2XKO is an upcoming team-based fighter game from League of Legends studio, Riot Games, and it looks to be getting a 2025 release. While 2XKO had an alpha playtest since August of this year, the development team recently hinted in a post on X that something is coming in March next year—potentially an expanded beta playtest or even the full launch of the game: "brb for a bit - locking in. you'll see what we've been up to in march, but we'll drop an update in february. in the meantime, support your locals."

The alpha version of the game Riot playtested in August was seemingly quite feature-complete, although a slew of changes is coming to the game based on that feedback, suggesting that what's to come in early 2025 is likely a wider playtest, rather than a full launch. Riot has previously confirmed that 2XKO will be launching sometime in 2025, but there is likely more testing necessary before the game is ready for prime time. That said, Riot Games is no stranger to short beta periods—League of Legends launched into open beta a mere week before its full launch. If 2XKO's previous development updates and the last playtest are anything to go by, the February update Riot teased will probably preview what to expect in the next playtest, with March either being the playtest itself or a showcase of an upcoming alpha or beta test.

Today we're excited to launch the 3DMark DirectStorage feature test. This feature test is a free update for the 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC. The 3DMark DirectStorage feature test helps gamers understand the potential performance benefits that Microsoft's DirectStorage technology could have for their PC's gaming performance.

DirectStorage is a Microsoft technology for Windows PCs with PCIe SSDs that reduces the overhead when loading game data. DirectStorage can be used to reduce game loading times when paired with other technologies such as GDeflate, where the GPU can be used to decompress certain game assets instead of the CPU. On systems running Windows 11, DirectStorage can bring further benefits with BypassIO, lowering a game's CPU overhead by reducing the CPU workload when transferring data.

Arc Raiders, the upcoming third-person PvPvE survival shooter from the developer of The Finals has received a date for its first tech test on Steam. This will apparently be the game's largest external play test to date, and, given the far-away release date, the developer will likely be evaluating things like server performance and game stability first and foremost—although players will likely be asked for feedback regarding game performance and features, as well. The tech test will run for four days, starting on October 24 and ending on October 27.

Players interested in trying out the upcoming extraction shooter can apply via the game's Steam Store page, although they will also need to agree to a non-disclosure agreement, and they will not be allowed to stream any gameplay, share any footage or images from the new game, or even talk about the playtest. In the announcement for the playtest, Embark Studios is clear that this is not meant to be a marketing push for Arc Raiders, despite the press wave that came with the tech test announcement, and the studio hopes to save the excitement for when the game fully releases in 2025.

After recently announcing PS5 and PC cross-play, Airship Syndicate announced that its co-op, indie, ARPG dungeon crawler, Wayfinder, will officially exit early access on October 21. Along with the full version 1.0 release, Wayfinder will introduce both a new playable area, called The Crucible, and a new vertical traversal tool, called a Hookshot, specifically designed to explore the ruins of the ancient city. The announcement comes with gameplay footage (see on the PlayStation Blog) of the overgrown, gloomy mega-mech that was built by the ancients to fight a war but has since been reclaimed by nature. The new map adds an extra degree of verticality to the game, giving the developers an opportunity to expand the player experience and arsenal.

In addition to the new region and extended mobility options, Airship Syndicate is teaming up with Critical Role for a paid DLC that will add The Legend of Vox Machina characters to Wayfinder as playable characters. Although exact pricing of the DLC is unknown both the Critical Role DLC Supporter Pack and The Crucible will be available on October 21. After the update, players will still be able to play in both single-player and co-op modes, just like before.

Apple recently launched the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max with the company's new A18 Pro SoC, and in its presentation, Apple claimed the new SoC offered up to 20% faster gaming performance than the previous generation. While this may be true in certain scenarios, recent testing in Alien Isolation has revealed that the A18 Pro's GPU still has some shortcomings when it comes to gaming.

According to the tests run by MrMacRightPlus, the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max is barely able to maintain 30 FPS in Alien Isolation when running at its native 2868×1320 pixel resolution. While Alien Isolation is a AAA title that was ported to the iPhone, it is still a 10-year-old game, meaning it should be fairly easy to run. Lowering the in-game resolution, however, results in a substantial improvement to the A18 Pro's performance, with the game reaching 60 FPS after the change. This 30 FPS limitation may not all be down to a lack of performance from the A18 Pro SoC, though.

Synopsys, Inc. today announced its continued, close collaboration with TSMC to deliver advanced EDA and IP solutions on TSMC's most advanced process and 3DFabric technologies to accelerate innovation for AI and multi-die designs. The relentless computational demands in AI applications require semiconductor technologies to keep pace. From an industry leading AI-driven EDA suite, powered by Synopsys.ai for enhanced productivity and silicon results to complete solutions that facilitate the migration to 2.5/3D multi-die architectures, Synopsys and TSMC have worked closely for decades to pave the path for the future of billion to trillion-transistor AI chip designs.

"TSMC is excited to collaborate with Synopsys to develop pioneering EDA and IP solutions tailored for the rigorous compute demands of AI designs on TSMC advanced process and 3DFabric technologies," said Dan Kochpatcharin, head of the Ecosystem and Alliance Management Division at TSMC. "The results of our latest collaboration across Synopsys' AI-driven EDA suite and silicon-proven IP have helped our mutual customers significantly enhance their productivity and deliver remarkable performance, power, and area results for advanced AI chip designs.

Gaming giant Valve appears to be venturing into uncharted territory. Recent findings on SteamDB have revealed that the company may be working on integrating ARM architecture and Android app support into its ecosystem. A mysterious application, codenamed "ValveTestApp3043620," has been spotted with an update that includes interesting changes. The update features new tags for several popular games, including Left 4 Dead 2, Garry's Mod, and Kerbal Space Program. These tags, such as "proton-arm64" and "proton-arm64e," indicate that Valve is testing a version of Proton specifically designed for ARM64-based systems. Proton, Valve's brainchild developed in partnership with CodeWeavers, is the magic behind running Windows games on Linux systems. By extending this technology to ARM64, Valve could be paving the way for PC gaming on portable Arm-based devices, potentially signaling a new hardware strategy.

The plot thickens with mentions of "proton_experimental" and "proton-arm64ec-vanguard" in the changelog, hinting at ongoing tests and experimental builds. Additionally, references to Waydroid, a tool enabling Android apps on Linux, suggest that Valve's ambitions may extend beyond gaming, possibly aiming to broaden software accessibility of its platform. This development has sparked speculation about the possibility of Steam games running on Android smartphones and tablets or even a possible Arm-powered version of the Steam Deck. However, a more likely scenario could be testing for Windows support on Arm-based chips. The timing of these experiments aligns with recent announcements of laptops featuring Qualcomm's ARM64-based Snapdragon X CPUs. These devices can run Windows-based games through Microsoft and Qualcomm's emulation layer, Prism. If Valve's Proton can provide superior performance or more stable emulation for Windows-based games on Arm devices, it could position itself as a strong competitor to Prism.

Gabriel Ferraz, maintainer of the TechPowerUp SSD database and content creator, recently published an article that shows the relationship between SLC (Single-Level Cell) cache technology and its performance impact on SSDs. Using a Pichau Aldrin Pro 2 TB SSD featuring an Innogrit IG5236 controller and YMTC 128-layer TLC NAND, Gabriel has uncovered both the advantages and potential drawbacks of this feature. The article reveals that with SLC cache enabled, which acts as a high-speed buffer, the SSD achieved remarkable write speeds of up to 6.5 GB/s, but only until 691 GB had been written. Beyond that, speeds dropped to 2.2 GB/s and then to 860 MB/s as the drive filled up.

Disabling the SLC cache delivers more consistent performance results that are 2.1 GB/s across the whole capacity of the SSD, but with lower peak performance. Testing also examined the impact on power consumption and efficiency. With the SLC cache active, the SSD consumed approximately 5 W of power while achieving over 3000 MB/s bandwidth. Disabling the cache reduced power consumption but at the cost of halving the bandwidth to around 1900 MB/s, resulting in lower overall efficiency. Maximum power consumption with cache enabled peaked at 7.3 W, compared to a lower figure when operating in constant TLC mode. Below, you can see some performance benchmarks published on The Overclock Page.

Amidst escalating tensions in the U.S.-China semiconductor industry, Huawei is reportedly working on a new AI chip called the Ascend 910C. This development appears to be the Chinese tech giant's attempt to compete with NVIDIA's AI processors in the Chinese market. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Huawei has begun testing the Ascend 910C with various Chinese internet and telecom companies to evaluate its performance and capabilities. Notable firms such as ByteDance, Baidu, and China Mobile are said to have received samples of the chip.

Huawei has reportedly informed its clients that the Ascend 910C can match the performance of NVIDIA's H100 chip. The company has been conducting tests for several weeks, suggesting that the new processor is nearing completion. The Wall Street Journal indicates that Huawei could start shipping the chip as early as October 2024. The report also mentions that Huawei and potential customers have discussed orders for over 70,000 chips, potentially worth $2 billion.

Samsung Electronics has achieved a significant milestone in its pursuit of supplying advanced memory chips for AI systems. Their latest fifth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, known as HBM3E, have finally passed all NVIDIA's tests. This approval will help Samsung in catching up with competitors SK Hynix and Micron in the race to provide HBM memory chips to NVIDIA. While a supply deal hasn't been finalized yet, deliveries are expected to start in late 2024.

However, it's worth noting that Samsung passed NVIDIA's tests for the eight-layer HBM3E chips while the more advanced twelve-layer version of the HBM3E chips is still struggling pass those tests. Both Samsung and NVIDIA declined to comment on these developments. Industry expert Dylan Patel notes that while Samsung is making progress, they're still behind SK Hynix, which is already preparing to ship its own twelve-layer HBM3E chips.

According to Benchlife.info insiders, NVIDIA is supposedly in the phase of testing designs with various Total Graphics Power (TGP), running from 250 Watts to 600 Watts, for its upcoming GeForce RTX 50 series Blackwell graphics cards. The company is testing designs ranging from 250 W aimed at mainstream users and a more powerful 600 W configuration tailored for enthusiast-level performance. The 250 W cooling system is expected to prioritize compactness and power efficiency, making it an appealing choice for gamers seeking a balance between capability and energy conservation. This design could prove particularly attractive for those building small form-factor rigs or AIBs looking to offer smaller cooler sizes. On the other end of the spectrum, the 600 W cooling solution is the highest TGP of the stack, which is possibly only made for testing purposes. Other SKUs with different power configurations come in between.

We witnessed NVIDIA testing a 900-watt version of the Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU SKU, which never saw the light of day, so we should take this testing phase with a grain of salt. Often, the engineering silicon is the first batch made for the enablement of software and firmware, while the final silicon is much more efficient and more optimized to use less power and align with regular TGP structures. The current highest-end SKU, the GeForce RTX 4090, uses 450-watt TGP. So, take this phase with some reservations as we wait for more information to come out.

Yesterday, NVIDIA released the latest version of its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3.7.0. The newest version promises to improve image quality. Among the most notable additions is the now default "E" quality preset. This builds upon the previous DLSS versions but introduces noticeably sharper images, generally improved fine detail stability, reduced ghosting, and better temporal stability in general compared to DLSS 3.5. It has been tested with Cyberpunk 2077 in the YouTube video with the comparison between DLSS 3.5.10, DLSS 3.6.0, and the newest DLSS 3.7.0. Additionally, some Reddit users reported seeing a noticeable difference on Horizon Forbidden West at 1440p.

Generally, the DLSS 3.7.0 version can be a drop-in replacement to the older DLSS versions. Using DLSS Tweaks, or even manually, users can patch in the latest DLSS 3.7.0 DLL and force games that weren't shipped initially or updated to support the latest DLSS 3.7.0 DLL file. We have the latest DLL download up on our Downloads section on TechPowerUp, so users can install DLSSTweaks and grab the desired file version on our website.

Grab the latest DLSS 3.7.0 DLL file here.

V Rising is emerging from the shadows to take its greatest form to date! Join millions of Vampires on the journey to become the supreme predator of Vardoran, carving your name into the history of a world that has forgotten your kind. Journey through the shadows of the lands of man and monster, staking your claim and raising your towering castle. Drink blood, gather knowledge, and prove that you are worthy of the claim of the greatest Vampire to ever live by overcoming one final challenge…

Coming May 8th, 2024 to Steam, take to the skies on leathery wings and face down the Vampire king! Write the future of Vardoran in blood and live your legend this Spring! More information on the upcoming launch is right around the corner, so keep an eye on us to be the first to hear about the latest, greatest chapter of V Rising! V Early Access is available now on Steam!

Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc. is inviting potential CRADLECOFFIN Drifters to participate in the upcoming SYNDUALITY Echo of Ada closed beta test, with registrations now open. The extraction shooter, set in a dystopian futuristic world where humans and AI must cooperate to survive, will have limited slots available for players to be among the first to venture into the ruins of Amasia to fight both environmental threats and human enemies, reap rewards, and escape with all the AO Crystals they can carry.

As a CRADLECOFFIN mech pilot, players will be able to bring their choice of Magus into battle—an AI companion that provides useful combat information including radar locations, resource tracking, combat assistance, and more. They can also select from a wide variety of chassis, arms, and legs, with two weapons as well to optimize their loadout for each sortie. The CBT for SYNDUALITY Echo of Ada will run March 28 through April 1 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Introducing game hubs. Earlier this month, we started rolling out game hubs to Xbox Insiders on PC and a subset of Xbox App on PC players worldwide. Game hubs were built on your feedback around depth, progression, and more ways to connect with your games. With game hubs, you'll be able to track your progress over time, discover the latest content and add-ons, connect or compete with your friends, get the latest news from developers, and more. This version of game hubs is just the beginning. We have another wave of updates coming soon, including ways to view your local game captures and browse other games from the same publisher.
We can't wait to hear your feedback on what's there now and what you'd like to see in future updates. You can access game hubs from the Xbox App on PC—just click on the game in your library or the left sidebar. Now, let's run through some of the exciting content you will find here:

The essentials. At the top of the page, you'll see the essentials like game info alongside options to play, install, or update the game. You'll also see a quick link back to the details page, where you can purchase the game to own, see reviews, or add it to your wish list. Lastly, you'll find information like when you last played, your total playtime, an achievement summary, and friend overviews. This area will also be used for important notifications like letting you know when a game is leaving Game Pass so that you can use your discount before it's gone.

China's homegrown Loongson 3A6000 CPU shows promise but still needs to catch up AMD and Intel's latest offerings in real-world performance. According to benchmarks by Chinese tech reviewer Geekerwan, the 3A6000 has instructions per clock (IPC) on par with AMD's Zen 4 architecture and Intel's Raptor Lake. Using the SPEC CPU 2017 processor benchmark, Geekerwan has clocked all the CPUs at 2.5 GHs to compare the raw benchmark results to Zen 4 and Intel's Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove) processors. As a result, the Loongson 3A6000 seemingly matches the latest designs by AMD and Intel in integer results, with integer IPC measured at 4.8, while Zen 4 and Raptor Cove have 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. The floating point performance is still lagging behind a lot, though. This demonstrates that Loongson's CPU design can catching up to global leaders, but still needs further development, especially for floating point arithmetic.

However, the 3A6000 is held back by low clock speeds and limited core counts. With a maximum boost speed of just 2.5 GHz across four CPU cores, the 3A6000 cannot compete with flagship chips like AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X running at 5.7 GHz. While the 3A6000's IPC is impressive, its raw computing power is a fraction of that of leading x86 CPUs. Loongson must improve manufacturing process technology to increase clock speeds, core counts, and cache size. The 3A6000's strengths highlight Loongson's ambitions: an in-house LoongArch ISA design fabricated on 12 nm achieves competitive IPC to state-of-the-art x86 chips built on more advanced TSMC 5 nm and Intel 7 nm nodes. This shows the potential behind Loongson's engineering. Reports suggest that next-generation Loongson 3A7000 CPUs will use SMIC 7 nm, allowing higher clocks and more cores to better harness the architecture's potential. So, we expect the next generation to set a bar for China's homegrown CPU performance.

Last week, Doc TB acted as a spokesperson for an updated version of everyone's favorite lightweight open source memory testing tool: "We have released Memtest86+ v7! 🎉 Now with live RAM settings displayed (supported on Core 1st to 14th Gen & AMD Ryzen CPUs) and preliminary ECC support (supported on some Ryzen CPUs). Give it a try at memtest.org 👍." Version 6.0 of Memtest86+, issued back in 2022, was a complete overhaul (courtesy of dev. Martin Whitaker) that revived the irregularly updated FOSS tool's fortunes. Recent media coverage has presented a more optimistic view of Memtest86+ (not to be confused with Passmark's similarly titled app)—several articles propose that a consistent release of future updates is feasible. Version 7.0's changelog documents a good number of highlighted improvements, including: "IMC polling for live RAM settings, preliminary support for ECC polling (on a selection of Ryzen CPUs), added support for MMIO UART, debugging options, plus various bug fixes & optimizations."

Alphawave Semi (LSE: AWE), a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world's technology infrastructure, today announced successful collaboration with Keysight Technologies, a market-leading design, emulation, and test solutions provider, demonstrating interoperability between Alphawave Semi's PCIe 6.0 64 GT/s Subsystem (PHY and Controller) Device and Keysight PCIe 6.0 64 GT/s Protocol Exerciser, negotiating a link to the maximum PCIe 6.0 data rate. Alphawave Semi, already on the PCI-SIG 5.0 Integrators list, is accelerating next-generation PCIe 6.0 Compliance Testing through this collaboration.

Alphawave Semi's leading-edge silicon implementation of the new PCIe 6.0 64 GT/s Flow Control Unit (FLIT)-based protocol enables higher data rates for hyperscale and data infrastructure applications. Keysight and Alphawave Semi achieved another milestone by successfully establishing a CXL 2.0 link setting the stage for future cache coherency in the datacenter.

Ansys has collaborated with TSMC and Microsoft to validate a joint solution for analyzing mechanical stresses in multi-die 3D-IC systems manufactured with TSMC's 3DFabric advanced packaging technologies. This collaborative solution gives customers added confidence to address novel multiphysics requirements that improve the functional reliability of advanced designs using TSMC's 3DFabric, a comprehensive family of 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies.

Ansys Mechanical is the industry-leading finite element analysis software used to simulate mechanical stresses caused by thermal gradients in 3D-ICs. The solution flow has been proven to run efficiently on Microsoft Azure, helping to ensure fast turn-around times with today's very large and complex 2.5D/3D-IC systems.

Anyone up for another beta? You guessed it, this weekend we'll run another technical beta of Payday 3. This time it will be OPEN for you to push our servers to the limit. Payday 3 is the much anticipated sequel to one of the most popular co-op shooters ever. Since its release, Payday-players have been reveling in the thrill of a perfectly planned and executed heist. That's what makes Payday a high-octane, co-op FPS experience without equal.

Second BETA
As you might've heard already, we're doing a second Technical BETA - in other words, a server stress test. Same build as last time—so no new UI or heists for now. We want to ensure that we have as few issues as possible ahead of our very imminent launch, so this test is meant to do just that. Between September 8th and 11th we're running an open BETA, just go to our store page, download the build and play.

Heisters! We are thrilled to announce that PAYDAY 3 is hosting a technical Closed Beta from August 2nd to August 7th. Players can sign-up for a chance to play the game on Steam and Xbox Series S|X. We have prepared a FAQ regarding the Closed BETA (see below).

PAYDAY 3 is the much anticipated sequel to one of the most popular co-op shooters ever. Since its release, PAYDAY-players have been reveling in the thrill of a perfectly planned and executed heist. That's what makes PAYDAY a high-octane, co-op FPS experience without equal.

AMD's recently added Ryzen 5 7500F for the AM5 socket was initially said to only be available in the PRC, but according to AMD, it will apparently be available globally. That said, AMD apparently only seeded review units to select Asian media, among them Quasar Zone in Korea, who put the six core, 12 thread CPU through its paces. Overall performance is very close to the Ryzen 5 7600, which isn't really all that strange, considering the two only differ by 100 MHz in both base and boost clock. In most of the benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 7500F is around two to three percent slower than the Ryzen 5 7600 on average.

When compared to the slightly more pricey Intel Core i5-13400, AMD falls behind multithreaded apps but comes out on top in most of the games tested, with the usual odd exception as would be expected. On average, the Ryzen 5 7500F is some 13 percent faster in the game benchmarks at 1080p, although this is using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It even beats the overall much faster Intel Core i5-13500 in gaming by around nine percent on average. However, the Ryzen 5 7500F system loses out to the two Intel systems when it comes to power efficiency, drawing around 20 Watts more on average when gaming. At US$179.99 it seems like AMD finally has a budget friendly CPU for the AM5 platform, if you're willing to lose the integrated GPU. It's unknown when the CPU will be available outside of Asia at this point in time.

Teledyne LeCroy, the worldwide leader in protocol test solutions, announced that it has received Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) approval for testing DisplayPort 2.1 Link Training Tunable PHY Repeater (LTTPR) and Display Stream Compression (DSC) compliance with the quantumdata M42de Video Analyzer and Generator. These tests underwent extensive testing during industry workshops to ensure their accuracy and reliability and are now considered mandatory for compliance certification of DisplayPort 2.1 Ultra High Bit Rate (UHBR) capable devices.

The DisplayPort specification was updated to version 2.1 in October of 2022 and brought significant changes to link training and LTTPR operation. Design and test engineers are faced with incrementally more testing as DisplayPort chipsets add support for the new link training and other advanced features. "The need to drive higher video resolutions and frame rates raises the bar for vendors seeking VESA logo approval. Compliance testing is a key factor in delivering a robust DisplayPort technology ecosystem and outstanding customer experiences," said Bill Lempesis, executive director of VESA, which develops and administers the DisplayPort standard and compliance logo program. "Reaching this level of comprehensive test coverage so quickly after the DisplayPort 2.1 specification was released is only possible due to the close collaboration between test vendors like Teledyne LeCroy and our VESA member companies."

A set of intriguing 3DMark Time Spy benchmark results have been released by hardware leaker All_The_Watts!!—these are alleged to have been produced by prototype Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 graphics cards (rumored to be based on variants of the Navi 32 GPU). The current RDNA 3 lineup of mainstream GPUs is severely lacking in middle ground representation, but Team Red is reported to be working on a number of models to fill in the gap. We expect a number of leaks to emerge as we get closer to a rumored product reveal scheduled for late August (to coincide with Gamescon).

The recently released 3DMark Time Spy scores reveal that the alleged Radeon RX 7700 candidate scored 15,465 points, while the RX 7800 achieved 18,197 points—both running on an unspecified test system. The results (refer to the Tom's Hardware-produced chart placed below) are not going to generate a lot of excitement at this stage when compared to predecessors and some of the competition—evaluation samples are not really expected to be optimized to a great degree. We hope to see finalized products with decent drivers putting in a good appearance and performing better later on this year.

Samsung Electronics and MediaTek completed the successful testing of 5G Standalone Uplink (UL) 2CC Carrier Aggregation (CA) with C-Band UL MIMO to reach top uplink speeds, marking a groundbreaking achievement in wireless mobile capabilities. This approach used three transmit (3Tx) antennas to improve upload experiences, ushering in an era of enhanced connectivity for consumers worldwide.

The demands on uplink performance are increasing with the rise of live streaming, multi-player gaming and video conferences. Upload speeds determine how fast your device can send data to gaming servers or transmit high-resolution videos to the cloud. As more consumers seek to document and share their experiences with the world in real-time, enhanced uplink experiences provide an opportunity to use the network to improve how they map out their route home, check player stats online and upload videos and selfies to share with friends and followers.