Gaming

A YouTuber has discovered how to significantly reduce temperatures on the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. Replacing the stock thermal pads can drop VRAM temperatures by upwards of 25 °C, allowing the card to be pushed harder before it thermal throttles.

We've already expressed our disappointment on the mobile GeForce RTX 30 series when compared to its desktop counterparts, but how does it fare against last year's mobile GeForce RTX 20 series? The data looks promising for mobile Ampere at least for the moment.

Dell is ridding last year's budget model for a fairly low price considering the balanced specifications. Some users may not like the visual design of the system, but the easy serviceability and Thunderbolt support are admirable nonetheless.

Today (March 16, 2021), MSI has confirmed that its esports-focused lines of desktops have been refreshed with Tiger Lake CPUs. Accordingly, the next-gen Aegis, Codex R, Infinite RS and Trident rigs will have 11th-gen platforms, with the PCIe Gen 4 support that entails in most cases, as well as RTX 3000-series cards, including the 3050.

RedMagic has confirmed that its latest 6 and 6 Pro Android gaming flagship phones are to be released globally, bringing their new 165Hz AMOLED displays and Snapdragon 888 processors with them. However, it seems that the 6 Pro may not pack the ultra-fast 120W charging system it had when launched in China.

A new DigiTimes report suggests that the RTX 3000 shortages could persist towards the end of the year, despite Nvidia's efforts to limit the crypto miners and introduce GPUs specifically designed for miners. Samsung's 8 nm nodes are still not able to present high enough yields and the rumored jump to TSMC's 7 nm nodes might not even happen this year.

OnePlus will replace the 8T as its newest flagship soon. However, the OEM has news for those who would prefer to stick with the phone: it is now part of the Open Beta project at the company. This channel of new Android updates might unlock access to new features before they hit the "normal" stable versions.

Multiple sources have confirmed that they have managed to bypass the Nvidia GeForce RX 3060's Etherium mining rate limiter. Installing the GeForce 470.05 development driver seems to do the trick, but one party insists that a custom VBIOS is necessary, too.

Dying Light 2 developer Techland recent promised to deliver an update on the troubled game's progress on March 17th. This could shed light into the status of the game, what it looks like now, and when it'll actually ship.

New rumors indicate that the RTX 3080 Ti may finally launch sometime in mid-April. The exact specifications of the RTX 3080 Ti are still elusive, but rumor is that the card would feature 12 GB GDDR6X VRAM and 10,240 CUDA cores at a US$999 price point.

A bunch of Vietnamese cryptocurrency miners quite literally have taken PC hardware to new depths by submerging eight Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards in mineral oil. While their operating parameters are not visible, empirical data tells us that mineral oil can cool PC components with the same efficiency as air or water. Some components also last longer due to the constant, uniform cooling offered by the medium.

Microsoft snapping up Sega is the rumor that will never go away, but it now seems that Konami could also be in the sights of the parent company of the Xbox Game Studios. Microsoft could do with a boost in Japan as recent sales figures reported 10 Xbox One consoles sold compared to 78,134 Nintendo Switch units.

The engineering card appears to be equipped with CPU-grade heatsink + cooler and it is connected to an Alder Lake motherboard through a PCIe riser. Koduri does not really mention that this is the DG2 card, but the test system is running 3DMark with the Port Royal ray tracing test in the test suite, and we know only DG2 GPUs among Intel's upcoming discrete models support ray tracing.

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card has been baring some serious fangs on the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark. In a case of Navi 22 XT vs. Navi 10 XT, the upcoming board scored up to +35% higher than the RX 5700 XT. The RX 6700 XT even managed to beat the Navi 10-based unit in a 4K vs. 1080p face-off.

The last weekend of Lenovo's Annual Sale in the US has arrived. It still has some decent deals, however, which include dropping the price of the Intel Core i7-10750H-powered Legion 7i to US$1,199. Alternatively, the Legion Tower 7i gaming desktop and IdeaPad Gaming 3i are also available at discounts.

Crytek has announced that DLSS can be switched on in Crysis Remastered with the game's latest update. Therefore, its performance while running on NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards with RTX may be boosted considerably. Then again, the new potential advantage is also affected by some initial bugs.

The latest Linux-based laptops from Tuxedo offer quite a wide array of options when it comes to displays and GPUs. The i7-10870H CPU might not be the best solution when the AMD Ryzen 5000H are already available, but users can choose among RTX 3060 / 3070 / 3080 Max-Q GPU options plus 144 Hz / 300 Hz FHD IPS displays and even 4K OLED or IPS screens with 60 Hz refresh rates.

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card has pitted against its main competitors, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070. The AMD mid-ranger manages to best the RTX 3070 in only a handful of titles while managing to consistently remain ahead of the RTX 3060 Ti. However, the 6700 XT's raytracing performance leaves a lot to be desired, though.

Specifications of the Intel 11th gen Core i7 and Core i9 Rocket Lake-S processors have leaked indicating a total of five SKUs each. The variants under each processor include K, KF, F, non-K, and T. A gaming comparison between the Core i9-11900K and the Core i9-10900K has also leaked indicating between 8% to 14% higher scores for the former depending on the title.

The ROG Phone 5 has now descended on the Android gaming scene, with its super-powered Pro and Ultimate variants for good measure. However, a tech blog claims to have found what could be their successor on the Bluetooth SIG certification website already. Then again, the evidence of this unusually advanced leak is now nowhere to be found.

A reddit post explains why the Anandtech i7-11700K review may have presented poor results in most gaming and synthetic benchmarks. This could be due to Intel misleadingly advertising inferior stock settings for the RAM controllers on all SKUs below the i9-11900K(F).

Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be pleased to know that they will soon be able to play Bethesda classics such as Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Doom on the platform starting on March 12. A total of 20 games have been added to the platform, some of which will be available on PC, console and cloud.

An AMD Radeon RX 6600M has been spotted as part of the hardware configuration for a device apparently being tested on a well-known gaming benchmark. Not only does this seemingly confirm the RX 6600M should be coming soon, but the GPU also appears alongside a surprising Ryzen 5000 CPU that hints at a Zen 3/RDNA 2 laptop in the works for 2021.

The Schenker XMG Core 15 brings all modern computer games smoothly onto the responsive screen (WQHD, IPS, 165 Hz). This is complemented by an NVMe SSD, 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), and decent battery life. The new Control Center provides extensive options to adjust the performance of the APU and GPU.

Xbox insider Shpeshal Ed says that several Bethesda games will be available on Xbox Game Pass. We're probably looking at UPlay+ integration with Microsoft's subscription services, which is expected to cost US$5 extra. This is expected to happen by the end of 2021.

The performance gap is definitely there, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before from previous generation Max-Q and non Max-Q designs. Gamers will see about 15 to 20 percent slower performance if jumping from a 130 W GeForce RTX 3060 GPU to the 75 W version.

NateDrake on the ResetEra forums claims that the DLSS-compatible Switch may differ from the upcoming Switch Pro with OLED screen and 4K support, and, due to the ongoing chip shortages, the DLSS version could end up pushed back to 2022. We should be seeing a new Nvidia SoC, though, and the DLSS hardware features will be supported on the handheld SoC rather than the dock SoC.

An intrepid MSI employee tried to mine cryptocurrency on the MSI GE76 Raider gaming laptop. It can apparently mine at 52.8MH/s, a smidgen slower than the desktop Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070's 52.9MH/s hash rate. MSI says that it will continue its 'experiment' for a month before posting results.

The latest update to War Thunder, labeled 2.5 "Ixwa Strike" and unleashed earlier today, brings more than 20 new ground vehicles (including a South African separate branch in the British tech tree), first sweep-wing aircraft (Su-17M), 5 new ships, new locations, a pilot HUD, new graphical effects, and more.

Ambitious miners have successfully managed to best the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060's hash rate limiter less than a month after it was launched. The graphics card can now mine crypto at 45MH/s. With the restriction in place, its mining rate was restricted to 20MH/s.

When the screen on your smartphone proves too small for productivity tasks, you can just use the new Beelink Expand X dock to hook your mobile device to a PC monitor and a keyboard / mouse setup. You can also watch movies from the phone or even play handheld console games on a big 4K TV through the included HDMI connector.

PlayStation 5 devkit images seemingly sourced from the National Communications Commission (NCC) of Taiwan have offered up an interesting reminder of what could have been. A PlayStation Store mailshot has reaffirmed that the expanded and enhanced version of Grand Theft Auto V for the PS5 appears to be still on schedule.

Microsoft has purchased ZeniMax Media for US$7.5 billion, bringing popular game development studios like Bethesda and id Software under the Xbox umbrella. This may mark the beginning of Xbox exclusivity for series like The Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Fallout, and more.

Production of the NVIDIA Tegra X1 'Mariko' is coming to an end, according to a new rumour. The Tegra X1 'Mariko' powers the Nintendo Switch and the Switch Lite, so we may be set to see a new Switch Pro or Super Switch this year, after all.

The BenQ MOBIUZ EX3415R is, as its name suggests, a 34-inch curved gaming monitor. The 21:9 monitor runs natively at 1440p with a 144 Hz peak refresh rate and 1 ms response times. The display has a 1900R curvature, is VESA DisplayHDR 400 certified and has built-in speakers.

It is possible to modify the GeForce RTX 3070 to support 16 GB of VRAM, a YouTuber has discovered. Enabling support on the GA104 card requires setting 'strap' resistors to the correct values too, which all but confirms that NVIDIA had been developing an RTX 3070 SKU with 16 GB of VRAM, as had been suggested last year.

Now that the AMD's mobile processors are proving their superiority over the Intel solutions, GPD is more inclined to follow the trend and offer its first AMD-powered handheld laptop. We have the official confirmation that a GPD Win Max successor with Ryzen 7 5800U is already being tested, but actually availability is still sketchy.

Lenovo's upcoming gaming smartphone, the Lenovo Legion 2 Pro, just showed up on Geekbench. It managed to net a single-core score of 1,129 and a multi-core score of 3,763, indicating that it is running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC. This particular variant also has 16GB of RAM.

A modder has created his own custom liquid-cooled PS5 console and has turned plenty of heads in the process. He has deconstructed a Sony console and re-made it using completely custom parts including the integration of a bespoke cooling system to stunning effect.

GSC Game World's Zakhar Bocharov sat down to answer questions about STALKER 2 on a Russian language podcast. Bocharov highlighted some new information about the game, including the possibility of mod support on Xbox.

A recent update to Resident Evil Village's listing on the Microsoft Store indicates that Capcom's upcoming game will have a surprisingly small file size, especially considering that it's a 9th-generation console exclusive. The game is set to come in at just 35 GB, with Re: Verse multiplayer bundled in and adding an extra 15 GB.

Design features from the high-end Alienware laptops are finally making their way onto the more affordable Dell G series. 360 Hz displays and quad-zone RGB lighting will both be optional.

A tech leaker has claimed that Microsoft is currently developing a “portable machine” that will soon be announced to the world. An Xbox portable console or Xbox Series handheld device could take the market by storm and provide direct competition to the Nintendo Switch Lite. Just don’t expect it to be called the Xboy though.

While Cyberpunk 2077's official 1.2 patch has been delayed somewhat, enterprising modders are improving aspects of the game by themselves. The Realistic Combat Overhaul by cortlong50 promises to revamp combat by making both the player - and enemy NPCs - significantly more dangerous to each other.