Gaming

After almost twoo weeks from the official launch of the Threadripper 2000-series, AMD finally decided to slash the prices for the first generation Threadrippers. The best deal of all three processors seems to be the 1920X, which got a 50% reduction, while the 1920X gets a ~40% lower MSRP, with the high-end 1950X getting only a 25% price drop.

Microsoft is introducing the concept of console-as-a-service with the Xbox All Access subscription. With Xbox All Access, customers can get an Xbox One S or Xbox One X console along with 2 years of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold access. The subscription starts at a monthly fee of US$21.99 without any upfront costs and is currently available only at Microsoft Stores in the US subject to qualifying a credit check.

The next version of 3DMark, a popular graphics benchmarking tool, will feature support for NVIDIA's RTX tech allowing adopters to test the ray tracing abilities of their cards. UL Benchmarks, the developer behind 3DMark, is hopeful of a release aligning with the next major feature update to Windows 10 slated to rollout in September.

Samsung has a sequel to the Odyssey Windows 10 Mixed Reality headset released in 2017. As confirmed in a new Bluetooth certification, the new device will be called the Odyssey+ and it will be headed to store shelves soon.

Nvidia is betting big on ray tracing technology while charging users an arm and a leg for the latest GeForce RTX GPUs. A few new quiet laptop releases round up a week that was dominated by Nvidia announcements and previews.

Google disclosed a vulnerability in the Fortnite Mobile APK that allows a pre-installed malicious application to exploit the way the game installs for the first time in Samsung Galaxy devices. Thankfully, Epic has patched this vulnerability in the latest version of the installer but is not very happy about Google disclosing it prematurely.

While users have been able to connect an XBox One controller to their Android device for a few years, the process has always been a bit buggy. A Google developer announced yesterday that the bug should be fixed in Android 9.0 Pie, which will have native support for XBox One controllers.

Just like AMD, things went unexpectedly well for Nvidia in the second quarter of this year, even though the crypto market decline was heralding a gloomy period. Nvidia managed to pull this off by forcing some AIB partners into overstocking Pascal GPUs, and the green team is doing this again with 10 major partners that were forced to contract shipments for the RTX 2000-series in order to be the first to deliver the new cards.

European online retailer CentralPoint has listed the Intel Core i9-9900K and the Core i7-9700K for pre-order. CentralPoint expects the stocks to arrive as early as September 7 and has listed the i9-9900K for €689 + VAT and the i7-9700K for €539 + VAT. Given that we will not know the MSRP of these chips before September, the listed prices are to be taken with a grain of salt.

CEO Jensen Huang somehow found it adequate to mention nothing about the DLSS tech that would boost the performance of the new RTX 20xx cards in his official announcement. If we are to believe Nvidia's graphs, the GTX 2080 is up to 50% faster than the GTX 1080 on its own, but the DLSS tech also adds up to 60% more fps when activate, leading to more than 100% performance gains in some cases.

GameStop will be selling the 500 Million Limited Edition PlayStation 4 Pro bundle tonight starting from 12.01 am CDT / 1.01 am EDT. Sony will be making only 50,000 of these consoles, which are being crafted to commemorate the PlayStation brand selling 500 million units of the console since the introduction of the PlayStation 1 in December 1994.

NVIDIA's next generation GeForce RTX cards come with support for Ansel RTX, which enables creating high quality in-game ray traced photos. Invoking Ansel RTX in a supported game increases the level of ray tracing — to a level which is not possible in real time — to create a high quality in-game photo. Games that do not yet support the Ansel SDK can still use some of the platform features to create Super Resolution in-game shots.

PUBG now has a version for Xbox One: however, it won't have an official release until September 4, 2018. Many fans may have to wait until then to play the Sanhok map with the console. On the other hand, there will be some new features that may be worth waiting for.

Games supporting NVIDIA's RTX technologies are assumed to have some form of ray tracing enabled but NVIDIA has clarified that RTX support not only refers to ray tracing but also to Deep Learning Super Sampling as well. NVIDIA has also released a list of games that support ray tracing and DLSS.

Even though the ray tracing technology is adding a whole new dimension of realism to some soon-to-be-released games, everybody is wondering if the latest RTX 2000-series flagships are indeed worth the money. Initial reviews claim that the cards are clearly breaking records in current games at 4K, but the ray tracing experience is not that impressive as far as fps counts are concerned.

Will the GTX name live on for gaming laptops after Pascal? Eurocom will soon be updating its high-end Sky series of laptops to support both Coffee Lake Intel CPUs and mobile Turing.

Nvidia announced the RTX 2000-series and the market reacted immediately with substantial price cuts for the Pascal flagships. Currently priced 30% lower than MSRP, cards like the GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti from Zotac are leading the "promotional offers." Additional price cuts could occur when the Turing GPUs hit the shelves in late September.

Samsung has launched its new, 144Hz monitor in 32- and 27-inch variants. They claim that the new product, the CJG5, will be "reasonably" priced while offering decent specs and features. While there is no information on when it will be available, it has quite a lot of visibility at Gamescom this year.

Zotac has taken the covers off its new GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs. Based on Nvidia's powerful new Turing architecture, the new Zotac Gaming GPUs will come in blower, triple fan and AMP models with all-new designs.

A few outlets managed to run a demo of the Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and the initial impressions seem to be a bit dampening with ray tracing turned on. The game was shown to hover in the 30 fps range in 1080p and struggled to reach 60 fps. A demo without ray tracing was not shown but it should understandably result in a huge performance difference.

Asus has announced the ROG Strix, Dual, and Turbo cards based on the just launched NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti GPUs. These cards are now available for pre-order on major e-tail sites with prices starting from US$839 for the Dual RTX 2080 and going up to US$1,239 for the Dual RTX 2080 Ti.

The Minecraft: Education Edition community now consists of over 35 million licensed teachers and students in 115 countries, so it is not surprising that Microsoft is finally bringing this game to the iPad. Schools licensed through Microsoft 365 for Education already have access to this title and general availability will follow next month.

This is the last week to register for a chance to win Dell's latest mainstream gaming laptop currently retailing for over $960 USD. The Twitter contest involves posting a picture and tagging multiple other users with a winner to be revealed by this coming Friday.

The Turing-powered RTX 2000-series gaming GPUs will come with most of the features integrated in the RTX Quadro professional cards, but at a fraction of the price. For now, Nvidia unveiled only three models - the RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti; however, there are rumors of possible GTX 2060 and 2050 cards that could be launched in October.

Better late than never. Dell has updated its mainline 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch Alienware laptops from four-zone RGB lighting to per-key RGB lighting. The design and internal specifications are otherwise identical. Both systems will begin shipping this week.

Before Valve had commented on the matter, several publications were reporting that Steam.tv was to be a competitor to Twitch's online streaming platform. However, the company has stated that Steam.tv is merely a website to host its Dota 2 tournament.

A report from Ace Economic Research Institute in Japan suggests that the PlayStation 5 might launch as soon as late 2019 provided the company can procure enough monolithic ceramic capacitors (MLCCs). The demand for MLCCs is so huge that manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand given the impending arrival of new cars and 5G mobile devices and services.

The next generation NVIDIA Turing GeForce RTX cards for consumers are all set to be unveiled in a couple of hours. In the run up to the release, we've been seeing photos of various partner cards pop up on the web. While we've already reported on what PNY has in store, here's a look at offerings from Palit, MSI, Zotac, EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, and of course from NVIDIA itself.

The new monster processor from AMD might find its way to the list of hardware options available for the Alienware Area-51 desktop gaming PC, but this depends entirely on its level of gaming performance this chip can reach. For now, Alienware and AMD fans should keep their fingers crossed and just wait.

All eyes will continue to be on Nvidia as the inevitable announcement looms. AMD launches its 32-core Threadripper 2990WX CPU to both excellent and mixed results and Asus unveils its thinnest second generation Zephyrus GX laptop just in time for Gamescom 2018. New workstation from MSI and Lenovo add even more power to increasingly thin chassis designs.

PNY has leaked specs and pricing information for the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. The RTX 2080 Ti is listed at US$1,000 while the RTX 2080 is at US$800. The listed prices, however, seem to be placeholders and are likely to change once the new GPU becomes official.

The Ti versions for Nvidia's mid-high and high-end GPUs usually arrive around 9 to 12 months after the launch of the original wave, but this time around, it seems like Nvidia is ready to launch the Ti version of the high-end card together with the regular versions. While the RTX 2080 is rumored to cost US$699 initially, the GTX 2080 Ti could get a US$1,000+ MSRP.

Just two days after Nvidia announces its Turing architecture, Intel has begun to tease its discrete GPU products. Intel has released a trailer intended to garner much hype, but does Intel even stand a chance against RTG and Nvidia? According to its trailer, we will find out in 2020.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is the next game in the popular tactical shooter series by CI Games that has just been confirmed to arrive on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019. This new title is set in the Siberian wilderness and comes with a new way to play, namely the contracts system.

PUBG Mobile crossed 100 million downloads this month, cementing it as one of the most popular Battle Royales for smartphones and tablets. Despite its success, it still trails behind Fortnite, which hit 100 million downloads last month on iOS only. The new Android version of Fortnite may spell trouble for PUBG Mobile and Tencent games.

Blizzard was most likely planning to reveal the Switch version of Diablo 3 at Blizz Con this November, but the overzealous Forbes editors wanted to share the news way to early. Of course, Forbes already deleted the article, but it was too late... no one can really delete anything from the Internet. The article reveals the name of the Switch version, as well as the exclusives that come with it.

The new "thinnest gaming laptop in the world" is just 15.75 mm thick at its thickest point to be even thinner than last year's ROG GX501. The GX531 introduces narrow bezels and 144 Hz displays to the Zephyrus family with plenty of changes both internal and external. Expect a worldwide launch as early as September.

There have been no notebooks with both narrow bezels and 144 Hz panels until now. Asus has teamed up with AU Optronics to develop a 17.3-inch 144 Hz/3 ms panel made specifically for gaming and the narrow-bezel GL704 will be the first to use it.

Only one week away from the official announcement of the next gen gaming GPUs powered by the Turing architecture, and the leaked benchmarks are already starting to pop up on the Internet. This time it looks like an alleged RTX 2080 made it in the hands of an overzealous tester who stressed it in Ashes of the Singularity on Crazy 4K settings.

On August 13 at Siggraph Nvidia announced its new Turing based RTX Quadro GPUs, designed to process real time ray tracing. The full Turing GPU is the second biggest in the world (the first being Volta) and it is the world's first GPU with ray tracing functionality built in. The new RTX Quadro lineup will be arriving in Q4 or sooner.

The NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs implement Samsung's latest 16 Gigabit GDDR6 memory. The enhanced bandwidth of GDDR6 helps in improved performance and memory efficiency while consuming 35% less power. The Quadro RTX is the first product to implement Samsung's GDDR6 VRAM.

Shortly on the heels of unveiling the Quadro RTX cards at SIGGRAPH 2018, NVIDIA released a new teaser video for the upcoming 'GeForce Gaming Celebration' event. The teaser drops quite a few hints, which indicate that the upcoming GeForce cards will indeed have an RTX 20xx nomenclature.

Intel is rumored to release its octa core i9-9900k in October with an all core turbo of 4.7 GHz, which is the fastest stock clock speed that has ever been offered on an eight core CPU on either the AMD Zen or Intel Core architectures. Intel's new mainstream flagship would be going head to head with AMD's Ryzen 2700X, which only has an all core boost of about 4 GHz. With such a high all core boost on so many cores, will Intel's 9900k be too hot to handle?

MSI has announced a new mobile workstation for creatives. The WS65 is a professional makeover for the GS65 Stealth Thin and comes with processor options up to the Intel Core i9-8950HK and GPU options up to the NVIDIA Quadro P4200. The MSI WS65 will be on display during SIGGRAPH 2018 and is expected to be available from September.

Google is expected to miss out cashing in on the Fortnite craze due to Epic Games' decision to distribute the Fortnite Mobile APK outside the Play Store. App Store intelligence firm Sensor Tower projects that Google might stand to miss out on more than US$50 million in platform fees for the remaining part of 2018. Circumventing the Play Store might have a slight impact in overall downloads of the game but its revenue potential stands to remain fairly unaffected.