PC Gaming

The latest data from JPR shows AMD regaining some market share from Nvidia. Don't get too excited. The new figures put AMD at 17.5% of overall desktop graphics card market share for the second quarter of 2023.

That's up from just 12% for the first quarter of the year. Wind the clock back to Q2 of 2022 and AMD was on 20%. So it's still behind its modest performance relative to Nvidia one year ago. But AMD has also improved significantly from the all-time low (at least in terms of data going back to 2002) of just a 10% share in the third quarter of last year.

Overall, desktop graphics cards shipments were up by 2% this quarter versus the first quarter of the year at 6.44 million. However, they were still down by a pretty horrendous 38% versus the same quarter in 2022.

Imagine Dragons has released its official Starfield song, called Children of the Sky (a Starfield song).

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Starfield composer Inon Zur collaborated with Imagine Dragons on Children of the Sky. He said: “The band has created an amazing, emotional, and memorable song, and I joined them in crafting the Starfield motif into the song as well as iconic elements from the Main Theme and the Starfield orchestral treatment. The outcome is a massive celebration for Starfield and I hope that the group’s fans as well as gamers from all over the world will find it as exhilarating and magnificent as we all feel.”

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Youtube link

Space Marine 2 has a new, explosive nine-minute gameplay video keen Warhammer 40,000 watchers are sure to get a kick out of.

Saber Interactive’s Space Marine 2 has so far shown off the relentless alien Tyranids as the primary enemy facing Lieutenant Titus and his Ultramarine brethren as they battle to save the Imperial Jungle World Kadaku from disaster. But this new gameplay video, below, teases the addition of Chaos forces to the game.

ASUS's Revolutionary Yet Proprietary "GC-HPWR" Connector Comes With A Cableless Design But Needs Adoption To Really Kick Off

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, proudly announces the new COLORFIRE MEOW Series which consists of a graphics card, motherboard, and chassis. The MEOW Series feature two designs, MEOW ORANGE featuring Bobi the orange tabby cat and MEOW PURPLE featuring A+ the British shorthair cat.

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[EDIT] : Sorry, kbin is picking up the least valuable image.

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Cooler Master has announced the GX II Gold series of power supply units (PSUs), a new line of PSUs designed for unparalleled durability, efficiency, and performance, catering to power users, enthusiasts, and custom builders. The GX II Gold comes fully loaded with an APFC half-bridge, LLC, and DC-to-DC design, achieving an 80 Plus Gold efficiency certification while maintaining exceptional performance. A smart thermal control mode and zero-RPM default mode effectively minimize noise and enhance heat dissipation, while an ATX 3.0 12VHPWR native cable featuring a space-saving 90-degree connector ensures flexible compatibility with the latest GPUs.

The seller claims that money from the sale will go to charity.

We got to see an all-new preview at Gamescom, as well as getting some all-new gameplay footage, and here's what we think about the game.

ITHome has picked up on interesting retail activity in China, where AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT graphics cards are deeply discounted. This seems to correspond to a possible discontinuation of Team Red's Navi 23 XT GPU—a Board Channel source stated: "AMD factory has stopped production of a certain GPU. At the present time, shipments from all AIB brands have stopped with inventory being cleared. AMD has stopped production for the Radeon RX 6650 XT, and nearly all brands will have their inventory cleared by the end of September."

Lords of the Fallen is an unlikely reboot, but Hexworks are bringing some new ideas to the table that are very near and dear to my heart.

Lenovo Legion Go will launch 1st of September with huge 8.8-inch screen, QHD+ resolution and a €799 starting price

(Article has lots of details)

A Lookback at Bethesda's Fallout 3 shown at this E3 2008

Steam Strategy Fest is live now through 10am September 4! Check out the fest to enjoy discounts, demos, and more for strategy games of all kinds.

Built-in benchmark tools and AMD FSR 2 support are among the PC version's features.

Robocop: Rogue City is part man, part machine, and all videogame. It's also delayed, as it turns out, from a planned release in September to November 2, 2023.

The November date was revealed in the description for the latest trailer for the game, which blends a cinematic look at the ever-crumbling Old Detroit with gameplay footage showcasing "detective work and gory shootouts." Publisher Nacon didn't provide any explanation for the delay, and in fact the Steam page still indicates that Robocop: Rogue City will launch in September, but this isn't the first time it's been pushed back: It was originally supposed to be out sometime in June, but got bumped into September earlier this year.

We had high hopes (or at least cautious optimism) for Robocop: Rogue City back in 2022, fueled largely by nostalgia for Paul Verhoeven's brilliant 1987 film about the future of law enforcement, but a closer look at the game in June left me cold.

Intel Arc A750 vs. GeForce RTX 4060, 40+ Game Benchmark @ 1080p & 1440p

tl;dr

The reduced price (~200-220$ USD) and improved drivers have made this a decent value on the low end). It generally lags behind the 4060 and the 7600 at 1080p but is often about the same at 1440p. THere were a few games where it pulled ahead of the 4060 and 7600 (eg. RE4 max settings with RT).

There's also some games where it's performance is just broken TLoU and Hogwarts Legacy RT.

Sea Of Stars is a beautifully made retro-inspired RPG that will instantly transport you back to the 16-bit golden years.

Many attempts have been made to recapture the JRPG's glory days. In Tokyo RPG Factory, Square Enix founded a whole studio dedicated to the craft, and more recently Squeenix's "HD-2D" style has come to define both their own retro work and that of others. But it's arguably the RPGs from outside Japan that have been doing a better job of propping up the SNES nostalgia tent. Last year's Jack Move and Chained Echoes were both infinitely more refreshing to me than the slightly tired Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler sequels, for example, and now we have The Messenger studio's latest, Sea Of Stars, which is probably one of the few Japanese-inspired RPGs I've played in the last decade that's even come close to bottling the mighty Chrono Trigger and lived to tell the tale. If you're the sort to cry, 'They just don't make 'em like they used to anymore', well, you can dry your tears, because Sea Of Stars is the one that is.

Wayfinder has plenty of potential, but it's stretching the 'early access' label a little too far with this very, very rocky launch.

This is our full-length interview with Jason Christensen of AMD's Device Analysis Lab in Austin, TX. We aired parts of this for our documentary previously, but due to popular demand from viewers who wanted to see Jason's full tour, we've cut together an extended version! This video walks through the destructive analysis tools, non-destructive analysis tools, and some of the technology behind how AMD designs and iterates on its CPUs. Jason shares technical details on how it all works.

NVIDIA has published its DLSS 3.5 SDK, paving the way for the next generation of Super Sampling enhancements within games and applications.

A few hours ago, I was tipped by one of our readers that NVIDIA has added the first DLSS 3.5 and Ray Reconstruction libraries over at its public GitHub domain. So we checked them out and as of just 14 hours (at the time of posting this article), the DLSS Super Sampling SDK 3.5.0 and required docs are indeed available. The libraries include multiple DLLs for Windows and Linux platforms & these DLLs can be easily swapped with the existing DLSS 3.1 using the DLSS Swapper tool made by Beeradmoore aka Brad.

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The release comes a day after AMD unveiled its FSR 3 technology which also features interpolation and frame generation capability. But the thing that makes DLSS 3.5 fundamentally different from AMD's FSR 3 is that DLSS 3.5 is an extension of DLSS 3 which already introduced the two elements, frame generation and frame interpolation. The technology has already gotten better with its DLSS 3.1 revision and DLSS 3.5 aims to further enhance the ray tracing capabilities through a new tech called Ray Reconstruction.

On a technical level, AMD's FSR 3 would be the competitor to DLSS 3/3.1, not DLSS 3.5 which is far more advanced in the things it's made to achieve. DLSS 3 itself has a far bigger adoption rate than DLSS 2 and is already featured in a range of titles whereas AMD has so far only promised two AAA title support for 2023 (Fall) and at least 10 more titles coming in 2024. AMD did announce that its HYPR-RX technology will enable fluid motion frame enablement across DX11/DX12 games but that will only be limited to Radeon RX 7000 GPUs and utilizes RSR over FSR which may have a slight bit of an impact on the visual quality of the game.

Now, after actually playing 30 minutes of Black Myth at gamescom 2023, I’m thrilled to report that seeing really can be believing. It genuinely does feel as good as it looks.

First, let’s address where Black Myth: Wukong sits along the action RPG spectrum. While it definitely falls under the soulslike umbrella thanks to its punishing centre-piece boss fights and bonfire-like checkpointing, Black Myth isn’t directly comparable to any FromSoft game. It sits somewhere between Sekiro and Bloodborne; it has the relentless speed of the former and emphasises evasive dodging much like the latter. But while the combat encounters pull on some of the same strings as the genre’s established titans, the actual act of fighting feels like its own slick beast.

Much of that comes down to the aforementioned evasions. Your staff-swinging monkey protagonist, based on Sun Wukong of China’s classic Journey to the West story, cannot block incoming attacks. Instead, dodges and leaps are your primary method of avoiding damage. This creates an incredibly kinetic foundation for the combat system, one in which you are constantly running circles around foes. While the lack of a traditional block means there’s not the satisfaction of a perfect parry, the feeling of dashing just before an enemy lands a blow is just as sweet.

(Ukrainian) retailer, Telemart, has listed Intel's 14th Gen Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K & Core i5-14600K CPUs on its online site.

Spotted by Momomo_US, the retailer has listed down the Intel 14th Gen Unlocked CPU lineup which includes the Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K, Core i5-14600K & their "KF" brethren. The processors aren't yet listed with any pricing but that could change in the coming month as the lineup is anticipated to be unveiled at the Innovation event in September.

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Intel Core i9-14900K CPU Specifications

Starting with the flagship, we have the Intel Core i9-14900K CPU which will feature 16 cores & 32 threads in an 8+16 configuration. The CPU will feature up to 36 MB of Smart Cache and a base TDP of 125W (253W PL2). It will feature clock speeds of 3.2 GHz at base and up to 6.0 GHz with a Thermal Velocity Boost. These frequencies are currently for the pre-QS stage so we might see the rumored 6.2 GHz on either this chip or a "KS" variant later down the road. Regardless, this will be a +200 MHz frequency jump over the Core i9-13900K and the same as the Core i9-13900KS.

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So just as a recap, here's everything we can expect from Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPUs:

• Same Architecture as Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove P-Cores + Gracemont E-Cores)
• Same Process Node as Raptor Lake (Intel 7 aka 10nm++)
• Higher Clock Speeds Beyond 6.0 GHz
• Support For Faster DDR5 Memory DIMMs
• Much Higher Power Consumption (Close To 300W)
• Compatibility With Existing LGA 1700 / 1800 Socket Motherboards

The Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh Desktop CPU lineup will be supported on the existing LGA 1700 socketed motherboards within the 600 and 700-series lineup and will launch in October 2023. The latest leaks point out a 3% average performance improvement besides the Core i7 SKU which will offer up to 17% faster multi-threaded uplift thanks to a core spec bump.

AMD just announced its RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT GPUs at Gamescom 2023. This video covers the specifications that AMD announced, alongside some of its first-party performance claims. AMD additionally discussed FSR3 in its Gamescom news announcement, with some talk of which games will support it initially. Bethesda's Starfield is also a current "AMD Exclusive" launch partner, so we're expecting more news on this front as Bethesda's launch approaches. Otherwise, most of the news is focused on specs, pricing, and release date.

Dome-King Cabbage is a visual novel set in the world of a monster-collecting RPG, and we were over the moon to debut a magnificent trailer revealing that it’s coming soon to PC and Nintendo Switch.

Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has certainly wowed in trailers so far, although most of the footage we’ve seen so far has been running on PS5. What will the game look like running on a powerful PC? Wonder no longer, because Ubisoft has just released an impressive-looking Avatar PC features trailer.

Massive is offering Avatar players a hearty selection of PC features, including ray-traced reflections and shadows. That ray tracing can be fine-tuned to an usually detailed degree, with Avatar’s in-depth graphics menu allowing you to really tinker with the specifics of the game’s shadows and reflections. Players can also look forward to support for ultrawide and multi-monitor setups, and surprise surprise, the game will have both FSR 2 and DLSS at launch. You can check out the trailer for yourself, below.

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YouTube Trailer Link