Latest News - Page 509

Apple's MacBook Pro M4 models rumored to launch later this year are entering mass production according to a new report.

This comes from DigiTimes - so add a fair pinch of seasoning, though the site does provide reliable enough supply chain-related info at times - as flagged by MacRumors.

Apparently, Apple is readying to fire up the production lines to manufacture MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch laptops with M4 Pro and M4 Max processors in August, so the likelihood is that this has now begun, or is very much imminent.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro wasn't just an open secret at Gamescom 2024 last week, but now it's rumored to feature an upgraded 2TB of Gen4 SSD storage, and use around 200W of power.

The new information on the PS5 Pro is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who has been told that a source of his has recently seen the PlayStation 5 Pro Dev Kit, and that it comes with 2TB of SSD storage. Microsoft has just unleashed its new Xbox Series X 2TB console, so Sony pushing for the same 2TB makes sense here (and with a far more powerful console in the PS5 Pro).

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro Dev Kit is also running quiet and cool, with the same power connector on the PS5 Pro as the standard PS5, we're looking at the same power consumption. AMD's new semi-custom SoC codenamed "Viola" doing well on TSMC's new node, and keeping power the same (sometimes lower) and temps lower than the standard PS5 with considerable more grunt inside of the PS5 Pro... Sony will have another winner on its hands.

Corsair has just released a pair of new affordable gaming mice: the wired M55 Lightweight Gaming Mouse for $29.99 USD and the M55 WIRELESS Gaming Mouse for $49.99 USD. In either form, the M55 sports a symmetrical shape, with textured side grips and a compact form factor that supports various grip styles.

The wired M55 Lightweight Gaming Mouse weighs 55 grams and is optimized for competitive gaming, where quick, precise movements can be the difference between a victory or a loss. The M55 WIRELESS Gaming Mouse weighs 85 grams in bulk because it's powered by a single AA battery, which adds weight.

On the plus side, the M55 Wireless Gaming Mouse can last up to 185 hours on a single AA battery with low-latency SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS. Both feature tracking specs of 35G acceleration and 300 IPS speed; however, the M55 Wireless's optical sensor is rated up to 24,000 DPI, while the wired version tops at 16,000 DPI.

A microSD card with read speeds of up to 820 MB/s is impressive because it is faster than a standard SATA SSD (which tops out at around 560 MB/s) and more than eight times faster than the UHS-I microSD cards that people slap into tablets, cameras, and gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch. Silicon Power's new 256GB SET320 microSD card can reach read speeds of up to 820 MB/s. However, there's a catch.

The SET320 is the company's first microSD 'SD Express' memory card, which utilizes a new interface (PCIe Gen 3x1 and NVMe via SD 7.0) to achieve its impressive speed. Still, it is fantastic to see a microSD card deliver SSD-like speeds in such a tiny form factor.

Silicon Power notes that its new high-speed microSD cards are an "industrial-grade solution designed to meet the growing demands of AI-driven applications." Based on their footprint alone, you could fit any number of these in a data center.

We got our first look at Antec's new flagship FLUX PRO Full Tower case at Computex 2024 and were quietly impressed by the use of high-quality mesh, tempered glass, and wood paneling. With the product pages for the FLUX Pro and FLUX Pro White variants now live, Antex has provided full specs and details on what to expect from its 'exceptional' and 'luxury' design.

As a modern case, the FLUX PRO incorporates a multidirectional vent design. This means you have dual vertical and horizontal airflow with enough mesh to ensure that all your internal components "remain cool under pressure." Dust filtration is also available, thanks to the fine 1.2mm mesh panels on the front and lower sides. This is all part of the Flow Luxury, F-LUX, or FLUX Platform, and the case ships with six fans - including four high-quality Tranquil 140mm PWM fans.

For those wanting complete control over cooling and lighting, the FLUX PRO Full Tower case also features a built-in ARGB and PWM Fan Control Hub and integrated temperature displays for both CPU and GPU for real-time performance monitoring.

The Lenovo Legion Go is a powerful portable PC gaming handheld (check out our full review) with a large 8.8-inch 144Hz QHD display, detachable Joy-Con-like controllers, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, and the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor with integrated Radeon graphics. It's an impressive unit that is powerful enough to play modern games and emulator several generations of classic console hardware.

Although it's been available for a while, Lenovo has just announced that it will release a range of new Legion Go accessories in the coming months: the Legion Go USB-C Dock, Legion Go Charging Connector, Legion Go Carry Case, and Legion Go Joystick and Joystick Caps.

The handheld's defining feature (compared to similar devices like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally) is the detachable controllers. Two new accessories announced this week complete the Legion Go's 'Nintendo Switch in PC form' design. One is a fancier version of the Switch's pack-in dock and base station, and the other is a fancier Joy-Con Comfort Grip.

Are you among the countless PC gamers jumping into Black Myth: Wukong, the latest AAA action-adventure hit? If so, there's a good chance that during those first few moments with the game, like me, you were left wondering which button brought up the map. Only to discover that there's no in-game map to be found.

Granted, this is a deliberate choice from the development team at Game Science, and Black Myth: Wukong is the sort of game where you can get around pretty quickly without needing a map. However, with side quests, hidden boss encounters, and other secrets to discover, having a map would make exploration a lot easier.

Well, us map fans are not alone, as one of the most popular mods for the game on PC is called 'Simple Map.' Which, as the name suggests, adds an in-game map to Black Myth: Wukong on PC.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer Beta details are here, with access available over two weekends across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. This is the first time players on all platforms get access to a Call of Duty beta simultaneously and the first major entry in the series to launch day and date on Xbox and PC Game Pass.

The first Early Access Beta weekend begins in a few days, running from this Friday, August 30, through to Wednesday, September 4. Access is available to all players who have pre-ordered the game and those who are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass.

The full Open Beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will run from Friday, September 6, through Monday, September 9. It is open to all players across PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The announcement coincides with the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Reveal Trailer, which showcases footage and gameplay from the 16 all-new maps coming.

AMD's new Instinct MI300X AI accelerator with 192GB of HBM3E has had a deep dive at Hot Chips 2024 this week, as well as the company teasing its refreshed MI325X with 288GB of HBM3E later this year.

Inside, AMD's new Instinct MI300X AI Accelerator features a total of 153 billion transistors, using a mix of TSMC's new 5nm and 6nm FinFET process nodes. There are 8 chiplets that feature 4 shared engines, and each shared engine contains 10 compute units.

The entire chip packs 32 shader engines, with a total of 40 shader engines inside of a single XCD and 320 in total across the entire package. Each individual XCD has its dedicated L2 cache, and out the outskirts of the package, features the Infinity Fabric Link, 8 HBM3 IO sites, and a single PCIe Gen5 link with 128GB/sec of bandwidth that connects the MI300X to an AMD EPYC CPU.

AMD is cooking up its next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs, which are leaking through new shipping manifests spotted online.

The first SKU to pass through is a 96-core part, which could very well be the full-fat version of the next-gen Zen 5-based Threadripper CPU. We should expect the new Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs to slot into the existing sTR5 socket that the current "Storm Peak" CPUs use.

AMD has the WRX90 and TRX50 motherboards on the market supporting the current-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series CPUs, so we should expect motherboard upgrades with some new support (USB4, etc) when Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs are gearing into launch.

AMD took the time at Hot Chips this week to deep dive into its new Zen 5 core architecture, which is already powering the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs for laptops, and new Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs on the desktop.

At Hot Chips this week, AMD went into detail abhout the journey of its Zen core architecture and how it launched in 2017 to fight Intel at levels never before seen, and AMD hasn't let up since. Zen was quickly followed by Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4, and now Zen 5.

Zen 3 launched with a 19% increase in IPC performance over the Zen 2 architecture, while Zen 4 delivered another 14% IPC performance improvement over Zen 3, and now Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC lift over Zen 4. Along the way, the Zen architecture picks up new features and tricks, like AVX-512 (FP-256) instructions, more cache, X3D models, and using TSMC's newest nodes.

Sony is raising the price of the PlayStation 5 in its home country for the third time, the company today announced.

The PS5 duo is about to get more expensive in Japan. Sony has revealed plans to raise the domestic MSRP of both the PS5 disc and digital editions alongside a multitude of peripherals within the region, culminating in the third PS5 console price hike in Japan since the system's launch.

The PlayStation 5 disc price will now be 79,980 yen ($550), an increase of roughly 13,000 yen ($90) from the previous cost. The PS5 digital edition is now priced at 72,970 (roughly $506), representing yet another increase of 13,000 yen ($90).

Windows 11 or 10 gamers who use a PS5 DualSense Edge controller for the titles where they prefer a gamepad to the mouse and keyboard will doubtless be pleased to learn that it's now possible to fully customize the peripheral on PC.

This is thanks to Sony releasing a new PlayStation Accessories app for Windows which lets you adjust all manner of parameters for the DualSense Edge.

As The Verge reports, you can use the app to customize the buttons, intensity of the haptic feedback, and also to adjust the deadzones for the triggers, and play with the stick sensitivity. Essentially it's possible to really fine-tune the DualSense to your own particular preferences for PC gaming.

Embracer Group's new quarterly report shows just how much the decentralized entertainment empire has cut from itself in an effort to stabilize and maintain profitability.

Like most of the video games industry right now, the Embracer Group has enacted some pretty harsh cost-cutting measures to help boost its margins. The group, which used to house a multitude of development teams and IPs from across the globe, went through a mass culling that saw thousands of people being laid off, and dozens of studios being shut down alongside dozens of game cancellations.

Recent figures from Embracer's Q2 2024 earnings report underlines how far these cuts actually went. We put together some numbers and graphs to illustrate the reductions in headcount, actual game projects, and studio closures.

Intel has announced new details on its new Xeon 6 SoC, Lunar Lake mobile processor, and Gaudi 3 AI accelerator and its OCI chiplet at Hot Chips 2024 this week.

First off, is the new Intel 6 SoC that combines the compute chiplet from Intel Xeon 6 processors with an edge-optimized I/O chiplet built on Intel 4 process technology. This enables the Xeon 6 SoC to deliver performance boosts over previous-generation Xeon CPUs with improved power efficiency and transistor density compared to previous-gen tech.

Intel will have more details about its next-gen AI PC processor, Lunar Lake, with Arik Gihon, the lead client CPU SoC architect, to talk about the new Lunar Lake CPU and how it's designed to "set a new bar for x86 power efficiency while delivering leading core, graphics and client AI performance".

Ubisoft's upcoming scoundrel-simulator Star Wars Outlaws may be pulling in solid pre-order numbers on PS5, updated PlayStation Store data indicates.

Star Wars Outlaws appears to be doing well on the PS Store. A quick look at the best-selling games on Sony's digital storefront shows that Ubisoft's third-person Star Wars game is in the top 10 games on the list, clocking it at #9, with mega-hits like NBA 2K25, GTA V, and Roblox taking a few spots above it.

This is a good sign for potential strong pre-orders for Star Wars Outlaws, at least in its current position on the charts. It's also interesting to note that reviews for the game have recently dropped and Outlaws has garnered a 77 rating on Metacritic with generally positive reviews.

IBM has just unveiled its new Telum II processor and Spyre AI accelerator, which it plans to use inside of its new IBM Z mainframe systems powering AI workloads.

The company provided details of the architecture of its new Telum II processor and Spyre AI accelerator, which are designed for AI workloads on the next-gen IBM Z mainframes. The new mainframes will accelerate traditional AI workloads, as well as LLMs using a brand new ensemble method of AI.

IBM's new Telum II processor features 8 high-performance cores running at 5.5GHz, with 36MB L2 cache per core and a 40% increase in on-chip cache capacity for a total of 360MB. The virtual level-4 cache of 2.88GB per processor drawer provides a 40% increase over the previous generation. The integrated AI accelerator allows for low-latency, high-throughput in-transaction AI inferencing, for example enhancing fraud detection during financial transactions, and provides a fourfold increase in compute capacity per chip over the previous generation.

Nintendo recently announced it is shutting down Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp's current iteration as a F2P mobile game, but it'll be coming back as a pay-to-play title on iOS and Android. Nintendo's historical earnings data might give some clues as to why this is happening.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is Nintendo's 3rd most-popular mobile title with over 10 million downloads, so why is the company shutting it down, and re-launching it as a pay-to-play game? There's a few possible reasons for this.

The first is that NDCube, the development studio responsible for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, may be too busy to actually upkeep the live game over time with new content and in-app purchases--especially via Pocket Camp's own subscription service. After all, NDCube has been pretty busy over the past 6 years, having developed 5x Switch games including two Mario Party titles.

AMD's new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs are now out in the wild, but new high-end X870E motherboards aren't quite yet... but they will be soon: on September 30.

The news of a September 30 release for the high-end X870E and X870 motherboards is coming from Kenny on the Bilibili forums, who received the new ASUS ROG STRIX X870E-E GAMING WIFI motherboard, where he said that he can share his experience on September 30.

Kenny explained: "The newly launched X870 series motherboards for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors are finally available. According to the official time specified by AMD, the motherboard can only be unboxed and basic specifications introduced without lighting on August 20, 2024. The official user experience sharing will be released on September 30, 2024".

Amazon will apparently publish games on Nintendo's new Switch 2 console, despite having never released any games for the current-gen model.

In a recent interview with IGN, Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann expresses interest in Nintendo's new DLSS-powered, 4K-ready Switch successor. Dubbed the Switch 2, the system is expected to leverage a more powerful NVIDIA Orin Tegra chip to deliver upscaled 4K resolution gaming, likely within the confines of the Switch OLED's dock (which itself is indeed capable of 4K output).

This extra horsepower is apparently enough to attract publishers like Amazon Games, who has yet to release any games onto the existing Tegra X1-powered Switch system.