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UPDATE: Newegg has the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and 1660 Ti AMP listed for US $279.99 and $289.99, respectively. The listings have detailed information on the cards' specifications. ZOTAC announced its take on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti today in the form of two new graphics cards. The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a relatively compact card (145 mm or 5.71 inches) that ZOTAC claims can fit into 99% of systems available today. The ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti AMP is a fair bit larger (209.6 mm or 8.3 inches) but has larger fans and will be factory overclocked. ZOTAC has yet to announce pricing and availability.

A YouTuber has asserted that Microsoft will port some games and features to the Nintendo Switch later this year. The indie title Ori has been specifically named in relation to this new purported deal to link the two platforms. This development will also apparently bring Xbox Game Passes to the Switch.

Adobe is offering a discount on the prices of all-app Creative Cloud (CC) plans. This offer applies to monthly-paid prices for CC and CC plus Adobe Stock plans only, and drops them to US$39.99 and $69.98 respectively. It is valid from now until March 1, 2019.

Microsoft's next probable major software release is 19H2, the April 2019 update. However, a build associated with a release in 2020 is the one that has most recently popped up for users in the Skip Ahead program. Despite this, the company insists 19H2 will be ready on time.

According to what appears to be a Staples employee training document that has recently surfaced on Reddit, the upcoming HP Omen Obelisk 875-0xxx series desktop will feature the yet-to-be-announced NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1180 as its top video card option. While this could be a typo, it could also be the name of a non-RTX flagship product.

It took TSMC a little over two weeks to fully assess the consequences of the Fab 14B incident. Apparently, the chemical contamination was triggered by an abnormal reaction in the photoresistant material that led to a polymer residue compromising up to 30,000 of 12 nm and 16 nm wafers. Total losses are estimated around US$550 million, but TSMC intends to ramp up production in Q2 to mitigate part of the losses.

Lioncast is a comparatively new manufacturer, but that has not stopped it from expanding its range of mice. The company has now released the LM60, a wired mouse with RGB lighting and a high-resolution optical sensor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lioncast has designed the LM60 with gamers in mind.

As a GTX 1050 successor, the GTX 1650 GPU is rumored to integrate a TU-117 core clocked at 1.48 GHz, faster Turing shaders, and 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The number of CUDA cores and the TDP are not yet known. Launch date should be close the end of March and MSRP is believed to be around US$179.

Reuters has reported that the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is planning on investing 120 trillion won (~US$106.6 billion) on chip manufacturing plants. The company will also spend an additional 55 trillion won (US$49 billion) on two existing factories over the next 10 years. SK Hynix is the world’s third-largest semiconductor vendor by revenue.

Ever since the Chinese government started to investigate memory chip suppliers over suspicious price fixing schemes, DRAM module prices started to slowly decline, and it looks like prices could get reduced by 30% in Q2 2019. By the end of 2019 DDR4 DRAM modules may end up costing up to 50% less, and prices may flatten as the DDR5 standard becomes more popular.

Some images of the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti have been leaked on Reddit. The pictures show the graphics card’s box, the GPU fitted inside a computer, and a screenshot of the device’s description. Apparently, the owner of the GTX 1660 Ti paid AU$475 for the graphics card, which is roughly US$340/€300/£260.

3DMark's latest DLSS test show outstanding performance gains with the right implementation. Meanwhile, real world games like Battlefield V and METRO Exodus suffer from DLSS artifacts, especially in resolutions under 4K. Nvidia is aware of these problems and already working on fixes that should be released with an upcoming driver update.

Zotac has unveiled a new modified graphics card to its line-up: The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Ti ArcticStorm. The Nvidia GeForce 2080 Ti-based GPU comes with a preinstalled ArcticStorm waterblock as part of a liquid cooling solution. The new card also comes with configurable lighting zones and can be fine-tuned with Zotac’s FireStorm utility software.

July 7 will see the launch of AMD's 7 nm parts including the Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi GPUs alongside the new X570 chipset. A detailed announcement is expected during Computex 2019 in June followed by wide availability in July. AMD is also expected to announce 12 and 16-core Ryzen CPUs in the July to September timeframe. While Zen 2 is mostly on track, the simultaneous launch of Navi depends on whether TSMC is able to cater to the demand.

Acer has released a report in which it puts its January 2019 revenues at about US$540 million. These figures have decreased by 23.7% compared to December 2018 and by 1.3% compared to January 2018. The company has cited the ongoing effects of the SoC shortage in explaining these changes.

Nvidia's investors can now breathe easy, as the latest fiscal year report shows decent gains throughout 2018. Things are not looking good for gaming GPUs, though, since the report shows sales in this sector were almost halved compared to 2017. Nevertheless, Nvidia keeps an optimistic outlook for 2019, with RTX 2000-series GPUs expected to see increased adoption.

NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, referenced both Unreal and Unity Engines in relation to ray-tracing during a company conference call about its fourth-quarter earnings conducted this week. That is odd, however, as only Unreal has ray-tracing support at present. Therefore, Huang may just have leaked Unity's imminent roll-out of similar capabilities.

Vox Media, the parent company of tech news outlet The Verge, has issued multiple copyright claims on videos criticizing its widely maligned PC building tutorial video. Using YouTube's copyright claim system, Vox lodged copyright strikes against several different channels that made criticism or parody videos of the tutorial. YouTube issued a copyright strike against some of the channels in question before reversing the decision, citing fair use under the DMCA.

Hardkernel has announced its latest single-board computer, the ODROID-N2. The device is equipped with a hexa-core SoC and up to 4 GB DDR4 RAM, which should deliver considerably more performance than the Raspberry Pi while remaining affordable. There is 384 KHz/32-bit stereo DAC onboard too.

Gamers that were rather reticent regarding the adoption of Nvidia's real-time ray tracing technology implemented in the latest RTX 2000-series GPUs may be interested to know that Epic Games is planning to make it easier for game developers to add ray tracing effects to existing and upcoming games with the release of Unreal Engine 4.22.

Shuttle has expanded its range of compact Mini PCs. The DH370 is a barebones PC based on the H370 chipset that can be equipped with up to a hexa-core processor.

The Surface Pen is Microsoft's answer to the Apple Pencil. It has been described as an effective stylus, albeit one that could produce more accurate digital writing. A new patent may help improve on this with changes to both the Pen and the screen used.

SilentiumPC has announced its latest Midi Tower, the Armis AR7X TG RGB. The case costs around £125 (~ US$161) and includes tempered glass panels along with four Sigma HP Corona RGB 120 mm fans and enough space for up to 420 mm long GPUs.

Get the XPS 13 9370 with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and a Core i7-8550U CPU for $1175 USD. Deals will last until early next week in an attempt to clear out older stock and make room for newer models.

A listing for an hitherto unknown Intel Core i3-9100F CPU has surfaced on the SiSoftware database. The Core i3-9100F shares similar specs with the Core i3-8100 but does not come with integrated UHD Graphics. While Core i3s are known for lack of Turbo Boost, a Dell listing tells us otherwise.

A new piece in Bloomberg has cited sources allegedly close enough to Activision Blizzard to allege that the gaming company will let "hundreds" of staff go. The firm is apparently taking this action to maximise profits and to "centralize functions". An announcement to this effect is expected on February 12, 2019.

AMD has released its final financial report for 2018. It shows that the company had made nearly US$6.5 billion for this year, which is a 23% increase compared to 2017. The company also claims to have posted a net income of $337 million, whereas it had made a net loss the previous year. Analysis has also shown that AMD has increased its share of server and PC markets.

Many Skype users may be reluctant to take a call due to how messy or inappropriate their surroundings may be. Now, however, the app's latest update adds a toggle that blurs everything but the caller out of a camera's shot. This new 'background blur' option is generated by AI, and should function on most PCs.

The first reviews for the 7 nm AMD Radeon VII GPU are out and they all seem to give an impression that AMD has managed to take the fight to the RTX 2080's pavilion. With a whopping 16 GB of HBM2 VRAM and a 1 TB/s memory bandwidth, the Radeon VII seems to focus more on raw power and compute performance versus niceties such as ray tracing or AI supersampling. Is the added power enough to move past the RTX 2080? The initial reviews seem to say, not just yet.

Previous rumors about launch supplies of 5,000 units might not be too far off, as new sources cite very limited Radeon VII availability at least for Europe. Overclockers UK cite 100 units available for Great Britain, while France and Spain would be getting only 20 units each. The reasons for reduced allocations seem to be the Lunar Year celebration in China and AIB partners not having enough time to come up with custom cards.

The next Oculus VR headset to be released is rumored to be called the Rift S. The latest leaks on this device suggests that it will come with its own onboard tracking cameras, rather than rely on USB-connected sensors. It may also fix the original Rift's problems with the appearance of 'god rays' on the lenses, and adjust for room lighting with 50-to-60Hz modes.

Zotac has introduced the Zbox Magnus EC52070D, which is a new, and compact desktop PC. The company has made a few compromises to pack such a powerful GPU within a small form-factor case, but it remains a powerful pre-built system that has plenty going for it.

It is now clear that AMD will be first to launch 7 nm desktop CPUs, but Intel is not sitting on its hands. Even after all the problems it faced in 2018, Intel is now carefully planning for its upcoming 7 nm CPUs. According to sources from Oregon, the D1X fab will be the first one to manufacture 7 nm CPUs, and the facility is currently going through an expansion that will take at least 1.5 years, so the first 7 nm CPUs from intel could arrive in late 2020.

The latest update to the VLC media player (4.0) will bring more features, especially for iOS. However, it will also no longer support older versions of the same platform, along with some others (e.g. Windows XP). It also now offers the ability to play a full list of music without pauses of any kind.

Latest report coming from RBC analyst Mitch Steves presents Nvidia misinforming its investors about revenues recorded during the crypto boom of 2017. We're talking about over US$1.3 billion that were not attributed to GPU sold to crypto miners. The report also claims that AMD's revenues at that time only amounted to US$234 million, which is unusual to say the least, as the Radeon cards were more efficient back then.

Chromebases may have fallen out of fashion years ago, but Acer is reviving the Chrome OS form factor with the Chromebase 24I2 and 24V2, two business-centric Chrome OS all-in-one desktops. Both devices will feature 24-inch Full HD touch displays, Intel 8th generation Core CPUs, and plenty of ports and hardware to support teleconferencing, business work, and more.

A post on Reddit allegedly contains a screenshot of a Gmail app interface that integrates many features taken from Inbox. They include a pinned-only toggle, per-subject bundling and Assistant-esque reminders. They may have been picked for preservation by Google before Inbox shuts down for good.

An image of an AMD Radeon VII graphics card being tested has been uploaded to TweakTown’s Twitter account. Clearly the photo is being used as a teaser for the site’s upcoming benchmarks for the much-anticipated GPU from the red team. LegitReviews has also announced that tests are underway on the world’s first 7nm gaming graphics card.

The Intel Core i9-8950HK represents the top of the line, but users with tighter budgets can opt to get one of the variants sporting Core i5-8300H / i7-8750H / Xeon E-2176M CPUs. All models may be equipped with up to 32 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and up to 1 TB of NVMe SSD storage, plus there is room for a 2.5-inch HDD as well. With a standard issue CPU cooler, these mini PCs will be anything but quiet.

The new Xeon W-3175X workstation-oriented processor sports no less than 28 cores and 56 threads, runs at 3.1 GHz (4.3 GHz turbo boost), has a TDP of 255 W, and supports up to 512 GB of hexa-channel DDR4 ECC memory. Announced back in October, now it is finally available for purchase at a price of US$2,999.

HP is currently promoting a deal that will give gamers a chance to properly test out a system that includes an Nvidia GeForce 20 series GPU. The manufacturer is giving away either Battlefield V or Anthem with qualifying PCs that have an RTX 2070, while both titles can be obtained for free if an RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti gaming desktop computer is purchased.

Although it cannot match the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 in Final Fantasy 15 — a title that features some technologies exclusive to the RTX series — the AMD Radeon VII appears to be a much better choice for 4K gaming, scoring higher than its competitor in the Fire Strike Ultra benchmark. The Radeon VII will hit the market on February 7.

The Austrian company Noctua has issued a press release to announce the introduction of the new NT-H2 thermal compound. The award-winning cooler manufacturer claims the second generation of its “enthusiast-grade” paste managed to deliver up to 2 °C lower temperatures in the firm’s tests than the predecessor NT-H1. The thermal paste will be available in 3.5 g and 10 g packages.

Besides integrating UHD Blu-Ray players or DVD writer drives, the new VivoMini HTPCs come with internal PSUs and generous room for storage expansions. These mini PCs are powered by Intel's 35 W Core T CPUs that bridge the gap between the ULV chips and the desktop processors. Additionally, there is support for up to 32 GB of RAM and up to 4 HDDs.

The significantly reduced base clock rate and TDP allow the mobile RTX 2080 to fit into a wider range of gaming laptop designs. Fortunately, memory bandwidth and number of CUDA cores remain unchanged.