Last week, GIGABYTE issued an official response to an initial case of "thermal conductive gel slippage," involving an ultra-expensive AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER ICE, a vertical-mounted graphics card setup, and very non-intensive MMO gaming sessions. The Taiwanese manufacturer believes that this problem is isolated within a first wave of products: "every graphics card is inspected and verified against our quality standards before leaving the factory. The thermal conductive gel is an insulating, deformable, putty-like compound. It is engineered to remain in place when applied properly, and can endure at least 150 °C before any melting or liquification could happen. In some early production batches for the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 50 Series, a slightly higher volume of gel was applied to ensure sufficient thermal coverage. The overapplication may cause the excessive gel to appear more prominent, extended, and could potentially be separated from the designated area. While the appearance of extra gel might be concerning, this cosmetic variance does not affect the card's performance, reliability, or lifespan. We had already inspected the issue, and adjusted the gel to the optimal amount in (subsequent) production runs."

Despite sending out a public assurance to a worried audience—"(we) take your concerns seriously and want to provide clear information"—GIGABYTE will not be recalling problematic products. VideoCardz reckons that the company is "downplaying" current conditions. Based on further evidence—shared by several members of the TechPowerUp forum (commenting on news coverage)—unfortunately, the first reported case (emerging from South Korea) was not an isolated incident. Given the contents of GIGABYTE's public bulletin, they seem to be aware that this special thermal material (reserved for fancier SKUs) is troubling owners of early batch "GeForce RTX 50 Series and Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards." TPU forumite, remekra, shared two images and the following bit of feedback (plus a warning): "I have mine mounted in Lian Li SUP01 case, so GPU is basically standing that's why it drips into the direction of ports. So far it does not overheat on memory modules. I will hold off sending it to GIGABYTE customer service, as I don't have good memories of them; so until it overheats or stops working I will use it. But if you have a vertical case or stand then be aware."

Dear Rally Community, every great journey eventually finds its finish line, and today, we announce that we've reached the end of the road working on WRC. After releasing EA SPORTS WRC in 2023, the 2024 season, including the recently released Hard Chargers Content pack, will be our last expansion. For now, we are pausing development plans on future rally titles. Rest assured, EA SPORTS WRC will continue to be available for existing and new players. We hope it remains a source of joy, excitement, and the thrill of rally racing. We've poured our hearts into making it for fans, and we know you'll keep the passion alive.

Our WRC partnership was a culmination of sorts for our Codemasters journey with off-road racing, spanning decades through titles like Colin McRae Rally, and DiRT. We've provided a home for every rally enthusiast, striving tirelessly to push the boundaries and deliver the exhilarating thrill of driving on the ragged edge. We've brought together incredibly talented racing developers, worked with some of the sport's icons, and had the opportunity to share our love of rallying. Thank you to all the fans who have and continue to be part of our rally journey.

• The Codemasters WRC Team

PC hardware watchers continue to pore over official AMD repositories and adjacent databases, in the hopes of finding unannounced next-gen technologies. Olrak29 and InstLatX64 have presented their latest Team Red-related findings; apparently reaching across futuristic desktop, mobile, and workstation product families. As outlined and interpreted by VideoCardz, several of these next-gen branches are already somewhat "known" properties—namely AMD's allegedly Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper "Shimada Peak" 9000WX (workstation) processor series. Following almost two years of leaks, an official introduction is expected to happen during Computex 2025. The Ryzen 9000G "Gorgon Point" desktop (Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5) APU series has turned up again; now "fully" linked to the AM5 socket platform (not a big surprise). The two leakers have also uncovered another rumored AM5-bound product lineup—"Grado" chips could be based on existing "Granite Ridge" foundations, but elevated to commercial/enterprise levels. These speculated basic/entry-level "EPYC 4005" processors are floated as natural successors to currently available 4004 forebears (related to Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" architecture).

Olrak29 and InstLatX64 have also found multiple mysterious FP8 socket-related Ryzen AI Mobile SoCs. "Krackan2" could be a cheaper refresh of current "Krackan Point" APUs—Tom's Hardware proposes smaller designs that sport fewer cores, and not configured with NPUs. Kepler_L2 has weighed in on the matter of three listed "Gorgon Point" IPs—he reckons that the third variant ("Gorgon Point3") will be a spin-off (aka refresh) of a "Krackan2" design. As suggested by insider knowledge, Team Red's convoluted scheme points to "Gorgon Point" being the sequel to "Strix Point." An FF5-based "Soundwave" processor design has appeared alongside the aforementioned futuristic Ryzen AI Mobile chipsets—industry whispers propose that AMD will be leveraging Arm architecture within a lower product tier. InstLatX64 pulled additional compelling information from AMD's Technical Information Portal—providing further insight into Ryzen AI "Medusa Point" APUs (Zen 6 + RDNA 3.5) being dreamt up, with a matching "larger footprint" FP10 platform.

The Hundred-day war between "extremeness" and "despair" begins..."The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy" is finally out, as of yesterday! Please enjoy this one-of-a-kind work born from the creators' "madness and passion" to your heart's content. Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi join forces for the first time to deliver the ULTIMATE adventure game! 15 students are tasked with defending a school from grotesque monsters for 100 days. Can they make it to the end? And will they survive long enough to uncover the truth? Takumi Sumino is a totally average teenager living in the Tokyo Residential Complex, a place where every day is much like the last and nothing bad ever happens.

All that changes when freakish monsters attack the town and start wreaking havoc. A strange creature calling himself Sirei appears and offers Takumi the power to protect those he holds dear... All he has to do is stab himself in the chest! The next thing he knows, Takumi is in Last Defense Academy, a school in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a wall of otherworldly flames. He and 14 other students have been drafted into the Special Defense Unit, a team tasked with keeping the school safe for the next 100 days. How much are they willing to sacrifice to take back their normal lives and save the world from the grotesque school invaders?

An unlucky owner of a GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER ICE 16 GB graphics card has reported a baffling instance of thermal gel leakage. A forum post—titled: "5080 oh my god thermal problem"—on the Quasar Zone BBS alerted the wider world to this bizarre fault. The South Korean MMORPG enthusiast described circumstances up until the point of critical liquefaction: "it's been exactly a month since I bought it. I use it for (Blizzard's) World of Warcraft. Two hours of use per day. I set up the card with a riser kit. Thermal (material) is crawling out?!" Early 2025 press coverage has largely focused on other types of unwanted high temperature events involving GeForce RTX 50-series cards, but the seeping out of "server-grade thermal conductive gel" compound is something new. As reported by several PC hardware news outlets, GIGABYTE has utilized fancy thermal conductive gel within flagship SKUs—instead of traditional/conventional thermal pads. This gel was placed over the card's VRAM and MOSFET sections; following fairly light usage (as described above) some of this material started to head down—getting ever closer to the unit's PCIe interface.

Assisted by the AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER ICE's vertical orientation, the (apparently) highly deformable, but non-fluid thermal gel was susceptible to the effects of gravity. JC Hyun System Co., Ltd.—GIGABYTE's official domestic importer (for South Korea)—weighed in with a separate bulletin: "we are aware of the thermal gel issue with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 50 series, which was first posted on Quasar Zone—(we) are currently discussing the thermal gel issue with GIGABYTE HQ and future customer service regulations. In addition, we sincerely apologize for the confusion caused to many customers who love and use GIGABYTE products due to inaccurate guidance provided to customers who received the products due to unclear customer service regulations regarding the issue that occurred this time. Lastly, when the manufacturer's customer service policy regarding this thermal gel issue is finalized, we will also forward the service policy to CS Innovation so that it can be processed smoothly in accordance with the service policy. We will also provide information through a separate post so that more customers can be aware of the information." As mentioned by Notebookcheck, GIGABYTE uses this special thermal gel solution on other highly expensive custom: "RTX 50-series cards like the GeForce RTX 5090 XTREME WATERFORCE 32G, RTX 5090 MASTER ICE, RTX 5070 Ti MASTER, and others."

Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie and a member of the Resetera video game discussion forum have alerted the wider community to a small change within the text on several of Nintendo's Switch 2 product web presences. Mackenzie's social media post included a comparative screenshot; showing before and after conditions; Digital Foundry's Canadian correspondent provided comment: "some weird stuff going on at Nintendo. Looks like they've changed their US website to no longer mention VRR support for TV play? Only HDR and 120 Hz support get a call-out." Additional press coverage has put spotlights on Nintendo's Japan and Canada websites; both regional offices have scrubbed "VRR" (variable refresh rate) from Switch 2 promotional material. At the time of writing, Nintendo of Europe and UK's hardware feature sections still showcase an unadulterated description: "bring games to life with a larger 1080p screen—or connect to a TV and play in up to 4K resolution. Support for HDR, VRR, and frame rates up to 120 FPS let you enjoy brilliant colour, clarity, and smooth gameplay."

Video Games Chronicle and a few other news sites have reached out to Nintendo for comment regarding this confusing situation. The Switch 2 maker is notorious for its guarded stance when discussing technical details—as evidenced recently, by a top employee deflecting responsibility in NVIDIA's general direction. Mackenzie reckons that VRR support—when paired with compatible televisions and monitors—could be added post-launch (June 5). It is possible that Nintendo's engineering department has removed this feature from its day one bag of tricks. Meanwhile, the Switch 2's surprisingly capable integrated display is expected to arrive without any technological compromises.

Earlier in the month, keen observers of Team Red activities were taken aback by whispers of a mysterious Radeon RX 9070 GRE GPU. Up until then, many assumed that AMD's engineering team was readying Radeon RX 9060 Series cards for launch in Q2'25. A source in China claimed that the next wave of RDNA 4 would arrive in the shape of a not-yet-official "Great Radeon Edition" (GRE) design; allegedly derived from Team Red's Navi 48 GPU die. Certain groups of skeptics have questioned the validity of this leak; many believe that the speculated Radeon RX 9060 XT model will launch ahead of a rumored GRE sibling.

Late last week, TechPowerUp's GPU-Z utility was updated to version 2.65.0 form—supported hardware lists were populated with several new additions. As highlighted by VideoCardz, the presence of Radeon RX 9070 GRE and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB GPUs points to potential imminent releases. In the case of Team Green, lower end "Blackwell" graphics cards are launching this week—as disclosed by insiders. AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE 12 GB card is expected to release as a Chinese market exclusive; possibly as a substitute for "difficult to acquire" Radeon RX 9070 16 GB (non-XT) AIB products.

Wow! The Talos Principle: Reawakened is out now on PC (Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. It's been an incredible journey to this point. One that we wanted to take for several years now, because we felt like The Talos Principle—even if it stands the test of time—deserves to become something more.

When we set out to create Reawakened, we asked ourselves: what would we like to see in a remastered game, if we were buying one? An updated version of the game, sure, but what else makes this kind of project exciting? Behind-the-scenes commentaries and the Puzzle Editor were one answer, but what about returning to the world and story of the game itself? What about more puzzles? Another story to join the main game and Road to Gehenna?

During the livestream reveal of Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, we discussed several things in the Q&A that we'd like to provide some further clarification on. In today's news post we'd like to start with additional information about Map Portals in Dawn of the Hunt! We'd like to clarify the situation with having to use portals each time you die. The concern raised during the Q&A was that you would be consuming portals to have to store items in your stash or trade with players. With so few portals, as low as one, you would not be able to leave the map and return.

Map Portals
We have made the following change to address this problem: you will now be able to enter and exit your Maps as much as you like as long as you haven't died. The number of portals is now representative of the number of revives you have during the Map, so if you are able to survive you can come and go as you please. We also wanted to clarify that when returning to a map after dying you will return to the last checkpoint, so if you forgot to make a portal you won't have to run through too much of an empty map to get back to where you died. We're also currently making a change which hopefully will make it for release, otherwise shortly after. This change is that when you die in a Map then revive, assuming you have any revives remaining, you will be instantly placed at the last checkpoint without any loading screens, so you don't need to return to your hideout and re-enter the map every time. We'll continue to provide further updates to topics discussed during the Q&A in the lead up to launch, so keep an eye on our announcements!

In something of a surprise, Epic Games today announced that it is working with Qualcomm to integrate support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X CPUs into Easy Anti-Cheat, officially adding Fortnite to the list of games that are available for Windows on Arm. According to the post announcing the upcoming change to EAC, support for Windows on Arm in Fortnite will arrive before the end of 2025. Until the EAC update arrives, EAC will block Windows on Arm players from playing games like Fortnite because Windows on Arm devices use Prism emulation and translation to run x86 apps on Arm hardware. At the time of writing, the unofficial Windows on Arm app compatibility tracker lists a total of 675 apps as compatible with the Arm SoCs, 121 of which are games. This is compared to 17,955 games that are verified or playable on the Steam Deck via Valve's Proton translation layer, according to ProtonDB.

Expanding support for EAC to Windows on Arm could also allow games like Apex Legends and Fall Guys to run on Arm devices. This news comes in spite of the slow adoption of Windows on Arm devices, which Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney infamously quoted as the reason for not supporting the Steam Deck or Linux as a platform. "If we only had a few more programmers. It's the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it." However, market share for Windows on Arm still appears to fall short of the market share Linux commands in the desktop OS space.

Hello Director! We're happy to announce that all owners of will be receiving a free content update. The update is hitting PC players (Steam and Epic Games Store, GOG to follow later) today, including several improvements to support newer hardware. In the near future we will release this same update for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S platforms. We have a small team working on these updates so we want to space them out to give us time to fix potential issues that might come up. We appreciate your patience! Keep an eye on our social channels for the exact date and time, as well as update notes.

Control Ultimate Edition contains the main game and all previously released Expansions ("The Foundation" and "AWE") in one great value package. A corruptive presence has invaded the Federal Bureau of Control…Only you have the power to stop it. The world is now your weapon in an epic fight to annihilate an ominous enemy through deep and unpredictable environments. Containment has failed, humanity is at stake. Will you regain control?

Set in an eerie, Lovecraftian reimagining of 1920s America, The Sinking City 2 is a narrative-driven, third-person survival horror game coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2025. Harnessing the full power of Unreal Engine 5, we're crafting an immersive horror experience that will plunge players into a world of mystery, madness, and cosmic terror. But to take our vision even further, we need your help!

What Awaits You in Arkham?
After the devastating flood, Arkham is a shadow of its former self. A city partially submerged, abandoned by most, and left to rot. The remaining survivors have their own reasons for staying, but their presence offers no reassurance. Everyone has an agenda, and no one can be trusted. With a semi-open world design, Arkham is denser and more detailed than ever, packed with quests, secrets, and environmental storytelling. There's no hand-holding—you'll need to explore, observe, and piece things together yourself. Navigate its ruins on foot or by boat, uncover hidden paths, and discover areas that may have been better left undisturbed.

PassMark Software has identified the root cause behind unexpectedly low compute performance in NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti GPUs. The culprit: NVIDIA has silently discontinued support for 32-bit OpenCL and CUDA in its "Blackwell" architecture, causing compatibility issues with existing benchmarking tools and applications. The issue manifested when PassMark's DirectCompute benchmark returned the error code "CL_OUT_OF_RESOURCES (-5)" on RTX 5000 series cards. After investigation, developers confirmed that while the benchmark's primary application has been 64-bit for years, several compute sub-benchmarks still utilize 32-bit code that previously functioned correctly on RTX 4000 and earlier GPUs. This architectural change wasn't clearly documented by NVIDIA, whose developer website continues to display 32-bit code samples and documentation despite the removal of actual support.

The impact extends beyond benchmarking software. Applications built on legacy CUDA infrastructure, including technologies like PhysX, will experience significant performance degradation as computational tasks fall back to CPU processing rather than utilizing the GPU's parallel architecture. While this fallback mechanism allows older applications to run on the RTX 40 series and prior hardware, the RTX 5000 series handles these tasks exclusively through the CPU, resulting in substantially lower performance. PassMark is currently working to port the affected OpenCL code to 64-bit, allowing proper testing of the new GPUs' compute capabilities. However, they warn that many existing applications containing 32-bit OpenCL components may never function properly on RTX 5000 series cards without source code modifications. The benchmark developer also notes this change doesn't fully explain poor DirectX9 performance, suggesting additional architectural changes may affect legacy rendering pathways. PassMark updated its software today, but legacy benchmarks could still suffer. Below is an older benchmark run without the latest PassMark V11.1 build 1004 patches, showing just how much the newest generations suffers without a proper software support.

AMD's openSIL project, aimed towards open CPU silicon initialization code, continues progressing despite a slight delay in its development timeline. The initiative, which will eventually replace the current AGESA system across AMD's client and server processors, received a new update. The company initially targeted the end of 2024 to release proof-of-concept code for Phoenix client SoCs and Turin server hardware. However, as we move through the first quarter of 2025, AMD has acknowledged a slight deviation from this schedule. In a recent statement, AMD representatives assured the developer community that work continues steadily on both Phoenix and Turin proof-of-concept releases.

"We are hard at work preparing the Phoenix and Turin POC's for public release," stated an AMD representative, emphasizing that these releases will serve as sample code previewing future production-worthy implementations. The company clarified that these initial releases are not intended for production environments. The delay has minimal impact on AMD's plan, as the primary goal remains focused on achieving full production readiness with the upcoming Zen 6 architecture. The openSIL project promises to enhance Coreboot support and provide developers with full access to low-level system components. Though limited to select reference motherboards, the proof-of-concept releases will serve as the first milestones in AMD's journey toward more open hardware solutions.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced today that it has shipped its first NVIDIA Blackwell family-based solution, the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72. This rack-scale system by HPE is designed to help service providers and large enterprises quickly deploy very large, complex AI clusters with advanced, direct liquid cooling solutions to optimize efficiency and performance. "AI service providers and large enterprise model builders are under tremendous pressure to offer scalability, extreme performance, and fast time-to-deployment," said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and general manager of HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions, HPE. "As builders of the world's top three fastest systems with direct liquid cooling, HPE offers customers lower cost per token training and best-in-class performance with industry-leading services expertise."

The NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 features shared-memory, low-latency architecture with the latest GPU technology designed for extremely large AI models of over a trillion parameters, in one memory space. GB200 NVL72 offers seamless integration of NVIDIA CPUs, GPUs, compute and switch trays, networking, and software, bringing together extreme performance to address heavily parallelizable workloads, like generative AI (GenAI) model training and inferencing, along with NVIDIA software applications. "Engineers, scientists and researchers need cutting-edge liquid cooling technology to keep up with increasing power and compute requirements," said Bob Pette, vice president of enterprise platforms at NVIDIA. "Building on continued collaboration between HPE and NVIDIA, HPE's first shipment of NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 will help service providers and large enterprises efficiently build, deploy and scale large AI clusters."

AMD's Ryzen 9000HX lineup of "Fire Range" Zen 5 mobile processors is due for release within a vague March to April window, with the upcoming 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 9 9955HX3D SKU touted to become a top choice for manufacturers of ultra high-end gaming laptops. The latest version of CPU-Z is ready (in advance) with support for Team Red's incoming product line; CPUID's patch notes (published on February 8) have revealed previously unannounced models. AMD's official introduction of Ryzen 9000HX series CPUs included an opening salvo of Ryzen 9 9955HX3D (16-core), 9955HX (16-core) and 9850HX (12-core) models.

According to CPU-Z version 2.14, three additional "Fire Range" SKUs are seemingly on the way. Starting off with the Ryzen 9 9950HX3D—a (presumably) slightly less potent 3D V-Cache-sporting model—its nomenclature suggests that it will sit just below the series flagship. The 9950HX model is expected to slot just under the already announced 9955HX chip. The newly revealed 9845HX SKU could become the lowest 12-core offering within AMD's "Fire Range" product stack.

Khronos introduced version 1.4 of its Vulkan graphics API last December—at the time, industry watchdogs believed that this iteration was prepared with NVIDIA "Blackwell" GPU conformance in mind. A mid-January leak indicated that the GeForce RTX 5090 SKU was already present on the Vulkan API's support list. Recent official additions—of GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 GPUs to the cross-platform API's compatibility registry—suggest an imminent launch at retail; insiders reckon that the 5070 Ti will arrive on February 20.

Last week, HWiNFO's development team revealed that they were readying an incoming build (8.21) with support for Team Green's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU. Their "upcoming changes" list did not include the lower-specced GeForce RTX 5070 (non-Ti)—online speculation posits that this model will launch later on in February. The GeForce RTX 5070's inclusion on the latest Vulkan API conformance list is an encouraging sign. VideoCardz spent its weekend searching for any entries alluding to GeForce RTX 5060 Ti or GeForce RTX 5060 (non-Ti) SKUs—they discovered zero evidence. The developers at Khronos are likely keeping these lower-end models under a "confidential" category.

The HWiNFO development team are prepping for the upcoming release of an NVIDIA upper mid-range "Blackwell" GPU—their popular system diagnostics tool will be updated with support for GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (GB203-based) graphics card models. Team Green flagship and sub-flagship SKUs were sent to market this week—with mixed results—industry experts believe that stock shortages will be in effect for many months post-release. Volatile retail conditions could force potential buyers—of next-gen graphics technology—into considering options from lower down in NVIDIA's new product stack. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti ($749 MSRP, with no Founders Edition) and GeForce RTX 5070 ($549 MSRP) GPUs could be tempting alternatives—as stopgaps or permanent fixtures. Press outlets believe that a February 20 product launch is pencilled in.

HWiNFO's incoming 8.21 build is being readied with support for GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards, but the GeForce RTX 5070 (non-Ti) GPU is notably absent from the suite's "upcoming changes" list. An investigative VideoCardz news piece points to HWiNFO being the first bit of software to publicly acknowledge (in advance) support for Team Green's 8,960 CUDA core-equipped model. As reported earlier this week, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is based on NVIDIA's GB203 GPU—also present on a larger sibling: "RTX 5080 maxes the silicon out, enabling all 84 SM, the RTX 5070 Ti is slightly cut down, with 70 out of 84 SM being enabled, resulting in 8,960 CUDA cores, 280 Tensor cores, 70 RT cores, 280 TMUs, and an unknown number of ROPs. The memory size is 16 GB, across the chip's full 256-bit GDDR7 memory interface... Its TGP is down to 300 W compared to the 360 W of the RTX 5080."

ASRock has quietly updated its CPU Support List with entries for the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D desktop processors—starting off with motherboard BIOS versions 3.15 and 3.16. The Taiwanese manufacturer seems to be the very first company to add these "Zen 5" models to public-facing motherboard compatibility databases—according to yesterday evening's VideoCardz report, the likes of MSI, GIGABYTE, and ASUS have not yet followed suit (at the time of writing). The appearance of Team Red's "Granite Ridge" 16-core and 12-core 3D V-Cache-equipped processors on ASRock's website has set off chatter across PC hardware discussion communities.

AMD has not officially revealed a specific launch date (or pricing details) for its Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D CPUs—instead, a loose March window has been marked down on this year's calendar. Industry watchdogs believe that ASRock's freshly updated database is proof of an imminent launch—a couple of insiders predicted a January rollout, but this seems unlikely to occur by the end of this working week. Given the reported scarcity of Team Red's already released and highly-praised Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming processor, many folks will welcome the addition of two alternative options. Team Red has already set expectations for the (presumably) more expensive models—recently, a product manager disclosed that their "new chips will provide similar overall gaming performance" to the current champion.

AMD Radeon engineers are spending newly allocated extra time on optimizing their upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) technology—industry watchdogs believe that a finalized version will launch alongside the initial lineup of RDNA 4 graphics card, now scheduled for release in March. Recently, David McAfee—Vice President and General Manager of Ryzen and Radeon products—revealed that his colleagues were working hard on maximizing performance and enabling "more FSR 4 titles." Insiders have started theorizing about how the current landscape of FSR 3.1-compatible games will translate with next-gen "AI-driven" upscaling techniques—several outlets believe that a freshly patched PC version of The Last of Us Part I is paving the way for eventual "easy" updates.

Kepler_L2—an almost endless fountain of Team Red-related insider knowledge—picked up on a past weekend VideoCardz report, and proceeded to add some extra tidbits via social media interaction. They started off by claiming that Team Red's: "RDNA 4 driver replaces FSR 3.1 DLL with FSR 4." When queried about the implication of said development, Kepler believes that all FSR 3.1 game titles will become ready to support FSR 4 on day one. The upgrade process—possibly achieved through a driver-level DLL swap—is reportedly quite easy to implement. According to the insider: "yeah, it should just work."

The Xbox Insider program has outlined a major upcoming feature upgrade for their home console lineup—Tuesday's Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring (2502.250120-2200) release notes reveal newly implemented support for larger capacity external hard drives. Naturally, inside program members get to play around with this early build—we presume that support will eventually trickle down to public level in the near future. The major announcement stated: "we are enabling support for external USB drives larger than 16 TB, so you can be sure your favorite games are always ready to play! Newly formatted drives that are larger than 16 TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to utilize all available space for games and apps. These will appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list."

Xbox-licensed external storage devices are only available with a maximum capacity of 12 TB—Western Digital's WD_BLACK D10 model wears the crown here. Console gaming enthusiasts—with a penchant for storing a huge library of titles on hard disk drives (HDD)—are best served by not selecting official Xbox-branded storage devices. Manufacturers do offer products with 18 TB to 28 TB capacities, but potential buyers will be greeted by hefty asking prices. There are a couple of caveats—for owners of 16+ TB drives—as noted in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring notes: "drives greater than 16 TB that have already been formatted will be unaffected by this change and would need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives. Please be aware that we have identified an issue with formatting drives larger than 16 TB, and we're working on a fix." Interestingly, the notes do not disclose information regarding a new upper limit for compatible storage devices.

Team Green's CUDA 12.8 release notes have revealed upcoming changes for three older GPU architectures—the document's "Deprecated and Dropped Features" section outlines forthcoming changes. A brief sentence outlines a less active future for affected families: "architecture support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta is considered feature-complete and will be frozen in an upcoming release." Further down, NVIDIA states that a small selection of operating systems have been dropped from support lists, including Microsoft Windows 10 21H2 and Debian 11.

Refocusing on matters of hardware—Michael Larabel, Phoronix's editor-in-chief, has kindly provided a bit of history and context. "Four years ago with the NVIDIA 470 series was the legacy branch for GeForce GTX 600 and 700 Kepler series and now as we embark on the NVIDIA 570 driver series, it looks like it could end up being the legacy branch for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta generations of GPUs." Larabel and other industry watchdogs reckon that the incoming "Blackwell" generation is taking priority, with Team Green likely freeing up resources and concentrating less on taking care of decade+ old hardware. VideoCardz believes that gaming GPU support will continue—at least for Maxwell (e.g. GeForce GTX 900) and Pascal (GeForce GTX 10 series)—based on a playtesting of the toolkit's latest set of integrated drivers (version 571.96).

GeForce NOW is expanding mod support for hit game Baldur's Gate 3 in collaboration with Larian Studios and mod.io for Ultimate and Performance members. This expanded mod support arrives alongside seven new games joining the cloud this week.

Level Up Gaming
Time to roll for initiative—adventurers in the Forgotten Realms can now enjoy a range of curated mods uploaded to mod.io for Baldur's Gate 3. Ultimate and Performance members can enhance their Baldur's Gate 3 journeys across realms and devices with a wide array of customization options. Stay tuned to GFN Thursday for more information on expanding mod support for more of the game's PC mods at a later time.

Exciting things are happening in the world of memory right now. Many of the headlines are being claimed by a new variety of DIMM, called Clock Unbuffered DIMM (CUDIMM). Featuring an integrated clock driver on the memory stick itself for improved reliability and stability, CUDIMM kits are already shattering speed records. But perhaps you're more concerned with memory capacity than with raw speed. We have some good news for you. The trusted memory professionals at Kingston have cooked up a 64 GB memory module that you'll be able to purchase soon: the Kingston Value RAM DDR5 6400 MT/s 64 GB CUDIMM.

64 GB of DDR5 RAM on a single stick opens intriguing new possibilities. A 128 GB one-DIMM-per-channel (1DPC) configuration is rather tempting. We suspect that many enthusiasts will be tempted by the prospect of installing four of these modules, a move that puts a stunningly large 256 GB (4 x 64 GB) pool of memory at their disposal—without having to venture into quad-channel workstation hardware.

DEAR VR WASHERS. I am so sorry to let you know that we won't be continuing support of PowerWash Simulator VR. We absolutely love and believe in VR, so this doesn't mean that we won't support it in the future—but we aren't able to continue with support right now.

We have been faced with a cross roads situation: we have a truly excellent and kind VR team who were working on a platform which costs us more than it makes, while also having a list of job openings that we are looking to be filled on other projects. FuturLab took the decision to redeploy our VR team into those other projects/roles. Whilst I would love to live in a world where we could support PowerWash Simulator on every platform going, I will always choose job security for my team. Every time.