Latest News - Page 368

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".

A free NVIDIA RTX 5080 from MSI sounds like a too-good-to-be-true offer, but while it does seem to be genuine - as far as we can tell from the reports - it's certainly one of the strangest promotions we've ever seen, and not one you'll likely to be able to avail yourself of.

For starters, you'll need to live in Taiwan to be eligible, as MSI's offer is exclusive to that country.

If you live there, all you need to do is collect a set of MSI Dragon 'Lucky Around The World' figurines - there are 9 in total (well, actually 10, as there's a bonus 'secret edition' model). Sounds easy? Well, it very much isn't.

We're more used to Windows 11 patches clattering through the door and causing strife thanks to various bugs - including some very odd glitches - and now the latest Windows 10 update appears to be following suit.

Windows 10's patch for March (KB5053606) came with a problem that's already been widely reported, namely the Copilot app being accidentally deleted (a really weird glitch that also affected Windows 11, and Microsoft swiftly resolved).

Aside from that, there's a known issue with some USB printers that Microsoft has admitted, but that's a bug affecting enterprise users, not consumers.

Sony's PlayStation 5 has outsold the PlayStation 4 by some margin going by fresh stats that provide a head-to-head comparison of the sales performance of both consoles.

Specifically, Mat Piscatella, who is executive director and game industry analyst at Circana, provided a tally of sales on Bluesky (see above) for the first 52 months on the shelves for both of Sony's consoles, showing the PS5 has outperformed the PS4 by 7%. (Hat tip to TechRadar for the spot here).

The opposite is true for Microsoft, mind, with the Xbox Series consoles trailing behind the Xbox One, and by a long way - some 19%. These stats are for the US market.

Former NASA engineer and popular YouTuber Mark Rober pitted a Tesla's object detection system against Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system to determine which was better at recognizing objects impeding the path of a vehicle.

Rober tested the Tesla's detection system and the LiDAR system in various scenarios, such as a mannequin child running out onto the road at the last minute, fog, direct sunlight/truck lights, rain, and a wall that was painted to look like the road behind it. The idea with the last test was to see if he could trick the Tesla into thinking the wall was just more of the road, therefore bypassing the detection system. To spoil the video below, LiDAR was able to easily detect the wall due to the fundamentals of the technology, and Tesla's detection system failed, resulting in the famed electric vehicle smashing through.

However, the tests by Rober were called into question by some, and now others are attempting to replicate the results with their own Tesla. Kyle Paul has posted a video on YouTube and X where he attempted to replicate the result by Rober, and he found that even with Full Self-Driving (FSD) he had to slam on the breaks to stop his Model Y from going through the wall. It should be noted that Rober's tests didn't include FSD, which is the much better version of Autopilot. So, even at the most expensive tier of Tesla's automatic driving detection system, the car failed to detect the wall painted to look like a road.

Apple is expected to be making some pretty big changes this years iPhone line-up, with rumors been flying for some months now about physical design changes, a different aesthetic, and now a color change.

It has been rumored for quite some time that Apple will be releasing an iPhone 17 Air, which is slated to replace the current iPhone Plus model. This new Air model is much more than just a name change as the device will be much thinner, feature fewer cameras, but ultimately retain some of the best features in the Pro model iPhones: 120Hz 6.6-inch display, battery life, USB-C charging - for about $900. This significant change in design represents Apple testing the waters, and if proven popular, the company will pivot future iPhone designs toward thinness.

Another big rumor for the iPhone 17 line up is the following devices will feature horizontal camera modules that are reminiscent of the Google Pixel phones. Those models are: the iPhone 17 Air, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max. Another rumor is the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max will arrive in a two-tone rear panel, which will be made of glass and metal. If this becomes true it would be a first for iPhone.

Google is continuing its push into artificial intelligence being injected into as many of its apps and services as possible, and the latest piece of Google software to get a touch of AI is Gmail.

The search engine giant has announced via a new blog post that Gmail is being upgraded with a "smarter search feature powered by AI." The blog post explains the new and improved Gmail will show users the "most relevant results faster," through what is called "smarter search." This upgrade is intended to help users find information buried in their inbox much faster, and with the power of AI users will now be presented with emails that aren't just based on keywords.

According to the blog post, up until now, Gmail has been showing searched for emails based on keywords and chronological order, but now the search feature will factor in elements such as recency, most-clicked emails and frequent contacts. With the inclusion of these new factors, emails users are looking for are more likely to appear at the top of your search, which will, in turn, save users significant time.

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows is not available on PC and consoles, and based on reviews and feedback, the game is a lot better than the negative press surrounding it for months would have you believe. Our own Jak Connor is currently playing it (check out his impressions on the first few hours), and although it's not perfect, it does sound like a worthy follow-up to previous entries like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

And with a million people playing the game on its first day of release, odds are that quite a few PC gamers jumping into the Japanese action and stealth will be rocking AMD Radeon GPUs - including the new Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT. If that's you, you'll probably want to grab the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.3.2 Optional Update driver, which adds support for the game, alongside The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

As a beta release, you won't get an official "update your driver notification," so be sure to go through the following Release Notes to see if it fixes any issues you've been encountering. There are fixes for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Counter-Strike 2, and other titles. Plus, fixes for crashes relating to high-refresh-rate displays and pressing Alt-Tab during gameplay.