Latest News - Page 198

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is widely considered to be one of the best open-world role-playing games ever made, and it cemented developer CD Projekt Red as one of the world's premier studios for creating immersive gaming experiences. This year, the game is celebrating its 10th anniversary (the complete edition of the game is currently 80% off at GOG.com), and to celebrate, Corsair has partnered with CD Projekt Red for some Limited Edition gear.

The new 'CORSAIR x The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 10th Anniversary Collection' includes three pieces of custom PC gaming gear: the Corsair K65 PLUS WIRELESS 75% gaming keyboard, the Corsair M75 WIRELESS Lightweight gaming mouse, and a Witcher 3-themed Corsair MM300 2XL Mouse Pad. All three sport a stylish, minimal The Witcher 3 look, with black, grey, and gold accents paired with logos like protagonist Geralt's iconic Wolf medallion.

The good news is that the gear chosen for this collaboration is all fantastic. In our review of the Corsair K65 PLUS WIRELESS 75% gaming keyboard, we praised its performance, customization, and features, giving it a well-earned Editor's Choice award. Likewise, the Corsair M75 WIRELESS gaming mouse earned a Recommended award for its high-quality build and wireless performance.

As a pure PC gaming platform, Linux has come a long way, thanks in part to Valve and its efforts with SteamOS and its Proton compatibility layer for running the latest DirectX graphics API. And with the popularity of its Steam Deck gaming handheld and third-party Linux builds focused on gaming like Bazzite, more and more gamers are looking for a Windows-free PC gaming experience, since games often run faster on Linux than on Windows.

According to a new report over at Boiling Steam, which monitors and tracks ProtonDB, gaming on Linux has never been more accessible, with close to 90% of Windows games launching and most running perfectly "out of the box." Valve's Steam Deck is primarily responsible for the rise in 'Platinum' and 'Gold' rated Windows games in recent years, which cover games that run well on Linux.

Although desktop gamers have Linux distros like Mint, Zorin, and Bazzite, many are waiting for Valve's controller-friendly and console-like all-in-one SteamOS to make the jump from PC gaming handhelds to more systems. SteamOS is optimized and limited to specific handhelds and AMD APUs, with the good news being credible rumors that Valve is planning to launch a full-fat version of the Linux-based operating system for PC gamers running a wide range of hardware.

Razer has evolved its premium Huntsman V3 Pro lineup of keyboards for competitive and pro gamers with the new Razer Huntsman V3 Pro 8KHz, which the company says offers an industry-leading latency of just 0.58ms for true 8K (8,000 Hz) polling. Razer notes that this provides a near-instantaneous response that is 11% faster than its nearest competitor; however, the company doesn't say which keyboard it's comparing performance to.

The Razer Huntsman V3 Pro 8KHz series is the company's "analog optical keyboard" that features the company's magnetic Analog Optical Switches Gen-2 with adjustable actuation, Rapid Trigger, and Snap Tap support. With an impressive adjustable actuation range of 0.1 - 4.0mm, a snappy 40g actuation force rating, and a 100-million keystroke lifespan, these magnetic switches are built for pro-level PC gaming performance.

Razer confirms that it has developed the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro 8KHz series alongside esports professionals like Counter-Strike star Nikola "NiKo" Kovač to help fine-tune the latency, keystroke feel, and overall performance.

NVIDIA has officially shown off its next-gen Vera Rubin Superchip at GTC in Washington, the first time in the flesh, ready with next-gen chips and HBM4 memory for the next dominator in AI chips.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang first showcased the company's next-generation Vera Rubin Superchip, but this is the very first time an actual sample of the motherboard, which NVIDIA calls the Superchip, has been shown. We have a Vera Arm-based CPU joined by not one but two gigantic Rubin GPUs. NVIDIA's motherboard for the Vera Rubin Superchip features LPDDR system memory that gets combined with the on-board HBM4 memory on both Rubin GPUs.

Jensen mentioned that NVIDIA's new Rubin GPUs are back in the NVIDIA labs, which means what he showed off was directly from the semiconductor fab at TSMC in Taiwan. Each Rubin GPU is surrounded with a bunch of power circuitry, with each of the Rubin GPU chips sporting 8 HBM4 sites, and two Reticle-sized GPU dies. The Vera CPU features 88 cores and 176 threads of custom Arm-based CPU cores.

Amazon is substantially reducing its presence in gaming, winding back its first-party game development and publishing divisions while also cancelling key projects along the way.

Amazon is preparing to lay off 14,000 workers, and the company's ailing games division will be hit hard. In a memo obtained by Bloomberg, an Amazon Games executive confirmed the cutbacks, telling employees to expect "significant role reductions."

Projects like the Lord of the Rings MMORPG have been cancelled, the report says, and the remaining in-house Amazon Games teams will focus on creating "casual and AI-focused games." New World, the division's most popular game at one point, has been sunset into maintenance mode and will no longer be receiving new updates, leading to an eventual shut down in 2026. This news comes shortly after the Season 10 update successfully attracted user engagement.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms that the next-gen Xbox will innovate in both the PC and console space.

Just yesterday, Windows Central's Jez Corden reported that the next Xbox would be a Windows PC that mimics an Xbox console experience, reiterating reports from The Verge's Tom Warren. Now Microsoft's leader comments on the new Xbox PC while clarifying and reiterating the company's gaming strategy.

In a recent interview with TBPN, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed how Xbox will make innovations in the synergies between Windows PCs and Xbox consoles. He also says that Microsoft considers Windows "the biggest gaming business," a nod towards all of the different stores available on the platform--Steam, Xbox Store, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net, etc.

Corsair has just announced its new MP700 PRO XT Gen5 SSD (reviewed here) with uncompromising speeds, offering up to 14.9GB/sec read speeds and up to 14.5GB/sec writes.

The new Corsair MP700 PRO XT SSD comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with more capacities -- hopefully 8TB -- coming in 2026. It offers super-fast boot, load, and transfer times, with a power-efficient design that ensures top-tier performance with lower power draw and less heat. Corsair is using Phison's new E28 Gen5 SSD controller, providing the MP700 PRO XT with its wicked-fast read and write speeds, as well as great efficiency.

There's also support for Microsoft DirectStorage, letting Corsair's new MP700 PRO XT communicate directly with the GPU for even greater gaming speeds, loading times, and smoother in-game transitions. Corsair includes its in-house SSD Toolbox software and a 5-year warranty.

Samsung Foundry is slowly tightening its grip on the semiconductor market against foundry leader TSMC with major contract wins from tech giants like Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla.

In a new report from the Korea Herald, the outlet has looked at some of the recent deals Samsung Foundry has inked, which is helping it reduce its semiconductor foundry losses, and better position the company to be a direct competitor to TSMC.

An industry official said: "As foundry orders have been heavily concentrated in TSMC, client firms are now compelled to diversify their supply chains to reduce risks. Since Samsung Electronics is the only company besides TSMC capable of producing advanced chips at the 2-nanometer level, more business opportunities are likely to follow".

In another tech scam where a purchased component turns out to be just a shell of what it should be, the buyer of an external hard drive got a nasty surprise.

As per a Reddit post uncovered by Tom's Hardware that you can see above, the drive in question was a Seagate model, supposedly a 1TB Backup Plus Slim external HDD.

However, while "everything about it looked and felt legit" at first according to the Redditor, when the case of the external device was opened, there was a microSD card inside (presumably with a small capacity).

It's been a little over two weeks since the release of Battlefield 6, and the title has attracted hundreds of thousands of players, but for those who didn't buy the game, EA has a surprise for you - the new free-to-play Battlefield 6 battle royale is now available.

EA has confirmed to me that as part of the first season of Battlefield 6, Battlefield Studios is releasing "Battlefield REDSEC," a "genre-shifting free-to-play destination built on Battlefield's iconic DNA". Players will be dropping into Fort Lyndon, Battlefield's biggest map in the franchise where 100 players in teams are pit against each other as they scavenge to find valuable loot, while also crafting unique game-winning strategies of taking out their opponents.

Players will be able to leverage the destruction seen in Battlefield 6, within the new battle royale mode, as Battlefield Studios writes, "The power of Tactical Destruction brings an entirely new level of strategy to the genre, as players create their own paths to victory or turn the environment into their own deadly weapon while crushing opposing squads."

If you haven't heard about the return of the optical drive to the world of PCs, you have now - Fujitsu has some new notebooks coming out that boast such drives.

As Fudzilla reports (via VideoCardz), this is happening over in Japan, where there's currently a resurgence in the popularity of optical drives which is tied in with support for Windows 10 ending (as we've seen in other recent media reports, such as Tom's Hardware).

Whether there's an element of exaggeration in the apparently booming sales of DVD drives in Japan - caused by people wanting to keep playing their physical media discs after upgrading to a new Windows 11 PC - it's difficult to say for sure. But clearly there's enough of a need for Fujitsu to produce notebooks that have both DVD and Blu-ray drives on board.

There have been some creative solutions in terms of brackets to hold up hefty GPUs, but someone using an ancient Nokia phone as an anti-sag support is one of the more amusing solutions ever shared on Reddit.

And as VideoCardz, who flagged this up from Notebookcheck.net, points out, there are plenty of Redditors who've used weird and wonderful things to prop up their heavyweight GPUs.

In this case, Bulochklem on Reddit has used a Nokia 6124 Classic to prop up their XFX graphics card, and as one commenter put it, when it comes to GPU support brackets: "This is it, we reached peak."

Northridge Fix is an electronics repair shop in Los Angeles, California, with over a decade of experience covering all things tech. It also has a successful YouTube channel detailing the various repairs it has undertaken, from laptops that wouldn't power on with no display to dead GPUs. The latest video focuses on the latter, specifically a damaged GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

"One thing I can tell you, never in your life buy a 5090 Founders Edition," Northridge Fix states in the opening section of the video. Strong words, and before we go through the reasons as to why Northridge Fix has strong feelings about NVIDIA's Founders Edition design, it's worth quickly going through what makes the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition one of the most unique modern GPU releases to date.

Not only does it sport Double Flow Through cooling, but the dual-slot GPU includes a complex, compact, and modular PCB with a separate PCIe interface. At the time of the GPU's release earlier this year, the connectors inside the GPU were described by many as fragile, and the design wasn't considered suitable for custom water-cooling mods in the same way a traditional partner GeForce RTX 5090 would.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, is an independent government body that monitors fair trading and robust consumer protection laws in Australia. The body's latest target is Microsoft, which it is suing for allegedly misleading 2.7 million Australian consumers over its Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

It all boils down to recent price increases for Microsoft 365 plans, which cover the Microsoft Office suite, cloud storage, and more. Basically, Microsoft increased the subscription price for Microsoft 365 after integrating its Copilot AI tools and services. The only problem, from the ACCC's perspective, is that the company "deliberately hid" the fact that subscribers could have kept the old price if they didn't want Copilot.

According to the ACCC's investigation, once Microsoft increased prices on October 31, 2024, customers were notified that their auto-renewal would include the higher Microsoft 365 pricing, with the only other option being to cancel the service. However, once the cancellation process began, customers were informed about a hidden "classic" Copilot-free plan at the previous price point.

With the launch of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series of graphics cards this year, MSI has not only revamped its lineup but also introduced new designs, including the brushed-gold Inspire series. The minimalist design of MSI's new Inspire range drops the company's tried-and-true gamer style for something sleeker, simpler, and creator-focused.

And this week, MSI is expanding its Inspire range to include a new compact, entry-level GeForce RTX 5050 model, available in OC and non-OC variants. The OC model pushes clock speeds to 2617 MHz in Extreme Performance mode, while the non-OC variant reaches 2587 MHz. Both offer increased performance over the 2572 MHz reference spec.

However, the most impressive part of the new MSI GeForce RTX 5050 8G INSPIRE ITX is its compact Mini-ITX form factor, measuring 147 x 120 x 45mm. This is the sort of GPU you could install in a tiny rig, which draws just 130W from a single traditional 8-pin power connector.

With official support for Windows 10 ending and the popular operating system reaching end-of-life, not everyone is making the jump to a new Windows 11 rig. But, people are buying new PC and laptops, with a new report from Counterpoint Research showing that global PC shipments grew 8.1% year-over-year in Q3 2025. The report cites "end-of-support for Microsoft Windows 10 in October 2025" and evolving US tariff policies as the main drivers of growth.

As Windows 10 support ends, both enterprise and consumers are replacing older systems with new ones, and this process will continue to serve as a "catalyst for PC market growth" in the years ahead. However, once you take a closer look at the OEM data, it appears that one of the biggest winners from Windows 10's departure is Apple. Apple's Mac and MacBook shipments for Q3 2025 grew 15% year-over-year, second only to Lenovo.

On the PC side, ASUS, HP, and Lenovo experienced double-digit growth, while Dell's shipments saw a slight decline. Naturally, part of Apple's continued growth in the PC and notebook sector comes down to the company releasing new MacBook models; however, like others, it's benefiting from ex-Windows 10 users buying something new.

Battlefield 6 getting a Battle Royale mode similar to Call of Duty: Warzone or Battlefield 5's Firestorm has been known for some time, with EA even confirming it was in development as recently as last month. A few days ago, we reported on leaks and data from within Battlefield 6 that hinted the mode was coming soon and would shadow drop this week alongside the launch of Battlefield 6 Season 1 on October 28.

Well, it looks like that's the case with EA officially teasing the Battlefield Redsec, a free-to-play Battle Royale mode for Battlefield 6. Unfortunately, neither EA nor Battlefield Studios is providing details on the mode or how it will interact with the definitely not free-to-play Battlefield 6. Will it be a separate game title on Steam and other platforms? Time will tell.

As for the setting, the short teaser showcases four soldiers in a suburban setting with a downed plane in the background and plenty of palm trees. We also see soldiers parachuting in the distance, a Battle Royale staple: jumping out of an aircraft to reach the surface. The map itself could be a potential version of Season 1's California and Eastwood map, which was recently detailed as part of Season 1's new content.

NVIDIA is preparing for the big move away from its Blackwell GPU architecture to its next-generation Rubin GPU architecture, with new patches published that will see NVIDIA moving from Boot0 to Boot42 in new Linux driver updates.

The folks over at Phoronix spotted that NVIDIA has been submitting new open-source "Nova" driver patches that show the company is currently transitioning to Boot42, ditching Boot0 for Rubin. NVIDIA engineer John Hubbard discussed the move in the patch notes, explaining that future-gen GPUs will move away from the long-standing "NV_PMC_BOOT_O" register, to the new "NV_PMC_BOOT_42" to simplify detecting the logic for Nova.

The release notes also mention that there have been 33 lines of code removed, making it cleaner and a more forward-compatible structure. This is a rather interesting development, with the new Nova code being written in Rust, there is now progress towards the next-gen Rubin GPU architecture by the NVIDIA Linux team.

A Redditor has shunt modded his RTX 4090 gaming laptop and unlocked 19% more performance, bringing its performance closer to a much more expensive RTX 5090 gaming laptop.

In a new post on Reddit, "u/thatavidreadertrue" shunt modded the GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU inside of his ASUS Zephyrus M16 GU604VY gaming laptop, stacking a 1m Ohm resistor on top of the existing 5m Ohm resistor, lowering the resistance to around 0.83m Ohm. This tricked the laptop GPU into thinking it was consuming 6x less power, which is why the power draw reading displayed 40-45W, compared to its actual power draw of closer to 240W, which is 1.6x more power than the reading.

Increased power always means more heat being generated, with the user repasting the old liquid metal on the GPU using Honeywell PTM 7950, a phase-change thermal interface material (TIM) which is known for excellent performance. The user also upgraded the VRM thermal pads with the Upisren UX Pro Ultra.

AMD has just inked a deal with the US Department of Energy (DoE) on two new supercomputer projects using AMD hardware.

AMD will be building out two new supercomputers -- the Lux and Discovery supercomputers -- for the US DoE that will be used mostly for academic purposes. In a press release, AMD explained that when fully deployed, the new Lux and Discovery supercomputers will represent a combined $1 billion investment of private and public funding, enabling the DoE to build a secure, federated and standards-based infrastructure for sovereign US-based AI and science.

The new Lux AI supercomputer is co-developed between AMD, ORNL, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and HPE, powered by AMD Instinct MI355X AI GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and AMD Pensando advanced networking technologies. The new Discovery AI supercomputer deepens the collaboration between DoE, ORNL, HPE, and AMD with next-gen AMD "Venice" GPUs, and AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs -- a new MI400 series AI accelerator engineered specifically for sovereign AI and scientific computing.