Unsurprisingly, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X don’t seem to be selling very well right now-
The recently launched AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X have been the subject of much… apathy? Indifference? Underwhelm? Take your pick. The epitome of these Zen 5 architecture chips has probably been the whole “Zen 5%” meme, referring to a mere 5% (or thereabouts) increase in performance. It’s not that these new chips are bad—far from it—they’re just not good enough for the cost.
It’s of little surprise, then, that we hear they’re not selling all too well—at least if Mindfactory’s sales numbers (via TechPowerUp) are anything to go by. At the time of writing, the website says that “over 20” 9600X SKUs and “over 30” 9700X SKUs have been sold.
There are many possible reasons for these low sales numbers. For one, it’s only a few days since these CPUs hit the shelves and people are still waiting for even more to do so. PC gamers are likely waiting to see what a 9000-series X3D CPU will be like—X3D referring to the 3D V-Cache th…
Cryptominers hope they can find a second life by turning their mining operations into AI farms-
Some large-scale crypto miners are looking for new ways to make money as demand for GPU-powered mining operations has significantly decreased over the last year. Some are hoping to turn that processing power elsewhere: to help train AI.
According to Bloomberg, some crypto mining companies have pivoted their business towards high-performance computing (HPC) services for customers working with AI. And they’re doing pretty well with it: Hut 8 Mining, for instance, told Bloomberg that its HPC business had generated approximately $16.9 million from its AI clients. Hive BlockChain bought $66 million worth of GPUs from Nvidia for its HPC endeavors and is projected to make about $98 million in revenue by the end of 2024.
Even Nvidia boss Jensen Huang predicts that AI models will become a million times more powerful within the next decade and expects to see the rise of “AI factories worldwide” to meet the ever-growing workload demands. And the amounts of money on the …
Wake up, Samurai—Cyberpunk 2077- Phantom Liberty Nvidia GPU driver just dropped-
It’s nearly time to play Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. And would you believe it’s an absolute scorcher of a game expansion. Before that happens, however, there’s still time to jump into the free 2.0 update to get your V ready for the new expansion and don’t forget to download the latest Nvidia Game Ready drivers out today.
These new drivers don’t promise much by way of specifics. Though Nvidia does say they provide “the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 3.5 technology and DLSS Ray Reconstruction including Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.”
That’s probably reason enough to go out and download this driver package. Cyberpunk is chocked full of the latest graphics features, including Ray Reconstruction. Our Dave has been playing around with Ray Reconstruction in Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of time, and he’s quite smitten with it already.
In his words, “It’s really, really good-looking. When I talk about Ray Reconstruction really grounding …
Be a swamp devil, cause chaos, steal stuff, in this lo-fi immersive sim-
What has eight eyes, a tail, and stabs people in the dark so it can steal their stuff? You, probably, once you download the demo for Brush Burial, a retro-inspired Thief-ish immersive sim about being a horrible little swamp devil named Fennel with eight eyes and a tail that stabs people in the dark so it can steal their stuff.
The developer describes it as a “First Person Snatcher” where “You play as Fennel, a knife-wielding swamp devil with an eye for gold and a penchant for violence. Use your tail to toy with your prey: grab and fling objects, climb impossible heights, and knock your enemies off balance.” Fennel gets up to stuff like stealing trinkets, befriending “thieves, brigands, and other charming troublemakers” and under your control navigating “hand-crafted environments blending the boundaries between the digital, the industrial, the natural, and the spiritual.”
It certainly earns its retro-inspired credentials, full of hand-drawn then crunched up textures mashe…
Valley Peaks trades Getting Over It’s frustration for cozy frog vibes, but keeps you climbing-
Watch On
Valley Peaks, which released on Steam this week, is a cozy first-person platformer where you play as a frog tasked with climbing mountains and installing radio transmitters on them. It’s on sale for the first two weeks, 10% off until August 7.
I had a delightful time in the Valley Peaks demo. It opens with your friendly frog protagonist driving his old truck down the road before getting an important message from Corporate. The frogs in the valley need your help connecting with the outside world, and you’ve got to get those transmitters up pronto. I did wonder what a bunch of happy frogs living in an idyllic valley really need with technological connection to all the hustle and bustle that’s making the rest of us crazy, but that’s neither here nor there.
Gameplay consists almost entirely of climbing, and it’s got a neat little system to let you do it. Each mouse button is connected to one of your froggy paws, and you can shimmy a little bit to the …
You can now install PC Gamer—okay fine, any website I suppose—as an app on your desktop with the latest Chrome Canary build-
Not content to merely sit on our laurels as the world’s best PC gaming website in your regular browser, now we want to infiltrate your desktop apps as well. Kidding— mostly kidding—but those of you with the latest Chrome Canary build could well make that dream a reality. With a bit of light tweaking you can add an “Install page as an app” option to the browser letting you drop app shortcuts onto your PC desktop (via Android Police).
If we’re being totally transparent, you can do it for any website, not just this glorious collection of PC gaming and PC gaming hardware delights. Chrome Canary is the daily build version of Google Chrome, and it’s generally a few steps ahead of the stable release build of the browser, often featuring the absolute latest changes under testing from the developers.
The most recent version is running an early build of Chrome 124, as opposed to the current stable release build of 122. We’ve put together a handy little guide to enablin…