Latest News - Page 1649

Xbox exec Aaron Greenberg clarifies the Xbox Series X's standard 60FPS output, confirming developers will have total freedom over frame rates in their games.

Microsoft might be talking too much about the Xbox Series X and it's gotten them into hot water. A bit ago, Xbox's Aaron Greenberg said 60FPS is the standard output for the next-gen Xbox Series X, leading many to believe that was the minimum FPS performance on the system. That's not the case. Developers won't be forced to push their games to 60FPS on the system, and the Xbox Series X won't automatically upgrade every single game to at least 60 frames-per-second.

Confusion set in when Ubisoft confirmed Assassin's Creed Valhalla would run at a minimum 4K 30FPS on the Xbox Series X. Apparently everyone expected 4K 60FPS performance, which is an extremely tall order. But then again, Microsoft has hyped up 4K 120FPS gaming on the next-gen Xbox.

Most gadget fans like to see the folks over at iFixit tear the latest and greatest gadgets apart so you can see the inside. It's also nice to find out how repairable the devices are so if anything needs to be fixed down the road buyers know if it's possible or not. The latest product that iFixit is tearing apart is the new magic keyboard for iPad Pro.

Before iFixit jumps into a complete teardown of the keyboard, it first took apart the trackpad. The trackpad is the only part of the Magic Keyboard that's able to be taking apart without significant destruction of the keyboard. A full keyboard tear down will be coming according to the publication.

Underneath trackpad cover, there is a single button that operates on a lever system. When the trackpad is pressed near the center the user is pressing the sole button in the trackpad. That press causes contact plate in the center to be forced upward, making a click happen. When the trackpad is pressed from one of the other sides or corners, the lever system is activated, causing the contact plate in the center to be forced upward to complete the click.

Microsoft first announced the Family Safety app in March as a way for parents to protect those who matter most with both physical and digital security. The software giant is now rolling out a limited preview of the Family Safety app on iOS and Android. During the coronavirus, pandemic families around the world are both learning and working from home, with many spending more time on computers and phones trying to be sure their loved ones are safe.

The Microsoft Family Safety app allows parents to facilitate a dialogue with kids about the time they are spending on their device and the content they're viewing. The app is designed to provide transparency on where everyone is spending time online and allows the creation of flexible schedules to carve out time for tasks like online learning.

Microsoft Family Safety also allows parents to keep on top of what kids are doing when they are apart via location sharing. Microsoft says it is committed to bringing additional physical safety features in the coming months, such as safe driving, as we go back to a "new normal" to help protect the family. Some key features of the app include activity reporting. Activity reporting includes screen time, top websites visited, and terms kids are searching online. Parents will get an email summary each week outlining usage.

Today Activision confirmed the Tony Hawk 1 & 2 remaster bundle, which packs enhanced visuals, original tracks, skate maps, and more.

After the failure of Tony Hawk 5, Activision is going back to its roots with a fully-on remaster of the first two Tony Hawk games. The remaster bundle releases September 4, 2020 on PS4, Xbox One, and the Epic Games Store for $40, and comes with all the classic skaters you know and love. It also packs the series' best feature: Create-a-Park map editing. This was my favorite thing in the series and gamers will be able to create their own custom maps, share them with friends, and download other maps online.

"New to Create-A-Park this time around is a robust editor enabling new ways of customization. Players will be able to share parks online with friends and outfit skaters with customization options."

One of the things Apple is most famous for its consistently high profit margins. One of the ways Apple maintains those high profit margins is to rarely discount its hardware. Since the hardware is almost always the same price, even small discounts get Apple fans shopping for new gadgets excited.

Amazon has a deal going right now on the Apple AirPods Pro that brings them to the lowest price we've ever seen at Amazon. The usual retail price for the AirPods Pro is $249. Amazon routinely has them marked down by 6% to $234.95 with free Prime shipping.

Currently, an additional discount of $6.96 is being added to all AirPods Pro headphones in the cart at Amazon. An in-cart discount means that when you first hop over to the product listing, the discount is not taken off the price. The discount will be added as a line item in the cart before check out. For those unfamiliar with the earbuds, they have active noise cancellation and transparency mode to allow users to hear what's going on around them.

Sony takes cues from Microsoft and forms its own first-party PlayStation Studios banner that ties all of its game studios together.

Today Sony announced PlayStation Studios (not to be confused with PlayStation Productions), a new collective that brings all of its first-party developers like Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch, Sony Santa Monica, and Guerrilla Games together in one designated place. The new PS Studios formation is part of Sony's big marketing push for the cross-gen environment. Future first-party PlayStation 4 and upcoming PlayStation 5 games will be marked with a special label on their boxes, but some games like The Last of Us II and Ghost of Tsushima won't have the new designation (these boxes have already been manufactured for store shelves).

"We are really excited about this. Over the last few years--and even the last decade--the strength of the titles coming out from our studios has been stronger than ever. We have been thinking about how we unite all of these great games under one brand, and really the purpose of that is to make the consumer understand that, when they see this brand, they're getting ready for a robust, innovative, deep experience that they've come to expect from games coming from PlayStation. So we came up with PlayStation Studios," SIE's Eric Lempel told GamesIndustry.biz.

Google has announced updates that it has made to the Google Duo service aimed at making the application more fun and usable for families. One of the significant changes is the new family mode that allows users to doodle on video calls allowing everyone to see what they draw. The mode also supports effects and masks that will enable users on the call to be transformed into astronauts, cats, and more.

Using the new mode requires users to start a video call, tap the menu icon, and then tap Family to get started. Google says that it hid the hang up and mute buttons while using these new features to prevent accidental muting or disconnection of calls while playing. Google also reminds us that Duo calls are end-to-end encrypted.

Any one-on-one video call also gets support for masks and effects on both the Android and iOS versions of the app starting this week. Google promises to roll out more effects and masks to help people express themselves in the future. One of the most significant updates to the service is coming down the road.

A recent Sony Japan job listing flat out says the PlayStation 5 will release October 2020, but Sony confirms this isn't accurate.

No, the PlayStation 5 isn't coming in October. Sony tells Japanese publication Famitsu the job listing was an error and is still set for an undisclosed Holiday 2020 launch time (likely sometime in November). The listing itself was for Sony's materials acquisition department, which lays out the supply path for console hardware including the next-gen PS5.

"We will select the best suppliers from domestic and overseas parts partners, and adjust the specifications of the hardware parts and the production capacity in cooperation with the design department and the quality assurance department to create the PlayStation 5 scheduled to be released in October 2020," the erroneous job opening states.

Capcom wants to break its all-time game sales record this year, and it'll probably use Resident Evil 8 to do it.

Back in 2019, we predicted Capcom was gearing up for next-gen. Now we're seeing that plan mature. The company today revealed that it plans to sell 28 million games this fiscal year. That's more than it sold during Monster Hunter World's launch year, and that game is the company's best-seller of all time with 15.5 million sales.

Clearly something big is on the way, and for Capcom, it doesn't get any bigger than Resident Evil.

Since the coronavirus pandemic everyone has been on high alert for viruses on Earth, but what about potential viruses on other planets?

What if there is another virus on Mars for example that has the same level of infectiousness as SARS-CoV-2, and NASA accidentally brings it back to Earth? Don't worry, the chances of that are extremely small, and NASA are already taking precautions to make sure that never happens in the first place. Firstly, for NASA to bring back a virus to Earth that would mean they have found alien microbe life. Secondly, any samples NASA brings back from the red planet immediately go into quarantine as if they have COVID-19 or Ebola.

In an interview with Stanford's Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA Ames and scientist specializing in planetary protection, "I have heard from some colleagues in the human spaceflight area that they can see how, in the current environment, the general public could become more concerned about bringing back some alien microbe, virus or contamination".

AMD launched their new Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X processors last week (our review here) where boost clocks in our review saw the Ryzen 3 3100 reach 3.9GHz.

Yeah well, TSAIK has put the Ryzen 3 3100 under LN2 cooling and pushed it to a huge 5.9GHz.

AMD's new Ryzen 3 3100 is a 4-core 8-thread processor on the new 7nm node and packs the Zen 2 architecture, with our sample of the Ryzen 3 3100 reaching 4.4GHz when overclocked. TSAIK used LN2 cooling to push his Ryzen 3 3100, reaching an overclock of 5923.62MHz (to be exact).

If you've been waiting there patiently twiddling your thumbs, then you're going to be disappointed to hear that The Elder Scrolls 6 is still many years away from release. Bethesda's senior VP of global marketing, Pete Hines, confirmed the news in a tweet:

Hines was asked a question by Quinton Meyers on Twitter, on when we can expect some information released by Bethesda on The Elder Scrolls 6. Hines replied that Elder Scrolls 6 is coming "after Starfield", reminding us that we "pretty much know nothing about". He then continues, adding "so if you're coming at me for details now and not years from now, I'm failing to properly manage your expectations".

I personally think that was a pretty harsh response, and then noticed that Mark Campbell - who writes for Overclock3D, tweeted a response that hits the nail in the head:

Sony is going to have quite the battle on its hands when it eventually launches its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, which will battle Microsoft's upcoming Xbox Series X console later this year. Prepare your salt shakers, people.

A new rumor is on Reddit that suggests Sony will be offering two starter packs for its PlayStation 5: a basic PS5 kit, and a premium PS5 kit. These consoles would be different by at least their storage amounts, with the basic PS5 pack reportedly selling for $540, while the premium PS5 pack would cost $650.

The difference here is the storage amounts with the basic PlayStation 5 pack featuring an 825GB ultra-fast SSD while the premium PlayStation 5 pack would use a much larger 1.65TB SSD.

I'm sure you've never heard of Zeal-All before, and don't worry because neither did I -- but they are a Chinese motherboard manufacturer and they've just released a new LGA1151 motherboard with an integrated GeForce GTX 1650 Ti.

Zeal-All's new ZA-SK1050 motherboard uses the Intel B150 chipset, supporting both 6th and 7th generation Intel Core processors (Skylake and Kaby Lake). It is a small board for custom enterprise use, with Zeal-All aiming the new motherboard at AI algorithms, according to its website.

The board has HDMI, Ethernet, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, and 3.5mm audio ports. Zeal-All's interesting new motherboard has an integrated GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB of RAM, while the board itself supports up to 32GB of RAM, and has 4 x SATA ports for storage.

An exciting new rumor has emerged through a leak from ChinaTimes, which is reporting that AMD's next-gen Zen 4 processors, as well as AMD's upcoming RDNA 3 (and not RDNA 2 which is on 7nm) as well as NVIDIA's new Hopper GPUs will be made on the 5nm node by TSMC.

A leaked investment plant at-a-glace shows what TSMC has planned for its 5nm N5 and enhanced N5+ nodes. In the image, TSMC refers to AMD's upcoming Zen 4 architecture CPUs and RDNA 3-based GPUs, NVIDIA's next-gen Hopper GPU architecture, and many others including Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 875 and Snapdragon X60 5G modem.

The list of technologies planned for TSMC's new 5nm node include Broadcom for a new high-speed network processor, other 5G modems, MediaTek's new Dimensity 2000 series 5G chips, Intel's next-gen Xe GPU architecture, Apple's upcoming A15 processor, Huawei HiSilison Kirin 1100, and more.

Alright everyone, here we go. This is an absolutely juicy rumor, and more like a gigantic juicy steak. Even writing those words made me salivate a little, but not like the bucket of drool these new specs on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead has been teasing some purported specs on NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture, and more specifically the GA102 GPU. GA102 will power the next-gen GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the successor to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is based on the Turing GPU architecture and is the flagship GeForce RTX graphics card right now.

These new rumored specs on GA102 have it packing 5376 CUDA cores on the Ampere architecture, 10% more IPC than Turing, and on the 7nm node that lets GPU clocks scale much higher to 2.2GHz and beyond. The lower-end Ampere GPUs will reach the dizzying heights of 2.5GHz.

Intel is just over a week away from making its new 10th Gen CPUs official, with the flagship Core i9-10900K offering 10 cores and 20 threads of 14nm+++++++ power. All those pluses really mean temperature, and with lots of them, that means these new CPUs run really hot. Like, really hot.

In some early results by Weibo user Wolfstame, we see that Intel's new flagship Core i9-10900K runs ridiculously hot, all while gobbling down huge amounts of power. Intel's biggest issue is the 14nm node that they're stuck on, while their competitor in AMD has coasted by and is riding smooth on 7nm... it now shows, a lot.

The Core i9-10900K is a 125W part that during Wolfstame's testing, reached a peak temperature of a super-hot 93C -- and that's with a decent 240mm AIO cooler. Yeah, so stock cooling is going to require LN2 to keep it cool I guess. Power consumption was awful too, with up to 235W under full load in AIDA64 FPU stress tests.

NVIDIA stock has just finished climbing a new mountain today, hitting a new all-time high of $322 on Monday after delving below $200 in March following the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

The bump in stock price can be attributed to the completion of its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, which closed on April 27. The deal was worth $6.9 billion, and sees NVIDIA acquiring a bunch of technologies from Mellanox including its InfiniBand interconnect technology, which super-speeds Ethernet connections in supercomputers and huge datacenters.

NVIDIA has significant investment into supercomptuers and datacenters with its stock product stack -- powering countless supercomputers around the world with its technology. Until now, NVIDIA's previous record closing price was $314.70 -- but it now stands at $322.62.

Ubisoft delivers early performance targets for Assassin's Creed Valhalla on next-gen consoles, and says the game will hit a minimum of 4K 30FPS on the Xbox Series X.

In a statement to Eurogamer Portugal, Ubisoft says its new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed will hit a minimum spec of 4K 30FPS on the Xbox Series X. But what does that mean exactly? Is that native 4K resolution? Is it upscaled? what's the actual FPS cap while running in 4K? This info actually sparks lots of other questions that we won't get answers to any time soon because Ubisoft literally doesn't have finalized hardware yet.

Everything they're doing--including the new Assassin's Creed Valhalla trailer--is being rendered, developed, and tested on devkits that approximate the consumer-grade hardware that'll ship in Holiday 2020. There's a reason why the trailer had a very specific disclaimer at the bottom. It's still too early to talk specifics. Right now AMD is ramping up chip production for the SoCs that power the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

Some rumors are circulating about the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro that suggests there will be two iPhone 12 models. One of the devices will have a 5.4-inch screen, and the other will have a 6.1-inch screen and be called the iPhone 12 Max, according to the leak. Both devices are said to have an OLED screen rather than an LCD. According to leaker Jon Prosser, Apple is working with a company called BOE for the screens in an attempt to keep costs down as much as possible.

The rumor also claims that Apple won't increase resolution on the screens as an additional cost-saving measure. The rumor also claims something that is already expected in the form of the A14 Bionic chipset along with 5G support. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Max are tipped to use 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage on the low-end. The rumor claims at 256 GB version will be available as well.

Pricing is in line with the leak we talked about last month that tipped the iPhone 12 would start at $649. The iPhone 12 Pro line will include the Pro and Pro Max. Rumors suggest 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch displays sourced from Samsung. The displays will have Super Retina XDR branding and support 120 Hz ProMotion tech that surfaced in 2017 with the iPad Pro.