Latest News - Page 257

An overclocker has shunt-modded his GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card to unlock a much higher 1200W power limit, hitting the top 20 in 3DMark benchmarks, all with just air-cooling keeping the GPU cool.

Reddit user "u/thatavidreaderture" used his GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5090 AORUS MASTER ICE graphics card and its stock heatsink, as he thinks that it's more than enough to keep the thermal requirements of the GPU nice and cool -- most, if not all AIB coolers have more than enough thermal headroom.

He replaced the 2MOhm resistors with 1MOhm, which unlocked twice the power limit of the RTX 5090, which by default uses close to 600W at load, but shunt-modded, the GPU was reaching a much higher 1200W power limit. He also repasted the GPU and used the popular PTM 7950 and Upsiren UX Ultra thermal putty.

AMD has confirmed that it is working on custom chips for future Microsoft Xbox platforms including the next-gen Xbox consoles, PCs, and gaming handhelds.

During its Q2 2025 earnings call, AMD recorded a huge 71.4% increase in its Client and Gaming business, with this segment including Client (Ryzen CPUs) and Gaming (GPUs, semi-custom SoCs) products. Client revenue leaped by 66% to $2.5 billion, thanks to super-strong Ryzen CPU sales, especially the new Ryzen 9000X3D processors.

In the Gaming segment, revenues increased by an even bigger 83.3% to $1.1 billion, with this segment including graphics products like the RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9000 series, as well as custom SoCs for gaming consoles and handhelds.

Tesla has reportedly disbanded its Dojo supercomputer team, with its leader leaving the company and increasing its reliance on external technology partners like NVIDIA and AMD for compute power.

In a new report from Bloomberg, we have heard that Tesla is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team, which was working on in-house AI chips for driverless technology. Peter Bannon was leading Dojo, and is departing the company with Tesla CEO Elon Musk ordering the Dojo supercomputer effort to be shut down, according to Bloomberg's sources.

The Dojo team lost around 20 workers recently to newly-formed DensityAI, with remaining Dojo workers being reassigned to other data center and compute projects inside Tesla.

Grand Theft Auto franchise has surpassed $10 billion in revenue generated since GTA V's release, our data analysis indicates.

Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular video game franchises on the planet. It's one of the only series outside of Call of Duty that can routinely sell millions of copies every quarter, and GTA V itself stands as one of the best-selling video games of all time with over 215 million copies sold. GTA Online churns out tens of millions of dollars per quarter, sometimes breaking $300 million in microtransaction earnings.

We've been tracking Grand Theft Auto data for a while now, and based on our findings, the GTA franchise has surpassed $10 billion in revenue since GTA V's release. Take-Two's latest Q1'26 earnings report reveals that Grand Theft Auto made $221 million in the period, pushing total cumulative GTA revenues to $9.944 billion since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked point-blank (again) how much GTA 6 will cost--will it be $70? Maybe $80? Even $100? Rockstar will break the news, the CEO says.

Take-Two's CEO isn't ready to spill the beans on GTA 6's price tag--not yet, at least. It's a hot-button topic, with many speculating that GTA 6 could essentially have a blank check so to speak. It's so anticipated that GTA 6 could be $100 at launch and gamers would buy it, at least that's the thinking.

The reality is the price tag will be revealed by Rockstar Games, and not Take-Two themselves. Remember that TTWO is the parent company that owns multiple divisions, branches, and labels. Rockstar is its own developer and publisher, and is technically one of these labels. Essentially, Zelnick says that Take-Two won't steal Rockstar's thunder and spoil the surprise of GTA 6's price tag.

President Trump has called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign immediately, after it was discovered the new Intel CEO has ties to Chinese companies.

In a new post on Truth Social, President Trump said: "The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!"

The post from President Trump calling for the resignation of the Intel CEO comes after a Republican Senator sent a letter to the Intel board of directors, as Lip-Bu Tan had earlier ties with Chinese companies that are now becoming a mainstream issue, and President Trump wants him to resign.

Bungie's independence is ebbing away and the Destiny developer will eventually become part of PlayStation Studios.

In a recent Q1'25 earnings stream, Sony CFO Lin Tao confirmed that Bungie will eventually be integrated into PlayStation Studios.

Bungie's internal independence is "getting lighter," Tao says, with Sony now controlling more and more of the decision-making. The developer's upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is still scheduled to release this fiscal year. This take-over is actually part of Bungie's acquisition contract; if Bungie fails to meet specific financial earnings targets, then Sony would dissolve Bungie's board of directors and take full control over Bungie's operations.

Marathon should be out by March 2026, but Sony isn't ready to make an official commitment just yet.

A bit ago, Bungie and PlayStation delayed Marathon to an indefinite period. The live game reportedly wasn't passing internal playtest reviews, and Sony doesn't want another $400 million Concord-level disaster on its hands. So Marathon was delayed...as to when, we don't know.

In a recent Q1'25 earnings webcast with analysts, Sony CFO Lin Tao directly commented on Marathon's release, saying that the intent is to launch the game in FY25 but no promises can be made.

Now that it has handily beaten Xbox console sales, Sony moving on with the next phase of the PlayStation business.

In a recent Q1'25 earnings call, Sony management said that PlayStation is "moving away" from being a hardware-based business into a more community business, potentially indicating that Sony could break exclusivity on more PlayStation Studios titles (including Helldivers 2).

In the webcast, Sony senior VP Sadahiko Hayakawa affirming that the company now prioritizes users and engagement rather than raw unit sales. "In the gaming business [we're] moving away from hardware-centric business more to community-based engagement business. As we move to more entertainment creation, the stability and productivity and performance is increasing," Haykawa said.

The new Xbox Ally handheld duo will launch mid-October in Europe, sources tell Dealabs' billbil-kun.

The release date for the first-ever Xbox handheld has apparently leaked out, with Dealabs' reporting both the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds will release on October 16, 2025 in Europe. It's unclear if this is the same release date for all worldwide geographies including the United States, especially given the current tariff situation.

Microsoft plans to reveal full details including pricing and availability at European games festival Gamescom 2025. While these details have yet to be confirmed, reports say that the Xbox Ally will be €599, and the higher-end Xbox Ally X with its 24GB of RAM and AI-powered chip will be a hefty three hundred euros more at €899. Full specs can be found here.

RedOctane is back - with a very slightly different name, RedOctane Games as opposed to RedOctane Inc - and is promising that it's already begun work on the 'next great music rhythm game' no less.

The announcement came on X (as noticed by Wccftech), and for those thinking 'Red-who?' - RedOctane Inc was the publisher and creative force behind the Guitar Hero games that first came out in 2005 (the outfit was subsequently closed down in 2010).

Yes, those were the very first plastic guitar games, before Rock Band came along, and the remit was expanded to not just axes, but mics, drums, and indeed the keyboard.

The PlayStation 5 has reached a new sales milestone with 80.3 million shipments made from launch to midsummer, Sony has announced.

Sony revealed the latest PS5 sales figures in their Q1'25 earnings report. According to the data, Sony shipped 2.5 million PS5s in Q1'25, pushing the PS5's total cumulative shipments to 80.3 million.

Despite the new sales bump, the PS5 still isn't beating the PS4 in launch-aligned sales. In its first 19 quarters on the market, the PS4 shipped 82.4 million units including the PS4 Pro. The PS5, on the other hand, shipped 80.3 million including the PS5 Pro. Interestingly enough, both Pro iterations helped spike sales of their respective console generations; PS4 shipments hit a record 9.7 million when the PS4 Pro released in 2016, and PS5 shipments reached 9.5 million when the PS5 Pro launched in 2024.

The release of Helldivers 2 was a phenomenal moment for PlayStation, as it was the first time PlayStation released a game on consoles and PC at the same time.

The release was a monumental success and led to one of the most successful simultaneous platform launches in 2024, with Helldivers 2 becoming a viral sensation and attracting as many as 450,000 players on Steam. Helldivers 2 has retained a healthy player base on Steam ever since its release, and now the title has arrived on Xbox, despite Helldivers 2 being a first-party PlayStation title. Helldivers 2 stands as an example that the walls of exclusivity are coming down for both Xbox and PlayStation, or at least when it comes to live-service games.

To further illustrate that point, we have now learned that Helldivers 2 arriving on Xbox was "all PlayStation," as confirmed by Helldivers 2 CEO in response to a Discord message to a fan praising the work developer Arrowhead Studios did on bringing the title over to Xbox. "It was all PlayStation. Send them your thanks! We were all in support of course," said Arrowhead Studios CEO Shams Jorjani.

UPDATE: Avalanche has delivered a statement, confirming that development on Contraband has stopped.

"Over the past several years, Avalanche Studios Group and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have collaborated on Contraband. Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project's future. We're thankful for the excitement we've seen from the community since we announced and will give an update on what's next as soon as we can."

Microsoft has chosen to cancel Contraband, a new game that had been in development for years, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

Apple has just announced it's expanding its end-to-end American silicon supply chain, alongside its announcement of spending another $100 billion on US manufacturing.

The US-based company announced the news next to President Trump and his administration pushing for more US-based semiconductor manufacturing. The US silicon supply chain is on track to producing over 19 billion chips for Apple products in 2025, including TSMC Arizona which is producing tens of millions of chips for Apple using its most advanced process technologies on American soil.

Apple is TSMC Arizona's first and largest customer.

We have the final PC system requirements for the Battlefield 6 open beta, which goes live in 6 hours' time, with an RTX 3060 Ti all you require for 1440p @ 60FPS on High settings.

The official Battlefield account on X posted the specs, with the minimum requirements being 16GB of RAM and 75GB of storage space (at launch), with TPM 2.0 enabled, UEFI Secure Boot enabled, HVCI and VBS capable. The CPU for the minimum PC specs is between the Intel Core i5-8400 and AMD Ryzen 5 2600 processors.

Battlefield 6's open beta will require an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, or Intel Arc A380 graphics card for 1080p @ 30FPS on Low settings.

MSI's new GeForce RTX 5080 16G EXPERT graphics card is available now. As the successor to the impressive MSI GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT from last year, it presents a unique take on the custom high-end GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU thanks to its FLOW FROZR 2 cooling system that incorporates a push-pull airflow configuration with one large fan on either side of the GPU.

If the design looks a little familiar, that's because it borrows the setup seen with NVIDIA's Founders Edition designs that it introduced with the GeForce RTX 30 and RTX 40 Series. As far as we know, MSI is the only major GeForce RTX partner to offer a model with this unique cooling solution, which makes the GeForce RTX 5080 16G EXPERT a notable release and one that stands out.

We've been eager to get our hands on it after getting to see it up close at Computex 2025, and with our full review coming soon, we thought we'd showcase the design while comparing it to MSI's EXPERT GPU we reviewed in 2024.

Apple has just announced a new $100 billion commitment to America, totaling its US investments at over $600 billion, with the company also launching its new American Manufacturing Program (AMP) that will bring more of Apple's supply chain and advanced manufacturing onto US soil.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "Today, we're proud to increase our investments across the United States to $600 billion over four years and launch our new American Manufacturing Program. This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we're grateful to the President for his support".

Apple parts and components manufactured in the US ship to customers across the planet, with around 2/3 of the components made in the US, exported to customers across the globe.

The official Windows channel on YouTube has posted a new video where David Weston, Corporate Vice President of Enterprise & OS Security at Microsoft, talks about what using Windows in 2030 might look like. And that vision doesn't include using a keyboard and mouse to navigate Windows to open up a browser or fire up Explorer or an app like Steam.

"The world of mousing around and keyboarding around and typing will feel as alien as it does to Gen Z to use DOS," David Weston says. So then, if we're not "mousing around," how will we interact with our Windows PCs? AI Agents. In this relatively strange vision of Windows in 2030, you'll talk to your team of AI Agents with natural language and get them to do everything for you.

"These agents will be net amplifiers and enable us to do things that we could only dream of just a few years ago," David explains. "I think we will do less with our eyes and more talking to our computers. The computer will be able to see what we see, (listen to) what we hear, and we can talk to it, and ask it to do much more sophisticated things. I think this will be a much more natural form of communication."

Samsung Electronics has reportedly started sample production of its next-gen HBM4 memory, ready to head over to NVIDIA for validation.

In a new report picked up by @Jukanrosleve on X, Samsung has reportedly commenced sample production of its next-generation HBM4, with these samples targeted for qualification by NVIDIA, and if it goes without a hitch, it would mark a shift in competitive landscape for the global memory market, especially against fellow South Korean memory rival, SK hynix.

Samsung reportedly started producing HBM4 sample wafers at its Pyeongtaek Campus, with the production of the HBM4 samples made for the purpose of testing and certification by global AI semiconductor companies, like NVIDIA.