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[JEMC]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

JEMC said:

Oof: Years before Steam, a Blizzard engineer wanted to turn Battle.net into a third-party game store, but was reportedly turned down
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/oof-years-before-steam-a-blizzard-engineer-wanted-to-turn-battle-net-into-a-third-party-game-store-but-was-reportedly-turned-down/
The world of today is the result of every decision and accident that led to it, which is a disconcerting thought given how many things it's possible to almost do in a lifetime. Case in point, according to a new book on the history of Blizzard, the Warcraft studio rejected a proposal to turn Battle.net into a third-party game store years before Steam launched.
>> Dear God. Can you imagine Steam in the hands of Activision and Bobby Kotick? **shudders**

Blizzard canceled a roguelike version of Diablo 4 with permadeath and Batman: Arkham-style brawls
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/blizzard-canceled-a-roguelike-version-of-diablo-4-with-permadeath-and-batman-arkham-style-brawls/
If things had gone differently at Blizzard 10 years ago, we might've been playing a version of Diablo 4 with melee brawls akin to the Batman: Arkham series. I'm not even sure that idea sounds good on paper, but it didn't seem to work out in practice either because Blizzard eventually rebooted the project into the demon-slaying action RPG we have today.

News 1: If this really was years before Steam, then Blizzard most certainly was still part of Sierra On-line, itself a subsidiary of Vivendi. So, no Activision store with that one yet.

Besides, having their own storefront didn't exactly mean it would work out nicely. Both Stardock and Paradox had their own stores (Impulse, sold to GameStop, and GamersGate, spun off) before they divested from them. In fact, I was on those stores (and GOG) first before switching to Steam.

News 2: Blizzard is going full circle here; Diablo was originally conceived as a roguelike with graphics (most roguelikes at the time, and even today, still used ASCII characters) until someone removed the turns and ran the game in real time. 

I know that a successful Blizzard back then would have given Vivendi more money and less reasons to sell it, but telecom and entertainment are their main business. It wouldn't be too hard to believe that they would try to sell it to get the money they needed to keep the other business afloat.

Still, we're lucky it didn't go anywhere.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

JEMC said:

I just realized (yeah, I know, I'm slow) that if that memory configuration is true, the 5060 will come again with a paltry 128-bit bus and either an insuffcient 8GB of VRAM or 16GB that won't do anything because the chip won't hav eenough memory bandwidth to take advantage of it. After all, we know Nvidia isn't going to use the newer and expensive GDDR7 on such lower parts.

So yeah, for those that want more memory, AMD may be the only one to bring it. And we'll see if they do or not. ***stares at the equally crippled 7600 8GB & 7600XT 16GB cards***

Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

AMD Preps Radeon RX 7650 GRE “RDNA 3â€Â Graphics Card For CES 2025 Launch

https://wccftech.com/amd-preps-radeon-rx-7650-gre-rdna-3-graphics-card-ces-2025-launch/

Anyone thinks this card will be good? Because this late in the cycle and likely aimed only for China, it doesn't look like it will bring much to the table.

My guess is that the 7650GRE is made of Navi 32 chips that weren't good enough for the 7700XT. As such, it should fit right in between the 7600(XT) and 7700Xt in terms of performance.

As for how much memory this chip is gonna have, that's an interesting question. After all; Navi 32 isn't monolithic, and AMD could put as many MCD on that this as they want. But I guess they're going to use 3 of them, just like on the 7700XT, 2 would simply be too little for the performance.

The 7650GRE could performance-wise be the perfect counter to the 4060Ti, with similar performance but less VRAM issues for a much cheaper price. It's biggest Problem will be the price: the gap between the 7600 and 7700 models has been shrinking, so much so that there's not much left in between the 7600XT and 7700XT to make way for a new card: Either it will be just $30 or less apart from one of the models or AMD kills of the 7600XT to replace it with the 7650GRE.

Given how both Nvidia and AMD are lowering the prices of their cards for their upcoming new cards, launching the 7650 GRE now to fill a price and perfomance gap is difficult to understand. It's not like the 7700XT is much more expensive than the 4060Ti, at least over here, and the performance jump is quite big (in raster).

Memory wise, it has options, yes, but AMD went with 256-bit for the 7800XT and 192-bit for the 7700XT, so it will likely be either of those.

Lastly, it's a GRE card. That points towards a China only card, which could ot not, be released in other markets later. But, with RDNA4 around the corner, will AMD bother to do it?