Memory prices continue going up, and to make matters worse, fake DDR5 memory modules are now flooding the PC segment. Beware, Your Expensive DDR5 Memory Might Be Fake, PC Buyers Advised To Double-Check Their RAM Asian markets are now seeing fake DDR5 memory at several retailers, both online and in shops. These DDR5 memory modules might look real to an average buyer, but on closer inspection, they're equipped with fake DRAM modules and sometimes even worse. So there are several cases of fake DDR5 DRAM modules circulating in Asian markets. Some of these RAM sticks feature fake DRAM modules, which […]

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With PC games growing increasingly complex nowadays — especially ones built on Epic Games's infamous Unreal Engine 5 — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely (if at all) strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and early access sensation Windrose is no exception to this rule. As a demanding UE5 game, it should come as no surprise to many that the game's maxed-out Epic graphics settings will be very GPU-heavy and thus should require some tweaking to achieve better performance on most rigs, without completely sacrificing visual fidelity. This guide should hopefully help you strike […]

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With PC games growing increasingly complex nowadays — especially ones built on Epic Games's infamous Unreal Engine 5 — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely (if at all) strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is no exception to this rule. As a demanding UE5 game, it should come as no surprise to many that the game's maxed-out/Epic graphics settings will be very GPU-heavy, and thus should require some tweaking to achieve better performance on most rigs, without hopefully completely sacrificing visual fidelity. This guide should hopefully help you strike […]

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The Intel LGA 1700 platform was launched three years ago in 2021, and it has since seen a total of 3 generations of CPUs: Alder Lake (12th Gen), Raptor Lake (13th Gen), and Raptor Lake Refresh (14th Gen). We have seen at least three generations of motherboards, first with the 600-series, which had Z690 as the top SKU, and then two generations of 700-series based on the top Z790 chipset, which included a soft refresh for the 14th Gen lineup. In late 2024, Intel introduced its next-generation 800-series chipsets, and with the Core Ultra 200S CPU series, the company also […]

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The failure rate of NVIDIA's 16-Pin connector GPUs should be the primary reason why the company's warranty claims have increased by 1000%. With A Share of Over 90% In The Discrete GPU Segment, NVIDIA Witnesses A Massive Surge In Warranty Claims That Could Be Linked To Its New 16-Pin Connector Products NVIDIA's warranty expenses have seen a drastic rise over the past three years, as Warranty Week reports an unusual rise in the company's warranty claims and accrual rates. It is reported that NVIDIA's warranty claims increased ninefold, whereas AMD's warranty claim rates increased by two-thirds during the 2024-2025 period. […]

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As PC hardware continues to evolve and modern games relentlessly chase higher levels of visual fidelity, striking the right balance between image quality and performance is becoming increasingly challenging—even on decently powerful rigs. DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH, as a cutting-edge AAA release, would normally fall into that same category. However, the original DEATH STRANDING earned a strong reputation on PC for its excellent optimization, delivering smooth performance across a wide range of PC configurations thanks to the efficiency of Guerilla Games's Decima engine, which achieved great performance/visuals ratios — with games such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon […]

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Microsoft has officially moved its latest graphics innovations into stable with the release of the DirectX 12 Agility SDK 1.619. This update marks the general availability of Shader Model 6.9. By using the Agility SDK, game studios can now bundle these advanced runtimes directly with their titles, bypassing a full Windows OS update and ensuring that any player with a compatible driver can access the latest features.

DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2's latest update graduates several critical technologies from preview to stable status. Shader Execution Reordering (SER) is now a required feature of Shader Model 6.9, providing a standardised way for GPUs to sort disorganised ray-tracing workloads into coherent, parallel threads dynamically. Simultaneously, Opacity Micromaps (OMMs) have been fully integrated, allowing hardware to skip pixel-level checks for complex, alpha-tested geometry like foliage and chain-link fences. All these additions are designed to reduce the overhead of path tracing and complex lighting in modern AAA titles.

Beyond ray tracing, Shader Model 6.9 introduces Long Vector support, enabling shaders to process vectors with up to 1024 elements without the need for awkward manual packing. This release also makes several previously optional capabilities mandatory, including native 16-bit and 64-bit shader operations. For developers looking even further ahead, Microsoft also launched Agility SDK 1.719-preview, which introduces Fence Barriers for more granular synchronisation and VPblit 3DLUT, a feature that offloads video tone mapping to dedicated hardware, such as a video processing engine.

Hardware support for these features highlights a diverging landscape among the major GPU vendors. Nvidia continues to offer the most comprehensive implementation, with hardware-accelerated OMM and SER support across the RTX 40 series and newer, while maintaining software compatibility for older RTX hardware. Intel has made a massive splash with its Arc B-Series (Battlemage), which features full hardware acceleration for SER. Internal Microsoft testing (via VideoCardz) using a dedicated tech demo showed that SER could boost frame rates by 40% on an RTX 4090 and by a staggering 90% on Intel Arc B-Series hardware. AMD has enabled API support for these features on the Radeon RX 9000 series. However, current drivers reportedly do not perform physical reordering, meaning the performance gains on Team Red may lag behind competitors for now.

KitGuru says: While the 90% performance jump seen on Intel's Battlemage is specific to a Microsoft synthetic demo, it's still quite promising.

The notorious 16-pin connector melting didn't originate with the RTX 50 series, and it dates back to as early as 2022, when we used to see regular reports of connector melting on the RTX 4090. Despite NVIDIA and its AIBs' attempts to mitigate the problem, the saga continues. Almost every week, we hear new reports of connector melting, mostly on the flagship Blackwell GeForce RTX 5090, rated at 575W. We have been reporting the stories regularly since the launch of the RTX 5090, and even a year after its official launch, the reports continue. Today, we will be deep diving […]

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Modding continues to be one of the most prominent boons of PC gaming. The open nature of the PC platform gives gamers an unparalleled level of freedom compared to consoles, given how there are dedicated communities who create and share mods that can improve older and newer titles alike by adding new content, resolving bugs, and improving graphics/performance beyond what developers have achieved at launch. Nexus Mods has a massive quantity of mods available from user-created enhancements to games— over hundreds of thousands — allowing players to customize their gaming experience each time they play their favorite games, well after […]

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