Latest News - Page 2702

Some interesting news has just appeared online, but first we'll tackle the business side of things. TSMC has said that it is investing a hefty $16 billion on creating a new chip factory, but there was some more interesting news that didn't seem to make the headlines.

TSMC will never make a 20nm GPU, with the reasoning behind this is that there are very low yields associated with the big cores and high performance requirements. Starting next year the Taiwanese giant will switch over to 16nm FinFET, but it wants to shift into 10nm as early as late 2016.

Intel is another player in the 10nm business, where it has invested $6 billion in fabrication facilities over in Israel. The chipmaker has already invested into the R&D of 7nm, which should happen before 2020. TSMC shifting to 16nm and then 10nm so quickly is a pre-emptive move against Samsung and Globalfoundaries, which have just joined forces in the R&D side of things.

It seems that basically any large-scale build in this day and age is not complete without a full rigid-tubed liquid cooling loop. Besides wacky color schemes and cutting numerous holes in your chassis, what else can you do to truly set your system apart from the rest?

Math Military Modding has developed their own special method of water cooling design - real carbon fiber tubes. The images you can see are part of the latest update on the ASUS Strix modding project and help symbolize the projects goal, which is to be designed and built from the ground up - allowing for a scratch-built and completely custom project.

The carbon fiber tubes have been purchased from FlashRC and will be circulating coolant around the system. It looks very interesting and is quite light - but is it worth the cost or will it perform properly? That's up to you to decide.

The tablet market is constantly changing, and each generation features newer and faster hardware being deployed in the mobile products. It's possible EA wants to try to win over casual tablet gamers and turn them into console and PC gamers, and that will require something beyond simple casual games that are racking up increased usage.

Most mobile games have focused on the casual sector, but that could change depending on how far hardware develops. EA and other game studios are trying to create gaming products so they can be used away from PCs and game consoles, and that could mean better developed, more immersive software titles in the future.

"What gets us the most excited is the power, the computing power, of mobile devices and the speed at which that's growing," said Blake Jorgensen, CFO of Electronic Arts, speaking during the 2015 Technology, Internet & Media Conference. "What that might mean is that a tablet, three or four years from now, has more power than what a typical console has. And that will open up a whole new set of people to console-style games that are much more immersive, much deeper, much more character-driven than simply a static mobile game that you might play for a small burst of time while you're waiting for the bus."

Popular fast casual restaurant Chipotle has issued an apology to its Twitter followers, after being hacked over the weekend. Insensitive tweets were published to more than its 634,000 followers, including racist messages aimed at President Obama - before Twitter could suspend the account. A separate tweet claimed the company would be shutting restaurants before the end of the year.

The attack also reportedly hit the official Chipotle website, which led visitors to a different website.

"Our Twitter account was hijacked overnight for about two hours during which a series of offensive tweets was posted to the account," said Chris Arnold, communications director of Chipotle. "We apologize for the nature of the posts that were made during that time, and we are now conducting an investigation to try to determine what happened and who might have been involved."

In the aftermath of the Anthem data breach last week, the New York Financial Services Department said it plans to conduct cybersecurity audits of insurance companies. The "regular" and "targeted assessments" will be a part of its examination process, and enhanced regulations should keep New York insurance members safer from future data breaches.

The Anthem data breach could affect upwards of 80 million people, as personal information was taken during the sophisticated cyberattack.

"We're still in the process of finalizing and determining the enhanced requirements, but we are moving quickly and expect to begin putting them forward in the coming weeks," said Matt Anderson, spokesman of the New York Financial Services Department, in a statement published by Reuters. "These requirements are specific to New York, but we're of course always willing to discuss these issues with other states."

The Anonymous hacker collective is taking aim at ISIS in Syria and Iraq, launching attacks to disrupt the group's social media accounts. As part of its #OpISIS campaign, Anonymous has taken down hundreds of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts linked to ISIS - used to spread propaganda and woo potential recruits.

"ISIS: We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you," Anonymous pledges. "From now on, no safe place for you online... you will be treated like a Virus, and we are the cure. We own the Internet. We are Anonymous; we are Legion; we do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us."

In addition to listing Twitter and Facebook accounts - of both compromised accounts and possible targets - Anonymous has revealed email addresses, IP addresses, VPN connections and websites used by the extremist group.

The recent data breach suffered by Anthem is further proof that companies are under cyberattack - and find it difficult to keep up with increasing numbers of sophisticated attacks. Many corporations understand they face cybersecurity threats, but can do very little to prevent crippling data breaches.

"For any given unit of time that goes by, the probability of an organization being compromised is trending to 100 percent," said John Hering, co-founder of the Lookout security firm, in a statement to CNBC. "We need to move to a world where security is not reactive, but proactive and predictive."

Financial institutions and medical companies typically have more stringent security protocols in place, but still find it difficult to prevent attacks. Late last year, JPMorgan Chase suffered a data breach that affected millions of customers, with phishing attacks and other threats targeting compromised victims.

The Resident Evil HD remaster from Capcom is the fastest selling digital game title launch in company history, also breaking the PlayStation Network one-day digital title download figure. Capcom didn't provide sales numbers, but the $20 remaster clearly was a good decision.

Resident Evil was originally released for the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002, but Capcom decided to release a game refresh for the PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

"It's been great to see so many positive comments from fans that have enjoyed this new release," said Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, Capcom Japan producer. "The team here at Capcom Japan have worked hard to bring the game to the latest generaton of consoles and we are thrilled at this news on its performance."

As we get closer to CD Projekt Red's massive The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we're finding out more juicy details on the game. The developer is introducing a new "Dark" mode to the game, which will have permanent death.

Not only that, but it will provide the toughest enemies in the game, but once you die anywhere in the campaign, that's it - you're taken right back to the beginning of the game. CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber told VG247: "Usually normal is easy, and easy is-well, you can be on your phone while playing. If you die five minutes before the ending, it's over. There are actually people who have already done it".

Weber compared The Witcher 3 to Dark Souls and Skyrim, saying that the Normal difficulty is quite similar. But when talking about the new Dark difficulty, he said that it is off the charts. So if you want to play with some serious wagers in The Witcher 3, you might want to choose Dark.

Apple and Intel have been partnered together for a while, ever since Steve Jobs announced that Mac systems would use Intel processors back in 2005.

At the time it was quite the shock, as Intel was the biggest chipmaker that made processors for PCs that ran Windows, and Microsoft were Apple's biggest enemy at the time. The tides have changed however, as Google was simply a search engine at the time, but they are now Apple's biggest competitor by far. Well, during an interview with Business Insider last week, Intel CFO Stacy Smith talked about how Intel is so far ahead of the competition, that when it comes to PC processors that Apple uses, the company has no choice but to use its CPUs.

Smith said: "Apple is a great partner of ours. Like Intel they like bringing really cool stuff to the market... As long as we're bringing great technology to the marketplace, we're enabling them to do great Apple products". Smith continued: "Our leadership over the rest of the industry is extending. We're not delayed relative to the industry. We're actually ahead of the industry". Smith also added: "For a customer like Apple you'd have to take a big step off performance to step off our architecture. That is what in essence enables us to win across different customers".

The open beta for Battlefield Hardline continues, with Visceral Games' General Manager, Steve Papoutsis, taking to Twitter to announce that 5 million players have taken place in the beta.

Papoutsis said: "Wow, we've passed 5 MILLION players in the #BFHardline beta! So proud of your team. Glad you're having fun and keep that feedback coming". Destiny set the bar last year, with 5 million players taking place in the open beta for Destiny, but Destiny wasn't released on PC. This goes to show that the PC community is huge, and a strong force for even a game like Battlefield Hardline which hasn't been getting the best feedback.

Battlefield Hardline will be released on March 17 for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC. The beta itself closes today, unfortunately.

We can expect DirectX 12 games to look radically different in just a few years time, with PC gamers being able to expect that future titles will look as good as the CG in the latest movies. The news is coming from an interview with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell with Inner Circle Podcast, teasing the future of PC gaming and DirectX 12.

Wardell said that if game developers get down and dirty with DirectX 12, games with thousands of on-screen characters, or any large number of objects on screen are usually bound by the CPU when it comes to lighting. Ubisoft has even admitted this for its mess that was Assassin's Creed: Unity. The first generation of DX12 games will see a 10-20% boost, as they are written for DirectX 11 and running DirectX 12. But when there are new graphics engines that are built from the ground up for DX12, the real benefits are going to be very, very clear according to Wardell.

The Stardock CEO claimed that future games would look like The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King by the end of the current console generation. He cites the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as resource heavy consoles, as they feature 8-core processors with 8GB of RAM and 64-bit operating systems and games that can access any and all of those resources easily. As time goes by, developers will squeeze much more out of the consoles.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has taken the Chinese smartphone market by storm, quickly punting Samsung out the door - and putting global pressure on Apple, Samsung, and others. The company sold 61 million devices worldwide in 2014, tripling its overall sales figure year-over-year - and provides a high quality phone at an affordable price.

"The trend over the last couple of years has been for local vendors, plus Samsung, to dominate the market and make it hard for others," said Chris Jones, principal mobile analyst of the Canalys research firm, in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. "They've been driving down the prices of smartphones and driving up the screen sizes and quality."

Xiaomi remains focused on its home market of China, in addition to India and several other select markets, and isn't focused on trying to expand into the United States just yet. The Chinese company wants to build a stronghold in China, India, Brazil, and select other regions before trying to migrate into the United States and select western markets.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will be an exclusive to the PlayStation 4, with developer Naughty Dog aiming for 1080p and 60FPS. But throughout the development of Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog has realized that it most likely won't be able to reach a solid 60FPS throughout the entire game.

Neil Druckmann is the Game Director in charge of Uncharted 4, where he said that reaching 60FPS is not an easy task and that Naughty Dog is continuing to opimize the game (water it down) but he hasn't said whether 60FPS is the aim for the company. When asked how hard it was to reach 60FPS in Uncharted 4 during an interview with Game Informer, Druckmann said that it's "Really f**king hard".

He continued: "That's true for any game. It was really hard on The Last of Us Remastered, and that's a game we had finished and we knew exactly what the end result needs to look like. And here [with Uncharted 4] we're trying to push the boundaries of what this game can look like; and do realistic, real-time cutscenes; and trying to do 60fps is really hard". When he was asked directly if Naughty Dog was aiming for 60FPS, he said that Uncharted 4 is still a work-in-progress, and that nothing is solid right now.

Techland has announced that it will be releasing modding tools for Dying Light, as there seems to have been a situation within the Dying Light community over mods, which seemed to have been erased from the game in a patch.

The developer then released a statement, saying: "Modders were a massive part of our gaming community since Call of Juarez 2 and Dead Island - and we wish to continue that with Dying Light. This invitation is only the first stage of our cooperation with the gaming community. After the modding tools are released, we plan to actively support the coolest mods created by players". Techland has not provided an ETA for the modding tools, so don't hold your breath for the short term.

We don't normally see a behind the scenes look at the hardware powering a gigantic event like the Super Bowl, but we now know what powered the show. This year's Super Bowl half-time show was powered by MAINGEAR, with a system that packed quite a punch in the performance department.

According to 'Bulwerk' on the Octane forums, they needed to render animation at a huge 3780x3024, which requires a serious amount of number crunching power. So they asked MAINGEAR to construct an insane PC that featured four NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z GPUs, which were all liquid cooled using EK Water Block products.

On top of that, we have an ASUS X-99E WS motherboard, Intel Core i7-5930K processor, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM, a Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD, and two Corsair AX 1200i PSUs.

The last couple of weeks have been filled with, well I guess you'd call it "controversy" over the VRAM on the GeForce GTX 970. If you haven't read up on it just yet, you can play catch up here.

But how are the return rates on them? Well, according to analyst firm Jon Peddie Research, not many. Jon Peddie from JPR has said: "I have heard as many as 5 per cent of the buyers are demanding a refund from the AIB suppliers". Retailers are reporting just 1-2%, with two of the UK's biggest retailers offering refunds for the GPU, where they have until the end of this month to box up their GTX 970 and return it.

So why are people up in arms over this? Well, the GTX 970 technically features 4GB of VRAM, with the final 512MB part of this running at a far slower rate than the first 3.5GB. So when a game fills up the first 3.5GB and spills into the remaining 0.5GB, it can cause slowdowns and stuttering in games. But it's not just the VRAM, as the ROPs (Raster Operating Pipelines) have been cut from the previous official specification of 64 ROPs, to 56, as well as the L2 cache being dropped from 2048KB to 1792KB.

It looks like Google Glass will soon be getting a major revamp under its new leadership, with Tony Fadell taking over the project. Various people familiar with the matter told The New York Times that Google Glass will be completely redesigned.

One of the sources has said that Fadell is a product person, so he won't be releasing the new version of Glass until it is near perfect. Fadell said in a statement to the Times that the early version of Glass broke ground, allowing the company to learn what is important for consumers and enterprise users when it came to their revolutionary wearable device.

Fadell added that he is excited to be working with fashion guru Ivy Ross, who will be providing direction and support for the new version of Glass, and other devices that will be rolled out in the future. This means that we most likely won't hear about a new version of Google Glass for a while yet, until the company is much closer to a final, consumer version.

Setting up your ideal gaming room is a mighty task because of all the details needed to make it perfect. The ESRB reports that 67 percent of households play video games; however, the average gamer plays about 8 hours a day. Therefore, it's only natural that some people need more than just the living room floor to sit on when gaming. If you are looking to turn your living room into your gaming room, follow these tips to set up the ideal console gaming room.

Regardless of your choice in console, you need to consider a few technical items when building up your perfect gaming chamber. Naturally, you want to play on an HD television with a 16:9 display ratio. While any television with those specs will do nicely, those with some extra cash to burn might consider upgrading to something like the Philips 42PF9630A, which is a 42-inch HD television capable of projecting ambient light around itself based on what colors are being displayed on the screen. This will create an even more immersive experience.

However, the display on your TV won't matter if the lights in your room are too bright. Good dimmable LED lights, like those made by Earth LED, allow you to capture a movie theater mood in your gaming room. Also, prevent sunlight from shining through your windows with solar shades to help reduce screen glare and add a greater sense of privacy. Creating the right lighting is critical to really appreciate many games because who really wants to play a survival horror game in a brightly lit room?

We've covered plenty of GGF LANs projects across the board, including Stuart Tonks' massive Cooler Master HAF stacker build and more.

In recent news, he's been given a Thermaltake Core X9 case to play with. Gigantic in size and with plenty of room to play around inside, we're very interested to see what he can produce.

The images you can see are only the preliminary design, involving custom orange paint and rigid-tubed watercooling filled with orange coolant. This build has been painted orange to match the 'Tt Dude' mascot located within, being Thermaltake's official toy and looking something like Kenny from South Park - Fun fact: Thermaltake's CEO is also called Kenny, however he doesn't wear orange hooded jackets.