^Agree.

Wednesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

DSOGaming Grand Giveaway – Win 200 keys for the Limited Preview phase of Volta-X
https://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/dsogaming-grand-giveaway-win-200-keys-for-the-limited-preview-phase-of-volta-x/
Volta-X is a real-time strategy RPG that will be coming to the PC on August 12th. The game will have a limited preview phase that will begin on August 7th. TriplePoint has provided us with 200 keys to give away, meaning that you can get to play and test this upcoming title prior to its official release.

GreedFall has sold over one million units worldwide
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/greedfall-has-sold-over-one-million-units-worldwide/
Spiders Studio and Focus Home Interactive have announced that GreedFall has sold over one million copies worldwide. As the press release reads, and following its launch in September last year, the game stormed into players’ hearts and minds, marking itself as a memorable RPG.

Detroit: Become Human surpasses 5 million sales thanks to its Steam release
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/detroit-become-human-surpasses-5-million-sales-thanks-to-its-steam-release/
Quantic Dream announced that Detroit: Become Human has surpassed 5 million units in sales across all platforms. This comes one month after the game’s release on Steam.

Call of Duty Warzone surpasses 75 million players on all platforms
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/call-of-duty-warzone-surpasses-75-million-players-on-all-platforms/
Activision has announced that Call of Duty Warzone now has over 75 million players on all platforms. Call of Duty Warzone is a free to play Battle Royale COD game that has been received positively by a lot of players.
The last COD Warzone report was back in May 2020. As such, Call of Duty Warzone was able to attract over 15 million more players in around 2-3 months.

Bohemia Interactive's new Humble Bundle has a surprising number of non-Arma games
https://www.pcgamer.com/bohemia-interactives-new-humble-bundle-has-a-surprising-number-of-non-arma-games/
You might think that the Humble Bohemia Interactive 2020 Bundle, which from here on we'll be calling the Humble Bohundle, would be nothing but Arma from start to finish. That is not the case, however. It starts with Arma, specifically Arma X: Anniversary Edition, at the $1 entry tier, but you'll also get:
>> You'll have to check it out to know it.

GOG's Midweek Sale offers up to 90% discounts until Saturday: https://www.gog.com/promo/20200805_midweek_sale

Steam has two new daily deals and four Midweek Madness sales:

• The first daily deal is Coffee Talk, 30% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/914800/Coffee_Talk/
• The second one is Shenmue I & II, 75% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/758330/Shenmue_I__II/
• And these are the Midweek Madness deals:
  • Publisher No More Robots celebrates its 3rd anniversary putting its games between 20 and 40% off until tomorrow: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nomorerobots
  • Blasphemous is 50% off until Friday; https://store.steampowered.com/app/774361/Blasphemous/
  • PC Building Simulator is also 50% off until Friday: https://store.steampowered.com/app/621060/PC_Building_Simulator/
  • And Warner Bros has a Hack & Slash sale with up to 80% discounts until the 7th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hacknslash/

And Fanatical has a new Star Deal: Doom Eternal, 56% off during the next 24 hours. The key is for the Bethesda launcher: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/doom-eternal

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.1 Driver is optimized for Horizon Zero Dawn & Hyper Scape
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-radeon-adrenalin-2020-edition-20-8-1-driver-horizon-zero-dawn-hyper-scape/
AMD has released a brand new driver for its graphics cards. According to the red team, the AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.1 Driver is optimized for Horizon Zero Dawn, Grounded and Hyper Scape.
This driver improves performance when using the Epic preset on the Radeon RX 5700 XT by up to 9% in Grounded. Unfortunately, AMD has not revealed any percentage improvements for the other two games.
This driver also bugs a number of fixes. For instance, it fixes an issue that could cause very dark or dim screen when changing V-Sync settings in Doom Eternal. It also fixes an application crash or hang when waking from sleep after joining the AMD User Experience program.
>> Available from here.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

-empty-

GAMING NEWS

First FIFA 21 Official Gameplay Trailer Released
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/first-fifa-21-official-gameplay-trailer-released/
EA Sports has released the first official gameplay trailer for the current-gen version of FIFA 21. This trailer showcases some of the gameplay improvements that EA Sports has added in the latest version of its soccer series.

Doom Eternal Update 2.1 released, improves network latency, fixes numerous bugs
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/doom-eternal-update-2-1-released-improves-network-latency-fixes-numerous-bugs/
id Software has released a brand new patch for Doom Eternal. According to the release notes, Update 2.1 re-enables Weapon Quick Switch in both Campaign and BATTLEMODE. Moreover, this patch makes further improvements to networking latency in BATTLEMODE.

Fallout 76 Update 21 is now available, is 50GB on Microsoft Store, full release notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/fallout-76-update-21-is-now-available-is-50gb-on-microsoft-store-full-release-notes/
Bethesda has announced that Update 21 for Fallout 76 is now available on all platforms. According to the team, the Steam update is around 2.4GB in size, whereas the Bethesda update is 4.7GB. However, the Microsoft Store Update is… wait for it… almost 50GB in size (49.6GB to be more precise).
>> You have to download the whole game again on the MS Store or what?

Red Dead Redemption 2 August 4th Update brings new content to Red Dead Online
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/red-dead-redemption-2-august-4th-update-brings-new-content-to-red-dead-online/
Rockstar has released a brand new update for Red Dead Redemption 2. According to the release notes, the August 4th Update focuses on Red Dead Online by adding new content to it. As such, don’t expect any improvements, tweaks or fixes for Red Dead Redemption 2.

New PC gameplay footage surfaces for Watch Dogs: Legion
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/new-pc-gameplay-footage-surfaces-for-watch-dogs-legion/
YouTube’s ‘Cycu1’ has shared a new video, showcasing six minutes of new gameplay footage from the PC version of Watch Dogs: Legion. This video shows the Whistleblower single-player mission that was present in the game’s latest preview event.

Dark Souls-inspired action RPG, Mortal Shell, releases on August 18th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/dark-souls-inspired-action-rpg-mortal-shell-releases-on-august-18th/
Cold Symmetry has announced that its Dark Souls-inspired action RPG, Mortal Shell, will officially release on August 18th. In order to celebrate this announcement, the team has released a new trailer that you can find below.

Official Boundary PC Requirements Revealed
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/official-boundary-pc-requirements-revealed/
Surgical Scalpels has revealed the official PC system requirements for its multiplayer tactical space-based shooter, Boundary. Boundary will feature intense zero-gravity FPS combat, and will focus on Team Deathmatch, Facility capture, Orbital purge and Skirmish.

Here is over one hour of PC gameplay footage from Horizon Zero Dawn
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/here-is-over-one-hour-of-pc-gameplay-footage-from-horizon-zero-dawn/
Sony has lifted the review embargo for the PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn. Thus, you can find below over one hour of gameplay footage from Horizon Zero Dawn PC. The following videos will give you an idea of how the game looks on the PC on Ultra/High Settings.

The news, the sequel:

Fall Guys is out now, but the servers are taking a beating
https://www.pcgamer.com/fall-guys-is-out-now-but-the-servers-are-taking-a-beating/
Fall Guys is having a very good launch day, at least in terms of player numbers. After its very popular beta, it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise, but developer Mediatonic might have underestimated how many people want to become a clumsy bean.

Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access launch won't happen in August
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-launch-wont-happen-in-august/
We expected Baldur's Gate 3 to launch into Early Access in August, probably. Maybe. Hopefully, at least: Larian CEO Swen Vincke said in June that the studio was pushing hard to make it, but the COVID-19 pandemic could slow things down.

Ubisoft reminds Rainbow Six Siege players that kills don’t matter to your MMR
https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-reminds-rainbow-six-siege-players-that-kills-dont-matter-to-your-mmr/
Have you ever just barely lost a ranked match of Rainbow Six Siege and wondered why you lost more MMR than your last win? Unfortunately you won’t find any fine details into Siege’s ranking process in the game itself, but a new post by Ubisoft is a useful guide to understand how the game tracks your skill over time.

The Overwatch Summer Games returns for 2020 with Lucioball Remix and new cosmetics
https://www.pcgamer.com/lucio-gets-bonus-balls-for-the-overwatch-summer-games-2020/
The Overwatch Summer Games have returned for 2020, and you know what that means—it's time to play some Lucioball.
This year's event introduces a "faster, more chaotic" game mode called Lucioball Remix, which puts two balls in play through the entire match. When a goal is scored, the ball will respawn after a brief pause, but players will not reset like they normally do—you just keep on playing.

Riot Games is shifting some patches so it can take next week off
https://www.pcgamer.com/riot-games-is-shifting-some-patches-so-it-can-take-next-week-off/
Riot Games—the whole studio—is taking next week off. The company announced today that the week of August 10 will be used "to disconnect, recharge, and reboot," and as a result, timelines for some patches and launches will have to be jiggled around a bit.

This trailer for Flight Catastrophe will convince you to stick to bus travel
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-trailer-for-flight-catastrophe-will-convince-you-to-stick-to-bus-travel/
I'm fresh off the horrors of automobile collision investigation simulator Accident when this sucker lands in my inbox. It's a trailer for Flight Catastrophe, a simulator about horrifying shit happening aboard a commercial airliner. The trailer is... something. You can watch it below, though if you don't want to see a bunch of terrified airplane passengers being blown up and a burning plane plunging toward the ground, you might want to skip it.

Blizzard confirms that a digital BlizzCon will happen early next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-confirms-that-a-digital-blizzcon-will-happen-early-next-year/
In May, Blizzard was forced to pull the plug on BlizzCon 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, like many other companies that were forced to scrap their big festivals, it said that it hoped to put together an online substitute instead, expected to take place sometime in 2021. During Activision's second-quarter earnings call today, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack confirmed that the plan is still going ahead.

National Videogame Museum completely recreated in Doom WAD
https://www.pcgamer.com/national-videogame-museum-completely-recreated-in-doom-wad/
The National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas, is about to get an interesting new exhibit: a Doom WAD that completely recreates the National Videogame Museum itself. Not only is that cool, but you can download the WAD, fire it up, and check out the museum without having to leave your home.

Activision confirms that Treyarch and Raven are making the new Call of Duty
https://www.pcgamer.com/activsion-confirms-that-treyarch-and-raven-are-making-the-new-call-of-duty/
We don't know much about the next Call of Duty game, beyond the fact that it's happening, but there are some fairly solid rumors kicking around. Like the title: Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War. Activision confirmed another rumor today in its Q2 FY2020 earnings, saying that it is in fact being developed by Treyarch—and Raven, too.

Marvel's Avengers is getting even more PlayStation exclusives
https://www.pcgamer.com/marvels-avengers-is-getting-even-more-playstation-exclusives/
The PlayStation 4 increasingly seems like Marvel's Avengers' primary platform. In a blog post detailing community challenges and cosmetics, Crystal Dynamics announced more exclusives heading to the platform—and PS5 when it launches—on top of a certain chatty web-slinging hero.
>> And then, S-E will wonder why it didn't sell well on the other platforms...

Obsidian is working on something that isn't Avowed or Grounded
https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidian-is-working-on-something-that-isnt-avowed-or-grounded/
It looks like Obsidian is pretty busy now that it's under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella. It's just launched the Early Access version of Grounded, its spider-infested survival game, and just last month it unveiled—albeit only in cinematic form—Avowed, its first-person RPG. The Outer Worlds is due some big DLC, too, coming next month. And now it turns out that it's got at least one more project on the go.

Join a gang in Necromunda: Underhive Wars in September
https://www.pcgamer.com/join-a-gang-in-necromunda-underhive-wars-in-september/
After being announced in 2017, Necromunda: Underhive Wars is poised to launch next month. It's been a long time coming, but you'll be able to throw your gang of eager killers at other equally murder-happy gangs in turn-based brawls on September 8. Check out the trailer above to get a peek at the fights and gang customisation.

ASUS announces the world's first HDMI 2.1 4K gaming monitors

https://www.notebookcheck.net/ASUS-announces-the-world-s-first-HDMI-2-1-4K-gaming-monitors.484211.0.html

No pricing info but 4k gaming monitors have had terrible pricing so I wouldn't expect anything less.

AMD's market cap soars past US$100 billion, CPU market share could reach 50% by 2H 2021

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-s-market-cap-soars-past-US-100-billion-CPU-market-share-could-reach-50-by-2H-2021.484154.0.html

ARM Becomes the Focal Point of a Growing Bidding War as TSMC and Foxconn Jump Into the Fray

https://wccftech.com/arm-becomes-the-focal-point-of-a-growing-bidding-war-as-tsmc-and-foxconn-jump-into-the-fray/

If the new ASUS monitors cost below $1000 they're probably not what I'm looking for.

can you imagine them lauching a HDMi2.1 monitor without it being able to do 4k@120fps

Asus never makes "cheap" (ha!) products, and that monitor won't be an exception.

Here's a couple Nvidia news:

Report: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER has been discontinued
https://videocardz.com/newz/report-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2070-super-has-been-discontinued
(...)

The Chinese site MyDrivers has a good track record when it comes to graphics card production information, after all, most of the cards are made in China. They are usually spot on when it comes to early indicators when the models are discontinued. Today they reported that the RTX 2070 SUPER, which was also mentioned in the previous report, is now ‘completely’ discontinued. Reportedly the last batch of the chips (GPUs) has been dispatched and no furthers orders will be accepted. What this means is that the RTX 2070 SUPER life has ended and the remaining chips will be the last to be sold.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series to gradually launch between September and November?
https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-series-to-gradually-launch-between-september-and-november
TLDR: We don’t know, but it should be next month!

The full version: Increased activity in the news channels in regard to the upcoming Ampere series is certainly not helping to get the most believable information. Thus, we are constantly reaching out to our sources to confirm if what is being written or said is true. In most cases – it is way too soon to confirm certain information, that includes launch dates for RTX 30 Ampere series.

In the past few weeks, we have heard it is either August or September, with more sources leaning towards the latter. The fact that August is still appearing in the rumor is rather simple. Almost 2 years ago NVIDIA introduced RTX 20 Turing series. It was on August 20, but the cards were not released until a month later, on September 20.

Later this month we have Gamescom, which starts on August 27th. The RTX 20 Turing series was introduced a day before Gamescom 2018 officially kicked off. NVIDIA always seems to have an announcement surrounding the event.(...)

The month of August was first mentioned by Overclocking.com, to whom we have reached out to for more information. Their information does seem credible, but their story clearly refers to the announcement, if it refers to anything true at all. However, as I said earlier, it is too early to say. The RTX 2080 teaser (which some of you should still remember) for Gamescom announcement was published a week before the event (August 13), so there is still time.

The site MyDrivers now claims that Ampere is set to launch on September 17th. According to the report GeForce RTX 3070 is also expected to be released a month later than RTX 3080 series (in October). Additionally, the RTX 3060 series is now expected in November. This would be sooner than RTX x060 2 year launch cadence, since 2060 was released in January 2019.

So Horizon Zero Dawn PC performance reviews are coming in. For the most part, it's not very optimized across the board. I'd wait for some post launch patches before buying it. The weird thing is that the FAQ from the devs themselves said:

"We recommend an Intel Core i7-4770K @ 3.5GHz or an AMD Ryzen 5 1500X @ 3.5GHz CPU, 16 GB of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 480 (4 GB) graphics card to run Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition for PC at the original settings in 1080p at 60 frames per second."

However most previews atm don't see that as the case at all so there's something weird going on.

That is in ultra settings so the visuals are higher than what you would get in the original ps4 pro. The other thing that makes these reviews also a big urghh worthy is that a lot of them don't have the day 1 patch applied as most of these went out prior.

https://www.computerbase.de/2020-08/horizon-zero-dawn-benchmark-test/

One interesting thing is:

"The game makes significant use of PCIe bandwidth. Having your GPU connected via fewer than 16 PCIe lanes reduces performance to a larger degree than any other game either of us is aware of."



https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

Some reviewers did manage to get 1080p 60fps on their 1060 but it's unclear as to how.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/05/horizon-zero-dawn-on-pc-comfortably-outperforms-ps4-in-this-brilliant-port/

But yea, I'd wait till they get their optimizations sorted out as it doesn't make any sense for Vega 64 to perform worse than a 590 amongst a ton of other performance issues.

Well, I think it will be better to wait until we have all those reviews revisited with day-one patches installed and the latest drivers from AMD and Nvidia.

The PCIe scaling is interesting, tho. I wonder why it's like that.

Oh, they will be able to do that, but brightness, contrast and latency will probably be subpar.