AMD Demos FSR 4 On Radeon RX 9070 GPUs, Delivering Better Visual Quality, Fewer Artifacts, & Ghosting

https://wccftech.com/amd-fsr-4-demo-radeon-rx-9070-gpus-better-visual-quality-less-artifacts-ghosting/

World’s fastest gaming laptops with AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D and GeForce RTX 5090 announced, up to 280W power

https://videocardz.com/newz/worlds-fastest-gaming-laptops-with-amd-ryzen-9-9955hx3d-and-geforce-rtx-5090-announced-up-to-280w-power

Radeon RX 9070 XT announcement expected on January 22, review samples shipping already

https://videocardz.com/newz/radeon-rx-9070-xt-announcement-expected-on-january-22-review-samples-shipping-already

MSI announces GeForce RTX 5090 Special Edition GPUs with up to five fans

https://videocardz.com/press-release/msi-announces-geforce-rtx-5090-special-edition-gpus-with-up-to-five-fans

Please no stuttering

Graphics Card Launches and Embargoes:​

January 16: Intel Arc B570
January 22: Radeon RX 9070 Announcement/Reviews?
January 24: Radeon RX 9070 Preorders/Launch?
January 30: GeForce RTX 5090/5080 Launch
February: GeForce RTX 5070Ti/5070 Launch
March: GeForce RTX 50 Laptop GPU launch

Let’s go with the Thursday news:

SALES/PLAYER COUNTS & DEALS

The Epic Store gives away Turmoil: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/turmoil-26318a.
Next week, they’ll give away Escape Academy.

GOG has two new promos:

• The Adventure Promo has games up to 95% off during 7 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20250109_adventure_promo
• The Action Promo has games with up to 95% discounts during 10 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20250109_action_promo

Steam has three new deals:

• Farewell North is going to be 30% off until January, the 15th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432850/Farewell_North/
• shapez, that has a demo, gets a 90% discount until the 16th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318690/shapez/
• And Ship Graveyard Simulator will be 91% off until the 22nd of January: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1286880/Ship_Graveyard_Simulator/

Humble Bundle presents the New Year, New You, Programming Games Bundle with 7 games to get during 13 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/new-year-new-you-programming-games.

And at Fanatical, the Star Deal will last another 24 hours, as expected.

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Nothing-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

-Empty as well-

GAMING NEWS

9 minutes of new gameplay footage from Monster Hunter Wilds
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/9-minutes-of-new-gameplay-footage-from-monster-hunter-wilds/
IGN has shared a video, showcasing 9 minutes of new gameplay footage from Monster Hunter Wilds. This new video focuses on the Rompopolo monster which you will find at Oilwell Basin. Moreover, Capcom announced the second open beta test for the game.
>> And there will be more open betas before launch, but without performance improvements.

Thursday news, part two:

Valve is changing the way it updates Deadlock 'to help improve our development process', so you can say goodbye to the regular biweekly posts
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/valve-is-changing-the-way-it-updates-deadlock-to-help-improve-our-development-process-so-you-can-say-goodbye-to-the-regular-biweekly-posts/
For the last few months, Valve has been releasing updates for Deadlock every two weeks. It's an impressive schedule that saw the game improve significantly over a short time with more detailed map finishes, new ways to traverse the buildings, and regular fine-tuning of hero abilities. That's not a sustainable pace in the long-term, though, and Valve knows it.

Ken Levine never expected Take-Two to shutter Irrational after Bioshock Infinite: 'The decision was made at a corporate level'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/ken-levine-never-expected-take-two-to-shutter-irrational-after-bioshock-infinite-the-decision-was-made-at-a-corporate-level/
The latest issue of Edge magazine includes a retrospective interview with Ken Levine, going over his career from Looking Glass Studios to Ghost Story Games and the upcoming Judas. When it gets to the latter, Levine's first game since the release of Bioshock Infinite, the director opens up about the subsequent closure of Irrational Games, which it's fair to say came as something of a shock: Both to the studio's staff, and the wider industry.

WoW's finally upgrading its dreaded swirlies so players can actually tell where it's safe to stand
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/wows-finally-upgrading-its-dreaded-swirlies-so-players-can-actually-tell-where-its-safe-to-stand/
World of Warcraft's patch 11.1, which is currently available on the public test realm and will shortly be rolled-out to all players, looks like it's fixed one of the game's most enduring issues: swirlies. These are ground markers that telegraph incoming damage to players, such as an AoE boss attack, and basically they've always been a bit of a pain to make out when amidst the cavalcade of other effects the game's typically throwing up during such encounters.
There are a number of UI mods to counteract the issue but Blizzard's decided to fix the problem at source, with the new patch giving swirlies a much clearer and more defined outline. The difference between old and new is immediately obvious, which is a tremendously good thing given that the whole point of these things is to tell you where not to stand if you want to live.

NetEase pulls funding for another studio: Former Halo Infinite design head says Jar of Sparks is 'halting work' while it looks for a new publisher
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/netease-pulls-funding-for-another-studio-former-halo-infinite-design-head-says-jar-of-sparks-is-halting-work-while-it-looks-for-a-new-publisher/
NetEase launched a new game studio called Jar of Sparks in 2022, headed up by Halo and Destiny 2 veteran Jerry Hook. The goal, NetEase said at the time, was "to create a new generation of narrative-driven action games, with immersive worlds that will be filled with moments that gamers will want to share with each other." But just a couple years down the road, that's all come to naught, for now at least, as Hook announced on LinkedIn (via VGC) that Jar of Sparks is halting work while it tries to find a new publisher.

Marvel Rivals' most-picked hero also has one of the lowest win rates
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/marvel-rivals-most-picked-hero-also-has-one-of-the-lowest-win-rates/
We're still two days out from Marvel Rivals' first major seasonal update, which will add Reed Richards and Sue Storm to the lineup, but NetEase just introduced a new feature that's arguably of greater importance to players: a living webpage showing every hero's pick rate and win rate, divided by mode and platform.
>> Talking about Sue Storm, now you know whose ass was used for the character.

Marvel Rivals patch has way more nerfs and buffs than we thought: A whopping 24 heroes are changing this week
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/marvel-rivals-patch-has-way-more-nerfs-and-buffs-than-we-thought-a-whopping-24-heroes-are-changing-this-week/
Earlier this week, NetEase said Marvel Rivals season 1 patch would target key heroes for nerfs and buffs, including dominant long-range duelists Hela and Hawkeye. Turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg: the upcoming patch will nerf or buff a total of 24 heroes (over two-thirds of the roster) and adjust several seasonal bonuses.

Splash Damage says layoffs are likely as the Transformers game it announced in 2022 is cancelled
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/splash-damage-says-layoffs-are-likely-as-the-transformers-game-it-announced-in-2022-is-cancelled/
Splash Damage has announced that it has cancelled development of the online action game Transformers: Reactivate, and that layoffs at the studio are likely as a result.

After 15 years, Minecraft has finally added two new pig variations: The warm pig and the cold pig, meaning I can delete one mod off my list
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/after-15-years-minecraft-has-finally-added-two-new-pig-variations-the-warm-pig-and-the-cold-pig-meaning-i-can-delete-one-mod-off-my-list/
Minecraft started 2025 off with a bang by adding falling leaves, new flowers, and the absolute pinnacle of development, different pig variations. Now, instead of just having the boring old pink pig in your farm, you can also keep the cold pig and the warm pig in the pen alongside it.

That's what we have been telling for Radeon users for the past 5 years now when it came to Ai upscaling vs FSR. Hopefully they find a way to at least make it compatible with RDNA 3. What will be interesting is comparing FSR4 which is based on CNN Ai model against Nvidia's new DLSS which based on Transformer Ai model as the old iteration of DLSS is based on CNN. But I don't imagine the comparison being as wide of a gap as it was between FSR 3 vs DLSS 3.

Given that you asked for a $449 price point, would the $479 rumor in that article please you? The cost of the AIB models is high, but that's to be expected, sadly, and the same will happend with the Nvidia models.

I'd say if the latest performance leaks are true (which would put the 9070XT at close to 4080 Super performance, both in raster and raytracing, which will probably be miles above the 5070 outside of DLSS and frame gen) combined with FSR4 being almost on par with DLSS, that would be a banger of a price tag.

In fact, due to the latest performance leaks, I was actually expecting $449 for a 9070 non-XT, so this is definitely a nice price.

CNNs are more efficient at low parameter counts, but vision transformers scale better with higher parameters counts. Given that the hardware used for this (Tensor cores for Nvidia, Matrix cores for AMD) are usually under-utilized when gaming AMD probably will have to switch to ViTs as well to keep up since there is plenty of room to scale for better quality.

Edit The biggest difference will also be observable in motion, because that is probably where ViTs will shine over CNNs, temporal consistency due to the attention mechanism.  

If 9070XT comes with 16GB of Vram and it costs $479, I think going for the 9070XT would be an easy recommendation against 5070 since the feature set is largely similar now that FSR is based on Ai upscaling. Radeon had a pretty strong showing against Nvidia's 70 series for some time now and I think the enhanced RT and new FSR along with 16GB of vram should be an easy sell.

But realistically, I think 9070 XT will be priced higher if it's actually as fast as a 7900XT to compete more closely to 5070 Ti while 9070 will be priced similarly to 5070 at the $479 price point. But we will see.

My problem with that leaked performance is that it comes from synthetic benchmarks, and I don't trust them. There's also the CoD Black Ops benchmark that IGN managed to do, but that game runs better on AMD hardware, making it a best case scenario.

We've had leaks from AIB partners talking about 16GB of VRAM. That's the only thing we can be sure about the GPU.

I'm actually surprised by this rumored price point because I was certain that AMD would be lazy and go with, at best, $499 to beat the 5070 by $50. I also think it's a more "practical" sort of price as it would give AMD more room to price the other three cards that will come, the 9070, 9060XT and 9060. But who knows, maybe AMD is scared of Intel and will price the 9060 at $250 to fight the B580, having almost another $200 to fit the other two models.

In any case, the leaker is more credible than Moore's Law, and it goes well in line with what AMD has been saying of wanting to grow its marketshare against Nvidia.

But we'll see how it goes by the end of the month, hopefully.