Latest News - Page 2416

CD Projekt RED is one of the many dev studios that's very familiar with Nintendo's new NX console hardware, and says that the system will be "spectacular" for gamers.

Not too long ago Nintendo America President Reggie Fils-Aime said something that worried Nintendo fans: "For us, it isn't about specs, it's about content," he said. But...the NX is supposed to be powered by a next-gen 16nm Pascal-based Tegra chip! It's supposed to be powerful! Does this mean the NX will be another hardware flop like the Wii U? CD Projekt RED's Fabian Döehlahe tells us not to worry: the NX is going to be "fantastic".

"The Nintendo NX will be fantastic," CD Projekt RED communications manager Fabian Mario Döehlahe told German games publication Rocketbeans TV. "As a developer you get access to the hardware and everybody [at CD Projekt] is looking forward to the NX. We know things."

I'll be honest. With a flurry of meetings to attend during E3 and free time nonexistent, I wasn't initially excited about seeing Astro's updated A50 wireless headphones. Don't misunderstand me, I'm a fan. I've used the crap out of my 1st generation pair for gaming, Rock Band, and VR sessions. But when I hear "updated," I envision a few new bullet points to put on the retail box for marketing purposes, just barely justifying a new version. This is thankfully not the case with the new Astro A50s.

I went hands-on and ears-on with an Astro engineer during E3, and walked away super impressed. My only criticism? Astro probably should have stamped these with a brand new model number because they're a substantial improvement over not just the originals, but even the most recent iterations.

The staples are still here: Dolby 7.1, superior sound, 5GHz wireless, and compatibility with PC, PS4, and Xbox One. And they're still one of the most comfortable gaming headsets I've ever put on my head.

Computex 2016 - Finally, our last video on Computex 2016 now that I'm not so busy and running around doing 15 trillion things at once - is of NVIDIA's huge 'booth' at the Grand Hyatt during Computex.

The company was showcasing its next-gen, Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1070 and GeForce GTX 1080 video cards, as well as it's huge push into VR. Not only that, but NVIDIA detailed Ansel with some truly beautiful pictures hanging on walls taken in-game, as well as huge VR Experience rooms where we got to play a bunch of games.

The energy in the room was intense, with gamers and everyone else enjoying themselves. What was your favorite part of the 10-minute video?

This isn't something I thought I'd be writing in 2016, but a team at the University of California, Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have hit a world's first. The team have designed the first "KiloCore" processor, which has 1000 independent programmable processors, with a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second.

The new 1000-core processor has 621 million transistors and was shown off during the recent 2016 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Honolulu on June 16. Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bevan Baas, who led the team that designed KiloCore, said: "To the best of our knowledge, it is the world's first 1,000-processor chip and it is the highest clock-rate processor ever designed in a university".

Up until now, there has been no other chips made with over 300 processors, with most of them being made for research purposes and only a handful are sold commercially. The new 1000-processor KiloCore was fabricated by IBM on their 32nm CMOS technology, so we're not even talking anything radically advanced like the 14nm and 10nm nodes that are being used and played with now.

With the much anticipated release of 'Independence Day: Resurgence' just a few days away, you'd expect that the first movie reviews might be imminent, right? Wrong.

According to U.S. based movie critics, 20th Century Fox has cancelled the organised press screenings for the film, leading to some speculation that the quality of the film isn't up to snuff. In contrast, Disney let critics publish their 'Captain America: Civil War' reviews a week in advance, when it was clear that the film was pretty decent.

As a long term fan, I'd be very happy if 'Resurgence' turns out to be a sequel worth waiting 20 years for, the lack of buzz and the latest move by the studio doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence. Our review will be published next week.

To celebrate this week's release of 'London Has Fallen' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Roadshow Home Entertainment.

The world's leaders have assembled. So have their enemies. The sequel to the worldwide smash hit 'Olympus Has Fallen' begins in London, where the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances. His funeral is a must-attend event for leaders of the western world. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world's most powerful leaders, devastate every known landmark in the British capital, and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. Only three people have any hope of stopping it: the President of the United States, his formidable secret service head (Gerard Butler), and an English MI-6 agent who rightly trusts no one.

To go into the running to win a prize, simply answer the following question in 50 words or less:

It looks like Samsung is continuing to out-innovate everyone else, announcing that Samsung and even TSMC are producing chips using the new FoWLP yield technology. What the hell is FoWLP yield technology you ask?

FoWLP, or Fan-Out Wafter Level Packaging platform, allows smartphone OEMs to reduce the thickness of their devices by a great degree, which has multiple benefits. FoWLP also doesn't need a PCB, and also increases the efficiency of chips by 30%, as well as reducing the thickness of smartphones by at least 0.3mm.

Apple is reportedly using TSMC as its main supplier of 10nm FinFET processors, and Samsung wants a cut of that business - which is where FoWLP comes into play. Samsung might end up winking just right at Apple, especially if TSMC can't keep up with Apple's high demand. With smartphones hitting the whole no bezel, super-thin, more battery wishlist - Samsung's impressive new FoWLP technology is going to come in handy big time over the coming years.

Roberts Space Industries has been doing some amazing things with the CRYENGINE and its ambitious as hell space game, Star Citizen, which has just had its latest v2.4 patch released.

Star Citizen's new v2.4 patch allows access to the new Shopping experience, full Hangar interactivity from within the actual game client - which can be accessed through new options, and the Port Modification app. Cloud Imperium Games have been making countless changes to the Crusader and Port Olisar, which includes the addition of new missions, Alpha Currency and Defender reputation.

But marvel over these new screenshots, which look out of this world.

At just 27 years old, actor 'Anton Yelchin', best known for roles in 'Star Trek', 'Terminator Salvation' and 'Green Room' has tragically died in a freak car accident.

According to Variety, the young actor died when he became pinned by a vehicle in his driveway. Yelchin portrayed Chekov in J.J. Abram's 'Star Trek' and 'Star Trek Into Darkness'. His colleagues has rallied, posting heartfelt tributes on social media today.

Yelchin will be seen in the forthcoming 'Star Trek Beyond', which hits cinemas next month.

Over the last two weeks, I've been addicted to doing Facebook Live videos for TweakTown - and that's something I will be doing much more of, but there are dangerous sides to Facebook Live video, too.

Chicago man Antonio Perkins was doing a Facebook Live broadcast and was shot to death during the stream in an "otherwise normal evening" reports Engadget. Facebook didn't take down Perkins' video, and while the social network usually removes videos that sensationalize violence, it's leaving Perkins video - and others like it on Facebook, as the social network believes it will help awareness of violence, and its dire consequences.

GIGABYTE has had some of the most impressive showings of GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards, especially with the super-fast GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming card, which has a manual OC of up to 2.3GHz on the GP104. Yeah, insane.

Well, now we have the GTX 1070 Windforce OC video card, as well as the GTX 1070 G1 Gaming card - both of which are on their way to my lab. The GTX 1070 Windforce OC features a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, with a dual-fan cooler with two 90mm fans that will keep the card nice and cool under those heavy gaming sessions.

GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 1070 Windforce OC has a maximum Boost clock of 1582MHz in its OC mode, while the Gaming mode has the Boost hitting 1556MHz. There's the usual 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8GHz on the 256-bit memory bus, and the same 3 x DP1.4 ports, 1 x HDMI 2.0b and 1 x DVI.

AMD has been in the headlines virtually every day this week, and here we are again with some even better news - AMD's stock continues to drive upwards, rising 9.8% yesterday. The reason? Zen and Polaris.

AMD has been pushing its upcoming Zen architecture for CPUs and APUs, and from what we've seen it is impressive. Then we have the bigger part of the puzzle; Polaris, which is the new GPU architecture from the newly-formed Radeon Technologies Group. Polaris will debut later this month with the Radeon RX 480 4GB model at $199, while the 8GB variant is $30 more expensive at $229.

Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, has been chatting with various financial groups, TV appearances and her appearance at E3 2016 to debut the Radeon RX 460 and RX 470 - Su has been reiterating AMD's multi-year investment program, something she talked about during her chat with CNBC yesterday.

E3 2016 - Bethesda teased a new Wolfenstein game at their E3 2016 showcase.

Renowned Swedish FPS developer Machine Games, who's responsible for such amazing games as Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Old Blood expansion, is likely developing another Wolfenstein game. A mysterious title called "The New Colossus" was shown on a fake command prompt on Bethesda's E3 showcase, pretty much confirming that the sequel is in development.

Keep in mind we don't know for sure that Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is a brand new sequel, but given how much time has passed since the original game and its expansion, I'm betting on it. We originally reported that Bethesda would reveal the new Wolfenstein game at E3 alongside Prey 2 and The Evil Within 2, but those plans ultimately fell apart. Prey 2 as we know it is dead, and the game is instead getting a reboot, and there was absolutely no mention of The Evil Within 2.

Hello Games, the developer behind the ambitious No Man's Sky, has just announced it has been involved in a large legal battle with British telecom company, Sky, over the name of its game. But, now the two parties have resolved their differences, and the issues are over.

Hello Games' founder Sean Murray took to Twitter with glee, saying: "Yay! We finally settled with Sky (they own the word 'Sky'). We can call our game No Man's Sky. 3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense over". Murray added that the legal situation "was pretty serious", adding: "On the plus side perhaps this is the real reason Skynet never happened".

With No Man's Sky being delayed recently, from its June release to an August release, Murray addressed the delay saying: "some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards".

Bluetooth is everywhere... absolutely everywhere, but it's about to get a heck load faster. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) have announced the latest in Bluetooth technology, with Bluetooth 5.0 having twice the speed, 4x the range, and 800% more capacity.

The updated Bluetooth 5.0 standard won't hit until late 2016 or early 2017, but it does promise some huge leaps in bandwidth, speed and range. Bluetooth 5.0 will allow many more devices to have better communication indoors, outdoors, through walls, and more - taking in more connections, and having improved efficiency, with less wait times.

What does this mean for you? Well, Bluetooth 5.0 will allow you to connect to your devices more reliably, with them disconnecting less, and you'll be able to enjoy higher speeds, and a much higher range (4x).

An interesting tidbit has hit the internet, with Hardware.fr's Damien Triolet claiming that ASUS and MSI are sending GTX 1080s to the press with modified BIOSes. The modified BIOS is enabling more power on the review samples, which are provided boosted performance - and thus, better reviews.

The report claims that the optimized BIOSes are common in the industry, with manufacturers encouraging GPU reviewers to enable special overclocking presets before reviewing the cards, reports VideoCardz. Now, I've been reviewing GPUs for nearly two years with TweakTown, and I've never been approached once by a company asking to do this - so I don't know where that part of the claim is coming from.

Hardware.fr's Damien Triolet adds that he asks manufacturers to provide retail BIOSes for his testing, with manufacturers not being too happy about having to provide the software. The two cards on the table in the middle of this debacle are the new MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G (with our review on that card here) and the ASUS GTX 1070 Strix. We tested the MSI card and our sample was being overclocked past a certain speed, but I underclocked it to its advertised Boost clocks for my testing. I presumed it was the EVGA Precision X software playing around with the clocks, but maybe MSI has sent an overclocked card - so I thought I'd do some digging on my own.

We've had a few of the custom GeForce GTX 1080 cards come through our labs so far, with our first review being the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G, and it being a totally silent GTX 1080 experience. Well, GIGABYTE is now teasing their upcoming GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming video card, which will be one of the fastest GTX 1080s released yet. GIGABYTE's new beast is teasing a huge GPU overclock, right up to 2.3GHz on the GPU... which is simply amazing.

GIGABYTE has used a totally custom PCB with Titan X style chokes and capacitors, with a dust/moisture/corrosion resistant PCB coating. The company has also used a 12+2 phase VRM that makes great use of GIGABYTE's Ultra Durable class components so that the card doesn't buckle under the pressure of the extreme overclocking. But we're not even at the best part yet.

GIGABYTE's new GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming has an AIO liquid cooler, which allows the GP104-powered GPU and its 2560 CUDA cores to be cranked all the way up to 1936MHz on Boost, out of the box. The 8GB of GDDR5X is cranked up from 10GHz to 10.4GHz, providing 333.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth over the GTX 1080 Founders Edition memory bandwidth of 320GB/sec.

In the latest Overwatch developer update, game director Jeff Kaplan details the rewards for the upcoming Competitive Play mode. Among what you can expect: golden weapons.

"Not only will there be some sprays and player icons that you can only get by playing each season, there is a very cool customized golden gun system," he says. "Once you see things like Reinhardt's golden hammer, you're going to be pretty blown away."

Kaplan goes on to explain such rewards are unlocked much faster if you're much more skilled. As well, if you're toward the top end of the competition, you can unlock some as of yet unspecified cosmetic items (we'll guess skins and maybe more).

E3 2016 -- During an interview with TweakTown at E3, HTC's VP of VR Content, Joel Breton, talked to us at length about the state of the Vive and virtual reality. While we're busy transcribing that awesome conversation, we wanted to highlight something that jumped out at us and got us more than a little excited: the suggestion that playing games like Grand Theft Auto in VR is less a pipe dream and much closer to reality.

One of virtual reality's big challenges is locomotion. Right now we can't move through an open virtual world without physically moving ourselves. If we do, a large amount of the population is prone to "VR sickness" or discomfort caused by a mismatch between your inner ear system and what your eyes are relaying to your brain. That's why so many VR games right now invoke the "blink" system that allows us to teleport around. That's understandably not as immersive.

During my interview with HTC's Joel Breton, I asked him if he's seen anything in development that gets us closer to being able to play something like a Grand Theft Auto realistically, or any sprawling open world title in VR. A mechanic that lets us move through the environment fluidly. His response was encouraging.

From the beginning, Valve has insisted on building SteamVR with openness in mind, with the goal of supporting any virtual reality hardware and not just the HTC Vive. To that end, they've already updated SteamVR with support for the Oculus Touch controllers which launch before the end of 2016.

The news comes via Swedish game developer Daniel Nyberg, who included a screenshot of SteamVR's Status window, showing two Oculus Touch controllers and two Oculus sensors (the second one will release alongside the Touch controllers to provide 360 tracking and negate occlusion). Replies to the tweet from other VR developers indicate that they can do roomscale with Oculus motion controller hardware right out of the box, even for games designed with the HTC Vive in mind.

Things are definitely heating up in this space. As fantastic as Oculus Touch is (I played several new experiences at E3 and look forward to writing about them ASAP), the VR community is quickly sending a message to the company that their closed ecosystem is unwanted.