Latest News - Page 1469

We started hearing about Valve's new game codename Citadel back in July 2019, with Valve leaker Tyler McVicker who has teased that Valve is working on not 1 but 2 new Half-Life games.

The first of which is Valve's new codename Citadel, but there's a totally new game that has been teased as codename HLX. HLX is compeltely new and something we haven't heard of yet, with new teases coming from McVicker that HLX could turn into an evolution of the successful VR-exclusive -- and fantastic -- Half-Life: Alyx from 2019.

It seems Citadel could be a multiplayer RTS-type of gamer where you will be deploying units, resources, and moving things around in augmented and virtual realities between multiple gamers. This sound so awesome, and so very close to the sorts of things I've wished from Valve over the years and talked with my friends about.

AMD has just released its new AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 21.3.2 BETA drivers, which add support for DirectX Raytracing (DXR) to DIRT 5 through its new Update 4.0 patch.

Not only is DIRT 5 getting ray tracing support for Radeon GPUs but there's also support for Outriders, and Evil Genius 2: World Domination. On top of that, we have the usual fixes which help some issues with incorrect GPU core clocks in performance tuning and system graphics hardware information tab with the new Radeon RX 6700 series graphics cards.

There are other issues fixed including display issues with preferred desktop resolutions in Windows being changed when the display is power cycled, and the start and cancel buttons in the performance tuning stress test disappering when Radeon Software is resized to be small.

We could be paying even more for our CPUs, GPUs, and every other chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) if rumors of water price increases are correct.

TSMC is rumored to jack prices of wafers up by 25% year-over-year, an increase of $400 for its 12-inch wafer would drive it to new all-time high prices. TSMC is pumping away with its 7nm process node, scaling up production for the new 5nm node and continuing its work on the 3nm process so that mass production can start in the second half 2022.

Research firm IC Insights reports that TSMC pulled in $1634 of revenue per wafer in 2020, so a 25% bump in that across 2021 and beyond will be a nice windfall for TSMC which is jam-packed with orders right now. TSMC is pretty much the number one manufacturing company in the world when it comes to not only its fabs, but also that it is the only company capable of supplying the biggest companies in the world with the most advanced chips ever made -- these companies include AMD, Apple Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and others.

Intel is launching its new Rocket Lake-S family of 11th Gen Core processors led by the flagship Core i9-11900K, which when installed into GIGABYTE's mid-range B560 AORUS motherboard can be clocked up to 5.1GHz across all CPU cores.

The new Core i9-11900K was installed into a GIGABYTE B560 AORUS motherboard, with GIGABYTE releasing a new BIOS that enables support and overclocking for Intel's new Rocket Lake-S chips. The new BIOS also enables higher memory overclocking, with GIGABYTE now supporting up to DDR4-5300MHz memory.

This is quite the achievement as Intel's mid-range B-series motherboards used to suck for overclocking, but now GIGABYTE's unleashing of the new BIOS for their B560 series motherboards means that mid-range users can grab a high-end CPU and overclock the crap out of it. Not only that, but unlocked memory XMP overclocking is also here which is another gold star for GIGABYTE and their mid-range motherboard offerings.

NVIDIA is preparing its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card with 12GB of GDDR6X memory, with AIB partners preparing their various custom models including GIGABYTE which has 12 x GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards being prepped for gamers (and crypto miners).

GIGABYTE has submitted 12 x GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards to the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) that rock 12GB of GDDR6X memory. These cards range from the flagship GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE graphics card through to the entry-level GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti TURBO graphics card.

There's everything in between as well, with GIGABYTE having the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in AORUS XTREME, AORUS MASTER, GAMING, VISION, EAGLE, and TURBO variants of the RTX 3080 Ti. There's also a CMP 30HX model that GIGABYTE is working on, which is the new crypto mining GPU series from NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is expected to unveil its new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card in the coming weeks, which will be based on the GA104-400 GPU and reportedly come in two versions: 8GB and 16GB GDDR6X models.

The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will not be replacing the non-Ti version of the card, so the normal GeForce RTX 3070 will continue to be sold once the new RTX 3070 Ti is released. VideoCardz does point out that they believe NVIDIA will focus on the new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti moving forward, leaving the original RTX 3070 to kind of fade away.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will reportedly be "more competitive" to AMD's new Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card, with VideoCardz noting that NVIDIA will be introducing a crypto mining hashrate limit -- why, I don't know especially when they "accidentally" removed the hashrate limiter from the GeForce RTX 3060.

EA is hard at work on the next-generation Battlefield game that we've been expected to be called Battlefield 6, but Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson has some news: it'll be called Battlefield, and it sounds like it'll kick ass.

According to Henderson the new rumors on Battlefield NOT being a "hub" for all other Battlefield games like the new leaks on Reddit suggest, but rather the game will feature a "revolutionary campaign compared to other previous instalments. The campaign will focus on you and your specialist unit, where you'll be able to chose which superpower you fight for".

The new Battlefield game will not see you choose "Axis or Allies" but Henderson reveals that you will "be able to choose your own path", where you will "recruit" your own specialized team with their own skillsets throughout your campaign. These assets you acquire along the way will help you on both sides, with Battlefield's single-player campaign reportedly being a co-op experience as well.

Zack Snyder's Justice League has made its huge debut on HBO Max, with parent company AT&T enjoying a huge surge in users as they flocked in to watch the original vision of Justice League from Zack Snyder.

WarnerMedia's streaming platform saw an 8.9% surge in users launching the HBO Max mobile app, while the HBO Max app itself had downloads skyrocket by 68% during the week that Zack Snyder's Justice League debuted. The only source on this right now is Bloomberg, where writer John J. Edwards III is wrong about the theatrical release of Justice League being Zack Snyder's "original 2017 cut" but "completed by a different director".

Capcom's latest Monster Hunter game is enjoying astronomical success on the Nintendo Switch.

Monster Hunter Rise has shipped an incredible 4 million copies in just 3 days time on the Nintendo Switch, Capcom today confirmed. While Monster Hunter Rise didn't topple Capcom's reigning Monster Hunter World, which sold 6 million copies in its first two weeks and amassed an incredible 16 million+ in total sales, these sales figures only represent purchases on the Switch platform. Monster Hunter Rise's PC port isn't expected until 2022.

The news marks a big milestone for Capcom's FY2021 fiscal year, which should deliver the fourth consecutive year of record earnings thanks to consistent evergreen sales and performance of new titles like MH: Rise. To date, the Monster Hunter franchise has sold over 70 million copies across all platforms.

Capcom is adding a bunch of new tricks and gameplay mechanics into Resident Evil 8 to keep things fresh.

Although Resident Evil Village harkens back to RE4 with its supernatural village and haunted castle, the eight mainline sequel sets itself apart in many ways. A big one is mechanics. This time around, players can guard (a feature in RE7) as well as repel enemies with a new combat-based kick attack. While scouting a recent interview with Resident Evil Village Producer Tsuyoshi Kanda, I noticed another new feature: Building walls.

According to Kanda, gamers will be able to build walls out of furniture in order to strategically protect themselves against the multitude of horrors in RE8. "This is a much more action-oriented game. We included the guard function from the previous game, but now it's possible to do a counter attack. You can also utilize furniture to build walls, so there are a few ways you can handle different situations. We have some more new tricks, but you'll have to check it out yourself," Kanda said.

Overseas mobile titan Nexon has invested a substantial $874 million into Japanese game companies like SEGA, Konami, and Bandai Namco.

Nexon is sinking $1.5 billion in specific games companies in a bid to help preserve high-quality IP creation and curation. The company has already invested 58% of this cash into a trio of beleaguered games-makers like SEGA, Konami, and Bandai Namco, all of which have been hit particularly hard by COVID-19.

Nexon corporate heads say this is a "friendly investment" and the company has no intention of takeovers or acquisitions. Buying out Konami, Bandai Namco, or SEGA simply isn't feasible for Nexon, who made $2.2 billion in 2019, more than Konami ($1.3bn) and SEGA ($1.15bn) but less than Bandai Namco ($3bn).

CD Projekt RED has officially released Cyberpunk 2077's new Patch 1.2 update on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it's a colossal game-sized patch that makes many, many changes.

Since its widely-criticized launch, the devs at CDPR have been tirelessly working on fixing Cyberpunk 2077. The second phase of that comeback story, Patch 1.2, rolls out today and it's an absolutely massive series of bug fixes, tweaks, and adjustments. Patch 1.2's notes clock in at a staggering 8,010 words and there's over 1,000 fixes listed across PS4, Xbox One, and PC, complete with a multitude of quest fixes, eliminating T-pose animations, improved memory allocation on base consoles, and tons of QoL improvements.

This kind of patch also comes with a hefty install size on all platforms. Patch 1.2 takes up 35GB on PS4, but needs 58GB free in order to install. On Xbox, it takes up 40GB. Most of the tweaks are immensely welcomed, but CDPR has removed the fan-favorite fall damage cancelling trick. The devs clearly took all the feedback and bug reports to heart and have methodically squashed dozens upon dozens of issues across all platforms.

The Tony Hawk 1+2 next-gen upgrade is having some big problems on Xbox Series X consoles, complete with crashing and other bugs.

Activision just released the Tony Hawk remaster duo on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but the upgrades didn't go without a hitch. The game is having a hard time on Xbox Series X, and gamers are reporting freezing, crashing, and the inability to upgrade digital versions of the game.

There's seven reports on the support forums of the game freezing on the main menu when booting from an Xbox Series X, and other instances of the upgrade simply not showing up at all. Compounding player frustrations is Activision's odd next-gen upgrade policy for disc owners on Xbox, which forces players to re-buy the game altogether to receive the upgrade.

CD PROJEKT RED is pushing out a rather gigantic patch for Cyberpunk 2077, with the new Patch 1.2 bringing ray tracing support for AMD Radeon GPUs.

In the patch notes for the new Cyberpunk 2077 update, CD PROJEKT RED explains that the first PC-specific thing in the new update is "Enabled Ray Tracing on AMD graphics cards. Latest GPU drivers are required". So we should expect some new AMD Radeon drivers in the near future that will enable ray tracing for specific RDNA-powered GPUs.

I did notice the missing HUD elements when running Cyberpunk 2077 in native 8K resolution at 7680 x 4320, with the new Patch 1.2 fixing that. There's also an issue fixed with perks in certain areas of the submenus weren't displaying descriptions on both 4K and 5K UltraWide resolutions.

Visa has just announced that it will begin using cryptocurrency USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network, with global wallet partner Crypto.com over the ethereum blockchain.

Crypto.com will now settle a percentage of its obligations for the Crypto.com Visa card program in USDC, which is a cryptocurrency that is pegged directly to the US dollar in a 1:1 ratio. Behind the scenes Visa's digital currency settlement partner is Anchorage, the first federally chartered digital asset bank. Funds will be sent from Crypto.com to Visa's own ethereum address at the bank.

As it stands Visa's business partners need to settle transactions with the credit card provider in fiat currencies that it accepts, but now they can be settled with USDC and put up into the ethereum blockchain. Visa is partnered with 35 digital currency platforms that include Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi, and Bitpanda which collectively have over 50 million active users.

Microsoft could be very close to unveiling the release date for its highly anticipated Age of Empires IV. So, when will we find out?

Microsoft hasn't directly said that it will be unveiling the release date for Age of Empires IV, but the company has released a new trailer that teases a coming broadcast that will showcase some big news for Age of Empires IV, including a look at gameplay, campaign missions and playable factions.

Additionally, the "Fan Preview" will drop some exciting news for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition players. The broadcast is scheduled to begin on April 10th at 9 am PT/12 pm ET/5 pm BST. The broadcast will also include some behind-the-scenes gameplay for the fans to enjoy. Tune into the livestream if you are excited for Age of Empires IV. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

EMTEK already has a couple of interesting GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards with a Call of Duty themed RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 -- but now we have the GeForce RTX 3060 MIRACLE which was inspired by bees and honeycombs. Check it out:

Looks unique, and if put into the right gaming PC it would actually look great -- I love how it is definitely something I've never seen before, I can safely say that. Inside, the EMTEK GeForce RTX 3060 MIRACLE uses the NVIDIA reference GPU specs of 1320MHz base GPU clock and 1770MHz boost GPU clock and a TDP of 170W.

We have a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, the GA106 GPU with 3584 CUDA cores, and 12GB of GDDR6 memory to top it all off. There's only a single photo of the card in existence, but with that unique front cooler and honeycomb-inspired design I'd love to see if the back of the EMTEK GeForce RTX 3060 MIRACLE looks any different or if the backplate is very plain.

We are so damn close to the new Intel 11th Gen Core CPUs being released, with Rocket Lake-S nearly upon us it is time to tease the 13th Gen Core CPUs -- yeah, not the 12th Gen Core CPUs, the new 13th Gen Core CPUs with Intel itself confirming Raptor Lake-S is coming.

VideoCardz leaked out a slide that shows Intel's next-gen Raptor Lake-S is a CPU coming in 2022 and that it would be an upgrade to hybrid technology, pack better CPU cache for gaming and new LPDDR6X memory support. Alder Lake will offer the first 'Performance Hybrid Architecture' with new CPU cores as well as PCIe 5.0 technology.

Intel's 12th Gen Core range with the Alder Lake CPU architecture offers the new Performance Hybrid Architecture with new CPU cores and DDR5 support with up to 4800MHz RAM support, as well as next-gen PCIe 5.0 technology with up to 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes for some seriously insane bandwidth for SSDs, GPUs, and everything in between.

The latest version of AIDA64 has support for some unannounced and unreleased graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA, with the Radeon RX 6600 series and GeForce RTX 3050 series GPUs.

AIDA64 6.32.5659 Beta also supports AMD's new Radeon RX 6700 non-XT, and the new Radeon RX 6600 series which will come in both the Radeon RX 6600 and Radeon RX 6600 XT variants. The developer of AIDA64 also notes that AMD will use the Navi 23 GPU exclusively on the new Radeon RX 6600 series graphics cards.

You can see in the change log image above that AIDA64 now supports the Navi 23-based Radeon RX 6600 and Radeon RX 6600 XT models, as well as the just-released Navi 22-based Radeon RX 6700 XT and the upcoming non-XT model that is also powered by Navi 22 with the Radeon RX 6700.

Razer is working on a new high-end 14-inch gaming notebook with a new Blade 14 gaming laptop that packs an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

The new Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop packs the new Zen 3-based mobile CPU, which is the first AMD processor inside of a Razer laptop so far. Not only that, but the AMD processor will be joined by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 -- and not an upcoming Radeon mobile GPU design.

The leak is coming from @_rogame on Twitter, teasing the "Razer P1411" gaming notebook -- a new 14-inch gaming laptop that Razer hasn't released with a new Ampere GPU yet. Razer has got Blade 15 and Blade 17 gaming notebooks with NVIDIA's latest-gen Ampere GPUs inside of them but not in a 14-inch laptop, yet... that is.