Latest News - Page 175

Pimax has just unveiled three new VR headsets using Sony's next-gen micro-OLED technology, with ultra-high pixel density, near-infinite contrast, beautiful blacks, and more.

We'll start with the flagship Pimax Crystal Super micro-OLED, with Sony's new micro-OLED panels sporting 3840 x 3552 pixels per eye with ConcaveView pancake optics, and a 116-degree FOV. This is the widest FOV achieved so far with micro-OLED panels on a VR headset. Pimax is using interchangeable optical engines that are compatible with 50 PPD, 57 PPD clarity-focused, and ultrawide QLED models.

Pimax's new high-end Crystal Super micro-OLED headset provides users with the flexibility to change between maximum immersion and maximum sharpness, with the new VR headset priced at $2199.

For the second time this year, Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox console hardware in the United States, leading to a generation with an $800 video games system.

Microsoft is planning another price hike for its Xbox Series X/S console duo, the company has confirmed. The most eye-catching part of this update is that Microsoft now has an $800 console with its Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Black edition, which has gone up by $70 since the summer price hike.

The new prices go into effect on October 3 in the United States, and see increases on all systems. The Xbox Series S is now $399, up from $379, with the 1TB model also increasing by $20 to $450. The disc version of the Xbox Series X is now baseline $649, up $50. The all-digital Xbox Series X is now $599, the same price that Sony attached to its unpopular PlayStation 3 in 2006.

PC gaming's largest storefront will stop being supported on legacy 32-bit Windows machines at the turn of the new year.

Valve has officially confirmed that it will be ending support for Steam on PCs running Windows 32-bit installs. Starting January 1, 2026, Steam will no longer support Windows 10 32-bit (the only such OS in use on its platform). This deadline is months after Microsoft's own impending Windows 10 cut-off in October. Interestingly enough, as The Verge points out, the current version of Steam is actually 32-bit but future versions after the end support date will be 64-bit.

Valve confirms that the launcher itself will still function "in the near term" on 32-bit, but won't receive security updates nor can Steam Support help 32-bit users with technical issues they may face.

Microsoft has announced that it has built the "world's most powerful AI datacenter" and the largest and "most sophisticated" AI factory that it's built to date. Called Fairwater, the facility is located in Wisconsin, US, and Microsoft has plans to construct identical Fairwater data centers across the country.

"Fairwater is a seamless cluster of hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GB200s, connected by enough fiber to circle the Earth 4.5 times," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella writes on social media. "It will deliver 10x the performance of the world's fastest supercomputer today, enabling AI training and inference workloads at a level never before seen."

To give you a sense of scale, the Fairwater data center spans a massive 315 acres, comprising three large buildings that offer 1.2 million square feet of data center space. Fairwater is distinct from most data centers in that it's designed to function as a single, massive AI supercomputer, utilizing interconnected NVIDIA GB200 servers and the latest NVLink and NVSwitch technologies, which offer bandwidth measured in terabytes per second.

Borderlands 4 has been one of the biggest releases of the year, but its PC debut has been met with mixed reviews at best. When it comes to the core gameplay experience and the 'looter shooter' action of the series, the game has been widely praised for being a return to form and a modern extension of the iconic Borderlands 2. When it comes to performance, well, that's a different story.

Ahead of the game's launch, everything from the high 'recommended' PC system requirements to NVIDIA's DLSS 4 benchmarks painted the picture of another heavy Unreal Engine 5-powered release. However, once the game launched and several reports of poor performance and stuttering emerged, Borderlands 4 development studio Gearbox Software boss Randy Pitchford began responding to criticism (and that's putting it mildly) by stating that the PC version was already in an 'optimal' state.

He went on to add that GeForce RTX owners should enable DLSS and Frame Generation in the game to ensure a smoother experience. Our own in-depth analysis of the game's performance is set to go live soon, and we conclude that, in its current state, it's essentially the first AAA PC game that requires upscaling and frame generation. But, there's good news.

MediaTek is working on next-gen WiFi 8 wireless technology, with research and development (R&D) work on the new Wi-Fi 8 standard, preparing to release new WiFi 8-ready products in the future.

In a new report from Taiwanese media outlet Ctee picked up by @DanNystedt on X, we're hearing that the release of the WiFi 8 white paper is key to leading the advancement of wireless connectivity, with MediaTek diving directly into the next-gen WiFi 8 standard, and more.

With network communication industry insiders believing that the penetration rate of WiFi 7 will hit 30% to 40% in 2026, we'll continue to hear more and more about the next-gen WiFi 8 standard, with its new speeds, features, and bandwidth, which speed up the development of AI, AR/VR/XR applications, and more.

In the tech world, it has easily been the biggest story this week (and this month, for that matter), with NVIDIA and Intel announcing a deal where Team Green is investing $5 billion in Team Blue for the development of data center and client/consumer CPUs that will feature NVIDIA's NVLink technology and GeForce RTX graphics.

This is significant news because it will mark the introduction of the first x86 system-on-chip (SOC) to hit the market, featuring a brand-new architecture that combines Intel's CPU hardware with NVIDIA's GPU hardware. Separate from NVIDIA's recent ARM-based CPU efforts for the AI space, an x86 offering for data centers will open the door for a new tier of NVIDIA (and Intel) hardware built for the AI era.

That said, this partnership is also going to be huge for the consumer space, with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang confirming that, with the notebook and laptop market accounting for around 150 million sales each year, this partnership will "address a vast majority of that consumer PC market, consumer PC notebook market."

Techland's Dying Light: The Beast is out today, and like the well-received Dying Light 2, the PC version features a suite of ray-traced lighting and effects covering ambient occlusion, global illumination, reflections, and shadows. And as the headline release in NVIDIA's weekly DLSS round-up, we've got 1080p, 1440p, and 4K benchmarks for the game running with max settings.

These come from NVIDIA's GeForce RTX team, so the numbers include DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation (4X) enabled. This includes DLSS Super Resolution using the Performance preset with the new 'Transformer' model, and in 4K with the Ultra preset and all ray-tracing effects enabled, the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 averages 336 FPS, with the GeForce RTX 5080 averaging 227 FPS.

NVIDIA notes that with DLSS 4, performance is increased by an average of 7.6 times at 4K; however, according to the chart, you will need at least a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti to play the game at this resolution.

Samsung Electronics has finally passed NVIDIA's strict HBM3E 12-Hi memory qualification tests for use on its AI GPUs, with the South Korean memory giant ready to supply 10,000 units.

In a new report from AlphaEconomy picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, NVIDIA recently signed a supply contract for its HBM3E 12-Hi memory to NVIDIA, where the contract will see Samsung supply around 10,000 units of its qualified HBM3 12-Hi product. Samsung commented, saying that everything is "progressing as scheduled".

In previous rumors, Samsung's new HBM3E 12-Hi memory supply was confirmed, but this seems more solid and now a contract is in place, after fellow South Korean memory rival SK hynix has been exclusively supplying NVIDIA with all of the high-end HBM3 and HBM3E memory it needed.

Samsung is expected to unveil its first XR headset -- Project "Moohan" -- on October 21, expanding its market reach into XR, AI, and content platforms.

In a new ETnews report picked up by @Jukanrosleve on X, we're hearing that the Samsung Mobile Experience (MX) division will unveil its new Moohan XR headset on October 21, with product specifications and features revealed for the first time, followed "immediately" by official sales of the new XR headset.

We're expected to see the initial shipment volume from Samsung of around 100,000 units for its new XR headsets, with adjustments to be made depending on how good the early demand is.

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.9.2 is available now, an 'optional' driver update for Radeon users that adds day one support for Dying Light: The Beast. Additionally, it supports the surprise launch of the Radeon RX 7700, a new RDNA 3 GPU that the company has quietly introduced, which offers more VRAM but less gaming performance than the Radeon RX 7700 XT.

The new driver release also features a couple of fixes, including the recent sci-fi horror release Cronos: The New Dawn, which could crash when played on a Radeon RX 9070 Series GPU with Ray Tracing enabled. Outside of this, a number of Known Issues remain unfixed, including an NBA 2K25 crashing issue that AMD says it will release a fix for "as soon as possible." There's also a weird one that causes a system crash "while playing World of Warcraft while watching YouTube on Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics products."

As an optional or non-WHQL driver, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.9.2 is a minor driver update but definitely one to install if you plan on jumping into Dying Light: The Beast on a Radeon GPU this weekend. Here are the full release notes.

AMD has quietly launched the Radeon RX 7700 graphics card, a new RDNA 3-powered GPU that features a cut-down chip compared to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, but with more VRAM. The new Radeon RX 7700's product page states that it's "designed for immersive gaming and streaming experiences at 1440p," and it ships with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, compared to the RX 7700 XT's 12GB.

The memory configuration is identical to that of the Radeon RX 7800 XT, featuring 16GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit interface for a total memory bandwidth of up to 624 GB/s. That said, it only features 40MB of AMD Infinity Cache, which is less than the Radeon RX 7700 XT and the Radeon RX 7800 XT.

Outside of the increased memory capacity and speed, the new Radeon RX 7700 is still a cut-down version of the Radeon RX 7700 XT, with 2560 Stream Processors and 40 Compute Units, compared to 3456 Stream Processors and 54 Compute Units. AMD also includes some benchmarks on the Radeon RX 7700's product page, giving us a general idea of how it performs in comparison to the Radeon RX 7700 XT.

The release of Battlefield 6 isn't too far away now if you can believe it, with EA and Battlefield Studios revealing the performance targets for the game on the PlayStation 5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Battlefield 6 includes Fidelity and Performance modes on the PS5 Pro + PS5 as well as the Xbox Series X/S consoles, with no other graphics modes available, instead featuring a maximum. Fidelity mode will prioritize resolution while Performance will prioritize performance.

Fidelity Mode on the Xbox Series X console will hit a maximum resolution of 1440p and targets 60FPS, compared to the PS5 on Fidelity Mode that targets the same 1440p @ 60FPS. Performance Mode on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles are also the same, with a resolution of up to 1280p and a higher 80FPS target.

NVIDIA and Intel just announced a huge $5 billion deal that would see NVIDIA supplying RTX GPU chiplets for Intel to use on its CPUs, but now Intel has said that this new collaboration with NVIDIA isn't the end of its Arc GPUs.

An Intel spokesperson told PCWorld: "We're not discussing specific roadmaps at this time, but the collaboration is complementary to Intel's roadmap and Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings".

In the weeks and (many) months ahead, I dare say we'll see some modifications to Intel's roadmap of laptop processors, with the possibility of seeing future Intel chips changed to include NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets. It all started a few years ago when Intel made Meteor Lake, which was the first-gen Core Ultra CPU designed with a specific GPU tile.

MSI has just introduced its new MPG Infinite Z3 X3D desktop gaming PC calling it the "Best X3D Gaming Desktop" so far, with up to the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, and ultra-fast GPUs including the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards.

The new MPG Infinite Z3 X3D can be configured with either the Ryzen 7 9800X3D or 7800X3D processors, slotted inside of an AMD B850-based motherboard and the CPU cooled with a 360mm AIO liquid cooler. On the GPU side of things, MSI's new MPG Infinite Z3 X3D can be configured with NVIDIA's latest Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs.

GPU offerings include the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 SHADOW 2X and 3X or VENTUS 2X or 3X, the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti in either SHADOW 3X or VENTUS 3X, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 in either SHADOW 3X or VENTUS 3X, or the flagship MSI GeForce RTX 5090 in either VENTUS 3X or GAMING TRIO variants.

NVIDIA and Intel have just announced a new $5 billion deal that will see the two companies working together on joint chip development, where Intel will build custom x86 chips for NVIDIA with RTX GPUs onboard.

In the future we'll see new Intel processors with NVIDIA RTX GPUs as well as building NVIDIA's x86 CPUs for integration inside of AI clusters, with NVIDIA investing $5 billion in Intel's common stock at $23.28 per share. It's an interesting and rather game-changing move, as it means that Intel has all but walked away from its in-house GPU development, after rumors from many years ago that Intel could be canceling its Arc desktop GPUs altogether.

Fast forward to today and the world's biggest chipmaker has teamed with the world's biggest GPU company to use its RTX GPUs on new consumer x86 processors, what an interesting turn of events. Furthermore, we had rumors just a few months ago that said Intel would be making a custom NVIDIA chip on its Intel 18A node for the next-gen Nintendo Switch 3 console, and now this deal is here.

When we reviewed the Logitech G ASTRO A50X Wireless Gaming Headset last year, we were impressed by its sound quality, build, comfort, and broadcast-quality microphone. However, the inclusion of a powerful HDMI base station that doubled as a video and audio hub for all your gaming devices meant that if you weren't using it with a PC and PlayStation or Xbox console, it felt a little overkill and, well, pricey.

The good news is that during its Logitech G PLAY 2025 event, the company announced the new ASTRO A20 X LIGHTSPEED Wireless Gaming Headset, which is available now with an MSRP of $179.99 USD. With a more wallet-friendly price point and a physical design reminiscent of Logitech's gaming headsets, rather than the ASTRO A50 X, it promises to deliver similar 24-bit audio with broadcast-quality 48 kHz full-bandwidth chat.

Unlike the HDMI base station of the A50 X, this model ships with a more compact PLAYSYNC BASE that features two USB connections, allowing you to connect to two systems simultaneously, and choose from PS5, Xbox, PC, or Nintendo Switch. The headset features dedicated buttons that will enable you to switch between devices, with added support for Bluetooth.

As part of its big Logitech G PLAY 2025 event, the company has announced a wide range of new gaming products, including the new Logitech G G515 RAPID TKL Wired Low Profile Analog Gaming Keyboard. Available now with an MSRP of $169.99 USD, this is a unique and interesting low-profile keyboard, featuring low-profile magnetic analog switches.

When it comes to gaming performance, magnetic switches not only allow the actuation point to be adjusted on a per-key basis (here, the range is 0.1mm to 2.5mm), but you've also got support for things like Rapid Trigger and Snap Tap (SOCD) - both useful technologies that have become popular in the competitive gaming space.

As a magnetic keyboard, you can also assign multiple actions to a single button, with the example given by Logitech being that you can assign actions like 'crouch' and 'prone' to a single key, with both actions triggered at different actuation points.

Logitech is teasing a new gaming mouse set to debut early next year, which it believes will be a game-changer for competitive gaming and esports - the Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE.

The product page for this stylish black and white mouse is already online, and the reason why it's set to be a game-changer is that the left and right click buttons are moving away from traditional mechanical switches to a new Haptic Inductive Trigger System. Like magnetic keyboards, this analog induction system opens the door for "instant actuation" and a reduction in latency of anywhere between 9 and 30 milliseconds.

Like gaming-focused magnetic keyboards, the actuation and haptic feedback will be customizable, with 'Rapid Trigger' support thanks to the new buttons being able to reset the instant you lift your finger. This feature alone will extend the appeal of the Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE beyond the realm of competitive shooters to more click-friendly games, such as DOTA 2, League of Legends, and Path of Exile 2.

GIGABYTE has just achieved the CPU frequency world record for AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, using its X870 AORUS Tachyon motherboard, pushing the 9800X3D past the heights of 7.3GHz.

At a recent product launch event in Shanghai, China, GIGABYTE's in-house overclocker -- HiCookie from Taiwan -- put his skills to the test yet again, and walked away with the frequency world record for the 9800X3D on the X870 AORUS Tachyon motherboard.

AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor has 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 5.2GHz with 96MB of cache and a 120W TDP, HiCookie overclocked the CPU under LN2 cooling, hitting 7313MHz (7.31GHz) and was the first one to breach the 7.3GHz barrier as the previous record holder reached (just) 7.2GHz.