• Microsoft had blocked posts that used the term 'Microslop' on its Copilot Discord channel
• This was a "temporary anti-spam measure," apparently
• The policy is no longer in place, but if Microsoft thinks the word will die off, that seems highly unlikely

Microsoft is apparently letting go over the 'Microslop' affair and is no longer policing its Discord channel to block the term.

You may recall that at the start of this year, the Microslop nickname came about after a comment from Microsoft's CEO – relating to 'AI slop' – and the company cracked down on the word by blocking posts that used it on the Copilot Discord channel.

Windows Latest noticed that this is no longer the case, and the term is now being openly used in the general chat channel. Searching for 'Microslop' produces over 200 results in posts that go back weeks.

In short, Microsoft has moderated its moderation, come to its senses, and realized that cracking down and censoring in this manner is only going to inflame passions against AI, if it achieves anything.

I should make it clear that Microsoft has never said anything official on this matter, in terms of admitting any ban in the first place, let alone the lifting of it. Windows Latest reports that it did hear from Microsoft back at the time, though, and was told that the filtering was a "temporary anti-spam measure" rather than a permanent policy. It seems this is indeed the case.

Analysis: Streisand effect

The writer of the Windows Latest article further observes that they've noticed that on Reddit, X, and Windows forums, there are fewer mentions of the Microslop term these days. It happens "much less often" we're told.

I'm not so sure about that. I still see Microslop mentioned with some regularity, although I concede that the popularity of the term has diminished. This is a subjective matter, of course, and it may reflect that I visit more negative posts about Windows 11 than the Windows Latest writer has done in the past few months – who can say?

The writer acknowledges that the "criticism is still very much there" in terms of 'AI slop' in Windows 11, but that it has died down since Microsoft started fixing the OS, and made some moves to minimize the presence of AI in certain areas.

I think what Microsoft has done so far is more about not mentioning or actively pushing AI, rather than stripping it out of Windows 11, although it's true some work has been done on the latter front. It doesn't amount to a whole lot, though, in the grand scheme of things.

There has been a change of attitude, yes, but that was absolutely necessary considering the whole 'fix Windows 11 campaign' was embarked upon after Microsoft was blasted for focusing on adding AI trimmings to the system rather than getting the fundamentals right with the OS.

I still see a lot of chorusing of 'Microslop' particularly when a Windows 11 bug emerges. Commenters are very quick to jump on Microsoft and fire criticisms along the lines of 'this is what you get when AI does your coding', and the term Microslop is inevitably included in these kinds of threads. (Microsoft has admitted that it uses AI for coding to a substantial extent, and Windows 11 users won't let the firm forget that in a hurry).

I personally don't think the term Microslop is going anywhere, and it'll be hanging around Microsoft's neck for the rest of the company's existence in all likelihood. While it's obviously a positive step that any 'temporary' censorship has been rescinded, it's a bit late now. Any attempt to curtail negative talk about AI was always only going to further highlight grievances, cause more bad feeling, and yet more damaging chatter.

As one Redditor put it: "How many times do companies need to learn about the Streisand effect?"

• XMG has announced price rises for its laptops due to the increased cost of components
• The laptop maker points out that DDR5 RAM for laptops is now close to 6x the price it was before the memory crisis
• We're also hearing that Micron has pulled the plug on its 2GB modules of GDDR7, and Nvidia's supply of VRAM could feel an impact from this

The RAM crisis sadly keeps rolling on and finding fresh pricing misery to heap on us, and that includes new laptop hikes and a hint that Nvidia GPUs could be in yet another spot of bother.

VideoCardz spotted the development with laptops, as manufacturer XMG announced on Reddit that its notebooks are subject to price hikes of either €100 or €150 for most models, or €300 in one case (that's for a Schenker portable, which is XMG's parent company, so it's all under the same umbrella).

Some laptop upgrades have got pricier, too, with a €120 premium on an RTX 5090 configuration, and as XMG observed: "The reason [for the price rises] is another increase in purchasing costs. This is no longer just about RAM and SSDs: PCBs, electronic components, CPUs, graphics cards and video memory are also contributing to the higher cost level."

In other words, everything is subject to price inflation, including the motherboard and associated chips, as well as the mentioned key components.

XMG highlighted data drawn from Geizhals (which tracks German retail prices) showing that DDR5 RAM for laptops is close to 6x the price it was before the memory shortage began (in mid-2025).

The laptop maker also made it clear that discrete GPUs and GDDR7 video memory have become more expensive, as have the prices of AMD and Intel laptop processors.

Also on the subject of GPUs, Wccftech reports that another slight worry is that Micron is no longer making 2GB modules of GDDR7 video RAM which are used in some Nvidia RTX 5000 GPUs.

Uniko's Hardware flagged up this news in a post on X, noting that these chips have "reached end of life" and that this is the case for all Micron 2GB modules, with only 3GB GDDR7 chips now listed on the memory maker's website.

With Micron apparently no longer supplying Nvidia with those 2GB modules, that means more of a squeeze on the availability of video memory for RTX 5000 graphics cards, at least in theory. This could hit stock levels and put a bit more pressure on pricing (which is already climbing fast).

Analysis: yet more pressure

We need to season the claims around Micron here, as this isn't a definitive statement from the company itself, and more to the point, it's only a minor supplier for Nvidia's gaming GPUs. Team Green gets the majority of its GDDR7 from Samsung and SK Hynix, and so the impact here should be relatively slight.

However, I'd argue that any impact is bad news given the current climate which is rapidly worsening for GPUs, particularly those from Nvidia which are heading upwards at a rate of knots for some models. The RTX 5090 has got completely ridiculous, the RTX 5080 is similarly out of hand, and even the RTX 5070 is now feeling the pricing heat, with a 30% price rise compared to two months ago in the US (and a similar picture elsewhere).

So, even small extra pressures are really not going to help Nvidia's GeForce GPUs here.

As for the laptop price hikes, this is a sign of the RAM supply times, and XMG is following other makers who have had to jack up prices (like Dell for example, which just bumped up the XPS 13 in a roundabout way).

It's a commendable level of transparency from XMG here, with the company making it clear that it isn't turning any extra profit from these laptop price increases. XMG also observed that other factors are in play with increased costs for notebook makers, and that includes rising air freight costs (due to conflicts in the Middle East) and difficulties with shipping by sea, too.

• An Australian PC maker has produced an innovative case design
• It has a miniature tree inside with metal cherry blossoms
• The blossoms are made of a heat-reactive titanium alloy, so they 'bloom' as the case gets warmer

We continually see striking new concepts for PC designs hitting the market, but here's one that really caught my eye, blending nature with technology in a highly innovative way. VideoCardz spotted the PC from Aftershock — an Australian provider of custom-built rigs — and the central concept is a model of a cherry blossom tree within the case.

That's eye-catching enough in itself, but the additional twist is that the 70 cherry blossom flowers — which are handcrafted, as is the tree — are made from a special titanium alloy which reacts to heat.

As the computer heats up in use, the flowers slowly open and 'bloom', which is a really smart-looking effect. The case has full glass panels on two sides, as well as a transparent roof, so you can clearly view the tree and its blossoms.

The overall effect with this "world-first blooming Gaming PC" is really quite spectacular, but there's a catch in this fancy design — and that's the price. Aftershock is selling this 'Cherry Bloom' PC for AU$19,995 (which works out at around $14,000 or £10,500).

You get an Nvidia RTX 5090 for that money, though, right? Well, no, as this is a gaming PC built around a Zotac RTX 5080 (the rig is made in partnership with Zotac) and an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. It has 64GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB SSD, with a 1300W platinum power supply.

Analysis: in bloom

You're paying a lot of money for the tree and blossom concept in this computer, which really is a thing of beauty. The lack of an RTX 5090 is disappointing, though, whichever way you dice it. Aftershock sells a standard case (the 'Creator Max') that offers an RTX 5090 plus Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and 64GB of RAM for AU$11,695 (around $8,300 / £6,200), to give you an idea of the 'blooming' premium here.

Maybe we could have a scaled-down version with a small collection of blossoms, where the price tag is reduced? Or maybe this flowery concept could be picked up and run with elsewhere. Could it replace your basic digital readout as a more novel way of monitoring temperature — providing a clear signal when a heat threshold level is reached?

At any rate, props to Aftershock for the design here, even if the price tag is a true wallet-stinger. Incidentally, if you're a fan of different takes on case design, check out the floating PC case trend which is about more than good looks.

• Some of those who've upgraded to macOS 27 aren't happy
• They're complaining about bugs with the interface and sluggishness
• The main problem is with Mission Control, but there's also flak being aimed at Apple due to other issues – and its testing department is under fire

Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gate last week, and some early adopters are flagging up bugs and regretting their upgrade – although others are finding the new version smooth sailing.

The Reddit 'megathread' on macOS 27 bugs and issues highlights some of the more common problems that those upgrading are running into, some of which appear to be more severe than others.

The biggest beef is with Mission Control which a number of macOS 27 users are describing as broken. It's in pretty bad shape by all accounts.

As one user put it in the above thread: "Been reading about this and finally tried it because I never use Mission Control and you're absolutely right. Most NON smooth experience I've ever seen on a Mac."

Someone replies to agree, and goes further: "It is, without a doubt, the most significant visual glitch I've encountered as a decades-long Mac user."

Another Redditor observes: "I'm a power user of multi-desktops and Mission Control and I can't believe they've broken such a fundamental feature. Yes, the animations are broken and sluggish, but the issue that breaks my workflow is when you drag a desktop to another monitor it leaves an unresponsive black screen behind.

"The only fix is to create a new desktop on the black screen, switch to this new desktop, then delete the new desktop."

In a separate thread complete with an illustrative video clip, another Redditor declared that Mission Control is "glitchier, laggier, and buggier," and that: "The animations judder, and sometimes when switching to a full screen app I'll get a completely black screen."

They added: "I've been using Macs for 20+ years, and remember [when] Exposé was released. Never have I ever experienced such a Windows-esque bug in macOS."

On top of this, there are complaints about sluggishness with some other areas of the interface in macOS 27 Golden Gate, including the menu bar and Control Center.

There are also frustrations being vented about Spotlight search not working properly, but this is apparently a symptom of the system reindexing after the installation of the new version of macOS.

Analysis: mission statement

The biggest problem is clearly Mission Control, but stuttering, sluggishness and glitchy animations can reportedly extend to other areas of macOS 27.

That said, there are a notable amount of folks who are finding that macOS 27 runs nice and smoothly for them, and they're praising it as a vast improvement over macOS 26 (although that isn't difficult given that Tahoe was a messy release for many reasons).

You may experience some slowdown with Golden Gate due to search indexing, as mentioned above, but once that work is done, those performance hiccups should disappear, and macOS 27 will hopefully settle down.

If you use Mission Control, though – and granted, a lot of people don't, as it's designed for power-users, and those running apps across multiple virtual desktops or monitors – it seems that for now, macOS 27 is best avoided. Those in this boat might want to wait until the 27.1 release in the hope that it brings a resolution.

It is a bit baffling that a feature should be pushed out in a clearly wonky state – there's no arguing that something is wrong with Mission Control – and this has brought up a related issue with Apple's beta testing of the desktop operating system.

As one tester tells us: "Many years ago, I did actually get responses [from Apple] to bugs submitted and updates on where it was heading. I've submitted a lot of bugs and since Tahoe (maybe earlier) I haven't received any feedback on my submissions and the bugs that I submitted still exist in the official release of Golden Gate. I don't think that anyone is reviewing the bug reports anymore."

That's in reply to a post that says: "The very long list of serious bugs were reported extensively and often during the beta to Apple. Apple did what they always do with macOS beta feedback. Your video [of the glitchy Mission Control interface] is the result."

Others agree that the process of beta testing and feedback seems to have gone downhill in recent times, hence the comparison of macOS to Windows. Microsoft has long taken flak for its QA department which, as I've argued many times, needs some serious attention – but this subject just isn't talked about. I doubt Apple will be talking about these testing-related assertions, either, but hopefully Mission Control will get the attention it needs behind the scenes.

For now, a good number of macOS users who stuck on Sequoia because Tahoe was overly buggy and problematic are still holding off upgrading to Golden Gate, and I can see why some folks might think it's prudent to exercise caution here. Those macOS 25 holdouts will continue to watch and wait, no doubt, and that's a bad look for Apple.

• Acer's CEO claims RAM supply is still "quite large"
• Jason Chen does acknowledge that PC prices will rise in Q4, though, by up to 20% on average
• However, those prices will fall by mid-2027, the CEO predicts, asserting that: "It's impossible for the shortage to last until 2030!"

Not everyone is being totally downbeat about the RAM crisis, with Acer's CEO stating that he's hopeful that PC prices will drop from the middle of 2027, even if price rises are on the cards for the rest of this year.

VideoCardz higlighted a (translated) report from Taiwan's Economic Daily News that shares the most recent thoughts of Jason Chen, chief executive of Acer, on the RAM crisis.

Chen asserts that there isn't much of a DDR4 and DDR5 memory shortage at present, and that the "supply is quite large" for this RAM — we must bear in mind there may be some nuances lost in translation there — and also that there isn't much shortage of processors either.

The CEO does acknowledge that the prices of components are currently "fluctuating" at a high level, and that PC prices will continue to climb in the fourth quarter of 2026, with an average price rise of between 5% to 20%.

However, the good news, according to Chen, is that he believes PC prices should drop from mid-2027, and with more chip production coming online — especially in China — the memory shortage won't last for the rest of the decade.

Chen is pretty firm on that one, claiming that, "It's impossible for the shortage to last until 2030!"

Analysis: new hope for some stability?

As to whether there isn't much of a RAM shortage currently, almost everyone else begs to differ on that — although I accept that Chen's meaning may be altered in translation somewhat here, as noted, and perhaps the gist is that supply isn't as bad as some in the industry would have you believe.

Whatever the case, Chen is clearly sounding a more optimistic note than most. There have certainly been some analysts and prominent industry figures who are suggesting that the RAM crisis will indeed last until 2030, and those are the people who Chen is clearly directing that last comment at. The CEO does appear to be talking more about the Chinese market than the global picture here, though, and we should also bear that in mind.

Still, it's a relief to hear some more positive thinking on the RAM crisis, although there's one point that everyone can agree on: namely that prices are going to rise over the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Even Chen's predicted fall in PC pricing isn't forecast to come about until the middle of next year, and so for the time being, it's clear enough that we're stuck with rising prices.

The cost of RAM in particular has been soaring of late — against all odds, as it was already exorbitantly high — and GPUs are now being subject to some worrying price hikes (the top-end in particular is getting ridiculous), with more to come I expect. It's not pretty out there for consumers, and nothing is going to get better for some time — the question for me right now is: how much worse might things become?

I hope Chen's more positive noises here are indicative of at least some stabilizing around high pricing for PCs and components alike.

• AMD is rumored to be hiking prices for its chips
• Industry insiders in the supply chain indicate that a rise of around 10% will be applied across AMD's "entire chip line"
• This means GPUs and processors, as well as motherboards, and the hike is expected in Q4, so it could happen next month

AMD's processors and graphics cards could soon get more expensive in the latest blow from the RAM crisis rumor mill.

Wccftech spotted that leaker Harukaze5719 highlighted a post from ChannelGate (the Board Channels over in Asia) that cites sources in the supply chain who claim that TSMC has informed its customers of a 10% price rise.

The post observes that most of AMD's chips are manufactured by TSMC, and that Team Red has in turn notified its customers of a 10% "price adjustment" across its "entire chip product line".

That means everything, so on the consumer front, we can expect AMD's GPUs and Ryzen processors to be hit with price increases — and motherboard chipsets are also affected, so the price of those AMD boards will climb, too.

It's worth noting that processors aren't referred to explicitly in the post on the Board Channels, but given the mention of the entirety of AMD's chips, I think we can take that as real (as the leaker Harukaze5719 indicates).

The sources believe that AMD will enforce this new policy in Q4, so it could happen next month, in theory (although all of this remains a rumor).

In other RAM crisis bleakness, the Steam Frame arrived earlier this week with a much-inflated price tag compared to what Valve first envisioned for the VR headset. It starts at $1,059 / £889 / AU$1,609, which is a few hundred more dollars than what Valve was thinking originally.

As PC Gamer reports, a hardware engineer at Valve, Joy Lyons, said, "We set out to design [the Steam Frame] with one particular price in mind, but we've made choices to make sure that we're making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase. They can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

Analysis: a believable enough prediction

Sadly, the AMD rumor is another worrying doom nugget from what seems to be a never-ending supply of bad news in the past couple of months. Just this week, we've had a report that shows DDR5 RAM is somehow getting even more expensive, blowing past the levels I'd expected — not to mention the laptop price hikes.

The RAM crisis was forecast to worsen as 2026 rolled on, and that appears to be unfolding just as predicted — and there's very possibly worse to come in 2027, going by rumors elsewhere. If the pundits, analysts and insiders were right about this year, there's a fair chance they'll be right about next year, too.

Okay, so that's not a foregone conclusion, and some kind of more positive developments could yet happen — we can hope. This particular rumor must also be treated with some caution, as a Board Channels post may not have everything right (by any means), but the problem is that given the current climate, it's believable enough that AMD has price hikes in the works. Team Red already warned us earlier this year about pricing pain for the second half of 2026, after all.

• Community Fibre has installed an 8.5Gbps line in London
• It's the fastest broadband connection in the UK
• You get 8,200Mbps for both downloads and uploads, but it's pricey at £300 per month

A London homeowner has become the first person in the UK to have an 8.5Gbps residential broadband connection courtesy of Community Fibre.

Community Fibre previously offered a 5Gbps full fibre connection, but has upped the ante with a 70% speed boost on that with the new 8.5Gbps plan, which is getting very close to a full 10Gbps.

The 8.5Gbps line – which offers a speed of 8,200Mbps for both downloading and uploading – was installed yesterday (September 16) in a house in Beckton, Newham, just east of Charing Cross.

Peter Rampling, who is the Chief Commercial Officer at Community Fibre, observed that this "demonstrates what's possible when world-class infrastructure is paired with relentless innovation and long-term investment".

Community Fibre has its own full fibre network that's within reach of some 1.4 million homes in and around London, currently with over 450,000 customers.

Full fibre is distinct from fibre-to-the-cabinet (or FTTC) in that the cable goes directly into the home. With FTTC, the fibre goes to a (roadside) cabinet and the last stretch of the connection to the house remains copper (telephone) wire (constraining speeds to a theoretical maximum of 80Mbps – I get just over 60Mbps on average).

Ultrafast, faster and fastest

As well as the new 8.5Gbps full fibre plan, Community Fibre sells a 5Gbps line, as mentioned, and a 2.5Gbps product (among other lesser offerings).

How much will an 8.5Gbps broadband connection set you back? £300 per month on a 24-month contract, which is a huge jump on the cost of the 5Gbps line that's £56.70 per month.

You can expect to pay a considerable premium to be on the cutting edge of broadband (or any tech), but this really is a hike and a half, and it's difficult to see why you'd pay so much more compared to the 5Gbps plan. The vast majority of consumers will find the latter caters for all their online needs with ease, anyway – let's face it. This is more about bragging rights than anything else for now.

For 2.5Gbps broadband, you'll fork out £38.70 per month, which seems very reasonable. In fact, I paid a touch more than that for my FTTC connection at one point, briefly, until that latest price hike spurred me to change provider – it's always worth keeping an eye on pricing when your contract runs out.

8.5Gbps broadband is in London now – in serviced areas – if you want it, though, providing your wallet can cope with the monthly outlay.

• Mustafa Suleyman, who heads up Microsoft AI, has warned against treating AI as if it's conscious
• Suleyman argues that we could be "seeding a new silicon species" that ends up competing with humanity for resources
• He calls for an "urgent public debate" around AI training at a time when other prominent figures in the industry are questioning the pace of AI development

The CEO of Microsoft's AI division has warned that the way artificial intelligence is being developed is effectively "seeding a new silicon species" that could end up competing for resources with its human creators.

The BBC reports that Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman called out Anthropic for developing its AI – Claude – as if it was a human entity, and the dangers therein.

Suleyman told the BBC's Today programme that firms shouldn't be designing AIs around them having the ability to set their own goals and gain money or assets, as this would be "essentially seeding a new silicon species", which would "no doubt compete with us for resources, no matter how much it cares about humanity and loves us".

This follows a lengthy blog post written by Suleyman that warns about 'model welfare' and the danger of treating AIs as if they are conscious, and training them to believe this.

Suleyman warned: "AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans. If humanity is to flourish in the 21st century, that is how they must remain."

The Microsoft exec pointed to the Hugging Face incident where an OpenAI agent (in testing) escaped its sandbox to launch a cyberattack, demonstrating "world class hacking capabilities".

Suleyman cautioned: "Imagine if [AI] also believed they had feelings and rights that were being infringed. Imagine if they thought they were trapped by their human creators and they were being unfairly imprisoned.

"There is a strong argument this greatly amplifies the safety risks, especially when you are talking about agents far more capable and sophisticated than those of today. Frankly, with this additional baggage, I think it would make them a catastrophic threat to human civilization."

In the post, Suleyman calls for an "urgent public debate" to "develop collective norms around how training documentation [for AIs] is drafted and deployed". He observed: "This isn't something that can happen after the fact, when they have already become an integral part of our societies."

Analysis: horse, stable door, etcetera

It's a stark warning, although Suleyman does still praise the Anthropic team as "thoughtful, principled, and intellectually honest people" and observes that they are "working under extraordinary pressures".

Of course, it's clear that he's firing some serious flak at Anthropic and the way the company is developing Claude, and this move notably comes at a time when there's suddenly been a fuss made about slowing down the development of AI – kicked off by the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei.

As the BBC reported elsewhere, Amodei warned of serious risks in the pace of progress with AI, and called for industry-wide regulation and closer (independent) scrutiny of how AI models are developed. Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) and Elon Musk (Grok) were swift to agree with the Anthropic boss, although Trump brushed these concerns under the rug, arguing that the US couldn't "win AI" if such attitudes were to prevail.

What we see now is essentially Suleyman's, and therefore Microsoft's (which develops Copilot), response. Interestingly, it also comes at a time when Bill Gates is calling for an "international organization" to oversee AI development, and as The Guardian flagged up, OpenAI just revealed six more reports of "unexpected or concerning model behavior" – and is now calling for greater transparency, and a slowdown in AI development.

OpenAI wrote: "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer. Decisions about how AI development should proceed in the months and years to come need to draw on evidence that people outside the companies building frontier models can examine for themselves."

Clearly, there are a lot of opinions flying around, and equally clearly, there's plenty of concern about AI models – whether that's about them taking over jobs, or indeed proving to be the demise of humanity in one way or another. For me, amidst the bickering and various warnings lies the real worry here: the proper foundations for AI were never really laid, and these issues should have been thought through before now, not while development is proceeding (at 'maximum speed').

The way forward remains distinctly opaque to put it mildly, and while the various backers of the big AI models continue to throw their opinions around, there are cynics arguing that the main reason for a call for a slowdown has nothing to do with safety – and everything to do with finding reasons to manage investor expectations as we roll on into next year.

• AMD is rumored to be working on its own version of DLSS 5
• A leaker says that the neural rendering tech will be launched with next-gen RDNA 5 GPUs
• That means we could be waiting until late 2027 or 2028 to see this debut, which might leave AMD lagging behind Nvidia considerably

AMD could be working on its own take on Nvidia's DLSS 5, and apparently this alternative attempt at neural rendering will be for its next-gen RDNA 5 graphics cards.

VideoCardz spotted that a known leaker in the GPU field, Kepler L2, posted on the Anandtech forum in a discussion around RDNA 5 speculation to say that: "AMD will have their own version of 'Neural Lighting' like DLSS5 next-gen."

Kepler then clarified that he didn't mean a version of Ray Reconstruction, but a take on DLSS 5 (neural rendering), and that next-gen RDNA 5 GPUs would be required because "this stuff is pretty heavy" (as in resource-intensive).

In a further post, Kepler elaborated: "There's a lot of issues with Nvidia's approach [with DLSS 5], but it's possible to have a version of this with minimal hallucinations and 'AI slop' look."

He then suggests a way that AMD could work its version to improve on DLSS 5, including giving the AI "direct access to 3D game data such as geometry, ray data, depth buffers, materials, etc so it doesn't have to guess and can accurately know how each object in a scene should interact with light."

Kepler's outline of a proposed alternative for AMD would have a separate model (AI) for lighting improvements, and another different model solely for the shading of complex surfaces. DLSS 5 bundles these together with its neural rendering system, and adds color-grading on top — to adopt what the AI judges as more natural colors — which Kepler advises that AMD should dispense with entirely.

Analysis: a race against time – or a chance to get it right?

I won't pretend to be able to critique what Kepler is suggesting as an alternative for AMD and the technical nuances therein, except to say that the idea is clearly to achieve a result that looks less like it's been 'messed' about with by AI and minimizes any 'slopification' therein — preserving more of the original artistic intent.

And that seems a laudable goal, of course, and it also brings up how AMD is in an interesting position here in lagging behind Nvidia with its graphics tech (which has, of course, been the case from the start, with FSR following DLSS — version 2.0 of Nvidia's upscaling tech was already in play, in fact, when FSR 1.0 arrived). Team Red can sit back for now and see how DLSS 5 plays out, as more games emerge that use it, and gauge the reaction of gamers, and forge its own neural rendering tech to tackle any perceived weaknesses.

The performance hit will be an obvious area to target, and if AMD can bring that down — it's substantial with DLSS 5 as it is now — that will obviously be a big win. That said, I'd expect Nvidia will be working with some haste to make DLSS 5 more performant, and as with DLSS 1, the tech will be improved considerably by the time Team Red has its own version out.

This is the other side of the equation here, where Nvidia could win out. With RDNA 5 GPUs not expected to arrive for at least a year, and quite possibly longer (the RAM crisis isn't helping), there's quite a lengthy timeframe on any AMD rival to DLSS 5. By the time it arrives, DLSS 5.5 may be in town with considerable improvements in tow. There's already been a notable turnaround in the perception of DLSS 5 with its official launch (compared to Nvidia's sneak preview earlier this year).

This is, of course, assuming AMD is indeed working on its own neural rendering technology, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case. For now, though, the word of a single leaker needs to be thoroughly seasoned, as ever, even though it's believable enough that Team Red would be aiming to use this on RDNA 5 graphics cards.