Month: January 2020

vulkan-12-logoSource: TechPowerUp!

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the release of the Vulkan 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Multiple GPU vendors have certified conformant implementations, and significant open source tooling is expected during January 2020.

Vulkan continues to evolve by listening to developer needs, shipping new functionality as extensions, and then consolidating extensions that receive positive developer feedback into a unified core API specification. Carefully selected API features are made optional to enable market-focused implementations. Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications, including: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.

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nvidia-geforce-logoSource: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA today released its first developer beta drivers that support the new Vulkan 1.2 3D graphics API. Labeled GeForce 441.99, under the R440-series, the drivers extend Vulkan 1.2 support to all NVIDIA graphics architectures going back to “Kepler.” That would include GTX 600/700-series “Kepler,” GTX 700/900-series “Maxwell,” GTX 10-series “Pascal,” and GTX 16/RTX 20-series “Turing,” along with TITAN and Quadro graphics cards based on these architectures. NVIDIA states that its API support for Vulkan 1.2 is “full,” including including support for timeline semaphores, descriptor indexing, buffer device address and SPIR-V 1.5 features.

You can download the GeForce Software 441.91 Beta drivers via GeForce.com.

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Play Arma 3 for free until Sunday, get it on sale at 70% off

Bohemia Interactive is excited to announce an immediate Free Week for Arma 3 on Steam, starting today January 14th (10 AM PST), and ending on Sunday, January 19th (10 AM PST). To play Arma 3 for free, people can simply visit the Arma 3 store page on Steam, and fire their mouse left-click at the green “Install” button.

To continue playing Arma 3 after the Free Week has ended, people will be able to seize a massive 70% discount on the Arma 3 base game, and/or enjoy savings of up to 66% on Arma 3 DLC packs and expansions until January 20th. When purchasing the Arma 3 Ultimate Edition (complete-your-collection bundle), they will seize an additional 15% bundle discount on top.

During the Free Week, all Steam users will have free access to the Arma 3 base game plus the Arma 3 Apex expansion. This also includes Arma 3′s full “The East Wind” singleplayer campaign and the “Apex Protocol” co-op campaign. New players might also familiarize themselves with the game’s controls via the “Prologue” tutorial campaign.

Arma 3 was first released in 2013 and has sold more than 5 million games to date. Over the past years, it has been reinforced by 80 platform updates, as well as 10 DLC packs, and 2 expansions. Meanwhile, Bohemia’s content creation community has shared more than 70.000 items to the Arma 3 Steam Workshop. Arma 3 continues to be one of the most popular games played on PC, with a 90% approval rating based on 100.000+ Steam user reviews, and an average playtime per user of 150 hours.

For more information about the game, please visit www.arma3.com.

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command-modern-operationsCommand: Modern Operations has reached an outstanding milestone. The Open Beta for Build 1121.4 has introduced a major new feature: the Fog of War (FOW) for Tacview 3D view.

When God’s Eye view is disabled, the Tacview window will now display only own- and friendly-side units plus any detected contacts. Displayed contact shapes start from generic semi-opaque placeholders and then switch to more specific (and solid) shapes when/if they are sufficiently classified/identified. If God’s Eye is active, all units are shown as before. (Known current issue: Switching side or toggling God’s Eye status forces the Tacview window to close and re-open).

Check here the full changelog and instructions to download the beta update.

Important note for Steam users. You can apply this update manually on top of your Steam installation. This new beta will soon also be available on the Steam beta branch, and after it checks out also on the normal distribution branch.

amd-radeon-software-adrenalin-2020Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.1.1 Beta comes with follows up on the previous 19.12.3 release with an equally long list of fixes and stability improvements in the wake of AMD radically updating its driver software, particularly the Radeon Software application. Before that, 20.1.1 includes performance optimization for “Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.” The company has also fixed SETI@Home result errors when using RX 5700 series GPUs. To begin with, AMD removed audible beeps for toggling of Radeon Chill, Boost, and Anti-Lag features (the beep is now optional). Radeon ReLive indication on screen timer during recordings has been disabled by default. V-sync settings now hide or disappear when Enhanced Sync is enabled, so as to not conflict with it and destabilize your gaming session. ReLive experiencing performance issues with high-resolution cameras has also been addressed. Radeon Game Advisor causing in-game CPU usage spikes has also been resolved. Issues with software updates through Radeon Software have been fixed. Also fixed is abnormal CPU usage with DuplicateDesktop process when gaming. A Radeon Software (application) crash when resuming from machine sleep has been fixed.

Radeon Software Overlay toast message persisting even when disabled, has been fixed. Stuttering issues with “Lost Ark” have been fixed. Custom stream hotkey failing to stream with Radeon ReLive has been fixed. Radeon R9 200, R9 300, and R9 Fury series GPUs experience instability in a number of games with over 120 Hz refresh-rates. This has been fixed. MJPEG video payback on RX 5700 series experiencing a green tint when viewed with WMP or Movies & TV application has been fixed. “MechWarrior 5″ crashing with DXGI dialog error when using FreeSync displays over HDMI, has been fixed. DouYu live streaming with hardware-acceleration on RX 5700 series was experiencing display corruption, which has been fixed. Excessive fog/smoke effects in “Trials Rising” has been fixed. Right-eye display corruption with “Boneworks” VR has been fixed. “Resident Evil 2″ flashing screen at start up in DirectX 12 mode has also been fixed.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.1.1 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

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newhardware-iconCheck out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

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