Latest News - Page 1062

Intel's new Arc A380 graphics card is kinda here, if you're in China... or spending oodles of money and going through the headache of getting a card across the border. Well, if you do for whatever reason... Bykski has a new water block for the Arc A380.

The new Bykski I-GNA380-X GPU BLOCK is a custom water block for the GUNNIR Arc A380 Photon OC graphics card, which is still mysterious: it's the first and only desktop Arc GPU for sale, and we don't know if the PCB that GUNNIR is using is a full custom design, or not. It's most likely an Intel reference design, so we don't know if you buy the Bykski I-GNA380-X GPU BLOCK if it'll fit on any other Arc A380 that's not from GUNNIR.

If you want a nice-and-tight single-slot GUNNIR Arc A380 Photon OC graphics card, the Bykski I-GNA380-X GPU BLOCK is what you want. Inside, the GUNNIR Arc A380 Photon OC graphics card has the Intel ACM-G11 GPU, 6GB of GDDR6 memory, a single 8-pin PCIe power connector that uses up to 92W of power. The reference Intel Arc A380 design has a 75W TDP, just FYI.

Sabrent has just unveiled their very latest Rocket 4 Plus G SSD that offers the very fastest storage performance, enough for Elon Musk to power the systems required to get him to Mars... hell, he's a big gamer, so Elon could power his Mars-based gaming PC with Sabrent's new Rocket 4 Plus G SSD.

The new Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G SSD is perfect for your new Windows 11-powered gaming PC, where the Microsoft DirectStorage API is ready to be taken advantage of in storage-strapped applications and games. Sabrent is pushing 7GB/sec+ with its Rocket 4 Plus G SSD, and capacities of 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB.

One of the crown jewels of the Rocket 4 Plus G is Sabrent's new O₂ firmware, which the company says is "specially engineered to elevate our cutting-edge hardware to all-new levels. Sustain high levels of performance throughout your long gaming session, without ever missing a beat. Your drive's health is intelligently maintained seamlessly in the background".

Sony asserts that content is the main driver for subscription services, and that Microsoft adding Activision franchises and IPs to Game Pass would be a "tipping point" in favor of the Redmond-based tech giant.

Brazil's competitive protection agency CADE has reached out to major games industry companies like Sony, Nintendo, Ubisoft, WB Games, Epic Games, and many more on the topic of Microsoft's proposed buyout of Activision-Blizzard. The questions center around possible anti-competitive practices and general information about the industry. Sony has delivered a number of interesting responses on the topic.

According to the questionnaire which has been made public on the Administrative Council for Economic Defense's website, Sony legal counsel says that Activision games on Game Pass could be a "tipping point" for content value. While the attorneys don't outright call it anti-competitive, they do make a case that Microsoft's previous acquisitions (like its $7.5 buyout of Bethesda) have significantly built Game Pass subscription value.

Sony makes interesting comments about how games offered on subscription services could potentially harm consumers due to lower game quality.

CADE, Brazil's own version of the FTC that acts as a protection group for the country's economy, recently polled major games industry players about Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard. The questionnaire aimed to collect data and insights on the $180 billion video games market.

Sony was among those questioned about Activision-Blizzard deal, and about the games market as a whole. One of Sony's more interesting responses discussed how important Call of Duty is for gaming, and comments on premium games vs subscription-based games. While not explicitly mentioned by Sony, the company's comments seem to compare the quality of buy-to-play first-party PlayStation games with Microsoft's direct-to-Game Pass titles that release day-and-date on the service.

A team of researchers have published a photograph snapped by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, and it's believed to be of a supernova occurring out in deep space.

The team of scientists released a group of images that showcase the galaxy SDSS J141930.11+525159.3, and according to reports, the team believes it may have captured Webb's first supernova as the object that was photographed gained in brightness between the several photographs that were taken.

More specifically, the researchers say that objects dimming and brightening are key indicators of a supernova occurring, however, this has yet to be confirmed as more observations are needed. Furthermore, Webb isn't designed to capture supernovas as it's equipped to observe distant planets, scan their atmospheres for signs of life, see far into the early universe, and much more.

The co-founder of the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has commented on the metaverse and what companies are currently developing.

Vitalik Buterin took to his personal Twitter account to state that the metaverse "is going to happen," but none of the current projects being developed by big-name corporations such as Meta, formerly Facebook, will go anywhere. Notably, Buterin explains that there isn't yet a unanimous definition for "metaverse" as he believes it's still "far too early to know what people actually want". Furthermore, Buterin wrote that "anything Facebook creates now will misfire".

For those wondering, Facebook changed its name to Meta back in October last year and has been pushing into the virtual reality space for quite some time, with the company purchasing Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion. Since the acquisition of Oculus, Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been touting the metaverse as the future of technology adoption, with Zuckerberg stating last year that he believes the "metaverse is the next chapter of the internet".

Elon Musk has taken to his Twitter account to give an easter egg to Tesla owners, writing that they need to try a specific voice command.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO took to his Twitter account over the weekend to say to Tesla owners to try the following voice command "open butthole". Notably, the voice command isn't necessary a new feature, as the below video shows a Tesla owner using the voice command in April 2021.

As for what the voice command does, the video shows the voice command being inputted and initiating the charging port for the vehicle to be opened. Musk didn't write that Tesla owners can also use the "close butthole" voice command to close the charging port cover. Tesla's have many of these small easter egg features, and it can be assumed that most owners aren't aware of them.

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Elon Musk has commented on the recent announcement from the Biden administration, which offered to exchange a Russian arms dealer for WNBA player Brittney Griner.

Griner was arrested in February and has remained detained in Moscow following airport officials allegedly discovering vape cartridges containing hash oil in her luggage. The Biden administration then offered to release Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the "merchant of death," to the Kremlin in exchange for Griner and Paul Whelan, a former marine accused of espionage having safe passage back to the US.

In response to these announcements and many of the reports that came out about the possible exchange, Musk took to Twitter on Sunday to voice his opinion on the matter. The Tesla CEO called for authorities to "maybe free some people in jail for weed here too?" and added a meme that stated the following; "People in the US in jail for weed while the government trades a Russian war criminal to free a woman's basketball player in jail for weed". According to Reuters, no deal has been confirmed between the US and Russia.

Researchers have taken a decapitated Egyptian mummy head and performed a CT scan revealing clues about its origin.

The decapitated head was found in an attic in Kent, England, and has recently been put under a CT scan that revealed it's at least 2,000 years old. Preliminary results from X-ray scans performed at Canterbury Christ Church University found that the head was once an adult female, which was then followed up by CT scans at the Maidstone Hospital that revealed the woman had a poor diet as her teeth were worn down.

Notably, the testing found tubing inside the left nostril as well as in the spinal canal. The researchers noted that the tubing is made of an unknown material and that it's unknown if the tubing was placed there during the mummification process or at a later date. Furthermore, the brain was removed as a part of the mummification process.

On Saturday, a large rocket fell back to Earth, causing many onlookers to believe it was a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere.

It was later confirmed that the rocket was China's Long March 5B which was launched from Earth on July 24. The rocket rook a new laboratory module to China's new space station that is currently under construction, marking the third flight of the Long March 5B since its first launch in 2020. Now, US Space Command has confirmed that the Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 pm EDT on Saturday.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson commented on the event and said that China's space agency failed to provide technical details such as "specific trajectory information" for where the rocket would fall, potential debris impacting a certain area, and the dispersal impact location. Notably, Nelson goes on to say that all space-faring nations should do their own due diligence with sharing this vital information before the reentry is made. Nelson added, "Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth."

Intel's new Arc A-series desktop GPUs launched without even a whimper, with the new GPUs being an exclusive to China for many months... but it appears AIB partners are now getting some of that Arc silicon to make entry-level graphics cards for some upcoming pre-built PCs.

GUNNIR started it all with their custom Arc A380 Photon OC 6G graphics card, then ASRock, and now we have ASUS and MSI leaping into the game. The Intel Arc A380 cards from ASUS and MSI comes from leaker "momomo_us" on Twitter, where MSI lists its new PC with an Intel Core i5-12400 or Core i5-12400F for the lower-end SKU, while the higher-end system has an Intel Core i7-12700 or Core i7-12700F processor.

These systems can be configured with 3 different GPUs: a custom MSI GeForce GTX 1650, an MSI GeForce GT 1030, or Intel DG2 A380 or Intel DG2 A310 graphics card. We should expect to see 4GB of VRAM on each of the Arc A380 and Arc A310 graphics cards, but there's no details on that with MSI's upcoming PC.

Intel will be unleashing its next-gen 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop CPUs later this year, but the company has now confirmed that it will be launching mobile Raptor Lake CPUs by the end of the year.

During their recent Q2 earnings call, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that when it comes to their next-gen CPU: "Raptor Lake - starting with our desktop SKUs this fall, followed by our mobile family by end of year". If we look at the current-gen 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU launch, Intel launched its Alder Lake-K series CPU in late October 2021, with Alder Lake mobile CPUs launched in February 2022, Alder Lake-HX mobile CPUs launched just a couple of months ago in May.

Intel does have its current "Innovation" event for September 27, where we're expecting to see the company roll out its new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs in desktop form. But now we have Gelsinger himself confirming Raptor Lake mobile CPUs for this year... but how close to the end of the year will Intel do that? CES 2023 is in the first weeks of January 2023, but it seems Intel is confident on Raptor Lake mobile dropping before the end of the year.

AMD's new mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X processor isn't too far away, with an engineering sample of the Zen 4 CPU with an AMD OPN code of "100-000000593-20_Y" has started appearing on the Userbenchmark website.

The new AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor was tested inside of ASRock's new N7-B65XT motherboard, which looks like a new B650-based motherboard being co-designed by NZXT as ASRock. The new AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor was rocking a 4.4GHz base CPU clock and turbo clock of up to 4.95GHz, which is damn good.

AMD's current mid-range Zen 3-based Ryzen 5 5600X has a 3.7GHz base CPU clock and 4.65GHz turbo clock, so the Zen 4-based Ryzen 5 7600X has some much higher CPU clocks up its sleeve.

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture should be detailed in the coming weeks, with the GeForce RTX 4090 expected to launch first and be a powerhouse... but the GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards will follow, and now we have some early 3DMark performance estimates.

The upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards have had their 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme graphics scores revealed by leaker "kopite7kimi". The leaker says that the GeForce RTX 4080 has 15,000+ points in TimeSpy Extreme, while the GeForce RTX 4070 will have 10,000+ points in TimeSpy Extreme.

These scores are based on the previously known specs of the cards, with the GeForce RTX 4080 packing the AD103 GPU and 10240 CUDA cores, while the GeForce RTX 4070 is based on the AD104 GPU and 7168 CUDA cores.

AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards will reportedly have 20Gbps memory bandwidth, while the 7x50 XT refresh will bump those numbers up again.

The next-gen RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 series is in the news from leaker "Greymon55" on Twitter, who said, "7900 series is 20Gbps, I don't know about the rest" when pressed by VideoCardz about "anything on individual SKU specs" of the upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards.

The leaker says that AMD will be launching its new Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards -- not just the Radeon RX 7900 series to be specific -- in November. We were already kinda expecting that because AMD is about to unleash its new Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs... and in the weeks after that, we'll get the RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs... and we ALL can't wait.

Intel is definitely adding a VPU chip to its new 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPUs that will debut in Q3 2023, a year from now: with the VPU confirmed as the Versatile Processing Unit.

The new Intel VPU was teased close to a year ago by leaker Moore's Law is Dead, yet another leak of his confirmed... MLID explained back in September 2021: "Meteor Lake will get an integrated VPU Accelerator. It's similar to the Neural in the Apple M1 for speech recognition, language models, and conceivably tons of apps by the time Meteor Lake launches".

Intel confirmed the Versatile Processing Unit (VPU) in a new commit to Linux VPU driver. The new VPU driver was baked into the Linux Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) in the same fashion that graphics drivers get integrated.

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I'm sure that by now you've heard about the mess that is the Intel Arc GPU launch, and that's because it's been such a disaster. Apart from YouTubers throwing up sponsored videos that only put the graphics cards in a good light, there's been no traditional tech press covering Intel Arc graphics cards, since they're still a China exclusive.

We've had a few European reviewers get their hands-on Intel Arc, likening Intel's big new GPU as "playing drunk, in a minefield". That same minefield must be where Intel GPU marketing plans their big launch, where leaker Moore's Law is Dead leaked that Intel is pulling back on its huge global launch of Arc for a much more watered-down positive-vibes-only round with YouTubers and select tech press.

But now... Intel Arc desktop GPUs will have a staggered launch according to Igor from Igor's Lab, who reports that Intel has "now internally decided on a narrower time frame" and that if they stick to this timeframe we should expect Intel Arc desktop GPUs to launch between August 5, and September 29.

Worldwide regulators are asking competitors like Sony for comments on Microsoft's Activision-Blizzard buyout and how it could affect competitor's positions in the market. Sony had a few choice words to say about Activision's most popular franchise.

Call of Duty is the top shooter series of all time. It's a powerhouse franchise that helps Microsoft and Sony generate combined billions every year (even with the 30% split). We've already calculated that Sony (and Microsoft) would lose hundreds of millions if Call of Duty is kept off of PlayStation platforms should Microsoft's $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard deal close, but Sony has delivered official comments reiterating how important Call of Duty is for gaming.

In an official response to Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), as found on this webpage and machine translated for this article, Sony legal representation said that Call of Duty is unrivaled in the games industry. Representation indicates that Call of Duty exclusivity could be a paradigm shift for the games market.