Latest News - Page 7

If you've been holding off on buying an AMD Ryzen CPU with the new Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 series, then the motherboard you've been waiting for is here: EVGA's new super-enthusiast X570 DARK motherboard.

EVGA's new X570 DARK motherboard has its AMD AM4 socket rotated 270 degrees, and just 2 x DIMM slots which is the optimal for extreme overclocking (1 DIMM per channel). There are 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, and a single M.2 NVMe SSD. You won't need much on this board, but with 4TB+ capacities on super-fast PCIe 4.0 SSDs you can build quite the beast with the EVGA X570 DARK.

Enthusiasts will be buying the EVGA X570 DARK motherboard for its 17-phase Digital VRM, with the huge power delivery cooled by extensive finned heat sinks. The aluminum-finned heat sinks cool the VRMs and the PCH through a large copper heat pipe. The dual DIMM slots limit you to 64GB, but there's not many situations where you'd be buying a motherboard like this and wanting to put 128GB into this board.

NVIDIA has just released its new GeForce 472.12 WHQL drivers which offer official Windows 11 support, with Microsoft's new OS just weeks away with a release on October 5.

The new drivers give GeForce RTX games support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, as well as enhancing SDR games with Microsoft's built-in Auto HDR, as well as DirectStorage which is all ready to crank your games to the next level on Windows 11.

There's also some tweaks and improvements that are included in the new GeForce 472.12 WHQL drivers, including improvements to Microsoft Teams and NVIDIA Broadcast thanks to the new features in Windows 11. NVIDIA has also taken the time to add 28 games supporting DLSS, which has super-speeded along thanks to DLSS powering Unreal Engine 4 and Unity including DLSS plugins.

Netflix has announced that it is using AMD EPYC "Rome" CPUs inside of its new data servers, beating out Intel and Ampere-based servers.

The current Netflix servers have up to 200Gbps of bandwidth, but the new servers are doubling this up to 400Gbps of bandwidth for the future of its content streaming. Inside, Netflix is tapping AMD EPYC 7502P (Rome) CPUs with 32 cores and 64 threads and a base CPU clock of 2.5GHz, and boost clock of up to 3.35GHz.

AMD's EPYC 7502P "Rome" CPU has 128MB of L3 cache, a 180W TDP, and arrives in a 1P (single-socket) configuration. Where AMD does things better than Intel here in the server game, is that AMD has PCIe 4.0 technology with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes on offer with up to 250GB/sec of I/O bandwidth and up to 2TB/sec in networking units.

Samsung launched its Galaxy S21 family earlier this year, led by the Galaxy S21 Ultra smartphone -- and just two weeks ago the company launched its new foldable phones in the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3.

Now we have a tease of Samsung's next-gen Galaxy S22 family of smartphones which half of the handsets will be powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 895 processor. The new Snapdragon 895-powered Galaxy S22 has been spotted in recent Geekbench results, with underwhelming results -- prototype device results to the side, we know it's coming.

Qualcomm still need to make its next-gen Snapdragon 895 official, and then Samsung will need to unveil its new Galaxy S22 family of smartphones sometime around March 2022. Qualcomm will most likely use its Snapdragon Tech Summit which is an annual event in December, to announce its new Snapdragon 895 chip. We're already hearing rumors of the tweaked Snapdrgon 895+ chip, too.

Activision-Blizzard loses its chief legal officer as it faces down four major complaints, allegations, and lawsuits ranging from discrimination to securities fraud.

Today Activision-Blizzard's ex-chief legal officer Claire Hart announced she has left the company: "After more than three years at Blizzard Entertainment, I have decided to move on to my next adventure. Friday was my last day," Hart wrote on Linkedin.

"The past three years have been full of unexpected twists and turns, but I feel honored to have worked with and met so many great people at Blizzard and across the Activision Blizzard businesses."

Blizzard has ideas on how to expand Diablo 2 Resurrected with new content that didn't exist in the original game.

Despite being 20 years old, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction is still technically an unfinished game. Back in the day, Blizzard North had released a number of patches to add in new features like fresh runewords, new skill synergies, item balances, and even respec options, but Diablo 2's item arsenal remains unfinished with many elite uniques missing from the database.

That could change thanks to the new Diablo 2 Resurrected remaster. Blizzard says they have a bunch of ideas on new items, runewords, and other updates that weren't available in the old-school PC game. Diablo 2's resurrection might only be the beginning, and Blizzard could reignite the fires of hell by slowly iterating, changing, and eventually revolutionizing the game.

Electronic Arts' experimental SEED division is currently using machine learning to help streamline game testing and simulator human behavior.

EA's games are getting bigger and bigger. Battlefield 2042, for example, is always-online and features 128-player multiplayer. It's the biggest project DICE has ever done. To make the game a reality, EA and DICE have used machine learning and AI to help initiate deep testing that goes beyond human capabilities.

In an i3D 2021 presentation from April, EA SEED Head of Technology Colin Barre-Brisebois talked about how the R&D division is using machine learning and AI to help optimize game development, testing, and content deployment.

Activision confirms to investors that it is being investigated by the Securities Exchange Commission, and affirms that it is complying with regulators.

Following yesterday's reports, Activision-Blizzard has sent out a press release that discloses the ongoing SEC investigation to investors. The billion-dollar gaming giant tells investors and the press that it is engaging and complying with all authorities and regulators.

Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard, said, "We are deeply committed to making Activision Blizzard one of the best, most inclusive places to work anywhere. There is absolutely no place anywhere in our Company for discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind. While we continue to work in good faith with regulators to address and resolve past workplace issues, we also continue to move ahead with our own initiatives to ensure that we are the very best place to work. We remain committed to addressing all workplace issues in a forthright and prompt manner."

Want to expand your PS5's SSD storage without breaking your bank? Buying an expensive $300 PCIe 4.0 SSD may not be necessary. You could grab this $55 drive instead.

According to findings from Digital Foundry, Western Digital's cheaper SN750 SE PCIe 4.0 (Gen 4x4) SSD actually works pretty well with the PS5 despite having marginally lower spec performance. The SN750 SE costs just $55 for a 250GB version and delivers up to 3.2GB/sec reads and just 1GB/sec writes--far below expensive, high-end competitors like WD's own SN850 (7GB/sec), the Crucial P5 Plus (6.6GB/sec), the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (7.1GB/sec), and the Seagate Firecuda 530 (up to 7.3GB/sec). It's worth mentioning the 250GB SN750 SE variant is slower than the 500GB (3.6GB/sec reads, 2GB/sec writes) and the 1TB version (3.6GB/sec reads, 2.83GB/sec writes).

Although Sony recommends that expansion SSD drives should hit at least 5.5GB/sec speeds, the SN750 SE delivered solid performance in test scenarios. The drive was used to run games like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, where in-game FPS was stable on the SN750 SE, and the cheaper drive held its own with powerful competitors like the WD SN850 and Sony's own internal SSD flash. Ratchet and Clank loaded in almost 10 seconds, roughly 30% slower than the built-in SSD.

Apple is wanting to get inside of your mind without putting cables inside of you, for now at least, with reports that the company is wanting to detect depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline on your iPhone.

This has of course rung alarm bells, because Apple would be doing all of this diagnosis work on-device, and would be capturing facial expressions, how users speak, sleeping patterns, respiration rates, and even how often you walk around.

The Wall Street Journal reports: "Apple Inc. is working on technology to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline, aiming for tools that could expand the scope of its burgeoning health portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal".