It can be pretty hard to get a successful repair or replacement for PC hardware these days, as vendors can reject RMA claims on silly reasons. GIGABYTE Sends Back Defective RTX 4090 Under Warranty, Denying RMA Request Citing User-Induced Damage; User Shows Pics Claiming No Such Damage This isn't the first or the last time we are seeing a vendor denying warranty claims. However, it's important to understand where this is heading. It's well-known that vendors don't usually cover user-induced damage to hardware under warranty. Therefore, it's fair when a vendor rejects warranty claims if there is physical damage to […]

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It's been three years since the AMD AM5 motherboard platform and the 600-series motherboards launched. Since its launch, the platform has seen the launch of several CPUs in the Ryzen 7000, Ryzen 8000, and Ryzen 9000 families. While the 600-series motherboards provide great features & compatibility with newer Zen 5 CPUs, motherboard makers are always looking to enhance user experiences through the latest technologies, so AMD has introduced a new chipset line called the 800-series. AMD also introduced both X870 and B850 series chipsets for high-end and mainstream AM5 motherboards. Both of these chips provide brand-new designs and brand-new features […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/asrock-x870e-taichi-white-motherboard-review-the-most-beautiful-fully-decked-out-taichi-for-enthusiasts-under-500/

With modern PC games becoming increasingly heavy — especially open-world titles built on Unreal Engine 5 — default graphics presets rarely (if ever) provide the best balance between visual fidelity and performance. Gothic 1 Remake is no exception to that rule. Alkimia Interactive’s remake of the cult-classic RPG is clearly much more visually ambitious than the 2001 original, with a fully rebuilt Valley of Mines, dense settlements, physically richer materials, dynamic lighting, more detailed characters, thicker foliage, and a far more cinematic presentation. However, that jump in visual ambition also comes with a fairly steep hardware cost, and frankly, the […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/gothic-1-remake-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-the-best-experience-on-pc/

It's been three years since the AMD AM5 motherboard platform and the 600-series motherboards launched. Since its launch, the platform has seen the launch of several CPUs in the Ryzen 7000, Ryzen 8000, and Ryzen 9000 families. While the 600-series motherboards provide great features & compatibility with newer Zen 5 CPUs, motherboard makers are always looking to enhance user experiences through the latest technologies, so AMD has introduced a new chipset line called the 800-series. AMD also introduced both X870 and B850 series chipsets for high-end and mainstream AM5 motherboards. Both of these chips provide brand-new designs and brand-new features […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/asrock-x870e-challenger-wifi-white-motherboard-review/

More Fake GPUs are circulating online marketplaces, which use plastic chips to imitate NVIDIA RTX GPUs and scrap memory dies. You Need To Be Extra Cautious of Graphics Cards Being Sold Online As NVIDIA RTX Graphics Cards Have Been Spotted With Glued Plastic GPUs Over the years, we have seen several instances of fake graphics cards appearing online. Most of these graphics cards are sold through online marketplaces, & the region most affected by such products is the Asia Pacific. Previously, we have seen graphics cards with missing components and different GPUs, but this time, scammers have gone an extra […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/scammers-selling-fake-nvidia-rtx-graphics-cards-glued-plastic-gpus-scrap-memory/

With PC games becoming increasingly complex nowadays — especially large-scale open-world games with dense environments, high-speed traversal, and ray/path tracing — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely, if ever, strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and Forza Horizon 6 is no exception to this rule. Thankfully, Playground Games’ latest open-world racing title arrives on PC with an impressively complete graphics menu, support for modern temporal upscaling solutions, uncapped framerates, ultrawide support, ray-traced reflections, ray-traced global illumination, and even live previews for many of its individual graphics settings. However, while Forza Horizon 6 is a […]

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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 […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/cthulhu-the-cosmic-abyss-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide/

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 […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/gigabyte-z890-aorus-elite-duo-x-motherboard-review-cqdimm-ready/

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 […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/dlss-enabler-guide-how-to-install-enable-and-test-it-on-modern-gpus/