Hi everyone! We're very happy to announce that our team is releasing Patch 1.21 for Horizon Forbidden West today. Patch 1.21 sets up the game for the release of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. It also brings additional Accessibility Features. Patch 1.21 is exclusive to PlayStation 5 users. Do note that Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores content will be playable from April 19th onwards.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores launches April 19 on PS5! This expansion sees Aloy pursue a sinister threat in the untamed wilds of Los Angeles, now a treacherous volcanic archipelago. Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores takes Aloy to the ruins of Los Angeles. The past millennia has seen the metropolis wracked by tectonic and volcanic activity. The result: a dangerous archipelago populated by deadly machines. Among these islands, a large settlement of Quen fight to survive.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.

Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 customers still represent a large group, as Microsoft has announced an additional year of Extended Security Updates (ESU) with a caveat. Only available for Microsoft Azure customers, the ESU program will allow Windows Server 2008 and R2 users on Azure cloud to get security updates until January 9, 2024. By no means is this not a free program, and Microsoft will bill this extensively as it is available internationally. Many customers are forced to join the ESU program for their Windows Server 2008 and R2 systems, as upgrading the OS to the latest version is not always possible without significant downtime or a hardware update.

The following customer base has legibility to the fourth year of the ESU program:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows Embedded POSReady 7
• Windows Embedded Standard 7
• All Azure virtual machines (VMs) running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems on Azure, Azure Stack, Azure VMWare Solutions, or Azure Nutanix Solution.

At the end of last month, ASRock revealed its UEFI/BIOS updates for its 600-series motherboards for the next generation of CPUs from Intel and now ASUS has announced that it will offer updates for its Z690 motherboards. We're not sure why ASUS has limited itself to only Z690, but we'd expect updates for all of its 600-series chipset motherboards to arrive in due time. ASUS has been just as short on details as ASRock, although in the case of ASUS, all the Z690 boards will start on the same UEFI version—160x—when it comes to Raptor Lake support.

ASUS will offer updates for its ROG, ROG Strix, ProArt, Prime and TUF Gaming boards at this first stage. ASUS recommends using the BIOS Flashback functionality on the motherboards, or its EZ Flash 3 program in Windows. To get the latest UEFI update for your motherboard, you need to head over to ASUS' support site and download it manually according to the press release.

Remember that hideous, remotely exploitable vulnerability on Windows' Print Spooler service, which would enable remote attackers to run code with administrator privileges on your machine? Well, Microsoft seems to be waking up from this particular instance of PrintNightmare, as the company has already issued critical, out-of-band security updates (meaning that they're outside Microsoft's cadenced patch rollout) for several versions of windows. Since the Print Spooler service runs by default and is an integral part of Windows releases (likely since the NT platform development), Microsoft has even pushed out patches to OSs that aren't currently supported.

Microsoft has issued correctives for Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, a variety of supported versions of Windows 10, and even Windows 7. As per Microsoft, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, and Windows 10 Version 1607 products are still missing the security patches, but they're being actively worked on and should be released sooner rather than later. The security patches include mitigations for both the PrintNightmare issue (CVE-2021-34527), as well as another Print Spooler vulnerability that's been previously reported (CVE-2021-1675). The mitigations are being distributed via Windows Update, as always, and the relevant packages are KB5004945 through KB5004959 (depending on your version of Windows).

The global leading motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, announces its AMD B450 motherboards series will support next generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors via BIOS update. The latest AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors come with a full suite of latest technologies designed to boost your PC's processing power. Update to the latest BIOS and get ready for the ultimate performance as well as latest technologies with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors!

In the anticipation of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs launch based on Zen 3 architecture, AMD has just released the updated drivers for its chipsets. Covering a wide selection ranging from B350, A320, X370, X399, B450, X470, X570, B550, and TRX40 Chipset, the updated chipset drivers include some bug fixes and new features. Now there is an updated power plan for AMD Ryzen CPUs that coordinate with chipsets, which means that AMD engineers have developed a new plan for Windows 10 OS which provides the best performance and power usage. You can check out the fixes listed below and you can go to the download link to install the new drivers.Download: AMD Ryzen Chipset Driver 2.10.13.408.

Intel today released and updated version of its "Architecture Instruction Set Extensions and Future Features Programming" Reference document with the latest advanced matrix extension (AMX) programming reference. This gives us some insights into AMX and how it works. While we will not go in too much depth here, the AMX is pretty simple. Intel describes it as the following: "Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) is a new 64-bit programming paradigm consisting of two components: a set of 2-dimensional registers (tiles) representing sub-arrays from a larger 2-dimensional memory image, and an accelerator able to operate on tiles, the first implementation is called TMUL (tile matrix multiply unit)." In other words, this represents another matrix processing extension that can be used for a wide variety of workload, mainly machine learning processing. The first microarchitecture that will implement the new extension is Sapphire Rapids Xeon processor. You can find more about AMX here.

Microsoft yesterday announced that they would be freezing any release for optional Windows 10 updates whilst the world still reels from the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision by the company comes after they decided to keep delivering security updates for the Fall Creator's update (version 1709 of the OS).

Both these decisions by Microsoft stem from the company trying to reduce the impact of Windows 10 updates on businesses - reducing update requirements to security updates means there is fewer chances of an optional update shipping that could negatively impact productivity - of which very little bit is required right now for some businesses to even keep afloat. When the crisis has passed, all updates will be resumed.

Microsoft today has released several microcode updates for Intel CPUs. The updates are meant to be applied in a case-by-case basis under their Windows 10 operating system, and these updates target several releases of that OS (ranging from version 1507 through version 1903/1909). These address several vulnerability exploits related to side-channel and speculative execution attacks on Intel CPUs.

The updates need to be installed specifically for the Windows OS version you're rocking, and on systems with CPUs affected by the vulnerabilities and covered by this microcode update release. These include Intel's Denverton (Atom C3000 series); Sandy Bridge, Sandy Bridge E and EP (2000 and 3000 series), Valleyview (Atom Z3000 series) and Whiskey Lake U CPUs (8000U series, 5000U series, and 4200U series). These updates must be installed manually by users.

Today, on January the 14th, Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows 7 operating system. After more than 10 years since its launch, Windows 7 has remained a primary operating system on many PCs, especially OEM PCs manufactured before 2015, when Windows 10 came out. The user transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has not been an easy task for Microsoft, however, by declaring that the product has reached End-Of-Life, Microsoft is trying to make millions of users pull the trigger and embrace the new operating system.

When January 14th arrives, Microsoft will stop giving Windows 7 users technical support, software updates with new features, and most importantly security updates. The official recommendation from Microsoft is to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, meaning Windows 10. As some of the older PCs may have compatibility issues with newer OS, it is also recommended to check your PC specifications. If you are a customer of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, you will continue to see further support in the future, however, for regular users, the support period is over.

Apple today updated MacBook Air, adding True Tone to its Retina display for a more natural viewing experience, and lowering the price to $1,099, with an even lower price of $999 for college students. In addition, the entry-level $1,299 13-inch MacBook Pro has been updated with the latest 8th-generation quad-core processors, making it two times more powerful than before. It also now features Touch Bar and Touch ID, a True Tone Retina display and the Apple T2 Security Chip, and is available for $1,199 for college students.

MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are also part of Apple's Back to School promotion, which includes a pair of Beats Studio 3 Wireless headphones with the purchase of a qualifying Mac notebook or iMac. With their sleek, portable designs, Retina displays, great everyday performance, all-day battery life and running macOS, Mac notebooks have never been more popular in higher education, with Student Monitor data showing nearly 60 percent of US college notebook buyers own a Mac.

Underworld Ascendant, the fan-funded title from independent game studio OtherSide Entertainment is now available digitally for PlayStation 4 from the PlayStation Store. The action-RPG, published by 505 Games, will soon be available to Xbox One players via the Xbox Games Store. Both versions are priced at 24.99.

Underworld Ascendant is a fantasy RPG that challenges you to think creatively in an interactive sandbox environment. Players can mix and match dozens of combat, stealth and magic skills to develop their unique style of play and devise clever plans to overcome challenges as they navigate the foreboding Stygian Abyss.

Intel released CPU microcode updates to address four new security vulnerabilities disclosed by the company on May 14, 2019. These microcode updates can be encapsulated as motherboard UEFI firmware updates, and for some processors even distributed through Windows Update. In its Microcode Revision Guidance document put out on Tuesday, Intel revealed that all Core and Xeon processors going as far as the 2nd generation Core "Sandy Bridge" architecture are eligible for microcode updates.

2nd generation Core is roughly the time when motherboard vendors were forced to adopt UEFI (unrelated to these vulnerabilities). A number of low-power microarchitectures, such as "Gemini Lake," "Cherry View," "Apollo Lake," and "Amber Lake," which are basically all low-power processors released after 2012-13, also receive these updates. Until you wait for your motherboard vendor or PC/notebook OEM to pass on these microcode updates, Intel advises you to disable HyperThreading if your processor is older than 8th gen "Coffee Lake," and seek out the latest software updates.Additional slides follow.

Crytek have updated their development roadmap for CryEngine, adding in some of the features we discussed yesterday on our piece regarding their Neon Noir ray tracing tech demo performance. The new roadmap now places Spring 2020 as the time where both DirectX 12 and Vulkan, lower level APIs than the currently-supported DX11, will be fully integrated into the engine. Ray Tracing will be added at the same time, no doubt taking advantage of the higher performance that can be extracted from hardware through the lower level APIs.

It will be interesting to see the level of performance on CryEngine's hardware agnostic ray tracing, and whether their Spring 2020 implementation will take advantage of specialized RTX hardware - or focus on a software solution ran at varying degrees of rendering resolution according to the scene. Though with AMD's Navi being expected to incorporate some sort of hardware-based ray tracing acceleration, it's very likely software calculations will only be a fallback of the coding.

One of the big no-nos for some users looking to upgrade do Windows 10 was the fact that Microsoft enforced constant, 6-month update cycles independent of whether users wanted them or not. This move was done to streamline the update process and keep all users at parity when it comes to important security and feature updates that Microsoft considered relevant. However, it seems Microsoft is now abandoning this practice, which means that users that like to know exactly what is being changed in their systems - and at a time of their convenience - now have one less reason to not upgrade.

Not only will Windows no longer push updates inadvertently, now home users will also have the ability to not only pause updates, but also remove them. There's a caveat, though - you won't be able to postpone feature updates forever. As it stands, Microsoft has an 18 month "end of life" period for major Windows 10 versions, which means that after your 18 months of postponing updates are up (and all of the kinks have been ironed out), you PC will still update to the latest version. There are some other details, which I will transcribe from the Microsoft blog post for your perusal.

MSI mid-March began quietly rolling out BIOS updates for its socket AM4 motherboards based on AMD 400-series chipset, with a very ominous BIOS change-log entry: "Support new upcoming AMD CPU." At first, we dismissed this for being the company's follow-up to its 6th March announcement of support for some of the newer Athlon processor models, namely the 220GE and 240GE. After updating our MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC with one of these BIOSes, however, we discovered a very interesting microcode string - AGESA COMBO-AM4 0.0.7.2.

Such a major change in AGESA shouldn't be warranted to add support for two new chips based on existing "Raven Ridge" architecture that both AGESA "Summit Ridge" and AGESA PiR (Pinnacle Ridge) series microcodes should be able to comfortably run. We spoke with sources familiar with AMD microcode, who revealed that this AGESA COMBO-AM4 0.0.7.2 is designed for the upcoming "Zen 2" microarchitecture, and its first socket AM4 implementation, codenamed "Matisse." AMD internal versions of AGESA with Matisse support begin with the version sequence 0.0.7.x., and as we head closer to formal launch of these chips, AMD could release a 1.0.0.0 version of "AGESA COMBO-AM4." For our B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, the BIOS version packing this new AGESA is v1.60, and we wager this board should now be able to run Ryzen "Matisse" engineering samples. Now, if we can only get our hands on one.

Anthem is out in the wilds, and it seems its reception has been mixed - it's definitely not the blockbuster, review-parading title that any developer - and publisher - would like their games to be. Reports peg Anthem's boxed game sales as half that of Bioware's previous Mass Effect: Andromeda - which was, again, half those of Mass Effect 3. Perhaps it's a tale of gamers taking a step back in trust regarding Bioware's ability to deliver, following Andromeda's reception, perhaps it has been superseded in interest by multiplayer-focused games (as we've seen, the industry trend has gone on towards having competitive multiplayer, instead of cooperative multiplayer designs). Whatever the reason, Anthem seems to have been met will a less-than-expected interest when it comes to sales - the opening weekend sales were lower than both Kingdom Hearts 3 and Resident Evil 2. And the PC version of the game has been ill-received by critics and gamers alike, if Metacritic still holds weight in this review-bombing world.

That said, EA is committing to content drops for the game - until May 2019, that is. This in itself sets a mild alarm ringing - this can't possibly represent publisher's investment in the game - three months is a very unimpressive commitment to the longevity of a game universe in the scale of Anthem. So many plans for the game to usher in the "games as a platform" concept of regular content drops, I'd be dumbstruck to find that EA might consider dropping the money bag like this.

NETGEAR , Inc. today debuted during IFA 2018 tradeshow its latest member of the Nighthawk Pro Gaming product family, the Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR700 WiFi Router, the industry's fastest home router for gaming. In addition to its award-winning DumaOS for greater network control over who and how you play, the NPG XR700 router sports cutting-edge hardware with its AD7200 Quad Stream Wave2 WiFi. Whether you're an avid or a casual gamer, the NPG XR700 router will deliver the control you need to dominate opponents in online multi-player scenarios.

Similar to the rest of the award-winning Nighthawk Pro Gaming family, the groundbreaking NPG XR700 router is purpose-built and fine-tuned to address the unique networking challenges of gamers. It optimizes network connections by stabilizing ping, reducing lag spikes, and keeping you always-on with the fastest wired and wireless connectivity for advanced online game play. The XR700 leverages exclusive state-of-the-art gaming software powered by DumaOS for critical pro gaming capabilities such as an intuitive and interactive Gaming Dashboard, a Geo Filter to guarantee local game hosts, and Quality of Service (QoS) to control and eliminate lag. This rich set of software features enables customization and gaming performance unmatched in the router space.

Much of the secret sauce that made Intel processors faster than AMD is going sour, as the cybersecurity community is finding gaping security vulnerabilities by exploiting features such as speculative execution. Intel's microcode updates that mitigate these vulnerabilities impact performance. Intel isn't too happy about public performance numbers put out by its customers, which it fears could blunt the competitive edge of its products. The company has hence updated the license terms governing the microcode update distribution to explicitly forbid its users from publishing comparative "before/after" performance numbers of patched processors.

The updated license for the microcode update has this controversial sentence (pay attention to "v"):

"You will not, and will not allow any third party to (i) use, copy, distribute, sell or offer to sell the Software or associated documentation; (ii) modify, adapt, enhance, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, change or create derivative works from the Software except and only to the extent as specifically required by mandatory applicable laws or any applicable third party license terms accompanying the Software; (iii) use or make the Software available for the use or benefit of third parties; or (iv) use the Software on Your products other than those that include the Intel hardware product(s), platform(s), or software identified in the Software; or (v) publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results."

ASUS announced that it is releasing motherboard BIOS updates that add 9th generation Core "Whiskey Lake" processor compatibility for almost its entire Intel 300-series chipset motherboard family. This includes models based on H310, B360, Q370, and H370 chipsets, and not just the top Z370. Intel is expected to debut its 9th generation Core processor family with three SKUs later this year: the Core i9-9900K, the Core i7-9700K, and the Core i5-9600K. The tables below list motherboard models alongside the minimum BIOS version you'll need for "Whiskey Lake" compatibility. You'll find your BIOS in the "support" tab of the product page of your motherboard on ASUS website.

A variety of motherboards based on Intel Z370 Express chipset began receiving the first BIOS updates that add compatibility with upcoming Intel 8-core processors. The updates are flagged "beta" by the manufacturers. Given that only Z370 (and not other 300-series chipset models) have such updates, it's possible that Intel could restrict the first socket LGA1151 8-core processor SKUs (which could be unlocked "K" variants with higher TDP) to Z370 chipset, as the chipset has stronger VRM requirements than other chipset models that don't support CPU overclocking.

To support the upcoming processors, the BIOS needs to include the latest 06EC microcode revision. Various motherboard manufacturers, such as ASUS, ASRock, and MSI, have released beta BIOS updates with this microcode, as confirmed in AMI Aptio inspection tool screenshots. The 06EC microcode, detailed in this slide-deck from Intel, hardens the machine against newer variants of the "Spectre" vulnerability. Older revisions of this document also mentioned support for Intel Core "9000 series" processors, before Intel scampered to redact it.

Intel on their latest Microcode Revision Guidance Guide has apparently stopped development of mitigations for some of its processor families that still haven't been updated to combat the threat of Spectre. The odyssey for the return to form of security on Intel products has been a steep, and a slow one, as the company has struggled to deploy mitigations for speculative code execution on its processor families that run it. Updates for some families of products, however - such as Penryn, Wolfdale, Bloomfield and Yorkfield, among others - are apparently not going to get an update at all.

ASRock today announced that it has posted motherboard BIOS updates for its socket AM4 motherboard product lineup, which enables support for AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs based on the "Raven Ridge" silicon. The company posted BIOS updates for all 18 of its AM4 motherboard models, based on AMD X370, B350, and A320 chipsets. To get your BIOS update, visit the downloads section of the product page of your motherboard model on ASRock company website.

In related news, it looks like AMD has standardized a new label for use by motherboard manufacturers on their product boxes to denote out of the box support for AMD Ryzen 2000 series processors, on newer batches of their AMD 300-series chipset motherboards. Motherboards without this label likely won't support chips such as the 2200G or 2400G out of the box, and will require a BIOS update using a supported Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processor first. Motherboards based on the upcoming AMD 400-series chipsets, which should launch in Q2-2018, will support "Raven Ridge" and upcoming "Pinnacle Ridge" processors out of the box, including backwards-compatibility for existing "Summit Ridge" processors.

MSI is among the first motherboard manufacturers to release BIOS updates for its entire socket AM4 motherboard lineup, to enable support for Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs, based on the "Raven Ridge" silicon. With the two chips installed, you will finally be able to use the DVI, D-Sub, HDMI or DisplayPort connectors on the rear-panel of your socket AM4 motherboards. Motherboards based on AMD's upcoming 400-series chipset, will come with support for "Raven Ridge" APUs out of the box, among other chips, such as the company's upcoming 12 nm "Pinnacle Ridge" processors.

Among MSI's 300-series chipset socket AM4 motherboards to receive "Raven Ridge" support, are the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium, the X370 Gaming M7 ACK, the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon, the X370 Gaming Pro, X370 Gaming Plus, X370 SLI Plus, X370 Krait Gaming; the B350 Tomahawk Plus, the B350 Tomahawk, the B350 Tomahawk Arctic, B350 PC Mate, B350M Gaming Pro, B350M Mortar, B350M Bazooka, B350M Pro-VDH, and A320M Gaming Pro. You'll find the BIOS ROM files in the downloads section of your motherboard's product page on MSI website.