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      GeForce Now Ultimate first impressions: Streaming has come a real long way

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 19 January, 2023 - 14:00 · 1 minute

    Rows of GeForce Now servers

    Enlarge / It's not actual GeForce RTX 4080 cards slotted into GeForce Now's "Superpods," but Nvidia says the hardware is pretty close. (credit: Nvidia)

    Cloud-based gaming service GeForce Now's new Ultimate tier is rolling out today, promising a series of adjectives about game streaming that might have seemed impossible just a few years ago: high-resolution, ray-traced, AI-upscaled, low-latency, high-refresh-rate, and even competition-ready.

    I tested out the Ultimate tier, powered by Nvidia's RTX 4080 "SuperPODs " on a server set up for reviewer early access, for a week. If I hadn't been hyper-conscious of frame numbers and hiccups, I could have been tricked into thinking the remote 4080 rig was local. Except when I was playing ray-traced games AAA games on systems that had no business playing them, like laptops with discrete GPUs, iPads, or my TV with no gaming console attached—that always felt weird, in a fun way.

    Ars had previously described our GeForce Now 3080 experience as "dreamy" and called the performance "a white-hot stunner that rivals the computing power you can muster" with the same RTX 3080 card in your PC. It's easy to lay at least the same kind of praise on the new Ultimate tier. It replaces the previous RTX 3080 option with the next generation's chipset for the same price ($20 per month, $99 for six months). That might be a steep price tag for a service that mostly makes you buy your games, but given the 4080's $1,200 price tag, the rent-versus-buy question is worth considering at this level.

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      Nvidia releases RTX 4090 and 4080 firmware update to fix display output bug

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 18 November, 2022 - 20:31 · 1 minute

    Nvidia releases RTX 4090 and 4080 firmware update to fix display output bug

    Enlarge (credit: Nvidia)

    Nvidia has released a firmware update tool for its new GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 GPUs to fix a bug that could break display output, causing the GPU to show a blank screen when being used without drivers installed. The issue only affects "certain motherboards," and Nvidia says it "should only be applied if blank screens are occurring on boot." (We installed it on an RTX 4080 Founders Edition in an Asus motherboard that was working normally and didn't notice any adverse effects.)

    Obviously, you aren't buying a GPU to use it with no drivers installed. But if you're adjusting BIOS settings, performing a fresh Windows install, or booting up for the first time after installing a new GPU, you need your GPU to be able to draw a basic image without having drivers loaded. The problem doesn't affect everyone, but if you notice a blank screen when you first boot your computer after installing an RTX 4090 or 4080, this firmware update may fix your problem.

    If the bug is preventing you from installing the firmware update in the first place, Nvidia recommends connecting "using an alternate graphics source" like an integrated GPU or secondary GPU, or allowing your system to sit with a blank screen until it can install a driver on its own; Windows Update can usually grab a functional driver for most GPUs by itself, though you'll want to download and install the newest version to take advantage of new fixes and optimizations. The update can be applied to Founders Edition cards from Nvidia or any RTX 4090 or 4080 made by Nvidia's partners.

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      New test shows loose RTX 4090 power connectors cause overheating and melting

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 16 November, 2022 - 22:50 · 1 minute

    Nvidia's RTX 4090.

    Enlarge / Nvidia's RTX 4090. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

    A few weeks ago, some early adopters of Nvidia's new flagship RTX 4090 GPU began reporting that the cards' power connectors were overheating and melting their plastic casing , sometimes causing damage to the outrageously fast and expensive GPUs.

    For Nvidia's part, the company is still looking into the failures. "We continue to investigate the reports, however we don't have further details to share yet," according to an Nvidia rep talking to KitGuru earlier this week. But the YouTubers at the Gamers Nexus channel have been conducting their own in-depth research , and in short, they believe that the problems are mostly being caused by improperly seated power connectors. "Foreign-object debris" inside the connector can also cause problems, but Gamers Nexus believes this kind of damage is much rarer.

    The failure that Gamers Nexus was able to re-create in its labs involved connecting the 12VHPWR power connector to an RTX 4090 without inserting it fully and then bending the cable to one side, making the connection even worse. After just a few minutes of testing, the loose connection's high power resistance generated heat above 250° Celsius, causing smoke and visible bubbling as the connector melted in its socket.

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      Testing suggests faulty cable may be to blame for melting RTX 4090 connectors

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 28 October, 2022 - 21:52 · 1 minute

    The power adapter for the RTX 4090 feeds four 8-pin power connectors into a single 12VHPWR connector.

    Enlarge / The power adapter for the RTX 4090 feeds four 8-pin power connectors into a single 12VHPWR connector. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

    Earlier this week, a couple of Reddit users reported that the power connectors for their expensive new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs had partially melted and that Nvidia was looking into the issue. Since then, at least nine additional Reddit users have posted about the same problem with the 16-pin power connector (a thread collecting all information on the problem is here ).

    Igor Wallossek of the German-language hardware site Igor's Lab has also performed additional testing , and said that the power adapter cable (rather than the GPUs or the 12VHPWR connector) may be to blame for the problems. The adapter, which is apparently manufactured by a company called Astron and was provided by Nvidia to all of its board partners, uses "a total of four thick 14AWG wires distributed over a total of six contacts," with a thin solder base that Wallossek says can be damaged easily when the cables are moved or bent.

    "If, in the worst case, the two outer wires break off, the entire current in the middle flows through the remaining two wires," Wallossek wrote. "The fact that this then becomes really hot does not have to be explained separately."

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      Nvidia RTX 4090’s power draw may be too much for its power connector to handle

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 25 October, 2022 - 16:42 · 1 minute

    Nvidia RTX 4090’s power draw may be too much for its power connector to handle

    Enlarge (credit: Sam Machkovech)

    Nvidia's $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 is an incredibly powerful graphics card, but its performance comes at the cost of high power draw. Like a few of the RTX 3000-series cards, Nvidia uses a new kind of 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector to supply all that power to the card—you can plug up to four 8-pin GPU power cables into the 12VHPWR adapter, which then plugs into the connector on the GPU, saving some board space.

    But at least two RT 4090 users are now reporting that their 12VHPWR connectors have overheated and melted during use. These complaints are sourced from Reddit ( via Tom's Hardware ), so take them with a grain of salt—we don't know the exact configuration of either user's PC setup. The specific model of graphics card (a Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC for one user, an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition for the other), the power supply, and any number of other factors could have contributed to the connectors overheating.

    For its part, Nvidia told Tom's that it is "investigating the reports" and that the company is "in contact with the first owner" and planned to reach out to the other. We've followed up with Nvidia and will update this article if the company has more information to share.

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      RTX 4090 review: Spend at least $1,599 for Nvidia’s biggest bargain in years

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 11 October, 2022 - 13:00

    The Nvidia RTX 4090 founders edition. If you can't tell, those lines are drawn on, though the heft of this $1,599 product might convince you that they're a reflection of real-world motion blur upon opening this massive box.

    Enlarge / The Nvidia RTX 4090 founders edition. If you can't tell, those lines are drawn on, though the heft of this $1,599 product might convince you that they're a reflection of real-world motion blur upon opening this massive box. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

    The Nvidia RTX 4090 makes me laugh.

    Part of that is due to its size. When a standalone GPU is as large as a modern video gaming console—it's nearly identical in total volume to the Xbox Series S and more than double the size of a Nintendo Switch—it's hard not to laugh incredulously at the thing. None of Nvidia's highest-end "reference" GPUs, previously branded as "Titan" models, have ever been so massive, and things only get more ludicrous when you move beyond Nvidia's "Founders Edition" and check out AIB options from third-party partners. (We haven't tested any models other than the 4090 FE yet.)

    After figuring out how to safely mount and run power to the RTX 4090, however, the laughs become decidedly different. You're going to consistently laugh with , not at , the RTX 4090, either in joy or excited disbelief.

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