The Chinese tech press is abuzz with slides allegedly from Intel's pre-launch press-deck for the Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S." The most sensational of these are Intel's first-party performance claims for the top Core Ultra 9 285K model. There's good news and bad news. Good news first—Intel claims to have made a big leap in energy efficiency with "Arrow Lake," and the 285K should offer gaming performance comparable to the current Core i9-14900K at around 80 W lower power draw for the processor. But then there in lies the bad news—despite claimed IPC gains for the "Lion Cove" P-core, and rumored clock speeds being on par with the "Raptor Cove" P-cores on the i9-14900K, the 285K is barely any faster than its predecessor in absolute terms.

In its first party testing, when averaged across 12 game tests, which we used Google optical translation to make out the titles of, Intel used performance numbers of the i9-14900K as the mean. The 285K beats the i9-14900K in only four games—Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, Age of Mythology Retold, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, and F1 23. It's on-par with the i9-14900K in Red Dead Redemption 2, Total War: Pharaoh, Metro Exodus, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Rainbow Six Siege. It's slower than the i9-14900K in Far Cry 6, FF XIV, F1 24, Red Dead Redemption 2. Averaged across this bench, the Core Ultra 9 285K ends up roughly on par with the Core i9-14900K in gaming. Intel also compared the 285K to AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, and interestingly, even the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

Get into your favorite games faster by linking GeForce NOW to Steam, Epic Games Store and Ubisoft accounts. And get a peek at more games coming to GeForce NOW later this year by tuning in to Ubisoft Forward on Monday, June 12, when the game publisher will reveal its latest news and announcements. Plus, two new games are available to stream from the cloud this week, as well as the newest season for Tom Clancy's The Division 2 from Ubisoft. GeForce NOW makes gaming convenient and easy for members by enabling them to link their accounts from Steam, Epic and, most recently, Ubisoft, directly to the service. Instead of signing into their accounts for each play session, members can be automatically signed in across their devices after linking them up just once.

Starting today, launching Ubisoft Connect games requires members to link their Ubisoft accounts in the app. Once that's completed, members can effortlessly play hit Ubisoft games, including Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry 6 and The Division 2. Members also have the benefit of library account syncing, which automatically syncs supported GeForce NOW games from Ubisoft Connect and Steam libraries - helping members find their Ubisoft games instantly. For an even more streamlined experience, upgrade to an Ultimate or Priority membership to skip the waiting lines over free members and get into gaming faster.

It's time! The Vault is open, and the Epic MEGA Sale 2023 starts…. Now! There are more opportunities to save than ever in one of the biggest sales we've ever had. We have enormous discounts of up to 75% off select titles. The Epic Coupon returns, with additional savings of 25% on eligible games. And we just launched a brand new Epic Rewards program that lets you earn 5% of your purchase back to spend on your next eligible Epic Game Store transaction.

There's more! Over the next four weeks, four free games and four giveaways will be up for grabs during the sale. Check in every Thursday, between May 18, 2023 (11 AM ET) to June 15, 2023 (11 AM ET), to see what's new. If you're reading this, the sale has already begun. It's live from May 18, 2023 (11 AM ET) to June 15, 2023 (11 AM ET). Go, go, go!

Make gaming a priority this GFN Thursday time's running out to upgrade to a GeForce NOW Priority six-month membership at 40% off the normal price. Find out how new Priority members are using the cloud to get their game on.

Plus, the week brings updates for some of the hottest games in the GeForce NOW library, and four more titles join the list. GeForce NOW RTX 4080 SuperPODs are now live for Ultimate members in Atlanta, where the gamers game. Follow along with the server rollout, and upgrade today for the Ultimate cloud gaming experience.

Ubisoft is slowly migrating availability of its flagship games over to the Steam store, and gaming fans will be happy to find out about this move. A lot of the French video game publisher's popular titles (on PC) have been locked to their own Connect service and the Epic Games Store. Far Cry-series fans on the PC platform having been shouting and complaining about one particular entry being tied to the pair of e-shops since launching back in October 2021. That timed deal between Ubisoft and Epic Games is soon to expire, and Far Cry 6 will become available via Steam on May 11.

Ubisoft implemented a reversal of releasing games on Steam back in 2019, a decision that attracted almost instant negative feedback from PC Gamers. The Division 2 was announced as being the 2019 headliner for release on Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store, and (at the time) other upcoming titles would follow the same path. Murmurs of a possible return to Steam emerged in late 2022, and shortly thereafter Ubisoft proceeded to rollout big franchise titles on that platform, including Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Immortals Fenyx Rising. The latest batch to get the Steam store release day treatment are (the aforementioned) Far Cry 6 on May 11th, Riders Republic on June 8th, Rainbow Six Extraction on June 15th, and finally Monopoly Madness on June 22nd.

Today, Ubisoft announced that Lost Between Worlds, a new Far Cry 6 expansion, is now available for £17.99, or as part of the Upgrade Pass, on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, as well as Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store and the Epic Games Store. Players can also subscribe to Ubisoft+ on PC and Amazon Luna.

Developed by Ubisoft Toronto, Lost Between Worlds is a thrilling new chapter of Dani Rojas' story, set in a fractured version of Yara. Players will dive into a rich action-packed gauntlet with deadly crystal enemies, a wide variety of unique gameplay challenges with bewildering supernatural obstacles, and multiple player paths. Players will test their wit, prove their skill, and overcome death itself - or be lost forever.

Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" is shaping up to be another leadership desktop processor lineup, with an engineering sample clocking significant increases in gaming minimum framerates over the preceding 12th Gen Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake." Extreme Player, a tech-blogger on Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, posted a comprehensive gaming performance review of an i9-13900K engineering sample covering eight games across three resolutions, comparing it with a retail i9-12900KF. The games include CS:GO, Final Fantasy IX: Endwalker, PUBG, Forza Horizon 5, Far Cry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the synthetic benchmark 3DMark. Both processors were tested with a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, 32 GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and a 1.5 kW power supply.

The i9-13900K ES is shown posting performance leads ranging wildly between 1% to 2% in the graphics tests of 3DMark, but an incredible 36% to 38% gain in the CPU-intensive tests of the suite. This is explained not just by increased per-core performance of both the P-cores and E-cores, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores. Although the same "Gracemont" E-cores are used in "Raptor Lake," the L2 cache size per E-core cluster has been doubled in size. Horizon Zero Dawn sees -0.7% to 10.98% increase in frame rates. There are some anomalous 70% frame-rate increases in RDR2, discounting which, we still see a 2-9% increase. FC6 posts modest 2.4% increases. Forza Horizon 5, PUBG, Monster Hunter Rise, and FF IX, each report significant increases in minimum framerates, well above 20%.

AMD on Monday released the latest version of the Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 20.10.1 beta comes with optimization for the Windows 11 operating system. Game-specific optimizations include "Far Cry 6," where it posts 10% performance gains over the previous driver; "Battlefield 2042 Open Beta," "Naraka: Bladepoint," and a 12% performance uplift for "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" with DirectX 12 at 4K with Ultra settings.

Among the issues fixed include rare driver timeouts noticed on "Horizon Zero Dawn" and "The Medium" on RX 6000 series graphics cards such as the RX 6700 XT, and when gaming+streaming on RX 500 series cards. An issue with high idle memory clocks on multi-monitor setups has been fixed. Incorrect power reporting by Radeon Software at full load, has been fixed. Foliage artifacting in "Arma 3" and "Wreckfest" have been fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.10.1 beta

Stephanie Brenham, Team Lead Programmer for Ubisoft's upcoming AAA Far Cry 6, recently spoke to WCCFTech on the upcoming Far Cry installment. Stephanie went into some detail regarding the graphics and performance options, and an interesting fact that surfaced was that neither Sony's PS5 nor Microsoft's Xbox Series consoles will feature ray tracing enabled on their respective versions of the game. Apparently, ray tracing will be a PC-exclusive feature, as console versions of the game are targeting higher render resolution and more fluid framerates over expensive graphics options such as ray tracing. And even on PC, it'll be a hybrid form of it, and not a full implementation: ray tracing is supported for both shadows and reflections, but Ubisoft opted for a hybrid approach here, marrying traditional rendering with ray tracing so as to improve performance in mainstream PC hardware.

"Ray tracing is a PC-only feature," Stephanie Brenham said. "On console, our objective has been to take advantage of new hardware capabilities, optimizing performance targeting 4K and achieving 60 FPS." This does somewhat fall in the face of performance expectations set by both Sony and Microsoft; both companies made (and still make) extensive use of ray tracing support on the marketing campaigns for their consoles. However, as we've seen in the past, enabling ray tracing comes with severe performance penalties in even the latest and greatest PC hardware (sometimes not to best effect, even), which still outclasses even the latest consoles' powerful innards (compared to their predecessors, of course).

CORSAIR, a world leader in high-performance gear for gamers, is delighted to announce the continuation of its partnership with leading video game publisher Ubisoft, bringing immersive in-game RGB lighting integration for all CORSAIR iCUE RGB devices to the latest installment of the popular Far Cry franchise: Far Cry 6. Players can experience exclusive dynamic lighting effects that convey the action not just through the screen, but across their entire iCUE setup as well.

Far Cry 6 welcomes you to Yara, a tropical paradise frozen in time. Far Cry 6 immerses players into the adrenaline-filled world of a modern-day guerrilla revolution. As dictator of Yara, Antón Castillo is intent on restoring his nation back to its former glory by any means, with his son, Diego, following in his bloody footsteps. Playing as local Yaran Dani Rojas, join revolutionary group Libertad and fight your way to Esperanza to take down Antón Castillo and his oppressive regime.

AMD today in a blog post announced several updates to the FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology, its performance enhancement rivaling NVIDIA DLSS, which lets gamers dial up performance with minimal loss to image quality. To begin with, the company released the source code of the technology to the public under its GPUOpen initiative, under the MIT license. This makes it tremendously easy (and affordable) for game developers to implement the tech. Inspecting the source, we find that FSR relies heavily on a multi-pass Lanczos algorithm for image upscaling. Next up, we learn that close to two dozen games are already in the process of receiving FSR support. Lastly, it's announced that Unity and Unreal Engine support FSR.

AMD broadly detailed how FSR works in its June 2021 announcement of the technology. FSR sits within the render pipeline of a game, where an almost ready lower-resolution frame that's been rendered, tone-mapped, and anti-aliased, is processed by FSR in a two-pass process implemented as a shader, before the high-resolution output is passed on to post-processing effects that introduce noise (such as film-grain). HUD and other in-game text (such as subtitles), are natively rendered at the target (higher) resolution and applied post render. The FSR component makes two passes—upscaling, and sharpening. We learn from the source code that the upscaler is based on the Lanczos algorithm, which was invented in 1979. Media PC enthusiasts will know Lanczos from MadVR, which has offered various movie upscaling algorithms in the past. AMD's implementation of Lanczos-2 is different than the original—it skips the expensive sin(), rcp() and sqrt() instructions and implements them in a faster way. AMD also added additional logic to avoid the ringing effects that are often observed on images processed with Lanczos.

Not to be outdone in comparison to almost all other AAA game releases in recent times, Far Cry 6 has recently been delayed from its February 18th release to May 25th 2021. However, that extra time may come to serve the game nicely, in that it may allow for all the planned features to be integrated. As part of AMD's partner showcase, Ubisoft has revealed that Far Cry 6 will make extensive use of DirectX 12 Ultimate features, featuring raytracing, AMD's Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), as well as Hybrid SSR (Stochastic Screen Space Reflections).

Ubisoft's head of 3D programming Oleksandr Polishchuk had this to say: "We were very impressed with the latest AMD technologies and joined forces to bring FidelityFX CAS, DXR raytracing and Variable Rate Shading to Far Cry 6. We are working together to ensure a smooth 4K viewing experience. This requires a lot of bandwidth, memory, and a Radeon RX 6000 with Infinity Cache that can handle it easily while maintaining high FPS rates." Check out the AMD partner showcase video below.

Ubisoft has been a major proponent of Google Stadia since release announcing plans to integrate uPlay+ and was the first major publisher to release a new game on the platform. Ubisoft has recently announced plans to bring eight older titles to Stadia in the coming weeks, these games include; Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs 2, Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Assassin's Creed Unity, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Far Cry New Dawn, and Far Cry 5. These titles are in addition to major new releases such as Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Far Cry 6 which are set to launch in the coming months. A variety of smaller Ubisoft games are also coming soon to Stadia, including Just Dance 2021, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, and Riders Republic.

"Our country is like this grenade… you must clutch our people nice and tight or we all go boom." - Antón Castillo. Today during Ubisoft Forward, Ubisoft announced that Far Cry 6 is currently in development and will release February 18, 2021 on Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Stadia and the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store on Windows PC, as well as on UPLAY+, the Ubisoft subscription service.

With performances from renowned actor and Emmy Award Nominee Giancarlo Esposito (Better Call Saul, The Boys, The Mandalorian) joined by Anthony Gonzalez (Coco), a score created by film and television composer Pedro Bromfman (Narcos), and an opening sequence directed by Emmy Award winner Patrick Clair (Westworld, True Detective), Far Cry 6 brings in Hollywood-calibre talent to bolster the narrative experience.