Gaming

A press release from Valve has revealed that the company intends to release two new apps, one of which will allow gamers access to their Steam media libraries on smartphones. The Steam Link app is expected to be released in the week starting May 21. The second app, Steam Video, will offer movie and television content.

The 7 nm manufacturing process will be superseded by the 5 nm one by 2020. Right now, TSMC is working to improve the extreme ultraviolet lithography tech that should lead to reduced power consumption and considerable performance gains for the 7+ nm chips in late 2018. TSMC estimates that the performance gains and power requirements will see minor improvements with the 5 nm stepping.

A representative for Epic Games has confirmed that an email inviting people to participate in a Fortnite Android beta is a phishing scam. Gamers have been warned not to share any personal information if they receive such an email. Also, Fortnite’s guest villain, Thanos, has had to be nerfed due to player feedback in regard to his destructive powers.

An entry for the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1180 graphics card has been made in TechPowerUp’s GPU database. Notebookcheck already reported on rumors surrounding the next-gen GPU and the data that has now surfaced online seems to support some of the expected specifications, including 3584 shading units and a 256-bit memory bus.

A news post on Steam has revealed the name for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds upcoming map: Sanhok. The developers are opening an experimental server for the map from May 10 to May 14, giving PUBG fans the opportunity to test the latest addition. Meanwhile, over at Fortnite one of the most villainous characters from the Marvel Universe will be paying a visit. The first lucky player to wield the Infinity Gauntlet will turn into Thanos.

The codenames for the upcoming Vega 20 and Vega 12 GPUs were mentioned in the latest LLVM and Clang compiler patches. Codenamed GFX906, the Vega 20 will support native AI instructions and the patch information reveals that it will benefit from the 7 nm tech, while the Vega 12 codenamed GFX904 is rumored to be replacing the Polaris series (Radeon RX 580 and co.) later this year.

Available for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for a few months already, Fortnite has recently reached iOS devices, after a short invite-only beta period. Now, it looks like the invites for the Android beta are going out already, so mobile gamers that use Google's platform should get Fortnite pretty soon as well.

Intel has launched the new Optane 905P range of SSDs, which are based on the previous 900P series. The 905P range comes in two variants; a 960 GB PCI-e based add-in card and a 480 GB U.2-based 2.5" drive, and both of them are available across major retailers for US$1299 and US$599, respectively.

The latest update for Forza Motorsport 7 is live worldwide, and it brings a new free car to all the game’s players. Fans of the game can now get their hands on the wheel of a 2018 Honda Civic Type R. The popular racing title, developed by Turn 10 Studios and published by Microsoft Studios, was released in October 2017.

Nvidia has decided to cancel the controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP). A blog post by John Teeple, the person responsible for Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Marketing, has the very unambiguous title “Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce.” The program has attracted a considerable amount of criticism since its introduction barely two months ago.

Responding to a question on Twitter, Frank Azor bluntly stated that the likelihood of a dedicated GPU making its way into Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 is slim to none. "Don't hold your breath," said Azor, effectively squashing any hope of a variant of the convertible with a dGPU. However, is that such a bad thing?

An official Gigabyte UK representative confirmed that the mobility version of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 11xx series should arrive towards the end of the year. This pretty much confirms that the desktop versions are slated to be released this summer, as the mobility solutions usually get released a few months later.

A new weapon has been revealed as part of the latest patch for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), but it seems not even original content can help Bluehole’s game in the battle royale war against Fortnite. According to analysts, the title from Epic Games made over five times as much as PUBG in first week cumulative iOS revenue.

According to Sony, 3.1 million copies of God of War have been sold in the first three days of the game’s release. The latest installment in the famous franchise was launched on April 20 and has been met with critical acclaim. The action-adventure title, which was developed by the Sony-owned SIE Santa Monica Studio, has already become the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive to date.

Thanks to TSMC's new stacked wafer manufacturing process, future CPUs and GPUs could double the performance just by integrating dies with two wafers. For now, only two wafers can be stacked one on top of the other, but in the future, dies could include multiple wafers and get a vertical design, instead of a horizontal one. The only problem is current dual-wafer designs have low yields for manufacturing processes under 16 nm, but TSMC is working to improve that.

Rockstar Games has released the latest trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2. The dramatic clip offers a glimpse into the game's gritty open-world environment and seems to hint at some of the expected gameplay the title will offer, such as fist-fighting. The scheduled release date for the anticipated prequel is October 26, and it will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One platforms.

By pulling the Inspiron Gaming notebooks away from the Inspiron series, Dell can now offer more options and sizes to better cater to budget-mainstream gamers who may not want to spend an arm and a leg on a hulking Alienware. The new Dell Gaming G series competes directly against the HP Pavilion Gaming series where the GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 Max-Q are common finds. No word yet on if future SKUs would also carry AMD options.

The Oculus Go standalone VR headset has officially been launched and is available for immediate purchase. The Facebook-owned company is shipping the headset to 23 countries starting today, from US$199 for the 32 GB model.

When Chris Hook first announced he was leaving AMD, many analysts speculated that he could join Intel and his long-time partner Raja Koduri, who has been working for Intel since late 2017. Hook recently confirmed these rumors and explained he is starting a new marketing leadership role at Intel in Santa Clara. The two former AMD gurus will be working on the Arctic Sound and Jupiter Sound discrete GPUs with which Intel is planning to take on AMD and Nvidia.

Atari has announced in a new press release that the Atari VCS hardware platform will have a pre-sale starting on May 30. The console will be available from US$199 during the pre-sale, which is being exclusively held through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo. However, the first actual shipments aren’t expected to start until spring 2019.

Although the Xperia XZ Premium supports video decoding at 120 Hz, Sony has chosen to "to strike a balance between power consumption and consumer benefit" and so this display mode has been disabled to ensure an increased autonomy for this handset. In addition to the XZ Premium, it seems that other Xperia handsets have this hidden setting as well.

Dell commissioned a study in collaboration with Researchscape to understand the PC gaming community. The study brings forth some new facts about gamers, their habits, and attitudes and breaks the typical stereotyping commonly associated with them.

Shortly after finding out that AMD is working on 7 nm Vega 20 GPUs, the alleged benchmark results for this upcoming product were spotted in the 3DMark 11 database. According to the listing, the Vega 20 with 32 GB of HBM2 memory clocked at 1.25 GHz is about 70 percent faster per clock than the RX Vega 64 Liquid.

There has been a growing wave of people in the community calling the Exklim eX Core a scam. Some feel that the eX Core fills a new niche, some think that it can't achieve the claimed performance, while others believe it doesn't exist at all. We haven't seen any working products and we don't endorse the eX Core, but we did feel it was important to give Edgar the chance to answer some of the communities questions.

Samsung recently divulged the name "Max-P" to describe the GTX 1060 GPU in its upcoming Odyssey Z gaming laptop before quietly removing the word. However, we can confirm that "Max-P" is simply a standard GPU without the Max-Q designation. The GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, 1060, 1070, and 1080 found on most gaming laptops are all technically "Max-P" graphics cards so long as they are not Max-Q GPUs.

Sony's PlayStation 4 remains one of the company's biggest revenue sources. The console sold 2.5 million copies in the first quarter of this year to extend its all-time sales to a massive 76 million. That figure is expected to rise across all coming quarters of the year, with new games like God of War, and the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2 and Spiderman.

The AMD processors that will probably hit the market soon were recently spotted in the official product master list available on AMD.com. In addition to the dual-core and quad-core desktop and mobile Ryzen processors, there are also three Threadrippers: the octa-core 2900X, the 12-core 2920X, and the 16-core 2950X.

Although the new XPS 15 2-in-1 (9575) was supposed to begin shipping more than a week ago, Frank Azor has just confirmed that many early adopters still have to receive their machines due to a delay that has been caused by "a small bad batch of the Mag lev keyboard." Even more, the i9 processor upgrade for the XPS 15 9570 is not available yet but will be added on May 10.

The company behind the development of Frostpunk has announced that 250,000 copies of the game have already been sold in just 66 hours. 11 bit studios posted a message on the game's official Twitter account to share the impressive achievement. The game developer has already announced plans for additional content and bug fixes for the snowy steampunk-inspired city-building title.

An impressive reveal trailer has been released for the upcoming game Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The latest title in the famous franchise is scheduled for September 14 and will be available on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One platforms. The action adventure has been developed by Eidos-Montréal and Crystal Dynamics and will be published by Square Enix.

In the recently announced Q1 2018 earnings report, AMD's CEO Lisa Su mentions that the company is already testing 7 nm Radeon Instinct GPUs, which should be sampling later this year. This GPU series is most likely part of the Vega 20 family that appeared in previously leaked roadmap slides. Spec-wise, the Instinct looks to be a solid competitor for Nvidia's Volta AI GPUs.

Nintendo has announced a partnership with Cygames, Inc. to develop a new game for smart devices. The jointly developed title will be called Dragalia Lost and is scheduled for release in the summer of this year. The Japanese video-game giant held out on introducing its popular franchises to iOS or Android for many years because of concerns about losing unique gameplay elements.

According to research by SuperData, Fortnite managed to earn an incredible US$223 million in March. The smash hit from Epic Games was already a success even before the battle royale mode was introduced. Far Cry 5 was also a winner in March, with the Ubisoft title apparently racking up digital sales in the region of 2.5 million units.

The graphics card demand drop is certainly a serious profitability issue for the Taiwanese suppliers, but this also means that gamers can now get the graphics cards they need for prices close to the original MSRP. Crypto miners are waiting to see if Bitmain's Ethereum ASICs are indeed worth it over GPU cards, however, if the upcoming GTX 11xx and AMD Navi cards would prove even better, we might see the price inflation scenario all over again.

Nintendo has racked up nearly 18 million sales of its Switch console. The hybrid handheld / desktop gaming console has helped drive the Japanese gaming giant to a whopping US$1.6 billion profit for its fiscal year just ended.

After failing to turn a profit for the best part of the last decade, AMD has reported a net profit of US$81 million for the first quarter of 2018. The company can pin its turnaround on the success of its Ryzen chip family, which is putting pressure on Intel for the first time in years.

According to Dell, Kaby Lake-G caters better to casual mainstream gamers while the Alienware brand will stick to hardcore gamers and enthusiasts with the familiar Intel H-series and Nvidia GTX GPUs. The Intel-AMD processors will instead be used for Dell's mainstream families like the XPS line to provide GTX 1050-level graphics.

AMD has coupled first-generation Ryzen CPUs along with an MSI variant of Radeon RX 580 GPU and a compatible MSI motherboard in a bundle named 'Combat Crate'. The combat crates target gamers by providing them with the essentials for a new build in a single package for US$40 less compared to buying the components individually.

Fans of the strategy genre will be pleased to learn that the games BattleTech and Frostpunk have been released today. The former, developed by Harebrained Schemes, gives the player the opportunity to control enormous BattleMechs on a futuristic battlefield. The latter is a city-building title from 11 bit studios and is based in the past where civilization has been devastated by the extreme cold weather.

A newly discovered hardware exploit allows for the execution of arbitrary code on devices powered by Nvidia's Tegra processors. This includes Nintendo's wildly popular Switch, which has been under the scope of several hacking groups this past year. The new exploit functions at the boot level and is claimed to be "unpatchable."

The esports industry is enjoying further rapid growth according to a report produced by The Esports Observer. Apparently, nearly US$2 billion has been invested in this gaming sector for the first quarter of 2018, with Tencent contributing over half of the funds. PUBG Corp has also offered a boost to esports by announcing a battle royale tournament with a prize pool worth over US$2 million.

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming is up for grabs for a discount of US$250. For US$850, you get a very capable gaming machine. The 7th Gen Intel Processor might be a bit older, but if you are okay with it, you can get yourself an excellent machine for a discount.

Famed overclocker 'der8auer' has managed to overclock the new AMD Ryzen 7 2700X to cross the 6 GHz on all cores. He managed to achieve this by first selecting the best CPUs for the task and then subjecting them to LN2 cooling. Consumer use isn't anywhere going to get close to that figure but it is still good to know that Ryzen are really as overclocker-friendly as AMD claims.