Latest News - Page 323

NASA has confirmed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the world's most powerful space telescope, has captured direct images of multiple exoplanets within Earth's galactic neighborhood.

The space agency has taken to its blog to announce Webb has observed the planets within HR 8799, and through its imaging, it has gathered strong evidence that the system's four gas giant planets formed much like Jupiter and Saturn, which slowly built solid cores that eventually pulled in gas from a protoplanetary disk. The young star system is only located 130 light years away and has long been a target of planetary studies, given the age of HR8799 is only 30 million years old, which is just a fraction of our own solar system's 4.6 billion years old.

Webb's results have been published in The Astrophysical Journal. NASA explains in its blog post that gas giants can form in two ways. The first is by building solid cores with heavier elements that attract gas. The second is when particles of gas rapidly coalesce into massive objects from a young star's cooling disk. The first process is called core accretion, and the second is called disk instability. Webb's results indicate the planets within HR 8799 have taken the first route, and by understanding these processes, researchers can better distinguish between the two when hunting for more exoplanets while also contextualizing the evolution of our own solar system.

Bots in competitive or cooperative multiplayer games have been a problem for years, with a new study from Echelon Insights stating that 59% of gamers have encountered third-party bots in games. And with that, 71% agree that bots make it less fun to play certain games, with 77% agreeing that it's essential to verify that you are a human before jumping into the action. And these bots are getting increasingly sophisticated in the age of AI gaming.

'Razer ID verified by World ID' is one solution to this problem, and it's set to be part of the upcoming multiplayer game TOKYO BEAST. The game is set in Tokyo in the year 2124, a time when humans and "advanced autonomous androids" coexist. It's a competitive title that includes collectible unique NFTs alongside in-game purchases via Razer.

'Razer ID verified by World ID' is powered by secure, single sign-on (SSO) technology designed to verify "real human gamers" to create a more authentic and immersive gaming experience. World ID, a company co-founded by Sam Altman and Alex Blania, is all about confirming someone's unique online human identity with a focus on privacy. It can tell that someone is human without knowing who they are.

As announced in 2022, Ubisoft Toronto is leading development on a Splinter Cell remake, built from the ground up using Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine.

The original Splinter Cell (2002) calls back to a time when Ubisoft was positioned at the forefront of innovation in games - and as evidenced by the team's commitment to return to what made the game great, it's shaping to be a pleasant departure from the publisher's open-world formula.

As reported by Videogamer, former Ubisoft tools support specialist Wesley Chartrand shared some behind-the-scenes hints on LinkedIn, detailing his role as a scrum master and his focus on project efficiency. More notably, Chartrand spent two years "organizing and running retrospectives for the Splinter Cell DevOps team" - a sign that the studio is actively studying the DNA of classic Splinter Cell rather than simply modernizing it.

Intel XeSS 2 is the company's significant overhaul and update to its AI-powered upscaling solution, including XeSS Super Resolution, XeSS Frame Generation, and XeLL Low Latency. Providing feature parity with NVIDIA's DLSS suite of AI rendering tools, at GDC 2025, Intel has announced that the XeSS 2 SDK is now available to download.

The XeSS SDK is available on GitHub and is open to all developers. It gives them the tools to integrate the full range of XeSS 2 features into their games. Intel also offers developer guides for enabling XeSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and its Reflex-like XeLL Low Latency solution, alongside the XeSS Inspector Tool for "verifying, debugging, and tuning XeSS 2."

Plus, plugins for Unreal Engine and Unity, two of the most popular engines and platforms used by game developers today. Intel's XeSS 2 is optimized for Intel graphics hardware and covers a range of mobile and desktop products.

Texture compression has been used in PC gaming for decades, ever since the first texture was applied to a basic 3D character model or environment. In 2025, with the rise of 4K gaming across the PC and console space, these high-resolution textures often contain several layers. The dinosaur example below shows eight 4096 x 4096 PBR textures with 13 channels of surface detail covering roughness, ambient occlusion, and other properties.

Add this all up, and you've got 200 million texture values per texture that would need to be stored in memory (the VRAM on a GPU) for the single in-game asset. Regarding gaming in super-high resolution with ultra settings in 2025, this is one of the reasons why the general rule of thumb is - the more VRAM, the better. Even so, new AI-powered methods of texture compression will significantly improve performance.

At GDC 2025, Intel's Anis Benyoub is joining Microsoft on stage as it showcases 'Cooperative Vectors on DirectX,' a new feature that will lead to a 10X improvement in inference performance for Neural Block Texture Compression on Intel Arc GPUs. Joe Rozek from AMD and Alexey Panteleev from NVIDIA will also be there to discuss how Cooperative Vectors will be used with Radeon and GeForce RTX hardware.

CPU-Z's new v2.15 update delivers support for the latest silicon from AMD and NVIDIA, with support for Strix Halo and Krackan APUs, while added GPU support includes the Radeon RX 9070 series and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.

Not only that, but CPU-Z now lets you check your GPU and ROP count, just in case you want to make sure your graphics card has the right ROP count, as that's now a thing unfortunately. AMD's new Ryzen AI Max 300 series "Strix Halo" APUs and Ryzen AI 340/350 "Krackan" APUs, as well as the new RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are all supported in CPU-Z now.

NVIDIA's new Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 are now both supported by CPU-Z, as well as the entire fleet of new EPYC 9000 series CPUs from the monster 192-core, 384-thread EPYC 9965 down to the 8-core, 16-thread EPYC 9015.

Amazon is changing their product family moving forward, with higher-tier products that will better compete with Apple, and some of those new Alexa+ ready devices could include new AR (augmented reality) glasses.

In a new report from Mark Gurman on Bloomberg, we're learning that AR glasses and new "wrist-worn devices" could be part of that lineup in Amazon's future. Amazon is well aware its home robot Astro didn't sell well, with former Microsoft executive Panos Panay not ruling out that the company wouldn't push more into the robotic front, but only if he's sure that it would give customers more reason to use Alexa.

Amazon dipped its toes into the smartphone business with its Fire range of handsets, but if we use the dipping of toes into water metaphor, then piranhas devoured their foot. Gurman reports that Panay said that Amazon has no plans to develop a new smartphone, but didn't fully rule it out, Panay said: "it would be foolish of me to not step back and look at how the world's changing in front of us. You always have to evaluate".

Xbox 360-era MMO shooter Defiance is coming back, and the new operator of Last Chaos is leading the charge.

Arkhunters rejoice! Both Defiance games are being revived, starting with the first game released by Trion Worlds in 2013. This version of Defiance is coming back on April 18, 2025 as a free-to-play game through Fawkes Games, a group that has licensed both the development and publishing rights for Defiance 2013 and Defiance 2050 from Gamigo (Fawkes also operates Last Chaos, an MMO that was popular in the mid-aughts).

Fawkes is making big commitments to preserving the authentic community-driven experience that the original MMO third-person shooter had to offer, and as someone who actually played the original Defiance way back on Xbox 360, I can say I'm intrigued to see how this goes. Sadly, all previous account data has been lost...so don't expect to dig up any of your old characters and loot along the way.

Elon Musk says that the US government has "magic money computers" that print money from absolutely "nothing", something he admitted DOGE found in a new chat with Senator Ted Cruz, check it out:

When talking about DOGE's recent discoveries, SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk said: "you may think that government computers talk to each other, they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it's coherent. The numbers that you're presented to as a Senator (talking to Senator Ted Cruz) are actually the real numbers". Cruz replies "one would think" and Elon repeats him "'one would think" but quips "they're not'.

"They're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. What we've uncovered is pretty remarkable. I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of thin air. That's magic money".

Obsidian's latest patch notes for Avowed contains a hint at future content for the RPG.

The not-Skyrim RPG Avowed released last month, and Obsidian has been rolling out patch updates to make various QoL tweaks to the game. So far, these updates haven't added any new content to the game, instead opting for additions like dedicated HUD-off keybinds or third-person button toggles.

While neither Xbox nor Obsidian have officially confirmed DLC for Avowed, it's possible that something like a paid expansion could be on the way or maybe some smaller-scale content drops like more quests and loot. If not, we at least know Obsidian will keep balancing the game over time.

Amazon Devices boss Panos Panay will be adding a new premium tier to the next-generation Alexa gadgets, centered around its new AI-powered Alexa+.

In a new report from Bloomberg, we're learning that the higher-end Alexa+ products will better compete against Apple products, with Panay pledging to reengineer Amazon's hardware from the silicon insides, to the design and materials on the outside. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes that whether they fall into the "entry, core or signature" he said that they will get the same love and attention.

Panay says that the higher-tier Alexa+ devices will have better audio, battery life, and security. He added: "I want perfection in every single product that we ship - period. There won't be a corner cut. It won't matter if we tried it before.It won't matter what you thought it used to be".

Razer is reportedly preparing a new wave of AMD-powered Blade 16 gaming laptops, which start at $1999 powered by NVIDIA's unreleased GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU.

In a new leak from @momomo_us on X we''re' learning that the new fleet of Razer Blade 16 gaming laptops are powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor (10 cores, 20 threads @ up to 5.1GHz) with the RTX 5060 Laptop GPU, RTX 5070 Laptop GPU, RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU, and RTX 5080 Laptop GPU. Razer also has the higher-end Blade 16 gaming laptop with the flagship RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, which has a higher-end Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (12 cores, 24 threads @ up to 5.1GHz).

Starting at $1999, you'll get the Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, 16GB of LPDDR5X-8000 memory, 1TB Gen4 SSD, and the GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU with 8GB of GDDR7 memory. The Razer Blade 16 gaming laptop arrives with a 16-inch 1600p (2560 x 1600) OLED panel with a super-smooth 240Hz refresh rate, with 0.2ms response time and up to 400 nits of peak brightness.

AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU has been tested in DeepSeek R1 with some impressive results, with the AI benchmark running up to 3x faster than NVIDIA's discrete GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card.

First off, the major difference between the two is that the RTX 5080 has 16GB of VRAM and the Strix Halo APU has up to 128GB of VRAM at its disposal, as well as combining a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5-based processor with 50 TOPS of AI workload performance with its XDNA 2-based NPU.

AMD ran some benchmarks using consumer AI workloads including llama.cpp-powered application, LM Studio, which is shaping up to be the ultimate support for client LLM workloads, allowing users to locally run the latest language model without any technical knowledge required.

Qualcomm has just unveiled its 2025 lineup of G Series Gaming Platforms, including the new Snapdragon G3 Gen 3, Snapdragon G2 Gen 2, and Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 for a new wave of gaming handhelds.

The new Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 processor is the first Snapdragon G Series chip to support Lumen, Unreal Engine 5's fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system for Android-powered gaming handhelds. Qualcomm promises 30% more CPU performance, 28% faster gaming capabilities, lower power consumption, Wi-Fi 7, and more.

Under that, Qualcomm has the Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 for gaming and cloud gaming at 144FPS on dedicated gaming devices, with 2.3x performance boosts on the CPU, and 3.8x the GPU performance over Snapdragon G2 Gen 1. Lastly, the Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 supports up to 1080p 120FPS over Wi-Fi, intended for cloud gaming on dedicated Android gaming devices, with 80% more CPU and 25% more GPU performance.

We keep hearing more about the foldable iPhone that's theoretically destined to launch next year, and now we've caught wind of the price - though we wish we hadn't.

Did you ever think that an iPhone with a foldable screen would be cheap, though? Of course not, but according to one analyst, the device might start at around $2,300 in the US when (or if) Apple debuts it.

The analyst in question is Tim Long, who works for a British bank (Barclays), and imparted the info on this weighty price tag in an investor note.

The sequel to 2019's Metro Exodus was briefly revealed to be in existence in 2023, but since then, not much has been shown about the highly anticipated title. However, we have now learned the game will be much darker than its predecessors.

Accoding to a new blog post that pays tribute to 16 years of Metro, the developers at 4A Games have teased the contents of the upcoming game by saying where they have drawn inspiration from. The blog post states the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has influenced the development of the title, even going as far as to changing how the team "wanted to tell the story of the next Metro game."

4A Games explains, "As art became life for many of our developers in Ukraine, we drew from that lived experience to create an even darker story, those themes already present in Metro becoming ever-more apparent and important."

AMD supposedly operates a two-tier system for supplying chips to its graphics card making partners, or that's the belief of the rumor mill.

As VideoCardz reports, this comes from the Board Channels forum over in China, which is always a source we regard with some caution, but admittedly has proved correct with speculation in the past.

The assertion here is that AMD's top-tier board makers - known as 'core' brands - are ASUS, PowerColor and Sapphire, as well as Vastarmor and XFX.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has yet again revealed some unannounced details about the Nintendo Switch 2. This time, the inclusion of what appears to be upscaling technology.

It was only recently that filing with the FCC revealed the Nintendo Switch 2 will have two USB-C ports and the support for Wi-Fi 6. Now, another filing has been discovered and has seemingly revealed the inclusion of AI upscaling technology, with the above image showcasing a process of taking a low-resolution image through a render pipeline that increases the output resolution of the image seen on screen. It should be noted that this technology may not be used for Nintendo's newly released games but instead, it's old games from previous console generations, as the image depicts a 540p image being bumped up to 1080p.

There are very few new games on the original Switch that launch with a 540p resolution, and most are extremely graphically intensive and only briefly drop down to this resolution when in handheld mode. Regardless of where the technology is used, it appears the Switch 2 will feature some kind of AI upscaling technology, which, if true, isn't totally surprising since NVIDIA is slated to power the upcoming console with an SoC from the Ampere generation of GPUs, specifically the NVIDIA Tegra T239 SoC. This SoC is capable of AI upscaling.

The voice actor behind Aloy, the main character from Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, has commented on the recently leaked video that shows an AI-generated Aloy.

The voice behind the iconic PlayStation character Ashly Burch took to TikTok to comment on the AI-generated video that leaked last week, with Burch explaining the developer of the Horizon games contacted her shortly after the video leaked and informed her that none of her personal data or voice acting was used in the creation of the AI-generated Aloy. Gorilla also said to the voice actor the demo didn't reflect "anything that was actively in development".

After the disclaimers, Burch went on to say how the AI-generated content made her feel as whole, with the voice actor going on to mention how this video emerged during an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, where actors are protesting against the use of AI in the video game industry as a means of replacing them. These strikes are extremely similar to the SAG-AFTRA strikes in the film and TV industry that occurred in 2023, where actors pushed studios for protections against AI generating their likenesses without permission and ultimately replacing them.

AMD has officially launched its new flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor, offering 16 cores, 32 threads, and second-gen 3D V-Cache, and now we've got a beautiful die shot of all that silicon goodness.

In a new post on Chinese social media platform Bilibili, we're getting a look at that gorgeous Zen 5 CPU design with the die of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D shown off, with the beautiful dual CCD configuration and additional 3D V-Cache. It looks so good, and as a self-professed nerd, I totally love seeing these things.

The die design of the new 9950X3D was compared next to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, where you can see the second CCD on 9950X3D (on the right). Each CCD is home to 8 cores and 16 threads of Zen 5 CPU power, with the second CCD on the 9950X3D bumping things up to 16 cores and 32 threads, with that juicy 3D V-Cache thrown into the mix.