For those unfamiliar with Jelly Key, I highly encourage going through our previous coverage of the Vietnamese artisan's works wherein we've seen several different examples of highly detailed themes which get put to life on your keyboard courtesy artisan keycaps that use a resin pour over a layer-by-layer assembly incorporating individually molded tiny pieces. In particular, we've covered a keycap before from a previous 8-Bit Series and that is probably my favorite theme from Jelly Key to date. This time round, we have a new group buy that builds upon the previous work called 8-Bit Series—Gaismas Kingdom. The company was kind enough to provide a prototype keycap to examine and show off here for interested users.

This happens to be another of Jelly Key's fascinating Droplet profile keycaps in the so-called Izchili theme. I immediately thought of Amiga games the minute I had this in my hands, and please note that the final keycaps should be done to an even higher standard of finish. The current group buy is set to end in a few hours so those who are eager to buy one need to decide sooner than later! These are available in four designs, four keycap profiles including the naked profile that doesn't have a resin pour, and 11 sizes while costing $55-105 each. There are further discounts and free shipping for those buying multiple keycaps and TechPowerUp readers also get a nice 5% discount code: 5p-w02hfav. See past the break for photos of my prototype space bar keycap, including under the microscope.
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(PR) Deceive Inc. Out Now, Launch Trailer Puts Spotlight on Tripwire's Extraction Shooter
Developer Sweet Bandits Studios and Publisher Tripwire Presents announced that DECEIVE INC., the highly-anticipated multiplayer FPS title that blends stealth and spycraft elements with intense action, launches this week with cross-play support on PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), the PlayStation 5 computer entertainment system, and Xbox Series X|S console system.

DECEIVE INC. deploys players into the world of high-stakes subterfuge, working for a private corporation with a complete monopoly over the international espionage market. Disguise yourself as anyone you meet in an instant, access state-of-the-art gadgets the rest of the world can only dream of, and possess skills that would make Hollywood super spies jealous. But you are not alone. Rival spies are after the same objective and every single one of them is as skilled, cunning, and well-equipped as you are. Blend in, alone or with your team, grab the objective, and break out. In the end, only the right actions and skills will get you that paycheck.
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AMD FSR 3 FidelityFX Super Resolution Technology Unveiled at GDC 2023
AMD issued briefing material earlier this month, teasing an upcoming reveal of its next generation FidelityFX at GDC 2023. True to form, today the hardware specialist has announced that FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0 is incoming. The company is playing catch up with rival NVIDIA, who have already issued version 3.0 of its DLSS graphics enhancer/upscaler for a small number of games. AMD says that FSR 3.0 is in an early stage of development, but it is hoped that its work on temporal upscaling will result in a number of improvements over the previous generation.

The engineering team is aiming for a 2x frame performance improvement over the existing FSR 2.0 technique, which it claims is already capable of: "computing more pixels than we have samples in the current frame." This will be achieved by generating a greater number of pixels in a current frame, via the addition of interpolated frames. It is highly likely that the team will reach a point in development where one sample, at least, will be created for every interpolated pixel. The team wants to prevent feedback loops from occurring - an interpolated frame will only be shown once, and any interpolation artifact would only remain for one frame.
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(PR) SMART Modular Technologies Releases New PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives
SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. ("SMART"), a division of SGH and a global leader in memory solutions, solid-state drives and hybrid storage products announces the introduction of its new T6CN family of PCIe NVMe SSD products which is part of the SMART RUGGED portfolio. T6CN SSDs are designed to fit between very high-performance datacenter SSDs and highly secure, ruggedized SSDs for military, industrial, and telecom applications. Competitively priced, the T6CN is available in M.2 2280, E1.S and U.2 form factors. All of which provide compatibility with PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe technology, delivering faster read, write, data transfer and operating speeds compared to current SSD technology.

The SSDs capacity ranges from 960 GB to 3,840 GB for the M.2, 960 GB to 7680 GB for the E1.S, and 960 GB to 16,360 GB for the U.2 version. T6CN offers speeds up to 3,500/s Sequential Read and 3,200 MB/s Sequential Writes and is compliant with NVMe v1.4 specifications. Gen 4.0 based technology runs exponentially faster than the speed of SATA III.
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UK CMA Provisionally Approves Microsoft's Proposed Acquisition of Activision Blizzard
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulatory body has today delivered its provisional approval of Microsoft's proposed purchase of the Activision Blizzard group, but has added that it will conduct further reviews into the topic of whether the buyout will have any detrimental effect on competition in the area of cloud gaming services: "where the CMA is continuing to carefully consider the responses provided in relation to the original provisional findings. The CMA's merger investigation continues, and it remains due to issue its final report by 26 April 2023."

The antitrust watchdog's stance looks to have changed in a significant way since February, when it declared that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard had the potential to "harm U.K. gamers". New evidence has been presented to the CMA in recent weeks, and its members have moved to provisionally conclude that: "overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK."
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Gigabyte B650 AM5 Motherboard Joins the $125 Crowd
Despite the fact that AMD promised that $125 AM5 are coming, there aren't many such motherboards on the market. The newest addition is the Gigabyte B650M K, which is now available at $124.99. Gigabyte's B650M K will be joining the previously available ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 microATX motherboard, which was the first B650-based motherboard available at $125.

Same as the ASRock motherboard, the Gigabyte B650M K is also a micro-ATX motherboard with the same 8+2+1 VRM, but features four DIMM slots with support for up to 128 GB of DDR5-6400+ memory. Unfortunately, it apparently features two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, rather than a PCIe 5.0 x4, and comes with a single PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot (in addition to the PCIe 3.0 x1). The rest of the specifications include Realtek's Audio, Realtek 2.5 Gb Ethernet, couple of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, Type-A, and USB 2.0/1.1 ports, as well as DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 outputs. Bear in mind that both of these are $139.99 motherboards, discounted down to $124.99, so hopefully, we'll see more of these $124.99 motherboards soon.

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Remnant 2 Gets New Gameplay Trailer
Gearbox Publishing and Gunfire Games have released a new gameplay trailer from Remnant 2, showing pre-alpha footage, with multiple Archetypes and locations. As this is a pre-alpha footage, it might not represent the final gameplay experience, so you can expect more changes before it launches later this Summer.

The new gameplay trailer is set in Yaesha, one of the locations in the game, and shows several Archetypes, or classes, including the Gunslinger, the Handler, and the Challenger. In case you missed it earlier, Remnant 2, as described by the developer, will "pit survivors of humanity against new deadly creatures and god-like bosses across terrifying worlds."
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