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Morgan Stanley analysts predict the effects of artificial intelligence on the video games sector.

AI aims to supercharge productivity with new tools like Microsoft's Copilot, and artificial intelligence is also expected to help optimize production in the interactive entertainment industry. Video games take many years to make due to the complex nature of the process, which often requires tedious tweaking, steady iterative design, and lots of bug-squashing. The hope is that developers can use AI to automate a portion of these tasks and potentially reduce costs and release games even sooner.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley believe that AI will have a tangible effect on gaming. Platform-holders like PlayStation, Xbox, and potentially even Nintendo are expected to benefit the most from AI, as these companies can bake time-saving AI tools into their respective software development kits (SDKs) for console and gaming hardware. Other engine-makers like Unity and Epic Games could also leverage AI for their production environments.

We all know that Windows 10 doesn't have too many miles left on the clock for support, and the impact of that could be pretty devastating to the environment, an advocacy group in the US has argued.

The Register reports that PIRG, the US Public Interest Research Group, has brought attention to the stark reality that when Windows 10 is made obsolete in October 2025, that will mean up to 400 million of the billion devices out there running the older OS could be on the scrapheap.

PIRG urges Microsoft to think again on Windows 10 support, and notes that the move could mean the "single biggest jump in junked computers ever," putting a big dent in the company's drive for sustainability.

AMD has released a new version of its Adrenalin graphics driver especially for Alan Wake 2.

Adrenalin Edition 23.20.17.05, which is clearly marked 'For Alan Wake 2,' has been rushed out the door by Team Red.

A dedicated driver just for a single game? Yes, that's unusual for sure, but what seems to have happened here is that AMD couldn't quite fit the work to support Alan Wake 2 into the last driver (v23.10.2, released last week).

Those mulling a purchase of an RTX 4090 graphics card would be advised to wait, at least going by what's happening with the GPU's pricing right now, and also what might be in store for the future (as predicted by leaker Moore's Law is Dead - we'll come back to that later).

Wccftech reports that the pricing of RTX 4090 models in the US is climbing now, after having held pretty steadily at around the MSRP of $1,599 for some time. It's now difficult to find one at MSRP, and if we look at major retailers, their 4090 models are a good chunk above that level now.

The tech site points to Newegg, where the cheapest RTX 4090 is $1766 (at the time of writing, it still is), which is over 10% more than the MSRP, a notable rise.

The TT Show is back for another big week of news and happenings in the tech, gaming, and science space with Jak and Kosta. This week on TweakTown's official podcast, the duo talks about the launch of Alan Wake II on PC - which requires DLSS and FSR to render its impressive visuals. Is this where PC gaming is headed in the next couple of years?

Kosta also talks about his time at SXSW Sydney and IEM Sydney 2023, where he saw Intel team up with the overclocking gurus at Team AU to break about of world records live on stage - including Counter-Strike 2 hitting 1310 FPS and DDR5 memory push to well over DDR5-11000 speeds.

The duo also discuss the potential ban of the GeForce RTX 4090 that drove up prices in the region to double and triple the MSRP. Since recording the episode, it sounds like the ban is being reversed, but it's wild to think that a gaming GPU is simply too powerful and dangerous to release in all markets.

We've been hearing more and more about NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB graphics card, hearing a few different rumors suggesting AD103 GPU, then AD102, 20GB of GDDR6X, then 16GB of GDDR6X... well, now we're hearing about pricing, and it's exciting.

NVIDIA's upgraded GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB graphics card could be released to really stir things up with its competitor AMD, not only dropping it into battle above the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but having a price of possibly just $999 to really make an impact. Moore's Law is Dead reports that a $999 to $1199 price could arrive with the RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB and will be pushed to perform 9-15% faster than the RTX 4080.

In terms of upgraded memory, MLID is being told directly that the RTX 4080 SUPER would be using faster 24Gbps GDDR6X memory compared to the 21Gbps GDDR6X memory on the current RTX 40 series GPUs. If NVIDIA does price its RTX 4080 SUPER at $999 to $1199, then we'd most likely see the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti discontinued and the RTX 4070 dropping to below $550.

The first version of Microsoft Word for Windows debuted on October 25, 1983 - a couple of days before the release of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. If you have vivid memories of one or both of these events, you're one of what the young people these days call "the olds." Don't worry, putting a reference to one of the most popular albums from 1998 in the headline probably puts me in the same category.

Yes, Microsoft Word is now 40 years old, and to celebrate the occasion, Microsoft has posted a nice little timeline to commemorate the history of the Word Processor. The very first version of Word shipped with a mouse, and as you can see from the YouTube clip from Aldo Computers below, there was a little tutorial on how to use the strange new input device.

The WYSIWYG or 'what you see is what you get' design meant that whatever you saw on screen was exactly how the document would print. It was most likely on one of those dot matrix printers that made sounds like they were a secret weapon in Wolfenstein 3D.

The Metal Gear Solid Collection's first volume is available on consoles and PC. From Konami, it brings remastered ports of the first three games in Hideo Kojima's iconic stealth action series to all gamers - with Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater all present. Throw in the Metal Gear games from the cartridge-era NES console, and it's a definite cause for celebration.

At least that's what many expected until they fired up the PC version and found that Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 weren't optimized for keyboard and mouse controls, and the PS2-era titles maxed out at 720p rendering. Plugging in a controller fixes the first issues, but you'll need a mod for the latter.

Rendering old games at a super-high resolution can cause issues like UI and textures. Still, according to the MGSResolutionPatch (available via GitHub), it adds a smooth and crisp 4K option for Metal Gear Solid 3. And, as expected, the mod drops within hours of the collection's PC port. And it weighs in at a tiny 64 KB.

We got to check out MSI's new 'Project Zero' range of motherboards at Computex 2023 earlier this year, and when paired with the company's compact and stylish Project Zero compatible case and new slimline GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, it was hard not to be impressed.

Like initiatives from ASUS and GIGABYTE, Project Zero looks to redesign the traditional PC motherboard by placing all of the connectors (the stuff that needs cables) to the underside of the motherboard. The result is a cleaner and more eye-catching build - especially in the age of PC cases with tempered glass panels.

The good news is that it looks like the launch is right around the corner, with product pages with full specs and details for two Micro-ATX Project Zero motherboards popping up online - the MSI B650M PROJECT ZERO for AM5 Ryzen 7000 Series processors from AMD and the MSI B760M PROJECT ZERO for LGA1700 Intel Core 14th, 13th, and 12th Gen CPUs.

NVIDIA has published its latest Game Ready driver, which will offer the definitive day-one experience in Remedy Entertainment's just-launched Alan Wake 2, which features full ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS 3.5, Ray Reconstruction, and Reflex technologies from NVIDIA. Grab the new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready driver here (701MB download).

Alan Wake 2 has absolutely beautiful ray-traced graphics, which are enhanced and accelerated by NVIDIA DLSS 3.5's huge suite of AI-powered technologies. NVIDIA's new Ray Reconstruction feature in DLSS 3.5 renders the Alan Wake 2 world at its absolute best, while frame rates are boosted by 4.5x with GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.

"Full ray tracing," you ask: yeah, "full ray tracing" is also known as path tracing, and will accurately simulate light throughout an entire scene. It's used by visual effect artists in film and TV graphics that can be up to photorealistic in quality, but now, with the latest GeForce RTX series GPUs with RT Cores and AI abilities like NVIDIA DLSS, worlds like Alan Wake 2 are coming to life. We have full ray tracing in real-time in video games now, and Alan Wake 2 delivers the very best of what high-end PC gaming has to offer.

NVIDIA's flagship Hopper H100 Tensor Core GPU is one of the best pieces of technology that mankind makes, costing over $35,000. Alphacool has just unveiled a new single-slot water block for the NVIDIA H100 PCIe GPU that has been designed and engineered for Grace Hopper H100.

Alphacool's new ES H100 80GB HBM PCIe GPU cooler features a matte carbon finish with no RGB bling -- this is a data center, professional, mega-expensive card, not a gaming GPU -- which will see many of these installed into a motherboard. This will also be driven by the fact that Alphacool's new H100 GPU cooler is a tiny single-slot instead of a 1.5-slot design.

The company positions the GPU cooler as close as possible to the components that need to be cooled, using heat-conducting pads that were reduced to a thickness of just 1mm. Alphacool wanted the maximum possible reduction in the thickness of the copper block, and the optimization of the water flow inside the cooler to allow all important components, including the GPU, VRMs, and VRAM, to be cooled by water much better and more effectively. It's a win-win.

ASRock has just the WRX90 and TRX50 motherboard release train, announcing their new WRX90 WS EVO and TRX50 WS motherboards that are ready for AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 7000 and Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000WX series CPUs.

The company has created its new motherboards to support either 4-channel or 8-channel DDR5 RAM, supporting up to 1TB/2TB DDR5 ECC RDIMM memory, PCIe 5.0 connectivity, server-grade storage expansion including Slim-SAS and MCIO, super-fast 10GbE networking, and so much more.

ASRock said that its new WRX90 and TRX50 motherboards would give you the ultimate performance for almost every application, such as content creation, video rendering, high-end workstations,, and even AI machine learning.

We've already seen early teases of GIGABYTE's upcoming TRX50 AERO-D motherboard, but now ASUS has its official announcement of the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI motherboard, which handles AMD's new families of Ryzen Threadripper 7000 and Threadripper PRO 7000 series CPUs.

The new ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE motherboard can handle the flagship Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor, which features 96 cores and 192 threads of mind-boggling processing power. If you want the HEDT-focused Ryzen Threadripper 7980X processor, you'll get 64 cores and 128 threads of HEDT power inside of your system.

ASUS also provides 5 x PCIe x16 slots, with 3 of them being PCIe 5.0 compatible, so you can install a bunch of high-end SSDs on Gen5 connectors for some 64GB/sec SSD action. ASUS includes 10GbE and 2.5GbE networking ports here, as well as support for SlimSAS NVMe technology. Power-wise, we've got a 36-phase VRM design, with two fans on each side -- keeping those VRMs nice and cool when you're powering a 64-core or even 96-core CPU. There's also DDR5 memory here in quad-channel, thanks to it not being a consumer board, with ECC memory support.

The reviews for Alan Wake 2 are in, and it seems gamers are smitten with what Remedy Entertainment has made. It seems it's 10/10 across the board for the most part, with one GameSpot reviewer giving it their first 10/10 review of the year. Alan Wake 2 is a smash hit with reviewers so far, unlocking for gamers in the coming hours.

I went through Twitter and saw many gamers putting out their reviews for Alan Wake 2, with some quotes that I thought I'd share... you know, pumping the hype machine for the game. One tweet read: "happy to join the chorus of praise for Alan Wake 2. this an uncompromising video game adventure. Scary, funny, strange, beautiful. Headphones on, lights off. I was up til 4 am playing. PERFECT for this spooky autumn season and even better for @remedygames fans like me. Vids soon".

Another loved it, comparing it to two huge horror games, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. This reviewer teased: "Alan Wake 2 has elements of Silent Hill and Resident Evil in all the BEST ways! While managing to keep itself to its own thing! The Dark Place Alan has to go through has Nightmare Graffiti while Saga explores her Mind Place! It's all makes for such a GREAT story! Screw it! 10/10!".

Alan Wake 2 is out in the wild for many, and to the general public, it's only a few hours away... now Remedy Entertainment boss Thomas Puha has been firing tweets out left, right, and center. In one of them, he talked about how he is glad he undersold the performance mode of Alan Wake 2.

Puha tweeted out that he was "glad I undersold the performance mode too" of Alan Wake 2, adding that the developer "played real safe on those PC settings btw. Underpromise, overdeliver, or something Finnish like that". Personally, I love to see this happen... a big developer with one of the biggest games of the year underselling the performance of their game... especially when so many weren't happy with the performance they'd get out of their hardware.

Alan Wake 2 isn't a safe game, and it's a game that pushes visual boundaries that are being made by a developer who doesn't have anyone to answer to (compared to the bigger billion-dollar companies that own all the developers). I'm glad they can have their marketing spin pushing that their game needs bleeding-edge hardware but then has a huge performance boost above those numbers because they undersold it. Nice.

Microsoft has made changes to its internal gaming leadership teams to help optimize the Xbox business.

Xbox's Senior Leadership Team (SLT) is getting overhauled as Microsoft prepares for the future of gaming. Microsoft has made two major changes to its Xbox team: Sarah Bond has been promoted to President of Xbox, where she will oversee multiple aspects of the games division.

Phil Spencer will still be the CEO of Xbox, which includes responsibilities like making decisions on game releases and content exclusivity.

ARK: Survival Ascended (the remake of Survival Evolved) is now out on PC, having hit Steam early on today, but already many gamers are venting their frustrations about issues with the open world survival remix.

As you can see in the launch announcement thread on X (formerly Twitter), there's no shortage of complaints, and on Steam, there's a good deal of negative feedback in early reviews.

Most of the flak being fired at Studio Wildcard is around serious performance problems on PC - the revamped game now uses Unreal Engine 5, as you may be aware - and issues around joining servers.

If you skipped the first Apple Watch Ultra and were left underwhelmed by the Apple Watch Ultra 2, it might be time to take the plunge and place an order regardless, especially if you were waiting for Apple to announce the Apple Watch Ultra 3 around September time 2024.

That's because one well-connected analyst believes that Apple isn't going to launch the Apple Watch Ultra 3 next year, or at least, it won't unless it hurries up and gets the ball rolling pretty soon.

That analyst is the supply chain watcher Ming-Chi Kuo and he was speaking in a new Medium post detailing Apple's plans for the Apple Watch through 2024. According to him, Apple has yet to get started on the development of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 which is thought to be unusual. In fact, Kuo goes on to say that if Apple doesn't officially get the ball rolling on Apple Watch Ultra 3 development within the next few weeks it will be "almost confirmed" that there won't be a new Apple Watch Ultra in 2024.

Apple has admitted that owners of the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max phones might find that they have an issue if they try and wirelessly charge them in some specific cars. The issue was first reported by some people not long after the new iPhones went on sale last month, but Apple has now posted a bulletin to its Apple Authorized Service Providers to warn that some people might have an issue.

That issue, it seems, is that the new iPhones might have a problem with a "small number" of wireless phone chargers that are built into some recent BMW and Toyota Supra models. The issue isn't so much that they won't charge, but that if they do they'll temporarily break the NFC capabilities of those iPhones. That issue could be a big one if you rely on your iPhone for Apple Pay, for example.

MacRumors says that there isn't any indication that Apple provided a specific reason for what's going on, but users report that after charging their new iPhones in those cars they receive an error stating that the device "Could Not Set Up Apple Pay" when trying to use it. The same issue would also likely affect other NFC-based features such as digital car keys and home keys.

Pigeons are like AI in the way that they solve problems, some new research from The Ohio State University suggests.

How does that work? Well, the researchers previously theorized pigeons used a brute force method of tackling a problem, similar to the way current AI models work, allowing the birds to solve problems humans couldn't cope with. That method is built on associative learning and error correction.

Brandon Turner, a professor of psychology at the university, led a study in which pigeons were shown stimuli - various different lines and rings - and with each one, the bird had to peck the appropriate button to show which category it belonged to, a line or ring.