Gaming

The improved compute element boards can now host desktop-grade Raptor Lake CPUs like the i5-13600K, i7-13700K or i9-13900K coupled with up to 64 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM plus up to 3x PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. Two Thunderbolt 4 connectors are also offered, and the barebone kits cost up to US$1549, but Intel also offers RAM, storage and OS options for up to and additional US$1100.

Best Buy is selling an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop with a Ryzen 7 CPU, an Nvidia RTX 3060, and a Full HD display with a 144 Hz refresh rate for US$500 off. The Zephyrus is currently listed at $899.99.

Prolific leaker Kopite7kimi says Nvidia plans to bring the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB back from the grave. It will supposedly be presented as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti sometime in January 2023, likely at CES 2023.

Retroid has introduced a new version of the Pocket 3. Sold as the Pocket 3+, the gaming handheld has a 4.7-inch display, a Unisoc T618 chipset and 4 GB of RAM but only features the outdated Android 11.

A new round of Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 benchmarks have shown up online. It is about 40% slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 on average. However, it managed to boost up to 2.9 GHz without any overclocking.

The well-performing gaming laptop made by the reputable Taiwanese manufacturer is currently discounted by a notable US$500, which makes the Asus TUF Dash F15 one of the most affordable gaming laptops with an RTX 3070 on the market.

Anbernic has introduced the RG353M, a gaming handheld that builds on the company's other 'RG353' devices. Built around a landscape display, the RG353M has a Rockchip RK3566 SoC, 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and an HDMI port, among other features.

A new set of Geekbench listings reveal the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is about 40% faster than the GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB in pure rasterization. It sits in line with earlier performance estimates which said it would be 50% faster.

Nvidia has kicked off its next generation of GPU hardware with the launch of the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080 boards. Following the availability of the RTX 4090 in October, the RTX 4080 16 GB will be up for sale this month. Now, the latest report from Moore’s Law Is Dead claims that, compared to the RTX 4090 supply, the initial stock of the RTX 4080 cards will be much less.

With highlights like a 360 Hz 17.3-inch IPS display, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics, 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD storage, the Intel Core i9-12900H-powered GIGABYTE AORUS 17 YE5 is unsurprisingly priced at US$3,699. Fortunately, the ongoing 32 percent discount pushes this list price down to US$2,499.

As expected, Sony’s God of War Ragnarök turns out to be a beautiful game on PS5 which can undoubtedly compete with the best-looking titles that this current console generation has to offer. Its 1440p performance mode with up to 90 fps appears to be particularly noteworthy since it allows for an extremely smooth gaming experience.

GPD has outlined when it will start selling the Win 4, its latest compact gaming handheld. Equipped with a 6-inch display and AMD's powerful Ryzen 7 6800U APU, the GPD Win 4 will also be available with up to 32 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 2 TB of PCIe 4.0 storage.

AMD's Frank Azor confirmed to PCWorld that the new RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 XTX is an RTX 4080 competitor and does not aim to take on the RTX 4090, which is 60% more expensive. Azor also touched upon FSR 3 and said that AMD aims to make the next generation upscaling technology available to all architectures.

A Windows Central report says Diablo 4 will be playable in April 2023. Pre-orders are expected to kick off in December 2022 at The Game Awards.

Steam for ChromeOS recently moved from Alpha to Beta, making it compatible with more Chromebooks across the board. However, the required specs to run Steam on ChromeOS are somewhat high (for Chromebooks, at least); users will need at least 8 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 CPU or higher.

You might want to have a good pair of headphones nearby if you plan on playing games on Acer's latest 14-inch Predator laptop. The model is as small as an Asus Zephyrus G14, but it's noticeably louder and even distracting at times.

AMD has confirmed the impending arrival of DisplayPort 2.1 capable monitors. Arriving early next year with 4K and 8K panels, AMD has also teased a new Samsung Odyssey Neo G9, which will be the world's first 8K ultra-wide monitor.

The performance metrics presented by AMD during the official launch appeared a bit cryptic, but Linus and twitter user Lock Gamer extrapolated the AMD estimates with actual RTX 4090 results and it looks like the RX 7900 XTX is only 10% slower than Nvidia's top dog. Not too shabby when we also factor in the 60% lower prices for the AMD card.

The new Chunxiao GPU is set to power an MTT S80 gaming card along with 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, as well as an MTT S3000 datacenter card with 32 GB of VRAM. Raw performance levels are estimated to match Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti and Moore Threads promises support for at least 40 of the most popular games in China, including Crossfire, CoD MW3, Diablo 3 etc. AV1 8K coding and decoding support is also a prominent feature.

AMD has officially unveiled the Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. Key specs include 24 GB of 20 Gbps VRAM on a 384-bit bus, 2.3 GHz game clock, DP 2.1 support and 96 CUs. It costs US$999 and will be available for purchase on December 13.

AYA NEO has brought two of its AMD Ryzen 7 6800U-based gaming handhelds. Arriving as the AYA NEO 2 and the AYA NEO GEEK, the gaming handhelds come with 800p and 1200p displays, plus a variety of colours.

SEGA has finally started selling the Mega Drive Mini 2 in Europe. Also available as the Genesis Mini 2 in North America, the newer retro gaming console is smaller than its predecessor but contains more games to boot, like Sonic the Hedgehog CD.

After a reasonable discount of 26 percent, the ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP Holo 12GB video card, which features advanced cooling and RGB lighting, is down to US$1,053.98. However, this is still a lot considering that the card was released over a year ago, when NVIDIA priced the reference design at US$1,199.

Microsoft has not yet raised prices for either of its current-generation consoles. However, Phil Spencer has outlined that Microsoft's sales strategy leaves the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles as loss leaders, with up to US$200 lost per console.

The chiplet area is estimated to measure around 533 mm², whereas the entire package would be 2612 mm². Each of the six MCDs come with some amount of Infinity Cache, but the exact specs will be unveiled later today.

Dell's new 16-inch machine may not be the sleekest or most portable gaming laptop on the market, but considering its already discounted sale price of US$899, it arguably offers a lot of CPU performance and a fairly decent QHD display for the money.

The Ryzen 7 6800H CPU and GeForce RTX-3070 Ti Laptop GPU ensure a smooth gaming experience for all games and display them on a 15.6-inch screen (FHD, 165 Hz). The notebook has enough space for two PCIe-4 SSDs and also features a USB 4 port. Bonus: The device stays fairly cool.

The rather rare "all-AMD" configuration of the Asus ROG Strix G15 draws closer to the important US$1,000 mark thanks to a new sale at Best Buy that grants a huge US$600 or 35 percent discount on the well-performing 15-inch gaming laptop made by the reputable Taiwanese PC manufacturer.

One-netbook has ended its pre-order period for the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U-powered version of the ONEXPLAYER mini Pro. Now available without reservation, the 7-inch gaming handheld starts at US$1,199 with 512 GB of storage and 16 GB of RAM.

Steam Big Picture mode has received a substantial update, moving it away from its most recent layout. In its place arrives Steam Deck UI, which contains new features and improved navigation when using a controller.

The Thunderbolt 4 connector shows its age as it gets tested with an external RTX 4090 GPU. This was not immediately apparent with previous GPU generations, but the RTX 4000 bandwidth capacities clearly give TB4 a hard time. Additionally, it looks like the TB4 implementation on Intel's top-tier mobile CPU is unexpectedly lacking.

Thanks to its Core i7-12700H CPU and GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, the Schenker Vision 14 offers plenty of performance in a compact 14-inch chassis - without the big battery, the weight decreases from 1.3 (~2.87 lbs) to just above 1.1 kg (~2.43 lbs). In this case, the Vision 14 is practically unrivaled.

An independent game developer is in hot water with Ikea for making a survival-horror game set in a furniture store bearing similarities to the popular chain's retail locations. While the developer says the game is inspired by a piece of horror fiction, Ikea has filed a suit to protect its brand.

Santa Monica Studio has posted a polite message asking God of War Ragnarök spoiler sharers to restrict their online behavior in the aftermath of a US retailer purportedly selling the game well before its official launch date of November 9. However, key players in the creation of God of War Ragnarök, especially Cory Barlog, have been vocal in their frustration with the matter.

The RTX 3070 Ti-powered machine impressed us with its high gaming performance and beautiful 165Hz display, which arguably makes the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro a decent choice in the high-end gaming laptop segment, especially at a significantly discounted sale price of US$1,660.

Gigabyte asserts that its new AORUS TACHYON motherboard, made for Z790-compatible processors such as Intel's Raptor Lake line, has broken records on Cinebench. They apply to an overclocked version of the high-end Core i9-13900K CPU. The OEM now pitches the board as "exclusively for extreme overclocking" on the back of this new achievement.

An alleged Nvidia RTX 4080 12 GB that was recently 'unlaunched' by the company has apparently ended up with a tester, who has posted some AIDA64 and 3DMark numbers along with performance in the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark. The results show the purported RTX 4080 12 GB's performance to be nearly identical to that of the RTX 3090 Ti. The card, however, trails massively behind the RTX 4090.

Sony's latest PlayStation 5 revisions have now reached Europe. Currently available in a specific bundle, CFI-1202A and CFI-1202B revisions rely on a more efficient APU based on AMD's Oberon Plus architecture.

Thanks to a steep 38% discount, the affordable RTX 3050 Ti-powered Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 may be a sensible choice for budget-minded gamers who are still looking for an adequately performing gaming laptop in the US$500 range.

Nvidia needs to analyze all the affected RTX 4090 cards in order to issue a full statement regarding the faulty power connectors, so the company notified all AIB partners to send relevant hardware directly to the Santa Clara HQ.

Schenker's slim Vision 16 models feature the world's lightest AZ91D magnesium alloy chassis weighing 1.45 - 1.6 kg. Powered by Intel's Core i7-12700H processor, the 16-inch ultrabooks come with 2560 x 1600 screens, up to an RTX 3080 dGPU and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity.

Philips has announced four gaming monitors under its new Evnia brand. Ranging from the Evnia 27M2C5500W at £459.99 to the Evnia 34M2C7600MV at £1,599.99, the series will be available from later this year, although most monitors will not launch until early 2023.

Whether you're part of the hardcore racing simulation crowd, or you're simply looking for some split-screen arcade fun with friends, there's always a good time to be had with racing games. Fortunately, Steam has some of the best racing games around — even better, many of the best ones are on sale.