Latest News - Page 1462

We've been hearing about AMD's next-gen Zen 4 architecture and Ryzen 7000 series or codename Raphael CPUs for over 6 months now, but now we have some more information thanks to new leaks.

A new leaked AMD roadmap has been teased by @sepeuwmjh which teases the Zen 4-based codename Raphael CPUs, and has been tweaked into a detailed roadmap by @Olrak29_ that gives us a great look at what to expect from AMD's upcoming slate of Zen processors.

The new codename Raphael CPUs will reportedly use the Zen 4 CPU architecture, pack on-board RDNA 2-powered graphics, support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies, and arrive on TSMC's fresh new 5nm node. AMD will be shifting to the new AM5 socket for the Ryzen 7000 series CPUs according to these roadmaps. Before that we have codename Warhol which will reportedly use the Zen 3+ architecture, DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 technology and be made on the 6nm node.

Activision is gearing up for Call of Duty 2021 that is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, set in World War II the game is reportedly called Call of Duty: Vanguard. Well, Vanguard is a "f***ing disaster" says industry insider Tom Henderson.

Henderson started out by tweeting on April 8 that he was sure the Call of Duty developers, saying they have a "bowl full of "things they can fuck up" and they randomly pick one with their eyes closed ready for the next patch/update". He then added: "Honestly at this point, it's just embarrassing and there's 0 justification for why these things are happening".

"It just feels like the passion has been sucked out of every studio and working from home has made everyone lazy". So the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and the entire work-from-home situation is adding serious fuel to the fire of game development across the industry, and Call of Duty 2021 which from the rumors isn't shaping up well.

Well gosh, the new Battlefield is sounding better and better with each drip and drop of rumors on EA DICE's upcoming first-person shooter.

In a new tweet, leaker Tom Henderson has teased the new Battlefield (which some are referring to as Battlefield 6 -- Henderson believes it will simply be titled "Battlefield") will have robotic dogs you can control. This would be a great tweak to the mechanics in the game, with Henderson teasing the "dog is more like Boston Dynamics Mule that can run really fast and potentially has a weapon on it. But it looks like it could be a new vehicle type instead of a gadget".

Henderson has teased that the next-gen Battlefield would be a "accurate representation of 2030's military combat compared to Final Stand. Everything in [the next Battlefield] is developmental weapons and vehicles being developed right now". That's exciting to hear, as we should have some great tweaked weapons of today through to 2030, as well as advanced vehicles, planes, drones, robotic dogs now, and more.

The new Mass Effect Legendary Edition has gone gold, meaning it's 100% finalized and ready to ship and won't be delayed.

2020 was great for the games industry, but 2021 is shaping up to be a year of delays. Luckily the new Mass Effect remaster trilogy won't be pushed back. BioWare project director Mac Walters confirms the game is now complete and ready to be mass produced and shipped out to consumers.

The new trilogy makes big upgrades to the originals, including 4K 60FPS performance, ultra-fast loading on next-gen SSDs, improved shadows/lighting, and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements. This is especially true for the first Mass Effect game, which now has a ton of changes including sprinting outside of combat, individual controls over squadmates during combat, tweaked aiming, ADS, and more, and being able to use any weapon regardless of class type.

Using a new Expeditions feature, Fallout 76 will borrow expansion plans from Elder Scrolls Online and incorporate locations and content from other Fallout games.

Fallout 76's Expeditions feature sounds pretty ambitious. Bethesda says Expeditions will "take users outside the current map" and that they're "very excited to make them." This could be similar to how ESO will eventually incorporate the whole of Tamriel's locations--on a smaller scale, of course. Expeditions may be more bite-sized instances where gamers travel to other locations from the Fallout series. If this is accurate, then Fallout 76 is here to stay for a long time.

Now we have evidence that Fallout 3's D.C. region will be one of these explorable regions. Unfinished assets of the D.C. region have been datamined from Fallout 76 by user eckserah, all but confirming that Bethesda is in early stages of prototyping Fallout 3 locales. One of the images clearly shows the Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. complete with the Washington Monument in the background, which also showed up in Fallout 3. These are test cells and not finalized content, so they might not show up in Fallout 76.

Every once in a while, developer live streams will reveal little tidbits about a creator's pasts. This time Doom Eternal game director Hugo Martin talks about his early comedy aspirations and how he wants to eventually teach future game directors and game developers.

Hugo Martin has had an interesting career. He's mostly known as game director on id's glorious metalhead fantasy Doom Eternal, but before that, Martin actually had a fledgling start as a standup comedian.

"I actually did standup comedy, and acting, then improv a little bit--which I was terrible at improv," Hugo Martin said in a recent Twitch stream. His set mostly consisted of dad jokes, and Hugo actually has a recording of the set...but don't expect to see it published on the internet.

A new Uncharted game has been in development since 2019, and Naughty Dog isn't the only team working on the project.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, a new Uncharted game entered development back in 2019 under two internal PlayStation studios. One of the teams from Sony Bend, the studio behind first-party game Days Gone, started work on the Uncharted project in 2019 as Naughty Dog geared up for The Last of Us Part II. This was shortly after Sony had shot down a pitch for Days Gone 2 and moved Sony Bend over to a franchise it wasn't necessarily familiar with--a move that caused worry and dropping morale among leadership.

Today, the fate of the Uncharted game remains unknown, but we do know Naughty Dog is working on The Last of Us 2's upcoming online mode. The report also mentions Sony Bend is helping out with this multiplayer gametype as well.

Sony is funding a remake of The Last Of Us for the PlayStation 5, complete with next-gen optimizations. Although Naughty Dog is mostly leading development, the project started out as a way for a fledgling startup to prove itself to Sony.

A recent Bloomberg report highlights how Sony is doubling-down on marquee hits at the cost of developer morale. The story of the new Last of Us remake highlights Sony's current business trajectory.

According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who spoke with sources close to the matter, the Last of Us remake didn't start off as a big project. It was a sort of proving grounds for a group of developers who wanted to earn recognition form Sony. The Last of Us wasn't chosen by Sony, but by the group, who were led by Sony's Visual Arts and Services Group director Michael Mumbauer. VASG is a kind of support studio responsible for putting critical animation work into Sony's biggest games.

HTC recently launched a set of Vive-branded VR accessories, but it isn't done with the new announcements yet. It is now dropping hints that there's a new headset on the way.

HTC's marketing team had some fun on Friday. The HTC Vive Twitter account dropped a very dark image of a closeup of what appears to be an inside-out tracking camera on the edge of a headset.

The shot is cropped too tight, and the image has too much contrast to see any meaningful details. Attempts to enhance the image have been fruitless in uncovering anything else. Meanwhile, HTC also released a teaser on the Vive Blog, which cheekily confirms that a new headset is imminent.

We are finding out some more information on Intel's next-gen Sapphire Rapids architecture, with the next-gen Xeon platform set to pack some juicy specs and technologies when it drops.

The new tease is from VideoCardz with an anonymous tipster sending a slide that shows the specifications of Intel's upcoming Sapphire Rapids platform. We're looking at up to 56 cores per CPU, DDR5 memory support, 64GB of HBM2e memory per socket (!!!), PCIe 5.0 support with up to 80 lanes of PCIe 5.0 goodness, and so much more.

Sapphire Rapids will scale between 1 and 8 sockets, so you will be able to cram in many of those 56-core CPUs into future supercomputers. But the most surprising things here are the 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 64GB of HBM2e memory on-package with up to 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth per socket. Delicious.

AMD is working on a next-gen Radeon PRO workstation graphics card, with a new leak teasing the first RDNA 2-powered workstation card. Check it out:

We are being told from the new rumors that AMD's new Radeon PRO workstation card packs 16GB of GDDR6 memory -- just like the flagship Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards. One of the labels on the cards teases that this model we're being shown is the "Full Secure TT GLXL" model and the "TT" definitely doesn't stand for TweakTown... or does it?!

AMD is using a blower-style cooler here with a dual-slot design, which is different to the thicker dual-fan reference Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards. We should expect lowered GPU clocks on the Radeon PRO versus the Radeon RX gaming graphics cards, with under 250W TBP expected.

It's not the first time it has happened, and it might not be the last time it'll happen -- but NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will be hosting the GPU Technology Conference 2021 keynote from his personal kitchen.

NVIDIA has announced: "The keynote, delivered again from the kitchen in Huang's home, will kick off a conference with more than 1,500 sessions covering just about every innovation - from quantum computing to AI - that benefits from moving faster".

GTC 2021 will kick off on April 12 @ 8:30 AM PST, where we should hopefully see NVIDIA unveil a bunch of new products, talk about their current successes, and everything in between. GTC isn't a gaming-focused event so there shouldn't be a new GeForce graphics card, but rather new workstation-focused Quadro graphics cards, new Tesla accelerators, and more.

If you're still playing Grand Theft Auto IV then you might want to check out the latest 4K2K Allaga Graphics Mod, which provides some kick ass new high quality textures for some buildings and characters in the game.

The idea behind the mod is to replace all of the game's textures over time, but the version that we see now is damn impressive with the mod enabled. 4K2K Allaga Graphics Mod creator 'okanto' explains: "The purpose of the mod is to improve all textures in the game. At the moment I am increasing the resolution of buildings and characters and then I will replace some with better ones and improve characters and effects".

This is a very early version of the mod and the creator notes that he "doesn't have a lot of textures" but I'm sure that will change over time if this mod gains popularity. Anything to keep us going until Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally announced, and a few years from now finally released.

NVIDIA's upcoming GPU Technology Conference 2021 is about to kick off, with the company teasing people with a GTC 2021 Scavenger Hunt with some "hidden treasures" to be found.

The first discovery of NVIDIA's surprise "hidden treasures" for GTC 2021 were unearthed by Wccftech, confirmed by VideoCardz where there is a hidden message inside of the NVIDIA GTC 2021 marketing videos. The light bulbs on the video above are attached to a neural network pattern blink in a pattern... which is of course Morse Code.

The NVIDIA hidden treasure was worked out, and was a webpage that NVIDIA congratulates you for finding, saying "You've discovered our first hidden treasure. We love rewarding curious minds. On Monday, April 12 (8:30 a.m. Pacific), the NVIDIA GTC keynote will go live and we thought we'd have a little bit of fun by adding a few "Easter eggs." These are clues & hidden treasures for those with eagle eyes to discover".

We saw our first tease of the new custom Lenovo Radeon RX 6900 XT LEGION graphics card in February, but the card is now here and being tested in Lenovo LEGION gaming PCs. Check out the Lenovo Radeon RX 6900 XT LEGION:

Lenovo is heavily inspired by AMD's own wicked Radeon VII reference graphics card design, with a triple-fan, triple-slot card that has a full custom cooling solution and non-reference PCB. Lenovo is tapping dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors, unlike some of the custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards which require another 6 or 8-pin PCIe power connector. Not bad, Lenovo.

The company uses a different dark design with their Lenovo Radeon RX 6900 XT LEGION graphics card, compared to AMD using a silver design theme with its reference Radeon VII graphics card. Lenovo will be using this design for both the Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT LEGION graphics cards.

Sony's emphasis on best-selling games is weighing heavy on the developers that make them--and teams that want to work on other projects.

A new report from Bloomberg highlights Sony's plans for the PlayStation brand. In lieu of a business-changing service like Game Pass, which fosters creativity by virtual of organic discovery, monetization, and full game purchases, Sony is instead doubling-down on its strengths: Big marquee first-party games that sell millions of copies.

Sony's games are lauded for their high production values, stellar art and animation, and mature themes, but these awards come at a very real human cost. Games like Naughty Dog's Uncharted and The Last of Us series require grueling overtime and crunch in order to achieve lifelike reactivity and dazzling visuals. The payoff is big: In 2020, Sony made over $22.7 billion from its games division. Like Nintendo, Sony has proven that exclusives push platform and full game sales to billion-dollar heights.

Diablo 2 Resurrected is filled with all sorts of quality-of-life improvements including a shared stash, a comparison tab, auto gold pickup, and now an awesome new mercenary feature.

As seen in a recent Dbrunski125 stream, Diablo 2 Resurrected shows more stats on your mercenary sidekick. Opening up the merc tab now shows the exact level and damage of their skills and abilities, including active attacks as well as any auras they use in battle. This is great for those Act 2 mercs with their holy freeze, thorns, might, and blessed aim auras.

Previously in Lord of Destruction gamers could only see basic stats like health, experience, strength/dex and damage and defense, and resistances. Now D2R adds a neat little skill tab so you can check out your mercs abilities in real-time. It's a nice bonus if you equip +skill gear to your merc like Andariel's Visage.

HP this week revealed the price of its upcoming Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition. The new enterprise-focused VR headset includes various biometric sensors that are not included with the standard Reverb G2, and they come at a high cost.

HP first revealed the Omnicept Edition of its Reverb G2 VR headset in September of last year. The headset is based on the HP Reverb G2, which features dual 4K displays and Valve's over-the-ear speaker solution. The Omnicept Edition builds on that base and adds several biometric sensors to unlock advanced features for business uses.

The Omnicept Edition includes a pair of eye-tracking sensors from Tobii, which enable features like foveated rendering for improved performance. The eye-tracking sensors can also provide useful information about the user's level of focus and attention. HP also included a heartrate monitor, which in conjunction with the eye-tracker, can help determine a user's cognitive load level.

Dell has just announced new Ryzen 5000 editions of their flagship Alienware M15 gaming laptops, with the regular Alienware M15 R5 gaming laptops packing an Intel CPU -- these new mobile offerings pack an AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU.

The new Alienware M15 Ryzen Edition gaming laptop has an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor for starters, joined by 16GB of RAM (upgradable to 32GB) with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. You can tweak the Alienware M15 Ryzen Edition gaming laptop with up to 32GB of RAM, up to the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, and up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 if you wanted the additional silicon grunt.

Alienware provides users with 3 different 15-inch display options, with 2 x 1080p options but with different refresh rates: 1080p @ 165Hz or 1080p @ 360Hz -- meanwhile, you can upgrade up to the 1440p resolution @ 240Hz which I think would be a much better option.

ASUS is about to launch its first-ever 16-inch laptop with the new ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 gaming laptop, that packs Intel's soon-to-be-launched Tiger Lake-H processor, and a 16:10 aspect 144Hz refresh rate display.

The new ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 gaming laptop rocks a 16-inch 16:10 display with a huge 94% screen-to-body ratio, with ASUS offering the new gaming laptop with a 1920 x 1200 (1200p) resolution, as well as a 2560 x 1440 (1440p) resolution option -- both displays have a 144Hz refresh and Adaptive Sync technology.

Inside, ASUS offers up the Intel Core i7-11800H or Core i9-11900H Tiger Lake-H processors, with both CPUs coming with 8 cores and 16 threads. ASUS packs in 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a super-fast 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD -- as for the GPU, we're looking at options of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, GeForce RTX 3060, and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards.