TechPowerUP NEWS

[NextPowerUP]

AI-powered image generation has progressed at a remarkable pace—from early examples of models creating images of humans with too many fingers to now producing strikingly photorealistic visuals. Even with such leaps, one challenge remains: achieving creative control. Creating scenes using text has gotten easier, no longer requiring complex descriptions—and models have improved alignment to prompts. But describing finer details like composition, camera angles and object placement with text alone is hard, and making adjustments is even more complex.

Advanced workflows using ControlNets—tools that enhance image generation by providing greater control over the output—offer solutions, but their setup complexity limits broader accessibility. To help overcome these challenges and fast-track access to advanced AI capabilities, NVIDIA at the CES trade show earlier this year announced the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for 3D-guided generative AI for RTX PCs. This sample workflow includes everything needed to start generating images with full composition control. Users can download the new Blueprint today.
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Take-Two Interactive—the owner of Rockstar Games—has publicly endorsed the studio's decision to delay the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI into 2026. Following months of insider whispers, long-time franchise fans were not surprised when reading Rockstar's apology. Initially, Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) was pictured as an important system seller—industry experts and analysts theorized a sharp uptake of PlayStation 5 Pro units. Due to the AAA+ title's planned home console-exclusive release, many hardcore gamers would opt for the best available experience—enabled by flagship hardware.

Naturally, the game's publisher was looking forward to massive sale results in 2025—mainly driven by Rockstar's big open world blockbuster. With a revised release date of May 26—within the next financial year—company leadership remains confident about a current GTA VI-less calendar. Strauss Zelnick—Two Interactive Software's chairman and CEO—believes that an upward trajectory is still on the cards: "we support fully Rockstar Games taking additional time to realize their creative vision for Grand Theft Auto VI, which promises to be a groundbreaking, blockbuster entertainment experience that exceeds audience expectations. While we take the movement of our titles seriously and appreciate the vast and deep global anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI, we remain steadfast in our commitment to excellence. As we continue to release our phenomenal pipeline, we expect to deliver a multi-year period of growth in our business and enhanced value for our shareholders."

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[NextPowerUP]

Astera Labs, Inc., a global leader in semiconductor-based connectivity solutions for AI and cloud infrastructure, today announced its purpose-built PCIe 6 connectivity portfolio is ramping production to fast-track deployments of modern AI platforms at scale. Now featuring gearbox connectivity solutions alongside fabric switches, retimers, and active cable modules, Astera Labs' expanding PCIe 6 portfolio provides a comprehensive connectivity platform to deliver unparalleled performance, utilization, and scalability for next-generation AI and general-compute systems. Along with Astera Labs' demonstrated PCIe 6 connectivity over optical media, the portfolio will provide even greater AI rack-scale distance optionality. The transition to PCIe 6 is fueled by the insatiable demand for higher compute, memory, networking, and storage data throughput, ensuring advanced AI accelerators and GPUs operate at peak efficiency.

Thad Omura, Chief Business Officer, said, "Our PCIe 6 solutions have successfully completed qualification with leading AI and cloud server customers, and we are ramping up to volume production in parallel with their next generation AI platform rollouts. By continuing to expand our industry-leading PCIe connectivity portfolio with additional innovative solutions that includes Scorpio Fabric Switches, Aries Retimers, Gearboxes, Smart Cable Modules, and PCIe over optics technology, we are providing our hyperscaler and data center partners all the necessary tools to accelerate the development and deployment of leading-edge AI platforms."
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[NextPowerUP]

HYTE, a leading manufacturer of cutting-edge PC components and peripherals, announced today its continued partnership with ATLUS for its latest HYTE Collection with Metaphor: ReFantazio. Starting today, fans can pre-order a Y70 computer case themed after the game, accompanying keycaps, desk pads, and more—all with an aesthetic that is fit for aspirant royalty! To learn more, and to pre-order these items, head over here. As part of this latest project, HYTE worked closely with the Metaphor: ReFantazio team on the case, keycaps, and desk pad's design to ensure a high-quality product that is authentic to the game's environment and themes. The Metaphor: ReFantazio Y70 case lovingly displays the game's incredible artwork on its glass panels. Fans can also expect in-game elements thoughtfully integrated across the Y70's metal paneling, a custom metal plate that calls back to the game, and a deep mahogany colorway made for this collaboration.

Fans can also pre-order the Metaphor: ReFantazio Keycap Set, which comes with 152 individual keycaps that are fully compatible with ANSI / ISO / JIS WW keyboards. Like with the Y70, in-game elements, typography, and design inspired by the game, along with the deep mahogany colorway, have also been integrated into the keycaps. As part of this lineup, HYTE is also launching three 900 mm x 400 mm Desk Pads, a 60 cm x 45 cm Wall Scroll, and a Metaphor: ReFantazio keychain with a special glowing effect that lets natural backlight shine through - all of which feature the game's impeccable artwork in stunning detail.
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[NextPowerUP]

Back in April, MSI unveiled the MAG 272UP QD-OLED X24 in China and now the display has tipped up on its global website, suggesting we'll see a world-wide release of what is set to be a more budget friendly 4K QD-OLED gaming monitor from the company. The base specs are quite similar to those of the MPG 272URX QD-OLED, as both models offer a 240 Hz refresh rate, a 0.03 ms response time, a peak HDR brightness of 1000 nits and a VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. Both also have what MSI refers to as a graphene film with a custom heatsink to help cool the QD-OLED panel, as well as MSI's OLED Care 2.0 and a three-year warranty.

However, the MAG 272UP QD-OLED X24 only comes with DP 1.4a support, rather than DP 2.1a, although both displays sport a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports and a USB Type-C input with DP Alt mode. That said, the MAG 272UP QD-OLED X24 only offers a meagre 15 W USB PD charging, whereas the MPG 272URX offer 98 W charging and MSI has also dropped the USB hub and KVM support on the MAG model, but a headphone jack is still present. MSI has also gone for basic VESA Adaptive-Sync support, so no FreeSync or G-Sync support on this one. On the plus side, MSI has added console specific modes at 60 and 120 Hz at three different resolutions, something we haven't seen before and VRR is supported for consoles as well. The overall design remains the same though, making it easy to mistake the affordable SKU for the more feature rich SKU. So far there's no word on pricing outside of China, where it costs 5,499 RMB.

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[NextPowerUP]

ASUS has added a brand-new ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB GDDR7 OC Edition SKU to its wide-ranging NVIDIA GPU portfolio. The company introduced new generation ROG Strix cards earlier this year, but these offerings were missing during the various GeForce RTX 50-series launch periods. Within the first quarter of 2025, ASUS seemingly concentrated on getting its TUF Gaming and PRIME lines onto retail shelves. As reported by VideoCardz, ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5070 Ti evaluation samples seem to be in the possession of media outlets. BenchLife.info has teased an upcoming full review, but their swift "hands-on" bit of coverage divulged an interesting claim about an alleged reshuffling of ASUS product hierarchies.

The article's author—Chris L.—stated: "ROG Strix RTX 50-series is finally on the market! After finishing GeForce RTX 5060 Ti tests, we return to a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card. ASUS has made some changes to the GeForce RTX 50-series, replacing ROG Strix with ROG Astral to become the highest-end graphics card product line (for GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 tiers). As for ROG Strix and TUF Gaming, ProArt, Prime and DUAL series, they provide players with different choices. The flagship ROG Matrix still exists, but we won't see it until it is needed." Currently, new product listings point to ROG Strix being limited to custom (standard and overclocked) GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 options.

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[NextPowerUP]

One of the interesting long-term trends in the commercial market is the shift in how people are functionally using PCs. Over the past few years, AI has gone from a dinner party conversation piece to practical use cases. Hand-waved discussions of future benefits are now concrete benefits in the here-and-now, from writing and validating software code to shaping customer communication. While many of these early AI workloads were executed in the cloud, we are seeing new use cases that require new local PC capabilities - capabilities AMD has been working to develop as part of its larger AI PC initiative. We've seen AI deployment accelerate in PCs, particularly as Microsoft builds these functions right into the operating system via its Windows 11 Copilot+ PC program.

In just two years, we've moved from an environment where the NPU was an unsupported, unknown proposition, to integrating NPU support into first and third-party applications. Commercial OEMs are expected to introduce AI PCs and Copilot+ PCs at a variety of price points throughout 2025, making local AI support more available and affordable. That's an important factor for corporate customers, many of which will be simultaneously negotiating the end of Windows 10 support and a historically large, pandemic-related system refresh wave. AI presents a further variable. The nature of the AI question has evolved over the last couple of years from "Does AI have a future in the enterprise?" to "What are the best practices for enterprise AI and AI PC deployment?" That's a significant shift, and it's worth unpacking in a little more detail.
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[NextPowerUP]

Hollow Knight: Silksong's long gestation period has frustrated many Team Cherry fans. The Adelaide, Australia-based independent development and publishing house has only released one title: Hollow Knight (2017). The much-anticipated sequel was officially delayed two years ago; a "planned" H1 2023 launch window was scuppered. Since then, Metroidvania genre fanatics have pored over the slightest of new details or external insights. Team Cherry has maintained a very low profile the ensuing years, but hopes were elevated in March. At the time, Microsoft's ID@Xbox initiative boasted about their empowering (aka supplementary funding) of development on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Descenders Next, FBC: Firebreak, and "of course Hollow Knight: Silksong." Early last month, Team Cherry's PR and marketing chief—Matthew Griffin—confirmed that the team was working on versions of Silksong for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles. Aditionally, two new in-game screenshots emerged via Nintendo of Japan's official website.

Fresh signs of activity were welcomed and celebrated by the upcoming game's intended audience. More good news has turned up this week—eagle-eyed observers noticed that The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will be previewing a playable build later this year. As disclosed within a new exhibit description: "Game Worlds transports you inside the levels of 30 unforgettable video games, from global blockbusters like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) to pioneer of the life simulation genre The Sims (Electronic Arts), Neopets (World of Neopia) and highly anticipated Australian title Hollow Knight: Silksong, plus more to be announced." The Melbourne-based museum could attract an unprecedented number of paying gamer tourists; playable titles will be showcased until February of next year.
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We're excited to present IBM Granite 4.0 Tiny Preview, a preliminary version of the smallest model in the upcoming Granite 4.0 family of language models, to the open source community. Granite 4.0 Tiny Preview is extremely compact and compute efficient: at FP8 precision, several concurrent sessions performing long context (128K) tasks can be run on consumer grade hardware, including GPUs commonly available for under $350 USD. Though the model is only partially trained—it has only seen 2.5T of a planned 15T or more training tokens—it already offers performance rivaling that of IBM Granite 3.3 2B Instruct despite fewer active parameters and a roughly 72% reduction in memory requirements. We anticipate Granite 4.0 Tiny's performance to be on par with that of Granite 3.3 8B Instruct by the time it has completed training and post-training.

As its name suggests, Granite 4.0 Tiny will be among the smallest offerings in the Granite 4.0 model family. It will be officially released this summer as part of a model lineup that also includes Granite 4.0 Small and Granite 4.0 Medium. Granite 4.0 continues IBM's firm commitment to making efficiency and practicality the cornerstone of its enterprise LLM development. This preliminary version of Granite 4.0 Tiny is now available on Hugging Face—though we do not yet recommend the preview version for enterprise use—under a standard Apache 2.0 license. Our intent is to allow even GPU-poor developers to experiment and tinker with the model on consumer-grade GPUs. The model's novel architecture is pending support in Hugging Face transformers and vLLM, which we anticipate will be completed shortly for both projects. Official support to run this model locally through platform partners including Ollama and LMStudio is expected in time for the full model release later this summer.
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At some point this week, the population of ASUS GeForce cards has grown again. In a very quiet manner, the brand has added over twenty new SKUs to its Team Green portfolio. The Taiwanese company seems to be catching up with a nearby AIB rival—since February, MSI has stealthily expanded its graphics card library. It will likely take a while—for PC hardware news outlets—to comb through everything, but momomo_us and Wccftech have put spotlights on two compelling "White Edition" spin-offs of already launched ASUS GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB and RTX 5070 12 GB custom models. The manufacturer's TUF Gaming division is best known for running with an industrial/military aesthetic on mid-tier positioned products—a standard palette combines gunmetal gray tones, silver highlights and minimal ARGB lighting zones.

The freshly introduced TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB GDDR7 White OC Edition will be deployed with the exact same specifications and "military-grade" components present on its traditionally-shaded sibling. In a similar manner, the new PRIME GeForce RTX 5070 White OC Edition 12 GB GDDR7 SKU leverages a repeat of original model specifications. The ASUS global website does not provide pricing or availability details, at the time of writing. Under normal circumstances, PRIME graphics cards were intended to be "baseline MSRP" conformant. It is not clear whether this white-hued + overclocked variant will hover close to NVIDIA's recommended GeForce RTX 5070 starting level: $549.00. Unfortunately, both of these brand-new almost "all-white" setups do not extend to contained PCB designs—we are probably looking at standard model boards. Gaming graphics card enthusiasts have heaped praise on PowerColor; thanks to their inclusion of suitably pale PCBs within "Spectral White" products.
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In December, we reported that Intel's next‑generation Arc graphics cards, based on the Xe3 "Celestial" IP, are finished. Tom Petersen of Intel confirmed that the Xe3 IP is baked, meaning that basic media engines, Xe cores, XMX matrix engines, ray‑tracing engines, and other parts of the gaming GPU are already designed and most likely awaiting trial fabrication. Today, we learn that Intel has reached pre‑silicon validation, meaning that trial production is imminent. According to the X account @Haze2K1, which shared a snippet of Intel's milestones, a pre‑silicon hardware model of the Intel Arc Xe3 Celestial IP is being used to map out frequency and power usage in firmware. As a reminder, Intel's pre‑silicon validation platform enables OEM and IBV partners to boot and test new chip architectures months before any physical silicon is available, catching design issues much earlier in the development cycle.

Intel provides OEMs and IBVs access to a secure, cloud‑based environment that faithfully emulates hardware‑representative systems, allowing developers to validate firmware and software stacks from anywhere without the need for physical labs. Most likely, Intel is running massive emulations of hardware on FPGAs, which act as an ASIC chip—an Arc Xe3 GPU in this case. The pre‑silicon validation team is now optimizing the power‑frequency curve and the voltage in sleep, rest, and boost states, as well as their respective frequencies. With the Xe3 IP taking many forms, engineers are experimenting with every possible form factor, from mobile to discrete graphics. Additionally, data pathways depend on these frequency curves, which in turn rely on power states that allow voltage to spike up and down as the application requires. As this work is now complete, engineers are moving on to other areas for optimization, and once the silicon returns from volume production, it will be fully optimized. We expect the first trial of silicon soon, with volume production by the end of the year or in early 2026.

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ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, the standalone multiplayer co-op action survival game by FromSoftware, Inc. and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., unveiled a new trailer to showcase an overview of the systems at players' disposal to conquer the game's various challenges in its harsh and unforgiving world. The network test was just a glimpse of the surface of the game's malleability, as the world of Limveld can twist and change with each run. Discover what awaits players when ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN launches later this month, by watching the new Gameplay Overview trailer (below).

In ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, players must make split-second decisions about combat and exploration across a map that can fluctuate with different biomes, weapons, and enemies in order to become stronger, and outrun the encroaching circle of fire to be able to take on terrifying bosses at the end of each day. This culminates on the third day, where if players were successful in surviving the night must take on one of the Nightlords—new bosses for this version. Nightfarers must learn to cooperate to take down these challenges, combining their unique abilities together for an unparalleled experience in the ELDEN RING universe. All is not lost for those who fall in defeat. Unsuccessful runs will grant players relics to allow them to customize and upgrade their characters tailored to their personal play styles.
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Today, we are looking at the latest benchmark results for NVIDIA's upcoming RTX PRO 6000 "Blackwell" workstation-class GPU. Based on the new GB202 GPU, this professional visualization card features an impressive 24,064 CUDA cores distributed across 188 streaming multiprocessors, with boost clocks up to 2,617 MHz. It also introduces 96 GB of GDDR7 memory with full error‑correcting code, a capacity made possible by dual‑sided 3 GB modules. In Geekbench 6.4.0 OpenCL trials, the PRO 6000 Blackwell registered a total score of 368,219. That result trails the gaming‑oriented GeForce RTX 5090, which posted 376,858 points despite having fewer cores (21,760 vs. 24,064 of RTX PRO) and a lower peak clock of 2,410 MHz versus the 2617 MHz of RTX PRO.

A breakdown of subtests reveals that the workstation card falls behind in background blur (263.9 versus 310.7 images per second) and face detection (196.7 versus 241.5 images per second), yet it leads modestly in horizon detection and Gaussian blur. These mixed outcomes are attributed to pre‑release drivers, a temporary cap on visible memory (currently limited to 23.8 GB), and power‑limit settings. If the card ran on release drivers, software (especially OpenCL) could greatly benefit from more cores and higher max frequency. One significant distinction within the RTX PRO 6000 family concerns power consumption. The Max‑Q Workstation Edition is engineered for a 300 W thermal design point, making it suitable for compact chassis and environments where quiet operation is essential. It retains all 24,064 cores and the full 96 GB of memory, but clocks and voltages are adjusted to fit the 300 W budget. By contrast, the standard Workstation and Server models allow a thermal budget of up to 600 W, enabling higher sustained frequencies and heavier compute workloads in full‑size desktop towers and rack‑mounted systems.
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The first couple of paragraphs within Anthropic's "Securing America's Compute Advantage: (Our) Position on the Diffusion Rule" article are standard fare. Roughly half-way through a read of this policy-related piece, the North American (Amazon-backed) AI startup makes some bizarre claims about the smuggling of AI-oriented products into China. Given ongoing global tensions and growing industry demands, these activities are somewhat expected—but Anthropic leadership described very specific methodologies. As stated within their "Chip Smuggling is a Major Threat" passage: "China has established sophisticated smuggling operations, with documented cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of chips. In some cases, smugglers have employed creative methods to circumvent export controls, including hiding processors in prosthetic baby bumps and packing GPUs alongside live lobsters." Specific bits of hardware were not mentioned in this section, but the author later alludes to the frictionless transfer of thousands of "NVIDIA H100 advanced chips" into Chinese territories.

In a statement issued to CNBC, a Team Green spokesperson dismissed Anthropic's fanciful claims: "American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in 'baby bumps' or 'alongside' live lobsters." This very public spat has received mainstream attention; with further coverage documenting additional "to and fro" barbs. NVIDIA criticized Anthropic's anti-foreign competition stance: "China, with half of the world's AI researchers, has highly capable AI experts at every layer of the AI stack. America cannot manipulate regulators to capture victory in AI." Amusingly, Anthropic's operations rely heavily on Team Green hardware—many online critics reckon that top US AI companies are jostling for priority access to cutting-edge GPUs/accelerators. In reaction to NVIDIA's dismissal of their report, a company spokesperson retorted with: "Anthropic stands by its recently filed public submission in support of strong and balanced export controls that help secure America's lead in infrastructure development and ensure that the values of freedom and democracy shape the future of AI."

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[NextPowerUP]

The momentum around Deadzone's Early Access release has been amazing! Since this week's launch, over 30,000 players have jumped in, and the feedback has been super helpful. Thanks everybody! The most-requested feature so far is offline single-player mode, so we're making it a top priority. You'll be able to play Deadzone Rogue offline in single-player mode ASAP—we're aiming to have a patch out and live as quickly as possible.

We're also sorry if it wasn't clear that an online connection was required. We've updated our Steam page "System Requirements" with this info for now. Note: co-op mode will still require online play, so everyone can share the same game experience in real time. Thanks again for your support, it's been so exciting to see so many players enjoying Deadzone! In the meantime, keep the bug reports and feedback coming through Steam reviews, or Discord—in our #feedback channel. Let's make this the best game possible!
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