Metroid Prime 4: Beyond just dropped for both Switch consoles after getting rebooted partway through development when Bandai Namco's version wasn't cutting it, and Retro Studios had to start over from scratch. The game was announced back at E3 2017 for the original Switch, but it took forever to actually ship because of the troubled production cycle.
PC players can already run it through Switch emulators like Ryubing and Citron since there aren't any Switch 2 emulators yet. The wild part is you can actually play it in stereoscopic 3D on a massive virtual screen using ReShade with the Rendepth shader and Virtual Desktop software on a VR headset.
The setup requires messing with depth buffer settings and tweaking Vulkan sources until...
OneXPlayer is prepping a gaming handheld called the X1 that runs Intel's Core Ultra 5 338H chip, and it just showed up on Geekbench with 32 gigs of RAM. The processor packs 12 cores split between performance, efficiency, and low-power variants, plus an Arc B370 integrated GPU with 10 Xe3 cores that should perform close to AMD's Radeon 880M.
Geekbench scores hit around 2,512 single-core and 13,265 multi-core, but those numbers will probably shift as more benchmarks surface. The memory is supposedly clocked at 9,600 MT/s, which is pretty solid for a handheld.
This looks like it'll be a decent mid-range option when Panther Lake chips actually launch, and other manufacturers are probably cooking up their versions already.
Apple might lose Johny Srouji, the guy who basically runs their entire chip operation, and the company is scrambling to keep him around. Srouji apparently told Tim Cook he's thinking about bouncing to another firm, and he's already let his coworkers know he's serious about it. Meta or OpenAI could be possibilities since they've been poaching Apple talent like crazy.
This would be a massive hit since Srouji designed the M1 that kicked off the whole Apple Silicon thing, and he's been pushing the custom modem work that just shipped in the iPhone 16e and iPhone Air. Apple threw huge pay bumps and maybe even a CTO position at him to stick around, but word is he doesn't want to work under a different CEO down the line.
If he stays, Apple...
Samsung might actually pull off a comeback with its HBM memory after getting absolutely bodied by yield problems for months. The company finished internal testing for HBM4 and sent samples to big clients like NVIDIA, and analysts think approval could happen before the year wraps up. Samsung is apparently pushing 11 Gbps pin speeds and undercutting competitors on price to make the chips more attractive.
NVIDIA wants to spread out its supply chain for the Vera Rubin launch, which is why getting Samsung qualified matters. The Korean firm has been struggling with DRAM yields for a while, but it seems way more confident about HBM4 since the tech got rebuilt from scratch using 1c DRAM and a 4nm base die. Hyperscalers like Google, Meta, and...
Apple might drop one of its flagship iPhones next year to make room for a foldable model, and the iPhone 18 lineup could get a major facelift with under-display Face ID tech. A leaker on Weibo claims Apple is testing this setup using micro-transparent glass splicing, which would let them ditch the pill-shaped cutout for a simple punch-hole camera. The company is apparently working toward a completely uninterrupted screen without any visible holes or notches.
Under-screen cameras usually produce garbage image quality since the display gets in the way, but Apple could probably fix that with software tricks. The whole thing ties into their rumored plan for a totally bezel-free iPhone launching in 2027, which might skip the iPhone 19 name...
Benchmarks for the Panther Lake Arc B390 integrated GPU just dropped, and the 12-core Xe3 chip is putting up some wild numbers in PassMark. The flagship iGPU scored 9,453 points, beating AMD's Radeon 890M by 16 percent and crushing older Intel Arc chips by huge margins. It even managed to hang with entry-level discrete cards like the Arc A530M and Radeon 7600M.
The B390 is showing an 83 percent improvement over the Arc 140V and a 50 percent lead against the discrete Arc A380, which is pretty nuts for an integrated solution. It's worth noting that PassMark seems to favor the new Xe3 architecture over older Arc GPUs, since the 140V tests are way slower here than they actually perform in real games.
With XeSS 3 frame generation support...
Intel's upcoming Panther Lake chips just showed up in PassMark benchmarks, revealing four different Core Ultra Series 3 processors. The leaked CPUs are the Core Ultra 7 366H, Ultra X7 358H, Ultra 7 365, and Ultra 5 332, and they're pulling some surprisingly strong single-thread numbers against AMD's current lineup.
The top-tier 366H managed to match the older Core Ultra 9 285H despite running at lower clock speeds, while the X7 358H beat out the 255H even though it has fewer P-cores. The eight-core 365 managed to edge past both the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Lunar Lake's Ultra 5 226V in testing.
A Panther Lake handheld also leaked on Geekbench, running the Core Ultra 5 338H, showing worse single-core performance than AMD's Strix Point...
A Reddit user ran over their brand-new M5 MacBook Pro after leaving it on top of their car, and the laptop survived with just minor scratches. The machine was inside a cheap sleeve when it got hit, but the owner found it after searching for half an hour with tire marks on the case. Despite initially thinking MacBooks were delicate, they were shocked that the device still worked perfectly.
Most laptops would have been destroyed in a similar accident, but Apple's unibody aluminum construction held up. Some commenters tried explaining it away with physics about force distribution, yet nobody would actually test that theory with their own gear. MacBooks have even stopped bullets before, with one saving someone's life during a shooting, so...
AMD dropped fresh PassMark benchmarks for the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, and the chip is sitting around 20 percent faster than the older 7800X3D while clocking a modest five percent bump over the current 9800X3D. The new variant packs eight cores with 96MB of L3 cache and hits 5.6GHz boost speeds, which explains the performance jump since that is a 400MHz increase compared to the 9800X3D. People upgrading from AM4 chips like the 5800X3D are looking at somewhere between 43 and 48 percent gains across single-core and multi-core workloads.
The chip uses second-generation V-Cache tech that runs cooler and supports overclocking, which should help gaming performance without cranking up temperatures. AMD might reveal the 9850X3D at CES alongside the...
