Latest News - Page 2174

It looks like we should get a little hyped for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, with the developer teasing it is "bigger, badder, and more brutal" than the first.

Developer MachineGames made the big switch to the id Tech 6 engine for Wolfenstein II, with Creative Director Jens Matthies explaining to GameSpot in a recent interview: "A big change was switching to [Id Tech 6] because the first [Wolfenstein] was made in the transition from the previous generation to the new generation of consoles. So, in terms of the visuals and how our faces can express things, everything the sound design, the technology is way, way, way more advanced. Everything on the audio/visual front has a very big upgrade. The whole sound engine is new, it's everything from the AI on up - we rebuilt everything. So, everything is much more capable".

The Xbox One X and PS4 Pro will be getting console-specific enhancements, while the PC will be the supreme version as expected. Matthies continued: "We have uncapped frame rates. We are huge PC players, too, and I think all of id's games have a very strong PC DNA in them. So, it's very important for us to make sure the PC version of the game feels as solid as any console version. And [PC] is also our primary testing platform. I am confident that PC players will be very happy with the PC version".

NVIDIA has just announced its next-gen Drive PX Pegasus board, a major successor to the Drive PX 2 board that is found in some Tesla vehicles. The new Drive PX Pegasus board has a freakin' performance jump of nearly 10x, which is absolutely incredible.

The new Drive PX Pegasus board features 320 DL TOPs, up from the 24 DL TOPs found on the Pascal-based Drive PX 2 board. We have 2 x next-gen discrete GPUs inside (that are NOT Volta...), two Volta iGPUs, and 2 x Xavier system-on-a-chips (SoCs). There's also 16 x NVIDIA ARM-based CPU cores, 2 x Volta iGPU cores, and up to 500W of power consumption (up from 250W on the previous-gen board).

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang said during GTC Europe 2017: "Creating a fully self-driving car is one of society's most important endeavors - and one of the most challenging to deliver. The breakthrough AI computing performance and efficiency of Pegasus is crucial for the industry to realize this vision. Driverless cars will enable new ride- and car-sharing services. New types of cars will be invented, resembling offices, living rooms or hotel rooms on wheels. Travelers will simply order up the type of vehicle they want based on their destination and activities planned along the way. The future of society will be reshaped".

TSMC is ramping into 3nm as soon as possible, with the Taiwanese semiconductor giant spending $20 billion on a next-gen 3nm manufacturing plant, so that it can keep customers like Apple happy in the future.

Samsung and Intel have been in the fab game for a while now, but TSMC has been spending around $10 billion per year in order to keep up to, or exceed what their two main competitors are doing. TSMC has announced its building a next-gen 3nm technology plant in Southern Taiwan, but to put it into perspective... 1nm is one billionth of a meter, and measures the width of each transistor in the chip. It's an incredibly intricate process, with TSMC leading the world in many ways.

Morris Chang, founder of TSMC and 86-year-old ultimate boss of the company said: "By the time we're through, by the time we've built all the necessary capacity, I think we would have spent upwards of $15 billion. That's a conservative estimate. Maybe it's safer to say upwards of $20 billion". Don't worry, TSMC won't be going out of business any time soon, as his company is worth a whopping $190 billion.

New Blizzard job opening gives potential clues on the studio's upcoming next-gen shooter--it could be Overwatch-related in some capacity. Or it could be something brand new.

Before I start this coverage, there's something you need to remember. A new Overwatch game has not been confirmed. Blizzard is hiring an art intern to help map out super duper early artwork for a new unannounced game. This game isn't even in proper development phases yet, and is in Blizzard's infamous incubation phase, which is pre-production planning. Games that are planned and plotted in incubation phases often die out and become nothing. Blizzard takes a long time to make its games (Diablo III took 10 years to make). Now that you've tempered your expectations, let's get onto the coverage.

According to the new job opening, Blizzard is hiring a generalist art intern at its incubation branch in Irvine to help conceptualize a new unannounced game that may or may not be related to Overwatch. We've known for a while that Blizzard is making a new next-gen FPS, and previously was hiring an engineer to make a "robust first-person engine for an unannounced project." These two job listings are likely connected.

Correction: first generation Optane M.2 modules used x2 PCI-E 3.0 lanes, and not x4 PCI-E 2.0 lanes as originally reported.

Leaked slides and inside industry contacts have hinted that Intel's second generation of Optane drives, the Intel 900P series, will launch around the end of this month. The 900P series will replace the Intel 750 series of NVMe drives and will come in the U.2 and AIC (PCI-E card) form factors. While the first generation of consumer Optane drives used a PCI-E 2.0 interface, this new generation will use PCI-E 3.0. The 900P has roughly the same specifications as Intel's enterprise P4800X, which costs almost $2000 for 375GB. The new 900P series drives will come in 280GB, 480GB, 960GB, and 1500GB variants, and will be aimed more at consumers rather than enterprise users, which hopefully means much more affordable prices (enterprise is typically overpriced by a large margin).

Optane offers random read speeds far greater than those of NAND flash, making it an excellent NAND replacement. The current Optane series provides 1.35 GB/s and 290 GB/s sequential (large files) read/write and 240,000 IOPS read/write for random performance (which matters more for OS). The new 900P should boast 2.5GB/s and 2GB/s sequential read/write speeds and up to 550,000 and 500,000 IOPS read/write for random performance, which is a huge increase over its predecessor.

Square Enix had a tough time scaling down the raw power of Final Fantasy XV's Luminous Engine to run on outdated console hardware.

It should be no surprise that consoles aren't very potent--Microsoft's new Xbox One X notwithstanding--and typically require significant optimization scaling to ensure a new demanding game can run on them. Some games like Final Fantasy XV are even built on a powerful next-gen iteration of a studio's proprietary game engine that's literally too powerful to run on PS4 and Xbox One hardware, and devs have to put tons of effort into downscaling the game to even hit 1080p 30FPS. According to Final Fantasy XV's game director Hajime Tabata, the core dev team at Square Enix had a tremendously difficult time getting the action RPG running on PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One and Xbox One S hardware.

Final Fantasy XV is a fine example of a developer's worst nightmare. From a technical standpoint, the game is a marvel: the action RPG mechanics are interspersed dynamically with the hugely detailed open world, allowing combat to seamlessly break out at any given point at a solid frame rate. The visuals are pristine, and the volumetric lighting, fog, shadows and a myriad of other effects add a deep layer of immersion to the experience. But make no mistake: Final Fantasy XV was built to run on higher-end machines and flex the raw power of today's most demanding hardware...but to get the game to the mainstream console audience, Square Enix had to dramatically condense this experience and ensure the game didn't fall apart while running on older hardware.

Complimenting their Viper V570 RGB Blackout Edition mouse, Patriot have released the Viper Series Gaming LED Mousepad to enhance the users gaming experience and to complete the perfect gaming setup.

The Viper LED gaming mousepad features a control switch that allows for six different LED color settings that provide a continuous backlighting effect around and beneath the entire mouse pad. Patriot have ensured high-quality products such as high-grip rubber backing to ensure a non-slip performance and High performance rigid polymer surface to ensure peak performance during intense gaming sessions.

Backed with a 2-year warranty, the Viper LED gaming mouse pad provides precious control and accuracy for your gaming sessions for the competitive price of $59.99

MSI have announced their new motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper builds, the MSI X399 SLI PLUS. MSI's latest motherboard is an optimized workstation and an excellent choice for professionals looking for performance and stability that we've came to expect from MSI.

Featuring a slick full-black color scheme and a first for MSI's PRO series, Mystic Light RGB, the X399 SLI PLUS can provide impressive performance and style that is customizable by the user. MSI have provided USB 3.1, M.2 SSD support and STEEL ARMOR PCI-E slots that have all been designed and thoroughly tested to achieve quality standards and are geared for longevity and performance. Capable of supporting quad-channel DDR4-3600 memory, 4 xPCI-E 3.0 x16 slots and backed with impressive performance features include DDR4 Boost, Turbo M.2 with RAID support, Audio Boost, X-Boost, Network Manager and many more, the X399 SLI PRO provides impressive compatibility and features.

With any workstation orientated build, stable and fast networking is paramount. MSI have optimized the X399 SLI PLUS for professional and multimedia use and is equipped with a high quality Gigabit network solution and Audio Boost 4. MSI haven't provided pricing or availability yet, but expect this motherboard to be released Q4 2017.

Just in time for Middle-Earth: Shadows of War, The Evil Within 2 and Forza Motorsport 7, NVIDIA have released the latest GeForce 387.92 WHQL drivers. Also included is Game Ready VR support for ARKTIKA.1, bug fixes and multiple SLI and 3D Vision profiles added.

NVIDIA have added SLI profiles for the following titles:

As for fixed bugs and issues, NVIDIA have addressed some common issues including SLI and Intel X299 experiencing low GPU usage resulting in poor performance, YouTube users with Fast Sync enabled, twitching occurs in full-screen videos while moving the mouse cursor, custom resolutions are not preserved after updating the driver plus a whole lot more.

It's been a big weekend for Star Wars fans, with PC and consoles gamers getting their first-hand experience of EA's Star Wars Battlefront II beta and Lucasfilm announcing that the new trailer for their upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be aired during ESPN's Monday Night football.

In case you were busy, don't like football or not sure how to use YouTube, you can view the trailer above. If you're like me, you have booked your movie tickets and will be left counting down the days until December 15... I'll save you the trouble, it's 66 very long days.

EK Water Blocks has just announced they've released two new slim radiators, with the CoolStream Slim 140mm and 280mm radiators ready for a new breed of watercooled gaming rigs.

The new EK-CoolStream SE 140 and EK-CoolStream SE 280 will allow EKWB to fill gaps in their product stack between the high-performance and larger radiators, with the new slimmed down models for smaller/trickier to build PCs. There are plenty of case manufacturers moving towards the 140mm fan form factor, so EK is staying ahead of the curve with the new CoolStream Slim products.

EK's new CoolStream Slim radiators are exactly 140/280mm in width, so they will fit perfectly into a 140mm fan spot in your case. The new radiators continue the slick EK-CoolStream design, with a black/silver style that looks slick as hell. The square housing has been evenly coated with black matte paint, while the fins feature a super thin layer of black coating for a super-clean look.

Some of my best gaming memories have been on older consoles, with plenty of hours pumped into the PS3 over the years. Now we have RPCS3, a new open source PS3 emulator that will render your favorite games at up to 10K.

The performance of the PS3 emulator is said to be great, but you'll need a graphics card that supports Vulkan. The developers have also added anistrophic filtering and have plans to add anti-aliasing, texture scaling, and even game-specific patches in the near future. The video above does an amazing job at convincing you if you had any doubts, which all of mine were squished as soon as I was 30 seconds into the clip.

Seeing games like Demon Souls running at 4K, and even games like Yakuza and titles I've never even heard of with Ni No Kuni and Catherine looking absolutely stunning once they were run with the emulator at 4K. The team explains: "The video showcases various popular titles with a side-by-side comparison from 720p (native PS3 resolution) to 4K rendering with 16x anisotropic filtering in RPCS3. The difference is quite incredible in titles that have high quality assets. There is a lot of detail that just wasn't visible at 720p. This feature is available for every PlayStation 3 game running on RPCS3. The only exception being that it does not yet work with Strict Rendering Mode. Games that require this setting will have to wait a bit longer before they can benefit from high resolution rendering".

Until now, you've had to use AMD's own Radeon Software and its pretty damn impressive Wattman overclocking utility, or SAPPHIRE TRIXX, and lastly ASUS' GPU Tweak in order to overclock Vega. We can now add MSI to that list.

MSI's latest Afterburner 4.4.0 Beta 19 has support for low-level access to the SMC microcontroller, providing full voltage control over Vega. This means you can adjust the voltage on Vega up and down, if you want to get into some undervolting action, too. You can't make any per P-state control adjustments, with a slider provided instead.

MSI states in its own changelog: "Added low-level AMD Vega 10 graphics processors family support. This means that now MSI AB can access this GPU directly without AMD ADL API, so more powerful voltage control (no longer limited by AMD ADL API) and extended and more efficient low-level hardware monitoring are available for Vega now. Core voltage control for reference design AMD Vega series cards is now performed via low-level access to on-die SMC microcontroller. Voltage is adjusted in offset form now, applied to all P-states (just like it was on Fiji/Polaris) and full -100..+100 range is available. Added GPU power draw graph to hardware monitoring module for AMD Vega series graphics cards. Added HBM memory temperature graph to hardware monitoring module for AMD Vega series graphics cards".

The Last of Us Part II could be released in 2019, something that has been hinted at by the composer for the score in the original The Last of Us, Gustavo Santaolalla.

Santaolalla was recently interviewed for Argentinian radio station Vorterix, where he says that the plan is to have The Last of Us Part II launch in 2019. Developer Naughty Dog as well as Sony haven't hinted at a release date for The Last of Us Part II, but this news might force something out of the companies.

Given the 2019 release date, I'd expect The Last of Us Part II to launch alongside the next-gen PlayStation 5 console. It's a big enough franchise, something that would sell millions of consoles if it was pushed in 4K 60FPS with next-gen graphics, on a next-gen PS5. Gimme, gimme. The last time we heard about the PS5 was from my exclusive story that the PS5 will feature a discrete GPU, something that we currently don't see in an APU-powered console world.

Intel has been rumored to be working with AMD for a while on a CPU that would feature AMD Radeon GPU technology, but until now it has been rumor. New rumors have surfaced, teasing that Intel is working on a new CPU with Vega GPU technology inside.

The new rumor is coming from a purported slide from Intel that says "Vega Inside, Mobile Performance Outside", which leads us to believe that Intel is working on a new mobile CPU that will feature Vega GPU inside. AMD released their Vega architecture a couple of months ago now, starting with Radeon Vega Frontier Edition and finishing up with Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition with a few SKUs in between. We haven't seen any low/mid-range Vega parts yet, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them in an Intel processor first, either.

Intel's recently released Coffee Lake family of processors still uses the same GPU technology that was inside of Kaby Lake, but the upcoming mobile-aimed Coffee Lake-H processors might see Vega inside. Further up the roadmap we have Cannon Lake which will be released in the Y-series family, which will come in 2018 on 10nm... this could also rock Vega tech.

Microsoft has quietly put Windows Phone to rest, with Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, Joe Belfiore saying over Twitter that even with incentives given to developers and even writing apps for them, the "volume of users is too low for companies to invest".

Bill Gates has switched to Android, and so has the Corporate VP of the OSG at Microsoft... so that's saying something. Developers haven't embraced Windows Phone, and with the early problems in the Windows Phone app store, mostly boring and definitely not mainstream (yet forced in TV shows, movies, etc) smartphones.

Microsoft will instead focus on investments into iOS and Android, which will only be good for the company and its users. This will however mean we probably won't ever see a Surface smartphone, and as a hardcore Android fan, that still disappoints me because Microsoft have well and truly proved themselves in the hardware business with many great Surface products.

Seagate has just announced a massive new 12TB HDD, with the BarraCuda Pro family of drives joined by a new 12TB model. The 12TB model spins at 7200RPM, with 256MB of cache to improve load times.

The new Seagate BarraCuda Pro family of HDDs were designed for professionals who want massive storage, with the new 12TB model costing $530 and featuring a 5-year limited warranty. If you want something a little different, Seagate has also announced their new IronWolf 12TB HDD, which like their BarraCude range, are part of Seagate's larger Guardian Series of HDDs for high capacity storage.

IronWolf is a feature-laden drive, as it allows multiple users to access it, making it perfect for file sharing and remote access.

With Battlefront II EA has crafted one of the most addicting shooters I've ever played, which can make the arguable "pay to win" lootboxes even more potentially dangerous.

I played the open Battlefront II over the weekend (I'm still playing it because I'm hooked) and quickly found the game to be extremely addicting. Not just because it's fun, precisely, but because it's so engaging and chaotic. The 40-player Galactic Assault mode, in particular, is tremendously engaging and puts players in an insane all-out war between two sides. It's Star Wars fully realized. But the reason why it's so addicting to me is because I'm so bad at it. Bear with me here--things might get a little weird.

When I fired up Battlefront II for the first time I got my ass handed to me. I sucked really bad (and still kind of do). Coming from a game like Halo or Destiny 2, which all have set rules for their PVP action, Battlefront II is a jarring experience. Here we have a havoc-filled landscape that's decided drenched with lootboxes that directly sway the outcome of any battle. I felt like just fodder for the better players, or the ones who had spend enough time to accrue points to spend on packs and unlock more goodies--in short, when you start Battlefront II as a noob, you're already at a disadvantage (or at least that's how you feel). But that's also one of the main reasons why the game is so addicting.

Microsoft's new high-end $499 Xbox One X is tailor-made for the 4K television market, and the company has been approached by various display-makers in bids to usher in the new jump for the 4K TV market.

With the PlayStation 4 Pro and the new Xbox One X, Both Sony and Microsoft are doing their part to help catalyze the 4K UHDTV market. But this push can't happen without the support of OEMs like Samsung, LG, and even Sony who are indeed helping the resolution revolution with their own range of higher-end premium 4K television sets. Microsoft exec Albert Penello is confident that the Xbox One X will help drive the momentum of 4K TV adoption, and in a few years, it'll be the main choice for the games industry. Then again, 4K is something you have to see to believe, which means the console and display industry have to come together in a symbiotic to adequately showcase and market their products.

"It's been an interesting marketing challenge," Penello said in a recent interview with MCVUK. "We have momentum on our side, which helps. The majority of TVs sold this year will be 4K TVs, there are all kind of analysts reports, and within the next few years everything will be 4K. So it's coming, in terms of retail of displays."

According to IGN editor Dan Stapleton, Middle-earth: Shadow of War clocks in at a huge 97.7GB on PC, which is over 50% bigger than the PS4 version.

Monolith Productions has been crafting Shadow of War for a few years now, and it's meant to be an epic, sprawling open-world experience with enough content to keep you busy for months. In fact, the team hopes gamers will be playing Shadow of War "for years". Open world games are huge, there's no doubt about that, and the data needed for these massive titles often comes with a colossal weight on our hard drives. Shadow of War is no different, and according to recent info from an IGN editor, the game will weigh in at 97.7GB on PC, which is 53% bigger than the PlayStation 4 Pro's 63.93GB install size.

So why is the PC version so much bigger? In a word: textures. The PC version comes with a ton of native 4K textures to ensure gamers with high-end rigs can experience top-tier fidelity. I have no doubt the Xbox One X flavor of Shadow of War will clock in somewhere near this size too, especially since the game uses native 4K textures on the new Xbox.