AMD posted some better-than-expected Q2 2024 earnings this week, but its gaming business took a rather large 59% revenue drop year-over-year.

During its Q2 2024 earnings report, it was noted that gaming revenues dropped 59%, which covers the Radeon GPU business and semi-custom chips provided by AMD (made by TSMC) to Microsoft for its Xbox Series X/S consoles and Sony for its PlayStation 5 consoles.

Microsoft announced earlier today its Q4 2024 earnings results, with its Xbox sales dropping 42% year-over-year, which brings down AMD's gaming revenue. Radeon sales haven't been anywhere near as strong compared to NVIDIA's Ada-tight grip on the gaming GPU market with its GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs... and RTX 50 series GPUs only months away.

Microsoft has actually removed adverts from something in Windows 11, albeit it's likely an app you've forgotten about - namely Skype.

If you recall, when Windows 11 was released (in 2021), Skype was dropped as a default (pre-installed) app from the roster (replaced by Microsoft Teams instead). However, the Skype client is still available for Windows 11 (and is still happily chugging along on other platforms), you just have to download it from the Microsoft Store.

Wherever you use Skype, the good news is that with a new preview build for testers, all the adverts have been banished from the app.

Titan Army is discounting a selection of its gaming monitors in a new deal that is running on Amazon and its website.

The gaming monitor brand has discounted two 32-inch displays and one 24.5-inch display. Each is equipped with a 2560 x 1440 (QHD) resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate for a buttery smooth in-game experience. The discounts are up to $60, bringing the cost down for some of the monitors to a very reasonable $300, which is extremely hard to beat at these specifications.

Below are three discounted gaming monitors, each with its specifications, what you can expect from it, and how much it is discounted. This is an exclusive Titan Army gaming monitor that won't last forever, so if you are in the market for a new gaming monitor and want to make the jump from 1080p (FHD) gaming to the sweet spot that is 1440p (QHD) gaming, now might the right time!

AMD's pricing on its upcoming Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop CPUs is finally official, thanks to some pricing information spotted on BestBuy.

It looks like we can expect the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor to cost $599, the Ryzen 9 9700X will cost $549, the Ryzen 7 9700X for $359, and finally, the Ryzen 5 9600X will cost $279. The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X launch on August 8, while the higher-end Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X will launch on August 15.

AMD's fleet of Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs were meant to be here already, but the company delayed them citing Q&A issues, with rumors of a typo on the branding of some of the processors and their retail packaging.

With the rise of artificial intelligence products, we are starting to see the first companies trying to implement AI into wearable hardware.

The first few iterations of the technology combination came in the form of a $699 device called the Human AI Pin, which was pinned onto a user's shirt, and the Rabbit R1, another pinnable AI device. Both of these devices didn't attract much attention at all, but the space of wearable AI devices is still very new, and we have just gotten our first look at potentially a new contender in the space. Introducing Friend, the wearable AI device that is capable of mocking you.

While that may sound like a joke, it certainly isn't, as the promotional video for the product, which has, at the time of writing, exceeded 90,000 views from a channel that has less than 500 subscribers, contains a scene where the AI mocks the wearer. So, here's how it works. The new AI wearable is called Friend, and instead of it being a pin its a medallion attached to a lanyard and worn around the neck of the wearer.

Microsoft has publicly come out and denounced AI-generation tools being used to create deepfake images that are then used to commit crimes such as fraud, abuse, manipulation.

Unfortunately, the demographics that are victims of this form of abuse are children and the elderly, and according to a recent blog post by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, the US government needs to step in and implement new regulations that hold the creators of deepfake content with nefarious purposes accountable for their actions.

Smith explains that AI-generated deepfakes are realistic and extremely easy for anyone to make. Unfortunately, due to their accessibility, the technology, while being built with the intention to conduct research and assist in people's workflows/projects, is increasingly being used to commit fraud, abuse, and other crimes. Smith not only called up regulators for new laws to protect victims of AI deepfakes but also the private sector to acknowledge its responsibility to "prevent the misuse of AI."

Following the tragic CrowdStrike outage that converted approximately 8.5 million Windows machines into devices that continuously flash the notorious blue screen of death, Google has confirmed it was responsible for Chrome Password Manager temporarily breaking.

Between potentially millions of Intel CPUs being faulty, AMD's new CPUs having problems, CrowdStrike updates nuking millions of Windows machines around the globe that results in airports being held up, and billions of dollars in lost revenue, it really does feel the technology industry is breaking at the seams. And to throw more fuel on the bad news fire, Google has confirmed its responsible for Password Manager on the Chrome browser being faulty.

While password manager being disabled certainly isn't as critical as the CrowdStrike outage that brought down various infrastructures around the world, the user base that was affected was comparable, and perhaps comedically it was only Windows users that were affected. According to Google, the glitch happened last week and lasted 18 hours, which was the time it took engineers to officially sign off on the fix.

Stormgate is described as a "next-gen RTS," a genre that helped define PC gaming in the 1990s. Its team of developers at Frost Giant Studios includes veterans from Blizzard who worked on iconic RTS titles like Warcraft III and StarCraft II. The sci-fi setting, gameplay, and overall look combine the two styles - vibrant, colorful visuals with hundreds of units on screen.

Its official free-to-play Early Access launch is scheduled for August 13. It will debut with the beginning of the game's campaign, competitive 1v1, and 3-player co-op versus AI modes. Those who have supported the developers or purchased the Early Access DLC Pack can jump in now.

Future updates will add more modes, new campaign missions and cinematics, new units, balance changes, and other updates and fixes. The developers note that the game will be in Early Access for at least a year.

Regarding the AI boom, we often think about GPUs, data center CPUs, and products from companies like NVIDIA. Well, specifically NVIDIA, whose H100 and upcoming Blackwell B200 GPUs and Superchips are at the heart of the generative AI movement. To the point where AI-related GPU revenues have made NVIDIA one of the biggest companies in the world.

But there's more to AI than Tensor Cores and high-end silicon processors from Team Green; high-speed memory and storage are also essential components for assembling massive data centers and supercomputers that train complex models like Meta's recent Llama 3.1.

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the DRAM and NAND Flash industry is expected to see "significant increases" in revenue this year. According to market analysis and reporting, DRAM and NAND Flash revenue for 2024, which includes memory and storage, will see increases of 75% and 77%, respectively.

Lawmakers will soon be voting on the implementation of an internet "kill switch," which will bolster the nation's effort to enhance digital security.

The lawmakers pushing the new legislation are from Malaysia, and according to a recent statement from Minister Azalina Othman Said, the proposal contains provisions that are designed for the "the procedure and enforcement of the kill switch." Said didn't specify the powers of the kill switch and what it was linked to, or in this case would be used to block, nor did the minister elaborate on the circumstances when such a technology would be used.

Said did take a jab at social media platforms for what the minister considers a lack of responsibility for the crimes that are committed on their platforms. Said stated the Malaysian government wants social media platforms to do more to prevent crimes such as fraud, child sexual abuse material, sexual harassment, and solicitation, along with bullying.

Samsung has been hitting problem after problem with developing new HBM memory chips for the ever-expanding HBM market, where it still needs another 2-4 months before the South Korean giant will get approved by NVIDIA to use its new HBM3E memory on its AI GPUs.

In a new Bloomberg report, Samsung has made "important headway in its comeback, including winning the long-awaited approval" from NVIDIA for its HBM3 memory to be used on NVIDIA's leading AI GPUs.

Samsung is now anticipating approval for its next-gen HBM3 memory in the next 2-4 months, according to people familiar with the matter who "asked not to be identified discussing internal developments".

Microsoft has announced the end of an era is upon Xbox gamers as the time has finally come to sunset the Xbox 360 Store.

The Xbox 360 marketplace opened nearly 19 years ago and gave rise to the popularity of having direct access to thousands of games that were constantly cycled through various sales. Microsoft informed Xbox gamers the 360 store was closing its doors in August last year, and on July 29, the final nail in the coffin happened as new games or DLC content was no longer available for purchase.

Notably, Microsoft explained via its blog that any content already purchased through the 360 store will remain available to play and redownload. Additionally, the Microsoft Movies and TV app will no longer work on Xbox 360 systems, which means gamers won't be able to view their content on those systems. Furthermore, Microsoft reminded Xbox gamers Xbox 360 games will still remain available to play on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S via backward compatibility.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the latest game in the long-running RPG series from BioWare, the veteran studio behind Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the fourth mainline entry in the series and is set to launch sometime later this year - an entire decade after the third outing.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was recently revealed at the Xbox Summer Showcase, where the development team and EA also presented a chunk of gameplay from the game's opening captured in 4K. Naturally, the change in visual style and the fast-paced action caught fans of the series off-guard; BioWare has confirmed that it's a massive RPG with 700 characters and 140,000 lines of recorded dialogue.

There's also good news for PC gamers regarding the next Dragon Age. BioWare has confirmed that the game will be Steam Deck Verified on day one, so it can be played on the go. Plus, something else that will make, well, everyone happy.

AMD has beaten analyst revenue and EPS estimates with its recent Q2 2024 earning report, with $5.8 billion in revenue, beating analysts' expectations of $5.72 billion.

One of the biggest highlights is that the AI division within AMD helped expand Data Center revenue by 115% annually, with Data Center revenue operating income increasing 405% annually. These huge leaps in income helped the massive slump that the gaming and embedded businesses divisions are going through right now, with gaming revenue down a shocking 59% annually with just $648 million for Q2 2024.

AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, said: "We delivered strong revenue and earnings growth in the second quarter driven by record Data Center segment revenue. Our AI business continued accelerating and we are well positioned to deliver strong revenue growth in the second half of the year led by demand for Instinct, EPYC and Ryzen processors. The rapid advances in generative AI are driving demand for more compute in every market, creating significant growth opportunities as we deliver leadership AI solutions across our business".

Intel has plans to lay off thousands more staff as the company wants to reduce costs and fund an "ambitious effort" to rebound from an earnings slump, market share losses, and the debacle surrounding dying 13th Gen and 14th Gen Core CPUs.

In a new report from BNN Bloomberg, we're learning that the reduction in Intel's workforce might be announced as "early as this week, according to people familiar with the matter". Intel is scheduled to report its Q2 2024 earnings on Thursday, with around 110,000 staffers worldwide, excluding workers at units that are being spun out of Intel.

Intel wants to return to dominating the semiconductor industry, with CEO Pat Gelsinger spending big money on research and development to improve its in-house technology. AMD has caught up and taken large chunks of its consumer, workstation, and server processor markets, with an Intel spokesperson declining to comment on the situation.

G.SKILL has announced some new DDR5 memory for AMD AM5 platforms, just in time for the arrival of Zen 5 and the new Ryzen 9000 Series of CPUs. These fall under the shiny and sparkly Trident Z5 Royal Neo series and feature "ultra-low latency specifications" and the speed of DDR5-6000.

These new Trident Z5 Royal Neo series kits arrive in DDR5-6000 CL28-36-36-96 and DDR5-6000 CL28-38-38-96 kits, with capacities of 32GB (2x16GB) and 64GB (2x32GB) for the former and 48GB (2x24GB) and 96GB (2x48GB) for the latter. As expected, they support AMD EXPO technology for overclocking, with G.SKILL describing low timing as an "ideal DDR5 memory solution for enthusiasts and overclockers."

This announcement follows from the new Trident Z5 Royal Neo DDR5-8000 memory for AMD AM5 platforms we reported on last week; however, the "ultra-low latency specifications" make these new kits stand out. The lower the CL number, the better.

Meta's long-term vision for AGI (artificial general intelligence) involved the use of 600,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, something NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang teased Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at SIGGRAPH 2024 this week Check it out:

In the video, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says that Meta is "coming up on 100K H100s" to which Zuck replies that yeah, they're "good customers" for NVIDIA and "that's why you invited me to this Q&A", said Zuck in return to Jensen.

600,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs at an average cost of $30,000 each combines for a total of $15 billion in AI GPU purchases from Meta to NVIDIA alone. We've seen gigantic GPU clusters from Elon Musk and his xAI startup, with its new Memphis Supercluster needing some insane portable power generators just to get 32,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs operational in the cluster.

Intel's latest Game On Graphics Driver for Intel Arc covers discrete Intel Arc GPUs and Intel Core Ultra chips with integrated Arc Graphics. It brings a sizeable performance boost to the critically acclaimed RPG Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

According to Intel, if you've got an Intel Arc A750, A770, A580, or A380 desktop graphics card, you can expect up to a massive 91% boost to performance when playing in 1080p using the game's Ultra image quality setting. Bump up the resolution to 1440p, and you'll still find a respectable 35% increase in performance.

Intel Game On Graphics Driver Version: 32.0.101.5768 WHQL also brings performance improvements to Metro: Last Light Complete Edition, which, like Yakuza, is a DirectX 11 title. The difference isn't quite as huge, but the 20% performance bump at 1080p and 23% at 1440p is respectable.

Intel has just announced that it will launch its next-generation Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors on September 3.

AMD has just launched its new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs, which deliver world-class performance to new laptops. They are powered by an upgraded XDNA 2-based NPU for AI workloads. Intel's new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs will compete with AMD's new Zen 5-based Strix Point APUs and Qualcomm's new Arm-based Snapdragon X chips.

The new Lunar Lake CPUs feature new Lion Core P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores, with improved IPC from both expected. On the GPU front, we've got the new Xe2 GPU architecture codenamed Battlemage inside, offering big upgrades in gaming performance and a beefed-up NPU4 chip offering up to 48 TOPS, with a total of 120 TOPS of AI performance from Lunar Lake.

New on-chain data indicates the United States government has moved more than $2 billion worth of Bitcoin to an unidentified wallet.

The new on-chain data was shared by Arkham Intelligence and comes only a few days after former US President Donald Trump spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennesse, where he said that if he was reelected, the US government would not sell any of its currently held Bitcoin, which amounts to as much as $15 billion worth, or approximately 203,000 Bitcoins.

Additionally, Trump said that he was going to make the US the "crypto capital of the world" by implementing several policies that support cryptocurrency. Furthermore, Senator Cynthia Lummis announced the introduction of new legislation that proposes that the US government purchase 5% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin to hold it as a strategic asset. The proposal was compared to the 1803 purchase from the French for $15 million for the American Midwest by the US government.