TechPowerUP NEWS

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CD Projekt Red has officially announced that Cyberpunk 2077's next update, Update 2.3, will be delayed to an as-yet an undetermined date. In a post on X, the game studio revealed that the next major update to Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to land as soon as June 26, but the developer says it will "need some more time to make sure we're happy with it." CDPR also clarified that the scope of the next update will be similar in scope to update 2.2, which launched in December 2024.

Cyberpunk 2077's Update 2.2 addressed a lot of issues in the game and introduced a host of new features, too, including extended vehicle customization, a new photo mode, and a substantial number of character customization options. The exact contents of Update 2.3 have not yet been disclosed, but the hint that the scope will be similar to Update 2.2 suggests that the next update, ostensibly the game's last major update, will likely feature similar quality-of-life changes, bug fixes, and minor in-game upgrades or cosmetics. Unfortunately, those who were hoping for a meatier update with more playable content or story may need to look elsewhere.

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Samsung's Exynos 2500 SoC has appeared on Geekbench, this time giving us a clearer indication of what to expect from the upcoming SoC that will power the next generation of Samsung flagship smartphones. There are three total runs that have appeared on Geekbench, putting forward anywhere between 2303 and 2356 points in the single-core Geekbench 6 benchmark and 8062 and 8076 points in the multicore benchmark. Meanwhile, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite in the current-generation Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra manages a single-core score of 2883 and a multicore score or 9518 on the same Geekbench 6 benchmark. Samsung recently made the Exynos 2500 public, with the spec sheet revealing a Samsung Xclipse 950 GPU paired with 10 Arm Cortex CPUs (1× Cortex-X5, 2× Cortex-A725 at 2.74 GHz, 5× Cortex-A725 at 2.36 GHz, and 2× Cortex A520 at 1.8 GHz).

The new SoC is reportedly the first chip to use Samsung's 3 nm GAA process, and leaks suggest that Samsung may be using the new SoC across its entire next-gen global smartphone line-up, starting with the launch of the Galaxy Z Flip 7. This would be a stark departure from previous releases, where the US versions of the Galaxy S line-up featured Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, with the international Galaxy S smartphones packing the in-house Exynos designs. In recent years, however, Samsung has pivoted to using Snapdragon SoCs across all regions.

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Microsoft is letting Xbox Insiders try out a new library in the Xbox PC app on Windows that brings together games from Steam, Battle.net, Xbox, and Game Pass in one central spot. Once you install a supported title, it automatically shows up in your library and in the recent games list, so you don't have to hunt through different launchers. You can also hide any storefront you don't use in the app's settings to keep your view clean. Before the holidays, Microsoft will roll this feature out to handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X, so you can carry your entire collection on the go. Over time, more PC storefronts will be added, making the Xbox PC app an even more complete hub for your games. To get started, just download the Xbox Insider Hub on your PC, join the PC gaming preview, and you'll see the combined library appear in your Xbox app.

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1047 Games, the developer behind Splitgate and the recently announced follow-up, Splitgate 2, has just announced a round of layoffs to an undisclosed number of "valued 1047 Games team members," according to an announcement on LinkedIn. The studio says that the decision was made at a time when the company is "redirecting resources to build the best game for our players." In addition to the job cuts, 1047 Games's co-founders, Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian, are not receiving salaries at this time. The announcement claims that the studio is working on the next phase of Splitgate 2 and using community feedback to perfect the gameplay experience.

Adding insult to injury, the company's CEO was recently criticized online for wearing a hat that said "Make FPS Great Again" to the Summer Game Fest event shortly after releasing Splitgate 2, which faced a somewhat negative reception because of generic battle royale gameplay mechanics and aggressive monetization tactics. Currently, the game has a "Mixed" review rating on Steam just over a month after its initial launch into Early Access. According to an X post by Proulx, he was unaware of the game's aggressive monetization and $80 launch bundles, which were also part of the reason the game was heavily criticized at launch. The first Splitgate game also had a somewhat mixed response at its initial Beta launch in 2019, so it would not be surprising to see the game and developer bounce back from this hit, however, some of the original Splitgate community seems to have been burned by the rocky launch and CEO's recent statements.

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Intel's next generation Core Ultra 300-series "Nova Lake-HX" enthusiast mobile processor is expected to debut a new BGA package, the BGA2540. This was sniffed out from shipping manifests of prototype boards of the processor. Although not socketed, mobile processors tend to carry forward package sizes and pin maps across generations, to simplify notebook mainboard and cooling solution designs for OEMs. Over the past several generations, the enthusiast notebook segment of mobile processors from Intel, designated by "-HX" in the codename, have meant notebook-friendly BGA variants of the maxed out "-S" segment silicon, with the highest core counts on the by the company in the client segment.

We've known from older reports that the maxed out desktop "Nova Lake-S" sees a significant increase in core counts, with a core configuration of 16 P-cores, 32 E-cores, and 4 low power island E-cores, a 3-tiered hybrid processor topology similar to "Meteor Lake." Intel is looking to at processor base power values as high as 150 W for its top Core Ultra 9 K-series SKUs. It's very likely that this silicon will be carried over with either the same or similar core-count to "Nova Lake-HX," which is why Intel is needing a larger package for mobile. The desktop "Nova Lake-HX" will require a motherboard change, as the processor is expected to debut the new LGA1954 socket.

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AI PCs are a new class of laptops designed to deliver AI-enhanced experiences—from productivity to creativity—that adapt to users' needs and enhance people's lives. For HP's Intel-based AI PCs, Intel contributed more than just hardware like its Intel Core Ultra processors. Intel worked closely with HP to co-engineer and optimize hardware platforms for AI workloads. By fine-tuning performance across the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU), Intel helped HP benchmark and validate real-world use cases, ensuring selected AI applications run efficiently on HP devices.

HP's latest AI PCs for business users—including the EliteBook X, EliteBook Ultra (announced in January at CES 2025) and EliteBook 8 (unveiled in March at HP Amplify)—are examples of how Intel's software and platform teams worked closely with HP to optimize performance and AI readiness on Intel Core Ultra-based systems. "We are delighted by the exceptional results Intel's Client Software team and HP's Commercial Personal Systems team achieved for the recent release of Intel Core Ultra 200V series devices," said Carla Rodriguez, vice president and general manager of the Client Software Ecosystem in the Client Computing Group at Intel.
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Instructions per clock is a metric used to define and compare CPU architecture performance usually. However, enthusiast colleagues at ComputerBase had an idea to test the IPC improvement in GPUs, comparing it across current and past generations. NVIDIA's Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series faces off against the Ada Lovelace-based RTX 40 generation, while AMD's RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9000 lineup challenges the RDNA 3-based RX 7000 series. For NVIDIA, the test used RTX 5070 Ti and 4070 Ti SUPER, aligning ALU counts and clock speeds and treating memory bandwidth differences as negligible. For AMD, the test matched the RX 9060 XT to the RX 7600 XT, both featuring identical ALUs and GDDR6 memory. By closely matching shader counts and normalizing for clock variations, ComputerBase isolates IPC improvements from other hardware enhancements. In rasterized rendering tests across 19 popular titles, NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture delivered an average IPC advantage of just 1% over the older Ada Lovelace.

This difference could easily be attributed to normal benchmark variance. Ray tracing and path tracing benchmarks showed no significant IPC uplift, leaving the latest generation essentially on par with its predecessor when normalized for clock and unit count. AMD's RDNA 4, by contrast, exhibited a substantial IPC leap. Rasterized performance improved by around 20% compared to RDNA 3, while ray-traced workloads enjoyed a roughly 31% gain. Path tracing results were even more extreme, with RDNA 4 delivering nearly twice the FPS, a 100% increase over its predecessor. These findings suggest that NVIDIA's performance improvements primarily stem from higher clock speeds, increased execution unit counts, and enhanced features. AMD's RDNA 4 represents a significant architectural advance, marking its most notable IPC gain since the original RDNA launch.

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Lenovo unveiled its new Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14", 10), the world's first Chromebook powered by MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor and exclusive Google AI features for hybrid AI functionality. Designed for professionals, students and creators, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14", 10) sets a new standard for Chromebooks in many categories, including 50 TOPS for supercharged performance, the capability to handle AI features both on device and via cloud and quad speakers and Dolby Atmos for a truly captivating multimedia experience.

"Our society has embraced the freedom of hybrid and remote work, but that freedom demands the workforce and their devices to be productive regardless of location and to do more in less time," said Benny Zhang, Executive Director and General Manager of Chromebooks in Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group. "The Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14", 10) delivers the most powerful AI capabilities ever on a Chromebook. Whether you are an executive needing AI performance through the day, an artist wishing to create outside the studio, or an everyday user looking to browse, learn or play, this premium device is your perfect everyday companion."
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Thermaltake has launched the WAir CPU Cooler a cooling solution for workstations that handle demanding tasks like 3D rendering and AI processing. This cooler supports Intel LGA4677 and AMD sTR5/SP6 sockets and is capable of delivering up to 500 W TDP cooling capacity. It measures 143.2 x 115 x 165 mm (L x W x H) and has a single-tower design with aluminium fins. Thermaltake WAir cooler features six 6 mm diameter heat pipes connected to a large nickel plated copper base with high-quality solder paste between heat pipes and heat sinks to enhance thermal conductivity.

The WAir uses two upgraded TOUGHFAN 14 Pro units. Each fan is 140.8 x 140.8 x 26.4 mm in size and runs at speeds from 500 to 1500 RPM controlled by PWM. Users can adjust the fan positions to fit different memory module heights. The fans have liquid crystal polymer (LCP) blades that help reduce vibration at top speeds. Each fan delivers up to 83.4 CFM airflow with 1.86 mm-H₂O static pressure and 24.4 dBA noise levels. The fans connect with 4-pin PWM connectors and offer 50,000 hours of operational life. Thermaltake didn't provide exact pricing and availability for the WAir CPU cooler series.

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An AMD research team has introduced a game-changing approach to procedural tree creation that runs entirely on the GPU, delivering both speed and flexibility, unlike anything we've seen before. Showcased at High-Performance Graphics 2025 in Copenhagen, the new pipeline utilizes DirectX 12 work graphs and mesh nodes to construct detailed tree models on the fly, without any CPU muscle. Artists and developers can tweak more than 150 parameters, everything from seasonal leaf color shifts and branch pruning styles to complex animations and automatic level-of-detail adjustments, all in real-time. When tested on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the system generated and pushed unique tree geometries into the geometry buffer in just over three milliseconds. It then automatically tunes detail levels to maintain a target frame rate, effortlessly demonstrating stable 120 FPS under heavy workloads.

Wind effects and environmental interactions update seamlessly, and the CPU's only job is to fill a small set of constants (camera matrices, timestamps, and so on) before dispatching a single work graph. There's no need for continuous host-device chatter or asset streaming, which simplifies integration into existing engines. Perhaps the most eye-opening result is how little memory the transient data consumes. A traditional buffer-heavy approach might need tens of GB, but AMD's demo holds onto just 51 KB of persistent state per frame—a mind-boggling 99.9999% reduction compared to conventional methods. A scratch buffer of up to 1.5 GB is allocated for work-graph execution, though actual usage varies by GPU driver and can be released or reused afterward. Static assets, such as meshes and textures, remain unaffected, leaving future opportunities for neural compression or procedural texturing to further enhance memory savings.
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Rapidus Corporation, a manufacturer of advanced logic semiconductors, today announced a strategic collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software for semiconductor design and manufacturing processes for the 2 nm generation. Rapidus will collaborate with Siemens to jointly develop a process design kit based on the Calibre platform, the industry-standard verification solution that enables highly accurate and efficient physical verification, manufacturing optimization and reliability assessment from semiconductor design through to fabrication, while continuing to further its design and verification ecosystem.

This collaboration supports the manufacturing for design (MFD) concept advocated by Rapidus to achieve high yield and short turnaround time from the early stages of manufacturing. Further, Rapidus and Siemens EDA will build a reference flow that holistically supports design, verification and manufacturing from front-end to back-end. This reference flow provides a smooth development environment for Rapidus' Rapid and Unified Manufacturing Service (RUMS).
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ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solutions, introduces its new USB-C video conferencing monitors—VG41V Series, featuring Windows Hello facial recognition for secure, instant login to digital workspaces. Available in 24-inch and 27-inch Full HD, as well as 27-inch QHD models, the new series is designed for everyday professional use, eliminating virtual meeting setup complexities while enhancing productivity across diverse workspaces.

Optimized Meeting Experience with Intuitive Features
With facial recognition via Windows Hello, professionals can securely log in to their devices in seconds. Building on this ease of access, the VG41V Series' built-in high-quality 5MP webcam comes with adjustable tilt for optimal framing and includes a sliding lens cover that protects users' privacy when the camera is not in use.
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The GeForce RTX 5090 flagship graphics card may be a hot commodity in Asia due its dual-use in AI acceleration farms, and in the US it may be saddled with crippling import tariffs, besides unethical retail practices, but gamers in Europe have it good. ComputerBase.de reports that their price-tracker has detected RTX 5090 cards briefly available at prices lower than MSRP—a first for the RTX 5090 anywhere in the world.

The MSI RTX 5090 Ventus 3X OC was launched as an MSRP-priced card listed at USD $1,999. German retailer Mindfactory.de had the card listed at €1,999 including VAT, which would make this lower than the MSRP and street prices of RTX 5090 in the US and Asia. Hours later, the retailer corrected the price to €2,600. The general trend with graphics card pricing seems to be that EEA (European Economic Area) countries currently have the best pricing on graphics cards, due to their lower import tariffs than the US, relatively rare scalper gray-marketing, and lower demand cards like RTX 5090 for use-cases other than gaming or professional graphics.

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Intel GPUs, both iGPUs and Arc, on Linux, can achieve a surprising 20% performance boost by taking direct action within their own graphics stack. The company has long incorporated security mitigations into its open-source Compute Runtime to protect against vulnerabilities like Spectre, but these safeguards have carried a hidden cost. With the introduction of a build-time option named NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS, Intel now allows users to compile the Compute Runtime without these extra checks, thereby reclaiming up to 20% in OpenCL and Level Zero workloads. Behind the scenes, Intel's engineers have been testing unmitigated builds on GitHub for months, and the results have been clear: disabling these driver-level mitigations can significantly speed up shader compilation, AI-driven upscaling routines, and physics simulations that rely on GPU compute.

Intel's confidence in disabling these checks stems from the fact that modern Linux kernels already address Spectre vulnerabilities comprehensively at the operating system level. To keep users informed, the Compute Runtime build will emit a warning if it detects a kernel lacking the necessary patches, ensuring transparency about any residual risk. Canonical's Ubuntu team has partnered with Intel to introduce this enhancement in its upcoming 25.10 release. But make no mistake, this is Intel's initiative: the company is driving the performance improvements, publishing unmitigated binaries upstream, and coordinating with distribution partners to make the change broadly available. Security teams at Intel have analyzed the potential attack surface and concluded that the performance gains far outweigh the minimal risk, especially given that Intel's own builds have been running unmitigated without incident.

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Cooler Master has introduced the new NR200P case now in its V3 iteration. The NR200P V3 is a Mini-ITX case designed for compact builds requiring high-performance cooling solutions. The case measures 378.2 x 185 x 292 mm with protrusions (18.62-liter volume) while supporting full-size components. The exterior combines aluminium, SGCC steel, mesh panels, and ABS plastic components. The CNC-machined aluminium side panels feature magnetic latching mechanisms for tool-free access. Large mesh side panels facilitate airflow while maintaining component visibility. The NR200P V3 accommodates 240 mm and 280 mm AIO liquid coolers through top-mounted radiator support. Additional cooling options include dual 120 mm or 140 mm fans at the top. Bottom ventilation supports up to two 120 mm slim fans (maximum 15 mm thickness) when no 3.5-inch drive is installed, or one 120 mm slim fan with a drive present.

It can accommodate CPU coolers up to 70 mm in height and supports graphics cards up to 361.5 mm in length, 160 mm in height, and 78.5 mm in width (3.8 slots). A PCIe 5.0 x16 riser cable enables vertical GPU mounting, with an included GPU support bracket for stability. Power supply compatibility covers SFX and SFX-L form factors. Storage capacity includes one 3.5-inch HDD bay (expandable to two) and one 2.5-inch SSD bay (expandable to two). Front I/O provides two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port, and a 3.5 mm headset jack. The Cooler Master NR200P V3 ships in black finish with a two-year warranty (retail pricing was not yet disclosed) targeting users requiring maximum performance in minimal desktop space.

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