Intel's Alchemist engineering team has been working on improving its open-source Vulkan drivers for Linux—recent coverage from Phoronix shows that Team Blue's hard work is paying off, especially in the area of gaming performance. The site's founder, Michael Larabel, approves of the latest Mesa work produced by Intel engineers, and has commended them on their efforts to better the Arc Graphics family. His mid-month testings—on a Linux 6.4-based system running an Intel Arc A770 GPU—demonstrated a "~10% speed-up for the Intel Arc Graphics on Linux." He has benchmarked this system again over the past weekend, following the release of a new set of optimizations for Mesa 23.3-devel: "The latest performance boost for Intel graphics on Linux is by supporting the I915_FORMAT_MOD_4_TILED_DG2_RC_CCS modifier. Indeed it's panning out nicely for furthering the Intel Arc Graphics Vulkan performance."

He apologized for the limited selection of games, due to: "the Intel Linux graphics driver still not having sparse support in place, but at least that will hopefully be here in the coming months when the Intel Xe kernel driver is upstreamed. Another recent promising development for the Intel open-source graphics driver support is fake sparse support to at least help some games and that code will hopefully be merged soon." First up was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive—thanks to the optimized Vulkan drivers it: "enjoyed another nice boost to the performance as a result of this latest code. For CS Linux gamers, it's great seeing the 21% boost just over the past month."

CD Projekt RED has released the new Patch v1.63 for Cyberpunk 2077 which includes several quest, open world, UI, visual, as well as PC-and console-specific improvements and fixes, as it is rolling out on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. While there are plenty of changes, PC users will be glad that it improves performance of DLSS Frame Generation on AMD CPUs, which had been hit by stuttering issues. The Cyberpunk 2077 Patch v1.63 also fixes visual color issues with DLSS and Path Tracing.

The new patch also fixes Photo Mode issues, as well as a crash issue when using Razer Chroma. There are plenty of other quest, open world, miscellaneous, console-specific and REDmod fixes, which you can check out it the full release notes.

Each week, we're bringing you news of the latest DLSS and ray tracing integrations in games and apps. Last week, Diablo IV launched with DLSS 3, Tower of Fantasy added DLSS 3 in a new game update, and it was announced that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will launch with DLSS 3, ray tracing, Reflex and DLAA on July 26th.

This week, F1 23 races off the line with support for DLSS 2, Reflex and ray tracing, and both Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow and Layers of Fear are launching with DLSS 2. Additionally, we've got a first look at Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, enhanced with the Technology Preview of the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, along with new trailers for upcoming DLSS-enhanced games.

CD PROJEKT RED has announced today at the Xbox Games Showcase that Phantom Liberty, the upcoming spy-thriller expansion for their open-world action-adventure RPG Cyberpunk 2077, will be launching on September 26th, 2023. The announcement was accompanied by a brand new trailer featuring key story beats, characters, location, as well as new content coming with the expansion.

In Phantom Liberty, players once again take on the role of V, a cyberpunk for hire, as they embark on a mission to save the President of the New United States of America after her orbital shuttle is shot down over the deadliest district of Night City - Dogtown. What follows is a deep dive into an intricate story of espionage and political intrigue which connects the highest echelons of power with the brutal world of black-market mercenaries. The stakes are larger than life, but so is the reward - your very survival.

Fans of CD Projekt Red's action role-playing Cyberpunk 2077 are looking forward to the release of extra content—the Polish gaming company has not set a firm launch date for its upcoming Phantom Liberty DLC campaign, but their own digital distribution platform - GOG.com - has aready spilled a few beans this week. Keen-eyed gamers noticed that a German language listing for the expansion had appeared (likely by mistake—it no longer exists) on GOG with a "BALD" tag—meaning that the DLC is due "soon." This information was captured in screenshots and quickly uploaded to the Cyberpunk subreddit.

Industry insiders are expecting CD Projekt Red to make a Phantom Liberty-related announcement at this year's (currently ongoing) Summer Game Fest, but media attention has already focused on the apparent pricing set for this piece of DLC. According to the screenshots Phantom Liberty will be available for a €29.99 pre-order price in Western Europe territories, which suggests a possible charge of around $30-35 for North American customers. Comparisons to The Witcher 3's post-release experience will inevitably crop up, and gamers will be questioning whether this expansion will offer good value for money—CD Projekt Red has indicated that this is their most expensive DLC undertaking in terms of development costs, but that has no bearing on how much content will exist within the final retail release. Recent company earnings calls have demonstrated that sales of their existing titles are slowing down, so CDP leadership will be looking forward to new product hitting the market soon-ish.

CD Projekt has responded to this weekend's rumors of a possible takeover bid by Sony's gaming division (Interactive Entertainment) - a leaker well known within the Destiny 2 community suggested that the (publicly traded) Polish games publishing and development group was on the cusp of signing up as first party entity. CD Projekt president and CEO Adam Kiciński addressed this matter in a company earnings meeting, he affirmed that no change in operations was incoming: "Nothing has changed in our end...So, I can repeat what we have been saying throughout the years - CD Projekt is not for sale. We want to remain independent. We have, I believe an excellent strategy. Not easy to execute, for sure, but it's very exciting to follow our own path. So it's a pure rumor." One of the company's PR representatives, Ola Sondej, also denied (on Twitter) that acquisition negotiations were in-progress: "Yah, we're not in such talks with Sony."

The earnings call also resulted in an announcement of The Witcher 3 selling more than 50 million copies - pointing to it being the ninth highest-selling game of all time. The Witcher franchise (consisting of three main line titles) has achieved lifetime sales of more than 75 million units. Despite this good news, CD Projekt has experienced a decline of 20% in net sales (for Q1 2023) - it seems that a reliance on continued revenue from older games can only go so far. Half of the main development team is committed to supporting Cyberpunk 2077, and finalizing a DLC campaign - Phantom Liberty, although CD Projekt has not yet set a firm release date for this extra content. Preview code is destined to make an appearance at this year's Summer Game Fest (June 9 to 10). Multiple Witcher games are in the pipeline, as well as a Cyberpunk sequel.

PCGamesN reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB founder edition graphics card a few days ago - the author noticed some stuttering issues when testing out said GPU in Cyberpunk 2077, and proceeded to publish these details. The odd performance bug seemed to occur when DLSS Frame Generation was enabled on a Ryzen 7000-series CPU PC system. PCGamesN forwarded these findings to NVIDIA - who took the matter very seriously. Team Green has since confirmed that an incompatibility between DLSS and Ryzen 7000 series processors exists in Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 - both developed by CD Projekt RED, and running on variants of the studio's proprietary REDengine. PCGamesN was quickly provided with revised .dll files that have apparently resolved the in-game stuttering problems.

An NVIDIA spokesperson outlined plans for forthcoming fixes: "The latest StreamLine 1.5.6 SL.dll files will be included in an upcoming patch of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, fixes stuttering on Ryzen 7000 CPUs." PCGamesN was impressed with the speedy response (on the software team's part) and effectiveness of the specified bug fixes - and jokingly signs off their article with this conclusion: "There's no word on when this update will arrive exactly, but we're glad to see NVIDIA both quickly recognize and provide a fix for the problem. Hopefully it'll arrive before or just in time for the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty release date, instead of whenever The Witcher 4 release date will be."

CD Projekt RED, the developer of Cyberpunk 2077, has advertised including various super sampling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and now Intel XeSS supersampling. With the inclusion of XeSS version 1.1, Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics cards can record a significant performance uplift. Thanks to the Intel game blog, we compare XeSS enabled versus XeSS disabled, measuring the ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra settings with medium ray tracing enabled. The FPS comparison was conducted with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU, which was paired with Intel Core i9-13900K and 32 GB of RAM.

With XeSS off, the A750 GPU struggled and only reached 39 FPS. However, with XeSS set to performance, the number jumped to 67 FPS, making for a smooth user experience and gameplay. This is a 71% performance uplift, enabled by a new update in the game. Interestingly, Intel XeSS is computed on Arc's XMX Units, while NVIDIA and AMD compute their super sampling on shader units.

CD PROJEKT RED's Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the most technologically advanced games available, using several ray tracing techniques to render its neon-illuminated environments and vast Night City visuals at incredible levels of detail. Now, a new Cyberpunk 2077 update has hit the streets, featuring the technology preview of the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, which enhances the game's already-amazing visuals with full ray tracing, otherwise known as path tracing.

Full ray tracing accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene. It is used by visual effects artists to create film and TV graphics that are indistinguishable from reality, but until the arrival of GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Cores, and the AI-powered acceleration of NVIDIA DLSS, real-time video game full ray tracing was impossible because it's extremely GPU intensive. Previous techniques separately addressed ray-traced shadows, reflections and global illumination for a small number of light sources. Full ray tracing models the properties of light from a virtually unlimited number of emissive sources, delivering physically correct shadows, reflections and global illumination on all objects. The technology preview for Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is a sneak peek into the future of full ray tracing, and we are working with CD PROJEKT RED on further full ray tracing enhancements, bug fixes, and performance optimizations.

Each week we're bringing you the latest news on games launching with NVIDIA DLSS and advanced ray tracing. Last week, Sackboy: A Big Adventure multiplied performance with DLSS 3; this week we're celebrating the launch of the technology preview of Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode. Additionally, High On Life and Like a Dragon: Ishin! have recently added DLSS 2 support, and there are even more games on the horizon with support for RTX technologies, so keep reading for all the details.

In 2018, we began a gaming revolution with the launch of 1st generation GeForce RTX graphics cards. Since the release of the very first games decades ago, lighting had been faked, and various hacks employed to approximate shadows, reflections, and other real-world properties. GeForce RTX made real-time ray tracing a reality, enabling developers to realistically render reflections and lighting, making their games more immersive and enjoyable. And with DLSS 1.0, we invented a game-changing way for players to accelerate frame rates. Back in 2018 there were 4 RTX games, 37% of GeForce RTX gamers enabled ray tracing, and 26% activated DLSS 1.0.

CD Projekt Red has now officially released the long-awaited patch for Cyberpunk 2077, bringing RT: Overdrive mode with Path Tracing technology preview, and other improvements. The new patch adds a Ray Tracing Overdrive and Path Tracing presets, which have to be manually enabled. Of course, the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is only supported on the NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics cards, and it will work on the RTX 3090 graphics card, although it is only limited to 1080p resolution.

The new patch also adds an option to enable Path Tracing for Photo Mode, and adds support for NVIDIA DLAA, which is NVIDIA's AI-based anti-aliasing mode meant to improve image quality. To not make it all about NVIDIA, CD Projekt Red also added support for Intel XeSS 1.1, and some minor benchmark improvements. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the new patch does not bring any expected gameplay improvements, which will probably come at a later date in a separate patch.

CD PROJEKT RED's Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the most technologically advanced games available, using several ray tracing techniques to render its neon-illuminated environments and vast Night City visuals at incredible levels of detail. On April 11th, a new Cyberpunk 2077 update will hit the streets, featuring the technology preview of the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, which enhances the game's already-amazing visuals with full ray tracing, otherwise known as path tracing.

Full ray tracing accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene. It is used by visual effects artists to create film and TV graphics that are indistinguishable from reality, but until the arrival of GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Cores, and the AI-powered acceleration of NVIDIA DLSS, real-time video game full ray tracing was impossible because it's extremely GPU intensive.

Last week we announced Playground Games' Forza Horizon 5 added DLSS 3 to multiply performance and provide the definitive open-world racing experience. This week, DLSS 3 is available for Sackboy: A Big Adventure. And coming next week, the technology preview of Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode will be released.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure DLSS 3 Update Available Now
PlayStation's iconic woolen hero stars in the PC edition of Sackboy: A Big Adventure. The dastardly Vex kidnapped Sackboy's friends and forced them to build his Topsy Turver. This most terrifyingly twisted device will transform Craftworld from a fantastical land of pure imagination and innocent dreams… into a torrid, barren eyesore of nightmares. Set off alone or with your bravest friends on a whirlwind of capers across the snowiest mountains, the leafiest jungles, the wettest underwater realms and the, uh, spaciest of space colonies. Take down Vex. Save the sack-folk. Save the day.

CD Projekt has revealed that 2022 was its second-best year in terms of financial results - it cites an uptick in sales of action role-playing shooter Cyberpunk 2077 as the main reason behind the nice boost to its earnings - around $222 million in revenue, leading to about $80 million in net profit. The Cyberpunk intellectual property has expanded beyond the scope of the video games format and onto the small screen - evidently a combination of the Netflix anime series adaptation and continued efforts into polishing and expanding the game has spread a positive word of mouth. The company states: "In 2022 CD PROJEKT RED carried out intensive work on Cyberpunk 2077, which resulted in successive updates and the next-gen console edition of the game. An important event was the well-received Netflix premiere of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. It attracted many new players to the game, and convinced many others to revisit Night City."

Adam Kiciński, CEO of CD PROJEKT was buoyed by these results and set expectations for continuations in both fields in the future: "The popularity of the series and the positive reception of the update, released a week before the premiere, had a notable effect on Cyberpunk sales and general sentiment around the game, as evidenced by gamers' reviews. This is a clear sign that deeper involvement in our franchises and expanding their reach is the right way to go. Another important event supporting the Cyberpunk franchise will be the release of Phantom Liberty - a large expansion scheduled for this year."

In an interview done by PCWorld's Gordon Ung at GDC 2023, CD Projekt Red's VP and Global Art Director, Jakub "Kuba" Knapik, and NVIDIA's Senior Developer Technology Engineer, Pawel Kozlowski, shed a bit more light about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing update and what it brings to the game as well as what kind of hardware will you need to run it.

In case you missed it earlier, both CD Projekt RED and NVIDIA did talk about the RTX Path Tracing Overdrive Mode for Cyberpunk 2077, which will launch on April 11th. This will be a part of the Cyberpunk 2077 Update 1.62, which should bring additional gameplay improvements as well. It is worth to note that Path Tracing will be introduced to the game as a "technology preview," Jakub notes, as the developer is implementing this technology with NVIDIA and it is still a work in progress.

NVIDIA has released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers, the version 531.41 WHQL. The new release provides the best day-0 gaming experience for Diablo IV beta phase, including support for DLSS 2, as well as the same DLSS 2 support for The Last of Us Part I, Smalland: Survive the Wild, and Deceive Inc. The new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Drivers 531.41 WHQL is also the Game Ready driver for Resident Evil 4 and it adds DLSS 3 support for Forza Horizon 5. Most importantly, it also adds support for the technology preview of Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode. The new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Drivers 531.41 WHQL also adds several GeForce Experience Profiles, as well as fixes several issues.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 531.41 WHQL

Update: Added Open Issues to the release highlights.

As promised and detailed earlier, NVIDIA has now released the first SDK for Path Tracing. Path Tracing, which should accurately re-create physics of all light sources in a scene, has been around and we already had a chance to see it in some demos like Quake RTX and Portal RTX, but now, thanks to some previously available NVIDIA tools and features, it could be finally coming to more games and not just tech demos.

According to NVIDIA, the thing that makes Path Tracing possible now, and more accessible to developers, is the combination of previously available NVIDIA technologies, as well as some new ones, including the new performance multiplier in DLSS 3, called the DLSS Frame Generation. The DLSS Frame Generation, working on GeForce 40 series cards and using the Optical Flow Accelerator, is what made real-time path tracing possible. The RTX Path Tracing SDK, according to NVIDIA, should re-create the physics of all light sources in a scene in order to reproduce what the eye sees in real life, and allows to build a reference path traces to ensure that lighting during production is true to life, while accelerating the iteration process; or build high-quality photo modes for RT-capable GPUs or real-time, ultra-quality modes that take advantage of the Ada Lovelace architecture.

CDProjekt Red today released a major update to Cyberpunk 2077, which adds support for the NVIDIA DLSS 3 performance enhancement. DLSS 3 leverages the Optical Flow Accelerator component of GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada" graphics cards to generate nearly every alternate frame entirely using AI, without involving the main graphics rendering pipeline, with which it nearly doubles frame-rates at quality comparable to native resolution. When used in conjunction with DLSS quality settings, DLSS 3 ends up working like a frame-rate multiplier. The feature also ends up positively impacting energy efficiency of the GPU. DLSS 3 requires a GeForce RTX 40-series GPU.

With only a couple of days to go until the AMD RX 7900-series benchmarks go live, some alleged benchmarks from both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT have leaked on Twitter. The two cards are being compared to a NVIDIA RTX 4080 card in no less than seven different game titles, all running at 4K resolution. The games are God of War, Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watchdogs Legion, Red Dead Redemption 2, Doom Eternal and Horizon Zero Dawn. The cards were tested on a system with a Core i9-12900K CPU which was paired with 32 GB of RAM of unknown type.

It's too early to draw any real conclusions from this test, but in general, the RX 7900 XTX comes out on top, ahead of the RTX 4080, so no surprises here. The RX 7900 XT is either tied with the RTX 4080 or a fair bit slower, with the exception being Red Dead Redemption 2, where the RTX 4080 is the slowest card, although it also appears to have some issues, since the one percent lows are hitting 2 FPS. Soon, the reviews will be out and everything will become more clear, but it appears that AMD's RX 7900 XTX will give NVIDIA's RTX 4080 a run for its money, if these benchmarks are anything to go by.

Update Dec 11th: The original tweet has been removed, for unknown reasons. It could be because the numbers were fake, or because they were in breach of AMD's NDA.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported revenue for the third quarter ended October 30, 2022, of $5.93 billion, down 17% from a year ago and down 12% from the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.27, down 72% from a year ago and up 4% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.58, down 50% from a year ago and up 14% from the previous quarter.

"We are quickly adapting to the macro environment, correcting inventory levels and paving the way for new products," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "The ramp of our new platforms - Ada Lovelace RTX graphics, Hopper AI computing, BlueField and Quantum networking, Orin for autonomous vehicles and robotics, and Omniverse-is off to a great start and forms the foundation of our next phase of growth.

Benchmarks of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 (formerly known as the RTX 4080 16 GB) are already out as the leaky taps in the Asian tech forumscape know no bounds. Someone with access to an RTX 4080 sample and drivers on ChipHell forums, put it through a battery of synthetic and gaming tests. The $1,200 MSRP graphics card was tested on 3DMark Time Spy, Port Royal, and games that include Forza Horizon 5, Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, Cyberpunk 2077, Borderlands 3, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The big picture: the RTX 4080 is found to be halfway between the RTX 3090 Ti and the RTX 4090. At stock settings, and in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme (4K), it has 71% the performance of an RTX 4090, whereas the RTX 3090 Ti is 55% that of the RTX 4090. With its "power limit" slider maxed out, the RTX 4080 inches 2 percentage-points closer to the RTX 4090 (73% that of the RTX 4090), and with a bit of manual OC, it adds another 4 percentage-points. Things change slightly with 3DMark Port Royal, where the RTX 4080 is 69% the performance of the RTX 4090 in a test where the RTX 3090 Ti does 58% that of the RTX 4090.

AMD on Thursday launched the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics cards. With these, the company claims to have repeated its feat of a 50+ percent performance/Watt gain over the previous-generation, which propelled the RX 6000-series to competitiveness with NVIDIA's fastest RTX 30-series SKUs. AMD's performance claims for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX put the card at anywhere between 50% to 70% faster than the company's current flagship, the RX 6950 XT, when tested at 4K UHD resolution. Digging through these claims, and piecing together relevant information from the Endnotes, HXL was able to draw an extrapolated performance comparison between the RX 7900 XTX, the real-world tested RTX 4090, and previous-generation flagships RTX 3090 Ti and RX 6950 XT.

The graphs put the Radeon RX 7900 XTX menacingly close to the GeForce RTX 4090. In Watch_Dogs Legion, the RTX 4090 is 6.4% faster than the RX 7900 XTX. Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus see the two cards evenly matched, with a delta under 1%. The RTX 4090 is 4.4% faster with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022). Accounting for the pinch of salt usually associated with launch-date first-party performance claims; the RX 7900 XTX would end up within 5-10% of the RTX 4090, but pricing changes everything. The RTX 4090 is a $1,599 (MSRP) card, whereas the RX 7900 XTX is $999. Assuming the upcoming RTX 4080 (16 GB) is around 10% slower than the RTX 4090; the main clash for this generation will be between the RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX. Even here, AMD gets ahead with pricing, as the RTX 4080 was announced with an MSRP of $1,199 (exactly 20% pricier than the RX 7900 XTX). With the FSR 3.0 Fluid Motion announcement, AMD also blunted NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Frame Generation performance advantage.

NVIDIA and CD Projekt RED (CDPR) came up with a unique giveaway for three GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics cards that have been customized with an ultra-rare Cyberpunk 2077-themed backplate. Even if not for the backplate, just the fact that you could win an RTX 4090 should get you to "dust off" Cyberpunk 2077 from your Steam library, reinstall it with its latest update that includes a crazy graphics present aptly named "overdrive," and explore every nook and corner of Night City for clues leading up to the card. These cards are hidden away as premium gear, and everyone who finds the card in the game stands a chance to win one IRL. For more information, visit this page.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is turning out to be a cool operator, with the GPU reportedly boosting up to 2.8 GHz (2810 to 2850 MHz) at stock settings, when playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, in its "psycho" settings preset. with DLSS and Reflex disabled. At native resolution, the RTX 4090 scores 59 FPS (49 FPS at 1% lows), with a frame-time of 72 to 75 ms. With 100% GPU utilization, the card barely breaks a sweat, with GPU temperatures reported in the region of 50 to 55 °C. With DLSS 3 enabled, the game nearly doubles in frame-rate, to 119 FPS (1% lows), and an average latency of 53 ms. This is a net 2X gain in frame-rate with latency reduced by a third. The power-draw is also said to be significantly reduced. The card pulls up to 461 W when rendering at native-resolution, but this drops down to 348 W with DLSS 3 "quality," a 25% reduction.

At the heart of the GeForce RTX 4090 is the gigantic AD102 silicon, which we broadly detailed in an older article. Built on the 4 nm silicon fabrication process, this chip measures 608 mm² in die-area, and crams in 76.3 billion transistors. We now have our first look into the silicon-level block diagram of the AD102, including the introduction of several new components.

The AD102 features a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 host interface, and a 384-bit GDDR6X memory interface. The Gigathread Engine acts as a the main resource allocation component of the silicon. Ada introduces the Optical Flow Accelerator, a component crucial for DLSS 3 to generate entire frames without involving the graphics rendering machinery. The chip features double the number of media-encoding hardware engines as "Ampere," including hardware-accelerated AV1 encode/decode. Multiple accelerators mean that multiple streams of videos can be transcoded (helpful in a media production environment), or transcoding is performed at twice the FPS rate (each encoder takes turns at encoding a single frame).