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We had the chance to spend considerable time with Acer's new flagship Predator Atlas 8 gaming handheld, powered by the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor, at Computex 2026 today. What makes this a notable release among the growing pack of PC gaming handhelds in recent years is that its integrated Intel Arc B390 graphics are easily the most powerful GPU for portable gaming we've seen to date, bolstered by Intel XeSS 3 AI-powered upscaling.

Aside from the internal hardware, the first thing you notice about the Predator Atlas 8 is its comfortable form factor and large 8-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200-pixel) display. The IPS display, which supports VRR while sporting a 120 Hz refresh rate, 500-nit brightness, and 100% sRGB color coverage, is not only vibrant but also delivers exceptional motion clarity for a handheld. This is something that we noticed pretty quickly because our extended hands-on time with the handheld was mostly spent playing the fantastic Forza Horizon 6 from Playground Games and Xbox.

The beefy Intel Arc G3 Extreme variant we tested (there's also an Intel Arc G3 non-Extreme version coming with integrated Intel Arc B370 graphics) felt premium and comfortable to hold, with high-quality thumbsticks and face buttons that have the responsive, clicky feel of premium controllers. This applies to the triggers, too, which are adjustable. As impressive as the Predator Atlas 8's specs and build quality are, it's all in service of playing games, and as far as impressive debuts go, you can't get much better than the brilliant Forza Horizon 6.

MSI has announced the world's first Agentic AI QD-OLED gaming monitor, the MEG X, at Computex 2026. The monitor features a 5th-Gen Penta Tandem QD-OLED panel, an AI Care Sensor, and the brand-new LuckyClaw AI Agent, offering real-time gaming assistance and adaptive performance.

The MEG X is part of a broader AI-integrated product lineup MSI is focusing on at Computex 2026, but this display is truly the crown jewel of MSI's gaming monitor technology, as it's been paired with the MEG Vision X2 AI+ gaming desktop, which comes with a holographic AI companion with Silent Storm Cooling AI and the MSI AI Engine.

For those who don't know, Agentic AI enables autonomous, adaptive behavior in devices. For example, LuckyClaw AI Agent users can automate complex tasks and provide real-time assistance, while the AI Care Sensor 3.0 enhances user comfort and system efficiency.

Computex 2026 has officially kicked off and to start the show MSI has unveiled a range of new world-first gaming monitors, and the one we are highlighting today is certainly drool-worthy. Introducing the MPG 271KRAW18, the world's first 5K dual-mode gaming monitor.

The MPG 271KRAW18 is a 27-inch Rapid IPS Mini-LED panel that features 2304 dimming zones, Quantum Dot technology, and dual-mode, enabling users to switch between 5120 x 2880 (5K) at 180Hz, and 2560 x 1440 (2K at 330Hz).

Other notable specifications include the 0.5ms (GTG) response time, AI Dual Mode for autonomous adjustment of refresh rate for smooth resolution switching, 1x DisplayPort 2.1a (UHBR20), 1x HDMI 2.1 input, 2x USB 5Gbps Type-A, 1x USB 5Gbps Type-B, and 1x headphone-out.

MSI is no stranger to incredible gaming monitors, and Computex 2026 is no different, as the company unveiled the MPG OLED 322URDX36, a world-first gaming monitor that is now MSI's flagship display.

The 322URDX36 is incredibly special, as it's the world's first 31.5-inch triple-mode gaming monitor, meaning it offers three native specs in one display. For example, the 322URDX36 is capable of 4K at 360Hz, 1440p (QHD) at 520Hz, and 1080p (FHD) at 680Hz. Users can freely switch between these modes to achieve the level of performance they want, matching the game they are playing.

The idea is that a user can switch to the 4K mode when they want to enjoy slower, more graphically impressive games, the 2K mode for general desktop use, and the 1080p mode for competitive games that call for as many frames as possible. The 322URDX36 utilizes the 5th-gen QD-OLED panel with Penta Tandem technology. It features the RGB Stripe sub-pixel layout, designed to reduce text and color fringing.

CD Projekt originally planned to release The Witcher 3's new Songs of the Past expansion this year to help boost sales and reach an ambitious three-year reward incentive program for the company. The new surprise Witcher 3 expansion will instead release in 2027, meaning the game is launching outside of the incentive target timeline, so Songs of the Past won't actually move the needle here.

Without a major expansion release for 2026, Investors and analysts are curious whether or not the studio can meet its high $551 million net profit goal. CD Projekt management now says that there are a total of three projects that are being capitalized--two gaming-related, and one non-gaming--and that there's still new content coming in the year.

"There are two unannounced gaming projects and one non-gaming project," CD Projekt co-CEO Michal Nowakowski said during the call.

CD Projekt Red is gearing up for a busy second half of the decade, as the company plans to roll out major projects one after another. The studio just announced a new Witcher 3 expansion, titled "Songs of the Past," targeting a 2027 release. Shortly after the announcement, CD Projekt Red held its earnings call, during which it shed more light on the development and release cycle of The Witcher 4.

As we have previously covered, CD Projekt Red is working concurrently on multiple projects, the most important of them being The Witcher 4. The company has previously confirmed that The Witcher 4 will kick off a new trilogy of Triple-A games, with Ciri as the protagonist. During the earnings call, CDPR joint CEO Michał Nowakowski was asked about the potential for expansions for the new Witcher saga.

The CDPR exec shed light on the ambitious plans that the company already has in motion regarding The Witcher saga. He specifically stated that they plan to release "three Witcher games within a six-year period." Therefore, Nowakowski thinks it would be difficult to add proper expansions to The Witcher 4, especially if you consider the size and scale of the likes of "Blood and Wine."

A public dispute between Microsoft and security researcher Nightmare Eclipse has escalated into a full-scale backlash from the cybersecurity community, after Microsoft threatened criminal prosecution over a series of uncoordinated zero-day disclosures.

Between early April and mid-May 2026, Nightmare Eclipse published proof-of-concept exploit code for six Windows vulnerabilities without coordinating with Microsoft. Three of those, BlueHammer, RedSun, and UnDefend, were confirmed as being used in live attacks shortly after going public, prompting emergency patches and CISA adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Three others, YellowKey, GreenPlasma, and MiniPlasma, remain unpatched.

Following these discoveries, Microsoft published a formal blog post describing uncoordinated disclosures as "never justifiable" and warning its Digital Crimes Unit could pursue criminal charges against those responsible. The company also had Nightmare Eclipse's GitHub account suspended around May 23, followed by their GitLab account between May 26 and 27.

The AI boom has driven extraordinary demand for computing power, but it is now creating a constraint that raw performance alone cannot solve. Speaking at a conference in Amsterdam, TSMC Senior Vice President of Business Development Kevin Zhang said energy efficiency has overtaken computing performance as the defining priority for customers across the chip industry.

"The area customers most want improvement in is energy efficiency. This is true across the board, whether you are the edge guy, smartphone, mobile, IoT application, or high-performance AI data center," Zhang told Reuters. The shift marks a major change for the chip industry as the era of simply packing more transistors onto a chip and calling it progress appears to be drawing to a close.

TSMC expects its A14 chips, due around 2028, to deliver more than 20% higher computing performance while cutting power consumption by up to 30% compared to its current N2 technology. Zhang added that while transistor density remains central to TSMC's plans, technologies such as advanced packaging, chip stacking, and photonics are becoming increasingly important in driving efficiency gains beyond what transistor scaling alone can achieve.

Xbox today announced a sequel to the wildly popular Minecraft movie at this year's Minecraft Live event, complete with new stars and a 2027 launch.

Microsoft is set to unleash havoc on theaters next year with A Minecraft Movie Squared, set for a release on July 23, 2027. Jack Black will reprise his role as Steve, with other first-movie stars Jason Momoa and Danielle Brooks also returning as Garrett and Dawn, respectively.

New stars are joining the cast of the Minecraft movie sequel, and it's been confirmed that Spider-Man's Kirsten Dunst will play Alex, the game's female analogue to Steve. Comedian and star of the What We Do in the Shadows TV show Matt Berry will return to play an unannounced part.

AOMedia has quietly published the first 1.0.0 release of its AV2 encoder, spotted by users on the AV1 subreddit and picked up by Videocardz. There was no official announcement, and AOMedia's public AV2 specification page still lists the standard as a draft. The GitHub tag tells a slightly different story, confirming the AVM reference software has reached version 1.0.0 with the message "First released version of AV2."

AV2 is the successor to AV1, AOMedia's royalty-free video codec that has been slowly making its way into mainstream devices and streaming services over the past few years. Like AV1 before it, AV2 is designed for better compression efficiency across streaming, broadcasting, and real-time video conferencing, with additional improvements for AR and VR, split-screen delivery, screen content, and a wider range of visual quality. Last year, testing showed AV2 to be around 30% more efficient than AV1, meaning smaller file sizes, lower bandwidth requirements, or better image quality at the same bitrate as today's streams.

That said, this 1.0.0 release is very much a starting point rather than a finish line. The AVM reference software is designed to help define and test the codec, not to replace the optimized encoders used in real video workflows. The current build is slow, not ready for broad use, and users testing it report that detail retention and encoding speed are still issues, with the encoder performing best only at very low bitrates for now.

GIGABYTE has introduced D5 Single Boost, a new BIOS-level feature for its Z890 and B860 motherboards that automatically overclocks a single DDR5 module to up to 8,400 MT/s. Running a single DDR5 module has always come with a bandwidth penalty. With only one module installed, the memory controller has fewer sub-channels to work with, which means lower overall throughput regardless of clock speed.

GIGABYTE is trying to close that gap as much as possible for builders who are starting with a single stick and plan to add another later, or for those who would rather spend their budget on a better CPU or GPU. That is especially useful amid the ongoing "RAMapocalypse" and rising memory costs, which have made getting into PC building more difficult than ever.

D5 Single Boost automatically detects Hynix M-Die memory chips as soon as a compatible module is installed. From there, an Adaptive BIOS Tuning Engine profiles the module in real time and applies precision timing and voltage adjustments calibrated to that specific die, with no manual configuration required. The settings persist across every boot without any user input.

A new 3D Shovel Knight game could be the next project in line for Yacht Club Games, assuming Mina The Hollower does well enough sales-wise.

Yacht Club Games just released their latest title, Mina The Hollower, a top-down indie with a distinct retro look and feel. Mina hearkens back to the classic days of gaming, combining sentiments and visuals from games like Link's Awakening on Game Boy and even Gremlins 2 on NES. The result is a nostalgic mash-up that innovates and evolves the formula, complete with boss battles and loot.

Now that their mouse precision-platformer is out, the indie studio is turning their attention on new things. One of these projects is a mysterious Shovel Knight game set in 3D. Sean Velasco, the head of Yacht Club, tells Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that this 3D game is more than halfway complete and could be showable soon.

A report from hardware insider, Moore's Law Is Dead, states that AMD's next-generation Zen 6 desktop silicon is much closer to mass production. The Zen 6 desktop Core Complex Die (CCD) and its X3D counterpart, codenamed "Powderhorn", have officially taped out in their B0 silicon stepping. This could mean a holiday 2026 launch or a formal debut at CES 2027.

AMD's next-generation Zen 6 desktop CPUs represent a massive design overhaul rather than a minor refresh. The new architecture is expected to deliver a 50% increase in both core counts and L3 cache per Core Complex Die (CCD).

Instead of the traditional 8 cores per CCD, Zen 6 increases this density to 12 standard cores per die. Simultaneously, the L3 cache pool per CCD grows from 32 MB to 48 MB. More importantly, Zen 6 CPUs are also expected to be compatible with existing AM5 motherboards.

Intel's "Bartlett Lake" CPUs have been in the news cycle recently, as the 12-core Core 9 273PQE was recently benchmarked, with some less-than-stellar results. Bartlett Lake is one of the more interesting Intel CPU lineups in recent memory, as it features solely P-cores. The Core 9 273PQE has 12 P-cores and 0 E-cores, a departure from Intel's hybrid architecture, which they have adopted for a few years now.

It looks like Bartlett Lake is getting more additions, even beyond regular Core CPUs. As spotted by Videocardz, Intel has recently expanded the Bartlett Lake lineup by officially listing the Xeon 6377P, an enterprise-grade processor built for server deployments. This means the P-core-only lineup extends beyond embedded and edge systems and now includes enterprise products as well.

Upholding the spirit of Bartlett Lake, the Intel Xeon 6377P is also a P-core-only SKU, hosting 12 performance cores just like the aforementioned Core 9 273PQE. Moreover, the CPU is compatible with the FCLGA1700 socket, which hosts the 12th, 13th, and 14th-Generation Core processors, as well as other Bartlett Lake entries.

G.Skill is back with another showcase of high-end DDR5 performance, and this time the company is turning heads ahead of Computex 2026. The memory maker has unveiled a Trident Z5 CK CUDIMM DDR5 kit running at a blistering 9200 MT/s, and the headline spec is not just the speed itself but how it gets there.

The kit is a 32GB (2x16GB) CU-DIMM configuration running at DDR5-9200 with CL74-74-74-148 timings, and it does all of that at just 1.1V DRAM voltage. That last part is what makes this announcement notable. Running at the standard JEDEC voltage figure of 1.1V at this speed is a serious engineering achievement. High-frequency DDR5 kits typically require higher voltages to remain stable, resulting in higher power draw and more heat. G.Skill is managing to sidestep both of those trade-offs at 9200 MT/s.

So how does CUDIMM factor into this? CU-DIMM is a newer DDR5 variant that integrates a built-in Clock Driver (CKD) chip directly into the memory module. The CKD chip strengthens the clock signal traveling from the memory controller to the DRAM chips, improving signal integrity and overall stability during high-frequency operation. Without the CKD on board, sustaining these kinds of speeds cleanly would be a much harder problem to solve.

ByteDance is developing its own CPUs to address growing AI infrastructure demands amid rising chip prices and supply shortages. Essentially, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has seen how much money hardware companies are making and now wants a slice of the AI pie, and/or it doesn't want to keep relying on third parties to provide it with the necessary hardware.

The company, best known for TikTok, is reportedly designing custom silicon to power expanding AI operations. Sources from Reuters state the chips will be used for AI inference tasks, with production potentially starting this year. The company is said to be in talks with Samsung and TSMC for manufacturing, with at least 100,000 units expected in 2026.

If accurate, the move signals a major pivot into hardware, positioning ByteDance alongside other tech firms like Google and Meta, which have also begun developing in-house AI accelerators intended to assist the demand for as many AI-capable chips as possible.

Something very interesting is happening in Forza Horizon 6 right now. The game has only been out for a couple of weeks at this point, and we have a boogeyman situation on our hands. A mysterious Drivatar by the name of Bowie Knife99 has been wreaking havoc across the map, disrupting the races of many players and generally acting as an agent of chaos.

So basically, this infamous gamertag gained notoriety when a series of tweets (or X posts) went viral, showing random players being forced off the road, hit from the side, or even ambushed from above by a Drivatar named Bowie Knife99. Gamers all across the platform started sharing their encounters with the infamous Drivatar, and they all had something in common: Bowie Knife99 being an absolute menace to society.

If you're not familiar with Forza Horizon's "Drivatars", they are AI-controlled opponents that are essentially copies of real players. These automated foes mimic the driving style and habits of the real-life players that they are named after. One can only imagine that the real Bowie Knife99 would be both extremely skilled and supremely mischievous.

Samsung has begun shipping samples of its HBM4E high-bandwidth memory to major global customers, making it the first company to deliver the next-generation AI memory product. The announcement sent Samsung shares surging as much as 6.51% before settling at a 3.67% gain, closing at 310,500 won.

The new 12-layer HBM4E delivers a stable pin speed of 14 Gbps, with performance that scales up to 16 Gbps, representing more than a 20% increase over HBM4. Memory bandwidth reaches up to 3.6 TB/s per stack, which, for context, is roughly equivalent to the combined memory bandwidth of two GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs in a single stack. The 12-layer configuration ships with a 48GB capacity, a more than 30% increase over the previous generation, with 32GB eight-layer and 64GB sixteen-layer variants also in the works, depending on customer requirements.

Beyond raw speed and capacity, Samsung has also made meaningful efficiency gains. Advanced low-power design techniques and an optimized packaging architecture improve energy efficiency by 16% and reduce thermal resistance by more than 14% compared to HBM4, translating into better heat dissipation and longer-term reliability in demanding data center environments.

MediaTek has announced the Dimensity 8550, a targeted revision to its existing flagship-killer chipset. It is not much different in terms of raw specs, but it now supports Google's new Gemini Nano V3 AI. But before you get too excited, having this chip in your phone does not automatically unlock Gemini Nano V3 features. There is more to it than that.

On paper, the core computing foundation of the Dimensity 8550 remains largely identical to that of the Dimensity 8500, which itself arrived in January 2026. It retains a 4nm manufacturing process and uses an all-big-core octa-core CPU configuration with eight Cortex-A725 cores alongside a Mali-G720 MC8 GPU. Because the core CPU and GPU performance metrics match those of its predecessor, users can expect the same reliable performance for gaming and daily multitasking.

The main change is Gemini Nano V3 compatibility, enabled by an upgraded NPU 880 and LLM Booster, which allows on-device AI processing even without an internet connection, provided the device meets RAM requirements. With that one upgrade, MediaTek is bringing capability that has been reserved for ultra-premium silicon, think Samsung Galaxy S26, Google Pixel 10, and OnePlus 15, down to sub-flagship price tiers.

Microsoft's plan has tentatively worked, for now: Game Pass numbers have improved since the recent price discount.

Back in 2025, Microsoft raised the price of Xbox consoles and its Game Pass Ultimate service. This move hurt the brand, deflecting gamers during the critical holiday season and leading to the worst-ever hardware revenues of the entire Xbox Series generation. Game Pass subscribers also fled from the service, opting not to renew.

While we don't know the exact impact--how many subscribers canceled, for instance--Xbox CEO Asha Sharma acknowledged the problem by fixing it with a substantial price decrease. Game Pass dropped from $29.99 to $22.99, and in exchange, players gave up day one Call of Duty launches (Modern Warfare 4 will be the first post-acquisition COD not released onto the service).