ASRock could enter the graphics card market, according to a report by Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes. The company is reportedly enamored by the GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining boom, and could develop a graphics card lineup that's mostly, if not entirely, based on AMD Radeon graphics processors. AMD Radeon GPUs are generally regarded as being more efficient at mining popular crypto-currencies.

This could indicate that ASRock's graphics card designs could be frugal, and purpose-built for mining. Like all other add-in board (AIB) partners, the company could start off with some reference-design cards, and then launch custom-designed ones. The company has seen success in recent times as a formidable high-end PC motherboard brand across both Intel and AMD platforms; in addition to its low-cost motherboard core business. It also diversified into industrial PC components, server motherboards, and consumer networking products, such as Wi-Fi routers.

The title of this piece is both question and answer, though users that keep up with PC-related news knew the answer already. Jon Peddie Research, in a new report, pegs the number of total graphics cards sold to miners at a pretty respectable 3 million units (worth some $776 million). That's some 3 million gamers that could be enjoying video games on their PCs right now, or which would be able to enjoy them at a much lower price that they had to recently pay to have the privilege.

AMD has been the primary benefactor here - its GPU market share went up by 8.1%, while NVIDIA's dropped by 6% and Intel's by 1.9% (the fact that Intel's graphics processing units come embedded in the company's processors helps keep that number stable). As it is, attachment rates of GPUs to systems was over 100% at 136%, the result of miners buying more cards per system in an effort to maximize profits. Jon Peddie thinks that gaming will still be the key player to drive GPU sales, though "augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners." The firm also expects demand for GPUs to slacken, coeteris paribus, due to "increasing utilities costs and supply and demand forces that drive up AIB prices." However, for those looking for prices to drop before upgrading their system, the news aren't rosy: the article states that pricing will not drop in the foreseeable future, so owners of GPUs that can actually mine already are being encouraged to mine while not gaming, so as to try and offset the markups in the current GPU offerings.

ASUS rolled out GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti Cerberus series graphics cards. Much like the GTX 1070 Ti Cerberus card launched late-2017, these cards come with 144-hour burn-in quality-control by ASUS, and are targeted at gaming iCafes. The GTX 1050 Ti Cerberus (model: CERBERUS-GTX1050TI-O4G) comes with 4 GB of memory, while the GTX 1050 Cerberus (CERBERUS-GTX1050-O2G) comes with 2 GB.

Both cards are based on an identical board design, featuring a 17 cm long full-height PCB, and a monoblock aluminium GPU heatsink that's ventilated by a pair of IP5X-certified (dust resistant) 80 mm fans. A 3+1 phase VRM with ASUS' highest grade Super Alloy Power II chokes power the card. Both cards rely on the PCI-Express slot for power. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI-D, HDMI 2.0b, and DisplayPort 1.4 connectors. Both cards are factory-overclocked, with the GTX 1050 Ti Cerberus shipping with 1341/1455 MHz (core/GPU Boost), and an untouched 7.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory; while the GTX 1050 Cerberus ships with 1404/1518 MHz (core/GPU Boost). The company didn't reveal pricing.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions announces that its line-up of graphics cards are highly recommended for the worldwide sensation game PUBG or PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds. With almost 3 million concurrent active players at any given time, it has become a must for almost any PC to be able to play PUBG. COLORFUL's history has been one created by its fans and users and the overwhelming demand for PUBG has left gamers asking if their graphics card can play PUBG in Ultra. COLORFUL has always stood by its commitment to gamers in delivering high-quality, high-performance products that meets their needs.

The chart below shows the performance of COLORFUL graphics cards in PUBG demonstrating that even in Ultra settings, COLORFUL VGAs are capable of delivering incredible performance even from the value segment all the way to the extreme enthusiast segment.

Sapphire over the weekend officially launched its cost-effective custom-design Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card, the Pulse Radeon Vega 56 (model: 11276-02), which began appearing on European e-tailers late-January. The card combines a custom-design short-length PCB that's roughly the length of AMD's reference R9 Fury board; with a beefy custom-design cooling solution that features two large aluminium fin-stacks, ventilated by a pair of 100 mm double ball-bearing fans.

The card offers out of the box clock speeds of 1208 MHz core, 1512 MHz boost, and 800 MHz (1.60 GHz HBM2 effective) memory, against AMD reference clock speeds of 1138 MHz core and 1474 MHz boost. At its given clock, the memory bandwidth on offer is 409.6 GB/s. The "Vega 10" silicon is configured with 3,584 stream processors, 192 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0. Sapphire intended for this SKU to ideally occupy a close-to-reference price-point, a notch below its Nitro+ series, however in the wake of the crypto-currency wave, market-forces will decide its retail price.

MicroCenter is known for its wacky deals on PC hardware, notably selling processors at below-MSRP rates. In a bid to ensure gamers - and not miners - have access to graphics cards, the retailer is willing to sell you one graphics card at MSRP, provided that the order (cart) includes a processor, a motherboard, a memory kit, and a power-supply (some of the key ingredients of a PC). This offer should help people building gaming PCs from scratch, but not so much people upgrading their graphics cards. It's still way better than how retailers from across the big pond are making sure crypto-mining doesn't irreversibly damage the gaming PC ecosystem. To ensure miners don't swallow up cards at MSRP by bundling them with cheap entry-level hardware, the offer can be redeemed once per delivery address.

Best Buy is another retailer selling graphics cards at prices close to MSRP. Amazon and Newegg are making a killing. This is a particularly terrible time to buy/upgrade your graphics cards, as bulk purchases from crypto-currency miners have caused a triple-digit inflation in prices. If your 2-year old graphics card can't cope with today's AAA games, maybe it's time to buy a console, or play a game IRL (like handball).

MSI is apparently working on a revised version of its dual-fan Armor design for AMD's cards, dropping the white and black color scheme and opting for a more AMD-basic black and red one. The new versions, tentatively dubbed the Armor MK2 graphics cards, are expected to trickle through MSI's AMD graphics card lineup slowly, starting with the RX 570 and RX 560 graphics cards in their OC versions. The new color scheme, even if used to exhaustion already, does a little more than the previous Armor iteration in conveying the image of an AMD graphics card (black and red, anyone?), and the Armor MK2 models should feature an additional color and design upgrade to the existing backplate.

The crypto-currency plague continues to nibble away at the PC gaming ecosystem, driving gamers to consoles. This affects the long-term prospects of graphics processor manufacturers like NVIDIA, who will find it difficult to pull gamers lost to consoles back to the PC ecosystem, should newer cost-effective ASICs arrest the viability of using GPUs to mine crypto-currency (as it did on several occasions in the past). The company is reportedly writing to PC hardware retailers to take steps to ensure that PC gamers have access to graphics cards first, and only then crypto-currency miners. The request doesn't prescribe any measures to control graphics card prices that have clearly gone out of hand.

Retailers in Germany responded lukewarmly, by setting quantity limitations, ranging between 2 to 5 units per order (and not per-household). Retailers responding to ComputerBase.de commented that they sometimes receive orders by e-mail with quantities running over 100 units. NVIDIA emphasizes that this request is a "recommendation" on its part, and not a directive, and that it would never interfere in freedom of commerce (by letting market-forces sell $200 graphics cards at $1000). The only people standing to lose are PC gamers who haven't upgraded their graphics cards in over two years, who are not able to play today's AAA games at recommended settings, especially when newer games are implementing the new DirectX 12 API, and their eye-candy have leaped to levels 2+ year old high-end graphics cards struggle to keep up with.

Sapphire took to CES 2018 to showcase one of the most elusive products in recent times: a custom variant of AMD's RX Vega graphics cards. Sapphire went to great lengths to keep the entire affair under as many wraps as possible, even going so far as to book an entire room to showcase their RX Vega Nitro+, laying still, like a mirage, on top of its anti-static plastic wrap.

There's something eerily beautiful about this graphics card: not on its exquisite back and faceplate designs alone, nor on the custom Sapphire-cut exhaust port; it's really for the condition of a somewhat "unicorn" type of product. Some people believe they're out there, but sightings in their natural environment (read, correct MSRP) are so rare that they are brought up as mass deliriums. The most interesting tech product on CES 2018 based on this story alone, surely.

EVGA is feeling both generous and nostalgic, and has announced a contest that's as welcome as it is original. Looking back on its roots as an innovative designer of cooling systems for graphics cards, allowing gamers everywhere to play their favorite games with the best temperatures and least noise possible, EVGA are looking for users that still keep their GeForce 4 ACS and ACS2-powered graphics cards. ACS and ACS 2 are effectively the precursors to EVGA's latest cooling innovations, even if these types of cooling designs are now the norm rather than the exception.

If you have a GeForce4 MX 440 or a GeForce4 4600 Ti, both launched way back in 2002, EVGA is asking that you submit your information to them, and the company will gladly pay you 1,000 EVGA bucks - its digital currency that is equivalent to $ in a 1:1 ratio, and would allow you to buy a great 1080 Ti from the EVGA store. Not such a bad deal for an old GeForce 4 graphics card, eh? Like Sonic would say, you "gotta go fast", though: the contest is available for a maximum of 3 ACS owners and 3 ACS2 owners.

MSI today rolled out its first quasi-custom design Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card, the MSI RX Vega 64 Air Boost. This card combines an AMD reference-design (or at least close-to-reference) PCB, with a custom-design lateral-flow cooling solution by MSI. The lateral blower features a large base plate with a copper core; the base plate draws heat from the VRM, the copper core from the "Vega 10" MCM. The card ships with slightly overclocked speeds of 1272 MHz core, and 1575 MHz boost. Drawing power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the card puts out three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, and an HDMI 2.0 port. The company didn't reveal pricing.

NVIDIA in a shock move, announced its new flagship graphics card, the TITAN V. This card implements the "Volta" GV100 graphics processor, the same one which drives the company's Tesla V100 HPC accelerator. The GV100 is a multi-chip module, with the GPU die and three HBM2 memory stacks sharing a package. The card features 12 GB of HBM2 memory across a 3072-bit wide memory interface. The GPU die has been built on the 12 nm FinFET+ process by TSMC. NVIDIA TITAN V maxes out the GV100 silicon, if not its memory interface, featuring a whopping 5,120 CUDA cores, 640 Tensor cores (specialized units that accelerate neural-net building/training). The CUDA cores are spread across 80 streaming multiprocessors (64 CUDA cores per SM), spread across 6 graphics processing clusters (GPCs). The TMU count is 320.

The GPU core is clocked at 1200 MHz, with a GPU Boost frequency of 1455 MHz, and an HBM2 memory clock of 850 MHz, translating into 652.8 GB/s memory bandwidth (1.70 Gbps stacks). The card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DP and one HDMI connectors. With a wallet-scorching price of USD $2,999, and available exclusively through NVIDIA store, the TITAN V is evidence that with Intel deciding to sell client-segment processors for $2,000, it was a matter of time before GPU makers seek out that price-band. At $3k, the GV100's margins are probably more than made up for.

After teasing us with a somewhat bold design for their custom RX Vega graphics cards, XFX has officially taken the lid of their finalized design for their RX Vega graphics cards. These have been a long time coming, for sure; and the design is definitely bold enough to be divisive, promising to be a "hate it or love it" affair. XFX has taken their brand-recognition-fueled X and applied that design to the graphics cards' shroud, with a recess in the middle of the graphics cards that separates the two air cooling fans giving the card an X-shaped design. This design quirk has been put to other uses than just aesthetic considerations, though, with the card's 2x 8-pin power connectors being slotted smack in the middle of the graphics card, which might be good (or bad) according to your cases' routing ability, though it should, in theory, allow for somewhat decreased length of the graphics card. The backplate on the XFX custom cards also looks great (black, gray and red are almost impossible to get wrong).

Black Friday is indisputably the best time of the year for any computer enthusiasts because we can get new toys for cheaper prices. Whether it be computer hardware or consumer electronics, Newegg has become the preferred place for many enthusiasts. We here at TechPowerUp have put together a list of the amazing deals currently available at the online retailer. The promotions are grouped into different categories for your viewing convenience. If you've been eyeing a particular piece of hardware or gadget, come take a look at our list. Who knows? Maybe you can save yourself a few hard-earned dollars. Don't forget to come back periodically to check for new deals!