Intel is taking a leaf out of AMDs book with their latest marketing campaign, the "Accelerate Your Game" bundle promotion was discovered on Overclockers UK and offer a selection of free games and software with the purchase of a qualifying Intel CPU. The promotion will offer free copies of Halo Wars 2, Dungeons 3, Hitman 2, Gears Tactics, VideoStudio Pro 2019, Corel Painters Essentials 7, DLC for The Cycle and World of Tanks along with one month of Origin Access to anyone who purchases a qualifying Intel Core i5 or above processor. The promotion is set to be officially announced by Intel shortly and will run until September 30th.

Intel has been very serious about its efforts in computer graphics lately, mainly because of its plans to launch a dedicated GPU lineup and bring new features to the graphics card market. Today, Intel and Wargaming, a maker of MMO titles like World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes, partnered to bring ray tracing feature to the Wargaming's "Core" graphics engine, used in perhaps one of the best-known MMO title - World of Tanks.

Joint forces of Intel and Wargaming developers have lead to the implementation of ray tracing, using only regular software techniques without a need for special hardware. Being hardware agnostic, this implementation works on any graphics card that can run DirectX 11, as the "Core" engine is written in DirectX 11 API. To achieve this, developers had to make a solution that uses CPU's resources for fast, multi-threaded bounding volume hierarchy which then feeds the GPU's compute shaders for ray tracing processing, thus making the ray tracing feature entirely GPU shader/core dependent. Many features are reworked with emphasis put on shadow quality. In the images below you can see exactly what difference the new ray-tracing implementation makes, and you can use almost any graphics card to get it. Wargaming notes that "some FPS" will be sacrificed if ray tracing is turned on, so your GPU shouldn't struggle too much.

Intel Graphics switched gears from being integrated graphics solutions for basic 2D desktop and video, to something that could appeal to gamers. The change appears to have been brought about by hiring of Raja Koduri, who led graphics teams at AMD and Apple. Intel discovered that its iGPUs can play many e-Sports games such as PUBG, World of Tanks, Warhammer: Vermitide 2, etc., and so, the company decided to do more for this segment of PC gamers that still games on iGPUs, beginning with regular driver updates that pack game-optimizations, the switch to the new DCH driver model for Windows 10, and apparently, a new Control Panel app designed for gamers.

Teased in a YouTube presentation by Intel Graphics, the Control Panel appears to show a game launcher and settings optimization tool modeled along the lines of GeForce Experience. Intel has also made big changes to the functional bits of the Control Panel, which deal with global display settings, monitor setup, etc. The new Control Panel gives us a direction of where Intel Graphics is headed: it doesn't want to leave behind gamers. The Gen11 iGPU which will be part of the company's 10 nm "Ice Lake" processors already spark rumors of massive 3D performance improvements over current Gen9.5, and reportedly have over 1 TFLOP/s of raw compute power. The company is also working on a discrete GPU lineup under the Xe brand, targeting a variety of market segments, including gamers.The video presentation by Intel Graphics follows.

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.6.1 beta. The drivers come with performance optimization for "Warhammer: Vermitide 2," with up to 9 percent performance improvements over 18.5.2, seen on Radeon RX Vega 56, at 1440p resolution; and up to 10 percent improvements seen using the RX 580 8 GB. In addition, the update fixes a number of bugs.

Blank screen issues with "Subnautica" have been fixed. System hangs or crashes experienced in "Sea of Thieves" in the "Cannon Cove" area have been fixed. Ground texture corruption in "World of Tanks" on certain multi-GPU systems, has been fixed. Flickering noticed in certain menus of "Middle Earth: Shadow of War" has been fixed. Desktop being out of the visible area at the 8K resolution on Radeon Pro Duo has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.6.1

The change-log follows.

AMD today released its first Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition drivers for this month, version 18.3.1 beta. The drivers come with optimization for "Final Fantasy XV," and "Warhammer: Vermintide II." It also includes some fine-tuning for Dota 2 that delivers up to 6 percent higher frame-rates than 17.12.1 drivers, at 4K Ultra HD, when tested with an RX 580 graphics card. The drivers also fix application crashes with "Sea of Thieves," multi-GPU flickering seen in "Middle-earth: Shadow of War," and some color-corruption noticed with "World of Tanks" in certain multi-GPU configurations. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.1

The change-log follows.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of their Game Ready driver suite, which aims to bring users' systems up to scratch towards playing the latest games with as much performance and stability as possible. The new 391.01 version of NVIDIA's driver suite brings GameReady improvements that pave the way towards Final Fantasy XV - Windows Edition's release. This driver release packs a bigger punch than just Final Fantasy XV, though; it's also a Game Ready driver release for the upcoming Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and for the upcoming World of Tanks' graphics engine upgrade, which will bring tons of graphics features, updates and improvements to the base World of Tanks experience.

On a second, still important note, this driver release also packs performance improvements for the majority of NVIDIA's series 10 graphics cards in Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. These performance improvements range between the 3% and 7%. For a list of fixed and outstanding issues, as well as trailers for the most relevant additions to this driver release, look after the break. As always, you can download these drivers right here on TPU. Just follow the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 391.01 Game Ready Drivers

Wargaming is excited to announce major game enhancements for its flagship title World of Tanks. Coming March 2018, Update 1.0 will overhaul the game's underlying technological base with an advanced CORE graphics engine. Together with this major uplift, over 25 World of Tanks maps are getting redesigned to meet modern graphical standards. Each map will have a distinguished flair and provide even deeper immersion thanks to dynamic music, authentic soundtracks, and atmospheric ambience.

'Update 1.0 is a true game-changer,' said Milos Jerabek, World of Tanks Development Director. 'Though the spirit of the game remains the same, the introduction of the new graphics engine leads to a far greater boost in image fidelity than a simple resolution increase. It's a staggering difference from the game as you know it, and we can't wait for players to get hands-on with it.'

MSI had launched the MSI GP62M World of Tanks Edition not long ago and we are excited to share with you about this special edition, which became a hit in the market. Although, MSI feels a bit of sorry for whom are waiting for a shortfall of this attractive gaming laptop. We understand that you've been waiting and we're so glad to be able to announce that we've stepped up the production in the shortest possible time to supply the various regions and fulfill the demand of WOT gamers and military enthusiasts. Do you wanna know why this gorgeous model could be so popular? Let's unveil the success factors.

MSI spent a lot of time to study the various tanks in World of tanks and try to find out one could be the key that helps gamers win the battle. As a result, the rare tank IS-2 is gloriously embedded on the top-cover and the palm rest, forging an impregnable appeal with IS-2's commanding presence. For this reason, you will become the center of attention on certain occasions.