Latest News - Page 889

NVIDIA has confirmed that the GeForce RTX 3060 successor, the GeForce RTX 4060, is coming in July, though with pricing starting from USD 299. That's right, a price lower than the previous generation's equivalent GPU. Yep, the GeForce RTX 4060 launch price is lower than the RTX 3060's USD 329 and the RTX 2060's USD 349 - a first for the GeForce RTX 40 Series, and great news for mainstream GPU pricing going forward.

As far as performance goes, NVIDIA has showcased 1080p benchmark results for the RTX 4060 and what to expect - with the RTX 4060 delivering a 1.2X increase (20%) in rasterized performance over the RTX 3060 and a 1.6X increase (60%) over the RTX 2060 on average.

As part of the GeForce RTX 40 Series, the RTX 4060 will benefit from new RTX technologies like DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, which sees these performance increase numbers jump to 1.7X when compared to the RTX 3060 and 2.3X when compared to the RTX 2060. DLSS and DLSS 3 adoption has seen astronomical growth in recent years, so the addition of Frame Generation to a mainstream GPU is impressive to see.

After months of speculation and leaks, NVIDIA has formally announced the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, with an 8GB model coming May 24 for USD 399 and a 16GB model in July for USD 499. During the presentation for the new GPUs, NVIDIA did note that outside of the difference in VRAM capacity, both models feature the same underlying specs.

For the 8GB model coming on May 24, the MSRP of USD399 is in line with previous-generation graphics cards, the RTX 3060 Ti and the RTX 2060 SUPER. In terms of expected in-game performance, which is the big question for many out there, 1080p gaming on the new RTX 4060 Ti will deliver a 1.15X increase (15%) in rasterized performance compared to the RTX 3060 Ti and a 1.6X increase (60%) over the RTX 2060 SUPER.

Like other GeForce RTX 40 Series models, the new RTX 4060 Ti will benefit from RTX technologies exclusive to the Ada Lovelace architecture, including AV1 encoding for content creators and DLSS 3 rendering with the AI-enhanced Frame Generation. With Frame Generation enabled (in supported titles), the performance increase compared to the RTX 3060 Ti jumps up to 1.7X, with that figure rising to an impressive 2.6X compared to the RTX 2060 SUPER.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU, the firm's purported response to the imminent NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti, has witnessed another spec leak, this time from GPU-Z.

The GPU-Z info was sent over to VideoCardz, and it underlines previous speculation, showing that the RX 7600 is set to run with 2,048 Stream Processors (graphics cores).

The RX 7600 will be equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 video memory and a 128-bit bus, if the spec details provided aren't fabricated somehow (as always, we must leave some room for doubt with any leak).

Windows 11 has a bug that's reportedly causing some VPNs (using one specific protocol) to run very sluggishly, and Microsoft has said it's now looking into the matter.

The issue has been reported on Reddit (and other forums online), having started in the cumulative update for May that rolled out last week. (Technically, it began in the preview of that update which was deployed late in April for Windows 11 22H2).

This problem seemingly affects L2TP/IPsec connections, not the most used VPN protocol (that would be the likes of OpenVPN and WireGuard).

Sony's PlayStation 5 continues its reign as the best-selling and top-earning console of 2023 in the United States, but Nintendo beat PS5 unit sales in April.

New data from Circana (formerly known as the NPD Group) highlights video game industry sales trends in the United States for April and the full-year 2023 period. According to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, gaming earned $4.123 billion total in the United States, down 5% year-over-year. The results are driven mostly by game sales, microtransactions, subscriptions, and mobile, which amounted to $3.598 billion, or about 87% of the total. Consumers spent $367 million on hardware in April 2023, an increase of 7% year-over-year, and hardware made up about 9% of total spending. Accessories made up $158 million, or nearly 4% of the total, and the PS5's DualSense Edge led the charge.

On a year-to-date basis (January - April 2023), consumers in the United States spent $17.7 billion on games, down 2% year-over-year. Games, content, and services generated $15.107 billion, down 4%, and comprising 85% of total spending. Hardware is up 18% year-over-year to $1.822 billion, driven primarily by strong PlayStation 5 and Switch sales. Accessories generated $779 million during the period and is up 1% year-over-year.

Microsoft has ambitions of creating a grand gaming ecosystem that connects consoles, PCs, and mobile devices together. Apart from games and content delivery, this kind of multi-level service framework could facilitate a new era of advertising for Xbox gaming in particular, and the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King could catalyze Microsoft's plans.

We've long speculated that advertisements could find their way into console gaming. Ads are an important part of gaming, and make up billions of earnings for the mobile and browser gaming market, but ads are typically have a smaller presence on console and PC gaming. The Xbox dashboard, for example, has advertisements for games and consumer products. There's also been product placement in some games like Alan Wake (Energizer batteries) and Final Fantasy XV (Cup Noodles), and Bidstack directly injects ads into games.

Overall, though, advertising doesn't yet have a large presence in dedicated gaming...at least not in the same way as mobile. There's been strong evidence that Microsoft (and Sony) may find a way to incorporate ads into games or services. In 2022, reports said that Microsoft had plans to bring in-game ads to free-to-play Xbox games.

New forecasts from Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive suggests Grand Theft Auto 6's possible release window.

GTA 6 could release in 2024, 2025, or even 2026, Take-Two Interactive management today indicated. The company says it plans to make a record-breaking $8 billion in net bookings in Fiscal Year 2025, which runs from April 2024 through March 2025. This new forecast is up over $2.46 billion over the previous FY25 estimate of $5.539 billion.

"We believe that we will enter our next phase of growth in Fiscal 2025, as we plan to deliver several groundbreaking titles that we anticipate will set new standards of quality and success and enable us to deliver over $8 billion in Net Bookings and over $1 billion in Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow. We expect to sustain this momentum with additional growth in operating performance in Fiscal 2026."

Saudi Arabia has significantly increased its share ownership in American games publisher Electronic Arts.

Saudi Arabia has invested over $38 billion in the global video games industry as part of its Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund that strategically invests money into specific economic markets. The Saudi PIF has purchased shares in major games companies like Capcom (5%), Nexon (5%), Nintendo (5%, $3 billion worth of shares), Embracer Group ($1 billion worth of shares), Activision Blizzard King (3.5%, $1.3 billion worth of shares), and other publishers.

Now the PIF has increased its investment in games publisher Electronic Arts. According to recent reports, Saudi Arabia now owns 24.81 million shares of EA, which represents about $3.11 billion worth of stock and 9% of total EA shares. The PIF had previously owned 16.01 million shares of EA, representing a purchase increase of 8.8 million shares.

The rumors were right: Sony's PlayStation showcase is just around the corner.

Sony's not-E3 but E3-timed summer extravaganza is approaching fast. Today Sony announced that its next PlayStation Showcase will debut on Wednesday, May 24 at 4PM EST/1PM PST, with the event being streamed on YouTube and Twitch.

So what will Sony reveal? Official details are light (as they almost always are), but the PlayStation Showcase will be a 1-hour stream that highlights new PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 games. We don't know which games will be shown, but it's fair to say we'll get some big surprises...maybe even official reveals of PlayStation's new live games like the upcoming Last of Us multiplayer title. We should also see the new Mortal Kombat at the show as well.

It's official: The new Zelda Tears of the Kingdom game is a smash hit for Nintendo.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 10 million copies in its first 3 days on the market, Nintendo today announced, making it the fastest-selling Zelda game of all time. The company also confirmed that 4 million of the game's sales, or 40% of total initial launch sales, were made in North and South America. Tears of the Kingdom is now the fastest-selling Nintendo game in this region.

To put these numbers into perspective, Tears of the Kingdom managed to sell 1/3rd of Breath of the Wild's total sales in just 3 days' time. The latest figures from Nintendo put Breath of the Wild's sales at just under 30 million.

AMD's RX 7600 is theoretically set to hit shelves next week, and we've just spotted another leaked price for the GPU - this time at a Canadian retailer.

VideoCardz spotted the product listings at PC Canada (thanks to a keen-eyed reader) for two models of the RX 7600, the first of which was the (much-leaked-already) Sapphire Pulse graphics card priced at $452 (Canadian), which roughly converts to $335 in the US.

The other product, an MSI Mech 2X Classic spin on the RX 7600, was listed at $444 (Canadian) or about $339 in the US. (Interestingly, that MSI listing has now been yanked down, but the above Sapphire card remains - it may not by the time you read this, mind).

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti has been spotted in a leaked benchmark that gives us an idea of performance - sort of - and imparts more info on the spec front, matching up with previous rumors.

The Geekbench 5 result was flagged up by Benchleaks on Twitter, a common source of, erm, benchmark leaks as you might guess (spotted by VideoCardz).

It shows a PC with an NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti that has 4,352 CUDA cores, backing up what we've already heard from the rumor mill as to this graphic card's core configuration. The boost speed is shown hitting 2.54GHz, too.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the creator of the highly popular artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, is close to securing $100 million in funding for another one of his projects called Worlcoin.

According to a new report by the Financial Times, which spoke to three people familiar with the deal, Sam Altman is on the verge of securing a new round of $100 million in funding from new and existing investors for Worldcoin, a project that aims at creating a global digital currency that is distributed equally and fairly to everyone. The project's foundations lay with Worldcoin's proof-of-personhood protocol that involves users participating in a biometric scan of their irises, which is then verified against a government-issued ID such as a driver's license.

Once the user is verified, Worldcoin is able to distribute the token out to the unique personhood address. Additionally, last week Worldcoin announced World App wallet and World ID, a new protocol that will enable users to sign in to websites, applications, and other cryptocurrency-related applications. The company was only founded in 2019 and has since reached a $3 billion valuation, attracting the attention of many investors around the world that are interested in the utility of iris scans.

Telly, a company founded and unveiled by Ilya Pozin, has announced it will be giving away half a million 55-inch 4K TVs that feature a second display that permanently runs advertisements in an effort to create the first sustainable advertising business around free televisions.

Pozin announced Telly on Monday, and its unveiling went off with a bang when the company said it would be giving away millions of premium TV sets completely free of charge, and to kick things off, it will be starting with a batch of 500,000 TVs. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Pozin, where he explained the motivation behind giving away the televisions, saying that "Companies are making billions of dollars from ads served on televisions, yet consumers have historically had to pay for both the TV and the content they watch. All of that changes today."

So, what's the catch? As with most things you get for free, there is a downside, and Telly's free 4K TV is no exception. Firstly, The Hollywood Reporter managed to get a guided tour of one of Pozin's TVs located in Telly's New York office, as photographed above, where he said each TV set features a 55-inch 4K HDR screen, microphone at the top of the display for voice command interaction, a five driver sound bar, LED strips to illuminate the back of the TV, a HD camera for video calling/workout classes, motion sensor and a second display.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has eyed large groups of young stars grouped together in a spherical shape and found a monstrous star lurking in the background.

These groupings of young stars are called globular clusters and can contain millions of stars born around the same time. Evidence of globular clusters births go back as much as 440 million years after the Big Bang, and despite being born in relatively close proximity to each other, stars within globular clusters have a composition that is confusingly diverse. Astronomers are still attempting to explain why stars born in a globular cluster have varying levels of sodium, aluminum, oxygen, and many other elements.

One theory that has been suggested by astronomers is undiscovered supermassive stars are polluting these infant stars with chemical elements. Now, Webb's incredible observations have given that theory some credit, as astronomers have announced in a new report that Webb has provided the very first evidence of supermassive stars lurking within globular clusters. So, what's a supermassive star?

It wasn't long ago that Elon Musk sat down for an interview with Fox News to discuss various topics, one of which was the evolution of artificial intelligence and the company he originally founded, OpenAI.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO sat down with Tucker Carlson about a month ago and shared his concerns about the exponential development of artificial intelligence, how it can develop bias, and his plan to create his own AI chatbot that will be dedicated to generating truthful responses. Throughout this interview, Musk was asked about the origin of OpenAI, a company that he originally founded with the principal of a non-profit dedicated to developing AI safety and transparently.

Musk said that since his departure from the company in 2018, many of its founding principles have been tossed out, such as OpenAI being a for-profit company, closed source, and being effectively bought by Microsoft. Musk said that OpenAI was created to be a "counter-weight to Google," and he admits that he "took my eye off the ball" as the company has now partnered with Microsoft, forming a relationship where Microsoft has a big say or even direct control over OpenAI. According to Musk, there are only two big players in the artificial intelligence game, Google and its AI division DeepMind, and now Microsoft and OpenAI.

Google has made some changes to its policies regarding Gmail accounts, and the newly updated policy may put your Gmail account at risk of being deleted.

A new report from 9to5Google recounts a policy change that Google made in 2020 when it stated it would remove content from any Google account that hasn't been accessed in two years. Notably, this 2020 policy change outlined that Google would keep the account available for use but would remove the content attached to it.

However, that is about to change as Google has announced that any Google Account that hasn't been signed into for at least 2 years will be deleted, along with its contents and email address. The contents that would be deleted would be Gmail messages, Calendar events, Drive, Docs, Workspace files, and Google Photos backups. Notably, Google won't be removing any YouTube videos attached to Google accounts as some of those videos could have historical significance.

Intel's latest Game On Driver for Intel Arc Graphics is here, supporting some new PC game releases like Starship Troopers: Extermination, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, and the online co-op horror of The Outlast Trials.

When it comes to the in-game performance for the fun-looking riff on a classic sci-fi film, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Intel notes that the Intel Arc A750 Graphics card can deliver better greater-than-60fps performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 12Gb at both 1080p and 1440p using the 'Epic' and 'High' settings respectively. The game also supports Intel's DLSS-like AI upscaling in the form of Intel XeSS - which can help push 1440p performance to around 115fps.

For next week's launch of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the new Game On Driver will lead to a smooth 60fps on the Intel Arc A750. Another Intel XeSS highlight for the new driver release is support for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to support the recent next-gen update that brought ray tracing and more advanced visuals to the iconic RPG. XeSS will allow for near 60fps performance using the game's demanding Ultra settings on the Intel Arc A750, though that's using the XeSS 'Performance' mode.

Amazon Games is now developing a huge new MMORPG set in The Lord of the Rings universe.

The developers that brought Amazon's New World game are now working on a new Lord of the Rings MMORPG that could deliver seamless, wide-scale battle sequences. This isn't the first time Amazon had signed up to make a Lord of the Rings MMO alongside developer Athlon games, but this project ultimate fell through.

Now with the help of Embracer Group, who purchased Lord of the Rings rights holder Middle-Earth Enterprises last year, Amazon gets to try again and helm development of the MMORPG.

Final Fantasy XI might be one of the longest-running MMORPGs on the market, but Square Enix apparently isn't going to shut the game down any time soon.

While Final Fantasy XIV remains one of Square Enix's most important games, its predecessor is still alive and well. Today marks the 21st anniversary of Final Fantasy XI, and I remember buying this game many years ago on Xbox 360 and hooking up a wireless mouse and keyboard combo for some couch MMO action.

Square Enix saved the largest celebration for the game's 20th anniversary last year, but in a recent developer post, the team says that Final Fantasy XI isn't going anywhere. That being said, the developers are indeed winding down the overall content plans for the MMORPG.