NVIDIA's latest generation GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs have been around for a few months now, and there is a recently discovered feature from one of the company's hardware partners that is quite unique amongst GPUs. ASUS ROG's Astral GeForce RTX 50 models have a built-in gyroscope and accelerometer that can detect the movement of the GPU itself. Eduardo Andres Labrin shared his finding that there is now an option for an alert in case of any movement in the ASUS software.
The Astral family of GPUs makes up the ASUS ROG brand's highest offering for its graphics cards, and one of the most premium across the entire NVIDIA spectrum of GPUs. ASUS is even releasing a special edition Doom: The Dark Ages-branded ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080. This GPU has plenty of interesting features, but this newly discovered movement capability is novelty. You can select an option to choose the startup behavior for this, letting you know if the GPU itself has moved in any significant manner.
It will notify you that the GPU has tilted down, in a measurement using degrees. This motion detection system is looking at the horizontal axis of the GPU to detect these changes, which the user can then adjust physically.
Image Credit: Eduardo Andres Labrin / Unikoshardware
The ASUS ROG Astral GPU family with the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are incredibly large products. Adding to this size, they're also very heavy, since they are made of premium material. This can create a problem for owners in some PC cases—in ones not properly equipped to support the massive weight profile of these herculean graphics cards, GPU sag can rear its unwanted head.
GPU sag has been an issue present for a long time, which is when the horizontal level of a GPU dips down and becomes unsightly. Too much of a dip can also potentially damage PCIe ports and the GPU itself, especially when such a heavy weight item is in play. The ASUS ROG Astral GPUs get frequent software updates, even allowing a higher power limit to ensure better performance.
According to Uniko's Hardware, there is a low-power IMU installed called the Bosch SENSORTEC BMI323 IMU that is responsible for this. This clever feature (as spotted by Videocardz) for the ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs certainly is an interesting one, and hopefully it becomes more commonplace.
