The Creative Assembly has released the system specifications for Three Kingdoms: Total War. It seems those with less powerful systems will still be able to enjoy this title with relative ease considering the minimum specifications reference an Intel i7-8550U, UHD Graphics 620, and 6 GB of system memory. With a system of this caliber, users can expect to run the game with low settings at 1280x720 while getting 25-35 FPS. Minimum specifications change somewhat when looking at dedicated graphics cards. The CPU requirement drops from an Intel i7 to a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, but only if the GPU is equal to or better than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850.

In regards to pushing the game at high or ultra settings. Users will need a slightly beefier system. For High at 1080p you're looking at needing an Intel i5-6600 or Ryzen 5 2600X with 8 GB of memory and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. All these considered these requirements are quite reasonable. Moving on to Ultra settings is where the requirements take a large jump with the Creative Assembly suggesting the use of an Intel i7-8700K, 8 GB of memory and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 or RTX 2060. Even with the large jump between high and ultra the fact remains these requirements are rather tame compared to some other AAA titles as of late.

AMD today released the latest version of their Radeon Adrenalin 2019 Drivers. Version 19.3.1 is game-ready for the release of Devil May Cry 5, promising an "up to 4%" performance improvement in that title, with a Vega 64 graphics card. High-profile fixes include fixes for Radeon WattMan on Radeon VII, mouse lag or system slowdown with one of multiple displays shut off, black screen issues with Acer's KG251Q display, and corrupted video on an HDR display. Follow the link below, and check after the break for the more complete listing of this driver release.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 19.3.1 Beta

AMD today released their latest Radeon Software Adrenaline 2019 Edition drivers. This latest beta, version 19.2.3, brings with it support for AMD Ryzen mobile processors with Vega graphics which see up to a 10% performance boost on average versus the 17.40 launch drivers. Titles included in the performance testing were; Destiny 2, Shadow of War, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Civilization 6, and the Witcher 3. Furthermore, various eSports title have seen performance gains of up to 17%, again when compared to the older 17.40 launch drivers. The games AMD used for testing were; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, Player Unknown's Battleground, and World of Warcraft. The only other performance gains specifically mentioned in this driver release is a 3% boost in Dirt Rally 2 on the Radeon RX Vega 64.

AMD has fixed a few issues with this release as well including player character outlines being stuck on screen after being revived in Battlefield V being the most significant fix. Otherwise, all other fixes or changes are related to AMD software or features such as ReLive wireless VR, FreeSync, and fan tuning. That said, a few prominent issues remain some of which have been around for some time like mouse lag on multi-monitor systems when one display is turned off. Other problems include Radeon WattMan not applying settings changes on the AMD Radeon VII. Meanwhile, the performance metrics overlay may fluctuate giving inaccurate readings on the previously mentioned Radeon VII. For full details, you can check the changelog after the break.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.2.3

NVIDIA has added new SKUs to its low power mobility graphics lineup. the MX230 and MX250 come in to replace The GeForce MX130 and MX150, but... there's really not that much of a performance improvement to justify the increase in the series' tier. Both solutions are based on Pascal, so there are no Turing performance uplifts at the execution level.

NVIDIA hasn't disclosed any CUDA core counts or other specifics on these chips; we only know that they are paired with GDDR 5 memory and feature Boost functionality for increased performance in particular scenarios. The strange thing is that NVIDIA's own performance scores compare their MX 130, MX150, and now MX230 and MX250 to Intel's UHD620 IGP part... and while the old MX150 was reported by NVIDIA as offering an up to 4x performance uplift compared to that Intel part, the new MX250 now claims an improvement of 3.5x the performance. Whether this is because of new testing methodology, or some other reason, only NVIDIA knows.

Intel is working to build up hype and awareness around its discrete graphics efforts, of which we're still to see more off besides Intel's continuous acquisition of AMD-based talent for that particular endeavor. It's relatively hard to build up enthusiasm for something other than the fact there is a third competitor entering the high-performance graphics card space; the rest is mostly rumors, speculations, and declared intentions.

Let me be the first to say that the two may not be directly related, but it is an awfully strong coincidence that both pieces of news come out on the same day. Indeed, earlier in the day AMD put out a press release (full release past the break) announcing "multiple organizational changes focused on strengthening the company's senior leadership team and accelerating growth." Several familiar names have been promoted within the company to be in charge of more products and visions across their CPU and GPU business units. Mark Papermaster, for example, is now an executive VP as well as CTO of AMD, and the company has also hired in new talent, including industry veteran Sandeep Chennakeshu, as executive VP of "Computing and Graphics responsible for the company's high-performance PC, gaming and semi-custom businesses".

Perhaps all this re-structuring and new hiring comes in handy, at a time when we have seen several people leave AMD for Intel or otherwise. Indeed, shortly after that press release went out, word got to us that James Prior, Senior Product Manager for AMD, and an ardent employee for nearly 6 years, is no longer working for the company. We have no word yet on what is next for James, but it was more than a small surprise to know that the person you just spoke with at CES, and had a long conversation of AMD's desktop processors, is gone just like that. We have known James for many years now, and can attest to his work ethics as well as being a great guy all-round. We wish him the best in his future ventures, and look forward to also seeing how AMD's re-structuring turns out.

Oh hey remember this news post from July last year? Damien Triolet's work history off-late has been one of many such recent stories. These tend to begin with AMD, and RTG in particular, getting a cash infusion and growing in 2016 and 2017 to where they hired some of the best engineers and marketing personnel from the industry- media or otherwise. This follows a more stagnant GPU division in 2017-2018, Intel deciding to dip their toes back into the discrete GPU market, and in turn.. persuading many to cross over to the blue side.

According to Damien's LinkedIn and FaceBook profiles, he has started working for Intel from November 26, 2018 in a technical marketing position in their Gaming and Graphics division, a role analogous to his from his days at AMD. Presumably, he joins Raja Koduri and the many others who have followed this exact path of late, and everyone remains curious as to what the finished retail product will be. In the meantime, we here at TechPowerUp wish him the best again for his new venture. We had the pleasure of interacting with Damien on multiple occasions in the past, some as colleagues in the media giving hardware manufacturers a hard time, and others when he was hosting us as an AMD employee. His tenure at Hardware.fr has been inspiring to us, with excellent reviews that no doubt were what caught the eyes of AMD in the first place, and Intel will definitely gain from his presence.

Today Apple has introduced its new iPad Pro and has resurrected both the MacBook Air, now with Retina display, and the Mac mini. In addition to all these new announcements, there's another one the company didn't talk about at the event: an update for the MacBook Pro that will now feature AMD Radeon Pro Vega graphics chips. According to Apple, this will allow a 60% improvement in performance over the Radeon Pro 560X, the most powerful GPUs available to date for the MacBook Pro.

These professional-oriented chips are manufactured on a 14 nm process, this is not the 7 nanometer Vega 20 that's expected to be released later this year for the enterprise space. The GPU is codenamed "Vega 12" and comes with HBM2 memory, which helps reduce space requirements in a notebook, compared to traditional GDDR5 memory. Vega Pro 20 in the MacBook Pro has 20 CUs (1,280 shaders), Vega Pro 16 has 16 CUs (1,024 shaders). Both MacBook Pro configurations will be available on November 14th at a price yet to be determined.

Back on September 27th, MSI talked candidly with PConline at the MSI Gaming New Appreciation Conference, in Shanghai. Multiple MSI executives were available to answer questions regarding products, launches, and potential issues. The first question asked was about the brewing US-Chinese trade war and if it will affect prices of graphics cards and CPUs. To which, Liao Wei, Deputy General Manager of MSI Global Multimedia Business Unit, and MSI Headquarters Graphics Card Products gave an actual answer. Stating that the since NVIDIA's GPU core is handled by a TSMC in Taiwan and memory is handled by Samsung and Hynix in South Korea and the United States respectively, there is little chance of further graphics card price hikes. However CPU side prices may increase on the Intel side, however, AMD is expected to be unaffected.

With update 2.6.6174, released today, 3DMark now includes a new benchmark dubbed Night Raid. This latest addition to the popular 3DMark suite offers DX12 performance testing for laptops, tablets and other devices with integrated graphics. It also offers full support for ARM based processors in the latest always-connected PCs running Microsoft's Windows 10 on ARM. Users running 3DMark Basic Edition which is free will have access to this latest addition upon installing the update.

The Night Raid benchmark continues the trend of offering two graphics tests and a CPU test. While not as visually stunning as previous entries this is to be expected considering it is targeted at integrated graphics processors and entry level systems. Even so, it makes use of numerous graphical features with graphics test 1 including; dynamic reflections, ambient occlusion, and deferred rendering. Graphics test 2 features; tessellation, complex particle systems and depth of field effects with forward-rendering. Finally, the CPU test will measures performance through a combination of physics simulation, occlusion culling, and procedural generation.

AMD today released version 18.9.2 of their Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Graphics Drivers. This update brings with it improved or added support for F1 2018 (up to 3% faster performance on Vega 64 at 2560x1440); Fortnite (up to 5% faster performance at 1080p under a Vega 64); Shadow of the Tomb Raider (up to 4% faster performance on Vega 64 at 2560x1440); and Star Control: Origins, with up to 14% faster performance with a Vega 64 running at 4K.

Fixed issues include some particle corruption seen in Star Control: Origins. Catch up with known issues after the break. You can download these drivers right here from your favorite website in the galaxy.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.9.2

AMD today announced a reimagined family of AMD Athlon desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics that have been optimized for everyday PC users: the AMD Athlon 200GE, Athlon 220GE, and Athlon 240GE processor. Combining the high-performance x86 "Zen" core and "Vega] graphics architectures in a versatile System-on-Chip (SOC) design, the Athlon desktop processors offer responsive and reliable computing for a wide range of experiences, from day-to-day needs like web browsing and video streaming through more advanced workloads like high-definition PC gaming. Complementing this news, AMD announced the availability of the commercial-grade Athlon PRO 200GE desktop processor, along with three 2nd Gen Ryzen PRO desktop processor models for the commercial, enterprise, and the public sector: the Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X, Ryzen 7 PRO 2700, and Ryzen 5 PRO 2600 processors. With these new introductions, AMD now offers a top-to-bottom line-up of professional-grade computing solutions for experiences that range from premium content creation to advanced multitasking and office productivity.

"We are proud to expand our successful "Zen" core-based consumer and commercial product portfolios today with the addition of AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon PRO, and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen PRO desktop processors. The new Athlon desktop processors, now incorporating the advanced "Zen" core and "Vega"3 graphics architectures, energize a legendary processor brand in AMD Athlon - a brand that consumers and PC enthusiasts alike trusted throughout nearly two decades of innovation," said Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, Client Compute, AMD. "Additionally, we are continuing to offer business PC users more processing power than we ever have before with the launch of 2nd Gen Ryzen PRO desktop processors into the commercial market."

Right in time for SIGGRAPH, the world's leading conference for computer graphics, the people around Raja Koduri and Chris Hook have posted a video on Twitter, which shows a teaser for their upcoming graphics cards, that are scheduled to become available in 2020.The video is produced in a style that's typical for what Chris Hook has been releasing at AMD, too. It starts with a history lesson, praising Intel's achievements in the graphics department, and then continues to promise that in 2020, Intel discrete graphics cards "will be set free, and that's just the beginning".

In the comments for the video, Chris Hook, who left AMD to join Intel as head of marketing for their graphics department said: "Will take time and effort to be the first successful entrant into the dGPU segment in 25 years, but we have some incredible talent at Intel, and above all, a passion for discrete graphics."

You can find the video here.

NVIDIA today reinvented computer graphics with the launch of the NVIDIA Turing GPU architecture. The greatest leap since the invention of the CUDA GPU in 2006, Turing features new RT Cores to accelerate ray tracing and new Tensor Cores for AI inferencing which, together for the first time, make real-time ray tracing possible.

These two engines - along with more powerful compute for simulation and enhanced rasterization - usher in a new generation of hybrid rendering to address the $250 billion visual effects industry. Hybrid rendering enables cinematic-quality interactive experiences, amazing new effects powered by neural networks and fluid interactivity on highly complex models.

Yesterday, a story surfaced on how Manli corporation had seemingly spilled the beans on NVIDIA's next-gen graphics cards lineup. A submission registration appeared online where the company was registering GTX 2070, GTX 2080, and GA104 and GA104-400 codenames for upcoming products - which obviously paved the way for speculation on those being the real, next-gen NVIDIA graphics solutions, in detriment of the on-and-off GTX 1100 series.

Today, Manli has sent out a media-wide email denying that the company had anything to do with the submission, and are actively investigating how, when, and why this happened. Still, the fact remains that the submission to the Eurasian Economic Union did happen. It remains to be seen whether this is a defensive, last-ditch effort to try and control media and PR damage to an impending announcement, or just an exceedingly clever ploy from a non Manli-affiliated party.

As independent third-party experts in the software quality assurance and testing industry for over 20 years, QA Consultants has conducted over 5,000+ mission-critical projects and has extensive testing experience and depth in various industries. Based in Toronto, Ontario, QA Consultants is the largest on-shore software quality assurance company, with a 30,000 sq. ft., industry-grade facility called The Test Factory.

AMD today announced key promotions that extend senior-level focus on company growth. AMD named "Zen" chief architect Mike Clark an AMD corporate fellow; promoted Darren Grasby to senior vice president of global Computing and Graphics sales and AMD president for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and promoted Robert Gama to senior vice president and chief human resources officer.

"We believe the opportunities ahead of us are tremendous as we execute on our long-term strategy and exciting product roadmap," said Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "As leaders, Mike, Darren, and Robert have made significant contributions to our success so far, and these promotions elevate their impact at AMD as we accelerate company growth going forward."

DigiTimes, citing "sources from the upstream supply chain", is reporting an expected decrease in graphics card pricing for July. This move comes as a way for suppliers to reduce the inventory previously piled in expectation of continued demand from cryptocurrency miners and gamers in general. It's the economic system at work, with its strengths and weaknesses: now that demand has waned, somewhat speculative price increases of yore are being axed by suppliers to spur demand. This also acts as a countermeasure to an eventual flow of graphics cards from ceasing-to-be miners to the second-hand market, which would further place a negative stress on retailers' products.

Alongside this expected 20% retail price drop for graphics cards, revenue estimates for major semiconductor manufacturer TSMC and its partners is being revised towards lower than previously-projected values, as demand for graphics and ASIC chips is further reduced. DigiTimes' sources say that the worldwide graphics card market now has an inventory of several million units that is being found hard to move (perhaps because the products are already ancient in the usual hardware tech timeframes), and that Nvidia has around a million GPUs still pending logistical distribution. Almost as an afterthought, DigiTimes also adds that NVIDIA has decided to postpone launch of their next-gen products (both 12 nm and then, forcibly, 7 nm) until supply returns to safe levels.

As the mining craze seems to have hit a steaming wall alongside the current contraction in the crypto market (which has almost all cryptocurrencies redlining), Gigabyte is revising its graphics card shipment expectations for 2Q18. This isn't a sudden move, mind you: the "cryptocurrency mining accelerator market" has been slowing its ludicrous demand for some time now. However, Gigabyte expects the slowdown to continue and maybe even become steeper: a 20% reduction in its overall shipment expectations for 2Q18, from 1.2M units down to 1M, and a 10% reduction in ASP (Average Selling Price) do speak to this decline in demand. As a result of this expected decrease, Gigabyte will once again turn its marketing efforts towards gaming products and usage scenarios for their graphics cards, diverting funds that had been allocated to mining.

Don't worry though: Gigabyte is doing great. 1Q18 saw the company post record profits higher than the first half of 2017 - 1Q18 profits rose 91% sequentially and skyrocketed five-fold YoY to NT$1.61 billion (US$52.75 million). The company's revenue for graphics cards hit an all-time high of 49% per graphics card sold (a result of increased ASP). the company's motherboard business should see the same results as the previous year - a fault of Intel's increased delays in launching a new, compelling product line-up. Who would have thunk - Intel, the company that's always launching new platforms and chipsets and ending motherboard support for new CPUs.

According to DigiTimes, the entire AIB partner and graphics card supply channel is gearing up to an expected demand decrease for graphics cards in the second half of 2018. This marks an expectation on the continuation of the downward trend since December 2017, a time where Bitcoin (and as such, alternate cryptocurrencies) were at all-time highs. As profits decrease, difficulty increases, and mining players offload their graphics cards to still-interested buyers of their hardware, the market's ability to trade existing graphics cards and absorb new inventory is dwindling. Naturally, this reduced demand means that prices for new graphics cards have also been decreasing and somewhat stabilizing towards pre-mining boom prices.

However, producers of graphics cards obviously don't want to give away their record-high profits in their entirety; and they're showing some reluctance, some "pricing memory" on their graphics cards, maintaining gross margins in the 20% area, double that of pre-mining pricing. As such, graphics card makers are again abandoning the mining boom as a source of stable revenue, looking to other solutions (such as servers, datacenter acceleration and such, DigiTimes reports in the case of TUL). Another thing that would certainly help graphics card manufacturers in keeping up high demand and profits, of course, would be the impending release of a new NVIDIA architecture... At least for those that have AIB status with the company.

Job postings on LinkedIn reveal that Samsung is looking to hire a ton of graphics chip engineers to bring forward their own GPU design. In the past the company has licensed GPU IP from companies like ARM and Imagination Technologies, but these designs come with cost, low performance and low flexibility. With Samsung needing graphics IP for a large range of products like phones, tablets and exploring options in markets like automotive, machine learning and AI, it's not surprising that the company is now looking into rolling their own GPU - from scratch as indicated by a recruiter's posting:

"This is Samsung's proprietary IP. We will define the ISA, the architecture, the SW, the entire solution."

Matrox Graphics Inc. is pleased to announce the 20-year anniversary of its Matrox G200 graphics chip. The milestone celebrates two decades of dedicated, active software development and support for multiple technology nodes across countless Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. Developed for 2D, 3D, and video acceleration, the G200 powered a number of industry-first, graphics and multi-monitor-based product lines that delivered unprecedented image quality across one or more displays. Today, G200 is and remains the trusted and preeminent integrated graphics solution of choice for the majority of baseboard management controllers used in servers worldwide.

ATOMONTAGE today announced that they're officially a company, and that they're looking to leapfrog graphics rendering by doing away with regular polygon-based graphics. The idea isn't new - some have tried it before, and we've even seen this technology being used in no other than No Man's Sky to some success.

However, there have been some technical hurdles that needed to be dealt with (mainly data management concerns, alongside rigid-body physics, soft-body deformations, standard PBR shaders, and efficient playback of multiple volumetric video streams). It appears that ATOMONTAGE now feels they've been able to bring the technology to a level that's enough to do actual development with, using today's powerful graphics processing units.

Intel's next generation "Ice Lake" processor could integrate a significantly faster integrated graphics solution (iGPU), if a SiSoft SANDRA online database entry is to be believed. A prototype "Ice Lake" chip was benchmarked, with its iGPU being described by the database as "Intel UHD Graphics" based on the company's Gen 11 graphics architecture, which succeeds the current Gen 9.5 architecture implemented on "Coffee Lake" and "Kaby Lake." This iGPU is endowed with 48 execution units (EUs), which work out to 384 unified shaders; against 24 EUs and 192 shaders on Intel UHD 620. SANDRA also describes the iGPU as being able to share up to 6 GB of memory from the system memory; and featuring 768 KB of dedicated cache. Its reference clock is 600 MHz, double that of the UHD 620, although its boost clock remains a mystery. "Ice Lake" is being built on Intel's new 10 nm+ silicon fabrication process, so it's understandable for the company to significantly enlarge its iGPU.

Sapphire took to CES 2018 to showcase one of the most elusive products in recent times: a custom variant of AMD's RX Vega graphics cards. Sapphire went to great lengths to keep the entire affair under as many wraps as possible, even going so far as to book an entire room to showcase their RX Vega Nitro+, laying still, like a mirage, on top of its anti-static plastic wrap.

There's something eerily beautiful about this graphics card: not on its exquisite back and faceplate designs alone, nor on the custom Sapphire-cut exhaust port; it's really for the condition of a somewhat "unicorn" type of product. Some people believe they're out there, but sightings in their natural environment (read, correct MSRP) are so rare that they are brought up as mass deliriums. The most interesting tech product on CES 2018 based on this story alone, surely.