Intel today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.5971 beta comes with day-zero optimization for "Black Myth: Wukong." It also comes with optimization for "Hunt: Showdown 1896" and "World of Warcraft: The War Within." The drivers also fix a couple of issues with this release. The alpha playtest of Delta Force: Hawk Ops experiences application instability during gameplay, which has been fixed with these drivers. A bug that causes foliage in "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" to exhibit corruption has been fixed. For Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" processors with Arc Graphics, the drivers fix a bug that causes "Force of Warships" to exhibit texture corruption during gameplay. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5971 Beta

Time to be wowed: GeForce NOW members can now stream World of Warcraft on supported devices with in-game mods powered by the CurseForge platform for WoW customization. With support for top mods, even the most hardcore raid leaders can play like a hero, thanks to the cloud. Embark on a new adventure in Azeroth when the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, launches on Monday, Aug. 26, at 3 p.m. PT. GeForce NOW members who purchase the Epic Edition of The War Within will get early streaming access on Thursday, Aug. 22, at 3 p.m. PT. And check out the five new games available in the ever-expanding GeForce NOW library this week, including the Psychonauts series from Double Fine Productions. For those looking to upgrade their play or try out GeForce NOW for the first time, the Summer Sale is offering new one- and six-month Ultimate and Priority memberships at 50% off through this Sunday, Aug. 18.

Play Your Way
Return to World of Warcraft in style across supported devices with GeForce NOW and support for top CurseForge Addons. One of the most popular platforms for WoW Addons, CurseForge includes user interface customization, combat Addons, action bars, quest helpers and many more categories. GeForce NOW has collaborated with CurseForge to include over 25 of the top Addons from its platform, available to Ultimate and Priority members - including Day Pass users - to seamlessly customize their WoW experience. The Addons are just as easy to implement as they would be while playing locally on a PC gaming rig, and a CurseForge account isn't required - just launch WoW and enable Addons from the game's menu.

More than 500 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. Read on to learn about this week's new integrations of DLSS.

Level Zero: Extraction Launching Today With DLSS 3
Level Zero: Extraction is a new multiplayer extraction horror shooter from Doghowl Games and tinyBuild. The game blends the heart-pounding tension of asymmetric survival horrors with the high-stakes showdowns of extraction shooters to create a brand-new immersive multiplayer experience. Playing as an elite PMC mercenary, embark on dangerous raids to extract valuable loot and face off against other players and unpredictable PvE hazards. Or take on the role of a formidable alien monster and hunt the humans until no mortal is left standing. When Level Zero: Extraction launches later today, GeForce RTX gamers can accelerate frame rates with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 560.81 WHQL comes with optimization for "Hunt: Showdown 1896." The drivers also add optimal settings for games such as "Chained Together," "Dungeonborne," "Once Human," and "Stormgate." A game bug with "Farming Simulator 22" that caused the game to crash during the loading screen with certain RTX 30-series and RTX 40-series GPUs on the older 560.70 series drivers, has been fixed. Also fixed is a bug that causes games to stutter if the overlay GPU metrics are stuck at 0%; the full range of available display refresh-rates not being exposed on some monitors; and NVIDIA container service exhibiting unusually high CPU utilization.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 560.81 WHQL

Crytek today released the final build for their hardware-agnostic raytracing benchmark. Dubbed Neon Noir, the benchmark had already been showcased in video form back in March 2019, but now it's finally available for download for all interested parties from the Crytek Marketplace. The benchmark currently doesn't support any low-level API such as Vulkan or DX 12, but support for those - and the expected performance improvements - will be implemented in the future.

Neon Noir has its raytracing chops added via an extension of CRYENGINE's SVOGI rendering tool that currently Crytek's games use, including Hunt: Showdown, which will make it easier for developers to explore raytracing implementations that don't require a particular hardware implementation (such as RTX). However, the developer has added that they will add hardware acceleration support in the future, which should only improve performance, and will not add any additional rendering features compared to those that can be achieved already. What are you waiting for? Just follow the link below.

The wait is over: Crytek has announced that Hunt: Showdown is now available via Steam Early Access, priced at 29.99 EUR/USD and 25.99 GBP. Hunt: Showdown is a competitive multiplayer bounty hunting game that combines PvP with PvE elements in a handcrafted sandbox environment. "We want to take this opportunity to thank everybody who participated in closed alpha testing," said Hunt Producer Fatih Özbayram. "It was essential for us in our continuing developments, and we are grateful to have such a dedicated community this early in the game."

"Early access is a big milestone for the team, and we are all excited to finally be releasing Hunt: Showdown out into the wild," said Hunt: Showdown Creative Director Magnus Larbrant. "With Hunt, we wanted to make the game that we, as gamers, have always wanted to play ourselves: tense, dark, addictive, terrifying-a real adrenaline-pumping experience. We have the foundations laid out, and now with the support and input of the community during early access, we can polish that experience together."

With many games being released in Beta over the years (in no small part thanks to Steam's Greenlight initiative), and some others having made full releases in a close to Alpha state, Crytek seems to be taking the long and arduous road of getting a new multiplayer-focused game out in the open via an initial feedback-gathering closed Alpha. The company's Hunt: Showdown has gone through a hellish development cycle, seeing some concept changes, name changes, and more than a handful of problems going on at developer Crytek. However, with it being the most high-profile currently being developed at Crytek, it's really the company's poster child initiative (unless you count suing Cloud Imperium Games in that place.)

Hunt: Showdown is a free-to-play, 4-player co-op, FPS title that sees players battling in a Van Helsing-esque setting, Civil War-era and steampunk-inspired weapons. Taking a break from the asymmetric gameplay that was being touted by many games some time ago (Fable Legends, Evolve, and the shelved Bioware-developed Shadow Realms), the two player teams compete between themselves to track down an AI-controlled monster in an open-world map. How the teams choose to play is up to them: it's fair game to ally, use, or mercilessly hunt each other. I guess some of the more interesting gameplay videos will cover some manner of Lovecraftian monster barging in uninvited and relatively unannounced into a pitched, two-way firefight.

CryEngine, the rendering prodigy responsible for some of the most visually impressive titles ever to grace our personal computing and gaming shores, is getting a Vulkan renderer. The news were broken down by the team at Crytek through a blog post, where they reaffirmed their commitment to proper GitHub support and updates for their game engine. The company puts it this way:

"Vulkan renderer
Following on from the renderer refactoring and DirectX 12 implementation, the team has been hard at work implementing a Vulkan renderer. The code can be seen in Code/RenderDll/XRenderD3D9/Vulkan/… although the feature is not functional, yet. We want to make these changes available to you for review whilst we are currently stabilizing the engine for our 5.4 release. So you can track our progress on GitHub until 5.4 is finally here by the end of July."