The weekly roundup - top news from August 19 through August 25

With so many topics and pages published everyday, it's easy to miss some of the more important details related to the industry. We gather some key announcements and rumors from the past week that we think shouldn't be overlooked for smartphone and laptop enthusiasts.

Nvidia GeForce RTX takes the spotlight

The news this week was nothing but green. As expected, Nvidia announced the proper successor to the GeForce GTX Pascal series with the new GeForce RTX Turing series. Perhaps predictably, the launch prices will be even higher than previous generations with models ranging from $500 USD to $1200 USD.

Reactions to the RTX series have been mixed. Aside from the very controversial stance by Tom's Hardware, most outlets are recommending readers to wait for independent benchmark tests before investing in a RTX card. Shadow of the Tomb Raider had some onstage hiccups when demoed on a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to imply that the technology is still in its very early stages for modern gaming. Gamers not interested in enabling ray tracing effects may see substantially lowered performance benefits when compared to the Pascal series.

Alienware laptops finally get per-key RGB lighting

Dell revealed a few minor updates to its Alienware family at this year's Gamescom. The often-requested per-key RGB lighting is coming to the Alienware 15 and Alienware 17, but a full chassis redesign is still nowhere to be found. Dell will also be one of the first OEMs to offer pre-built PCs with GeForce RTX GPUs starting next month.

Intel promising hardware-level patches for Cascade Lake

The chipmaker will be beefing up its Cascade Lake architecture for servers by addressing the infamous security vulnerabilities at a hardware level. Details on how Intel will be approaching the challenges were unveiled during a short presentation at Hot Chips 2018. Optane support has also been confirmed.

New notebook releases:

• Xiaomi Mi Notebook with Kaby Lake-R and GeForce MX110
• Huawei Matebook D 14 with both Intel 8th gen and AMD Ryzen options
• MSI PS42 Ultrabook now shipping in North America
• Lenovo ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation now available for pre-order