Intel has officially started shipping the "0x129" microcode update for its 13th and 14th generation "Raptor Lake" and "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors. This critical update is currently being pushed to all OEM/ODM partners to address the stability issues that Intel's processors have been facing. According to Intel, this microcode update fixes "incorrect voltage requests to the processor that are causing elevated operating voltage." Intel's analysis shows that the root cause of stability problems is caused by too high voltage during operation of the processor. These increases to voltage cause degradation that increases the minimum voltage required for stable operation. Intel calls this "Vmin"—it's a theoretical construct, not an actual voltage, think "speed for an airplane required to fly". The latest 0x129 microcode patch will limit the processor's voltage to no higher than 1.55 V, which should avoid further degradation. Overclocking is still supported, enthusiasts will have to disable the eTVB setting in their BIOS to push the processor beyond the 1.55 V threshold. The company's internal testing shows that the new default settings with limited voltages with standard run-to-run variations show minimal performance impact, with only a single game (Hitman 3: Dartmoor) showing degradation. For a full statement from Intel, see the quote below.

Welcome to the first Patch Notes of 2024 for HITMAN World of Assassination. Alongside the return of the Undying, new challenges, and curated contracts, we bring you more than 200 hundred improvements, fixes, and additions to the different areas of the game. Enjoy and happy hunting! HITMAN World of Assassination is now updated to version 3.180 on all platforms; PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Switch.

The Undying mission is available in the Free Starter Pack for new players and as an Elusive Target for HITMAN World of Assassination players, for a limited time only. The DLC Undying Pack is also now available, including a suit, items, Freelancer mode decorations, and access to the Undying indefinitely through the Elusive Target Arcade. Players will be able to unleash their creativity against Mark Faba, with a wide variety of tools at their disposal to accomplish their mission and make sure the Undying does not reappear again. The mission takes place in the Miami map, where Agent 47 will have to stop Mark Faba before he can utilize his expert surveillance, infiltration, and demolition skills to complete a contract at the Global Innovation Race event.

We are excited to announce the opening of our fourth IOI studio in Istanbul, Türkiye. Uniquely positioned in the pan-continental gateway to Europe and Asia, IOI Istanbul is a crucial part in the continued growth and success of IO Interactive.

With a thriving tech and mobile development scene, we identified Istanbul as a region filled with talent that is furiously passionate, development-focused and technically creative. Istanbul is also a city rich in history, offering a strong cultural presence, historic architecture, astonishing Bosphorus views and vibrant and varied culture.

Intel Graphics today posted a technological deep-dive video presentation into how XeSS (Xe Super Sampling), the company's rival to NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, works. XeSS is a gaming performance enhancement technology where your game is rendered by the GPU at a lower resolution than what your display is capable of; while a high-quality upscaling algorithm scales it up to your native resolution while minimizing quality losses associated with classical upscaling methods.

The video details mostly what we gathered from our older articles on how XeSS works. A game's raster and lighting is rendered at a lower-resolution, frame-data along with motion vectors are fed to the XeSS upscaling algorithm, and is then passed on to the renderer's post-processing and the native-resolution HUD is applied. The XeSS upscaler takes not just motion vector and the all important frame inputs, but also temporal data from processed (upscaled) frames, so a pre-trained AI could better reconstruct details.

AMD late Thursday released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.1.1 beta graphics drivers. The drivers add optimization for "Hitman 3," with up to 10% performance uplift measured at 4K with an RX 6800 XT, compared to the previous 20.12.1 drivers. The new 21.1.1 drivers also add support for "Quake II RTX." A large number of issues were fixed. For starters, an issue with Radeon Software that caused recording/streaming overlay indicator to reset itself to its default position has been fixed, sometimes even after task switch, which have been fixed. The performance metrics overlay flickering on displays with HDR enabled has been fixed.

Reflections failing to appear in "GTA V" with reflections MSAA enabled, has been fixed. PUBG session timer continuing in Radeon Software even after exiting the application has been fixed. "DOOM Eternal" crashing with Steam Overlay enabled, has been fixed. Radeon Software recorded content appearing cropped or at an incorrect resolution on Radeon RX Vega series has been fixed. Samsung Odyssey G9 C49G95T noticing display corruption at 5K 240 Hz has been fixed. Anisotropic filtering forced through Radeon Software not taking effect in Direct3D 9 applications on RDNA graphics cards, has been fixed. Sceptre C series or Samsung Odyssey G9 displays experiencing intermittent black screens with Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs has been fixed, as were issues related to Oculus Link on "Polaris" and "Vega" GPUs. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.1.1

We're happy and excited to announce that we are partnering with Intel to provide the best possible performance and optimization for our PC players in HITMAN 3. Together with Intel, we are working to optimize the game for launch and beyond, with updates, tweaks and improvements coming throughout 2021 that will improve the experience of playing on a high-end PC and multi-core CPUs.

These optimizations include enhancing HITMAN 3 for PC players with 8+ core CPUs, for example you'll be able to spot more crowds in Dubai or experience more complex destructibility in Dartmoor. We're also introducing Variable Rate Shading (VRS), a technique that allows us to prioritize GPU resources where they have the biggest impact. On top of that, we will also implement raytracing after the launch of the game, later in 2021.

IO Interactive revealed that Hitman 3, the next chapter in the stealth assassin sim, will be exclusively available on the Epic Games Store, for the PC platform. This marks a departure from over a decade of Hitman releases on Steam, including its most recent entry, the 2018 Hitman 2. Hitman 3, like the previous two titles since the franchise's 2016 reboot, will be a collection of locale-specific missions that are loosely interconnected by a storyline. With Hitman 3 transitioning to Epic Games Store, it will be interesting to see if the game retains the seamless campaign experience of Hitman 2, which let you play forward from Hitman 2016 missions, onward to new missions from Hitman 2. IOI Announced that Hitman 3 arrives in January 2021.Update 06:40 UTC: Turns out, that the EGS exclusivity is for 12 months only. Want the game on Steam? Wait until January 2022.

IO Interactive is proud and excited to announce HITMAN 3, the next game from IO Interactive. It makes us smile just reading that out loud. Here's the brand new Announcement Trailer for you to enjoy. HITMAN 3 is the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy and takes players around the world on a globetrotting adventure to sprawling sandbox locations. Agent 47 returns as a ruthless professional for the most important contracts of his entire career.

Supported by his Agency handler, Diana Burnwood, 47 joins forces with his long-lost friend Lucas Grey. Their ultimate mission is to eliminate the partners of Providence, but they are forced to adapt as their hunt intensifies. When the dust settles, 47 and the world he inhabits will never be the same again. HITMAN 3 will be available in January 2021 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One and PC. Death Awaits.

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.

AMD has released today the Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.11.1 beta drivers. These drivers bring a host of fixes and performance improvements to a number of titles including, Hitman 2, Battlefield V and Fallout 76. In the case of Hitman 2 the Radeon RX 580 sees a performance uplift of 3% at 1920x1080 compared to the Adrenalin 18.10.2 drivers. Meanwhile, Battlefield V sees performance improvements of 9% and 8% respectively on the Radeon RX 580 and RX Vega 64. It is likely other GPUs based on the Vega and Polaris architectures will benefit from these drivers as well. Fallout 76 gets official support with this release, however, no other information was made available as to what AMD has done for testing with Bethesda's latest offering other than to confirm that it works.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.11.1 BetaThe change-log follows.

IO Interactive just released the Hitman Spring Pack on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Players can redeem it for free starting from today until April 3. The Hitman Spring Pack includes the Sapienza location, which is basically Episode 2 of the six-episode saga. Apart from the story mission, players will also get access to the prequel, which includes two story missions, and other features. If you decide to purchase the full game later on, your progress will carry over without hiccups. PC owners can add the Hitman Spring Pack to their Steam library over at the game's Steam page. If you already own Episode 1 from the December giveaway, you might run into some problems when trying to redeem Episode 2. In that case, you can go to SteamDB and click the Free button to add Episode 2 to your Steam library.

We're giving everyone the chance to celebrate this Holiday Season in style with Agent 47 in Paris as we make the second location of HITMAN free for a limited time only with the Hitman Holiday Pack.

Starting on December 15th and in addition to the free Prologue, anyone on PC, PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One and Xbox One X will now be able to download Paris and have access to all of the Paris content completely for free. And while you're in Paris, players can experience IOI's free festive content, 'Holiday Hoarders' as you try and find Santa as he drops gifts around the stylishly re-decorated Palais de Walewska in Paris and try to stop the two thieves who are following his trail stealing all the gifts and leaving the taps running..!

This awesome package includes The Complete First Season, the brand new 'Patient Zero' campaign, new Escalation Contracts, new weapons, new suits, new challenges, improvements to existing features and new lighting enhancements to all locations that make the game look better than ever - plus we have a few more surprises!This is our first new content release since becoming an independent studio and we had an absolute blast putting it together for you. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we did making it - get ready to have your multi-coloured socks blown right off!

Here's a full rundown of what's included:
HITMAN The Complete First Season

• New: 'Patient Zero' Campaign
• New: Clown Suit and themed weapon
• New: Raven Suit and themed weapon
• New: Cowboy Suit and themed weapon
• New: 3 themed Escalation Contracts

You probably took a long, hard read at our article covering a single-minded user's experience of his new Vega Frontier Edition. Now, courtesy of PCPer, and charitable soul Ekin at Linus Tech Tips, we have some more performance benchmarks of AMD's latest (non gaming specific) graphics card.

Starting with 2560x1440, let's begin with the good news: in what seems to be the best performance scenario we've seen until now, the Vega Frontier Edition stands extremely close to NVIDIA's GTX 1080 Ti video card in Fallout 4. It trails it for about 10 FPS most of the test, and even surpasses it at some points. These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt regarding the RX Vega consumer cards: performance on those models will probably be higher than the Frontier Edition's results. And for the sake of AMD, they better be, because in all other tests, the Frontier Edition somewhat disappoints. It's beaten by NVIDIA's GTX 1070 in Grand Theft Auto V, mirrors its performance in The Witcher 3, and delivers slightly higher performance than the GTX 1070 on Hitman and Dirt Rally (albeit lower than the GTX 1080.)