In an exclusive interview with Hot Hardware, Intel acknowledged that its recently launched Core Ultra 200 desktop processors, codenamed "Arrow Lake," have significant performance issues. However, Intel announced that a set of fixes are being developed. As our review confirmed, the launch of these new processors fell short of both consumer expectations and Intel's own projections, particularly in gaming performance, despite showing promise in productivity, content creation, and some AI workloads. In a discussion during a recent livestream, Intel's Robert Hallock, VP and general manager of client AI and technical marketing, addressed these concerns head-on, describing the Arrow Lake launch as "disastrous" and attributing the underwhelming performance to inadequately optimized systems.

Robert HallockI can't go into all the details yet, but we identified a series of multifactor issues at the OS level, at the BIOS level, and I will say that the performance we saw in reviews is not what we expected and not what we intended. The launch just didn't go as planned. That has been a humbling lesson for all of us, inspiring a fairly large response internally to get to the bottom of what happened and to fix it.

Valve's latest third-person MOBA-like hero shooter, Deadlock, has had a pretty serious cheater problem, despite still being an invite-only public test. While the game has thus far operated on a player reporting system to identify and punish cheaters, a recent game patch has introduced a rather comical—and seemingly effective—anti-cheat system that can either ban cheating players or turn them into frogs until the end of the match.

Valve says that the new anti-cheat system is set up to be fairly conservative at the moment to avoid any false positives. Aside from the new anti-cheat, Deadlock's September 26 update introduced a new hero, Mirage, whose design and gameplay seem rooted in the jinn from Arabic myths (aka djinn or genie) and added a pretty vast collection of gameplay updates, balances, and quality-of-life improvements throughout the game.

Recent reports suggest that AMD's Zen 5 desktop processors may soon receive a significant power upgrade. The upcoming AGESA 1.2.0.1A Patch A is rumored to increase the default power limits (TDP) from 65 W to 105 W for certain models, specifically the 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X and the 6-core Ryzen 5 9600X. This development comes as a surprise given that the first reviews of the Ryzen 9000 series were published just last week, with lower power consumption praised as a major advantage over previous generations. The potential TDP increase, while not as high as the 120 W initially rumored for the 9700X, still represents a substantial boost in power allocation.

The rationale behind this significant TDP increase appears to be addressing the lower than expected performance of the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X compared to their predecessors. Initial testing showed that both CPUs performed similarly to earlier models, especially in gaming scenarios, with notable improvements only visible when using Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). Even at 65 W, the Ryzen 7 9700X struggled to outpace the 7800X3D in gaming performance, highlighting the need for improved power delivery.

Intel's 5th generation Xeon Scalable processors codenamed Emerald Rapids, have been shipping since late 2023 and are installed at numerous servers today. However, Emerald Rapids appears to possess more performance and efficiency tricks than it initially revealed at launch. According to the report from Phoronix, reporting on a Linux kernel patch sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), there is a chance for up to 38% performance increase while using up to 18% less power on all Intel 5th generation Xeon machines. Thanks to Canonical (maker of Ubuntu Linux) engineer Pedro Henrique Kopper, who explained the patch on the LKML, we found out that changing a single line of code yielded this massive increase.

Ubuntu Linux, as well as many other distributions, ship with Energy Performance Preference (EPP) for Emerald Rapids with a "balance_performance" value of 128. However, changing the value to 32 now yields a massive performance improvement alongside using less power. The EPP "balance_performance" is the default out-of-the-box setting for many Linux distributions. Users manually setting the "performance" mode in the EPP are not expecting any increase from this patch, as the "balance_performance" mode had issues balancing power and efficiency. Introducing this new setting yields more performance for machines that run at default settings, and this is especially important for data centers where the need for lower power and increased performance is constantly surging. Especially at hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Meta, which may run tens of thousands of these CPUs at default settings to keep them stable and well-cooled, who can now enjoy a massive performance increase with less power consumed.Below, you can see the patch quote as well as more performance/power measurements.

Hi everyone. As patch 1.1.2f1 is rolling out on Steam and Microsoft Store, let's have a look at what it includes and what you can expect next. This patch removes the entitlement from all the Beach Properties assets, so they are now a part of the base game and available to everyone. Saves and custom maps using the assets should work without any extra steps, but as always, don't hesitate to make a bug report on the forum if you have any issues. Additionally, we have improvements to performance, support for Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution, and a long list of bug fixes for both the game and the Editor. You can find the full list below.

With this patch in your hands, we've started working towards the next one. It will take about a month as, along with bug fixes and improvements, this patch will include a large re-work of the Economy to address much of the feedback you have shared with us in the past months. We'll share more details on what has changed when the patch is ready. As modding is an important part of any Colossal Order game, one of our top priorities right now is to resolve the remaining issues with the asset import pipeline, so you can start to import and share your custom assets on Paradox Mods. This is proving more difficult than we hoped, so we don't have an exact timeline at this time at this point, but it will likely take several more months. Thank you for all the bug reports, feedback, and support. We really appreciate it as it helps us understand and improve your experience with Cities: Skylines II.

Lords of the Fallen got a new big update that is now live for both PC and consoles, and brings several new features, improvements, and fixes, as well as support for AMD FSR 3. Called the Master of Fate, the new version 1.5 update is the culmination of over 30 updates released since launch and should significantly improve performance, stability and optimization, as well as bring difficulty balancing based on the feedback from gamers.

According to the full release notes released over at Steam, the biggest update is the new Advanced Game Modifier System, which will be available to both new and old players, and brings several content and quality of life enhancements. In addition, the new Version 1.5 update also adds support for AMD FSR 3 and fixes several issues, including a multiplayer issue where the player can fall through the elevator, a fix to increase the maximum stack count of Vestige Seeds from 5 to 99, and a fix for a rare crash caused by AI.

Hey everyone, today's update for Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on PC includes crash fixes, various bug fixes, and improvements based on player feedback. Since the launch of the game last week, we've been closely monitoring our crash reporting system and investigating crashes submitted through our support channel. This patch includes several crash fixes and changes to further improve stability.

We've also fixed several bugs, including one that prevented players from claiming rewards at the Hunting Grounds when using mouse and keyboard controls. This patch also fixes the HDR Max Luminance slider and enables DLSS 3 Frame Generation during cutscenes. Check out the release notes below for more details. The teams at Nixxes and Guerrilla continue to closely monitor player feedback. We are aware of other issues raised by the community and are actively working on future patches with further bug fixes and optimizations.

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.

With Mods (short for modifications), you can tailor your gaming experience to your unique preferences. Uploaded by creators all over the world, you can pick between anything to create the city of your dreams. Along with Beach Properties, the first wave of Cities: Skylines II Modding will be available. The Beta release of Modding will initially support Map and Code mods. With the Map Editor, you can make maps with the Terraforming Tools you're used to, import hightmaps to create highly accurate depictions of your hometown, and upload your creations to Paradox Mods.

With the Code Tools, you can show off your coding skills and create Code Mods to meet your heart's desire! Future updates will improve on these tools and come to include support for Asset Mods. As we've talked about before, there will be updates to these tools that we are currently working on, and we will see some updates before the 1.0 release. We will be taking your opinion into consideration when we continue to work on the editor and are looking forward to seeing the feedback that you might have. If you're curious on what the process of Modding will look like you can already check it out on the Cities: Skylines II Wiki here.

Close monitoring of AMD engineering activities—around mid-February time—revealed the existence of a new set of patches for GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). At the time, news reports put spotlights on Team Red's "znver5" enablement—this target indicated that staffers were prepping Zen 5 processor microarchitecture with an expanded AVX instruction set (building on top of Zen 4's current capabilities). Phoronix's Michael Larabel has fretted over AMD's relative silence over the past month—regarding a possible merging of support prior to the stable release of GCC 14.

He was relieved to discover renewed activity earlier today: "AMD Zen 5 processor enablement has been merged to GCC Git in time for the GCC 14.1 stable release that will be out in the coming weeks. It was great seeing AMD getting their Zen 5 processor enablement upstreamed ahead of any Ryzen or EPYC product launches and being able to do so in time for the annual major GNU Compiler Collection feature release." Team Red is inching ever closer to the much anticipated 2024 rollout of next-gen Ryzen 9000 processors, please refer to a VideoCardz-authored timeline diagram (below)—"Granite Ridge" is an incoming AM5 desktop CPU family (reportedly utilizing Zen 5 and RDNA 2 tech), while "Strix Point" is scheduled to become a mobile APU series (Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5).

The Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection launched last Thursday (March 14), with day one adoptees experiencing a plethora of issues. Player feedback and press coverage painted an ugly picture—an unreasonable install size of 70+ GB was an immediate point of discussion, considering the lo-fi origins of the Collection's graphical assets. Players were greeted with a low number of servers, and in-game sessions were often interrupted by crashes and other bugs—at the time of writing, overall Steam feedback (from 5315 user submitted reviews) is "Overwhelmingly Negative." The Embracer Group-owned development house is also under fire due to alleged uncredited usage of modder content—iamashaymin's character reskins were present in the PlayStation 5 build, but promptly removed by a post-launch patch update.

Aspyr quickly responded to community feedback—their support department stated: "we'd like to thank the Battlefront community for their overwhelming support and feedback for the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection release. At launch, we experienced critical errors with our network infrastructure. The result was incredibly high ping, matchmaking errors, crashes, and servers not appearing in the browser. Since launch, we've been working to address these issues and increase network stability, and we will continue our efforts until our network infrastructure is stabilized to prevent further outages. Please continue to report bugs, errors, or unexpected behaviors to our support team via our Request Form." Aspyr's licensing partner, Lucasfilm Games, has not issued a statement on this situation.

Hello Drivers. Here we are. Taxi Life was released about two weeks ago. First of all, we'd like to thank you for all your support and feedback to improve the game. Reading your feedback, your kind messages and your encouragement has given us a lot of fuel for this first week. We are glad to read that many of you are enjoying driving in Barcelona! Now, let's get straight to the point. We are aware that you're interested in what is going on next in Taxi Life. And in this post, we want to share with you how our first week was for the team, and what's coming in the future of Taxi Life.

Driving Wheel
The main feedback we've received is that there aren't enough steering wheels compatible with the game. During the development of Taxi Life we worked with the driving wheels that were available for us. There are a lot of models out there, and it takes a lot of time to make every single driving wheel compatible with the game. It's not an excuse, but this was our situation. We really want to expand this list, and improve some actual driving wheels. We have a step-by-step plan that we are polishing right now and should let you know in more detail soon how it will look. In parallel we need to fix other issues you're already experiencing in-game.

CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk development team expected to conclude work on 2077 around autumn of last year—following the release of their v2.0 Content Update, and Phantom Liberty DLC campaign expansion. Game director, Gabe Amatangelo, declared in a September 2023 interview with PC Gamer, that his team was ready to move onto the development of a sequel, but some members continued to deliver updates. December's upgrade to v2.1 added a functional metro transport system, while January's Patch 2.11 expanded vehicle customization options. Game File's Stephen Totilo interviewed Amatangelo during last month's DICE Summit—his recently published article included a discussion regarding CD Projekt RED's surprising extended support schedule for Cyberpunk 2077.

Amatangelo okayed the addition of a Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) system, after absorbing news coverage and fan feedback: "my team had a plan on how to accomplish it in a reasonable way, sort of in a timely way." Cyberpunk 2077's game director confirmed that work has finally concluded on his team's open world magnum opus: "Yes. We're done." The temptation does remain to tinker with the current game: "It's possible that there are some other little things that comes in here or there, just because, as you're kind of messing around with stuff, sometimes you discover something that is not a high risk. Or it's easy to integrate. Or, you know, some developers have some bandwidth...Then they bring it to me." Amatangelo indicates that he could approve further updates, but "Cyberpunk Part Deux" takes priority: "Well, I trust you that it isn't going to mess with your other work…So let's give it a go."

Thanks to Phoronix, we have discovered that AMD has recently released initial patches for performance monitoring and events related to their upcoming Zen 5 processors in the Linux kernel. These patches, sent out for review on the kernel mailing list, provide the necessary JSON files for PMU (Performance Monitoring Unit) events and metrics that will be exposed through the Linux perf tooling. As the patches consist of JSON additions and do not risk regressing existing hardware support, there is a possibility that they could be included in the upcoming Linux v6.9 kernel cycle. This would allow developers and enthusiasts to access detailed performance data for Zen 5 CPUs once they become available, helping with optimization and analysis of the next-generation processors.

The release of these patches follows AMD's publication of performance monitor counter documentation for AMD Family 1Ah Model 00h to 0Fh processors last week, confirming that these models represent the upcoming Zen 5 lineup. While Linux kernel 6.8 already includes some elements of Zen 5 CPU support, the upstream Linux enablement for these next-generation AMD processors is an ongoing process. Upon Phoronix examining the Zen 5 core and uncore events, as well as the metrics and mappings, it appears that they are mainly similar to those found in the current Zen 4 processors. This suggests that AMD has focused on refining and optimizing the performance monitoring capabilities of its new architecture rather than introducing significant changes. As the launch of Zen 5 CPUs draws closer, we await to see the performance and capabilities of these next-generation processors. With performance monitoring also getting a push, this could be a sign that Zen 5 launch is nearing.

We recently released a patch containing our first round of balance changes to Helldivers 2 and our Head of Product Testing has some valuable insight into our philosophies and practices when it comes to balancing. Hello everyone! My name is Patrik Lasota, I was the designer on the first Helldivers and am currently Head of Product Testing at Arrowhead. A bit of a grandiose title, but what it means in this context is that I'm responsible for how Arrowhead listens to feedback and balances its games. I'd like to talk about the changes we made in this patch and why.

Primary weapons
First I'd like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren't powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently. This doesn't mean that your primary weapon shouldn't feel good to use, but please understand that it is primary only in the sense that it's something you always spawn with.

We're thrilled to announce the addition of Crossplay, a highly anticipated feature in Remnant 2! Now, players can unite against the Root, irrespective of their chosen platform. Team up with friends or discover open games across platforms and embark on your journey together. Dev Note: For console players, Crossplay is set to on by default. This setting will affect your ability to see other games (including friend's games) within the game if their Crossplay setting is set to "off." If you can't see a friend's game in-game, then confirm that you have matching Crossplay settings. The "off" setting will prevent you from joining another game that have Crossplay enabled. Additional Dev Note: Settings on PC that use frame generation currently blocks the Epic Online Services Overlay, which is required for Crossplay functionality of joining friends in game. You can still accept invites using the Epic launcher prior to starting the game and join that way if you wish to use frame generation in game.

Aberration Domination Event
The Root have seized yet another opportunity to unleash a horde of menacing Aberrations across all worlds! From February 29th to March 5th, gear up and face this challenge head-on. Defeat these sinister foes and collect the elusive Corrupted Shards, a rare material with untold potential. Head over to the enigmatic Dwell in Ward 13, where you can trade these Corrupted Shards to craft corrupted versions of some NEW special weapons. Show the Root that even in the darkest of times, our resolve shines brighter than ever! Dev Note: This is our second big aberration event; we figured why not celebrate the addition of Crossplay with another Aberration event! We've added even more corrupted weapons to acquire, so group up and take on the Root!

Arrowhead Game Studios has released a new update for Helldivers 2, that addresses AFK players, fixes some stability issues and crashes, as well as improves backend performance. Due to the limited server capacity, lots of players were staying logged in but, thankfully, AFK players will now be kicked back to the title screen after 15 minutes.

In addition to fixing the server hogging issue, the new patch 1.000.11 fixes multiple crash issues, including those triggered when exiting ADS or joining other players' ships, various GameGuard and other issues, as well as brings improvements on client to backend communications.

Phoronix has spotted intriguing new Linux kernel patches for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors—the Monday morning notes reveal in-house software engineers are implementing default power profile adjustments. Meteor Lake CPUs have been operating on a default "balanced_performance" mode since their December 2023 launch—Linux adjustments will affect the processor's Energy Performance Preference (EPP) under Linux (similar to Windows Power Plans). Michael Larabel (Phoronix head honcho) laid out some history: "We've seen EPP overrides/tuning in the past within the Intel P-State driver for prior generations of Intel processors and this is much the same here. The ACPI EPP value is typically a range from 0 to 255 for indicating the processor/system power to performance preference."

He continued onto present day circumstances: "To date though the Intel P-State EPP override/tuning has been focused on the default "balanced_performance" mode while the first patch (from Monday) allows for model-specific EPP overrides for all pre-defined EPP strings. The second patch then goes ahead and updates the EPP values for Meteor Lake so that the balanced_performance default is now treated as 115 rather than 128 and the "performance" EPP is set to 16 rather than 0." Larabel is hopeful that a public release will coincide with the "upcoming Linux v6.9 cycle." Intel software engineers reckon that their tweaks/overrides have produced higher performance results—for "small form factor devices"—while reducing CPU temperatures and thermal throttling. Meteor Lake is considered to be quite energy inefficient when compared to the closest mobile processor architectures from AMD and Apple. Team Blue's next-gen Arrow Lake family is expected to launch later this year, but the current crop of CPUs require a bit of TLC and optimization in the meantime.

Last Epoch is releasing Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, at 11:00am CT! Welcome everyone to the patch notes for Last Epoch's Release! It's been an amazing road to this point, and it's unreal to be writing patch notes without using the term "Beta Patch". With this patch Last Epoch will officially be leaving Early Access. We couldn't have made it to this point without all of you, our amazing community driving the world of Eterra alongside us. We can not say it enough, Thank you.

We also want to mention again here that to prepare the servers for our release on February 21st, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting: Tuesday, February 20st, 2024, at 11:00am CT. While the servers are down, authentication will not be possible. If you are already playing in offline mode before we take down the servers, you should be able to continue your play session, however offline will not be able to authenticate to log in once the servers are down. This is also a good point to note that one of the features being added with 1.0 is a true offline mode, which will prevent this kind of interference with offline mode in the future.

Intel appears to working on an intriguing next generation adaptive sharpening filter—as revealed in mid-week published patch notes. Lunar Lake's display engine seems to be the lucky recipient here—its Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture is expected to debut later this year. Second generation Intel Arc integrated graphics solutions have been linked to mobile Lunar Lake (LNL) processors—driver enablement was uncovered by Phoronix last September. The notes reveal that Team Blue is exploring a more intelligent approach to improving visual enhancements across games and productivity applications.

Author, Nemesa Garg (an engineer at Intel India) stated: "Many a times images are blurred or upscaled content is also not as crisp as original rendered image. Traditional sharpening techniques often apply a uniform level of enhancement across entire image, which sometimes result in over-sharpening of some areas and potential loss of natural details. Intel has come up with Display Engine based adaptive sharpening filter with minimal power and performance impact. From LNL onwards, the Display hardware can use one of the pipe scaler for adaptive sharpness filter. This can be used for both gaming and non-gaming use cases like photos, image viewing. It works on a region of pixels depending on the tap size."

The PC version of Helldivers 2 has shot up the Steam charts since yesterday's launch (also available on PlayStation 5)—according to tracking sites, peak player population sits at 151,927. Games industry watchdogs believe that this is Sony PlayStation's most successful launch title on PC platforms—24-hour peak telemetry has Helldivers 2 attracting 81,840 players versus God of War's 68,000 (January 14, 2022). An abundance of technical issues has prompted the submission of negative feedback—around 12,200 reviews have been left on the game's Steam Profile. Its current status is "Mostly Positive," but launch evening impressions were "Mixed" following 5300 review submissions. Eurogamer has summarized the problematic period: "Chief among criticisms are complaints about persistent crashes, while others have singled out server and matchmaking issues. Then there's ire directed towards PC optimization, and its kernel-level GameGuard anti-cheat software, which some feel is cause for concern, as well as complaints around Helldivers 2's monetization—which includes a battle pass and premium currency in-game shop, despite its £34.99/$39.99 price tag."

The development team at Arrowhead Game Studios implemented day-of-launch matchmaking fixes and addressed the most common crash problems. Helldivers 2 Game Director, Mikael Eriksson, stated that a patch was in the making: "If it's a success, we'll trigger a hotfix and get it out to the Steam community first, then roll it out to PS5 players as quickly as we can. Thank you—seriously—for your patience. We really want you all to have a blast playing this game. Bear with us, we're almost there." Arrowhead have followed up on their promise(s) today with another set of fixes pushed out to PC gamer population—Eriksson shared some good second day news: "We've uploaded a patch to Steam that should improve matchmaking for PC. The patch also includes some other crash fixes we've identified. We know there's more to solve, and we're working our way through it. Nevertheless, we hope this rapid patch goes a long way to making your experience better. Now go smash some bugs (and bots)!"

Phoronix head honcho, Michael Larabel, has noticed another set of interesting updates for AMD Graphics on Linux—albeit in preparation for next generation solutions: "engineers on Monday (February 5) posted a few new patch series for enabling some updated IP (intellectual property) blocks within their open-source AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver. This new IP is presumably part of the ongoing hardware enablement work for their next-gen RDNA 4 graphics." Team Red GitHub patches for "GFX12" targets appeared online last November, again highlighted by Larabel's investigative work—AMD engineers appear to be quite determined with their open-source software endeavors, as seen in LLVM-Project notes regarding GFX1200's enablement.

The new "IP block" updates included patches for the enabling ATHUB 4.1, LSDMA 7.0, IH 7.0, and HDP 7.0—presumably for next generation Radeon graphics solutions. Larabel provided a quick breakdown of these components: "ATHUB 4.1 is needed for clock-gating / power management features, LSDMA 7.0 is the latest IP for Light SDMA for general purpose System DMA (SDMA) on the GPU, IH 7.0 for the Interrupt Handler on the GPU, and HDP 7.0 for the Host Data Path support for CPU accessing the GPU device memory via the PCI BAR. As far as code changes, the big chunks of the work are from the auto-generated header files." He believes that AMD's engineers have largely moved on from current generation tasks: "The big version bumps for these IP blocks all the more are likely indicative of these bits being for next-gen RDNA 4 as opposed to further iterating on RDNA3 or similar." The patches could be merged into the upcoming Linux 6.9 release, possibly coinciding with a Radeon RX 8000 series rollout.

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty is being rolled out on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. In this update we focused on fixing the most common issues encountered by players, including Finisher animations, and added a little something for Rayfield enthusiasts! PC-specific changes include the addition of a Hybrid CPU Utilization setting, which can be found under Gameplay → Performance. It can be set either to "Auto" (lets the operating system automatically decide how to distribute threads among the cores) or "Prioritize P-Cores" (prioritizes performance cores). It is set to "Auto" by default. We have also implemented a fix that improves graphics performance, especially on AMD Radeon RX Vega GPUs.

Visual Changes
Patch 2.11 adds Neon-lit rims for the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X—these parts will now light up properly. We also fixed shadows appearing on V's torso when wearing tank tops, as well as dark shadows appearing on V's hands when holding some weapons with Ray Tracing enabled. The Devil and Judgment tarot cards will now be properly displayed on the end-game reward screen. For complete patch details, check out the full list of changes below.

Hi everyone, in January we shared with you all a status update on 3 key areas of feedback from the Forza Motorsport community that our team is working to improve—Car Progression, Forza Race Regulations and Drivatar AI. For Car Progression, today we began collecting feedback from various sources on changes that will give players freedom to equip the parts they need regardless of car level. We have additional changes to the system in various states of design and testing with plans to implement these changes as soon as possible. For Forza Race Regulations, we have enabled Race Marshals and some content creators the ability to flag in-game incidents for review to help feed changes to the adjudication model that will improve the system. Lastly, we're testing out fixes to the Drivatar AI to alleviate competitors bunching up around Turn 1 and causing the first few AI opponents to reach insurmountable leads. Beyond those key changes, we're investigating other priority fixes for the AI that improve their overall driving behavior and reduce how aggressively they stick to the racing line. These are just a few examples of where we are prioritizing work in these areas, and we will be sharing more on each soon.

While we have 3 distinct teams here at Turn 10 working on these key improvements, we're also actively developing fixes and improvements to other areas of the game. These will begin rolling out alongside Update 5 in February and will include a Skip Practice option to the Career mode pre-race menu to make it more discoverable, and a save point after finishing a Practice session so you can complete the Featured Race later. We're also developing fixes and quality-of-life improvements to the Livery Editor based on the reports you've shared with us, including custom advanced zoom for applying decals, the ability to paint upgraded brake calipers, and a prompt to save your design when exiting the Livery Editor. While this update is in active development, we wanted to share an earlier-than-usual look at some of the changes we're targeting for this release.

Intel presented its next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" processor family during September's Innovation Event—their roadmap slide (see below) included other Birch Stream platform architecture options. Earlier this week, Team Blue's software engineers issued a Linux kernel patch that contains details pertaining to codenamed projects: Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge and the aforementioned Clearwater Forest. All E-Core Xeon "Sierra Forest" processors are expected to launch around the middle of 2024—this deployment of purely efficiency-oriented "Sierra Glen" (Atom Crestmont) cores in enterprise/server chip form will be a first for Intel. The Sierra Forest Xeon range has been delayed a couple of times; but some extra maturation time has granted a jump from an initial maximum 144 E-Core count up to 288. The latest patch notes provide an early look into Clearwater Forest's basic foundations—it seems to be Sierra Forest's direct successor.

The Intel Xeon "Granite Rapids" processor family is expected to hit retail just after a Sierra Forest product launch, but the former sports a very different internal configuration—an all "Redwood Cove" P-Core setup. Phoronix posits that Sierra Forest's groundwork is clearing the way for its natural successor: "Clearwater Forest is Intel's second generation E-core Xeon...Clearwater Forest should ship in 2025 while the open-source Intel Linux engineers begin in their driver support preparations and other hardware enablement well in advance of launch. With engineers already pushing Sierra Forest code into the Linux kernel and related key open-source projects like Clang and GCC since last year, their work on enabling Sierra Forest appears to be largely wrapping up and in turn the enablement is to begin for Clearwater Forest. Sent out...was the first Linux kernel patch for Sierra Forest. As usual, for the first patch it's quite basic and is just adding in the new model number for Clearwater Forest CPUs. Clear Water Forest has a model number of 0xDD (221). The patch also reaffirms that the 0xDD Clearwater Forest CPUs are using Atom Darkmont cores."