Acer revealed two small-form-factor desktops aimed at AI workloads. The SFF RTX Spark uses NVIDIA's new RTX Spark superchip, offering up to a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU, a 20-core Grace CPU, and 128GB of memory, though pricing and availability remain undisclosed. The Veriton RI110 AI Mini Workstation runs on an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor with an Arc B390 GPU, supports agentic AI tools, joins Microsoft's Copilot+ PC lineup, and is slated for North American release in late 2026.
Pearl Abyss has launched a free 20-minute playable demo of Crimson Desert that runs entirely through Twitch's cloud streaming, requiring no download or installation. The demo works on any device with a web browser, though notably not on current game consoles. It coincides with the rollout of Crimson Desert Enhanced, a major free update released last week.
AI training-data startup AfterQuery has reportedly raised new funding valuing it at $3.2 billion, just five months after its $30 million Series A priced it at $300 million. Y Combinator partner Gustaf Alströmer called it the fastest launch-to-unicorn run in the accelerator's history, achieved by founders who are just 22 and 23 years old.
Gaming monitor buyers are advised to stick with 4K (3840x2160) rather than jump to 5K (5120x2880) displays, since 5K's extra pixel density mainly benefits photo and video professionals rather than gamers. Achieving smooth 4K gaming still requires powerful GPUs like Nvidia's RTX 4070 or AMD's RX 9070 XT, with top-tier cards such as the RTX 5080 or 5090 needed for ray-traced titles at native resolution with high frame rates. Upscaling tools like DLSS and FSR help lower-end systems approximate native 4K quality without the full performance cost.
SB Energy, a data center infrastructure company backed by SoftBank, Nvidia and OpenAI, has filed for an initial public offering with the SEC. The filing discloses net losses of about $3.2 billion for the first half of 2026 against roughly $139 million in revenue, mostly from its legacy energy business, while none of its planned AI data centers are yet operational.
GoKawiil's summer analysis of Hugging Face data shows public model repositories rose from 2.43M to 2.96M between January and August 2026, with datasets and Spaces also expanding sharply. Despite that growth, download activity remains concentrated in a tiny fraction of repositories, and Chinese labs including Moonshot, MiniMax, Xiaomi and Z.ai are releasing massive models, some exceeding a trillion parameters, without first publishing smaller versions.
NVIDIA is launching DLSS 5, its latest AI upscaling technology, alongside NBA 2K27 on September 3. Early demos from Resident Evil: Requiem and Starfield drew heavy criticism for producing unnatural, over-processed character models, though NBA 2K27's implementation reportedly applies the effect more subtly with improved shadows and texture depth. The feature is exclusive to NVIDIA's RTX 50-series graphics cards.
Nvidia confirmed DLSS 5 will officially launch this week, with NBA 2K27 as its sole debut title, ahead of a wider rollout to other games. Nvidia's own 4K benchmarks show only the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, using 6X Multi Frame Generation plus DLSS Performance mode, with underlying render rates of roughly 39 and 62 FPS before frame generation inflates the final numbers to 233 and 370 FPS.
Logistics firm OneRail has launched OmniStar, a platform built with Nvidia's AI software that helps retailers quickly select the most efficient delivery option for each order. The company says the tool cuts routing decision time from about 20 minutes to roughly two and a half minutes by analyzing OneRail's proprietary delivery data at scale.
Nvidia's RTX 5090, originally launched at $1,999, is now selling for around $5,090 even in non-special-edition versions like the Asus TUF Gaming OC. Prices have jumped 20% in the past month and 41% over six months, putting the card 145% above its original MSRP. Even pricier variants exist, including the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Edition 20 listed at $5,740.
An unfinished version of Nvidia's upcoming DLSS 5 feature, already nicknamed 'slop tracing' by critics, leaked online and modders tested it on classic games like Halo: Combat Evolved. The results showed blotchy, over-processed visuals and uncanny hyperrealistic faces that stripped away the games' original look, and one tester reported it also sharply reduced frame rates when tried on Final Fantasy.
Nvidia is re-launching its DLSS 5 neural rendering technology after early demos, including a widely mocked look at Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft, drew accusations of 'AI slop.' The company now frames DLSS 5 as a tool that preserves developers' artistic intent while giving them control, and hands-on testing suggests it functions as a real-time image filter that adjusts lighting, shadow and detail rather than altering shapes or inventing objects.
GoKawiil