PowerColor and TechPowerUp brought you a sensational Giveaway embedded into TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.15.0, with a crateful of PowerColor and AMD gear up for grabs. The Giveaway has drawn to a close, and from nearly 15,000 entries, nineteen lucky winners were picked out. It's a long list, and so without further ado, the winners:

• Umut from Turkey, and Dimitris from Greece, win a PowerColor Radeon RX 590 Red Devil 8GB graphics card, each
• Sava from Serbia, and Gary from the United States, win an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 6-core/12-thread desktop processor, each
• The following winners get a $30 Steam Wallet Coupon, each: Tarek from Egypt, Mike from Canada, Tundzhay from Bulgaria, David from Alabama USA, Rafael from Brazil, Wassim from Algeria, Serghei from Italy, Tim from Germany, George from Greece, Luca from New York state USA, Oskari from Finland, Jasmin from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Balazs from Spain, Wesley from North Carolina USA, and Martin from the United Kingdom.

A huge Congratulations to each of you. We hope you've had as much trying out the GPU-Z 2.15.0 Giveaway tab as we had fun making it. TechPowerUp and PowerColor will return with more such interesting giveaways!

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular video sub-system information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.16.0 adds support for new and upcoming GPUs, new features and comes with various bug fixes. To begin with, GPU-Z adds support for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card. Support is added for the EVGA iCX sensor suite on RTX 2080 FTW3 and RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 graphics cards.

GPU-Z can now detect UWD and DCH graphics drivers. When such drivers are detected on Windows 10 machines, the driver version will include the "DCH" marker. The "Advanced" tab gives info on the DCH driver status of the installed GPU, too. With version 2.16.0, we also made GPU-Z more high-DPI friendly. The splash screen is aware high-DPI screen resolutions. More importantly, we fixed the sensor list not correctly displaying on high-DPI monitors. Rendering artifacts when resizing the sensor window have been fixed. The main settings panel now has a checkbox that lets you control the updater (this option was previously located inside the update checker itself). A rare crash noticed with AMD "Polaris" GPUs has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.16.0The change-log follows.

One of our readers tipped us off with a very plausible looking image that drops a motherlode of information about what AMD's 2nd generation Ryzen (aka Ryzen 3000 series) processor lineup could look like. This includes a vast selection of SKUs, their CPU and iGPU core configurations, clock-speeds, and OEM channel pricing. The list speaks of a reentry for 7th generation A-series "Excavator" as Duron X4 series, followed by Duron 300GE-series based on a highly cut down "Raven Ridge," Athlon 300GE 2-core/4-thread based on an implausible "Zen+ 12 nm" APU die, followed by quad-core Ryzen 3 3000 series processors with and without iGPUs, making up the company's entry-level product lineup.

The core counts seem to jump from 4-core straight to 8-core, with no 6-core in between, for the Ryzen 5 series. This is also where AMD's new IP, the 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture, begins. There appears to be a large APU die (or a 3-chip MCM) with an 8-core CPU and 20-CU iGPU, which makes up certain Ryzen 5 SKUs. These chips are either 8-core/8-thread or 8-core/16-thread. The Ryzen 7 series is made up of 12-core/24-thread processors that are devoid of iGPU. The new Ryzen 9 series extension caps off the lineup with 16-core/32-thread SKUs. And these are just socket AM4.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version, 2.15.0, of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. This brings along with it support for AMD's Radeon RX 590 GPU, two reviews of which can be seen here and here for those interested. In addition, GPU-Z 2.15.0 adds support for Intel Whiskey Lake, UHD Graphics 617, and NVIDIA Tesla V100-SXM2-32GB along with minor bug fixes including detection of certain Quadro cards as fake, as well as an updated Vega 20 release date.

While this alone is plenty to merit an update, there is a special giveaway added to this version. Indeed, to the left of the "Close" button at the bottom is a temporary button that opens up a giveaway window listing a collaboration with PowerColor enabling users to potentially win the following (one per winner):

• 2x PowerColor Radeon RX 590 Red Devil
• 2x AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
• 15x $30 Steam Wallet Coupon

The terms and conditions can be found in GPU-Z again, but know that the contest runs through Dec 6, 2018 and you will have to enter via the form in the utility itself. The full change log can be found in the download link seen below, and do let us know what you feel about integrating our giveaways with our utilities in the comments section below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.15.0

More than a quarter of TechPowerUp readers either already game at 4K Ultra HD resolution, or plan to do so by next year, according to our front-page survey poll run over the past 50 days. We asked our readers if they are gaming at 4K. Among the 17,175 respondents at the time of this writing, 14.5 percent said that they are already gaming at 4K UHD (3840 x 2160 pixels), which includes not just a 4K display, but also having their games render at that resolution. 3 percent say that while they have a 4K display, they game at lower resolutions or with reduced level of detail, probably indicating that their PC hardware isn't yet capable of handling 4K.

Almost a tenth of the respondents (9.5 percent to be precise), say that while they don't game at 4K, they plan to do so in the near future. 1.6 percent responded that they expect to go 4K within 2018, and 7.9 percent in 2019. The majority 73 percent of our readers neither game at 4K nor plan to any time soon. These results are particularly encouraging as a reasonably big slice of our readership is drawn to 4K, the high-end gaming resolution of this generation, which can provide four times the detail as Full HD (1080p). Of the 9.5 percent lining up to upgrade, a near proportionate amount could upgrade not just their display, but also other hardware such as graphics cards, and perhaps even the rest of their platforms, to cope with 4K.

TechPowerUp partnered with SeaSonic, one of the most reputed PSU manufacturers, to bring you the Focus Plus Gold PSU Giveaway, a chance for one of our readers to win a SeaSonic Focus Plus Gold 650W power-supply, and 10 others to win SeaSonic-branded gym bottles. The Focus Plus series are mid-range PSUs designed to offer clean and efficient power-delivery without costing a lot. The 650W model has enough juice and straws for even a high-end desktop build with a single enthusiast-segment graphics card, or two performance-segment ones. Without further ado, the winners:

• Juan from Spain: Wins a SeaSonic Focus Plus Gold 650W power supply
• SeaSonic gym bottles won by: David from Spain, Michael from Canada, Adrian from Romania, Gary from the United States, Luca from Italy, Bertalanne from the United States, Daniel from Iceland, Nikola from Croatia, Stephen from the United States, and Pat from the United States

A huge congratulations to all you! TechPowerUp and SeaSonic will return with more such interesting giveaways!

TechPowerUp announced its new Instagram handle, and the retirement of its Google+ account. Instagram is all about pretty pictures that tell stories; and so our idea behind our Instagram presence is to bring you not just high quality exclusive pictures of the products we're reviewing; but also to get more personal with behind-the-scenes content - such as new product arrivals to our labs, unboxings, etc. Exclusive images from our breaking news coverage also makes it there. Instagram also lets us fuse our technical photography skills with creativity. Every post to Instagram is carefully curated (not automated), so it stays as organic and personal as possible.

You can reach our Instagram timeline on @techpowerupofficial (emphasis on "official").

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.14.0 adds support for Intel UHD Graphics iGPUs embedded into 9th generation Core "Coffee Lake Refresh" processors. GPU-Z now calculates Pixel and Texture Fill-rates more accurately, by leveraging the boost clock instead of the base clock. This is particularly useful for scenarios such as iGPUs, which have a vast difference between the base and boost clocks. It's also relevant to some of the newer generations of GPUs, such as NVIDIA RTX 20-series.

A number of minor bugs were also fixed with GPU-Z 2.14.0, including a missing Intel iGPU temperature sensor, and malfunctioning clock-speed measurement on Intel iGPUs. For NVIDIA GPUs, power sensors show power-draw both as an absolute value and as a percentage of the GPU's rated TDP, in separate read-outs. This feature was introduced in the previous version, this version clarifies the labels by including "W" and "%" in the name. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.14.0The change-log follows.

BIOS modder Vipeax has released a special patched version of NVFlash (version 5.527.0), the utility that allows you to extract and flash the video BIOS of your NVIDIA GeForce graphics card. This special version lets you to bypass NVIDIA restrictions and flash GeForce RTX 20-series Founders Edition (FE) graphics cards with BIOS ROMs of custom-design graphics cards. The official versions of NVFlash that support "Turing" GPUs report a "board ID mismatch" error when trying to do this, and an additional CLI parameter that made it ignore this warning, was removed by NVIDIA, effectively walling off Founders Edition cards from BIOS cross-flashing. You still can't flash the card with a BIOS you modified, because of NVIDIA's digital-signature restriction that has been in place since "Pascal," however, this new change could come handy if you want to flash your FE card with the BIOS of a custom-design card that is largely based on NVIDIA's reference-design PCB.

PC enthusiasts look to flash their Founders Edition cards with BIOS ROMs of custom-design graphics cards by other NVIDIA add-in card partners, mainly to increase power limits that allow the GPU to sustain boost frequencies better, and increase overclocking headroom. As an obligatory word of caution, use of NVFlash isn't covered by product warranties, and you use it at your own risk, especially when cross-flashing between cards that might have subtle differences. We manually checked the modified executable (not just Virustotal) and it doesn't contain any malware.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA NVFlash with Board ID Mismatch Disabled

TechPowerUp today released GPU-Z 2.13.0, our graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility. Version 2.13.0 introduces fixes to some of the major bugs reported by our users. To begin with, it corrects missing fan-speed sensors for pre-Turing NVIDIA graphics processors running on GeForce R400 release (or newer) drivers. Some rare crashes during GPU-Z start-up have been corrected. The "take screenshot" tooltip will no longer be part of the screenshot. We also improved the "minimize on close" behavior.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.13.0

The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.12.0 released today with useful new features and several stability updates. We worked extensively on the ability of GPU-Z to detect fake NVIDIA graphics cards (i.e cards not really having the GPU advertised on the box). GPU-Z now prepends "[FAKE]" to the Graphics Card name field, and lights up with a caution triangle. This capability is forward compatible for the supported GPUs (listed in the changelog), so for example, it will be able to detect a fake RTX 2060, which in reality uses a GK106 GPU. The second big feature is the ability to extract and upload graphics card BIOS of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2000 graphics cards. Graphics cards with multiple independent fans (each with its own speed control) are gaining popularity, and we've added the ability to read and log fan-speeds of individual fans on NVIDIA "Turing" graphics cards that support the feature, in addition to fan speed percentage monitoring.

Our feature-rich "Advanced" tab now also shows information on HDMI and DisplayPort connectors of your graphics cards. Power-draw on NVIDIA graphics cards is now reported both as a percentage of TDP and as an absolute value in Watts. Among the bugs fixed are a system hang due to Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) kicking in when GPU-Z is running in the background; memory bandwidth reading on RTX 2080 & RTX 2080 Ti with GDDR6 memory, AMD Radeon RX 400-series GPU utilization monitoring, and improved texts for system memory usage sensors.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.12.0

The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and Lian Li brought you a golden opportunity (well, three), to bring home one of five LANCOOL ONE GOLD limited edition cases ever made, three of which were up for grabs on TechPowerUp alone! The gilded LANCOOL ONE is a super-rare case for a super-rare build to match its black-and-gold color scheme, featuring gold finished front panels, accented by matte white main body panels, white interiors, and contrasting tinted black tempered glass panels. Without further ado, the Winners:

• Yeung from Hong Kong SAR, China
• Michael from Victoria, Australia
• Nathan from Southampton, United Kingdom

A Huge Congratulations to the Winners, who will receive a piece of Lian Li history!

With the latest release of NVIDIA's NVFlash, version 5.513.0, users can now read and write the BIOS on Turing based graphics cards. This includes the RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070. While this may seem mundane at first, due to the different power limits between graphics cards, there is some hope that cross flashing of the BIOS could result in tangible performance gains.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA NVFlash v5.513.0

Lian Li made only five LANCOOL One Champagne Gold limited edition cases, ever. Three of these are up for grabs on TechPowerUp alone! The TechPowerUp Lian Li LANCOOL One Gold Giveaway presents you with a unique opportunity to win a rare Lian Li creation that combines sexy gold bling with legendary build quality and utility. These super-rare cases feature gold finished front panels, accented by matte white main body panels, white interiors, and contrasting tinted black tempered glass panels.

To win one of three cases we are giving away, simply fill up a form that lets us get back to you if you've won. You can add a chance by sharing the contest page on popular social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, or even classic e-mail. Each platform gives you an extra chance, so you can have up to four extra chances. To get extra chances, you not only have to click on the share buttons, on the giveaway page, but also follow through on the appropriate platform (we can tell). The Giveaway is open Worldwide (wherever legal), from today (25th September) till 6th October. Good Luck!

For more information, and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) brought you a unique opportunity to bring home a LIVA Z2 mini PC over the month. After sifting through hundreds of entries, we have a winner, who receives a LIVA Z2, which is primed to be an ideal, super-compact HTPC, or a space-saving desktop that you can tuck away behind your monitor! Some entries were disqualified for being additional ticket entries without following through with social-media sharing. Without further ado, the winner!

• Mark from Michigan, USA

A huge Congratulations to you, Mark! TechPowerUp and ECS will return with more such interesting Giveaways!

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of ThrottleStop by Kevin Glynn, a utility that gives you control over your processor's internal power-management features, including OEM-preset throttling. Version 8.70 comes with a refreshed user-interface that's designed to minimize information-overload. Under the hood, improvements are made to Windows ring-0 security and memory access; thanks to contributions by Sam Haskins.

With this version, the ability to disable and lock memory-mapped Turbo power limits, and IccMax domain adjustments, are being introduced. Also fixed are the correct voltage domain names for "Skylake" (and later) CPUs. Also improved are system-tray icon behavior, including regular updates in Stop Data mode, single-click spawning of the main window, and the new Logo Min option. Grab the feature-packed new ThrottleStop from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp ThrottleStop 8.70

TechPowerUp and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) bring you an opportunity to grab an ECS LIVA Z2 mini PC. The LIVA Z2 can be a great addition to your living room as an HTPC, as its HDMI 2.0-equipped graphics solution is capable of 4K UHD video playback, complete with 10 bpc HEVC hardware-accelerated decoding. We reviewed it recently. Its 802.11ac WLAN serves up sufficient bandwidth for 4K @60 fps video streaming, while Bluetooth 4.1 enables wireless keyboards, mice, and headphones to work in tandem. Its Intel Pentium Silver SoC also makes it sufficiently fast for basic productivity, and its VESA wall-mount lets you mount it behind your monitor and save space on your desk. Here's your chance to get one - simply fill up a form to help us get back to you, if you're the randomly selected winner, at the end of the giveaway on 13th September. Good Luck!

To participate, visit this page.

Viper Gaming and TechPowerUp brought you a unique opportunity to win one of three sets of gaming keyboards, mice, and headsets, to revamp your battlestation. When it closed on the 19th of August, we sifted through hundreds of entries to randomly pick three lucky winners! Without further ado, the winners:

• Robert from New York City, NY: Wins Viper V770 Keyboard + Viper V570 Mouse + Viper V370 Headset
• Matthew from Saint Johnsbury, VT: Wins Viper V760 Keyboard + Viper V560 + Viper V361 Headset
• Aaron from Saint Paul, MN: Wins Viper V730 Keyboard + Viper V530 Mouse + Viper V330 Headset

A Huge Congratulations to you three!

TechPowerUp will return with more such interesting giveaways.

TechPowerUp and Viper Gaming, the gaming peripherals brand of Patriot Memory, bring you a chance to grab some of the finest pieces of gaming peripherals there are. Open for residents of US and Canada, up for grabs are three Viper Gaming care packages, each including a keyboard, a mouse, and a headset (3 winners in all). The 1st winner gets a package with a Viper Gaming V770 mechanical gaming keyboard, a V570 gaming mouse, and a V370 headset (all top grade stuff). The 2nd winner gets a V760 gaming keyboard, a V560 mouse, and a V361 headset. The 3rd winner gets a V730 keyboard, a V530 mouse, and a V330 headset. These prizes pretty much cover all of Viper Gaming's lean yet differentiated lineup of gaming hardware at attractive price-points.

The Giveaway is open from today (09-Aug) to 19th August, 23:59 UTC. You can increase your chances of winning by sharing the Giveaway on social media. For more information and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp today released a major update to GPU-Z, our graphics sub-system information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility that no PC enthusiast can leave home without. Version 2.10.0 introduces a slew of changes. To begin with, we have added CPU temperature monitoring, supported on all Intel processors 2nd generation Core and newer; and AMD Ryzen. The graph drawing code for the "Sensors" tab has been improved for faster rendering and reduced CPU usage. The "Reset" button in this tab can be used to clear all graphs with a click. Various under the hood improvements work to avoid error messages with Query External. GPU-Z now reports Override limits on the ATI/AMD BIOS Advanced view page.

Support has been added for the GDDR6 memory type. Among the new GPUs supported are AMD Vega M GH, Vega M GL, WX 4130, WX 4150, WX 8100, Radeon Pro Vega 56, Pro SSG; AMD Vega Graphics in Ryzen 3 2200U, Ryzen 3 2300U, Ryzen 3 Pro 2200GE, Ryzen 5 2400GE, Ryzen 7 2400U; Intel UHD 605, UHD 610, UHD 630, P580; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB, GTX 1050 3 GB, GTX 1050 2 GB (GP106), GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q, MX110, MX130, GTX 750 Ti (GM107B); Quadro GV100, P600 Mobile, P620, P2000, P3200, P4200, Grid M3-3020; and Tesla V100, V100-PCIE-32GB, M4, P106-090, P5200, P6, P40, P100 SXM2, P100 PCIe 12 GB.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.10.0

The change-log follows.

An "attack on journalism" exclaims German tech publication Heise.de, on NVIDIA's latest non-disclosure agreement (NDA), a document tech journalists and reviewers have to sign in order to receive graphics card samples and information from NVIDIA. The language of this NDA, released verbatim to the web by Heise, provides a glimpse of what terms reviewers agree to, in order to write launch-day reviews of new products. NDAs are sort of like the EULA you agree to before installing software. There are NDAs for even little things like new thermal pastes, and reviewers end up signing dozens of them each year. Over time, it becomes second nature for reviewers to not publish before a date prescribed by the manufacturer, NDA or not.

The spirit of an NDA is: "we are giving you information/a sample in good faith, don't post your review before date/time/timezone." Such an NDA casts no aspersions on the credibility of the review since it doesn't dictate how the review should be, or what it should say. It doesn't say "don't post your review before we approve what you wrote." NVIDIA samples usually ship with a PDF titled "reviewer's guide," which only politely suggests to reviewers something along the lines of "here's our cool new graphics card that's capable of playing this game at that resolution with these settings, just don't test it on something like Linux with Nouveau drivers, because that either won't work or won't show what our card is truly capable of." Heise's close inspection of the latest NDA by NVIDIA suggests to them that NVIDIA is mandating positive reviews now. We disagree.

TechPowerUp today released GPU-Z v2.9.0, the latest version of the graphics sub-system information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility no enthusiast can leave home without. Version 2.9.0 fixes some of the bugs encountered with Windows 10 April 2018 Update, with support for new WDDM 2.4 drivers. Support is also added for NVIDIA Tesla V100, and NVIDIA GPUs in TCC mode (eg: Tesla and Quadro families). Also added is support for "Haswell" GT1 variant (found on certain Celeron SKUs), and more AMD "Bristol Ridge" APU graphics variants.

At AMD's request, we disabled "Vega" SoC clock and hot-spot sensors by default. You can manually enable them any time in the settings. For enthusiasts who have GPU-Z launched at start-up (as a Scheduled Task), Windows will no longer nag with the "this file was downloaded from the Internet" dialog every time. PerfCap reason for Tesla GPUs in TCC mode has been fixed to "none." Detection of various AMD "Carrizo," "Bristol Ridge" and "Stoney Ridge" GPUs were fixed. The overall drawing code for the sensor graphs is improved. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.9.0

The Change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and Be Quiet! brought you a chance to pick up either a Dark Base 700 case, or Straight Power 11 750W PSU, or both. Our Giveaway has ended, and we've picked three lucky winners from hundreds of entries. Dark Base 700 is among the quietest mid-towers in the market, and our review has shown that its acoustic dampening can significantly quieten the many noisy components your high-end build may have. The Straight Power 11 750W is its perfect match, with a design focus on low noise, without compromising on safe and clean power for your build. Without further ado, the winners:

• Srdjan from Madison, USA - wins both a Be Quiet! Dark Base 700 case and a Straight Power 11 750W PSU
• Mylous from Las Vegas, USA - wins a Be Quiet! Dark Base 700 case
• Christopher from Highland, USA - wins a Be Quiet! Straight Power 11 750W PSU

A huge congrats to you three! TechPowerUp and Be Quiet! will return with more such interesting giveaways.

Yesterday, we had a very productive phone call with CTS-Labs, the firm behind the "AMD Flaws" critical security vulnerabilities exposé of the "Zen" microarchitecture. Our questions focus on the practicality of exploiting these vulnerabilities, and should provide more insight to the skepticism centered on needing admin privileges, flashing BIOS ROMs, and other localized hacks that would render any machine, not just "Zen" powered, vulnerable. Feel free to follow up with questions in the comments section, if we can help explain something.

CTS Labs, the Israel-based IT security research company behind Tuesday's explosive AMD Ryzen security vulnerabilities report, responded to questions posed by TechPowerUp. One of the biggest of these, which is also on the minds of skeptics, is the ominous lack of proof-of-concept code or binaries being part of their initial public report (in contrast to the Meltdown/Spectre reports that went into technical details about the exploit). CTS Labs stated to TechPowerUp that it has sent AMD, along with other big tech companies a "complete research package," which includes "full technical write-ups about the vulnerabilities," "functional proof-of-concept exploit code," and "instructions on how to reproduce each vulnerability." It stated that besides AMD, the research package was sent to Microsoft, HP, Dell, Symantec, FireEye, and Cisco Systems, to help them develop patches and mitigation.

An unwritten yet generally accepted practice in the IT security industry upon discovery of such vulnerabilities, is for researchers to give companies in question at least 90 days to design a software patch, harden infrastructure, or implement other mitigation. 90 days is in stark contrast to the 24 hours AMD got from CTS Labs. CTS Labs confirmed to TechPowerUp that it indeed shared its research package with AMD (and the other companies) just 24 hours prior to making its report public, but urged those disgruntled with this decision to look at the situation objectively. "If you look at the situation in the following way: right now the public knows about the vulnerabilities and their implications, AMD is fully informed and developing patches, and major security companies are also informed and working on mitigation."