Latest News - Page 29

At its annual Advancing AI 2026 event, AMD has not only launched its next-gen Zen 6-powered AMD EPYC 'Venice' CPUs and AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs for large-scale AI, but it has also announced the new AMD Ryzen AI Embedded X100 Series processors for physical AI and robotics.

These new processors combine a 16-core Zen 5 CPU with a discrete-class integrated RDNA 3.5 iGPU with 40 Compute Units, similar to AMD's Strix Halo processor, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395. For physical AI and robotics, the 16-core CPU covers things like planning, orchestration, and agentic AI control, while the GPU handles perception, reasoning, and vision. Like other Ryzen AI chips, there's an onboard XDNA 2 NPU, which handles continuous vision and audio.

The Ryzen AI Embedded X100 Series processors power AMD's new Kria AI system-on modules (SOMs), so developers and designers can easily prototype, build, and deploy autonomous robots and physical AI systems. In fact, the AMD Kria AI Robotics Developer Platform is the first "open, turnkey integrated platform for autonomous robotics" thanks to its combination of CPU, GPU, NPU, and FPGA.

AMD has officially launched its AMD Helios rackscale solution for AI infrastructure and large-scale foundational-model training and inference. As a supercomputer, AMD Helios combines the new AMD Instinct MI455X GPU, 72 of them, with the latest 6th Gen AMD EPYC 'Venice' server CPUs, AMD ROCm software, and AMD Pensando networking. It's a lot of cutting-edge tech coming together, delivering 2.9 ExaFlops of FP4 Compute.

According to AMD, it's enough to deliver 15% more compute (peak FP4 performance) than NVIDIA's latest Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale solution. And when it comes to raw specs, there is a notable difference in favor of Helios. For example, the 31TB of HBM4 memory capacity is 50% more than Vera Rubin. And with 43 TB/s scale-out bandwidth and 1.7 PB/s of memory bandwidth, AMD notes that Helios can offer AI companies 30% more tokens per dollar.

"As demand grows for AI factories and frontier AI, customers need infrastructure that scales efficiently from a single rack to large gigawatt-scale AI clusters while maximizing performance, performance per watt and cost per token," AMD explains. "AMD Helios delivers an integrated rack-scale building block that simplifies deployment while providing the compute, networking and open software foundation needed for the next generation of AI infrastructure."

Coinciding with AMD's Advancing AI 2026 event, the company has launched its latest AMD Instinct data center GPUs purpose-built for the AI era, with the Instinct MI400 Series led by the flagship AMD Instinct MI455X GPU. Built on a 2nm process, it sports 320 billion transistors, a maximum clock speed of 2.4 GHz, and 432 GB of high-speed HBM4 memory with a peak memory bandwidth of 23.3 TB/sec.

According to the company, the AMD Instinct MI455X GPU is its first GPU to be designed and built for rack-scale AI deployments, which is why it serves as a key part of the new AMD Helios rack, which features 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs for 31TB of HBM4 memory with an impressive 1.7 PB/s memory bandwidth and up to 2.9 exaflops of compute performance.

And with the AMD Instinct MI455X being built for Helios, this means the GPU has been designed with scale-up and scale-out capability with shared-memory capacity, communication bandwidth, and more connectivity compared to previous AMD Instinct GPU generations.

At AMD's Advancing AI 2026 event, the company formally lifted the lid on its 6th Gen AMD EPYC series of processors with the new 'Venice'-powered AMD EPYC 9006 Series. With multiple purpose-built models, AMD notes that the lineup is built for agentic AI, cloud computing, HPC, and general process workloads.

Of course, it's the agentic AI focus that makes the 6th Gen AMD EPYC server CPUs stand out. That, and the impressive Compute configuration that features up to 256 Zen 6c cores, up to 96 Zen 6 cores, and 1152 MB of 3D V-Cache.

"Agentic AI is reshaping how enterprise infrastructure is used and designed," AMD confirms. "It is transforming AI from systems that simply answer questions into systems that act, plan, call tools, write and execute code, and reason over enterprise data. Agentic AI depends on CPU-powered infrastructure to run agents, coordinate work around the model, connect to enterprise data and services, and keep accelerators fed across increasingly complex AI systems."

Apple is set to roll out a sweeping overhaul of its Mac lineup in 2026, with the M6-powered MacBook Pro and redesigned iMacs leading the charge.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a well-known Apple insider with a strong track record, states Apple is finalizing work on the updated 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is expected to arrive in late 2026 before it transitions to the next-gen M7 chip in 2027. According to Gurman, Apple is planning to debut two new versions of every Mac it sells, including updates for its desktop computers. The report states Apple has already finished the design for the low-end M6 MacBook Pro, which will be the first to use the new M6 chip, along with two iMacs.

What is likely the standout from the new line-up is the high-end 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, which Gurman writes will come with a fresh new design and a touchscreen that uses OLED pixel technology. These two new laptops are pegged to release sometime between this year and early next year, and both will, interestingly, use the previous-gen M5 Pro and M5 Max chips when they release.

Bethesda developers were blindsided with termination letters the same day Xbox and Bethesda announced Fallout 5 is in early development, and now the union is filing a legal complaint against the developer for "continuing to violate labor laws in Canada."

The union alleges Bethesda's layoff and the timing of the announcement were a calculated move to distract from the hundreds of employees who were recently laid off as part of Microsoft's sweeping layoffs that affected approximately 3,200 people, and resulted in the closure of four studios.

The OneBGS union claims that Canadian employees at Bethesda Game Studios received termination notices via email on July 17, the same day the company revealed major Fallout and Elder Scrolls remasters, and hinted at a new Fallout title from Obsidian. The union alleges Bethesda used these announcements as a smokescreen to mitigate the negative public perception of employees being laid off.

Sony has allegedly imposed what insiders are calling its "strictest ever" social media guidelines on first-party developers to prevent them from adding to the ongoing criticism around the company's decision to discontinue physical PlayStation discs in 2028.

The information comes from Alanah Pearce, a former Santa Monica Studio writer who worked on the upcoming God of War: Laufey, who revealed that PlayStation first-party studio employees were handed what is described as "the strictest social media guidelines for this particular thing that they've ever seen issued". "Sony knew this was going to be an enormous PR issue," Pearce said in a recent YouTube video. "They only do this when they're expecting a firestorm."

Sony reportedly issued effectively a social media gag order on first-party developers to curtail any criticism about the issue, and judging by what Pearce said, those guidelines can come as late as the day of the announcement. Pearce recounted one instance where Sony provided guidelines on what she could and could not say regarding the announcement of God of War: Laufey.

NVIDIA has officially confirmed the fall 2026 launch of its first RTX Spark-powered PCs and which brands will be leading the charge. The new RTX Spark platform is designed to bring AI, content creation, and gaming into a single system. But what price is this ultimate PC?

The RTX Spark platform combines a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU with a Blackwell RTX GPU and up to 128 GB of unified memory, delivering as much as one petaflop of AI performance in a laptop. NVIDIA unveiled the RTX Spark at Computex 2026, where it said the device is a culmination of the last 40 years of computing and is the first device that will usher in a fundamental change to how we interact with traditional computing systems. According to NVIDIA, the platform represents a major leap in power efficiency and performance for AI-driven computing, making it ideal for developers and creators who demand high-end performance but in a portable form factor.

Furthermore, NVIDIA stated during its announcement that the RTX Spark will also be gaming capable, with NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang stating buyers can expect at least 100FPS at 1440p across modern AAA titles. Developed in partnership with MediaTek, RTX Spark also ushers in MediaTek's entry into NVIDIA's AI ecosystem, with ASUS and MSI finalizing their systems first, and Acer and GIGABYTE to follow. OEMs like HP and Microsoft are also preparing their own RTX Spark-powered machines for later in the year.

Valve has just made significant improvements to the infrastructure surrounding gifting games on Steam, removing the need for Steam friends, accounts, or region locks, and overhauling the wishlisting feature with custom categories.

You can now send a game to someone's email address directly, purchase from shareable wishlists, and all without needing to be logged into a Steam account. The update allows cross-region gifting, though you'll need to know the recipient's Steam account to see the pricing in their specific region.

You can also now organize your wishlist into categories and share only specific lists, such as a dedicated "Xmas" list or a big Steam sale. This is a big win for surprise gifting and better organization of games you want to keep tabs on, and is undoubtedly a welcome addition to the Steam storefront.

Ubisoft has quietly made 80+ of its most popular titles available for purchase through the Xbox Store on PC, but the experience is far from seamless.

The new listings include a mix of classic and newer titles, from Assassin's Creed entries like Valhalla and Shadows to Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. However, players must still enable the Ubisoft Connect extension to launch the games, and Xbox achievements and cross-save functionality remain absent, raising obvious concerns with many gamers who would like to enjoy Ubisoft's titles but also want to snag the achievements along the way.

This move signals a continued push by Microsoft and Ubisoft to unify storefronts, but it highlights a growing problem with the Xbox PC app, and that frustration is being voiced by many gamers on Reddit and other social media platforms. Here's the issue: none of these titles are natively built for the Xbox PC app, as they all require Ubisoft Connect to launch.

A developer has managed to get an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 desktop GPU to run on Windows 11 Arm by hacking drivers never designed to support that GPU on Windows 11 Arm, marking quite an impressive breakthrough in cross-architecture compatibility.

VoidTech, the developer behind the project, uploaded a video on Bilibili that showcases how they managed to boot the RTX 4060 on a Huawei Qingyun W510 workstation running Windows 11 Arm. The developer demonstrated that by modifying the RTX Spark Arm64 driver package, the system not only recognized the GPU but also enabled DirectX 12, Vulkan, and CUDA support. Additionally, the system featured 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and the GeForce RTX 4060 had 8GB of VRAM.

By modifying NVIDIA's RTX Spark drivers, which, for those who don't know, are the new platform NVIDIA introduced at Computex 2026. NVIDIA described RTX Spark as the culmination of 40 years of computing, as it's a new Arm-based Windows platform that offers exceptional AI performance while simultaneously supporting real-world applications and software, even games.

With Microsoft committed to updating Windows 11 this year and improving the operating system's speed and performance for users, part of this includes introducing more modern WinUI elements to classic Windows features. One area that is a definite focus for the Windows team is File Explorer, which in its current form features a mix of modern and legacy UI elements.

When it comes to the legacy elements, if you right-click a file and open the 'Properties' window, you'll no doubt notice it hasn't changed for a while, retaining that old-school Windows look. As spotted by Phantomofearth on Bluesky (via Windows Central), it seems that a new WinUI version of the Properties window is hidden in Windows 11 Experimental build 26300.8935.

It's hidden because it's not accessible in File Explorer, but instead, when you open up the Properties of files deleted and sent to the Recycle Bin. Here we see the more modern Windows UI, with support for Dark Mode. It's a glimpse of what the window will look like in File Explorer in the future, hopefully optimized for performance and a lower memory footprint.

The foldable iPhone is no longer a mystery (kind of), and if the leaks and rumors are anything to go by, Apple's upcoming device will look eerily similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Based on leaked case models and rumored specs, Apple's first foldable is shaping up to be a direct competitor to Samsung's latest flagship, but with some differentiating factors worth knowing about.

The most immediate takeaway? Price. According to the Apple Hub, the rumored foldable iPhone could cost around $600 more than the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for what appear to be nearly identical specifications. However, it should be noted that the specifications in the above image aren't confirmed by Apple, and various rumors have been floating around citing different specifications, such as the latest being that the iPhone Fold will have] a 7.8-inch inner screen versus the previously rumored 7.6-inch.

However, what does line up is the 5.5-inch outer display, along with various other specifications, such as the titanium frame, Touch ID, 4.5mm unfolded thickness, camera hole punch-out, battery capacity, and RAM (on the base model). Both are expected to pack high-end processors and have very premium build materials. However, Samsung's foldable lineup has been iterating for years, while Apple will be entering into the space for the very first time.

MSI unveiled its 40th-anniversary flagship laptop at Computex 2026, and we got to see its impressive design up close. The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic limited edition laptop certainly lives up to its name, thanks to a physical design with impressive metal etching and art inspired by the Draco constellation, including anodized color embedded directly into the metal chassis.

It's a limited-edition design that comes in a special collector's edition bundle and packaging that includes a gaming mouse, a large mouse mat, and a commemorative coin. Yes, it's a stunning creation, but also a flagship gaming laptop packing some of the most impressive mobile hardware currently available. From a CPU and GPU perspective, it features the 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor and the GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory.

The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic is also on the larger side, with the 18 in the naming referring to its 18-inch 4K Mini LED display that sports a 240 Hz refresh rate and 100% DCI-P3 color accuracy, with VESA DisplayHDR 1000 Certification. The MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic is also built to unlock the full potential of its hardware, with vapor chamber cooling and a total power rating of 270W thanks to MSI's OverBoost technology.

As part of a global study with a sample size of 1,500 Australians, which asked participants whether or not esports deserve to be in the Olympic Games, there's a definite generational divide when it comes to who said yes or no. For Aussies between the ages of 18 and 24, 59% believe that esports should be a part of the Olympics, which is 10% higher than the global sentiment amongst participants in the same age group.

However, once you look at the data for older Australians, this majority quickly evaporates. For those Australians surveyed between the ages of 45 and 54, this support falls to just 19%, with only 4.6% of Aussies aged 55 or over supporting the idea of esports becoming a part of the Olympic Games.

The idea of a global, Olympics-style event for esports has been a point of discussion for several years. The Olympic Esports Series, which is run by the same governing body as the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, is still on track to kick off in 2027; however, the choice of non-traditional esports titles (there's no Counter-Strike, Rocket League, or Call of Duty) has drawn criticism. Plus, the inaugural event's location is up in the air as Saudi Arabia pulled out of hosting the event last year.

According to the latest report from Counterpoint Research, the estimated 65 million units of global PC shipments in Q2 2026 represent a 4% decrease year-over-year. And this is the first downward trend since Q1 2025, with the firm stating that one of the key reasons for the decline is rising component costs, specifically for memory.

The dramatic increase in DRAM costs over the past year is something that we've covered extensively, with the quick summary being that supply is struggling to meet demand due to the unprecedented appetite for high-speed or HBM memory from the AI and data center market. And with memory makers focusing on this lucrative boom, the consumer tech market is now being forced to pay significantly more for memory for anything PC-related.

The report notes that the three biggest companies in the PC space, Lenovo, Dell, and HP, have seen their overall shipments for the quarter decline by a single-digit percentage compared to the same period last year. Interestingly, two companies have actually seen growth: Apple and ASUS.

Google's push to turn Search into an AI answer engine is creating a serious problem for the publishers it depends on for content. Some of them are now openly considering blocking Google entirely.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Reddit, USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Economist, and People Inc. are all reconsidering how much access they give Google as referral traffic continues to collapse. The core issue is Google's AI Overviews, which answer search queries directly on the results page, removing the need to click through to the source.

Semrush data shows Google-driven organic traffic to USA Today's US site fell by nearly half between June 2025 and June 2026. Politico was down 23%, CNN lost around 25%, and Business Insider's traffic dropped more than 85%.

Palworld's 1.0 launch has been a massive success so far. The game hit 961,867 concurrent players on Steam on July 19, its highest figure since its explosive early access launch in January 2024, when it peaked at more than 2.1 million players, still the third-highest concurrent player count in Steam history. Before version 1.0, daily peaks had fallen to around 58,000 players, which shows just how significant the update has been.

Pocketpair launched version 1.0 on July 10 across Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Game Pass. The update introduced 72 new Pals, an Awakening mechanic, reworked main missions, new areas, additional skills, improved riding controls, and patch notes spanning roughly 27 pages. The scale of the update appears to have drawn back a large number of lapsed players while also attracting newcomers.

According to Alinea Analytics market analysis lead Rhys Elliott, Palworld has now sold approximately 30.5 million copies, generating around $700 million in gross revenue. Nearly 1.5 million of those copies were sold in the two weeks following the 1.0 launch, helped along by a 30% Steam discount that ran through launch week. Steam accounts for roughly 65% of the player base, with Xbox at 31% and PS5 at just 4%. The US and China are the two largest markets on Steam, each holding around 27% of the player base.

Ahead of CEO Lisa Su's Advancing AI 2026 keynote in San Francisco, AMD has begun showcasing its upcoming EPYC Venice processor. Banners installed around the Moscone Center West, photographed by ComputerBase, include a detailed rendering of the flagship 256-core Venice chip's internal layout, and it is a genuinely impressive piece of silicon.

The die shot confirms the structure AMD teased at CES earlier this year. Eight compute dies surround two large I/O dies at the center. Each compute die is a CCD containing two 16-core Core Complexes, giving each CCD 32 cores. Eight CCDs across 16 CCXs add up to 256 cores and 512 threads in the flagship configuration. The rendering shows cores arranged in a 2x4x4 layout within each CCD, consistent with the dense Zen 6c configuration used in the highest core count Venice processors rather than the larger standard Zen 6 cores.

Venice is the first high-performance computing product to enter volume production on TSMC's 2nm process, which transitions from FinFET to Nanosheet transistors and delivers 10 to 15% higher performance at the same power, 25 to 30% lower power consumption at the same performance, and up to 15% higher transistor density. AMD has promised more than 70% performance and efficiency improvement over its current generation EPYC Turin chips, alongside a more than 30% increase in thread density.

Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 might struggle to hit 60 FPS on consoles, according to a former technical director who worked on GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption, suggesting fans shouldn't get their hopes up for Rockstar releasing the next-gen GTA with 60FPS support on current platforms.

Reece "Kiwi Talkz" Reilly recently posted a podcast with Rockstar producer John Ricchio, who discussed the challenges of maintaining a high frame rate on current-gen hardware given the game's scale and ambition. While rumors of a 60 FPS performance mode have been circulating for quite some time, Ricchio's comments cast doubt on the feasibility of hitting that target without sacrificing visual fidelity, which is something that Rockstar won't want to do. Essentially, Rockstar will need to decide between graphical fidelity + object density versus total in-game framerate, and according to Ricchio, Rockstar is more than likely to lean toward graphical fidelity and object density.

Multiple leaks and retailer listings have suggested GTA 6 could ship with both 30 FPS and 60 FPS modes on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. However, Rockstar has yet to confirm these details, and the developer has a long history of capping major titles at 30 FPS on consoles, and then later releasing a 60FPS mode some years after release. The PS5 Pro, with its extra power, may be the only system that could support a stable 60 FPS at 4K resolution, but given Rockstar's resources and the time it has had developing GTA 6, it's likely we will eventually see 60FPS on both PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X consoles.