Latest News - Page 1489

Qualcomm has just announced its next-gen Snapdragon X65 5G modem, which offers a great leap over the last-gen Snapdragon X60 5G when it comes to download speeds.

The last-gen Snapdragon X60 5G modem is built into the new Snapdragon 888 chipset, but the new Snapdragon X65 5G modem offers super-fast 10Gbps download speeds... up from the 7.5Gbps offered on the Snapdragon X60. You might need to wait until networks catch up to offer that insane 10Gbps, but Qualcomm is ahead of the curve -- as always.

Qualcomm also says it is first with the Snapdragon X65 to support the upcoming 3GPP Release 16 specification, otherwise known as "5G phase 2" that will have improvements including MIMO connectivity, improved power consumption, and so much more. It will also help 5G networks move from just consumers to more commercial and business users through support for unlicensed spectrum and non-public networks.

AMD has been making great strides between each of its Zen architectures, with the difference between Zen and Zen 2 being very noticeable -- but it was the jump from Zen 2 to Zen 3 with the recent Ryzen 5000 series CPUs that things really went up into another level.

But the fun isn't over, with the next-gen Zen 4 architecture in the oven and promising some truly gigantic IPC gains and overall performance uplifts over the current-gen CPUs. The new rumors are coming from ChipsandCheese, with news from AMD's next-gen server family codenamed Genoa. These new EPYC processors will be powered by the Zen 4 architecutre and will offer tremendous benefits all over the place.

The rumors tease that the current Genoa engineering samples with the identical cores and CPU clocks as the Milan EPYC processors, but the new Zen 4-powered CPUs are up to 29% faster.

This isn't good for Pakistan, its distributors and retailers -- or the general public, as NVIDIA's unreleased GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards are being sold in the country already.

ZAH Computers is an official dealer in Pakistan, selling the Palit GeForce RTX 3060 Dual OC graphics card for 120,000 PKR (Pakistani Rupees) which works out to around $750 or so... a huge premium, price gouging at its finest over the starting price of the GeForce RTX 3060 which is meant to be $329.

But don't worry, the company is saying that the $750 premium pricing is because of the high customs duties and import prices. Our friends at Wccftech report that "simply put are excuses that these distributors and dealers are known to hide behind and have been doing so for quite a while now".

ASUS has always crammed some serious mobile gaming hardware inside of its ROG Phone gaming smartphones, with the next-gen ROG Phone 5 to reportedly be powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 chip.

According to new Geekbench 5 results the next-gen ASUS ROG Phone 5 gaming smartphone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and not the upcoming, tweaked Snapdragon 888+ processor. The details from Geekbench have a codename of Lahaina, which is the Snapdragon 888 while Lahaina+ is the Snapdragon 888+ chip.

The new ASUS ROG Phone 5 should pack up to 16GB of RAM which is insanity, right up there with kick ass gaming laptops and gaming desktops that pack 16GB of RAM. We should have more information on the next-gen ASUS ROG Phone 5 over the coming months, but so far it's shaping up to be a beast -- and we should expect nothing less from ASUS.

EA plans to raise millions (possibly billions) in a new senior note offering to help pay for new studio acquisitions, development, and other business costs.

EA today announced that it will sell a specific amount of senior notes for an undisclosed price in a new share offering. Senior notes are debts that mature after a set period and have higher priority over existing debts. Shareholders that buy senior notes have a guarantee of a return with a set interest rate. Usually, EA would pay these senior notes off after a 5-6 year period.

Case in point: EA held a senior note offering in 2016 for $1 billion split between two maturity dates: $600 million would be due in 2021, and the remainder, $400 million, is due in 2026.

EA is spending more on research and development as it ramps up big next-gen projects from Battlefield 6 to Star Wars.

EA's latest third quarter financials show a clear trend: R&D spending has been climbing quarter-over-quarter for some time. This makes sense given EA's current games pipeline, which includes a number of high-profile games like Battlefield 6, Dragon Age 4, and a new Mass Effect.

We took a closer look at EA's R&D spending since FY12 and discovered interesting data on how the company spends money for new technologies, engines, and games development. EA typically spends at least $240 million every quarter on R&D regardless of how much net revenue it earned during the period, and the investments have been consistent for nearly 10 years.

EA may soon lay Anthem to rest once and for all and scrap its plans for a big revival.

EA will soon decide whether Anthem lives or dies. Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that EA is currently weighing the decision carefully. The overall cost will be the deciding factor, both in capital spending and developer investment--the latter of which is in precious supply. The current Anthem revival team consists of roughly 30 developers, but BioWare will need at least 90 devs for Anthem Next, sources tell Bloomberg.

Right now, BioWare is working on a number of projects including Dragon Age 4, a game that's been in planning phases of development since 2016, and a new Mass Effect game. Both of these properties are guaranteed hits and take priority, whereas Anthem, a fledgling new IP, isn't as important sales-wise.

CD PROJEKT RED has been hacked with the developer confirming the news on Twitter, saying that it had "discovered that we have become a victim of a targeted cyber attack".

The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer added: "An unidentified actor gained unauthorized access to our internal network, collected certain data belonging to CD PROJEKT capital group, and left a random note the content of which we release to the public. Although some devices on our network have been encrypted, our backups remain intact. We have already secured our IT infrastructure and begun restoring the data".

The hackers have reportedly taken internal source codes for CD PROJEKT RED games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Gwent, and even an unreleased version of The Witcher 3. Not only does the hacker reportedly have the source codes to those games, but also accounting, administrator, legal, and investor relations information might have been accessed as well.

Apple really is getting serious about AR and VR. Rumours about its upcoming AR/VR headset have been circling the internet since the beginning of the month, and now there are a few dozen AR/VR job postings on Apple's website.

Apple is currently looking to beef up its AR/VR team. The company is seeking a handful of software developers and hardware engineers with AR/VR experience in various disciplines, including software engineers, system UI engineers, video and 3D professionals, and audio software engineers.

Apple is also looking to fill a pair of marketing roles for the AR/VR division, including an art director position and a creative technologist position.

Battlefield 6 is going to be a huge release for EA this year, with the latest leaks teasing next-gen destruction in Battlefield 6 with "unscripted skyscraper destruction" on the cards.

But there is another news nugget here with Battlefield 6: it might have a free-to-play mode for BF6 that will be part of the battle pass system. We don't know what type of battle royale experience to expect in Battlefield 6, but it has to be better than the dumpster fire that was the battle royale 'Firestorm' mode in Battlefield V.

We might not see this come to fruition, but I doubt EA DICE is sitting there not thinking about having a battle royale mode for Battlefield 6 when it has been so mega successful for Activision-Blizzard with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its battle royale mode Warzone. We already know from previous rumors that Battlefield 6 development was being influenced by Call of Duty: Warzone's success, too.

It was only just over a month ago that Steam smashed through 2021 with an insane 25 million concurrent users, and now that record has been broken with 26.3 million Steam users online at once.

The data is coming from the SteamDB tracker, which saw 26.3 million gamers online at once -- up from the 25.4 million on January 2. Valve recently hosted the Steam Game Festival where it offered PC gamers hundreds of demos of PC games from mostly indie developers.

But spin that in with the COVID-19 lockdowns across the planet and you have more people inside, playing PC games (and on consoles, tablets, and smartphones) than ever before. I wonder if we'll see Steam's concurrent user record broken again throughout the year, and if so would we breach 30 million concurrent users on Steam before the end of the year.

It seems like Apple is getting serious about moving into the world of XR. The latest round of news shows that the headset that Apple is developing will have extremely high-end features. Rumor has it the device will have dual 8K displays, eye tracking, passthrough cameras, and more than a dozen sensors to track the world your hands and other movements.

Apple has been very bullish about augmented reality, but it has been very quiet about virtual reality. Tim Cook has said in the past that he believes that virtual reality won't be as popular as augmented reality, and that isn't as useful. The latest leaks suggest that the company is likely working on a virtual reality headset as well, and it would likely be the first XR headset that Apple releases.

Don't get too excited about Apple taking over the VR industry, though. Rumor has it this headset won't be cheap, with suggestions of a $3000 price tag for the device. It won't compete in the consumer space at that price, but it would be right in line with enterprise-level hardware.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a super interesting new system, which is capable of building drones, robots and other electronic devices all on its own.

Introducing, the LaserFactory:

MIT's interesting new LaserFactory is a two-part system that uses not just the machine itself, but also software for designing electronic devices. This makes it much easier, as it shows in the video above, to make electronic devices at a much faster rate.

NVIDIA's new mainstream GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card wasn't a secret, with the company revealing the card during CES 2021 -- but now we have a firm release date: February 25, 2021.

Our friends at Wccftech report that the GeForce RTX 3060 will go live on February 25 @ 6AM PST, with global retail outlets kicking off sales starting at $329. We should expect various custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards to be released, with varying prices -- which will also come down to how many of them are available given the massive GPU shortages worldwide.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 rocks the Ampere GA106-300 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node, 3584 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6 @ 15Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus with up to 384GB/sec of memory bandwidth. We have a 170W TDP on the card (down from the 175W on the RTX 3060 Ti) and price that starts at $329.

The last we heard about Apple and securing 5nm chips from TSMC in 2021 were previous rumors that it had 80% of the 5nm capacity from TSMC in 2021 -- but new reports suggest Apple has over 50% of the 5nm supply from TSMC this year.

New information from Counterpoint Research says that TSMC started mass production of its 5nm process in Q1 2021, with competitor Samsung following through but they were 6-9 months behind. Counterpoint Research says: "Apple is the top customer (with all orders to TSMC) in 5nm this year (see Exhibit 1), including both for iPhones (A14/A15) and the newly released Apple Silicon".

Counterpoint Research continued: "Qualcomm will be the second-largest 5nm customer as the iPhone 13 may adopt its X60 modem. TSMC is expected to book $10-billion revenue from 5nm in 2021".

The last 12 hours have been one of the wildest rides for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular, with Elon Musk and Tesla Motors announcing it will accept Bitcoin as payment in the future, and that Tesla is purchasing $1.5 billion of Bitcoin. Hell, it's even had crypto exchanges glitching out.

Apple is now in the headlines with a "clear opportunity" to offer a buying and selling mechanism for cryptocurrencies, according to a new research report from RBC Capital Markets. The report said that it would let Apple quickly dominate with market share, and with its world-class software and secure iOS ecosystem.

RBC analysts said in the report: "If the USA owns the most crypto assets (be it Bitcoin or other assets), it would not make logical sense in our view to ban it".

Elon Musk knows how to make an impact, with the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO tweeting about Dogecoin and seeing the price skyrocket towards the moon -- and then, he announced through Tesla that the EV giant would be accepting Bitcoin as payment in the future.

The news of Tesla accepting Bitcoin as a payment, along with the fact that the company revealed it purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin saw the cryptocurrency surge from around $40K to $44K almost instantly. It has barely been 12 hours and in that time cryptocurrency exchanges were having technical issues dealing with the amount of traffic on their platforms.

Kraken, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, had to temporarily disable sign-ups after they had a huge surge of traffic after the Elon + Tesla one-two punch to the moon for Bitcoin. Other crypto exchanges like Gemini and Binance had similar issues, with a Kraken spokesperson explained in an email to Reuters: "The recent run-up far exceeded anticipated increases in demand, up over five-fold from previous all-time highs".

Expanscape is showing off its new prototype laptop that packs not just a single screen, but rather it has 7 displays that offers some true next-gen workstation on-the-go multi-tasking.

The Expanscape Aurora 7 prototype packs 4 x 17.3-inch monitors each at 4K -- 2 are in portrait mode, 2 are in landscape mode -- but then it is flanked with 3 x 7-inch screens with 1920 x 1200 native resolutions. All of the 7 displays are at 60Hz, with the entire system weighing in at around 12 kg (26 lbs).

Gamers won't be interested in something like this, but Expanscape is aiming more at security operations centers, data scientists, content creators -- and I'm sure stock and cryptocurrency traders. It's a monstrous laptop with some seriously powerful innards, too.

GTA V sales are now up to 140 million across two console generations, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirms in a recent Q3 earnings report.

13 years after its initial release, GTA V is still a sales revenue monster. Take-Two announced the game has now shipped 140 million copies across PS4, Xbox One, PC, and older-gen hardware like the PS3 and Xbox 360. That's a +5 million sales increase over last quarter, and GTA V has now consistently sold 5 million units every quarter for three periods.

GTA V and Grand Theft Auto Online both impacted the $814 million net bookings earned in Q3'21. GTA Online helped buffer the massive $472 million in microtransactions that Take-Two earned during the period, whereas GTA V full game sales pushed the remaining $341 million from software purchases.

Final Fantasy XIV is coming to PlayStation 5 with some big optimizations and free upgrades.

Square Enix recently dropped some big Final Fantasy XIV bombshells. The company's immensely profitable MMO is coming to PlayStation 5, a free open beta for the PS5 version is dropping alongside Patch 5.5, and the new patch update adds a bunch of new quests, a new raid, tweaks for jobs, and other features. Plus there's Endwalker, a brand new expansion that closes the Hydaelyn saga and sets the stage for a new era.

As expected, Final Fantasy XIV is getting upgraded on PS5. The enhancements include boosted native 4K resolution and "significantly improved" frame rates. Sadly no exact FPS was outlined, but expect to see at least 60FPS offered. FFXIV could also get performance/quality modes in its settings menu.