Latest News - Page 547

Sabrent has just kicked off some storage discounts on its Amazon UK store, so if you are in the UK and need some storage discount goodness, check out Sabrent's Amazon UK store to scoop up some deals.

Starting with the Sabrent 256GB V90 SDXC UHS-II memory card, ready for 8K video recording with 280MB/sec for professional photographers, videographers, and bloggers which is down 7% on Amazon UK right now, down to £166.66. There's also the super-fast Sabrent CF Express 512GB memory card with up to 1.7GB/sec (1700MB/sec) reads and up to 1.5GB/sec (1500MB/sec) writes for £133.32, discounted by 9% for a limited time.

There's also the Sabrent 128GB V60 SDXC UHS-II memory card which offers 270MB/sec reads with 12% discount, bringing its original price from £35 down to £30.82, for a limited time only.

Microsoft previously announced it was ending support for the world's most popular operating system, Windows 10, and now the Redmond company has announced a version of Windows 11 will soon be losing support.

Microsoft took to its blog on Monday to announce an older version of Windows 11 will soon be reaching its end-of-support date, meaning it will no longer receive any security and preview updates. The blog post states Microsoft will end support for Windows 11 22H2 on October 8, 2024, and after that date, users will need to update to Windows 11 23H3 to receive up-to-date security patches.

Notably, the PSA from Microsoft affects Windows Home, Pro, and Business users. Choosing not to update your Windows will result in your PC becoming vulnerable to viruses, malicious attacks, malware, and other forms of digital infiltration. However, if you are already using Windows 11 it's very easy to update by proceeding through the following steps: Settings > Windows Update > Check updates.

We've just received the latest cumulative updates for both Windows 11 and Windows 10, and interestingly Microsoft has debuted the new Copilot app in both of these desktop operating systems.

Why's that surprising? Well, thus far, the Copilot app - which changes the AI assistant from an anchored side panel, on the right, to a freely movable app window, just like any other application in Windows - has only been tested in Windows 11.

However, as well as debuting in the release version of Windows 11, the Copilot app has suddenly jumped into Windows 10, as well (courtesy of the KB5040442 update for the former, and KB5040427 for the latter). Although note that the rollout of the app is going to be a gradual one.

The race to create the world's most powerful artificial intelligence system has certainly heated up, and by the looks of things, it isn't stopping anytime soon, with multiple tech companies flocking to NVIDIA for its powerful workstation GPUs used to train the AI models.

It was only a few months ago Musk confirmed it was building a massive AI factory with Dell and Supermico, and within these huge server farms will be NVIDIA GPUs that will be used to train xAI's model Grok. To "catch up" to the competition and make Grok a viable AI solution that is as good, if not better than leading models from OpenAI and Microsoft, Musk plans on throwing 100,000 Hopper-based GPUs into a server.

The SpaceX founder explained via a post on X that xAI contracted 24,000 H100 (Hopper) GPUs from Oracle, which are being used to train Grok 2. However, Musk said xAI will move forward with its 100,000 H100 system by itself as that will result in the "fastest time to completion". Moreover, Musk wrote the decision to go ahead with the 100,000 GPU system internally was the company's "fundamental competitiveness depends on being faster than any other AI company."

AMD has released the FidelityFX SDK 1.1 for game developers. This includes AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.1 or FSR 3.1, which recently debuted in high-profile PlayStation Studios titles like Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Forbidden West on PC.

One of the big features of FSR 3.1 and the new SDK is that "Frame Generation is now separate from upscaling," which opens up Frame Generation to all GPUs (AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA) with the ability to enable it with competing upscalers like DLSS for GeForce RTX owners and Intel's XeSS.

"With FSR 3.0 Frame Generation, we required FSR upscaling to be performed earlier in the graphics pipeline," AMD's Colin Riley explained. "This was because the Frame Generation algorithm required processed motion vector and depth data that was already created as part of FSR upscaling - and so the resources were simply used from there as a performance optimization. The downside of this was that it locked our Frame Generation to only work with our upscaling."

One of the more recent and popular trends with PC cases has been the arrival of the fishbowl design, which combines two tempered glass panels on the side and front to present a more open case look to showcase the internal components.

The new Corsair 3500X Series Mid-Tower PC Case, which is available now, sports this design in an affordable package starting from $89.99 USD for the non-ARGB variants.

The case supports multiple motherboard form factors, ranging from Mini-ITX to EATX, and is compatible with the new hidden connector boards such as ASUS BTF and MSI Project Zero. With a glass panel on the front and side, this has been factored into the cooling, with fans on the side, roof, rear, and even the bottom of the case to increase airflow. There's also support for 360mm radiators on the roof and the side (near the front of the case).

Cooler Master is a brand known for creating a range of PC hardware, including CPU AIO coolers. The company's MasterLiquid range has been a go-to for many builders and PC gamers for several years. However, its latest MasterLiquid AIO cooler introduces a first for the company - an LCD display. This week, Cooler Master launched the MasterLiquid 360 Ion, the company's first liquid cooler to feature an LCD display.

The MasterLiquid 360 Ion is the company's new flagship AIO cooler. As per the name, it arrives with a 360mm radiator paired with three of its premium Mobius 120P ARGB Fans pre-installed. The Gen X Dual Chamber Design pump once again sports a dual chamber design for more efficient cooling - with the single-piece design sporting premium components like a graphite ceramic shaft that is temperature resistant.

Back to the cooler's big addition, the LCD screen - it's 2.1 inches and fully customizable via Cooler Master's MasterCtrl software. The display also features ARGB halo lighting for good measure and can showcase system info like component temperatures.

What is just a portion of the undiscovered bot farms plaguing the internet has been discovered by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and seized.

The DOJ announced on Tuesday that it seized a bot farm linked to Russia's state-owned publication RT. The US authorities claim the bot farm can all be traced back to one employee. The bot farm consisted of more than 900 social media accounts designed to masquerade as accounts owned by Americans, and their goal was to post a massive amount of information online at once.

It states in the report the accounts posted content about the Ukraine-Russia war, which included videos of Russia's President Vladimir Putin justifying the invasion. The RT employee setup this bot farm by acquiring two domain names from Arizona-based company Namecheap. These domain names were then used to create two email servers that were then used to create nearly 1,000 bot accounts for social media platforms - 968 in total.

Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play action RPG that was released earlier this year. It arrived on day one with DLSS 2 Super Resolution upscaling support. As part of this week's DLSS announcements from NVIDIA, Wuthering Waves is upgrading its Deep Learning Super Sampling support to include DLSS 3 Frame Generation and Reflex to push performance further. It will arrive alongside the Version 1.1 'Thaw of Eons' update later in the year, which you can see in the following trailer.

Although we've covered it a few times today, thanks to the Black Myth: Wukong GeForce RTX 40 Series bundle announcement and some early performance benchmarks, Black Myth: Wukong will support DLSS 3 Frame Generation on day one. The highly anticipated cinematic action game is set to launch on August 20.

Also adding DLSS 3, DLSS 2, and Reflex support in a recent update is the bright, vibrant, and fun Bears in Space - an "over-the-top bullet-hell FPS." The final game on the list this week is the very cool-sounding 3D action roguelike The Black Room.

Can you believe that MSI released its first-ever laptop 20 years ago now? The company is celebrating 20 years of laptop history with a celebration video, which you can check out below:

MSI introduced its first laptop -- the M510C -- in 2004, packing an Intel Centrino processor and Radeon 9700/9600 Mobility graphics. It featured a 15-inch display, up to 2GB of DDR-3000 memory, an optical drive, and WiFi-G support, and weighed in at a hefty 2.9kg. MSI talked about its GX600 laptop design from 2007, noting that it was the first overclockable gaming laptop, packing NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics at the time.

Fast-forward to today, and MSI's flagship laptop is the TITAN 18 PRO Ryzen Edition, which packs a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 4-based CPU with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU. It is 800g heavier than MSI's first-ever laptop, but it rocks a huge 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display and far, far more powerful internal components, oh and no optical drive, obviously.

Microsoft has stuck with its decision to roll out more advertisements for its products into Windows 11, with the Redmond company issuing patch notes for Windows 11 version 23H2 and Windows 11 version 22H2.

As with every Windows update, Microsoft engineers have implemented a slew of bug fixes, general stability improvements, new features, additional support, and advertisements. We have previously caught glimpses of new advertisements in preview builds of Windows 11, where operating system beta testers found new ad placements in Windows 11's Start Menu and Settings. Redmond has rolled out the Settings advertisement for its Game Pass subscription.

The new update will add a Game Pass card to the Settings homepage, which will reportedly only appear for Windows 11 users that game. If a user isn't playing games on their PC, the card won't appear. As for other aspects of the new update, Microsoft has added the "Show Desktop" to the taskbar again, File Explorer is now capable of creating 7-Zip and Tape Archive files when a user right clicks a file, support for Emoji 15.1, improvements to account manage in the Start Menu, and much more.

Blizzard has just announced its new Overwatch 2 x Transformers collaboration, adding some truly gorgeous skins into the game, so if you're a fan of both Overwatch 2 and Transformers, check out the skins below:

The new Overwatch 2 x Transformers event has already kicked off, with the skins now available in the game. As for the skins that are up for grabs, we have:

Blizzard teased on the official Overwatch 2 x Transformers gameplay trailer on YouTube: "From lessons of the past, the future is forged with Overwatch 2 x TRANSFORMERS! Stand side by side with the AUTOBOTS - Reinhardt as Optimus Prime Reinhardt, Bastion as Bumblebee, and Illari as Arcee. Or you can make them pay with Ramattra as Megatron, the leader of the DECEPTICONS. Which side will you choose?"

Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" CPU is the flagship processor of the new Arrow Lake-S desktop processors, leaked by CPU-Z developers.

CPU-Z v2.10 has rolled out, confirming the leaks from the last couple of months regarding Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs. The new version of CPU-Z details the Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 9 275, Core Ultra 7 265K, Core Ultra 7 255, Core Ultra 5 245K, and Core Ultra 5 240 processors.

We don't know the CPU core counts of the Arrow Lake-S processors just yet, but we're expecting that the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K processor will roll out with 24 cores (split between 8 x P-Cores and 16 x E-Cores). There will be no Hyper-Threading this time around, so it'll be a 24-core, 24-thread CPU.

The world of AI is being forced upon us whether we like it or not, and as much bragging as these tech giants do, the CEO of Google DeepMind says that the IQ levels of current AI models are not as smart as a domestic cat.

In a recent chat with Tony Blair, the ex-Prime Minister of Britain, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis compared artificial intelligence versus cat IQ during the Future of Britain Conference 2024, organized by the Institute for Global Change.

Hassabis talked about his work not being focused on AI but rather on AGI (AI = artificial intelligence, AGI = artificial general intelligence), and that is how he is looking at the computer versus cat comparison. Current AI models can write, paint, create music, and more in a human-like fashion, but a domestic house cat has more intelligence. Hassabis said: "At the moment, we're far from human-level intelligence across the board. But in certain areas like games playing (AI is) better than the best people in the world".

Taiwan's two major PC vendors Acer and ASUS saw strong June and Q2 2024 sales led by strong shipments of new AI PCs and a recovery of the PC sector.

In a new report from outlet UDN, we're learning that Acer reported a 33.4% year-on-year increase in June revenue up to NT$28.2 billion (around $865 million USD or so), while ASUS reported a 21.5% year-on-year increase to NT$58.4 billion (around $1.79 billion USD or so).

ASUS said that its PC product shipments in Q2 2024 were "better than expected" and alongside AI server shipments, its brand revenue in Q2 2024 record a record high for the same period of last year. ASUS emphasized that the company has taken the lead in launching Copilot+ PC systems, with the most extensive AI innovation applications from June to July, and will continue to expand its various AI applications and product innovations to fully deplop the new growth cycle of AI.

Peter Wennink, the former CEO of ASML, said he anticipates the Chip War will not be resolved anytime soon, and it could potentially persist for decades to come.

The news comes from reports by Reuters and the Commercial Times, with the former ASML CEO also stating during an interview with Dutch broadcaster BNR that the "Chip War" between the US and China "lacks factual basis and is entirely driven by ideology".

ASML is the global supplier of EUV lithography machines, making the world's largest and most advanced machines. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel use EUV machines for manufacturing. TSMC uses EUV lithography machines for its 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm processes, while Samsung's EUV lines make 7nm, 5nm, and 4nm chips, along with the 3nm GAA process.

Black Myth: Wukong is out next month, and it's not only one of the most anticipated PC games of the year but also one of the best-looking. On PC, the game features a 'Full Ray Tracing' or 'Path Tracing' mode to deliver realistic and cinematic lighting, shadows, reflections, and more.

Ray-traced Global Illumination in the game will ensure that the "lighting indoors and outdoors is pixel perfect, darkening areas where light is occluded or doesn't reach, and realistically illuminating the world by bouncing light." As we saw with Alan Wake II's and Cyberpunk 2077's path-tracing modes, you'll need a beast of the PC to run it and access DLSS 3 Frame Generation, Super Resolution, and Reflex technologies. The game will also support DLSS 3.5's Ray Reconstruction which dramatically improves visual fidelity on GeForce RTX cards.

With that, NVIDIA has shared some pre-release Black Myth: Wukong benchmarks for the game running in 1440p and 4K - and yeah, unless you've got at least a GeForce RTX 4070, running the game with max settings will bring your rig to its knees. And for 4K, you'll need at least a GeForce RTXC 4080.

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most anticipated game releases of 2024, and it's right around the corner - launching on August 20. Today, NVIDIA has announced a new Black Myth: Wukong GeForce RTX 40 Series Bundle, offering PC gamers a steam copy of the game with eligible GPU and Laptop products.

On the desktop GPU side, the bundle covers everything from the GeForce RTX 4070 and higher: so the RTX 4070, RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, RTX 4080, RTX 4080 SUPER, and RTX 4090. Anything that isn't a GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4060 Ti - two of the most popular graphics cards for the current generation.

The laptop side of the bundle is the same. Eligible systems are those with an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU or higher. So, what gives? Well, it looks like Black Myth: Wukong's impressive ray-tracing visuals will require at least a GeForce RTX 4070 to hit a playable frame rate.

NVIDIA's next-generation ultra-enthusiast GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is rumored to have a base clock that will be near 2.9GHz, meaning it will trounce every other graphics card on the market when it arrives later this year.

The new rumor is coming from Chiphell forum user "Panzerlied," who has previously provided leaks on the GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPUs. In the post, the user said that the "base frequency of 5090 is almost 2.9G" which has everyone excited.

NVIDIA's current-gen flagship GeForce RTX 4090 has a base GPU clock of 2235MHz, so if the RTX 5090 rolls out with a 2.9GHz+ base clock, we're looking at a 30% improvement in base GPU clocks alone. Add on that NVIDIA will be using next-generation GDDR7 memory that Micron has teased will provide 30% gains in gaming in both rasterization and ray tracing, we're in for quite the performance leap with the RTX 5090.

The Registry is a fabled beast and many tales have been told about how you mess with it at your peril - though someone has taken that idea to extremes in Windows 10, and apparently got away with it. Well, sort of...

As you're doubtless aware, when it comes to any Windows how-to guide, if there's a step that takes you into the Registry to make a modification, it inevitably comes with warnings of dire consequences: Type carefully and don't make mistakes, as you might nuke your system with a slip of a key (or certainly cause something nasty to happen).

Well, how about if you changed every single value in Windows 10's Registry to zero? Does that count as messing about enough? Well, YouTuber 'Come on Windows' did exactly that, and you can see the results in the above video.