The Battlefield 6 beta weekend is almost upon us, and with the highly anticipated game now opening up to the public, thousands of Call of Duty players will be flocking to servers to jump into the action. Here's what you need to know if you are a Call of Duty player who is about to experience their first Battlefield game.

Battlefield differs significantly from Call of Duty in its gameplay execution. While Call of Duty leans more toward a solo run-and-gun game, Battlefield is best experienced alongside teammates. It is possible to take on an entire enemy point by yourself in Conquest, cap it, and wait for teammates to spawn on you. However, first-time Call of Duty players are going to find that extremely difficult, considering enemies are also moving alongside their teammates.

Battlefield 6 is split into four classes, with each offering unique abilities and mechanics. While not every map calls for every squad to have one of each class, it's more often than not that a team will have different percentages of the same class.

A modding and repairs workshop based in the US has managed to successfully upgrade a Steam Deck OLED to 32GB of memory.

This is SlickBuys Mods and Repairs, based in California, which offers mail-in repairs or upgrades and specializes in consoles and gaming handhelds.

VideoCardz spotted the above YouTube video which shows how SlickBuys has managed to give the Steam Deck OLED an upgrade to 32GB of RAM - but there are significant caveats here.

Chromebook gamers who used Steam won't be able to do so for much longer, as Google has officially canned support for Valve's platform on ChromeOS.

The Steam for Chromebook Beta kicked off a few years back, in 2022, but it isn't going to make it past the end of this year.

9 to 5 Google reports that if you fire up the installation of Steam under ChromeOS now, you receive the following warning:

Earlier this week, we heard some chatter about a new high-end (200W) 16-core AMD Ryzen 9000 3D V-Cache processor with two banks of cache, one per chiplet - and apparently this rumor is a fake.

This comes from another leaker - so obviously, we need to take a debunking like this with appropriate seasoning, as we did with the original rumor - but 'wjm47196' on the Chiphell forums (in China) seems pretty certain this is fakery.

As flagged by HXL on X (see the above post, noticed by Wccftech), the Chiphell leaker (who is well-known) wrote: "Fake, there is no such thing." They then elaborated that there may be a new X3D chip for the Zen 5 generation in the works, though.

The latest freebies from the Epic Games Store for this week are Road Redemption and 112 Operator.

Cast your mind back to 1991 and you may recall Road Rash, a game where you zipped along on a motorbike, swerving between other bikers and then hitting them with miscellaneous weapons to dispatch them from the race.

Road Redemption is the spiritual successor to the chaotic racing which defined that EA classic, and it came out in 2017 (see the 'Road Rash' timeline in the above YouTube clip for the full story).

The beta for Battlefield 6 multiplayer has gone live, and I have already played 14 hours of it since it was made available. Here's what I have learned exclusively from playing Conquest.

There are three maps available in the BF6 beta for the Conquest game mode, two are similar, and one is pretty different, at least in terms of how you want to play it. For example, Siege of Cairo is a close-quarters map where players will mostly be rocking with SMG and AR weapons, possibly even shotguns, depending on how good you are at positioning.

Iberian Offensive is similar in size to the Siege of Cairo, but features more vehicles and a no-man's land located in the center. Liberation Peak is the larger of the two maps, or at least in terms of it being more visibly open. This map is where the Recon class can really cause havoc.

South Korea has confirmed that its big tech powerhouse companies -- Samsung and SK hynix -- are exempt from President Trump's 100% tariffs on semiconductors. Taiwan has also said TSMC is exempt from the tariffs, too.

The Trump administration unveiled punitive sectoral tariffs for the semiconductor industry yesterday, removing the sting of the levy by exempting companies that are already either in the middle of building, or have committed to building semiconductor facilities on American soil.

President Trump then confirmed that there would be levy-exempt status stamped onto Apple and NVIDIA, as the two US-based tech companies have hundreds of billions of dollars of investments inside of the US.

LG has just teased its bleeding-edge high refresh rate OLED panel designed for gaming monitors, with a new 27-inch 1440p OLED panel with a blistering 540Hz refresh rate (at native) and an even higher 720Hz mode (at 1080p).

LG's new 27-inch OLED panel runs at 2560 x 1440 @ 540Hz in native mode while at 1920 x 1080 it'll crank up to an insane 720Hz using Dynamic Frequency & Resolution (DFR) technology. LG's new OLED panel is based on the 4th Gen Tandem OLED technology, delivering 99.5% of the DCI-P3 coverage, and up to 1500 nits of peak brightness according to LG.

LG explains on its website: "In addition, it is unveiling the world's fastest OLED monitor panel for the first time. LG Display's 540Hz 27-inch OLED panel (QHD) applies Dynamic Frequency & Resolution (DFR) technology to achieve an ultra-high refresh rate of up to 720Hz (HD) depending on the user's needs. Combined with fourth-generation OLED technology, it boasts the highest level of picture quality among OLED monitor panels, with 99.5% DCI-P3 color reproduction and a maximum brightness of 1,500 nits".

Microsoft's Gaming Copilot is described as the "ultimate gaming sidekick," an AI assistant designed to help you out when you get stuck in a game as it "knows what you're playing and understands your Xbox activity." Gaming Copilot (Beta) is now available as part of the Game Bar for Windows PC for Xbox Insiders, with Microsoft confirming that optimizations are on the way for the upcoming launch of the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds.

"This companion makes gaming with Xbox more seamless and personalized, helping you get to gameplay faster, sharpening your skills, and being there when you need it and out of the way when you don't," Xbox's Taylor O'Malley writes. Gaming Copilot appears as one of the widgets on the Xbox Game Bar, and it fully supports voice interaction with a dedicated Voice Mode.

Apparently, this will let you engage and talk to the Gaming Copilot AI assistant while you're playing a game, so you'll be able to get tips and hints "without breaking away from gameplay."

A new GPU startup has just been born in Silicon Valley, one of the first in the last 25 years or so, with the ex-RTG boss announcing his new startup -- Oxmiq Labs -- and they've got world-class architects to make AI GPUs.

Koduri retired from Intel as its Chief GPU architect close to two years ago, previously working for AMD as the Senior VP and Chief GPU Architect of its graphics department -- Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) -- but is now building AI GPUs from scratch with Oxmiq Labs.

Oxmiq Labs will represent 500+ years of collective experience and will use hundreds of patents to design new AI hardware, with the company not just tweaking current GPU designs, but rather will be rebuilding the GPU ecosystem from the ground up with an "Atoms to Atoms" mindset. This will see the development of low-level hardware and bring transistor-level innovation to create high-end AI systems.

If you're jumping into the Battlefield 6 Open Beta with an Intel Arc graphics card like the latest Intel Arc B580, or an Intel CPU with integrated Arc Graphics, be sure to grab the latest Intel Graphics Driver 32.0.101.6987 (WHQL Certified). This new driver adds support and optimizations for FPS of the moment, alongside day one support for Mafia: The Old Country.

This new driver release also includes performance improvements for DOOM: The Dark Ages with an up to 6% average FPS uplift when playing at 1080p with Path Tracing enabled. Rounding out the game-specific updates, there's also a fix for Naraka Bladepoint that stops the game from freezing when Intel XeSS upscaling is selected on a Battlemage GPU.

Outside of game support, the latest Intel Graphics Driver also adds Shared GPU Memory Override control for select Intel Core Ultra Processors, and power management optimization for Intel Core Ultra 200H series devices.

Battlefield 6 is still months away from release, but hundreds of thousands of gamers have jumped into the open beta, which has already broken the concurrent player count of Battlefield 2042, which just... wasn't good at all.

The Battlefield 6 Open Beta has had a huge all-time peak of 334,549 gamers play the game on Steam, beating out Battlefield 2042 and its all-time peak from nearly two years ago with 107,376 players according to SteamDB. This is an amazing achievement for Battlefield 6, showing that just like John Wick... yeah... Battlefield is back.

This weekend is the Battlefield 6 Early Access and Open Beta weekend, where early access was granted to those who pre-ordered, while the open beta was open to anyone who simply streamed more than 30 minutes of the game through Twitch. I did that last night and put some time into Battlefield 6 and my early impressions are very high, I need some more time on it, but it gives me some crazy Bad Company 2 + Battlefield 4 vibes, which were my favorite entries in the franchise.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming library is expanding this week thanks to the launch of Mafia: The Old Country, the surprise Early Access release of Titan Quest 2, the Assassin's Creed Mirage PC Game Pass debut, and the highly anticipated 1.0 update for RTS game Stormgate.

Even though you're probably reading this while waiting in the Battlefield 6 Open Beta queue, this weekend's big release is the latest installment in 2K's long-running Mafia crime series. With the action taking place in 1900s Sicily, this is also the latest Unreal Engine 5 release that demands some serious hardware to render its cinematic visuals. This is good news for GeForce NOW gamers as you'll be able to play the game on an RTX-powered rig in the cloud with access to DLSS and other features like G-Sync.

This week also saw the surprise release of Titan Quest 2 in Early Access, which is the long-awaited sequel to the iconic Diablo-meets-Greek Myth action-RPG from 2004. Published by THQ Nordic, the Early Access version of the game features the first chapter of the story with the ability to create and customize your character build as you take on mythical beasts and monsters in Ancient Greece.

When id Software released Doom in 1993, it forever changed the PC gaming landscape as it ushered in a new era of fast-paced first-person shooters. The following year, in 1994, id would partner with developer Raven Software (a studio that is still around, working on Call of Duty) to publish Heretic. Instead of wielding guns in the distant future, fending off a demonic invasion from Hell, Heretic presented the FPS action of Doom in a rich fantasy world with magic, spells, monsters, and flaming swords.

Heretic quickly became a cult classic, alongside its follow-up Hexen: Beyond Heretic, which Raven also developed and released with id Software. With QuakeCon 2025 kicking off this week, Bethesda, id Software, and Nightdive Studios have been working behind the scenes to shadow drop Heretic + Hexen, a definitive remastered version of both games, for PC and console.

With native 4K 120 FPS action on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, PC gamers also benefit from the modernized update, which supports multiple resolutions and aspect ratios. It doesn't stop there, as this re-release also includes two brand-new campaigns or episodes in the form of Heretic: Faith Renewed and Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur, online cross-platform co-op, a remastered soundtrack, and multiplayer Deathmatch for up to 16 players with 120 maps to choose from.

An overclocker has shunt-modded his GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card to unlock a much higher 1200W power limit, hitting the top 20 in 3DMark benchmarks, all with just air-cooling keeping the GPU cool.

Reddit user "u/thatavidreaderture" used his GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5090 AORUS MASTER ICE graphics card and its stock heatsink, as he thinks that it's more than enough to keep the thermal requirements of the GPU nice and cool -- most, if not all AIB coolers have more than enough thermal headroom.

He replaced the 2MOhm resistors with 1MOhm, which unlocked twice the power limit of the RTX 5090, which by default uses close to 600W at load, but shunt-modded, the GPU was reaching a much higher 1200W power limit. He also repasted the GPU and used the popular PTM 7950 and Upsiren UX Ultra thermal putty.

AMD has confirmed that it is working on custom chips for future Microsoft Xbox platforms including the next-gen Xbox consoles, PCs, and gaming handhelds.

During its Q2 2025 earnings call, AMD recorded a huge 71.4% increase in its Client and Gaming business, with this segment including Client (Ryzen CPUs) and Gaming (GPUs, semi-custom SoCs) products. Client revenue leaped by 66% to $2.5 billion, thanks to super-strong Ryzen CPU sales, especially the new Ryzen 9000X3D processors.

In the Gaming segment, revenues increased by an even bigger 83.3% to $1.1 billion, with this segment including graphics products like the RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9000 series, as well as custom SoCs for gaming consoles and handhelds.

Tesla has reportedly disbanded its Dojo supercomputer team, with its leader leaving the company and increasing its reliance on external technology partners like NVIDIA and AMD for compute power.

In a new report from Bloomberg, we have heard that Tesla is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team, which was working on in-house AI chips for driverless technology. Peter Bannon was leading Dojo, and is departing the company with Tesla CEO Elon Musk ordering the Dojo supercomputer effort to be shut down, according to Bloomberg's sources.

The Dojo team lost around 20 workers recently to newly-formed DensityAI, with remaining Dojo workers being reassigned to other data center and compute projects inside Tesla.

Grand Theft Auto franchise has surpassed $10 billion in revenue generated since GTA V's release, our data analysis indicates.

Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular video game franchises on the planet. It's one of the only series outside of Call of Duty that can routinely sell millions of copies every quarter, and GTA V itself stands as one of the best-selling video games of all time with over 215 million copies sold. GTA Online churns out tens of millions of dollars per quarter, sometimes breaking $300 million in microtransaction earnings.

We've been tracking Grand Theft Auto data for a while now, and based on our findings, the GTA franchise has surpassed $10 billion in revenue since GTA V's release. Take-Two's latest Q1'26 earnings report reveals that Grand Theft Auto made $221 million in the period, pushing total cumulative GTA revenues to $9.944 billion since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked point-blank (again) how much GTA 6 will cost--will it be $70? Maybe $80? Even $100? Rockstar will break the news, the CEO says.

Take-Two's CEO isn't ready to spill the beans on GTA 6's price tag--not yet, at least. It's a hot-button topic, with many speculating that GTA 6 could essentially have a blank check so to speak. It's so anticipated that GTA 6 could be $100 at launch and gamers would buy it, at least that's the thinking.

The reality is the price tag will be revealed by Rockstar Games, and not Take-Two themselves. Remember that TTWO is the parent company that owns multiple divisions, branches, and labels. Rockstar is its own developer and publisher, and is technically one of these labels. Essentially, Zelnick says that Take-Two won't steal Rockstar's thunder and spoil the surprise of GTA 6's price tag.

President Trump has called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign immediately, after it was discovered the new Intel CEO has ties to Chinese companies.

In a new post on Truth Social, President Trump said: "The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!"

The post from President Trump calling for the resignation of the Intel CEO comes after a Republican Senator sent a letter to the Intel board of directors, as Lip-Bu Tan had earlier ties with Chinese companies that are now becoming a mainstream issue, and President Trump wants him to resign.