Latest from TweakTown

We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with MSI to give one lucky winner a premium gaming bundle worth a combined ~$895, featuring a special-edition World of Warcraft-themed GeForce RTX 5070 and an ivory wireless gaming headset.

There will be one winner in total, and the prize includes an MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12G World of Warcraft: MIDNIGHT LIGHT EDITION OC worth ~$770 and an MSI MAESTRO 500 WIRELESS Ivory headset worth ~$125.

The MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12G World of Warcraft: MIDNIGHT LIGHT EDITION OC is the centerpiece of this week's prize. Created as part of MSI's World of Warcraft: Midnight collaboration, the card combines special Light-inspired styling with NVIDIA's latest-generation Blackwell GPU architecture. It features 6144 CUDA cores and 12GB of high-speed GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit interface, along with support for NVIDIA technologies including DLSS 4.5, Multi Frame Generation, ray tracing, Reflex, and NVIDIA Studio.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated releases for cinephiles, and even the general public who haven't yet made it to the theatre to watch it. To showcase that anticipation, thousands of pirates downloaded several torrents titled "The Odyssey," only to be greeted with a movie that on IMDb is currently rated 1.8/10.

The torrent circulating on numerous popular torrent websites gained attention after it was uploaded under the familiar YTS/YIFY branding and was titled "The Odyssey (2026) 1080p WEBRip x264 5.1 YTS YIFY." The torrent weighed just 1.59GB, and on one torrent website I viewed, the file had 5,800 seeders and 4,597 leechers. However, the movie within the torrent wasn't Christopher Nolan's, but an 86-minute movie directed by Marcel Walz and produced by The Asylum, a studio known for releases called "mockbusters". Notably, Walz's The Odyssey stars Myrom Kingery and was released on July 3, 2026, while Nolan's version was released on July 17, 2026.

To add even more confusion, a YTS mirror listing has appeared and includes details from Christopher Nolan's version, including Nolan as the director, a synopsis of the plot, and actors such as Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Zendaya. That mirror torrent offers a movie length of 86 minutes, the same as Walz's version of The Odyssey. To spur things along even further, comments have taken to these torrents to encourage users to download them, with some even writing that the acting from Damon, Hathaway, and others was superb.

After just one month, the PS5 emulator known as KyTyPS5 has been spotted successfully running Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 5, indicating significant progress in getting PS5 games unofficially working on PC.

Footage highlighted on X by eXtas1s shows Grand Theft Auto 5 running the North Yankton prologue mission, and the player progressing through the mission as per normal, albeit with considerable graphical concessions. Assets, lighting, and other graphical elements are extremely unstable, flickering in and out of view. However, the game runs relatively stably, with gameplay pulling between 40 and 60FPS through the KyTyPS5 emulator.

The original footage was posted by BrutalSam, who captured the gameplay on a system equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 79000XT. What makes this demonstration particularly interesting is that, back in July, I reported the KyTyPS5 emulator had only managed to boot GTA 5 to its main menu and settings, as the campaign was completely inaccessible. Now, less than two months later, we have a "playable" version that renders 3D gameplay up to 60FPS.

Acer has unveiled its first compact PC based on NVIDIA's RTX Spark platform, aiming to challenge systems like the Mac Studio with 128GB of unified memory and a full petaflop of AI compute.

The Acer SFF RTX Spark features an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU and a Grace CPU, delivering up to 6,144 CUDA cores and 1 petaflop of FP4 AI compute. The new system is designed for local AI workloads, content creation, and gaming, with Acer saying it supports NVIDIA's CUDA and RTX technologies.

Acer showed the system at IFA 2026, though it is calling it a design concept rather than a finalized product, which is a nice way of saying Acer is currently in the process of gauging the public reaction to the released specifications and design before it initiates any production on the new system.

Discord is reportedly preparing to reintroduce global age verification under the codename "Tiny Bronco," according to a recent Wumpus Central post.

The news has sparked privacy concerns among users who point to past trust violations, such as Discord exposing 70,000 government IDs. The new system is said to impose stricter access controls for users under 18, including restrictions on adult-only servers, stage channels, and sensitive media. Here's how it will work. You click into a server, and a prompt appears asking you to prove you are an adult; if you don't, you won't be able to see the content within that server.

Additionally, Message requests would also become mandatory, and users could face blurred content in direct messages. These changes come as Discord attempts to combat its large platform, privacy concerns, and the implementation of systems designed to protect teens using Discord. Walking the line between intuitive age verification security systems, and non-intrusive, consumer-focused privacy is proving a difficult challenge. Not just for Discord, but any other company in a similar set of shoes.

NVIDIA has officially confirmed that DLSS 5 will be introduced to previous-generation RTX 40 series GPUs. NVIDIA issued a statement (reported by TechPowerUp), clarifying that Ada Lovelace would get DLSS 5, but noted that support will not arrive until the company further optimizes DLSS 5 performance on Blackwell GPUs. NVIDIA is planning to introduce new DLSS 5 models this fall, so development work on 40 series enablement won't come until after those models are complete.

The news comes days after NVIDIA launched DLSS 5 with NBA 2K 27, when the company initially announced DLSS 5 would be RTX 50 series exclusive. NVIDIA even went so far as to say there is no fallback path for RTX 40 series GPUs, seemingly suggesting that they were not going to make a version of DLSS 5 for Ada Lovelace.

However, the modding community already confirmed prior to DLSS 5's launch that DLSS 5's hardware limitation was purely artificial. A couple of days before NBA 2K 27's launch, modders were able to use DLSS 5 early through a DLSSNR DLL found in an early access version of NBA 2K 27. After modders successfully injected DLSS 5 into Control, the mod spread like wildfire across the internet, with a number of gamers and tech influencers testing DLSS 5 across dozens of titles.

GTA 6 will level up realism for players with several new systems that track Jason and Lucia's ongoing health. The game will punish poor sleep and unhealthy habits, with Jason and Lucia's well-being now confirmed to directly tie to in-game performance.

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson confirmed that a built-in health app tracks sleep, diet, and even weight. "It will say whether you're well rested or not," Nelson said. "That will have some effect on regen of certain attributes." If you neglect your in-game health, your character might start to suffer, and not just visually; Nelson saying "certain attributes" implies there will also be an impact on other aspects of the character.

On the other side of the coin, if players decide to work out constantly with Lucia or Jason, or both, each protagonist will gain muscle and additional attribute bonuses. However, if the player suddenly stops working out, Nelson said they will lose these bonuses, and they won't maintain their muscles.

After 17 years, Activision has finally addressed the dangerous Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PC. The update, released this week, claims to have solved all known exploits that had plagued the 2009 title for years.

In a statement to Windows Central, Activision confirmed that the team has patched the vulnerabilities and is actively working to support legacy titles. The studio encouraged players to report any remaining issues through its Bug Bounty Portal, which you can access if you are interested or have recently encountered a bug and want to report it here. For PC players, this is a long-awaited fix, as RCE exploits allowed malicious actors to upload malware during multiplayer sessions and, in some instances, take over PCs completely.

The RTX 5090's infamous 12V-2x6 power connector has struck again - this time on Hardware Unboxed's test bench, where a cable hit a scorching 175°C under load.

The incident involved an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 paired with a Be Quiet! Dark Power 13 PSU. Host Steve discovered the problem after touching the cable and feeling a burn, which thermal imaging later confirmed. A Thermal Grizzly WireView Pro revealed an extreme current imbalance: one wire pulling 22A while others carried almost none. The damage was worse at the PSU end, and Steve noticed after using pliers to pull the cable out that the wires that weren't carrying any current were completely melted at the PSU end.

Steve added that the cable was perfectly seated in the power supply beforehand, and that he isn't specifically blaming Be Quiet! or the Dark Power 13 PSU, as there have been numerous reports of melting with a variety of PSU and graphics card combinations. However, the one common denominator is the 12V-2x6 power connector.

Rockstar Games' GTA 6's PC release may come faster than most expect, driven by rising console prices and shifting market dynamics.

Rockstar Games has yet to confirm a PC launch date, but industry analysts such as VGC's Andy Robinson suggest the company may release the PC version within a year of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S debut. Notably, that would be extremely unlikely considering Rockstar's latest flagship titles, such as GTA 5, which took 1 year and 6 months to arrive on PC, and Red Dead Redemption 2, which took 1 year and 10 days. So, anything under a year would be extremely unusual.

However, we are living in unusual times: the gaming industry is feeling the pinch as hardware costs rise, with companies diverting manufacturing capacity toward AI-focused hardware and leaving less supply for consumer-focused electronics. E.g., consoles, graphics cards, components, etc.

GTA 6 could run at 4K 60FPS on PlayStation 5 Pro, according to Leaked PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced guidelines that suggest developers must target a stable 60FPS frame rate and 2160p resolution.

According to the requirements leaked by Moore's Law is Dead, developers must follow these guidelines to receive a PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced tag. However, developers have a choice in direction, as the PS5 Pro Enhanced tag can be awarded to a title that increases its target resolution from its original base PS5 resolution. Furthermore, a PS5 Pro Enhanced tag can be given to a game with a higher maximum resolution target, a higher framerate target, or the addition of new or higher-quality ray-tracing effects.

Rockstar is reportedly using the PS5 Pro's improved GPU to push GTA 6 to 4K, likely using the latest version of PSSR. However, achieving a stable 60 FPS on the system's modestly upgraded Zen 2 CPU seems unlikely, with 40 FPS a more realistic performance ceiling, especially if Rockstar is already leaning toward increasing visual fidelity through the addition of further refinements to the implementation of graphical technologies such as ray-traced lighting, textures, shadows, and more.

Gaming is currently in the throes of its second major market crash, at least that's how Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney describes the industry's current tumult.

According to Tim Sweeney, the video games industry is currently in the throes of its second major crash. And he might know; his company, Epic Games, is an institutional backbone of the interactive entertainment sector. The numbers are also pretty clear; we now live in the world of $900 PS5 Pros and $800 Xbox Series Xs.

In Edge Magazine (issue #428), Sweeney says that what's going on right now in the industry is the "worst crash" since the console market plummeted in 1983 (it was later revived by Nintendo and SEGA).

Yet again, modders have figured out a way to make DLSS 5 work on unsupported hardware, with this latest example being the most extreme yet, featuring AMD hardware running DLSS 5. Reported by Ancient Gameplays on YouTube, a modder by the name of Daniel published a mod on GitHub called "DLSS-NR-on-AMD" that makes DLSS 5 work on RDNA 4 GPUs, including the RX 9070 XT.

The mod uses a custom executable, along with a specific build of NVIDIA's DLSS DLL to introduce RDNA 4 compatibility to DLSS 5 (and add DLSS 5 to games that don't support it). Currently, the mod has only been tested on RDNA 4 GPUs, but RDNA 3 support technically exists. The mod's creator welcomes people to try the mod on RDNA 3 and report their experience with it.

Footage of Cyberpunk 2077 from Ancient Gameplays shows DLSS 5 working as intended on the RX 9070 XT with shadows, and highlights looking more realistic than native rendering. But unsurprisingly, performance was far from perfect; Ancient Gameplays recorded frame rates well under 20 FPS, making the mod barely useful for anything beyond capturing screenshots, at least in Cyberpunk 2077. That said, the modder has since published a new update that reportedly achieves 30 FPS at 1080p with the RX 9070 XT in Cyberpunk 2077.

Pearl Abyss has revealed Crimson Desert's first expansion at Sony's State of Play event, confirming a bunch of new changes coming to the game including romance options, town/building customization, and some tropical naval exploration right out of Black Flag Resynced.

Crimson Desert's debut expansion Charting the Unknown will flesh out the all-in-one action game with a bevy of new features. Crimson Desert itself feels like a gestalt of many genres, games, and influences, Charting the Unknown likewise channels games like The Sims with custom city planning, and even the sailing and diving from Assassin's Creed Black Flag. It even has an underwater jetpack that lets players zoom around, adding a new dimension of traversal.

The trailer also mentions an abyssal horror, ending with a brief look at the colossal robot that players may end up fighting. Other enemies include a robo-Cetacean that tries to inhale Kliff into its mouth, with our hero struggling against the pull Whalefall-style.

Microsoft has announced that it will set time limits on Xbox cloud game streaming later this year, and will soon sell cloud streaming play time directly to gamers. The company is also currently working on a free, ad-supported version of the subscription.

Xbox is officially capping the number of hours that Xbox Game Pass subscribers can spend streaming games. Under the new changes, which go into effect in November, Ultimate subscribers will be able to stream just 15 hours per month. Currently, Ultimate subscribers don't have a cap on game streaming hours. The new limits look like this:

Gamers will also be able to buy cloud time directly from Microsoft, no Game Pass needed: "Players will be able to purchase cloud playtime hours through the XBOX Store and stream eligible games they own on supported devices."

Days after a modder got DLSS 5 working on RTX 40 series GPUs, another modder has managed to get DLSS Multi Frame Generation working on RTX 40 series GPUs. The mod was made by Reddit user "dashdogy" who announced their mod on the r/NVIDIA subreddit for Cyberpunk 2077.

The mod works by reportedly intercepting the DLSS DLL in memory and changing the number of frames that are being generated, as well as backporting Blackwell-specific frame timing instructions to the Ada Lovelace architecture to ensure proper frame placement. Dashdogy's GitHub page for the mod goes into significantly more detail about how the mod works, noting that the mod targets the Streamline SDK rather than Cyberpunk 2077's renderer itself.

Multiple commenters in the NVIDIA subreddit confirmed that the mod works in Cyberpunk 2077, with one modder noting their surprise that the mod not only works, but also provides high-quality frame generation with "really good" frame pacing. Another user noted that with their RTX 4080, baseline performance drops from 38 FPS to 30-31 FPS going from a 2x to 6x multiplier, but noted that the experience felt very smooth, with the game outputting 180 FPS using generated frames. Another user posted a video of them running Cyberpunk 2077 at over 240 FPS with DLSS 5 plus multi-frame generation on an RTX 4090.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation releases April 8, 2027, and Square Enix has revealed pricing, editions, and confirmed two new story expansions--one for Sephiroth, and another for Vincent--ahead of the game's launch.

Square Enix is set to conclude its epic Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy in April with the release of FF7 Revelations, the last chapter in the saga. The game will have three editions and two story expansions in a very predictable business model that we've seen time and time again.

FF7 Revelation will have a base $70 version; a $100 premium edition that's basically a kind of pre-order for the GOTY edition with expansions, items with in-game bonuses that affect gameplay, and 24 hours of early access; and a premium plus version for $110 that includes everything in premium along with a digital artbook, a digital soundtrack, and a special in-game item that slightly restores your MP after battle (a pretty advantageous buff).

DLSS 5 is NVIDIA's most ambitious version of DLSS to date, but it also is one of its most limiting as of late, lacking support for DLSS overrides (which were introduced with DLSS 4), and requiring RTX 50 series GPUs to run it. Luckily, the modding community has been busy working on a new version of DLSS Swapper called DLSS 5 Swapper that doesn't have any of the aforementioned restrictions, while also streamlining DLSS 5 modding for mainstream gamers. The new Swapper app was published on GitHub by rankanki911.

The new DLSS 5 Swapper takes all the complexity out of modding DLSS 5 in games manually by incorporating all the required tools and files through a simple user interface. Users can drag and drop games directly into DLSS 5 Swapper where the app will automatically add all the necessary files to get DLSS 5 working in-game. The app can also automatically detect games installed on a user's PC, further automating the process.

DLSS 5 Swapper not only can upgrade DLSS-supported games, but can also implement DLSS 5 into games that don't have DLSS compatibility. This is done through "DLSS5-Feeder", a community mod that makes DLSS calls so DLSS 5 can be triggered in-game. This mod works with ReShade which provides its own depth buffer and optical-flow motion, two features that are required for DLSS to function properly.

Sony has announced two new custom GTA 6-themed DualSense controllers that will launch alongside the game in November.

If Sony's marketing deal with Rockstar hasn't gone far enough, GTA 6 is getting official limited edition DualSense controllers for the PlayStation 5. The two controllers come in white and black color schemes, and are highlighted by the kind of distinct vibrant hues you'd find in a Vice City club.

The limited GTA 6 controllers will be available on November 19, but gamers can pre-order them on the PlayStation Direct store starting September 10. Both controllers will cost $85 each and have features standard to all DualSense PS5 controllers, including improved haptics and immersion. No PlayStation 5 - GTA 6 console launch bundles have been announced. The Sony x Rockstar marketing deal asserts that GTA 6 "plays best" on PlayStation 5 consoles, and this product is technically an extension of that marketing by simple virtue of Xbox not having its own haptic-enhanced controller.

RGB stripe tandem OLED, or Tandem OLED for short, improves brightness, color accuracy, and text clarity through innovations in the stacked subpixel layout. So far, we've seen this new panel technology in Alienware's flagship ultrawide 39-inch 5K2K gaming monitor, and the company plans to bring it to its new Alienware 32 4K OLED Gaming Monitor (AW3226Q), due for release later this year.

At a $699 USD launch price, it's more affordable than the ultrawide 5K flagship, while still delivering that big-screen 32-inch 4K OLED experience. With its RGB Stripe Tandem OLED panel, the new Alienware 32 delivers an impressive peak HDR brightness of 1000 nits, 99% DCI-P3 color coverage, and Delta E<2 accuracy. With VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification and Dolby Vision support, it's a display for cinematic gamers and creators alike. And with its new panel tech, it offers virtually no text fringing, making it a productivity beast, too.

Beyond the underlying technology, the Alienware 32's display also includes a polarizing layer for improved black levels and contrast detail. Rounding out the specs, it also features a 165Hz refresh rate, a 0.03ms response time, and support for all of the leading VRR technologies (NVIDIA G-SYNC, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and VESA AdaptiveSync).

With its launch expected sometime in early 2027, the new Alienware 25 is a QD-OLED gaming monitor built for competitive FPS and esports players "who prioritize refresh rate, motion clarity and response time above resolution."

With its 24.5-inch QD-OLED panel, fast 560Hz refresh rate, and 0.03ms response time, it definitely falls into that esports pro realm of displays, with Alienware confirming that it developed and designed the new Alienware 25 560Hz QD-OLED Gaming Monitor (AW2527HX) alongside the pro players at Team Liquid. As one of the most recognized names in the esports world, Team Liquid actively competes in a wide range of titles, including Counter-Strike 2 and League of Legends.

For pro players and competitive gamers who play shooters, a QD-OLED is a massive upgrade over the TN-based esports monitors that have dominated the esports world for years. As OLED refresh rates have steadily increased, the one benefit of TN panels, their refresh rate, means that displays like AW2527HX running at 560Hz will become the new standard.