Gaming

The Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 includes AMD Ryzen 5000 APUs, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs and CherryMX mechanical keyboard switches. You can configure the 15.6-inch gaming laptop with up to a 1440p and 240 Hz display, 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and 6 TB of PCIe storage. Thankfully, Alienware has gone with the 115 W variants of the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070.

Dell has launched four new gaming monitors to complement its Ryzen-powered line of gaming laptops. There four SKUs in total with screen sizes ranging between 24 and 34 inches. The monitors will be available for purchase towards the end of May 2021.

Dell has launched two new G15 gaming laptops, both starting at US$899.99. The G15 Ryzen Edition (5515) comes with newer processors though, but both it and the G15 5510 have the 115 W variant of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060.

Atari announced the creation of two new divisions under the main Atari Group. Atari Gaming will continue to manage the company's gaming division, including game development, the VCS console, and the licensing of recognizable Atari games. The new Atari Blockchain division will focus on blockchain and cryptocurrency opportunities, primarily Atari's Atari Token cryptocurrency.

The Lenovo Yoga Creator 7 offers a lot of computing power and a well-rounded equipment level. This is accompanied by a very good battery life and three-year warranty.

The Legion 2 Pro is touted to become the world's first dual-fan gaming smartphone on its launch. New leaks might partially confirm this tip while spoiling its unique design in the process. These images show a mobile device with the back-lit logo one might expect from this upcoming Lenovo product, contained in a highly distinctive rear panel.

Introduced in early March 2017 with a price tag that read US$699 and discontinued in the meantime, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is now apparently being produced again. For now, it looks like older units that were sent for RMA are being replaced with brand-new ones, so we might see them on the free market as well.

The Black Shark 4 Pro has topped the AnTuTu Android flagship smartphone performance chart for March, with fellow high-end gaming phones the RedMagic 6 Pro and the Asus ROG Phone 5 also prominently placed. The table solely consists of smartphones powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.

High prices and lack of marketing likely led to poor sales of the SC15 and SC17 series. Manufacturers looking to break into the gaming laptop world will likely face similar challenges and pushback from established makers.

Lenovo avoided punch-holes or notches in the display of its first-gen Android gaming phone by developing an innovative pop-up selfie camera, hidden in one of this device's sides rather than in its top edge, instead. Now, the OEM has revealed this feature is making a comeback in its upcoming Legion 2 Pro flagship, leaving its 144Hz screen free of any interruptions.

Steam has published its hardware and software survey for March and yet again AMD has pinched some more processor usage share away from Intel. However, there has been a small increase for Team Blue with Linux-based systems, and there must be some hope that Rocket Lake has the cash registers ringing soon.

The idea of a more portable refrigerator styled after the latest Xbox Series X console - one that you might be able to buy soon, moreover - sounds like the most April Fool’s Day thing ever. However, a Microsoft executive still states that it is real and will be available soon.

An image of an upcoming Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 laptop has been shared confirming that the device is seemingly almost ready for launch. On top of that, at least two models of the novel 16-inch Asus ROG Zephyrus appear to be in the pipeline, with a specs leak revealing an Intel Core i9-11900H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU as headliners.

Lenovo is currently hyping the imminent launch of its second-gen gaming phone with some of its high-powered specs prior to this event. They include its generous FHD+ AMOLED display with its 144Hz refresh rate. It will be kept on with a 5,500mAh battery that will apparently charge at up to 90 watts (W).

Apple has announced an expansion to its Apple Arcade subscription gaming service. Along with new titles including NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition, Star Trek: Legends and The Oregon Trail, it has added two new categories called Timeless Classics and App Store Greats.

According to a new report, the upcoming PlayStation Store closures for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable will result in the removal from purchase of over 2,200 digital-only games. Ironically, some of these titles will become Xbox exclusives due to this contentious decision by Sony. Even worse, apparently some games will be permanently lost.

Beoplay Portal is the first wireless gaming headset from Bang & Olufsen. With a rather sober design, the Beoplay Portal comes with an all-new virtual boom arm, adaptive active noise cancellation, Dolby Atmos for Headphones support, and up to 24 hours of autonomy. Those interested can already purchase it for US$499.

The inclusion of the RTX 3070 Max-Q mobile dGPU seems to be suggesting that Razer's thin and light chassis on the upcoming AMD-powered 14-inch models only allow for lower-TGP dGPU options. Can Razer also add an RTX 3080 Max-Q and are these options really making sense for such price premiums when Lenovo is offering the Max-P versions on the Legion 5 Pro and Legion 7 with superior price/performance ratios?

Low-power CPUs have advanced so much these past few years that they can even run the latest games at 720p and decent frame rates. The AYA NEO will be one of the first handhelds to run on a 6-core Ryzen 5 4500U Renoir CPU designed for on-the-go gaming.

The Analogue Pocket is, arguably, one of the most exciting retro consoles thanks to its ability to play cartridges natively. Unfortunately, the ongoing chip shortage has delayed the console's release again, this time until October 2021.

MSI has unveiled the OPTIX MAG301RF, its latest ultra-wide gaming monitor. The MAG301RF has a 29.5-inch panel that runs at 2,560 x 1,080 pixels, with a 200 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response times. The MAG301RF should be available in a month for about US$399.

Lenovo's upcoming gaming smartphone, the Legion 2 Pro, just showed up on the Master Lu benchmark database. It managed to defeat the Asus ROG Phone 5 by a somewhat narrow margin, with a total score of 962,115, which is a tad higher than the latter's score of 947,284. Lenovo will launch the smartphone in China on April 8.

Three SKUs from the AMD Ryzen 5000G desktop APU series have had their core specifications leaked. The three chips in question are the Ryzen 3 5300G, Ryzen 5 5600G, and Ryzen 7 5700G. The top-end Cezanne unit will offer eight Zen 3 cores and clock rates from 3.8 GHz up to a maximum boost of 4.6 GHz.

Please note this was a joke article posted on April Fools' Day in 2021.
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We can confirm that NVIDIA plans to release the GeForce RTX 3050 and GeForce RTX 3050 Ti in multiple configurations. The GeForce RTX 3050 series will replace NVIDIA's GTX 16 series, but early benchmarks show the RTX 3050 Ti outperforming even the RTX 2060 in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

CD Projekt has revealed its 2021 update roadmap for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher franchise. Revealed is stretching it somewhat in the case of Cyberpunk 2077 though, as its multiplayer modes and expansions are out of scope for 2021.

Besides storing more high-res textures and boosting the ray tracing performance, the 16 GB mod can also help improve framerate stability. Some games like Watch Dogs Legion can be less stuttery on the 16 GB mod, as the 0.1% Low and 1% Low framerates see considerable improvements, but other games like Godfall do not seem to take advantage of the increased RAM capacity and even perform slightly slower.

The Realme GT Neo has launched as the world's first Dimensity 1200-powered phone. This new MediaTek flagship processor has debuted in a chassis with many potential advantages, including an FHD+ AMOLED screen with an up-to-date refresh rate, Wi-Fi 6 and UFS 3.1 storage. It starts at about US$275 for a 6GB RAM version, although a 12GB option is also available for a good price.

The 2021 Ultra 17 models from XMG pack up to an i9-11900K 8-core / 16-thread CPU, which can be coupled with up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and 32 TB NVMe SSD storage. Users can choose among max TGP versions for the RTX 3060 / 3070 / 3080 mobile dGPUs that take full advantage of 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Screen options include 300 Hz FHD and 60 Hz 4K IPS panels and among the ports we find 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors plus an HDMI 2.1 video output.

Major GPU OEM Colorful seems to have entirely omitted download links for Resize BAR BIOS updates on its technical support page. This leaves Colorful graphics card owners with no way to enable the feature, at least until the OEM fixes those broken links.

Resizable BAR is now available for NVIDIA's full RTX 30 desktop product stack, as the company promised earlier this month. Resizable BAR is available for most modern AMD and Intel chipsets and processors, including Zen 3 and Comet Lake-S CPUs. NVIDIA has expandable Resizable BAR support to 17 games, too.

Asus touts its new ROG Flow X13 as a Swiss army knife for consumers who are into content-creation as well as gaming, thanks to Ryzen 5000-series processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics. Initial European pricing and availability for this interesting 2-in-1 has now been announced; however, the OEM has yet to mention a release for its optional, RTX 3080-toting ROG XG Mobile eGPU in this market.

AMD has released the latest version of its Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver for Radeon cards. It is hardly essential, yet may be useful for those wishing for the best experience in ray-tracing-heavy titles such as Cyberpunk 2077. It also adds support for some other games, including Outriders and Evil Genius 2: World Domination.

All new? A lot of information about the Rocket Lake-S processors has already been made public, and now we make our own contribution. Whether or not Intel manages to overcome the 2-core deficit with its top-end model? Moreover, we also got our hands on the fastest 6-core chip from the new generation. Read our review to learn what kind of performance the new chips offer and whether or not AMD needs to start preparing for the worst.

Gigabyte has registered new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SKUs with the EEC, following NVIDIA's GPU and VRAM changes. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is expected to arrive in May with 12 GB of GDDR6X VRAM, but it seems that Gigabyte has its eyes set on releasing a CMP 30HX crypto mining card, too.

The Sony PlayStation 5 outputs all content in HDR by default, even if games or videos do not support a higher dynamic range. There are some situations where one may want to disable HDR though, but it turns out that Sony's latest console struggles with displaying the correct colours when set to SDR.

A report from a Taiwanese media site has revealed that both Acer and Asus appear to be planning on implementing price hikes on their popular laptop ranges. The continuing high demand for notebooks and mobile workstations has led to a situation where Acer and Asus are likely to increase product prices in the second quarter of 2021.

Xiaomi's bumper launch of today (March 29, 2021) mainly focused on its new Mi 11-series Android phones. However, it also introduced a number of new products that could be used alongside them, one of which is the new Mi AX9000 router. Its new, gamer-geared design gives it 12 antennae in total, and integrates a top-end Qualcomm chipset for tri-band Wi-Fi 6 speeds and specs.

The South Korean hardware manufacturer EmTek has released unusual-looking graphics cards before, but the GeForce RTX 3060 MIRACLE will take some beating. While its dual fan design is regular for a GeForce RTX 3060, its honeycomb and bee-inspired design is more playful than many contemporary graphics cards. It remains to be seen how useful obscuring one intake fan will be, though.

ASUS has unveiled the GeForce RTX 3060 Phoenix, a tiny GA106-based card that has one fan. The RTX 3060 Phoenix is just 177 mm long, but it is a 2.5-slot card being 51 mm wide.

The long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 is almost here, and CDPR has confirmed that it will feature nearly 300 fixes for its triple-A title. Patch 1.2 will also enable ray tracing for AMD graphics cards, such as the Radeon RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 XT.
Updated: Patch 1.2 is now live on consoles and PC, where it is a 34 GB download.

MSI will be showcasing how its latest Intel Z590 and B560-series motherboards can help push the performance of Intel's 11th gen Rocket Lake processors in productivity, gaming, and content creation via a virtual live event on March 31. Viewers of the livestream will also be able to take part in contests and win exciting prizes.

File transfers are almost an order of magnitude faster on the new GE76 when compared to the older GE75. If you rely on SD cards for your daily workloads, then you may want to skip the GE75 or GE65.

A discovery by a Hardwareluxx forum member seems to indicate that NVIDIA might have scrapped plans for using the GA102-250 in the RTX 3080 TI and, instead, repurpose it as GA102-300 for the RTX 3090. This still leaves the possibility of a GA102-225 with 12 GB GDDR6X VRAM launching as the RTX 3080 Ti some time in May.

The Dell G15 5515 will launch with at least an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, according to a 3DMark listing. The 115 W GPU will be available with 16 GB of RAM and a fast 1TB SSD, too.

Redmi is slated to launch its first dedicated Android gaming phone soon. It is already confirmed to debut with the new MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor; now, it is also tipped to do so with a high-end flat AMOLED screen. The device may also have fast 65W charging, as well as shoulder buttons like those of the RedMagic or Black Shark lines.

ZA/UM's remarkably political RPG is set to receive a major upgrade on March 30th. The Director's Cut of Disco Elysium will include new narrative content as well as full voice acting, fleshing out hundreds of thousands of lines of in-game text.

Dell is throwing in a year of onsite or in-home repair service at no additional cost. The Alienware m15 R4 is the newest gaming laptop from Dell and not some older configuration on clearance.

Razer has launched a new retractable stainless steel staw, complete with a carrying case and a cleaner. It is packaged as the Razer Reusable Straw and costs US$20 on Razer's official website. The company says that straw is s part of its "go green with Razer" initiative.