Latest News - Page 2226

AMD has finally confirmed it will be indeed launching Radeon RX Vega at SIGGRAPH 2017, which takes place in LA between July 30 and August 3. I will be on the ground at SIGGRAPH, covering the event itself, and everything AMD will be announcing - including Radeon RX Vega - at the show.

The official Radeon Twitter account tweeted: "We can't wait to announce our new Vega products, including RX at this year's #SIGGRAPH - make sure to follow us for more details". Boom. Radeon RX Vega confirmed for an early August reveal, but I'm confident we'll hear much more from AMD between then and now, and I'm sure some NDAs will be thrown onto the table, too.

AMD launched its new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition recently, with some so-so gaming performance that rivals a GeForce GTX 1070, but even some of the largest people in the tech industry - including influential tech YouTubers, are comparing its gaming performance against gaming-focused cards. It's not a gaming-orientated card, but a professional card that can game if the owner wants to, instead of switching between graphics cards for professional, and then personal/gaming use.

Intel must be shaking in its boots over the various threats from AMD, and now there's news that AMD has scooped back a huge 10.4% of the CPU market share from Intel... all in Q2 2017.

PassMark's quarterly market share report has interesting results, from thousands of submissions that flow through their database each quarter. Remember: PassMark's market share data comes from benchmark submissions, and not total systems sold - it also doesn't include any operating systems other than Windows.

AMD now owns 31% of the CPU market, which is a huge freakin' deal compared to the 20% they had just three months ago. This is the largest CPU share dominance AMD has enjoyed over the last 10 years, and a 10% gain in the CPU market in a single quarter is a massive achievement.

Vivendi's impending takeover of French games-maker Ubisoft may end up costing the company big.

After forcibly acquiring Gameloft in 2016, Vivendi has eyed another Guillemot family business: the massively popular games developer and publisher Ubisoft. Vivendi actually laid the seeds to the Ubisoft takeover in 2015, where it began buying shares and increasing its stake in the company for two years. Vivendi currently owns 27% of Ubisoft's share capital and 24.5% of its voting rights.

The Guillemot family has repelled the takeover in the only real way it can: by increasing its stake thereby raising the amount Vivendi will have to pay to acquire the company. Following a recent boost, the Guillemot family now holds 13.6% of Ubisoft's share capital and 20.02% of the company's voting rights.

French media titan Vivendi has its sights set on Ubisoft, one of the games industry's most powerful players, but executives affirm Ubisoft isn't the only target.

Instead of satiating the titan's hunger, Vivendi's recent acquisition of Gameloft has only whet the company's appetite for video game earnings. Vivendi acquired Gameloft from the Guillemot family in 2016, buying the founders out of majority ownership in a takeover. Now Vivendi may repeat this strategy to pull ownership of Ubisoft away from the Guillemots. Although Gameloft earned 257 million euros in sales and 10 million euros in operating profit in 2016, Vivendi isn't satisfied. The media conglomerate seeks a lucrative anchor in the gaming sector, and if it inherits Ubisoft via a hostile takeover, it will inherit a digital games empire of profitable and sustainable long-term revenues.

However, Vivendi could pass on Ubisoft altogether. Gameloft CEO and ex Vivendi COO Stéphane Roussel told French press site Le Figaro that the company is weighing other acquisition targets, and although Ubisoft is the "most natural solution," it's "not Ubisoft or nothing." If Vivendi pursues another acquisition that costs more than 1 billion euros, Roussel says, then the company will cease any takeover of Ubisoft.

LG's V30 should be announced at this year's IFA in Berlin at the end of August. The phone is expected to be powered by Qualcomm's yet-to-be-announced Snapdragon 836. The device should feature a 3.5mm headphone jack, dual rear camera setup, and IP68. This may mean that the V30 could be the end of a long LG heritage of removable batteries.

Now, a new report has revealed another interesting thing about the upcoming device. As you are probably well aware of, LG's V series features a secondary screen, at least it did in the past. According to the rumor, the V30 won't have a secondary screen.

The same rumor claims that the V30 will come with an OLED display, a first of any LG flagship smartphone. This could also mean Google daydream VR support could be a feature as well.

BioWare's new Dragon Age game is very likely a big mainline sequel in the massively popular RPG franchise.

We've known for a while now that BioWare is making a new Dragon Age game, and speculation hinted the game could be a spin-off style RTS game meant to fill out the gaps between Anthem, the studio's massive new online multiplayer IP, and the missing Mass Effect-shaped block in BioWare's release slate. But now the developers have strongly hinted the new Dragon Age is a big AAA endeavor and not a sideline project.

Dragon Age series executive producer Mark Darrah outright confirmed on Twitter that he's currently not a "Dragon Age Tactics" game.

Bungie makes a huge change to Destiny 2's loot finding system, removing the luck of the draw from weapons.

One of the main reasons to continue playing a game like Destiny is loot. The quest for better loot is at the heart of countless games from Diablo to Borderlands, and gamers ceaselessly grind and grind for the chance to get better gear. Drops are always random, and its this blind lottery that keeps players going. In an effort to better track and fine-tune weapon balances, Bungie has removed this key fundamental core tenant from its new high-profile Destiny 2 sequel.

Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith confirms that all in-game weapons have the same stats and no longer vary. "There aren't random rolls on weapons anymore. Better Devils is a Crucible hand cannon [in Destiny 2], and what it has on it is what it has on it. Period," Smith told Mashable in a recent interview.

Paradox Interactive has added another strategy games titan to its already potent arsenal of RTS mastery.

Triumph Studios, the developers behind the long-running Age of Wonders PC strategy game, has been acquired by Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive, joining the banner of acclaimed titles as Europa Universalis, Pillars of Eternity, and Crusader Kings. Paradox confirms that the acquisition is essentially in name only and is less of an acquisition and more of a kind of long-term partnership.

Triumph's full development team and executive leadership will stay on, including the original co-founders Lennart Sas and Arno van Wingerden, and all of the studio's current projects will continue and be fully published by Paradox Interactive.

G.SKILL just don't stop with their lust for taking over the RAM market, announcing their new quad-channel DDR4 kit designed for Intel's next-gen Skylake-X CPUs and the new X299 platform.

We now have G.SKILL's latest flagship 64GB Trident Z DDR4-4200 in quad-channel with 4 x 16GB DIMMs, while there's a dual-channel Trident Z DDR4-4400 Black series, ready for the new Kaby Lake-X processors. Samsung is providing their 20nm 8Gb DDR4 DRAM modules, available in 3600, 3733, 3800, 4000, and 4200MHz, with voltages from 1.35V to 1.4V.

The faster Trident Z kits have higher latencies of up to CL19 on DDR4-4200, while the slower kits will have their latencies at CL16. G.SKILL loves RGB LEDs, so there are two variants of X299 ready DDR4: Trident Z, and Trident Z RGB.

If you haven't had your eyes on Unikrn, it's a company started by a man years ahead of his time in multiple businesses - with Unikrn itself being the first eSports betting company in the world. Unikrn lets gamers bet and then win or lose real money on eSports tournaments and games around the world, with games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and DOTA 2.

Unikrn then had another world's first when it launches Unikoin, a digital currency that could be used for eSports betting on its own site. But just last week the company announced UnikoinGold, Unikrn's own token that is designed as a decentralized ERC20 token on the hugely popular Ethereum blockchain. This means that you can buy, sell, or trade digital currencies on an exchange that supports Ethereum. This also means people can mine their own Ethereum at home and exchange them into UnikoinGold, betting on eSports games through Unikrn using mined Ethereum. That's pretty awesome.

I reached out to Rahul and asked him some questions:

Digital currencies are all the rage right now with global GPU shortages thanks to Ethereum mining, and just as I've reached 1.15GH/s with 46 graphics cards mining away, eSports betting giant Unikrn has landed the eyes of investor Mark Cuban.

Cuban has announced he is investing in Unikrn, which is in the planning stages of its own token sale, where he said: "I want to learn more about them". He added that he hasn't "signed the paperwork yet. But it's likely it will happen". Unikrn is expected to roll out its initial coin offering (ICO) in September, which will be based on Ethereum. Ethereum mining is one of the hottest trends of digital currency this year, driving a global sell out of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.

We will be closely covering Unikrn's moves with its own UnikrnGold, a Unikrn currency based on ERC20, which will trade on all of the main crypto exchanges after the initial token sale.

Put your phone down. Turn your computer off. Sorry if you can't read this news, but your LCD is burning you... according to Dr Howard Murad, an American dermatologist to A-list stars like Taylor Swift and Jennifer Lopez.

Murad claims that spending four days (not all at once) in front of screens that emit harmful blue rays, is equivalent to 20 minutes of sunbathing. Murad gave the remarks during a segment on This Morning, saying that we can better protect ourselves with sunscreen when using our smartphones, tablets, and computers. Certain sunscreens have an ingredient called lutein, while foods like goji berries have lutein, protecting you from these harmful rays.

It just so happens Murad is the owner of a multi-million dollar skincare range, urging viewers to eat foods that contain the sunscreen-like lutein ingredient, and to apply a tablespoon of lotion to your face before going out into the sun, or snapping a selfie, I guess. Murad said: "Look for sunscreen that contains lutein, because that helps protect from the blue rays. It's really important. It's something that you should be using".

AMD has been on the offensive ever since it launched Ryzen earlier this year, with the next few weeks leading into the Ryzen ThreadRipper family of CPUs and their respective X399 chipset, but AMD also teased its mid-range Ryzen 3 CPUs destined for a couple of months from now.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen PRO family of processors were announced in the last 24 hours, with some - but not all, details on Ryzen 3. Ryzen 3 should have the same cache structure as the lowest-end Ryzen 5 processor, the Ryzen 5 1400. We will receive 8MB of L3 cache enabled, versus the 16MB of L3 cache on Ryzen 5 1500X, 1600, and 1600X. Each core will still retain its full 512KB of L2 cache, and lowered TDPs of just 65W.

We don't know the full details on Ryzen 3 just yet, but Ryzen 3 will be 4C/4T processors without SMT enabled like Ryzen 5. Ryzen 3 1300 should be a 4C/4T chip @ 3.5/3.7GHz, while the Ryzen 3 1200 will be a 4C/4T processor at 3.1/3.4GHz. We should expect the Ryzen 3 1300X as well, but we'll have to wait and see about details on that in the near future.

As I predicted earlier this month, EA will monetized Star Wars: Battlefront II with a card-based microtransaction system in the form of blind loot crates, not unlike Halo 5's REQ packs.

If you've read our previous coverage then you have a good idea how this monetization system works. YouTuber Battlefront Updates reveals that Battlefront II features loot cases which contain 5 Star Cards of random quality which are denoted by color (White = Common, Green = Uncommon, Rare = Blue, Epic = Purple, Legendary = Orange).

These loot crates can be purchased with real money, meaning gamers will effectively be able to pay for the chance of earning powerful loot--not unlike Halo 5.

Thanks to RUST developer Garry Newman, everyday gamers get a glimpse into how Steam's refund system can affect sales of any widely popular game.

Newman, who's responsible for popular games such as Garry's Mod and RUST, is one of the thousands of developers and publishers that has to deal with refunds. As PC GamesN rightly puts it, an actual game sale on Steam doesn't mean that money will actually stay in the developer's pocket--there's a chance players will simply refund the game before the allotted limit and get their money back. Newman recently revealed that RUST has been refunded 329,970 times, amounting to a loss of over $4 million.

A $4 million loss in potential sales will certainly make any developer or publisher wince, but this is simply the reality of selling games on Steam (and, more recently, on Xbox LIVE). However, Newman affirms that refunds make up just 6% of RUST's 5.5 million total sales.

Netflix has embraced Dolby's next-generation Atmos sound technology in a bid to create a true theater-like cinematic experience for living rooms across the globe.

Streaming titan Netflix today announced that it will be integrating Dolby Atmos sound quality into key titles across its library of content. Dolby Atmos support debuted today with the release of Okja, and the company aims to match the impressive visuals of 4K HDR with high-end sound quality.

"I'm excited for Netflix members all over the world to be able to get a theater-quality experience in the comfort of their own homes while watching Okja and the other excellent titles to come," Netflix Chief Product Officer Greg Peters said. "Over time, we plan to add support to more devices, making the experience more accessible to Netflix members everywhere."

Months after its release, Ubisoft is still updating Watch Dogs 2 with new content and features. This time the huge open-world hacktivist adventure is getting a four-player party mode for co-op free roam or multiplayer activities.

Watch Dogs 2's new four-player party mode allows gamers to team up with 2-4 players in private or public parties and go carousing across San Francisco. Sadly four-player parties can't actually do any co-op missions since the quests are specifically made for 2 player parties.

The update will go live on July 4th on all platforms, but don't expect any singleplayer fixes or updates/patches this time around.

Bandai Namco today announced that its Namco Museum collection on the Nintendo Switch is coming to the West in late July.

The Namco Museum collection really does exemplify the Nintendo Switch's unique transforming form factor, and shows how old-school classics should use the system. SEGA and Capcom could learn a thing or two from this--so could Nintendo themselves--but in lieu of traditional Virtual Console support, Switch owners have been limited in old-school gaming fare. Now their diets are about to be enriched with a nice helping of arcade games.

The retro collection features 11 classic coin-op arcade games that any 80's kid will recognize, and even sports one of the hardest Turbo Grafix 16 games ever made: Splatterhouse. What's so impressive about Namco Museum collection is that gamers can flip their Switch consoles vertically to simulate a coin-op arcade, adding a splash of authenticity to their experience. This is something that I've wanted to see for a while, and I'm glad Bandai Namco has had the foresight to include something like this--Tabletop Mode's "arcade mode" euphemism really sticks here as gamers are literally turning their Switch consoles into miniature arcade machines.

The battle of the top chips continues. Samsung Electronics is reportedly focusing on the next generation of 6nm chip fabrication technology. In order to do so, the Korean tech giant will stop further investments in the 7nm chip manufacturing technology.

Samsung is expected to introduce 8nm chips next year as an improved version of the 10nm technology, which has already been found in some of the best Android smartphones in 2017 so far. The Koreans will produce a limited number of 7nm line and focus its investment on the 6nm market.

Samsung should be installing two new ASML machines, vital for improving chip manufacturing efficiency, this year, and seven more in 2018. The manufacturing of Samsung's 6nm process and chips using it is expected to begin starting in 2019.

At this year's CES, Faraday Future unveiled their highly anticipated electric vehicle - the FF 91. The FF 91 is their first production vehicle, and the company plans for it to compete directly with Tesla.

The company has now announced that they have successfully tested the limits of FF 91 in its first attempt to challenge the 4,720-foot ascent of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

The FF 91, driven by FF Principal Engineer Robin Shute, finished with a time of 11:25:083, beating last year's Tesla P90D by 20 seconds.