The news, part two:

EVE Online player uses obscure rule to pull off the biggest heist in the game's history
https://www.pcgamer.com/eve-online-player-uses-obscure-rule-to-pull-off-the-biggest-heist-in-the-games-history/
Back in 2017, we learned about the biggest heist in EVE Online history: A year-long inside job that ultimately made off with an estimated 1.5 triillion ISK, worth around $10,000 in real money. But now another EVE player claims to have pulled off a heist worth significantly more than that—and with significantly less work involved.

Build a big city (that fits on a small table) in this cute card-based city builder
https://www.pcgamer.com/build-a-big-city-that-fits-on-a-small-table-in-this-cute-card-based-city-builder/
It's enjoyable to plop down a building and watch it get built, either by wee little peasants or by tiny construction crews, depending on the era of the city builder you're playing. But I've discovered a new and satisfying way to watch buildings get assembled: when they're folded together out of little bits of cardboard.

Blast-from-the-past FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun gets a release date
https://www.pcgamer.com/blast-from-the-past-fps-warhammer-40000-boltgun-gets-a-release-date/
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, the aggressively retro and also just plain aggressive-looking first-person shooter from Auroch Digital, now has a release date. It's been revealed via a trailer showing off a variety of the 41st millennium's monsters in the pixelated-sprite style of the late 20th century, which we'll be pretend-murdering right here in the 21st century. Specifically, from May 23, 2023.

Lucasfilm wanted Jedi: Fallen Order to be a shooter featuring a bounty hunter or smuggler
https://www.pcgamer.com/lucasfilm-wanted-jedi-fallen-order-to-be-a-shooter-featuring-a-bounty-hunter-or-smuggler/
While the Star Wars universe is mostly concerned with Jedi shenanigans, from movies to comics to videogames, it turns out that Lucasfilm is incredibly protective of its lightsaber-swinging warriors. This was a problem when Respawn pitched Jedi: Fallen Order. It all worked out in the end, with a Jedi in the driving seat and a sequel, Jedi: Survivor, coming on April 28. But Respawn had to fight for its concept.

AI-driven NPCs are living lives and planning parties all on their own
https://www.pcgamer.com/autonomous-ai-npcs-are-here-and-theyre-planning-parties/
Soon enough we'll be entering a world where NPCs don't just run through their standard lines of code, but form complex, meaningful relationships with other NPCs even when we're away.

Survive prison by recruiting an army of alien rats in this turn-based RPG
https://www.pcgamer.com/survive-prison-by-recruiting-an-army-of-alien-rats-in-this-turn-based-rpg/
What does it take to survive in space prison? Well, it takes space guts, it takes space fortitude, but most of all it takes space charm. That's the premise of Space Prison, at least—a newly announced and wonderfully literally-titled game that styles itself as "social survival". Playing as a human prisoner amongst all manner of weird and terrifying alien thugs, you have to be as much a diplomat as a brawler to thrive, working your way up the hierarchies of the major gangs to gain power and influence.
>> If that headline hasn't picked your interest, I don't know what will.

CS:GO player destroys entire opposing team with single 'one in f**king billions' miracle shot
https://www.pcgamer.com/csgo-player-destroys-entire-opposing-team-with-single-one-in-fking-billions-miracle-shot/
Look, sometimes words just get in the way. So before I start waffling, here's a video—spotted by GamesRadar—of one of the most buck wild strokes of luck I've ever seen happen in a videogame.

So in short, the 4070 is a 3080 with an efficiency improvement and $100 off it's MSRP. At just 12GB Vram however, I fear it will run into a bottleneck here even faster than the 3070/Ti did - probably even before any next-gen GPUs get released.

I checked in Europe at Mindfactory, and you can get a 6800 for 529€, 6800XT for 569€ and 6950XT for 649€. and if you go 20€ on the latter, you even get the Powercolor 6950XT Red Devil, which is pretty much the best 6950XT there is. So the 4070 really needs to be available at or very close to the MSRP or else the AMD cards should all be better value than the 4070. And if early price leaks from Asia are anything to come by, it doesn't look like the 4070 will be available for that price, at least not from the board partners.

Speaking of AMD, the 6700XT is already available for 379€, which will put the upcoming 4060/Ti into a tough spot in terms of pricing.

I wouldn't trust those Asia leaks in terms of pricing. Not only have they been proven wrong countless times, during the 4070 Ti launch, they also claimed there wouldn't be any 4070 Ti available at msrp either but there were many AIB models in stock for MSRP. So I am fairly confident there will be many models at MSRP even if the initial stock might sell out depending on how much volume there is.

I do think there's one thing that has been clear watching a lot of these reviewers checking GPU prices and what's in stock. And that is despite Nvidia massively overproducing Ampere GPUs compared to RDNA 2 and RDNA 2 getting massive discounts compared to Ampere GPUs selling at MSRP, a lot of the Ampere GPUs have ran out of stock while RDNA 2 GPUs are still in stock. That does prove that customers are willing to pay a premium for Nvidia GPUs and their feature sets even if the vram is less than Radeon. So even if the 6700XT is cheaper and better value, I don't think Nvidia is all that worried even if for the health of the market, it would be better if they were worried.

But I do think that at some point, the RDNA 2 GPUs will also go out of stock so snagging one while they are this cheap, especially when there's free games included, is a good value play.

Keep in mind that 40 series numbers are skewed towards high end which have GPUs that are far more RT capable than their upcoming low end while 30 series and 20 series have obviously been out for some time. Still interesting numbers.

NVIDIA RTX Remix game remastering platform is now open source

https://videocardz.com/press-release/nvidia-rtx-remix-game-remastering-platform-is-now-open-source

Skimmed through a few reviews and idk man.. might sit out this gen at this rate.

Whats dissapointing me the most as the silicon gets cut down more and all the benefits gained from going to a massively improved node.. gets lost. With essentially the same RT performance as last gen with a slight price improvement and efficiency. And just Ai as the big seller. Shits so bad that even RDNA 2 cards compete with RT with these cards lol.

Yeah I mean its not a bad card. £600, too is my upper limit for buying a new graphics card. Sadly the uplift in performance has stagnated a lot this generation. Still a big jump from our old Pascal cards though and decent performance. Okay in todays inflated prices but that's not saying much.

Honestly that is still my recommendation outside of 4090 buyers. Buying neither Nvidia or Radeon feels good right now. Nvidia because of how greedy they are and AMD cause of a lack of features amongst other issues like with emulation.

There is a good amount of reasons to wait for next gen imo. GPU and PC shipments in general have massively gone down similar to Turning. The price and performance outside of flagship is largely unappealing like Turing. Nvidia should be switching to Samsung similar to Ampere. Nvidia is increasing their vram for the mid ranged every generation. There are new features like DLSS 3 and VSR that need some more updates to get their kinks worked out similar to Turing.

So I think there's a good chance that Blackwell will be similar to Ampere in terms of performance uplift for the price you pay. $600 could be the new price for the 5070 regardless but imo, the performance uplift would be worth the price by then. And they could potentially add in 16GB of vram for the 70 class as well.

Guys; quick question as I'm sifting through the jungle of motherboards and compatibility issues. How long will the LGA 1700 remain relevant/viable for upgrade? I understand it's quite new, but I've heard that it might be short-lived, causing potential issues 4-5 years down the line if I wish to upgrade my CPU. I mostly want PCIe 5.0 support and DDR5, but that's not hard to find. I think perhaps AMD is a safer bet, with them usually keeping their sockets for longer (AM5 will more than likely be viable in 5 years time).

As I've mentioned before, I have no loyalty. I'm considering either a 13600K or perhaps the 7800X3D, the latter seems like crazy value in comparison, especially given its low consumption. 4090 combo with 7800X3D is looking mighty sweet.

Well AMD officially said 2025+ in their slides so at the very least, I'd expect support until 2025. Raptor Lake could potentially get one more CPU generation in the rumour mill with Raptor Lake refresh but in my point of view, going AMD is the better bet in terms of CPU and platform. X670E is simply a superior platform to Z790 with all of it's PCI-E 5 capabilities and IO and such. But you can always pair raptor lake cheaper Z690 boards so the platform cost could be cheaper overall depending on a few factors but basically little to no upgrade path.

Personally speaking, I am going with 7800X3D + Asus ProArt Creator X670E + 32GB of 6000 Mhz CL30 DDR5. Platform Longevity + PCI-E 5.0 for GPU + Storage + Fast and efficient CPU.

Sounds smart. I'm also entertaining the idea that there will be actually worthwhile m.2 drives on PCIe 5.0 within a few years. For now, the performance increase isn't worth the extra premium, not by by a long shot. I'll be going with a 1TB drive for OS and doodles, something around the 7000/7000 mark in speed. And for gaming/various stuff, I'll be getting either a 2TB or 4TB drive with roughly the same speed. Apparently, the larger the drive, the more/bigger write cycles it can perform before it says goodnight (which is important if I plan on keeping it for many years).

I generally keep my rigs for a long time, as my other electronics, which is why I need something powerful and stable, as well as something that can be improved in increments. I had my last phone for 5 years, and I still have every single console I ever owned. I think my average time between rigs is around 6,5-7 years or so.

I agree with you about the 4070. And it's interesting how the performance changes compared to the 3080 going from faster to slower as the resolution goes up.

As Yuri said, 1700 may get a refresh based on the current architecture, but we don't know how those may look like. Too many rumors about it.

And yeah, AMD said it would support AM5 until 2025, probably a couple of new CPU releases, but you should still be able to find a compatible processor in 5 years. Maybe not the latest or the best, but still a good upgrade (and also cheaper as it won't be new anymore).