Microsoft Studios' latest entry to the Forza racing series, Forza Horizon 4, launches on PC and XBOX October 2, 2018. In a nice change of pace from the norm these days, a free demo has been released for trial on both platforms. Those interested will have to navigate the Microsoft store, however, as this will join the other Microsoft exclusives in only being available for purchase there and nowhere else. Initial impressions of the demo are positive from media outlets in general, although there were also videos out that showed the game still has random bugs a few weeks out from launch. PC Gamer also shares more details on the demo, and the game alike, which is worth a read if you are a fan of the series.

The demo also included an benchmark mode that offers useful information beyond just an average FPS number. Indeed, we see also a timeline on how the CPU and GPU fared throughout the length of the benchmark, a stutter count, whether the GPU was in a limiting situation or not, and how far off the achieved frame rate was compared to the target number (which can be left unlocked). Initial results from MotoGamesTVon YouTube show an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X-based system netting an average of 57 FPS at 4K under Ultra settings, with a similar system netting over 75 FPS in Forza Motorsports 7 from last year. The demo is impressive looking on PC, and we remain curious if a driver update will help gain more performance.

Turn 10, developers of one of the world's most renowned racing game franchises in Forza, today announced that they will be removing Lootbox-style mechanics from the game. This marks another high-tier developer abandoning this sort of business model in wake of the controversy - and legal crossfire - they entail. Some developers have taken steps to remove them from their games entirely - such as Monolith Studios' Middle-Earth: Shadow of War - and others that skirt and skim as and where they can - such as Valve with its selective removal of these systems. Read after the break for Turn 10's remarks regarding this decision.

AMD today released the latest version Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. Version 18.3.3 beta is the third release for this month, and features a major API update, in addition to game optimization. The drivers introduce support for the Vulkan 1.1 API. In addition, the drivers provide optimization for "Sea of Thieves," and "A Way Out." An intermittent stuttering issue was fixed with "Forza Motorsport 7." A system hang seen on "Star Wars Battlefront 2," on multi-GPU systems, was fixed. Also fixed are flickering and objects disappearing from the scene, with "Final Fantasy XV."DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.3 Beta

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA today released the GeForce 387.92 Game Ready Graphics Drivers, which presents a more comprehensive package than most Game Ready drivers. This time, the changes aren't mostly limited to new, upcoming games support, though that's still part of the package. On that front, you can count on these drivers being optimized for the upcoming Middle-earth: Shadow of War and The Evil Within 2, as well as Forza Motorsport 7, on which NVIDIA expects anywhere between 15% and 25% performance improvement (which should help improve NVIDIA's situation). On the VR space, this driver package brings the optimal experience for 4A Games' Artika.1 (if you recognize the studios' name, it's probably because they're the ones behind the Metro game series.

Also interesting, however, are the feature updates that come with this driver package. Fast Sync is now supported for SLI configurations, though Maxwell architecture users should steer clear of 4K resolution, which isn't supported for this feature. There's also NVIDIA GameStream support for HDR under Windows 10. On the renderer side, we see added support for OpenGL 4.6, as well as for DirectX Intermediate Language (DXIL). This includes full support for DirectX 12 Shader Model 6.0 ( for features such as Wavemath), and the DirectX Shader Compiler, though it's only supported on NVIDIA Kepler and later GPUs. There are also some improvements to full-screen Vulkan applications, though this particular change may cause more errors while leaving and entering full-screen mode (Alt-Tab). Grab the drivers from the link below right here on TPU, and find the change-log after the break.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 387.92 Game Ready Drivers

In an interesting turn of events, AMD's latest flagship videocard, RX Vega 64, has seen a gaming performance analysis from fellow publication computerbase.de, which brought about some interesting - and somewhat inspiring findings. In their test system, which was comprised of a 4.3 GHz Intel Core i7-6850K (6 cores), paired with 16 GB of DDR4-3000 memory in quad-channel mode, and Crimson Relive 17.9.3 / GeForce 385.69 drivers, the publication found that the Vega 64 was outperforming the GTX 1080 Ti by upwards of 23%, and that percentage increases to 32% when compared to NVIDIA's GTX 1080. The test wasn't based on the in-game benchmark, so as to avoid specifically-optimized scenarios.