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!

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.

SteelSeries announcing a new gaming headset is not uncommon, nor is it strange for them to impress when it comes to audio quality and comfort - check out the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 4X we recently reviewed. This week, SteelSeries has revealed a new entry in the Arctis Nova line-up, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5.

Designed for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, the Arctis Nova 5 supports both low-latency 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth technologies, Neodymium Magnetic Drivers for a high-end audio experience, and a new ClearCast 2.X Mic with a new high-bandwidth chipset for 32KHz 16-bit audio for in-game chat and communication.

The new SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 also offers 60 hours of wireless gaming with fast USB-C charging that delivers 6 hours after only 15 minutes. This is all great stuff, but the most exciting part is the new Nova 5 Companion App for smartphones or any compatible iOS or Android device.

HPE was showing off a server blade from its upcoming El Capitan supercomputer at the recent ISC High Performance event in Hamburg, Germany.

The server blade had its front cover removed, showing off the internals that include AMD's new Instinct MI300A AI accelerator. The blade is called the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX255a accelerator blade, featuring a single-slot 1U blade chassis. It might be small, but it packs an incredible 8 x MI300A chips, with copper cooling blocks and copper cooling pipes linking everything together, rather beautifully I might add.

Each of the blades uses liquid cooling to keep the crazy amounts of heat generated by the 8 x AMD Instinct MI300A chips, with each of the MI300A APUs featuring a 550W TDP, and a peak power rating of 760W. This means that the cooling for the blades needs to be able to handle an incredible 4400W of power on average, and peak power of up to an even higher 6080W.

Phison Electronics is one of the global leaders in NAND controller and storage technologies, supplying solutions and partnering with notable consumer-facing SSD brands like KIOXIA, Micron, Western Digital, and Samsung. Today, Phison announced that it has launched its new Pascari brand, which will deliver and tailor SSDs for the enterprise and data center markets.

Pascari's first product is the new 2.5-inch form factor X200 Series of SSDs, which are high-performance PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSDs with NVMe 2.0 and up to 32TB for maximum capacity and advanced features. They have a dual port design, ultra-low latency, and read speeds of 14.8 GB/s-you're looking at some serious speed.

"Introducing the Pascari brand marks a milestone for Phison as we continue to innovate and lead in NAND Flash technology," said K.S. Pua, CEO of Phison. "Our commitment extends beyond products; with Pascari and our IMAGIN+ design services, we are enabling organizations to custom-build flash storage architectures that precisely fit their performance demands, ensuring accelerated business growth and enhanced value creation."

Earlier this year, AMD launched its latest Ryzen 8000G Series of desktop processors, which featured built-in Radeon graphics (up to a Radeon 780M), offering PC gamers an entry-level option that doesn't require a discrete graphics card. With the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G, you've got a CPU that can play modern PC games in 1080p without a GPU.

The Ryzen 8000G Series is AMD's first desktop processor lineup to include dedicated AI NPU hardware - with up to 39 TFLOPs of AI processing power. Combining AMD XDNA AI hardware, Zen 4 CPU architecture, and RDNA 3 graphics, you've got a series of AMD chips to suit all workloads.

This week, AMD unveiled two new entries to the lineup: the AMD Ryzen 7 8700F and AMD Ryzen 5 8400F. These variants ship without Radeon graphics and are optimized for efficiency and low-power draw.

In 2024, putting together a gaming rig with the attached gear (keyboard, mouse, headset, etc.) usually means choosing a bunch of black or white-colored hardware, with both options often including a hefty dose of RGB lighting. White-colored PC hardware and peripherals are minimal, sleek, modern-looking, and growing in popularity.

It's not unusual for hardware makers to release both 'light' and 'dark' versions of hardware to cater to the tastes of different gamers. With that, Razer has introduced White Editions for some of its high-end gear: Razer Cobra Pro, Razer Basilisk V3, Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro, Razer Huntsman V3 Pro, and Razer Seiren V3 Chroma.

The list covers Razer mice, keyboards, and the latest USB microphone. Hit the jump for the entire product breakdown. All gear is now available via Razer.com and retailers like Best Buy.