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AMD disclosed some fantastic earnings figures earlier this month, and a large portion of its Q1 2026 success was driven by its data center segment. Of the $10.3 billion in revenue the company brought in this quarter, $5.8 billion was data center revenue. This accounts for a surprisingly high 55.9% of AMD's total revenue for Q1 2026, which is a staggering figure. AMD seems to be capitalizing well on the AI boom, and its EPYC server processors are the backbone of this recent success.

Alongside AMD's Instinct lineup of workstation GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs have been the cornerstone of the company's AI and datacenter deployments. EPYC CPUs are having so much success, in fact, that they have captured almost half of the server CPU market spending in Q1 2026. According to the latest data from Mercury Research, AMD's EPYC CPUs make up 46.2% of the total server CPU spending in Q1 2026.

This is an all-time high for AMD's server CPUs, driven largely by rising AI and data center demand. We recently heard AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su back CPUs heavily in the Agentic AI debate, and predicted we might be moving towards a 1:1 ratio between CPUs and GPUs soon. While that may still be a ways away, AMD's recent success in the data center space can only multiply if CPU demand were to rise, as Dr. Su has predicted.

Dell Technologies World 2026 kicks off next week, once again taking place at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas from May 18 through May 21. As a Diamond-level sponsor of the event and a longtime partner with Dell, KIOXIA will be on hand to showcase its latest innovations and cutting-edge flash storage solutions and technologies for AI and enterprise.

With the theme of Dell Technologies World 2026 being "Shaping the Future of Business, Together," KIOXIA will showcase exactly that, focusing on performance and scalability in today's data centers and AI-powered environments. This includes leveraging PCIe 5.0 to increase responsiveness and storage capacity, while showcasing its full SSD portfolio across a wide range of Dell platforms, from client-facing devices to servers and storage systems.

Some of the highlights include KIOXIA's PCIe 5.0 LC9 Series 245.76 TB E3.L enterprise NVMe SSDs in a Dell PowerEdge server in an industry-first 9.8 Petabyte (PB) setup, and KIOXIA's CM7 Series enterprise SSDs that meet the stringent and specific government FIPS 140-3 Level 2 Validation standard running on Dell PowerFlex and Nutanix Cloud Platforms. Plus, KIOXIA will showcase its new line-up of client SSDs for OEMs, including the EG7, XG10, and BG8 Series.

What happens when you pair the Dell PowerEdge R7725xd Server with 40 KIOXIA LC9 Series 245.76 TB SSDs? Well, you get something unprecedented and impressive: a 2U server for enterprise and data centers with 9.8 Petabytes (PB) of flash storage. And to highlight just how much storage capacity that is, 9.8 PB is equivalent to 9,800 terabytes (TB) or 9,800,000 Gigabytes (GB).

This setup is impressive not only in its storage capacity but also in the flash technology it employs. KIOXIA's LC9 Series delivers PCIe Gen5 speeds of up to 12,000 MB/s paired with the company's 8th Gen BiCS FLASH with CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, which leads to 32 2-Terabit (Tb) dies stacked together to offer the groundbreaking 245.76 TB capacity on a single 2.5-inch Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) SSD.

In addition to the impressive SSD setup, this Dell PowerEdge R7725xd server also sports a high-end AMD EPYC processor to meet the demands of large-scale "data lakes," AI, and intensive enterprise workloads. And when it comes to AI, these air-cooled servers complement GPU-heavy systems with up to 5 x 400Gbps NICs for high-capacity, power-efficient model training and AI data management.

Fans of BioWare RPGs, like the original Mass Effect trilogy and the iconic Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, will probably know the name, Casey Hudson. The veteran game designer and director led development of these classic titles and is currently leading a new studio, Arcanaut Studios, to create a Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) spiritual successor, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

With the new studio partnered with Lucasfilm Games, with an additional $100 million in funding from NetEase veteran Simon Zhu, the studio co-founder and Fate of the Old Republic game director recently sat down with Bloomberg to discuss the project. And during the discussion, he conveyed his feelings on the role of generative AI in game development. As the headline says, yeah, he's not a fan.

"I just find AI to be creatively soulless," Casey Hudson tells Bloomberg. "It's hard to imagine where it's actually helpful in the process. I'm just really unimpressed with it." Although this doesn't call out a specific use case for generative AI in game development, the discussion naturally went in that direction, as Arcanaut Studios is a relatively small studio developing a massive AAA-style Star Wars RPG.

ASUS's ProArt series covers everything from motherboards and cases to displays, laptop systems, storage, and more. Designed and built to accelerate performance for creatives, artists, students, and professionals, another key element of ASUS's ProArt lineup is a uniform design language that's sleek, minimal, and stylish, with a greater focus on ergonomics and portability than on going all out.

Which brings us to the new ProArt GeForce RTX 5090 OC Edition, which is the company's most compact flagship GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics card to date. The 2.5-slot thickness and dual-fan pull-through cooling system are based on NVIDIA's impressive Founders Edition design, making this a rare compact SFF-Ready GeForce RTX 5090. And the stylish physical design, which includes a wood-patterned laminate trim, also houses impressive cooling.

Under the hood, you've got premium vapor-chamber cooling for the GPU, alongside liquid-metal cooling for the higher Boost Clock speed of 2512 MHz. This is paired with two large 115mm Axial-tech fans and a double-vented backplate that ASUS says is why the card can be up to 27% smaller than a graphics card with a single flow-through vent.

007 First Light is out on May 27, and it's a cinematic third-person action-stealth-adventure game from the studio behind the Hitman series, IO Interactive. Unlike previous notable 007 or James Bond games, this one isn't based on an existing film or portrayal of the iconic character; instead, it's a "reimagined origin story" where players step into the digital shoes of a young, up-and-coming Bond, James Bond.

With the PC version offering the best visuals and performance, with native support for DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and DLSS Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and a Path Tracing mode coming in Summer 2026 with DLSS Ray Reconstruction support, NVIDIA's latest GeForce bundle is giving away copies of the game.

The new 007 First Light GeForce RTX 50 Series bundle is offering a Steam copy of the game with eligible purchases of GeForce RTX 50 Series desktops or graphics cards, as well as laptops with select GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics. On the desktop side, the bundle covers everything from the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti to the flagship GeForce RTX 5090, while the laptop side covers everything from the GeForce RTX 5060 through to the RTX 5080 and the flagship RTX 5090.

Valve has kicked off a beta test that brings a major overhaul to the Steam Community Market. The company explains that current market tools cannot keep pace with growth and that the platform now offers items from over 13,000 games and in-game items from over 700 projects. The update is designed to accommodate that growth and make it easier to buy and sell in-game items and other digital goods.

For those new to Steam, the Community Market allows users to buy and sell in-game and community items with other users, depositing funds into their Steam wallet that can be spent on games, weapon skins, soundtracks, digital gift cards, and more.

Since the community market is very familiar to CS2 fans, these players will be among the first to notice the changes. Valve said that it used Counter-Strike items to experiment and build out the new item integration, though it says it "looks forward to other games leveraging these same new features."

Global memory semiconductor giants are undergoing a profound structural shift. According to a report by the Chosun Ilbo citing research from market firm Omdia, Samsung Electronics, Kioxia, and Micron Technology are either shutting down or slashing production on their legacy 2D NAND flash production lines.

Samsung has slightly reduced its NAND Flash wafer production forecast, expecting a decline from 4.9 million wafers in 2025 to 4.68 million in 2026. Similarly, SK Hynix is forecasted to reduce output from 1.9 million wafers in 2025 to 1.7 million in 2026. Meanwhile, 64Gb MLC NAND spot prices have surged more than 300% from end-2025 levels and are currently trading in the $20-$28 range. MLC NAND, which stores 2 bits per cell, offers better data retention and durability than 3-bit TLC and 4-bit QLC designs, yet weak profitability has pushed it to the margins.

The main driver behind the production cuts is profitability. Thanks to the AI boom, high-bandwidth memory and advanced 3D NAND exceeding 300 layers have become the industry's focal points, while low-margin legacy 2D NAND is being rapidly sidelined and deprioritized for capital investment.

The Apple-Intel partnership is taking shape as a key part of Cupertino's future silicon plans for both mobile and desktop chips. Fresh reports from a GFHK (GF Holdings Hong Kong) Monthly Call, shared by leaker Jukan on X, suggest a formal agreement between the two Silicon Valley giants was already signed last year.

For over a decade, Apple has been TSMC's "darling" customer, a relationship forged after Apple famously moved away from Samsung Foundry. This partnership has historically granted Apple exclusive, early access to bleeding-edge nodes. However, the unprecedented AI boom has fundamentally altered that dynamic, with TSMC reporting shortages projected to persist beyond 2027.

Apple has been eyeing diversification of its chip production through dual sourcing, with Intel Foundry and Samsung Foundry as potential partners. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Intel and Apple have struck a preliminary deal in this regard.

After months of nothing but bad news, Assassin's Creed Hexe seems to be making a comeback with some positive rumors. The game has been in developmental turmoil, first losing two directors in two months, and then parting ways with 50 developers in one go. Information around Assassin's Creed Hexe has been very scarce ever since its announcement, but it seems like that is about to change.

A new leak by a known Ubisoft insider, "Rogue," has surfaced, outlining various new Assassin's Creed Hexe features, story points, and gameplay details. According to Rogue, a number of voice lines from the game have leaked, which give us an idea of what to expect from Hexe's story. It is according to these voice lines that we now know that the legendary assassin, Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, will make an appearance in Assassin's Creed Hexe.

This is huge news, especially given the kind of fandom Ezio has garnered over the years. The leak goes on to say that the main protagonist of the game, Anika, is a descendant of Ezio's sister, Claudia Auditore. Anika was previously referred to internally as Elsa, but that was just a placeholder name. There is a leaked Anika dialogue that says, "They call me a witch," so we know our protagonist is probably going to get in trouble for it.

It seems Microsoft is continuing to deliver on its Project K2 promises, and the latest development is notable. As part of the broader initiative to address Windows 11's biggest pain points, including sluggish performance, bloated AI integrations, unreliable updates, and a reduced storage footprint, Microsoft is now turning its attention to the UI framework itself.

A key part of Project K2 involves migrating core Windows 11 experiences, such as the Start menu and File Explorer, over to WinUI 3, Microsoft's modern native UI framework. However, according to a GitHub post by Microsoft software engineer Beth Pan, in addition to porting components to WinUI 3, the company is also actively optimizing the framework from the inside out, with performance being a central focus.

The post outlines that Microsoft has been using File Explorer and Notepad as primary benchmarks for its WinUI 3 improvements, targeting launch time as the key metric. The results so far are quite encouraging. For File Explorer alone, the team has achieved a 41% reduction in memory allocations, a 63% drop in transient allocations, a 45% decrease in function calls, and a 25% reduction in the time Windows spends executing WinUI code during a launch sequence. These are meaningful numbers that should translate into a noticeably snappier experience for everyday users.

Google recently announced Googlebook, a series of laptops designed around the Gemini AI model. This new laptop series is supposed to fall somewhere between a Chromebook and a traditional Windows laptop. Information surrounding the Googlebook is pretty vague right now, except for a few nifty features such as the Magic Pointer, Widget Creator, and general Gemini integration.

However, now it seems like we are getting more clarity about the hardware side of Googlebook. Intel has announced that it is the official CPU partner for Googlebook, providing processors for the upcoming series of laptops from various manufacturers. The company took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that it is prepping "premium, powerful devices designed for intelligence." Google has previously confirmed that Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are the official launch partners for this laptop series.

Intel has not yet confirmed which CPU lineup will power Googlebooks, but the most optimal candidate has to be the Core 300 "Wildcat Lake" processors. These processors are a perfect match for these laptops since they are built on Intel's 18A process node, and offer 2 "Cougar Cove" P-cores and 4 "Darkmont" LPE cores, with no traditional E-cores. The models come with a 15W TDP and a maximum power package of 35W, and include an NPU 5 with 40 TOPs, as well as an Xe display and media engine.

AMD is extending its existing lineup of Ryzen 9000 Pro models with six new SKUs, including some armed with 3D-VCache technology. The highlight of the lineup is the Ryzen 9 Pro 9965X3D, armed with up to 144MB of cache, and the Ryzen 7 Pro 9755X3D boasting 104MB of L3 cache.

These two models are the world's first Pro-series chips to come with 3D-VCache technology. The extra 3D cache layer is aimed at accelerating professional cache-sensitive workloads such as video encoding and 3D rendering. Both models are virtually identical to their consumer desktop counterparts in terms of raw specs. The Ryzen 9 Pro 9965X3D comes with 16 cores, 32 threads, a 5.5 GHz boost clock, a 4.3 GHz base clock, 144MB of L2+L3 cache, and a 170W TDP. The Ryzen 7 Pro 9755X3D comes with 8 cores, 12 threads, 5.2GHz boost clock, 4.7GHz base clock, 104MB of L2+L3 cache, and a 120W TDP.

The rest of the lineup consists of traditional (non-X3D) parts, featuring a mix of 6, 8, 12, and 16-core parts. AMD is also offering multiple TDP variants for almost all of these non-X3D models, to better fit OEMs with systems that can handle higher TDPs. For the uninitiated, AMD's initial Ryzen 9000 Pro series lineup offered only three SKUs with a 65W TDP.

Some TVs (notably OLEDs) are marked down for not being bright enough, and there can be concerns around daytime viewing with such screens, particularly in well-lit rooms - but one criticism you can't level at the TCL X11 is that its brightness is subpar.

According to TV expert and reviewer Vincent Teoh (via VideoCardz), the new 85-inch Super Quantum Dot Mini LED TV from TCL comes close to 11,000 nits.

That's as measured by Teoh as you can see in the above video clip posted on X, with the brightness level reaching 10,931 nits to be precise.

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki tells investors that PlayStation console prices could be adjusted if hardware manufacturing costs increase, but the company has enough console supply to meet demand throughout the remainder of the year.

In a recent earnings call, Sony management briefly discusses the PS5's volatile pricing situation that, in part, led to Q4'25 delivering the lowest quarterly shipments off Sony's ninth console generation.

The company's CEO was quite frank on the realities of the hardware market, indicating that the PS5 could get more price hikes if component scarcity keeps squeezing the market.

One of the biggest stories for the consumer-facing PC market, that is, the non-data center and AI-only space, was Micron announcing that it would no longer produce consumer SSD and RAM products under its long-standing Crucial brand. It was a surprising move, but on the plus side, it looks like KIOXIA, the inventors of flash memory, is stepping in to fill that void with a new range of SSD offerings built for OEMs and the consumer PC market.

In addition to the affordable EG7 and BG8 Series of SSDs that cover PCIe Gen4 and Gen5 interfaces and leverage the company's groundbreaking BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory with its CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, KIOXIA is also introducing the new XG10 Series of SSDs for PC OEMs, targeting high-performance users.

With its PCIe 5.0 interface delivering sequential read speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 12,000 MB/s, the XG10 Series is built for content creation workloads such as editing, immersive next-gen cinematic gaming, and local AI training and inference. Compared to the previous generation's XG8 Series, that's double the performance while also delivering improvements of 122% in random read and 158% in random write.

Valve has sneaked in a smart easter egg with the Steam Controller, one that'll only be discovered by the clumsier people out there - or those who aren't afraid to chuck the controller about a bit.

VideoCardz flagged up a thread on Reddit where the original poster threw their controller onto a bed - and was surprised to hear it scream.

As Redditor RF3D19 observed: "If you drop the controller while in Steam Big Picture mode (on a pillow or a bed, we're not psychopaths here), it will occasionally play the Wilhelm scream with the haptic motors. Do whatever you want with this information, I just feel like I needed to share this asap."

Sony's PlayStation 6 is on the horizon. Still, with the memory and storage crisis set to affect all consumer technology for the foreseeable future, the company's executives are unsure of the next-gen console's launch timing. This uncertainty could pave the way for concessions on the hardware side, as costs for the PS6's custom next-gen AMD hardware continue to rise.

Renowned insider and leaker, KeplerL2, who has previously leaked specs for the upcoming PlayStation 6 console, notes that a reasonable cutback could see Sony drop the planned 30 or 32GB of GDDR7 memory to 24GB of VRAM on a slower 128-bit bus. According to KeplerL2 (via NeoGAF), this move would save the company around $60 in BOM costs per PlayStation 6 console and would be a "reasonable" choice, as it wouldn't require reworking the PS6's custom AMD SoC beyond disabling a single memory controller.

24GB of VRAM still represents notably more capacity than the PlayStation 5's 16GB of unified memory. It would allow more complex rendering, such as ray tracing and path tracing, to run without bottlenecks. The other bonus for going the 24GB route, as KeplerL2 notes, is "a yield boost for the SoC by being able to harvest MC (memory controller) defects."

Computex 2026 is right around the corner, and ahead of the show, Origin Code has announced the new Vortex 48GB DDR5-6200 Memory Kit with low CL28 timings that will undoubtedly draw a crowd when people see it in person. The reason is fairly obvious: this is a DDR5 memory kit equipped with a Vortex Water Block that, yes, delivers a liquid-cooling thermal solution that reportedly improves heat dissipation by 50%.

And with that, the average memory temperature while operating at 1.55V drops from 66.3 degrees Celsius without liquid cooling to only 31.5 degrees Celsius. The custom water block features a dual-inlet, dual-outlet setup with standard G1/4 threads for custom closed-loop systems. In addition to delivering something that you don't normally see, RAM liquid cooling, the Vortex Water Block also features a small LCD wide-view screen with a 222 x 480p resolution and 60 Hz refresh rate that can be configured to showcase real-time system information for monitoring.

The Vortex Water Block is designed specifically for Origin Code's DDR5 line-up, which includes multiple kits with capacities going up to 256GB. Aside from the whole liquid cooling add-on, a 48GB DDR5 kit with 6200 MT/s speed and CL28 timings is impressive, as is the company's 48GB 6000 MT/s kit that supports CL26 or 8000 MT/s at CL36 with AMD EXPO.

GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.49 is here, and it's Game Ready for what is easily the biggest game release of the month, Forza Horizon 6. Despite leaks, the game's official launch is May 19, and on PC, the game is set to debut with stunning ray-traced visuals and support for NVIDIA's new DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Dynamic Frame Generation.

Running in 4K with Max Settings and ray-tracing, the full DLSS 4.5 suite of technologies delivers 200+ FPS performance at the demanding resolution on the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, and the flagship RTX 5090. With the latter pushing 300+ FPS. Dropping the resolution to 1440p and NVIDIA's internal DLSS 4.5 benchmarks show that the figure climbs to 260+ FPS for the top-tier GeForce RTX 50 Series cards.

Set in a visually impressive open-world Japan, Forza Horizon 6 is the highly anticipated follow-up to the Mexico-set Forza Horizon 5, and it's undoubtedly the biggest racing game release in years. In addition to Game Ready support for the latest Forza, the GeForce Game Ready Driver 596.49 also adds support for Directive 8020 and Subnautica 2.