Latest News - Page 2254

AMD has unleashed a bunch of new products today at their Financial Analyst Day, with a tease of ThreadRipper with 16C/32T, their new Naples platform and the Epyc CPU with 32C/64T, and the exciting new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card.

AMD also detailed their GPU roadmap through to 2020, with Vega arriving on 14nm - but a 14nm+ respin that I think we'll see in early 2018. The bigger tease is Navi on 7nm for 2018-2019, and a brief glimpse of 'Next Gen' sometime in 2019-2020.

AMD is really kicking Intel in the shins with its Ryzen CPU family, teasing that it's next-gen ThreadRipper processor will be launching in Summer 2017 - and will be officially detailed at Computex.

ThreadRipper will feature up to 16C/32T of CPU performance, with AMD "targeting the world's fastest ultra-premium desktop systems in an all-new HEDT platform".

I reached out to Founder & Principal Analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy, Patrick Moorhead, where he told us: "AMD's Threadripper willl be unique in the market and could easily garner over $1,000. I don't expect Intel to follow tit for tat, thread to thread, but rather on other merits like single core performance".

AMD just announced its new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, with 4096 stream processors, 16GB of HBM2 and 480GB/sec of memory bandwidth with an estimated 12.5 TFLOPs of single precision compute performance - enough to beat the new NVIDIA TITAN Xp graphics card and its 12 TFLOPs.

AMD also announced a watercooled version of its professional Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, and its goooooold in color, too. AMD requires 8+8-pin PCIe power connectors, but other than that, we have no idea what to expect in terms of performance/clock differences between the air-cooled and watercooled Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics cards. More to come as it happens.

AMD has announced its new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, which isn't part of the consumer graphics card family, but instead the Radeon Pro line.

Radeon Vega Frontier Edition rocks 16GB of next-gen HBM2 memory, an estimated 12.5 TFLOPs of performance (NVIDIA's new TITAN Xp has 12 TFLOPs) of single precision compute performance, while we have the Vega GPU clocked at 1586MHz.

AMD detailed its Radeon Vega Frontier Edition specs with 64 next-gen compute units (nCU - 4096 stream processors), 12.5 TFLOPs of single precision compute performance (FP32), 25 TFLOPs of single precision compute (FP16), 16GB of HBM2 alongside HBC, and 8K display support.

Eidos Montreal confirms our skeptical predictions: a new Thief game isn't in development.

Just days ago Straight Up Films, the production company who's making a feature film adaptation of the Thief franchise, said that Eidos Montreal is currently developing Thief game to release alongside the movie. Now Eidos Montreal boss David Anfossi confirms the game isn't happening.

"Apparently we're developing Thief 5 game! So now we have a title... We just have to build a team,a budget... Forget it!" Anfossi said on Twitter, poking fun at the production company.

Square Enix plans to accelerate its Mobile / PC Browser gaming segment to counterbalance low full-game sales, and we should see more mobile titles this year than ever before.

In our latest Square Enix financials report we dissected the company's latest Fiscal Year 2017 earnings, and also highlighted where the publisher will go in 2018 and beyond.

While most gamers are itching for news on Final Fantasy VII: Remake and Kingdom Hearts III, this year will be a low-point for big-name Square Enix games, especially after the flurry of AAA releases in FY2017 (Final Fantasy XV, Nier: Automata, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided). Instead of belting out new juggernauts, I predict Square Enix will use the strength of its mobile IPs to buoy revenue streams and carry momentum into the next fiscal year, who's pipeline likely includes the aforementioned anticipated RPGs.

Just two weeks after their last launch, SpaceX has successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket.

The company launched a communications satellite that will complete Inmarsat's fifth-generation broadband network. The Inmarsat-5 F4 communications satellite is the heaviest object delivered by the company to space, for now.

Getting the 13,400-lb. (6,100 kilograms) heavy F4 into its intended orbit emptied the Falcon's fuel tanks, leaving no propellant for the landing attempt.

Square Enix recently announced its Fiscal Year 2017 earnings (April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2017) revealing strong growth in all gaming sectors as well as a look at the publisher's future.

Square Enix reported mighty net sales of $2.26 billion (256.8 billion yen) during its FY2017, representing a sizable 19.94% year-over-year increase.

The company notes that "major launches of blockbuster titles boosted revenue significantly," with games like Final Fantasy XV, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Rise of the Tomb Raider's PS4 port, World of Final Fantasy, and NieR: Automata all contributing the the strong net sales.

We know that Samsung is working on the Galaxy Note8. This was confirmed earlier this year by DJ Koh, Samsung's Mobile Chief. The Note 8 will likely debut this fall, but the first leaks have already been revealed.

According to the latest report from China, the Galaxy Note8 will have a huge 6.3-inch display, most likely with the same 18:5:9 aspect ratio as the Galaxy S8.

The same source claims that the Note8 should sport a dual rear camera setup. Unfortunately, no other info is available at the moment.

Back in 2014, ASUS launched its first smartwatch, followed by ZenWatch 2 in 2015, and ZenWatch 3 in 2016. However, it looks like we might not see the ZenWatch 4 at all.

According to a report said to be coming from "sources of Taiwan's supply chain," the company has a hard time finding the buyers for their smartwatches. The source claims that ASUS is shipping 5,000 to 6,000 units per month. Considering that Apple is shipping around a million smartwatches monthly, this number is extremely low.

This is the reason why, according to the report, ASUS is considering to discontinue the ZenWatch series.

343 Industries appears to be taking its time with Halo 6, and we already know the shooter wont release in 2017. However it appears the game probably won't get an official reveal in 2017 either.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer has already confirmed that Halo 6 won't be a Project Scorpio launch game. Since Microsoft's new 4K-ready Project Scorpio console will release Holiday 2017, that means Halo 6 won't be available this year. 343 Industries Bonnie Ross affirmed that Halo 6 would have many changes including split-screen co-op and multiplayer as well as a "compelling story" with stronger focus on Master Chief.

Now 343 Industries community manager Brian "Ske7ch" Jarrard confirms that Halo 6 won't be showcased at E3 2017. In fact, Jarrard confirmed Halo 6 won't even be showcased at Microsoft's Gamescom 2017 presence in Cologne, Germany. That's two major gameshows that Halo 6 will miss, strongly indicating we won't get an official reveal--or even a tease--in 2017.

HTC has finally unveiled their highly-anticipated flagship, the HTC U11. Although we expected the U11 to be unveiled in April, a year after its predecessor the HTC 10, the company wanted to wait for its official 20th anniversary to launch the phone.

Ever since the HTC One, announced in 2013, there hasn't been much hype about the new HTC phones. In the world of smartphones, HTC doesn't represent what it used to. They are leaders in virtual reality with their Vive device. The company recently sold its phone manufacturing facility in Shanghai to boost their investment into their Vive virtual reality business. Although the company said the sale of the Shanghai plant would not affect its mobile division, it is clear in which direction the company is headed in.

Just recently, HTC announced that they marked an 18.03% decline in revenue this year compared to the last one. It seems that the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play sales aren't that great, and they aren't helping the company to get back on track. The two phones were launched in January, but many were left disappointed with the last year's processor and a steep price that can be compared to the price of Snapdragon 835 powered Galaxy S8.

HTC has unveiled their highly-anticipated flagship - the HTC U11. The phone was subject to numerous leaks over the past few weeks, so there were no surprises at the launch.

The HTC U11 is powered by Snapdragon 835 and comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, expandable up to 2TB with a microSD card.

The device comes with a 12MP rear camera and a 16MP front shooter. As rumored, the phone doesn't have a headphone jack, but the company will ship adapters with the phone.

HTC has launched the HTC U11, and as previously rumored, the device doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The company decided to ditch the headphone jack. Many might be disappointed with this decision, but lately, we are seeing more and more companies that are dumping the headphone jack.

However, HTC will pack an adapter with the phone, so you don't have to worry if you still want to use your headsets.

You've got to give it to NVIDIA CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang, he has high hopes for gaming in the future, and simply oozes enthusiasm for the entire gaming market.

During NVIDIA's recent investor Q&A, Huang provided some updates on GeForce Now, NVIDIA's game streaming service. He said that GeForce Now is "years away" from becoming a major gaming service, but said that he believes every human will eventually be a gamer, and that there's only one way to do that: the cloud.

Huang said: "However, I'm optimistic about the opportunity to extend the GeForce platform beyond the gamers that we currently have in our installed base. There are several billion gamers on the planet. And I believe that every human will be a gamer someday, and every human will have some way to enjoy an alternative universe some way someday. And we would love to be the company that brings it to everybody. And the only way to really do that on a very, very large scale basis and reach all those people is over the cloud".

Radeon Technologies Group boss Raja Koduri has posted something a little cryptic on his Twitter account, where he tweeted a tease on Radeon RX Vega just over 20 minutes ago.

Koduri tweeted: "Ok..complete the sentence..we stand today on the edge of a ...... (first 10 people who get this right will get something special) @radeon". I was the first to answer, saying "new frontier" by JFK, and plenty of others followed with the same answer.

He had a follow up tweet that read "Bonus points to those who can cite the author and my favorite science and space section", so I don't know if that's another tease of the space-themed Vega architecture. AMD using a political giant like JFK for their Radeon RX Vega graphics card pre-launch marketing ramp up is interesting, as it continues their award-winning 'The Uprising' marketing campaign based around politics.

NVIDIA has been pushing its GeForce technology into the VR world since Oculus and HTC headsets were in development stages, and now Jason Paul - the General Manager for VR Strategy at NVIDIA has said some interesting things about the future of VR tech.

Paul was interviewed by UploadVR during GTC 2017, where he talked about his estimated roadmap for VR headsets, and how their resolutions would improve. Paul said: "I actually sat down and did the math one time. Based off how many pixels we would need to be able to push and mapping that out alongside our upcoming new GPU releases, it would take us about 20 years to achieve resolutions that can match the human eye".

Sight is a "highly difference sense" says Paul, with our eyes detecting "even the smallest inconstancies in its perceptions" adds UploadVR. In order for VR to reach a resolution where our eyes wouldn't be able to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality - taking away the weight of the headset, etc - it would take GPU development another 20 years to get there.

We've been hearing a few rumors on Intel's next-gen Core i9 family of processors, but now we have benchmarks of the new Core i9-7920X which rocks a 12C/24T design.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-7920X will reportedly feature 12C/24T with somewhere around 4GHz boost CPU clocks, with 16.5MB of L3 cache, 44 PCIe lanes, and 140W TDP. This chip was benchmarked against Intel's 10C/20T offering in the Core i9-7900X with its 3.3/4.0GHz base/boost clocks with 13.75MB of L3 cache, and the same PCIe lanes and TDP.

I put all of the scores into one of our benchmark templates, so you can see the scores in a much easier to understand way. As you can see the Core i9-7920X really is a monster, with the multi-core test score pushing 1760, leaving the Core i7-6950X in its rear view mirror, and the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X in its dust.

SK Hynix has released its new Q2 2017 product databook, and inside we get some more details on their current and next-gen graphics memory products, with the company listing 12Gbps and 14Gbps modules of GDDR6, as well as 1.6Gbps HBM2 memory.

AMD's upcoming Radeon RX Vega is powered by HBM2 memory provided by SK Hynix, while NVIDIA is tapping Samsung made HBM2 memory. Radeon RX Vega should rock SK Hynix's current 1.6Gbps HBM2 that would provide up to 409.6GB/sec of memory, unless AMD were to use more HBM2 stacks, then the bandwidth and HBM2 would double. The memory bandwidth would reach a pretty damn high peak of 817GB/sec, easily beating out any graphics card in its path - and getting close to NVIDIA's new HBM2-based Tesla V100 and its memory bandwidth numbers of 900GB/sec.

Remember that AMD also has its HBCC (High Bandwidth Cache Controller) working alongside the Vega NCU, which will be able to greatly improve minimum FPS performance, and has up to 512TB of virtual address space - insanity.

The irony is delicious, but Disney are less than amused that hackers have obtained a full copy of the unreleased 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales' and are ransoming it for an undisclosed sum.

According to Deadline Hollywood, Disney is currently working with the FBI and are refusing to pay the "enormous" ransom that is being demanded. The unnamed hacking group have threatened to release the film incrementally is their demands aren't met. The hack is not believed to be related to recent WannaCry ransomware attack, but could be related to the recent leak of unreleased 'Orange is the New Black' episodes which were apparently sourced from a Hollywood post-production facility.

'Dead Men Tell No Tales' is set to hit theatres in 2D, 3D and IMAX across the world on May 26th 2017.