We've seen NVIDIA's move to provide RTX effects on older, non-RT capable hardware today being met with what the company was certainly expecting: a cry of dismay from users that now get to see exactly what their non-Turing NVIDIA hardware is capable of. The move from NVIDIA could be framed as a way to democratize access to RTX effects via Windows DXR, enabling users of its GTX 1600 and 1000 series of GPUs to take a look at the benefits of raytracing; but also as an upgrade incentive for those that now see how their performance is lacking without the new specialized Turing cores to handle the added burden.

Whatever your side of the fence on that issue, however, NVIDIA has provided users with one more raytraced joy today. Three of them, in fact, in the form of three previously-shown tech demos. The Star Wars tech demo (download) is the most well known, certainly, with its studies on reflections on Captain Phasma's breastplate. Atomic Heart (download) is another one that makes use of RTX for reflections and shadows, while Justice (download) adds caustics to that equation. If you have a Turing graphics card, you can test these demos in their full glory, with added DLSS for improved performance. If you're on Pascal, you won't have that performance-enhancing mode available, and will have to slog it through software computations. Follow the embedded links for our direct downloads of these tech demos.

Update April 4th: This post has been corrected based on new information provided by ASUS, EKWB, as well as other parties. The original story mentioned a silent change to the glue used on the PCB which, as we now believe, is no longer the case in that ASUS is not to blame.

Update April 5th: ASUS has confirmed to us that there has been no PCB change (in terms of components and their heights), it's only a problem of tolerances due to the glue being liquid during production.

ASUS has glued the GPU die to the PCB for many generations, which helps ensure contact and avoids microfractures in the solder balls from physical force or thermal expansion. The nature of this glue, typically an epoxy resin, means that aftermarket cooling solutions, such as full cover or die-only water blocks, have to accommodate for this around the holes around the die. Previous graphics cards had no issue here, because the mounting holes were far away from the GPU die. With RTX 2080 Ti and its super large GPU chip this has changed, and there's only a few millimeters of space left. If a waterblock uses wider standoffs than the design merits, or if the glue spreads out farther than intended, it can result in poor/inconsistent contact between waterblock and the GPU, which in turn can lead to worse thermal performance than ideal.

This time, EK Waterblocks alerted us that the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti had poor contact and fitting issues with their GPU water block for the same, as seen in images below provided by their customer T. Hilal, which interferes with the four standoffs surrounding the package. EK recommends removing these standoffs to ensure a good fit and thermal paste spread, and this does not affect water block performance much in their internal testing. In previous such occasions, EK and others have had to come up with a second version of the block for added compatibility, however it remains to be seen if the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti will merit a similar treatment this time round. As an external reference, Phanteks has separately confirmed to us that their water block remains compatible.

Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) announced today that the 2019 COMPUTEX International Press Conference will be held with a Keynote by AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. The 2019 COMPUTEX International Press Conference & CEO Keynote is scheduled for Monday, May 27 at 10:00 AM in Room 201 of the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC) in Taipei, Taiwan with the keynote topic "The Next Generation of High-Performance Computing".

"COMPUTEX, as one of the global leading technology tradeshows, has continued to advance with the times for more than 30 years. This year, for the first time, a keynote speech will be held at the pre-show international press conference," said Mr. Walter Yeh, President & CEO, TAITRA, "Dr. Lisa Su received a special invitation to share insights about the next generation of high-performance computing. We look forward to her participation attracting more companies to participate in COMPUTEX, bringing the latest industry insights, and jointly sharing the infinite possibilities of the technology ecosystem on this global stage."

Anyone remotely familiar with NVIDIA knows of their now erstwhile distinguished engineer Thomas A. Petersen, better known simply as Tom Petersen or TAP. He was a delight to work with as far as the tech media is concerned, including TechPowerUp, and was a source of technical information on NVIDIA microarchitectures as well as features targeting the general consumer and prosumer alike. The last few keynote presentations have had a visible lack of Tom on screen, and even in person to where we were discussing internally whether he had taken on a more "behind the scenes" approach at the company. As it turns out, Tom is the latest in line to have attracted the eyes of Intel as the latter gears up to the challenge of gaining marketing share in the discrete GPU business in the years to come.

Tom confirmed on his Facebook page this past Friday that he was indeed leaving NVIDIA, with March 29 being his last working day there. He was quick to note his unemployment status on his LinkedIn profile in a humorous manner as well, and this was surely not for long given news broke shortly from Hothardware, and then Gamers Nexus, who both independently verified from their contacts at Intel that Tom Petersen was headed to the blue team sooner than later. Aside from being a media liaison for technical marketing, he has been at the forefront for the development of tools to help benchmark render response and effectiveness (FCAT), contributed to NVIDIA's GPU BOOST technology directly, and no doubt will be an important contributor at Intel to complement the vast number of PR and media personnel joining their ranks in the recent few months. We are excited to see what Tom helps bring to the table, and wish him the best to help create a more open and competing dGPU market for us.

This here is an interesting piece of tech news for sure, in that Intel has already scored a pretty massive design win for not one, but two upcoming products. Intel's "Future Xeon Scalable Processors" and the company's "Xe Compute Architecture" have been tapped by the U.S. Department of Energy for incorporation into the new AURORA Supercomputer - one that will deliver exascale performance. AURORA is to be developed in a partnership between Intel and Cray, using the later's Shasta systems and its "Slingshot" networking fabric. But these are not the only Intel elements in the supercomputer design: Intel's DC Optane persistent memory will also be employed (in an as-of-yet-unavailable version of it as well), making this a full win across the prow for Intel.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced its new High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2E) product at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) to deliver the highest DRAM performance levels for use in next-generation supercomputers, graphics systems, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The new solution, Flashbolt , is the industry's first HBM2E to deliver a 3.2 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) data transfer speed per pin, which is 33 percent faster than the previous-generation HBM2. Flashbolt has a density of 16Gb per die, double the capacity of the previous generation. With these improvements, a single Samsung HBM2E package will offer a 410 gigabytes-per-second (GBps) data bandwidth and 16 GB of memory.

NVIDIA will kick off the 2019 GPU Technology Conference later today, at 2 PM Pacific time. The company is expected to either tease or unveil a new graphics architecture succeeding "Volta" and "Turing." Not much is known about this architecture, but it's highly likely to be NVIDIA's first to be designed for the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. This unveiling could be the earliest stage of the architecture's launch cycle, would could see market availability only by late-2019 or mid-2020, if not later, given that the company's RTX 20-series and GTX 16-series have only been unveiled recently. NVIDIA could leverage 7 nm to increase transistor densities, and bring its RTX technology to even more affordable price-points.

As the world's most popular GAMING graphics card vendor, MSI is proud to announce its new graphics card line-up based on the new GeForce GTX 1660 GPU, the latest addition to the NVIDIA Turing GTX family.

The GeForce GTX 1660 utilizes the "TU116" Turing GPU that's been carefully architected to balance performance, power, and cost. TU116 includes all of the new Turing Shader innovations that improve performance and efficiency, including support for Concurrent Floating Point and Integer Operations, a Unified Cache Architecture with larger L1 cache, and Adaptive Shading.

Jon Peddie Research, the market research firm for the computer graphics industry, has released its quarterly Market Watch report on worldwide GPU shipments used in PCs for Q4'18. Overall GPU shipments decreased -2.65% from last quarter, AMD shipments decreased -6.8% Nvidia decreased -7.6% and Intel's shipments, decreased -0.7%. AMD's market share from last quarter decreased -0.6%, Intel's increased 1.4%, and Nvidia's market share decreased -0.82%. Year-to-year total GPU shipments decreased -3.3%, desktop graphics decreased -20%, notebooks increased 8%.

Although overall GPU shipments declined PC sales saw an uptick of 1.61% which is a positive sign for the market overall. "The channel's demand for add-in boards (AIBs) in early 2018 was out of sync with what was happening in the market," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president and founder of Jon Peddie Research. "As a result, the channel was burdened with too much inventory. That has impacted sales of discrete GPUs in Q4, and will likely be evident in Q1, and Q2'19 as well."

While developers have become more and more focused on actually taking advantage of the PC platform's performance - and particularly graphical technologies - advantages over consoles, the truth remains that games are being optimized for the lowest common denominator first. Consoles also share a much more user-friendly approach to gaming - there's no need for hardware updates or software configuration, mostly - it's just a sit on the couch and leave it affair, which can't really be said for gaming PCs. And the console market, due to its needs for cheap hardware that still offers performance levels that can currently fill a 4K resolution screen, are the most important playground for companies to thrive. Enter AMD, with its almost 100% stake in the console market, and Variable Rate Shading.

As we've seen with NVIDIA's Turing implementation for Variable Rate Shading, this performance-enhancing technique works in two ways: motion adaptive shading and content adaptive shading. Motion adaptive shading basically takes input from previous frames in order to calculate which pixels are moving fast across the screen, such as with a racing perspective - fast-flying detail doesn't stay focused in our vision so much that we can discern a relative loss in shading detail, whilst stationary objects, such as the focused hypercar you're driving, are rendered in all their glory. Valuable compute time can be gained by rendering a coarse approximation of the pixels that should be in that place, and upscaling them as needed according to the relative speed they are moving across the frame. Content adaptive shading, on the other hand, analyzes detail across a scene, and by reducing shading work to be done across colors and detail that hasn't had much movement in the previous frame and frames - saves frame time.

We saw a glimpse of this at the NVIDIA suite during CES 2019, with a beta version coming out shortly after. NVIDIA and OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) have since brought out the full release of a new OBS Studio, version 23.0.1, that adds improved support for NVIDIA GeForce cards. In particular, their latest and greatest RTX lineup, including the new desktop RTX 2060 as well as the mobile and Max-Q variants, will see an FPS impact drop by as much as 66% according to NVIDIA's internal testing. Some example results are seen below, with games such as Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Blackout, and Apex Legends seeing a frame rate boost by up to 48% compared to x264 Fast, and 27% compared to x264 Very Fast.

Given this is a result of NVENC, NVIDIA's hardware encoder, in place, older GeForce GPUs (GTX 600-series and newer that support NVENC) will also see some benefits. GeForce RTX GPUs just get to enjoy a bit more- up to 15% more, in fact, in efficiency as far as bitrate consumption for the same graphical fidelity. NVIDIA effectively says that "GeForce RTX GPUs can stream with superior image quality compared to x264 Fast, and on par with x264 Medium", thus putting in a strong case for single-PC gaming and streaming, as opposed to having a dedicated streaming PC. They have even put out a video to go over the enhancements, which will no doubt interest game streamers on the PC platform.

Manli Technology Group Limited, the major Graphics Cards, and other components manufacturer, today announced the brand new 16 series graphics solution, Manli GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with two options: Single Fan and Blower Fan.

The Manli GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is equipped with the world's fastest memory, 6 GB of GDDR6, and a 192 bit memory controller. The base clock is 1500 MHz which can dynamically boost up to 1770 MHz to deliver a smooth and fast gaming experience. Meanwhile, it is packed with the award-winning NVIDIA Turing architecture, adaptive shading technology, and NVIDIA Ansel which delivers super resolution of images.

Here is the first picture of NVIDIA's 12 nm "TU116" silicon, which powers the upcoming GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. While the size of the package itself is identical to that of the "TU106" on which the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 are based; the die of the TU116 is visibly smaller. This is because the chip physically lacks RT cores, and only has two-thirds the number of CUDA cores as the TU106, with 1,536 against the latter's 2,304. The die area, too, is about 2/3rds that of the TU106. The ASIC version of TU116 powering the GTX 1660 Ti is "TU116-400-A1."

VideoCardz scored not just pictures of the ASIC, but also the PCB of an MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus graphics card, which reveals something very interesting. The PCB has traces for eight memory chips, across a 256-bit wide memory bus, although only six of them are populated with memory chips, making up 6 GB over a 192-bit bus. The GPU's package substrate, too, is of the same size. It's likely that NVIDIA is using a common substrate, with an identical pin-map between the TU106 and TU116, so AIC partners could reduce PCB development costs.

It seems that NVIDIA may be pulling another GTX 1060 when it comes to memory configurations of its upcoming midrange, non-RTX GPU. If ASUS' filling with the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) are anything to go by - and they usually are - then the green team is looking to tier their GTX 1660 Ti graphics cards via memory culling, offering it in both 6 GB and 3 GB versions. The GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 will supersede NVIDIA's highest-volume GTX

In all, there are 9 SKUs for the GTX 1660 Ti 3 GB graphics card being filed with the EEC, which usually preempts graphics card launches in those domains. These slot in nicely with ASUS' plans for 6 GB versions of the GTX 1660 Ti, almost to a card - though ASUS' STRIXX-branded graphics cards seem, for now, to only be available in 6 GB versions. Of course, the 3 GB of VRAM on the GTX 1060 allow the card to achieve a desirable performance/dollar ratio, but at the cost of some performance, with the penalty increasing alongside resolution - but these are cards that likely won't ever be used for 4K gaming. While 3 GB graphics cards still fare relatively well, as we've seen, the latest games are pushing over 3 GB of video RAM more often than not, which leaves the 3 GB version of the graphics card somewhat of a less than choice when it comes to AAA gaming. But when it comes to competitive multiplayer game,s it likely will be more than enough.

NVIDIA is in the process of rolling out the first implementations of its RTX 2000 series GPUs in mobile form, and if the going is as is being reported, it's going to be a little rough for users to actually extrapolate their performance from product to product. This is because manufacturers are apparently getting a whole lot of leeway in how to clock their products, according to their solution's thermal characteristics and design philosophy.

What this means is that NVIDIA's RTX 2080 Max-Q, for example, can be clocked as low as 735 MHz, which is a more than 50% downclock from its desktop counterpart (1,515 MHz). The non-Max-Q implementation of NVIDIA's RTX 2080, for now, seems to be clocked at around 1,380 MHz, which is still a close to 200 Mhz downclock. Of course, these lowered clocks are absolutely normal - and necessary - for these products, particularly on a huge chip such as the one powering the RTX 2080. The problem arises when manufacturers don't disclose clockspeeds of the GPU in their particular implementation - a user might buy, say, an MSI laptop and an ASUS one with the exact same apparent configuration, but GPUs operating at very different clockspeeds, with very different levels of performance. Users should do their due research when it comes to the point of choosing what mobile solution sporting one of these NVIDIA GPUs they should choose.

Let me be the first to say that the two may not be directly related, but it is an awfully strong coincidence that both pieces of news come out on the same day. Indeed, earlier in the day AMD put out a press release (full release past the break) announcing "multiple organizational changes focused on strengthening the company's senior leadership team and accelerating growth." Several familiar names have been promoted within the company to be in charge of more products and visions across their CPU and GPU business units. Mark Papermaster, for example, is now an executive VP as well as CTO of AMD, and the company has also hired in new talent, including industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu, as executive VP of "Computing and Graphics responsible for the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses".

Perhaps all this re-structuring and new hiring comes in handy, at a time when we have seen several people leave AMD for Intel or otherwise. Indeed, shortly after that press release went out, word got to us that James Prior, Senior Product Manager for AMD, and an ardent employee for nearly 6 years, is no longer working for the company. We have no word yet on what is next for James, but it was more than a small surprise to know that the person you just spoke with at CES, and had a long conversation of AMD's desktop processors, is gone just like that. We have known James for many years now, and can attest to his work ethics as well as being a great guy all-round. We wish him the best in his future ventures, and look forward to also seeing how AMD's re-structuring turns out.

Phanteks today announced the launch of two new Glacier series GPU blocks, corresponding backplates, a vertical GPU bracket and flat riser cables to add to their product portfolio. This includes the Glacier G2080Ti XTREME and the Glacier G2080Ti STRIX for the Gigabyte AORUS Extreme RTX 2080/2080 Ti and the ASUS Strix RTX 2080/2080 Ti respectively. Both of these blocks use a minimalist design that extends the length of the PCB, allowing for a full cover fit to cool the GPU, VRAM and VRMs alike. Integrated digital RGB lighting coupled with an anodized or chrome-plate cover plate, a polished acrylic top, and a nickel-plated copper cold plate round off the aesthetics.

Phanteks made sure to give some love to the NVIDIA Founders Edition RTX 2080(Ti) cards as well with Glacier G2080Ti backplate that is designed to work with their own Glacier G2080TiFE water block, since the AIC cards come with their own backplate that can be re-used with the GPU blocks mentioned above. We get two color options here, and the backplate extends the entire length of the PCB again. The GPU blocks will be available for $149.99 each and the backplate costs $29.99/39.99 for the black/chrome versions towards the end of this month. Read past the break for more on their new accessories.

The Vive Cosmos was not the only major announcement coming out of HTC's Vive business unit at CES this year. While that has massive mainstream appeal, the company was quick to let us know that it was still to early to comment further than what has already been covered in the aforelinked news post. Instead, they invited us to their suite to take a closer look at the Vive Pro Eye- one of the few things that really stood out for us at the trade show.

The Vive Pro Eye is, as the name would suggest, a new SKU with integrated eye tracking in the Vive Pro HMD. Working together with Tobii, the Vive Pro Eye allows for a more natural control mechanism within VR via eye controls, which in turn means a revamped menu navigation system is possible. This allows for increased accessibility to end users with disability, more optimization on VR performance, and detailed analysis of VR experiences for both the client and the businesses alike. Read past the break for a breakdown of our experience with the Vive Pro Eye, and the various demos on hand to showcase the feature.

CES may have officially ended but our coverage from the trade show continues. Bitspower had invited TechPowerUp to come visit their suite, mentioning there would be something new and unexpected, and that indeed was the case. Our tour began with the customary showcase of the new GPU water blocks compatible with reference, and board partner designs, for the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 and relatively new AIC RTX 2070/80(Ti) cards as well. These feature integrated RGB lighting compatible with all major motherboard lighting solutions for control, and adopt the split central-inlet flow design as well.

While at CES 2019 we had the opportunity to visit with PowerColor who were showing off their latest external GPU enclosures including the TBX-180/240FU, and the TBX-750FA. Starting with the TBX-750FA this external GPU enclosure uses a Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) connection and has a 750-watt internal power supply. Due to the size of not only the enclosure but the power supply as well, graphics cards measuring up to 335 x 170 x 58 mm (13.18 x 6.69 x 2.28 inches). When you factor in maximum GPU power is rated at 500-watts pretty much any GPU on the market should work with this enclosure like a cat with a box if it fits it sits. Connectivity options consist of the 1x Thunderbolt 3 port for connection to the host system, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 5x USB 3.0 (3 up front, 2 in back), 1x SD 4.0, and finally 1x SATA. Overall the enclosure measures in at 359 x 179 x 198 mm and supports Windows 10 and MacOS 10.13.4 or later.

ASUS today announced TUF Gaming FX505DY and TUF Gaming FX705DY, a pair of gaming laptops powered by the latest AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor, with up to 32GB of RAM, and a range of storage options. This new platform is paired with discrete Radeon graphics tightly coupled to vivid FreeSync displays. Slim bezels frame the NanoEdge displays to further enhance immersion and shrink the overall footprint, while the reinforced chassis help the machines survive everyday life. Intelligently designed and carefully built, FX505DY and FX705DY balance performance, battery life, and affordability to provide a better gaming experience.

AMD's Ryzen processors have taken desktops by storm, and TUF Gaming laptops lead the deployment of the newest version. Otherwise known as Picasso, this 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile APU is built with industry-leading 12 nm technology. The Ryzen 5 3550H chip powering FX505DY and FX705DY boasts four cores and eight threads that deliver capable performance for popular games and everyday work. Multithreaded performance is particularly strong, yet the processor fits into a 35W power envelope that doesn't compromise battery life.

NVIDIA will implement the 7 nanometer EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography to build its future generation of GPUs slated for 2020, according to Japanese publication MyNavi.jp. The GPU giant could be among the first customers besides IBM, to contract Samsung for 7 nm EUV mass-production of GPUs. IBM will use the Korean semiconductor giant for manufacturing Z-series processors and FPGAs. Samsung announced in October 2018 that it will begin risk-production on its 7 nm EUV node in early-2019.

An earlier report from 2018 also forecast NVIDIA implementing 7 nm DUV (deep ultraviolet) node of TSMC for its 2019 GPU lineup. With news of the company now working with Samsung on 7 nm EUV for 2020, this seems less likely. It's possible that NVIDIA could somehow split its next generation GPU lineup between TSMC 7 nm DUV and Samsung 7 nm EUV, with the latter being used for chips with higher transistor-counts, taking advantage of the node's higher deliverable transistor densities.

It was about 6 months ago that we posted a news story about how a Lenovo representative mentioned that the successor to NVIDIA's GeForce 10-series of GPUs would be named the 11-series. Fast forward in time, we know how that turned out with the recently announced RTX 20-series instead. The rumor mill has not taken a break over the holidays, however, with consistent postings and speculation online about how NVIDIA will announce not only the RTX 2060 at CES 2019, but also a whole new GTX 11-series accompanying it that is aimed to meet gaming needs without real-time ray tracing support and at a lower price point respective to the equivalent RTX SKU.

Perhaps it is fitting that Lenovo provides more fuel to this fire once again, with a listing of a mobile GeForce GTX 1160 (N18E) graphic solution on their upcoming Legion Y530 and Y7000P laptops. VideoCardz.com was quick to capture a screenshot of the specs listing, seen below, that describes it as a "next generation GPU", albeit with an asterisk hinting that the specification may not be final. Indeed, Lenovo has since changed the description on that product page to remove all signs of said 11-series mobile GPUs, and the LaptopMedia specs database for the Legion Y530 also now mentions a "GTX 2060" with 6 GB of VRAM instead. The only thing we know for sure is that we are not sure of anything, and it may well be that a GeForce 11-series, if it even exists, is a mobile-only platform. Hopefully CES will shed more light on this matter, and stay tuned for our coverage of the event accordingly.

AMD's Radeon Technology Group (RTG) continues to be in a state of flux, with another executive leaving the company. This time, RTG General Manager and Senior Vice President, Mike Rayfield (pictured on the left below) will be resigning by year's end, marking the second time in a calendar year the group has been devoid of a formal leader. Rayfield previously worked for NVIDIA as the General Manager of their Tegra business unit, and was Vice President and General Manager of Micron's mobile storage business unit prior to that. Having served in all these roles for quite some time, it is somewhat of a surprise to see him leaving AMD so quickly, having only just joined the company back in February 2018. With that said, AMD has said the reason for this departure is so that he can "spend more time with his family and pursue his personal passions".

David Wang (picture on the right below), the current Senior Vice President of Engineering at RTG, will be his interim successor. He already has a storied history at AMD, having worked on ATI/AMD graphics cards as a GPU engineer from the R300 to GCN 1.0 in a time period ranging from the years 2000 to 2012. Under AMD's dual leadership model which was implemented after Raja Koduri's resignation, both Wang and Rayfield have worked together leading the RTG group. Thanks to this, the transition of duties should be relatively smooth even though Wang's role is only temporary, and it will be interesting to see whom AMD picks as Rayfield's long-term successor.

3DFX is a well-known name for most in our community, I'd wager (I don't have the data to back me up on that, but bare with me). The company is one of the highest-profile defunct companies that vied for a place in the desktop, high-performance GPU space back in the day, and brought its guns bearing on NVIDIA and then ATI. The Rampage was the last GPU ever developed by the company, and looked to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce3. That never saw the light of day, though, with the company shutting its doors before development became viable for market release.

DSOGaming has some images of some of the Rampage GPUs that survived 3DFX's closure, though, and the graphics card is shown running Max Payne, Unreal Tournament & 3DMark 2001. For those of you that ever had a 3DFX graphics card, these should bring you right down memory lane. Enjoy.