Latest News - Page 2178

ASUS hasn't yet announced the purported ROG STRIX B350-I-Gaming motherboard, but Swedish online retailer Inet has, with plenty of details and photos to look at.

The new ROG STRIX B350-I-Gaming motherboard uses the B350 chipset, with support for up to 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, and any Ryzen 3/5/7 processor. ASUS will be including a single PCIe 3.0 x16 port with 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, and 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports.

Storage wise, we have 2 x M.2 slots and 4 x SATA 6Gbps ports, and considering this is a mini-ATX there is an awesome amount of storage capabilities provided by ASUS. There's also GbE and built-in Wi-Fi as well as SupremeFX 8-channel High Definition Audio on-board.

Microsoft will have the fastest console in the world when it launches its new Xbox One X next month, but just how many consoles will Microsoft ship in 2018?

According to Lewis Ward, IDC Research Director for Gaming and VR/AR: "No, the XB1X won't be enough for Microsoft to catch up. It should give PlayStation 4 Pro a run for its money in 2018 in the United States and the United Kingdom, however. I'm projecting about four million XB1X consoles shipped from Q4 2017 through the end of 2018, and about five million PlayStation 4 Pro consoles shipped in the same timeframe".

Ward continued: "The way shipments break down globally, however, that implies a very tight race in the United States and the United Kingdom".

The massive breach of Yahoo looks like it was worse than the original stories, which were already bad, but now Yahoo has said that all 3 billion users had their accounts breached.

Yahoo first reported 1.5 billion accounts had been breached in 2013, something that was announced just days before Verizon acquired the search giant. Verizon, which now owns Yahoo, has said that the attack had breached every Yahoo account... which means 3 billion accounts were attacked.

Verizon disclosed the new findings after an internal investigation into the 3 billion account breach, working with the SEC. The filing reads: "Subsequent to Yahoo's acquisition by Verizon, and during integration, the company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft".

ASUS has secured the #1 spot for motherboard market share, with DigiTimes reporting that the Taiwanese PC component giant has 45% of the motherboard market in their hands.

ASUS still has plenty of next-gen motherboards on the horizon with Intel launching their new Coffee Lake CPU architecture and Z370 chipset, with ASUS preparing a new arsenal of Z300-series motherboards. Not only that, but we also have AMD's current-gen Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper-ready motherboards from ASUS in the form of X370 and X399 chipsets, and AMD's upcoming Ryzen 2 processors and next-gen chipset with new motherboards again in early 2018.

ASUS should only continue to at least keep that lead, or push it harder with next-gen boards, something I'm sure we'll see in 2018 and beyond. The main question is: what motherboard do you have? Comment below so that we can see how many people reading this story actually have ASUS motherboards or not.

TSMC is running directly into the arms of 3nm fabrication, with the Taiwanese semiconductor company announcing the locaiton of their first 3nm fab, which will be build in Tainan Science Park, in southern Taiwan.

The decision to build it in Taiwan versus the rumors of a US production plant is so that TSMC can use their assets and supply chain for the production and support of many customers like AMD, NVIDIA, who will want 3nm designs made. The Taiwanese government also provided a lending hand, with land, water, electricity and environmental protection offered to TSMC for their latest manufacturing plant. Some of the new 3nm manufacturing machines will be supplied by ASML, a Netherlands-based company.

As for when we can expect 3nm production to kick off... 2022 at the earliest. TSMC has teased that the 7nm yields are currently ahead of schedule, so we should expect 7nm-based products released in 2018. The 5nm roadmap is still on track, expected to launch in Q1 2019.

Can you believe we're at the front steps of the Star Wars Battlefront II official beta? I can't either, but EA and DICE are celebrating the fact with a new trailer to the game which should hype you in all the right ways, even teasing split-screen coop gameplay.

The new trailer teases everything you need to see in terms of space battles, beautiful Frostbite engine graphics, and so much more. If you're gaming on the PC, Xbox, or PlayStation then the beta is open to everyone through to Sunday. The official game launches on November 17, with pre-orders including the usual bonuses if you're into that thing - like the "Lightsaver Mastery" upgrade for Yoda if you pre-order by October 9.

Microsoft isn't too much further away from the release of its flagship Xbox One X console, the first true 4K-capable console ever. Our friends over at Linus Tech Tips have had some hands-on time with Xbox One X, with Luke giving the new console a teardown in the video below.

Inside, the Xbox One X rocks an 8-core CPU @ 2.3GHz alongside 12GB of GDDR5 RAM and a GPU clocked at 1172MHz that's capable of 6 TFLOPs of compute power. AMD helped Microsoft design the refreshed APU inside of Xbox One X, so when it's compared against Sony's beefed up PS4 Pro, Microsoft comes out ahead in a big way with Xbox One X. More so when you consider Xbox One X also features a 4K Blu-ray player, while Sony gives gamers no options whatsoever for 4K Blu-ray playback... not even with an external drive.

Microsoft has engineered Xbox One X with a single 120mm radial fan that keeps the elaborate console nice and cool, with an easy-to-repair console that repairers should be breathing a side of relief at. Not bad, Microsoft - you continue to impress me with your engineering abilities on Xbox One X.

Scorn seeps into our mind and ignites the strange, hallowed depths of our imaginations--and I love every minute of it.

As a fan of weird body horror the likes you find in David Cronenberg or Clive Barker films, I love it when games get weird. I've openly praised Madmind Studio's new hellishly grotesque game Agony every chance I get, and I always want to see video game adaptations of this blasphemously dark and plain exotic style. And through the magic of indies, my wish is being fulfilled.

Scorn is the type of game I've always wanted to see in the video game world. In a sense, the developers at Ebb Software are making my dreams come true--well, maybe "nightmares" is more apt. The game, which takes stark visual queues from the unnerving phantasms of H.R. Giger's art or Zdzislaw Beksinski's otherworldly visions, is a first-person horror title that's been successfully funded on Kickstarter. At the time of publication Scorn has raised $196,003, more than $20,000 over their initial goal.

After more than 20 years with Sony, PlayStation boss Andrew House is relinquishing his position and will leave the company at the end of this year.

As President and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Interactive Entertainment since 2011, Andrew House revitalized the PlayStation brand after the PS3 console's sales dip and steered the tech titan towards billion-dollar growth with the massively successful PlayStation 4. Following the PS4's reveal in 2013, Mr. House presided over a period of explosive growth during the last five years, with 63.3 million PS4s shipped globally to date and Sony's Games and Network Services rocketing into the lucrative billions-earning segment it is today. (For example, the games segment pulled in $14.730 billion last fiscal year, making up 21.69% of Sony's total FY16 revenues.)

Now Mr. House has decided to leave the company on a high note. "I"m tremendously proud of what we've built with PlayStation and Sony Interactive Entertainment," the corporate executive said in a PR statement. "PlayStation has been a huge part of my life for more than 20 years but with the business having achieved record-breaking success, now seemed to be the right time for me to pursue new challenges."

Team Ninja's gruelingly challenging and amazingly executed samurai "Soulsborne" masterpiece is coming to PC, but not everyone will be able to play.

NiOh is a great game that stands as a shining example of Team Ninja's development prowess, and the game's incoming arrival on PC in November fills a very real void left by Dark Souls' discontinuation. But there's an entry cost this time, and the PC spec requirements to run NiOh aren't super lenient; gamers will need a moderately decent graphics card on top of the huge 100GB file size.

According to NiOh's official Steam Page, the game will require at least an Intel i5-3550 CPU, 6GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 280 with at least 3GB of VRAM. This is somewhat surprising given NiOh ran quite well on PlayStation 4 consoles that notoriously feature older graphics hardware and components.

Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians has been on a rollercoaster ride since reaching their funding goal via Kickstarter way back in 2014. If you're a backer (myself included) then you're probably aware of the path that Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardian has taken. There's good news however for the tactical-RPG, in August 2017 it was recently announced that Unsung Story has been picked up by new developer Little Orbit who has since shared their vision of the game and this weekend announced Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians will be released on consoles including Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

"For me, I remember playing Final Fantasy Tactics from the couch on my PS1, and that format was quintessential to my experience enjoying that game,"Little Orbit CEO Matthew Scott said. Backers will also be able to update their platform preference via a survey.

In Little Orbit's Kickstarter update, Scott mentioned that they would be cancelling or modifying some backer rewards as it was "financially wasteful to produce" due to limited amount of backers. No need to worry though, partial refunds will be allocated for those tier backers.

SteelSeries have added three new colors to their award-winning Arctis 3 gaming headset range, solar red, boreal blue and slate grey. SteelSeries are celebrating this launch a little differently than most brands, with a great and selfless initiative. SteelSeries have partnered up with anti-bullying non-profit organization, Ditch the Label, by donating 10 percent of all Arctis Colors web shop sales, with their goal to raise $10,000.

"We questioned everything about gaming headsets when we designed the Arctis line - and because of that, it has driven the gaming audio industry forward to become the most sought after gaming headsets on the market with its beautiful, powerful features," said Ehtisham Rabbani, SteelSeries CEO. "With the new, trending colors of Arctis, we celebrate vibrant personalities and passionate gamers that help drive this culture forward, as well as support a worthy cause benefiting youth and gamers."

Featuring 7.1 surround sound, the Arctis 3 is able to deliver incredible sound via a range of devices including PC, consoles and mobile devices. The Arctis 3 also includes the SteeSeries ClearCast microphone, a retractable bi-directional system that delivers clear voice communication that is unmatched in gaming headsets.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is one of the biggest releases of 2017, and has smashed all sorts of records in the gaming industry since it hit Steam Early Access in March earlier this year.

PUBG developer Bluehole has signed a timed exclusive with Microsoft for Xbox One X, which will definitely boost sales of Microsoft's new flagship console with the hottest game right now as a console exclusive. Bloomberg is now reporting that Bluehole "has had talks with all of the major console companies", and then being very specific that the developer was "in talks with Sony" about a PS4 release of Battlegrounds.

Sony might not see a release of Battlegrounds on the PS4, but Bluehole even talking to them in the first place is promising. Microsoft might only have a timed exclusive on Battlegrounds for Xbox, and I'm sure Sony wants to make sure it's ready as soon as it possibly can with a PS4 version of PUBG. If we're seeing 1.5 million concurrent users on the PC right now, where would those numbers be if Battlegrounds was on both Xbox and PlayStation consoles?

ECS is hitting the Z370 motherboard game with their upcoming lets-throw-all-the-cool-words-in ECS Leet Gaming Z370-Lightsaber, a new motherboard ready for Intel's eighth-gen Coffee Lake CPU architecture.

The new Leet Gaming Z370-Lightsaber rocks a pretty plain look given its burst-in-your-face name, but inside still supports 4 x DIMMs capable of memory at up to 3200MT/s, 3 x PCIe x16 ports, and 2 x M.2 ports that are connected to a PCIe 3.0 x4. We also have 6 x SATA ports, and 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports that are backed up by Realtek's ALC1150 codec and Killer E2500 Ethernet.

ECS is aiming the Leet Gaming Z370-Lightsaver at overclockers, with some beefy VRM heat sinks, and on-board power and reset buttons. Next to the power and reset buttons, ECS has placed diagnostic LEDs that will help you know what's happening to your motherboard when your overclock fails. There are three other buttons that provide you with an update BIOS, reset CMOS settings, or a "quick OS" button.

Call of Duty: WWII's beta has wrapped up, with developer Raven putting in the extra mile for the PC version of the game. You don't need a supercomputer to run the game, either.

Raven Software worked on the PC port of the game, with Raven CTO Dwight Luetscher talking with PCGamer recently where he said: "The World War 2 setting, and this game in particular I think, is very well suited for the PC community, in the way some of the recent releases haven't (been)". He continued: "We really believe this is the year where the PC is going to excel. This is the year that we're going to give it our best shot to win the hearts and minds of the PC community".

I don't believe a word about "this game" being "very well suited for the PC community", but I see it as more that PUBG is doing so well it's going to drag the entire PC gaming market out of the slump that Raven thinks it was in, and into the limelight. Not another Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V development job on the latest COD because it has some additional PC features that gamers have been complaining were missing from the series for YEARS.

Samsung has some of the best flagship smartphones on the market and available right now to buy, with the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and even the new Galaxy Note 8. Apple on the other hand, is still a little while away from unleashing its new iPhone X.

Right now, Samsung is the only company in the world that is capable of making enough OLED displays, NAND flash, and DRAM in the quantities that Apple need for the mass sales of its iPhone. This is a huge profit driver for Samsung, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that these massive orders chalk up big profits for Samsung's component business, which is around 35% of Samsung's revenue.

So when your friends say "but the iPhone X is way better than your Samsung junk", you can reply with "well, your iPhone X wouldn't even exist without Samsung" and then link them to this article. Boom.

I awoke to an email this morning from Futuremark that announced they have a new entry into the 3DMark family of benchmarks, with Time Spy Extreme launching on October 11. What is Time Spy Extreme?

Futuremark's new 3DMark Time Spy Extreme benchmark run is a 4K DX12 benchmark run of the current Time Spy benchmark that will stress multi-core processors, countless GPU combinations, and more. Futuremark explains: "A decade or so ago, hardware sites were asking, "Will dual-core processors enhance your gaming experience?" Today, we're looking at new processors from AMD and Intel that can have up to 18 cores in some cases".

The company continues: "The CPU test has been redesigned to let processors with 8 or more cores perform to their full potential. Compared with Time Spy, the Extreme CPU test is three times more demanding. It also lets processors use more advanced instructions sets up to AVX2 when supported".

It was reported last week that GIGABYTE and MSI weren't working on custom AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, but that rumor was wrong. I quickly reached out to my contacts at GIGABYTE which confirmed they were indeed working on custom RX Vega.

Now we have some photos to show courtesy of our friends at VideoCardz, with the GIGABYTE Radeon RX Vega 64 GAMING OC graphics card. We can see that it rocks what will surely be an updated Windforce 2X cooler, but it is pretty damn massive compared to AMD's sleek Radeon RX Vega 64 reference board.

GIGABYTE will be throwing DVI away (yay) and using just 1 x HDMI 2.0 and 3 x DP ports, while GIGABYTE seems to be using a custom PCB on their RX Vega 64 GAMING OC variant.

Ten years before CD Projekt RED made The Witcher series a beloved name in gaming, another game development studio called Metropolis tried to make an adaptation on Sapkowski's works back in the 1990s.

The Metropolis Witcher project was believed to be lost in the ravages of time, but two developers give us a rare look into the early days of PC games development--back before CDPR thought about plunging headlong into making a series that would become their magnum opus. Polish game dev Metropolis Software started developing their Witcher adaptation in 1996, but apart from a few pictures, nothing had ever surfaced--until now.

In a recent interview with arhn.eu , ex-Metropolis game devs Kacper Reutt and Jarek Sobierski not only discussed key points about the failed project, but also managed to get an early tech demo prototype up and running in the stream. What followed is an early look at what could've been the very first Witcher game. The interview is about 13 minutes of interesting game development tidbits and I advise any Witcher fan to give it a watch.

Sony is updating the original PlayStation VR headset with some small hardware iterations--just don't expect new HMD technology or anything.

The new PlayStation VR, model CUH-ZVR2, will allow HDR pass-through via a new enhanced Processor Unit, aka the little box that flips the video signal to the television. With the new box users will no longer have to unhook the video feed cable to game on an HDR screen, which solves one of the main frustration points for PS4 Pro owners. But there's a trade-off: the new CUH-ZVR2 model won't be compatible with the cord from the original CUH-ZVR1 launch model, meaning if you lose your cord you'll have to buy a new one.

"A hardware update to PlayStation VR is being prepared. The new version, model number CUH-ZVR2, features an updated design that enables the stereo headphone cables to be integrated with the VR headset and a slimmer, streamlined connection cable. There's also an updated Processor Unit that supports HDR pass through, enabling users to enjoy HDR-compatible PS4 content on a TV without having to disconnect the Processor Unit in between the TV and the PS4 system. This function can be used only when the VR headset is turned off," reads an update on the PlayStation Blog.