Generative AI has made a significant impact across education, computing, medicine, entertainment, and more. However, all that progress comes with a hefty price tag. The amount of electricity these systems burn through, plus the insane amounts of water needed to keep them cool, is honestly outrageous.

For context, Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption in 2024 surpassed the power usage of over 100 countries. Similarly, OpenAI's GPT-4 AI model consumes up to 3 water bottles to generate 100 words.

Earlier this month, Microsoft shared an interesting concept that may potentially address the water concerns riddling the progression and advancement of AI. CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the tech giant uses a liquid loop in its data centers, which is filled once. As a result, the company's data centers' water consumption has reduced significantly, down to "what a single restaurant would use."

And now it looks like NVIDIA is taking a page from Microsoft’s playbook. Speaking at London Climate Week on Monday, a top executive suggested that water concerns tied to data center development could be addressed through the company's next-generation AI infrastructure.

The executive further disclosed that the company's new next-gen AI infrastructure can be fully cooled with a liquid warm enough to alleviate the need for additional chilling equipment (Axios).

According to NVIDIA's Chief Sustainability Officer, Josh Parker:

"The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved."

How does this liquid work? It’s basically a recirculated mix of water and propylene — think automotive antifreeze. It’s worth noting that the system can operate at temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

As such, this allows it to function reliably in hotter environments compared to older systems. In practical terms, data centers equipped with NVIDIA’s next-generation AI infrastructure will require significantly less water and energy for cooling, reducing both operational costs and environmental impact.

This announcement comes at a time when concerns over water and energy use are mounting, as data centers continue to expand into community corridors. Microsoft has seemingly embraced the "Community-First" AI infrastructure, which addresses some of the issues raised by communities themselves, including reducing its water consumption and promising not to increase electricity bills.

Elsewhere, Microsoft’s plan to build a $1 billion data center in Kenya came to an abrupt halt in early May after the government declined to commit to covering the annual capacity costs Microsoft had requested to run Azure in the region. President William Ruto remarked that the facility’s power demands would be so immense that it would effectively require “switching off half the country” to keep it operational.

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Despite an ongoing memory crunch that's affecting wide swaths of the tech market, a new report from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reveals that NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel discrete GPU shipments in Q1 2026 remained relatively flat compared to the previous quarter.

As JPR points out (via PC Gamer), the first quarter of the year is generally expected to be flat. Consumers are tapped out after the holiday season, and the major sales events in the tech market are yet to arrive.

In any case, I wasn't expecting the market to hold as strongly as it did, considering the inflated prices that most GPUs are currently experiencing and the lack of any new card launches.

Approximately 11.8 million GPUs were shipped in Q1 2026, with NVIDIA making up the bulk of the hardware.

In Q1 2026, JPR posits that NVIDIA and AMD's overall market share both dropped by 0.4%, whereas Intel increased by 0.4%. That means that NVIDIA fell from 91% in Q4 2025 to 90% in Q1 2026. AMD remained at 8%, and Intel remained at 1% market share, comparatively.

What's more impressive is that the attach rate for discrete GPUs in desktop PCs climbed to 76%, a 33.2% increase from the previous quarter. That's a huge jump. Conversely, JPR also notes a significant 25% year-over-year CPU market drop and a 24% quarter-over-quarter drop.

The GPU results, at least, look good at first glance, but there's some nuance to the numbers.

JPR is known to track all GPU shipments rather than direct point-of-sale purchases to the likes of you or me. That means the data includes GPUs gobbled up by OEMs and other manufacturers, who are undoubtedly attempting to stockpile hardware as prices continue to rise.

I don't doubt these efforts are skewing the numbers, and future reports like these could show far worse results.

AMD's GPU struggles continue as NVIDIA holds its market dominance

If I break down the overall 11.82 million shipments in Q1 2026, it works out to roughly 10.7 million units for NVIDIA, 1 million units for AMD, and 100,000 or so for Intel.

Despite only dropping 0.4% in Q1 2026, AMD's struggle to gain ground on NVIDIA continues.

Looking at Steam's May 2026 GPU hardware survey, the first AMD GPU shows up in 13th place, and it's not a discrete card but rather integrated Radeon Graphics.

In 25th place is the first actual discrete AMD GPU, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, with a 1.33% share of use on Steam.

The rest of those top 25 spots? Completely dominated by NVIDIA, aside from integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics in 16th place with a 1.79% share.

Windows Central's take

Despite recent news from AMD regarding its FSR 4.1 tech coming to some of its older RX 7000 and RX 6000 GPUs, NVIDIA largely dominates the news cycle with its cutting-edge PC gaming advancements that AMD always seems to be chasing.

I can attest that many of those advancements feel like they border on magic. My RTX 5070 Ti has been treating me very well since I bought it last year, and I'm constantly amazed at the capabilities of DLSS and the overall performance the card can deliver across all games.

There's also the fact that NVIDIA dominates the high-end GPU market. And when I say dominate, I mean there's really no AMD alternative to an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090.

Considering how popular these cards are not just for developers, designers, and editors, but also AI professionals, you can see why AMD is having such a hard time clawing back market share.

I do hope that changes. NVIDIA might hold the biggest market share by far, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. An AMD Radeon revival would only benefit the overall market, providing NVIDIA with some much-needed competition.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is a cornerstone of the global chip supply, accounting for roughly 70% of the world's foundry production (and more if you're talking only about the most cutting-edge semiconductors).

Considering the Taiwanese firm supplies tech giants like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, AMD, and Apple with chips, if there's one company that I don't want to see discuss price increases, it's TSMC.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. In a recent interview with the BBC, TSMC's Chief Financial Officer, Wendell Huang, cited inflation as a reason why the chip maker could be forced to hike prices.

The good news, at least for now, is that TSMC won't be hiking prices (if at all) in the same way that memory manufacturers have been doing for the last couple of years as AI's appetite grows.

Huang explicitly said that TSMC would not suddenly raise prices "fourfold, fivefold" for customers despite inflation causing the company's costs to increase.

TSMC is a publicly traded company, and so it rides the markets with plenty of pressure from shareholders. Indeed, earlier in the day, before the BBC interviewed Huang, TSMC's Chairman and CEO, CC Wei, reportedly told investors that he'd like to mirror his firm's competition and raise prices accordingly.

This is in line with a May report from Commercial Times suggesting that TSMC is planning a 2026 price hike of up to 15% on its 3nm products, some of the most advanced in the world.

TSMC is undoubtedly under a lot of pressure to deliver a lot of chips to some of the most valuable companies in the world, and its impressive stock price reflects that demand.

TSMC has a duty to maximize returns for its investors, and considering it's essentially working at maximum capacity in all of its operational foundries, it only makes sense, from a fiduciary standpoint, to raise prices.

The question of whether or not the AI revolution is a bubble doesn't seem to be playing a role in TSMC's operation. Huang told the BBC that "these [AI] companies are financially very strong with a lot of financial resources, so we believe that they're able to continue to invest."

Windows Central's take on rising TSMC prices

Although TSMC has not committed entirely to a price hike, it seems inevitable that the firm will eventually have to start charging more for its services. What would this move look like across the rest of the tech industry?

Considering TSMC's dominance, particularly in the world's most advanced chips, companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Qualcomm would immediately be forced to either absorb the raised costs or pass those costs on to customers. I don't want to make any assumptions, but you can probably guess which avenue is more attractive to shareholders.

And I don't think these effects would be felt only in AI markets. Everything from phones to PCs to automobiles with a chip inside would go up in price. Do note that NVIDIA's new RTX Spark platform, announced at Computex 2026 and coming to the Surface Laptop Ultra, is manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process node

Considering how much almost everything already costs in the tech world, this news doesn't give me hope for the future of affordability. It's but another step toward the end of personal PCs, a once-upon-a-time "conspiracy theory" that's not so much of a conspiracy anymore.

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Just days ago, Microsoft unveiled Surface Laptop Ultra, its most powerful and capable Surface PC yet, powered by NVIDIA's new RTX Spark superchip and Windows on Arm. It's a feat of engineering, featuring the most ports, the best display, and the largest trackpad ever fitted to a Surface.

I was able to get my hands on an early sample unit at Computex 2026, and to say I was impressed would be an understatement. Of course, the star of the show is the RTX Spark, which I was shown plenty of demos of showcasing its raw power. But we'll get to that later.

First up, let's talk about the design. Surface Laptop Ultra is basically a beefed-up Surface Laptop 8 15-inch. It's both thicker and heavier to accommodate the more powerful RTX Spark SoC, but this results in a device that feels incredible. It's chunky and hefty, but in a good way, just like the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

And "just like the 16-inch MacBook Pro" is the theme of this device. It's very clear to me that Microsoft is going after the high-end MacBook Pro crowd with Surface Laptop Ultra. While the device is very Surface, there's no denying that it also heavily resembles a MacBook Pro, right down to the port selection.

Surface Laptop Ultra features a full-sized HDMI port and two USB-C ports on the left, and one USB-C port, a USB-A port, and a full-sized SD card reader on the right. The USB-C port on the right is special, however. It's larger than a normal USB-C port and takes normal USB-C cables, but Microsoft wasn't willing to tell me why the port is larger.

Many Surface fans immediately noticed that Microsoft's Surface Connect port appears to be missing on Surface Laptop Ultra, but it seems that may not be entirely true. While the proprietary magnetic Surface Connect port is gone, I believe that Microsoft may have engineered the world's first breakaway USB-C port that maintains what made Surface Connect so special.

Of course, the company didn't confirm this to me, but it's clear that the right USB-C port is different for some reason. The company said it would have more to share about specific features of the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year, so we'll have to see. For now, I'm of the belief that this USB-C port features a breakaway design, perhaps even magnetic for easier alignment? Time will tell.

Moving onto the trackpad, which is the largest ever fitted to a Surface. It feels fantastic, and supports Windows 11's new haptic signals system that provides subtle feedback when you interact with certain parts of the Windows UI and apps. I've already done a full hands-on with this experience, but it elevates the Windows UX in a way similar to what haptics can do to phones. Everyone loves iPhone haptics, and Surface Laptop Ultra has a very similar feature.

The keyboard is also incredible, just like on the Surface Laptop 8. I'd argue that Surface has the best keyboard and trackpad in the business, matching or perhaps even surpassing that of the MacBook Pro. I had no complaints typing or mousing around on Surface Laptop Ultra. Windows felt very smooth and easy to use.

That's also helped by the 15-inch mini-LED screen, which is 120Hz and looks fantastic. I do wish it were an OLED display panel, but it's still incredibly crisp with great color contrast. Of course, Microsoft didn't share specific details on the display panel or color optimizations, but it looks great.

I wasn't able to test audio performance, but I'm assured that the speakers built into the device will rival the MacBook Pro 16-inch, which many consider to be the best speakers in a laptop you can buy.

Of course, it's what's under the hood that's making waves in the tech industry right now. This is Microsoft's first RTX Spark device, and its design was influenced by the raw power of RTX Spark. Surface Laptop Ultra is thicker to accommodate RTX Spark's thermal output, featuring the largest fans ever put in a Surface PC to keep the chip cool.

That means the device can get loud under max load. In a number of the demos I was shown, the Surface Laptop Ultra's fans were running at full blast, and I could hear them from a few feet away. With that said, under normal use, the device was essentially completely silent. I understand that the fans only spin up to max when under sustained load for long periods, which many of the demo units had been.

On RTX Spark performance, yeah, this is the real deal. It's an Arm SoC, meaning it relies on Microsoft's Prism emulation layer to run x86 apps that haven't been built natively for Windows on Arm yet. That's basically most video games and a number of obscure or less popular Windows apps, and in my hands-on time, I simply couldn't tell the difference.

Many of the games I was shown were running under emulation, but they were all running incredibly well with smooth framerates. NVIDIA and Microsoft weren't willing to show me FPS stats or any nitty-gritty details, but in my demo time, the games ran as if they were native, and that's no small feat for Windows on Arm. NVIDIA is essentially brute-forcing a native-feeling experience through its powerful chip.

Neither Microsoft nor NVIDIA, nor any other Windows OEMs for that matter, are marketing this first wave of RTX Spark devices as gaming machines, but it's very clear that they can game, should the user want to. That's not something you've really been able to say about Windows on Arm PCs up until now.

I was not allowed to run any benchmarks, likely for obvious reasons. All of the devices I was shown are running pre-release software, drivers, and firmware, in pre-production chassis and thermal envelopes. There's likely a lot of fine-tuning that still needs to take place before Microsoft or NVIDIA are ready to let us benchmark these properly.

App developers will also be able to make specific changes to their software to make them run better on RTX Spark. Adobe is one such company that is working to rearchitect its Premiere Pro and Photoshop apps for RTX Spark, and I was shown a demo that compared standard Premiere Pro and Premiere Pro enhanced for RTX Spark, which was able to render a scene much faster as a result.

Microsoft had already confirmed that Surface Laptop Ultra ships with 128GB of unified memory, but I was able to confirm that there will be more configurations available at various prices. That means you'll likely be able to get it with less RAM and storage, for those that do or do not need it.

Of course, Microsoft was not able to comment on pricing for those different configurations or battery life. No Windows OEMs are sharing that information currently, but all of them are targeting a fall 2026 release window, including Microsoft and Surface Laptop Ultra. That means we should hear more about specs, pricing, and availability in the next few months.

Surface Laptop Ultra is the best Surface PC that Microsoft has ever made, but that doesn't mean it's the best Surface PC for everyone. This is clearly a device designed for developers, creators, and professionals, utilizing on-device AI models, video or photo creation and editing, and data crunching. For the majority of us who only need a PC for light computing or productivity tasks, you'd be better served with a Surface Laptop 8 or equivalent PC.

Obviously, we haven't yet had a chance to live with Surface Laptop Ultra, so this isn't an endorsement just yet. But first impressions are incredibly strong. Hopefully, Microsoft can deliver with the final product later this year.

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Microsoft has nearly recovered all of its year-to-date stock market losses as of writing, as shares rally on Azure growth, homegrown AI, and the latest news coming out of Computex.

In case you've been sleeping under a rock (or a pile of silicon), NVIDIA and Microsoft announced a renewed push into an Arm-based Windows future over the past weekend.

Qualcomm's exclusivity deal for Snapdragon Arm chips has finally expired, and NVIDIA has immediately stepped in with its much-hyped N1X chipset, boasting RTX graphics and full-blown compatibility with "all" Windows apps, says NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. They also showcased Forza Horizon 6 and 007 First Light running incredibly well on this chip, and we even have a new Surface Laptop Ultra coming later in the year to showcase it in full.

The news led to another solid uptick for Microsoft's stock price, which has taken a battering over the past year over its AI infrastructure spending. Investors had been worried that Microsoft is over-extending itself on capital expenditure, given that AI has yet to show a path towards real profitability.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has been focusing its AI efforts around the enterprise more and more — where the real money is — while taking a more measured posture with consumers. Microsoft has also been working to untangle itself from OpenAI and work more closely with Anthropic and other AI vendors, as well as building out its home-grown efficiency-focused Phi models.

So far, investors seem generally upbeat about the way Microsoft has been handling things more recently. A few weeks of rallies have seen Microsoft claw back much of the losses it endured over the past year, buttressed by a pretty loud pitch to improve quality for consumers across Xbox and Windows both. Microsoft's Windows K2 effort and its work to bridge its Xbox console and PC gaming ecosystems should also serve to breathe new life into the Windows ecosystem in the coming years.

The news out of Computex with NVIDIA N1X also led to an additional 3% upswing, while competing chip makers AMD and Intel shares sank slightly on the news. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and other analysts have been more upbeat on Microsoft lately, citing Copilot adoption and its boosted position on AI-oriented PC hardware. It's not all good news, though.

The AI infrastructure build-out has led to a monstrous explosion in memory prices, which has harmed consumer confidence and priced many more out of various markets for new tech spend. There's not a huge amount of information about how much N1X-based laptops could end up costing, but you probably shouldn't be surprised if the Surface Laptop Ultra ends up costing $2,999.99 or more.

There's still a big question mark hanging over the AI build-out in general. The vast amount of hype, claims of mass job losses, and circular investments have seen Microsoft and many of its Big AI cohorts be accused of operating in a gigantic fiscal bubble primed to implode. Perhaps this $MSFT rally will be short-lived if that's all true.

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It finally happened: NVIDIA officially went public with its RTX Spark consumer processors to take on Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. I say "officially" because I've been hearing rumors about these ARM-based 'N1x' chips for over a year, but multiple announcements at this year's Computex show in Taiwan let the cat out of the bag.

Some of these mobile RTX SoCs are appearing in Windows on ARM laptops at the show, including Microsoft's uncompromising answer to Apple's MacBook Pro, the new flagship Surface Laptop Ultra. Predictably, PCs from other popular brands, like ASUS' 14-inch ProArt P14 and 16-inch P16, are targeting "all-day battery life" in the same way that PCs featuring Qualcomm's ARM-based Snapdragon X2 chips do.

In that, the mysterious hype from the past weekend around "a new era of PC" now feels more like a continuation of the Qualcomm-led ARM revival from 2024, which my Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Rubino, called a "great reset" for the industry. Then again, I wouldn't consider Microsoft's previous attempt at a "new era" of Copilot+ PCs a success, but it at least started a wave. And now, NVIDIA wants to ride that wave, bringing its specialized skills along.

My primary takeaway from NVIDIA's announcement was that it focused entirely on high-end laptops targeting "creators, AI developers, and gamers," at least for now. That's what separates it from what Qualcomm has been offering to more everyday consumers, with an exception for the ultra-high-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor featured in ASUS' phenomenal Zenbook A16.

So, if the RTX Spark processor can be "the most efficient PC chip ever built", as its marketing lead Mark Aevermann claims, does that include the integrated GPU performing better than anything else in its class? Can it come anywhere close to the desktop RTX 5070, given the matching CUDA core count, or is that a pipe dream reminiscent of the "4090 performance for $549" claims?

That kind of spec scrutiny will likely interest the die-hard enthusiasts and confuse the rest of us. Besides, I'll always take NVIDIA's mobile GPU pontification with a pinch of salt, as it casually oversells the capabilities of its laptop graphics by awarding them the same names as their full-size desktop counterparts. For example, a mobile RTX 5090 is about 50% slower than the desktop version.

Crucially, it hits me that we don't have any hints about fan noise or how long the RTX Spark-based laptop batteries will actually last in real-world testing, never mind what's touted on a spec sheet.

However, I'd generally prefer to remain optimistic, and the Snapdragon X devices that I've tested over the past couple of years certainly lived up to their claims. Either way, Microsoft benefits from the continued development of native ARM64 apps and whatever NVIDIA is doing to back up CEO Jensen Huang's claim that RTX Spark PCs will support "every single application that Windows has ever run."

Therefore, if NVIDIA can match everything Qualcomm has done to date and deliver more performant graphics, this could be a very exciting chapter for Windows on ARM. Although I won't call it "a new era," I'll still be watching the development of RTX Spark closely.

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Call me cynical, but I feel like Microsoft's entire ecosystem, especially Windows 11 and now Surface, is seemingly headed in the right direction. At the start of the year, the tech giant promised to improve the operating system's overall user sentiment by addressing major pain points based on customer feedback.

Microsoft has made major moves on this front over the past few months, including reducing where Copilot appears and more. And now, Microsoft, in partnership with NVIDIA at Computex 2026, has unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra — equipped with 128GB of unified memory and full CUDA support with Windows-compatible RTX Spark under the hood. This powerhouse device breathes fresh air into the company's hardware division, signaling the dawn of what it calls “a new era of PC.”

Microsoft and NVIDIA's promise of a new era of PC seemingly sparked nostalgia for Microsoft veteran and former President of the Windows Division Steven Sinofsky when the first Surface hybrid PC ran on NVIDIA Tegra ARM silicon back in 2010/11 (via Tom's Hardware).

For good measure, his X post included a video attachment recorded with a Windows Phone, before Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the unfortunate decision to pull the plug on mobile.

"Kinda sad for Qualcomm," an X user posted. "They've invested so much to get Windows on Arm into a usable state, and Nvidia swoops in to take advantage of that. Nvidia is strategic." It's this exact post that triggered Sinofsky's nostalgic response and retort, which indicated that it was history repeating itself, but this time with a (unsurprising) dash of artificial intelligence.

"Nvidia “swoops in”? Do you think history started in 2020?" another user indicated, reiterating Sinofsky's sentiments. "The first two generations of Surface tablets ran on Nvidia Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 chips, almost 15 years ago."

Sinofsky's post shows that the hype around Windows on Arm is not new, and that at the time most people believed it would ride high on "strong partnerships." But as highlighted by our sister site Tom's Hardware:

"This prior push for Windows on Arm didn’t exclusively support Nvidia Tegra. Sinofsky points out that Windows 8 on Arm also supported Qualcomm and TI processors. However, we saw Microsoft switch to a Qualcomm partnership focus in the years following. That collaborative effort also didn’t break through, even when the much-lauded Nuvia Oryon architecture arrived with the Snapdragon X family."

That said, it'll be interesting to see if Windows on Arm will manifest to its full glory this time around with Microsoft and NVIDIA's new commitment. "I think this is a smart move by Microsoft, although it is unfortunate that we know its pricing is going to be sky-high due to, ironically, the demand for AI putting macro pressure on NAND and RAM prices," our Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Rubino, added to his Surface Laptop Ultra reaction. Time will tell.

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On the back of NVIDIA's groundbreaking RTX Spark announcement, Qualcomm SVP of Computing Kedar Kondap has shared his thoughts on the Windows on Arm space heating up in a Q&A session with media hosted at Computex 2026 in Taipei earlier today.

When asked directly what Qualcomm thinks of NVIDIA entering the PC space, Kondap said the following:

"Welcome to the family. We are, you know, we're excited. When you think about the investments that we've made over the last several years, it's a good endorsement of the fact that there is an ecosystem that's growing outside of x86. We invested many years ago, driving the ecosystem and driving the entire platform story, whether it is getting the printers to work, whether it's getting the software apps to be compatible, whether it is getting the docks and peripherals to work, whether it's getting more than 2,500 games to be compatible with Snapdragon. We led the way in driving that ecosystem, and I think this is positive tailwinds for the entire ecosystem. It will tell us how we're all taking the ball forward in the trajectory that we started."

It's clear that Qualcomm views NVIDIA's entry into the PC space as good for the entire industry. While the company is eager to remind people that Snapdragon is the reason Windows on Arm is in a good place today, it's clear that both companies will benefit from each other pushing the Windows on Arm platform forward.

If anything, it's the x86 chipmakers that should be the most concerned. Windows on Arm is no longer an afterthought for the Windows ecosystem, with hundreds of devices now shipping with an Arm SoC thanks to Snapdragon, and with more on the way from NVIDIA, the platform is only getting stronger with each year.

Kondap was also asked about NVIDIA's claims that their Arm SoC won't have any Windows app compatibility concerns, but it's obvious that Qualcomm was caught off guard by this announcement. "Our partnership with Microsoft has gone on for several years. We launched the first Copilot+ PCs together. We launched the first platforms where the Microsoft OS supported the NPU and supported how this distributed computing work across the different cores ... I'm sure the engagement with Microsoft is strong enough where we've worked with them to build this entire ecosystem to make sure that it's compatible with Snapdragon and the architecture."

It's currently unclear how NVIDIA has solved this app compatibility problem. Windows on Arm PCs powered by Snapdragon chips have been relied on Windows 11's Prism emulation layer to run x86 apps, which works most of the time, except for in a few instances where an older app or newer game may be too complex to run optimally. Time will tell if NVIDIA's chips really are immune to x86 app compatibility issues, or if Qualcomm has some catching up to do.

Overall, NVIDIA entering the PC space with its new RTX Spark SoC is good news for the entire Arm PC industry, and Qualcomm knows it. If NVIDIA's new chips encourage app and game developers to take the Arm architecture more seriously, that will benefit everyone running a Snapdragon PC today.

For now, Qualcomm is happy to continue serving the Windows market with Snapdragon PCs that are available from $300 with the new Snapdragon C all the way up to $1,699 with the highest end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. It's likely that NVIDIA's chips will be targeting the ultra-premium category, priced much higher than the top end that Snapdragon currently targets.

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NVIDIA has confirmed at Computex that its upcoming RTX Spark SoC will be fully compatible with every Windows app ever made, in an attempt to ease concerns around Windows on Arm app compatibility on upcoming devices like the Surface Laptop Ultra.

CEO Jensen Huang was quick to confirm during the NVIDIA Computex 2026 keynote that RTX Spark is compatible with any app or game you might want to run on these powerful devices, though he did not provide technical details around how this is being ensured.

"Every single application that Windows has ever run, meticulously optimized so that this computer literally runs everything the world has ever created" said Huang on stage.

Windows on Arm has had little app compatibility issues for a number of years, but there are still some apps and games that won't run on existing Windows on Arm PCs.

It sounds like NVIDIA has solved this issue, meaning buyers should not need to be concerned about whether RTX Spark-powered devices will run their apps or games, obscure or otherwise. Of course, it remains to be seen if this is actually true.

The company has already confirmed that it's working with game developers to ensure anti-cheat software is fully compatible with RTX Spark, enabling games like PUBG, Valorant, Fortnite, and more to run with no issues on the platform.

Today, Windows 11 on Arm devices utilize an emulation layer called Prism, which is capable of running x86 compiled apps on Arm-based SoCs. It's capable of running most x86 apps, though some are too complex or too old to run optimally or at all. For most users, it already runs all the apps they'd ever need to run on Windows.

It's likely that RTX Spark will use this same Prism emulation layer, meaning it's possible that Microsoft is working on more updates to Prism to ensure wider compatibility. NVIDIA is confident that these devices will run every Windows app.

Of course, a large percentage of Windows apps are now natively compiled for Windows on Arm anyway, so the emulation layer is less of a concern for most people. Gaming is an outlier, where most games are not Arm native, but NVIDIA says these devices should run your games just fine too, thanks to its powerful RTX-class GPU.

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For months, I have been teasing on the podcast that Microsoft might be working on a device that would finally address the demand for a truly high-performance Surface without the experimental hinge of the Surface Laptop Studio (which has ended production). While that device has its fans, there has been a loud, persistent contingent of power users asking for a pro laptop that focuses on the fundamentals: raw power, thermal efficiency, and a traditional form factor.

Today at Computex 2026, Microsoft made it official with the announcement of the Surface Laptop Ultra in conjunction with launch partner NVIDIA, which is behind the device's silicon.

This is a fundamental shift in what we should expect from a professional Windows laptop, especially since it is part of this NVIDIA N1x wave of devices that compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 line.

I have spent years arguing that power users need more than what a standard ultrabook can provide, and Microsoft has clearly been listening. During a recent briefing, Andrew Hill, the product leader for Surface, described this as the most performance-oriented, most powerful Surface they have ever built (which, to be fair, isn't a high bar, but noteworthy, nonetheless).

What is even more impressive is that Microsoft managed to pack all this hardware into a chassis that weighs less than 4.5 lbs (interestingly, that's not super light, as Surface Laptop Studio 2 was 4.37 lbs)

Unfortunately, this is more of a tease announcement, as exact specs, pricing, and availability are all coming later, but that just gives you time to start saving.

Let's get into what we do know about Surface Laptop Ultra.

The Blackwell jump: Surpassing the Laptop Studio

The headline feature here is the deep, full-stack collaboration with NVIDIA. While we have seen NVIDIA GPUs in Surface devices before, the Surface Laptop Ultra is the first to be built on the NVIDIA RTX Spark platform (N1x CPU, RTX GPU, unified memory) from the silicon up. It features the new Blackwell architecture for massive acceleration, delivering up to 1 petaflop of AI compute.

When you compare this to the previous Surface Laptop Studio models, the jump is staggering. The Blackwell GPU features up to 6,144 cores, providing a level of raw performance that previously required a much thicker, heavier chassis. Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and Devices, noted that this platform allows Microsoft to build high-performance machines that are also thin and light.

Internal X-ray-style views of the device reveal a sophisticated cooling architecture featuring prominent dual fans. This design is purpose-built for sustained high performance, ensuring the machine can handle long rendering or compile cycles without the aggressive throttling that plagued older portable designs.

Unified Memory and the 128GB Monster

The memory configuration is what truly defines this machine as Ultra. Microsoft is offering up to 128GB of unified memory with full CUDA support. This allows the system to dynamically allocate RAM between the 20-core Arm CPU and the GPU wherever the workload requires it most.

Apple does this, and Qualcomm does this with Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, and now NVIDIA does, too.

This architecture enables the device to run massive 120B parameter AI models locally without needing to round-trip to the cloud.

As Davuluri noted during the call, the team is laser-focused on ensuring that the operating system takes full advantage of this massive memory pool for both advanced workloads and multitasking. Microsoft has even enhanced how Windows manages page sizes in shared memory regions to ensure that larger memory pages are available for peak performance on heavier workloads.

Local AI and the need for Containment

Getting into the weeds a bit, you start to see that this laptop is aimed very much at AI development and AI workloads.

For instance, a major theme of this announcement is the new wave of agents. For those who find the term vague, agents are essentially AI assistants that can take action on your behalf, such as debugging code or managing complex workflows.

Microsoft is introducing new Windows security and containment primitives specifically for this era.

Containment is a concept that every user should care about. It essentially sandboxes these AI agents, ensuring they only have access to the data you permit and cannot interfere with the core integrity of your operating system. It provides visibility into what the agents are doing, giving you a level of governance that is impossible when using cloud-based AI. NVIDIA is bringing NVIDIA OpenShell to Windows, built on these new primitives, allowing creators and developers to leverage AI that reasons over large contexts with total privacy.

Gaming on Arm comes of age

Yeah, yeah, Surface Laptop Ultra is not a gaming laptop, but it can game, and Microsoft had some announcements around gaming on Windows on Arm that not only benefit Surface Laptop Ultra (and other NVIDIA N1x laptops) but also Qualcomm-based ones (so pay attention): Microsoft announced that Riot Games is bringing titles like Valorant and League of Legends to the platform natively. KRAFTON is also joining in, bringing the iconic PUBG: Battlegrounds to the list of compatible titles.

This is possible because Microsoft has finally addressed the technical hurdles that once held Arm gaming back. Native anti-cheat solutions from partners like Epic (Easy Anti-Cheat) and BattlEye are now supported.

Furthermore, it says the improved Prism emulation layer has been specifically tuned for the RTX Spark microarchitecture, ensuring that x86 games that are not yet native still run with high performance. With the Blackwell GPU under the hood, players will have access to AAA titles like Alan Wake 2 and Naraka: Bladepoint with performance levels that rival traditional gaming laptops.

A masterclass in display and port selection

The visuals on this machine are equally ambitious. The Surface Laptop Ultra features a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra display. It hits a staggering 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness, making it the brightest display Microsoft has ever shipped. With a resolution of 2880 x 1920 and a density of 262 pixels per inch, the clarity is exactly where it needs to be for professional creators.

During the presentation, Hill emphasized that every micron matters in this design. They have included a large haptic touchpad that is the biggest ever put on a Surface device.

And for those who have been frustrated by the lack of ports on modern laptops, Microsoft is including a proper selection: HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack are all built directly into the chassis. These ports were picked on purpose because they are what creators actually need in the field.

Surface Laptop Ultra: Pricing and availability

I know the big question on everyone's mind is what this beast will cost. Microsoft is being cautious with pricing details for now. Andrew Hill mentioned that they will talk about pricing closer to the availability date later this year due to the current volatility in the RAM and NAND markets.

Given the 128GB of RAM and the mini-LED display, I suspect this will sit at the very premium end of the market. I mean, very premium (especially that 128GB model).

Microsoft is positioning this as a Copilot+ PC, meaning it (probably?) combines a powerful NPU with the RTX Spark GPU for a unique set of AI capabilities (or, it just uses the powerful RTX GPU; Microsoft said, however, it has nothing to announce on using RTX GPUs in desktop for Copilot+ features, which is still odd).

So, who is Surface Laptop Ultra for? Developers, AI workloads, workstation tasks, and anyone who just wants a portable, powerful, and efficient laptop. It is a device designed for the builders who see limits as flaws and have the vision to push past them.

As to availability, the Surface Laptop Ultra will be available later this year in Platinum and Nightfall finishes.

Do you think the addition of a 128GB RAM option and a mini-LED display justifies the expected premium price of the Surface Laptop Ultra for your specific workflow?

Windows Central's Take

I think this is a smart move by Microsoft, although it is unfortunate that we know its pricing is going to be sky-high due to, ironically, the demand for AI putting macro pressure on NAND and RAM prices.

But putting that aside, as pros who need this level of compute will gladly pay for good hardware, the question remains: Will Surface Laptop Ultra truly be a game-changer?

The real test will come down to whether we see significant real-world battery life gains (Microsoft says "all-day battery life" with the caveat that "battery life varies significantly based on usage, settings, and other factors").

And what about Qualcomm? I think Snapdragon X, which is by far the dominant Windows-on-Arm SoC these days, will not only be just fine, but thrive. NVIDIA seems to be targeting workstation/semi-gaming laptops, where a discrete GPU is required. But will NVIDIA's N1x make sense in a laptop without an RTX GPU? I don't think so, which is why Snapdragon X can still thrive in lower-cost, entry-level, and mid- and upper-tier ultra-thin laptops. (Personally speaking, I rarely need a discrete GPU.)

Moreover, NVIDIA entering the chat gives developers more incentive to optimize Windows apps and games, not less, which benefits Qualcomm just as much, if not more, than NVIDIA.

If anything, this puts a lot of pressure on Intel and especially AMD (the latter has been flubbing laptops lately, in my opinion, and is likely going to lose in the nascent handheld gaming space, as it seemingly focuses on servers).

Indeed, there's now this neat divide of Qualcomm + NVIDIA (ARM64) versus Intel + AMD (x64), which should make those last two chip makers very nervous!

Getting back to price, it'll be important, but not for the success or failure of Surface Laptop Ultra. Ultimately, it has to deliver on its promise, and Microsoft and NVIDIA certainly believe it does, but we'll have to wait until the fall to see if this is truly an evolution or revolution in Windows PCs.

What do you think: Ignoring the price, is Surface Laptop Ultra something you would benefit from? Let me know in the comments.

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New Surface hardware could be unveiled as soon as next week, and it looks like the potential PCs will be much more exciting than the business versions of the Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 8.

Simultaneous X posts from NVIDIA and Microsoft promise "a new era of PC." The posts spun the rumor mill into gear, creating buzz for Computex and Microsoft Build.

We don't have any confirmation of what's on the way. Both NVIDIA and Microsoft used the same phrasing to tease the announcement, and they clearly left in clues for people to figure out.

So, what would classify as "a new era of PC?" Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri, who leads Windows and Surface, already ruled out a new operating system version. It seems safe to say that the upcoming announcement is not about Windows 12 (which isn't confirmed to be real anyway).

The image shared by Davuluri looks like a piece of a curved display.

Microsoft's Build conference kicks off next week, so we won't have to wait long to find out what the hints are about. We may not even have to wait until then.

The X posts from Microsoft and NVIDIA mention "25.0528" and "121.5990" Those number aligns perfectly with the longitude and latitude of the Taipei Music Center, which is where Computex takes place. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will hold a keynote at the event on June 1.

The Verge speculates that the announcement could be related to NVIDIA's rumored N1 and N1X chips. VideoCardz goes ever further by sharing screenshots of a Dell embargo related to NVIDIA's N1X.

Rumors of the N1X chip have swirled for years. A leak in January suggested the processor will be a "20‑core Arm + RTX GPU monster," as our Cale Hunt put it.

If rumors and leaks are accurate, NVIDIA's N1X would challenge decades of x86 dominance by introducing a powerful, high-end ARM processor to the market. That could certainly usher in a "new era of PC."

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It was inevitable that NVIDIA would one day sunset the Control Panel app for Windows 11, and that day has finally arrived.

As of the latest driver, 610.47, NVIDIA Control Panel will no longer be installed as part of the package. All of its features have been migrated to the newer NVIDIA App, and this is now the one-stop shop for everything you need to manage for your GPU.

NVIDIA Control Panel had a great run, with 20 years of faithful service, and it's been a staple on my PC for longer than I can remember. It did what you needed it to do without worrying about looking pretty and was always just a right-click away.

You can still use NVIDIA Control Panel, if you wish, but it will no longer be supported with any features, fixes, or updates of any kind. If you have it installed currently, it will stay there with the latest driver update, unless you do a clean installation.

If you do, it'll be gone for good, and to get it back if you really want it, you'll need to go and download it from the Microsoft Store.

The only exception for now will be RTX Pro owners, as all of the feature sets for those graphics cards have not yet been migrated over to the NVIDIA App. This will happen at a later date, but it is business as usual for the time being.

I don't personally use the NVIDIA App all that often, but part of that was because I just used NVIDIA Control Panel for what I needed. Aside from driver updates, I rarely touch the main app.

I've had a little poke around, and it all seems fine. Nothing much to get excited about, but at least now everything that an NVIDIA user might need is all in one place. You don't have to log in with an account, either, these days, which is sure to be good news for many out there who haven't used it to this point.

20 years is a long time for one piece of software, though. Change isn't always welcome, but in this case, I think we'll be just fine.

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Once a month, the PC gaming mega-giant Valve opens an optional hardware and software survey for its Steam users to gauge trends and ultimately spotlight the world's most common components. Much of it is predictable and follows obvious patterns, such as the average amount of memory (RAM) increasing over time and discontinued parts falling off the graphs.

Still, some tidbits offer insight into buying habits and product adoption. In particular, the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for April 2026 shows that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB of VRAM remains the most common discrete graphics card this year. For context, that GPU is now three and a half years old, and many gamers already debate the viability of 8GB cards in 2026.

It's a similar story for operating systems, as Windows holds an utterly dominant 93.47% adoption amongst Steam users, though it's divided between its two (technically) active versions. Windows 10 is in its End-of-Life phase, but Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program offers an extension through October 13, and it looks like 25% of Windows users have opted for it.

Linux and macOS fluctuated into ever-so-slight negatives, but the values were less than 1 percentage point and shouldn't be considered alarming. At the very least, Valve reports Arch Linux as the most-used "distro", which is the foundation for its in-house SteamOS rival to Windows 11, pre-installed on its four-year-old Steam Deck handheld and the upcoming Steam Machine PC.

Windows Central's take: Unaffordability is forcing a new norm for PC gamers

Again, it's the natural order of things for incremental hardware and software upgrades to be reflected in Steam's survey, but seeing a quarter of users holding on to Windows 10 is telling. While activists worldwide are staging mock funerals for Microsoft's OS, many PC gamers seemingly aren't willing to budge until the bitter end, possibly due to their device's incompatibility-led obsolescence.

That, and seeing the RTX 3060 clinging on for dear life, helps justify my frustrations with a lack of optimization in modern AAA games. This isn't even the 12GB version that's still going strong in my wife's PC; this is the entry-level 8GB model in NVIDIA's RTX 30 Series that lacks native FP8 support for cutting-edge DLSS tech. Your average gaming rig is two generations old.

And against Microsoft's assurance that 32GB of RAM is the "no worries" count in a world of hilariously expensive DDR5 memory, there still hasn't been a significant shift away from 16GB as the most common count in Valve's latest survey. All of this keeps my hopes alive for the Steam Machine to come with "affordable" pricing.

That, and I'm suddenly checking up on friends and relatives who are stuck on Windows 10. We can always bypass the TPM 2.0 check and upgrade an unsupported computer to Windows 11 with a bit of extra work, but it's starting to feel tense for those who still outright refuse to move over. Are you still using Windows 10? What are your plans for October? Not long now.

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When NVIDIA first unveiled DLSS 5 with a shocking video, the reaction from PC gamers, developers, and general AI haters was overwhelmingly negative.

Touted as "the GPT moment for graphics" by NVIDIA's CEO and founder Jensen Huang, DLSS 5 is evidently capable of completely transforming your favorite game's graphics into something that resembles AI fan art.

About a month and a half after NVIDIA's poorly received DLSS 5 reveal, the team behind the massively popular game Roblox has revealed what I can only describe as DLSS 5 Lite.

Known officially as Roblox Reality, it's an internal project that aims to "combine hyperscale multiplayer gaming with photorealism."

Now, keep in mind that Roblox is a game that can usually run on a toaster. That's a big part of its appeal, especially with younger gamers who don't have the income to splash out on a heavy-duty PC or brand new console.

Rather than require an expensive, latest-gen GPU to handle the AI upscaling, Roblox Reality will apparently use a mix of its cloud and the on-device game engine to deliver shiny results.

The official explanation goes like this:

The most important thing to note here is that the Roblox team still hasn't achieved the desired results. Although it has provided several examples of what it imagines the process will look like, it's still working on making it a reality.

In several four-panel examples provided by the development team, we can see how the original Roblox render has its 3D data stripped out and sent to the new Super Upsampler to create more realistic visuals.

In the bottom-right corner of these examples, there's a "vision" frame that shows off what's going to be expected as an end result for Roblox Reality.

Why does Roblox want to add photorealistic AI upscaling?

Roblox is a game full of content that's largely created by its audience, and the company says that's exactly who they're targeting with this upgrade.

The developers admit that Roblox Reality is not yet ready for prime time, mostly due to issues with compute costs when scaling. Regardless, the team is hoping to launch the new feature later this year or early next year.

Windows Central's take

As I've pointed out plenty of times in the past, the use of AI upscaling in gaming isn't going anywhere. If nothing else, it's only accelerating to the point where many gamers believe it's stepping over some unseen red line, turning handcrafted art into generic slop.

Although Roblox kind of feels like its own gaming world — I really don't have any experience with the game, but know that it's massively popular — I don't doubt that this is a hint as to what the future holds for plenty of other game studios.

Despite NVIDIA receiving a ton of blowback for its DLSS 5 introduction, the feature is still expected to arrive later this year. As I'm sure the kids would tell me, "The future is now, old man!"

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NVIDIA has quietly expanded its mobile graphics cards by announcing a new RTX 5070 Laptop GPU configuration with 12GB of VRAM.

The original RTX 5070 mobile with 8GB of VRAM doesn't look to be going anywhere. Instead, this is a play by NVIDIA to give its OEM partners more options to work with while the global RAM crisis rages on.

There's no word yet on which laptops will officially receive the new 12GB RTX 5070 mobile variant, but prior leaks (via Videocardz) suggest it'll arrive at some point in ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI models.

How does adding more VRAM to a GPU help solve memory shortages?

How does adding more VRAM to a GPU help when memory is so hard to come by? It's all about the type of memory used in the new 12GB configurations.

The new RTX 5070 mobile with 12GB of VRAM uses 24Gb GDDR7 memory, whereas the 8GB VRAM model uses 16Gb GDDR7 memory.

The manufacturing process for these types of memory is different. 24Gb uses 3GB memory modules, whereas 16Gb uses 2GB modules. The former modules have seen increased production of late by manufacturers like Samsung and Micron.

Spreading out the memory type should help NVIDIA source components for its mobile cards, allowing it to provide more GPUs to its partners.

It doesn't appear that NVIDIA is changing anything else on its RTX 5070 mobile GPU. Core counts remain the same, as does bandwidth and memory bus.

Windows Central's take

Regardless of a lack of other changes to the RTX 5070, with how memory-hungry modern games have become, getting a 50% boost compared to the original isn't a bad thing.

And if it allows NVIDIA to keep the mobile GPUs flowing to its partners, I'm on board.

(via Videocardz)

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Ever since the AI boom began more than a year ago, it's seemed like NVIDIA has had more important priorities than the consumer PC market. That makes sense, considering how much money the company is currently making from its specialized AI GPUs and support systems for datacenters.

This position seems to have shifted, at least if you're on the side of believing a new rumor originating at SemiAccurate. According to SA, NVIDIA is negotiating "a huge purchase that will reshape the PC and server landscape like nothing else has done since the computer was invented."

The SA piece also says that NVIDIA has been working on a potential purchase of "a large PC-oriented company" since at least 2024.

If the rumor is at all true, which it could certainly turn out not to be, we'll likely have concrete proof soon. SemiAccurate states that "the time is approaching to make a deal or walk" for NVIDIA and the PC company it wants to purchase.

Which PC company is NVIDIA rumored to be in talks to acquire?

The news that NVIDIA is hoping to purchase "a large company" in 2026 leads some to believe that it's one of the top PC manufacturers in the world. Although the rumor doesn't include any specific names, the list of top PC brands isn't exactly long.

According to a recent report from analysts at Omdia, Lenovo sold the most PCs in 2025 with 71 million units.

HP came in at second place after selling about 57 million PCs in 2025, while Dell hit third place with 42 million PC sales. ASUS and Acer both sold around 20 million and 17 million units, respectively.

While it makes more sense for NVIDIA to potentially be going after one of the smaller companies not mentioned in the list, like MSI or Gigabyte, Bloomberg was quick to report that it was Dell and HP's share prices that have made a significant jump today since the SemiAccurate story was released.

Is there any weight to a rumored PC company acquisition by NVIDIA?

NVIDIA has been in the PC rumor cycle of late, not because it plans to buy an entire company, but because it is working on a new chip for gaming PCs to rival those from Intel and AMD.

NVIDIA's N1X rumors began as far back as 2023, and only lately has there been further proof that an ARM-based chip is on the way from the company that has always mainly been focused on GPUs.

Buying an entire PC company in which the NVIDIA N1X chip makes its debut is certainly a possibility, at least for a company with as much money as NVIDIA.

This would allow Team Green to control everything from design to performance and battery tuning, and it would likely bring NVIDIA's new chip into far more PCs.

I'm filing the rumor under the "possible but not likely section," at least until more proof is shared.

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A free, open-source GitHub project called OpenNOW is gaining a lot of attention in the PC gaming community as an alternative to the native NVIDIA GeForce Now app.

OpenNOW, created and maintained by the OpenCloud community, is built for use with Windows (ARM64 support included), macOS, and Linux (x64 or ARM64), and as its creators state, it "aims to give players a transparent, customizable alternative to the official client without hiding the technical parts from contributors."

NVIDIA GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that rivals Xbox Cloud Gaming in its reach and appeal, allowing gamers who don't necessarily have a powerful PC to enjoy games running on top-tier hardware.

Unfortunately, not all GeForce Now subscribers love the native app offered by NVIDIA. Those users now have this alternative, assuming NVIDIA's legal team doesn't get involved.

Why is OpenNOW getting so much attention as a GeForce Now alternative?

It's explicitly stated that you must use your own GeForce Now account with OpenNOW; this isn't some way to get around subscription fees. So why is OpenNOW getting so much attention? Although it's only been around and under active construction since late 2025, it has now picked up 1.5K stars on GitHub.

The biggest perk for many gamers is a lack of AFK limitations. You know how GeForce Now will drop you out of a game if you walk away and get distracted for more than a few minutes? That doesn't happen in OpenNOW.

It's also clearly stated on the OpenNOW GitHub page that the app does not collect any sort of telemetry. Authentication of your GeForce Now account is all done through NVIDIA servers, and game settings and any media you capture stay on your PC.

Beyond privacy and telemetry concerns, OpenNOW is just easy to use. It offers a robust set of stream controls you can use to adjust performance and graphics. It has built-in performance monitoring and diagnostic tools. Search is streamlined for your games and private games. And the app handles captures, audio, and controller navigation.

Perhaps the best part is that it's open source. That means savvy developers can fork their own version and apply changes as they see fit.

The OpenNOW app's website shows that it's working on adding features like voice chat, instant replay, themes, and custom scripts and extensions, and with the rate at which the app is currently being updated, I don't expect these features to be missing for too long.

NVIDIA GeForce Now vs. OpenNOW: Which one should you use?

OpenNOW does have some limitations compared to its official NVIDIA counterpart, and I'm sure that many PC gamers won't want to give up features like Discord integration or Android compatibility. Not to mention HOTAS support for all the flight sim enthusiasts out there.

Still, OpenNOW should be a great option for anyone who's into privacy and advanced streaming controls. For those who want a more streamlined experience with official support, GeForce Now remains the go-to option.

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PC gaming in 2026 is increasingly becoming a matter of AI upscaling and frame generation. Assuming you're comfortable with that, good on you. You're going to have a great time with smooth frames and higher framerates than ever before.

If you're not on board with the "fake frames" movement largely spearheaded by NVIDIA, I have some bad news. The use of AI by cutting-edge graphics cards from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel isn't going anywhere any time soon.

This has never been more evident than in the past day or two. NVIDIA launched the first portion of its DLSS 4.5 update earlier this year at CES 2026. A second-gen Transformer Super Resolution model was immediately available for NVIDIA's RTX cards, promising superior image quality thanks to significantly improved compute power.

The other portion of DLSS 4.5's feature update, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation with up to 6X Multi Frame Generation (MFG), finally launched in beta on March 31.

👉 NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, and Microsoft DirectSR explained

NVIDIA's frame multiplier was capped at 4X in DLSS 4, meaning that for each frame created "naturally" by the GPU, there were three other frames being pumped out using AI generation.

With 6X MFG, RTX 50-series graphics cards can now create five AI-generated frames for each natural frame generated in the "old-fashioned" method. In order to better balance display refresh rates and GPU output, NVIDIA's new Dynamic MFG can step in to automatically change the frame generation multiplier.

NVIDIA likens this process to a car's automatic transmission, and it's surprisingly apt. If your GPU is having a hard time matching your display's refresh rate, it raises the multiplier. If your GPU isn't struggling to hit a target framerate, it lowers the multiplier.

Early impressions of NVIDIA's Dynamic MFG 6X are very positive

All of those fake frames being generated by NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPUs should surely come with some drawbacks, right? As it turns out, everyone who's tested the new DLSS 4.5 features basically has the same positive outlook, with perks heavily outweighing downsides.

Perhaps the biggest news is that NVIDIA managed to push MFG from 4X to 6X without really affecting input latency (the delay between inputs from your mouse or keyboard and the actions showing up on screen) in any serious way.

Our friends at Tom's Hardware tested MFG 6X with Cyberpunk 2077. Input latency without any MFG was at 35ms. At 2X MFG, it climbed to 46.6ms. It only rose to 53.2ms at 4X MFG, and it actually fell to 52.6ms at 6X MFG.

Meanwhile, average framerates rose from 60 FPS all the way to 247.7 FPS using the exact same hardware and in-game settings. All that for just 17.6ms of extra input latency. It's a compromise that I know many PC gamers will gladly make.

Colleagues at PC Gamer discovered largely the same results in their initial testing of Dynamic MFG and MFG 6X, remarking:

This is but a small sample of hands-on reporting, but the response is basically the same everywhere you look. DLSS 4.5's Dynamic MFG and MFG 6X are worthy additions to NVIDIA's RTX toolbox.

That's not to say there aren't some caveats. You still need to have a decent baseline framerate to allow MFG to do its AI-assisted thing, and competitive gamers will still look the other way as they attempt to lower input latency as much as possible.

As PC Gamer points out after its testing, MFG 6X and Dynamic MFG are tools best viewed as capable of pushing good performance into great performance, rather than pushing bad performance into acceptable performance.

The future of PC gaming is all AI all the time, whether you like it or not

There are plenty of arguments to be made against the use of AI in PC gaming. One I hear most often is that developers should be optimizing their games to allow for reliable performance on raw hardware rather than relying on upscaling and frame generation.

I don't disagree, especially in the name of PC gamers who aren't blowing thousands on the latest hardware. Unfortunately, I don't think the industry is going to change any time soon. The AI path will almost certainly be the one we follow for years to come.

PC graphics keep improving as the engines that games are built on evolve, and even the most powerful consumer card, the NVIDIA RTX 5090, has trouble hitting high framerates without some form of AI assistance when path tracing and 4K resolutions are involved.

Whereas GPU hardware clearly has limitations on what it can achieve, software leveraging AI seems limitless in its abilities. Would you rather spend far more on GPU hardware or take advantage of "free" AI tools that boost performance well beyond what's otherwise expected?

I'll bet that in 10 years, the use of AI in PC gaming won't be controversial at all. It will be the accepted norm. Every modern mainstream GPU company is currently chasing some sort of AI upscaling and frame generation, and I don't see those efforts going away.

There are certainly going to be some speed bumps along the way, as is the case with any emerging technology that we're not quite ready to admit is the future.

For example, the outcry against NVIDIA's DLSS 5 reveal from a couple of weeks ago was practically unanimous, causing NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to backpedal a bit as it became clear that gamers aren't comfortable with a complete AI-generated reskin of their favorite games.

I'm certainly not on board with changing the entire look of the games I enjoy, although I also wasn't on board with MFG's initial 4X cap until I tested it myself in DOOM: The Dark Ages. It will be interesting to see how DLSS 5 is shaped by the PC gaming community and its strong opinions.

What do you think about the future of AI and PC gaming?

It might sound like I'm shilling for NVIDIA here, but trust me; I'm not. It's just hard to imagine a future of PC gaming, if we follow the current trajectory, that doesn't involve heavy use of AI to improve performance.

Do you agree that AI upscaling will no longer be a controversial topic in the future? Or could there be enough backlash that the entire momentum of the PC gaming industry changes course?

Will it be a hardware innovation that lets us go back to "real" frames? Let me know in the comments section below!

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NVIDIA's latest upcoming version of its Super Resolution software DLSS 5 was announced last week, and the reveal ended up being one of the hottest stories in gaming for all the wrong reasons. The graphics and AI-focused company showed how the tech uses generative AI in an effort to enhance in-game scenes with photorealistic lighting.

What it was hoping would be a slam dunk that got people hyped for its release later this fall, however, was instead something of a disaster. Gamers and devs alike were shocked by how DLSS 5 made characters look like they were passed over by an uncanny AI slop filter, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang only made things worse by telling consumers "they're completely wrong." He later backpedaled.

The overall backlash against DLSS 5 has been enormous, and despite Huang's clarifications that it doesn't touch model geometry or textures and can be fully controlled and finely tuned by developers, some remain skeptical at best and doubt the truthfulness of those statements at worst.

Others, though, believe that while DLSS 5 had a poor first showing, the tech is still very much going to catch on and become popular, especially as developers adopt it and tweak it to achieve the visual enhancements that they want. Among them is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 director Daniel Vávra, who's spoken up in defense of the software.

"I can imagine in the future devs will be able to train this tech for particular art style or specific people faces and it might replace expensive raytracing etc. This is just a little uncanny beginning. No way haters will stop this. Its way more than a soap opera effect every tv has when you turn motion smoothing on," he said in a post on social media.

Vávra has previously spoken of generative AI with resigned acceptance, noting that while he's "no fan of AI-generated art," he believes it's not going anywhere, and that "it's time to face reality." At the time, Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios was being widely criticized for using AI to generate art references for its concept artists as they worked on the upcoming RPG Divinity. In response to the heat, Larian stopped using AI for ideation.

I'm not one to get happy about anything AI related succeeding, mind you, but honestly? I think Vávra is right in this case. DLSS 5 may look pretty bad with character faces, but in the examples and comparisons we've seen, it's made some pretty impressive-looking changes to environments.

The 12-minute gameplay footage of DLSS 5-enhanced Starfield that Vávra was quote-reposting serves as a great example of this. Xbox and Bethesda's 2023 RPG is somewhat notorious for having flat lighting in a lot of its "normal" areas that lack dramatic lighting, but DLSS 5 brought a lot of natural depth to it, and made it pop.

Therefore, I do believe that we're going to see developers support and engage with DLSS 5, aiming to capitalize on its potential by tailoring its outputs to suit the look and style of their games without pushing things into uncanny valley territory as NVIDIA's demo did.

In the end, I would be okay with that, provided that developers retain the ability to fully control how DLSS 5 affects the look of their projects in their official vanilla versions. Creative control should always remain with a game's creators.

🗨️ Do you agree with Vávra's comments?

I don't always find myself agreeing with Daniel Vávra's opinions — and he's pretty opinionated — but I do believe he's right in this case. Despite how horrifically it messes with character faces, DLSS 5 does show potential, and I think it's something devs will want to capitalize on.

How about you, though? Do you agree with Daniel Vávra, or do you think he's wrong and that DLSS 5 won't catch on? Let me know in the comments, and vote in our poll.

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Razer's Blade 16 is a gaming laptop often considered to sit at the pinnacle of premium features and design, and it's just been refreshed for 2026.

The big news? Razer has made the change from AMD Ryzen AI HX to Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, bringing super-fast RAM, superior connectivity, and a brighter OLED display in tow. Razer also says the new Blade 16 is significantly more efficient when not gaming compared to the previous generation, with up to 13 hours of battery life for productivity.

The CPU used in all Blade 16 (2026) models is now the Intel Core Ultra 9 386H with 16 cores and a 4.9GHz boost clock speed, which is four more cores than the Ryzen chip used in 2025's model. That boost should show up in both gaming and heavy workloads, plus it has an NPU with 50 TOPS of power for Copilot+ AI tools in Windows 11.

The use of Intel's latest "Panther Lake" chips unlocks faster LPDDR5x-9600MT/s RAM (compared to 8000MT/s RAM in the 2025 model), of which you can configure up to 64GB.

NVIDIA's RTX 50-series mobile GPUs are still the big attraction here for gamers, and Razer lists the RTX 5070 Ti as a starting point with options for the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.

If you're eager to get your hands on the new gaming laptop, I have some good news. The Blade 16 (2026) is available to buy now directly from Razer.com starting at $3,499.99.

The Blade 16's OLED display gets brighter, connectivity levels up

The switch back to Team Blue processors in the Blade 16 after the previous model's use of an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a testament to the efficiency and performance improvements Intel achieved with its Panther Lake generation.

This change has also unlocked Thunderbolt connectivity. The Blade 16 sports one Thunderbolt 5 and one Thunderbolt 4 port for the best connectivity possible, especially if you're a fan of the best docking stations.

👉 I tested Razer's new Thunderbolt 5 Dock Chroma — I can no longer live without this extremely convenient feature

The Blade 16 (2026) otherwise offers HDMI 2.1, three USB-A 3.2 (Gen 2), a UHS-II SD card reader, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack for your headset. It's a solid mix of ports that I'm sure will appeal to gamers and creators alike. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 are also as cutting-edge as can be for wireless connectivity.

One last change worth mentioning is a boost to the 16-inch OLED display's brightness. It now hits 1,100 nits in HDR mode, enough to land VESA DisplayHDR TrueBlack 1000 certification. It still has a 2560x1600 (QHD+) resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate and 0.2ms response time, as well as NVIDIA G-Sync and perfect P3 color reproduction.

The Blade 16 for 2026 is still one of the thinnest gaming laptops the company has ever produced at just 14.9mm (0.59 inches) thin, a feat that's achieved by using a CNC-milled aluminum body.

This redesign is one we first saw when we reviewed the 2025 Razer Blade 16, when we called it "a fantastic redesign, once again establishing the Blade 16 as the ultimate luxury gaming laptop."

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NVIDIA's CEO just made a bold claim about the artificial intelligence race, and it's already proving controversial.

NVIDIA was formerly a gaming graphics company, but has since become a server-first company, powering data centers for all types of cloud compute. The industry that made it a global market cap leader was artificial intelligence, which requires enormous amounts of compute to help users generate pasta recipes, cat memes, and bad poems.

Indeed, "artificial intelligence" applications are fairly unimpressive for most every day people, although they are being applied in certain industries in a far more useful scenarios. AI systems like Github Copilot and Claude Code has expedited programming productivity in some cases, and agentic AI systems can help companies parse large data sets in a far more efficient cadence. Efficient at least in terms of time, that is.

The elephant in the room is that AI is making model makers zero dollars. Companies like OpenAI are either barely breaking even or burning cash like there's no tomorrow. OpenAI in particular has been long thought of as running one of the worst business models in tech history, requiring billions in annual venture capital handouts just to keep the lights on.

Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI, and is heavily partnered and integrated with them for Microsoft Copilot and other tools. Microsoft is one of the few companies that has made a bit of cash on the AI boom, in large part thanks to Github Copilot and heavily siloed and legally-compliant Microsoft 365 Copilot tools. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's recent comments on the Lex Fridman podcast might have Microsoft's lawyers raising their eyebrows, though.

On episode 494 of the show, Lex Fridman asked Huang for a timeline on achieving "AGI," or artificial general intelligence. The definition of AGI varies wildly based on who you ask, but Fridman posits the scenario of an agentic AI that can autonomously set up and run a tech company, and make millions of dollars doing it.

"Is this 5, 10, 20 years away?" Fridman asked. Huang said, "I think it's now. I think we've achieved AGI."

Huang elaborated that he thinks agentic tools like OpenClaw could easily set up and run a viral app that billions of people might pay 50 cents for, like many start ups did during the dot com boom or the early days of the smartphone app industry. It hasn't happened yet, of course, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

The reason Microsoft and OpenAI's lawyers might be interested in this definition owes to an odd clause in the companies' partnership agreements.

When Microsoft initially partnered up with OpenAI, the latter baked in three "escape clauses" to move away from offering Microsoft model exclusivity in the event that so-called "AGI" is achieved. However, OpenAI and Microsoft define AGI very differently to Lex Fridman and Jensen Huang here.

For OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI can only cut off Microsoft from future models if it can demonstrate an AI model that can generate $100 billion in profit. For reference, even OpenAI's most advanced models have yet to generate a single cent in profit. Microsoft is also barred from competing with OpenAI on building models that could approach "AGI," as part of this deal, if they're built using any of OpenAI's technology.

Tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft might be reaching a fever pitch as of late. There are rumors that Microsoft is exploring suing OpenAI owing to its latest funding round, which grants competing tech companies like Amazon some access to its products in a move which might violate some of Microsoft's early contracts with the firm.

The original design of the "AGI" agreement was based on Microsoft's belief that a generally autonomous and intelligent AI is unlikely to arrive before 2030. Inversely, OpenAI and NVIDIA both have been far more willing to shift the definition of AGI, hyping the idea that it might already be here.

Jensen Huang's comments feed a narrative shift on the definition of what "AGI" actually is, and while the original contract with OpenAI suggests profitability as a metric, it's ultimately up to OpenAI itself to decide what constitutes "AGI." If OpenAI's board decided to declare that it has achieved AGI, it might set the stage for a big court battle between Microsoft and OpenAI to find a formal definition of the so-called technological benchmark.

Microsoft has been moving away from OpenAI reliance for some time, but it might already be too late for it to catch up without ChatGPT and other similar models. If OpenAI successfully declared "AGI" as achieved, either holistically or via the court system, Microsoft could find itself check mated out of access to more powerful frontier OpenAI models, battering Microsoft Azure's prestige and profitability potential. Microsoft investors are already nervous that it is over-exerting itself on AI infrastructure capex. Imagine how they'd react if Microsoft was to lose exclusive access to OpenAI's post-AGI models?

Microsoft already seems to be preparing itself for a post-OpenAI future. Microsoft has restructured its AI division recently, designed to prioritize research into its own models and toolkits. Microsoft has also returned to focusing on customer feedback across Xbox and Windows both, as these platforms and their future viability become more business critical in a potential future where Microsoft loses the AI race.

Indeed, whether due to AGI disagreements or OpenAI's finances finally imploding — a big, nasty breakup between OpenAI and Microsoft seems increasingly likely as time goes on. Get the popcorn ready.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) has seen an unprecedented resurgence based mostly on the Steam Spring Sale price of $5.99. It's seen the platform's previous high player counts left in the dust, peaking at over 60,000 this past weekend.

Times have changed since the game launched, though, and hardware has come on a few generations since. When Modern Warfare (2019) first hit the market, NVIDIA was on the RTX 20 series, its first-gen ray tracing-capable GPUs.

We're now on the RTX 50 series, and many jumping back into Modern Warfare (2019) on more modern hardware are seeing graphics issues. I'm one of them. No matter what combination of settings I tried with my RTX 5090, it was all blocky and distracting and looked horrible. Turns out if you're in the same boat, your NVIDIA driver is probably to blame.

A solid hat tip to this old Reddit thread I found while investigating the problem, which has been resurrected in recent days along with the game.

In short, if you're running an older NVIDIA driver on your RTX 50 series, it's likely this could be what's causing the blockiness in Modern Warfare (2019). I updated to the latest release, 575.79, and by magic, everything is fine again.

So, if you're on an older driver and Modern Warfare (2019) looks like hell, go ahead and update, and it should fix the problem. It's best to make sure you do a clean installation, too, which you can do either from the NVIDIA app or by using the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). This will completely remove the old driver first before installing the new one.

Modern Warfare (2019) is, like basically every Call of Duty game, divisive. Many players hold it in high regard, others less so. I originally fell into the latter, and I'm not afraid to say I've enjoyed playing it more this time around than back in 2019/2020.

My experience was spoiled by the graphics issues, but nothing in-game seemed to help fix it fully. So if you're in the same position I was, go ahead and get the newest NVIDIA driver, and you'll be back having a blast in no time.

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In case you missed it last week — and unless you were totally offline, I'm not sure how you could — the leading graphics hardware and AI software manufacturer NVIDIA got a thorough thrashing from the gaming community when the company announced DLSS 5, the latest iteration of its popular Super Resolution technology.

Releasing this fall, DLSS is exclusive to NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPUs, and uses generative AI to enhance in-game scenes with photorealistic lighting. That description alone sounds okay, but when people actually began to see the before and after comparisons, it became apparent that DLSS 5's effects made in-game characters look like AI slop. Even game devs who agreed to let NVIDIA demo the tech with their games were shocked.

In response to widespread backlash against what appeared to many to be an AI filter akin to what you'll find in smartphone apps, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang infamously commented "they're completely wrong," which naturally stoked the flames of controversy more and brought on further criticism. Now, though, he's backpedaled, saying he gets it because "I don't love AI slop myself."

"I think their perspective makes sense and I can see where they’re coming from, because I don’t love AI slop myself," he explained to Lex Fridman in a new interview. "You know, all of the AI-generated content increasingly looks similar and they’re all beautiful and so I’m empathetic towards what they’re thinking."

A better response to consumers than saying "they're completely wrong," certainly (though the words ring a bit hollow, given how all-in NVIDIA is with AI). Huang, though, still took issue with the perception that DLSS 5 is just a filter, reiterating that it's not post-processing, doesn't change model geometry or textures, and that its implementation will be controlled by developers.

"That’s just not what DLSS 5 is trying to do. I showed several examples of it but ... the artist determined the geometry we are completely truthful to. The geometry maintains in every single frame," he asserted. "It’s conditioned by the textures, the artistry of the artist. And so every single frame, it enhances but it doesn’t change anything."

He went on to note that "the system is open" and that developers could tweak and train DLSS 5 to change in-game scenes in a particular desired way. It's not a post-processing layer, but rather a tool game devs can choose to support in their projects by integrating it as they see fit.

"I think that [people] got the impression that the games are gonna come out the way the games are shipped the way they do, and then we’re gonna post-process it. That’s not what DLSS is intended to do," Huang said. "DLSS is integrated with the artist, and so it’s about giving the artist the tool of AI, the tool of generative AI. They could decide not to use it, you know?"

Ultimately, this should clear up misconceptions that people have about DLSS 5, though I firmly believe NVIDIA might not have found itself so deeply mired in controversy if it had just explained this clearly from the get-go, and if Huang led with this instead of deciding to blow off the concerns of its customers at first.

It would have also served NVIDIA well to not show off DLSS 5 in a way that made the faces of fan-favorite characters from games like Resident Evil Requiem immediately trigger feelings of uncanny valley. But regardless, it is good to know that game developers will have full control of how it looks in their games, if they even choose to support it at all.

🗨️ How do you feel about DLSS 5?

NVIDIA's DLSS 5 technology was extremely controversial the moment it was revealed thanks to how uncanny it made characters and NPCs look in games like Resident Evil Requiem and Starfield, leading to scathing backlash. Over the last several days, though, NVIDIA has clarified several things about it — even if it's done a pretty terrible job from a PR perspective while doing so.

Now that we have more information, I'm curious: what do you think about DLSS 5? Let me know in the comments, and vote in our poll:

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

If you're even somewhat keeping up with what's new in the gaming world, than I'm sure you've seen NVIDIA's new DLSS 5 tech — and how its getting absolutely roasted online. Indeed, the latest iteration of the firm's Super Resolution software hasn't been received well at all, with the way it uses generative AI to transform scenes with simulated photorealistic lighting being called uncanny "AI slop" all over social media.

I think DLSS 5's effects actually look good in environment shots, though in some of the comparisons we've been able to see, I do believe it goes too far and starts to infringe on the intended look of a scene. In shots with characters, though, it straight up makes them look like they got hit with a "yassification" filter you'd find in a smartphone app. The before and afters shocked the community, and even shocked the developers that agreed to let NVIDIA present DLSS 5 using their games.

In general, DLSS 5 has proven extremely controversial with developers as well as fans. Notably, one veteran dev, senior animator Mike York — known for his work on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War Ragnarök, and others — has now reacted to it in a stream of him watching Digital Foundry's analysis of it that's been posted to his York Street Gaming YouTube channel. He's not a fan.

"Whoa, hold on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," he began, his deep concern apparent the moment he saw Grace in Resident Evil Requiem with DLSS 5 on. "No. This isn't just some lighting, dude. What the f... I'm telling you, this is like a complete AI re-render. That's what this is doing. This is actually re-rendering this."

NVIDIA asserts that DLSS 5 strictly changes the lighting of a scene, and isn't touching things like model geometry or texture detail whatsoever. As CEO Jensen Huang puts it, it "introduces a real-time neural rendering model that infuses pixels with photoreal lighting and materials." However, many — York included — believe there's more going on with the software.

"Who even is that? It's a different girl, like, she looks different," he continued, dumbfounded. "You know why I can tell? Look, her eyes are no longer looking, like, correctly. That one eye is looking over here, and one eye is looking there."

"It has, somehow, put wrinkles into her lips that weren't there before. See that? It's added all kinds of details that weren't there before," he added. York then went on to point out several apparent differences with things like the shape of Grace's ear and her nose. "You're no longer looking at the game anymore, does that make sense? This is scary."

While I hesitate to say anything definitive without DLSS 5 actually being in anyone's hands other than NVIDIA's, I have to admit that I'm very suspicious of the claim that the software is only affecting lighting. Lighting can have a huge impact on the way an image looks, true, but I still can't help but feel doubt after seeing how much fuller and sharper Grace's lips are with DLSS 5 on, or the way where she's looking seems to subtly change.

NVIDIA's Jensen Huang can say "They're completely wrong" all he wants, but the fact of the matter is that regardless of the nitty-gritty specifics of what's going on with DLSS 5 under the hood, it just looks off when applied to in-game characters, and has triggered feelings of uncanny valley in countless players.

The silver lining in all of this is that DLSS 5 isn't scheduled to come to NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPUs until fall later this year, so the company can still improve it ahead of its release. NVIDIA also says developers will be able to fine tune how DLSS 5 looks with their games if they choose to support it, which hopefully means we'll never have to deal with characters that look like Grace does here.

🗨️ How do you feel about DLSS 5?

Gamers and developers alike have been reacting to DLSS 5 all week long, and it's pretty interesting to hear what a senior animator that's worked on some of the biggest games in the industry has to say.

His negative comments echo most sentiments, but I'm curious: how do you feel about DLSS 5? Share your thoughts below, and vote in our poll:

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NVIDIA's new DLSS 5 tech isn’t quite winning the public over, with many comparing the image-altering technology to some kinds of "AI slop" filters seen in generative AI tools like ChatGPT and other Snapchat.

The CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, had responded to that criticism, telling users they are “completely wrong.” However, despite claims that developers have “direct control,” Insider Gaming reports that may not have been the case.

Developers at Ubisoft and Capcom who agreed to showcase their games at the DLSS 5 reveal say they were not informed in advance. “We found out at the same time as the public,” said one Ubisoft developer.

Developers at Capcom also told Insider Gaming they were shocked by the publisher’s involvement. According to the report, the company has historically been “anti-AI,” and some developers fear DLSS 5 could shift its stance on generative AI and its use in future games.

Back in January 2025, IGN reported that Capcom was experimenting with generative AI tools to help create ideas for in-game environments, so its stance on AI might not be as “anti-AI” as some may believe.

However, AI use cases like this in development are nothing new, and not quite the type of AI people typically take issue with. That criticism is usually aimed at AI-generated art, which can directly negatively impact the artists behind it.

🎮 How do you feel about DLSS 5?

Is DLSS 5 a huge leap in graphical technology and something you’ve always dreamed of, or is it more akin to AI-generated slop that many, myself included, have come to disdain?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and make sure you take part in our poll below:

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DLSS 5 has not landed the way Nvidia likely hoped. Since its reveal, the feature has drawn heavy backlash online, with many comparing it to the kind of AI slop filters that gamers have grown tired of seeing.

Jensen Huang has now responded to that criticism, but rather than acknowledging those concerns, Nvidia’s CEO says gamers are “completely wrong.” So let’s break down his full comments and whether players are really as mistaken as he claims.

Jensen Huang responds to DLSS 5 backlash

For a bit of context, DLSS 5 was revealed recently as what Nvidia sees as the next evolution of its upscaling technology.

Traditionally, DLSS helped games look sharper while being rendered at a lower resolution, improving performance on hardware that could not quite keep up. It used AI to “fill in the gaps,” and was widely seen as one of the more practical uses of the tech.

This time, however, Nvidia appears to have pushed things further, and the response has been far more mixed. Some players say the results resemble the kind of AI slop filters people have grown tired of, or fall into that familiar uncanny valley effect.

That criticism has been loud online, and while Bethesda’s Todd Howard has also defended the tech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has now responded directly. Speaking to Tom’s Hardware, he said:

Huang went on to stress that control still sits firmly with developers, saying:
“All of that is in the control — direct control — of the game developer. This is very different than generative AI; it’s content-control generative AI. That’s why we call it neural rendering.”

He also elaborated on how DLSS 5 works at a technical level, adding:
“The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI. It’s not post-processing, it’s not post-processing at the frame level, it’s generative control at the geometry level.”

🎮 What are your thoughts on Huang's comments?

It is always interesting to see a CEO of a trillion-dollar company point the finger back at consumers and suggest the criticism is misplaced.

I joke, but it is still surprising to see Huang double down, and it does make me feel better about choosing AMD over Nvidia for my own PC.

With that said, let me know your thoughts. Do you think DLSS 5 is being judged too harshly, or has Nvidia taken things a step too far by pushing this technology and calling out players directly?

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On Monday afternoon, GPU manufacturer and leading graphics innovator NVIDIA officially announced DLSS 5 at the ongoing Game Developers Conference (GDC), and boy oh boy has it proven to be quite controversial. The latest version of the company's Super Resolution tech — exclusive to NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPUs — uses AI to render photorealistic lighting and enhancements and then adds them to a scene, and is intended to make the games you play look more natural and high-fidelity.

The problem? In nearly all of the screenshots and footage we've seen from NVIDIA of DLSS 5 running in existing titles like Resident Evil Requiem and Hogwarts Legacy, the technology makes some aggressive changes to character skin and facial appearance in particular, to the point where comment sections across social media are flooded with comparisons to the generative AI beautification filters you'll find in smartphone apps.

DLSS 5 seems to effectively homogenize the way individual characters across games look, eliminating nuance from art direction and applying some universal standards (more pronounced laugh lines and fuller lips for young female characters, more and deeper wrinkles for older characters, etc.).

As a result, the overall reception to the technology thus far has been extremely negative, and many believe most developers won't even want to support it in their games. One big-name dev, though, was excited to see DLSS 5 running in their game: Todd Howard, game director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios.

Howard had this to say about how DLSS 5 looks in Bethesda's latest game, Xbox's Starfield: "When they showed us DLSS 5 and we got it running in Starfield, it was amazing how it brought [it] to life. We've played it; we can't wait for all of you to do so as well."

Now, while DLSS 5's character faces immediately trigger the feeling of uncanny valley in me, I will admit that the way it improves the quality of lighting and textures in the environment is arguably pretty impressive. Starfield in particular — a game that's a bit notorious for having flat visuals in scenes without dramatic lighting effects — pops quite a bit more with DLSS 5. Check out Digital Foundry's comparisons in the above video for examples.

I imagine this is largely what Howard was impressed by, because the way DLSS 5 changes NPC faces is pretty jarring, and makes everyone look a little too perfect. Again, it's that same uncanny look you'd expect from an AI filter...and ultimately, that's kind of what DLSS 5 is.

Notably, according to Digital Foundry, NVIDIA says the system doesn't touch the game's actual assets like textures and models whatsoever, which I find pretty wild considering how different they look with it on. Assuming the truth is being told, it goes to show just how much of a difference lighting can make — for better or for worse. So far, we're seeing both with DLSS 5.

The good news, though, is that DLSS 5 is still in its early stages, and that developers will be able to tweak the effect the technology has in their games how they see fit if they choose to support it. Hopefully with further development and per-game fine tuning, the system can get away from this AI slop look.

As for when DLSS 5 is coming out, NVIDIA says it's scheduled to launch this fall and is coming to its RTX 50-series graphics cards, so you'll have to wait until then if you're curious to try it out yourself.

🗨️ How do you feel about DLSS 5?

The initial reactions to NVIDIA's upcoming DLSS 5 tech are, overall, very negative. But I'm curious: do you feel the same way? Or do you think the comparisons to AI slop and beautification filters are overly dramatic?

I'd love to hear from you, so let me know in the comments, and vote in our poll, too:

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

In the year 2026, Nvidia and its AI department have taken over the world of AI computing. Powering corporations and the masses, Nvidia now looks to bring DLSS 5 into the homes of gamers everywhere.

“Twenty-five years after NVIDIA invented the programmable shader, we are reinventing computer graphics once again,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics — blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.”

According to Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, “Twenty-five years after NVIDIA invented the programmable shader, we are reinventing computer graphics once again. DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics — blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.”

After revealing the above trailer, Jen-Hsun took center stage at GDC:

"Computer graphics comes to life, now what did we do? We fused controllable 3D graphics, the ground truth of virtual worlds, the structured data of virtual worlds, and the generated worlds. We combined 3D graphics with generative AI and probabilistic computing.

"One of them is completely predictive, the other one, probabilistic yet highly realistic. The content is beautiful as well as controllable. This concept of fusing structured information and generative AI will repeat itself in one industry after another. Structured data is the foundation of trustworthy AI."

I am speechless, for all the wrong reasons

During the entirety of the trailer, all I kept thinking was “That looks exactly like the first AI image I made.” In some instances, it did make the current-looking image more realistic and pleasant to look at. Again, sometimes.

In terms of environments, the difference was night and day, especially during the Starfield shots during the game’s opening tutorial. The lighting effects presented were uncanny in terms of their realism, but that’s where the uncanny stopped to benefit, and instead, began to haunt me.

I mean, I think Resident Evil: Requiem speaks for itself when you look at Grace Ashcroft. They turned her into some anime waifu AI garbage that you see when people “fix” the character models to look sexier. The image is completely and utterly changed from the original presentation into something unrecognizable by comparison.

In the shot of the older woman in Hogwarts Legacy, the initial rendering showcases a soft blend of wrinkles that creates a better illusion of movement in the face. When DLSS 5.0 is turned on, it recreates the wrinkles under the new lighting system, but in turn, makes it seem as though a piece of bark with lips is speaking to the character, ruining that initial facial movement.

Which, perhaps, is the leading issue? I don’t know, and I’m obviously not an Nvidia AI engineer working on the latest neural networks, but according to Digital Foundry, none of the original assets are touched by DLSS 5. The only thing changed is the lighting presentation, meaning every geometry point in use comes from the original render; nothing new is being created in terms of surfaces.

Given that the face of the woman in Hogwarts Legacy isn’t changed, all it does is highlight the shortcomings of the original 3D image to create somewhat of a horror show. So, maybe it comes down to developers using it to their advantage?

In the Digital Foundry video, they also mention that Todd Howard signed off on this implementation in Starfield. Saying this preserved the original artistic integrity of the game. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m just washed when it comes to what artistry is supposed to look like if the director says otherwise, but I can factually say it looks completely different than anything I’ve ever played.

I can argue that this is the best example of this technology, as the original textures are rough by comparison to anything else in the trailer. Starfield was never a game where character models looked good, so the fidelity increase is actually preferred, for me, in this game.

In fact, I’d argue the AI neural rendering of DLSS 5 feels more like facial replacements you’d find on Nexus mods for Starfield, Skyrim, and other Bethesda titles. This doesn’t look or feel anything like the game, but rather, some fan creation.

Even the main character from Hogwarts Legacy, arguably the second-best result in the trailer, falls apart the longer you look because he’s supposed to be 15. Instead, he ends up looking like some 22-year-old dude playing a 15-year-old student.

"DLSS 5 will come to games including AION 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Black State, CINDER CITY, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, Justice, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, NTE: Neverness to Everness, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Sea of Remnants, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Where Winds Meet, and more."

At the end of the day, DLSS 5 is clearly pushing NVIDIA’s tech in a bold new direction, but the reaction shows just how sensitive players are to anything that changes the “feel” of a game. If the YouTube comments are any indication, NVIDIA has some convincing to do before these AI‑driven filters win people over. The conversation isn’t slowing down, and neither is the scrutiny: DLSS 5 is going to be one to watch.

🗣️What do you think about DLSS 5's new AI filters?

NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 reveal has sparked one of the harshest community reactions we’ve seen in a while, with YouTube comments going almost entirely negative. Some players say the AI filters look uncanny, others think it’s just early footage, and a few believe NVIDIA is pushing too far into “AI‑beautified” visuals.

Where do you land on this? Are the new filters a step forward, a step too far, or something that just needs more time in the oven? Drop your take below and take our poll.

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NVIDIA is having a busy week at the GDC 2026 conference, and its GeForce Now game streaming service is at the forefront with new features and new games just announced.

Similar to a browser extension I highlighted last year that lets you know which Steam games are also available on Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA's GeForce Now is set to receive in-app labels on games that you already have access to in your Xbox Game Pass and Ubisoft+ subscriptions.

NVIDIA notes that this feature is designed to improve game discoverability, and it appears that you'll be able to launch these games directly from NVIDIA's app.

Also coming to GeForce Now is an expansion to single sign-on capabilities that I first saw with Battle.net and again with Gaijin at CES 2026. In April, NVIDIA will unlock similar single sign-ons for GOG.com accounts, making it easier to authenticate but once to have access to all titles.

As it currently stands, there are more than 4,000 games available through GeForce Now, whether as Ready-to-Play or Install-to-Play. The list is always growing, and indeed, there are five new notable games on the way.

• Control Resonant
• Resident Evil Requiem
• Crimson Desert
• Samson: A Tyndalston Story
• Active Matter

Perhaps more relevant to our readers here at Windows Central is that NVIDIA's list of Install-to-Play games is expanding with new Xbox titles, including Brutal Legend, Quantum Break, and Contrast.

PC gamers who rely on GeForce Now to deliver their VR headsets new games are also getting some good news. On March 29, GeForce Now Ultimate subscribers will be able to stream at 90 FPS, which is a particularly huge upgrade in the VR world, considering the previous max was 60 FPS.

VR headsets that support GeForce Now include the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and Valve Index, as well as several older headsets that no longer receive as much attention (like the HP Reverb G2).

Windows Central's take on NVIDIA GeForce Now improvements

NVIDIA GeForce Now is largely regarded as the go-to game streaming service if you're looking for top-tier performance, and it competes directly with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is available through Game Pass Ultimate.

Considering GeForce Now can deliver up to a 5K resolution at 120 FPS or a QHD resolution at 240 FPS, it makes it fairly easy (and economical) to enjoy games at a much higher quality than you'd be able to enjoy on lower-tier PC hardware.

With the PC hardware market undergoing one of its biggest hurdles ever, caused by DRAM and NAND shortages driven by AI, it's not a stretch to imagine that a lot of PC gamers will eventually turn to a cloud service.

👉 Conspiracy theory or apt prediction? — The AI-fueled hardware shortage will kill local PCs, paving the way for subscription-based cloud computing

These improvements announced at GDC 2026 aren't exactly major, but it is great to see the service continuing to get so much attention as interest in the platform heats up.

What do you think about these GeForce Now improvements?

Were you hoping for more GeForce Now news out of GDC 2026? Are you happy with the updates to VR game streaming, new game additions, and the new in-app labels?

I also want to know if you're a regular user of GeForce Now or any other cloud gaming services. Is it the best you've used? Why or why not? Please let me know in the comments section!

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

NVIDIA's time at GDC 2026 is all about highlighting new features coming to its products, and alongside new features and games being added to GeForce Now, we now have an official launch date for one of Team Green's most exciting updates.

DLSS 4.5's Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, originally announced at CES earlier this year, is finally set to arrive for RTX 50-series GPUs on March 31, 2026.

Multi Frame Generation (MFG) currently works by locking in a frame multiplier, whether it's 2x, 3x, or 4x. For every one frame generated by the GPU in standard fashion, DLSS 4.5 can then create "fake frames" to fit in between the "real" frames.

Dynamic MFG essentially takes over the multiplier selection, dynamically adjusting it on the go to deliver one target frame rate. If your GPU needs help hitting the target, which in many cases I'm sure will be a monitor's native refresh rate, MFG will kick in. NVIDIA compares it to a car's automatic transmission, where you choose the speed, and the car does the rest.

What NVIDIA's GDC 2026 announcement does not include is the arrival of MFG 6x. The next tier of MFG was also revealed at CES 2026 with a promise of a Spring reveal, but it seems we'll have to wait a bit longer. MFG 6x is expected to unlock 240Hz+ refresh rates at 4K with Path Tracing enabled.

What is NVIDIA's new RTX Mega Geometry foliage system?

NVIDIA took the wraps off its new RTX Mega Geometry feature last year as a way for ray tracing to handle the newfound complexities surrounding geometrics, 3D sculpting, photogrammetry, and the use of generative AI.

Alan Wake 2 was notably the first game to feature NVIDIA's new RTX Mega Geometry feature, demonstrating how higher frame rates can be achieved while simultaneously lowering VRAM. In the case of Alan Wake 2, NVIDIA saw a 5-20% frame rate improvement while cutting out about 300MB of VRAM usage.

NVIDIA used GDC 2026 to show off a new addition called RTX Mega Geometry Foliage, which will be coming to The Witcher 4 whenever it launches. This new foliage rendering system looks mighty impressive based on the video that NVIDIA shared, with photorealistic foliage blowing gently in the breeze.

Windows Central's take on the new NVIDIA RTX features

I was admittedly once skeptical of NVIDIA's AI-generated "fake frames" that were first revealed at CES 2025, but I quickly became a believer after actually testing Multi Frame Generation on an RTX 5070 Ti.

It's frankly an indispensable tool that I've largely been able to set and forget when PC gaming, and the fact that NVIDIA is pushing out meaningful updates fairly quickly comes as no surprise.

It's just a shame that MFG is only available on NVIDIA's latest RTX 50-series cards.

What do you think about NVIDIA's new Dynamic MFG and RTX Mega Geometry Foliage systems?

Are you excited to test out NVIDIA's Dynamic Multi Frame Generation when it launches on March 31? What do you think about the new RTX Mega Geometry Foliage system that's coming to The Witcher 4? Be sure to let me know in the comments section!

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Microsoft and NVIDIA have together turned me into someone I no longer recognize. Months of chaotic Windows 11 patches and NVIDIA GPU driver issues have resulted in me disabling automatic updates and ignoring new patches on my gaming PC.

I know, I know; it's not exactly a controversial take. Despite some security concerns, many PC users do the same, and have done so for a very long time. Why fix something that isn't broken?

What's really getting under my skin lately is the fact that the companies that are supposed to be improving the products they sold me are consistently introducing problems that get in the way of a smooth experience.

I'm talking about two of the most valuable companies in the world: Microsoft and NVIDIA. I should be able to leave automatic updates enabled and not worry about what they're going to do to my PC.

Why has the quality of Windows and NVIDIA updates declined so rapidly?

Is the decline in update quality due to AI taking over coding duties? No idea, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has boasted that up to 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI. Is it because NVIDIA's RTX drivers have become way more complicated with all of the new features? I honestly can't say.

What I do know is that trust in these companies to deliver a stable update is eroding quickly. In the past year or so, Windows 11 has received several broken updates that required an emergency patch.

Most recently on the Windows frontier, there was Windows 11's KB5077181 February update that caused installation failures and several other issues, including those related to NVIDIA GPUs. In January, Windows 11 update KB5078127 was introduced in an emergency out-of-band capacity to address issues with cloud services. I could go on.

On NVIDIA's side, GeForce driver 595.71, released just a couple of days ago, introduced GPU overclocking issues. Right before that, GeForce driver 595.59 broke hardware monitoring, which resulted in GPU fans not spinning properly. Again, I could go on.

How am I handling Windows and NVIDIA updates on my gaming PC?

In my case, NVIDIA driver updates were the first to be disabled on my gaming PC. Sure, I might miss out on some launch drivers for specific games, but I can handle those on a per-game basis. I don't play that many games right when they launch, anyway.

For Windows 11, I've kept updates enabled, but they're on a two-week delay so that I can ensure there's not going to be any unforeseen problems right after they go out.

Until Microsoft and NVIDIA can once again prove that the updates they're pushing out can be trusted, I'll be keeping new versions at arm's length from my gaming PC.

How are you handling updates on your gaming PC?

I know my move to stop allowing automatic updates on my gaming PC isn't exactly controversial. I know a lot of gamers do the same already; please speak up if that's you.

Are you also frustrated that it's basically the only option now that upgrade quality has declined so much? Do you disagree with my take? Please let me know in the comments section!

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

NVIDIA's new job listings suggest it's looking to strengthen its Linux efforts, including roles focused on Vulkan graphics optimization and Linux graphics engineering in general. You may have also heard Vulkan pretty recently, as Mojang is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan for the Java edition of Minecraft.

Basically, Vulkan is a modern graphics API that acts as the backbone of most advanced graphics work on PC games, just like Microsoft's DirectX. It allows games to communicate efficiently with your graphics card, giving developers more direct control over performance.

It's also a key reason Proton works as well as it does. Proton translates Windows game instructions into Vulkan so they can run on Linux. SteamOS relies on this same process, which makes Vulkan central to its viability.

In simple terms, without Vulkan, Windows games would not run nearly as smoothly on Linux, and Proton would not be nearly as effective.

Linux gaming is no longer a niche experiment

What was once seen as a niche experiment does feel like it is starting to take shape. Valve chose Linux as the foundation for SteamOS, and now NVIDIA appears interested in strengthening its position there too, with two open roles tied directly to Linux graphics and Vulkan performance.

The listings specifically reference a “Senior System Software Engineer, Vulkan Performance” and a “Linux Graphics Senior Software Engineer.” That is not accidental wording. It suggests targeted effort rather than casual support.

As Windows becomes heavier and more locked down, as noted by VideoCardz, it is not surprising that NVIDIA might want to broaden its focus beyond Satya Nadella’s Windows 11. NVIDIA GPUs do function the best on Linux today, and the experience has often required more setup and troubleshooting compared to AMD, which tends to work more seamlessly out of the box.

More operating system support is rarely a negative. Many users will welcome the idea of NVIDIA taking Linux more seriously.

It is still early, and Linux with NVIDIA hardware still has significant hurdles to overcome before it can meaningfully dent any Windows usage. That said, if driver support continues improving and Proton keeps maturing, the gap may narrow faster than some expect. Windows 11 could still course correct, but the competitive pressure is clearly building.

🗨️ How do you feel about NVIDIA taking Linux more seriously?

Do you think NVIDIA’s hiring push signals a serious shift toward Linux gaming, or is Windows still firmly in control? Let us know in the comments and make sure to take part in our poll below:

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Microsoft cannot seem to catch a break lately. After a recent Windows update prevented some users from shutting down their PCs, the company is now being blamed for PC gaming issues as well.

NVIDIA has pointed the finger at Microsoft over reported performance problems affecting games on NVIDIA GPUs (via WindowsLatest). According to reports from users and comments from NVIDIA staff, the issues appear to be linked to a Windows update released in January.

Let’s go over just what was, who said it, and what it means for Windows users dealing with the issue.

What NVIDIA is saying about the Windows update

NVIDIA staff have confirmed on its forums that it is actively investigating the issue. According to the company, January update KB5074109 appears to be the root cause, and uninstalling it does seem to resolve the problem for affected users.

I have also been running into issues since updating my own PC today, including unusual graphical behavior on my monitor and generally slower performance (Windows be damned!).

As far as NVIDIA can tell, the issues are not linked to graphics drivers, and many users are reporting dropped frames of up to 20fps, as well as graphical issues. NVIDIA has stressed that its investigation is still ongoing.

For those experiencing these problems, you can either try installing the latest updates from Microsoft or rolling back KB5074109 and pausing Windows Updates temporarily.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Search Settings and open it.
3. Go to Windows Update.
4. Select Update history.
5. Choose Uninstall updates and remove KB5074109

This is intended as a temporary workaround until a permanent fix is made available.

Microsoft is also working on fixing the woes of last month’s disastrous update, rolling out updates addressing users' concerns, and they have recently committed to ensuring Windows is a better OS overall, and rolling back on some of their AI pushes as of late, after the company lost over $400 billion in market cap, mind you.

NVIDIA pointing to a Windows Update as the source of gaming instability puts the spotlight squarely back on Microsoft’s patching pipeline. Windows is the backbone of PC gaming, and when an update disrupts performance, it ripples across the entire ecosystem. Until Microsoft addresses what went wrong here, players and partners alike are left wondering how a routine patch turned into yet another avoidable setback.

Have you been affected by the January Windows update? Share your experience and let us know in the comments and make sure you take part in our poll below:

OpenAI is on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars, but profitability today seems like a total fantasy. How can it survive? More investment, of course.

Following reports that various companies, from Microsoft to Amazon and Softbank, are all looking to help prop up the struggling ChatGPT maker, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently fielded questions about its own firm's involvement.

OpenAI is facing huge pressure from Google Gemini, whose resurgent models have beaten OpenAI not only in general benchmarking, but also efficiency. Google Gemini exists within a company that controls the entire stack, from server tech to models, to research, and then endpoints. OpenAI relies on inefficient and complex partnerships with third-party companies, such as NVIDIA and Microsoft, in order to operate.

Many of these deals don't exactly favor OpenAI particularly well, sealed in the company's early years. OpenAI has also been struggling to get users to actually pay for its services. Despite having hundreds of millions of monthly active users on ChatGPT and its other products, the vast majority of those users are completely unmonetizable.

OpenAI has been flirting with including ads and product recommendations to build revenue, but doing so risks exacerbating ChatGPT's exodus to Google Gemini and other competing products.

Speaking with CNBC, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that reports that his firm was "unhappy" with OpenAI were "nonsense."

Jensen Huang was responding to reports that the chip giant and the world's most valuable company was exploring a $100 billion investment in OpenAI. The reports began circling last fall, although the investment never materialized. Why? NVIDIA was reportedly unhappy with OpenAI's business model, which, on paper, doesn't seem like a sure-fire thing to the untrained eye. NVIDIA apparently disagrees.

"We're going to make a huge investment in OpenAI," Huang said. "I believe in OpenAI, the work they do is incredible. They are one of the most consequential companies of our time, and I really love working with Sam."

Huang said that Sam Altman is still working on OpenAI's latest investment round, with some reports suggesting it could come with valuations of anywhere up to $830 billion dollars — which would be record-breaking.

"We will invest a great deal of money, probably the largest investment we've ever made," Huang said, but denied reports that it would be anywhere near the previously-rumored $100 billion.

OpenAI's future hangs in the balance

The entire circus around artificial intelligence doesn't look to be ending any time soon. Despite having no apparent path to profitability, insiders at companies like Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Softbank, and various others are still lining up to burn cash on the chatbot maker.

On the face of it, OpenAI could only realistically achieve serious returns for investors by replacing human workers at a scale unlike anything we've ever seen in history. The idea that OpenAI can possibly deliver on some of these sky-high valuations doesn't seem feasible without pandemic-scale automation being the real play here. If all ChatGPT ends up boiling down to is a "better search engine," that hardly seems like enough to justify the frenzy revolving around it.

None of Sam Altman's loftier promises have come true. OpenAI has yet to deliver any real, tangible benefits for society at scale, beyond novelties and modest productivity gains in document-heavy industries. Given how much large language models actively cost to run, it might simply end up being not be worth the effort.

Investors handed Microsoft a $440 billion rout last week, after the firm failed to show that its AI investments were delivering the types of returns that would justify its infrastructural capital expenditure.

There's clearly going to be winners and losers as a result of this new computing paradigm, but increasingly it feels like these companies know something about OpenAI that the rest of us don't ...

If I had to guess based on the situation on the ground, Google is going to end up being the frontrunner, with Microsoft absorbing the charred remains of OpenAI when payments finally come due. But what do you think?

NVIDIA's Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta series GPUs no longer receive Game Ready Driver updates as of last year, but that doesn't mean they're being entirely ignored by the company. That's good news since a lot of these cards are still faithfully serving PC gamers and developers.

On January 28, 2026, NVIDIA released a security-focused driver update (version 582.28 WQHL) for its legacy cards with a focus on eliminating five vulnerabilities. The driver release notes oddly don't list the vulnerabilities it fixes, but you can read, in detail, on NVIDIA's Security Bulletin page.

I've listed the descriptions here:

• CVE-2025-33217: NVIDIA Display Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability where an attacker could trigger a use after free. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, and information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33218: NVIDIA GPU Display Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability in the kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys), where an attacker could cause an integer overflow. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33219: NVIDIA Display Driver for Linux contains a vulnerability in the NVIDIA kernel module where an attacker could cause an integer overflow or wraparound. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33220: NVIDIA vGPU software contains a vulnerability in the Virtual GPU Manager, where a malicious guest could cause heap memory access after the memory is freed. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33237: NVIDIA HD Audio Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability where an attacker could exploit a NULL pointer dereference issue. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to a denial of service.

If you were hoping for something other than security patches, I'm afraid you're out of luck. A bug causing distorted text in Counter-Strike 2 when the in-game resolution is lower than a monitor's native resolution persists, as does flickering on some systems running Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

This security update targets NVIDIA's GeForce 10-series, 900-series, 700-series, and Titan-series GPUs. If your hardware is on that list, you can download the security update driver 582.28 directly from NVIDIA's website.

Does this security patch affect your PC? What GPU are you running? Let me know in the comments section!

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW announced a native Linux app at CES earlier this year, following similar plans in 2025 when it revealed a Steam Deck app at the same show. Now, it's expanding to more traditional desktop distributions, starting with the Debian-based Ubuntu (24.04 and later).

We already saw NVIDIA update its cloud-based gaming rigs to RTX 5080 GPUs last year, supporting up to 5K rendering at 120 FPS or 1080p at 360 FPS with low-latency streaming. At least this time, it's about something more exciting than supplementing the lower-end graphics capabilities of smart TVs and handhelds.

If you've never tried GeForce NOW, it's the same as how Xbox Cloud Gaming lets you rent a remote console to stream Microsoft's games, except you're borrowing a high-end gaming PC from an NVIDIA server that's closest to you. That, and you get access to multiple digital libraries in one combined view, including Steam and PC Game Pass.

Testing GeForce NOW for myself

It's viable to use GeForce NOW just for free-to-play games like Fortnite, and that's part of what makes this Linux build so interesting: it's an answer to popular titles that are lacking native ports. That, and I could even connect my Battle.net account to stream World of Warcraft on practically any device at this point if I desperately need to hand in some daily quests.

I'm particularly happy to say that GeForce NOW's overall responsiveness is getting eerily good. It's actually living up to the low-latency hyperbole I've heard from its advertising over the years, and faster games are now totally playable. Before, I'd mostly relied on cloud gaming for turn-based RPGs and other slow-paced titles, but this is seriously changing my habits.

I did test it on another distro besides Ubuntu (and SteamOS), but Bazzite isn't there yet. GeForce NOW loads and logs in, but it's unstable, and an error forces the app to close after a minute. Not a huge deal for me, since the majority of my cloud gaming is on my much-loved Steam Deck, but I'll keep trying.

In particular, it's the mouse and keyboard latency that I want to test after these GeForce NOW upgrades, and Linux might as well be the testing ground. I'm in no danger of hitting NVIDIA's 100-hour streaming limit, so I'm happy to boot up the same game (or any other) over and over again to see how it compares to running PC games natively in Windows.

For now, if you're running Ubuntu and you have an active GeForce NOW account, you could give it a shot with the free tier, which offers 1-hour play sessions as a kind of trial experience. On other distros, your experience will vary, since they won't be officially supported. Then again, most enthusiast-grade Linux users won't care about that and see it as more of a challenge than a roadblock — let me know in the comments if you find success.

Do you ever use NVIDIA GeForce NOW to stream PC games over the cloud? Let me know in the comments if the poll doesn't quite fit your answer, or if you know something interesting about it that I don't!

Microsoft appears set to be part of the next big wave of investment in OpenAI. According to The Information, Microsoft is in discussions to invest less than $10 billion in the well-known AI company.

Microsoft's investment would be part of a funding round that will potentially include NVIDIA investing up to $20 billion and Amazon investing $10 billion or more.

None of this information has been confirmed by OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, or Amazon. Reuters has reached out to the tech giants but has not received word back.

The exact figures of the deal are unknown as well, even when accounting for phrasing such as "up to" and "less than." The Information's headline states that NVIDIA , Microsoft, and Amazon are in talks to invest up to $60 billion in OpenAI.

A report by The Financial Times states that OpenAI is in talks to raise $40 billion from investments from NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Until we see more information or receive confirmation from OpenAI or its potential investors, it's important to take the latest information with a grain of salt. It appears OpenAI could see heavy investment soon — we're just unsure of the exact details.

Microsoft was an early partner to OpenAI and has invested heavily in the AI startup. Microsoft extended its partnership in October 2025 and confirmed that it holds an investment in OpenAI that was valued at approximately $135 billion at the time.

Microsoft detailed that its investment represented "roughly 27 percent on an as-converted diluted basis, inclusive of all owners."

NVIDIA is already an investor in OpenAI, having announced up to a $100 billion investment last September. NVIDIA chips power OpenAI models, and the partnership will see OpenAI train and run its next generation of models on at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems.

Amazon would be a new investor in OpenAI. Reuters notes that Amazon's investment could depend on other negotiations with OpenAI, including a potential agreement to rent Amazon cloud servers.

The Information also noted that Amazon's investment could hinge on OpenAI agreeing to sell products, such as enterprise ChatGPT subscriptions, to Amazon.

OpenAI is reportedly on pace to lose $14 billion in 2026, due in large part to the cost of operating its services. OpenAI announced ads for ChatGPT earlier this year, which could help reduce the company's expected losses.

NVIDIA's next conquest, after what feels like years of rumors, is laptops. No, I'm not talking about mobile RTX graphics cards. This is an entirely new processor designed to run Windows on Arm.

The rumors really kicked off in 2023 when NVIDIA was reported to be weighing its options regarding an ARM SoC designed for Windows PCs, and in July 2025, we got a much more significant leak in the form of a Geekbench OpenCL benchmark listing. Earlier this week, we covered a DigiTimes report suggesting that supply chains are gearing up to launch laptops featuring the NVIDIA N1X chip in Q1 2026.

Now, a fresh leak from dataminer Huang514613 gives us an insight into what sort of PCs we might expect. The leak was not hard to spot, at least as long as you aren't shy about poking around in support documents.

On one of Lenovo's "Legion Space" public webpages, support for its software includes a long list of applicable Legion gaming laptops. Included in the listings are the regular collection of Intel and AMD configurations, but there's something there that's not like the others.

A Legion 7 15N1X11 stands out as the only product to not feature the usual "I" (for Intel) or "A" (for AMD) product number. That can't be anything other than NVIDIA's N1X SoC.

Huang514613 follows up the original leak with another X post listing other "known N1 products from Lenovo." These include:

• Ideapad Slim 5 14N1V11
• Ideapad Slim 5 16N1V11
• Yoga Pro 7 15N1V11
• Yoga Pro 7 15N1X11
• Yoga 9 2-in-1 16N1X11

These leaks ultimately fly in the face of assumptions that NVIDIA's N1X was a chip designed for use in desktop PCs. It could very well still be found in desktops, but the fact that it's arriving for laptops — including a 15-inch Legion 7 and a 16-inch Yoga 9 2-in-1 — is exciting, to say the least.

So far, we can only go on leaked and rumored specs to flesh out the N1X. But what we do know bodes well for mobile PC gaming, creation, and AI workloads.

If the N1X is indeed the same chip used in NVIDIA's DGX Spark, we're looking at 20 ARM cores and an integrated Blackwell graphics chip with 6,144 CUDA cores. That's enough to theoretically place its performance alongside the desktop-class RTX 5070. If true, the N1X would be among the fastest iGPUs available in any laptop.

Aligning with rumors of an N1X launch in early 2026, Microsoft has been busy preparing a significant Windows 11 26H1 update. It's a full OS upgrade that moves Windows from the Germanium platform release to Bromine, unlocking platform changes required for Snapdragon X2 and NVIDIA N1X.

Microsoft also rolled out public support for the Xbox PC app on Windows on Arm this week, noting that its Prism emulation layer now supports 85% of games available through the subscription.

(via Videocardz)

Are you excited to see what NVIDIA's N1 and N1X chips can do for laptop performance? What about gaming performance with Windows on Arm? Let us know in the comments section!

If you're shopping for an NVIDIA RTX 5090 this week, you're probably not having a great time. The flagship GPU, which delivers the most performance possible from any consumer card, has all but disappeared from the biggest retailers in the US.

The mighty 5090, which debuted at a $1,999 MSRP in January 2025, has, until recently, been listed somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 depending on the make and model. While the cards were certainly selling for more than MSRP throughout 2025, those prices now seem very reasonable.

I spent the morning trying to prove the trend wrong by scraping the big GPU retailers, but it's futile. Amazon? Forget about it. Listings are sitting between $3,800 and $4,500 unless you want to take your chances with a used unit.

Best Buy? There's not a single RTX 5090 in stock. Forget Newegg — prices are lower at Amazon, and that's not saying much. What's worse, none of the RTX 5090s I could find for sale are actually being sold by the retailers themselves. It's all third-party listings being hosted on the likes of Newegg and Amazon.

The only outlier is Micro Center, which is still offering 5090 units for a slightly more reasonable price. The issue, of course, is that once you click through to select a store for pickup — there's no shipping option for any of the listed cards — you'll quickly find that there are only a handful of cards available across the entire country.

So, that begs the question: Where have all the 5090s gone?

In December, I covered rumors about NVIDIA cutting GeForce RTX production by up to 40% in early 2026. The move would be a byproduct of the global memory shortage, which itself is caused by AI firms buying up the supply of DRAM years in advance in order to fulfill the needs of datacenters.

These rumors undoubtedly sparked a bit of a rush on remaining RTX 5090 stock, further exacerbating the issue. With the RTX 5090 now disappearing from store shelves and not being restocked, the reality of the situation is perhaps worse than we imagined.

You might as well buy an entire pre-built PC with a 5090 inside

The PC market is in turmoil, and there's no better proof than the crazy pricing discrepancies between standalone NVIDIA RTX 5090 cards and pre-builts with the GPU inside.

For example, Newegg's in-house ABS brand currently has a Kaze II Aqua pre-built on sale for $4,899.99, and that's before adding an additional 5% ($245) discount. The PC has an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, MSI Ventus RTX 5090 GPU, 32GB of T-Force Delta RGB DDR5-6400MHz RAM (which alone costs $530), a 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, a 360mm AIO liquid cooler, and a 1050W PSU.

That's a lot more value for your money, but I'm not expecting deals like this to stick around very long if RTX 5090 production is indeed in such a rough shape.

If you're a resident of the US and have an NVIDIA account created before January 30, 2025, you can always sign up for NVIDIA's Verified Priority Access program. It's essentially a lottery for RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 Founders Edition cards sold at MSRP, but it's worth putting your name in should you not yet have your hands on the flagship card.

(via TechRadar)

Is this a temporary blip in supply lines, or is RTX 5090 stock drying up a signal that the GPU market could be in for a rough 2026? Let us know in the comments section!

The talk of NVIDIA putting its chips inside Windows on Arm PCs isn't new, and it certainly feels like it comes around every year at this point.

However, as we enter 2026, it's back. This time, apparently, it's actually going to happen for real.

A new report from DigiTimes supply chain sources suggests that the first laptops powered by NVIDIA's N1X could be debuting as early as the first quarter of this year.

We've previously heard that NVIDIA N1/N1X laptops were originally supposed to launch at some point during 2025. Rumors began as early as 2023, and in mid-2025, the first leaked performance benchmarks of the N1X gave us hope. But the rumored Computex 2025 reveal never happened.

DigiTimes had previously reported that supply chain sources placed some of the blame on Microsoft, specifically "Microsoft OS timelines." Other factors reportedly include NVIDIA chip redesigns, and global economic situations. Lest we forget the ongoing threat of tariffs from the United States ever looming.

The NVIDIA N1 is actually already out in the world. CEO, Jensen Huang, confirmed that the GB10 inside the DGX Spark AI Supercomputer is actually an N1 in disguise. While these systems are based on Linux, it does at least offer an insight into the sort of performance we could be expecting.

The GB10 features a 20-core ARM CPU paired with an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU, and boasts up to 1,000 TOPS of total AI performance. The CPU is capable of outperfoming AMD's Strix Halo (AI Max 395+) and the GPU performance can hit RTX 5070 levels.

The short version is that should we actually see N1X-powered PCs launching this year, they're not going to target the affordable end of the spectrum. For that, we'll still be looking towards Qualcomm's lower-tier Snapdragon X chips, but at the high-end, things could get interesting.

NVIDIA is obviously massively invested in the AI market right now, and we can all but guarantee there will be an AI-spin applied to any N1X powered hardware that may release. But aside from that, it would just be nice to finally see Windows on Arm getting another shot in the, well, arm.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform has changed the game, but competition is ultimately what will drive Windows on Arm forward.

The update from Hardware Unboxed:

"The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB have not been discontinued or designated as end-of-life (EOL). ASUS has no plans to stop selling these models.

"Current fluctuations in supply for both products are primarily due to memory supply constraints, which have temporarily affected production output and restocking cycles. As a result, availability may appear limited in certain markets, but this should not be interpreted as a production halt or product retirement."

This could be a case of damage control from ASUS PR, and as Hardware Unboxed points out, "the proof will be in the supply."

Original article:

As we're all coming to understand, AI takes precedence over human consumers. The latest casualty, caused by a focus on feeding AI datacenters with as much memory as the world's manufacturers can supply, is NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti graphics card.

Yes, the 16GB Blackwell GPU that was one of the more popular options from the new lineup — thanks mainly to its ample memory allocation and its stellar performance — is seemingly on its last legs as NVIDIA's AIB partners (aka the companies that build GPUs around NVIDIA's chips) struggle to receive a supply of the GPU.

The report comes from Hardware Unboxed, which spoke with "several AIBs and retailers" post-CES 2026 in order to get a clearer view of the current GPU predicament.

Hardware Unboxed notes that retailers have not been explicitly warned that the 5070 Ti has hit end-of-life status. However, speaking with those same retailers, it's clear that there is no stock from AIB partners to buy and sell.

This news aligns with December rumors I covered, suggesting that NVIDIA would cut RTX 50-series production in 2026 to cope with memory shortages. At the time, it looked like production might shrink by 30-40%, but it could be a lot worse.

New, more recent rumors stemming from Board Channels and picked up by Videocardz seemed to indicate that NVIDIA had adjusted its supply chain to focus on 8GB versions of its RTX 50-series GPUs, including the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti. In an update, it appears that this rumor is only partly true.

According to HKEPC, a Hong Kong-based outlet, NVIDIA is now prioritizing its GPU production based on memory allocations. For example, out of the 8GB cards, NVIDIA will focus on the RTX 5060 Ti. For 16GB cards, it will focus on the RTX 5080. There's no information yet about the 12GB RTX 5070, but the RTX 5090 will continue production.

This new prioritization effectively leaves the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5070 Ti behind. If you currently have one of these GPUs in your PC, I probably don't need to tell you to protect it at all costs. There's a lot of discussion about VRAM and how much you need to game effectively in 2026, but it essentially boils down to "more is better."

The RTX 5070 Ti, which launched with a $749 MSRP, is indeed seeing price spikes at retailers. Some versions are still available at Newegg for as low as $829.99, but the majority of options have climbed to $1,250 and well beyond.

The 16GB RTX 5060 Ti, which launched at a $429 MSRP, is facing a similar predicament. Some models are still available for as low as $489.99 at Newegg, but the majority have hit or surpassed $530.

NVIDIA's Blackwell SUPER cards have been postponed indefinitely

Traditionally, SUPER variants of NVIDIA's cards are released about a year after the initial cards' launch. Rumors began in November 2025 of memory shortages killing the RTX 50 SUPER cards, and Hardware Unboxed has now confirmed that the SUPER cards have been postponed indefinitely.

Should memory prices calm down later this year, which isn't likely, NVIDIA could revisit its next-gen products that were supposed to debut at CES 2026.

It's worth pointing out that NVIDIA's laptop GPUs have seemingly not yet suffered the same prioritization fate, but I expect that 2026 will see a lot of low- and high-end models rather than a mid-range spread.

NVIDIA focusing on the costly RTX 5080 as its only 16GB GPU is surely going to leave a lot of PC gamers in the lurch. Are you ready to make the jump to AMD or Intel? Let me know in the comments section below!

NVIDIA is currently the world's most valuable company, and its wealth has largely been carried to the bank on the shoulders of AI datacenters powered by its GPUs. Refusing to slow down, NVIDIA unveiled a new Rubin supercomputing platform at CES 2026 consisting of six different chips, including a Vera CPU and a Rubin GPU.

The Rubin platform as a whole, as NVIDIA explains it, is ushering in a new "industrial" era of AI compute where costs are lower, and output is higher. Indeed, NVIDIA says the Rubin platform can offer 10x lower inference token costs while requiring 4x fewer GPUs when training mix-of-experts (MoE) models; that's compared to the current Blackwell generation of hardware found in so many cutting-edge datacenters around the world.

Here come the screeching brakes, heard loudest by those who couldn't care less about AI.

Last year ended in a dire situation for PC makers and consumers, and it's continuing today — memory is being gobbled up by AI firms at an alarming rate, leaving only some scraps for the rest of us. It's nigh impossible to build a new PC without dropping an enormous sum on RAM, and leading manufacturers are also starting to feel the squeeze.

The same shortages have already begun to show up in the SSD hardware space, as NAND — the type of flash memory that's used in SSDs — was starting to feel a similar squeeze.

Now, as the Vera Rubin server systems arrive, it's being projected that storage is the next sector of hardware that's about to dry up. That's due to Vera Rubin's new memory design that significantly speeds up data processing.

Vera Rubin is projected by Citi to eat up "1,152TB of additional SSD NAND" per server system in order to properly support the new NVIDIA Inference Context Memory Storage (ICMS) operations. If those estimations are even close to the truth, we're about to be in for (another) bad time.

👉 Related: Conspiracy theory or apt prediction? — The AI-fueled hardware shortage will kill local PCs, paving the way for subscription-based cloud computing

If you can wrap your head around a projected 30,000 Vera Rubin shipments in 2026 and another 100,000 shipments in 2027, the result falls out to about 34.6 million TB of NAND in 2026 and 115.2 million TB of NAND in 2027 for NVIDIA's new servers alone.

In 2026, those 34.6 million TB represent approximately 2.8% of the expected global NAND demand. In 2027, the 115.2 million TB represents 9.3% of global NAND demand. That's a big jump, and Citi says "the global NAND supply shortage is expected to intensify further." This dilemma will undoubtedly trickle down into consumer SSDs, igniting the fuel that sends prices into space.

Experts have predicted for months that NAND would represent the next big hardware shortage, and it seems those predictions weren't too far-fetched. Is this the next step on our way to subscription-based cloud computing?

(via WCCFTech)

Realistic prediction or baseless rumors? What do you think about Citi's projection involving hundreds of millions of TB of NAND capacity going into NVIDIA's new Rubin platform? Let us know in the comments section below!

Last year, Merriam‑Webster named “slop” as Word of the Year, defining the term as low-quality digital content produced in quantity by AI. This didn't come as a surprise, considering the rapid advances and adoption of the technology across the world.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote a heavily AI-inspired blog post highlighting his hopes and aspirations for the technology in 2026, even as the company continues to heavily integrate the technology across its tech stack despite backlash from users, which has seemingly contributed to widespread mockery and the generation of a new nickname for the tech giant — Microslop.

Nadella expressed his desire and hope for society to embrace the technology as it continues to advance and move on from criticism of AI slop. And as it now seems, the Microsoft executive isn't alone on this. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has also entered the chat.

While recently speaking at the No Priors Podcast about robotics, reasoning models, and unpacking the AI bubble narrative, Huang revealed that he wasn't happy about the negativity around generative AI in society.

The executive described the negative theories and conspiracies about AI as a "doomer narrative," which is not helpful to society. The technology promises to alleviate poverty, cure diseases like cancer, and more, but these are yet to be realized.

Huang indicated that there's a battle of narratives between people who believe AI will have a positive impact on society and critics. While the executive admitted that it is "too simplistic" to dismiss either of the views, he indicated that some of the narratives from AI critics and doom-mongers have a negative implication for the progression of AI development.

While Huang didn't point any fingers, he blatantly dismissed claims from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about AI's potential to slash up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, leaving Gen Z without work within 5 years.

According to Huang:

"Their intentions are clearly deeply conflicted, and their intentions are clearly not completely in the best interest of society. I mean, they're obviously CEOs, they're obviously companies, and obviously they're advocating for themselves."

The executive concluded by indicating that all the negativity around AI is actually scaring people from making investments in AI that could actually make the technology safer, more functional, more productive, and more useful to society.

Interestingly, the comments come from an executive whose company is heavily invested in the AI landscape, with multiple deals involving top research labs in the industry.

Have negative AI comments caused harm to society and AI safety? Share your thoughts in the comments and cast your vote in the poll!

You might not be able to afford or even find an NVIDIA GPU for sale in 2026 due to severe, AI-caused hardware shortages and rumors of production downturns, but that isn't stopping Team Green from forging ahead with its next version of DLSS.

DLSS 4.5, just announced at CES 2026, introduces two major upgrades to NVIDIA's leading AI-powered upscaling suite for PC gamers.

Available today for all NVIDIA RTX GPUs is a second-gen Transformer Super Resolution model with promises of far better image quality. The second-gen Transformer model is significantly heavier than the first-gen model, offering five times the compute power.

How will that affect performance? NVIDIA says that the use of FP8 acceleration on Ada and Blackwell GeForce cards balances it to the point that there is only a minor performance difference compared to the first-gen model.

In the examples provided by NVIDIA, the new DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution looks incredible. Increased temporal stability provides finer details in background and foreground scenes, ghosting is significantly reduced, and anti-aliasing looks better than ever, reducing jagged edges in moving scenes.

The second-gen Transformer model is debuting with two new model presets that you can select as you please. Model M is best suited for general compatibility, while Model L is better if you're gaming at 4K with Ultra settings enabled.

Although it's available on all RTX cards, the older Ampere and Turing generations can't take advantage of FP8 hardware acceleration. It will be interesting to see how it performs without.

The second half of the DLSS 4.5 announcement is all about Multi Frame Generation (MFG), and it's limited to the latest RTX 50-series Blackwell GPUs.

I admit I was skeptical of these AI-generated "fake frames" when they were first revealed at CES 2025, but once I actually got to test out the magic on an RTX 5070 Ti, I was hooked.

Whereas DLSS 4 allowed for up to 4x MFG, DLSS 4.5 pushes it to 6x. NVIDIA is targeting 240Hz+ refresh rates with this new tech, and that's with Path Tracing enabled at 4K.

There's also something called Dynamic Multi Frame Generation that NVIDIA likens to a car's automatic transmission. You can set a target framerate (like the native refresh rate of your monitor, and Dynamic MFG will only create extra frames when required. Very cool.

MFG 6x and Dynamic MFG are not expected to arrive until Spring 2026. However, DLSS 4.5 and its improved Super Resolution are available now via the NVIDIA app for more than 400 games.

NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar wants to do away with motion blur completely

Another new announcement for PC gamers, especially those in the competitive esports scene, is NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar.

Headed into a range of new 27-inch QHD 360Hz monitors starting at $599 on January 7, G-Sync Pulsar is said to increase motion clarity by up to four times compared to a regular picture. With VRR (variable refresh rate) enabled, it will look and feel like you're gaming at a refresh rate higher than 1,000Hz.

These monitors can automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on the ambient lighting around you, further helping with clarity and reducing eye strain.

Have you accepted that "fake frames" are the future of PC gaming? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section below!

NVIDIA first announced its 100-hour monthly playtime cap for GeForce Now back in late 2024. At the time, there were a few grumbles, but they soon died down and the internet zeitgeist moved on. Mainly because only new subscribers were affected, so it was easy to be apathetic.

Existing subscribers wouldn’t be affected for a year. That year is soon up on January 1, 2026. With the date fast approaching and NVIDIA updating its FAQ to confirm the cap will apply to almost everyone, it’s worth reminding everyone of this news again. Not because NVIDIA has changed its mind about the cap, but because PC gaming prices have ballooned astronomically throughout 2025, and the reduction in streaming hours stings more than ever.

Users are vocalizing their frustrations once more, and with greater vigour, as we move into a gaming landscape increasingly reliant on streaming services.

Quick reminder of what's actually changing with NVIDIA Geforce Now in January 2026

Starting January 1, 2026, GeForce Now will enforce a 100-hour monthly playtime limit on nearly all paid subscribers. The tiers are currently priced at:

• Performance tier (formerly Priority): $9.99/month
• Ultimate tier: $19.99/month

Extra time outside of the 100 hours will be charged accordingly:

• Performance tier: $2.99 for 15 hours
• Ultimate tier: $5.99 for 15 hours

If you don't use your 100 hours for the month, you can carry over 15 hours of unused hours into your next month's allowance. The free tier is still capped at 1-hour sessions.:

There is one major exception to all of the above info which applies only to Founder Members. Founders who subscribed before March 17, 2021 remain exempt from the limit as long as they never cancel.

For everyone else? The clock starts ticking.NVIDIA has been clear that the cap has been implemented so prices can “remain the same for the foreseeable future.”

This does land a little worse now than it did in 2024

Nvidia GeForce Now’s Time Limit Will Stop Gamers After 100 Hours Each Month from r/Games

When NVIDIA first floated the cap back in 2024, cloud gaming was still widely seen as a supplementary service — something we used alongside our localised gaming setups.

At least for me, I use Geforce Now primarily on the Steam Deck for games that the handheld struggles with or can't play at all. NVIDIA GeForce Now is a fantastic convenience for occasional play, of which the majority of the user base would never hit the 100-hour limit anyway.

That assumption no longer holds given the current climate. Over the last year, more players have been pushed toward streaming not because they want to be there, but because traditional PC upgrades are becoming brutally expensive.

I was browsing the reaction to the impending limit over on Reddit and while I was surprised at many comments responding as if this were new information, the renewed vitriol over it does make some sense given the recent ballooning costs of RAM. The disdain isn't really directed at GeForce Now itself, rather the reasons why people are using it more.

Much of the pressure on the cost of upgrading our gaming PCs is now attributed to AI workloads competing for the same memory supply chains. GPUs are still expensive. CPUs aren’t cheap, but even “mid-range” builds are becoming increasingly unachievable.

For many players, cloud gaming isn’t just a supplementary service anymore. If they are unable to upgrade, they will become increasingly dependent on these services to run the latest games. So any nickel and diming feels so much harsher in 2026 than it did on paper in 2024.

"What am I paying for exactly?"

Even users who admit they may never hit 100 hours bristle at the idea that their access is being rationed. NVIDIA insists only around 6% of users will be affected, which begs the question, why implement the limit at all in that case? And given the change in PC component prices, won't that 6% increase drastically in the years to come? Is NVIDIA simply putting in this limit now, ahead of what's to come?

There is, of course, the concern that once a major player successfully normalizes paid access + time caps + micro-top-ups, others will follow. Not because users like it, but because they tolerate it. Could Xbox Cloud Gaming implement similar limits in the future? Given that they have recently rolled out Xbox Cloud Gaming to lower tiers (at the cost of higher Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions), it's not out of the realm of possibility that this could go well for Nvidia.

As local hardware becomes harder to afford and streaming becomes more attractive or unavoidable, caps like this will eventually affect more users. Come January, the 100-hour timer starts for almost everyone. Whether that feels fair may depend less on how much you play, and more on how few alternatives you feel you have.

Let us know in the comments whether you think NVIDIA’s approach is reasonable, short-sighted, or a sign of where the entire industry is heading.

Are PC hardware prices pushing you toward cloud services, consoles, or sticking with what you already have?

👉Share your thoughts in the comments below. Your perspective helps shape the discussion around where gaming goes next.

I hope you managed to find the right GPU at the right price in 2025, because a new report suggests that NVIDIA plans to significantly cut production of its RTX 50-series graphics cards in 2026.

The cause? You guessed it — AI and its unending thirst for memory and storage, which is causing a global shortage.

This news began on China's tech forum Bobantang and was picked up by Benchlife and eventually OC3D. The report alleges that NVIDIA plans to "adjust GPU production capacity of GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards in 2026 to cope with memory shortages." Just how much of a reduction? Compared to the first half of 2025, supply could be reduced by anywhere from 30-40%.

That's not an insignificant reduction, and I can't see how the ramifications won't be felt throughout the tech industry.

It's not just GDDR7 memory — the stuff that goes into RTX 5000 cards — causing issues, either. The report suggests that all memory types are being squeezed enough to cause a shift in production.

According to Benchlife, "a number of AIC partners and component suppliers have also mentioned" that the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 5060 Ti, each with 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, will be the first to see a cut to production.

If true, that's some terrible news for PC gamers. GPUs with 8GB of VRAM are on the edge of being "not enough" to play demanding modern titles, and the 16GB GPU options drying up will make it more difficult to get the performance you desire without spending huge money on an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090.

Notably, the report makes no mention of NVIDIA's RTX PRO GPUs. These specialized cards are coveted by data scientists, creators, engineers, developers, AI professionals, and more. They come at a much higher price compared to the consumer RTX 50-series GPUs, and I wouldn't be surprised to see NVIDIA continue to feed GDDR7 into the production lines to maximize profits.

The memory crisis is only getting started

This NVIDIA news comes on the heels of several high-profile stories focusing on the RAM shortage.

At the end of November 2025, Micron announced that it was discontinuing its consumer lineup of Crucial memory and storage to focus on producing the hardware for AI companies. Samsung, one of the other leading memory suppliers, is expected to hike RAM prices as well.

Dell just announced that it plans to hike its commercial PC prices by up to 30% on December 17, echoing the moves by other major PC manufacturers. Elsewhere, Valve's upcoming Steam Machine could be in trouble if it can't debut at a reasonable price due to RAM costs.

As for NVIDIA's RTX 50-series SUPER cards — the "upgrade" versions that generally debut about a year after the standard cards hit markets — there have been rumors floating around for a couple of months regarding NVIDIA killing the entire product line due to the memory shortage.

This has to make for some awkward reading at the Microsoft coffee table.

Recently, Time Magazine debuted its annual "Person of the Year" cover story. The tradition began in 1927, and has since depicted individuals that have made the biggest impact on world events throughout the year — for better or worse.

Previous winners of Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" cover story include the likes of world leaders, including Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, activists like Greta Thunberg and Nelson Mandela, and often times scientists and technologists, like Elon Musk and former Intel CEO and chip architect Andrew Grove.

This year's Time "Person of the Year" edition features a group of people, titled "The Architects of AI." It's a recreation of the famous "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" photograph that showcases New York construction workers working on the city's iconic skyline — dangerously perched on a steel girder without safety equipment. Let's put the metaphor for the dangers of AI and gaping pitfall of a potential stock market "bubble" to one side for a moment, because there's an interesting omission here that underpins how Microsoft is falling behind in the race for relevancy.

The photograph features eight world leaders in technology, server infrastructure, and AI science. From left to right, we have Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame, Lisa Su of AMD, Elon Musk of xAI and Grok, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Sam Altman of OpenAI and ChatGPT, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Claude, and pioneering AI researcher Fei-Fei Li.

Notice any particular absences?

All of the people depicted here are directly responsible for funding and building frontier AI models, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, Grok, or Google Gemini. The lack of inclusion for Microsoft AI, run by Mustafa Suleyman and brokered by CEO Satya Nadella, showcases how far behind the frontier of AI research Microsoft actually is.

Microsoft is functioning as an investment bank in existing AI products, re-selling NVIDIA GPUs as part of Microsoft Azure and re-selling ChatGPT as part of Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft's home-grown AI models, including MAI, aren't generally used and sport limited public API access, and its benchmarks aren't public either.

The lack of representation for Microsoft really underlines the company's status as a background player in artificial intelligence, nowhere near the forefront of the race.

Forced integrations and investments aside, is Microsoft actually serious about AI?

I've written recently about how Microsoft's fumbling and panicked behavior over artificial intelligence risks undermining its customer's needs. It's certainly undermining Windows' reputation.

Windows 11 hate is going utterly mainstream, with weak and forced Copilot features in everything from Microsoft Word to Notepad tears into the company's public image, but for me, it goes beyond social media "haters" simply disliking AI — Microsoft's AI products simply aren't good.

I'm not sure exactly what Microsoft did to make its version of ChatGPT dumber, but Copilot returns weaker results than ChatGPT generally speaking. AI imaging features in Microsoft Photos are absolutely pathetic compared to Google or even Samsung's photo editing tools on Android.

Integrations in Outlook and Microsoft Edge are invariably useless compared to integrations in Gmail and Chrome, and Xbox's "Gaming Copilot" tries to make up solutions out of thin air if it doesn't have a gaming website to steal information from.

CEO Satya Nadella has previously spoken about how he wants Microsoft to be an AI-first company, while declining to provide any innovative, or perhaps more crucially, useful AI products of its own. Windows Recall was called a privacy nightmare when it was announced, and other features like Click-To-Do haven't exactly ignited a rush on Microsoft AI products.

The whole situation is eerily similar to Microsoft's haunted Windows Phone project. Microsoft partnered with Nokia, creating friction at a time where competitors were moving far faster — similar to Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, which has been reportedly fractious. Microsoft's short-term thinking and half-hearted execution led to Windows Phone eventually being mothballed, and that same lack of passion and cadence for releasing half-baked products seems to be typifying Microsoft's AI products as well.

Users are making use of products like Github Copilot and Microsoft Copilot, but much like products like Outlook and Microsoft Teams, Microsoft's strategy seems to revolve around offering a weaker, cheaper alternative — rather than be at the cutting edge for quality. Given how expensive AI actually is to run, it's unclear if this can be a winning strategy for artificial intelligence.

In any case, they say photographs are worth a thousand words, and the above photo is symbolic of various things. From the arguably tone deaf nature of multi-millionaires and billionaires being depicted as construction workers literally risking their lives to build New York's skyline, to the lack of guardrails building what could end up being a superior intelligence. For better or worse, Microsoft's role in the future depicted here is one of absentia, echoing other computing revolutions the company failed to capitalize on.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been vocal about the impact of generative AI on the world, specifically on jobs as the technology gains broad adoption. He categorically indicated that careers like coding might be dead in the water with the rapid prevalence of AI, urging the youth to explore alternative career paths in areas like biology, farming, manufacturing, and more.

The chipmaker has greatly benefited from the tech world's focus on AI, especially due to the rise in demand for GPUs to foster sophisticated advances in the ever-evolving landscape. Consequently, the chipmaker briefly became the first company to hit $4 trillion in market capitalization.

Despite claims that the tech world is seemingly trapped in an AI bubble that could implode soon, Huang dismissed the claims. "I don't believe we are in the AI bubble. And the reason for that is, we're going through a natural transition from an old computing model based on general-purpose computing to accelerated computing," added Huang. And now, the executive is championing the integration and adoption of AI by NVIDIA employees across their workflows.

In a leaked meeting recording exclusively obtained by Business Insider, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang indicated: "I want every task that is possible to be automated with artificial intelligence to be automated with artificial intelligence," Huang added. "I promise you, you will have work to do."

NVIDIA isn't the only company that's heavily integrating AI into its workflow. At the beginning of the year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company was seriously debating hiring software engineers, only to reveal that the company uses AI to write up to 50% of its code while citing incredible productivity gains.

Similarly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company uses AI to write up to 30% of its code, which helped it save $500 million. As it stands, some professionals are already losing jobs to AI, and the most viable way forward appears to be upskilling, particularly in AI-related fields.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed AI has the potential to slash up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, leaving Gen Z without jobs. It will be interesting to see what the future job market looks like with the rapid prevalence and adoption of AI.

Cyber Monday 2025 — Quick links

• All our TOP recommended Cyber Monday deals: Just the best
• Mini PC deals: up to 47% off tiny PCs
• GPU deals: early price drops on NVIDIA RTX before they go up
• Microsoft Surface deals: save up to $500 on premium PCs
• Xbox accessories: best deals on gadgets for your Xbox Series X|S and PC
• Gaming laptop deals: the best laptops for the best price
• Xbox controllers: our top picks for best controller deals
• ANC headphones: great Cyber Monday deals on the best ANC headphones
  
  Even more Cyber Monday deals:
• Dell deals: 13 deals from Dell.com that you shouldn't miss
• Best Buy: 34 hottest discounts on laptops, monitors, gaming, and more
• Walmart: 7 top laptop deals you shouldn't miss
• Samsung monitors: the best Samsung display deals we've found
• Retro gaming: handhelds, arcade machines, old school consoles, and more
• Gamer merch: Blizzard’s Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo IV collectibles
• Game keys: 10 PC game codes are even cheaper at Loaded (formerly CDKeys)
• Accessories: Even more PC accessories starting at $17

Following the launch of Gemini 3 with advanced capabilities across video, reasoning, and coding, Google is now the talk of the town in the generative AI category. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently admitted that the Gemini team had done a great job with the launch.

Even NVIDIA, which has also been flying high due to the high demand for chips to foster AI advances (unlocking $4 trillion in market capitalization), recently indicated that it is delighted by Google's success (via Tom's Hardware).

But perhaps more interestingly, the chipmaker used the opportunity to toot its own horn: "Nvidia is a generation ahead of the industry — it's the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done. Nvidia offers greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs, which are designed for specific AI frameworks or functions."

This news comes after reports claim that Meta is currently in discussions with Google to rent its Cloud Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in 2026, and even potentially buy them in the subsequent year. Consequently, Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Meta's stock prices saw a significant increase. However, NVIDIA's stock price dropped by 3%.

Google's Cloud TPUs are quite different from NVIDIA's AI GPUs. For context, the former's offerings are designed to help with AI model training and inference, while the latter are designed for parallel processing, allowing them to handle billions of calculations simultaneously.

While speaking to CNBC, a Google spokesman indicated:

“We are experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and Nvidia GPUs. We are committed to supporting both, as we have for years.” During NVIDIA's earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang addressed the rising TPU competition, indicating that Google is the company's customer for GPU chips and that Gemini can run on its technology.

More Black Friday 2025 — quick links

• All our TOP recommended Black Friday deals: Just the best
• Mini PC deals: up to 47% off tiny PCs
• GPU deals: early price drops on NVIDIA RTX before they go up
• Microsoft Surface deals: save up to $500 on premium PCs
• Xbox accessories: best deals on gadgets for your Xbox Series X|S and PC
• Gaming laptop deals: the best laptops for the best price
• Xbox controllers: our top picks for best controller deals
• ANC headphones: great Black Friday deals on the best ANC headphones
  
  Even more Black Friday deals:
• Samsung monitors: the best Samsung display deals we've found
• Walmart: 7 top laptop deals you shouldn't miss
• Retro gaming: handhelds, arcade machines, old school consoles, and more
• Gamer merch: Blizzard’s Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo IV collectibles
• Game keys: 10 PC game codes are even cheaper at Loaded (formerly CDKeys)
• Accessories: Even more PC accessories starting at $17

Black Friday saw NVIDIA's flagship RTX 5080 GPU — aka the card that every gamer wants — fall to a far more reasonable price than usual. It was so popular that a few models sold out, but thankfully, Cyber Monday has added some new discounts on the monster 4K card.

There's the MSI INSPIRE RTX 5080 model on sale for $1,069, perfect for those who prefer a sleek design for a more mature build. MSI and Gigabyte cards have now hit new lows, giving you more options for your PC upgrade.

The RTX 5080 will deliver incredible performance for years to come

Everyone wants an RTX 5080 — that's no secret. NVIDIA's flagship GPU is the perfect option for any 4K gamers who don't want to pay obscene amounts for the RTX 5090. Not gaming at 4K? The RTX 5080 is going to absolutely crush 1440p, especially if you have a monitor with a high refresh rate.

These GPUs all come with the "OC" designation, which means that they're overclocked to provide better performance than the reference cards that NVIDIA produced.

These GPUs all have 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, setting you up nicely for the future as games become more demanding. And because they're all built on NVIDIA's latest Blackwell architecture, you get full access to all of the latest DLSS 4 features, including Multi Frame Generation (MFG).

I admit I was skeptical about MFG and its use of AI to multiply frame rates, but once I tested it in DOOM: The Dark Ages using an RTX 5070 Ti, I quickly became a believer. The RTX 5080 is only going to make that experience better.

The RTX 5080 isn't just for gaming, either. It's powerful enough to easily cut through AI, video, rendering, and other professional workloads, giving you the best of both worlds in one GPU.

Keep in mind that GPU prices are expected to skyrocket once again due to the impending memory shortage caused by the AI datacenter buildout, giving you just another reason to cash in on these great Cyber Monday deals.

Looking for a GPU that doesn't cost nearly as much as the RTX 5080? I have a separate roundup that includes many more Cyber Monday GPU deals from NVIDIA and AMD, but I've also added some additional options to check out right here.

FAQs

More Cyber Monday 2025 - quick links

• All our TOP recommended Cyber Monday deals: Just the best
• Mini PC deals: up to 47% off tiny PCs
• GPU deals: early price drops on NVIDIA RTX before they go up
• Microsoft Surface deals: save up to $500 on premium PCs
• Xbox accessories: best deals on gadgets for your Xbox Series X|S and PC
• Gaming laptop deals: the best laptops for the best price
• Xbox controllers: our top picks for best controller deals
• ANC headphones: great Cyber Monday deals on the best ANC headphones
  
  Even more Cyber Monday deals:
• Dell deals: 13 deals from Dell.com that you shouldn't miss
• Best Buy: 34 hottest discounts on laptops, monitors, gaming, and more
• Walmart: 7 top laptop deals you shouldn't miss
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