AMD was supposed to reveal these new GPUs at CES 2025 but decided to cancel that, probably last minute, as the press like ourselves were already pre-briefed with some of the materials.

On his official X handle, McAfee shared:

Since AMD and its AIB vendor partners are likely playing around with the cards internally at the moment, some leaks are bound to happen. A few hours before David McAfee posted the news above, Hong Kong media outlet HKEPC shared a couple of screenshots showing the alleged performance and specifications of a 9070 XT. It was benchmarked on Monster Hunter Wilds and managed to put up 36,102 points.

The screenshot showing the purported specs of the card on TechPowerUp's GPU-Z suggests AMD's 9070 XT will have 64 compute units (CUs) or 4096 stream processors. It will also apparently break past 3 GHz when boosting. On the memory side, the 9070 XT appears to be sporting 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide bus for a total bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s.

Meanwhile, it is hard to be sure about the graphics settings or upscaling options chosen in the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark but whatever the case may be, the score does look impressive. It does appear that perhaps FSR and frame generation were used as 211 fps even at 1080p is a good show. But this is assuming the screenshot is not forged.

We may also now have an idea of the power requirements of the 9070 XT, at least for some of the variants. Reddit user Emotional-Rip7202 shared a photo of a supposed PowerColor Red Devil box packaging material and it shows AMD recommending a "minimum 900 watt or greater power supply" unit for the SKU.

Bear in mind though that the Red Devil is PowerColor's flagship variant and this time too it is no different. The 9070 XT Red Devil packs three PCIe 8-pin power connectors instead of two 8-pins which will be typical of the other non-premium 9070 XT variants.

With three 8-pins, the 9070 XT should theoretically be capable of consuming up to a continuous 525 watts since each 8-pin does 150 watts while the PCIe slot does 75 watts.

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The newly released update touts over 1700 changes, which include gameplay improvements, bug fixes, AI upgrades, and much more. Some highlights include NPC shooting accuracy changes to not let them laser the player so much, better stealth elements, and the player flashlight now casting proper shadows.

Considering the length of the changelog, only some of the changes can be seen below, specifically regarding AI, balance, optimizations, and under-the-hood changes:

AI

• Fixed a bug with A-Life NPCs unable to properly approach corpses. Now they can pick up the best loot and weapons from them, and switch to more powerful weapons.
• Improved corpse looting behavior for NPCs.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs could loot body armor and helmets from corpses.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs could not loot the corpses of NPCs from another faction.
• Fixed NPC shooting accuracy
• Reconfigured bullet dispersion accuracy for all distances for all weapons.
• Added randomization of accurate shots in bullet sprays.
• Reduced wall penetration from certain NPC’s weapon bullets.
• Improved Stealth
• Fixed an issue where after a melee attack, the NPC could end up behind the player.
• Adjusted the time of identification of the player character by NPCs.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs at Malachite location could notice players at a long distance and through the objects.
• Improved mutant behavior in combat
• Fixed an issue where AI wouldn't avoid obstacles and get stuck during scripted combat.
• Fixed an issue where jumping mutants could stuck in the air in certain conditions.
• Fixed that Controller ability does not work through grate doors.
• Fixed that mutants were not able to attack in certain positions.
• Fixed an issue where Chimera could jump through objects.
• Fixed issue where Chimera did not use jump attack.
• Fixed an issue where Deer summons could spawn in the player's field of view.
• Fixed an issue where Poltergeist could activate an anomaly and receive damage from it.
• Fixed an issue where mutants with ability to jump were running around the Player on elevated, unreachable surface.
• Fixed an issue where Pseudodog couldn't create summons when retreating.
• Added roar ability for Controller.
• Fixed an issue where A-life NPCs did not heal friendly wounded NPCs.
• Fixed an issue where A-life could spawn corpses near the player.
• Fixed an issue that could cause A-Life NPCs to have access to quest locations.
• Fixed the absence of some characters that could lead to a blocker during walkthrough of the main line.
• Fixed an issue where A-Life militaries could spawn endlessly near Rookie Village.
• Fixed the issue with a stuck guard NPC in the doorway at the Skadovsk location.
• Fixed issue where more rats spawned in the lair than there should have been.
• Fixed an issue where NPC may stuck after loading saves made right after Emission ends.
• Fixed an issue where weapons grabbed by the Burer ability would disappear.
• Fixed an issue with NPC animations when walking upstairs with a gun in hand.
• Improved animations for some mutants.
• Fixed that player takes damage near the NPC that is going through zombification.
• Fixed an issue where NPC may be stuck in the doorway after emission and block player.
• Fixed an issue where shooting at mutant limbs could stretch them.
• Fixed use of NPC rifle stand position when standing with a pistol.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs could spawn in front of the player at the Sphere location.
• Fixed NPC's repeatable cover animations.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs would stop in doorways on Rostok.
• Fixed NPC's walking animation during stand in combat.
• Fixed an issue where enemy NPCs did not react to flying bullets.
• Improved open world combat with Pseudogiant near Abandoned Science Campus at Prypiat.
• Fixed an issue where an NPC with a closed helmet could eat, smoke and drink through the helmet.
• Fixed an issue where animations of death from an anomaly could be missing for some mutants.
• Fixed an issue where Lex Legend and his group could not return to the quest location after the end of Emission.
• Fixed a problem that made it difficult for rats to move in narrow places.
• Fixed an issue where Burer could snatch a quest weapon from the player's hands.
• Fixed an issue where NPC could start searching for an enemy after warning players to hide weapons.
• Reduced spawn rate for Bloodsuckers before the completion of the Behind Seven Seals mission.
• Fixed the issue when NPC can block a doorway in the Quiets camp after the combat.
• With additional 70+ issues fixed.

Balance

• Weird Water arch-artifact anti-radiation effect was reduced
• Fixed issue when a grenade could deal damage to Burer when the shield was active.
• Now NPCs need less shots to kill Pseudodog summon.
• Increased frequency of Jump Attack for Blind Dog mutant.
• Rebalanced pistols and silencer attachments.
• Decreased spawn rate for NPCs in exoskeletons.
• Reconfigured the number of armor NPC are wearing. Increased the chance of spawning low and mid-tier armor, while the chance for top-tier armor to spawn was reduced.
• Increased damage from radiation depending on accumulated rad-points
• The chance of spawning NPCs with high tier weaponry in early stages of the game was reduced.
• Added ability to trade with additional NPCs at Hubs.
• Economy tweaks for A Job for the Barkeep repeatable missions on Veteran difficulty.
• And a few more minor balance tweaks were made.

Optimization and crashes

• Fixed FPS drops during boss fight with Faust.
• Fixed an issue with performance drop on closing PDA or Pause Menu.
• Slightly improved performance by disabling navigation mesh rebuild properties for multiple objects.
• Fixed memory leak related to item manipulation.
• Fixed over 100 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION crashes and other errors, including some other minor memory leaks.
• Fixed input lag after enabling VSync with enabled FidelityFX Frame Interpolation.
• Added Framerate lock during the pause menu, main menu and loading screens.
• And some other optimization tweaks.

Under the Hood

• Player's flashlight now casts shadows on objects.
• Fixed the issue where relationships with NPCs didn't change.
• Changed names of some ammo types.
• Fixed the issue where the title could unexpectedly freeze during the dialogues.
• Fixed the issue where some quest logic couldn't start after the NPCs death.
• Improved transitions from cutscene to game.
• Fixed a generic issue where mission logic could break if Player gave an item to a NPC via dialogue option.
• Fixed the issue where the dialogue with NPC was closing after exit from the Trade/Upgrade.
• Fixed an issue where the Player was teleported outside the playable area.
• Added custom Aim Assist logic for invisible targets for all supported controllers.
• Fixed an issue where save backups could be missing after losing game saves.
• Fixed NPC's broken animations while smoking.
• Fixed an issue where NPC could teleport outside the playable area of the map.
• Fixed achievement to sneakily clear the lair.
• Fixed the issue where In Game saves become corrupted after deleting local saves and unsuccessful cloud saves sync.
• Polished PDA models look in low light areas.
• With over 100 other improvements implemented in both sections: Optimization & Crashes, and Under the Hood.

The complete changelog for Patch 1.2 can be found here, which also goes into fixes GSC Game World has made for the main questline, side missions and encounters, the Zone's interactable objects, gear, and other areas.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Patch 1.2 is now available for PC and Xbox Series X|S players, as well as Game Pass subscribers across both platforms.

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As always, the most important Nvidia graphics card is the one you can actually buy, and Nvidia’s talked a big game for its RTX 5070, making the dubious but nuanced claim it can deliver RTX 4090 performance for just $549. On February 28th, AMD will get its chance to intercept with the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, in a streaming event it just announced today. But Nvidia has now made its own wiggle room, delaying the launch of the RTX 5070 from February to March 5th, its product page reveals today.

Nvidia will ship its $749 RTX 5070 Ti ahead of AMD’s event, though, on February 20th, a week from today.

AMD has telegraphed that it won’t be competing with Nvidia’s latest and greatest cards, so price is the one big lever that AMD can potentially pull in order to compete. (The AMD Radeon 9070 cards appeared to be targeting Nvidia 4070 Ti and 4070 Super levels of performance, not necessarily higher.) But Nvidia, a company that can now make $20 billion in pure profit in a single quarter, could theoretically counter that if it feels it needs to, and now has more room to do so.

All that said, there is a rumor that AMD may be working on a more potent card than its already-announced RX 9070 and 9070 XT, one with 32GB of RAM. AMD gaming marketing boss Frank Azor says the 9070 XT won’t be a 32GB card, but did not address the larger rumor.

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Per the CEO, Assassin's Creed Shadows "preorders are tracking solidly, in line with those of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the second most successful entry of the franchise."

The March-launching open-world RPG experience also received a round of previews from content creators recently, and Ubisoft seems to be very happy with the reception.

"Early previews have been positive, praising its narrative and immersive experience, with both characters playing critical roles in the game’s storyline, as well as the quality and complementarity of the gameplay provided by the dual protagonist approach," says Guillemot. "I want to commend the incredible talent and dedication of the entire Assassin’s Creed’s team, who is working tirelessly to ensure that Shadows delivers on the promise of what is the franchise’s most ambitious entry yet."

The CEO also dropped hints at something "significant" that will happen during the upcoming 10-year anniversary celebrations of Rainbow Six Siege. The live-service shooter has been rumored to be getting a massive engine upgrade later this year, which may be what Ubisoft is planning to announce.

In a later Q&A session (via VGC), Yves Guillemot replied to a question regarding the company's future plans for games. He confirmed that the focus is on developing open-world action adventure games as well as live service titles, and that it's investing heavily in those areas:

“We have been investing significantly for a big pipeline of products for the coming years along our two verticals, [these] being open-world action adventure as well as ‘Game as a Service’-native experiences, and that’s what we want to deliver year after year.”

Assassin's Creed Shadows is slated to release on March 20 across PC (Steam, Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store), Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Apple Silicon Macs, and Amazon Luna. Find the PC system requirements here.

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Monster Hunter Wilds has shown off a new launch trailer during Sony's PlayStation State of Play February 2025 event. This trailer shows an epic montage of Monster Hunter Wilds' various monsters that players will hunt and a teaser of the game's post-launch update roadmap that reveals that it will add Mizutsune in the first Title Update during Spring 2025.

Mizutsune is a Leviathan-type monster that debuted in Monster Hunter Generations and was last seen in Monster Hunter Rise. It's a dangerous monster that slithers into battle and attacks its prey with sharp claws, water beam attacks, and inflicting the Bubbleblight status effect to cause opponents to lose their footing.

However, Mizutstune won't be the only thing to look forward to in the 1st Title Update as it will also include Event Quests and additional updates. The roadmap then reveals that another Title Update will drop for Monster Hunter Wilds in Summer 2025 which will add another and more Event Quests.

In addition to post-launch Title Updates, Monster Hunter Wilds has shown off a new Leviathan-type monster called the Jin Dahaad. It is a colossal, metallic monster that rules the Iceshard Cliffs region as its apex predator and will no doubt require a full party of hunters to take it down.

Gearbox and 2K have officially revealed that Borderlands 4 will launch on September 23, 2025. Vault Hunters can dive into the chaos on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

A new trailer at State of Play provided a teasing look at the action, with assurances of even more outrageous over-the-top combat, weird enemies, and piles of loot on the new world Kairos. Borderlands 4 aims to take the series to the next level, building on the old gameplay with a range of new movement abilities.

Gamers can look forward to using gliding, dodging, double jumping, and even a static-point grappling hook to move around the battlefield and bring havoc from every angle. The new traversal mechanics are aimed at bringing a new layer of skill and dynamism to the Borderlands franchise.

Creative director Graeme Timmins has indicated that the game's open world and new movement mechanics will be so engaging that the earlier games will feel constricting to play.

"Borderlands 4 is about freedom and being badass,” said Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford at The Game Awards 2024 in December 2024. “This is by far the biggest and most insane world we’ve ever made - it's overloaded with jerkface ratnozzle scrote monsters that need to be put down with the most over-the-top hardcore nuts op guns and loot in any game ever. Oh, and the story also seriously kicks ass!”

2K Games stated that having sold more than 87 million copies, to date, the Borderlands franchise has garnered committed fanbase. The players can stay informed about Borderlands 4 and wishlist the title on Steam or Epic Games Store.

The release date announcement comes after remarks from Gearbox's parent Take-Two that Borderlands 4 will not come out close to the release of GTA 6, also due for a Fall 2025 release. Although GTA 6's release date is not yet confirmed, the Borderlands 4 announcement provides a clue on a possible release date.

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The data comes from the company's latest financial results that were published today. Remedy revealed that by 2025, Alan Wake 2 had crossed the impressive two million copies sold milestone. Also, the Epic Games-published game has gone on to make a profit and gather royalties for the developer, finally recouping its development and marketing costs. The milestones were hit right after the game's second and final expansion, The Lake House, landed too.

Meanwhile, Control 2 has entered full production status this month, with Remedy saying that it has "verified the velocity of asset creation, established production pipelines, and is ready for scaling up for production." While not much information about the sequel has been revealed yet, the studio has said that it will feature RPG elements unlike the original. The first entry recently crossed the 4.5 million copies sold mark as well.

The company has two more games in full production at the studio. One of these is its first multiplayer project, FBC: Firebreak. This Control spin-off is set to offer a cooperative experience that explores various missions while trapped in the Oldest House. The title is releasing sometime in 2025 and is currently going through closed technical tests.

Lastly, the Max Payne 1&2 remake is "making steady progress in full production," according to the studio. The highly anticipated project is being published by Rockstar Games, but a release window has not been announced yet.

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NVIDIA's RTX 5070 graphics card might not be launching in February 2025 after all. The new rumor arrives just days before what used to be the expected mid-to-late February release date that NVIDIA officially acknowledged. The supposed delay would be another mark alongside an unsavory RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 launch full of scalpers, high prices, and driver issues.

First spotted by Videocardz, the rumor was sparked by X (formerly Twitter) user MEGAsizeGPU who is known to be fairly accurate with their predictions. Posted on February 11, it states that the RTX 5070 won't be arriving in February; instead, NVIDIA is aiming for an early March release. As with all rumors, it's best not to take it at face value until NVIDIA makes an official statement.

When picking the best CPU and best GPU, you usually weigh things like power, performance, efficiency, and compatibility. Those are all important, of course, but they are not the only metrics to look at. A recent security report by Intel claims that its CPUs and GPUs are more secure than those from rivals AMD and NVIDIA.

The 2024 Intel Product Security Report covers a breadth of topics. While several highlights from the report focus solely on Intel's reaction to security threats, several key points discuss AMD and NVIDIA.

Most notably, AMD claims that AMD CPUs had 4.4 times more firmware vulnerabilities in hardware root-of-trust than Intel. Intel also claims that NVIDIA GPUs only had high-severity vulnerabilities in 2024, and that there were 18 such vulnerabilities. Intel states that its GPUs only had 10 reported issues and that only one was marked as high or severe.

In the root-of-trust category, Intel states that 100% of vulnerabilities affecting its chips were found by internal employees. AMD, in contrast, only found 58% of vulnerabilities internally, leaving 42% to be discovered by external security researchers.

Intel also highlighted that 78 vulnerabilities listed by AMD are marked as "no fix planned."

Below are the key points summarized by Intel:

• 96% of the vulnerabilities addressed by Intel in 2024 were discovered through Intel’s proactive product security assurance efforts.
• 100% of the Intel processor vulnerabilities addressed were discovered through internal security research.
• 53% of the 374 vulnerabilities Intel addressed received a bug bounty payment.
• 84% of the bug bounties paid were in the software category.
• AMD reported 4.4x more firmware vulnerabilities in their hardware root-of-trust than Intel.
• AMD reported 1.8x more firmware vulnerabilities in their confidential computing technologies than Intel.
• In the GPU category, NVIDIA had only high-severity vulnerabilities (18) in 2024.

Within the full report, Intel discusses platform firmware vulnerabilities. The company shared that its "proactive product security assurance efforts resulted in the discovery and mitigation of 94% of platform firmware vulnerabilities." In contrast, AMD only proactively discovered 57% of the platform vulnerabilities that were disclosed last year.

In a statement via social media, Crytek revealed around 15% of its workforce of 400 are being laid off.

"Like so many of our peers, we aren't immune to the complex, unfavorable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years," said the company. "It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees."

It doesn't look like troubles had begun recently, as the studio also revealed that Crysis 4 development had been on pause since the third quarter of 2024. The new installment was announced back in 2022 as being in early development, where the studio promised a true "next-gen" shooter.

The studio has shifted developers from the Crysis project over to its ongoing live-service experience Hunt: Showdown 1896. However, even with its ongoing success, the studio hasn't managed to stay out of financial trouble.

"While Hunt: Showdown 1896 is still growing, Crytek cannot continue as before and remain financially sustainable. Even after ongoing efforts to reduce costs and cut operating expenses, we have determined that layoffs are inevitable to move forward."

The studio did not say when it expects to return to Crysis 4 development, but its full focus is currently with Hunt: Showdown 1896, saying that the remaining team "remains fully committed to its operation."

The complete Crysis trilogy was remastered in recent years by Crytek too, possibly preparing players for the upcoming entry. Meanwhile, Hunt: Showdown 1896 also dropped last-gen console support last year, with it now only available to play on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

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Speaking of problems and quality control, a wrong product shroud is the least of the company's worries as Nvidia is also facing the heat related to burning and melting power connectors on RTX 5090. For those that have been following the landscape, RTX 40 series, where Nvidia introduced its 16-pin 12VHWPR PCIe power connector for the first time, also had major issues related to it.

Upon investigation, it was mainly established that improper or inadequate insertion of the new 16-pin PCIe plug was leading to the issue. Aside from that, users were also asked to be careful about the degree to which they were bending the connector cables. To prevent such issues, brightly colored 16-pin 12VHPWR plugs and L-shaped connectors were introduced by some vendors.

The major upgrade came in the form of 12V-2x6 standard which managed to stay within specs and not end up burning or melting even when it was not inserted fully or appropriately.

Curiously, Nvidia is using this newer and supposedly safer form factor and despite that, there are reports of malfunctioning RTX 5090 16-pin power connectors as well. The company had previously stated that it did not "expect" to come across such scenarios with the new family of GPUs. However, that is clearly not the case albeit note that the initial reports were registered on third-party cables.

Nvidia also tested the cards fairly rigorously it seems as engineering samples are apparently showing four 16-pin power connectors on RTX 4090 and 5090:

Overclocking guru and YouTuber Der8auer was testing his RTX 5090 when he found that there was a wide variance in the current flowing through the pins, with some of the pins having to handle up to around 20 amperes of current. With such a high current flow and stress, the temperature of the pin naturally shot up to close to 150 Celsius.

However, not every reviewer agreed with this take. Andreas Schilling, senior editor at Hardwareluxx, did not see such a wide range of current flow in their testing:

It is noteworthy that the current flowing through the individual pins of power connector can only be tracked on some of Asus' variants as it is currently only on the RTX 4090 Matrix, 5080 Astral and 5090 Astral (via UNIKO's Hardware on X).

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Despite this financial success, a significant portion of YouTube's audience employs ad-blocking tools to enhance their viewing experience. As of 2024, approximately 31.8% of internet users in the United States utilize ad blockers, with global usage rates averaging around 42.7%.

The prevalence of ad blockers presents a challenge for YouTube's advertising model, as it directly impacts the platform's primary revenue stream. In response, YouTube has implemented measures to counteract ad-blocking software, aiming to ensure that advertisements reach their intended audience.

Looking ahead, YouTube plans to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance content creation and delivery. Initiatives include AI-generated video summaries and personalized content recommendations, aiming to improve user engagement and maintain the platform's competitive edge.

As YouTube continues to navigate the balance between maximizing ad revenue and maintaining user satisfaction, the platform's strategies will play a crucial role in shaping its future growth and relationship with its audience.

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Unity has been hit with another round of layoffs. This is according to posts on LinkedIn from recently laid off staff and confirmed by reporting from Game Developer and 80.lvl. According to reports, employees were notified via emails sent out at 5 AM local time, while the layoffs affect a number of different teams within the the game engine software company. According to a message posted in the Unity forums, one of the casualties in the layoffs was the entire Behavior department which built tools that assisted in NPC scripting. It’s not clear at this point how many employees were impacted.

Unity has been on shaky ground for the last two years, undergoing several rounds of layoffs amid other upheavals. In January 2024, Unity eliminated 25 percent of its workforce or around 1,800 employees. Before that in November 2023, Unity closed several office locations and cut 265 jobs.

Before that was one of the events that likely contributed to all the layoffs: the company’s disastrous deployment of its Runtime fee. The fee, which initially intended to charge developers a small fee for every download of a Unity game, was roundly rejected by prominent indie developers. Several voiced their concerns on social media, while others threatened and, in the case of a collective of mobile developers, actually enacted a boycott of the software.

The fallout led to Unity revamping the runtime fee and resulted in CEO John Riccitiello retiring less than a month after the runtime announcement. The Verge has reached out to Unity for comment.

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On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly rejected an unsolicited Elon Musk-led attempt to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The Wall Street Journal reports that the offer was backed by Musk's own company, xAI, in addition to several investors Musk's other businesses.

After the Wall Street Journal broke news of the purchase offer Monday afternoon, Altman shifted the offer's decimal point in a joke publicly posted on X, saying, "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

Musk—who recently changed his X name to "Harry Bōlz" as a reference to the nickname for a teenage member of his DOGE group that is currently embroiled in what some legal experts consider a constitutional crisis for the US federal government—replied to Altman on X with one word: "Swindler."

Altman clarified his position in several media appearances on Tuesday morning, characterizing Musk's latest salvo as another one of his attempts to throw a wrench in the works at OpenAI.

"OpenAI is not for sale," Altman told Ina Fried at Axios. "OpenAI's mission is not for sale—to say nothing of the fact that a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market and instead is just trying to say, 'I'm gonna buy this,' with total disregard for the mission is a likely path there."

A brief history of Musk vs. Altman

The beef between Musk and Altman goes back to 2015, when the pair partnered (with others) to co-found OpenAI as a nonprofit. Musk cut ties with the company in 2018 but watched from the sidelines as OpenAI became a media darling in 2022 and 2023 following the launch of ChatGPT and then GPT-4.

In July 2023, Musk created his own OpenAI competitor, xAI (maker of Grok). Since then, Musk has become a frequent legal thorn in Altman and OpenAI's side, at times suing both OpenAI and Altman personally, claiming that OpenAI has strayed from its original open source mission—especially after reports emerged about Altman's plans to transition portions of OpenAI into a for-profit company, something Musk has fiercely criticized.

Musk initially sued the company and Altman in March 2024, claiming that OpenAI’s alliance with Microsoft had broken its agreement to make a major breakthrough in AI "freely available to the public." Musk withdrew the suit in June 2024, then revived it in August 2024 under similar complaints.

Musk and Altman have been publicly trading barbs frequently on X and in the press over the past few years, most recently when Musk criticized Altman's $500B "Stargate" AI infrastructure project announced last month.

This morning, when asked on Bloomberg Television if Musk’s move comes from personal insecurity about xAI, Altman replied, "Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity."

"I don’t think he’s a happy guy. I feel for him," he added.

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Sports cars demonstrate their versatility through performance, speed and agility. These daily racers are varied in nature, from small and agile hot hatches to roaring V8 sedans, to the new generation of electric cars. Experience the world of Daily Racers in Forza Motorsport Update 17.

Update 17 introduces four new-to-Forza cars: the 2023 Toyota Camry TRD, the 2021 Hyundai i20 N, the 2022 Toyota GR86, and the 2021 Hyundai #98 Elantra TCR.

However, you can get five more fresh cars by completing additional events. Completing Challenge Hub events will get you the 2021 Toyota Yaris GR and the 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, while each series in the Daily Racer Tour offers three new Spotlight cars: the 2020 Hyundai i30 N, 2022 Cadillac CT5V Blackwing, 2022 Mazda MX-5 RF, and 2022 Hyundai Elantra N.

The update also includes the following fixes and improvements:

• An improved Rival select system changes how friends and random players are prioritized as your Next Rival when there are no more friends to beat on the event’s leaderboard or when your next friend's best lap time is exceedingly faster than yours, while ensuring each new Rival presents a decent challenge.
• Updated car audio for the 1998 Toyota Supra RZ and 2020 Toyota GR Supra.
• Fixed bugs in the updated 2019 Lamborghini Sian FKP 37 exhaust sound and 2021 Porsche GT3 cockpit audio.
• Fixed a bug where opponent cars were not being attenuated correctly in cockpit view.
• Fixed an issue where the game could restart when using the Quick Resume suspend feature on Xbox Series X|S consoles.
• Rivals events can now be switched quickly without causing game instability.

Forza Motorsport Update 18, the next content update for the game, will bring new cars to the game, focusing on high-speed vehicles, cornering performance, cutting-edge technologies, and big horsepower. Expect full details about Update 18 somewhere in March.

You can find more information about Forza Motorsport Update 17 in the official blog.

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A report on Reddit seems to indicate that the damage is occurring on both the PSU end of the power cable and the section directly connected to the GPU. Interestingly, the problem has been seen with power cables from several manufacturers, including MODDIY and FSP, which may indicate that it is not a problem with a specific type of cable.

Nvidia's RTX 40-series GPUs introduced the world to the 12VHPWR power connector meant for the new generation of graphics cards with higher power demands. In response to the initial issues with the RTX 4090, the PCI-SIG, the standards organization responsible for the 12VHPWR connector, has updated the design. The new 12V-2x6 connector features shorter sensing pins and longer conductor terminals.

Nvidia uses the 12V-2x6 connector on its RTX 50-series GPUs, although consumers can still use the existing 12VHPWR cables. Still, some manufacturers, such as Corsair and MSI, have already colored the pins for their 12VHPWR cables to indicate if the connector is not seated properly.

In January, Nvidia said it 'does not expect' to see a similar melting situation with the RTX 5090 or 5080, saying, "We made some changes to the connector to address the issue at the time, and now, two years later, we don't know of any such issues."

It is still not clear what exactly is causing the issue, whether it's the power cable, the PSU, or both. Some users have even speculated that thinner pins on the 12VHPWR connector of their PSU may have led to increased resistance and the melting problem.

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ExplainingComputers (1.08M subscribers)

February 9, 2025

Video length: 16m 49s

00:00 Titles & Intro

00:49 Platters & Areal Density

04:12 CMR & SMR

07:25 Recording Technologies

10:41 eMPR

12:13 HAMR

14:14 MAMR

15:38 Wrap

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Table of contents:

1. Windows 10 and 11 news
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and 10

Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.

This week, Microsoft updated the official Windows Health Dashboard with new details about certain known bugs and issues in Windows 11 version 24H2. The bug with the operating system not allowing you to change certain date and time settings has finally been fixed in the latest non-security update. Also, Microsoft provided a workaround for the issue that prevented Windows updates from being installed via various media, such as USB or CD.

Now, here is some useful stuff. First, we have a guide from Steven Parker. The article describes how to restore Dolby Digital (AC-3) support in Windows 11 version 24H2, which no longer comes with one on clean installations.

Next, a couple of debloaters for Windows 11. One is WinScript, a neat-looking open-source app for Windows 11 that can run several commands at once to get rid of annoying ads, optimize your system, turn off telemetry, install useful third-party applications with a package manager, and a lot more. Another app you may find useful in this regard is NoBloatbox, which lets you select what bloatware you want to remove from your Windows installation.

Finally, Microsoft published a new blog post that announced details for IT Admins about Windows installing feature updates during the initial setup (OOBE) on managed devices.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:

One of the biggest changes in this week's Windows 11 preview builds, besides the first big update for MIDI in nearly half a century, is the ability to customize widgets on the lock screen. Build 22635.4870 lets you turn off certain widgets and leave only those you need the most. Check out this article to learn more about it.

In addition to the new builds, Microsoft shipped an update for the Microsoft Store. The latest version, which is now available for Windows Insiders, allows users to select what parts of the games will be downloaded. This change is useful for those who do not want certain components, like high-resolution textures, campaigns, and more.

Finally, Optical Character Recognition is once again available in the Photos app for Windows Insiders. Microsoft removed the feature from preview builds in November 2024, and it is now back with a few improvements and squashed bugs.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Even though we are still at the beginning of the year, Microsoft already has dates for its upcoming developer conference, Build 2025. The company revealed that its main developer-focused event will occur on May 19-22 in Seattle, Washington. Tickets and the schedule will be available as we get closer to the date.

We had plenty of browser updates this week. Firefox 135 arrived with a long list of various changes. Mozilla brought the redesigned new tab page to all users, credit card autofill support, translation improvements, additional privacy improvements, and other changes.

Opera released a new browser, Opera Air, in an attempt to make browsing the modern internet less stressful. Opera Air has various built-in utilities to help you remain calm, do breathing exercises, learn some binaural tunes for extra relaxation, and more.

Microsoft released Edge 133 for all users in the Stable channel, bringing an updated downloads UI, an AI-powered scareware blocker, improvements for the built-in price tracker, and more. Those in the Dev Channel received version 134.0.3096.1 with "Browser Essentials" improvements and various fixes.

Besides the updates, Microsoft announced upcoming changes for Notifications API, which will soon support call notifications with custom buttons. Also, the company created a fake "guide," which, instead of doing its job and explaining how to uninstall Edge, simply trashes Google Chrome.

Speaking of Chrome, the browser is also getting some neat improvements with the next feature update. Version 134 will make picture-in-picture mode more seamless with automatic activation when playing videos and switching in and out of tabs.

Other notable updates include the following:

• Microsoft has updated the Windows 10 Extended Security Update program support page with new details
• Windows Terminal and Windows Terminal Preview received big updates with new multi-window support, reworked console architecture, and more
• Microsoft released an updated PowerShell script for bootable Windows media
• Outlook for Mac now allows you to recall sent emails
• NanaZip 5.0 Update 1 is now available with more file format support and other changes
• Microsoft Teams received various improvements for its calendar
• Logitech Options+ has been updated with more device support and various fixes

And here are the newest drivers released this week:

• Nvidia 572.24 Hotfix with patches for Valorant and Final Fantasy XVI
• Intel Wi-Fi 23.110.0 driver with hotspot improvements and fixes for data transfer slowdowns

Reviews are in

Here is hardware and software we reviewed this week

We published two reviews this week. Steven Parker reviewed the GEEKOM A6 mini PC, a small and affordable computer with improved memory and storage. I had a chance to check out a quirky pair of headphones from Philips that were made specifically for sleep (spoiler: they are not very good).

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts and more.

More Xbox games are heading to the PlayStation 5. Following the announcement of Forza Horizon 5 moving over to the Japanese console, Microsoft is bringing Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition to the PlayStation 5.

If you are waiting for the next Need for Speed installment, EA has not-so-good news for you. As of right now, all of Criterion Games stuff is working on the next Battlefield (expected before April 2026), not Need for Speed. In an interview with IGN, Vince Zampella said that the series might return at some point, but it is not clear when.

Microsoft already had a gaming event this year, and another one is coming in February. The company revealed that the first ID@Xbox showcase will occur on February 24, 2025, to showcase various indie games from different publishers. IGN will stream the event at 10 AM PT, 1 PM ET, and 6 PM BST.

Valve released a small but useful update for Steam. The platform now features a prominent banner for abandoned games that have not received any updates or attention from developers for an extended period of time. This change will help gamers avoid abandonware, especially early access abandonware.

Nvidia announced a new batch of games that are now playable on the GeForce NOW streaming service. They include Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Sid Meier's Civilization VII, SWORN, Alan Wake, Far Cry: New Dawn, and more.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away two games: Beyond Blue and Humankind. You can add these to your library for free until the next Thursday. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can score several free titles on the Amazon Games app, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. They include Bioshock Infinite: Complete Edition, Surf World Series, Sands of Aura, and more. A lot more games will be available later this month.

Other gaming stories from this week include the following:

• Age of Empires IV and Age of Mythology Retold are getting new expansions in 2025

• Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 received updates with Steam Achievements support

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 got a new update with a new difficulty, an FOV slider, and more

• Currys became the first Xbox-authorized repair providers in the UK and Ireland

• Star Wars Outlaws now supports DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Gen on RTX 50 series cards

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Gamers Nexus (2.39M subscribers)

February 9, 2025

Video length: 31m 26s

00:00 - Recapping the Week

01:24 - NVIDIA Responds to PresentMon Criticism

07:33 - AMD to Launch 9000 Series GPUs in March

10:33 - 50-Series GPUs Encountering Stability Issues

13:30 - AMD Beats Intel at Data Centers for First Time

14:56 - New Tariffs May Lead to Expensive Hardware

19:31 - Google Now Open to Using AI for Weapons

20:45 - ASUS Q-Release Issues

28:43 - ASUS Releases 50 Series Pricing, Then Changes It

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The company barely communicated with users while the outage was active, and even when services returned, only a short update was sent out. "PSN has been restored," said the company in a social media post. "You should be able to access online features without any problems now. Sorry for the inconvenience!"

A few hours later, Sony has now provided a short update on what had happened, but again without details or context around the matter. "Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue," the company said regarding the 20-hour outage during the weekend.

Sony is sending out a PlayStation Plus bonus as compensation for the lost time. All existing PlayStation Plus members will receive 5 days of additional service for no extra fee for going through the outage. Judging by the social media reactions though, fans aren't happy about the lack of details, with fear of another data leak/hack being a possibility, and about the only 5-day Plus offering.

Another factor to consider is that it wasn't just PlayStation Plus members who were affected by the outage. Many users' single-player games failed to run due to Sony authentication servers not responding, plus it also restricted non-members from playing free-to-play titles.

In any case, we will have to wait and see if Sony will provide more information on what was the reason behind the global PlayStation Network outage. If details are incoming, expect a blog post to go up in the new week.

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Paul's Hardware (1.5M subscribers)

February 5, 2025

Video length: 11m 15s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - Feb 9, 2025

1:56 Shortages and Tariffs Are Already Affecting GPU Prices

5:35 Reports of “Bricked” NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5090D GPUs

7:17 Radeon RX 9070 XT Launch Date Rumor - Late Feb Event, For Sale March 6

TECH BRIEFS

8:25 GeForce RTX 5060 & 5060 Ti to use 8-Pin power connectors, 650W PSU

9:36 No new Intel desktop CPUs until 2026?

10:17 EVGA closes its popular tech forums, Team EVGA moves to Reddit

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PlayStation Network (PSN) has finally recovered from an outage that lasted for almost a day.

“PSN has been restored,” Sony says in a post from its @AskPlayStation X account. “You should be able to access online features without any problems now.” The post also points to Sony’s PSN status page and concludes by saying “Sorry for the inconvenience!”

The outage began Friday evening, and account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website were all dealing with issues, the status page said at the time. For gaming specifically, Sony said that “you might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features.”

Around when I first published this article at 7:28PM ET on Friday, a colleague wasn’t able to load their purchased digital games or see their friends, trophies, or even their online status on their PS5. At about 11:45PM ET that night, I tried to play Fortnite on my PS5, but the game showed an error message and wouldn’t let me log in. I was able to start my digital copy of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, however.

Sony’s status website said that the issues started at 7PM ET, but Downdetector showed user reports starting to come in about an hour earlier at around 6PM ET. At the peak, Downdetector showed a bit fewer than 70,000 reports of problems.

Sony didn’t reply to requests for comment.

PSN had an outage that lasted for around eight hours back in October. It dealt with a partial outage in May, too.

Update, February 8th: Sony says services have been restored.

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Checking DownDetector, the first reports of PSN being down arrived via users around 3 pm PST, with social media posts by gamers also blowing up at the same time. Sony responded to the outage shortly after with posts on its own social media accounts.

However, this was only to say, "We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN," and point towards its status page that shows what services are down. No more information about the cause of the outage or when gamers can expect things to return to normal has been shared by Sony teams just yet.

The linked status page shows Account management, Gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and PlayStation Direct being affected across PS5, PS4, PS3, PS Vita, apps, and "Other" platforms.

The length of the outage and Sony's relative silence around the matter are interesting aspects of this situation. However, most PlayStation players are simply worried they won't be able to play any games over the weekend on the service they pay monthly to access. PC users who can't access their single-player PlayStation ports are in some luck, though, as Sony recently made the account requirement optional on most of its games on the platform.

Right now, there is no information on when the PlayStation Network will stabilize and let gamers on the Sony platforms back into their games. We will update this page once the services come back online.

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These issues happen in very different sets of circumstances—some users report only a black screen upon changing resolution or refresh rates while others observe the problem occurring under heavy usage or when making use of multi-monitor configurations. This inconsistency carries forward into how the problem takes effect; for certain users, the effects do not disappear even with a hard reboot, whereas other end users can access intermittent functionality.

Oddly, the problems do not seem to be limited to the new RTX 50-series cards, as there are also reports of identical problems with some RTX 40-series GPUs, suggesting that Nvidia's latest 572.16 driver release is the culprit.

Nvidia has acknowledged the reported issues (reported by PC Gamer) and is currently investigating the matter. The response from the company indicates that it is aware of the problems and is working to find a resolution. However, RTX 50-series owners may need to exercise caution or consider alternative driver versions until an official fix is made available.

On the other hand, both the new SKUs, especially the RTX 5090, have been extremely limited in stock. We've reported that some major retailers in the UK confirmed that restocking could take up to 16 weeks for the RTX 5090 and up to six weeks for the RTX 5080.

It is worth noting that a few reports have also come in about "bricked" cards, but these claims seem to be less substantiated. With any new hardware release, a certain amount of failure is expected, but the current scale of the problems has raised concerns among the community.

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