Latest News - Page 2191

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of Disney's 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales', we have ten awesome Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at Disney Home Entertainment. Each pack includes a Blu-ray copy of the film, a bandana, notebook, water bottle, and travel pouch all enclosed in a travel bag!

Captain Jack Sparrow finds the winds of ill-fortune blowing even more strongly when deadly ghost pirates led by his old nemesis, the terrifying Captain Salazar, escape from the Devil's Triangle, determined to kill every pirate at sea...including him. Captain Jack's only hope of survival lies in seeking out the legendary Trident of Poseidon, a powerful artifact that bestows upon its possessor total control over the seas.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles and send your correct answer to the following question (along with your postal address), to ben at TweakTown dot com before the competition closes on September:

Destiny 2 is off to a roaring start on PS4 and Xbox One, and for good reason: the game is actually pretty damn good.

Bungie today announced that Destiny 2 has amassed 1.2 million concurrent users on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which pretty much means the game is a bona-fide hit (we expected nothing less). Despite the hotly contested monetized shader controversy, console gamers are apparently milling into Destiny 2's majestic and expansive open-ended world to gun down countless aliens and collect sweet, sweet loot.

While Bungie didn't give out actual sales figures--and we likely won't hear anything until Activision drops their fiscal Q3'17 earnings--the concurrent users give a hint at Destiny 2's sales. Bungie's Tweet went life at 2:24 PM, which is hardly prime time, and during 7PM - 10PM those numbers could skyrocket. Analyst firm SuperData predicted that Destiny 2 on console has a 33% chance to sell 1.5 million units digitally in its first three months of availability, and overall sales could be much, much higher. Also remember the PC version of the game hasn't launched yet, and is currently scheduled for an October 24 release.

A Bethesda executive says the publisher has a new unannounced game coming out this year, and we're pretty sure it's Fallout 4 on Nintendo Switch.

In a recent video interview with Tek Syndicate at PAX West 2017, Bethesda Softworks VP of Public Relations Pete Hines said that the company has a mysterious new game coming out this year that they haven't told anyone about. "We have nine games hands-on here, and all of which are coming out this year or are already out. Three VR titles including Skyrim for PSVR, we have Skyrim Switch, we've got Wolfenstein 2 and The Evil Within 2...we have a ton of stuff going on. And we even have a game coming out this year that we haven't even told anyone about yet," Mr. Hines said. "They can wait. It won't be so long."

Before you get too excited, we have strong reason to believe this is just Fallout 4 on Nintendo Switch. Bethesda typically reveals any new games the same year they release, and if it were a major new game, it would've been revealed at Bethesda's huge E3 2017 event. There's been Fallout 4 GOTY Switch listings at select retailers, but even if these listings didn't exist, Bethesda has already told us enough information with the Creation Club. The Creation Club is Bethesda's new storefront that monetizes optional bite-sized DLC content, and is specifically geared to make most of its money from platforms that don't support free mods very well: Sony's PlayStation 4 is one of these, but the biggest is Nintendo's Switch platform.

Even though Flash Memory Summit 2017 was cut short by a fire on the showroom floor, TweakTown was able to take a close look at some of Phison's upcoming SSD technology. We even got a chance to bench the Phison E8 in our hotel room using our own test equipment. The main star of the show for Phison is their soon-to-be-released, value-oriented Phison E8 NVMe SSD.

The E8 isn't designed to compete for any performance crown; it is designed to compete for the value crown. E8-powered SSDs will deliver 3x the performance of typical SATA SSDs for around the same cost. Even though the E8 is only a two-lane controller that is very power efficient, it packs a big punch. In fact, the E8 cranks out enough performance to take on Intel's popular 600p series of value SSD, and Western Digital's Black series, even though they are both 4-lane PCIe SSDs. At first, we were a bit skeptical that a 2-lane E8-controlled SSD would be able to match the performance of the 600p or the WD_BLACK. That was until we benched it.

As the above benchmarks demonstrate, the 512GB E8 SSD that we benched actually outperforms the 512GB 600p and the 512GB WD_BLACK. Phison intends to offer their E8 SSDs for around the same cost as SATA-based SSDs, so the E8-powered SSDs should be priced below the 600p and the WD_BLACK.

Mid-tower cases don't get much better looking than Raijinek's latest chassis, the Coeus EVO. Featuring 4mm thick tempered glass on every panel (top, sides and front) with SECC steel frame and motherboard tray, to say that this case is a thing of beauty is an understatement.

Backing up the Coeus EVO's style is functionality. Allowing 350mm of room for graphics cards, CPU coolers as tall as 175mm, and PSUs as long as 200mm. Storage options include up to four 3.5-inch and two 2.5-inch drive bays for your SSDs. The overall measurements of the case is listed at 235 x 444 x 544mm and weighs 11.6 kg.

All that tempered glass allows vision of your water cooling setup, with support of up to 360mm radiator in the front and 280mm radiator at the top. Featuring a dual-compartment layout, The PSU shroud houses the PSU and storage drives away from the main chamber to allow more room for custom loops.

The remastered version of 2011's L.A Noire is set for release on current-gen consoles on November 14, however PC gamers were left in the dark regarding a remastered release. However, Rockster also revealed that they're working on their entry into the virtual reality market with L.A Noire: The VR Case Files for the HTC Vive.

L.A Noire: The VR Case Files is specifically designed for VR that includes seven cases from the original game. With VR technology, you'll be able to use the Vive's wands to steer cars, open their doors, shoot while driving and change the radio station.

The HTC Vive blog explains: "Players can use real-world physical motions including grabbing, inspecting and manipulating individual clues or using the detective's notebook to make notes or draw freehand."

The crypomining phase is slowing fading, but this hasn't stopped BIOSTAR releasing the first Micro-ATX Intel H110 Chipset Motherboard dedicated for crypto mining systems. Built ground up for mining, BIOSTAR have removed features don't enhance mining performance to keep costs down and efficiency up.

The compact design still allows for 6 x PCI-E support (1 x PCI-E x16 3.0, 5 x PCI-E x1 2.0) and supports all the essentials in optimizing your mining rig including 7th generation Intel Core processors, 2-DIMM DDR4-2400MHz RAM to 32GB, HDMI and USB 3.0. Featuring HDMI KVM support, this allows for easy management of multi-mining setups or D-Sub KVM for more conventional multi-monitor setups.

The BIOSTAR H110M-BTC is a great choice for entry miners, that require affordable pricing and still offering support and performance for multiple GPU's.

There have been simulators of real life events and animals before, but now developer SOEDESCO have announced the latest in simulators: Real Farm.

Real Farm will be released on October 20, with the developer unveiling the first gameplay trailer and screenshots for the game. The developers promises that simulator fans and traditional gamers will enjoy Real Farm and its two game modes: Free Mode and Career Mode.

Starting with Free Mode, wher eyou will start off in an established farm and begin wherever, and however you want. But if you play in Career Mode, you'll start Real Farm with NOTHING. You'll have to do work jobs and missions for other farmers in order to gain their respect, reputation, and earn that important money... so that you can buy your own farm, and expand your game.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has surpassed 10 million sales, pulling in over $300 million in sales for developer Bluehole, but now PUBG creator Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene has talked about the water in his game. This will be done before PUBG reaches 100 million sales, I'd say.

During an interview with GamesIndustry, Greene said that the water technology from Sea of Thieves could be used in Battlegrounds in the near future. Greene said: "There are games like Destiny that really get auto-aim and controllers in an FPS feeling good. And I think that with Microsoft's help it's really going to get it feeling like a good shooter on console. We want to give the same experience. We want to PC and Xbox to be identical in terms of the experience you have playing the game".

He continued: "And another thing is, I was at the Microsoft event last night talking to the Sea of Thieves guys. They said they loved the game, they play it a lot, but, 'Oh, you're water.' I mean, our water is not very good, but Rare has great water tech. They said, 'We should share some knowledge.' That's a great thing about being part of a network of studios. We can get that water tech, essentially for free, and we can share stuff with them. That's just invaluable, because their water is great. Having that would really finish off our world nicely".

NVIDIA unleashed its next-gen DGX-1V system earlier this year, promising a Q3 2017 launch, and have followed through with that launch now shipping the first Volta-based DGX-1V systems.

The first Volta-based DGX-1V system was shipped to MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science (CCDS), which is a "Massachusetts-based research group focusing on AI and machine learning applications in healthcare", reports AnandTech. This means CCDS is one of the first research institutes with the new Volta-based AI supercomputer, an upgrade from their Pascal-based DGX Station.

CCDS will be using the AI supercomputers in training deep neural networks that will be evaluating medical images and scans, with AnandTech adding that they'll be "using Massachusetts General Hospital's collection of phenotypic, genetics, and imaging data. In turn, this can assist doctors and medical practitioners in making faster and more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans".

There are people who spend their lives continuously working on breaking 3DMark records, and now that AMD's massive Ryzen Threadripper CPUs are here, AMD has once again entered the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra Hall of Fame.

You can see here from the Top 15 runs in the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra Hall of Fame that Intel absolutely dominates, but the #12 spot goes to 'Finnsk3' who ran the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X with 4 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI.

Finnsk3 used the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X on the ASUS X399 Zenith Extreme motherboard, with 32GB of G.SKILL 3600MHz DDR4 RAM, and 4 x GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI. The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X was clocked @ 4.17GHz, which provides a score that beasts out the Core i9-7900X from Intel.

Turn 10 has announced that Forza Motorsport 7 has gone gold, celebrating the milestone by releasing an official commercial trailer.

The new trailer for Forza Motorsport 7 features comedian and CarCast host Adam Corolla, pro driver Ken Block, and a bunch of gamers. There are some uber cars in the trailer, including: a Pagani Huarya, Porsche Cayman GT4, Plymouth Barracuda, and Block's own custom-built Ford Mustang "Hoonicorn".

There will also be a PC demo of Forza Motorsport 7 coming soon, and get this: it will include a benchmark utility so that we can test the performance of the game. Expect a bunch of cards to be benchmarked when the demo arrives on September 19.

Nintendo has officially confirmed that some Nintendo Switch games won't fit on the standard Switch GameCard cartridge, strongly indicating key publishers are choosing the more affordable cartridge solutions for their game instead of going with the higher capacity versions.

As per Nintendo's official announcement, some physical cartridge-based will require a microSD card to be installed and force users to download an undisclosed amount of data in order to play a full game. "A microSD card will be needed for certain Nintendo Switch games that contain an especially large amount of content and require additional storage for players to enjoy the full experience," Nintendo told IGN. NBA 2K18 is the first known game to force users to buy microSD cards, but is the game so big it really won't fit on a cartridge?

A PR representative told us that NBA 2K18 is 25GB on the Nintendo Switch. That means it will consume more than the Switch's available built-in 25GB of free memory. But Nintendo Switch GameCards can actually hold up to 32GB of data; as per Eurogamer, GameCards come in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavors. The bigger the capacity, the more expensive the cartridges are. So instead of using the 32GB capacity that would hold the full 25GB game, it appears 2K Games has selected the 16GB GameCard, thus forcing users to download up to 9GB of data to their microSD cards.

The Federal Trade Comission today announced that prominent YouTubers TmarTn and Syndicate have settled charges of deceiving fans and viewers in the CS:GO Lotto gambling controversy.

CS:GO Lotto owners Trevor "TmarTn" Martin and Thomas "Syndicate" Cassell, who promoted the skin-gambling website and falsely represented earnings while failing to disclose their ownership, have complied with the FTC's settlement orders. Now the duo must "clearly and conspicuously disclose any material connections with an endorser or between an endorser and any promoted product or service."

"Consumers need to know when social media influencers are being paid or have any other material connection to the brands endorsed in their posts," said FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. "This action, the FTC's first against individual influencers, should send a message that such connections must be clearly disclosed so consumers can make informed purchasing decisions."

Global entry! We have teamed up with ASRock to give away a total of four brand new motherboards to four lucky winners.

ASRock has kindly provided two of their X299 Taichi motherboards and two of their Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 motherboards.

How to Win

Earlier in the year, Microsoft announced that Killer Instinct will be available on Steam. We all expected that Microsoft would only allow cross-play support with Xbox One and Windows 10 platforms, while the minority of Steam users would be left out of the fun.

Well, we were wrong. Revealed on the Killer Instinct forums, Community Manager Rukari "rukizzel" Austin posted "This is your confirmation that Killer Instinct players on Xbox One or Windows 10 will be able to play cross-network with players on Steam, as well, and we're super excited to be able to bring that feature to you when KI launches on Steam in the coming weeks."

Austin further stated. "We will be testing this feature, making sure all the kinks are worked out (as best as we can) in a live environment. What that means for you is that you will see the option for cross play in your menus, but then there will be times where that menu item is turned off, and seemingly missing. Never fear, that is simply us working on things in the background, and your experience will not be affected as we do our work."

MSI have released their new monster laptop, the MSI GT75R Titan. This laptop is the envy of most desktops and is powered by Intel's Core i7-7820HK processor that features MSI's Cooler Boost 5 that allows for overclocking up to 4GHz.

With a wide selection of GPU's available, you will have a tough time selecting out of NVIDIA GTX 1070, GTX 1070 SLI or a GTX 1080. With support up to 64GB of DDR4-2400MHz RAM memory, you can select two 512GB SSD in RAID 0 and a 1TB HDD for your storage needs.

SteelSeries have teamed up with MSI to provide an impressive SteelSeries-designed RGB mechanical keyboard. Also included is a USB 3.1 Type-C port, a memory card reader and HDMI/mini DisplayPort connections.

Zotac have today announced two groundbreaking additions to their mini PC catalog, the ZBOX MI553 and the ZBOX PI225. These mini PCs are customized to contemporary users' needs and equipped with the latest technology.

"Both ZBOX MI553 and PI255 inherit the defining features of their predecessors, and perhaps employ the most ambitious designs and features yet in a Mini PC. We want to make sure users can enjoy a simple and fast computing experience." Said Chinny Chuang, ZOTAC Global Director of Marketing.

The ZBOX MI553 features a 7th Gen Intel Core processor, revolutionary Optane memory technology, Thunderbolt 3 and is professionally dressed for the office and home environments. Also featuring the largest surface-area of ventilation ever in a mini PC, the all-new ZBOX MI553 is the perfect choice for style, performance and aesthetics.

ENERMAX have announced their flagship power supply series, the MaxTytan. These power supplies are the definition of their philosophy of "Power, Innovation and Design". The MaxTytan range is 80PLUS Titanium certified with over 94% efficiency and available in 750W and 850W outputs.

The MaxTytan range is equipped with Self-cleaning DFR Technology. This means at a flick of a switch and your PSU's fan will spin in reverse to eliminate accumulated dust to prolong your power supplies life.

To complete a great all round PSU, ENERMAX have engineered fanless mode for anything less than 55% load, providing a quiet cooling experience for your full modular series power supply.

Philips introduces us to their new 276E8FJAB monitor, this QHD 27-inch display utilizes Philips' Ultra Wide-Color technology that offers crisp images with the richest, most vivid colors on an elegant display for incredible viewing pleasure.

The IPS panel produces a wider color gamut, producing more natural-looking greens, vivid reds and deeper blues whilst offering users extra-wide viewing angles of 178/178 degrees.

Offering only 60Hz refresh rate, this may discourage gamers who want high refresh rates from their panels. Philips compensate this by have included their Flicker-free technology, which regulates brightness and reduces flicker to relieve eye fatigue and provide more comfortable viewing experience. SmartContrast detects the content on the display and automatically adjusts colors and backlight intensity while SmartImage Lite analyzes the content of the screen and dynamically enhances the contrast, color saturation and sharpness for ultimate display performance.