I've been testing Dawnwalker for the past week or so, with a few different setups, and in those forests of Carpathia you're going to either need some more beefy hardware to hit Rebel Wolves' proposed frame rate targets or compromise on those graphics settings.

Which is where I'm coming in here, aiming to help you get the highest frame rate out of your rig without sacrificing the actual look of the game.

And, actually The Blood of Dawnwalker does pretty well even down at the lower end of the graphics settings, still looking relatively crisp and with a detailed open world for you to explore to your vampyric heart's content.

As a representative system, I've picked out Rebel Wolves' mid-range spec, the one designed to net you 60 fps at 1440p. That's an Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card, with an eight-core AMD CPU at its heart, of which I've selected the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X. This should theoretically be enough to get you that 60 fps target using the High preset in the games.

But that is very much going to depend on where you are. Right from the outset you will find yourself running around the dense forests, either with a sword in your hand or with fangs and claws at the ready. And those forests immediately tank your frame rates.

I've picked a repeatable run in Briar Sloughs, through the forest, out into the open and then back in for a scrap with a big ol' slimy monster. And you are lucky to be hitting an average 50 fps at 1440p with High settings even with DLSS set to Balanced.

Interestingly, dropping that DLSS setting down to Performance—essentially running the game at 720p—will only net you another 6 fps on average. And although Nvidia has gotten pretty good with the stability of its Performance and Ultra Performance modes, there's still a lot of noise around the foliage in this game. And there's a lot of that.

I've run the game on AMD GPUs, too, and even with FSR 4 enabled in the game I've found the Ultra Performance mode to be even more noisy, with an obvious shimmer in rock textures, too. That initially made me think I was looking at an FSR 3 implementation. You also get a fair bit of fringing around the main character as you're travelling around the gameworld, even with DLSS set to relatively high levels.

Which settings to tweak?

High preset vs. custom

Image comparison of the 'High' preset against our own custom settings.

High preset

Custom preset

So, what settings should you compromise on to actually be able to hit that 60 fps standard? I've found four settings that combined will give you a decent chunk of extra performance back without harming the visual fidelity too much. These are the same settings I've had to compromise in order to get good 4K/60 performance at (more or less) the Ultra preset on Rebel Wolves' recommended graphics card, so they do scale.

Knocking each of Shadow, Light, Foliage, and Detail Quality down a notch to Medium I managed to hit 57 fps on average during my run, but taking Shadow Quality back to Low finally got me to a 62 fps average. Shadows is a pretty typical resource hog for an Unreal Engine 5 game, and when there are this many shadows owing to the level of foliage detail in the forests, that's always going to have an impact on your frame rate.

• Shadow Quality - Low
• Light Quality - Medium
• Foliage Quality - Medium
• Detail Quality - Medium

Note: in the video below the OBS capture is having an impact on the overall frame rate for all three runs, making the average lower than it would otherwise be.

Chasing 60 fps at High preset

I've created a 90 second repeatable loop in the Briar Sloughs area of the map to test different presets.

2560 x 1440

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Custom preset | DLSS Balanced

62

46

High preset | DLSS Balanced

50

35

High Preset | DLSS Performance

56

37

020406080

2560 x 1440 Data

Product	Value
Custom preset | DLSS Balanced	62 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
High preset | DLSS Balanced	50 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
High Preset | DLSS Performance	56 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS

But even at low settings, the shadows still look pretty decent, especially when you're hackin' and slashin' around at pace. They do have a tendency to pop-in a little more noticeably during motion compared to the higher shadow settings, but I didn't find it too distracting during actual gameplay.

You do get less 'stuff' on the forest floors by cutting the Foliage quality back, but I kinda don't see that as a massive miss. Especially as for a large part what you're losing is the kinda scattered hay aesthetic.

It must be said, however, that these numbers are purely an average and there will still be frame drops below the 60 fps mark. I have another benchmark run I've been testing with that's even more punishing, which is a multi-character fight at night, and even with these settings pared back that test drops the average frame rate down to just 53 fps.

So what's a mid-range GPU owner to do?

Frame Generation

Yes, right before launch, Rebel Wolves has added an experimental Frame Generation setting to the game. Covering both AMD and Nvidia implementations, you are able to use 2x Frame Gen to help boost the smoothness of your game. I almost wrote 'performance' there and had to catch myself.

The interpolated frames of either FSR or DLSS Frame Gen cannot really be called extra performance; they are simply smoothing out your experience to make a lower frame rate feel far more comfortable.

But while it's experimental, I'd say it's definitely worth giving it a go if your system is capable. Any modern AMD or Nvidia card from the last two generations will deliver a decent Frame Gen experience, and the RTX 4060 performs admirably. Generally I'd want a base 60 fps for Frame Gen to feel good in-game, but the 50 fps average I've got in the High preset with DLSS Balanced is good enough here.

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Chasing 60 fps at 1440p

Using the experimental Frame Generation setting breezes past the 60 fps target.

The Blood of Dawnwalker (1440p High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Custom preset | DLSS Balanced

62

46

High preset | DLSS Balanced | FG x2

73

42

020406080

The Blood of Dawnwalker (1440p High) Data

Product	Value
Custom preset | DLSS Balanced	62 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
High preset | DLSS Balanced | FG x2	73 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Chasing 60 fps at 1440p

Added latency is the curse of Frame Generation, but adding only 4 ms on top for the extra smoothness is a worthwhile tradeoff.

The Blood of Dawnwalker

Custom preset | DLSS Balanced

68

High preset | DLSS Balanced | FG x2

72

020406080

PC Latency (ms)

The Blood of Dawnwalker Data

Product	Value
Custom preset | DLSS Balanced	68
High preset | DLSS Balanced | FG x2	72

Even though it is 2x Frame Gen, you are not, however, doubling your effective frame rate. With the feature enabled I have a jump from that 50 fps mark to 73 fps on average.

And, visually, it's still pretty solid. I mentioned earlier that there is a level of fringing around the main character no matter what setting you're using, but it did feel more obvious when running with Frame Gen enabled. There is also some artifacting when you quickly pan the camera around in highly detailed scenes, but mostly only when you're looking for it.

Generally the most punishing thing for Frame Generation is the added PC latency you get from enabling the feature, but I've only measured an extra 4 ms of PCL from turning it on with the RTX 4060. And the extra smoothness you get, alongside a higher graphical preset, is absolutely worth that trade off.

I will admit, I'm a pretty comfortable advocate for Frame Generation, though with Dawnwalker I'd maybe suggest that if you're getting 60 fps+ without it that for clarity alone I think I'd leave it off. But, if I'm talking about getting that extra little bit of smoothness from an RTX 4060, I would absolutely have that feature enabled.

Does that mean OpenAI is packing it in, and going home? Well, no. The AI infrastructure buildout is continuing in earnest, with OpenAI planning to invest another $50 million this year alone on collecting compute. Sachin Katti, the co-lead on OpenAI's compute strategy told Time that the company's earlier investments now appear "very prescient," going on to add, "We are still short of compute. If anything, we should have bought a lot more."

If OpenAI's machine-learning products don't bring in the revenue the company would like, renting out its compute capacity to other parties is another option. Altman told Time, "I think we are going to be able to use all of the compute very profitably that we are planning to build."

Intent on investing millions more either way, it makes me wonder where the company will find the space to build—not just in terms of logistics, but also in terms of 'Who would want an AI data centre next door?' As we've previously covered, data centres don't always make great neighbours, with Wisconsin residents filing a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft earlier this year, alleging 'unreasonable and excessive noise'.

For another example from last year, Elon Musk's Colossus data centre was at the centre of an environmental row over air quality in South Memphis. The impact of data centres on nearby communities is by no means the only reason fuelling negative sentiments towards AI, but tangible knock-on effects like rising power costs are hard to ignore. There are also bigger picture environmental effects to consider, with one report suggesting gas power projects for just 11 US data centre projects could emit more greenhouse gases than entire countries.

The class of 2026 is arguably not looking forward to the world that may follow; an ex-Google CEO was loudly booed by a stadium full of students after talking about AI, while another university graduate speaker was booed for saying AI 'is the next industrial revolution.' As for games, one data analyst found that Steam games which disclosed the use of AI got 53% fewer reviews overall, and those they do get tend to generally be more negative too. Clearly, many people hate data centres—and I'd say that's for good reason too.

According to the latest numbers from SteamDB that breaks down to 8,964 Steam Deck Verified games and 21,083 games considered 'playable' on the handheld (via Gaming On Linux). That's a big jump from the 3,000 games either Verified or Playable back in May 2022.

'Verified' means your game of choice should work great on the Steam Deck from first boot, whereas 'Playable' games require either some finagling or adjustments for the best experience. Steam Deck verification is also joined by similar compatibility checks for the Steam Machine, the soon-to-be-released Steam Frame, and SteamOS more broadly. I make the whole thing sound straightforward, but it's worth noting that the Steam Deck's full verification criteria can present developers with confusing hoops to jump through.

One more thing to note: a game with neither badge doesn't necessarily mean it won't run on the Steam Deck at all. For just one example, Dragon Age: Origins is officially 'Unsupported,' but our Shaun says it runs incredibly on Valve's handheld. Granted, that's a 17-year-old game, but I think the point of 'Unsupported doesn't always mean a no-go on the Steam Deck' still stands. The thing you might want to be more wary of is how the kernel-level anti-cheat systems often used in competitive games don't play well with the handheld's Linux-based SteamOS.

And it doesn't mean games will always be playable on the Steam Deck. Ubisoft recently announced that it is "removing For Honor from the Linux platform to ensure a safer environment for our players as we cannot meaningfully deploy protection on this platform." Which means no third-person melee fun for you on Steam Deck, so from September 10 there will be one less game playable on Steam Deck.

Anyway, for a bit more context, SteamDB also says well over 130,000 games total have been released on Steam to date. SteamDB's figures suggest there were half as many games on Steam back in 2022. With the platform having grown so significantly in just the last four years, the days of 10% of all Steam games enjoying official Steam Deck compatibility feel so long ago.

During the announcement, head of product Matt McGowan said that Alienware were aiming to offer "more price points people can actually reach," though that pricing promise isn't the only thing that piqued my interest.

First, something for the esports sickos: the AW2527HX. Head of product Matt McGowan pitches this as Alienware's "fastest monitor ever," featuring a 560 Hz refresh rate and a 0.03 ms response time.

Co-designed with 4-peat World of Warcraft Race to World First champions Team Liquid, McGowan said that "Every detail [of this OLED has been] informed by how pros actually set-up and compete." Pricing and release details for the AW2527HX OLED will be announced in early 2027.

Alienware isn't the only company who has set its sights on the competitive scene recently. Last month, Asus announced that the ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace would be the official monitor for PGL CS2 Major Singapore 2026 later this year. Odds are, Alienware is hoping for a similarly lucrative slice of the tournament pie. But it's worth noting that the Asus OLED has a very slightly faster response time of 0.02 ms and a higher refresh rate of 720 Hz. Could Alienware be attempting to compete on price point instead? We'll find out next year.

Some of the AW2527HX's tournament-friendly features include a built-in headset hanger, plus a matte coating on the screen to minimise glare. On top of that, esports fiends can look forward to a screen with brightness to write home about thanks to Penta-tandem OLED tech. RGB Stripe subpixels will keep text sharp and offer overall improved image clarity too.

Alienware's second OLED, the AW3226Q, is much less mysterious. For a start, I can already tell you it's a 32-inch 4K OLED that will arrive this Autumn, and will set you back about $699. That's more than twice the price of our top pick for the best budget OLED, the AW2726DM, which is also from Alienware but only costs $350. That said, this cheaper option doesn't have the tandem OLED tech. The MSI MPG 322UR X24 that our Jeremy recently rated is a '5-layer tandem' QD-OLED (so that's Samsung's tech, not LG's) but will set you back over a grand from Newegg. With that comparison in mind, $699 is a good price for that level of brightness on the Alienware.

But what else is the AW3226Q offering for the money? Well, 1,000 nits of peak brightness plus Tandem OLED tech, though it may turn out to be slightly less bright than Alienware's esports monitor. This gaming OLED also has a lower refresh rate of 160 Hz, but the same 0.03 response time plus the same clarity of image offered by RGB Stripe subpixels. Overall, it's a less specialised bit of kit, with McGowan saying it will be "Stunning for gaming and equally impressive for everyday use." Well, us lot on the hardware team will be the judge of that.

That's due to the World Robot Humanoid Games in Beijing, a yearly event where robots compete in sporting events like running, boxing, jumping, weight-lifting, and even the tug of war. As we've seen in previous months, robots are prone to falling over and freaking out when they're doing stuff like moonwalking or, you know, standing perfectly still.

Getting robots to race at speeds faster than Usain Bolt? There are gonna be some catastrophic fails. Let's look at our favorite robot moments from August.

1. Failympics

There's no better place to start than with this highlight reel of fails from the World Robot Humanoid Games compiled by news.com.au. It's four glorious minutes of robots keeling over, smashing into each other, falling to pieces, shuddering, juddering, tripping, malfunctioning, sparking, burning, charging into walls, falling over tables, and being carted away on stretchers. Enjoy.

Funny stuff, but it's also worth noting there were several situations in that compilation where a human being could have been injured. Two running robots abruptly shot sparks from their hips, one actually caught fire, a long-jump robot staggered directly at a bystander who had to leap over a barrier to avoid getting bodied, and a judge at a weight-lifting competition almost had a table knocked over onto her. No need for Skynet—these mini-terminators are already on the brink of wiping us out just by malfunctioning.

2. Botcrop

Just imagine giving a robot something sharp and sitting there while it swings it around your head. That's the situation with this AI-powered robotic barber:

On the plus side, that looks like maybe the worst haircut I've ever seen, so human hairstylists don't need to worry about being replaced quite yet. And no smock? My guy is just wearing a hoodie that's getting full of his itchy hair clippings while he sits there having his head debased. I'm not seeing evidence of intelligence, artificial or human, anywhere in that clip.

3. More Failympics

Robots don't even need to be actively competing in the World Robot Humanoid Games to throw a major fit. Here's one having a huge tantrum on the floor at the event, and its handlers can't even stop it because (apparently) their control device died.

Time to amend Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics to add a fourth: A robot must not kick someone to death just because it fell on its ass and it can't get back up.

4. Frickin' laserbeams

Sometimes I'll spot something robo-related and have to grudgingly admit it looks pretty cool, actually, and this is one of those moments. In fact, I'd pay good money for this tech that spots mosquitos using LiDAR and then annihilates them with lasers:

I imagine having a bunch of purple laser beams blasting away in your yard all night would annoy the neighbors and do god knows what to the local wildlife—but I don't care. I hate mosquitos. I'm one of those people who is feasted on constantly by those tiny ravenous monsters and I want them all to die, and burning them from the air with deathlasers is rad.

5. Still even more Failympics

I just can't stop with carnage from the World Robot Humanoid Games. This is the greatest single demonstration that robots are goofy AF. Here's a bunch more clips of robots eating it at the event, and make sure you turn up the volume for the soundtrack.

Apparently, this is a known issue in Windows 11 and Windows 10. Microsoft details the issue, writing, "Notifications might appear stating that 'Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off,' even though the antivirus is functioning correctly and all settings show it as active. These notifications can appear when Windows starts and intermittently afterward."

Worse still, these fibbing notifs can "persist even if notification settings are turned off." But worse than that, the issue can be observed in "any version of Windows or Windows Server with Microsoft Defender Antivirus running with the latest Defender updates."

Before you ask, that is a lot of Windows 11 and Windows 10 users potentially affected. Potentially affected platforms include Windows 11, version 26H1, version 25H2, as well as version 24H2, and range all the way back to ye olde Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2016. Microsoft has a full list here of operating systems that can encounter the bug. The company is currently working on a fix, though there's no word yet on when this will be available.

For now, it's annoying at best and kind of anxiety-inducing at worst, though arguably not quite as bad as the Windows 11 update that borked a bunch of multiplayer games last month. That's not a great look considering Microsoft said earlier this year it wanted to make Windows 11 "better."

To be fair, the work hasn't been all back steps; for instance, fresh features like the 'low latency profile' speeding up the OS, and our Jacob reckons recent changes to the Windows 11 Start menu also look promising. Here's hoping Microsoft fixes that Defender notification bug sooner rather than later too.

I've made my feelings about Micro-OLED displays pretty clear: these tiny screens are the future of high-end virtual reality. They're stunning; with deep blacks, a stunning range of colours, and none of the usual pitfalls of non-OLED displays. The Pimax Dream Air has two of them, hidden away beneath a compact pancake lens system. It's the only VR headset I've worn as of late that made me say "wow" out loud—I haven't done that since, well, probably the first time I wore a VR headset.

The Dream Air is tiny, too. It more closely resembles a pair of ski goggles than the company's other VR headset, the Crystal Super, which looks more like a prop from an '80s sci-fi movie than a modern-day wearable. Both are impressive in their own way—my first time experiencing Micro-OLED was in the Crystal Super—but the Dream Air's diminutive size and light build make it far more comfortable to wear over long periods.

So, it's the best VR headset, right? I wish it were that clear cut. I've not tried anything that gets close to the Dream Air in terms of visuals, size, and comfort; however, it lacks finesse in tracking. The model I've been testing uses Pimax's own inside-out tracking technology called SLAM, and whether it's this or the run-of-the-mill controllers that Pimax bundles with all its headsets, it's not up to the job as well as others. I wish that weren't such a dampener on the whole thing, but it really is the Achilles' heel of the Dream Air as it stands today.

Not every VR game requires controllers. Flight sims, racing sims, and anything with immersive, non-standard controls are best suited to the Dream Air. Though these games often come with their own set of challenges to deal with. While the Dream Air doesn't have the widest field of view (FOV) for these sorts of experiences, it has something even better, in my opinion. So, let's get into the details.

Pimax Dream Air - Features

The Pimax Dream Air has an enviable specs sheet. The stuff one could only dream of when first trying on a HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.

Let's start with the optics. It comes with twin 1.35-inch Sony Micro-OLED panels with pancake lenses over top. Pimax calls these 'ConcaveView'; the first of three lenses making up the pancake optics has a deep, recessed design, as if someone pressed a golf ball into the glass just as it was out of the kiln. Two further lenses together adding up to a 110-degree horizontal FOV.

That's the same FOV as the Crystal Super Micro-OLED, using the exact same optics in a much larger optical engine such as the Quest 3, and Steam Frame. With a 140-degree FOV, the Crystal Super QLED has it beat (Ultrawide version), but I prefer the Dream Air for one key reason.

Binocular overlap. This is the portion of a frame that is displayed across both screens in a VR headset. It's noted as a percentage: the higher this percentage, the more of a frame is shared by both screens, and the easier it is for your brain to blend the two images into one. After all, humans have stereo vision, and the brain is constantly trying to match up two slightly differing views of the world into one complete image. It's also very important in how comfortable and convincing a virtual reality experience is.

It varies person to person, but generally, a higher binocular overlap is best. It's a big deal for me, anyways, which is why I'm more than happy with the Dream Air. It has an excellent binocular overlap of 86%, far in excess of something like the Quest 3, which only comes in at 69%. That headset has a notably low binocular overlap, which I personally find leads to more eye strain and me reaching for my ever-so-slightly corrective glasses.

I can't wear my glasses with the Dream Air, as it doesn't offer much wiggle room for the frames, but I needn't worry. I've not found any need for them, even over longer periods of play, and I chalk that up to its high binocular overlap.

Here are the figures from my most recent round of testing in 'What is my Field of View?', or as it's more commonly known, WimFov.

• Dream Air - 86%
• Dream Air (Wide FOV mode) - 77%
• Crystal Super QLED (50 PPD) - 77%
• Crystal Super Micro-OLED - 86%
• Quest 3 - 69%

At a resolution of 7680 x 3552 (each eye at 3840 x 3552), the twin Micro-OLED displays are razor sharp. Using the Pimax Play software, these can be configured to run at either 90 Hz or 72 Hz, with the latter being a benefit if you're lacking suitably powerful silicon. This headset is very demanding and will require a high-end graphics card at its native resolution.

There's also eye tracking built into the Dream Air. This can also be configured in the Pimax Play application. It feels snappy and responsive in that tool, and though the uses can be a little limited, depending on what games you play, it is also a must-have for some titles; games like DSC, for instance, which support Quad Views rendering for the best performance and visuals with eye tracking. Similarly, it's pretty useful if you can figure out Pimax's own in-house center rendering tool, which runs when it's selected as the OpenXR runtime. That can be a bit tricky to sort game-to-game, in my opinion, but it is an option if you're willing to tinker.

The Dream Air tracks your movements through either inside-out or Lighthouse tracking, depending on which version you buy. I have the inside-out version here for review, what Pimax boisterously calls the SLAM version, which includes four cameras; each one covering a quadrant of the area in front, below, and above the headset. This version also reportedly supports hand tracking, though I'm yet to figure out how to turn it on.

Two controllers are included in the box. These are one and the same with the controllers included with the Crystal Super, and as such are pretty mediocre. They're comfortable enough, though they use a design that's more common among older VR headsets with a halo around the hand. They're rechargeable using USB Type-C, at least, which saves on buying AA batteries like the rest of them.

There are two speakers nestled into either side of the strap, in a fashion similar to the Quest lineup. They're pretty decent, which is a relief, as they're all you're gonna get without running another cable from your PC—there's no 3.5 mm jack on the headset. Speaking of cables, the device has one tethered to both sides of the headset, for better balancing, that combines into a roughly four-metre long flexible and not-too-chunky cable into a breakout box. The breakout box requires a USB 3.0 and DisplayPort connection from your PC, and power from a supplied adapter.

Pimax Dream Air - Optics

The Dream Air has the best optics of any headset I've used. It's truly next level. A potent combination of contrast, colour, and clarity that only Micro-OLED can so far deliver.

Every object is rendered in absurdly crisp detail within the Dream Air. Even an instructional pop-up looks good. They're very readable, too, as text rendering is greatly improved between this and older, cheaper headsets. I've been replaying Half-Life: Alyx—still the best game you can play with a VR headset—and the difference between the Dream Air and a Quest 3 is startling. Namely in how vibrant and immersive the former feels.

The Quest 3 appears washed out, lacking clarity, and jittery. The Dream Air feels like you're experiencing the game as the developers intended; like seeing the game world in full detail, rather than a facsimile. I personally feel a lot closer to the action when the quality has been improved by so much. In darker environments, the individually-lit pixels of the Micro-OLED produce incredibly atmospheric contrast. It's really creepy when you're hunting for headcrabs under shelves and around corners.

There's a pretty extreme difference in price between the Dream Air and Quest 3, so how about something more its own speed? The Pimax Crystal Super with a couple of QLED displays certainly comes closer to the Dream Air due to its equally high resolution and impressive optics. Yet it's the depth of colour and contrast that places the Micro-OLED on a rung above.

I generally find pancake lenses have a little more visible glare compared to more traditional aspheric lenses, and that's certainly true of the Dream Air. It's noticeable in the TestHMD test environment; less so while actually playing games, but it is definitely present either way. Though it's not quite as bad as the Quest 3 in this regard.

There's no visible aliasing due to the sheer number of pixels on the screen, nor does the screen door effect raise its ugly head. The teeny tiny pixels on the teeny tiny 1.3-inch Micro-OLED displays see to that. They are, after all, manufactured directly onto silicon substrates, achieving pixel density often in the thousands, where traditional screens are only in the hundreds. The Sony ECX344A used here has a pixel-per-inch (PPI) of 3,389. A standard 27-inch 4K monitor has one of just 163.

That also translates into a high pixel per degree (PPD) of over 50. With a field of view within the same sort of range as other high-end VR headsets, at around 110 degrees, it's not alone at the top of the pile; however, it is an excellent rating. Much higher than a Quest 3 or the upcoming Steam Frame.

The FOV, at around 110 degrees, isn't breaking any records. That's pretty standard for a VR headset today, and I measured the effective FOV with the provided facemask and IPD at 64 to be more like 90 degrees horizontal (88 vertical). There is a wide FOV mode in the Pimax Play advance settings, which extends that to around 98 degrees, closer to the given rating; however, it drops binocular overlap from an excellent 86% to 77%. It's also not anywhere close to the Crystal Super QLED Ultrawide at 140 HFOV, but that's pretty wild.

The biggest downside to all of this? The hardware required to run it all. With over 27 million pixels to deal with, you'd better have a very high-end and modern graphics card in your gaming PC. Even an RTX 5080 can struggle in my experience, and I've had to roll out render scaling in the Pimax Play application, sharpening, and even upscaling to try to ease the performance hit with some demanding titles. So, if you think the VR headset is already too expensive, think again; the PC required to run it is much, much more.

Pimax Dream Air - Controllers and tracking

A reality check for any potential buyer: The controllers included with the Dream Air aren't great, with consistently inconsistent tracking. Or perhaps it's the SLAM tracking. Either way, the interplay between the controllers and headset is a little clunky.

There are two controllers included with the Dream Air. They're identical to what's included with the Crystal Super, and include a halo around the top, four buttons, one trigger, one grip button, and a thumbstick on either side. They're rechargeable via a USB Type-C on the underside, and come with fairly standard wrist straps with an adjustable size. Due to the halo around the top, I have smacked the two controllers together a few times, as is tradition with this sort of design, but that's not a huge issue. What does wear thin after a while, however, is the tracking.

Between these controllers and the four tracking cameras on the headset, the tracking is inconsistent. It's not game-breaking but it does remind me of much older VR headsets in terms of accuracy and dexterity.

The issue is present most of all at the extremes of human movement, ie, trying to raise my hands above my head or down at my waist. Climbing a cliff in Blade and Sorcery turned into an exercise in mental resilience, as my hands would often get stuck or feel unresponsive, jittering or wobbling to and fro, as I tried to make my ascent and slipping back down the hill like Bennett Foddy. It's quite realistic, in a way, as my own vertigo would cause me similar jitters in real life, but as a VR experience, it's quite frustrating.

Reaching toward holsters located at your waist in other VR titles also proves a tricky scenario for the Dream Air. Any action that requires the controllers moving close to your body seems to put the tracking at a disadvantage. As it stands, I prefer the Quest 3 for games that require any level of dexterity in controls.

Case in point, I've been on a mission to defeat a cat in the game Eleven Table Tennis. My AI opponent, a cat who stares blankly at me as it serves and returns with laser-guided precision, is only set to the second difficult level, but I'm yet to defeat it. Though this hasn't been helped by the Dream Air. I can barely even serve with the Dream Air, due to both an inability to toss the ball into the air to begin my serve with any accuracy, or return the ball with a controlled speed. The Dream Air's controllers seem unable to judge the speed and inertia to a required accuracy. Meanwhile, I can serve and genuinely compete with (but not beat) the smug cat while wearing the Quest 3.

Room-scale boundaries also need to be set-up pretty much every time you put down and pick up the Dream Air. It tends to 'lose' its place in the real world once it's down on the ground, and while the process to make a new one is fairly slick, it's a real frustration when you have to do it over and over again during play.

Ideally, you'd use the Pimax Dream Air with a sim rig, which would cut a lot of the hassle out of using its insufficient tracking. Though I've been attempting to play a few sim racing games in VR over the past week, and I've been reminded just how convoluted and messy trying to get my sim racing wheel, pedals, and shifter working in a game alongside VR. That's not on Pimax; it's just an issue seemingly shared by many racing games over the years. Sim racers may prefer a headset with a wider FOV, anyways.

Pimax Dream Air - Ergonomics

The Dream Air has a dual-adjustable headband, but lacks any over-the-head strap for added support. Usually, I'd say that's a big miss, but when you get down to this sort of weight class for a VR headset, it doesn't make a difference. This thing is hella comfy.

The Dream Air weighs just 280 grams. That's on my own scales, with the cable still connected, but not taking the weight of the entire 4-metre cable as well. Pimax has it listed as sub-170 grams without the cable connected. Comparing its weight to others on my scales and it's clear nothing else comes close:

• Dream Air: 280 g
• Quest 3: 437 g
• Quest 3S: 454 g
• Crystal OLED: 848 g
• Crystal 50 PPD: 837 g
• Sony PS VR2: 499 g

Some of these VR headsets have their own system-on-chip and play games without a PC, but even compared to Pimax's own Crystal Super Micro-OLED, using the same optics as the Dream Air, the weight savings are astounding.

I can wear the Dream Air for hours and not feel the strain. It moves around the least on my face of all the headsets I've tested over the past week, including the Quest 3/3S and other Pimax units. It gets a little hot along the top edge of the headset—right where the exhaust vents are for the two fans inside, so that checks out—however, I don't feel like it warms up enough to make it uncomfortable, even after hours of testing. Combined with the stellar optics and binocular overlap, it's the one VR headset I feel I can wear without glasses for hours on end.

Though, speaking of which, you cannot wear glasses in this compact headset. It does come with frames should you wish to buy prescription lens inserts.

The cable is well balanced, too. Ultimately, any VR headset with a cable is going to be less convenient than one without, but I do find not worrying about battery life to be a boon most of the time. In this instance, at least, the Dream Air's twin-cable approach helps prevent the cable from tugging one side of the headset. It's a simple solution to a problem many VR headsets have had over the years—a sign of some quality of life improvements for the previously slightly clumsy company.

My one small complaint is that the strap has a rather sharp edge to it, on both sides, where it terminates at the speaker housing. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be an issue, as you can position the headset and straps in such a way to avoid the sharp edge resting on your ears or head, but it does slightly limit the comfortable range of the headset a little. Other than that, the Dream Air is very comfortable. Top marks.

Pimax Dream Air - Software

Pimax Play is the one-stop shop for features and settings with the Dream Air. It's a Spartan application, with a plain interface and minimal bloat, and it's easy to use.

You'll find the usual suspects in the settings menu within Pimax Play: IPD adjustment, firmware updates, and ways to pair controllers and trackers. But there is also more than meets the eye here. Pimax has a pretty complete feature set tucked away under device and advanced settings, which are key for unlocking the Dream Air's full potential.

One important setting is render scale, which Pimax recommends adjusting down to lessen the load on the hardware. Combined with a sharpening filter, it's easy enough to finely balance performance and fidelity. If performance is still an issue, there's even upscaling support with FSR and NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) to boost frame rates; though in doing so, hurting the overall clarity that you are paying a lot of money for in the first place.

Dynamic Foveated Rendering (DFR) is one way to increase performance that is supported through Pimax Play and the Dream Air's eye tracking functionality. There's also Quad Views support, which needs to be supported on a per-game basis to have an effect (namely in DCS). Finally, there's Center Rendering, which has three modes: Quality, Balanced, Performance. In Pimax's own words, this "Reduces rendering quality at the edges of the field of view while keeping the center in high resolution to save performance."

I admittedly didn't notice this was even functioning until opening up testHMD and noticing a distinct circle at the center of my vision, outside of which, lines and text were a little less defined.

With an RTX 5080 under the hood, I was able to combine a lower render scale, a touch of sharpening, and Center Rendering for a smooth 72 Hz—and in many cases, 90 Hz—experience in all of the games I played with this headset. There's lots of flexibility here, which helps with performance on a range of PCs, though you're going to need a PC that is resolutely high-end for a good experience across the board.

Though Pimax could maybe do a better job of signposting how these settings work and what they are dependent on in the application. VR still feels clunky at times, especially with per-game support for eye tracking, and it takes longer to get au fait with all the settings and what they do than I'd like.

Pimax Dream Air - Value

The Dream Air costs $2,299 ($1,999). A price tag like that sets very high expectations for the headset.

The Dream Air offers the best visual experience I've had in VR. It's only matched by the Crystal Super Micro-OLED with the very same optics, but the Dream Air absolutely wins out on overall comfort and fit. The bulking behemoth of the Crystal Super compacted down into a headset the size of some ski goggles—the Dream Air is both impressive and selling at a similar price point.

The headset is genuinely pushing what's possible in VR, and I have to say, I'm here for it. Virtual reality can feel a bit stagnant at times, stuck with the same games and tech for years, but the richness of detail, colour, and tone from the Dream Air does a lot to dispel that feeling. This is seriously impressive tech at an unattainably high price—it is, ultimately, a price I could not afford myself.

Then onto the tracking. This is one aspect of the Dream Air that doesn't feel remotely high-end or worth $2,299. It's clunky, old-fashioned, and a detriment to the experience. A pretty big one, too, in my opinion. I shouldn't really be reaching for the $599 Quest 3 in order to play a game with more accuracy than the $2,299 headset currently on my head, nor having to reset my play area every single time I remove the headset. That is a big deal for me—I expect better at this price point.

PSU fails dramatically

It's accepted wisdom at this point that there are some things you probably shouldn't cheap out on: Tires, tattoos and medical devices sit among the top. But I say a good PSU should be up there if you want your rig to stay intact, as you definitely don't want it blowing up while attached to all of your pretty components. And a recent video going around Reddit has made me doubly sure of that fact.

As shared to the PCMR subreddit, a tech worker was testing a PSU for a potential RMA for a customer. They plugged it in, and within a second, the entire back of it blew up, causing a fire. The sound it makes as it does so is truly horrible, with multiple components frying. At least, with video footage, they show why the RMA is justified.

The employee luckily stepped away very quickly and appears to have avoided any harm. The PSU in question is a VSP Megamax, and judging from the picture showing off the aftermath, it's a 750 W model. The user who shared this clip, Front_Cookie_1198, says the OEM is China-based Jiumeng, a budget manufacturer.

The original poster also says the model claims to have a Cybenetics Silver rating (a high power efficiency just under Gold), but doubts the quality control process of the OEM to really verify that.

No one got hurt here, but it's lucky that this fault wasn't tripped when it was actually plugged in to a computer, as it could be rather dangerous and could risk burning your rig, or even your house with it. If it turns on as usual but malfunctions a little while after, there's a chance it might take you a while to realise your PSU is on fire before it's already too late.

This is a great reminder to never cheap out on your PSU. You want something efficient, trusted, and worth the cash, even if it bumps up the price of your build. And it's very understandable why some might opt for cheaper PSUs in the wake of the memory crisis.

RAM, storage, and even graphics cards are getting more expensive, so one might think that cheaping out on other parts of the rig would be a good way to scrape back a few dollars on the setup. But a good PSU is absolutely necessary—and a cheap, unknown one is not worth the risk.

I'll be attending G Play, so hopefully I'll get to see the new mouse in person, but I haven't actually been told what I'll be seeing there yet. Given this video, though, it's gotta include the new Superstrike, right?

Previous leaks and rumours suggested an X3 Superstrike that has the option of an all-black colourway (excluding some white accents) or a pink-and-black design. The video on Amazon confirms both of these. These previous rumours had also claimed the new version would have an upgraded controller, plus some tweaks to the haptic-inductive trigger system (HITS).

The HITS system is, of course, the main draw to the Logi Superstrike. The induction technology allows for adjustable actuation and rapid trigger, effectively allowing you to lessen the latency between deciding to click and actually clicking. The haptic system means you get the feeling of a click when you click, despite the differing actuation levels.

In the video, a new chipset and "upgraded" sensor are confirmed, the latter of which allows for an an additional 4,000 DPI, up to 48,000. But in addition to this, there are a couple more interesting claims. First is that we'll be seeing an extra +50% battery life, up to 135 hours from the original Superstrike's 90 hours at 1,000 Hz polling. Second is that the mouse will apparently have "refined weight and balance."

This last point is something a fair few people should be happy about, because some people didn't like the weighting of the X2 Superstrike. Logitech managed to shave off enough weight to keep it to around 60 g despite the new HITS system, but this made it quite front-weighted. Hopefully "refined weight and balance" means a more even distribution. And I might be piping up a fool's hope, here, but if some extra grams can be shaved off, then even better.

At any rate, it looks like we shouldn't have long to wait to find out. Maybe Logi will also do something about those mushy side buttons. In my book, that would truly leave the X3 Superstrike in top standing for competitive gaming.

Dataminer Brad Lynch unearthed this tidbit, sharing a screenshot of code strings that refer to a 'Frame Alyx Promo'. He also observed on X that Valve did a similar thing in the past, offering the game for free with purchases of the Index VR headset after the game launched. That all occurred, of course, quite a few years ago now.

Lynch also noted in an earlier post that internal branches of Alyx had been regularly updated since early last year, though "the public app is only just now starting to get those many months of staged updates." The implication is that these are optimisation tweaks specifically for the Steam Frame, though that's not been confirmed.

Lynch is fairly reliable as a leaker regarding all things VR, having previously spotted that a number of SteamVR code components had been renamed 'Frames' shortly before the Steam Frame was fully revealed.

More recently, he spotted "the first 'official' Android app on Steam," which would make the most of all of Valve's work on its custom Android compatibility container for Linux, Lepton. Lynch also suggested back in June that the entire VR sphere may enjoy much better displays in the next few years, like Micro-OLEDs from Samsung.

So, no, it doesn't seem that Half-Life 3 is on the horizon, but I won't turn down a free copy of one of the best virtual reality games to come out in years. Mind you, the fact Alyx itself is already six years old probably says a lot about the state of VR these days.

While the Steam Frame is designed to play your entire non-VR library as well, given the lack of big releases in the niche, I personally won't be rushing out to buy a fresh virtual reality headset any time soon.

I've been trying out some different control pads in Counter-Strike 2 for months now and I feel like I'm finally able to draw some solid conclusions over which are best. At least as far as my own fingertips are concerned. Your mileage may of course vary.

Personal favourite: Zowie H-SR III
Noteworthy: Wallhack CR-005

Key terms

• Stopping power: How easy it is to stop your mouse where and when you want it to, presumably over an enemy's head.
• Static friction: How hard it is to get the mouse moving from stationary. The combination of this and dynamic friction makes for good stopping power.
• Dynamic friction: How hard it is to keep the mouse moving when in motion. The combination of this and static friction makes for good stopping power.
• Softer pads: Tend to be slower.
• Harder pads: Tend to be faster.

Razer Gigantus V2 Pro (Control ver.)

Razer's Gigantus V2 Pro is great if you really have a thing for slow pads and don't much care what you have to sacrifice to get it. The surface, which Razer says was made to match the pro player's NiKo's preference, is indeed very slow—slower than any I've used. This means little chance of accidentally nudging your crosshair out of line when holding an angle.

However, it's a bit too slow for my liking, and I'm saying this as someone who massively prefers control pads to speed ones now for playing CS2. I think the slowness is in part thanks to how soft the pad is as it's noticeably softer than any other I've tried.

But if something super-slow is your thing—and who can argue with one of the best Counter-Strike players of all time?—it'll serve you well. Also note there's even a Max Control version that is, presumably, even slower than this one.

Corsair MM Pro

Corsair's new pad is the one I like the least out of those I've tried. That's not to say it's bad, it just doesn't stand out in any particular way. It's smaller than the others and is a little too quick for my liking in a control pad, feeling a bit closer to a regular cloth pad than I'd like. In particular, I notice that with this pad I have to try a little harder to keep my crosshair steady when holding a headshot angle.

Still, it does look nice and it is slower and more controlled than many other (non-control) options on the market—it's certainly slower than speed pads. If you prefer a little more speed to your control and don't mind your competitive pad being a bit on the smaller side, the MM Pro is a reasonable choice.

Zowie H-SR III / G-SR III

I was immediately sold on this Zowie pad when I tried it. It ticks every box for me and is what I keep returning to as my baseline for playing Counter-Strike. That's because it manages to maintain a level of static friction that keeps my crosshair steady when holding angles, but is just on that cusp where I can also move my mouse pretty easily for flicks.

There's also its dynamic friction, ie, how it feels when actually moving the mouse. On this front, the H-SR III doesn't just have a decent amount of slowness/muddiness to it but also a texture that you can subtly feel as you move. It might be the placebo effect, but I feel like that's helped my muscle memory a little when aiming in-game.

Then there's the fact that it's a pretty hard pad for cloth, which means you don't get much inconsistency to how much your mouse drags depending on how hard you press. That can make all the difference in clutch moments when you tense up and push down harder. I really don't have anything to complain about here, which is why the Zowie is my go-to. (The G-SR III is just the H-SR III but a little smaller.)

Steelseries QcK Performance Control

Steelseries' QcK Performance Control is a very divisive pad. I sent it to my colleague Andy, and he had a much worse time of it than I did. To be honest I can see why: it's not your usual control pad.

Instead of opting for a slow cloth, SteelSeries has given this pad quite a smooth and hard-topped but very rough texture. You can really feel your mouse moving across it, which does help your muscle memory. Stopping power is pretty good, too.

On the other hand, static friction isn't quite as good as on the Zowie pad, and dynamic friction might be a touch quicker, too, though it's hard to tell. Most importantly, though, the rough texture can be quite unpleasant on your arm when gaming for an extended period if you're a low-sens player as many control pad gamers are. Unless you use a gaming sleeve like me, of course, but few are willing to take the L to their public image that I am.

Wallhack CR-005

Yes, this is a glass pad on an article about control pads, and glass is usually as far from 'controlled' as you can imagine. The CR-005 that Wallhack has created, however, is a glass pad with "microscopic concave formations" that help slow things down.

However, it still doesn't quite match a good cloth control pad for, well, control. After breaking it in a little, I found it to be more speedy than the Zowie and even the Corsair. It's still not as fast as speed pads though, and the static friction is particularly nice for a glass pad.

The main benefit of going glass is that it should last a very long time, unlike a cloth pad which wears out pretty quickly. It will also have consistent friction and glide however hard you press into it. The downsides are not being able to roll it up, potentially having to wear a gaming sleeve to prevent your arm sticking, having to replace your mouse skates more often as they get worn down, and having to wipe it down pretty frequently to keep dust away.

If it was a little slower and more controlled I think I'd make these sacrifices for the consistency and longevity of a glass pad, but it's just not quite there yet for control players compared to cloth. Saying that, even if it's not quite as slow as some cloth options, it's impressive that Wallhack has managed to make a glass pad as slow as this. It means glass pad lovers who play tac FPS need to miss out no longer.

The good news is, DLSS 5 is capable of looking pretty good once the settings have been tweaked by actual game developers. The very bad news is, Nvidia says turning DLSS 5 on will currently reduce performance by 50-60%. And that's across the board—no matter the game.

Nvidia was keen to point out that, just six months ago, DLSS 5 required two RTX 5090s to run. So, a 5x improvement since then is something to hold within our collective hats. But tanking frame rates is very unlikely to improve DLSS 5's perception within the PC gaming community, that's for certain.

Looking at the basic performance charts Nvidia has provided us so far, the ultra-high frame rate figures are based on 6x Multi Frame Generation. So, while the little RTX 5060 can churn out a 258 fps result in NBA 2K27 at 1080p Ultra settings with ray tracing and DLSS 5 enabled, the game underneath will actually be running at around 43 fps.

At 4K, the same game settings result in a 370 fps average on an RTX 5090, or a 233 fps average on an RTX 5080. That's with Performance-level upscaling, though, and with 6x MFG doing some seriously heavy lifting once more.

If you've spent thousands of bucks on a high-end graphics card, I'd imagine that running games with the upscaling and frame generation settings near their limits to achieve high frame rates is probably not what you had in mind.

All of which makes me wonder if the AI-ification of DLSS 5 is really the biggest barrier to its acceptance. I have my own deep, dark concerns about DLSS 5, AI in general, and its hooks making their way into our hobby. But if the tech is capable of slicing the frame rate in half, all of this might be a moot point.

The Nvidia folk I spoke to were keen to point out that performance improvements are already on the way. But given that so many gamers are stuck with older graphics cards, thanks to the ongoing pricing crisis that seems destined to become much worse before it gets better, I do wonder who the tech is currently for.

When ray tracing first arrived on the scene, its performance-tanking qualities were at least (partially) offset by the introduction of upscaling. But all these years later, I still debate for myself whether it's worth turning on when I play games on my own, relatively high-end gaming PC. Our rigs might be better equipped on average, but ray tracing is still a performance hog in 2026—and many gamers I speak to still turn it off for smoother frames.

And while DLSS 5 is certainly more... transformative than ray tracing in terms of the images it creates, it's also far more controversial. Even if you're prepared to make the jump into AI-enhanced games (and it's quite the leap, let's be honest), putting those concerns in tandem with massively compromised frame rates is a seriously big ask for even the most curious of gamers.

I expected to be writing about the controversy surrounding Nvidia's new tech in terms of the wider atmosphere of AI discontent. But here I am getting down to brass tacks. In its current form, DLSS 5 seems to hit your graphics card like a freight train—and whatever your opinion on AI in gaming, nobody wants that.

However, myself and a select group of journalists were ushered into a small room in the Nvidia booth at Gamescom last week, amid some furtive glances and hushed whispering. As the lights went down, it became obvious as to why. Here was the latest version of DLSS 5 running in front of us, the controversial graphics tech in the flesh. And the message Nvidia wanted to get across was deliberate, and strongly put: It's all about developer control.

I was shown a character sitting within the Nvidia Zorah demo, the same shown at SIGGRAPH 2026 earlier this year. As he sat, looking around at his environment in a bored fashion, I leaned forward in my chair. DLSS 5 was obviously altering the image to a significant degree, but seeing the results in person, it was clear this was nowhere near the "yassified Grace" level of AI enhancement shown in the first reveal.

Our digital example, casually inspecting the back of his hand, looked a lot like the original character model—but with more photorealistic lighting, and plenty of finer details that seemed fitting for the scene. It was nowhere near as brash an image as I was expecting, I'll say that much for free.

At the side of the screen was the DLSS 5 developer control menu. Two sliders, marked "structure intensity" and "tone intensity" were set somewhere around the midway mark—and at these settings, the character looked pretty damn good.

There are more tools for developers to play with, too. The masking feature allows devs to select individual items in a scene (say, a fruit bowl on a table) and give it the AI-enhanced treatment, while leaving everything else DLSS 5-free. The varying AI models can also be switched in and out (or on and off) on a whim.

According to Nvidia, the fine-tuning abilities of DLSS 5 are designed to be as developer-friendly as possible, allowing them to dip in and out of its features on a model-per-model basis to suit their artistic intent. Seeing the demo running in front of me with my own eyes, I could feel myself coming around to the idea. My arms uncrossed.

And then my hosts began messing with the sliders and the model presets, and an essential truth emerged. While a light dusting of DLSS 5 can cause a substantial visual leap in terms of photorealism, turning it up to 11 can still provoke an unwanted, gut-level reaction.

There are three image-transforming AI models for devs to choose from (at least in the demo I was shown): A, B, and C. While models A and C looked pretty good to me at various settings, model B made me wince when both sliders were pushed up. The HDR-like shadows became overblown, the skin textures too shiny, the facial features too keenly drawn.

To my eyes, characters with model B turned up can look substantially different from the model underneath, in a way that's reminiscent of the AI beauty filters we've all become far too familiar with. In short, it's still capable of giving me the ick.

I'll call it as I see it: DLSS 5 turned up to the guns, particularly using model B, can look downright ugly. But Nvidia's point makes a whole lot of sense. It's the developers, the artists behind the game, that choose how far to push the technology. If it oversteps the mark? Devs can adjust the settings and rein it back in, and you can turn it off entirely (separate from regular DLSS upscaling) if you disagree with their choices.

On that note, some Nvidia staff members I spoke to took issue with the idea that DLSS 5, even in the experimental version shown earlier this year, is capable of transforming the facial geometry of a character model. I argued the contrary, because well, look at the screenshots below.

Apparently, this is more of a perceived effect created by the lighting than an actual, DLSS 5-induced facelift. This eventually turned into a philosophical debate, where I argued that, even if it simply looks like the model is creating markedly different facial geometry from the original character models, the end result is functionally the same.

Because that's what it looks like, and what it looks like is the whole point. This argument resulted in a stalemate, so I'll let you be the judge for yourselves.

Anyway, the longer the demos continued, the clearer it became that DLSS 5 is capable of creating some stunning imagery when handled with a delicate touch, and some seriously overblown results when pushed to the limit. DLSS 5 can enhance—but it can also alter an image with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The example above shows a DLSS 5-enhanced scene of some foliage against a building, with ray tracing turned on and off. It's supposed to demonstrate that the more lighting information you give the models to work with, the better the visual result. The DLSS 5 and ray-traced image combined, though, looks seriously oversaturated to my eyes. Realism has gone out of the window, and the end result is… lurid, to say the least.

What is beautiful to some is garish to others, but all I'll say is that the term "better" is far from my mind. There's no accounting for taste, is there?

What we're going to be relying on for the most part, though, are the tastes of the game developers themselves. I was taken into a separate room to try out NBA 2K27, the first game you'll be able to play with DLSS 5 enabled. Officially, at least, as it can apparently be modded into any game.

This was a very locked down session, in which the devs refused to be drawn in on the details of exactly what sort of DLSS 5 implementation I was looking at. However, I'd guess that, by Nvidia's standards, everything I saw was achieved by using the lower end of the DLSS 5 spectrum.

The sweat running down the players' arms looked… sweatier. More glistening. The facial features looked more realistic, with better lighting in the nooks and crannies of their various mugs, and less of the "uncanny valley" effect I'd seen at higher settings. The crowd in the background transformed from low-poly models into a more passable depiction of basketball match attendees, without straying too far from the look of the original assets.

To my surprise, I didn't experience the AI image ick. It looked more like the difference between a game running on a console, and one running on PC with a ton of extra graphics options added on top. DLSS 5 doesn't look quite so revolutionary at these settings, perhaps—but the results impressed me more than I expected.

I was careful to look for signs of ghosting, or any morphing AI faces under fast motion. One of my critiques of the previous DLSS 5 footage was the temporal handling, which looked a little blurred and smeared to my eyes. However, there was no hint of that here. I played virtual basketball, I sucked at it, and I enjoyed the look of the game overall.

In all honesty, it felt like playing a next-gen game with cutting-edge graphics technology, and not an ill-advised AI gaming revolution. This, beyond anything else, was perhaps the best demonstration that DLSS 5 can be used to genuinely enhance the look of our games, rather than turning them into an AI-slathered mess. If developers tune it wisely, there are real visual benefits to be seen.

All of this might be a moot point, though, if performance is a concern. The Nvidia devs I spoke to estimated a 50-60% performance hit with DLSS 5 turned on, which doesn't vary on a game-by-game basis. Essentially, it's still a massive resource hog as things stand, although it no longer requires two RTX 5090s just to run. Goodie.

Further performance improvements are forthcoming, says Nvidia, but my eyebrows jumped so high at this news I'm surprised they didn't shoot off the top of my head. Graphics card prices are outrageous right now, and I can't help wondering who's going to want to slice their frame rate in half in return for some AI-enhanced imagery, good-looking or otherwise.

All of the performance charts I was shown used a combination of 6x Multi Frame Generation and various levels of upscaling to bump up the numbers. And while I'm not as much of a frame generation sceptic as some, I doubt this will come as good news to those curious to try out the tech.

If the performance impact was minimal, I could see some gamers experimenting with DLSS 5 for themselves and potentially changing their minds. With this sort of massive dip, though, I think DLSS 5's GPU-hogging ways are a much bigger issue for adoption than the AI-ified nature of the tech itself.

What's left, then, is the thorny issue of the ethical debate. The elephant in the room, and there's no getting around it, is that generative AI usage in games is a massive hot topic at the moment. In fact, AI usage in general is causing all sorts of debates in all sorts of arenas, from the potential effects on the job market, to ecological concerns, to discussions around the very nature of truth.

And this, I feel, is the real hurdle Nvidia is trying to jump. While it's clear that DLSS 5 can be beneficial to the image quality of our games in the right hands, whether we, as gamers, want to participate in the AI-ification of everything in this way is much more doubtful. And it's on this level where I feel far more conflicted about the tech.

My criticisms of the AI revolution, in a general sense, are well documented. And while I can absolutely see the potential benefits of DLSS 5, I left the demo booth with mixed feelings. Is this where the games industry is heading? Will I be spending most of my gaming time looking at more AI-enhanced imagery in the future?

Will developers make use of the tech wisely, or will major releases eventually go for the full yassified approach, transforming our games into something unrecognisable from what they are today? Will devs jump in with both feet, or will they be more cautious? And crucially, is AI-enhanced imagery really what we want, even if it's capable of looking nice?

In principle, the demos I was shown should have me jumping up and down with excitement at the potential of better gaming graphics. But the AI association, perhaps even infiltration, into a form of media I truly adore is enough to keep me awake at night. In practice, DLSS 5 is certainly capable of creating some good-looking imagery in the right hands.

But it also represents a major leap towards an AI-enhanced gaming future, and one that still makes me, in the depths of my bones, more than a little uncomfortable. Whatever the case, DLSS 5 will be launching on September 3—and we're going to have to decide for ourselves if we want to engage with it.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, the amendment passed with a 39-0 vote. The wording on the Linux passage is curious. It specifically precludes a "person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software" from being called an "operating system provider." That means Linux users will get away without verifying age on somewhat of a definitional technicality.

The amendment also ensures that operating system providers acquire "only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply" with the age check, and therefore this should stop providers from acquiring more information on users, or even spying on users for their own benefit, any more than necessary through the guise of Californian law.

Though Linux and its many distros will be exempt from the law, it's not too clear yet if Valve's SteamOS is. SteamOS is a Linux-based OS built on Arch, but it also has proprietary elements, which means one can't copy, redistribute, and modify it. Even if SteamOS is exempt, you will still have to verify your age via Steam on your Steam Machine or Steam Deck if you want to play certain games.

Affected operating systems included Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. The bill was originally introduced back in February and at that time was deemed to include Linux, but it looks like the authorities saw sense before it passed. Ensuring these checks could've been immensely damaging to the use of open source operating systems in the state, not the least bit Silicon Valley.

The last few years have seen all manner of age checks roll out. Discord preemptively agreed to age verification checks, but clarified many wouldn't have to, as it already has the information necessary to verify ages. That's somewhat worrying, but it does mean not having to give your ID or face to the company.

And with Discord's rollout having ties to Palantir, and no one particularly liking the idea of giving their information to the government, there's already quite a lot of cynicism around digital age checks. Earlier this year, the UK's Online Safety Act came into full force, even requiring me to verify my age on my phone to get full access.

Linux's user base has been growing off the back of Microsoft's many failures, and getting around age verification checks is just one more step for the OS. It seems 2026 may have finally been the year of the Linux, but who said it can't have two years in a row?

That's according to the newly updated Fable FAQ, which says you will need an Intel i7 6850K or an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, paired with either an RTX 5050 / RTX 2060, a Radeon RX 6600, or an Intel A580 to run the game on a minimum. Minimum in this case means running the game at 1080p at 30 fps.

With the RTX 2060 being a budget-to-mid-range graphics card from 2019, and both suggested CPUs being nearly a decade old, these are reasonably unintensive requirements, assuming you can stomach 30 fps. Especially for what looks to be a very good-looking game.

The recommended specs (which in this case means running the game on Medium) are an Intel i5 11600KF or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 paired with an RTX 5060 / RTX 3060 TI, or an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT / RX 7600 XT. There's no Intel GPU mention on this one, and 'recommended' entails playing the game on 1440p at 30 fps or at 1200p at 60 fps.

Interestingly, there is no note on whether upscaling is used to get these figures. Forza Horizon 6, another game from the Fable developer, Playground Games, specifies that its system requirements do not include upscaling (apart from the Extreme RT recommendation), so the lack of any such declaration is certainly rather strange.

And upscaling has been finding its way into system requirements recently. For instance, The Blood of Dawnwalker's final system requirements included upscaling set to Balanced, which made them appear lower than previously given system requirements.

With the game still a good few months out, these may not be the absolute final requirements, but they paint a good picture of what you could roughly expect out of your rig.

Still, early signs are decent here, and the 12 GB memory requirement isn't too bad, even with the memory crisis in full swing. In fact, with the memory crisis also taking the price of SSDs with it, its 135 GB of storage requirement may be the hardest for me to make room for. Hey, maybe you've got a few hundred GB in your recycle bin like I did a buddy of mine had.

The MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W is in many ways the polar opposite of the other MSI laptop I recently tested, the Stealth 16 AI+ B3W. The latter is an ultra-expensive, sleek and subtle machine that limits its power for the sake of thermals, efficiency, and form factor. Not so with the Crosshair: it's a gaming laptop, and it knows it.

I could tell as much as soon as I unboxed it, thanks to its glossy—and I would later discover, RGB-lit—embossed MSI logo on the lid, plus the general thickness, key styling and so on. It's not particularly obnoxious and still has some subtlety to it, but it's not hiding the fact that it's a gaming laptop.

Nor does it hide this fact when it comes to performance, eking as much as it can out of the RTX 5070 GPU and Core Ultra 7 251HX processor, saying to hell with thermals and battery life. I can certainly respect that, but it has to deliver in other respects, too, including price. And in other respects this laptop is not quite so pretty.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W features

The particular Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W that I tested came with an Intel Core Ultra 7 251HX, RTX 5070, and 16 GB of DDR5 RAM, but there are different versions. The ones I can currently spot online have a more powerful Core Ultra 9 290HX with 32 GB of DDR5, or the same 251HX CPU but an RTX 5060 and 32 GB of DDR5. All of those come with 1 TB of storage.

In the case of the 16 GB of RAM in the version I have, it is at least 2x8 GB of fast 6,400 MT/s memory, rather than a single stick of slow RAM. This presumably helps a bunch with CPU-intensive tasks, as I found the laptop to perform even better than some others with 'better' CPUs.

A big draw here is also the OLED panel, which is gorgeous. I'm not used to seeing OLEDs on such gamer-y gaming laptops, as I've only really seen them on gaming laptops that are going for 'sleek and refined', so it's a nice surprise to see such a great panel here. It's only 165 Hz, but it's a perfect match for the RTX 5070 mobile GPU inside the Crosshair.

At first I thought there weren't many ports on this laptop, but before long I found the rest hidden on the rear side and breathed a sigh of relief. I particularly like the inclusion of a Thunderbolt 4 port as well as a port for an Ethernet connection.

Getting to how it is to actually use the laptop, I don't have any real complaints but equally no specific praises. It's no behemoth, but it's hardly a slimline laptop, either, and its keys feel simply… fine. WASD keys are translucent and there is 24-zone RGB, again signalling to the world 'I am definitely a gaming laptop'. I do wish MSI had foregone the numpad to make things a little less cramped, though. The trackpad is quite small, but it is at least central, which is the correct choice (fight me).

The big downside is audio, just as was the case with the Stealth. However, in this case it's even worse. There's definite (but not catastrophically high) latency over the default audio device, but unlike with the Stealth I tested, this wasn't resolved by switching to a different USB-connected audio device.

As such, if you play games that really benefit from snappy and responsive audio such as shooters, and especially sensitive to a little audio delay, I'd steer clear unless and until MSI discovers what the problem is and how to fix it (the company is investigating). I tried disabling/uninstalling Nahimic as well as Norton antivirus to see if that helped, but doing the former proved difficult and the latter didn't resolve it.

The speakers themselves are nothing to write home about anyway. They're not the worst I've heard, but they've definitely got a little bit of that tinniness in them that you expect out of a lot of laptops or cheaper Bluetooth speakers.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W performance

The Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W performs very well for an RTX 5070 laptop, often beating other similar lappies. MSI has clearly opted for a performance-oriented machine here, and it shows.

1080p gaming performance

This chart shows average and 1% low frame rate results in various tested games at 1080p resolution.

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High)F1 24 (1080p Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070

46

33

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

34

24

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

32

20

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

43

33

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)

36

24

MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)

55

32

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070	46 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	34 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	32 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	43 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)	36 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)	55 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070

85

52

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

74

43

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

63

32

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

69

41

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)

60

27

MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)

68

39

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070	85 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	74 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	63 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	69 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)	60 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)	68 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070

68

59

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

45

37

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

53

30

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

64

55

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)

57

39

MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)

73

47

020406080

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070	68 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	45 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	53 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	64 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)	57 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)	73 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070

83

57

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

62

55

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

60

34

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

75

58

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)

65

34

MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)

100

50

0255075100

F1 24 (1080p Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070	83 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	62 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	60 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	75 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)	65 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)	100 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070

87

54

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

83

64

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

66

20

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

82

51

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)

63

46

MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)

102

42

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070	87 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	83 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	66 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	82 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Nvidia RTX 5060 (115 W)	63 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+| RTX 5080 (125 W)	102 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

The MSI Crosshair 16 Max performs incredibly well at 1080p, often beating other RTX 5070 laptops and almost keeping up with an (admittedly power-limited) RTX 5080 laptop.

1600p (native) gaming performance

This chart shows average and 1% low frame rate results in various tested games at 1600p (native) resolution

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (Native res. Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High)F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (Native res. Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

26

19

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

9

2

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

18

8

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

12

5

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

34

22

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	26 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	9 Avg FPS, 2 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	18 Avg FPS, 8 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	12 Avg FPS, 5 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	34 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

79

51

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

65

39

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

67

37

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

54

33

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

67

39

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 (Native res. Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	79 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	65 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	67 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	54 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	67 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

66

57

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

94

69

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

72

62

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

57

49

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

57

49

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	66 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	94 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	72 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	57 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	57 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

47

37

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

35

29

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

41

32

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

34

18

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

62

43

020406080

F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	47 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	35 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	41 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	34 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	62 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

59

41

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

53

31

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

54

39

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

45

17

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

74

48

020406080

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (Native res. Ultra) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	59 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	53 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	54 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	45 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	74 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS

The Corsshair 16 Max does very well at native res, offering playable frame rates in almost all of these games. In most of them, it leads other RTX 5070 gaming laptops. (Note the MSI Stealth listed here has an RTX 5080 that is power-limited compared to some other RTX 5080 laptops.)

At both 1080p and 1600p (native), the MSI performs better than other RTX 5070 mobile laptops and even comes close to the (power-limited) Stealth with RTX 5080 mobile. This is more so the case at 1080p where things are less GPU-bound and the CPU can have more of an effect, but it's still great at native.

Real-world gaming performance

This chart shows average and 1% low frame rate results in various tested games at 1600p resolution with Quality upscaling enabled, and frame gen where applicable

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra + upscaling (quality), 2x FG)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High + upscaling (quality, 67%))F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High + upscaling (quality), 2x FG)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

80

51

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

27

18

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

58

35

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

75

58

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

97

53

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra + upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	80 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	27 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	58 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	75 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	97 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

75

64

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

94

69

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

57

49

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

72

62

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

87

74

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High + upscaling (quality, 67%)) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	75 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	94 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	57 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	72 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	87 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)

118

82

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)

52

42

Framework 16 | RTX 5070

92

70

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)

147

56

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High + upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	118 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | RTX 5070 (115 W)	N/A
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | RTX 5070 (85 W)	52 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Framework 16 | RTX 5070	92 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | RTX 5080 (125 W)	147 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS

Again, the MSI Crosshair 16 Max performs well. With upscaling and/or frame gen, expect smooth frame rates even in pretty demanding games at native resolution on max settings. (Note the MSI Stealth listed here has an RTX 5080 that is power-limited compared to some other RTX 5080 laptops.)

When upscaling and/or frame gen is enabled, even pretty demanding games become smoothly playable at native res on max settings. Saying this, you might still want to drop your settings a little just to reduce any latency incurred by frame gen, as higher starting frame rates improve this.

I'd say this laptop is ideal for gaming on high (but not max) settings at 1600p with upscaling and, in some games, frame gen. That will be how to make the best use of the 165 Hz refresh rate on offer here.

Interestingly, this one seems to perform even better in most games than the previous MSI Crosshair we tested, the Crosshair 16 HX AI (2025), which has the same GPU and a more powerful Core Ultra 9 275HX processor. That could be due to driver improvements over the past year plus the fact that this new one gets hotter, ie, allows for a bit of extra performance at the top.

System performance

The laptops are here tested against intensive benchmarks that mostly test the CPU, but also the GPU, for productivity tasks.

7zip 24.07Cinebench 2024Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop)Procyon

Decompressing (GIPS)

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

120.254

135.177

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

121.787

130.822

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)

77.91

87.77

Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070

108.822

128.355

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)

65.22

105.78

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)

105.399

98.828

037.575112.5150

7zip 24.07 Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	120.254 Compressing (GIPS), 135.177 Decompressing (GIPS)
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	121.787 Compressing (GIPS), 130.822 Decompressing (GIPS)
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)	77.91 Compressing (GIPS), 87.77 Decompressing (GIPS)
Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070	108.822 Compressing (GIPS), 128.355 Decompressing (GIPS)
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)	65.22 Compressing (GIPS), 105.78 Decompressing (GIPS)
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)	105.399 Compressing (GIPS), 98.828 Decompressing (GIPS)

Multi-core index score

Single-core index score

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

1638

129

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

1320

134

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)

800

78

Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070

1158

105

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)

812

101

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)

1221

124

05001,0001,5002,000

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	1638 Multi-core index score, 129 Single-core index score
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	1320 Multi-core index score, 134 Single-core index score
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)	800 Multi-core index score, 78 Single-core index score
Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070	1158 Multi-core index score, 105 Single-core index score
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)	812 Multi-core index score, 101 Single-core index score
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)	1221 Multi-core index score, 124 Single-core index score

CPU (samples/min)

GPU (samples/min)

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

112.66

1046.74

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

108.15

1028.98

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)

65.55

1017.59

Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070

93.15

1026.08

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)

62.87

1014.05

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)

79.43

1691.37

05001,0001,5002,000

Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop) Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	112.66 CPU (samples/min), 1046.74 GPU (samples/min)
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	108.15 CPU (samples/min), 1028.98 GPU (samples/min)
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)	65.55 CPU (samples/min), 1017.59 GPU (samples/min)
Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070	93.15 CPU (samples/min), 1026.08 GPU (samples/min)
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)	62.87 CPU (samples/min), 1014.05 GPU (samples/min)
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)	79.43 CPU (samples/min), 1691.37 GPU (samples/min)

Overall index score

Duration (Sec)

Sec/image

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

1750

57.12

3.57

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

1508

66.27

4.14

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)

1418

70.52

4.41

Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070

1789

55.9

3.49

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)

1490

67.11

4.2

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)

2472

40.44

2.53

07501,5002,2503,000

Procyon Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	1750 Overall index score, 57.12 Duration (Sec), 3.57 Sec/image
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	1508 Overall index score, 66.27 Duration (Sec), 4.14 Sec/image
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)	1418 Overall index score, 70.52 Duration (Sec), 4.41 Sec/image
Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070	1789 Overall index score, 55.9 Duration (Sec), 3.49 Sec/image
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)	1490 Overall index score, 67.11 Duration (Sec), 4.2 Sec/image
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)	2472 Overall index score, 40.44 Duration (Sec), 2.53 Sec/image

The Intel Core Ultra 7 251HX in the MSI Crosshair 16 Max is better for productivity tasks than a lot of other RTX 5070 laptops

Much as with this laptop's gaming performance, its productivity performance is impressive. When allowed to run so hot, the Intel chip here can plough through tasks such as decompression and other multi-core-heavy tasks.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W thermals

Real-world gaming temperatures

Gaming temperature results recorded during multiple Metro Exodus EE runs

Gaming temperatures

Avg CPU (°C)

Max CPU (°C)

Avg GPU (°C)

Max GPU (°C)

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

91

104

81

84

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)

55

98

28

69

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)

55

87

57

71

Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070

65

73

68

71

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)

58

71

59

72

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)

92

100

81

87

037.575112.5150

Gaming temperatures Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W) | Core Ultra 7 251HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	91 Avg CPU (°C), 104 Max CPU (°C), 81 Avg GPU (°C), 84 Max GPU (°C)
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI) | Core Ultra 9 275HX | RTX 5070 (115 W)	55 Avg CPU (°C), 98 Max CPU (°C), 28 Avg GPU (°C), 69 Max GPU (°C)
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot | Ryzen AI 7 350 | RTX 5070 (85 W)	55 Avg CPU (°C), 87 Max CPU (°C), 57 Avg GPU (°C), 71 Max GPU (°C)
Framework 16 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5070	65 Avg CPU (°C), 73 Max CPU (°C), 68 Avg GPU (°C), 71 Max GPU (°C)
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W)	58 Avg CPU (°C), 71 Max CPU (°C), 59 Avg GPU (°C), 72 Max GPU (°C)
MSI Stealth 16 AI+ | Core Ultra 9 386H | RTX 5080 (125 W)	92 Avg CPU (°C), 100 Max CPU (°C), 81 Avg GPU (°C), 87 Max GPU (°C)

The MSI Crosshair 16 Max does run very hot on Extreme Performance mode (and, as an aside, still pretty damn hot in Balanced mode). That's especially the case for its Core Ultra 7 251HX CPU.

This laptop is indeed particularly toasty. This obviously helps in the performance department, but don't expect it to win any efficiency medals. 104 °C for the max CPU temp is hot, as is 84 °C for the GPU, though the new MSI Stealth runs a little hotter on that front.

That being said, during all my time gaming, I didn't notice my fingers getting too hot on WASD, and given the performance is so good, I doubt the high temps indicate too much throttling.

The Crosshair can get pretty loud in Extreme Performance mode, which these benchmarks were taken in. However, as with the new Stealth, this Crosshair's fans don't sound grating at all. You just get a pleasant, loud whoosh. Though it will make it difficult to hear your game through the speakers if you're opting for built-in audio.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W aesthetics

I don't have a ton of praise for the way this laptop looks, unfortunately. It's not awful, just not my particular cup of tea. There's a splash of the old-fashioned, angular, gamer-y look to it, but it only leans kind of half-heartedly in that direction, which ultimately means it looks a little confused about what it wants to be overall.

You're getting some funky RGB lighting on the keys, including a translucent WASD if that's your jam, and you're also getting the logo on the lid which lights up and a particularly angular design on the underside, but the rest of the chassis is plain. To be honest, I'd rather it leaned in one direction or the other: gamer-y, or subtle. Still, it's far from an outrageous design and doesn't offend my aesthetic sensibilities too much.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W software

The main bloatware on this laptop is Norton antivirus, which I'd personally promptly uninstall just because Microsoft Defender is fine and Norton, in my historical opinion, can be a bit of a pain.

Apart from that, you get MSI Center to control all the settings such as lighting and performance modes. You can install a bunch more modules to fiddle with different settings if you wish, but I just stuck with those and the default system info and options pages. It runs well and isn't too difficult to navigate once you get used to it, but it definitely feels like a 'set it and leave it' kind of software that you don't need to load up very often.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W battery life

Battery life

Testing how long the battery lasts in Balanced mode, medium brightness, Wi-Fi disconnected, in the PCMark 10 gaming battery life test.

PCMark 10

MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W)

72

MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI)

101

Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot

109

Framework 16

131

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10

89

MSI Stealth 16 AI+

104

037.575112.5150

PCMark 10 Data

Product	Value
MSI Crosshair 16 Max (E2W)	72
MSI Crosshair 16 HX (AI)	101
Gigabyte Aero X16 Copilot	109
Framework 16	131
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10	89
MSI Stealth 16 AI+	104

The MSI Crosshair 16 Max perhaps unsurprisingly doesn't do very well when it comes to battery life. It seems oriented around eking out as much performance as possible from its CPU and GPU, without much care for efficiency.

You probably already expected this given the laptop ekes out as much performance as it can from its components, not to mention that it runs mighty hot, but battery life is not great. This isn't a laptop for those of you who primarily want to game while out and about using battery power, but for short sessions or light work it's fine unplugged.

The RTX 5080-boasting MSI Stealth laptop I tested has a 90 Wh battery and lasted for 104 minutes in a gaming battery life benchmark, whereas this one has an 80 Wh battery and lasted for just 72 minutes. That's 31% less time up and running, and less than a bunch of other RTX 5070 laptops we've tested.

MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W Value

You're looking at about $2,600 for the 32 GB version of this—$2,000 on offer—and I can't see the 16 GB version that I tried for sale anywhere. Looking at some of the best deals on gaming laptops right now, that $2,600 is pretty expensive for an RTX 5070 machine.

On the one hand, this isn't a corner-cutting machine, as you're getting a lovely OLED panel and some very convincing performance that pushes the CPU and GPU as far as possible. But on the other hand, even $2,000 on sale is a lot for an RTX 5070 machine, even during a memory shortage. You can often pick similar but non-OLED gaming laptops up for well under $1,500 on sale.

As such, unless and until there are bigger discounts on it, I don't think the price tag fits what's on offer. If the normal retail price were a couple hundred lower and the discount price was a couple hundred lower, too, I would consider it for the OLED panel and great performance.

But as it stands, it's a tough sell, especially if you want any kind of battery or thermal efficiency, or just a laptop that looks a little more dashing. Not to mention one that doesn't suffer from audio latency issues. Considering performance alone it's a great machine, but the price is not quite right.