It allows you to set the resolution scaling AND use FSR? I could've swore it disables internal resolution scaling (TSR) when using non-UE upscalers...at least with DLSS and XeSS.

But yeah, some artifacts are unfortunately inevitable - I've only played a bit with FSR, at that very late point when you get out of APC, I don't think there's rain there, so haven't noticed the exact problem, but edges are much less stable than DLSS, though it looked quite descent, even in 1440p Performance mode. Guess I'll start the demo from the beginning to get to that point, though I have pretty good idea how it might look - FSR3 has quite a bit of problems with ghosting, that is one of the things that FSR4 solved (I remember that waterfall from DF's video, smudge with FSR3, actual waterfall with FSR4) - I want to see how XeSS and UE's TSR cope with that.

Have you tried same video settings as with native, but running it at FSR Quality? And how's your overall feel, do you find it something that is usable for you to squeeze a bit more out of 1070?

EDIT:

Well, tried it out from the beginning, I don't remember that rain at all first time I've played. Rain leaves trails whatever you choose, including native, and I found that XeSS behaves much better than FSR overall and it can be run one step in quality above FSR (and DLSS for that matter) at about the same performance. That said, DLSS does look best, but it's not without it's problems. Then again, this is UE5 game that has a lot, and I mean a lot, problems, even with no upscaling at all, especially on edges around character, even with all set to Ultra.

BOE unveils 31.5-inch 8K 120Hz monitor, hints at mass production in 2025

https://videocardz.com/newz/boe-unveils-31-5-inch-8k-120hz-monitor-hints-at-mass-production-in-2025

Intel Nova Lake-S reportedly supports DDR5-8000 memory and 36x PCIe 5.0 lanes

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-nova-lake-s-reportedly-supports-ddr5-8000-memory-and-offers-36-pcie-5-0-lanes

Intel Nova Lake-S platform has enough PCIe 5.0 lanes to support one Gen5x16 GPU and four Gen5x4 SSDs

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-nova-lake-s-platform-has-enough-pcie-5-0-lanes-to-support-one-gen5x16-gpu-and-four-gen5x4-ssds

AIDA64 Extreme Adds Support For Radeon RX 7400 And Intel BMG-G31; PCIe 7.0 Controllers And Devices Added As Well

https://wccftech.com/aida64-extreme-adds-support-for-radeon-rx-7400-and-intel-bmg-g31/

TSMC’s Phenomenal 2nm Yield Rates Would Likely Put Alternatives From Samsung & Intel Foundry Way Behind; Apple, NVIDIA & AMD to Be Major Customers

https://wccftech.com/tsmc-phenomenal-2nm-yield-rates-put-alternatives-from-samsung-intel-way-behind/

Unlike Regular Stores, US Navy Exchange Is Probably The First One To Sell RTX 50 Series GPUs At MSRP

https://wccftech.com/nex-sells-rtx-5090-for-1900/

Finally at least some more lanes!

How long were we limited now to 16-32 PCIe lanes (depending on the board)? It feels like an eternity, really.

This is why I moan over the loss of the traditional HEDT platforms. Threadripper has grown way past HEDT nowadays: It's either not enough lanes or way too many lanes. Same with Memory channels: You either get 2 or you get 8 and soon 12, with nothing in between. And while HEDT was more expensive than normal desktop, Threadripper is another order of magnitude above it again.

If AMD (and Intel for that matter) would create new HEDT that would basically be a halved server platform, so for instance a halved EPYC (48 instead of 96 cores, 64 instead of 128 PCIe lanes, 6 instead of 12 Memory channels, 280W TDP (like the 3000 series Threadripper) instead of 600W, I think most prosumer would be happy with such a platform.

But instead AMD makes Threadripper pretty much just an 1P or Workstation EPYC, and Intel is just banging more and more cores on their CPUs without all the rest around it. 

Let’s check the Tuesday gaming news:

SALES/PLAYER COUNTS & DEALS

Steam’s Top 10

(Click here for the Top 100)

By the way, Steam published the best new releases of May a couple days ago, in case you want to check them.

Steam has all these deals:

• Neva will be 30% off until the 25th of June: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2420660/Neva/
• Snow Plowing Simulator gets a 25% discount until the 26th of June: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2096030/Snow_Plowing_Simulator/
• The Early Access title Heart Of The Machine is going to be 35% off until the 26th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/
• Moonstone Island has a demo and a 50% discount until June 26: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658150/Moonstone_Island/
• Port Royale 4 will be 85% off until the 26th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1024650/Port_Royale_4/
• These are the Sales/events:
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is on sale with up to 35% discounts (a DLC, the game has a 20% deal) until the 23rd of June: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4283115/sale/KCD2midweek
  • The Railway Empire Franchise is on sale, up to 80% off until the 24th of June: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/RailwayEmpireFranchiseSale2025
  • Publisher/Developer Monster Couch starts its Summer Sale with up to 60% discounts (there’s a soundtrack with a 70% deal, but that doesn’t count) until the 26th of June: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35075530/sale/MonsterCouchSummer2025
• And of course, there’s the weeklong deals

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

NVIDIA GeForce 576.80 WHQL Driver Is Available for Download
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-geforce-576-80-whql-driver-is-available-for-download/

HIGHLIGHTS

Game Ready for FBC: Firebreak and DOOM: The Dark Ages Path Tracing Update
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 4 technology including FBC: Firebreak and REMATCH, as well as the Path Tracing update for DOOM: The Dark Ages.

FIXED ISSUES

Fixed Gaming Bugs

• Dune: Awakening: stability issues [5273568]
• EA Sports FC 25: stability issues [5251937]
• Dragons Dogma 2: displays shadow flicker [5252205]
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: stability issues [5283401]
• Enshrouded: crashes after launching game [5279848]
• Monster Hunter World: stability issues when playing in DX12 mode [5305302]
• Gray Zone Warfare: stability issues [5284518]
• Marvel Rivals: stability issues [5273681]
• Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut: Flickering/corruption around light sources [5138067]
• GTA V Enhanced: stability issues [5302755]
• Honor of Kings: World: stability issues [5304344]
• Forza Horizon 5: stability issues [5131160]
• Indiana Jones and The Great Circle: Image corruption [5326122]

Fixed General Bugs

• GeForce RTX 5090 FE acoustic improvements for idle and low loads [5139629]
• Changing a setting in the "NVIDIA Control Panel" -> "Manage 3D Settings" may trigger shader disk cache rebuild [5282396]
• Twinmotion: Bugcheck when attempting to launch [5282285]
• Adobe Substance 3D Painter: showing viewport corruption after baking [5270020]
• BlackmagicDesign: UI overlay in Fusion page is not displayed correctly [5237584]
• Video playback in a web browser may show brief red/green flash corruption [5241341]
• Videos captured with NVIDIA App may appear washed out after editing with the Windows Photos app [5294224]
• Certain DisplayPort 1.4 monitors may display random black screen flicker when connected to DisplayPort 2.1 graphics card [5277453]

>> The link in the article doesn’t work so, click here to go to Nvidia’s page.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Nexus Mods founder steps back after 24 years and hands over ownership: 'The strain of being responsible for the behemoth I created has taken its toll'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/nexus-mods-founder-steps-back-after-24-years-and-hands-over-ownership-the-strain-of-being-responsible-for-the-behemoth-i-created-has-taken-its-toll/
The founder of Nexus Mods, Robin 'Dark0ne' Scott, has announced he's stepping back from the day-to-day running of the site, a full 24 years after founding it.
"I started this project back in 2001, in my bedroom, with a 56k modem, an excitement for the upcoming release of Morrowind and with no grand ambitions or intentions," writes Scott. "I didn't set out to build a business, I just wanted to make a place where modders could share their work without worrying it would vanish into the internet either the next time a fansite went offline or a publisher decided they were done with it."
Nexus Mods is the biggest mod site in the world, and last year popped the cork on over 10 billion downloads. It boasts millions of users, hosts mods for thousands of games, and as it's evolved has added excellent functionality and features like enabling creators to monetise their work. It's honestly quite hard to imagine the PC gaming experience without Nexus Mods: it's just such a useful, well-organised depository.
(...)
Scott believes he's found "the exact right people for the task" and thus "the ownership of Nexus Mods has changed hands." But from the user side of things, nothing should change. Scott says changes to the site's structure are about long-term stability and the principles won't change: "Nexus Mods is community-first and mod-author focused, that's not up for negotiation."
He also takes the time to emphasise that this hasn't been a one-man show: "The Nexus Mods you see today has been created by a team of 40 incredibly dedicated people, some of whom have been here for over 9 years. They live and breathe modding, they care deeply, they're experienced, committed, and they're very much still here. None of that is changing."
>> We’ll see if things remain the same or change in the coming months.

Must-have Stellar Blade Mod fixes EVE’s walk foot sliding issues
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/must-have-stellar-blade-mod-fixes-eve-walk-foot-sliding-issues/
We all know that Stellar Blade has already gotten a nude mod (as well as some hot outfit mods). But you know what? It’s time to share a mod that will greatly improve your gaming experience, and it’s a must for everyone.
Created by modder ‘Bluality’, this mod aims to fix the game’s walk foot sliding issues. For those unaware, EVE will slightly slide whenever she stops moving. You can get used to it. However, some may find it frustrating as it does not feel realistic. And that’s where this mod comes in. By using it, you can mitigate these walk foot sliding issues.
>> There’s a short video with a before vs after comparison that clearly shows the change.

GAMING NEWS

Borderlands 4 is NOT an $80 game, PC requirements revealed
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/borderlands-4-is-not-an-80-game-pc-requirements-revealed/
2K Games has made Borderlands 4 available for pre-order on all platforms. And, as we can see, this won’t be a $80 game. Instead, the standard version will be priced at $69.99, like pretty much most games these days. The publisher has also shared the game’s PC requirements, so let’s take a look at them.
>> It demands an 8-core CPU and the GPU requirements are ok.

DOOM: The Dark Ages Path Tracing Patch Coming on June 18th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/doom-the-dark-ages-path-tracing-patch-coming-on-june-18th/
NVIDIA has just announced that the Path Tracing Patch for DOOM: The Dark Ages will be released tomorrow, June 18th. This is the update that a lot of PC gamers have been waiting for. So, things will get really interesting tomorrow.

Tuesday gaming news, part two:

Josh Sawyer says a hypothetical Pillars of Eternity 3 would be 3D, just like Baldur's Gate 3, with 'environmental mechanics, elevation hazards, and dynamic terrain'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/josh-sawyer-says-a-hypothetical-pillars-of-eternity-3-would-be-3d-just-like-baldurs-gate-3-with-environmental-mechanics-elevation-hazards-and-dynamic-terrain/
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, as the RPG sickos on the PC Gamer staff are to be believed, is an RPG that never quite got its time in the sun. While we rated it pretty highly, giving it a solid 88 in our review back in the day, low sales caused Obsidian no shortage of existential angst, and the studio's only been flirting with the idea of a sequel ever since (it's okay, we still got Avowed).
Still. Let's say that sequel were to hypothetically exist, and let's also say the studio did do all of that re-evaluation in the year 2019. What would it do differently now? In an interview with Gamepressure, design director Josh Sawyer says he'd likely make the jump to 3D.

'Do it fast, do it dirty': The Witcher 4's narrative director discusses the studio's philosophy and what made The Witcher 3 so great
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-witcher/do-it-fast-do-it-dirty-the-witcher-4s-narrative-director-discusses-the-studios-philosophy-and-what-made-the-witcher-3-so-great/
Everyone has a different way of going about their work. Some like to plan meticulously, colour code information and have Excel spreadsheets on Excel spreadsheets, and others, well, others have GDocs.
As it turns out, throwing ideas into an ever-growing chaotic GDoc for days on end was actually Philipp Weber's first job at CD Projekt Red (via GamesRadar). Back when he was a quest designer on The Witcher 3 before he got promoted to narrative director for The Witcher 4.

Prince of Persia social media botch forces Ubisoft to promise once again that it's still working on The Sands of Time
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/prince-of-persia-social-media-botch-forces-ubisoft-to-promise-once-again-that-its-still-working-on-the-sands-of-time/
In what seems like an entirely out-of-nowhere reminder, a surprise message on the Prince of Persia X account has popped up to promise everyone that yes, Ubisoft is still working on The Sands of Time "behind the scenes," and no, it has nothing more to say about it. It's all a bit odd, and almost entirely random, but scrolling back through the social media feed reveals that there is actually a good reason for the unprompted message—and by "good" I mean pretty silly.

Funcom says its working on 'a bunch of changes' for Dune: Awakening PvP after player calls out the survival MMO's 'biggest issue'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/funcom-says-its-working-on-a-bunch-of-changes-for-dune-awakening-pvp-after-player-calls-out-the-survival-mmos-biggest-issue/
Dune: Awakening is off to a great start: excellent Steam reviews, a growing playerbase, and few of the launch problems that regularly plague popular new multiplayer games.
There is some trouble brewing, however, as players begin exploring Dune: Awakening's endgame, much of which revolves around PvP in the deep desert—a massive, uninhabitable zone only traversable by air where players can compete for precious resources like spice and titanium.
But there's one more resource that can be found in great supply in the deep desert: player complaints about the deep desert. The good news is that Funcom seems to be listening and is working on making some adjustments to PvP.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 studio teases possible 'new content' and more language support: 'It's very much on our radar'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/clair-obscur-expedition-33-studio-teases-possible-new-content-and-more-language-support-its-very-much-on-our-radar/
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a major hit on Steam: An "overwhelmingly positive" rating across more than 83,000 user reviews on Steam, and concurrent player numbers that keep it high on Steam's top 100 most-played list—not bad at all for a relatively brief narrative-based singleplayer RPG. And if you've played through it all and wish there was more, the good news is that there might be.

Honkai: Star Rail publisher sues player for streaming a new character on Discord before its official release
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/honkai-star-rail-publisher-sues-player-for-streaming-a-new-character-on-discord-before-its-official-release/
Chinese game company Cognosphere is known for four things: Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, and its aggressive pursuit of anyone who doesn't toe the line on its announcement and release schedules. In the latest example of how much it really, really does not like leakers, the company is now suing a guy who streamed Honkai: Star Rail gameplay on Discord that included a look at a new character who hadn't been released to the public.

Game of Thrones RTS has a dragon R&D team dedicated to answering burning questions like 'do the dragons explode when they die?'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/game-of-thrones-rts-has-a-dragon-r-and-d-team-dedicated-to-answering-burning-questions-like-do-the-dragons-explode-when-they-die/
HBO's first Game of Thrones series didn't feature nearly enough dragon scenes, if you ask me. My favorite mythical beasties mostly showed up for a passing greeting or to die within seconds, but it sounds like that's a problem PlaySide's upcoming RTS, Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, could remedy.

To be honest, I don't know if you can use both resolution scaling AND FSR or any other scaling at the same time. Both settings are a bit appart and can't be seen at the same time, and I didn't even thought about scrolling up to see if it turned grey once FSR was activated. And the 70% upscaling was like that by default, so maybe the game checked my hardware and set those settings for "better experience".

As for your question, I only tried the game in two modes: with all the options set to low except for textures and shadows, and running at native scale, getting those 22-24fps, and then with all but GI set to medium, scaling at 70% and FSR3 to balance, getting those 8 to 10 fps more. I doubt combining both settings would give me much of a performance boost (maybe a more stable 30fps result?), and I don't think I'd be able to notice it much. 

In any case, this is one game where, simplpy put, my 1070 shows its age and isn't enough to run it well, at least at 1440p.

Bold: Trauma. Your mind decided to forget it to protect itself from how ugly it was XD.

8K 120hz... You'd need a 5090 with DLSS4 set to performance and MFG to 4x to even get close to run a modern game that fast, and it wouldn't look or feel good enough to be worth it.

Good for the extra PCIe lanes. Intel had been quite stingy with them for years so, it's good to see them changing in that part.

I'm surprised by the number of cores those things will have, up to 52! Tho I still don't understand why the ELP cores are present on desktop parts.

From what I've read at Tom's Hardware (link), we won't get PCIe 6.0 motherboards of SSDs until at least 2030, so imagine when will 7.0 be part of our desktops.

But, of course, server hardware will jump to both 6.0 and 7.0 as soon as possible.

By the way, the buyer of Nexus Mods is Chosen (their site). They posted a comment of the announcement of the sell (here).

I don't know enough about them to know if it's ok or the worst that could happen.

Usually, inbuilt UE's TSR is disabled when you enable any external solution, so that's why I was wondering how come it lets you choose both (I checked, it doesn't - it gets greyed out and external upscaler sets rendering resolution).

As for rain, I just checked Daniel Owen's performance test video from couple of weeks ago, when demo was released, and I was right - I'm not going insane, that's how I remember it when I've played it, there was no rain :P

As for performance, from my fiddling with both FSR and XeSS in game, if you ran it at 1440p native (so TSR 3D Resolution setting at 100%) and you were getting 22-24fps, remaining at the same visual settings and going with FSR Balance or XeSS Quality should give you about 90% more frames...which is quite a bump up...so maybe then you can increase some gfx settings and see where it lands?

Well, I already did that, going from low settings to medium and still getting those extra 8-10 fps. I wouldn't try pushing it further than that, it wouldn't be worth it, in my opinion.

On another note, one thing I'd like them to change is them going from FSR3 to 3.1, so get better results and give the option to RDNA4 users to enable FSR4 from the AMD control panel. After all, it's still in development and it shouldn't be that hard to make this change, right?