So who will reveal first? AMD or Nvidia?

For sure, but yeah quite a few rumours pointing RDNA 2 is going to be quite performant. I wouldn't be too surprised.

RDNA 2 should be 2x RDNA 1st gen and RDNA 3 three times. That's why Nvidia should be worried and why they are going out all stops for Ampere. Man, GPU market about to get a lot exciting again.

They would need to price it competitively. RT performance is an unknown of both cards but it would need to keep pace in that regard as well. I would assume this would cost as much a RTX 3080 for their flagship or a tad lower.

@vivster Probably Nvidia as they are rumoured to be launching their lineup in September.

Welcome to the Tuesday news, all in one post!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam features a new deal as well as a new range of weeklong deals:

• Crazy Machines 3 is 90% off during the next 9 days: https://store.steampowered.com/app/351920/Crazy_Machines_3/
• And these are a few of the weeklong deals:
  • Miss Neko is 20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1101450/Miss_Neko/
  • Strategic Mind: The Pacific gets a 30% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/991810/Strategic_Mind_The_Pacific/
  • Lovecraft's Untold Stories is 50% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/871420/Lovecrafts_Untold_Stories/
  • The Station is 66% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/565120/The_Station/
  • The Early Access title The Yellow King features a 75% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149400/The_Yellow_King/
  • And Toki Tori (and the sequel) is 90% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/38700/Toki_Tori/

At the Humble Store Ubisoft has put its games up to 85% off during the next 6 days (all the keys are for UPlay except 3, that are for GOG): https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/ubisoft-sale/

Fanatical has two new sales:

• The Star Deal is Outward, 65% off during the next 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/outward
• And there's a new bundle: the Refuge Bundle, with 8 games with a 94% discount for the next 19 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/refuge-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Steam's new 'Community Recommendations' feature is a wild ride
https://www.pcgamer.com/steams-new-community-recommendations-feature-is-a-wild-ride/
Today marks the one year anniversary of Steam Labs, a sort of ongoing PTR that Valve uses to test and iterate on new Steam functionality before rolling it out to everyone. To celebrate, Valve posted an update that looks back on a year's worth of experiments and teases a little bit about what's coming next, and finally launched the Community Recommendations storefront feature it began testing last year.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

You can now play as Milla Jovovich “Alice” in Resident Evil 3 Remake
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/you-can-now-play-as-milla-jovovich-alice-in-resident-evil-3-remake/
Resident Evil fans, here is something really cool for you today. Darknessvaltier has released a new mod that allows you to play as Milla Jovovich’s character, Alice, from the Resident Evil movies in Resident Evil 3 Remake.
According to the modder, the 3D model of Milla Jovovich is based on RHender Art’s work. This mod also requires Fluffyquack’s Mod Manager, otherwise you won’t be able to use it.
From what we can see, this 3D character swap mod replaces Jill with Alice. Moreover, Alice has full facial expressions, and comes with her red dress from the first Resident Evil movie. However, you can also use Jill’s default outfit with Alice.
>> You can find it at Nexus Mods.

GAMING NEWS

Here are the launch trailers for Death Stranding & Rocket Arena
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/here-are-the-launch-trailers-for-death-stranding-rocket-arena/
505 Games and Electronic Arts have released the launch trailers for Death Stranding and Rocket Arena, respectively. Both of these games are coming out on the PC later today, alongside Halo 3 for The Master Chief Collection.

Over 5,000 games have been entered into this year's Game Maker's Toolkit game jam
https://www.pcgamer.com/over-5000-games-have-been-entered-into-this-years-game-makers-toolkit-game-jam/
This year's Game Maker's Toolkit game jam took place over the weekend and ended with a total of 5,492 game submissions from indie developers all over the world. The GMTK jam challenges developers to create a game in 48 hours either as a solo developer or within a team, and this year it saw a record number of participants, with the total number surpassing the previous three years of entries combined.
>> If you end not liking any of those games, maybe you have a problem...

Platinum Games says it's still working on mysterious action game Babylon's Fall
https://www.pcgamer.com/platinum-games-says-its-still-working-on-mysterious-action-game-babylons-fall/
Babylon's Fall, a new project in development at Nier: Automata studio Platinum Games, was announced in 2018, with release expected to happen sometime in 2019. It almost immediately fell off the radar, though, until 547 days later, when the developers reappeared to remind the world that it still existed but would be out considerably later than initially planned. Instead of the 2019 launch, it promised "more information next summer," which effectively pushed the release into late 2020.
Another 216 days brings us to today, and the development team has surfaced once again to say that, yes, the game is still in development. That promised info, though (which most of us presumably figured would be a new launch date, or at least a target of some sort) is nowhere to be seen.

Far Cry 6 inspired by former Cuban guerrillas, says narrative director
https://www.pcgamer.com/far-cry-6-inspired-by-former-cuban-guerrillas-says-narrative-director/
Yesterday's Far Cry 6 cinematic trailer (which you can also see above) revealed that the new game will take place in Yara, an island that's fallen into neglect and bloodshed under the rule of dictator Antón Castillo. In a Q&A post at ubisoft.com, narrative director Navid Khavari said that the setting is inspired by Cuba, which the development team visited in preparation for the game.

Skull & Bones still coming, will be a Fortnite-style 'live' game: report
https://www.pcgamer.com/skull-and-bones-is-still-in-development-and-will-be-a-fortnite-style-live-game-according-to-report/
Sunday's Ubisoft Forward showcase focused on the publisher's most popular (and lucrative) titles: Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon and Far Cry all dominated the E3-style presentation. Conspicuously absent was Skull & Bones, an open world pirate adventure first announced in 2017, initially scheduled for a 2018 release, but subsequently delayed over and over again.
A report on VGC suggests there's a good reason for that: the game's direction has changed dramatically. According to anonymous dev sources speaking to VGC, the game has moved from Ubisoft's usual 'premium box model' (think basically every other open world Ubisoft game) towards a live service model (think: Fortnite).

Hyper Scape now has Australian servers
https://www.pcgamer.com/hyper-scape-now-has-australian-servers/
The ongoing Hyper Scape open beta just became more viable for players in the Oceania region, with the announcement that Ubisoft has added a new Australia-based data server. According to the official Hyper Scape Twitter account, players in Oceania don't need to take any action: they'll automatically join matches hosted on the new servers.

Civilization 6 gets Cthulhu worshippers and vampire societies this month
https://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-6-gets-cthulhu-worshippers-and-vampire-societies-this-month/
Civilization 6 is getting weird. It's got a 4X spin on battle royales, for instance, which now includes alien and zombie factions, and the whole thing is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Now, with the imminent arrival of the Ethiopia DLC, things are poised to get even weirder.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla does have sidequests, but they're a bit different
https://www.pcgamer.com/assassins-creed-valhalla-does-have-sidequests-but-theyre-a-bit-different/
There have been a lot of claims over the last day that Assassin's Creed Valhalla won't have sidequests. Depending on where you were looking, it won't have any, it won't have any traditional ones or it just won't have many of them. This all seems to have stemmed from a single Gamespot article. And semantics.

EVE Onine: Zenith is the beginning of the end for the Triglavian invasion
https://www.pcgamer.com/eve-onine-zenith-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-triglavian-invasion/
Massive anecdote generator EVE Online received an update today that will conclude the Triglavian invasion that's had the galaxy in its grip for the last year, with players getting a chance to influence the outcome.

PUBG's remastered Sanhok and loot trucks are coming soon
https://www.pcgamer.com/pubgs-remastered-sanhok-and-loot-trucks-are-coming-soon/
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is poised to get another massive map overhaul in Season 8, with Sanhok in its sights this time. The jungle map has been rebuilt from the ground up, according to PUBG Corp, with an eye to making it even more overgrown and dangerous.

I really, really doubt Big Navi will be that powerful. Now don't get me wrong, I hope they do, but it would be stupidly big improvement gen over gen only from a new architecture because 7nm+ can't be much better than 7mn.

I think NVidia.

AMD will probably announce ZEN 3 and RDNA2 together, just like they did with RDNA and ZEN2 last year. Since ZEN3 is still  some way off and NVidia reportedly stops producing Turing chips right now, I expect them to go first.

I was actually expecting it to be roughly in that ballpark.

AMD was touting over a year ago already that their aim was increase the performance per watt by 50% over Navi/RDNA, and the same is true for RDNA over GCN. Since the RX 580 and RX 5700 are consuming a very similar amount of energy at their nominal clocks (so without factory overclocking) yet the 5700 having over 50% higher performance, I was expecting AMD to do this again just as planned.

In fact, I think the bigger question will be how AMD's Raytracing implementation will look like and what it's performance will be compared to NVidias implementation, as in raw performance and efficiency AMD will be back - they already mostly are in that regard with Navi anyway.

A bit off topic but if you owned an old iphone and you live in the US, you could get $25 thanks to the batterygate settlement where Apple was secretly throttling old iphones without the knowledge of the users. Those affected by the “Batterygate” scandal have up to October 6, 2020 to submit a claim form, while the deadline for attending a hearing falls on December 4, 2020 at 10:00 am PST.

Certain criteria have to be met to be eligible to submit a claim:

US owners of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and/or iPhone SE running on iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21, 2017.
US owners of the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus running on iOS 11.2 or later before December 21, 2017.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/US-owners-of-certain-iPhone-6-series-or-iPhone-7-series-devices-affected-by-Batterygate-can-now-claim-from-Apple-s-US-500-million-settlement-payout-pool.481246.0.html

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/13/iphone-slowdown-lawsuit-notification/

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/03/02/apple-agrees-to-up-to-500m-batterygate-settlement/

Yeah, I've pretty much given up on Platinum at this point. They just can't seem to fix anything they make, like at all...

Just because they want to increase their efficiency by 50%, that doesn't mean that they'll reach their desired goal. Even more, they could still achieve that but launch cards that aren't 50% more powerful, cutting their higher power consumption a bit... although if the rumors about Ampere and its high powe consumption are true, they could cut those savings and use everything to get more performance.

But we'll see. If they manage to achieve that I'll be truly impressed.

I'll believe it when I see it though.

Lots of claims of AMD "retaking the crown" over the years... I.E. Fury and Vega thanks to HBM, but that didn't really materialize.
Again with RDNA.

They have managed to offer a few compelling products over the years (I.E RX 480/580) but they were mostly mid-range hardware.

I expect a performance and efficiency uplift.

RDNA was still based on GCN but with "aspects" taken from RDNA2, so it was an in between variant for time-to-market reasons... AMD still left some technology on the table to drive performance home.

We do need AMD to step up and offer some pressure on nVidia to bring pricing down to more tenable levels, Intel stepping into the ring might help there as well.