Latest News - Page 12

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.8.1 is available now, and the latest Radeon graphics driver for games and PC enthusiasts is a must for those looking to jump into the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Open Beta, which kicks off this weekend for those who've pre-ordered the game or are subscribed to PC Game Pass. It also adds support for a brand-new RDNA 4 graphics card, the Radeon RX 9050 4GB.

This 4GB variant of AMD's new entry-level Radeon RX 9000 Series GPU is reportedly built for system integrators, with the existing Radeon RX 9050 8GB card being the one that you'll find on retail shelves. In terms of performance, online benchmarks suggest the Radeon RX 9050 falls short of the GeForce RTX 5050, despite its $279 USD launch price.

Interestingly, the driver's Release Notes state that because Cyberpunk 2077 recommends a minimum of 6GB of VRAM, in-game graphics settings will need to be set to low or turned off completely for those "experiencing issues." Basically, the note is almost an admission that 4GB of VRAM isn't enough for modern PC gaming.

Described as the "world's first low-profile analog optical esports keyboard," the wired Razer Huntsman V3 Pro Low-profile Tenkeyless 8KHz pairs low-profile keycaps and switches with performance built for competitive gaming. With its new Razer Low-profile Analog Optical Switches, it supports gaming features like Rapid Trigger, Razer Snap Flex, Snap Tap, and 8,000Hz (8K) polling for ultra-low-latency performance.

The slim design and reduced travel distance mean the analog switches offer 0.1 mm to 2.8 mm adjustable actuation, with adjustments available in 0.1 mm increments. And when you pair this with Razer's True 8000Hz HyperPolling, you're looking at a snappy response with a reported 0.39 ms average latency. Razer notes this is a 52% improvement over the "nearest competing keyboard," though it doesn't specify the model tested.

As a compact board, the 19.5mm front height makes it notably slimmer than its full-sized counterpart, but it still sports an angled layout to support natural wrist placement and finger movement. Under the hood, it also features foam dampening for acoustics and a smooth typing experience, plus lubrication for the Low-profile Analog Optical Switches.

We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with MONTECH to give 12 lucky winners a new CPU air cooler, with both the NX400 and higher-end NX600 available in black and white.

There will be 12 winners in total, and each winner will receive one CPU cooler. The prize pool includes three MONTECH NX400 Black coolers, three NX400 White coolers, three MONTECH NX600 Black coolers, and three NX600 White coolers.

The MONTECH NX400 is designed as a compact single-tower cooler for builders who want strong air-cooling performance without committing to a particularly large heatsink. Its heatsink uses 52 fins aligned with four heat pipes to move heat away from the processor while maintaining a relatively streamlined 120 x 74 x 156mm footprint.

The GTA 6 leak saga has taken another turn, with multiple game developers now suggesting the leaked footage is running on a PC build rather than a console devkit.

The claim began to spread after creator TheRavenHelm posted on X that multiple game developers had been in touch with them about this speculation, all pointing to the same conclusion.

The reasoning is technical but straightforward. Console devkits for PS5 and Xbox Series X are restricted and license-locked hardware that's hard to access outside of official channels. A PC build, on the other hand, can apparently run through internal debug executables on regular PC hardware, which lines up with what people are seeing in the leaked clips.

It looks like Xbox is barely a footnote in the physical games market this year. According to analyst firm Circana, only about 4% of new physical video games sold in the US in 2026 have been for Xbox, a small sliver compared to Nintendo and PlayStation.

Circana's monthly report puts Nintendo platforms at 63% of new physical game sales this year, with PlayStation taking 32%. Analyst Mat Piscatella told Kotaku that the remaining share includes some PC collector's editions, like those for 007 First Light and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag: Resynced, leaving Xbox with just over 4%.

A few things likely explain the gap here. Nintendo fans have historically bought physical copies at a much higher rate than PlayStation or Xbox players, so it's not surprising that the platform holding the majority is Nintendo.

Samsung has raised prices on some of its advanced contract chipmaking services by as much as 15% for new orders, according to a Reuters report citing two people familiar with the matter. The increases took effect in July and are driven by a surge in AI chip demand, which is tightening capacity across the industry.

The hikes center on Samsung's 4nm SF4 process, where customers in China and the US saw price increases of 10 to 15% compared to the previous month. Taiwanese customers got a smaller bump of 5 to 10%. Samsung's 5nm SF5 line also rose 10 to 15%, while the older 8nm node climbed closer to 10%.

Chinese customers are reportedly accepting the steepest increases. US export restrictions on advanced chipmaking equipment have limited what Chinese firms can access domestically, pushing more of them toward foreign foundries like Samsung. With fewer alternatives at the leading edge, they have less room to push back on pricing.

Doom running on anything and everything has been a running joke for a while, and now Doom has found another unexpected host. Developer Bas Lichtjaar, known online as lauris-nl, has built a playable port of the 1993 classic for the Canon EOS 550D, a 16-year-old entry-level DSLR also sold as the Rebel T2i and EOS Kiss X4.

The port runs through Magic Lantern, an open-source firmware add-on for Canon cameras that's been around since 2009 and normally adds things like RAW video recording and expanded ISO ranges.

The camera's own hardware handles everything. Its DIGIC 4 processor runs the game, while the directional buttons control movement, the SET button fires, PLAY opens doors, and the rear wheel switches weapons. Zoom buttons double as run and strafe controls when held. There's even sound, mixing Doom's original effects with synthesized music through a 48KHz mono output using the camera's built-in speaker.

Valve's Steam Frame just leaked itself. An update to the ARM version of the Steam client briefly included eight finished setup and unboxing videos for the headset, and dataminers grabbed them before Valve could pull the update.

The videos were spotted by the Steam Hardware Updates account on X and cover unboxing, IPD adjustment, controller pairing, the wireless streaming adapter, and even a spacer for glasses wearers. One clip also shows a previously unannounced Ergonomic Accessories Kit, apparently including hand straps for the controllers and an extended light blocker for a tighter seal around the nose.

Nothing here looks like a render or a mockup. These are polished, narrated clips in the same style Valve used for the Steam Machine and Steam Controller overview videos, and they were sitting inside the actual client software that will eventually serve them to real customers.

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.