The Steam Frame, unfortunately RAM shortage-ravaged as it is, is unique among virtual reality headsets for its ability to run Steam games – VR or 'flat' alike – entirely on its own, internal compute hardware. It is, in effect, a SteamOS PC for your face. Yet as I waxed about in our review, this feature’s impact could extend far beyond the Frame itself, as it’s based on new compatibility tech that Valve now hope to bring to a broader range of PCs and laptops. Potentially, according to staff speaking with RPS, making bonafide gaming systems out of previously unfriendly computers.

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Apple is working on an AI server that would use Apple’s high-performance M-series Ultra chips found in Mac desktops. The potential product’s expected release in 2029 would mark the first Apple server to hit the market in nearly two decades—and could capitalize on the surging popularity of Apple hardware among AI developers.

The enterprise server would come in two configurations that include either two or four of Apple’s future M8 Ultra chips, according to The Information. The project reportedly received support from new Apple CEO John Ternus when it began a year ago, back when Ternus led Apple’s hardware engineering efforts.

This revelation coincides with booming sales for Apple’s Mac mini and Mac Studio as AI developers and companies snap up the Mac computers to run AI workloads. The popularity of such computing devices that rely on Apple’s M-series Ultra chips has undoubtedly encouraged Apple’s pursuit of an enterprise server using the same chips.

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Valve have sometimes – if perhaps not often enough to call it a grand old tradition – massaged interest in their hardware by pairing the kit with a new game. For the Steam Deck it was Aperture Desk Job, and for 2019’s jammy sod of a VR headset, the Valve Index, it was Half-Life: Alyx, a full-length City 17 adventure that reviewer Graham (RPS in peace) called “a masterclass of first-person shooter design.”

Still, people rarely want to take the same class twice, hence why padding-compacted eyebrows have been raised by Alyx again being a tentpole of the new Steam Frame headset – this time, to showcase the game running in PC-less, standalone VR. Why not make something new, even a smaller tech demo like ADJ or the Index’s own The Lab collection of Portal-themed minigames?

According to Valve staff, several of whom I spoke to prior to the Frame’s Monday night launch, there were several reasons why a return to Alyx was considered more valuable – even though a brand new VR game was, at least briefly, on the table.

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Surprising no-one, Valve’s Steam Frame VR headset is launching with higher-than-expected prices, following the Steam Machine in having its budget-friendly intentions foiled by the memory shortage misery of RAMnarök.

The lack of affordable PC parts - which as a fully standalone-capable VR kit, the Steam Frame is as vulnerable to as any laptop or desktop - continues to have wide-ranging, usually shitty impacts on hardware manufacturing and even game development. Besides simply raising prices, some kit makers are reverting to lower-RAM models to keep costs down, or going DRAMless altogether. Valve, however, have told RPS that there was never a question of cutting the Frame’s specs, even as the worldwide component crisis took hold.

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It’s a strange time to be selling a new VR headset, and maybe an even stranger time to be buying one. The supply of original virtual reality games has slowed to a dribble, and just as with Valve’s last hardware launch, the Steam Frame arrives covered in bumps and scrapes from a fight with the worst components shortage in memory. A fight which, judging by how it’ll cost ya £889 / $1,059 at minimum, it lost.

However, something else the Frame has in common with the revamped Steam Machine is that as a piece of hardware per se, it’s really quite likeable. Charismatic, even. It’s a happy marriage of core VR capability and genuinely new engineering ideas: some simple practicality boons, some with the potential to change PC games as we know them. And not just the ones you’d play with sweaty goggles on your face.

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Love Firefox enough to drop $200 on a branded keyboard? Tough, it’s sold out Mozilla is flogging a full-sized, 108-key mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches. It has a unique keycap colour scheme and branding with Firefox logo super/meta key and the new Firefox mascot Kit on Esc. It works wired, via Bluetooth or 2.4g wireless. “Clean, clicky and finished in Firefox colors”, reads the Mozilla Store description, “this is a keyboard that looks good, feels better and sneaks in a little personality where you least expect it” (unaware the personality is exactly where one would expect it: on the […]

You're reading The $200 Firefox mechanical keyboard sold out [update: or not?], a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Bit of an anticlimax, really. After months of (justified) revulsion and anti-anticipation over Nvidia DLSS 5’s AI rendering, it’s now available in a live game - license laden b-baller NBA 2K27 - and it looks... maybe not that bad?

This not-that-badness does come at an enormous cost to performance, and I’m still sceptical of how DLSS 5 will handle something more stylised than 2K27’s devotedly realistic depictions of varnished court floors and face-scanned athletes. But given how artistically botching and/or ridden with rendering errors the earlier previews have been, this specific implementation, in this specific game, is at least inoffensive in the looks department.

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Love Firefox enough to drop $200 on a branded keyboard? Tough, it’s sold out Mozilla is flogging a full-sized, 108-key mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches. It has a unique keycap colour scheme and branding with Firefox logo super/meta key and the new Firefox mascot Kit on Esc. It works wired, via Bluetooth or 2.4g wireless. “Clean, clicky and finished in Firefox colors”, reads the Mozilla Store description, “this is a keyboard that looks good, feels better and sneaks in a little personality where you least expect it” (unaware the personality is exactly where one would expect it: on the […]

You're reading The $200 Firefox mechanical keyboard sold out [update: or not?], a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Arduino's VENTUNO Q went up for pre-order priced from $299. The development board runs Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is built around Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 platform.

You're reading Arduino’s Ubuntu-powered $299 edge AI board just sold out, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Arduino's VENTUNO Q went up for pre-order priced from $299. The development board runs Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is built around Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 platform.

You're reading Arduino’s Ubuntu-powered $299 edge AI board just sold out, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

After being prematurely dug out of game files by modders late last week, Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech is making its official debut in a matter of days. Yes, it's the filter which was criticised on reveal earlier this year for giving a bunch of game characters weird genAI makeovers. Unsurprisingly, given where those modders pulled the aformentioned files from, the tech's arriving with NBA 2K27.

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Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech, AKA the AI filter which was widely criticised upon reveal earlier this year for creepily yassifying a bunch of game characters' faces, is reportedly up and running prior to its planned release later this year. The folks to thank or blame for this are modders, who've found the files needed to get the tech's neural rendering working in Control.

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Today, August 25th, Nvidia have released Ray Reconstruction for DLSS 4.5, with the aim of more swankily rendering ray-traced/path-traced shadows and lighting than was possible with previous Ray Reconstruction versions.

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If you’ve been eyeing up one of PINE64‘s Linux-friendly single-board computers, phones or tablets, now would be a good time to buy one. The open-hardware company has announced it will not be “producing more Linux devices” for the time being, and expects its existing stock of certain devices, including the PineNote and PineTab 2, to sell out in the next three months. After that, there won’t be more until. Why’s the company pulling the plug on production? One guess: RAMaggeddon. The AI infrastructure boom continues apace, and demand for memory and storage chips has reduced supply and driven up costs […]

You're reading Pine64 stops making Linux devices as AI inflates component costs, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

I don’t begrudge anyone who’s waited to try STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl until it got its technical defects fixed. They’re still wrong, obviously - an absorbing and eerily atmospheric survival FPS is still an absorbing and eerily atmospheric survival FPS when it has the structural integrity of baked beans. But it was spectacularly broken at launch, and although nearly two years of patches have swatted countless bugs and beefed up the series’ signature A-Life NPC simulation, it’s remained a heavyweight GPU-puncher on general performance.

Thank the Zone, then, for the 2.0 update, which rolls out tomorrow in tandem with the also-good Cost of Hope expansion. It ambitiously migrates STALKER 2 to a newer, sleeker version of Unreal Engine 5, and makes sweeping (though handcrafted) changes to lighting and environmental deets. Based on what I’ve played, the result is both a better-looking game and a better-performing one. So get in here, stalker - there’s never been a better time to have your skeleton melted out by an anomalous soap bubble.

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If you’ve been eyeing up one of PINE64‘s Linux-friendly single-board computers, phones or tablets, now would be a good time to buy one. The open-hardware company has announced it will not be “producing more Linux devices” for the time being, and expects its existing stock of certain devices, including the PineNote and PineTab 2, to sell out in the next three months. After that, there won’t be more until. Why’s the company pulling the plug on production? One guess: RAMaggeddon. The AI infrastructure boom continues apace, and demand for memory and storage chips has reduced supply and driven up costs […]

You're reading Pine64 stops making Linux devices as AI inflates component costs, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Hi! I'm Rick Lane, and you might remember me from such columns as Reality Bytes, RPS' erstwhile monthly goggle at the world of virtual reality. I've spent the last couple of years trapped between the second and third dimensions, my flattened body doomed to forever spin to face the camera. But RPS has whipped out its bicycle pump and popped me back into stereoscopic 3D, so I can seek revenge tell you all about the state of VR in 2026.

And boy, what a state! The headlines make for grim reading. VR headset shipments are in decline. Notable VR studios are either laying people off or being shut down outright. And VR's hitherto biggest champion is going all Distracted Boyfriend, ogling passing market trends in its ethically dubious smart glasses.

The all-in-one Steam Frame headset is on the way - very soon, if rumours are to be believed - but in short, things don't look great. Then again, things don't look great anywhere in the games industry, so why should VR, gaming's most niche market, be any different? To truly understand the state of the VR scene, we need to try to separate the generally bad from the specifically bad. When we do that, it becomes clear that VR broadly isn't faring any worse than the industry at large, and in some areas at least, is healthier than you might expect.

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If you live in Europe and have bought hardware from Steam in the past three months, then watch out, your personal information might have been stolen thanks to a cyberattack on one of Valve's shipping partners.

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In today’s Demoralising But Not Remotely Surprising Hardware News, "industry insiders" are claiming that the Big Three memory makers – Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix – have already sold not just their expected manufacturing output for 2026, but 2027 as well. The report, by Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes and partially translated by TweakTown, effectively suggests that the large-scale supply of new RAM chips is already tapped out until 2028, likely extinguishing any lingering hopes that PC RAM, storage, and graphics cards will escape their current pricing nightmare anytime soon. Or, indeed, soonish.

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