Latest News - Page 209

Intel's Panther Lake or Intel Core Ultra (Series 3) processors for laptops and handhelds are on the way, powered by the company's most advanced chip technology to date - Intel 18A. Intel notes that with improved performance and efficiency, Panther Lake will be able to deliver Lunar Lake levels of power efficiency with Arrow Lake-like performance.

Looking at the GPU side, which will be powered by Arc Graphics and the latest generation of Xe3 graphics, Panther Lake's top-end chip with 12 Xe Cores will reportedly deliver a 50% or 1.5X improvement over Lunar Lake with better support for ray-tracing, with Intel XeSS delivering its version of Multi Frame Generation optimized for portable devices.

With a reported 40% increase in performance-per-watt compared to Arrow Lake, and more Xe Cores to play with (Arrow Lake handhelds like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ feature a processor with 8 Xe Cores), the prospect of a high-end PC gaming handheld powered by Panther Lake and AI rendering could present a real alternative to AMD-powered handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally X and Legion Go 2.

Game Freak, the developer of Pokémon, has been hacked, and now the content that was stolen is being released online, revealing what the developer plans to release up until 2030.

This isn't the first time Game Freak has experienced a tragic hack, as it was only last year in October that the developer had to respond to a hack referred to as the "Teraleak," which revealed details about the developer's plans for the Nintendo Switch 2, employee information, game source code, new games, past projects, and Pokémon designs.

Now, Game Freak has been hacked again, and this time the developers' plans have been revealed, showcasing that three mainline Pokémon games are currently planned, with the first being Gaia/Gen 10, scheduled to release in 2026 with a DLC planned in 2027.

Edifier is an audio brand known for creating traditional bookshelf-style speakers and other audio solutions for listening to music, streaming media, and playing games on a PC. In China, the company has unveiled its 'New Cyber' speaker (via TechSpot) that features a design that makes it look like a desktop gaming PC.

Yes, at a glance, you might even think that this was a PC with desktop speakers built into the lower third, but it's not. Priced at 1,499 yuan, which is around $210 USD, this Bluetooth speaker is perfect for those who love the look and aesthetic of a modern panoramic PC. The 2.1 design includes a downward-facing four-inch subwoofer, with two additional speakers with 52mm drivers behind the mesh finish.

The design itself is actually a lot of fun (which, admittedly, is a weird way to put it), as the "GPU" serves as the power supply for the unit. At the same time, the cable that resembles a tuning fork for an AIO cooler houses the speaker cable. In addition to this, you've got lighting flourishes mimicking fans and memory, and a functional 2.8-inch display that can display images, animation, and other information.

Using upscaling or 'Super Resolution' technologies like NVIDIA's DLSS, AMD's FSR, or Intel's XeSS is always a trade-off. You're essentially sacrificing visual quality and fidelity for improved performance, with the best examples actually delivering native-like or even better-than-native results thanks to advanced AI models.

NVIDIA's DLSS (especially the new DLSS 4) and AMD's FSR 4 are the two best examples of AI-powered upscaling for PC gaming; however, the latter is limited and exclusive to the new Radeon RX 9000 Series of GPUs due to its AI hardware requirement. This means RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 owners with a Radeon RX 6800 XT or Radeon RX 7800 XT are limited to using the inferior FSR 3.1, which delivers improved performance at the cost of image fidelity that's a step or two behind DLSS and FSR 4.

The good news is that, thanks to an unintended leak of FSR 4 code and files, an unofficial INT8 version of FSR 4 is circulating. It works on all Radeon GPUs, including RDNA 2 and RDNA 4 cards - but requires a bit of manual work. And with that, German outlet Computer Base has conducted an in-depth look at the performance and image quality of FSR 3 and FSR 4 running on three generations of Radeon hardware.

When NVIDIA shifted to the new 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector for the GeForce RTX 40 Series of desktop graphics cards, news of cables melting and GPUs being damaged began appearing online at a steady clip. The revamped 12V-2x6 design, introduced with the GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series refresh and the new GeForce RTX 50 Series, saw a reduction in cases of 'GPU power cables melting'; however, instances still seem to appear as clockwork.

With only a handful of AMD's new RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards adopting the new power connector, which delivers up to 600W over a single cable, it looks like we've got our second case of a Radeon GPU's power cable melting due to the new cable standard. The GPU in question is the impressive and sleek SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+, a premium model that adopts the new 16-pin power connector via an innovative hidden-cable design.

According to the report by Redditor 'e92justin,' the GPU was connected via a 3 x 8-pin power adapter connected to a 1000W Corsair power supply. Based on all of the investigations into the issue over the years, a faulty connection or improperly inserted cable could be the culprit. However, it's yet another case of the 12VHPWR and 12V-2x6 design power connector for modern GPUs failing, overheating, and effectively melting.

MONTECH is a hardware company best known for creating sought-after PC cases and cooling solutions. This week, the company is formally unveiling its latest AIO liquid cooler. The new LightFlow ARGB AIO liquid cooler from MONTECH is available in either Black or White, with two radiator size options: 240mm and 360mm.

And with this latest AIO liquid cooler for CPUs from MONTECH featuring both LightFlow and ARGB in its naming, you can be sure that customizable aesthetics and lighting are right up there with thermal performance. MONTECH says that the new LightFlow ARGB AIO liquid cooler offers "minimalist aesthetics," but this likely refers to avoiding the full-brightness rainbow mode we see in the marketing materials.

One of the defining design features of the new cooler is the infinity mirror design on the pump head, sporting the company's logo. As a more affordable cooler that doesn't go the 'slap and LCD screen on the pump' route, the infinity mirror look is definitely impressive. Beyond its appearance, MONTECH adds that the 3100 RPM high-performance pump paired with the 27mm high-density radiator delivers "stable, efficient cooling."

AMD has yet to confirm or formally announce details on its next generation of desktop Ryzen CPUs that will be built using the company's on-the-horizon Zen 6 architecture. Credible leaks, rumors, and speculation suggest that Zen 6 will feature a mix of TSMC's 3nm and 2nm process nodes, offering more cores than previous generations, along with notable improvements in power efficiency, latency, and performance.

Marketing for the new ASUS X870 AYW GAMING WIFI W motherboard confirms 'Zen 6' support

It's also expected that the Zen 6 generation of Ryzen CPUs will be supported by the AM5 platform and current Ryzen motherboards, even though the release is expected sometime in late 2026 or in the first half of 2027. This aligns with AMD's commitment to supporting motherboard chipsets for multiple CPU generations, as reflected in the new X870 AM5 boards listed as "future CPU ready."

Retro-inspired game visuals, drawing from the late 1980s and early 1990s era of video games, are not uncommon; this nostalgia-fueled aesthetic has proven to be really popular over the years. Likewise, with stylized pixel art and the rise of generative AI used to create images and video, there are now models that attempt to blur the line between traditional 2D pixel worlds and modern interactive 3D environments.

Project Shadowglass, from developer Starhelm Studios, is a new game featuring "3D pixel art graphics" that is currently in development. And it might just be the most impressive example of this retro-inspired aesthetic so far, and it doesn't look like it's leveraging AI at all. Described as a "love letter to classic immersive FPS stealth sims" like Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock, the first teaser trailer showcases the game's impressive and unique engine.

Looking at screenshots, you'd think this was 2D pixel art representing 3D environments. However, in motion, it looks like a cross between the 16-bit pixel sprite era of gaming and the early 3D worlds seen on consoles like the original PlayStation.

The final system specifications of Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 and Microsoft's next-gen Xbox consoles have been finalized according to the very latest leaks.

In a new post on the NeoGAF forums, leaker "KeplerL2" said that the final specs on the PS6 and Xbox Magnus consoles have been finalized, the leaker said: "Specs are very much finalized".

We've been reporting on the specs of the next-gen PS6 and Xbox Magnus consoles for a few months now, with Microsoft's purported next-gen Xbox (if it still sells Xbox consoles by then) being more powerful than the PlayStation 6. The next-gen Xbox has a more powerful RDNA 5-based GPU with more GPU cores, and a purported 48GB of GDDR7 memory, which is more than the up to 40GB of GDDR7 memory inside of the PS6.

Battlefield 6 is one of the best-looking games on the market right now, but this comparison with the game versus real-life gives you a glimpse into just how good the Frostbite engine can look, and run. Check it out:

In a new video released by YouTuber "ElAnalistaDeBits" we have a comparison between Battlefield 6 and real-life locations, including Gibraltar and New York City (from BF6 maps Iberian Offensive, Empire State, and Manhattan Bridge) and it'll blow your socks off.

Battlefield Studios has done an enormous job at recreating real-life locations for Battlefield 6, with the developers not trying to push for a 1-to-1 replica of real-life locations, but instead they replicated the atmosphere of those locations.

Apple's about to launch its new MacBook Pro with M5 chip this week, alongside an iPad Pro refresh with the same chip, and a pepped up Vision Pro.

This is according to one of the most prolific Apple rumor peddlers out there, Mark Gurman, in his most recent Power On newsletter (for Bloomberg - hat tip to TechRadar).

We're told that the devices will be launched without the fanfare of a big press event - of course, as if it's this week, invites would need to be out already - with Apple using online announcements instead.

It wasn't long ago that I reported on Apple scaling back its plans for a cheaper and lighter Vision headset for a shift in focus to developer AI-powered smart glasses akin to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses. Now, details have emerged about Apple's rumored smart glasses and how they will work.

The details come from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known and extremely reliable Apple insider, who has penned a new report detailing what he has heard about the upcoming product. Gurman outlines that Meta's smart glasses serve as an example of an extremely promising product line that one day could be as mainstream as a smartphone, and while Meta's Ray-Bans still feel like a prototype, they show promise that Apple has now recognized.

The Vision Pro didn't display this level of promise, as it quickly became a very niche product. Niche products are not something Apple pursues, besides a very select few, and instead, the company has switched gears to focus on smart glasses, abandoning the rumored cheaper and lighter version of the Vision Pro. However, not all Vision development has been thrown out, as Gurman says the operating system running the Vision Pro, VisionOS, will likely be used to run the upcoming AR smart glasses, albeit it will be a cut-down version.

Remedy's latest experiment FBC Firebreak is a failure, and the company has responded with a tax write down on the unsuccessful project.

FBC Firebreak has done so poorly that Remedy Entertainment now expects its annual earnings to be negative. The studio issued a notice to investors that confirmed Firebreak will be written down in a non-cash impairment. This essentially means that Remedy no longer thinks that the game is worth as much as they once had.

Battlefield 6 has been released, and players are trying to figure out the fastest ways to farm the most XP to unlock new weapons and attachments, presumably to take back into the live multiplayer servers. However, the tactics players are using are now being stopped by EA and Battlefield 6 developers.

Players who can't be bothered grinding the XP for levels to unlock new guns and attachments are heading to Portal servers, which is Battlefield 6's sandbox-style mode, where players can create custom servers. It wasn't long before players caught on that they could create custom Portal servers and design them to farm as much XP as possible through the killing of bots. Servers quickly became popular with YouTubers making videos on them, along with Redditors sharing codes to their XP farming servers.

However, EA and Battlefield 6 developers have caught wind of these XP farms and are now putting a stop to them by bringing down the servers. In addition to banning the XP farming servers, EA has seemingly implemented a new tactic to circumvent the creation of new XP farms, as now an error message presents itself when a new server is going to be created, EA's servers "are at max capacity".

The new horror game based on John Carpenter's Halloween will have similar game mechanics as Illfonic's previous multiplayer games, including gamifying Michael Myers' bloodlust and using it as fuel for in-game slaying.

Illfonic has found an interesting way to capture the mystique of Michael Myers. The developers lean heavily into Michael's original name throughout the film script (The Shape) to create a kind of ultimate boogeyman, one that fluidly blends in and out of the shadows with silent grace.

The devs have now explained how exactly playing as Michael Myers will work in Halloween. Playing as The Shape, gamers will stalk the citizens of Haddonfield, literally watching in-game NPCs and AI, waiting in the dark, and following them. Illfonic even went so far to make players see through the eye holes of Michael's mask. Stalking townspeople fills up Michael's bloodlust meter, which feels like the polar opposite of Jason's rage meter in F13 (and rightly so). Michael can only attack when bloodlust is full, so the gameplay loop is a kind of deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Battlefield 6 has finally been released, and more than 700,000 players have flocked to the game to jump into the mayhem, and some of those players are enjoying the single-player campaign.

Some of the players that are working their way through the single-player campaign have even managed to finish it, and to their surprise, a message pops up in the place of where the campaign once was, recommending that they uninstall the campaign to save storage space. For those who don't know, the campaign is a nine-mission story that comes in at around 15GB in size - it's not too big, but not small either, and with modern-day games taking up so much storage capacity, every gigabyte counts.

Many gamers are faced with tough decisions on which game to uninstall to play a new game. It's great to see Battlefield Studios offering gamers the option to uninstall the campaign once it's complete, as it demonstrates that the developers are aware of the storage limitations many gamers face, especially since it's unlikely a player would return to the campaign after completing it.

Battlefield 6 has finally been released, and the title has amassed more than 700,000 players just on Steam. As with any new live-service release, some problems were discovered within the first few days of players jumping into the servers.

One of those problems was the jumping momentum with specific guns. Players began reporting that while having some weapons equipped, jump momentum would randomly be interrupted, causing the player to stop mid-air. Battlefield Studios has announced via the "Battlefield Comms" X account that it has rolled out a patch that addresses the bug, and that patch is now live across all platforms. Furthermore, the developers state that the issue should be resolved the next time you play.

Battlefield 6 is off to a roaring start, as hundreds of thousands of players have flocked to servers to jump into the action. The title has peaked at an insane 747,000 players just on Steam, smashing Call of Duty's record by nearly double (491,870 players).

Microsoft has rolled out an update for OneDrive that added AI facial recognition to the digital storage service, specifically for photos. However, the feature reportedly can only be disabled three times per year.

The discovery comes from Slashdot, which discovered Microsoft's warning after uploading an image from local storage on their smartphone to Microsoft's OneDrive"file-hosting app. After the upload was complete, the user ventured to the Privacy and Permissions section of the app and discovered the"People Section"feature, along with the description"OneDrive uses AI to recognize faces in your photos."

According to the description, OneDrive uses AI to recognize faces in photos to assist users in sifting through their collection of photos to find specific people, such as friends or family. Think of this feature as Google Photos' "People" search, but in OneDrive.

Although we're still waiting for an official response or acknowledgement from Nintendo, there are reports that the hacking group Crimson Collective has breached Nintendo and stolen data. Cybersecurity firm Hackmanac, which tracks and verifies cyber attacks, posted a screenshot on social media showcasing directories and folders from the group as proof of the successful hack.

The files and folders reportedly cover everything from manuals to administrative items, assets, development data, backups, and more. As of writing, the scale of the breach and whether it will become as high-profile as the Insomniac breach remain to be seen. This breach led to the leak of an early playable build of the studio's upcoming Marvel's Wolverine game, so hacked Nintendo data could include a lot of game-related stuff the company wouldn't want to see released.

Crimson Collective recently made a name for itself among hacking groups when it breached Red Hat's private GitHub repositories in September 2025, reportedly stealing 570GB of data, including sensitive information.

AMD and Sony released a new video and presentation ahead of the weekend, detailing some of the latest architectural advancements coming to PlayStation hardware as part of their Project Amethyst partnership. This partnership, which sees Sony's engineers and hardware designers led by Mark Cerny work more closely with AMD to develop graphics hardware for gaming, will also inform AMD's upcoming RDNA 5 generation of Radeon graphics for PCs and other x86 devices.

As detailed in the announcement (check out our coverage here for the full scoop), the presentation offered a very high-level overview of how the next generation of PlayStation and Radeon architecture and hardware will work. Setting aside the various revelations, the overall feeling we got was that it's the latest bit of proof that we're on the cusp of a seismic shift (for both PlayStation and Radeon) toward neural rendering, machine learning technologies, and ray-tracing.

Looking at AMD's RDNA hardware, including this year's brand-new RDNA 4 architecture, although you've got hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and machine learning or AI capabilities, it feels more tacked on as opposed to a core part of the design. In fact, with the newly announced 'Neural Arrays' and 'Radiance Cores,' it seems AMD is adopting a more NVIDIA and GeForce RTX-like approach, similar to Team Green's Tensor Cores and RT Cores.