Latest News - Page 36

According to the latest Steam data, the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is still the most popular discrete gaming GPU among PC gamers. The mainstream GPU from the Ampere generation debuted in 2021, and in subsequent years we've seen its successors arrive in the form of the RTX 4060 and RTX 5060, both of which are among the most popular GPUs in use today.

However, thanks to the current memory and component crisis, part of NVIDIA's solution to get GPUs out into the wild has been to re-release or re-launch the GeForce RTX 3060 as a mainstream option. And with that, we're not only seeing the return of older models but also new designs, such as the Palit GeForce RTX 3060 Infinity 2 OC (via VideoCardz). This is a new variant of the now five-year-old GPU model, and the dual-fan design includes a small factory overclock to 1792 MHz, with 12GB of GDDR6 memory.

The return of the GeForce RTX 3060 comes down to Ampere's use of Samsung Foundry's 8nm process as opposed to the TSMC chips found in the GeForce RTX 40 and 50 Series. This allows NVIDIA to produce more mainstream and entry-level GPUs for PC gamers using the GA106 GPU found in the RTX 3060. The only downside, of course, is that in 2026, performance is definitely a step or two behind the GeForce RTX 5060, even though it has more VRAM capacity.

A Brazilian Xbox player has won a court ruling against Microsoft after the company permanently suspended his account following a hack and told him to repurchase his digital game library. The user, Ordo_Liberal on Reddit, announced the verdict on July 12, 2026, after a case that began in April, when his account was compromised despite two-factor authentication being enabled.

After detecting unauthorised access and determining that the hacker had changed the account's security details, Microsoft permanently suspended the account. It then told Ordo_Liberal his only option was to buy his games again. The suspension affected not only his Xbox library but also Xbox purchases, Windows licenses, OneDrive files, Microsoft 365, and store apps, blocking access to all of it.

Brazil's Consumer Defence Code allows individuals to bring small-claims cases without a lawyer and without paying court costs. So rather than starting over, Ordo filed a lawsuit. The Brazilian court ruled in his favour, ordering Microsoft to fully restore his account and digital library within 15 days or face a daily fine of 150 reais, around $30, capped at 1,500 reais, roughly $300.

Glen Schofield, the creator of Dead Space and co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, has announced his retirement from the games industry after 35 years. The news came in an emotional LinkedIn video in which Schofield thanked his family, colleagues, fans, and the studios that gave him the freedom to make the games he made.

"After 35 years of making games and directing them, running teams, it's time for me to officially retire from day-to-day work," Schofield said. "I had a front row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history."

Schofield's career reads like a timeline of some of the most influential games of the past three decades. He started as an artist before working his way up to VP at Crystal Dynamics, where he worked on the Gex series and the Legacy of Kain series. From there, he moved to EA's Visceral Games, where he was given the creative freedom to build something entirely new.

FX's new Far Cry TV show expands its cast with Hollywood legend Steve Buscemi.

Iconic character actor Steve Buscemi will star in Hulu's upcoming Far Cry series adaptation. The news was announced on franchise socials, confirming Buscemi's involvement while teasing a cerebral and chaotic adventure: "Hope you're ready to get thrown into the deep end, lose your mind, and make a few catastrophically bad decisions along the way."

Not much is known about the series insofar as plot points, but FX Networks has said that the show will follow the anthology format similar to Fargo, another FX series from showrunner Noah Hawley, who is also helming the Far Cry series. The individual runs of the Far Cry show will essentially tell a whole new story: "Each season of the limited series will feature a new setting and cast of characters," reads an announcement post from 2025.

Assassin's Creed Hexe still hasn't been officially revealed, but a DLC for the game seems to have already leaked. While yes, the official reveal is supposedly coming soon, getting information about an expansion pack before the main game is quite peculiar, to say the least.

The find comes from RogueTx, the same Ubisoft insider we have closely tracked throughout Hexe's rocky development. The leaker says a datamined string from the game's source code reads "Season_Pass_Wuerzburg_Expansion," pointing to a post-launch expansion set in Wurzburg, a real city in Bavaria.

If accurate, that would mean Ubisoft is already building out post-launch content for a game it hasn't even announced yet, similar to how Assassin's Creed Shadows got story expansions rather than pure cosmetic add-ons.

A new industry report out of Japan claims that every single online game company surveyed is now using generative AI tools in some way. That's not a typo. Zero percent said no when they were inquired about AI use in their development pipelines.

The number comes from JOGA, the Japan Online Game Association, which has tracked the domestic online game market since 2004. Its newly published JOGA Online Game Market Research Report 2026 covers 2025 data, and the AI section is the one worth talking about.

According to a preview shared by Famitsu, 100% of surveyed companies said they use generative AI tools somewhere in their business, with Google's Gemini the most common pick at 94%, followed by Anthropic's Claude at 84% and GitHub Copilot at 76%.

Valve recently released Windows 11 drivers for the Steam Machine, giving testers and reviewers an opportunity to benchmark Windows 11 on the Valve console to see if there are any performance differences between Windows 11 and SteamOS. YouTuber ETA Prime tested Windows 11 on the Steam Machine and found that gaming performance is slightly better compared to running the console's native SteamOS.

The YouTuber compared the Steam Machine's performance between Windows 11 and SteamOS in several games and synthetic benchmarks. In Geekbench 6.7.1, Windows 11 had a 3.3% lead over SteamOS in the single-core benchmark, but in the multi-core benchmark, Windows 11 had a whopping 22.1% lead over SteamOS.

This is the only time Windows 11 has had such a massive lead over SteamOS. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Windows 11 was only marginally faster, being 1.7% faster at 1080p very high settings and 4.3% faster at 4K very high settings. 1440p was the only resolution where SteamOS outperformed Windows 11 in this game, by 2.4%. In Cyberpunk 2077, SteamOS outperformed Windows 11 by 8.8% at 1080p ultra settings and by 4.7% at 1440p ultra settings. At 4K resolution, Windows 11 beat SteamOS by 10%. Forza Horizon saw marginal differences between the OSes, with Windows beating SteamOS by 1.7% at 1080p very high settings and 7.1% at 4K very high settings. At 1440p, SteamOS beat Windows 11 by 2.1%.

SpaceX has unveiled the Starlink V5 satellite internet kit, delivering nearly half a gigabyte per second of download speed in a more compact, lightweight form factor.

The latest iteration outperforms its predecessor in power efficiency and touts that it will enable seamless streaming, gaming, and video conferencing experiences for home users. According to the company, Starlink V5 brings peak speeds of up to 375+ Mbps, which is quite considerable when the median internet speed in the US is 306 Mbps, according to SpeedTest.net.

Starlink V5 actually marks a shift for SpaceX, as the company is now focusing on refining its hardware with the goal of making Starlink appropriate for stationary use. The idea is that SpaceX wants to grow its already expansive network, and making a Starlink that's suited for households or businesses now gives them the opportunity to achieve that goal.

It has been less than half a year since Logitech debuted the G Pro X2 Superstrike, and the company is reportedly already preparing a new Gen 2 version of the gaming mouse . Discovered by TechPowerUp, jakeu+ on X published a leak claiming that the Superstrike 2 is coming this September with improved tuning on the magnetic switches and an upgraded controller.

If this leak is real, Logitech's development of a next-generation Superstrike represents one of the fastest turnarounds for a Gen 2 product from Logitech. There is no official word on why Logitech wants to make a new version so quickly, but likely, issues pertaining to the existing version are the reason for the quick turnaround. The outgoing X2 Superstrike is Logitech's most complex mouse to date and has come under fire from reviewers and the community for having reliability issues. For instance, multiple content creators have demonstrated that the Superstrike's left and right mouse buttons can be actuated by squeezing the sides of the mouse, potentially causing mis-clicks in-game.

Worse still, the mouse takes on a major flaw from all of its G Pro X Superlight counterparts and uses the same weak middle-mouse button from the Superlight series that can start malfunctioning after moderate use.

PS5 emulation on PC has hit a new milestone, as the open source KytyPS5 emulator can now load Grand Theft Auto V far enough to reach the game's in-game menus and settings screen.

Additionally, Quake II Remastered has been shown reaching actual gameplay, marking a significant step toward achieving full 60FPS emulation. Unfortunately, neither of these games are playable from start to finish in their current state. Quake II reportedly runs at around 7 frames per second with visible graphical glitches, and GTA V's campaign and GTA Online remain totally inaccessible. So, not exactly a gripping gaming experience in either title. However, getting a commercial 3D PlayStation 5 title to boot this far is a significant technical milestone, and nothing to be ignored.

KytyPS5 is a Windows-only compatibility layer, and its GitHub page warns that compatibility is limited and changing rapidly as contributions pour in. Version 0.0.3, the latest build, focuses on backend and compatibility work rather than polished gameplay, which is critical for smooth gameplay in the future. For those wondering, the latest version introduced faster virtual memory allocation for quicker load times, a new shader-binding system, AMPR optimizations, Pthread fixes, and updated LibUlt ABIs, along with a refreshed GUI.

NVIDIA has cut its authorized AI chip customers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan by more than half in an effort to reduce the number of unauthorized products from being funneled through to China.

According to a new report from the Financial Times, the chipmaker has implemented a new "white list" of vetted companies, which have passed stricter compliance checks ensuring NVIDIA's high-end AI accelerators don't end up in places they aren't legally allowed to be. The move signals a major tightening of access to its AI hardware in key Asian markets, which comes on the heels of intense investigations from reporters that unveiled an expansive black market in China for NVIDIA GPUs.

NVIDIA's tightening of its grip on the Asian market follows increasing pressure from regulators and policymakers to enforce export controls on AI GPUs for fear the US will be selling what it needs to competitors that will enable it to gain a leg up in the AI race. NVIDIA's new restrictions notably excluded more than half of NVIDIA's previous customers, and companies that failed the initial compliance check are eligible to reapply. According to FT, many of the companies that were affected by NVIDIA's changes are neo-cloud providers, specialized cloud platforms for AI workloads.

Hisense just dropped a phone that feels like a throwback, but with a modern twist, and while it is admittedly not for the general consumer, the A10 looks like it will be thoroughly enjoyed by those who wish to distance themselves from technology but don't want to sever their connection entirely.

The Hisense A10 is an E Ink smartphone with a detachable color LCD screen that you can snap on and off at will, with reports citing an insider who said the detachable magnetic screen might not be included with the phone and will be sold separately. It's a novel approach to the screen, and certainly a bold design choice.

The A10's main display is a 6.13-inch E Ink panel, which offers the low-power, glare-free benefits that make e-readers so appealing. But the real highlight is the magnetic color LCD on the back, which can be used for video, apps, and anything that requires color and motion. The two screens communicate, though Hisense hasn't explained how. I suppose if the color screen is sold separately, it would mean the A10 has modular phone add-ons.

Federal agencies have issued a stark warning to the public about Russia's state-backed hackers actively attempting to compromise home and small-business routers.

According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Russian cyber actors including groups tracked as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, and Static Tundra are exploiting misconfigured or vulnerable networking devices to gain persistent access. These groups use compromised routers to mask their activities and launch further attacks once access has been gained. The advisory was co-issued with partners in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and the UK, as authorities have discovered these efforts are global and not just targeting the United States.

Russian and Chinese state actors have been attempting to infiltrate and compromise devices for many years now, and in some instances their efforts have paid off as critical infrastructure has been compromised and data has been extracted. While agencies like the FBI have temporarily disrupted botnets by resetting DNS settings, attackers simply rebuild their networks.

For those who might not be aware, NVIDIA, SEGA, and the Virtua Fighter series share a long, storied history dating back 30 years. Back in the 1990s, as 3D visuals in games began to appear, SEGA's arcade fighting game Virtua Fighter quickly became one of the hallmarks of where gaming technology was headed. And as part of bringing the game to PC, SEGA partnered with NVIDIA to leverage its NV1 chip to power this version of the game.

Today, 30 years later, SEGA Akihabara Arcade in Tokyo, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, SEGA CEO Haruki Satomi, SEGA COO Shuji Utsumi, Virtua Fighter creator Yu Suzuki, and former SEGA CEO and President Shoichiro Irimajiri came together to celebrate this partnership by announcing that the upcoming VIRTUA FIGHTER CROSSROADS is headed to RTX Spark.

RTX Spark is NVIDIA's new custom Arm-based APU built for premium laptops, debuting at Computex 2026, delivering powerful CPU performance with RTX graphics technologies and fast memory. With RTX Spark-powered Windows on Arm laptops on track for later this year, one of the highlights of these devices will be their PC gaming capabilities.

Intel's next generation of Nova Lake-S-powered desktop CPUs is reportedly on track for release later this year or early 2027, and so far we've heard rumors of cache-filled X3D-style mid-range offerings for PC games as well as flagship models with a whopping 52 cores.

As a cutting-edge consumer processor architecture, Nova Lake was previously believed to use TSMC's 2nm (N2) process for its main compute tile, with only around 30% of the CPU tiles and chip technology manufactured internally via Intel Foundry on the company's 18A node. And we say previously, because a new report indicates that Intel is now planning to bring the majority of Nova Lake production in-house.

And the reasoning is sound; apparently Intel's 18A node yields have dramatically improved in recent months, going from 65% to 85%. The higher the yield, the fewer dies or chips go to waste, leading to a more efficient chip product and a notably higher quantity. Intel's 18A node production, which is being carried out across two sites in North America, is currently being leveraged for its 'Panther Lake' lineup of mobile processors, so the assumption is that with greater yields it can also take on more products like Nova Lake.

MSI Afterburner has been the go-to GPU overclocking and monitoring tool for several generations, and right now, when it comes to tinkering with frequencies and voltages on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, it's something we still use regularly at TweakTown. For a tool with as much legacy as MSI Afterburner, you might be surprised to learn that its development is led by a single person who goes by the handle of Unwinder.

In a new post on the Guru3D forums, Unwinder has teased an impressive update coming to the next beta release of MSI Afterburner. And it's the addition of a heatmap to the V/F curve editor, giving users and overclockers a better understanding of how their GPUs behave when Boost Clock speeds are pushed. The heatmap you see here was captured on a GeForce RTX 5090, which showcases different behavior compared to the previous generation's GeForce RTX 4090.

This heatmap provides a visual representation of the voltage/frequency points that are most used. This will give users a far better understanding of how their GPU behaves when overclocked (or not) and enable them to use that data to optimize settings and improve overall performance. Unwinder says that the heatmap also provides clear data on how the GeForce RTX 50 Series differs from previous generations due to changes to DVFS (dynamic voltage frequency scaling).

For those out there with a Nintendo Switch 2 console looking for an alternative dock to the rather plain and functional one that ships with the console, you might want to check these out. These are unlicensed creations sold on Etsy, priced between $70 and $100 USD, including shipping.

Naturally, if you've taken a look at the headline and main image of this story, you'll see that these docks are modeled after classic Nintendo consoles from the 8-bit, 16-bit, and 64-bit eras, alongside the inclusion of the iconic original PlayStation from the 1990s and the Nintendo GameCube from the early 2000s. For retro gaming fans, the designs are impressive, with subtle details that celebrate these classic pieces of hardware.

The 64BITDOCK, which takes its inspiration from the Nintendo 64 (N64), sees the Nintendo Switch 2 slot into the dock horizontally, with the optional removable N64 cartridge doubling as storage for Switch game cards. The 8BITDOCK, inspired by the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from the 1980s, includes an optional controller that opens to store game cards.

In a recent interview with A Rabbit's Foot (via Kotaku), the legendary filmmaker and Star Wars creator opened up about AI, specifically as a tool for filmmakers in a wide-ranging conversation that touched upon several key milestones and moments of his career. Now, for those expecting the creator of Star Wars to be against the rise of AI in all things creative, prepare to be disappointed.

"Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies," George Lucas says. "It's very much like sitting here saying, 'Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it's at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there's all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they'll be making them into tanks, and then they'll be killing people. It's terrible.' There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress, it's the future."

Now, for those familiar with George Lucas's career, specifically the creation of the original Star Wars trilogy and the subsequent prequel trilogy a couple of decades later, it's a response that tracks.

Late last year, Valve confirmed that it was discontinuing the original Steam Deck LCD model that debuted in 2022 by stating that it was no longer producing the model and "Once sold out, it will no longer be available." As for the reasoning, many have chalked it up to the rise in component costs making it no longer feasible to produce a more affordable variant compared to the Steam Deck OLED refresh, alongside the difficulty in repairing the original model - specifically in relation to its battery.

Cut to July 2026, and the online hardware repair specialists at iFixit have confirmed that Valve has now quietly discontinued the production of Steam Deck LCD replacement parts, namely the battery. Responding to a Reddit post from a user looking to replace the battery in a heavily used 2022 Steam Deck LCD handheld, iFixit confirms it can no longer obtain replacement parts for the original Steam Deck.

"It's not that we're choosing not to stock these anymore," the post from an iFixit representative reads. "Unfortunately, Valve is just starting to sunset these parts." On the plus side, as iFixit is all about offering users a way to repair tech of all shapes and sizes, the company is looking at alternatives. It is "actively evaluating aftermarket options," so hopefully there's a workaround.

Although it's an Xbox console exclusive, the highly anticipated Gears of War: E-Day is also coming to PC. Launching October 6, we've got confirmation this week that the PC version of the game will debut with native support for DLSS 4.5 and ray tracing. When it comes to the latter, as the game has been built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, it's set to leverage the engine's cutting-edge tech for its advanced lighting.

Gears of War: E-Day will use MegaLights for its ray-traced shadow effects, supporting up to 100 distinct light sources to create a more cinematic, realistic-looking world. It's also set to leverage Lumen for ray-traced global illumination and Nanite to increase detail in each environment. According to developer The Coalition and the GeForce RTX team at NVIDIA, this will apparently increase "object detail and fidelity" by up to 100X compared to Gears 5.

In addition to fancy lighting, Gears of War: E-Day will also introduce real-time destruction to the series, as well as volumetric particle and smoke effects for more intense, action-paced sequences. "These technologies deliver players the most technically ambitious and visceral Gears of War entry to date," NVIDIA writes.