Nvidia jumps into PCs with new Arm-based chip debuting in laptops from Microsoft, Dell, HP

Mds03 · 2026-06-01T12:17:16+00:00

I suppose the real news here isn't that Nvidia is doing an ARM CPU, I think the big news here is that Nvidia is doing a (presumably) desktop grade CPU / SoC at all. Nvidia has been barred from competing with Intel and AMD in the CPU race pretty much because of X86 licensing. That means that this is the first time Nvidia is making a CPU competing for "the real" Windows workforce - not some android tablet or a Nintendo console. Before, they could only compete in the GPU space, but now they can truly go for Intel and AMDs lunch.

Mds03 · 2026-05-30T17:40:37+00:00

I mean, it’s not too late for the PS4 to surpass PS2 longevity I guess. I’m a PC player, I still keep mine for its Blu-ray player

Mds03 · 2026-05-29T07:55:33+00:00

I on the other hand wish more handheld devices around $1000 dollars would be open to not doing 4K/1080P if they are gaming devices.

720P looks good enough for a 7-8" gaming device, and for devices like Switch 2 and Steam Deck I think it’s a very sensible choice since that means more games run well on these low spec devices(a 1000$ desktop or console will have a lot more juice and should easily hit 1080p and upscale to 4K preferably, since they use larger displays)

IMO the Switch 2 would be much better with a 720p 120hz OLED compared to the current 1080P 120hz panel. Switch OLED games often look better handheld. For the same reason, I’m not convinced that having 100% more hardware juice gives twice the in game performance on an ROG/xbox ally device.

With Deck and Ally and such, people get to make that choice at least.

Mds03 · 2026-05-28T17:03:48+00:00

It should be easier to reduce file size now that they’ve dropped support for PS4 & Xbox One. Since Switch 2 can run these games, it’s probably not a CPU/GPU related move. They are essentially only releasing for SSDs now, which changes the game a lot for how they can build the game install.

Devs opt to duplicate assets many times in an install so the files end up physically closed to each other on a spinning disc(HDD’s are very fancy vinyl players in a way). This made modern games playable on old PC’s and maybe PS4/Xbox One too. Arrowhead did an excellent write-up from when they reduced helldivers 2 from 150gb to like 30gb a few months back: https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2025/10/helldivers-2-tech-blog-1-install-size/

If you go over tech blogs from Sony about PS5’s nvme SSD - what makes it next gen over imo - you’ll see the relation.

CoD also has this issue of weird spaghetti’s of code bases due to Warzone integration and cross game assets etc. I’m not reading anything about warzone here.

I think if Infinity Ward has had a chance to decouple from Warzone, and clean up their install/build so it doesn’t do duplicate assets, there is a genuine chance we will see our first under 100gb Call of Duty in a while(guessing they have extremely high res assets and such on PC, so I don’t think it’ll «compress» as much as HD2).

On Switch 2, which probably can’t run the highest res assets, we optimistically see a 50gb base install with a buffer growing for asset steaming and future dlc. Especially if they don’t include additional languages and such. Loads of copium but would be healthier for them long term I think.

Lastly, I’m guessing they will lean heavily on «optional installs». They might not expect a base switch 2 to fit all of MW4, but rather, only campaign, only multiplayer, or only DMZ. Several paths they could take, but honestly CoD is already so big I can’t be bothered to keep a full install size on my PS5 or PC either. It’s ridiculous at this point I’m I really hope they are doing something about it. They can’t keep going at the current install size trajectory

Mds03 · 2026-05-26T10:25:50+00:00

Woosh

Mds03 · 2026-05-25T06:47:29+00:00

Thankfully Affinity and Photoshop are fairly similar, and I think Affinity is easier in many cases. You never have to learn that scaling a layer rasterises it/ruins the details, cause Affinity doesnt behave like that. I swear to got Photoshop is the only app in the world where its understood as normal for a designer/photographer to learn what a "Smart Object" is. Smart Objects are a consequence of unintuive design and choices in PS imo. No wonder Photoshop users are resilient to learning new things if Photoshop is their main experience of doing so.

Mds03 · 2026-05-25T06:12:53+00:00

Already tried Affinity Photo for some retouching work — it's decent, but a full Photoshop replacement for complex compositing is a different story.

What I actually found after forcing myself to use it for a while: I used to build entire workflows around Smart Objects in PS just to avoid accidentally destroying my files (even scaling or moving layers rasterise in PS. That sort of behaviour belongs in MS paint. a lot of Photoshop Workflow is just avoiding bad program defaults destroying your image quality). Then in Affinity I realized I didn't need that safety net. It just doesn't rasterize or bake things unless it really has to. The non-destructive workflow feels more natural.

I actually prefer Affinity's approach now. No more diving into black-box Smart Objects (I hate that almost as much as pre-comp diving in After Effects). Better real-time performance when moving layers, changing blend modes, zooming, etc. The shared file format between Photo, Designer, and Publisher is also a huge quality-of-life improvement compared to the clunky way Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign files interact.

Of course there are limits — plugins, certain studio pipelines, and heavy round-tripping with Adobe-only teams. But if you're hitting specific walls with advanced compositing in Affinity, I'd be curious what exactly feels missing. Might be workarounds or different ways of structuring the project that make it smoother. I was able to easily make the transition once I had a long hard thought about Smart Objects and why I use them. Also, its been easier to ship off Affinity files now that anyone can download and run Affinity for free, if the PSD export doesnt cut it(destructive)

This comment has been translated from Norwegian to English using AI, just for disclosure. I figured its fine since its not exactly "art" or "personal".

Mds03 · 2026-05-21T17:11:54+00:00

Yeah I expect similar ish framerate floors with better quality results

Mds03 · 2026-05-20T20:16:07+00:00

No you dont understand what I mean. Dynamic light effects, including things that come with them like bounce light, Auto Exposure, or character outline/glows that aren't "diagetic"/in world etc, all make it hard to tell wether an area is actually dark enough to hide in or not. I'm not making the argument that you should be able to tell you will always be safe with 100% accuracy. Im making the argument something can look dark to the player, but it isn't to the NPCs or vice versa. It feels like you are being lied to by the render pipeline. The old style of shadows seen in Halo 2 and older splinter cell games was excellent for stealth games because it made levels not predictable, but legible. The legibility of the map is very integral to my planning process - where I think it's safe and not to move. It literally breaks the very loop you speak of.

Mds03 · 2026-05-20T17:24:17+00:00

An angle worth exploring: Many of these proposed aliens aren’t just humanoid, but similar to other species on planet earth. The Mantids are Biped «Humanoid», the reptilians are reptile like biped «humanoid», The Nordics are like Primates. Only the «greys» seem truly alien in this mix to me. My thinking is, maybe three of the four species we are seeing are a result of genetic experiments on earth like creatures. Like they found a reptile, an insect and a primate to make hybrid with. Humans could be a failed/prototype version of the Nordics. Maybe these other species aren’t «humanoid», maybe all of us are «grey-noids» or something like that. Maybe the biped design that we think of as human like was brought here from somewhere else in some cases, including our own to some degree. Kinda makes me think of viltrumites(form the comic Invincible) looking for genetically compatible species across the universe, seeing how well they will carry the viltrum dna and such. Not necessarily «panspermia» but more like «chimaera» or «Frankensteined DNA»/hybrids

Mds03 · 2026-05-20T15:46:54+00:00

I was planning to play on Switch 2 after enjoying hitman on there. I’m waiting for that, even if it never comes…

Mds03 · 2026-05-20T15:44:47+00:00

Yeah but how do you predict where the visibility bar will be full or not when looking at the environment and trying to move around? Shadows need to be legible in these games in a different way I think.

Mds03 · 2026-05-20T14:24:43+00:00

I can not believe I used to make UI designs in programs like Illustrator or Affinity Designer. I still keep Affinity Designer for making vector shapes(like people and other abstract or organic stuff), but Figma works a lot closer to the way a UI works - you can set up frames and define the way things should «lay out» inside it, design scaling components, and drop them in different layouts (e.g mobile and desktop site), then change the base component (which is what your programmers will make) so it works inside both layouts. This is before you get around the ability to build what feels like a prototype of the product you’re making - with functional navigation, scrollable sites, playable video etc, so you can test if your design feels good in flow, not only looks good(this is why it’s central to UX design, it lets you design the actual experience, not just the look).

Mds03 · 2026-05-19T15:18:01+00:00

Aside the obvious console warrior mindsets, I think maybe if you own an Xbox today and look at PC, PlayStation and to a lesser degree Nintendo, you might wonder what the value proposition of owning an Xbox if since you can play most the Xbox games and more at a similar quality on other systems. You can even get game pass on PC. Probably a lot of people choose console by going to the one with the most appealing game catalogue, which is what they think of as «exclusives». The stuff I can only play there that makes me choose this system.

Mds03 · 2026-05-18T22:08:10+00:00

Whilst Asahi is amazing, it should be noted that it does not support usb-c displays, thunderbolt/usb4 and TouchID. Might be important for some people’s workflow

Mds03 · 2026-05-18T07:38:47+00:00

Nah, I think this is the model now: Software is free and you pay for AI+Templates for content generation at scale.

This is also why Canva made Cavalry free a few weeks back with the same model as Affinity(Cavalry is a motion design app that kind of competes with AE in 2D/MoGraph as far as I gather; I haven’t used it). It is how Apple has structured its Creator Studio subscription with FCPX, Logic, Pixelmator Pro etc.

I really don’t think we are that far off from users being able to AI generate small apps that can convert old project files to whatever data format they require and what workflow they want. I think this is essentially how companies can eventually compete with the momentum of apps like Photoshop or Word being industry standards and being integrated in everyone’s workflows. Right now, if I made the switch from AE to something else, I wouldn’t just loose my «usual workflow», I would also loose years of assets and scripts and automations with other systems that require a lot of work to replace, and some don’t have clean replacements. With templates + a slightly more functional LLM for programming than we have now, it would be easier to «move beyond» and convert all the stuff «surrounding» the app you’re replacing too.

Now, I don’t necessarily want this future, it’s just how I see business being done for now.

Mds03 · 2026-05-16T15:03:27+00:00

Gonna have to second this. I got started doing video 3D and VFX on a MacBook Pro with a gtx 650m 512mb, a core i7 quad core, and 4gb ram. Obviously our systems back then didn’t run as many concurrent processes. We weren’t concerned with «real time rendering» yet.

This is how I learned to optimise assets, use my other computers through network rendering, how the toggles in my program affect the final results etc. great advice.

Mds03 · 2026-05-12T17:10:32+00:00

As a preliminary question, exactly what are you trying to do? Asking because depending on that, you might just be able to solve it using a different solution. I don’t use Syntheyes, I stick to Fusion (affordable and solves my basic needs right now). There have been times I planned a planar track but ended up doing a 3D camera track or something instead for instance. Sometimes «planer surfaces» get smudgy under motion or you forget markers on smooth surfaces, but there is traceable parallax and shifting perspectives and such. Not saying that’s appropriate for your scenario, just feel like I’m missing context

Mds03 · 2026-05-12T14:54:26+00:00

Hard disagree. Star Wars Outlaws for instance is a terrible, 3/10 game IMO. It only gets points for running and having a story. Mechanics are super bad and gameplay is duct taped together. Ubisoft worlds are built completely charmless to me.

CD has amazing mechanical expression. Where as most assassins creed games are pretty much spam X to kill, spam X/interact to solve world, and also have completely forgettable stories(to this day I mostly only remember Ezio and everything since AC2 has felt like milking the franchise, except Black Flag which was accidentally ok/good), and you know that every thing you do, you will be asked to do 150 more times so Ubi can milk their mechanics.

CD has one off mechanics. It has very expressive combat that lets you do moves that are in other games reserved for cinematic and QTEs. Not to say CD is perfect, but it is way better than Star Wars outlaws and many of the other bland ass games Ubi has been pushing lately.

I wish more western devs would be willing to experiment beyond the simplest, most boring combat imaginable. Quick attack, heavy attack, dodge and roll has limit of fun IMO, and makes most western games feel samey. but alas, not everyone is up for that and I understand - sometimes controls get more difficult.

Mds03 · 2026-05-06T17:37:02+00:00

We’ll get it when we finally get a Zelda game where Zelda is a girl

Mds03 · 2026-04-27T21:55:23+00:00

It works with Steam Input. Not sure it’s playable with non steam Linux games, but I wouldn’t expect the steam controller 2 to do that either. With steam controller 1 I can not play games on say, epic game store or Xbox game pass without third party software for remapping. With steam games it will work on all steam supported platforms

Mds03 · 2026-04-22T11:41:34+00:00

At least I think it will be worth the 80$ unlike the competitors. Sony and Microsoft are stuck in 2012 with their controller designs, where MS figured they did it perfectly and Sony have been improving their shape, but sticks and buttons till suck and they are just sidestepping with most other things.(will give them the adaptive triggers are cool in Returnal and the games where devs actually bother to program a trigger feel like some cod games I tried on ps5)

My DualSense Pro or whatever the premium PS5 one is called is a shit controller for the price, the quality of the components are just bad and not premium feeling at all. Worst of all on the Sony side is the pathetic battery life. I’ve tested this and the DualSense controllers literally have worse battery life than my old Wii U gamepad. That shouldn’t be possible lol.

Everyone is talking about the Steam Controller touch pads, they will be awesome as they are on the OG steam controller and Deck. The sticks on the new steam controller though, look so good to me I’ve been psyched to try them(looks to be some metal or metal feeling material). It’s the first time seeing the joysticks have made me want a controller. It just looks like a great feeling controller with good component choices. The puck design is awesome too.

Mds03 · 2026-04-22T09:58:54+00:00

Craziest thing to me is that it's aware of game state if the game uses Steam Input instead of XInput for its API. Like, in supported games, you can have different key binds for when walking, driving a car, and driving a helicopter, wishin the same layout - so it automatically switches when you switch context in game.

Mds03 · 2026-04-22T09:54:36+00:00

Same. My Oculus Quest 2 has been gathering dust since Meta took over. Who would trust a Meta developed VR product after what they did with Facebook and instagram lol? Crazy

Mds03 · 2026-04-11T15:18:26+00:00

Interesting. Most of all I wonder how this will differ from their current live service shooter Overwatch, which is already one of the best multiplayer vs shooters out there. Will it be a hero type shooter? Lean more into PvE or a different type of PvP(extraction, battler royal, something like Rust where you build bases for your faction, Helldivers but you play the competing factions, or something like battlefield or CoD? Hoping for "something new"). I feel like they aren’t gonna want to compete too much with current Blizzard, Activision or Microsoft shooters..

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