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Imagine this. You’ve just paid a ton for a new RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU. You plug the card in, boot everything up and … wait, why is my super-expensive GPU running at 230 degrees?

Reddit user antonyjeweet asked themselves that very same question. Given that GPUs shouldn’t be running above195 degrees fahrenheit/90^c well, ever, they figured there was something wrong with the internals.

This sort of thing is pretty rare, but it does happen. Igor’s Lab reported earlier this month how a user received an AMD Radeon 6700 XT with all the thermal pads still installed. The thermal pads are basically small bits of plastic or tape that are supposed to be removed before the GPUs are shipped to users.

And after rolling the dice and taking his GPU apart to replace the thermal pads, antonyjeweet discovered an unwelcome surprise: a finger glove, hidden inside the thermal pads:

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“Now I know why my memory temps easily hit 110c very very fast. Now they stay at 86c max after 1.5 [hours] of stress testing. Also the core dropped 10c (from 75 to +/-65c after stress testing),” they wrote.

Interestingly, Nvidia at first followed procedure. They refused to honour the card’s warranty because antonyjeweet had taken the GPU apart, which is all pretty standard. However, after discovering someone in the Founders Edition assembly chain had left the little plastic surprise behind, they’ve agreed to help out antonyjeweet if they want it.

“Nvidia told me at first I lost my warranty. But after seeing this they said we will give you warranty (got that on mail). No swap or anything. If it works fine just keep it, if not, contact us and we will fix it,” the Netherlands-based user wrote.

If you’re wondering how something like this even happens, the real answer is there’s a global chip shortage. Customers usually don’t care too much the how’s and why’s, only that they get supply of their flash new consoles, CPUs, GPUs and everything else as soon as possible. That pressure and crushing demand often results in crippling conditions for those working on the factory floor. One factory in Vietnam that’s part of the Samsung and Apple supply chain has around 150,000 workers living at the factory full time, while another major Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer forced some migrants back into shared accommodation despite the intensity of that country’s COVID wave.

On the bright side, everything worked out fine in this instance. But it’s a reminder to everyone that luxury consumer tech isn’t always going to work as advertised. If you’re going to drop thousands for real-time ray-tracing and all the bells and whistles at 4K, you might as well spend a little bit extra time making sure it’s running the way it should.

This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.

This week as part of the annual Hot Chips semiconductor conference, Samsung’s memory division has presented a poster/slides on a project it is currently working on with impressive end-point results. The company details a 512 GB module of DDR5 memory, running at DDR5-7200, designed for server and enterprise use. This is a step up from the 256 GB modules at the top end of the market today, but to get there, Samsung has been introducing some new features and functionality.

As per standard DDR5 specifications, the modules will run at 1.1 volts with standard JEDEC DDR5-7200 timings, however even JEDEC has not declared an official DDR5-7200 standard at this stage, choosing only to go to DDR5-6400. There are placeholders for future standards, such as DDR5-7200, and based on how the latencies increase from slower speed to higher speed, these should be in the realm of 50-50-50 to 60-60-60*.

*There are three variants for each DDR5 standard – A, B, or C.

DDR5-6400A is 46-46-46 for example, but 

DDR5-6400C is 56-56-56.

As part of the presentation, Samsung states that the introduction of Same-Bank refresh (SBR) into its DDR5 will increase the efficiency of the DRAM bus connectivity by almost 10%, with DDR4-4800 showing the best efficiency in terms of energy from bit.

In order to support the higher memory transfer rates of DDR5, Samsung has introduced a new DFE (Decision Feedback Equalizer) for better signal stability. It allows for a more variable data-path location, as well as per-pin calibration techniques.

One of the big things about increasing capacity in memory is that you end up stacking more memory together. For their part, Samsung is stating that they can stack 8 DDR5 dies together and still be smaller than 4 dies of DDR4. This is achieved by thinning each die, but also new through-silicon-via connection topographies that allow for a reduced gap between dies of up to 40%. This is partnered by new cooling technologies between dies to assist with thermal performance.

On power, we’ve known that one of the drivers for JEDEC’s newest memory specifications is lower power, and for DDR5 the major thing aside from the lower voltage is to bring the voltage regulator from the motherboard on to the memory module. This allows for the memory module manufacturer to more tightly control the power requirements and consumption of the memory, especially should the motherboard be a very cheap model that might skimp on valued components at the voltage regulation level. For this 512 GB module, Samsung is using a high-efficiency Power Management IC (PMIC) – Samsung as a company has a lot of PMIC experience through its other electronic divisions, so no doubt they can get high efficiency here. Samsung also states that its PMIC has reduced noise, allowing for lower voltage operation, and also uses a High-K Metal Gate process (introduced on CPUs at 45nm) in a first for DRAM.

One of the talking points on DDR5 has been the on-die ECC (ODECC) functionality, built in to DDR5 to help improve yields of memory by initiating a per-die ECC topology. The confusion lies in that this is not a true ECC enablement on a DDR5 module, which still requires extra physical memory and a protected bus. But on the topic of ODECC, Samsung is showcasing an improvement on its bit-error rate of 10^-6, or a factor of a million lower BER. How much of this is required by the DDR5 JEDEC specification is unclear at this point, but it’s still a good direction to have.

At the end of the slide deck from Samsung, it states that its first 512 GB module should be ready for mass production by the end of 2021 – it’s unclear if this is a DDR5-7200 module or something else, as the slide could be interpreted differently. But one of the key aspects to this discussion is when the market expects the crossover of DDR4 and DDR5 to occur: Samsung has a big window of 2023-2024 planned for that crossover, which does align with other market analyst predictions.

This stuff is still going to cost some serious money, which makes me wonder what this means for consumers. Right now the supply of 32 GB modules (UDIMMs) seems to be plentiful for those that want 128 GB of memory in a consumer system. The advent of these new memory packages from Samsung might suggest a path to 64 GB modules for DDR5 on the consumer platform, however you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll stay for enterprise for a while as they will command a price premium.

Stay tuned for AnandTech’s Hot Chips content throughout this week.

As the delta plus variant continues to spread, cities and businesses are doubling down on COVID-19 safety protocols. New York is requiring proof of vaccination, and so is San Francisco. While most companies are incentivizing getting the shot, many establishments like gyms, restaurants, bars and indoor event venues are making it a requirement. For example, in Colorado, where I live, a handful of large concert venues owned by AEG Presents recently announced they’ll require vaccination for anyone who wishes to attend a show. It’s simple — no proof, no entry. 

That small paper card you received when you were vaccinated will suffice to prove that you’re vaccinated. But what if it’s lost, damaged or stolen? As of now, the CDC is not storing your vaccination status. Across the US and the rest of the world, companies, apps and municipalities are making it easier to digitally store and display your COVID-19 vaccination card. Now Samsung is joining in. 

Instead of carrying around the card — or laminating it, which prevents your health care provider from updating it with future booster shots — take a few minutes to add a digital copy of your vaccination card to your phone. Here are a few options I’ve found while researching how to safely store mine. 

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There’s not a standard way to show proof of your vaccination card

Keep in mind that right now there isn’t a single national system or app to present proof of vaccination on your phone. Requirements vary, based on locale and company. While some places may accept a picture of your vaccination card, others may require you to use an app that’s been implemented at the state level. 

It’s a confusing mess, to put it mildly. I strongly urge you to take a few minutes to research what your local city or state will accept as proof as it can vary. 

For example, AEG Presents will accept a “physical copy of a COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, a digital copy of such card or such other proof as is permitted locally.”

Seattle University, meanwhile, requires students to be vaccinated to attend in-person classes via an online form that uploads photos of the front and back of the vaccination card. (Many other colleges are requiring students and employees to be vaccinated.)

Again, every venue, business, city and state is going to approach this differently until there is a unified standard — assuming there ever is one. 

When in doubt, look for information on the business’s website, or call the local health department and ask for clarification. This is bound to save you time, headaches and being turned away at the bar.

Take a clear photo with your phone

Snapping a picture of your vaccination card and keeping it on your phone is the quickest and easiest way to, at a minimum, have a backup copy of your card and all of the information surrounding your vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even recommend keeping a picture of your card as a backup copy. 

Simply use the camera app on your phone to take the photo. We suggest storing this in a notes app, a folder or somewhere that’s easy to remember so you don’t have to endlessly scroll your camera roll to find it. Make sure you’re in a well-lit area and get close enough to the card that its dates and details are legible. I also suggest putting the card on a dark surface, while remaining conscious of shadows of your arms or the phone on the card itself. 

Here’s an example of one way to save your vaccination card as a new photo album. On an iPhone, open the Photos app, select the Albums tab and then tap the + sign in the top left corner followed by New Album. Give the album a name and then tap Save. Next, select the photos of your card to add it to the album. 

On an Android phone, it depends on which app you’re using, but the process should generally be the same. If you’re using the Google Photos app, open the app and then select the picture of your vaccination card. Tap the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner, followed by the Add to Album button. Select +New album and give it a name such as “Vaccination Card” and tap the checkmark button when you’re done. 

Have a Samsung phone? There’s an app just for you

Samsung now gives Galaxy phone owners the option to add proof of vaccination to Samsung Pay, its wallet app. By having direct access to your vaccination record, you won’t have to fiddle around with creating photo albums and tapping through multiple screens before you’re able to show it to a bouncer at your local watering hole. 

To add your card to Samsung Pay, you’ll need to download the CommonHealth app (Samsung’s partner) from the Google Play Store. Follow the prompts in the app to verify your vaccination status. Once the app confirms you’ve indeed gotten the shots, you’ll be prompted to download a Smart Health Card to Samsung Pay. 

That card is what you’ll then show to anyone requesting you show proof of vaccination. 

Excelsior and more: Look for apps based on where you live

Some states — including New York, Colorado and California — offer some form of digital vaccination card. The myColorado app requires you to create an account, verify your identity and then add your digital driver’s license to your phone. After you’ve done that, you can then add your myVaccine record to the app. 

Louisiana’s LA Wallet app takes a similar approach to Colorado’s, allowing you to add your driver’s license and proof of vaccination to your phone. 

California’s implementation requires you to fill out a form to verify your identity, after which you’ll receive a text message or email with a link to a QR code you can save to your phone. When scanned, the code will offer proof of vaccination. The link will also include a digital copy of your vaccination record. 

MyIR Mobile is another app used by several state health departments to provide a digital copy of your vaccination card. Currently, if you live in Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia or Washington, DC, this is the app you’ll use. 

We’ll update this story as the national vaccine conversation continues. For more information about the forthcoming booster shots, make sure to read this. We have up-to-date details about the delta variant, as well as delta plus and the lambda variant.

Gamescom is fast approaching and the host Geoff Keighley is beginning to build hype for the event by teasing some of the games we can expect to see at Opening Night Live.

Apart from a “world premiere” of the highly anticipated LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga video game by TT Games, Nintendo Switch fans can also look forward to an announcement and footage of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.

The new TMNT game was announced earlier this year in April and has been described as a classic-inspired brawler with some seriously strong retro vibes.

“Inspired by the Turtles’ iconic 1987 design,Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge brings New York City’s most righteous ninjas to life with gorgeous pixel art that’d look right at home in your favorite retro arcade. From showdowns with infamous rivals like Bebop and Rocksteady to returns to signature locales like Dimension X, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a bodacious celebration of classic TMNT beat-em-ups with its own modern touches.”

There’s no release date for this one just yet, so perhaps we’ll get a confirmation at Gamescom next week. Will you be tuning in on the 25th of August to see Raph, Don, Leo and Mike in action? Tell us down below.

A huge new Cyberpunk 2077 update was released this week, complete with new DLC, all of which was free. Despite this, players of the PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Google Stadia game were divided over the update, with some taking umbrage with the aforementioned DLC, which included an alternative appearance for Johnny Silverhand and a few cosmetic items. In other words, nothing crazy, and nothing like CD Projekt Red has promised players will get with the two expansions. Still, many players were quick to complain about both the update and the DLC, which prompted a developer on the game to defend it.

During a recent Twitch livestream about the update, CDPR senior level designer Miles Tost noted that the new update is the biggest to date and required a lot of effort. To this end, the DLC was supposed to be a cherry on top.

“This patch is our biggest one to date,” said Toast said during the livestream. “We’ve put a lot of effort into this one, so consider the DLCs that we have now as sort of goodies, sort of cherries on top. The reality of course, and we’ve talked about this in the past, is that we differentiate a bit between different kinds of extra content, between DLCs, additional items of which we will have plenty coming down the road, and of course the giant expansion passes which we will have something to say about later.”

As you can see, Tost teases that that CDPR will have more to say about the aforementioned expansions “later,” but unfortunately, the CDPR developer didn’t delve deeper into when exactly it will have more to say.

Whatever the case, if any of this feels familiar, it’s because this is exactly how CDPR approached the post-launch of The Witcher 3. It released 16 pieces of small DLC and two meaty expansions with hours and hours of new content. The only difference is that when CDPR did this with The Witcher 3, it was applauded up, down, left, and right, now, for some reason, it’s being met with backlash, though this may have less to do with the strategy and more the negativity surrounding the title ever since its messy launch last year.

A brand new benchmark of Intel’s Core i9-12900K Alder Lake-S Flagship Desktop CPU has popped up within the Puget System benchmark database along with the first entry of ASUS’s upcoming ROG STRIX Z690-E Gaming WIFI motherboard.

Intel Core i9-12900K Alder Lake CPU Benchmarked With ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-E Gaming WIFI Motherboard, Faster Than AMD Ryzen 9 5950X And i9-11900K

Two entries for the Intel Core i9-12900K Desktop CPU were made within the Puget Systems data-base. Based on the new benchmarks, this chip looks to be a qualification sample with much higher clock speeds than what we have seen on early engineering samples. The CPU was tested on ASUS’s ROG STRIX Z690-E Gaming WIFI motherboard which is part of the next-gen ROG lineup & this entry seems to be made by accident by someone at ASUS’s HQ. The test setup was running 64 GB DDR5-4800 (2 x 32 GB) memory and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card on the Windows 10 OS.

AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX Cezanne Flagship Benchmarked, Comes Close To Intel’s Core i9-11980HK Tiger Lake Flagship

Coming straight to the performance numbers, the Intel Core i9-12900K scored 1575 points which put it ahead of the Core i9-11900K in the same benchmark. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X scores an overall 1581 points whereas the Intel Core i9-11900K scores 1548 points. The Intel Core i9-11900K is an 8 core chip whereas the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X features 16 cores which means this benchmark (After Effects 0.93.2) isn’t really optimized for high-core count processors. But this is the 2nd leaked benchmark that shows the Core i9-12900K sitting ahead of the Ryzen 9 5950X.

Despite all, the Core i9-12900K coming close to the Core i9-11900K and Ryzen 9 5950X in its current state is a big feat. We have to remember that Alder Lake CPUs, even in QS state, won’t deliver full performance capability until they receive proper BIOS and OS support. We have previously seen this with Intel’s Rocket Lake chips which didn’t receive proper BIOS support till a few days prior to their launch. Furthermore, Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs are based on a hybrid architecture & will require extensive updates through Windows 11 to fully unlock their performance and multi-threaded core potential.

ASUS Announces ROG Phone 5s, ROG Phone 5s Pro With Snapdragon 888 Plus, Higher Touch Response Rate, More

A crucial element to this was announced by Intel during its Architecture Day 2021 & is known as ‘Thread Director’. It is a hardware-based scheduler that finally has visibility into the type of threads being scheduled. The technology would first be available in Alder Lake CPUs where it will work with Windows 11 to prioritize tasks to the various cores based on their nature. For the first time, a hardware scheduler can send background tasks to the small cores and performance-requiring tasks to the performance cores.

Intel Core i9-12900K 16 Core / 24 Thread Desktop CPU

The Intel Core i9-12900K will be the flagship chip in the 12th Gen Alder Lake Desktop CPU lineup. It will feature 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Gracemont cores for a total of 16 cores (8+8) and 24 threads (16+8). The P-cores (Golden Cove) will operate at a maximum boost frequency of up to 5.3 GHz with 1-2 active cores and 5.0 GHz with all-cores active while the E-cores (Gracemont) will operate at 3.90 GHz across 1-4 cores and up to 3.7 GHz when all cores are loaded. The CPU will feature 30 MB of L3 cache and TDP values are maintained at 125W (PL1) and 228W (PL2).

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake Desktop CPU Specs “Rumored”

The Intel Alder Lake Desktop CPUs are expected to launch in Q4 2021 and will be the first mainstream consumer platform to utilize PCIe5.0 and DDR5 technologies along with a new hybrid architecture approach, something that Microsoft has optimized for its Windows 11 operating system.

News Source: Benchleaks

15 years ago, back in 2006, I was barely 15 years old. And in that year, the same year Twitter launched, the original Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was barely four years old. And one modder was starting work on a mod that would add a fully realized and modeled Titanic into the game. 15 years later the first part is out.

“The Titanic Mod” aims to create one of the most “detailed and accurate free 3D recreations of the Titanic ever made.” Players will be able to explore the huge ship in free roam mode and the eventual plan is to include a series of new missions that involve the doomed ship and the mafia. It is being developed primarily by one man, Robin Bongaarts. According to a Eurogamer interview from last month, Bongaarts is a maritime engineer from the Netherlands who has been working on this mod since 2006.

The first part of the massive mod was finally released yesterday, August 20. It doesn’t contain any missions onboard the ship and it also doesn’t feature the moment where the ship sinks into the ocean. And some parts of the ship aren’t done yet, based on this diagram. Still, you can run around the ship and explore different parts of its highly detailed exterior and rooms.

This mod includes features not found in the original base game, such as fully climbable ladders and swimming. These features were added into the mod with the help of a small team that Bongaarts works with.

If you want to try out the Titanic Mod, you’ll need a vanilla, unmodded version of the game. The Steam and GOG versions of the open-world game will also work, though this mod doesn’t support other mods like the popular widescreen fix. And no, this won’t work in last year’s Mafia Definitive Edition.

You can read more about the creator of the mod via that previously mentioned Eurogamer interview or check out the Titanic mod’s history via its Moddb page.

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(h/t: Eurogamer)