With Atomfall coming to PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Game Pass in just over a month (arriving on March 27), today we released the latest trailer for the game. Featuring -new gameplay, the trailer highlights the main features that you will experience when you enter the quarantine zone. I thought now would be a good time to give you more information on some of the game's key features and what you can expect when you play Atomfall. The trailer (see below) starts at the very beginning of the game. You wake up in a dark and eerie bunker and are met by a wounded man in a hazmat suit who immediately asks who you are and asks for your help. The problem is you don't know who you are, or how you got there. He tells you that you are inside a quarantine zone, built around the Windscale Atom plant following a nuclear disaster.

Set in the luscious British countryside in 1962, Atomfall is a fictionalized telling of what happened five years after true events in Northern England. It is a game about investigation and discovery—as you try to uncover the mystery behind what really happened at Windscale, but also who you are and what you're doing there. There is plenty to explore beyond the rolling hills of Cumberland, including a picturesque village, bandit camps, caves, tunnels, and mysterious buildings and facilities left abandoned by the British Atomic Research Division. All of these will hold their own secrets for you to discover. You will find clues about what has happened and learn more about the colorful characters you meet along the way - but there is no clear single "truth", and different people interpret what happened in different ways. This feeds into the game's "Leads" system, our new take on traditional gaming quests.

MODDIY has swiftly updated its Help Center site with new guidelines, following recent reports of one of its older 12VHPWR cable designs having a high temperature disagreement with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition card and ASUS ROG Loki SFX-L power supply unit. The company's newest batch of (2025) 12V-2X6 and 12VHPWR are manufactured with the latest specifications and standards in mind, thus given the all-clear for utilization with NVIDIA's recently introduced GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards. Any products from the 2024 production cycle (and before) are deemed safe to use with the GeForce RTX 40-series, but not "officially" valid for anything newer.

The company's renewed guidelines state: "as of 2025, the industry standard has transitioned to 12V-2X6, replacing the previous 12VHPWR standard. Our new cables incorporate significant advancements, including enhanced terminal and connector housing materials, along with thicker wires, to provide an additional safety buffer for the latest GPUs. At MODDIY, all 12VHPWR / 12V-2X6 cables purchased from 2025 onward are manufactured in accordance with the new 12V-2X6 specifications and standards, ensuring compatibility and optimal performance with the RTX50 series GPUs. Prior to 2024, the RTX50 series GPUs had not yet been introduced, and the prevailing standard was 12VHPWR. All cables produced before this period were designed and tested for use with the RTX40 series GPUs. We recommend that all users upgrade to the new 12V-2X6 cables to take full advantage of the enhanced safety and performance features offered by this new standard." They believe that their messily-named "ATX 3.1 PCIe 5.1 H++ 12V-2X6 675 W 12VHPWR 16 Pin Power Cable" premium custom tailor-made model is the best candidate for Team Green's modern generation of gaming cards.

Leading gaming accessories maker Turtle Beach Corporation today unveiled two new striking colorways for the latest Stealth 600 and Stealth 500 wireless headsets - two top-rated models in the brand's critically acclaimed wireless gaming headset range.

The new Stealth 600 purple and Stealth 500 arctic camo colorways are available for pre-order today from Turtle Beach and will launch this spring. The Designed for Xbox Stealth 600 purple will be available exclusively at Target in the U.S., as well as at participating retailers globally. The Stealth 500 arctic camo for PlayStation will be available exclusively at Walmart in the U.S. and at participating retailers globally, while the Designed for Xbox Stealth 500 arctic camo will be available at participating retailers globally.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce drivers. Version 572.42 WHQL comes Game Ready for "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle." including support for DLSS 4. Other new optimized titles include "Avowed" and "Wuthering Waves." The driver also offers early optimization for "Sid Meier's Civilization VII." Among the gaming bugs fixed with this release include a crash-to-desktop (CTD) noticed at launch with "Valorant," a system freeze noticed when exiting "Final Fantasy XVI," and performance loss noticed in "Delta Force" with resizable-BAR enabled. Unexpectedly low score for RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs in 3DMark DXR feature test has been fixed. A compatibility issue caused by library version mismatch has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 572.42 WHQL

It's a match made in heaven—GeForce NOW and Warner Bros. Games are collaborating to bring the beloved Batman: Arkham series to the cloud as part of GeForce NOW's fifth-anniversary celebration. Just in time for Valentine's Day, gamers can fall in love all over again with Gotham City's Dark Knight, streaming his epic adventures from anywhere, on nearly any device. The sweet treats don't end there. GeForce NOW also brings the launch of the highly anticipated Sid Meier's Civilization VII. It's all part of the lovable lineup of seven games joining the cloud this week.

A Match Made in Gotham City
GeForce NOW is welcoming Warner Bros. Games to the cloud with the Batman: Arkham series, including Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition, Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition and Batman: Arkham Knight Premium. Don the cape and cowl of the world's greatest detective, bringing justice to the streets of Gotham City with bone-crushing combat and ingenious gadgets.

Late last month, an AMD "How to Sell" Ryzen AI MAX series guide appeared online—contents provided an early preview of the Radeon 8060S iGPU's prowess in 1080p gaming environments. Team Red seemed to have some swagger in their step; they claimed that their forthcoming "RDNA 3.5" integrated graphics solution was up to 68% faster than NVIDIA's discrete GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile GPU (subjected to thermal limits). Naturally, first-party/internal documentation should be treated with a degree of skepticism—the PC hardware community often relies on (truly) independent sources to form opinions. A Chinese leaker has procured a pre-release laptop that features a "Zen 5" AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. By Wednesday evening, the tester presented benchmark results on the Tieba Baidu forums.

The leaker uploaded a screenshot from a 3DMark Time Spy session. No further insights were shared via written text. On-screen diagnostics pointed to a "Radeon 8050S" GPU, and the CPU being an "AMD Eng Sample: 100-000001243-50_Y." Wccftech double-checked this information; they believe that the OPN ID corresponds to a: "Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 with the Radeon 8060S, instead of the AMD Radeon 8050S iGPU...The difference between the two is that the Radeon 8060S packs the full 40 Compute Units while the Radeon 8050S is configured with 32 Compute Units. The CPU for each iGPU is also different and the one tested here packs 16 Zen 5 cores instead of the 12 Zen 5 cores featured on the Ryzen AI MAX 390." According to the NDA-busting screenshot, Team Red's Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 engineering sample racked up an overall score of 9006 in 3DMark Time Spy. Its graphics score tally came in at 10,106, while its CPU scored 5571 points. The alleged Radeon 8060S iGPU managed to pull in just under NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile dGPU (average) score of 10,614. The plucky RDNA 3.5 40 CU iGPU seems to outperform a somewhat related sibling; the Radeon RX 7600M XT dGPU (with 32 RDNA 3 CUs) scored 8742 points. Radeon 8060S trails the desktop Radeon RX 7600 GPU by 884 points.

Synopsys, Inc. today announced the expansion of its industry-leading hardware-assisted verification (HAV) portfolio with new HAPS prototyping and ZeBu emulation systems using the latest AMD Versal Premium VP1902 adaptive SoC. The next generation HAPS-200 prototyping and ZeBu-200 emulation systems deliver improved runtime performance, better compile time and improved debug productivity. They are built on new Synopsys Emulation and Prototyping (EP-Ready) Hardware that optimizes customer return on investment by enabling emulation and prototyping use cases via reconfiguration and optimized software. ZeBu Server 5 is enhanced to deliver industry-leading scalability beyond 60 billion gates (BG) to address the escalating hardware and software complexity in SoC and multi-die designs. It continues to offer industry-best density to optimize data center space utilization.

"With the industry approaching 100s of billions of gates per chip and 100s of millions of lines of software code in SoC and multi-die solutions, verification of advanced designs poses never-before seen challenges," said Ravi Subramanian, chief product management officer, Synopsys. "Continuing our strong partnership with AMD, our new systems deliver the highest HAV performance while offering the ultimate flexibility between prototyping and emulation use. Industry leaders are adopting Synopsys EP-Ready Hardware platforms for silicon to system verification and validation."

Days Gone Remastered rides onto PlayStation 5 and PC April 25, 2025! A game nearest and dearest to our hearts, with our good partners at Climax Studios, we strived to make this the definitive way to play Days Gone for new and returning players. Step into the dirt flecked shoes of former outlaw biker Deacon St. John and feel his desperate struggle for survival in a brutal open world ravaged by feral creatures known as Freakers. We at Bend Studio are very excited to share our first look at Days Gone Remastered with our announcement trailer, giving you a sneak peek of brand-new content to play!

Built for the PS5
Days Gone Remastered is brought to new life by the PlayStation 5 console featuring improved graphical fidelity, increased foliage draw distance, improved shadow and lighting quality, Tempest 3D Audio, VRR support and more. Select your preferred playing experience between Quality mode for increased resolution or Performance mode for improved framerates. And with the added power of the PS5 Pro, Days Gone has truly never looked better on PlayStation!

XFX and ASRock have registered various Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 SKUs in South Korea—earlier today, harukaze5719 discovered these "public secrets." The National Radio Agency received two filings from Hightech Systematic Limited (aka XFX); the graphics card manufacturer is seeking certification for five models. A single filing from ASRock Incorporation contains one product, a Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT) Challenger 16 GB card—TechPowerUp spent a little bit of hands-on time with this particular model at CES 2025.

XFX showcased two unnamed custom Radeon 9070 graphics card designs at last month's CES event, but yesterday's leak revealed a slew of incoming MERCURY, QUICKSILVER and SWIFT SKUs. The latest South Korean filings corroborate a couple of the accidental Canadian retail listings. The unannounced QUICKSILVER Magnetic Air model has attracted the most interest—promotional imagery is not available at the time of writing, but VideoCardz reckons that XFX could borrow elements from last year's hot-swappable Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7800 XT Series design. TPU's W1zzard praised XFX's Magnetic Air system, in his evaluation of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX MERCURY model. An "amazing removable fan implementation" was pinpointed as a major highlight. The unusual usage of Honeywell PTM7950 thermal paste—a phase change material (PCM)—was another novel plus point.

NVIDIA's official GeForce Twitter handle just confirmed that the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti will be available from February 20, 2025. This is the third RTX 50-series "Blackwell" graphics card launch. The RTX 5070 Ti is positioned in the enthusiast segment considering its starting price of $749, with custom-design OC cards expected to be priced well above $800. Although officially being recommended for maxed out gameplay at WQHD (2560 x 1440) or ultrawide 3440 x 1440 resolutions, we expect the RTX 5070 Ti to be capable of gameplay at 4K UHD considering its predecessors, the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti, each were at launch.

The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is carved out from the same 5 nm "GB203" silicon that powers the RTX 5080 launched late last month. It is endowed with 70 out of 84 SM present on the silicon, which works out to 8,960 CUDA cores, 280 Tensor cores, 70 RT cores, 280 TMUs, and possibly 96 ROPs. The card gets 16 GB of [at least] 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory, giving it 896 GB/s of memory bandwidth on tap, a massive increase from the 12 GB and 504 GB/s of its predecessor. Then there are the Blackwell-exclusive technologies such as DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, Neural Rendering, Mega Geometry for ray tracing, and an updated display engine with support for DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20. The picture NVIDIA used in its tweet shows an abstract-looking card, which could be a sign that there won't be a Founders Edition card of the RTX 5070 Ti.

Just over a year ago, at The Game Awards 2023, Sega teased the revival of several legacy franchises. Today we are excited to formally announce the first of those games: Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. Yesterday's State of Play provided a first look at the game which will release August 29, 2025 on PC and consoles.

There is more to be shared in the coming months, but for now we wanted to bring you a Q&A with the game's producers at Sega of Japan and Lizardcube, who have teamed up to bring the game to life. We discuss the motivation to revive the franchise, how this new installment pays tribute to the original entries, and what players can expect from the full release. We hope you enjoy this first look behind Shinobi: Art of Vengeance!

Seagate Technology, a leading innovator of mass-capacity data storage, and Intevac, Inc., a supplier of thin-film processing systems, today announced that Seagate has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Intevac in an all-cash transaction for $4.00 per share (the "Transaction"). In connection with the closing of the Transaction, Intevac will pay a one-time special dividend of $0.052 per share. The payment of the special dividend is expected to occur on or about the closing of the Transaction. Separately, Intevac's Board of Directors has declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share, which will be paid on March 13, 2025, to Intevac stockholders of record as of February 28, 2025.

The Transaction and the special dividend deliver aggregate consideration to Intevac stockholders of $4.052 per share, or $4.102 per share including Intevac's regular quarterly dividend. This represents a premium of 45% to Intevac's closing price of $2.83 per share on December 11, 2024, one day prior to Intevac's announcement that it had renewed its focus on pursuing strategic options, a premium of approximately 21% to Intevac's closing price of $3.38 per share on February 12, 2025 and an aggregate value of approximately $119 million including both dividends. As a result of the Transaction, Intevac will no longer hold its earnings call, which was previously scheduled for February 25, 2025.

ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd., the leading provider of semiconductor assembly and testing services ("ATM") and the provider of electronic manufacturing services ("EMS"), today reported its unaudited net revenues of NT$162,264 million for 4Q24, up by 1.0% year-over-year and up by 1.3% sequentially. Net income attributable to shareholders of the parent for the quarter totaled NT9,312 million, down from NT$9,392 million in 4Q23 and down from NT$9,733 million in 3Q24. Basic earnings per share for the quarter were NT$2.15 (or US$0.134 per ADS), compared to NT$2.18 for 4Q23 and NT$2.25 for 3Q24. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were NT$2.07 (or US$0.129 per ADS), compared to NT$2.13 for 4Q23 and NT$2.18 for 3Q24.

For the full year of 2024, the Company reported unaudited net revenues of NT$595,410 million and net income attributable to shareholders of the parent of NT$32,483 million. Basic earnings per share for the full year of 2024 were NT$7.52 (or US$0.470 per ADS). Diluted earnings per share for the full year of 2024 were NT$7.23 (or US$0.452 per ADS).

ASUS today announced the availability of ZenScreen Duo OLED MQ149CD, a portable monitor with two OLED screens that provide users with a versatile workspace offering more onscreen area than a standard 20-inch monitor. Each panel boasts a 1920 x 1200 resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio. OLED display technology ensures bright, crystal-clear visuals that stand out even in brightly-lit environments. This versatile monitor has a durable 360° hinge and fold-out kickstand that allows for flexible workstation setups, suiting a wide range of scenarios. Split, Extended, Independent, and Mirror modes provide even greater flexibility.

Compact, unique design
The portable MQ149CD offers a perfect blend of elegance and practicality, weighing just 1.07 kg and measuring just 14-inches when folded. When unfolded, its two screens offer the equivalent onscreen area of a standard 20-inch monitor. Thanks to its 360° hinge design, the monitor can be used in a variety of positions, including a unique Tent mode in which the two displays face opposite directions, allowing for convenient one-to-one presentations.

Thermaltake, a leading PC DIY brand for premium hardware solutions, is thrilled to launch the Massive EXTREME, a high-performance notebook cooler designed to deliver exceptional cooling for gaming and workstation laptops. With a cross-flow fan with an impressive 3500 RPM fan speed and sealed chamber design, it ensures superior temperature control even during demanding tasks.

Massive EXTREME is Thermaltake's first laptop cooler equipped with a powerful cross-flow fan, its vortex airflow design offers smoother air circulation to enhance the cooling capacity. This 120 mm PWM fan delivers up to 48.5 CFM airflow and 29.5 mm-H2O static pressure while keeping a noise level of 55.0 dB-A. Furthermore, the included high-density memory foam forms a sealed chamber, concentrating cooling on critical hotspots and significantly lower laptop temperatures.

The AK3 RGB puts the focus on a classically minimalist look with an air-permeable front panel and a high level of functionality. With its modern connection options, space for large pieces of hardware, and room for up to eleven fans, this case is suitable for either gaming, office or multimedia PCs.

In addition to a tempered-glass side panel, the AK3 RGB has a front panel that has been designed to optimally support the airflow inside the case by allowing the easy entry of air from the outside.A total of up to eleven fans have room in the AK3 RGB, four of which are already pre-installed: Three addressable 120 mm RGB PWM fans are located behind the front panel and an identical fan is on the rear panel. Those who prefer water cooling will also be happy with the AK3 RGB, as two radiators with up to 360 mm can be simultaneously operated, if required.

Western Digital (Nasdaq: WDC) held the company's Investor Day today, announcing a vision and strategy for the future as the planned separation of the company's Flash business nears its expected completion on February 21, 2025. CEO Designate Irving Tan reinforced Western Digital's leadership in delivering world-class, sustainable storage solutions at scale. With a deep legacy in HDD technology and innovation, Western Digital remains the trusted partner for the world's largest hyperscalers, CSPs and OEMs, delivering cutting-edge solutions at the right time with low total cost of ownership (TCO). From industry-leading ePMR CMR HDDs and UltraSMR technology, to HAMR and beyond, Western Digital continues to drive innovation across its portfolio, creating unmatched long-term value for its customers.

Tan shared Western Digital's projection on how the proliferation of AI will impact the HDD industry and the value of data stored. As companies generate and store more data, growing use cases such as text-to-image GenAI workloads, text-to-video applications and a rising demand for massive data lakes to fuel AI models are expected to increase HDD exabyte shipments at a 23% CAGR from 2024 to 2028. Western Digital remains steadfast in addressing the ever-growing data demands of the cloud and enterprise markets, delivering the scalability, TCO and sustainability needed to store the majority of the world's generated data, which is expected to grow 3x between 2023 and 2028.

V-COLOR Technology Inc. proudly introduces the groundbreaking CKD SCC (Speed Booster, Colorful Makeover and Cost effective) O CUDIMM RGB Filler Kit 2+2 (2 DRAM Modules + 2 Filler Modules) additions to its DDR5 memory lineup, redefining high-performance and customization. With the launch of the new SCC O CUDIMM RGB Filler Kit now compatible with Intel Core Ultra CPUs Motherboards 800 series up to 8800 MT/s and not only that, the already existent SCC UDIMM kit just got a massive upgrade now reaching 8000 MT/s with dual profiles for Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO. This new SCC line will be under the family of the already amazing XFinity series that continues to push the boundaries of memory innovation.

The latest CKD SCC O CUDIMM is optimized for Intel Core Ultra CPUs and Z890 series motherboards, offering unmatched performance and stability. With speeds reaching 8000 MT/s ~ 8200 MT/s for 32 GB (2x 16 GB) configurations and 7000 MT/s ~ 8800 MT/s for 48 GB (2x 24 GB) configurations. The latest lineup of SCC technology doesn't just revolutionize the new O CUDIMM memory modules; it also pushes the boundaries of already existing UDIMMs to unprecedented levels. Speeds now reach an impressive 7200 MT/s up to 8000 MT/s, while the addition of dual profiles ensures seamless compatibility and performance optimization for both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP 3.0 systems. This development bridges accessibility across platforms, offering next-level performance for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

AVerMedia Technologies, a global leader in streaming and digital audiovisual solutions, announces the launch of the Live Gamer ULTRA S (GC553Pro), a high-performance capture card built for game streamers looking to elevate their content and raise the bar for their game streaming. With support for high frame rate recording, true-color RGB24 capture, and 5.1-channel surround sound, the Live Gamer ULTRA S empowers creators to captivate their audiences with stunning visuals and immersive audio. Paired with AVerMedia's software ecosystem—Streaming Center, Streaming Center Plug (OBS plugin), and the all-new Assist Central Pro— it ensures a smoother, more efficient streaming experience.

"Game streamers today demand more than just basic capture—they need tools that bring out the best in their content," said Michael Kuo, President and CEO of AVerMedia Technologies. "The Live Gamer ULTRA S is built to meet these expectations, offering the quality and flexibility creators need to engage their audiences like never before."

ADATA Technology, the world's leading brand for industrial-grade embedded storage, has released the "A+ Analyzer" data analysis tool, which features technology developed by ADATA's independent R&D team integrating software and hardware to analyze user behavior. This innovative solution aims to accurately depict terminal device usage behavior through in-depth collection and analysis of customer host system data, thereby enabling the selection of the most suitable SSD products for customers.

Since industry customers are widely distributed in disparate fields such as transportation, medical care, automation, network communications, and security, there are significant differences in data patterns, write cycles, and SSD read/write requirements for associated applications (such as sequential read/write, random read/write). The lifespan of flash memory decreases with each write cycle. Therefore, the read/write behavior of specific applications directly affects the durability of SSD flash memory. The ADATA "A+ Analyzer" tool was created to meet these challenges. It not only analyzes customer behavior to gain in-depth insight into their usage patterns, but also provides personalized SSD selection recommendations or customized firmware solutions based on different routines.

The EU could influence the mobile phone industry to ditch bundling wall chargers with their phones, and got them to standardize the USB-C connector, with the goal of minimizing the number of wall chargers people would have to own, which could last years, spanning many phones. It even got Apple to ditch its proprietary Lightning connector in favor of USB-C. The European Commission could be turning its attention to the way products such as desktop PC processors are sold in the retail channel. In the OEM channel, things are golden—processors are sold by the 1,000 units in trays that aren't all that different from the way eggs are sold to restaurants. In the retail channel, these processors put on elaborate packaging material that includes boxes that are about 20 times the size of the processor itself, and include stock cooling solutions that can run the processors at stock settings.

This could change, as the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) came into effect on February 11, 2025. This regulation gives manufacturers an 18-month grace period for compliance, and it affects desktop processor packaging in the retail channel. The first casualty will be special edition or flagship SKUs that come with swanky acrylic packaging, like Intel's large dodecahedron that shipped with the Core i9-9900K. Intel has already made the switch, and its current flagship, the Core Ultra 9 285K, comes in much simpler paperboard boxes. AMD's flagship processors also comply, as they come in compact paperboard boxes even for the top Ryzen 9 9950X. Then there's the issue of stock CPU coolers included in these boxes, at least for the 65 W processor models.

The lead-up to the release of Borderlands 4 has been rife with release date speculation, feature wish lists, and no shortage of complaints about visuals and character design. Today, however, at PlayStation State of Play, Take Two released a new trailer for Borderlands 4 and finally confirmed a September 23 release date for the upcoming looter shooter.

As is to be expected from any trailer dropping months ahead of the official game launch, gameplay details are slyly hinted at instead of directly advertised, but there is a lot of information hidden in the latest Borderlands 4 trailer. For starters, the trailer confirmed that Borderlands 4 appears to be getting some serious mobility enhancements, including a new double jump mechanic—which would be the first time since Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel that a Borderlands game allows players to properly redirect in the air. Alongside with double jumping, the new trailer gives us a hint at what to expect from new weapons and character abilities.

Corsair Gaming, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRSR) ("Corsair" or the "Company"), a leading global provider and innovator of high-performance products for gamers, streamers, content-creators, and gaming PC builders, today announced the planned retirement of Andy Paul, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, from the company and its board effective July 1, 2025. As part of the planned transition, the board of directors appointed Thi La, currently Corsair's President and Chief Operating Officer, as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2025.

Ms. La, an experienced leader in the computer and gaming industries, joined Corsair in 2010, and played an instrumental role in growing Corsair from a $300 million company to where it is today. La oversaw the expansion of the company's product portfolio from a small range of DIY components, adding many gaming and streaming solutions to what is now a diverse gaming company with 30 different product lines. In December of 2021, La was appointed a member of Corsair's Board of Directors. She has served as Chief Operating Officer since August 2013, and President since January 2021. From May 2010 to August 2013, she held the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager of the gaming PC component unit. Before her tenure at Corsair, La was Vice President of Global Operations and IT at Opnext, Inc., and the North America Consumer PC Product Line Director at HP, responsible for over $3 billion in revenue. Ms. La holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University.

ASUS has released version one of a BIOS update tool for its ultra-premium air-cooled ROG Astral graphics cards, OC and standard flavors. Yesterday's update advertises an improved "Quiet Mode," that implements a "more silent fan curve." TechPowerUp reviewed the quad-fan configured ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 OC Edition cards late last month. Resident GPU evaluator, W1zzard, awarded the astronomically-priced flagship model with an "Editor's Choice" badge, but simultaneously pinned on a "But Expensive" honor. The lesser (GB203-based) Astral did not receive any accolades. Both models have courted criticism for louder than expected operation; W1zzard did not enjoy listening to the Astral GeForce RTX 5090 OC Edition's collective fan concerto. "Out of the box" settings were not great, and the quiet BIOS mode did not "help much" in reducing the highest-end Astral's cacophony.

TPU's GPU guru elaborated further: "the second BIOS runs a more relaxed fan curve, but it's not much quieter and achieves 36.5 dBA with 70°C. Sure, good temperature, but isn't the point of a 'quiet' BIOS that isn't quiet, even if temperatures are higher? MSI's Suprim lineup does much better noise-wise, with temperatures that aren't that much higher." The ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC Edition seems to be a less noisy prospect, given that its cooling solution is not dealing with the largest "Blackwell" GPU die. Its sound signature was less offensive, but W1zzard reckoned that there was room for improvement. On this subject he stated: "with the default (performance) BIOS, temperatures are extremely low, but noise levels are a little bit on the high side with 36 dBA. I would have preferred a more balanced setting. Good thing that ASUS includes a secondary quiet BIOS with their card. Now the card runs whisper quiet, emitting only 26 dBA, which is highly impressive for a card in this performance segment. It is not the quietest card though, the MSI Suprim SOC is a tiny bit quieter, and it is so out of the box, without requiring a manual BIOS switch change." ASUS has seemingly absorbed initial feedback from review outlets (plus early adopters)—yesterday's update arrived just under two weeks from launch time. Watch out for possible upcoming reassessments.

Angelbird is excited to introduce our new AV PRO SE CFexpress B v4 memory cards. Built on the latest CFexpress v4 Type B technology, we set a new benchmark for stable, high-speed performance, redefining the "Standard Edition" of our CFexpress Type B memory cards.

Stability meets performance
At Angelbird, we understand that true performance isn't just about maximum speeds - it's about delivering consistent, stable results throughout the entire creative process. Angelbird's Stable Stream guarantees consistent recording performance across all modes and throughout the entire capacity of the card. These new cards deliver a sustained write speed of up to 3150 MB/s - doubling the speed of our previous CFexpress 2.0 Type B cards. Designed to keep up with various demanding workflows, from fast-paced shoots to data-intensive post-production, they deliver unparalleled and reliable performance for the modern creator.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, the standalone multiplayer co-op action survival game by FromSoftware, Inc. and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., will launch on May 30. Set in the Elden Ring universe, ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN challenges players with co-op multiplayer PVE combat against a harsh and unforgiving world. Pre-orders are now available for the Standard ($39.99), Deluxe ($54.99), or Collector's Edition ($199.99) of ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. Follow the latest information on the official website.

Teaming up in squads of three—or daring to go solo—players must choose one of eight Nightfarers, each with different abilities, to outlast a three day-and-night cycle. Players must make split-second decisions about combat and exploration across a map that can fluctuate with different biomes, weapons, and enemies in order to become stronger, and outrun the encroaching circle of fire to be able to take on terrifying bosses at the end of each day. This culminates on the third day, where if players were successful in surviving the night must take on one of the Nightlords—new bosses for this version. Nightfarers must learn to cooperate to take down these challenges, combining their unique abilities together for an unparalleled experience in the ELDEN RING universe. All is not lost for those who fall in defeat. Unsuccessful runs will grant players relics to allow them to customize and upgrade their characters tailored to their personal play styles.

Yesterday's news cycle pointed to Samsung's alleged development of 7000 mAh capacity batteries for the next-gen "Galaxy S26" smartphone series. Additionally, reports suggest that the South Korean megacorporation's Electronics division is experimenting with silicon-carbon battery technology. Industry watchdogs reckon that Chinese manufacturers are market leaders in terms of silicon-carbon battery tech breakthrough, with Apple and Samsung trailing far behind. PandaFlashPro took issue with the latest reports, and dismissed the notion of a so-called "Galaxy S26 Ultra" model featuring a 7000 mAh capacity battery. According to their network of insider sources, Samsung engineers are struggling with their planned improvements.

Typically, flagship Galaxy S phones have utilized 5000 mAh lithium-polymer batteries. PandaFlashPro envisions an underwhelming next-gen upgrade in this department: "I'll delete my X/Twitter account if Samsung gives the 'Galaxy S26 Ultra' a 7000 mAh or even a 6000 mAh battery I bet...based on my five sources, the internal Samsung Test Lab only seem to have a maximum capacity of 5500mAh; not more." The self-proclaimed science and tech enthusiast did not clarify whether the new generation of Galaxy S models will utilize silicon-carbon tech. Industry whispers allege that Samsung is perfecting its "battery formula," thus ensuring that it meets internal standards and expectations.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a leading innovator of mass-capacity data storage, today announced the Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD, the lightning-fast SSD that is highly durable and portable. With transfer speeds of up to 1,000 MB/s, you can conveniently store and move large files on-the-go, freeing up space on your PC, phone, tablet or gaming device. The device comes in spacious 1 TB and 2 TB capacities.

Product Highlights:

• Small but Mighty: The Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD is a compact and light, thumb-drive sized SSD that easily attaches to your key ring. Despite its small size, it offers powerful performance and convenience.
• Tough Stuff: Built to withstand the rigors of travel, The Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD features 3 meter drop resistance, IP54 dust and water resistance, and a removable rubber sleeve for extra protection.

OnLogic, a leading provider of edge computing solutions, has launched the Axial AX300, a highly customizable and powerful edge server. The AX300 is engineered to help businesses of any size better leverage their on-site data and unlock the potential of AI by placing powerful computing capabilities on-site.

The Axial AX300 empowers organizations to seamlessly move computing resources closer to the data source, providing significant advantages in performance, latency, operational efficiency, and total cost of ownership over cloud-based data management. With its robust design, flexible configuration options, and advanced security features, the Axial AX300 is the ideal platform for a wide range of highly-impactful edge computing applications, including:

• AI/ML inference and training: Leveraging the power of AI/ML at the edge for real-time insights, predictive maintenance, and improved decision-making.
• Data analytics: Processing and analyzing data generated by IoT devices and sensors in real-time to improve operational efficiency.
• Virtualization: Consolidating multiple workloads onto a single server, optimizing resource utilization and simplifying deployment and management.

The Powerbeats Pro 2 from Beats are officially here, commanding a premium $250 price tag. The earbuds feature ANC and transparency modes, along with a custom acoustic architecture with dual-layer drivers. Sound quality is difficult to determine without actually trying the buds on, but the Powerbeats Pro from 2019 were met with mostly positive reviews, which sure does indicate that its successors will likely live up to expectations. The earbuds boast Apple's H2 chip, which is the exact same SiP found in the AirPods Pro 2, and therefore, sport spatial audio support with dynamic head tracking when used with the Apple Vision Pro. A heart rate sensor is also present, which makes sense considering the earbuds are primarily targeted at fitness enthusiasts.

The charging case has shrunk, and can juice up the earbuds over three times. With ANC on, the Powerbeats Pro 2 can be used for 8 hours, and with ANC off, the usage time goes up by two hours. Unlike AirPods, the Powerbeats Pro 2 should function well with Android devices, thanks to the Beats app. The USB-C port replaces the previous lightning connector, and the IPX4 rating indicates sweat resistance. Thankfully, physical buttons are present, allowing for volume, playback, voice assistant, and ANC controls without having to resort to any gesture-induced guess work. Beats also claims that the earbuds are 20% lighter than before, which is certainly welcome news. A total of five tip sizes are provided with the earbuds, which should resolve the majority comfort issues for most people.

Civ fans—Sid Meier's Civilization VII is available now! To the entire Civ community, thank you so much for joining us on this journey. We're honored and humbled to be starting this new chapter of Civ history with you, and this is just the beginning of our years-long commitment to Civilization VII. Thanks especially to everyone who has offered feedback and support in the days since Advanced Access began for Deluxe and Founders Edition owners. As we stated in our February 6 message to the Civ community, we're actively listening to all the feedback, and work is already underway on free updates to the game including a UI rework, the addition of community-requested features, and other quality-of-life updates. We're still determining what can be delivered when, so be on the lookout for a detailed roadmap in the future. We're committed to making Civilization VII the best it can be, and your feedback is hugely helpful as we continue to make improvements.

Thank you for being a Civ fan
We can't wait for you to get into the game and start building an empire you believe in - but first, we'd like to share some heartfelt thanks to the entire Civ community from some of the people who made Civilization VII possible: "It is a monumental day for all of us at Firaxis, and we couldn't let it pass without saying a heartfelt thank you. When Sid Meier started this series over 30 years ago, his vision for Civilization wasn't just about building a great game - it was about creating a canvas where players could shape the world and write their own history. That vision remains at the heart of everything we do, and it's what makes Civilization VII a true collaboration with you, our dedicated fans. On behalf of everyone at Firaxis, thank you for your trust, excitement, and love for this series. Here's to the next chapter of Civilization!"—Heather Hazen, President of Firaxis

AMD will be launching its new generation of "RDNA 4" Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards next month, but we will likely hear more about technical details and price points from official sources around late February. Team Red had scheduled a special "launch event," but Radeon RX 9070 series leaks continue to flow online. Earlier today, reports alluded to an XT variant that allegedly sports a generous VRAM pool of 32 GB. VideoCardz has received another RDNA 4 tip-off, courtesy of Tomasz Gawroński and the AnandTech forums. Based on screenshots, Canada Computers has inadvertently revealed regional prices (minus tax) for PowerColor and XFX's opening round of custom Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 models.

Team Red is reportedly lining up an aggressive price strategy; industry insiders reckon that that baseline MSRP for the Radeon RX 9070 XT will be $599. Its non-XT sibling is expected to launch at a minimum point of $499. The Canada Computers leak seems to contain a small selection of models that hover closer to AMD's guidelines, but the majority of listed cards seemingly demand a premium upcharge. PowerColor's barebones models appear to conform closest to Team Red's recommended baseline—according to VideoCardz's conversion-crunching, the Radeon RX 9070 XT Reaper will cost $999 CAD (~$697 USD). The RX 9070 (non-XT) Reaper will come in at $839 CAD (~$586 USD). We spotted no surprises when looking up and down the list of leaked PowerColor RDNA 4 SKUs; TechPowerUp staffers handled Red Devil, Hellhound and Reaper samples at CES 2025. In sharp contrast, XFX appears to have all sorts of options lined up for launch (refer to VideoCardz's chart, below). Two unnamed demonstration units—in black or white—were on display at AMD's recent partner roundup.

China's dominance in semiconductor equipment procurement is expected to face its first setback since 2021, with spending projected to decrease from $41 billion to $38 billion in 2025, according to semiconductor research firm TechInsights. This 6% decline marks a significant shift for the world's largest buyer of wafer fabrication equipment, whose purchases represented 40% of global sales in 2024. The downturn reflects mounting pressures from both market dynamics and geopolitical constraints. US export controls targeting advanced semiconductor capabilities have intensified while domestic chipmakers grapple with overcapacity in mature node segments. SMIC, China's leading foundry, has already signaled concerns about oversupply risks in this sector, where Chinese manufacturers have rapidly expanded their market share against Taiwanese competitors.

Despite these headwinds, Chinese equipment manufacturers have notably advanced domestic capability development. Naura Technology Group has emerged as the seventh-largest global equipment manufacturer, while AMEC continues to expand its international presence. However, critical gaps persist in China's semiconductor equipment ecosystem, particularly in lithography systems, where dependence on foreign suppliers like ASML remains high. TechInsights data reveals that Chinese companies supplied only 17% of testing tools and 10% of domestic assembly equipment in 2023. The spending reduction comes after a period of aggressive stockpiling prompted by US sanctions to limit Beijing's access to advanced chipmaking capabilities, especially those applicable to artificial intelligence and military applications. However, Chinese manufacturers have demonstrated resilience, with SMIC and Huawei successfully producing advanced chips through alternative, albeit more costly, manufacturing methods.

The premium digital tablet familiar to the desks of the world's top illustrators, photo editors, videographers and 3D sculptors is now in perfect harmony with today's high-end creative applications thanks to its updated design featuring tactile controls and the industry defining Pro Pen 3.

Creative workflows are part work and part flow. The work requires a combination of operating complex software controls and processes. The flow is the act of creation. The new Intuos Pro is designed to help artists accomplish their work as quickly and intuitively as possible so they can immerse themselves in the creative flow. The newest Wacom Intuos Pro remains true to its heritage as the preeminent tablet for anyone accustomed to professional workflows. In fact, it has been the industry standard for so long, its precursor, the Intuos 3, was sent to space to support astronauts on the space station as they adjusted to microgravity.

Like so many of our peers, we aren't immune to the complex, unfavorable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years. It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees. The layoffs affect development teams and shared services. This has not been an easy decision to make, as we deeply appreciate the hard work of our talented teams. After putting the development of the next Crysis game on hold in Q3 2024, we have been trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown 1896.

While Hunt: Showdown 1896 is still growing, Crytek cannot continue as before and remain financially sustainable. Even after ongoing efforts to reduce costs and cut operating expenses, we have determined that layoffs are inevitable to move forward. Crytek will offer affected employees severance packages and career assistance services. We firmly believe in the future of Crytek. With Hunt: Showdown 1896, we have a very strong gaming service and remain fully committed to its operation. We will continue to expand and evolve Hunt: Showdown 1896 with great content and drive our strategy for our engine CRYENGINE.

Unannounced Intel processor families have emerged online over the past week—one source, Jaykihn, has unearthed a treasure trove of speculative mobile SKUs. Today's discovery pushes into the enterprise market segment; focusing on Team Blue's "Granite Rapids-W" (GNR-W) platform, likely equipped with Redwood Cove cores. The latest leak suggests an upcoming emergence of "Mainstream" and "Expert" workstation-oriented product tiers, allegedly prepared with the company's rumored W890 motherboard chipset. Past generations of "Xeon W" HEDT processor families have rolled out with entry-level and high-end offerings.

The leaker reckons that the mainstream Intel Granite Rapids-W "Xeon W" lineup will arrive with 4-channel memory support and 80 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes. Team Blue's higher-end "Expert" tier is anticipated with 128 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and 8-channel memory support. In addition to leaking processor information, Jaykihn outlined basic details regarding the W890 chipset—they believe that board designs will have access to 24 PCIe Gen 4 lanes, as well as 8 Gen 4 lanes for Intel's proprietary link (DMI) between northbridge and southbridge. The leaker did not divulge details of upcoming socket types—Team Blue is notorious for its elaborate rollout out of multiple LGA platforms.

According to a fresh leak doing the rounds on the internet, NVIDIA has pushed the launch of its GeForce RTX 5070 GPU all the way to March - suspiciously close to AMD's RDNA 4 launch. The RTX 5070 Ti is still on track for a launch later this month, which can already be seen taking shape going by all the leaked retailer listings. The RTX 5070, has yet to witness any leaked listings, which adds credibility to the claim for sure. MEGAsizeGPU, the source, has further claimed that the GeForce RTX 5070 will "hit shelves" early next month.

Going by some of the rumored performance improvements, that the GeForce RTX 5070 family is poised to bring to the table, it can be said that there is a very real chance that the RDNA 4-based AMD Radeon RX 9070 family will have the upper hand in not just affordability, but also raster performance. Considering the abysmal supply that the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 recently witnessed, it is not unfathomable that the RTX 5070 family will face similarly dire circumstances. Of course, things may change, but the rumored delay surely does not inspire confidence. AMD has a real opportunity to do right by gamers by appropriately pricing its RDNA 4 cards and somehow sorting out its supply chain, although that is yet to be seen.

Qualcomm has announced its latest mid-range offering, dubbed the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. Compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, the improvements on the CPU side are rather modest, with Qualcomm claiming an 11% improvement. The CPU, now based on TSMC N4, packs four ARMv9-based Cortex-A720 P-cores, along with four Cortex-A520 E-cores, making it an 8-core system as tradition. On the GPU side, however, a substantial 29% improvement has been asserted, although the specifics remain under wraps as of this writing.

The chipset can be paired with up to 16 GB of LPDDR5-3200 memory, and displays up to FHD+ at 144 Hz are supported. INT4 support is also present the new NPU, which should allow for decent on-device AI capabilities. Gaming performance should also witness a decent jump, thanks to the aforementioned GPU improvement, paired with Game Super Resolution (upscaling) and Frame Motion Engine (frame generation, every other frame). For connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, and 5G (mm Wave, sub-6 GHz) are present. Up to 200 MP single-camera systems are supported, with Snapdragon's LLV (Low Light Vision) technology, Of course, being a budget segment SoC, it would be futile to expect high-end photography capabilities. As for videography, 4k30 and 1080p120 are supported, along with HLG and HDR10.

HYTE, a leading manufacturer of cutting-edge PC components and peripherals, is teaming up with ATLUS once again to bring back its highly popular collaboration with Persona 3 Reload. The game's cast and setting will be featured in a premium and aesthetic manner with an all-new product line involving HYTE's iconic Y70 computer case.

ATLUS and HYTE are gearing up for a year-long celebration of Persona 3 Reload's original February 2024 launch with all-new limited-edition Persona 3 Reload-themed products. Like with the original Y60 case collaboration, HYTE's Persona 3 Reload Y70 Case utilizes the chassis' glass panels to lovingly feature the game's core cast and the in-game setting of Tartarus. The case's metal paneling is also tastefully decorated with in-game elements fans are sure to recognize, including a "Dark Hour" clock painted on its rear panel, and comes with a custom metal plate that calls back to S.E.E.S., the main group players will join in Persona 3 Reload.

The rapid evolution of generative AI has created countless opportunities for innovation across industry and research. As is often the case with state-of-the-art technology, this evolution has also shifted the landscape of cybersecurity threats, creating new security requirements. Critical infrastructure cybersecurity is advancing to thwart the next wave of emerging threats in the AI era. Leading operational technology (OT) providers today showcased at the S4 conference for industrial control systems (ICS) and OT cybersecurity how they're adopting the NVIDIA cybersecurity AI platform to deliver real-time threat detection and critical infrastructure protection.

Armis, Check Point, CrowdStrike, Deloitte and World Wide Technology (WWT) are integrating the platform to help customers bolster critical infrastructure, such as energy, utilities and manufacturing facilities, against cyber threats. Critical infrastructure operates in highly complex environments, where the convergence of IT and OT, often accelerated by digital transformation, creates a perfect storm of vulnerabilities. Traditional cybersecurity measures are no longer sufficient to address these emerging threats. By harnessing NVIDIA's cybersecurity AI platform, these partners can provide exceptional visibility into critical infrastructure environments, achieving robust and adaptive security while delivering operational continuity.

European PC hardware retailers are readying themselves with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti partner models, ahead of the GPU's freshly scheduled launch on February 20. Tech news sites and industry watchdogs have already sniffed out preliminary pricing; courtesy of accidental listings of MSI custom card designs in France and Austria. We are more than a week away from GeForce RTX 5070 Ti release day, so speculative price points are subject to change. The Austrian arm of MediaMarkt was quick to correct matters after an accidental leak, and proceeded to remove an MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GAMING TRIO OC PLUS product page from its webstore. VideoCardz managed to preserve fundamental details, prior to MediaMarkt AT's de-listing of the offending item. The card's alleged €1169 asking price has raised Central European eyebrows—factoring in the region's customary VAT, we are looking at an approximate 32% increase over NVIDIA's baseline MSRP (€884). It should be noted that a Founders Edition does not exist in Team Green's upper-mid "Blackwell" GPU segment.

MSI's price point for its GeForce RTX 5070 Ti VENTUS 3X OC PLUS card is expected to reside closer to Team Green's recommendation, but this barebones offering sits within the company's "entry-level" product tier. The manufacturer's GAMING TRIO OC PLUS range tends to slot right into middle of product hierarchies—provisioned RGB lighting, larger heatsinks and miscellaneous fancy features often demand an upcharge at retail. Tomasz Gawroński (aka GawroskiT) happened upon additional MSI listings in France; an unnamed e-tailer has priced the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GAMING TRIO OC PLUS at €1149 (€20 cheaper than MediaMarkt AT). The upper crust MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti VANGUARD SOC LIMITED EDITION model demands that French customers part way with €1199, for the pleasure of ownership.

At first blush, South of Midnight could be described as a classic action-adventure: a heroine thrust from ordinary life into a remarkable journey; magical weapons and abilities; ability skill trees. But spend just a few minutes with it, and that feeling simply floats away. We've never seen a gaming world quite like this. In playing through its full third chapter, it's a revelation that strikes again and again—this setting, this story, these ideas, even the music are something brand new, all underpinned by challenging combat and blissful exploration along the way. The preview begins as our hero, Hazel, has already set off to find her mother, who's been swept away by a flood. Before we step into her sneakers, she's discovered she's a Weaver, able to wield an ancient form of magic that allows her to fight and explore by pulling on the once-invisible threads holding reality together. But around her, that reality seems to be warping. We step into a Deep South-inspired countryside that Hazel doesn't recognize—and that is, in places, actively hostile to her.

Trailers have showed us a lot of the world and story of South of Midnight, but getting your hands on it reveals the tight, action-focused game simmering underneath. As you travel the world, you'll see shimmering spheres of energy, refracting light like an oil-slicked puddle. Entering one will see you facing off against Haints, creatures from real Southern folklore. These creatures come in various forms - some rush you, pulling off melee flurries, others flee for ranged attacks, while some simply pump out grotesque insects to harry you. It quickly becomes an element of strategy to work out which Haint needs to be taken down first in any given situation.

The new ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 designs have attracted a lot of attention, due to an unusual cooling configuration that includes a backplate-mounted fourth fan. At CES 2025, MSI teased onlookers with a placard adorned with a GeForce RTX 32G "Lightning" Special Edition model—featuring a "FiveFrozr" cooling solution. A traditional triple-fan setup is placed in the expected shroud location, but two additional units are integrated into the card's backplate. According to recent reports and early reviews, GIGABYTE has deployed a somewhat related system, albeit entirely optional (depending on user discretion). The Taiwanese manufacturer sent its AORUS RTX 5090 and 5080 MASTER models to market last week. These premium card designs feature the company's new "Screen Cooling Plus" system. CES press material claims that the "extra air-boosting fan" grants more airflow.

GIGABYTE's fourth fan has flown under the radar, but major hardware news outlets have just picked up on initial impressions. Singapore's HardwareZone appreciated the inclusion of an optional extra—with their AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER sample—but criticized GIGABYTE's slightly undercooked implementation. Their reviewer did not evaluate whether the modular part made any difference in terms of reducing temperatures—instead, they opined: "to further improve cooling, the card also comes bundled with a separate 120 mm RGB fan that you can place on the back of the card to pull air out—a design reminiscent of the ROG Astral RTX 5080's built-in cooling solution. It's a practical touch but not an elegant one, as it means having to deal with additional cables to tidy up since—oddly enough—the card itself does not come with a power connector for the extra fan." GLITCHED.online, a South African tech site, took GIGABYTE's AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER ICE card for a test drive—they found that the extra bit of cooling potential made a difference, but it was "almost unnoticeable." We hope that GIGABYTE will send review samples to TPU's W1zzard in the near future. Will the fourth fan make any difference on the AORUS RTX 5090 MASTER model?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced eight new HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers, the latest additions to a new generation of enterprise servers that introduce industry-first security capabilities, optimize performance for complex workloads and boost productivity with management features enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI). The new servers will feature upcoming Intel Xeon 6 processors for data center and edge environments.

"Our customers are tackling workloads that are overwhelmingly data-intensive and growing ever-more demanding," said Krista Satterthwaite, senior vice president and general manager, Compute at HPE. "The new HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers give organizations - spanning public sector, enterprise and vertical industries like finance, healthcare and more - the horsepower and management insights they need to thrive while balancing their sustainability goals and managing costs. This is a modern enterprise platform engineered for the hybrid world, designed with innovative security and control capabilities to help companies prevail over the evolving threat landscape and performance challenges that their legacy hardware cannot address."

Aaaaaand… action! Time to become a Hollywood mogul! The Executive is now officially released with a 10% launch discount! Produce your dream movies. Tackle production challenges. Build your empire…And much more! We're thrilled to finally let you get your hands on it! We're incredibly proud of this project, and after your feedback on the demo, we can't wait to hear your thoughts on the full game!

Shape the history of the Hollywood movie industry in this sandbox business simulation game. Create the movies you've always wanted to see, hire the best team, research cutting-edge technologies, and dominate the Box Office. Can you rise from a small studio to a Hollywood giant? The Executive is a sandbox business simulation game that lets you rewrite the history of Hollywood from the 1970s to today. As the founder of a scrappy production company, you'll produce the movies you've always dreamed of, manage ambitious franchises, and build a studio that rivals the industry's greatest. Navigate the challenges of the movie business, outmaneuver your competition, and decide whether to chase critical acclaim or box office domination.

TSMC has unveiled today its board meeting decisions, the chip giant has greenlit a massive US$17 billion investment to boost production capacity. According to TSMC, to meet long-term capacity plans based on market demand forecasts and TSMC's technology development roadmap, the board approved capital appropriations of approximately US$17.14 billion for installation and upgrade of advanced technology capacity, installation and upgrade of advanced packaging, mature and/or specialty technology capacity, fab construction, and installation of fab facility systems.

Previous reports by MoneyDJ suggested that TSMC might unveil plans for a third Arizona fab, a potential fourth fab, or its first advanced packaging plant after the board meeting. However, no updates have been confirmed yet. Industry sources suggested that TSMC's second Arizona fab, featuring 3 nm, will likely go ahead of schedule, providing a temporary response to U.S. pressures. According to the same report, TSMC's second Arizona fab is expected to begin equipment installation in mid-2026, with mass production expected by 2027. Notably, this progress would exceed TSMC's projections which expected the second plant to start 3 nm and 2 nm production in 2028, with a third plant potentially for the 2 nm process by the late 2030s. The MoneyDJ report further notes that initially, TSMC's second Arizona plant will offer 25K-30K 3 nm wafers per month. TSMC's first Arizona plant, initially slated for 2025, started 4 nm production ahead of schedule in Q4 2024.

User preference to super resolution technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, beat playing games without them, at native resolution, in the latest TechPowerUp Frontpage Poll. Spanning nearly a month of polling and over 29,260 votes, the poll provides an interesting insight into the minds of today's gamers. It suggests that gamers are willing to explore super resolution technologies to make their games playable with higher eye-candy, as opposed to playing at native resolutions with watered down settings. The question we asked was what setting of super resolution do gamers use, with "native" suggesting a lack of super resolution. Native could include presets such as DLAA or FSR Native, which render the game at native resolution while using the upscaler to work like an AA technology, smoothing out edges.

Native resolution scored 13,024 votes, or 44.5% of the votes. It is the single largest response, but given that every other response is tied to some form of super resolution, it becomes a minority response. Native is followed by "Quality" preset at 38.8% or 11,341 votes. The "Balanced" present, which tends to be the default super resolution preset in most games, trails "Quality" by a significant margin, scoring just 8.9% of the vote, or 2,593 votes. Only trace sections of our users pick "performance" and "ultra performance" presets that tend to render the game at significantly lower resolutions to make it playable. "Performance" got 4.7% (1,376 votes), followed by "Ultra Performance" at 3.2% or 930 votes.

AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs are expected to come with up to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. However, AMD is reportedly expanding its RX 9070 lineup with a new 32 GB variant, according to sources on Chiphell. The card, speculatively called the RX 9070 XT 32 GB, is slated for release at the end of Q2 2025. The current GDDR6 memory modules used in GPUs carry a capacity of 2 GB per module only, meaning that a design with 32 GB of VRAM would require as many as 16 memory modules on a single card. No 2 GB+ GDDR6 memory modules are available, meaning that the design would require memory module installation on both the front and back of the PCB. Consumers GPUs are not known for this, but it is a possibility with workstation/prosumer grade GPUs employing this engineering tactic to boost capacity,

While we don't have information on the GPU architecture, discussions point to potential modifications of the existing Navi 48 silicon. This release is positioned as a gaming card rather than a workstation-class Radeon PRO 9000 series product. AMD appears to be targeting gamers interested in running AI workloads, which typically require massive VRAM amounts to run locally. Additionally, investing in a GPU with a big VRAM capacity is essentially "future-proofing" for gamers who plan to keep their cards for longer, as recent games have been spiking VRAM usage by a large margin. The combination of gaming and AI workloads may have made AMD reconsider some of its product offerings, potentially giving us the Radeon RX 9070 XT 32 GB SKU. We have to wait for the Q2 to start, and we can expect more details by then.

QNAP Systems, Inc. has introduced the new QNA series USB4 Type-C to 10GbE network adapters, specifically designed for Mac and Windows PCs equipped with USB4 or Thunderbolt 3/4 ports. These adapters enable connecting to 10GbE high-speed networks, significantly improving user convenience and work efficiency.

QNAP Product Manager Andy Chuang stated, "The compact and low-noise QNA USB4 adapters allow computers without network ports to establish a high-speed network environment with other devices. Users can enjoy efficient large file transfers and smooth 10GbE collaborative workflows without complicated setup."

Sid Meier's Civilization VII was released just a few days ago, and its peak interest is seemingly below the interest recorded way back in October 2016, when Civilization VI was released. According to SteamDB analytics, the new Civilization VII game has recorded a 24-hour peak of 80,103 concurrent players. However, when its predecessor, Civilization VI, launched, the 24-hour peak concurrent player count was a whopping 162,657 players, more than double that of the newer release. In the peak 24-hour period, the older Civilization VI has seen 52,082 players concurrently, suggesting that the game has left a strong impression on many, and gamers continue to return to it to explore.

However, it's not only about peak numbers. Players of 2016 Sid Meier's Civilization VI are active throughout the year. Currently, Civilization VI players occupy 35,854 spots, while 38,201 players, a bit more, are playing the 2025 Civilization VII. To say that Civilization VII is a flop is a bit of an overstatement. However, this shows that the Civilization series hype was much stronger in 2016 than it is now and that gamers value quality gameplay so much that they continue to play their favorite games throughout the year. We have yet to see how the game progresses in the future, and we are curious if the current Civilization VI player base will migrate over to Civilization VII. If you are a Civilization series fan, let us know your opinion in the comments.

A new case of catastrophic CPU failure has emerged involving AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, marking the latest in a series of reported incidents within the last few days involving high-performance GPUs and CPUs. The failure occurred during routine use when a system equipped with the 9800X3D and an ASRock Nova X870E motherboard suddenly shut down, resulting in visible thermal damage to both components. The incident is particularly noteworthy as the system operated under stock settings, with only AMD EXPO memory optimization enabled. The affected user, who has two decades of PC building experience, reported that the system had been operational for approximately 20 days before the failure, with no temperature anomalies recorded through HWMonitor during its operation.

The hardware was running the ASRock BIOS version 3.16. This case differs significantly from the previous AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D failure, where user error during installation was identified as the primary cause, with the user force-installing the CPU in the socket. The timing of the failure—during a low-intensity workload of streaming video content—further complicates the investigation into root causes. While isolated cases of hardware failure are not uncommon in the PC component market, this case may be the first one caused entirely by the CPU/motherboard combination, not user error. The user also faces uncertainty regarding warranty coverage, as the CPU and motherboard were purchased separately from different retailers. We hope the warranty case goes well, and the user gets a replacement!

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of IPC solutions, motherboards, graphics cards, and PC peripherals, is excited to introduce the MS-X6413E industrial system designed to meet the needs of a wide range of industries including automation machine builders, edge computing innovators, and HMI solution creators.

The MS-X6413E is tailored for businesses looking to stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital landscape. For system integrators, this product offers a seamless solution to keep business operations running smoothly, managing customer contact details, transaction history, and accounts with ease. Its unparalleled reliability ensures that businesses are always up-to-date and in control of their processes. Its versatility also extends to those building edge computing machines.

The NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti gaming GPU is expected to be available starting February 20, although whether gamers are going to be able to purchase one anytime soon is a different story entirely. That said, a recent listing on an Austrian retailer's website has revealed the pricing details for the MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio card - a cool €1169 (inclusive of 19% VAT), roughly equivalent to $1212. Compared to NVIDIA's official pricing for the RTX 5070 Ti in most parts of the EU, a 33% increase in price can be observed. Of course, the MSI GAMING TRIO is quite a high-end card, but the price delta is quite surprising regardless. Depending on supply, the prices may further inflate, if the events of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 launch are repeated.

The RTX 5070 Ti is expected to boast 8690 CUDA cores paired with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus. Recent leaks have hinted at very mediocre performance improvements, similar to what we witnessed with the RTX 5080. As of this writing, there seems to be a decent possibility that the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT will beat the RTX 5070 family, not just in raster performance, but also in value. Of course, since NVIDIA is clearly going to fire first, gamers will not have much of a choice before RDNA 4 hits the scene. That said if the RTX 5070 series witnesses similarly atrocious availability at launch as its siblings, a lot of folks will have no option but to wait.

The X86-P6 is a freshly unveiled mini PC that primarily aims to function as a NAS or a local backup. The system is powered by up to an Intel Core N355 processor, sitting at the top of Intel's Alder Lake-N product lineup. Packing 8 cores and 8 threads, the N355 is no small fry and packs enough computing grunt to push through moderately intensive workloads without an issue. However, the primary selling point for the system, unsurprisingly, is its storage at networking capabilities.

With dual 2.5G LAN, the X86-P6 packs enough networking prowess for a small home office or backup setup. The system also packs four M.2 2280 slots - albeit limited to only a single PCIe 3.0 lane (1 GB/s) per SSD when utilizing all the SSDs, which should theoretically be enough to saturate the system's networking capabilities. Apart from the LAN, the system also sports dual HDMI 2.0 ports, dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, as well as an M.2 B-key slot for wireless network modules.

A recent leak from the reliable analyst Evan Blass has revealed a bunch of new ThinkPad, ThinkBook, and Yoga devices set to see the light of day at MWC 2025. Although the tweet has been deleted by Evan, Notebookcheck was able to summarize the information provided in the nick of time. First up, we have the refreshed ThinkPads, including the T14, T14s, T16, and X13. All the devices are equipped with the beloved TrackPoint, unlike the recently launched ThinkPad X9 Aura. The T14 G6 and T16 G4 are expected to be marketed as a CoPilot+ PC, indicating Lunar Lake prowess. However, the processor powering the X13 is not known at this point.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura will also reportedly see the light of day at MWC 2025, packing a 16-inch display with an unconfirmed Intel processor. As for the ThinkBooks, the lineup will likely welcome two new entrants, including the ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 -- a 14-inch convertible with a touchscreen and stylus support -- and the ThinkBook 16P G6 - a 16-inch device that is rumored to boast a dedicated GPU, a numeric keypad, and a spacious trackpad. Finally, we have the IdeaPad Slim 3x, which will boast the entry-level Snapdragon X processor and position itself as a budget device with a 16-inch display, fingerprint scanner, SD card reader, USB-A and USB-C ports, as well as a privacy cover for the webcam. The image order has been detailed below.

Last March, Relic Entertainment announced its independence; an "external investor" helped officiate the Vancouver, Canada-based studio's separation from Sega. Via a press release, Relic thanked its former owner for the: "support over the years and guidance during this transition have been instrumental to our success. We may be out of the SEGA business, but we remain friends and colleagues. We are excited about this next chapter." The newly-independent development house proceeded to cut staff headcounts—according to the 2024 news cycle—and seemingly kept a low profile for the rest of the year. In early 2025, Relic has revealed its refreshed strategies and goals; VentureBeat and Game Developer both sat down and conducted interviews with Justin Dowdeswell (CEO). The relatively new Relic boss outlined his company's focus on three key areas of development. Relic remains committed to existing titles (e.g. Company of Heroes 3), but it will also pursue the production and publishing of "smaller-scope" games, as well re-imaginations of classics from its past portfolio.

Dowdeswell believes that company leadership will put "Relic back on the map" following its well-documented split from Sega. The future looks bright, due to the real-time strategy specialist's now unconstrained operating model—the CEO believes that his studio: "has innovated for its whole existence. The ability to tap into that is best served with Relic as an independent studio." Dowdeswell and his colleagues have long worked within the constraints of a relatively niche market segment; Relic's chief envisions something with a wider/more mainstream appeal: "the opportunity we have here is to crack the case of where RTS needs to go next...We've definitely seen really highly engaged multiplayer audiences. But it is limited when we talk about Company of Heroes, for example. This is a game set in World War II, which limits the audience to some degree. It's an RTS which further limits the audience. And when we internally talk about what the barriers are for us, broadening that audience is big. How do we bring new players in? How do we reach players?...We definitely strongly believe there is a market and there are players out there. It's our job to give them the next great RTS."

Last October, Apple introduced its modernized range of MacBook Pro models; featuring the M4 family of chips. Ultra-thin notebook enthusiasts wondered whether the MacBook Air range series would receive similar treatment in the near future. Apple provided an answer around December-time, by accidentally publishing "Mac16,12" and "Mac16,13" machine listings within their macOS Sequoia 15.2 release. MacRumors believed that the referenced models are MacBook Air M4 13-inch and M4 15-inch products. At the time, industry moles suggested that Apple had settled on a possible April (2025) launch window. A fresh follow-up report points to an earlier than anticipated release—MacRumors reckons that a recent leak indicates an "imminent" launch.

Yesterday, the publication discovered intriguing information online; posted by an anonymous source on X. Based on said leak, MacRumors reports that the updated MacBook Air models: "will be equipped with Apple's T8132 chip." Apple's internal reference code points to both 13-inch and 15-inch models housing a 10-core M4 chipset (part number: APL1206). Mark Gurman—Bloomberg's resident technology guru—has picked up on signs of dwindling current-gen MacBook Air M3 stock. His weekend detective work suggests that successors are only weeks away from launch.

A fresh report from the reliable publication "The Elec" has revealed that the OLED panel destined for the 2026 MacBook Pro is already in the prototyping stage at Samsung Displays. The report adds that the company expects to produce somewhere between three and five million OLED panels yearly, which can be expanded to up to 10 million if demand increases. The MacBook Pro lineup is also expected to boast 2 nm Apple M6-series SoCs in 2026, although details regarding the SoCs are unsurprisingly scarce as of this writing.

Interestingly, as we have already reported on before, the MacBook Air has once again been rumored to receive the OLED treatment no sooner than 2029. An upgraded LCD panel, however, is still on the cards for the entry-level laptop. The iPad Pro was updated with tandem OLED panels last year, although reports since have failed to indicate a substantial jump in demand. Whether the OLED MacBook lineup will meet a similar fate remains to be seen, although there is no denying that OLED panels will bring a plethora of improvements for MacBook Pro customers, especially those who happen to be creative pros.

People are using AI more and more at home, at work, in school, and everywhere in between. According to the most recent Microsoft Global Online Safety Survey, there has been a global increase in active generative AI users. Our findings showed that in 2024, 51% of people are users or experimenters of generative AI compared to 38% in 2023. Generation Z continues to drive this adoption with 64% of young adults reporting ever using the technology. That means it's up to us - especially those of us who work in technology and gaming - to make sure that young people have the support they need to navigate the world of AI safely while also fostering their curiosity and creativity in exploring these new technologies.

That's why, for Safer Internet Day 2025, Minecraft Education is releasing a new installment in the CyberSafe series where players can explore the risks and opportunities of AI use through fun, game-based challenges. In each instance, players are tasked with articulating guidelines for how to use AI safely and responsibly. Welcome to CyberSafe AI: Dig Deeper, available free on the Minecraft Marketplace and in Minecraft Education!

Earlier today, NVIDIA happily declared that: "GeForce RTX 50-series laptop pre-orders start February 25 from OEMs." A March launch window was mentioned during the company's official unveiling of its "Blackwell" GPU architecture at CES 2025. Mobile variants of the GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti are expected to ship with laptops next month. GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile-equipped devices are due in April. As reported by VideoCardz, a Finnish retailer's webstore has confirmed the February 25 pre-order start date. The Gigantti.fi site lists several new ASUS ROG Zephyrus and Strix laptops; configured with the latest Intel Core Ultra 200HX or AMD "Strix Point/Fire Range" mobile APUs, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series discrete graphics solutions. The most expensive option is listed with a €5499 price point—interested buyers are looking at a spec that includes a 16-inch OLED screen, Core Ultra 9-285H processor, 32 GB LPDDR5X RAM, 1 TB M.2 PCIe SSD, and a GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB mobile GPU. At the time of writing, Gigantti's "cheapest" option is a €2999 ROG Strix 16 model; sporting a Ryzen 9 9955HX APU and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 12 GB Mobile GPU.

NVIDIA disclosed official MSRPs during last month's CES presentation: $2199 for RTX 5090, $2199 for RTX 5080, $1599 for RTX 5070 Ti, and $1299 for the RTX 5070. Western press outlets have scouted North American online retail outlets. Tom's Hardware observed (ASUS and HP) price ranges starting at $1800. The most expensive offering came in at $4200; an ultra high-end ROG Strix Scar 18 laptop featuring a GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile GPU and an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU. Team Green's upcoming launch partners include Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, Mechrevo, MSI and Razer. NVIDIA seems to have extra GeForce RTX 50-series announcements in the pipeline—they recommend that potential buyers: "stay tuned for more details!"

AI PC capabilities have evolved rapidly in the two years since AMD introduced the first x86 AI PC CPUs at CES 2023. New neural processing units have debuted, pushing available performance from a peak of 10 AI TOPS at the launch of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor to peak 50+ TOPS on the latest AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 300 Series processors. A wide range of software and hardware companies have announced various AI development plans or brought AI-infused products to market, while major operating system vendors like Microsoft are actively working to integrate AI into the operating system via its Copilot+ PC capabilities. AMD is on the forefront of those efforts and is working closely with Microsoft to deliver Copilot+ for Ryzen AI and Ryzen AI PRO PCs.

In the report "The Year of the AI PC is 2025," Forrester lays out its argument for why this year is likely to bring significant changes for AI PCs. Forrester defines the term "AI PC" to mean any system "embedded with an AI chip and algorithms specifically designed to improve the experience of AI workloads across the computer processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), and neural processing unit (NPU)." This includes AMD products, as well as competing products made by both x86 and non-x86 CPU manufacturers. 2025 represents a turning point for these efforts, both in terms of hardware and software, and this Forrester report is an excellent deep dive into why AI PCs represent the future for enterprise computing.

According to early February reportage, Team Green's GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards are expected to launch onto market next month. Very basic technical information has leaked online; insiders reckon that both product tiers will be utilizing the NVIDIA "Blackwell" GB206 GPU. Rumors have swirled regarding intended VRAM configurations—loose online declarations point to variants being prepared with 8 or 16 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, on a 128-bit bus. Regulatory filings indicate two different configs with the eventual arrival of GeForce RTX 5060 Ti models, but certain industry watchdogs insist that the GeForce RTX 5060 SKU will be an 8 GB-only product.

A curious-looking ZOTAC Trinity OC White Edition GeForce RTX 5060 16 GB variant surfaced via a TikTok video—post-analysis, expert eyes declared that the upload contained doctored material. A BenchLife.info report pointed to a notable inconsistency on the offending item's retail packaging: "DLSS 3 should not appear on the GeForce RTX 50 series box, because the Blackwell GPU architecture focuses on DLSS 4." The publication presented evidence of ZOTAC RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity OC White Edition box art being repurposed in the TikToker's video. Hardware soothsayer MEGAsizeGPU added their two cents: "this is fake. There is no plan for a GeForce RTX 5060 16 GB, and the box is photoshopped from the last-gen ZOTAC box." At the end of their report, BenchLife reckons that NVIDIA has not sent a "GeForce RTX 5060 color box template" to its board partners.

One year on, with the teething problems a major new release inevitably brings firmly behind us, Plasma's developers have worked on fine-tuning, squashing bugs and adding features to Plasma 6—turning it into the best desktop environment for everyone! Read on to discover all the exciting new changes landing in this release…

Digital Art
We want to make Plasma the best platform for creativity, and Plasma 6.3 takes the next step in that direction by providing features that help artists optimize and customize their graphics tablets to their liking.

Recent engineering prototype leaks reveal NVIDIA's power delivery design for its RTX 5090 flagship GPU featured a jaw-dropping quad 12V-2x6 connector configuration. The prototype board, while not publicly photographed, is significantly different from the final version we have today. The quad-connector design serves multiple purposes beyond raw power delivery. Each 12V-2x6 connector, capable of delivering up to 600 W individually, creates a theoretical power ceiling far beyond reasonable requirements. More likely, the implementation allows for separate voltage rails and enhanced power stability, crucial for the card's reported 575 W TDP - a 125 W increase from the RTX 4090's specifications. This overengineered piece follows NVIDIA's historical engineering practices, where early prototypes typically feature expanded power delivery systems that are later optimized for production.

The timing of this leak happens just in time with ongoing discussions about 12V-2x6 connector reliability, particularly following documented failures. While the quad-connector design may seem excessive, it distributes power load more evenly across multiple connection points, potentially addressing thermal concentration issues that plagued single-connector implementations. Board partners like ASUS have already implemented sophisticated current monitoring solutions in their custom designs, using shunt resistors to detect overcurrent conditions across individual pins. Established hardware leaker, Panzerlied confirmed the prototype's existence on Chinese forums, alongside images of other engineering samples featuring similar power delivery experiments across multiple GPU generations.

We've been hinting that this year is going to be huge, and we're ready to share why… in two weeks on Feb 25th, at our Framework (2nd Gen) Event! We're holding this launch event live in San Francisco and streaming to our YouTube channel at 10:30am Pacific that day. You can sign up now to get notified when the stream starts. The last time we held a live launch event was in March 2023, when we unveiled Framework Laptop 16 and two new versions of Framework Laptop 13. It's been amazing seeing the interest in these products and the incredible ways the community has been using and extending on them. We've been heads down working for the last two years on an even bigger set of announcements.

For this event, in addition to bringing in press and partners, we're opening a pool of invites to the Framework Community to attend the event in person, meet the team, and get hands on with our newest products. If you're a current Framework fan and are in the San Francisco area (or are able to handle your own travel to us), you can apply to attend in this sign-up form. We expect we'll see a lot more interest than we have available seats in our venue, so we'll likely need to downselect from applicants.

State of Play is back tomorrow, February 12! Tune in live for news and updates on great games coming to PS5. The show celebrates a creative and unique selection of exciting games from studios around the world. The 40+ minute show begins February 12 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET | 11pm CET / February 13 at 7am JST on YouTube and Twitch, and will be broadcast in English and Japanese. See you tomorrow!

Regarding co-streaming and video-on-demand (VOD)
Please note that this broadcast may include copyrighted content (e.g. licensed music) that PlayStation does not control. We welcome and celebrate our amazing co-streamers and creators, but licensing agreements outside our control could interfere with co-streams or VOD archives of this broadcast. If you're planning to save this broadcast as a VOD to create recap videos, or to repost clips or segments from the show, we advise omitting any copyrighted music.

Late last week, Colorful Technology revealed a brand-new series of "CVN" motherboards—the manufacturer's Bilibili account hinted at an upcoming launch and uploaded three highly-stylized promotional images. As reported by ITHome, Colorful's debut AMD X870 chipset-based board will be: "equipped with Colorful's first-generation graphics card quick-release device." Western press outlets have covered the functional validity of similar systems in recent times, but Colorful's teaser seems to be poking fun at a rival's current predicament. The incoming CVN X870 series will sport a unique selling point; its GPU removal system features an "ON or OFF" switch. Colorful advertises this proprietary design as being "really safe."

CVN X870 or X870E product pages have not appeared online, but ITHome reckons that this new range will sit in-between Colorful's familiar iGame and Tomahawk motherboard lines. The intended target audience appears to be "mainstream DIY" builders. According to one of the teaser images, Colorful reckons that its silver/white-tinted CVN X870 boards will "live up to expectations." The Chinese manufacturer has devised a new "Frost Armor" structure that covers a board's VRM sections—sporting "composite heat dissipation grooves and heat pipes." Lower-end CVN B840 and B850 models could be in the pipeline, but Colorful is likely testing the waters with its initial launch of X870-equipped fare.

In a world where most of us work, communicate, play, explore, and make purchases online nearly every day, cybersecurity is more important than ever. Yet it's also a world where it's increasingly hard to know who to trust. Perhaps you've seen recent news reports that call into question the security practices of companies that you might rely on for the network for your home or small business. At ASUS, we're working to show you that not every networking company has the same level of commitment to cybersecurity. Recently, we joined FIRST, a longstanding and renowned organization that brings together a variety of computer security incident response teams from around the world. Our membership in FIRST enables us to take enterprise-level experience, security protocols, and incident response tactics and integrate them into the consumer market.

35 years of coordinating responses against cyberattacks
When you're the victim of a cyberattack, your priority is to re-secure your own hardware, data, and account access. But the incident response teams dedicated to cybersecurity have to take a larger view. What vulnerability made the cyberattack possible? What other systems could be affected? How quickly can a fix be deployed, and how might this fix affect other vital systems and functions? Answering these questions in today's connected world requires not just on-the-ground incident response teams, but international communication and coordination between these groups. Since 1990, this layer of coordination has been provided by FIRST—the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams. Consisting of members from government agencies, educational institutions, military divisions, and the private sector, FIRST works to ensure a safe internet for everyone by creating channels for incident response and security teams across the globe to work together.

GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF), today announced preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2024.

"In the fourth quarter, the GF team delivered solid financial results that exceeded the Non-IFRS midpoint of the guidance ranges we provided in our November earnings release," said Dr. Thomas Caulfield, President and CEO of GF. "2024 presented a unique set of challenges for our industry, but thanks to our focus on operational excellence, we generated over $1 billion of Non-IFRS adjusted free cash flow. As we look to 2025, we are encouraged by our strong design win momentum across our end markets and product portfolio as we position GF for a growth year."

Unlucky owners of problematic GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards have posted feedback across various online community sites. Press outlets started to take notice of these documented issues soon after the launch of NVIDIA's debut wave of "Blackwell" GPUs. PC Gamer has "kept track" of reports relating to black screens and miscellaneous failures—the site published an investigative article late last week, following user feedback "hitting critical mass" across Reddit and Team Green's own forum. A request for comment was sent over to NVIDIA HQ; PC Gamer received a brief response. A company spokesperson confirmed that their team is: "investigating the reported issues with the RTX 50-series."

Several PC hardware community members have documented their troubleshooting experiences—the most common suggestion involves downshifting from a PCIe 5.0 connection to 4.0, on the PEG-16 graphics port. Unfortunately, this step did not resolve black screen issues for certain owners—a member of the buildapc subreddit explored a wide array of troubleshooting channels. They re-installed Windows 11 (23H2), adjusted BIOS settings, experimented with monitor connections, and played around with drivers. Best results were produced by connecting a single monitor to their MSI GeForce RTX 5090 GAMING TRIO OC's DisplayPort, with nothing else hooked up to the other ports (DP and HDMI). They suspect that Team Green's GPU drivers could be the source of frustrations; corroborated by a recent VideoCardz news piece. In addition, the 572.16 driver is reportedly affecting "certain GeForce RTX 40-series." A smaller number of owners have discussed a "bricking" of cards; VideoCardz believes that China-exclusive GeForce RTX 5090D models are suffering the most. Manli will be analyzing a "bricked" unit at its service center, in the near future. Colorful did not reply with a comment on the situation.

The P series from ARCTIC is known for its high performance. The new P9 models add four 92 mm versions to the range. Optimized for static pressure and focused airflow, the fans offer efficient cooling even with increased air resistance and are ideal for use on heat sinks, radiators and in narrow cases. Powerful, quiet and durable - the P9 series is an excellent choice for powerful and reliable cooling in a wide range of applications.

P9 Max: High-Speed PWM Fan
Very wide control range, maximum static pressure and airflow

• Airflow: 58.25 CFM | 98.97 m³/h
• Static pressure: 6.17 mmH₂O

The task of authentically recreating 15th century Bohemia for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is one that's part careful forensic work, and part respectful artistic interpretation. To learn more, we sat down with senior game designer Ondřej Bittner to find out how the team at Warhorse Studios went about crafting an authentically immersive world in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, available today. Bittner explains that the team starts with the geographical data, because not a lot has changed when it comes to the formation of hills, valleys and rivers. "Then, there are the military maps created in the mid-19th century. They usually have the layout of fairly static villages," Bittner says. "This was quite a common thing to do in European military history. When you build an army that has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, you need really good maps with individual buildings, logistical points, roads and so on."

Once the top-level geography, settlements and architecture of 15th century Bohemia have all been established, the team then turns to the living curators of those buildings that survived to the modern day. "You can talk to the people taking care of these castles or churches, and see if they have any material on a particular building," says Bittner. "Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't! If they don't, then you have to reconstruct it from more general knowledge about the time."

Intel experienced another leadership setback on Monday when Justin Hotard, who led its Data Center and AI (DCAI) division said he was leaving to become Nokia's CEO. Hotard joined Intel in early 2024 and worked there for just over a year. He will take over from Pekka Lundmark at Nokia on April 1. In his short time at Intel, Hotard oversaw the release of Intel's Sierra Forest E-core and Granite Rapids P-core Xeon 6 platforms. These helped Intel catch up to AMD in core count for the first time since 2017. Intel has temporarily appointed Karin Eibschitz Segal, an 18-year company veteran and co-CEO at Intel Israel, as the interim chief of DCAI.

However, Justin Hotard's exit comes as the DCAI division faces several problems. Not long ago, Intel said it would push back the launch of its next-generation Clearwater Forest Xeons to the first half of 2026 blaming low demand. The company also scrapped its Falcon Shores accelerators to focus on a future rack-scale platform called Jaguar Shores. These setbacks came after Intel fellow Sailesh Kottapalli left for Qualcomm last month. Kottapalli had worked at Intel for 28 years and played a key role in developing many Xeon server processors.

be quiet!, the German manufacturer for premium PC components, is proud to introduce Silent Loop 3. This all-in-one water-cooling series represents its passion for technological innovations, all packed up in one AiO. With a powerful pump to ensure an immensely high cooling performance, Silent Wings 4 fans with closed fan frames to maximize air-pressure, an iconic cooling block design with ARGB LEDs, radiator sizes up to 420 mm, and an easy-to-access refill port, Silent Loop 3 can be considered a love letter to German engineering.

Silent Loop 3 lives up to the "be quiet!" brand name: a powerful 6-pole, 3-phase PWM pump with 3-chamber design ensures high-performance at whisper-quite noise levels. The second of the three chambers acts as a reservoir and offers space for the coolant to spread out, thus reducing turbulences before the liquid leaves the pump unit. And it's not just the pump that's silent: the radiator features up to three Silent Wings 4 PWM high-speed fans with silence-optimized fan blades and a funnel-shaped air outlet. The corners of the fan frame are designed to minimize air leakage, resulting in a perfect balance between quiet operation and the highest performance.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is excited to announce the 9th Annual OC World Cup 2025 extreme overclocking competition, starting with the Online Qualifier Stage, which will run from February 15, 2025 until March 19, 2025 on HWBOT.org. A total of 9 finalists from the Online Qualifier stage will be invited to compete live on the Live Qualifier stage at Computex from May 20 through May 23, 2025, which will be held in Taipei, for a share of the total prize pool of $40,000 USD. The OC Champion of the OC World Cup 2025 competition will be taking home $10,000 USD.

Consisting of three stages, beginning with the Online Qualifier, and ending with the Live Qualifier and Grand Final stages, which will be held in Taipei at Computex 2025, the G.SKILL OC World Cup is considered one of the most challenging overclocking competitions. The top 9 overclockers of the Online Qualifier stage will be invited to compete against each other live during the week of Computex 2025 at the G.SKILL booth in Nangang Exhibition Hall, and the top 3 overclockers from the Live Qualifier stage will go on competing for the title of OC Champion in the Grand Final stage.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) of France to collaborate on the advanced technologies, component and system architectures that will shape the future of AI computing. The collaboration will leverage the strengths of both organizations to push the boundaries on energy-efficient systems needed to support the world's most compute-intensive AI workloads in fields from energy to medicine.

Through this initiative, AMD and CEA will engage in a structured collaboration, focused on technological advancements on next generation AI compute infrastructure. AMD and CEA also are planning a symposium on the future of AI compute in 2025 that will convene European stakeholders and global technology providers, startups, supercomputing centers, universities and policy makers to accelerate collaboration around state-of-the-art and emerging AI computing technologies.

The future of AI at the edge has arrived, and ASRock Industrial is leading the way. With Super Mode support for the iEP-6010E Series and iEP-6010E Series Dev Kit, powered by NIVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Jetson Orin Nano modules and optimized with NVIDIA JetPack 6.2 SDK, this upgrade supercharges AI acceleration, unlocking up to 2X faster generative AI performance. Delivering unprecedented inference speeds, real-time decision-making, and superior power efficiency, Super Mode is redefining edge AI computing - Powering everything from predictive maintenance and anomaly detection to AI-driven medical imaging, intelligent surveillance, and autonomous mobility - pushing performance beyond limits, faster, smarter, and more efficient than ever before. Whether driving Edge AI computing, real-time vision processing, intelligent autonomous vehicles, advanced robotics, industrial automation, or smart city infrastructure, ASRock Industrial's latest innovation empowers industries with cutting-edge AI capabilities that drive real-world transformation.

A Quantum Leap in Edge AI Performance
The iEP-6010E Series and iEP-6010E Series Dev Kit, now optimized with Super Mode, provides:

• Up to 2X Faster Gen AI Processing - Up to 157 TOPS (Sparse) on Orin NX 16 GB (Super) and 67 TOPS (Sparse) on Orin Nano 8 GB (Super), delivering blazing-fast generative AI performance for automation, robotics, and real-time vision systems.
• Optimized Power Boost and Efficiency - Supports power modes up to 40 W / MAXN Super on Orin NX and 25 W / MAXN Super on Orin Nano, while maintaining high-performance AI workloads in power-sensitive environments, making it ideal for industrial automation and smart city infrastructure.
• NVIDIA JetPack 6.2 Support - Fully compatible with the latest NVIDIA JetPack 6.2 SDK, offering enhanced libraries, frameworks, and tools to accelerate advanced AI development.

According to ITHome, AMD is preparing to disrupt its competition with aggressive pricing for its upcoming RX 9000 series. The RX 9070 XT, built on the RDNA 4 architecture, is expected to launch at $599, positioning it directly against NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti, which carries a $749 price tag. With this competitive pricing, AMD aims to revitalize its market position following lower-than-expected sales of the RX 7000 series, causing it to lose some market share. The upcoming RX 9070 XT features the Navi 48 core running at 2.97 GHz, complemented by 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus. Architecture's enhanced AI upscaling capabilities, already demonstrated in the PlayStation 5 Pro, could offer compelling performance advantages over current-generation cards. The base RX 9070 model is anticipated to debut at $499, creating a focused attack on multiple market segments, including NVIDIA's RTX 5070, priced at $549.

AMD reportedly plans to accelerate the end-of-life timeline for its RX 7800 XT, currently priced at $479. Sources from IT Home suggest production ceased as early as January, months ahead of the planned initial third-quarter 2025 termination. This accelerated timeline suggests AMD's confidence in the RX 9000 series' ability to deliver superior price-to-performance metrics. The March 2025 launch window for the RX 9000 series arrives at a critical point in the GPU market, as NVIDIA rolls out its Blackwell-based RTX 50 series. AMD's aggressive pricing strategy and the architectural improvements in RDNA 4 positions the company to challenge NVIDIA's market dominance, at least in the $500-$600 price range. This competitive positioning could trigger NVIDIA price adjustments, potentially benefiting consumers who have faced consistently high GPU prices in recent years.

ASRock, a global leader in motherboards, graphics cards, gaming monitors, small form factor PCs, and power supply units, proudly announces that its entire lineup of AM5 motherboards fully supports the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors. With this seamless compatibility, gamers can harness the full potential of these flagship processors for an unparalleled gaming experience.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors are the flagship models of the Ryzen 9000X3D series, designed for hardcore gaming enthusiasts who demand the ultimate in gaming performance. ASRock AM5 motherboards offer seamless compatibility with the Ryzen 9000X3D series, making them the ideal choice for gamers worldwide to experience the power of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors firsthand.

German overclocking specialist Der8auer has showcased a custom water block for NVIDIA's flagship RTX 5090 Founders Edition, achieving a remarkable 30-degree Celsius reduction in core GPU temperatures. The prototype copper cooling solution demonstrated peak operating temperatures of just 43.8°C, compared to the stock cooler's 73.8°C under identical testing conditions. The design features an all-copper construction with a substantial 14 mm-thick cold plate, engineered specifically for optimal thermal transfer from the GB202 die. While maintaining the dual-slot form factor of the original Founders Edition cooler, the water block incorporates multiple cooling channels beneath a transparent top panel that reveals the coolant flow.

Memory temperatures also significantly improved, dropping by 38 degrees Celsius below stock measurements. Despite its impressive thermal performance, the prototype faces several engineering challenges. The team was constrained by the graphics card's display output ribbon cable, which prevented a more compact design closer to the actual PCB dimensions. Additionally, the Founders Edition card's unique split PCIe finger design presented structural concerns that require additional reinforcement before any potential commercial release. Der8auer's prototype prioritizes function over aesthetics, omitting common features like RGB lighting in favor of raw cooling performance. The water block's industrial design reflects its proof-of-concept nature, though the transparent top panel offers practical utility for monitoring coolant flow. While no retail release timeline has been announced, Der8auer indicated that addressing the PCIe slot structural support issue remains a critical milestone before any commercial version could be considered.

ASUS today announced the ASUS NUC 15 Pro mini PC, a compact powerhouse that delivers versatile performance for a wide range of development needs, from AI model training to data visualization. Featuring the latest Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processors, DDR5 6400 MHz memory, and the Intel Arc GPU, NUC 15 Pro delivers outstanding speed and efficiency. Additionally, advanced Intel Wi-Fi 7 offers ultrafast connectivity for seamless collaborations. NUC 15 Pro offers an unbeatable combination of performance and innovative design to elevate workflows.

Optimized for AI
ASUS NUC 15 Pro unleashes the potential of AI thanks to the latest Intel Core Ultra processors (Series 2). Featuring up to 99 platform TOPS, this next-generation CPU is purpose-built for diverse workloads and unrivaled AI performance. These advanced processors are built on Intel 18A process and deliver remarkable compute performance. This innovative CPU redefines productivity and creativity to set a new benchmark for AI-powered computing.

With a front panel that is both low-key and stylish, the AK2 RGB doesn't miss out on good looks and, at the same time, is the perfect PC case for either gaming, office, or multimedia. And with its modern compatibility, space for large pieces of hardware, and room for up to eleven fans, this case offers plenty of potential for performance, whatever the application.

Thanks to its low-key design and its tempered-glass side panel, the AK2 RGB is ideal for putting the focus on the installed hardware inside. Two 120 mm fans are already pre-installed in the AK2 RGB - one fan behind the front panel and one RGB-illuminated PWM fan on the rear panel. Up to eleven fans will find room in the case. Even water-cooling enthusiasts will be happy with the AK2, as two radiators with up to 360 mm can be simultaneously operated, if required.

AMD's China customers are now surprised by AMD's claim that the Radeon RX 7650's "GRE" nomenclature actually translates into "Great Radeon Edition" and not into "Golden Rabbit Edition" as we had previously thought. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE was the first "GRE" GPU to debut in the Chinese market. Back in 2023, China celebrated the Year of the Golden Rabbit; hence, AMD made a reference to that and named its GPUs appropriately to appeal to Chinese gamers. However, with 2025 being the year of the snake, AMD decided to just find a new meaning for its GRE branding instead of replacing it altogether. Now, AMD's official documents point to AMD Radeon RX 7650 Great Radeon Edition (GRE).

As a reminder, this RX 7650 GRE "great" SKU carries a Navi 33 GPU with 32 CUs translating into 2048 SPs. Clocked at 2.69 GHz, its 8 GB GDDR6 memory configuration positions it in the low-middle-class gaming segment. Scheduled for a launch in February, it will be priced at 2,099 RMB or 287 USD at the time of writing.

Intel today released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.6559 WHQL adds Game On driver-optimization for "Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii," with the optimization covering the Arc B-series, A-series, and Core Ultra processors with Arc iGPUs. The drivers also add optimization for "Avowed," covering the B-series and A-series discrete GPUs. Performance for Arc B-series GPUs has been improved for "Senua's Saga: Hellblade II," with up to 5.9% increase in framerates to be had at 1080p with High settings.

Among the issues fixed with this release are flickering seen with Arc A-series discrete GPUs, Core Ultra Series 1 and Series 2 processor iGPUs in Adobe After Effects, specifically in its Preview window. "Horizon Zero Dawn remastered" experiencing a crash with frame generation enabled on Core Ultra Series 2 processors with Arc graphics, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6559 WHQL

MSI France posted a countdown timer on its regional website for the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, which winds down to February 20, 2025, 3 PM CET. This is our first confirmation that NVIDIA's third graphics card from the RTX 50-series "Blackwell" will be launching next week. MSI already has product pages of its custom design RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 graphics cards up on its website. The RTX 5070 Ti lineup will be topped by the RTX 5070 Ti Vanguard series, followed by the RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio series. There's also the RTX 5070 Ti Inspire 3X series targeting creators. There are two "entry level" SKUs, the RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X, which the company will price close to the NVIDIA baseline, and the RTX 5070 Ti Shadow 3X, which meets NVIDIA SFF-Ready requirements.

AMD's Ryzen 9000HX lineup of "Fire Range" Zen 5 mobile processors is due for release within a vague March to April window, with the upcoming 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 9 9955HX3D SKU touted to become a top choice for manufacturers of ultra high-end gaming laptops. The latest version of CPU-Z is ready (in advance) with support for Team Red's incoming product line; CPUID's patch notes (published on February 8) have revealed previously unannounced models. AMD's official introduction of Ryzen 9000HX series CPUs included an opening salvo of Ryzen 9 9955HX3D (16-core), 9955HX (16-core) and 9850HX (12-core) models.

According to CPU-Z version 2.14, three additional "Fire Range" SKUs are seemingly on the way. Starting off with the Ryzen 9 9950HX3D—a (presumably) slightly less potent 3D V-Cache-sporting model—its nomenclature suggests that it will sit just below the series flagship. The 9950HX model is expected to slot just under the already announced 9955HX chip. The newly revealed 9845HX SKU could become the lowest 12-core offering within AMD's "Fire Range" product stack.

A new adventure is here, adventurers! Today—on February 10—start your journey in the Biped 2 Demo, team up with friends, explore brand new levels and mechanics! Today, Owlcat Games, alongside META Publishing and NEXT Studios, is proud to announce that the first-ever demo playtest for their puzzle action-adventure title, Biped 2, is now live until February 17. Fans of the original Biped and curious newcomers can access the playtest on the game's Steam page. The adorable bipedalled robots you know and love are back! Biped 2 is the sequel to the exciting original game about two charming bipedal robots, Aku and Sila, who rely on each other and embark on incredible adventures side by side. Dive into the groovy co-op action-adventure game full of puzzles, friendship, support, and fun!

Biped 2 raises the stakes with expanded multiplayer, including four-player co-op for the first time, new robots, missions, and stunning new biomes. Players will encounter even more challenging puzzles as they navigate diverse landscapes, either solo or with friends in two-or four-player co-op. After brave bipeds had reactivated all the beacons on Earth, they received a strange signal from a faraway planet. This can mean only one thing—someone is calling out for help! Now, our mechanical friends are determined to prove themselves and help those in need across the Galaxy. Become a hero and save the planet in distress. After all, even the tiniest robots are capable of great deeds!

MSI has, quite appropriately, introduced new SHADOW 3X graphics card models in a low-key manner. These stealth-black GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti custom designs have just appeared online via official product pages. We expect to see press material published in the near future, perhaps closer to the launch of NVIDIA's next wave of Blackwell GPUs. MSI's newly discovered product pages place emphasis on the SHADOW 3X's essential features: "a performance-focused design that delivers the gaming experience players want, making it the ideal choice when upgrading or building a gaming rig." VideoCardz believes that the incoming SHADOW 3X cards will be the first to reach Western markets—previous-gen models have released as Chinese regional exclusives. The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G SHADOW 3X overclocked (OC) and non-OC SKUs appear to re-use MSI's familiar VENTUS 3X design, just tinted many shades darker.

The new SHADOW 3X cards seem to utilize a fresh design, with no recycling from a similarly appointed sibling product family. MSI's latest barebones/essential tier brings a minimal set of perks: a sizable heatsink, a triple-fan cooling solution, a single 16-pin power connector and a straightforward shroud and backplate aesthetic. SHADOW 3X eschews anything RGB lighting-related. Potential buyers will not be dealing with fancy vapor chambers or liquid cooling systems. MSI will be offering overclocked editions, as well as standard models that conform to NVIDIA reference specifications. TechPowerUp's well-maintained GPU database will be updated with these new additions.

IBM and Lenovo today announced at LEAP 2025 a planned expansion of their strategic technology partnership designed to help scale the impact of generative AI for clients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. IDC expects annual worldwide spending on AI-centric systems to surpass $300 billion by 2026, with many leading organizations in Saudi Arabia exploring and investing in generative AI use cases as they prepare for the emergence of an "AI everywhere" world.

Building upon their 20-year partnership, IBM and Lenovo will collaborate to deliver AI solutions comprised of technology from the IBM watsonx portfolio of AI products, including the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) open-source Arabic Large Language Model (ALLaM), and Lenovo infrastructure. These solutions are expected to help government and business clients in the Kingdom to accelerate their use of AI to improve public services and make data-driven decisions in areas such as fraud detection, public safety, customer service, code modernization, and IT operations.

Sapphire Technologies has started teasing new PURE series graphics cards; earlier today a social media post stated that new offerings are: "coming your way." An accompanying image presents two semi-obscured signature white models—press outlets believe that the pair are custom Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 (non-XT) models. Sapphire did not exhibit at CES 2025, but a lonely triple-fan Radeon RX 9070 XT PURE card did make the overseas journey to Las Vegas. At the time, AMD presented a small smattering of RDNA 4 board partner samples at a roundup showcase.

Sapphire started to market its new darker dual-fan PULSE design last month, but a series of leaks have ruined the company's (social media-driven) build-up of product anticipation. We have not witnessed any Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT or 9070 (non-XT) PURE stock reaching retail storage locations, but lower-end PULSE models have been distributed—reportedly, at least East of the Mediterranean. Sapphire's CES demonstration sample sported an almost all-white enclosure, a triple-fan cooling solution and dual 8-pin power connectors. The PURE Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 (non-XT) models could feature limited RGB lighting—an "ARGB out" connector was present on the back section of Sapphire's presentation card.

AI reasoning models and agents are set to transform industries, but delivering their full potential at scale requires massive compute and optimized software. The "reasoning" process involves multiple models, generating many additional tokens, and demands infrastructure with a combination of high-speed communication, memory and compute to ensure real-time, high-quality results. To meet this demand, CoreWeave has launched NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances, becoming the first cloud service provider to make the NVIDIA Blackwell platform generally available. With rack-scale NVIDIA NVLink across 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and 36 NVIDIA Grace CPUs, scaling to up to 110,000 GPUs with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, these instances provide the scale and performance needed to build and deploy the next generation of AI reasoning models and agents.

NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 on CoreWeave
NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 is a liquid-cooled, rack-scale solution with a 72-GPU NVLink domain, which enables the six dozen GPUs to act as a single massive GPU. NVIDIA Blackwell features many technological breakthroughs that accelerate inference token generation, boosting performance while reducing service costs. For example, fifth-generation NVLink enables 130 TB/s of GPU bandwidth in one 72-GPU NVLink domain, and the second-generation Transformer Engine enables FP4 for faster AI performance while maintaining high accuracy. CoreWeave's portfolio of managed cloud services is purpose-built for Blackwell. CoreWeave Kubernetes Service optimizes workload orchestration by exposing NVLink domain IDs, ensuring efficient scheduling within the same rack. Slurm on Kubernetes (SUNK) supports the topology block plug-in, enabling intelligent workload distribution across GB200 NVL72 racks. In addition, CoreWeave's Observability Platform provides real-time insights into NVLink performance, GPU utilization and temperatures.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D "Zen 5" processors are due for launch at some point next month, but Team Red's recent-ish introductory presentation did not include any details regarding prices. Given patterns demonstrated by previous generations of Team Red's popular 3D V-Cache-equipped CPUs, we can safely assume that the incoming duo will demand a premium over the already released Ryzen 7 9800X3D SKU (MSRP: $479). Late last week, momomo_us happened upon speculated price points during a sleuthing session involving a comparison shopping website.

The PCPartPicker's price aggregation engine pulled data from two Newegg listings—now scrubbed from existence—that outlined a cost of $699.99 (plus a $12.41 shipping fee) for the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D model, and $599.99 (plus shipping) for the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D. Fortunately, VideoCardz preserved this information over the weekend. PCPartPicker has removed the aforementioned figures from its price history chart system, and Newegg has delisted the offending pages. The leaked price points align closely with MSRPs set for previous-gen (Zen 4) Ryzen 9 7000-series CPUs: $699 for the 7950X3D, and $599 for 7900X3D. The de-listed prices could be based on placeholder information—the Ryzen 7 9800X3D launched last November with a generational premium of $30 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D's original MSRP was $449). AMD has alluded to gaming performance being on a roughly even plane, so the incoming Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D models are not expected to surpass the Ryzen 7 9800X3D as "THE best gaming processor."

Valve has updated its Steam platform policies to prevent mobile-style advertising practices from infiltrating the PC gaming market. The new guidelines, recently added to the Steam Terms of Service, explicitly ban any game that requires players to watch or interact with advertisements to progress. Under the revised rules, developers must eliminate any ad systems that force players to engage with promotional content as a prerequisite for gameplay. Games that rely on mandatory ads for rewards or advancement will not be permitted on Steam. While cross-promotional partnerships and product placements remain acceptable, the forced ad model is no longer supported. Mobile games often burden players with unwanted commercial interruptions. Developers are now encouraged to pursue alternative monetization strategies, such as single-purchase models, optional microtransactions, or downloadable content packages.

"If your game's revenue relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to find a new monetization model in order to release on Steam."—states Valve pricing guide. In addition to banning forced advertisements, Valve has introduced a new feature for early-access titles. This functionality displays the time elapsed since the last update, offering players greater transparency regarding game development progress. By drawing a clear line against aggressive in-game advertising, Valve is fighting smartphone-style ads that force players into watching unwanted content. Valve's commitment to ecosystem quality ensures that Steam remains a trusted platform for gamers seeking pure gaming and ad-free experiences. Other platforms are likely to follow suit.

Like the first part, Chernobylite 2 is a story of people who try to accomplish an impossible mission and survive in the sinister Chornobyl Zone. Chernobylite 2 will be released on Steam in Early Access on March 6th, similar to the first part in 2019, which was awarded the Top Early Access Platinum Graduate on Steam. Cole Grey, a former military and security guard, lives in a reality where the economy and industry are based entirely on a substance called Chernobylite. With its help, people have made a real leap in civilization. However, the construction of the utopia has been paid for by massive unemployment, pushing people like Cole to the margins of society. Due to severe financial problems, he joins the mysterious "Planewalker" initiative to provide for his family.

It quickly becomes apparent that there is a shortage of Chernobylite in Cole's universe, and the solution is the morally questionable initiative that involves traveling to parallel worlds in search of the mineral and obtaining it by any means possible. In addition, the Planewalker service requires appropriate genetic modifications. Cole must, therefore, physically absorb the essence of chernobylite and, to increase his physical and intellectual capabilities, lose a part of his humanity. However, seeing no other options for himself, he agrees to the bloody and dangerous service, which results in him ending up trapped in the most sinister place in the world: the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. There, he meets a Black Stalker, the Zone's dark guide and silent ruler.

TSMC is set to hold its inaugural board meeting on US soil on February 12—a strategic decision influenced by potential reciprocal tariffs outlined by the US President Donald Trump. As the company's first wafer fabrication facility in Arizona is in mass production using its 4 nm process, the US board meeting marks a first in TSMC's global expansion, where the company is holding a board meeting outside of Taiwan for the first time in its four-decade history. The board gathering, which will bring together directors from its Taiwan headquarters and overseas operational sites, comes amid concerns over possible US tariff measures targeting key trade partners, including Taiwan. Trump recently hinted at imposing tariffs on semiconductor products, which could directly affects TSMC's business operations.

Among the attendees will be Liu Jingqing, a director representing Taiwan's National Development Fund Management Committee, the company's largest shareholder holding 1.65 billion shares. Liu, who left for the United States on February 8, is expected to return to Taiwan immediately after the meeting, ensuring the board remains aligned with upcoming legislative sessions. During the meeting, the board will review the financial results for the fourth quarter and decide on cash dividends for 2024. Despite uncertainties over US tariffs, TSMC continues to expand its US investments. Its second and third fabs in Arizona, expected to employ more advanced processes such as 3 nm and 2 nm, show the company's long-term commitment to the American market while it continues advancing process and packaging capacity in Taiwan. TSMC Chairman C.C. Wei stressed that advancing mass production in Taiwan remains critical even while expanding US operations.

Going back a year, we started hearing about an OpenAI proprietary AI chip project—this (allegedly) highly ambitious endeavor included grand plans for a dedicated fabrication network. TSMC was reportedly in the equation, but indirectly laughed at the AI research organization's ardent requests. Fast-forward to the present day; OpenAI appears to be actively pursuing a proprietary GPU design through traditional means. A Reuters exclusive report points to 2025 being an important year for the company's aforementioned "in-house" AI chip—the publication believes that OpenAI's debut silicon design has reached the finalization stage. Insiders have divulged that the project is only months away from being submitted to TSMC for "taping out." The foundry's advanced 3-nanometer process technology is reported to be on the cards. A Reuters source reckons that the unnamed chip features: "a commonly used systolic array architecture with high-bandwidth memory (HBM)...and extensive networking capabilities."

Broadcom is reportedly assisting with the development of OpenAI's in-house design—we heard about rumored negotiations taking place last summer. Jim Keller's tempting offer—of creating an AI chip for less than $1 trillion—was ignored early last year; OpenAI has instead assembled its own internal team of industry veterans. The October 2024 news cycle posited that former Google TPU engineers were drafted in as team leaders, with a targeted mass production window scheduled for 2026. The latest Reuters news article reiterates this projected timeframe, albeit dependent on the initial tape going "smoothly." OpenAI's chip department has grown to around forty individuals with recent months, according to industry moles—a small number relative to the headcounts at "Google or Amazon's AI chip program."

NVIDIA's high-TDP flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090, appears to cause additional headaches for users, not including the high power bill. According to a Reddit user, we now have the first documented case of a melted power connector on NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, reigniting concerns over high-wattage GPU safety from the last generation. While playing Battlefield 5, Reddit user ivan6953 detected a burning odor and immediately shut down their system, only to discover severe damage to both the RTX 5090's 12V-2×6 connector and their ASUS ROG Loki SFX-L PSU. The user had employed a Moddiy 12VHPWR cable, marketed as ATX 3.0/PCIe 5.0-compliant and rated for RTX 5090's 600 watts of power. Despite claims of secure installation—audible clicks at both ends—the cable melted at 500-520 W load, charring connectors on the GPU and PSU.

Notably, the same cable had powered an RTX 4090 FE for two years without issue. NVIDIA's RTX 5090 FE ships with a redesigned adapter featuring a longer, more flexible cable and an angled connector to reduce strain in compact builds. NVIDIA asserts that no incidents have occurred with its bundled adapter, emphasizing compliance with the updated 12V-2×6 standard, which shortens sensing pins to prevent power flow if connections loosen. Hence, an older connector can not provide 100% secure usage despite the user thinking that the sensing pins are touching properly.

The more I learn about the Living Lands of Avowed, an island ripe with riches, mystery, and magic, the more it feels like it's the Wild West of Eora. A frontier full of adventurers, mercenaries, and thieves, all looking to stake a claim—as a player, that's exactly where I want to be. It projects this unique, early-modern period look and feel where it's not quite medieval, but sophisticated enough that society is utilizing things like gunpowder and blast furnaces, with cultures developing their own distinct means of survival - much like moments in the history of our world. In talking with the team at Obsidian, I learned that all of this is intentional in its design, giving us a look at what a new frontier would look like if it were a first-person fantasy role-playing game. Borrowing elements from our world also helps to inform the "rules" Obsidian follows for crafting a player experience within the Living Lands, turning the dials just enough to give us something wholly unique, where souls are real and gods exist - but not necessarily in a way that we think of them.

"When you're informed by those two basic facts, it guides a lot about both the kind of content you develop and the tone and flavor you give it," explains Game Director Carrie Patel. "The flow of souls, the presence and existence of that energy, is key and core to life continuing in Eora in a way that will resonate with players who have been through Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. We have a traditional pantheon in the world of Pillars, and you will get glimpses of some of these gods in Avowed." This all feeds into the various cultures you will encounter along the way—what's important to them (like their gods) is what gives life to the game. The Aedyrans, for example, are a nation that heavily values the ideas of rightful rule, leadership, and order—and now they're plopped into the greatest frontier of Eora. What would it look like as they start to try and blend in with the locals? It may be a small change in their outfit or adapting to how they choose to live. This "Wild West" attracts all sorts, and rigidity may not blend very well with what's required to survive the Living Lands.

NVIDIA unveiled its RTX Mega Geometry technology during their recent CES 2025 presentation, coinciding with the introduction of various new RTX branches. At the time, Team Green mentioned that Remedy Entertainment would be upgrading their Northlight Engine with RTX Mega Geometry technology. Last week, Digital Foundry published their early impressions of an enhanced version of Alan Wake 2, outlining "clear and measurable" improvements; especially with previous-gen GeForce RTX gaming hardware—in particular, on an RTX 4060 GPU. NVIDIA has released version 9.0 of their OptiX SDK—signalling a wider distribution of the Mega Geometry tech to game development and visualization houses. This new API, for building clusters, is advertised as being able to: "dramatically speed up BVH builds of large meshes."

Late last week, NVIDIA updated its Neural Texture Compression (NTC) toolkit BETA. RTXNTC version 0.5.0's quick start guide outlines the fundamental functions of Team Green's AI-enhanced image compression technology: "(an) algorithm designed to compress all PBR textures used for a single material together. It works best when the texture channels are correlated with each other, for example, detail in the albedo texture corresponds to detail in the normal texture. Up to 16 texture channels can be compressed into one NTC texture set. Typical PBR materials have 9-10 channels: 3x albedo, 3x normal, metalness, roughness, ambient occlusion, opacity."

The GameSir X3 Pro integrated cooler mobile controller merges an advanced cooling system with high-quality performance. It is designed to enhance your gaming comfort and elevate your gaming experience with extreme esports sensation. It's compatible with Android devices and iPhone 15 and above, supporting phones with a length of 110-180 mm. Now available in exclusive Deadpool edition.

Officially licensed by Marvel, this edition showcases Deadpool's iconic black and red color scheme, capturing the essence of the beloved anti-hero. Equipped with a 900 mm cooling plate, it delivers an impressive 12 W of cooling power, keeping your phone cool even during long gaming sessions or in high temperatures. The GameSir Hall Effect anti-drift sticks offer 360° precision control, providing seamless and pinpoint accuracy. Combined with their durability, they meet the high standards that gamers demand for a top-tier gaming experience.

Zotac has come up with a new way to fight graphics card scalping by starting a "Priority Access Campaign" on their Discord server, with a Zotac employee named Bryant making the announcement. The plan is simple and has only one main goal: to help regular buyers get a real chance of buying NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5080 and 5090 models at the right price. These cards have been almost impossible to get because they sell out fast and end up on resale sites at high prices. Zotac says it wants to use its online community to help real gamers, not scalpers.

The process is pretty straightforward, with users being selected based on engagement in discussions and various challenges. Then, using a random number generator, eligible buyers will be selected. The campaign is already active (is limited to users in the U.S.) with special Discord channels to give out RTX 5080 models (currently Zotac has only ten RTX 5080 cards) while the RTX 5090 isn't yet available. The company has insisted on warning scalpers; each card sold via this method will have its serial number recorded, and any user caught trying to resell it at a higher price will be permanently banned from any future Zotac direct sales events or raffles. Zotac isn't the first to try this approach, in the past, companies like Newegg and NVIDIA have used lottery systems or sold directly to customers to avoid scalpers. While there is no guarantee of completely avoiding scalpers, the action is commendable and it is possible that we will see similar actions from other brands or retailers in the future.

GAMEMAX, an emerging brand of PC gaming components including gaming cases and power supply units, announces the VISION GMX32UCDM gaming monitor. The VISION GMX32UCDM is the brand's first ever QD-OLED gaming monitor. It is a 31.5-inch 4K QD-OLED gaming monitor set to redefine immersive gaming with its ultra-fast 240 Hz refresh rate, delivering smooth, and blur-free visuals. Featuring a Samsung 3rd-gen QD-OLED panel, the VISION GMX32UCDM monitor offers rich colors and deep contrast without color shift or luminosity loss, as well as HDR support for enhanced image quality.

The VISION GMX32UCDM supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and NVIDIA G-SYNC, delivering tear-free gameplay with low latency. Additionally, flicker-free and low blue light technology help reduce eye strain during long gaming sessions. Designed for both gaming and professional creative work, the VISION GMX32UCDM QD-OLED monitor ensures unmatched color accuracy with factory calibration, achieving Delta E < 2 and 99% DCI-P3 color coverage. The enhanced Type-C port supports mobile work devices with 90 W power delivery for efficient reverse charging. A built-in headset stand adds convenience and organization, making it a perfect addition to any gaming setup.

The Sennheiser brand today announces the HD 505, a headphone crafted for listeners looking to elevate their love for audio to the next level of performance. With its blend of analytical tuning, precise detail, and enduring comfort, the HD 505 brings the essential Sennheiser experience to listening setups and gaming rigs of all kinds.

"The HD 505 is for anyone ready to experience the audio awakening a great set of Sennheiser headphones is known for," said Klaus Hanselmann, Sennheiser Audiophile Product Manager. "There is something truly special in here that puts serious listening within arm's reach of the emerging audiophile or gamer."

ASUS today announced the ASUS Cobble SSD enclosure, a stylish and durable external storage solution. Featuring a unique cobblestone-inspired design and IP55 water- and dust-resistance, ASUS Cobble combines stylish aesthetics with durable, reliable protection in the most demanding environments. The enclosure supports both M.2 NVMe PCIe and SATA SSDs, and features a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x1 interface for superfast data transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps. The tool-free design allows for easy installation, while broad compatibility with Windows 11, macOS, mobile devices, and game consoles makes ASUS Cobble perfect for gamers, professionals, and content creators.

The ASUS Cobble SSD enclosure has a sleek cobblestone-inspired design that's available in gray or black. Speckle-painting techniques enabled designers to incorporate organic textures and colors into the design, giving the enclosure a warm and natural aesthetic that perfectly complements any workspace or gaming setup. A special scratch-resistant coating offers a durable surface that protects the enclosure from minor impacts, and enables the sturdy metallic chassis to withstand high temperatures for long-lasting stability and reliability.

Yet another Brix mini PC from Gigabyte has hit the scene, powered by the very modest six-watt Intel N250 CPU. Undoubtedly, this mini PC is targeted at folks with modest computing demands. If the system's specifications are anything to go by, the BTIP-N250 is most likely to command an affordable price tag, although that cannot be said with certainty for now considering that Gigabyte is yet to reveal any pricing or availability details regarding the system.

As mentioned, the Intel N250 quad-core, quad-thread processors is not here to set any performance records. That said, the N250 is actually as performant as the Zen+ Ryzen 5 3500U, which means moderate workloads and office-based workflows are likely not going to be much of a challenge for the system. The processor can be paired with up to 16 GB of DDR5 memory, and the system supports M.2 as well as 2.5" drives to take care of storage requirements. Dual USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, dual USB-A 3.2 gen 2, HDMI, and audio in/out ports are also present. Wireless connectivity can be added via the M.2 2230 slot, while the 1G ethernet takes care of wired networking.

Docking stations are particularly useful for folks who own laptops with limited I/O. Having more ports is seldom a bad thing, and ORICO's latest 20-in-1 docking station packs excellent potential in that regard. As the name suggests, the product packs a total of 19 ports, split between its front and rear. The dock, dubbed the ORICO DKA22, is currently available on Amazon, commanding a price tag of $129.99.

At the rear, the dock sports dual USB-A 2.0, dual DisplayPort, HDMI, good old VGA, 1G Ethernet, and a USB-C port with 60 watts of power delivery. On the front, triple USB-A 3.0, dual USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, SD/TF, USB-A 2.0, and audio input, output, as well as combo jacks. A volume control knob is also present on the front, which is quite a neat addition. In terms of video output, the dock is capable of running dual four displays simultaneously, although only with the HDMI, VGA, and DP ports limited to 1080p60, while the remaining DP limited to 1080p30. For a detailed understanding of the supported video output configurations, please refer to the third embedded image.

A recent Cinebench R23 result portrayed the upcoming Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX lagging behind its predecessor by a few points in single-core performance, despite pulling well ahead in multicore performance. Now, the high-end Arrow Lake-HX chip has made its debut on Passmark, and the result appears quite enticing, to say the least. In single-core, the Core Ultra 9 275HX leads the i9 14900HX by around 10% - a fair generational uplift. In overall performance, however, the Core Ultra 9 275HX shines bright, pulling off a 33% lead over its predecessor. Of course, the actual improvements are likely to be lower, considering that the Passmark database contains over 1800 entries for Core i9 14900HX-powered systems with varying thermal capabilities, while only a single one so far for the 275HX.

For a refresher, the Core Ultra 9 275HX debuted at CES 2025, and packs 8 Lion Cove P-cores along with 16 Skymont E-cores. Intel has left Hyper-Threading in the rearview mirror with its Arrow Lake lineup, although the Passmark entry seems to suggest Arrow Lake-HX will do just fine without it. Unsurprisingly, for laptops, the performance of the system will boil down to its thermal capabilities, which basically means that there will be a plethora of systems where the 275HX will be unable to fully spread its wings. Besides that, as with all pre-release performance benchmark leaks, be sure to accept this information with a grain of salt. The Ryzen 7945HX3D is also left behind, albeit by a far smaller margin of just around 7% in overall performance. With the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D just around the corner, however, Intel's high-end laptop reign might be short-lived after all.

Welcome to week two of February, during which one of the oldest game franchises is launching its seventh iteration, although this time around it steps away quite a bit from its past versions, for better or worse. This is followed by some mayhem, Hollywood drama, an action co-op RPG, some classic side scrolling action with a lot of big guns and the week is rounded off with a JRPG.

Sid Meier's Civilization VII / This week's AAA release / Tuesday 11 February
In Civilization VII, your strategic decisions shape the unique cultural lineage of your evolving empire. Rule as one of many legendary leaders from throughout history and steer the course of your story by choosing a new civilization to represent your empire in each Age of human advancement. Steam link