Latest News - Page 4

We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with Ocypus to give one lucky winner a premium PC cooling bundle combining a 360mm liquid CPU cooler with an integrated 360mm ARGB fan assembly.

There will be one winner in total, and the prize includes an Ocypus Sigma L36 PRO 360mm AIO liquid cooler and an Ocypus Sigma F36 ARGB integrated 360mm fan.

The Ocypus Sigma L36 PRO is built around a 360mm radiator and a distinctive pump housing topped by a large 3.5-inch IPS display. The screen runs at 640 x 480 and uses an ultra-narrow bezel, giving users plenty of room for system monitoring or custom visual content.

Someone has figured out a way to hook up an RX 9070 XT graphics card to a Steam Machine, despite Valve's latest console not supporting GPU upgrades or graphics card docks officially. Large_Customer_3840 on the Steam Machine subreddit showed off an RX 9070 XT graphics card hooked up to an external GPU dock working perfectly with a Steam Machine.

To make this setup work, the user took out the Steam Machine's integrated M.2 SSD and replaced it with an M.2 to OCuLink ribbon cable adapter to make the Steam Machine compatible with their Aoostar EG01 eGPU docking station. Since the Steam Machine lacks any additional M.2 slot or SATA slots, an external SSD was used in place of the M.2 SSD for storage.

SteamOS reportedly saw the RX 9070 XT without any issues, with signal output going from the GPU to the monitor perfectly without any additional tweaks in the OS. The only caveat the Redditor pointed out was that the Steam Machine would fail to display an image through the RX 9070 XT if the HDMI port on the Steam Machine itself was not connected. To remedy the issue, the Redditor routed an HDMI cable from both the Steam Machine's HDMI port and the RX 9070 XT to their TV.

Linux gaming has been around for decades, but thanks to the popularity of Valve's Steam Deck alongside the consensus that Windows 11 has evolved into a bloated mess for PC gaming, it's becoming increasingly popular. Xodus is from the same team of modders and developers behind the Heroic Game Launcher, which brought Epic, GOG, and Amazon Prime Games to Linux and Mac, so the expectation is that this new project will deliver on its promise.

The Xbox app and PC Game Pass are both currently exclusive to Windows, with the former being the company's Steam-like storefront for PC games that also doubles as the interface and launcher for accessing the PC Game Pass. Thanks to the open-source Xodus project, PC gamers and Game Pass subscribers might soon be able to run Xbox PC games and Game Pass on a Linux or Mac system.

And so far, progress is looking good, with the Xodus team confirming that it's created a working Xbox login system that then confirms the licenses for the games you own (or have access to via Game Pass), with the option to install them. Of course, getting the games to run is the next step, and the most crucial, with the team reverse-engineering the frameworks, targeting the newer GDK and MSIXVC format.

NVIDIA's RTX Spark chips are set to power a new wave of premium Windows on Arm laptops, and with the release on track for Fall 2026, we're now starting to see benchmarks and performance data pop up. This week we've got two new Geekbench listings covering two RTX Spark variants, one with a 20-core CPU and one with an 18-core CPU.

For the full 20-core RTX Spark chip, the Geekbench 'OEMQAJ 766_MIS Product Name DV' listing shows impressive results with a 2,570 single-core score and a 23,126 multi-core score. Although it falls a bit short of the new Snapdragon X2 Elite processor, it does pull ahead of AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, aka Strix Halo. It's also faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, showcasing that RTX Spark is indeed faster than its X86 contemporaries.

When it comes to single-core and multi-core performance, there's not a lot separating the 20-core and 18-core RTX Spark variants, with the latter's CPU performance being within 6% of the flagship configuration. Interestingly, although these Geekbench listings aren't related to GPU performance, they do confirm a difference with the RTX Blackwell GPUs found on each model.

Ahead of pre-orders opening for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6, one of the big discussion points was whether publisher Take-Two would make GTA 6 the first $100 game, or stick with current AAA game pricing that's either $70 or $80. Turns out both came true: when GTA 6 pre-orders kicked off, players had the choice of GTA 6 Standard Edition for $80 or GTA 6 Ultimate Edition for $100.

With the whole $100 debate being all about how much gamers would be willing to spend on what's shaping up to be the biggest game release of all time, it turns out that most GTA 6 pre-orders have been for the $100 GTA 6 Ultimate Edition. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed this during a recent interview appearance on CNBC, where he also confirmed that pre-orders for the game have far exceeded the company's expectations.

With the $100 version of GTA 6 including access to exclusive in-game cosmetic items, via storefronts that won't be available to players with the Standard Edition, Zelnick chalks up more gamers opting for the $100 version as indicative of the fact that the more "avid consumers" are the ones who tend to pre-order a game months ahead of its expected launch.

GAMDIAS, a brand all about high-performance gear, has just launched its latest flagship THOR P2 Series power supplies, available in 850W, 1050W, and 1350W models. With a full modular design, the THOR P2 Series features 80 PLUS Platinum certification for elite efficiency, alongside ATX 3.1 and PCIe Gen 5.1 compatibility for modern PC hardware. This includes native 12V-2x6 support for modern enthusiast graphics cards, alongside multiple 6+2-pin PCIe connectors.

With 80 PLUS Platinum certification being the highest available, this means the THOR P2 Series is built for stable and efficient power delivery, with 3 x GPU power excursions and 2 x total power excursions alongside "best-in-class" 105°C Japanese capacitors. With OPP, OVP, UVP, SCP, OCP, and OTP protections, GAMDIAS THOR P2 Series power supplies are also supported by an industry-leading 12-year warranty.

Underneath the hood, you've also got a premium DC-to-DC structure with a 12V synchronous rectification design for clean and reliable power. Cooling is handled by a high-quality 135mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan, with a Smart Silent Mode that switches the fan off when the load is under 20%. GAMDIAS has built the THOR P2 Series for gamers and those with high-end GPUs like the GeForce RTX 5080, RTX 5090, or Radeon RX 9070 XT, as well as CPUs like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Microsoft Word began as a word processor for MS-DOS back in the 1980s, a time when most personal computer software was all about databases, spreadsheets, and typing up documents. Yes, a time when a PC was referred to as a Personal Computer because before then, computers were the size of rooms and limited to places like universities. Over the years, Microsoft Word has evolved, with the more familiar Microsoft Word for Windows version arriving in 1989.

With its old-school interface and lack of any special features like spell checking, it's a relic of a different time. One of the big innovations that Microsoft Word brought to the table was its WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design, meaning that what you saw on-screen was how the document would look when printed. The shift to Microsoft Word for Windows opened the door to a more intuitive user interface, helping MS Word become the most popular word processor on the market.

And with that, thanks to the source code for Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a for Windows 3.0 becoming publicly available in 2014, someone has taken the time to port it to Windows 11 as an x64 Windows executable that can run on modern PC hardware.

Windows 11's built-in Weather app is apparently one of the most wasteful apps on the entire OS, and the numbers are surprisingly bad. According to testing from Windows Latest, just opening the app can push RAM usage past 1.2GB, and it apparently spikes as high as 1.6GB once you start interacting with it.

The app is actually MSN Weather wearing a trenchcoat. It's built as a WebView2 web wrapper rather than a native app, and expanding the process tree in Task Manager reveals nine separate Chromium-based sub-processes running underneath it. That's a lot of overhead just to display a forecast.

For comparison, Apple's native Weather app on macOS reportedly uses around 246MB for the same basic function, roughly a fifth of what Windows 11 needs. It also doesn't show ads, while Windows 11's version apparently slots sponsored tiles directly into the forecast grid.

GTA 6's decision to debut new gameplay on Netflix instead of YouTube or Twitch has not gone over well with a lot of fans. However, now there's apparently a clearer explanation for why Rockstar and Take-Two made that call anyway.

Jason Schreier touched on the topic during a recent video on his YouTube channel, and when asked whether there's an audience on Netflix that wouldn't otherwise be watching GTA 6 gameplay, he said, "I do think there's a reasoning behind this." It's a fairly guarded answer, but it is also what Take-Two has apparently been signaling for a while now, that this isn't really aimed at people who already have their pre-orders locked in.

The backlash online has been pretty loud, though. A lot of longtime fans feel like paywalling a preview behind a Netflix subscription is a strange move for a game this anticipated, especially when Rockstar is already charging $80 for the standard edition and $100 for the Ultimate Edition. The extended look premieres on Netflix first on August 27, with a free version following six hours later on YouTube and Rockstar's own site, so it's not locked away forever, just delayed for anyone unwilling to pay up front.

The Steam Deck modding scene keeps finding new ways to surprise us. A Reddit user going by PhyFawkes has apparently pulled the internals out of a Steam Deck and rebuilt them inside a shell roughly the size of an original Game Boy. It looks a bit chonky, and it also looks like it mostly works, which is honestly the fun part of these community builds.

Called the SteamBoy, the build reuses genuine LCD Steam Deck parts, including the motherboard, battery, speakers, and button hardware, all squeezed into a smaller vertical chassis. Because the new shell is so much tighter than Valve's own design, the cooling fan had to shrink down too, and a different display panel was fitted in place of the stock screen. It's a neat bit of engineering just to get everything to physically fit together in the first place.

That screen seems to be the current holdup, however. Early coverage of the project suggests the display doesn't actually function yet. The builder reportedly thinks a custom adapter and some BIOS tweaks will be needed before the system properly recognizes the panel. So for now, this is very much a proof of concept rather than a finished handheld, but there's a demo video floating around showing it running output through a TV instead of its own screen.

Modders have figured out how to turn NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service into a traditional Windows environment that can be used for tasks other than gaming. Zortos and dpadGuy on YouTube published a tutorial showing how to enable the Windows taskbar in a GeForce NOW session, as well as customize the taskbar and change the wallpaper.

The tutorial takes advantage of the Steam browser's ability to modify files installed on the GeForce NOW VM. The only caveat is that this trick apparently only works on paid versions of GeForce NOW and won't work with the service's free tier. The tutorial first guides the user to install a game called Trove, then open Steam's built-in browser by right-clicking the game's publisher name on the game's store page and opening the URL in a new tab (which opens a new browser window within Steam). From the URL bar in the browser window, the tutorial tells users to type in C:/ to gain access to the VM's storage drive, head to the Trove folder, add the Trove executable to the directory path, then copy the directory path.

Afterwards the tutorial has the user go to "salsa.zortos.me" from the Steam browser, triggering a restriction error, which then opens up a "Save As" dialog box. From there, the tutorial tells the user to paste in the aforementioned directory path and click save. After downloading it, the tutorial tells the user to run the Trove game from Steam, which then triggers the modified file, unlocking the taskbar and installing several applications.

This week we've partnered with GEEKOM on a Back-to-School deal that's hard to top. From now until August 30, you can get 15% off the GEEKOM IT13 MAX Mini PC. For just over $600, you're looking at a compact, cost-effective, powerhouse featuring the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, a 16-core CPU with a maximum frequency of 5.1 GHz, with integrated Intel Arc graphics and dedicated AI hardware.

The Core Ultra 9 185H is paired with 24GB of LPDDR5 (5600 MT/s) memory, a 500GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, dual 40Gbps USB4 ports, dual 2.5G Ethernet ports, and support for the latest Wi-Fi 7 wireless technology. And all of this arrives in a compact 0.9L mini PC form factor, making it a tiny unit capable of handling creative, gaming, productivity, and AI workloads in a way that you don't normally see at this price point. From programming to running local LLMs, editing 8K video, and playing games, the GEEKOM IT13 MAX Mini PC can handle it all.

The GEEKOM IT13 MAX Mini PC is packed with expansion options, from multiple USB ports (4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x USB 2.0 Type-A) to handling quad 8K and 4K displays thanks to its dual HDMI and USB4 capabilities. Plus, there's also room for up to 96GB of high-speed DDR5 RAM with three M.2 SSD slots for more storage. The GEEKOM IT13 MAX Mini PC is also built to last, with its reinforced metal frame, custom motherboard, and IceBlast 3.0 cooling.

Developed by Raven Software, working alongside id Software, Quake 4 was released back in 2005. Running on the id Tech 4 engine, it's widely viewed as something of a departure for the franchise, as it focused on being a cinematic first-person sci-fi shooter rather than being predominantly known for its multiplayer mode.

And with the game launching on the then brand-new Xbox 360 console, PC gamers also saw it as more of a console game than something born from the legacy of Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3. The game received mixed reviews, with additional reporting noting that it failed to meet Activision's sales targets. An expansion, called Quake 4: Awakening, was in development at Ritual Entertainment and was canceled sometime in 2018.

Until now, Quake 4: Awakening was one of those games that was lost to time, and something fans have simply wondered about. In a pretty stunning turn of events, a veteran game developer named Justin Marshall found a copy of Quake 4: Awakening on the hard drive of a second-hand PC he randomly bought.

With an insatiable appetite for all things AI, and the big tech companies pouring over $1 trillion into AI infrastructure, it's no secret that plans for and construction of new data centers are happening at a pace that hasn't been seen before. And with rural areas like Northern Kentucky in the United States among many locations being viewed as new places to build data centers, one family is fighting back.

As reported by WKRC-TV Local 12, a local woman and her mother turned down a $26 million offer to sell part of their 1,200 acres of farmland to an unnamed company that wanted to build a data center. According to the report, land in the region typically sells for around $6,000 per acre, which would make the $26 million offer around ten times that amount. When they were told that it would bring jobs and economic growth to the region, the 82-year-old Ida Huddleston called it a scam.

In fact, the main reason Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare have no interest in turning their family farm into space for another data center is that they want to "stay" and "feed a nation." Adding, "$26 million doesn't mean anything."

"In FY26 Blizzard ended the year as the top-performing studio in Xbox's studios division, and this past year has marked our third highest fiscal for top-line revenue in Blizzard's history," Blizzard President Johanna Faries writes in a leaked email sent to staff, obtained by Windows Central. With Blizzard's big in-person community event Blizzcon 2026 returning next month in Anaheim, it sounds like the studio is firing on all cylinders.

According to the Windows Central report, the home of Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo 4 operates as a "limited-integration entity" within Microsoft and Xbox. This means its various teams and leadership are still functioning as a single studio and succeeding, while other Xbox teams and franchises, including Activision and Call of Duty, have been struggling.

With Xbox's latest financial report showing both hardware and overall revenue declining year-over-year by double-digits, it has been a different story for Blizzard. "FY25 and FY26 were our first back-to-back years of growth since FY17," Johanna Faries added. "Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred and Overwatch drove exceptional performance in particular, with Overwatch delivering its strongest quarter since 2022."

XGIMI's new Elfin Flip 4K projector features a stylish and portable form factor designed to be easily carried around and set up in any room with a blank wall or screen. Priced at the very competitive $999 USD, the 1.55 kg unit with slim 254 x 245 x 78 mm dimensions is powered by the latest RGB Triple Laser technology for exceptional color accuracy, with the company noting a 110% BT.2020 color gamut output that's SGS certified (ΔE<1).

This is part of the XGIMI Elfin Flip 4K's new "crystal-clear imaging system," which reportedly delivers 20% sharper images compared to previous-generation projectors from the company, too, alongside a 1600 ISO Lumens brightness rating and a 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. XGIMI notes that its specs are on par with dedicated home theater projectors, but in a more versatile compact form factor.

Throw in an in-built 7W Harman Kardon speaker with Dolby tuning, and Google TV for instant access to popular streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and Plex, and you've got a simple at-home cinema solution. And one that ships with intelligent screen alignment, adjustment features, and optical zoom.

Based on reports, AMD is planning to keep using its RDNA 3.5 architecture for its integrated graphics as part of its APU line-up until 2029. RDNA 3.5 powers the integrated Radeon RX graphics in its Ryzen AI 300 and 400 Series processors, while also powering gaming handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally X from ASUS and Legion Go 2 from Lenovo.

That said, RDNA 4m is expected to be included in the company's upcoming 10-core 'Medusa Point' processor that will also leverage its next-generation Zen 6 CPU architecture. According to leaks and early information on RDNA 4m, the new mobile GPU architecture is something of an in-between, as in not the full RDNA 4 we see on the current Radeon RX 9000 Series desktop lineup.

These leaks note that it supports INT8 data types, so it will bring native FSR 4 technology support to the table, which is a big win for mobile AMD graphics and portable PC gaming. As spotted by Phoronix, RDNA 4m, under the name GFX1171 GPU, has been merged into Mesa 26.3, the Linux-based open-source graphics driver stack, ahead of its rumored Q4 2026 launch.

Video game publishers could save over $10 per $70 game with Sony's decision to phase out disc production.

The games industry is in turmoil as AI eats into the chip market, stalling growth and leading to absurdly-inflated hardware prices. In a bid to shave costs and boost profits, Sony made a decision that will affect the entire industry itself; physical game discs will stop being produced for new titles starting January 2028. It's the end of an era and the beginning of a digital future primed for profit, and stability, amid the tech sector's tumult.

New reports from GameFile have attached a monetary figure to Sony's controversial decision. Sources tell GameFile that publishers pay roughly 15% to even 20% of a game's MSRP to Sony and Microsoft to produce the physical game discs that are sold by retailers. For a $70 game, that's $10.50, and for an $80 game like, say, Grand Theft Auto 6, that's $12. This math seems to illustrate a clear reason why Rockstar and Take-Two chose to not ship GTA 6 on discs.

After a year of BSODs, freezes, artifacts, and PCIe errors across four separate RMA cycles, one Redditor has finally broken free from what they called their "RTX 4090 death loop."

Reddit user Prudent_Echidna1254 posted on the Zotac subreddit that after sending their Zotac GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO in for a fourth RMA with just one month of warranty remaining, they waited 30 days before reaching out for an update. Zotac's U.S. RMA team came back with some unexpected news. Rather than sending another RTX 4090, the company is giving them an RTX 5090 SOLID, a card that currently sells for somewhere between $4,300 and $4,500.

"Thought ZOTAC would do me dirty and send me a faulty card that would fail on me again after my warranty would expire," the user wrote. "Well I hit the 30 day mark, shot an email to ZOTAC USA RMA for an update and they were able to get me out of the 4090 death loop I've been stuck with and sent me a 5090."

SK Hynix is doubling down on the AI boom with another massive investment. The South Korean chipmaker's board of directors has approved a 54.3 trillion won investment, roughly $38.1 billion, to build two massive new fabrication plants dedicated to supplying memory for the next generation of AI accelerators and enterprise servers.

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said last month that 2027 will be the worst year in the industry's history from a supply perspective. The $38 billion commitment is SK Hynix's answer to that problem.

The company describes the current moment as a structural transformation in which memory has become core infrastructure determining AI performance itself. The $38.1 billion is split across two production centres in South Korea. The larger share, around $24.9 billion, goes toward the Yongin Y2 fab, the second of four fabs planned for the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster.