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Rapidus has just become the first Japanese semiconductor company to announce 2nm trial production, using ASML's bleeding-edge High-NA EUV lithography machines, and could enter the coveted supply chain for NVIDIA.

TSMC is ahead with its 2nm production but Rapidus is coming in quick, leaving semiconductor competitors Intel Foundry and Samsung, in its 2nm dust. Rapidus is an emerging semiconductor company, using ASML EUV scanners in a facility in Japan, with 2nm production reportedly on track and ready to compete with Taiwan semiconductor giant TSMC.

Rapidus unveiled that ASML's bleeding-edge EUV machines were being installed by the end of December 2024, which is said to be a revolutionary development for Japan's semiconductor industry. Rapidus said that it will kick off pilot production in April 2025, with commercial development expected to start in 2027.

OneXPlayer has just unveiled its new G1 compact gaming laptop, powered by AMD's new "Strix Point" APU, and featuring a detachable keyboard... check it out:

The new OneXPlayer G1 gaming laptop features the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU with 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 5 processing power at the ready, backed up by 16 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5-based GPU. The G1 features an 8.8-inch display at a 2.5K resolution with a refresh rate of up to 144Hz.

There are USB4 and OCulink ports that allow OneXPlayer G1 gaming laptop owners to use an external graphics card, with the laptop weighing in at 900g. There's a detachable keyboard and two methods of controlling the G1 laptop: the physical keyboard itself, or the game controllers that are hidden underneath.

The latest version of GPU-Z has just dropped with v2.61.0 adding support for Intel's new Arc B580 and B570 "Battlemage" graphics cards, as well as preliminary support for AMD's new RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPU. You can download GPU-Z 2.61.0 here.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.61.0 is also the first version of the software to support detection of Qualcomm Adreno 540, 630, 640, and 642L with the team noting that "GPU-Z is an x86 application, although you can run it on Windows on Arm platforms, where the operating system's emulation allows GPU-Z to detect the underlying hardware".

Not only do we have Battlemage and RDNA 4 GPU support, the team has added support for the integrated GPUs of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, NVIDIA H100 80 GB HBM3, A4000H, A800 40 GB Active, RTX 5880 Ada, and Tesla K40st. There's also new PCI vendor detection for ONIX, the new Intel Arc board partner, as well as Shangke.

The first trailer for James Gunn's new Superman is here, showing Kal-El battered, bruised, and bleeding before Krypto comes to save him. Check it out:

The new Superman movie is being directed by James Gunn, who helmed the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel and the MCU, but is now the co-chief of DC and the writer + director on Superman. In the opening scene of the trailer, Krypto is called to (well, whistled) by Superman who needs help... as the trailer cuts to other parts of the movie.

We get to see the visual style and color grading that James Gunn has used for Superman, shots of Lois Lane and Clark Kent in the Daily Planet, cuts to the Kent Farm with Clark and Pa Kent embracing... it shapes up so well, but then Superman flies in front of a little girl that has just been attacked by a... KAIJU... an epic shot, absolutely epic.

Recently, Alienware launched a new line of Pro peripherals for PC gamers, designed in collaboration with and for pro gamers and enthusiasts. The recent launch of the Alienware Pro Wireless Headset Review blew us away with its comfort and audio tuning, primarily when used for PC gaming.

It's also versatile, with Bluetooth support and ANC, making it a great travel companion for long flights or a short commute to work or school. "With premium comfort and sound quality to match, it's easy to recommend the Alienware Pro Headset for gaming - this is the sort of high-quality sound you expect from a premium brand," our review says. "With decent ANC, you'd gladly take it on the road or your daily commute connected to a smartphone or portable gaming handheld like the Steam Deck."

Is it perfect? Well, no product is, and here, the lack of a dedicated mobile app is disappointing but not a deal breaker. Recently, we sat down with Brian Wong from Alienware, who was instrumental in designing the Alienware Pro Wireless Headset, to discuss what went into the design, how the headset was created in collaboration with Team Liquid, and how he wants to change the public's perception of the brand when compared to peripheral heavy hitters like Logitech and Razer.

NVIDIA's next-gen GPU range creeps ever nearer, and as is par for the course, the RTX 5000 leaks are also coming hot on each other's heels now - and here's another one.

This time, we've got a whole range of potential Blackwell GPUs aired by Palit, which just filed a host of models with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), as flagged up by leaker @momomo_us on X.

Typically, these filings indicate that upcoming products are near, and may also give us a clue as to what launches we'll see - but in this case, Palit has gone for a spray-and-pray approach, quite clearly.

An on-court PS5 giveaway has gone wrong for a young fan at an NBA basketball game on Monday.

During the December 15 clash between the Charlotte Hornets and Philadelphia 76ers, a child and his uncle were called onto the court and presented with a 'PS5, and VIP experience for a future game'. The segment centralized around a Christmas theme, aimed to promote the holiday spirit. A presenter from the Hornets reads out the boy's holiday wish - a request for a PS5 to play the NBA 2k series.

The boy is ecstatic upon receiving the gift - the team's presenter, and a santa-dressed mascot wishing him a happy holidays. But when the cameras turned off things began to started taking a turn.

SpaceX is undoubtedly celebrating the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarding the company a launch license for its upcoming 7th test flight of Starship.

The celebration isn't for the license itself but more so for the speed at which it was obtained, as the FAA only took about a month to evaluate the previous launch of Starship and issue the new license. This kind of timing is unheard of and has even resulted in SpaceX and company CEO Elon Musk publicly slamming the FAA and its regulatory hurdles for holding up the development of Starship. However, the license issuing for Flight 7 stands as an example of the FAA improving internal efficiencies.

SpaceX hasn't confirmed when Flight 7 will take place, but given the history of previous flights, they typically occur within weeks of the launch license being obtained. However, with Christmas around the corner, it might not be until mid-January we see Starship take flight again. As for the mission objective, while SpaceX hasn't released any details about Flight 7, it would be a reasonable guess that it will include another catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster, as unforeseen problems that emerged in Flight 6 resulted in a catch attempt having to be abandoned.

The Nintendo Switch 2 leaks continue to emerge, as a YouTuber posted a video with a dummy Nintendo Switch 2 unit, which is now the best look we have gotten at the design of the upcoming handheld.

It was only yesterday that multiple Nintendo insiders pointed to the same month for the Nintendo Switch 2 unveiling, which was preceded by a known Nintendo leaker teasing a new Mario Kart game as a launch title for the unreleased console. Additionally, the Nintendo Switch 2 was revealed in leaked images traced back to Chinese accessory manufacturers or brands, which posted renderings of the new console within product listings for accessories designed for the "Switch 2".

We can now add one more "leak" or rumor to the overwhelming mountain of rumored evidence of the Nintendo Switch 2, and it's possibly the most valuable one yet. YouTuber NerdNest published a 20-minute hands-on video with a Nintendo Switch 2 dummy sourced from accessory maker iVolver. The YouTuber explained that while he had a dummy unit for the Switch 2 in his possession, he chose not to publish a video about it until the dbrand leak happened, which, for those who don't know, was also a dummy Nintendo Switch 2 unit. In fact, it was the same unit NerdNest had in his possession.

Grand Theft Auto fans are patiently waiting for the sixth game, which is currently scheduled to be released sometime in 2025 but is rumored to be pushed back to 2026. Now, an actor who worked on Grand Theft Auto 5 has teased a possible release window.

Fans of Grand Theft Auto have been searching online for any piece of information about the upcoming title and have previously even gone to the extent of aggregating all known leaks, rumors, and rumblings into one single document. Another piece of information can now be added to the document, as an actor who previously worked on Grand Theft Auto V has subtly teased his involvement in Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.

The actor Johnny Ray Gill, who appeared in the TV series Cross, recently sat down for an interview on the YouTube channel Check It TV, where he hinted at possible involvement in Grand Theft Auto VI. Gill, while not being able to directly confirm his involvement in the project, did allude to it quite heavily, and given Gill's history with working on Rockstar games, such as GTA 5 and also Red Dead Redemption 2, his comments were seen through quite easily.

The first crossover collaboration for Helldivers 2 has been unveiled, and the collaborative DLC is Killzone-themed but has sparked anger from fans of the title due to its price.

Before Sony and Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead Studios announced the collaboration on social media, images for the cosmetic DLC were leaked online. These images were promptly pulled down by the copyright holder, which in this case would be Sony. Shortly after the leaks were plugged the official announcement was posted to the Helldivers 2 X account, and then began the backlash from fans. Purchasing everything within the cosmetic DLC will cost a player 1,975 Super Credits, the Helldivers 2 in-game currency. Notably, players can pay $20 for 2,100 Super Credits.

The new cosmetic DLC is the most expensive set currently available to purchase in Helldivers 2, and it being the equivalent of approximately $20 to buy, it means the new DLC pack is half the price of another copy of Helldivers 2. Furthermore, while games such as Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, Fortnite, and others survive through cosmetic DLC releases such as this one, each of those aforementioned titles is free to play, while Helldivers 2 costs $40.

January 2025 is gearing up to be a massive month for technology, as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will kick off the year with a range of new product announcements, including NVIDIA, and now it seems we will be getting a new AMD CPU in the same month.

According to leaker @AnhPhuH, who reportedly has previously accurately called internal movements at AMD, the Red Team is preparing to launch a non-X version of its budget Zen 5 CPU, the Ryzen 5 9600X. The launch is rumored to be in late January, which would make it a few weeks after the week of madness that will be CES 2025. As for specs, the leaker says the Ryzen 5 9600 will feature lower clock speeds than the Ryzen 9600X, but TDP will remain the same at 105W.

One big change is the contents of the box with the Ryzen 5 9600. According to the leaker, the Ryzen 5 9600 box contains a Wraith Stealth CPU cooler, which was a welcome addition in previous generations of AMD CPUs as it enabled entry-level buyers that are possibly unfamiliar with PC building, which is who these CPUs are aimed at, some peace of mind when it came to purchasing the right cooler for the CPU. Moreover, the inclusion of the Wraith Stealth cooler meant buyers were able to save money on buying one individually, resulting in more savings for higher-tier components.

NVIDIA has unveiled the contents of a Diablo IV-themed mystery box as part of the company's celebratory "GeForce Greats" event.

NVIDIA took to its official GeForce X account to unveil the new mystery box will contain five items, which starts off with a GeForce RTX 4080 Super that comes with a Diablo IV-themed backplate, a copy of the Diablo IV Collector's Edition, a Diablo III-themed chess set, a sealed copy of Diablo II, and a GeForce 256 signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Notably, the GeForce 256 was marketed as "the world's first GPU," or Graphics Processing Unit, and its emergence on the market resulted in a significant leap in 3D PC gaming performance.

The giveaway is one of many NVIDIA is hosting for its GeForce Greats event, which is designed to increase hype leading up to CES 2025, where it's slated to unveil its new generation of RTX graphics cards, the RTX 50 series, utilizing the new Blackwell architecture. Leading up to CES 2025 and NVIDIA's big announcement, the company will be doing many more of these franchise or video game-themed mystery box giveaways, and judging on the contents of the Diablo IV mystery box, gamers can expect similar contents for future mystery boxes.

After The Game Awards gave out its Game of the Year award to the PS5-exclusive Astro Bot, it is time for PC gamers to get their votes as the nominees for the annual 2024 Steam Awards. Voting opens this weekend alongside the big Seam Winter Sale 2024 kicking off, and the nominees for Game of the Year include a couple of titles that many believed were overlooked at the TGA's.

The five nominees for Game of the Year are Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, Black Myth: Wukong, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Balatro, and Helldivers II. All excellent games have been played by millions of PC gamers in 2024, so it will be interesting to see which game takes the top honors. As a community-voted event, we assume it'll be between Black Myth: Wukong and Helldivers II.

This year, many categories return, including the Better With Friends Award for multiplayer gaming, the Outstanding Visual Style Award for visuals and art direction, the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award, and the Best Game on Steam Deck Award. Voting opens on December 19 and concludes on December 31. Here's a look at all the nominees.

Sony is all-in on machine learning technology, and wants to use AI and ML to help transform its lucrative PlayStation platform.

Although it has a variety of top-tier studios that have sold tens of millions of games, Sony is a platform-holder first and a game-maker second. This means Sony must always innovate and provide new tools to help make developers' jobs easier. It behooves Sony to optimize the game development process, and it does so through a mixture of organic means via its first-party studios who rigorously test new hardware and technologies like PlayStation Spectral Resolution (PSSR) upscaling, and inorganic means through feedback from external third-party publishers, developers, and partners.

That's the main impetus for the PlayStation 5 Pro. The mid-gen console is meant to help ease the burden that developers face when making games, namely in the constraints of the age-old struggle of resolution vs performance. Sony did this by adding in a variety of new tools and technologies that devs can use, including PSSR, which allows for unique enhancement opportunities that devs can scale for their specific games/in-game sequences. Then there's the hardware-based modifications like the +67% beefier GPU, new shader core modifications with ML instruction sets, and an extra 1GB of GDDR5 RAM specifically meant to house the PS5 Pro's OS.

BIWIN has shown off an incredible feat today: 192GB of DDR5-6400 CL28 memory running on an AMD X870E motherboard. Impressive stuff, check it out:

The company has announced that it has successfully completed a burn-in test using DDR5-6400 CL28 memory in a gigantic 192GB kit (4 x 48GB sticks). The company provided a screenshot for proof, but you'd think they'd be able to upload a higher-resolution image considering we're on the tail end of 2024, but I digress.

BIWIN was using an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor with 16 cores and 32 threads, with the CPU and RAM installed onto an MSI X870E motherboard. MSI was the first company with support for 192GB of DDR5-6400, so we're probably looking at a collaboration between MSI and BIWIN here.

COLORFUL has just teased its new iGame Shadow DDR5 memory kits, available in speeds of DDR5-6400 with latencies at CL28, while faster DDR5-8000 memory is available with latencies at CL40.

The company is making a few different kits, with the new iGame Shadow DDR5 memory available in 6000, and 6800 MT/s speeds. The new COLORFUL iGame Shadow DDR5-6000 RAM comes in a 32GB kit at those 6000 MT/s speeds, but you get that ultra-low CL28 latency. The next kit up from there is the 32GB DDR5-6800 kit, with CL32 latencies, and up from there, there's a 48GB kit (2 x 24GB sticks) with 6800 MT/s speeds and CL34 latencies.

COLORFUL says its new iGame DDR5 memory can be pushed to 6400 MT/s speeds with CL28, while CL28 is the default latency for 6000 MT/s speeds, however with some manual overclocking and AMD EXPO enabled, 400 MT/s more can be achieved without the latency increasing.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will don his iconic leather jacket and head to Las Vegas in January for his annual CES 2025 keynote, where we'll be introduced to the next-gen GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, and oh-so-much more.

We can expect a bunch of next-gen GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" gaming GPUs to be unveiled, with the new ultra-enthusiast flagship GeForce RTX 5090 and its huge 32GB of ultra-fast GDDR7 memory, the RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 graphics card being unveiled at CES 2025.

But, the company will surely have a bunch of new things to talk about when it comes to ray tracing, DLSS (hopefully DLSS 4 with the new RTX 50 series GPUs), self-driving cars and EV technology, AI, AI, AI, and so much more.We should also see NVIDIA and MediaTek show off their new Arm-based AI PC processor, which will launch in 2H 2025.

Ever wonder how the PlayStation 5 Pro works? Sony gives us a hefty 37-minute technical breakdown on everything you'd want to know about the new mid-gen upgrade.

Sony just released a new PS5 Pro video specifically for enthusiasts. The 37-minute "technical seminar" is hosted by console architect Mark Cerny, who dispels the magic of Sony's new $700 console.

One of the more fascinating developments was the lengths in which Sony went to enable its proprietary PlayStation Spectral Resolution (PSSR) neural network. PSSR is Sony's own first-party, console-ready analog of DLSS, FSR, or XeSS. It's an AI-based upscaling solution that utilizes Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), but to enable PSSR, Sony first had to create what it calls a "fully fused network."

If Sony sticks to its established cadence, the next-gen PlayStation 6 could release in holiday 2028.

Console generations define the video games market. New hardware gives developers a chance to sell new games, or re-sell old ones, and content can be elongated for maximum sales. Think of each new console launch as the opening of a vast digital bazaar, while behind the scenes Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo make power plays to optimize their platforms for developers.

Some companies like Sony have become quite regular in their generational timelines. PlayStation consoles typically last 6-7 years, and Sony likes to release a new mid-cycle refresh every four years or so. That means the PS6 might be due out in 2028, which isn't exactly a surprise given existing market trends, but it's still something to be aware of.