Latest from TweakTown

The mobile gaming community has long relied on unofficial tools to run PC games on Android phones, making it a gamble where some titles perform great while others refuse to launch. That struggle may be nearing an end, according to new details shared in a hands-on preview video from Chinese tech channel Geekerwan on Qualcomm's newly announced Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip.

According to Geekerwan, a Qualcomm contact told the channel the company has shifted its focus to PC game emulation and is developing its own official GPU drivers to support it. So far, Android users translating Windows games to Qualcomm-powered phones have mostly relied on Turnip, a community-built driver project for Adreno GPUs that's produced strong results without any official backing from Qualcomm.

Geekerwan also claimed that Qualcomm is examining bringing DirectX 12 support more directly to Android. As part of the demonstration, the channel says it ran Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong through DirectX 12 translation on a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 reference device, with both titles reportedly running. No frame-rate or performance figures were declared for either test. Qualcomm's Windows-based Snapdragon PC platforms already support DirectX 12 natively, but this would be a new attempt to bring that support to Android.

Intel is apparently not done with Raptor Lake yet. More than three years after the 13th Gen family launched, two new embedded processors have surfaced in distributor listings: the Core i7-13799HRE and Core i5-13599HRE, spotted by @momomo_us on Mouser.

So far, the confirmed specifications are minimal. The Core i7-13799HRE carries 24MB of cache and a 5.0GHz maximum clock. The Core i5-13599HRE has 18MB of cache and reaches 4.8GHz. Both are listed as FC-BGA16F tray processors, meaning they are soldered directly onto dedicated motherboards rather than installed in a user-accessible socket. Intel has not published core count, base frequencies, power figures, or graphics configuration, and neither chip appears in ARK, Intel's public specifications database.

The existing Core i7-13800HRE, launched in Q1 2023, also carries 24MB of cache and a 5.0GHz boost clock, with 14 cores, 20 threads, and a 45W base power. The Core i5-13600HRE matches the new i5's 18MB cache and 4.8GHz ceiling, with 12 cores and 16 threads at the same 45W base. Without full spec sheets, it cannot be confirmed whether the new models are straightforward rebadges or carry any internal changes, but the surface-level match is about as close as it gets.

Intel's Nova Lake platform is still a few months from launch, but its socket is already showing up for sale online. A Foxconn-branded LGA1954 component has appeared on AliExpress, spotted by @momomo_us, listed at around $16.55 under the description "LGA1954 CPU Socket Holder with Tin Balls."

Before anyone gets too excited, this is not a retail socket assembly. The part in question is a solder-ready component, the socket base itself without any locking or retention mechanism, designed to be soldered directly onto a motherboard PCB during assembly or used as a repair part. It is far more relevant to motherboard manufacturers and repair technicians than to anyone building a PC. Still, the appearance of these components in the supply chain confirms that Intel's partners are moving toward production readiness for LGA1954 boards.

Intel's LGA1954 socket will debut with Nova Lake-S desktop processors, replacing the current LGA1851 platform used by Arrow Lake. The accompanying 900-series chipset lineup includes Z990 and Z970 for enthusiasts and overclockers, B960 for the mainstream, and Q970 and W980 for business and workstation deployments.

Sony may be quietly reconsidering how firm its stance on ending physical PlayStation discs really is. According to leaker Tom of Moore's Law Is Dead, speaking on the Broken Silicon podcast, Sony recently sent developers what he describes as one of the largest surveys the company has ever distributed, and hidden inside it was a question hinting at whether studios see "an issue with how we sell games physically."

Tom argues the survey's existence and unusual scale suggest Sony may be checking whether enough resistance exists to justify some form of walk-back, even if only to some extent. He also hypothesised that the company could be weighing a "mea culpa" if developer feedback comes back strongly enough. However, he was careful to frame that as his own guess rather than anything official.

Marvel's Wolverine makes the theory even more interesting. The game reportedly moved around 1.9 million copies in its first three days, with roughly 23% of its $130 million launch revenue generated directly from disc sales. That's a significant chunk of revenue for a format Sony is already dead set on retiring, and it's not just limited to the company's latest exclusive. Data shows six of seven major first-party Sony titles sold between 32% and 47% of copies through physical retail.

Current GPU prices have pushed gamers to a point where they will pay just about anything cheaper than the highest listing. If you have been following our coverage, NVIDIA's flagship RTX 5090 has become something close to an unimaginable purchase for most people, with prices on secondary markets soaring past $10,000.

Against that backdrop, $4,299 starts to look almost reasonable, and apparently many shoppers agreed. During Walmart's GeForce Week promotion, MSI's GeForce RTX 5090 32GB Gaming Trio OC appeared on the retailer's site at $4,299.99, offering a rare chance to buy NVIDIA's flagship GPU from a major storefront rather than a third-party marketplace seller with an even steeper markup. The listing has since gone out of stock.

That $4,299 price puts the card $2,300.99 above NVIDIA's reference price, a premium of approximately 115%. And it was not just a handful of shoppers willing to pay it either. Walmart's page showed the card sitting in 10,000 carts before stock ran out. However, with RTX 5090 prices skyrocketing, Walmart's price was genuinely one of the better deals available.

Lisuan Tech's LX 7G100, one of China's latest attempts to develop a competitive gaming GPU, has now undergone broader real-world testing. PC Games Hardware tested the card across a 14-game 1080p rasterization suite, where it delivered roughly one-third the performance of NVIDIA's RTX 5060 despite offering theoretical compute throughput comparable to the RTX 5060 Ti.

The LX 7G100 is rated at 24.6 TFLOPS of theoretical FP32 throughput, along with 12GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus and 432GB/s of bandwidth.

In PCGH's 14-game 1080p rasterization index, the LX 7G100 finished 23% ahead of the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. However, the RTX 2060 was 55% faster, while the Radeon RX 6600 held an advantage of around 80%. In the same test suite, the 7G100 delivered just 34% of the RTX 5060's performance.

Rockstar today revealed a $400 collector's edition-style merch box for GTA 6 that comes with some...interesting items including a replica coke spoon and a razorblade, but no actual copy of the game.

GTA 6's new unofficial collector's edition is up for pre-order now, and the $400 price tag positions it as a high-end and limited premium product. The merch box is called The Goodtime State Vice City Collection and comes with a ton of real-world goodies that are inspired by GTA 6's in-universe TV show, Macca the Gator.

Buyers will get their very own replica coke spoon--technically referred to as a swizzle stick--razorblade, and mirror combo, alongside wearable merch like sunglasses, a trucker hat, and a fanny pack. There's even a double-sided post with a map of Leonida on the back, so this might be Rockstar's way of continuing its tradition of releasing physical maps with every GTA disc release (unfortunately, GTA 6 will be the first game that ships disc-less).

Qualcomm has renewed its global patent license agreement with Apple, with the new deal taking effect April 1, 2027, right after the current agreement runs out.

The company confirmed the renewal in a brief announcement, without disclosing financial terms or how long the new agreement will run. "We are pleased to extend the Apple license agreement," said John Han, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Qualcomm Technology Licensing.

This licensing relationship goes back to 2019, when Apple and Qualcomm settled years of patent litigation and signed a six-year deal with a two-year extension option. Apple exercised that option in 2024, pushing the agreement's end date to March 2027. It looks like this new renewal simply picks up where that one leaves off.

Left 4 Dead writer and former Valve developer Chet Faliszek adds perspective to the current state of gaming, saying that teams are too big these days and it's leading to a lot of wasted time and money.

Valve is massive in terms of earnings and influence, but its teams are small compared to other publishers. The reality is that large teams often cause massive inefficiencies; having too many cooks can crowd the kitchen, so to speak. Having smaller, more agile teams with people who are all on the same page was the key to making games like Left 4 Dead.

Over on his YouTube channel, former Valve writer Chet Faliszek shares his industry take, expressing with first-hand experience as to how big game development teams can ultimately cause more problems than they solve. Faliszek's words ring with truth, especially as practically every game-making team in the industry has shed workers in an effort to reduce some of the very costs associated with things like wastage and indecision.

RTX Neural Texture Compression is one of those technologies that could become a game changer for PC gaming, leveraging AI for texture compression and RTX Tensor Cores for real-time texture decompression. This means massive savings in VRAM and memory, up to a reported 90% in some scenarios. This would let modern 8GB GPUs play games with maximum texture quality while using considerably less memory overall.

As part of NVIDIA's new RTX Kit 2026.3 update, RTX Neural Texture Compression 0.10 beta is now available for game developers. Although still early, this update adds support for the Microsoft DirectX 12 Agility SDK preview with Linear Algebra for neural textures in DirectX. Interestingly, this update also adds support for Windows on Arm, paving the way for the technology to also be available on RTX Spark devices. With these updates, we're getting closer to seeing RTX Neural Texture Compression live in an actual game.

The other big addition to the RTX Kit is RTX Mega Geometry 2.0, coming soon to Gears of War: E-Day, so stay tuned for our coverage. RTX Mega Geometry increases the detail and complexity of objects and environments in ray-traced scenes while improving performance. More detail, more performance. It does this by converting complex meshes or sections into clusters.

When we reviewed the Logitech G PRO X2 LIGHTSPEED Gaming Headset back in 2024, it unfortunately fell short in a few key areas. Although the build quality, comfort, battery life, and default tuning were great for long sessions, an average microphone on a flagship, pro-grade headset for competitive gaming was disappointing. With the new Logitech G PRO X3 LIGHTSPEED, that's changing, as it features a 48KHz/16-bit full-bandwidth omnidirectional microphone for studio-quality voice.

A high-quality microphone also makes integration with BLUE VO!CE via the G HUB app a worthwhile customization tool, letting you switch between a rich, warm, broadcast-like sound for streaming and a crisp, tournament-tuned preset for competitive gaming.

Another shortcoming of the X2 was its spatial audio capabilities, and Logitech has focused on that too. With premium 50mm PRO-G AUDIO graphene drivers tuned for gaming, specifically action titles, the 7.1 spatial solution has been rebuilt for enhancement. Add an expanded parametric equalizer to customize the sound for various game genres, movies, and music, and the Logitech G PRO X3 LIGHTSPEED Gaming Headset certainly looks like a worthy successor.

Announced today, we've been hands-on with the new Logitech G PRO X2 RAPID Wired Gaming Keyboard for a few days. It's the company's new flagship pro-grade gaming keyboard, built with custom Hall-effect analog switches and a tournament-ready design developed in collaboration with several esports players and teams.

Based on what we've experienced so far, it might be the company's best analog keyboard to date. Not only from a hardware perspective, which includes actuation point adjustments in 0.05mm increments between 0.1 and 4mm, but also in the overall feel. With linear magnetic keyboards, impressive customization and gaming-first features like Rapid Trigger often come at the cost of typefeel, with acoustics and a feel that don't quite match what you get on a traditional magnetic board.

One of the big things we've noticed over the past year of keyboard releases is that this gap is closing, and fast. For the Logitech G PRO X2 RAPID Wired Gaming Keyboard, the acoustics and typefeel are not only up there for a Hall-effect analog gaming keyboard, but also for Logitech G gaming keyboards overall.

After months of rumors and leaks, including trailers and other promotional material, Logitech has officially announced the PRO X3 SUPERSTRIKE gaming mouse. It's the follow-up to the Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE, which launched at the beginning of this year, making it a rare revision for a flagship gaming peripheral to appear within a year of the original.

As with the first SUPERSTRIKE, the big news here is HITS, the name Logitech gives to its new Haptic Inductive Trigger System for the main switches. Like magnetic keyboard switches, this analog technology lets gamers dynamically adjust actuation levels and haptic feedback, with support for features like rapid trigger.

The X2 SUPERSTRIKE was the first time we'd seen this tech in a gaming mouse, and the new PRO X3 SUPERSTRIKE builds on that foundation. With HITS, input latency for PC gaming improves by up to 30ms, and the PRO X3 version makes several subtle design changes that make it a step forward.

Xbox has restructured its business to find synergies within its studios. We've seen racing game studios Turn10 team up with Playground Games, and Bethesda is teaming up with Obsidian. On paper, the Fallout New Vegas studio will be under the organizational purview of Bethesda's publishing label.

Behind the scenes, though, not a whole lot is changing. According to a memo acquired by Aftermath, Bethesda has no plans to dispel Obsidian's magic; the studio's leadership teams will remain. The changes are "primarily a change in reporting structure," Bethesda president Jill Braff says in the memo. This is interesting because ZeniMax Media technically joined Microsoft under a limited-integration merger, which means Bethesda itself has a certain level of autonomy.

The Bethesda president affirms that Obsidian won't have its creative identity or creative strengths altered or shifted by management. Obsidian's current CEO, Feargus Urquhart, will stay on to lead Obsidian--the only change now is that Obsidian reports directly to Bethesda, instead of maybe someone like Xbox Game Studios lead Matt Booty.

Security researchers at Cisco Talos have documented what they describe as the first publicly known Windows malware to hand its tactical decisions to a panel of commercial AI models rather than a human operator. The malware, called CLOSEDQUORUM, queries up to four AI services, DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, and Google Gemini, and acts on whichever action receives the most votes.

The way the malware works is pretty straightforward. Each time it needs to decide what to do next on a compromised machine, it sends basic system information to the four models, along with a fixed menu of options: steal, inject, persist, or move. Each model votes; the majority choice wins, and the malware acts on it without any instruction from a human operator. It has its favourite too, and if two options tie, CLOSEDQUORUM defaults to DeepSeek first, then Qwen, then Mistral, then Gemini.

The steal option directs the malware to dump credentials from Windows memory, copy saved passwords from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and extract data from cryptocurrency wallets including MetaMask and Exodus. The inject option runs code inside another process using Early Bird APC injection or process hollowing. The persist option sets up three separate footholds: a Registry Run key, a scheduled task, and a WMI event subscription that restarts the malware every 60 seconds, all named to look like routine Windows Update activity.

New specification details for AMD's next-generation RDNA 5 "AT2" GPU have emerged from Kepler_L2 on the Anandtech forums, a leaker with a strong track record on AMD's roadmap. In a September 23 post, Kepler_L2 shared the new AT2 specs, which appear to be a significant step up from AMD's current flagship, the Radeon RX 9070 XT. An earlier post from the same leaker also said AT2 will be the only new GPU AMD or NVIDIA will sell in 2027, with the rest of both companies' next-gen releases delayed to 2028.

Looking at the specs, AT2 is reportedly built with 70 compute units, six more than the RX 9070 XT's 64, a 9.375% increase on paper. Kepler_L2 also claims that RDNA 5 targets clock speeds between 3.1 and 3.4GHz, which would be 4.3% to 14.4% higher than the RX 9070 XT, depending on the exact bin. Together, those increases put AT2 somewhere between 14% and 25.1% faster than the RX 9070 XT, and that's before AMD's rumored architectural improvements to ray tracing and AI workloads are even considered.

Microsoft's new and upcoming "Project Helix" console is also rumored to use 68 of 70 available AT2 compute units, closely linking the hardware to next-gen Xbox consoles and AMD's PC lineup. Separately, other leakers have reported that AT2's AI rendering hardware could reach RTX 5080-class performance, though that comes from a different leaker, expanding on Kepler_L2's numbers, and remains unconfirmed by AMD.

While gamers struggle to keep up with rising prices on current-gen consoles, details about next-gen hardware are already piling up on the other side. The latest comes from prominent AMD leaker KeplerL2.

Posting on NeoGAF, Kepler confirmed that the chips powering both the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix have taped out. Tape-out means the final chip design has been submitted to manufacturing, effectively locking in the hardware. At this stage, major specification changes are essentially off the table. Minor silicon revisions can still happen if testing surfaces bugs, but the overall architecture and capabilities are fixed.

Along with the tape-out confirmation, Kepler shared GPU compute estimates. The PS6 comes in at 40 TFLOPS and Xbox Helix at 56 TFLOPS, giving Microsoft a roughly 40% theoretical advantage on paper. For context, the PS5 sits at 10.28 TFLOPS, the PS5 Pro at 16.7, and the Xbox Series X at around 12. Previous rumours pointed to 80 TFLOPS of FP32 performance for the PS6 and RTX 5080-beating performance, but as we said before, that was likely a double count of RDNA 5's Dual Issue capability.

If you are one of the very few people left who are not affected by rising component prices and, in fact, want something even more expensive than a $10,000 RTX 5090, Aftershock PC might have just the thing.

Meet The Cherry Bloom, a $14,200 gaming PC with 70 handcrafted cherry blossoms made from heat-reactive titanium alloy that physically open as the system heats up during gaming and close again as it cools. No motors, no RGB tricks, no electricity powering the blooms. Just heat. AFTERSHOCK says all 70 flowers can open under load, while powering the system down returns the tree to its closed state.

The tree sits inside an APNX V2 chassis with 270-degree wrap-around glass, presumably so you can watch the flowers open rather than hide the whole spectacle under a desk. Under the sculpture, the hardware includes an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a Zotac GeForce RTX 5080, 64GB of DDR5-6000 memory, a 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD, a 1300W Platinum power supply, and a custom open-loop liquid cooling system.

Map images alone make it hard to grasp how big Vice City in GTA 6 will actually be, but a new video shared on r/GTA6 by u/HawkGuy gives fans the clearest sense of scale yet. Instead of placing two maps side by side, the video overlays the outline of Los Santos onto a reconstructed version of Vice City, and the difference is striking. Vice City appears to swallow up the space Los Santos occupies.

Based on the shared video, Vice City's land area, excluding water, comes in at about 16.6 km², spanning roughly 4.07 km by 4.07 km. Los Santos in GTA 5, measured at the same scale, covers around 9.1 km², or about 3.02 km by 3.02 km. That makes Vice City's city footprint nearly twice the size of Los Santos on land area alone, before accounting for anything outside the city limits.

It is worth noting that the Vice City outline used in the video is not extracted from an official Rockstar map. It is based on the community-run GTA 6 Mapping project, so the actual proportions might look different once Rockstar's real in-game map is available. The video also compares only the two named cities directly, ignoring that GTA 6's full map extends far beyond Vice City alone, covering large parts of the fictional state of Leonida, just as GTA 5's map expanded into the rural expanse of Blaine County.

id today announced surprise changes to Quake Champions amid Xbox's new layoffs and restructuring plans.

Quake Champions has dropped its free-to-play status and is now being sold as a paid game on Steam. The pricing is pretty reasonable, with the online shooter listed at $9.99, and id has also removed all paid microtransactions from the game while unlocking all playable characters and cosmetics from the store.

Existing players are grandfathered into the free-ninety-nine price tag, meaning if you played Quake Champions F2P, you can still play this version for free. "We're transitioning Quake Champions from a free-to-play game to a paid title on Steam only. Good news to anyone who's played the game on Steam: you've already been automatically upgraded to this paid version for free!"