NVIDIA released its first GeForce software suite since Windows 10 October 2018 went official. The new GeForce 416.16 WHQL drivers add full support for the new operating system, including WDDM 2.5, and DirectX Ray-Tracing (DXR), which are essential for NVIDIA RTX to work. The drivers also add SLI profiles for a large number of games, including "Battlefield V," "Basingstroke," "Divinity: Original Sin II," "Immortal: Unchained," "Jurassic World Evolution," "Phoenix Point," and "Seven: The Days Long Gone." 3DVision profiles are added for "The Elder Scrolls: Online."

A small number of bugs are also fixed with this release. "Pascal" GPUs running "Quake HD remix" no longer experience black square glitches. Temporal AA sharp drops in performance with GeForce GTX 1060 running "Rainbow 6: Siege" has been fixed. Driver errors on TITAN Xp when waking up from S4 sleep have been fixed. Lastly, an issue found with "Turing" GPUs not exposing Netflix 4K mode to displays connected over USB-C, has been fixed. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 416.16 WHQL

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA could be giving final touches to its Quadro GV100 "Volta" professional graphics card, after the surprise late-2017 launch of the NVIDIA TITAN V. The card was found listed in the binary view of the latest version of NVFlash (v5.427.0), the most popular NVIDIA graphics card BIOS extraction and flashing utility. Since its feature-set upgrade to the TITAN Xp through newer drivers, NVIDIA has given the TITAN family of graphics cards a quasi-professional differentiation from its GeForce GTX family.

The Quadro family still has the most professional features, software certifications, and are sought after by big companies into graphics design, media, animation, architecture, resource exploration, etc. The Quadro GV100 could hence yet be more feature-rich than the TITAN V. With its GV100 silicon, NVIDIA is using a common ASIC and board design for its Tesla V100 PCIe add-in card variants, the TITAN V, and the Quadro GV100. While the company endowed the TITAN V with 12 GB of HBM2 memory using 3 out of 4 memory stacks the ASIC is capable of holding; there's an opportunity for NVIDIA to differentiate the Quadro GV100 by giving it that 4th memory stack, and 16 GB of total memory. You can download the latest version of NVFlash here.

NVIDIA has announced two new collector's edition NVIDIA TITAN Xp GPUs created for the ultimate Star Wars fan. The new Jedi Order and Galactic Empire editions of the NVIDIA TITAN Xp have been crafted to reflect the look and feel of the Star Wars galaxy.
These new Star Wars collector's edition GPUs pay homage to the light side/dark side dichotomy, and contain hints of the Star Wars galaxy, such as the hilt of Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and light panels reminiscent of the Death Star.

The Jedi Order GPU simulates the wear and tear and battle-worn finish of many items used by the Rebel Alliance, resulting from its diecast aluminum cover being subjected to an extensive, corrosive salt spray. Conversely, the Galactic Empire GPU's finish features simple, clean lines, emulating the high-end, orderly nature of the resource-rich Empire. Both versions have multiple windowed areas to showcase internals and lighting, evoking each faction's lightsabers, green and red, respectively. The finishes of both versions took over a year to perfect.

At SIGGRAPH 2017, NVIDIA announced it is working with a number of partners towards the development of external graphics enclosures that can power - and increase mobility - of their professional-geared GPU solutions. Namely, NVIDIA has announced external GPU solutions featuring the powerful Titan Xp and Quadro graphics cards. These external GPU solutions are meant to upgrade the capability of notebooks to support new workflows such as video editing, interactive rendering, VR content creation, AI development and more. Such has been enabled by the latest, high-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 protocol. For the Quadro eGPU program specifically, Nvidia is working with established manufacturers like Sonnet, Magma, Akiti, and Bizon. The company says there are more to come.

Pricing information has not been revealed for now, but Titan Xp can already be ordered, while the Quadro solutions will see availability in a few weeks.

In a bid to preempt sales of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition, and the Pro WX 9100, NVIDIA expanded the feature-set of its consumer-segment TITAN Xp graphics card, with certain features reserved for its Quadro family of graphics cards, through a driver update. NVIDIA is rolling out its latest GeForce software update, which adds professional features for applications such as Maya, unlocking "3X more performance" for the software.

Priced at USD $1,199, the TITAN Xp packs a full-featured "GP102" graphics processor, with 3,840 CUDA cores, 240 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and 12 GB of GDDR5X memory across the chip's 384-bit wide memory interface. At its given memory clock of 11.4 GHz (GDDR5X-effective), the card has a memory bandwidth of 547.6 GB/s, which is higher than the 484 GB/s of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 385.12 for TITAN Xp

PC World posted a preview of an AMD Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, and reported some interesting observations about the card ahead of its review NDA. The tech publication compared the air-cooled Pro Vega Frontier Edition against NVIDIA's fastest consumer graphics card, the TITAN Xp. It did reveal performance numbers of the two cards in two compute-heavy tests, SPECViewPerf 12.1 and Cinebench R15 (OpenGL test), where the Vega FE significantly outperforms the TITAN Xp. This shouldn't come as a shocker because AMD GPUs tend to have a strong footing with GPU compute performance, particularly with open standards.

It's PC World's comments on the Vega card's gaming performance that might pique your interest. In its report, the publication comments that the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition offers gaming performance that is faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080, but slightly slower than its GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. To back its statement, PC World claims to have run the Vega Frontier Edition and TITAN Xp in "Doom" with Vulkan API, "Prey" with DirectX 11, and "Sniper Elite 4" with DirectX 12. You must also take into account that the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition could command a four-figure price, in the league of the TITAN Xp; and that gamers should look forward to the Radeon RX Vega series, bound for a late-July/early-August launch, at price-points more appropriate to their competitive positioning. The RX Vega is also expected to have 8 GB of memory compared to 16 GB on the Frontier Edition. Watch PC World's video presentation in the source link below.

AMD is dragging its feet with the launch of its next performance/enthusiast segment graphics card based on the cutting-edge "Vega 10" silicon, the Radeon RX Vega. The last we heard, the company is announcing the product late-July/early-August, along the sidelines of SIGGRAPH 2017. The company already put out specifications of the first consumer product based on this silicon, the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition; and according to listings by online retailers, its power figures aren't looking good. The air-cooled version has its TDP rated at 300W, and the faster liquid-cooled variant 375W. This is way above the 275W TDP of the TITAN Xp, NVIDIA's fastest client-segment graphics card.

An MSI company representative posting on Dutch tech-forums confirmed our worst fears, that the RX Vega will have a very high power draw. "Specs van Vega RX gezien. Tering wat power heeft die nodig. Wij zijn er aan bezig, dat is een start dus launch komt dichterbij," said the representative who goes by "The Source" on Dutch tech forums Tweakers.net. As a gentleman scholar in Google Translate, and citing VideoCardz which cited a native Dutch speaker; the MSI rep's statement translates as "I've seen the specs of Vega RX. It needs a damn lot of power. We're working on it, which is a start so launch is coming closer."

AMD Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition goes on sale later this month (26 June). It is designed to provide a "gateway" to the "Vega" GPU architecture for graphics professionals and game developers alike, with the consumer graphics product, the Radeon RX Vega, is bound for late-July/early-August. Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition, being a somewhat "enterprise-segment" product, was expected to have slightly lower TDP than its consumer-graphics sibling, since enterprise-segment implementations of popular GPUs tend to have slightly restrained clock speeds. Apparently, AMD either didn't clock the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition low, or the chip has extremely high TDP.

According to specifications put out by EXXACT, a retailer which deals with enterprise hardware, the air-cooled variant of the Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition has a TDP rated at 300W, while its liquid-cooled variant has its TDP rated as high as 375W. To put this in perspective, the consumer-segment TITAN Xp by NVIDIA has its TDP rated at 275W. EXXACT is claiming big performance advantages in certain enterprise benchmarks such as SPECVIEWPERF and Cinebench. In other news, the air-cooled Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition is reportedly priced at USD $1,199; while the liquid-cooled variant is priced at $1,799. Based on the 14 nm "Vega 10" silicon, the Pro Vega Frontier Edition features 4,096 stream processors and 16 GB of HBM2 memory across a 2048-bit memory interface.

PowerColor showed off its Gaming Box external graphics enclosure, at the 2017 Computex. With dimensions that almost match a cubical SFF desktop (343 mm x 163 mm x 235 mm), the enclosure can hold a graphics card up to 32 cm long and up to 15.5 cm tall, with 2.5-slot (2-slot bracket). Powering the enclosure is a 550W internal PSU, with two 6+2 pin PCIe power connectors. A Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) connection links the box to your notebook, PC, or NUC. Downstream connectivity includes a Thunderbolt 3 port, three USB 3.0 ports, and a 1 GbE wired network connection. The enclosure supports most current high-end graphics cards, such as the R9 Fury/Nano series, RX 400/500 series, GTX 10-series, and TITAN Xp.

EK Water Blocks, the market leader in PC custom liquid cooling, is launching its new brand created for PC gamers called EK Fluid Gaming. Bringing the best price/performance ratio imaginable, it's set to change how water cooling is perceived. This is real EKWB water cooling at an affordable price thanks to innovative patent pending technology.

The benefits of liquid cooling of CPUs and especially GPUs have never been so obvious as air cooling solutions are struggling to cope with cooling demands of modern PC hardware. Air-cooled PCs tend to suffer from loud noise and overheating, something that no gamer wants to hear and see as it degrades performance of hardware, furthermore preventing any serious overclocking! Liquid cooling is the best solution for rapid heat removal due to its unmatched thermal heat dissipation. It is the only solution that allows successful heat removal from critical spots with zero noise pollution!

Alphacool rolled the Eisblock GPX-N full-coverage water-block for GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, TITAN X Pascal, and TITAN Xp (they share the same reference PCB). The block features a nickel-plated copper primary material, with an acrylic top, and a metal outer shroud that gives the block an industrial look. Also included is an aluminium back-plate. The block features standard G1/4" fittings.

Swiftech introduced two new full-coverage water blocks for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti under its Komodo brand. These include the Komodo NV-LE GTX 1080 Ti, and the Komodo NV-ECO GTX 1080 Ti (pictured in that order). The Komodo NV-LE GTX 1080 Ti features a chrome-plated copper base, with a clear acrylic top, that is further topped off by a matte-black aluminium plate with diamond-cut edges. The block includes RGB multi-color LED lighting elements, with a standardized 4-pin LED header. The block features standard G1/4" threading for your fittings.

The Komodo NV-ECO GTX 1080 Ti is a "lite" version of the NV-LE. It features the same exact block base made of chrome-plated copper, but features a clear acrylic top, which lacks the aluminium top-plate featured on the NV-LE. It also lacks the RGB LED elements and Iris-Eco lighting controller, but features preparation for them, so you can optionally order them, or add them later down the line. Both blocks are also compatible with NVIDIA TITAN Xp. The Komodo NV-LE GTX 1080 Ti is priced at USD $169.95, while the Komodo NV-ECO GTX 1080 Ti goes for $119.95.

Thermaltake today introduced the Pacific V-GTX 1080Ti (model: CL-W183-CU00TR-A), a full-coverage water block designed for reference-design NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. Although not mentioned in its specs-sheet, the block could also work on TITAN X Pascal and TITAN Xp graphics cards, which use the same PCB. The block is made of nickel-plated copper with a mirror finish at its GPU base, and features a clear acrylic top. The block has standard G 1/4-inch threads, with inserts along its top for LEDs. Measuring 22.6 mm x 131.2 mm x 238.5 mm (HxWxL), the block weighs about 890 g. The block also includes a back-plate made of 4 mm-thick aluminium. The company didn't reveal pricing.

In an AMA (ask me anything) session with Tom's Hardware community, AMD desktop processor marketing exec Don Woligrosky answered a variety of AMD Ryzen platform related questions. He did not shy away from making a key comment about the company's upcoming high-end graphics card, Radeon Vega, either. "Vega performance compared to the Geforce GTX 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp looks really nice," Woligrosky stated. This implies that Radeon Vega is in the same league of performance as NVIDIA's two top consumer graphics SKUs, the $650 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and the $1,200 TITAN Xp.

It is conceivable that AMD's desktop processor marketing execs will have access to some privileged information from other product divisions, and so if true, this makes NVIDIA's recent memory speed bump for the GTX 1080 a failed gambit. NVIDIA similarly bumped memory speeds of the GTX 1060 6 GB to make it more competitive against the Radeon RX 580. Woligrosky also commented on a more plausible topic, of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync becoming the dominant adaptive v-sync technology, far outselling NVIDIA G-Sync.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility that no PC enthusiast can leave home without. Version 1.19.0 adds support for new GPUs and improves some features. To begin with, GPU-Z 1.19.0 supports upcoming AMD Radeon RX 500 series, new NVIDIA TITAN Xp, Quadro M600M, and M1200. It also adds the ability to extract video BIOS from GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. It also improves NVIDIA driver version detection on Windows 8, and a new vendor ID for Sapphire Technology was added. Grab it from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 1.19.0

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cannibalized the TITAN X Pascal, and the company needed something faster to sell at USD $1,200. Without making much noise about it, the company launched the new TITAN Xp, and with it, discontinued the TITAN X Pascal. The new TITAN Xp features all 3,840 CUDA cores physically present on the "GP102" silicon, all 240 TMUs, all 96 ROPs, and 12 GB of faster 11.4 Gbps GDDR5X memory over the chip's full 384-bit wide memory interface.

Compare these to the 3,584 CUDA cores, 224 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and 10 Gbps GDDR5X memory of the TITAN X Pascal, and 3,584 CUDA cores, 224 TMUs, 88 ROPs, and 11 GB of 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory across a 352-bit memory bus, of the GTX 1080 Ti. The GPU Boost frequency is 1582 MHz. Here's the catch - the new TITAN Xp will be sold exclusively through GeForce.com, which means it will be available in very select markets where NVIDIA's online store has a presence.