Yea fair enough, that one is much better priced

The only problem is that it only has 4 SATA ports, like the MSI one

Meh many modern cases have limited capacity for non m.2 drives/ssds anyway. With m.2 ssds being so cheap these days, I'll take the added slots for those over sata. But granted if you have a lot of 2.5/3.5 inch hard drives/ssds, upgrading gonna be a pain.

This is likely improper wording or they misunderstood AMD's comments. Ryzen Master works overriding settings at a software level, it can't alter the BIOS. I don't think even OEMs provide software with true kernel-level access to the BIOS anymore.

That being said (if the reports are real) it's probably just some dumb kids that don't know to boot in safe mode and reset whatever settings they left in place.

For context:

The 6700S is a 100W card for ultrathins (that's what the S stands for), while the 7600S is a 75W card. Both also come with 28CU and 8GB VRAM, which is a nice upgrade over the 6600S (4GB), plus the bandwidth went up a bit  from 224Gb/s to 256Gb/s. The 6800S meanwhile has 32CU and faster memory, but still a 100W limit.

What is definitely nice is that the 7600S has a full 16 PCI-E lanes connection as opposed to just 8 for the last-gen 6700M and below.

It's not a very big performance upgrade, but it can certainly help keep the battery alive a bit longer, so there's that. And the desktop spinoffs won't be held back by the small bus this time around.

Well there were a lot of articles that essentially said the same thing which they got from AMD. You can always google "Radeon Drivers overclocking Ryzen" to find this out. From what I can find:

"A few days ago, a report published on Igors Lab revealed that the BIOS settings on computers that had an AMD processor and graphics card, were being reset automatically. The issue was narrowed down to be caused by Ryzen Master, which is integrated with the graphics driver. It changes the CPU settings when it loads a GPU Profile, followed by a reboot. It also modified the Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) values regardless of whether the user had set them or not. Igor mentions using Radeon Software Slimmer to get rid of bloat such as the AMD Ryzen Master SDK can help prevent the BIOS settings from being reset.

It is also mentioned as a known issue in the release notes for AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.4.1, that was released yesterday.

"Ryzen CPU Overclock settings may be changed after resetting or importing a profile from Radeon Performance Tuning Options.""

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/04/07/amd-gpu-drivers-are-overclocking-cpus-on-their-own/

Now whether or not it's easy or hard to fix is not really the point. The point is that a driver update shouldn't be causing instability issues to this degree especially if it's AMDs own software. There's a lot of new users that buy PC hardware and things like this can put them off of pc gaming entirely.

Yeah, if someone if buying a shiny new graphics all things considered you'd expect things like the drivers to be complete, stable and upto date with the latest titles. And Nvidia hardly dissapoints in that area. AMD can't even manage current drivers for last generation cards, how can they keep up when their competitor is offering that, on top of a myriad of useful feature sets and higher performance overall to boot.

Tbh the RDNA 3 cards were clearly rushed to market to get interest and sales for the Holidays. Though what they should have done is polish up their drivers more and do more testing because what they demonstrated was far from what they promised in their final product. Granted they have smaller teams, and less budget than Nvidia its just a bad look to launch cards with dodgy drivers, and then leaving current 6000 series owner sin the dark for months; with no updates.

I was close to ordering a 7900XT the other day as it was on offer and priced around a 4070Ti but ultimately went against it. Nvidia's cards offer so much more than just pure Raster performance and VRAM. Between the way better efficiency plus Nvidia's support and feature set being second to none, that's something AMD really should invest in if they want to be taken seriously.

AMD's GPU's are quickly garnering "2nd tier" quality status... They already lack features that nVidia has, they can't have inferior quality/performance as well... Especially with Intel entering the arena ready to take marketshare. (Once they get their shit sorted that is.)

And it's frustrating... Because the entire Polaris/RX 5000/RX 6000 series felt like it had very solid drivers until just recently... My drivers were updated in November last year, still nothing new.

In saying that... My RTX 3060 hasn't exactly been smooth sailing either, it doesn't switch graphics cards seamlessly in my notebook and drivers have crashed a few times, but it's generally been better supported by nVidia.

The Thursday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

The Epic Store gives away Warpips: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/warpips
Next week, they'll give away Duskers.

GOG has partnered with Warhorse Studios for a CONTEST with the chance to win one of the 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance OST vinyls signed by devs. Learn more here: https://www.gog.com/en/news/we_love_games_special_kingdom_come_deliverance_contest_for_medieval_day.

Steam has a new deal and a sale:

• Anvil Saga, still in Early Access, will be 25% off until the 22nd: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1587540/Anvil_Saga/
• And the Indie Cup Celebration 2023, with up to 80% discounts until February 22: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38747278-Indie-Cup/sale/indiecup2023

The Humble Store also shows its love for indie titles with the Indie Hits Sale, with up to 90% discounts during 4 days. There are keys for Steam, GOG, EGS (1) and UPlay (2): https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/indie-hits-sale/.

And Fanatical, after the massive bolar bundles of yesterday, comes today with another two bundles:

• The Bethesda Favorites BYOB has 12 titles to choose for your 2, 3 or 5 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/bethesda-favorites-build-your-own-bundle
• And the BYO Infinity VR Collection has 17 titles to pick from for your 2, 3 or 5 games: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-infinity-vr-collection

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This Grand Theft Auto 4 Mod overhauls the main playable protagonists
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/this-grand-theft-auto-4-mod-overhauls-the-main-playable-protagonists/
Modder ‘BadassBaboon’ has released a new HD Texture Pack for Grand Theft Auto 4 that overhauls its main protagonists. In other words, this pack will improve the textures of Niko Bellic, Luis Fernando Lopez and Johnny Klebitz.
Now as you may all know, in GTA 4’s main game you assume the role of Niko Bellic. However, in The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony DLCs, you control Johnny and Luis.
In order to improve the textures of these three characters, the modder used AI techniques and then tweaked them by hand for that “extra” bit of detail. This pack improves the textures for their clothes, hands, attachments, face, and hair.

GAMING NEWS

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales February 15th Update brings performance optimizations to older CPUs
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/marvels-spider-man-miles-morales-february-15th-update-brings-performance-optimizations-to-older-cpus/
Nixxes Software has released a brand new update for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. According to the changelog, the February 15th Update brings performance optimizations to older CPUs.

WILD HEARTS will get a CPU performance patch next week
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/wild-hearts-will-get-a-cpu-performance-patch-next-week/
Omega Force has revealed that it’s working on a PC performance patch for WILD HEARTS that will go live next week. According to the devs, this update should improve performance across mid-high end CPUs.

Thursday news, part two:

Valve backtracks on Team Fortress 2 update wording after people got way too excited: 'We've been bamboozled'
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-backtracks-on-team-fortress-2-update-wording-after-people-got-way-too-excited-weve-been-bamboozled/
Last week Valve spread some joy in the world. After years of the Team Fortress 2 community pining for new stuff and begging Mr. Newell for scraps like Dickensian urchins, Valve published no less than a blog post to the official Team Fortress 2 site announcing "an update-sized update." Content's back on the menu, boys!
The Team Fortress 2 community's reaction to this was about as sane and measured as a Demoman after a three-week bender: Valve was listening all along, this is what we've been waiting for, the good times are a-coming once more. (...)
That is, it seemed clear Valve was not announcing that it would be making an original new update, but that it was announcing it would pick-and-choose community created content and package it up in an official update.
The expectations reached a burning pitch any Pyro would be proud of, to the extent the TF2 dev team has now gone back to the original blogpost and silently edited it to make things crystal clear. It now uses the wording "holiday-sized update" instead of "update-sized update" and has removed the phrase "who knows what else" in its entirety.

Hogwarts Legacy datamined potion would've made choosing talents easier
https://www.pcgamer.com/hogwarts-legacy-talent-reset-potion-mod/
Hogwarts Legacy currently has no way for your witch or wizard to swap their talents around, or reset them. Once you've made a decision to invest in one of the game's talent trees, you're stuck with it.
But tucked away in the game's files is a bit of code that reads: "RPG_PotionAbility_TalentReset." This potion causes the "RPGTriggerEffect_TalentReset" and is located under the "TalentReset" folder, according to EIPGaming. The potion even has a sparkly purple texture file associated with it. It isn't used for anything in the game though, and seems to be either cut content or potentially a developer tool.
>> I can see an incoming mod attempting to enable it in the not too distant future.

Rejoice: Warzone 2 Resurgence is back with a new small map
https://www.pcgamer.com/rejoice-warzone-2-resurgence-is-back-with-a-new-small-map/
As a part of Activision's apparent mission to turn Warzone 2 back into Warzone 1, today's season 2 update brings back a fan-favorite mode, Resurgence, on a brand new Japan-themed small map: Ashika Island. There are also a few new weapons in the mix, simplified loot, and new points of interest in Al Mazrah.

Angry Modern Warfare 2 players moderately soothed by new map reveal, remain mad
https://www.pcgamer.com/angry-modern-warfare-2-players-soothed-by-new-map-reveal-still-mad/
A considerable portion of the Modern Warfare 2 subreddit reacted scornfully to the game's Season 2 roadmap reveal and its two 6v6 maps, but spirits improved a little during the launch today when Infinity Ward announced that another new map will release sometime mid-season.

Genshin Impact developer's next game draws 2M sign-ups as its launch nears
https://www.pcgamer.com/genshin-impact-developers-next-game-draws-2m-sign-ups-as-its-launch-nears/
Take Genshin Impact, make it turn-based, and crank the anime dial up to 11 and you have Honkai: Star Rail, the next game from MiHoYo.
The free-to-play game just entered its final beta and the dates on its Apple App Store and Google Play Store page suggest it might release in April. The game's final beta started on February 10, and over two million people have pre-registered (basically wishlisting) for the final game on PC and mobile.

Genshin Impact drops actor who admitted to sexual misconduct and pledges to scrub him from the game entirely
https://www.pcgamer.com/genshin-impact-drops-actor-who-admitted-to-sexual-misconduct-and-pledges-to-scrub-him-from-the-game-entirely/
HoYoverse has announced that it's dropping Elliot Gindi from Genshin Impact's voice cast for "breach of contract," after the actor admitted to sexual misconduct with fans on Discord last week. Gindi, who provided the English voice for Genshin's Tighnari, will "no longer be voicing the character in subsequent versions" of the game, after he confessed to "wrong and inappropriate" behaviour in a statement released last week, though he denied preying on underage members of his Discord community.

Total War: Warhammer 3 is making one of the series' greatest ever campaigns free for all owners
https://www.pcgamer.com/total-war-warhammer-3-is-making-one-of-the-series-greatest-ever-campaigns-free-for-all-owners/
Total War: Warhammer 3's first update of the year has made a big change to its Immortal Empires campaign. Launched in beta, Immortal Empires has, up to now, only been available to players who own all three Total Warhammer games. But now Creative Assembly is peeling that beta tag off, and making the campaign freely available to anyone and everyone who owns plain old Warhammer 3.

Destiny 2: Lightfall's new loadout system will let players swap gear in the middle of an activity
https://www.pcgamer.com/destiny-2-lightfalls-new-loadout-system-will-let-players-swap-gear-in-the-middle-of-an-activity/
Bungie recently gave us the chance to see Destiny 2: Lightfall in action. In a behind-closed-doors presentation, Bungie showed off Destiny 2's new city of Neomuna, and most excitingly of all—for me and other buildcrafting sickos, at least—demonstrated the new in-game loadouts system.