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Tech News
Nvidia is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS launch with a free interactive Steam experience called '20 Years of a Legend.' Built by effects artist Dylan Browne in Unreal Engine, the demo simulates unboxing the original card but demands modern hardware—at least an RTX 4070, with RTX 5080 recommended—plus 32GB of RAM and 30GB of storage.
GPU makers are redirecting manufacturing capacity toward AI chips, triggering a memory shortage that has driven up prices for graphics cards and related components. JP Morgan projects DRAM prices will rise 400 percent between 2024 and the end of 2026, while Tom's Hardware reports Nvidia's RTX 5090 now sells for nearly $5,000 above its original $1,999 price. The price surge has also hit consoles, laptops and resale markets, with PC shipments falling as a result.
A buying guide advises gamers to first match a monitor's specs to their existing GPU, noting that pairing a high-end panel with a weaker graphics card wastes its refresh-rate potential. It also recommends weighing resolution against refresh rate depending on game genre, and considering panel type, HDR, brightness, ports and VRR features like G-Sync, along with monitor size and aspect ratio.
Retail listings show the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, launched at $999, now selling for $1,999 to nearly $3,000 at retailers including Best Buy, Newegg, Micro Center and MemoryC. Stock is scarce, with many listings limited to local pickup or third-party Amazon sellers, and even the cheapest widely available reputable listing matches the RTX 5090's original $1,999 launch price.
Developers have released Linux kernel modules—gpu-unlock, gpu-unlock-ada, and turing-unlock—that rewrite speed-select registers on Nvidia RTX 20-, 30-, and 40-series GPUs before the driver loads, removing a hardware-level cap on FP32-accumulate tensor math that Nvidia normally reserves for workstation cards. Benchmarks show gains ranging from roughly 12% to nearly 2x depending on card and workload, with an RTX 3090 Ti jumping from 87.5 to 157.4 BF16 TFLOPS and an RTX 4090 doubling its raw FP16 instruction rate, though real-world matrix workload gains are smaller.
Atari announced it will close the official online store for its VCS mini PC in early 2027, ending the ability to download new apps and games through that platform. Previously downloaded software will remain usable, and Atari plans an OS update to remove dependencies on its servers for authentication and software access. The company also plans an Atari Home Brew app to let third-party developers keep adding games after the store closes.
A developer released a VBIOS editor plus Windows and Linux loaders that let GeForce RTX 30, 40 and 50 series owners run custom firmware without writing to the GPU's flash chip. On Windows the edited image is stored in the driver's registry key and loaded at GPU restart, while the Linux version patches Nvidia's open kernel modules to boot the GSP firmware from the custom image. The editor exposes controls such as power limits, voltage ceilings, clock offsets, current protections and fan settings, with examples including an RTX 5090 FE raised from a 600W to 700W power ceiling and an RTX 4090 pushed to 671W from 550W.
Rising memory and silicon costs have pushed graphics card prices well above launch prices, with the Nvidia RTX 5070 now selling for over $800 despite its $549 launch price. This has led to advice that owners should consider reselling or repurposing older GPUs rather than discarding them, citing eBay listings where used cards like the RTX 3060 and even the decade-old GTX 1060 still fetch significant resale value.
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates realistic lighting, shadows and reflections by tracing light rays, in contrast to older rasterization and screen-space reflection methods used in non-RT titles. According to Steam Hardware Survey data cited in the piece, NVIDIA's RTX 5070 is currently the most-used graphics card, indicating many PC gamers now own hardware capable of handling ray tracing. The author, who uses an RTX 5090 with DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation, says gamers on older cards like the RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT should disable ray tracing and prioritize stable frame rates instead.
According to leaked factory notices cited by hardware leakers @hongxing2020 and @Zed__Wang, Nvidia has stopped producing GB202 chips for consumer RTX 5090 graphics cards, including Chinese 'D' variants. The notice claims the RTX 5080 24GB will become the new top consumer GeForce model, with the RTX 5080 16GB being discontinued. Nvidia has not confirmed the claim and typically does not comment on rumors.
Nvidia has pushed out a special software security update for GeForce GPUs from the 700, 900 and 10 series, including Titan and MX notebook variants, that no longer receive regular Game Ready Driver support. The company says the update fixes multiple issues with potential security impacts, though it has not detailed the specific vulnerabilities.
NVIDIA's RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, which the company calls its most powerful desktop GPU, now carries a US price of $16,000. That's up sharply from its $8,565 launch price and its earlier $13,250 tag, though NVIDIA has not explained the reason for the increase. The card sits above the consumer-focused RTX 5090 and is aimed at professional users rather than gamers.