AMD Tech Summit 2016 - One of the things I've been wanting to tell the world is that I got to see AMD's next-generation graphics card in action at their Tech Summit in Sonoma, California a few days ago - and now, I can.

I was witness to seeing Vega 10 rocking 8GB of next generation HBM2 technology running DOOM at 4K (3840x2160) on Ultra settings, with an average of 70FPS. Impressive stuff, considering that NVIDIA's fastest GeForce GTX 1080 and Titan X are required to hit those performance numbers in DOOM.

I had my hand behind the card, which had its fans cranked up to 100% - and it was pushing out some serious heat - but this is a prototype board that is months from being finished. Still, a major technology turn on for me. We don't know much else about the Vega 10-based graphics card that was inside of the PC, either. There have been leaks all over the place about this, and a few of you have been wondering why I haven't written about it.

Sony might have its 4K-ready PS4 Pro out right now, but Microsoft has been enjoying success with the Xbox One S thanks to its 4K Blu-ray player (what's going on, Sony?) - and now we're hearing about Microsoft's confidence in its new "monster" Project Scorpio console due in 2017.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer was fielding questions on Twitter as always, where he teased: "Looking forward to E3. We build our Xbox plans for Xbox customers, not in response to others. I think 2017 will be a good year". Then @MasyerGaming asked Spencer "are you guys keeping the promise of 6 teraflop GPU on scorpio rumors are running its been dropped to 5 tell me its not true."

Spencer replied: "Nothing has changed since our announce," so we're safe - Project Scorpio still has 6 TFLOPs of GPU performance, and Microsoft asserts it will enable native 4K console gaming, which the PS4 Pro has trouble sustaining.

We all know that high-end gaming displays are expensive, but holy hell are they beautiful to game on - especially in games like Overwatch, CS:GO, Battlefield 1, and more - when you're hitting that 144Hz+ mark, it's amazing.

ASUS has been running the gaming monitor market for a while now, but things will be changing in a big way in 2017. Right now, ASUS is the largest vendor of gaming monitors with 35% of the market, while BenQ has around 22-24%, and Acer with 17-19%. Worldwide LCD shipments hit 120 million units in 2015, and are expected to reach the same point in 2016 - but in 2015, the 144Hz gaming monitor shipments reached 550,000 - 600,000 units.

144Hz gaming monitors are expected to shift from the 600K units shipped in 2015 to a huge 1.2 million in 2016 - and while this represents just 1% of the total 120 million LCD monitor shipments, the average selling price (ASP) of gaming displays is much higher, so there are lots of profits in this market. DigiTimes is reporting that according to vendors current orders, worldwide gaming monitor shipments are expected to reach 2.5 million units in 2017, and a massive 3.5 million in 2018.

Renowned for producing some of the best Blu-ray players ever made, oppo has finally launched their first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player - and it includes all the features that aficionados have been waiting for.

From the product breakdown published by the company this week, the UDP-203 is a behemoth, including the following features:

While the company is promising an even higher-end unit in the coming year, on paper their first player looks to be the one to beat. If you're in the US you can order a unit from here, while other locales will launch in the coming months. We can't wait to get our hands-on one!

Valve has pushed out a new Steam client update, with a bunch of tweaks, optimizations, and new features - including higher bandwidth options for those wanting to blast around 4K in-house streaming.

There's also new controller options, as well as a Steam Configurator support for Sony's DualShock 4 controller, improved downloading and patching speeds when games are being downloaded/updated on a mechanical HDD (seriously, buy an SSD). The full update log is below:

General

How many devices do you have in your house that use Wi-Fi? I'm sure there's at least a few, and if you're like me and many others - you'll have over a dozen devices with Wi-Fi, so when engineers reach a breakthrough with Wi-Fi that uses 10,000x less power - it'll make you sit up and pay attention.

Engineers from the University of Washington have achieved speeds of 11Mbps on the new connection, so it's not breaking speed barriers - but they're working on getting the speeds faster, and faster. The new Wi-Fi transmissions use 10,000x less power than conventional methods, so battery life savings on smartphones and mobile devices will improve by a considerable margin in the future.

One of the engineers, Shyam Gollakota, explains: "We wanted to see if we could achieve Wi-Fi transmissions using almost no power at all. That's basically what Passive Wi-Fi delivers. We can get Wi-Fi for 10,000 times less power than the best thing that's out there".

Dying Light and Dead Island dev Techland is making a massive new open-world fantasy RPG with the help of Damien Monnier, a lead ex- CD Projekt RED dev who helped build The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Damien Monnier has joined Techland to work as lead designer of the studio's new IP, which was teased back in May. According to Eurogamer, Techland's new RPG is an open-world fantasy experience with online co-op multiplayer and singleplayer elements. Here's what Monnier had to say about the game in his own words: "Today I joined Techland as lead designer on a new exciting IP that got me all *___*," he said on Twitter.

If the IP has impressed Monnier, who worked on the masterpiece that is The Witcher 3, then we can only imagine what the studio is cooking up!

Intel's high-end next-generation enthusiast Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X CPUs are expected for a reveal in Q3 2017, with Digitimes reporting Intel will showcase the new chips at Gamescom 2017 in Germany.

Both Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X extreme CPUs will be a 14nm refresh of the current Broadwell-E series built on the new X299 chipset, with the new enthusiast line being called Basin Falls. Skylake-X is expected to come in 6, 8 and 10-core variants possibly with up to 4.3GHz and 20-threads, Turbo Boost 3.0 support, 140W TDP, and 13.75MB L3 cache.

Kaby Lake-X is expected to come in only 4-core variants with 8MB CPU L3 cache, 112W TDP, and only Turbo Boost 2.0 support.

The maker/modder community is always cooking up some awesome homebrew tech: we've covered the the SNES Pi Boy Portable, and the tiny 70's themed Gameboy that fits in your pocket--but now a DIY tecchie has made his own NES console out of a classic Nintendo cartridge.

Since Nintendo has done such a horrible job getting the NES Mini out to consumers, leading to insane $200-300 eBay auctions from scalpers, many gamers are looking for ways to get their nostalgic gaming fix.

Introducing the Pi Cart, a fully-fledged classic gaming console packed into an old NES cart. The Pi Cart was made by Zach from Howchoo, and is (you guessed it) powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero as well as RetroPie software. You can actually make one yourself with about $30 and a bunch of emulated games, and Zach even shows you a step-by-step guide with all the tools you need to make your own Pi Cart.

The HTC 11 should be unveiled sometime next year, possibly at MWC at the beginning of February, or shortly afterward like they did with the HTC 10.

Not much is known about the phone at this point, but a photo of the HTC 11 recently leaked on the Chinese social network Weibo. Have in mind to take the photo and the leaked specs with a grain of salt since they can not be confirmed at this point.

The leaked photo shows that HTC 11 features a dual rear camera with 8MP selfie camera. The post says that HTC 11 will have a beefy 3700 mAh battery, an improvement from 3000 mAh battery that HTC 10 has.

The planned launch of NASA's CYGNSS spacecraft aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus rocket has been postponed. According to the company, a hydraulic pump aboard the Orbital ATK L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, which is required to release the latches holding the Pegasus in place, was not receiving power.

The three-stage Pegasus XL will be used to deploy eight small satellites for NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission into a Low-Earth orbit. Pegasus is carried aloft by Orbital ATK's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will be released and free-fall for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor. With its unique delta-shaped wing, Pegasus will deliver these satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.

CYGNSS will be used to study hurricanes and to learn about their rapid intensification.

Thermaltake has announced the Core X71 Thermal Glass Edition PC case, featuring a tempered glass window to show of your rig, modular components, and a spacious full-tower chassis with plenty of room for high-end enthusiast hardware.

The Core X71 Tempered Glass Edition is a modified version of the Core X71 case that features 4 mm-thick tempered glass side windows. The chassis features a dual-compartment optimized for easy installation and modular expandability, and fits bigger HPTX/XL-ATX/EATX motherboards and video cards above 350mm. Users can also install a AIO liquid-cooling solution into the Core X71 as well as a multitude of fans for air cooling.

"Designed for high-end gaming system compatibility, the Core X71's modular drive racks allow users to easily install up to seven data storage devices, a dual expansion slot VGA of up to 420mm in length, and a tower CPU cooler as high as 180mm. Even with a high-wattage PSU stretching to 220mm in length, the Core X71 still leaves plenty of interior space for cable management. Moreover, a 480mm radiator can be installed at front of the chassis, delivering superior cooling performance."

Rinspeed, a Swiss car manufacturer, is famous for its exotic concepts that don't enter into production but attract a lot of attention.

At CES, the company will introduce a self-driving electric car called Oasis that also has a small garden plot behind the windshield. Yes, a garden. I guess if you are stuck in traffic you can plant or water your flowers or something?

With its large glass areas and shrouds on the front wheels, the refined and swift two-seat runabout looks rather futuristic. The company says they found the inspiration for this concept in the famous Star Wars icon R2D2 because their car can also turn on its wheels with almost a zero radius thanks to a special steering angle, two in-wheel electric motors and torque vectoring.

Since 4K HDR gaming is something you have to see to believe, marketing it can be very difficult: you literally can't see the differences unless you already own the requisite 4K HDR displays, making the next resolution jump quite nebulous for Sony and Microsoft to sell. Due to this roadblock and difficulty, Microsoft exec Albert Penello says companies "have to fudge things a bit" in order to sell 4K HDR gaming.

Like it or not, consoles are forging ahead to the new realm of 4K HDR gaming. Sony's pushing into this territory with its new 4K-ready mostly-upscaled PlayStation 4 Pro, and has even enabled HDR for base PS4 consoles. Microsoft, however, has two consoles for 4K HDR gaming: the new $299 Xbox One S, which upscales regular Xbox One games to 4K on UHDTV screens and supports HDR, and its "monster" Project Scorpio, which will enable native 4K gaming with its (likely) AMD Vega GPU. But when Sony announced the PS4 Pro in September, it was very difficult to actually sell the console on its merits, as you literally can't even its main selling point unless you already have the required 4K display hardware.

So how will Microsoft and Sony get around this very obvious roadblock? By "fudging" the details. "Showing people what 4K and HDR looks like is really hard when you're not watching the thing in 4K or in HDR," Microsoft exec Albert Penello said on Major Nelson's recent podcast. "How do we market that and be honest. You have to fudge things a little bit to show the differences, but you want to do it in a way that's honest. So even telling customers what it looks like, we have to go through that journey."

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) announced that it will spend $15.7 billion on a new facility to create 3nm and 5nm chips.

The new facility will be based in Taiwan, and may use the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography process to fabricate 3nm and 5nm chips. Back in July of this year, TSMC affirmed it's made strides in its EUV technology, implementing 125W EUV source into its ASML NXE:3350 equipment.

"We're asking the government to help us find a plot that is large enough (123 to 197 acres) and has convenient access so we can build an advanced chip plant to manufacture 5 nm and 3 nm chips," TSMC spokesperson Elizabeth Sun told TechPowerUp.

Awesome things are happening on the Sony front: Hideo Kojima's new Kojima Productions studio is collaborating with Guerrilla Games to foster an amazingly powerful and dynamic new games engine called Decima, which will push Sony's new 4K-ready PS4 Pro to its limits.

The Decima engine is powering both Kojima Pro's new Death Stranding game and Guerrilla Games' excellent-looking PS4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn. In other words, two dev teams are pouring their heart, soul and know-how into a single unified engine. "It's a full blown collaboration. They are using a merged code base, it's the same code," PS4 architect Mark Cerny affirmed in a recent interview (see above).

Kojima is so impressed with the Decima engine and the collaboration that he says Death Stranding will fly way past its original goal: instead of landing on the Moon, Kojima will take his new mysterious game all the way to Jupiter. "We decided to make the rocket by reforming their engine. And by doing so it enables us to go to Mars but even to Jupiter," Kojima said in a series of metaphorical Tweets.

We are in for a wild freakin' ride in 2017, with AMD kicking things off today with the announcement of something radically new: Radeon Instinct. What is Radeon Instinct? There's no easy answer to that, but it is the next big thing in cloud computing - something being touted as the machine intelligence era.

Back in the 1960s, the big thing at the time were the massive main frames that would take up entire buildings, requiring radical amounts of cooling and physical space - while not providing much power (compared to the insane amounts of data crunching power we have now).

In the 80s and 90s it shifted to client-server operations, and then in the last 15 years we've seen a massive shift towards cloud computing.

Ahead of next month's CES event in Las Vegas, the HDMI forum, which consists of the major players from consumer electronics companies, mobile devices and cable manufacturers have ratified a major update to the HDMI cable specification, dubbed version 2.0b.

In an announcement today, the HDMI forum revealed the update to the format includes the following capabilities:

While some of these features were enabled in earlier specifications by individual manufacturers, the ratification by the working group should mean improved functionality throughout the sector. Thankfully, the updates is also fully backwards compatible with the HDMI 2.0a specification, with no need to purchase new cables to unlock the new features. Expect to see more about HDMI 2.0b at next month's CES event in Las Vegas.

Sony has been making moves throughout 2016 to secure more of the gaming console space, with over 50 million PS4s sold, you could definitely say they're making the right moves.

Lead Architect of the PS4 and PS4 Pro, Mark Cerny was interviewed with IGN alongside Guerrilla Games' CEO Hermen Hulst and Hideo Kojima where he said: "I think one of the things you're seeing is just the benefit of focus on a single platform".

He continued: "You can know the technology down to the tiny hardware details and then take advantage of them in your engine. And that really pays off. I mean, I was sitting there this morning at the keynote at PSX 2016 and it's clear that Guerrilla and Naughty Dog have somehow found the button you push that makes more polygons come out".

To celebrate this week's release of 'David Brent: Life on the Road' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have 5 Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Home Entertainment.

'David Brent: Life on the Road' sees the highly anticipated big screen debut of one of comedy's best-loved characters, David Brent (Ricky Gervais). The star of the hit BBC series The Office, Brent hasn't given up on his dream of rock stardom. Assembling a group of musicians who are just in it for the money, and a talented rapper in an attempt to gain some street cred, Brent embarks on a selffinanced tour - a last ditch effort to find fame and fortune. Featuring original music by the man himself, David Brent: Life on the Road returns Gervais to his most iconic character, once again pushing the boundaries of comedy with hilarious, excruciating and surprisingly moving results.

To go into the running to win a prize, simply correctly answer the following question: