GIGABYTE Technology announces the launch of its highly anticipated XTREME Prestige Limited Edition series, featuring the Z790 AORUS XTREME X ICE Motherboard and the AORUS GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER XTREME ICE 16G Graphics Card. This exclusive release merges top-tier performance with unparalleled design, catering to the discerning tastes of gaming enthusiasts and collectors alike.

The XTREME Prestige Limited Edition sets a new standard in the realm of gaming hardware. It is crafted to perfection, embracing the latest Current White Gaming Builds trend. Each component showcases white iridescence, accented with crystallized titanium textures and adorned with a 99% Au gold serial plaque, embodying luxury and exclusivity. The series not only dazzles with its aesthetic appeal but also promises exceptional gaming and computing performance.

Rain or shine, a new month means new games. GeForce NOW kicks off April with nearly 20 new games, seven of which are available to play this week. GFN Thursday celebrates the 10-year anniversary of ZeniMax Online Studios' Elder Scrolls Online by bringing the award-winning online role-playing game (RPG) to the cloud this week. Plus, the GeForce NOW Ultimate membership comes to gamers in Japan for the first time, with new GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs online today.

The Rising Sun Goes Ultimate
GeForce NOW is rolling out the green carpet to gamers in Japan, expanding next-generation cloud gaming worldwide. The Ultimate membership tier is now available to gamers in the region, delivering up to 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second, all at ultra-low latency - even on devices without the latest hardware. Gamers in Japan can now access from the cloud triple-A titles by some of the world's largest publishers. Capcom's Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil Village will be coming to GeForce NOW at a later date for members to stream at the highest performance. GeForce NOW will operate in Japan alongside GeForce NOW Alliance partner and telecommunications company KDDI, which currently offers its customers access to GeForce RTX 3080-powered servers, in addition to its mobile benefits. Plus, new GFNA partners in other regions will be announced this year - stay tuned to GFN Thursdays for details.

The Professional Gamers League (PGL) showcased its newly upgraded tournament rig specification prior to the kick-off of their (still ongoing) CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 esports event. As reported, over a week ago, competitors have been treated to modern systems decked out with AMD's popular gaming-oriented Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards, while BenQ's ZOWIE XL2566K 24.5" 360 Hz gaming monitor delivers a superfast visual feed. A hefty chunk of change has been spent on new hardware, but expensive cutting-edge tech can falter. Virtus.pro team member—Jame—experienced a major software crash during a match against rival group, G2.

PCGamesN noted that this frustrating incident ended the affected team's chance to grab a substantial cash reward. Their report put a spotlight on this unfortunate moment: "in the second round of a best of three, Virtus Pro were a few rounds away from qualifying for the playoffs, only for their aspirations to be squashed through no fault of their own...Jame experiences a graphics card driver crash that irrecoverably steers the round in G2's favor, culminating in Virtus Pro losing the match 11-13. Virtus Pro would then go on to lose the subsequent tie-break match as the round was not replayed. In effect, the graphics card driver crash partly cost the team their chance at winning an eventual $1.25 million prize pool." PGL revealed, via a social media post, that officials are doing some detective work: "we wish to clarify the situation involving Jame during the second map, Inferno, in the series against G2. A technical malfunction occurred due to an NVIDIA driver crash, resulting in a game crash. We are continuing our investigation into the matter." The new tournament rigs were "meticulously optimized" and tested in the weeks leading up to CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024—it is believed that the driver crash was a random anomaly. PGL and NVIDIA are currently working on a way to "identify and fix the issue."

Chinese custom chassis specialist, Xikii, has opened pre-orders for a new FF04 model—this classy ￥3599 (~$500) box has been designed to match the aesthetic theme of ASUS ProArt graphics cards. 3DCenter.org was impressed with the company's premium-priced work, following a discovery by Western readers (on Reddit). The site's social media account expressed some appreciation—the Xikii FF04 chassis set is a "9.8 liter case built around a single GPU; ASUS ProArt RTX 4070 Ti. Even the contour of the case matches the curve of the GPU shroud."

Xikii's product page includes a bunch of slick marketing shots and a promo video—all showing off a sample unit. Redditors noticed that the first batch of FF04 cases has already sold out—the company anticipates a shipping out date somewhere within an April 15 to 30 window. VideoCardz has eyeballed all available data, and surmised that several "RTX 40 ProArt models (4080, 4070 and 4060 series)" are suitably proportioned to fit in Xikii's purpose-built chassis—these: "have the same dimensions of 300x120x50 mm. This may explain why this design made any sense, you can certainly fit more than one model into this case, just keep in mind that a suitable power supply is needed for higher-end models." Xikii will offer an "external split water-cooling adapter module" as an optional item in the near future—they predict a price of 180 yuan (~$25).

Thermaltake USA, the leading PC Case, Cooling, Power, and memory solutions, proudly announces the launch of twelve innovative models in the LCGS (Liquid Cooled Gaming System) Reactor series, available exclusively at Best Buy. This launch marks a significant milestone for Thermaltake, introducing the next generation of gaming PCs, meticulously designed with the newly unveiled The Tower 300 Micro Tower Chassis. These gaming powerhouses are equipped with the latest high-performance components, including the cutting-edge Intel Core 14th Gen i9/i7 processors, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Super Series/4090 graphics cards, 32 GB of DDR5 5600 MT/s memory, and expansive 2 TB NVMe M.2 SSD storage.

Each system in the LCGS Reactor series boasts a 360 mm radiator liquid cooling solution, ensuring exceptional cooling performance and stability during intense gaming sessions. The addition of vibrant color options such as Snow, Black, Hydrangea Blue, and Turquoise adds a personalized touch to these systems, catering to gamers' and content creators' diverse tastes and styles. Tailored for the most demanding gamers and creative professionals, these pre-built gaming desktop PCs are assembled and rigorously tested by Thermaltake's skilled engineers in the USA, ensuring unparalleled build quality and reliability.

The stars align this GFN Thursday as more top titles from Ubisoft and Square Enix join the cloud. Star Wars Outlaws will be coming to the GeForce NOW library at launch later this year, while STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R and PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo are part of eight new titles joining this week. Additionally, four other games are getting NVIDIA RTX enhancements, all arriving at next week's Game Developers Conference.

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT and Portal with RTX are adding full ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction capabilities. This month's Diablo IV update will add ray tracing. And Sengoku Dynasty—available to stream today—was recently updated with DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Two months ago, NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series to the market, bringing a trio of models: RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4080 SUPER. Today, according to the report from ComputerBase, NVIDIA's latest trio has recorded a drop in pricing recently, and it now retails under MSRP in German stores. The RTX 4070 SUPER started with an MSRP of 659 Euros ($599 in the US) and is now available from 589 Euros. Its older brother, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, started with an MSRP listing of 889 Euros ($799 in the US) and is now retailing from 840 Euros. Lastly, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER has been listed at 1,109 Euros ($999 in the US) and is now retailing with a small discount at 1,092 Euros.

Once NVIDIA launched a new GPU generation, it became a custom for these cards to be retailed over their MSRP long before prices were adjusted and settled. However, with the latest SUPER refresh, this seems to be one of the fastest price adjustments. This could be caused by either an improvement in the supply chain or leveled supply and demand, making it so that these cards are finally trading below their launch-level MSRPs.

Palit has kind of gone against the 12VHPWR grain with its GeForce RTX 4080 Super GamingPro OC graphics card—PC SIG's 16-pin power connector is the default standard for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series, but an outbreak of technical snafus has caused many to question the format's future. A new 12V-2x6 connection standard is touted as 12VHPWR's natural successor, but PC parts manufacturers continue to produce products that utilize the latter. HXL discovered a MaxSun custom GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER design that sported two completely bog standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors (in lieu of 12VHPWR), but a follow up report indicates that the Chinese board partner has scrubbed the offending item from its web presences.

Jisakuhibi Japan's review of the Palit GeForce RTX 4080 Super GamingPro OC model included close-up shots of the card's PCB—the publication's social media account noted an intriguing yet empty section: "(Palit's) board seems to be able to natively set the auxiliary power supply to PCIe 8-pin x 2 instead of 12VHPWR." The unoccupied area sits just south-east of the standard 12VHPWR connector—the provisional positioning of pin holes suggests that Palit's PCB could be designed for a separate professional graphics card solution. The company is unlikely to divulge its original intent with the placement of older auxiliary power connectors—ultimately 12VHPWR is the way forward.

Leading power supply manufacturer FSP Group proudly announces its PSU lineup now features native 12VHPWR connectors, fully prepared to harness the power of NVIDIA's RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4070 SUPER graphics cards. For a truly supercharged experience, FSP PSUs go beyond compatibility. They're fully compliant with both ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 regulations, boasting support for 2x total power excursion and 3x GPU power excursion. This ensures unleashing the full potential of these new GPUs without breaking a sweat.

Explore the FSP ATX 3.0 & PCIe 5.0 PSU range, starting from 750 W, and find the perfect match for your RTX 40 SUPER Series.

We are well aware that NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics cards are next up on the review table (January 31)—TPU's W1zzard has so far toiled away on getting his evaluations published on time for options further down the Ada Lovelace SUPER food chain. This process was interrupted briefly by the appearance of custom Radeon RX 7600 XT models, but today's attention soon returned to another batch of GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER cards. Reviewers are already toying around with driver-enabled GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER sample units—under strict confidentiality conditions—but the occasional leak is expected to happen. The appropriately named Benchleaks social media account has kept track of emerging test results.

The Geekbench Browser database was updated earlier today with premature GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPU test results—one entry highlighted by Benchleaks provides a quick look at the card's prowess in three of Geekbench 5.1's graphics API trials: Vulkan, CUDA and OpenCL. VideoCardz points out that all of the scores could be fundamentally flawed; in particular the Vulkan result of 100378 points—the regular (non-SUPER) GeForce RTX 4080 GPU can achieve almost double that figure in Geekbench 6. The SUPER's other results included a Geekbench 5 CUDA score of 309554, and an achievement of 264806 points in OpenCL. A late morning entrant looks to be hitting the right mark—an ASUS testbed (PRIME Z790-A WIFI + Intel Core i9-13900KF) managed to score 210551 points in Geekbench 6.2.2 Vulkan.

According to the recent listing on Goofish, discovered by VideoCardz, Chinese companies have begun selling mobile versions of NVIDIA's latest RTX 40-series GPUs as desktop graphics cards. Initially designed for gaming laptops, the GeForce RTX 4080M and RTX 4090M are now being marketed in China as more affordable alternatives to their official desktop counterparts. This development is no surprise to industry observers who recall similar adaptations with the RTX 20 and 30 series. These companies are leveraging the lower cost of mobile GPUs, combined with budget cooling solutions and simpler PCB designs, to offer more affordable desktop GPU options. The mobile GPUs, which are capped at a power consumption of 175 Watts, are being repurposed without official sanction, with NVIDIA seemingly disregarding this practice. Despite the lack of official endorsement, these modified GPUs are finding their way into the market, providing gamers a cost-effective alternative to the more expensive desktop versions.

While not officially supported by NVIDIA, these cards utilize the mobile GPU dies paired with custom cooling solutions and PCBs to work in desktop PCs. According to reports, the RTX 4080M desktop variant offers 7424 CUDA cores and 12 GB GDDR6 memory, representing a 24% reduction in cores and 4 GB less memory versus the desktop RTX 4080. The desktop RTX 4090M is even more cut-down, with 9728 cores and 16 GB memory—a 40% drop in cores and 8 GB less memory than the flagship RTX 4090 desktop card. Pricing falls between $420 and $560 for the RTX 4080M and exceeds that of even the desktop RTX 4090 for the 4090M variant. Performance and longevity still need to be determined for these unofficial cards. While they present a cheaper RTX 40-series option for Chinese gamers, the reduced specifications come with tradeoffs. Still, their availability indicates the ongoing demand for next-gen GPUs and the lengths some vendors go to to meet that demand.

Yeston, Chinese GPU AIB, has posted a preview of its upcoming Sakura RTX 40 SUPER cards, featuring a white PCB, a first for SUPER cards. The current RTX 40 Sakura models are set to be updated to these SUPER variants, with no reported visual changes. The RTX 4070 (Ti) SUPER will adopt the older design first introduced with the RTX 30 series, featuring a color scheme of white, purple, blue, and adorned with sakura-inspired graphic designs. In addition to the RTX 4070 (Ti) SUPER, Yeston will also release the RTX 4080 SUPER, which is expected to be the highest-end Sakura model from the company at the time of its release. The only RTX 4090 in Yeston's lineup is a Deluxe edition. These new releases offer gamers an exceptional GPU design, particularly those who appreciate the unique aesthetic of the Sakura series. The white PCB is a notable feature that sets these cards apart in the market. More details about the release date, clock speeds, and pricing are expected to be announced soon.

EK, the renowned pioneer in premium liquid cooling, announces full compatibility with the newly launched GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series graphics cards powered by NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture. With the launch of the new GPU and all vendor partners announcing their complete lists of the upcoming graphics cards, EK has also updated all the water block compatibility lists found on the EK Compatibility Configurator and EK Custom Loop Configurator database.

The latest RTX 4080 SUPER promises competitive pricing and a lower entry point for PC users, and with that, it represents a more attractive product for custom-loop liquid cooling enthusiasts. RTX 4080 SUPER is bound to go on sale on January 31 with a price of $999 (MSRP), which is $200 less than the launch price of the original RTX 4080. With the release of the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, we have seen a plethora of new GPUs announced by the custom board partners, and EK strongly suggests using EK Compatibility Configurator or EK Custom Loop Configurator tools to find a suitable water block. EK is updating the compatibility database with newly released hardware from various manufacturers, adding compatible graphics cards to the list daily.

Schenker, one of Europe's leading PC OEM and systems integrators, updated its XMG line of premium mobiile workstations, with the XMG Neo 16 and XMG Neo 17, powered by 14th Gen Intel Core HX "Raptor Lake Refresh" mobile processors, which released on January 8. Both are power-packed beasts that offer maxed out gaming with ray tracing at their respective display resolutions. Both feature the top-of-the-line Core i9-14900HX 8P+16E processor, along with dual-channel DDR5 SO-DIMM memory. The machine supports user-configured processor undervolting, and Intel XMP 3.0 overclocked memory support. Out of the box, the i9-14900HX is configured for over 100 W base power, although the maximum turbo power can go over 150 W as per Intel specifications. Graphics sub-system is led by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU with 16 GB 256-bit memory, and 175 W power tuning.

XMG's innovative OASIS air+liquid cooling solution tackles heat from the beastly i9-14900HX and RTX 4090 Laptop GPU. Connectivity includes a 100 W PD USB-C port. The notebook has an elaborate aluminium channel heatsink with multiple flat heatpipes, but there's also a liquid coolant channel with exterior fittings. The XMG OASIS accessory (purchased separately), can be quick connected to this, which contains a liquid cooling loop with a pump, reservoir, radiator, and probably something to deal with the residual air in the loop. You can opt for a CHERRY-sourced RGB-illuminated mechanical keyboard. The XMG 16 packs mostly the same hardware, except GPU choices offered between an RTX 4080 Laptop GPU and the top RTX 4090 Laptop GPU. It comes with a gorgeous 500 nits 16:10 display.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the 2024 Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16, the latest in an illustrious lineup of supremely powerful thin-and-light gaming laptops. These machines feature a new CNC-machined aluminium chassis, a customizable Slash Lighting array, and a brand-new Platinum White colorway, while cutting-edge AI accelerated silicon from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA stand ready to push gamers and creators to new heights of performance. Both the Zephyrus G14 and G16 come equipped with the ROG Nebula Display, stunningly color-accurate OLED panels that are also G-SYNC capable for incredible gaming experiences. Ultra-efficient cooling technology, including tri-fan technology, liquid metal, and vapor chambers on select models enable the Zephyrus G14 and G16 to breathe easily despite their ultra-portable designs.

Brand-new chassis design
The 2024 Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 have been completely redesigned inside and out. Both machines boast all-new and all-aluminium CNC-machined chassis for the perfect mix of weight reduction, structural rigidity, and increased chassis space. This allows for an edge-to-edge keyboard design, as well as the inclusion of larger and louder speakers with superior bass response down to 100 Hz. The speakers are 25% larger than the previous generation, with a 47% volume increase for more immersive audio experiences than ever before. The Zephyrus G14 and G16 also come with larger individual keycaps and a larger touchpad, for superior typing, precision scrolling, and fluid gaming. Both the 2024 Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 ship with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, providing access to a library of hundreds of great games.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the 2024 Strix family of laptops, including the Strix SCAR 18, the first 18-inch ROG laptop equipped with the mini LED ROG Nebula HDR Display. As the vanguard of gaming laptops, all 2024 Strix machines feature the latest flagship Intel Core i9 processor 14900HX, with the Strix SCAR 16 and SCAR 18 sporting up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU with 175 W max TGP. Paired with a complete suite of the latest intelligent cooling improvements, including Tri-Fan technology and Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal on both the CPU and GPU, the 2024 Strix family of laptops has arrived to dominate the competition.

Brilliant detail
This year marks the introduction of the first ROG 18-inch display powered by Mini LED technology. HDR content and games have arrived on the big screen with the arrival of the 2024 Strix SCAR 18, with its Nebula HDR Display boasting over 2000 discrete dimming zones and 1100 nits of peak brightness. On an 18-inch panel, this dimming zone density coupled with the ROG Nebula HDR Engine minimizes blooming and haloing even in challenging scenes, giving the Strix SCAR 18 incredibly vivid HDR performance.

Akasa introduced a couple of new accessories designed to solve the problem of an obtuse cable bend of the 16-pin 12VHPWR power cable that compounds the problem of tall high-end graphics cards not getting along well with some of the more compact PC cases—of which Akasa specializes in. These include the G-Nexus P24, and G-Nexus PX24. The G-Nexus P24 is a solid-state L-shaped adapter and connector converter. One of its sides has three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which it converts to a 12VPWR on the other end, at a 90° angle. This 12VHPWR is rated for 450 W, which should cover all RTX 40-series graphics cards up to the RTX 4080. It might be possible to even pair this with an RTX 4090, though the 450 W connector power limit could take the edge off overclocked performance. All custom RTX 4090 cards include a 600 W-rated adapter cable (that demand four 8-pin PCIe inputs).

The Akasa G-Nexus PX24 is a slightly different take on this concept, with a 30 cm cable between the 12VHPWR (which is held at a 90° angle), and the other end that has the three 8-pin PCIe inputs, arranged next to each other on a single piece. It's important to note here, that while Akasa is converting three 8-pin PCIe (3x 150 W) to a 12VHPWR on both accessories, the connector has its signal pins set to tell the graphics card that it is capable of delivering 600 W. This would obviously mean that any continuous load above 450 W would go above the 150 W specification limit of the PCIe connectors. The company didn't reveal pricing.

FinalWire Ltd. today announced the immediate availability of AIDA64 Extreme 7.00 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Engineer 7.00 software, a professional diagnostic and benchmarking solution for corporate IT technicians and engineers; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business 7.00 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Network Audit 7.00 software, a dedicated network audit toolset to collect and manage corporate network inventories.

The new AIDA64 update introduces a revamped user interface with a configurable toolbar, as well as AVX-512 accelerated benchmarks for AMD Threadripper 7000 processors, AVX2 optimized benchmarks for Intel Meteor Lake processors, and supports the latest AMD and Intel CPU platforms as well as the new graphics and GPGPU computing technologies by AMD, Intel and NVIDIA.

DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 Extreme v7.0

Uncover the source of the supernatural darkness in Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake 2, with the power of the GeForce RTX 40 Series. Experience two beautiful yet terrifying worlds enhanced with full ray tracing for the highest levels of fidelity, accelerated and enhanced by DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction. And get the most responsive gameplay possible thanks to NVIDIA Reflex. Solve the deadly mysteries of Alan Wake 2 with RTX On - the definitive way to play.

In 2019, NVIDIA and Remedy Entertainment partnered to enhance Control, one of the first ray-traced and DLSS-enhanced games, which to this day remains a stunning title that demonstrates the advanced capabilities of the PC platform. In Alan Wake 2, our technical partnership takes the PC edition of Remedy's new, eagerly awaited game to the next level with fully ray-traced, path-traced graphics that are beyond anything you've previously seen.

As a leading brand in True Gaming hardware, MSI is excited to introduce the GAMING SLIM Family, a new graphics card series powered by NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series graphics processors. While maintaining the most iconic GAMING elements from the long-standing MSI GAMING series, GAMING SLIM is even thinner and lighter, allowing for flexible system assembly while promising high-performance capabilities. The GAMING SLIM series is available with the GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, GeForce RTX 4070, and GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics processors.

Powered by NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace architecture, RTX 40 Series graphics cards offer unparalleled speed, ushering in a new era of performance, immersive gaming, AI capabilities, and lightning-fast content creation for gamers and creators alike.

NVIDIA in its Gamescom 2023 presentation began with announcing updates to the GeForce NOW game-streaming platform. Its Ultimate performance tier, which gives you performance and quality comparable to a gaming PC powered by an RTX 4080 graphics card, is now deployed throughout Europe and North America, with as many as 15 RTX 4080 SuperPod locations. Gamers in these locations will be able to opt for the company's highest tier of game streaming. An RTX 4080 SuperPod is a data-center of game streaming servers can provide each client (gamer) with performance rivaling an RTX 4080-powered machine.

GeForce NOW Ultimate lets you play and stream at 4K or Ultrawide resolution at 120 frames per second, or play at up to 240 FPS with DLSS 3 and reflex. NVIDIA has optimized over 40 AAA games for GeForce NOW Ultimate, and plans to add four new games titles to the mix, including Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, Payday 3, and Party Animals. Next up, NVIDIA introduced Xbox PC Game Pass support on GeForce NOW. If you have an Xbox PC Game Pass subscription, you can play any of the games available to you on the GeForce NOW platform from that subscription, without having to pay for the title on GeForce NOW. NVIDIA says that the first Xbox PC Game Pass titles should begin streaming from August 24, 2023.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 and RX 700 series based on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPU architectures have been benchmarked by folks over at ComputerBase. However, these weren't regular benchmarks of performance but rather power consumption. According to their latest results, they discovered that enabling Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) can lower the power consumption of AMD Radeon cards in idle. Using a 4K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, ComputerBase benchmarked Radeon RX 6800/6700 XT and RX 7900 XT, both last-generation and current-generation graphics cards. The performance matrix also includes a comparison to Intel Arc A770, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4080.

Regarding performance figures, the tests compare desktop idle consumption, dual monitor power consumption, window movement, YouTube with SDR at 60 FPS, and YouTube with HDR at 60 FPS, all done on a 4K 144 Hz monitor setup. You can see the comparison below, with the most significant regression in power consumption being Radeon RX 7900 XTX using 81% less power in single and 71% less power in dual monitor setup.

The GPU at the heart of the China-exclusive AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) sparked much curiosity. It is a physically different GPU from the one found in desktop Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. AMD wouldn't go through all that effort designing a whole different GPU just for a limited edition graphics card, which means this silicon could find greater use for the company—for example, this could be the package AMD uses for its upcoming mobile RX 7900 series. AMD wouldn't go through all the effort designing a first-party MBA (made by AMD) PCB for the silicon just for the RX 7900 GRE, and so this PCB, with this particular version of the "Navi 31" silicon, could see a wider global launch, probably as the rumored Radeon RX 7800 XT, or something else (although with a different set of specs from the RX 7900 GRE).

We compared the sizes of the new "Navi 31" package found in the RX 7900 GRE, with those of the regular "Navi 31" powering the RX 7900 XT/XTX, the previous-generation "Navi 21" powering the RX 6900 XT, and the NVIDIA AD103 silicon powering the desktop GeForce RTX 4080. There are some interesting findings. The new smaller "Navi 31" package is visibly smaller than the one powering the RX 7900 XT/XTX. It is a square package, compared to the larger rectangular one, and has a significantly thinner metal reinforcement brace. What's interesting is that the 5 nm GCD is still surrounded by six 6 nm MCDs. We don't know if they've disabled two of the six MCDs, or whether they're dummies. AMD uses dummy chiplets as structural reinforcement in some of its EPYC server processors. The dummies spread some of the mounting pressure applied by the IHS or cooling solution, so the logic behind surrounding the GCD with six of these MCDs could be the same.

NVIDIA has reportedly shelved plans in the short term to release the rumored GeForce RTX 4090 Ti flagship graphics card, according to Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks. This card had been extensively leaked over the past few months as featuring a cinder block-like 4-slot thickness, and a unique PCB that's along the plane of the motherboard, rather than perpendicular to it. From the looks of it, sales and competition in the high-end/halo segment are too slow, the current RTX 4090 remains the fastest graphics card you can buy, and the company seems unfazed by the alleged Radeon RX 7950 series, given that AMD has already maxed out the "Navi 31" silicon, and there are only so many things the red team can try, to beat the RTX 4090.

That said, the company is reportedly planning more SKUs based on the AD103 and AD106 silicon. The AD103 powers the GeForce RTX 4080, which nearly maxes it out. The AD104 has been maxed out by the RTX 4070 Ti, and there could be a gap between the RTX 4070 Ti and the RTX 4080 that AMD could try to exploit by competitively pricing its RX 7900 series, and certain upcoming SKUs. This creates scope for new SKUs based on cut-down AD103 and the GPU's 256-bit memory bus. The AD106 is nearly maxed out with the RTX 4060 Ti, however there's still room to unlock its last remaining TPC, use faster GDDR6X memory, and attempt to slim the vast gap between the RTX 4060 Ti and the RTX 4070.

NVIDIA's high-end GeForce RTX 4080 has, for the very first time, dropped below the $1,000-mark in pricing. A Newegg retailer-level promotion sees the MSI RTX 4080 Ventus 3X OC graphics card listed at $1,099, with a coupon shaving off a further $100. This is a 16.5% discount over the $1,199 NVIDIA baseline MSRP for the RTX 4080. The MSI Ventus 3X OC was originally launched at a $60 premium over the MSRP.

The GeForce RTX 4080 is seeing a much needed downward trend in street pricing, with the graphics card market as a whole experiencing a slump. The RTX 4080 in particular could be experiencing pressure from the Radeon RX 7900 XTX for NVIDIA and retailers to consider price-cuts, with the lowest street-price for the AMD flagship recorded at $881. It's probably hoped that a $999 price could attract some buyers away from the RX 7900 XTX. The GeForce RTX 4080 is an enthusiast-class graphics card designed for maxed-out gaming at 4K Ultra HD, with ray tracing enabled, and loaded with features such as DLSS 3 and dual-stream encoders and decoders.