Given that Yuri hasn't posted them, here ar a couple more hardware news regarding AMD:

AMD Radeon RX 6950XT, 6750XT, 6650XT RDNA2 refresh with 18Gbps memory now expected to launch on April 20/21
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-6950xt-6750xt-6650xt-rdna2-refresh-with-18gbps-memory-now-expected-to-launch-on-april-20-21
According to Chiphell leaker “热心市民描边怪/Enthusiastic Citizen” AMD is set to announce as many as three new desktop graphics cards either on April 20th or 21st.

It should be noted that “Enthusiastic Citizen” is not a random member of the Chiphell forums, but a well established leaker, normally focusing on unreleased CPU launches. With this relatively good track record, one must assume that the newest information shared on the Chinese discussion board is at least based on embargoed information, and not a random rumor.

According to the Citizen, AMD is set to launch its RDNA2 desktop refresh known as Radeon RX 6X50XT series either on April 20th or 21st. There are three cards to be expected: 6950XT, 6750XT and 6650XT, all to be equipped with faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory.

AMD Said to be Releasing no Less Than Four New Ryzen 5000-Series Chips in March
https://www.techpowerup.com/292657/amd-said-to-be-releasing-no-less-than-four-new-ryzen-5000-series-chips-in-march
According to yet another leak, it would appear that AMD is planning to release no less than four new CPUs in its Ryzen 5000-series this month, with the obvious headline product being the already announced Ryzen 7 5800X3D. However, details of a further three CPUs have turned up on Twitter and it looks like AMD is planning to go head to head with Intel, if the rumoured price brackets are indeed correct. The expected three new CPUs are the Ryzen 7 5700X, Ryzen 5 5600 and Ryzen 5 5500.

Update Mar 8th: According to a post on Facebook by a computer shop called TechMovers in the Phillipines, we can except an additional two SKUs to what leaked this weekend. No actual specs were provided, but in addition to the Ryzen 5000-series chips mentioned originally, it looks like AMD is planning on adding a pair of 4000-series models as well. The two chips will be the Ryzen 5 4500 and the Ryzen 3 4100. These new chips might not even be based on the Zen 3 architecture, considering AMD put them in a series of their own, but as these new chips are expected to arrive later this month, the wait won't be too long until we find out what AMD has in store.

I don't think the new cards a¡will have a big impact on the market, specially with the successors around the corner, but it's yet another stone in the path of Intel.

As for the new CPUs, they're too late to matter.

The Wednesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG has a couple of new flash deals and two new sales:

• The first flash deal is Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game, 55% off until Fiday: https://www.gog.com/en/game/chef_a_restaurant_tycoon_game
• The second flash deal is Megaquarium, 60% off during the next 46 hours: https://www.gog.com/en/game/megaquarium
• The Midweek Sale, full of management games, brings up to 85% discounts until Sunday: https://www.gog.com/promo/20220309_midweek_sale_managerial
• And there's a Special Sale "Games for Food Lovers", with up to 80% discounts during the next 4 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/20220309_midweek_sale

Steam has two daily deals:

• The first daily deal is Genesis Noir, 45% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/735290/Genesis_Noir/
• The second daily deal is Rise of Industry, with a 75% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/671440/Rise_of_Industry/

And Fanatical has a new bundle (there are no new flash deals when writing this): the BYO Spring Bundle, with 20 games to choose for your 1, 5 or 10 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-spring-bundle.

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Steam had 69 million daily users in 2021
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/steam-had-69-million-daily-users-in-2021/
Valve has published the Steam Year in Review 2021—yes, in March 2022. It's good to experience a bit of Valve time again, don't you think?
The Year in Review is a mix of customer-facing stats and shop talk for developers using the platform. The headline numbers this year are as impressive as they've ever been, even in the context of 2020's unprecedented growth: 69 million daily active players (nice), making up 132 million unique monthly users, with the highest concurrent player count at any one point being 27.4 million people.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Cloud Strife's modded abs have Final Fantasy 7 players in a tizzy
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/cloud-strifes-modded-abs-have-final-fantasy-7-players-in-a-tizzy/
I've always been of the mind that anyone looks great in a crop top, and Final Fantasy 7's Cloud Strife is no exception. For some reason, not everyone seems to agree with me though. A mod from juijub on NexusMods has put the grumpy protagonist in a pretty sweet cropped leather jacket, showing off the typical JRPG protagonist washboard abs (thanks, Kotaku).
While I'm a fan of the mod, not everyone was into it. Comments were asking juijub to cover up his exposed midriff, with one writing "any way we can get a version without the belly exposed? Otherwise looks great" while another said "this is very cool! But I would also like one without the lewd belly exposed." Now I'm not sure I'd go as far to call a man's stomach lewd, especially considering the same modder literally has a mod that makes Cloud naked, but the cropped look isn't for everyone.

GAMING NEWS

Bethesda has removed Denuvo from Wolfenstein Youngblood
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/bethesda-has-removed-denuvo-from-wolfenstein-youngblood/
Bethesda has released a new update for Wolfenstein Youngblood that removes the Denuvo anti-tamper tech. Wolfenstein: Youngblood came out in 2019 so it took Bethesda almost three years in order to remove it.

STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN will be exclusive on Epic Store, official PC system requirements
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/stranger-of-paradise-final-fantasy-origin-will-be-exclusive-on-epic-store-official-pc-system-requirements/
Square Enix has announced that CHAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS will be coming exclusively on Epic Games Store. In addition, the publisher has revealed the game’s official PC minimum and recommended requirements.

First Shadow Warrior 3 Patch fixes all stuttering issues
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/first-shadow-warrior-3-patch-fixes-all-stuttering-issues/
Flying Wild Hog has released the first post-launch update for its latest first-person shooter, Shadow Warrior 3. And, we are happy to report that this patch fully fixes the game’s annoying stuttering issues.

Gotham Knights will officially release on October 25th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/gotham-knights-will-officially-release-on-october-25th/
Warner Bros has just announced that Gotham Knights will release on October 25th, 2022. And… well… that’s it. The publisher did not share any new screenshots or a new trailer for it.
>> Ryuu96 has made a thread about it.

Dying Light 2 Update 1.2.0 brings combat, ragdolls & DX12 cache-related improvements, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/dying-light-2-update-1-2-0-brings-combat-ragdolls-dx12-cache-related-improvements-full-patch-notes/
Techland has released a brand new update for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. According to the release notes, Patch 1.2.0 brings a number of combat, ragdolls and DX12 cache-related improvements. Moreover, it improves overall stability, and packs various co-op fixes.

Part two of the news:

John Romero's new Doom 2 level raises over $29,000 for Ukraine
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/john-romeros-new-doom-2-level-raises-over-dollar27000-for-ukraine/
Last week, Doom co-creator John Romero released a new level for Doom 2—his first since 1994—to raise funds for humanitarian aid in Ukraine. It's a simple deal: The map, called One Humanity, is €5 (Romero is based in Ireland now, but that works out to about $4.35), and all funds raised will go to support people suffering under the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It's a small individual amount, but it adds up—to more than €25,000 ($27,200) so far, all of which will be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

Spock takes the spotlight in the first Star Trek: Resurgence gameplay trailer
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/spock-takes-the-spotlight-in-the-first-star-trek-resurgence-gameplay-trailer/
First revealed at the 2021 Game Awards, Star Trek: Resurgence is a "narrative adventure game featuring dialog choices, relationship building, and exploration" set in the year 2380, the era immediately following the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies. Now, courtesy of IGN, we've got the debut gameplay trailer, and it's got just about everything you'd expect from a classic five-year mission: An intractable conflict between alien races, tough moral quandaries, the prime directive, ion storms, and—of course—Spock.

There's an easy way to pause Elden Ring without mods
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/theres-an-easy-way-to-pause-elden-ring-without-mods/
FromSoftware has a habit of making its games unpausable. For nearly two weeks, we all thought Elden Ring was no different. There's even a mod on PC that adds a pause button at the cost of having to play offline. It turns out FromSoftware snuck in a single menu option that actually does pause the game at seemingly any time.

The Bundle for Ukraine raises over $1.6M in less than a day
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-bundle-for-ukraine-raises-over-dollar16m-in-less-than-a-day/
Yesterday, indie digital storefront Itch.io rolled out the Bundle for Ukraine, a collection of nearly 1,000 games for a minimum purchase price of just $10, with all funds raised going to charities supporting the people of Ukraine. Based on the initial uptake rate, we predicted that the bundle would probably exceed its goal of $1 million raised before it expired in 10 days. And, well, we were right. Very right.

Lost Ark is getting more multi-gender class options and less revealing armor
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/lost-ark-is-getting-more-multi-gender-class-options-and-less-revealing-armor/
The big fantasy MMO Lost Ark is a hit, but it's not without problems, including the fact that its classes are gender-locked: Warriors are men, mages are women. It's an old-school approach, and one that doesn't really hold up anymore. Developer Smilegate is attempting to address the situation through the addition of "advanced classes," which are specializations that enable both male and female characters in individual classes.

K/D ratios are back on display in the new Battlefield 2042 scoreboard
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/battlefield-2042-new-scoreboard/
I was reluctant to embrace change, but I eventually accepted that Battlefield 2042 was trying something new with its scoreboard, putting the focus on squad effectiveness rather than individual kill-death ratios. Well, now I have to un-embrace that change: Today's Battlefield 2042 patch replaces its original scoreboard with a more typical spreadsheet of stats.

When does Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok unlock in your time zone?
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/assassins-creed-ac-valhalla-dawn-of-ragnarok-release-time-unlock/
With the Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok release time rapidly approaching, you may be wondering the specific point at which you can embrace the power of Odin in the mythical dwarven world of Svartalfheim.

Finewine? Radeon RX 6800 XT vs GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, 50 Game Benchmark

Of course, Hardware Unboxed still downplays plenty of features that Nvidia leads in such as Ray Tracing, DLSS, Nvenc encoder and omits various other advantages such as RTX broadcast and it's advantages on various workstation applications. But overall their conclusion was essentially what I predicted when these two GPUs came out. It doesn't any make sense to get AMD GPUs at similar price points as the Nvidia GPUs if the Raster performance is similar. Even if the 3080 was losing, it will be by a tiny % and the advantages that you get in feature set is significantly higher.

We also relearn the age of lesson of, just because the consoles are using a similar architecture for AMD, that doesn't mean it will translate to advantages on PC. Also if you think about it, both Sony and Microsoft engineers surely had access to AMD's plans of adding in infinity cache and yet, both of them decided to omit that feature from all of their consoles and instead, go the traditional higher memory bus + bandwidth similar to what Nvidia has been doing.

All in all though, we will see how Lovelace vs RDNA 3 will turn out. But one thing to always keep in mind is, Nvidia is not Intel.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D reportedly does not support overclocking (yet?)

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d-reportedly-does-not-support-overclocking-yet

Not that you can OC these much anyway but it sounds like a skip considering Zen 4 is on the horizon.

Apple makes my brain hurt…

As usual with Apple and their press events, there's always*** with their claims. While I am sure their M1 Max Ultra can go up against a 3090 in certain applications when the media engine in involved, it will most likely be less powerful than a 3060 Ti when all is said and done imo. While costing $4000 to start. But for a specific kind of crowd, this is certainly their dream machine.

Valve does what FromSoftware don’t, thanks to Steam Deck’s precaching update

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/how-valve-made-steam-deck-the-first-pc-to-smoothly-run-elden-ring/

When an iGPU is able to play the game more smoothly than a 3070... If Valve continues to fix games that have performance issues at launch before the developers do, that will certainly make an interesting case to perhaps use SteamOS as a gaming OS. But at the same time, they can really only do this because they have such low level access so it probably won't work non-Steam Decks.

Confirmed: GeForce RTX 3090 Ti launches on March 29th, reviews coming on the same day

https://videocardz.com/newz/confirmed-geforce-rtx-3090-ti-launches-on-march-29th-reviews-coming-on-the-same-day

Probably will be 1% faster than a normal 3090 for a higher price and at 450 Watt and will get smoked by a 4070 in 4-6 months. Basically skip because even a scalped 4070 will be a better deal.

Bought a 512 GB SanDisk Extreme (A2) a few months ago for the Steam Deck (it was on sale, almost as cheap as A1 cards).

But I'll also use a 400 GB SanDisk Ultra (A1) laying around. On this card there are 140 small deck-compatible games (0 - 7 GB each), where A1 IOPS will be more than enough. These games were made for HDDs with a few hundred IOPS.

No big differences on read speeds between A2 and A1 cards:

For comparison: two of my HDDs with much much worse random read speeds:

So don't worry about using A1-cards in the Steam Deck. It will be fine for most games.

Yeah, those new cards from both Nvidia and AMD (and maybe even the Intel ones), would have made sense one year ago as a mid-cicle refresh. But right now they're of little use.

Chip supplies may take a hit due to Russia... As supply lines of neon and palladium may start to come up short.

You're always welcomed.

I didn't know Cooler Master still did their HAF line, but nowadays it doesn't stand so much from the competition. I have to say, tho, that I don't think that GPU fan will do much given how close the GPU is to one of the front 200mm fans.

Indeed. Russia has what, 40 or 50% of paladium? We'll notice that sooner rather than later.

Let's hope, for the sake of everybody involved in this stupid war, that Russia stops this nonsense soon.