Latest News - Page 1619

GTC 2020 NVIDIA has officially unveiled its first GPU based on the Ampere GPU architecture, the new NVIDIA A100, which the company has in full production and is already shipping to customers worldwide.

NVIDIA's new A100 GPU packs an absolutely insane 54 billion transistors (that's 54,000,000,000), 3rd Gen Tensor Cores, 3rd Gen NVLink and NVSwitch, and much more. The GPU itself measures 826mm2 (!!!) on TSMC's 7nm node, as well as packing a huge 40GB of HBM2 memory from Samsung, and up to 600GB/sec bandwidth through NVLink.

The new A100 is being compared against the V100, which is based on the Volta GPU architecture. NVIDIA's current-gen Tesla V100 comes with 16GB and 32GB HBM2 options, while the V100 was built on the 12nm node at TSMC it packs just 21 billion transistors in comparison.

On the eve of NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU reveal, AMD has decided to unveil its new Radeon Pro VII graphics card aimed at professionals.

AMD's new Radeon Pro VII is the consumer-focused Radeon VII, but for professionals. We have the same 16GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit memory bus with up to 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth. The same Vega 20 GPU on the 7nm node is used, with 3840 cores, 240 TMUs, and 64 ROPs.

What is new here with the Radeon Pro VII is that AMD has shifted over to the PCIe 4.0 standard, versus the consumer-focused Radeon VII on PCIe 3.0. The same GPU clocks are here, with peak GPU clocks of up to 1750MHz -- while AMD delivers a new multi-GPU bridge for the Radeon Pro VII which the company calls Infinity Fabric Link with up to 168GB/sec of bandwidth.

NVIDIA will be unveiling its next-gen Ampere GPU architecture tomorrow morning, with the super-insane Ampere A100 GPU to lead the charge as well as a bunch of A100-powered systems.

We are to expect NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang to burst out onto a (virtual) stage and unveil the new Ampere GPU architecture, talk about the latest innovations that NVIDIA has achieved in AI, high performance computing (HPC), data science, autonomous machines, healthcare, and graphics during the GTC 2020 online keynote.

I was fully booked and I'm sure many hundreds of others were, for the annual GTC 2020 which was meant to kick off on March 23 -- but was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. NVIDIA shifted gears to go all-online for GTC 2020 this year, with the full announcements that will be in the keynote to be found here.

The world's first real-time PlayStation 5 gameplay footage was a dazzling tech demo that pushed the hardware to its limits. How far? The PS5 devkit was able to steadily maintain 1440p 30FPS "most of the time" with cinematic-quality 8K textures, global illumination, and other new advanced techniques.

The new Unreal Engine 5 footage was absolutely incredible and gave us a taste of next-gen console gaming. But there's a few caveats. For one, it's a tech demo, not an actual game. Yes, it's playable with live source code on a PS5 devkit, but it won't actually ship. And two, the demo required intense horsepower for its Nanite system to render the billions of triangles needed for the scenes, and wasn't able to hit 60FPS on the PlayStation 5's 10TFLOP Navi GPU. It also required dynamic resolution scaling, which adjusts resolution on-the-fly to lock in a consistent frame rate. For reference, most of the PS4 Pro's 4K games have dynamic resolution scaling and few are native 4K.

Epic's VP of Engineering Nick Penwarden says the demo hit 1440p 30FPS on PlayStation 5 with dynamic resolution scaling enabled--the resolution spot between 1080p and 4K but at the lower FPS range for these kinds of action-adventure experiences.

Fortnite is coming to next-gen consoles (it's a service game that drives billions in revenues, so of course it is) and Epic will use it to experiment with its new Unreal Engine 5 tech later next year.

Today Epic Games announced Unreal Engine 5, a new powerhouse toolset that enables high-end visuals on next-gen consoles. Epic was the first to show real-time PlayStation 5 gameplay via a tech demo that uses the new Nanite geometry tech to inject cinematic-quality 8K texture assets into game scenes in real-time without texture pop-ins, and also uses Lumen, new global illumination tech. But there's just one issue: Unreal Engine 5 doesn't release until 2021.

Epic plans to bring Fortnite to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at launch in 2020, but the game will use Unreal Engine 4 and not the beefy new graphics might of UE5. It'll be fully cross-progression between the console generations and it won't actually be a new version of Fortnite--although the next-gen version will take advantage of the new hardware.

Today Microsoft accidentally confirmed a ton of info about the Mafia Trilogy, a new definitive collection of 2K's crime drama series.

2K Games today announced the Mafia Trilogy, a collection that packs in Mafia, Mafia II, and Mafia III in one bundle that spans 40 years of organized crime across Illinois, New York, and New Orleans. 2K was light on details and planned to save announcements for a May 19 stream, but a now-deleted Microsoft Store listing confirmed a bunch of info.

The biggest surprise is how the first old-school Mafia game from 2002 has been completely remade. The game originally launched for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, and has been re-done from the ground up with enhanced visuals, textures, graphics, and improved animations. The results deliver eye-catching lighting effects, immaculate textures, and impressive environmental effects. "Faithfully recreated, with expanded story, gameplay and original score. This is the Mafia you remembered and much more," reads the listing.

Instagram has announced the fifth edition of its Community Standards Enforcement report that tracks its efforts to keep the social network safe. Along with that report, Instagram is also announcing new features that go along with its effort to fight online bullying. One of the key features is giving users the ability to manage multiple unwanted interactions at once.

Instagram wrote, "We know it can feel overwhelming to manage a rush of negative comments, so we've been testing the ability to delete comments in bulk, as well as block or restrict multiple accounts that post negative comments." Instagram reports that early feedback has been "encouraging," noting that the feature is particularly useful to those with large followings that want to maintain a positive environment on their account.

Enabling the feature on iOS requires users to tap on a comment and then the dotted icon in the top right corner. Users can then select Manage Comments and choose up to 25 comments to delete at once. Tapping More Options to block or restrict accounts in bulk is also available. To block or restrict accounts on Android, users press and hold on a comment, tap the dotted icon, and select Block or Restrict. Another new feature is giving users a way to highlight encouraging and positive interactions, called Pinned Comments. Instagram says it will soon begin testing Pinned Comments.

Dell has officially announced the new XPS 15 and XPS 17 notebook computers. It's been a decade since the XPS 17 was offered, and it's being hailed as the most powerful Dell XPS laptop ever made. One of the highlights of the XPS 17 is that it's the smallest 17-inch laptop around featuring a "virtually borderless" four-sided InfinityEdge display that allows the 17-inch notebook to be smaller than 48% of 15-inch machines on the market today.

Dell uses the latest 10th generation Intel Core processors inside the XPS 17 along with GPUs up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with Max-Q design. To keep all the high-end hardware cool, the laptop uses a unique thermal design for increased fan airflow for ideal performance. Dell has also announced the redesigned XPS 15 laptop computer.

Dell says that the XPS 15 is the smallest 15.6-inch performance class laptop on the market. It features a larger 16:10 display and up-firing speakers. The machine uses the latest 10th generation Intel Core processors and up to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU. Both of the machines have some of the same features, including a chassis crafted from two pieces of machined aluminum, making the laptops lightweight and strong.

As rumors continue to persist about a Galaxy Fold 2, new rumors are going around about another device that will slot into the Galaxy Fold family. According to the latest rumor, Samsung is working on a significantly cheaper version of the Galaxy Fold that will skip some features of the original. The rumor says that the device is believed to be called the Galaxy Fold Lite 4G.

The smartphone would be a mix of parts sourced from older and newer smartphones that launched between 2018 and 2020. One way Samsung is said to be keeping costs low on the Galaxy Fold Lite is by ditching the ultra-thin glass used on the Galaxy Z Flip and relying on a plastic screen like the original Galaxy Fold.

Another cost-saving measure would be a smaller external display. The exact size of that external display is unknown, but speculation suggests it could be more like the external screen on the Galaxy Z Flip rather than what was seen on the original Fold. The cheaper device will use an aluminum frame according to reports with the external portion made out of glass to enable wireless charging.

Epic Games' Tim Sweeney praises the PlayStation 5's raw power and storage tech, calling Sony's next-gen hardware 'unprecedented' and 'absolutely phenomenal.'

Today Epic announced Unreal Engine 5, and showed the first-ever real-time gameplay running on a PlayStation 5 console in the form of an advanced tech demo. The Unreal Engine 5 looks to push the PS5 to its limits with 8K texture rendering alongside high-end and ultra-versatile Nanite tech, which allows for cinematic movie-quality assets to be injected right into a game using virtual geometry. To create these kinds of dev tools, Epic has nurtured an intimate relationship with the PlayStation 5 and knows its ins and outs.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney had some choice words about the PS5 that come from an actual understanding of the hardware itself instead of marketing hype-speak.

A new report is going around the claims Apple is looking to have its employees returned to the office during 2020. This is in contrast to other major technology companies that have announced plans to keep employees out of the office the remainder of the year due to coronavirus. The report, which first originated with Bloomberg, says that Apple has already begun the first stages of returning employees to work with essential workers unable to do their jobs from home already returned to the office.

Some Apple workers who have returned to the office were having issues working from home in some regions. Apple reportedly told staff that major locations will begin returning to work later this month or in June. Apple is also said that workers may return to offices globally starting in July.

However, those plans are not firm and can fluctuate according to the changing status of state and local emergency orders. Managers will inform their staff what phase of reopening they will fall under, and if they are required to be at the office daily or just for periods of time. The first group of employees expected to return the office will include those who work in data center management, software deployment, sales, and hardware testing and development.

Today Epic Games announced Unreal Engine 5, a new toolset that's specifically optimized for next-gen consoles, and debuted the first-ever PlayStation 5 gameplay.

The new Unreal Engine 5 footage is a tech demo, but it showcases what the PlayStation 5 can do. And the results are stunning. The footage is amazingly technical and has a cinematic quality, using 8K textures via virtual texturing in the new high-end geometry polygon technology called Nanite. And it's all fully playable with live code on a PS5 devkit.

The demo runs over a billion polygons in every frame that are condensed into 20 million triangles per frame, and the demo clocks in at hundreds of billions of triangles. Epic says Nanite allows for limitless geometry and photorealistic visuals and allows devs to get to the sub-pixel level of quality and adequately portray the original high-end cinematic-quality assets that were scanned, all without any LoD or texture pop-ins.

One of the things that long sat iPhone and Android messaging apart is that Apple's iMessage has had some features that Android users didn't have. Android users did get some improvements when RCS messaging rolled out, but it wasn't exactly what many users hope for. Some Android users have spied a new Google Messages feature in the wild that many Android users will be excited about.

That feature is reactions that allow users to share Facebook -like reactions to RCS chat conversations with various emoticons. Available emoticons include a thumbs up, laughing face, surprised face, sad face, angry face, and a thumbs down icon. Apple's iMessage for iPhone users has something similar with the ability to hold down a message and select a heart icon, thumbs up icon, thumbs down, "haha" icon, "!!" icon, or "?" icon.

According to those who have seen the reactions feature live in Android Messages, accessing the reactions is done by long-pressing a message. Currently, the reactions appear to have a fallback for users with devices that don't support reactions directly on messages. The fallback looks like the image below. Reports indicate that the new reactions don't appear in the web-based Google Messages platform.

Diablo II Resurrected, a remastered version of the old-school classic, is coming to PC in Q4 2020, sources tell ActuGaming.

It looks like best Diablo ever made is coming back in a big way. As a die-hard Diablo II fan, this news is tremendously exciting. But there's still a lot of details we don't know, and we need clarification. On the heels of Warcraft 3 Reforged's terrible port, I asked Blizzard not to remaster Diablo II. But sources tell ActuGaming that Vicarious Visions, the team that's helping Blizzard make the remaster, is taking D2 Resurrected very seriously.

The main questions I have center around Battle.net, mod support, and what version of Diablo II will be supported. Can we expect a remaster of the base Diablo II and the Lord of Destruction expansion? Base D2 isn't really worth playing with LoD's massive improvements--synergies, runewords, stash expansion, etc. Also what about Battle.net? Will there be cross-play between the original D2 and D2R? Are there chat lobbies? Are there game lists? Those are super important for ladder trading on Realm.

One of the coolest accessories that Apple rolled out with the updated iPad Pro models was the iPad Magic Keyboard. That keyboard magnetically attaches to the iPad Pro with versions available for the 11-inch tablet and the 12.9-inch tablet. Another of the features of that keyboard is the ability to charge the iPad Pro through the Magic Keyboard USB-C power port.

However, some users are reporting that some USB-C power adapters and cables are unable to charge the iPad Pro through the Magic Keyboard's USB-C port. MacRumors reports that multiple iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard owners are reporting issues with pass-through charging that refuses to work with third-party cables or power adapters.

One user reported that they tried three different USB-C cables, and all resulted in a "Not Charging" message displayed next to the battery icon. In that instance, the user claims that Apple Support was trying to arrange pickup of the Magic Keyboard and would send out a replacement for what was seemingly a hardware issue. MacRumors notes that it was unable to charge the iPad Pro using the Anker PowerPort Atom and Apple's official USB-C cable.

One of the most challenging things for businesses and schools around the United States and other countries during the coronavirus is getting employees and students together to work and learn. Many video chat platforms have become popular during the coronavirus pandemic, including WhatsApp, which recently gained support for 50 people on a video call. Another service has now announced that it is free to use, and is called Spatial.

The exciting thing about Spatial is that it's not your typical video chat application, it allows for virtual reality meetings. Spatial enables users to take advantage of VR or mixed-reality headsets from a variety of manufacturers as methods to meet inside virtual spaces. The company has announced a significant change today with support for web browsers on desktops.

Previously all users in a Spatial meeting were required to have VR headsets to attend. Support for web browsers on desktops, Android, and iOS means that no headset is required, and the platform is free and open to everyone. Spatial says that it had an "intense amount of demand" during coronavirus with a 1000% increase in demand for its service.

OriginPC has just announced two new 17-inch gaming laptops, with the new EVO17-S and NT-17 both rolling out with massive 17-inch panels with a 1080p option, and a 4K option.

The new laptops pack Intel's new Core i7-10875H processor, which is an 8-core 16-thread chip, backed up by up to 32GB of DDR4-2666MHz RAM, and NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Max-Q graphics. OriginPC is offering up to 4TB of storage inside, in case you want to install every game you own.

OriginPC has three different display options with its new 17-inch gaming laptops, with a 17.3-inch 1080p 144Hz WVA option, another 1080p option this time at 240Hz, and then a 4K60 panel with Adobe 100% coverage.

The PlayStation 5 won't be delayed and will meet its holiday 2020 launch, Sony today confirmed in an earnings report.

Despite previous warnings to investors, Sony now says coronavirus hasn't had a major impact on its console hardware production lines. The company said the PS5 is still "on track for launch in this

holiday season" and games haven't been disrupted either: "no major issues in game software development at this point."

Respawn Entertainment and EA have just kicked off Season 5 of battle royale giant Apex Legends, introducing an all-new character, a modified version of Kings Canyon, balances, tweaks, and so much more.

The new character hitting the roster in Apex Legends is Loba, which we've known about for a little while now: but now she's official, and you can play with her now that Season 5 is here. Loba is a master thief, where she has the ability of seeing rare loot through walls -- as well as being able to suck up loot in vicinity to herself, and even teleportation.

Loba isn't the only major new thing in Season 5, with Respawn making some big changes to Kings Canyon by introducing a totally new area: Skull Town. Normally there were a bunch of buildings hanging out in the middle of the desert, but now there is a military facility and underground base for you to have battles in -- and most of all, explore for loot.

I'm about sick of hearing about coronavirus as it is, but we will have long lasting effects from it -- even in the technology and gaming worlds.

In a new interview with Business Insider, Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked about how COVID-19 coronavirus is impacting the gaming world -- ramping up into the release of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console.

Spencer said: "Through the summer, early fall? I feel pretty good about those games. Games that were targeting a year from now or beyond? There'll be some impact, but they'll be able to react. Mocap is just something that's basically stopped. We're not going into mocap studios".