Last week was quite busy with news, and one thing that slipped through the cracks then was the announcement of ZOTAC's new NVLink bridging solutions. Marketed under the ZOTAC Gaming brand, these follow in line with other major NVIDIA add-in card (AIC) partners in providing an alternative to the first-party OEM offering, just in case you preferred a different aesthetic. These are available in either a 3-slot (74.5 x 75.5 x 25 mm) or a 4-slot (74.5 x 96 x 25 mm) spacing option, with backlighting support for the ZOTAC Gaming logo in the center that can be configured by their SPECTRA software lighting suite.

These NVLink bridges have not yet been made available for purchase in most regions, with expected retail availability ranging from December 14-20, but those in East Asia can already find them available for comparable prices as with other such options from MSI, ASUS, and GIGABYTE. ZOTAC also put out an unboxing video which gives a better look at the product relative to the renders below, for those interested.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations including the recent addition high performance gaming iCHILL Memory. Its introduction to the market has been very well received due to the various capacities that the iCHILL memory series offers including 4GB to 16GB at speeds of 2400MHz to 4000MHz and with ultra-low latencies up to 15CL.

INNO3D has done wonders with the iCHILL series over the last decade in the graphics department so wanted to apply the same principles, intricacies and devotion to creating a series of performance gaming memory with the ice cool touch. The iCHILL memory modules are equipped with a unique heat spreader design that optimizes system performance for smoother gaming experience with that extra kick to your PC.

RAPOO, a leader in Wireless peripheral technology, introduces its newest 'VH300 Gaming Headset'. Designed to make even the most casual gamer feel like a pro, VH300 brings the eternal gaming experience, unbeatable! Sporting the clutter free and integrated design with Cool Blue LED backlight, the headset adds a touch of sophistication to gamers personality.

Game Boosting refers to the practice of gamers to pay other, more skilled players to "boost them up" to higher ranks, mainly in competitive multiplayer games. The practice sometimes takes the form of paid partnership with a team of skilled players (where the player that's receiving the boost is of much lower skill, but gets pulled along with the remaining members of the team's efforts) or by actually giving a player access to your account, to play as if he/her was you, and cashing in on his/her better "skillz". This practice, it goes without saying, goes against the competitive nature of certain games, and if you know your South Koreans, you know they take competitive gaming very, very (really, very) seriously.

This is why the country is seemingly looking to put an "illegal" tag on game boosting, as in, illegal enough to warrant prosecution and an actual sentence to jail (a maximum prison sentence of two years and a fine of 20 million won ($18,000). This isn't something that has been cooked up overnight: an amendment to the "Law on Game Business Development" bill was first proposed earlier this summer, and has now passed the National Assembly Legislation Review Committee, bringing it one step closer to becoming law.

The gaming market is one with high gross margins in the vast majority of its product lines - this is easily seen with the number of companies that have just slapped the same aesthetic look and "gaming" branding to otherwise "normal" product lines. One such instance, in particular, is the gaming monitor segment, where increasing perception of more competitiveness with higher refresh-rate monitors has brought about an urge to upgrade in the market - and not the least of which was brought about by games such as PUBG and Fortnite (the former even sparked an upgrade frenzy in China's Internet Cafes as they vied for ever more customers who would get an edge on their store over others that didn't sport these high refresh-rate monitors).

According to TrendForce's report, ASUS is the worldwide sales leader i the gaming monitor segment, followed by Acer, with AOC/Philips coming in a close third. TrendForce reports that the increased demand has seen shipment of gaming-grade (or at least branded) monitors has doubled in 2018 compared to last year, and that a sector that has increased significantly is the one of curved monitors, which has been taken up chiefly by Samsung, bringing it to the fourth spot in the manufacturer race. The curved monitor market has achieved a 50% stake in the whole of the gaming monitor, led chiefly by China's demand.

For Electronic Arts when it rains, it pours, as Battlefield V continues to experience a multitude of issues. The various controversies and problems that plagued the game leading up to its release were terrible enough. Now with numerous bugs such as audio issues to squash along with balancing of guns and gadgets, DICE remains unable to catch a break. They have now discovered yet another problem, this time resulting in the delay of their first Tides of War content update "Chapter 1: Overture." This particular update was to deliver the new Panzerstorm map, vehicle visual customization options, The Last Tiger War Story, and the practice range among other things. All this new content will still be released but when that is is currently unknown.

DICE expects the delay to be a short one, but no official date for the launch has been set.

Update (5th Dec, 10:00 UTC): The update is now live and distributing via Origin.

Update (5th Dec, 14:30 UTC): We have just posted a detailed performance review of this patch across all three RTX graphics cards, at three resolutions each. To summarize, the performance gains are big enough that the RTX 2080 Ti can comfortably handle 4K again, and RTX 2080 be capable of 4K with some riders.

As Thanksgiving nears, Steam's Autumn Sale has officially started. Offering multiple deals to be thankful for, such as, Assassin's Creed Odyssey (33% off), NeiR: Automata (50% off), Monster Hunter World (34% off), Shadow of The Tomb Raider (50% off) and Civilization VI Gold Edition (69% off) just to name a few. Even virtual reality titles like Doom VFR, Skyrim VR, and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality are now on sale for (50% off). That said, PC gamers can breathe a sigh of relief as the latest Steam sale will run from November 21st until November 27th at 10:00 AM Pacific. Meaning you have plenty of time to spend all your hard earned money, so open up your wallets and let the shopping spree begin.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of PC components and peripherals which boast performance at a reasonable price. Sharkoon has now expanded their popular 1337 RGB mouse mat series with additional sizes. As before, the gaming mats offer perfect gliding properties and a nonslip base. In addition, the mouse mat has a cable guide, keeping the connecting cables tidily out of the way.

Sharkoon 1337 RGB with a robust soft surface
The mouse mats of the 1337 RGB series possess a resilient textile surface for long durability. This has been manufactured in a way that always allows the mouse to effortlessly glide without resistance. To prevent the mouse from slipping even during heated battles, Sharkoon has again relied on a rubberized underside. What's new, though, is the RGB illumination, which is integrated in the border of the mat. And to enable the lighting to fully come to its visible effect, the manufacturer has used a transparent nylon thread for attaching the LED strip to the mat.

Generic post-processing injector, ReShade, which offers SMAA anti-aliasing, screen space ambient occlusion, depth of field, and many other effects, has been updated to version 4.0. More than just a version update the ReShade FX compiler has received a complete overhaul having been made fully standalone as of this release. These changes bring performance improvements, better error recovery, improved support for code features, and even opens up the ability to add Vulkan support since it can now generate HLSL, GLSL, and SPIR-V. With a change-log packed with enhancements changes and new features, Crosire, the author also reworked the UI. Not only can the new UI be customized by the user, but it also includes new features such as an in-game code editor and texture preview.

While it should be noted that due to the compiler change some effects may no longer compile or work properly in version 4.0. However, these effects just need to be updated by their authors to work with the latest release. Going forward it is likely smaller revisions and updates will be forthcoming with a version 4.0.1 already having surfaced with further fixes. Sadly, even with these quick fixes, teething issues continue beyond the few broken effects by other authors. Some games like Diablo 2 and Arma 3 are proving problematic for some users of the latest ReShade version. Even so, with further updates should see these issues resolved, however for those enjoying those two games, in particular, can roll back to 3.4.1 which remains a fairly stable release.The Change-log follows.

MSI today announces the Clutch GM50 GAMING mouse and Vigor GK60 GAMING keyboard to provide solid choices for gamers looking for powerful weapons to conquer the battlefield. Both new products offer unique features and use MSI's exclusive new Gaming Center software which allows for more detailed control and customization.

(Editor's Note: Now isn't this beautiful. We could likely coin a "single player gaming isn't dead" hashtag right out of this one, for sure. What's more impressive is that this particular Rockstar release has only targeted current-gen consoles, leaving out a huge, booming slice of the market - PC Gaming. Let's forget the fact that it isn't all that hard to have a more powerful PC than any of the top consoles on the market today... But well. let's not be salty. here's hoping that Rockstar taps into our own PC gaming market so we can have a shot at Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. Kudos for the company for the apparently amazing world they've built.)

Rockstar Games is proud to announce that the critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption 2 has achieved the single-biggest opening weekend in the history of entertainment. With over $725 million in worldwide retail sell-through during its first three days, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the second-highest grossing entertainment launch of all time next to Rockstar Games' previously released title, Grand Theft Auto V, which achieved over $1 billion in retail sell-through in three days.

While GALAX has introduced numerous solid graphics cards over the years, their product names are a bit of a mouthful, or in some cases just odd. The latest example being their EX OC "White Gamer" line, which, let's face it, is a tad off-putting to say the least. Of course we know that GALAX aren't racist, but you have to wonder how something like this happens. It probably comes down to marketing focusing too much on buzzwords, forgetting the context of said words in the process. In my humble opinion you can trace it back to the fact every company has to stick "Gaming" in every product name or on every box. In this case you would think the fact the product is a graphics card for gaming would be enough to get the point across.

It all started with MSI in 2013, when NVIDIA Kepler was all the rage. They released the "MSI GTX 780 Gaming", which was an amazing product, better than what most other graphics cards vendors had to offer. Competitors were surprised by the success of MSI's new cards and instead of searching into the reasons for their own products failures, their conclusion was that it must be the "Gaming" name, that drove the sales, so suddenly everybody started to fluff up their product names.

1MORE introduced the Spearhead VRX H1006, its new flagship around-the-ear gaming headset. The headset is characterized by an industrial design with two metal tubes pointing downward, on which the two cans are suspended. The retractable microphone is drawn out of one of the tubes, and embellished with RGB LED, just like the ring accents bracketing the cans themselves. The headset uses USB to drive an in-stock DAC and power the RGB LED lighting. The DAC packs Waves Nx, a usage-specific DSP designed by Gammy Award-winning sound engineer Luca Bignardi. The headset features 50 mm graphene synchronized vibrating drivers, with 20 to 20,000 Hz frequency response range, 32Ω impedance, and 20 mW RMS power output. Available now, the Spearhead VRX H1006 is priced at USD $220, excluding taxes.

Microsoft has announced their xCloud initiative, a game streaming effort that looks to bridge the gap between local and stream-based gaming. xCloud is looking to bring true, platform-agnostic gaming with much lower bandwidth requirements due to a number of technologies being researched and worked on by Microsoft. Chief among these are low-latency networking, encoding, and decoding advances - all crucial parts of the puzzle for solving latency and poor image quality issues. xCloud aims to allow for "high-quality experiences at the lowest possible bitrates that work across the widest possible networks" - with 4G and 5G support. For now, the test version of xCloud only requires a minimum 10 Mbps connection, which is already very impressive in abstract - though of course it would require more info on the rendering specs being delivered to the recipient's system for deeper analysis.

One big takeaway here is that this xCloud initiative is fully powered by AMD's own hardware - as it should be. Using AMD custom hardware such as that found within Microsoft's Xbox consoles takes away the work and investment in building even more emulation capabilities on a server level, which would only add additional overhead to the streaming service. By using AMD's own custom hardware, Microsoft circumvents this issue - but entrenches itself even more on AMD's own product portfolio, both now and in the foreseeable future.