Shader Compilation is common in modern PC gaming: a process that runs during the initial load and also re-runs whenever a game or graphics card driver is updated. The process can take several minutes, which is why, no matter how fast your SSD or storage is, getting into that first area or match takes a while.

It's necessary because it configures how everything from textures to surfaces and lighting renders on your GPU, reducing or eliminating stutters and performance issues when shaders are processed or loaded into a scene for the first time. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Activision and the development teams are changing how this works in Call of Duty, calling the process Shader Preloading.

According to Activision, Modern Warfare 4 will begin preparing shaders before you even launch the game. Players will see a "Shader Pre-Loading Will Start" message after installing the game. This will also run after each major update, and Shader Preloading will be included in the upcoming Modern Warfare 4 Beta and run in the background.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Beta is set to take place over the next two weekends, which will include a taste of the single-player campaign in addition to the series' standard multiplayer modes. The first weekend, August 21 - August 25, 2026, is the Early Access period for those who pre-ordered the game on PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X|S. The second weekend, August 28 - September 1, 2026, will be open and free to all players to jump in, even those on Nintendo Switch 2.

And with that Activision has released the Minimum and Recommended PC specifications for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Beta, which haven't changed all that much since last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 misfire. Call of Duty has always been a series built to run on a wide range of hardware, and GPU-wise the Minimum spec for the Modern Warfare 4 Beta calls for a GeForce GTX 1060, Radeon RX 470, or Intel Arc A580.

It's impressive that the game still caters for aging hardware, with Activision noting that the game will run on a GPU with only 3GB of VRAM. Of course, for a smooth 60 FPS with console-like visuals you'd want to make sure your rig meets the Recommended spec, which asks for the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, Radeon RX 6700 XT, or Intel Arc B580 on the GPU side. It's also pretty modest on the CPU-side, so here's a look at the full Minimum and Recommended PC specifications.

LG has unveiled what it's calling 'dream next-generation OLED technology.' Called FLiPP, which is short for FMM-Less innovative Pixel Patterning, it's all about innovating OLED manufacturing to deliver brighter, more reliable, and affordable OLED panels. Per the naming, it's a proprietary technology that removes the need for a conventional fine metal mask (FMM) process in manufacturing.

According to LG these FMMs need to be produced for every single panel size and resolution, which adds weight to the panels, leading to alignment issues and defects. To help explain how they work, LG compares the process to stencil art, where red, green, and blue (RGB) organic materials pass through tiny holes in metal plates.

In contrast, LG calls FLiPP a "new OLED manufacturing paradigm" as it removes the need for divided substrates, coating the RGB pixels in order with photolithography. It's a process that enables LG to create OLED panels that are 1.6 times brighter and also last 2.4 times longer. Not only that, it also improves efficiency and reduces power consumption by 13% as the FLiPP process improves the aperture ratio (a single pixel's light-emitting area compared to its total physical area) by 55%.

With the exponential performance improvements we've been seeing from AI rack-scale solutions from companies like AMD, demand for power and cooling has increased. With the wider consensus that AI data centers are anything but efficient, AMD has confirmed it's on track to deliver a 20X increase in rack-scale efficiency by 2030.

According to AMD's internal projections, two AMD racks in 2030 will deliver the same compute as 570 AMD Instinct MI300 Series-powered racks from 2024. This represents a 20X-fold increase in energy efficiency and a 28X reduction in "carbon intensity." Of course, this isn't to say that we're going to see a reduction in the amount of racks being deployed, so the probable result will end up being the same amount of energy being used with a 20X increase in compute performance measured in FLOPs.

AMD adds that its goal is to "deliver substantially more compute performance without requiring energy consumption to grow at the same pace," so that's a plus for those concerned about the sheer amount of power currently being used up by AI data centers. In addition, AMD has confirmed it has achieved an estimated 4X increase in AI energy efficiency as of mid-2026, ahead of schedule.

Microsoft is finally updating Windows 11's privacy and security settings to give users more direct control over what apps can or can't access your PC or laptop's microphone, camera, and location settings. As spotted by Windows Latest, a recent Experimental Insider PC Build 26340.9212 for Windows 11 lets you choose which desktop apps can access these features.

For native Microsoft Store apps, you've been able to choose which apps can, say, access your microphone for years. However, when it comes to more traditional desktop Win32-style apps, like Discord, Chrome, and anything else that launches via a .exe file, this feature was missing. Before this update, you had a single catch-all toggle that let all desktop apps access your microphone, camera, and location settings.

And with that, you were beholden to in-app settings or Windows pop-ups to confirm which desktop app could access them. As seen in this preview build, the 'Privacy & security' section of Windows 11's Settings removes the separate "Let desktop apps access your camera/microphone/location" toggle and instead places each app in the same dropdown menu as native Microsoft Store apps.

A new report on first-party PlayStation live-service game Horizon Hunters Gathering sheds new light on the troubled project. Announced earlier this year as a new multiplayer game set in the Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West universe from franchise creator Guerrilla Games, the Fortnite-style visuals and co-op action didn't exactly garner a lot of positivity from PlayStation fans after its unveiling.

According to a new report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, during a recent private test with players, Horizon Hunters Gathering received "poor feedback." So much so that Sony and Guerrilla Games have apparently decided to strip the game of its live-service elements and retool it into a story-driven co-op game with a smaller scope. On top of that, they're continuing development with a much smaller team than what was originally assigned to the project.

As live service games require continuous content updates through expansions, new characters, and seasonal events, it sounds like the player feedback was so bad that both Sony and Guerrilla Games have decided that it's not worth the investment or risk. Especially after the high-profile failures or less-than-expected performance of the company's recent live-service efforts like Concord and Bungie's Marathon.

A Micro Center shopper ran into the kind of pricing mixup that most of us can only dream about. According to a post on the r/Microcenter subreddit, a buyer found an XFX Radeon RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC 310 Black Edition listed for $222.96, even though the page marked it as out of stock.

That should have stopped the order right there. Most retailers won't let you add an unavailable item to your cart at all. Somehow, the Redditor was still able to add it to the cart, and this listing let it through anyway.

The buyer wasn't convinced the order would actually go anywhere, though. He says he stayed quiet about it until he showed up to collect the card, worried Micro Center would cancel it the moment someone noticed. That never happened as he walked out with the GPU for $236.34 after tax.

Seasonic has become the first manufacturer to earn 80 PLUS Ruby certification for an ATX power supply. The company's new Prime Enterprise RX-1600 hit the mark at 115V, putting it above every other ATX PSU currently on the market in terms of certified efficiency.

Ruby is a brand new efficiency tier above Titanium, and it's a tough one to clear. A power supply needs to hit 85% efficiency at just 5% load, 91% at 10% load, 93% at 20% load, 95% at 50% load, and 91% at full load. That low-load requirement is particularly important, since most systems spend the bulk of their time sitting well under full power draw, rather than maxing it out.

Seasonic CEO Walter Sun said reaching Ruby reflects years of engineering focus, adding that every additional percent of efficiency gets harder to squeeze out. He noted the gains still matter because they add up to real savings at scale.

Thermal Grizzly has added AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 to its lineup of pre-delidded processors. The CPU is listed on the company's website for $1,402.83 including VAT, which is over $500 more than AMD's $899 MSRP for the standard chip.

Delidding removes the CPU's integrated heatspreader so a cooler can make direct contact with the silicon underneath. It typically improves temperatures and can help with overclocking, but the process is risky and voids AMD's warranty. That's where Thermal Grizzly comes in, since it backs every delidded CPU it sells with its own coverage instead, good for up to 24 months.

Apparently, each unit goes through cleaning and functional testing after delidding. Thermal Grizzly includes a USB stick with a screenshot of the temperature test results and a microscope image of the die.

Intel's next-gen desktop flagship was apparently leaked, and along with it, we get a few unexpected changes.

A CPU-Z screenshot shared by leaker LC Tech Leaks points to a chip called the Core Ultra 9 4950K, reportedly an early engineering sample of Intel's Nova Lake-S lineup. If the name holds up, Intel appears to be ditching its three-digit Core Ultra naming and moving to four digits instead, something Intel-focused leaker Gotou_3rd says is confirmed, although the exact model number isn't final yet.

The chip itself sounds like a monster on paper. It's listed with 28 cores, split into 8 performance cores and 20 efficiency cores, running on an unreleased Z990 motherboard. The leaked benchmark shows a single-thread score near 1,000 and multi-thread near 20,000 in CPU-Z, numbers that would put it ahead of every current desktop CPU on the charts, including AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

Getting SteamOS to work on Intel cards has been anything but smooth since the operating system arrived, thanks to installation bugs and issues. However, SteamOS 3.9 beta now reportedly works on Arc cards without problems; YouTuber ETA Prime reported in a recent video that his Arc B580 worked "on the first boot up" and ran games on SteamOS almost flawlessly.

The YouTuber tested several games, confirming that the Arc B580 can play games at playable frame rates on SteamOS. Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p high settings with FSR set to quality mode ran at roughly 80 FPS; Horizon Zero Dawn at 1440p high settings with XeSS in balanced mode ran at roughly 70 FPS. Fallout 4 at 1440p ultra settings ran at a flat 60FPS with a V-Sync 60Hz lock with no dips, and Elden Ring also ran at a locked 60 FPS with no dips at 1440p max settings. Finally, Forza Horizon 5 ran at roughly 80 FPS at 1440p high settings.

Less than a handful of issues were present when running the Arc B580 on SteamOS; the biggest issue was XeSS support, which could only run on the shader cores on SteamOS. The Linux drivers for the Arc B580 reportedly aren't configured to run XeSS on the XMX cores, forcing the GPU to run the upscaler on the shader cores instead. This issue also extends to XeSS frame generation, which was incompatible due to the tech being inaccessible to the XMX cores through the Linux driver.

The current memory crisis is such that NVIDIA has officially brought back the now-aging GeForce RTX 3060 12GB graphics card, with new models selling at prices notably higher than its launch-day $329 MSRP. And with recent widespread and substantial price increases hitting NVIDIA's current GeForce RTX 50 Series lineup, we're not surprised to see GeForce RTX 3080 cards hit the second-hand market and be sold at higher-than-expected prices.

That said, like the recent return of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which saw modders double the Turing generation's flagship memory to 22GB of VRAM, the same is now happening for the GeForce RTX 3080. As VideoCardz spotted, China's second-hand GPU market is now full of GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards with 20GB of GDDR6X memory.

This is double the 10GB of memory of the stock version, making it a more viable 1440p PC gaming option. These GeForce RTX 3080 20GB cards seemingly cover a wide range of makes and models, from large triple-fan models to cards with a more old-school blower-style cooling solution. The prices vary, but it looks like they're being sold for around $445 USD.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100) is the company's latest flagship laptop processor for premium Windows on Arm devices. With its direct premium Windows laptop competition being Intel's Panther Lake-powered Core Ultra X9 388H and AMD's Ryzen AI 9 465, a new Signal65 study shows the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme outperforming both with ease.

Granted, Qualcomm sponsored the whitepaper and performance analysis, so even though Signal65 is a well-respected third-party outlet for benchmark data and reporting, the conclusion is that Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme devices offer the best performance per dollar, as they're generally cheaper than their x86 Intel and AMD counterparts.

For its results, the company tested three different retail units: the ASUS Zenbook A16 (X2 Elite Extreme), MSI Prestige 16 (Core Ultra X9 388H), and HP OmniBook X 16 (Ryzen AI 9 465), all priced between $1,649 and $2,299.

Hydra is a custom GPU overclocking and monitoring tool created by Yuri Bubliy (1usmus), and a notable 2.3B update is expected to drop next week for Early Access subscribers on Patreon. This update is currently making headlines because it's set to introduce advanced VRAM overclocking and power-limit controls for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs.

According to the post, owners of GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards from any vendor will be able to increase and overclock GDDR7 memory speed up to 36 Gbps. For most cards in the lineup, this would equate to a +3000MHz increase, with the developer noting that it achieved this with a custom solution that's not "a security hack, a VBIOS modification, or some kind of 'magic' driver."

To accompany the announcement, the developer showcases images of their ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 GPU hitting an impressive 2.3 TB/s of memory bandwidth thanks to the new 36 Gbps overclock. They also note that 36 Gbps is an intentional limit "with user safety in mind," meaning that the ceiling could go even higher.

Originally envisioned as a compact console-like gaming PC, Valve's Steam Machine went from one of the most highly anticipated hardware releases of 2026 to one of the most controversial. The reason is simple: the price. Basically, Valve fell victim to the current climate of ever-more-expensive memory and storage, turning what could have been an affordable entry-level PC gaming solution into a $1,049 USD box with limited value.

With its semi-custom 28 Compute Unit AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 8GB of VRAM being the equivalent of a Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, the value proposition seemingly goes out the window the moment the Steam Machine price gets close to $1,000 USD. Since then, we've seen many custom Steam Machine builds pop up online, with one of the most notable being a new entry from Hardware Unboxed.

This custom build, which uses the 8-liter ASRock DeskMeet X300 barebones mini PC as its foundation, cost the team $1,050 USD to put together, matching the same price as the entry-level Steam Machine with 512GB of storage.

Announced back in 2012, Star Citizen has since raised over $1 billion in funding. And although there's no clear idea when we might see Version 1.0, over the decade-plus the game has been in development, the scope of the galaxy-sized space sim and shooter has kept growing. Case in point, the release of an instanced Destiny raid-style FPS Siege of Orison mission built to showcase the game's dynamic, strategic, team-based, FPS combat.

Community sentiment on the current test build of the mission is mostly negative, with the consensus that Siege of Orison is a buggy mess. And with that, the developers at Cloud Imperium Games dedicated a full episode of its Star Citizen Live show to livestream the team playing the mission on internal servers to give players a good look at how it's supposed to play out.

Turns out, "a buggy mess" with major performance issues is only part of the problem, as the developers themselves became visibly frustrated with each other and the game during the livestream. From broken mechanics to glitches, the team couldn't complete the mission and cut the stream short.

A hacker or hacker group called Cyberleek has posted gameplay clips allegedly from Grand Theft Auto 6. With both clips, each roughly a minute long, we get to see GTA 6's protagonist Jason Duval play what looks to be a realistic recreation of pickup basketball alongside him driving on a highway where he gets into a collision that ends with some melee violence.

Adding weight to the footage leaked being legitimate, Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have sent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices to individuals and accounts posting the gameplay footage on social media platforms like X. Neither Rockstar nor Take-Two have issued a statement on the leaks, with known industry insider NateTheHate adding that the gameplay we see is from a Grand Theft Auto 6 build that's more than a year old, potentially from 2023.

Cyberleek, which leaked the gameplay, issued a manifesto saying it made the footage public to draw attention to Rockstar and Take-Two's anti-consumer behavior. This includes no physical release, no planned offline mode, and charging extra for the single-player content in the Ultimate Edition. Naturally, any gameplay leak related to Grand Theft Auto 6 is big news, so here's a rundown of what the footage has revealed.

A memo apparently circulating out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, is offering soldiers a pretty unusual re-enlistment perk: four days off specifically to play GTA 6 when it launches in November.

The document, which has been circulating on social media, is addressed to personnel of the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion. It reportedly promises a four-day pass to any soldier who signs a re-enlistment contract between August 1 and November 14, 2026, timed to line up with GTA 6's November 19 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The exact days off would apparently be worked out between each soldier and their chain of command, but the memo ties them to a window of November 20-23.

It's worth noting neither the Army nor Fort Stewart has confirmed the memo is genuine, and outlets covering it haven't verified its authenticity either. Details like the commander's name and formatting reportedly check out based on soldiers familiar with the unit, so it looks credible, but it hasn't been officially confirmed as real. This also isn't an Army-wide policy, just one battalion using it as a retention incentive.

We all knew it would break all kinds of records, but now there are finally some numbers behind the hype. GTA 6 has pulled in roughly $429 million in pre-order revenue so far, according to new estimates from analyst firm Sensor Tower. That figure comes from about 4.38 million copies sold worldwide, months before the game even launches on November 19.

The analysis also covers the platform split, which leans heavily toward Sony. Sensor Tower's numbers show PS5 accounting for 77% of pre-orders, with Xbox Series X|S making up the remaining 23%. In raw numbers, that works out to 3.38 million copies on PS5 for $331 million in revenue, and just over 1 million copies on Xbox for $98 million in revenue.

Apparently, this tracks with what Take-Two has already said about pre-order demand. CEO Strauss Zelnick previously called the numbers "astonishing and unprecedented," and it looks like the Ultimate Edition is doing most of the heavy lifting here too. Sensor Tower's earlier data pegged the $100 edition at nearly 90% of all pre-orders, well above the industry norm, where premium editions usually account for a much smaller share of day-one sales.

It doesn't look like it's a great time to be a Crucial customer, as this is the second warranty complaint we have seen against Crucial in the same week. In this latest one, a Reddit user posted in the r/homelab subreddit about their terrible warranty experience with Crucial.

Apparently, Crucial offered the customer a refund of just $259.99 for a failed 128GB (2x64GB) DDR5 kit that now sells for around $1,800 at major retailers. That's just 14% of the current value, and assuming the customer accepts, they would have to buy a replacement at the inflated RAM prices. It's the second warranty complaint of this nature we have covered recently, and it's playing out identically to the first case.

Crucial initially approved an RMA and promised a replacement within 14 to 21 business days. After the customer shipped the RAM to Crucial, the company changed its mind. The reason they gave is that they have stopped making RAM for the consumer market. So, instead, they offered a refund based on what the customer originally paid. However, that refund is roughly 14 percent of what a comparable kit costs right now.