Just before Holiday 2016 (December), we were intrigued by a curious line in a LinkedIn job-posting, which at the time confirmed that NVIDIA is working on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and more importantly, that existing users of the GeForce GTX 980 Ti would have a priority in a pre-order queue, or a "Step Up Offer." A step-up offer is that in which GTX 980 Ti users would have the ability to trade-in their GTX 980 Ti cards for new GTX 1080 Ti cards, at a price significantly lower than buying a brand-new GTX 1080 Ti card. From the looks of it, there is no sign of such an offer.

The other, more scary detail about the GTX 1080 Ti, which was doing rounds at the time, was its fabled $999 price-tag, with fears of NVIDIA price-gouging with the new card so as to not cannibalize inventory of premium GTX 1080 cards in stock, some of which are still priced over the $700 mark. Alas, the GTX 1080 Ti launched at $699, a price we're sure NVIDIA partners with unsold super-premium GTX 1080 cards won't take kindly, and the GTX 1080 got its price cut to $499. NVIDIA is taking no chances with its market preparation for AMD's next-generation Radeon RX Vega.

In the wake of its GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics card launches, NVIDIA decided to cut prices of its previous-generation GeForce GTX 980 Ti, GeForce GTX 980, and GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards, in a bid to clear inventories. The $379 and 150W GTX 1070 is faster than the GTX 980 Ti and the GTX Titan X, rendering them obsolete. The price of the $620 GTX 980 Ti has been cut by $125, and is now down to $495~499. The GTX 980, on the other hand, sees its price cut by $75, bringing its price down from $399 to $324, less than the launch-price of the GTX 970. The smash-hit GTX 970, at the dusk of its market life, sees its price cut by $25, bringing it down from $289 to $265.

Intel's upcoming Core i7-6850K six-core processor made its way to the hands of an enthusiast on OCN, who wasted no time in picturing the chip, and putting it through a few handy tests. Built for the LGA2011v3 socket, the i7-6850K is based on the 14 nm "Broadwell-E" silicon, and features six cores, HyperThreading enabling 12 logical CPUs, 15 MB of L3 cache, and a nominal clock speed of 3.60 GHz. To begin with, while the i7-6850K is pin-compatible with existing socket LGA2011v3 motherboards (and logically features an identical pin-map to "Haswell-E,") the package is slightly different. Its fiberglass substrate is slightly thinner (1.12 mm vs. 1.87 mm of "Haswell-E,"). Its thickness is made up for by a chunkier IHS (integrated heatspreader).

The i7-6850K sample was installed on a machine with ASRock X99 Extreme3 motherboard (BIOS: P3.30), 16 GB of quad-channel DDR4-2133 memory, and a single GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card. It was compared to a Core i7-5820K processor on the same setup. The i7-6850K based setup was barely (~1%) faster at 3DMark FireStrike Extreme in its final score, however, its CPU-intensive Physics score was 14.9% higher. Moving on to the community favorite Cinebench R15, the i7-6850K yielded a 10% higher score. To test its single-core performance, the chip was put through SuperPi 32M, where the i7-6850K crunched through the test in 8m 27.854s, compared to 8m 38.866s by the i7-5820K.

Ahead of its launch, performance numbers of AMD Radeon Pro Duo were leaked to the web by Expreview. Pitted against the $620 GeForce GTX 980 Ti, the $1,499 dual-GPU monstrosity is about 32 percent faster at 1080p (which sees CPU saturation), and on average 59.4 percent faster at 4K Ultra HD. The card is noted to conjure up more than playable frame-rates for all the games Expreview tested at 4K. Frame-rates were as low as 46 fps, and as high as 61 fps, indicating that the Pro Duo is the go-to single-card solution for Ultra HD. Find the review in the link below.

At a presser in Taiwan for its Radeon Pro Duo launch, AMD talked extensively about its upcoming "Polaris" and "Vega" family of GPUs. The company appears to be betting heavily on two SKUs it plans to launch this June, Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. Polaris 10 is an internal designation to Radeon R9 490(X), based on the 14 nm "Ellesmere" silicon. It may be the biggest chip AMD builds on the "Polaris" architecture, but it won't exactly be a "big chip," in that it doesn't succeed "Fiji." That honor is reserved for "Vega," which debuts in early-2017.

The "Ellesmere" silicon is more of AMD's competitor to NVIDIA's GP104. It is rumored that the R9 490(X), based on this silicon, will offer consumers performance rivaling the GeForce GTX 980 Ti (ergo faster than the Radeon R9 Fury X), at a USD $300-ish price point. "Ellesmere" will be a lean-machine, physically featuring up to 2,560 4th generation GCN stream processors (2,304 enabled on Polaris 10), a possible 256-bit GDDR5X memory interface, and a deep sub-200W typical board power rating.

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a new Full-Cover water block, designed and engineered specifically for GIGABYTE XTREME GAMING series NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti top-tier graphics cards - the EK-FC980 GTX Ti XG.

EK-FC980 GTX Ti XG is a high-performance Full-Cover water block, designed for GIGABYTE non-reference design GeForce GTX 980 Ti XTREME GAMING graphics cards. The cooler actively cools the GPU, RAM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas, thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks. Water block aesthetically covers the entire PCB and with the corresponding retention backplate, users get visually stunning GPU in their system.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, introduces its most powerful GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card with the iGame GTX 980 Ti KUDAN featuring a revolutionary hybrid cooling solution to deliver extreme cooling for the best gaming experience.

The iGame GTX 980 Ti KUDAN features a unique custom-cooler from Colorful integrating powerful heatsinks with an integrated watercooling loop to deliver unsurpassed thermal dissipation. Five heatpipes carry heat away from the GPU and disperse it to the densely packed fins and the integrated water-cooling loop kicks in when extra cooling muscle is needed. Full-time GPU thermal monitoring gives smart control over when the integrated liquid cooling system operates.

The 8Pack Asteroid is the all-new extreme mini PC designed and built by Ian '8Pack' Parry, the world's renowned overclocker. The Asteroid is the fastest Mini-ITX gaming PC available on the market today, packed with high performance hardware that has been finely tuned by 8Pack. Ian Parry, or more well known by his alias 8Pack is the UK's number one benchmarking champion, holding multiple prestigious world records and winning some of the largest overclocking events globally.

The PC is supplied with a flight case as standard that has been manufactured for portability, allowing the user to also pack their peripherals with the PC. As standard, the PC has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti overclocked to 1450 MHz+ combined with an Intel Core i7-6700K processor overclocked over 4.70 GHz. The memory is 8 GB overclocked to 3866 MHz followed by plenty of storage, a 512 GB SSD for the Operating System and a 1 TB SSD for files and games. All of the hardware is powered by a 1000W 80 Plus Titanium rated power supply from Super Flower.

NVIDIA is preparing its next GeForce GTX bundle for performance-thru-enthusiast segment graphics cards. The company is currently giving away copies of "Rise of the Tomb Raider." It's reported that soon, select NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics cards, and notebooks with GeForce GTX 970M and GTX 980M, will be bundled with copies of "Tom Clancy's The Division." The bundle will only be applicable in select regions, and through participating retailers.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR EDITION has arrived. Accelerated by the groundbreaking NVIDIA Maxwell architecture, the GTX 980 Ti delivers an unbeatable 4K and virtual reality experience. With 2,816 NVIDIA CUDA Cores and 6GB of GDDR5 memory, it has the horsepower to drive whatever comes next. And with the VR EDITION, you get an included 5.25" drive bay with front HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.0 giving you easy access to your VR device's input. The graphics card also has an internal HDMI connector, meaning no external cables will be visible.

AMD gave its premium small-factor gaming graphics card, the Radeon R9 Nano, its first major price cut. The card now starts at US $499, down from its launch price of $649. At $499, the R9 Nano is priced on par with its similar-performing albeit bigger and noisier sibling based on the "Fiji" silicon, the Radeon R9 Fury. The company's flagship single-GPU card, the R9 Fury X, remains at $599, its price was gradually reduced from its launch price of $649.

The three SKUs appear to be positioned to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980, and offer cost-effective alternatives to the $629 GTX 980 Ti. Elsewhere in the lineup, the Radeon R9 390X starts at $379, and has its guns trained on the GTX 980 and GTX 970. Its smaller sibling, the Radeon R9 390 starts at $299.

Here are some of the first pictures of EVGA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition graphics card, in the flesh. The card will be available in two cooling options - a blower-type cooler that's designed by EVGA, or the more popular ACX 2.0+ cooling solution, pictured below. The rather conventional-looking card is "VR Ready," in that it has HDMI connectivity that's very conveniently placed for VR headset users - the card has a mini HDMI 2.0 port on its rear panel, while a 5.25/3.5-inch front-panel comes included, which provides a convenient front HDMI 2.0 port, and two USB 3.0 type-A ports which internally plug into your motherboard over a standard header, so you can save your neck pains for the VR experience, and not craning your head behind your case.

EVGA kicks off 2016 with over five new and innovative product lines introduced at CES 2016. These new products further set EVGA apart from the competition and prove that EVGA is the leader for high performance computing products. The new products announced today will be shipping in 2016.

Among the products EVGA launched, are the revolutionary new SC17 Gaming Notebook, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition graphics card, the Quick-release CPU/Quick-release GPU series AIO coolers that allow you to break the loop; a new high-end gaming PC case, and a high-end audio card.

The turnaround in developer relations for NVIDIA, propelled by its GameWorks software and a refreshed "The Way It's Meant to be Played" (TWIMTBP) program is best exemplified with the upcoming "Rise of the Tomb Raider." A sequel to the 2013 franchise reboot by Square Enix, which brandished the "AMD Game!" logo, and even bundled with certain AMD Radeon graphics cards; the new Tomb Raider not only features the NVIDIA logo, but will also be bundled with select GeForce graphics cards under the new "Discover the Legend Within" bundle.

NVIDIA is giving away "Rise of the Tomb Raider" with GeForce GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980, and GTX 970 graphics cards. This includes cards sold in the retail channel, as well as gaming desktops that come with those cards pre-installed. On the notebook front, select notebooks running the GTX 980, GTX 980M, and GTX 970M will also give you a key to the game. The bundle extends to participating retailers and OEMs only.

EVGA announced its first "VR Ready" graphics card that comes with preparation for HMD VR headsets out of the box. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition includes a 5.25-inch/3.5-inch front-panel that gives you a front-facing HDMI 2.0 port (letting you easily plug in your HMD), and a second mini-HDMI 2.0 port on the card's rear panel that helps with certain kinds of headsets. The front panel also throws in a couple of USB 3.0/3.1 ports with a standard USB 3.0 header that plugs into your motherboard. EVGA is offering two kinds of cooling solutions, ACX 2.0+ and a blower-type custom-design cooler. The GTX 980 Ti sticks to reference clock speeds.

EVGA and Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido have once again teamed up to achieve three new 3DMark World Records, with Vince running his EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition graphics card at over 2200MHz GPU clock on liquid nitrogen cooling. The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition graphics card has been meticulously designed from the ground up for overclocking, and feats such these new world records are further proof that EVGA products are #1 for overclocking. Vince recently had this to say about the graphics card design:

"K|NGP|N GTX 980 Ti once again represents EVGA's dedication to the enthusiast inspired hardware, bullet proof engineering and bleeding edge performance."

ASUS today celebrates 20 years of producing the world's most award-winning and innovative graphics cards with the release of a special limited 20th Anniversary Gold Edition GTX 980 Ti graphics card. Featuring the latest GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics processing units (GPUs) - clocked at 1367MHz - this meticulously-crafted, highly-collectible graphics card delivers up to 21.6%-faster performance than reference cards in the 3DMark 11 Extreme benchmark test and 22.1%‑faster gaming performance in GTA V.

Combined with exclusive ASUS technologies including industry-exclusive, fully-automated Auto-Extreme manufacturing for premium reliability, and Memory Defroster for subzero overclocking stability, 20th Anniversary Gold Edition GTX 980 Ti continues the pioneering ASUS spirit of developing the world's fastest, most-innovative GTX 980 Ti graphics cards.

Corsair, a world leader in high-performance PC hardware, today announced the immediate availability of its new Hydro Series HG10 GPU N980 and HG10 N970 cooling brackets for NVIDIA GeForce GTX GTX 980 Ti, Titan X, GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards. Easy to install and compatible with any Corsair Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler (sold separately), the HG10 N970 and N980 help to substantially reduce your GPU's temperature, allowing for greatly increased overclocking headroom and providing as much as a 25% clock speed increase.

Designed to work with any stock PCB layout NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, Titan X, GTX 980 or GTX 9701, the HG10 N970 and HG10 N980 replace the existing air cooling of the graphics card with a precision engineered aluminium bracket, allowing users to them fit a Corsair Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler directly to the GPU. With modern graphics cards outputting over 250W of heat, a liquid cooling system is a more efficient and powerful way to keep your graphics card cool. Lower temperatures mean users can overclock their GPU with fewer thermal limitations, allowing for improved performance and higher frame rates, all while running quieter than a standard air-cooler.

This year's installment to the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops III, has just hit stores, and is predictably flying off shelves. As with every ceremonial annual release, Black Ops III raises the visual presentation standards for the franchise. There is, however, one hitch with the way the game deals with system memory amounts as high as 12 GB and video memory amounts as high as 8 GB. This hitch could possibly be the reason behind the stuttering issues many users are reporting.

In our first play-through of the game with its highest possible settings on our personal gaming machines - equipped with a 2560 x 1600 pixels display, Core i7 "Haswell" quad-core CPU, 12 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card, NVIDIA's latest Black Ops III Game Ready driver 385.87, and Windows 7 64-bit to top it all off, we noticed that the game was running out of memory. Taking a peek at Task Manager revealed that in "Ultra" settings (and 2560 x 1600 resolution), the game was maxing out memory usage within our 12 GB, not counting the 1.5-2 GB used up by the OS and essential lightweight tasks (such as antivirus).

One of biggest features of DirectX 12 is its asymmetric multi-GPU that lets you mix and match GPUs from across brands, as long as they support a consistent feature-level (Direct3D 12_0, in case of "Ashes of the Singularity"). It's not enough that you have two DirectX 12 GPUs, you need DirectX 12 applications to make use of your contraption. Don't expect your older DirectX 11 games to run faster with a DirectX 12 mixed multi-GPU. Anandtech put Microsoft's claims to the test by building a multi-GPU setup using a Radeon R9 Fury X, and a GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Some interesting conclusions were drawn.

To begin with, yes, alternate-frame rendering, the most common multi-GPU method, works. There were genuine >50% performance uplifts, but nowhere of the kind you could expect from proprietary multi-GPU configurations such as SLI or CrossFire. Second, what card you use as the primary card, impacts performance. Anandtech found a configuration in which the R9 Fury X was primary (i.e. the display plugged to it), and the GTX 980 Ti secondary, to be slightly faster than a configuration in which the GTX 980 Ti was the primary card. Mixing and matching different GPUs from the same vendor (eg: a GTX 980 Ti and a GTX TITAN X) also works. The best part? Anandtech found no stability issues in mix-matching an R9 Fury X and a GTX 980 Ti. It also remains to be seen how long this industry-standard utopia lasts, and whether GPU vendors find it at odds with their commercial interests. Multi-GPU optimization is something both AMD and NVIDIA spend a lot of resources on. It remains to be seen how much of those resources they'll be willing to put on a standardized multi-GPU tech, and away from their own SLI/CrossFire fiefdoms. Read the insightful article from the source link below.

BIOSTAR's latest gaming products cover both the mainboard and VGA card spaces with two products that offer a sweet spot for performance versus investment in hardware. The motherboard is the Gaming H170T which is the best valued motherboard of the Gaming Skylake platform (other brands are at least $169 and up) and the GPU is the Gaming GeForce GTW980Ti, a 6GB GDDR5, 384bit, full size PCB, high-end 3D graphic solution, supporting NVIDIA's PhyX and CUDA technology at 4K resolutions.

BIOSTAR's latest mainboard, the Gaming H170T is based on Intel's H170 chipset which is a single-chip design that supports Intel 6th generation socket 1151 Intel Core processors. The Gaming H170T comes with Hi-Fi Technology built inside, delivering Blu-Ray audio, Puro Hi-Fi features an integrated independent audio power design with a built-in amplifier. The technology utilizes audio components with an independent power delivery design for a significant reduction in electronic noise producing superb sound quality. Moreover, the Hi-Fi H170T supports USB 3.0, PCIe M.2 (32Gb/s), SATA Express (16Gb/s) and has DisplayPort for monitor output.

The EVGA Hybrid Face Off program is here! Now for a limited time ALL EVGA customers who own any EVGA Hybrid product qualifies for a free* new shroud! This shroud gives the card an updated look, complete with an LED. If you are an owner of one of the below Hybrid products, you qualify! Just fill out the form, and we will contact you on further steps.

Qualifying Products:

• EVGA GeForce TITAN X HYBRID
• EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti HYBRID
• EVGA GeForce GTX 980 HYBRID

MSI announced the GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming Golden Edition, a special variant of the GTX 980 Ti Gaming graphics card with a copper heatsink, gold-colored panels, and higher clock-speeds. This limited edition card offers out of the box clock speeds of 1190 MHz core, 1291 MHz GPU Boost, and 7096 MHz (GDDR5-effective) memory, compared to 1178/1279/7010 MHz on the standard red and black GTX 980 Ti Gaming card.

The main distinguishing feature of the Golden Edition card is its copper-fin heatsink, with exposed copper heat-pipes, compared to the aluminium fin heatsink with nickel-plated heat pipes on the standard GTX 980 Ti Gaming card. This lends the card a lot of weight, at 1,338 g compared to 1,068 g of the standard card; but also better heat dissipation. Complementing this, you have copper heat pipes with a gold-like finish, and gold colored accents on the panels (cooler shroud and back-plate). MSI didn't announce pricing or availability.

MSI, world leading manufacturer of gaming and overclocking hardware, is proud to announce the result of a unique partnership with Corsair at the Tokyo Game Show 2015. Combining MSI's expertise in graphics cards and Corsair's closed loop liquid-cooling solution, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK was born. This latest addition to the legendary MSI Hawk graphics cards family provides outstanding gaming performance at low temperatures and low noise levels.

The MSI GTX 980 Ti SEA HAWK utilizes the popular Corsair H55 closed loop liquid-cooling solution. The micro-fin copper base takes care of an efficient heat transfer to the high-speed circulation pump. The low-profile aluminum radiator is easy to install and equipped with a super silent 120 mm fan with variable speeds based on the GPU temperature. However, to get the best performance, the memory and VRM need top-notch cooling as well. Therefore, the GTX 980Ti SEA HAWK is armed with a ball-bearing radial fan and a custom shroud design to ensure the best cooling performance for all components.

Ahead of its launch, ASUS showed off its flagship socket LGA1151 motherboard, the ROG Maximus VIII Extreme. Based on the Intel Z170 Express chipset, this board offers the largest feature-set from ASUS' stable, for the enthusiast crowd. Built in the ATX (almost E-ATX wide) form-factor, the board retains the styling of its series siblings, such as the Maximus VIII Hero, but does away with the red+black for a more contemporary golden orange+black scheme, which made its debut with the GeForce GTX 980 Ti MATRIX Platinum graphics card (also pictured here).

The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, and conditions it for the CPU with a 16-phase VRM. The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots. Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 3.0 x16, from which three are wired to the CPU, and one to the PCH. All four are PCIe gen 3.0. Storage connectivity includes an SFF-8639 U.2 32 Gb/s connector, an M.2 32 Gb/s slot, two SATA-Express 16 Gb/s, and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Networking includes 802.11 ac WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet (all Intel controllers). The new SupremeFX onboard audio solution borrows a lot of tech from ASUS' discrete sound cards, and comes with an 5.25-inch front-panel bay with rotary controls, and front-panel jacks. The board features a boat-load of overclocker-centric features, including dual-BIOS.