Intel Principal Engineering Program Manager, Joseph Bonetti, says that the rumored TSMC deal is a mistake and that the new Intel 18A process node is more advanced, and that the company has early adopters onboard.

In a now-deleted post on LinkedIn, Bonetti said that Intel is making progress in semiconductor manufacturing and that Intel 18A -- which is destined for its upcoming Panther Lake CPUs -- is nearing completion. Bonetti said that Intel Foundry will prove itself with its own new products, and that early adopters include Microsoft and Amazon.

Bonetti talked about the concerns that Intel 18A might be beaten by TSMC's new N2 process node, noting that both nodes use gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, and that Intel 18A will have the added advantage of backside power delivery. Bonetti said that neither company (Intel nor TSMC) has a "2nm" node right now, but that Intel is on track to have theirs in production sooner than TSMC.

Jim Keller has weighed in on the messy Intel situation, with the legendary chip expert posting on X that he thinks "a great intel is worth $1 trillion".

In a new post on X, Keller said: "you build value by having a great goal and a team that loves working to the goal. Intel built the fastest CPUs on the best process. This is not unlocking shareholder value, it's a fire sale". Pierre Ferragu replied to Keller, saying: "Jim - there a time for dreaming big and a time for rationalizing; preparing ground for the next big thing? Couldn't Intel's chip join the well run Broadcom family, Altera and Mobileye live their lives and Intel foundries become a national asset we protect and turn around?"

Keller replied, saying: "I think a great Intel is worth $1 trillion. Seems a little careless to throw it away".

ASUS has just confirmed that its new ROG XG external graphics card solution will launch on February 25, just days from now, and will work with up to NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU along with blazing-fast Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.

Thunderbolt 5 drives bandwidth up to 80Gbps (bi-directional) on the ASUS ROG XG 2025 external GPU, and as it stands, is the only external GPU product on the market with Thunderbolt 5. ASUS makes its new ROG XG with either NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU or the flagship RTX 5090 Laptop GPU.

Inside, ASUS is using an upgraded cooling solution that packs a vapor chamber and dust filter, with the company noting that it features 54% more surface cooling area, and it's quieter (by 3dB) than its predecessor (the XG Mobile 4090).

We've had a glimpse of the spec of AMD's RX 9070 vanilla GPU and its clock speeds thanks to an early Amazon product listing.

The graphics card in question is the XFX Radeon RX 9070 Swift, as noticed on Amazon by leaker @momomo_us (see the above post on X, located via VideoCardz).

XFX's Swift Gaming Edition is listed with a base clock of 1440MHz, a game clock of 2210MHz, along with a boost clock of 2700MHz.

NVIDIA's RTX 50 series has officially dropped support for 32-bit CUDA applications, including 32-bit PhysX. As a result, older games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Borderlands 2, and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag - which relied on GPU-accelerated PhysX - will now shift physics calculations to the CPU, leading to significant performance drops on RTX 5000 series GPUs.

The issues were first reported by users on the NVIDIA forums, who highlighted issues with enabling PhysX in Borderlands 2. NVIDIA support responded by stating:

NVIDIA's RTX 5050 graphics card has again been mentioned on the grapevine, and once again it's the laptop version that's in the rumor spotlight.

VideoCardz has got hold of a list of specs for incoming laptops from HP - the Victus 15 series - which mentions the next-gen GPUs from NVIDIA which will be used in these portables.

Both the RTX 5060 and 5050 are present here, therefore theoretically confirming that these mobile GPUs are indeed real.

AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors are rumored to be debuting in March, and some freshly leaked benchmarks back up that idea - though the results themselves look rather disappointing, particularly for the flagship CPU.

These are Geekbench results flagged up by VideoCardz and a regular contributor to hardware rumors on X, Olrak29.

The Ryzen 9950X3D presents a robust enough single-core uplift here compared to its predecessor, being around 15% faster than the 7950X3D. However, for multi-core, the generational increase is only about 4%, which looks disappointing to say the least.

Spider-Man 2 for PC launched roughly three weeks ago to mixed reviews from fans due to its performance issues. However, one of the new title's saving graces is mod support, and the community has been quick to implement its own string of fixes, features, and reworks.

Aside from the required mod manager, the most downloaded mod on the Spider-Man 2 Nexus is 'Reworked MJ's Face'. The mod does exactly what you'd expect - it changes Mary Jane's face model in-game. A common complaint during the game's PS5 launch was that MJ looked older, and just different from the original game's appearance. While many liked the new look, others weren't a fan of the change - a preference that's clearly echoed from the download figures for the PC version's mods.

Speaking of original face models, you can also download a mod that adds back the original Peter Parker face, which John Bubniak modeled for the 2017 release before it was updated in Spider-Man: Remastered (2022). You'll also find improved versions of the fan-favorite Raimi suits, and a more refined version of Andrew Garfield's suit from The Amazing Spiderman: 2. Among various gameplay tweaks, quality-of-life changes, and graphics improvements.

As reported by Yahoo Finance, NVIDIA has recovered 90% of its market losses, rebounding sharply after the turmoil caused by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.

DeepSeek's low-cost R1 model sent shockwaves through the global tech sector, triggering a historic selloff that erased nearly $600 billion from NVIDIA's market capitalization in a single day-the largest one-day loss in stock market history. The broader tech sector shed an estimated $1 trillion, while NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang saw his net worth decline by $18 billion overnight.

Now, NVIDIA shares have rebounded to $140 USD, marking a remarkable turnaround from the late-January collapse. While still below the all-time high of $153.13 recorded on January 7, the swift recovery highlights investor confidence in the company's long-term prospects.

Elon Musk's Grok-3 has officially been released, and according to early feedback, it's actually pretty good. Grok-3 has already placed at #1 in the Chatbot Arena leaderboards - a platform that ranks AI language models based on blind popularity contests. The startup also claims that it outperforms its competitors across math, science, and coding benchmarks.

Yet, beyond standardized benchmarks for LLMs, the practical application of these tools is relatively similar. Converse with a chatbot, generate images, write code, and search the web. Although they each have different strengths, there isn't a massive difference between the UX of prompting DeepSeek, Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude.

However, one of Grok-3's distinguishing characteristics is that it's a little more... unhinged. Aside from being trained on (shudders) Twitter data, the model is intentionally designed to include fewer safeguards. You can generate text prompts containing profanity, akin to an unfiltered Charles Bukowski, and even images of celebrities, which understandably would concern creators.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly set to introduce its next-generation mobile memory, its new low-power wide I/O (LPW) DRAM for optimized on-device AI in 2028.

The new LPW DRAM is also known as low-latency wide I/O (LLW) and has been touted as a "mobile HBM" memory that's optimized for high performance and low power consumption. Samsung is aiming to be the top dog when it comes to the mobile memory market with its next-gen LPW DRAM designed for on-device AI.

Song Jae-hyuk, the CTO of Samsung Electronics' DS Division and head of the Semiconductor Research Lab said at the keynote address of ISSCC 2025 in San Francisco earlier this week that "the first mobile products equipped with LPW DRAM optimized for on-device AI will be launched in 2028".

PlayStation 6 coming out in 2028 sounds about right, former Sony Computer Entertainment worldwide studios president Shuhei Yoshida reckons.

The current console generation is entering its fifth year amid a games industry bloodbath. The market is laying off thousands of workers in droves, and cost-cutting has forced yet another unprecedented era for the interactive entertainment industry. Current events could disrupt the status quo, including the pivotal point where Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft release new refreshed hardware.

Despite what's going on in the world, Sony could deliver the PlayStation 6 sometime in 2028. At least that's the thought of Shuhei Yoshida, who led PlayStation's worldwide studios division for 11 years during the mega-popular PS4 gen.

My Nintendo Gold Points is being discontinued, Nintendo today announced.

Nintendo is shutting down its popular rewards program ahead of the Switch 2's launch. Nintendo will stop offering My Nintendo Gold Points starting March 24, 2025, and after this time, users will no longer earn Gold Points for digital and physical game purchases. All Gold Points that had been previously earned will still be available and redeemable for 12 months after they were issues, Nintendo promises.

Pre-orders made before the cutoff date will also net Gold Points: "Gold Points will be awarded if you place another pre-order by 9:30PM PDT on March 24, 2025. However, Gold Points will not be awarded if the new pre-order is placed after that." Nintendo's Platinum Points aren't going anywhere, though. These points are used for freebies like physical items and extras for Switch Online users. "Yes. You will still be able to earn Platinum Points, even after March 24, 2025."

Former Xbox VP Mike Ybarra publicly comments about Microsoft's current multi-platform gaming strategy, and the possibility of the company exiting the hardware market.

Trends indicate that the current Xbox hardware market is saturated. HW sales aren't growing--console and accessories revenue was down to its second holiday in the Xbox Series generation. Microsoft is breaking exclusivity on its games to grow laterally, and the general consensus is that this is the early stages of hardware being phased out over at Microsoft.

Whatever the case may be--we don't have access to Xbox's accounting data--Xbox management has confirmed another console is on the way. But these hypothetical situations about Microsoft dropping hardware have caught the attention of former key execs in the games industry, namely Mike Ybarra, who was VP of Xbox for a time and spent multiple years with the Xbox division.

UPDATE:Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, who tracks the Chinese games market, explained that the Marvel Rivals situation is a result of a re-evaluation of NetEase's core business.

NetEase, who makes billions of dollars from live service games every year, has laid off the developers of the popular new shooter Marvel Rivals.

From all accounts, the new Overwatch contender Marvel Rivals is a mega hit. The game has seen high playercounts on all platforms (10 million players in 72 hours), routinely hitting among the top-earning games on various storefronts. Rivals was so successful that it reportedly made over $130 million in its first month of availability. To put that into perspective, the entire Grand Theft Auto franchise made $175 million in 3 months.

Apple's new ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air has been spotted in some juicy new renders, with a tease of the same camera bar as the Pro models, and more. Check it out:

The new Apple iPhone 17 Air smartphone has appeared in a new video from YouTube channel Front Page Tech, with Jon Prosser telling us the new iPhone 17 Air will measure in at 5.5mm thin at its thinnest point, making it only slightly thicker than both of the iPad Pro models with OLED displays.

Apple's new iPhone 17 Air smartphone will feature a new camera bar on the back, housing all of the required components that you find on the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max handsets. This means we can expect a single-lens camera sensor on the left side of the camera bar, with a mic and LED flash placed on the right.

In another case of Samsung giving its best OLED screen to its competitors, rumor has it Apple's new iPhone 17 family of smartphones will use the latest M14 OLED panel provided by Samsung.

This means that Apple's new iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max smartphones will all use Samsung's new M14 OLED panel, which is a big change over only the higher-end iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max using the high-end M14 OLED display. Now the entire range of iPhone 17 handsets will use Samsung's latest M14 OLED panel.

Samsung's latest M14 OLED panel is the company's most advanced display technology, when compared to the previous generation M13, the new M14 OLED is 20-30% brighter, improved energy efficiency, and longer service life. Apple is expected to roll out 120Hz refresh rate goodness to all of its iPhone 17 handsets.

Samsung Vice Chairman Jeon Young-hyun has reportedly met with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang on US soil to discuss supplying the company with its new 8-Hi HBM3E memory for use on its AI GPUs.

In a new report from SEDaily, we're learning from semiconductor industry sources that the vice chairman recently visited NVIDIA's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California with CEO Jensen Huang to discuss various agendas surrounding the cooperation between the two companies.

Jeon Young-hyun is the Vice President and Head of Device Solutions (DS) Division, overseeing the semiconductor division of Samsung, met with Jensen in person, which leads the industry to believe Samsung's new 8-Hi HBM3E memory is finally, finally ready for certification (after months and months of delays and issues).

AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 300 series "Strix Halo" APUs have launched, first appearing in ASUS's new ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet that reviews have just gone live on.

The new flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU inside of the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet, and torn down for review by ASUS China PM Tony Yu, which confirms that Strix Halo's new Zen 5 CCDs have TSV (Through-Silicon Via) which could see future APUs rocking 3D V-Cache. AMD's next-gen Zen 6-based Medusa Halo APU should have X3D cache, and now we know that's definitely a possibility.

For me, the GPU power inside of AMD's new Strix Halo APU is the most impressive thing on show: we have a huge 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 GPU goodness, up from the 16 CUs inside of Strix Point APUs. This provides performance that gets close to the GeForce RTX 4070, and easily beats the RTX 4060 which is bloody impressive to see out of an APU.

The release of NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti is almost upon us, and for those who were hoping against hope that the GPU might not be low on stock with the initial launch - well, we don't have good news here.

The latest rumors on how healthy supply might be - or indeed won't be - were picked up by VideoCardz, including the post you see above on X.

That's a claim from Winterherz that they've spoken to Alternate, a large retailer in Germany (viewed as second only to MindFactory by some), and the outlet suggests that the stock level of the RTX 5070 Ti will be around the same as that seen with the RTX 5080 and 5090.