Latest News - Page 1550

A new cryptocurrency mining facility is about to have the lights turned on, and crypto mining insanity begin -- with mining facility operator Enegix teasing its huge new 180-megawatt (MW) data center for mining pools opening in September 2020.

The new mining facility has been built in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan -- close to the Russian border. Enegix sales director Dmitriy Ivanov said that the facility can host up to 50,000 mining rigs -- where if packed at full capacity with Bitmain AntMiner S19 series or MicroBT WhatsMiner M30 -- it would have around 4% of Bitcoin's current hashrate at a huge 5-6 EH/s.

Enegix's new facility will hire over 160 people, ranging between engineers, electricians, and security. It's not the first in Enegix's history, as it has 2 mining facilities already, but the new one in Ekibastuz is its largest so far.

BioWare celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special Dragon Age 4 tease at Gamescom 2020's Opening Night Live Ceremony.

Dragon Age 4 is still a long ways away. BioWare confirmed the game is only in early production phases right now, but teased a bunch of concept art and early gameplay/combat animation footage at Gamescom, all of which showed next-generation visuals. BioWare confirms Dragon Age 4 is being built from the ground up to target next-gen tech, so the game will likely be exclusive to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

"Since 2014, we've been looking at ways to use next-generation technology to bring the world and characters of Dragon Age to life," said BioWare general manager Casey Hudson.

Activision promises Black Ops Cold War will be fully optimized for PC on Battle.net, but Treyarch and Raven aren't developing the PC version.

The latest Black Ops Cold War press release revealed an interesting tidbit: The PC flavor is being developed by a quadraplex of studios including Beenox, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios and Activision Shanghai.

Beenox, who has extended experience working on Call of Duty ports, is handling principal development of the PC version and the other studios, including the once-mighty Sledgehammer, are offering a helping hand. This somewhat contrasts with previous reports that indicated Sledgehammer, Treyarch, and Raven would all be working together on the same version of the game.

Halo lore master Joseph Staten has returned to the franchise to lead Halo: Infinite's campaign, 343 Industries today announced.

There's good news for Halo fans: Joe Staten is back and is now guiding what appears to be a deceptively-rocky boat. This move seems to speak volumes about the current state of Halo: Infinite's development, and reflects a larger part of Microsoft's game dev business practices. While coronavirus was a major factor for disruption, it's unclear it was the only thing that affected development.

"I'm thrilled to join Halo to help them ship Halo Infinite. As the project lead for the Infinite Campaign, I will be supporting the team's existing, great leaders and empowering them to do their best work," Staten said on Twitter.

I've been a big fan of Secretlab's unique SoftWeave fabric since its debut in 2018, but now the company has just unveiled its latest SoftWeave BLACK3 -- a "reimaginging of the popular Triple Black colorway".

Secretlab explains that there are a number of fans that work for the company itself that love the Triple Black colorway sneakers -- so they went ahead to create something similar with their new SoftWeave BLACK3 by incorporating the tri-color weave with three different, and unique shades of black.

The result is something that looks really slick, but I would love to see it in person with my own eyes -- my review sample is on the way. Secretlab is infusing the worlds of gaming and streetwear with the new SoftWeave BLACK3 -- and I'm really digging it. I can see this chair being super comfortable, while also rocking its own unique look.

Activision-Blizzard's net revenues for Q2 were $1.932 billion, the best second quarter earnings in the last 10 years.

Activision-Blizzard's recent Q2'20 performance saw astronomical spikes in net bookings, operating income, and the historic best Q2 net revenues in the last decade. The company raked in $580 million of net income (+76%) on the back of $1.932 billion in net revenues (+39%), and earnings per share jumped 11 cents to $2.36 for the period ended June 30, 2020.

Growth was driven by the Activision segment, which earned $993 million, or 50% of total revenues thanks to massive spikes in Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone monetization. Warzone itself now has 75 million active players and in-game microtransaction earnings are up almost 500% from last year. Activision segment earnings were up 270% year-over-year.

Gamescom 2020 is almost upon us, and to get that hype train rolling ahead of the opening night, Bethesda has released a teaser for the coming DOOM Eternal DLC.

Back at the start of August, a teaser trailer was dropped for the first DOOM Eternal DLC titled "The Ancient Gods", Part One, and with that teaser was the confirmation that the full reveal would be at Gamescom 2020. Now, Gamescom 2020 is only around the corner, and what better way to kick things off than with a full reveal of what impossible challenge Doomguy is going to overcome next.

As a reminder to everyone, Gamescom showrunner Geoff Keighley took to his Twitter to post a time for the reveal, which is "#OpeningNightLive at 8 pm CEST / 2 pm ET / 11 am PT". More recently, the official DOOM Twitter page just posted their own reminder that the DLC would be arriving "tomorrow". If you have played DOOM Eternal and enjoyed the game's story then this DLC will most likely be for you as its an expansion of the main game. If you are interested in the full list of dates and times for Gamescom, check out this link here.

We have another picture of NVIDIA's new 12-pin PCIe power connector, something that I wrote will be exclusive to their own GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition cards according to my sources. The custom cards will feature 2-3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors instead.

But now we have a trio of new images from Korean tech publication QuasarZone, which shows off the new Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 12-pin connector. The new 12-pin connector has smaller pins than the normal 8-pin PCIe power connectors, is slightly longer -- but much thinner, and there's only one of them versus 2-3 x required on other graphics cards.

The smaller 12-pin PCIe power connector will offer significantly more power than a traditional 8-pin PCIe power connector, which is what should make it special. We will know all about it during the September 1 reveal event for NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards.

The White House has just announced a large $1 billion plan to build out over 12 federal research facilities, where they will have the sole task of researching AI (artificial intelligence) and quantum computing.

A few issues have plagued the US in these areas, with a lack of talent in AI and quantum information science -- and then the Trump administration stopping high-skilled H-1B visa holders from coming into the US. This move by the Trump administration wants to see the US stop from falling behind other countries.

AI and quantum computing is the future, with the Trump administration and White House concerned that the US falling behind could be a matter of national security. This is where the $1.2 billion National Quantum Initiative Act comes into play, with 5 of the new research centers inside of the Department of Energy gets $625 million to play with a bunch of exciting technologies.

If you want the very best in installing Windows 10 on your system, grabbing the ISO file and throwing it on a super-fast USB 3.0 flash drive can super-speed your Windows 10 installs.

Microsoft have released the very latest ISO files for the very latest version of Windows 10, with the Preview Build 20201 released today. If you are a Windows Insider in the Dev and Beta Channels, you can begin playing with Windows 10 2021 and 20H2 features with fresh installs from the new ISO files from Build 20201 and Build 19042.

Corsair's new Hydro Series hardline watercooling kits include everything you need to build your first custom liquid-cooling setup. You even get the tools to help you make it.

Corsair's new XH305i RGB or XH303i RGB custom cooling kits come fully equipped with all the components required to build an extraordinary computer. Each kit includes an XC7 RGB CPU water block, which is compatible with Intel 1200 and 115x CPUs, and AMD AM4 platform CPUs. Both kits also include an XR5 360mm radiator, which should offer ample cooling for all but the most extreme overlocks.

Where the two kits differ is in the pump and fans. The XH305i RGB features a strong Xylem D5 pump with PWM control, which is well suited for large, full-size loops. The XH303i RGB's XD3 DDC pump, however, is better for setups with short tube runs as it pushes less fluid per second than D5 models. The XH305i RGB also has a more extensive 330ml reservoir than the 180ml variant included with the XH303i RGB.

You might remember when id Software said that DOOM Eternal could handle 1000FPS, well -- someone has done just that, powered DOOM Eternal with enough PC grunt to power it at over 1000FPS.

Polish overclocking team 'x-kom' used an Intel Core i7-9700K processor and ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, both the CPU and GPU were cooled under LN2 -- and both were heavily overclocked. The Core i7-9700K was pushed to an insane 6.6GHz, while the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti was cranked all the way up to 2.4GHz under LN2 cooling.

The team built a pretty kick ass PC, specced out with:

Microsoft has teamed with Warner Bros. on some gorgeous new Wonder Woman 1984 themed Xbox One consoles, inspired by the Wonder Woman armor, lasso, and villain of the movie.

We have the slick Cheetah-themed console, with Cheetah / Barbara Minerva played by Kristen Wiig. This custom console looks great with a snakeskin pattern, some awesomely-used faux leopard fur, and a themed controller.

Next up we have the Golden Armor Xbox One X console, inspired from Gal Gadot's golden armor that she wears later on in Wonder Woman 1984. The console is made of 24-carat gold leaves, and packs a gorgeous matching Xbox controller.

TSMC has revealed some exciting stuff during its 2020 Technology Symposium, teasing its projections of its new CoWoS-S packaging technology.

This has allowed designers to come in and make gigantic, super-fast designs with bigger and bigger logic dies and layered stacks of HBM memory. One of the restrictions in pushing things even higher, and even crazier, is the interpose size limitation.

TSMC has said that it expects to have 4x reticle size in 2023 -- something that will enable 12 HBM stacks. Micron will have its HBMnext memory available in late 2022, which should super-power some next-gen GPUs and HPC systems with some truly mind-blowing memory bandwidth.

We are days out from NVIDIA's huge GeForce RTX 30 reveal event on September 1, with Jon Peddie Research detailing the latest GPU vendor market share, and discrete GPU market share numbers.

As you can see from JPR's new data, NVIDIA only secured more market share in the last 12 months -- where it had 71% of the discrete GPU market, and now have 80% of the discrete GPU market. AMD may have launched its RDNA-powered Radeon RX 5000 series cards in that time, but they've been bleeding market share ever since.

Back in Q2 2019, AMD had 29% of the discrete GPU market share while NVIDIA had 71% -- but the end of 2019 and first half of 2020 weren't good for AMD Radeon discrete market share. NVIDIA has just continued to take more and more, and we're about to head into next-gen GPUs... will these numbers change in 3-6-12 months?

GUNNAR has just revealed what they're referring to as the "holy grail" of gaming glasses, with their new GUNNAR Lightning Bolt 360 range of glasses. Check out the video they've just posted on YouTube:

The new Lightning Bolt 360 gaming glasses comes in 3 different editions, with the GUNNAR, 6 Siege, and ESL varieties. They are priced between $130 and $140 -- depending on the version you go for.

You do get a "unique lightning bolt design" that doesn't just look cool, it also takes pressure away from your temples. GUNNAR provides 3 different temple options, interchangeable lens (for both indoor, and outdoor use), 3 nose bridge sizes, and a protective case and pouch.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its super-popular, and very addictive battle royale mode Warzone has just had its Season 5 drop -- and then Season 5 Reloaded out of nowhere.

But now we're hearing about some upcoming changes to Warzone, and the newly-introduced train that runs through Verdansk. Warzone multiplayer director Joe Cecot explained to Red Bull in a recent interview: "We have lots of ideas around [the train]. We wanted to get it in there in Season Five and have it be a fun thing to interact with, where you have a lot of movie moments of vehicles chasing trains, people fighting over the train, [that sort of thing]".

Raven Software creative director Amos Hodge chimed in, adding that the team is working on "lots of ideas to update the train in general". He added that the developer wants to add more "interactive elements" to Warzone, in order to keep the game stay frosty.

Treyarch confirms the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will fully harness the raw power of next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

Black Ops Cold War will be among the top-performing shooters on next-gen consoles and is being geared to tap the full potential of the new hardware. The next-gen 7nm Navi GPUs and Zen 2 CPUs will enable high-resolution, high-FPS gaming alongside instantaneous loading via new PCIe 4.0 SSD tech. There's also raytracing support baked in thanks to a newly revamped games engine built from the ground up for next-gen hardware.

"We want to make sure that the framerate is responsive, and that it feels like there's nothing on the technical side preventing you from having a good time,"Treyarch executive Dan Bunting told VentureBeat.

Thermaltake today announced the availability of 32GB and 64GB dual-channel Toughram RGB memory kits in 3200MHz and 3600MHz configurations. The kits are compatible with AMD and Intel's latest chipsets, including AMD's B550 and Intel's Z490.

Thermaltake's new memory features a high-quality ten-layer PCB design, and the company said it uses "strictly selected" Hynix A-die 2GB memory chips to produce Toughram modules. The 32GB kits include dual 16GB modules, whereas the 64GB models offer 32GB per stick. Thermaltake is not currently offering 4-stick configurations, although you could combine two sets for double the memory capacity.

As the name suggests, the new Thermaltake Toughram RGB modules include RGB LEDs that allow you to customize your system's appearance.

Ever the trendsetter in the games industry, Activision's new $69.99 price hike for next-gen PS5, Xbox Series X games could convince other publishers to raise prices too.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War should be the biggest game of 2020, and it'll be sold at a $69.99 premium on next-gen consoles. This is just the beginning for Activision's future games and we should expect its new next-gen titles to also jump by $10.

Call of Duty is among the biggest franchises in gaming and typically sets the bar for imitation--whether it's gametypes like Warzone or its billion-dollar live service business models, publishers are always trying to mimic the company's success. This imitation should extend to next-gen game pricing.