Latest News - Page 312

HP's new ZBook Ultra 14 workstation laptops are now available for pre-order, rocking AMD's fantastic new Ryzen AI Max+ 300 series "Strix Halo" APUs, with prices starting at around $4000 but pricing scales up to an eye-watering $8250.

On its official website, HP lists the new ZBook Ultra 14 G1a mobile workstation PC Wolf Pro Security Edition, packing the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro 385 "Strix Halo" APU, the Radeon 8050S "RDNA 3.5" integrated GPU, 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 512GB of Gen4 SSD storage for $4296.

HP has a bunch of different configurations with slightly different Strix Halo APUs, with plenty of variants of RAM + SSD upgrades along the way. A higher-end configuration of the ZBook Ultra 14 includes one with the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro 395 "Strix Halo" APU, 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $5660, however the same laptop but with an upgraded 128GB of RAM and 4TB SSD will cost you $8250... representing a $2590 price increase for 64GB more RAM and 3TB more SSD... ouch.

KLEVV has updated its DDR5 Gaming/OC memory lineup, with new releases that include new color options for its FIT V and BOLT V series RAM, enhanced performance with lower latency RAM options, and "Optimized for AMD" variants across its DDR5 OC models.

The new color variations for its FIV V and BOLT V memory series include an elegant Jet Black edition, which KLEVV explains as a "minimalist and understated aesthetic tailored for creators and professionals". The BOLT V series now features a new pure White edition, which KLEVV says combines a bold, modern aesthetic alongside high-speed performance tailored for gamers.

It's not just looks that KLEVV is updating here, with its CRAS V RGB, URBANE V RGB, BOLT V, and FIT V series with reduced latency, enhancing responsiveness and efficiency. The company's 6000MT/s variants now have lower latencies down into CL26 and CL28, while its 6400MT/s memory is at CL30, depending on the model, ensuring smoother and more efficient operation for demanding applications and gaming.

Intel has confirmed that its next-generation Panther Lake CPUs made on its next-gen in-house Intel 18A process node will be released in 2025, with its next-gen Nova Lake CPU platform launching in 2026.

During its recent annual report to stockholders, there was a letter from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan who said: "This is strengthening our position as the CPU of choice in a valuable growth market. We will further enhance our position in the second half of this year with the launch of Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, followed by Nova Lake in 2026".

However, the freshly-minted Intel CEO didn't mention a single word about GPUs... with the company remaining silent on its graphics division since the whisper-quiet launch of Battlemage. We have no idea what the future of graphics is from the company, with the CEO not elaborating on it further.

Chinese manufacturer UNIS has just unveiled its new S5 and S5 Ultra Gen5 SSDs, rocking the fastest Gen5 SSD read speeds of up to 14.9GB/sec, beating out the Gen5 SSD competition.

UNIS's new S5 family includes the base S5 and S5 Ultra, both falling into the M.2 2280 form factor and PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. They've debuted in China and should reach global markets in the future, especially when they're pushing speeds of up to 14.9GB/sec which beats some of the world's biggest and best SSD makers.

The base model UNIS S5 pushes out up to 14.9GB/sec sequential reads and up to 12.9GB/sec sequential writes, beating out the competition -- Samsung 9100 PRO with 14.8GB/sec and Crutial T705 with 14.5GB/sec -- especially when you consider that UNIS is using an older, unknown 12nm controller and a DRAM-less design.

TSMC at one point wouldn't make any of its advanced chips on US soil, but appears that this could be changing... with the Taiwan giant to make bleeding-edge (A16) 1.6nm chips in Arizona.

Now that President Trump is in office, TSMC's ambitions in the US can grow exponentially and have advanced semiconductor production in the United States. TSMC VP for Global Policy, Peter Cleveland, recently said that TSMC plans to produce chips at its upcoming third semiconductor fab soon under construction in Arizona, to sustain the United States' AI leadership.

TSMC has invested $65 billion into its Arizona semiconductor fabs so far, with plans to have 3 facilities in total, with the first fab responsible for making 4nm chips according to reports. TSMC plans to make higher-end chips including 3nm, 2nm, and possibly its bleeding-edge A16 (1.6nm) chips.

The biggest question in gaming right now is by far "what is the release date for Grand Theft Auto VI," and that question has been partially answered by the CEO of franchise.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise has sat down for an interview where he was asked about the secrecy surrounding the launch date for GTA 6, especially considering many competing franchises reveal their release dates so early in their development.

Nintendo has already begun to show the value of its newly announced and launched Nintendo Today app by revealing the release date of its upcoming The Legend of Zelda Movie directed by Wes Ball, the director of The Maze Runner and Kingdom of the Planet of the apes.

The upcoming live-action movie is set to be released on March 26, 2027. Unfortunately, there isn't any more information to reveal on the movie, as we don't know who will be playing any of Nintendo's iconic characters such as Link, Zelda, and Gannondorf.

Additionally, we don't know how much of the movie will be animated versus live-action, but if we use the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie as an example, we can assume that Nintendo will be attempting to replicate the popularity of that movie with The Legend of Zelda Movie by keeping to the same approximate format.

AMD is reportedly working on releasing its Strix Point APUs to the desktop, under the Ryzen 9000G branding according to the latest rumors.

AMD CEO Lisa Su was recently asked if we'd see the company's new flagship "Strix Halo" APU on the desktop, which she confirmed with "yes, yes, of course!" and now it seems that Strix Point on the desktop will come first with the Ryzen 9000G series APUs.

In a new post on X by leaker @9550pro, we're hearing that there is a new AM5 APU coming and that it should be release in Q4 2025. As it stands, the highest core/thread count we've had on an AMD APU has been 8 cores and 16 threads, but the newer Strix Point APU features 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 5 processing power (and a far better integrated RDNA 3.5 GPU, and more).

Reports indicate that publishers are wary to set release dates for their games because no one wants to compete against Grand Theft Auto 6.

GTA 6 is set to "save" the games industry by capitalizing on 12 years of hype. Rockstar's new Grand Theft Auto is expected to be so big that it will collectively uplift the console games industry--after all, you can only play it on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S at launch.

There's also the disastrous effect of GTA's wake, and publishers don't want to see their $100 million AAA games get swallowed up. Some companies are even ready to push back their projects just in case GTA 6 does meet its intended Fall 2025 launch timing. Bosses at various publishers tell The Game Business' Chris Dring that they're poised to delay games to steer clear of GTA 6.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick reiterates that long development cycles are funded by the company's strong balance sheet.

If GTA 6 releases in 2025 as planned, then it'll have been 12 years in since GTA 5 released in 2013. Why has it taken over a decade? Games are tough to make, but more importantly, the length of development is directly depending on how much funding is available. Rockstar makes tons of revenue every year, and while Rockstar is owned by Take-Two Interactive, Take-Two's royalty-sharing & incentive plans ensure Rockstar have a hefty treasure vault to fund new games--especially something as big as Grand Theft Auto.

In a recent interview with Wall Street Week's David Westin, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on how the company's continued performance growth create a kind of virtuous cycle that enables longer periods of development, presumably for bigger games that could have significant payoffs (like Grand Theft Auto 6).

Ubisoft just made a deal with Tencent to spin off Ubisoft's most valuable franchises to a separate company. Employees are worried about what happens to the existing Ubisoft organization--will more layoffs ensue? Ubisoft management effectively tells workers to hold tight and wait for more info.

Amid many quarters of disappointing results and growing financial pressure, Ubisoft and Tencent have teamed up. Tencent has invested $1.2 billion into a new Ubisoft subsidiary (off-handedly known as"Ubisoft 2") in exchange for 25% of financial stake in the new subsidiary.

Internal memos from Ubisoft's CEO have made employees antsy--those that remain after the culling of jobs as part of Ubisoft's strict cost-cutting plan. People are worried that more layoffs are coming.

Gamers, investors, and users can now see how Ubisoft discussed its new shake-up with employees.

Ubisoft has announced a new mega-deal with Tencent; the Chinese firm invested roughly $1.2 billion into a new Ubisoft subsidiary in exchange for 25% of stake in the group.

The internal memo from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot regarding that announcement has been acquired by Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, with the CEO stressing the new business partnership will help boost profits through a new focus reform.

The debut of Windows 11 22H2 introduced the requirement of a Microsoft account for both Windows 11 Home and Pro versions, but users who were particularly annoyed at this requirement and technically inclined enough, discovered a workaround that bypassed the dreaded Microsoft Account.

What is considered to be one of the most popular workarounds is "bypassro," which is a command line prompt that's entered during the setup process that circumvents the requirement of an internet connection to continue the setup process and a Microsoft Account. Unfortunately, this workaround is now being removed by Microsoft, as confirmed in the latest Windows 11 preview build, with Microsoft's reasoning being to "ensure that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account."

As you can probably imagine, this change will be quite annoying for any Windows 11 user who doesn't want a Microsoft Account or an internet connection during setup, but this doesn't mean it's impossible to bypass the requirements. Notably, "bypassro" can be manually re-added in a command line by typing the following, "reg add HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionOOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0".

SpaceX is about to make history by being the company to transport the first astronauts in a polar orbit under the mission "Fram2. The name is a reference to the Norwegian ship "Fram," which did Arctic to Antarctic expeditions during the 1800s and 1900s.

In a similar fashion SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft named "Resilience" will orbit over the both poles in a three to five-day journey. The capsule will be transported to orbit with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, and much like the Inspiration4 mission, the world's first private space mission with no professional astronauts aboard, Crew Dragon will be equipped with a cupola for unparalleled views of Earth.

Crew Dragon will have four soon-to-be astronauts aboard: Malta resident Chun Wang, Vehicle Commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, Pilot Rabea Rogge and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Eric Philips. Wang has funded the mission for an undisclosed amount of money. The goal of the mission is for the four crew members to conduct twenty-two scientific and research experiments, such as sleep research, the world's first X-ray monitoring of bone density in space, world's first mushroom growing in space, glucose monitoring, and more.

The former co-chief operating officer (co-COO) of TSMC, Chiang Shang-yi, has had some fighting words against US chipmaker Intel... and how much he looks down on the company.

Chiang has a position of authority as he worked at TSMC until 2013, and even when he left, he was one of the company's core team members who helped cement the Taiwanese company to become a global contract chip manufacturing leader. Chiang recently attended a book launch in Taiwan this week, meeting with the dean of Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University, and boy he didn't hold back any punches towards Intel.

TSMC's former executive said Intel should get more into mature chip manufacturing processes -- and not bleeding-edge process nodes -- as Intel was too far away from catching up with TSMC. He also added that Intel was the former "king" of the chip industry, but was still a "nobody".

NVIDIA's previous-gen GeForce RTX 3090 is being rebranded, rebadged, and ready to scam unsuspecting PC gamers as the more expensive, and higher-end RTX 4090... oh boy.

This new scam involves polishing the GPU die and re-labeling it using a laser, so that it looks like it's got some official markets on the GPU die from NVIDIA. You've got to hand it to these scammers, they're getting better at what they do, but you can still tell: the capacitor layout surrounding the GPU is obvious, as our friends at Uniko's Hardware said in the above post on X.

Uniko's Hardware posted: "Another fake 4090 that used a 3090 die labbed the die then remark it as 4090 AD102, the MLCC surrounding the die are the layout the 3090 uses" adding "or just check the location of the dots at corners".

Apple's upcoming foldable iPhone Ultra smartphone will reportedly use a liquid metal hinge that will resist deformation, improving durability and help minimize creases in the foldable screen.

In a new post by a Chinese leaker, we're learning that Apple has used a metallic glass (amorphous metal) for the hinge mechanism inside of the foldable iPhone, something we've heard analyst Ming-Chi Kuo refer to Apple's use of "liquid metal" which is a common marketing term for the same thing.

The difference between regular glass and metallic glass is that traditional metals feature a regular, repeating crystalline atomic structure, compared to metallic glass that features a disordered arrangement of atoms that just so happens to be more resistant to bending, deformation, and denting -- perfect for an ultra-premium foldable iPhone.

We all know that the leather jacket that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang wears is iconic, to say the least, but now he has a new one: gifted to him by a humanoid robot made by 1X Technologies.

Jensen recently visited the 1X Technologies HQ in San Francisco, where the NVIDIA CEO was greeted by a humanoid robot, gifting him one of the very best black leather jackets on the market, custom-made by California-based ERL clothing brand. 1X Technologies might be a name you haven't heard of, but the company has been working on its Neo Gamma humanoid robot, with plans to ship hundreds of thousands of them before the end of 2025.

As for Jensen's new leather jacket, but sports an NVIDIA logo embroidered into the clothing, and I'm sure will join the wardrobe of leather jackets that the NVIDIA CEO has in his house. It looks awesome, and I definitely want one.

AMD's next-generation consumer-focused Zen 6-based "Medusa Range" desktop CPUs, with new leaks teasing that AMD will be using TSMC's bleeding-edge N2X process node that is made for ultra-high clock speeds on CPUs.

In a video posted by leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're hearing that "Medusa Range" will be AMD's next-gen Zen 6 desktop processor family, made on TSMC's new N2X process node, meaning AMD is skipping over the new N3 process node, and next-gen N2 process nodes, and right into the (warm arms) N2X node.

We are to expect up to dual TSMC N2X-fabbed CCD chiplets (Medusa Range is expected to feature 2 x 12-core Zen 6 CCDs for a total of 24 cores, 48 threads) with CPU clock speeds targeting a juicy and hype-building 6.0GHz+ and over. We should expect a "decent" integrated GPU, while another variant could arrive with weaker or no integrated GPU.

Instagram is rolling out a double-speed toggle for its reels, allowing users to consume short-form content even faster.

According to an Instagram representative, the feature was 'highly requested' by the community and aimed to give users more control over the Reels experience. Reels currently operate at lengths of 15 seconds up to 3 minutes, and the new settings would allow users to long-press on the edge of the screen to double playback speed.

The impact of short-form social media content is a topic of increasing concern, particularly among youths. Reels on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are designed to be short, engaging, and algorithmically driven, and studies have identified detrimental effects on attention spans, cognitive function, and academic performance.