PowerColor RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil: liquid cooled Navi costs $599

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Nov 19, 2019 11:00 PM CST

PowerColor has just unveiled what appears to be the best custom Navi graphics card yet, with the new Radeon RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil coming in with liquid cooling and its Navi GPU clocked at up to 2070MHz -- the fastest clocks on a Navi 10 out of the box yet.

PowerColor RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil: liquid cooled Navi costs $599

The new PowerColor RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil features an EK Water Blocks made full-cover water block, with PowerColor tweaking it with their own logos and design traits. EK's water block on the Radeon RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil covers the entire PCB which means the Navi 10 GPU is liquid cooled, the 8GB of GDDR6 memory is liquid cooled, and the VRMs and MOSFETs are also cooled by liquid.

EKWB uses a nickel-plated copper base that takes heat away from the 7nm Navi 10 GPU, 8GB of GDDR6 memory and other heat-generating parts of the card. It does all of this while looking great too, with PowerColor throwing in some RGB lighting that isn't too over the top -- and if anything, really makes the card pop.

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AMD Radeon Pro W5700: workstation Navi, 8GB GDDR6, 9 TFLOPs for $799

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Nov 19, 2019 7:59 PM CST

AMD has announced its first Navi-based workstation graphics card with the new Radeon Pro W5700, featuring the Navi 10 GPU based on the RDNA architecture on 7nm -- the world's first 7nm workstation graphics card.

AMD Radeon Pro W5700: workstation Navi, 8GB GDDR6, 9 TFLOPs for $799

The new Radeon Pro W5700 packs 36 compute units which translates into 2304 stream processors and 64 ROPs, meaning it's not the full Navi 10 chip used on the flagship Radeon RX 5700 gaming card. We do have the Navi 10 GPU clocked at up to 1930MHz, resulting in total compute power of 8.89 TFLOPs.

AMD has chosen to use 8GB of GDDR6 on the same 256-bit memory bus as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, with the GDDR6 clocked at 14Gbps we have memory bandwidth of up to 448GB/sec. The one thing lacking from the new Navi-based Radeon Pro W5700 workstation graphics card is the use of ECC memory, something that the Vega-based Radeon Pro cards did offer.

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Tesla battery output/storage in South Australia to expand by 50%

Just over 200km north of me here in South Australia is the huge Tesla battery storage array in Hornsdale, with the Hornsdale Power Reserve currently having battery output of 100 megawatts -- and that's to soon increase by 50%.

Tesla battery output/storage in South Australia to expand by 50%

Tesla, the South Australian government and federal government, as well as French renewable energy company Neoen will be expanding the Hornsdale Power Reserve from 100 megawatts, to 150 megawatts. The upgrades will also include battery storage capacity boosts, which will see it expand up to 193.5 megawatt hours -- enough juice to keep it operating at 100% for over an hour.

The deal comes at the perfect time, with weather here in South Australia for November 20 set to be the hottest November on record with temperatures hitting 40C (104F) at just 10AM. I'm writing this news with all air conditioning on right now and I'm just surviving, but the electrical grid will be taking a big strain today.

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Halo 1 PC beta tests will start in 2020

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 19, 2019 4:16 PM CST

Halo: Reach is coming to PC in just a few weeks, but 343i will take a break before it starts testing out its next Halo PC project.

Halo 1 PC beta tests will start in 2020

Once Reach ships on December 3, the next up for a PC launch is Halo: Combat Evolved. But don't expect to try out Master Chief's original FPS adventure on PC before 2020 (unless of course you play the old-school version).

"Once Reach comes out next month, after the holiday we will start to reset and we'll start to flight Halo CE. We're just going to keep going down the road until we fill out the rest of the collection," 343i's Brian Jarrard told PCGamesN.

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What it's like to play Stadia with terrible latency

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 19, 2019 3:09 PM CST

Stadia's biggest drawback (or streaming in general) is latency and lag. They can interrupt gameplay tremendously in action games where reaction times are critical, which includes nearly the entire Stadia launch lineup.

What it's like to play Stadia with terrible latency

Latency was always one of the biggest concerns about Stadia, Google's new game streaming service. But how bad can it get? Pretty bad. The Washington Post recently illustrated Stadia's potential latency issues in a few GIFs, and they're not too pretty.

Since your internet speeds are always in flux, there's no guarantee you'll have a constantly-stable session unless your connection doesn't dip below a certain threshold. Admittedly enough, though, we haven't actually played Stadia and are going off of second-hand reports. I did try Project Stream last year, though, and found it to be an amazing experience.

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PlayStation game demos are coming back with Sony's ambitious new plan

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 19, 2019 1:53 PM CST

A recent Sony patent shows how the PlayStation Network could get much, much more socially interactive, complete with save state sharing and user-created game demos.

PlayStation game demos are coming back with Sony's ambitious new plan

Sony is currently ramping up its services to prepare for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, and PS Now is a big part of that acceleration. But how can PlayStation Now actually evolve? It already allows offline downloads, and just got a cheaper $10 a month price tag. Now all it needs is more innovative and interactive social features that allow subscribers to spread the word organically, and to do that, Sony is taking plays out of Google Stadia's playbook while making some interesting moves of its own.

According to a new Sony patent, PlayStation Now's game streaming service may eventually let users share their saves with other gamers. The idea is to create a save point in a specific game, then beam it to a friend via social media or even email, who can then click on the link and take over. This isn't exclusive to PS Now, either, and should work with any game sold on the PlayStation Store.

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Dragon Quest Builders 2 is releasing on PC at the end of the year

Jak Connor | Gaming | Nov 19, 2019 4:24 AM CST

A new announcement from Square Enix says that PC gamers will be getting Dragon Quest Builders 2 by the end of the year.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is releasing on PC at the end of the year

Dragon Quest Builders 2, the block-building RPG title, will let PC players explore a brand new fantasy land that is under threat by an evil cult. Players will be jumping into a title that allows them to build structures, slay creatures, collect materials, improve upon skills, and be a fearsome warrior. Not only will players be able to play a single-player campaign, but they will also be able to enjoy a creative online open sandbox world with up to 4 other players.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 will be arriving on Steam, and it will include all the Season Pass content that was previously released on the console version. What is the Season Pass content? Packs included are Hotto Stuff Pack, Modernist Pack, Aquarium Pack, Designer's Sunglasses, Legendary Builder Outfit, Dragonlord's Throne, and more. Dragon Quest Builders 2 will be coming to PC on December 10th. For more information about the title, check out the official Steam Store listing here.

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NASA select SpaceX, Blue Origin and more to design Artemis Moon lander

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Nov 19, 2019 3:32 AM CST

NASA has introduced five more companies into the Artemis lunar program, and these companies will be designing what they think is the best moon lander for an astronaut return trip.

NASA select SpaceX, Blue Origin and more to design Artemis Moon lander

NASA has selected the following companies to join its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS): SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp., Ceres Robotics and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc. The basis of this program is that private companies will be able to compete for contracts to deliver NASA science to the surface of the moon. This means that the previously listed companies will all be designing their lunar lander, along with nine other NASA selected companies.

According to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, "American aerospace companies of all sizes are joining the Artemis program. Expanding the group of companies who are eligible to bid on sending payloads to the moon's surface drives innovation and reduces costs to NASA and American taxpayers. We anticipate opportunities to deliver a wide range of science and technology payloads to help make our vision for lunar exploration a reality and advance our goal of sending humans to explore Mars."

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Amazon injects free music streaming into Android, iOS & Fire TV

Jak Connor | Internet & Websites | Nov 19, 2019 3:04 AM CST

Amazon has decided to expand its music sector by releasing the free service on to more devices. Amazon Music is now on Android, iOS, and Fire TV.

Amazon injects free music streaming into Android, iOS & Fire TV

Originally the free music streaming service was just available on Alexa devices, but now that has changed for users in the US, UK, and Germany. At the moment, the service limits free users with listening to playlists and stations that are from specific artists, genres, and songs.

The whole idea of the limitation is to give users a tease of what the service has to offer, and then hopefully either annoy the user into purchasing the whole service, or convince the user to upgrade their Prime package in some fashion. If you are in need of a music streaming service, you can check out Amazon Prime here.

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Aquaman & Spiderman star Willem Dafoe: superhero movies are 'too long'

Jak Connor | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Nov 19, 2019 2:36 AM CST

If you don't know who Willem Dafoe is, you'd probably recognize him from two movie roles, Spider-Man's Green Goblin and the recent blockbuster Aquaman.

Aquaman & Spiderman star Willem Dafoe: superhero movies are 'too long'

Despite his acting career taking him to movies that are comic book-based and his performances being amazing, Dafoe has given his opinion on the future of 'superhero' movies. Dafoe has joined Martin Scorsese in criticising superhero movies by saying that he finds them "too long and too noisy". This isn't all that Dafoe had to say, and he did admit that he doesn't want to "bite the hand that feeds me", but said that shooting Aquaman wasn't the same as shooting 2002's Spider-Man.

"Spider-Man was great fun because Sam Raimi made that like it was a little independent film. And also that was before a lot of the technology was in place, and comic book movies were fairly new, so it was exciting. There was nothing by the numbers, they didn't roll in the experts. Now it's become, the industry outgrew itself", said Dafoe. Comparing Spider-Man's shooting to Aquaman, he said "You have fun with some of the things that you get to do, because there's lots of hardware and there's lots of crazy crane shots and those kind of things."

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