Latest News - Page 60

Some of the coolest hardware mods have always existed in the retro gaming space, and the Kawaii is certainly up there. What you've got here is a compact, keychain-sized Nintendo GameCube that features actual Nintendo silicon. Created by Bitbuilt modders @YveltalGriffin, @Wesk, and @Ding, it's made possible thanks to the OMEGA trim of the original Nintendo Wii motherboard.

As the Wii was backward compatible with GameCube titles, the Kawaii is a GameCube in the form of a stylish CNC-machined aluminum chassis with laser-etchings measuring 60 x 60 x 15.8mm. Now, the Kawaii is paired with a magnetic dock that includes four GameCube controller ports and video out, and the CPU inside the passively cooled chassis is undervolted to keep temperatures in check.

The modders note that the design "prioritizes aesthetics over practicality," which is reinforced by a deep dive video on the Kawaii by YouTube channel Macho Nacho Productions. In the video, we learn that the Kawaii gets "very warm" when gaming, so a portable desk fan and airflow are recommended.

COLORFUL has introduced a new pair of compact M-ATX motherboards as part of its refreshed BATTLE-AX motherboard series. Built for performance, versatility, and affordability, these Intel Core Ultra 200S Series and 12th, 13th, and 14th-Gen Core-compatible boards offer gamers the option to choose between next-gen DDR5 performance and speed and cost-effective DDR4 memory.

As the naming suggests, the new BATTLE-AX B860M-PLUS S WIFI7 and B760M-PLUS S WIFI7 motherboards also support the latest Wi-Fi 7 wireless networking standard alongside Bluetooth 5.4 support. The BATTLE-AX B860M-PLUS S WIFI7 is built for the latest Intel Core Ultra 200S Series, and its dual-channel DDR5 memory supports speeds of up to 8,800 MT/s, with single-DIMM configurations also available for those looking to save a bit of money.

With a robust 10+1+1+1-phase 60A DrMOS power design, the compact board also includes three M.2 SSD slots with an integrated heatsink and tool-free installation, one of which is PCIe 5.0 x4-ready. The rear I/O is also packed with expansion options, with it including six USB Type-A ports and two USB Type-C ports.

Recent testing by Der8auer suggests that ASUS's new ROG Equalizer 12V-2x6 cable might not be the solution to melting PCIe cables it was marketed as. Der8auer went deep into the design choices behind the cable and called it something that "doesn't make sense," with his testing revealing some surprising results.

ASUS has made strong claims about the ROG Equalizer. The cable is rated to handle 17A per pin compared to 9.2A on a standard 12V-2x6 cable, with better load distribution across each pin. ASUS believes that higher-quality components can help reduce abnormal loads and cable temperatures without the need for active components.

However, Der8auer's testing tells a different story. In his first video, he connected the ROG Equalizer and monitored current distribution using a WireView Pro, finding unequal distribution across the pins. In some cases, the cable actually performed worse than conventional 12V-2x6 connectors. Each time he disconnected and reconnected the cable, the load distribution changed, with differences of up to 4A between the highest- and lowest-loaded pins, one near 10A and the other near 6A.

In a recently surfaced support document, Microsoft now positions 16GB of RAM as the minimum baseline for gaming on Windows 11, while pushing 32GB as the "no worries" upgrade that removes all doubt. The reasoning isn't purely about in-game performance either.

Microsoft blames the modern gamer's broader usage patterns, with voice chat applications running in the background, multiple browser tabs open, streaming and recording software, platform launchers, and an ever-growing layer of background services that quietly eat up available memory. Once a game is added to that pile, 16GB starts looking a bit thinner than it used to.

With this new recommendation, Microsoft is clearly implying that 32GB of RAM is no longer an enthusiast luxury. They are normalizing it as the sensible, future-proof choice for anyone serious about PC gaming. Microsoft openly states that moving to 32 GB "helps if you run Discord, browsers, or streaming tools alongside your games" and gives newer titles some breathing room. However, this recommendation lands at arguably the worst possible moment for consumers.

An unreleased Ryzen PRO series processor has just been spotted on PassMark, but the interesting bit is that it is an X3D CPU with 3D V-Cache. AMD's Ryzen PRO lineup is targeted towards professionals, content creators, and other productivity-focused users. There have been rumors of an X3D Ryzen PRO chip out in the wild before, but it has never been benchmarked as it has now.

The new CPU that has just been added to PassMark's database is the AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 9965X3D. We have a couple of interesting things to note about the nomenclature first. First, the XX65 number has not yet been used in the Ryzen 9000 PRO series lineup, and second, the CPU has 3D V-Cache, a feature typically targeted at gamers.

Looking at the information on PassMark, the "new" 9965X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread processor just like the consumer Ryzen 9 9950X3D. The unreleased PRO chip is the first 16-core CPU in the lineup, and it slots in right above the Ryzen 9 PRO 9945, a 12-core, 24-thread Zen 5 CPU. On the page, the L3 cache is listed as 32MB, but that seems incorrect, as it doesn't align with other 3D V-Cache CPUs.

When Intel's ARK pages for the upcoming Wildcat Lake family briefly went live, they listed Recommended Customer Pricing (RCP) along with the chips. Intel was quick to scrub the data, but thanks to timely Notebookcheck and archived snapshots from the Wayback Machine, we've caught a glimpse of Intel's steep pricing for these chips.

The RCP structure for Wildcat Lake starts at $304 and tops out at $470 for the highest variants. Intel often delists RCPs for OEM-only processors because they are generally just a ceiling for public and investor reference, or a baseline for smaller system integrators. Here are the models and their pricing:

Massive OEMs like Dell, HP, and Lenovo negotiate deep volume discounts for contracts that last for years. They operate under complex rebates, and once you factor in high-volume negotiations and subsidies, the effective cost per unit is significantly lower than $304. At first sight, the RCP can significantly skew a laptop's Bill of Materials (BOM).

It seems like Microsoft is slowly but surely starting to address some of the pain points of Windows 11. In the midst of strong competition from Linux and SteamOS, Microsoft has outlined a major plan of improvement for its operating system. While we saw a few useful changes here and there before, such as the removal of Copilot integration and the overhaul of the storage menu, it looks like more impactful improvements are on the horizon.

As reported by Windows Central, Microsoft has launched a project to address the "biggest complaints" people have about Windows 11 today. This project, known internally as Project K2, comprises several major changes expected to improve Windows 11's user experience and address its pain points.

The report reveals that Project K2 is based on three pillars: performance, craft, and reliability. Microsoft is expected to use user feedback and telemetry data to improve the user experience moving forward. Another major focus is on agility, which translates into fewer, smaller updates and fewer bugs overall. Microsoft is also reportedly working on revamping the File Explorer and using the File Pilot app as a reference point.

We recently covered rumors that the RTX 3060 12GB was set to return to market shelves in June. Now, we have a bit more evidence to back up that rumor: Chinese Board Channels have confirmed that the 5-year-old NVIDIA GPU is indeed returning this summer. The timeline differs from what was previously leaked, but it seems the Ampere GPU will be on store shelves by July at the latest.

Per a new post from Chinese Board Channels, the RTX 3060 12GB supply will resume in June. This means that NVIDIA will start supplying the 3060 GPU to board partners in June, allowing them to enter mass production. The add-in board partners are then expected to deliver the finished RTX 3060 12GB cards around July.

Among the partners expected to receive allocations for this re-launch are ASUS, MSI, Colorful, and GALAX (recently incorporated into Palit). All these board partners already have existing designs for the RTX 3060, so it may be easier for them to just re-launch those designs instead of making new ones from the ground up. After all, cost-cutting seems to be the entire point of this re-launch.

The SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group reported that worldwide silicon wafer shipments grew 13.1% year on year in Q1 2026, reaching 3,275 million square inches, up from 2,896 million in the same quarter of 2025.

Silicon wafers are the foundation for almost every chip. CPUs, GPUs, and memory modules all start as thin silicon slices, typically up to 300mm wide. Chipmakers like TSMC, Samsung, and Intel Foundry take these wafers and fabricate semiconductors onto them.

More wafer shipments mean more chips, making this one of the earliest indicators of where the semiconductor market is headed. However, much of this growth is being absorbed by AI infrastructure over consumer products. Ginji Yada, Chairman of SEMI SMG and Managing Executive Officer at SUMCO Corporation, said:

EA is back in the headlines for monetization practices, and this time gamers have noticed an interesting new trend that could arm the company with even more high-level data.

A new video from YouTuber DannyonPC shows that EA is currently taking pre-orders for Battlefield 6's new season 3 battle pass. Users have noticed pop-ups while playing in-game that advertise both battle pass purchase options--the standard $10 version, or the $25 Battlefield Pro. EA is offering pre-order bonuses for gamers who buy now, including weapons and packs.

EA has discussed season 3 at length, confirming a May 12 start date and the inclusion of Battlefield 6's largest map to date--Railway to Golmud, a reimagining of the BF4 classic--and ranked battle royale.

GameStop is prepared to offer buyout terms to auction titan eBay, the premier commerce point for the second-hand used gaming market.

New reports from The Wall Street Journal say that retailer GameStop seeks to acquire eBay to help advance ambitious expansion plans. GameStop was the de facto depot of generations of interactive entertainment and now company CEO Ryan Cohen seeks to make the company into a $100 billion brand that goes beyond games and collectibles.

eBay currently has a market capitalization of $45-46 billion, and it's said that GameStop's CEO is prepared to make a hostile takeover bid if the initial offer is refused. GameStop has been securing stock in eBay for months now, and while its cash is ample at $9 billion, the group would still need additional partners to make the buyout happen.

World of Warcraft players are sending a clear message to Blizzard by protesting the prices of the new housing store, which has a bundle for $75, which is just $2 more than it costs to subscribe to the game for half a year.

WoW's new player housing economy has become controversial, which seemed inevitable, given that it's built on the game's second-ever virtual currency. While the game's community is usually contentious, gamers seem unified in their feelings about the new $75 Cozy Treehouse Retreat Bundle that's being sold on the Battle.net store.

The more expensive retreat bundle includes a ton of different cosmetic options wrapped up in one package, and it saves users on average $0.50 versus buying everything separately. Fans aren't entirely happy about the presentation, positioning, and general pricing of the new player housing content, which was a big selling point of World of Warcraft's latest Midnight expansion.

YouTube is apparently working to integrate more AI features into its user interface. Shortly after increasing the price of YouTube Premium, they launched AI avatars for Shorts creators and began asking users whether they felt their feeds were filled with "AI slop". However, presumably after getting the answer that we weren't getting enough AI on our feeds, they are reportedly doubling down on AI features.

A new AI-powered search feature called "Ask YouTube" is reportedly in the works. Users will now get a tool in the search bar that uses AI to find the perfect answers to their queries, integrating videos into the answers. If you searched for a "how-to" style video, you might get a step-by-step instructional answer with multiple videos curated by AI to best answer your question.

In the demo, a user asks YouTube to "plan a 3-day road trip from San Francisco to Santa Barbara". The feature then proceeds to do its "AI magic" and provides a result with a mix of text, short videos, and long-form videos that are tailored to the user's specific query. This might seem like a red flag for discoverability, but YouTube claims it will show videos and relevant segments, along with channel details, to point users to the sources. You can then ask follow-up questions to the original query and get more video suggestions, much like the conversations we are now used to holding with large language models.

The developers behind coreboot have provided an update on their progress developing a port of the open-source BIOS to a consumer AM5 motherboard, the MSI Pro B850-P. Phoronix reports that 3mdeb, the company behind coreboot, has successfully ported several important blocks required to support AMD (Phoenix) Ryzen 8000 APUs, featuring MPIO, SMU, NBIO, FCH SD, FCH ACPI, and RcMgr. The company also addressed the missing USB initialization code that was causing USB failures to occur on the board previously.

All these changes have made the open-source port almost fully functional, with the team stating that its open-source BIOS implementation now almost makes it to the Linux login screen. In addition to the aforementioned USB fixes, the team also resolved a system hang caused by a bug in the PCIe enumeration process. The main issue that remains is a problem (or problems) surrounding the promontory B850 chipset, causing hard faults to occur.

Development of this port has taken a couple of months so far, split into multiple parts. Part one involved enabling bootblock and romstage and mapping all of the USB, SATA, and PCIe ports on the motherboard. Part 2 involved adding USB and PCIe devicetree descriptors and integrating Ryzen 8000 series openSIL code into the port.

Benchmark results of Intel's recently launched Core 300 "Wildcat Lake" processors are slowly starting to come out. These Core 300 CPUs are aimed at mid-range mobile and edge applications, with Panther Lake targeting the high end. We recently reported on the Core 5 320 being spotted on PassMark, and delivering superior multi-threaded performance to the Apple A18 chip that powers the MacBook Neo.

Now, a new Wildcat Lake result has been listed on PassMark, this time for the Core 5 330. Bear in mind that the Core 5 330 has the same core configuration as its lesser sibling, the Core 5 320. Both CPUs have 6 total cores in a 2P+4LPE setup, with "Cougar Cove" P-Cores and "Darkmont" LPE cores, but no traditional E-cores. These processors can boost up to 4.6 GHz on the P-cores and have 6MB of L3 cache with a 15W TDP. The only notable difference between the two CPUs is that the Core 5 330 supports Intel SIPP, while the other does not.

Since the underlying specs are so similar, the Core 5 330 performs similarly to the Core 5 320, as backed by the PassMark results. It gets a single-thread score of 4215 and a multi-threaded rating of 14947. To put these numbers into context, the Core 5 320 scored 4047 in single-core performance, while its multi-threaded rating is slightly higher at 15222. We can chalk that difference up to the lack of samples for the Core 5 330, as ratings tend to become more accurate as more benchmarks are submitted.

Rockstar Games has been steadily building a user-generated content framework for Grand Theft Auto, including investing and supporting its active GTA Online community with practical delivery and commerce systems.

Rather than trying to tackle everything themselves, Rockstar actually bought modding group Cfx.re, the team that hosts special standalone online versions of GTA V and RDR Online, which are respectively known as FiveM and RedM. Rockstar then established a dedicated storefront, the Cfx Marketplace, that sells digital content and items for these separate, standalone and user-monetized online versions.

That got us thinking: Will GTA 6 operate in the same way, with an official online mode operating separately but in tandem with a custom version (SixM)? Or will Rockstar try to combine the two, offering UGC within the official version?

Microsoft is hiring a new financial expert to help lead transformational change at Xbox and keep a close eye on game budgets and sensitive profit margins.

Xbox is being primed for its next phase shift. The platform will evolve with Project Helix, a hybrid system that plays both PC and console games, as well as expansion into cloud-native games and off-console content. These ambitions won't come cheap, and the latest Game Pass price drop means Microsoft might have to get more creative to squeeze out extra revenue--especially at a time when Xbox earnings continue to drop every quarter.

That's why Microsoft is now hiring more bean counters to help keep Xbox's spending under control. Games are more expensive to make now than they've ever been, and it's also a very bad time to plan a next-gen console launch, what with the RAM and storage scarcity driving up prices to eye-wateringly high levels. Microsoft is currently hiring a senior finance lead to help identify solutions to these problems while making sure Xbox stays a profitable, growing business.

AMD unveiled its in-house AI development platform, the "Halo Box," at AI Dev Day yesterday, rivaling NVIDIA's DGX Spark. AMD initially presented the platform at CES and plans to release it in June. The system features the powerful Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 chip and an extensive 128GB of soldered RAM.

While the Strix Halo family debuted at CES 2025 to much fanfare, the following year, third-party systems saw higher prices due to rising memory costs. Likewise, NVIDIA launched its first-party DGX Spark mini-PC to deploy local AI models. In response, AMD introduced the Halo Box reference system at CES this year.

The first-party nature of the Halo Box should offer seamless operation on both Windows and Linux, preloaded models, quality control, and possibly subsidized pricing. The Halo Box can be portable enough to be carried by hand, as evidenced by the executives holding it on stage with little effort. It features an LED strip that can be controlled via software (even on Linux, according to some early patches).

A Battlefield movie starring Michael B. Jordan is already sparking a bidding war, highlighting just how valuable major gaming IP has become in Hollywood right now.

According to recent reports, multiple studios are competing for the rights to the project, which aims to bring EA's long-running Battlefield franchise to the big screen. The involvement of Michael B. Jordan has reportedly elevated the project's prospects, positioning it as more than just another video game adaptation and instead as a potential blockbuster with mainstream appeal, but also seemingly a shoo-in with gamers.

Video game adaptations are no longer treated as risky experiments, with several franchises making the jump to either film or TV shows, and many becoming successful. For example, there is the God of War TV show in development, along with Activision's Call of Duty movie, which was recently confirmed. There is also The Last of Us TV show and the super-successful Super Mario Bros. Movie. These successes have proven that gaming IP can translate into major box-office hits. Battlefield, with its large-scale warfare, cinematic set pieces, and global recognition, is now going to join the silver screen.

NVIDIA is pushing into the next phase of artificial intelligence with OpenClaw agents, signaling a shift from passive AI tools toward systems that can actively perform tasks.

Unlike traditional AI models that generate responses, OpenClaw agents are designed to execute workflows, make decisions, and operate across systems with minimal to no human input. Picture a virtual assistant that controls your entire machine, can take instructions, and carries out tasks. NVIDIA positions this as a major evolution in how organizations will use AI, particularly in enterprise environments where automation and efficiency are critical.

AI is moving beyond chat interfaces and into agent-based systems capable of handling complex operations across multiple platforms. NVIDIA even went as far as to call OpenClaw agents the ChatGPT moment for AI agents. Companies are increasingly looking for solutions that do not just assist users but actively complete tasks, reducing manual effort. NVIDIA's involvement suggests this shift could accelerate quickly, especially given its strong position in AI hardware and infrastructure.