Latest News - Page 1165

If you were expecting big upgrades from NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, I wouldn't be holding my breath... because you're going to experience another 5-10% more performance.

Even with all of that additional grunt under its hood -- 2GHz+ GPU boost, faster and newer 21Gbps GDDR6X memory, and up to 100W of more power -- the new GeForce RTX 3090 is only 5-10% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090.

The new rumor is coming from CapFrameX, who tweeted out "some performance numbers" from the new RTX 3090 Ti, and the current flagship RTX 3090. He said that his "first impression" was that the RTX 3090 Ti was around 10% faster than the RTX 3090 at 4K, with up to 450W power and up to 2GHz GPU boost.

NVIDIA is now hours away from launching its new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, with NVIDIA's in-house GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition to become the first graphics card with a nifty new 16-pin PCIe power connector.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition will have a PCIe Gen5 16-pin power connector, replacing the 12-pin Molex MicroFit 3.0 plug that was on the RTX 30 series Founders Edition GPUs. The new 16-pin PCIe power connector can drive up to 450W on the RTX 3090 Ti, while the 12-pin PCIe power connector could drive up to 350W on the RTX 3090.

But on some of the custom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphic card design, we can expect up to 480W of power... or up to 516W with some tweaking. The upcoming ASUS ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (liquid-cooled with a dual-fan AIO cooler) has up to a 480W TDP, and can be tweaked for up to 516W. At this point, you're reaching the maximum power -- 525W -- of the PCIe 5.0 power connector and PCIe slot.

Netflix has secured yet another game developer to help fuel its new free game offerings for subscribers.

Mobile game dev Boss Fight Entertainment is now part of Netflix's first-party video games studios initiative. The studio is mostly known for Android and iOS mobile games like Dungeon Boss, a popular RPG with voxel-style graphics. Boss Fight is the third indie studio to join Netflix behind Night School and Next Games.

Boss Fight will bring its mobile expertise to help Netflix release a salvo of free mobile games to subscribers as well as plan out future titles for the company's eventual games rollout on TVs, browsers, and game consoles through the app.

Gamers have raised $70 million in Fortnite microtransactions in a week, showing just how powerful Fortnite's in-game revenues are.

Epic Games is currently donating 100% of Fortnite VBucks proceeds to Ukrainian relief. Gamers managed to raise $36 million for Ukraine through VBucks purchases in one day, and now that number has almost doubled to an astronomical $70 million in microtransactions in a week's time. These values include 100% of revenues on PC via the Epic Store and Xbox (Microsoft has partnered to donate 100% of Fortnite revenues through April 3), plus the 70% cut from the PlayStation Store and Switch.

"Together we've now raised $70 million USD in humanitarian relief funds for Ukraine. Congratulations and thanks everyone and Xbox for joining this effort!"

The ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, a mass of ice the size of New York City,

Scientists had previously considered East Antarctica to be relatively stable in the face of climate change, with global warming seeming to impact the smaller western side of Antarctica more noticeably. The collapse is the first of its kind captured in the eastern region of Antarctica, owing to a rise in temperatures by more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) above the normal range in the area,

The collapsed ice shelf spanned approximately 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers), acting as a barrier between the Conger and Glenzer glaciers and warmer waters. It collapsed between March 14th and 16th, 2022, and was captured by satellite imagery.

An announcement regarding the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program will drop on Wednesday, March 30th.

NASA has promised that the "exciting new observation" by Hubble will be "one for the record books," but hasn't suggested what it could be related to other than to tease a collaboration between the nearly 32-year-old HST and the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Ukraine has launched the Meta History Museum of War, an official NFT collection by the country's Ministry of Digital Transformation.

The Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, took to Twitter to announce the "NFT-Museum," where users can purchase NFTs created to preserve moments from every day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine so far. The funds from sales of any NFTs from the collection will go directly toward supporting the country's army and civilians.

Exxon Mobil has partnered with Crusoe Energy Systems Inc. to create a new cryptocurrency mining project powered by excess natural gas.

A surplus of 18 million cubic feet of natural gas produced by Exxon Mobil per month is being used to power mobile Bitcoin mining servers. Exxon produces too much gas from shale oil to transport through its pipelines, so the company has sought to profit from the has that would otherwise be burned off without serving any purpose.

Cryptocurrency mining currently is relatively unfriendly to the environment, requiring significant amounts of power, mostly generated from fossil fuels, resulting in a large carbon footprint. This pilot project makes cryptocurrency mining slightly more environmentally friendly by not using excess fossil-fuel-derived power while natural gas continues to be wasted.

The study on alcohol consumption titled "Association of Habitual Alcohol Intake With Risk of Cardiovascular Disease" has been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Broad Institute of MIT, and Harvard have determined that alcohol intake of any level is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Their findings contradict the supposed benefits of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption on heart health that previously may have been conflated with other positive lifestyle factors in individuals with such consumption.

The study examines 371,463 participants in the UK Biobank, with an average age of 57 years old and average alcohol consumption of 9.2 drinks per week. Those with the lowest levels of alcohol consumption had the lowest risk of heart disease, followed by those who abstained, seemingly suggesting a positive influence from alcohol consumption. However, they found this was likely due to healthier lifestyles in the lower-level consumers, such as greater physical activity and vegetable intake and less smoking.

Sony will make a historic change in its lucrative services business model next week, sources tell Bloomberg.

Reports indicate that Sony Interactive Entertainment is poised to announce its new breakthrough subscription service next week. The tech giant, who made $3.6 billion from network services last year, aims to combine its two major subscription offerings into one cohesive package.

The service is codenamed Spartacus, and will bundle PlayStation Now (3.2 million subscribers) with its popular PlayStation Plus (48 million subscribers) into one powerhouse offering. While PlayStation Plus outpaces Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass by 15 million subscribers, Sony is positioning Spartacus to compete with Game Pass in strategic ways utilizing Sony's core strengths. The Roman-named contender will offer three tiers with varying value points that include game streaming and classic era games.

Rockstar has announced a new $5.99 a month subscription service for Grand Theft Auto Online.

GTA Online is getting its own monthly subscription plan called GTA+ exclusively for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of GTA Online.. The new service is priced at $5.99 a month and includes a bunch of monthly freebies and bonuses, including in-game cash, cosmetic skins, early access to upgrades and features, and bonus experience points. Rockstar is even adding special Shark Cards exclusive to GTA+ subscribers.

"Being a GTA+ Member gets you a recurring monthly GTA$500,000 direct deposit to your Maze Bank account, plus the opportunity to claim properties in and around Los Santos that unlock gameplay updates you may have missed out on, special vehicle upgrades, Member-only discounts, GTA$ and RP bonuses, and more each month."

Microsoft has paid out billions in royalties to indie game developers as part of its ID@Xbox program, but these payments are just a drop in the company's very deep money bucket.

It's been nine years since the ID@Xbox program first launched in 2013, helping usher in a new wave of indie games onto the Xbox console-and-PC ecosystem. The initiative has helped publish and fund thousands of indie games that have earned Microsoft, and the developers themselves, billions in revenue.

In fact, Microsoft says it has paid out more than $2.5 billion in royalties to indie developers. That sounds like a lot, but it's actually not, at least in comparison to the company's gargantuan earnings from the Xbox marketplace.

Future builds of DirectStorage will help optimize CPU usage even more than it already does, and could significantly impact the performance and gameplay of new PC games.

Microsoft's DirectStorage API empowers developers with new tools to supercharge IO throughput and workload efficiency. The current version of DirectStorage can reduce CPU overhead by up to 40% on systems running Windows 11 with 2.5GB/sec NVMe SSDs; the new IO file stacks included in Windows 11 work in tandem with DirectStorage's simultaneous decompression and asset loading to help free up the CPU for other work--like, say, environment destruction.

Those gains will only get better over time. Right now DirectStorage uses the CPU to decompress data, but future builds will directly feed compressed files into the GPU's VRAM for efficient, ultra-fast decompression and processing. This will free up the CPU even more, giving developers more flexibility to assign CPU cycles for specific tasks like physics and robust worldbuilding.

Polyphony Digital has apologized for Gran Turismo 7's downtime by offering gamers a bunch of free credits.

Today Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi has formally apologized for Gran Turismo 7's current issues by giving away 1 million in-game credits with an approximate worth of $9.99. At the time of writing, Gran Turismo 7 is Sony's lowest-rated game on Metacritic by player ratings as major controversy continues surrounding the racing sim.

DirectStorage's IO performance gains will help PC game developers utilize more CPU power in their games.

Microsoft's new DirectStorage API could help revolutionize PC gaming. We already know DirectStorage will lead to faster loading times, but combined with Windows 11 and an NVMe SSD, Microsoft says that DirectStorage can reduce CPU overhead by up to 40%, freeing up the CPU for other vital tasks. This could have a dramatic effect on games, including more populated open worlds with diverse NPCs.

We noted this in an older video on the Xbox Series X/S's Velocity Architecture, but here the performance gains are more pronounced due to the higher NVMe speeds of the drives and the increased optimizations with Windows 11's file stacks. What's interesting to note is that DirectStorage's current version still uses the CPU for decompression and is still able to reduce overhead by 40%.

Polyphony Digital is reversing course on one of Gran Turismo 7's most controversial changes.

Gran Turismo 7 has been a crash course PR nightmare since release. The game has sped into controversy due to unpopular changes like increased microtransactions, reduced credit payouts, always-online requirements, and the strange decision to remove car resales from the game. The last one was particularly frustrating for gamers, who saw it as an attempt to push users towards more grinding or paying outright for in-game credits to buy the cars they wanted.

Now the devs at Polyphony Digital are making some vital course corrections. A new update will allow gamers to sell cars in Gran Turismo 7 alongside a host of new reward adjustments, activities, and races. The changes are coming in a series of updates that are coming soon. Polyphony Digital has also apologized to all GT7 owners by giving out 1 million free credits.

US President Joe Biden gave a press conference in Brussels where he discussed what the US would do if Russia used chemical weapons in the Ukraine war.

Biden told reporters in Brussels that the US "would respond" if Russia began using chemical weapons in the Ukraine war and that the level and nature of the response would depend on the "nature of the use" . Additionally, Biden declined to comment on what intelligence suggests to the US that Russia may be considering using chemical weapons while also not going into any specifics about what that kind of response the US would have.

"We will respond," Biden told reporters. "The nature of the respond will depend on the nature of the use." Adding, "It would trigger a response in kind. We would make that decision at the time." The US president comments on relations between the US and China, saying that China's President Xi Jinping understands that if China sides with Russia it would come at great economic cost, and that China's economy is much more reliant on the West than Russia.

The missile test is North Korea's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test since 2017.

On March 24, North Korea conducted its most recent ICBM test, which flew for about 71 minutes, traveling 684 miles (1,100 kilometers) and reaching a peak altitude of 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers). The previous ICBM test in 2017 launched a Hwasong-15 missile approximately 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), taking 54 minutes and reaching its highest altitude at 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers).

Ukraine is requesting more aid from the United States and has provided a list requesting hundreds of anti-tank/aircraft missiles.

Ukrainian soldier holding the American-made FGM-148 Javelin.

Ukraine has updated its wish-list of military gear that its requesting from the US with hundreds more missiles that weren't previously included in the last list, according to CNN. The newly updated list features an increased number of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles, with Ukraine stating that it needs 500 of each per day.

The capsule's contents were collected by astronauts on the moon 50 years ago and sealed for later opening on Earth.

The lunar core sample 73001 was collected from the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and has been slowly unsealed over March 21st and 22nd. The sample was stored inside a special tube originally sealed in the vacuum of space surrounding the moon, thus requiring specialized tools to open carefully and keep all of the pieces organized.

Deputy Apollo sample curator Juliane Gross conducted a dry run of the process with mock lunar rocks at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the original lunar sample has been kept. The sample has now been opened, ready for analysis, after originally being collected by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt from the Taurus-Littrow Valley within Mare Serenitatis.