Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis rules nothing out in supermarket reform Even if it means forcing the current duopoly or rolling out the red carpet to an international player with some tweaks to the law. 
© 2025 RadioNZ 8:35am AMD’s next-gen Radeon RX 9070 XT will be revealed February 28 After a weird not-quite-announcement at CES 2025, AMD is ready to whip back the curtain on its next generation of graphics card. Today, David McAfee (VP of Ryzen and Radeon) announced on X that the company will formally unveil the Radeon RX 9070 XT on the AMD Gaming YouTube channel on February 28 at 8 AM Eastern.
AMD originally briefed the press on the Radeon RX 9070 XT in early January, saying that it would be part of the company’s CES 2025 keynote. AMD never actually mentioned a new GPU generation, and in interviews afterwards, executives said it was delayed to provide a bigger, dedicated event for its complex new graphics generation. (Nvidia’s RTX 50-series reveal, with lower prices than expected and a frame-boosting Multi Frame Generation feature, might have also taken AMD by surprise.)
The original press briefing didn’t reveal much beyond philosophical changes. The new RDNA 4 architecture powering the Radeon RX 9070 and 9060 series graphics cards (finally) places a larger emphasis on AI hardware as AI upscaling devours native graphics. And AMD’s next-gen FSR 4.0 is designed to lean heavily on those new AI cores to more closely compete with Nvidia’s vaunted DLSS upscaling. AMD said a March launch would let the company add more polish to initial FSR 4.0 integrations.
AMD
Beyond that, we don’t know anything official yet, though some compelling (unconfirmed) Radeon RX 9070 XT specs were recently leaked. Are they legit? Guess we’ll find out on February 28.
In the meantime, check out our reviews of the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, two graphics cards that go all-in on DLSS 4’s new Multi Frame Generation feature. Nvidia just announced that the RTX 5070 Ti, a more direct competitor to the name-borrowing Radeon RX 9070, will launch on February 20. It’s going to be a busy end of the month for gaming enthusiasts! 
© 2025 PC World 8:25am  
| What’s up with Gen Z? A study suggests that less than half of Generation Z are proud to be British. 
© 2025 BBCWorld 7:55am |
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  Kiwi runner breathes fresh air into what's possible with cystic fibrosis Aucklander Ben Prince-Saxon is pushing the boundaries of what's possible living with cystic fibrosis. 
© 2025 RadioNZ 8:35am Rachel Hunter back at the Kiwi beach where she was discovered “Our Rach’s” latest gig is an Uber Eats in-app campaign to get Kiwis ordering food deliveries at their favourite sandy spot. 
© 2025 Stuff.co.nz 8:25am Live: Another busy day of Treaty Principles Bill submissions lined up Among the people set to submit include former ACT MP Donna Awatere Huata, TV presenter Peter Williams, and former Green MP Catherine Delahunty. 
© 2025 Stuff.co.nz 8:25am Nato boss presses case for nations like NZ to boost defence spending Mark Rutte wants Indo-Pacific countries to lift spending to three percent of their economies. 
© 2025 RadioNZ 8:15am Watch live: Time for 'significant reset' on red tape, David Seymour says Bad regulation is killing New Zealand's prosperity, the Regulation Minister has told the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. 
© 2025 RadioNZ 8:15am Hands-on with Asus Q-Release Slim PCIe slots: Just yank it Getting a big honkin’ graphics card out of a PCIe slot isn’t easy these days. Asus has tried a few methods to alleviate this issue, but its latest Q-Release Slim slot design is causing some new problems on its own. Adam and Will decided to go in-depth in the lab to see what all the fuss is about.
The fuss, in case you haven’t heard, is that this slot design might scratch your graphics card’s connection area. There’s a little retention clamp inside the slot, which replaced simpler button-redirect mechanisms that just moved the tab to make it easier to hit. The clamp only releases if you pull on the card in a very specific way, from the part of the card closest to the rear of the PC case.
The mechanism itself is a little awkward, requiring a two degree tilt in an area of the case that’s already very tight. But as Adam points out, the bigger issue might be that in the absence of easy access to the release tab, the Q-Release Slim design asks the user to just yank on the card, in a way that’s not immediately obvious. It’s also deeply unnatural for anyone who’s been using PCIe slots for the last couple of decades.
That said, it’s not so awkward that it’s impossible to get used to. And as has been noted before, most people aren’t frequently installing and removing graphics cards in the same machine — it’s a condition that might be exclusive to people who are constantly reviewing and benchmarking PC components. So I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker for a motherboard that has this Q-Release Slim system in place.
But if it is, there are plenty of alternatives, even in Asus’ own product line. For more on the latest yankable PC hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube. And join us every Tuesday for The Full Nerd podcast. 
© 2025 PC World 8:05am  
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