Latest News - Page 665

Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against the developers of the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu for "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale," aiming to shut development down and destroy all copies.

As an emulator, Yuzu allows users to play Switch games on a Windows PC or similar device, which makes it (according to Nintendo) a tool for "massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others' copyrighted works." The lawsuit claims that the developers of Yuzu 'unlawfully' bypassed its hardware encryption and, by doing so, allowed games to run on other hardware.

With the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2023 (check out our full review of this masterpiece here), the game leaked ahead of its launch - with many running the game at full speed with the Yuzu emulator ahead of its official console launch.

NVIDIA has announced two new GPUs that will join its Ada Generation Laptop GPU line-up this year - the NVIDIA RTX 500 and RTX 1000, designed for 'highly portable mobile workstations.' The announcement notes that mobile workstations with these new GPUs will be available from partners including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI this spring.

The new RTX 500 and RTX 1000 GPU-powered workstations will ship with a neural processing unit (NPU) as part of the CPU configuration, with the addition of NVIDIA's Tensor Cores for more demanding AI workloads.

On the high-end, the NVIDIA RTX 5000 offers 682 TOPS of AI performance, with the new RTX 500 and RTX 1000 sitting on the entry-level side with 154 TOPS and 193 TOPS, respectively. NVIDIA adds that these workstations and new GPUs will be useful for video conferencing with AI effects, AI upscaling video content, generative AI, and content creation.

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a first-person shooter set in the iconic Star Wars universe developed by LucasArts and released for MS-DOS computers in 1995. It launched at a time when every release in the genre was labeled a 'Doom-clone'; however, the development team at LucasArts managed to inject the game with plenty of stories, cutting-edge multi-level stages, and incredible visuals and sound design (for the time).

This week, the game is getting a remaster courtesy of the retro gaming wizards at Nightdive Studios, collaborating with Lucasfilm Games, for the release of Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

Nightdive, who recently remastered Quake II and Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remastered, once again ports a classic to use its versatile KEX engine, allowing for up to 4K 120 FPS on current-gen consoles and PC hardware, with fully remastered artwork, including the cinematic sequences (or cut-scenes), presenting and preserving this classic for a new generation.

According to a new report at Windows Central, Microsoft is currently testing a new feature that will allow it to deploy security updates and other patches to Windows 11 systems without forcing a reboot or restart. We've all suffered through having to restart Windows as part of every minor update for years, so this is excellent news.

The latest Windows 11 build on the Dev Channel notes that Insiders with the Virtualization Based Security (VBS) feature turned on will be able to "receive Build 26058.1400 (KB5036080) and may not experience a restart upon installing the update." Very cool.

Hot patching is a brand-new feature for Windows 11 desktop users, and how it works is pretty simple. "It works by patching the in-memory code of running processes without the need to restart the process," Microsoft writes. Which lowers the workload impact, offers better protection, and reduces the time it takes to update.

The Cooler Master MK770 Hybrid Wireless Keyboard is described as a 'state-of-the-art mechanical gaming keyboard' with 'unparalleled customization' and 'outstanding gaming performance.'

And sure, companies love to talk up new releases. Still, with Cooler Master's mechanical keyboard track record and the fact that the new Cooler Master MK770 also comes in a stylish (and not for everyone) pastel color option, like me, you probably want to know more.

This is a premium feature-packed mechanical keyboard with a reasonable price point of $129 USD. With this, you get hot-swappable switches for that extra layer of customization, a gasket structure, pre-installed KailhBox V2 switches, silicon dampers to keep noise levels down, per-key customizable RGB lighting, double-shot PBT keycaps, stabilizers, and more.

The new CSTM65 Keyboard from Drop is a compact 65% mechanical keyboard that aims to take customization to new heights thanks to its interchangeable magnetic case (available in polycarbonate or aluminum) that can easily slip on or off the keyboard while covering the entirety of the board.

It's an excellent addition to a customization-focused keyboard, with various keycap options, switches (Gateron Brown Pro 3.0 Switches or Gateron Yellow KS3 Switches), weights, and even cables. This mix-and-match design lets users personalize theDrop CSTM65 Keyboard to suit their style. Polycarbonate cases are sold separately, in a range of colors, for $25 each, with aluminum cases available in silver or black for $59 each.

The specs here are impressive, with a gasket-mounted design, ABS keycaps, PCBA-mounted stabilizers, and 5-pin switch support. The Drop CSTM65 Keyboard is available in a barebone (MSRP $79) and fully assembled (MSRP $129). Fully assembled includes the keyboard, keycaps, switches, stabilizers, and black polycarbonate case.

GIGABYTE teased an entire new fleet of gaming monitors back at CES 2024 earlier this year, and now the company has detailed its upcoming AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor.

The new AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor will feature a 27-inch 1440p (2560 x 1440) QD-OLED panel, with a blistering 360Hz refresh rate. Playing games at 1440p and 360FPS won't be easy, so you'll want to team the new AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor with a higher-end GPU like NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080, RTX 4080 SUPER, or RTX 4090, and on the AMD side the Radeon RX 7900 XT or RX 7900 XTX graphics cards.

GIGABYTE's new AORUS FO27Q3 with its QD-OLED panel also features anti-reflective coating, with the 10-bit panel capable of pumping out 10.7 billion colors, and certified for DisplayHDR True Black 400, with a typical brightness of 250 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of 15,000,000:1.

NVIDIA has greatly improved AI GPU shipments over the last few months, which were swelling out to 8-11 months and now down to a better 3-4 month waiting period. But some AI GPU customers are offloading their high-end AI chips... yeah, they're selling the H100 AI GPUs they've paid for.

Why? Some companies purchased oodles of NVIDIA's flagship H100 Tensor Core AI GPU, noting that it's now easier to rent AI processing power from AI cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

A new report from The Information states that some companies are reselling their NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs or reducing their future AI GPU orders due to the scarcity of AI GPUs and the huge costs of maintaining unused hardware. If we rewind to just 6 months ago, companies were tripping over themselves trying to get as many of the most powerful AI GPUs made. Still, even though increased AI GPU availability, reduced waiting times, and next-gen AI GPU hardware are on the horizon, companies are selling their AI GPUs.

Jon Peddie Research's latest report is on the PC GPU market, which has been doing surprisingly well over the last quarter. PC GPU shipments increased by 6% in Q4 2023, with a total of 76.2 million graphics cards shipped.

The new report detailing 76.2 million GPU shipments over Q4 2023 is a huge 24% year-over-year increase, which JPR notes is the "biggest year-to-year increase in two and a half decades". Overall, JPR reports GPUs will have a compound annual growth of 3.6% during 2024-2026, where the outfit estimates that almost 5 billion GPUs will be in the wild by 2026.

Over the next 5 years, JPR estimates the penetration of discrete GPUs inside of PCs will hit 30%.

AMD has teased it's working on a refresh of its just-released Instinct MI300 AI GPU family, which will feature the latest ultra-fast HBM3e memory standard that Micron and Samsung are gearing up into.

We heard rumors of AMD's next-gen Instinct MI400 series AI GPU just a couple of days ago, along with a refreshed MI300 AI GPU with faster HBM3e memory, and now AMD's own Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster, has confirmed just that. A refreshed AMD Instinct MI300 AI GPU is on the way, with HBM3e memory.

AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster said during a presentation at the Arete Investor Webinar Conference, which Seeking Alpha reported on: "We are not standing still. We made adjustments to accelerate our roadmap with both memory configurations around the MI300 family, derivatives of MI300, the generation next. [...] So, we have 8-Hi stacks. We architected for 12-Hi stacks. We are shipping with MI300 HBM3. We have architected for HBM3E".

Samsung has just announced it completed the development of its new 12-Hi 36GB HBM3e memory stacks; on the heels of Micron's announcement, it's started mass production of its 8-Hi 24GB HBM3e memory... what an announcement.

Samsung's new codename Shinebolt HBM3e memory features 12-Hi 36GB HBM3e stacks with 12 x 24Gb memory devices placed on a logic die featuring a 1024-bit memory interface. Samsung's new 36GB HBM3e memory modules feature 10GT/s transfer rates, offering next-gen AI GPUs up to 1.28TB/sec of memory bandwidth per stack, the industry's highest per-device (or per-module) memory bandwidth.

Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, said in the press release: "The industry's AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need. This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era".

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.2.1 is available now for Radeon GPU owners, and it's one to definitely check out if you've been running into issues when gaming, as it's chock full of fixes and updates.

Those playing the smash hit co-op, democracy spreading, bug squashing Helldivers 2 on PC will be pleased to know that this new driver update fixes 'intermittent driver timeout' issues on Radeon RX 7000 Series GPUs while also fixing crashing while playing. These are the sort of problems that are way more annoying when playing an online title, so kudos to AMD.

Another big fix covers those playing Counter-Strike 2, where the game would crash when enabling FSR on some Radeon GPUs. AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.2.1 also fixes 'excessive stutter' across a range of titles, including Battlefield 2042, Destiny 2, Overwatch 2, Monster Hunter: World, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, and STAR WARS Battlefront II.

NVIDIA is reportedly delaying AI GPU shipments if it finds out its customer is talking to AI GPU competitors like AMD or Intel, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Jonathan Ross, CEO of rival chip startup Groq, told The Wall Street Journal: "A lot of people that we meet with say that if NVIDIA were to hear that we were meeting, they would disavow it. The problem is you have to pay NVIDIA a year in advance, and you may get your hardware in a year, or it may take longer, and it's, 'Aw shucks, you're buying from someone else, and I guess it's going to take a little longer.'"

Ex-NVIDIA GeForce and ex-AMD Radeon GPU boss Scott Herkelman chimed in on X, where posted: "This happens more than you expect, NVIDIA does this with DC customers, OEMs, AIBs, press, and resellers. They learned from GPP to not put it into writing. They just don't ship after a customer has ordered. They are the GPU cartel and they control all supply".

Intel has just confirmed that its new Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" CPU family is getting vPro technology for a new business laptop series that'll be called vPro.

The news comes from the MWC (Mobile World Congress) that's happening in Barcelona, Spain, right now... where, over the last few years, we've seen Intel move its approach with vPro technologies. The company shifted away from physical changes to the processors to software locking. Intel's new Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" processors officially support the vPro feature set, which is split into Enterprise and Essential tiers.

Intel's new Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" CPUs will be getting vPro technology, but its recent 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors will NOT be getting vPro, at least none of the mobile processors in the wild. Intel says if you want -- or need -- vPro technology, they recommend their new Meteor Lake-powered laptops that are spreading onto the market.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service allows users and PC gamers to stream and play over 1800 titles they own (plus free-to-play games) across a broad range of services. Paying GeForce Now Ultimate subscribers get access to a cloud-based GeForce RTX 4080 rig with priority access and even support for G-SYNC. Today's news, however, concerns GeForce NOW's free tier, which provides access to a 'Basic Rig' and one-hour sessions.

NVIDIA has informed free-tier users that as of March 5, 2024, they will begin showing up to two minutes of ads (or 'video sponsorship messaging') before each one-hour gaming session. The new ads will help pay for the free tier, with NVIDIA claiming that the change will "reduce average wait times for free users over time," though it's unclear how.

The change doesn't affect paying GeForce NOW customers, who get access to more powerful GeForce RTX hardware and longer gaming sessions. The 'Priority' tier offers up to 1080p 60 FPS gaming, while the 'Ultimate' tier offers up to 4K 120 FPS gaming on an RTX 4080 rig.

I think we've seen it all, folks... with the release of the new GameScent being a "fully immersive" AI-powered scent release system that's designed to make gamers' worlds even more immersive. Check it out:

The new GameScent AI device is compatible with all systems and consoles, automatically releasing scents based on the gameplay that's happening in real-time "without the need for any specific game development." Game developers don't need to make anything separately in order for the GameScent to work its smelly magic.

The new GameScent product is a patent-pending adapter that uses and captures real-time audio, processed by the GameScent's "innovative AI to release scents that correspond with the on-screen action". You can use it with your PC, game console, your TV with regular video content, or even a VR headset.

Intel has released a new driver for Intel Arc graphics with more massive improvements to DirectX 11 titles, up to a 65% average FPS uplift in Assassin's Creed Syndicate and a whopping 155% average FPS uplift in Just Cause 4. However, this time around, these performance enhancement improvements are not for discrete desktop Intel Arc graphics cards like the Intel Arc A750.

The performance improvements found in the new Intel Arc graphics 5333 WHQL driver focus on the new 'Meteor Lake' Intel Core Ultra mobile processors with built-in Intel Arc GPUs - like the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Ultra 5 125H, and Ultra 9 185H. As integrated graphics, the improvements range from 7% to 155% when playing DirectX 11 titles covering 1080p with 'Medium' settings enabled. Although DirectX 11 is most associated with older titles, newer games like Palworld still use the API - with the smash hit survival game getting a 14% performance improvement with the latest driver release.

This driver update covers all Arc GPUs and integrated Intel graphics and adds support for the new action RPG hit Last Epoch and Rare's DirectX 12 update for Sea of Thieves.

Sony's refreshed PlayStation 5 Pro console will launch later this year, with rumors that it will feature AI-powered upscaling technology that was dubbed an "NVIDIA DLSS competitor" that saw some tweets flying on X.

Leaker "Kepler" posted on X saying, "Why on earth are people thinking the PS5 Pro will support DLSS?" after headlines that Sony was working on a "DLSS competitor" for its upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro console. AMD makes the semi-custom SoC inside the PS5, PS5 Pro, and upcoming PS6, so any AI upscaling would be done through AMD technology like FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and NOT something from their GPU competitor.

Tylor Sweeney replied to Kepler, saying: "I could see them having AMD build a custom NPU-like chip using RDNA GPU cores (kinda like the sound chip in PS5) for AI/neural processing and then custom build an AI-enhanced FSR alternative, a la DLSS".

Mass layoffs hit Sony's video games division and some 900 people are believed to be affected.

Just yesterday I published an in-depth look at PlayStation's profit margins across the last 7 quarters, and as I was writing, I came to a sobering conclusion: More cost-cutting is coming. The profit margins are just too low. Sadly, that was confirmed today by PlayStation's soon-to-be-gone CEO Jim Ryan.

Sony Interactive Entertainment today announced that it will lay off 900 people, or 8% of its global workforce. The London Studio will close down completely, suffering the same fate as Sony's Japan Studio. All-star teams responsible for billion-dollar franchises aren't immune to the cuts, either: Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla Games are all being hit by layoffs, with the Horizon developer Guerrilla cutting about 10% of its staff, or 40 people.

While we don't know an awful lot about what the upcoming iOS 18 software update will bring in terms of new features or redesigned interface, we do know that there is a lot of noise surrounding Apple's ongoing work in the world of AI. The company is thought to be leaning heavily on AI for its upcoming software updates, including iOS 18, but it isn't clear what that will actually mean. The smart money is in improvements to the ailing Siri digital assistant, and a new report claims that AI features could well be enough to get Chinese buyers excited about the iPhone once again.

A paywalled DigiTimes report, picked up by MacRumors, says that even though the Chinese smartphone market has started to lean in on high-end models with price tags to match, sales of iPhones have struggled so far this year. Local Chinese brands have started to offer new AI-powered features and that has been enough to cause people to choose not to buy Apple's phones, but iOS 18 could arrest that.

It's reported that Apple's iPhone sales declined 13% in December 2023 alone and it's thought that things have only gotten worse as 2024 has rolled in. But with AI claims being made, people could choose to give the iPhone another try - assuming those AI improvements do come to the iPhone.