Latest News - Page 1222

NASA's Parker Solar Probe recently "touched" the Sun as it made its approach towards our host star, but why didn't the spacecraft melt?

NASA has answered this question and many others regarding the Parker Solar Probe on its NASA Goddard YouTube channel, where the agency explains that the Parker Solar Probe is outfitted with a white heat shield that reflects light and is made out of a variety of materials that keep the spacecraft. Additionally, NASA engineers explain that the heat shield has to automatically sense if it's in the correct position to provide maximum protection for the sensitive instruments onboard the probe.

The spacecraft is equipped with solar limb sensors that, when illuminated, notify the Parker Solar Probe, and in turn, the heat shield to correct itself. The Parker Solar Probe is also equipped with a cooling system that circulates water behind the solar cells where it's warmed. The water is then pushed down into the radiators, where it is then cooled. If you are interested in learning more about the Parker Solar Probe, check out this link here.

NASA has confirmed via its database that tracks all Near-Earth Objects (NEO) that an asteroid that is roughly half the size of the Empire State Building has approached Earth.

As the NASA database states, asteroid 2013 YD48 is anywhere between 260 - 600 feet in diameter has made its closest approach with Earth on January 11. The asteroid was in no way a danger to the planet and made a safe fly-ball of Earth at a distance of 3,477,476 miles. To paint a picture of how far away 2013 YD48 was from Earth, the moon is only 238,855 miles away from Earth, which means that the asteroid was 14 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

NASA considers any object that flies within 120 million miles of Earth's orbit to be a "NEO", and while an asteroid approaching Earth may seem concerning, the space agency has stated that Earth is safe from any catastrophic asteroid impacts for the next 100 years. Earth will still experience smaller asteroid impacts that are capable of reaching the surface, but the impact would have very little effect compared to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

A clip has been shared onto Twitter that shows astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) being chased around by a gorilla.

The footage was shared onto Twitter by screenwriter and filmmaker Todd Spence, where he wrote that astronaut Mark Kelly smuggled a full-sized gorilla costume onto the ISS back in 2016. Spence got a few things wrong in his caption on the video which has since been retweeted more than 43,000 times.

The gorilla costume wasn't smuggled onto the ISS or worn by Mark Kelly, it was actually worn by his twin brother Scott Kelly, who can be seen in the above video chasing around astronauts. The costume was sent to Scott by Mark and ended up staying onboard the floating laboratory for an entire year. Even in space humans find ways to prank other humans in a soul effort to bring a smile to everyone's face. I think if that was the mission Scott had in mind, it was certainly achieved.

A "supermassive" black hole has been discovered by astronomers who were observing a dwarf galaxy with NASA instruments.

The discovery was announced during a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday, and according to the announcement, the astronomers have discovered a black hole that has a mass of around 200,000 times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to observe eight dwarf galaxies and found that within the galaxy named Mrk 462 contained a supermassive black hole that's actively feeding.

According to a report by RT, the discovery is one of the first times that researchers have been able to observe an "obscured" black hole within a galaxy that only has a few hundred million stars. Researchers detected the X-ray signature from the black hole within Mrk 462, and based on the acquired data, astronomers believe the black hole is "heavily obscured" by gas and clouds of dust.

AMD announced its new Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) image upscaling technology at CES 2022, with support planned for thousands of games.

AMD has teased some rather big performance improvements with its upcoming RSR technology, with an awesome sneak peak inside of its new AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. In the new video (above) the company teases up to 70% performance gains using Radeon Super Resolution technology, upscaling the native 1440p resolution to 4K.

In Warframe, we're looking at up to 55% more performance -- 222FPS with native 4K and RSR off, while 346FPS with native 4K and RSR on -- impressive stuff. Although, you wouldn't tell the difference between 222FPS and 346FPS. AMD's new RSR is built on the foundations of FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) but with driver-level support, meaning game developers don't need to spend oodles of time getting AMD's new tech into their game engine pipelines.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has posted to its blog about a new planet that was recently discovered and how it has taken a strange shape.

Artists impression of WASP-103b.

The blog post found on the European Space Agency website states that the agency's exoplanet mission dubbed Cheops has discovered a planet called WASP-103b. The planet was discovered in the constellation Hercules, and due to gravitational forces between the planet and the host star, WASP-103b is a deformed planet that resembles the shape of an NFL football.

AMD's new flagship EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" processor is now out in the wild, with dual-socket configurations benchmarked and some truly glorious results to drool over.

The new AMD EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" CPU has 64 cores and 128 threads on the new Zen 3 architecture, with up to a 280W TDP. Inside, the CPU clocks are at 2.2GHz base and 3.5GHz boost, with a truly huge 768MB of L3 cache. This includes 256MB of regular L3 cache, joined by 512MB of cache delivered by the stacked L3 SRAM -- a 3x increase in L3 cache over the previous-gen EPYC "Milan" CPU.

In the new dual-socket configuration, the EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" "100-000000504-04_34/21_N" processor was used, which is a QS/ES (qualifying sample, engineering sample). This CPU has a base clock of 1.8GHz and boost clock of up to 2.9GHz, lower than the flagship EPYC 7773X -- but as a QS/ES sample, this makes sense.

If you're using a Linux operating system and haven't used Mesa just, Mesa 22.0 is about to launch and will have a huge 20-40% performance gain for Intel Arc Alchemist DG2 GPUs.

Intel's new Arc Alchemist DG2 GPUs were meant to launch in Q1 2022 but now that's a mess and it's sometime in 2022, but Intel has been helping the Linux community by kick-starting their Xe HP pipeline optimization from the get-go so that Linux users wouldn't have to wait for compatibility.

But then rolls in Mesa 22.0 which will have pixel pipeline optimizations, boosts to OpenGL and Vulkan performance in Intel discrete GPUs -- offering up to 40% more performance. In something like Unigine Valley, there was a huge 40% performance gain in Mesa 22.0 with Intel DG2-448 hardware. DOTA2 for example, had up to 30% more performance while Xonotic had up to 14% more performance... impressive numbers.

Intel teased its next-gen NUC 12 Extreme "Dragon Canyon" at CES 2022, which will be the successor to the "Beast Canyon" NUC that is powered by the 11th Gen Core KB-series CPUs in the Tiger Lake-H family of processors.

The next-gen Intel NUC 12 Extreme "Dragon Canyon" will be desktop-powerful, with a full desktop LGA 1700 socket that will handle GPUs with 65W TDPs. Inside, will be 3 x PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD support, and up to a huge 64GB of DDR4-3200 (not DDR5). There'll be a Compute Element inside, with all of the major components on a separate board.

This is how Intel will have a discrete Arc Alchemist GPU inside, and while Intel didn't confirm it, they did show off a NUC Extreme system with an Intel Arc Alchemist GPU inside. We've already had a shot of the guts of the NUC 12 Extreme "Dragon Canyon" system, a detailed shot of the Compute Element that I've got for you below.

AMD has released their latest Adrenalin 22.1.1 drivers for Radeon GPU owners, with support and improvements for Monster Hunter Rise and God of War.

God of War gets some decent performance improvements on RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, with the Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and Radeon RX 6700 XT all receiving up to 7% more performance in God of War at 4K Ultra settings over the previous driver version 21.12.1.

You can download the new AMD Adrenalin 22.1.1 drivers right here (465MB download).

NVIDIA launched its new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card today, with AIB partner Inno3D launching its new family of custom GeForce RTX 3080 12GB cards.

Inno3D has its new flagship GeForce RTX 3080 12GB iCHILL Frostbite graphics card, a wicked new water-cooled card that will have the best performance of them all.

The company promises that the GPU will sit between 60-65C when cooled by a 240mm or 360mm radiator. There's wicked RGB lighting of course, as well as the 12GB of GDDR6X memory being cooled with the water block.

NVIDIA launched its new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card kinda silently, with AIB partner MSI unleashing 6 new custom designs based on the new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB.

MSI's new flock of cards starts with the flagship GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X 12G LHR, which rolls out with the highest 390W TDP (up from the 350W TDP on the RTX 3080 12GB reference design, and up from the 320W on the RTX 3080 reference design). It requires 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, is a big boi at 336 x 140 x 61mm and weighs 1882g (card only).

The next one down from that is the MSI RTX 3080 SUPRIM 12G LHR (non-X) which is the same in all regards (TDP, PCIe power connectors, size, and weight) but will have reduced boost GPU clocks. Under that we have the MSI RTX 3080 GAMING Z TRIO 12G LHR which also has a 390W TDP, 3 x PCIe power connectors, but it's a bit smaller: 323 x 140 x 56mm. MSI also offers the GAMING TRIO PLUS variant, the same size and weight as the GAMING Z TRIO variant, but with reduced boost GPU clocks and a lower 350W TDP.

NVIDIA has just launched the new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card, with an updated GA102-220 GPU and 12GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory.

The new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB offers 2GB more GDDR6X memory over the RTX 3080, which has 10GB of GDDR6X -- but also arrives on a higher 384-bit memory bus -- and offers up to 912GB/sec of memory bandwidth. NVIDIA's original GeForce RTX 3080 had 10GB of GDDR6X, but on a smaller 320-bit memory bus, resulting in 760GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

This means the new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB has the same 12GB of GDDR6X @ 19Gbps with up to 912GB/sec memory bandwidth of the higher-end GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but with less CUDA cores. Now talking about CUDA cores, let's start with the RTX 3080 which has 8704 CUDA cores, the new RTX 3080 12GB has 8960 CUDA cores, while the higher-end RTX 3080 Ti will reign supreme with 10240 CUDA cores.

KIOXIA might not have been physically at CES 2022, pulling out over the Omicron pandemic panic, but the company had some sweet stuff to show off virtually.

KIOXIA teased its next-gen CD7 PCIe 5.0 NVMe Data Center SSD, an industry-first, with PCIe 5.0 rolling out on Intel's new Z690 chipset motherboards and into the data centers and HPC systems of the world. KIOXIA also showed off its new XD6 Gen4 NVMe SSD on the smaller EDSFF E1.S form factor, pushing a huge 7GB/sec reads.

Alex Mei, vice president of corporate marketing for KIOXIA America, Inc said: "The KIOXIA legacy of innovation continues with product introductions such as the latest generation of BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and our new BG5 Series solid state drives. Whether it is automotive applications or compact high performance-oriented PCs, we are committed to developing flash storage solutions that enable the success of emerging applications and allow existing technologies to reach their full potential".

NVIDIA has announced out of nowhere its new Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution technology, or DLDSR, which is an AI-powered version of Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) downscaling technology -- something that has been available to GeForce graphics card owners inside of the GeForce drivers.

The new NVIDIA DLDSR technology improves over DSR by using an AI-powered layer, which is powered by NVIDIA Tensor cores inside of GeForce RTX series GPUs. NVIDIA has a new January 14th Game Ready Driver that will update NVIDIA's built-in DSR feature with AI.

DLDSR improves on DSR by adding an AI network that NVIDIA says "requires fewer input pixels, making the image quality of DLDSR 2.25X comparable to that of DSR 4X, but with higher performance. DLDSR works in most games on GeForce RTX GPUs, thanks to their Tensor Cores".

The organization that handles the PCIe standards, PCI-SIG, have announced the release of the next-gen PCIe 6.0 standard which has some truly wicked next-level bandwidth.

PCIe 6.0 will offer up to 256GB/sec through a x16 PCIe 6.0 slot, and with advanced PAM4 technology (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) and many other new features and technologies, the new PCIe 6.0 standard is a huge step up from the already impressive PCIe 5.0 standard (which is huge over PCIe 4.0, and then PCIe 3.0, and so on).

The new super-fast PCIe 6.0 standard will usher in levels we've never seen before, with a x4 PCIe 6.0 M.2 NVMe SSD capable of 64GB/sec -- while if you had an AIC RAID card you could drive that up to an insane 256GB/sec -- untouchable levels with even PCIe 5.0, let alone PCIe 4.0.

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 will come and blow our socks off later this year, powered by the new Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, but now there are some massive predictions of the RTX 4090 performance... and wow.

In a new tweet, 3DCenter.org answers itself in the question that the earliest that NVIDIA could test out 12 games on its next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card would be "sometime in the summer of 2022". The tweet continues, noting that NVIDIA has to do a few things first: AD102 tape out, AD102 validation, real boards in the wild, working clock rates (Ada Lovelace GPU clocks will be much higher than Ampere GPU clocks), and then great drivers.

A video posted in December 2021 from all of the gathered leaks and rumors of the GeForce RTX 4090 has it pegged for some serious 4K gaming powerhouse performance, but we've already heard the rumors of the new RTX 4090 being 100% faster than the RTX 3090... but in a chart, man-oh-man, does it look good. 4K gaming at 400FPS in games like Rainbow Six: Siege... nearly 100FPS at Ultra settings in Cyberpunk 2077... yeah.

Take-Two Interactive hopes to have its mobile games running on Zynga's powerful ad tech platform 12 months after its combine deal closes.

Take-Two plans to buy Zynga shares in a massive $12.7 billion deal that has the two behemoths combining their efforts. The deal, which is so complimentary that Take-Two CFO Lainie Goldstein described it as a "hand in glove fit," would give the GTA publisher a powerful foothold in the growing billion-dollar mobile games industry.

One of the biggest opportunities for Take-Two is surging recurring consumer spending revenues thanks to Zynga's in-house ad platform. Zynga monetizes its games in two ways: with microtransactions and in-game ads. The ad platform is already established, and Take-Two hopes to bring its own mobile games Dragon City, Monster Legends, Top Eleven, Two Dots, and WWE SuperCard to the platform within 1 year after the deal closes. TTWO expects the Zynga combine will close in Q1 FY23 (by June 2022), so these games could be running on Zynga's ad platform by June 2023.

As Halo Infinite sales continue hitting top spots among key marketplaces, we take a look at historical franchise sales for more context.

Unlike previous Halo games, Halo Infinite is insulated against low sales. The free-to-play multiplayer offers a way to make long-term revenues without a $60 pay gate. Despite this free access point, Halo Infinite's premium campaign looks to be selling decently.

Infinite is the #3 best-seller on Amazon, is the 18th best-selling game on the PC Microsoft Store, and has sold an estimated 800,000+ copies on Steam (based on Game Discover Co. Simon Carless' conversions, Halo Infinite's campaign could've sold anywhere from 500,083 - 833,472 units in 2021). Halo Infinite's campaign is also the 15th top paid game on Xbox.

Microsoft's dual-console plan with the Xbox Series generation has paid off, culminating in the most quickest-selling Xbox console hardware gen of all time.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently re-confirmed the Xbox Series X/S duo is the fastest-selling Xbox consoles of all time. This isn't a surprise--Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella first confirmed the news way back in July 2021 during a Q4 call, saying: "Xbox Series S and X are our fastest-selling consoles ever, with more consoles sold life-to-date than any previous generation."

Six months later, that fact remains true. The Series X and S models are selling extremely well due to astronomically high demand (driven by scalpers and genuine desire from consumers alike). "At this point [we have] sold more of this generation of Xboxes, which is Xbox Series X and S, than we had any previous version of Xboxes," Spencer said in a recent New York Times column.