Intel is coming back into the graphics card game in a really, really big way in 2020 and while most people think it's going to be a hit-the-ball-out-of-the-park performance wise... the first-gen product was never, ever going to be that good.

Intel Xe will debut in 2020 in mid-range form for its first iteration, offering esports-level performance with 1080p 60FPS being a great starting point for the company.

The new news is coming from the Intel Developer Conference (IDC) in Tokyo, where benchmarks were released discussing the 10th-gen Intel Ice Lake mobility CPUs with their new Gen 11 'Iris Plus' GPUs compared to the previous-gen UHD 620 graphics.

MSI has just launched the world's first 7nm gaming laptop, something that was achieved when AMD announced their new Radeon RX 5500 series graphics yesterday. Meet the new MSI Alpha 15 gaming laptop.

MSI's new Alpha 15 gaming laptop packs AMD's new Radeon RX 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6, and is teamed with the Ryzen 7 3750H processor -- both of which are made on the 7nm process. MSI provides two options with screens: a 15.6-inch 1080p 144Hz IPS-based panel with FreeSync tech, or a 15.6-inch 120Hz IPS panel with FreeSync.

Inside, the Alpha 15 gaming notebook is cooled by a 7-heat pipe Cooler Boost 5 thermal outfit, compatible with AMD's own SmartShift technology. This technology cools both the CPU and GPU simultaneously, which should see for low temps while under gaming loads.

AMD has released its new Radeon Adrenalin Edition 19.10.1 drivers, and with it comes support for the freshly-announced Radeon RX 5500 series graphics cards.

The new Radeon RX 5500 series of graphics cards includes three different SKUs: Radeon RX 5500 XT, Radeon RX 5500, and Radeon RX 5500M. All of these are supported in the new Radeon 19.10.1 drivers, as well as issues being fixed for Borderlands 3, 75Hz monitor owners with Radeon RX 5700 series graphics, and more.

You can grab the new Radeon 19.10.1 drivers right here.

Can you believe World of Warcraft has been out for 15 years now? I still remember losing friends to the game, as they sunk 16 hours a day into it and wouldn't play Call of Duty and Call of Duty: United Offensive in my pro teams here in Australia.

15 years! Add on top of that the mega successful release of World of Warcraft Classic, and now Blizzard have unveiled a new statue that celebrates the 15-year milestone of the original World of Warcraft. The awesome Ragnaros statue not only looks awesome, but he was one of the best raid bosses in the original WoW.

Blizzard offered up the World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition on its website, but it quickly sold out (you're not surprised). The kit cost $100 and included a bunch of gear, starting with the 10+ inch Firelord statue, an Onyxia pin, Map of Azeroth mouse pad, fine art prints, 30 days of game time, and two Alabaster mounts.

EA is aware of server issues it was experiencing across its games, with the company tweeting out: "We are aware of connectivity problems with our games. We'll keep you up to date on progress here. Thanks for your reports".

The server issues were affecting some of the largest games in the world including Apex Legends, FIFA 20, and Battlefield V. EA hasn't detailed the server issues, but Apex Legends players were reporting errors with error code 100 or 103, which stopped them from signing into their EA accounts -- which you know, stops them from playing Apex Legends.

I do like some of the reply tweets to EA's original tweet, with "MrFUTAnalyser (Billy)" tweeting "Theres been connectivity problems for a few years" and right under that "Jonas" with something a little more apocalyptic in "Hope the servers blow up so they have to buy new ones". Wow, guys.

CAPCOM is continuing to see mega success in Monster Hunter World, with the company announcing that physical and digital shipments of the game have now passed 14 million units.

Hell, when Monster Hunter World reached 7.5 million sales back in March 2018 it was CAPCOM's best-selling title of all time. In the 18 months after that, Monster Hunter World has doubled its sales through to 14 million units and should only continue to do so.

The new Iceborne expansion launched last month on consoles and has shipped over 2.5 million units so far, and that's without it even hitting the PC. Monster Hunter World's new Iceborne expansion drops on the PC in January 2020, so we should see how sales are a few months after that and compare.

Activision and Infinity Ward have enabled the full hype train for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as we get into the final weeks before its big launch, with a new launch trailer released. Check it out:

The new trailer is action-packed, with plenty of 'splosions, fights, helicopters crashing and Metallica's "Enter Sandman" playing over top. I definitely feel like this isn't like the last few releases of Call of Duty, and definitely feels like what we loved from years ago. It also looks far better than previous COD titles, something I want to play with RTX enabled.

As for the story of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this will bring you up to date: "When the world is threatened, you'll have to get your hands dirty so the world stays clean. In a desperate mission, Captain Price and the SAS will partner alongside the CIA and the Urzikstani Liberation Force to retrieve stolen chemical weapons. The heart-racing fight will take you from London to the Middle East and other global locations, as this joint task force battles to stop full-scale global war. Lines will be drawn, your resolve will be tested, and the world will look to you to do what needs to be done".

Oh, you thought you had to do mining in Minecraft in order to beat the game? Yeah, nah -- you don't need to do anything of the sort. Check out this video on how to beat Minecraft, without any actual mining.

YouTuber 'Hedgey' ignored all the cues to actually mine anything in Minecraft to beat the final dragon at the end of the game, all without mining a single piece of wood or rock. Hedgey had to find some supplies without mining, which means there would've been lots of time exploring.

You don't need to mine in Minecraft in order to be well-equipped, something that is on show here as Hedgey using the dead bodies of Creepers to collect and craft TNT. This provided a weapon against enemies, and used to place explosives in the right places -- but it's nowhere near the same as using the crafty pickaxe.

8chan was gone, but it looks like it is about to return and possibly be re-branded into 8kun -- according to the official Twitter account of 8chan. Check out this tweet, with the video having 277,000 views at the time of writing:

Nothing is official yet, but the video clearly displays '8kun' in different animations -- so we could expect 8kun.com or 8kun.org or 8kun.net to make an appearance, but if you visit 8kun.com you're greeted with an Apache 2 Test Page.

What is 'kun'? Well, it is one of the titles that are given to Japanese people to address each other, in the same wway 'san', 'chan', and 'sama' are used. Kun is the 'informal and mostly used for males, such as boys or juniors at work. It is used by superiors to inferiors, by males of the same age and status to each other, and in addressing male children. In business settings junior women may also be addressed as kun by superiors' according to this website.

The same day it released PS4 remote play on all Android devices, Sony blocks PS4 Facebook sharing.

Sony has mysteriously disabled PS4 media sharing on Facebook. Users can no longer link their PSN and Facebook accounts together, nor can they share screenshots, video clips, or even find their Facebook friends on the PlayStation Network.

PS4 media sharing is now only available via Twitter and YouTube, making game and activity visibility quite limited. Removing Facebook as one of the sharing mediums will significantly impact the free organic promotion and advertisement of key first-party games, especially when big hits like Death Stranding roll out in November. It's possible Facebook changed its terms of service, or Sony was worried about possible privacy issues arising from real-life information being shared.

Epic Games may get sued for not telling players how addictive Fortnite can be, especially when it comes to minors.

Fortnite, a game that's earned Epic Games billions from massive replayability and status as a social sensation, is described as one of the most addictive games on the planet. One Canadian law firm is making a case that Fortnite's dopamine-releasing effects are similar to cocaine addiction, thereby making the game a potential health hazard and/or risk.

Canadian law firm Calex Legal wants to sue Epic Games on the grounds of not properly informing players and users of addiction risks. The firm will represent the parents of two minors who have had their lives transformed by the battle royale game. "We dug into it and we realized there was a strong case for it," Calex Legal attorney Alessandra Esposito Chartrand told the CBC.

We've all seen HBM deployed on various GPU's primarily from AMD starting back in the days of the FURY and FURY X. However the market for HBM has grown quite a lot and is used for not just GPU but similar devices such as compute accelerators and FPGAs

Samsung today announced that they have developed an industry first in the new 12-layer 3D-TSV (Through Silicon Via) design. The design uses 60,000 TSV holes to enable the stacking of DRAM chips in a vertical configuration. The TSV holes are stated to be one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair.

This new tech can allow for the new stacking of 12 DRAM chips through these holes on much thinner slices allowing the package to occupy the same 720micron thickness. This means that theoretically, an existing design using 8-layer tech can now equip up to 48GB or even up to 96GB of HBM dependent upon bus width. In the case stated above, that would be 2048-bit or 4096-bit, but this could also mean refinement for lower density packages for applications not requiring high density such as consumer GPUs.

PlayStation 4 games can now be played on all Android devices, and are no longer exclusive to Sony Xperia phones.

It used to be PS4 remote play on mobile was only available to Xperia devices. Today that changed as Sony rolled out a big new system software update for PS4 that expands features, namely allowing gamers to stream PS4 games remotely from consoles to devices running Android 5.0 and above.

In conjunction with PlayStation Now's ability to stream games to mobile devices, this feature is invaluable to Sony to fend off Microsoft's advances with Project xCloud, which has its own Xbox-to-mobile remote streaming option.

Users of Windows 10 are no stranger to updates causing issues. But, a recent update has really shown just how bad it can go.

That's right, a recent update labeled KB4524147, which is supposed to fix some Internet explorer and printing bugs. Has instead gone YOLO on users start menu causing an error prompt reading as the user describes "Critical error start menu not working, sign out ... or something like that ." rendering PC's far harder to navigate.

This story cropped up on the Microsoft forums, where it has been advised by some to 'reinstall the start menu'. Unfortunately from reports spanning several outlets, this solution is to no avail. The only sure-fire solution to this bug should you experience it would be to remove the update entirely. If you have this issue the advised solution was to try reinstalling the start menu which instructions we have copied below.

Intel's recent announcement of Cascade Lake-X processors and the coming massive price drop, you can bet there will be a much higher HEDT demand this time around. With the 18 core unit dropping from $2000 to sub $1000, you can bet that the X299 platform just became far more obtainable for a large part of the enthusiasts market.

GIGABYTE has released the newest in their X299 lineup, labeled the X299X series. Don't let the name fool you; all of the same parts are still in place with the chipset backbone being X299. Beyond that, GIGABYTE worked to improve connectivity and capability of their X299 based parts in the new X299X offerings.

All of the X299X offerings feature the same 70A power stages for power delivery to ensure you can push all of the new Cascade Lake-X CPU's to the limit of your cooling. These boards also enhance the memory capability and support in lockstep with the new CPU's supporting up to 256GB DDR4.

Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel will be a titular heroine of Crystal Dynamics' big new Avengers live service game.

Square Enix makes good on its promise to add more superheroes to Avengers' roster. This time the hero pool expands with Ms. Marvel, complete with her ass-kicking abilities: In the new trailer, we see Kamala stretching out her limbs to dish out devastating hook kicks and smash foes with her gigantic hands. Her abilities aren't just for fighting though. She can use her extending limbs as a kind of grappling hook to grab nearby ledges to escape attacks.

Crystal Dynamics' Avengers game is set in its own unique alternate timeline, but each characters' origin stories still match up with the comic source material. Players will get to live through Kamala's humble beginnings and experience her transformation into the mighty Ms. Marvel. She's described as a fan-girl of the Avengers squad, but she's actually the glue that holds them all together by discovering proof that the A-Day catastrophe was a setup.

Hulu will now let subscribers download shows and movies for offline playback.

Hulu's new offline download feature mirrors Netflix and is now live, but not for everyone. To download right now you'll need an iOS device and a $12 a month ad-free plan. Android support will be added later down the line (but we don't know exactly when).

Only a select number of shows can be downloaded, too. Right now the list includes Hulu Originals and higher-profile titles like Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, and ER. Subscribers can choose to download shows and films in Standard or High quality for data control.

MSI has created some amazing boards over the past few chipset generations. Like most board manufacturers, MSI has also ramped up the RGB game in the process to ensure relevance with enthusiasts users and industry demands.

Until now, one of the few board models to go sans RGB has been the 'Dark Series' by EVGA. MSI noticed the desire by many enthusiasts to build custom rigs based on powerful overclocking friendly boards without the need or want for RGB.

Enter the MSI MEG X570 Unify which comes out of the gate sporting some powerful specs such as 2.5G wired LAN and 802.11 AX for equally speedy wireless networking. On top of this, MSI also employs a 14 phase power design (real or doubled phases is unknown at this time). For the most part, the MEG X570 Unify model board seems to closely parallel the popular MSI MEG X570 ACE motherboard.

Kingston is a well-known name in the memory game, but some may not be aware that they also hold a powerful position in the SSD storage space as well.

Kingston has been in the flash storage game since the onset of the consumer SSD. Many may think of Samsung when thinking storage, without realizing that an industry stalwart such as Kingston while being the less celebrated holds a lot of the cards in the market.

According to a recent report from TrendFocus, Kingston has already surpassed the 13.3 million unit sales in the first half of 2019. 13.3 million in an economy of scale may not seem like much, but in reality, that is 11.3% of the total SSD purchases globally. Kingston's market presence goes into every facet of the PC flash storage realm from base consumer 2.5" drives which they currently are reported to hold over 27.3% of the market share. To the enterprise/data center market which Kingston is already within and picking up steam.

Last week we revealed a leak about Intel's upcoming 10th generation HEDT processors and their improvements and additions, but there was more to the story than that. Intel also briefed us on upcoming revamped Xeon-W 2200 series CPUs as well as improved pricing on some of their mainstream 9000 series processors.

The new features of the new CPUs include up to 4.8GHz Turbo speeds, up to 1TB of DRAM, which is double the amount of the previous generation, higher DRAM speeds up to 2933MHz, new deep learning ISA, support for Intel's 2.5G LAN controller, and support for Intel's new WIFI 6 controller. The new CPUs will work with the same motherboards the previous generation used.

In regards to performance increases, we see huge improvements especially when it comes to deep learning. Intel's new DL Boost ISA and improved frequencies basically double performance when it comes to AI inference. When it comes to other workloads we see large boosts in editing, rendering, and compiling.