AMD's Radeon RX 7700 XT continues to drop in price and is becoming a more attractive GPU at the kind of pricing it's now at, compared to when the board first launched.

If you recall, the RX 7700 XT arrived on the shelves with an MSRP of $450, but the graphics card witnessed a drop to $419 in February 2024, and has continued to sink since then, moving to as low as $395 recently.

But now one model of the RX 7700 XT has dropped well below the $400 mark in the US, and you can grab the ASRock Challenger version of the RX 7700 XT for $379 at Newegg.

Windows 11 is showing a bulked-up set of nag screens, and this is part of a push underway to get more folks using Microsoft's Edge browser, it seems.

Those are the findings of tech site Windows Latest, which observed being confronted by a multi-screen post-setup marathon of seven panels to be clicked through.

Typically, this is what you'll see after installing Windows 11, but as you've doubtless noticed, these multi-screen affairs also pop up sometimes after simply installing the latest monthly cumulative update for the OS.

Apple is strongly expected to debut the iOS 18 iPhone software update at an event that will take place in June and that WWDC 2024 event will likely also see Apple take the wraps off a ton of new software updates for its other hardware platforms, too. But it's iOS 18 that most people are interested in, and the software is tipped to include some big new AI features. As part of the plans for those features, it seems that Apple is increasingly likely to turn to another company to provide some of its smarts.

Apple was reportedly previously in discussions with OpenAI and Google about using their respective chatbot technologies in iOS 18 and now a new report suggests that OpenAI's talks are once again underway. Apple is also thought to continue to be talking to Google about its own Gemini chatbot technology, too. This news comes following the claim that talks between Apple and OpenAI had been slow since the turn of the year, but they now appear to be back underway.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, writing in the weekly Power On newsletter, says that Apple is yet to make a decision as to whether it will work with OpenAI or Google for its upcoming AI features. The report goes on to say that Apple may choose to work with both of the partners, while there is always the possibility that a third party could be added to the mix as well.

The Apple Vision Pro is only available in the United States right now, with prices starting from $3,499 which is a price that is enough to put a lot of people off. But Apple is thought to be working on a new, cheaper version, and a fix for the limited availability is also thought to be on the way. According to a new report, Apple is working on a global launch in China soon.

We've heard that Apple wants to ship the headset to new countries before the end of the year, and Apple says as much on its own website. But the company has so far refused to say which countries will be included nor when the launches will actually happen. Now, writing in the weekly Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple intends to launch the headset in China in the very near future.

China is one country that had previously been rumored for an imminent launch and there are others on that list, but China is the only country mentioned in the Bloomberg newsletter. That could mean that China will be on its own on a list of the next release countries, but we can surely expect others to arrive in due course.

The Apple Vision Pro first went on sale in February, offering the headset to customers across the United States both online and in Apple Stores. But the headset has remained only available to those in the United States, although a global launch is expected to happen at some point before the end of 2024. However, a global launch isn't going to deal with one problem that Apple seems to be struggling to fix - the price.

Those who are looking to buy an Apple Vision Pro will have to spend at least $3,499, with that price getting buyers a 256GB model while a headed with 512GB of storage and a 1TB model are also offered for those who need extra breathing room for more apps, games, and media. Apple has long been reported to have plans to find a way to offer the headset for less, and it was expected that Apple was working on a cheaper version. However, a new report suggests that while that is the case, there is one issue within Apple Park - the company doesn't know how to do it.

Writing in the weekly Power On newsletter Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple is indeed trying to figure out a way to take the $3,499 Apple Vision Pro headset and make a cheaper version that can ship before the end of 2026. That's the window that Apple's roadmap suggests Apple intends to aim for when releasing a second-generation model, apparently, but actually making a cheaper model is proving problematic. Apple's reportedly flummoxed as to how it should make the $3,499 headset cheaper. The question over which features, sensors, and displays Apple could remove or tweak is a question that appears to be causing a problem inside Apple.

The Apple Vision Pro has now been around for a few months after it first went up for sale on the Apple website and Apple Stores across the United States in February. There's no sign of when the headset will ship globally yet, but Apple has already confirmed that it will do just that before the end of the year. We also don't know which countries the headset will arrive in, either. Now, a new report has suggested that those waiting for a new, second-gen model should probably just pull the trigger on the current model.

It already made a ton of sense that Apple would plan to launch an upgraded model with tweaks and improvements over the previous headset. But a new report suggests that it won't be ready to launch the headset any time soon. Writing in the weekly Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the Apple Vision Pro roadmap does not currently have a second-gen model ready to go and it isn't on the roadmap until the end of 2026 at the earliest. That could mean it will be 2027 before the headset will go on sale.

Long before any of that will happen, however, Apple will give current Apple Vision Pro owners something new to look forward to. The visionOS software that powers the Apple Vision Pro is set to be updated to visionOS 2 this year, and it's expected that Apple will announce it at the WWDC event on June 10. However, Gurman says that the update isn't expected to be a big one, saying that it won't be a game changer. The report goes on to say that the next big thing for Apple is the expansion of the rollout to a new country, with China thought to be on the list for a release very soon. Time will tell which other countries the Apple Vision Pro will launch in, but Apple's website simply says that a global launch will take place in 2024.

If you're an Apple TV Plus subscriber you're already very well aware of some of the top-notch TV shows, movies, and documentaries that are available for viewing on the streaming service. The streamer is well known for its awards wins, and now it's picked up four new ones alongside additional nominations.

Apple TV Plus announced the news via a press release, saying that Slow Horces and Silo had picked up four wins. Slow Horses won the Editing: Fiction category while it also picked up a win for the Sound: Fiction category. Fans of Silo will be pleased to learn that the show, based on the Wool bestseller, won the Production Design category as well as the Original Music: Fiction category.

Both Slow Horses and Silo have been well received by viewers with the former already offering multiple seasons for viewers to sink their teeth into. While Silo only has a single season available right now, more are on the way - the show has already been announced to have a further three seasons on the way with the final two set to be filmed back-to-back, likely to allow for a quicker release.

Shift Up's new PS5 hit Stellar Blade is climbing Sony's best-seller charts.

Things are looking good for Stellar Blade, the latest PS5 exclusive from Korean developer Shift Up. The game just launched yesterday, and in that time span, Stellar Blade has now broken the top 5 of the best-selling games on the PlayStation Store.

According to the listings, which are publicly available on any PlayStation 5 console that's connected to the internet, Stellar Blade is currently the #4 top best-selling game on the PlayStation Store in the United States. The game had previously been on the 25 best-sellers list, but had not previously broken the top 10. Now that Stellar Blade is out on the market--to strong reviews, no less--U.S. gamers are buying it up.

The Italian government has plans to invest around $10 billion into the semiconductor industry this year, where it plans to become one of the biggest microelectronics products in Europe.

Industry Minister Adolfo Urso told reporters in Pescara, where the ruling party Fratelli d'Italia met over the weekend: "Italy is preparing to become one of the largest microelectronics producers in Europe". Urso added: "I believe that in the coming weeks we will be in a position to make other equally significant announcements".

Urso announced a $3.4 billion investment into Singaporean startup Silicon Box, back in March 2024, which would see a new chip factory build in the north of the country. This announcement was born out of the Italian government's failure to convince Intel to invest, reports BNN Bloomberg.

TSMC is one of the biggest benefactors of the unstoppable AI market, with TSMC's AI revenue expected to exceed $10 billion for the first time this year, setting a new high and cementing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as one of the biggest players in the AI industry.

TSMC said during a press conference this month that the Taiwanese chip maker is optimistic about revenues contributed by AI processors to more than double this year, expected to account for a low-teens percentage of TSMC's total revenue for 2024. Within the next 5 years, however, server AI processors are expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 50%, making up over 20% of TSMC's revenue in 2028.

The company is highly optimistic about the future of AI, with TSMC president Wei Zhijia revising the AI order visibility and revenue ratio during a statement this month. Order visibility has been extended from its originally expected 2027 date to 2028, with the company emphasizing that almost all AI chip makers are working with TSMC to solve AI-related needs of the never-ending demand for energy-saving AI computing power.

According to new reports from Board Channels (via Videocardz), the GeForce RTX 40 Series of GPUs is currently experiencing shortages, with the 60-class (the GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti) being impacted the most. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is one of the most popular current-gen NVIDIA GPUs, and according to a post on Board Channels, it is facing a 'major supply problem.'

The report also indicates that GPU makers' needs for the RTX 4060 Ti, in particular, aren't being met, with companies having to deal with reduced shipments. This issue isn't limited to local suppliers (Board Channels is based in China) but also Taiwanese manufacturers like ASUS and MSI.

Videocardz, which first reported on the story, has confirmed with its own NVIDIA partner sources that the reduced supply of GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards is real. However, it might have little impact on global availability.

NVIDIA opened its first Asia-based AI R&D center in Taiwan two years ago, investing NT$24.3 billion ($715 million USD or so) and employing 400 people there. But now, the company is reportedly considering a second R&D center in Taiwan.

In a new post by the China Times, the Technology Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said on April 26 that NVIDIA's current research and development (R&D) is "going smoothly" and it will "assist our manufacturers in AI application development". They're reportedly happy with the quality of talent in Taiwan, and are considering setting up a second R&D center in Taiwan.

The first R&D center that NVIDIA built in Taiwan mainly works on AI chip research and development, as well as GPUs. The R&D center also helped build Taiwan's biggest supercomputer -- Taipei-1 -- with the Taiwan government providing a NT$6.7 billion ($205 million USD or so) subsidy for NVIDIA's first R&D center project.

Intel 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake Core i9 processors have been making headlines recently due to widespread reports of crashing and instability, often while gaming. With CPUs drawing more and more power on the high-end, the issues are most likely related to thermal and power delivery on certain 600/700 Series motherboards - and the push to boost clock speeds, benchmark scores, and performance over stability.

ASUS has already addressed the issue with a BIOS update introducing a more sensible 'Intel Baseline Profile' for power limits using Intel's recommended settings. Other big board makers like MSI and GIGABYTE have followed suit with their own BIOS updates and revisions.

In a statement supplied to Igor's Lab, Intel blames motherboard manufacturers for disabling "thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency." It's a strange stance when the instability lies with the CPU.

AMD is reportedly not going to have any high-end RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs when they launch later this year, with news that the high-end Navi 4X GPU coming out recently... and it would've been great to see: with 50% more shader engines than the Navi 31 GPU inside of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

In some new patches for AMD's GFX12, leaker "Kepler_L2" spotted some of the upgrades we are missing out on with the flagship RDNA 4-based Navi 4X GPU, which would've been the successor to the Navi 31 GPU that powers the fastest Radeon GPU for gamers: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

In the patches, Kepler_L2 noticed that the GFX12 family is the codename for the RDNA 4 GPU family. The flagship Navi 4X or Navi 4C SKUs reportedly would've featured 9 Shader Engines, which would've been a 50% increase over the Navi 31 GPU, which features 6 Shader Engines.

With a steady stream of driver updates, bug fixes, and day-one game support, Intel's Arc graphics cards continue to improve. In our review of the SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 TITAN OC Edition from earlier this year, we said it was a decent mainstream option for 1080p and even 1440p gaming thanks to the top Intel Arc A770 GPU featuring 16GB of VRAM.

Regarding Intel Arc GPUs, SPARKLE is right up there regarding build quality, style, and thermal performance. Until now, each model has had a distinct look thanks to bright 'Intel blue' for the shrouds and blue-colored PCBs.

SPARKLE's latest addition to its Intel Arc lineup is the SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC OC Edition 16GB, available in Black and LUNA White. Sporting a more compact twin-fan design with a 2.5-slot thickness, the new ROC OC Edition features the same out-of-the-box overclock as the triple-fan TITAN OC Edition.

Corsair has officially teased its new One i500 compact gaming PC, which will be revealed on May 5 sporting "next-gen components". The official tease was posted on X by Corsair; check it out:

The company will be showing off a brand-new design with a tease of a sleeker chassis with beautiful LED lighting on the sides and bottom, but it's the next-gen component that I want to see. Hopefully we'll get some next-gen AMD Zen 5-based CPU goodness, alongside what I'm sure will be an interesting choice in GPU... Radeon, or GeForce?

We should see Corsair unveil its new One i500 compact gaming PC with Intel's new 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs, but the high-end Core i9 designs are very hot and very power-hungry, and they're not "next-gen". Alternatively, even AMD's current-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs are wonderfully power efficient, while Zen 5 is a true "next-gen component" that AMD is teasing. Zen 5 inside of the Corsair One i500 gaming PC makes total sense.

Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2, a massive open-world RPG, has been one of the years talked about and played games. On PC, the gameplay has been generally well received; however, poor performance and optimization for Capcom's impressive RE Engine going 'open-world' for the first time is one of the main reasons it's currently sitting on a "Mixed" user rating on Steam.

That said, if you're looking for a mod that takes the game visuals to the next level, the Graphics Suite ALPHA mod from EXXXcellent (download it at Nexus Mods) unlocks a hidden developer menu for the game that includes a path-tracing renderer for the game that is not available in the retail version.

Path tracing (also called full ray tracing) covers indirect lighting, global illumination, shadows, and reflections - where anything related to light is ray-traced. Dragon's Dogma already includes RTGI or ray-traced global illumination, but as we can see in Digital Foundry's video on the path tracing mod, the difference is night and day.

NVIDIA is expected to generate $40 billion of revenue from AI GPU sales this year according to Bloomberg analysts, with competitors AMD and Intel in their dust.

AMD is estimated to generate around $3.5 billion in revenue from its new Instinct MI300X AI accelerator, while Intel will enjoy some loose change with its Gaudi AI accelerator, with analysts estimating just $500 million in sales. Both pale in comparison to $40 billion from NVIDIA, which is 80x more than Intel's estimated $500 million.

These numbers were discussed by Bloomberg Technology during an interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, where he had no real answer to how Intel's new Gaudi AI accelerator will battle NVIDIA. When NVIDIA is making 80x your revenue -- and keep in mind, this is just AI GPU sales, not GeForce graphics cards or any other NVIDIA product -- it's hard to compete against the dominant force in AI.

We all know that applying thermal paste to CPUs isn't the easiest thing to do, squirt a little on... move it around, make it kinda even... but now there's an idiot-proof method of applying the perfect layer thermal paste with X-Apply... check it out:

Igor's Lab worked with DigitalBlizzard, who "came up with the whole thing" explains Igor, and with a little help from an "industrial partner" and a few suggestions from Igor, X-Apply was born. The new X-Apply stencil allows the formation of the absolutely ideal pattern of thermal paste, with a perfectly even distribution across your CPU.

Most regular methods of thermal paste applications are about the same, but your final thermal paste application will most likely be uneven because it's just placed in small clumps or a few lines across your chip. This means that part of the IHS (integrated heat spreader) on your CPU doesn't have enough thermal paste, or none at all. X-Apply won't allow that, as it will fill those gaps with its specially designed stencil.

MSI seems to have fully pulled back from making AMD Radeon GPUs, with the company confirming with HardwareLuxx that it is solely concentrating on making custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPUs.

Hardware Unboxed posted on X saying: "Did I miss this story? MSI has been completely removed from AMD's Radeon 7000 series, all existing products have been discontinued and they never released a 7700 XT / 7800 XT. This all seems to have happened very quietly". HBU isn't wrong, this has happened very quietly indeed.

MSI told HardwareLuxx: "When it comes to graphics cards, our focus at the moment is actually more on RTX cards. Nevertheless, the collaboration with AMD is essential and extremely relevant for us. We see a very positive development, particularly in the area of motherboards".