Latest News - Page 766

The TT Show is back for another massive week of news and happenings in the tech, gaming, and science space with Jak and Kosta - this time with an added 'TT Show After Dark' section. Okay, maybe not, but the duo covers the adult industry embracing AI technology and the new Strange Brew from popular streamer Amouranth.

This week on TweakTown's official podcast, some of the biggest stories include Apple bringing its cutting edge 3nm M3 chips to MacBooks and iMacs, rumors surrounding NVIDIA creating Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs, and how the latest deep dives into Star Citizen and Squadron 42 have rekindled our hype for games that have been in development for over a decade.

Sticking with games, Jak and Kosta also talk about the awesome PC gaming mod scene, specifically those that have spent the time recreating the entirety of Skyrim in Age of Empires II or took it upon themselves to add 4K support to the recent Metal Gear Solid Collection that renders Kojima's classics in 720p.

Windows 11 23H2, officially known as Windows 11 2023 Update, has been out for a short while now, available to those who want to upgrade from 22H2.

However, there's a catch, and that's regarding installing the latest incarnation of Windows 11 with the Media Creation Tool (which is used for a fresh install of the OS via a bootable USB stick or DVD).

If you go this route, even though Microsoft states that the current release version of the Media Creation Tool is the 23H2 update, in actual fact, it still fetches 22H2 instead.

Baldur's Gate 3 just received another big patch (Bethesda, are you paying attention?) and this fourth effort brings in a whole load of nifty changes, most notably the addition of FSR 2.2.

With FSR 2.2 now on-board for AMD graphics cards - and that means the Steam Deck, of course - the RPG will get nicely boosted frame rates courtesy of the upscaling tech, but with much better graphics.

Using FSR 1.0, which was previously in place, Baldur's Gate 3 looked pretty awful, with all manner of odd graphical artifacts and glitches as PC Gamer, which spotted the release of this patch, points out.

It seems the ban on NVIDIA's RTX 4090 graphics card being shipped to China is going to be in place in two weeks, or so further chatter from the GPU grapevine indicates.

According to Tom's Hardware, with the website citing the usual insiders ('people familiar with the matter') and its own delving into published SEC filings, the RTX 4090 ban will kick in come November 17.

This backs up a report from MyDrivers earlier this week which specified the same date, just a fortnight from today.

Lexar has just announced that it has unveiled its new NM790 with Heatsink M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe SSD, which in layman's terms, is the Lexar NM790 SSD for the PlayStation 5 console.

The new Lexar NM790 SSD is an upgraded version of the award-winning NM790 SSD, with the new design featuring a heatsink to keep it cool when it's running inside of the PlayStation 5, as well as any gaming PC. Lexar offers some fantastic speeds out of the NM790 SSD, with up to 7400MB/sec (7.4GB/sec) sequential reads and up to 6500MB/sec (6.5GB/sec) sequential writes.

Joey Lopez, Director of Marketing, said: "We are thrilled to offer gamers a powerful SSD with an integrated heatsink that allows players to squeeze the full performance out of their PlayStation 5 gaming systems while keeping their consoles cool".

AMD could see its AI upscaling technology powering Samsung's next-gen Galaxy S24 smartphones, with new rumors teasing that AMD is working directly with Samsung and Qualcomm on getting FSR onto smartphones.

The new rumor is coming from Tech_Reve on Twitter, who says it's an exclusive: "AMD, Samsung, and Qualcomm have decided to jointly develop 'FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)' in order to compete with NVIDIA's DLSS, and it is anticipated that FSR technology will be implemented in Samsung's Galaxy alongside ray tracing in the future."

Apple has its in-house MetalFX upscaling technology on its iOS devices, NVIDIA DLSS is all over the PC and laptop scene as well as the future-gen Nintendo Super Switch (I seriously think it'll be called that; Nintendo would be missing out), and then AMD FSR technology entering the smartphone business makes sense. But remember, Qualcomm has its own upscaling technology with Snapdragon GSR. What's happening with that?

Microsoft is reportedly looking at pushing full steam ahead into the world of AI -- riding the wave of artificial intelligence that saw the company launching its generative AI-powered Copilot software for Microsoft 365 enterprise customers this week -- and now we're expecting the rise of the "AI PC" in 2024 and beyond. What will the "AI PC" do more than a "non-AI PC"? Well, we don't know, and I don't think it'll be much.

We're seeing Qualcomm push AI into its processors, AMD has Ryzen AI on some of its processors, and Intel's new Meteor Lake CPUs will have a dedicated AI chip that will handle artificial intelligence tasks. What are those tasks? Well, we're going to see them shoved down our throat over the coming 18 months... where it seems Microsoft will be leading the charge with Windows and Office and AI-powered "Copilot" additions.

The next sticker on computer systems will be for the "AI PC," and it seems Microsoft will have a particular metric -- an AI benchmark of TOPS performance -- that an "AI PC" would perform and be scored on its AI performance. This will give Microsoft another noose to tie around OEM's necks, making sure they fall into line with "AI PC" performance on their new systems.

SteelSeries is known for creating high-quality PC gaming peripherals covering keyboards, mice, and headsets. Looking at the latter, the SteelSeries Arctis series has consistently delivered excellent and award-winning audio solutions over the years - like the recent SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X.

With the company's gear mostly associated with the competitive and esports scene, its latest lineup addition - the new SteelSeries Alias Series Mics - is aimed at the streamer and content creator market. For those looking for an easy plug-and-play, broadcast-quality experience, there's the USB-C Alias, and for those looking for a more professional XLR setup, there's the Alias Pro, which comes with a Stream Mixer.

SteelSeries makes a special note to say that the Alias Series Mics have been built from the ground up for gamers and, with that, take full advantage of the company's powerful Sonar audio platform.

First of all, Steam Deck or not, modding a PC gaming rig or device with 61 Terabytes of storage for games is kind of crazy - but in the best possible way. With 61TB, you don't have to worry about games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 taking up well over 100GB of drive space. There's enough room for most PC gamers to install their entire Steam library and still have enough room to install all the additional games added during the upcoming Steam Holiday Sale.

The highest capacity off-the-shelf Steam Deck from Valve is 512GB of internal NVMe storage, so going up to 61TB is like watching a graph figure out that there's a thing called 'exponential growth.' The second and important point to make is that this mod isn't exactly something you can try at home as it makes use of the Solidigm P5336 61.44TB enterprise SSD.

An enterprise solution worth many thousands of dollars, which we reviewed last year - calling it "the king of capacity." How StorageReview managed to get this SSD working on Steam Deck is pretty cool - so let's take a look.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's Cloud game streaming platform, lets you play the games you own on a GeForce RTX 4080-powered rig. It is updating the list of compatible games with 15 new titles this week, and it doesn't stop there. Throughout November 2023, over 50 new games are headed to the streaming platform - with many from the recent Xbox and PC Game Pass partnership.

As part of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox made a deal with NVIDIA to appease regulators to bring both its games and those of Activision Blizzard to GeForce NOW. This is great news for subscribers because it's currently the most impressive cloud gaming service available. The setup is simple: play the games you own (or have access to) via Steam, the Epic Games Store, or the Xbox app, which includes PC Game Pass.

Games supported this week include new releases like Jusant, RoboCop: Rogue City, and The Talos Principle 2, which include support for DLSS 3 and Frame Generation.

German PC hardware maker, be quiet! is known for creating some high-quality premium gear, and its latest PC case certainly fits into that category. The new Dark Base 701 is designed for high airflow and aesthetics, with a full mesh on the top and front, some subtle ARGB effects, and the company's impressive Silent Wings 4 fans keeping things cool.

For those with experience with or are aware of be quiet!'s Dark Base 700 PC case from 2017, designed for silent operation, the Dark Base 701 takes a different approach. The three pre-installed Silent Wings 4 140mm PWM high-speed fans ( with a maximum speed of 1900 rpm) are powerful, and with room for five additional 120mm or 140mm fans, the cooling potential here is exceptional.

Another area where the Dark Base 701 impresses is with the ease of installation, which includes a motherboard tray that lets you assemble outside of the case alongside completely tool-less HDD and SSD installation.

NVIDIA has pushed out its new GeForce Game Ready 546.01 WHQL drivers, which offer the best day-one gaming experience for multiple games, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

Not only do the new GeForce Game Ready 546.01 WHQL drivers provide the best support for Modern Warfare III, but also Desynched, Jusant, and RoboCop: Rogue City. There are some fixes for issues in previous drivers, with the new drivers tackling Halo Infinite, where NVIDIA has fixed increased loading times after updating to the previous 545.84 drivers, as well as the significant performance drops on Maxwell-based GPUs.

In the new 545 release drivers, we've got support for CUDA 12.3 as well as RTX Video Super Resolution v1.5 technology, and of course, the latest performance improvements, bug fixes, and driver enhancements.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III seems to be the biggest Call of Duty of all time, with the PlayStation 5 version of the game taking up an SSD-busting 234.9GB of storage... wowzers. The PC version of the game requires an equally SSD-hurting 213GB of space.

Why does XXX require so much storage? Activision explains why the file sizes of the game are "larger than last year", explaining: "This is due to the increased amount of content available day one, including open world Zombies, support for item carry forward from Modern Warfare 2, as well as map files for current Call of Duty: Warzone. (Note: as part of our ongoing optimization efforts, your final installation size will be actually smaller than the combined previous Call of Duty experiences)".

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III requires 79GB of storage in its basic form, giving you multiplayer only without the campaign or the higher-quality textures. The campaign for Modern Warfare III is where all of the storage space is used, with 140GB for the campaign alone. This means that if you want the campaign + multiplayer + zombies + Warzone = 235GB of space on the PlayStation 5 and 213GB of space on the PC.

AMD has released AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.11.1, which adds launch support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, The Invincible, and JX3 Ultimate.

The new driver also adds Radeon Boost support to Alan Wake 2, which is AMD's performance-boosting technology that dynamically adjusts the resolution based on how much action is currently on screen or when there's a lot of fast movement. Remedy's Alan Wake 2 is a deliciously slow-paced game, so we're not sure exactly how it'll work there - but it's a nice get nonetheless.

There's other good news is that several issues are getting fixed - including Counter Strike 2 performance on some Radeon GPUs and flickering when playing Total War: Pharaoh and Alan Wake 2. Plus, some very welcome AI and Machine Learning improvements. However, there's no word on when Anti-Lag+ will be reinstated. Or, a timeline for when Fluid Motion Frames is leaving beta.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series graphics cards have filled the headlines for weeks now, with the latest leaks on them teasing TDP numbers for the RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and finally, the RTX 4070 SUPER.

According to new leaks from kopite7kimi suggests that the two higher-end SUPER refreshes in the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER will have the same TDP as their non-SUPER counterparts of 320W and 285W, respectively. The GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, on the other hand, will have a 220W TDP, 20W increase on the 200W of the RTX 4070 non-SUPER.

However, these power numbers would be for NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Founders Edition graphics cards, with AIB partners releasing custom variants of the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4070 SUPER graphics cards having higher TDP numbers.

AMD has just launched its new Ryzen 7040U series processors, which feature their Zen 4c cores borrowed from the datacenter-focused EPYC family of processors. The entire Ryzen 7040 series of APUs has been popular for systems with different designs, and recently, TianBei launched its new Cyberpunk GOD78 Mini-PC.

Inside, it features the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor. This APU inside features 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture at up to 5.1GHz, a Radeon 780M based on the RDNA 3 GPU architecture with 12 compute units clocking at up to 2.7GHz, with a 35-54W TDP.

The new Cyberpunk GOD78 Mini-PC has "CYBERPUNK" plastered on top of it and a wicked aesthetic with RGB lighting peaking out from multiple parts of the system. It looks futuristic, and I kinda dig it... with the cyberpunk-style armor on top and interesting RGB lighting designs, it'll look great on your desk. Speaking of being on your desk, it measures 131.5mm x 131.5mm x 55mm.

AMD has made its new Ryzen 7040U series official, with the launch of two parts of that series: the Ryzen 5 7545U and Ryzen 3 7440U processors, which will both feature smaller Zen 4c cores that is currently used in the EPYC family of processors.

The special thing about AMD's new Ryzen 7040U series CPUs is that they're the first to feature a hybrid-style architecture with performance-focused and efficiency-based cores, similar to how Intel uses a hybrid design with P-Cores and E-Cores on their Core CPUs.

Now, AMD is saying it has even better performance with its new processors over the competitor, and they all feature "AMD Ryzen AI" technology. AI will be a huge focus moving forward on CPUs over the coming months -- Intel's new Meteor Lake packs an AI chip -- and Microsoft will change to "AI PC" recommendations and scores on systems in 2024.

Legendary hellraiser John Romero plans to celebrate Doom's 30th anniversary with a new WAD.

Sigil II is done. Romero has laid the finishing touches on the new Doom mod (which are actually called WADs, or "Where's All the Data?"), and pre-orders are now open for the new Doom "mega WAD" created by the maven of mayhem himself. Prices start at €6.66 for the digital edition, but just like last time with the original Sigil, Romero is making big box versions of the WAD. These versions are super popular and two of the three big box SKUs have sold out in less than 2 hours.

"On December 10 it's Doom's 30th anniversary, and on Doom's 30th, I wanted to release another episode. It's the sixth episode, and it's called Sigil II," Romero said. "That is the day that we'll start shipping Sigil orders."

Apple has reportedly stopped signing the iOS 17.0.3 update, a move which means that users can no longer install it on their iPhones even if they want to. This comes after Apple released iOS 17.1 to the public recently and with iOS 17.2 now being beta tested. That update isn't expected to ship to the public until next month, however.

There is still an older version of iOS available for those who want it, however. Apple continues to sign iOS 17.0.2 which means that it can be installed on devices should their owner want to go that route. However, we'd always suggest using the latest version of iOS to ensure that you're using the latest versions of its apps as well as benefiting from the usual array of bug fixes and security improvements.

Those security improvements are often behind Apple choosing to stop signing older versions of iOS, for example. It wants to ensure that bad actors cannot choose to install an old version of iOS onto an iPhone in order to exploit a bug that might allow them to gain access to personal information. Apple often simply likes to block downgrading to prevent the potential for future jailbreaks based on security flaws, although jailbreaking isn't anywhere near as popular as it was in the early years of the iPhone.

Intel has made great progress with its Arc graphics card drivers since its Alchemist GPUs first emerged, and the latest release is no exception.

The new Arc & Iris graphics driver version 31.0.101.4952 - which it should be noted is a beta - brings in support for the following games:

As well as support for The Talos Principle 2, this gets a solid performance boost, with the new driver offering an (up to) 19% increase in average frames per second at 1440p resolution (on High settings).