Latest News - Page 616

The days of the 3dfx Voodoo graphics card are some of my fondest PC gaming memories, so seeing X user @oscar_barea making a customized vintage 3dfx Voodo card makes me smile. Check it out:

The custom "VoodooX" graphics card is based on the 3dfx VSA-100 GPU, which was used across a few different 3dfx graphics cards including the 3dfx Voodoo 4 4500 and Voodoo5 5500 graphics cards. AshEvans81 worked on the project with Oscar, with the VoodooX using an auctioned-off "new" VSA100 chips that were used in Voodoo4 cards.

Modifications were required to get the VoodooX running with 32MB of RAM, as the original Voodoo4 4800 AGP graphics card back in the day had 64MB of RAM... a far cry from the 24,000MB (24GB) of VRAM on the GeForce RTX 4090. The customized VoodooX card has newer DVI inputs, after the original Voodoo cards used VGA output, while we live in a DisplayPort + HDMI world now.

Intel's next-generation Lunar Lake-MX has been renamed to Lunar Lake-V, which features up to 8 CPU cores, 8 Xe2 GPU cores, and up to 32GB of on-package LPDDR5X memory.

Insider Golden Pig Upgrade has leaked the name change to Lunar Lake-V, that Intel is dropping the "MX" branding from Lunar Lake and using the "V" branding. That means these processors will fall into the new Core Ultra 200V series CPU family when they launch later this year and into 2025.

Intel will use a single die for its Lunar Lake-V processors, with 4 P-Cores based on the Lion Cove CPU architecture and 4 LP-E Cores based on the Skymont CPU architecture. Golden Pig Upgrade says that Intel's Lunar Lake-V fleet of processors will all feature the same core count but will vary with CPU frequency, up to 8 Xe2 GPU cores, on-package LPDDR5X-8533 memory, and an optional fanned or fanless design.

NVIDIA has just introduced two new entry-level workstation Ampere-based GPUs, with the new RTX A400 and RTX A1000 cards, both in single-slot design.

The new NVIDIA RTX A1000 and RTX A400 workstation GPUs provide access to AI and ray tracing technologies, which are in the everyday workflows of professionals. The new NVIDIA RTX A1000 workstation GPU should have the GA106 GPU with 2304 CUDA cores, 72 Tensor Cores, and 18 RT Cores.

The RTX A1000 has up to 6.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance, with 8GB of GDDR6 memory at 12Gbps speeds on a 128-bit memory bus that's capable of up to 192GB/sec of memory bandwidth. NVIDIA's new RTX A400 has 768 CUDA cores, 24 Tensor Cores, and 6 RT Cores. It'll feature up to 2.7 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance, with 4GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit memory bus with just 96GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

GEEKOM is dishing up a banging deal for TweakTown readers on its Mini IT12 mini PC. Powered by Intel's 12th-Gen Core i7-12650H processor, the GEEKOM Mini IT12 comes equipped with an impressive 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and the fast Bluetooth 5.2 and W-Fi 6E wireless technologies.

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The Apple TV+ streaming service has had a ton of hits to call its own since its launch, and while the library it offers might not be as big as that boasted by Netflix or Disney+. it definitely makes up for the lack of quantity with top-notch quality. Silo is one example of a great offering, and while we already knew that there was a second season on the way, we now know there's more to the story than that.

While Apple TV+ hasn't officially confirmed anything yet, star of the show Rebecca Ferguson has told Collider that there will actually be a third and even a fourth season, with the latter two being filmed back to back. That might suggest that the seasons will be released closer together than usual, which will be extremely good news for people who don't want to wait.

The decision to share the Silo story across four seasons is interesting given the fact that the books the show is based on ended after the third. Ferguson told Collider that the ending is already decided and that it'll come at the end of that fourth season. But beyond that, everyone's keeping their cards close to their chest.

Apple's iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro have been on sale for a few months at this point but we're all already starting to turn our attention to what will come next. Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models as soon as September, which means that we will only have to wait a few short months to see what Apple has been cooking up. But as the leaks continue to arrive, we might not have to wait that long even.

The latest leak comes via the X leaker Maijin Bu in the form of a photo of what appears to be new iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max dummy units. The units are all placed face down but appear to match what we've been told to expect so far in terms of size and dimensions - although it's always difficult to know for sure from this kind of photo.

The new iPhones are all expected to be similar to the ones that shipped last year with a couple of differences. The iPhone 15 Pro's Action button is now expected to come to all of the new iPhones this time out, while there is also an expectation of a new Capture button being added to the mix. Also set to come to all four models, the Capture button is expected to act as a quick way for people to capture photos and videos, although it remains to be seen what its full functionality will be. The button is also expected to be capacitive and flush with the edge of the iPhone, unlike all other buttons.

If you're someone who likes to make use of the WhatsApp instant messaging app you're already probably familiar with the way the Meta-owned company updates the app and adds new features relatively regularly. The latest instance of that is a new feature that makes it easier for people to find their chats, especially when they have a lot of them going on at once.

Announced by a WhatsApp blog post, the new chat filter feature is exactly what it sounds like. When users receive the new feature they will notice three filter options at the top of the screen including the ability to see all messages, filter out read messages so they only see threads with something new to read, and grroups.

WhatsApp says that the new filter options are rolling out right now and that users should expect to be able to make use of them in the coming weeks. You'll need to make sure that you're using the latest version of the WhatsApp app for your device of course, and even then there is no guarantee that you will see the new filter option immediately. Instead, it appears that WhatsApp is enabling chat filters per account, which means you may have to wait longer than your friends before you see the option.

Fans of the hugely popular Apple TV+ series For All Mankind will be pleased to learn that the streamer has announced that it is coming back for a fifth season, and that isn't all. Apple TV+ also confirmed in a press release that it will be launching a new Star City spinoff series as well.

For All Mankind has so far managed to hold a 100% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes throughout its first four seasons which should be enough to whet the appetite for anyone who is yet to take the show for a spin. It tells the story of an alternate timeline where Russia gets to the moon before the United States and follows how that changed history, including space travel throughout the coming decades.

As for the new Star City show, Apple TV Plus says that it is a robust expansion of the For All Mankind universe and will explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain for the first time. There is currently no published release window for when the new show, or indeed the fifth season of the main For All Mankind storyline will be made available for us to binge-watch, but it's already time to get excited.

Lenovo has a supremely tiny PC box that runs ChromeOS and has just gone on sale in the US, pitched at the kiosk market.

The Chromebox Micro is available at Walmart, Notebookcheck.net noticed, although it'll set you back $361 from there, and the PC is cheaper elsewhere.

Indeed, you can pick it up for $250 at CDW, which is a massive difference - the catch being that it's not currently in stock. However, it's still possible to back-order the Chromebox Micro if you wish, although there's no timeframe provided for when the PC might come back into stock.

If you're an iPhone owner in the European Union, there's a new alternative app store now available for download. The AltStore PAL store is a version of the popular AltStore and is now available for download.

AltStore PAL is an open source app that will give developers a way to allow users to download their apps without having to deal with Apple's App Store rules, although there will still be requirements. Apple was forced to allow third-party app marketplaces in the EU following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act in March, and this store is one that people have been waiting on for some time.

The new store is not like the App Store however, with no repository available which means that developers will need to promote their apps via their websites and then link to the relevant app page within AltStore PAL. Developers will also be able to monetize their apps using built-in Patreon support, too.

You don't need to have been following along too closely to know that Apple regularly releases big new software updates for its many different product lineups. The iPhone is at the top of that list of course, with iOS 18 expected to be announced later this year - if it sticks to its usual release schedule we expect that to happen in September. We've been seeing reports of various new features coming to that iOS 18 update, and now we're starting to learn even more, too.

Apple is yet to officially confirm the new iOS 18 update of course, but a new leak suggests that the Notes app in particular will benefit from some new capabilities. According to the report, coming out of AppleInsider, the Notes app is going to get some new features that will take an already popular note-taking app and improve it with a couple of particular features; a new audio note feature, and upgrades to the way Notes deals with math.

According to the report, Apple's Notes app will support audio messages being embedded directly into a note, allowing them to be placed alongside other content including photos and text. AppleInsider gives an example of a student taking a class and adding a recording of the audio alongside their own notes and a photo of the whiteboard. That does sound like a feature that a ton of people will make use of including people in business meetings and beyond.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models might have only been on sale for a few months and the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro handsets are still months away, but some people are already starting to turn their attention to what comes next and one of those people is Ross Young. Young is a display analyst who has his finger on the pulse of the companies within Apple's supply chain. And according to him, Apple might have something of a surprise in store for the iPhone 17 Plus.

Young was writing in a paywalled post on the X social network, picked up by 9to5Mac when he said that he had heard suggestions that the iPhone 17 Plus will actually have a smaller display than previous Plus models. As a refresher, the iPhone 15 Plus has a 6.7-inch display and all of the rumors have so far suggested that the iPhone 16 Plus will also sport the same 6.7-inch display. But according to Young, things will change when the iPhone 17 Plus rolls into town.

Young says that the iPhone 17 Plus will shrink, although he didn't share specific details on what that will actually mean in terms of measurements. He did note that it will sit between the iPhone 17/iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max, so we can expect something between 6.3 inches and 6.9 inches or thereabouts.

AMD's last-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards are becoming very thin on the ground, or at least that's what we're hearing from Europe.

3D Center has its finger on the pulse of the GPU market in Germany, crunching the sales figures from a major retailer in that country, MindFactory.

The upshot is that most of the RX 6000 family of graphics cards are pretty much on their last gasp in terms of the remaining stock out there, certainly with RX 6700 models and above - save for one notable exception.

Alongside releasing the PC hardware requirements for Ghost on Tsushima Director's Cut on PC, Sony has announced that it's bringing a PlayStation overlay to its PC games. The overlay will give players access to their PlayStation Profile, Friends list, Trophies, and Settings. Yes, PlayStation Trophies are coming to PC, starting with Ghost of Tsushima.

Sony recently announced that it would double down on multiplatform releases and bring more titles to PC. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki said, "Strong titles that achieve growth on PS5, PCs, and other platforms will widen our margins. We believe that we have opportunities for margin improvement and intend to pursue them aggressively."

Introducing a dedicated overlay that connects to the PlayStation Network that brings PSN Friends lists and Trophies to PC? That sounds aggressive to us.

PlayStation 4 classic (the game also got a PS5 update) Ghost of Tsushima is headed to PC on May 16, with the Director's Cut version hitting the platform with the Iki Island expansion and the co-op multiplayer Legends mode. In a fantastic move, we've got confirmation that the co-op will support cross-play with PlayStation gamers.

With the talented Nixxes Software handling the port (the studio's most recent effort was the excellent Horizon Forbidden West for PC), Ghost of Tsushima will feature a range of visual enhancements on PC, including support for ultrawide displays (up to 48:9 resolutions), an uncapped frame rate, and upscaling tech that includes NVIDIA DLSS, Intel XeSS, and AMD FSR 3.

Nixxes says it has been working hard to make the game "run well on older hardware." With the PC specs and hardware requirements released today, the good news is that you'll only need a GeForce GTX 960 with 4GB of VRAM to play the game on the lowest settings. The bad news? You'll need a beast of a rig to play the game in 4K 60 FPS.

Thought about trading in your expensive GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card through Microcenter's trade-in program? Don't. The company only estimates that a used RTX 4090 is worth a $700 trade-in.

Wccftech is the source of this story, where one of their readers pointed out that Microcenter's Trade-in Value for a high-end MSI GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING TRIO graphics card was just $699.95, with the same graphics card costing $1939.99 on Microcenter's website. That's not nice at all.

Of course, you're trading in a used graphics card, so you're not going to get what you paid for it from a mega-retailer like Microcenter. However, the GeForce RTX 4090 is still worth a hefty $1500+ on second-hand markets, as the RTX 4090 is still retailing for around $2000 (and over) at e-tailers like Amazon, BestBuy, and Microcenter.

You may have noticed that recently, there's been a bit of a fuss about a Copilot application being installed quietly on some Windows PCs without the user's knowledge - and this has happened again.

However, this time around, it's an even stranger scenario as the Copilot app in question has been pushed onto Windows Server 2022 installations in some cases.

Windows Latest picked up on this development and has spoken to Microsoft about what has gone on here. The long and short of it is that the app getting onto Windows Server 2022 is a mistake.

AMD has announced the new AMD Ryzen PRO 8040 Series processors for business laptops and mobile workstations and the new AMD Ryzen PRO 8000 Series desktop processors for professionals. Designed for the age of the AI PC, it's the first set of PRO chips from AMD with built-in NPUs for AI workloads.

Like other 8000-series 'Hawk Point' and 'Phoenix' products, these are built on the tried-and-true Zen 4 architecture that has been powering Ryzen for a few years (we have to wait a bit longer until we see Zen 5). They have the bonus of AI acceleration and onboard RDNA graphics. These are similar to previous client-facing chips that launched earlier this year, with additional tweaks and services to suit the professional market.

In fact, the addition of AI hardware, the AMD Ryzen PRO 8040 Series for laptops and the AMD Ryzen PRO 8000 Series of desktop processors for workstations, have made AMD the first company to offer professional CPUs with AI NPUs for both environments. Intel has yet to launch a desktop CPU with a built-in NPU.

No Rest for the Wicked is a new action RPG from the creators of the award-winning Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps platformers, with the team at Moon Studios channeling the likes of Diablo and Dark Souls to deliver a mature, story-driven, co-op loot-filled adventure in a dark and beautiful world.

Visually, No Rest for the Wicked is stunning, with a painterly art style that brings its gothic world to life. The animation is impressive; it makes the combat look intense. The game is launching into Early Access this week, on April 18 (on Steam), and the launch trailer showcases glimpses of the world, story, characters, and gameplay.

In the game, you become a "mystical holy warrior" and use your arsenal of supernatural powers to "defeat the Pestilence at any cost." At its core, No Rest for the Wicked is a Diablo-style action RPG where loot and skills will define your playstyle, with a zoomed-out isometric perspective framing exploration and action.

NVIDIA's new wave of Blackwell AI GPUs will boost demand for TSMC's advanced CoWoS packaging capacity by over 150% in 2024.

In a new report from TrendForce, the next-gen Blackwell AI GPU platform that includes the B200 and B100 AI GPUs -- as well as the GB200, which also features NVIDIA's in-house Arm-based Grace CPU -- all use CoWoS packaging from TSMC, and projections suggest millions of shipments of high-end B200 AI GPUs are expected in 2025 making up close to 50% of NVIDIA's high-end GPU market.

NVIDIA will launch its new GB200 and B200 in the second half of 2024, with upstream wafer packaging needing to adopt a much more complex, and high-precision CoWoS-L technology, which will make validation and testing take more time. On top of that, more time is needed to optimize the B-series for AI server systems in things like network communication and cooling performance.