Man Orders RTX 3090 Ti From Amazon, Receives Sand

Ah, scammers. As much as many of us hate these degenerate sub-species of the human race, they are, unfortunately, a difficult bunch to properly be rid of. Recently, a man in Brazil recently fell victim to a scam when he made an order on Amazon and got a whole load of sand, literally.

The Brazillian man, whose name is Mauricio Takeda, had posted his plight on the social media platform, TikTok. Here’s the story: Takeda had pulled the trigger and decided to purchase an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card from Amazon Brazil. What makes this purchase extra special, though, is that the multinational brand was also having its Prime Days sale period, which in turn meant that products were being sold at a discount.

In Takeda’s case, his Palit GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GameRock graphics card was purchased for 14500 Brazillian Real (~RM12179). If we’re being honest here, that’s still a little on the high side, and that is despite the fact that the prices of graphics cards have been on a steady decline or if you’re in China, crashing hard.

 Upon receiving his newly purchased “GPU” in the mail from Amazon, red flags began to rise for Takeda when he picked up the package and realised something was very clearly off with its weight. With his suspicions already at a heightened state, he then proceeded to ask his wife to record him opening the package and, upon doing so, discovered that he was not, in fact, an owner of a new RTX 3090 Ti, but multiple jars and pots filled with sand.

But Takeda’s story doesn’t even end there. Realising that he was a victim of a very expensive scam, he attempted, attempted, to liase with Amazon, asking them for a resolution, but to no avail. Then, after repeatedly receiving calls from the centre over a course of several days, they finally sent him an email containing a link that would permanently remove the affected Amazon account.

Takeda ultimately got restitution, though, after he filed a lawsuit in the Brazillian Small Claims Court and his issue actually became a national headline. At that point, even Amazon couldn’t take the issue lightly and began to fix the problem.

Motorola Razr 2022 To Get Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen1 Chipset

The Motorola Razr of 2022 has made a physical appearance in some capacity, confirming leaks that it will look quite different compared to before. But the way it looks aside, other things that we know of the device come from leaks. Though on this front, some things have changed, as the company has revealed two bits of info on what the phone packs.

As Android Authority reports, the company has shared on Chinese social media Weibo that the Motorola Razr 2022 will come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen1 chipset. Considering that it hasn’t gotten an official launch yet, this is good news. The base Snapdragon 8 Gen1 would be just a little out of date by the time the phone becomes available.

Separately, one post which the report attributes as coming from a Motorola executive states that the Razr of 2022 will also get a 3500mAh battery. By today’s standards, that is a pretty small battery for a smartphone. But hopefully with the more efficient chipset, it would be enough for the foldable phone to last a day at the very least. The executive also claims that the phone will also have good battery management, which would be nice if it’s true.

Beyond these two points though, we’ll still have to go with what we know from previous leaks. Leakster Evan Blass has claimed that the Motorola Razr 2022 will have a Full HD+ display, either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage space, a 50MP primary + 13MP wide angle and macro camera combo, and a 32MP punch hole secondary camera.

Whether or not these are accurate, we will have to wait for the launch to find out. On that note, the report claims that Motorola will be officially unveiling the Razr 2022 on 2 August, so it won’t be too long a wait.

Mercedes-AMG Unveils Its First Ever “Office” Chair

Mercedes-AMG, the high performance focused sub-brand of Mercedes, is now looking to deliver its luxurious and comfortable seating experience from its cars and straight into your workplace. Recently unveiled is the all-new and aptly named AMG Office Chair, which is also its first ever product of this category.

Now, some of you may recall a somewhat similar throne by Noblechairs that was released in 2019, which also featured the AMG branding (or rather its official F1 team). This new chair, on the other hand, isn’t a collaborative release, and is actually designed and manufactured by the Mercedes high performance arm itself. Amusingly, the first-party AMG throne isn’t marketed as a gaming chair despite featuring a design that is often reflected on similar products from the likes of Secret Lab, Razer, and the previously mentioned Noblechairs. And for car brands releasing their own chairs, consider this circle now complete.

The AMG Office Chair bears similarities to the brand’s A45 performance seats – complete with a bucket form factor with an integrated headrest, a metal badge featuring the company’s branding, black high quality Artico artificial leather upholstery, as well as red decorative stitching and stripes. Unique to it is a black powder-coated steel base, black back shell, chrome castors, and adjustable padded armrests. Other than that, the throne also comes with height adjustability and a control lever to adjust its reclining position. Weight-wise, Mercedes-AMG says the entire chair comes in at around 39 kilograms.

Unfortunately, you won’t find the usual fancy features that are typically offered by Mercedes in their cars, such as memory seat adjustment, massage functions and so on. But that’s actually a good thing, as the inclusion of such things will further bump up the chair’s price even further.

Speaking of which, the cost of bringing the Mercedes-AMG certified comfort into your own home (or workplace) will only cost you EUR 3,500 (~RM 15,900). The new AMG Office Chair is available for pre-order now via its official online store, though the company notes that the first 50 units will first ship out exclusively for Private Lounge members.

Intel ARC A750 Graphics Card Shown Running Death Stranding At 1440p

A couple of weeks ago, Intel officially launched a new website, dedicated towards the latest information pertaining to all news about its ARC GPUs, and along with it, a brief glimpse of the mid-range A750. This week, the latest video revolves around the same card, this time being used to run another game, Death Stranding.

As usual, the short technical demonstration was hosted by none other than Ryan Shrout, Intel Fellow and member of the ARC Graphics Marketing team. In this new video, the A750 is being shown running the Hideo Kojima Production title, along with multiple Intel-focused features turned on as well. Chief among these features being showcased is Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and HDR.

On a sidenote, it is worth noting that the new video doesn’t include a comparison chart between the A750 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, but the video clearly wasn’t to demonstrate the card’s prowess in other games. Rather, the new video was made to inform consumers how the graphics cards, and all other ARC cards after it, will support any monitor with VRR.

Also on another side note, Intel also gave a breakdown of the rest of the hardware that being used to run the A750 and Death Stranding. This included a 12th Gen Core i9-12900K, an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 hero, 32GB DDR5-4800 RAM from Corsair, as well as an MP600 Pro XT 4TB NVMe Gen4 SSD from the same brand.

Oh, and the monitor Shrout was using is an Ultra-wide QHD monitor (3440 x 1440), that in turn is also an HDR-capable display.

As you would expect, the demonstration pretty showed the A750 running Death Stranding without any hiccups, thanks in no small part to the VRR feature. As for the HDR portion of the showcase, it was a little difficult to showcase how the feature worked on the camera, but Shrout and his “HDR tester” assured viewers that the feature was definitely working.

Lastly, Shrout explained that all Intel ARC GPUs, including the A750 would definitely support HDMI 2.1, including the Limited Edition cards. However, the chipmaker will be giving OEMs the free hand in integrating the Protocol Converters (PCONs), which could lead to some ARC GPUs supporting HDMI 2.1 only.

Unfortunately, the video did not contain any details regarding the A750’s specification, nor does it provide an official release date about for the card, or any other ARC GPU, for that matter.

Prodrive Racing Simulator Is A Custom PC Worth GBP39000

Racing sim games can be played on a standard gaming PC or console setup, but you can choose to go the more immersive route with a sim racing rig. But if you really want to take the sim racing experience to the next level, then you can look towards UK-based motorsports company Prodrive to provide you with that experience. The company has announced what it calls simply the Prodrive Racing Simulator.

From the announcement, Prodrive intends its Racing Simulator to be an expensive piece of furniture for your home. The company likens it to a grand piano that’s always sitting in the background, and that you’ll occasionally play, rather than something you hide away when not in use.

And it certainly looks the part, with the seat, screen, steering wheel and pedals sitting in the sculpted carbon monocoque housing that appears  to be “floating” within the birch canopy. This was cooked up by CALLUM, the design company with one of the founding members being Ian Callum, the name behind the look of cars like the Aston Martin DB7.

For its tech specs, the PC that powers the Prodrive Racing Simulator comes with an unspecified Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card with 12GB of VRAM, as well as 16GB of RAM. The monitor that comes with it is an AOC 49-inch 5K curved screen with a 165Hz refresh rate. The steering wheel is a Precision SIM LM-PRO that has five rotary dials, 12 buttons and carbon fibre paddles to give you the race car experience.

With the look to emulate a grand piano in design, comes a similar price tag to the musical instrument. The Prodrive Racing Simulator comes with a price tag of GBP39000 (~RM208120). If you’re in the UK, you can even give it a try at the company’s Banbury headquarters before buying it.

Discord’s Voice Chat Function Finally Coming To Xbox Consoles

Discord has announced that local and cross-platform voice chat is finally coming to Microsoft gaming consoles, namely the Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. Though not widely rolled out just yet, the feature is now available to testers under the Xbox Insiders program.

At its current state, the platform only offers limited functionalities on Xbox consoles – with its key feature, voice chats, missing entirely. One way to remedy this is by initiating or joining calls via the Discord app on your smartphone, but that also means you’ll be relying on multiple audio sources for the session – one for game audio and another for tuning in to voice chats, which is doable but not too practical.

The upcoming Discord voice call functionality that’s coming to the console, however, is not as straightforward as most users would’ve hoped. The long and short of it, this new ability is somewhat an improvement to the solution we’ve mentioned above, sans the need for an extra audio source for the experience. You are required to have the Xbox mobile app installed on your smartphone though, as it will be the platform that bridges Discord’s voice chat to your Xbox console.

First, you need to connect your Discord and Xbox accounts on both the former and latter’s apps. Even if you’ve already done so in the past, Discord notes that you’ll have to relink them again when this new feature is available. Once that’s done, initiate or join a call via the Discord app and tap “transfer to Xbox.” Activating this will then automatically bring up the Xbox app, where you’re required to confirm the process.

From here, both input and output for voice chats are handled directly by your Xbox console, provided that the device and your smartphone are connected to the internet. The platform adds that you can transfer calls from desktop or web clients to your Xbox console as well.

“While you are playing on your console, you will be able to see who is on the call and speaking,” explains Xbox principal program manager Eric Voreis via an official news release. “You’ll also be able to adjust the sound, and switch between Discord Voice and Xbox game chat.”

Both Microsoft and Discord say the new voice chat feature will expand to more testers in the coming weeks. Seeing that the former’s testing period often spans a couple of weeks to even months, it might take a while for it to be widely available to all Xbox users.

Mercedes EQS 450+ EV Goes Official In Malaysia For RM 699K

Mercedes-Benz has officially launched the fully-electric Mercedes EQS saloon in Malaysia today. It is the second EQ model to be made available here, just three months after the company marked the arrival of the fully-electric Mercedes EQ sub-brand in Malaysia by launching the EQA SUV.

Unlike EQA which was generally derived from the ICE-based GLA, the EQS was conceived using a modular architecture that is designed exclusively for luxury and executive-class electric vehicles. In fact, EQS is the first model that is based on the EV-specific platform.

Globally, the fully-electric saloon can be obtained in several variants but in Malaysia, it is only available in the form of EQS 450+ for the time being. Fully imported (CBU) from Germany, this particular variant has a rear-wheel drive setup and features a 245kW motor that can deliver around 333hp of power and maximum torque of 565Nm of torque alongside a top speed of 210 km/h.

Equipped with a 107.8kWh battery which provides the car with enough juice to travel between 631 km to 782 km according to WLTP standard, the EQS 450+ supports AC charging of up to 11kW while it is also capable of supporting DC chargers with a power rating of up to 200kW. When it comes to charging time, the car takes around 10 hours to reach from 10% to 100% when charged using an 11kW AC charger.

On the other hand, a 200kW DC charger can charge its battery from 10% to 80% within 31 minutes. The EQS 450+ relies on Type 2 / CCS2 combo port for charging and each owner will be provided with a 5m Type 2 charging cable.

As you can tell from the third letter in its name, EQS models are on the same level as per Mercedes S-Class line-up. This means that the EQS 450+ is part of the company’s top-of-the-line releases which is why the luxury saloon is filled with plenty of features inside and outside.

For example, the Malaysian-spec EQS 450+ comes standard with AMG Line exterior and body styling alongside 21-inch light-alloy AMG wheels. There are plenty of other items that were optional extras in other markets but made standard for the release in Malaysia such as the rear axle steering, the curved tri-display MBUX Hyperscreen, MBUX Augmented Reality Navigation, head-up display, THERMOTRONIC automatic climate control, and 15-speakers 710 watts Burmester surround sound system.

Driving Assistance Plus Package is also a standard for the Malaysian-spec EQS 450+ which covers safety technologies such as Active Distance Assists DISTRONIC, Active Lane Keeping Assist, Blind Spot Assist, 360-degree camera, Active Parking Assist, and DIGITAL LIGHT headlamps.

Given how S-Class models are also commonly used as chauffeur vehicles, things are no different with the EQS 450+ too. Aside from the luxurious interior all around which has draped in Nappa leather, rear passengers of the new EV are provided with their own infotainment displays and there is another detachable tablet that they can pull out from the centre armrest.

Naturally, the EQS 450+ comes with an OTR price tag to match at RM698,888. Covered by a 4-year unlimited mileage warranty in addition to a separate EV battery-specific 10-years 250,000km warranty, delivery is taking place immediately.

AMD Supposedly Prepping Noise Suppression Technology

Rumour has it that AMD is supposedly working on an AI-based Noise Suppression feature that could be introduced in the near and immediate future. The alleged feature was first spotted on an official YouTube video on the brand’s channel, but has since been set to private.

Thanks to the quick hands of some fans online and through the magic and convenience of Reddit, a snippet of that video that “officially” shows off the alleged noise suppression technology. Again, it’s short and last for all but 40 seconds, but for the most part, it’s a sign that AMD is stepping up its game in the area of communication, as well as challenging a similar technology from its direct rival, NVIDIA.

We are, of course, talking about NVIDIA’s RTX Voice technology that the GPU maker launched close to two years ago, back when the pandemic was at its peak, virtually forcing a good chunk of the global population to work from home, until the vaccines became more widely available.

 Returning to AMD’s Noise Suppression technology and based on what we can see, the CPU and GPU maker is clearly working on something that works almost like RTX Voice, but with more tweaks and features made for Red Team, obviously. In other words, the feature should deliver a two-way noise reduction, cutting down on ambient sounds for both input and output.

Because AMD’s Noise Suppression allegedly uses AI-based algorithms to nullify these sounds, it could technically silence even construction work happening next door, thus ensuring a clear, crisp conversation between you and whoever else is on the other side.

As for its delivery vehicle: if AMD really is taking a page out of NVIDIA’s playbook, it could release its AI-based noise cancellation technology through the next major Adrenalin software drivers for its Radeon GPUs. The only other question is whether or not the brand will make Noise Suppression available only to RDNA2 cards, or if older Radeon GPU generations will benefit from the features. Although, all things considered, the latter seems unlikely, and that’s primarily due to these GPUs lacking certain internal components.

Intel Confirms ARC A770, A750 As Scavenger Hunt Prizes

Remember when Intel quietly kicked off a “special” Scavenger Hunt event last year, where 300 lucky winners would be rewarded with one of the chipmaker’s latest ARC Alchemist graphics card, as and when they become available? Well, it’s been close to a year now, and the brand recently confirmed what those 300 cards were: the ARC A770 and A750 Limited Editions.

As a quick recap, the Scavenger Hunt that occurred in October last year happened for just a few weeks and was part of Intel’s effort in hyping up interest for its ARC GPUs, which was just known as Xe HPG back then. The rules were more or less straightforward: participants would have to answer a series of questions, with each correct answer earning them points. Simply put, the more points players had, the greater the likelihood of them becoming the winner.

As mentioned earlier, Intel limited the number of winners of the Scavenger Hunt to just 300 people. Of the 300, 100 would receive the “Premium” ARC Alchemist GPU, which we now know to be the A770 Limited Edition, while the remaining 200 would receive the “Performance” model, which is the A750 Limited Edition.

Intel’s confirmation comes less than a week after the A770 Limited Edition itself was shown off in its full glory at the headquarters of popular TechTuber, Linus Sebastian, via the official Linus Tech Tips channel. Specs-wise, there still isn’t much to say about the GPU officially, but it is likely to be using a full-fat ACM-G10 GPU, along with 32 Xe-Cores and as much as 16GB GDDR6 graphics memory.

As for its performance, the top-tier Intel card was able to run “Tier 1” titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 2021 at 1440p (2560 x 1440) resolution at relatively high framerates, although that was explained to be due to the fact that Intel’s ARC team had targetted the new API standards hard, in order to make it run as smooth as it did.

Unfortunately, there still isn’t much to say about the performance of the Intel A750 Limited Edition, beyond the official video of the card’s performance, which again, has since been made private.

For that matter, there’s still no official pricing for both the ARC A770 Limited Edition or A750 Limited Edition, although Intel’s Tom Petersen did say that it plans on offering “killing” prices that will make its competitors rethink their own pricing strategy.

Samsung Files Multiple Tax Break Applications In Texas

Back in November last year, we reported that Samsung was planning on opening a new US$17 billion (~RM75.7 billion) semiconductor plant in the US and more specifically, within the state of Texas. Fast forward to today and it appears that the Korea electronics giant recently filed as many as 11 tax break applications, in order to build more semiconductor facilities within the state city of Austin.

According to Techspot, the applications are a part of the state’s Chapter 313 incentive program, which gives companies a 10-year limitation on the taxable property values. In return, the applicant must install their facilities and create jobs within the defined area. Again, should Samsung’s filing be successful, this will mark the second city in the state that the electronics brand will be opening up facilities, the first being in the town of Taylor.

As for what exactly the new Austin plant would make, Samsung provided no indication over the matter. Having said that, the chipmaker and electronics giant had mentioned that its Taylor-based plant will make manufacturing products that are based on “advanced process technologies”. A fancy way of saying that the components it produces will be applied towards mobile, 5G, HPC and AI applications.

On another matter, Samsung also indicated that, while it is filing for these tax breaks in the state, it does not have any specific plans to build facilities at this time. Instead, the filings are merely a part of a long-term planning process, where it can “evaluate the viability” of potentially building additional plants within the US.

Samsung isn’t the only non-US company that has long wanted to build a factory of their own on US soil. For example, TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer, announced back in 2020 that it wanted to open up a new foundry advanced factory within the state of Arizona. Back then, however, the move was approved by its own board of directors, as it was trying to circumvent the trade sanctions imposed by the US on China.

Full NVIDIA AD102 GPU Allegedly Runs Control At Over 160 FPS In 4K

A recent leak about a full-fat NVIDIA AD102 Ada Lovelace GPU suggests that the top-tier GPU can and will run rings around the current king-of-the-hill, the GeForce RTX 3090. How fast is the card, you ask? Apparently, it can run Remedy’s Control at 4K resolution and above the 100 fps mark.

Now, to be clear, this rumour about the AD102 isn’t to be confused with the non-Ti variant of the supposed RTX 4090 that has been making its rounds online. By comparison, the full-fat AD102 GPU ships out with as many as 18432 CUDA cores, which is approximately 12% more CUDA cores than what the RTX 4090 is expected to ship out with.

Getting back on point, and according to a Twitter user that goes by the handle AGF (@XpeaGPU), the AD102 GPU was able to run the game Control at 4K resolution, with the framerates sustaining themselves beyond the 160 fps mark. Further, those framerates were also achieved with ray-tracing and DLSS enabled, but not without its own set of drawbacks. In order to achieves those numbers, the GPU was also reported to have pulled more than 800W off the wall.

By comparison, the RTX 3090 at the same resolution and ray-tracing parametres turned on would yield approximately half the number of frames. With our RTX 3090 Founders Edition, our framerate in-game hovered between 60 and 74 fps.

The arrival of this AD102 rumour is interesting, given that just yesterday, we posted a report about another rumour regarding the RTX 4090 and how it is expected to be nearly 70% faster than the RTX 3090. However, those performance numbers were supposedly pulled off an as-of-yet unconfirmed 3DMark Time Spy Extreme benchmark and as such, should be treated with the usual consumption of salt.

For another matter, there are other missing variable that can render claims about the AD102’s prowess unreliable at this point. For starters, the source doesn’t specify the exact game settings the GPU was running Control with, nor did they say if the Lovelace GPU is actually using a new generation of Tensor Cores. Much like Ampere and its 2nd generation Tensor Cores.

Second, there aren’t any additional details about the AD102’s specs, not even its TDP or clockspeeds.

Please stop making Evangelion porn

 

ARM Announces New Immortalis Mobile GPU With Ray-Tracing Support

Arm recently announced its latest flagship GPU, the Immortalis-G715. The new mobile GPU is the first of its kind to implement hardware-based ray tracing for mobile.

The Immortalis-G715 signals ARM’s shift in bringing its products into the mainstream, in the same way that Sony and Microsoft brought ray-tracing to their respective consoles. Specs-wise, the new mobile GPU is built on top of Mali and designed to accommodate between 10 and 16-cores, with a promised performance boost of up to 15% over previous generation Mali GPUs. This is alongside double the architectural machine learning (ML) improvements. 

With the presence of hardware accelerated ray-tracing, Andy Craigen, director of Product Management at ARM. says that the Immortalis-G715 will use approximately 4% of power per the shader core area while delivering more than 300% performance improvement. The trade-off here is that the Immortalis can and will use significant power, energy, and area within the SoC it is attached to.

The company has not provided any more particular details on what devices the Immortalis-G715 will be featured in, but you may expect that the first phones that have them will arrive at the beginning of 2023. 

Moving on, Arm also announced the Mali-G715 and Mali-G615 as premium GPUs, which are aimed at devices with lesser pricing, but with fewer cores and no ray tracing support. The Mali-G615 has 6 cores or less while the Mali-G715 has 7 to 9 cores respectively, but unlike the Immortalis-G715, they will only have Variable Rate Shading that provides up to 40% on frames per second (FPS) and Execution Engine.

ARM also gave a glimpse of its roadmap, which said that it plans on following up Immortalis other flagship mobile GPU next year, codenamed “Titan”, while it plans on bringing “Krake” in 2024. The chipmaker did not indicate if it intends to extend the same hardware-based ray-tracing to the other two.

Insta360’s Latest 360 Camera Features Dual Leica Co-Developed 1-Inch Sensors

Insta360 has recently unveiled the 1-inch 360 Edition One RS action camera, a new addition to its One RS series that was launched back in March. This newer model features 1-inch front and back sensors as part of its 360-degree imaging system, which is co-developed by the company and Leica. It’s worth noting that this is the second device from Insta360 to feature a sensor of similar size in collaboration with the renowned German camera manufacturer – the first being the 1-inch One R from 2020.

Keeping in line with the brand‘s modular action camera approach, the 1-inch 360 Edition can also be attached to the battery base of the original One RS or other compatible accessories from Insta360. Included together with it is a vertical mounting bracket that doubles as a grip, a core module with an LCD screen and microSD slot, as well as a battery module.

The latter two can be slotted into the bracket on top of each other, with the 1-inch 360 Edition camera attached on the very top to complete the entire assembly. Insta360 says each module is securely attached to the bracket as well as one another, thus enabling IPX3 water resistance. Meanwhile, found on the grip are two release buttons for freeing the modules, a power button, and a record button. Situated underneath it is a 1/4-inch screw mount for attaching a tripod or a selfie stick.

The camera itself is capable of recording up to 6K resolution 360-degree videos or capturing up to 21MP photos, thanks to the two Insta360 and Leica developed 1-inch sensors on either side. In addition, the core module of the 1-inch 360 Edition is equipped with an upgraded processor, which enables the camera to support its built-in FlowState Stabilisation system and Active HDR video capture. The battery module, on the other hand, allows for up to 62 minutes of 6K 30 fps video recording.

You can also find all previously available features and AI-powered enhancements from Insta360’s other cameras on the 1-inch 360 Edition One RS. These include PureShot, PureShot HDR, Starlapse, Cinelapse, Skyswap, TimeShift, MultiView, and the impressive Invisible Selfie Stick feature. Additionally, the new 360-degree action camera comes with live streaming and webcam capabilities as well.

The Insta360 1-inch 360 Edition One RS is offered in two options: the complete set including the camera, grip, core and battery modules for US$ 800 (~RM 3,519), or just the camera module for only US$ 650 (~RM 2,859). The new camera’s availability and pricing for the Malaysian market has not been confirmed at this time.