Latest News - Page 840

Micron has announced that it's currently sampling its new 24GB HBM3 Gen2 memory to its customers, with the new high-speed memory featuring 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth. Micron notes that HBM3 Gen2 delivers 2.5 times greater performance per watt than previous generations, making it ideal for AI data centers where performance, capacity, and efficiency are important.

The 8-high stack of 24GB of HBM3 Gen2 has increased pin speed to over 9.2Gb/s, a 50% improvement over existing HBM3 solutions. Over a 1024-bit bus, you've got 1.2 TB/s of bandwidth, which is a massive improvement over the current 820 GB/s found in existing HBM3.

With the current AI boom and race to see who can build the most supercomputers, this sort of thing will give Micron's flagship memory products an edge over the competition. With 24GB HBM3 Gen2 memory rolling out, Micron adds that 12-high stack 36GB capacity options will begin sampling in early 2024. And as part of its roadmap Micron lists 'HBMNext' as the next evolution beyond HBM3 Gen2, with 64GB capacity and over 2 TB/s of bandwidth arriving sometime around 2026.

Earlier this week, we reported on a story about how World of Warcraft players on Reddit managed to trick an AI newsbot into posting an article about the arrival of a fake character called Glorbo. It was a fun story because the name Glorbo is hilarious, and it highlighted how AI cannot differentiate between real news and fake news, even with text in the post stating, "I just really want some major bot-operated news websites to publish an article about this."

So yeah, it brought to light an issue with several shady online publications using AI to generate articles without highlighting what you're reading was generated by AI. Instead, these articles are credited to what we assume are names. And there's another gaming example of some random publication posting Reddit bait as news - this time, it's for Destiny 2, where Glorbo has made another appearance.

In the post from Rasputin_the_Warmind, titled 'I just want to say the new Glorbo secret boss has been the best content I've played in a while,' many replies feed into the prank celebrating Bungie for adding a super secret boss into the game's latest dungeon. "Can you PLEASE tell me how to access Glorbo?!" writes one response, with several more outlining outlandish ways to find Glorbo.

Xbox is currently rolling out a major update to the UI for the OS found across Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, with Microsoft noting that the new UI design was based on player feedback to make game discovery easier. From custom backgrounds for tiles to subtle changes - let's take a look.

First up, one of the more subtle and welcome additions is the addition of a new shortcut bar at the top of the Home screen that includes quick access to your Library, the Microsoft Store, Xbox Game Pass, Search, and Settings. It's a great addition, as before this update accessing Xbox system settings required a couple of steps.

The biggest overhaul comes with the overall presentation of tiles to access recent apps and games, with more space for custom backgrounds and an option to change the background to match the game highlighted. This is reminiscent of the PlayStation 5's UI, which changes the background and even music depending on what game is currently highlighted. Seeing Starfield in Xbox's demonstration of the new UI is a nice reminder that the highly anticipated game is right around the corner.

When Intel announced that it was discontinuing the production of Intel Arc A770 16GB Limited Edition GPUs, it left very few options for those after a version of the Arc flagship with full memory capacity. The good news is that AIBs are filling that gap, with the latest coming from ASRock in the form of a new Intel Arc A770 Phantom Gaming 16GB OC graphics card.

The new GPU already has a retail listing over on Newegg, with a price of USD 329.99 - making it one of the most affordable 16GB GPUs currently available. Once it becomes available, the retail listing showed up before any official confirmation from ASRock and simply notes that the item is on "backorder" with a ship date of July 28.

The good news is that the GPU finally got an official product page on ASRock's site - which means the card is real and out later this week. The key difference between this and the 8GB Intel Arc A770 model comes down to memory capacity and a slight increase in overall bandwidth - 16GB at 17.5 Gbps versus 8GB at 16 Gbps.

During a tour of ASUS HQ at Computex 2023, we got a look at several exciting new products, with one of the standouts being its new "hidden concept" GeForce RTX 4070 GPU that was all about removing visible power cables to deliver a clean and slick look. Seeing it in person, it was surprising what a difference no visible power cables make to the look of a GPU installed in a gaming rig.

According to a new report, this concept cable-less GPU is set to become a reality, with mass production of the new GeForce RTX 4070 in white on track for later this year. Removing the standard 8-pin or 16-pin power connectors means the GPU needs to get power from an alternate source, and for ASUS's new GeForce RTX 4070, a special motherboard is required.

This new GeForce RTX 4070 features an additional PCIe connector alongside the standard PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 interface, which delivers power via a 16-pin power connector on the underside of the motherboard - with ASUS noting that it behaves in the same way as including a power connector on the GPU, delivering up to 600W of power. To demonstrate the new GPU design, ASUS paired it with a custom Z790 TUF Gaming motherboard.

Like most of the top video game publishers and platform-holders, Capcom also made most of its gaming revenues from digital.

Digital has been slowly taking over the video games market for many years now. The Gen8 console cycle gave way to a paradigm shift towards live games and subscription services, and now both PlayStation and Xbox make most of their revenues from in-game purchases and digital sales.

Capcom is one of the publishers that has contributed strongly towards this trend, and digital is a big reason why the company is able to deliver strong consistent operating income growth across its games unit. According to Capcom's latest Q1 2023 financial report, the Japanese games-maker once again made most of its game unit sales and total video games revenues from digital delivery.

Microsoft's FY23 results had muted expression of Xbox's full-year performance and missed another valuable opportunity to update investors on the division's current standing on the market.

Xbox's FY23 results are in, showing strong consistent earnings across content and services. Xbox made $15.477 billion in FY23, the second-highest earnings year of all time for the games segment. Interestingly enough, Q4 revenues missed MIcrosoft's expectations due to "weakness in first-party and third-party content."

As per usual, there was no breakdown on Game Pass earnings or subscribers. We've been able to dial-in Game Pass revenue estimates based on previous comments from Microsoft management, and the current Game Pass subscriber count is still "over 25 million." Game Pass did increase in one of the most important metrics in modern gaming, and one of the biggest KPIs that Microsoft looks at: Play time and monthly active users.

Samsung has today announced a whole raft of products at the Unpacked event and while the phones and watches are going to get all of the attention, the three new tablets are also well worth running the rule over.

Those tablets are the Galaxy Tab S9, Galaxy Tab S9+, and Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, and they're all available starting from August 11 with preorders already open for those who want to make sure that they lock theirs in for day one delivery.

All three models feature different screen sizes; the Tab S9 has an 11-inch display. while the Tab S9+ increases that to 12.4 inches. The top-of-the-range Tab S9 Ultra comes with a 14.6-inch display and all three models feature a variable refresh rate that goes all the way up to 120Hz.

They'd both been rumored for months but the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are both finally here, and they both look pretty sweet.

Samsung announced the two wearables during its Unpacked event alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5.

While Samsung did announce two watches, they're both essentially identical in terms of functions. Where things differ is in the aesthetics and price, with the Galaxy Watch 6 adding an overall larger case size and a rotating bezel.

After many months of rumors Samsung has finally taken the wraps off the Galaxy Z Fold 5, its latest large-format foldable phone. It arrives alongside the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and is already proving to be something of a disappointment for some.

The Galaxy Z Fold 5 appears to be almost identical to the Galaxy Z Fold 4 that it replaces in Samsung's lineup, albeit with an improved hinge that now allows the phone to close flat.

That new hinge is undoubtedly the biggest change according to those who have already spent time with the upgraded phone. But beyond that little seems to have changed.

After months of rumors, Samsung has finally announced its next flagship foldable with the Galaxy Z Flip now available for preorder.

This Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a notable upgrade over the previous and already-popular Galaxy Z Flip 4, a phone that was already one of the best foldable phones around. This new model comes with an upgraded outer display that Samsung is calling the Flex Window, but that isn't all that's notable.

That Flex Window is 3.78 times larger than the previous generation which makes it a much better proposition for people who want to be able to use their phone without opening it up all the time. On the inside, the foldable display is the same size as the previous models, however - a 6.7-inch FHD+ offering with a 22:9 aspect ratio.

CD Projekt Group prepares to lay off 9% of its CD Projekt RED workforce in an effort to stay lean as it continues developing multiple high-profile Unreal Engine 5-powered games.

CD Projekt today announced that has planned to lay off 9% of its employees in the CD Projekt RED division across multiple sectors including game development, publishing, and back office. In its 2022 annual report, the company stated that approximately 1,012 people worked in its CD Projekt S.A. division that includes CD Projekt RED, so this would be about 91 people.

CD Projekt Group president Adam Kicinski later clarified that "around 100 people" would be laid off. The reason for the layoffs is so that CD Projekt RED can conduct "deep transformations" as it pivots not only from its internal RED engine to Unreal Engine 5, but also to the development of new games in three different franchises that should also incorporate multiplayer aspects.

Diablo IV made $666 million revenue in just 5 days, and helped Blizzard achieve record-breaking earnings during the quarter, but apparently the game wasn't enough to significantly impact Blizzard's monthly active users.

By all accounts, Blizzard's latest action RPG is a mega-hit. Diablo IV saw 10 million players embark in an epic quest to slay evil, and the game helped Blizzard make $1 billion in a single quarter for the first time in its 32-year history. But there's one thing Diablo IV apparently didn't do: Considerably drive up the player base.

In its recent Q2 2023 earnings report, Activision Blizzard King outlined its total monthly active players for the April - June period. In that timeframe, Blizzard's monthly active users (MAUs) actually dropped by 1 million players, reducing total MAUs to 26 million. There's a few reasons this may have happened.

Capcom continues its long-running streak of record operating income, hitting a new all-time quarterly high for game sales.

Capcom's latest Q1 2023 earnings results are out, showing consistent strong growth for the Japanese games publisher.

On a converted yen to USD basis, the company set new records for net sales ($439 million), operating income ($240 million), and net income ($182 million), driven by the success of its blockbuster game sales and growth in its arcade business.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card with 8GB of VRAM could be facing stock shortages, but not due to the usual reason.

Typically, this would be because there's too much demand from gamers, but in this case, it's the other end of the supply-demand equation which is suffering - NVIDIA simply isn't making enough chips.

This is happening in China, according to Board Channels forums (as spotted by Wccftech), so as ever, keep a skeptical hat on for this source which is a little sketchier than we'd ideally like.

Remnant 2 has already been seen on PC giving the mighty RTX 4090 GPU a tough time with keeping smooth frame rates - and there's plenty of feedback on Steam about performance woes - so how does it fare on cutting-edge consoles?

The curious can check out a new Digital Foundry video (see above) which evaluates frame rates on Remnant 2 for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as overall graphics quality.

To be fair, Remnant 2 (which uses Unreal Engine 5) does look pretty good for overall visuals - especially in the early stages of the game - and as Digital Foundry makes clear, there are some impressive visuals to be witnessed.

Microsoft has just revealed its earnings for Q4 of fiscal 2023, and there are some highs and lows, with one of the latter again being sales of its Surface hardware and Windows OEM.

If you recall, these areas were heavily down in the previous quarter, too, so this is a continued barrage of bad news for the hardware side of Microsoft.

Surface sales were down 20% year-on-year (a loss of $339 million), while sales of Windows to PC makers dropped by 12%.

NVIDIA and OpenAI are reportedly aiming to create a technological marvel by combining the power of more than a million NVIDIA AI GPUs and software developed by OpenAI that will link them all together.

For those that don't know, AI systems such as open AI's ChatGPT are powered by thousands of NVIDIA AI GPUs. According to reports, NVIDIA has supplied approximately 20,000 of its AI GPUs to open AI, but this won't be enough if the company wishes to keep up with its ever-expanding language models that require more and more power.

According to Wang Shah Kwong, a businessman and founder of the Chinese search engine Sogou, OpenAI is already developing a more advanced AI computing model that will have a total capacity of 10 million AI GPUs. While 10 million NVIDIA AI GPUS sounds astronomical (and it is), it's another thing entirely to actually reach that number in physical hardware.

Elon Musk has officially rebranded Twitter to X, sparking major concern from law professors that believe Twitter is putting itself in the firing line of legal battles.

The days of the blue bird are now gone, with Elon Musk taking to his personal Twitter account to announce that Twitter is officially now called X, in what appears to be the first step towards the company converting the text-based app into the "everything app".

The Twitter logo has been changed to the letter X, and now that the rebranding is official, law professors such as Shubha Ghosh, from Syracuse University, warned that Twitter may soon be hit with a myriad of lawsuits from companies claiming that the social media platform's new branding interferes with their own branding.

Threads, Meta's direct competitor to X, formerly known as Twitter, has rolled out a new update that features what everyone on the app has been asking for since the day it became available.

Instagram, Meta's subsidiary company, rolled out a new update that includes the highly anticipated Following tab, which acts exactly the same way as the Following tab on Twitter - a place for users only to see content that is published by accounts that they follow.

This feature has been highly requested by all Threads users since the app's release, as the main For You feed was riddled with content that was from accounts the individual wasn't following, mixed with content from accounts they were following. This mixed approach resulted in users having to sift through the For You feed to look for content published by their followed accounts. Those days are now over.