Intel has released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics drivers, the version 101.6083 Beta. The new driver update brings Game On support on Intel Arc A-series GPUs and Intel Core Ultra CPUs with Intel Arc GPUs for Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Expansion, DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO, and Silent Hill 2 games, increases performance in games like God of War Ragnarök, as well as fixes an issue seen in FC25, where Arc A-series GPUs may exhibit intermittent green corruption in the game menu and during gameplay.

According to Intel's release notes, the new driver update improves performance in God of War Ragnarök game by up to 9 percent average at 1080p resolution with Ultra settings and up to 34 percent average at 1440p resolution with Ultra settings. There are still several known issues which will hopefully be fixed with the next WHQL driver update.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6083 Beta

God of War Ragnarök has been one of the most highly anticipated PC launches in recent history, although the launch has been somewhat controversial. After launching on PC via Steam and Epic Games on September 19, players discovered that the single-player narrative-driven action-adventure game would require an online PSN account in order to play. This account requirement somewhat predictably resulted in significant backlash, which, in turn, resulted in a third-party mod to remove the account requirement.

Shortly after the launch of God of War Ragnarök, the game's Steam page became inundated with negative reviews because of the PlayStation Network account required to play the game. Less than a week after launch, God of War's rating on Steam is a solid "Mixed," with only 69% positive reviews. That is compared to Metacritic's user reviews that place the PS5 version of the game at 8.1/10. Shortly after the review bombs started, though, a free mod called NoPSSDK appeared on Nexus Mods and GitHub that removes the PSN account requirement from God of War Ragnarök.

Today Intel released its latest Arc GPU graphics drivers, with version 101.6077 beta hitting our servers. This latest version brings game-ready support for titles like Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Final Fantasy XVI, Frostpunk 2, and God of War Ragnarok. Besides adding support for latest titles, the 101.6077 beta drivers also fixed issues like corruption on certain reflective surfaces during gameplay of The Last of Us Part I (DX12), and corrupted lines on certain textures during gameplay of Age of Empires IV (DX12). Interestingly, few issues persist like Diablo IV (DX12) intermittently crashing while toggling Ray Tracing settings during gameplay, and Doom Eternal (VK) exhibiting intermittent flickering corruption in the game menu and during gameplay. Few more notes are included in the changelog and known issues, which can be seen below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6077 Beta.

More than 600 games and applications feature RTX technologies, and each week new games integrating NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex and advanced ray-traced effects are released or announced, delivering the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX players. This week, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Enotria: The Last Song, FINAL FANTASY XVI, and God of War Ragnarök all launch with day-one support for DLSS 3, maximizing frame rates for GeForce RTX gamers! And Frostpunk 2 arrives September 20th with DLSS 3. Read on to learn more.

God of War Ragnarök Arrives September 19th, Supporting DLSS 3 & Reflex
From Santa Monica Studio and brought to PC in partnership with Jetpack Interactive comes God of War Ragnarök, an epic and heartfelt journey that follows Kratos and Atreus as they struggle with holding on and letting go. The sequel to the critically acclaimed God of War (2018), God of War Ragnarök picks up with Fimbulwinter well underway. Kratos and Atreus must journey to each of the Nine Realms in search of answers as Odin's forces in Asgard prepare for a prophesied battle that will end the world. Along the way, they will explore stunning, mythical landscapes, and face fearsome enemies in the form of Norse gods and monsters. As the threat of Ragnarök grows ever closer, Kratos and Atreus must choose between the safety of their family and the safety of the realms.

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

Welcome to the second half of September and what is nothing but a jam packed week of new game releases. The week kicks off with an almost two-year old PlayStation game that has something to do with Norse mythology gets launched on PC, although it does come with the DLC included and it's not capped at 60 FPS. As for the rest of this week's new games, we have a packed week starting with a lot of spell casting, another PlayStation game, but this time we're taking a JRPG of the highest rank, which is followed by a souls-like RPG game. Next up we have Dr Dr, which oddly enough isn't German at all, followed by another highly anticipated game that involves frozen punks. If there's nothing you like this week, you're most likely not a gamer.

God of War Ragnarök / This week's AAA release / Thursday 19 September
The sequel to the critically acclaimed God of War (2018), God of War Ragnarök picks up with Fimbulwinter well underway. Kratos and Atreus must journey to each of the Nine Realms in search of answers as Odin's forces in Asgard prepare for a prophesied battle that will end the world. Along the way, they will explore stunning, mythical landscapes, and face fearsome enemies in the form of Norse gods and monsters. As the threat of Ragnarök grows ever closer, Kratos and Atreus must choose between the safety of their family and the safety of the realms. Steam link

NVIDIA has released its latest GeForce WHQL Game Ready drivers, version 561.09, which brings optimizations for FINAL FANTASY XVI and God of War Ragnarök games, including support for DLSS 3 technology. It also adds launch support for EA SPORTS FC 25 and Frostpunk 2 games. The new GeForce 561.09 WHQL Game Ready drivers also add new GeForce Optimal Settings for Black Myth: Wukong, F1 Manager 2024, and Star Wars Outlaws games. Unfortunately, it does not fix any previously seen gaming bugs, but it does add several general bug fixes, including a fix for GeForce Experience where Performance Monitoring overlay could stop refreshing GPU information, a fix for NVIDIA App, where game filters may be missing when invoking the NVIDIA Overlay in-game, and a fix for performance issues in some workloads with Chaos V-Ray. Interestingly, there are no listed open issues with the latest driver either.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 561.09 WHQL Game Ready

A long time before the debates, the director of God of War, Cory Barlog, already had his eyes set on the Venom-famed actor Tom Hardy to play Kratos in a live-action adaptation of the God of War game. In a video that aired six years ago, Cory Barlog expressed his thoughts on who should play Kratos on the silver screen. God of War is one of the most popular gaming titles, making waves since 2005.

Now, the God of War team is planning a live-action adaptation. Although it's still underway, the debate is fierce with some suggesting ex-WWE superstar Dwayne Johnson for his masculine looks and aggressive temperament, and others, the God of War's Kratos' voice actor Christopher Judge. Some even suggest Jason Momoa plays the role.

Team Asobi's Astro Bot was released for PlayStation 5 on September 6, 2024, and it received many positive reviews and critics from fans. Recently, Team Asobi president Nicholas Doucet explained that he directly approached God of War's Cory Barlog and Eric Williams about getting Kratos' cameo for the game. And was surprised to see they were excited about what he was going to do with Kratos in Astro Bot.

Cory Barlog explained that for a dramatic game like the God of War IP, you have to be very careful with the world, and he was excited to see what Team Asobi would do with Kratos in Astro Bot, something different from the way it is in God of War at least. Nicholas said their expectations were to get 50 cameos, but they were shocked that they almost got everyone. The PlayStation partners expressed their support for Astro Bot and were excited to see their characters used in the game.

God of War Ragnarök will be coming to PC on September 19, 2024! Santa Monica Studio's development partner for God of War (2018) on PC, Jetpack Interactive, is back to help deliver the PC version of God of War Ragnarök. Alongside the release date, we'd also like to share a selection of the features that will be available (Account for PlayStation Network is required).

Unlocked framerates
Experience the epic conclusion of Kratos and Atreus' journey in the Norse saga at peak performance. Unlocked framerates and the option of true 4K resolution expand the full potential of the cinematic no-cut camera as you travel through the stunning vistas of the Nine Realms to do battle against deadly foes in the forms of Norse gods and monsters.

We want you to have the happiest of holidays for 2023, so we've put together the most festive sale. It has thousands of discounted games, limitless 33% Epic Coupons, an Epic Rewards boost to 10%, 17 free games, and free cosmetics for everyone. The event runs from today (Dec. 13, 2023) 11 AM ET (4 PM GMT / 5 PM CET), to Jan. 10, 2024 11 AM ET (4 PM GMT / 5 PM CET) Read about the highlights below!

Thousands of titles on sale, limitless 33% Epic Coupons, and an Epic Rewards boost to 10%!
In addition to the thousands of discounted titles, from today (Dec. 13, 2023) 11 AM ET (4 PM GMT / 5 PM CET), to Jan. 10, 2024 11 AM ET (4 PM GMT / 5 PM CET), any eligible transactions at, above, or adding up to $14.99 or higher will have a 33% Epic Coupon automatically applied at checkout (see Terms and Conditions). The Epic Coupon is limitless, so you'll receive one following each eligible transaction completed for the duration of the event. We'll also be boosting our Epic Rewards program to 10% for the duration of Holiday Sale.

Dear players - thank you for the tremendous support we received so far on Atlas Fallen! From your enthusiastic comments on our video teasers online and in person at PAX EAST to the positive previews from critics, we're grateful and honored to have you excited to play our game. Our goal has always been to create a memorable RPG experience in a unique setting, with exciting gameplay and the option for fully playable seamless co-op with a friend.

We'd love to give the game some extra time which will allow us to deliver the best possible version of Atlas Fallen. To achieve this, we have made the difficult decision to delay the worldwide launch of Atlas Fallen to AUGUST 10, 2023.

Atlas Fallen, the epic fantasy action-RPG from Focus Entertainment's studio Deck13 Interactive, is excited to open pre-orders following the recent announcement of its May 16 release date. Get a feel of the high sensations to come in the game where you battle legendary creatures in super-powered combat with today's captivating Gameplay Reveal Trailer.

Take on a heroic journey through a variety of breath-taking environments, swiftly gliding through the desert landscapes of a vast sand-covered world. Explore ancient ruins and unearth the mysteries and secrets of a fallen society. Fight a corrupt god and extraordinary beasts thanks to the divine power of your shape-shifting weapon. Unlock powerful skills and abilities to build a unique move-set and rise as the champion who will liberate the people of Atlas.

Steam's Spring 2023 sale has kicked off, offering a bunch of PC games at discount. To celebrate its first year anniversary, Valve is also giving a 10 percent discount for the Steam Deck during the Spring sale. There are plenty of great titles on sale, and some of the popular include Forza Horizon 5, God of War, Battlefield 2042, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Total War Warhammer, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more.

There are several franchises on discount as well, including The Witcher, Battlefield, Borderlands, Fallout, Resident Evil, The Elder Scrolls, Civilization, Hitman, Doom, Far Cry, and others. As noted, the Steam Deck is also on sale with 10 percent discount. This means that if you are in the US, you can get the base version for just $359 while the 512 GB version is down to $584.

Mythical landscapes and fearsome Norse gods and monsters lay in wait as Kratos and Atreus explore the Nine Realms in the highly anticipated God of War Ragnarök, coming this November. The follow up to PlayStation's critically acclaimed God of War title is certain to capture the imagination and excitement of gamers, and it has inspired Seagate to offer a new special edition external hard disk drive (HDD) Game Drive featuring one-of-a-kind artwork inspired by the game.

Adding to Seagate's expanding line of PlayStation storage for gamers, the new officially licensed Seagate special edition God of War Ragnarök Game Drive for PlayStation 5 (PS5) and PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles features a stunning design based on the title and customizable LED RGB light. The external 2 TB HDD expands storage capacity letting players spend less time managing console storage and more time gaming.

May 12, 2022, was a big day for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) -- DEATHLOOP was the first game to be updated with FSR 2.0, and we were thrilled to see the incredible response to the next generation of our open-source upscaling technology. Now we are extremely excited to tell you that two more games have been updated to add support for FSR 2.0, Farming Simulator 22 by GIANTS Software and God of War by Santa Monica Studio and PlayStation Studios.

FSR 2.0 is the next-level AMD temporal upscaling technology designed to deliver similar or better than native image quality and boost framerates in supported games across a wide range of products and platforms. Along with the two new FSR 2.0 game updates above, five more games have now joined the list of upcoming FSR 2.0 titles - Abyss World, Hitman 3, Rescue Party: Live!, Super People, and The Callisto Protocol. In addition, more games have been updated to support FSR 1.0.

Last week, Acer unveiled its first two consumer implementations of its SpatialLabs 3D displays and the company is demoing its SpatialLabs technology at Computex this week, which gave TPU a chance to get some hands, or rather eyes on time. At the time Acer released the press release, it wasn't really clear how these displays work and we can now provide a lot more details on what makes these displays so special. The displays rely on a special lenticular lens, a pair of eye-tracking cameras and some very clever software algorithms. When the 3D mode is disabled, it looks just as sharp as any other display and there weren't any visible distortions or other distractions on the panel. Acer had multiple demos at its booth, of which one was an interactive demo with hand tracking, where you could pick items out of a treasure chest. Another demo showed various 3D renders and in both cases, the objects were protruding out of the display, as well as extending inwards and it was very convincing 3D demos, especially considering no glasses were involved.

The demos that matter more to the TPU readership should be the game demos, of which the main one was God of War running on a desktop PC. Acer claims to support some 500 game titles today and although a custom launcher is required to get the 3D effect in games, Acer told us that games from Steam, Epic etc. should work just fine via its launcher. Here the 3D effect is more of a depth effect, since unless the game in question incorporates support for the display, there's no way to get objects in the game to protrude out of the display. The game did get that extra 3D dimension that older solutions that rely on glasses had, but the overall feeling was very different. Sadly there's no way of presenting what it was like using the display, but it was very much an impressive experience.

A Steam Deck enthusiast has done what Steam would not (at least not in the first rendition of its popular Steam Deck handheld console): he went and added an external GPU to the mix. The owner of the ETA Prime YouTube channel managed to increase the Steam Deck's APU-powered graphical oomph with a much more powerful AMD RX 6900 XT graphics card. To do so required sacrifices however: since the SteamDeck doesn't feature a proper Thunderbolt 3/4 connector, ETA Prime had to remove the Steam Deck's SSD from its M.2 port, instead mounting a special M.2 to PCIe adapter in the SSD slot itself.

This, of course, required that installed games be run off memory cards, which generally offer lower speeds (a less than stellar experience) than the onboard SSD. It also required butchering the Steam Deck's OS by replacing it with Windows 11. But it did allow the Steam Deck's APU to tap onto power otherwise unavailable to it, unlocking playable framerates with maxed out detail settings on games such as God of War, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, and others.

AMD released the year's first Radeon Software Adrenalin software update. Version 22.1.1 comes with optimization for "Monster Hunter Rise," and "God of War," with up to 7% performance increase measured at 4K Ultra settings with the RX 6900 XT, compared to the previous 21.12.1 drivers. A handful issues were also fixed. To begin with, high idle memory clocks noticed on machines with multiple high-resolution monitors, has been fixed. Power Tuning components of a saved tuning profile not correctly loading following a Radeon Software update, has been fixed. Visual corruption noticed with "Halo Infinite" when zoomed-in, on machines with products such as the RX 5600 XT, has been fixed. Flickering noticed in "Fortnite" with RX 6000 series graphics cards in DirectX 12 mode with Radeon Boost enabled, as been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.1.1

According to some testing performed by the team behind RPCS3, a free and open-source emulation software for Sony's PlayStation 3, Intel's Alder Lake processors are enjoying a hefty performance boost when E-Cores is disabled. First of all, the Alder Lake processors feature a hybrid configuration with high-performance P-cores and low-power E-cores. The P-cores are based on Golden Cove architecture and can execute AVX-512 instructions with ease. However, the AVX-512 boost is only applicable when E-cores are disabled as software looks at the whole package. Officially, Alder Lake processors don't support AVX-512, as the processor's little E-cores cannot execute AVX-512 instruction.

Thanks to the team behind the RPCS3 emulator, we have some information and tests that suggest that turning E-cores off gives a performance boost to the emulation speed and game FPS. With E-Cores disabled, and only P-cores left, the processor can execute AVX-512 and gets a higher ring ratio. This means that latency in the ring bus is presumably lower. The team benchmarked Intel Core i9-12900K, and Core i9-11900K processors clocked at 5.2 GHz for tests. The Alder Lake chip had disabled E-cores. In God of War: Ascension, the Rocket Lake processor produced 68 FPS, while Alder Lake produced 78 FPS, representing around 15% improvement.

Santa Monica Studio, a video game developer, seated in Los Angeles and owned by PlayStation Studios, is the creator of the highly successful game God of War. Today, the company announced that they would be releasing a God of War port for PC owners, entering a whole new market. The PC port of the game will allow thousands of players to enjoy the story of Kratos and his adventures with a considerable boost to graphics. According to a company announcement, the PC port will allow fine-tuning of graphics settings, including a range of new technologies to back it.

Some essential upgrades over the console port include native 4K rendering and an unlimited frame rate. The company stated that the ambient occlusion pipeline had been upgraded with GTAO and SSDO tech, creating unique visuals. In addition to that, the game will feature support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Reflex low-latency technology. For controllers, the game will feature support for Sony's DualSense and DualShock4 controllers. And last but not least, ultrawide gamers are in luck as well, as the game will support a 21:9 aspect ratio. The game is going to be available on January 14, 2022, on the Steam storefront.

For some PC visuals, check out the images and the video below.

It's confirmed: one of the most widely acclaimed games from the PS4 era is finally coming to your PC of choice early next year - January 14th, to be precise. The announcement was done by Sony via a blog post, quickly followed by a YouTube trailer (which you can watch below). A Steam store page has been made available since then; the game will be available for $49, and includes all previously-released digital content.

God of War on PC will be more than a straight PC port, according to Sony. The game will feature support for 21:9 resolution, various controller types, and will support a full 4K renderer for machines that have the required processing and graphics grunt. Sony also promises "a wide range of graphical presets and options so you can fine-tune your visual experience based on your setup. From higher resolution shadows and improved screen space reflections to enhancements to the ambient occlusion pipeline with GTAO and SSDO - God of War on the PC can create striking visual quality unique to the platform." Beyond that, Sony Santa Monica has been working closely with NVIDIA, and will be integrating the company's DLSS and Reflex technologies into the game - DLSS by itself should make a 4K output resolution much easier to achieve.