TweakTown

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss and review the latest PC hardware, including the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D. With Chris's in-depth TweakTown review live, the good news is that Zen 5's 3D V-Cache enhanced chip is an absolute beast for PC gaming while providing a substantial boost to productivity performance for creators.

In a review-stacked episode, Jak reviews some of the best 27-inch 1440p and 32-inch 4K OLED gaming displays currently available - spoiler alert, stylish, and feature-packed Alienware models. However, with ASUS, MSI, and Samsung all releasing OLED displays with third-generation QD-OLED panels, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bad OLED in 2024.

Switching gears to the world of peripherals, Kosta reviews the Meletrix Zoom75 TIGA mechanical keyboard kit, the first mechanical keyboard he built from scratch. The result was not only a fantastic new keyboard, but the whole process gave him a greater appreciation for modern custom keyboards' modular, layered, and logical design.

This week on the TT Show, Jak goes through Apple's long-awaited AI upgrade with the arrival of Apple Intelligence. From writing tools to an overhauled Siri to being able to edit and search through your photos with powerful new tools, Jak goes through all of the features iPhone users can look forward to as long as they have at least an iPhone 15 Pro.

Also, this week, AMD CEO Lisa Su drops a few tasty details about its next-gen Radeon graphics cards powered by its next-gen RDNA 4 architecture. In addition to the usual generation performance increase, RDNA 4 ray-tracing performance will be 'significantly' better than previous generations, and Radeon is going all in on AI.

Yes, FSR is set to become more like NVIDIA's DLSS, with AI Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and its version of DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction - a game changer for ray-tracing. So then, why is AMD talking up RDNA 4? Because the company's Gaming business is not doing great.

This week on The TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss the latest in PC and gaming hardware, science, and more. The discussion begins with a look at Apple's new MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini models powered by the latest M4 chip and how it might only present an incremental update instead of a generational leap forward.

Switching gears to the incremental update that is the PlayStation 5 Pro, it sounds like the console has a secret weapon in the form of the AI-powered PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which brings a little bit of that NVIDIA DLSS magic to the world of console gaming. Compared to AMD's FSR 3.1, which is available for consoles, there's a night and day difference in image quality - with PSSR making everything it touches look better. And it's exclusive to the PS5 Pro.

Next, the discussion shifts to the world of handhelds, with everything from Valve providing an update on the Steam Deck 2 to leaks for Nintendo's new online Pokemon game. Plus, an in-depth look at the surprise playtest for a Minecraft and Roblox-style massive MMO for the Switch developed by Nintendo.

This week, on another stacked episode of The TT Show, Kosta talks about all of the cool PC hardware he saw at PAX Australia - from custom builds to rigs to new gaming handhelds. There are a few not-as-new ones as Valve officially brings the Steam Deck to Australia.

On the topic of handhelds, Kosta and Jak discuss the possibility of NVIDIA releasing a PC gaming handheld with GeForce RTX hardware in the near future. This looks to be happening thanks to the recent partnership with MediaTek to develop chips specifically for portable AI devices like laptops. For Kosta, it seems inevitable because it's a growing segment and a corner of PC gaming where NVIDIA has zero presence.

Of course, NVIDIA dominates in the desktop space, and with the imminent arrival of the GeForce RTX 50 Series - there's been a lot of discussion surrounding how much the new flagship GeForce RTX 5090 will cost. Its MSRP will be higher than the GeForce RTX 4090's $1599 USD, but how much higher?

Yesterday, October 17, 2024, we lost a great man and friend. Tyler Bernath, TweakTown Hardware Editor, lost his battle with cancer at age 41 years old at his home in Montpelier, Ohio. After going through several rounds of chemotherapy and treatment over several years, sadly, the cancer took over. He fought against the terrible disease for as long as he could with huge courage. In the end, he went peacefully at his home.

Tyler started with us in 2013 and was with TweakTown for almost 12 years and published 1452 content items - most of which were reviews. That's an amazing average of 2.5 reviews every week over 12 years - an incredible effort that will be hard for anyone to reproduce again. His first review was of the SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, and his final was of the Acer Predator Triton Neo 16 Gaming Laptop.

In fact, till the end, when he knew his time was near, he was still trying to complete reviews. That's sad, but it also makes me happy in a way, knowing that his work kept him busy and occupied. Tyler informed hundreds of thousands of consumers on which products to buy or avoid in the storage, networking, NAS, Mini PC, CPU, and motherboard fields.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta finally discuss their recent trip to MSI's factory in Shenzhen, China. There, they saw MSI's new Z890 boards up close, Intel's latest Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs, and even watched as thousands of MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI boards were being made.

With new motherboards and chipset technology, a lot of cool new tech will make you want to upgrade - especially when it comes to flagship motherboards like the new MSI MEG Z890 ACE. With Arrow Lake and Intel Core Ultra 200 Series CPU benchmarks starting to show up and full reviews and availability coming later this month, it won't be long before the complete picture is known.

With the new Z890 motherboards also ready for the next generation of graphics cards, this week we learned that NVIDIA could be announcing three GeForce RTX 50 desktop graphics cards at CES 2025: the GeForce RTX 5090, GeForce RTX 5080, and GeForce RTX 5070.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss the current state of the GPU market for PC gamers based on the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results and a recent report outlining two decades of market share between NVIDIA and AMD.

It's not only an uphill battle for AMD and Intel with RDNA 4 and Battlemage, but it's gotten to the point where it feels like anything that isn't GeForce RTX is starting from square one. The GeForce RTX 4060 is now one of the most popular GPUs among millions of gamers - and no alternative has even made a dent. So, even if AMD offers up a killer GeForce RTX 4060 competitor soon, it will do so from a position of almost no mindshare.

There's much more to the latest episode of The TT Show than just GPU talk and going over the latest GeForce RTX 5090 rumors. There are also the new AMD motherboards to discuss, Microsoft's controversial Copilot+ PC feature Recall making a return, and a potential Microsoft Surface Fold in development.

Sony unveiled the PlayStation 5 Pro console this week, so it's only fitting that Jak and Kosta discuss the announcement presentation, Sony's subsequent blog post, and the lukewarm reaction from PlayStation fans and gamers. Outside of the hefty $699 price, the beefed-up RDNA 4-powered GPU inside the PS5 Pro console sounds promising.

And really, that seems to be the big issue with Sony's PS5 Pro reveal; without new games or new experiences, it's hard to get too excited about replaying The Last of Us Part II on the fourth console it's being optimized for - faster performance or not. The same sentiment applies to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, games that already look great on the baseline PlayStation 5.

However, if Sony's AI-based PSSR upscaling hits the same heights as NVIDIA's DLSS on PC and the 45% more GPU horsepower is put to good use, there will no doubt be a bunch of games that look and play best on Sony's new console. When it comes to an announcement like this, you need to show, not tell.

The TT Show's 50th episode is here, and to celebrate the milestone (more like the timing lined up perfectly), we sit down with NVIDIA's Jacob Freeman, GeForce Evangelist, to talk about all things PC gaming. From DLSS to RTX Remix to Half-Life 2's impressive remake to the success of Black Myth: Wukong, and more.

It's a lengthy and great discussion worth tuning into. Jacob offers insights into how NVIDIA engages with game developers and sees AI evolving and changing how we all play. Ahead of that, though, it's your usual TT Show programming as Jak and Kosta go through all of the big stories that have cropped up in the PC, gaming, and tech space over the past week.

This week on the TT Show, the duo talks about the PlayStation 5 Pro's imminent reveal, thanks to Sony finally teasing the upgraded console and what to expect regarding games and performance.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta dig into the revelation that the highly anticipated first-party Xbox RPG from Obsidian, Avowed, is targeting 30 FPS on Xbox consoles. This comes from one of the game's developers stating precisely that during a recent interview.

Microsoft set the expectation of 60FPS gaming ahead of the Xbox Series X launch, and yet now it seems another gaming like Starfield and Redfall will be launching without a performance mode. There's plenty of gaming news and discussion this week, with Jak giving his impressions of Age of Mythology: Retold and Kosta talking about his time with Ubisoft's open-world Star War Outlaws.

The discussion then leads into the recent launch of the PlayStation AAA multiplayer game Concord, which is proving dead on arrival with abysmal player counts on Steam and reportedly poor sales on PS5. What went wrong? The duo digs into it, as Concord is shaping to be one of the biggest flops in gaming history.