Latest News - Page 1500

NVIDIA might have just "indefinitely postponed" its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, more on that here -- but in the meantime Palit is still preparing custom RTX 3080 Ti cards.

A new listing on the Eurasian Econopmic Commission website teases multiple new SKUs of custom Palit GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards. There is a boat load of different SKUs listed in the EEC listing for custom GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards.

The list is also joined by custom GeForce RTX 3060, GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, and finally the custom GeForce RTX 3050 graphics cards that will make their way out to gamers in the coming months. It seems the RTX 3080 Ti is in a holding pattern right now until NVIDIA can get more GPUs -- AMD is in a same, and even worse position as there are even less custom Radeon RX 6000 series cards available right now.

If you were like me, you were waiting and hoping that NVIDIA would release its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 20GB of GDDR6X memory -- then you'll be disappointed to hear it seems to have been "indefinitely postponed".

Tech Jesus over at GamersNexus said in their new video titled 'NVIDIA Indefinitely Postpones RTX 3080 Ti, Launches RTX 3060 GPU Specs, Ampere Laptops' that the "once inevitable RTX 3080 Ti" wasn't announced at CES 2021 during NVIDIA's all-virtual event.

Tech Jesus explained: "postponement is likely due to the community response to the cards in general, and you can just look at the chat window from the live event, to see why NVIDIA might think it was in poor taste to announce yet another GPU".

We live in a world where you can't even buy AMD's new RDNA 2-based graphics cards in the Radeon RX 6000 series, so here's a card that you won't want to buy -- as it's focused on the mining market, but it's technologically impressive. Introducing the new SAPPHIRE GPRO X070, a passively cooled Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card.

The new SAPPHIRE GPRO X070 rocks the Radeon RX 5700 XT underneath, so we have a 7nm GPU with 40 CUs and 2560 stream processors. There's 8GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit memory bus that is more than enough to get some great GPU compute performance -- cough crypto mining -- through the SAPPHIRE GPRO X070.

SAPPHIRE has the GPU clocks at 1607 / 1755 / 1905MHz for base, game, and boost clocks respectively. There's also a second BIOS that enables "Efficiencyt Mod" which reduces GPU clocks to 1500 / 1700 / 1750MHz for base, game, and boost clocks respectively. This would be perfect for all-day, all-night crypto mining setups.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is starting 2021 off well, with news floating around that it will be making chips for Intel in the near future, record products for 2020, an expanded $28 billion spend on advanced chips in 2021 -- and now TSMC will solve global auto chip shortages.

Volkswagen announced last month that it was worried about the low supply of chips coming in from China would disrupt production for the German automaker, while Honda said it would be closing its UK plant temporarily because of global auto chip shortages.

Never fear, TSMC is here!

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is going all-in on next-gen, with the company planning to spend $28 billion increasing the capacity of its plants -- amid the most demand for its technology ever.

TSMC said during a recent Q4 2020 earnings call that the company will see a 50% increase in capacity investments in 2021 compared to 2020. The demand for chips is at fever pitch -- AMD with countless products (Zen 3 + RDNA 2 + EPYC + Ryzen Threadripper) as well as the semi-custom designs for the Sony PS5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S products, new chips from Intel, chips for Apple, chips for Qualcomm, and chips for many of the world's largest tech companies.

Brian Bandsma, a portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management said: "Usually, historically, when you see TSMC's capital expenditure numbers, it's a good leading indicator of how they are seeing demand. They are very conservative about their capital expenditures number. They're not going to be overly aggressive".

Kim Dotcom has come out swinging, with the MEGA founder tweeting out that within the next 10 years "the USD will be replaced by Bitcoin as the world's reserve currency".

He started off by saying "After WW2 the US was the largest holder of gold and other countries linked their currencies to USD. The gold standard is long gone but 61% of all foreign bank reserves and 40% of global debt are in USD. That's why the US had the luxury of printing USD to finance its debt".

But then it swung directly into cryptocurrency as the answer, where he replied to his original tweet saying: "Within the next 10 years the USD will be replaced by Bitcoin as the world's reserve currency. Nations can no longer rely on USD because of out of control US debt and excessive USD printing by the US for its own benefit. The fall of US Empire is near. Experts know and buy Bitcoin".

Samsung has made its new Galaxy S21 family of smartphones official, with the new flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra being a truly king level smartphone with some incredible hardware at its fingertips.

We're looking at a large 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display with a WQHD+ resolution of 3200 x 1440 @ 515 PPI and an adaptive and beautifully smooth 120Hz refrsh rate with HDR10+ certification on top. Inside, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is powered by either Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon 888 or Samsung's own in-house Exynos 2100 processor.

Depending on the model, you're looking at 12GB or 16GB of RAM (up from 8GB inside of the normal Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+ smartphones) while storage options include 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. There is no microSD card slot on the new Galaxy S21 smartphones, with even the flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra missing out -- I'm sure it's going to be shifted over as a Galaxy Note exclusive in 2021.

Samsung has just introduced the latest member of its Galaxy family of products, with the introduction of the new Galaxy SmartTag. Check it out:

The introduction of the new Galaxy SmartTag has been in the planning for a while, as it is controlled by the new SmartThings Find service that Samsung launched recently. Samsung's new Galaxy SmartTag uses Bluetooth Low Energy technology, and has a button that lets you start a pre-defined smart home routine -- turning on a light, or your air conditioning for example.

Samsung's new Galaxy SmartTag works just like a Tile tracker, pairing with your smartphone through the Samaung SmartThings app. You can search for the Galaxy SmartTag, and when you get close to whatever the tag is attached to -- a bag, keys, or even something like a Nintendo Switch -- you can tap your phone and the tag will make a noise so you can easily find it.

Qualcomm has just acquired Nuvia for $1.4 billion, an acquisition that sees former engineers and chip experts from companies like Apple, moving into the warm arms of the Team Snapdragon.

Nuvia co-founders Gerard Williams, Manu Gulati, and John Bruno are joining Qualcomm through the acquisition, where Qualcomm will use its Nuvia chips "across Qualcomm Technologies' broad portfolio of products". Qualcomm has plans to use Nuvia technology inside of data centers, smartphones, laptops, vehicles, and more.

Qualcomm said in a statement: "5G is further accelerating the convergence of mobility and computing. The acquisition of Nuvia builds on Qualcomm Technologies' Snapdragon technology leadership, delivering step-function improvements in CPU performance and power efficiency to meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing".

ASUS has been introducing some very delicious gaming monitors at the all-virtual CES 2021 this year, with the reveal of their new 2021 flagship ROG Strix XG43UQ gaming monitor.

The new ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ gaming monitor rocks a huge 43-inch VA panel, with a native 4K resolution and super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate. ASUS is no stranger to the 43-inch 4K 120Hz monitor market, and it's also no stranger to the 43-inch 4K 144Hz gaming monitor market -- so where does the new ROG Strix XG43UQ shine?

HDMI 2.1 -- that's where. The ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ gaming monitor can handle 4K 120Hz over the HDMI 2.1 connector, while DSC (Display Stream Compression) will help the monitor burst up through to 4K 144Hz. You will have 2 x HDMI 2.1 ports, 2 x HDMI 2.0 ports, and at least 1 x DP 1.4 port on the ASUS ROG Strix XG43UQ gaming monitor.

Valve has been steadily making changes to Source 2 for a while now, but this new rumor is pretty juicy -- the Source 2 engine could soon have RTX/ray tracing support.

The news is coming from new evidence found and posted by Twitter user @thexpaw who noticed the latest Artifact beta has "Raytracing Shader" and "RTX" strings. Now consider what NVIDIA is showing off with Quake II RTX and its awesome ray tracing-boosted graphics, could we expect similar RTX treatments to Half-Life and Half-Life 2?

Does this mean Half-Life 3 has RTX or ray tracing support? Well, I'd dare say if Valve was working on Half-Life 3 it would be the most next-gen game ever released with every bell and whistle the team could turn on... would be turned on, including ray tracing and all its visual glory.

The GPU shortage situation doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon, where they're virtually impossible to buy anywhere -- and wherever they are available, they're far more expensive than they were advertised.

Colette Kress, EVP and CFO of NVIDIA explained at the J.P. Morgan Tech/Auto Forum Conference: "This demand has remained stronger for longer. Okay? So, supply does remain tight at this time. We expect the overall channel inventories, meaning the inventories that are with our AIC partners as well as in our e-tail and retail channels will likely remain lean throughout Q1. Our overall capacity has not been able to keep up with that overall strong demand that we have seen".

Kress continued: "We've seen in terms of constraints, constraints really from the overall global surge of compute and the overall capacity, capacity that may be necessary for assembly and test and/or sub trades as well. But again, we remain focused on this and working each day to improve our overall supply situation. [...] Our channel inventory is being lean and likely remaining lean though. We'll focus in terms of how to think about that supply for our revenue as we think on Q1".

We are hearing all about HDMI 2.1 right now with some of the biggest and most bad ass TVs in the world rocking the latest display connectivity capable of 4K 120Hz and 8K 60Hz over a single cable.

That might keep next-gen console gamers happy, but many PC enthusiasts want something much higher than that for the future of PC display technology. HDMI 2.1 is tapped out right now, so in comes DisplayPort 2.0 which were meant to launch a few months ago, but are now coming 'later in 2021'.

DisplayPort 2.0 will drive up to 4K 240Hz -- double that of HDMI 2.1 which can do 4K 120Hz -- and up to 8K 120Hz, up from 8K 60Hz on HDMI 2.1. Pure monitor insanity.

Intel CEO Bob Swan joined the team 2 years ago now, but has just announced that he will be stepping down from his position on February 15, 2021.

The new CEO stepping up to the plate is the current CEO of VMWare and 30-year of Intel, Pat Gelsinger, who also helped design the original 80486 CPU. Intel Executive Chairman Omar Ishrak talks only praise of Gelsinger, saying he has a "distinguished track record of innovation, talent development and a deep knowledge of Intel". Ishrak adds that the Intel board is hoping the new CEO will use his expertise to hep the company through a "critical period of transformation" from a "CPU to a multi-architecture XPU company".

Gelsinger explained in a post on the Intel website: "I am thrilled and humbled to be returning to Intel as CEO. I was 18 years old when I joined Intel, fresh out of the Lincoln Technical Institute. Over the next 30 years of my tenure at Intel, I had the honor to be mentored at the feet of Grove, Noyce and Moore. Intel then helped me continue my education at Santa Clara University and Stanford University. The company also gave me the opportunity to work on the forefront of silicon innovation with the best and brightest talent in the industry".

Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment reveals more details about their upcoming Star Wars game, promising to deliver a story replete with new iconic characters.

The Division developers at Massive Entertainment have lofty ambitions for their new Star Wars game (to be fair, so did Visceral Games, and we know how that turned out). According to creative director Julian Gerighty, the studio wants to make an impactful experience that affects gamers for years to come. Whereas Respawn's goal with Jedi: Fallen Order was to deliver larger-than-life action-adventure, Massive's main goal is to unify a completely original story, unique characters, and powerful next-generation performance in one package.

"We want to bring both lifelong and new fans on an immersive and outstanding journey that will stick with them for years," Gerighty said. "We want to invite players on a journey they never experienced before in this beloved lore. First, we want to make it a unique game in the saga with a captivating story and set of characters that players can relate to and connect with. We want to take what is familiar and resonant about Star Wars and tell the stories of new characters who have their own motivations and stakes."

Steam's monthly active users for 2020 skyrocket thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns, and game sales are up a substantial 21% over last year.

Steam's MAUs surged to a massive 120 million in 2020, up 15 million players since 2019 and representing a sizable 26% year-over-year increase. DAUs, or daily active users, hit 62.6 million and Steam had a whopping 24.8 million gamers online at the same time during the year. COVID-19 is no doubt the major motivator for the user spike as more consumers stayed indoors and turned to gaming when quarantining and social distancing.

Steam's Monthly active players have risen nearly 80% from 2017 - 2020 as more gamers adopt PC hardware and buy into the ecosystem.

Capcom will finally show off extensive Resident Evil 8 gameplay footage on Thursday, January 21, 2021 at 5pm EST, the company today announced.

A new Resident Evil VIII gameplay walkthrough is on the horizon from Capcom that will show off the game's macabre tone. We should get a good look at the horrifying castle-village environment, teases at the mythical monsters like werewolves, and maybe even a glimpse at the ultra-creepy witch coven too. The devs should highlight multiple story beats and touch upon Ethan's current plight, and we should also see more info on the gameplay mechanics--although they shouldn't vary too far from RE7's first-person action.

We should also see the higher-end PS5 and Xbox Series X/S optimizations in action, complete with tighter frame rates, ultra-fast loading (this was already showcased by Capcom a bit ago), and other RE Engine tweaks and upgrades.

CD Projekt just shipped Cyberpunk 2077, but it's been plotting out future games for a while. Its next game could return to the fantasy world of The Witcher.

In a recent apology video, CD Projekt Group co-founder Marcin Iwinski teases new projects outside of Cyberpunk 2077. "Beyond Cyberpunk we have many more plans for the future, which we will share when we're ready," Iwinski said in the explanation video. It's highly likely one of these projects is a fully-fledged Witcher singleplayer game.

We've speculated about a new Witcher game for years, and in March 2020, CDPR pretty much confirmed it was happening.

Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment studio is working on a new open-world Star Wars project for Lucasfilm. So what's up with the Avatar game?

After Ubisoft Massive's big Star Wars announcement I had a simple question: Is the Avatar game still in development? In 2017, Massive Entertainment announced they were making a new Avatar game that would tie into James Cameron's new Avatar films. It's being made with the Snowdrop Engine (just like the Star Wars game). It's also been a while since we've heard any updates.

We now know the Avatar game is still in development. Ubisoft Massive is still hiring for the Avatar game; last night I spotted a quick LinkedIn post from Michael McDonald, who recently joined the team as a senior lighting artist for the game.

We knew it was coming, but now they are official: MSI has just announced its new GeForce RTX 30 series SEA HAWK graphics cards.

The new MSI GeForce RTX 30 series SEA HAWK graphics cards infuse the worlds of air and liquid cooling: with the card packing a dedicated cooling fan and then an all-in-one (AIO) closed-loop liquid cooling solution that MSI says is "efficient, silent and requires absolutely no maintenance".

MSI also took the time to reiterate its kick ass GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X and GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X graphics cards, both of which I was a big fan of in my reviews of them not too long ago. But the new MSI RTX 30 series SEA HAWK cards have my attention, and hopefully I get a card to review in the mail soon.