HW News - Ubisoft Hates Ownership, MSI Claw Huge Patch, EK Updates, & Z790 Issues

[Music]

it's been a busy week welcome back to

Hardware news we are doing a recap for

the last two weeks actually because

we've been working on some things in

this one we're getting mostly back to

normal there's a brief followup on the

EK story it's mostly just some some

talking about some extra information and

then we'll also be going over some

updates to the MSI claw which now claims

a 150% performance increase in some

games so 92 people will be really happy

for some rumors on Intel's next desktop

CPUs and the core configurations rumors

of amd's radon 8000 gpus meta opening up

its VR operating system to other vendors

so soon we'll have the Asus Rog

expensive edition of VR uh and plenty

more stories let's get started before

that this video is brought to you by the

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description below all right first up so

quick EK followup we have a ton more

information we haven't published yet uh

but for now it feels like the story is

pretty well encapsulated in that part

two video check out this image though so

this was the org chart that we made it's

about halfway through the uh EK

investigation part two video

and we made this chart to explain the

complicated web of ownership and

conflicts we also made this table of

suppliers in 3D and We additionally

talked about ek's global locations in

this section of the video and then

finally we covered some of the finance

documents the tax forums the Secretary

of State filings uh the taxes owed in

various locations and also discussed

leans and Loans in the business the

reason I wanted to just sort of surface

all of these is for all of you who

didn't make it that far into the video

uh or who just haven't seen it yet

there's some really cool stuff in there

and if you only watch one section really

uh I would recommend somewhere around

the 16 to 18 minute or so Mark for the

starting point watch through till about

30 minutes or so uh you got a good 12 to

14 minute Chunk in there that's really

focused on sort of the business the

finance uh the strange structure of

owners and investors and all this weird

stuff going on uh that for me was the

most fun part of the video but we had to

sort of um establish the storyline of

what is this company what's it doing

what are it subsidiaries before we

really got there so you should check

that out if you haven't but I wanted to

surface those just cuz it was the most

intriguing part of it to me doing the

research on this and uh our business

analyst had a a pretty late night

working on the or chart I was on the

phone with them for several hours we

were trying to we're like wait so does

this this one connects to this one and

but then how does it cross over to this

one it really felt like we needed some

red strain actually I bought some red

strain but the gag didn't make it the

video cuz the video end up been pretty

long anyway we have received a number of

follow-ups and tips that are credible

however for now we're probably done

covering the story until we see

something major out of EK on the

positive side we've compiled a list of

ek's employes and contractors former and

current who've reached out to us uh and

for those of you who sent your resumés

your contact information I've put it all

together before this video goes up that

we're filming right now uh I'm going to

be sending that out to a couple of the

companies in the space that have

requested uh basically a pool of good

talent in the PC industry that they can

try and FastTrack and hire from so cool

update on that uh I've spoken with star

Forge I know that star Forge systems has

an interview lined up with at least one

of the former EK cooling solutions Texas

staff which is awesome and it's great to

hear they're already trying to uh see if

they can create positions for people who

were affected by this and then I also

spoke with height uh and height has

started lining up who they want to

interview from the former EK staff both

HQ and cooling solutions in Texas so

there might be a positive ending for

some of those affected here

whistleblower Dan Henderson who kicks us

all off at LinkedIn has a job at antech

now which is actually also awesome to

hear because uh whistleblowers and other

Industries typically get forced out of

those Industries and don't find work in

them again after they raise the alarm so

the fact that he's found a job in

Industry at antech uh that's good news

on the GN side we have a pool of awesome

Consultants who can help with future

investigation so we've really learned

about how to piece this type of content

together it was really complicated uh I

was working every day all day like 20

plus hours a day on trying to sort the

story put it together understand it all

that everything um it was really fun to

work on it's an expensive way to do

things but I think the content speaks

for itself where we've never had this

level of sort of depth in an

investigation before and with this many

contributing experts both on camera and

behind the scenes

so I'm excited to apply that knowledge

to Future content uh for now though

we'll be moving on with our reviews

lineup now real talk we've made a lot of

specific enemies with people who are

Executives or high up at EK or in EK

subsidiaries with that video uh and

that's fine because I've had a lot of

people reach out the last couple days

alone like suppliers and other companies

in the industry where definitely an

overwhelming majority of what we've

heard has been from people I know in

director positions or

uh positions at other large companies

that deal with EK where they have

thanked us for exposing what they've

been dealing with for years so um

there's one supplier I just spoke to

recently that's owed a a singled digit

thousands amount of dollars uh for a

very long time now and that's like you

can't pay that and something's wrong so

anyway if you want to support our Deep

dive investigations and reports like

this one grab one of our limited foil

cyber skelet V2 t-shirts on store.

Gamers access.net the last time we made

a design like this was for artisian

builds in this one we changed the colors

we tuned the foil material and shirt

fitment and we're using that brilliant

blue and gold foil for rib cage skeletal

outline including fittingly water

cooling parts like fittings the spine's

also pretty cool it uses vrm components

to form the structure and this directly

helps support expensive efforts like our

EK investigation which again cost us

around $40,000 or actually over that and

it supports our research editing teams

you can grab it for limited time on

store. gamas a.net all right let's get

back to normal we're going to do some

speedrun stories first these are rumors

and things without a whole lot of

content to them first up MSI posted

Updates this one's official for it's MSI

claw handheld that we reviewed a couple

weeks ago MSI claims an improvement

upwards of 150% which must have been

borderline broken before to get that big

of an uplift we're not sure if this fix

will fix the frame time pacing issues

that we saw now previously just before

review went live Intel post its own

update that recommended avoiding some

MSI Center M Power plans and stated its

own intention of improving performance

for Ark and we'll revisit the device

next time we do a handheld review amd's

ryzen 9000 series was in the rumor mill

this has been confirmed by gigabyte as

being the naming basically gigabyte

posted a press release that it has since

changed stating that its beta bios

supports quote the coming ryzen 9000

Series processors and video cards was

able to capture a screenshot of the

original posting the only news here is

that we now have have a confirmed name

and he leaving the 8,000 naming to

probably the apus in other news it home

picked up a rumor that Intel's core

Ultra 5 240f will be an 8+ 16 and 6 Plus

8 core configuration for what the poster

says is the entry level desktop skew we

look forward to motherboards running

them at 700 watts and related to that

comment hard run box posted a uh testing

video relating to Intel's motherboards

and the CPUs and how they get blasted uh

depending on the configuration of the

board and it various settings we did not

cover that story so that's related to

the stability story that's been in the

news for on and off couple months now uh

we haven't covered it because we're

buried in all this EK stuff and I'm

happy to defer to them for that one

since we kind of skipped that in favor

of the EK coverage so they've got a

report for you there if you want to

follow up on that all right next one

we've previously reported on rumors that

nvidia's at 50 Series gpus will be using

gdr 7 memory and this is showing that

AMD is currently cooking up unannounced

rdna 4 powered RX 8000 gpus that will

stick with slower gddr6 vram now this

comes by the way of Kepler L2 who

tweeted quote only 18 gbits per second I

don't know how to verbally quote the

Emoji that's in that is it is it like

it's

like I think that's how you quote it uh

this would indicate potentially a

cost-saving measure for amd's following

gpus going with an older memory

technology would definitely save money

it could also however create a memory

bandwidth issue depending on how Reliant

the architecture is on bandwidth uh and

that varies architecture architecture

the gdr 7 is expected to go into mass

production uh throughout and by the end

of the year companies like SK HX have

stated publicly that they are targeting

40 gbits per second performance out of

gdr 7 as it matures when it first comes

out it's going to be lower than that

it's typically how it goes now for

reference amd's rdna 3 based RX 7900 gr

and RX 7700 XT uh both carry 18 GB per

second memory and this would be slower

than the 7900 XTX which carries 20 GBS

per second for its configuration by

default now up next meta opens up its VR

OS to other vendors including Lenovo and

Asus in what feels to be a bid to be the

Android or Windows operating system in

the VR space meta has announced that

it's beginning to open up what it's now

calling the Met Horizon OS to other VR

headsets the company revealed that VR

headsets from Asus Lenovo and a limited

edition Quest headset made in

collaboration with Xbox are in the works

and in a company blog post meta wrote

this quote we're opening up the

operating system powering our meta Quest

devices to thirdparty Hardware makers

giving more choice to Consumers and a

larger ecosystem for developers to build

for end quote Zuckerberg posted to

Instagram referencing modding and

Hardware diversity as a key driver for

opening up the solution he specifically

cited apple as the Counterpoint to this

approach headsets that use meta Horizon

OS will have access to the features that

meta has built which include Inside Out

tracking as well as eye face hand and

body tracking the operating system also

supports mixed reality features like

they say quote pass through scene

understanding and spatial anchors with

these headsets meta is also pushing its

meta Quest store which it has rebranded

to the metah Horizon store maybe

something of a steam play there as well

where valve benefits from being

effectively the publisher or at least

the the retailer of the games on its

platform and that's where the real money

is for them not the hardware as you see

with the steam deck and previously with

the original HTC Vive efforts so maybe

something like that now delving more

into the coming headsets there's the

Asus version which is supposed to be an

Rog branded device likely with Rog

pricing attached to it and this is aimed

at being what they say uh is a quote all

new performance gaming headset so Asus

has really taken the gaming side of it

and specifically cited high performance

as a key demand that they seek to fill

with that headset lenovo's headset seems

to be aimed at more mixed uses with the

blog post highlighting things like

learning and

productivity ew and also entertainment

as the key areas of focus of sarcasm by

the way before someone's like I thought

you liked learning uh the company

previously partnered with Facebook when

it co-designed the Oculus Rift s headset

so there's some history there as well

the limited edition Xbox inspired one is

pictured in black and green coloring

with the quest with the user holding an

Xbox controller which no doubt will be

targeted at streaming Xbox cloud gaming

titles this is currently available in a

beta State on existing Quest headsets we

recently reported on how the fccu was

going to vote to reinstate net

neutrality which has come to pass and uh

that was a 3 to2 vote restored net

neutrality as predicted this

reclassifies internet service providers

under the title 2 provision of the

communications act which is actually a

1930s act in law and this is after net

neutrality was repealed in 2017 so it's

kind of a restoring of that title 2 has

a common carrier aspect which would

allow the FCC to have authority over

those carriers so critically this would

mean public access to Internet would be

uh explicitly required to be a

non-discriminatory provision of that

service now in this instance the the

non-discriminatory applies to the type

of access so that would be things like

certain websites being faster or slower

uh maybe having throttling or other

restrictions placed on them so that's

what's meant here by that use of that

phrasing so net neutrality theoretically

aims to put all internet traffic on the

same playing field preventing potential

paid priority Lanes prior to the vote

opponent of net neutrality and FCC chair

Rosen warell stated that internet access

has gone from a quote nice to have to a

quote need to have adding that quote

Broadband is now an essential service

essential Services the ones we count on

in every aspect of Modern Life have some

basic oversight historically isps or

internet service providers have fought

this provision and it's mostly over

concerns that their pricing could become

regulated so not a big surprise they' be

against it now this would be similar in

some ways to utilities like power it's

not that far uh but that's I think what

they are maybe scared of as an ISP the

FCC has continued to push a national

security angle for this uh previously

they pushed a more consumer angle from

our observation of how things have gone

down so definitely a change in tone and

what they're focused on um the material

we saw was much less consumer focused

this time next one RX 7800 XT price

drops to

$470 so uh the powercolor hellhound 7800

XT has dropped to a new low with the

price of

$470 available from Newegg by way of

eBay this is $31 less than its original

$500 price that puts it in spitting

distance of nvidia's 4060 TI 16 gab

which currently retails for $450 and

remains a waste of money for anyone who

just wants it for gaming uh when we

reviewed the 7800 XT back in September

we concluded that it's one of the better

value cards this generation thus far

we've reviewed the powercolor hellhound

cards in the past so for the 7900 XT

model we found it to be a good cheap

performer and the cards official product

page for the 7800 XT Hound mentions that

it offers dual bio support and features

like a physical LED switch on the cart

after speculation that A PS5 Pro was

inbound it's inbound it's really only a

couple versions of consoles out there

there's Slims pros and bass models so it

wasn't inevitable at some point uh this

one comes from The Verge which reports

that it has obtained documents

confirming the console's existence and

The Verge says that those documents

indicate it'll be called the PS5 Pro

Trinity or in other words the PS5 3 Sony

allegedly views this as a quote high-end

version of the PlayStation 5 and says

that it's one that'll focus on improving

rate tracing so this would be a maybe

more typical mid generation refresh it's

a reminder the PlayStation 5 originally

came out in 2020

and it's approaching four years old at

this point so it's relatively new in

console years the PlayStation 2 is

something like a decade or somewhere in

that range of life but the Verge reports

that the new one will quote include a

more powerful GPU and a slightly faster

CPU mode elaborating on performance the

publication wrote quote Sony expects GPU

rendering on the PS5 Pro to be about 45%

faster than the standard PS5 adding the

PS5 Pro GPU will be larger and use

faster system memory to help improve R

tracing in games they say that Sony is

also using a more powerful R tracing

architecture in the PS5 Pro where the

speed here is up to three times better

than the regular PS5 the article

likewise claims a 350 MHz clock bump

which is pretty big and says that

developers may be able to pick between

modes for lower or higher frequencies

this uh could maybe make sense if the

developer is optimizing a heavier game

to spec down to better work on the older

device or on the other side of things uh

if they have a game that already runs

fine on the older device they could

maybe find ways to uh utilize The

increased memory from we'll get there uh

increased capabilities of the GPU

whatever with higher quality assets

things like higher resolution textures

things like that so there's a few

options there uh and the claim is that

there's going to be multiple modes for

which the games can be built now

elaborating to the ram changes The Verge

stated that quote the PS5 Pro will also

have some changes to system memory for

developers the standard PS5 memory runs

at 448 GB per second but Sony's bumping

it up 28% to 576 GB per second on the

PS5 Pro they say the Verge also claims

that quote developers will get more

access to overall system memory games

can use an additional 1.2 GB on the PS5

Pro so that's 13.7 versus 12.5 allocated

to games on the Basse PS5 now this could

manifest in a couple ways as well so

first again is for the p PC audience we

may see a kind of knock on effect to

this because a lot of games come from

console and are ported or uh they are

built for all platforms simultaneously

and in either case they're going to

build to the spec probably of the

consoles in some capacity so an increase

in memory available there might mean an

increase in vram as an example uh

requirements for games on the PC now in

this case that bump isn't massive it's

not the same as a generational bump but

1.2 GB increase

still a lot it's enough to push you into

another class of GPU depend on what you

have so we could see that pop up in a

couple years as developers have had time

to get games out to actually utilize

this memory change now another way this

could materialize is an increase to

Graphics quality on the PS5 Pro as

opposed to the PS5 if the developers

leverage that for say higher resolution

textures or something along those lines

now additionally if Sony's moving

forward with its pssr or its own super

resolution technology then GPU load

might decrease at least with relation to

resolution while the CPU capabilities

would be less constrained by the GPU in

that instance the increase in Ray

tracing Focus here uh maybe could mean

that super resolution instead could be

used to kind of free up some aspect of

GPU processing capabilities to instead

Leverage The GPU on allow it to

basically crunch on other things like

rate tracing well that one's interesting

because um the rate tracing is one that

that sort of maybe toggling or reducing

bounces or something like that it's just

seems like it'll be hard to fully

represent the same experience on both

devices if there's going to be this big

push for increased rate tracing

capabilities but we'll see how it pans

out the Verge also reports quote Sony

has built a custom architecture for

machine learning on the PS5 Pro which

support 300 tops of 8 bit computation uh

they say and we're not sure how that'd

be used at this point the publication

here's that game developers are able to

order test kits now that means that

there's going to be a lot of leaks in

the coming months as developers get

their hands on these the plan apparently

is to get this launched by holiday

season this year to be uh available

alongside the original PS5 not outright

replacing it up next if you've got a

gigabyte z790 board gigabyte is warning

against using the latest beta bios

apparently it's causing the BIOS to

freeze it's totally uncool while the

BIOS update was supposed to support

Intel's 14900 K CPU that just launched

and enable Intel APO which got updates

we talked about recently instead users

are experiencing Frozen bioses videoc

cards.com reports that this has impacted

more than just a single motherboard but

quote all boards that were recently

updated unfortunately it seems like

early adopters got the short end of the

stick with Taiwanese publication unico's

Hardware reporting negative feedback

from users who say things like quote if

I boot into BIOS I'm unable to change

anything no matter what I do or click

the first 10 seconds or so the BIOS

freezes other users also reported the

same and the UEFI has been called

unusable now gigabyte has followed this

up and has warned against using that

version they're working on another

update that should fix all these issues

and then that'll roll out if it's not

already out might be by the time this

news video goes up with that said if you

own an AR z790 board probably best to

wait for the stable bios to come out

also just kind of a general commentary

here but uh whenever bioses come out

personally speaking as in on systems I

use but not for testing and things like

that it's good to stay updated for

security reasons at the same time I

personally still will wait like at least

a month to sometimes three months just

to make sure any issues like this have

been worked out because uh if there's

going to be a problem with a perfectly

working setup normally it comes from

either a Windows update thanks Microsoft

this actually this computer behind me

was stuck updating earlier it kept

rolling back or it comes from the uh the

bioses that come out and actually on the

count of this system behind me I I

considered just filming with a giant

windows's updating logo on that Center

screen right there and uh unfortunately

it sorted itself out before we started

we got a good one up next it's Ubisoft

they're back previously Ubisoft said

people should feel comfortable with not

owning their games direct quote by the

way and they cited that they intended to

make good on the gaming libraries and

gaming streaming services among others

and make sure you'd always have access

to your

games except for the ones they remove

like the crew which they just removed

but don't worry they won't take access

away to games people who purchased

copies of the online only racing game

got this message upon trying to launch

the game recently it says you no longer

have access to this game why not check

the store to pursue your adventures uh

here's why last time I did that you took

it away this is some of the most toned

deaf advertising for a digital game

store I think I've ever

seen just like sorry the one you clicked

on that you bought and paid for from us

is gone or that you've invested money

into somehow and um anyway how about

giving us some more of that money PC

Gamer reports that the crew has been

moved to a player Library labeled

inactive game which again is not

encouraging to have a entire subfolder

that exists for a store that can charge

you for games and then just dump them

into that folder whenever they feel like

it personally I just think that's how

they should work you buy the game and

then once you download it it just moves

it into that inactive games folder and

that's the end of the whole transaction

you've actually beaten the game it's

just the the part where you play it we

don't need to do that one takes a lot of

time anyway and so you get all of the