Tuesday news, part two:

Diablo 4 players have started calling people who didn't earn the horse cosmetic in the beta 'bare-mares'
https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-4-players-have-started-calling-people-who-didnt-earn-the-horse-cosmetic-in-the-beta-bare-mares/
Did you beat the world boss Ashava in the Diablo 4 "Server Slam" beta? The answer's important: it will decide your standing in the upcoming game's social order.

This cozy farm sim lets you raise dozens of adorable animals and then become one
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-cozy-farm-sim-lets-you-raise-dozens-of-adorable-animals-and-then-become-one/
There's another cozy farm sim just about to hatch and this one has a little extra magic. Everdream Valley has just announced its May 30 release date with a new trailer showing off its crops, livestock, critters, and cooking. That all sounds like standard farm sim fare, but there's a twist: when you go to sleep you'll transform into an animal yourself.

Activision Blizzard says it's 'committed to the Chinese market' following China's approval of Microsoft acquisition
https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-says-its-committed-to-the-chinese-market-following-chinas-approval-of-the-microsoft-acquisition/
Following the EU's approval last week, China's State Administration for Market Regulation has given its blessing to the proposed union between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. The decision was reported by Seeking Alpha late last week, and confirmed by Activision Blizzard today in a statement sent to PC Gamer.

Don't you dare drop the number from the next Final Fantasy name, Square Enix
https://www.pcgamer.com/dont-you-dare-drop-the-numbers-from-the-final-fantasy-names-square-enix/
Final Fantasy 16 is doing its last lap of console previews ahead of a release next month, though sadly on PC we're not going to be playing it anytime soon. More concerning, though, is something Yoshida told GQ UK in an interview today: there have been talks "with the higher-ups" at Square Enix about ditching the numbers for the Final Fantasy series because they can be confusing for new players.

I'm getting some tasty Skyrim and Dark Messiah vibes from this first-person action RPG
https://www.pcgamer.com/im-getting-some-tasty-skyrim-and-dark-messiah-vibes-from-this-first-person-action-rpg/
If you like tromping around a fantasy world in first-person casting two-handed spells, whacking ogres and goblins with an ornate sword, and solving huge mechanical puzzles in mysterious chambers, here's a game you might want to keep an eye on.
It's called Testament: The Order of High Human and the trailer gives me quite a blend of vibes. A bit of Skyrim, a pinch of Elden Ring, a dash of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. (Just not with the budget attached to those massive games.)

Ashfall is a Fallout-inspired MMO set in 'a whole new kind of wasteland'
https://www.pcgamer.com/ashfall-is-a-fallout-inspired-mmo-set-in-a-whole-new-kind-of-wasteland/
Ashfall was first announced at Tokyo Game Show last year, but the third-person shooter MMO flew under my radar until a few days ago when it got a new trailer (above) and the announcement of a July beta test. It looks cool!

Blizzard execs sound very excited about AI, want to use it for level design, coding, and 'anti-toxicity'
https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-execs-sound-very-excited-about-ai-want-to-use-it-for-level-design-coding-and-anti-toxicity/
Brace yourself, folks, because it sounds like Blizzard is getting into AI-generated art. A recent report in the New York Times (via Kotaku) contains some choice(?) excerpts from an email sent to Blizzard staff by Allen Adham—Blizzard's chief design officer—in which he enthuses about the potential benefits that AI could bring to the company's workflow.

Props to this decade-old fighting game for moving to new servers instead of shutting down in 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/props-to-this-decade-old-fighting-game-for-moving-to-new-servers-instead-of-shutting-down-in-2023/
It's become so common to see online games switched off entirely that we actually compiled a list of all the big games that shut down last year. It sometimes feels risky to get too attached to any kind of online multiplayer game these days; as soon as a line on an earnings graph dips too low, the servers get unplugged.
But Killer Instinct is bucking that trend (via Time Extension). The fighting game reboot that originally hit PC seven years ago has responded to issues with its legacy server infrastructure by, get this, migrating to new ones! A quality of life update for the game released last week that begins the process of moving Killer Instinct over to a new server backend.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Graphics Cards Review Roundup

https://videocardz.com/156089/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060-ti-graphics-cards-review-roundup

https://www.techspot.com/review/2685-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060-ti/

The worst part is that there are a few instances where it's infact slower than a 3060 Ti due to a lack of bandwidth

So it's largely trash

AMD Radeon RX 7600 final specifications leaked, 165W TDP & 2625 MHz boost clock

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-7600-final-specifications-leaked-165w-tdp-2625-mhz-boost-clock

6nm certainly explains why it's as close to the 6600XT and power hungry as it is since RDNA 3 is supposed to be 5nm while a 4060 is still using 4N node like the rest of the Lovelace lineup.

AMD launches Ryzen/Athlon 7020C “Mendocino” APU series for Chromebooks

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-launches-ryzen-athlon-7020c-mendocino-apu-series-for-chromebooks

AMD FSR 3 Might Generate Up To 4 Interpolated Frames & Be Enabled On Driver-Side

https://wccftech.com/amd-fsr-3-might-generate-up-to-4-interpolated-frames-be-enabled-on-driver-side/

I don't believe the final product will be a driver side implementation because if FSR 3 is a driver side only implementation, then it will be bad, like really bad. The reason why Nvidia's DLSS 3 works as well as it does is because it is able to get motion vector and optical flow information directly from the engine which allows it to guess what the in between frame is supposed to look like hence why it needs to be implemented at a per game level. But implementing FSR 3 at a driver level would make it so that it will be a glorified interpolation technology similar to what we see on TVs.

DF goes on a bit of a rant about the state of gaming with all the unoptimized ports and pc hardware and Nvidias treatment of the 4060 Ti/4060. It's long but I do think it's worth watching.

One interesting thing they mentioned is how some users are attempting to circumvent the stuttering issues in games by using DLSS 3. Essentially when you have shader compilation stutter or traversal stutter, users are finding that the stuttering aspect has a minimum framerate of say 40fps. So if they cap the framerate to 40fps then they don't feel the stutter as badly then they use DLSS 3 to make the framerate 80fps. Of course this does mean that the GPU is being heavily underutilized.

Certainly better than $300 and in a vacuum, it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the 4060 for $300 but yea, best just to buy a 6700XT and be done with it than either 7600 or 4060 or 4060 Ti. DLSS really starts to break down at 1080p and Ray Tracing isn't all that important with these cards anyway so a pure Raster performer with 12GB of vram is all anyone really needs with this class of GPUs.

That's just what Nvidia calls their proprietary interpolation algorithms. In essence, what they're doing isn't qualitatively any different from any AI processor inside high-end screens. The main difference is that Reflex is mandated on DLSS3, which alleviates some of the intrinsic added latency in FG. But then other proprietary FG modes will also turn off most post-processing to decrease latency with FG, so yeah.

To me, this is another G-Sync scenario where a lot of the added proprietary Nvidia stuff to supposedly create a more premium experience ends up promptly ignored in most scenarios and eventually matched by the open standard solution in a few years anyway.

I mean its probably going to be closer to 4060 in performance but at only $30 less its going to be a hard sell vs Nvidia's counterpart. At under $250 I feel its a decent budget card if funds are limited and that person only really plays at 1080P and/or esports titles. Lower of course it would be a solid recommendation for 1080P gamers.

And the 4060Ti looks to be a waste of sand. Barely beats the 3060Ti and sometimes even loses to it due to its halved bus bandwidth. Should've called it the 4050Ti and priced it at $350. Heck, just skip the 8GB model and launch the 16GB only at $400.

Yeah, everything in this tier for new launches seem gimped anyway. And its more surely better for a person to spend a bit more on decently specced cards and more VRAM to avoid headaches. Going for at least 12GB all while getting decent raster will serve the user better, than having more FPS, then choking once you go past the 8GB VRAM buffer.

A bit depressing that once upon a time you could get these kind of cards at $200 heck, sub $200. Now is closer to 300 and is barely moves the needle years down the line with a brand new generation. Lets hope AMD or even Intel shakes up the market in the lower end/mid tier because these new cards are just a waste of time.

As a side note.. its funny how this kind of makes the A770/A750 good value. It takes some BS launch to do that lol.

yeah, 4060 Ti beating the 3060 Ti by like 15% in the marketing material is the best cast scenario with RT at 1080p. At higher resolutions and without RT the 3060 Ti can be faster because of the better memory bus. Not sure if I've ever seen that, pretty embarrassing.

This 60 series is just terrible, a 256 bit 16GB one at $399 would have been ok I guess, the current one is more like a 50 class card.

Crazy that the only card this gen that didn't disappoint compared to last gen is the 4090 which is ofc too expensive for most people.

I think that's underselling the tech behind DLSS quite a lot tbh. The Ai processor in high end screens doesn't have any awareness of motion vectors or anything of that nature because the game engine and such do not provide the screens any information. The Ai processor just looks at the frame data and makes a quick guess as to what the frame supposed to look in between before putting out the next frame. DLSS 3 on the other hand actually has motion vectors and etc that it gets directly from the game engine which allows it to guess significantly more accurately than anything the Ai processor in those TVs can do and that's the key. It's like saying well DLSS is an upscaler just like checkboard rendering and FSR but then you see differences like this:

And it's like sure they are all upscalers but DLSS is significantly better. And sure maybe in 4-6 years, an open source version might match DLSS but what are you gonna do till then? Just be happy with a subpar experience when you could have enjoyed the tech 4-6 years in advance? Remember that DLSS 2.0 released 3 years ago and we have not seen an single upscaler that is on par with DLSS.

Yea I personally hope that Intel especially has something. Radeon feels like they are enjoying to duopoly train with Nvidia where as Intel might have greater ambitions in the space and they certainly have the money to throw at it. We will see how Battlemage turns out but that's more of a 2024 thing. Till then, I we will just have to rely on discounts. If the 4060 Ti goes on sale for $350 with a game bundled in, maybe or if the 4060 Ti 16GB can go down to $400 after a few months, then that might be a decent deal. But we are simply going to have to hope that all these lack of purchases from customers will have a big impact on decisions behind Blackwells release similar to how the lack of purchases during the Turing era made Ampere launch quite amazing.

And yea, the A770/A750 have gotten quite good. I hope more reviewers review them so we can see how they hold up these days.

If a game supports FSR 2, all data to run FSR 3 is delivered. My guess is that FSR 3 has to implemented in games to unlock frame rates or toggle vsysnc and some other settings. Forcing FSR 3 via drivers will likely produce some glitches.