TweakTown News - Page 1

Black Myth: Wukong is breaking records on PC, becoming one of the most popular and most-played single-player games in just a few days. The action RPG blends fast-paced combat with Souls-like mechanics in a highly cinematic and richly detailed world. Jak and Kost begin this week's episode of The TT Show by discussing the launch, its cutting-edge ray-traced visuals, and how it plays.

This week is Gamescom week, the biggest gaming convention and conference of the year, so Jak and Kosta also go through some of the big highlights of the show. The surprise Borderlands 4 announcement arrives shortly after the movie adaptation tanked at the box office, a new Mafia game (Kosta convinces Jak that he needs to play the series), and more.

Some of the "more" involves Microsoft, with Xbox announcing that the previously Xbox and PC exclusive Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be coming to PlayStation 5 a month or two after its Xbox Series X|S launch. This is a big move for Microsoft, effectively marking the end of console exclusivity.

Black Myth: Wukong is out in a few days, and to the developer's surprise, dropping a PC Benchmark Tool for the game, Jak and Kosta take a look at how it runs in 4K on a GeForce RTX 4090 and what the game's full ray tracing visuals (or path tracing) look like running on a GeForce RTX 4090.

Surprisingly, Black Myth: Wukong is not the only impressive piece of ray-tracing and PC graphics this week as a new mod for id Software's iconic shooter from 1994 has left the TT Show duo speechless. Doom II: Ray Traced is a remarkable version of the game that runs on the GZDOOM version, adding full path-traced lighting to deliver an incredible reimagining of one of the very first, first-person shooter games.

This week's episode also examines the latest controversies in the CPU world, from Intel finally releasing its new microcode update and fix to its partners that it says stops 13th and 14th Gen CPUs from crashing and getting damaged and a new vulnerability that is affecting hundreds of millions of AMD Ryzen and server CPUs.

The TT Show is back for another week of the latest happening in the world of tech, gaming, and science, with this week's episode kicking off with the launch of the AMD Ryzen 9000 Series of desktop CPUs. Specifically, Kosta's reviews of the Ryzen 5 9600X and the Ryzen 7 9700X CPUs and how the first batch of Zen 5 products perform across productivity and gaming workloads.

In recent weeks (and months), we've seen concerns raised over what data is strictly being used to train large language models. This week, a new explosive report citing leaked internal documentation said NVIDIA has been scraping YouTube for its AI model training - a 'human lifetime's' worth of YouTube videos every day.

Just when it looked like things couldn't get any worse for Intel, the company's stock (along with other big tech companies) took a dive. The company announced that it is laying off 15% of its massive workforce.

Lots of stories are discussed in this week's episode of The TT Show, but before Jak and Kosta dive into the week that was, there's fallout from the CrowStrike Windows blue-screen and crash stuff to go through. As the dust settles, the billions of dollars in lost revenue and the number of PCs affected have become apparent.

Then there's the ongoing saga that is Intel's 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPU troubles. Thanks to an explosive new interview at The Verge, the size and scope of the problem are bigger than we thought and startling, to say the least. Irreparable damage, no product recall, and the entire lineup of CPUs, including 65W mainstream models, are all affected.

Onto the new stuff: NVIDIA's engineers released a paper on a brand-new AI-powered technology it calls Real-Time Neural Appearance Models. Without getting too technical, it will make objects based on real-world properties like metal and ceramic look more realistic in games and run up to 24 times faster - a true game-changer. Also, Logitech is thinking about creating what it calls a "forever mouse."

The CrowStrike Windows outage will go down in history as one of the biggest ever seen, as millions of PCs tied to industries like travel, healthcare, and government services experienced the dreaded Blue Screen of Death or BSOD last week.

Still fresh in everyone's minds, Jak and Kosta spend a big chunk of this week's episode of The TT Show talking about the CrowdStrike Windows outage, what caused it, and how the simple fix of manually booting into Windows Recovery turned out to be a massive undertaking when you're looking at millions of computers and a finite number of tech support specialists.

In this week's massive episode, it's not all CrowdStrike. Jak and Kosta also discuss Intel's ongoing CPU troubles and the controversy surrounding the flagship Core i9 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors. Intel has released an official statement, but is it enough?

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss the ongoing saga with Intel's 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, specifically the flagship 13900K and 14900K models that have been plagued with instability issues for several months. Over the past week, things have fired up with reports of game developers switching servers over to AMD and data showing that these Intel CPUs are failing at an alarming rate.

Speaking of AMD, the company announced its new game-specific tech that can reduce install sizes by up to 70% - and yeah, Jak and Kosta cannot wait for this to become available. For reference, that would bring Call of Duty's install size down from 150 GB to under 50 GB.

In the world of AI, it's come to light that companies like Apple and NVIDIA have been using YouTube videos from popular channels and creators for AI training, which goes against Google's terms of service. Also, Microsoft has confirmed that it has created an AI voice generator that sounds indistinguishable from the real thing - and for that reason, it won't be released.

This week on The TT Show, Jak and Kosta discuss the week in tech, science, and gaming. They start with a new report outlining that almost half of all internet traffic comes from bots - and most are malicious. Also, a friendly PSA to always be on top of your passwords, especially in light of last week's password leak - the biggest in hacking history.

In the hardware world, it's been a busy week of teases, leaks, and rumors as Kosta goes through everything we know about next-gen Radeon and RDNA, from performance to release timing to how it could shake up the GPU market. Then there's Palit teasing a new flagship GPU design for later in the year, which has to be the GeForce RTX 5090.

We've also got some early benchmark results for this month's launch of Zen 5 and AMD's new Ryzen 9000 Series of CPUs. In the world of Microsoft, Jak and Kosta discuss the elusive bloatware-free Windows 11 'Government Edition,' the rocky Copilot+ PC, and a promising new patent from the company.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta go through a range of tech, gaming, science, and AI-related stories - including an AI chatbot 'Skeleton Key,' that lets users bypass any security checks and measures in place. Plus, Nintendo's stance on the generative AI boom equates to "our games are way better than anything AI could come up with, so no thanks."

On the GPU front, the duo discusses Micron's comments on next-gen GDDR7 memory that will be used in the GeForce RTX 50 Series and how the speed increase alone will lead to a 30% increase in gaming performance. Very cool.

Also, this past week saw the arrival of AMD's FSR 3.1 in several first-party PlayStation Studios games on PC. The latest version of AMD's DLSS competitor is a little hit-and-miss. There are a lot of game-related stories, too, including Ubisoft's plan to remake classic games in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Valve's impressive new Steam Game Recording Feature, and the original Splinter Cell getting the RTX Remix treatment. Kosta weirdly sides with Ubisoft, while Jak doesn't. It gets heated, so be sure to tune in.

This week on The TT Show, after the tech explosion of Computex 2024 and the new game explosion of Summer Game Fest, the latest news from the world of tech, gaming, and science returns to its regular broadcasting.

Jak and Kosta open the episode by discussing the notoriously litigious record industry's new lawsuit against AI music generators and what this could mean for generative AI and media going forward. They also discuss the future of VR gaming as Sony seemingly pulls the plug on PlayStation VR 2. Is VR destined to remain a niche corner of the gaming industry?

Then there's the return of overclocker Vince 'Kingpin' Lucido and a new partnership with PNY that will see the return of high-end flagship GeForce 'Kingpin Edition' graphics cards. In the aftermath of EVGA's exit from the GPU business, this is great news for enthusiasts looking to pick up the best GeForce RTX 5090 when it launches later this year. Or early 2025, or whenever.

After the explosion of new tech from Computex 2024 last week, Jak and Kosta take a quick hardware break to review some of the most exciting game announcements from the recent summer showcase events. From the fantastic and totally metal DOOM: The Dark Ages to the surprise gameplay reveal for Metroid Prime 4 and the Unreal Engine 5 brilliance of the new Gears of War prequel.

The duo also discusses the recent news that NVIDIA has become more valuable than Microsoft and Apple. Although this is the direct result of the current AI gold rush and boom - it also translates to PC gaming. According to the latest Steam data and GPU shipment information, GeForce RTX is currently experiencing a monopoly-like grip on the PC gaming market.

In AI, Jak and Kosta look at the Copilot+ PC launch, which is missing Microsoft's controversial screenshotting 'Recall' feature (probably for the best). With Apple Intelligence, Apple's big AI push is finally given the spotlight, and the company will be leaving behind hundreds of millions of customers.