Latest News - Page 946

This new DROP collaboration with The Lord of the Rings is what dreams are made of if you're a fan of the Tolkien books - and Peter Jackson-directed movies. Maybe even the new Amazon series, though I haven't seen that yet. What you've got here is a collection of premium mechanical keyboards decked out with custom keycaps in Middle-Earth languages. Plus, some artisan wrist rests and even some funky artisan keycaps that look fantastic.

The mechanical keyboards come in Dwarvish, Elvish, and evil Black Speech styles. The latter is a brand-new entry into the collection, with the keycaps featuring Black Speech characters instead of English lettering. Which we assume would make it dangerous to talk and type at the same time. Not to mention having the piercing Eye of Sauron sitting there all menacing above the arrow keys.

The Dwarvish and Elvish keyboards also feature keycaps written in their respective Middle-Earth languages, giving all three keyboards the look and feel of gaming peripherals that Frodo, Gimli, and Aragorn might use if PC gaming was a thing in Middle-Earth. The TKL designs are impressive, too, with Holy Panda X Switches, ENTR baseboards, and Drop Phantom Stabilizers. The keycaps themselves are also being offered as separate sets.

We reviewed both the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING X TRIO and the MSI GeForce RTX 4080 GAMING X TRIO, where both cards more than earned their awards thanks to impressive in-game performance, and excellent build quality and cooling. But here's the thing, neither card was white - they were both the standard black and metallic with RGB flourishes we've become used to.

And sure, having white components in your PC is like an all-in-or-nothing thing, but it's fantastic to see that MSI is launching RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti GAMING TRIO WHITE models. How a GPU looks is undoubtedly subjective, but even so, these look slick - especially when installed in an all-white rig. Even the GPU brackets are white, which is a nice touch.

As for the underlying hardware, both cards remain the same.

PowerColor has officially revealed details on its water-cooled Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU - the PowerColor Liquid Devil 7900 XTX. Described as "the ultimate overclocking performance for gaming enthusiasts," this Liquid Devil features a nickel-plated copper base and a custom PCB designed to push performance.

The GPU features a Dual BIOS, which is all about overclocking. There's the standard 'OC' mode for more balanced energy consumption and an 'Unleash' mode that PowerColor describes as delivering the highest clocks for breaking records - a bold claim-designed in collaboration with EK, the water block ships with an EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex for safe usage and testing. The custom water cooling here offers liquid cooling for the GPU, VRAM, and VRM.

It's also stylish too, with fully customizable RGB lighting effects, though on that front, we all know that blue RGB makes everything run cooler. At least, that's what they tell me. All in all, it's a stylish look with a great blend of logos, geometric shapes, and transparent flourishes.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series laptops are launching this week, bringing a massive generational leap to portable gaming performance. The results are impressive as per our review of the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI (2023) powered by a GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU. This brand-new laptop from MSI can push 90 frames-per-second in Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K and 123 fps in Forza Horizon 5 in 4K. Yeah, those are desktop numbers and incredible to see.

And with that, NVIDIA has released its latest GeForce Game Ready Driver, which adds support for all of the GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 laptops that are launching this week. The new GeForce Game Ready 528.49 WHQL driver isn't just about laptop gaming on the new Ada Lovelace architecture; there's plenty of love for PC gaming too.

NVIDIA DLSS support for Hello Neighbor 2 and PERISH is included. The former includes DLSS 2 support for its ray-traced reflections, ray-traced shadows, and RTXGI ray-traced global illumination, while PERISH includes both DLSS 3 and DLSS 2 for its ray-traced reflections and RT shadows.

Nintendo has joined publishers like Sony, EA, and Take-Two in raising the price of new games.

It's official: Nintendo has confirmed that new premium first-party games will cost $69.99, and the cost increase will start with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo has opened pre-orders for the game on the eShop with the new price tag and also mentions the new MSRP in a press release:

"In addition to the standard version, which will be available at a suggested retail price of $69.99, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Collector's Edition will release on launch day at a suggested retail price of $129.99," the press release reads.

PlayStation, not Microsoft, dominated the cloud game streaming market throughout 2021, a new report from UK regulators has indicated.

Today the CMA published its massive 277-page document detailing its findings on Microsoft-Activision merger. The report meticulously outlines key financial and market data in the games industry, including earnings, arguments, and information on userbase numbers. According to the report's appendix filing, PlayStation actually had more users streaming games than Xbox in 2021, but Xbox stole the market in 2022.

According to Table 14 in the document, PlayStation's cloud gaming service captured 30-40% of average monthly active users (MAUs) in 2021, whereas Microsoft's xCloud captured 20-30%. NVIDIA's GeForce Now game streaming service likewise captured the same market percentage bracket as xCloud.

Regulators at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have outlined preliminary remedies that may be required to get the Microsoft-Activision merger passed in the United Kingdom.

Today the CMA published a very important series of documents relating to the Microsoft-Activision merger. The CMA's Inquiry Group (Martin Coleman, John Thanassoulis, Humphrey Battcock, Ashleye Gunn) released their provisionary findings on the merger. In the 277-page provisional findings document, the Inquiry Group has determined the merger could have Substantial Lessening of Competition (SLC) effects in two markets: Console gaming and cloud streaming.

The Inquiry Group has summarily published a list of possible remedies, or guidelines, that Microsoft may need to follow in order to get the merger approved. The remedies are based on the findings of the Inquiry Group's investigation, which does not fully reflect recent developments such as Microsoft's offer to bring the $32 billion Call of Duty franchise to PlayStation, Nintendo, and PC platforms for a 10-year period. Microsoft's offer was made publicly to quash concerns about Call of Duty platform exclusivity.

Regulators at the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) have published a list of possible remedies that may be required in order to get the Microsoft-Activision merger passed in the United Kingdom.

Today the CMA delivered new updates on the Microsoft-Activision merger process with a series of documents, including some remedies and concessions that could get the deal approved. The 12-page document includes 53 paragraphs of thorough information on the current regulations and lays out some very interesting preliminary options.

It's important to note that these possible behavioral and structural remedies are not finalized. This is essentially a first draft made by the CMA based on the provisionary findings of the previously conducted Phase 2 investigation. These proposed remedies were drafted by the CMA's Inquiry Group (Martin Coleman, John Thanassoulis, Humphrey Battcock, Ashleye Gunn) and do not consider the 10-year Call of Duty licensing deal that Microsoft has offered to Sony, Nintendo, and Valve.

Today the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published 7 new documents pertaining to the Microsoft-Activision merger, including findings from an important provisionary investigation.

Independent investigators have determined that the Microsoft-Activision merger could result in a significant lessening of competition, a concept that regulators refer to as SLC. Regulators from the United Kingdom's CMA hired a group of investigators to collect and examine millions of documents from games industry players, including Microsoft, Activision, Sony, and other publishers. The CMA had previously published its own provisionary findings in September 2022.

The findings from the CMA's provisionary investigation were published in a substantial 277-page document that we plan to extensively cover. The determination is that, among other things, the merger "could harm UK gamers" and lead to reduced competition in the console and cloud portion of the UK video games market.

Nintendo has released its earnings report for quarter 3 of the current fiscal year, and it reveals that the Nintendo Switch is now the third best-selling console of all time.

Nintendo has recently released its quarterly earnings report, where it details that the Nintendo Switch has now sold over 122 million units, beating Sony's PS4 at 117.2 million units, and the Game Boy at 118.69 million units. Notably, the Nintendo Switch is now battling with the remaining two consoles above it on the best-selling console of all time ladder, the Nintendo DS with 154.02 million unit sales and the PlayStation 2 with 155 million units sales.

So, will the Switch become the best-selling console of all time? Well, it's hard to say, the console is losing says year-over-year, with Nintendo writing in its Q3 earnings report that hardware sales have dropped by 21.3% when comparing the fiscal year 2022 Q1-Q3 (18.95 million units) against the fiscal year 2023 Q1-Q3 (14.91 million units). Nintendo expects to sell no more than 18 million units by the end of March 2023, this fiscal year.

The legal case between Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series, and the fans of the series that created reverse-engineered projects of GTA 3 and Vice City is about to settle.

The lawsuits began flying in 2021 when Take-Two filed two copyright infringement strikes for two fan-made projects. The projects received DMCA takedown notices that forced them to be pulled down from public access. The creators of these projects protested the DMCA claims, saying that the materials contained in the fan-made projects weren't protected by copyright claims and were fair use.

Lawyers quickly got involved in the debate between Take-Two and the creators of the reverse-engineered GTA 3 and Vice City, with Take-Two's side alleging the fans distributed "derivative GTA source code", infringed on copyright laws, and demanded that Github remove access to all of the projects.

The former Coinbase employee is Ishan Wahi, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in court on Tuesday, February 7.

The former product manager at Coinbase was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District of New York. Notably, Wahi pleaded not guilty to wire fraud back in August, which was based on an insider trading scheme that involved the former Coinbase employee informing his brother and his friend Sameer Ramani about coming token listings on the platform. Wahi's brother Nikhil pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September and received a 10-month sentence.

According to reports, federal prosecutors are describing the Wahi case as the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrencies. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also coming after Wahi and charged him back in July last year, deeming 9 out of the 25 tokens involved in the case as "securities". However, lawyers representing Wahi filed to dismiss the SEC charges, claiming that tokens bought and sold on the secondary market aren't securities.

Microsoft has unveiled its new version of its search engine Bing, which will be powered by an upgraded version of the technology behind OpenAI's popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Microsoft has taken to its social channels and its website via a blog post to reveal what it's calling "the new Bing", which will work in tandem with an upgraded Edge browser and artificial intelligence. The company performed a small number of demos of what it intends to make widely available to users, and from the images provided below, we can see the traditional search has been moved to the left half of the screen, and the Bing chatbot (AI) shows its answers on the right. Microsoft demonstrated several queries such as recipes, travel tips, and shopping for furniture.

Microsoft's new Bing is capable of digesting news of recent events, which means the AI will be able to generate responses on recently occurring events - something that OpenAI's ChatGPT isn't capable of doing. Notably, the Bing chatbot was even able to answer questions about its own launch, citing recently written news posts and reports about the software.

NASA's car-sized Mars rover named Curiosity has stumbled across an iron-nickel meteorite while exploring a region of Mars.

NASA has taken to its social channel and explained in a blog post on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website that the Curiosity rover found the iron-nickel meteorite on January 28, 2023, in a region around Mount Sharp, a large mountain located in the Gale crater. NASA has written on the Curiosity rover Twitter account that it's not "uncommon to find meteorites on Mars" and that this isn't the first discovery by Curiosity. In 2016 the rover discovered a meteorite now called "Egg Rock", or the golf ball.

As for the meteorite that Curiosity most recently found, NASA writes that its approximately 1 foot wide and has been named Cacao. The space agency explains that Curiosity snapped a panorama with its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, which features a 100-millimeter focal length lens. The panorama consists of 19 individual images that are then stitched together to form the above image. This image is then color corrected to "match lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth," writes NASA.

Citing official embargo info from NVIDIA, we've got a report (via Videocardz.com) that GeForce board partners are looking at April 2023 as the launch window for the upcoming GeForce RTX 4070. A specific date isn't mentioned, but it's expected that GeForce RTX 4070 models from board partners will hit retail shelves sometime during the month.

Naturally, we've seen the release dates for GPU launches change and swap around right up until the last minute. Still, with the GeForce RTX 4060 expected to launch shortly after the RTX 4070, odds are we'll be seeing these more mainstream and affordable Ada Lovelace GPUs arrive before mid-year. The GeForce RTX 4070 is rumored to feature 5888 CUDA Cores, 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and a lower power rating of 200W compared to the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti.

The GeForce RTX 4070 is also rumored to feature a lower boost clock speed, 2475 MHz, compared to the RTX 4070 Ti's 2610 MHz boost clock. Using the same AD104 chip as its basis, albeit cut down, it'll be interesting to see how its performance stacks up to the 285W TGP rating of the RTX 4070 Ti. Interestingly the RTX 4070's CUDA Core count is identical to the Ampere generation's RTX 3070, though with much higher clock speeds, the RTX 4070 should beat it in benchmarks.

We recently looked in-depth at the search trends for GPUs in 2022 courtesy of Raul Bilc at Razzem, where we learned that NVIDIA dominated Google searches, with nearly 80% of all searches being for GeForce-related products. Today comes a new report, this time looking at CPUs, and as per the headline, AMD dominates the results, with over 60% of all search queries in 2022 being for Ryzen CPUs. AMD Ryzen Threadripper, Intel Xenon, and Intel X-series CPUs were excluded, with the results focused on the consumer market.

The top results are all Ryzen, with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X being the most popular CPU searched for alongside the AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 7 5800X, and even the Ryzen 5800X3D making the top 10 list. With the Ryzen 7000 series making its debut last year, it's interesting that the only entries in the top 50 are for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and the Ryzen 5 7600X.

It's easy to understand why the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X made the top of the list, and it's affordability and performance make it a great option for new builds or upgrades. Plus, it comes with packed with a cooler.

Cooler Master is upgrading its best-selling PC case of all time with the introduction of the new TD500 Mesh V2. It retains the funky geometric look and feel of the original, with three 120mm ARGB fans on the front. Cooler Master describes the polygonal mesh design as being both stylish and great for airflow and dust filtration. In terms of improvements, the new TD500 Mesh V2 supports larger radiators (seven 120mm fans and 360mm front and top radiator support is here) and adds a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port on the I/O panel.

The tempered glass (and tool-free) side panel returns alongside a cool PSU shroud feature that allows you to showcase your PSU or keep it covered. There's no point messing too much with a classic design, and with a price point of USD 89.99, the TD500 Mesh V2 sounds like a great option for those looking to put together a new gaming rig.

Here's the Cooler Master TD500 Mesh V2 breakdown.

Dell Technologies Inc. is set to cut 6,650 jobs as the demand for PCs drops dramatically after a pandemic-era boom that saw an influx of people and businesses buying hardware. According to reports, the company's sales in Q4 2022 saw a massive 37% decline compared to the same period in 2021.

The bulk of Dell's revenue comes from PC sales, over 50%, and these job cuts represent around 5% of the company's global workforce. For PC gaming hardware, this includes Dell's Alienware brand too, which covers PCs designed and explicitly marketed for high-end gaming.

Ahead of the job cut announcement, Dell had already put a hiring freeze in place in addition to other cost-cutting measures. It wasn't enough. "We've navigated economic downturns before, and we've emerged stronger," Dell Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke Clarke wrote in a memo sent to employees obtained by Bloomberg. "We will be ready when the market rebounds." Dell is positioning the cuts as critical for the company's long-term health.

The original Apple iPhone presented a revolution for portable phones, ushering in the smartphone era. First released on June 29, 2007, it was Apple's first smartphone with a 320x480 resolution LCD screen and a Samsung 32-bit ARM microprocessor clocked at 412 MHz.

It featured several sensors, too, though, by 2023 standards, it's pretty archaic technology. For example, the camera on the back was 2MP, and it didn't feature a flash. The iconic App Store wasn't introduced until 2008 either, but there's no denying that the original Apple iPhone and Steve Jobs' dream of a portable touchscreen device forever changed the landscape. At the time its competition was the BlackBerry 8800 and whatever the Samsung BlackJack was.

And now a factory-sealed 2007 Apple iPhone is being auctioned off, with a current bid of USD 16,823. That's certainly a lot of money for an old-school iPhone, but with 11 days left on the auction at LCG Auctions, it'll no doubt end up going for a lot more than that. Collecting retro-tech (yeah, the original iPhone is now retro) is big business, and an item like this could go for as much as USD 50,000.

Twitter has rolled out a new quality-of-life update for all users of its platform, making the overall experience on the platform much more enjoyable.

If you haven't updated your Twitter app, now would be a good time, but before you go ahead and do that, let me tell you why it's a good idea. Twitter has taken to its "Twitter Support" account to announce that the "For You" tab will no longer be the default tab whenever Twitter is opened. Before this update, Twitter would always default to the "For You" tab whenever the app was opened, despite a user closing the app in the "Following" tab.

Anyone that wished to just live in their following tab, so they aren't consuming any content that Twitter recommends them, was unable to do so. Now, Twitter has rolled out an update across iOS and Android devices that enables users to return to whichever timeline they had opened last. This update is especially helpful for people that don't want to consume Twitter's suggested content and strictly want to view content created by accounts they follow on the platform.