The chip giant is partnering with Mercedes-Benz to launch a driverless car powered by its `Alpamayo` tech. Read...

Gamers, 2025 was a year that drove high-fidelity graphics at high frame rates and lofty resolutions to new heights. Last year, we witnessed the release of the first 4K, 240HZ monitors ever – a feat that earned MSI’s model “best accessory” nod in our annual Full Nerd awards – and the introduction of Nvidia’s magical DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation, which unlocked the capability to hit those speeds on high-end GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. At CES 2026, Nvidia is bringing those capabilities to more affordable graphics cards. Meet DLSS 4.5. Whereas DLSS 4 can insert up to four AI-generated frames between every GPU-rendered frame to quadruple frame rates, DLSS 4.5 amps that up to 6x thanks to a new “Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation” feature. It shouldn’t add much additional latency over standard 1x frame gen thanks to the way the underlying technology works – and it could let more modest RTX 50-series cards like the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti max out those spiffy 4K, 240Hz displays now available. That’s not all. DLSS 4.5 includes enhanced AI training for extended failure modes (which should hopefully mean fewer visual artifacts), a new 2nd generation “transformer” model with enhanced visuals, and better image quality all around. The proof will be in the pudding, but if DLSS 2, 3, and 4’s success is anything to go by, the pudding could be mighty delicious indeed. DLSS 4.5 improves how the AI model handles temporal stability, ghosting, and anti-aliasing, which you can see if you zoom in on the images below – all welcome additions. The new 6x Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation wraps in the utterly delightful and woefully unheralded “GPU flip metering” feature that debuted in DLSS 4. That means your GPU is in control of handling the image output timing to your monitor, delivering frames at a consistent pace. This unsung gem makes games look and feel so much smoother than native. Star Wars Outlaws is notorious for its, uh, uneven technical performance, but will DLSS 4 enabled, it feels just as buttery as Doom 2016. The technology is that damned good! Hilariously, Nvidia used the ferocious RTX 5090 flagship to illustrate its claims. Why is it so funny? Because as the Nvidia-supplied graph below shows, the RTX 5090 can already hit 240Hz on 4K monitors even with vanilla 4x frame gen even in path traced games. Dynamic MFG’s 6x capabilities only help it blast past those levels – and past the refresh rate of even the most advanced 4K 240Hz monitors. But again, that’s a good thing – faster is (almost always) better, and Dynamic MFG’s prowess should unlock killer performance on more modest 5070-class GPUs at 4K. My body is ready. Over 400 games will support DLSS 4.5, though you’ll need to tune settings for many of those in the Nvidia app. The second-gen Transformer Super Resolution feature (and all the image enhancements it provides) are available now for all RTX GPUs – not just the latest ones – while Dynamic Multi-Frame Gen is expected to hit RTX 50-series cards alone sometime this spring. Multi-frame gen requires dedicated hardware that prior GeForce generations lack. Read...

Nvidia didn’t reveal any new graphics cards at CES 2026, but the company didn’t show up at the show empty handed. Not only did Team Green reveal DLSS 4.5, an advanced new form of its industry-leading graphics upscaling and frame generation technology, but it also introduced a new breed of esports-focused gaming monitors. Meet G-Sync Pulsar. G-Sync Pulsar brings a standardized set of features to esports monitors. Pulsar-certified panels will need to be 27-inches, with 1440p resolution and blistering 360Hz refresh rates; hit 1000Hz+ “perceived motion clarity with VRR;” and include Nvidia’s G-Sync Variable Overdrive and new Ambient Adaptive Technology features. Basically, they’re all but guaranteed to melt your socks off — and make blurry visuals in fast-paced games a thing of the past. These could be the ultimate in motion clarity. Nvidia’s G-Sync Pulsar technology is reminiscent of the company’s awesome “Ultra Low Motion Blur” feature in G-Sync monitors, but for visual elements instead of text alone. If Nvidia’s marketing image above can be believed, it’s a marked increase in motion clarity — and I’ll be jumping right on it for my own esports endeavors if claims indeed hold true. I have a demo session scheduled with Nvidia later this week where I can hopefully check it out! I wasn’t able to get a deep-dive technical tutorial on how Pulsar works, but here’s an Nvidia-supplied comparison of how Pulsar works compared to a more traditional display. The downward VRR rolling backlight strobing is the secret sauce to the huge motion clarity improvements, giving the pixels time to stabilize before they’re backlit. Here’s a look at how a G-Sync Pulsar looks in Anno 117: Pax Romana. G-Sync Pulsar monitors will also feature Nvidia’s new Ambient Adaptive Technology, which automatically adjusts your panel’s color and brightness based on your room’s ambient conditions. I guess that means they must include an environmental sensor of some sort? Better yet, these displays should launch soon. Nvidia says availability will start right now during the midst of CES, with models coming from Asus, AOC, Acer, and MSI. Read...

The firm plans to deploy the technology at the same plant that was involved in a huge immigration raid in 2025. Read...

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips, aka “Panther Lake,” have entered the market, backed by dozens of PC makers. “We’ve beeen out there shaping what it means for fundamental computing, said Jim Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of the Intel Client Computing Group, in a launch event at CES 2026. Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s chief executive, said he was “proud” to highlight that Intel has shipped its first Intel 18A processors, the production technology upon which Panther Lake is built upon. The technology uses RibbonFET gate-all-around to manage current and energy efficiency, while PowerVia is Intel’s name for backside power delivery, enabling 15 percent better performance per watt. What is Intel’s Core Ultra 300 ‘Panther Lake’? Intel showed off what was simply known as “Panther Lake” in October, when Intel announced the Panther Lake technology along with some of its implementations. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips return to the era of performance cores (P-cores), efficiency cores (E-cores,) and low-power efficiency cores (LP E-cores) of Intel’s Core Ultra 100 chip, aka Meteor Lake. Those are paired with an NPU capable of 50 TOPS worth of AI processing as well as Intel’s Xe3 GPU, which should improve Intel’s 3D capabilities. Foundry / Mark Hachman Intel said then that Panther Lake’s single-threaded performance should be 10 percent higher than Lunar Lake at the same power. Compared to both Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, Intel’s Panther Lake offers more than 50 percent better multithreaded performance, Intel said in October. But the power should be 10 percent less than Lunar Lake. Anecdotally, Intel representatives have been characterizing Panther Lake as the performance of Arrow Lake — an architecture which struggled on the desktop but performed surprisingly well in Arrow Lake laptops — with the power consumption of Lunar Lake. Panther Lake consists of three different organizations of the P-cores, E-cores, and LP-cores: An 8-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 4 low-power (LP) E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 6800 MT/s LPDDR5x or 6400 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 8533 MTs/ LPDDR5x or 7200 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores, 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to 9600MT/s LPDDR5x, period. At CES 2026, Johnson said that the Panther Lake delivers about 60 percent more power than the Core Ultra 200 series, or Lunar Lake, using the Cinebench 2024 mujlticore benchmark. Depending upon the banchmark, Intel cut the power by about 2.8X. Foundry / Mark Hachman Somewhat like AMD’s Ryzen AI Max (“Strix Halo”) or the Ryzen 9000X3D family, both of which concentrate large amounts of cache memory to improve performance, it’s the final “12Xe” configuration that will form the premium lineup on many laptops. The GPU will be called the Intel Arc B390 graphics, said Intel’s Dan Rogers, the vice president in charge of PC products at Intel. On average, gaming performance will be about 73 percent more than Lunar Lake, Rogers said. The B390 GPU can also take advantage of frame generation to improve frame rates further, he said. XeSS3 can render three AI-generated frames for every GPU-rendered frame, Rogers said. How good does Intel think Panther Lake is? Intel will launchn an entire handheld platform, based on Panther Lake, later this year, Rogers said, taking on AMD’s leadership in the space, Rogers said. Read...

With the Acer Nitro XV270X 5K gaming monitor it’s launching here at CES 2026, Acer seems like it’s sending a signal: 5K is the next step in PC gaming. And there’s something else, too: Acer’s Pro Designer PE3200QX display boasts a whopping 6K resolution. Even if you’re nominally familiar with PC gaming, you probably understand that displays have stepped up from 1080p to 1440p to 4K (3,840?×?2,160), with various refresh rates and panel technologies attached to each. As resolutions increase, the complexity of the scene being rendered also increases, which means that you need a more powerful combination of a CPU and graphics card. Frame rates also tend to drop, though the visual appeal of the scene or game increases. Recently, we’ve seen 4K OLED screens at high refresh rates of 144Hz and above…which apparently means that it’s time to move on. Meet 5,120 x 2,880, the “5K” resolution of the Acer Nitro XV270X display. Acer’s Acer Nitro XV270X 5K display.Mark Hachman / Foundry So-called 5K screens are available today from e-tailers like Amazon; however, most if not all of them use the extra pixels to extend the screen into a widescreen or ultrawide direction. Acer’s XV270X uses a standard 16:9 display ratio, the standard that most of the industry uses. Acer’s Nitro XV270X is a 27-inch display, using the older IPS panel format. What’s a little surprising is that, even at a 5K resolution, there’s no basic 60Hz refresh rate here; Acer’s panel is capable of 165Hz, or 1440p at 330Hz. Response time is 1 ms GTG. The panel outputs 400 nits peak in HDR400 mode, or 350 nits normally; the color gamut is 95% DCI-P3. You can connect to your PC with a pair of HDMI 2.1 connections or DisplayPort 1.4. The Acer ProDesigner PE320QX steps up another rung, as the 31.5-inch IPS panel supports a “6K” resolution of 6,016×3,384, with a range of 400 nits (normal) to 600 nits (HDR600). As a display for creators, it supports 99% Adobe RGB and 98% DCI-P3. Inputs include one HDMI 2.1, one DisplayPort 2.1, and USB-C input ports. Acer Nitro XV270X 5K display ships with a handful of port options.Mark Hachman / Foundry Naturally, these displays won’t come (that) cheap: the Acer Nitro XV270X will cost $799 and ship in the second quarter, while the ProDesigner PE320QX will be priced at $1,499, and will ship during the same timeframe, Acer says. Acer doesn’t seem to be alone in staking a claim to 5K gaming technology; LG also has announced its UltraGear evo brand, with the UltraGear evo 27-inch GM9 (27GM950B) offering a miniLED disolay with 2,304 local dimming zones. LG has yet to announce a price or a ship date, however. Nevertheless, multiple display makers supporting 5K resolutions in gaming monitors sounds like a trend, and one that companies like Nvidia, Intel and AMD can benefit from, as well as display makers. The PC gaming roadmap appears ready to take another step ahead. Read...

Welp, it finally happened. We complained—and Dell listened. Dell’s XPS laptops have officially risen from the grave to haunt CES 2026 in Las Vegas, after Dell unceremoniously kicked the brand (and all others) to the curb in 2025 for a simplified lineup. Honestly? They’re looking pretty darn slick—I know I’m glad to see them again, and I’m convinced I’m not the only one. The XPS 14 and XPS 16 are light, sleek, and pack both aluminum and Gorilla Glass. It’s the kind of polish I’ve come to expect from this brand, and Dell appears to have delivered on that front. Visually, Dell has fully leaned into the XPS identity again. The minimalist design is cleaner than previous iterations, with the XPS logo boldly staring out from the front lid, making it all the more recognizable. The real kicker? The performance. These laptops pack Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 3 processors and Intel Arc graphics, which Dell says are up to 78 percent faster for AI tasks and more than 50 percent faster for graphics than before. There’s a big jump in battery life this year, too. With the LCD configuration of the laptop, Dell claims up to “27 hours of regular use or 40+ hours of local video playback.” Dell And yet, somehow, they’re still surprisingly light. The XPS 14 weighs just three pounds. The XPS 16? Around 3.6 pounds. That makes them Dell’s thinnest XPS laptops yet. Speaking of the display, this is a nice highlight that’ll appease the movie aficionados among us. You can pick the 2880×1800 OLED version (with Dell’s tandem technology) if you long for a truly beautiful picture, or you can stick with the more power-efficient 2560×1400 LCD model. Both have InfinityEdge screens and a 1–120Hz variable refresh rate, so your stuff should look crisp and multitasking shouldn’t overwhelm it. Dell also plans on releasing a brand new XPS 13 in late 2026. Not only will it be smaller and lighter than previous versions, but its price will be more accessible as well. Neat! Dell’s XPS 14 and 16 arrive January 6, 2026, starting at around $1,650 and $1,850. More options are coming in February. Read...

TCL is making some bold claims about its new SQD-Mini LED Series at CES, with the company crowing that its flagship X11L “ends the debate” between OLED’s superior blacks and LED’s superior brightness. The company promises that its SQD Mini-LED achieves 100 percent of BT2020 color (that’s very good), while noting that its technology is largely devoid of the color crosstalk, color bleed, and color blooming that Micro RGB can suffer from. Adding to the X11L’s luster is an uber-thin 0.8-inch design, with a completely flat back for a superior flush mounting experience. The perfectly flat back of the X11L makes wall-mounting nearly flush. TCL, like all the other TV vendors at CES, is touting the advanced AI capabilities of its TCL Super Resolution AI processor, which “ensures accuracy in every area” by “leveraging enhanced AI color, AI contrast, AI clarity, AI motion, AI upscaling, and AI sound.” In other words, TCL says it has improved the processing speeds and algorithms on its TV’s chips, resulting in better picture quality. Integrated Google TV with Gemini is featured to enhance voice control and offer help in finding content. Sound features include Audio by Bang & Olufsen and—of course—expansion via TCL’s own surround components, which include a wireless subwoofer and Dolby Atmos FlexConnect speakers. As you might expect, all this goodness won’t be cheap: the 75-inch model is $7,000, the 85-inch is $8,000, and the wall-filling 98-inch model is $10,000. But the best always costs more, and while we haven’t actually seen the X11L, the specs are impressive indeed. Read...

Micro RGB is shaping up to be the TV industry’s overriding theme at CES 2026, and Samsung is going all in. The new technology resides in the middle ground between increasingly mainstream mini-LED TVs and still ludicrously expensive micro-LED sets. Where micro-LED TVs use self-emissive pixels that can be turned on and off individually–much like an OLED TV–micro RGB TVs still rely on a backlight. But that backlight consists of red, green, and blue LEDs that reduce the need for a color filter. It’s a significant improvement on conventional LCD TVs, but it still relies on LCD shuttering. A host of Micro RGB TVs Samsung plans to ship eight new Micro RGB TVs in 2026, including a massive 130-inch model in its R95H series as well as the 115-inch model MR95F. The TV manufacturer is also showing 65-, 75-, and 85-inch models in its R95H series, along with 100-, 98-, and 85-inch models in the step-down R85H series. Some Samsung TVs, such as the newly reissued Frame Pro, will be compatible with the minty fresh wireless version of Samsung’s One Connect breakout box, which previously used a thread-like optical cable to connect to the TV. That leaves you need to hide just the TV’s power cord. It’s not quite the magic of DisplaceTV series, but Samsung is getting there. QLED Samsung is also showing a new giant-sized model of its The Frame TV that measures 98-inches, just in case your local art gallery has some extra large digital creations it wants to display. The company has also added a 55-inch model to its The Frame Pro lineup, which provides a brighter picture. OLED Samsung hasn’t forgotten its stellar RGB OLED series either. It’s refreshing the S95H series, which offers modest improvements to our favorite “puppies on black velvet” (i.e., fantastic black and warm color) TV viewing experience. AI and other stuff Samsung’s AI Sound now creates “stems,” aka separate music, voice, and audio effects streams. This is a feature that’s been around in the pro audio arena for a while, but not in real time. The feature is said to let you mute the announcers while still hearing the actual game and crowd noise. Now that’s progress! The same algorithms are used to create a more immersive sports audio experience called AI Soccer Mode, where the effects are boosted to make it seem more like you’re sitting in the stadium. Google Photos The company is also working to integrate Google Photos into its smart TVs for, so users can interact with their personal images, and manage their photo libraries directly from their TV. Speaking of such, my favorite quote from the show so far is from the president of Samsung’s display division, Seok Woo Yong: “Samsung TVs are not just screens. They are entertainment companions….” Err… In a world that’s moving away from live social interaction, that’s exactly what we need our TVs to be. Read...

Beatbot builds some of the most sophisticated—and the most expensive—robot pool cleaners on the market, and it’s once again raising the stakes at CES 2026 with the introduction of its AquaSense X. This doesn’t look like just an incremental advance over the TechHive Editors’ Choice-winning AquaSense 2 Ultra, it’s Beatbot’s first foray into self-cleaning technology, courtesy of a key component that lives on land. The Beatbot AquaSense X AI Robotic Pool Cleaner looks and feels a lot like 2025’s Ultra, but the addition of the new Beatbot AstroRinse Cleaning Station is an entirely new concept, not just for Beatbot but for the industry as a whole. This box-like docking station is a sizeable device atop which the AquaSense X robot rests when not in use. Once placed on top of the device, the AstroRinse gets to work, flushing the AquaSense’s filter during a three-minute cycle. Debris is captured in the 23-liter basket underneath; Beatbot says for a typical pool owner, the disposable AstroRinse debris bag will need to be replaced only once every two months (based on a cycle of two cleanings per week). The AstroRinse also recharges the unit after the cleaning cycle is complete. The Beatbot AquaSense X, sitting atop its self-cleaning station. Beatbot As for the Beatbot AquaSense X robot itself, while it looks familiar, many of its systems have been upgraded under the hood. Its AI vision detection system now recognizes 40 types of debris (up from 20 on the Ultra), allowing the unit to search for debris on the pool floor instead of simply traversing the area on a preset path. The new detection system can also search for debris on the surface of the pool: Like its predecessor, the AquaSense X can rise to the surface and float, operating in a skimmer mode as part of its cleaning cycle. The unit also has improved detection of permanent pool features, such as steps and ledges, thanks to dual ultrasonic sensors on the underside of the robot. Lastly, the unit now integrates with various smart home environments—including Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant—allowing for voice-activated operation in addition to control via Beatbot’s mobile app. The AquaSense X will be available on January 5, 2026 at a price of $4250. The first 500 customers who preorder a unit will receive a $250 discount. If you’re attending CES in person and would like to see the AquaSense X in action, the robot will be on display at Beatbot’s booth: Venetian #53852. This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners Read...