NVIDIA is giving away three VR games with bundles of Oculus Rift VR headset, Oculus Touch controller, and qualifying GeForce GTX graphics cards. Game codes to three of the hottest VR titles, "The Unspoken," "SUPERHOT VR," and "Wilson's Heart" will be given away for free when you buy bundles of the Rift VR headset, Touch controller, with GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1080, or GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. The bundles will be sold exclusively through Amazon and Newegg.

On the special promotion pages of these stores, you can match an Oculus Rift headset and Touch controller with an applicable GeForce GTX graphics card of your choice. A typical GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB + Oculus Rift + Touch controller bundle is priced around US $850, a GTX 1070 based bundle around $980, a GTX 1080 based bundle around $1,090, and a GTX 1080 Ti based bundle around $1,300.

MSI has been doing the round with its Trident line of "console-sized" PCs. After upgrading its original model to a Kaby Lake-based platform, the new, limited Arctic edition of the Trident 3 features a bolster to its GPU computing power, RGB lighting - and a price hike to boot. MSI has also included an HDMI port on the front of the Trident 3 Arctic, gearing it up towards the VR market.

The new Arctic variant features a GTX 1070 graphics card in an ITX format, which is fed by a Core i7-7700, on the H110 chipset. The memory subsystem delivers 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4, expandable up to 32GB. A 256GB M.2 SSD (SATA) and a 1TB spinning HDD handle storage. MSI claims the system only reaches 32dB at full load, taking power off a 330W adapter. For the hardware specs and the neat, icy, small-sized package (346.25 x 232.47 x 71.83 mm), MSI is asking for a neat $1500.

A graphics card-game bundle is always a reason to cheer, though not this time, if you loathe GeForce Experience. The company's latest "Prepare for Battle" game bundle lets you choose between two of the season's hottest game releases - "For Honor," and Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands" on purchase of new GeForce GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 graphics cards. The only catch here is that you need GeForce Experience to redeem or activate your free game. This further requires you to create a GeForce Experience login, which adds to the list of startup apps, as GeForce Experience dials home to sign-in and sync your game settings.

ASUS announced the GeForce GTX 1070 Expedition series graphics card. Based on the company's new Expedition line of durable graphics cards, which made its debut this CES, with the GTX 1050 Ti Expedition, this card is designed with a focus on durability and longevity. Each card on the production line has been stress-tested against the elements for longer than the other cards. This includes 144 hours of continuous stress, 2-hour reboot test (continuous reboots), and 15 hours of 3DMark stress. The idea here is to make the cards fit for the rigors of gaming iCafes, which are popular in some parts of Asia.

The GTX 1070 Expedition comes with a factory OC of 1607 MHz core, 1797 MHz GPU Boost, and an untouched 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory, against reference clocks of 1506/1683 MHz. It features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink with a single fin array to which heat drawn directly from the GPU is conveyed by a pair of 8 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include three DisplayPorts, and one each of HDMI and DVI. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability information, although it's likely that this card could see a release limited to certain east Asian markets.

In a lInkedIn job post for Senior Marketing Manager, NVIDIA has seemingly confirmed the launch of a Ti version of their GTX 1080 graphics card. The relevant line is a simple one: "980 Ti users get first spot in line for 1080 Ti pre-orders, or Step Up offer".

If true, this is an interesting way for NVIDIA to go on about with their newest generation graphics card releases, and would be a good way to essentially "corner" their current user base into future hardware upgrade paths by increasing the value of staying within the GeForce family. Considering NVIDIA's current product stack, we wouldn't be surprised to see GTX 1080 Ti retail at about $999, so a value of $200 for your used 980 Ti seems reasonable in such a trade-in program (from a purely corporate perspective, naturally).

New reports have surfaced that indicate NVIDIA is all set to launch a new mid range mobile graphics solution, the GTX 1050 M at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. While NVIDIA has already released mobile variants of the GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and GTX 1060, people not willing to spend big on higher tier products from the green camp are limited to "Maxwell" based GTX 960 M or GTX 950 M offerings. Reports also indicate there has been somewhat of a surge in demand for GTX 1060 M equipped laptops, where the new GTX 1050 M could be nicely positioned to further augment consumer appetite.

As we reported in November, we can expect that in line with the existing "Pascal" based mobile solutions, the new GTX 1050 M to sport the same (or better) core-configuration as its desktop counterpart, but with significantly higher clock speeds. This should make the GTX 1050 M an attractive option as it would endow the laptop with graphical horsepower exceeding the very capable GTX 970 M. All in all with new Intel "Kaby Lake" processors set to take the stage at CES 2017 too, we could see quite an array of new or reconfigured laptops scattered throughout the show.

Due to the usual metrics and happenstances with foundry yields and wafer production, some chips contained in the production wafers are defective, with inoperative sections. This is always taken into account by companies, such as NVIDIA, while designing their product stacks (with the GTX 1070/1080 sharing the same silicon, and GTX 1070 samples being, mostly, defective versions of the fully-enabled Pascal GP104-140 chip). Other times, when supply of defective chips that can guarantee sufficient numbers of lower-tiered products, such as the GTX 1070, is insufficient to guarantee market demands (basically, things go better than expected at production), some sections of fully-operational chips are deactivated, so that it has the same working resources as the (otherwise defective) chips. Sometimes, like it happened with the Radeon HD 6950, these chips' resources can even be unlocked by simple BIOS flashing. According to recent reports, NVIDIA is bound to do something akin to that, by reusing GP104-140 chips on their GTX 1060 3 GB variants.

After announcing earlier this week the impending release of their VR Go backpack, ZOTAC has now made pricing details available: $1999 will net you the ability to strap a PC to your body so you can freely engage with enemies or friends alike in VR environments.

The ZOTAC VR GO can work autonomously for up to two hours, feeding on two Li-ion batteries rated at 95Wh (6600mAh). The batteries can be hot-swapped and charged separately, featuring a DC12V-out for powering the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. When not in use as a backpack to play virtual reality games, the VR GO can be used like a normal desktop computer: its form-factor allows it to be placed on a desk either vertically or horizontally and all the ports will remain accessible. It isn't very heavy, either, though at 4.95 kilograms, your mileage may vary.

Just a slight update on our reported stories of overheating issues with EVGA's FTW line of NVIDIA graphics cards, with the company having finished rolling out fan-curve adjusting BIOS updates for the affected cards.

The issue affects EVGA's line of FTW graphics cards ranging through the GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080, sporting the ACX 3.0 solution. As a casual reminder, you can view the list of affected cards below, for which BIOS updates have been issued in a blog post, along with a small FAQ and some instructions on how to perform the update.

After reports of EVGA cards overheating and sometimes becoming non-operational, which we covered right here on TPU, the company has now issued a statement further clarifying the steps it's taking towards solving the issues. Though it was first reported that only the GTX 1070/1080 FTW series of cards were having issues, the company has also extended its efforts towards the GTX 1060 cards, in both 3 GB and 6 GB flavors, which may point to either underlying problems with those cards as well, or simply EVGA extending that bit of extra support to their customers.

While at first it seemed that the company-distributed, free-of-charge thermal pads (which EVGA stressed were optional in nature) would be enough to fix any and all issues, the company is also issuing a BIOS revision in a few days, which "adjusts the fan speed curve" to "ensure sufficient cooling of all components across all operating temperatures".

MSI today unveiled the GeForce GTX 1070 Quick Silver Edition graphics card. Going purely by the factory-overclock on offer, the card appears to be positioned below the GTX 1070 Gaming X graphics card by the company, although one can expect the company to monetize its unique design. The company also has a slightly pricier OC Edition variant of this card, which is identical to the GTX 1070 Gaming X in terms of factory-overclock. The card is characterized by a metallic silver color-scheme that's consistent with the company's GTX 1080 30th Anniversary Edition graphics card, and Gaming Titanium series motherboards, such as the X99A XPower Gaming Titanium. Shimmery silver accents run through bits of the Twin Frozr VI cooler shroud where you'd normally expect fiery red from the Gaming X, while the back-plate is entirely silver, with an illuminated MSI Gaming logo ornament.

The card comes with a factory-overclock of 1518 MHz core and 1708 MHz GPU Boost in Gaming Mode, and 1531 MHz core with 1721 MHz GPU Boost in OC Mode; which is below the factory-overclock of the GTX 1070 Gaming X, which comes with 1582/1771 MHz in Gaming Mode and 1607/1797 MHz in OC Mode, and barely above NVIDIA reference clocks of 1506/1683 MHz. The OC Edition variant, on the other hand, ships with identical clock speeds to the GTX 1070 Gaming X. The card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Based on the 16 nm "GP104" silicon, the GeForce GTX 1070 features 1,920 CUDA cores, 120 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 8 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 8.00 GHz, across a 256-bit wide memory interface. MSI didn't reveal pricing.

After users' reports (and Tom's Hardware.de testing) of EVGA FTW 1080 and 1070 cards displaying black screen issues, and sometimes even sparking and dying altogether, even at stock voltage, the company is now moving towards fixing the issue.

Apparently, the issue stems from the absence of any thermal pads over the VRM area of the FTW line of cards, which prompts higher operating temperatures. Some users were reporting heat transfer in such quantities that even the GDDR5X memory chips on the cards were being heated at 107 ºC, significantly over their rated operating temperatures of (0°C ≤ TC ≤ +95°C).