Latest News - Page 318

Dune: Awakening is the highly anticipated new survival game from Conan Exiles developer

Funcom will launch on PC on May 21. It will debut in full Version 1.0 form, with no Early Access period or subscription model. Pre-orders for the game will open this week, and the developer has detailed the full hardware requirements.

This is good news for those with older hardware, as the recommended GPU for playing using 'High' settings at 1440p 60 FPS is the GeForce RTX 3070. For those pushing 4K 60 FPS with 'Ultra' settings, you'll need a GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon RX 7800 XT. The absolute minimum spec is the GeForce RTX 1060, which only covers playing using the 'Low' quality preset at 1080p 30 FPS.

According to established leaker wxnod, we have a date and time for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5060 Ti launch. The post, which went live over the weekend, states that the 8GB and 16GB variants will launch on April 16 at 9 p.m. (which we assume is based in Asia). NVIDIA has yet to announce the GeForce RTX 5060 series; however, this information aligns with the leak/rumor we reported last week that said the RTX 5060 Ti was coming in mid-April.

According to that source, the baseline GeForce RTX 5060's launch has been delayed to mid-May, so the RTX 5060 Ti will arrive first. As seen with the GeForce RTX 30 and ERX 40 Series, it's also expected that NVIDIA will create a Founders Edition model for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.

In the past couple of days, we've also seen the full specs for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti leak out from its 4,608 CUDA Cores to its Boost Clock speed of 2572 MHz. With up to 16GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti will offer significantly more memory bandwidth than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. However, as we get down to the mainstream cards for the RTX Blackwell generation, pricing will be a key factor in determining the card's overall value.

In recent weeks, we've received details on NVIDIA's upcoming mid-range GPUs, the GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti. According to leaks, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is set to arrive in two flavors: one with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM and one with 16G on a 128-bit bus. Like the mid-range RTX 5070 series, it's set to see competition from AMD with the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9060 XT.

According to new product listings from the South Korean Radio Agency (via @harukaze5719 on X), the Radeon RX 9060 XT will also arrive in two flavors: 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM and 16GB - on a 128-bit bus. However, as AMD's new RDNA 4 GPUs all use older GDDR6 technology, the overall bandwidth will be slower than NVIDIA's cards with the latest GDDR7.

The new product listings cover various Radeon RX 9060 XT cards from ASUS. Only the premium variant will arrive with 16GB of VRAM. Both the ASUS Dual and Prime models will ship with 8GB of memory, in OC and non-OC form, with the ASUS TUF Gaming model set to ship with 16GB of memory, also in OC and non-OC form.

At the DirectX State of the Union at GDC 2025 last week, Microsoft announced DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2 alongside a suite of new technologies that will usher in the "next evolution in graphics." Partnering with AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm. DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2 is set to bring a "game-changing" boost to performance in games with ray-tracing enabled.

This is excellent news as ray-tracing is one of the most cutting-edge and demanding forms of lighting and effects in games. According to Microsoft, the massive performance boost will arrive thanks to two technologies: opacity microamps (OMM) and shader execution reordering (SER).

Opacity micromaps (OMM) are set to improve performance in path-traced games by up to 2.3X thanks to enhanced efficiency and reduced "shader invocations" without compromising visual fidelity. Path tracing is the endgame for ray-tracing as it replaced all lighting, shadows, global illumination, reflections, and more with realistic ray-tracing. As seen in the recent Half-Life 2 RTX demo, Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it's a game-changer for image fidelity.

If you haven't heard about it, the Nintendo PlayStation is the stuff of videogame legend. In the early 1990s, when the CD-ROM multimedia age of gaming kicked off, Nintendo was looking to partner with Sony to create a CD add-on for the then-popular Super Nintendo console.

According to legend, around 200 units were produced, with the attachment set to boost the Super Nintendo's processing power and storage capacity in a big way.

PlayStation co-creator Ken Kutaragi, often called the father of PlayStation, was a key leader and engineer in developing the hardware and features of the original PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, and the PlayStation 3. In a recent photoshoot with Julian Domanski, Kutaragi showed off his very own Nintendo PlayStation console, tucked away in a closet - in pristine condition.

Less than 24 hours after reports began surfacing about the Australian Ratings Board (ACB) banning the sale of Silent Hill f across the country because its contents failed to meet criteria, the ACB has removed its classification.

It was only yesterday I reported the ACB classified Konami's upcoming Silent Hill f as "RC," which translates to "Refused Classification". The regulatory body of Australia that hands out ratings for media deemed the contents within Silent Hill f exceeded its guidelines, with the ACB stating on its website that any media with the RC classification "cannot be sold, hired, advertised or legally imported in Australia."

AMD's next-generation Sound Wave APU is reportedly a new Arm-based chip that will feature RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, MALL cache, and compete in the Windows on Arm market against Qualcomm, Intel, and soon NVIDIA in 2026.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're hearing AMD's next-gen Sound Wave APU will feature 2 x P-Cores and 4 x E-Cores of Arm-based CPU that won't deliver powerhouse performance, but instead will have fantastic battery life as Windows on Arm laptops do.

AMD is expected to use 4 x GPU cores based on the RDNA 3.5 GPU, but with improved ML (machine learning) performance that could be more of an "RDNA 3.5+" GPU instead. Sound Wave is expected to feature 16MB of MALL cache, a 4th Generation AI engine, a 128-bit LPDDR5X-9600 memory controller and 16GB of RAM expected to be the "standard" for the new Arm-based Sound Wave APU.

Micron's new SOCAMM, a modular LPDDR5X memory solution, was developed in collaboration with NVIDIA to support its just-announced GB300 Grace Blackwell Superchip announced at GTC 2025 this week.

Micron's new modular SOCAMM memory modules provide over 2.5x higher bandwidth at the same capacity as RDIMMs, and they're super-small, occupying just one-third the size of the industry-standard RDIMM form factor. Thanks to LPDDR5X, the new SOCAMM modules use one-third the power of regular DDR5 DIMMs, while SOCAMM placements of 16-die stacks of LPDDR5X memory enable a 128GB memory module: the highest-capacity LPDDR5X memory solution, which is perfect for training large AI models and more concurrent users on inference workloads.

Raj Narasimhan, senior vice president and general manager of Micron's Compute and Networking Business Unit, explained: "AI is driving a paradigm shift in computing, and memory is at the heart of this evolution. Micron's contributions to the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell platform yields significant performance and power-saving benefits for AI training and inference applications. HBM and LP memory solutions help unlock improved computational capabilities for GPUs".

Microsoft and Qualcomm have tried ever-so-hard to push their Windows on Arm and Snapdragon X series processors onto the market, but it... just hasn't worked. So much so, that Amazon is now tagging Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 as a "frequently returned" item, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

The folks over at Windows Central spotted that Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 on Amazon says that the device is frequently returned by users, and that customers should thoroughly research the product and read reviews before purchasing it. In my review of the Snapdragon X Elite-powered ASUS Vivobook S14, I said it was a good laptop... but there are far too many shortcomings because of the Arm-based Snapdragon X series chip.

Amazon's return policy is pretty strong, with customers able to return a product for a multitude of reasons: hardware faults, software incompatibility (you're going to have a LOT of those with a Snapdragon-powered Windows laptop) or even buyer's remorse (you'll have that buying a Snapdragon-powered Windows laptop, too).

NVIDIA's new beefed-up RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU has turned up on US-based IT reseller Connection, with a price of $8435 (if you buy it in bulk) or $8565 (boxed).

The new NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU comes with a huge 96GB of GDDR7 memory, 3x the GDDR7 memory that the new gaming flagship GeForce RTX 5090 has. There are a couple of different RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, with the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, and the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition.

The difference here is that the Max-Q variant is capped at 300W, while retaining 88% of its AI performance according to NVIDIA. NVIDIA's upcoming RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell GPU will launch with 48GB of GDDR7 memory and a price between $4439 and $4569, while the RTX PRO 4500 comes with 32GB, and the RTX PRO 4000 with 24GB.

Samsung is reportedly working on new smart glasses that will be revealed before the end of the year, with the South Korean firm rumored to be set to unveil both a glasses-type device and a head-mounted device, simultaneously, by the end of 2025.

In a new report from ETnews, we're learning from their industry sources that Samsung is developing smart glasses by the end of the year, where the smart glasses will be worn like regular glasses, showing important information or images onto the glasses, transmitting sound from the frame, too.

Each and every person has a different face structure, so Samsung is said to be putting "a lot of effort" into a human-customized design, because smart glasses are hard (or near impossible) to have physical buttons on them, the company is working on hand movements to control the cameras and sensors on their upcoming smart glasses.

NVIDIA's previous-gen GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card ships with 24GB of GDDR6X memory, but China being China, and we've got modded RTX 4090s with 48GB of VRAM being sold for $3400.

The custom-modded RTX 4090 has 48GB of GDDR6X memory and a custom AIO cooler, confirmed on Reddit by u/CeFurkan. The AIO cooler on the custom GeForce RTX 4090 has a triple-fan cooler attached to the radiator, with the retail packaging clearly showing "GeForce RTX 4090 48GB".

BYKSI makes the AIO cooler that you see on the modded RTX 4090 48GB graphics card, with the 48GB of memory seen in both Windows Task Manager as well as GPU-Z.

Silent Hill f is banned in Australia ahead of its global release, which has an unnamed date. The upcoming title developed by NeoBards and published by Konami only recently received a haunting trailer, which can be viewed below.

Australian authorities at the Australian Classification Board (ACB), which is similar to America's Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), have classified the upcoming Silent Hill f as "RC," or "Refused Classification," meaning the game is now banned for sale within Australia. The ACB doesn't specifically state what content within the title violated its rating criteria, but according to the ACB's website, any media that receives an RC classification contains material that is "outside generally-accepted community standards and exceeds what can be included in the R 18+ and X 18+ ratings."

So, what has caused Australian authorities to ban Konami's upcoming title? The summary for Silent Hill f on the ACB website describes aspects of Silent Hill f as containing depictions of "players' character getting impaled in the neck and/or getting their faces ripped apart," a "character burned alive inside a cage", "a woman branded by a hot iron; entrails and sinew displayed on serving platters in fantastical celebration/ceremony; a character sawing off her own arm; a character slicing off portions of a character's face during a ritual."

A new free-to-play game set in the A Song of Ice and Fire universe is on the way, but you'll have to pay to get first dibs.

Early access is all the rage right now in gaming, and while it does have significant advantages (look at Baldur's Gate 3), the practice has been criticized as just another layer to the industry's money-making strategies. Free-to-play games aren't immune to paid early access either and the latest Game of Thrones Kingsroadco-op multiplayer game is yet another example.

The new Game of Thrones game will be F2P at launch, but first it'll release into a paid early access program. Kingsroad will launch into Steam early access on March 26 and you'll have to spend a minimum of $25 to get in. The packs, which include cosmetics, the in-game currency called Iron Bank Marks, and access to the game, start at $25 and go all the way up to $90. The developers say Kingsroad's early access is expected to last for 4 weeks.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has outperformed its successful predecessors, Ubisoft today proudly announced.

Despite controversy, all signs point to the latest Assassin's Creed game being a best-seller (the franchise, which sold over 200 million games by 2022, is a foundational pillar for the modern games market). Ubisoft today confirmed that AC Shadows has now broken 2 million players just 2 days after launch on all platforms.

"🔥 2 MILLION PLAYERS! 🔥 We're thrilled to celebrate this incredible milestone! Assassin's Creed Shadows has now surpassed the launches of AC Origins and Odyssey. Thank you for joining the journey in Feudal Japan!" Ubisoft wrote on its social channels.

The European Union has introduced a new set of consumer protection rules that directly address how video games handle microtransactions, virtual currencies, and in-game purchases in games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and EA Sports FC.

The new principles, laid out by the EU's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC), aim to bring greater transparency and accountability to how these systems are presented to players. While described as "principles," they're backed by existing EU consumer law and are legally enforceable.

One of the most significant changes targets how prices are shown. Under the new rules, games must clearly display the real-world currency equivalent of any in-game item. If a skin in Fortnite costs 2,500 V-Bucks, the game must also show that this translates to $20 USD. The same applies across the board - whether it's NBA 2K's VC or Call of Duty's COD Points, players need to see exactly how much they're spending in real terms.

As reported by PC Gamer, industry experts have been widely speculating about the effect on GTA 6 on the gaming markets. While it should prove to be a huge uplift for gaming as a whole - there's a chance that even a slight change of plans could run studios into the ground.

Ben Porter, an industry intelligence expert at Newzoo, commented on the potential for a GTA 6 delay. Highlighting that while companies try to steer clear of the anticipated title, there's a lot of fear surrounding launch plans.

Razer has unveiled its latest AI-powered venture, Project Ava, which aims to become the smartest gaming companion ever created.

Originally announced at CES 2025, ProjectAva provides features that aim to assist the player with every aspect of the experience in-game. In-game walkthroughs allow the user to ask questions and get advice on how to progress through missions while in the game. One-click PC optimization claims to offer expertise with optimizing your game's graphics settings. Real-time esports coaching offers competitive analysis and insights to improve the player's performance in multiplayer experiences.

The focus on competitive play is the key differentiator for Razer's gaming copilot. The video example showcases the assistant pointing out enemy rotations in a game of League of Legends, and real-time instruction on how to counter a boss in Black Myth: Wukong. The focus on multiplayer, e-sports style applications is the backbone of the copilot's pitch. While the demonstrations are impressive, the real question is whether any of it will actually work.

Internal studies from OpenAI and MIT have been exploring how chatting to ChatGPT may affect the emotional experience of its users. In recent findings - which draw on over 40 million ChatGPT interactions and four weeks of human observation - there were some interesting takeaways.

The study from MIT found that chatbot interactions, whether through text or voice, were associated with higher levels of loneliness, reduced socialization, and emotional dependence. It highlights that participants who already trusted the chatbot, or were prone to emotional attachment in human relationships, were more likely to experience these effects. While the impact was less severe in ChatGPT's voice mode, the study found that both personal and general conversations could lead to emotional dependence and feelings of loneliness.

OpenAI's study, however, found that emotional conversations with ChatGPT were the exception rather than the norm. The researchers highlighted that such interactions were prominent for 'only a small group of the heavy Advanced Voice Mode users' that were studied. Meaning, that while there are links to adverse emotional effects found in the MIT study, they only made up a small subset of the broader population.

PCI-SIG has just announced PCIe 7.0 specification v0.9 has hit the final draft, now available for members to review, before being floated out into the market in the future.

PCIe 7.0 will target data-intensive markets like hyperscale data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), military/aerospace industries, emerging applications like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), 800G Ethernet, cloud computing, and more. PCI-SIG says the new PCIe 7.0 standard is being developed with the following goals:

PCI-SIG explains in a blog on its official website: "I am excited to share that PCI-SIG® has released the PCI Express® (PCIe®) 7.0 specification, version 0.9 for member review. Version 0.9 is the final draft of the specification wherein members perform internal reviews of the technology for their essential patents. No additional functional changes are expected during this time, and we are on track to publish the full specification later this year. With this update, PCI-SIG is proud to continue our frequency of doubling the data rate every three years - from 64 GT/s of PCIe 6.0 specification to 128 GT/s raw bit rate".