There’s plenty that you could justifiably expect from a Bioware RPG: chats with mates, opportunities to get those mates horribly killed, surviving mates turning to the side then walking offscreen. But I don’t think anyone expected Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be, at least on a purely technical level, one of the smoothest-performing, settings-rich AAA PC releases of the year so far.
]]>Per last night’s Sony State of Play, PS5 darling and supposedly rather good action-dad adventure God of War Ragnarök is coming to PC on September 19th 2024. The good news is that the port, co-developed by Jetpack Interactive and original makers Santa Monica Studio, will pack in all the DLSS 3, FSR 3, and ultrawide what-have-yous that one might expect from a big, monied PC release. The bad, silly, clearly pointless news is that it will need a PlayStation Network (PSN) account, despite the complete lack of multiplayer.
]]>While I’ve always thought the race towards graphical hyperrealism isn’t as pervasive as it's often perceived, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is definitely one of those games. The kind that probably has twelve artists dedicated to the recreation of visible pores, that sort of thing. It’s so focused on looking pretty that it hasn’t even noticed the title and subtitle got mixed up.
Sure enough, Hellblade 2 is a harsh test for older hardware, with a heavy reliance on DLSS or FSR upscaling to keep performance sweet. That said, it’s no Dragons Dogma 2-style technical horrorshow either. A happy balance of visuals and smoothness is attainable on plush PCs and low-end laptops alike, while DLSS 3 frame generation can deliver an effective kick in the framerate pants on RTX 40 series GPUs.
]]>Welcome to Should You Bother With, a new, hopefully somewhat regular RPS column where I’ll investigate the quirkier niches that PC gaming hardware has to offer. Through trial and testing, together we’ll find out which of these products and features are technological red herrings – and which are the genuine innovations that deserve your attention.
First up on the lab table: AMD Fluid Motion Frames!
]]>Since I’m apparently on survival game duty for the rest of my days, and we’ve just had a firm reminder of how wobbly an early access launch can be, it seems like a good time to check in on that there Sons Of The Forest 1.0 release and see whether it’s felt the effects of its own early access polishing process.
]]>FSR 3, AMD’s framerate-roiding answer to DLSS 3 frame generation, is ready to roll in its first supporting games. Great! Except these are currently limited to tedious magic shooters Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, which is less great.
Regardless, this could be a major moment for basically any modern graphics card that isn’t an Nvidia RTX 40 series model. FSR 3’s Fluid Motion Frames system works in a broadly similar manner to DLSS 3, piecing together whole new frames outside of the usual GPU rendering pipeline and slipping them onto your screen between the 'real' frames. The result (in theory – I’ll be trying FSR 3 out in depth next week) is higher FPS with no extra strain on your PC, and unlike Nvidia’s frame generation, it doesn’t need any specialist hardware to work. Therefore older cards, as well as recent AMD GPUs like the RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT, could get a new lease of life in games that support it.
]]>Now that’s more like it. The Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics cards don’t just fill out a 1440p-shaped hole in AMD’s current lineup – they both, the latter in particular, make the kind of spirited attempt to get up in Nvidia’s face that previous red team GPUs simply didn’t.
]]>"Modders will fix it" is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is they’re rooted in fact. So it is with Starfield, which already has a DLSS mod ready to patch in the class-leading Nvidia upscaler that Bethesda left out in favour of AMD FSR 2.
It’s the work of seasoned modder PureDark, previously seen hammering both DLSS and FSR into Skyrim. I’ve tried the Starfield mod and it works rather nicely, granting a visible quality boost on RTX graphics cards while equalling FSR’s ability to smooth out Starfield’s sometimes-tricky performance. Unfortunately (and largely by association), it’s also been dragged into a spot of nasty business, one involving a separate mod for DLSS 3 frame generation and PureDark’s application of DRM.
]]>AMD will finally plug a yawning great hole in the middle of their RDNA 3 graphics card lineup, with both the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT set to launch in September. Intended as RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 botherers, you can expect these GPUs to put in a shift at high-quality 1440p, with a view towards FSR 3 making up for their lack of Nvidia DLSS 3 support.
]]>Apologies to Geoffey K and his GTA 6-loving stage invader, but for me, the torquiest head-turner of Gamescom 2023 was not a game but AMD FSR 3. The Radeon gang’s long awaited answer to DLSS 3 finally got a proper reveal, showcasing how its frame generation feature – called Fluid Motion Frames – could triple performance in supported games. And, while it was revealed alongside two new GPUs – the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT – AMD general manager Scott Herkelman suggested that FSR 3 will work "on any graphics card" once it launches.
]]>Immortals of Aveum is making me wonder whether there’s some kind of gigantic hidden market for floaty magic shooters with overcooked YA dialogue and exceedingly high PC hardware demands. After this and Forspoken releasing within a few months of each other, I’m half expecting Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to open with Captain Price shooting GPU-smelting laser beams out of his 'tache.
Indeed, this first person sorcery adventure will be hell on your hardware, even if you’ve tooled up with a high-grade graphics card and CPU. This is somewhat more understandable than with the other low-performing PC games we’ve seen this year, as Immortals of Aveum is one of the first Unreal Engine 5.1 games, and makes extensive use of its sparkly new lighting and VFX tech. Sadly, it also aims so high that the only way to get playable performance on lower-end and older mid-range kit it to gut the quality settings.
]]>Ideally, the story of Remnant II’s launch would start and end with it being an ambitious success of a shooty Soulslike. Sadly not: in a Reddit post addressing complaints of wonky performance, even on higher-end graphics cards, developers Gunfire Games admitted to having "designed the game with upscaling in mind."
Working the likes of Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS into a game wouldn’t normally be a cause of incredulity. Indeed, as optional performance boosters, they’re pretty much always a welcome sight amid the duller texture filtering and ambient occlusion toggles of the average settings menu. The problem here is that with its dismal performance at native, non-upscaled resolutions, Remnant II essentially forgets about the 'optional' part – and in doing so, undermines what makes DLSS and its rivals such valuable tools in the first place.
]]>How was your year for PC hardware, reader? Pick up anything nice, or got any old favourite gear still going strong? I’m still very happy with the 4K gaming monitor I got for a pittance, and have spent the past twelve months becoming increasingly convinced that tenkeyless keyboards are, in fact, the best keyboards.
That’s just me, though. On an everyone’s-invited macro level, 2022 ended up being the most transformative year for PC gaming kit in recent memory. We’ve had it all: long overdue launches, bitter disappointments, and genuinely impactful performance innovations. Also, Valve made a handheld PC. That was cool.
]]>We finally have AMD’s answer to the Nvida RTX 40 series: the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the red team’s first graphics cards build on the RDNA 3 architecture. These are both high-end GPUs, set to cost $899 and $999 respectively when they release on December 13th, but you’ll note those prices are oodles cheaper than the £1269 / $1199 RTX 4080 and the £1679 / $1599 RTX 4090.
They’re also structurally distinct from the current Radeon RX 6000 cards to an extent that, frankly, is quite surprising to see from AMD GPUs. RDNA 3 uses a Ryzen CPU-inspired chiplet design, where the GPU is split up into different sections, and the new media engine is engineered for the 4K gaming monitors of the future as much as it is for current PC hardware.
]]>FSR 2.0 – AMD’s graphics card-powered upscaling tech for boosting games performance – already has a newer, prettier version. AMD have announced FSR 2.1, which is available to developers immediately, and has made its playable debut via a Farming Simulator 22 update – just a couple of days after FSR 2.0 got its latest big-name backing from Red Dead Redemption 2.
]]>Red Dead Redemption 2 now has official FSR 2.0 support, as of the just-released 1.31 update. This makes Rockstar’s cowboy epic/improvised teleconferencing software the latest game to work with AMD’s upscaler without mods; an unofficial FSR patch for RDR2 has been out for a while, but this update should make it even easier to simply enable or disable FSR in the settings menu. Alongside its rival, Nvidia DLSS, which Rockstar also added last year.
]]>Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is landing on PC, and it’s pretty good! Co-developers Insomniac Games and Nixxes, who spoke to me this week about the port's development, have also taken the care to festoon this version of the open-world crim-puncher with various Windows-exclusive features. These span enhanced ray traced reflections and ultrawide monitor support to both Nvidia DLSS and (surprisingly, given it wasn’t in the initial PC features trailer) AMD FSR 2.0, adding to a list of visual options that already stretches into the sky like a Manhattan high rise. Let’s take a look, then, at how Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered performs on PC – as well as the best settings to keep it swingin’ real smooth like.
]]>Modders have been getting busy with FSR 2.0, AMD’s latest, recently open source-ified, Nvidia DLSS-esque upscaling tech. First someone got FSR 2.0 working in Cyberpunk 2077, then someone modded the Cyberpunk mod to get FSR in Dying Light 2, and then someone discovered the mod of the mod could also mod Metro Exodus. Now, redditor Muddymind has figured out how to tweak the Metro mod so that it can act as an Nvidia DLAA clone, skipping the upscaling bit to solely provide better image quality and anti-aliasing.
]]>AMD’s FSR 2.0 upscaler is out now – in only one game, Deathloop, but still. This is a big moment for the heavily upgraded FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), as it’s basically attempting to fight Nvidia’s rival DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) with some of its own tactics. There’s none of Nvidia’s machine learning enhancements, but whereas FSR 1.0 was a simple spatial upscaler – meaning data used for upscaling a frame could only come from within the frame itself – FSR 2.0 uses a temporal upscaling technique similar to that of DLSS. This allows it to draw data from previous frames as well, producing a sharper, higher-quality image.
The lack of machine learning also has the upside of keeping FSR 2.0, like FSR 1.0, compatible with any reasonably recent gaming GPU. Nvidia may make most of this generation’s best graphics cards, but you won't need something brand new and super powerful to let FSR 2.0 boost your frame rates. To find out how well it works, compared to both DLSS and FSR 1.0, I reinstalled Deathloop and gave all three upscalers a whirl.
]]>AMD are looking to wring the last few GPUs out of their RDNA 2 architecture, ahead of the RDNA 3-powered Radeon 7000 series launching later this year. They’ve just announced the Radeon RX 6650 XT, the Radeon RX 6750 XT and the Radeon RX 6950 XT: slightly faster, but more expensive and power-hungry refreshes of the RX 6600 XT, RX 6700 XT and RX 6900 XT models. These latest swings at Nvidia and their best graphics cards are ostensibly available from today, though third-party retail listings are currently hard to find, and AMD’s own store only lists the RX 6750 and RX 6950 XT... which are both sold out.
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