NVIDIA RTX 5080 Laptop GPU Might Be Up to 60% Faster Than RTX 4080 Laptop

Moore's Law is Dead, a prominent YouTube channel specializing in computer hardware leaks, has revealed its expectations for the RTX 50-series Laptop GPUs. We have already reported on a massive product listing leak shedding light on almost every single "Blackwell" laptop GPU, but needless to say, more information is always welcome. According to Moore's Law is Dead, the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, and this has been hinted at by the aforementioned prior leak, will only sport 16 GB of GDDR7 VRAM - the same as the RTX 5080 Laptop.

Moreover, his sources indicate that the RTX 5080 will drop with a 175-watt TGP and 7,680 CUDA cores, which is shockingly only a hair more than the 7,424 found in its predecessor. However, the source did state that the RTX 5080 will be around 40 to 60% faster than the RTX 4080, which is a massive generational leap in performance. It is not clear at this point how this number was arrived at, but it sure does seem rather utopian. Yet another source has also indicated that an RTX 5090 Laptop card with a whopping 24 GB of VRAM is also in the works which might launch down the line, but there is little else to be said about it. As MLID notes, NVIDIA has very little to no competition in the high-end laptop segment, which inevitably makes things worse for the end-user. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/330096/nvidi...080-laptop

OneXPlayer G1 Gaming Laptop Unveiled With Compact Enclosure and Strix Point Firepower

OneXPlayer has pulled back the veil on its G1 gaming notebook, and the product sure does look intriguing. Calling it a notebook might not even be fair, considering that its 8.8-inch display barely exceeds tablet territory. However, for lovers of compact gaming systems and handhelds, the G1 looks like it ticks many boxes, and its detachable keyboard is undoubtedly a welcome addition.

The system is powered by AMD's 12-core Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU with 4 Zen 5 and 8 Zen 5c cores, along with a powerful Radeon 890M iGPU with 16 CUs based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture. The aforementioned 8.8-inch display is quite the looker as well, featuring a 2.5K resolution with a speedy 144 Hz refresh rate. At least on paper, it appears that the OneXPlayer G1 leaves very little room for complaint. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/330049/onexp...-firepower

XDefiant Signs Off With Assassin's Creed-Flavored Bang, Delivers 13 New Maps and Ple

Ubisoft announced earlier this month that it would be sunsetting its free-to-play first-person shooter, XDefiant, on June 3, 2025, after dwindling player counts made it unfeasible to continue supporting the live-service game. Despite the game being shut down by Ubisoft, the game's development team at Ubisoft San Francisco apparently still wanted to follow through with some of the content it had in the game's pipeline. In an announcement on X, the game's executive producer clarifies that much of the content that is being delivered in what he calls the last patch contains all the content that was planned for Season 3 along with some content from future seasons of the game, including Season 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Some major highlights in the new patch, are 13 new maps, three new factions, including the Assassins—from Assassin's Creed—six new weapons, and five new game modes. Along with the slew of new content, XDefiant received a handful of gameplay and QoL fixes for both competitive and casual play. The new maps consist of eight new arena maps, four new linear maps, and one new tactical map. XDefiant also got a new progression system that allows players to unlock cosmetics, badges, and other rewards for character progression. The developer also introduced daily rewards and "Credits," the game's new in-game currency that allows players to buy skins and other items from previous seasons. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/330010/xdefi...inal-patch

16-core AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU Outshines Ryzen 9 7945HX3D in Geekben

Ever since AMD introduced Strix Point, enthusiasts like ourselves have been eagerly awaiting details regarding the high-end Strix Halo APUs with integrated graphics that are rumored to be powerful enough for the system to not require discrete graphics at all. Leaks regarding the upcoming performance mobile APU lineup have been trickling out steadily, and a fresh new Geekbench leak reveals the CPU performance of the Ryzen AI+ Max 395 APU, which boasts a 16-core configuration consisting entirely of Zen 5 cores, unlike Strix Point which features a mix of Zen 5 and the smaller Zen 5c cores. And oh dear, are the numbers ever so lucrative. The APU managed to rake in 2,849 points in the single-core department, and a whopping 20,708 points in multicore. As Videocardz correctly notes, this result is far ahead of AMD's current top-end mobile offering, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, which manages around 16,900 points in the multicore test. In single-core, however, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D does edge ahead, with around 2,900 points. That said, the ROG Flow Z13 laptop that the APU was housed in is most likely still in the testing phase, so it is entirely possible that the final product will sport even better performance. That being said, the Apple M4 Max SoC, however, remains in a league of its own with 3,800 points in single-core and a shocking 25,000 points in multicore. With CES 2025 just around the corner, it's only a matter of weeks before the Ryzen AI Max+ lineup finally sees the light of day and reaches our hands.


https://www.techpowerup.com/329963/16-co...-geekbench

32 GB NVIDIA RTX 5090 To Lead the Charge As 5060 Ti Gets 16 GB Upgrade and 5060 Stil

Zotac has apparently prematurely published webpages for the entire NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5000 series GPU line-up that will launch in January 2025. According to the leak, spotted by Videocardz, NVIDIA will launch a total of five RTX 5000 series GPUs next month, including the RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, 5070, and the China-only 5090D. The premature listing has seemingly been removed by Zotac, but screenshots taken by Videocardz confirm previously leaked details, including what appears to be a 32 GB Blackwell GPU.

It's unclear which GPU will feature 32 GB of VRAM, but it stands to reason that it will be either the 5090 or 5090D. Last time we checked in with the RTX 5070 Ti, leaks suggested it would have but 16 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, and there were murmurings of a 32 GB RTX 5090 back in September. Other leaks from Wccftech suggest that the likes of the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti will pack 8 GB and 16 GB of GDDR7, respectively. While the 5090's alleged 32 GB frame buffer will likely make it more adept at machine learning and other non-gaming tasks, the VRAM bumps given to other, particularly Ti-spec, RTX 5000 GPUs should make them better suited for the ever-increasing demands from modern PC games.


https://www.techpowerup.com/329927/32-gb...-vram-spec

Nintendo Switch Leak Tips LCD, Hall Effect Joysticks

With the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 all but a given, much has been said about the new handheld gaming console in leaks and rumors. Now, a new set of supposed leaks from Decky Wizard on X have caused a bit of consternation among the Switch community, given the seemingly random mix of upgrades and perceived downgrades coming to the next-gen Switch. Minor details include larger buttons, a redesigned dock, and three colorways at launch, however, details around the new display and controls are more significant. For starters, the leaks suggest that the Switch 2 will have larger buttons and Hall-effect joysticks, both of which would likely be a massive upgrade in the eyes of most gamers, however it also seems as though the Switch 2 will use an LCD, as opposed to an OLED display, for the base model.

It seems as though most Switch fans were expecting an OLED panel right out the gate, given the Nintendo Switch OLED has been available for quite some time, now. Hall-effect joysticks will also likely solve one of the community's biggest complaints about the Switch controls—that being stick drift—but Nintendo would have to also provide a calibration tool in the Switch software to correct for wear and tear on the joysticks. Larger buttons may also be a welcome change for most Switch gamers, since cramped controls are a fairly common criticism of the original Switch. In addition to the news of the physical and technical specifications, Decky Wizard also claims that the Switch 2 will be lighter than the Steam Deck and be launched as soon as January 2025. In a subsequent post, Decky Wizard uploaded leaked images of the new Switch 2, showing off not only a fresh looking chassis with smaller screen bezels and a new built-in kickstand design, but also the design of the new first-party dock and two new, larger Joycon release buttons on the backs of each Joycon.


https://www.techpowerup.com/329895/ninte...-joysticks

Dynabook Introduces 989-gram Portégé Laptop With Meteor Lake CPUs

Dynabook has introduced the Protégé X30W powered by up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor. At first glance, that hardly seems impressive, but a closer look at the device reveals that the laptop weighs a feather-light 989 grams, or roughly 2.2 lbs. The device is also a convertible, which means that the hinge allows for 360° rotation, effectively converting the laptop into a tablet.

Apart from its lightweight design, there is little else about the laptop that is worth noting. The highest-end variant sports a Core Ultra 7 165H, which is a plenty-powerful chip, featuring 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores for a total of 14 cores and 22 threads, since the Crestmont cores do not support Hyper-Threading. An 8-core Arc iGPU handles the graphics, and delivers decent performance that nearly matches the RTX 2050 Mobile in certain cases. The system features up to 32 GB of DDR5-5200 memory, and up to a 2 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329871/dynab...-lake-cpus

(PR) CoolIT Systems Continues to Expand Manufacturing Capabilities

CoolIT Systems (CoolIT), the world's leader in liquid cooling systems for advanced computing, is continuing to invest in its manufacturing capabilities to support the surging demand for liquid cooling of AI systems. Along with a 25x capacity expansion in a new Calgary, Canada manufacturing facility, CoolIT recently hired Scott Hudson as Vice President of Quality to lead the company's development of world-class quality operations and systems.

"As the leader in direct liquid cooling for over two decades, our customers expect leading performance and reliability from CoolIT products," said CoolIT's COO Patrick McGinn. " Adding Scott as CoolIT's VP of Quality reinforces CoolIT's commitment to developing best-in-class quality standards for liquid cooling products." Scott joins CoolIT from Celestica, where he led the company's global quality strategy for all business segments across over 30 sites. His career spans three decades of quality leadership roles in the worldwide computer hardware industry, overseeing multi-site operations in North America, Asia and Europe. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329803/cooli...pabilities

Former Dauntless Associate Producer Criticizes 'Awakening' Update for "Gutting" Core

We recently reported on the overwhelmingly negative response from the Dauntless community after the game's latest Awakening update and Steam launch. Now, Jessie Leigh Gagnon, a former Phoenix Labs developer and the former associate producer for Dauntless, has also weighed in on the current state of the game and the changes introduced by the indie developer. According to Gagnon's post on LinkedIn, the creative team that birthed Dauntless and maintained it before Phoenix Labs's dark times "never would have made decisions that are so blatantly not player focused." She seemingly attributes the disastrous Steam launch and poor decision-making that led to the maligned update to the studio's new ownership.

According to Gagnon's description, when Dauntless was first launched, Phoenix Labs was an indie studio in the true sense. It was a group of passionate developers who simply wanted to create something fun. In this case a Monster Hunter-like game that wasn't locked to the Nintendo DS and didn't force its players to deal with "aching hands, cumbersome inventory management, and a lore that wasn't super approachable." Since then, though, Phoenix Labs has been through the wringer and lost much of its original creative talent and many of its former executives, supposedly all culminating in a game that seems to have put monetization before all else. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329756/forme...-mechanics

(PR) GameMax Introduces GS SFX Gold Series PSU with ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 Standards

GameMax, an emerging brand of PC gaming components including gaming cases and power supply units, proudly announces the GS SFX Gold Series power supply units featuring ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 standards. The GameMax GS SFX Gold Series features native 12V-2x6 connectors for the latest NVIDIA RTX graphics cards. The GS SFX Gold Series is available in 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models—all of which are available in black and white colors to color-match your PC build!

The circuit design features advanced Active PFC, Half-Bridge LLC Resonance, Synchronous Rectification, and DC-DC topology to ensure high performance and efficiency particularly to the +12V rail for graphics cards. The GS SFX Gold Series PSU's FMD-F161E131B microcontroller intelligently manages the fan with a stop/start function, enabling the fan to stop below 20% load for silent 0 dBA operation. Read full story


https://www.techpowerup.com/329721/gamem...-standards