Latest News - Page 1546

World of Warcraft's new Shadowlands expansion calls for an SSD in its minimum requirements, but apparently it'll still run on hard disk drives too.

New minimum spec requirements for World of Warcraft Shadowlands explicitly call for an SSD, listings on the Battle.net app confirm. This is the first time any major World of Warcraft expansion has called for an SSD and is an interesting move for Blizzard. Right now game developers are starting to target SSD storage in games thanks to new tech like Microsoft's DirectStorage, Sony's built-in PS5 SSD architecture, and the new RTX IO.

The $40 Shadowlands expansion will have tons of content packed into a 100GB package, including the cross-race/-class Death Knight, a new area across the veil to explore, new bosses and items, and more. The expansion is set to release October 26, 2020.

AT&T has abandoned its plans to sell WB Games, sources tell Bloomberg.

WB Games will remain part of AT&T's new WarnerMedia division, sources familiar with the matter say. Early reports suggested AT&T would sell WB Games in a sweeping $4 billion deal, which would include key development studios and licensing rights to DC properties, Harry Potter, and more. Companies like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Take-Two were previously interested in buying.

The news is welcome for fans who are awaiting big new WB titles, including WB Montreal's new Gotham Knights, Rocksteady's new Suicide Squad live game, and Avalanche's unannounced Harry Potter RPG. Reports originally said AT&T would sell of WB Games in an effort to shave its massive $152 billion debt.

Game devs are starting to weigh in on the PlayStation 5's next-gen 5.5GB/sec SSD tech and how it can revolutionize gaming. But right now devs are mostly focused on speed versus huge gameplay changes.

The PS5's SSD is a massive development that changes everything. But it won't change everything right at launch. Developers still need time to get used to the tech and utilize it in innovative ways. While first-party devs like Insomniac are using the 12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD to completely revolutionize gameplay in Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart with instantaneous omni-dimensional traversal, other devs are mostly focusing on raw speed.

Sony just interviewed a few devs about the PS5's SSD and the consensus is that the raw hardware speeds will drive initial next-gen experiences. There's no talk about custom data libraries or APIs or I/O architectures, and no discussion of technical info (which is disappointing). Just hype around instant access, elimination of loading times, and how the PS5 can load assets for rendering at 5.5GB/sec.

Microsoft's Xbox Series S gets mentioned yet again from official promotional materials. It's time to announce it already.

Microsoft is working on two next-gen consoles: The beastly, more expensive enthusiast Xbox Series X, and the cheaper, digital-only, entry-level Xbox Series S. The latter hasn't been formally revealed, but it's been leaked a bunch of times. Now it just got leaked again.

First the Series S was mentioned in the new cross-gen Xbox controller that released months early (this controller also revealed the Series X's possible launch date). Now Xbox Series S is also being mentioned in Game Pass slips included with current-gen Xbox One controllers.

NVIDIA has finally unveiled its new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, with the introduction of the 'big, ferocious GPU' in the GeForce RTX 3090 -- 'the new flagship' in the GeForce RTX 3080 and the 'sweet spot' with the RTX 3070.

The new GeForce RTX 3080 will start from $699 and will offer 2x the performance than the original GeForce RTX 2080 with 8704 CUDA cores and has been "designed for 4K gaming" where the RTX 3080 will "consistently delivers more than 60 fps at 4K resolution".

NVIDIA notes the new GeForce RTX 3080 is made on a "custom 8N manufacturing process", packing a huge 28 billion transistors and 10GB of GDDR6X from Micron. The 10GB of GDDR6X is on a 320-bit memory bus at 19Gbps with memory bandwidth hitting 760GB/sec. We have a 320W TDP on the RTX 3080, too.

NVIDIA has just unveiled its new stack of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, with the ferocious new $1499 graphics card the world's first 8K 60FPS gaming GPU.

During the recent NVIDIA livestream where the Ampere GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 graphics cards were unveiled, NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang gushed over the ballistic GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card.

Rightfully so, as he heralded it as the world's first 8K 60FPS gaming GPU -- packing the GA102 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node with 10496 CUDA cores in total. There's a huge 24GB of GDDR6X memory, the same framebuffer amount offered on the TITAN RTX which costs $2499.

NVIDIA has just unveiled its new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, with company founder and CEO Jensen Huang literally pulling the RTX 3090 from the oven during the Ampere GeForce unveiling.

The quick skinny on NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card is the crown jewel of Ampere, rocking the GA102 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node with 10496 CUDA cores in total. This is a huge increase over the 4352 CUDA cores inside of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which gives the new GeForce RTX 3090 some serious muscle to flex.

Not just that, but we have a gigantic 24GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory, a huge upgrade from the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its 11GB of GDDR6. NVIDIA's previous-gen TITAN RTX had 24GB of GDDR6 memory, and debuted -- and is priced right now (I'm sure this will change once the news goes live) at $2499.

We are just over 21 minutes away from NVIDIA's huge GeForce RTX 30 series launch event, when this insane custom ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3090 appeared:

VideoCardz tweeted it out of nowhere, asking "What in the name of Lord Gaben is this" and they're right -- what in the hell is it. It's obviously a fake because there's no way ZOTAC is putting something on the market with exposed cables on the outside like this.

But man-oh-man, I actually really like the design. ZOTAC, you should totally make a card like this and release it as the ultimate GeForce RTX 3090 in your stack.

Inno3D has had its new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards unveiled by VideoCardz, with some new renders hitting their website just now.

The site notes that Inno3D is preparing 4 series of GeForce RTX 30 serise graphics cards, with 6 graphics cards in total. Inno3D's flagship model is the GeForce RTX 3090 iChill X4 graphics card, which rocks a custom quad-fan cooler (3 on the front, 1 on the back).

We don't have detailed specs just yet, but we should expect some high GPU clocks and 19.5Gbps on the 24GB of GDDR6X memory.

ASUS has just made its next-gen GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards official, a full two hours ahead of the Ultimate Countdown of NVIDIA's next-gen cards.

The company is introducing new versions of its ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, and Dual brands of graphics cards powered by NVIDIA's new Ampere GPU architecture. We have some seriously impressive stuff going on under the hood, so let's take a quick look at what we have here.

ASUS teases: "The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, the 2nd generation of RTX, features new RT Cores, Tensor Cores and streaming multiprocessors, bringing stunning visuals, amazingly fast frame rates, and AI acceleration to games and creative applications".

We are around T-minus 4 hours and 20 minutes from the Ultimate Countdown reveal, for NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards. You can find out where, how, and when to tune into that here.

But now we have a glorious new leak from Chiphell which shows off the bare naked PCB (and not our first Ampere nude) of a GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition -- with the unique V-shaped board design. The board is actually quite small, which I'm sure we're going to hear about why it is much smaller in 4 hours time -- with the 12-pin PCIe power connector also seeing the board size being reduced (the 12-pin connector, is something I revealed would be exclusive to the Founders Edition boards).

NVIDIA has 12 GDDR6X chips on each of this board, where you can even see one has been placed right on top of the PCIe 4.0 slot. The dual-sided memory enables a bonkers 24GB of GDDR6X memory in total, with the GA102 GPU directly in the center.

Augmented reality smart glasses aren't quite mainstream yet, but the companies that are building this market are finding new use cases for these devices all the time. Vuzix, one of the leading smart glass makers, recently showed the benefits of augmented reality for autocross drivers.

Augmented reality has a wide range of use cases, but I bet you never thought of wearing smart glasses while driving. Vuzix's Director of Product Design, Tyler Porter, likes to go to autocross events with his Camaro SS. He recently brought a set of Vuzix Blade smart glasses to an event, and the results were quite impressive.

Porter loaded his Vuzix Blade smart glasses with an Android app for Autocross drivers called Solostorm that tracks telemetric data such as acceleration, GPS data. It also allows you to compare the data from previous runs. With the software loaded into Porter's AR headset, he was able to see the information in real-time as a heads-up display.

We're just over two weeks away from Facebook Connect, where the company is expected to announce a successor, the Oculus Quest standalone VR system. Unfortunately for Facebook, Walmart may have spilled the beans on two primary details: The price and the storage capacity.

We don't yet know a lot about the upcoming Oculus headset. No details about the processor or the screen resolution have leaked that we know of, but if a listing that RoadtoVR caught on Walmart's website may reveal at least some of the specifications.

Walmart's listing has since been taking down, but there is an archive of what used to be there on web.archive.org which shows a 256GB version with a $399 price tag. Those details are incredible for two reasons: It's cheaper than the original Quest, and it includes double the capacity. The archive link doesn't show the other model, but RoadToVR claims that the original page also offered a $299 model with 64GB of storage.

ASUS dropped a pair of ZenBook ultraportable laptops, and one of them features a brand-new display aspect ratio. The Zenbook S includes a taller-than-standard 3:2 display for improved document viewing. ASUS also released the ZenBook Flip 13 convertible laptop.

ASUS's new ZenBook models are powerful little machines. Both systems feature 10th generation Intel Core processors; the ZenBook Flip 13 is available with an i5-1035G1 or an i7-1065G7. The ZenBook S comes equipped with an i7 onboard.

The ZenBook S is positioned as a somewhat higher-end laptop compared to the Flip 13. Not only does it come standard with a more potent processor, but it also includes 16GB LPDDR4x memory and a 1TB PCIe NVME 3.0 x4 M.2 SSD. The ZenBook Flip 13 consists of a smaller capacity 512GB NVMe drive, and you can get it with 8GB or 16GB of memory. Curiously, the memory in the Flip 13 runs a 3733MHz, whereas the ZenBook S includes slower 3200MHz memory.

An interesting new custom-designed GPU is being made by Apple right now, with the new custom GPU to power Apple's first ARM-based iMac in 2021.

But according to a new report, we now know about codename "Lifuka" which is Apple's in-house GPU that will be made by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) on its new 5nm node. The China Times reports, however, that Apple's new chip will be faster, and more power efficient than the Intel chip it replaces.

The China Times writes: "In the past, Apple introduced Mac personal computers with Intel CPUs, equipped with NVIDIA or AMD GPUs, but industry insiders pointed out that Apple has cancelled support for AMD GPUs in the macOS Arm 64-bit operating system, indicating that Apple will be adopted in the future".

NVIDIA acquiring networking giant Mellanox Technologies back in April 2020 for $7 billion, and now has formally renamed the company.

Mellanox Technology is now NVIDIA Networking, where if you visit Mellanox's website you will be directed to NVIDIA. The banner reads: "Mellanox Technologies is now NVIDIA Networking".

NVIDIA only continues to get bigger in the networking space, which is a very important part of the entire HPC cluster of the computing industry. NVIDIA has the dominant GPUs, a world-class networking outfit, and if it acquires ARM then NVIDIA would be collecting one of the last Infinity Stones, really.

Intel's new Xe GPU has made an appearance, spotted inside of a new Tiger Lake CPU. A new benchmark run was spotted by @TUM_APISAK, with a new Intel Xe logo, too.

Intel will be unveiling its new Xe GPU-powered Tiger Lake CPU architecture on September 2, where I'm sure it will try to steal some of NVIDIA's glorious Ampere thunder. The new benchmark has the Intel Xe GPU with 768 ALUs (cores) and a GPU clock of 1.65GHz.

1.65GHz is much faster than the touted 1.3GHz GPU clocks that we were expecting, and it should be interesting to see how the GPU performs alongside the new Willow Cove CPU architecture on Intel's finally-it-is-here-kinda 10nm SuperFIN process.

Can you believe we're finally here? We are just over 12 hours away from NVIDIA's big Ultimate Countdown event for the next-gen Ampere GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics card reveal.

NVIDIA will be streaming its Ultimate Countdown event directly through Twitch, which kicks off on September 1 @ 8AM PST. If you're elsewhere in the world, I'll include some times for you below:

We have been enjoying copious amounts of leaks on custom GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards, from ASUS, ZOTAC, and GAINWARD so far.

It looks like the PlayStation 5 will indeed be launching on November 13 -- at least in the United States and Canada, according to another Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War leak.

The new leak was spotted by Twitter user Riaan van Wyk, which was noticed at the end of the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War trailer and reads "PS5 coming Holiday 2020: US and Canada" and adding "PS5 coming late 2020: Rest of the World".

This isn't a solid release -- and hell, the PlayStation 5 might not even come out on November 13 -- it could be a little later -- or it's just the release date of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, but we've heard November 20 (at a price of $499, too) -- and even December.

Sony has developed neural network-based algorithms to power the PS5 DualSense controller's haptics.

Sony is making it very easy for developers to utilize the DualSense controller's advanced haptics. The PlayStation 5 controller features programmable adaptive triggers, which allows devs to do nifty things like locking the triggers when your gun jams or simulate nuanced tactile sensations like pulling a bowstring or driving through mud. A big part of this immersion is how the DualSense can turn sound waveforms into rumble feedback.

To streamline this process for devs, Sony has made a system that uses neural network algorithms to automatically create rumble and vibration effects based on sounds and in-game effects. This gives developers more time to focus on other things like ray tracing optimization.