AMD today released a preview driver that provides optimization for a couple of new games, and fixes a few issues. Preview Driver version 24.20.11.01 adds optimization for "God of War: Ragnarök," "Frostpunk 2," and the DirectX 11 mode of "Sims 4." It also extends Radeon Boost support for "Final Fantasy XVI." HYPR-Tune support is extended to "Black Myth: Wukong," "God of War Ragnarök," and "Creatures of Ava." HYPR-Tune now autoconfigures Anti-Lag 2 in "Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut."

The drivers also address intermittent driver crashes when playing "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2," including crashes when loading maps on RX 5000 series GPUs. Driver crashes on "Final Fantasy XVI" have also been fixed. The bug that causes overly dark shadows in "Black Myth: Wukong" with medium-high global illumination settings, has been fixed. AV falling out of sync during AV1 codec playback has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin Preview Driver 24.20.11.01

Intel released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Released today is the 101.5445 WHQL, which is a minor update over the 101.5444 Beta drivers from last weekend. It comes with Game On optimization for "Manor Lords." It includes all the DirectX 11 game-specific performance uplifts referenced in the change-log of the 101.5444 Beta drivers, and its fixed issues; but fixes an additional issue on top—lower than expected performance with "A Plague Tale: Requiem." Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5445 WHQL

Intel over the weekend released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.5444 Beta comes with significant performance uplifts for certain DirectX 11 games. Tested at 1080p with an Arc A770 and the highest in-game settings, the driver provides an up to 30% performance increase with "Astroneer," an up to 5% increase with "Days Gone," an up to 15% increase with "Dyson Sphere Program," up to 14% increase with "Lethal Company" and "Mass Effect Legendary Edition," an up to 8% increase with "Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord," an impressive 36% increase with "Need for Speed: Heat," 5% increases for "Unturned" and VR Chat; and 7% increase with "World of Warships."

The drivers also extend performance uplifts to the Arc iGPUs powering Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors. Tested at 1080p with medium or default settings, you can expect an up to 10% increase for "American Truck Simulator," an up to 17% increase for "Dyson Sphere Program," an up to 12% increase with "Fortnite Performance Mode," an up to 11% increase with "Grim Dawn," up to 24% performance increase with "Lethal Company," an impressive 48% increase with "Mass Effect Legendary Edition," and an up to 19% increase with "Need for Speed: Heat." Among the handful issues fixed with this release include an application crash when launching "No Rest for the Wicked" when launching prologue gameplay; a fullscreen display corruption when switching windows using alt+tab in "Asseto Corsa," and a display corruption noticed in "Halo Infinite" with ray traced shadows enabled. On Arc iGPUs, an issue that caused "Diablo IV" to exhibit corruption on the terrain has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5444 Beta

AMD today released the latest version of the Adrenalin software for Radeon RX GPUs. Version 23.8.2 WHQL comes with optimization for "Starfield" almost a week ahead of its September 6 release. This is probably because "Starfield" has a brand partnership with AMD, which includes the game being optimized for Radeon GPUs and Ryzen processors, as well as AMD selling or giving away special editions of its Radeon RX 7000 series and Ryzen 7000 series products. In terms of numbers Adrenalin 23.8.2 WHQL offers up to 16% increase for "Starfield" at 4K Ultra HD over the previous version, as tested using the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT GPUs. With this release, AMD has addressed just the one issue—an application crash or driver timeout when playing "Baldur's Gate 3" with DirectX 11 renderer on certain Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.8.2 WHQL

Intel Graphics figured out a unique way to step up performance of its entry-level Arc A380 graphics cards. While other companies prevent BIOS updates and generally discourage overclocking; Intel has given the A380 a free vendor overclock. With the latest Arc GPU Graphics drivers 101.4644 WHQL, Intel has increased the base frequency of the GPU. The driver installer includes a firmware update besides the driver. The A380 has a reference base clock of 2000 MHz, which boosts up to 2050 MHz. With the latest 101.4644 drivers (the new firmware), the base frequency has been increased to 2150 MHz. It's not much, but hey, who doesn't want a free 7.5% overclock to go with their recent 19% performance increase in DirectX 11 games, and over 40% increase in DirectX 9 ones?

Sony Electronics is adding a new model to its Spatial Reality Display portfolio with the addition of the ELF-SR2. At 27 inches, the larger 4K option provides highly realistic, three-dimensional content without the use of special glasses or VR headsets. Highlights of the new offering include an upgraded high-speed vision sensor, image quality enhancing technologies and installation flexibility. Additionally, the ELF-SR2 enables more robust functionality through its support of applications and development. It is optimized for industrial design, surgical planning, architecture, engineering, construction, signage, retail, software/application development, game developers and entertainment applications.

"Our original Spatial Reality Display continues to captivate customers by bringing 3D content to life with an astonishing authenticity and sophistication that demands to be experienced hands-on," said Rich Ventura, Vice President of Professional Display Solutions, Sony Electronics. "While our users love the technology, we keep hearing the same question from professionals; 'does this display come in a larger size?' As we expand into more B2B verticals and environments, I'm happy to say that in addition to a bigger screen, we've added some powerful and commonly requested features to enhance content production. These include a wider color gamut, a newly developed engine, more advanced high-speed sensors and rich support for applications and their development - all for an extremely competitive price."

It's not only Intel that has been showing off new graphics cards recently, as Chinese company Glenfly has revealed more details about its Arise-GT10C0 graphics card. To be clear from the start, this is not a graphics card for gamers, but rather for the PRC government and its computers, as the nation is trying to become self-sufficient when it comes to computer hardware for its government agencies and other government backed organisations. The 28 nm GPU has a clock speed of a whopping 500 MHz and delivers 1.5 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, which places it firmly in yesteryear's performance category. Glenfly claims support for up to 4K resolution, althought this is most likely only for desktop use.

The GPU is paired with 2 or 4 GB of DDR4 memory with a clock speed of 1200 MHz, using either a 64 or a 128 bit memory interface. The actual cards have a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface and have support for unspecified HDMI and DP interfaces, as well as D-Sub VGA ports. Driver support includes DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.5 and OpenCL 1.2. The GPU is also said to have hardware offload support for HEVC and H.264 hardware encoding, as well as decoding for both formats, plus most other common video formats, although, oddly enough, support for AVS, which is China's homebrewed video codec, is missing. OS support includes various Chinese flavours of Linux, Ubuntu and Windows according to Glenfly and outside of the x86 processor world, MIPS and arm based processors are said be supported.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin. Version 21.8.2 beta comes with optimization for "Myst," with up to 6% performance improvement seen at 4K medium settings on a machine powered by a Radeon RX 6800 XT, compared to the previous 21.8.1 drivers. The drivers also feature optimization for "Aliens: Fireteam Elite."

The drivers also fix a handful of issues. Difficulties ending an OBS recording session with h.265 or HEVC codec on some of the newer Radeon GPUs, such as the RX 6800 XT, have been fixed. An image corruption bug with split-screen multiplayer on "F1 2021," has been fixed. Unresponsive behavior with Radeon Software in rare cases, has been fixed. Lighting corruption noticed in "Control" with DirectX 12 on cards such as the RX 6600 XT, has been fixed. Upgrading to the lastest Radeon Software causing auto-updates in Ryzen Master to stop working, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.8.2 beta

High dynamic range (HDR) offers the most impressive improvement to the visual experience in recent history. HDR unlocks an entirely new range of colors with more intensity than standard monitors, making games come to life like never before. In November 2020, the Xbox Series X/S consoles launched with the Auto HDR feature which automatically upgrades your backwards compatible games from SDR to HDR to take advantage of this amazing display innovation and provide a richer visual experience even on already-released games. Today we're excited to bring you a preview of Auto HDR for your PC gaming experience and we're looking for your help to test it out. When enabled on your HDR capable gaming PC, you will automatically get awesome HDR visuals on an additional 1000+ DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games!

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce Game Ready drivers. The drivers add optimization for "The Medium," including support for RTX raytracing and DLSS. The drivers also introduce support for the Mobile GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics. Among the issues fixed with this release include game crashes and broken HUD with "X4: Foundations" on RTX 30-series GPUs; game crashes for games based on the RE2 game engine in DirectX 11 mode; "Error 707" application crash with DaVinci Resolve; an application freeze with MPE GPU acceleration in Adobe Premiere Pro; a problem with color distortion in Zoom meetings with NVENC enabled; random crashes with "Detroit: Become Human;" and stuttering/lagging with game launches in Steam VR. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 461.40 WHQL

Benchmarks have a natural lifespan that ends when they no longer provide meaningful results on modern hardware. When old benchmarks are used with new hardware, the results can be skewed or limited in ways that reduce their accuracy and relevance.

After reviewing our product line, we've decided to end support for 3DMark Sky Diver, the 3DMark API Overhead feature test, PCMark 8, Servermark Media Transcode, and VRMark for Android. After January 14, 2021, these unsupported benchmarks will: No longer be sold by UL, Steam, or other app stores; no longer be guaranteed to work with UL's online services; no longer receive updates; no longer be eligible for customer support.

NVIDIA rolled out the GeForce software 445.78 Hotfix drivers. Hotfixes are released to expeditiously correct glaring bugs with GeForce software. The 445.78 Hotfix corrects a bug that causes some DirectX 11 games to fail to launch when Image Sharpening is globally enabled from the NVIDIA Control Panel. The drivers are otherwise identical to GeForce 445.75 software released earlier this week. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 445.78 Hotfix

Intel has been very serious about its efforts in computer graphics lately, mainly because of its plans to launch a dedicated GPU lineup and bring new features to the graphics card market. Today, Intel and Wargaming, a maker of MMO titles like World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes, partnered to bring ray tracing feature to the Wargaming's "Core" graphics engine, used in perhaps one of the best-known MMO title - World of Tanks.

Joint forces of Intel and Wargaming developers have lead to the implementation of ray tracing, using only regular software techniques without a need for special hardware. Being hardware agnostic, this implementation works on any graphics card that can run DirectX 11, as the "Core" engine is written in DirectX 11 API. To achieve this, developers had to make a solution that uses CPU's resources for fast, multi-threaded bounding volume hierarchy which then feeds the GPU's compute shaders for ray tracing processing, thus making the ray tracing feature entirely GPU shader/core dependent. Many features are reworked with emphasis put on shadow quality. In the images below you can see exactly what difference the new ray-tracing implementation makes, and you can use almost any graphics card to get it. Wargaming notes that "some FPS" will be sacrificed if ray tracing is turned on, so your GPU shouldn't struggle too much.

Microsoft extended variable refresh-rate (VRR) to games that don't natively support it, through a new global setting under Graphics Settings. To access this setting, you must have the latest Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903), a display that supports NVIDIA G-Sync, AMD FreeSync, or VESA Adaptive-Sync, and a graphics processor with a WDDM 2.6-compliant driver that supports these VRR technologies. For now, this setting only works with DirectX 11 games in exclusive-fullscreen mode. Microsoft clarified that this setting is not designed to override the VRR options presented by the control panels of your display driver provider (eg: NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Settings). The option is disabled by default, and isn't visible to users who don't meet both the hardware- and software-requirements of VRR.

IO Interactive announced that "Hitman 2" will receive a new DirectX 12 renderer through a patch scheduled for later today. The game launched with only DirectX 11 support unlike the 2016 reboot of the franchise that was one of the posterboys of DirectX 12, and let you choose between the two APIs. The DirectX 12 renderer is expected to be better optimized for multi-core CPUs. Hitman 2 is published by WB Games, which likely emphasized on getting all of the base game out instead of the piecemeal episodic approach of the 2016 "Hitman," making IOI focus on content over technical advancements. The DirectX 12 renderer is now being retrofitted through a 1.8-gigabyte patch. Besides DirectX 12, the March 2019 update (v2.20) includes a new location, Hantu Port (Singapore), which will unlock as a DLC, with Sniper Assassin missions. The DirectX 12 renderer can be enabled through the Advanced Settings in the game's launcher.The change-log follows.

Adoption rate of DirectX 12 has slowed a lot in recent months, with some titles like Hitman 2 even backtracking and offering only DirectX 11 support, even though the previous game supported both DX12 and DX11. Codemaster, developers of the Formula One game series have now announced their plans for DirectX 12 support in their game engine.

After enabling the "Beta" option in Steam, and entering passcode "244EwzNFQkfnqf4Xc6GTmgsPtT6LAbYn", you'll be able to download the DirectX 12 branch, which is identical to the regular public version in every regard, with the exception of running in DirectX 12. Your existing savegames will continue to work and you can still play online, with players using DX11 and/or DX12 - there are no limitations.

Codemasters requests feedback in this forum thread, to improve their engine, and a few issues are already known. For example SLI and CrossFire support is "not yet implemented", and some other minor issues.

NVIDIA today released GeForce 416.81 WHQL drivers. These drivers provide optimization for "Battlefield V," which appears to be available to Origin Access users. In addition, the drivers significantly reduce Idle and Multi-monitor power-consumption of GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards. It also corrects G-Sync issues with "Turing" GPUs. Stuttering noticed on the RTX 2080 Ti when playing back HEVC videos is also fixed. A number of game-specific fixes related to "ARK Survival," "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," "Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," "Monster Hunter World," and "Far Cry 5" were also fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 416.81 WHQL

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA today releases GeForce 397.31 WHQL drivers. The drivers see NVIDIA discontinue regular support for 32-bit versions of Windows. It also sheds support for GPUs based on NVIDIA "Fermi" GPU architecture (GeForce 400 series and 500 series). The drivers also add first official support for NVIDIA RTX real-time ray-tracing technology. To use it, you'll need a GPU based on NVIDIA's next-generation "Volta" architecture (such as the $3,000 TITAN V), the latest major version of Windows 10, and Microsoft DXR developer package. The drivers also add support for Vulkan 1.1 API. Besides the above three, GeForce 397.31 WHQL is game-ready for "BattleTech" and "FrostPunk." Grab it from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 WHQL

Ahead of its October 26 launch, someone with access to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti sample put it through "Ashes of the Singularity" (AotS) benchmark, with its scores even getting posted on its online database. Paired with an Intel Core i9-7900X based high-end machine, and running the benchmark's DirectX 11 API version, the card scored 6,200 points in the "Extreme" (1440p) preset.

This score spaces it significantly apart from the GTX 1070, which typically scores around 5,400 points in this test, and the GTX 1080, which puts out around 7,000 points. The GTX 1070 Ti manages to keep frame-rates of AotS consistently above 60 frames per second. Much like the Radeon RX Vega 56 it's designed to compete with, the GTX 1070 Ti will find its comfort-zone with the 1440p resolution, even though it will be capable of playable (≥30 fps) frame-rates at 4K Ultra HD.

AMD today released Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.4, its fourth release for April. These drivers come with optimization for "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III," with up to 7 percent performance improvement seen on a machine powered by a Radeon RX 580. It also fixes display corruption seen on some machines with HDMI scaling, incorrect HDR colors on "Mass Effect: Andromeda," DirectX 11 mode stuttering on CrossFire machines in "Battlefield 1," a hang noted on Radeon RX 550 machines that haven't been rebooted for a long time, and some UI improvements with Radeon Settings. The drivers also add a curious looking shortcut to your desktop (check out the image below). Grab the driver from the link below.

Edit: In case you are wondering where that Quake Champions Beta shortcut on your desktop comes from, AMD's 17.4.4 driver installation stealth-adds that to your desktop, with a bit.ly tracking link, instead of directly to the official page. Looks like AMD is making some $$ from it, a referral id is included in the final URL destination, too.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.4

NVIDIA Flow, was previously announced by the company in 2016's GDC as the new GameWorks implementation for combustible fluid, fire and smoke simulation (superseding NVIDIA's Turbulence and FlameWorks.) It makes use of an adaptive sparse voxel grid for maximum flexibility with the least memory impact, being optimized for use of Volume Tiled Resources when available. With this technology being implemented on the Unreal Engine 4 soon, the company is now looking to increase developer awareness of the tool by showcasing its capabilities.

In the video below, the company is showing off its DirectX 12 implementation of the technology, which showcases gas combustion that results into real-time simulation of fire and smoke in the air.

AMD today released the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.2 drivers, its second release this month. The drivers are important if you've updated Windows 10 to the latest "Creators Update" (version 1703), since it supports the new WDDM 2.2 driver model. In addition, the drivers fix bugs related to SteamVR asynchronous reprojection, poor multi-GPU scaling for "Battlefield 1" in DirectX 11 mode, flickering noticed on ReLive running on Windows 7, and a bug with Radeon Settings that removes application profiles upon logout. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.2

Futuremark has just released a major update to its 3DMark benchmarking suite, adding Vulkan support while simultaneously axing its cousin, Mantle. This means that the API Overhead test now uses a Vulkan path instead of its previous Mantle one, which is sure to lead several enthusiasts into a frenzy of benchmarking under the Khronos's API (which has just recently been announced will offer support for multi-GPU in Windows 10, 8.x, 7, and Linux operating systems.)

Check some of the new features, improvements and fixes on the new version right after the break. You can download this piece of software right here on TPU - just follow the link below.Download: Futuremark 3DMark + TimeSpy v2.3.3663

AMD today released Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.3.3 Beta drivers. These drivers come with optimization for "Mass Effect: Andromeda," including support for AMD CrossFire in DirectX 11 mode. To enable CrossFire, however, you need to input "-RenderDevice.AmdCrossfireEnable 1" as a command-line argument (set launch options in Origin). The drivers also fix a texture flickering issue noticed with the game. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.3.3

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, its popular graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility, which no PC enthusiast can leave home without. Version 1.17.0 comes with support for new graphics chips, and a host of stability and usability improvements. To begin with, it comes with full support for Intel "Kaby Lake" and "Apollo Lake" HD Graphics (integrated graphics). It also comes with support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Mobile, GP104-based GTX 1060, and GP104-based Quadro Mobile.

GPU-Z 1.17.0 also comes with some user-interface changes, including display of Core architecture codename for Intel iGPUs, UEFI support being shown as available for Intel iGPUs newer than "Sandy Bridge" architecture, fixed ROP count on AMD "Beema" iGPU, and fixed values for Intel "Bay Trail" silicon to be 22 nm silicon process, and DirectX 11 as maximum API support. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 1.17.0