Latest News - Page 743

NASA has taken to its website to reveal a new image snapped by the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. The image is of two objects located in deep space that have masses equivalent to around 30 trillion and 120 trillion times the mass of the Sun.

The Hubble Space Telescope has honed its powerful instrument on the galaxy cluster known as Abell 3192, which is located in the constellation Eridanus. Originally, Abell 3192 was documented in 1989 in an update of the catalog of galaxy clusters that was first published in 1958. In that 1989 update, astronomers believed Abell 3192 was a single cluster of galaxies that was located at a specific distance. However, follow-up observations revealed something surprising to astronomers - the galaxy cluster's mass appeared to be in two distinct points and not one.

This discovery led astronomers to update their description of Abell 3192 to include two independent galaxy clusters, one located in the foreground that's located 2.3 billion light-years from Earth, and the other background galaxy located 5.4 billion light years from our planet. NASA writes on its website that researchers estimate that the masses of these galaxy clusters would be anywhere between 30 trillion and 120 trillion times the mass of the Sun.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has sat down for an interview at the Brazil-based entertainment convention CCXP, and revealed some key details about the current state and future of Starfield.

Spencer was asked about Starfield, and the Microsoft Gaming CEO began to explain that due to his position, he is able to play games early in their development, and when he was playing Starfield approximately a year before it was officially released, he noticed it was "probably gonna be a pretty special game" as he "couldn't stop playing".

Spencer's finger seems to be pretty close to the pulse for telling if a game is going to be a hit or not, as Bethesda's latest title has already reached 12 million players and is still sitting in the "top ten most played games from our studios." It should be noted that Spencer wasn't specific about where these players are coming from, whether they bought the game directly or accessed it through Game Pass. However, the launch of Starfield resulted in the biggest "single day" ever for the subscription service.

Taiwan publication The Commercial Times reports that Microsoft's Windows 12 will launch in June 2024, and the operating system will feature several AI technologies. With that, Microsoft's next Windows will launch alongside a wave of new AI PCs from companies like Acer, MSI, GIGABYTE, and Quanta.

According to the report, 2024 is shaping up to be "the first year of AI PCs," with dedicated hardware built for generative AI. This means Microsoft is positioning Windows 12 as the first version of the operating system built for the age of AI - so it will be interesting to see what it brings to the table compared to Windows 11.

The publication doesn't say where it got the June 2024 launch info for Windows 11. However, the article does feature quotes from Acer CEO Jason Chen and Quanta's Barry Lam from the recent Taiwan Medical Technology Exhibition.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 is banned in China, and with news of the company will use a cut-down AD102-250 GPU for its upcoming China-friendly RTX 4090D... the RTX 4090D has been created specifically for the Chinese market.

NVIDIA reportedly started increasing the number of AD102 GPU shipments into China, so that the Chinese board partners could prepare for when the RTX 4090 was banned from the Chinese market. The company knew this would happen, so Chinese AIB partners were ready... but now, these same Chinese board partners are unlaunching the RTX 4090.

Some of the Chinese board partners are removing mentions of the RTX 4090 from their website, with the likes of GAINWARD and GALAX both removing the cards and even if you look for them manually, you won't find them. The GAINWARD and GALAX cards have also both been removed from their respective websites.

GPU scams are very real, and Sapphire (who make some excellent Radeon GPUs) is once again warning its followers and customers that scam sellers on Amazon offering brand-new GPUs with discounts of up to 50% are most likely fake.

Sapphire Technology notes that the best way to tell if you're looking at a scam is by checking the "Ships from" and "Sold by" sections, which should read Amazon.com - anything else and you're at risk of being scammed. This advice applies to all GPU purchases over on Amazon, as buying directly from the source is always the way to go regarding expensive PC gaming hardware.

Amazon.com is home to countless resellers and third-party merchants, so it can be hard to tell who you're buying something from, which can be very risky regarding tech. GPU scams on Amazon aren't limited to Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX from Sapphire, as there have been recent listings for GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs with pricing as low as $399.

Update: an NVIDIA spokesperson reached out to me shortly after this story went live, and said: "We are engaged with the U.S. government and, following the government's clear guidelines, are working to offer compliant data center solutions to customers worldwide".

Original story: US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has some fighting words for NVIDIA: don't ship China any of your AI GPUs, and that her department needs more funding to stop China from catching up on cutting-edge semiconductors.

During the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, on Saturday, Raimondo said: "We cannot let China get these chips. Period. We're going to deny them our most cutting-edge technology". She added that she has a $200 million budget, referring to that $200M as "that's like the cost of a few fighter jets. Come on. If we're serious, let's go fund this operation like it needs to be funded".

The Steam Hardware and Software Survey results for November 2023 are in, and there have been a number of changes or corrections after October 2023's GeForce-heavy numbers. The most popular gaming GPU is still the GeForce RTX 3060, though its share has dropped dramatically - pointing to October's figures being a little out of whack.

Total AMD and Radeon market share is back at September 2023 levels, with a little bit of growth too, bringing Team Red up to 16.19% - though this is still a distant second behind NVIDIA's dominant 75.12% share. The biggest gains on the Radeon side come from the RDNA 2 line-up - with the Radeon RX 6700 XT, 6750 XT, 6800 XT, and the mainstream 6600 XT showing signs of growth.

It makes sense when you factor in just how heavily discounted RDNA 2 GPUs have been this year, which isn't amazing news for RDNA 3 and the latest Radeon RX 7000 Series. According to the latest Steam survey results the only GPU that seems to be resonating with PC gamers from the RDNA 3 generation is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

We've already heard reports of AMD working on X3D processors for its previous-gen AM4 platform, with new sources corroborating the leaks: AMD will be launching its Ryzen 7 5700X3D in the first few months of 2024.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor will be an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with 96MB of X3D cache on-board, while we're expecting a base clock of 3.0GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.1GHz. This means it is 400MHz slower in frequency over the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which AMD is probably using slightly gimped 5800X3D chips to make its upcoming 5700X3D.

There's no new information on the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, which is expected to be a more budget X3D offering as a 6-core, 12-thread offering that should have a 3.0GHz base clock and boost clock of up to 4.0GHz. ECSM is confirming this on Twitter, posting up a bunch of SKUs that it sees AMD launching in Q1 2024: Zen 3 GT, Zen 3 X3D, and Ryzen 8000 APUs that we've been hearing about for a while now.

The pre-release trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 showcased the main protagonist riding a train, so it was a little surprising when news dropped that developer CD Projekt Red wasn't planning on implementing a functional metro system in the game. Many expected a working metro system at launch and were confused when the in-game fast travel points within Cyberpunk 2077 were located at non-interactive metro stations.

Fast forward three years and Cyberpunk 2077 has transformed from a promising incomplete game into an excellent open-world cinematic action RPG with the massive Update 2.0 overhaul and the Phantom Liberty expansion. The good news is that the development team has another big update coming - Update 2.1 - and yes, you can now catch a ride on the Night City metro.

The newly implemented and working Night City Area Rapid Transit system has five separate lines. Players can travel between 19 different stations in what's described as "a proper metro ride experience."

PC shipments are expected to go through a huge sales boost in 2024, which will be driven by the "AI PC" wave that we're going to see begin in January 2024 and not stop throughout the year.

According to research outlet Canalys, in their new report, they see 2024 being a "delight" for the PC business. We've been seeing dips from the heights of the pandemic when pre-built system builders were essentially selling everything they could get their hands on and build.

But, after the pandemic, the PC industry saw huge drops in sales units dipping after the 2021 high, down in 2022, and down even more in 2023, but now 2024 is expected to be back up towards 2022 levels, and 2025 will get closer to 2020 levels. The entire PC business isn't doing great, but AI PCs are expected to see shipments increase by 8% up to 267 million units.

The price of AMD's higher-end Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards is now getting higher now that the RTX 4090 has been banned by the US government from being sold in China.

We all know that the US government and its updated export rules seeing high-end AI hardware, and even high-end gaming GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4090, are banned not just in China but other countries throughout the world. New information from Board Channels teases that there is no ban planned for the Radeon RX 7900 series.

The report adds that AMD is having trouble getting more Navi 31 GPUs to board partners in China because more gamers want high-end GPUs in the aftermath of the RTX 4090 being banned. Board Channel's sources added that the Radeon RX 7900 series -- so that's the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards -- are seeing sales increase in China and that there's already a shortage of GPUs for board partners (but not yet for consumers).

AMD has just announced that it has opened its largest global R&D center in Bengaluru, India, where the company will boost research, development, and engineering operations in India.

The new state-of-the-art facility will host around 3000 AMD engineers over the coming years, where they will be designing and developing semiconductor technology that will include 3D stacking, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and, I'm sure so, so much more.

Recently, the new R&D campus was inaugurated by Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Cabinet Minister for Railways, Telecommunications, Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. AMD executive leaders, including Mark Papermaster, executive vice president and chief technology officer; David Wang, senior vice president of GPU technologies and engineering; Brian Amick, senior vice president of central engineering; and Andrej Zdravkovic, chief software officer and senior vice president of GPU technologies along with the AMD India leadership team were present.

AMD's next-gen Zen 6 architecture won't be hitting desktops or servers for a number of years yet... we've still got Zen 5 to get to, folks... but we're hearing about the next-gen EPYC-E processors that will be powered by the next-gen Zen 6 architecture.

The new rumors on AMD's next-gen Zen 6 architecture and EPYC-E processors are coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead after some details on the architectural side of things for both Zen 5 and Zen 6 a few months ago in September, from a leaked internal AMD slide deck.

The codename for Zen 5 is "Nirvana," while Zen 6 is codenamed "Morpheus" where we're learning that Zen 6 will be increasing core counts up to 32 cores per chiplet (CCD) and supporting high-prevision floating point (FP16) operations acceleration for both AI and Machine Learning (ML).

Capcom will officially introduce its first $69.99 game and solidify the new pricing trend for modern games.

It's official: New AAA games now officially cost $69.99 across the board (well, except for games like Alan Wake II). The new pricing trend was first introduced by Sony, Take-Two Interactive, and Electronic Arts at the early onset of the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X generation, and one by one, major publishers and game-makers started moving towards the upped MSRP--even Nintendo, who charged $69.99 for Tears of the Kingdom.

Japanese publishers like SEGA and Capcom used to be among the last big-name publishers to keep their titles the pre-Gen 9 prices, but even they have increased costs. SEGA is charging $69.99 for the new Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth game, and Capcom, well, they're starting off their next fiscal year with their first $69.99 game.

Sycom has just launched its new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Silent Master graphics card, the latest member of their Silent Master family of cards... rocking dual Noctua fans and a huge design.

Sycom has already launched its RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti Silent Master graphics cards, with each card featuring an individual cooling design, but they're all using Noctua fans. This means we get a chunky heatsink and dual Noctua fans that make for a huge quad-slot design, but that thermal system is worth it if you want virtually silent operation from the card.

Noctua's own black chromax fans are in play here, with the iconic brown and beige fan design that sits on top of a huge heatsink on the Sycom RTX 4070 Ti Silent Master. Sycom is using the Noctua NF-A12x25 PVM fans with a custom metal frame that was developed by Nagao Seisakusho, with the black frame actually handmade, exclusively designed and manufactured.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is one of the hottest products in China right now, if you can get your hands on it, that is, you'll be paying double that price... which is seeing scalpers across the planet capitalize on expensive RTX 4090s being sold in China.

I was tagged once again by leaker I_Leak_VN on X, who pointed me to some pictures they had received from just one of the Vietnamese traders/scalpers that are hoarding GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards to sell to China. You can see in the photos above and below that the reseller has scores of ASUS, GIGABYTE, and ZOTAC custom GeForce RTX 4090 cards.. where there have to be over 100 in these photos alone.

Vietnam is also on the list of banned countries that the Biden administration and US government have been stepping down on, so it's not just China. Scalpers and resellers are always going to take advantage, especially when the price of an RTX 4090 is pushing past $4000 USD in China... it's safe to say things are out of control.

Following strong controversy over season 1, Paramount could redeem its Halo TV series with its upcoming second season.

Halo is returning to Paramount with a second season that debuts on February 8, 2024, the streamer has announced. The first two episodes of Halo S2 will be available on that date, with new episodes releasing every week after the premiere. Paramount has dropped a new 90 second trailer for Halo season 2 that appears to tap into the core themes of the franchise, capturing some impressive shots along the way.

The trailer really underscores the desperation and dimming hope that the human race had to face in Halo's sci-fi universe. The galaxy is on fire, ignited by a bloodthirsty alien zealots who seek to burn whole worlds in a misguided religious crusade. The footage shows planets being glassed by Covenant supercruisers, marines being brutally slashed in the shadows by a lethal elite assassin, and Master Chief going toe-to-toe with a sword-bearing elite in a sequence that can only be described as epic.

Amazon has released the first teaser trailer for the Fallout TV show, revealing a strong attention to detail and authentic representation of the post-apocalyptic franchise.

Following the bad reception to Netflix's Resident Evil and Paramount's Halo TV series, fans are optimistic about Prime Video's new Fallout adaptation. The streamer just released an entertaining 2-minute teaser for the Fallout show that touches upon the gritty humor-meets-horror style and themes that the game IP is known for.

The trailer has some welcome surprises, including a look at the Brotherhood of Steel in action, faithful companion Dogmeat alongside a positively ghoulish Walter Goggins, a hilarious cyclops overseer mutant sequence, and a highlight of some of the fiendishly brutal monstrosities that roam irradiated Los Angeles like the fearsome yao guai and what appears to be a horribly mutated axolotl that has fingers inside of its hideous mouth.

Valve boss Gabe Newell has been ordered by a federal judge to physically appear in U.S. district courts in Seattle and answer questions under oath.

Indie developer Wolfire Games has sued Valve (2:21-cv-00563-JCC Wolfire Games LLC et al v. Valve Corporation) for allegedly breaking antitrust law, and Gabe Newell has been ordered to show up in court to deliver deposition in the case.

Newell's legal counsel had previously asked to deliver remote deposition in the case and not have the Valve president show up in court, citing Newell's health concerns regarding possible COVID-19 exposure as the main reason. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour has now weighed in on the decision, ordering (Docket #170) Newell to appear in court because Newell did not provide sufficient evidence that he was of particular risk of serious illness over the general public.

Activision Blizzard King's latest innovation may adapt game release pricing to expansions.

According to new reports from Bellular News, Blizzard has sent out surveys to consumers regarding Diablo 4's expansion pricing schemes. Blizzard appears to be exploring Diablo 4 expansion bundles that include the base DLC alongside digital bonuses like premium currency, mounts, and skins.

The survey, which doesn't confirm or disconfirm what will actually happen, lists four price points for Diablo 4's expansion bundles that offer pieces of all points of monetization and features, whether it be early access and skins or battle passes and digital currency.