TechPowerUP NEWS

[NextPowerUP]

Corsair Gaming, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRSR) ("Corsair" or the "Company"), a leading global provider and innovator of high-performance products for gamers, streamers, content-creators, and gaming PC builders, today announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2023, as well as guidance for 2024. Definitions of the non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release and reconciliations of such measures to their nearest GAAP equivalents are included below under the heading "Use and Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures."

Andy Paul, Chief Executive Officer of Corsair, stated, "I am really excited to see that the gaming market is now showing signs of growth again after relaxing back from the surge that occurred during the pandemic. Consumer spending during the recent holiday period was better than we expected and we see that the high inventory levels at our competitors that were causing heavy discounting are generally back to normal. We saw a 16% year over year increase in our Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment for Q4 2023, which is a reflection of the market returning to growth and also Corsair gaining market share."
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[NextPowerUP]

BIGBIG WON, a trailblazer in gaming peripherals, proudly announces the release of its RAINBOW 2 Pro Wireless Gaming Controller. This cutting-edge controller is poised to redefine gaming experiences across multiple platforms including Windows PC, Xbox, PS4, Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch. This competition grade controller boasts an array of high-end features that cater to the needs of both hardcore gamers and casual gamers alike. The RAINBOW 2 Pro is available for RRP £64.99 from Amazon UK and $64.99 on Amazon. It is also available as a combo with a charging dock, 3 sets of joystick caps and 2 sets of D-pad caps for RRP £79.99 on Amazon UK and $79.99 on Amazon.

The RAINBOW 2 Pro excels in its advanced features designed to provide a competitive edge for gamers. The BIGBIG WON "Elite" App allows real-time adjustments for motion control, joystick, trigger, buttons and Macro settings. The RGB lighting effects can also be personalized through the app, which enhances the gaming experience according to the user's preference. It also features 2 back buttons and 2 additional top buttons, which can be remapped as required. Additionally, Dual Motor Vibration is built-in, which has adjustable intensity levels, helping to make the gaming experience even more immersive. Interchangeable thumb-sticks and D-Pad are even included, which can be swapped for each game genre to help gain an advantage over other players.
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[NextPowerUP]

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading computing solutions company focused on small form factor PCs, announced the launch of Bravo Canyon (ASUS NUC 13 Rugged), the newest addition to the Intel-based Rugged NUC lineup. Set to revolutionize embedded computing with its robust features, unparalleled versatility, and engineered to excel in demanding environments, Bravo Canyon offers a range of processor variants and customization options to meet the diverse needs of industrial applications.

"Bravo Canyon represents a significant leap forward in embedded computing," said Aaron Rowsell, Founder & President of Simply NUC. "With its powerful processor variants, rugged design, and extensive customization options, it's a game-changer for industries seeking reliable and adaptable computing solutions. We're proud to introduce a product that sets a new standard in the field."
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[NextPowerUP]

Last week, DLSS was available at launch in the Stormgate Steam Next Fest demo, and in The Inquisitor. Additionally, DLSS was also available for players of the new Atomic Heart: Trapped In Limbo expansion, and the newly-released Call of Duty: Warzone Season 2. This week, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden launches with DLSS 3, while Smalland: Survive the Wilds and Skull and Bones launch with DLSS 2.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Launches Today With DLSS 3 & DLAA
Focus Entertainment and DON'T NOD's Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden launches February 13th. In New Eden, 1695, communities of settlers are plagued by a dreadful curse. As Banishers, step into their lives, investigate the source of evil, unravel chilling mysteries, explore diverse landscapes, and interact with unforgettable characters whose fate lies in your hands. Immerse yourself in an intimate narrative Action-RPG, taking you on an exhilarating journey between life, death, love and sacrifices.
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[NextPowerUP]

Flight sim fans should suit-up and get ready for action as best-selling gaming headset and accessories maker Turtle Beach Corporation today announced the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flightdeck is now available. VelocityOne Flightdeck is Turtle Beach's premium combat HOTAS (Hands-On Throttle And Stick) flight simulation control system. It is designed to provide full-control mastery in today's sophisticated flight and space combat games on Windows 10 & 11 PCs. VelocityOne Flightdeck is available now from Turtle Beach and participating retailers for $399.99 MSRP.

"Whether you're flying in the skies or stratosphere, VelocityOne Flightdeck delivers an unmatched contemporary flight simulation experience," said Cris Keirn, Interim CEO & SVP of Global Sales, Turtle Beach Corporation. "We're excited to continue expanding our best-selling and award-winning lineup with the new VelocityOne Flightdeck HOTAS."
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[NextPowerUP]

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready software. Version 551.52 WHQL comes with optimization for "Skull and Bones." Among the gaming related bugs fixed with this release are an intermittent micro-stutter noticed with V-Sync enabled; a stuttering issue with "Red Dead Redemption 2" on some Advanced Optimus notebooks; and stability issues seen with "Immortals of Aveum" over extended gameplay sessions. Non-gaming issues fixed with this release include a stutter observed with some web-browsers in certain system configurations.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 551.52 WHQL
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[NextPowerUP]

Cooler Master, a leading provider of PC components, gaming peripherals, and tech lifestyle solutions, has today announced the NR200P V2 - a redesigned new take on the classic high performance NR200P case. The V2 keeps things compact and frees up desk space without sacrificing any of the performance benefits users expect from an NR200P case, such as versatile cooling support and maximized airflow.
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[NextPowerUP]

China's homegrown Loongson 3A6000 CPU shows promise but still needs to catch up AMD and Intel's latest offerings in real-world performance. According to benchmarks by Chinese tech reviewer Geekerwan, the 3A6000 has instructions per clock (IPC) on par with AMD's Zen 4 architecture and Intel's Raptor Lake. Using the SPEC CPU 2017 processor benchmark, Geekerwan has clocked all the CPUs at 2.5 GHs to compare the raw benchmark results to Zen 4 and Intel's Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove) processors. As a result, the Loongson 3A6000 seemingly matches the latest designs by AMD and Intel in integer results, with integer IPC measured at 4.8, while Zen 4 and Raptor Cove have 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. The floating point performance is still lagging behind a lot, though. This demonstrates that Loongson's CPU design can catching up to global leaders, but still needs further development, especially for floating point arithmetic.

However, the 3A6000 is held back by low clock speeds and limited core counts. With a maximum boost speed of just 2.5 GHz across four CPU cores, the 3A6000 cannot compete with flagship chips like AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X running at 5.7 GHz. While the 3A6000's IPC is impressive, its raw computing power is a fraction of that of leading x86 CPUs. Loongson must improve manufacturing process technology to increase clock speeds, core counts, and cache size. The 3A6000's strengths highlight Loongson's ambitions: an in-house LoongArch ISA design fabricated on 12 nm achieves competitive IPC to state-of-the-art x86 chips built on more advanced TSMC 5 nm and Intel 7 nm nodes. This shows the potential behind Loongson's engineering. Reports suggest that next-generation Loongson 3A7000 CPUs will use SMIC 7 nm, allowing higher clocks and more cores to better harness the architecture's potential. So, we expect the next generation to set a bar for China's homegrown CPU performance.

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[NextPowerUP]

Reports are circulating online that Nintendo's upcoming successor to the Switch console, tentatively referred to as the "Switch 2," will offer backward compatibility for physical game cards and digital purchases from the current Switch library. While Nintendo has yet to officially announce the new console, speculation points to a potential reveal as early as next month for a 2024 launch. The backward compatibility claims first surfaced last year when Nintendo America President Doug Bowser hinted at supporting continuity between console generations to minimize the sales decline when transitioning hardware. New momentum behind the rumors comes from gaming industry insiders Felipe Lima and PH Brazil, who, during recent podcasts, stated the Switch 2 has backward compatibility functionality already being shared with game developers.

Well-known gaming leakers "NateTheHate" and others have corroborated that testing is underway for playing current Switch games on new hardware. If true, this backward compatibility would be a consumer-friendly move that breaks from Nintendo's past tendencies of forcing clean breaks between console ecosystems. While details remain unconfirmed by Nintendo, multiple credible sources point to the upcoming Switch successor allowing gamers to carry forward both their physical and digital libraries to continue enjoying this generation's releases. If the compatibility remains, the hardware platform could stay in the playing field of the same vendor—NVIDIA—who provided Nintendo with Tegra X1 SoC. The updated version of the SoC could use a fork of NVIDIA's Orin platform based on Ampere GPU with DLSS, but official details are yet to be seen.

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[NextPowerUP]

Humble Bundle, the digital retailer with a mission to be a force for good in the world, today announced it has surpassed a momentous milestone: raising over a quarter of a billion dollars for charities worldwide, together with its global community of game, book, and software lovers, by directing a portion of nearly every sale to a variety of worthy causes. Today's announcement coincides with the release of the Humble 2023 Social Impact Report, highlighting the results of last year's donations, which exceeded $14.4 million and supported more than 7,500 charities across a range of categories, including Humble's five core social impact focus areas: Health & Well-being, Crisis & Disaster Relief, Equity & Inclusion, Quality Education, and Climate Change & Sustainability.

Founded in 2010 by Jeff Rosen and John Graham, a couple of gamers seeking a new way to raise money for various charities, Humble Bundle pioneered the game bundle-for-charity model. Since then, the company has expanded its offerings and grown its focus on doing good, integrating it into every aspect of its business and operation. Its community has grown, too, demonstrating that being a force for good lies at the heart of what people want from the products and businesses they support.
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[NextPowerUP]

ZALMAN today introduced the P10 series Micro-ATX mini-tower case, which comes in black and white variants. A striking design feature with the case is its pillarless front-left corner, where the front- and left tempered glass panels meet. You still get a glass edge, this isn't a single piece glass panel. Inside, the case features a horizontally partitioned layout, with the bottom portion only accessible by removing the right panel, which is mostly perforated for good airflow. On the left- and front, this portion is completely walled off, but has some side-facing vents for passive ventilation for the PSU bay.

The motherboard bay of the ZALMAN P10 offers maximum clearance of 38.2 cm for graphics cards, and 17.3 cm for CPU coolers. There are 5 expansion slots, and a graphics card reinforcement that can be adjusted to fit the thickness of your graphics card. It counteracts PCB bending of graphics cards over time. Storage options include a single 3.5-inch bay, and an additional 2.5-inch mount. Ventilation options include either three 120 mm or two 140 mm vents at the top; two 120 mm along the bottom; and a 120 mm rear exhaust. You can mount a 360 mm or 280 mm radiator along the top, and a 240 mm radiator along the bottom. The case measures 216 mm x 418 mm x 422 mm (WxHxD), weighing 6.1 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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[NextPowerUP]

Solid State Disks Ltd. (SSDL), a leading manufacturer of solid-state-drives (SSDs) and a value-added reseller (VAR) of latest-technology Flash and DRAM solutions, has launched SCSIFlash-Fast, a swap-in upgrade/replacement for electromechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) that use the SCSI interface. Initially available with 68- and 80-pin connectors and write speeds of up to 80 MB/s, SCSIFlash-Fast uses proven SCSI drive architecture and industrial CFast or M.2 SSD memory (with storage capacities ranging from 2 GB to 1 TB). The drive features configurable hardware, allowing the OEMs of (or those responsible for maintaining) legacy systems to replace or upgrade obsolete HDDs that were made in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and improve system reliability and security.

James Hilken, SSDL's Sales & Marketing Director, says: "There are several computer-based systems in use within aerospace, defense, manufacturing, medical, telecommunications and other sectors that were designed decades ago and were fitted with then state-of-the-art SCSI hard disk drives. With their moving parts, these long-obsolete drives are increasingly failing. Our SCSIFlash-Fast drive is a highly reliable swap-in replacement for virtually any SCSI hard disk drive that's more than 20 years old." SCSIFlash-Fast is configured to order and can replicate the exact behavior of the SCSI HDD it replaces, meaning no modifications need to be made to the host system; which in many cases must not be modified (i.e. its functionality has been certified) or it is simply not cost-effective to do so. With SSDL's SCSIFlash-Fast, the SCSI version is set to that of the host system (SASI, SCSI-1, SCSI-2 or Ultra3) and the disk sector size is set to 256, 512, 768, 1024, 2048 or 4096. Other configurations can also be applied, including the preloading of data.
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[NextPowerUP]

China's National Supercomputer Center (NUDT) introduced their Tianhe-3 system as a prototype back in early 2019—at the time it had been tested by thirty local organizations. Notable assessors included the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center. The (previous generation) Tianhe-2 system currently sits in a number seven position of world-ranked Supercomputers—offering a measured performance of 33.86 petaFLOPS/s. The internal makeup of its fully formed successor has remained a mystery...until now. The Next Platform believes that the "Xingyi" monikered third generation supercomputer houses the Guangzhou-based lab's MT-3000 processor design. Author, Timothy Prickett Morgan, boasted about acquiring exclusive inside knowledge ahead of international intelligence agencies—many will be keeping an eye on the NUDT, since it is administered by the National University of Defence Technology (itself owned by the Chinese government).

The Next Platform has a track record of outing intimate details relating to Chinese-developed scientific breakthroughs—the semi-related "Oceanlight" system installed at their National Supercomputer Center (Wuxi) was "figured out" two years ago. Tianhe-3 and Oceanlight face significant competition in the form of "El Capitan"—this is the USA's prime: "supercomputer being built right now at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in conjunction with compute engine supplier AMD. We need to know because we want to understand the very different—and yet, in some ways similar—architectural path that China seems to have taken with the Xingyi architecture to break through the exascale barrier."
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[NextPowerUP]

Hey Everyone,, thank you for your patience during the server maintenance. With it we deployed three "rapid-fixes" aimed at improving the situation with rewards often not being handed out properly, login-issues, and server capacity. To speak in technical terms, our services as well as our partner services have a rate limiter that denies connections beyond a volume per minute to prevent the entire system from failing. We managed to increase the rate limit from 10,000/min to 20,000/min and the total capacity of concurrent players was increased from 250,000 total to 360,000 total. This was however still not enough as the player count jumped to 360k after 5 1⁄2 minutes.

As such, the issue with login remains. If for any reason you get the "Failed to connect to server"issue it means that the maximum number of login requests for that particular minute is exceeded and/or that the servers are full and will require someone to log out before allowing new players in. As mentioned above, the increased capacity should require less retries to get in.
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[NextPowerUP]

Indie games are known for their daring and often groundbreaking approaches to visuals and storytelling. Ultros is a new indie title coming to PS4, PS5, PC and Mac on February 13 (tomorrow!). The game is a twisted, time-looping sci-fi adventure. It's packed with high-stakes action, clever twists on classic game design ideas, intriguing, and often unsettling environmental storytelling, and crazy-colorful pop-psychedelic visuals that makes you wonder if the game came with its own built-in blacklight. This eye- and mind-dazzling adventure comes to PlayStation courtesy of Sweden-based developer Hadoque. It tells the story of a spacefarer trapped in a nightmare time-cycle within a bizarre, seemingly demonic black-hole acting as a womb for an unspeakable cosmic horror-the titular Ultros. In the words of game director Mårten Brüggeman, "It's a psychedelic sci-fi platforming adventure, a combat- and gardening-driven experience. It also asks a lot of existential questions if you dive into it, as you explore the sarcophagus spaceship and try to understand what it is a metaphor for and what is dwelling inside."

Fight or foster
Ultros is fundamentally a search-action game where you explore an ever-expanding map that opens up further and further as you acquire more abilities for navigation and combat. It's a popular indie game genre, and Ultros expands on it with some unique gameplay twists centered around the ideas of karmic cycles: creation and destruction, nurture and killing. "It's a game about choices," explains Brüggeman, "where you can choose to play in a destructive or constructive way, and the choices you make change your interpretation of your in-game actions." The environment oozes with otherworldly threats, requiring skillful combat to neutralize the assorted hostile lifeforms. Variety is a big emphasis here. Ultros encourages you to use a diverse arsenal of moves in fun and creative ways to dispatch foes: dodge-and-strike attacks, jumping strikes, and even launching foes into the air to turn them into a living projectile weapon. "We want to combat to feel intimate and visceral to emphasize destruction, ruining the balance of disruption and construction within the current cycle. We focused on movements, forcing you to be near them to fight them are integral to what we wanted to do, the intensity and intimacy of one-on-one combat."
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