The TT Show is back for another big week of news and happenings in the tech, gaming, and science space with Jak and Kosta. This week on TweakTown's official podcast, the duo talks about the Activision Blizzard acquisition by Xbox finally being over. No more legal talk (for now), just fun game speculation.

From there, the discussion leads to an interesting new patent and physical design for what could be the Nintendo Switch 2. However, they're not convinced. This week, we also saw AMD's low-latency tech Anti-Lag+ go from cool new tech to a complete disaster, Netflix expanding its gaming reach, and new 14th-gen CPUs from Intel with the Intel Core i9-14900K leading the pack.

Plus, scientists discover a 'missing law of nature' that blew Jak's mind, and we finally find out what was in those asteroid samples collected by NASA. Life will always find a way - so be sure to tune in!

With a 26-minute presentation covering the game's cinematic story, space battles, all-star cast, first-person missions, and stunning visuals - it finally looks like Squadron 42 is on track to deliver the modern Wing Commander game we've all been waiting for.

For those needing a refresher, Squadron 42 was announced alongside the long-in-development Star Citizen in 2012 - described as the 'single-player' component of the ambitious sci-fi universe sim. The original release window was 2014, and from there, it was continuously delayed as the size and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 expanded. It's a game that has been in development for over a decade.

"Squadron 42 is now feature complete and has entered its polish phase," Chris Roberts, Founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), says in the impressive video demonstration of the game. If you're into sci-fi games with cockpit action like the Wing Commander series or more modern titles like Mass Effect and Starfield, it's a must-watch.

Recently, we reported on the ban on the GeForce RTX 4090 GPU in China, which shocked several people because it's the first time the US-imposed export ban on technology to the country included a piece of hardware designed for PC gaming. This has led to RTX 4090 models being sold for double the price in China, ahead of the restrictions kicking in next month.

According to sources, it's all about restricting and slowing China regarding AI. With the new restrictions looking to limit the sale of NVIDIA's A800 and H800 workstation cards in the region, the ban, which doesn't restrict specific models but hardware with certain transistor numbers, now includes the GeForce RTX 4090.

No GeForce RTX 4090s for China might not sound like a big deal, but with the AI boom and new reports from outlets like TechSpot, it seems that when it comes to high-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs, we're on the cusp of another situation where prices are about to go through the roof.

With the launch of the new Intel Core 14th Gen desktop processors, Intel's 'Raptor Lake Refresh' is paving the way for improved and simplified overclocking. This is not only for a wider audience to get the most out of each CPU Core (the 14900K offers up an out-of-the-box 6 GHz boost), but it extends to the DDR5 memory support.

The flagship Intel Core i9 14900K is one of the fastest processors in the world for gaming, productivity, and multitasking, and with a new range of motherboards hitting the scene for the new 14th Gen, memory and storage speeds will continue to rise.

Hardware support for the new gen is strong (a lot of that comes with it being a refresh of the 13th-gen architecture), with ADATA and XPG noting that its full range of memory and SSD storage solutions are ready for the new generation of Intel CPUs. The company conducted compatibility testing with Intel and motherboard brands prior to the 14th Gen launch to ensure there were no issues.

Last week, Intel announced and launched its 14th Gen Core processors for desktops, with the flagship Intel Core i9 14900K leading the pack. The company made a mistake when formally revealing the 14th Gen 'Raptor Lake Refresh' lineup; the new desktop processors will not support the latest Thunderbolt 5 spec.

It's not the sort of mistake you see in a product reveal of this stature, with the statement proclaiming that the 14th Gen processors would support "upcoming Thunderbolt 5 wired connectivity."

To make the situation a little more confusing, the announcement has been updated with an Editor's Note (via Tom's Hardware) stating, "While some processors in the Intel Core 14th Gen processor family will include support for Thunderbolt 5, Intel Core 14th Gen desktop processors, specifically, will not support it." Adding it will share details on "Intel Core 14th Gen CPUs that support Thunderbolt 5 at a later date."

Alan Wake 2, the highly anticipated sequel from Remedy (the studio behind the brilliant Control and Max Payne franchises), is set to launch globally on October 27 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The latter has been dominating the PC gaming headlines of late because of the super demanding PC requirements for the game.

For 30 FPS performance at 1080p, you'll need a GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 with DLSS or FSR 2 set to 'Quality' mode - which means the game is being upscaled from an internal 720p resolution. Also, this is 30FPS using the game's Low graphics preset without any ray-tracing effects.

This makes Alan Wake 2 the most demanding PC release ever. However, it doesn't stop there. The developer hasn't included GPUs from the GeForce GTX 10 Series or Radeon RX 5000 Series because they're not officially supported.

Rockstar Games has been steadily improving its in-house graphics engine -- Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) -- for years. It has powered Grand Theft Auto over the years and Red Dead Redemption 1 + 2, but it is being suped-up for Rockstar's next-gen Grand Theft Auto 6.

We're now hearing that the evolution of the RAGE engine in GTA 6 will be a huge step above what Rockstar has done before. With the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 being huge, we're being told that the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 will be even bigger.

A new post by Rockstar Mag France is a reminder that a Rockstar Toronto studios developer had their Slack account hacked by the hacker group "Lapsus$" and revealed a bunch of new information on Grand Theft Auto 6. The hack was so big it gutted the staff at Rockstar... but now we're hearing about the graphics side of things, and it has me excited.

SanDisk, a division of Western Digital, recently announced its fall lineup of storage solutions - and it includes the new SanDisk Ultra microSD UHS-I cards with capacities going all the way up to 1.5TB. This highly versatile microSD card from the company is compatible with thousands of devices, including portable gaming rigs like the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and ROG Ally.

However, when paired with Android devices like Chromebooks and Windows laptops with a SanDisk MobileMate USB 3.0 microSD card reader, transfer speeds hit an impressive 150 MB/s. This speed makes 1.5TB SanDisk Ultra microSD UHS-I cards one of the best capture and storage solutions for photos, videos, games, podcasts, documents, and more.

With SanDisk's 10-year limited warranty and the SanDisk Ultra lineup featuring proprietary Proprietary Flash Management technology and NAND, plus A1-rated performance for launching apps - you've got an excellent and super easy storage expansion option for the PC gaming handhelds of the world.

The evolution of the discrete graphics card for PC gaming has been fascinating to watch over the years, with massive performance leaps and breakthroughs arriving at a steady clip. The ancient days of early 3D gaming have paved the way for realistic physics, lighting, animation, texture detail, ray-tracing, and so much more.

However, as GPUs have become more powerful, they've begun to require more sophisticated cooling - often with large fans and lots of fins, copper, and heat pipes.

On the high-end, the overall size of flagship GPUs like the GeForce GTX 980 through to the GeForce RTX 4090 (or the Radeon RX 7900XTX compared to an older Polaris-era card) has increased substantially to the point where mid-range GPUs are now a lot larger than what they used to be. And with that, GPU sag is a real problem - so having a GPU brace or bracket is a must if you plan on installing one in the traditional horizontal configuration.

Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be one of the best-looking games of the year on a fully tricked-out PC, but it's also going to look beautiful on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, says Remedy.

Remedy Entertainment's Communications Director, Thomas Puta, has taken to Twitter to discuss the performance of Alan Wake 2 on consoles. Puta said that the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Alan Wake 2 are "great" and that the PC version of the game is as "good as it can be", with the developer recommending NVIDIA's second-fastest GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card for 4K 60FPS with ray tracing and path tracing enabled.

Puta explained on Twitter: "Especially as a console player, I'm really happy how good Alan Wake 2 is on console platforms. We had a lot of focus on them throughout development ensuring the game would run well and look as incredible as it does. Focused on all platforms to be fair, as well as we could".

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor is an absolute champion of silicon, offering up to a mighty impressive 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 4-powered CPU power... so much power that it has more FP32 compute performance than the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles.

That new flagship Ryzen Theadripper PRO 7995WX processor offers up to 12.16 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance, whereas if we compare this to the Xbox Series X with its 12.1 TFLOPs and the PlayStation 5 with its 10.2 TFLOPs, we can see that the new TR PRO 7995WX is quite the beast. It's almost at the performance of the GeForce RTX 3060, too, which is the most popular GPU on the Steam Hardware Survey.

AMD recently launched its Ryzen Threadripper 7000 and Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 series CPUs, with a few big differences between the two: the Threadripper 7000 (non-PRO) is for HEDT users and enthusiasts, offering up to 64 cores and 128 threads. Meanwhile, the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 scales up higher, with a 96-core, 192-thread Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor.