Latest News - Page 2435

Apple has had a few years of releasing so-so upgrades on its MacBook Pro, but the next-gen MBPs could be quite exciting with a "thinner and lighter" design, and a new OLED display touch bar above the keyboard, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo adds that the updated MacBook Pro are the "brightest spot for Apple's 2016 rollouts" and will arrive in both 13-inch and 15-inch models, sometime in Q4 2016. The OLED display touch bar will replace the usual physical function keys at the top of the keyboard while Apple will use new metal injection molded hinges. We're expecting to see USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity as well. Intel's new 14nm processors should also find their way inside, and I'm hoping to see some Polaris love from AMD on the GPU side of things.

On top of the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros, Apple is reportedly working on a new 13-inch MacBook that will be similar to the 12-inch Retina model that was upgraded with performance improvements. There'll also be a new MacBook Air available as the new entry-level model, while the MacBook will be the mid-range choice, leaving the high-end to the MacBook Pro. Apple will also unleash Touch ID onto the new MacBook Pros, something that iPhone users have enjoyed for a while now.

Computex 2016 kicks off in just a few days time, with Intel reportedly preparing to unveil its next-gen 200 series chipset. Right now the Z170 chipset is the one responsible for running the current Skylake-based CPUs, including the flagship Core i7-6700K.

Intel is already poised to unveil the new Broadwell-E family, offering processors with up to 10 cores, and 20 threads. The flagship Broadwell-E offering will be the Core i7-6950X, which is expected to be quite the beast, and slot into some exciting new X99-based motherboards from the likes of GIGABYTE. The latest leak on Kaby Lake-S had Intel launching it in Q4 2016, but according to our industry sources, Intel will unveil the 200 series chipset at Computex.

When it comes to the Kaby Lake-S processors, they will arrive in dual- and quad-core designs with 35W/65W/95W parts. Intel's 7th generation platform will continue on with the LGA 1151 socket, with the new 200 series being made up of mostly the same innards of the 100 series, but it'll feature increased I/O performance. This is because Intel will push their exciting new 3D XPoint memory architecture, so we should see the Kaby Lake-S products featuring up to 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes, which is an increase from the 20 lanes availabel on the 100 series chipset. The 200 series chipset should also feature 6 x SATA 6Gbps ports, and 10 x USB 3.0 ports.

Our robot overlords are well and truly on their way, with former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi, saying that it's better to buy $35,000 robots than it is to hire teenagers for $15 an hour.

During an interview with FOX Business Network's Mornings with Maria, Rensi said: "I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe".

He added: "It's not just going to be in the fast food business. Franchising is the best business model in the United States. It's dependent on people that have low job skills that have to grow. Well if you can't get people a reasonable wage, you're going to get machines to do the work. It's just common sense. It's going to happen whether you like it or not. And the more you push this it's going to happen faster".

Sony has made some pretty big PS4 sales estimates for its latest fiscal year--could the new 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Neo (aka PS4K, PS4.5) have anything to do with those figures?

Sony wants to sell 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles from now until April 2017, bringing the total number of PS4s sold to 60 million globally. That's quite a feat. Although the PS4 is still a hot-selling console in its own right, what if Sony is counting on the new rumored PS4K to bolster those sales? Technically speaking the PS4K is a PS4, so those sales would definitely boost overall figures. Sony could unveil the PS4K at E3 2016, open up pre-orders after a month or so, and possibly ship it by October 2016 to coincide with the launch of the PlayStation VR.

Keep in mind that it's taken three years for the PS4 to hit its current 40 million sales figure, and Sony wants to sell half of this amount in one year. A new console would definitely bolster sales and drive growth. Remember that Sony's Fiscal Year 2016 ends on April 2017, so we could see the PS4K release in early 2017 or so, with Sony collecting the cash on pre-orders, but a 2016 launch is more likely in this scenario. On the other hand, if Sony does reveal the PS4K at E3, it's highly likely consumers will hold off on buying a PS4 and wait for the new console. If Sony lumps the PS4K with the original PS4 sales, the 20 million estimate makes a bit of sense. During Sony's IR call, Shuhei Yoshida affirmed that the company is now hitting the peak of console profits: "About two and half years have passed since the PlayStation 4 went on sale, and we believe we are beginning to enter the part of the console cycle where we harvest profits." What better time to release the PS4K?

Modders plan to push Fallout 4's Creation Kit to its limits with a massive new Fallout 3-sized mod set in Seattle.

Introducing Fallout Cascadia, an ambitious new modding project that will bring the Fallout universe to the Pacific Northwest for PC players--and eventually console users--to enjoy. Cascadia is being built by a team of 18 volunteers using Fallout 4's official Creation Kit, and will be completely separate from Fallout 4. The Seattle-based mod is expected to be almost as big as Fallout 3 and much bigger than Far Harbor, with all new quests, storylines, and authentic locations based in the region.

Cascadia takes place several decades after Fallout 3/New Vegas/Fallout 4, and Seattle will be the main hub on the game--the same way Boston is Fallout 4's main hub. "Many locations of the game focus around the city proper, including certain fair grounds, public markets, and other famous locations. The game will also include other locations to the west and south including Mercer Island, Redmond, Bellevue, forested areas and airports. The project make an effort to make the world a believable and alive one."

Thanks to G.Skill, all of the world's most renowned and prestigious overclockers will meet at Computex this year to push today's most powerful hardware to its limits.

Armed with an all-star ensemble of overclockers and the world's most powerful motherboards, video cards, DDR4 RAM, SSDs, CPUs and more, G.Skill is ready to completely redefine everything we know about overclocking. G.Skill will be hosting this year's major OC events at Computex--the 5th Annual World OC Record Stage 2016 and 3rd Annual OC World Cup 2016--with Intel, Samsung and NVIDIA sponsoring the events.

G.Skill has partnered with the world's greatest motherboard partners like ASRock, ASUS, EVGA, GIGABYTE and MSI to allow the world's greatest OC'ers to "break as many overclocking world records as possible" using today's most powerful Intel Core CPUs, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 video card, and G.Skill's DDR4 RAM. Expect to see some staggering new benchmark records, with Skylake CPUs, 4000 MHz DDR4 RAM, and NVIDIA's new insane GeForce GTX 1080 pushed to its limits--and beyond.

The live action remake of Disney's 1992 animated classic 'Beauty and the Beast' released its first teaser trailer yesterday, and has quickly dethroned the first day trailer views of the previous record holder 'The Force Awakens'.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the minute long teaser video generated 1.8 million views worldwide in its first 24 hours, besting the 2014 teaser trailer for the 'Star Wars' sequel.

Starring Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast, 'Beauty and the Beast' hits theaters in March 2017.

Popular part-racing part-sports game Rocket League gets even better today as developer Psyonix launches cross-platform play. When the clock strikes 6pm ET / 10pm UTC, Xbox One players and PC players can duke it out with each other, making the game that much more competitive and making it that much easier to find a quality match.

"We're really excited to bring Xbox One and PC players closer together," said Jeremy Dunham, Vice President, Psyonix. "Cross-network play has been something that Xbox One gamers have been asking us for since the day we launched, and thanks to Microsoft's new cross-network policies, we're proud to give it to them."

The Xbox One player base stands tall at about two million; as of August 2015, PC sales were at one million.

AT&T began data capping its U-Verse broadband customers back in 2011, although it didn't enforce its new rules. That changes this week as May 23 has arrived: the date the company said it would begin enforcing caps.

Whereas the cap was 250GB per month in 2011, that's been increased to 300GB for those with 768 Kbps-6Mbps plans; 12Mbps-75Mbps plans will have a 600GB cap, and 100 Mbps-1Gbps means a 1TB cap. Should you exceed the limit (and you'll receive plenty of e-mail warnings before you do), you'll be charged $10 for each 50GB of extra data. Alternately, you can pay a flat $30 extra per month for unlimited data.

AT&T says about 4% of its customers go over the new limits.

Valve's DOTA 2 is now the second game to support the Vulkan API, an evolution of AMD's Mantle that allows developers to squeeze a ton more performance out of a game. The first: 2014's The Talos Principle, which received support earlier this year.

Support is in the beta stage, so you'll need to grab it as DLC. And if you use the Steam Overlay, you'll want to opt in to the Steam Client Beta to have the newest Steam Vulkan Overlay to prevent issues. Also, Valve notes the first time you play with Vulkan, you might notice stuttering, but that should go away after a full match.

Minimum system requirements are as follows:

Nintendo's post-3DS next generation handheld might be codenamed the "MH", and it could co-exist alongside the Nintendo NX games console.

According to Yahoo Japan, who cited a report from Japanese financial site Traders Web, Nintendo may be planning on releasing an upgraded portable handheld to accompany the Nintendo NX console. "The driving force up until now has been new business from "health services, theme parks and mobile games etc", but will switch over to the next generation game system (NX) and next-gen handheld game device (MH (temporary name))," reads a translation provided by IGN.

This doesn't seem quite right, especially considering the NX will likely have a Wii U-like gamepad controller that sports 3DS-like portability. It's also too soon for Nintendo to release a handheld. The New 3DS was released in 2014 in Japan, and February 2015 in North America, and the N3DS has yet to adopt its own exclusive games library.

AMD's Radeon Crimson Edition 16.5.3 driver is out, and with it comes optimizations for top games, new Crossfire profiles, and bug fixes for various games and system issues.

If you're getting in on the Total War: Warhammer or Overwatch action (both newly released), AMD has you covered with this driver set, which is optimized and includes Crossfire profiles for both. As well, a longtime favourite in DOTA 2 gets some love with improved support for the Vulkan API (Valve has also enabled it on their end with a patch for the game).

As for fixes, that stuttering while playing Fallout 4 in Crossfire should be gone as should flickering in the Division while using Crossfire. Various niche system issues are no more, either.

It's been eagerly awaited for 20 years since the release of the original, but the marketing juggernaut for the 'Independence Day: Resurgence' is kicking up a gear today with the release of an epic, 5 minute long trailer which plays as a 'best-of' from the previously released trailers, alongside new footage.

Returning stars Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch and Vivica A. Fox are joined by newcomers Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe and Jessie Usher in defending the world from a second, much more powerful wave of alien attack, with the film promising to unleash visual effects as mind-blowing as they were in 1996.

'Independence Day: Resurgence' hits 2D, 3D and IMAX cinemas worldwide from June 23rd.

Uncharted 4 is a smashing success for Sony and Naughty Dog, selling an incredible 2.7 million global units in its first week. The game now holds the mantle as the fastest-selling first-party Sony game in North America.

Sony broke the amazing sale figures on the PlayStation Blog, and the company is understandably peacocking the feat to the rest of the gaming world. Uncharted 4's 2.7 million sales are actual "sell-through" sales, meaning 2.7 million people across the globe actually bought the game digitally or on disc. After a bit of quick math we see Uncharted 4 (just the game, mind you) generated an insane $172.8 million in its first week.

But wait, there's more: Uncharted 4's sale figures reportedly smash the first-week sales figures of Halo 5, despite Microsoft's claims that Halo 5 sold $400 million worth of global software and hardware sales during its launch week.

Microsoft has changed the hardware requirements of Windows 10 in light of the looming Anniversary Update. On the whole, these are for the better, allowing a wider range of devices to use the operating system.

Once the update is live, Windows 10 Mobile devices up to 9'' will be able to run it (versus the previous 7.99''), whereas the desktop version can be installed on devices with screens as small as 7'' (down from 8'').

RAM requirements are now up for 32-bit versions of the OS: 2GB versus the previous 1GB. As for storage, that's now at 16GB and 20GB for 32-bit and 64-bit devices, respectively.

Homefront: The Revolution has been suffering from performance issues on both console and PC. On PC at least, it turns out a major factor in this is uneven CPU core utilization; according to DSOGaming's testing, the game puts a lot of stress on one core while others are left to lag behind, dragging framerate down considerably.

To get around it, do the following after booting the game: Alt-Tab > Task Manager > Details tab > right-click Homefront > Set affinity > disable all threads > re-enable all threads. Once complete, you should notice an approximately 25 FPS boost.

Unfortunately, you'll likely have to do this every time you play the game, so you may just want to wait for patches, which are on the way.

Apple Music has been growing thanks in part to its $14.99/mo family plan, and Spotify has taken notice. As of today, the Swedish streaming service offers the same plan except it does Apple one better and supports up to six people instead of five.

At last count, Apple Music sat at 13 million subscribers (up two million over the previous count), while Spotify sat at 30 million.

If Apple's service continues to pick up Steam, both services should improve all the more for the competition, which is great news for users.

The game just keeps getting better: first there was the Japanese voices, English subtitles mod for Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, and now there's a texture improvement mod.

Created by modder Fraggoso with the use of Kalaiden's also sweet Untitled Project X mod, this one reworks all the game's low-resolution textures to bring them up to par with the rest of a given scene. To compare the work, head here and here (likely the best example) and mouse over and under the different shots. While Square Enix's remastering is fine work, the mod shows there was still significant room for improvement.

Hit the source for downloads and installation instructions.

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition is one of the best video cards ever made, but it'll be even better when it's overclocked to its yet unknown limits. In blows Colorful with news that their new GTX 1080 Founders Edition water block is coming soon, with the company teaming up with Chinese water block manufacturer Bykski.

Their new water block is the first to market with full coverage, and is designed exclusively for the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition. The company has teased its new series of iGame-powered GeForce GTX 1080 cards, that will be announced after May 27. The new Colorful GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition will be available soon for $699, while the new Bykski water block will be priced at $100.

We've been wondering what cost the custom GeForce GTX 1080 cards will be, with NVIDIA stating the lowest will cost $599, while their GTX 1080 Founders Edition card costing $699. Well, according to a recent Colorful press release, Colorful's "custom-designed GTX 1080 video cards" will "retail below the [price of] the GTX 1080 Founders Edition".

With the cost of the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition from NVIDIA set at $699, this means we should see a varying cost between $599-$699 for the overclocked GeForce GTX 1080 cards. That might sound like news, but think about the cost. The GTX 1080 costs $599, but the Founders Edition which is capable of over 2GHz on its new 16nm-based GP104 GPU, so what will custom cards be clocked up to if something with a single fan and 1x 8-pin PCIe power is already the best card on the market?

The custom GeForce GTX 1080 cards should, in theory, be faster than the GTX 1080 Founders Edition. But, it looks like they'll be priced cheaper than the Founders Edition, which is - well, great? NVIDIA loses out because most gamers and enthusiasts will buy a custom GeForce GTX 1080, while system builders and more professional customers will find comfort in the new NVIDIA reference design GTX 1080 in the form of the Founders Edition.