Latest News - Page 254

The Battlefield 6 multiplayer entered its public beta on August 10, and more than 500,000 Steam users flocked to the title throughout the weekend. Unfortunately, one of those PC gamers discovered their RTX 5090 caught fire and started melting mid-game.

The user said they noticed something was up when the game started freezing mid-match, and then an odor began to fill the room. The smell was shortly followed by a fire that reportedly lasted around 10 seconds. Notably, the area that has sustained most of the damage is where the GPU undercarriage meets the motherboard, specifically right before the PCIe slot. The graphics card is a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5090, and judging from the images posted, the fire was significant enough to leave significant damage to the card, case, and some surrounding components.

Reports indicate the owner purchased the system as a prebuilt, which, thankfully for them, will make claiming warranty on the rig much easier (hopefully). The PC has been returned to the store and is currently undergoing an investigation by the manufacturer. As for what caused the fire, the specifics are currently unknown, as typically when a GPU is involved in a fire or melting scenario, it has to do with incorrect seating of the power connector cables, or in the case of an RTX 4090, a flawed power connector design.

Ubisoft seems to have accidentally revealed there is work being done on a Far Cry TV show over at FX, the television network owned by Disney, and the creators of the hit TV show Fargo.

The accidental reveal of the TV show was done by none other than Ubisoft itself, which posted a news article about the show on its own website over the weekend. The post was quickly removed, but not before it was noticed by Redditors who shared it to the /r/Far Cry subreddit. The post has since been removed from the Far Cry subreddit, but not before publications captured its details. According to Eurogamer, the new TV show will be an "anthology drama" where "each season will be set in a new world with a different cast of characters."

According to the report, the show is being produced by Noah Hawley, the creator of the Fargo series for FX, as well as Alien: Earth, a new show that released just this week. Additionally, the Far Cry TV show is being co-executive produced and will star Rob McElhenney of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It should be noted that Ubisoft has been known to be working on numerous alternative media adaptations of its IP that haven't yet, and perhaps never will see the light of day.

Samsung Electronics has confirmed its latest HBM3E 12-Hi memory has been picked up by NVIDIA, with the company to supply 30K to 50K units of the AI memory to NVIDIA in the "near future".

In a new report from Korean media outlet Alpha Economy picked up by @Jukanrosleve on X, NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics reportedly agreed on the supply of HBM3 12-Hi memory. It's being reported that all of the Samsung HBM3E 12-Hi memory supplied will be used exclusively in liquid-cooled AI servers.

Samsung said in regards to its HBM3E 12-Hi memory supply being used exclusively in AI servers: "we cannot confirm this".

For those who lived through the dial-up internet days, you'll no doubt have the sound a modem makes when it does its 'dialling' imprinted on your brain forever. You'll also remember that the slow 28.8K and 56K speeds we lived with meant that you had to download images and that it took several minutes to listen to a single song in compressed MP3 format.

In the United States, America Online or AOL was synonymous with dial-up internet throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The company gained notoriety by sending out CD-ROMs to anyone with a mailbox, offering free trials to its service alongside an email address that ends with aol.com. With millions of AOL customers going online, the company also helped usher in the age of instant messaging with AOL Instant Messenger and chat rooms - your 1998 version of Discord.

Even though the term 'AOL' conjures up memories of the age of Netscape Navigator and the Excite search engine, you might be surprised to learn that AOL's dial-up internet service is still a thing that exists. But not for long, as the company has announced that after 34 years of various beep and static sounds, it's set to discontinue its 'Dial-up Internet' service on September 30.

MaxSun has just introduced its new ARL-HX Micro Station, a new mini AI workstation machine packed with all-Intel hardware, including an Arrow Lake-S processor and dual Arc PRO GPUs.

The new MaxSun ARL-HX Micro Station features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores @ up to 5.4GHz), dual PCIe Gen5 GPU support -- with up to 2 x Arc PRO B60 AI GPUs with 24GB VRAM each -- up to 256GB of DDR5 which is overclockable to 7200MT/s, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, alongside SlimSAS + PCIe x4 + 10GbE ethernet, and Wi-Fi 7.

This all fits into a 20L compact, purpose-built AI workstation system that sports a full metal chassis, with MaxSun designing the case with a bunch of potential for cooling.

Meta is showcasing new prototype VR headsets at SIGGRAPH 2025, with the company posting a new in-depth article outlining the latest technologies and breakthroughs of its new 'Tiramisu' hyperrealistic VR headset and the 'Boba 3' headset that increases the FOV (field-of-view) to get closer to how humans see than ever before.

According to the post, the teams within Meta's Reality Labs Research are working to "create virtual experiences that are indistinguishable from the physical world," and they believe that its prototype Tiramisu VR headset is a big step toward that reality. Its custom micro-OLED panels feature a resolution and pixel density that is 3.6X what is currently offered in the Meta Quest 3. It also features three times the contrast ratio and a peak brightness of up to 1,400 nits.

The brightness aspect alone is impressive, and to render real-time Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals that can be displayed on the Tiramisu headset, it needs NVIDIA DLSS to mitigate the high performance cost. It sounds impressive, but the technology is currently limited. The Tiramisu headset is bulky, and the FOV is limited to 30 degrees on either axis, so you're essentially looking at a virtual box.

President Trump just met with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, a week after the president said the new Intel CEO was "highly conflicted" and called for his resignation immediately, calling the meeting a "success".

President Trump and some of his cabinet members met with Lip-Bu Tan, with President Trump writing on Truth Social after the meeting with a positive outlook on the Intel CEO.

President Trump said on Truth Social: "I met with Mr. Lip-Bu Tan, of Intel, along with Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent. The meeting was a very interesting one. His success and rise is an amazing story. Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the next week. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

A Battlefield 6 clip that has since attracted more than 42 million views has now resulted in the creator being banned by Twitch.

The above clip has gone viral on the social media platform X with the streamer and VTuber RileyCS posting it to their X account with the caption, "the most locked in catgirl you'll ever see in battlefield 6". The clip is a montage of Riley playing the Battlefield 6 open beta and absolutely decimating the competition with various guns. The problem is the video appears to showcase Riley using cheats, specifically aimbot, as many are now accusing the Twitch streamer of using.

With the popularity of the clip, thousands of people have accused Riley of using cheats, with many pointing to a lack of over/under aiming on targets, flat horizontal movement from target to target with no height deviation, and a seemingly uncanny ability to switch perfectly. Riley responded to these claims and shared more footage of them playing, but this time with a handcam, a dedicated camera angled at their desk, showcasing their hand on the mouse, making these movements.

Although FSR 4 is the latest and greatest version of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, it's currently exclusive to the company's new RDNA 4 desktop GPUs. And with that, it's great to see that FSR 3 is still getting updated, as seen with the release of FSR 3.1.4 covering Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and more.

AMD notes that FSR 3.1.4 includes several fixes and improves FSR 3's upscaling image quality by reducing ghosting, while also paving the way for FSR's future. One of the key new features of the update is the "easily upgradable DLL," which allows FSR 4 and future versions of the technology to update in a way that is "more straightforward than ever before."

The update also arrives with new Unreal Engine 5.6 plugins to make FSR 3.1.4 and AMD Radeon Anti-Lag 2 easier to integrate in a game or project. Last, and certainly not least, this update paves the way for FSR Redstone, which is still on track for release later this year. This is exciting because FSR Redstone will see AMD finally catch up, capability-wise, with NVIDIA and its full suite of DLSS technologies.

ASUS has announced its latest collaboration with Noctua, the GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua Edition. ASUS says it's the "quietest ASUS graphics card in its class," which is to be expected when you release a GPU with three next-gen Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 120mm fans, which are renowned for two things: thermal performance and silent operation.

As expected, ASUS's overall design embraces the brown and tan-colored look and feel of Noctua fans. The impressive fans are paired with ASUS's optimized vapor chamber for the GPU and VRAM, phase-change thermal pads for heat transfer, and high-quality components and power delivery. The one trade-off of adding Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 120mm fans to a GPU cooler is size; the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua Edition is a thick boy.

With dimensions of 385x151x80 mm, it's a quad-slot, long, and tall GPU, and one of the larger custom GeForce RTX 5080 models we've seen. On the plus side, it does ship with a generous +115 MHz overclocked Boost Clock speed, and the Noctua fans paired with ASUS's thermal design should make it a fantastic GPU to overclock to get even more performance.

Sony may not raise prices on PlayStation 5 hardware in the United States, unlike its competitor who just hiked the Xbox Series X by $100.

In a recent Q1'25 earnings call with analysts, Sony management says that it is unsure whether or not it will raise prices of PS5 consoles. The global tariff situation is unfolding and changing on what seems to be a monthly basis, and Sony says that it intends to "flexibly decide" on prices to reflect market conditions. Based on what was said, it's possible that Sony could absorb any potential hits from tariffs and not raise prices on consoles sold in the US--at least from now through the holiday season.

At one point, BioWare floated the idea of remastering the original Dragon Age games into a trilogy collection, not unlike the Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

According to previous BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah, BioWare had lots of interesting ideas and pitches for Dragon Age projects, including a remastered trilogy of the first three games. Ultimately, though, the project wasn't greenlit by EA, and BioWare didn't have the extra budget to allocate for this kind of remaster trilogy.

In a recent interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, Darrah revealed some of BioWare's ideas that never took off. Darrah says that one of the things that the team thought about doing was a "Champion's Trilogy" of the first three Dragon Age games, referring to each of the title's respective mythical heroes.

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AMD's Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor has reached the end of the line, at least according to a report from a Dutch tech site.

This comes from Tweakers (as highlighted by VideoCardz) which claims that 'several' online stores have confirmed that the Ryzen 5700X3D isn't being shipped to retail outlets by AMD any longer.

So, any remaining stock is all that's left - in theory - and that explains why prices have been going up of late (in the Netherlands, anyway). Tweakers observes that the Ryzen 5700X3D has risen by around 15% in recent weeks, presumably as the inventory of the CPU started to dwindle.

Sony's PlayStation games division makes history with the best Q1 earnings that the company has ever seen.

Sony's Q1'25 results show an incredible performance from its gaming segment. In the Q1 period, PlayStation generated a record-breaking $6.47 billion in total revenue, principally driven by strong third-party game sales and PlayStation Plus subscriptions. This is the highest-ever revenue that the PlayStation platform has achieved in a Q1 range.

The substantial spike in revenue also helped surge PlayStation's profits. Company management cleared the runway for boosted profit by paying down the $3.7 billion Bungie acquisition, reducing expenses (facilitated partly through layoffs), and strategically pinpointing investment points (which has also led to game cancellations).

When the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled, it was revealed that the new console utilizes a form of upscaling technology, which was later confirmed to be NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech. However, neither Nintendo nor NVIDIA confirmed which version of the software was present in the Switch 2.

That has seemingly just changed as a developer known for specializing in porting games over to the Nintendo Switch 2 has posted on BlueSky claiming the Switch 2 uses DLSS 3.1. That developer is LynxByte Games, which shared an image containing all of the "unique features" within Nintendo's latest console.

The full list includes DLSS 3.1, ray tracing, 4K HDR (TV), 120Hz handheld, GameChat (voice/video), new Joy-Cons w/ mouse mode, improved sticks, Pro Controller w/ extra buttons + jack, Full backward compatibility, Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6, HDMI 2.1, LAN, USB-C cam, and MicroSD card. The only feature listed there that wasn't already publicly announced was the DLSS version. Notably, this news hasn't been confirmed by NVIDIA or Nintendo, so you should definitely take it with a grain of salt.

Microsoft's seemingly never-ending quest to migrate features from the legacy Control Panel to the Settings app in Windows 11 has taken another few small steps forward with a new preview release.

This is build 26200.5742 in the Dev channel, which has witnessed Microsoft shoving over a bunch of time and language settings, alongside keyboard-related bits and pieces which are arriving in the Settings app.

That includes the ability to change the format of the date and time (in the system tray), as well as the time server, and also to add additional clocks (in the notification center, off the taskbar), and a host of more niche tweaks.

Over the weekend, AMD launched a new GPU, and while it would usually be a big celebration and event for a new graphics card, the motto with this one is seemingly hush-hush.

The new graphics card is a Radeon RX 7400, which is a generation of graphics card that launched three years ago. Yes, AMD has added a new graphics card to its previous generation that runs the previous generation RDNA3 architecture. The RX 7400 is aimed at gamers on a budget as it features 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM and will be humbly priced somewhere between $150 and $250.

AMD hasn't officially revealed the price for the new GPU, but given that the RX 7400 is effectively replacing the RX 6400 released in 2022, it will be a budget graphics card priced below the $200 mark. The price estimation of sub-$200 is reinforced even further when the RX 7600 is currently priced between $260 and $360, depending on the 8GB or 16GB VRAM models.

ASUS has officially launched what is now considered to be the world's first, as it features a dual mode resolution and refresh for different gaming scenarios.

ASUS has unveiled the XG32UCWMG and the XG32UCWG. Both of these monitors are OLED gaming displays, specifically WOLED, and come with the new dual mode, which we are seeing quite a lot more of in gaming monitors across the market. Starting off with the XG32UCWMG, ASUS has equipped this new display with a 4K at 240Hz refresh rate panel, but at the press of a button, it can switch to 1920 x 1080 at 480Hz, making it the fastest dual-mode OLED gaming monitor on the market.

The idea behind the dual mode is to provide a gamer with an option to switch to a really high refresh rate when they want to play a competitive title, such as Counter-Strike, Rocket League, or any other game that can take advantage of an intensely high refresh rate. The XG32UCWG is a cut-down version of the XG32UCWMG, with it being the exact same size at 31.5 inches, and featuring a 4K/1080p resolution, but instead of 240Hz and 480Hz, the XG32UCWMG offers 165Hz at 4K and 330Hz at 1080p.

SK hynix is reportedly using the EUV process in the development of its next-gen DRAM, with its 1c DRAM (6th-generation 10nm-class) for which transitional investment will begin later this year according to new reports.

In a new report from ZDnet Korea, the outlet reports from industry sources that SK hynix plans to use 5 or more EUV layers on its new 1c DRAM. SK hynix first applied EUV to one layer of its 1c DRAM (4th-generation 10nm-class) which was later expanded to four layers for its 1b DRAM.

In the future, 1c DRAM will increase the number of EUV layers to five or more, with SK hynix the first to develop 16Gb (gigabit) DDR5 DRAM based on the new 1c DRAM process, with plans to convert investments into 1c DRAM in the second half of this year.