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MSI has officially rolled out a new feature on its new range of X870 and Z890 motherboards designed for Intel and AMD's new generation of CPUs, and the new feature enables more performance to be squeezed out of onboard NPUs.

The new motherboards for AMD's Ryzen 9000 series and the Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) come with brand-new chipsets that have a range of hardware improvements. To accompany these hardware improvements MSI has overhauled its BIOS interface into what its calling Click BIOS X, and during a recent tour of MSI's motherboard factory in Shenzhen, China, we were able to spend some time with some setups featuring Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs and the new BIOS interface.

All of MSI's new range of motherboards come with the new BIOS interface, and one of the built-in features is AI Boost. This was a particularly impressive feature as the setting within the BIOS enabled overclocking for the NPU, which MSI claimed to improve AI performance and efficiency by up to 5%. According to MSI, enabling the new feature will provide the user with "faster data processing, enhanced AI performance, improved efficiency in AI tasks, better multi-tasking capabilities, and maximized hardware utilization."

MSI is ready for Intel's upcoming new generation of desktop CPUs, which will be released under the moniker Arrow Lake.

MSI has revealed its highly anticipated lineup of new Z890 motherboards that come with support for Intel's Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, which have seemingly already had some of their performance benchmarks leaked online. By the time this article has gone live, more performance benchmarks will likely be online as we are nearing the official launch of Intel's new chips. As for MSI's upcoming range of boards, MSI invited me for a behind-the-scenes tour of its motherboard manufacturing factory in Shenzhen, China, where it was making some of the boards detailed below.

MSI had its main four boards on display at its press event: the Pro Z890-A Wi-Fi, the MPG Z890 Edge Ti Wi-Fi, the MPG Z890 Carbon Wi-Fi, the MEG Z890 Ace, and the MAG Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi. Each of the boards offers unique aesthetics and functionality, but all come ready for Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs. Additionally, each of the boards will come with Thunderbolt 4 support that will enable fast data transfer speeds. Moreover, the improvements to connectivity and additional power to the board via an extra 8-pin connector enable charging up to 60W on some boards, which is especially helpful for users that have multiple devices such as laptops, smartphones, power banks and tablets.

Not all Wi-Fi is the same; most of us know this well. Regardless of the underlying internet speed and whether or not you're connected to fiber or Starlink up in the sky, device speed can vary dramatically. The new Wi-Fi 7 standard is a game changer for wireless speeds and how it handles multiple connections, but many early Wi-Fi 7 devices were kind of Wi-Fi 7 in name only.

With the arrival of next-gen Intel Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs and a new range of Z890 motherboards, the latest chipset not only adds high-speed USB4 and all manner of support for PCIe Gen 5 storage and other goodies but also sees a shift to Wi-Fi 7 - supported by the always impressive Intel KiLLER network technology.

As much flack as Intel has received in recent months for the issues surrounding its Raptor Lake CPUs, production and foundry delays, and other things - Intel's network technology, whether its Ethernet or Wi-Fi, has remained rock solid. And when it comes to Wi-Fi 7 in the new range of Z890 motherboards for Arrow Lake processors - you're looking at full Wi-Fi 7 speeds and bandwidth.

MSI has a pretty impressive line-up of motherboards for Intel's new Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs - from the high-end MEG Z890 ACE to the stylish PRO Z890-A WIFI and the PC gamer-focused MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI and MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI.

In addition to supporting new chips, they come equipped with advanced full-speed Wi-Fi 7, multiple M.2 storage slots that include support for PCIe Gen5, and more USB ports than you'd think possible. With more and more desktop PCs being used for generative AI workloads, some models, like the new MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI, even support installing multiple graphics cards.

Outside of AI, desktop graphics cards for PC gaming - especially on the high end - have only gotten bigger in recent years. They have triple slots or higher thickness, lengths extending beyond the motherboard's end, chunky heatsinks, and three fans as standard. MSI, and other board makers for that matter, have noted and are factoring the larger size, weight, and power consumption into their new motherboard designs.

Recently, when pictures of new 2024 motherboards for new CPUs began to appear online, many noticed the addition of a new 8-pin PCIe power connection on the bottom of specific boards. Located on the opposite end of the main motherboard and CPU power plugin, this led to speculation about what it could be for.

Is it for the upcoming release of the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080? NVIDIA's next-gen flagship graphics cards are rumored (from multiple credible sources) to require 600W and 400W of power, respectively. Or, is it to compensate for the dramatic increase in CPU power consumption in recent years - precisely, on the Intel side of the fence?

The answer is yes, no, all of the above, and more. During a recent visit to MSI's factory in Shenzhen, China, where we saw MEG Z890 ACE, PRO Z890-A WIFI, MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI, and MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI, we asked one of the company's leading engineers and designers about the new connector to find out what it's used for.

This year, AMD and Intel have announced and released their next-gen desktop CPUs with the new Ryzen 9000 Series and Intel Core Ultra (Series 2). New processors mean new chipsets, in this case, Intel Z890 and AMD X870, and countless new motherboards hitting retail shelves as we close the year.

During a recent tour of MSI's impressive factory in Shenzhen, China, where we saw Intel Z890 motherboards being produced at a mind-boggling scale, we got to go hands-on with a few Intel Core Ultra 200 builds with MSI's new boards. New CPUs and new motherboards are always exciting, but when you throw in a brand-new, modern BIOS redesign - it all feels 'next-gen.'

MSI is calling its revamped, redesigned, and overhauled BIOS interface and UI the Click BIOS X system. We went hands-on with two systems: an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU and MEG Z890 ACE motherboard and an Intel Core Ultra 5 245K CPU and MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI motherboard.

Enthusiast-level gaming motherboards can arguably be some of the most impressive pieces of technology within a PC, especially when considering the motherboard is responsible for the correct communication between components, power regulation, etc.

MSI has been at the forefront of impressive enthusiast-level gaming motherboards for quite some time, and right at the top of the company's offerings is its GODLIKE series. Likely picked up in the name, the GODLIKE series is meant to have as many bells and whistles as a motherboard possibly can, and just like the Z790, the upcoming Z890 has followed suit with some substantial improvements.

The Z890 GODLIKE, which currently doesn't have an official release date, but I can confirm will be launched sometime in Q4, has expanded storage capabilities with support for up to 6x M.2 (2x Gen5 + 4x Gen4) and 4x SATA 6Gbp/s. Moreover, the Z890 GODLIKE has expanded on its connectivity offerings, with support for 2x USB 3.2 20G (1x Rear Type-C / 1x Front Type-C PD60W), an insane 13x USB 3.2 10G ports (8x Rear Type-A + 5x Rear Type-C), 4x USB 3.2 5G (4x Front Type-A), and 4x USB 2.0 (4x Front Type-A). Comparatively, the Z890 GODLIKE has 23 USB ports, compared to the Z790 GODLIKE's 18.

Intel has finally revealed its new Intel Core Ultra 200 Series desktop CPUs, with the new Arrow Lake architecture set to power the next generation of Intel systems and builds for the foreseeable future. A new generation of Intel CPUs also means a new generation of motherboards, with various Z890 models hitting the market - including several from MSI, like the new MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI.

The Intel Core Ultra 200 series differs from previous generations because, like recent mobile Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake chips from the company, it incorporates a new design and layout that now includes a dedicated NPU for AI processing. Until now, running local AI off a CPU with a powerful NPU has been limited to mobile devices, so Arrow Lake marks a shift for desktop CPUs everywhere.

As part of our recent tour of MSI's factory in Shenzhen, China, and seeing its new Intel boards up close, we learned one interesting fact about Intel's Core Ultra 200 Series - the new NPU design means the hotspot is changing. The cooling requirements are also changing, so you'd want to pair a Core Ultra CPU with the new MSI MPG CORELIQUID i360 or i240.

More details have emerged regarding Intel's upcoming next-generation desktop CPU generation named Arrow Lake, and one of the additions in the new generation of CPUs from the Blue Team is the inclusion of direct Thunderbolt 4 support.

A few weeks ago, I was demoed the performance of Intel's next-generation Arrow Lake CPUs and was shown performance metrics based on engineering samples. Throughout that presentation, I was also shown the additions Intel has made to its Arrow Lake CPUs and how they will be reflected in the LGA-1851 platform. Intel's new platform will include a slew of upgrades, such as Wi-Fi 7, NPU overclocking, Thunderbolt 4 support, and much more.

The inclusion of Thunderbolt 4 is particularly exciting as it helps users such as content creators or home entertainment enthusiasts who deal with large file sizes organize their files much faster and more effectively. Moreover, Thunderbolt 4 comes with support for multiple 4K displays, 15W PD charging (up to 100W), daisy chain connection, and 40Gbps of high-speed data transfer. MSI's new range of Z890 motherboards will all feature Thunderbolt 4 support, and below, you will find some images of some of the company's offerings.

Regarding Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs and Z890 motherboards for the latest Core Ultra 200 Series processors, DDR5-8000 is the new 'standard.' This is according to MSI, who recently gave us a detailed look at its full line-up of Z890 boards coming soon from the return of the beast with the Z890 Godlike to the popular MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI.

DDR5-8000 kits are already here, but they're not the most popular kits. Over at Newegg, the most popular DDR5 memory kits as of October 2024 feature speeds of DDR5-6000 and DDR5-6400 - which is a definite increase from the DDR5-5600 or so from a few years ago.

AMD's new BIOS for X870 and other AM5 boards has recently added a DDR5-8000 one-click EXPO overclocking profile. So, the next generation of Intel CPUs (which will take a little while to gain a foothold in the market) will have no issue supporting DDR5-8000 as a default or standard XMP memory profile; it'll probably end up being the new standard for all DDR5 soon.

NVIDIA's next-generation flagship GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card could cost somewhere between $1999 and $2499, according to the latest leaks.

In his latest video, Tom from Moore's Law is Dead said that one of his sources just said that NVIDIA briefed them with some new GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" gaming GPU pricing. This source said that the new RTX 50 series GPUs will be launching in 2025, and are preparing people with some higher pricing.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 32GB could cost between $1999 and $2499, the GeForce RTX 5080 16GB could cost between $1199 and $1499, and finally, the GeForce RTX 5070 12GB costing between $599 and $699.

It was only a year ago that Casio was forced to repel cyberattackers that were probing its digital infrastructure, but now according to the company it has detected a breach.

The company took to its Japanese website to officially announce that it had detected a security breach after conducting an internal investigation. The breach was detected on October 5, 2024, and the investigation found that the unauthorized access had caused a system failure, "resulting in the inability to provide some services." Casio has already reported the breach to authorities and brought in a third-party security firm to investigate the breach and determine if customer data was stolen.

Judging by the hiring of a third-party security firm to look for any stolen files, it appears the breach may have been a ransomware attack. However, Casio hasn't confirmed that any data was stolen. Additionally, no ransomware groups have claimed responsibility for the hack.

Intel is about to launch its next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs, and now we're getting discount bombed with 14th Gen Core CPUs on the cheap... like, really cheap... check it out:

Amazon and Newegg both have discounts on Intel's fleet of current-gen 14th Gen Core CPUs, with the likes of the flagship Core i9-14900K dropping from its MSRP of $599 down to $445, and the mid-range champ in the Core i5-14600KF dropping from its $304 MSRP to just $204.99 right now. Damn good stuff to see ahead of Arrow Lake.

Newegg is enjoying its "discount bombs" with the 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs in both K and KF variants of the Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 processor offerings. There are regular discounts that are amplified -- or discount bombed -- even further.

OpenAI has just received one of the first engineering builds of the NVIDIA DGX B200 AI server, posting a picture of their new delivery on X:

Inside, the NVIDIA DGX B200 is a unified AI platform for training, fine-tuning, and inference using NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs. Each DGX B200 system has 8 x B200 AI GPUs with up to 1.4TB of HBM3 memory and up to 64TB/sec of memory bandwidth. NVIDIA's new DGX B200 AI server can pump out 72 petaFLOPS of training performance, and 144 petaFLOPS of inference performance.

OpenAI Sam Altman is well aware of the advancements of NVIDIA's new Blackwell GPU architecture, recently saying: "Blackwell offers massive performance leaps, and will accelerate our ability to deliver leading-edge models. We're excited to continue working with NVIDIA to enhance AI compute".

Amazon released New Word on September 29, 2021 and after amassing a big player base of more than 900,000 concurrent players on Steam, the MMORPG eventually fell off as there was a lack of end-game content to satisfy hungry players, among other reasons.

Currently, New World averages less than 10,000 concurrent players on Steam, and at the same time, a year ago, it had more than 50,000 concurrent Steam players. Unfortunately, this is a common curse of MMORPGs, but the failure of New World didn't dissuade Amazon from having another attempt at the notoriously difficult gaming genre, as Amazon Games recently published Throne and Liberty, an MMORPG developed by NCSOFT.

A new article published on the Amazon Games website reveals Throne and Liberty has already amassed more than 3 million registered players, with 24 million hours played in the game, and 11 million hours watched on Twitch. According to Vice President for Amazon Games, Christoph Hartmann, "Bringing THRONE AND LIBERTY to players around the world has been a huge shared undertaking by our team and our friends at NCSOFT, and we're so pleased to see the results as players join the game. We're only getting started, and we have a series of updates planned including our first castle siege coming soon."

Apple has just released the trailer to its first scripted immersive video for its Vision Pro headset, a new short film called Submerged.

Submerged was written and directed by Edward Berger, as is set inside of a WWII submarine as the crew scrambles to deal with a "harrowing torpedo attack". The trailer above shows some of the behind-the-scenes work behind Submerged, with fisheye-looking clips and a voiceover from Berger, claiming that the immersive format displayed on the Apple Vision Pro will "change the future of filmmaking".

Berger adds that putting on Apple's new Vision Pro headset changes "the way you think about storytelling". The vibes of the narrow you-can't-escape halls of the submarine are amplified when you're seeing it in an immersive format with a headset strapped to your head.

Nintendo is holding sign-ups for a new mysterious Switch Online feature, but no one knows exactly what the company has planned.

Today, Nintendo announced a new playtest for its Switch Online subscription service. To get in, you have to be subscribed to the $50/year Switch Online + Expansion Pack, and even then, there's no guarantee you'll be able to get in. Only 10,000 people will be able to try out the new feature.

"We will be performing a test related to a new feature for #NintendoSwitchOnline on #NintendoSwitch. Starting 8:00 AM PT on Oct. 10, existing Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members will be able to apply to participate on a first-come, first-serve basis," the company said.

Remember the mysterious Nintendo device that popped up on the FCC database? False alarm--it has nothing to do with Nintendo's next-gen Switch 2 console.

Back in late September, Nintendo submitted a new device (CLO-001) for the FCC to test out. It was believed to be some sort of strange peripheral, possibly for the Switch 2. After all, the mysterious device had motion tracking via a 24GHz mmWave sensor. What else could it be, if not some sort of JoyCon-like controller?

Now the device has been revealed, and it's something that no one expected. It's actually an interactive alarm clock.

Sony started selling refurbished PlayStation 5 consoles in late September, giving players an opportunity to buy into the Gen 9 ecosystem at a discounted rate.

Looking to buy a PS5, but don't want to spend $500? Sony's refurbished PS5s might be your best bet. Apart from the Black Friday deals that should be rolling around the holiday season, Sony is currently selling restored units of its original 2020 PS5 lineup duo.

On Sony's digital PlayStation Direct e-commerce storefront, gamers can buy a PS5 disc edition for $399 or a PS5 digital edition for $349, both of which are discounted by $50 based on the current retail rates (it should be noted the disc edition was $499 at launch, though).

NVIDIA will reportedly unveil its new GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card with 12GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit memory bus at CES 2025 in just a few month's time.

According to our friends over at Wccftech, the upcoming GeForce RTX 5070 will feature the GB205 "Blackwell" GPU with 12GB of GDDR7 memory clocked at 28Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus that will push out up to 672GB/sec of memory bandwidth. This means the new RTX 5070 has 33% more memory bandwidth than the current-gen RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 SUPER graphics cards.

We're expecting to see the RTX 5070 with a 250W TBP, which is a 14% increase in power over the RTX 4070 SUPER with a 220W TBP.