As we enter the last week of October and the first few days of November, we have a crammed week of new games, as well as a bunch of old releases that have either been refreshed or released on PC for the first time. This week's AAA title is a single player RPG that appears to have something to do with an age of dragons. This is followed by a mystery on the moon, a strange life, cowboys, some martial arts, a trip through hell, mechanical animals and finally a sequel to Elona.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard / This week's first AAA release / Thursday 31 October
When a pair of corrupt ancient gods break free from centuries of darkness, the vibrant land of Thedas needs someone they can count on. Rise as Rook, Dragon Age's newest hero. Be who you want to be and play how you want to play as you fight back and lead your team of seven companions, each with their own rich story. Together you will become The Veilguard. Steam link

The Chinese tech press is abuzz with slides allegedly from Intel's pre-launch press-deck for the Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S." The most sensational of these are Intel's first-party performance claims for the top Core Ultra 9 285K model. There's good news and bad news. Good news first—Intel claims to have made a big leap in energy efficiency with "Arrow Lake," and the 285K should offer gaming performance comparable to the current Core i9-14900K at around 80 W lower power draw for the processor. But then there in lies the bad news—despite claimed IPC gains for the "Lion Cove" P-core, and rumored clock speeds being on par with the "Raptor Cove" P-cores on the i9-14900K, the 285K is barely any faster than its predecessor in absolute terms.

In its first party testing, when averaged across 12 game tests, which we used Google optical translation to make out the titles of, Intel used performance numbers of the i9-14900K as the mean. The 285K beats the i9-14900K in only four games—Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, Age of Mythology Retold, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, and F1 23. It's on-par with the i9-14900K in Red Dead Redemption 2, Total War: Pharaoh, Metro Exodus, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Rainbow Six Siege. It's slower than the i9-14900K in Far Cry 6, FF XIV, F1 24, Red Dead Redemption 2. Averaged across this bench, the Core Ultra 9 285K ends up roughly on par with the Core i9-14900K in gaming. Intel also compared the 285K to AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, and interestingly, even the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

NVIDIA has released a new GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 551.46 that should fix stuttering issues in some scenarios. According to the release notes, the new hotfix driver fixes micro-stuttering in some games when vertical sync is enabled, as well as stuttering when scrolling in web browser. It also fixes stuttering issues on Advanced Optimus Notebooks when running Red Dead Redemption 2 under Vulkan API, and stability issues in Immortals of Aveum under extended gameplay.

The new GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 551.46 is based on the latest GeForce WHQL driver, version 551.23. You can download the new GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 551.46 over at NVIDIA's support page.

AMD has released the AMD Software Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver which add support for AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) technical preview which is available in several games and only works on AMD Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards. AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) will be available as a part of FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0 (FSR3), which is expected to launch tomorrow and supported in Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum games.

With the new AMD Software Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver, AMD enables Frame Generation on a driver level as "Fluid Motion Frame" option, which can be enabled via HYPR-X, or individually for each game by using the Global Graphics Settings page. AMD has an extensive list of over 20 titles, including Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us Part 1, Far Cry 6, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and others. AMD also notes that AFMF can also be manually for any title such as Cyberpunk 2077 using the per-app settings within AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames

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.

With only a couple of days to go until the AMD RX 7900-series benchmarks go live, some alleged benchmarks from both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT have leaked on Twitter. The two cards are being compared to a NVIDIA RTX 4080 card in no less than seven different game titles, all running at 4K resolution. The games are God of War, Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watchdogs Legion, Red Dead Redemption 2, Doom Eternal and Horizon Zero Dawn. The cards were tested on a system with a Core i9-12900K CPU which was paired with 32 GB of RAM of unknown type.

It's too early to draw any real conclusions from this test, but in general, the RX 7900 XTX comes out on top, ahead of the RTX 4080, so no surprises here. The RX 7900 XT is either tied with the RTX 4080 or a fair bit slower, with the exception being Red Dead Redemption 2, where the RTX 4080 is the slowest card, although it also appears to have some issues, since the one percent lows are hitting 2 FPS. Soon, the reviews will be out and everything will become more clear, but it appears that AMD's RX 7900 XTX will give NVIDIA's RTX 4080 a run for its money, if these benchmarks are anything to go by.

Update Dec 11th: The original tweet has been removed, for unknown reasons. It could be because the numbers were fake, or because they were in breach of AMD's NDA.

The PC version of "Red Dead Redemption 2" received official support for the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) performance enhancement with the latest Version 1.31 patch. The game now supports FSR 2.0 as well as DLSS. The update also includes improvements to the temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) implementation in the PC version. The update comes two months following a community mod that added FSR 2.0 to the game unofficially, which required you to run the game with its DirectX 12 renderer, and add or replace certain game files. The official 1.31 patch adds FSR 2.0 support for both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan renderers. The 433 MB patch is being pushed through Steam.

Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" is shaping up to be another leadership desktop processor lineup, with an engineering sample clocking significant increases in gaming minimum framerates over the preceding 12th Gen Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake." Extreme Player, a tech-blogger on Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, posted a comprehensive gaming performance review of an i9-13900K engineering sample covering eight games across three resolutions, comparing it with a retail i9-12900KF. The games include CS:GO, Final Fantasy IX: Endwalker, PUBG, Forza Horizon 5, Far Cry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the synthetic benchmark 3DMark. Both processors were tested with a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, 32 GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and a 1.5 kW power supply.

The i9-13900K ES is shown posting performance leads ranging wildly between 1% to 2% in the graphics tests of 3DMark, but an incredible 36% to 38% gain in the CPU-intensive tests of the suite. This is explained not just by increased per-core performance of both the P-cores and E-cores, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores. Although the same "Gracemont" E-cores are used in "Raptor Lake," the L2 cache size per E-core cluster has been doubled in size. Horizon Zero Dawn sees -0.7% to 10.98% increase in frame rates. There are some anomalous 70% frame-rate increases in RDR2, discounting which, we still see a 2-9% increase. FC6 posts modest 2.4% increases. Forza Horizon 5, PUBG, Monster Hunter Rise, and FF IX, each report significant increases in minimum framerates, well above 20%.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 516.59 WHQL comes with optimization for F1 2022. The drivers also introduce support for Windows 11 22H2, and the "new" GeForce GTX 1630, besides CUDA 11.7. The drivers also fix a handful of issues, including artifacts noticed in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan), Minecraft Java Edition, and Second Life, when connecting using third-party viewers. Incorrect light-source rendering in Neverwinter Nights; and black textures in Path of Exile. A stuttering was noticed in games when you invoke the Xbox overlay, which has been fixed. Lastly, a bunch of stability issues with Unreal Engine 5 has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 516.59 WHQL

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported record revenue for the second quarter ended August 1, 2021, of $6.51 billion, up 68 percent from a year earlier and up 15 percent from the previous quarter, with record revenue from the company's Gaming, Data Center and Professional Visualization platforms. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.94, up 276 percent from a year ago and up 24 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.04, up 89 percent from a year ago and up 14 percent from the previous quarter.

"NVIDIA's pioneering work in accelerated computing continues to advance graphics, scientific computing and AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Enabled by the NVIDIA platform, developers are creating the most impactful technologies of our time - from natural language understanding and recommender systems, to autonomous vehicles and logistic centers, to digital biology and climate science, to metaverse worlds that obey the laws of physics.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 471.41 WHQL comes with support for Windows 11, including a WDDM 3.0 compliant display driver, making it NVIDIA's first official driver for the upcoming operating system. In addition, the drivers introduce DLSS performance enhancement on Red Dead Redemption 2 and Chernobylite. The drivers also introduce CUDA 11.4 support.

Among the issues fixed are lack of hardware acceleration on Capture One; HUD loss issues on Valorant; a game freeze noticed with DOOM Eternal; League of Legends failing to launch; mouse pointer issues with certain DSC monitors in HDR mode; blurry Ansel depth-of-field in certain games; display resolution being limited to 640x480 on some monitors after updating from older drivers; distorted HDMI audio playback on 8K displays connected via HDMi 2.1, and HDMI audio drop-outs on LG C9 OLED TVs.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 471.41 WHQL

Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the highest-rated games of all time, with over 275 perfect scores and over 175 Game of the Year Awards. Its PC release is also one of the platform's best-looking titles, with an amazingly rendered and realistic open world that tests the mettle of any PC when effects and rendering resolutions are ramped up.

To boost performance on GeForce RTX PCs and laptops, Rockstar has today released a NVIDIA DLSS update for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online. If you're unfamiliar with NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), it's a groundbreaking AI rendering technology that increases graphics performance using dedicated Tensor Core AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs, without compromising image quality.

Rockstar Games, the developer behind plenty of AAA titles, including Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), is preparing an interesting update for all the RDR2 players. Called the "Blood Money" update, it brings new player activities to the Red Dead Online community. As Rockstar describes it, you will "Step into the criminal underworld of Red Dead Online: Blood Money on July 13, and prove you are willing to get your hands dirty in service to notorious and well-connected members of Saint-Denis society." While the update brings interesting content, it also integrates new technologies for visual/graphics improvements. NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is also landing on July 13, allowing you to play the game with better performance and image quality if you have a GeForce RTX graphics card.Check out the Red Dead Online: Blood Money trailer below.

Don't hold your breath for Grand Theft Auto 6, as the game won't be out before 2025, reports Tom Henderson. Timelines for development of the next GTA was pushed this far back possibly because the extensive amount of voice-over and motion-capture work that goes into the game, and playtesting the game, probably aren't easy in the wake of travel restrictions. The Cyberpunk 2077 launch, which was disastrous form a quality-assurance standpoint, possibly spooked Rockstar, which wants to take its own sweet time getting GTA 6 right.

A third factor could be the increased scrutiny from gamers on studios that crunch (overwork their employees to meet release dates), Rockstar was accused of crunching during the development of Red Dead Redemption 2. In related news, GTA 6 will reportedly be based around a modern-day rendition of Vice City, from the title that springboarded GTA to the top of the open-world action adventure genre. It is also rumored to have Fortnite-like evolving maps, which gives players the feel of a world that changes with time like a city in real life, would (new infrastructure and businesses).

Steam has recently published their Best of 2020 awards which highlight the best selling, and most played games of 2020. The awards include six categories including Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Top Selling VR Games, Top Early Access Graduates, Most Played Games, and Top Controller Games. The 100 games in each list are ranked as Platinum (1st - 12th), Gold (13th - 24th), Silver (25th - 40th), and Bronze (41st - 100th) with each rank of games being randomly sorted.

Starting with the Top Sellers we have Grand Theft Auto V, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, DOOM Eternal, Monster Hunter: World, Dota 2, Among Us, Destiny 2, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive all taking the top platinum rating.

Rockstar Games have recently released Red Dead Online as a standalone game completely independent from the single-player components in Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Online will feature the same content found in the complete game including future content updates. The game is now available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC along with Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 via backward compatibility modes. The standalone version of Red Dead Online is available from the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Rockstar Games Launcher, Epic Games Store, and Steam for an introductory offer of 4.99 USD until February 15th, 2021 when the price will revert to 19.99 USD.

Rockstar Games is proud to announce that it has acquired Ruffian Games. Based in Dundee, Scotland, the studio will operate under the new name of Rockstar Dundee. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. "We are thrilled to have Ruffian join the Rockstar Games family," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "The Ruffian team are a talented addition to Rockstar's global studios, and we look forward to working together on future projects."

Founded in 2008 by Gary Liddon and Billy Thomson, Ruffian partnered with Microsoft to work on the Crackdown series, and with 343 Industries on Halo: Reach from the Halo Master Chief Collection, among many other projects. Ruffian's talented team of just over 40 have a depth of development experience that even includes some early Rockstar titles from the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt series. Both Liddon and Thomson will remain on-board as Co-Studio Directors of Rockstar Dundee.

Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox will receive some new big-name games in the coming days, besides the games released earlier this month such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Final Fantasy 9. The biggest title set to join the program is Minecraft Dungeons a new dungeon crawler spinoff game from Microsoft's Mojang Studios. Minecraft Dungeons will be available through Xbox Game Pass on PC and Xbox from tomorrow the 26th of May.

The classic Alan Wake has been added to the platform for both PC and Xbox users along with the return of Cities Skylines. Golf with your friends was also added earlier this month for Xbox. Finally PC users will also receive Plebby Quest: The Crusades later this month.

Microsoft has recently announced all the game arrivals and departures coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC & Xbox this month. PC gamers are receiving Halo 2 Anniversary, Final Fantasy IX, Streets of Rage 4, and Endless Legend while console gamers are getting Red Dead Redemption 2, DayZ, Final Fantasy IX, Streets of Rage 4, and Fractured Minds.

The over 10 million subscribers' strong service will also lose several games this May 15th for both PC and Xbox. PC users will lose Imperator: Rome, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Banner Saga, West of Loathing and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus while console users will lose Grand Theft Auto V, Black Desert, Doom, Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Metal Gear Survive, The Banner Saga, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) is TechPowerUp Game of the Year 2019. Decided purely by popular vote of our readers with close to 13,000 respondents, the Rockstar Games open-world got the most votes among 16 entries that included a large number of commercially, critically, and technically acclaimed PC games released in 2019. The PC version of Red Dead Redemption (or RDR2), had enough technical differentiation from its console releases to not strictly qualify as a "PC port."

RDR2 game took advantage of the increased hardware resources of modern PCs to bring to life higher visual fidelity, support for higher display resolutions, and a suitably improved input mechanic taking advantage of PC input devices. We asked our readers not to judge a game by its technical merits alone, but as an artistic and interactive achievement. It should be a fun game to play foremost, with an intuitive gameplay mechanic, an engaging risk-reward mechanic, and draw the player into its world. For these reasons and more, RDR2 is the pick of the TechPowerUp community, and we as its editors couldn't agree with the popular vote more.

NVIDIA late Tuesday pushed out a Hotfix to its GeForce Software against glaring bugs that can't wait for the next driver release to be fixed. Hotfix 441.34 fixes a bug with "Red Dead Redemption 2" stalling on machines with 4-core and 6-core CPUs, when the Vulkan API is used. The drivers also fix a game crash with "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" launching in DirectX 12 mode. The rest of the driver's change-log is identical to that of the recent 441.20 WHQL drivers. Grab the hotfix from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce Hotfix 441.34

NVIDIA today released GeForce Software version 441.12 WHQL. These drivers come game-ready for "Red Dead Redemption 2," which is going live tomorrow (November 5th). The drivers add or improve optimization for "Need for Speed Heat" and "Borderlands 3." The drivers fix a white-screen game crash associated with "Super Robot Wars V." With these drivers, NVIDIA is also addressing a security vulnerability, which isn't documented publicly yet, but will be released on Nov 6th, as "Security Bulletin 4907". Right now it is only briefly described as "Added security updates for driver components". Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce Software 441.12 WHQLThe change-log follows.

Rockstar Games has dropped a launch trailer for their upcoming PC release of the critically-acclaimed Red Dead Redemption 2. Fret not if you're worried about spoilers (though the game has indeed released quite a while ago): the trailer is only one minute long. There are some specific PC improvements to the title, such as support for up to 8K resolutions (good luck on that), support for higher framerates than on consoles, HDR, and support for non-standard monitor ratios.

The PC version of the game will also introduce a new photo mode for all you photography enthusiasts out there - even though it's in-game, it should still count. One of the things the PC version of the game won't ship with - sadly - is support for raytracing. There were some rumors running around the web regarding support for raytracing on the Rockstar Release due to some screenshots outed by NVIDIA that sported an RTX logo on the bottom right corner, but those served only as marketing for their latest 20-series graphics cards. No raytracing will be available in this game - and there is no reason to think it might.

Highly anticipated version of Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC is now available for pre-order. Launching on November 5th, this game will be available for pre-purchase starting from today until October 22nd, when the pre-order period will end. For now, ordering is exclusive to the Rockstar Games Launcher, Rockstar's version of Steam/Epic Store for its own games.

For all pre-purchases, Rockstar has prepared a heap of extra bonuses. For starters, users can choose any two games from the selection of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto:Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Bully: Scholarship Edition, L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition, Max Payne 3: The Complete Edition, for free. Additionally, every pre-purchase made through Rockstar Game Launcher will result in a free upgrade to the premium edition of Red Dead Redemption 2, where ultimate and special edition will get a $20 discount if users want to upgrade. Furthermore, there are additional bonuses that include Outlaw Survival Kit for Story Mode, War Horse for Story Mode, Le Trésor des Morts Treasure Map for Story Mode, Cash Bonus for Story Mode, 50 gold Bars for Red Dead Online. To add thing up, PC port of RDR2 will feature updated graphics to harness the power PC graphics cards offer with features like HDR for better visual effects.

Rockstar Games revealed that its hotly anticipated PC version of "Red Dead Redemption 2" will launch across three digital platforms. Pre-orders for the game will open on Rockstar Games Launcher on October 9th. At launch on November 5th, the game will be available on the Epic Games Store. This "exclusivity" will remain for a month, when in December, the game becomes available on Steam. Both Steam and Epic Games Store form concentric DRM layers to the Rockstar Games Launcher, and the game will be available on this launcher throughout, including pre-orders. Buyers are expected to be drawn to Epic Games Store or Steam to take advantage of regional pricing.