Latest News - Page 897

The Hong Kong authorities have stopped smugglers from transporting live lobsters into China, with the strange addition that the vehicle was also smuggling a bunch of old NVIDIA Quadro K2200 series based on Maxwell architecture.

Nearly decades-old hardware at this point, with outlet The Register noting that these GPUs can be picked up for as little as USD 160. Still, Hong Kong Customs has valued the 280 kilograms of live lobsters and 70 "high-value computer display cards" at HKD 600,000 (around USD 76,500).

Lobsters and GPUs, it sounds like the destination might have been the world's strangest seafood restaurant.

Although the GeForce RTX 4080 is a powerful 4K-capable graphics card that presents a sizable uplift over the previous generation's GeForce RTX 3080, the MSRP of USD 1199 also presents a sizable uplift when it comes to pricing.

This has been the primary source of criticism for the GeForce RTX 4080 as a value proposition. Even though we're seeing price increases across the entire industry due to economic factors, there's a sense that the GeForce RTX 4080 shouldn't have crossed the USD 1000 barrier.

That said, when the GeForce RTX 3080 launched with an MSRP of USD 699, the mining boom and pandemic demand for all things tech pushed prices for the GPU into the MSRP region of the GeForce RTX 4080 - so there's that. The good news is that most of the new GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD are being sold at prices close to the MSRP, a welcome change from the Ampere generation. And now we've got a GeForce RTX 4080 from PNY that's being sold for almost USD 100 less than the MSRP.

Microsoft's gaming CEO Phil Spencer reiterates that the core ethos of Xbox is platform agnostic and doesn't adhere to any one console or device.

We've known for a while now that Xbox isn't just a console, but an ecosystem of services and content that bridges multiple platforms. To date, Xbox serves four separate platforms including consoles, PCs, mobile devices, and even smart TVs via xCloud game streaming. This multi-pronged approach is part of Microsoft's core gaming vision that doesn't focus primarily on any one device, unlike Nintendo and Sony who have put their respective Switch and PlayStation systems as the core destination.

"We have a different vision," Xbox Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said during the Kinda Funny Xcast episode 137 stream.

Starfield could indeed be a highly-optimized game on Xbox platforms, including Xbox Series X/S consoles and Windows PCs.

According to Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer, the Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG) joined up early in Starfield's development to help Bethesda optimize the new space RPG for Xbox platforms. This could point to much better in-game performance than Redfall, which launched at 30FPS, and the ATG could have been instrumental in helping Starfield's new next-gen Creation Engine 2 tap into the power of the Xbox Series X's higher-end GPU hardware.

In a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, Spencer talked about how internal resources like Xbox ATG can affect development and the overall performance of launched products. Spencer indicates that it's better for developers to utilize these resources as early as possible to maximize in-game optimization benefits, and in the case of Redfall, Arkane had already been in mid-production when Microsoft had closed the ZeniMax merger.

Microsoft is currently working with 14 international competition regulators to seek approval of its proposed $68.7 billion merger with gaming powerhouse Activision Blizzard King.

Just like in the console market, there's a distinct Big Three for mergers and acquisitions approvals: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the United Kingdom, and the European Commission (EC) in Europe. Microsoft is working with these three key regulators in an attempt to close its mega-merger deal with Activision, however both the FTC and CMA seek to block the combination.

That's not where the process ends, though. Microsoft plans to appeal the CMA's decision, and the FTC is currently holding an adjudicative proceeding in its administrative court to weigh the deal before a judge. That being said, the merger has already been approved in seven territories that we know of.

Ukraine has officially approved the Microsoft-Activision merger, becoming the seventh worldwide jurisdiction to greenlight the $68.7 billion deal.

Last week, Ukraine announced a decision to lend its approval to Microsoft's proposed buyout of North America's biggest independent video games publisher Activision Blizzard King. Unlike the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK and the European Commission in the UK, Ukraine notes that the merger does not have any anti-competitive effects on its domestic market for two reasons.

The first is that neither company offers cloud gaming in Ukraine, which is the main reason that the CMA chose to block the merger; and the second is that neither Activision nor Microsoft have a significant aggregate share of specific markets due to widespread segmentation effects.

The latest update for Minecraft has resolved a bug that has been blighting the game since, well, forever - albeit this was a relatively minor glitch.

Given that, it's not surprising that there wasn't a big rush to fix the problem, but the length of time it took the devs to correct this is pretty staggering - an entire decade.

What did the bug, labeled MC-1133, actually cause? In certain situations, the player's footsteps would become inaudible. When the avatar was too close to the edge of a block, the game would read the position wrongly as in mid-air, and therefore produce no footsteps.

In spite of Redfall's disastrous launch, Xbox business lead Phil Spencer says he will not stifle creative freedom and wants to allow teams to fully realize their visions, even if that means taking big risks.

By now you've probably heard about Arkane's new game Redfall, the vampire survivor FPS that's driven a metaphorical stake through Xbox's heart. In a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, Xbox's Phil Spencer showed candor and transparency on his leadership tactics, saying that despite Redfall's controversial launch, he won't order his teams to just make numbered sequels and to stick to what they're good at. Spencer encourages studios to be creative and try new things--even if that means sometimes underdelivering on content.

"One thing I won't do is push against creative aspirations of our teams," Spencer said.

AMD's next-gen Zen 5 processors are once again the subject of chatter on the grapevine, with a YouTube leaker toning down expectations (slightly) on how fast Ryzen 8000 chips could be.

The latest video from RedGamingTech (RGT) still sticks to the line that Zen 5 might offer an IPC (Instructions per Clock) uplift of between 20% and 25%, as the YouTuber said in their last leak.

This time around, though, RGT notes that while multiple sources in both cases are pegging IPC gains at about 20% and 25% respectively, the leaker believes that 20% is the more likely figure.

NVIDIA could soon be going head-to-head with AMD as both firms unleash mid-range GPUs at the end of the month, with previous rumors to this effect now backed up by another piece of evidence.

As VideoCardz spotted, one of the better-known hardware leakers on Twitter, Harukaze5719, was eagle-eyed enough to spot GIGABYTE filings with the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) for two GPUs - the NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti and AMD RX 7600.

There's a whole load of entries for the RTX 4060 Ti, and a couple for the RX 7600, with all of these graphics cards shown with 8GB of VRAM as was previously rumored (multiple times).

With Samsung and Google being silicon bedfellows it sounds like the latter could be about to benefit from a bit of a breakthrough that the former has had. That breakthrough is an improvement in its 4nm chip manufacturing process with the company thought to have seen the yield increase to the point where it's almost as reliable as its existing 5nm process.

If Samsung really can make its 4nm chips work then we can probably safely expect that the next Google chip will be based on that manufacturing process. That chip will likely be the Tensor G3, a chip that will surely power the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

While the move to a smaller manufacturing process doesn't necessarily automatically mean that the chips will be faster, that is often what happens thanks to a couple of things. Chips built on a smaller manufacturing process often use less power, which in turn means that less heat is generated when they are working. Both of those things often mean that the chips themselves can be clocked higher, improving performance as a result.

YouTube channel The Eric Experiment has documented how he built - from scratch - a tiny custom, fully functional 486 PC. Using actual parts, this is not a Raspberry Pi system emulating a classic MS-DOS PC; the video outlines a fascinating, cool, and brilliant journey to create a mini 486 PC. Here's a look at the final product sitting next to what an actual 486 PC looks like. And, yeah, like us, you're probably wondering how he fit all of that hardware in such a tiny space.

Hardware-wise, this is rocking an Intel DX4 100 with 32 MB of memory with sound and video compatible with old-school Windows 3.11, 95, and MS-DOS.

The short answer is that it wasn't easy, even with a four ISO-slot backplane, to stack all the cards and hardware in a compact space. From custom PCB designs and other hacks, it's a masterclass in modding.

Have you noticed a recent trend regarding the Steam store page for games that the media section would be full of videos and trailers, and you'd have to scroll to see screenshots?

Well, the good news is that Valve has, too, with a new update to Steam for developers now limiting the presentation to a maximum of two trailers before screenshots.

"Starting today, a maximum of two trailers can appear in the row of thumbnails to the left of screenshots," Valve writes in the update. "Any remaining trailers will be displayed after the screenshots, resulting in a default view for players that always has a mix of screenshots and trailers in view."

Razer makes hardware and peripherals, from gaming laptops to keyboards and mice. Still, it also sells gear in the form of backpacks and funky clothing created in collaboration with designer brands. Earlier this year, Razer dropped its EVISU collection, which saw funky designs from the Japanese designer clothing company for hoodies and jeans. You definitely need to check out the jeans.

In keeping with this tradition, the latest collaboration with Italian designer eyewear brand Retrosuperfuture makes sense - though it's still surprising. The collab results in the new Razersuperfuture sunglasses that look like the 3D glasses you'd put on before watching Avatar at the cinemas. Retrosuperfuture sunglasses all live up to the brand's naming, sporting sci-fi designs that look better suited to a runway than going for a walk on a sunny day.

In terms of specs (sunglasses apparently have these, too), you've got a durable, lightweight acetate frame with photochromic lenses (with 100% UVB/UVA protection) and blue light protection (up to 420 nm). The latter means they could be worn indoors while gaming on a bright HDR display.

Recently we reported that modder PureDark had successfully modded DLSS 3 into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with the mod being in the early stages of testing before it can be made widely available.

But, PureDark has also been working on adding DLSS 3 and Frame Generation into Elden Ring on PC, with mod now available to Patreon backers. Frame Generation and DLSS 3, which leverages AI to generate new frames and improve game performance, is exclusive to the new GeForce RTX 40 Series of graphics cards. It leverages Super Resolution (DLSS 2), Frame Generation, and NVIDIA Reflex to reduce latency.

The results have already been impressive, with several titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5, Marvel's Spider-Man, and more supporting the tech. For DLSS 3 in Elden Ring, Wccftech got their hands-on the mod via PureDark and tested it to see how it performed with a GeForce RTX 4090 and an Intel Core i7 12700KF processor.

Crucial is preparing to launch its new range of ultra-fast Crucial T700 1TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSDs available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. How fast? Well, its sequential read speed of 12,445 MB/s (as per our testing) will make it the fastest Gen5 option when it launches on May 30, 2023.

Pre-orders for the new storage are open now via Crucial, with pricing for the 1TB variants starting at USD 179.99 for the non-heatsink model and USD 209.00 for the heatsink model.

We went hands-on with the new Crucial T700 2TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink, and our in-depth testing backed up Crucial's claims of sequential reads and writes speeds of up to 12,400/11,800 MB/s. Also, the passive cooler proved effective in keeping the SSD from running into throttling issues.

Gaming's top publishers reveal how much money they spend to develop and market AAA games, and the results are eye-opening to say the least.

As part of their investigations on the Microsoft-Activision merger, and the video games market at large, regulators like the UK's Competition and Markets Authority are publishing an incredible amount of interesting information regarding the world's largest entertainment industry. The latest finding reveals the astronomically high budgets of AAA games while underlining the rationale behind the unpopular decision to hike game price MSRP to $69.99 across new-gen titles.

According to Pages 309 and 310 in the CMA's final report decision on the Activision merger, some publishers are paying as much as $1.2 billion in combined development and marketing costs for an entire franchise.

Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios was not directly involved with Redfall's development, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Redfall, Microsoft's debut $70 first-party Xbox game, just released and has caused lots of bad press for the games division, with Microsoft receiving a large portion of the blame for Redfall's myriad of issues. The reality is that ZeniMax, not Xbox or Microsoft, led Redfall's decision-making process.

A new investigation from Windows Central indicates that ZeniMax still essentially operates as its own unit and that Redfall was in development long before Microsoft purchased ZeniMax--which includes Bethesda, id Softworks, Arkane, and others--for $7.5 billion back in 2020. This hands-off approach is common within mega-corporations in the games industry; Tencent, the largest video games company in the world, typically lets its studios continue day-to-day operations without interfering with specific titles, roadmaps, etc, as is the case with Riot Games and Grinding Gear Games. Sony is also taking a similar approach with Bungie, who it acquired in 2022 for $3.7 billion.

Capcom expects big things from Street Fighter 6, and hopes the game will become the best-selling title in its beloved franchise.

Street Fighter is synonymous with Capcom, and remains the company's third best-selling IP of all time behind Resident Evil (135 million) and Monster Hunter (90 million). Street Fighter 6 looks to be one of the most explosive games in the franchise yet and fan reception to the promos and recent playable game trial have been very strong. All signs are pointing to the next Street Fighter being a smash hit.

Capcom management certainly hopes this to be the case. In a recent interview with Famitsu, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto says that internal SF6 sales projections are as high as 10 million units, which would outpace all previous games in the series. Right now, Street Fighter V is the top-seller with 7 million unit sales.

Gmail users will soon see a blue checkmark beside senders that have been verified by Google, hopefully reducing the chances of someone falling foul of scams like phishing.

The new move is part of an expansion of the existing Brand indicators for Message Identification system that is behind something you might already have noticed - some email senders have their company's logo instead of the usual first character of their name. That's all part of making it easier to tell who is real and who isn't, and a new checkmark is part of that program.

It's all made possible by strong authentication based on DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance), Google says, and the blue checkmark will be immediately recognizable to anyone who ever used Twitter or another social network.