AMD recently expanded its X3D lineup with the Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a new entry that slots in below the Ryzen 7 7800X3D as a more affordable way to get 3D V-Cache on the AM5 platform. Launched on July 16 at $329, the 7700X3D is essentially built from the same silicon as the 7800X3D, just with lower clocks and a price tag that undercuts it by $120 at launch.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D, on the other hand, needs no introduction at this point. Launched back in April 2023 at $449 (now $360), it quickly became one of the most recommended gaming CPUs on the market and has held that reputation for over three years. AMD has kept it in the lineup even as newer X3D chips took the place at the top of the best CPU for gaming charts, which says a lot about how well it has aged.

With the 7700X3D now available, AM5 builders finally have a cheaper way into the X3D club without stepping down to the six-core Ryzen 5 7600X3D. The obvious question is how much performance actually gets left on the table by going with the cheaper option, and whether the 7800X3D's higher clocks are worth the extra money in 2026.

Using data from our CPU benchmark hierarchy and individual reviews of both chips, we’re going to compare them point-for-point across gaming, application performance, power consumption, and more.

Features and Specifications: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

The Ryzen 7 7700X3D is the newer of the two chips here, launching on July 16, 2026, priced at $329. For the time being, it's a Newegg exclusive in North America, at least for this quarter, before wider retail availability presumably follows. It's built on the same Zen 4 architecture as the rest of the Zen 4 X3D family and manufactured on TSMC's N5 process.

The chip features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 4.0 GHz and a boost clock of 4.5 GHz. That boost clock is notably 500 MHz lower than the 7800X3D, which is really the main differentiator between the two chips on paper. AMD has essentially taken 7800X3D silicon that couldn't hit the higher clocks and repackaged it as a cheaper SKU.

For the cache, the Ryzen 7 7700X3D carries the full 96MB of 3D V-Cache-enabled L3, for a total cache pool of 104MB once you factor in L2. This matches the 7800X3D exactly, and it's the reason the 7700X3D isn't just a watered-down budget chip.

The Ryzen 7 7700X3D uses the AM5 socket and supports DDR5 memory exclusively, with capacities of up to 128 GB. It also supports PCIe 5.0 connectivity for both storage and GPU lanes. The chip has a 120W TDP, identical to the 7800X3D, and integrated graphics are included in the form of AMD Radeon Graphics with 2 CUs running at 2,200 MHz (same as the 7800X3D).

Now onto the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which launched in April 2023. It's also an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 chip built on TSMC's N5 node, so the core architecture and process node are shared between both CPUs. Where it separates itself is clock speed, with a 4.2 GHz base clock and a considerably higher 5.0 GHz boost clock.

The 7800X3D carries the same 96MB of L3 cache as the 7700X3D, along with the same 104MB total cache figure. It also uses the AM5 socket with DDR5-5200 support up to 128GB, the same 120W TDP, and the same PCIe 5.0 lane configuration.

Neither CPU officially supports a traditional multiplier overclock in the way non-X3D Ryzen chips do. However, AMD has gradually opened up more headroom for Curve Optimizer and PBO tuning on its X3D lineup since the 7800X3D's launch. We'll get into that in more detail in the overclocking round.

Zooming out, it's clear these two CPUs are much closer than a typical faceoff matchup. The Ryzen 7 7700X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D share the same core count, the same cache pool, the same socket, the same memory support, and the same TDP. The only meaningful difference on paper is the 500 MHz deficit on the 7700X3D's boost clock, and any price gap that comes with ti (though that gap is small).

That makes this round more or less straightforward, with only one factor tipping the scales in the favor of the 7800X3D.

⭐ Winner: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

The 7800X3D still wins on paper thanks to its higher boost clock, but barely. With identical cache, cores, and platform support, this is about as close as a spec sheet comparison gets.

Gaming Benchmarks and Performance: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

For gaming, we're looking at a 16-game test suite at 1080p, with settings varying between High and Ultra depending on the title. That should give us a clear picture of how the new Ryzen 7 7700X3D stacks up against its more expensive sibling in the games people are actually going to play. We tested the two CPUs with a GeForce RTX 5090 to remove any potential GPU bottlenecks.

We used identical systems for testing. For a full breakdown of the platforms we used, see our Ryzen 7 7700X3D review and Ryzen 7 7800X3D review.

Starting off with our 16-game FPS geomean, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D leads the Ryzen 7 7700X3D with an average of 181.8 FPS, compared to 174.3 FPS for the newer chip. That works out to a 4.3% advantage for the 7800X3D. The gap widens slightly in 1% lows, where the 7800X3D puts out 124 FPS against 118 FPS for the 7700X3D, a difference of about 5%.

It's a modest lead across the board, but a lead nonetheless. Both CPUs comfortably outpace the rest of the field here, including the pricier Core i7-14700K and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, so this really comes down to a battle within AMD's own X3D lineup.

Looking at individual titles, the story stays fairly consistent. In Baldur's Gate 3, the 7800X3D leads the 7700X3D by 6.4%, and the gap is similar in The Last of Us Part One at 5.6% and Marvel Rivals at 5.5%. Hogwarts Legacy sees the 7800X3D ahead by 4%, and 007: First Light comes in at a 3.2% lead.

However, the margin shrinks considerably in a few titles. Flight Simulator 24 and Minecraft RT both land in the 2% range, and Crimson Desert is even closer at just 1.4%. Interestingly, DOOM: The Dark Ages is essentially a dead heat, with the 7800X3D ahead by less than 1%, at 201.9 FPS to the 7700X3D's 200 FPS.

So yes, the 7800X3D wins every title we tested, but in a good chunk of them, you'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference without a frame counter on screen. However, that is what you would expect from a CPU that is essentially the same, with a cut-down boost clock.

Speaking of the clocks, the 7800X3D averaged 4,726 MHz across our test suite, compared to 4,505 MHz on the 7700X3D. That's a 4.9% higher average clock speed for the 7800X3D, and it lines up almost exactly with its FPS advantage, so the extra frequency headroom appears to be the deciding factor here.

Where the 7700X3D claws back some ground is in power, temperatures, and value. The newer chip drew just 60.9 watts on average during our gaming tests, compared to 67.3 watts for the 7800X3D, a 9.5% reduction in power draw. That also translates to lower temperatures, with the 7700X3D running at an average of 55°C versus 62°C for the 7800X3D, a full 7°C cooler than its sibling.

Safe to say, the 7700X3D is also the more efficient chip of the two. It managed 2.86 FPS-per-watt in our testing, compared to 2.70 for the 7800X3D, making it about 6% more efficient. The value picture tells a similar story, with the 7700X3D delivering 0.53 FPS-per-dollar against 0.50 for the 7800X3D — though that assumes a $360 price for the 7800X3D, and we’ve seen it sell for the same price as the 7700X3D multiple times previously. Obviously with both CPUs at $330, the 7800X3D comes out ahead on value.

⭐ Winner: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

The 7800X3D wins every game we tested, and while several of those wins are razor thin, a win is still a win. The 7700X3D answers back with better efficiency, cooler temperatures, and a stronger price-to-performance ratio, at least at MSRP, but this round is about raw gaming performance, and the 7800X3D still has the edge there.

Productivity Performance: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

AMD’s X3D chips aren’t top productivity performers, unless you spring for something like the Ryzen 9950X3D. Still, application performance is important even if you primarily use your PC for gaming. We have a range of tests in rendering, encoding, web performance, and more that compromise or multithreaded and single-threaded geomeans, which you can see in the gallery below.

In these workloads that are concerned with raw CPU performance, clock speed alone can make a significant difference. That tracks with our results, with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D consistently providing a larger advantage over the 7700X3D in application performance than it does in games.

Starting with our multi-threaded performance ranking geomean, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D scores 291 points, compared to 272 points for the Ryzen 7 7700X3D. That puts the 7800X3D ahead by 7% on average. It is not a massive gap, but it is a consistent one, as it shows up across every multi-core test we ran.

In Cinebench 2024's multi-core test, the 7800X3D leads the 7700X3D by 4.7%, with the same pattern showing up in Cinebench 2026 at a 5.3% lead. POV-Ray tells a similar story, with the 7800X3D ahead by 7.7%, and Blender's Junkshop scene puts the 7800X3D 6.25% faster than the newer chip.

The encoding tests follow the same trend. In HandBrake's x265 10-bit encode, the 7800X3D is 7.7% faster than the 7700X3D, and that lead holds nearly identical at 7.6% in SVT_AV1 encoding. JPEG-XL multi-threaded decode shows the 7800X3D ahead by 7.2%.

Interestingly, the gap in every single multi-threaded benchmark sits somewhere between 4% and 8%, so there is no real outlier here in either direction. Since core and thread counts are identical, this is really just a straightforward reflection of the 7800X3D's higher boost clocks doing their job across sustained, all-core loads.

Moving on to single-threaded performance, the gap actually widens a bit. Our single-threaded performance ranking geomean has the 7800X3D at 215 points against 195 points for the 7700X3D, which is a 10.3% lead for the pricier chip.

This makes sense when you consider how single-core workloads work. With fewer cores active, the CPU can push individual cores harder within its power budget, so the chip with the higher clock ceiling pulls further ahead than it does in multi-core tests where thermal and power limits are shared across all cores at once.

The same pattern shows up across the individual single-threaded tests. Cinebench 2024's single-core result favors the 7800X3D by 9.8%, and Cinebench 2026 comes in nearly identical at 9.8% as well. POV-Ray's single-core test shows the widest gap of the round, with the 7800X3D ahead by a noticeable 11.1%.

In the Lame audio encoding tests, the 7800X3D finishes 8.8% faster in the standard test and 9.5% faster in the extended version. WebXPRT4, which measures browser and JavaScript performance, has the 7800X3D ahead by 9.7%.

It is worth remembering that neither of these CPUs was really built with productivity as the main focus. The extra 3D V-Cache that makes them so good at gaming doesn’t help much in these tests, and if anything, the lower clock speeds that come with fitting that cache onto the die work against them in these tests.

⭐Winner: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

The 7800X3D wins every single productivity test we ran, with leads ranging from roughly 5% in multi-threaded work up to 11% in single-threaded tasks. It is a clean sweep, though the margins stay consistent enough that the 7700X3D never looks completely outmatched.

Overclocking: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

AMD introduced traditional multiplier-based overclocking with Zen 5 X3D CPUs. However, the Ryzen 7 77003D and 7800X3D don’t have access to that. These CPUs stack the cache on top of the compute die, acting as an insulating layer. New Zen 5 X3D CPUs instead keep the cache below the compute die.

That said, AMD loosened things up compared to the first-gen X3D chips. Both the 7700X3D and 7800X3D support Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer, which let you push sustained boost clocks a bit further and shave voltage where the silicon allows it, without touching the core multiplier directly. Memory and Infinity Fabric overclocking remain fully open on both chips too, and EXPO makes hitting rated DDR5 speeds simple enough.

Given that the 7800X3D already ships with higher stock clocks and a bit more thermal headroom than the 7700X3D, it also tends to respond slightly better to PBO tuning, since it has more room to stretch before hitting the same limits. The 7700X3D isn't far behind, and its lower stock power draw means it has some slack of its own to work with when pushed.

Realistically, this round is a wash in terms of actual tools available. Both chips are locked in the same way, and both get the same PBO and Curve Optimizer toolkit. The only real difference comes down to how much headroom each chip has to give up before hitting a wall, which slightly favors the 7800X3D, but it is still a tie overall.

⭐Winner: Tie

Both CPUs are limited to the same PBO and Curve Optimizer tuning since neither got AMD's reworked cache layout, so this round is essentially a tie between the two.

Power Consumption, Efficiency, and Cooling: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

For power consumption, we measured power draw across idle, active idle, and full load scenarios, then broke things down further into efficiency metrics to see which chip gets more work done per watt.

At idle, the Ryzen 7 7700X3D consumed just 19 watts, compared to 25 watts for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, making the 7700X3D 31.6% more efficient at rest. That gap narrows slightly in an active-idle scenario like YouTube playback, where the 7700X3D drew 22W against 28W for the 7800X3D, a 27.3% difference. Even while doing nothing demanding, the newer chip is sipping noticeably less power.

Moving on to all-core workloads, in our y-cruncher multi-threaded AVX power test, the Ryzen 7 7700X3D consumed 78W, while the Ryzen 7 7800X3D drew 89W, which is a 14.1% increase. The same pattern shows up in Linpack, where the 7800X3D consumed 10.8% more power than the 7700X3D.

We see the gap growing wider in our rendering tests. Cinebench 2024's multi-core render has the 7800X3D pulling 88W compared to 74W for the 7700X3D, an 18.9% increase, and Blender's Junkshop scene shows an even wider 23% gap. The encoding tests land somewhere in between, with the 7800X3D drawing 11.1% more power in HandBrake x265 and 15.3% more in SVT_AV1 encoding.

We even looked at single-threaded power draw, and the same pattern can be seen here as well. In y-cruncher's single-threaded AVX test, the 7700X3D consumed 32W, while the 7800X3D needed 39W, which is a 21.9% increase. This lines up with the more conservative power budget AMD appears to have given the 7700X3D, as it prioritizes efficiency over the extra clock speed the 7800X3D gets to use.

To determine said efficiency, we looked at the performance delivered per watt. In Cinebench 2024, the 7700X3D managed 14.4 points per watt compared to 12.6 for the 7800X3D, making it 14.3% more efficient in this test. Linpack's GFLOPs-per-watt-hour metric shows a similar story, with the 7700X3D being 12.2% more efficient in this test. In HandBrake x265, the watts-per-FPS numbers are close, but the 7700X3D still edges ahead by 4.6%.

We can also visualize this using our scatterplots. In the Linpack power efficiency chart, the Ryzen 7 7700X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D sit almost on top of each other toward the bottom-left of the graph, both well ahead of the Core i7-14700K and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus in efficiency. The HandBrake x265 scatter plot tells a slightly different story. The 7700X3D sits marginally lower in energy use, while the 7800X3D pushes a bit further right thanks to its higher FPS, landing both chips close together towards the middle of the plot.

Curiously, the 7800X3D never falls behind by a wide margin in these efficiency charts, but the 7700X3D is consistently the more frugal chip whenever raw wattage is being measured directly. The long and short of it is that AMD seems to have dialed back the power ceiling on the 7700X3D without giving up much in the way of real-world efficiency, which makes sense given it is the newer, more refined part in this matchup.

⭐Winner: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

The Ryzen 7 7700X3D draws less power across idle, active idle, and full-load scenarios, and it backs that up with better efficiency numbers in nearly every test we ran. The 7800X3D still performs faster, but not by enough to justify its higher power draw in this round.

Pricing: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D

Pricing is interesting as this is where the two chips get quite close, since they share the same platform, the same socket, and largely the same feature set. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D currently sits at $340, though it’s previously sold closer to $340, while the newer Ryzen 7 7700X3D comes in at $330, making it $10 cheaper out of the gate.

That $10 difference on the CPU itself is straightforward enough, and the platform costs line up, as well. Both CPUs support the same AM5 platform. A decent B650 board runs about $150-$200, while X670E boards with better VRMs and connectivity climb into the $250-$350 range.

Memory requirements are also identical, since both CPUs support DDR5 exclusively. A 32GB DDR5-6000 kit, which is the sweet spot for AM5 platforms, currently runs between $300 and $400 depending on the brand and timings. Given the ongoing RAMpocalypse, that price could shift, but it applies equally to both chips, so it does not tilt the comparison one way or the other.

Both CPUs are remarkably efficient, but they run hotter than what their power draw suggests; that's the insulation effect of the cache at work. A competent air cooler between $30 and $80 is enough to keep the chip cool, though you might want to step up to a midrange AIO liquid cooler between $80 and $120.

Platform longevity is identical between the two as well, since both are on the AM5 platform that AMD has committed to supporting for years to come. Neither chip has an advantage in future upgrade paths, so this round really does come down to dollars and cents.

And that makes picking a winner here tricky. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D has seen consistent price drops, with it dropping from $360 to $340 just in the time between writing and publishing this article. The Ryzen 7 7700X3D briefly dropped down to $290, though it climbed back up to $330 and has remained there since.

⭐ Winner: Tie

This round is a tie because, depending on the day, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D might be the exact same price (we've actually seen it cheaper on sale) than the 7700X3D. If you want a shorthand, if you can buy the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for less than $350, it makes up the extra cost in performance. Otherwise, the 7700X3D comes out ahead on value.

Bottom Line: Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D

After a six-round matchup, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D comes out on top with a 5-3 scoreline, coming ahead in features, gaming performance, and productivity, while coming in a tie with the 7700X3D in pricing and power consumption.

The 7800X3D's wins all trace back to the same factor: higher clock speeds. It has more headroom baked in from the factory, and that advantage carries through gaming performance and productivity workloads. Its victory in both of these categories was slim, but consistent.

The Ryzen 7 7700X3D answers back where it counts the most for a lot of buyers. It draws noticeably less power at idle and under load, runs slightly cooler, and is more efficient across nearly every metric we tested. That efficiency doesn’t translate into direct savings, however. Both chips have a very similar thermal profile.

If you want the fastest possible gaming and productivity performance on this platform and don't mind paying a bit more upfront, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the CPU to get. The performance gap isn't enormous, but it is still noticeable enough across every round we tested.

Given how close these two chips actually are once you factor in price and efficiency, this is one of the tighter faceoffs we've done. Still, the numbers don't lie, and the 7800X3D is the overall victor in this battle.

⭐ Winner: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

More CPU Faceoffs

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 vs Ryzen 9 9950X3D
• Intel Core i5-14400 vs AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
• AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D vs Intel Core i9-14900K
• AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D vs Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The PlayStation 5 emulation scene has been a wonder to witness, with rapid progress matching the community's ambition. The latest development on this frontier is SharpEmu, an open-source PS5 emulator, successfully running on the Steam Deck with Astro's Playroom even booting to show the PlayStation Studios loading screen. The framerate doesn't go past 1 FPS, but the fact that it's even running is very impressive.

We scoured the internet for more information on this but couldn't find anything. This seems to be the first and only case of someone getting a PS5 game to load on a Steam Deck without streaming involved. The video above shows the Steam Deck in its desktop mode inside SteamOS, which is based on Linux. Performance fluctuates between 0.5 FPS and 1 FPS according to the overlay in the corner, and the audio is just as choppy.

SharpEmu can smoothly run lightweight 2D titles like Dead Cells and Dreaming Sarah on more capable hardware, but the team's focus is not on compatibility. KytyPS5 is far more advanced in terms of the games people have been able to boot on it, including 3D titles like Demon's Souls. However, Kyty is limited to Windows while SharpEmu has native support for Linux and Mac, and there's even an unofficial Android fork.

We tried this version on a OnePlus 12 and were able to get Dreaming Sarah to show an initial splash screen with the developer's logo. After that, though, the screen turns black, and nothing happens, despite the FPS counter constantly hovering around 60 FPS. A few questionably optimistic users on Reddit have even suggested running SharpEmu on Android through Winlator, so that GTA VI can be played on Android once it launches.

Just like the Steam Deck, even the fact that the game launches on Android is a mighty feat and a testament to the sheer ambition of this community. SharpEmu is only meant for x86 devices; it runs on Apple Silicon Macs through the Rosetta 2 translation layer, and on Windows-on-Arm devices through Microsoft's Prism translation layer. But since it's written in C# from scratch, evidently, the code can be recompiled for Android.

With the ongoing component crisis making even consoles more expensive to purchase, and the death of physical media right around the corner, emulation is once again being touted as a cornerstone of preservation. With a roadmap to playing GTA VI on PC without waiting a few years for a port no doubt in the back of everyone's minds.

Nvidia has once again silently raised the price of its RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell on its US Marketplace website to $16,000. The card was previously listed for $13,250, which itself was a price hike earlier this year since it actually launched at $8,565. Workstation GPUs of this caliber don't really have an MSRP since no one's buying them at retail, but we saw pre-orders for this GPU as low as $7,673 back in March 2025.

• RTX Pro 6000 at Newegg: $13,998 (Old Price)

That's when the card was first announced, and it went on sale a month later, in April 2025, where initial listings had it up for $8,435 for bulk orders and $8,565 for single-unit purchases. This means the June 2026 change from $8,435 to $13,250 was already a 57% price increase, and now, from $13,250 to $16,000, we're seeing a roughly 20% hike. In total, from March 2025 to August 2026, the RTX Pro 6000 became almost 90% more expensive.

If you count the pre-order prices that were momentarily below $8,000 — we're seeing this card sell for more than twice what it debuted at. Keep in mind that we're talking about the boxed Workstation Edition, which is basically like the Founder's Edition for these professional cards, because otherwise it's also available in a 300W Max-Q variant with a blower-style cooler, and a server edition with passive cooling for rack mounts.

These price hikes were not officially confirmed by Nvidia at any point during 2025 and 2026. With the ongoing component crisis continuing to worsen memory prices, these changes are not a surprise, especially when you consider the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell has 96GB of GDDR7 VRAM.

Still, a nearly $7,500 increase from March 2025 listings to now is a sizeable jump. For what it's worth, we found the same SKU listed on Newegg for $13,998, so $2,000 less than Nvidia's official store and basically the same price as before. Perhaps this listing will rise to $16,000 the moment current inventory runs out, and prices always vary between retailers. Case in point, B&H has the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell up for $15,499 right now.

Intel's upcoming Nova Lake CPUs have been a part of the rumor mill for months as excitement builds up for a potential CES 2027 announcement. The latest leak comes from reliable tipster Jaykihn, who's actually updating an older report that said SKUs with cut-down E-cores would also have reduced cache. Now, his new leak claims Intel will keep the L3 cache unaltered, even on chips with partially disabled E-core clusters.

Previously, it was rumored that some Nova Lake configs, such as the 8+12+4 silicon, would only have 33MB of L3 cache since the 12 E-cores are cut down from the 16 we expect on the full-fat variant of this SKU. Now, Jaykihn reports that this config will now have 36MB of L3 cache instead, just like the uncut 8+16+4 config. Similarly, the 4+4+4 config is said to retain 18MB of L3 cache instead of 15MB, same as the fully enabled 4+8+4 SKUs.

This does not apply to every SKU of Nova Lake, however. For instance, the leaker claims that the 6+12+4 config is still limited to 27MB and not 30MB, had the disabled E-core cluster retained its cache. If true, it seems there's no linear scaling at play here; rather, Intel just decides on its own which SKUs get to keep all of the L3 cache regardless of their disabled E-cores, and which ones are still relegated to lower amounts.

Nova Lake desktop CPUs are not the only ones reportedly affected by this change; Nova Lake-HX, the mobile lineup, is also said to follow the same methodology at this point. Therefore, we can expect some of the midrange SKUs to have more cache than previously expected. Keep in mind that all of this is preliminary, unofficial information and subject to change between now and the actual launch, as this very development proves.

Intel's big trick for Nova Lake is expected to be the introduction of bLLC in consumer CPUs, directly meant to challenge AMD's 3D V-Cache. Only mid- to high-end SKUs are expected to get it, including the 8+12+4 and 6+12+4 configs we mentioned earlier. They're said to feature 132MB and 108MB of bLLC, respectively, which is separate from the native L3 cache we've been talking about in this story, so those numbers won't change.

*non-bLLC variants of all the single-tile SKUs are also rumored. All specifications rumored, not confirmed by Intel.

As usual, there might be some level of internal segmentation that we aren't seeing here. Although leaked specs give us a glimpse at what Nova Lake could offer, it's always possible that Intel is testing various configurations, even if those chips won't end up in the main lineup.

Sony lets gamers access their PlayStation consoles remotely through a couple of different tools. The Remote Play app lets gamers stream titles from their consoles to their phones, tablets, and PCs. The PlayStation Portal handheld has an extra trick. It can stream PS5 games both locally from a gamer's own console or directly from the PlayStation Plus Premium service's cloud gaming library.

Third-party apps like Chiaki have already brought PS Remote Play functionality over to Linux, but the new Asobi Remote Play app promises to make that functionality available directly from Steam. It also boasts an exclusive feature that can turn your Steam Deck into a virtual PS Portal, allowing you to play cloud games from the PlayStation Plus Premium library. The app is in a pre-release play test right now, but its capabilities are intriguing.

As long as you have a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, you can stream select PS5 titles directly from Sony's servers inside Asobi, even if you don't have a PS5 console. This hasn't been possible on any device other than the PS Portal until now. Only the titles Sony has approved are available for cloud streaming on PS Portal, and that same restriction will apply within Asobi.

That said, hundreds of games are already available through this subscription, so you likely won't run into any trouble finding something to play if you want to try the PlayStation library without committing to a PS5.

The Asobi team has just released the app for SteamOS (and, by extension, Linux), which means you can install it on a Steam Deck or Steam Machine and essentially turn your existing Steam Deck into a Portal, saving you from buying a $250 device just to enjoy PlayStation games without a console.

Asobi is not associated with Sony in any way, so there's no guarantees for future compatibility or even a stable experience, but the developer does promise 1080p 30FPS streaming with the app's free tier. The premium tier bumps that up to 1080p 60 FPS with HDR and 4K upscaling support, as well as manual bitrate selection, controller haptics, and lower latency.

All of these premium features are currently free on the Steam playtest, which is also why pricing for the premium tier hasn't been announced yet. Some users already part of the testing are reporting issues, which is to be expected for pre-release software.

But if the team can iron out the kinks, and assuming that Sony doesn't block whatever method Asobi is using to mimic the PlayStation Portal for cloud game streaming access, this app could become the most accessible way to play PlayStation games on the Steam Deck (apart from native PC ports, of course).

Xbox PC games, distributed through the Xbox app, fail to run on Linux because of Microsoft's proprietary GDK runtime environment. This also breaks Game Pass even though the company supports cloud streaming Game Pass titles. A new open-source project from the developers of Heroic Launcher, called "Xodus," is aiming to fix this by reverse engineering and emulating the necessary components required for Xbox PC games on Linux.

Xodus primarily targets modern, GDK-based Xbox PC titles and their MSIXVC packages; not older, UWP-based releases like Gears of War 4 and early Forza Horizon games. The problem with those isn't the DirectX API or x86 instructions; Proton and DXVK/VKD3D can already translate those. That's also the reason why you can still run Xbox PC games on Linux if you somehow get your hands on the DRM-free executables.

The real issue is the trifecta of Microsoft's proprietary GDK (Game Development Kit), Xbox identify services, and encrypted MSIXVC packages. This framework is responsible for verifying licenses for the games you own through the Xbox app. Without it running in the background, the games will simply crash right as you try to open them, or not launch at all. This is where Xodus comes into play.

The Xodus team says the project can already log into Xbox services, download game packages and obtain game licenses. It includes its own open-source implementation of the xgameruntime.dll and custom forks of both Wine and Proton, along with xal-rs, which is an Xbox authentication library for Rust. Xodus uses proxy libraries to interface with GDK games and intercepts API calls to transmit valid Xbox Live tokens.

For now, efforts are focused on emulating the Xbox Gaming Runtime from the Xbox GDK through Wine, then the project will move on to actually launching and playing Xbox PC titles locally. Considering they've already solved the Xbox/Microsoft authentication, license check, and package decryption hurdles, it shouldn't be long before we see PC Game Pass running natively on Linux.

BedrockonLinux 2.0, another open-source project that brings Minecraft Bedrock to the platform, already relies on similar reverse-engineering tech to handle these components since Microsoft migrated the game to GDK. This allows the game to talk to Xbox Live in real-time through a secure doorway to authenticate tokens despite the game running in a sandboxed environment like SteamOS (Linux).

Microsoft itself brought four original Xbox titles to PC last month and it says more are coming, along with leaked documents suggesting Xbox 360 titles also releasing on PC next year. These games come with a baked-in Xbox 360 emulator. It's not clear if these games use the same GDK stack as native Xbox PC titles, however.

Nvidia's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service has been a popular way to access your games on the go without worrying about hardware. It has a free tier with titles like Fortnite, not even requiring a purchase, but the paid subscription enjoys much better specs and rate limits. As such, using the "Ultimate" tier, modder Zortos was able to gain full access to the Windows desktop inside GeForce NOW, allowing him to use it as a normal computer that can (ironically) run local AI models on it.

For context, GeForce NOW is only meant for gaming; Nvidia does not advertise it as a general, all-purpose cloud streamer like Shadow PC, for instance. Hence, doing all this is certainly against the terms of service, and you run the risk of your account getting banned. With that being said, ethically, you are paying for renting hardware, so trying to gain desktop access is predicated on how far your own moral scruples allow you to go.

Anyhow, the exploit begins with an I2P (Install-to-Play) game that you download from Steam — Zortos uses Trove. You click on the publisher's name to open the built-in browser, from where you go to your C: drive through the address bar and essentially hijack the index. You open the steamapps folder that was just created for Trove and copy the path of the main executable from the contents.

This file is replaced with a decoy that deceives Steam into thinking you're actually starting Trove when you click on the "Play" button. In reality, it's a modified executable developed by another modder, dpadGuy, that just opens the desktop instead. Once inside, it really is the full Windows environment with no apparent restrictions. The video below even shows Zortos installing Wallpaper Engine and customizing the taskbar.

However, users have reported some discrepancies between their experiences, such as GeForce NOW simply closing the session when it sees the File Explorer open, or the service blocking file downloads, which is a necessary step to replace the executable. Zortos insists that the exploit is still working on his X account, and he even says that if you have persistent storage, the exploit will remain active between different sessions.

Keep in mind that you need a paid tier of GeForce NOW to be able to pull this off, and even if you do, it's against Nvidia's ToS as you're not allowed to venture beyond games. Running local AI models on a setup like this doesn't make sense because of the session rate limits, but the Ultimate tier Zortos used does give you access to 48GB of VRAM (thanks to an RTX Pro 6000D) so it might be worthwhile for some.

HoverAir, makers of self-flying selfie drones, have just unveiled the HoverAir Versa, combining their existing aerial expertise with the convenience of a pocket camera. At its core, the Versa is a high-end stabilized pocket gimbal camera, like the DJI Osmo, but it can magnetically snap onto a drone body and transform into a cinematic selfie drone. It's designed to tackle two different product categories simultaneously, but with the same goal of making it as easy as possible to film yourself (or others).

The Versa is actually HoverAir's first-ever pocket camera. It features a three-axis gimbal, which means it can adjust for tilt, yawn, and pitch to make sure your footage turns out stable. Compared to other options on the market, no pocket camera offers more than two-axis stabilization. It has a rotating screen and the accompanying controls for the camera, along with RGB accent lighting that also works as a status indicator. Overall, it looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill, well-made pocket camera.

But the magic happens when you bring out the wings. A small, foldable drone body can magnetically attach to the camera unit via pogo pins located at the back of the device. Once connected, you just unfold the wings, gently tap the top, and it takes off right from your palm. There is no external controller needed because the device uses AI to track and follow you automatically. It has 10+ intelligent modes that can film you from any direction with AI-assisted framing, along with a neat 360° feature as well.

In this mode, called 3D Worlds, the drone flies around to snap pictures of the scene from different angles and composites them into a single 360° scene that can be explored and shared later. Technically, this would be the third audience the Versa is trying to cater to — the Insta360 crowd, though that's real-time 360° video recording that you can also generously manipulate in post, so not exactly comparable. Still, it's a neat trick, and we'll have to see how well HoverAir implements it.

We don't have a price or release date; just a bunch of teasers so far that say it's coming soon. As such, specs are also up in the air, but the company is touting class-leading performance with the best dynamic range in the category. From the promotional material, we can infer that it has a large lens, and the drone body looks very compact. If HoverAir's previous selfie drones are anything to go by, the Versa could have support for up to 8K video in 10-bit Log or HLG, along with rapid flying speeds of up to 45 km/h.

The test footage on HoverAir's website and the video we attached above look really impressive. The ingenuity of the concept warrants both excitement and skepticism, but it's undeniable that the Versa kind of feels magical. Nothing like it exists in the market today, and if the company can already ship excellent selfie drones like the X1 series, and pocket cameras aren't exactly rocket science, it stands to reason that harmonizing the two together is the only challenge for the Versa.

Windows is in a tough spot right now, with years of neglect and stagnation reaching a boiling point with customers. Lack of optimization, bloat, ads, forced AI slop, and persistent tracking have forced Microsoft to admit its missteps and commit to fixing the OS at large. Windows Latest's new testing shows that the built-in weather app is a perfect representation of the state of Windows. The "app" consumes up to 1.2GB of RAM while idling, and it serves up a bunch of ads while you check the temperature.

MSN Weather is the default weather app that ships with Windows, which explains why it's filled with promotions throughout, despite being part of a paid OS. To be clear, the app looks very modern and has all the data you could ask for, such as live radar overlays, hourly wind and precipitation breakdowns, air quality index, and moon phases. It's also accurate because the data is sourced from a bunch of different providers across the world, but mostly Foreca.

The author explains that getting accurate forecasts is not a cheap endeavor, so it's not like Microsoft is running a charity. But the comparison falls apart when you look at what the competition is offering. Apple's native weather app on macOS is just as beautiful, detailed, and accurate, yet it's free of ads. It also only consumes about 250MB of memory to show all that data, so 5x less than Windows. This is because MSN Weather is technically not even an app to begin with; it's a web wrapper that's pinging a bunch of browser tabs in real-time.

When the author clicked on the Task Manager entry for MSN Weather, they saw 8 Chromium-based subprocesses, confirming that they're just looking at a website being rendered via WebView 2. For context, native Windows apps are supposed to adhere to the WinUI framework, which the company is slowly adopting over Win32 and UWP. Microsoft is committed to updating all the native apps Windows ships with to Win32, which should significantly improve their optimization, but we don't know if the ads will suddenly disappear as well.

The author saw Adobe Acrobat ads while checking the forecast, and we saw two ads — one for LendingTree and another for Spotify. Apart from that, scrolling around the app and clicking on the different menus and boxes was fast enough. We have to emphasize that the app really is granular and well-built from an aesthetic point of view; Microsoft gets full points for that, or is it MSN? That distinction is another issue that makes the weather app conundrum a bit more confusing.

When Microsoft promised to rebuild all native Windows 11 apps, it didn't explicitly say those would include MSN-branded services too, like MSN Weather and MSN News. Seeing as though they're simply called by their utilitarian names in the OS, there's a strong chance that these memory hoggers will also be eventually upgraded. For now, just stick to your phone, especially if you were among those who immediately Googled how to remove the weather widget from your taskbar that fateful day.

Two new Geekbench listings for Nvidia's upcoming RTX Spark laptop superchip have surfaced, confirming a second, cut-down SKU exists with 18 CPU cores, at least in the testing phases. Both parts score remarkably close to each other, posting impressive multi-core numbers, but their single-core performance isn't special. Still, these are preliminary results on unreleased hardware, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.

The model name for the 20-core (10+10) SKU was shown as "OEMQAJ 766_MIS Product Name DV" with its clocks reported at 4.0 GHz. This chip scored 2,570 points in the single-core test and 23,126 points in the multi-core test. The second listing showed up as "OEMQAJ OEMQAJ Product" with this SKU's 18 cores divided across 10+8 core clusters, clocked at 3.9 GHz. It scored 2,541 points in the single-core test, so within 1% of the 20-core part, while the multi-core was 21,776 points, which is about 6% faster than the full-fat chip.

When you compare these numbers to other Windows-running SoCs on the Geekbench database, these multi-core numbers are among the best. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme currently holds the record for the highest multi-core score with 25,075 points, so both SKUs of the RTX Spark lose to it. But when we switch to the AMD AI Max+ 395, which scores 20,609 on average in the same test, even the 18-core Nvidia chip is 5.6% faster here, and the 20-core variant is about 12% faster.

Compared to Apple's lineup, the 20-core RTX Spark is 3.3% faster than the 14-core variant of the M3 Max, which scores 22,385 points in the multi-core bench. Considering that this is pre-release hardware with unoptimized drivers, we can expect it to even beat the maxed-out M4 Pro and the base M4 Max (which hover around 25,000 points) when it officially launches. Moreover, the 18-core SKU's 21,776 points are equal to, if not more than, the base M4 Pro, which also nets around 21,700 points in the multi-core test.

That being said, the swan song falls apart when we bring up the single-core numbers. Every Apple Silicon chip from the base M3 onwards beats the 2,570 points the 20-core RTX Spark achieved in this run. Only the M2 Max with its 2,477 points is bested by the Nvidia offering, and that too by just 3.75%. Apple's current-gen base M5 is a whopping 41% faster here. On the Windows side, the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme score roughly 3,000 points, but AMD and Intel's top-end models take a beating.

The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 only achieves 2,429 points in the single-core test, making the 20-core RTX Spark 5.8% faster, and the 18-core variant 4.6% faster. The same goes for the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 because its 2,432 points are within the margin of error of the Strix Halo chip. Intel's highest single-core score is achieved by the Core Ultra 9 275HX at 2,467 points, making it 3% slower than the 18-core RTX Spark and 4.2% slower than the 20-core SKU. However, Intel's actual fastest chip, the Core Ultra X9 388H, scores 2,767 points, making it about 7% faster than even the 20-core RTX Spark.

All in all, this is a much better showing for Nvidia's upcoming laptop Superchip than previous leaks. It's clear that driver optimization is slowly unlocking the full potential of the silicon, and by the time RTX Spark is in the hands of reviewers, we expect it to compete fiercely with every Windows machine. Nvidia is working hard to ensure a proper launch with a commitment to making DRM and anti-cheat work on day one.

From the outside, the Phantom Drive, created by Rootkit Labs, appears like a boring old USB. It has that classic, cheap plastic-feeling look to it that would never make you second-guess its intention; when you plug it in, it shows up as just an 8GB drive. However, under the hood, the Phantomdrive is powered by a microSD card that only unlocks itself when you specifically create a new text file, after which it mounts the secret partition, which comes with AES-256 encryption. It's made for situations and places where you might be forced to reveal the contents of a storage device.

The Phantomdrive is built using the CH569 microcontroller that has a bunch of different hardware blocks — this project uses the USB3, SD/eMMC, and the AES block. There are no NAND chips directly onboard the custom PCB because of the ongoing component crisis. Instead, the Phantomdrive relies on a simple microSD card (that you provide; it doesn't come with one) for both its 8GB decoy partition and the hidden partition. The creator does say they'll make a version with eMMC modules once prices come down.

Of course, if someone were to open up the drive, they'd be able to physically rip the SD card out. However, it still wouldn't be a dead giveaway since many cheap USBs are powered by microSD cards, and SD card adapters are also a thing. Anyhow, the finished drive looks pretty simple from the inside; it comprises a USB port, two buck supplies, a button for firmware update, the microSD card, UART test points, and some support components. The custom firmware now comes into play.

The name of the game is interception. The firmware doesn't know it's being used to handle file transfers; it just reads raw packets of data being sent over the USB bus as is. It's coded to always look for a "password" string, so as soon as you create the unlock.txt file with "password:xyz" inside, it detects the "xyz" bit and copies it over to SRAM, while overwriting the raw data with a bunch of zeroes before it's written to the SD card. The operating system thinks it's created the new file, but the firmware intercepted it midway and sent essentially nothing to the physical storage cells.

The firmware uses the unique internal hardware ID of the microcontroller as the salt, combines it with the password you just typed, and runs the pair through PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA-256 hashes 100,000 times (you can also select 600,000 times) to create a key. Each run induces an intentional 2-3 second delay to deter brute-force attacks that would try to crack the password. The key is used to unlock and lock the hidden partition, and since it's tied to the silicon itself, putting the SD card into another Phantom Drive will not unlock it.

Even if you try to access it directly through a microSD card slot, it will stay hidden, and the 8GB decoy will actually appear like a broken partition. The creator has also provided the option to recompile the firmware on your own to spoof specific vendor IDs, so that the USB appears like it's from different brands. You can make the Phantomdrive pretend to be a cheap 16GB Kingston Datatraveler at the hardware protocol level, at which point no scanning software will flag it as anything more than a cheap USB.

There are Linux-based C tools you can use in case of emergency, however, to recover your data, such as physical damage to the board. The transfer speeds are also very limited because the project is built over USB 2 — 20 MB/s reads and 9 MB/s writes in AES-CTR mode. The speeds fall to 10 MB/s reads and 6 MB/s writes in AES-XTS, but at least you have the freedom to choose between the two according to your needs.

You can buy the Phantomdrive from Rootkit Labs for $50, but you can also build your own, since this is an open-source project. The prebuilt device comes with two extra shells because the pins wear off and break quickly. Otherwise, the GitHub repo provides all the resources, including the PCB layout files and schematics, the BOM for every part, and the custom firmware, alongside its related tools.

The creator of Phantomdrive, Ryan Walker, explains the goal behind the project as both utilitarian and political. It's built using entirely open-source software and with inexpensive, easily accessible components. They wanted to create something that could "slip past authoritarian government representatives, corrupt police, and anyone else that doesn't respect basis encryption rights."

Valve's second-gen Steam Controller has been a major hit with the community thanks to the company's open approach to its hardware. Modders have already used the haptic motors inside to move it across a desk and charge automatically, while others have built their own open-source pucks. Now, a new project from Pixel1011, called "Steam Haptics Player," can turn these motors into a stereo speaker capable of playing music both wired and wirelessly.

For context, the Steam Controller doesn't have a speaker; there are two linear actuators under each trackpad that vibrate to provide haptic feedback. Previous projects have leveraged these components to make the controller vibrate in a certain way. Since vibrations are the basis of sound, Valve itself built a secret easter egg into the controller that randomly makes it do a Wilhelm scream when dropped from certain heights.

Pixel 1011 discovered that the haptic motors inside can be targeted with low-level HID (Human Interface Device) feature commands using HIDAPI. As such, Steam Haptics Player takes an audio file, downsamples it through FFmpeg, splits it into chunks of a PCM stream, and sends those packets directly to the controller, bypassing high-level software like Steam Input. The controller's firmware then feeds this raw data to the motors, at which point they vibrate to produce sound.

Because of the DIY nature of this process, bandwidth is an issue, especially wirelessly, since the puck isn't designed to carry audio data over its radio signal. This means the audio has to be compressed, and there's a limit to the overall quality the motors can transmit — 8-bit 8kHz (μ-law) over the puck and 16-bit 8kHz PCM over a wire.

Still, the 16-bit audio is enough to produce a surprisingly loud and balanced result that can deceive you as if it's coming from a speaker. The video at the start features Pixel1011 playing the song "Want You Gone" from the end credits of Portal 2, and you can hear the quality for yourself. There's a genuine low-end that you would never expect from a jerry-rigged setup like this, even if it's sitting on top of a towel on a flat surface to give it its best chance.

The wireless audio quality is rough in comparison; it crackles and pops and even cuts off in between because of the bandwidth limitations. Pixel1011 is using 8-bit mu-law companding here, which actually offers dynamic range similar to 14-bit audio while keeping the byte footprint of an 8-bit stream. Even through this compression, the puck is struggling, but the fact that this is even possible is still very impressive, and perhaps there's room for improvement down the line.

You can try Steam Haptics Player yourself on your own second-gen Steam Controller with pretty much any audio file in any format. Just download the archive from the GitHub repo, install FFmpeg (for transcoding, if you don't have it already), and run the program via a PowerShell window in the original directory. Detailed steps are on the linked GitHub page, but we don't know how this affects the controller's battery life. Just don't go all out with your Spotify playlist on these haptic motors.

Last month, we covered a federal criminal case in which Microsoft's Global Device Identifier (GDID) helped the FBI catch an alleged hacker. Despite the noble cause, the implications of a persistent tracker built into Windows became difficult to ignore, and it was enough of a tipping point to convince Windscribe to do something about it. The VPN company has created an open-source project and script called "deGDID" that aims to strip GDID off your PC — but does so at the cost of breaking some Microsoft cloud services.

You can find the script on GitHub and run it via PowerShell with admin privileges. It's completely free and works in a very straightforward manner. There are three main execution flags that dictate how deGDID operates: –Status, which is read-only and tells you if a GDID is active on your rig; –Status –Redact, which generates logs with the GDID redacted so users can share diagnostic data more confidently; and –Protect, which completely wipes the GDID and prevents the creation of new ones.

A fourth flag, –Unprotect, allows you to reverse the script in case you need to revert back to the default state. But –Protect is the one worth discussing. First, the script looks for server-issued GDID keys in the registry, where they remain cached, and purges them all. This is something you can do manually as well. In fact, Windscribe tried it on a virtual machine, but the GDID keys are silently re-minted in the background upon a reboot or whenever Windows contacts Microsoft servers again.

To close this loop, the script then modifies the ACLs (Access Control Lists) and registry permissions to prevent the OS from fetching and subsequently trying to remint the GDID keys. It puts up a firewall against the internal DeviceAdd endpoint, which completely cuts off Microsoft identity services from even seeing this as a registered Windows PC. This one-two punch completes the process, and the existing GDID keys are not only wiped, but the possibility of new ones being created is put to bed as well.

Keep in mind that old keys that are already server-side cannot be removed; Microsoft has access to them indefinitely. This script also only works on unmanaged systems with admin accounts. If you're part of an organization or domain, deGDID will refuse to run. More importantly, though, since it blocks Microsoft's DeviceAdd pipeline, some core Windows services will break because they'll fail to authenticate your Microsoft account.

The reason deGDID is even needed in the first place is that Windows has no native toggle to turn off GDID. It exists as a permanent device ID that can track you without your consent. It works across IP addresses since it sits beneath the layer where VPNs operate, so no amount of network tunneling can obfuscate it. This can explain why Windscribe was compelled to create deGDID — to combat a potentially invasive system that has the power to wreak havoc in the wrong hands.

We tried the script on a Windows 11 computer, and it worked as intended. Running the –Status flag showed multiple cached GDIDs that were then removed by the –Protect flag, and a new GDID didn't show up even after restarting. As expected, some Microsoft apps freaked out and returned connection errors. Account verification through login.live.com was also blocked across all browsers, though login.microsoftonline.com still worked. Online games and other apps continued to behave normally as well.

Windscribe says deGDID is a research project, and it will continue to evolve as more information about how GDID works is uncovered. For now, the fact that it can make core Microsoft services and features fail might be too much of a tradeoff for some. The script also doesn't promise to kill every GDID instance, and Microsoft already has your previous keys, so this is certainly not an ideal solution — but it's a good start to the fight against hidden trackers.

Microsoft is working to bring an unprecedented level of backwards compatibility to its upcoming PC-console hybrid, the Xbox Helix, according to a new report from The Verge. The outlet obtained leaked screenshots of an internal memo allegedly sent to publishers, asking them to opt into a new model that makes legacy titles from old Xbox consoles available for modern devices without additional effort.

Microsoft began charting this course with the release of four original Xbox titles on PC last month that shipped with an Xbox 360 emulator baked in. That discovery led many to speculate that Xbox 360 backwards compatibility is right around the corner, too, and the memo indeed confirms it to be in the works for 2027-28. That's around the time we expect to see the next-gen Xbox Helix console as well, which may or may not have a disc drive.

Recent reports suggest Microsoft wants to follow in Sony's footsteps and move away from physical discs by offering a way to digitize them. This would tie the game on the disc to a license instead, and you'd be able to access it anywhere with your Xbox account. This kind of universality is the direction Microsoft has been heading in for a decade at this point, and the memo says a public beta for this feature was coming in July 2026 (we're in August now).

To support this digitization, Microsoft seems to be asking publishers to join hands in offering original Xbox and Xbox 360 games on Xbox Helix, PCs, and handhelds. Keep in mind that Xbox One and Xbox Series backwards compatibility is already expected (and obvious) given the architectural similarities between the three consoles — the OG Xbox and Xbox 360 need emulators for modern hardware since they weren't x86-based.

As such, the leaked memo says that Microsoft will generously "manage all engineering, the bespoke emulator, title-by-title certification and testing, storefront merchandising and player support." Leaving the developers to simply give permission for their legacy titles to appear on the storefront and reap the profits in return. Microsoft promises devs that they will retain "rights, pricing, and brand control."

All of this makes it sound like the ball is entirely in the developers' courts, and it is, because the next screenshot is an even more explicit sales pitch. Microsoft wants them to know just how beneficial it would be to revive older titles and how there'd be zero effort required on their part, so it's really a win-win scenario. The company is promising a "modern ecosystem" with cloud saves for old games that would be convenient for the player, too.

This kind of proposal makes sense when you realize that backwards compatibility on this scale doesn't work like it would between recent consoles. As we mentioned, the underlying, PC-like x86 architecture makes it possible for an Xbox One disc to be plopped into an Xbox Series console and just work. Microsoft even has a Smart Delivery system in place to download additional content best suited to your hardware.

This is simply not possible for older titles that require explicit permission if the emulator already supports them, or titles that are delisted because of third-party licensing issues. For instance, an old racing game won't have the rights to the cars and music featured in it anymore, and relicensing those assets wouldn't make sense even if Microsoft is handling the actual distribution for you as it promises in this memo.

Therefore, the idea of converting discs into digital games is perhaps more enticing and less legally binding, while serving the same concept of organizing all Xbox generations under one roof. The memo calls that "Program 01" as if that's the more preferred option anyway. The call to publishers is labeled "Program 02" and seems less likely to prevail, at least at the scope Microsoft wishes for, but only time will tell.

Ultimately, if the Xbox Helix can play PC games (all of them?) and at least three separate generations of Xbox titles — Helix, Series, One — it's already going to have a vast catalogue. Add emulated backwards compatibility and disc digitization to the mix, and you'll have by far the largest library on a console, ever. Of course, it can be argued whether Xbox Helix is even a traditional console to begin with, hence undermining this achievement in hindsight, but let's table that debate for later.

It seems the global component crisis has skyrocketed the prices of storage to the point where some alternative ways of utilizing a NAS have popped up. YouTube PC enthusiast TrashBench recently took a ZimaCube 2 NAS and modded it into a gaming PC, driven by an RTX 5060 graphics card. Despite the low-power laptop CPU inside the server, the results still showed an astronomical improvement in gaming performance across the board, improving frame rates by 828% in some tests and breaking the Time Spy world record for the Intel Core i5-1235U CPU.

For context, the ZimaCube 2 is powered by an Intel Core i5-1235U CPU, which is an Alder Lake chip featuring just two P-cores and eight E-cores, alongside Iris Xe integrated graphics. The iGPU is weak because that's all that's needed for a server (if it's needed at all). This system was never intended for gaming, but the motherboard inside has a vacant PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, making this NAS the perfect candidate to be liberated by some questionable mods.

At first, the tests showed the iGPU hitting around 18 FPS in Hitman 3 on 1080p with low settings. Cyberpunk 2077 was even worse with just 13 FPS, while Shadow of the Tomb Raider was the most promising title, achieving 31 FPS. Putting an AMD Radeon Pro WX5100 workstation GPU (a cut-down version of the RX 480) in the board's slot helped raise the numbers a bit, around 40% on average, but the updated performance was still not enough to be classified as playable.

TrashBench proceeded to connect an RTX 5060 to the x16 slot with a riser cable and just let it hang outside the case, since the card was way too big to fit inside. Of course, this wasn't ideal and would restrict airflow quite a bit, so he devised a 3D-printed frame that would hold the GPU in place, while zip-tying the other end to the case directly. The final result might not exactly look polished, but it was firm enough to conduct benchmarks.

Keep in mind that all this jury-rigging was possible due to the ZimaCube's unique design. The chassis has large cutouts across its chassis, allowing the riser cable to easily protrude from the left. To power the RTX 5060, TrashBench removed all the hard drive caddies so that the system's drive bay was left completely empty. He then fit a 750W SFX power supply inside with an extension cable that ran up to the GPU's power connector. The front cover of this NAS is magnetic, so everything was nicely hidden behind it.

TrashBench's retesting showed Hitman 3 running at 167 FPS on average, which is an 827% improvement over the stock 18 FPS, or more than nine times faster. Similarly, Cyberpunk 2077 got a 7x boost, going from 13 FPS to 90 FPS. Framerates in Shadow of the Tomb Raider "only" quadrupled, as the RTX 5060 achieved an average of 124 FPS compared to 31 FPS with the iGPU.

TrashBench didn't stop there and, true to his nature, wanted to freeze the CPU to try and see if he could get even better results. The issue was that the chip never throttled to begin with, and the GPU was already bottlenecked, so running an antifreeze loop actually worsened performance. The silicon designed to run a storage server had achieved its maximum potential.

Unfortunately, this variant of the ZimaCube 2 does cost $1,299 to start with so you're much better off just building a regular PC even today. It also doesn't come with Windows, and the BIOS was never configured to run a dedicated GPU, so you have to always have something plugged into the iGPU's display output for the dGPU to display anything. Still, as a wild experiment, we can call this one a success.

Wirth's law dictates that software becomes slower more rapidly than hardware gets faster. That logic can explain why games today look mostly the same as they did a decade ago, yet require a lot more resources to run comfortably. That sentiment is now reflected in Steam's latest hardware survey as well, where 8-core CPUs have overtaken 6-core CPUs for the first time ever, and GPUs with 16GB of VRAM have become the most common on the platform.

The results for July 2026 show that 16GB GPUs now represent 25.9% of all Steam users, just edging out 8GB GPUs that sit at 25.32% adoption. In June, 16GB GPUs were at 24.50%, so they gained 1.4 points in a month, while 8GB GPUs lost 0.32 points in the same time. This is the first month in the storefront's history where 8GB of VRAM is no longer considered enough, closing the book on this debate in a rather definitive way. Keep in mind that these numbers combine all Steam instances across Windows, Linux, and Mac.

When it comes to processors, the need to move away from 6-core chips hasn't really been of concern since they're still enough for gaming. It was not long ago that Intel was refreshing the same quad-core CPUs year after year until AMD's resurgence pushed the industry out of stagnation. This is evident by the fact that 4-core CPUs still enjoy a 13.2% share of the pie. But today, it's clear that the shift has begun as Steam's most recent data shows 27.85% of the userbase is rocking 8-core CPUs, while 27.52% have 6-core CPUs.

Once again, it's the first time this precedent has shifted as 8-core chips became 0.32% more popular this month compared to last, the most of any config, while 6-core chips lost 0.12% of their adoption. The extreme popularity of X3D chips for gaming is partly responsible, since the 5800X3D, then the 7800X3D, and now, the 9800X3D, all feature 8 cores and 16 threads. Intel's hybrid architecture makes it so that pretty much none of its midrange or high-end chips have exactly 8 cores (though many have 8 P-cores).

The obsolescence of 6-core CPUs and 8GB GPUs is not a sudden event; we've been witnessing this decline since at least last year, when their numbers first started to dwindle. Sales figures from across the world, multiple times, have shown how customers heavily prefer to buy 16GB versions of the same GPUs that also have an 8GB model. Such a small memory pool is simply not enough for modern games, especially since they've begun relying on ray tracing as a requirement now.

"What Andy gives, Bill takes away" is a niche adage in the tech space that referred to Microsoft's bloatware outpacing hardware advancements made by Intel back in the 90s. It still holds true today, but it's better combined with May's Law — the idea that the abundance of silicon will make developers lazy, such that they'll stop optimizing their code to its fullest potential. Of course, this is a bit ironic considering we're in a component crisis at the moment, where soaring memory and storage prices are now coming to bite back said developers.

The consumers are not stuck with the debt of years of inefficiency. If you still have an 8GB GPU today, like the 5060 Ti, there's a high chance you won't be able to play upcoming modern games smoothly, even if the core itself remains perfectly capable. Anyhow, the Steam Hardware Survey doesn't represent the entire market, obviously, but it's a good indication of mainstream trends. They show that the RTX 3060 is still the most popular current-gen card in the world, while the RTX 5070 is climbing the charts fast. AMD and Intel are basically honorable mentions on this list.

Legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima, through his studio Kojima Productions, is collaborating with Japanese audio company km5 on a wireless CD player themed after the BB Pod from Death Stranding 2. The "Instant Disc Audio Cp1 DEATH STRANDING 2 Model," as it's called, doesn't have a speaker, is priced at 25,300 Yen (roughly $160), and is available through both in-person and online stores.

The limited-time device is a reskin of km5's existing CP1 CD player, but upgrades the Bluetooth 5.0 on that model to Bluetooth 5.3 on this. You get a vibrant translucent orange design that proudly displays the spinning CD for whatever you're playing. There's a slot behind the front lid where you can also put a lyric sheet or one of the two exclusive Death Stranding 2 postcards that are included in the box.

The back is opaque and features screw holes to mount or hang the player on a wall, so it acts as a standalone decorative piece even when there's no music playing. There's a 1,800mAh battery inside that's supposed to last 7-8 hours on a single charge, after which it can be juiced up through the USB-C port on the side. The front lip of the player has buttons for all basic controls, plus even a headphone jack for wired play.

The player as a whole is supposed to resemble a BB Pod and features caution marks added as accents throughout, and even the packaging is customized to fully express the world of the game. There's an LED grid in the corner that km5 calls an "LED Nixie Tube" — it shows the track number and acts as a playback status indicator. It accepts 12cm and 8cm discs, weighs 300g itself, and measures out to 160mmx140mmx26mm, so it's not exactly pocketable.

The Instant Disc Audio Cp1 DEATH STRANDING 2 Model came out yesterday, on August 1, and can be purchased on km5's online store or you can walk into the Parco Games store in Shibuya Parco, which is a mall in the Shibuya region of Tokyo. Considering it's a limited-edition collector's item, and the fact that the CP1 is already a well-reviewed CD player, this thing will probably sell out fast, but it's in stock as of this writing.

Few names echo in the aisles of tech cathedrals like the legendary GTX 1080 Ti, released by Nvidia all the way back in 2017. The GPU it's based on, GP102, actually debuted a year earlier, in 2016, which is why this story is titled as a decade-old hindsight. German outlet PC Games Hardware just retested all three cards based on the GP102, pitting them against far more efficient modern offerings to answer a simple question: how well does the 1080 Ti hold up in 2026?

At its launch, the GTX 1080 Ti cost $700 and used a cut-down version of the GP102 called "GP102-400," while the Titan Xp that released a month later enjoyed the full-fat GP102-450 silicon. Built on the Pascal architecture, the 1080 Ti featured 3,584 CUDA cores that could boost up to 1.58 GHz, 11GB of GDDR5X memory saturated across a 352-bit wide bus, and a 250W TDP. It was the last (consumer) flagship Nvidia made with pure rasterization in mind.

Jumping to the results, we see the 1080 Ti still pushes close to 60 FPS in modern titles at 1080p resolution. However, it's slower than even the current-gen RTX 5050, and it's unable to beat any recent 60-series GPU as well. You'd have to go as far back as the RX 6600 or the RTX 3060 8GB to find something that the 1080 Ti edges out. Speaking of which, it is still faster than the Radeon VIII that came out two years later and matches the relative performance of the Titan X, while the Titan Xp clears it comfortably.

As you'd expect, the older the game, the better the 1080 Ti performs. Though its large VRAM buffer helps it win in some areas. For instance, it's barely faster than the aforementioned RTX 3060 in Assassin's Creed Shadows, Battlefield 6, Days Gone, and Baldur's Gate 3. X4 Timelines and Spider-Man 2 are surprise cases where it's faster than even the RTX 4060 and RX 7600. Stalker 2 was the only game where the 1080 Ti managed to beat the RTX 5060 as well, once again because of that extra memory.

In recent titles, reliance on technologies like upscaling and ray tracing severely hurts the king of a bygone raster-only era. DLSS and ray tracing were both mocked at the time they debuted, but have become integral parts of the industry now. Pascal lacks any Tensor or dedicated RT cores, forcing it to fall back to software emulation, which is basically unplayable. DOOM: The Dark Ages and the new Indiana Jones game wouldn't even boot on this GPU.

Averaged across all resolutions and 20 different games, testing shows the RX 5700 XT and RTX 2070 as its closest contemporaries. At 1080p, the resolution you'll actually play at, it's slightly more performant than the RX 6600 and RTX 2060 6GB, while being smoked by almost every midrange card from the last five years. Not to mention, even this performance requires an absurd amount of power by today's standards.

The GTX 1080 Ti posted the worst efficiency numbers on the chart, second only to the Radeon VII. The aging architecture mixed with the 16nm process node combines to give it a rating of 0.085 FPS per watt. In comparison, the current-gen RTX 5060 achieved 0.202 FPS per watt, meaning the 1080 Ti wastes 58% more energy under load, while the RTX 5080 had the best results at 0.253 FPS per watt.

Today, cards like the RTX 5070 have 250W TDPs, and they're almost three times as fast with that kind of power consumption. Not to mention, they're significantly cheaper compared to the 1080 Ti when adjusted for inflation. So, you're paying more for less performance, fewer features, and less efficiency, but maybe not less longevity, since the card is almost a decade old already. Keep in mind that Nvidia has stopped pushing driver optimizations for Pascal at this point as well.

If you want to check out all the benchmarks in detail, make sure to give our friends at PC Games Hardware a visit. Their excellent testing originally included comparisons against the Titan X and Titan Xp, since both use the same GPU, but neither of them is as illustrious as the 1080 Ti. The outlet actually argues its GOAT status and crowns the 2080 Ti as the true visionary, and the charts certainly back that up.

The answer to the question asked at the start is rather straightforward. If you already own the 1080 Ti and only have a 1080p monitor, you can still just about get by, though you're missing out on a lot. However, given the state of the PC hardware industry right now, it would be sacrilegious to recommend upgrading from an icon that championed the people's voice for so long. So if you don't find yourself wishing for more performance, features, or efficiency, ride that 1080 Ti till its dying breath!

AMD is expected to unveil its next-gen Zen 6 platform at CES 2026 with Ryzen 10000 series processors. While we're looking forward to IPC and clock speed improvements, it seems like more subtle, under-the-hood changes could end up upgrading the gaming experience in a big way. According to a tip received by Videocardz, AMD is implementing various per-core optimizations to ensure foreground tasks get priority over background applications. Each new feature is supposed to more smartly manage the power and thermal budgets at the silicon's disposal, so let's go over each of them.

First up, we have CPPC Performance Priority — CPPC stands for Collaborative Processor Performance Control, and it's responsible for communication between the silicon and the OS. It lets the firmware sitting in between decide the performance of each core separately. This feature has actually existed since the Ryzen 3000 series, but it doesn't work perfectly. Zen 6 CPUs are apparently supposed to apply a band-aid fix and improve their effectiveness.

Secondly, we have FloorPerf, which acts as a dynamic, targeted power delivery system. It sets a minimum clock speed for all cores that the silicon can clock down to in case of thermal throttling. For instance, imagine you're running a game in the foreground while Discord and Spotify sit in the background. The temperatures on your Zen 6 CPU rise to the point of throttling, but instead of reducing the speed of all cores, FloorPerf will target the cores running the background tasks first, in order to maintain the performance of your game.

We covered a recent fix like this for the Linux world as well, where a sudden spike in the background can cause the foreground task to choke. Linux has an issue with priority allocation across tasks, so that was a different situation, but similar logic applies here. On a Zen 6 CPU, instead of your game suddenly experiencing microstutters because of aggressive throttling, FloorPerf will try to limit whatever's running in the background first. The aforementioned CPPC Performance Priority should work hand in hand with this feature to maintain clocks on the important cores.

CPPC will get another boost in the form of HighestFreq, which will allow the OS to access more granular chip data to make better core management decisions. As the name suggests, it pertains to maintaining high clock speeds on the cores running a foreground task. The OS will be aware of exactly which core can boost the highest and maintain that speed the longest. This will allow it to assign, for instance, a game's main rendering thread to the fastest cores, while pushing background apps to more power-efficient ones.

In conjunction with this, Zen 6 is also seemingly getting per-core EPP boost. EPP stands for Energy Performance Preference, and it's supposed to fix core parking issues caused by a momentary bottleneck. For example, if the CPU is waiting for the GPU to render the next frame, the clock speeds for the active cores will drop in that moment and struggle to ramp back up in time, forcing all cores to boost when the frame is ready. EPP boost is supposed to identify the active cores and individually keep them in high-performance mode to eliminate any wait times.

Lastly, Zen 6 is reportedly introducing PQOS Global Bandwidth Enforcement and an updated IBS Memory Profiler. Both of these target memory bandwidth with the same goal of maximum stability as everything else discussed so far. The former is responsible for allocating RAM to background tasks, ensuring their usage stays under the limit for foreground priority. The latter will limit L3 cache access to background tasks when it detects that those tasks are slowing down the foreground application, which should help with frametime consistency in games.

As you can tell, all of these optimizations are supposed to work together and harmonize into a more efficient processor at the end — one that maximizes the silicon's potential as much as possible. Of course, none of this is confirmed and there's a lot that could be gated behind product segmentation. We could see some features only on high-end parts, while some are limited to mobile; there's no telling at the moment, but it's exciting stuff, nonetheless. Seems like a battle for the ages is brewing between Nova Lake and Zen 6 next year.

Buying a new GPU is always a joyous occasion, but the celebration was cut short for an unfortunate customer in China. Right after buying an AX Gaming RTX 5060 Ti, they got into a serious car crash that ended up totaling the car — and the card along with it. Fortunately, the driver was safe, and somehow the GPU survived, too, with no major electronic damage. Despite being bent in half, the card ended up only requiring minor repair work and was brought back to life quickly by Brother Zhang.

Visually, the card didn't look salvageable, and midrange GPUs like these often don't make for feasible repair jobs either because of the high labor cost. The backplate and cooler were completely destroyed, so Brother Zhang separated them from the actual PCB. Luckily, this variant of the 5060 Ti used a very short PCB that just barely touched the point of curvature, so the internals were mostly fine.

The technician checked all the power rails for a short circuit but saw no abnormal resistance, which confirmed the core and memory weren't dead. He then proceeded to quickly test the GPU with its bare PCB, and it booted successfully. Brother Zhang devised a makeshift cooler that consisted of the bent fin stack straightened back to the best of his abilities, and two 120mm fans strapped on top via zip ties. This seemed enough to keep the card cool.

However, as soon as he tried to install drivers, the PC would black screen and hard crash, showing consistent signs of instability. At this point, Brother Zhang reopened the card and inspected the PCB. He inspected the flex point and decided to resolder the memory module closest to the edge of the board since it experienced the most torque. A simple removal and reapplication fixed the issue, and the card was detected correctly as a 5060 Ti with the full 8GB of VRAM.

Brother Zhang rechecked for any short circuits to ensure no solder bridges were created during the BGA work before moving on to benchmarking. In Furmark, the temps peaked and stabilized at 64°C with no visual artifacts. He then ran a full 3DMark loop to test the PCIe 5.0 x8 link speeds — the card passed with a high 98.9% stability score. It drew around 92% of its maximum power limit during the run, with core temps peaking at around 67°C. This 5060 Ti was officially a survivor.