Latest News - Page 1554

In August, Facebook announced that new Oculus accounts would soon require Facebook account integration. With Quest 2 launching this week, that change is now in effect. In a blog post today, the company confirmed that Quest 2 requires Facebook even for existing account holders.

Facebook's new Oculus account policy requires that new users use a Facebook account to create an Oculus account. The company previously said that existing Oculus account holders would be exempt from the change for two years, but we now know that only applies to legacy headsets.

Quest 2 activation requires linking your Oculus account to a Facebook account, but don't worry, that doesn't mean you can't use a gamer tag. Oculus accounts still use gamer tags, but they now need Facebook accounts for user identification. You can choose to leave your real name public, or you can hide your Facebook name on your Oculus profile.

Thanks to DLSS, Watch Dogs Legion can run at 4K Ultra with ray traced visuals...but it requires some hefty GPU horsepower.

Today Ubisoft revealed a revised PC spec sheet for Watch Dogs Legion outlining what kinds of hardware you'll need for ray traced gameplay. The game has three varying ray-tracing perf targets: 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, the latter of which requires an RTX 3080 (which is actually capable of hitting 30-60FPS at 4K Ultra with RT), and Intel Core i9-9900k/AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 65GB of install space (20GB of which is from a 4K texture pack).

The 1080p and 1440p spec requirements are reasonable, and you can skate by with some serious older hardware at 1080p with Low settings, including an NVIDIA GTX 970, 4GB of RAM, and in Intel Core i5-4460 CPU.

Production for Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV show has already begun, and now the director has revealed filming has reached a milestone.

The director for the coming TV show, J.A Bayona, took to his Instagram story and took a photo of himself and said, "This is my face of having completed more than half the weeks of shooting. More tomorrow!". We can assume he is talking about the Lord of the Rings TV show from the emoji's he used at the end of the statement, which were wizards and elves.

Bayona has previously directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and will be directing the series's first two episodes. For those who don't know, the show's filming is taking place in New Zealand, and we can assume that production is running slightly behind schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, New Zealand has recently listed all restrictions for Auckland.

Razer has unveiled its 2020 refresh of the Razer Blade Stealth 13 laptop, packing a 13.3-inch super-fast 120Hz-capable 1080p display and Intel's new Tiger Lake CPU.

The new Razer Blade Stealth 13 is powered by Intel's latest 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake processors, with the Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor based on the new 10nm Super Fin architecture. We have 4-core/8-thread at up to 4.7GHz -- a large 800MHz increase over the previous-gen Razer Blade Stealth 13.

Razer is offering two different display options with a 1080p 120Hz display, while if you want a higher-end OLED you're getting dropped down to 60Hz. If you want a 4K panel you're stuck with the older Ice Lake CPU, while the stock Razer Blade Stealth 13 rocks the 1080p 60Hz OLED panel.

We all know NVIDIA has been issues with sales of its GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics cards on their website, well -- now the RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3090 FE are exclusive to Best Buy to US customers.

The company will take orders for its GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics cards exclusively to Best Buy at least for now -- and other retailers and e-tailers in the near future. Nothing changes with custom RTX 30 series graphics cards, they'll continue to sell through their regular channels.

An NVIDIA employee explained on their official forums: "We have heard your feedback regarding the NVIDIA online store and are working to improve the experience. In the meantime, we will be selling our GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition through other partners. In the US, you can shop for Founders Edition at Best Buy - GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 . In Europe, we continue to review Founders Edition fulfillment options".

NVIDIA is seeing virtually every single GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card it can make sell out worldwide instantly, but it looks like we're leading right into the larger 20GB model that will reportedly launch in December 2020.

According to VideoCardz, the new GeForce RTX 3080 20GB graphics card will launch in December -- with their sources "confident that NVIDIA will launch two SKUs: 3080 20GB and 3070 16GB in that month". The plans as VC states have been changed when it comes to the purported GeForce RTX 3070 Ti with 6144 CUDA cores which has "allegedly been scrapped".

NVIDIA should launch the GeForce RTX 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6 on October 29, the day after AMD reveals Big Navi and the now-confirmed (with 4K gaming performance numbers teased) with the Radeon RX 6000 series on October 28. After that, sometime in December, we are to expect the RTX 3070 with 16GB.

Razer has just introduced two new Tomahawk gaming cases, with the new Tomahawk A1 (ATX) for $199 and the new Tomahawk M1 (Mini-ITX) for $179. Check them both out in the video below:

Both of the new Razer Tomahawk cases have huge tempered glass doors that open from a swiveling mount at the rear, which looks great -- and speaking of looking great you have some gorgeous RGB lighting as usual.

I should note that this isn't the first Razer case, as the company teased its Tomahawk Elite at CES 2019 with gull-wing tempered glass doors -- except, the Tomahawk Elite was only a proof of concept. Fast-forward to CES 2020 and the company showed off its Tomahawk Gaming Desktop pre-built PC, but it didn't reach the market.

Razer has just unveiled its latest gaming mouse, with the Razer Viper Ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 Edition gaming mouse, check it out:

The new mouse was unveiled during Razer's own RazerCon event, unveiling a bunch of new products that included this kick ass new Viper Ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 Edition gaming mouse. We are told to expect around 70 hours of battery life between charges on the new mouse, with a 20,000 DPI sensor and maximum of 650 IPS (inches per second) and maximum acceleration of up to 50G.

You will of course have some slick RGB lighting through Chroma RGB, which can be tweaked through software -- while the mouse launches sometime in November 2020 for $160.

It looks like Digital Extremes is about to put in some huge graphical upgrades into Warframe, right after its 7th big expansion launched with Heart of Deimos.

Digital Extremes explains in a new post on the Warframe forums that they're moving away from their old rendering engine, with the new rendering upgrade providing the developers with a huge new playground of tools, improved graphics, and more to use in Warframe.

Destiny 2's Battle.net to Steam content transfers will end this December, Bungie confirms, so be sure to move your accounts over.

Destiny 2 hasn't been on Battle.net for a long time but anyone who bought the game on Blizzard's platform is still able to transfer their content, characters, and overall account over to Steam. Time to transfer is running out though. Bungie says the transfer will be cut off on December 1, 2020. After that, any un-transferred expansion content, unlocks, weapons, characters, and account data will be lost for good.

Bungie confirmed the news in a recent update, and also warned gamers that existing Steam progression will be overwritten if they migrate Battle.net data over. There's only one spot for Steam data.

Chinese gacha game Genshin Impact is a massive hit in overseas regions and has amassed a huge $100 million in less than two weeks.

Genshin Impact is one of the most popular new free-to-play games on the market right now and has taken the US, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese regions by storm. The gacha game has pulled in a monumental $100 million in monetization revenues via in-game purchases on all platforms in less than two weeks time--a feat that, according to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, makes it the most successful new IP launch for a Chinese developer.

MiHoYo's open-world game has doubled its earnings in just a week (original 7-day revenues sat at $50m) and had over 17 million downloads in its first day on mobile.

It turns out you may be showering incorrectly, or at least according to doctors that recently talked to The Daily Mail.

According to the doctors a massive factor in showering correctly comes from how hot the water is, and if you are one of the potentially millions of people out there who love a near-boiling hot shower - you might want to stop doing that. The researchers say that its important to wash your face in lukewarm or almost cold water as hot water can dry out the skin on your face.

Additionally, the researchers say that hot water can lead to short and long-term damage that includes broken or dilated blood vessels. On top of that, washing your face with hot water can strip your face from natural oils that are healthy for your skin. The experts recommend to save your face washing for when you are out of the shower, and make sure to rinse your face with a gentle cleanser.

I'm sure you know someone, or at least know someone who knows someone who purchased a new TV during the last 9 months with the huge COVID-19 lock downs worldwide.

Well, it appears global TV shipments are at an all-time high in Q3 2020, with a new report from TrendForce indicating that 62 million TVs were shipped in the quarter. This is a jump of just under 13% from the same period of 2019, and up nearly 39% over Q2 2020.

Samsung and LG lead the global TV shipments, with TrendForce noting that the demand in the US alone was over 20%, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and millions of Americans sitting at home. The uptick in demand for Q3 2020 over the quarter before it, is because the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked havoc on the entire supply chain.

Alienware has just unveiled its very latest gaming laptop with the new Area-51m packing some serious heat underneath its keyboard.

Inside, you can configure it with an Intel Core i9-10900K processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER graphics -- but a super-fast 360Hz refresh rate. It's impressive considering the Alienware Area-51m packs a large 17-inch display with a native 1080p resolution.

Alienware's new Area-51m gaming laptop can be configured with up to 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, up to 2 x 2TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs, Wi-Fi 6 and GbE connectivity. You can option out the 1080p display for a higher-end 4K 60Hz panel if you want, too.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series X consoles are right around the corner, if you can believe it -- it kinda doesn't feel real yet -- but now we have a better list of 120 FPS-capable games on the new consoles.

The folks over at Windows Central have a full list of 120 FPS-supported games on the next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S games, including the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War -- as well as the if-it-eventually-releases Halo: Infinite. Here's the list of 120 FPS-capable Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S games:

Final Fantasy XVI's core development and production has been completed, and now Square Enix is ramping up its dev teams to create awe-inspiring large-scale battle sequences for the next-gen RPG.

Final Fantasy XVI has been in development for years now and is currently in advanced stages of progress, a new recruitment page confirms. "Basic development and scenario production have already been completed, and we are continuing to create large-scale resources and build boss battles while expanding various development tools," the page says.

Even with this headway, Square Enix is still far from finished with Final Fantasy XVI. The project requires tons of optimizations for next-gen hardware and the team is currently working on cutscenes and ways to push the new Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU tech with expansive resources, huge boss battles, and dynamic wide-scale war sequences.

Frame drops in PS4 games may be a thing of the past thanks to the PS5's backwards compatibility boost mode.

Today Sony revealed more info on how PS4 games will be natively boosted on the PS5's new hardware. The next-gen console will raise the performance of all playable PS4 games in certain ways, ranging from faster load times for games installed on the PS5's SSD to streamlined/increased frame rates. Not every game will see a big native FPS boost, though, and Sony warns gamers they may need to download an update before certain PS4 games can be played on the PS5.

"Select PS4 games will benefit from the PS5 console's Game Boost, which may make PS4 games run with a higher or smoother frame rate," a new PS5 support article reads.

PS5's backward compatibility is staggering and the console will play nearly every PS4 game except a handful of lesser-known titles.

Sony has finally revealed the PS5's backwards compatibility list and confirmed which PS4 games are playable on the console. Actually that's not quite right--the list of backwards compatible PS4 games is so big that Sony instead confirmed which games aren't playable. The list non-playable PS4 is tiny and only includes 10 games. They're not notable and you won't miss them.

The following PS4 games aren't playable on the PS5:

AMD has unveiled its new Zen 3 architecture and with it the new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, led by the flagship Ryzen 9 5950X processor. It is a powerhouse processor, the shining flagship of the Zen 3 chips.

We have a monster 16-core/32-thread at up to 4.9GHz, with performance that is between 5-27% faster than the current Zen 2-powered flagship Ryzen 9 3900XT processor in content creation situations. In gaming, the new Ryzen 9 5950X is up to 29% better in gaming -- where gamers are going to dive right onto it once it launches.

Another big selling point is that the Ryzen 9 5950X is just $799, and will be available November 5 -- something that I'm sure AMD fans will remember, remember, the 5th of November as the day AMD unleases the Ryzen 9 5950X. A serious chip that will dethrone Intel in a big way for the rest of the year, and into 2021.

AMD has now unveiled its next-generation Zen 3 CPU architecture, with ASUS quickly off the mark unveiling its new ROG Crosshair VII DARK HERO and ROG STRIX B550-XE motherboards ready for the new Ryzen 5000 series processors.

First up we have the ASUS ROG Crosshair VII DARK HERO was made specifically for AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, packed with higher-end 14+2-phase design and titanium power stages that are good all the way through to a huge 90A. The board packs 8+4-pin power connectors, with two huge aluminum blocks that keep the VRMs cool with a huge heat pipe.

ASUS has a really slick matte and metallic black aesthetic, with RGB lighting through ASUS Aura Sync, with an RGB-lit ROG eye looking back at you, while keeping the PCH cool. There's no active cooler on this model, compared to its predecessor in the X570 boards.