You bring the monitor of the present, and I bring the panel tech of the future!

Engineers invent vertical, full-color microscopic LEDs
https://news.mit.edu/2023/vertical-stacked-color-microscopic-leds-0201

Take apart your laptop screen, and at its heart you’ll find a plate patterned with pixels of red, green, and blue LEDs, arranged end to end like a meticulous Lite Brite display. When electrically powered, the LEDs together can produce every shade in the rainbow to generate full-color displays. Over the years, the size of individual pixels has shrunk, enabling many more of them to be packed into devices to produce sharper, higher-resolution digital displays.

But much like computer transistors, LEDs are reaching a limit to how small they can be while also performing effectively. This limit is especially noticeable in close-range displays such as augmented and virtual reality devices, where limited pixel density results in a “screen door effect” such that users perceive stripes in the space between pixels.

Now, MIT engineers have developed a new way to make sharper, defect-free displays. Instead of replacing red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes side by side in a horizontal patchwork, the team has invented a way to stack the diodes to create vertical, multicolored pixels.

Each stacked pixel can generate the full commercial range of colors and measures about 4 microns wide. The microscopic pixels, or “micro-LEDs,” can be packed to a density of 5,000 pixels per inch.

Guys, if you have a Samsung 980 Pro NVMe drive, you should give this a look:

Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-980-pro-ssd-failures-firmware-update
Over the past few months, there have been numerous reports of Samsung 980 Pro SSD failures, with many complaints originating from China. We never heard an official statement from Samsung on the matter, but custom PC builder Puget Systems definitely took notice after it "received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung drives." Puget worked with Samsung to identify the problem, and a firmware update is available for affected 980 Pro SSDs.

(...)

However, the new firmware update from Samsung will prevent the failures from occurring in the first place if your drive is still functioning. So, if you have a 980 Pro running the 3B2QGXA7 firmware, you'll want to update to the newest firmware (5B2QGXA7) using the Samsung SSD Magician software ASAP. It should be noted that 980 Pro SSDs running the 4B2QGXA7 or 5B2QGXA7 firmware are not affected by this issue.

A few days ago I posted an article about Samsung's 990 drives having problems, but it looks like the 980 Pros also had their own issues.

Let's go for the Friday news!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Fanatical has two new deals:

• The new Star Deal is Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Extraction, 65% off during 48 hours. The key is for UbiConnect: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/tom-clancy-s-rainbow-six-extraction
• And Paradox Interactive puts its games up to 82% off during the next 7 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/publishers/paradox-interactive

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This Mod for Remedy’s CONTROL adds Native HDR and Ultrawide support
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/this-mod-for-remedys-control-adds-native-hdr-and-ultrawide-support/
Filippo Tarpini has released a new mod for CONTROL that adds native HDR and Ultrawide support to it. This is a must-have mod for everyone that has an HDR monitor, and we highly recommend downloading it.
Furthermore, this mod adds a new “Max” texture settings to improve the slow texture streaming. By using it, players can eliminate (or at least minimize) the low-resolution textures that can appear in the game. Not only that but the mod fixes a launcher issue that affected Intel Arc GPUs.

Beef-up Hitman's Freelancer mode with this variant map mod
https://www.pcgamer.com/beef-up-hitmans-freelancer-mode-with-this-variant-map-mod/
Hitman's new roguelike freelancer mode is pretty excellent, giving you the opportunity to hunt Agent 47's criminal quarry across almost all of the maps from the first, second, and third games. But what if that's not enough? What if you want to play in the additional variants of those maps—like Sapienza's bonus nighttime mission—rather than their standard iterations? Well, then you'll just have to install Hitman's Freelancer Variations mod.
Spotted by Dominic Tarason, the Freelancer Variations mod beefs up Hitman's new mode by chucking each possible destination's alternative versions into the mix of potential levels. You can now freelance across the Hokkaido Snow Festival, Dartmoor Garden Show, and pretty much every other map variant you can think of, rather than being stuck with the default mode. It even adds "alternate times of day" for maps "where no bonus missions existed".

GAMING NEWS

Unreal Engine 5-powered MMO, The Day Before, gets an official 10-minute gameplay trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/unreal-engine-5-powered-mmo-the-day-before-gets-an-official-10-minute-gameplay-trailer/
Fntastic has just released a new trailer for its Unreal Engine 5-powered MMO, The Day Before, showcasing 10 minutes of gameplay footage from it. This trailer will give you a glimpse at the game’s graphics and gameplay mechanics.

Dead Space Remake Update 1.04 released, full patch notes revealed
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/dead-space-remake-update-1-04-full-patch-notes/
EA Motive has just released a brand new update for Dead Space Remake. According to the team, this patch should address various stuttering and lag issues. As such, we’ll test this update and report back whether it resolves the game’s traversal stutters.

Friday news, part two:

Fans huff the copium as Platinum Games teases MGR:Revengeance's 10th anniversary
https://www.pcgamer.com/fans-huff-the-copium-as-platinum-games-teases-mgrrevengeances-10th-anniversary/
Platinum Games has teased a celebratory event for the 10th anniversary of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the excellent hack-and-slash adventure that has gone on to have a second life as the source of countless memes. The game had originally been in development at Konami's Kojima Productions as Metal Gear Rising before being handed over to the action game specialists, who came up with the rather brilliant central mechanic of ripping out your enemies' spines to heal oneself, and the rest is high-octane history.

That time Among Us accidentally violated the Geneva Conventions
https://www.pcgamer.com/that-time-among-us-accidentally-violated-the-geneva-conventions/
Running one of the most popular games on Earth can have its downsides. Every minor flaw will get picked to death, people will hassle you endlessly about expansions and sequels, and that time you accidentally violated the actual Geneva Conventions suddenly becomes a matter of public scrutiny.
>> It's nothing big, one of those things that seem silly but have a good reason for being that way.

We now know the massive changes coming to Destiny 2's DPS meta in Lightfall
https://www.pcgamer.com/we-now-know-the-massive-changes-coming-to-destiny-2s-dps-meta-in-lightfall/
Linear fusion rifles have dominated Destiny 2's DPS meta for over a year now. The quadrilogy of Cataclysmic, Taipan-4FR, Stormchaser and Reed's Regret have been the default picks for raids, dungeons and Nightfalls throughout The Witch Queen era. So when Bungie first teased an overhaul of heavy weapons for next month's Lightfall expansion, we all instinctively knew that a major nerf was on the cards.

This 'professional' end-of-the-world simulator is now available on Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-professional-end-of-the-world-simulator-is-now-available-on-steam/
At first glance, Nuclear War Simulator, which launched today on Steam, bears a real resemblance to DEFCON, the old (and excellent) Wargames-inspired strategy sim about turning the planet into a roasted chestnut. In reality, it's something quite different, and not really a game at all: It's "a detailed realistic simulation and visualization of large-scale nuclear conflicts with a focus on humanitarian consequences."

Overwatch 2's new Antarctic map has ice drills, fishing, and immortal penguins
https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2s-new-antarctic-map-has-ice-drills-fishing-and-immortal-penguins/
Overwatch 2's new Antarctic Peninsula map will drop with the launch of season 3 on February 7, and in it, you can find penguins, snow, and a sort-of-functional ice fishing spot.

The next Sims 4 expansion is threatening me with making family memories
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-next-sims-4-expansion-is-threatening-me-with-making-family-memories/
Right on the heels of other announcements this week, The Sims 4 has also revealed its next expansion: Growing Together. Compared with recent expansions like High School Years and Cottage Living, this sounds like a much more conceptual collection of features in which you'll "strengthen family bonds, make friends or enemies, and discover your Sims' truest selves." It will launch on March 16, just two days after the free base game infants update.

Play Counter-Strike 1.6 in your browser
https://www.pcgamer.com/play-counter-strike-16-in-your-browser/
Counter-Strike is one of the most important and influential PC games in history. It began as a Half-Life mod released in 1999 before Valve bought it out and hired the creators. The version of the game it released in 2000 would over time and tweaks become known as Counter-Strike 1.6, and to this day you will find purists who insist this is the best the game's ever been. Now, pretty remarkably, you can just play it in your browser.
First things first: This is a Russian website that doesn't appear to have any affiliation with Valve. So this is in all likelihood quite illicit, and trying to get the Russian authorities to take it down is going to be a fun time for some poor lawyer in Seattle. On a more practical level you may be worried about malware or trackers. While I'm no cyber-expert, I've run it through three different scanners and it appears clean.

Back 4 Blood won't get any more new content as Turtle Rock pivots to an all-new game
https://www.pcgamer.com/back-4-blood-wont-get-any-more-new-content-as-turtle-rock-pivots-to-an-all-new-game/
A little more than a year after it launched, Back 4 Blood is formally finished. Developer Turtle Rock Studios announced today that it's going to "get to work on the next big thing."

Bandai Namco announces Elden Ring anniversary event, but I'd put those piping hot DLC expectations on ice, champ
https://www.pcgamer.com/bandai-namco-announces-elden-ring-anniversary-event-but-id-put-those-piping-hot-dlc-expectations-on-ice-champ/
Bandai Namco Nordics, the regional Scandinavian division of Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco, recently announced a party and accompanying livestream in Stockholm on February 25 to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our 2022 Game of the Year. The announcement already has fans in a lather, with numerous comments and quote tweets speculating about DLC, and a post about the party on the game's subreddit titled "Possible DLC news? " attracting more than 4,500 upvotes and over 500 comments.
>> I doubt Bandai will leave a DLC announcement to one of its divisions, but who knows.

Two years after launch, live-service dodgeball game Knockout City is shutting down
https://www.pcgamer.com/two-years-after-launch-live-service-dodgeball-game-knockout-city-is-shutting-down/
On June 6, Velan Studios' online dodgeball brawler Knockout City will have its servers taken offline, just over two years after going live. Game director Jeremy Russo explained the decision in a special announcement, writing that, "Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs around the globe, there are several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we are a small, indie studio, it's simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it."

Eagle-eyed gamer spots Starfield feature hiding in plain sight
https://www.pcgamer.com/eagle-eyed-gamer-spots-starfield-feature-hiding-in-plain-sight/
Since the dramatic and exciting Starfield gameplay reveal trailer released back in 2022, it's largely been radio silence from Bethesda in terms of revealing new details about the game.
However, one eagle-eyed gamer has just seemingly spotted a Starfield feature that has been hiding in plain sight ever since that gameplay trailer reveal—it's just that hardly any gamers spotted it.

Deep Rock Galactic celebrates five years of free updates by letting you play without them, says 'we are not slowing down'
https://www.pcgamer.com/deep-rock-galactic-celebrates-five-years-of-free-updates-by-letting-you-play-without-them-says-we-are-not-slowing-down/
Deep Rock Galactic is the finest space-dwarf mining simulator out there, which is in no small part down to how the game has been supported with free updates since its early access launch almost five years ago (the game was fully released in 2020). February 28 is the anniversary date, and to celebrate the game will see an event running from March 2-16 with decorations and rewards aplenty for all bearded heroes.

Hose down a filthy Final Fantasy 7 boss at several thousand PSI in Powerwash Sim's upcoming DLC
https://www.pcgamer.com/hose-down-a-filthy-final-fantasy-7-boss-at-several-thousand-psi-in-powerwash-sims-upcoming-dlc/
Hot on the heels of its Tomb Raider expansion, Powerwash Simulator is set to get Final Fantasy 7 DLC that will finally fulfil your aching, secret desire to scrub clean a Guard Scorpion at a million PSI. Announced by Square Enix on Twitter, the DLC will see you take your power washing armoury over to Midgar to blast clean all sorts of familiar sights. It's not much, but it's honest work.
>> Could this be one of the weirdest crossovers ever made in videogames?

Overwatch 2 is targeting players who play with cheaters even if they're not cheating themselves
https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2-is-targeting-players-who-play-with-cheaters-even-if-theyre-not-cheating-themselves/
Blizzard has used an update about toxicity and cheating in Overwatch 2 to slip-out a bit of a humblebrag: Since launch, the game has attracted "over 40 million players, both returning and new." Partly that's because, unlike the original, Overwatch 2 is free-to-play, but even so that's a staggering number of players ignoring the objective.
(...)
Over 50,000 accounts have been "actioned" for cheating since launch, and Blizzard's had enough, to the extent it's no longer just targeting the cheaters, but those who go along with them. From season 3 it's looking to identify players who regularly group-up with cheaters, and will take action against these accounts, even if they're not cheating themselves, with "severe suspensions" and in extreme cases outright bans. Blizzard even gets a bit finger-waggy about it: "players who knowingly group up with cheaters are looking to take the same advantage as those who use cheats themselves, including boosting their accounts to skill levels they would not normally belong in with their own skill." OK, Mum.

And now, the GOG and Steam deals for the weekend:

+GOG

• Let's start with the first Deal of the Day: Intravenous, with a 55% discount until Monday: https://www.gog.com/en/game/intravenous
• The second DotD is Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, 75% off during 70 hours: https://www.gog.com/en/game/disco_elysium
• Publisher Iceberg Interactive puts its games on sale with up to 80% discounts during the next 3 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/2023_iceberg_interactive_weekend
• The Weekend Sale comes with up to 85% discounts until Monday: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20230203_weekend_sale
• And maybe because there's a new movie, there's a Special Sale featuring Asterix & Obelix titles with up to 85% discounts until February 11: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/2023_asterix_obelix

+Steam

• The Taipei Game Show 2023 comes with up to 70% discounts until Sunday: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/tgs2023
• We Who Are About To Die, still in Early Access, is going to be 25% off until Monday: https://store.steampowered.com/app/973230/We_Who_Are_About_To_Die/
• Kenshi gets a 55% discount until the 6th; https://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/Kenshi/
• Publisher Dovetail's Festival of Rail 2023 puts its trains up to 80% off until Monday, 6th: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/dovetailgames/sale/festivalofrail2023
• The Games from Quebec 2023 Festival features up to 90% discounts until the 6th of February: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/quebec2023
• OPUS: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition will be 35% off until February 9th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1504500/OPUS_Echo_of_Starsong__Full_Bloom_Edition/
• Overcrowd: A Commute 'Em Up will get a 70% discount until the Thursday, 9th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/726110/Overcrowd_A_Commute_Em_Up/
• And Marvel's Spiderman Franchise will be 33% off until the 16th of February: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/smfranchisesale2023

And that will be all. Until next time, I wish you a happy and gaming weekend.

AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX “Dragon Range” 12-Core CPU Tested In PassMark, Almost Twice As Fast As Ryzen 9 6900HX

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-9-7845hx-dragon-range-12-core-cpu-tested-passmark-almost-twice-as-fast-as-6900hx/

NVIDIA RTX 3060 Graphics Card With Fully Enabled GA106 GPU & 3840 Cores Spotted

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-rtx-3060-graphics-card-with-fully-enabled-ga106-gpu-3840-cores-spotted/

3060 with 3840 cuda cores sounds great until you realize it has 6GB Vram
3060 with 3584 cuda cores has 12GB of ram which is the one to get as it more vram than a 3080 10GB
3060 also has 3584 cuda core version with 8GB of vram but only a 128 bit memory bus

Never before has a 60 series been such a clown circus of weird configs...

AMD Radeon 780M RDNA3 integrated graphics have been tested in 3DMark

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-780m-rdna3-integrated-graphics-have-been-tested-in-3dmark

Talk about small improvement... The only good 780M is the one running at 54 watts which is a lot for a iGPU. Certainly won't be possible with the Steam Deck 2.

Sure took their sweet ass time with this one but least it's finally happening. This does mean that there won't be any game ready drivers for Hogwarts release either for older Radeon cards but hopefully, they will go back to regular updates after this.

Those 54W are for the entire APU, not just the iGPU.

Also, small improvement? Compared to it's direct predecessor, the 6900HS, it went from 2292 to  2791, so a 25% increase. It's certainly not as big as with the switch from Vega to RDNA2, but a pretty substantial increase nonetheless. It's also getting dangerously close to the different NVidia 16/20/3050 GPUs in laptops while obliterating their entire MX series lineup. What more did you expect, really?

I don't see why the 54W is supposed to be the only good one. If the GPU can still beat everything the last gen could reach while limited to 25W and last gen was already considered pretty playable in FHD with low or medium details, I'd say this means the 780M is still very playable while on battery.

Why shouldn't it be possible for the Steam Deck 2? The Vega 8 in the Steam Deck (which only reaches up to 1700 points btw) is also underclocked compared to 4000/5000 series APUs. It will probably not get quite as many points in a steam deck configuration even when paired with faster memory (780M supports up to LPDDR5-7500), but I think a score comparable to the one of the 6800U (which most probably ran at 25W TDP to get that score) in the graph should be very achievable. This in turn would be a 30-40% increase, plus whatever an upgraded CPU would add to the mix.

It is a pretty small improvement because a 6800U has a tdp of 28 watts. So if we compare the 28 watt 6800U to the 25 watt 7940HS, that's like 8-9% improvement. 6900HS also has a tdp of 35 watts... So in order for the 7940HS to get 2791 score, it needed to be bumped up to 54 watts... So that's a 54% increase in wattage for a 22% increase in performance... That's horrid... I expect better from AMD, that's for sure.

Also a 3050 has nearly double the time spy score so it's not really close...

That's also some Intel logic you go there. Sure it can beat everything last gen at 25 watts but by 1-8% is pretty terrible...

The Steam Deck does not have a Vega 8 GPU. I have no idea where you got that from. It has 8 RDNA 2 CUs and the APU runs at 15 watts. The point was that because of how inefficient the 7940HS is, Valve might be better off going with RDNA 2 solution or waiting for RDNA 4 to see if there will be bigger efficiency gains for the Steam Deck 2.

A worrying trend: flagship GPUs have increased power consumption by ~15% per generation (in real-world scenarios, although the result of estimating it using TDP is similar). This is happening against a backdrop of decreasing gains in efficiency with rare exceptions due to architectural improvements.

So far it has been used to average ~50% gains per generation for the last decade, but ahead of us lies a bunch of nodes with worse power characteristics all the way to the end of CMOS die shrinking.

Will we see a 5090 with a 560W TDP to get to that 40% improvement? A 6090 keeping said TDP but consuming closer to it? A 7090 going for 650W? Or will consumer pushback and/or a novel innovative architecture save us from going that path?

Well Ada is essentially rebuffed Ampere with a new node, enhancements and a crap load of cache added. Blackwell is going to be a lot different as architecture goes (supposedly) so I think they'd keep power consumption to a reasonable level. As in I can't see them going over 500W for the 5090.

3nm and IPC gains from a new architecture will give them enough power jump in two years. And if, (and thats a big if) AMD somehow manages a pul a rabbit out the hat with RDNA 4. They can crank up the clocks.

On AMD. RDNA 3 is just trash architecture and in a lot of ways a half step forwards in efficiency. They obviously goofed up somewhere before launch and clearly missed their design targets; going by their launch promo graphs and actual performance targets. If AMD can sort out how to do a GPU with GCX and MCD's and hit performance targets, without massive power draw in RDNA 4 it could be interesting. Though with AMD's RTG, they've been underdelivering for years so not holding much hope there.