While Apple laptops have never really been the first stop for PC gaming, Linux is slowly shaping up to be an excellent gaming platform, largely thanks to open-source development efforts as well as work from the likes of AMD and NVIDIA, who have both put significant work into their respective Linux drivers in recent years. This makes efforts like the Asahi Linux Project all the more intriguing. Asahi Linux is a project that aims to bring Linux to Apple Silicon Macs—a task that has proven rather difficult, thanks to the intricacies of developing a bespoke GPU driver for Apple's custom ARM GPUs. In a recent blog post, the graphics developer behind the Asahi Linux Project showed off a number of AAA games, albeit older titles, running on an Apple M1 processor on the latest Asahi Linux build.

To run the games on Apple Silicon, Asahi Linux uses a "game playing toolkit," which relies on a number of custom graphics drivers and emulators, including tools from Valve's Proton translation layer, which ironically was also the foundation for Apple's Game Porting Toolkit. Asahi uses FEX to emulate x86 on ARM, Wine as a translation layer for Windows apps, and DXVK and vkd3d-proton for DirectX-Vulkan translation. In the blog post, the Asahi developer claims that the alpha is capable of running games like Control, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 at playable frame rates. Unfortunately, 60 FPS is not yet attainable in the majority of new high-fidelity games, there are a number of indie titles that run quite well on Asahi Linux, including Hollow Knight, Ghostrunner, and Portal 2.

In a notable step forward for the RISC-V architecture, the Box86 and Box64 emulator developers have successfully run The Witcher 3 on a RISC-V processor. While performance is far from optimal, even on a Milk-V Pioneer with a 64-core processor and an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card, the achievement is remarkable.

RISC-V, a free and open-source instruction set architecture, is still in its early stages compared to established platforms like ARM and x86/x64. Despite this, the Box86/Box64 team, known for creating environments to run Windows programs on Linux, has demonstrated that AAA gaming is possible on RISC-V hardware. To accomplish this feat, the developers utilized Box64 with Wine and DXVK to emulate the necessary instructions.

PCGamesN reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB founder edition graphics card a few days ago - the author noticed some stuttering issues when testing out said GPU in Cyberpunk 2077, and proceeded to publish these details. The odd performance bug seemed to occur when DLSS Frame Generation was enabled on a Ryzen 7000-series CPU PC system. PCGamesN forwarded these findings to NVIDIA - who took the matter very seriously. Team Green has since confirmed that an incompatibility between DLSS and Ryzen 7000 series processors exists in Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 - both developed by CD Projekt RED, and running on variants of the studio's proprietary REDengine. PCGamesN was quickly provided with revised .dll files that have apparently resolved the in-game stuttering problems.

An NVIDIA spokesperson outlined plans for forthcoming fixes: "The latest StreamLine 1.5.6 SL.dll files will be included in an upcoming patch of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, fixes stuttering on Ryzen 7000 CPUs." PCGamesN was impressed with the speedy response (on the software team's part) and effectiveness of the specified bug fixes - and jokingly signs off their article with this conclusion: "There's no word on when this update will arrive exactly, but we're glad to see NVIDIA both quickly recognize and provide a fix for the problem. Hopefully it'll arrive before or just in time for the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty release date, instead of whenever The Witcher 4 release date will be."

CD Projekt RED has released the newest update for The Witcher 3 Next-Gen, bringing performance improvements for ray tracing, adding support for Intel XeSS, and fixing some issues seen earlier.

According to the update release notes, the latest The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update 4.03 introduces general performance improvements for ray-traced global illumination and ray-traced reflections, and fixes some issues seen with ray-traced shadows. It also addresses issue with DirectX 11 crashing on certain AMD GPUs, adds support for Intel Xe Super Sampling, and fixes lighting issues with Screen Space Reflection when ray-traced global illumination is off. There are also plenty of visual, quest, and gameplay fixes on both the PC and other platforms.

CD Projekt RED has announced that it will release its new big patch for The Witcher 3: Next-Gen today, coming to all platforms, including PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We still do not have all the patch notes but Marcin Momot, Global Communication Director at CD Projekt RED, noted that it will be around 2 GB on the PC and between 10 GB and 20 GB on consoles.

It will be interesting to see if CD Projekt RED managed to optimize the CPU multi-threading as the game was pretty hard even on high-end systems. CD Projekt RED already said it was looking into this issue, and hopefully, this new patch will address this and other issues that have been plaguing the game. We'll update the article as soon as official release notes are available.

Update: Patch 4.02 for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has gone live and should be available on PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles soon. Full release notes are now available.

Welcome to a new addition to TechPowerUp! where we give you an overview of new games that are set to launch in the coming week. This will be a weekly feature and it'll contain a short blurb about each game, some screenshots and maybe a video as well. We're open to feedback about this format and we'll make adjustments as we go along.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition / This week's AAA title / Wednesday December 14
Enhanced with the power of next-gen consoles and modern PC hardware in mind, the upcoming release of CD Projekt Red's award-winning role-playing game will feature dozens of visual, performance, and technical enhancements over the original. These include ray tracing support, faster loading times on consoles, as well as a variety of mods integrated into the experience, among many others. Along with new additional content inspired by The Witcher series from Netflix, these will be covered next week in a dedicated REDstreams event on Twitch, where the studio will present gameplay from the next-gen version of the game.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 527.56 WHQL comes with optimization for Portal with RTX, a remaster of the cult classic with enhanced with NVIDIA RTX, which we took for a spin. Besides, the new drivers also add optimization for The Witcher 3 Wildhunt Enhanced Edition, which will debut later this month, and Jurassic World Evolution 2. Among the issues fixed with this release include flickering noticed when looking at the sky in Watch_Dogs 2, on machines powered by RTX 4090; games with DLSS 3 crashing when ending a recording using Shadowplay or OBS with NVENC; display corruption noticed in Minecraft Java Edition, hotplugging between HDMI and DP not working correctly on RTX 4090; and certain issues with Adobe Premiere with H.265 and HEVC content.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 527.56 WHQL

CD PROJEKT RED today revealed that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development with Unreal Engine 5, kicking off a new saga for the franchise and a new technology partnership with Epic Games.

Today's announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED's previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons.

As if CD Projekt Red needed any more problems on their plate that weren't of their own creation, it seems that the hackers who recently infiltrated the company's infrastructure have turned out a profit on sensitive data. After source code for CD Projekt Red's Red Engine, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, and Gwent were stolen from the company's servers, the company announced they had gone to the relevant authorities, and that they wouldn't negotiate with the data terrorists. Now, according to Cybersecurity company Kela, the hackers have de-listed their auction for the data - after requiring a starting bid of $1 million, and expecting $7 million for the entire package.

The deal apparently went through, with a condition that bars the hackers from re-selling the data to any other parties. It remains to be seen whether or not the thieves will abide by their word and the conditions reportedly set upon the sale. Of course, it is in the realm of possibility that CD Projekt Red themselves acquired the data anonymously so as to protect their corporate and technology interests - one can only imagine the repercussions of the company's efforts being exposed this way. And despite any ill sentiment that can be levied at the company for the state of Cyberpunk 2077's last-gen versions, I'd say that respect for the company's developers and team should have us all on their side on this one.

CD Projekt RED just announced that it has been hit by a cyber-attack on its internal network, with the attacker having gained access to certain sensitive information belonging to the CD Projekt group. In a press note posted to Twitter, the studio included the screenshot to a plain-text ransom note left on its servers by the attacker, who claims to possess source-code of the company's most popular titles, including "Cyberpunk 2077," "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," "Gwent," and an unreleased version of "The Witcher 3" (possibly a remaster). They also claim to have confidential documents related to CDPR's financial accounting, administration, legal, HR, IR, and more. The note ends with information on how to reach out to the attacker to discuss ransom within 48 hours. CDPR announced that it will not give into the demands of the attacker, and has reached out to law enforcement.

According to the latest information coming directly from CD Projekt RED, we are finding out that Witcher 3, one of the most popular releases from CDPR, is going to be ported to the next-generation console lineup by 3rd party studio. Here you can read the message CDPR passed in its H1 conference call:

CD Projekt president Adam KicinskiRegarding The Witcher 3 and its next-gen version: this project is developed outside, with our proven partner who had delivered the 4K version of The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 3 for Switch, so they already know our technology very well. We asked them to prepare the next-gen port, and as I said during my presentation, we expect a full next-gen experience, with great next-gen features, but it doesn't interfere with the next-gen development of CP, which is being done internally by the CP team, and we're confirming that CP will be released in the next-gen version. Well we have to differentiate two things: the current version, which will be released in November, will be playable from the beginning when next-gen consoles are released; you will be able to play the current-gen version on next-gen from day 1. And you can expect a bit higher quality than on the current-gen. However, the full-blown next-gen version is planned for next year and it will be developed internally.

CD Projekt RED has recently announced that a new "visually and Technically Enhanced" version of The Witcher 3 will be coming to PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5. This enhanced version will be sold as a standalone version titled The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - Complete Edition and "will feature a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times — across the base game, both expansions, and all extra content". The upgrades will also come " as a free update for everyone who already owns the game on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4". The release date for this enhanced version is currently unknown.

CD Projekt Red announced that the cumulative sale of games in the Witcher franchise has surpassed the 50 million mark. This news comes three years after the developer broke through the 25 million mark on the same franchise, and speaks to the intemporality that can be achieved by games developed during the last gen. While there will always be improvements in graphics technologies (though the diminishing returns equation is already definitely present), it can be said that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt still remains a beautiful game today. This is true even if you don't consider the numerous graphical improvement mods that have been made available since; and that helps games keep their sales momentum for many more years than those developed in previous gens.

Sales of games on The Witcher franchise have obviously increased following Netflix's successful adaptation of the universe for its The Witcher streaming series, with original author of The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski, also enjoying increased book sales in the same period. It's a circular system of sorts - and a well deserved one for CD Projekt Red. Here's hoping the developers can achieve the same level of acclaim (and sales) on their Cyberpunk 2077 project - only four months to go now.

Polish game studio CD Projekt, behind the smash-hit "The Witcher" game franchise and 2020's most anticipated game, "Cyberpunk 2077," turned a handsome profit in 2019. The studio reported 521 million PLN (roughly USD $125 million) in sales for the fiscal year 2019, which the company says is a 44 percent growth over 2018. Its consolidated net profit increased by 60 percent over 2018, to 175 million PLN ($42 million). Interestingly, CD Projekt attributes its growth to sales of "The Witcher 3," particularly its Nintendo Switch release, and "GWENT" on mobile. Pre-orders of "Cyberpunk 2077" will stream cash into CDPR's coffers, leading up to its September 2020 release.

CD Projekt Red has to be the most renowned games developer in the world, due to its consumer-friendly policies and overall posture when it comes to creating and maintaining their game worlds. The company has always given gamers more than the average company, with free DLCs being delivered throughout the first year of support for a given title (looking at you, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt), and added goodies to packages that from most other companies usually only feature the plastic packaging around the game disk. Their GOG games platform is also one of the most well-established out there, and has helped build the company's image due to its DRM-free approach.

All of this, alongside the fact that The Witcher series has seen a resurgence with the release of the Netflix series, and expectations on their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 title, have led the company towards tremendous growth, with it now ranking as second largest European gaming company, second only to Ubisoft - and the difference is still tremendous. Ubisoft has around 16,000 employees (as of 2019), and is home to some of the world's most historic franchises, while CD Projekt Red counts more than 900 employees (as of 2018), with that number having certainly increasing in size in preparation for, and in continued development, of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.

NVIDIA today posted, the latest version of GeForce software. Version 442.19 WHQL comes game-ready for "Zombie Army: Dead War 4," "Apex Legends Season 4," and "Metro Exodus: Sam's Story." With these drivers, NVIDIA improved the maximum frame-rate setting with limits between 20 and 1,000 FPS. Find this setting in "NVIDIA Control Panel>3D Settings>Maximum Frame Rate control." NVIDIA also introduced VRSS (VR super-sampling), an image quality enhancement that super sampling selectively on the central region of a frame.

Among the bug fixes are a game crash during a cutscene in "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine," SETI@Home experiencing driver crash (TDR) on "Maxwell" GPUs, random stoppage of OBS streaming with "Call of Duty Modern Warfare," Battleye with NVIDIA low-latency mode causing a DWM crash and recovery; certain SLI+G-Sync stutter issues being fixed; a "Doom" (2016) game crash with "Kepler" GPUs, and an NVENC memory leak. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce Software v442.19 | Don't forget to check out TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.3.0

NVIDIA late Thursday released the GeForce 442.01 Hotfix driver. A hotfix driver is that which is pushed out to correct glaring bugs with the driver immediately, and tend to have much shorter change-logs than beta or WHQL releases. The driver fixes a bug with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" streaming using StreamLabs OBS randomly stopping. Also fixed is a bug with "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine," where a game-crash is observed in a specific cutscene. Lastly a minor stutter in SLI machines with G-Sync enabled has been fixed. The driver is otherwise identical to GeForce 441.87.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 442.01 Hotfix

A Reddit user reported on a recent CD Projekt Red community event held in Warsaw, where the developer of the highly expected Cyberpunk 2077 (and highly acclaimed The Witcher 3) expanded on their latest cyberpunk game's story. According to CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 will have a shorter main storyline than that of The Witcher 3, albeit its sidequests will be much more complex and impactful regarding the entire experience. With the Witcher 3 and its numerous sidequests taking north of 120 hours to fully complete (at least at this editor's pace), this might still place the game's playtime above that of The Witcher 3, depending on the number and complexity of said sidequests.

According to the user, CD Projekt Red in the community event said that The Witcher 3 sidequests were designed as branching events from the main storyline, which would then, sometimes, make it back onto the main storyline with some repercussions. However, Cyberpunk 2077 sidequests are being developed so as to then enable more of them to be generated upon completion, depending on choices made during that slight deviation from the main story, with most of them having some kind of impact on one another.

Winner of over 800 awards, including 250 Game of the Year awards, The Witcher 3: Wild Huntis an RPG set in a fantastic open world full of adventure, danger, and mystery. As professional monster slayer Geralt of Rivia, gamers must set out to find the Child of Prophecy - a powerful entity that may send the world spiraling toward destruction. Along the way, the witcher will find himself facing not only mighty foes, but also difficult choices, the consequences of which will ripple throughout the game's epic narrative.

Set to launch this year both digitally and in retail, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Editionfor Nintendo Switch comes with the base game, as well as every piece of additional content ever released. This includes both story expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, as well as all 16 free DLCs. In total, the Complete Edition offers over 150 hours of gameplay, for the first time playable truly on the go. The game is being ported to Nintendo Switch by Saber Interactive in close cooperation with CD PROJEKT RED.

The 9.75 TFLOPs figure in the leaked specifications slide of the Radeon RX 5700 XT "Navi" graphics card from earlier today got many guessing if AMD is essentially putting RX Vega-level performance into a GPU that sips a fraction of its power. It turns out that AMD's claim of the RX 5700 XT being faster than the GeForce RTX 2070 wasn't just specific to the odd super-optimized game title, but a whole selection of games, many of which some with GameWorks varnish, some of which even support NVIDIA RTX.

AMD's [leaked] performance slide for the Radeon RX 5700 XT sees the card beat the RTX 2070 in "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey," "Battlefield V," "CoD: Black Ops 4," "Far Cry: New Dawn," "Metro Exodus," Tom Clancy's "The Division 2," "The Witcher 3," and Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands." The card is also striking distance behind the RTX 2070 at "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," and Sid Meier's "Civilisation 6." All games in this slide are tested at 1440p resolution, with in-game settings maxed out (although we're waiting to read the Endnotes on whether "max out" in NVIDIA's context means turning on RTX on some of these games). The RX 5070 XT beats the RTX 2070 by as much as 22 percent in "Battlefield V," and 15 percent in "Metro Exodus," and is claimed to be within single-digit percentage ahead of the RTX 2070. There's another picture of the RX 5070 XT reference board in this slide, and unless we're mistaken, we spy two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We'll learn more about this card in a few hours from now.

The latest game set in the The Witcher universe has been met with slower initial sales than CD Projekt Red expected. According to the company's CEO Adam Kicinski, who spoke in the last earnings call, the slower uptake was the reason for the game's offering on Steam (it was initially launched as a GOG exclusive, but quickly made its way to the much more ubiquitous Steam store.)

As it is the latest game set in The Witcher universe, community interest and excitement surrounding the title increased the sales forecast, but perhaps the "slightly" different take on a Witcher game has turned some buyers' excitement to other pastures. Thronebreaker: the Witcher Tales is a single-player, story-driven adventure with card mechanics, a far cry from the third-person goodness of the now legendary The Witcher 3. Of course, the game now has a long time to rake in funds through continued sales, and it's unlikely the developer will leave The Witcher world behind even if it flops - which it definitely won't, at least not in the long run.

Well, this was bound to happen sometime - but I expected it sooner, rather than as late as now. The Witcher series has become an incredible success in the videogame department, with each successive entry in the series becoming more and more of a masterpiece, culminating in The Witcher 3 - considered by many to be the ultimate RPG yet. The story for the games' development by CD Projekt Red goes way back to 2000, when the developers approached Andrjez Sapkowski on acquiring the rights to The Witcher, after a failed endeavor from another studio who had already bought the rights, but failed to deliver a game - Metropolis, which counted with Adrian Chmielarz (known for Bulletstorm, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter).

Andrjez Sapkowki's approach to the whole "games industry" informed his decision on how to sell the copyright to The Witcher series' and characters - with a "Well they brought a big bag of money! (...) What I expect from an adaptation: a big bag of money. That is all." And that is what he got, according to himself, though CD Projekt Red's co-founder Marcin Iwinski described it as "(not) a huge amount of money".

CD Projekt Red has revealed the gameplay trailer for Thronebreaker, a new role-playing game set in the Witcher universe. Thronebreaker, however, isn't a new third-person role-playing game, like the The Witcher games before it. Thronebreaker was at first being developed as a single-player campaign companion to Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. But of course, as with all CD Projekt Red projects, their ambition and drive drove the package to be much more than just that, meriting its own separate release. However, some ties remain to Gwent, in the form of card unlocks and Gwent elements being integrated into Thronebreakers' gameplay.

In an interview to PC Gamer, CD Projekt Red's CEO Adam Kiciński approached the subject of loot boxes and their integration in videogames as ways of increasing companies' bottom line. And as has been the case in nearly every move CD Projekt has ever made, the CEO's - and the company's - posture is one of respect and frankly, overwhelming candure as to how to conduct a respectable business. When inquired on where the company that developed the Witcher games stands on the microtransactions and lootbox conversation, Adam Kiciński was very clear: far and away from a "milking customers" position.

"'Conversation' sounds way too nice to describe what was happening last year. I would rather call it community backlash," says Kiciński. "And this time around, it wasn't just the hardcore community, there were a lot of really pissed off gamers out there and they decided to speak up. Where we stand is quite simple and you could see it with all of our past releases-most recently The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GWENT. If you buy a full priced game, you should get a big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay."

Fable has been one of the hallmarks of the modern RPG. Not only because of the series' characteristic graphics and tone signature, with its cartoonish characters, hub world design, and Monty Python-esque sense of humor. It was also due, in no small part, to Peter Molyneux's grandiose sales of his vision for the franchise (which never materialized... but could they ever, really?)

Now, after Microsoft killed off the franchise with its free-to-play bet gone wrong in Fable Legends, it seemed the franchise's future was dark and absent of any real interest in development. However, it seems all hope is not yet lost, as reports (saying they're "sources close from the project") have surfaced that Microsoft has delivered the keys to the Fable universe to Playground Games, responsible for the development of the Forza Horizon series of games. The studio is (also reportedly) in the process of hiring new talent for the expected 200-strong project team set to work on the game at Playground's newly-established second office in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. A quick tour by the studio's website, however, reveals that when it comes to careers, Playground Games are "unable to offer internships or work placements at this time.