Nvidia officially positions its tracking technology, which can approximate the physical location of its AI processors, as a way for infrastructure operators to oversee their GPU fleets as well as monitor their health. As an added bonus, the feature also addresses political demands in the United States to curb illegal diversion of advanced AI GPUs to restricted markets such as China, North Korea, or Russia, according to Reuters. The capability has only been demonstrated confidentially as the company has not yet deployed it publicly, though it does not deny its existence. Yet, it has not formally confirmed that the software can determine the physical location of Nvidia's hardware.

"We are in the process of implementing a new software service that empowers data center operators to monitor the health and inventory of their entire AI GPU fleet," an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "This customer-installed software agent leverages GPU telemetry to monitor fleet health, integrity, and inventory."

Reuters reports that the mechanism behind the tracking software can not only read GPU telemetry, but also incorporates timing measurements taken from communication between customer systems and Nvidia servers. By analyzing this latency, the software can estimate the location of the GPU with roughly the same precision offered by standard Internet-based geolocation services, according to Reuters. There are two things to note, though. Actual location-based services use IP address and Wi-Fi positioning, but while the former makes sense for data center hardware, Wi-Fi positioning may not work well in remote rural areas, where many of China's AI data centers are located. The company stresses that this is a customer-installed software agent rather than a hidden function, and that it relies on legitimate GPU telemetry rather than any concealed access pathway.

The feature is slated to appear first on the latest Blackwell-generation components, which include strengthened capabilities for 'attestation,' a process that verifies that the hardware and software stack have not been altered. According to Reuters, citing a company representative, these AI accelerators contain more advanced verification logic than the preceding Hopper and Ampere families; however, it is unclear whether Nvidia can remotely disable hardware if it is used in a prohibited region.

Meanwhile, China’s main cybersecurity regulator has summoned Nvidia for questioning over concerns that verification functions could act as backdoors accessible to the U.S. government. Nvidia has firmly rejected the notion that its hardware contains any backdoors, and reading hardware telemetry does not undermine cryptographic protections and other security features.

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Some pictures of my Nvidia Dawn and Dusk demo machine + Brass FX5950 Ultra from r/pcmasterrace

“I took this home from work around 2005. It has a looping demo of Dawn and Dusk and a few other demos,” wrote the lucky Redditor. “It currently has a 7800 AGP inside it but I still have the original FX5950 Ultra. For some reason the card has a brass I/O plate, and a brass top rail decoration,” they explained. Then, to refresh the time-worn craniums of those who remember the nVidia Dusk Demo when it was a technical tour de force, Inclusive_3Dprinting shared the video below in breathtaking HD 720p.

If you want a deeper trip down memory lane, Tom’s Hardware featured the Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra graphics card back in January 2004. It looks identical to the sample that Inclusive_3Dprinting shows sitting beside their demo system, except for our review model’s white metal I/O bracket.

As we mentioned back in 2004, this card, featuring the Nvidia NV38 GPU with 256MB DDR RAM on a 256-bit bus, was built to make the most of the then-cutting-edge DirectX 9 API. It was bundled with titles from the Tomb Raider and Rainbow Six franchises to show off its capabilities.

Those wishing to test out the old Dusk demo, featuring Dawn’s racy twin sister, can still test it on their choice of hardware thanks to the Internet Archive preserving access to this 83.4MB demo. The Dusk demo showcased true-to-life skin and hair visuals, delivering the most realistic human-like real-time character animations of the era on consumer hardware.

At some period, lost in the sands of time, the Redditor swapped out the FX 5950 Ultra in favor of a GeForce 7800GS, which we reviewed in February 2006. It has remained with this upgrade ever since, but thankfully the original brass bracket card wasn’t lost to time.

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Getting the S10000 gaming-ready, particularly to get both GPUs to cooperate in supported games, was no easy task. The GPU enthusiast had to make several changes to get the card to work at all with newer titles due to its age. This included using Windows 10 instead of Windows 11, and BIOS flashing the card so the S10000 would function with newer AMD Adrenalin drivers.

First, running the GPU out of the box on Windows 10, RandomGaminginHD discovered several weird quirks with the card. The S10000 only supports up to FirePro driver version 17.4 and not AMD's Adrenalin counterpart, which is critical for getting game optimizations. Under GPU-Z, the card shows up under two distinct names, S10000 and W9000 X2.

After researching the GPU's name, RandomGaminginHD discovered that the two model names are, in fact, the same GPU, only the W9000 X2 was never released under that name. In fact, the enthusiast discovered that AMD had slapped a "S10000" sticker over a "W9000 X2" badge on his particular card, suggesting AMD renamed the graphics card from W9000 X2 to S10000 just before the product's release in November 2012.

The S10000 was technically gaming capable in its out-of-the-box form with the most recent FirePro drivers it supports, running Crysis at just above 60 FPS. However, the YouTuber discovered the FirePro drivers don't enable CrossFire support whatsoever, preventing the second GPU from spinning up in supported games.

To fix this, RandomGaminginHD BIOS-flashed the graphics card with firmware from a Radeon HD 7990 dual-GPU gaming card. This made the S10000 identify as an HD 7990 to Windows 10 and enabled support for AMD's Adrenalin drivers, specifically version 22.6.1 from 2022.

With the S10000 disguised as an HD 7990, performance increased substantially thanks to the 2022 Adrenalin drivers enabling Crossfire support. In Crysis, the S10000 was able to achieve over 110 FPS most of the time with both GPUs sitting at around 65% usage. RandomGaminginHD also tested Crysis 3, GTA V, and Mafia 2, and found all three titles ran well, especially Mafia 2, which was able to take full advantage of both GPUs —both sitting above 90% usage all the time.

Moving to modern games, our intrepid tester tried Arc Raiders, Cyberpunk 2077, and CS2. Despite all three titles lacking multi-GPU support, Arc Raiders and CS2 ran at playable frame rates, albeit with extremely low graphics settings. At the lowest settings — 70% resolution scaling at 1080p — Arc Raiders ran at around 40-45 FPS. CS2 fared better, with 120-160 FPS depending on the scene. Cyberpunk 2077 handled the worst on this card, producing just 20-30 FPS on the S10000 at the lowest settings with FSR set to its ultra performance profile.

The S10000 ranked among the most powerful workstation cards in 2012, as Nvidia had shied away from dual-GPU professional cards at the time. The S10000 sported two Tahiti GPUs featuring 1,792 shader cores, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 28 CUs each. Memory was split across two 384-bit memory interfaces for each GPU, and each chip was connected to 3GB of GDDR5.

RandomInGamingHD's work to resurrect his particular S10000 shows how potent the dual-GPU graphics card was at the time. It was essentially an HD 7990 consumer graphics card, but with disabled cores on each die. If the second GPU worked in today's titles, the S10000 would likely be capable of playing Arc Raiders near 60 FPS and Cyberpunk 2077 at playable FPS, but with Crossfire and SLI support long gone in modern games, this is the best performance we'll ever see from this graphics card in those titles.

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The authorization reportedly only covers Nvidia's H200, a processor that originates from 2022, but features formidable performance and comes with 144 GB of HBM3 memory (an important spec for training large AI models), so it is years behind the leading edge Blackwell GPUs. When compared to the HGX H20 — specifically designed to meet U.S. export control regulations of 2023 — it still delivers a formidable performance advantage over H20. Although Huawei now offers accelerators and rack-scale systems that can compete against Nvidia's H200 and even GB200 NVL72 systems, many Chinese companies still prefer Nvidia hardware largely because of their reliance on the CUDA-based software stack.

Semafor claims that the decision also reflects an assessment inside the U.S. government that the earlier restrictions did not significantly hinder progress by Chines AI leaders like Alibaba, DeepSeek, or Huawei. These companies continued to release advanced AI models and fill hardware gaps with domestically engineered products, therefore blunting the intended effect of U.S. policy and spreading Chinese AI standards when it comes to hardware, software, and eventually ethics.

An avid reader would ask whether the Department of Commerce — a part of the executive branch of the federal government — is overriding laws set in 2023. This is not exactly the case. The DoC is not formally canceling or rewriting the 2023 export control rules, but it is preparing to apply them far more flexibly. The ECCN 3A090/4A090 framework — which sets performance caps and interconnect thresholds for AI accelerators — remains intact. What is changing is the DoC's willingness to grant licenses for hardware that sits above those limits. By approving Nvidia's H200, the U.S. is effectively raising the practical performance ceiling that China may receive, without altering the existing export rules. Whether or not AMD can receive appropriate indulgences is something that remains to be seen.

One thing to keep in mind is that China rejected the H20 for political, not technological, reasons.

On the one hand, China is more likely to permit H200 imports than it was to accept the H20, because the H200 is a full-fat Nvidia GPU rather than a deliberately slow-downed, export-only model. Meanwhile, H200 will help China to develop its AI prowess faster than any domestic hardware.

On the other hand, China's approval is not guaranteed as availability of H200 could slowdown development of domestic AI hardware solution.

Last but not least, China may hesitate to re-open reliance on U.S. technology that the U.S. government could cut off again. Therefore, it may prefer to protect the momentum of domestic manufacturers like Huawei as it fits into China's broader semiconductor self-sufficiency plan.

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The particular listing momomo_us shared above sees the Xe3 iGPU scoring 2,383 points in Furmark's benchmark test at a reported max boost clock of up to 2,300 MHz, and at up to 36 watts of power. However, the GPU is outperformed by Intel's outgoing Arc 140V and 140T counterparts, with the 140V scoring 2,736 points and the 140T scoring 2,398 points, respectively. The 140V and 140T results were taken from the same database that the B370's results came from.

These results make Intel's flagship 140V Xe2 graphics chip 14% faster than the B370, and the 140T equal to the B370. To make matters worse for the B370, both 140-series iGPUs operate at between 10 and 12 watts less, making the B370 worse on energy efficiency as well.

Take these results with a pinch of salt since the B370 is not out yet, but these results are awfully similar to our previous article on the B370, which showed the Xe3 iGPU performing roughly the same with the 140T in Geekbench as well. That said, these results are not surprising. Intel confirmed this year that its Celestial (Arc C-series) Xe3 graphics chips would actually function off of its outgoing Battlemage GPU architecture rather than jumping on a new architecture, as many previously thought. Instead, genuine performance/efficiency improvements won't come until Intel debuts its Xe3P architecture.

The Arc B370 will reportedly be one of the likely several iGPU models included in Intel's next-generation Panther Lake architecture (the Core Ultra 5 338H is the first chip we've seen with the B370). Panther Lake will launch in January 2026, boasting Intel's 18A process node, Cougar Cove P-cores, and Darkmount E-cores. Intel hopes Panther Lake will be a "one-size-fits-all" solution for mobile, providing the power efficiency of Lunar Lake and the performance of Arrow Lake in one cohesive design.

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Our journey starts with a Thermalright Peerless Assassin, a competent cooler on its own, but clearly, there's room for improvement. One by one, the fins from its heatsink are removed until the heatpipes running through the finstack are exposed just enough. Then, a disc cutter is carefully run through the top to get access to the magic sauce.

For those unaware, the heatpipes inside an air cooler are hollow, with a small amount of liquid inside that evaporates and condenses during heat cycles, acting as a phase-change system. That's enough to cool a CPU when combined with fans on either side. So, when we cut the tops off the pipes, we see channels inside leading directly to the base plate, which enables this madness.

Thin water tubes are connected and secured to these pipes, and once initial leaks are fixed, a pump at the other end successfully injects green-colored water through them, bringing this custom apparatus to life. It's time for testing, and an MSI RTX 3070 is the first recipient of this honor.

After being stripped down to expose the die, the DIY cooler is retrofitted on top with surprising conviction, and the whole thing is put on a test bench. On the side is a portable ice chiller, on which a 12V diaphragm pump is mounted to power the entire setup. Once turned on, ice-cold water flows through the heat pipes, touching the 3070's GPU, which sits at a casual -14 degrees Celsius.

Owing to his name, TrashBench runs a bunch of games and benchmarks on this new below-zero RTX 3070, and compared to the stock results, we see an average 10% uplift across the board. The unlocked cooling headroom enables a +320 MHz overclock that delivers decent improvements, but it's not drastic.

This is where the GTX 960 comes in.

The same story follows: the graphics card is disassembled, and its stock cooler/shroud is replaced with our mighty water-injected cooler. But the results here are far more impressive; Cyberpunk 2077 shows a massive 21% increase in FPS, while COD: Black Ops 7 demonstrates a 220 MHz uplift in boost clocks. Overall, across all tests, the GTX 960 saw a ~17% performance bump.

TrashBench doesn't declare the experiment a success or a failure at the end. Still, we're pretty confident in singing its praises — this seems like a legit upgrade to an existing air cooler, turning it into a pseudo AIO that can help overclock GPUs without requiring a full-blown liquid nitrogen setup. It's wild but just accessible enough to be something truly special, adding the "fun" in functional.

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The post, shared on Thursday, December 4, in the PCMR Reddit, includes support transcripts in which the user says they were initially told the connector was safe to use before the case was escalated and ultimately ruled “customer-induced damage.”

The retention clip plays an important role in anchoring the plug inside the socket and helps ensure full insertion. This is particularly important because Nvidia attributed the widespread RTX 4090 melting incidents to partially seated 12VHPWR connectors, and the revised 12V-2x6 standard was introduced with the RTX 50 series to improve reliability.

A clip failure removes one of the few mechanical safeguards that prevent the plug from backing out under cable tension. Support logs quoted by the user indicate an initial assessment that “everything looks totally normal from pictures.” However, the customer insisted that, after seeing the disasters the connector has caused, they weren’t willing to leave it as is. The nature of the replies led the original poster and those commenting to speculate that Nvidia support was relying on AI to analyze the customer’s pictures and respond to their concerns.

This isn’t a first for the 5080, which has been the subject of at least one earlier Reddit thread in which an owner asked whether a broken clip could cause long-term issues. Other reports include a 5080 power cable allegedly melting at the power supply side and isolated cases of 5090 connector damage. These incidents have not yet formed a clear pattern, but they sit alongside high-profile reminders that the underlying design may be flawed.

Warranty outcomes have varied across vendors. In the RTX 4090 cycle, Nvidia said it would handle RMAs for connector-related failures, even when third-party adapters were involved. Board partners did not always match that posture.

MSI previously rejected an RMA when a CableMod adapter was used, and the case only came to light after customers shared support transcripts. Cooler Master sparked its own controversy when a representative advised a user to dismantle part of a 12V-2x6 plug to fit an RTX 5070 Ti. The company later apologized and withdrew the connector from sale, noting that its internal guidance had been incorrect.

The Reddit user behind the new 5080 claim says they have asked Nvidia to reconsider the diagnosis, arguing that a mechanical failure on the first unplug should not be treated as misuse.

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“When your card arrived at our facility, our technicians performed a visual inspection prior to electrical testing. During this inspection, they identified a crack in the PCB (printed circuit board) near the PCIe connector. While the gold contacts themselves appear intact, the board material above the connector is visibly fractured,” the service manager told I_Main_TwistedFate.

The Zotac representative later added, “The type of cracking found is consistent with external mechanical stress during handling or transportation. Since this damage cannot be caused by normal GPU operation, we recommend filing a shipping damage claim with the carrier that delivered the package to ZOTAC USA.”

Just a warning if your planning to buy a Zotac card as my RMA has been denied PT2: Now they are offering that they can dispose of my card. from r/pcmasterrace

This probably led to enormous frustration for the user, as they initially sought an RMA for their three-month-old RTX 5070 Ti because it was making unusual noises they suspected could be a fan bearing issue. They even shared photos of the supposed PCB damage, which appeared to be considerably minor. The biggest insult was that Zotac even offered to dispose of the GPU at its facility if I_Main_TwistedFate did not want it returned.

We’re unsure what caused the PCB damage to the GPU, but it seems to have been due to wear-and-tear rather than accidental or deliberate damage. This is similar to the $3,350 repair bill another customer received from Asus for their RTX 5090 after the company discovered a microscopic “surface irregularity” on the expensive card. It could be that these companies are just covering themselves in case these seemingly minor damages lead to a catastrophic failure. However, it’s still infuriating for anyone who spent hundreds or thousands of their hard-earned money on these expensive parts. On the other hand, Nvidia has been extremely generous, replacing a damaged RTX 5090 despite it being caused by the user, and even offering a replacement unit for a $10,000 RTX Pro 6000 that was broken in transit.

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According to the owner of the GeForce RTX 5090, intermittent blank screens and system reboots had been persisting in the system where the Blackwell flagship was installed. After diagnosing the issue as stemming from their ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, the Reddit user sent the graphics card to Asus for RMA. However, the company reportedly declined the warranty, citing a "surface irregularity." It appears that Asus identified a small crack near the PCB edge tab area, which is not visible to the naked eye and was only detectable through microscopic examination. The company attributes it to customer damage.

ASUS Asking for $4661 to repair RTX 5090 ASTRAL due to "surface irregularity" from r/ASUS

The ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, measuring 14.1 x 5.9 x 3 inches (357.6 x 149.3 x 76 mm), is a heavyweight, weighing 6.6 pounds (3.01 kg) on a scale. Needless to say, it's a monstrous graphics card, so it's vulnerable to damage if not handled or transported with appropriate caution. However, Kromz asserts that they installed the graphics card with meticulous care, consistently utilized the included support bracket, and refrained from relocating the system post-installation. "... all of that weight is supported by a single stress point on the PCB," they said. "Honestly, that’s a design flaw waiting to happen."

Asus reportedly quoted the user $4,661 CAD for a replacement graphics card, which translates to around $3,357 by today's exchange rate. That's more expensive than buying one. When in stock, the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 sells for $3,299.99. Even in Canada, where computer hardware is often more expensive, the overclocked model retails for $4,059 CAD.

After several months of communication with Asus, the Redditor finally had the case escalated to Customer Service Supervisor Peggy Lee, who offered a 50% discount. While they are still seeking a more favorable resolution, a 50% discount could serve as an acceptable compromise if Asus remains firm in its stance. It's unlikely to find a GeForce RTX 5090 for $1,679 in the current market, as even Nvidia's Founders Edition retails for $1,999. However, the Redditor hasn't given up and has started exploring alternative solutions to achieve a better outcome.

There is a precedent concerning PCBs cracking on graphics cards. The issue arises because high-end graphics cards are becoming increasingly power-hungry, requiring more robust solutions with each generation. The additional weight places greater strain on the PCIe connector, particularly on the PCB edge tab, which has been a weak point in some Gigabyte graphics cards from a few years ago.

Gigabyte later updated the design of the PCIe locking tab by increasing its surface area. The manufacturer also reinforced PCIe slots on its motherboards to support graphics cards weighing up to 128 pounds. However, despite these improvements, there were still one or two instances of cracking on the graphics card's PCB.

Dealing with RMA cases can be pretty challenging. One party often claims that the issue was due to user error, while the other side disagrees. Nobody wants to lose money. This particular case is isolated, meaning it's not a frequent occurrence. However, to prevent incidents like this from happening, chipmakers should focus on optimizing their flagship products. This way, partners will not need to release heavy graphics cards that weigh as much as a clay brick.

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This is the second time that we have seen Nvidia replace a customer's GPU, even though the original damage was caused by user error. The first time we saw this was when a customer of an RTX 5090 Founders Edition accidentally damaged their card after attempting to install a waterblock on it (and voiding the card's warranty in the process). After NorthridgeFix published a video on the customer's 5090 FE, and complained that Nvidia did not provide replacement parts needed to fix the card, Nvidia replaced the customer's card anyway.

This latest story is an even worse tale revolving around Nvidia's $10,000 RTX Pro 6000 workstation graphics card. A customer of this card accidentally left the GPU inside their PC as they were shipping the system to another location, causing the PCIe component to snap in half. Again, NorthridgeFix complained that the card was unrepairable and that they could not source parts from Nvidia to fix it.

These two incidents reveal that Nvidia is apparently very lenient on its graphics card replacements, particularly for its OEM cards (not third-party cards from other vendors). Even if the customer is at fault for damaging their OEM Nvidia GPU, we now know that Nvidia won't rule out shipping the person a new graphics card (regardless of warranty). More encouragingly, Nvidia seems at least somewhat interested in examining the old card, possibly to check for structural weaknesses or flaws in the design.

This is great for consumers of these cards since NorthridgeFix reports that Nvidia refuses to provide replacement components for its GPUs, even though its Blackwell-based dual-fan OEM graphics cards have modularity in their design. The PCIe finger and four rear display outputs on these Blackwell cards are connected to the GPU with their own independent boards, theoretically making these components easy to fix if either component breaks. All you would have to do is replace the bad board(s) with a new one, if only Nvidia provided the parts. Though ironically, you can source the PCIe finger for these particular cards in China for just $25, but this option won't be available for everyone.

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PhysX is one of Nvidia’s oldest technologies, originating in 2004 when the company acquired Ageia. Designed as a physics simulation SDK, it handled ragdolls, cloth, particles, fluids, and other advanced physics effects. Its core promise was to simply offload physics work from the CPU to the GPU for better performance and more detailed effects. The supported games are:

• Alice: Madness Returns
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• Batman: Arkham City
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• Borderlands 2
• Mafia II
• Metro 2033
• Metro: Last Light
• Mirror’s Edge
  
  Batman: Arkham Asylum is slated to be supported in 2026.

After Nvidia adapted the tech to run on GeForce GPUs, PhysX found its way into popular AAA game titles, including the Batman Arkham trilogy, Borderlands 2, The Witcher 3, Metro: Last Light, Metro: Exodus, Metro 2033, Mirror's Edge, The Witcher 3, and several older Assassin’s Creed releases.

By the late 2010s, PhysX adoption slowed significantly as more flexible, cross-platform physics solutions emerged. One of the biggest limitations was its reliance on CUDA, which tied it exclusively to Nvidia GPUs and restricted it from competing hardware, consoles, and mobile devices. Nvidia also gradually dropped support for certain features, leading some developers, such as Warframe’s team in 2018, to move to custom frameworks built on or inspired by PhysX.

The latest Game Ready driver update also brings game optimizations for the upcoming Winter Offensive update on Battlefield 6 ahead of its December 9th release. Nvidia says that gamers can expect average frame rates to increase by 3.8 times, enabling up to 460 frames per second on desktops, and 310 frames per second on RTX 50 series laptops at 4K ultra settings with DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation, and DLSS Super Resolution enabled. Additionally, the latest drivers bring improved fidelity of DLSS Ray Reconstruction on Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

To download the latest drivers, visit the official Nvidia driver download page, select your product from the drop-down menus, choose your operating system, and click search. Alternatively, you can download and use the Nvidia app, which can automatically detect your hardware and install the latest driver for you.

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Although we do not have a confirmed cause for the price increase, it is not difficult to infer the reason. It is widely acknowledged that artificial intelligence and data centers have contributed to a shortage of memory products, driving a significant surge in DRAM prices. It was merely a matter of time before heightened demand affected other segments, and the graphics card market has already begun to feel this effect.

The recent price increase will affect only AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series, which is equipped with the latest RDNA 4 architecture. The availability of earlier Radeon graphics cards remains limited within the U.S. market.

AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series Pricing

The price adjustment will vary by model because AMD has modified pricing based on memory capacity. Consequently, models with larger memory configurations will incur higher costs. The MSRP for RDNA 4, as we know it, will likely increase if distributors pass those costs on to customers. As an example, the Radeon RX 9060 XT's 16GB variant would increase from $349 to $369, while the 8GB variant will rise from $299 to $309, reflecting percentage increases of 5.8% and 3.3%, respectively. However, that math assumes vendors wouldn't add additional margin stacking on top of the increased price, which is possible. It is also unclear if this will apply globally, or to all distributors, though those are logical assumptions.

The price increase to distributors has already been implemented; however, RDNA 4 graphics cards are currently priced at or below the original MSRP. As we have recently concluded Black Friday and are approaching the holiday season, some retailers may not yet have adjusted their prices or may be preparing holiday-season discounts. They may also be using the remaining inventory from before the price change.

Nevertheless, our observations indicate that numerous retail establishments in the United States refrained from implementing price increases during Black Friday week. According to our source, some retailers intend to delay adjustments for as long as possible. Nonetheless, retailers will inevitably conform to market trends and adjust their pricing strategies accordingly.

AMD is not the sole chipmaker to implement price increases on graphics cards. Our source indicates that there are significant discussions among AIC partners, suggesting that Nvidia is likely to follow suit shortly. Nonetheless, the precise magnitude of this adjustment remains uncertain. Regrettably, the price modification appears to be the least pressing concern for consumers. There is substantial speculation that a shortage will affect specific models of the GeForce RTX 50 series (codenamed Blackwell), including the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and higher SKUs, during the early part of 2026. Should this occur, the prices for Blackwell series graphics cards are expected to escalate considerably, potentially surpassing the price increases observed for DRAM.

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It is great to see legendary old hardware that is still able to work in the latest PC builds. A prime example of old mingling with new in a magical way was provided by Omores on YouTube a few days ago. The TechTuber managed to coax their ancient Creative 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB graphics card to work in their cutting-edge AMD Ryzen 9 9900X-powered Windows 11 PC.

This is no simple feat. Nevertheless, you can see that Omores got a 1998 vintage 3D accelerator, using services written for a 1996 OS, with an experimental 64-bit driver from 2006, to run on a PC using an OS from 2011, powered by a processor from 2024.

To kick off the above video, Omores pitched a simple question. Could a classic Voodoo2 graphics card work with modern hardware, and on Windows 11? “Sounds impossible,” because of the 64-bit driver necessity of Microsoft’s newest OS, the TechTuber openly pondered.

Omores then explained that he would be looking specifically at the Voodoo2, as the original Voodoo trips up with processors faster than 1.0 GHz, while the Voodoo2 doesn’t suffer any such limitations. Thus, mused the intrepid old-meets-new experimenter, a combination of the right drivers and a working PCI to PCIe connection should get the iconic 3dfx card and one of AMD’s latest and greatest platforms playing nicely together.

Instead of jumping in the deep end, Omores took viewers on a journey with this tech tale of May to September. After introducing the hardware solution that could physically get a 1998 3D accelerator hooked up to a modern AM5 motherboard system (a StarTech PCI-E to PCI enclosure), it was time to check OS/software compatibility.

First off, the unmatched hardware combo was shown working with Windows 98 installed on the system. This confirmed, with reference drivers, that the hardware side of the equation was fine. Further confirmation that this disparate hardware concoction posed no issues came from benchmarking in games/apps like Quake 2 and 3D Mark 2001 SE.

Next, Omores moved to Win 10 32-bit, the last 32-bit OS release from Microsoft. An enthusiast community developed 32-bit driver for the 3dfx was used here, and it worked well.

Moving to Windows 10 64-bit would be more complicated. However, Omores explained that in 2006 a dev called Ryan Nun (AKA Colourless) published an experimental 3dfx Glide Project for x64 – based on research into original Win NT (1996) drivers. These new kernel drivers worked for Omores on a Win10 64-bit install, with a fix that was made for XP systems.

The TechTuber saw no real reason why Windows 11 shouldn’t work the same way after driver signature enforcement was removed. But, of course, things weren’t so simple. Surprisingly, a change of PCI slot cleared an early hiccup, getting the system to the same easily fixed error point where the Win 10 64-bit stalled (the Mapmem error).

“We now have a 3D accelerator from 1998, using a driver that relies on services written for Windows NT from 1996, successfully running in Windows 11 23H2,” wryly observed Omores. We’d add that the CPU was a powerful, ultra-modern one, from 2024.

Perhaps the TechTuber was pushing his luck by trying to run two Voodoo2s in SLI on the same system, next. Indeed, using his second Voodoo2, a Joytech Apollo 3D Fast II 12MB, which isn’t a perfect glitch-free runner, caused this delicately teetering concoction of hardware to topple in Windows 11.

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A video on Bilibili showed a Lisuan 7G106 graphics card hooked up to an ARM-based system featuring an ARM-based 12-core CP8180 CPU. The video showed the system running 3DMark's Steel Nomad benchmark along with Task Manager on top, showing that the GPU clearly has 3D acceleration support within the ARM version of Windows 11. Furthermore, dxdiag was also shown to reveal DX12 support in the driver.

The Lisuan 7G106 is a Chinese-based graphics card aimed at the consumer market that has RTX 4060-like performance. The card boasts 12GB of memory on a 192-bit interface, 192 TMUs, 96 ROPs, PCIe 4.0 x16 support, and is based on Lisuan's TrueGPU architecture. Despite its Chinese roots, the card is based on TSMC's 6nm N6 process.

Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have not publicly announced display drivers that support ARM-based machines for their consumer-grade discrete GPUs, so Lisuan has beaten everyone to the punch in this area. Technically, there are discrete GPU setups that are paired with ARM chips, such as Nvidia's Grace Blackwell platform and third-party setups such as TinyCorps' third-party driver that unlocks compatibility of RTX GPUs with M-series MacBooks. There is also Nvidia's $4,000 DGX Spark that boasts an ARM chip and a Blackwell GPU, but technically, it is integrated.

What is different about this specific case with Lisuan is that it represents the first time we've seen a dedicated graphics card paired with an ARM chip sporting a graphics driver that enables the GPU to play games. We aren't sure why Lisuan has decided to develop an ARM-based display driver for its discrete GPUs; likely, this driver is being developed to support a future Chinese ARM product that has a discrete GPU paired with it. Regardless, Lisuan's work demonstrates that PC gaming on ARM with discrete GPUs is viable.

PC gaming on ARM devices only gained serious traction once Microsoft introduced its Copilot+ PC program and Qualcomm began shipping its high-performance Snapdragon X Elite SoC. Both companies have been working to make PC gaming as smooth as possible on the ARM version of Windows 11, primarily through Microsoft's Prism compatibility layer that translates x86 code to instructions that ARM chips can process.

With Lisuan now having a working display driver for ARM for its own discrete GPUs, this could encourage both Chinese and Western manufacturers to start incorporating discrete GPUs into ARM-based laptops and desktops aimed at gamers. All we have to wait for now is for hardware to be produced in massive quantities that support such configurations.

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Linux users have historically actually been luckier than mere Windows peons, as feature support on the penguin-infused operating system used to continue for longer. That's no longer the case since 2024, as Nvidia's release schedule for both OSes has been in lockstep, especially as they share a common development branch. Reportedly, Nvidia forum users installed the 590 beta release and confirmed the older cards' deprecation.

It should be noted that the newer drivers not supporting the vintage cards doesn't mean that support for them is ending completely—much the opposite, in fact. Last October, as per usual procedure, Nvidia announced that 900- and 10-series GPUs would be moving to the legacy support model, with their respective final drivers seeing security updates until October 2028.

That's conveniently longer than Windows 10's actual final EOL. The outgoing operating system still has one year of free security updates for users willing to sign in with a Microsoft account or, alternatively, pay a little cash.

It was a good run, though. The GTX 970 came out in 2014, while the bulk of the 10-series cards, including the mighty GTX 1080 Ti, came out between 2016 and 2017. That marks the better part of a decade of Nvidia Game Ready game enhancement features for those cards.

If, like me, you played a lot of games on the outgoing cards, pour one out. My former GTX 970 served me well during its day, and the 1080 Ti that replaced it cost me a kidney and a half but saw me through the COVID shortage at high FPS, and netted me a decent sum when selling it. Totally worth it.

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Received Rocks In Place Of Asus Tuf 5080 From BestBuy from r/pcmasterrace

On November 25, u/GnarDead ordered an Asus TUF RTX 5080 from Best Buy for $1,200, well below the MSRP for this variant. Three days later, the GPU finally arrived... or so they thought. Even before opening up the box, the red flags were already there. The 5080 wasn't put inside a generic cardboard box to conceal its identity, and the shipping labels were directly slapped onto the retail box itself, and the seal was "clearly tampered with."

Opening up the box only confirmed the suspicion as our victim found literal rocks sitting where the GPU was supposed to be. If you're getting some déjà vu reading all this, it's because scams like these have become increasingly commonplace, and bad actors have learned to fool automated systems (that detect weight), and even humans, by simply faking the heft of the package. By the time someone checks, it's already too late, so customer support is the last resort.

Unfortunately, for our unlucky buyer here, even Best Buy's support teams turned them down, saying they couldn't do anything about it and that a refund was not possible after conducting an investigation. Comments suggested taking the matter to social media and blasting Best Buy with hashtags, while others reminded u/GnarDead of the importance of recording unboxings, so that you have conclusive evidence in case of any claims like this. Right now, it's a sort of your word against mine situation.

The best plan of action in the thread was a credit card chargeback. Asking the bank to reverse the transaction after filing a billing dispute is a pretty surefire way of getting your money back. We sincerely hope the victim gets a refund, and for everyone reading, let this serve as a reminder of how unreliable customer protection systems can be at major retailers. Like we always say, remain vigilant until due process takes its course, and remember that nothing scares these companies more than bad PR.

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8GB of GDDR6 memory was priced around $19.54 ($2.443 per 8 Gb chip) on the spot market on July 1, 2025, according to DRAMeXchange. The spot price of 8GB of GDDR6 today, December 2, is around $31.52 ($3.94 per 8 Gb chip), an increase of 61% in less than half of a year. Prices of 16 Gb GDDR6 memory ICs aren't as easy to find, but normally they should be about two times more expensive than their 8 Gb counterparts, which means that it costs over $62 to equip a graphics card with 16GB of GDDR6.

An avid reader may argue that as a large consumer of GDDR memories, AMD purchases memory in large volumes on long-term contracts, which smooths out sudden price changes. Yet the volumes of GDDR6 memory that AMD is likely to buy for graphics cards aren't that large these days: the company sold 740,000 discrete graphics processors for desktops in Q1, followed by 700,000 units in Q2 and 840,000 standalone GPUs for desktops in Q3, based on data from Jon Peddie Research. Getting huge discounts is hard if you do not buy a lot.

Furthermore, since we are dealing with a structural DRAM market change and as leading producers of memory clearly allocate more of their capacity for HBM memory aimed at AI accelerators, commodity DRAMs like GDDR6 are poised to get more expensive.

If it comes to pass, this rumor highlights the growing pressures that the AI boom is placing on the entire industry. AMD likely chose GDDR6 memory over GDDR7 for the RX 9000 series in part to control costs by maximizing its GDDR6 volumes (its Xbox and PS5 SoCs also use GDDR6), but the skyrocketing AI demand for silicon right now means there ultimately isn't any escape from rising costs.

These pressures also aren't isolated to AMD. Other rumblings suggest that Nvidia could move away from the business model of selling GPU packages and GDDR memories as a set to board partners altogether. We usually think of HBM as the memory type of choice for AI accelerators, but each Rubin CPX GPU requires 128GB of GDDR7, and if that memory could go on a high-margin AI accelerator rather than a lower-margin consumer graphics card, it's not hard to understand why Nvidia would prioritize furthering its AI lead.

AMD's current lineup includes Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 with 16 GB of memory ($599 and $549), the Radeon RX 9070 GRE with 12 GB, Radeon RX 9060 XT with 8GB or 16GB ($299 and $399), and a Radeon RX 9060 with 8GB that is designed primarily for OEMs. Increasing MSRPs of AMD's existing Radeon RX 9000-series products by $20 to $40 will hardly make them substantially more expensive and therefore less competitive, as Nvidia's relatively high MSRPs for its Blackwell cards leave some wiggle room for AMD to adjust its own sticker prices while remaining competitive. But at the same time, no increases go unnoticed in today's market.

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The Section 301 tariff was first proposed in 2018, during President Donald Trump's first term, but it was never fully implemented as both Trump and then President Joe Biden kicked it down the line like a ticking time bomb for over seven years. The last deferment happened in late August 2025, when Washington extended the exemption until this November 29th.

According to the U.S. Trade Representative [PDF], Trump initially applied the Section 301 tariffs as a punitive measure against China “as part of the action in the Section 301 investigation of China’s acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation.” However, it seems that its original purpose has been forgotten as the proposed tariffs became a part of the back-and-forth trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing, with the former using access to technology and the latter implementing rare-earth export controls as cards to be played in international relations.

Aside from this, industry groups have also been hard at work lobbying against the planned import tax. Putting a 25% tariff on these computer components would certainly drive up prices, even for brands that aren’t based in China.

For its part, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), in a comment on the USTR website, notes that “For many of the products currently subject to exclusions, alternative sources outside of China remain constrained. While companies continue to diversify supply chains, global capacity for critical inputs and specialized components is still heavily concentrated in China.”

And even though the tariff proposal has been around for many years, the CTA also said that “Additional time is therefore essential to enable gradual and sustainable diversification. Extending exclusions allows companies to continue operations while investing in new sourcing strategies.” CTA members, then, are getting their wish.

While these oft-delayed Section 301 tariffs only threatened to make graphics cards more expensive, PC builders and gamers are already feeling the squeeze from market realities as the AI data center boom drives up prices of other important components, including components like DRAM and NAND.

While it's a relief to know that GPU prices won't be worsened by the implementation of these tariffs, that's cold comfort in a world where prices for DDR5 kits are approaching or exceeding the costs of entire systems. PC enthusiasts are still going to have to buckle up for a rough 2026 — and possibly even longer.

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Nvidia still way ahead

Make no mistake, Nvidia’s market share still looks almost unassailable at 92% in Q3’25. It remains dominant and still makes some of the best graphics cards for gaming in 2025. But its position has slipped from 94% in the previous quarter.

Those are rounded figures, as the JPR news post says that Nvidia’s market share has decreased just 1.2% from the last to the current quarter. Nevertheless, more than nine out of 10 graphics cards sold are still Nvidia GPU-based, according to JPR’s figures.

Tariff uncertainty made Q2’25 a bumper quarter, eating into the usual Q3 rise

Q3’25 still showed an uplift in graphics cards sold, but the increase was less than usual for the season. JPR says that the 2.8% increase recorded “was less than the historical 10-year average of 11.4% for this quarter.”

More importantly, the analysts think this can be explained by a wave of “panic buying because of the pending tariff,” occurring in Q2. Naturally, U.S.-based buyers shifted their AIB buying decisions forward due to looming tariffs creating retail pricing uncertainty.

Intel cracks 1% share

The shifting sands of the AIB market share have precipitated a milestone for Intel. While it is a Goliath of the PC CPU world, its AIB products are still minnows. At least now, it can hold its head high with a full 1% market share of the dGPU business.

AMD is also shown to be on the up. Its RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9000 series offerings, like the RX 9070 XT, appear to be popular in the media and at retail. This popularity manifests as a 7% market share, up by 0.8% from Q2’25.

Another figure that was intriguing to see highlighted was the AIB penetration rate in desktop PCs. The Q3’25 figure of 162% indicates that there’s quite a lot of GPU upgrading going on, with system upgrades outpacing new builds. You will see this percentage is resolutely above 100% as PC systems usually get a GPU upgrade, or two, during their service life. But 162% is pretty high.

JPR’s predictions

Lastly, it is worth a look at the analyst company’s crystal ball gazing regarding the graphics card market. Dr. Jon Peddie, president of JPR, openly worries about “an inflation-driven recession due to the socioeconomic turmoil created by the Trump administration.”

This concern may be the driving force behind the research outfit's predicted 2024-to-2029 AIB growth rate being restricted to negative territory (-0.7% CAGR).

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• OwlTree External PC Power Switch
• Aukuoy Wireless External PC Power Button
• RAK Magnetic Pickup Tool with light.
• Asus Zendrive External 8x +/-RW DVD/burner
• Cozoo Headphone Stand with USB Charger
• Aimhduty HDMI Adapter Kits

Over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales period, the staff of Tom's Hardware have browsed through some weird and wonderful tech oddities that we think are both fun, useful, or even good value for money. Most of these tech gadgets are on sale, but a couple have finished their sale periods, and we've still included them because of how interesting they are.

Interesting and unusual gadgets for your PC

With prices ranging from as low as $6.99 to a maximum of $99.99, there may be an interesting little gadget on offer here for either yourself or someone you know. Some of these geeky devices could also make for a Holiday Season stocking filler. Here are 19 of our favorites spotted so far.

From PC power buttons, wired and wireless, to CD/DVD burners with built-in hub stations, to colorful cable tidies and Haribo GaN chargers, there's a little something different for everyone. Have you spotted any interesting gadgets on your sales browsing travels that you think we should know about?

More Cyber Monday Deals

Cyber Monday Live Blog |Best gaming laptop deals | Best GPU Deals | Gaming Chair | Best monitor deals | Best SSD deals | Best CPU deals | Gaming Chair | Best hard drive HDD deals | Best PC case deals | Best Dell and Alienware deals | Best 3D printer deals | Best PC peripherals deals | Best motherboard deals | Best CPU cooler deals | Best gaming chair deals | Best laptop PC deals | Best Gaming PC deals | Best RAM deals | Best Wi-Fi Router deals

A lot of the most attractive discounts we've seen over the past few days have been yanked this morning (especially on higher-end Nvidia Blackwell cards), leaving only a few scattered deals worth considering.

We've sifted through what's still around to find the bargains still worth jumping on. And there are a few new oddball deals out there that might fill a niche for a few gamers. Here's what we've got.

Best Cyber Monday Nvidia gaming graphics card deals

Best Cyber Monday AMD gaming graphics card deals

Best Cyber Monday Intel graphics card deals

And that's the best of what's still around in gaming graphics card discounts this Cyber Monday. If you aren't sure what GPU you need, check out our list of the best gaming graphics cards to see which one best fits your needs and budget. And if you find a sweet deal on a graphics card you know you want, act now—as we've already seen, deep discounts are unlikely to stick around for long.

More Tech Deals

Cyber Monday Live Blog |Best gaming laptop deals | Best GPU Deals | Gaming Chair | Best monitor deals | Best SSD deals | Best CPU deals | Gaming Chair | Best hard drive HDD deals | Best PC case deals | Best Dell and Alienware deals | Best 3D printer deals | Best PC peripherals deals | Best motherboard deals | Best CPU cooler deals | Best gaming chair deals | Best laptop PC deals | Best Gaming PC deals | Best RAM deals | Best Wi-Fi Router deals

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB is a decent graphics card, but its 8GB capacity and initial launch price can sometimes give it a bit of a negative reputation. Still, this Blackwell-based card has dropped to an all-time low of $299.99, making it worth considering if you're looking to breathe new life into your gaming PC and want to be mindful of your budget. Keep in mind that choosing an 8GB model instead of a 16GB one involves some trade-offs, so it's a good idea to do a little research to see what best suits your needs.

• Check out the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti WindForce Max OC 8G deal on Woot!
• Check out the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Eagle Max OC 8G deal on Woot!

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti WindForce Max OC 8G features a dual-slot design and measures up to 8.2 inches (208 mm), making it one of the more compact options available. This makes it a wonderful choice for older systems or smaller cases. If you have the space, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Eagle Max OC 8G (11 inches or 281 mm) comes with a higher factory overclock. Regardless of the model you pick, the 180W graphics card only requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. For optimal performance, we recommend a power supply with at least 650W.

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti WindForce Max OC 8G and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Eagle Max OC 8G come with factory overclocks. The WindForce model has a 15 MHz boost over Nvidia's reference, while the Eagle version offers an even more impressive 45 MHz increase.

Both models come equipped with Gigabyte's reliable WindForce cooling system, which includes server-grade thermal conductive gel, durable composite copper heat pipes, a copper plate, and Hawk-branded cooling fans, ensuring efficient and effective cooling.

Here's how the 5060 8GB stacks up to the 16GB version in our benchmark testing, to give you an idea of some of the trade-offs you're making at this lower price.

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti WindForce Max OC 8G and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Eagle Max OC 8G could be your next graphics card if your gaming PC just doesn't cut it nowadays.

If you're looking for more Black Friday savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard or CPU Deals pages.

Putting together a great PC during this weekend isn't the easiest task. With spiraling RAM prices, SSD inflation, GPU shortages, and information overload around every corner, sometimes you just want someone to do the legwork for you.

We've scoured all the best Cyber Monday PC hardware deals going right now to put together a PC that can game however you want, including at 4K, without breaking the bank. And I'm afraid we've got some bad news. Despite our best efforts, rising DDR5 prices and creeping component prices mean that, try as we might, we weren't actually able to match the best Cyber Monday pre-built PC we've seen, this Alienware Aurora with an RTX 5080.

Our version, which you can see below, comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and a Radeon RX 9070 XT, and while it was more expensive than our previous attempts at this spec, we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.

However, this Alienware Aurora alternative features an Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF and a much better GPU. We might be missing out on the X3D cache from AMD, but instead, you get an RTX 5080, 16GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD, as well as a 1000W PSU and a liquid cooler. We beat Alienware for RAM, but even then, you can upgrade this Alienware PC to 32GB of RAM for just $100 more, pricing the enthusiast DIY market has no answer for.

If you're a diehard DIY-er, or you want to wander through the ruins of PC building this Cyber Monday, take a look at our $1,800 Cyber Monday PC below.

$1,800 Cyber Monday gaming PC: Quick list

• AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU: was $449 now $375.98 at Amazon
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black CPU Cooler: Was $29.98 $19.99 at Amazon
• Asus TUF Gaming B850-PLUS: was $239.99 now $189.99 at Amazon
• ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB: was $699 now $599 at Amazon
• Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 6400: $272 at Newegg
• Samsung 990 Pro SSD 2TB: was $199 now $169 at Amazon
• Corsair Frame 4000D: was $104 now $85 at Amazon
• Montech Century II 850W fully modular PSU: was $89 now $82 at Amazon

$1,800 4K Cyber Monday PC

This is more than we've priced out for our "mid-range build" in the past, so we're in at around $1,800 rather than the $1,600 of previous attempts. Crucially, however, the extra cash spent on that 9070 XT is going to pay dividends in real 4K gaming performance. If you have to swallow RAM and SSD price increases, we figure you may as well get 4K gaming readiness in the bargain. Check out our best monitor deals this Black Friday season if you need a great display to go with this powerful build.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

This is bound to sell out quickly, and these cards are not restocked very often, which makes it a minor miracle that Nvidia has magically found some behind its data center-shaped sofa in time for Cyber Monday.

Based on TSMC's 4N node, the RTX 5090 has over 21760 CUDA cores, with a clock speed of up to 2407MHz, and is equipped with 32GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit memory interface. This titanic GPU can demand up to 575W of total board power, meaning that you'll have to reach for an adequately powerful power supply of at least 1000W or more to run things comfortably, as the transient spikes of the RTX 5090 Founders Edition can spike up to 659W, as we show in our testing over at Tom's Hardware Premium.

So, if you're all ready and prepared to put such a card into your system, how well does it perform? Well, to put things bluntly, if you're buying an RTX 5090, you can pretty much brute force your way through demanding games with heaps of ray tracing, or titles marred by lousy PC optimization through sheer power alone, but don't take my word for it; we've left some benchmarks below.

In our four-star review from earlier this year, we said that it's doubtful that any other GPU would be able to beat it in the next few years. Thanks to its pure horsepower under the hood, and the large amount of VRAM — with its huge memory bandwidth — the RTX 5090 is also suited to local AI workloads, which will make this card even more in demand for those looking to capitalize on the ongoing AI boom, or if you want to experiment with local models. But, if you want to run larger AI models, you might want to shell out for the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, instead. Though that'll cost you a little bit more than the (relatively) humble RTX 5090 by comparison.

Look, I've waffled on enough about how fast the RTX 5090 is, and the Founders Edition model, complete with its swanky design, is still somehow in stock. Grab one before it's gone, otherwise you might not see it in stock again for a little while.

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In a statement published on its website, Xiang Di Xian said the new card more than doubles the overall rendering performance of its predecessor, and ran a series of large-scale 3D graphics workloads throughout the event. The company also demonstrated digital-twin applications and next-generation techniques such as ray tracing and super-resolution.

This is one of the first public demonstrations of Imagination’s DXD architecture in production hardware. DXD is the company’s high-performance GPU IP aimed at desktops and cloud-gaming infrastructure. It introduces native DirectX support to Imagination’s roadmap and offers Feature Level 11_0 compliance, Vulkan, and OpenGL support, and a decentralized multicore design.

Imagination advertises 2.3 TFLOPS and 72 GTexel/s per core, along with a reported 2.25x uplift in per-core performance over its BXT family. Its multicore layout is intended to scale into higher-end products aimed at PCs, workstations, and cloud-gaming deployments.

While the company did not publish specifications for the GPU card and did not assign a model name in its announcement, it emphasized that the design is already in mass production. The ability to run complex 3D visualization workloads smoothly formed the core of its demonstration.

Imagination’s public documentation describes DXD as a raster-first architecture, while the closely related DXT mobile IP integrates hardware ray tracing. Xiang Di Xian highlighted ray tracing in its written announcement, but the company has not yet clarified whether it is using a customized configuration of DXD, integrating additional blocks, or adopting an extended version of the IP tailored for its market.

Although the announcement did not provide numerical performance data beyond the “more than double” claim, the focus on digital-twin workloads and 3D simulation aligns with Imagination’s own positioning. DXD includes virtualization features such as the HyperLane multi-context system, which allows multiple isolated workloads to run on a single GPU.

With no independent testing or shipping products outside China, many questions remain about software support and real-world performance. Its appearance at ICCAD, however, marks the first time a DXD-based graphics card has been publicly demonstrated, setting the stage for a clearer look once further details emerge.

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The Redditor was shopping at a Salvation Army and stumbled upon a random GTX 1060 "chilling on a shelf" with a $10 price tag — but since it was Black Friday, the store had everything half off, dropping the price down to $5. After buying the alleged GTX 1060, the Redditor opened the MSI GTX 1060 3GB box only to find a Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti inside.

The purchase was disappointing for the now-GTX 560 Ti owner who had hoped to flip the GTX 1060 for a small profit. Losing $5 is unlikely to keep the owner awake at night. We've seen and reported on much worse GPU purchases, including those where buyers paid full price or over MSRP. Many of these switches involve either full-blown GPU swaps, missing GPU cores and/or memory, or GPU boxes full of rice and macaroni.

These stories are good reminders that not every graphics card listing on the market is a good deal. If the price is too reasonable to be true, it probably is. For example, the prices of used GTX 1060 3GB are around $50 at the time of writing, and 6GB trims are around $60-$80, so seeing a GTX 1060 for under $10 should be suspicious.

If you are in the market for a new graphics card, there are a plethora of Cyber Monday sales still going on right now, from high pricing to low. For instance, MSI's Shadow GeForce RTX 5050 is $30 under MSRP at Amazon, at a mere $219, while there are also far beefier GPUs on offer, as you can see in our tracking of the latest Cyber Monday GPU deals.

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• Check out this deal on Newegg

The RTX 5070 demands no introduction; it's Nvidia's premier midrange offering this generation, aimed at 1440p gaming. Built on the GB205 GPU and fabricated using TSMC's 5nm process, the RTX 5070 features 6,144 CUDA Cores that can boost up to 2,542 MHz on this particular variant. You get 12 GB of GDDR7 memory, which is plenty for even the most demanding games today, and enough connectivity to power setups on r/battlestations, with 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DP 2.1b ports.

MSI's Shadow RTX 5070 has a dual-fan design with stealthy aesthetics, but that doesn't mean it's not premium. It still features a reinforced metal structure, with a solid backplate sitting over a dense heatsink with a nickel-plated base copper plate. Since this is only a 250W GPU, the two fans are enough to keep it cool, even in a small chassis, which makes it part of Nvidia's SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards.

Checking the benchmarks above, the RTX 5070 performs well across all games, posting numbers right in the middle of the pack, true to its midrange nature. We gave AMD's RX 9070 XT the top spot in our best gaming GPUs roundup, but at this price, the RTX 5070 also becomes a no-brainer, especially when you take into account the Green Team's superior software suite, which includes things like RTX HDR. So, don't wait and grab the MSI Shadow RTX 5070 for just $479.99 before it sells out!

If you're looking for more Black Friday savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard or CPU Deals pages.

If you're looking for a graphics card on Cyber Monday, then you obviously want to know what's good value for money, what's a deal, and what's not? Graphics card prices are notoriously fickle, with subtle discounts bringing cards below MSRP, but larger discounts on inflated prices that can look like a deal, but actually aren't.

To cut through the noise, we've compiled the lowest price available for every current-gen GPU on the market, regardless of the manufacturer, including Asus, Zotac, MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte, ASRock, and others. It can be hard to keep track of how board partners' many models stack up against each manufacturer's suggested price for a given GPU, so we've done the hard work for you. Many of these deals are still holdovers from Black Friday that are still great deals, too. We're checking deals around the clock to find the best options and keep this page up to date. We also have another page that tracks all of the best Cyber Monday GPU deals, even if they aren't currently at the lowest price.

Exceptional Cyber Monday Gaming GPU Deals

These are just a couple of standout deals from the Cyber Monday deals bonanza. Check out our full list of the best Cyber Monday graphics card deals for the latest and greatest GPU discounts this deals season, too.

Our lowest GPU prices article continues below:

Your graphics card is the heart of any gaming PC and the component with the single biggest impact on gaming performance. After years in which it was impossible to find the best graphics cards for less than MSRP thanks to the crypto-bubble and the pandemic, we're enjoying a brief respite - but prices are set to rise again, and availability seems set to tighten as the AI boom sucks up every available silicon wafer. If you see a low price on a graphics card that matches your needs and budget in this tracker, be sure to jump.

Check out our list of the best graphics cards and our GPU benchmark hierarchy to see evergreen performance data to help you make an informed decision when choosing a new GPU for your system.

Nvidia RTX 50-Series: Lowest Cyber Monday Graphics Cards Prices

Nvidia's 50-series range may not have released with the most impressive gen-on-gen performance uplifts when judged on pure rasterization power compared to the 40-series, but they do come with support for Nvidia's latest software and tech, such as 5th Gen Tensor cores, 4th Gen Ray Tracing cores, DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation (MFG), and Reflex 2.

Included in the 50-series lineup is the world's most powerful consumer gaming graphics card, and Nvidia's flagship offering, the GeForce RTX 5090. The RTX 5090 uses the new Blackwell architecture and comes with a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which boasts an impressive 1792 GB/sec memory bandwidth.

Stock levels of RTX 50-series cards are no longer an issue, but pricing tends to be higher than MSRP. Many deals are popping up on the 50-series cards during Black Friday season, however, and some of those cards can now be seen dipping below MSRP.

Click the blue link to get the best price

AMD Radeon RX 9000-Series: Lowest Cyber Monday Graphics Cards Prices

AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards are some of the best bang-for-buck GPUs available. These 9000-series cards go toe-to-toe with Nvidia's RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti and offer a great alternative to Team Green. They are exceptional value if you can find one on sale during Black Friday. See our list for the cheapest RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT.

The RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT both come with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM for gaming at high resolutions and settings, and their RDNA 4 architecture provides a large generational increase compared to RDNA 3. Improvements to AI and ray tracing tech have made this generation of AMD cards perform much better in games that feature ray tracing, although RTX 50-series cards still have the edge there. AMD's great FSR 4 upscaler is also rolling out to more and more games, making

There are also 8GB and 16GB versions of the RX 9060 XT available, and they are selling for a fair price at the moment. However, 8GB of VRAM isn't terribly futureproofed, as game requirements continually grow regarding shader and texture memory requirements.

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AMD Radeon RX 7000-Series: Lowest Cyber Monday Graphics Cards Prices

AMD's 7000-series GPUs are still a decent option for a graphics card in your gaming rig if you can find one at a good price. Be wary of second-hand or refurbished cards, and be careful of third-party sellers charging silly prices.

RDNA 3 is not the route to go if you're looking for the best ray-tracing performance, but if you want raw computational performance, these cards can still be winners at the right price. Combined with AMD's FSR upscaler, these 7000-series GPUs can still crank out high frame rates in the latest games.
The RX 7900 XTX in particular represents a great blend of power, performance, and VRAM capacity, and it still ranks highly in our GPU Benchmark Hierarchy charts.

Here are all the lowest prices for the 7000-series models currently available during Black Friday.

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Intel Arc GPUs: Lowest Cyber Monday Graphics Card Prices

Intel's entry into the GPU market has been a little hit-and-miss. In some titles, these cards perform relatively well, but in older DirectX games, the cards have suffered from some poor performance issues. Driver updates, however, have been relatively frequent, and many improvements have been made since launch.

The MSRPs of Intel's Arc B-series GPUs fill a space that has been frequently ignored by Nvidia and AMD, especially for 1080p gaming; however, scarcity at launch and consequent markups meant that Battlemage cards have often been overpriced.

The Arc series of GPUs should certainly not be discounted when considering any budget gaming system build if you can land a good deal. Check our pricing tables for the lowest up-to-date price.

Intel's most recent launches include the Arc B580 and Arc B570. 12GB of VRAM for the B580 and 10GB for the B570, along with solid performance for the money, make these cards worth a look. Check out our tables for the latest low prices.

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More Cyber Monday and Black Friday Tech Deals You Can Still Get

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Nvidia doesn't manufacture VRAM; it's made by Samsung, Micron, or SK Hynix, which is then procured by either large AIBs directly, or Nvidia bundles it together with its GPUs to sell as a package to board partners. Clearly, the ongoing memory shortage has gotten so out of control that even the Green Team doesn't consider this feasible anymore.

For larger vendors, sourcing GDDR on their own shouldn't be a problem since it's already standard practice. They have enough connections and experience to follow Nvidia's specifications and keep separately-sourced memory aligned with reference designs. It's the smaller partners that might be affected, squeezing margins even more in an already tight industry.

A lot of you may remember how EVGA left the industry, citing growing tensions with Nvidia, alleging mistreatment. Not to speculate too much, but leaving vendors to buy cutting-edge VRAM on their own could put a lot more pressure on low-scale operations, putting them at risk of shutting down, unable to weather the memory drought.

All that being said, this is still just a rumor, so take the news with a huge grain of salt. If it's true, Nvidia is potentially leaving money on the table that would otherwise come home by selling marked-up modules, implying that the economics just don't make sense anymore in the current landscape. All production lines have been hijacked by AI for the foreseeable future.

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Now is a good time to grab a graphics card, as prices on many of the best GPUs, like AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, have finally fallen to MSRP or even below. And GPU price increases are likely on the horizon due to the AI data center gold rush that's consuming every available silicon wafer.

But throwing a powerful new GPU into your existing system won't necessarily improve your gaming experience all by itself. You'll want to make that upgrade without limiting a GPU's utilization or spending its performance potential on rendering wasted frames that don't get displayed. You can also see some of our other tips for navigating the shortages in our RAM pricing survival guide.

How pairing a new GPU and a new monitor could be your best upgrade option

If you're rocking a five- to eight-year-old CPU and a 1080p monitor of a similar vintage, your CPU might not be able to keep up with the overhead of feeding a modern GPU at what is now considered a low resolution.

And even if you are suddenly seeing much higher frame rates in your performance monitoring overlay after an upgrade, you might not actually be enjoying a smoother, more responsive experience if you're still rocking a 60 Hz monitor.

Our recent RTX 5050 testing shows that, on average, upgrading to even a relatively affordable graphics card like an RTX 5060, Radeon RX 9060 XT, or RTX 5060 Ti will give you output frame rates well beyond what a 1080p60 display can fully show.

Hook up an RTX 5070, RX 9070, RX 9070 XT, or RTX 5070 Ti to that same monitor, and you're just rendering even more frames that never get properly displayed. And that's just with native rendering, not with upscaling.

The advent of the DLSS, FSR, and XeSS upscalers and framegen tech like Nvidia's Multi Frame Generation means that your monitor's native resolution and refresh rate are no longer hard caps on performance. You can now balance output frame rates and image quality at will. But if your display has a low resolution and refresh rate to start with, it greatly limits your degrees of freedom when balancing those factors.

Enabling upscaling on a 1080p display, and thus targeting a 1080p output resolution, means DLSS, FSR, and XeSS have lower-quality input data to work with than they would when upscaling to a target resolution of 1440p or 4K. Any performance you add this way is coming at the expense of degraded image quality.

Targeting 1440p or 4K gives upscalers more pixels as input at the same quality settings and, especially in the case of DLSS 4's transformer model, means that you might actually see higher-quality output than with modern games' sorry TAA implementations at native resolutions. You just need the extra pixels in your display to begin with.

Getting the best results from upscaling and framegen with an older CPU

To figure out what potential upgraders with older PCs might face by only upgrading their graphics cards, we pulled a five-year-old Ryzen 9 5950X off the shelf as a representative of the wildly popular family of Zen 3 CPUs and paired it with the thoroughly modern Radeon RX 9070 XT. We then hooked up our ROG Strix XG27UCS 4K 160Hz monitor and got to work with Marvel's Spider-Man 2, a notoriously CPU-heavy game.

With a 1080p monitor running at native resolution, the 9070 XT is already bottlenecked by the 5950X in Spider-Man 2, demonstrating just 88% GPU utilization while delivering 108 FPS. Your first instinct in this situation might be to enable FSR 4 Balanced upscaling, and that change does goose output frame rates to a 114 FPS average, but it only worsens the GPU utilization problem, lowering it to just 84.5%.

We're getting higher performance, but perceptibly worse image quality than native 1080p, and we're leaving resources idle on our $600 GPU. This isn't the way.

Going in the other direction, dialing in native 1440p Very High settings results in a 99.7 FPS average in Spider-Man 2 with 95% GPU utilization. This is better. We only lose a bit of performance versus 1080p, in exchange for a higher output resolution and better image quality, and we're using most of our GPU resources. Even so, further optimization is possible.

Stepping all the way up to 4K Very High essentially maxes out our GPU, which is now at 99% utilization, but output frame rates fall to just 62 FPS on average. Now we're losing smoothness. Dialing in FSR 4 Quality at 4K brings back an 87 FPS average and 99% utilization, which is much better, but we can do more.

The final step is to add FSR framegen, which boosts output frame rates to 164 FPS, on average, while keeping GPU utilization at 99.88%. Because the processing for framegen is occurring on the GPU, it doesn't place additional load on the CPU, as naively enabling FSR Balanced and Performance might.

With FSR 4's Quality preset and framegen enabled on our 9070 XT paired with a 4K display, we get higher frame rates and smoother perceived output than native 1080p, while avoiding CPU bottlenecks and giving FSR 4 room to deliver superior image quality. It's a win-win, and you can't tell that you're gaming on a five-year-old CPU at all.

Low-cost, big-time upgrades

That's a lot to digest, so in summary: If you're considering a GPU upgrade for an older system, make sure that you can keep as much of the work on the graphics card as possible. Counterintuitively, that may mean using higher resolutions, higher-quality upscaling settings, and framegen rather than performance-oriented upscaling settings alone. To enable all that tuning, you need a good high-resolution, high-refresh-rate monitor to go with your new GPU.

All that might sound snobbish, but the joy of PC gaming is that you can still be a snob and a penny pincher all at once. Upgrading to a high-refresh-rate 4K display doesn't have to be expensive at all.

For just one example, MSI comes in clutch with the MAG 275UPD, which is just $229.99 and offers dual 4K/144Hz and 1080p/288Hz refresh rate modes. Even better, Newegg will knock another $30 off with the promo code BFEFE82.

Just $200 for a display of this caliber—with wide color, variable refresh rates from 48-144Hz, and a fully adjustable stand—is crazy. And unlike many other PC components, a high-quality LCD monitor like this should last for a good long while.

Low prices on long-lasting components that might let you extend your existing PC's lifespan is the kind of Hallmark-movie Black Friday story we dream of, and here one is. Grab a new GPU and the right display to go with it, and you'll enjoy smooth, detailed gaming for many years to come.

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Keeping the same TSMC 4N node, the RTX 5080 houses the GB203 processor, along with 16GB of VRAM for playing the latest and greatest video games in high fidelity. If you want to power a high-resolution monitor with a very fast refresh rate, you will need one of the more powerful GPUs on the market to succeed, especially if you're looking at 4K gaming with high refresh rates.

Modern game titles can easily suck up the available VRAM on GPUs with 8 to 12GB, as I've found with games like Battlefield 6, which swallows 13GB with not even max settings. Games can store shaders and textures in memory, allowing for smoother gameplay at higher resolutions without compromising on graphical fidelity, so in some cases, having a larger VRAM budget is a bonus, and the good news is the RTX 5080 comes with 16GB.

The second most powerful Nvidia Blackwell GPU available currently, PNY's AIB variant features 16GB of the fastest GDDR7 VRAM using a 256-bit memory bus, which allows a memory bandwidth of 960GB/s. An increase in shader cores means the RTX 5080 rocks 10,752 CUDA cores, at a base clock of 2.3GHz, with the ability to boost to clock speeds to 2.62GHz.

The RTX 5080 has a small generational uplift over the previous generation in pure rasterization, with more gains in ray-tracing and DLSS 4 integration. You can see our testing results from our review of the RTX 5080, where we focus on gaming at higher resolutions such as 4K for this high-end graphics card.

Second only to the RTX 5090 and RTX 4090, the RTX 5080 is a high-end graphics card for equally high-end gaming PC setups, but it does come at a price. Paying anywhere near $1000 for a GPU is a hard enough pill to swallow, but you must also consider that you will require an adequately powered PSU and a decent gaming monitor. There is no point in buying a great graphics card if you don't have a good screen to experience it on, and vice versa.

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Despite those restrictions, someone has benchmarked the now contraband 6000D in Geekbench 6.5, GPU boasting an OpenCL score just ahead of the RTX 5090D V2 and just below the RTX Pro 6000.

The RTX 6000D scored 390,656 points in Geekbench 6.5's OpenCL benchmark. The card's performance is a mere 1% higher than Nvidia's RTX 5090D V2, which boasts an OpenCL score of 386,710 points. The 6000D is also roughly 5% slower than its bigger brother, the RTX Pro 6000 server edition, which boasts a score of 410,605 points.

That's not a big gap, especially considering the spec difference between the two RTX 6000 series GPUs. The RTX Pro 6000 comes with 96GB of GDDR7 operating on a 512-bit interface, spread over 32 chips with 3GB of capacity each. The GPU also comes with 24,064 CUDA cores split across 188 SMs.

The RTX 6000D comes with 14% less memory and memory bandwidth, along with 20% fewer CUDA cores. It has 84GB of GDDR7 memory connected to a 448-bit bus and 19,968 CUDA cores spread across 156 SMs.

Geekbench's OpenCL benchmark represents just one workload, so take these performance results with a pinch of salt. Shader compute performance usually takes the smallest hit on Nvidia's neutered China-exclusive GPUs. AI performance usually takes a much larger hit, and it's that workload that the USA's export controls care about. (These D-series GPUs are designed to comply with the U.S. government's China-specific export regulations on GPUs.)

The RTX 6000D's favorable performance against the RTX Pro 6000 could have been compelling for customers if the price was right, and the card was launched in the right context. The RTX 6000D couldn't have launched into a less favorable environment. Not only did the Chinese government ban the card months after launch—it also purportedly faced tough competition from Chinese GPU manufacturers.

Against those headwinds, the RTX Pro 6000D's story is likely to become a footnote of what might have been in the annals of GPU history, regardless of its objective performance.

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Now that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5050 has arrived at a $249 MSRP (and you can find RX 9060 XT 8GB cards for well under $300), the B580 faces some stiff competition - and it's readily been available from stock for that same $249 of late.

This Black Friday season, however, RTX 5050 cards have dropped as low as $219, addressing one of our greatest complaints about that card's price-to-performance ratio. Is that enough to make the RTX 5050 a winner versus the B580?

Let's pit the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 vs Intel Arc B580 head-to-head and see which one is better positioned to win your gaming dollars.

Rasterization

Raster gaming performance

At 1080p, where most gamers shopping in this price class will likely play, you can barely fit a nanosheet transistor between the Arc B580 and the RTX 5050 for raster gaming performance across our 12-game test suite.

At 1440p, the Arc B580's 12GB of VRAM lets it shine, while the RTX 5050 falls significantly behind. The B580 also maintains a relatively strong standing at 4K while the RTX 5050 falls down the charts (even though we wouldn't recommend either of these cards for 4K gaming).

⭐ Winner: Arc B580, but check the games you like to play for performance pitfalls if possible

Ray-tracing

Ray-traced gaming performance

Much as with our raster results, the RTX 5050 and the Arc B580 are neck and neck at 1080p across our eight-game RT test suite. At 1440p, the RTX 5050 pulls ahead (possibly thanks to Blackwell's more mature RT architecture).

All that said, you shouldn't buy either of these cards purely for RT performance (except in less demanding RT games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, or GTA V Enhanced.) For a good RT baseline at 1080p, you really want an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB.

⭐ Winner: Tie (but neither of these cards are really built for hardcore RT)

Power

Power efficiency

While the 5050 and B580 are neck-and-neck in performance at 1080p in raster titles, the GeForce card draws substantially less power to deliver roughly the same number of frames on average, and so it naturally ends up being more efficient in frames per watt. Even at 1440p, where the 5050 falls behind in raster, its lower power draw still lets it stay slightly more efficient than the B580.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

Upscaling

Upscaling and framegen

As a Blackwell card, the RTX 5050 gets all the latest DLSS 4 goodness, from the latest transformer-powered upscaling model to Multi Frame Generation. DLSS upscaling remains best in class, and we're fans of MFG when it's implemented well. DLSS upscaling is in pretty much every game that needs it, and if a game hasn't implemented the DLSS 4 transformer model yet, you can generally force it on via the Nvidia App to get an image quality boost.

The issue is that both MFG and DLSS upscaling require chunks of VRAM to work their magic, and if you're already pushing the limits of the 5050's 8GB of VRAM, as you often will be with the latest AAA games, MFG might not work as expected.

That reality makes the RTX 5050 less appealing than other Blackwell cards for cutting-edge gaming, but if you only play popular esports or battle royale titles that don't pressure VRAM much, you might not care.

The Arc B580 can take advantage of the best version of Intel's XeSS upscaler, which we generally prefer to AMD's cross-platform FSR where it's available. XeSS 1.x is in 324 games by our latest count, meaning you have a decent chance of finding it in a settings menu. Unfortunately, the latest XeSS 2 with framegen support is only in 44 games, and that number hasn't budged for a while.

Those titles will receive XeSS Multi Frame Gen support at some point in the future (at the Panther Lake launch in January, if we had to guess), either through native integration or through an app override, but Intel needs to get its latest tech into way more titles at a much faster pace if it wants to keep up with Nvidia. You can, of course, use AMD's FSR upscaling and framegen on the B580, where it's available, but FSR upscaling often looks worse than XeSS, so it's not as much of an advantage as you might hope.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

Pro apps

Pro apps and content creation

It's difficult to make an overall judgment about content creation and pro app performance. Unlike gaming, where frames per second can easily be distilled into a geomean, pro users are generally only using one app (or suite of apps) to do their work, and performance in that app can make or break an entire purchase.

We haven't tested the RTX 5050 against our full pro app and content creation suite yet, but in our last full test, the comparable RTX 4060 took home the crown in 11 tests versus the Arc B580's seven wins.

Going purely on experience, we know that Nvidia has basically limitless cash and resources to ensure that more or less every application works well with its products (witness its Studio driver program). At this price point, outright performance doesn't matter as much as stability and compatibility do, and we would give the nod to Nvidia there.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

Drivers and software

Drivers and software

Nvidia's Game Ready drivers reliably appear alongside the latest game releases, and Nvidia has a history of quickly deploying hotfixes to address specific show-stopping issues.

As we just noted, games aren’t the only place where drivers matter. Nvidia’s massive financial advantage over the competition means that non-gamers who still need GPU acceleration, like those using Adobe or other creative apps, can generally trust that their GeForce card will offer a stable experience with that software.

The Nvidia App (formerly GeForce Experience) includes tons of handy features, like one-click settings optimization and game recording tools. Nvidia also provides useful tools, like Broadcast, free of charge for GeForce RTX owners.

Intel has kept up a steady pace of new driver releases with support for the latest games, though broader app support may be a question mark. Intel Graphics Software has a slick enough UI and an everything-you-need, nothing-you-don't feature set for overclocking and image quality settings. We wouldn't choose an Arc card based solely on Intel's software support, but the company has proven its commitment to maintaining its software alongside its hardware. Still, though, Nvidia's track record on drivers and software is hard to beat.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

VR

Virtual reality

While VR hasn't changed the world to the degree its boosters once promised it would, the enduring popularity of apps like Beat Saber and VRChat means that we should at least give it a cursory look here.

This one is easy: the RTX 5050 boasts VR support, and the Arc B580 doesn't. Intel has never said whether or when it intends to support VR HMDs with its graphics cards, so until that changes, we have to give the win to Nvidia by default.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

Pricing and value

Pricing and value

The Arc B580 launched at an ostensible $249.99 MSRP, but for many months after its launch, prices for both Intel's Limited Edition card and partner cards settled well above that suggested price, dampening Intel's budget-friendly gaming story for the B580. Late this summer, prices finally settled within a few bucks of MSRP on more B580 cards (around the time of the RTX 5050 launch), and they've basically stayed there since, making the B580 a better value of late than it was at launch.

The RTX 5050 has been readily available at its $249 MSRP ever since its launch, but going by the results we saw in our review, $229 would be a fairer price for this card given its performance delta with the next card up the Blackwell stack: the $299 RTX 5060.

Which of these cards is a better value, dollar-for-dollar? We think that the RTX 5050's widespread support for DLSS 4 upscaling, better power efficiency, and strong 1080p gaming performance are all hard to ignore.

The Arc B580's 12GB of VRAM is situationally useful if you're trying to game at 1440p on a budget, but Intel's still-nascent XeSS integration base, lower power efficiency, and less mature software ecosystem swing the needle back toward the RTX 5050 here. Just not by that much.

⭐ Winner: RTX 5050

Verdict

RTX 5050 vs Arc B580 Verdict

We ask a lot of our graphics cards these days. You're not just buying a card and a driver. You're buying into an entire software stack and developer relations effort that actually lets you take advantage of all the features your GPU vendor promises. And you want all those features to just work when you sit down to enjoy your limited gaming time.

At MSRP, the $249 RTX 5050 still feels a bit overpriced for the performance it delivers. But in the world we live in, where graphics card buyers have exactly two options at this price point, it's a better general pick than Intel's Arc B580. The B580 can steal a win from the 5050 here and there, but the whole Arc enchilada just isn't up to what Nvidia is offering.

There are a couple specialized use cases where the Arc B580 still shines. If you need to do 1440p gaming on a budget, or you're big into AI, the B580's extra VRAM (and, apparently, better utilization of its compute resources at higher resolutions) lets it pull ahead. But we don't feel like those wins are worthy of a general recommendation.

As we noted in our review, the real spoiler for the RTX 5050 and the Arc B580 is AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB, which has consistently been available for $269 on Amazon for some time, and for as little as $249 during the 2025 Black Friday deals season. It delivers much higher raster frame rates at 1080p than the RTX 5050 and Arc B580 for just a bit more money.

In raster games that aren't limited by VRAM, which describes many of today's most popular titles on the PC, the 9060 XT wipes the floor with everything further down the ladder, and it isn't even close.

Those pricing pressures have led to relatively deep discounts on the RTX 5050 of late. As Black Friday 2025 gets into full swing, we've seen prices for some of these cards fall as low as $219.99, which makes the RTX 5050's shortcomings easier to accept for budget gaming.

Transient discounts aside, our judgment stands: if you only have $250 to spend and can't spend a dollar more, our nod has to go to the RTX 5050 until something better comes along.

🏆 Winner: RTX 5050

The subject of graphics card pricing has been a contentious one for a number of years now. Prices and power draw have risen generation upon generation, and cryptocurrency-induced shortages have occasionally spiked demand and the cost of a new GPU in turn. 2025 started with something similar, though that seemed to be more down to deliberately constrained supply — or perhaps a shift of Nvidia and AMD's focus to AI.

That's only become more apparent throughout the year, and as data centers the world over ate up GPUs, CPUs, memory, storage, and anything else they could get their hands on (including entire power plants), prices for most components have risen in turn. None quite so much as memory, though, which has jumped close to 200% per stick in recent months, and that shortage is now making its way into other industries: most notably, graphics cards.

PowerColor recently warned that GPU price rises were coming, and AMD seems to have now confirmed it to its suppliers and board partners. In the translated text, UDN's sources claim it'll be by at least 10%, suggesting that could be the floor of AMD's potential price rises. However, Mr Nystedt suggests that 10% is the figure, so we'll have to wait and see how it shakes out or for an official announcement from AMD, to know for sure.

This is unfortunate timing for AMD which has struggled to get the price of its flagship RX 9070 XT even close to its recommended retail price throughout the year. It just managed it this week, hitting $599 for the first-time since release as part of Black Friday. But that seems likely to be incredibly short-lived. Not least because that's a decent deal for a great graphics card.

AMD is unlikely to be alone in its GPU prices rises either. Nvidia is expected to have delayed the launch of an RTX 50 Super series of graphics cards because of memory shortages, and unlikely to lose profit on its graphics cards when selling to gamers since it makes so much selling them to data center developers.

If you're keen to get ahead of the price rises and want to buy a graphics card before the end of the year, here's our list of the best graphics cards out there right now. Better yet, check out our Black Friday deals page to see if there's something you can snap up before anyone else.

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The Radeon RX 9070 XT is based on AMD’s Navi 48 GPU, featuring 64 RDNA 4 compute units, a 2.97 GHz boost clock, and 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit interface. With a Total Board Power (TBP) of 304W, the card delivers a strong balance between performance and efficiency. On paper, the RX 9070 XT offers up to 48.7 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance, marking a significant generational leap.

We gave the RX 9070 XT 4.5 stars in our review for its price-to-performance ratio, now that you can get the card for its original MSRP, the GPU represents good value for money, with excellent 1440p performance, and decent 4K performance at a much more palatable price compared to the competition.

In our review of the Radeon RX 9070 XT, our benchmarking tests found AMD's flagship graphics card to be an amazing performer for the price compared to the competition. Its main disadvantages were the initial availability and inflated prices. Now that we have more stock, prices have begun to drop from their astronomical highs. The 9070 XT is a great proposition for an upgrade or a new PC build.

You can see from our performance chart below that across our suite of gaming benchmark tests, the RX 9070 XT outperforms the RTX 5070, and is on par with Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti. The 9070 XT is also cheaper than the RTX 5070 Ti, but you do lose ground on the Nvidia card in terms of ray-traced performance and DLSS 4 integration.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best Black Friday PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

Graphics cards are typically the most expensive components in a computer. So, when you get your hands on one for free, it's like the universe finally throwing a bone at you, rewarding you for years of kindness and suffering. Then, if that GPU suddenly gets enveloped in a legal feud, you start to second-guess your alliances, shattering loyalties in a moment. Such is the bittersweet ordeal that unfolded in China this past week, where an employee almost lost his shiny new RTX 5060 but ultimately walked away with both the GPU and a story.

That same evening, he was told by a colleague that the finance department had already caught wind of this, and since the company would bear the costs, he should hand in the GPU. Later on, the winner reminisced about how accounts knew of no such thing, revealing that perhaps that coworker was just jealous in hindsight. Regardless, the news quickly spread, and the company became aware of the intern's blessed fortune. You can imagine how things took a turn from this point.

The firm gradually grew more contentious, demanding that the RTX 5060 be handed in because the event it was acquired at was part of a business trip, entirely paid for by the company. The employee would never have won the GPU had the firm not enabled him to attend the venue. Our winner refused, arguing that it belonged to him because he had won it on his own by pure luck. Neither party was willing to step down, and eventually the company's higher-ups got involved, repeatedly questioning him.

Even though the firm considered the RTX 5060 company property, it ultimately didn't confiscate the GPU. HR then told the intern to "look for another company," and he submitted his resignation that night. Assuming general corporate tendencies, the worker either had to be extremely steadfast or was paid like a typical intern (or not at all), so leaving the company over a $400 GPU was more worthwhile. Though staying without giving up the card might've harbored an even more hostile environment.

Lawyers discussing the case sided with the intern, saying that a prize won by random chance belongs to the person holding the ticket. It doesn't matter whether they were there on behalf of the business; in that moment, the employee wasn't fulfilling his duties when participating in the raffle. Unless the contract or internal rules explicitly address company property matters, in a legal standoff, the employee is in a stronger position.

Netizens agreed with this sentiment, with some mockingly asking whether the firm would've maintained the same tenacity and reimbursed the Internet had he been fined 50,000 RMB at the event instead. At the end, this story serves as a potent reminder to stand up for yourself in a corporate world that seldom sees you as anything more than replaceable.

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If you're a PC gamer, you already know what AMD's FSR is. FidelityFX Super Resolution is ubiquitous in PC games because it's extremely easy to implement and works on almost literally any graphics card. The most common forms, being the first two versions of FSR, are generally considered the worst upscaling option available in any particular game, but they're almost always available.

AMD's page discusses its upcoming FSR 'Redstone' technology, which was recently previewed in the troubled Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The story has gotten buried amid outrage over Activision's new shooter, which heavily uses AI-generated assets. Still, AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS Ray Reconstruction, called Ray Regeneration, is now available in Black Ops 7. Preliminary results are... well, they're interesting, in that they're neither uniformly better nor clearly worse than Nvidia's tech. The output is definitely different between the two GPU vendors, though, and that isn't what you want in a competitive shooter.

It's a bit of an odd choice, because FSR is quite literally an acronym that stands for "FidelityFX Super Resolution". Presumably, AMD is changing the name because the full name is quite long and unwieldy, or because "FSR" now represents more than just super resolution. But if it doesn't stand for "FidelityFX Super Resolution" anymore, what does it mean? It's certainly not a pronounceable word in its own right. It's a very odd choice from AMD.

Currently, we have FSR 4 upscaling in shipping games, and FSR Ray Regeneration in preview. That's two out of the four FSR 'Redstone' technologies, with the other two being ML-based frame generation (including multi-frame generation) and then FSR Radiance Caching, which is a feature that uses a small neural network that knows how light bounces and propagates through a scene to predict the correct amount of light at a given point. Nvidia's had Neural Radiance Caching for a while; it was released as an experimental feature with the RTXGI SDK 2.0 back in March of last year.

If Ray Regeneration and Radiance Caching seem specifically geared toward ray tracing, that's because they are. Whether we gamers like it or not, the bleeding edge of gaming graphics is barreling toward a path-traced future, and the expectation is that next-generation game consoles (or at least the PlayStation 6) will be built around fully path-traced graphics, similar to Cyberpunk 2077's RT Overdrive mode.

This is unbelievably taxing even on today's best graphics cards, though, so we need these AI-based shortcuts even to approximate the appearance of properly path-traced graphics. Unfortunately, this does imply that the next few years of games might be characterized by smeary, sparkly output, thanks to this reliance on temporal upscaling and frame generation technologies to try to cover up the fact that we can't cast enough rays to make it look good in motion.

AMD has set a release date of December 10th for FSR Redstone, as we reported earlier. It's not entirely clear that even RDNA 4 gamers should be specifically excited about that date, though; this isn't a driver feature gamers can tick to enjoy immediately. Instead, it's up to game developers to implement support for the new rendering technologies into their games. Admittedly, FSR 4 upscaling can be toggled in the driver to "upgrade" some FSR 3 games to FSR 4 upscaling, but Redstone seems more complex, and we'd be surprised if the same method worked. We won't know for sure until it actually comes out next month.

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The performance issues from Microsoft's latest update are likely far more egregious than most people were expecting. Sabastian saw a whopping 47% improvement in average FPS in Assassin's Creed Shadows from Nvidia's last outgoing stable driver 581.80 compared to its latest 581.94 hotfix driver. Similarly, 1% lows were 46% better on the hotfix driver as well.

Another X poster, Daniel Nowak, also shared similar performance behavior in the same game, but his comparison was made with a slightly older driver. Daniel saw a 65% performance improvement going from driver 581.57 to Nvidia's new hotfix driver. These performance regressions are massive, but only affect certain games according to Nvidia, so it might not be worth upgrading to 581.94 if you are not experiencing any noticeable performance drops. The 581.94 hotfix driver is considered a "beta" driver, so there may be additional bugs introduced by installing it.

Performance issues started cropping up with Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 October 2025 update KB5066835, which introduced a bug that could reduce FPS in certain circumstances. This bug has yet to be fixed by Microsoft and is the reason why Nvidia is now stepping in to fix the issue for themselves, at least for Nvidia GPU owners. Sadly, AMD and Intel GPUs are also affected by this bug, but no new drivers have come out yet from either vendor to fix the issue.

This latest hotfix update is quite different from what we are accustomed to seeing Nvidia fixing with these drivers. Earlier this year, most (if not all) of Nvidia's hotfix drivers were dedicated to fixing issues surrounding RTX 50 series GPUs, including crashes, clock speed issues, and display-related problems. With driver 581.94, Nvidia is fixing an issue that was caused by Microsoft, not itself.

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Peeking at the Overclock.net forums (page 1202 onwards) will show you various folk flashing the 800W XOC BIOS on their cards as soon as Benni231990 first posted the link for it a couple of days ago. It's relatively straightforward to install with NV Flash, but not every model is compatible right away. Variants like Gigabyte's Aorus Xtreme Waterforce can easily accept this firmware, likely because they match the ROG Matrix's three-channel fan header setup.

Variants with no fan headers, like liquid-cooled models, are also in the green, but some other models, like Asus TUF, have only two fan headers and simply don't work at the moment. This includes Asus' other high-end RTX 5090, the Astral, which many users complained about on the forums. Some models from PNY, Palit, and Zotac were also ruled out as compatible, as more and more people began testing it.

Regardless, the performance boost is visible: these BIOS-modded 5090s are running at 100-200 MHz higher boost clocks than Nvidia's stock numbers and Asus' own claim of up to +323 MHz on the actual ROG Matrix card. This is extreme overclocking territory, so gains are marginal, but it's all about topping the charts, and any bit helps, including custom BIOSes.

This leads to higher sustained clock speeds across the board in games and productivity applications, bolstered by increased power consumption, as shown in the screenshots below. Cyberpunk 2077 gets a few more FPS at 4K resolution as well, and users have been reporting slightly better numbers at the same core clock and memory offsets across a number of games.

As far as the 800W BIOS is concerned, Asus achieved this feat by combining two interfaces: the 16-pin power connector rated for 600W, working alongside a GC-HPWR adapter designed for back-connect motherboards. Forcing this firmware on cards without the custom PCB and cooling of the ROG Matrix cards is, therefore, quite risky, and you might just be accelerating a headline appearance.

The BIOS is available on TPU, but exercise extreme caution; it will most certainly void your warranty. Previously, shunt mods that trick the GPU's resistors into accepting much more power than they think they can handle were used to unlock this sort of headroom. Now, a simple BIOS flash is promising to unlock up to 200W of extra leeway to experiment with and, with the proper cooling, break world records.

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Dell and HP confirmed to Ars Technica that a number of their laptops, including Dell's 'standard and base systems' as well as HP's EliteBook and ProBook 600 Series G11, 400 Series G11, and 200 Series G9 laptops, come with disabled support for hardware decoding of video streams encoded using the HEVC/H.265 codec. Dell emphasized that systems featuring an integrated 4K display, a standalone GPU, Dolby Vision, or Cyberlink Blu-ray software come equipped with HEVC/H.265 hardware decoding capability. Interestingly, Dell advises users to purchase 'an affordable third-party app from the Microsoft Store' to re-enable HEVC decoding.

While neither Dell nor HP explained the motives behind removing hardware decoding capability that has been around for a long time, Ars Technica believes that the companies are trying to cut down costs as HEVC/H.265 codec patent holders plan to increase their licensing fees in the short term. Indeed, to support hardware decoding of HEVC/H.265 videos on a device, device makers must pay royalties to MPEG LA ($0.2 per device, or $25 million per annum per entity), HEVC Advance (up to $1 per device, or annual license cap of $40 million), Velos Media (rumored between $1 and $2 per device), Via LA ($0.25 per unit or $25 million per entity per annum). Given that both Dell and HP sell tens of millions of PCs every year, the drop in such licensing payments translates into huge savings amounting to tens of millions of dollars per year. However, such savings also translate to greatly reduced experience for end users.

Virtually all discrete and integrated GPUs support hardware decoding of video streams encoded using the HEVC/H.265 codec, as the first GPUs featuring this capability emerged in 2015 – 2017 (starting with Kaby Lake in Intel's case). GPU developers must pay to implement HEVC hardware decode at the silicon level, so patent pools get their money directly from companies like Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, or Qualcomm. However, to enable hardware decoding on the device level, OEMs must pay patent pools as well. If they do not pay royalty fees, they must disable the capability on the software (by modifying drivers) or firmware level, or by asking their GPU vendor to fuse the capability off in silicon (which is not something that is usually done).

If a capability is turned off using a modified driver, then an end-user can easily re-enable it by installing generic drivers from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia, but at the cost of losing some customizations. However, things disabled on the firmware level are hard to restore. Also, despite Dell's advice, no third-party player can re-enable hardware HEVC decoding if it is disabled in drivers or firmware. It can only add power-hungry software decoding, but this is probably something that many pre-installed programs can do by default.

As a result, it looks like users of inexpensive systems now have to prefer content encoded using AV1 or other open-source hardware codecs, or hope that their CPUs are powerful enough to decode high-resolution HEVC streams.

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The list of GPU IP blocks for which AMD adds hardware enablement includes PSP 15.0.8 (platform security), IH 7.1 (interrupt handler), MMHUB 4.2 (graphics IP), GFXHUB 12.1 (GPU IP), and GMC 12.1 (graphics and memory controller).

AMD has not officially disclosed which of its products use the GFX 12.1 IP, but its latest Radeon RX 9000-series GPUs based on the RDNA 4 architecture use GFX 12 IP. To that end, GFX 12.1 may either point to a superset of the GFX 12 IP for integrated GPUs, AMD's next-generation RDNA 5-based GPUs, or next-generation CDNA 5-based accelerators. A leak from earlier this year indicates that the GFX1250 monikers are reserved for CDNA 5 accelerators, whereas GFX1300 monikers are reportedly meant for RDNA 5 GPUs.

GFX 12.1 IP could point to integrated RDNA 4-based GPUs that have tangible differences from the existing RDNA 4 graphics processors, which justify a new IP denominator, or it could point to the next-generation Instinct MI400-series accelerators based on the CDNA 5. The latter is more likely, as all Zen 5-based APUs rely on RDNA 3.5 GPUs, so it might be too early for RDNA 4-based iGPUs.

HXL points out that AMD's GFX1250 index belongs to the AI-oriented Instinct MI450-series GPUs, whereas the GFX1251 moniker belongs to the HPC-bound Instinct MI430-series processors. Of course, AMD has never confirmed this.

The beginning of the Instinct MI400-series enablement highlights steady execution of AMD's Instinct and CDNA roadmaps both for AI and HPC segments and could serve an indirect testament that the company is on track to refresh its family of Instinct accelerators with all-new offerings next year.

The key question in all of this is when exactly AMD intends to launch its next-generation AI offering — the Instinct MI450 product — and whether it will be able to ramp up its production as well as production of its Helios rack-scale solution based on its EPYC Venice CPUs and Instinct MI450 GPUs before Nvidia rolls out its Vera Rubin platform featuring its next-generation hardware sometimes in Q3 2026.

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• Check out this deal on Overclockers UK

A discounted price of just £169.99 for this Acer Nitro Intel Arc B570 OC graphics card is ridiculously good value, thanks to that 35% saving, and one that I personally think makes this an essential purchase if you’re looking for a GPU on a budget. Seriously, ignore the AMD and Nvidia entry-level options right now, as they'll cost you £100+ more with just 8GB of VRAM. You simply won’t see a better cost-to-performance ratio than you'll find with this Intel GPU right now.

Looking at the specs first, this Acer Nitro-branded Arc B570 graphics card ships with 10GB of GDDR6 VRAM, operating on a 160-bit memory bus. It also comes with 18 Xe2 GPU cores, along with a beefed-up boost clock rate of 2,690MHz. You also get a three-year warranty as standard, so there’s coverage if you run into any issues.

The Arc B570 is an entry-level GPU, so you’d be forgiven for thinking it might struggle with performance. The benchmark data from our Intel Arc B570 review, featuring a similarly overclocked ASRock card, proves that simply isn’t the case, with decent frame rate scores on average across the board, and even remaining playable when using ultra graphics presets with ray tracing enabled.

Intel has also been taking great strides to improve performance further with its XeSS upscaling tech by adding multi-frame gen support to cards like these. That’s a feature we’ve only seen on Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series cards up until now, and before its AMD rivals have seen anything similar. It’s also a feature that can have an immediate positive impact on frame rates in any particularly resource-intensive games.

The Acer Nitro Arc B570 OC would be astronomical value on its own at this price, but Intel’s Holiday Bundle makes it a jaw-dropper. Running until 31st January, 2026, you can claim a free copy of Battlefield 6, Dying Light: The Beast, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, or Civilization VI with each purchase. BF6 retails for around £60, so getting the two together makes the equivalent value of this Acer-made B570 just £110, especially given Battlefield 6 is essentially brand new and can't be found on the likes of Xbox Game Pass.

A sales price of £169.99 for a 1080p-capable gaming GPU with 10GB VRAM, along with a free copy of Battlefield 6, makes this the essential upgrade for any budget-conscious gamers out there. This is one Black Friday deal that we expect to sell out pretty quickly, so if you’re looking for a graphics card that won’t break the bank, jump on this Acer Nitro card, fast.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, or CPU Deals pages.

The operation was led by Brian Curtis Raymond, founder of Bitworks, a Huntsville, Alabama-based AI hardware distributor that sells products from AMD, Nvidia, PNY, and Sapphire, among others. Bitworks legally acquired restricted hardware — including Nvidia A100, H100, and H200 accelerators for AI and HPC workloads and 10 HPE supercomputers — and then sold it to Tampa, Florida-based Janford Realtor, which was controlled by Hon Ning 'Mathew' Ho, a U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong.

Janford Realtor then organized illegal exports of restricted GPUs and other hardware to China through Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. According to the accusations, Hon Ning Ho would submit or direct false paperwork, fake contracts, and fraudulent export declarations; Cham Li would route actual shipments through Malaysia and Thailand (bypassing U.S. export controls); and Jing Chen would arrange China-side reception and payments. Proceeds for restricted hardware would be wired to Janford Realtor, which would launder the money for Bitworks.

The operation ran from September 2023 to November 2025 after the U.S. government imposed export controls on A100, H100, and more advanced GPUs. The conspirators have successfully smuggled 400 A100 GPUs to China between October 2024 and January 2025, and then attempted to export an additional 10 HPE supercomputers containing H100 GPUs and 50 standalone H200 GPUs to China, but failed as law enforcement intervened.

The DOJ states that the group had received over $3.89 million in wire transfers from China to fund the purchase and illegal export of these GPUs. The money flow, combined with false contracts, falsified shipping paperwork, and deceptive routing, is now used to form the basis for the conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

$3.89 million in wire transfers from China over a little more than two years is hardly a considerable sum given the context of the AI hardware market, where AI accelerators retail for $20,000 - $50,000 a unit. Last year, the DOJ began investigating Supermicro for shipments of restricted hardware to China and Russia that bypassed U.S. export controls. Just two episodes of alleged shipments to Russia through Turkey and Hong Kong were valued at $76.3 million. Given the scale of Supermicro — which earned $21.053 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year — the potential violations could be very significant. That probe is still ongoing.

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While Nvidia says that only some games were affected by the bug, it seems to have been significant enough for it to release a hotfix instead of waiting for its regular driver update release schedule. Team Green says that GPU drivers are incredibly complex, especially as it has to deal with a potentially infinite number of hardware and software configurations. Because of this, it usually releases driver updates in line with major hardware and game launches after extensive testing.

However, this means that major issues could remain unaddressed as existing users wait for Nvidia’s regular release cadence. Because of this, the company drops hotfixes, which are released in advance to resolve major issues as soon as possible. For example, when the newly-launched 50-series GPUs started crashing and producing black screens, Nvidia dropped a hotfix outside of its usual release cadence to address the problem. When some issues remained unsolved, the company dropped another hotfix just a week after that to further address crashes and clock speeds.

Windows Updates have recently been breaking a lot of stuff, including one that made USB keyboards and mice unusable in the Windows Recovery Environment and another that triggers BitLocker and encrypts your hard drive without warning. Thankfully, Nvidia stepped up relatively quickly and released an update to fix what the Windows Update broke. It’s unclear if Intel and AMD will release driver updates of their own to deal with KB5066835, especially as neither company has acknowledged any Windows Update-related problems so far, but Windows Latest said that GPUs from Intel and AMD are also suffering from performance issues brought about by this particular patch.

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"We are on track to deliver Vera Rubin about Q3 time frame of next year, continuing our once-a-year cycle," Jensen Huang told Bloomberg. "Vera Rubin, seven different chips, are back in our labs, and the bring-up is happening across engineering teams. Probably... 20,000 people are bringing up Vera Rubin from silicon, to systems, to software, to algorithms, people are working around the clock. And this bring-up is going beautifully."

When talking about the Vera Rubin platform at Nvidia's GTC 2025, even in late October, Huang told the audience that the hardware would be in production this time next year, 'maybe slightly earlier.' Apparently, the company is on track to launch its next-generation data center platform already in the third quarter, so in the fourth quarter, the company will likely ship a significant number of Rubin GPUs, which will help the company to achieve its goal of selling $0.5 trillion worth of AI GPUs by the end of 2026.

Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform consists of the dual-chiplet Rubin GPU with 288 GB of HBM4 memory, the Rubin CPX accelerator with 128 GB of GDDR7 for the next-generation Vera CPU with 88 custom cores, the BlueField-4 DPU, a 6th-generation NVLink switch for scale-up scalability, and next-generation Ethernet and InfiniBand adapters for scale-out connectivity. All of the chips belonging to the Vera Rubin platform have taped out, and Nvidia has working silicon.

As AI is getting adopted by a wide range of companies, government agencies, and scientific organizations all around the world, the company can sell tons of its AI accelerators and adjoining chips. Therefore, the company is reportedly set to achieve the $0.5 trillion goal without taking into account China, its third-largest market just a year ago. Earlier this year, the U.S. government banned sales of all advanced AI processors (including AMD's cut-down Instinct MI308 and Nvidia's cut-down H20 GPUs) to China, whereas recently, Beijing forbade government organizations from buying foreign hardware, instead relying on domestic alternatives as part of the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

Due to uncertainties with sales to China, Nvidia no longer includes the People's Republic in its revenue forecasts.

"We have said for some time now, our forecast for China is zero," Huang said. "[…] We would love the opportunity to be able to re-engage the Chinese market with the excellent products that we deliver and to be able to compete globally. The Chinese [AI] market is very large. This year, my guess is probably about $50 billion. […] We are going to continue to engage the U.S. government, continue to engage the China government to advise them and to encourage them to allow us to go back and compete in the open market. Until then, we should assume zero."

Huang also denied that many of Nvidia's GPUs officially bound for other markets (such as Singapore) are diverted to China and said that the company regularly checks data centers worldwide to ensure that there is no diversion of restricted hardware to restricted countries like China.

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• Check out this deal on Amazon

That’s because Amazon has slashed the price of this Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC graphics card to just £569.90. Camelcamelcamel’s historical price data confirms that this Gigabyte card has been steadily dropping in price over recent weeks, but this is as low as it’s been up until now. While one or two RX 9070 XT cards without the beefed-up OC specs can be bought for slightly less, this Black Friday deal is the pinnacle right now if you’re looking for an AMD GPU upgrade.

Let’s look at why the RX 9070 XT has had such an impact on the gaming GPU market and why we've placed it at the top of our best GPU list. As our RX 9070 XT review explains, this is a GPU that offers serious performance improvements over its predecessors. It comes with 64 RDNA 4 compute units, but as this card is factory overclocked, it also ships with an increased boost clock speed of 3,060MHz. The RX 9070 XT is also equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus, operating at a memory speed of 20 Gbps.

For gamers, this means you’re getting a GPU that can rival the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, despite typically being £100 cheaper. It will smash through 1080p gaming on Ultra graphics presets, as our benchmark graphs show, while also easily handling gameplay at 1440p. It’s even an option for 4K, depending on the game you’re playing, with that extra memory providing a boost over weaker, entry-level GPUs with only 8GB of VRAM like the RX 9060 XT.

A £569.90 sale price makes this Gigabyte-made RX 9060 XT graphics card one of the best bargains for a Black Friday PC upgrade, especially if you’re a serious gamer. If you want to unlock 1440p and 4K gaming on the cheap, you’ll want to pick up a card like this one, especially before the stock runs out.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, or CPU Deals pages.

With stark warnings from AIB industry veterans , it might be a long time until you can get a good deal on a GPU. Prices are likely to rise due to the memory price hikes that are sure to be passed on to the consumer.

• Grab this deal at Walmart

PNY's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti OC is a large, triple-fan GPU with a thick heatsink designed to dissipate heat away from the graphics processor while playing high-fidelity games on high settings. 8960 CUDA Cores, a clock speed of 2.3 GHz, and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM give it the power for you to enjoy you respectable framerates and decent ray-tracing performance. Video connectivity options include 1 x HDMI 2.1b port and 3 x DisplayPort 2.1b ports.

Looking at the price trends on PC Partpicker, this is the cheapest available RTX 5070 Ti graphics card on the market currently, a cool $50 below the next contender. At just $699, this is the perfect opportunity to jump on a new 5070 Ti GPU and snag one before they sell out.

The RTX 5070 Ti performed well in our testing and the results place it where you would expect it to land in our charts. Cards are missing in the chart, such as the Radeon RX 9070 XT, as we had not tested the card until after we'd tested the RTX 5070 Ti. The RTX 5070 Ti hits about 61.2 FPS in 4K gaming raster at Ultra settings, with 1% lows going down to 49 FPS. Playing on a 1440p monitor, performance climbs to a 100.3 FPS average and 75 FPS 1% lows on Ultra. If you insist on ray tracing, performance dips to 48.9 FPS on average, with 41 FPS 1% lows at 4K. If you drop down to 1440p, then you’re 88.5 FPS on average, with 66 FPS 1% lows, allowing you to enjoy smooth gaming at Ultra settings.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best Black Friday PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

Nvidia's GAAP revenue reached $57.006 billion, up 62% year-over-year and 22% quarter-over-quarter, in the third quarter of the company's fiscal year 2026. The company's net income hit $31.91 billion, a 65% increase compared to Q3 FY2025, while its gross margin totaled 73.4%, up 1% sequentially, but down 1.2% YoY.

Sales of data center hardware exceeds $51 billion

Nvidia's data center business delivered a rather whopping $51.215 billion revenue in Q3 FY2026, rising 66% year-over-year and 25% sequentially. Within the segment, compute revenue — comprising CPU and GPU sales — reached $43 billion, as the Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra platforms were adopted by all major clients, including cloud hyperscalers, enterprise AI, sovereign AI projects, and industrial. Networking revenue totaled $8.2 billion, up an extraordinary 162% year-over-year, as customers purchased more networking hardware while switching from individual AI servers to rack-scale solutions.

"Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. "Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference — each growing exponentially. We have entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast — with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries, and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once."

Gaming GPUs hit their peak, whereas ProViz solutions set new record

Nvidia's gaming segment generated $4.265 billion in the third quarter of the fiscal year, rising 30% YoY but slipping 1% sequentially, which was a surprise. Nvidia said channel inventories normalized ahead of the holiday season, though GPUs are normally strongest in the third quarter, so it looks like other factors were affecting sales of graphics cards. Nonetheless, at $4.265 billion, Nvidia's Q3 of FY2025 is the company's second-best quarter for consumer GPUs ever, suggesting the market has peaked for the company at this time.

While sales of GeForce RTX graphics cards were so strong in Q2 and Q3 that they could no longer grow, sales of professional visualization solutions increased to $760 million, rising 56% year-over-year and 26% sequentially, setting an all-time record for Nvidia and likely the whole industry. The improvement was driven primarily by the launch and ramp of the DGX Spark AI workstation platform and increased demand for Blackwell-based professional GPUs used in CAD, CAM, DCC, and various emerging creative workflows.

Nvidia's Automotive and Robotics revenue reached $592 million in Q3 FY2026, increasing 32% year-over-year and 1% sequentially, which was driven by continued adoption of the company’s self-driving platforms. During the quarter, Nvidia announced that its next-generation Drive AGX Hyperion 10 Level 4-capable vehicle platform has been adopted by major partners, including Uber, so expect this segment to become even more important for the company going forward.

The OEM and Other segment recorded $174 million in revenue for the third quarter, up 79% year-over-year and 1% sequentially.

Q4 outlook: More money incoming

Nvidia expects another quarter of strong growth, so it guides revenue to $65 billion ±2% and GAAP gross margin of 74.8%. These results will be primarily driven by continued adoption of Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra platforms by various customers in the West. It is noteworthy that the company said nothing about sales of its AI GPUs to China, perhaps reflecting sentiment that this market has largely been lost for now.

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If you have not been keeping up with the latest Nvidia gossip, there have been two incidents of damage to the modular PCIe connector in the past few weeks, with both incidents involving snapped connectors. One incident resulted from a failed liquid-cooling attempt on the expensive GeForce RTX 5090, while the other was caused by improper packaging during transportation, affecting an even more eye-watering $10,000 RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell. Although both damages were attributed to user error, the outcome was favorable, as Nvidia unexpectedly agreed to replace the entire GPU in both cases.

It was good that Nvidia agreed to replace those cards, though, as GPU repair technicians have complained loudly that the replacement PCIe edge connector is simply unattainable through normal channels. That's incredibly unfortunate, given that it appears to be a fairly simple part.

However, now Uniko's Hardware (click the tweet below to expand it) has identified that numerous Chinese vendors are selling the Nvidia PCIe connector on Xianyu, the domestic platform counterpart of Goofish. The connectors are priced at approximately $19 to $23, with some sellers offering free shipping. That's the price before tariffs, though. It is important to note that these are salvaged components; therefore, they are unlikely to include warranties. Nonetheless, a $23 gamble may be justified, given that one has spent over $1,999 on a graphics card.

Nvidia was generous in resolving both situations, despite the apparent cause being user error. The chipmaker could have easily declined to provide replacements, as user error is outside the scope of standard warranty coverage. One cannot help but ponder whether there exists an ulterior motive behind Nvidia's actions.

NorthridgeFix, a renowned electronics repair establishment with a subscriber base exceeding 400,000, showcased both cases on its YouTube platform. The RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell, featuring a damaged PCIe connector, was allegedly the property of a high-profile tech YouTuber boasting over 40 million subscribers. One might contend that Nvidia just wanted to avoid negative publicity. It also makes you wonder whether an average Joe would receive the same level of treatment.

Nvidia is the world's first company to reach a valuation of $5 trillion; therefore, replacing a graphics card costing $1,999 or even $10,000 will not even dent its financials. Moreover, the graphics card merely requires a replacement of the PCIe connector, which Nvidia can easily replace and subsequently sell. The issue is that Nvidia doesn't sell individual replacement parts, so you or a third party can't do the replacement. Nonetheless, if you find yourself in a predicament involving a damaged PCIe connector and Nvidia does not provide a favorable resolution, now you (and repair technicians) know where to look.

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FSR Redstone is the name for AMD's next generation of graphics technologies aimed at competing with DLSS 4. The Redstone branding encompasses several AMD technologies, including ML-based upscaling and frame generation, neural radiance caching, and ML-based ray regeneration.

AMD already has ML-based upscaling and frame generation available to RX 9000 series graphics cards through FSR 4. What's new are the latter two technologies, neural radiance caching and ray regeneration. These two technologies mimic Nvidia's Neural Radiance Fields and Ray Reconstruction. Neural radiance caching speeds up path-tracing by predicting indirect lighting assets and storing this information in a cache. Ray Regeneration regenerates pixels that could not be accurately traced in a ray-traced scene (such as scenes with ray-traced reflections).

At the premiere, we can expect AMD to share even more details on how FSR Redstone works, if it will replace FSR 4 entirely, and what games Redstone will be coming to (besides BO7). Reports have surfaced that FSR Redstone could potentially be a vendor-agnostic solution and is reportedly coded through a ROCm project that operates on the shader cores (making it possible to run Redstone on Nvidia and Intel GPUs).

However, the teaser trailer Jack Huynh showcased for Redstone makes it pretty clear that Redstone (at least initially) will be limited to the RX 9000 series just like FSR 4. The video only endorsed RX 9000 series support and lacked any details about vendor-agnostic support or support for older RX 7000 series GPUs. This is very similar to FSR 4, which officially only supports RDNA 4 GPUs, but it technically does support older GPUs.

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