TSMC has reportedly secured orders from NVIDIA for chips based on its 7 nm and 5 nm silicon fabrication nodes, sources tell DigiTimes. If true, it could confirm rumors of NVIDIA splitting its next-generation GPU manufacturing between TSMC and Samsung. The Korean semiconductor giant is commencing 5 nm EUV mass production within Q2-2020, and NVIDIA is expected to be one of its customers. NVIDIA is expected to shed light on its next-gen graphics architecture at the GTC 2020 online event held later this month. With its "Turing" architecture approaching six quarters of market presence, it's likely that the decks are being cleared for a new architecture not just in HPC/AI compute product segment, but also GeForce and Quadro consumer graphics cards. Splitting manufacturing between TSMC and Samsung would help NVIDIA disperse any yield issue arriving from either foundry's EUV node, and give it greater bargaining power with both.

In a quick follow-up to our story from yesterday about the GALAX GeForce RTX 2070 Super EX Pink Edition graphics card, we are learning that the company is ready with a GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics card based on the same board design. Bearing the model number "28ISL6MD71PE," the card is a costmetic variant of the company's RTX 2080 Super EX graphics card, featuring a bubblegum pink paintjob on the cooler shroud and back-plate. The PCB, although of the same design as the EX (1-click OC), is now fully white, like the HOF series. The RGB LED fans glow hot-pink out of the box. The Pink Edition card ships with factory-overclocked speeds of 1845 MHz GPU Boost (vs. 1815 MHz reference), and its software-based 1-click OC feature enables 1860 MHz boost frequencies. The memory is untouched, at 15.5 Gbps (GDDR6-effective).

The GeForce RTX 2080 Super maxes out the 12 nm "TU104" silicon, featuring 3,072 "Turing" CUDA cores, 192 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface holding 8 GB of memory. Much like its RTX 2070 Super sibling, this card pulls power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors; while its display outputs include three DisplayPorts and one HDMI. Expect an identical product to be launched under the KFA2 brand in certain markets. The company didn't reveal pricing.

NVIDIA updated the product page of its GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card to make GDDR6 an official memory option besides the GDDR5 that the SKU launched with, back in Q2-2019. NVIDIA now has two product specs for the SKU, the GTX 1650 (G5), and GTX 1650 (G6). Both feature 896 "Turing" CUDA cores, 56 TMUs, and 32 ROPs; but differ entirely in memory configuration and clock speeds.

The GTX 1650 (G6) features 4 GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 12 Gbps, across a 128-bit wide memory bus, compared to the original GTX 1650, which uses 4 GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 across the same bus width. This results in a 50% memory bandwidth gain for the new SKU: 192 GB/s vs. 128 GB/s. On the other hand, the GPU clock speeds are lower than those of the original GTX 1650. The new G6 variant ticks at 1410 MHz base and 1590 MHz GPU Boost, compared to 1485/1665 MHz of the original GTX 1650. This was probably done to ensure that the new SKU fits within the 75 W typical board power envelope of the original, enabling card designs that lack additional power connectors. As for pricing, Newegg recently had an MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6 Gaming X listed for $159.

Intel and NVIDIA are preparing to refresh their hardware offering meant for laptop devices, and they are planning to do it on April 2nd. According to the Chinese website ITHome, Intel is going to launch its 10th generation Comet Lake-H CPUs for mobile devices, on April 2nd. The new models are going to bring improved frequency and core count, with top-end models reaching up to 8 cores with 16 threads. NVIDIA, on the other hand, will also update its mobile offerings with the arrival of Turing SUPER mobile cards. So far, we only had a choice of regular Turing series, however, there is soon going to be a SUPER variant of the existing cards.

Being that these cards are also expected to arrive on April 2nd, laptop manufacturers will integrate new products and showcase their solutions on that date. The availability of these devices, based on new Intel Comet Lake-H CPUs and NVIDIA Turing SUPER GPUs, is expected to follow soon after, precisely on April 15th. Additionally, it is notable that laptop manufacturer Mechrevo will hold an online press conference where they will showcase their "Z3" gaming laptop based on new technologies.

Microsoft Thursday released the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo. This is not a new API with any new features, but rather a differentiator for graphics cards and game consoles that support four key modern features of DirectX 12. This helps consumers recognize the newer and upcoming GPUs, and tell them apart from some older DirectX 12 capable GPUs that were released in the mid-2010s. For a GPU to be eligible for the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo, it must feature hardware acceleration for ray-tracing with the DXR API; must support Mesh Shaders, Variable Rate Shading (VRS), and Sampler Feedback (all of the four). The upcoming Xbox Series X console features this logo by default. Microsoft made it absolutely clear that the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo isn't meant as a compatibility barrier, and that these games will work on older hardware, too.

As it stands, the "Navi"-based Radeon RX 5000 series are "obsolete", just like some Turing cards from the GeForce GTX 16-series. At this time, the only shipping product which features the logo is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series and the TITAN RTX, as they support all the above features.

NVIDIA graphics cards, starting from the current generation GeForce RTX "Turing" lineup, will support the upcoming DirectX 12 Ultimate API. Thanks to a slide obtained by our friends over at VideoCardz, we have some information about the upcoming iteration of the DirectX 12 API made by Microsoft. In the new API revision, called "DirectX 12 Ultimate", it looks like there are some enhancements made to the standard DirectX 12 API. From the leaked slide we can see the improvements coming in the form of a few additions.

The GeForce RTX lineup will support the updated version of API with features such as ray tracing, variable-rate shading, mesh shader, and sampler feedback. While we do not know why Microsoft decided to call this the "Ultimate" version, it is possibly used to convey clearer information about which features are supported by the hardware. In the leaked slide there is a mention of consoles as well, so it is coming to that platform as well.

As we approach the release of NVIDIA's Ampere GPUs, which are rumored to launch in the second half of this year, more rumors and information about the upcoming graphics cards are appearing. Today, according to the latest report made by Taipei Times, NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards based on "Ampere" architecture is rumored to have as much as 50% performance uplift compared to the previous generations of Turing GPUs, while using having half the power consumption.

Built using Samsung's 7 nm manufacturing node, Ampere is poised to be the new king among all future GPUs. The rumored 50% performance increase is not impossible, due to features and improvements that the new 7 nm manufacturing node brings. If utilizing the density alone, NVIDIA can extract at least 50% extra performance that is due to the use of a smaller node. However, performance should increase even further because Ampere will bring new architecture as well. Combining a new manufacturing node and new microarchitecture, Ampere will reduce power consumption in half, making for a very efficient GPU solution. We still don't know if the performance will increase mostly for ray tracing applications, or will NVIDIA put the focus on general graphics performance.

UL Benchmarks today announced an update to 3DMark, with the expansion of the Variable-Rate Shading (VRS) feature-test with support for VRS Tier-2. A component of DirectX 12, VRS Tier 1 is supported by NVIDIA "Turing" and Intel Gen11 graphics architectures (Ice Lake's iGPU). VRS Tier-2 is currently supported only by NVIDIA "Turing" GPUs. VRS Tier-2 adds a few performance enhancements such as lower levels of shading for areas of the scene with low contrast to their surroundings (think areas under shadow), yielding performance gains. The 3DMark VRS test runs in two passes, pass-1 runs with VRS-off to provide a point of reference; and pass-2 with VRS-on, to test performance gained. The 3DMark update with VRS Tier-2 test will apply for the Advanced and Professional editions.

DOWNLOAD: 3DMark v2.11.6846

NVIDIA is invested in the development of multi-GPU, specifically SLI over NVLink, and has developed a new multi-GPU rendering technique that appears to be inspired by tile-based rendering. Implemented at a single-GPU level, tile-based rendering has been one of NVIDIA's many secret sauces that improved performance since its "Maxwell" family of GPUs. 3DCenter.org discovered that NVIDIA is working on its multi-GPU avatar, called CFR, which could be short for "checkerboard frame rendering," or "checkered frame rendering." The method is already secretly deployed on current NVIDIA drivers, although not documented for developers to implement.

In CFR, the frame is divided into tiny square tiles, like a checkerboard. Odd-numbered tiles are rendered by one GPU, and even-numbered ones by the other. Unlike AFR (alternate frame rendering), in which each GPU's dedicated memory has a copy of all of the resources needed to render the frame, methods like CFR and SFR (split frame rendering) optimize resource allocation. CFR also purportedly offers lesser micro-stutter than AFR. 3DCenter also detailed the features and requirements of CFR. To begin with, the method is only compatible with DirectX (including DirectX 12, 11, and 10), and not OpenGL or Vulkan. For now it's "Turing" exclusive, since NVLink is required (probably its bandwidth is needed to virtualize the tile buffer). Tools like NVIDIA Profile Inspector allow you to force CFR on provided the other hardware and API requirements are met. It still has many compatibility problems, and remains practically undocumented by NVIDIA.

EK, premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer based in Europe, is launching a new, addressable D-RGB version of EK-Vector Trio high-performance water blocks specially designed for MSI Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. The block also features a D-RGB lit aesthetic cover over the block Terminal which is designed to showcase the graphics card model via addressable LEDs, visible from the side.

The EK-Quantum Vector Trio RTX D-RGB water blocks are specially designed for multiple MSI Trio GeForce RTX Turing based graphics cards. These water blocks use the signature EK single slot slim look and cover the entire PCB length. This sophisticated cooling solution will transform your powerful MSI graphics card into a minimalistic, elegant piece of hardware with accented D-RGB (addressable) LED lighting. The block also features a unique aesthetic cover over the block Terminal which is designed to showcase the graphics card model via addressable LEDs, visible from the side.

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.

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.

As the world's most popular GAMING graphics card vendor, MSI is proud to announce its brand-new graphics card line-up based on NVIDIA's Turing architecture with outstanding performance. Equipped with excellent thermal solutions, MSI GeForce GTX 16 SUPER series are designed to provide higher core and memory clock speeds for increased performance in games.

MSI's GAMING series delivers the top notch in-game and thermal performance that gamers have come to expect from MSI. With a solid and sharp design, VENTUS XS provides a great balance with strong dual fan cooling and outstanding performance. The AERO ITX is a great option for gamers looking to include Turing power into a small form factor build. With this comprehensive line-up there is plenty of choice for any build. Both MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER and GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER will have GAMING, VENTUS XS and AERO ITX models with various differences.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER and GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER gaming cards were designed to bring the best cooling and the best overclocking to new performance levels and price points. Now the new GeForce GTX SUPER Series has ultra-fast GDDR6 memory, bringing you performance that's up to 50% faster than the original GTX 16 Series and up to 2X faster than previous-generation 10 Series GPUs. It's time to gear up and get SUPER.

GeForce GTX SUPER Series graphics cards are powered by the NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture. Turing shaders enable awesome performance increases on today's games. Get 1.4X power efficiency over the previous generation for a faster, cooler, and quieter gaming experience.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations is excited to announce the new INNO3D GeForce GTX 1660 and 1650 SUPER. Continuing with the success of the RTX 2060 Twin X2 and RTX 2060 SUPER Twin X2 OC, our engineers decided it was only logical to launch the new GTX 16 SUPER series with the same excellent performing coolers while also adding the fan favourite Compact version to the 16 SUPER series. However, our engineers went one step further this time and developed the Twin X2 OC RGB! Read on…

Remember the efficiently designed cooler with two large 9 cm fans? Now picture that with a display of RGB lighting up the fins of the cooler complimenting your proudly built PC rig. The cooler not only looks great, it is super effective in cooling and means business as it delivers excellent performance for today's most popular games. The dual 9 cm fan has the best balance of noise and cooling performance for its size. The cooling system comprise of 3 heatpipes with aluminium extrusion and a large heatsink to disperse heat quickly and efficiently.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, high-performance storage solutions and gaming PCs is proud to introduce the latest graphics card for upgraders and mainstream gamers with the announcement of the latest COLORFUL graphics card powered by NVIDIA GTX 16 SUPER Series.

The new COLORFUL iGame GTX 1660 SUPER Series offers an excellent upgrade for gamers using older-generation graphics card and are looking to upgrade their gaming experience with the latest NVIDIA Turing architecture powering the GeForce GTX 16 series graphics cards from COLORFUL. Experience excellent gaming performance on popular games with COLORFUL GTX 16 SUPER Series featuring ultra-fast GDDR6 memory and enjoy the latest technical innovations from NVIDIA to compliment your gameplay with GameReady drivers and GeForce Experience as well as improved performance in Creators-compatible apps that leverage dedicated GPU performance to accelerate content creation as well as acceleration for streaming software.

ZOTAC Technology, a global manufacturer of innovation, is pleased to expand the GeForce GTX line of graphics cards with the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX SUPER series featuring GDDR6 ultra-fast memory. Powered by the new NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture, the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER series feature two super compact VR ready models and is up to 20% faster than the original GTX 1660 and up to 1.5X faster than the previous-generation GTX 1060 6 GB.

The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER AMP is factory overclocked out of the box for faster performance. Featuring a full body length aluminium array heatsink, dual 90 mm fans, a dynamic layout of copper heatpipes, and a powerful design in color neutral to match any PC system color scheme. At just up to 8.3 inches or 209.6 mm, it is still a super compact design.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, the first non raytracing-capable Turing-based SUPER graphics card from the company, is set to drop on October 29th. Contrary to other SUPER releases though, the GTX 1660 SUPER won't feature a new GPU ship brought down from the upwards performance tier. This means it will make use of the same TU116-300 as the GTX 1660 with 1408 CUDA cores, not the 1536 CUDA count of the GTX 1660 Ti. Instead, NVIDIA has increased performance of this SUPER model by endowing it with GDDR6 memory.

The new GDDR6 memory ticks at 14 Gbps, which gives it an advantage over the GTX 1660 Ti model which will still cost more than it. When all is said and done, the GTX 1660 SUPER will feature memory bandwidth in the range of 336 GB/s, significantly more than the GTX 1660 Ti's 288 GB/s, and a huge differentiating factor from the 192 GB/s of the GTX 1660. Of course, the fewer CUDA core resources compared to the GTX 1660 Ti mean it should still deliver lower performance than that graphics card. This justifies its price-tag set at $229 - $20 higher than the GTX 1660, but $50 less than the GTX 1660 Ti.

Introducing the EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER ULTRA+ series - now with 10%+ Memory Speed. Available in FTW3 and XC versions, these new cards offer nearly 500 GB/s of GDDR6 memory bandwidth giving you even more performance in the latest gaming titles. 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.

See every game come alive with super-fast ray tracing that delivers physically accurate shadows, reflections, and lighting. And tap into Tensor Cores for super-powerful AI-processing. Advanced memory, performance boosts, and processing technologies make these GPUs the perfect weapon for hardcore gamers. Gear up and get super powers.

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.

Chinese website ITHome has new info on the release of NVIDA's GeForce GTX 1660 Super graphics cards. According to their website, the release is expected for October 22nd, which seems credible, considering NVIDIA always launches on a Tuesday. As expected, the card will be built around the Turing TU116 graphics processor, which also powers the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti. Shader counts should either be 1472, because NVIDIA wants to position their card between GTX 1660 (1408 cores) and GTX 1660 Ti (1536 cores). The memory size will be either 4 GB or 6 GB. Specifications of the memory are somewhat vague, it is rumored that NVIDIA's GTX 1660 Super will use GDDR6 chips, just like GTX 1660 Ti — the plain GTX 1660 uses GDDR5 memory. Another possibility is that shader count matches GTX 1660, and the only difference (other than clock speeds) is that GTX 1660 Super uses GDDR6 VRAM.

The Chinese pricing is expected around 1100 Yuan, which converts to $150 — surprisingly low, considering GTX 1660 retails at $210 and GTX 1660 Ti is priced at $275. Maybe NVIDIA is adjusting their pricing to preempt AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5500/5600 Series. Videocardz has separately confirmed this rumor with their sources at ASUS Taiwan, who are expected to launch at least three SKUs based on the new NVIDIA offering, among them DUAL EVO, Phoenix and TUF3 series.Update Oct 24th: Seems the actual launch is October 29th, this post has more info: https://www.techpowerup.com/260391/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-launching-october-29th-usd-229-with-gddr6

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations is excited to announce the new INNO3D GeForce RTX 2080, 2070 SUPER Gaming OC X2. Our R&D team have been working hard in order to have every conceivable version of the SUPER series and we're thrilled to showcase the Gaming OC X2. Boasting two large cooling fans and unique cooling system to enhance the way it's cooled - perfect for all Gaming OC fans who require a little more kick to their cooling. It's also powered by the Turing architecture packed with more oomph thanks to additional cores and higher clocks.

This beautiful design houses two incredibly large 10 cm fans that are super effective yet look like they mean business by delivering powerful performance required for the most demanding games. The cooling system comprise of 4 heatpipes that are 932 mm in length and a huge aluminium heatsink giving a surface area of 383,000 mm². It also has bidirectional air flow, two paths for heat dissipation to perform brilliantly keeping heat at bay, and it manages to do so quietly. It is quiet, effective and cool.

NVIDIA and ASUS today announced that the Quadro RTX 6000 GPU will power the world's fastest laptop, the ASUS ProArt StudioBook One, which joins 11 other new RTX Studio systems, launched just in time for IFA, the world's largest electronics conference, bringing the total number of RTX Studio systems to 39.

The Quadro RTX 6000 at the heart of the ProArt StudioBook One enables creatives and other innovators to tap into the power of a high-end deskside workstation without being chained to their desks. Wherever their work takes them, professionals can harness the RTX Studio-based system to handle massive datasets and accelerate compute-intensive workflows, such as creating 3D animations, rendering photoreal product designs, editing 8K video, visualizing volumetric geophysical datasets and conducting walk-throughs of photoreal building designs in VR.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced their new Razer Blade Stealth 13 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics - the World's First Gaming Ultrabook. Powered by Intel's new 10th generation processor, the new Razer Blade Stealth 13 delivers true gaming performance packed into an amazingly thin 15 mm chassis weighing only 1.3 kg.

"Razer is constantly pushing the boundaries of what's possible, by designing laptops that utilize the most powerful components in the smallest chassis" says Brad Wildes, Senior Vice President of Razer's Systems Division. "We did it with our original Razer Blade, which led the trend of slim gaming systems, and now we're doing it again with our Blade Stealth, pioneering a new market for powerful, small-footprint laptops."

3DMark today announced they've introduced a new benchmarking feature. Specifically developed to test Variable Rate Shading (VRS) performance and image quality differences, the new feature allows users to actually visualize the performance and image quality differences associated with more aggressive (or less aggressive) VRS settings. The algorithm is a smart one - it aims to reduce the number of pixel shader operations on surfaces where detail isn't as important (such as frame edges, fast-moving objects, darkened areas, etc) so as to improve performance and shave some precious milliseconds in the deployment of each frame.

To run this test, you will need Windows 10 version 1903 or later and a DirectX 12 GPU that supports Tier 1 VRS and the "AdditionalShadingRatesSupported" capability, such as an NVIDIA Turing-based GPU or an Intel Ice Lake CPU. The VRS feature test is available now as a free update for 3DMark Advanced Edition, or from now until September 2, 3DMark is 75% off when you buy it from Steam or the UL benchmarks website.