Jeez...

A 21000rpm fan spinning tends to be noisy. It also raises the question of how long it will last.

Something is clearly wrong with that Intel chip when not only the Threadripper, but also the 7950X and 13900K beat it in that test.

I don't know what Intel expects from these CPUs, but it doesn't look well for them, especially when Zen4 Threadrippers should come out soon.

Also, it's good to see that the Harry Pottr game doesn't suffer from the common problems, but it seems to be a very demanding game.

Actually enforced power limits, maybe? Its TDP is 'just' 270W while the 13900k goes over 280W in Blender...

I am a big proponent of self improvement... And that means working towards higher income brackets, which means things become affordable.
Since COVID started I have double my income for example, I took full advantage of the implosion in the job market.

At the moment there is a market correction as the world starts moving manufacturing to more local areas, inflation is hitting costs hard... And supply/demand is now placing some unique pressures on other markets.

We are seeing that with CPU's currently... The market is no longer hungry for CPU's, so AMD has been forced to lower prices or loose out... I mean... Why would I upgrade my Ryzen 5950X that I bought for $800 for a 7950X at $1200? Especially when you combine the higher RAM and motherboard costs.

I won't. It's not like my 5950X became useless overnight... And normally I am an early adopter.

Just play the waiting game, things might start getting interesting over the next 12 months.

We don't even have games that fully utilise 16gb RAm yet and we're still seeing plenty of games stuck on 8, wtf is this, Crysis Hogwarts/Sims?.

The 1080ti req set me off and now this lol, I'm def staying away until I see 1440p benches, and I hope to god someone out there benches with a card that isn't the 3000/4000 series, we don't all have one of those yet. Also no way can I currently afford a brand new 32gb kit atm, so I'm locked out of another AAA game even more than the others (the others being price range-wise and RT based)lol...

Tbf I have been playing the GPPU waiting game since 2018, and it's not 2023 lol.

I'm not at all worried on the CPU front, I know I'll be able to nab what I want within a year from now, but GPU-wise is totally still up in the air, and I don't see myself reaching that point any time soon.

I just wish bottom barrel and low tier jobs paid more tbh. I know you're a Fire fighter, so that's def an important job to pay more for, same for office/techies, but retail?, those poor bastards are still fucked. 

The Tuesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam weeklong deals:

• Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter, still in Early Access, will be 34% off until Saturday: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1272010/Destroyer_The_UBoat_Hunter/
• Sands of Aura, also in Early Access, will be 33% off until February 13th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1119840/Sands_of_Aura/
• The Sonic franchise is on sale with up to 75% discounts until Monday: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36333614-Sega-Promotions/sale/sonic-franchise-sale
• And the... Midwinter in Middle-Earth Sale comes with up to 85% discounts on those titles, even the Lego ones, until Monday, 13th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/midwinterinmiddleearthsale
• The following is nothing but a small sample of the weeklong deals:
  • Return to Monkey Island, the new one, will be 25% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2060130/Return_to_Monkey_Island/
  • The VR ONLY Ragnarock, that has a demo, gets a 40% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1345820/Ragnarock/
  • What Comes After is half its usual price: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421760/What_Comes_After/
  • Faery - Legends of Avalon is 65% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/303790/Faery__Legends_of_Avalon/
  • And the last one is The Gardens Between, with an 80% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/600990/The_Gardens_Between/

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 fan remake is most impressive, and you can play the first two levels right now
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-jedi-knight-dark-forces-2-fan-remake-is-most-impressive-and-you-can-play-the-first-two-levels-right-now/
It might be 26 years old, but Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 is still a banger. It's so good, in fact, that we were still singing its praises as recently as 2020, praising its lightsaber-swinging and movement. But there's no getting around it, Dark Forces 2 is an ugly game by today's standards, which you'll only notice if you actually manage to get the thing running on modern machines. Thankfully, someone's decided to remake the whole thing in Unreal Engine 4.
The fan remake comes from a developer named Ruppertle, who mostly tinkers with Arma mods when they aren't remaking '90s PC classics from scratch, and you can currently play through two levels from the original game in it. On top of that, there's four wave-based survival levels, and a sandbox mode. Oh, and a 3D model viewer, in case you want to sit and marvel at the poly count for a while.
>> There's a 1:10 video of the mod.

Modders are using AI to put voice acting in Morrowind, and I'm impressed and concerned all at once
https://www.pcgamer.com/modders-are-using-ai-to-put-voice-acting-in-morrowind-and-im-impressed-and-concerned-all-at-once/
Morrowind, Lee Harvey Oswald's favourite Elder Scrolls game and mine, has its rough edges. Its combat makes no sense, its characters all have one polygon they share between each other, and the people walk like no one taught them about knees. But I suspect the thing that turns most people away is all that reading. You could fill a stadium with the number of players that switched Morrowind off as soon as Sellus Gravius started spitting multiple voiceless paragraphs of instructions at them, but now modders have started using AI to fix it. I'm just not sure how I feel about the results.
Modders are using a tool called ElevenAI to literally give voice to Morrowind's voiceless, and projects using it have sprung up with increasing frequency in recent months. We've got some greetings for Nami the librarian, barks for quest-givers like Caius Cosades, and a fledgling, perhaps-doomed project to voice the entirety of Morrowind using all the latest whizzbang AI tech.

GAMING NEWS

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Title Update 4 released, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/monster-hunter-rise-sunbreak-title-update-4-released-full-patch-notes/
Capcom has just released a brand new update for Monster Hunter Rise. According to the release notes, Title Update 4 adds new monsters, including a Risen elder dragon, and new Anomaly Research Quests. Furthermore, it brings a new “3D Audio” option, and new Event Quests.

ExeKiller is a new futuristic western FPS using Unreal Engine 5
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/exekiller-is-a-new-futuristic-western-fps-using-unreal-engine-5/
Now here is something that passed under my radar. Earlier this month, Paradark Studio revealed a new futuristic western first-person action-adventure shooter, called ExeKiller. ExeKiller will be using Unreal Engine 5, targets a 2024 release date, and below you can find a pre-alpha gameplay trailer for it.

Forspoken Update 1.03 released, does not bring major performance improvements, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/forspoken-update-1-03-released-does-not-bring-major-performance-improvements-full-patch-notes/
Square Enix has just released a new update for Forspoken. The February 7th Update is 200MB in size, and, from the looks of it, does not bring any major performance improvements.

Here is everything you need to know about the PC version of Hogwarts Legacy
https://www.dsogaming.com/articles/here-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-pc-version-of-hogwarts-legacy/
The Deluxe Edition for Hogwarts Legacy will become available to those that have pre-ordered it later today. As such, we’ve decided to share an article and inform you about everything you need to know about the game’s PC version.

Maximum Football is the first sports game in Unreal Engine 5, gets first gameplay trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/maximum-football-is-the-first-sports-game-in-unreal-engine-5-gets-first-gameplay-trailer/
Modus Games today revealed a first look at the first sports game that will be using Unreal Engine 5, Maximum Football. Maximum Football will be coming to Steam Early Access this Spring, and will be free to play.

Tuesday news, part two:

Play Darkest Dungeon 2 for free with a new limited time demo
https://www.pcgamer.com/play-darkest-dungeon-2-for-free-with-a-new-limited-time-demo/
After a year hiding in shadow—that is, in Early Access as an Epic exclusive—Darkest Dungeon 2 is almost ready to emerge to terrorise innocent PC gamers. On May 8th, it'll be launching its full 1.0 release, and in the meantime a free demo is available now on both Steam and Epic.

More people saw the secret Elden Ring ending where you have to do loads of weird stuff than the 'normal' ending
https://www.pcgamer.com/more-people-saw-the-secret-elden-ring-ending-where-you-have-to-do-loads-of-weird-stuff-than-the-normal-ending/
While browsing Elden Ring's Steam listing the other day, PCG's eagle-eyed Ted Litchfield spotted something interesting about the game's General Grievous-armed snow witch wife. The page includes a breakdown of what percentage of the playerbase has garnered a given achievement, and when it comes to the endgame trophies it turns out we all love a witch.

Finally, Overwatch 2 gets a dating sim and more in season 3
https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2-season-3-roadmap-events/
Overwatch 2's third season aims to address the biggest issues players have had since the game's launch in October.
Apart from debuting the new Antarctica Control map, season 3 will finally make skins easier to earn for free, tweak how Competitive works, and feature three events with skins and other cosmetics to earn and buy on the shop.

Overwatch 2 is about to make playing support easier, except for Mercy
https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2-season-3-mercy-support-balance-patch/
After heated debates about the role of support in Overwatch 2, particularly the strength of Mercy's ability to damage boost DPS heroes, Blizzard has taken a stance with an upcoming balance patch.

Apex Legends is finally getting team deathmatch
https://www.pcgamer.com/apex-legends-is-finally-getting-team-deathmatch/
For the first time since it launched in February 2019—that's right, four years ago—Apex Legends is getting a team deathmatch mode. Respawn said team deathmatch "has been our community's most requested mode," which might make you wonder why it took so long to happen, but better late than never: The new mode will arrive next week with the kickoff of the next Apex Legends season, called Revelry.

You've got 7 days to get through 900 game demos in the latest Steam Next Fest
https://www.pcgamer.com/youve-got-7-days-to-get-through-900-game-demos-in-the-latest-steam-next-fest/
The latest recurrence of the semi-annual blowout of game demos, livestreams, and other stuff known as the Steam Next Fest is now live, and that means you have exactly one week to power through nearly 900 demos from nearly every genre you can imagine.

Dr Disrespect's Deadrop is moving to 'less frequent but much larger' updates
https://www.pcgamer.com/dr-disrespects-deadrop-is-moving-to-less-frequent-but-much-larger-updates/
Midnight Society co-founder Guy Beahm, better known as mustache-and-wraparounds streamer Dr Disrespect, announced today that the studio is slowing the pace of Deadrop "snapshot" build releases in favor of slower but more substantial updates through 2023.

One of the industry's more skeptical CEOs thinks AI tools will 'raise the bar' for videogames
https://www.pcgamer.com/strauss-zelnick-ai-tools/
Over the past few years of listening to gaming executives talk about the industry during earnings reports, I've found Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to be one of the more circumspect bosses in the business. He's been relaxed about the rise of Xbox Game Pass, noting whenever he's asked about it that subscriptions are still a small part of the business, and he didn't declare NFTs to be the future of commerce five minutes after finding out about them. It's a low bar, but it's mildly refreshing to hear a tech exec respond to buzzwords with something other than a golden retriever's unconditional enthusiasm. So it went on Monday when Zelnick was asked during an investors call what he thought of advances in AI tech, at least at the start of his response.

Juggle enemies to hell with a grappling hook and mighty kick in this stylish FPS
https://www.pcgamer.com/juggle-enemies-to-hell-with-a-grappling-hook-and-mighty-kick-in-this-stylish-fps/
In 2006, Arkane Studios let loose a quiet FPS miracle with Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: a fantasy melee FPS with a fast kick move that didn't do much damage, but would instantly ragdollize almost any enemy in this early Source engine game. Ample physics hazards and precarious drops combined to make Dark Messiah an absolute slapstick hoedown.
Dark Messiah's kick was so breathtakingly, life-changingly satisfying it was never seen again until 2021's Deathloop. Now developer Alexy "cptnsigh" is building a hybrid character action game/FPS built around that same perfect attack, with a recently-released demo for Shady Knight proving an absolute blast.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU Review

https://www.techspot.com/review/2624-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-laptop-gpu/

Insane performance. As mentioned in the review, it performs very similarly to a desktop 3090 while using a lot less power. The price of the laptop is also crazy high at $5000 USD and the cheapest ones they found start at $3500 USD. But realistically, no one looking for at this class of laptop is going to care about the prices as they simply just want the fastest one available even if you can get a desktop 4090 build for $3500 USD easily. Regardless of which tho, as expensive as it may be, no one can deny the incredible uplift in performance.

Wouldn't surprise me if the 4090 laptop beats a 7900XTX in some RT titles.

4080 laptop has the more usual gen on gen uplifts while being less expensive than 4090 laptops.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 expected to launch in April

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-expected-to-launch-in-april

Samsung Confirms 990 Pro SSD Firmware Fix Coming Soon

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-ssd-firmware-fix

^ Since it's basically a desktop 4080 power limited to 50% with 67% of the performance, it could match the 7900XTX RT in Cyberpunk 2077. So I'd guess that and Portal RTX, but not other titles.