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SK hynix has started ordering equipment for DRAM expansion investment, with production capacity expected to be expanded by 18% at its M16, and M10 facilities in South Korea.

The South Korean memory giant has started placing "full-scale orders" for production facilities at its M16 plant in Icheon, South Korea, which is currently under construction as a new state-of-the-art DRAM plant. Chosun reports from its industry sources that SK hynix ordered the key equipment to be invested at its M16 expansion from major equipment manufacturers.

Market research firm Omdia reports that SK hynix's monthly average DRAM production increased from 380,000 units in Q4 2023 to 400,000 units in Q2 2024. SK hynix is expected to increase its production capacity to 440,000 units in Q3 2024, but still trails behind South Korean memory rival Samsung, which produces a monthly average of over 670,000 units.

KLEVV has just introduced its latest flagship CRAS V RGB ROG Certified DDR5 OC Gaming RAM, with the new kits available at one fast speed: DDR5-7200 spec.

The new KLEVV CRAS V RGB ROG Certified DDR5 OC Gaming RAM comes in 32GB kits (16GB x 2), and 48GB kits (24GB x 2) with built-in Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO profile support, meaning you don't need to swap memory for each system to get full compatibility.

KLEVV claims that when paired with an ASUS ROG motherboard, the new CRAS V RGB ROG Certified DDR5 OC Gaming RAM will support speeds of up to DDR5-7400. The new kits might be ROG Certified, but they'll work in other motherboards, just as regular CRAS V RGB memory modules.

SK hynix has just announced its clients that it will be raising DDR5 DRAM prices by 15-20%, something that DRAM rivals Samsung and Micron are 'likely to follow'.

Why? Because of AI, that's why. More specifically, HBM... and the insatiable AI GPU demand is driving unbelievable demand for HBM which is seeing DRAM manufacturers SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron, all pushing everything they can into HBM production capacity.

In a new report from UDN, we're learning that the supply chain has received a notification from SK hynix that it will be increasing its DDR5 pricing by 15-20%. SK hynix is the second-largest DRAM manufacturer, second to South Korean rival Samsung. Over in Taiwan, local factories including Nanya have started mass production of DDR5, just in time for the price increases, and will benefit first from the higher-priced DDR5 memory. ADATA and TEAMGROUP are also expected ot benefit from the low-price inventory, reports UDN.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against General Motors that alleges the company collected and sold drivers' data to insurance companies without their consent or knowledge.

The new lawsuit alleges that in car models from 2015 and above, General Motors implemented data-collecting technology to monitor and collect drivers' data, particularly any "bad" habits. The lawsuit alleges General Motors collected data on more than 1.8 million Texas drivers and that these "bad" habits were events such as braking too fast, steering sharply into corners, not using seatbelts, and driving at night. At the moment, it remains unclear if the data was used by the insurers to increase the premiums for Texans.

More specifically, the data collection method involved crunching the numbers down to what was referred to as "driver score," which was an aggregation of data from any time a driver used their vehicle. The attorney general's office claimed General Motors "deceived" its Texan customers by encouraging them to enroll in opt-in programs such as OnStar Smart Driver. The lawsuit alleges General Motors deceived its customers by failing to inform them enrolling in such programs mean they agree to the collection and sale of their data.

Black Myth: Wukong was first showcased years ago and with the developer

Game Science is partnering with NVIDIA to incorporate cutting-edge ray-traced visuals into the cinematic action RPG retelling of the Journey to the West myth; it's been highly anticipated for a long, long time.

With the release right around the corner, August 20, for PC and PlayStation 5, the developers also dropped a Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool on Steam - check out our 4K performance results here. Interestingly, the Benchmark Tool hit an incredible 85,277 peak concurrent 'players' in its first 24 hours. And this is for something that only takes a few minutes to run.

The Borderlands movie is the latest video game-to-movie adaptation to hit the big screen and be received with utter disappointment by fans and the general public.

Borderlands has flopped at the box office with a reported $145 million budget that includes marketing; the movie only managed to pull in $8.8 million in its opening weekend. Additionally, critics haven't had very nice things to say about the movie, but, regardless of its negative reviews, fans of the video game franchise, which is undeniably popular, have begun flocking back to the titles for another playthrough.

Through the smoke of negative comments about the Borderlands movie, Gearbox Studios, the developer of Borderlands, teased the upcoming next installment in the video game franchise, presumably Borderlands 4. The Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford tweeted that the response for the Borderlands movie means fans of the franchise like what Gearbox does with the universe rather than some of the best cast and crew of filmmakers - "I'm super flattered!"

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most anticipated game releases of 2024, and it's right around the corner - launching August 20 for PC and PlayStation 5. This is one that we've been following for a while, and on PC, the game is set to be a visual treat thanks to the inclusion of full ray-tracing (or path tracing), DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, and Frame Generation.

Ahead of the game's launch, developer and publisher Game Science has released a free Benchmark Tool on Steam that includes a fly-over through one of the game's lush forest, river, and temple environments. There's no combat in the benchmark, which is a shame. Still, the developer notes that it "evaluates your hardware performance and system compatibility through the real-time rendering of an in-game sequence."

As for the game's full visual potential, here's a look at 4K performance running on a GeForce RTX 4090.

Following Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and its conversation into the social media platform that is now called X, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO cleaned house, reducing the overall headcount at the company by at least 70%.

During that time, which was in November of last year, employees were going through a tumultuous time with rounds of firings, employees being locked out of offices, and company-wide emails being fired off from Musk. On November 16, Musk sent out an email titled "A Fork in the Road" and a warning to employees that for Twitter to reach "2.0," it would require long work hours at "high intensity," and the company would only be accepting "exceptional performance" as a passing grade.

The email also explained then-Twitter would be converting to a more engineering-driven company, and that if "you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below. Anyone who has not done so by 5 pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

CNBC published a report on August 12 that claimed Elon Musk's SpaceX knowingly violated environmental regulations by releasing pollutants into nearby bodies of water in Texas.

The report claims the Elon Musk-led company violated wastewater regulations at its Boca Chica, Texas launch site Starbase. The report cites investigative records along with notices from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TQEC). CNBC writes that SpaceX moved quickly to rebuild its destroyed launchpad following the first test flight of Starship, causing some damage to the environment, vehicles, and the in-question launchpad.

To prevent such catastrophic damage SpaceX rebuilt the launchpad with a new deluge system capable of muffling sound, reducing heat, and energy produced by a launch. What the report claims is SpaceX skipped obtaining a permit before going ahead with their next launch. More specifically, the EPA launched an investigation into the wastewater from the new system following SpaceX's full pressure test of in July 2023. Here come the crux of the allegations.

GPD has just unveiled its new Pocket 4, which is the first gaming handheld powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APU. Check it out:

GPD's new Pocket 4 gaming handheld features the flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, with the handheld sporting an 8.8-inch LTPS display with a 2.5K resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. We've also got 97% DCI-P3 color coverage, and 500 nits of brightness.

This isn't just a gaming handheld either, with the GPD Pocket 4 handheld featuring a physical keyboard, touchpad, and a 180-degree rotatable screen. This means that the GPD Pocket 4 could be used as a tablet, so it's kinda like a 2-in-1 tablet and notebook, powered by the Strix Point APU. Nifty.

Intel is feeling the pinch, with the company selling all of its 1.18 million shares in Arm Holdings in Q2 2024, providing the company with around $146.7 million as it continues to struggle in virtually every sector.

Earlier this month, Intel shed over 15% of its global workforce, laying off over 15,000 people as it struggles in the CPU market (servers, consumer) and its problematic 13th Gen Core and 14th Gen Core CPU issues that have been hitting headlines for weeks now.

Benchmark Co analyst Cody Acree told Reuters: "This looks to be consistent with the restructuring plan and the renewed focus on liquidity and efficiency that Gelsinger laid out from the last conference call'.

Google has just introduced its next-gen Pixel 9 Pro Fold, a foldable Pixel 9 Pro with a redesigned look and brand-new AI features.

The new Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold smartphone features the company's next-gen, in-house Tensor G4 processor, with 16GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. There's a 4650mAh battery inside, a 48MP wide camera, 10.5MP ultrawide, 10.8MP telephoto camera on the rear, and a 10MP front (inner) and 10MP front (outer) cameras. This all weighs in at 257g, which makes it a little lighter than the Pixel Fold which weighs 283g.

Google has upgraded the cover display size of its new Pixel 9 Pro Fold, with the cover display spanning out to 6.3 inches from 5.8 inches on the original Pixel Fold. That's the cover display, but when you open the Pixel 9 Pro Fold you'll be greeted with a huge 8-inch Super Actua Flex 1080p 120Hz panel, compared to the 7.6-inch panel on the Pixel Fold.

It looks like there is a "component shortage" for NVIDIA's new Blackwell-based GB200 AI servers, with market demand in Taiwan at the highest levels because of the AI market needing as many chips as possible.

In a new report from Taiwan Economic Daily, we're learning that NVIDIA's new GB200 AI servers are experiencing huge development issues, with the main problem stemming from leaks from the liquid cooling system inside of the next-generation multi-million-dollar AI server.

The water leakage inside of a GB200 AI server would be a disaster as you can imagine, with Taiwanese manufacturers moving into emergency mode to solve it, with new Taiwanese suppliers stepping up to help NVIDIA get its GB200 AI servers to market.

Activision Blizzard King helped Microsoft achieve new record-breaking annual games revenues as the publisher continues raking in billions from service-oriented games.

Microsoft's latest FY24 results gave us key insights on the health of the Xbox business. According to the data, the Xbox brand managed to pull in $21.5 billion throughout July 2023 - June 2024, a new all-time high for the video games unit. The +39% year-over-year revenue growth was driven primarily by software, services, subscriptions, and monetization--a segment that Microsoft refers to as Content & Services--whereas hardware declined slightly by 13% to $2.87 billion.

Activision was a significant driver for Xbox's growth, and helped the division finally break the $20 billion mark. But how much did Activision contribute? Is the costly $70 billion merger having a positive impact on the business? The raw figures say yes, but we also have to wonder about Xbox's overall performance sans Activision. Microsoft's quarterly financial results gave us some clues, at least on a more basic level.

Microsoft reports new record-breaking gaming revenues as it recognizes the full might of Activision's earnings potential.

Xbox just reported its full fiscal year earnings following the $70 billion Activision-Blizzard merger. Microsoft's FY24 gaming results reflect three consecutive quarters of Activision Blizzard King's billion-dollar contributions, and the service titan has had a strong material impact on Xbox's total-year results.

According to the loose figures provided by Microsoft and calculated by us (with the help of past historical figures from Xbox numbers expert John Welfare), Xbox gaming delivered a record-breaking $21.524 billion in revenue throughout Fiscal Year 2024 (July 2023 - June 2024).

Nintendo has reportedly told developers when they should expect the Switch 2 to release.

The next-gen Switch successor isn't coming in 2024, and may not be out until mid-2025 at the earliest. That's according to new reports from GamesIndustry.biz's Christopher Dring, who has been given a few clues on the system's launch by game developer sources.

This information lines up with previous rumblings about Nintendo's new Switch 2 system. In those previous reports, the DLSS-powered Switch 2 was pegged for a Q1 2025 launch, which runs from January - March 2025. But that timeline may have been adjusted if this newer report is accurate.

In recent times, there's been a steady drip of exciting news around Bloodborne coming to the PC - unofficially, mind, using a PS4 emulator - and we've just caught wind of some screenshots of the game running under Windows.

This is using the shadPS4 emulator, and as you'll doubtless recall if you've been following along with this saga, Bloodborne has been fired up to get to the character screen already - but now the devs of the unofficial port are past that and into the game.

Well, sort of. As YouTuber BrutalSam points out, the graphics are pretty broken, but the alpha of the emulated version of Bloodborne now actually gets past the menus and into the game. Wccftech spotted the video above which shows off a couple of screenshots of this feat.

The Last of Us multiplayer game that was canceled last December has gotten more details, which may be nails on a chalkboard to fans of the series that were excited about a multiplayer addition to the popular franchise.

The details were revealed by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who said during an episode of the Friends Per Second podcast that Sony is "trend-chasing to the extreme" with its push into live-service games, and that live-service titles can work in rare cases such as Helldivers 2. Schreier even talked about the Horizon Zero Dawn online game, saying it's "still in development," but he's unsure when / if it will ever be released.

As for The Last of Us online game, Schreier said that the title was deep into its development before it was suddenly canceled. The Bloomberg reporter said there was a team of hundreds of developers behind the project, and that it was in development for "something like four years". Notably, Schreier said the cancellation of the title wasn't a "bloodless endeavor" and that there were "some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one."

It was only a few days ago that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro signed a 10-day ban on Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, over the platform breaking many of the country's regulations.

The ban severed access to X for local residents. According to Maduro's speech, which CNBC translated, the reasoning is that the social media platform violated "all of the rules" of the nation's telecommunications regulator. Maduro said X is "inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death and confrontations among Venezuelans." According to the nation, the temporary ban will give the platform time to respond to the changes.

Following the ban and other threats of banning the popular messaging app WhatsApp, VPN demand is surging across Venezuela, according to new research from vpnMentor. According to the cybersecurity and research lab, VPN demand has skyrocketed by more than 494% following X being officially blocked, with the demand surging on Thursday after the order went through by Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission.

Elon Musk has sat down for a historic interview with former US President Donald Trump, as the interview has marked the biggest the platform has seen so far.

The recent interview dominated X, formerly known as Twitter, and throughout the conversation, listeners reached around 1 million. The surprisingly lengthy conversation covered numerous topics and would be more easily consumed in 1-hour long segments, which Musk recommended following the conclusion of the interview. Musk has since taken to his personal account to share some stats on the Spaces post, with the Tesla CEO sharing a post by the official X account stating the Spaces post received 73 million views between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET.

Additionally, during that same period, there were 4 million posts about the conversation, which generated a total of 998 million views. Musk wrote in the sharing of the X post that the "Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion" . The conversation between the SpaceX CEO and Trump was delayed by 40 minutes as a "massive" DDOS attack hit the social media platform. It eventually went live with less bandwidth than what Musk was testing for earlier in the day.