Geforce

Back in the Nvidia Pascal days, the chipmaker boasted that its mobile GPUs have caught up to their desktop counterparts in terms of performance. Fast-forward to 2021 and that claim has all been thrown out the window.

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is being given a new lease of life, almost half a decade after its initial release. According to a new report, NVIDIA has already started resupplying the card to plug the gap currently left by the RTX 30 series.

When it comes to NVIDIA's Ampere laptop GPUs, variation in TGPs is just one conundrum. Apparently, NVIDIA is keeping mum on Dynamic Boost 2.0 clocks due to which OEMs, apart from determining TGP and Max-Q features, are also deciding on which boost clocks to advertise further complicating matters for both reviewers and end users alike.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is already available to purchase through official channels and at more than double its MSRP. NVIDIA's first GA106 card will be available globally, albeit probably in extremely limited quantities, from the end of February.

According to a major European retailer, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series will become even harder to purchase between now and April. Prices of NVIDIA's latest graphics cards will continue to increase too, even those bought from retailers.

Asus says it's ok to use generic USB-C adapters to recharge the laptop in spite of the warning label telling owners otherwise. When charging via the AC barrel port, however, be sure to use only those provided by Asus.

AMD seems to be internally looking at a 2.5x performance increase for RDNA 3 compared to RDNA 2, flagship-to-flagship. RDNA 3 Navi 31 with 160 CUs is expected to be a multi-chip module while Navi 33 will continue to be monolithic. With Intel Xe also pegged to offer good ray tracing performance, NVIDIA Lovelace will have both Intel and AMD in its sights.

Eat your heart out, Razer Project Valerie. The Expanscape Aurora 7 is a laptop prototype that boasts an insane seven screens that fold out from every nook and cranny of the lid and chassis.

The TOPTON VG is a compact mini-PC that features a comparatively powerful graphics card and a choice of four desktop-class Intel processors. The VG has a remote control too, along with socketed RAM and storage.

There's a lot of data out there on the Playstation 5 and how power-hungry it can be when running games. Now, let's see if it's any more power efficient than the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 gaming laptops.

EA has released the minimum and recommended system requirements for Mass Effect Legendary Edition. While the minimum specs are reasonable, the recommended hardware may be hard to come by for those that don't already have it.

Nioh 2: Complete Edition recently launched on PC. While the package is decent value, including all DLC released so far, the port is in a rough state. Nioh 2 doesn't currently feature NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 option, as promised. Worse yet, keyboard and mouse button prompts don't show up, making for a confusing experience.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is now speculated to come with 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM and 10,240 CUDA cores. Its 320-bit memory interface will allow for 730Gb/s of memory bandwidth, identical to that of the GeForce RTX 3080.

A financial blogger on Chinese social media has posted various images of Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series laptops being used for cryptocurrency mining. The rigs on show involve dozens of gaming notebooks stacked up just for hunting down some increasingly valuable Ethereum. Some of the laptops visible are RTX 3060 machines that cost around US$1,000.

Asus combines beauty and speed into a successful blend in the Zephyrus G15. The compact 15-inch gaming device is available with a white case and a GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU.

For its Ampere generation of GPUs, Nvidia was very generous when it came to TDP thresholds. In case of the TUF Dash F15, equipped with a GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop, Asus chose to configure it with the lowest possible TDP threshold.

The Summit E15 is supposed to make life difficult for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme and Dell XPS 15 top dogs. To do this, MSI uses the most current technology: Tiger Lake, Turing, USB 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, and PCI Express 4.

Thanks to liquid nitrogen cooling, the GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF was pushed from 1.8 GHz to over 3 GHz and it broke multiple benchmark records, including 3DMark Vantage Extreme, Port Royal, Fire Strike, Superposition, and other tests. Gamers on a (very!) generous budget can choose one of the six RTX 3090 HOF variants released by GALAX.

Nvidia looks impressively strong in the PC video card usage chart in Steam’s latest monthly Hardware & Software survey. There are new entries for both the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3090, while the RTX 3080 enjoys a third month of popularity. In terms of overall percentage share, Nvidia has no real rival in the GPU space yet.

The RTX 3060 is said to launch soon based on an Ampere chip variant called the GA106-300. A GPU leaks site claims to confirm its existence with a new live image showing this silicon, alongside the latest news on its supposed specs. They are said to include 12GB of RAM and fewer CUDA cores than it conceivably could.

A Gigabyte G5 KC gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7-10870H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU has been spotted on Geekbench turning out a terrific OpenCL score that would place it roughly between the RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Super desktop cards in the benchmark chart. Unfortunately, the TGP of the RTX 3060 is not mentioned.

Out of the Ampere laptops that we have tested so far, the XMG Neo 17 from Schenker Technologies came out on top with the best performance. Thanks to the high TDP, the RTX 3070 laptop GPU even computes faster than many RTX 3080 devices.

Control: Ultimate Edition recently launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Remedy's latest game has evidently joined the ranks of ninth-gen titles running at 30 FPS with a sub-native resolution, thanks in large part to its hardware ray-tracing implementation. Could ray-tracing hold back progress in other aspects of scene complexity and visuals this generation?

Although the "Max-Q" marketing term was flawed, it at least helped to differentiate the "slow" GeForce gaming laptops from the "fast" ones. The onus will be on the manufacturers to list their thermal graphics power (TGP) targets in the specifications now that Max-Q is no more.

Reputed benchmarks of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti have surfaced, showcasing the upcoming card against the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. It is unclear why NVIDIA would choose to release the RTX 3080 Ti on these benchmarks, though.

The laptop versions of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 are yet to land, but the first gaming benchmarks are already online. The two videos compare the GeForce RTX 3060 against the GeForce RTX 2060 in nine games, including in CDPR's latest title, Cyberpunk 2077.

MSI has launched one of the first Mini-ITX compatible RTX 30-series GPUs. The MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Aero ITX card is ultra-compact, but delivers gaming performance that you would expect from a full-size RTX 3060 Ti.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series has already received price hikes following its release, and not just from scalpers reselling the likes of the RTX 3070 for well above MSRP. Now, a report claims that scarcity of GDDR6 and GDDR6X VRAM will push the price of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs up even further.

MSI has defended its decision to omit GPU wattages from its new NVIDIA GeForce 30 series gaming laptops, despite the considerable differences in performance between some GPUs of the same name. Apparently, MSI believes that it would be unable to inform people that one RTX 3080 GPU has an 80 W TGP, while another has a 150 W TGP. Its justification has left us unconvinced, though.

XMG has offered an insight into the availability of AMD Ryzen 5000 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series gaming laptops. Sadly, it is bad news for gamers, as companies are uncertain of the volumes of Cezanne APUs that AMD will be able to supply in the first half of 2021.

In what could come as a disappointment to GeForce RTX 3080 owners, recent Xbox and PC exclusive The Medium struggles to deliver a consistent 60 FPS, even at 1080p with ray-tracing effects disabled. Because the game readily scales to 4K, this could be an optimization issue Bloober Team and NVIDIA will soon resolve.

The Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR is not directly aimed at gamers but rather at creative users. Consequently, a high frequency and good response rates are not the most important factors to consider.

There are pros and cons for sure, but the advantages arguably outweigh any losses especially since many retailers would avoid listing "Max-Q" anyway and that some Max-Q laptops would even outperform Max-P ones.

Unlike most other gaming laptop sales for under $800, this MSI GL65 strikes a respectable balance between graphics performance, CPU performance, display, RAM, and storage. Owners will just have to live with average color reproduction and the lack of Thunderbolt support.

Lenovo's US webstore has begun what it calls a "You Pay What We Pay" event, which apparently entails the same kinds of discounts only normally available to the OEM's staff members. They include up to US$800 off an Intel 10th-gen Legion 7i laptop, as well as deals on gaming mice and headsets.

The ridiculous number would not really be a problem for end users if OEMs actually respected Nvidia's guidelines and provided clear info with the official specs. Unfortunately, very few OEMs are currently doing this, and we are seeing wild spec variations that allow lower-priced SKUs to outperform higher-priced variants.

First shipments are expected to arrive by February 15. The Asus model is notable for its next-gen components that were unveiled just a few weeks ago at CES 2021.

AMD's support for USB4 and Thunderbolt is scheduled to arrive in early 2022, and, until then, laptop OEMs are trying out alternatives. One solution would be to implement a new type of connector, like Asus has done on its new ROG Flow X13 laptops. Lenovo, on the other hand, is exploring something more simple in the form of a cable that connects external video cards to the M.2 slot inside the laptop.

The new RTX 3080 cards proved to be quite the crypto mining monsters, but these high-end solutions are still in very short supply. A better and more efficient alternative could be presented by Nvidia's mobile RTX 3000 dGPUs, as suggested by the latest leaks from China. If this is indeed true, miners could eventually impact the availability of all upcoming Nvidia-based laptops.