gaming – Page 4

Fans’ reverse-engineered servers for Sony’s defunct Concord might be in trouble

concord, gaming, Reverse-engineering, server, Sony / 9u50fv / November 17, 2025

A group of dedicated coders has managed to partially revive online gameplay for the PC version of Concord, the team-based shooter that Sony famously shut down just two weeks after its launch last summer. Now, though, the team behind that fan server effort is closing off new access after Sony started issuing DMCA takedown requests of sample gameplay videos.

The Game Post was among the first to publicize the “Concord Delta” project, which reverse-engineered the game’s now-defunct server API to get a functional multiplayer match running over the weekend. “The project is still [a work in progress], it’s playable, but buggy,” developer Red posted in the game’s Discord channel, as reported by The Game Post. “Once our servers are fully set up, we’ll begin doing some private playtesting.”

Accessing the “Concord Delta” servers reportedly requires a legitimate PC copy of the game, which is relatively hard to come by these days. Concord only sold an estimated 25,000 copies across PC and PS5 before being shut down last year. And that number doesn’t account for the players who accepted a full refund for their $40 purchase after the official servers shut down.

Better safe than sorry

Red accompanied their Discord announcement of the first “playable” Concord match in months with two YouTube videos showing sample gameplay (“Don’t mind my horrible aim, I spend so much time reverse engineering that I no longer have the time to actually play the game,” he warned viewers). In short order, though, those videos were taken down “due to a copyright claim from MarkScan Enforcement,” a company that has a history of working with Sony on DMCA requests.

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Cities: Skylines upheaval: Developer and publisher announce “mutual” breakup

breakup, cities, colossal, developer, gaming, paradox, publisher, shakeup, skylines / Mike M. / November 17, 2025

For well over a decade now, the Cities franchise has done its best to pick up the urban simulation ball that EA’s SimCity famously dropped. Going forward, though, that ball will be handed off from longtime developer Colossal Order to Finnish studio Iceflake (a subsidiary of Cities publisher Paradox Interactive).

The surprise announcement Monday morning on Paradox’s official forums says that Cities‘ developer and publisher “mutually decided to pursue independent paths” without going into many details as to why. “The decision was made thoughtfully and in the interest of both teams—ensuring the strongest possible future for the Cities: Skylines franchise,” the announcement says.

“Both companies are excited for what the future holds while remaining deeply appreciative of our shared history and grateful to the Cities’ community,” the statement continues. Colossal Order “will work on new projects and explore new creative opportunities,” Paradox wrote in an accompanying FAQ.

A new mayor in town

New Cities developer Iceflake was acquired by Paradox in 2020, shortly after the release of its post-apocalyptic survival/strategy game Surviving the Aftermath. That game has maintained a small but seemingly dedicated following on Steam, thanks in part to updates and DLC that seem to be Iceflake’s main focus in the last few years.

Paradox writes that Iceflake is currently “hard at work getting into the nuts and bolts of Cities: Skylines II” and will be responsible for future free updates, expansions, and content packs for that game from the start of 2026 onward. Iceflake will also be working on the long-awaited console ports of Skylines II, which were originally planned to launch alongside the PC version in 2023.

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I’ve already been using a “Steam Machine” for months, and I think it’s great

Features, gaming, steam deck, steam machine, steamos, Tech / Kelly Newman / November 17, 2025

or, “the impatient person’s guide to buying a Steam Machine”

With a little know-how, you can get yourself a Steam Machine right this minute.

I started trying to install SteamOS on other PCs basically as soon as Valve made it possible. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Valve’s second big foray into first-party PC hardware isn’t a sequel to the much-imitated Steam Deck portable, but rather a desktop computer called the Steam Machine. And while it could go on your desk, Valve clearly intends for it to fit in an entertainment center under a TV—next to, or perhaps even instead of, a game console like the Xbox or PlayStation 5.

I am pretty sure this idea could work, and it’s because I’ve already been experimenting with what is essentially a “Steam Machine” underneath my own TV for months, starting in May when Valve began making it possible to install SteamOS on certain kinds of generic PC hardware.

Depending on what it costs—and we can only guess what it will cost—the Steam Machine could be a good fit for people who just want to plug a more powerful version of the Steam Deck experience into their TVs. But for people who like tinkering or who, like me, have been messing with miniature TV-connecting gaming PCs for years and are simply tired of trying to make Windows workable, the future promised by the Steam Machine is already here.

My TV PC setup

I had always been sort of TV PC-curious, but I can trace my current setup to December 2018, when, according to a Micro Center receipt in my inbox, I built a $504.51 PC in a tiny InWin Chopin case centered on an AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor.

At the time, the Ryzen brand was only a couple of years old, and the 2400G had impressed reviewers by combining a competent-enough quad-core CPU with a usably performant integrated GPU. And the good news was: It worked! It was nowhere near as good as the graphical experience that, say, a PlayStation 4 could provide, but it worked well for older and indie games, while also giving me access to a TV-connected computer for the occasions when I wanted to stream things from a browser, or participate in a living room-scale Zoom call (something that would become the box’s main job during the pandemic-induced isolation of 2020 and early 2021).

(This PC evolved over time and currently uses a Ryzen 8700G processor, which includes AMD’s best CPU and integrated GPU for socketed desktop motherboards. I did this to get more stable 1080p performance in more games, but I would not recommend this build to most people right now—more on that in a bit.)

The main problem was Windows, which was not and still is not particularly well-optimized for controller-driven living room use. What I really wanted was a startup process that felt more or less like a game console: hit the power button, and automatically get launched into a gamepad-navigable interface that would let me launch and play things without touching a mouse or keyboard.

There are third-party apps like Launchbox that make a go of providing this functionality for people more interested in emulation or who own games from multiple PC storefronts. What I eventually settled on was a sort of hacky fix that allowed my user account to log in automatically, and then automatically launch Steam in Big Picture Mode.

This worked… fine—except when I needed to interact with a mouse and keyboard to install driver updates, or when some component of the Windows UI would steal focus from the Big Picture Mode window and make it impossible to use the controller to navigate.

So when reports indicated that Valve was working on a SteamOS version that would run on more hardware, I was immediately interested. SteamOS was designed to boot right into its gaming interface, and the desktop mode was its own separate thing that you needed to open up manually—ideal for my usage model, since I didn’t want to give up the desktop mode but also didn’t need to use it often. But I did run into some bumps during the installation process, which I’ll share here in case it helps you avoid them.

SteamOS or Bazzite

Bazzite’s desktop mode wallpaper. A community supported alternative to SteamOS, Bazzite offers much wider hardware compatibility but can have rough edges. Credit: Bazzite

I had trouble using Valve’s official restore image (SteamOS version 3.7.7, from this support page) to get newer hardware working, which may be one reason why that language was softened. It was no problem to install official first-party SteamOS on slightly older hardware, like the Ryzen 7040 version of the Framework Laptop 13 or an older Acer laptop with a Ryzen 6000-series processor installed. But trying to install the software on newer hardware failed no matter what I tried. Those systems included the Ryzen AI 300 version of the Framework Laptop; a socket AM5 testbed desktop with a dedicated Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU; and, to my great disappointment, my TV desktop’s Ryzen 7 8700G.

There’s very little information out there about installing or troubleshooting SteamOS on generic hardware, but if you poke around on Reddit about much of anything, you’ll quickly meet a specific Type of Guy who believes that anyone with hardware compatibility issues should just use Bazzite, a community-developed alternate operating system that attempts to provide a SteamOS-ish alternative with wider hardware support (including for Intel and Nvidia hardware, which isn’t likely to be supported by the official SteamOS any time soon).

And so Bazzite I tried! Indicating that I used an AMD GPU and wanted to boot into the SteamOS interface offered me the exact same image that Bazzite offers for the Steam Deck and other handhelds, and it installed on my Ryzen desktop with minimal fuss.

Bazzite also came painfully close to what I wanted it to be, in terms of user experience—a desktop mode to boot into on the occasions I needed one, but otherwise I could just fire up the Xbox controller I had paired to the PC and jump right into a game.

But Bazzite was sunk by the same kind of bugs and edge cases that often chase me away from Linux operating systems when I try them. The main issue was that periodically, the system would boot up into desktop mode without asking (usually this seemed to happen when the Steam client software needed an update, but I can’t say for sure). Restarting the system would usually boot it back into the SteamOS interface—but I’d need to log in all over again, and the OS would switch Bluetooth off by default. Not only am I having to dig out a keyboard and mouse to solve this problem, but I’m needing to use a wired keyboard until I could get Bluetooth turned back on.

By the time this had happened twice, I was sure it wasn’t a fluke; by the time it had happened four or five times, I was determined to blow the entire operating system away and try again. And I was particularly interested in trying actual, for-real SteamOS again, just in case a new Bazzite install would have the same problems as the one I was already using.

After some digging, I found this directory. If you look through those folders, you’ll see OS images for various versions of SteamOS, including newer versions of SteamOS 3.7 (the “stable” version you’ll find on the Deck) and builds of both SteamOS 3.8 and 3.9 (the Deck will pull these down if you switch from the “stable” OS channel to “main”). Not all of those folders include the repair image you need to wipe a device and install SteamOS, but a few do—this one, dated October 27, is the most recent as of this writing.

Those newer versions of the operating system include changes that expand SteamOS’s hardware support, most notably a step up from Linux kernel version 6.11 to version 6.16. And it was that steamdeck-repair-main-20251027.1000-3.8.0.img.zip file that I was finally able to flash to a USB drive and install on my TV desktop using Valve’s instructions.

It has only been a week or so since then, but at least so far I’m finally getting what I wanted: the same experience as on my Deck, just on my TV, with hardware that is somewhat better-suited for a larger and higher-resolution screen (and that’s the main reason to do this, rather than use a docked Steam Deck for everything).

The SteamOS experience

The “console-like experience” designed for the Steam Deck also works well with a TV and a gamepad. Credit: Valve

Once the OS is installed and is up and running, anyone who has used a Steam Deck will find it instantly familiar, and all you’ll need to do to get going is connect or pair a gamepad and/or a keyboard and mouse.

Most of the bugs and quirks I’ve run into stem from the fact that this software was developed for standalone handheld gaming consoles first and foremost. There are multiple settings toggles—including those for adaptive brightness and HDMI-CEC—that serve a purpose on the Steam Deck but just don’t function on a desktop, where these features usually aren’t present or aren’t supported.

SteamOS is also pretty hit or miss about selecting the correct resolution and refresh rate for a connected display. Navigate to the Settings, to Display, and then turn off the “Automatically Set Resolution” toggle, and you’ll see a full list of supported resolutions and refresh rates that you can pick from. You may also want to scroll down and change the “Maximum Game Resolution” from “Native” to the actual native resolution of your screen, since I occasionally encountered games that wouldn’t offer resolutions that were supported by the display I was using.

Similarly, you may need to navigate to the Audio settings and switch output devices if you’re sending audio over HDMI. I also needed to turn the audio output volume up to around 80 percent before the sound coming out of my Steam Machine would match the volume of all the other boxes connected to my TV.

And if you’ve never used SteamOS before, it’s worth reading up on some of its limitations. While its compatibility with Windows games is quite good, Valve’s Proton compatibility layer is in continuous development, and not every game will play perfectly or play at all. Games that use anti-cheat software are still broadly incompatible with SteamOS, since many anti-cheat programs hook into the Windows kernel in ways that are impossible to translate or emulate. And while it’s possible to run games from other storefronts like Epic or GOG, it’s best done with third-party software like the Heroic Games Launcher, adding an extra layer of complexity.

And although SteamOS includes a useful desktop mode, it’s really not meant to be used as a day-to-day workhorse operating system—security features like “using a password to log in” are off by default in the interest of expediency, and you need to open your system to bootloader tampering just to install it. It’s fine for installing and running the odd desktop app every once in a while, but I’d hesitate to trust it with anything sensitive.

Finally, while our tests have shown that SteamOS generally performs at least as well, if not better, than Windows running on the same hardware, the first-party version of SteamOS is still made with handhelds and other low-power hardware in mind. In my limited testing of SteamOS on desktops with both integrated and with more powerful dedicated GPUs, I’ve generally found that those observations hold up. But I’ve only tested on a narrow range of hardware, and you could easily encounter a setup where SteamOS just doesn’t run games as well as Windows does.

Rolling your own Steam Machine

A Ryzen 7 8700G-based “Steam Machine,” in an InWin Chopin Max case. I enjoy PC building, but the economics of this box aren’t great for most people. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Say you’re interested in having a Steam Machine, you don’t want to wait for Valve, and you don’t just happen to have a spare ideally configured AMD-based PC to sacrifice to the testing gods.

I am more or less happy with my custom-built mini ITX Steam Machine, but I find it difficult to recommend this hardware combination to basically anybody at this point. For me, it scratched a PC-building itch, and the potential for future upgradability is mildly interesting to me. But given the high cost of AMD’s Socket AM5 platform and spiking costs for RAM and SSDs, it’s going to be difficult to put together an 8700G-focused system in an InWin Chopin for less than $800. And that’s a whole lot to pay for a years-old Radeon 780M GPU.

For a more budget-friendly Steam Machine, consider the range of no-name mini PCs available on Amazon and some other places. We’ve dabbled with systems from manufacturers like Aoostar, Beelink, Bosgame, and GMKtec before and come away conditionally impressed by the ratio of utility-to-performance, and YouTubers like RetroGameCorps and ETA Prime periodically cover new ones and generally have positive things to say. You’re rolling the dice on long-term reliability and support, but it’s also tough to argue with the convenience of the form factor or the pricing compared to a custom-built system.

If you’re going this route, we have some general recommendations and performance numbers, based on testing of similar chips in other laptops and desktops. Note that the Ryzen 6800U/Radeon 680M system is an Acer Swift Edge 16 laptop with 16GB of soldered DDR5, while the Ryzen 7840U/Radeon 780M system is a Framework Laptop 13 with non-soldered DDR5. Performance may differ a few FPS in either direction depending on your hardware configuration. The Ryzen 7700X/Radeon RX 7600 system is a custom-built testbed desktop similar to the one we use for testing CPUs and GPUs; based on hardware alone, we’d expect the real Steam Machine to perform near or slightly below .

A handful of numbers from a single game, to show relative performance differences between some integrated and low-end dedicated AMD GPUs. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

In the $350 to $400 range, look for PCs with a Ryzen 6800-series chip in them, like the 6800H or 6850H (here’s one from GMKTec for $385, and one from Beelink for $379). These processors come with a Radeon 680M integrated GPU, with 12 compute units (CUs) based on the RDNA2 architecture. These boxes will offer performance slightly superior to the actual Steam Deck, which uses eight RDNA2 CUs and squeezes them into a system with a small power envelope.

If you can spend around $500, that generally seems to get you the best performance for the price right now. Look for processors in the Ryzen 7040 or 8040 series, or the Ryzen 250 series (here’s one for $$490 from GMKtec, one for $499 from Bosgame, and one for $449 from Aoostar). These chips all offer broadly similar combinations of eight Zen 4-based CPU cores, and a 12-core Radeon 780M GPU based on the RDNA3 architecture.

In a mini desktop, this GPU can come pretty close to doubling the performance of the Steam Deck, though it will still fall short of most dedicated graphics cards. It’s similar to the performance level of the non-Extreme version of the Ryzen Z2 chip for competing handhelds. The 780M is also the same GPU that comes with the Ryzen 8700G desktop chip I use, and I’ve found that it gets you decent 1080p performance in many games.

The GPU is the most important thing to focus on in these systems, since it’s going to have the most impact on the way games actually run. But keep an eye on RAM and storage, too; a 1TB SSD is obviously preferable to a 500GB SSD. And while most of these come with a healthy 32GB of RAM by default, pay attention to the type of RAM. If it just says “DDR5,” that’s most likely to be socketed RAM that’s a bit slower, but which you can upgrade yourself if you want. If it comes with LPDDR5X, that’s going to be soldered down, but also a bit faster, maximizing your graphics performance.

The Steam Deck is a useful benchmark here, because it’s a fixed hardware platform that’s popular enough that PC game developers sometimes go out of their way to target. Games often include Steam Deck-specific graphics presets, which are a useful starting point when you’re fiddling with settings.

I would generally try to avoid systems with Ryzen AI 300-series chips in them—their Radeon 890M GPUs are faster, but they can also be twice as expensive as the Radeon 780M boxes. I’d also stay away from anything with Ryzen 5000 or 3000-series chips, or Ryzen 7030-series chips. The price tags on these $200 to $300 systems are tempting, and they will probably run SteamOS, but their older Vega-based GPUs will fall far short of the Steam Deck’s GPU, let alone the Radeon 680M or 780M.

The Framework Desktop is a compelling alternative to the actual Steam Machine, if you don’t mind paying for it. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

OK, but what if you have more money to spend, and you’re more interested in 1440p or 4K gaming performance (roughly what Valve is targeting with the actual Steam Machine)? I think that the Framework Desktop is a surprisingly good fit here; $1,200 will get you a console-sized PC with an eight-core Zen 5 CPU, a Radeon 8050S GPU with 32 CUs based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture (the Steam Machine has 28 RDNA3 CUs), 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. I can confirm firsthand that SteamOS 3.8/3.9 installs and runs just fine.

This desktop is probably a bit more expensive than the Steam Machine will end up being, but it’s impossible to say how much more expensive before Valve actually puts out a price.

The TV PC is ready for its close-up

TV-connected PCs have historically been a niche thing. They’re expensive, they’re finicky, and purpose-built game consoles have always provided a more pleasant and seamless experience for people who just want to do everything with a controller from the couch.

But the TV PC could finally be ready for its moment. In SteamOS, Valve has created a pretty good, pretty widely compatible Windows substitute that buries a lot of the PC’s complexity (without totally removing it, for the people who want it sometimes). Like the Nintendo Switch, Valve has crafted a user interface that feels good to use on a handheld screen and on a TV from 10 feet away.

And this is happening at the same time as a weird detente in the console wars, where Sony seems to be embracing PC ports and easing up on exclusive releases at the same time as Microsoft seems, for all intents and purposes, to be winding down the Xbox hardware operation in favor of Windows. Valve is way out in front of Microsoft on its console-style PC interface at the same time as the PC is becoming a sort of universally compatible über-console.

I’m kind of the ideal audience for the Steam Machine; nearly all my PC games are on Steam, I play practically nothing that requires anti-cheat software, and I play mostly graphically undemanding indie games rather than GPU-bruising AAA titles. So, you know, take my enthusiasm for the concept with a grain of salt.

But as someone who has already functionally been living with a Steam Machine for months, I think that Valve’s new hardware could do for living room PCs what the Steam Deck has done for handhelds: defining and expanding a product category that others have tried and failed to crack. This year, my Steam Machine has ably kept up with me as I’ve played Silksong, UFO 50, Dave the Diver, both HD-2D Dragon Quest remakes, part of a bad-guy run through Baldur’s Gate III, some multiplayer Vampire Survivors experimentation, several Jackbox Party Pack sessions, and more besides. I’ve never been less tempted to buy a PlayStation 5.

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

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Are you ready for a $1,000 Steam Machine? Some analysts think you should be.

Analysts, components, gaming, Hardware, steam machine, steam machines, tariff, valve / Mike M. / November 15, 2025

If you ask random gamers what price they think Valve will charge for its newly announced Steam Machine hardware, you’ll get a wide range of guesses. But if you ask the analysts who follow the game industry for a living the same question… well, you’ll actually get the same wide range of (somewhat better-informed) guesses.

At the high end of those guesses are analysts like F-Squared‘s Michael Futter, who expects a starting price of $799 to $899 for the entry-level 512GB Steam Machine and a whopping $1,000 to $1,100 for the 2TB version. With internal specs that Futter says “will rival a PS5 and maybe even hit PS5 Pro performance,” we can expect a “hefty price tag” from Valve’s new console-like effort. At the same time, since Valve is “positioning this as a dedicated, powerful gaming PC… I suspect that the price will be below a similarly capable traditional desktop,” Futter said.

DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole similarly expects the Steam Machine to start at a price “around $800” and go up to “around $1,000” for the 2TB model. Cole said he expects Valve will seek “very low margins” or even break-even pricing on the hardware itself, which he said would probably lead to pricing “below a gaming PC but slightly above a high-end console.”

A loss leader?

At the other end of the spectrum, Superdata Research founder and SuperJoost newsletter author Joost Van Dreunen predicted the entry-level Steam Machine could come in as low as $549, rising to $749 for the 2TB version (plus an additional $50 for bundles including a Steam Controller).

To Van Dreunen, Valve’s unique position as a private company with a loyal fan base means it can “price its hardware to hit its own strategic sweet spot rather than mirror the competition.” And in this case, he said, that could mean taking a “modest” loss on the hardware as a way to get more gamers invested in SteamOS.

Getting people to buy more games on SteamOS could be worth a lot more to Valve than any Steam Machine hardware profits. Credit: Valve

“Just like Sony and Microsoft, the real money isn’t in the box, it’s in the ecosystem you enter once you buy it,” Van Dreunen said. “To me the question isn’t whether Valve can afford to eat margin. It’s whether they want the SteamOS footprint to grow fast enough to justify it. … Strategically, this is about expanding the platform, not squeezing the hardware.”

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Years later, Arkane’s Dishonored is still a modern stealth classic

arkane studios, C:ArsGames, dishonored, gaming / Kelly Newman / November 14, 2025

Chief among these is the “blink” system, which lets you warp instantly from point to point in a way that reminds me now of the similar nausea-preventing movement systems seen in many virtual reality games. Here, being able to go from one hidden corner to another without the risk of being seen revolutionizes the stealth gameplay.

Hopping up to a nearby rooftop or down on top of an unaware enemy with a quick blink is incredibly satisfying, making you feel less like a crawling assassin and more like a bona fide superhero. The same goes for the “dark vision” that lets you see enemies and allies through walls, an ability that’s all the more necessary in a game without any sort of mini-map to help you get the lie of the land.

This screenshot makes the combat look more exciting than it is in practice. Credit: Arkane Studios

In contrast to the elegant, super-powered sneaking, combat in Dishonored can feel a bit slow and clunky. This is exacerbated by the game’s “chaos system,” which sends seemingly endless waves of enemies that turn each violent engagement into a war of attrition against a nearly overwhelming force.

It’s usually a better idea to simply blink away to safety until they quickly call off the pursuit. Or, better yet, just avoid combat altogether by sticking to the shadows, coming out only when you can take out your next assassination target cleanly and silently.

In a lesser game, the assassination-focused gameplay could threaten to feel too repetitive. But Dishonored‘s structure encourages different paths to that same final goal in each mission, from magically assisted sneaking to social manipulation and eavesdropping to actually taking a moral stand in a long-running feud.

Add in side quests that offer plenty of opportunity for creative problem solving, and you have a game that encourages multiple playthroughs to explore all the different ways you can succeed. That should provide enough of an excuse to revisit Dishonored, or to dive in for the first time if you missed it during its debut.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

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Valve says it’s still waiting for better chips to power Steam Deck 2

gaming / 9u50fv / November 13, 2025

Yesterday’s announcement of new living room and VR hardware from Valve obviously has many gamers clamoring for any news of a more powerful version of the nearly 4-year-old Steam Deck. In a new interview with IGN, though, Valve Software Engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais says that portable gaming silicon still hasn’t advanced enough to justify brand-new benchmark hardware.

“The thing we’re making sure of is that it’s a worthwhile enough performance upgrade [for a Steam Deck 2] to make sense as a standalone product,” Griffais told IGN. “We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20 or 30 or even 50 percent more performance at the same battery life. We want something a little bit more demarcated than that.”

“So we’ve been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there’s no offerings in that landscape, in the SoC [System on a Chip] landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck,” Griffais continued.

More power, but at what cost?

At first glance, Griffais’ comments might seem to run counter to the advancements we’ve seen in portable PC gaming handhelds in recent years. The eight-core Zen 5-based AMD chip in the recently launched ROG Xbox Ally X, for instance, is significantly more powerful than the four-core Zen 2 chip in the Steam Deck. The newer handheld can push out decent-quality 1080p graphics at reasonable frame rates for many recent games that the old Steam Deck struggles to run at all.

Keep in mind, though, that Griffais said Valve is focused on getting those kinds of performance improvements “at the same battery life.” The ROG Xbox Ally X has a 50 percent larger battery than the original Steam Deck, and it still fully drains that battery in around two hours when running the most taxing games in “Turbo” mode.

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Valve rejoins the VR hardware wars with standalone Steam Frame

gaming, headset, steam, valve, virtual reality, vr / Beth Washington / November 12, 2025

Valve also tells Ars that streaming to the Steam Frame will be “as efficient as possible,” maximizing battery life from the included 21.6 Wh battery. “Standalone battery life will be much more variable, depending on the game and its settings,” Valve Engineer Jeremy Selan and Designer Lawrence Yang told Ars via email.

While a wired PC connection would go a long way toward addressing those battery-life and extra latency concerns, Valve said the Steam Frame won’t even support it as an option. “We’re focused on a robust wireless streaming experience, which is why we included a dedicated wireless adapter, have a dedicated radio on the headset just for streaming, and invented a new streaming technology to optimize the streaming experience (Foveated Streaming),” Selan and Yang told Ars.

A low-weight modular “core”

All told, the Steam Frame comes in at just 440 grams, a welcome and sizeable reduction from the 515 grams of the Quest 3. Interestingly, Valve’s spec sheet also specifically calls out the 185 gram “core” of the headset hardware, which comprises all the main components besides the battery, headstrap, and speakers (e.g., lenses, displays, motherboard, cooling, processor, RAM, tracking system, etc).

That core weight is important, Selan and Yang told Ars, because “it’s designed to be modular so one could imagine other headsets connecting to this core module that bring different features.” So tinkerers or third-party headset makers could theoretically build modified versions of the Steam Frame with lighter batteries or streamlined headstrap/speaker combos, for instance. The Steam Frame’s monochrome passthrough cameras can also be accessed via a front expansion port with a standardized Gen 4 PCIe interface, Valve said.

It’s an interesting potential direction for new hardware that will launch into a more niche, less irrationally exuberant VR market than Valve’s previous virtual reality headsets. But with companies like Apple and Meta pivoting toward augmented reality and/or mixed-reality hardware of late, it’s nice to see Valve continuing to cater to the small but dedicated market of gamers who are still interested in playing in fully immersive VR environments.

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Steam Deck minus the screen: Valve announces new Steam Machine, Controller hardware

controller, gaming, steam, steam controller, steam machine, steamos, valve / DJ Henderson / November 12, 2025

SteamOS-powered cube for your TV targets early 2026 launch, no pricing details.

Meet the ValveCube (not its real name) Credit: Valve

Nearly four years after the Steam Deck changed the world of portable gaming, Valve is getting ready to release SteamOS-powered hardware designed for the living room TV, or even as a desktop PC gaming replacement. The simply named Steam Machine and Steam Controller, both planned to ship in early 2026, are “optimized for gaming on Steam and designed for players to get even more out of their Steam Library,” Valve said in a press release.

A Steam Machine spec sheet shared by Valve lists a “semi-custom” six-core AMD Zen 4 CPU clocked at up to 4.8 Ghz alongside an AMD RDNA3 GPU with 28 compute units. The motherboard will include 16GB of DDR5 RAM and an additional 8GB of dedicated DDR6 VRAM for the GPU. The new hardware will come in two configurations with 512GB or 2TB of unspecified “SSD storage,” though Valve isn’t sharing pricing for either just yet.

If you squint, you can make out a few ports on this unmarked black square. Valve

Those chips and numbers suggest the Steam Machine will have roughly the same horsepower as a mid-range desktop gaming PC from a few years back. But Valve says its “Machine”—which it ranks as “over 6x more powerful than the Steam Deck”—is powerful enough to support ray-tracing and/or 4K, 60 fps gaming using FSR upscaling.

Externally, the Steam Machine is housed in a stark black cube measuring 160 mm (~6.30-inch) on each side, making it slightly larger than the old Nintendo GameCube (sans handle). The front of the Machine sports two USB-A ports, an SD card storage expansion slot, a power button, and a “customizable LED bar” that can change to reflect when the system is booting up, downloading updates, etc. A huge fan vent takes up most of the rear of the unit, alongside three additional USB ports (including one USB-C port) and HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.

Taking control

While the Steam Machine will be able to connect to standard USB and Bluetooth PC controllers and peripherals, it has been designed with a brand-new Steam Controller in mind. And while both pieces of hardware will be sold separately, they will also be available in a bundle for gamers who want an all-in-one living room gaming solution.

If it weren’t for those touchpads, it would be hard to distinguish this gamepad from a lot of other modern controllers. Valve

The new Steam Controller (not to be confused with the identically named old Steam Controller) will make use of a proprietary 2.4 Ghz wireless connection that allows for around 8 ms of end-to-end latency between a button press and the resulting signal received by the system. A radio for that connection will be built into the Steam Machine but will also be available via an included “plug and play” Steam Controller Puck that can support up to four wireless controller connections.

Without the puck, the new Steam Controller can still connect to PCs (including portable gaming PCs) and smartphones via Bluetooth or a wired USB connection. And while console connections are technically possible, Valve Software Engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais and Designer Lawrence Yang told Ars via email that it would “require collaboration with the vendor” that the company would be “happy to discuss… if it came up.”

The most striking feature of the Steam Controller is the dual touchpads underneath the thumbsticks, mirroring the similar, somewhat underutilized control options on the Steam Deck. Each touchpad will come with its own haptic motor for “HD tactile feedback” that should feel akin to rolling a clicky trackball under your thumb (two more haptic motors in the grips handle force feedback output from the games themselves).

Aside from that, the Steam Controller seems a lot more standardized than Valve’s last attempt at a controller. It features thumbsticks, a d-pad, face buttons, and shoulder buttons pretty much where you’d expect them, plus four programmable “grip buttons” on the back side of the controller. The familiar Steam, View, Menu, and QAM (aka “three dots”) buttons also come over from the Steam Deck for quick access to useful SteamOS functions.

Internally, the Steam Controller will use magnetic TMR thumbstick sensors, which should hopefully limit the kind of stick drift we see with the mechanical sticks on the Nintendo Switch, for instance. A six-axis IMU will allow for gyro-based tilt controls as well, and a “grip sensor” can help make sure those controls turn off when you’re putting the controller down or picking it up.

Let’s try that again

Software-wise, the Steam Machine will of course run SteamOS, the custom Linux-based operating system popularized by the Steam Deck and recently officially expanded to other handhelds. Valve says that means fast suspend/resume features, easy access to your Steam cloud saves, “and all the other Steam features you’d expect.” It also means the ability to boot to a Linux desktop mode or install Windows with the help of drivers available on Valve’s website, Griffais and Yang told Ars.

Crucially, the new SteamOS offers compatibility with the vast majority of games made for Windows via Proton, a key feature that was missing the last time Valve pushed Linux-based “Steam Machines” hardware roughly a decade ago. Recent versions of SteamOS can actually boast better in-game performance than Windows on some games and hardware in Ars’ testing.

“One of our biggest learnings [from the first Steam Machines effort] is that it’s a tall order to ask developers to port their games to run on Linux—so we have done a bunch of work on Proton to the point where almost all games just work out of the box,” Griffais and Yang told Ars. “Since that time, we’ve gained valuable experience in manufacturing, made big improvements to Steam, Steam Input, and SteamOS, and we are excited to bring our own first party Steam Machine and the new Steam Controller to market.”

Valve’s ill-fated Steam Machines hardware rollout 10 years ago also relied on third-party manufacturers to handle the actual construction of a wide range of branded Linux boxes. This time around, Valve is handling the manufacture and distribution of a singular Steam Machine on its own, following the success of a similar rollout for the Steam Deck. And while we’ve seen leaked “Powered by SteamOS” branding suggesting third-party SteamOS living room boxes might be in the works, Valve hasn’t announced anything official yet.

“We’re always happy to chat with companies who are interested in making their own SteamOS powered devices,” Griffais and Yang told Ars. “We are working on broadening support, and with the recent updates to Steam and SteamOS, compatibility with other devices has improved, starting with other AMD powered PC handhelds.”

But while the Steam Deck filled an obvious market need for portable access to PC games, it’s harder to know where the new Steam Machine will fit in the already crowded market for living room gaming (not to mention the highly modular desktop gaming market). That’s especially true since the Steam Deck and its imitators can already serve as passable living room gaming devices when plugged into any number of third-party USB-C docks.

A lot will depend on pricing details and just how simple and convenient the new hardware makes the experience of playing PC games on the living room TV. We’ll keep you posted as more information comes in and when we’ve had a chance to get some hands-on time with Valve’s newest swing at the hardware market.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

Steam Deck minus the screen: Valve announces new Steam Machine, Controller hardware Read More »

Review: New Framework Laptop 16 takes a fresh stab at the upgradeable laptop GPU

AMD, AMD Ryzen, Features, framework, framework laptop 13, framework laptop 16, gaming, NVIDIA, nvidia geforce, Reviews, right to repair, Tech / 9u50fv / November 12, 2025

framework laptop 16, take two

New components make it more useful and powerful but no less odd.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The original Framework Laptop 16 was trying to crack a problem that laptop makers have wrestled with on and off for years: Can you deliver a reasonably powerful, portable workstation and gaming laptop that supports graphics card upgrades just like a desktop PC?

Specs at a glance: Framework Laptop 16 (2025)
OS	Windows 11 25H2
CPU	AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (4 Zen 5 cores, 4 Zen 5c cores)
RAM	32GB DDR5-5600 (upgradeable)
GPU	AMD Radeon 860M (integrated)/Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (dedicated)
SSD	1TB Western Digital Black SN770
Battery	85 WHr
Display	16-inch 2560×1600 165 Hz matte non-touchscreen
Connectivity	6x recessed USB-C ports (2x USB 4, 4x USB 3.2) with customizable “Expansion Card” dongles
Weight	4.63 pounds (2.1 kg) without GPU, 5.29 pounds (2.4 kg) with GPU
Price as tested	Roughly $2,649 for pre-built edition; $2,517 for DIY edition with no OS

Even in these days of mostly incremental, not-too-exciting GPU upgrades, the graphics card in a gaming PC or graphics-centric workstation will still feel its age faster than your CPU will. And the chance to upgrade that one component for hundreds of dollars instead of spending thousands replacing the entire machine is an appealing proposition.

Upgradeable, swappable GPUs would also make your laptop more flexible—you can pick and choose from various GPUs from multiple vendors based on what you want and need, whether that’s raw performance, power efficiency, Linux support, or CUDA capabilities.

Framework’s first upgrade to the Laptop 16—the company’s first upgrade to any of its products aside from the original Laptop 13—gets us pretty close to that reality. The laptop can now support two interchangeable motherboards: one with an older AMD Ryzen 7040-series CPU and one with a new Ryzen AI 300-series CPU. And both motherboards can be used either with just an integrated GPU or with dedicated GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia.

The Nvidia GeForce 5070 graphics module is the most exciting and significant part of this batch of updates, but there are plenty of other updates and revisions to the laptop’s external and internal components, too. These upgrades don’t address all of our problems with the initial version of the laptop, but they do help quite a bit. And a steady flow of updates like these would definitely make the Laptop 16 a platform worth investing in.

Re-meet the Framework Laptop 16

Framework’s Laptop 13 stacked on top of the 16. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Framework treats each of its laptops as a platform to be modified and built upon rather than something to be wholly redesigned and replaced every time it’s updated. So these reviews necessarily re-cover ground we have already covered—I’ve also reused some of the photos from last time, since this is quite literally the same laptop in most respects. I’ll point you to the earlier review for detailed notes on the build process and how the laptop is put together.

To summarize our high-level notes about the look, feel, and design of the Framework Laptop 16: While the Framework Laptop 13 can plausibly claim to be in the same size and weight class as portables like the 13-inch MacBook Air, the Framework Laptop 16 is generally larger and heavier than the likes of the 16-inch MacBook Pro or portable PC workstations like the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 or Dell 16 Premium. That’s doubly true once you actually add a dedicated graphics module to the Laptop 16—these protrude a couple of inches from the back of the laptop and add around two-thirds of a pound to its weight.

	Frame-work 16 (no GPU)	Frame-work 16 (GPU)	Apple 16-inch MBP	Dell 16 Premium	Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8	HP ZBook X G1i	Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 10	Razer Blade 16
Size (H x W x D inches)	0.71 x 14.04 x 10.63	0.82 x 14.04 x 11.43	0.66 x 14.01 x 9.77	0.75 x 14.1 x 9.4	0.39-0.62 x 13.95 x 9.49	0.9 x 14.02 x 9.88	0.85-1.01 x 14.34 x 10.55	0.59-0.69 x 13.98 x 9.86
Weight	4.63 lbs	5.29 lbs	4.7-4.8 lbs	4.65 pounds	4.06 lbs	4.5 lbs	5.56 lbs	4.71 lbs

You certainly can find laptops from the major PC OEMs that come close to or even exceed the size and weight of the Laptop 16. But in most cases, you’ll find that comparably specced and priced laptops are an inch or two less deep and at least half a pound lighter than the Laptop 16 with a dedicated GPU installed.

But if you’re buying from Framework, you’re probably at least notionally interested in customizing, upgrading, and repairing your laptop over time, all things that Framework continues to do better than any other company.

The Laptop 16’s customizable keyboard deck is still probably its coolest feature—it’s a magnetically attached series of panels that allows you to remove and replace components without worrying about the delicate and finicky ribbon cables the Laptop 13 uses. Practically, the most important aspect of this customizable keyboard area is that it lets you decide whether you want to install a dedicated number pad or not; this also allows you to choose whether you want the trackpad to be aligned with the center of the laptop or with wherever the middle of the keyboard is.

It might look a little rough, but the customizable keyboard deck is still probably the coolest thing about the Laptop 16 in day-to-day use. Andrew Cunningham

But Framework also sells an assortment of other functional and cosmetic panels and spacers to let users customize the laptop to their liking. The coolest, oddest accessories are still probably the LED matrix spacers and the clear, legend-less keyboard and number pad modules. We still think this assortment of panels gives the system a vaguely unfinished look, but Framework is clearly going for function over form here.

The Laptop 16 also continues to use Framework’s customizable, swappable Expansion Card modules. In theory, these let you pick the number and type of ports your laptop has, as well as customize your port setup on the fly based on what you need. But as with all AMD Ryzen-based Framework Laptops, there are some limits to what each port can do.

According to Framework’s support page, there’s no single Expansion Card slot that is truly universal:

Ports 1 and 4 support full 40Gbps USB 4 transfer speeds, display outputs, and up to 240 W charging, but if you use a USB-A Expansion Card in those slots, you’ll increase power use and reduce battery life.
Ports 2 and 4 support display outputs, up to 240 W charging, and lower power usage for USB-A ports, but they top out at 10Gbps USB 3.2 transfer speeds. Additionally, port 5 (the middle port on the right side of the laptop, if you’re looking at it head-on) supports the DisplayPort 1.4 standard where the others support DisplayPort 2.1.
Ports 3 and 4 are limited to 10Gbps USB 3.2 transfer speeds and don’t support display outputs or charging.

The Laptop 16 also doesn’t include a dedicated headphone jack, so users will need to burn one of their Expansion Card slots to get one.

Practically speaking, most users will be able to come up with a port arrangement that fits their needs, and it’s still handy to be able to add and remove things like Ethernet ports, HDMI ports, or SD card readers on an as-needed basis. But choosing the right Expansion Card slot for the job will still require some forethought, and customizable ports aren’t as much of a selling point for a 16-inch laptop as they are for a 13-inch laptop (the Framework Laptop 13 was partly a response to laptops like the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13 that only came with a small number of USB-C ports; larger laptops have mostly kept their larger number and variety of ports).

What’s new in 2025’s Framework Laptop 16?

An upgraded motherboard and a new graphics module form the heart of this year’s Laptop 16 upgrade. The motherboard steps up from AMD Ryzen 7040-series processors to AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 and Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chips. These are the same processors Framework put into the Laptop 13 earlier this year, though they ought to be able to run a bit faster in the Laptop 16 due to its larger heatsink and dual-fan cooling system.

Along with an upgrade from Zen 4-based CPU cores to Zen 5 cores, the Ryzen AI series includes an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU) that is fast enough to earn Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC label. These PCs have access to a handful of unique Windows 11 AI and machine-learning features (yes, Recall, but not just Recall) that are processed locally rather than in the cloud. If you don’t care about these features, you can mostly just ignore them, but if you do care, this is the first version of the Laptop 16 to support them.

Most of the new motherboard’s other specs and features are pretty similar to the first-generation version; there are two SO-DIMM slots for up to 96GB of DDR5-5600, one M.2 2280 slot for the system’s main SSD, and one M.2 2230 slot for a secondary SSD. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth connectivity are provided by an AMD RZ717 Wi-Fi card that can at least theoretically also be replaced with something faster down the line if you want.

The more exciting upgrade, however, may be the GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. This is the first time Framework has offered an Nvidia product—its other GPUs have all come from either Intel or AMD—and it gives the new Laptop 16 access to Nvidia technologies like DLSS and CUDA, as well as much-improved performance for games with ray-traced lighting effects.

Those hoping for truly high-end graphics options for the Laptop 16 will need to keep waiting, though. The laptop version of the RTX 5070 is actually the same chip as the desktop version of the RTX 5060, a $300 graphics card with 8GB of RAM. As much as it adds to the Laptop 16, it still won’t let you come anywhere near 4K in most modern games, and for some, it may even struggle to take full advantage of the internal 165 Hz 1600p screen. Professional workloads (including AI workloads) that require more graphics RAM will also find the mobile 5070 lacking.

Old 180 W charger on top, new 240 W charger on bottom. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Other components have gotten small updates as well. For those who upgrade an existing Laptop 16 with the new motherboard, Framework is selling 2nd-generation keyboard and number pad components. But their main update over the originals is new firmware that “includes a fix to prevent the system from waking while carried in a bag.” Owners of the original keyboard can install a firmware update to get the same functionality (and make their input modules compatible with the new board).

Upgraders should also note that the original system’s 180 W power adapter has been replaced with a 240 W model, the maximum amount of power that current USB-C and USB-PD standards are capable of delivering. You can charge the laptop with just about any USB-C power brick, but anything lower than 240 W risks reducing performance (or having the battery drain faster than it can charge).

Finally, the laptop uses a second-generation 16-inch, 2560×1600, 165 Hz LCD screen. It’s essentially identical in every way to the first-generation screen, but it formally supports G-Sync, Nvidia’s adaptive sync implementation. The original screen can still be used with the new motherboard, but it only supports AMD’s FreeSync, and Framework told us a few months ago that the panel supplier had no experience providing consumer-facing firmware updates that might add G-Sync to the old display. It’s probably not worth replacing the entire screen for, but it’s worth noting whether you’re upgrading the laptop or buying a new one.

Performance

Framework sent us the lower-end Ryzen AI 7 350 processor configuration for our new board, making it difficult to do straightforward apples-to-apples comparisons to the high-end Ryzen 9 7940HS in our first-generation Framework board. We did test the new chip, and you’ll see its results in our charts.

We’ve also provided numbers from the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in the Asus Zenbook S16 UM5606W to show approximately where you can expect the high-end Framework Laptop 16 configuration to land (Framework’s integrated graphics performance will be marginally worse since it’s using slower socketed RAM rather than LPDDR5X; other numbers may differ based on how each manufacturer has configured the chip’s power usage and thermal behavior). We’ve also included numbers from the same chip in the Framework Laptop 13, though Framework’s spec sheets indicate that the chips have different power limits and thus will perform differently.

We were able to test the new GeForce GPU in multiple configurations—both paired with the new Ryzen AI 7 350 processor and with the old Ryzen 9 7940HS chip. This should give anyone who bought the original Laptop 16 an idea of what kind of performance increase they can expect from the new GPU alone. In all, we’ve tested or re-tested:

The Ryzen 7 7940HS CPU from the first-generation Laptop 16 and its integrated Radeon 780M GPU
The Ryzen 7 7940HS and the original Radeon RX 7700S GPU module
The Ryzen 7 7940HS and the new GeForce RTX 5070 GPU module, for upgraders who only want to grab the new GPU
The Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU and the GeForce RTX 5070 GPU

We also did some light testing on the Radeon 860M integrated GPU included with the Ryzen AI 7 350.

All the Laptop 16 performance tests were run with Windows’ Best Performance power preset enabled, which will slightly boost performance at the expense of power efficiency.

Given all of those hardware combinations, we simply ran out of time to test the new motherboard with the old Radeon RX 7700S GPU—Framework is continuing to sell it, so it is a realistic combination of components. But our RTX 5070 testing suggests that these GPUs will perform pretty much the same regardless of which CPU you pair them with.

If you’re buying the cheaper Laptop 16 with the Ryzen AI 7 350, the good news is that it generally performs at least as well as—and usually a bit better than—the high-end Ryzen 9 7940HS from the last-generation model. Performance is also pretty similar to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in smaller, thinner laptops—the extra power and cooling capacity in the Laptop 16 is paying off here. People choosing between a PC and a Mac should note that none of these Ryzen chips come anywhere near the M4 Pro used in comparably priced 16-inch MacBook Pros, but that’s just where the PC ecosystem is these days.

How big an upgrade the GeForce 5070 will be depends on the game you’re playing. In titles like Borderlands 3 that naturally run a bit better on AMD’s GPUs, there’s not much of a difference at all. In games like Cyberpunk 2077 with heavy ray-tracing effects enabled, the mobile RTX 5070 can be nearly twice as fast as the RX 7700S.

Most games will fall somewhere in between those two extremes; our tests show that the improvements hover between 20 and 30 percent most of the time, just a shade less than the 30 to 40 percent improvement that Framework claimed in its original announcement.

Beyond raw performance, the other thing you get with an Nvidia GPU is access to a bunch of important proprietary technologies like DLSS upscaling and CUDA—these technologies are often better and more widely supported than the equivalent technologies that AMD’s or Intel’s GPUs use, thanks in part to Nvidia’s overall dominance of the dedicated GPU market.

In the tests we’ve run on them, the Radeon 860M and 890M are both respectable integrated GPUs (the lower-end 860M typically falls just short of last generation’s top-end 780M, but it’s very close). They’re never able to provide more than a fraction of the Radeon RX 7700S’s performance, let alone the RTX 5070, but they’ll handle a lot of lighter games at 1080p. I would not buy a system this large or heavy just to use it with an integrated GPU.

Better to be unique than perfect

It’s expensive and quirky, but the Framework Laptop 16 is worth considering because it’s so different from what most other laptop makers are doing. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Our original Framework Laptop 16 review called it “fascinating but flawed,” and the parts that made it flawed haven’t really changed much over the last two years. It’s still relatively large and heavy; the Expansion Card system still makes less sense in a larger laptop than it does in a thin-and-light; the puzzle-like grid of input modules and spacers looks kind of rough and unfinished.

But the upgrades do help to shift things in the Laptop 16’s favor. Its modular and upgradeable design was always a theoretical selling point, but the laptop now actually offers options that other laptops don’t.

The presence of both AMD and Nvidia GPUs is a big step up in flexibility for both gaming and professional applications. The GeForce module is a better all-around choice, with slightly to significantly faster game performance and proprietary technologies like DLSS and CUDA, while the Radeon GPU is a cheaper option with better support for Linux.

Given their cost, I still wish that these GPUs were more powerful—they’re between $350 or $449 for the Radeon RX 7700S and between $650 and $699 for the RTX 5070 (prices vary a bit and are cheaper when you’re buying them together with a new laptop rather than buying them separately). You’ll basically always spend more for a gaming laptop than you will for a gaming desktop with similar or better performance, but that does feel like an awful lot to spend for GPUs that are still limited to 8GB of RAM.

Cost is a major issue for the Laptop 16 in general. You may save money in the long run by buying a laptop that you can replace piece-by-piece as you need to rather than all at once. But it’s not even remotely difficult to find similar specs from the major PC makers for hundreds of dollars less. We can’t vouch for the build quality or longevity of any of those PCs, but it does mean that you have to be willing to pay an awful lot just for Framework’s modularity and upgradeability. That’s true to some degree of the Laptop 13 as well, but the price gap between the 13 and competing systems isn’t as large as it is for the 16.

Whatever its lingering issues, the Framework Laptop 16 is still worth considering because there’s nothing else quite like it, at least if you’re in the market for something semi-portable and semi-powerful. The MacBook Pro exists if you want something more appliance-like, and there’s a whole spectrum of gaming and workstation PCs in between with all kinds of specs, sizes, and prices. To stand out from those devices, it’s probably better to be unique than to be perfect, and the reformulated Laptop 16 certainly clears that bar.

The good

Modular, repairable, upgradeable design that’s made to last
Cool, customizable keyboard deck
Nvidia GeForce GPU option gives the Laptop 16 access to some gaming and GPU computing features that weren’t usable with AMD GPUs
GPU upgrade can be added to first-generation Framework Laptop 16
New processors are a decent performance improvement and are worth considering for new buyers
Old Ryzen 7040-series motherboard is sticking around as an entry-level option, knocking $100 off the former base price ($1,299 and up for a barebones DIY edition, $1,599 and up for the cheapest pre-built)
Framework’s software support has gotten better in the last year

The bad

Big and bulky for the specs you get
Mix-and-match input modules and spacers give it a rough, unfinished sort of look
Ryzen AI motherboards are more expensive than the originals were when they launched

The ugly

It’ll cost you—the absolute bare minimum price for Ryzen AI 7 350 and RTX 5070 combo is $2,149, and that’s without RAM, an SSD, or an operating system

Review: New Framework Laptop 16 takes a fresh stab at the upgradeable laptop GPU Read More »

New project brings strong Linux compatibility to more classic Windows games

compatibility layer, gaming, Linux, Open Source, steamos, valve, Windows / DJ Henderson / November 10, 2025

Those additional options should be welcome news for fans looking for new ways to play PC games of a certain era. The PC Gaming Wiki lists over 400 titles written with the D3D7 APIs, and while most of those games were released between 2000 and 2004, a handful of new D3D7 games have continued to be released through 2022.

The D3D7 games list predictably includes a lot of licensed shovelware, but there are also well-remembered games like Escape from Monkey Island, Arx Fatalis, and the original Hitman: Codename 47. WinterSnowfall writes that the project was inspired by a desire to play games like Sacrifice and Disciples II on top of the existing dxvk framework.

Despite some known issues with certain D3D7 titles, WinterSnowfall writes that recent tuning means “things are now anywhere between decent to stellar in most of the supported games.” Still, the project author warns that the project will likely never reach full compatibility since “D3D7 is a land of highly cursed API interoperability.”

Don’t expect this project to expand to include support for even older DirectX APIs, either, WinterSnowfall warns. “D3D7 is enough of a challenge and a mess as it is,” the author writes. “The further we stray from D3D9, the further we stray from the divine.”

New project brings strong Linux compatibility to more classic Windows games Read More »

With Skigill, the classic RPG skill tree becomes a crowded battlefield

achromi, gaming, roguelike, skill tree, survivors / Beth Washington / November 7, 2025

The stark presentation can threaten to be overwhelming at times, especially when nearly the entire screen descends into a mass of yellow pixels. But the simplicity of the colors also makes it easy to unfocus your eyes and instinctually plan a path away from the red and yellow threats and through to the safety of the inky black void.

Skigill also benefits from allowing players to speed up or slow down time with a quick tap of the shoulder buttons. This is a lifesaver for the tedium of the early parts of runs, when the enemies are coming in at a relative trickle and you don’t want to stand around waiting for the actual challenging part of the run.

Thankfully, you can fast-forward through the early-run doldrums… Credit: Achromi

Where Skigill suffers most, for the moment, is in an overall lack of variety. The recent Early Access release only has three playable characters and four skill-tree maps. While they differ in some important ways, the options fall far short of the dozens of arcane unlockable options that can keep players coming back to a game like Vampire Survivors for dozens of hours.

For replayability, Skigill currently relies on a difficulty system that simply scales up the quantity and health of enemies alongside a secondary skill tree that lets you purchase more permanent upgrades from the main menu. Unfortunately, even at the higher difficulty levels, you’ll see the same four yellow-on-black enemies filling your immediate vicinity, with little in the way of interesting movement or attack patterns to mix things up.

The developers promise on Steam that Skigill will see at least three new characters “along with more weapons and build possibilities” as it goes from Early Access to a Version 1.0 launch. We’re happy to hear that, because even this limited, somewhat repetitive taste of the game has had us coming back for the fun take on an old RPG staple.

With Skigill, the classic RPG skill tree becomes a crowded battlefield Read More »

After confusing driver release, AMD says old GPUs are still actively supported

AMD, gaming, Radeon, rdna, rdna 2, Tech / Shannon Garcia / November 4, 2025

The release notes for the 25.10.2 Adrenalin release also dropped Windows 10 from the list of “compatible operating systems,” listing only Windows 11 21H2 and later. But AMD confirmed to Windows Latest that the driver packages would still support Windows 10 for the foreseeable future. The company said that the OS is not listed in the release notes because Microsoft has technically ended support for Windows 10, but home users running Windows 10 on their PCs can get an extra year of security patches relatively easily. Microsoft will continue to provide support for the OS in businesses, schools, and other large organizations until at least 2028.

Why all the fuss?

It would look bad if AMD dropped or reduced support for those Radeon 5000- and 6000-series GPUs, given that Nvidia continues to support GeForce RTX 20- and 30-series graphics cards launched in the same 2019 to 2022 time window. But the end of support could have been even worse for gaming handhelds and lower-end PCs with integrated graphics.

The RDNA 2 architecture, in particular, has enjoyed a long and ongoing life as an integrated GPU, including for systems that are explicitly marketed and sold as gaming PCs. And because so many of AMD and Intel’s lower-end chips are just rebranded versions of older silicon, AMD continues to launch “new” products with RDNA 2 GPUs. The RDNA 2 architecture is the one Valve has used in the Steam Deck since 2022, for example, but Microsoft and Asus’ just-launched ROG Xbox Ally series also includes an RDNA 2 GPU in the entry-level model.

The last time AMD formally scaled back its GPU driver support was in 2023, when it moved drivers for its Polaris and Vega GPU architectures into a separate package that would only get occasional “critical updates.” At the time, AMD had launched its last dedicated Vega-based GPU just four years before, and many lower-end desktop and laptop processors still shipped with Vega-based integrated GPUs.

For the Steam Deck and other SteamOS and Linux systems, at least, it seems that things aren’t really changing, no matter what happens with the Windows drivers. Phoronix points out that the Linux driver package for AMD’s GPUs has always been maintained separately from the Windows drivers and that GPU architectures considerably older than RDNA 1 continue to get official support and occasional improvements.

After confusing driver release, AMD says old GPUs are still actively supported Read More »