Latest from TweakTown

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.

Great Wall has introduced a new version of its low-end Little King Kong desktop PSU in China, identified by JD as the GW-330SF, intended for low-power systems. The power supply comes with unusual environmental protection, including a PCB with a protective "three-proof" coating designed to resist insects, moisture, and dust, according to Great Wall.

According to Chinese outlet IT Home, the GW-330SF features 180-240V AC input, a single +12V rail rated at 19.16A, a 5V and 3.3V rail, fixed cables, and no AC power cable included in the box. At 19.16A, the +12V rail is rated for roughly 230W on its own, essentially matching the PSU's total advertised output.

Great Wall says the PCB uses a protective coating that creates an insulating barrier over exposed circuitry, helping protect against moisture and conductive debris. Similar coatings are commonly used in industrial electronics.

GTA 6 will have a weather system unlike anything we've seen before, Game Informer has confirmed in their latest cover issue.

New coverage from Game Informer teases a closer look at some features that Rockstar has yet to actually reveal. According to GI, it turns out that GTA 6 will have an advanced new weather system that "simulates Florida's less-sunny weather phenomena." That's a little vague, especially since weather in Florida is extremely unpredictable, but it could signal that hazardous weather conditions like tropical storms or even hurricanes will be in the game.

GTA 6's weather is actually something I reported on way back in 2021, when I spotted a patent for next-gen NPCs. This specifically mentioned weather, but in relation to NPC interactions. Further speculation was fueled by a Rockstar VFX job listing from that same year, which indicated that large-scale destruction could be possible. What could cause such devastation in a coastal state? Perhaps a massive category-5 storm that kicks off during the end missions, permanently changing Leonida.

Game of Tobi's latest showcase of their port of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo 3DS shows significant progress over earlier builds. The 27-minute gameplay footage highlights major improvements and now includes working stereoscopic 3D on the New Nintendo 3DS.

Nintendo originally launched Twilight Princess in 2006 for the Wii and GameCube, before remastering it as Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U in March 2016. The 3DS never received an official version, despite years of fan speculation and even a short-lived Twilight Princess 3D rumor in 2015 that was ultimately revealed to be fake.

Following an initial reveal in July this year, Game of Tobi is effectively building the 3DS version Nintendo never made. The project is possible thanks to the community decompilation of Twilight Princess. ZeldaRET spent years reconstructing the game's source code, which has since enabled native ports like Dusklight, along with other projects such as Twilight Princess: Courage Reborn.

Even if Halo stayed with its original developers at HS/343 Industries, a new game would still be years away from release.

Xbox recently made some big changes to its game dev teams and the franchises that they're responsible for. In an odd twist of fate, Activision will now make the next Halo game. Xbox has in turn mostly shuttered Halo Studios, the team responsible for Halo, relegating HS' ranks to more of a support studio that will handle socials, community features, and bug fixes for existing games.

New reports from The Verge's Tom Warren shed more light on the Halo situation. According to Warren's sources, the existing Halo Studios team was years away from releasing the next Halo game.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 2 was released in 1999, and although that was the era of early 3D gaming, its top-down presentation set the tone for the game-changing open-world action of Grand Theft Auto 3 in 2001. The GTA series has seen a few impressive RTX Remix mods and projects over the past couple of years, but seeing GTA 2 with full path-traced lighting is an impressive achievement.

Created by modder gebdag, GTA 2 RTX Remix translates all existing light sources in the game, while generating new ones for explosions, gunfire, and other effects, into RTX Remix's path-traced solution. As GeForce's Jacob Freeman showed on social media, this new lighting is transformative and includes a dynamic time-of-day system.

One key reason this is an impressive achievement is that we're talking about a game built using DirectDraw, an early version of Direct3D (DirectX). And because RTX Remix only supports games that use at least DirectX 9, the modder had to create a custom wrapper to translate the game's rendering calls so RTX Remix could read them properly.

Tap to pay is a modern convenience that many have grown accustomed to. Simply tap a card or a smartphone on a compatible reader, and purchases are conducted in a way that's simple and doesn't require anyone to punch in or enter information. According to a new patent titled "Video Game Controller-Driven Information Transfer," Sony could be bringing tap-to-pay technology to the PlayStation 6 and its next-gen controller.

As spotted by Dexerto, the system would include cards and smartphones, with gamers or users bringing their payment method close to the controller for NFC and Bluetooth communication. Although consoles like the PS5 support payment methods being stored on the system for digital purchases, entering card details for the first time or whenever there's a change has always been viewed as cumbersome when using a controller.

Interestingly, in addition to calling out credit cards as one use case for this tap-to-pay system, it also mentions gift cards. This would be a welcome addition, as many PlayStation gamers currently use gift cards for their digital purchases, a process, like with credit cards, that currently requires using a controller to manually type or select each character or number for activation.

Nintendo Switch emulation continues, even though Nintendo has been doing its best to scrub and remove Yuzu-based emulation projects from the internet. ProsperoEden, based on the Eden fork, is an unofficial PlayStation 5 port of the Nintendo Switch emulator. What makes this impressive is that it runs natively on PS5 hardware, no Linux required.

However, it requires a jailbroken console. Interestingly, this Nintendo Switch emulator for PS5 uses OpenGL, not Vulkan, and the developers have optimized it for specific games. The current ProsperoEden v1.000.010 release is listed as an Early Alpha, so performance varies by title, but the results are impressive for a project that seems to improve with every release.

The side-scrolling platformer Cuphead runs at a relatively stable 60 FPS while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Metroid Dread average around 40 FPS. The popular multiplayer racer runs at a solid 60 FPS on actual Switch hardware, so that one still has a ways to go before it's deemed playable. As for two of the most popular games on the Switch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Legends Z-A, it's a different story.

Thermal Grizzly and Noctua, two brands known for creating premium cooling and thermal solutions for PC hardware, have joined forces for the new WireView Pro II - Noctua Edition. As expected, it combines the WireView Pro II's advanced GPU monitoring and protection features for high-end cards using the new 12V-2x6 power connector standard, plus an integrated Noctua fan.

Specifically, it uses the Noctua NF-A4x10 PWM fan, which requires a larger CNC-machined aluminum housing and a redesigned grille than the original WireView Pro II. The extra space for heat transfer and dissipation also includes a cooling plate and thermal pad to improve thermal performance. The small Noctua NF-A4x10 PWM fan also operates semi-passively, only activating once a certain temperature and load threshold is reached.

According to Noctua, the revamped design improves cooling and thermal performance compared to the standard WireView Pro II, especially during "high thermal conditions," which would be when a card like the GeForce RTX 5090 is running at full load playing a game like 007 First Light or Control Resonant in 4K with Path Tracing and DLSS 4.5.

The mid-generation New Nintendo 3DS refresh that upgraded the processor, expanded memory, and added microSD support has become a haven for homebrew development in recent years. It was Nintendo's last full handheld console before it transitioned to the Switch's handheld-and-console hybrid.

In addition to the recent and impressive efforts from homebrew developers bringing classic GTA games like Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to the handheld, there's a new app that brings the latest PC games with ray-tracing and DLSS to the New 3DS, New 3DS XL, and New 2DS XL called Kasumi.

Created by p0mpurin and available via GitHub, Kasumi is an unofficial GeForce NOW client that brings PC gaming to the handheld via NVIDIA's cloud streaming service. GeForce NOW offers near-instant access to PC games across Steam, Epic, Xbox, and other clients, running on GeForce RTX-powered cloud hardware that leverages the full suite of RTX technologies like DLSS, Frame Generation, Reflex, and even G-Sync.

MAXSUN has demonstrated a compact workstation built around a Z890 Mini-ITX motherboard that connects a discrete GPU by routing its PCIe 5.0 link through MCIO cabling rather than a conventional PCIe x16 slot. The system was shown at Intel Connection 2026 in China, highlighting how the high-density connector standard can provide greater flexibility for small-form-factor workstation designs.

MAXSUN officially announced the MS-Challenger MCIO ITX platform in June 2026, as part of an effort with Intel to expand the MCIO ecosystem. MCIO stands for Mini Cool Edge I/O, and can carry high-speed PCIe over cable instead of forcing the PCIe endpoint to plug directly into the motherboard.

The 74-pin MCIO 8i connector used by MAXSUN carries up to eight PCIe lanes, so the board uses two connectors to expose a full 16-lane interface. This raises an obvious question: how is it different from a conventional PCIe riser cable?

Radeon GPU users no longer have to wait for AMD's response to NVIDIA's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering, as modders have delivered significant performance gains and simpler installation. Thanks to modder Daniel Blanco's unofficial project DLSS-NR-on-AMD, Radeon users can now run DLSS-NR with significantly higher frame rates and a much simpler, one-click installation.

There are actually two major runtime implementations at play here: Kien's dlss5-on-amd-9070xt-porting and danielblnc's DLSS-NR-on-AMD. Both are ground-up implementations that use custom HIP kernels to run the DLSS 5 neural network on Radeon hardware rather than translating NVIDIA GPU code at runtime. Daniel's approach remains closed-source while Kien's alternative is open-source.

According to danielblnc, the Alpha 0.3.3 version achieved a 23% speed boost over previous builds. Alpha 0.4.0 then increased performance by around 42%, and Alpha 0.4.1 added another 8%, bringing the total to roughly 89% more performance than v0.3.2 across those three releases. That is a massive improvement in just 2 weeks.