Game Tech News

Earlier this week, we discussed new test results for Ashes of the Singularity that showed GPUs from AMD and Nvidia running the game side-by-side. Unfortunately, Oxide has made the decision not to make this build of the game public immediately.*What we do have, courtesy of Oxide, *is video evidence of the ultimate Frankenstein rig running both AMD and Nvidia GPUs.

Note that in this case, the hardware obviously isn’t configured for any kind of SLI passthrough — AMD doesn’t use physical bridges the way Nvidia still does, and this kind of hardware wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it, since the two company’s use very different pinouts. Nevertheless, the rig works and works well.

Oxide’s benchmark test pairs a GTX 980 with a Fury Nano and notes that scaling is extremely good, though not quite perfect. While the video isn’t quite as gameplay-focused as we might like, the footage that exists runs without apparent problems. As we’ve noted, there’s very little that any ODM can do to prevent this mode from working. AMD and Nvidia can certainly try to encourage developers to prefer LDA (Linked Display Adapter), which mimics DX11 functionality, as opposed to the MDA mode shown here, which allows GPUs from multiple vendors to work together. But AMD and Nvidia can’t prevent it outright.

Some readers have asked whether or not PCI-E has enough bandwidth to make MDA plausible in all scenarios. This is a valid question, and we’ll need more data from other games before we have a guaranteed answer, but given that AMD stopped using bridge cables back in 2013, we suspect PCIe 3.0 has all the bandwidth necessary to feed even 4K multi-GPU configurations.

With PCI-Express 4.0 now not expected to debut until 2017 or 2018 due to the difficulty of achieving the standard’s 16GT/s transfer rate, it’ll be important to balance any new capabilities against what PCI-E 3.0 can provide. Then again, Ashes shows extremely strong scaling in the Nano + GTX 980 test, and a still-impressive 1.62x when the higher-end Fury X and GTX 980 Ti were used. Neither AMD nor Nvidia have fallen over themselves to publicly congratulate Oxide, so we’ll do it for them — gentlemen, we appreciate your efforts in making gaming more accessible to consumers who prefer to buy based on price/performance ratios rather than sticking to any single company.

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The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight continues to be a comedy of errors. In spite of numerous patches, a complete relaunch, and loads of promises, the game still performs poorly on a wide range of PCs. Even with an extra four months to tidy up the mess, the developers still can’t get the game to run reasonably well. After yet another tidal wave of negative customer feedback, Warner Bros. has caved, and is now allowing for complete refunds until the end of the year.

In a message posted on the Arkham Knight Steam community page, a Warner Bros. representative announced that every owner of the PC version will be able to return the game for a full refund. Regardless of how many hours you’ve played, you can get all of your money back until the end of the year. Did you buy the season pass as well? You can return that too, but only if you decide that you’re willing to part with the core game as well — no backsies otherwise.


Over at the Digital Foundry, the performance analysis is showing lackluster results across the board. If you’re running a graphics card with 2GB of memory, you can expect pitiful performance on anything but the lowest texture setting. Rocking a high-end card with 4GB of memory? You’re probably still better off locking the frame rate at 30fps to reduce stutter. Even running a GTX 980 and an i7-4790K, the Digital Foundry folks can’t keep the frame rate steady at 60fps. All these months later, and this port is still a massive headache.

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After the countless missteps Microsoft made leading up to the launch of the Xbox One, the PS4 has been this generation’s sales leader by a large margin. In spite of Microsoft’s valiant efforts to course-correct over the last two years, it seems as if there’s little hope of the Xbox One ever catching up to the PS4. Even so, there’s an argument to be made that the Xbox One is actually thriving despite the massive sales gap.

The sales for the third quarter of 2015 are in, and the folks over at Ars Technica have broken down the numbers. From July to September, the PS4 sold four million units, the Xbox One sold roughly 1.85 million, and the Wii U only sold about 0.72 million. Due to ambiguity from the reports, these numbers aren’t exact, but the results are clear. Even if we’re generous in how we calculate the number of Xbox One’s sold, it’s still under two million — less than half of the number of PS4s sold in the same timeframe.


When we look at the overall sales, the situation looks stark. Even with a one-year head start, the Wii U is lagging behind at 10.74 million units sold — a little over 10% of the Wii’s sales total. The Xbox One? Its total sales are somewhere between 15.03 million and 17.3 million. And as for the PS4, it’s sitting on top with a whopping 29.3 million sold. No matter how you look at it, the PS4 is the lead platform this generation. And now that Sony and Microsoft are competing at the same price point, the row has become even harder to hoe for the Xbox team.

With that said, the Xbox One is just now starting to come into its own. It finally has a new Halo game to hang its hat on, and the hotly awaited sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot will release first on Xbox One later this month. Compare that to the PS4’s pitiful lack of exclusives this holiday season, and the Xbox One is looking pretty good right now.
The PS4 does have Uncharted 4, Street Fighter V, and Horizon: Zero Dawn lined up as heavy hitters for next year, but the Xbox One is getting Quantum Break, ReCore, and Gears of War 4. In terms of exclusive games, there’s a lot to look forward to in 2016 for both platforms.

On top of that, we’re only a week away from a huge Xbox One update. This new OS will be based on Windows 10, and will reportedly offer substantial usability and speed improvements from tip to tail. Even better, universal Windows 10 apps will be capable of running on the Xbox One as well as PCs, tablets, and phones. The open app ecosystem that the PS4 so desperately needs is actually being tackled first by Microsoft. Let’s just hope that this spurs Sony to get on the ball.
Without a doubt, the PS4 is more powerful and more popular, but that isn’t slowing Microsoft down one iota. Combine this year’s big games, a brand new OS, and the inevitable Black Friday deals, and it’s hard to deny how compelling the Xbox One has become in the face of adversity.


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Fallout 4, otherwise known as The Game That Ate November, will launch in a matter of days, and we’ve rounded up the various news, pre-releases, technical previews, and developments that accompany the game. It’s been just over five years since we got a new Fallout game, and excitement for the game is reaching a fevered pitch.

First, the technical details. Fallout 4 uses the same Creation Engine that powered Skyrim, but includes a number of sophisticated feature updates that the Creation Engine didn’t support back in 2011. It’ll ship with full DX11 support (there’s no word on a DX12 version, but Bethesda engines have typically lagged cutting-edge adoptions in API. Nonetheless, the game looks incredible. Bethesda is touting a new volumetric light engine, physically based deferred rendering, and a cloth simulation system that lets fabric ripple realistically in the wind. The screenshot below shows how different the same area can look depending on the time of day and ambient weather conditions.




Other features include Bokeh depth of field support, temporal AA, SSAO, something delightful called “Dynamic Dismemberment using Hardware Tessellation,” and screen space reflections. The proof will be in the pudding, but FO4 looks set to jettison the grim, washed-out Wasteland we saw in FO3 and FNV at least some of the time.




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For years, game support on Linux has seriously lagged behind Windows, to the point that the OS was basically a non-option for anyone who wanted to game on a PC. In recent years, that’s begun to change, thanks to increased support for the OS via Valve and SteamOS. From the beginning, Valve claimed that it was possible to boost OpenGL performance over D3D in Windows, and it’s recently put a hefty push behind Vulkan, the Mantle-based API that’s a successor to OpenGL.

Two new stories took OpenGL out for a spin compared with Windows 10, on a mixture of Intel and Nvidia hardware. Ars Technica dusted off their Steam machine for a comparison in the most recent version of SteamOS, while Phoronix compared the performance of Intel’s Skylake Core i5-6600K with HD Graphics 530. The results, unfortunately, point in the same direction: SteamOS and Ubuntu simply can’t keep up with Windows 10 in most modern titles.




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There’s a rumor making the rounds that AMD is prepping new solutions for Sony and Microsoft with an estimated 2018 release date and up to 5x improved performance-per-watt. Sony and Microsoft haven’t said much about these plans (and won’t, to avoid cannibalizing sales of existing platforms), but that doesn’t stop us from examining them. Could we see new hardware in-market by that date?

We could — but there are significant questions about how the market would react to it. If you plot game console releases over time, the Xbox 360 and PS3 were clear outliers, at eight years and seven years, respectively. The historical trend going back to the original Nintendo NES has been a 4-6 year cadence. The problem with a release cycle this fast, however, is that game development cycles now take longer than they used to, and you run the risk of alienating gamers who dropped significant cash on a platform they thought would last as long as the Xbox 360 / PS3 cycle did.

The other major question is one of technology. In the past, console technology tended to leap forward relatively quickly — compare the evolution of Lara Croft from her earliest appearance on the PlayStation to the 2013 title, Tomb Raider.

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Earlier this year, Nvidia recalled its Shield Tablet over problems with the lithium-ion battery. The company has put the tablet back on sale and given the base model a whopping price cut, from $299 to $199 for the 16GB flavor. At that price, the Shield Tablet is a steal, considering its overall performance, build quality, and features. Even better, this new version seems to fix the nagging touch-screen issues that were widely reported on Shield 1.0.

While I didn’t review the first Shield Tablet for ExtremeTech, I do own one, and the touch screen has always been a little dodgy. It works perfectly in the desktop or in-browser, but often had trouble picking up multi-touches in the one Android game I play on a regular basis — Castle Clash. This was an issue unique to the Shield — the game ran perfectly well on multiple Android smartphones and devices. The issue would typically resolve itself after I attempted a multi-touch zoom-in / zoom-out several times, but reoccurred each time a new area of the game was loaded. While it didn’t prevent play, it was annoying. Factory resets, new OTA updates, and reinstalling the game never had much impact on the issue.



The replacement Shield I received in the mail doesn’t have this problem and I’m hoping that means Nvidia quietly corrected whatever caused it in the first place. It appears, however, that there are at least two subtly different SKUs shipping out to market. The replacement tablet I received is externally identical to the original device in every particular, but over at Ars Technica UK, Mark Walton reports that his replacement tablet lacks a stylus garage and has a slightly different case and branding.

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Auir is a shambles. A rogue Xel'Naga, Amon, looks to slaughter the Firstborn and end the cycle of life and death. Only Artanis, Hierarch of the Protoss, can save the Koprulu Sector by uniting the Daelaam, Tal'darim, and Nerazim against him.

If you haven't paid attention to the lore of StarCraft II up to this point, now is a terrible time to start. The deluge of hard-to-parse proper nouns and space magic is enough to douse even the tiniest spark of interest at this point. It's ironic—the first game was all about petty politicking and squabbles between the Zerg, Protoss, and Terrans over limited resources. In-game and out, the scope was so much smaller and the plot much more affecting for it.

If you must know what's happening going into Legacy of the Void—the finale to the StarCraft II trilogy and the fifth installment in the series, overall—it sports a slide show telling "the story so far." Honestly, though, you're better off grabbing a ticket to see Duncan Jones' upcoming Warcraft movie adaptation. The plot points in both series are basically identical, and Jones’ Moon was pretty good.
Boots on the ground, keep stepping

Despite Legacy's fictional failures, the single-player campaign in this expansion is a lot stronger than its predecessor. StarCraft is at its strongest when it gives you too many objectives to juggle for too long. This is something the first chapter, Wings of Liberty, got very right, but the second, Heart of the Swarm, did not. The standout skirmish from that first campaign was pulled straight out of The Chronicles of Riddick, of all places, forcing players to outrun a solar flare scouring the planet. You had to ceaselessly soak up resources while you could while also completing your objectives and moving your base out of harm's way every few minutes.

Legacy emulates that same plate-spinning style more than once. Whether it's a psychic storm surging through an arid riverbed or just a spread-out battlefront in need of defending, there's nearly always something to keep Protoss leader Artanis and company on their toes (or talons, as the case may be).

As Hierarch, Artanis is more of a leader than a bleeder, and so you won't bring him into combat nearly as much as you did with Sarah Kerrigan in Heart of the Swarm. That's just fine. Without the crutch of a super-powered psychic war machine to lean on, the balancing act is a lot more fun and much truer to the kind of real-time strategy game StarCraft is meant to be.

That's not to say Legacy has dropped the meta-progression from previous episodes. Instead of providing upgrades for Artanis, as you did with Kerrigan, completing mission lines reveals upgrades for your ship—the Spear of Adun. The dreadnought's support abilities work on timers, as well as their own renewable resources, complementing your existing forces rather than replacing them.

Even so, the Spear can seem overpowered at times. One upgrade path allows you to summon minor reinforcements and Pylons—which allow you to warp in more troops—to any location, free of charge. Limited resources and a constant need to reposition make this upgrade particularly unfair against the already relatively toothless A.I. In fact, if you have even the slightest understanding of human StarCraft II tactics, you'll rocket through the campaign on normal difficulty.
Cutthroat competition

How that might hold up against other humans is harder to say. StarCraft II's competitive multiplayer is the same as it has always been: brutal, fast, and unpredictable. Will your opponent slit your economy's throat four minutes into the game, or will it drag out into a long, grinding siege?

Blizzard probably hopes for neither. While there's little to do about the infamous Zerg Rush, Heart of the Swarm was particularly notorious for ferociously long base phlebotomies with siege units. In the boundless search for the perfectly balanced meta-game, the developers have promised a greater focus on micromanagement and small-scale, low-impact fights. At the core of this philosophy is rebalancing units to have more active abilities that require more individual attention. There are new units and structures, but not many—fewer than ten. In this way, as it was in Heart of the Swarm, Legacy's "new" multiplayer feels more like a hefty patch than a real expansion.

That's probably fine for those already bulwarked behind the walls of Castle StarCraft. The creater of this year's StarCraft II World Championship Series is still glowing behind us. It will be a while before the tournament pros and ladder Joes nod with knowing approval and/or spit in disgust at every little balance update. StarCraft is, and will remain, categorically bonkers.

You require more minerals—no you require more minerals



Those looking for admission to the cabal, or who just want a lick of their Kool Aid spoon, have new options in Legacy of the Void.

Archon Mode is the one getting the most spotlight among fans at Blizzcon and the like. It has two players controlling a single base, thereby splitting the macro- and micromanagement into something closer to what the average human is capable of. Some might use Archon Mode as a replacement for pure, one-on-one dueling. A more likely scenario, and perhaps what Blizzard has in mind, is for one half of the APM sandwich to coach the other, prodding them along the plank over the sea of ladder leagues and matchmaking ratings.

Co-op Missions haven't gotten the same attention as Archon Mode. Perhaps it's because they don't preach to the StarCraft multiplayer faithful, instead playing more like a game that’s been hybridized with Diablo 3. Each mission in this mode is played against the A.I. with pseudorandom scenarios that allow you to use the hero units and Spear of Adun spells you'd expect from the campaign—depending on the commander you select. There are two commanders for each faction, and they level up as well as earn permanent upgrades independently.

In summary, Archon Mode is a gateway drug to traditional multiplayer, while Co-op missions feel like a concession to those loners looking for a semi-randomized excuse to keep playing after the campaign's gibberish termination.
Babble and battle

This new repeatable content is welcome after a campaign that falls somewhere between Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm in quality, with plenty of well-designed missions. Even the space hocus-pocus story—with an ending so saccharine, so perfectly neat and happy for all involved that it feels like a How Legacy of the Void Should Have Ended video—has its bright spots, mostly involving Artanis' conversations with subordinates about Protoss culture.

Even so, it's hard to recommend Legacy of the Void in the traditional way. If you've played the last four Starcraft releases, even the last two, you're probably not going to stop now. If you haven't, this is technically the most complete version of the game's multiplayer to date. Just don't expect to have even a slight understanding of the nearly 20 years' worth of fiction and intricate gameplay that it puts a tidy bow on.

The Good

• Juggling multiple objectives keeps campaign missions exciting.
• Archon Mode makes for a decent entry point to multiplayer.
• Co-op missions offer more of the campaign's best stuff.
• One of the most complex and defined multiplayer suites in history.

The Bad

• A nonsense story that wraps up a bit too neatly.
• Multiplayer is still vicious and brutally complicated for casual players.

The Ugly

• That moment after the campaign when you realize you've forgotten how to play any race but the Protoss.

Verdict: As the conclusion to a more than 17-year-old saga, Legacy of the Void isn’t a great place for newcomers to jump in. For those who want to wrap up the story or see the pinnacle of the series’ multiplayer, this is probably your last best chance to jump on for a good, long time. Try it.

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Star Wars: Battlefront dropped earlier this week after months of anticipation, incredible previews, and what EA claims was the largest, most popular beta in the company’s history. While it’s technically the third Battlefront title, we haven’t seen a new release in the series for a decade, and relaunching the series with a new first chapter (EA has already announced it will make sequels) makes good sense — at least in theory.

EA expects to sell 13 million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront. Based on what I’ve seen of the game in the past few days and in the beta, it probably will. Whether or not it deserves to is an entirely different question. While I normally cover and review hardware, not games, I’ve been a gamer for nearly 30 years — and I’ve rarely had such a divided opinion on a game.

What Battlefront gets right

Let’s get the big question out of the way first: Star Wars: Battlefront does a better job of capturing the look, feel, and spectacle of battles in the Star Wars universe than any title ever has. Classic RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel do a far better job of storytelling in the SWU, but if your childhood dreams involved more Death Star trench runs and fewer hours running through a swamp with Master Yoda, no previous game can match the eye-and-ear candy that Battlefront delivers.

X-WIng on the left, A-Wing on the right. The cockpit sways and shifts while flying — exterior views are more useful. Also, can we get someone to clean my X-Wing’s windshield?

If you’ve been a Star Wars fan since childhood, it’s hard to move past the initial rush of seeing huge walkers lumber across the surface of Hoth or racing through Endor’s forests on a landspeeder. Much has been said about the strategic disadvantage the Rebels suffer on Hoth; comparatively little has been written about the pounding the Empire takes on Endor. It turns out that being restricted to various flavors of bone-white armor creates a strategic disadvantage when battling Rebel troops in forest camo. Serves them right.



Forget carbonite. In this universe, Boba shot first.

EA and Dice have built a variety of game modes, from standard death match (40-man Supremacy) to starfighter dogfights. There’s a control point battle mode, a capture-the-flag clone (cargo hunt), and a point capture node that focuses on seizing droids rather than static points on the battlefield. There’s even a Heroes vs. Villains mode that pitches two teams against each other, each with three “Hero” characters. The game rotates who plays as a hero in any given match, and non-heroes have the option to spawn as “Honor Guards” — infantry-type classes with special abilities and more staying power compared to the heroes themselves. Finally, of course, there’s the climatic, asymmetrical battle of Hoth, which needs no introduction. Walker Assault is clearly the game mode that received the most polish, and it shows — big time.

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When it comes to control panels and user interfaces, both AMD and Nvidia have taken an incremental approach to adding features or changing the basic UI. Today, Team Red is shaking that trend up, with a brand-new driver stack that offers an entirely different UI — and a host of other improvements as well. It’s a huge jump forward on multiple fronts for AMD and an encouraging sign to see the company taking multiple aspects of support more seriously. The images below can be clicked for enlarged versions.



Evolution of Catalyst

Here’s the evolution of AMD’s UI from 2002 to the present day. The original Catalyst Control Center debuted in 2002 and the major themes were established by 2006. The 2015 UI is a clear evolution of the 2006 design rather than a wholesale revamp. Today’s Radeon Crimson Software Edition (Crimson for short) breaks with this trend in favor of a Metro-like interface — but we actually mean that in a good way.



Here’s an example of the old layout, which required some scaling or resizing to make elements fit, as compared to the new global profile page:




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