This looks interesting... (PC HW News)

Summary

Hardware and PC Market

• Leaked Zen 6C performance: A Geekbench 7 result suggests Zen 6C could deliver up to 24% higher per-clock performance than Zen 5 in one comparison. At the same 4.1 GHz clock, the reported single-core gain is 16.5%. This is a single leaked benchmark, not controlled testing or a gaming benchmark. Higher clocks, if achieved, could add to the uplift. Zen 6C may be especially appealing to people upgrading an existing compatible motherboard and RAM rather than building a whole PC while component prices are high.
• PC market and costs: Global PC shipments reportedly fell 21% in Q3, with a deeper decline expected in Q4. Rising memory and other component costs are cited as factors squeezing demand and making new PC generations harder to get excited about.
• RTX 5090s diverted to AI use: Reports show RTX 5090 cards being dismantled, with their GPUs and memory installed on custom boards with blower-style coolers for AI systems. This may help explain high prices and limited gaming-card availability, though NVIDIA’s production plans remain unclear.

Upscaling and Graphics

• FSR 4 on older GPUs: Hardware Unboxed published detailed performance and image-quality testing of FSR 4 on RDNA 2. Its results indicate that RDNA 2 gains less performance than newer AMD GPUs, but FSR 4 can still produce better image quality and performance than FSR 3 with more aggressive settings. The speaker views the support as useful for extending the life of older GPUs, while noting that it would have been preferable to receive this software support earlier.
• FSR 4.1 for APUs and handhelds: ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X and X20 devices have received a preview driver for the lighter FSR 4.1 version designed for APUs. Support is not yet available across all handhelds and APUs. This version appears to trade a small amount of image quality for substantially better performance. The speaker suggests AMD offer it as an optional driver-level setting, similar to NVIDIA’s upscaling options.
• FSR on Intel Arc: Modders have reportedly run the FSR 4.1.2 light version using Intel Arc GPUs’ XMX AI cores. On an Arc B580, its reported upscaling cost was about 0.59 ms, close to the 0.58 ms reported for XMX-accelerated XeSS. Some image-quality comparisons reportedly favor the FSR light version, though available testing is limited.
• DLSS 5 and RTX Remix: Metro 2033 Redux received an unexpected official DLSS 5 neural-rendering implementation in an update. Based on screenshots, the speaker’s initial reaction is that the more photorealistic lighting may look somewhat out of place on the game’s older character models, but he has not tested it directly. RTX Remix 1.6 also adds DLSS 5 and 6× multi-frame generation; these features are available in Portal with RTX and the Half-Life 2 RTX demo.
• Qualcomm Adreno Neural Fusion SDK: Qualcomm released an SDK with AI upscaling and 2× frame generation for Snapdragon GPUs, mainly relevant to mobile devices.

Video, Drivers, and Streaming

• YouTube AV2 testing: YouTube is testing AV2 streaming, with a possible public rollout as early as 2027. AV2 is said to offer roughly 30% better compression efficiency than AV1, which could mean better image quality at the same bitrate or similar quality using less bandwidth.
• NVIDIA driver issue: GeForce driver 621.01 has a reported bug causing video freezes or black screens for some users, particularly when video is playing while a game launches. An NVIDIA staff member has acknowledged the issue. Affected users may want to roll back while it is investigated.
• Steam Deck OLED remote play: HDR remote-play streaming has returned to the Steam Deck OLED beta client after a brightness issue affecting SDR content was fixed. The speaker welcomes the progress but says the official option still does not match third-party tools such as Moonlight and Sunshine in his experience.

Games and Development

• Steam games running on PS5: An experimental project is attempting to run Steam games directly on PlayStation 5 hardware rather than stream them. Compatibility is limited and games may crash, but the project is another development in emulation and modding.
• BioWare and Mass Effect: BioWare was shut down, and a new Mass Effect project—reportedly involving a 50-person team—was cancelled. A leaked trailer and descriptions suggested a setting centuries after the trilogy, with an N7 agent undertaking missions. The speaker notes that the game’s ultimate quality is unknown.
• Valve and HLX: Valve employee Mike Morasky mentioned HLX as a Valve project while discussing HDR. The mention does not confirm that HLX is Half-Life 3.
• Unreal Engine 5.8: The engine adds support for Microsoft Advanced Shader Delivery, allowing developers to distribute compiled shaders with game downloads. This could reduce first-launch shader compilation and help address stuttering.

Reviews, Testing, and Guides Mentioned

• Hardware Unboxed: Detailed FSR 4 performance benchmarks and image-quality comparisons on RDNA 2.
• FSR 4.1 light-version testing: User and modding-community comparisons across GPUs, including Intel Arc. The speaker notes that results are preliminary and are not based on his own comprehensive testing.

Main Speaker and Sources

• Main speaker: Daniel Owen.
• Named testing source: Hardware Unboxed.
• Other sources: Linked reporting and community testing for the remaining hardware, software, and gaming news.