Latest News - Page 1138

ASUS has just launched its ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3090 EVANGELION Edition, a new custom GeForce RTX 3090 -- non-Ti -- themed on anime-mecha story EVANGELION.

The new ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3090 EVANGELION Edition graphics card uses the ROG Strix OC design and is the now fourth variant of the card. ASUS is going with a wicked-looking green/purple design, with black/red throughout -- themed like EVANGELION -- with fantastic results.

You're not going to be able to buy the card anywhere, with CoolPC store the first to take preorders. CoolPC says that they will only have 15 of the new ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3090 EVANGELION Edition graphics cards for sale, with the Taiwanese store selling them for 63,990 TWD which works out to around $2173 in the US.

We've been all sitting and waiting to see the chip shortage improve, and while estimates have been optimistic until now... Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has some bad news for you.

In a new interview with CNBC, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said: "That's part of the reason that we believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged".

We won't be seeing the situation improve this year, nor next year... but 2024... a very long time away. The shortage has been affecting us as consumers for now, but manufacturing and factory equipment are now affected. These industries are paramount, as they're required to -- you know -- actually make the things that were already in short supply.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the best-looking games ever made, with performance in the game getting better and better -- and will soon only get even better -- with upcoming patches to the game.

In a recent developer Q&A with developer Asobo Studio, Executive Producer at the studio, Martial Bossard, explained that Flight Simulator would be getting AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). Flight Simulator will get FSR 1.0 at first, but will soon get upgraded to FSR 2.0 -- while support for NVIDIA DLSS isn't far away -- dropping with Update 10, scheduled for July.

Asobo Studio Executive Producer Martial Bossard explained: "The good news is that the Microsoft Flight Simulator team is working in a direct relationship with both manufacturers, so NVIDIA and AMD are working with us to help us to have the best implementation of their systems. For DLSS, we are still having some artifacts, some issues with some animated textures and the water surfaces, but we are working with NVIDIA to fix that. For Update 10 we'll have a great DLSS implementation".

GIGABYTE has just nudged MSI out of the way of the DDR5 memory overclocking world record, where MSI smashed into 10004MT/s... GIGABYTE pushed 18MT/s more reaching DDR5-10022.

The record was broken by GIGABYTE's internal OC team that HiCookie leads, with the DDR5 memory frequency world record being achieved on the GIGABYTE Z690 AORUS Tachyon motherboard. This motherboard in particular, was crafted from its inception for overclocking... and those days are now here.

GIGABYTE not only used its own Z690 AORUS Tachyon motherboard, but its AORUS DDR5 memory -- which was DDR5-4800 before overclocking, with a single 16GB DDR5 stick -- pushed up to DDR5-10022. The GIGABYTE OC team had timings of 46-58-58-46-104-2 (tCAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC-tCR) when at DDR5-10022 speeds.

EVGA must be having some serious fun in its OC lab, with overclocking legend Vince "KINGPIN" Lucido, playing around with not just one... but two of its crazy custom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN graphics cards.

EVGA is using a very custom design with its GeForce RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN, with a TGP rated at 516W and a 1200W power limit.

With KINGPIN using the two cards each with 2 x 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connectors mean for 4 x 16-pin PCIe power connectors into 12 x 8-pin PCIe power adapters. The 1200W+ per GPU means EVGA was using a separate PSU per GPU, something that's required at this (absolutely bonkers) stage of 2400W of power from two GPUs and all those power adapters.

MassiHancer is back again with some very incredible modding work on Batman: Arkham Knight, using a ray tracing mod at 8K on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti with some bat-shit insane results. Check it out:

The modder has previously impressed with some super-impressive work on God of War 3 and Star Wars: Battlefront -- both radically improved with his ray tracing mods and more -- showcased beautifully at the monster 8K resolution, offering 7680 x 4320 or 4x the pixels of 4K (and 16x that of 1080p, I might add).

MassiHancer talked with DSO Gaming, where he explained: "For the first time you can see godrays and Dynamic Volumetric Fog integrated into the existing rendering engine extracting object positions from the Depth Buffer (something that was possible only using RT cores or NVIDIA PhysX ). I added Color Grading, Depth of Field and a Camera Mod that reacts to everything happening in Gotham. Finally I used "also" RT shader from Pascal Gilcher for G.I. effects".

Death Stranding 2 is likely in development. Here's what it could look like on next-gen consoles utilizing new Unreal Engine 5 technologies.

Kojima's new Death Stranding game will likely use the Decima engine, but skilled environment and lighting artist Pasquale Scionti gives us an idea of what the game could look like in UE5. Scionti recently created an awe-inspiring environment showcase that looks like something out of a PlayStation 6 reveal trailer starring a next-gen Death Stranding game.

Scionti created the scenes using Quixel Megascans and took advantage of Unreal Engine 5's new powerful and flexible tools, which includes Nanite virtualized geometry allowing for effortless drag-and-drop importing of photorealistic assets. Scionti also used 8K resolution Nanite textures and HDR lighting with volumetric fog.

One of Wall Street's biggest players is betting billions on the Microsoft-Activision deal going through.

Berkshire Hathaway now owns "something like 9.5%" of Activision-Blizzard's total shares, billionaire mogul Warren Buffet said in a company shareholders meeting yesterday.

"We now own something like 9.5% of Activision and if we went over 10% we'd file a report. It is my purchases, not the manager who bought it some months ago, and if the deal goes through we'll make some money and if it doesn't, who knows what happens," Buffet said during the event.

NVIDIA first announced its next-gen H100 Hopper GPU at GTC 2022 (GPU Technology Conference) earlier this year, its next-gen GPU is built on the new 4nm process node at TSMC and rocking a huge 80 billion transistors. Well, that next-gen GPU is now for sale... and it'll cost ya.

Japanese HPC retailer GDEP Advance has the NVIDIA H100 GPU listed for sale, which costs a whopping 4,745,950 yen (or around $36,550) which includes taxes and shipping: the card on its own costs 4,313,000 yen (around $33,200). This is also for the PCIe-based model with passive cooling for server enclosures, so the price of other SKUs is unknown at this point.

As for the NVIDIA H100 GPU, it's based on the new Hopper GPU architecture with NVIDIA using TSMC's 4nm process technology and packing 80 billion transistor into 814mm2 of silicon. The PCIe-based version of the NVIDIA H100 rocks 80GB of HBM2e memory with 2TB/sec of memory bandwidth, rocking on the PCIe 5.0 x16 connector.

Update: Ahhh, the leaker has deleted his tweet... which said "92 TFLOPs" and now is saying that there are toned down specifications of Navi 31 that would radically reduce the FP32 compute power down to around 73 TFLOPs (a 20% reduction).

AMD's next-gen Navi 31 GPU has been shaping up to be a monster so far, but with every rumor the RDNA 3 architecture is looking better and better... to the point where it could topple NVIDIA and its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture.

In a new tweet, leaker "Greymon55" tweeted something rather simple: "~92T FP32" as a reply to his Navi 31 leaks from November 9, 2021. In that tweet, rumors had Navi 31 at 75T FP32 compute performance, but now the leaker has upped those specs by a considerable 28%.

A wild new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card has appeared, with Japanese pre-built PC-maker introducing the new Sycom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti G-Master Hyrdo graphics card.

The new Sycom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti G-Master Hyrdo graphics card has a triple-fan cooler on its triple-slot design, but also has a dual-fan AIO cooler. Yeah, not one -- but two coolers -- the first of its kind: rocking 5 cooling fans in total, I'm sure it's going to be running pretty chill.

Sycom is using an OEM triple-fan cooler joined by the higher-end Asetek Hybrid GFX 240mm AIO cooler, which is joined by dual 12cm Noctua NF-A12X12 ULN fans. So, you should expect low GPU and GDDR6X memory temperatures, as well as near-silent operation as the fans only make 12.1 dBA of noise. The company says that their RTX 3090 Ti is up to 15C cooler with the AIO cooler.

We break down Sony's new PlayStation Plus conversion charts to tell you everything you need to know about the upcoming changes to the PlayStation subscription.

Yesterday, Sony opened up a can of worms by issuing out a very confusing and needlessly complicated PlayStation Plus chart. Sony is attempting to answer everyone's questions about the new three-tiered PlayStation Plus platform.

Like, for instance, what happens to your existing subscription when the new service rolls out.

Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has made over $185 million in total compensation from 2019 - 2021, new SEC filings reveal.

Activision's latest SEC filing aims at total transparency for shareholders and gives a tell-all look at the company's financials, upcoming proposals, and executive compensation. Nestled in the latter portion is a stark reminder of just how much money that company CEO Bobby Kotick has made over the last three years.

According to a table in the SEC filing, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has made a total of $185,562,762 in the period between 2019 - 2021. The bulk of this is from substantial $149 million performance-based compensation pursuant to 2016 Kotick Employment Agreement, an expansive contract that rewards the CEO with PSUs (Performance Share Units) based on certain company performances.

The West Japan Rail Company (or JR West) unveiled its Gundam-style heavy equipment robot for carrying out repairs.

The robot takes on the appearance of a humanoid upper body mounted on the end of a hydraulic crane arm, which rides around on the rail system atop a specially braced rail car. The rail car can deploy stabilizing legs when it arrives at its destination along the line, allowing the robot to manipulate heavy equipment around the rail system instead of workers "to improve productivity and safety."

The robot is controlled by a human pilot wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset. Motion tracking allows the pilot to turn their head and have the robot turn its head accordingly while streaming what it sees to the pilot. The pilot also controls the robot's arms and hands with a pair of handles, and if an external force moves the robot's arms, that motion will feed back into the pilot's grips.

Researchers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will be presenting new information about the Milky Way in about two weeks.

The presentation will feature results from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project that brought the world the first-ever image of a black hole in 2019. The EHT has since been studying Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the galactic center of the Milky Way galaxy, and an astronomical radio source, an object in space that emits strong radio waves.

Sgr A* is believed to be a supermassive black hole, and confirmation of such could comprise part of the upcoming presentation. A press conference from the project's findings will be hosted on May 12th, 2022, at 15:00 CEST (13:00 UTC), which will be live-streamed on the ESO's YouTube channel. Following that, a live Q&A event will be hosted on the same channel for the public to query a panel of EHT experts.

The pop-up airport was built in the heart of the city of Coventry by U.K.-based startup Urban-Air Port Ltd (UAP).

The airport is the world's first urban airport, where electric drones and air taxis, categorized as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, can arrive at and depart. The project is a collaboration between the Coventry City Council and Urban-Air Port Ltd, intending to demonstrate "the potential of urban air mobility to cut congestion and air pollution."

A new project status update from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reveals SpaceX's Starship will have to wait a while longer to get off the ground.

SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program has been awaiting the finalization of the FAA's Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) in order to conduct its first orbital test flight. The draft of the PEA was first published for review on September 17th, 2021, and after multiple delays will now be finalized no sooner than May 31st, 2022.

To conduct Starship and Super Heavy launch operations, SpaceX had to apply for and obtain permits and licenses from the FAA to operate such a vehicle. In order to grant such permits and licenses, the FAA has to conduct a review of "public safety issues," "national security or foreign policy concerns," "insurance requirements for the launch operator," and "potential environmental impact."

USNI News is a website run by the U.S. Naval Institute, which has learned of the recent dolphin deployment by Russia.

The dolphins have been deployed to protect Russia's Black Sea naval base amidst the country's invasion of Ukraine. Satellite imagery shows that two dolphin pens were placed at the entrance to Sevastopol harbor by the Russian Navy around February. The Sevastopol base in Crimea is Russia's most important naval base in the Black Sea.

The Soviet Union developed its own military marine mammal programs during the Cold War, including dolphin training in the Black Sea. The training was conducted at Kazachya Bukhta near Sevastopol, where it remains to this day. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the unit responsible for the programs came under Ukrainian control.

AMD's next-gen EPYC processor based on the super-next-gen Zen 6 architecture has had some light shined onto it. We're only at Zen 3 on the desktop right now, with Zen 4 being unleashed next year... Zen 5 is a while away, let alone Zen 6.

The news is coming from Tom @ Moore's Law is Dead -- who is on a roll with leaks lately -- where his sources have said that AMD's next-gen Zen 6 architecture is codenamed "Venice". The new 3rd Gen EPYC CPUs have just been updated, powered by AMD's delicious new 3D V-Cache technology. We should be expecting the Zen 6-powered AMD EPYC "Venice" CPU sometime in 2024, 2025+.

AMD's current-gen EPYC "Milan" CPU has up to 64 cores and 128 threads powered by the Zen 3 architecture and made on the 7nm node, slotting into an SP3 socket (LGA 4094). The upcoming EPYC "Genoa" boasts up to 96 cores and 192 threads, on the new Zen 4 architecture and 5nm node, slotting into an SP5 socket (LGA 6096).

Intel's next-gen 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPU has been turned on, and successfully booted into operating systems and a web browser.

The news of Meteor Lake hitting this milestone comes from Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who said: "Intel 4 Meteor Lake has now successfully booted Windows, Chrome, and Linux. The speed at which the team was able to achieve this milestone is a significant sign of the health of both Meteor Lake and our Intel 4 process technology".

We won't see the new 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPUs launching this year, but rather Intel will be unleashing the new Meteor Lake chips in 2023. Later this year we'll see the release of Intel's next-gen 13th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" CPUs with the new flagship Core i9-13900K processor. Meteor Lake on the other hand, will be using a tiled chip design based on the Intel 4 process architecture for the compute tile.