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Intel's new 12th gen Alder Lake platform brings with several notable changes on the architecture side. Alder Lake processors use a heterogeneous ISA with a shared L3 cache and an intelligent Thread Director that helps the OS in proper scheduling of threads. The CPU brings support for DDR5-4800 RAM and PCIe Gen5, but the Z690 chipset supports only PCIe Gen4 and Gen3.

Age of Empires IV developers World's Edge and Relic Entertainment have unveiled a new 'Min Spec Mode'. It compromises the visual quality, resolution, and number of people you can play with at one time. The mode is tailor-made for users running older, less powerful PCs.

Tipster @Greymon55 claimed that AMD's upcoming Ryzen refreshes with 3D V-Cache will enter mass production by November. This is in line with AMD's announcement that 3D V-Cache Ryzen CPUs will hit the market by Q1 2022, likely as a stopgap against Alder Like while Zen 4 is finalized for a Q3 2022 release.

An Apple tipster has indirectly claimed that there could be an event held by the tech giant in March of next year. Unsurprisingly, this has led to numerous predictions of what products might emerge from Apple Park at that time, with devices such as the iPhone SE 3, Mac mini with M1 Pro (or M1 Max), and a 27-inch iMac or iMac Pro leading the charge.

Rockstar recently released the official minimum and required specifications for the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy remasters. Calling for an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 at minimum, alongside a quad-core processor, the 20 year-old games actually require beefier hardware than Assassin's Creed: Odyssey to run.

Tipster @ExecuFix revealed what appear to be details for the upcoming AMD Instinct MI250W GPU. The MCM-based card will reportedly feature 110 CUs running at 1.7 GHz, 128GB of HBM2 memory, and a 500W TDP.

Tipster @TUM_APISAK recently shared what appear to be leaked CPU-Z benchmarks for the Alder Lake i5-12600K. The 10-core CPU delivers better performance in the benchmarks than the previous-gen flagship i9-11900K, and nearly doubles the score of the Ryzen 5 5600X.

A ransomware attack by a group called AvosLocker reportedly hit Gigabyte. As a result of the attack, sensitive information including customer credit card details, NDA'd agreements with Gigabyte partners, and employee payroll information, among other details, were leaked.

Youtuber @Cycu1 put together a comparison video of gameplay footage for God of War’s PC port with the existing PS5 enhanced version. The video highlights broad parity between the two, but with minor improvements on PC to shadowing and ambient occlusion.

The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5975WX has turned up on Geekbench with 32 cores and 64 threads. The Chagall processor has commendable multi-core performance, but rumour has it that AMD has cancelled the non-Pro Threadripper 5000 series.

Razer has launched four new products for PC building enthusiasts. They include the Razer Kunai RGB fans, Razer Hanbo AIO liquid cooler, Razer Katana power supply and a Razer-branded fan controller. The RGB fans and controller are available for purchase now, while the remaining parts will hit shelves later in the year.

MonsterLabo's Beast case is able to maintain max temperatures of 89 °C for an Intel i9-10900K running at 4.5 GHz and 1.13 V on all 10 cores, while the RTX 3080 GPU required a bit of tinkering to prevent power leaks above 80 °C.

Gigabyte envisions a future where gaming PCs combine fast 5G connectivity with modular design. The Aorus Project Cielo features a main PC module with integrated 5G antenna, and users can add a battery module for increased mobility plus a Bluetooth speaker module for entertainment purposes.

Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max silicon is incredibly powerful. Apple alluded to how it was able to scale these chips up from the M1 using what it called ‘fabric’. This fabric points the way to how Apple will further scale up its chip architecture for the Mac Pro.

An Intel Alder Lake Core i9-12900K retail sample was tested with an all-P-core overclock to 5.2 GHz in CPU-Z and the results compared to a stock AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. The results show good leads in single-thread and a marginal lead in multi-thread performance, but this comes at a 330 W power consumption cost.

Sony has officially announced that God of War (2018) will be available on PC soon. It includes several improvements such as ultra-wide (21:9) support, Nvidia DLSS, and unlocked framerates. The game is up for pre-order now and will be playable on January 15, 2022.

The Mac Pro has been described as being in line for up to 40 cores of CPU power and a staggering 128 cores of GPU power for the next iteration of the expensive Apple desktop. Apple Silicon will be used instead of Intel and AMD parts, possibly in the form of multiple connected units of the just-announced M1 Max processor.

Intel has switched approaches with Apple, having run an aggressively anti-Apple campaign earlier this year. Now, CEO Pat Gelsinger has been speaking the Apple M1's praises. However, he still wants to tempt Apple back with better processors than it could manufacture itself.

As has been speculated, Intel will be announcing the specifications, pricing, and initial performance figures of its upcoming Alder Lake platform during its Innovate event on October 27. Initially, the company will focus on top-end SKUs and the Z690 platform. Availability of these processors along with Z690 motherboards is slated for November 4.

AMD may introduce some of the upcoming Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 Raphael desktop offerings with RDNA 2 graphics under Raphael-H mobile with up to 16 cores and even higher performance than Zen 4 Phoenix-H. While not confirmed, if true, this move could be seen as AMD's counter to Intel's plans of pushing higher performance mobile CPUs above 55 W TDP with Alder Lake-S mobile and the ensuing Raptor Lake mobile parts.

Apple is expected to soon launch the M1X MacBook Pro 14 and 16, with the 10-core SoC being one of the highlights of the 2021 laptop refresh. The older 8-core M1 Apple Silicon still sits at the top of both the desktop and laptop single-thread performance charts at PassMark, with Intel and AMD so far unable to remove the ARM competitor.

After having his GeForce RTX 3080 order remain unfulfilled for an entire year, a buyer in Poland reportedly ordered a special cake commemorating the “anniversary,” and sent it to the retail. Surprisingly, this drove the retailer to actually fulfill the order, a year after it was placed.

The surprisingly high specifications, with a GeForce GTX 970 as the recommended GPU, raise questions about optimisation and how significant Rockstar’s remastering efforts are.

Alienware has announced the latest iteration of its popular Aurora gaming desktop. The redesigned model has been launched to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of the Alienware brand.

Moore's Law Is Dead is back with quite the allegation. Unnamed sources of his are claiming that Nvidia may try to halt the production of all its RTX 3000 gaming GPUs in late October in order to keep street prices as high as possible until next year, when refreshed models could make these inflated prices the norm. This move might also be planned in order to mitigate a possible price crash caused by miners dumping many GPUs after Ethereum goes full POS.

The Cypress lineup is Simply NUC's first with 4x4-inch motherboards supporting the Ryzen Embedded V2000 processors with Vega 7 iGPU. Processor options include the Ryzen V2516 / V2546 / V2748 APUs and users can configure these models with up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 10 TB SSD storage. By default, there is support for quad-4K video outputs through 2x HDMI 2.1 and 2x USB-C 3.2 DP 1.4 ports.

Early benchmarks of the upcoming Intel 12th gen Alder Lake Core i9-12900K in combination with AMD's just announced Radeon RX 6600 GPU were posted on Chinese social media. The results show good gains for the Core i9-12900K compared to the Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 9 5950X, and the Core i9-11900K in 3DMark CPU tests. However, real-world gaming benchmarks do not seem to show very high differences, especially when paired with DDR4 RAM.

Crytek employees showcased Crysis 2 gameplay on Twitch, with the game slated to arrive on October 15th. A detailed list of new enhancements was also shared: Crysis 2 will be receiving SVOGI, hardware ray-tracing, and a raft of other features. However, RT will be limited to PC.

G.SKILL's new Trident Z5 DDR5-RAM for gamers offers frequencies of up to 6400MHz, low CL timings and supposedly has enough headroom for further overclocking.

According to reports, NVIDIA is working towards releasing the GeForce RTX 3050, RTX 3050 Ti and a new RTX 3080. All will feature different GPUs, with only the RTX 3050 relying on the lowly GA107.

One of the more outlandish claims includes information about the Q4 Alder Lake supply that is expected to be limited to only 300,000 units, which would lead to significantly increased prices. Things are getting really iffy when the Chinese leaker starts explaining that the big.LITTLE hybrid core architecture does not work on Windows 10, where the big cores are completely disabled, then he drops the bomb stating that DDR5 RAM kits need to be overclocked to at least 8000 MT/s in order to notice any performance gains over DDR4-3600.

AMD has unveiled the Radeon RX 6600, its answer to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060. The RDNA 2-based card arrives with a US$329 MSRP and supposedly delivers 'the ultimate 1080p gaming experience'.

Acer has announced the Predator Orion 7000 desktop PC aimed at enthusiast gamers. The Predator Orion 7000 features Intel 12th gen Alder Lake processors, DDR5-4000 RAM, and a choice of Nvidia RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 GPUs. Acer said the Predator Orion 7000 offers vastly improved thermals with AIO cooling along with a host of connectivity options.

Acer has unveiled the Predator GD711 as its new "smart projector" for gaming. It is rated to throw HDR10 content at "high dynamic contrast" and a wide color gamut, at a brightness of up to 4,000 LED lumens. The projector is compatible with PCs or consoles, offering a high refresh rate on either platform.

Amphenol has confirmed that a new GPU power connector standard is on its way, replacing conventional 8-pin and 12-pin ones. The 12VHPWR will be capable of delivering up to 600 W to next-generation GPUs too, possibly starting with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.

Tipster @momomo_us spotted a listing on HP’s website for 24 and 27-inch AIO systems which seem to offer the AMD “Ryzen 7000” series as a CPU option.

BenQ has introduced the EW2880U, a 28-inch IPS monitor with a 4K native resolution. Billed as an entertainment monitor, the BenQ EW2880U supports numerous features, including USB Type-C connectivity.

Canon has announced the RF5.2mm f/2.8L, created with the dual fish-eye lenses needed to convert a single DSLR into a VR content-creation machine. This new binocular accessory is compatible with the EOS R5, and confers 180-degree 3-dimensional stereoscopic recording in up to 8K on the flagship camera.

The Intel Core i9-12900K has been discovered being tested on Windows 11 where it produced up to double-digit performance gains over the same tests on Windows 10. However, despite the exclusive boost from Microsoft, the 16-core Alder Lake chip still lagged behind an older rival in the form of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X.

XPG has announced that it is the first OEM to get its DDR5 RAM to reach a speed of over 8,000 megatransfers per second (MT/s). The company claims to have achieved this feat using memory with a default clock of 4,800MT/s. The RAM in question is to be launched later in 2021.

Samsung will be the first company to implement Gate-All-Around transistors (known as MBCFET) with its upcoming 3 nm node scheduled to go online in the first half of 2022. A second gen 3 nm node is planned for 2023, while the 2 nm node should be ready by 2025. TSMC, on the other hand, will only adopt GAA technology with its 2 nm nodes scheduled for 2024.

The Intel Core i9-12900K has made a few initial runs on the polarizing synthetic benchmark UserBenchmark, where it has produced astonishing results. Even discounting the seemingly unfair weighting against the Ryzen 9 5950X still leaves the Alder Lake chip way beyond its nearest Intel relative, the i9-11900K.

Intel has unveiled what Alder Lake-S processors look like, just a few weeks away from their expected release. The Core i7-12700K has leaked again, this time on PugetBench and in a CPU-Z listing.

Corsair has introduced its first gaming monitor, the Xeneon 32QHD165. The 32-inch gaming monitor supports Quantum Dot technology, a 165 Hz refresh rate, 1 ms response times and VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification, among other things. The monitor will ship later this month in most markets.

Intel is lending early Alder Lake adopters a hand and releases a provisional list with validated DDR5-4800 DIMMs from several suppliers. This list should expand as more models become available.

If this new leak is accurate, we could see the RTX 30 SUPER lineup launched throughout the first quarter of 2022. Additionally, Nvidia might up the minimum VRAM capacity to at least 12 GB for all of its desktop tiers. The RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB and RTX 2060 with 12 GB may be launched to compensate for the ongoing shortages.