Latest News - Page 487

Intel has been in hot water for quite some time now, and the problems were particularly exacerbated when it broke consumer trust with the sloppy response to its now officially recognized problems with its 13th and 14th gen desktop CPUs.

The result of this tumultuous time for Intel has resulted in the company selling off its remainder of Arm Holdings shares, equating to a sale of $146 million, a 15% reduction in its global workforce (15,000 people), and a downward spiral stock value that has reduced by 59% over the course of 2024. Recent reports indicate Arm approached Intel about potentially acquiring the company's product division, and according to a recent report from Bloomberg published on Thursday, Arm's offer was rejected.

The Bloomberg report cited anonymous people familiar with the matter and didn't mention any specifics, such as financial details or whether the talks between the companies are continuing or over. What is known is that Arm showed very little interest in purchasing Intel's manufacturing capabilities, and instead they just wanted its product division, which encompasses Intel's CPUs designed for desktop PCs, servers, networking equipment and more.

Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards for desktop PCs are expected to arrive in early 2025 and offer a compelling option for the budget-conscious and those looking for a powerful mid-range GPU. At least, that's the idea or hope.

With the new Xe2-LPG 'Battlemage' graphics architecture appearing in new Luna Lake Core Ultra processors for mobile devices, the only question is how desktop performance stacks up.

Wccftech recently spotted a Geekbench OpenCL benchmark result with a GPU featuring one of the Intel Arc Battlemage device IDs spotted in Linux Kernel drivers and shipping manifests. Multiple Battlemage cards are on the way, and this benchmark result covers the Bettlemage 'G21' variant.

SpaceX has been pouring millions of dollars into the development of Starship, the company's rocket that is slated to be the transportation method humans will use to touch down on the surface of Mars.

Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket and is shaping up to be the rocket that will finally realize the company's dream, sourced from Elon Musk, of making humans a multi-planetary species. With a few Starship launches under its belt SpaceX is full steam ahead to achieving its goal, but it appears its being blocked by US regulators more than necessary, at least according to SpaceX.

Despite its goals, we have now learned an approximate figure SpaceX has spent on Starship's development, with the company's Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell, saying in front of the Texas Appropriations Committee for Texas Space Commission that SpaceX has invested $3 billion into developing Starship and its surrounding facilities. Shotwell also pointed out SpaceX is about to break through the four million mark for Starlink customers and that as the network grows, it plans to expand its facilities and put more Starlink satellites in orbit.

NASA has highlighted an interestingly shaped near-Earth asteroid that recently made a close approach to our planet, and during its fly-by, a powerful radar system analyzed it.

The space agency published the results of the analysis on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website, where it explained the oddly-shaped asteroid is officially called 2024 ON. According to the report, Deep Space Network's Goldstone Solar System Radar was used to capture the above images of the asteroid, which passed safely by Earth at a distance of 620,000 miles, or approximately 2.6 times the distance between the Moon and Earth. The asteroid was originally discovered on July 27, 2024, and despite 600,000 miles being an immense distance on Earth, it's actually quite close in astronomical terms.

600,000 miles falls within the range of 2024 ON, being categorized as a near-Earth object or an NEO. However, NASA and other researchers aren't interested in its proximity to Earth but instead in its shape, as 2024 ON resembles a peanut, with one lobe being at least 50% larger than the other. According to the images gathered by the radar, 2024 ON is approximately 1150 feet long with features on its surface that have a diameter of 12.3 feet, which are likely boulders. The images also show the asteroid rotates about 90% over the course of six hours.

Computers have been around for decades, longer than most of us, and there's a big difference between a CPU from 2024 versus one from 2014. Rewind the clock to 1971, and you have the first commercially produced microprocessor - the 4-bit Intel 4004. It is a chip initially developed for a calculator and so far removed from modern computing, so you'd be hard-pressed to find a practical use for it other than as a historical artifact.

This is where Dmitry Grinberg or Dimity.GR, who set the record for the lowest-end machine to run Linux back in 2012, enters the picture. He took the design and capabilities of the Intel 4004 chip to create a "PC" running Linux. The only catch is that booting up the rig took 4.76 days.

Which is unusable. Naturally, it makes for a fun experiment, and you can see the Intel 4004 emulation and hardware do its thing in the time-lapse video above. Keep your eye on the Windows clock, which churns through the hours as the 4-bit Intel 4004 from 1971 tries to deal with an operating system from the distant future.

With powerful GPUs built to run complex AI workloads and new mobile (and desktop) CPUs integrating NPUs into their architecture for generative AI tasks, the PC as we know it is changing. And that change could be here sooner than we think, with research and consulting firm Gartner forecasting that AI PCs will account for 43% of global PC shipments by 2025.

"The debate has moved from speculating which PCs might include AI functionality to the expectation that most PCs will eventually integrate AI NPU capabilities," said Ranjit Atwal, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. "As a result, NPU will become a standard feature for PC vendors."

This will present a dramatic shift for all consumers buying laptops or PCs, including students, creators, and professionals. Not everyone will jump in and start using Windows' AI features with their new NPU-powered CPU, but all new CPUs will include an NPU and AI hardware as standard.

One of the biggest PC game launches in the past week has been the long-awaited debut of Sony and PlayStation's God of War Ragnarok. The game arrives with optimizations and support for technologies like DLSS 3 and FSR 3.1. Another big PC release is Frostpunk 2, another sequel and a visually stunning strategy game supporting AMD and NVIDIA upscaling and frame generation technologies.

If you own a Radeon GPU and are playing either of these games, you'll want to download and manually install the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.20.11.01 preview driver. This driver adds New Game support for God of War Ragnarok, Frostpunk 2, and The Sims 4 DirectX 11 Update.

The driver also adds HYPR-Tune support to automatically enable FSR 3 and the Anti-Lag 2 latency reduction tech in games like Black Myth: Wukong, Creatures of Ava, and God of War Ragnarok. The new preview driver also fixes issues with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 crashing for Radeon gamers. Here's a look at the full release notes.

NVIDIA's issues with its Blackwell AI GPUs have been "addressed" according to tech journalist Tim Culpan on X, with actual GB200 AI server shipments going out to major cloud service providers (CSPs) "earlier than previously-feared delay".

Microsoft is expected to take delivery of one of the largest allocations of NVIDIA's new Blackwell AI GPUs, as well Oracle, AWS, Meta, and others. NVIDIA's new GB200 NVL36 AI servers were originally slated for delivery at the end of this month, while the higher-end (and more expensive) GB200 NVL72 AI servers were scheduled for early November.

Culpan took to his Substack to explain that delays pushed the timeline back to January, but now both NVL36 and NVL72 AI servers will "ship around the first week of December".

A sea of portable PC gaming handhelds have hit the market in the last few years. Most offer similar performance thanks to the Ryzen Z1 chip, which can deliver impressive 1080p gaming. The AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme features integrated RDNA 3 graphics with 12 Compute Units, while the lower-end variant offers 4 Compute Units.

Even with multiple options available, the Lenovo Legion Go stood out due to its premium design, which included a large display and removable controllers similar to the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Cons.

Although it hasn't been officially confirmed, new images from YouTuve creator NITTRX have emerged showcasing the design of what's being referred to as the Legion Go Lite. This follows reports we heard earlier that Lenovo was preparing to release a more affordable variant of its PC gaming handheld.

NASA's Mars rover named Perseverance has been exploring the surface of the Red Planet since February 2021, and with such valuable scientific exploration taking place it unfortunately comes at a cost.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even the engineering achievements made to create NASA's Curiosity rover and place it on the surface of the Red Planet. Since 2012, the rover has been documenting its exploration of the Red Planet, capturing valuable scientific data in the form of images. Curiosity's main objective is to search for any evidence of ancient microbial life once living on Mars, and if proven correct, the discovery would truly be one of the most significant scientific achievements in human history as there would now be evidence of life existing outside of Earth.

NASA has taken to its blog to showcase the costs that come with this exploration, and seemingly, the price of traversing Mars' terrain is that you will eventually get holes in your tires. The rover has endured Mars' harsh environment for many years now, and of its six wheels, some are in better shape than others. NASA points out that the right-middle wheel is probably in the worst shape out of the bunch as it has a hole so big you can see the mechanisms inside the wheel.

It isn't surprising that Sony is making changes to the pricing of its products ahead of the upcoming launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro, but the latest price change was somewhat egregious.

WCCFTech has pointed out that Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition was originally priced at $19.99 on the PlayStation Store, but Sony quietly increased that price tag on September 25 to $39.99. Moreover, the price increase of the original version of Horizon Zero Dawn has increased the remaster to $49.99 from $29.99. Besides the problem of paying more for the same game, players who own the original game can purchase the remastered version for $9.99.

However, if you owned the original PS4 game on disc and now have a digital PS5 or the coming PS5 Pro without the optical disc drive, you won't be able to play the original game or take advantage of the $9.99 upgrade price as you won't be able to verify the purchase of the original game by placing in the disc.

The gaming market is saturated with options, and simply being exposed to a platform such as Steam, a gamer can feel like there are almost too many options to choose from.

While choice is ultimately a good thing it can lead to a feeling of many games feeling very similar, which is why titles that have a unique take or spin tend to stand taller than others. Empire of the Ants, developed by Tower Five and published by Microids, is shaping up to be one of those unique games, as this soon-to-be-released real-time strategy (RTS) game combines the stunning visuals of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.4 and the unusual third-person perspective of a lowly ant setting out to save its colony.

Empire of the Ants is based on the famous French novel of the same name (Les Fourmis) by Bernard Weber, and the title will put players in the thorax of an ant called 103,683e. This ant is determined to protect its colony, and according to Microids, players will be forced to make difficult decisions that will need to be heavily considered, as the repercussions of these decisions will impact the survival of the colony. Players will need to overcome many obstacles to ensure the survival of the colony, such as making alliances, competing for resources, and surviving the chaotic environment of the forest.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, legendary Nintendo game director Shigeru Miyamoto gave some insight into Nintendo's internal perspective of the company and how he hopes that will be understood by visitors to the soon-to-be-opened Nintendo Museum.

The interview with Miyamoto was about the upcoming opening of the Nintendo Museum, scheduled for October 2 in Kyoto, Japan. The museum is dedicated to preserving the unique history of Nintendo, and during the interview, Miyamoto said the goal is to help people understand what Nintendo truly is. More specifically, the Nintendo game director said, "I hope that through this, people will understand and refrain from dragging Nintendo into competitions like the so-called 'console wars,' which focus on high specs and hardware performance (laughs)."

Miyamoto added that he hoped that people visiting the museum would come away thinking that Nintendo was much more than a company that made games. Moreover, Miyamoto said he hopes people see that Nintendo is separate from the competition and the cutting-edge technology discussion surrounding those consoles. These comments by Miyamoto aren't that surprising as Nintendo has been separating itself from the so-called "console wars" for many years now.

MSI has rolled out the much-awaited 0x12B microcode BIOS patch to a selection of Z90 and B760 motherboards.

It was only yesterday that Intel announced it was rolling out the new 0x12B microcode patch aimed to fixing instability issues with its 13th and 14th gen CPUs. The patch is designed to address the excessive voltage requests fired off by the affected CPUs that were occurring during idle and light activity. These excess voltage requests by the CPU led to general instability problems, game crashes, and more issues.

Now, MSI has revealed the first wave of motherboards that will be receiving the new BIOS update, and the motherboard manufacturer has announced a total of 14 boards are now ready for the update to be downloaded. MSI motherboards are now ready for the 0x12B microcode patch, including the B760 series and two Z790 PCH-based designs. More MSI motherboards are expected to be added to the list in the coming days, with other motherboard manufacturers also expected to roll out their own versions of the update soon.

AMD will only be launching a few of its new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000X3D processors this year: the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, Ryzen 9 9900X3D, and Ryzen 7 9800X3D... mid-range X3D chips will be released in 2025 including the Ryzen 5 9600X3D.

In a new post on Chiphell, leaker "zhangzhonghao" has some information from GIGABYTE's recent X870 launch event, which had AMD staffers in attendance, with 3 different Ryzen 9000X3D processors teased, but they're not all launching at the same time.

We can expect AMD to launch the star of the Ryzen 9000X3D series CPU show: the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in late October, which will fight directly against Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" CPU. The leaker teased that there are some "new features" with the higher-end 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors, so we could expect a CES 2025 reveal.

MSI has just teased its new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER GAMING Slim "STALKER 2" Edition graphics card, check it out:

MSI has been working directly with STALKER 2 developer GSC Games on designing its GAMING Slim "STALKER 2" Edition graphics card, joining the ranks of MSI's other custom designs including Black Myth: Wukong and World of Warcraft. The new MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER GAMING Slim "STALKER 2" Edition graphics card features a beautiful custom design, new stickers on the fans, and an upgraded backplate.

Inside, we should expect the AD103-275 GPU with 8448 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR6X memory, and a 285W TDP. The custom variants from MSI don't usually include "X" or "OC" specifications, so there is now factory overclocking here... but I'm sure you'll squeeze some more performance out of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER GAMING Slim "STALKER 2" Edition graphics card.

Sony had already started plotting out the early ideas for a mid-gen PlayStation 5 Pro even before the PS5 launched in 2020.

The PS5 Pro was in pre-production discussion phases of development since before the PS5 released, a new IGN interview has revealed. This is typically customary for Sony--as a consumer electronics firm, Sony must always be planning the next wave of technology on a near-perpetual basis. The console market is cyclical, and both Sony and Microsoft have invested significantly into mid-gen upgrades to power new gaming experiences and to boost hardware sales profits.

"We started discussing [the PS5 Pro] before the PS5 actually came out...because the PS5 specs were already locked in. We were ready to launch and everything. We knew, of course, as you mentioned, technologies evolve every year," PlayStation product manager Toshi Aoki told IGN.

AMD has just launched its fleet of Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop CPUs, but up next... up next we've got the more exciting Ryzen 9000X3D processors... with teh mid-range Ryzen 5 9600X3D processor teased in new rumors.

In a new post on X, leaker Hong Anh Phu said that the Ryzen 9 9800X3D processor would be launching in early November, following up the post with "one more thing" being Ryzen 5 9600X3D was "also planned from the beginning" with Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 variants of X3D processors.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 5 9600X3D processor should arrive with 6 cores and 12 threads of Zen 5 processing power,r with 32MB of L3 cache per CCD + 64MB of 3D V-Cache + 6MB of L2 cache + 480KB of L1 cache for a total of 102.5MB of cache on the 9600X3D.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro "30th Anniversary Limited Edition" console bundles were sold out in mere seconds, with scalpers already listing the bundles for thousands of dollars... some are asking for $5000, some are asking for $10,000.

Just minutes after the pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 Pro 30th Anniversary Limited Edition bundle went live in the UK, shoppers were slammed with "sold out" messages, which had some gamers upset obviously. Not long after, multiple listings for the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Limited Edition bundles hit eBay, with scalpers seeking up to £10,000.

These scalpers don't even have hands-on with the PS5 Pro bundles, they're just selling their successful pre-orders, so this is just capitalism at play... it's not nice, but it is nigh impossible to stop. There are even counter listings on eBay that are warning shoppers from buying pre-ordered PlayStation 5 Pro 30th Anniversary Limited Edition bundles from scalpers.

We've got some new leaks regarding NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards -- you can read about the monster RTX 5090 here -- but the new RTX 5080 is poised to have 10K+ CUDA cores and 16GB of ultra-fast GDDR7 memory.

In a new post on X, leaker "kopite7kimi" teased that NVIDIA's second-fast Blackwell gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 5080, will have the GB203-400-A1 GPU with 10,752 CUDA cores (51% less than the 20K+ on the RTX 5090). We can expect 16GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit memory bus, where if NVIDIA uses 28Gbps GDDR7 we'll see 896GB/sec memory bandwidth, or with 32Gbps GDDR7 we'll get 1.0TB/sec memory bandwidth out of the RTX 5080.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 5080 is rumored with a 400W TDP, which I'm sure is for the Founders Edition, so we'll see custom AIB models of the RTX 5080 exceeding that (and with higher GPU clock speeds, improved thermal designs, etc.