Latest News - Page 700

Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-S platform has received some more details thanks to new leaks, with hardware leaker YuuKi_AnS sharing it in a new post on X.

The next-gen Intel Arrow Lake-S platform is currently in engineering sample (ES) form, with data from these leaks probably outdated, so don't take performance or specs with certainty, but there are some great details in here. We should see Intel's flagship Arrow Lake-S processor with 24 cores (8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores) that line up with the current Raptor Lake-S platform.

Intel is bumping up the E-Core count on its Arrow Lake Refresh platform, but keep in mind that the leaked slides don't mention the new Arrow Lake Refresh. We do know that the upcoming Arrow Lake processors will be featured in an 8+16+1 configuration, with a 125W TDP for the upcoming K-series CPUs, which should materialize into the Core Ultra Series 2... oooh yeah.

Apple's new Vision Pro headset will cost you $3499 for the base model, scaling up to $4800 if you opt for 1TB of internal storage... but you will NOT want to damage it, as repair costs are as high as $2400 if you don't have AppleCare+ protection.

The company opened up pre-orders for its new Vision Pro headset a couple of days ago, where if you buy the minimum 256GB internal storage model, you're looking at $3499, while 1TB of storage will set you back $4800.

You'll want to get AppleCare+ protection which costs $499, because without it, if you damage something catastrophic (expensive) like the display or another part of the Vision Pro headset, you could be looking at spending $2399 on repairing your expensive new headset. AppleCare+ protected? $299 for that same repair.

NVIDIA's current-generation GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU and GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU can now be found inside desktop GPUs, at least in China.

According to a new article on VideoCardz, Chinese companies that specialize in marketing mobile GPUs as desktop GPUs with a low operating margin by using less expensive mobile GPUs, budget cooling designs, and simpler PCBs, with their power limits capped at 175W because they are mobile GPUs.

This isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as there are things like warranty that gamers have to worry about, as well as possible issues when it comes to driver support. VideoCardz reports that they get emails from readers who have "difficulties" with using these cards. Consumers of these mobile-now-desktop GPUs have to use modded drivers or seller-provided drivers that we don't know where they come from.

Meta is on a war path towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), where CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased in a new Instagram post that the social networking giant is betting big on AI and AI GPUs.

The company is currently training its next-gen model Llama 3, where Meta is building massive compute infrastructure to support their future roadmap, including 350,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs by the end of the year. Zuckerberg added that overall, almost 600,000 x H100-equivalents of compute will be ready, as they're also buying AMD's new Instinct MI300X AI accelerators, not just NVIDIA AI GPUs.

We should expect all this AI GPU power won't just be from NVIDIA's current-gen H100 AI GPU that's based on the Hopper GPU architecture, but NVIDIA's beefed-up H200 AI GPU and next-gen B100 AI GPU that's based on the next-gen Blackwell GPU architecture.

Sabrent seems to be getting closer and closer to unleashing its next-gen Rocket 5 Gen 5 SSD, with the company recently testing its new Gen5 SSD under loads with temperatures hitting just 60C... and remember, that's without a gigantic heatsink that previous Gen5 SSDs not just used, but NEEDED.

The new Sabrent Rocket 5 Gen 5 SSD features Phison's impressive new E26 Max14um controller, with the companies working closely together on the new Rocket 5 SSD beast. We've already seen tests of Sabrent's new Rocket 5 Gen 5 SSD pumping 14GB/sec (14,000MB/sec) reads and 12GB/sec (12,000MB/sec) reads, but now it's been tested under new conditions with impressive thermal results.

Sabrent showed off a sample of what we can expect with the up-and-coming Rocket 5 SSD, with CrystalDiskMark benched with 14169MB/sec reads and 12756MB/sec writes.

Now is an opportune time for video games developers, publishers, and platform-holders to push consumers even further towards digital gaming.

With the help of the billion-dollar microtransaction market, digital has taken over gaming as the largest revenue-generating medium. Console-makers like Sony and Microsoft have released digital-only systems to serve content, subscriptions, and services directly to consumers via digital marketplaces.

The up-side for digital-only games is massive for these companies; digital cuts a lot of costs, including manufacturing/shipping costs of the discs themselves. The trend towards digital has been vastly accelerated on both the hardware and access front, with platform-holders like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft offering value-oriented subscriptions to buffer--and, in Microsoft's case, overtake--the traditional business of selling games.

Walmart has reportedly been ordered by game suppliers to dispose of and/or destroy all physical disc copies of Starfield.

Starfield will reportedly be the initial first-party Xbox game to be removed from sale at retailers. According to a new employee memo, Walmart will begin taking down physical disc-based versions of Starfield from store shelves and removing the products from sale. The mass de-listing is reportedly at the behest of the game's suppliers, which in this case is Microsoft and/or Bethesda Softworks/ZeniMax Media.

The memo, which has been corroborated by deals maestro Wario64, says that the retailer aims to have all copies of Starfield removed from store shelves and processed by February 5.

If you buy an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pron Max today you'll have an array of different storage options from which to choose. The most capacious of them all is of course the 1TB model, but a new report suggests that Apple is getting ready to switch things up with this year's iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

According to a report by news aggregator account yeux1122 on the Naver blog, Apple is readying a new upgraded model of iPhone that will offer double the maximum storage available in Apple's best iPhones. The move would mean that Apple's iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max would make the move to a maximum capacity of 2TB rather than the current 1TB limit.

This is a rumor that follows a previous claim that Apple would start using new QLC NAND storage in its future iPhones, a move that would not only save physical space but also cost. That could be enough to make Apple choose 2TB as an option without making the costs too prohibitive. However, the downside is that such storage is slower when reading and writing data than the current TLC NAND used in iPhones today.

Apple announced the Vision Pro AR/VR headset way back in June 2023 but it didn't give us all of the details that you might have expected. But now, as the headset gets ready for its big June 2 release the company has started to share more and more details about what we can expect when the headset finally arrives. As a part of that, we now know what apps the headset will come with preinstalled.

Apple has shared a full list of the apps that will come installed on every single new Vision Pro when buyers first put it on, and there is a total of 25 apps for people to look forward tousing. However, out of those 25 apps a surprisingly large number aren't Vision Pro apps at all. Instead, they're iPad apps that have been preinstalled on the headset to make up the numbers. And perhaps more worrying is the fact that some of them are core apps that you might have expected Apple to focus on getting ready for the big day.

Of the 25 apps that Apple will preinstall, the following have been redesigned and optimized for the Vision Pro:

Apple's Vision Pro spatial computing headset is available for preorder now and people will start to receive their new devices next month and we're still learning new things. As part of the preorder window going live Apple has started to publish a number of new support documents to its website that details the headset, its capabilities, and more. And one of those has confirmed that other people will be able to see what Vision Pro owners see if they want them to.

That's thanks to the magic that is AirPlay, with Apple confirming that the headset will be able to send its display content to an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, or any other AirPlay-capable smart TV or device. The move means that others will be able to see whatever the Vision Pro wearer can see, something that we were not aware of until now.

There is one big limitation in terms of how the AirPlay experience will work, however. While each of the displays inside the Vision Pro headset are 4K affairs, sending that content over AirPlay will see Apple limit the resulting image to just 720p. That might not be an issue for those watching on an iPhone, but it does mean that throwing the image onto a big screen via a projector, for example, could be problematic.

Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset is now finally available for preorder and it will officially go on sale on February 2. That's when those who placed a preorder can expect the headset to arrive, while in-store orders will also begin on that same date. But Apple has shared a new support document that could be enough to give some people pause before placing an order.

The Vision Pro headset is, like any other AR/VR headset, prone to causing certain issues including dizziness and headaches. To that end, Apple has shared a new support document that outlines the medical conditions that people should be aware of. If you suffer from one of these medical conditions, Apple says, you might find that it aggravates symptoms or increases the risk of discomfort and even injury. In short, you might want to have second thoughts about spending $3,499 on a new Vision Pro if you suffer from one of those issues.

The list of medical conditions that Apple mentions specifically includes:

Palworld, a third-person Pokemon-esque survival game, is the next mega-popular indie sensation to hit the market.

The highly anticipated crafting-survival adventure game Palworld just launched in early access on PC and Xbox, and it's already racking up huge numbers. The game has sold over 1 million copies in its first 8 hours of availability on Steam and Xbox Series X/S, and at $29.99 per purchase, developer Pocketpair has certainly achieved great success.

That record has since risen to 2 million copies sold in the first 24 hours. Everyone is taking notice, especially the likes of Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, both of which are probably very interested in this new "Pokemon with guns" hit.

The GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is here, and this week, Jak and Kosta discuss NVIDIA's latest GPU launch, focusing on the Founders Edition model. This week has a lot of additional CES 2024 goodies, too, including some hidden gems from the show, like a new headset that charges using sunlight and even indirect light - meaning it'll never run out of battery.

Plus, a bunch of new unique displays, from transparent screens to MSI's new OLED in inbuilt AI game-enhancing/potential hack features, and glasses-free 3D and even VR directly from Samsung's new prototype.

Plus, plenty of SpaceX and AI Robot news out of Elon Musk-world, Valve opening the floodgate to games with AI-generated content on Steam, and the latest YouTube controversy.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth has made a controversial decision, it seems, when it comes to a feature that is normally free.

We're talking about the New Game+ mode, which is usually part and parcel of the core experience, and unlocked when you've completed the game for the first time.

However, with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (the franchise previously known as Yakuza), you only get the New Game+ option after completion if you've purchased the more expensive editions of the game.

Ara: History Untold is a grand strategy game in the vein of Civilization which does things rather differently, particularly when it comes to valuing the player's time.

Developed by Oxide Games and published by Microsoft, Ara: History Untold is set to release in the fall of 2024 on PC (and PC Game Pass), and it comes with some innovative ideas for the genre.

Firstly, there's that promise of not wasting your time, and Michelle Menard, Design Director at Oxide Games, explains how that works in a lengthy chat with Xbox Wire (hat tip to PC Gamer).

Windows 11 has an incoming new feature that allows Android phone owners to edit recently snapped photos from their handset on their desktop PC.

This is a fresh introduction with Windows 11 preview build 23619 (in the Dev channel) although it's only rolling out to a limited number of testers at the moment, so if you aren't seeing it, hold tight.

The idea is that when you take a photo, or a screenshot, on your Android phone, you'll get an instant notification of this on your Windows 11 PC (assuming you've granted the OS access to your Android device, that is, in your settings for mobile devices).

Farming Simulator 22 is the latest game to get AMD's FSR 3 frame generation tech to help with smoother frame rates.

It's a niche title, obviously, albeit one that's popular with its fans (online competitions, leagues and so on are built around this game, we should add). The addition of FSR 3 will go a long way towards smoother harvesting and hay bale stacking.

The feature comes with Farming Simulator 22 update version 1.13.1.1, and naturally requires an AMD (or NVIDIA) graphics card that supports FSR 3. RX 5000 GPUs are included, but it's recommended to have an RX 6000 or 7000 model. (For NVIDIA, RTX 2000 works, although RTX 3000 and 4000 GPUs are recommended).

We all love an underdog story (don't we?), so how about this one: an indie developer that's actually a lone programmer whose game is almost at the top of Steam's most-wanted rankings.

Manor Lords is in second place on Steam's wishlist rankings, which is a more than remarkable achievement against truly heavyweight competition as you might imagine.

The game from developer Slavic Magic (otherwise known as Greg Styczeń) is a city builder with a medieval theme and an in-depth economic and social engine, with large tactical battles thrown in to spice up the pot.

GALAX has introduced its new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER HOF OC Lab Master-X and Master Edition graphics cards, with a beautiful all-white look GALAX is known for... check them out:

The GALAX HOF (Hall of Fame) graphics cards are now rolling out in new RTX 40 SUPER series cards now that NVIDIA has introduced its new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4080 SUPER graphics cards into the wild. GALAX is introducing a new look for its HOF OC Lab series graphics cards, with plans to release all RTX 40 SUPER cards, starting with the RTX 4070 SUPER.

Inside, the new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER features the AD104-350 GPU with 7168 CUDA cores, which is a 20% bump over the RTX 4070, with the same 12GB of GDDR6 memory as the RTX 4070 non-SUPER. NVIDIA has a reference boost GPU clock of 2475MHz for its RTX 4070 SUPER, while GALAX is offering the fastest GPU boosts for an RTX 4070 SUPER so far with its new GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER HOF OC Lab Master Edition graphics card.

GEEKOM's new APro8 Max Mini-PC is nearly ready for the market, featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 8940HS processor and discrete Radeon RX 7600M XT graphics. Check it out:

The new GEEKOM APro8 Max Mini-PC features an AMD Ryzen 9 8940HS processor with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a TDP between 20W and 30W. The new "Hawk Point" APU features a boosted AMD XDNA processor for AI workloads, with the same specs and performance as the Ryzen 9 7940HS.

On the GPU side of things, we've got a discrete Radeon RX 7600M XT graphics card, as well as the Radeon 780M integrated GPU on the Hawk Point APU. The new GEEKOM APro8 Max Mini-PC uses AMD SmartSwitch so that both GPUs can work together, but most gaming will be done on the Radeon RX 7600M XT discrete GPU.