Maximum PC

IF THERE’S ONE THING you can rely on in technology, it’s the ever-onward march to miniaturize anything with a power button. Looking at Nvidia’s 40-series graphics card range, you’d think Jensen Huang had missed the memo. But along come the 50-series cards, and compared to the chunky 40-series, they’re positively titchy. This can mean only one thing—it’s small form factor build season here at Maximum We’re taking a hammer to the laws of physics to squeeze a meaty, full-fat RTX 5080 GPU into a case the size of a box of cereal in our cover build (page 16). We’re talking about a console-conquering micro PC that could sit on your desk without scrimping on performance or cooling. Our guide will help you pick all the components, from the case through…

AMD HAS officially announced the RX 9000 series, starting with the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. The series and RDNA4 architecture were partially revealed at CES 2025 during AMD’s keynote address. However the company didn’t reveal in-depth technical information, partly due to the announcement taking place before Nvidia’s address concerning its GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. The specifications and pricing for the RX 9000 series were the subject of rumors and leaks, specifically that AMD had delayed its rollout. The company has now ended all speculation by releasing full technical specifications for both GPUs, along with its own performance benchmarks. Both cards feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit interface, running at 20 Gbps. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT has 64 compute units, while the RX 9070…

IN A DEPARTURE from its previous zero-tolerance policy towards cheating, Epic Games has announced that it will offer a ‘second chance’ to certain Fortnite players. From April onward, cheating will be punished with a one-year matchmaking ban. Epic Games states that this will allow people ‘to learn from their mistakes’, although those who cheat a second time will be banned for life. This new policy will also be retrospective, so players who have been subject to a lifetime ban for over one year will have their access to Fortnite restored. The rules haven’t changed for players who have sold cheats or engaged in other behaviors that have resulted in a lifetime ban previously. Such accounts will still be barred permanently.…

OPENAI HAS released a ‘research preview’ of its flagship language model, which it describes as its ‘largest and best for chat yet’. Anyone willing to pay $200 per month for a ‘Chat Pro’ subscription can try out version 4.5 today. This ‘non-reasoning’ model, known internally as ‘Orion’, is designed to better interpret user intent and have a higher virtual ‘EQ’ when it comes to interactions. Nevertheless, the company has emphasised that GPT-4.5 is not one of its cutting-edge ‘frontier’ models. Even so, it claims that the LLM hallucinates less than GPT-4o, and is better at managing conversations. OpenAI also tested GPT-4.5 using its ‘SimpleQA’ knowledge quiz. The model scored 62.5 percent. This compares well with GPT-4o (38.6 percent) and o3-mini (15 percent). CEO Sam Altman tweeted that free tier users…

TRIUMPHS SIGNAL THREATENS TO LEAVE SWEDEN They will not cooperate with proposals by the government for backdoor encryption products. GTA V FOR PC UPDATES The Enhanced edition adds support for upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 2 and AMD FSR1/FSR3. RAZER RELEASES MINECRAFT ACCESSORIES The gaming brand is ‘Creepin’ it real’ with a Minecraft edition gaming mouse and headset. TRAGEDIES PASSWORDS STOLEN Troy Hunt, the owner of ‘Have I Been Pwned?’, has confirmed that the ‘ALIEN TXTBASE’ contains stolen credentials. UBLOCK ORIGIN DEAD ‘uBlock Lite’ lives on in Chrome, and uBlock Origin works in non Chromium-based browsers. APPLE DISABLES ICLOUD ENCRYPTION IN UK Apple has disabled the service for UK users rather than comply with the government.…

MICROSOFT’S FEBRUARY 2025 preview cumulative update (KB5052093) for Windows 11 24H2 comes with a range of bug fixes, enhancements, and features. The update (OS Build 26100.3323) introduces a PC Game Pass referral card. This can be accessed by users with a connected Microsoft account by opening the Windows settings home page. Microsoft originally introduced Game Pass for PC in 2019. Users pay a monthly subscription to access hundreds of games. Other perks include free trials of certain titles, as well as EA Play Membership. There are also new functions for ‘Narrator’ scan mode. Users can press ‘n’ to automatically skip to the text after a link. The comma and period keys can also be used to jump to the start and end of items respectively. Multiple apps can now access the…