EVGA and Colorful GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards are thick and power-hungry

https://videocardz.com/newz/evga-and-colorful-geforce-rtx-3090-ti-graphics-cards-are-thick-and-power-hungry

Fat, power hungry, overpriced, small performance increase and will get smoked by a 4070 in less than 6 months which is to say... Skip. But it does feel like this is a way of Nvidia prepared AIBs for the 4080/4090.

Intel teases March 30th launch of Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs for laptops

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-teases-march-30th-launch-of-arc-alchemist-discrete-gpus-for-laptops

We will see if Intel has better luck than AMD in dethroning Nvidia in the laptop space but most likely, there will be less reason to get Intel GPUs than AMD unless they sell it for really cheap.

GPU-Z now support Intel Arc Alchemist, NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 6X50XT series

https://videocardz.com/newz/gpu-z-now-support-intel-arc-alchemist-nvidia-rtx-3090-ti-and-amd-radeon-rx-6x50xt-series

GPU accelerated RAID calculations for storage is here

Luckily you only need potato GPUs for right now but if this tech ever increases in popularity, well add another form of technology that will increase GPU shortages in the future. This is not for consumers for now but maybe in the future.

Intel Core i9-12900KS Up To 15% Faster Than Core i9-12900K In 3DMark CPU Benchmarks

https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i9-12900ks-up-to-15-faster-than-core-i9-12900k-in-3dmark-cpu-benchmarks/

It will be interesting to see how it stacks up against 5800X3D

As a person that has played Starcraft 2's single player, competitively played multiplayer and these days, casually play multiplayer for Starcraft 2 still, I think there needs to be a good mix of both. The Single player of RTS games is important for a lot of casual people but once that ends, the multiplayer is what keeps people talking and on going as seen by his very own charts of the starcraft 2's ladder matches. Age of Empires IV certainly made the mistake of focusing too much into the esports style especially for it's single player but the irony for AoE IV is that it's multiplayer is also pretty bad in comparison to AoE2 Definitive Edition as well.

AoE IV gives you like 8 civs vs AoE2DE gives you 39 civs after all the DLCs and such. AoEIV has a ton of balance issues. The minimap is a joke when it comes to readability. There is no ranked seasons and no user generated maps/mods. There's also no patrol move which is very essential for online. On top of that many of the basic functionality such as hotkeys and etc haven't even been implemented yet on AoEIV. And there's also lots of other issues while AoE2DE has all that and still getting updates. AoEIV still has a goodish roadmap that will fix many issues but it will be a while before it can ironically compete against AoE2DE.

But overall, I do think they need a good mix of both. What makes Starcraft 2, AoE2DE and such still relevant today is they both have a strong single player and a strong multiplayer on top of getting the basics right. AoEIV did both single player and multiplayer wrong not to mention it's visual style is pretty meh. Maybe one day they will fix it but from what I have tried and seen, it will be a long ways away.

You're on the money, and it's why over time I've been getting put off games that come out, that want to be balls to the wall hardcore PVP. I even disliked the time when WoW tried to turn itself into a PVP esport, but thank god that died off in the end.

I originally got into OW because I wanted to learn more of the character's backstories, since Blizz was using those for their marketing, but as we found out, they didn't really bother with that and focused entirely on turning the game into an esport, one that's basically dead at this point, and OW 2 is still trying to chase a dead fad. 

There's definitely a mix, but I'm finding it hard to deny what the author was trying to point out via his collection of data, as well as an official at blizz stating who played the campaign vs who stayed for PVP, it kinda paints the picture that PVP RTS isn't really as big as it was cracked up to being.

All my fond memories come from me playing epic skirmish battles, the campaigns, the co-op vs AI fights, while my worst memories stem from the times I played PVP, the one time one of my friend's friend lost his collective shit because I beat him in a 4 players free for all, that he had to be taken outside the net cafe to chill himself out from strangling me (me and him never got on, but he was a colossal asshole to anyone but my two friends at that time).

The thing is, TLOU was renowned and remembered fondly for it's story and campaign, and while it did offer that side-line PVP mode, hardly anyone remembers that anywhere as much as the story itself. I remember Quake, UT, TF2 for their PVP, because those games were primarily designed with mostly PVP in mind (yes Quake had a campaign, but the story is so blaze' at this point that I can only remember the PVP matches).

I even watched a response vid to that guy's own vid, and even that SCII player points out that people both like playing the campaign and watching SCII LP's (but it's a mix of both, from campaign to PVP).

AoE IV like the author said, feels like it was designed with PVP in mind, which is why after all these years of waiting, we only get a few civs, poor physics, units the size of buildings and a UI that looks far too clean to be considered AoE UI, which tells me that it was all for PVP and not what AoE is known for.

I have a feeling that AoE IV has sold like shit compared to all the other versions, and I'm going to blame the lack of content and fixes (I also dislike the UI and poor physics and the part where it looks like a mobile RTS). I can't believe that after 3-4 years, MS still didn't give it their all for one of their beloved RTS IP's, but then again, look at Halo Infinite and how we're still freaking waiting for god damn co-op and other fixes (which again tells me that they are still focused on quantity, not quality and I fucking wish they'd knock that shit off, because this is why we've waited this long for stuff like Direct storage, the wasted Game bar, the fuddled game mode and GPU scheduling, all practically kicked out the door and not implemented on).

I do think that the next dev making a new RTS should at least put a bit more focus on crafting a memorable campaign, lore and units that stand out, and then focus on PVP, once the cool units are in play for skirmish/SP, and then cut out the cool OP units for PVP matches (I don't want a repeat of SCII and seeing cool units stripped away because of the PVP focus, as I find that cannibalistic from a game design perspective). 

Btw, if you have the time, here's that follow up response vid that SC II player did (the one that was in the author's vid, interviewing the Blizz dev):

It's actually neat to see this dude's perspective vs the author's.

The 3090Ti, being only "up to" 10% faster, is only good for two things: give AIB partners a chance to get ready for the power hungry beasts tha tthe 4000 series will be, shown by those 3.5 slot coolers, and to sell more PSUs with the new Gen5 power connector.

I fail to see any other positive aspect of that card, specially at that price and with the 4000 series so close.

Using GPUs for RAID looks great, but also a pain in the ass for us. Our only ray of light is that it doesn't seem to work in every task and that it works well with mid, mid-low range GPUs.

I feel like nvidia forgot how weird it felt having the Titan series being around, a gap that wasn't really needing to be filled, and now they've more or less replaced it with the 90 series, again, a gap that wasn't really needing filled, since we already had the 80 and 80ti series.

It's going to make the 3090 look silly once the 4000 series comes out and the 4080 ends up either trumping it in perf or power draw, but this is Nvidia, so they'll likely cut back on something to make the 4080 look brand new, but just shy of being better than the 3090, because they want to keep charging stupid prices for that card.

I just wish they'd drop the 90's and stick with the 80ti's being the top brand, because if you ignore the old Titan series, that's what the 1080ti was for it's time (but that was more like rare lightning in a bottle that we haven't really seen since, so I dunno if we'll see that happen again). 

Btw, since I posted those vids on the RTS genre, I feel like I should also point out that C&C Red Alert 3 still has two mods in the works that look quite promising:

We have RA3 Corona (the naming at this current time couldn't by any worse lol), a mod being dev'd by a bunch of Chinese modders, it will include it's own SP campaign, brand new art and all, as well as it's own custom made OST (it's prominent theme sounding close to Frank kelpachi's style of music, which is nice).

A sample of their music:

I feel like this is the one mod out of all the other RA3 mods that's got a certain level of quality going for it (a story, great art design, soundtrack, attention to detail and rebalance changes).

Then of course we have a modder still working on bringing us C&C generals, but in RA3's Sage engine:

This is the one mod I definitely plan on getting into soon, as trying to play C&C generals on modern hw and OS makes it difficult to enjoy, as the game crashes for me, doesn't support my resolution and the fps goes stupidly wonky a lot of the time (even slowing down to a crawl), so having this being supported through RA3 is something I'm happy to see (even if it is locked to 30fps). 

EA could really do with looking at these two mods and think about the direction they could take C&C or how to even do a remake of Generals, since they fucked up generals 2 and didn't really do much with C&C remaster (A game I originally was into, but once I discovered the unit path finding was unchanged since the 90's, I refunded the game on Steam).

Nvidia won't be so stupid to make that mistake. They can't hold back because, otherwise, AMD will easily beat them.

Age of Mythology being teased...

I am going to guess it's the definitive edition which would be pretty fap worthy.

Can't see shit, oh no wonder lmao, that journo must have blocked me at some point. I guess he must have done that when EGS showed up and started the pariah shit, so I guess nothing of value is lost in seeing anything from that journo. 

Still, interesting to see what a remaster of this could look like. 

Well, how about this to convince you: https://www.newsdirectory3.com/zen-4-ryzen-7000-cpu-is-driven-by-all-cores-5ghz-amd-unveiled-at-ces-2022/