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SK hynix wants utter world domination in the HBM and advanced packaging markets, with its new Arizona, USA-based plant gearing up for all-systems-go in the coming years on US soil.

In an interview posted on SK hynix's own blog last week, the vice president in charge of SK hynix's package and test division, Choi Woo-jin, said: "Package and test (P&T) technology is turning into a crucial factor in the battle for semiconductor leadership".

Choi is a packaging expert who has conducted and led research and development in chip memory packaging over the last 30 years, with the P&T division at SK hynix that he runs taking care of the back-end process where wafers are packaged into products and tested, ensuring their meet the strenuous demands of customers.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 is on track for a 2025 release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and based on the hype surrounding the game's debut trailer from late last year - it's on track to be the biggest thing, since, well, Grand Theft Auto 5. The trailer currently has 185 million views on YouTube, with gameplay showcasing the game's modern-day Vice City setting and male and female protagonists.

Vice City is Rockstar's stand-in for Miami, Florida. With several nods to real-life locations and 'Florida residents doing crazy things,' YouTuber Andrew Levitt has created (or recreated) a live-action shot-for-shot trailer remake. The trailer includes real-world footage of locations seen in the trailer alongside news footage, including the notorious 'Florida Joker' parodied by Rockstar.

There are also stand-ins/actors for the characters and cinematic story bits from the trailer, with 46 shots in total - as highlighted by a behind-the-scenes 'making of' video posted by Andrew Levitt.

If you want to see how Final Fantasy XIV runs on your system, developer Square Enix has just released the official benchmark for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. You can check it out below and download it here.

The developer explains that the official benchmark software isn't pre-canned but uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC, which rates its performance. There's also a character creation tool, allowing you to view your playable character just as it appears in-game.

The new benchmark's character creator allows you to check out the female option for the Hrothgar race. Any characters players create in the benchmark will be carried over to the full release of Dawntrail. On the graphics side, Square Enix promises that Dawntrail will feature Final Fantasy XIV's first graphical update, and you can scope out some of the game's graphical upgrades in the Dawntrail benchmark.

MSI has just unleashed the new AGESA ComboPi 1.1.7.0 patch, which supports AMD's next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs coming later this year.

MSI's new MPG B650 Carbon Wi-Fi motherboard firmware confirms Zen 5 support by using "next-gen CPU" in its description. We should expect AMD's next-gen Ryzen 9000 series, codenamed Granite Ridge, to usher in the next-generation Zen 5 architecture with some hearty improvements.

We should expect AMD to unveil its next-generation Zen 5 processors that will fill its Ryzen 9000 series family of CPUs, led by the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X processor that we've seen benchmarked in Cinebench R24 recently with 46% more multi-threaded performance over the current Zen 4-powered Ryzen 9 7950X processor.

ASUS has just quietly upgraded the innards of its new ROG NUG gaming PC, with the ROG C22CH -- or in China, the ROC Ice Blade X -- featuring an upgraded GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER graphics card.

The original ASUS ROG NUC features a GeForce RTX 4070, but now the China-destined ROG NUC -- or ROC Ice Blade X -- features a better GPU. NVIDIA's newer GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER features 7168 CUDA cores, an upgrade from the 5888 CUDA cores inside the RTX 4070 in the original ROG NUC gaming system.

NVIDIA's newer GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the upgraded ASUS ROG NUC features 25W more TDP, up from the 200W TDP in the RTX 4070-powered ROG NUC to 225W in the RTX 4070 SUPER-powered ROG NUC. You can opt for either Intel's new Core i9-14900KF or Core i7-14700KF processors, with either the RTX 4060 Ti or RTX 4070 graphics cards, but now we've got a newer RTX 4070 SUPER to choose from.

NVIDIA spent a sizeable $10 billion on R&D for its next-generation Blackwell GPU architecture, but chip legend Jim Keller said he could've done the same job for just $1 billion.

I first saw Keller's tweet, noticing that it looked familiar... he had taken an image of the story I wrote about NVIDIA spending $10 billion on R&D for Blackwell. Great to see, but how does Keller fix NVIDIA's $10 billion R&D budget for one-tenth of that cost, just $1 billion?

First, NVIDIA uses dual Blackwell B100 dies on its new B200 AI GPU, which has a whopping 208 billion transistors, each B100 GPU die featuring 104 billion transistors. NVIDIA uses two B100 dies to create the B200 in full, with NVIDIA using its in-house NV-High Bandwidth Interface (NV_HBI), which has up to 10TB/sec of bandwidth.

If you buy a new M3 iMac or M3 MacBook Air at an Apple Store today, you'll spend more than a thousand dollars yet only get a machine with 8GB of RAM - unless you choose to upgrade to a more copious amount and pay extra, of course. That's something that Apple has long drawn flak for with many Windows PCs and laptops shipping with more, especially at the same kind of price point. However, Apple has now suggested that there is a very good reason these Macs come with just 8GB of RAM - that's all that people really need.

At least, that's what most people who buy these particular Macs need, according to two Apple executives who were interviewed by IT Home.

According to the IT Home report, Mac marketing executive Evan Buyze argued that the entry-level 8GB of RAM in iMacs and MacBook Airs is plenty for most tasks and most users. He used some examples as well, saying that media playback. photo and video editing. and even gaming only needs 8GB assuming you aren't pushing the boundaries - high-end games might need more, but it's unlikely anything downloaded from the App Store and Apple Arcade, will. Web browsing is another key use, and 8GB is plenty for that, too.

Thanks to innovative new designs, DIY PC building continues to improve, especially when putting together a gaming rig decked out with multiple fans, ARGB lighting, and modern components. MSI's new MPG EZ120 ARGB Fans fall into the recent cable-free school of system fans that let you daisy-chain and connect multiple fans without worrying about cable management.

This is awesome because a traditional ARGB fan requires connecting a system fan header to your motherboard or fan controller and a separate ARGB header. When you start adding multiple intake and exhaust fans, this can quickly become a cable management problem. MSI's new MPG EZ120 ARGB fans have a custom JAF 7-pin header that integrates ARGB and system fan headers.

It doesn't stop there. The MPG EZ120 ARGB fans are magnetic, so joining one, two, or three is a breeze - with unique Magnetic Connector Blocks delivering power and facilitating the signal between the fans.

With the release of the Fallout TV series on Prime Video, a Fallout 4 remaster coming later this month, and everything post-apocalyptic still as popular as ever, Elgato has just launched a new limited-edition line-up of Fallout gear created in collaboration with Bethesda. The line-up includes a Fallout Edition Stream Deck, Wave DX, Wave XLR, and Wave Mic Arm LP.

This is the first time Elgato has developed a custom dynamic microphone, audio interface, or boom arm, so it's also offering Vault Overseer Kits that bundle the new Fallout gear. But it doesn't stop there, as Elgato and Bethesda are offering some very cool bonus digital goodies for fans that draw on the franchise's long history of mods and customization.

Available separately and free for all Elgato users (via the Elgato Marketplace), you can now download Pip-Boy-inspired icons for the Stream Deck, Vault-Tec Stream Deck screensavers, and a voice modifier that includes several presets and settings to make you sound like another wastelander wandering the wastes.

BIOSTAR is the latest GPU maker to join the Arc family with the new BIOSTAR Arc A750 OC mainstream graphics card. BIOSTAR, which has several GeForce RTX and Radeon RX cards available, is now offering a new mainstream GPU with its Arc A750 offering.

As an OC model, it boosts the graphics clock speed to 2200MHz, a 7% increase over Intel's reference spec. Elsewhere, it's your typical Intel Arc A750 GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit interface, 28 Intel Xe-Cores, and a power rating of 225W.

The dual-fan BIOSTAR Arc A750 OC is a compact GPU, measuring 222 mm in length, 101 mm in height, and 2.2 mm in slot thickness. The minimal rectangle and black design look pretty stylish, too, thanks to the all-blue PCB, reminiscent of Sparkle's Intel Arc line-up.

Professional displays are very different from those designed for gaming, where response times, refresh rates, and VRR support sit pretty high on the list. Professional displays are about accurate and vibrant color reproduction for designers and professionals to create and edit with reference-quality visuals.

At the NAB Show 2024, ASUS was on hand to present its latest professional monitor, the new ProArt Display PA32KCX - described as the "world's first 8K HDR Mini LED monitor with LuxPixel Technology." The 32-inch display features a native 8K resolution (7680 x 4320) with a 4096-zone Mini LED backlight, 97% of the cinema-grade DCI-P3 color gamut, 1200 nits peak brightness, and 1000 nits full-screen sustained brightness.

That last bit makes it one of the most impressive 32-inch displays for 2024 and perfect for HDR workflows. It's a tasty display and comes packed with ports. It has HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, a USB hub, and dual Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports with up to 96W Power Delivery.

There has been a lot of negative talk lately about the current state of the videogame market. The most popular and played games are several years old, titles like Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Apex Legends, and other popular competitive and online games. Outside of a few exceptions, new games are struggling to find an audience, and as budgets increase dramatically, the risk for developers and publishers to launch something new is on the rise.

Looking at the best-selling games, new titles are few and far between. In Europe, half of the top 10 best-selling games for March 2024 were old Command & Conquer games. Throw in Grand Theft Auto 5, which continues to sell, and Ubisoft's aging Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege - old games are selling.

The best-selling title for the month was EA Sports FC 24 (the FIFA replacement), with Helldivers 2 in second place and Dragon's Dogma 2 in third place - the latter debuting in March. After that, five Command & Conquer games are on the list, which is impressive because the European data includes PCs, consoles, and digital data from storefronts like Steam, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and the Nintendo eShop.

Blackmagic showed off some new cameras at the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas, including the new Blackmagic URSA Cine 12 K, which was designed from the ground up as its new high-end digital camera. It costs $15,000.

The new Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K has a wide variety of inputs and outputs, including 10GbE ethernet and dual M.2 SSD slots for some super-fast, massive SSDs to handle the 4K, 6K, 8K, and 12K video you can capture with it. The company has a bunch of new design tweaks on the URSA Cine 12K, with all configurations on the camera done through locking nuts, making it easy to put it on a tripod, slider, or go handheld shooting 12K video.

Inside, Blackmagic built a completely new 12K 35mm large-format sensor for the URSA Cine 12K camera, supporting five different 12K formats. The 12K resolution itself is an eye-popping 12,288 x 6912 for the 16:9 aspect ratio, up from the 8192 x 4608 capable of 8K full frame with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Impressive stuff.

LG has announced plans to expand its home appliance-specific on-device AI chip -- DQ-C -- to 46 models through 8 product families.

The new LG DQ-C chip supports AI control, LCD display driving, and voice recognition and is specialized for operating systems inside of home appliances. LG has designed the DQ-C AI chip in-house, with previous chips produced by other semiconductor companies, while LG outsources to TSMC on its 28nm process node in Taiwan to make its DQ-C AI chip.

LG has spent three years deep inside research and development of the DQ-C chip, first announced in July 2023, and is used inside of five LG products including washing machines, dryers, and air conditioners. LG first introduced washing machines and dryers with its DQ-C chip under its Home Appliances 2.0 series in July 2023, showing off the actual DC-Q chip at IFA last year.

Blizzard is making some more changes to Overwatch 2, with its upcoming Season 10 to see changes to the game that will punish players who leave a game mid-match... finally.

Starting with Overwatch 2 Season 10, the developer is taking a "firm stance" on leavers in Competitive Play, with a new update for that game mode, too. Starting with Competitive Play, with Overwatch 2 players being suspended from Competitive Play whenever they leave a Competitive Play match, with a ban of 15 minutes.

But, if you leave more games, that penalty gets harsher and harsher: 2 games left out of 20 games, there's a 2-hour ban, while leaving 3 of your last 20 played games results in a huge 8-hour ban. From there, leaving 4 out of the last 20 games played will see you with a whopping 20-hour ban, while leaving 5 games out of the last 20 played results in a major Competitive Season BAN, while 10 games left throughout the entire season (at play) will result in a Competitive Season BAN.

Corsair has just announced that it has entered the DDR5 workstation memory market, with the introduction of its new WS DDR5 RDIMM memory kits.

The new Corsair WS DDR5 RDIMM memory kits have been engineered to offer uncompromising performance and reliability. They are compatible with Intel's new 4th Gen Xeon and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series CPUs. If you want to fill every DIMM slot of your motherboard, they come in huge 256 GB DDR5 memory kits.

Corsair says that with its memory kits coming in huge 256GB capacities, it will set a new standard for memory-intensive tasks like high-resolution media editing, 3D rendering, and of course, AI training. Corsair has carefully screened each DIMM, with the modules passing JEDEC specifications with higher timings and higher speeds, making sure you get the optimal performance for the huge workloads these DIMMs will crush.

It was just days ago I spotted a small part of a UDN report that said AIB manufacturers were getting ready for a launch of only the top-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, and high-end RTX 5080 graphics cards to launch later this year, and now we have some more confirmation in new leaks.

In his latest video, Tom from Moore's Law is Dead has a few sources inside of the industry that have talked about NVIDIA's impending GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards.

NVIDIA is reportedly waiting until workstation-class RTX 6000 series GPUs are detailed, as the GB202 and GB203 dies used in RTX 6000 and B40 workstation variants are the same GPUs that will be used inside of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, respectively.

This week on The TT Show, Jak and Kosta talk about their recent trip to Sydney, where they attended a special launch event for Samsung's impressive TV line-up for 2024. The line-up includes Samsung's new flagship 85-inch 8K display, which features the latest in AI technology, and the company's new OLEDs, which ditch the reflective finish for a more matte Glare-Free look better suited to bright rooms.

It's a lengthy discussion covering everything from TV tech for sports, games, and movies to Samsung's interesting new wall-hanging speaker. In the world of impressive displays, the duo also looks at the new Razer Blade 18 gaming laptop for 2024, which features the world's first 4K+ 200 Hz display for a portable device.

In gaming, AMD's FSR 3.1 update means that Frame Generation is finally coming to the world of consoles - with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S gamers set to get their first taste of the groundbreaking tech with Immortals of Aveum. Also, Kosta talks about how the next-gen Xbox's giant technical leap could come from AI - with Microsoft touting a suite of next-gen 'Gaming AI' technologies coming.

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch believes $70 is too much to charge for a game, but his studio is nonetheless selling Space Marine 2 for $70 on all platforms.

At the start of Gen9 in November 2020, publishers like Take-Two Interactive, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Sony were among the first to charge $70 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of games. This trend has continued well into 2024 and shows no signs of stopping, especially now that publishers are laying off workers en masse in an attempt to stem bleeding budgets and shrinking profit margins. The $70 game was an attempt to offset high production costs (some games like Spider-Man 2 cost $200 million to make).

But not everyone agrees with the new software MSRP. Consumers have pushed back against the pricing--in 2023, we surveyed over 25,000 gamers on the subject of $70 software and most agree that it's too much. Some industry figures like Saber Interactive's Matthew Karch have even spoken out against the price tag, saying that it's just unsustainable.

Lossless music is something that Spotify has been working on for a long time and we've often wondered whether it would ever actually launch. Spotify still hasn't confirmed when it will happen, but we might now finally be getting closer to it arriving.

Lossless audio was first known as Spotify HiFi before it was rumored to be part of a new Supremium subscription tier that would sit above the current options. Now, it appears that we could see the lossless audio become part of the new Music Pro add-on that is already being previewed.

That Music Pro add-on will include the DJ remix features that have been touted of late, and a new report by The Verge, based on a Reddit poster's research, suggests that lossless audio could also be part of that option.