Latest News - Page 686

Burn-in with OLED screens remains something of a controversial issue, especially with PC monitors, and we've just had some interesting news in terms of warranty coverage for this potential problem.

Two monitor makers have revealed their extended warranty coverage for burn-in - a permanent blemish on the display, as opposed to temporary image retention, which happens all the time - and one firm has gone longer than the other.

As VideoCardz spotted, TFT Central flagged up on X (formerly Twitter) that ASUS has updated the warranty for its OLED monitors to include two years' worth of coverage for burn-in (in the product specs, though the main warranty page for ASUS hasn't yet been changed).

Fallout 4: Project Arroyo is an ambitious fan remake of the classic 1998 isometric hit Fallout 2 from Black Isle Studios - the last major entry in the franchise before Bethesda Game Studios took over in the mid-2000s.

Like other ambitious mods like Skywind and Skyblivion, which are Morrowind and Oblivion remakes in a more modern Bethesda engine, this goes one step further by translating a 2D game into full 3D.

Fallout 4: Project Arroyo has been in development for a few years, but over the weekend, we got our best look at the project with a two-minute location trailer that captures the look and feel of Fallout 2's New California setting. Fans of the classic will undoubtedly notice the Sacred Head of the Vault Dweller looking very cool (and imposing) recreated in Fallout 4.

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and the Phantom Liberty expansion went live recently, bringing several fixes to the game, including a few visual updates. Although not mentioned in the full release notes, the update also adds a new NVIDIA DLSS settings called DRS or Dynamic Resolution Scaling to sit alongside the Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes.

The various DLSS modes refer to the rendering resolution as a percentage, where Quality at 4K means AI upscaling from 1440p and Performance at 4K means AI upscaling from 1080p. The new DRS mode is about maintaining a target frame rate, where the resolution that DLSS is upscaling from dynamically changing to ensure a minimal performance loss.

It's an exciting new addition as it means DLSS will be able to dynamically switch from DLAA's native rendering to lower resolutions in much smaller increments, with Redditor 'skyj420' posting that they witnessed native 1440p drop to just 1420p to maintain the target frame rate set of 45 FPS.

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for January 2024 are in, giving us an updated look at the hardware PC gamers use for playing games on the biggest PC gaming platform. It's an interesting look at the current state of GPUs, with NVIDIA continuing to dominate with an overall 74.25% market share, followed by AMD with 16.46%. NVIDIA's total share has dropped compared to December 2023, while AMD's has grown.

Not dramatically, mind you, but enough to make a difference. However, the biggest Radeon gains come via integrated graphics, not desktop Radeon products. In fact, the only RDNA 3 GPU to make the list (and not relegated to the 'other' category) is still the flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX. According to the results, more than twice as many GeForce RTX 4080 GPUs are in circulation.

There's still no sign of the Radeon RX 7800 XT, 7700 XT, or mainstream 7600. However, as the 7800 XT and 7700 XT have only been available for four months, it could be a matter of time.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti launched in May 2023, and with the same price point as the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti it replaced, it offered a modest 10-15% improvement to PC gaming performance with the bonus of DLSS 3 Frame Generation support in one of the most power-efficient GPU releases this generation.

It's a great entry-point to 1080p and even 1440p gaming while being notably faster than mainstream offerings like the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600. In fact, it's closer to the GeForce RTX 3070 than those two offerings.

Today's deal arrives via US retailer Best Buy, which has dropped the price of a single model, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GAMING OC 8G, to a historic low of $343.99 USD - $55 cheaper than the $399 MSRP and $86 cheaper than this OC model's original $429.99 price point.

ASUS has just announced it's made Fortune's list of 2024 World's Most Admired Companies, which is the 9th time ASUS has received this honor.

The company was recognized for its extraordinary achievements in areas including global competitiveness, social responsibility, product service quality, and more. ASUS continues its technological innovation, maintaining its global leadership in areas like motherboards, computers, monitors, graphics cards, peripherals, routers, and more.

The company also has collaborations with strategic partners like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and others, which has continued to strengthen its presence in gaming, commercial, and industrial markets. The new AI market has also been a huge push for ASUS, which has rapidly advanced its AI applications, integrating cloud services, efficient computing power, and big-data platforms, as well as expanding into diverse fields such as smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart education, smart cloud, and smart retail.

The GeForce RTX 3050 6GB refresh and relaunch is real, with NVIDIA's new entry-level graphics card making some pretty major cuts that extend beyond lowering the VRAM capacity of the GeForce RTX 3050 8GB to 6GB.

One of the biggest changes with this relaunch and refresh for the new GeForce RTX 3050 is lowering the power rating from 130W to 70W. This means the new GeForce RTX 3050 6GB ships without a power connector and is entirely powered by the motherboard and PCI Express slot - which is great for home theater PCs or SFF builds.

And with a lower price point of around $169 compared to the GeForce RTX 3050 8GB's $240 or so, you might think this is an easy win-win. However, lowering the power rating to 70W means significant cuts all around, with a sizeable impact on performance - making it around 20% slower, according to reports.

The first thing you want to do with your new Apple Vision Pro after you've plonked down $3499 on it is rip it to pieces and see how it ticks. Right? That's exactly what the team at iFixit did, tearing down the technology-heavy Apple Vision Pro headset. Let's go.

The journey begins using a simple SIM eject tool, where you start taking apart the Apple Vision Pro headset with the regular heat gun, some prying, screws all over the place, brackets, connectors, and more. iFixit says that the Apple Vision Pro headset is too complicated to cover in detail in a single video, promising more videos that will show "just how deep this rabbit hole goes".

iFixit says that the strangest thing with the Vision Pro is "the thing that makes it most uniquely Apple: it's got a big shiny bubble glass front, which makes it stand out from the aluminum- and plastic-shrouded competition, even when it's off. And when it's on, it's even stranger-instead of being fully transparent, behind the glass, an odd lenticular screen displays a 3D-ish video of the user's eyes, emulating their gaze. Apple calls it the EyeSight display, and when the user is looking at you, it kind of, sort of, almost looks like you can see through smokey glass".

Apple's revolutionary new Vision Pro headset is now out in the wild, starting from $3499 and impressing the likes of Terminator and Avatar director James Cameron.

In a new interview between Vanity and Apple CEO Tim Cook, we get a look into Cook's thoughts, Apple's thoughts, and the thoughts of many others on the new Vision Pro headset. Avatar director James Cameron said: "I would say my experience was religious. I was skeptical at first. I don't bow down before the great god of Apple, but I was really, really blown away".

Iron Man and Mandalorian director Jon Favreau chimed in, telling Cook that he was "blown away" by the technology offered by the Apple Vision Pro and that it will do the storytelling of the future. Favreau actually created content specifically for the 3D capabilities of the Vision Pro, which you can check out if you've got Apple's new headset on your skull. Favreau said: "I'm excited by what kind of story I can tell now that I couldn't tell before now".

Faraday Technology is a company you might not have heard of, but they're a leader in the ASIC design services and IP solutions space, announcing a new collaboration with Arm and Intel on a 64-core SOC on Intel 18A technology.

The innovative new 64-core SOC will be seamlessly integrated into Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS), which will provide unparalleled performance and power efficiency that's made for the construction of capable hyperscale data centers, infrastructure edge, and advanced 5G networks.

Faraday's new Arm-based SoC is designed to be a fundamental component of its upcoming SoC evaluation platform, which will help customers accelerate the development of data center servers, high-performance computing (HPC)-related ASICs, and custom SoCs. It will feature interface IPs from the Arm Total Design ecosystem, while baked on Intel 18A technology. Faraday is expecting its new SoC to be released in the first half of 2025.

NVIDIA has been the fuel of the AI race since its inception, garnering an estimated 90% of the AI GPU market, and now Goldman Sachs has increased its share price target by a whopping 28%.

NVIDIA will publish its earnings report later this month, and thanks to its absolute dominance in the AI business, the company could post a whopping report, says Goldman Sachs. NVIDIA has pushed out countless H100 Hopper AI GPUs, with beefed-up H200 AI GPUs coming soon, and next-gen B100 Blackwell AI GPUs are due in 2024, too.

Goldman Sachs says that not only is demand for AI GPUs and AI servers healthy, but the supply constraints that were hurting NVIDIA AI GPUs are now easing. The firm increased its share target for NVIDIA from $625 to a huge $800, representing a 28% increase, while also increasing NVIDIA's earnings per share estimates for the next few years.

We know the advancements of AI have been swift and fast, but now we're hearing about an AI scammer using deepfake technology to defraud a business by $25.6 million.

In a report published by the South China Morning Post, a thief stole HK$200 million ($25.6 million USD) using deepfake technology to host a fake video conference call, where deepfake technology showed the chief financial officer (CFO) of the UK branch of the company.

The company's finance department received a phishing message that claimed to have been from the CFO in the UK, instructing staff to execute a secret transaction, but the employee wasn't convinced. AI was then used to host a conference call that had videos of the CFO and other staff to convince the staffer to transfer the funds.

AMD's new mid-range Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APU series is now out in the wild, with the fastest Hawk Point APU in the Ryzen 7 8700G being used for some new DDR5 memory overclocking world records.

We've already seen overclockers using the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU inside of an AORUS B650 Tachyon motherboard, pushing a DDR5-10346 memory overclock. Now, the ASUS OC team has pushed things even further, using the Ryzen 7 8700G APU inside of the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Gene motherboard and DDR5-10600 memory speeds.

The DDR5 memory in question is the G.SKILL Trident Z5 memory, which ut of the box will run at DDR5-7600 CL36 specs. The ASUS OC team pushed it up to DDR5-10600 speeds with CL50 at 1.4V, with no massive array of cooling the RAM or the APU needed for this new record. The team used a regular AIO liquid cooler for the test.

Crucial already has a fantastic T700 Gen5 SSD on the market, but the company is working on a new T705 series Gen5 SSD that has even faster read speeds than the T700 series Gen5 SSDs.

The new Crucial T705 SSDs will make use of Micron's new B58R FortisFlash TLC NAND technology, which will provide speeds higher than the T700 SSDs. According to the latest leaks, we can expect the 2TB variant to be the fastest T705 SSD with sequential read speeds of up to 14.5GB/sec (14,500MB/sec) and write speeds of up to 12.7GB/sec (12,700MB/sec).

Crucial's new 1TB variant of the T705 Gen5 SSD will feature 13.6GB/sec reads (13,600MB/sec) and 10.2GB/sec (10,200MB/sec) writes, while the largest 4TB capacity T705 Gen5 SSD (which there aren't a lot of ) will feature 14.1GB/sec (14,100MB/sec) reads and up to 12.4GB/sec (12,400MB/sec) writes. Damn good if you want 4TB of ultra-fast Gen5 SSD storage.

MSI is cooking up something that looks a little different than the traditional graphics card you'd see with its new special edition RTX 4090 SUPRIM X "Ruan Mei" Edition graphics card. Check it out:

MSI's new custom RTX 4090 SUPRIM X "Ruan Mei" Edition graphics card is based on the character Ruan Mei from the game Honkai: Star Rail. The full name is found on the poster that's bundled in the box, but the resolution of the photo makes it impossible to see.

The photos of the new card were posted by "hongxing2020" on X, which is based on MSI's delicious RTX 4090 SUPRIM X design (which I love). This is the newest SUPRIM design, and not the CLASSIC one, just to be clear. The beautiful green and gold shroud design looks unique here, while the backplate made me fall in love with the work MSI put into its new RTX 4090 SUPRIM X "Ruan Mei" Edition graphics card.

Reports say Microsoft is thinking about bringing select Xbox console exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Fans are predictably not happy and want answers. Next week, they will have them.

Multiple reports say that big-name games like Starfield, the new Indiana Jones project, and even Gears of War could break exclusivity and release on PlayStation. The goal here would be to maximize sales outside of the Xbox and Windows Store ecosystem--both of which have not captured substantial shares of their respective console and PC markets.

Everyone is confused by these announcements, but Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirms that the new business plans will be revealed next week during a special stream. This event could determine the fate of the Xbox hardware business as we know it.

Microsoft Office is widely used in homes and offices for good reasons. The software suite has been around for three decades and has evolved to offer some of the most powerful productivity tools available. Despite the availability of various clones, there is no substitute for Office. While it can be expensive, you can now save significantly thanks GoDeal24's Valentine's Day Sale that offers huge discounts on Microsoft Office Suites and Windows OS.

In this deal, you can snag a lifetime license for Microsoft Office 2021 Professional for just $27.78(reg. $299). As far as what you'll get with your one-time purchase, you'll gain access to popular software titles like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Publisher, and Access. These tools can help you in your day-to-day work, allowing you to create, organize, and collaborate on documents. This Valentine's Day, give the gift of enhanced productivity.

If you need to upgrade your operating system, go to the GoDeal24, which offers you a big reduction on Windows 11. Windows 11 Professional is offered to you at only $14.58 compared to $199 previously. You can also choose keys that cover several computers or that allow you to access an enterprise or more advanced version. You will then just have to download the operating system and install it on your device, and that's it. Windows 11 includes sharing features for better interaction with your teams, as well as improved protection and security features. Windows 11 is designed to perform better than Windows 10, especially in terms of games.

It's official: The godfather of tactical stealth games is returning to the genre. Hideo Kojima has announced he is making a new experimental espionage game with Sony.

Hideo Kojima has now announced three projects: Death Stranding 2, the horror game OD for Xbox, and a new stealth espionage game that's totally not Metal Gear Solid. The last game was announced at Sony's recent State of Play event, and while details are light, we do have a name.

The project is codenamed PHYSINT, which could be short for "Physical Intelligence," a term used to describe operatives collecting intel on the field. It'll be set in a totally new, all-original IP, and it's being made for PlayStation. It's also to be a film-game hybrid...which is interesting. "Two years from now, I will celebrate the 40th anniversary of my game production career. I am confident that this title will be the culmination of my work," Kojima said at the event.

It looks like NVIDIA may have a feature in the pipeline which is like Windows 11's Auto HDR, in that it turns SDR games into HDR - but is a better take on the idea (hopefully).

This would be for RTX graphics cards, and it'll theoretically build on top of the recently introduced capability to upgrade SDR videos to HDR, called RTX Video HDR. Just like that feature, it would use the RTX graphics card's Tensor cores to realize the HDR conversion (or rather, approximation).

As noticed by 'Emoose' (hat tip to VideoCardz), NVIDIA's version 551.23 graphics driver, which added RTX Video HDR, has some 'TrueHDR' profile settings that can be implemented for non-HDR games.

Gears of War could be the next big Xbox exclusive to release on PlayStation.

Reports indicate that Microsoft is thinking about breaking Xbox exclusivity for select franchises. The idea is to launch new and catalog titles onto rival platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo to boost sales. Sources have told The Verge that Xbox-exclusive games like Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Hi-Fi Rush could break exclusivity. Other rumors suggest Sea of Thieves could also cross over.

Today we have fresh reports that even more games could be going to PlayStation. Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb says that Microsoft is currently discussing bringing its billion-dollar Gears of War series to PlayStation. Xbox leadership has not officially confirmed or denied the rumors, and nothing has been decided yet.