Desktop

The Elden Ring Patch 1.05 is now downloadable across all platforms. It fixes several buggy interactions between items/skills and lets players carry forward certain Bell Bearings to New Game+.

Activision Blizzard has confirmed that the fifth playable character class in Diablo 4 will be the Necromancer. It will be the first Diablo game to feature an open world and offer character customization options. The game will be available to play on PC and consoles (current-gen and previous) sometime in 2023.

Bethesda has finally lifted the covers off Starfield, its most ambitious RPGs made to date. Players can explore over 1,000 planets in the vast open world and custom build everything ranging from characters to spaceships. Xbox Game Pass subscribers can play it at its unspecified 2023 launch date on Xbox Series S|X and PC.

Dihara Wijetunga, a senior R&D engineer at AMD, recently announced Wolf PT, a mod that adds a full DX12 path-tracing renderer to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Wijetunga shared screenshots that showcase dramatic improvements to lighting in the aging id Tech 3 game.

It has been reported that the launch date for GeForce RTX 40 series cards has been pushed back. There were rumors that Nvidia would announce its eagerly awaited “Lovelace” series in July with the first boards, likely the GeForce RTX 4090, being available shortly afterwards. However, it seems there are still profits to be made with the RTX 30 “Ampere” series.

We're not sure how long the sale will last, but now is a good chance to save some pocket change if you're already in the market for one while these are still in stock.

2K games has officially announced that Marvel's Midnight Suns will be playable on PC, PS4, Xbox One PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 7. The turn-based card game can be pre-ordered now starting at US$60.

Dell has unveiled its new Precision 7865 Tower that packs enough power to satisfy creators, engineers, and future imperial senate dissolvers anywhere. The Dell Precision 7865 Tower features AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000WX processors and can provide up to 56 TB storage, more than enough for containing complex workloads and Death Star blueprints.

Industry insider Jeff Grubb has heard that The Last of Us could be remastered for a PC and PS5 release. The official announcement is expected to arrive on September 2. Update: A PlayStation Store listing has confirmed the launch date and the existence of the PS5 version.

Gigabyte has introduced a new version of the AORUS Model S, a compact gaming PC that was previously available with Intel Tiger Lake and AMD Ryzen 5000 processors. Now upgraded to Intel Alder Lake silicon, the AORUS Model S measures 190 x 189 x 400 mm and has a 14 litre-case.

There has been some speculation on what the Apple M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra SoCs could deliver in terms of specifications. Figures have been extrapolated from currently known data, with the monstrous Apple M2 Ultra having the potential to sport up to 96 GPU cores, support up to 192 GB unified memory, and transfer data from the memory to the CPU at a scorching 1,200 GB/s.

Industry insider Tom Henderson has viewed footage from an upcoming horror game called Overdose. It is being developed by Kojima Productions and features a character from Death Stranding. The game is likely to be unveiled at Summer Game Fest 2022.

Elon Musk had agreed to buy the social media company Twitter for a sum of over US$40 billion. However, the Tesla CEO has subsequently raised objections to this deal going ahead, citing alleged discrepancies in the proportion of accounts on the platform that belong to "real" users. The latest move in this vein is a securities filing that has sparked speculation that Musk is now trying to terminate the acquisition.

The Apple Mac Mini is thought to get an upgraded model in 2022. Now, according to some new pages on a well-known online retail site, it may get more than one this year, in fact. They may differ in terms of new M-series processors, and also, should the vendor have gotten this right, form factor.

Seasonic has revealed possible details about the top three graphics cards in AMD's Radeon RX 7000 product stack. All due later this year, the trio could match their predecessor's power requirements and without resorting to the new 16-pin power connector.

Developer Dario Samo recently announced RT64, a plugin for N64 emulators which enables a host of ray-tracing features. In a video on Twitter, Dario showed off RT64 in action across a range of N64 classics, including Ocarina of Time and Paper Mario.

The New York State Senate and Assembly have approved the motion to sign the Digital Fair Repair Act into law. The bill is intended to oblige OEMs to make it easier for users to restore their personal devices on their own within the state. Its new law is now viewed as a watershed moment for right to repair throughout the rest of the United States.

While some regions received it one day earlier, Diablo Immortal is now available globally for mobile players. The Open Beta version for Windows PCs is also surfacing today, although it will probably lose most of its players to Diablo 4 once that title hits the market (hopefully next year).

An early Intel Raptor Lake-S entry has popped-up on UserBenchmark. According to the benchmark listing, the unnamed Raptor Lake-S (Core i9-13900K?) features 24 cores and 32 threads with a 4.6 GHz average boost. The system features 32 GB DDR5-4800 memory and also runs an Arc A770 Alchemist desktop GPU.

Igor's LAB shows a PCB design that is meant for non-Ti RTX 4090 / 4080 SKUs. It still features a 16-pin power connector like the v-shaped PCBs leaked in March, but that does not mean that the SKUs using it will bolster 600 W TDPs. The latest report also includes an AIB development schedule that suggests the first cards may launch in September.

The new Venus UMF560 mini PCs are powered by the Ryzen 5 5625U APU with Radeon Vega 7 iGPU. These models are refreshed versions of the original Ryzen 5000U models, but feature slightly higher clocks. Thanks to four 4K connectors, MINISFORUM's Venus systems are ideal for HTPC use cases.

Intel has been quite open to strategic collaborations ever since Pat Gelsinger stepped in as CEO. Some upcoming Intel processor models are scheduled to be produced in part by TSMC, but Gelsinger's recent visit to South Korea could hint at an Intel - Samsung collaboration on angstrom-era technology.

A new leak suggests that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 will be the first Ada Lovelace based graphics cards to go on sale. Nvidia is expected to announce it alongside the GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 sometime in mid-July.

The sale runs until May 30 and includes the GeForce RTX 3060 for $440, GTX 1660 Super for $300, RTX 3080 for $970, and the RTX 3080 Ti for $1200 USD. The RTX 3060 Revel in particular is a small form factor GPU designed for smaller PC builds.

MSI has announced a new, Assassin's Creed-branded edition of its RTX 3080 SUPRIM X card in its native Taiwan. It has the same specs as the standard version currently sold in the same country, although it has a new, exclusive and Valhalla-themed finish for its TRI FROZR X-enhanced build. Its price has yet to be revealed, although it is of course unlikely to come cheap.

Hallock explains that the flagship Ryzen 7000 processors will have a maximum TDP of 170 W, and the 16 cores will easily hit 5.5 GHz. RAM should also see considerable overclocking headroom, while expected performance uplift over Zen 3 is expected to be around 40%. Some AVX 512 AI instruction sets are also supported and the RDNA2 iGPU is clearly not on the same level as the Radeon 680M from the Rembrandt APUs.

Cyberpunk 2077 was due to receive new content via an expansion pack in the near future. Data miners found some of the expansion content in the game files recently. Among other things, it adds new questlines, NPCs and an entirely new ending.

Its remarkably compact size and the passive cooling system make the new GaN-based PSU from HDPLEX ideal for small form-factor systems. This PSU is rated for 94% efficiency, comes with modular design and users can even sync two units together to supply more powerful components.

FromSoftware CEO Hidetaka Miyazaki has confessed that his favourite Elden Ring bosses are Starscourge Radahn, Godrick the Grafted and Rykard the Blasphemous. The game was heavily inspired by open-world bestsellers such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3.

LG is expanding its OLED monitor portfolio with a 47.5-inch model specifically designed for gamers. The UltraGear 48GQ900 4K monitor offers unique features like the 138 Hz refresh rate and an anti-glare low reflection coating. The W-OLED panel is HDR10-ready and has a 98.5% DCI-P3 color gamut.

Researchers in Portugal, the US, and the UK recently published a paper in which they attempted to leverage quantum computing algorithms to optimize ray-traced rendering workloads. The researchers' approach helped cut intersections per ray in a scene by a factor of three. The use of older NISQ quantum computing technology meant rendering took several hours, however.

EVGA's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Black Gaming is currently being sold under its official MSRP. Although $1900 is still a significant amount of change, this is less than what some GeForce RTX 3080 SKUs were retailing for just months earlier. Lower pricing hints that, should NVIDIA beat the GPU supply crisis, RTX 4000 series cards might end up being available for at or near MSRP.

The SSD controller on the PCIe 5.0 models is indeed producing more heat, but Apacer is not implementing active cooling just yet. Instead, the new NVMe 2.0 devices feature a hefty heatsink with aluminum fins or an ultra-thin graphene thermal pad for compact systems. Read speeds are expected to reach 13,000 MB/s and write speeds can top at 12,000 MB/s.

Microsoft has unveiled Project Volterra, a mini-PC that looks like a black Mac mini. The comparisons do not stop there though, as Microsoft has equipped Project Volterra with a Snapdragon SoC. Thought to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3, Project Volterra is also stackable but will only be available as a developer kit.

The Zotac Zbox PI336 Pico is now official with an Celeron N6211 processor, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB storage, a VESA mount, Wi-Fi 6E and the ability to output two video streams at 4K 60 FPS. Its price and availability will be confirmed later.

Those who missed last week's big news can still grab the latest freebie from Epic, namely Borderlands 3, which became available on May 20. Released back in September 2019, this title is a great action role-playing first-person shooter that shipped more than five million copies in the first five days on the market.

The Logitech MX Mechanical and MX Mechanical Mini are now official. Both keyboards can be configured with Blue/Brown/Red switches with a travel distance of 19 mm and can offer up to fifteen days of battery backup. The MX Mechanical Mini costs €159 and the MX Mechanical €179.

Spanish YouTuber ElAnalistaDeBits used software trickery to emulate what a remastered version of Bloodborne would look like. The side-by-side comparison video covers many iconic areas of Bloodborne and showcases several visual improvements, such as better lighting, reflections, etc.

AMD officially announced Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 CPUs and the AM5 platform at Computex 2022. Ryzen 7000 features 5 nm Zen 4 chiplets and a 6 nm I/O die that will include an RDNA 2 iGPU along with PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 controllers. Ryzen 7000 will also feature 2x the L2 cache as Zen 3 and is purported to offer a 15% uplift in single-core performance over Zen 3.

Apropos to AMD's official unveiling of Ryzen 7000 AM5 platform, Asus launched its first X670E motherboard: the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme. The X670E Extreme offers a complete PCIe Gen 5 solution and features 20+2 phase VRMs and other flagship components for enthusiast overclocking and ease of installation and upgrades.

While a US$9.99 monthly Photoshop subscription is almost nothing for a professional studio spending thousands on expensive camera gear, a lot of people only do photography as a hobby and don't want to pay a monthly fee for editing software they may use every few weeks. Fortunately, there are free options out there that are very capable of editing both the shots you took on your morning walk and your landscape shots from your most recent camping trip.

AMD announced the arrival of desktop Ryzen 7000 processors based on the Zen 4 architecture at Computex 2022. Ryzen 7000 is supported by new X670E/X670, B650, and A620 chipsets. The X670 series is daisy-chained to maximize I/O. It is being learnt that the low-end A620 chipset will launch alongside upcoming Rembrandt APUs later this year.

Building a custom rig can be a rewarding and fulfilling experience; however, as Gigabyte asserts, it can get frustrating, especially when it comes to fitting things (mostly cables) around other things. The OEM has launched the new AORUS Project Stealth, a PC that requires assembly rather than building, as a new solution to these potential issues.

A noted leaker has offered their take on the potential clock rates for key SKUs in the upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 “Raphael” series. The commenter has been quite optimistic with some of the clock rate estimates, with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X potentially offering a higher boost rate than Alder Lake’s i9-12900KS Turbo Max 3.0 speed of 5.3 GHz.

Yesterday, SK hynix has finally unleashed its first Gen 4.0 SSD with a 176-NAND layer, namely the Platinum P41. As unveiled back in early January, it is available in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB versions. The prices start at US$104.99 and go up to US$259.98, but the stock seems depleted already.

The IFA tech trade show is now set to return to an in-person format set in its traditional Berlin venue in 2022. The conference will take place at the start of September of this year. Its organizers are celebrating this announcement with early-bird prices on its tickets, although they are for only one of five of the event's scheduled days.

The new Neptune series is advertised as the world's first mini PC lineup with AMD RDNA2 dGPUs. MINISFORUM is planning to first release a Ryzen 9 5900HX + Radeon RX 6650M model, followed by Ryzen 9 6900HX and Intel Alder Lake variants with the same dGPU.