In addition to its two new CPU cores, Arm has announced three new GPU cores, namely the Immortalis-G925, Mali-G725 and Mali-G625. Starting from the top, the Immortalis-G925 is said to bring up to 37 percent better performance at 30 percent lower power usage compared to last year's Immortalis-G720 GPU core, whilst having two additional GPU cores in the test scenario. It's also said to bring up to 52 percent better ray tracing performance and up to 36 percent improved inference in AI/ML workloads. It's also been given a big overhaul when it comes to ray tracing—due to it being aimed towards gaming phones—and Arm claims that it can either offer up to 52 percent increased performance by reducing the accuracy in scenes with intricate objects, or 27 percent more performance with maintained accuracy.

The Immortalis-G925 supports 50 percent more shader cores and it supports configurations of up to 24 cores, compared to 16 cores for the Immortalis-G720. The Mali-G725 will be available with between six and nine cores, whereas the Mali-G625 will sport between one and five cores. The Mali-G625 is intended for smartwatches and entry-level mobile devices where a more complex GPU might not be suitable due to power draw. The Mali-G725 on the other hand is targeting upper mid-range devices and the Immortalis-G925 is aimed towards flagship devices or gaming phones as mentioned above. In related news, Arm said it's working with Epic Games to get its Unreal Engine 5 desktop renderer up and running on Android, which could lead to more complex games on mobile devices.

The highly anticipated NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 update, including Ray Reconstruction for NVIDIA Omniverse - a platform for connecting and building custom 3D tools and apps - is now available. RTX Video Super Resolution (VSR) will be available with tomorrow's NVIDIA Studio Driver release - which also supports the DLSS 3.5 update in Omniverse and is free for RTX GPU owners. The version 1.5 update delivers greater overall graphical fidelity, upscaling for native videos and support for GeForce RTX 20 Series GPUs. NVIDIA Creative Director and visual effects producer Sabour Amirazodi returns In the NVIDIA Studio to share his Halloween-themed project: a full projection mapping show on his house, featuring haunting songs, frightful animation, spooky props and more.

Creators can join the #SeasonalArtChallenge by submitting harvest- and fall-themed pieces through November The latest Halloween-themed Studio Standouts video features ghouls, creepy monsters, haunted hospitals, dimly lit homes and is not for the faint-of-heart.

Intel Graphics today posted a technological deep-dive video presentation into how XeSS (Xe Super Sampling), the company's rival to NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, works. XeSS is a gaming performance enhancement technology where your game is rendered by the GPU at a lower resolution than what your display is capable of; while a high-quality upscaling algorithm scales it up to your native resolution while minimizing quality losses associated with classical upscaling methods.

The video details mostly what we gathered from our older articles on how XeSS works. A game's raster and lighting is rendered at a lower-resolution, frame-data along with motion vectors are fed to the XeSS upscaling algorithm, and is then passed on to the renderer's post-processing and the native-resolution HUD is applied. The XeSS upscaler takes not just motion vector and the all important frame inputs, but also temporal data from processed (upscaled) frames, so a pre-trained AI could better reconstruct details.

I've written my fair share of articles on No Man's Sky, since the game's concept is one of the more interesting in recent years (for me; editor liberties, can we call it?). The game may have excelled more in concept than in execution, but a series of updates have brought the game close to what was promised. Now, developer Hello games has brought about an update that brings a more subtle change: the game's API has been updated from OpenGL to Vulkan. The "behind the curtains" update has brought about improved performance across the spectrum of graphics cards that support that API renderer (in particular AMD users, as the patch notes themselves spell out), and, expectedly, an easier coding time for the developers. Improved HDR support was also coded into the game. The full patch notes follow, as well as Hello Games' words on this change.