EVGA No Longer Making Graphics Cards For Nvidia

 Popular graphics card manufacturer EVGA has ended its relationship with Nvidia and will no longer manufacture graphics cards in the future.

According to Gamers Nexus, EVGA has discontinued all future graphics card operations but will continue to sell leftover stock of its current products and service consumers who have already purchased them.

EVGA cited 'disrespectful behavior' as the basis for the breakup, claiming that it became agitated because Nvidia would reportedly divulge crucial information to the public at the same time as EVGA.

The company also claimed that Nvidia was undercutting it by selling its own Founders Edition graphics cards for less than EVGA goods.

It expects to run out of RTX 30-series graphics cards by the end of 2022, but is keeping some supply on hand to fulfill current customers' warranties if necessary. EVGA will continue to operate and sell its other goods, but will not expand into new markets or pursue new graphics card collaborations with Intel or AMD.

"EVGA is committed to our customers and will continue to offer sales and support on the current line-up," it said in a statement. "EVGA would like to say thank you to our great community for the many years of support and enthusiasm for EVGA graphics cards."

EVGA terminates relationship with NVIDIA, ceases all video card manufacturing on grounds of disrespectful treatment, among other things. Employees told they will be 'taken care of,' but we don't see how all those jobs will persist ad infinitum: https://t.co/ZvgDYhcGXf

— GamersNexus (@GamersNexus) September 16, 2022

Mouse And Keyboard Support Finally Coming To Xbox Cloud Gaming

 As the service's latency improves, Xbox Cloud Gaming will offer mouse and keyboard support soon.

As part of Xfest, Xbox revealed that mouse and keyboard functionality for titles playable over xCloud, Microsoft's cloud gaming service included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, will be available shortly. Developers may begin implementing mouse and keyboard support immediately, and functionality will be introduced upon launch.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is accessible on mobile devices, desktop computers, and Samsung televisions. On PC, the service now only supports gamepads, but gamers will soon be able to play games using a mouse and keyboard.

Valve's Steam Deck Is A Handheld PC. Starts at $399, Releases In December

Valve has revealed the Steam Deck, which will arrive in December in the US, Canada, the European Union and the UK. The system starts at $399.

It has a 7-inch touchscreen, with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 at a 16:10 aspect ratio, 400 nits of brightness and a 60Hz refresh rate. It features dual thumbsticks, two 32.5mm square trackpads, an analog directional pad, four main face buttons, triggers and a quartet of grip buttons, as well as gyro controls. The Steam Deck also has a headphone jack, stereo speakers, dual microphones and haptic feedback. It weighs around 669 grams and it's just under a foot wide.

Valve has partnered with AMD on the hardware. The custom chipset features a 2.4-3.5GHz processor and a 1.0 to 1.6GHz GPU with 8 RDNA 2 compute units. The handheld PC comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 512GB of NVMe internal storage, which you can expand with a microSD card. Valve says the 40-watt-hour battery will power the device for between 2 and 8 hours on a single charge. The battery life will depend on how resource intensive the games you play are.  

Steam Deck runs on a new version of SteamOS that's designed for handheld use. You'll have access to your full library of games. You can expect to have access to many Steam
features, including chat, remote play, cloud saves and the Steam storefront. The device has a built-in quick suspend and resume feature. Pressing the power button will suspend your game and send the Steam Deck into sleep mode. You'll be able to continue where you left off when you hit the power button again.

Steam Deck will support a variety of Bluetooth and USB-C peripherals. You can plug in a powered USB-C hub and use multiple devices at once. You can connect the system to an external display and play games at up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz. Valve is also making an official dock with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 and Ethernet ports, as well as one USB 3.1 connection and two USB 2.0 sockets. You'll be able to use the Steam Deck as an actual PC.

The base $399 Steam Deck comes with 64GB of eMMC internal storage and a carrying case. For $529, you can upgrade the storage to a 256GB NVMe SSD. The 512GB model costs $649 and comes with "premium anti-glare etched glass." The dock will be sold separately at a later time.

Introducing Steam Deck: powerful, portable PC gaming starting at $399. Designed by Valve, powered by Steam. Shipping December 2021.

Learn more at https://t.co/ZOTx3KUCVK and reserve yours tomorrow. #SteamDeck pic.twitter.com/jcgbaKfT9c

— Steam (@Steam) July 15, 2021

Steam Next Fest Happening In June

Valve has announced that the Steam Game Festival will start later this year.The Steam Next Fest will kick off on June 16th and run through to the 22nd. Notably, that means it will overlap with part of this year's likely all-digital E3. The three-day event is slated to start on June 15th. They'll demos of upcoming games to play, livestreams and a chance to chat with the people behind those projects. 

Halo 4 Comes To PC Next Week

Halo 4 finally is coming soon for Steam players, completing the
Master Chief Collection's arrival on PC. Halo 4 officially joins the PC on November 17. According to Halo 4's Steam page, below is what fans can expect when the game arrives next week: 

• PC Settings/Optimizations: Halo 4 looks better than ever on PC, including up to 4K UHD at 60+ FPS. Other PC native settings include customizable mouse and keyboard support, ultrawide support, FOV customization and more.
• Campaign: An ancient evil awakens and a new saga begins. Shipwrecked on a mysterious world, the Master Chief must unravel the sinister secrets of an ancient alien race to find a way home. But in his search for the truth, the Master Chief discovers that some secrets are better left buried.
• Multiplayer: Continue your Halo adventure with 25 multiplayer maps from the revered Halo 4, featuring an updated armor customization system that allows players to change more armor pieces than ever before, as well as countless ways to play with Forge and Theater
• Spartan Ops: Enlist aboard the UNSC Infinity to experience innovative episodic fiction-based co-op missions that pick up the story where Halo 4’s campaign left-off.

Among Us Dev Gives Content Road Map

In its latest blog post, Among Us developer InnerSloth first addressed hacking in the game, saying: "Firstly, we want to be sure to talk about the cheating and hacking going on. It was pretty bad there for a bit, so Forte pushed out server changes really fast. They seemed to help a lot, but some cheats still work and now there are bugs too. There will be more server updates to fix all of this, but rushing anti-hacks is what caused the bugs, so cleaning things up is a slower process. Also rest assured that any threats made in the game are false and your devices and data are safe. If you see a hacker, ban them or find a different room."

An anonymous voting option as been added that makes all players greyed out during Emergency Meetings. adding a new layer of intrigue to this deceptive game. 

Task Bar modes have also been added: 

• Always
• Appears like normal
• Meeting 
• The bar is only updated during meetings
• Invisible 
• The taskbar is removed entirely

Also added is the ability to clear security logs with Comms sabotage, symbols on the colored wires for those tasks to be more colorblind-friendly, and a slew of bug fixes. The team also teased some larger scale goals: 

• Accounts: We’re hoping to get accounts into the game by December. This will allow players to report accounts that are toxic and/or hacking. They may be a bit barebones at first but things like friends lists will also come at a later date after launch.
• New Map: We’re hard at work on a new map (It’s Henry Stickmin themed!). This map is currently looking bigger than Polus! The map will contain plenty of new tasks and will be available for free to all players!
• Translations/Localization: The game is currently only translated into a few languages (and some of those translations are a bit rough). We’re planning on getting professional translations into multiple languages (More than we currently have, not ready to share quite which languages yet). To all the people offering to translate, thanks for reaching out, but we’ve got it under control!
• Colorblind support: This patch contains the first pass on colorblind support. We’ll continue monitoring it to see how it performs.

AMD Announces Radeon RX 6800 And 6800 XT

 

AMD has announced the Radeon RX 6800 XT, that includes 72 compute units, 16GB DDR6 VRAM, 2015MHz Game Clock and 2250MHz Boost Clock, and 128MB Infinity Cache. With all this
power the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT aims to deliver 4K gaming at the highest settings. AMD also announced the Radeon RX 6800 which brings a little less power with 60 compute units, a 1815Mhz base clock, 2105Mhz boost clock and 16GB GDDR6 VRAM. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT will be available for $649 and the Radeon RX 6800 costs $579, both cards will release on November 18th.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Update Adds Xbox Controller Support, FPS Only Servers And More

The latest update for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is here and has a list of new features and tweaks. Among the August update, players will have the opportunity to utilize Xbox controllers and adds dedicated first-person servers. The Xbox controllers patch notes also mention that  there will be continued efforts to make improvements for the peripheral for players who choose to use this feature. The first person server options have been added to solo and duo game modes on the NA and EU servers. Also featured in this update, you can honk the horn of a vehicle by left clicking when you’re in it. Seems like a solid update. Interested to see how controller support works. Thoughts ?

WWE 2K17 Is Coming To PC

After being released on all other major platforms, including PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in late October, WWE 2K17 is coming to PC. There will be 2 versions of WWE 2K17 available for purchase, the $49.99 standard edition, which gives you the Goldberg Pack that's included in every copy, and the $74.99 deluxe edition, which comes with the $29.99 Season Pass. All of the DLC that's been released to date will be immediately available for PC at launch. However, any future DLC released for console platforms will be available on PC at a later time. WWE2K17 releases for PC on February 7.

Gaming On Windows 10 Gets Better With The Creators Update

During the Microsoft October event, the company announced that Windows 10 is getting an updated called the Creators update. The update will add a number of new features to Windows 10 this spring, and with it come a few new features for Windows gaming. Game broadcasting is getting a big improvement with the inclusion of Beam. Beam is popular interactive live streaming software, and it will be integrated directly into Windows 10 gaming. Custom tournaments are also coming to Windows 10. Players will be able to pick games, set tournament types, set the time the tournament will be taking place and send out invites all from one window. It will also track all the stats of the tournament for you. Also, Xbox One players and Windows 10 players will be able to participate in tournaments together. 

Razer And Maingear Team Up To Make A Beast Gaming PC

Maingear has teamed up with Razer for the R1 Razer Edition, a tower PC that's pretty flashy. Razer handled the design and loaded it with green lighting, including for the optional liquid cooling system. Even the wiring is kept super-tidy to both improve airflow. The base model starts at $999 with a 3.2GHz Core i5, 8GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1060 and a 1TB hard drive. You can outfit the R1 with the aforementioned liquid cooling as well as up to a 10-core i7, dual GeForce Titan X video cards, 128GB of RAM and exotic storage options like a 1.2TB PCI Express solid-state drive. If you're eager to see what Razer’s desktop computer can do, then you can order the R1 today.

Mortal Kombat XL PC Public Beta Is Available On Steam Until Monday

Warner Bros. stopped supporting the PC version of Mortal Kombat X back in January after suffering some technical problems. Now it seems the company is updating the PC version of the game. An "enhanced online beta" for Mortal Kombat XL appeared on the Steam store page for Mortal Kombat X. According to a notice on the page, the beta will run until Monday, August 29. The beta client is separate the main game, so even if you didn’t purchase the game you can participate in the beta.

If You Own A GTX970, Nvidia Owes You Some Money

Back in 2015, Nvidia was in a class action suit due to advertising claims of one of its GTX 970 graphic card. That card was advertised as having 4GB of DDR5 memory, which It turns out that’s not exactly true. The card has 3.5GB of DDR5 and a separate .5GB block of lower performing memory. That may not seem like a problem to some but if you’re running a game that requires the full 4GB you may run into some trouble trying to run the game. The resulting settlement in the class action suit will see $30 paid out to eligible GTX 970 purchasers. Nvidia will also pay out $1.3 million in attorney fees. If you’re eligible for the settlement, you should receive notification via mail or email.

Here’s What Video Cards Will Work With The Razer Core

Razer has released a list of what full-size graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia will be supported at launch for the Razer Core. Only the Thunderbolt cable is required to give compatible laptops a boost with the external graphics card, and the Core includes its own set of 4 USB 3 ports and ethernet connectivity.

AMD cards fully supported at launch, include:

• AMD Radeon R9 Fury
• AMD Radeon R9 Nano
• AMD Radeon R9 300 Series
• AMD Radeon R9 290X
• AMD Radeon R9 290
• AMD Radeon R9 280

Nvidia GeForce cards supported in the beta program include:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750

The Razer Core is priced at $499. You can Pre-order now. Products will begin shipping in April.

The New Razer Blade Is A Beast Of A Gaming Laptop

Razer has announced a refresh for its 14-inch Razer Blade laptop, alongside a lower entry price and reduced weight. The latest Blade is still .7 inches thick, but now weighs only 4.25 lbs. The new Blade comes with a 3200x1800 QHD+ display, an i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHz chip (turbo boost to 3.5 GHz), an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M GPU with 6 GB of video memory, and 16 GB of DDR4 RAM. The keyboard is fully backlit, offering 16.8 million colors customizable using the Chroma feature set. Developers can program specifically for Chroma keyboards, taking over lighting preferences to highlight important keys. The Razer Blade start at $1,999, it perviously retailed for $2,399. Razer has also announced that the Razer Blade Stealth and the new Razer Blade will be compatible with the Razer Core. This external GPU housing uses a Thunderbolt connection to deliver enhanced video power as well expanding USB ports and offering additional inputs. Pre-orders will start tomorrow, March 16. The 256 GB solid-state drive model costs $1,999. A 512 GB upgrade is also available at $2,199. The new Blades will ship in April. 

Razer Core

The Steam Winter Sale Starts Today, Ends On January 4

The 2015 Steam Winter Sale is now upon us. As earlier reports indicated, the sale started today, December 22, and will run until January 4. In a news release, Valve said there will be discounts on "thousands of games and software." You can also collect Winter Sale-themed trading cards only available during the sale period. Some of the deals include Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for $40.19, Rocket League for $13.99, Grand Theft Auto V for $35.99 and Black Ops III for $44.99 among other deals. What games do you hope goes on sale ? 

Square Enix Is Selling Mystery Bundles For $10

Square Enix has announced the 2015 Holiday Surprise Box. For $9.99, you’ll get a mystery bundle of 5 different PC games and other offerings . The total value is more than $80. You can get the surprise box now through December 17 at 11:59 PM Pacific. Your present will be delivered on December 18.In 2014, the bundle included Thief - The Master Thief Edition, The Last Remnant, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light, Deus Ex - The Fall, and Nosgoth Founders - Warlord Pack. You can purchase the bundle on Square Enix's store here.

Could We see Halo 5: Guardians On PC In The Future ?

Halo 5: Guardians could come to Winnows 10 PC’s. According to Halo franchise director Frank O’ Connor during a GamesRadar livestream "Nothing to announce at this point, but it’s absolutely within the bounds of reason." O'Connor went on to say the porting process wouldn't be all that difficult. "We developed the game on an Intel platform. It wouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world to move it to PC and take advantage of PC stuff. But nothing to announce today." Halo 5: Guardians will be available for Xbox One on October 27, at least for now. It would be nice to play Halo on a PC, the last Halo on PC was Halo 2. Needless to say a Halo on PC is long over due and would be a great addition to the Windows 10 games catalog that Microsoft is trying to create. What do you think of Halo 5 being on PC ? 

Batman: Arkham Knight PC Patch Coming In A Few Weeks

The Batman: Arkham Knight PC issues are still around with the game's first interim patch is not likely to hit its target release of August. An update on Steam reveals the patch is going into testing and should be released "in the next few weeks.". Major fixes included in the patch are as listed below:

• Reduced frame rate hitches
• Optimized system memory and VRAM usage
• Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
• Min Spec AMD GPU is once again the Radeon HD 7870 2GB
• More Robust In-Game Settings, including:
• Added the ability to change settings for Max FPS to 30/60/90
• Added toggles for Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, and Film Grain
• Added a “High” Texture Resolution value
• Added Texture Filtering option
• Added an Adaptive V-Sync option (NVIDIA only)
• Added VRAM Usage Meter
• Added Mouse Sensitivity Slider & Mouse Smoothing Option
• Fixed low resolution texture bugs
• Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)

Windows 10 Kills Pirated Games ?

Microsoft has updated there End User License Agreement which allows Windows 10 to remotely disable counterfeit software or hardware on your computer. Section 7b of the EULA states that Microsoft may "automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices." This only effects software found on the Windows store but that can change in the future. What do you think of this change?