NVIDIA today releases GeForce 397.31 WHQL drivers. The drivers see NVIDIA discontinue regular support for 32-bit versions of Windows. It also sheds support for GPUs based on NVIDIA "Fermi" GPU architecture (GeForce 400 series and 500 series). The drivers also add first official support for NVIDIA RTX real-time ray-tracing technology. To use it, you'll need a GPU based on NVIDIA's next-generation "Volta" architecture (such as the $3,000 TITAN V), the latest major version of Windows 10, and Microsoft DXR developer package. The drivers also add support for Vulkan 1.1 API. Besides the above three, GeForce 397.31 WHQL is game-ready for "BattleTech" and "FrostPunk." Grab it from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 WHQL

As poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote: Life must go on, And the dead be forgotten. Effective as of this month, NVIDIA will no longer release Game Ready Driver upgrades for their Fermi-based graphics cards. Unlucky users who are still rocking a GeForce GTX 400 or GTX 500 series graphics card in their systems will cease to receive future performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes. However, NVIDIA is kind enough to continue providing critical security updates for the aforementioned models through January 2019. It has been a great run, Fermi. We will miss you!

NVIDIA quietly launched the GeForce MX150 mobile GPU in May of last year. The team at Notebookcheck discovered that there are actually two variants of the GeForce MX150 in the wild - the standard 1D10 variant and the much slower 1D12 variant. Normally, this wouldn't raise any alarms. However, neither NVIDIA or the manufacturer distinguish the two variants from each other. Buyers who purchase an ultrabook or notebook with a GeForce MX150 are basically playing the lottery. They have no idea which variant is inside the product until they run an utility like GPU-Z to find out. But just how significant is the performance difference between the two variants? Let's look at Notebookcheck's findings.

Starting with the GeForce MX150's specifications, the standard 1D10 variant has a 1469 MHz core clock, 1532 MHz boost clock, and 1502 MHz memory clock. Notebookcheck first saw this variant in the MSI PL62 and Asus Zenbook UX430UN. They later discovered the underclocked 1D12 variant in the Lenovo IdeaPad 320S, ZenBook 13 UX331UN, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3, HP Envy 13, and ZenBook UX331UA notebooks. The 1D12 variant has a 937 MHz core clock, 1038 MHz boost clock, and 1253 MHZ memory clock. Right off the bat, that's a 36 percent reduction in the core clock alone. According to the 3DMark and 3DMark 11 tests, consumers can expect anywhere from a 20 to 25 percent performance hit with the less powerful variant. The charts don't lie. Of the 13 notebooks tested by Notebookcheck, the five models equipped with the 1D12 variant of the GeForce MX150 are at the bottom of the list. Nvidia's move to sneak the 1D12 variant into thin and light notebooks was probably to meet the 10W TDP envelope as opposed to the original variant's 25W. Luckily, the 1D12 variant has only appeared in 13-inch notebooks.

A report from HardOCP's Kyle Bennet aims to shake NVIDIA's foundations, with allegations of anti-competitive business practices under its new GeForce Partner Program (GPP). In his report, which started with an AMD approach that pushed him to look a little closer into GPP, Bennet says that he has found evidence that NVIDIA's new program aims to push partners towards shunning products from other hardware manufacturers - mainly AMD, with a shoot across the bow for Intel.

After following the breadcrumb trail and speaking with NVIDIA AIBs and OEM partners ("The ones that did speak to us have done so anonymously, in fear of losing their jobs, or having retribution placed upon them or their companies by NVIDIA," Bennett says), the picture is painted of an industry behemoth that aims to abuse its currently dominant market position. NVIDIA controls around 70% of the discrete GPU market share, and its industrious size is apparently being put to use to outmuscle its competitors' offerings by, essentially, putting partners between the proverbial rock and a hard place. According to Bennet, industry players unanimously brought about three consequences from Nvidia's GPP, saying that "They think that it has terms that are likely illegal; GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices; It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel."

EK the Slovenia-based premium PC liquid cooling gear manufacturer is expanding its RGB portfolio by releasing the EK-FC GeForce GTX FE RGB water block that is compatible with multiple reference design Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080 Ti, Titan X Pascal and Titan Xp based graphics cards. As known from before, the FE labeled GPU blocks come as a replacement to the old GeForce GTX 10×0 / TITAN X Series of water blocks.

EK-FC GeForce GTX FE RGB
This water block directly 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. EK-FC GeForce GTX FE RGB water block features a central inlet split-flow cooling engine design for best possible cooling performance, which also works flawlessly with reversed water flow without adversely affecting the cooling performance. Moreover, such design offers great hydraulic performance allowing this product to be used in liquid cooling systems using weaker water pumps.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of their Game Ready driver suite, which aims to bring users' systems up to scratch towards playing the latest games with as much performance and stability as possible. The new 391.01 version of NVIDIA's driver suite brings GameReady improvements that pave the way towards Final Fantasy XV - Windows Edition's release. This driver release packs a bigger punch than just Final Fantasy XV, though; it's also a Game Ready driver release for the upcoming Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and for the upcoming World of Tanks' graphics engine upgrade, which will bring tons of graphics features, updates and improvements to the base World of Tanks experience.

On a second, still important note, this driver release also packs performance improvements for the majority of NVIDIA's series 10 graphics cards in Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. These performance improvements range between the 3% and 7%. For a list of fixed and outstanding issues, as well as trailers for the most relevant additions to this driver release, look after the break. As always, you can download these drivers right here on TPU. Just follow the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 391.01 Game Ready Drivers

NVIDIA is reportedly working on a TITAN V-esque surprise for March 2018. According to Reuters, which summarized the company's Q4-2017 results and outlook, the company is working on a new consumer-graphics GPU for launch next month, codenamed "Turing." This could be the codename of an ASIC or an SKU and not the architecture (which could be "Volta"). The Reuters report describes "Turing" as a "new GPU gaming chip." This unequivocally points to a consumer graphics (GeForce) product, and not a professional (Quadro), or HPC (Tesla) product.

As someone who does not mine crypto-currency, loves fast computers, and gaming on them, I find the current crypto-currency mining craze using graphics cards nothing short of a plague. It's like war broke out, and your government took away all the things you love from the market. All difficult times teach valuable lessons, and in this case, it is "Save up and build future-proof."

When NVIDIA launched its "Pascal" GPU architecture way back in Summer 2016, and AMD followed up, as a user of 2x GeForce GTX 970 SLI, I did not feel the need to upgrade anything, and planned to skip the Pascal/Polaris/Vega generation, and only upgrade when "Volta" or "Navi" offered something interesting. My pair of GTX 970 cards are backed by a Core i7-4770K processor, and 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory, both of which were considered high-end when I bought them, around 2014-15.

Throughout 2016, my GTX 970 pair ate AAA titles for breakfast. With NVIDIA investing on advancing SLI with the new SLI-HB, and DirectX 12 promising a mixed multi-GPU utopia, I had calculated a rather rosy future for my cards (at least to the point where NVIDIA would keep adding SLI profiles for newer games for my cards to chew through). What I didn't see coming was the inflection point between the decline of multi-GPU and crypto-plague eating away availability of high-end graphics cards at sane prices. That is where we are today.

ASUS today announced XG Station Pro, an external graphics card enclosure with a stylish aluminum chassis and advanced cooling that provides PC and Mac laptop users with high-end graphics performance, suitable for demanding professional applications, such as video rendering, 3D design and scientific modeling. With support for the latest NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards and featuring fast and convenient Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, XG Station Pro enables a workstation-class experience when connected to a laptop and an external monitor without sacrificing mobility.

Premium, all-aluminum design
Designed in collaboration with In Win - the well-known maker of premium computer chassis - XG Station Pro has a highly functional and stylish design with an elegant, grey aluminum chassis that perfectly complements premium laptops. XG Station Pro fits a full-length, 2.5-slot graphics card, yet has a compact size that takes up minimal space on a desk or workspace. An external, 330W power supply drives even the most demanding graphics cards, reduces heat within the chassis, and enables XG Station Pro to have a smaller overall size.

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities have been making many headlines lately. So far, security researchers have identified three variants. Variant 1 (CVE-2017-5753) and Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715) are Spectre, while Variant 3 (CVE-2017-5754) is Meltdown. According to their security bulletin, NVIDIA has no reason to believe that their display driver is affected by Variant 3. In order to strengthen security against Variant 1 and 2, the company released their GeForce 390.65 driver earlier today, so NVIDIA graphics card owners can sleep better at night.

Experience tells us that some software patches come with performance hits, whether we like it or not. We were more than eager to find out if this was the case with NVIDIA's latest GeForce 390.65 driver. Therefore, we took to the task of benchmarking this revision against the previous GeForce 388.71 driver in 21 different games at the 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. We even threw in an Ethereum mining test for good measure. Our test system is powered by an Intel Core i7-8700K processor overclocked to 4.8 GHz, paired with G.Skill Trident-Z 3866 MHz 16 GB memory on an ASUS Maximus X Hero motherboard. We're running the latest BIOS, which includes fixes for Spectre, and Windows 10 64-bit with Fall Creators Update, fully updated, which includes the KB4056891 Meltdown Fix.

NVIDIA today released GeForce 390.65 WHQL drivers. These drivers come game-ready for "Fortnite," including support for ShadowPlay Highlights in the "Battle Royale" mode of the game. The drivers also introduce NVIDIA Freestyle technology, which lets you apply custom post-processing effects for your game, or choose from several included post-FX filters. More importantly, the drivers introduce security updates against "Spectre" variant 2 (CVE-2017-5753) vulnerability. The drivers also provide pop-up notifications when an external GPU is connected or disconnected. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 390.65 WHQL

Your underpowered PC can now pack the punch of high-performance GeForce GTX GPUs with GeForce NOW. Starting today, the game-streaming service, which launched a successful beta last summer, is available as a free beta compatible with most Windows-based desktops and laptops. GeForce NOW can connect gamers to their library of games from many of the top digital stores - and starting today that includes Uplay PC, Ubisoft's PC games portal.

"Ubisoft is excited that gamers playing acclaimed franchises such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege on Uplay PC can now enjoy outstanding play experiences on PCs and Macs thanks to NVIDIA's futuristic GeForce NOW service, without needing a high-end PC," said Chris Early, vice president of Partnerships and Revenue at Ubisoft. "NVIDIA is powering a high-quality experience that now streams a selection of Ubisoft's top franchises."

ELSA 's appearances in TechPowerUp's front pages have been few and far between, with the last iteration of a graphics card from this manufacturer having made its way into our news feed around February 5th, 2015, with its GTX 960 SAC graphics card. That doesn't mean they ELSA isn't worthy of our attention, though, so here goes: the announcement of a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card.

The ELSA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB ST graphics card features a stock blower design that's reminiscent of those offered in AMD's base models, with a subdued black and silver color scheme. It's a pretty graphics card, though it will likely be let down by its cooling and acoustic performance. Specs are vanilla when it comes to NVIDIA's reference GTX 1080 Ti clocks: there's a base clock of 1,480 MHz (actually 1 MHz lower than NVIDIA's reference) and 1,582 MHz Boost, with 11 GB of 11 GHz GDDR5X memory. The ELSA GTX 1080 Ti 11GB ST graphics card draws power from the PCIe bus, and from 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin connectors. Display outputs on this dual-slot graphics card come in at 3x DisplayPort, 1x Dual link DVI-D, and 1x HDMI 2.0b. The card's dimensions stand at 266 mm (L) x 111 mm (H) x 39 mm (D).

NVIDIA recently updated the end-user license agreement (EULA) for their GeForce Software. There's one particular statement in the limitations section that caught our eye. And it reads: No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted. It seems that NVIDIA isn't too happy with data centers that utilize GeForce and TITAN graphics cards instead of the more expensive Quadro or Tesla cards. With this prohibition in place, data centers are forced to either invest in NVIDIA's pricier offerings or completely switch over to AMD. Data centers that are using GeForce products for cryptocoin mining are unaffected by this change in the EULA.

NVIDIA announced that it is ending driver support for 32-bit operating systems after its R390-series drivers. Following its GeForce 390.xx release, NVIDIA will not support 32-bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Linux, or FreeBSD for any of its GPU architectures. NVIDIA will, however, offer support for critical driver security fixes for 32-bit operating systems until January 2019. This means the company will release hotfixes addressing specific critical security vulnerabilities in the drivers, as and when they're found, but such hotfixes won't include new features or optimizations that are part of the main driver trunk for 64-bit operating systems.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of their GeForce software suite. Version 388.71 is a game-ready one, which brings the best performance profile for the phenomenon that is Player Unknown's BattleGrounds. For professionals, there's added support for CUDA 9.1, and Warframe SLI profiles have been updated. There are also many 3D Vision profiles that have been updated for this release, so make sure to check them out after the break, alongside other bug fixes and known issues.

As always, users can download these drivers right here on TechPowerUp. Just follow the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 388.71 WHQL

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.

NVIDIA today released its latest GeForce "Game Ready" drivers. Version 388.43 WHQL drivers feature optimization for "Doom VFR," the virtual-reality iteration of the 2016 "Doom" reboot. It also adds 3DVision profiles for "Escape from Tarkov" and "Claybook." Some game-crashes related to "Wolfenstein: The New Colossus" on notebooks GPUs were addressed. NV Tray (tray icon) has been restored with this release, on popular demand. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 388.43 WHQL

NVIDIA today has released the latest version of their GeForce Game Ready Graphics Driver. The new 388.31 drivers are optimized for the latest AAA games, "Star Wars Battlefront II," and "Injustice 2". NVIDIA has also added the corresponding 3D Vision profiles for both titles. In addition, they've included SLI profiles for Star Wars: Battlefront II and EVE Valkyrie - Warzone as well. According to them, the 388.31 drivers improve Destiny 2 performance by up to a staggering 53%. However, the more notable fixes include the micro-stuttering issue when using GPU monitoring tools to monitor GPU power and the driver not picking up GeForce GTX 1080 on the Alienware Amplifier.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 388.31 WHQL

Acer's new Aspire A615-51G laptop is set to launch on January 8th. The A615-51G is 19.95 mm thick and sports a sleek and sturdy all-metal body. The IPS display measures 15.6 inches and has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. There are two models planned so far. The standard model comes with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor and a 256GB SSD, while the higher-end model features the more powerful Intel Core i7-8550U processor, 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD for additional storage.

However, the two models do have some characteristics in common. Both will come with 8GB of RAM and employ NVIDIA's GeForce MX150 graphics card with 2GB GDDR5 memory. The standard model will cost $825 approximately, and the high-end model will set you back $1000.

Final Fantasy XV has been exceedingly well-received by both critics, consumers, and fans alike, but left out one particular gaming crowd: PC gamers. The original release of November 2016 for XBOX One and PS4 (with PS4 Pro improvements having been baked in the game as well), the game still stands as a showcase for graphics on consoles. However, a true PC, Windows Version of the game is under development in close partnership with NVIDIA, which will see a re-release of the game on PC with many added graphical features, including HDR and 4K resolution support.

Due to its close collaboration with NVIDIA, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition is expected to be a showcase for NVIDIA GameWorks technologies, such as NVIDIA Flow, NVIDIA HairWorks, NVIDIA Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows, NVIDIA Turf Effects, NVIDIA Voxel Ambient Occlusion, and more. With all of that NVIDIA technology being built-in, it's somewhat expected that the game will only run the way the developers envisioned on a green team graphics card. However, the system requirements seem to be reasonable - though we expect these to reflect only 1080p gaming, as a 4K presentation fo this game will most likely be a resource hog. As it is, Minimum System Requirements are being listed with DX 11, 8 GB RAM, an Intel Core i5 2400 (3.1GHz) or AMD FX-6100 (3.3GHz) CPU, and GeForce GTX 760 graphics. Recommended System Requirements bring those up: DX 11, 16 GB RAM, Intel Core i7 3770 (3.4GHz) or AMD FX-8350 (4.0GHz) CPU, and GeForce GTX 1060 graphics.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of their GeForce driver suite which brings with it critical support fixes for machine Games' Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. This hotfix is of particular interest for Kepler-based GPUs - and the users that deploy these for eye-candy and 3D acceleration purposes. NVIDIA is counting on launching a new Game Ready driver package in the beginning of next week, bringing the best, optimal experience to the title.

If not for its impressive graphics and the fact that it's a Wolfenstein game, this one should probably capture your attention due to the developers cutting off multiplayer entirely, so that nothing interfered with the development of the games' single-player experience. In a world of canned single-player games due to these not being easy to develop microtransactions and DLC packs for, Machine Games' approach is one that should elicit an approving nod - at least for story pundits (disclaimer: this editor is one of those). You can download this driver below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 388.10 Hotfix Drivers for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

MSI, a world leader in gaming hardware, introduces a new model of its GS63 Stealth line of notebooks. The newest variant features the same ultra-slim design, but with a more affordable GeForce GTX 1050 GPU. At just 1.8kg, the Stealth also features a powerful cooling module with three fans and five heatpipes to keep the system optimal at all times. The notebook has a 72 percent NTSC IPS level display, SteelSeries multi-color backlit keyboard and Killer Double shot Pro for smoother online gameplay.

The notebook takes advantage of MSI's Cooler Boost Trinity technology. It features five heatpipes for effective low-noise heat dissipation, even while gaming. Combing this cooling system with NVIDIA's latest GeForce GTX 1050, the system will be able to perform to its full capacity for a long period of time.

Videocardz does a great job on putting their hands on as-of-yet unreleased pictures of upcoming GPUs, and this time, they've brought out some more custom takes on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card from MSI, PALIT, and yet more ZOTAC models. MSI has shown their red and black color scheme yet again on their Gaming model; lower in the product stack comes the Armor model, with its black and white color scheme; and finally, there's the blower-type Aero version of the GTX 1070 Ti.

PALIT hasn't shown their hand on the blower-style GTX 1070 Ti, which they almost assuredly have; however, there are some pictures fo two of their custom models. There's a Dual-Fan model with the same name, and another, slightly higher-tier looking JetStream version, which likely brings some RGB elements and a custom PCB - likely, the GTX 1070 Ti version of their GTX 1080 JetStream graphics card.

The GTX 1070 Ti is likely one of the worst kept secrets in recent history of graphics cards launches - whether by accident or design, only NVIDIA fully knows. Now, it's EVGA's lineup of graphics cards based on this overpowered version of the GTX 1070 graphics card that has surfaced. No less than four different models have been pictured, which still likely don't represent the entirety of EVGA's lineup for this particular piece of GP-104 silicon.

Besides a simple, blower-type design, akin to today's leak of ASUS's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Turbo Edition, EVGA will be launching at least three different SKUs with their signature ICX cooler design series, with varying levels of customization on the PCB and power delivery designs.