NVIDIA ends 2020 with the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 priced at $1499 -- a price that I'm sure won't change before the end of the year, but what about the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card?

The latest rumblings on NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is that it will be launching after Chines New Year -- which takes place between February 11-17, 2021. The news is coming from Igor's Lab, with his new story being confirmed by multiple sources right through to suppliers.

Igor says that all of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti boards "already exist" and that "switching to the GeForce RTX 3090 boards that can be equipped with memory on both sides is a mere formality for the board partners. After all, even the matching coolers and backplates are only for further use. So NVIDIA has all the time in the world to sort out its own current delivery problems first. That, in turn, remains to be hoped for".

CD Projekt RED admits to investors that it chose to hide footage of Cyberpunk 2077 running on last-gen consoles. Now it's paying the price.

Rather than celebrating the launch of their most ambitious game ever, CDPR is being raked over the coals and forced into damage control mode. The last-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077 is in bad shape with substantial frame drops, blurry textures that don't pop in, and tons of glitches. CDPR now admits they neglected the PS4 and Xbox One versions, and worse, that they willfully hid evidence of the poor optimization from the public.

The reason? CD Projekt RED didn't show last-gen footage because they literally weren't finished with the PS4 and Xbox One version. This implies the game wasn't good enough to show off. So why was it released?

Cyberpunk 2077 is a big mess on Xbox One and PS4, and CD Projekt RED now admits they purposely neglected the game on these platforms.

Out of necessity, CDPR is being very transparent about its recent Cyberpunk 2077 controversy. The last-gen game launched in an unacceptable state with tons of bugs and massive perf hitches dropping to 15FPS with terrible textures. The dev has been publicly lambasted by the industry as a result, and investor's are very concerned.

Now CDPR is taking full responsibility for their actions. The developer admits they focused most of their efforts on making the game run on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and neglected the last-gen version (CP2077 hits 60FPS on PS5, 15FPS on PS4). Remember, CP2077 was originally delayed because CDPR stressed difficulties with optimizing for so many platforms. Even as it admits full neglect, the dev says this is an "unanticipated situation," which is hard to believe.

We know that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 series launch was a disaster -- where AMD finally has a kick ass flagship Radeon graphics card... yet it can't get any on retail shelves or into gamers' hands. Well, now GIGABYTE has priced its custom Big Navi cards and they aren't cheap.

AMD might start pricing of its Radeon RX 6800 XT at $649, but GIGABYTE is leading the charge here with $899 pricing on its higher-end flagship Radeon RX 6800 XT AORUS MASTER graphics card. This is $250 over the MSRP of the Radeon RX 6800 XT reference model.

It does make me question if AMD ever intended to sell much of its Radeon RX 6800 series at its advertised MSRP, especially if AIB partners like GIGABYTE are charging a huge premium -- it will be interesting to see how the price of Big Navi and Ampere cards flows in 2021.

Today, carbon Studio revealed that it is hard at work porting The Wizards: Dark Times to the Oculus Quest platform. The studio is gearing up for an early 2021 release.

Carbon Studio launched The Wizards: Dark Times on PC VR over the summer, and it's had fantastic reviews from gamers and tech media. This spellcasting VR adventure is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Wizards, which also got rave reviews.

The Wizards: Dark Times features some of the most impressive graphics found in any VR game, so it comes as quite a surprise that Carbon Studios is making it work on the standalone Oculus Quest platform. Of course, the graphics in the Quest version are toned down quite a bit.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has only been available for three days, and Respawn Entertainment has already released the first patch with a promise of more on the way.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond dropped on December 10 and the response to the game has been mixed at best. Respawn Entertainment took the criticism to heart and quickly moved to fix some of the community's most frequent complaints.

Late Friday, u/Oculus-Mdoran from Oculus Studios announced that a patch would be released early this week, which would address several complaints by adding features and making some tweaks to how the game works.

A group of researchers at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, are evaluating the benefits of Microsoft's HoloLens in the operating room. Recently, the team executed the first-ever "holographically navigated" spine surgery.

The researchers are evaluating how augmented, and mixed reality technology can benefit surgeons performing complex and potentially life-altering procedures.

The team at Balgrist University Hospital has put in years of research to get to this point, and the recent surgery marks the first time a surgeon has performed a real spine surgery on a live patient. Prof. Dr. med. Mazda Farshad, Surgeon in Chief and Spine Surgeon, performed the procedure while wearing a Microsoft HoloLens 2 headset.

Intel will be launching its next-gen 11th Generation Core processors in March 2021, with the flagship Core i9-11900K getting some more 'concrete' specs before its reveal in 2021.

But the big takeaway here is that Intel is reportedly shipping the Core i9-11900K as an 8-core, 16-thread part @ up to 5.30GHz -- this is down from the 10-core, 20-thread CPU that is the current-gen flagship Core i9-10900K processor. There's also the Core i7-11700K which is virtually identical with 8C/16T, but lower boost clocks.

Intel might keep its Thermal Velocity Boost exclusive to the flagship Core i9 processors, which could explain why the leaked details on the Core i9-11900K have the 8C/16T chip having a single-core boost of up to 5.3GHz and all-core boost at up to 4.8GHz. This is versus the Core i7-11700K (the same 8C/16T) at single-core boost of up to 5.0GHz and all-core boost of up to 4.6GHz.

Pornhub has just removed millions of videos from its website, with a new blog post detailing the entire deal detailing why the website "enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history".

The website has announced it has banned unverified uploaders from posting new content, Pornhub has "eliminated downloads" and have partnered with "dozens of non-profit organizations, among other major policy changes". There's more to read about on that particular subject, here.

But it goes beyond that: Pornhub announces that part of their new policy to ban new uploads means that they have now "suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program. This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute".

When is the best time to buy computer parts? With Christmas Day right around the corner, some better-than-Black Friday deals are still available. If you want to purchase components for a new computer or an upgrade now, you're likely going to be able to save a lot of money, not only on hardware but also on software.

Just in case you have been looking to upgrade your computer software lately, there are some pretty good offers available for you: Best Software Christmas Sale - up to 62% off on Windows and Office!

The hot new release Cyberpunk 2077 has over 1 million players on Steam. If you want to play this game at 4K, Windows 10 64-bit is recommended, but the Windows 10 Professional version MSRP is a whopping 259 Euros! It doesn't have to be. With the Christmas Sale from GoDeal24.com, you can get the latest Windows Operating System for less than 8 Euro. Here are some of the available options below:

EA plans to buy Codemasters for a huge $1.2 billion in an effort to dominate the racing game market.

EA today confirmed its plan to purchase Codemasters, the UK-based game developer behind F1, Project Cars, and DiRT, for a whopping $1.2 billion. EA plans to buy out 100% of Codemasters stock at 604p (roughly $7.98) per share, but there's no details on how this will be paid out (e.g. stock and cash payments).

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive originally made a bid on Codemasters. Take-Two was prepared to pay as much as $973 million to acquire Codemasters, but EA undercut Take-Two and exceeded the bid by some $273 million.

CD Projekt RED formally apologizes for Cyberpunk 2077's terrible performance on weaker PS4 and Xbox One consoles, and promises to fix it.

Cyberpunk 2077 runs really poorly on the base PS4 and Xbox One, with frame rates dropping to as low as 15 FPS in 720p resolution. The PS4 Pro fares better at 30FPS, and CP2077 can hit 60FPS on the PS5. The lower-end performance has frustrated tons of gamers to the point where Sony is offering refunds for the game (which is pretty rare).

CDPR has taken notice, and promises new updates are on the way. The developer just laid out a plan to fix the abysmal gameplay on last-gen hardware. CDPR will release two patches--one in January, and another in February--that "fix most of the prominent problems gamers are facing on last-gen consoles."

I'm working late tonight here in Australia and went to visit YouTube to look at something and realized it was down, I posted on my social media and a few friends from around the world quickly replied and confirmed the news.

YouTube is down right now and after some very quick digging while I was getting this article ready that Gmail, Google Drive, and other Google services are all down right now. Google hasn't explained what is going on, but I hope they're getting right onto it -- millions of people are going to be waking to this in the US right now.

I'll update the article once we have more news.

I've got over 10 hours in Cyberpunk 2077 so far with a GeForce RTX 3090 powering my 4K experience with ray tracing dialed to maximum and DLSS on performance I'm getting 50-60FPS. It is one of best-looking games ever made, but how does Cyberpunk 2077 compare now, against its E3 2018 gameplay? Check this out:

CD PROJEKT RED has done an incredible job between 2018 and its release in December 2020 -- with Cyberpunk 2077 looking much, much better now than it did then. The lighting system seems to have been radically super-charged, with some truly gorgeous graphics on display in Cyberpunk 2077.

It's not common that a game exceeds its debut at an E3 but CDPR worked some real magic with Cyberpunk 2077. The improvements between E3 2018 and the retail release in December 2020 are remarkable. The final version of the game looks worlds better, with more detail, better lighting, shadows, and of course ray tracing looks out-of-this-world in Cyberpunk 2077.

The team at iFixit have performed weeks of work on getting a teardown guide done for Sony's new PlayStation 5 console. It is gloriously detailed, which you can go and nerd out over (like I did) right here.

The photo above was taken by Creative Electron's X-ray cabinet, giving us an awesome look at the innards of the PlayStation 5 -- which is powered by semi-custom Zen 2-based CPU, custom RDNA 2 GPU, PCIe 4.0-based storage, and so much more.

iFixit reports that it wasn't too hard to open up the PS5 by popping off the white panels on the side with a "gentle lift-and-slide motion" that provides "immediate access" to the M.2 SSD expansion slot, the fan, and even some vacuumable dust ports.

Cyberpunk 2077 reportedly ignores SMT on multi-threaded AMD Ryzen CPUs, which leaves FPS on the table. But you can use a hex editor to make quick changes and get a nice little frame rate boost.

Redditors have apparently cracked the case of Cyberpunk 2077's dropped performance on AMD Ryzen CPUs. According to findings from Redditor u/CookiePLMonster, Cyberpunk 2077 uses GPUOpen to check CPUs and designate how many threads the game will use based on CPU type. The game assigns less scheduler threads for non-Bulldozer CPUs, so Ryzen CPU cores won't be utilized as much.

You can use a hex editor to bypass the check and get a boost of up to 20% in top-end FPS performance depending on your hardware/settings configuration. Low-end FPS can improve dramatically. One user with a 3800X CPU and RTX 3080 saw a 15-30 FPS spike in lower-end FPS while playing, especially in CPU-demanding areas like populated city areas.

More people are playing Cyberpunk 2077 than any other paid game on Steam.

Cyberpunk 2077 has more peak players than any other paid played game on Steam with 1,054,388 players, new SteamDB figures show. Right now CP2077 is in fourth place in all-time concurrent players, sitting behind free-to-play titans like PUBG (3.25 million), Counter-Strike (1.3 million), and DOTA 2 (1.29 million).

In fact, CDPR's new FPS has nearly 3x as many concurrent peak players as Grand Theft Auto V, and handily beats its nearest competitor, Terraria, by over 564,000 players. CDPR notes Cyberpunk 2077 has already generated $50 million in revenues on Steam, and the developer now gets to keep 80% of all sales earnings moving forward.

Insomniac is doing some awesome things with the PS5's ray tracing capabilities right out of the gate, and now matches higher FPS with ray-traced visuals in the new Spider-Man remaster.

First Spider-Man Miles Morales got a RT Performance mode, and now the Spider-Man Remastered re-release is getting it too.

A new update for the remaster (v 1.0002) adds the mode, and it essentially boosts frame rates when ray-tracing is turned on. The trade-off is resolution takes a hit. So the reflections and lighting will look great, and the game will feel more fluid at 60FPS, but the resolution will drop below native 4K and switch to dynamic resolution scaling.

The PlayStation 5 has smashed through multiple records, and is now the best-selling launch console in U.S. history.

Sony's PS5 is now the best-selling launch console of all time in the United States. It has sold more units and made more launch sales revenues than any other console in U.S. history, beating out contenders like the PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and the newer Nintendo Switch. The news comes from analyst firm NPD Group, who also says the PS5 helped drive November 2020 to a record $1.4 billion in earnings--the highest November in tracked history.

While Sony hasn't revealed exactly PS5 sales figures just yet (we'll get those in the Q3 earnings report), we do know the PS5 has outsold the PS4's 7.6 million launch sales. The PS5 is also the best-selling launch console of all time in the United Kingdom.

EA could be the new home of Codemasters as the publisher ousted Take-Two's huge $900 million acquisition offer.

A month ago, Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive offered to pay $973 million in stock and cash to buy Codemasters, the developer behind racing games like Project Cars, DiRT, annual F1 games, and GRID. Now EA has stepped in and outbid Take-Two's sizable buyout offer.

Sources tell Sky News that EA has made a buyout offer and is currently working with brokers at UBS to layout specific financing terms. The deal hasn't been made public, and EA's SEC filings haven't been updated with any information on the potential buyout.