PS: Jensen is kinda obsessed with those girls he met at the lan party during AMD's press conference which is kinda interesting to say the least lol

The Friday news, all in one post!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Today's free game at the Epic Store is Encased: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/encased.

GOG has a new giveaway and four new Deals of the Day:

• There's a new GIVEAWAY: Greak: Memories of Azur will be free to get during 70 hours: https://www.gog.com/game/greak_memories_of_azur
• These are the four Deals of the Day, that will last the whole weekend:
  • Starship Troopers: Terran Command is 20% off: https://www.gog.com/en/game/starship_troopers_terran_command
  • The second DotD is POSTAL 4: No Regerts, 50% off during 70 hours: https://www.gog.com/en/game/postal_4_no_regerts
  • The third one is Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, with a 52% discount: https://www.gog.com/en/game/emperor_rise_of_the_middle_kingdom
  • And the fourth DotD is Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, 90% off: https://www.gog.com/en/game/robin_hood

• And there's also a new collection, with the GOG Team Picks of 2022, that will last until the end of the sale: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/2022_winter_sale_gog_goty

Steam... The Winter Sale is live. Do I need to say more?

The Humble Store has three new Holiday Sales:

• Capcom puts its games up to 90% off during 6 days. All the keys are for Steam: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/capcom-holiday-sale/
• Koei Tecmo puts its games on sale with up to 75% discounts during 13 days. The keys are for Steam: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/koei-tecmo-sale/
• And the Sega Holiday Sale features up to 80% discounts during 13 days. Once again, all the keys are for Steam: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/sega-holiday-sale/

Fanatical has a couple new things:

• The Star Deal, that started yesterday, is the recent Sonic Frontiers, with a 39% discount during 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/sonic-frontiers
• And there's a new contest with the chance to win one of two HyperX Cloud Earbuds. Learn more here: https://www.fanatical.com/en/blog/wishlist-and-win-contest

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Cyberpunk 2077 gets a new mod that adds a new exploration area
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/cyberpunk-2077-gets-a-new-mod-that-adds-a-new-exploration-area/
Modder ‘anygoodname’ has released a new mod for Cyberpunk 2077 that unlocks the previously inaccessible Lower Market area, and adds a recurring quest to the place.
Thanks to this mod, players can explore the V’s Megablock Lower Market and collect quest rewards. The quest creates Access Point Jobs to reward you for your Perk Points. As new points come in new jobs are added creating new reward opportunities.
Surprisingly enough, this is a limited edition release. According to the modder, the mod site will go offline in about two weeks. Thus, we suggest downloading it while you still can.

Red Dead Redemption 2 gets a High Resolution Hair Textures Mod
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/red-dead-redemption-2-gets-a-high-resolution-hair-textures-mod/
Modder ‘EnergiDaan’ has released an interesting mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 that improves the hair of all pedestrians. According to its description, this mod packs the unused 2048×1024 hair textures.
For those unaware, the game uses by default 512×256 hair resolution textures. Thus, we’re talking about a 4X resolution increase.

GAMING NEWS

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Patch 6.3 detailed, releases in January 2023
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/final-fantasy-xiv-endwalker-patch-6-3-detailed-releases-in-january-2023/
Square Enix has detailed Patch 6.3 for Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker which will release in January 2023. In order to celebrate this, the publisher has also shared a trailer that you can find below.

Unreal Engine 5-powered Negative Atmosphere: Emergency Room gets new trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/unreal-engine-5-powered-negative-atmosphere-emergency-room-gets-new-trailer/
Sunscorched Studios has released the debut trailer for Negative Atmosphere: Emergency Room, a standalone free cinematic medical horror experience covering the events that lead to Negative Atmosphere.

Hideo Kojima says he 'completely rewrote' Death Stranding 2 after the pandemic
https://www.pcgamer.com/hideo-kojima-says-he-completely-rewrote-death-stranding-2-after-the-pandemic/
Hideo Kojima says that he "completely rewrote" Death Stranding 2 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking to IGN, Kojima explains that the sheer scale of Covid-19's effect on the world made it impossible not to take into consideration.

Elden Ring is on sale for the first time ever in the Steam Winter Sale
https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-ring-is-on-sale-for-the-first-time-ever-in-the-steam-winter-sale/
Elden Ring, the game that dominated 2022 and is probably as close to a universal game of the year as we're ever going to get, has understandably not yet been on sale. But today is the big day, because for the first time since it launched in February, FromSoftware's action-RPG epic is marked down for the 2022 Steam Winter Sale.
>> It's 30% off.

And that's all. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, that get many presents (even from yourselves) and that find some time to game a bit.

¡Felices Fiestas! Happy Holidays!

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT now available for €999, 5% below MSRP

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-7900-xt-now-available-for-e999-5-below-msrp

More like exchange rate adjustments than actual discounts

GALAX unveils HOF Extreme 50 PCIe Gen5 SSD with up to 10 GB/s read speed

https://videocardz.com/newz/galax-unveils-hof-extreme-50-pcie-gen5-ssd-with-up-to-10-gb-s-read-speed

I wouldn't be surprised if these SSDs get big discounts shortly after release. I doubt most people truly care about the speeds.

Some Radeon RX 7900 XTX MBA reference cards are experiencing 110C hotspot temps

https://www.techspot.com/news/97053-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-mba-reference-cards-experiencing.html

5700XT, is that you?

(For reference)

Lmao!

I remember someone mentioning that I'm playing too many ecchi games (Sakura games) on Steam a few years back on another forum - I was just trying to finish 100+ games back then (this was like 2017 or so) and those games were short (4-5 hours).

Yup. These new drives don't feel as revolutionary as the 4.0 ones. With those, you got twice the read and write speeds almost out of the gate and, while hot, a simple heatsink was enough to keep it under control.

These new drives won't double the performance for a while, and they come with either massive heatsinks or fans. Plus the price, because it doesn't look like they'll be "afordable" by any means.

And, on top of all that, there's the issue of... "what for?" Is there any consumer program that needs the extra speed? And let's not mention games, with DirectStorage being still a promise, not a reality.

It doesn't look like these drives will do well, outside of the most enthusiast of users, and even those will likely buy a bigger 4.0 drive than one of these.

Got an early christmas gift

Time to see how much it has improved since I originally got it during launch and sold it due to a lot of issues. It is the 64GB (I didn't choose it) but I did put in my 512GB microsd card in there and will eventually replace it with a better SSD.

That's a great present. I hope you like it more this time around.

4060Ti has apparently been leaked, and it's coming with less shaders (or Cuda Cores if you want) than the 3060Ti, with just 4352 shaders compared to 4864 on the 3060Ti. Also, it apparently won't come out before June 2023. Oh, and the prospective MSRP would be $500, same as the 3070 and 100 more than the 3060Ti:

https://www.pcgamer.com/if-these-rumoured-nvidia-rtx-4060-ti-specs-are-accurate-just-ewww/

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/nvidia-rtx-4060-ti-launching-no-sooner-than-ending-june-2023-rtx-4090-is-3-6x-faster-rumor/

Looks like NVidia wants to push their customers to buy a 4090 by making the whole rest of the stack worthless.

I see Nvidia are really dead set on shooting themselves in the foot, maybe even the whole leg.

"fuck them low-mid tier kids" - Ngreedia

Yeah, it doeesn't look well. The 4090 and eve nthe 4080 have more shaders/cores than its Ampere counterparts.

Of coure, the 4060Ti will be faster than a 3060Ti, and likely also faster than a 3070, and that loss of cores wouldn't be so much of a problem if the card was priced accordingly, but paying more for a card that brings a smaller jump than in previous generations (it has zero chance to beat a 3080)? That's pure greed.

Our only hope is, once again, AMD. If they can bring a similar performance jump to their 7700 and 7600 products as the ones seen with the 7900 while keeping the prices from the 6000 series, they could damage Nvidia in the mid and low range, where 4K and ray tracing is less important.

Oh, and there's Intel too. But well, it's Intel and we don't know what's going to happen after the recent changes that Yuri posted a couple days ago.