Gaming

To the surprise of no one, Apple's new smartphones sparked loud online discussions and arguments ranging from the absurd prices of the new models to the seemingly minimal upgrades from the original iPhone X. Outside of Apple, Razer is preparing its own smartphone refresh whil GeForce RTX rumors continue to churn.

The 2300X and 2500X are AMD's newest Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 CPUs, respectively. They boost to 4.0GHz support all-core overclocking. Therefore, they may be seen as promising for starter or modest builds. However, both processors have been announced as exclusive to OEMs and SIs.

Sporting a custom Ryzen SoC with integrated Vega graphics up to 24 CUs clocked at 1300 MHz, the Zhongshan Subor Z+ is a small form factor PC that tries to offer a console-like experience along with the flexibility of using a traditional Windows PC. The most intriguing aspect of the Subor Z+ is, no doubt, its custom SoC that offers up to 3.99 TF of GPU Compute compared to the 3.65 TF power of the Intel 'Kaby Lake-G' Core i7-8809G. The Subor Z+ also manages a much more consistent performance at 60 fps in 1080p Ultra settings in Battlefield 1 and Destiny 2.

Intel will not have enough chips to satisfy demand during the upcoming holiday season. This is part of a recent prediction by a JP Morgan analyst. The analysis may take factors such as the long-awaited switch to 10nm chipsets by the premier processing manufacturer into account.

Follow these gaming companies on Twitter and Instagram to see how to win multiple tickets to BlizzCon 2018. Asus wants the most hardcore of Blizzard fans while Corsair and Nvidia will give more contest details in the weeks to come.

Razer is set to unveil its next-generation gaming smartphone, the Razer 2 on October 10. The device looks quite similar to the original Razer Phone, but is expected to feature upgraded internals including a Snapdragon 845 processor.

The two companies are envisioning a future where gaming consoles integrate the bear minimum computing power for CPU-based tasks, but rely on cloud-based GPUs to process complex graphics. Games would have an instance running on the local machine and another running in the cloud, and the cloud framework stitches the two concurrent instances into a seamless experience.

The latest installment in the Tomb Raider series is now globally available The game is the last in a line of Lara Croft origin-story portrayals. Eidos-Montréal is confident that it will showcase the studio's capabilities.

ASRock is set to update their Fatal1ty motherboard line with new ones, including the Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 offering exposed in a recent leak. This new product will sport triple M.2 and PCIe slots. It also has 3 Ethernet ports, one of which is 10-gigabit.

The Nintendo Switch has been one of Nintendo's most successful consoles in history. While Nintendo has historically struggled with third party appeal, the Switch seems to have overcome its predecessors' struggles to date has received some of the most popular third party titles. With this most recent Direct, the Switch continues to garner third party games and ports, as well as first party titles.

Besides the Deep Learning Super Sampling and ray tracing tech that might not be implemented in games right away, the RTX 2000-series GPUs also integrate a series of features that could theoretically bring 50% performance gains over the Pascal chips. Videocardz made a brief summary of all these features, which should be explained in detail after the review embargo lift from tomorrow.

Forza Horizon 4 has just gone gold and will be launching globally on October 2. This racing title will come with no less than 450 cars, but those eager to take it for a spin can play the official demo which is already available for both Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One consoles.

Back in early July, Frank Azor revealed that the Alienware 13 gaming laptop will not get a Coffee Lake refresh. Those still living with the hope that some other update might arrive should move on, because Alienware's co-founder has just pointed out that there are no more updates coming to this machine.

NVIDIA brought its GeForce NOW to the AT&T Spark Conference to showcase the service's potential when combined with 5G. The company is confident that its new cloud-based graphics solution can negate the need for expensive hardware in areas such as 60fps gaming. It is now moving to build partnerships to bring this to a wider audience.

Spiderman was released a few days ago and has done extremely well in the UK market, with it selling double the number of God of War units over the same period in their sales cycles on its way to becoming the fastest-selling game of the year.

As the end of the fifth Fortnite season is drawing near, the start of the Fall Skirmish event is also heading our way. This competition will last for 6 weeks and the best players will have the chance to win a total of no less than US$10,000,000 (yes, that is 10 million). More details will be available later this week.

El Chapuzas Informatico has leaked what they claim is the Cinebench score of a Ryzen 7 2800X. However, several inconsistencies within the screenshot of the score and the idea of a 10 core Ryzen CPU reveal that this leak is almost certainly a fake.

Using the 10 nm manufacturing process, Samsung managed to pack 256 GB or RAM on a single stick, proving that DDR can offer a viable alternative to Intel's Optane and 3DXPoint technology. The 256 GB RAM modules are only available for servers at present, while desktop and laptop PCs get 32 GB per module, but it will not be long before these capacities hit the mainstream markets.

The Nintendo Switch Online Service has been anticipated for some time. A rumor that precedes its launch suggests that users of the new feature will be able to back up all their games in a cloud. However, there may be an opt-out for developers.

Armored Warfare 0.26 goes live today with Israeli tanks (and a new dealer for this branch), Armor Viewer in-garage tool, a new PvP map, overhauled PvE missions, major optimizations, improvements to the game mechanics, a new Special Operations mission, and more. This free-to-play title is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows.

Advertised by Microsoft as "the first-of-its-kind" console accessory, the brand-new Xbox Adaptive Controller can be already acquired from the Microsoft Stores and GameStop Online for US$99.99. This controller can connect multiple external devices to create a custom experience and was primarily designed for gamers with limited mobility.

Battlefield V developer EA DICE revealed to Tom's Hardware that it had toned down some of the ray tracing effects in the game to enable more performance. DICE said that it is looking to hit a comfortable 60 fps on 1080p with ray tracing enabled. The game seems to be optimized for multi-core CPUs but does not support multi-GPU configurations.

In a statement buried in an interim earnings report, Razer today announced a successor to their Razer Phone, which had a lukewarm reception upon its release last year. Razer is releasing the sequel device in order to capitalize on the new "gaming smartphone" market, a segment that has drawn the focus of major mobile players.

The new NVIDIA Turing architecture may be coming to laptops soon. Listings on the GPU maker's website and on GitHub specifies a "GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile" with device ID and model number included. It suggests that this GPU will be available for non-desktop boards soon.

The Intel Core i7-9700K may seem comparable to the i7-8700K in many ways. However, it can be boosted up to 4.9GHz (albeit on one core only). The i7-9700K has also recently exhibited the ability to OC up to 5.3GHz on air and beat the i7-8700K on Geekbench.

With ZTE back in the game, it seems that the Nubia Red Magic gaming handset will get an update that aims to turn it into a top-of-the-line device. According to Roland Quandt, the updated Red Magic, which does not have an official name yet, will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and shoulder buttons.

OLED offers an unbeatable experience when it comes to response times, viewing angles, and contrast ratio. After making a very brief appearance on the Alienware 13 R3 and Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga last year, the technology has been lying dormant ever since to make room for narrower bezels and more incremental improvements to IPS panels.

Synthetic benchmarks might not offer definitive proof on how the new flagship GPUs from Nvidia perform versus the previous gen, and the drivers used are most likely not final either, so performance could slightly improve upon release. Additionally, since the official Turing drivers are not yet publicly available, these results seem to be provided by an Nvidia or AIB partner employee.

Sony will not allow Fortnite players on PlayStation to play against players on other consoles according to Sony Chief Kenichiro Yoshida as he feels that the PlayStation 4 offers the best experience for playing Fortnite compared to other consoles. He said that the decision to allow cross-platform play will be decided on what's best for the user experience.

The tech world has been on fire these past few weeks with not one, but two major press events. After Nvidia unveiled its GeForce RTX GPUs at Gamescom, more OEMs unveiled brand new refreshed products at IFA in Berlin equipped with next generation Intel Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake processors.

Huawei’s sub-brand, Honor, has launched its Honor Play gaming phone for the European market. The device is the cheapest Kirin 970-powered smartphone on the market and its price tag puts it directly against Xiaomi’s new Poco F1.

Asked about the raw gaming performance in current games, Nvidia’s Director of Technical Marketing Tom Petersen stated that the new RTX 2000 GPUs are between 35% and 45% faster than the Pascal cards. However, upcoming games may perform better if they are specifically coded to take advantage of the new Turing Tensor cores that facilitate the DLSS tech.

The 15-inch Zephyrus S GX531 will launch in late September with the 17-inch ROG GL704 Scar II to follow a few days later. The new Zephyrus will be thinner and leaner than the GX501 at just $1900 compared to almost $3000 when the GX501 launched last year.

There are good reasons to settle for a less expensive configuration other than cost. Systems with less powerful components have less heat to dissipate and are therefore more likely to run cooler and quieter than their more powerful alternatives. The ROG GL504 series is the latest example of two visually identical SKUs with very different performance profiles.

When Lenovo released this years lineup of Legion gaming laptops, they were a downgrade in terms of GPU performance. A few months after launch, Lenovo will rectify this – at least when it comes to the less expensive Legion Y530.

We had an opportunity to play around with the new Dell Inspiron 7000 2-in-1 notebooks at IFA 2018 and were glad to see that the 15 and 17-inch versions sport the '1D10' version of the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU. The '1D10' version of the MX150 can operate in a 25W TDP envelope, which should allow better performance in games and demanding applications.

With its single-sided M.2 2280 package, the XPG SX6000 Pro NVMe SSD can fit PCs, as well as compact laptops and mini PCs. The new Realtek PCIe Gen3x4 controller coupled with second gen 64-layer 3D TLC NAND memory chips can deliver sequential read speeds of up to 2,100 MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,500 MB/s. Capacities range from 256 GB up to 1 TB.

At IFA 2018, Acer unveiled the updated Predator Orion line of gaming desktops. The Predator Orion comes in three main variants and offers CPU options up to the Intel Core i9 7980XE Extreme Edition and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, and GPU options up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. These systems utilize Acer's IceTunnel 2.0 liquid cooling for keeping temperatures under check.

At IFA 2018, Acer is taking wraps off its new Aspire notebook models. The budget-gamer focused Aspire is getting an upgrade to Intel 'Kaby Lake-G' CPUs with onboard Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics while the Aspire 5 is being upgraded to Intel's latest 'Whiskey Lake-U' 15 ULV chips with optional NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics.

Having stayed at the company for over 3 years, Jim Anderson has left AMD and will be replaced by Saeid Moshkelani. Anderson entered AMD before the Ryzen launch in order to help with client sales, and since opportunities to advance in AMD were scant, has decided to depart and become CEO at Lattice Semiconductor.

It is not clear if these results are provided by an RTX 2080 or 2070 card. Haters would quickly point out that if this is the RTX 2080, the price Nvidia is asking for the card is clearly unjustified. On the other hand, if this card is the RTX 2070, the high prices are justified. If anything, this leak might have stirred the controversies even more.