Gaming

It’s been reported that some of the executives at BioWare, the EA-owned game developer, have been blaming Anthem’s issues on the gamers that play it. Great things were expected from the title, but within days of its release in February it was already facing a lukewarm response from critics and complaints about hardware crashes from players.

As if the Playstation 5 and XBox rumors haven't been rampant enough, we can expect even more speculation pieces once AMD gives the deep technical dive into both Zen 2 and Navi during the private Hot Chips 2019 conference.

An interesting new custom kit has been discovered that can turn a simple-looking Raspberry Pi board into a handheld gaming console with keyboard and game controls. The Hyper Keyboard Pi is currently being sold for ¥6,980 (~US$64), although users will have to purchase the rest of the key components separately.

According to a new report, the virtual reality (VR) gaming market will grow from its most recent US$10.3 billion valuation to one of $40.2 billion in 2024. This is likely to be driven by advancements in VR equipment design and function. However, the cost of the same is also thought to be what is holding this market back at present.

Today (May 16, 2019), the corporations Microsoft and Sony unveiled plans to collaborate on the development of new technology. This partnership will see the 2 electronics giants team up on new image sensors and cloud computing applications. This may enhance platforms such as PlayStation and Azure AI in the future.

The Red Magic 3, Nubia's latest gaming smartphone, is available outside China, albeit through some third-party resellers. Now, however, the OEM has announced that it is about to ship the phone itself to numerous international locations. This general release will begin on May 27, 2019.

A modder known as Madmorda has created an amazing fully functional miniature version of Nintendo’s immensely popular GameCube. Nintendo has had great success with the NES and SNES Classic Edition mini consoles, but there has been no sign that the Japanese company would turn its sights onto the GameCube.

AMD has issued a press release to announce that it will be holding a 'Next Horizon Gaming' event at E3 2019 on June 10 to reveal its upcoming gaming products for PCs and consoles. It goes without saying that AMD will be using this platform to announce the highly anticipated Navi series of GPUs and also throw some light onto the semi-custom silicon that will soon be powering the next generation of Xbox One and PlayStation consoles.

According to our first benchmarks on the Core i9-9880H, there are now good reasons to own a mobile Core i9 especially for 3D rendering, video editing, and running other software optimized for octa-core CPUs. For gamers, however, the original hexa-core Core i7-8750H can still provide very nearly the same gaming experience for hundreds of dollars less.

NVIDIA could look to introducing a refreshed RTX lineup as a pre-emptive measure to take on the upcoming AMD Navi lineup, according to information by RedGamingTech. The rumors points to a possible refresh of current RTX cards with higher memory speeds. Also being speculated is a possibility of higher clocks, use of Samsung's 16 Gb GDDR6 DRAM, and reduction in prices.

Dell is currently offering a sitewide sale with 12% off a full range of electronic products. This covers the American manufacturer’s numerous well-known lines, including XPS, Alienware, Inspiron, and more. One of the most interesting current deals is for an Inspiron Gaming Desktop packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 and Radeon RX 580 graphics card for US$791.99.

An analyst for the Ace Research Institute has compiled a financial results report about Sony’s PlayStation business. Among the big numbers and forecasts, the researcher has detailed some information about the upcoming PlayStation 5 console, which includes an expected launch date of November 2020. There are also predictions for price and sales.

Chinese manufacturer Ipason has launched the F-Migrate miniPC. The compact desktop computer comes with AMD’s Ryzen 3 2200GE desktop APU with 8 GB RAM and a 240 GB SSD also onboard. Abundant connectivity options and a tight two-liter case make the Ipason F-Migrate ideal for those seeking portable computing power.

Lisa Su will kickoff Computex 2019 in less than two weeks and then tease even more gaming technologies two weeks later at the Next Horizon Gaming conference in E3 2019. Expect a cluster of hopefully exciting AMD announcements in the coming month.

Xperi claims that Nvidia has been using 5 of its patents related to voltage circuitry and semiconductor manufacturing technologies in some of its GPUs and processors without acquiring licenses. Three of these patents have already been litigated with Broadcom and Samsung, therefore Xperi clearly has a strong case.

The HP Omen X 2S is a thin-and-light gaming laptop that features a secondary 6-inch touchscreen display directly above the keyboard. While the device is a capable gaming laptop in its own right, the secondary display could be a game changer that raises the Omen X 2S above the crowd. However, we've seen secondary displays in laptops before, and they usually come across as a gimmick.

Earphones and headphone sales drive a healthy market in the United States. The market analysis firm ReportBuyer estimates that it will grow at a compound rate of over 12% until it is worth approximately US$9 billion in 2024. The products in question are mostly used in fitness, entertainment and gaming pursuits.

Huawei’s Matebook X Pro is finally available in a new rose gold color. The latest iteration of the highly-regarded ultrabook is retailing in China from US$1,320.

Lenovo has just launched the Pro version of its Z6 flagship smartphone. Now, its Vice President, Chang Cheng, has reportedly posted a photo of another new variant for this device on Weibo. This is patently a different model, as it bears a Ferrari logo, which even the Z6 Pro lacks.

The latest driver update for NVIDIA GeForce cards, labeled 430.64, brings a performance boost of up to 18 percent in World War Z, as well as day-one support for Rage 2 and Total War: Three Kingdoms. However, the HD Audio Driver and PhysX System Software components have not been updated this time around.

The mobile GeForce GTX 1650 is just 5 to 10 percent slower than the average GTX 1060 according to 3DMark benchmarks while costing a few hundred dollars less. It's a worthy successor to both the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti as the mobile GTX 1660 Ti is currently overpriced for what it offers.

Crytek explained about the process that went into making of ray tracing effects in the Neon Noir demo and said that most modern GPUs have enough computational power for implementing ray tracing (to various degrees). The demo showed an AMD Vega 56 being able to easily render ray tracing effects at 1080p 30 fps with the possibility of higher framerates with reduced reflection resolutions.

The video game John Wick Hex has appeared in an interesting announcement trailer that gives gamers a brief insight into what the title holds for the grizzled hitman. The strategy game is being created by Bithell Games in collaboration with Good Shepherd Entertainment and Lionsgate. John Wick Hex will initially be available for the PC and Mac.

If you want a super-thin laptop, then something has got to go. Manufacturers like Apple, Razer, and Dell have been getting creative with their keyboard technologies with generally mixed results. Qualities like clatter, feedback, and travel that are often taken for granted on a desktop keyboard are becoming trickier to nail on newer laptops.

Tensions between the U.S. and China are higher than ever, as president Trump increased the Chinese tariffs from 10% to 25% without any warning. China is still willing to continue the negotiations, but AMD and Nvidia investors fear that negotiations could fail and the companies may eventually be locked out of the Chinese market.

EA's latest quarterly earnings report shows a slight growth slowdown for Apex Legends in the last month, so the company is now planning to release a version for the mobile platforms and expand the Origin marketplace in the SEA region. A switch version could also be released at some point, but the port is said to be problematic.

Vivaldi 2.5 is now live and this update turns Opera 12's spiritual successor into the first browser to feature full integration with Razer Chroma — the world's largest lighting ecosystem for gaming devices. Other noticeable changes are the ability to resize Speed Dial thumbnails and improved Tab Selection options.

MSI has beaten its competitors to widespread availability of the latest laptops equipped with Intel 9th gen Core CPUs and Nvidia GeForce GTX 16 GPUs. Walmart now has at least a dozen different configurations ranging from the cheap MSI GL63 all the way up to the pricey GE75.

A titanic score of 16,956 points has been recorded on 3DMark’s Time Spy Extreme benchmark recently. Pictures of the PC build that achieved the amazing result were shared on Twitter, and if you’re a fan of RGB lighting and perfectly ordered cases, you’ll probably want to look away. The “desktop” looks more like an engine than an actual computer.

A list of AMD Navi GPUs was revealed by AdoredTV based on his analysis of existing Navi rumors and some insider information. The Navi lineup will be apparently led by the top-end Navi20 comprised of the RX 3090 XT and RX 3090. The mid-range Navi10 will see the RX 3080 XT, RX 3080, and the RX 3070 XT while the entry-level Navi12 will feature the RX 3070 and RX 3060 SKUs. Except for Navi20, the other two are expected to launch sometime during E3 2019.

AdoredTV reports that the Navi10-based Radeon RX 3080 XT could offer similar performance to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 at a sweet price of US$330. The RX 3080 XT is said to feature 56 CUs and will have a TDP of 190 W. AdoredTV also notes that AMD engineers are struggling to hit Vega20 clocks with early Navi samples and that they seem to suffer from power and efficiency issues.

The latest report by the market analysis group Grand View Research indicates that the laptop market will be worth US$108.91 billion worldwide by 2025. This is based on data collected from 2014 to 2019, and shows that the segment for the 2-in-1 category is projected to exhibit the most effective growth between then and now.

Expected to arrive in the third quarter of this year, it seems that not all the members of the upcoming family of AMD Navi-based video cards will show up at once. The Radeon Instinct, based on the Navi 20 GPU, has been apparently delayed to early 2020. However, the mainstream Navi GPUs might be available just in time for this year's winter holiday season.

The open-source OpenGL and Vulkan Linux drivers for the upcoming Intel Gen11 GPU are now considered to be complete according to code updates spotted by Phoronix. The drivers will be a part of the Linux 5.2 kernel and are said to be working at full performance.

Waiting for Google Stadia to finally launch? Help beta test GeForce Now in the meantime. The Nvidia game streaming service has yet to reach gold status even after all these years, but here's your chance to try it out and see what game streaming has to offer.

Newegg pre-orders are already sold out with a new expected ship date of May 27. Best Buy, however, is still in stock albeit at a higher starting price of $1200 USD.

The re-badged 25 W MX250 offers almost no performance benefits over the 25 W MX150. If jumping from the 10 W MX150 to the 25 W MX250 or 25 W MX150, however, then expect a performance boost of about 30 percent. Save your wallet and get essentially the same GPU performance from an older MX150 laptop instead of a newer MX250 laptop.

Reviewers and GPU aficionados have previously observed that there are two "classes" of the dies that make up NVIDIA RTX cards. They are essentially the TU10x-xxxA and TUx-xxx chips, the "A"s of which are approved for factory overclocking. However, new variants of the same dies negate this dichotomy.

Walmart is offering some great deals on popular consoles at the moment. One of the current picks of the bunch is for the Microsoft Xbox One X that comes bundled with a copy of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The list price is US$499.99, but it can be picked up for US$349.99 and will help banish those boring rainy weekends.

Following up on a promise to combat cheating in Apex Legends more than ever, developer Respawn announced in a blot post today that the company has banned over 770,000 players for cheating so far. The company also banned over 4,000 spam accounts in the past 20 days alone.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame welcomes four new inductees this week. Windows Solitaire, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Kart, and Colossal Cave Adventure were chosen from a group of 12 finalists for their impact on the gaming world and society as a whole.

The Red Magic 3 is the first gaming phone to feature a physical fan. This stand-out Snapdragon 855 is set to be available to order in China from today (May 3, 2019). GizTop now also offers the possibility of ordering a truncated range of variants from outside this region. It starts by asking US$539 for a 6GB/64GB SKU.

A new investor presentation from AMD has been published online and there are numerous interesting additions and omissions from the previous presentation. In comes mention of Zen 3, Zen 4, Milan and cloud gaming connected to Navi, and no doubt to the dismay of HEDT processor fans, out goes the 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper CPU.

Asus has been teasing the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Platinum desktop graphics card on Twitter recently, and it has already attracted some attention from interested gamers. The binned card features the company’s Infinity Loop Cooling system, which is a closed-loop water-cooling solution that is installed under the shroud.