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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered is out now on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2, and it looks like Steam players showed up in force. SteamDB showed the game peaking at 120,975 concurrent players at the time of writing, with the number still climbing. That beats the previous record of 103,329, set in January 2020 shortly after Netflix's The Witcher premiered.

For context, the game peaked at roughly 92,000 players when it launched in 2015, and last month's peak was reportedly closer to 32,000. The remaster is a free update for existing owners, which probably helped interest. CD Projekt Red reworked the skill system, animations, and combat, and the update also sets the stage for Songs of the Past, the expansion due in 2027. It is being co-developed with Fool's Theory to bridge The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4.

The catch is that the upgrade asks more of your PC. The minimum spec now starts at a Core i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 2600 with 12 GB of RAM and 70 GB of SSD storage. On PC, the visuals also get full path-traced lighting, with DLSS 4.5, FSR 4, and XeSS 2 support, and CD Projekt Red says full path tracing at 4K needs an RTX 5080. Anyone on older hardware should check the full requirements list first.

GDDR7 is known to have very high overclocking headroom, with artificial limits set in GPU overclocking tools often preventing higher GDDR7 memory clocks from being achieved. Sad-Victory-8319 on the Overclocking subreddit discovered that their GDDR7 memory on a GIGABYTE RTX 5070 Ti achieved a whopping +5500MHz offset, equating to 39Gbps per memory module and 1,248GB/s of total memory bandwidth. For perspective, that's over 200GB/s more memory bandwidth than what an RTX 4090 achieves stock.

The utility the user used to reach these exorbitantly high memory speeds was mvolt+ extreme, a third-party overclocking utility purpose-built to unlock overclocking headroom beyond NVIDIA's official limitations. For GDDR7 memory, the maximum offset limit for most tools, including MSI Afterburner, is +3000MHz.

The Reddit poster noted that performance scaling was linear, gaining "about +1 FPS for every +1000[MHz] on the memory", confirming that the offset was providing noticeable performance gains. Other RTX 5070 Ti owners in the same thread shared similar findings with mvolt, with some reporting memory clock speeds working with a +5000MHz or +5500MHz offset. However, there was one exception, where one user with an ASUS Prime RTX 5070 Ti noted their card topped out at around +4500MHz.

We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with MONTECH for Liquid Cooler Week, giving four lucky readers the chance to upgrade their CPU cooling with a HyperFlow ARGB all-in-one liquid cooler.

There will be four winners in total, and each winner will receive one CPU cooler. The prize pool includes one HyperFlow ARGB 240 Black, one HyperFlow ARGB 240 White, one HyperFlow ARGB 360 Black, and one HyperFlow ARGB 360 White.

The MONTECH HyperFlow ARGB 240 pairs two 120mm fans with an aluminum radiator measuring 277 x 120 x 27mm. Its shorter radiator makes it an option for compatible cases without room for a 360mm installation, while retaining the HyperFlow range's colorful lighting and gemstone-inspired pump housing.

Following tens of millions of sales and a successful TV show adaptation, Sony's first-party darling isn't through with The Last of Us universe.

Naughty Dog celebrated The Last of Us day by confirming two new projects in the series are currently in the works. There are no specifics on what these things actually are, but at least one of them is expected to be playable and interactive. The other non-game project might be related to more adaptations similar to the popular HBO TV series; however, Naughty Dog has distanced itself from the show's season 3, so it remains unclear whether or not that adaptation is technically included in the lineup.

The Last of Us hasn't seen a new release since 2019's sequel on the PlayStation 4, re-releases and remasters notwithstanding. Sony and Naughty Dog actually cancelled the ambitious Last of Us online survival game, which had one of the more anticipated live titles in the PlayStation games-as-a-service lineup. Reports indicated that this game was mostly complete before it was shut down.

Created by Luma's Workshop and without any AI, the AstroCore project has successfully decompiled Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy, with a native PC port of the iconic platformer "coming soon." Super Mario Galaxy originally debuted in 2007 as the big Super Mario game for the Nintendo Wii. Although motion controls defined Nintendo's Wii era, Super Mario Galaxy is still widely considered a traditional 3D platformer because it doesn't rely on Wii Remote functions for Mario's movement.

With Super Mario Galaxy decompiled, the game's code has been reverse-engineered so it can be recompiled to run on a wide range of platforms, starting with PC. Without emulating Wii hardware, this native PC port of Super Mario Galaxy can support higher resolutions, frame rates, custom controls, bigger draw distances, and even mods like texture packs. The AstroCore shows that the game runs on PC at a smooth 60 FPS.

The Luma's Workshop team notes that once the PC port of Super Mario Galaxy is complete, it will shift its efforts to the game's sequel, Super Mario Galaxy 2. As with all recompilation projects, since the new code doesn't infringe on copyright, players will still need to have their own copy or backup of the game for various art assets.

With most recent DLSS mods for Radeon focused on getting the brand-new DLSS 5 Neural Rendering working on RDNA 4 graphics cards, this new mod from Countervolt does something we haven't seen before, or thought possible: bring NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution to the RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7700 XT as an OptiScaler mod.

DLSS Super Resolution is NVIDIA's AI-powered upscaling or anti-aliasing tool that has been a game changer for PC gaming since its DLSS 2.0 update in the GeForce RTX 20 Series era. Since then, it has continued to evolve, with the latest Transformer-powered DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution widely regarded as the gold standard for upscaling technologies and a key feature for any GeForce RTX GPU.

Now, Countervolt notes that this is an experiment and only works when running Windows games on Radeon GPUs in Linux with Valve's Proton compatibility layer. It also requires ZLUDA, which is a replacement for CUDA for non-NVIDIA GPUs. When the game asks for DLSS, the DLSS network runs on the Radeon GPU via ZLUDA, with the "heaviest DLSS kernels replaced by hand-written RDNA3 code."

Kubb Fanless mini PCs offer a compact, passively cooled design in a 120 x 120 x 120mm size that supports AMD Ryzen AI 300 and Intel 'Panther Lake' Core Ultra 300 Series processors. The big difference is the pure aluminum chassis with stylish machined fins integrated into the design for heat dissipation, enabling silent operation without fans.

Turns out one Kubb Fanless customer reportedly ordered a pure and solid-gold version of the Kubb Fanless, which bumped the 2.1kg passively cooled aluminum version up to around 13kg. Of course, that's not the only thing that increased: the €1,595 starting price of a Kubb Fanless mini PC rose to an estimated $1.7 million for this 24-carat gold model.

As reported by FanlessTech, as gold transfers heat anywhere between 30 and 50% faster than aluminum, this custom design also doubles as a passive cooling marvel. That doesn't make it a viable option for any sort of ready-for-retail design, as this is clearly a one-off for a very wealthy customer.

Pulsar's X2F CrazyLight sets a new bar for the brand's lineup of high-performance, ultra-lightweight wireless gaming mice with its 29-gram build. It's Pulsar's latest fingertip mouse, a design that strips away most of a gaming mouse's body to focus on the main buttons for fingertip grips. The reduced size won't suit everyone, with Pulsar noting it's built for gamers seeking ideal "speed and precise fingertip control."

The design logic is sound: the lighter a gaming mouse is, the faster it moves with less effort. The Pulsar X2F CrazyLight wireless gaming mouse is also built for performance, powered by the brand's next-gen XS-2 sensor, which features a 42,000 DPI sensitivity rating, 800 IPS tracking, and 70G acceleration. Add low-latency 8,000Hz (8K) polling, and you get a 29-gram mouse with the hardware to back up its unique design.

The sensor also supports adjustable lift-off distances (LOD) and can track on a wide range of surfaces, including glass and hard mousepads. Elsewhere, the main left and right click buttons use 100 million-click-rated Pulsar Optical Switches, while the scroll wheel features gold-plated contacts and a dust-resistant design for long-term use.

With the release of Valve's Steam Frame all-in-one VR headset, with its Arm-based Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and native version of SteamOS, modders are now using this as a baseline to bring the popular handheld operating system to more portable devices.

Android-based devices from AYN, AYANEO, Retroid, and more all feature similar Qualcomm processors, and with that, ROCKNIX is bringing Steam and even Windows game support to its Linux distribution for handhelds. This includes AYN's popular Odin 2 and Thor handhelds, the AYANEO Pocket series, and the Retroid Pocket 5 and 6. With ROCKNIX, users can transform their compact gaming handhelds into mini Steam Decks.

As Retro Handhelds spotted, the latest ROCKNIX update adds support for "native Linux games as well as Windows games through Proton," Valve's translation layer for SteamOS. With Valve's compatibility layer, Proton 11.0, ported to Arm, this opens the door to x86-on-Arm gaming on par with the Steam Frame.

Researchers at ETH Zurich's Soft Robotics Lab have built a robotic hand that can walk on its own fingertips, and if that description alone is not enough to make you uneasy, the footage will finish the job. The project is being compared, quite accurately, to Thing from The Addams Family.

The hand is built on a standard commercial anthropomorphic model with five fingers and 20 actuated joints, four per finger. Rather than redesigning the hand, the researchers kept the off-the-shelf fingers as-is and taught the hand to move using reinforcement learning in a simulator. A battery, onboard computer via Raspberry Pi, and motion sensors were mounted to the palm to make it fully self-contained. The whole thing weighs 818 grams.

Teaching it to walk was a big challenge. Unlike a standard robot with symmetrical legs, the fingers are different lengths, the thumb opposes the others, and lifting any single finger to take a step immediately destabilizes the structure.

CD Projekt Red has expanded its system requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered to include four new presets, showing what hardware is needed to run the game's Ultra, ray-tracing, and path-tracing presets. The Witcher 3 development team announced the updated requirements in a blog post, stating that an RTX 5080 is required to run the game in its full path-tracing mode at 4K.

Each of the four presets, Ultra, RT Minimum, RT Recommended, and Path Tracing, has specific resolution and frame rate targets, beyond just the graphics presets themselves. The first three presets target either 1080p or 1440p with a 30 or 60 FPS target, but CD Projekt Red is targeting 4K for the Path Tracing mode at 60 FPS.

For the Ultra Preset, the devs are targeting 1440p and 60 FPS for its hardware requirements page. To run it, gamers will need at a minimum a Core i7-13700K or Ryzen 7 7700X for the CPU, and an RTX 3070 Ti, RX 6800 XT, or Arc B580 for the GPU, along with 24GB of RAM. That said, the B580 is the only GPU on the list that requires XeSS upscaling to reach the aforementioned frame rate and resolution targets.

Developer danielblnc continues improving the unofficial DLSS-NR-on-AMD tool, and the latest Alpha 0.4.3 release has pushed Radeon RX 9070 XT performance in Cyberpunk 2077 to new heights. According to the official GitHub release notes, the card reached 75 FPS at 1080p with DLSS 5 Neutral Rendering enabled in Fast mode.

Just a few weeks ago, early builds of the same mod struggled to clear even 30 FPS at the same resolutions and settings. The jump to 75 FPS followed a series of aggressive updates over the past couple of weeks. Alpha 0.4.0 produced a 42% gain over the previous version, 0.4.1 added another 8% plus an extra 9% under heavy loads through a new priority queue mode, 0.4.2 delivered a 15% boost specifically for RX 9000-series cards in Fast mode, and 0.4.3 further added an 18-20% boost on top of that.

Fast mode was introduced in 0.4.2 and is now the default for RX 9000 GPUs, thanks to its ability to use cheaper arithmetic operations while keeping visual differences from full Reference mode barely noticeable. The RX 7000-series cards remain locked to Reference mode for now. The developer also states that overall image quality is very similar to native DLSS 5 on GeForce hardware, though some effects might not be fully on par.

The AI boom has already pushed memory prices to historic highs and driven GPU costs well beyond what most consumers can absorb. The next casualty appears to be silicon wafers, the raw material that everything else is built on.

According to a report from Taiwan's Commercial Times, long-term agreement prices for 12-inch silicon wafers are expected to rise significantly in 2027. Epitaxial wafers, which feature a single-crystal silicon layer grown on the surface and are widely used in advanced AI chips by foundries including TSMC, are projected to increase by 15% to 25%.

Polished wafers face steeper increases of more than 40%, with some second-tier customers potentially seeing hikes above 50%. Analysts also expect spot prices to surpass long-term contract levels as early as Q4 2026, giving suppliers a stronger negotiating position heading into 2027 renewals and leaving room for further increases in 2028.

Noctua is figuring out a different way to cool hot hardware without a liquid loop. On September 24, the company announced a research partnership with Forced Physics DCT to investigate whether its patented JouleForce micro-channel array technology can advance to desktop PCs and workstations. Noctua presents it as a long-term R&D effort rather than a specific product.

JouleForce forces air through arrays of tiny channels. According to the announcement, the geometry prevents the boundary layer that normally restricts air cooling from fully forming, so heat is pulled out along the entire length of each channel. This lets air alone move large amounts of heat without pumps, tubing, or liquid loops. Forced Physics says the tech can remove between 500W and more than 2,000W, depending on the design.

Noctua says the arrays create a pressure drop of at least an order of magnitude above the range standard axial PC fans are built for, so current setups depend on industrial blowers, high-speed centrifugal fans, or vacuum pumps. Increasing fan speed or utilizing multi-stage impellers could help achieve the goal.

Reports of the shutdown began circulating on September 27 after screenshots of a discussion with a DenuvOwO member were shared online. When asked whether the group had disbanded, the member reportedly confirmed that it had. The member also reportedly agreed when another user suggested that Denuvo's recent lawsuit against voices38 was behind the decision.

The shutdown is a notable development for a group that became closely associated with the growing use of hypervisor-based Denuvo bypasses in 2026. Unlike traditional cracks that directly patch or modify Denuvo's checks inside a game's executable, the hypervisor technique attempts to bypass the protection by manipulating the environment Denuvo sees while the game is running.

The approach proved much easier to deploy across multiple titles, though it came with drawbacks, including the need to alter or turn off some Windows security features. DenuvOwO used the method on more than 60 games, making it one of the more recognizable names in the recent wave of Denuvo bypasses.

We already know Rockstar is set to publish Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne 1 and 2 Remake after GTA 6, but that may not be the only project the studio has lined up. A resurfaced leak now points to something that will surprise a few people: not a new IP, not Red Dead Redemption 3, but an L.A. Noire sequel, reportedly targeting a 2030 launch.

The leak originates from a December 2023 post on GTAForums by user Shahansha, which has recently gained renewed attention after some of its GTA 6 claims proved accurate. According to the post, the sequel is set in San Francisco and built around the Zodiac Killer case. Rockstar was reportedly in the very early stages of development at the time of writing, with a 2030 window floated as an internal target. The post also claimed Rockstar was "talking about doing the face scanning stuff again, but making it insane," a reference to MotionScan, the facial capture technology that made the original L.A. Noire genuinely ahead of its time when it launched in 2011.

The reason this three-year-old 4chan post is being taken more seriously now than when it first appeared comes down to two specific GTA 6 details the leaker got right before anyone else. He described the relationship and criminal profiling system that has since been confirmed in Netflix's extended look at the game, and he mentioned that GTA 6 was initially designed around four protagonists before being narrowed to Jason and Lucia, a detail Rockstar North boss Rob Nelson confirmed in recent previews.

Xbox recently laid off 268 more workers across multiple teams, and handed Halo over to Activision. On the heels of this news, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that it's "great" to see the business being "streamlined" as the firm moves into the future of gaming.

Shortly after it made the largest tech acquisition in history, buying Activision Blizzard King for $68 billion, Microsoft inadvertently hindered its gaming business by disrupting chip supply through massive multi-billion dollar AI investments. Thanks to AI, chips are harder to come by for everyone, driving up prices for games consoles--prices that have already been increased by macro-economic disruptions like tariffs and volatile exchange rates.

This has led to a right-sizing of the video game industry; publishers laid off hundreds of workers as jobs were eliminated across the board, leading to thousands upon thousands of layoffs and redundancies across the globe. Xbox, who grew tremendously after the merger, has laid off over five thousand workers to date, per Game Developer.

Even thieves aren't getting a good deal on expensive NVIDIA hardware. In what may be one of the most disappointing heists in recent memory, thieves in California stole two Nvidia-branded trailers expecting to find stacks of AI GPUs, only to discover that their robbery was about to become a worldwide joke. Instead of silicon, they got silica. Twenty tons of sand, to be exact.

The two trailers bore both the NVIDIA and PlusAI logos, the latter being an autonomous trucking startup working with NVIDIA to test self-driving technology. The thieves likely spotted the branding and assumed an Nvidia-branded vehicle meant an Nvidia-adjacent payday. What they did not know is that PlusAI packs its semi-trailers with 20,000 pounds of sand each to simulate real cargo loads and test how a fully loaded truck responds to various road conditions. The actual truck cabs, which would have contained the valuable self-driving hardware, were parked safely inside the warehouse. The trailers were left outside secured with hand locks.

PlusAI learned the trailers were missing only after an executive received a text from a friend who recognized the vehicles parked near their Newark, California workplace, about half a mile from PlusAI's warehouse. Police were called, and both trailers were recovered with all 40,000 pounds of sand intact. It appears the thieves broke open the doors, discovered their payload, and simply walked away. At the time of writing this, no arrests have been made.

A wild new external GPU enclosure has surfaced that is designed to provide an RTX 5090 or RTX 5060 Ti gaming experience over a wireless display connection. Known as the WiCi One, the enclosure uses a Wi-Fi 7 connection instead of DisplayPort or HDMI to project a display signal to a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone. The base model starts at $1,999 for the RTX 5060 Ti version.

The WiCi One is a high-end GPU enclosure targeted at gamers, creators, and AI developers, featuring not just a dedicated RTX 50 series GPU but an Intel CPU, Wi-Fi 7 module, and NVMe storage included in the enclosure to provide wireless display connectivity and additional storage for machine learning workloads. The eGPU enclosure uses a virtual GPU driver and its Wi-Fi 7 module to provide display output to a host machine. The internal NVMe SSD is designed to use TurboStream, which is a feature that turns the SSD into a working VRAM pool, improving the complexity of AI models that can be deployed on the GPU.

A couple of gaming benchmarks were provided on the WiCi One product page, advertising up to 110 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K Ultra with DLSS 4, and 90 FPS at 4K Cinematic with DLSS 4 on the RTX 5090 version. The RTX 5060 Ti version was capable of providing 80 FPS and 60 FPS, respectively, in the same titles at the same settings.

A PS5 emulator has now booted Marvel's Wolverine on PC, and the game only launched on PlayStation 5 on September 15.

User Jose Coixao (@notnotzecoxao) posted a short video on X showing the KytyPS5 emulator getting the game to its main menu, on a system with a GeForce RTX 5090 and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Frame rates were reportedly around 2 FPS, and no gameplay was shown, so this is a boot-to-menu result for now.

Still, PS5 emulation looks like it keeps picking up speed. When we covered the emulator in July, KytyPS5 had only just reached the menus of GTA 5 and ran Quake II at around 7 FPS with glitches. Roughly a month later, footage highlighted on X showed GTA 5 running through its North Yankton prologue.