Tag Archive

AMD Crimson Driver & Software Suite Rumored For Imminent Release


Posted on November 24, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Owners of AMD cards have been seeing some inferior benchmarks when compared against comparable Nvidia hardware with recent titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum and The Witcher III. Many tech journalists and enthusiasts users have speculated that this disparity may have to do with these titles utilization of Nvidia’s proprietary GameWorks technologies. Rain effects in Batman, Lighting in Fallout 4 and hair in The Witcher III all utilize Nvidia exclusive technologies that AMD owners have had to tone down or disable entirely in order to achieve the same framerates as GeForce owners.

It looks like AMD might finally have an answer with the (rumored) impending release of AMD Radeon Crimson – a brand new driver and software suite that according to leaked marketing material will provide a number of benefits to owners of existing and future hardware.

On the r/PCGaming sub-reddit a user by the handle of BehindaCorpFirewall posted a link to over a dozen presentation slides that outline the AMD Crimson software. Here are a few of the more interesting points, at least to me:

Higher Frames Per Second

  • Asynchronous Shaders allow for breaking serial workloads into parallel tasks
  • Idle GPU resources used for this task instead of queuing
  • Improved multi-threading performance

Low Frame Rate Compensation Technology

  • Smooths out gameplay when application frame rate falls below monitor refresh rate
  • Algorithms adjust GPU output and refresh-rate to prevent game stuttering
  • No additional hardware or configuration required for this feature.

Custom Resolutions Support & Better Up-Scaling

  • Allows users to create custom resolutions.
  • Control over pixel density & refresh rate.
  • Improved 2k (1080P) à 4K (UHD) scaling

What do you think of some of these rumored changes that the Crimson driver & software may bring? If these leaked material are even close to accurate we could see the rollout of this new software package in the coming days. If you head-on over to the AMD website you can already watch a preview video outlining some of the work that has gone into Crimson.

Right now all of this should be considered a rumor, as an AMD owner I’ll be sure to take some bench marks in some of the games I regularly play and report back after the rollout.

[source]

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Fallout 4: Survival in the Wasteland


Posted on November 23, 2015 by Kenny Keelan

If you’re having trouble making it in the Commonwealth of Fallout 4…

…you’re far from alone on that one. There’s a lot of people out there who are already kind of burned out on the game with the sheer amount of things you can do. It’s kind of overwhelming. I totally agree with you! That’s why I came up with a rather handy-dandy guide so you can get a leg up on the terrible atrocities of the Commonwealth so that way you can get the most out of your Fallout 4 experience.
Read More


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New Fallout 4 Dynamic Shadows Mods Greatly Improves Average FPS


Posted on November 21, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Are you still wandering through the wastes of Boston weeks after release? Are you playing the Windows PC version on mid-range hardware? If you answered yes to both questions, then I might have the right mod for you! Don’t worry Vault-tech isn’t involved in any way!

“FPS dynamic shadows mod by creator Shadow Beast adds the ability for the game engine to dynamically shadow draw distance and level of detail based upon your desired frame rate. The mods creator offers the following description of it:

Many of you may have noticed that in some locations of Fallout 4 fps gets low even with a good hardware, like in the City, mostly it happens in theareas with lots of objects. Since the game isn’t properly optimized, almost everything that it does with objects which it renders takes more time thanit actually should. One of the most time consuming operations in Fallout 4 is shadow rendering and because the game has only predefined shadow drawdistance, which applies everywhere in every location just the same, we have a choise either we set it to high value with having a good picture but eventually facing fps drops in locations with lots of object or we lower the value to make fps more stable in general. And this is exactly the pointwhere this plugin comes handy!

With this mod installed I saw my frame rate increase in diamond city from 35 FPS on average to a respectable 55. Outdoor areas like the commons faired even better never dipping below my target of 60 frames per second even during intense battles. Before installing the mod I was ranging between 40 – 50 during intense firefights with super mutants. I don’t know all the technical ins and outs of this mod but it seems to work wonders.

If you’re wondering what kind of rig and graphical settings I am running to achieve these results – I’ve got everything except Godrays set to ultra with maximum draw distance enabled. My system specs just meet those recommended by Bethesda with probably my graphics card being the weakest component.

My system:

4.0 GHZ 8-Core AMD Processor
16GB DDR3
Radeon R7 270 2GB Overclocked
Fallout 4 installed on a mechanical hard drive

Installation of the dynamic shadows mod is really easy as well. If you’ve installed mods for Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas you might be familiar with having to use tools like the nexus mods manager or even the built-in plugin loader to ensure everything worked without a hitch. To install the dynamic shadows mod you just drag the files into your games directory and you’re good to go!

Users on Reddit are reporting similar findings to mine in terms of performance on cards as high as the Geforce 970. Interesting posters on the Reddit thread are also comparing the capability of this mod to 2011’s RAGE which featured a dynamic graphics performance system designed to optimize the user’s experience on lower end hardware.

We’ll keep you posted on any other interesting Fallout 4 mods as they continue to emerge.

[Source]


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Modder Discovers Unused Weapon in Fallout 4 Data


Posted on November 21, 2015 by Broken Joysticks

A modder that goes by the name xxdeathknight72xx has found an unused weapon in Fallout 4’s data and has since released it as a mod on NexusMods. This may be something from an unreleased DLC, or simply something they chose not to include in the final game for whatever reason. The gun is a sweet looking “underwater” weapon that’s basically a harpoon gun in both appearance and function. The mod itself overrides the Railway Rifle, as it is a direct replacement for the time being. I’ll include a video from a YouTube user named Tyrannicon featuring the mod at the bottom of the post right after the mods’ link.

You can find the gun/mod here.




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Fallout 4: Bethesda to Release 1st Patch for Game to PC, (and later Xbox One and Playstation 4)


Posted on November 20, 2015 by Tamsin Heineman

Seems by next week we’ll have our first (much needed) patch for Fallout 4 from Bethesda, which is coming to PC first followed later by Xbox One and Playstation 4 releases.

Our process for updating the game will include releasing a beta patch on Steam, followed by full release on PC, then release on the consoles. This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster. Expect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones. This allows us to make sure each fix is working right, as any change can have unintentional side effects in a game this huge. We expect the first beta patch to be up next week.

Official blog post here with full details.


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Surprising No One Fallout 4 Is Still The 2nd Most Played Game On Steam


Posted on November 18, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Bethesda’s Fallout 4 is the 2nd most played game on Steam a week after its release with 256,000+ players. This comes after the game broke existing records when it launched last week with 360,000 players – the game went live at midnight on November 11th. Previously RockStar Game’s Grand Theft Auto V held the record for concurrent players with 301,000+ when it was released on PC this past April.

Fallout 4’s numbers are nowhere near the reigning champion, Valve’s DOTA 2, which had 318,000 concurrent players as of press time and a peak today of nearly a million players today! Comparing Fallout 4’s numbers to DOTA 2’s isn’t exactly fair since one game is a single player immersive RPG and the other is a 5 Vs. 5 MOBA.

Rounding out the top ten include PC staples like Valve’s own Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2. Surprisingly Activision’s latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops III is the last place on the top ten. I would have thought Black Ops III would have been a bit higher but I guess you can’t deny the power of the wastelands.

CURRENT PLAYERS PEAK TODAY   GAME
318,155 806,386   Dota 2
256,633 292,202   Fallout 4
250,258 586,014   Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
40,526 54,472   Team Fortress 2
37,893 58,566   Football Manager 2016
30,565 39,535   ARK: Survival Evolved
27,964 33,635   Sid Meier’s Civilization V
22,566 26,840   Garry’s Mod
21,037 26,366   The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
19,739 35,395   Call of Duty: Black Ops III

[Source]


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Kenny’s Fallout 4 Log – Day 7


Posted on November 18, 2015 by Kenny Keelan

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

November 18th, 2015

So, here we are: I’ve had this game for a full week and even the acquisition of NHL 16 hasn’t slowed progress any… that’s saying a lot because I’m a humongous hockey fan. It’s been a long time and the path through the Commonwealth has been fraught with small victories and huge losses and while Fallout 4‘s improvements made themselves apparent right away, a lot of the franchise staples have made themselves apparent as I, finally, start to embrace the main quest line that the game has set out in front of me.

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Here’s All of Companions (And Where To Find Them) In Fallout 4


Posted on November 16, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

It can be a hard life wandering through the wastes without a soul to talk too. Sure you’ve got your trust canine companion Dogmeat to keep you companion through those first few irradiated nights but sometimes you just want someone to talk too.

Here’s a very brief and helpful guide that will let you find all of Fallout 4’s companions in record time. Whether you’re looking for morally ambiguous Cait, The Minute Men’s Preston Graves or any of the other surprise companions. Here’s our entire list.Read More


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Kenny’s Fallout 4 Log – Day 3


Posted on November 14, 2015 by Kenny Keelan

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How Seth Got His Groove Back

November 13th on PlayStation 4

Yeah, so, my character’s name is Seth: there’s a bit of a story behind that name and there’s about four I try to inject into just about every self-injection game lead I can but that’s a different story for a different time. I’ll tell you now, memory has not served me well and it did not do my skills with the game justice as I was expecting things to kind of go a certain way and they most certainly don’t.Read More


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Fallout 4 Configuration Tool by Bilago


Posted on November 12, 2015 by Tamsin Heineman

One of the biggest complaints with Fallout 4, perhaps the only complaint, is the poor optimization for PC. Well the good news is an audacious and well known modder named “Bilago” has released a configuration tool to help things run better on your rig. Most options are self explanatory and let you adjust things like frame cap, Kodix’s FPS boost(which may not work on all PCs), world and first person FOV, and various other standard tweaks. I want to also mention here that if you uncap your framerate it is highly recommended to turn on Vsync for the game in your video card’s control panel(ATI Catalyst/NVidia Control Panel) .

You can grab the configuration tool here.


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I’m Ten Hours Into Fallout 4 And I think I’m Starting To Glow


Posted on November 11, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

The desolate wastes have been calling out to me ever since the anticipated reveal of Fallout 4 this past E3. Like the game’s main character, I too hid underground although figuratively speaking. For the past few months I ignored any small gameplay snippets, cell-phone videos and plot details that leaked out of Bethesda ahead of the game’s release. With the large steel doors of Vault 111 finally open as of yesterday I’ve finally got the chance to spend nearly ten hours in the Boston wasteland. Here’s a brief journey of my character’s journey from the relative safety of Vault 111 to the streets of Diamond City.Read More


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Kenny’s Fallout 4 Log – Day 1


Posted on November 11, 2015 by Kenny Keelan

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Deathclaws and Power Armor, Already?

November 11th, 2015 on PlayStation 4:

A lot’s happened in a short amount of time. In the first couple of hours I’ve put into the game, introduction included, I’ve already got my first companion, racked up my first set of power armor and used it to take on my first Deathclaw. It seems as though Bethesda is coming up to me and going “you remember this stuff? Yeah? I bet you remember this stuff.” Can’t say that I’m entirely surprised but it’s nice. I’ve already experienced my first set of graphical glitches, mostly people falling and dying on platforms that don’t seem to exist and people sitting and standing on these said magical platforms. It’s to be expected and, if we’re being honest, quite amusing. The game feels and plays, very much, like an improved version of Fallout: New Vegas and you can certainly feel the Skyrim showing in this as the movement and environment certainly shows it.

It’s not exactly the prettiest game and it does have its fair share of visual and audio shortcomings – one of which is a personal pet peeve of mine: I sometimes have a hard time hearing things and I require subtitles and sometimes the subtitles I’ve set are either not appearing at all or they’re stuck – but it’s nothing that takes away from the fun the game has to offer, so far. I’ve done my fair share of wandering and getting into trouble and I gotta say the experience is not far removed from previous entries at all.

Story seems solid, so far. Voice acting has improved quite a bit, too, which is awesome. Music is mostly not present but during some of the story-based moments, it was nice.

My huge concern is this, so far: if I know Bethesda at all, they have this habit of fooling you into what to expect from the challenges out there. Greatest example in my memory is when you faced a Behemoth earlier on in the game in Fallout 3 and I thought to myself “holy hell, if it took myself and that many Brotherhood members to take this down, there can’t be much that’s more difficult in this game to take on alone” when I later found out that there are many other threats much worse than that Behemoth. Deathclaws are a great example of a threat that was incredible alone and in packs they were nigh unstoppable. Every time I even heard one my heartbeat skyrocketed. Within the first little bit of the game I played today I was already paired up with Dogmeat, plopped down into my first set of power armor, and then faced up against a Deathclaw. Now, that was, by no means an easy battle, tension was high and the adrenaline was pumping but the point remains that it only took one try to down the thing and I’ve already got a suit of power armor. Of course, it requires a power supply in order to get going and the suit you get comes to you damaged so you can’t exactly abuse it early on but… still… power armor! I remember not even being able to wear a suit of power armor until late into Fallout 3 due to not having the perk so I could wear it and, at that, I didn’t have a suit, period, until a little bit before I put a point into that perk. I’m just wondering how the difficulty will scale from here: are things going to get bigger, badder, and more dangerous from here, or are Deathclaws still going to be the prominent threat in Boston and are they being nerfed slightly? I guess only time will tell.

Aside from all that business, very typical Fallout business: things haven’t changed that much and, honestly, that’s a very good thing. I’m already glad I picked it up.


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Collect Some Bottle Caps With Real World Fallout 4 Beer


Posted on October 23, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

You can ensure your survival during a real world nuclear apocalypse not by reserving a spot in a Vaul-Tec vault but by stashing away some bottle caps from a case of official Fallout 4 beer. Bethesda Softworks is partnering with UK brewer Carlsberg UK to offer European Fallout 4 fans the chance to order a case of 12 bottles through Amazon UK, which will ship on November 5th

Currently priced at 29.99 Great British Pounds (approximately $60 CDN) the Fallout 4 official beer ships in twelve 330ML bottles. According to the product listing the Fallout beet has been brewed using a unique blend of malted barleys combined with selected hops, to produce a light coloured lager with a fruity aroma and a crisp bitter finish”.

Fallout 4 is scheduled to be released on November 10th worldwide for Windows PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Honestly I think the green bottles with those sweet Vault-Tec style labelling is worth the price of entry alone. It is too bad that this hasn’t been announced in North America as of press time.

Source: Bethesda Press Release

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Fallout 4’s Minimum Specs Might Leave Your PC In Ruins


Posted on October 10, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Bethesda’s absolutely massive open world roleplaying game (that some people have successfully argued isn’t a roleplaying game but rather a society simulator) is due out in exactly a month and now we know the minimum PC Specs as well as the hard drive requirements for console players. Get ready to check your graphics cards and clear out your hard drive because the nukes are about to fall!

In terms of minimum PC specs these numbers aren’t so bad – the Phenom II 940 is a rather old processor from about five years ago and anyone who’s upgraded their graphics hardware should meet the minimum standards of a 550 TI 2GB or Radeon HD 7870 quite easily. More concerning for me (since I am primarily an AMD devotee) is the obviously overclocked recommended processor speed of a staggering 4.7GHZ with a 4GB graphics card.

Between Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront’s daunting system specs I think I’ll be going for the PS4 versions of both games. I am a little disappointed in Fallout 4’s minimum specs to be honest, I know my gaming rig is only a mid-range setup but I barely meet the recommended specs and I am not about to overclock my processor to nearly 5GHZ to play this game. It’s a shame because I was really looking forward to trying out some of the cooler mods on PC, as Fallout 3 had great mod support.

In terms of console players the base game will require 28 – 35 GB of hard drive space, which isn’t too bad. For more details make sure to head over to Bethesda’s official blog post about the minimum requirements for Fallout 4.

PC Systems Requirements (Requires Internet Connection and Free Steam Account to Activate)

Minimum
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent

Recommended
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent

 


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