Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy have released the v1.0.5.1 Patch for the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1, bringing general and AMD GPU stability improvements, and fixing issues seen with all Intel Arc GPUs.

According to the rather short release notes, the newest update brings general stability improvements, fixes crashes on boot that were seen on all Intel Arc GPUs, as well as brings stability improvements for some AMD GPUs during an extended playthrough. Naughty Dog was keen to note that they are still closely watching for reports to support future improvements and patches, as well as actively optimizing, working on game stability, and implementing additional fixes that will be included in future updates.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today launched the top-grade water-cooled external graphics - AORUS RTX 4090 GAMING BOX. AORUS RTX 4090 GAMING BOX is equipped with the most powerful NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture - GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card and the Thunderbolt 3 high-speed transmission interface. It endows ultrabooks with 3D computational performance beyond imagination, transforming ultrabooks into game platforms with full ray tracing and becoming a reliable assistant for creators, creating an unprecedented work efficiency experience. In addition, the AORUS WATERFORCE Cooling System is the only solution that combines performance and comfort, allowing users to enjoy a quiet and comfortable environment while handling heavy work.

The AORUS RTX 4090 GAMING BOX is the top-of-the-line water-cooled external graphics box in the market. It enables users to enjoy top-level GeForce RTX 4090 performance with independent high-wattage and stable power supply, while enjoying a quiet and comfortable environment. AORUS has minimized the size of the GAMING BOX, taking up minimal desktop space, making it the ideal companion for ultrabooks.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, under the PowerColor brand announces today the launch of the PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 7600 HELLHOUND and PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 7600 FIGHTER series graphics cards. These cutting-edge graphic cards are engineered to cater to the needs of passionate gamers who demand exceptional reliability, performance, and quality.

POWERCOLOR HELLHOUND AMD RADEON RX 7600 Graphics Card
The shroud of the PowerColor HELLHOUND AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card is designed to be sleek and clean, with silver accents, resembling a calm and low-key hound that's always prepared to unleash its power. In addition to HELLHOUND's symbolic ice blue lighting, a second color—amethyst purple—is added into LED color choices to provide user with more options to fit their PC color scheme.

As COMPUTEX once again opens its door, MSI, the world leader in gaming, content creation, business & productivity, and AIoT solutions, is all geared up to dominate the show floor with a full slate of new lineup and its Best Choice Award honorees. "We are thrilled to be back at COMPUTEX," said Sam Chern, MSI Vice President of Marketing. "We expect to see users' tech experiences reinvented and MSI is at the forefront. Our COMPUTEX 2023 lineup showcases the ultimate fusion of breakthrough technology and everlasting aesthetics that surpasses all limits and indulges global users with the best possible experience like never before."

This year, MSI themes its booth around The Leap to Singularity, envisioning a future in which the technological singularity brings forth superintelligence to improve human lives. Among the highlights on display will be the Raider GE78 HX Smart Touchpad, Stealth 16 and Creator Z17 laptops powered by up to 13th Gen Intel Core i9 processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics, making them powerhouses for gamers and creators alike.

It was reported earlier this morning that Leadtek was preparing a new custom design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card - Tom's Hardware pointed out that South Korea's National Radio Research Agency had uploaded a registration for a "RTX 4070 AI BLOWER" VGA card on behalf of "Leadtek Research Inc." The article delves into a possible scenario, based on the model name alone, of Leadtek producing a cooling solution that reflects NVIDIA's blower-style reference design. Team Green has gained quite the reputation for being protective of that blueprint, despite its Founders Edition lineup of gaming-oriented cards shifting to a traditional cooling solution (back in the RTX 20-series days). Board partners are normally expected to devise their own/unique cooling solutions, and NVIDIA has mostly reserved the blower + vapor chamber combination for its professional GPU model lineups.

Leadtek has created a product page for their new custom card this afternoon, and it is immediately clear that this morning's prediction was somewhat correct. The WinFast RTX 4070 AI BLOWER 12G sports a "streamlined" yet boxy black cooling solution that appears to be closer in appearance to an NVIDIA RTX A-series professional card, although a flash of silver trim and logo on the fan provides a bit of "gamer" visual language. Leadtek's specification info states that their AI Blower cooler features an aluminium die cast housing alongside a copper finned vapor chamber. The lone mounted fan is said to have a 50,000 hour operational lifespan thanks to a special internal arrangement: "WinFast double ball bearing fan provides better reliability, higher dust resistance levels, and moreso keeps friction and noise to a minimum." Tom's Hardware posited that Leadtek's custom card would be marketed as an enterprise product (for AI processing) - the freshly uploaded product page does position it for those purposes, but the rundown also mentions its supposed gaming performance prowess.

The SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB Graphics Card headlines with 2048 stream processors running with a Boost Clock of up to 2755 MHz and a Game Clock of up to 2355 MHz. The latest 8 GB of GDDR6 high-speed memory clocked at 18 Gbps Effective with 32 MB of AMD Infinity Cache, which dramatically reduces latency and power consumption, ensuring higher overall gaming performance than traditional architectural designs. To support the latest display monitors in the market, it is equipped with 4 output ports, including 1x HDMI and 3x DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC outputs. The SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB Graphics Card series features 32 powerful enhanced Compute Units and 32 Ray Accelerators.

Noise vs. Temperature
The SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7600 Graphics Card is designed around the renowned Dual-X Cooling Technology for a whisper quiet and low temperature gaming experience. Two large fans equipped with sturdy Dual Ball Bearings for longevity are designed with the effective Hybrid Fan Blades to work in conjunction with the Intelligent Fan Control feature and Precision Fan Control feature. Airflow is streamlined for optimal heatsink coverage, and GPU component temperatures will be low to balance performance and fan noise. Rest assured with the Fuse Protection feature, built into the circuit of the external PCIe power connector to preserve the components and protect the graphics card.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today launches a new AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card powered by AMD RDNA 3 architecture. The GIGABYTE Radeon RX 7600 GAMING OC 8G graphics card is equipped with GIGABYTE's flagship WINDFORCE cooling system, providing unprecedented performance, visual effects, and efficiency for 1080p gaming and streaming experiences.

The GIGABYTE WINDFORCE cooling system is specifically designed for gamers. It features three unique blade fans with alternate spinning, composite copper heat pipes in direct contact with the GPU, 3D active fans and screen cooling that work together to provide efficient heat dissipation. The Alternate Spinning technology rotates the central fan in the opposite direction of the side fans, directing airflow in the same direction and doubling air pressure while reducing turbulence. This effectively dissipates heat from both the top and the bottom of the graphics card, resulting in improved overall cooling performance.

Dell Technologies and NVIDIA announce a joint initiative to make it easier for businesses to build and use generative AI models on-premises to quickly and securely deliver better customer service, market intelligence, enterprise search and a range of other capabilities. Project Helix will deliver a series of full-stack solutions with technical expertise and pre-built tools based on Dell and NVIDIA infrastructure and software. It includes a complete blueprint to help enterprises use their proprietary data and more easily deploy generative AI responsibly and accurately.

"Project Helix gives enterprises purpose-built AI models to more quickly and securely gain value from the immense amounts of data underused today," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and co-chief operating officer, Dell Technologies. "With highly scalable and efficient infrastructure, enterprises can create a new wave of generative AI solutions that can reinvent their industries."

"We are at a historic moment, when incredible advances in generative AI are intersecting with enterprise demand to do more with less," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "With Dell Technologies, we've designed extremely scalable, highly efficient infrastructure that enables enterprises to transform their business by securely using their own data to build and operate generative AI applications."

Newegg has reduced the asking price for Intel's Arc A750 Limited Edition 8 GB graphics card - this reference model is now available at an all-time low of $199. It is too early to tell whether this a permanent discount or just a seasonal sale - but the online retailer could be reacting (in advance) to the launches of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 (in July) and 4060 Ti models, as well as AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU lineup later this week.

Team Blue is putting a lot of effort into getting the hardware buying public to adopt its first generation of A-series/Alchemist discrete graphics cards - including the premiere of a slightly bizarre marketing campaign last week, called "Arc Balanced Builds." Intel has been navigating a market long dominated by NVIDIA and AMD, where plenty of folks have welcomed a third player on the field - but the Arc series experienced a much delayed and rough launch process last year. Intel has seemingly committed to next generation graphics technologies, with its Battlemage and Celestial architectures speculated to be in-progress at the company's AXG division.

According to brand new information sent to the press and influencers yesterday, AMD has likely made a last minute change to its pricing strategy - VideoCardz has communicated with insider sources and confirms that an official email contains this message: "The Radeon RX 7600 will now be available starting at an SEP of $269 USD, beginning on May 25."

Industry experts were predicting a $299 MSRP for the upcoming Radeon RX 7600 graphics card lineup, based on possible earlier communications (under embargo) from AMD, but the company has seemingly decided to change its pricing strategy ($269/€299) only three days before the May 25 launch. Its monolithic RDNA 3 Navi 33 XL GPU (6 nm) is set to go head-to-head against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card range later this week - the latter's specifications look to be superior according to leaked info - so Team Red could be making adjustments in order to stay competitive in the lower-end gaming-oriented GPU market.

Imagination Technologies is bringing seamless visual experiences to cost-sensitive consumer devices with the new IMG CXM GPU range which includes the smallest GPU to support HDR user interfaces natively.

Consumers are looking for visuals on their smart home platforms that are as detailed, smooth, and responsive as the experience they are accustomed to on mobile devices. At the same time, ambitious content providers are aligning the look and feel of their applications' user interfaces with their cinematic content, by integrating advanced features such as 4K and HDR.

People agree: accelerated computing is energy-efficient computing. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the U.S. Department of Energy's lead facility for open science, measured results across four of its key high performance computing and AI applications.

They clocked how fast the applications ran and how much energy they consumed on CPU-only and GPU-accelerated nodes on Perlmutter, one of the world's largest supercomputers using NVIDIA GPUs. The results were clear. Accelerated with NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, energy efficiency rose 5x on average. An application for weather forecasting logged gains of 9.8x.

Sapphire China has introduced a slightly cheaper alternative to its high-end Nitro Vapor-X card, based on AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT GPU. The new Nitro OC L custom design (also translated as "XT 20G Ultra Platinum L") grants a saving of about $70 when stacked against the XT Nitro+ Vapor-X model. Local prices according to JD.com's listings are 6299 RMB (roughly $895) and 6799 RMB (around $966) respectively. The two cards appear to be very similar in appearance at first glance, but Sapphire has chosen to cut back on advanced cooling features and lighting.

The "Nitro OC L" comes with a more traditional copper base, which presumably helps reduce the unit's material cost, but this choice also lessens its cooling prowess - Sapphire's engineering team has lowered the card's clock speed boost down to 2450 MHz (from the Vapor-X's 2560 MHz), so performance is on-par with their RX 7900 XT PULSE model. The Nitro OC L features a single strip of RGB on the top of its shroud - its more expensive sibling sports a secondary lighting region on its underside (emitting in the direction of the motherboard). The Radeon RX 7900 XT Nitro OC L card has not been announced for launches in western markets yet, but we hope to hear more from Sapphire's international team very soon.

ASUS today announced a showcase of the latest HPC solutions to empower innovation and push the boundaries of supercomputing, at ISC High Performance 2023 in Hamburg, Germany on May 21-25, 2023. The ASUS exhibition, at booth H813, will reveal the latest supercomputing advances, including liquid-cooling and AI solutions, as well as outlining a slew of sustainability breakthroughs - plus a whole lot more besides.

Comprehensive Liquid-Cooling Solutions
ASUS is working with Submer, the industry-leading liquid-cooling provider to demonstrate immersion-cooling solutions at ISC High Performance 2023, focused on ASUS RS720-E11-IM - the Intel -based 2U4N server that leverages our trusted legacy server architecture and popular features to create a compact new design. This fresh outlook improves the accessibility on I/O ports, storage and cable routing, and strengthens the structure to allow the server to be placed vertically in the tank, with durability assured.

Increasing its HPL score from 1.02 Eflop/s in November 2022 to an impressive 1.194 Eflop/s on this list, Frontier was able to improve upon its score after a stagnation between June 2022 and November 2022. Considering exascale was only a goal to aspire to just a few years ago, a roughly 17% increase here is an enormous success. Additionally, Frontier earned a score of 9.95 Eflop/s on the HLP-MxP benchmark, which measures performance for mixed-precision calculation. This is also an increase over the 7.94 EFlop/s that the system achieved on the previous list and nearly 10 times more powerful than the machine's HPL score. Frontier is based on the HPE Cray EX235a architecture and utilizes AMD EPYC 64C 2 GHz processors. It also has 8,699,904 cores and an incredible energy efficiency rating of 52.59 Gflops/watt. It also relies on gigabit ethernet for data transfer.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, continues to expand its data center offerings with liquid cooled NVIDIA HGX H100 rack scale solutions. Advanced liquid cooling technologies entirely from Supermicro reduce the lead time for a complete installation, increase performance, and result in lower operating expenses while significantly reducing the PUE of data centers. Savings for a data center are estimated to be 40% for power when using Supermicro liquid cooling solutions compared to an air-cooled data center. In addition, up to 86% reduction in direct cooling costs compared to existing data centers may be realized.

"Supermicro continues to lead the industry supporting the demanding needs of AI workloads and modern data centers worldwide," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO of Supermicro. "Our innovative GPU servers that use our liquid cooling technology significantly lower the power requirements of data centers. With the amount of power required to enable today's rapidly evolving large scale AI models, optimizing TCO and the Total Cost to Environment (TCE) is crucial to data center operators. We have proven expertise in designing and building entire racks of high-performance servers. These GPU systems are designed from the ground up for rack scale integration with liquid cooling to provide superior performance, efficiency, and ease of deployments, allowing us to meet our customers' requirements with a short lead time."

We have seen a few examples of custom design/board partner Radeon RX 7600 graphics card models via leaks over the past two weeks - and AMD's alleged reference design has made an appearance this weekend, only fours days prior to the official product launch date (May 25). The leaked images once again come courtesy of VideoCardz - the set of two photos show a dual-fan setup on a mostly black shroud with the company's simple "Radeon" logo positioned near the top - this design seems to be missing an underlining strip of RGB (as seen on the big boy cards).

The picture of the card's flipside depicts a very plain looking backplate. The overall aesthetic is not too far removed from the existing high-end Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX reference siblings, although this leaked entry-level offering is tiny in comparison - it is reported to be just under 21 centimeters in length (versus the 7900 XT at 27.6 cm and 7900 XTX at 28.7 cm). The RX 7600 MBA (made-by-AMD) card is said to be two slots wide.

VideoCardz seems to be getting the scoop on all sorts of custom design Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards - this weekend it revealed factory overclocked models from ASRock and ASUS, only a couple of days prior to the expected product launch. The hardware news site was tipped off to the presence of boxed Sapphire PULSE cards sitting in an unnamed retail store's stockroom almost two weeks ago, and photos of actual hardware emerged two days later.

From the looks of things, Sapphire has chosen to update its dual-fan PULSE card design for the new Radeon GPU generation, but ASRock and ASUS have taken the easier path - the latest photo leaks indicate that both companies have opted to reuse cooling solutions from their older RDNA2 models. ASRock is reintroducing the Phantom Gaming OC and Challenger OC card designs as part of its RX 7600 GPU lineup, and ASUS is recycling its ROG STRIX and Dual cooler designs - these were previously slapped onto their Radeon RX 6650 XT offerings (launched back in 2022).

In its recent Second Quarter of the Fiscal Year 2023 conference, Synopsys issued interesting information about the recent moves of chip developers and their usage of artificial intelligence. As the call notes, over 200+ chips have been taped out using Synopsys DSO.ai place-and-route (PnR) tool, making it a successful commercially proven AI chip design tool. The DSO.ai uses AI to optimize the placement and routing of the chip's transistors so that the layout is compact and efficient with regard to the strict timing constraints of the modern chip. According to Aart J. de Geus, CEO of Synopsys, "By the end of 2022, adoption, including 9 of the top 10 semiconductor vendors have moved forward at great speed with 100 AI-driven commercial tape-outs. Today, the tally is well over 200 and continues to increase at a very fast clip as the industry broadly adopts AI for design from Synopsys."

This is an interesting fact that means that customers are seeing the benefits of AI-assisted tools like DSO.ai. However, the company is not stopping there, and a whole suite of tools is getting an AI makeover. "We unveiled the industry's first full-stack AI-driven EDA suite, sydnopsys.ai," noted the CEO, adding that "Specifically, in parallel to second-generation advances in DSO.ai we announced VSO.ai, which stands for verification space optimization; and TSO.ai, test space optimization. In addition, we are extending AI across the design stack to include analog design and manufacturing." Synopsys' partners in this include NVIDIA, TSMC, MediaTek, Renesas, and IBM Research, all of which used AI-assisted tools for chip design efforts. A much wider range of industry players is expected to adopt these tools as chip design costs continue to soar as we scale the nodes down. With future 3 nm GPU costing an estimated $1.5 billion, 40% of that will account for software, and Synopsys plans to take a cut in that percentage.

Last year, the Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series introduced customers to a flexible, general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPU) for the data center and the intelligent visual cloud. Since its introduction, Intel has expanded the Intel Flex Series GPU's production-level software capabilities, including new support for Windows cloud gaming, AI inference and digital content creation.

As Flex Series GPU adoption grows in the market, customers, solution providers and developers are utilizing the hardware's capabilities across many real-world scenarios:

• Cloud service providers are deploying instances of Windows cloud gaming alongside streaming and media acceleration.
• Media studios are testing and deploying Flex Series GPUs for high-density streaming and transcoding.
• Digital content creators are using the platform for fast, real-time rendering using ray tracing hardware acceleration.

In particular, the addition of Windows cloud gaming allows the Flex Series GPU to address the growing gaming market. The rapid growth of the global cloud gaming market is estimated to reach a targeted market value of about $13.3 billion by 2028, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 42.5% from 2022 to 2028. Game service providers must continually innovate to deliver first-rate playing experiences to their subscribers while operating the most efficient infrastructure possible.

NVIDIA receives a lot of questions about graphics memory, also known as the frame buffer, video memory, or "VRAM", and so with the unveiling of our new GeForce RTX 4060 Family of graphics cards we wanted to share some insights, so gamers can make the best buying decisions for their gaming needs. What Is VRAM? VRAM is high speed memory located on your graphics card.

It's one component of a larger memory subsystem that helps make sure your GPU has access to the data it needs to smoothly process and display images. In this article, we'll describe memory subsystem innovations in our latest generation Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, as well as how the speed and size of GPU cache and VRAM impacts performance and the gameplay experience.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today launches NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB and GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB series graphics cards powered by NVIDIA ADA Lovelace architecture. GIGABYTE offers a wide range of graphics cards, including the AORUS and GIGABYTE series, to cater to the diverse needs of gamers. These cards are designed to meet the demands of gamers seeking the ultimate in performance and stunning aesthetics, as well as those who prioritize fundamental performance and durability. These graphics cards will enhance the gaming experience for a vast number of gamers.

The GeForce RTX 4060 family is designed to deliver incredible performance for mainstream gamers and creators at 1080p resolution at 100 frames per second with Ray Tracing and DLSS 3. The GeForce RTX 4060 product family delivers all the advancements of the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture—including DLSS 3 neural rendering, third-generation ray tracing technologies at high frame rates, and an eighth generation NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) with AV1 encoding.

A Taiwanese PC hardware news outlet, Benchlife, has been talking to insider sources positioned within several of NVIDIA's add-in-board (AIB) partners - the author reports that these organizations are experiencing significant changeovers. The AIB informants indicate that production of GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti models is accelerating, following rumors of the older Ampere-based RTX 3060 Ti card being discontinued. The article's author was seeking further clarification and confirmation from industry insiders, given that most of the recent leaks have emerged from Chinese technology discussion boards. Forumites have posited that NVIDIA has stopped supplying its AIB partners with RTX 3060 Ti silicon. It is difficult to tell whether (via translation) the AIB tipsters have concluded that the older card is totally done for, but NVIDIA is prioritizing the launch of new products.

It would make sense for Team Green to clear the way for the much newer Ada Lovelace-based lineups, but their entry level RTX 3060 cards have remained firm favorites with PC hardware buyers, so it could be quite tricky to play catch up with succeeding product lines. NVIDIA's component suppliers have stated (back in mid-April) that RTX 4000-series GPU production was not ramping up, due to a possible slow uptake of existing cards - in particular the recently released RTX 4070. Given the vast popularity of budget graphics card models, it seems that NVIDIA is preparing to embrace that market segment once again with its latest offerings - due for launch at the end of this month.

A leaked roadmap (that seems to be authored) by Giga Computing provides an interesting peak into the future of next generation enterprise-oriented CPUs and GPUs. TDP details of Intel, AMD and NVIDIA hardware are featured within the presentation slide - and all indications point to a trend of continued power consumption growth. Intel's server CPU lineups, including fourth generation Sapphire Rapids-SP and fifth-gen Emerald Rapids-SP Xeon chips, are projected to hit maximum TGPs of 350 W by mid-2024. Team Blue's sixth gen Granite Rapids is expected to arrive in the latter half of 2024, and Gigabyte's leaked roadmap points to a push into 500 W territories going forward into 2025.

AMD's Zen 5-based Turin server CPUs are expected to ship by the second half of 2024, and power consumption is estimated to hit a maximum of 600 W - representing a 50% increase over the Zen 4-based Genoa family. The 2024 NVIDIA PCIe GPU lineup is likely hitting TDPs of up to 500 W, it is rumored that these enterprise cards will be based on the Blackwell chip architecture - set to succeed current generation H100 "Hopper" PCIe accelerators (featuring 350-450 W TDPs). It is possible that AMD's Instinct-class PCIe accelerator family will become the direct competition, these cards are rated up to 400 W. The AMD Instinct MI250 OAM category has a maximum rating of 560 W. The NVIDIA Grace and Grace Hopper CPU Superchips are said to feature 600 W and 1000 W TDPs (respectively).

Thanks to the latest release of the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, we have additional information about Apple's upcoming M3 Pro chip. Currently in testing and reported on by an App Store developer, Apple is looking to upgrade the microarchitecture of the forthcoming chip and add additional cores to the system for more performance. As the report notes, the entry-level M3 Pro chip currently in testing will have 12 CPU cores, six for efficiency and six for performance tasks, with 18 graphics cores, all manufactured on TSMC's 3 nm node. The current baseline for M2 Pro is 10 CPU cores, where four are dedicated to efficiency, and six are dedicated to performance. The current generation entry-level M2 Pro also features a 16-core GPU, which is two cores fewer than the upcoming model.

Generally, the M3 Pro chip will boost integrated memory across the board, as the sample spotted in testing shows 36 GB of memory. The M2 Pro offered 32 GB in that memory tier, so a four GB increase is inbound there. Presumably, the 16 GB version (if it exists) and 64 GB version will also get memory bumps by going the M3 Pro route. Of course, we have to wait for more information as these chips become more widely available to developers.