Latest News - Page 302

A rare engineering sample of a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition GPU with 20GB of VRAM was recently sold on eBay for $1,999.99. This is one of those big "what if" releases for NVIDIA, as the GeForce RTX 4080 Ti was a mid-generation launch designed to offer GeForce RTX 3090 gaming performance at a more affordable price point.

Ahead of the card's debut, several reports and rumors of GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20GB graphics cards from companies like GIGABYTE and ASUS made their way to specific markets like Russia. There was also the case of an MSI SUPRIM X variant of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20GB that went up for sale in Australia in 2023.

The sale of this Founders Edition model with 20GB of GDDR6X memory adds weight to the idea that NVIDIA changed the memory configuration of this graphics card at the eleventh hour. And there are, in fact, a number of these rare GPUs out in the wild.

MSI has officially released its new BIOS for multiple of its 800-series AM5 motherboards, supporting up to 256GB of RAM using 4 x 64GB DIMMs.

In a press release posted to its website, the company explains the new AGESA Combo PI-1.2.0.3e BIOS, with memory optimizations included to help support 4 x 64GB DIMMs for up to 256GB of system RAM. The new AGESA Combo PI-1.2.0.3e BIOS will support all AM5 motherboards, starting from the 600 series up to 800 series, meaning these RAM optimizations are available even for the A620 series mobos.

On some (not all) motherboards, you can run 4 x 64GB DIMMs in MSI's motherboards with the new BIOS update, and run the system with more stability than before. MSI goes as far as saying that the DDR5 memory can be overclocked to 6000MT/s or even 6400MT/s using large-capacity DRAM kits using Micron, SK hynix, or Samsung memory... all boasting up to 256GB capacities at those 6000-6400MT/s speeds.

Although NVIDIA hasn't formally announced a new budget desktop gaming GPU, several sources point to the company launching the GeForce RTX 5050 in July. The company's 50-Class GPUs are considered entry-level, with the RTX 5050 set to be built using the GB207-300 chip with 2560 CUDA Cores, which is 33% fewer than the RTX 5060's and 16% fewer than the RTX 4060's CUDA Core count.

As we learned in prior leaks on the upcoming RTX 5050, the GPU will be the first graphics card in the GeForce RTX 50 Series line-up to not feature fast GDDR7 memory. Instead, its memory configuration will include 8GB of GDDR6. However, according to a new post by MEGAsizeGPU over social media, the GDDR6 in the GeForce RTX 5050 will comprise 20 Gbps memory modules.

This is the same faster GDDR6 memory found in AMD's Radeon RX 9000 Series, which means it will be quicker than the 8GB of VRAM found in the GeForce RTX 4060.

Stellar Blade is a sci-fi action adventure from South Korean developer SHIFT UP Corporation that was a fan favourite and hit when it debuted on PlayStation 5 consoles last year. The game, which Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation published, finally made its way to PC last week, and the Steam data shows us that it's on track to be one of the biggest PC game launches of 2025.

As far as single-player PlayStation games that Sony has published on Steam go, Stellar Blade is the publisher's biggest hit to date. This past weekend, the Steam peak concurrent player count for the game hit an impressive 192,078, more than double Ghost of Tsushima's peak concurrent player count of 77,154.

Looking at the PlayStation Publishing page on Steam Charts, which tracks who's playing what at any given moment, Stellar Blade is proving to be more popular than massive PlayStation franchises like God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, and Uncharted.

A user has been scammed with not one, not two, but four different GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards, with fake AD102 GPU labels being laser-engraved onto RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 graphics cards, a new scam exposed by a Japanese technician on YouTube. Check it out:

The technician tore apart some faulty GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that a customer send to him, with none of them working, only to discover that three of them were modded RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 graphics cards, which were picked up from seeing changes to the substrate.

Most users wouldn't be able to discover this on their own without completely tearing apart their expensive -- what they thought to be RTX 4090 graphics card -- but once they were torn down, the repairer noticed that one of fake RTX 4090 cards had a protruding capacitor in the top right, which would normally be seen on an RTX 30 series GPU. There's also a small QR code in the bottom left, which is a little higher than its usual location on the GPU.

You might not have heard about Sycom, but they're a Japanese system integrator that works on weird and wonderful things... like its new GeForce RTX 50 Silent Master graphics cards. Check it out:

Sycom released custom versions of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series last year with the RTX 4080 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti Silent Master graphics cards cooled by Noctua fans, and now the Japanese company is back with its new GeForce RTX 50 Silent Master series, cooled by Noctua fans.

The GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs have those iconic brown-and-beige Noctua fans, high-performance fans that are also ultra-quiet, with Sycom looking like they're cooking up new custom GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 series graphics cards cooled by Noctua fans. There's only a single 8-pin PCIe power connector on the smaller card, and a single 16-pin power connector on the bigger GPU.

Apple should have its foldable iPad and foldable iPhone hitting the markets in late 2026, with some new specs revealed teasing the monster-big 18.8-inch foldable iPad that the company is reportedly working on.

In a new report from GF Securities Hong Kong analyst Jeff Pu picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, we're looking at some of the final specs of Apple's purported foldable iPad and iPhone. Apple is reportedly gearing up with a large 18.8-inch foldable display supplied by LG Display for its foldable iPad, with an SZS hinge and on-cell touch technology.

Apple is looking at a 2 to 3-month product life cycle on the foldable iPad, with mass production reportedly penciled in for Q4 2026 with Foxconn manufacturing the foldable iPad and iPhone. As for the foldable iPhone, the purported iPhone Ultra will feature a 7.74-inch foldable display with an Amphenol and SZS hinge, with the same on-cell touch technology but a far longer product life cycle of between 16 and 18 months.

Most PC gamers don't even have a Gen5 SSD yet, but the world of Gen6 SSDs won't be thrusted upon us for years to come, says the founder and CEO of Silicon Motion.

In a new interview with Tom's Hardware, Wallace C. Kou, the founder and chief executive officer of Silicon Motion, said we won't be seeing any Gen6 SSDs for consumer PC systems until 2028. Gen4 SSDs already drive 7GB/sec+ right now, with Gen5 SSDs either requiring active cooling, a specific Gen5 SSD slot on your motherboard or inside of your laptop, but they'll drive upwards of 14GB/sec+ if you use one.

PC OEMs have zero interest in Gen6 SSDs right now, with AMD and Intel not even wanting to talk about them yet. We did see Gen6 teased at Computex 2025 in Taipei just a few weeks ago, but Gen6 SSDs won't be hitting the market until at least 2030.

The next-generations of HBM memory have been teased for the next 10+ years, including HBM4 which will appear on NVIDIA's new Rubin AI GPUs and AMD's just-announced Instinct MI400 AI accelerators, but also we have details on HBM5, HBM6, HBM7, and HBM8 which will appear in 2038.

In a new presentation published by KAIST (the Korea Institute of Science & Technology) and Tera (Terabyte Interconnection and Package Laboratory) the firms showed off a lengthy HBM roadmap with details of the next-gen HBM memory standards. HBM4 will launch in 2026 with NVIDIA Rubin R100 and AMD Instinct MI500 AI chips, with the Rubin and Rubin Ultra AI GPUs using HBM4 and HBM4E, respectively.

NVIDIA's new Rubin AI GPUs will feature 8 HBM4 sites with Rubin Ultra doubling that to 16 HBM4 sites, there are two GPU die cross-sections for each variant, with Rubin Ultra featuring a larger cross-section, packing double the compute density of the regular Rubin AI GPU.

AMD teases its next-next-gen Instinct MI500 AI accelerator during its Advancing AI event, with the new AI chip to be mass-produced on TSMC's fresh new N2P process node, and going directly head-to-head with the current AI hardware leader: NVIDIA.

Back in April 2025, AMD announced its next-gen Zen 6-based EPYC "Venice" CPU would be the first HPC product made on TSMC's new 2nm process node technology, while the new EPYC "Venice" CPUs were officially unleashed yesterday at its Advancing AI event.

The company also teased its next-next-gen Zen 7-based EPYC "Verano" CPUs and next-next-gen Instinct MI500 series AI accelerators would be dropping in 2027. AMD's new Instinct MI500 series AI GPUs will be fabbed on TSMC's new N2P process node, and will be ready to fight NVIDIA's next-gen Rubin AI GPU chips that will be unleashed later this year, and enter mass-production in 2026.

Samsung Electronics has chosen advanced semiconductor packaging and robots for its future growth engines, and will discuss the two next-gen product paths at its global strategy meeting.

In a new report from ETnews picked up by insider @Jukanlosreve on X, industry sources said that Samsung has identified strengthening its advanced semiconductor packaging competitiveness and robot business strategies as key agenda items for its 3-day global strategy meeting that's being held between June 17-19.

The global strategy meeting is where key Samsung executives, including headquarters management and overseas corporation heads, review the business status of each division of the company, preparing future growth strategies.

Microsoft's cross-platform Play Anywhere program appears to be working as more and more Xbox gamers are playing on multiple devices.

As a service-first company, Microsoft wants Xbox games, content, and services on as many devices as possible. Microsoft used subscription value to drive new play habits and change consumer behaviors via Xbox Game Pass, but now it's leveraging another older, but synergistic strategy: Play Anywhere.

Play Anywhere, Microsoft's 2-for-1 value program, gives players cross-platform entitlements. Play Anywhere games purchased once but can be played on both Xbox consoles and PC, and this value proposition may have been a major contributor to Xbox's recent cross-platform growth.

SK hynix has reportedly already started supplying "small quantities" of its next-generation HBM4 memory to NVIDIA, ready to power the company's next-gen Rubin AI GPUs.

In a new report by Korean media outlet Dealsite and picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, we're hearing that SK hynix has been pre-supplying NVIDIA with its new HBM4 memory in small quantities. US-based memory giant Micron has already started shipping its own HBM4 memory to NVIDIA, but the industry believes that SK hynix will have a "significant portion" of the initial HBM4 volume.

The industry believes that HBM3E memory forced a price premium of around 20% but next-gen HBM4 is expected to drive that premium upwards of over 30% as the design of HBM4 is much more complex which has driven up manufacturing costs because of the number of I/O pins doubling from 1024 to 2048, and the die size increasing.

Sony keeps its annual release cadence even as the games industry contracts amidst economic volatility.

It's tough to release new products in a market where cost-cutting is prevalent, layoffs are abundant, and project cancellations are frequent. Software is the beating heart of the games market, and Sony for its part aims to continue delivering consistent yearly game releases to help bolster the PlayStation ecosystem with marquee content.

In a recent corporate interview, PlayStation boss Hermen Hulst confirmed that the game plan is still to have at least one major singleplayer game launch every year. When the games come out is crucial and Sony aims to be strategic with launch timing. For instance, one of this year's annual PlayStation games, Ghost of Yotei, will release in October, which was around the same time GTA 6 was expected to release before Rockstar delayed it to May 2026.

Sony wants to ultimately use AI to help evolve the player experience as well as streamline how PlayStation games are made.

AI is everywhere these days, and that especially rings true for gaming, where AI has been used for decades. But how AI is being used in games development has changed. AI is being used to help automate certain rote processes and whole console chips like the PlayStation 5 Pro's SoC are now being built around the use of AI.

There's not a lot of details on how AI will actually affect player interactions, and some use cases remain speculative. Sony, for its part, has outlined a rough draft on the kinds of ways that PlayStation gamers can expect to be involved with artificial intelligence.

Eager to avoid another Concord situation, Sony says that Marathon is constantly going through rigorous bouts of testing.

Sony still plans to invest into live service games, but after Concord's costly blunder, Sony has drastically cut its content pipeline to a more manageable size. Among the new hedged bets are Bungie's new extraction shooter Marathon, which recently went through alarming controversy when Bungie was found to have plagiarized art for use in Marathon's promotional images.

Despite the fiasco, Sony is doubling-down on Marathon--the game will be out this fiscal year, after all--and has subject Bungie's live game to a more in-depth and systemic approach to testing. PlayStation boss Hermen Hulst explains that these new processes will help Sony refine its core live games using never-ending flows of player feedback, analytics tools, and other resources.

Despite Concord's disastrous launch, Sony says it remains strongly committed to live service games.

Sony isn't ready to give up on live service games any time soon. That certainly hasn't stopped the company from cancelling a number of games, including the anticipated Last of Us multiplayer title, but these cost cuts are a sign of deeper GaaS focus for Sony.

The truth is that Sony wants to deepen its ambition for more live game hits, but in a more targeted and controlled way. Helldivers II's incredible breakout performance has piqued Sony's interest and the company is eager to replicate its success, preferably with a wholly-owned core franchise. PlayStation's corporate heads don't shy away from live games, saying that Sony "remains committed" to games-as-a-service and that more investments in this area are taking place.

Up until two days ago, PlayStation games on PC ported over by Sony were only available to Steam players in specific regions, specifically regions that support the PlayStation Network (PSN).

However, Sony has now dropped region locks, enabling an additional 162 countries to access select PlayStation PC games on Steam, as they no longer require a PSN account to play. Previously, Sony argued it needed PSN accounts to be mandatory for multiplayer titles, but for some reason still required players to have a PSN account for single-player games. As you can probably imagine, this caused major pushback from PC gamers, who are very particular about developers/publishers overstepping when it comes to information gathering or unnecessary account-making.

But the straw that broke the PSN account camel's back was the debacle with Helldivers 2, which dates back to May, 2024, when Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) announced it was forcing Helldivers 2 players to have a PSN account to access the game, which at the time, Helldivers 2 was going completely viral and was one of the biggest games on Steam. SIE's announcement meant players who are located in regions where PSN isn't supported would no longer be able to play the game, forcing SIE to refund Helldivers 2.

The next generation update for Minecraft is finally here, with Microsoft and Mojang showcasing the new Vibrant Visuals graphical overhaul and how it drastically improves the world of Minecraft while retaining the charm players love.

In a new blog post on the Minecraft website, along with a new YouTube video on the Minecraft channel, developer Mojang explains what Vibrant Visuals will be bringing to Minecraft and how it will change the way players play the game.

Firstly, anyone who doesn't like Vibrant Visuals has the choice of turning it off in the settings, which reverts it back to the vanilla version of the game. As for what Vibrant Visuals will bring, Mojang explains it will improve in-game elements with directional lighting, meaning players will be able to see the Sun's rays move across the Overworld.

Matrox, an early competitor to NVIDIA, has unveiled a new dual-GPU graphics card that has support for up to four 8K displays.

Matrix was a major graphics card competitor in the 1990s alongside NVIDIA, ATI, and 3dfx, with the company earning its stars and stripes for its exceptional 2D image quality and dual-head support before it became a standard. However, Matrox decided to exit the mainstream gaming GPU market as it fell behind 3D acceleration performance compared to NVIDIA and ATI, resulting in the company pursuing work in fields such as video capture, video editing hardware, and multi-display solutions, which it has now carved out a niche in.

For example, Matrox graphics cards are commonly used to power major displays, such as the Sphere in Las Vegas, an extremely large music and entertainment venue that consists. More specifically, while NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs handle the rendering for the Sphere's massive LED displays, which consist of an interior 160,000-square-foot wraparound with a 16K resolution, and an exterior 580,000-square-foot display, Matrox graphics cards provide the backbone for the video signal routing and control.