ASUS launched its ROG Huracan G21 mini gaming PC a long time ago intending to provide a small form factor gaming machine. Today, ASUS decided to update the Huracan with the latest hardware available. Inside a 17.7 liter chassis measuring 129.9×372.4×366.1 mm, ASUS managed to pack some powerful hardware. Starting with CPU, the ROG Huracan G21 is a house to Intel's Core i9-9900K 8 core, 16 thread CPU. There are also configurations available with Intel Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9400 CPUs. The CPU is installed on Mini-ITX Z390 motherboards made by ASUS, so it is technically possible to overclock it, however with an inadequate cooling solution for that it is not recommended.

To make a gaming PC, you need to have a good GPU to push all the framerates, and ASUS opted to equip the G21 with up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card with a blower-type cooler. Other options include GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 GPUs as well. For storage, there are quite a few options. There is one M.2 SATA SSD which can range from 128 GB to 512 GB in capacity. In addition to a 3.5-inch HDD that is available in 1 TB and 2 TB capacity, there is a hot-swap bay for a 2.5-inch drive. As far as the main memory goes, there is room for up to 32 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz memory. For IO, two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port is available on the front of the chassis. In the back, there are two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, along with four USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Video outputs are dependant on which graphics card is equipped in a given configuration. Additionally, to power this PC, ROG Huracan G21 relies on external power adapters that come in 180, 230, or 280 Watt options that again depend on the configuration of the machine. It is also worth pointing out that for audio, the G21 uses Realtek ALC1150 with ESS DAC and amplifier. Support for RGB is not lacking and of course, and it is compatible with ASUS Aura Sync software.

NVIDIA today has finally launched its GeForce Now streaming gaming service, and users can enjoy partial amounts of free gaming under the business model. There are two tiers of users on offer: Free, and Founders. The free tier, which you may give a go to check the streaming infrastructure and if it's something you would enjoy paying for, is limited to 60-minute play sessions. This means that after the clock has stopped ticking (with potentially intrusive pop-up notifications reminding you of how much time you have left every 10 minutes), you'll be forced to quit the game, and submit yourself to a playing queue until your next 60-minute window is up. RTX isn't available in this tier, though - so if you also wanted to see for yourself what the raytracing talk is all about, you'll have to pay $5 (monthly subscription) to cross that particular river.

Founder-tier members, however, will be able to enjoy the latest RTX-enabled games. The only ones listed on the service, for now, are Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Call of Duty: modern Warfare, Metro Exodus, and Deliver Us the Moon, which NVIDIA has recently started bundling with select RTX graphics cards). There is still a catch though: play sessions will be limited to 6 hours, after which time you'll be brought back to a gaming queue (though you'll have precedence over Free tier accounts, should there be many Founders-tier players in the queue, you might have to wait a while). There's a limited-time 90-day introductory period of which you can take advantage while subscribing for the Founders tier right now, which means you will only be billed after that 90-day grace period is over. Remember - you have to own a digital copy of the game you want to play in any of the more popular storefronts, such as EPIC and Steam, before you can game - but it's still a nice way to experience RTX should you currently own a non-RTX-enabled graphics card.

In case you missed the giant banners on the website, EVGA shared news with us that they are bundling in a free game with their GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards, and this includes the EVGA GeForce RTX ️ 2080 Ti, 2080/2070/2060 SUPER, and 2080/2070/2060. The promotion is not from NVIDIA, and this is not the first time EVGA have gone the extra step to sweeten the deal towards consumers buying their cards as opposed to other add-in card partner solutions. Deliver Us The Moon is a weird little sci-fi thriller game with puzzle mechanics and rudimentary flight systems that yours truly found interesting for the few hours played thus far, and is well worth checking into- especially as a freebie on top of your GPU purchase. There is also NVIDIA RTX support to use with your new graphics card, and the ambient lighting in the game does benefit from it, especially when flying in space. For more information on this promo, click here.

NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards codenamed Ampere is set to arrive sometime this year, presumably around GTC 2020 which takes place on March 22nd. Before the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang officially reveals the specifications of these new GPUs, we have the latest round of rumors coming our way. According to VideoCardz, which cites multiple sources, the die configurations of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 have been detailed. Using the latest 7 nm manufacturing process from Samsung, this generation of NVIDIA GPU offers a big improvement from the previous generation.

For starters the two dies which have appeared have codenames like GA103 and GA104, standing for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 respectively. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) count. The smaller GA104 die has as much as 48 SMs, resulting in 3072 CUDA cores, while the bigger, oddly named, GA103 die has as much as 60 SMs that result in 3840 CUDA cores in total. These improvements in SM count should result in a notable performance increase across the board. Alongside the increase in SM count, there is also a new memory bus width. The smaller GA104 die that should end up in RTX 3070 uses a 256-bit memory bus allowing for 8/16 GB of GDDR6 memory, while its bigger brother, the GA103, has a 320-bit wide bus that allows the card to be configured with either 10 or 20 GB of GDDR6 memory. In the images below you can check out the alleged diagrams for yourself and see if this looks fake or not, however, it is recommended to take this rumor with a grain of salt.

NVIDIA today released a major update to Quake II RTX that add even more eye-candy to the game, leveraging RTX. Quake II RTX, promoted by NVIDIA, is a playable tech-demo for its RTX real-time ray-tracing technology that's based on a classic 3D game so it runs on nearly all DXR-compatible graphics cards (GeForce GTX 10-series, 16-series, and RTX 20-series). It comes with id Software's shareware 1st episode content, although you can add your own licensed game data for the full game.

With version 1.2, NVIDIA added support for a boatload of modern technology, beginning with support for dynamic resolution scaling. Much like watching online videos with resolution toggle set to "auto" (which adjusts resolution based on your Internet bandwidth), dynamic resolution scaling adjusts the rendering resolution of your game on the fly in pursuit of a frames-per-second target. NVIDIA also remastered several textures of the game, increasing texture detail. Over 400 textures have been redone by NVIDIA, adding detail. Support is added for multiple reflection/refraction bounces, which makes it possible to create a "hall of mirrors" effect. NVIDIA implemented light shafts or god rays throughout the game, including underwater light shafts. Light shafts also get reflected off certain metal or glass surfaces. NVIDIA also improved the AI denoiser for the game. Metal and glass surfaces are made to appear more photo-real thanks to denoiser improvements. Find many other technical changes in the official change-log below.DOWNLOAD: Quake II RTX v1.2

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia based water cooling gear manufacturer, is introducing its new generation of EK-Vector RTX Strix D-RGB water blocks designed for ROG Strix GeForce RTX series graphics cards, based on Turing graphics processor. The EK-Quantum Vector Strix RTX D-RGB series water blocks feature four integrated addressable LED sources, two located in the terminal cover and one digital LED strip on each end of the water block.

EK-Quantum Vector Strix RTX D-RGB
The EK-Quantum Vector Strix RTX water blocks are specially designed for multiple ROG Strix GeForce RTX Turing based graphics cards. The water block itself uses the signature EK single slot slim look, and it covers the entire PCB length. This sophisticated cooling solution will transform your powerful ROG graphics card into a minimalistic, elegant piece of hardware with rich and addressable D-RGB LED lighting.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, today announces the product launch of EK-Quantum Vector RTX RE D-RGB water blocks, EK-Quantum Vector Upgrade Kits, and EK-D-RGB 6-Way Splitter Cable.

The RE water blocks use the signature EK single slot slim look and cover the entire PCB length. The block also features a unique aesthetic cover over the block Terminal which is designed to showcase the graphics card model via LEDs, visible from the side. The water block comes in 2 different models tailor-made for either reference NVIDIA RTX 2080 or NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti. The water blocks are equipped with 5V D-RGB (addressable) LEDs which are compatible with the motherboard 3-pin 5V D-RGB (addressable) LED header.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations is thrilled to announce the new range of INNO3D fans including the TWIN X2 OC RGB and GAMING OC X2, while also adopting the popular TWIN X2 and COMPACT on existing GPUs. So what GPU will get what fan? Take a look at the list below.

Our engineers were at the drawing board and had the task of designing two new fans to essentially target customers with specific requirements when purchasing their graphics card. High on the list of requests was the need for the INNO3D GTX 16 series to have RGB so that even the less hardcore gamers can also enjoy and marvel at the colour cycling display when playing their favourite games. It is not all form and no function, far from it - the RGB cooler has dual 9 cm fan with the best balance of noise and cooling performance. The cooler houses a big heatsink with 3 heatpipes for efficient heat dissipation while made up of an 8-layer PCB with 8 pin power input for stable overclocking. All this in a relatively small form factor with the length of just 22 cm.

NVIDIA's efforts with Quake 2 RTX haven't gone unnoticed in the community, providing a distinct overhaul in image quality to the now decades-old game. Raytracing and its global illumination capabilities have already been well explored in this publication, and its effect in older games - the ones that already run remarkably well in modern hardware - has been well documented, with some third party solutions (such as ReShade) including the effect to great measure in a number of games that haven't been built from the ground-up for raytracing.

The new Lightspeed Studios from NVIDIA aims to bring Quake 2 RTX-like improvements to other games. A job posting from the company dated from the end of September seems to make it clear that the company is looking to increase the number of games with RTX support in this way. Read on after the break for the description in the job listing.

According to the sources over at Igor's Lab, NVIDIA could launch its next generation of GPUs, codenamed "Ampere", as soon as first half of the 2020 arrives. Having just recently launched GeForce RTX Super lineup, NVIDIA could surprise us again in the coming months with replacement for it's Turing lineup of graphics cards. Expected to directly replace high-end GPU models that are currently present, like GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 Super, Ampere should bring many performance and technology advancements a new graphics card generation is usually associated with.

For starters, we could expect a notable die shrink to take place in form of 7 nm node, which will replace the aging 12 nm process that Turing is currently being built on. This alone should bring more than 50% increase in transistor density, resulting in much more performance and lower power consumption compared to previous generation. NVIDIA's foundry of choice is still unknown, however current speculations are predicting that Samsung will manufacture Ampere, possibly due to delivery issues that are taking place at TSMC. Architectural improvements should take place as well. Ray tracing is expected to persist and get enhanced with possibly more hardware allocated for it, along with better software to support the ray tracing ecosystem of applications.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's re-release will see the game supporting real-time raytracing, and given NVIDIA's current stand in the market as the only provider of hardware-accelerated raytracing capable GPUs, this partnership makes total sense. NVIDIA has announced that they will be bundling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with select RTX series GPUs, which gives gamers on the fence towards buying an RTX graphics card one more reason to take the plunge.

The bundle is available for eligible GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, 2070 Super, 2070, 2060 Super and 2060 products, whether in discrete card or laptop/desktop pre-built form. The game will be taking advantage of ray tracing and adaptive shading, and will bring gamers back to Soap and Price's story.

LG Electronics (LG) has joined forces with NVIDIA to make gamers' dreams come true, adding support for NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatibility to its stunning 2019 OLED TVs (model 65/55E9, model 77/65/55C9). LG's newest OLED products offer blazing speed and stunning color reproduction, their superior performance and image quality validated through NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible testing to ensure a smooth and immersive gaming experience without flickering, tearing or stuttering.

With exceptional picture quality, low input lag and an ultra-fast response time, LG OLED TVs have already earned a reputation for delivering an optimized gaming performance. The addition of NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatibility raises the bar once more, guaranteeing even more immersive big-screen PC gaming on the company's industry-leading 4K OLED models, available in 55- to 77-inch screen sizes.

"Control" by Remedy is the season's hottest AAA release, not just because it's an above-average story-driven action RPG, but also because it's an eye candy-shop. With the ability to use NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing across a multitude of features, the game is particularly heavy on graphics hardware. Tweaktown tested the game's stability at extremely high display resolutions, including 8K, and found that the game can use up to 18.5 GB of video memory, when running in DirectX 12 with RTX enabled. There's only one client-segment graphics card capable of that much memory, the $2,499 NVIDIA TITAN RTX, which ships with 24 GB of GDDR6 memory. Its nearest client-segment neighbor is the AMD Radeon VII, but it only packs 16 GB of HBM2.

When a game needs more video memory than your graphics card has, Windows has an elaborate memory management system that sheds some of that memory onto your system's main memory, and the swap file progressively (at reduced performance, of course). Video memory usage drops like a rock between 8K and 4K UHD (which is 1/4th the pixels as 8K). With all RTX features enabled and other settings maxed out, "Control" only uses 8.1 GB of video memory. What this also means is that video cards with just 8 GB of memory are beginning fall short of what it takes to game at 4K. The $699 GeForce RTX 2080 Super only has 8 GB. The RTX 2080 Ti, with its 11 GB of memory has plenty of headroom and muscle. Find other interesting observations in the source link below.

Top-of-the-line gaming brand AORUS, reveals itself at the 2019 GAMESCOM trade show in Germany Cologne, in which the spotlight shines at the all-new 17 inch flagship gaming laptop, the AORUS 17. AORUS takes the lead yet again through the co-op with world renowned switch manufacture OMRON to innovate and develop a set of unique mechanical switches that is tailored for the AORUS 17, not only does the keys offer exceptional durability, it also offers one of the best feeling keys that gamers can find on a laptop. The AORUS greatness continues through the combination of the brand new Intel 8-core CPU, NVIDIA RTX graphics chip with Ray Tracing technology and an exclusive WINDFORCE INFINITY cooling system, the AORUS 17 steadily sits on the high-end gaming thrown with these specs.

AORUS leads the industry again by working with world renowned mechanical switch manufacture, OMRON in order to create a unique set of mechanical keys for the AORUS laptop, with gamer oriented design details, including an optimal 2.5 mm key travel and an actuation point of 1.6 mm, giving gamers both the sensational touch and sound of a crisp blue switch, which gamers can now enjoy the qualities of a full mechanical keyboard right on their AORUS laptop. AORUS pursues further by redesigning the key caps to produce stunning backlit keys with unique "concentric" keycaps, letting the LED underneath the keycap shine though evenly, increasing the overall lighting intensity by 27%, in addition to the AORUS exclusive FUSION 2.0 keyboard customization software, gamers can truly create a unique personal style.

Minecraft is the perfect gaming paradox. It's a stupidly-popular title, but with simple graphics that can run on practically any Windows machine, but supports the latest 3D graphics APIs such as DirectX 12. The title now adds another feather to its technical feature-set cap, with support for NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing. RTX will now be used to render realistic light shafts using path-tracing, global illumination, shadows, ambient occlusion, and simple reflections. "Ray tracing sits at the center of what we think is next for Minecraft," said Saxs Persson, Franchise Creative Director of Minecraft at Microsoft. "RTX gives the Minecraft world a brand-new feel to it. In normal Minecraft, a block of gold just appears yellow, but with ray tracing turned on, you really get to see the specular highlight, you get to see the reflection, you can even see a mob reflected in it."

NVIDIA and Microsoft are yet to put out a release date on this feature update. It remains to be seen how hardcore crafters take this feature. Looking at images 1 and 2 (below), we can see that the added global illumination / bloom blurs out objects in the distance. This gives crafters the impression that the draw-distance is somehow affected. Crafters demand the highest possible draw-distance, with nothing blurring their view. We can't wait to try this out ourselves to see how RTX affects very-large crafting.A video presentation by NVIDIA follows.

During NVIDIA's second quarter earnings call, the company's co-founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, talked about earnings and what drives demand. When talking about sales, Huang noted a few things about NVIDIA's RTX lineup of graphics cards and why buying one is the only reasonable thing to do.

Specifically, Huang said that "SUPER is off to a super start for and at this point, it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to buy a new graphics card, and it's going to the last 2, 3, 4 years to not have ray tracing is just crazy. Ray tracing content just keeps coming out. And between the performance of SUPER and the fact that it has ray tracing hardware, it's going to be super well positioned for throughout all of next year."

Assetto Corsa Competizione, the big AAA race simulator slated for a September release, will lack support for NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing technology, not just at launch, but even the foreseeable future. The Italian game studio Kunos Simulazioni in response to a specific question on the Steam Community forums confirmed that the game will not receive NVIDIA RTX support.

"Our priority is to improve, optimize, and evolve all aspects of ACC. If after our long list of priorities the level of optimization of the title, and the maturity of the technology, permits a full blown implementation of RTX, we will gladly explore the possibility, but as of now there is no reason to steal development resources and time for a very low frame rate implementation," said the developer, in response to a question about NVIDIA RTX support at launch. This is significant, as Assetto Corsa Competizione was one of the posterboys of RTX, and featured in the very first list by NVIDIA, of RTX-ready games under development.

NVIDIA today announced that 10 new NVIDIA RTX Studio laptops and professional-grade mobile workstations are being released by major partners, delivering real-time ray tracing, advanced AI and ultra-high-resolution video editing to the world's 40 million creatives.

The latest designs from Dell, HP, Lenovo and BOXX bring the number of RTX Studio models to 27 - including 17 that are now available. These laptops power more than 40 creative and design applications that have turned "RTX On", enabling tens of millions of creatives to harness ray tracing and AI in their workflows. NVIDIA RTX features are being shown at SIGGRAPH this week in software from a diverse set of independent software vendors, including Adobe, Autodesk and Blackmagic Design.

Today Bitspower, a well know watercooling supplier, launched a full cover waterblock for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series of graphics cards, including the new Super lineup. The waterblock features a copper base that is nickel and chromium plated to give the block a nice shiny look. It uses 0.5 mm fins over the GPU die to provide efficient heat dissipation. Waterblock's body is covering whole graphics card including the VRM power delivery area. Rest of the block is made out of acrylic that integrates digital RGB LED strip in order to provide additional color customization.

In addition to new design of the block, Bitspower is also including a GPU backplate and IO cover with it. The backplate is coated in black, while the IO cover is silver. Waterblock uses standard G1/4 inch threading and has four of the threads.

Bethesda revealed that "Wolfenstein Youngblood" will launch a day earlier for the PC platform globally, on July 25. Console platforms PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch get the game on July 26. This prioritization of the PC platform is symbolic and underscores the vast revenue-base the platform constitutes. The PC is already Ubisoft's biggest revenue source.

A separate VentureBeat report reveals that at launch, "Youngblood" won't support real-time ray-traced eye-candy, which would be added at a later date through a patch. "We're working together with NVIDIA on that, but ray tracing won't be available at launch," said executive producer Jerk Gustafsson. "Youngblood" will be one of the first non-DirectX AAA titles to implement RTX. The game uses the Vulkan 3D API, and its RTX feature-set is exclusively NVIDIA's handiwork.

The EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER & EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER gaming cards were designed to bring the best cooling, the best overclocking, the best RGB to new performance levels and price points.

NVIDIA Turing
The new GeForce RTX SUPER Series cards deliver everything you need to rule your game. They're powered by the Turing architecture and feature more cores and higher clocks. This gives you up to 25% faster performance than the original RTX 20 Series and 6X the performance of previous-generation 10 Series GPUs.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations, is excited to announce the new INNO3D GeForce RTX SUPER Series. With great power comes great responsibility, and with the INNO3D GeForce RTX 2080, 2070, 2060 SUPER graphics cards you will surely do your favourite games justice by powering them with the Turing architecture packed with more oomph thanks to additional cores and higher clocks.

Our R&D team have been burning the midnight oil in order to have every conceivable version of the SUPER series, from the iCHILL Frostbite, iCHILL Black, iCHILL X3 Ultra and X3 to the Gaming OC X2 and X3, and of course the INNO3D TWIN X2 OC and Compact.

NVIDIA is reportedly going to introduce a new gaming bundle come the release of their new SUPER, Turing-refreshed graphics cards come July 2nd. The new bundle picks up RTX-enabled titles that were developed with NVIDIA's support, and will include access to MachineGames' Wolfenstein: Young Blood, as well as Remedy's Control.

NVIDIA has officially confirmed pricing and SKU availability for its refreshed Turing lineup featuring the SUPER graphics cards we've been talking about for ages now. Primed as a way to steal AMD's Navi release thunder, the new SUPER lineup means previously-released NVIDIA gppahics cards have now hit an EOL-status as soon as their souped-up, SUPER versions are available, come July 2nd.

The RTX 2060 and RTX 2080 Ti will live on, for now, as the cheapest and most powerful entries unto the world of hardware-based raytracing acceleration, respectively. The RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, however, will be superseded by the corresponding 2070 SUPER and 2080 SUPER offerings, with an additional RTX 2060 SUPER being offered so as to compete with AMD's RX 5700 ($399 for NVIDIA's new RTX 2060 SUPER vs $379 for the AMD RX 5700, which is sandwiched in the low-end by the RTX 2060 at $349).

NVIDIA has confirmed that they will be launching a new RTX series of gaming graphics cards, called RTX Super, on July 2nd. According to info from VideoCardz, there will be three models of the new GPUs at launch - RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2080 SUPER. The review embargo will lift on the same day as launch day for RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER, but the embargo for RTX 2080 SUPER will prevail until "later in July".

The embargo for custom cards based on the new SUPER GPUs will be delayed until July 9th, when we will get the first wave of new cards. There is no apparent reason for the delay, so we will need to find out more about that. Pricing is yet to be announced, but according to the source, it will be "later this week". As a reminder, from previous leaks we have seen that Super series is supposed to bring about 10-13% more CUDA cores to the GPU models, more memory and higher memory speeds.