Latest News - Page 299

Samsung's new 1c DRAM yields have reportedly increased from 0% to 40% recently according to new reports, with its new 1c DRAM a crucial part in the company's next-gen HBM4 memory, which gives the green light for the company to kick off HBM4 mass production later this year.

In a new report from Chosun picked up on X by insider @Jukanlosreve, where Chosun reports that a source familiar with Samsung Electronics said it had "recently improved" its 1c DRAM wafer yield for HBM4 to "about" 40% based on cold tests, and somewhere in between 40% and 50% based on hot tests.

Chosun's source said: "considering that the cold test yield of 1c DRAM was close to 0% just a year ago, the recent yield is an encouraging result". 10nm-class DRAM process technology is developed in a little bit of a confusing order, so we'll recap: 1x (1st generation), 1y (2nd generation), 1z (3rd generation), 1a (4th generation), 1b (5th generation), and the new 1c is the latest 6th generation DRAM from Samsung.

The Nintendo Switch 2 can add another highly anticipated title to its growing library of third-party games, as Nintendo and IO Interactive have confirmed the release of 007 First Light in a new announcement trailer.

007 First Light has received a new announcement trailer posted to the Nintendo of America YouTube channel, where we see a young James Bond get himself into some trouble that I'm sure he is going to enjoy working his way out of in a not-so-graceful way.

For those who don't know, 007 First Light is being developed by Danish studio IO Interactive, famous for the Hitman franchise, and First Light will be a new origin story on 007 that focuses on narratively driven action that is not linked to any previous Bond media, meaning this a fresh new take on 007.

Nintendo has just wrapped up its Donkey Kong Bananza-dedicated Direct, where it gave a deep dive on the upcoming title, revealing aspects such as the villains of the story, Donkey Kong's abilities, and his companion that will be tagging along with him throughout the duration of the game.

The Donkey Kong Bananza Direct was mostly gameplay-focused. Nintendo revealed that players will journey to the center of the Earth with Donkey Kong and his companion, Pauline. In the upcoming title, Pauline is a child who was hidden inside a rock until DK discovered her. As players progress through the game, they will get deeper and deeper into the world, with each level being completely different from the last.

Donkey Kong Bananza takes aspects from other Nintendo titles, such as Breath of the Wild, with DK being able to climb on almost any terrain, participate in unique challenges, and take on bosses for rewards and upgrades. One of the biggest surprises of the Direct was Nintendo revealing that Donkey Kong is able to transform into different animals, such as a zebra and an ostrich. Each of these forms gives DK special perks and abilities, such as the ability to fly or run on water.

Microsoft is slated to fire thousands more employees after it just let go 6,000 people in May in an attempt to better position the company for success.

The news comes from a Bloomberg report that states Microsoft is now targeting its sales department for the culling of employees and will be looking to take on third-party firms, or outsourcing its sales requirements, following the departure of the new former staff.

The layoffs are expected to be announced in the coming weeks as the fiscal year ends, and the new layoffs come on the heels of Microsoft firing thousands of employees in May, with some higher-up positions at the company not being safe from the redundancies.

Intel has reportedly told its employees that the company plans to lay off between 15% and 20% of its employees from its chip manufacturing division, with more job cuts planned down the line.

The Oregonian wrote earlier this week that general manager of the Intel Foundry Technology and Manufacturing organization, Naga Chandrasekaran, told its factory workers of the news in an email sent over the weekend. Chandrasekaran said: "These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual".

An Intel spokesperson told CRN that the company is "taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company" that it had previously announced (in the stories below).

Valve has just kinda silently pushed out a pretty big upgrade to its in-game performance tools inside of the new June 17 Beta client update with Steam now offering a full Performance Monitor that tracks your FPS alongside CPU and GPU utilization, clock speeds, temps, and RAM usage.

The updated Steam FPS overlay now offers real-time graphs for each metric, or users can choice a pared-down display that only shows in-game FPS. The new overlay also flags when there are Frame Generation features like DLSS and FSR are active, separating true rendered frames from those that are created using AI upscaling technology.

For competitive and heavily detail-focused users, they'll enjoy knowing what their true FPS counts are, versus upscaled FPS, so they can tweak their settings based on actual performance. If the newly-updated Steam FPS overlay shows full GPU memory, then reducing your texture quality is something you'd normally do first... while if your CPU usage is maxed-out, you can make the appropriate tweaks to your in-game visual settings.

AMD has officially launched its new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs, offering up to 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 5 processing power for HEDT systems.

AMD says its new Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9000 series CPUs offer an IPC performance uplift over the Zen 4-based Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series CPUs of up to 26%. The new Threadripper PRO 9000 series processors feature the Zen 5 architecture and its full 512-bit FPU data-path, boasting significant performance uplifts in applications that use the AVX-512 instruction set.

AMD has been working hard at tweaking the IOD (I/O die) to support higher memory speeds of DDR5-6400 natively, AMD EXPO profiles, and CKD.

In some new 6G trials using the 300GHz band, researchers have breached 280Gbps connectivity speeds: which is around 28x faster than 5G, enough speeds to download 50GB of data in just 1.4 seconds flat.

The new 6G benchmark trial was made possible by ensuring that the signal transmitted was super-clean, with Keysight's Vector Component Analyzer playing a central role in the 6G tests, build on the latest N524XB series PNA-X Microwave Network Analyzers. This enabled the use of spectral digital predistortion (DPD) to minimize any distortion and optimize the signal integrity to reach 280Gbps speeds using 6G.

The tests used NTT's indium phosphide-based J-band power amplifier, reaching 35 GBaud with 256-QAM modulation at 0dBm output, and +9.1dBm saturated power.

ASUS has just launched its latest QD-OLED ROG Swift gaming monitor, with the introduction of the new ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDMR, an iteration of its ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDMR, but this time with AI technology and DisplayPort 2.1a UHBR20.

The new ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDMR gaming monitor features the same 32-inch 4K 240Hz QD-OLED panel, but unlike the ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM, the new PG32UCDMR (note the "R" there) features DisplayPort 2.1a UHBR20, where as the non-R model relied on DisplayPort 1.4 which only packs 32.4Gbps of bandwidth. The new PG32UCDMR features DP2.1a UHBR20 which rocks and rolls with the full 80Gbps of bandwidth, capable of offering uncompressed visuals at higher resolutions and refresh rates.

DisplayPort 2.1a UHBR20 features 20Gbps of bandwidth per lane, with four lanes offering a huge 80Gbps of bandwidth. This new bandwidth enables not just 4K @ 240Hz with HDR and 10-bit color depth, but also offers 8K @ 60Hz with dual 4K @ 144Hz modes.

Beat Saber is officially dropping support for Sony's PSVR2 this month.

Despite major technological innovations, the PlayStation VR2 didn't make a substantial splash in gaming the way that Sony had hoped it would. Maybe it was the steep $549 price tag on top of having to already own a PS5, or maybe it was the games selection. Whatever the case, it looks like the PSVR2 is winding down both on a platform and partner level.

Today, Beat Games announced that Beat Saber on PSVR2 and the original PSVR will no longer receive new updates and content, and that multiplayer functionality is also being removed on January 21, 2026.

NVIDIA is reportedly working on another custom GPU for the Chinese markets, with rumors pointing to a GeForce RTX 5090DD -- replacing the RTX 5090D which is under a "full sales ban" in the country.

In a new post on X by leaker @MEGAsizeGPU we're hearing that NVIDIA is preparing a GeForce RTX 5090DD with the same GPU core count with 21760 CUDA cores and the tweaked GB202-240-K-A1 GPU. In a follow up post, leaker @kopite7kimi noted that but the memory is scaled down to 24GB (down from 32GB on the RTX 5090) on a 384-bit memory bus clocked at 28Gbps and the same 575W TDP but the leaker teases "and there's a surprise".

NVIDIA launched its cut-down GeForce RTX 5090 back in January 2025, tweaked to meet US export controls, but its AI TOPs power was sliced down, but the GPU retained its same GB202 GPU with 21760 CUDA cores and 32GB of GDDR7 memory. This new RTX 5090DD has the VRAM cut down from 32GB to 24GB, a big difference, but retains all of its gaming power.

A new feature in Donkey Kong Bananza has fans speculating about a modern day Mario Paint game on Switch 2.

The Nintendo Switch 2 feels ripe for a Mario Paint sequel. The new upgraded console supports USB mice and its JoyCon controllers can be tilted sideways and converted into a makeshift mouse cursor, with built-in sensors simulating those of a computer mouse. It even supports the original Mario Paint mouse that released on the Super Nintendo in 1992.

Nintendo has been tight-lipped on any possibility of a Mario Paint on Switch 2, but we've now had a glimpse of what that might look like, at least on a conceptual level. The new Donkey Kong Bananza game on Switch 2 features an interesting new creation toolset called DK Artist mode, where gamers can paint, mold, and customize digital 3D creations in a kind of studio environment.

We've heard a lot about macOS Tahoe 26's new features recently, with that big Liquid Glass redesign being a key change - and now comes news that Terminal is getting a makeover.

In fact, this is the first time Apple has revamped the appearance of Terminal, although that isn't staggeringly surprising in some ways, given that it's the very epitome of function, not form, in the macOS library of apps.

MacRumors just noticed that Apple revealed the new look for Terminal in its State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25.

If you've taken the plunge with Nintendo Switch 2, you may have experienced the handheld disabling its rumble effect - and some gamers are complaining that this is happening to them surprisingly often.

IGN picked up on this, as well as plenty of Switch 2 owners on Reddit (like the above person) who are seeing the effect switched off with the following message displayed on-screen: "Rumble has been turned off due to prolonged use."

So, it seems that the idea is that if lots of rumble is coming through with a game, the Switch 2 will proactively turn off the effect - perhaps to save battery. After all, longevity is a priority with handhelds and rumbling the Joy-Con uses power.

WB Games gets restructured with new leadership and content focus while its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, plans to split in two parts.

Following an expensive multi-year merger, Warner Bros Discovery is breaking up, and that means big changes across all segments. WB Discovery will split into two groups: Global Networks and Streaming & Studios, and WB's games division will be nestled under the studios branch. So...how will all of this affect gaming?

WB Games will now focus on four core billion-dollar IPs: DC (primarily Batman and Superman), Mortal Kombat, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. The entire video games unit is effectively being restructured and bifurcated to work on these franchises.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is receiving its Path Tracing update this week, and we got to check it out early, running on a GeForce RTX 5080 in 4K. Path Tracing, or Full Ray Tracing, uses cutting-edge technology to calculate realistic shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, global illumination, and more, covering everything related to in-game lighting.

DOOM: The Dark Ages already features ray-tracing on all platforms, with developer id Software leveraging the technology for global illumination and even hit detection. The Path Tracing update, which introduces DLSS Ray Reconstruction support, improves the game's fantastic visuals and lighting to deliver a seamless, more immersive cinematic action experience.

As seen in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it's the little details that make DOOM: The Dark Ages so impressive with Path Tracing enabled. From how light from objects interacts with each other to how weapons look more like a part of the world in first-person, especially when you see things like fire and ominous red lighting reflected on the Slayer's shotgun.

Until GTA 6 arrives on PlayStation and Xbox next year, GTA V will remain one of the most popular games on all platforms. Earlier this year, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 5: Expanded & Enhanced on PC, introducing several visual improvements to the game that first debuted on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Part of the visual overhaul included the addition of ray-tracing and support for AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution technologies.

However, the ray-tracing in the GTA V update was pretty basic. The reflections were console-like and lower quality than other RT-heavy PC games, and the ray-traced global illumination only covered a single 'bounce'. Tracing and calculating multiple light bounces is hardware-intensive, but it is something that modern GeForce RTX GPUs and AMD's new RDNA 4 line-up can handle.

As part of the game's GTAV Title Update 1.71 for the new GTA Online 'Money Fronts' update, the team at Rockstar is improving the Grand Theft Auto 5: Expanded & Enhanced's ray-traced effects.

With the recent announcement of the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds from Microsoft and the Xbox team, which will introduce a new Xbox-focused version of Windows 11 when it launches later this year, the company gave us our first look at its plans for the next Xbox console and the future of Xbox gaming.

Earlier today, we reported on Xbox President Sarah Bond's announcement that it has partnered with AMD to co-engineer silicon for next-generation consoles. This part of the announcement is business as usual. For generations, Sony and Microsoft have been developing custom CPU and GPU hardware for PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

However, this "multi-year" partnership now extends to a "portfolio of devices," including handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally, as the handheld's Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip features prominently in the announcement video from Sarah Bond.

2K and Gearbox have detailed the launch plans for the upcoming Borderlands 4. Although attention is being placed on the game's lack of an $80 price tag (turns out the game will launch for $70), PC gamers will probably want to take a closer look at the game's minimum and recommended hardware requirements.

When it comes to PC specs, the 'recommended' settings are the ones that you should pay the closest attention to, as they refer to running the game at a high resolution with visuals on par with or better than console, and at a decent frame rate. Borderlands 4's recommended specs are causing a bit of a stir in the PC gaming community because it's a triple sting of asking for a high-end CPU, GPU, and RAM.

On the CPU front, Gearbox says the game requires 8+ CPU Cores for the best performance, listing the Intel Core i7-12700 and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X as a baseline. On the GPU front, Gearbox says the game requires a GPU with 12+ GB of VRAM, listing the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT as the baseline.

Bungie has announced it will be delaying the release of Marathon to focus on several aspects of the game, including making it more challenging, rewarding, increasing visual fidelity, and adding more social experiences.

This official delay by Bungie comes on the heels of the developer being caught in the middle of a negative press spiral, with the first problem being that Alpha play tests of the game generated poor player feedback, and the developer admitting to stealing artist designs for Marathon assets. The latter of the two really caused the sentiment around Marathon to be negative, with reports stating morale at the developer dropped to an all-time low following the controversy.

Additionally, following the negative response from the Alpha play tests and the artist debacle, reports stated the entire marketing plan for the game had to be reworked, along with the roadmap to release. Moreover, it was reported at the end of May that a delay was being discussed between Bungie and Sony executives, as neither wanted to release the game in what was described as a "now actively hostile environment."