Latest News - Page 479

"We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it." That's former Google CEO Eric Schmidt responding to a question about the rise in energy consumption due to the AI boom at SCSP's inaugural AI+Energy Summit.

AI is putting a strain on energy grids everywhere due to the sheer amounts of power required to run complex generative AI systems, so it's a definite issue.

Eric Schmidt's response is somewhat cynical but indicative of the debate surrounding how governments, corporations, and people everywhere should be dealing with climate change and its potentially devastating impacts. His response wasn't simply a shoulder shrug, as Schmidt confirmed that energy concerns surrounding AI "will be a problem."

I'm a huge fan of high-res die shots of new chips, with Fritzchens Fritz pulling out the microscope and posting some truly beautiful die shots of AMD's newly-launched Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs. Check them out:

The new die shots of the Ryzen 9000 series CPUs gives us a (much) closer look of the new Zen 5 architecture, and what AMD has planned for the future (hint: its upcoming Ryzen 9000X3D series CPUs with 3D V-Cache). Fritzchens Fritz had to sacrifice his Zen 5 chip because its CCD needed to be extracted to get the close-up shots of the die.

AMD's new Ryzen 5 9600X processor was used in the breakdown, packing a single Zen 5 CCD and a single IOD and the pictures are absolutely gorgeous, I truly nerd out of these shots. So, Fritzchens Fritz, if you're reading this... hat tip, good sir. He noted on X that this time AMD's new Zen 5 "Granite Ridge" CPUs offer "interesting changes" for the 3D V-Cache in upcoming Ryzen 9000X3D series processors.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss the current state of the GPU market for PC gamers based on the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results and a recent report outlining two decades of market share between NVIDIA and AMD.

It's not only an uphill battle for AMD and Intel with RDNA 4 and Battlemage, but it's gotten to the point where it feels like anything that isn't GeForce RTX is starting from square one. The GeForce RTX 4060 is now one of the most popular GPUs among millions of gamers - and no alternative has even made a dent. So, even if AMD offers up a killer GeForce RTX 4060 competitor soon, it will do so from a position of almost no mindshare.

There's much more to the latest episode of The TT Show than just GPU talk and going over the latest GeForce RTX 5090 rumors. There are also the new AMD motherboards to discuss, Microsoft's controversial Copilot+ PC feature Recall making a return, and a potential Microsoft Surface Fold in development.

The Kickstarter page for the new Lunar 2-in-1 Foldable Keyboard & Mini PC is now live. The unique device is available starting from $579 USD, and the ultra-compact pocket-sized PC sports some impressive specs. It features the impressive AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor, with up to 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, and around six hours of battery life (or 8 to 10 in light office scenarios). It also has a lightweight build, weighing 800 grams.

The key idea is that you've got a mini PC in the form of a keyboard. You unfold it, place it on a desk, connect it to a display, and you're good to go. The keyboard includes a trackpad, so there's no need for a mouse, and when fully unfolded, it is 29cm long - slightly smaller than a compact TKL keyboard. When folded, this halves to around 15cm with a thickness of 3cm.

The crowdfunding Kickstarter campaign offers several discounted models and configurations, and global shipping is expected to commence in January 2025. The fully decked-out 32GB of RAM and 1 TB storage variant is available for $769.

Epic has ambitious plans to also give out free smartphone games on the mobile version of the Epic Games Store.

The Epic Store's freebie program has done wonders to boost the storefront's user numbers, with MAUs jumping from 160 million in 2020 to a whopping 230 million in 2022. A good portion of that uptick is from users signing up to nab the free games that Epic routinely doles out on the service.

As it turns out, the freebies are also coming to Epic Games Store mobile, too. And with federal judge ruling that Google must now allow competing third-party storefronts right in the Google Play Store, Android gamers will be able to access these free mobile games once they are made available without having to do any extra steps.

Most game developers have switched to Unreal Engine 5, which is powering some of the biggest games available now or currently in development at studios worldwide. In a new interview with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney at The Verge, we learn that the studio is already working on Unreal Engine 6, which will be much more than a game engine.

Sweeney says that the current plan for the next version of Unreal Engine is to combine the developer tools and platform that game studios and teams are using today with Fortnite's easy-to-use Unreal Editor. The reason can be summed up using a single word, which you probably haven't heard in a while - the 'metaverse.'

"The real power will come when we bring these two worlds together so we have the entire power of our high-end game engine merged with the ease of use that we put together in [Unreal Editor for Fortnite]," Sweeney says. "That's going to take several years. And when that process is complete, that will be Unreal Engine 6."

Epic Games wins big in its antitrust case against Google, with Judge Donato ruling that Google must allow competing third-party app storefronts within the Google Play Store for the next 3 years.

Google has officially been ordered by United States District Judge James Donato to break open Android's ultra-lucrative Google Play Store and allow competing storefronts on the service.

Today, Judge Donato issued his final ruling in the Epic v Google antitrust case with a permanent injunction. Documents retrieved from PACER reveal that the terms of the injunction are to start on November 1, 2024.

This Pokeball-related patent possibly the reason why Nintendo is suing Palworld developer Pocketpair for patent infringement.

Nintendo is officially suing Japanese games developer Pocketpair, but it's not for copyright. Instead, the lawsuit alleges that the Palworld developer has infringed on one of Nintendo's game patents. While we can't be 100% certain, it looks like this is the patent in question.

The patent (publication number 20230191255 in the United States) was filed in September 2022 in the U.S., and published in June 2023 in the region. However, the Japanese version of the patent (identification number JP2023-92953 (P2023-92953A)) was published in July. The patent also appears to be closely related to patents filed in 2021 specifically for Pokemon Legends, and a YouTube clip of the patent in action was also attached to the Japanese patent filing.

Ubisoft has two main goals right now: open-world adventures like Assassin's Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, and live games like Rainbow Six Siege.

Reports say that Ubisoft could go private in a bid to better control its business, with the Guillemot family teaming up with Tencent to buy out all existing shares. No one knows exactly what will happen, but Ubisoft's core focus remains the same as it has been for a while: open-world games and live services.

We've heard as much from the publisher's executive management, who have frequently discussed this dual-pronged approach to investors and analysts. Now the company has reiterated this business plan in a formal response to the share buyout rumors. Ubisoft stock has rallied since the reports, increasing by up to 40% from €10.74 to a peak of €15.07 on Monday, October 7.

More than half of worldwide surveyed gamers like singleplayer games the best, but the story is different for younger audiences--hence why publishers are still chasing and perpetuating live service trends.

The battle between live services and singleplayer games has been waging for a while, and it's now almost as old as the ever-shrinking battle between frame rate vs fidelity. Thanks to forever games like Fortnite, which has made $20 billion in revenue in less than a decade, everyone is trying to break into the live service market--even traditional singleplayer-makers like Sony.

The market has shown that there's more than enough room for both live and singleplayer games to co-exist, but microtransactions still reign supreme, likely due to their constant always-on storefronts and comparatively lower costs. Even still, analyst firm Midia has conducted some interesting research that shows surveyed players typically prefer to play singleplayer games on average when compared to other forms of gaming like PVE, couch co-op, and online PVP.

NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has just been announced as delivering a keynote at CES 2025 which is widely expected to be the event where Team Green reveals its next-gen Blackwell GeForce GPUs.

So, what's the time and date you need to mark in your diary for finally finding out exactly how powerful the NVIDIA RTX 5090 is - and likely the RTX 5080 too? Scribble down Monday, January 6, at 6.30pm (PDT).

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (which organizes CES) enthused: "We are thrilled to welcome Jensen Huang as a keynote speaker at CES 2025. Jensen is a true visionary in the tech industry. His insights and innovations improve the world, enhance the economy, and will inspire our CES audience."

Alien Isolation 2 is confirmed--get ready for more thrilling interstellar terror.

There's few games that are scarier than Alien Isolation. It's a horrifyingly tense experience full of sheer nail-biting suspense. Being hunted by the monstrous xenomorph throughout the haunted ship of the Nostromo makes you feel like prey with the odds hopelessly against you. 10 years ago, Creative Assembly captured one of the most unique movies in cinema history and let us actually experience it in an interactive way.

Now the team is going to do it again. Today, creative director Al Hope officially announced that Alien Isolation 2 is in development at Creative Assembly. "Today, I'm delighted to confirm, on behalf of the team, that a sequel to Alien: Isolation is in early development. We look forward to sharing more details with you when we're ready."

If you bought an Apple iMac with the original M1 chip a couple of years back, a new problem that's reared its head with these all-in-one PCs may be some cause for concern.

There are a growing number of reports on Apple's support forum from owners of iMacs that are around the two-year-old mark - and out of warranty - suddenly developing a serious issue with the screen (mind you, some of the reported problems are occuring with machines that are newer).

This manifests itself in the form of a bunch of thin, black horizontal lines across a section of the display which is every bit as awful as it sounds in terms of pretty much ruining the desktop experience. In some reported cases, the black lines are obscuring more than half of the screen.

Just imagine... a totally next-gen Grand Theft Auto 7 on a future-gen PlayStation 7 console, powered with next-gen hardware and AI that looks almost photorealistic... but with a certain (really awesome-looking) vibe. Check it out:

We all know Rockstar is going to release the biggest game of all time with Grand Theft Auto 6, but with our eyes to the future with next-gen hardware (AMD's future-gen Zen 6 and RDNA 6 architectures) as well as Sony's continued advancements into adding ray tracing (RT) and AI-powered upscaling that truly begins with PlayStation 6, but this tiny glimmer of hope is inspiring... the hype for this would be unbelievable.

In a post on X, NikTik explained that the scene in the tweet (below) is a scene from GTA: San Andreas reimagined with Runway Gen-3 AI. He also mentions that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang talked about the future of DLSS, mentioning that it will generate in-game assets including textures and objects, with DLSS 10 hypothetically delivering full neural rendering.

Is it November already? No, but it feels like AMD is hitting sales season early this year, with some great deals on its RX 7000 graphics cards having popped up at the start of October, and now this - an absolute steal on the Ryzen 7 5800X that could have us fooled that Black Friday is here already.

Even today, while technically two generations old - though some will doubtless contest the level of progress made with the 9800X anyway (certainly for gaming) - the Ryzen 5800X remains a great AMD processor.

Recall that at launch, the Ryzen 5800X was sold for $449, and now at Newegg in the US, it's all the way down to $128. On Amazon, it's even cheaper at just $121, but the catch is you must be a Prime member in that case.

Hurricane Helene has caused untold destruction across multiple states in the US, with a large impact on the ever-important semiconductor industry.

In what has been officially designated as the deadliest storm to hit the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina, the total quantum of its destruction is only just starting. In a small town in North Carolina that was recently hit by Hurricane Helene, is now on the radar because it could disrupt the multi-trillion-dollar global semiconductor industry because of the town's virtual monopoly over the mining of High-Purity Quartz (HPQ).

The town of Spruce Pine in North Carolina is home to just 2200 residents (as of 2022) but plays a crucial role in the global semiconductor industry through its mining that yields some of the world's purest quartz, which is then used to manufacture silicon wafers.

Known Apple insider and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has penned in his latest Power On newsletter the dates for Apple's upcoming announcement of its new M4-powered Mac lineup and when it will be released.

Gurman, who has established a known reputation for knowing the inner workings of the Cupertino company, wrote in the latest edition of his newsletter that Apple is planning on announcing its new lineup of M4 Macs at the end of October, with release slated for the first week of November. More specifically, Apple will be launching a new M4 version of its low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, along with higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that will feature the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips.

The Bloomberg reporter also mentioned Apple is planning on rolling out M4-powered desktop Macs, but they won't be arriving this year as Apple has reportedly planned their release for mid-2025. Apple is also planning refreshes for its Mac Mini lineup in M4 and M4 Pro chip configurations, along with an M4 refresh of the iPad mini. Gurman predicts all of the aforementioned products will be announced by Apple at the end of October, and some of them will be available on November 1.

HP's upcoming Omen 35L is the first desktop gaming PC with Intel's new Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPUs, with up to the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K.

The company has confirmed that its upcoming Omen 35L will feature up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor with 24 cores and 24 threads (no Hyper-Threading). The Core Ultra 9 285K will run with a boost clock of up to 5.7GHz and feature 36MB of cache.

HP's new Omen 35L can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor, up to NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, up to Kingston FURY 64GB DDR5-4000 (DDR5-4000 feels like an error, we'll see if HP updates it) "plus AI features" that will make HP's new OMEN components make it powerful, as well as easy to upgrade and customize.

Amazon is planning on increasing the amount of money it makes on its Prime Video streaming service by increasing the number of available advertisement slots, meaning users will be blessed with even more ads than they are already consuming.

Notably, current Prime Video users consume between 2 and 3.5 minutes of advertisements every hour. According to a recent Financial Times interview with Kelly Day, Amazon's Vice President of Prime Video International, currently, standard-tier Prime Video users don't receive ads in the middle of content, but that could change in 2025 with Amazon's plan to revise its advertising structure across its platform.

The FT article also revealed Amazon's plan to roll out different forms of ads on Prime Video, such as shoppable ads, carousel ads, intermissions ads, and brand quiz ads. Currently, advertisements on Prime come in two forms; a trailer for Amazon's next upcoming big piece of content (movie/TV show), and then additional slotted ads from brands that have purchased these slots.

Apple is expected to release its highly anticipated foray into artificial intelligence, but just in Apple fashion they have rebranded the emerging software as "Apple Intelligence".

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who wrote in his recent Power On newsletter, Apple is slated to roll out iOS 18.1 on October 28, and within that OS update will be Apple Intelligence. For those that don't know, Apple Intelligence will be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro/Max and the entire iPhone 16 line-up. Unfortunately, devices older than that don't have the necessary hardware to process AI tasks at a speed that Apple is comfortable with releasing.

Apple Intelligence, or the complete lack of it, has been a point of criticism in the recent launch of the iPhone 16 lineup, as much of Apple's marketing for the new generation of iPhone showed Apple Intelligence features that weren't available at launch. Apple clarified when the features will be released, saying Apple Intelligence will be rolled out in stages. As for iOS 18.1, according to reports, developers with early access to the operating system version have found it to be quite unstable, leading to app crashes and excessive battery drain.