Latest News - Page 180

The DDR5 overclocking world record changes almost on the daily, with a new DDR5 speed record hit using Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory and the GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Tachyon ICE motherboard, and overclocker "Sergmann" with an incredible 13,530 MT/s speed.

Overclocker "SaltyCroissant" had achieved a new DDR5 world record earlier that day using CENS DDR5 memory at 13,322 MT/s, hitting 6703.9MHz or 13,407 MT/s using a single Corsair Vengeance 24GB DDR5 module on the GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Tachyon ICE motherboard.

However, later that day, Sergmann reached a new record of 6765.2MHz or 13,530 MT/s for a new DDR5 OC world record, using the same Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory and the same GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Tachyon ICE motherboard. The only difference between the two overclockers' achievements is that SaltyCroissant used an Intel Core Ultra 5 265K processor, while Sergmann used the higher-end Core Ultra 9 285K processor.

NVIDIA is cooking up a new China-exclusive GPU with the new RTX 6000D Blackwell GPU, recently tested on Geekbench and teases what is happening under the hood.

The company has sliced the CUDA core count, VRAM capacity, and GPU clock speeds of its new RTX 6000D "Blackwell Pro for China" GPU. NVIDIA created the RTX 6000D after ever-increasing US export restrictions for AI hardware were imposed, with the RTX 6000D Blackwell GPU being a different SKU than the one available globally.

Inside, NVIDIA's new RTX 6000D GPU for China features 156 SMs or 19,968 CUDA cores, representing 17% less CUDA cores than the RTX PRO 6000, as well as less VRAM with 84GB of GDDR7 memory compared to 96GB GDDR7 on the full RTX PRO 6000. We should expect to see NVIDIA using 3GB GDDR7 memory modules on the RTX 6000D for China, indicating a 448-bit memory bus compared to the 512-bit memory bus on the RTX PRO 6000.

Update: AMD reached out to us to inform us that this article had some incorrect information, with AMD telling me that Wccftech's story included "two sets of data" that were "mixed up". We've got some updated graphs that better compare AMD's "Strix Halo" APUs against Intel's new Core Ultra 386H "Panther Lake" CPU, with this article updated with that new information.

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 9 386H "Panther Lake" CPU has been benched early, still unable to beat AMD's flagship Strix Halo APU in Geekbench 6, but great single-core and multi-core performance against its other processor rivals.

Intel will officially unveil its new Core Ultra 300 series "Panther Lake" CPUs at CES 2026 in January, with plenty of leaks and information in the wild and in the links below. So far, we've been seeing engineering sample (ES) processors which don't usually run at retail CPU clock speeds, but now it looks like we've got some benchmarks from proper, closer to retail silicon.

Intel will be unveiling its new Arrow Lake-S Refresh CPUs in 2026, with some new details on the Core Ultra 200K Plus family of processors, and the new naming scheme that includes the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus processors.

We've been hearing rumors of Intel's new Arrow Lake-S Refresh processors for a while now, which should act as the last hurrah for the LGA-1851 socket before shifting to the new LGA-1954 socket for the launch of the next-gen Core Ultra 400 series "Nova Lake" desktop CPUs.

Intel's new Arrow Lake-S Refresh processors will include the tweaks and features that the Arrow Lake-S chips got in the form of special boost features and more, as well as some new surprises. The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus succeeds the Core Ultra 9 285K while keeping its 8P+16E CPU core configuration, but increases the Thermal Velocity Boost to 5.8GHz (up from 5.7GHz on the 285K). The E-Core turbo speeds also increase to 4.8GHz, while power limits remain the same at 125W base, and 250W max turbo TDP.

Sony has been slowly becoming more PC-focused with the release of its first- and second-party PlayStation Studios titles on Steam, and it's not hard to see why. According to a new report by Alinea Analytics, PlayStation Studios games released on Steam (PC gaming's number one platform) have generated $1.5 billion in revenue for Sony.

And even when you take out Valve's cut, that's still around $1.2 billion for Sony. With over 43 million games sold, the biggest seller for Sony isn't Marvel's Spider-Man, God of War, or Horizon Zero Dawn; it's Helldivers 2. And it's not even close, with Helldivers 2 reportedly selling 12.7 million copies on Steam, making it the most popular PlayStation Studios release on PC, with second-place going to Horizon Zero Dawn, which has sold 4.5 million copies.

Alinea Analytics notes that Helldiver 2's success on PC is Sony's first "megahit," with it selling over double the amount of copies on Steam as it did on PS5. Other big sellers on PC for Sony include God of War and Days Gone, which sold 4.2 million and 3.4 million copies, respectively.

A new report seemingly confirms the rumors we've been hearing of late: AMD is set to increase the prices of its graphics cards by about 10% across its entire Radeon RX 9000 Series lineup. This is all due to rising memory costs across the industry, with demand far exceeding supply, driven by data centers and the AI market.

According to the new report over at UDN (via Dan Nystedt on X), AMD has notified its partners of the price increase, which should take effect very soon or at the beginning of 2026. Everyone is affected because AMD and NVIDIA bundle GPU dies with GDDR memory when cards are sent to their AIB partners. This includes all of the companies making Radeon RX 9000 Series cards, including ASUS, ASRock, GIGABYTE, Sapphire, PowerColor, and others.

Even though AMD's Radeon RX 9000 Series cards, like the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT, use GDDR6 memory rather than the newer GDDR7 found in the GeForce RTX 50 Series, the current memory crisis is reportedly affecting all sectors of the DRAM market. As we've seen in various reports, DRAM prices have increased by over 170% in the last couple of months.

ASUS's flagship and limited-edition ROG Matrix Platinum GeForce RTX 5090 not only looks impressive, but it's an RTX 5090 that can draw up to 800W of power via its 12V-2x6 connection, paired with ASUS's BTF high-power adapter. With liquid metal and vapor chamber cooling, four fans, and safety measures that include pin-sensing power monitoring and even angle detection to ensure a perfect 90-degree horizontal installation, it's a beast.

And with that, YouTube creator and GPU specialist der8auer has put the ROG Matrix Platinum GeForce RTX 5090 through its paces, showing how it performs, and taken a closer look at its components and cooling in a detailed teardown.

As far as gaming performance goes, testing games like Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Mirage shows that the ROG Matrix draws about 26% more power for about 10% more performance, bringing it closer to the RTX Pro 6000.

If you grew up playing PC games on DOS and operating systems like Windows 95 and Windows 98, then here's an early present for the holiday season - eXoWin9x Vol. 1. A single pack available to download that includes 662 fully emulated games from 1994 through to 1996, released during the era where Windows went 32-bit and became the go-to operating system for PC.

The list of games included in the 263GB package includes well-known classics like DOOM II, MechWarrior 2, Myst, SimCity 2000, Heroes of Might and Magic, Quake, Wing Commander IV, and the original Diablo. Still, it's chock-full of forgotten classics and lesser-known games you might recall from the era. Titles like Spycraft - The Great Game, SimGolf, Rally Racers, Phantasmagoria, and several other multimedia-enhanced games from the CD-ROM era, as well as rare releases no longer available on any platform.

It's an impressive collection with a detailed front-end that includes information and goodies for each game, including cover art, manuals, soundtracks, and other materials. Everything is pre-configured with a simple setup process, and every game runs in a virtual machine from a single launcher, so there's no need to configure or modify your existing system.

Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 400 series "Nova Lake" desktop processors will feature a next-gen NPU6 chip, offering 1.5x the AI performance inside of the upcoming "Panther Lake" desktop chips with NPU5 coming in early 2026.

In a new post on X from leaker @jaykihn0, we're hearing Nova Lake desktop CPUs will feature an upgraded NPU6 design for higher AI performance, whether consumers want/need it or not. NPU3 is inside of the "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors from Intel that launched in 2023, the same NPU inside of "Meteor Lake" chips for laptops, while NPU5 inside of "Panther Lake" next year will top out at 50 TOPS of AI performance.

We knew that Nova Lake would feature an NPU for the desktop, and that it would (obviously) be faster, but now we have some firmer details from leaks that NPU6 will feature 74 TOPS of INT8 performance for AI workloads, a significant upgrade over the 50 TOPS from Panther Lake.

You can buy an entire PlayStation 5 console for less than what a 64GB kit of DDR5-6000 memory would cost you, and it's only going to get worse.

The RAM shortage is being blamed on the AI boom, which is consuming as much of the best DRAM memory chips it can, increasing the price of DDR5 memory and DDR5 memory kits for the PC. It's gotten to the point that a $205-$220 memory kit from a few months ago -- the G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB series 64GB DDR5-6000 memory kit -- now costs $599, and that's with some discount applied.

Looking at the tracking data of DDR5 RAM prices, you could get a 64GB DDR5 memory kit for just $140, but now 64GB kits are $500+ in the last couple of months. Sony has its PlayStation 5 Digital console priced at $399, and the Microsoft Xbox Series S also at $399, while the PS5 Slim Disc costs $449, and the more powerful PS5 Pro costs $649.

NVIDIA's expensive RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation GPU has received its own Black Friday deal on Newegg, reducing its pricing from $9299 down to $7999, with the card rocking 96GB of GDDR7 memory.

In a current market where RAM prices are absolutely skyrocketing out of control, the 96GB card has a decent 13% price discount on Newegg right now, down to $7999. NVIDIA launched the new RTX PRO 6000 earlier this year for at least $8500, and some places charging up to $11,000 for it, while sitting at around $9000 on average.

This isn't a GPU that people would buy for gaming, but rather customers who are after the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 -- even with its discount down to $7999 -- would be servers, AI companies, and the enterprise. You could install multiple RTX PRO 6000 cards into a system for massive performance increases across the board, with 384GB of GDDR7 memory through the four cards installed, with 2400W power consumption total (4 x 600W).

Microsoft's Xbox Full Screen Experience (or FSE) for Windows 11 debuted with the ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds last month, marking the first time the OS delivers a console-like, controller-friendly experience for gamers. With XBE now rolling out to more Windows 11 gaming handhelds, Microsoft is also making it available to Windows 11 Insiders to test out and use on any laptop or PC.

The big feature is the ability to boot straight into the Xbox app and interface for a smoother, faster gaming experience. By booting straight into the Xbox app, which still gives you access to other storefronts like Steam and the Epic Game Store, the FSE also disables unneeded non-essential and non-gaming Windows 11 processes to free up system resources and memory.

"Designed for controller-first navigation, it provides a gaming-first, full-screen environment where players can easily browse and launch titles from across their game libraries- including most popular PC storefronts," Microsoft explains, "A powerful Task Switcher enables quick movement between games and apps, delivering a seamless experience."

The reports were true: A Far Cry TV series is indeed on the way, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator Rob Mac will star in the show.

Today, FX announced that it has greenlit a new anthology TV series based around Ubisoft's best-selling Far Cry franchise. The show is the brainchild of It's Always Sunny co-creator Rob Mac and Alien: Earth director Noah Hawley, and will air on Hulu.

Ubisoft's Far Cry social account didn't reveal specifics about the show itself, however Variety confirms that each season will tell a different story with different characters. The Far Cry show won't be an anthology series like Twilight Zone where each episode is different, but instead be similar to the likes of American Horror Story.

While EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft all tout artificial intelligence, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has a more down-to-earth assessment of the new technology.

AI is all the rage right now. We've seen major video game companies invest billions into artificial intelligence in the hopes of streamlining content production and eliminating wasteful spending. Almost every video games company in existence has laid off workers while simultaneously embracing AI, some in the tune of thousands of job eliminations. But one pretty high-ranking games industry creative isn't convinced that AI will be the savior of the games industry that it's hyped up to be.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser was recently on Channel 4's Sunday Brunch show, and he had some interesting things to say about what AI can and can't do.

Valve wants to deliver a Steam Deck successor that has next-gen performance with current-gen battery life.

The Steam Deck 2 will happen at some point, but for now Valve says the technology to do what they want simply doesn't exist yet. The priorities remain the same for a new Steam Deck handheld with a careful balance between capability and longevity. Valve aims to deliver higher-end performance and power befit of a next-generation machine with a similar power and battery profile to Steam Deck OLED.

In a recent interview with Skill Up, Valve designer Lawrence Yang and software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais briefly discuss what kinds of hurdles they're navigating while thinking about the Steam Deck 2. Essentially, the chip technology doesn't exist yet, but Valve is carefully watching the market and assessing the needs of the Steam community.

Valve is open to a Steam Machine Pro in the future, but the company has more than enough on its plate with the current hardware spec.

The Steam Machine isn't an enthusiast device. Valve is instead targeting the mid-range user who wants a more complete package that delivers plug-and-play compatibility, kind of like a console. Price will determine whether or not it becomes a mass-market machine, and right now RAM costs are through the roof. Given Valve's focus, and the current market trends, a higher-spec Steam Machine Pro may not happen for a while--if at all. But Valve is still receptive to the idea of beefier Steam Machines, maybe even from third-party OEMs.

"Potentially yeah, I think we're open to anything," Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais said in a recent interview with Skill Up. "For now we're focusing on this level of spec because we think it's a good trade-off between affordability and the level of power that we get."

The world's largest tech companies are embracing AI in the hope of streamlining workflows and eliminating waste, but the move might be backfiring for the games industry.

Just days ago, Ubisoft confirmed that generative AI is now being used organization-wide, with every office and development team incorporating gen AI. The entire tech sector is betting big on AI, especially in gaming. Microsoft created gen AI tools like MUSE that eliminate the need for game dev coding, and EA is creating a ChatGPT-like chatbotthat can change gameplay in real time.

The widespread use of AI comes with some drawbacks and growing pains, though. Recent reports say AI is causing problems for EA, leading to extra work as developers have to come in and clean up critical mistakes made by the tech. Despite the presentations and assurances, dev teams aren't really showing how AI is used in their games, perhaps to avoid controversy. Or perhaps, as Bloomberg's Jason Schreier suggests, AI is causing more harm than good for game developers.

Valve is making around $50 million per employee based on recent data which sees the company making an incredible $16.2 billion in revenue from its Steam platform alone this year so far, and should easily tip over $17-18 billion by the end of 2025.

This data comes from a recent report from Alinea Analytics, with Valve itself making over $4 billion this year from Steam itself, while each of the 350+ employees of the company creating $50 million each for Valve. We must remember that Valve is a private company, so we don't know exactly how many people work for the company, nor do we know their exact revenues and profits.

If we compare these numbers to the likes of Apple which reportedly makes around $2.4 million per employee, and Facebook parent company, Meta, which makes $1.9 million per year, it's an impressive feat for Valve. Valve knows about this, where back in 2012 the company made its "Handbook for New Employees" available, where it stated: "Our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum amount of money back into each employee's pocket".

In the ever-growing digital age, power is becoming a necessity, especially as portable gaming devices are making their way into millions of people's hands every year.

While smartphone batteries have reached a point where a general user can typically get a full day on their smartphone without it going flat, some users are experiencing battery degradation, resulting in their device going flat or, at the very least, running extremely low sometime during the day. When that happens, it's good to have a portable power bank on hand, especially one with fast-charge capabilities.

Genki sent out their Energy Pack, designed to be the solution for both smartphones and gaming handheld devices. It features 30W fast charging and a 10,000 mAh battery. The Energy Pack is compatible with any Qi2 wireless charging device and comes with a digital dashboard for real-time energy transfer monitoring. The screen displays the power bank's current capacity and the charging or discharging rate.

Intel's next-generation Xeon "Diamond Rapids" CPUs will be supported on its next-gen "Johnson City" reference platform, spotted inside of a new NBD shipping manifest.

The shipment log teases the "JNC" server board hardware with a label of "Validation Material", with JNC standing for Johnson City, a reference platform being used by Intel and its partners to test performance, capabilities, and features of the next-gen Xeon "Diamond Rapids" processors on next-gen platforms.

We don't know much from these new details other than two listings referring to "1SPC 500 DMR" which could be a 500W TDP range for Diamond Rapids CPUs, while the other lists a higher 650W TDP. In a separate listing, the JNC Multi-S platform is teased, numbered "2+1+1S" with 1S referring to a single-socket setup, but it could easily be a label for a multi-socket, or even multi-chiplet Diamond Rapids configuration.