Latest News - Page 1273

UL Benchmarks released their new 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC which if you didn't already know it, is a benchmark for your SSD and storage devices in your PC.

Well, our resident Storage God, Jon Coulter, has run a series of the fastest NVMe SSDs in his lab and we have some glorious results in the new 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC. As it stands, Jon has run the Plextor M10P, Kingston KC3000, WD_BLACK SN850, Samsung 980 PRO, and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSDs.

Plextor leads the pack coming in first with M10P SSD while the second-fastest SSD that Jon has tested so far is the Kingston KC3000, while in third position is the WD_BLACK SN850. After that, the Samsung 980 PRO comes in fourth, the Corsair MP600 Pro in fifth place, and in last place: Sabrent with the otherwise super-fast Rocket 4 Plus. These are early results, so expect some updates from UL that should fix these issues (Sabrent's performance for example, and Alder Lake having issues).

NASA has taken to its YouTube channel to answer another popular question as part of its "We Asked a NASA Expert" series.

This week a NASA expert has answered the question "Is NASA aware of any Earth-threatening asteroids?", and taking center stage is NASA asteroid expert Davide Farnocchia who explains that NASA isn't aware of any Earth-threatening asteroids, but the agency is always searching. Farnocchia explains that for more than 20 years, NASA has funded programs that construct telescopes such as telescopes to observe the sky. Farnocchia adds that over the years, the observations have increased, and now the agency is watching the sky almost every single night.

Continuing on, the NASA asteroid expert explains that through these constant observations, the agency has been able to locate 95% of the asteroids that are greater than 3,280 feet and that could come close to the Earth. Additionally, more than a million asteroids have been discovered. Out of all the asteroids found, the scale that assesses the risk of each asteroid (0 - 10, zero being the lowest, ten being highest) has never categorized an asteroid above 0-level risk. With this information, NASA is able to say that for the next 100 years, there is a very low chance of an asteroid threat.

We heard rumors but now we have confirmation: TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) will be making a big new $7 billion chip fabrication plant in Japan, with an investment of Sony included.

The PlayStation giant will be chipping in $500 million out of the $7 billion, with construction of the factory slated to begin in 2022 and will be complete in 2024 according to Sony and TSMC. Sony and TSMC explained: "The fab (plant) is expected to directly create about 1,500 high-tech professional jobs and to have a monthly production capacity of 45,000 12-inch wafers".

Japanese industry ministry officials said that they want the world's No.1 contract chipmaker, so this case TSMC, to build plants in order to supply the required chips for Japan's electronic device makers (mostly Sony) and auto companies (the second-largest customer). We all know the issues between the US and China, with Taiwan and Japan right in the middle of the mess.

PS5 scarcity won't be alleviated any time soon. Sony has cut its PS5 shipment target due to worldwide component shortages.

Sony has cut 1 million units from its PS5 production target, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki. Sony now expects to have 15 million PS5 consoles available for shipment by March 2022, and now that number has dropped to 14 million. Like Nintendo, Microsoft, and other consumer technology manufacturers, Sony is having trouble securing critical semiconductors, chips, and components required for the PS5 console.

Supply constraints may also bite into Sony's big plans for 2022, where it plans to make nearly 23 million PlayStation 5 consoles ready for shipment. This is the largest salvo of PlayStation consoles that Sony has ever prepared in the history of the brand.

Caviar is no stranger to making some of -- if not the -- most expensive custom smartphones ever. Today, Russian luxury company Caviar has unveiled its new Tyrannophone... which has a real tooth fragment from a real T-Rex, which is 80 million years old.

The company is only making 7 of its very, very limited edition Tyrannophone which it makes in just 1 smartphone variant: Apple's new iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max smartphones, and only in the 1TB capacity model. Hardware to the side, the Tyrannophone features the aforementioned T-Rex tooth fragment, and so much more.

Caviar has used a beautiful, hardened titanium panel and Teradiamond option of the Tyrannophone which features 1024 diamonds on the back. The new Tyrannophone uses a lightweight composite foundation with engraving on the back, with beautiful gold-plated jewelry alloy. But it's the eye of the T-Rex that's the best, with Caviar using real amber -- and then using titanium for the awesome volumetric head sculpture of the T-Rex.

Twitter has just announced it is building out a new division for all things cryptocurrency and blockchain, with the social networking giant hiring Tess Rinearson as the engineering boss in the newly-formed Twitter Crypto.

Twitter Crypto will have Rinearson "set the strategy for the future of crypto at (and on) Twitter". Rinearson said: "First, we'll be exploring how we can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies, and to support their work and communities. Looking farther ahead, we'll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what's possible with identity, community, ownership and more".

Parag Agrawal, Twitter chief technology officer (CTO) will be who Rinearson will be reporting to under Twitter Cryto. Twitter explains that there is "massive and growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies". Meanwhile, Rinearson will be working on these issues, "with a long term goal of exploring how ideas from crypto can help us push the boundaries of what's possible with identity, community and more".

Samsung has just unveiled its latest LPDDR5X DRAM, the successor to its current LPDDR5 RAM where it is the first 14nm-based 16Gb LPDDR5X (Low Power Double Data Rate) DRAM.

The new Samsung LPDDR5X DRAM is super-speeded for the future of 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest buzzword: metaverse. SangJoon Hwang, Senior Vice President and Head of the DRAM Design Team at Samsung Electronics explains: "In recent years, hyperconnected market segments such as AI, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse, which rely on extremely fast large-scale data processing, have been rapidly expanding".

"Our LPDDR5X will broaden the use of high-performance, low-power memory beyond smartphones and bring new capabilities to AI-based edge applications like servers and even automobiles".

Battlefield 2042 pre-loading is kicking off worldwide right now, but once you've got it downloaded and installed onto your PC or console, what time does it unlock? Let's find out.

If you've pre-ordered the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition version of Battlefield 2042, then you'll get Early Access into the game and can enjoy it on November 12. The full release is a week later on November 19, so anyone that ordered the Gold or Ultimate Edition of the game can pre-load Battlefield 2042.

I've just finished pre-loading Battlefield 2042 Ultimate Edition on Steam, but we're still over 24 hours away from the PC Early Access launch at the time of writing. It all kicks off on November 12 @ 00:00 PST. Not only that, but there's also a 10-hour trial of Battlefield 2042 if you're an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or EA Play subscriber.

UL Benchmarks is taking storage benchmarking to the next level, with the introduction of the new SSD Benchmark, a new storage-focused benchmark that will test your gaming PC and its included SSD, hybrid SSD, or regular mechanical HDD.

It won't cost you much, where if you already own 3DMark Advanced Edition then you're looking at $2.99 for the new 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC. UL Benchmark explains on its own website: "The 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC extends 3DMark Advanced Edition with a dedicated component test for measuring the gaming performance of your SSD and other storage hardware".

"It supports all the latest storage technologies and tests practical, real-world gaming performance for activities such as loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams".

KLEVV has just unveiled its new DDR5 overclocking/gaming RAM, which has a beautiful design and will arrive in speeds of up to DDR5-6400 for your new Intel Alder Lake-based gaming PC.

The higher-end overclocking and gaming RAM from KLEVV will arrive in other speeds between DDR5-4800 through to DDR5-6400, where I'm sure there'll also be plenty of room for some manual overclocking. KLEVV explains in its press release for its new DDR5 overclocking/gaming RAM: "DDR5 is the latest memory standard soon to be adopted by the PC ecosystem. Its key upgrades are larger capacities and considerably faster speeds compared to previous generation DDR technologies".

"The new standard incorporates Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) and On-Die Error Correcting Code (ODECC) technology on the DIMM for the first time, allowing KLEVV to tailor its memory designs for improved power efficiency, stability, and better overclocking effectiveness".

TSMC has approved a further $9 billion in capital expenditure that will be spent towards building the very best chip manufacturing plants in the world -- a continuation of what TSMC already does -- and will expand into the US and Japan, expanding out from Taiwan.

At least a portion of the $9 billion investment will go into the new chip plants overseas, with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) pushing down into the Ant-Man-style world of 3nm. TSMC will have its 3nm chips ready for a trial production run in 2H 2022.

TSMC is on the 5nm node right now, which we're seeing made into Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops with the super-impressive M1 Max and M1 Pro SoCs. TSMC is hard at work on continuing the work on 5nm which includes the newer N4P node, which is the "third refinement of the 5nm process family" and has up to 22% more power efficiency, and up to 11% performance improvements over the first-gen N5 node.

Intel has finally launched its new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs with the flagship Z690 chipset and various motherboards, but now someone has been accidentally sent a mid-range ASUS PRIME B660 PLUS D4 motherboard, and something interesting was discovered.

The new ASUS PRIME B660 PLUS D4 motherboard includes the expected LGA1700 socket, which will support the new Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs -- mostly the non-K series processors. If you want a new Alder Lake CPU, but didn't want to upgrade to DDR5 -- it has DDR4 memory -- but no PCIe 5.0 unfortunately.

This isn't a big deal right now, especially on a mid-range B660-based motherboard -- there are no PCIe 5.0 SSDs or PCIe 5.0 GPUs right now and won't be for many months at the very least. I wouldn't be buying some new balls-to-the-wall Gen 5-enabled SSD or GPU for a mid-range B660-based motherboard, but hey.

We all know videos where the dislike count is higher than the like count, especially on some videos released by corporations -- and especially since Joe Biden became President -- there are a lot of videos with more dislikes than like and now YouTube is doing something about it.

The company says that the dislikes on YouTube will not be seen by the world, but the dislike button itself would remain. This means that you can still click or tap on the thumbs down button, which will let the creators behind the video know that you didn't like it, but no one else will know that you didn't like it.

Earlier this year, YouTube removed the dislike counter on videos... and while you've been free to like and dislike videos on the platform, now you simply can't. Well, you can -- but no one else will see it other than the content creator. YouTube also added that it has talked with small content creators, and said some of them felt like they were being targeted with dislike attacks -- more so than larger creators.

Battlefield 2042 is only days away but the game has leaked for some lucky gamers, with Reddit user 'Aaronfrogger' teasing new details from EA DICE's biggest game of 2021.

We now have a tease of what the full version of Battlefield 2042 will entail, with our first look at the menu and much more from Aaronfrogger on Reddit. The full Battlefield 2042 subreddit has more, but we do get a quick look at the menus of Battlefield 2042, as well as weapon customization, and bot matches.

The full game drops on November 12 which is mere hours away, but the early look is welcomed. We do have a list of the guns that Battlefield 2042 will have, with 3 x secondary weapons, 4 x SMGs, 4 x assault rifles, 3 x DMRs, 3 x sniper rifles, 3 x shotguns, and 2 x LMGs for a total of 22 weapons... at least at launch.

Spider-Man could help reinvigorate Square Enix's "disappointing" Avengers live game.

Crystal Dynamics and Sony have announced Spider-Man is finally coming to the new Avengers video game on November 30, 2021. Thanks to a brand marketing deal, the webslinger is exclusive to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles and won't be available to PC or Xbox owners (these users are not happy about it, either).

No info on what to expect from the free Spider-Man DLC has been released. We know Spidey is part of a hero event and can be accessed right away in the Avengers Initiative mission series. We don't know anything about Spider-Man's abilities, his combat mechanics, or the variety in his suits...but expect to see a bunch of these lifted straight from multiple comic series' and sold as paid skins.

BREAKING: Valve's new Steam Deck has been delayed, and will now start initial shipments in February 2022.

Component shortages have delayed yet another consumer product, this time with Valve's new Steam Deck. The company announced that the first wave of Steam Deck shipments have been delayed by two months to February 2022 due to "material shortages" in critical component supply chains.

Valve says all reservations will shift, so if you had an early reservation you will still get your Steam Deck before someone who registered to pre-order months after you.

Rockstar Games has finally put out more GTA trilogy remaster comparison gameplay footage and the results are pretty stunning.

The new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition looks absolutely incredible. Well, parts of the trilogy does, namely the environments, lighting effects, shadows, and all the other atmospherics that are baked into the scenes. Old-school PS2 games have been reborn with modernized upgrades befit of current- and next-gen systems.

At the same time, the new remastered trilogy upgrades do change the overall tone, look, and feel of the game. GTA III's blurry and dark sequences gave the experience a more foreboding and brooding nature, underlining the dark city streets filled with crime. There are some parts of GTA III that are just dazzling--namely the Times Square area with its mock-Flatiron Building--and Vice City is also a lot brighter than the PS2 days.

One gamer received an early copy of the new GTA trilogy and showed off the upgraded graphics in a live stream.

YouTuber okayjosh made history with the world's first gameplay of the new Vice City remaster in action. Up until today, Rockstar hadn't really show much gameplay of the new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition (they released a comparison video that does a great job showing the upgrades though).

Now we get to see what the game looks like in the wild without any PR edits. It's just raw gameplay streamed directly from a PlayStation 4. The graphics are a significant step up from the original PS2 game, but also have a very cartoonish look and feel--even more so than what was previously shown off. Interestingly enough, Vice City has a number of graphics options that allow gamers to toggle bloom, motion blur, and depth of field.

The head of NASA has told reporters that the date for the Artemis III mission when humans will return back to the Moon has been changed.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson spoke to reports on Tuesday and said that the space agency is pushing back the launch of Artemis III by at least a year. The delay in the launch comes after the Artemis program was smacked by delays that range from the development of technology to legal disputes. After losing to Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin moved to sue NASA for allegedly changing the terms of the contract throughout the competition to present proposals for designs.

Since the contract was now a legal matter, all development on SpaceX's lander had to be paused until the dispute was over. Nelson commented on the matter between NASA and Blue Origin, saying,"We lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025".

Richard Branson's space company Virgin Galactic has announced its targets for how many tourists it wants to be taking to suborbital space per month.

In July, Virgin Galactic took Richard Branson and three others to suborbital space via the company's VSS Unity spaceplane. At the moment, the VSS Unity is the only spaceplane the company offers, but Virgin Galactic won't be stopping there as the company has plans for testing the VSS Imagine in early 2023. The VSS Unity will be flown once a month starting in 2023, and during the second half of 2023, the VSS Imagine will begin accepting travelers.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said that in 2023 Virgin Galactic plans on taking tourists to space three times per month. On Monday, the company announced it has already presold 700 tickets, and of those 700 tickets, one-hundred of them were at the new price point of $450,000. Virgin Galactic has delayed the launch of commercial flights until late 2022 as it announced it had to work on VMS Eve. For more information on this story, check out this link here.