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Qualcomm originally planned to adopt the 2nm process to challenge Apple's A20 chips in 2026, but it appears they may have to wait a bit longer. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Qualcomm's latest mobile processor, currently uses a 3nm process, but the semiconductor company wanted to work with Samsung to develop chips with the 2nm process.

The Bell reports that while Qualcomm appears content with the technical side of Samsung's 2nm process, pricing disputes are allegedly delaying the deal to 2027.

The report details that Qualcomm is demanding a price reduction, and Samsung is reluctant to meet it. Allegedly, the production volume discussed by both parties also isn't big enough for Samsung to budge on its pricing. With price negotiations delaying production, this could mean that Qualcomm's 2nm chips might not be ready in time for early smartphone launches in 2027. Phone manufacturers like Xiaomi and Vivo might look to Mediatek instead, or it's possible that Qualcomm falls back to TSMC.

Apple's iPhone Duo may start at $1,999, but a significant slice of that cost goes straight to a familiar name. According to leaker Instant Digital, posting on Weibo, Apple has signed a three-year exclusive supply agreement with Samsung Display for the foldable panels inside the iPhone Duo, with Apple reportedly paying $250 per inner display panel. A separate source puts the cover display at an additional $80 per unit.

LG Display does not yet manufacture folding screens, and while BOE produces them for Huawei, Apple reportedly considers those panels inadequate and has had ongoing reliability concerns with the company. Samsung was effectively the only supplier that could meet Apple's requirements, which gave it considerable leverage in negotiations.

The panel Apple is getting for that $250 is Samsung's latest and most advanced. The iPhone Duo uses Samsung's M16 OLED material, a native 10-bit panel that replaces blue fluorescent OLED with blue phosphorescent material and delivers meaningful improvements in efficiency, peak brightness, and colour accuracy. Apple lists the iPhone Duo as capable of 3,000 nits of peak brightness, though the M16 panel itself can reach up to 3,500 nits, with the delta likely attributable to the nano-texture coating or Apple's own settings.

When it comes to melting power connectors, we are used to seeing the latest 12VHPWR or 12V-2x6 power connectors melting on modern NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards that use them. However, a new case has come up where three 8-pin power connectors have melted on a Thermal Grizzly Wireview paired to an RX 7900 XTX. Awareness Hour 9192 on Reddit was the victim of the melting disaster and shared images on the PC Builder subreddit of the power connectors being visibly burned that were connected directly to the GPU.

The victim reports that the melting issues were not immediately apparent. Before the issue was discovered, the Redditor notes that they were having "extreme problems" with their PC, to the point where the system was freezing and displaying a black screen constantly. Later, they took the computer to a repair shop that ran several tests on the system and reinstalled Windows, but supposedly "couldn't find any errors" on the machine. After taking the system home, the PC started crashing again; the Redditor realized they hadn't re-seated the graphics card yet, which finally led to the discovery of the burned power connector.

Luckily for the victim, Thermal Grizzly has already made contact with them and requested they contact their support staff through email to get a better look at the problem and "find a solution". Thermal Grizzly noted in their response that loose connectors could possibly be the issue, but the Redditor verified that all of the connectors were properly inserted and were "quite tight".

The past week brought plenty of discussion around NVIDIA's latest real-time Neural Rendering model, DLSS 5. Of course, the technology itself was enough to hook enthusiasts and gamers alike, but it also sparked a wave of modding efforts to bring it to more games, since only NBA 2K27 currently has official DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering support.

NVIDIA now wants that spotlight back on the game meant to showcase DLSS 5's photorealistic lighting magic, and what better way than an NBA 2K27-centered giveaway.

NVIDIA has launched the NBA 2K27 DLSS 5 Poster Challenge, with four custom NBA 2K27-themed GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards up for grabs. Players can enter by submitting their NBA 2K27 poster, which can be an in-game screenshot or video, but it must be captured with DLSS 5 enabled on a GeForce RTX 50 Series system.

Valve's Steam Controller has already inspired some creative modding since launch, from a custom Steam Machine faceplate that holds and charges the controller on the front of the console to a mod that scoots the controller across a surface toward its own charging puck. Now there is another addition, and this one opens the controller up to an entirely new capability.

Developer FamBoy32 has released LiveHaptics, an open-source tool that captures any system audio playing on a PC and converts it in real time into haptic feedback through the Steam Controller's actuators. Music, game audio, dialogue, sound effects, anything reaching the selected audio output gets translated into vibration. More importantly, it doesn't require individual games to add specific haptic support, meaning it works across everything rather than being limited to titles built for it.

The tool works over USB, Valve's Steam Puck wireless receiver, and Bluetooth, with versions available for Windows and Linux. On Windows, it runs as a static binary with no installation required. Just close Steam, unzip the archive from the GitHub page, connect the controller, and run the executable. Linux installation is a little more involved, but the GitHub repository covers it.

Wardogs is the latest shooter sensation that's sweeping Steam, and if the momentum continues, the game could directly compete with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4's launch next month.

Wardogs, the new tactical FPS from Bulkhead and Team17, is capturing platinum sales and widespread engagement on PC. The game has already broken 1.25 million sales in its first day on Steam early access, and at the time of writing, the $40 early access shooter is currently the #1 top seller on Steam.

The shooter offers an innovative take on King of the Hill, with three teams of up to 100 players battling each other in random maps spanning roughly 2.5 miles. Bulkhead says that Wardogs is an "all-out warfare FPS that combines tactical gunplay and combined arms combat with building and destruction mechanics in a large-scale militaristic sandbox."

This year has not really been PlayStation's year. The console's exclusive lineup has struggled to make the kind of impact Sony needed, with Wolverine drawing mixed responses and failing to offer what IGN described as "an occasional middle ground." The bigger controversy, though, has been Sony's speedy march toward an all-digital future. While the company has made it clear that no amount of backlash is changing that decision, new data raises a fair question about whether it should.

Figures from Alinea Analytics show the revenue split for first-party Sony games since 2022, and the numbers make a strong case that physical media is still pulling its weight. All but one of the seven titles covered sold between 32% and 47% of copies through physical retail.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 generated $1.2 billion in total revenue, with 35% coming from physical sales. Ghost of Yotei brought in $400 million, with nearly 40% from discs. A similar split played out across GOTY winner Astro Bot, Stellar Blade, Death Stranding 2, and others in the dataset.

GPU sagging has become a serious problem in recent years thanks to graphics cards ballooning in size and weight. In a worst-case scenario, a heavy enough graphics card without proper anti-sag support can break the card's PCB after months or years of use. Graphics card manufacturer Manli has opted to fix this problem by equipping its RTX 5060 series "Unlimited Firepower" graphics cards with a sensor that can detect when the GPU is being subjected to an abnormal amount of sagging.

The sensor reports GPU alignment in real time and reports any abnormal tilting through instant alerts from the Manli app. Manli neglected to share how aggressive the sensor is, or if the triggering point can be adjusted, but having a sensor integrated into the GPU takes all the guesswork out of checking if your GPU needs an anti-sag bracket.

Hopefully we'll see this type of sensor in graphics cards that really need it, such as triple- and quad-slot RTX 5080s and 5090s. The RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti models Manli has embedded this feature in aren't heavy enough to fully take advantage of it. Both 5060 models sport dual-slot form factors and weigh just under two pounds. Both models also have the same form factor measuring 405 x 240 x 112mm. Manli has equipped its new Unlimited Firepower GPUs with a triple-fan cooler design and a shroud design that mimics the design of a modern handgun.

Desktop graphics card shipments just hit their highest point in four years, right as prices are climbing instead of settling. According to Jon Peddie Research's latest Market Watch report, add-in board (AIB) shipments for desktop PCs reached 12.5 million units in Q2 2026, up 10% quarter over quarter and 6.6% year over year. That's the strongest quarter since Q1 2022, when shipments touched around 13.4 million, and a clear jump from the more modest Q1 2026 numbers we covered earlier this year.

Q2 is normally the slow stretch for desktop GPUs, and JPR's own president, Dr. Jon Peddie, pointed out that shipments usually drop in this window. Instead, they went up while memory prices and component costs kept rising. JPR's read on it is that buyers moved early to grab cards before prices went up even more, with supply pressure tied to broader global tensions adding to the squeeze.

NVIDIA held onto its usual dominance, shipping around 11.25 million of those desktop units for roughly 90% share, leaving AMD and Intel to fight over the rest. Across the first half of 2026, total desktop AIB shipments reached 24.3 million, a solid step up from the same period last year. It's a bit of an odd signal. Gamers are apparently still spending, just maybe not because things feel stable. It looks more like people trying to buy before costs jump again rather than waiting things out.

G-Sync Pulsar Monitors are getting a worthy upgrade courtesy of NVIDIA's new G-Sync Pulsar 1.1.10 firmware update. The 1.1.10 firmware improves Motion Picture Response Time (MPRT), lowering it to below 1.0ms (0.97ms, to be exact) in 240Hz mode with Pulse Width set to 50. According to the NVIDIA changelog, this translates to motion clarity that's equivalent to a 1,000Hz monitor.

At maximum brightness (480 nits) on supported monitors, the sharpness for moving images at 240Hz and 360Hz now matches the sharpness you get from 60Hz ULMB2 mode. If you now run a G-Sync Pulsar monitor at 360Hz at 480 nits of brightness, you also get an MPRT improvement from 1.64ms to 1.14ms. It's possible that NVIDIA might get the 360Hz mode under the same 1ms response time as the 240Hz mode, but that's just speculation right now.

For those unfamiliar, G-Sync Pulsar pairs variable refresh rate (VRR) with dynamic backlight strobing to reduce screen tearing and motion blur. These monitors pulse the backlight in sync with frame refreshes and variable refresh rates, providing better motion clarity while still combating screen tearing.

Sony recently separated from Hideo Kojima, allowing Xbox to swoop to publish Kojima's next game. New details reveal why Sony made this decision after decades of working with the Metal Gear Solid creator.

Sony recently made the decision to separate from Hideo Kojima and terminate a partnership deal with Kojima Productions. Sony was set to publish Kojima's next game, PHYSINT, but that fell apart. Xbox took advantage of the rare opportunity and, in a tables-have-turned situation, will now publish PHYSINT instead of Sony.

Hideo Kojima is one of the most famous game developers on the planet. He merged action with an operatic storyline in Metal Gear Solid and blurred the line between movies and games with Death Stranding. So why would Sony break up with Kojima? New reports from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier give some clues, and it sounds like Sony separated from Kojima for some of the same reasons that Konami did back in 2015.

Miami's city council has approved a new ordinance to advertise Grand Theft Auto 6 at its beaches for the Holiday 2026 period.

Following a vote that ended in a 4-3 decision, the city of Miami is now officially working with Rockstar Games to advertise GTA 6. Miami city commissioners approved Ordinance 19783 which essentially gives the city more leeway to go outside of existing advertising restrictions and make special accommodations for Rockstar and GTA 6.

City commissioner Laura Dominguez confirms that GTA 6's advertising will be "discrete" and will include two things: The fictional Vice City name, and GTA 6's signature Roman numeral VI. Rockstar will be able to advertise GTA 6 in Miami from October 15 until no later than December 31, 2026, the ordinance says.

At this point, it would be more surprising if someone hadn't heard about the melting cable problem that has long plagued NVIDIA's RTX 40 series and now the RTX 50 series. For every case of a melted connector, even on heavily underclocked cards, there has been a corresponding effort to address it, like the ROG Equalizer. But with results consistently landing in the "not a guaranteed fix" category, a modding group has decided the real solution isn't to push the 12V-2x6 design further, but to abandon it altogether.

Modders at Brazilian YouTube channel TecLab took an RTX 5090 and wired it to run on standard 8-pin Mini-Fit Jr. connectors. Their reaction to the results speaks for itself: "It's colder than the original connector, guys. Where is NVIDIA? Call NVIDIA, guys. Put the raw footage out there for people to see, otherwise they'll think it's a lie. This looks like a lie."

The experiment used a Galax HOF OC LAB RTX 5090, a card designed to use two 16-pin connectors. The modders stripped the card down to bare PCB and replaced the dual 16-pin connectors with three 8-pin PCIe connectors at the rear, each soldered directly to the power regulators using heavy-gauge cables. The Sense 0 and Sense 1 pins were also rewired to ensure the card could reach its maximum power load without restrictions. A liquid cooling system with a GPU block was used to manage temperatures.

AMD's commitment to its AM4 platform, which debuted back in 2026, continues with the arrival of the 6-core, 12-thread Zen 3 'Vermeer' Ryzen 5 5500F processor. As a new entry-level CPU in the Ryzen 5000 Series priced at $99, the Ryzen 5 5500F differs from the Ryzen 5000G by using a multi-chiplet architecture, making it more like a cutdown version of the Ryzen 5 5600.

The key difference is lower Base and Boost Clock frequencies: the new Ryzen 5 5500F features a 3GHz Base Clock and up to 4.0 to 4.4GHz Boost Clock, compared to the Ryzen 5 5600's 3.5GHz and up to 4.4GHz. Also, the L3 Cache is cut in half to just 16MB, while the TDP remains at 65W.

For gamers, builders, and enthusiasts looking for a budget CPU option that can still be paired with DDR4 memory, the Ryzen 5 5500F makes sense, especially in the current climate of pricey components. The newer AM5 platform also has a new affordable option: the 6-core, 12-thread Zen 4 'Raphael' Ryzen 5 7500 CPU, priced at $189.

TSMC has announced its latest financial report for August 2026, in which the world's leading chip manufacturer posted record revenue of NT $514.81 billion, up 53% from a year ago and over 10% from July. Breaking the NT $500 billion barrier for the first time, this equates to $16.3 billion USD in revenue in a single month, with the record attributed to continued robust demand from the AI sector.

It's also the fourth straight month of significant growth for TSMC, highlighting that accelerating demand for AI silicon shows no signs of slowing. Per a new report from the analysts at TrendForce, when it comes to silicon revenue, TSMC's market share for Q2 2026 ending in June is sitting at around 72.5%, with the company's 5nm, 4nm, and 3nm capacities fully booked.

With Q2 2026 data showing nodes like 5nm accounting for a third of TSMC's revenue, and 2nm at only 3%, current demand extends beyond next-gen cutting-edge nodes like TSMC N2. However, with N2 wafer production expected to reach 100,000 per month by the end of 2026 and Apple's new iPhone A20 Pro SoC built on 2nm technology, TSMC's revenue growth is expected to continue, especially as 3nm and 5nm revenue keep growing.

Remedy has always pushed PC graphics and cinematic in-game visuals to new heights, from the original Control, one of the first games to truly showcase the potential of real-time ray-traced lighting, to Alan Wake 2's stunning path-traced mode, which leveraged the full suite of NVIDIA's DLSS 4 technologies.

The highly anticipated sequel, Control Resonant, launches later this month, and ahead of its release, Remedy has published the final PC requirements and specifications. The specs are fairly detailed, covering the game's non-RT, ray-tracing, and path tracing modes, with the developer offering Upscaler settings for each configuration.

Yes, Remedy's specs include NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS to hit 30 and 60 FPS targets, with the game set to launch with support for the latest DLSS 4.5 and FSR 4.1. The good news is that the minimum spec calls for a GeForce GTX 1070 or an RTX 2060 SUPER for ray tracing, which suggests the game will launch relatively polished and optimized.

YouTuber Coooley is offering a $1,000 bounty to anyone that can find the rarest item in Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction.

Diablo 2 is one of the most addicting games ever mostly because of its loot system, and finding that perfect item roll is extremely satisfying. Some items in Lord of Destruction are so rare and valuable that perfect versions haven't ever been found. Players have even put paid bounties on these ultra-rare drops, offering to pay real money for proof of ownership. Diablo YouTuber Coooley is bringing this challenge back, offering $1K to whoever can prove they own a perfect ethereal Tomb Reaver on Battle.net.

"I think us D2 players can do it. In light of Diablo 2 approaching 27 years of existence, I'm bringing back the bounty. I'm pledging $1,000 of my own money to the first person that can show me a perfect eth Tomb Reaver, in D2R, on Battle.net."

A modder has apparently pushed NVIDIA's DLSS Frame Generation back another GPU generation, this time getting it working on a GeForce RTX 20-series card. The project, shared on GitHub as DLSSG for SM75, was tested on an RTX 2060 Max-Q running The Witcher 3's next-gen update in DirectX 12, where the in-game Frame Generation toggle could reportedly be switched on and produced a visible framerate bump.

This is a direct continuation of the RTX 30-series mod that surfaced just days earlier, in which modders got DLSS Multi Frame Generation running on Ampere cards through a project called DLSSG SM86. The RTX 20 version is described as a fork of that same work, adapted to target Turing's SM75 architecture instead. Unlike some older workarounds that reroute DLSS calls through AMD's FSR Frame Generation, this one reportedly runs NVIDIA's own nvngx_dlssg 310.1 runtime, just with the GPU kernels swapped for SM75-compiled versions and the architecture check tricked into reading Turing as Ada Lovelace.

NVIDIA officially reserves Multi Frame Generation for RTX 50-series "Blackwell" cards, with standard Frame Generation limited to RTX 40 and above, so none of this is officially sanctioned. Early impressions are rather mixed too. It seems 2X mode is the one that actually holds up, while 3X reportedly introduces ghosting and 4X doesn't really work yet on this hardware. One user also said performance came in a bit behind what FSR Frame Generation already delivers on the same GPU, so this may not be a clean upgrade for everyone.

PC gamers may soon have one less launcher to worry about as Ubisoft is introducing new tools that break reliance on the Ubisoft Connect app.

Ubisoft today surprise-revealed that it's working on a new way to avoid having to download and run its proprietary launcher when playing Steam games. The info wasn't part of a big press release but instead nestled in an update post for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Steam, which is compatible with the new systems. Ubisoft says more games will be added in the future as its Steam tools expand.

"Starting with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, we are testing a new Ubisoft Connect Services Steam tool that keeps Ubisoft game features such as cross-progression, cross-play, player safety, challenges and rewards, among others, without requiring the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher to be installed or launched," the announcement reads.

A modder has ported NVIDIA's DLSS 5 neural renderer from using FP8 exclusively to using a hybrid FP8/NVFP4 approach. Reported by SwurvGaming, performance from this DLSS 5 mod only increased performance by 1% to 2% using this approach, despite the raw potential NVFP4 has over FP8 in AI compute.

The modder of this port, wilsjo2, gives details on how this hybrid implementation works. In the patch notes for their OptiScaler DLSS neural rendering mod version 0.7.1, the model selector will attempt an NVFP4 hybrid where possible, with unsupported shapes reportedly staying processed in FP8 when this hybrid mode is active. In version 0.7.2, the modder changed their NVFP4 hybrid model to be the recommended option for Blackwell GPUs, as well as providing some benchmark results. In a 120-second capture of Baldur's Gate 3, the hybrid model in version 0.7.2 achieved 55.16 FPS, and the FP8-only mode achieved 54.57 FPS.

There's not much reason currently to use this hybrid approach with the NVFP4 model, due to its poor performance uplift over DLSS 5's default FP8 implementation. But it shows that modding DLSS 5 to NVFP4 is possible, and we could see better results as optimizations are made to the DLSS 5 model in the future. Porting DLSS 5 from FP8 to NVFP4 is not as simple as switching what instructions the model uses; the model needs to be retrained to take advantage of NVFP4's inherent performance advantages over FP8.