Latest News - Page 2240

It looks like the rumors of NVIDIA working on a new Pascal-based cryptocurrency mining solution were right, with VideoCardz posting a new article teasing the GPU mining beast.

The new GPU cryptocurrency mining station rocks 8 x GP106-100 mining cards that are passively cooled, and have no display outputs. This is perfect for mining, as you don't need display connectivity, and the fanless design will keep them nice and quiet versus the huge noise some cards can pump out when the card is pushing full speed 24/7.

We're looking at 200MH/s when mining Ethereum, which is what I'm mining right now - and with a blend of GPUs on 9 systems with 18 graphics cards in total, I'm getting 470MH/s. So to see 200MH/s from a single GPU mining station with 8 x GPUs using less than 1000W, that's impressive indeed. The entire system is powered by an optional 1600W PSU, with 9 x 8cm 5800RPM coolers keeping everything nice and chilled.

Universal Studios's new Super Nintendo World attraction gets an official trailer, showing off what we can expect from the exotic new park.

Super Nintendo World looks like tons of fun, and the park is currently in development at three Universal Studios theme parks in Osaka Japan, Hollywood, California, and Orlando, Florida.

Based on images dug up by devout Twitter users, we're able to highlight some of the major rides that Super Nintendo World may offer, with possibilities like: a Donkey Kong themed cart rollercoaster ride, an on-rails Mario Kart ride, a watersled ride that hints the park will have a water-themed attraction, and a strange stand-up ride that may have users shooting Mario's iconic fireballs out of their hands at a digital screen.

Samsung isn't slowing down with smartphone releases this year, following up on the great launch of the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones with the launch of the Galaxy Note 8 in late August.

The new Galaxy Note 8 is reportedly being launched a month before Apple's next-gen iPhone which is expected in September, according to The Korea Herald. Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note 5 on August 13, 2015 and then was on sale on August 21. It was only August 2 last year that Samsung unveiled the super-awesome Galaxy Note 7, which had numerous battery-related issues forcing Samsung to recall it.

We should expect the Galaxy Note 8 to feature a large 6.3-inch bezel-less display, similar to what we've seen on the S8 and S8+ handsets. Samsung could use a dua-camera setup with a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera and 13-megapixel telephoto lens, with a fingerprint sensor under the glass on the front - versus the stupid positioning

For the hardcore Apple fans out there, you might be surprised to see that Heritage Auctions is planning to list a pair of prototype Apple sneakers that never made it to market, with the listing to hit eBay on June 11 starting at $15,000.

The sneakers feature the old school rainbow Apple logo, and were only handed out to employees at the time. The near-mint condition sneakers make them a near one-of-a-kind, which explains their $15,000 starting price. For those who collect Apple hardware, software, and well - clothes and shoes, this could be quite the steal.

Computex 2017 - GIGABYTE hosted their X299 OC gathering at Computex 2017 last week, bringing in a bunch of the world's leading overclocking enthusiasts and hit a new world record with the Intel Core i7-7740K: hitting 7.5GHz.

Legendary overclocker HiCookie reached 7.5GHz using liquid helium at -250C, pushing the Core i7-7740K to 7500MHz on a multiplier of 75, and a bus speed of 100MHz on the GIGABYTE X299-SOC Champion motherboard. They used a 16GB kit of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-4333 RAM, and a Corsair AX1500i PSU.

EA wants to use DICE's Frostbite 3 engine for everything these days including sports games, shooters, and its new affinity towards-action based games. While the engine is quite powerful, it doesn't play well with certain types of experiences--namely RPGs.

In a recent featured piece on why Mass Effect: Andromeda fell apart, Kotaku's Jason Schreier made some interesting points on EA's Frostbite engine--particularly how BioWare had to build both Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda from scratch because the engine hadn't ever been used to build RPGs before. "In the video game industry, Frostbite is known as one of the most powerful engines out there-and one of the hardest to use," Schreier writes.

Key BioWare developers spoke out on their experiences with Frostbite, explaining how the engine has evolved over time--and how developers like BioWare's Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams were forced to adapt by making their own tools completely from scratch.

Although Kojima Productions has started development on Death Stranding, the studio won't showcase new content or gameplay at E3 2017.

Hideo Kojima today confirmed that his new game Death Stranding won't be in attendance at E3 2017, so don't expect to see it on Sony's E3 conference on Monday, June 12. Why won't the game be shown? Kojima explains that the team is now "fully focused on development," but that won't stop the Metal Gear creator from showing up at Geoff Keighley's E3 Coliseum event in a panel about how film has influenced his work.

Details on Death Stranding have been vague, but we know that it'll be powered by Guerilla Games' powerful DECIMA engine, and that it's an open-world action game, but despite its weirdness, it's not exactly horror.

Video games industry analyst Michael Pachter predicts that Western publishers are wary of supporting Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid, and only Xbox 360 and PS3 last-generation ports of third-party Western games will come to the platform.

I've long voiced my concerns about the Nintendo Switch, underlining that major players in the West like Activision, Take-Two and EA seem to be hesitant to treat Nintendo's new machine as a current-generation competitor, and will instead focus primarily on consoles, PC, and mobiles. There's a lot of reasons why publishers may be dubious about the Switch, including its lower-end NVIDIA Tegra chip that's about 1/4th as powerful as a PS4, which requires trade-offs when switching to the device's 720p handheld screen, and the lack of a key social online infrastructure such as Xbox LIVE or PlayStation Network to allow monetization of games.

Japanese publishers, on the other hand, are supporting the platform: Capcom has announced Monster Hunter XX for the system, and SEGA will be bringing its mainline Sonic series to the system as well. But Western publishers seem unsure about the device and may only test the waters with "safe bets", ie ports of older last-generation PS3 and Xbox 360 games like NBA 2K18 and FIFA 18 (both of which are releasing on the Switch).

Like almost every other publisher at E3 2017, Square Enix will announce a new game, and it could be People Can Fly's new collaborative title.

Today the ESA revealed the full panel schedule for E3 2017's Coliseum event, which Square Enix will be in attendance. The timetable confirms that the publisher will not only announce a new game at E3 2017, but will also hold a 45-minute live demo of a "newly announced title being showcased at E3 2017."

Given the wording on the schedule, it's possible these games could be different or the same game. The publisher recently announced a collaboration with Bullestorm developer People Can Fly to develop a "new high-end original title for console and PC." We're betting that'll be the new game that's revealed at E3. But we could still see some Final Fantasy VII: Remake footage, or maybe some Kingdom Hearts III info to boot (but that might be wishful thinking).

Overclockers have now pushed G.SKILL's high-performance RAM to the 5.5GHz barrier, setting a new world record for highest DDR4 RAM frequency speeds.

G.SKILL today announced that renowned Taiwanese overclocker Toppc has pushed its premium DDR4 RAM to 5.5GHz with liquid nitrogen cooling. Toppc and G.SKILL now hold the world record for DDR4 RAM speeds and the milestone has been validated by HWBOT.

"DDR4 5.5GHz has been our next target after we achieved DDR4 5GHz last year. We are extremely excited to finally make it happen together with Samsung components, MSI X299 motherboard, and Intel Core X-series processor," says Tequila Huang, Corporate Vice President, G.SKILL International.

21st Century Fox makes its first major move with its FoxNext mobile games label by acquiring smartphone game maker Aftershock.

Media juggernaut 21st Century Fox today announced the first major acquisition for its FoxNext mobile games arm, which was originally created in January to facilitate mobile, VR & AR, and other video game experiences. The company acquired Aftershock--a spin-off of mobile dev Kabam after it was purchased by South Korean games-maker NetMarble--for "tens of millions of dollars," the Wall Street Journal reports. Aftershock is a seasoned mobile veteran who's worked top-grossing mobile games including Marvel Contest of Champions and The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth.

Aftershock will helm "a number of projects" including a massively multiplayer strategy game based in James Cameron's Avatar series. Cameron and Fox are currently working on a new Avatar film that's slated to release in 2020.

Amazon may have accidentally leaked a new Dissidia: Final Fantasy game.

According to a new Amazon listing, Square Enix will bring its landmark Final Fantasy fighting game to the West with a release on PS4. The game is apparently called Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT, and will feature "over 20 playable Final Fantasy heroes and villains." Square Enix's Dissidia series has typically remained in Japanese arcades, and has seldom come West except for launches on PSP and older systems.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT will be a PS4 port of the 2015 arcade game originally launched in Japan, which has been developed jointly by Team Ninja and Square Enix. The publisher has expressed interest in bringing key franchises to the West to improve reach, and even commented that it wants to launch an online game streaming service for key Japanese titles. We originally thought Square Enix would stream Dissidia: Final Fantasy to the West, and it's great the game is getting its own dedicated port on PS4.

HP is really throwing a party with its Omen gaming line of products, with the new Omen 15 and Omen 17 gaming laptops rocking refreshed CPUs and GPUs, and much more. There's even a big plus with HP using NVIDIA's new Max-Q technology, which has massive thermal and power tweaks to the GTX 10 series card and a design guide for partners, making super-powerful gaming laptops really thin, and quiet.

The new flagship Omen 17 gaming laptop comes in 4 variants, all rocking Intel's new Core i7-7700HQ processor. Here's the differences:

HP has used larger fans on the Omen 17 gaming laptop, increasing the maximum airflow by 2.7%, which helps a lot. HP still lets you upgrade the RAM and storage of their Omen gaming laptops, providing a door at the bottom of the Omen to upgrade the two components.

HP unveiled their new Omen desktop gaming PC that can be figured with GTX 1080 in SLI or RX 480/580 in CrossFire, but it also teased it was going to be configured with the unreleased Vega 10 GPU from AMD. At the same time, HP announced their new HP Accelerator, their new external GPU enclosure.

HP has stepped it up with their new Accelerator, which can handle graphics cards with up to 300W TDP, meaning virtually everything on the market. It comes with an internal 500W PSU and an integrated charging port that will charge your notebook at up to 60W, while there's also 4 x USB 3.0 Type-C ports, and a single USB 3.1 Type-C port that's Thunderbolt certified. There's even an RJ-45 network port on the back of the new HP Accelerator, in case your wireless-only laptop needed a faster, more stable network connection.

The company has put a lot of design effort into the Accelerator, which includes a 2.5-inch bay for an additional HDD, or super-fast SSD. There's just a single cable required, and it has an easy access door that makes replacing and installing the graphics card and HDD/SDD a simple procedure.

Computex 2017 - Rosewill has been sponsoring eSports events and teams around the world, including Blizzcon and Dreamhack, and they're continuing to push their brand at major gaming events and PC communities. In the near future, Rosewill will be pushing into gaming events in Europe and Asia, with markets that are mammoth.

At the show, Rosewill were displaying their latest peripherals with the Neon Series mice in two models: M55 and M57.

Starting with the Rosewill Neon Series M55 mouse, we have their A4090 high-end optical gaming engine, and 4 x RGB backlighting modes for some personalization. There's 6 programmable buttons, and up to 6000 DPI (with settings for 800/1600/2400/3000/4000/6000). A polling rate of up to 1000Hz, acceleration at 20G / 100 IPS, and has software that you can use to fully customize your M55 experience.

The cryptocurrency craze is hitting yet another couple of waves with Bitcoin reaching a record $2900 USD in value, while Ethereum is climbing up as it doesn't require ASIC specific graphics cards. I've personally just written an article where I'm using 4 x different PCs with 11 x GPUs between them and it's estimated to make me $900 this month alone.

Secondly, AMD Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series cards are flying off the shelf so fast that the RX 580 is being listed on Amazon for as high as $900. This is absolutely insane, as a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti costs less than $700, but loses to the RX 580 in cryptocurrency mining, especially Ethereum.

Now there's rumors that both AMD and NVIDIA are working on cryptocurrency-specific graphics cards that would not include display connectors, so you could just buy a handful - or boxes of them, and throw them into mining rigs. These cryptocurrency mining cards would ship with a much smaller 90-day warranty, and will be sold by AIB partners, and should be a little cheaper than traditional GeForce and Radeon graphics cards.

HP is teasing their next-gen Omen gaming PC, which can be configured with a single, or even GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards in SLI - but you can opt in for AMD's upcoming Radeon RX Vega as well.

HP says on its own advertisement for the new Omen gaming PC that you can configure it with 1 or 2 x GTX 1080, 1 or 2 x RX 480/580, or a single AMD Vega 10 with "timing/pricing TBC, late 2C17". Inside, you can configure the new HP Omen gaming PC with Intel's new Core i5/i7 processors on the H270/Z270 chipsets, or go the AMD Ryzen route with the Ryzen 5/7 CPUs.

Up to 32GB of RAM can be installed, with an optional PCIe-based NVMe-capable SSD and even dual HDD configurations if you need some serious storage. HP has designed the Omen as a beast, with a "machine-like, battle armor inspired design", with HP offering an optional see-through door with internal lightning and an integrated handle on top of the case so that you can take your Omen desktop gaming PC to a LAN even easier than before.

The cryptocurrency game is stepping up to a new level with Bitcoin hitting a new record $2900 point, but now there's Ethereum, a new distributed public blockchain network. It's similar to Bitcoin, but there are major technical differences between the two that make Ethereum very good for graphics card owners.

Ethereum isn't ASIC specific, so you don't need specifically made graphics cards to run it, meaning you can use any GPU you have right now. Without going into its own story, AMD Radeon graphics cards are far superior to anything NVIDIA has with Ethereum mining, with a Radeon RX 580 beating the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with one hand tied behind its back. Even the Radeon R9 295X2 and its dual-GPU prowess destroys everything, and is the current champion graphics card for Etherium - but maybe not for power consumption, though.

We're now at the height of Ethereum, which is currently selling for around $260 right now, riding an insane 2800% increase in the last 12 months. This has driven the price of graphics cards through the roof, with the MSI Radeon RX 580 Gaming X 8G listed on Amazon for an insane $899.99. Considering NVIDIA's much faster for gaming GeForce GTX 1080 Ti costs $700 or less, the price of the RX 580 is bonkers.

Samsung's Galaxy J5 (2016) was one of the best selling smartphones in Q1 this year, and now the company has announced its successor along with the Galaxy J7 (2017).

The Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017) is the bigger of the two announced devices, with a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen. The phone is powered by an Exynos 7870 processor (14nm, 8x A53, Mali-T830 MP2) and comes with 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage expandable up to 256GB with a microSD card.

The device has a 13MP rear camera and a 12MP front shooter. The phone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with Samsung's custom UI on top.

Ninja Theory today announced that Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice will release August 8, 2017 on PS4 and PC.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is one of the most striking games I've seen in recent memory, and features some eldritch and truly phantasmagoric visuals. Ninja Theory's new game has strong Norse and Celtic overtones, and revolves around Senua's intimate journey into her own broken and fractured mind. The trailer shows exotic imagery that transcends the kind of content we usually see in games today and looks to be something quite unique.

With Hellblade Ninja Theory aims to "bring back the mid-sized game" and will sell the game at half the price of modern games, or $29.99. The developer, which is made up by a small team of 20 people, affirms that this title is a "independent AAA experience" and backs it up by both developing and publishing the game themselves.