Latest News - Page 1041

NASA is currently doing its final checks on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket as the agency gears up for the launch of its Artemis 1 mission.

The SLS rocket is scheduled to launch on August 29 and will be the first step in NASA's return to the surface of the Moon. Artemis 1 will be NASA's reconnaissance mission, where the SLS rocket will carry the Orion capsule on a journey around the Moon and back to Earth, gathering vital information for the following Artemis missions. The launch will mark the first test flight of NASA's largest rocket yet, the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket, which will also deploy a satellite throughout its mission.

The Orion capsule is outfitted with sensors to data gathering instruments that will relay all information back to Earth for officials to take into account when preparing for Artemis 2, a crewed mission around the Moon, and Artemis 3, a crewed landing on the Moon. To bring the most immersive experience they can to the launch of Artemis 1, NASA has partnered with Meta and Felix & Paul Studios to livestream the unmanned launch.

Intel's new Arc A380 graphics card has been tested in 50 games across a spectrum of titles released between 1999 and 2022, including DirectX 9, DX10, DX11, DX12, OpenGL, and Vulkan titles.

The folks over at PC Games Hardware has tested the Intel Arc A380 graphics card, which is great to see after hearing Intel Arc GPUs will be using a DirectX 9 to DirectX 12 emulator... as the Arc A-series desktop GPUs have no native DX9 API capabilities. This means we get Arc hardware + Arc software + GPU compatibility in 50 games as a great early look at the Arc GPUs (but not up against AMD and NVIDIA in these results).

As for the games tested, the new Intel Arc A380 graphics card ran games flawlessly including Crysis, Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, F1 2022, FEAR (one of my favorites), Red Dead Redemption 2, Stray, The Witcher 2 and 3, and many, many more. As for the games that didn't work, PC Games Hardware notes that Max Payne 2 -- which runs on the older DirectX 8 API -- "doesn't start at all".

AMD will be unveiling its next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" family of processors as well as a fleet of X670 + X670 motherboards, which will usher in DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support for AMD.

The company will kick off the premiere at 7PM ET on August 29, on the official AMD YouTube channel, while a replay will be made available a few hours after the end of the live stream on the official AMD Ryzen website. Once AMD posts the live stream link, I'll update this post so you can check it out.

We should expect AMD to detail all of its next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, all the capabilities, features, and technologies that its new X670E and X670 motherboards are capable of -- as well as I'm sure board partners like ASUS, MSI, and others will fully detail and announce their respective X670E + X670 motherboards -- as well as AMD's new DDR5 EXPO memory overclocking, and more.

In the hours before AMD officially unveils its next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, X670 + X670 motherboards, and oh-so-much more, we're hearing more details on AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X processor... and boy, what a flagship CPU it is.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X processor features 16 cores and 32 threads that we're recently hearing will have an "F-max" frequency of 5.85GHz, which is mighty impressive. The new Ryzen 9 7950X features two Durango CCs with 16 cores codenamed "Persephone".

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is using its new 5nm process node to build AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X processor, along with the rest of the Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, with the leaker posting on Chinese social media site Weibo that this sample "will not be the top bin".

Intel's new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPU and Z790 motherboards will be unleashed next month, but now we're learning that the new Z790 motherboards will support up to DDR5-6800 memory.

The new information is coming from documents VideoCardz received that were for MSI's upcoming Z790 range of motherboards, including their specifications. One of those documents confirmed that MSI's new Z790 motherboards will support JEDEC DDR5-5600 specs by default, which is an upgrade over the Z690 upgrades and support for DDR5-4800 by default.

MSI will support DDR5-6800+ in 1 DIMM Per Channel (1DPC) and 1-rank configuration on its new Z790 motherboards, while 2-rank memory speeds slide down to DDR5-6400. This is an upgrade over the up to DDR5-6666 memory and most of the time DDR5-6400 on MSI's current-gen Z690-based GODLIKE, ACE, or Unify motherboards.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X is shaping up to be a monster CPU, with fresh news suggesting that the limit that AMD has built into its new flagship Zen 4 processor is 5.85GHz.

The next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs will be led by the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X processor, rocking along with a powerful 16 cores and 32 threads of CPU power built on AMD's fresh 5nm process node and pushing the clock speeds to their limits: 5.85GHz+ insanity.

AMD reportedly has the "F-max" frequency of 5.85GHz on the Ryzen 9 7950X, where you'll need to use something like AMD Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) or manual overclocking to boost CPU clock speeds, with the final CPU clock speed (and maintaining it) depending on the exact overclock, the temperature of your Ryzen 9 7950X CPU, power consumption, and what you're running (benchmarks, rendering, games, etc).

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Intel's new Arc A380 graphics card has been put through its paces in multiple ways, with an interesting new one here: Ethereum mining on Intel's new GPU.

The developer of Nanominer has added support recently for Intel's new Arc GPU, where it's been benchmarked with some Ethereum mining... performance wise the new Intel Arc A380 graphics card spits out just 10.2MH/s without any optimizations enabled. We're looking at 75W of power which isn't bad for power consumption, but performance wise the new Intel Arc A380 is worse than NVIDIA's lower-end GeForce GTX 1660 series GPUs.

Ethereum miners are preparing for Proof of Stake in the coming weeks, making Ethereum mining on the Intel Arc A380 kinda useless. It's good to see the performance and whatnot of Intel's new GPU, but when the DAG size for Ethereum is 5127MB, then the VRAM on the Intel Arc A380 becomes an issue.

Many of Valve's products have gone the way of the dodo, but the Steam Deck is different...and a new model might be in development right now.

Valve has confirmed it will continue making new Steam Deck hardware and supporting its existing models with software updates and QoL adjustments. In fact, Valve outright says the Steam Deck is "multi-generational," which aligns with previous assertions of new Steam Deck successors.

The info was spotted in a new digital Steam Deck information booklet that goes over the many functionalities and features of the hardware. The last page re-affirms what Valve has pretty much said a few times before--the Steam Deck isn't going anywhere.

The first season of Sony's new Twisted Metal TV show has finished filming and is in editing phases.

Video game adaptations are the next big thing, and Sony is investing heavily into TV show and film renditions of its games. Right now Sony's PlayStation Productions label is working alongside its Pictures and Music branches on creating 11 different shows and movies. One of these projects, a new show based on its old-school 1990s Twisted Metal franchise, has just finished filming.

Showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith (writer and producer of Cobra Kai) shared the news on Twitter roughly six months after Deadline's report on the show's casting and plot. The Twisted Metal show is described as a high-octane, post-apocalyptic comedy with destruction, marauders, and a world of mayhem and carnage.

What happened to System Shock 3? Is the game still in development? That ball is in Tencent's court now.

Back in May 2020, we reported that Tencent had saved System Shock 3's development. OtherSide Entertainment, who was developing the game, said at the time that the Chinese gaming giant "will be taking the System Shock franchise forward." Now two years later we have official confirmation that Tencent actually acquired the rights to System Shock 3 alongside the sizable investment they made into the project itself.

"When we originally acquired the rights to the franchise, we licensed the rights for the third game to Warren and Paul at Otherside. They then subsequently sold their rights to Tencent," Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick told VideoGamesChronicle during a Gamescom 2022 interview.

Halo The Master Chief Collection may not get microtransactions after all, 343 Industries says.

A bit ago, 343i kicked off controversy by announcing they may add microtransaction purchases into Halo MCC (oddly enough, this was something I mentioned briefly in 2019). MCC's unlockable currency is being changed to Spartan Points, and all in-game items will be "purchased" by these points. Right now gamers can earn unlockables simply by playing the game, ranking up, earning EXP, and completing challenges. But 343i may add the ability to directly purchase these Spartan Points with real money.

Now in a recent Halo MCC blog update, 343 Industries briefly talks about Spartan Points. The devs say that no official decision has been made regarding microtransactions (but given Halo Infinite's dropping numbers I'd say it's a pretty much guaranteed bet).

Diablo 2 Resurrected's new Terror Zones endgame feature allows any item in the game to drop in affected areas.

Diablo 2 is getting its first new content update since the Pandemonium Event many years ago. They're called Terror Zones, and they essentially transform specific areas in the game to feature supercharged enemies that grant lots of extra EXP.

Every hour, a specific area in the game becomes a Terror Zone, meaning gamers now have a new endgame area to farm. The best thing about the Terror Zones is that they also instantly raise drop rates to Treasure Class 87, meaning any item in the game can drop in these Terror Zones.

EK is better known as a leader in the premium PC liquid cooling business, but have flexed out from that and announced their first external screen: the new EK-Quantum Lumen 7-inch LCD.

The new EK-Quantum Lumen 7-inch LCD screen is a beautifully stylish, and functional addition to any setup... but especially a fully-custom EK water-cooled rig. You can use the 7-inch display as an additional desktop on your OS, so you can have anything you want on it... but we all now you're going to display system information like CPU, GPU temps, and more.

EK is using an SVGA resolution on the EK-Quantum Lumen, with a resolution of 1024 x 600, the IPS display itself is 7 inches long which means you've got some good viewing angles and colors. The EK-Quantum Lumen connects to your PC with an included HDMI 2.0 cable, with an internal USB 2.0 Type-A port and another USB Type-C cable to connect the Luman to your PC as an external display.

In an era of post-merger uncertainty, Warner Bros. Games boss David Haddad reassures gamers and investors that the interactive division will be safeguarded from spin-offs and acquisitions.

Warner Bros. has finalized its merger with Discovery to form a mega media conglomerate. Following the merger, company CEO David Zaslav has been axing shows and content left and right. So what about gaming? Could WBD sell WB Games to Sony or Microsoft? Communication has been extremely sparse on this subject; AT&T barely mentioned WB Games in its earnings calls, and WB Discovery has also been coy on details on the division's fate. Now WB Games boss David Haddad has delivered some big assurances that nothing will happen to WB Games.

In a recent interview with Axios, Haddad essentially said WB Games was safe. And rightly so: the games division has done incredibly well in 2022 thanks to the roaring success of Multiversus, a new free-to-play brawler featuring various DC and WB characters, and the more recent LEGO Star Wars titles.

Xbox console availability will be scarce this holiday season, Microsoft's gaming boss Phil Spencer has said.

As Sony readies its massive 18 million PlayStation 5 console shipment, Microsoft may still be playing catch-up with hardware availability well into next year. Xbox Series X/S consoles are expected to be limited throughout the remainder of 2022, including the critical holiday season where the gaming industry sees its largest sales boom.

"I still think demand will outstrip supply for us this holiday," Spencer said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. "When we get into 2023 you'll start to see more that supply is catching up. You might see [an Xbox Series console] when you walk in the store."

Sony has raised the PlayStation 5's price in worldwide markets except for the United States, but Microsoft currently has no plans to raise Xbox console MSRP.

Sony is about to ship 18 million PS5s this year, and the company wants to maximize every console sale to help offset weaker global economics that led to a 50% slide in gaming operating income. To do this, Sony is hiking up the price for both its PS5 models in Asia, Central America, Australia, and Canada. Sony's home country of Japan sees the largest price jump with MSRP rising over 20% due to weaker yen-to-USD conversion rates.

Microsoft, on the other hand, says that Xbox Series X/S prices will remain as they are.

The PlayStation 5 price hike is the most unpopular decision that Sony has made since the PS3 era. As history repeats itself, Sony faces the very thing that held it back during the Gen 7 console cycle.

Sony has announced a PlayStation 5 price hike in all territories and countries outside of the United States. The reasons are stark and clear: Foreign currencies are falling against the dollar--the Euro dipped below the dollar recently, and is currently break-even; the yen is low, causing PlayStation operating income to drop by -50%--and inflation is forcing consumers to re-think their spending.

The pandemic earnings surge is long gone, and manufacturing costs have risen even as components become more readily available. Everything is getting more expensive and to stay profitable, Sony is passing those costs onto consumers in every market except its most important one: The United States.

Sources have told USA Today's GL;HF outlet that Amazon will buy Electronic Arts, and the news will be announced today. CNBC's David Faber indicates this report may not be true.

Today might be one for the record books. Reports from Swedish games out let GL;HF say Amazon is buying EA , the billion-dollar gaming powerhouse behind big franchises like Apex Legends, FIFA, and Madden. But other reporters like CNBC's David Faber have contested the rumors.

"I have talked to some people who would actually know if there's something going on and they say there's nothing going on," CNBC's David Faber said.

China Central Television (CCTV) has shared footage from its ever-growing Tiangong space station, captured using a camera on one of its robotic arms.

The first module launched to make up the Tiangong space station was the Tianhe core module, which entered orbit on April 29th, 2021, and was followed by the Wentian module, which joined Tianhe on July 24th, 2022. Both modules came equipped with their own robotic arm, with Tiangong carrying an arm 33 feet (10 meters) long and Wentian bringing an arm measuring 19.6 feet (6 meters).

The larger of the two arms has a camera, which the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has recently used to inspect the exterior of the space station and "ensure it is ready to move the Wentian lab module from its current docking bay to its permanent dock." In the footage captured by the robot, you can see Earth's ocean and clouds as the station orbits 236 miles (380 kilometers) above the surface.