This week, on a more focused episode of The TT Show, Jak and Kosta break down and go through the crazy Helldivers 2 controversy on PC. If you were offline for a few days (and this all played out throughout a single weekend), the decision to force the Helddivers 2's PC players to link their Steam Account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account caused a veritable backlash storm.

From the review bombing to developers being grilled to Sony and developer Arrowhead's damage control to the surprisingly swift happy ending, Jak and Kosta discuss the implications and consider what might happen in the aftermath.

This week's other big story comes from the world of Apple, with the company lifting the lid on its new iPad Pro lineup powered by the new AI-powered 3 nanometer M4 chip. The big thing here is that it represents Apple's first dip into the world of OLED displays, with a groundbreaking 1000-nit SDR and HDR screen that has two OLED panels in one!

Frostpunk 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the grim and frosty city-builder set to launch on PC and PC Games Pass on July 25. To celebrate, developer and publisher 11 bit studios have teamed up with our friends at SAPPHIRE Technology to create a very cool custom SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT Frostpunk 2 Edition.

This looks to be a special edition of the Sapphire PURE AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT that we reviewed late last year, with a similar frosty-white color scheme to match the game's icy setting with a custom "oil-black metal backplate with rusty accents" to add some steampunk grit. Even the ARGB lighting is given a Frostpunk makeover and set to 'Orange' by default.

The special edition Radeon RX 7700 XT GPU comes with a few Frostpunk-themed extras - three enamel pins, three keyboard keycaps, a keycap puller, and a PC code for the Deluxe Edition of Frostpunk 2.

Rumors about NVIDIA working with various partners to enter the PC gaming handheld market are heating up. NVIDIA and GeForce are synonymous with gaming, especially when it comes to PCs. However, everything from the Steam Deck to the ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion GO, and handhelds from AYANEO are powered by AMD Ryzen with Radeon hardware.

It's a growing market, and Intel recently entered it by partnering with MSI to launch the MSI Claw gaming handheld. And now, it seems, it's NVIDIA's turn, with insider XpeaGPU claiming that NVIDIA is working with MediaTek to develop an Arm-based handheld SoC with integrated NVIDIA graphics.

This follows the news that NVIDIA and MediaTek are reportedly working on an Arm-based AI processor for AI PCs that could be revealed in a few weeks at Computex 2024. A SoC for PC gaming, running Windows 11 or Linux, would be something else entirely - and something that could blow the Steam Deck out of the water, performance-wise.

AMD has released Adrenalin Edition 24.5.1 for Radeon GPU owners. It adds support for three major PC game releases: Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, and F1 24.

Ghost of Tsushima and Hellblade II are two of the biggest PC game releases this month, so make sure you update to the new Adrenalin Edition 24.5.1 driver if you plan on picking one or both of these up. The new driver also adds four games to the supported HYPR-Tune titles list, enabling AMD HYPR-RX frame generation, Radeon Super Resolution, and Anti-Lag. These are Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Forbidden West, Starfield, and The Last of Us Part I.

The new driver also improves AI support and performance with Radeon hardware, with AMD citing "Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Topaz Photo & Video AI, and many more" - though it doesn't provide any specific driver-related performance data.

Intel has just launched a proprietary app that allows you to install it on Thunderbolt 4 or 5 compliant systems, connect them with a Thunderbolt cable, and share your mouse, keyboard, storage, screens, USB peripherals, and more... it's called Thunderbolt Share.

Thunderbolt Share will allow you to use the huge bandwidth available to Thunderbolt 4 -- 40Gbps right now -- between two PCs connected over Thunderbolt, which is kinda nifty. Intel says that you can mirror one PC's screen to another at 1080p 60FPS with low latency and zero compression. PCs can connect through a Thunderbolt dock or monitor, if that's easier than a direct link.

Intel explains that you don't need a Thunderbolt-certified PC for Thunderbolt Share to work, you actually don't even need an Intel processor. Intel Thunderbolt boss Jason Ziller explains that "USB 4 and Thunderbolt 3 connections may work, we just really don't guarantee it, we won't be providing support for it".

Mozilla Firefox is a popular open-source browser that is one of the few non-Chromium-based options out there. It's the latest to incorporate support for NVIDIA RTX Video technology, which uses GeForce RTX hardware to improve video streaming quality and performance.

RTX Video covers two key technologies: RTX Video Super Resolution and RTX Video HDR. The former is like DLSS for YouTube; it taps into NVIDIA's powerful AI-based Tensor hardware to make low-resolution video look cleaner, crisper, and more detailed while also minimizing and even eliminating compression artifacts. It's tailor-made for video streaming applications and services like YouTube, Prime Video, and Disney+ - while also being beneficial for those with spotty connections.

RTX Video HDR adds another layer by converting SDR video content to HDR with excellent results that improve color vibrancy and detail. NVIDIA notes that 90% of all videos online are 1080p or lower and in SDR, which makes the RTX Video technology suite a way for GeForce RTX owners to remaster and upscale the video content they watch.

Star Citizen, the perpetually in-development grandiose everything sci-fi game, just got a new Alpha 3.23 'Adventure Beckons' update. There's a long list of updates and revisions, from a new character customization system to improved AI ship combat and a reworked Starmap to make planning your space travel more comfortable. There are also new hoverbikes, vehicles, and massive industrial facilities to explore.

Tech-wise, the update makes some fundamental changes thanks to the arrival of a new Vulkan Renderer, currently listed as in Beta. GPU performance with the new renderer should be on par with the default DirectX 11 Graphics Renderer. According to the team, "the aim [is] to make Vulkan the default and more performant implementation in a following release."

Regarding performance, GeForce RTX and Radeon GPU owners will be pleased to learn that Star Citizen now has NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR support for upscaling and a third "in-house TSR solution."

SK hynix unveiled a new technology that will be used to create a "dream memory chip" that is capable of storing data and performing calculations for AI.

The South Korean memory giant unveiled its new technology during the International Memory Workshop (IMW 2024) held from May 12-15 at the Walkerhill Hotel in the Gwangjin district of Seoul, South Korea. The new technology enhances the accuracy of Multiply Accumulate (MAC) operations in Analog Computing in Memory (A-CIM) semiconductors using oxygen diffusion barrier technology.

MAC operations are critical for the high-speed multiplication and accumulation processes required in artificial intelligence (AI) inference and learning. SK hynix's recent development is a significant step for the company in the competitive field of creating a "dream memory semiconductor" that can both store information and perform calculations, passing the traditional limitations of memory-only semiconductors.

Bethesda's big May 2024 update for Starfield is now live on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and available to all Xbox Game Pass players. It's not the game's first update with a long list of changes, but it's the first with some meaningful additions and quality-of-life improvements, namely in the form of detailed surface maps for exploration through cities and beyond. Also, Xbox players now have a 60 FPS Performance Mode and can play at 40 FPS on 120 Hz displays.

The new maps are particularly impressive. Not only do they overhaul the dedicated map screen with 3D renders of the game's city and planetary locations, but the scanner overlay now shows each notable location and how far it is, with the option to fast-travel to individual vendors or other prominent spots.

The other major change is giving players direct control over a range of gameplay settings that go beyond changing the difficulty of person-to-person or ship-to-ship combat and adding a new Extreme difficulty. These include the ability to access ship cargo from anywhere and new survival features relating to food, drink, and environmental hazards.

Apple launched its new M4 processor and new iPad Pro last week, with the powerful new Arm-based M4 processor destroying the Geekebench 6 world record when the M4-powered iPad Pro was cooled with liquid nitrogen (LN2 cooling).

The new M4-powered iPad Pro was tweaked by reviewer Geekerwan and his team, and while the M4's performance cores already clock at a hefty 4.40GHz, the overclock using LN2 only pushed the performance cores on the M4 chip to 4.41GHz (an additional 10MHz), which was enough to break the 4000 points milestone in Geekbench 6, creating a new world record.

I don't know if using exotic LN2 cooling to chill down the M4-powered iPad Pro was required enjoy a 10MHz frequency bump, as Apple is probably keeping things tight -- in both hardware and software -- keeping that 4.40GHz frequency on the performance cores as high as it can. Normally we see LN2 cooling on a CPU or GPU, as they're thermally limited from operating at higher frequencies... but it seems the M4 is hitting its limits thermally, and Apple probably has stops in place to keep the 4.40GHz (or so, 10MHz is such a tiny increase on 4400MHz).

Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs have been spotted in new shipping manifestos, in both Arrow Lake-S (desktop) and Arrow Lake-HX (laptop) form.

We've seen new Intel Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs in shipping manifestos already, but now we have more of the range: 6-core, 14-core, 16-core, and 24-core variants for both desktops and laptops have been spotted this time. Here's the full list so far:

So we'll have a trio of desktop Arrow Lake-S processors with a 24-core CPU with 36MB of L3 cache, a 14-core CPU with 24MB of L3 cache, and a 6-core CPU with 18MB of L3 cache. On the laptop side of things, we've got the Arrow Lake-HX processors in a 16-core part with 30MB of L3 cache, and a 14-core CPU with 24MB of L3 cache.