Latest news with #DigitalFoundry
Metro
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
The Witcher 4 designed for PS5 and not PC after 'so many problems' scaling down
CD Projekt has discussed its technical ambitions for The Witcher 4, which marks a big change in strategy for the studio. The history of CD Projekt is rooted in the PC market, stemming back to the original The Witcher in 2007 and their origins as a CD-ROM importer, but development of The Witcher 4 will see the studio make a shift in priorities. The majority of CD Projekt's games have been built for PC first, with console versions scaled down from this baseline to accommodate their technical limitations. However, this method has caused some issues in the past, with console versions of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 riddled with problems at launch – especially the latter. An Unreal Engine 5 demo for The Witcher 4 earlier this month indicated a possible sea change at the studio, showing the upcoming sequel running on a standard PlayStation 5 at 60fps. Now, CD Projekt has confirmed Sony's console is the priority for The Witcher 4. When asked by Digital Foundry, about the reasons why it chose to show the Unreal Engine 5 demo on PlayStation 5, Charles Tremblay, vice president of technology at CD Projekt, said: 'As you said, we always do PC and we push [the technology] and try to scale down. But then we had so many problems in the past that we tried to see, ok this time around we really want to be more console-first development.' After noting the challenge of targeting 60fps on PlayStation 5 with a game like The Witcher 4, he added: 'Where we go from there is hard to say, but right now we really wanted to focus on what does it mean to make this ambition on a console, and we have all our other projects at 60fps and we really wanted to aim for 60fps once again.' While it remains to be seen what this means for the PC version, Tremblay did reassure PC players that it still wants to offer the 'best experience' for those on the platform. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. When asked how the studio would potentially scale up The Witcher 4 beyond PlayStation 5, Tremblay said: 'I don't want to go too much in details and again, not to overpromise, but in the past something that's super important for the group is that if people pay good money for their hardware, then we want them to have what the game can provide for that. Not like a simplified experience. So this is something we'll definitely explore. 'The company started as a PC company and we definitely will want to have the best experience for the PC gamer for sure, but it's too early to say what it will mean for The Witcher 4.' According to Tremblay, the bigger hurdle is scaling down from the PlayStation 5 version, most notably for the Xbox Series S. More Trending 'This is something that is next on our radar for sure,' Tremblay replied, when asked about the Xbox Series S version. 'I will say that 60fps will definitely be extremely challenging on [Xbox] Series S. Let's just say this is something that we need to figure out.' As per Microsoft rules, developers have to ensure their games can run on both the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S, with no difference in features. This has caused problems in the past, with Baldur's Gate 3 being delayed on Xbox Series X/S due to issues related to the lower-powered console. The Witcher 4 doesn't have a release date yet but it is expected to launch in 2027, with a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 set to follow. That's around the time that the PlayStation 6 has been rumoured for release, but unsurprisingly Tremblay made no mention of that. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 sales numbers smash records in the US and worldwide MORE: Red Dead Redemption 2 actor teases news this week as fans hope for Switch 2 port MORE: Games Inbox: Would Xbox ever shut down Game Pass?
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Yahoo
Nintendo Switch 2 official specs confirm GPU similar to a mobile RTX 2050
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Leaked hardware specifications of the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 have been circulating for a while, but we now have official confirmation of the new console's specs. Digital Foundry has claims it has officially confirmed that the Switch 2 will feature a custom Nvidia SoC with an Ampere-based GPU, 12GB of memory, and 256GB of CPU portion of the custom SoC sports eight ARM Cortex A78C cores, featuring the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set and cryptography extensions. Feeding the cores are four cache layers: a 64KB L1 instruction cache, a 64KB L1 data cache, 256KB of L2 cache per core, and 4MB of L3 cache that is shared among all eight cores. Digital Foundry clarified that six of the CPU cores will be available for games, while two will be strictly reserved for the operating system. This isn't new; it's a method used in the current Switch as well as in other modern consoles, such as the PS5. The CPU has an official maximum clock speed of 1.7 GHz; however, for the Switch 2, the developers have opted to run the CPU at a significantly lower speed: 1.1 GHz in "portable" mode and 0.998 GHz in "docked" mode. (That is not a typo; the CPU operates at a lower clock speed when docked, for unknown reasons.)The GPU portion of the SoC is based on Nvidia's two-generation-old Ampere architecture and sports 1,536 CUDA cores. The physical chip itself is rated for up to 1,400 MHz, but — similar to the CPU — Nintendo has opted to run the chip at significantly lower speeds on the Switch 2. In "portable" mode, the chip will operate at 561 MHz, and in "docked" mode, 1,007 MHz. The Switch 2's Ampere GPU resembles Nvidia's RTX 3050 and RTX 2050 mobile GPUs (the latter of which is also Ampere-based). Compared to these GPUs, the Switch 2's counterpart has 512 fewer CUDA cores (2,048 vs 1,536) and runs at significantly lower clock Ampere to the Switch 2 will give the console real-time ray-tracing capabilities and DLSS support. Nintendo has not announced any games with real-time ray-tracing capabilities, but Digital Foundry and other outlets have demonstrated that it is possible on the RTX 2050 mobile. By contrast, several games have been confirmed to be coming with DLSS support, with Cyberpunk 2077 in particular offering variable real-time resolution scaling with DLSS (a feature of DLSS that is exceptionally rare to see, even on PC).The memory subsystem is powered by two 6GB LPDDR5X memory modules (12GB total) operating on a 128-bit memory interface. The chips themselves operate at 2,133 MHz in "portable" mode and 3,200 MHz in "docked" mode. This translates to 68 GB/s of memory bandwidth in "portable" mode (2,133 MHz) and 102 GB/s of bandwidth in "docked" mode (3,200 MHz). 9GB of memory capacity is available for games to take advantage of, while the remaining 3GB is reserved strictly for the OS. Storage consists of 256GB of internal UFS-based storage and a microSD Express card slot capable of supporting cards with up to 2TB capacity. To speed up storage decompression, the custom Nvidia SoC sports a dedicated decompression block dedicated to decompressing data from the Switch 2's SSD (and/or SD slot) into memory. The Switch 2's compression block supports the LZ4 format that is built into Nintendo's NSP Nintendo Switch 2 is the successor to the original Switch, which debuted all the way back in 2017. The new variant will arrive on June 5, 2025, for $ Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Tom's Guide
06-06-2025
- Tom's Guide
Your PS5 games are about to look a whole lot smoother thanks to this new update — here's what it does
Sony just dropped a system update for the PS5 and PS5 Pro, finally putting the problematic VRR stuttering to rest. The PS5 system update, version 25.04-11.40.00, doesn't actually specify this particular fix in its release notes. Instead, Digital Foundry highlighted the change in a post on X, referencing an email correspondence with Sony PR. In the unlikely event you you don't get a system update message upon startup, first make sure you're connected to the internet. Head to Settings -> System, then System Software. Click "Update System Software," and you should be good to go. Sony PR contacted me yesterday to confirm that - as already detected by some - the latest PlayStation firmware resolves the VRR hiccup issue. Both the PS5 and PS5 Pro have long suffered from stuttering issues when using VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) for several months now. In an ironic twist, VRR is intended to diminish stuttering using some key enhancements. These include real-time syncing of the console and TV's refresh rate and an unlocked framerate to give games that buttery-smooth look. The PS5 initially used the technology without any constraints, but a more recent system update that went out in the past few months most likely caused VRR syncing issues when playing specific games in this mode. The problems persisted after playing for around 30 to 40 minutes across a variety of games. Luckily, the issue has been quelled across both Sony consoles, and you can rest assured that playing titles like The Last of Us Part 2, Diablo 4, and more will run smoothly in VRR mode now. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Switch 2 Is Shaping Up To Be The Port Machine The Original Never Was
I hope all of you are ready for a lot of PS4, PS5, and Xbox ports arriving on Switch 2 over the next few months, because that seems to be our future. For folks who primarily play on Switch and soon Switch 2, it will be a chance to play a lot of great games that were too much for the OG console to handle, or which arrived via less-than-stellar ports. For everyone else, well, that new Donkey Kong game looks cool... The $450 Nintendo Switch 2 is nearly here, though some people already have their hands on the console ahead of its June 5 launch. Its launch lineup isn't horrible, but it's nothing too impressive either. It mainly features a handful of new, exclusive games, like Mario Kart World, and some upgraded versions of OG Switch games. But the majority of the Switch 2's launch lineup is ports like Cyberpunk 2077. And that's because, unlike the old Switch, Nintendo's new machine is actually going to be able to run these games without compromising visuals and features. Looking at the launch lineup for June 5, of the 25 or so games arriving on day one, about 10 of them are ports of old games that didn't arrive on the original Switch. Stuff like the previously mentioned Cyberpunk 2077, Street Fighter 6, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and Split Fiction. Then there are some Switch 2 ports that are replacing or upgrading older Switch ports, including Civilization 7, Fortnite, Hogwarts Legacy, and Hitman: World of Assassination, which was only available as a cloud-powered streaming game on the old machine. There are also ports that are coming after launch, like Star Wars Outlaws in September. It's not surprising that a big chunk of games announced for Switch 2 so far are ports of older titles. The original Switch got plenty of ports during its run, but most AAA games were chopped up and squished onto the aging hardware, resulting in some really ugly conversions. Sure, some of these games, like Doom (2016), ran mostly fine and looked okay on Nintendo's hybrid console, but there was always this feeling when playing these ports that the Switch hardware was being pushed to its limits. And then, when the PS5 and Xbox Series X arrived on the scene in 2020, games started targeting the more powerful hardware, and Switch ports became harder to pull off. As a result, we got some truly gnarly versions of great-looking games. Remember Mortal Kombat 1 on Switch? Yikes. In the last few years, fewer and fewer big games have been making the leap to Switch, primarily because the hardware is so old and outdated that they would be impossible to pull it off, or you'd have to compromise the visuals and performance so much that it wouldn't be worth it. So the Switch 2 is a big deal for a lot of publishers who have been unable to bring some of their recent games to Nintendo's audience, which is often cited as a group of people hungry for new content. And for players, it means they'll receive some fantastic-looking ports. As recently pointed out by Digital Foundry, Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 looks as good (and sometimes better) than the open-world game running on an Xbox Series S or PS4. That's thanks in large part to DLSS, but also the guts of the Switch 2 are just significantly better than those of the Switch. There is more power inside this new console, and that's going to be good news for devs, publishers, and players. All of this does mean that the Switch 2 will likely end up being something of a port machine as publishers race to get their big games running on the new console. That might be annoying for people who buy Nintendo consoles for exclusives and unique experiences, but with Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, and Donkey Kong Bananza on the way, we can feel pretty confident that we'll get plenty of those games, too. They'll just be the outliers among a ton of nice-looking PS5 and Xbox ports. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The Verge
22-05-2025
- The Verge
Nvidia's RTX 5060 review debacle should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers
Nvidia has gone too far. This week, the company reportedly attempted to delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, which would normally be its bestselling GPU of the generation. Nvidia has repeatedly and publicly said the budget 60-series cards are its most popular, and this year it reportedly tried to ensure that by withholding access and pressuring reviewers to paint the new 5060 in the best light possible. Nvidia might have wanted to prevent a repeat of 2022, when it launched this card's predecessor. Those reviews were harsh. The 4060 was called a 'slap in the face to gamers' and a 'wet fart of a GPU.' I had guessed the 5060 was headed for the same fate after seeing how reviewers handled the 5080, which similarly showcased how little Nvidia's hardware has improved year over year and relied on software to make up the gaps. But Nvidia had other plans. Here are the tactics that Nvidia reportedly just used to throw us off the 5060's true scent, as individually described by GamersNexus, VideoCardz, Hardware Unboxed, Digital Foundry, and more: Nvidia decided to launch its RTX 5060 on May 19th, when most reviewers would be at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, rather than at their test beds at home. Even if reviewers already had a GPU in hand before then, Nvidia cut off most reviewers' ability to test the RTX 5060 before May 19th by refusing to provide drivers until the card went on sale. (Gaming GPUs don't really work without them.) And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win. In some cases, Nvidia threatened to withhold future access unless reviewers published apples-to-oranges benchmark charts showing how the RTX 5060's 'fake frames' MFG tech can produce more frames than earlier GPUs without it. Some reviewers apparently took Nvidia up on that proposition, leading to early reviews where charts looked positively stacked in the 5060's favor: But the reality, according to reviews that have since hit the web, is that the RTX 5060 often fails to beat a four-year-old RTX 3060 Ti, frequently fails to beat a four-year-old 3070, and can sometimes get upstaged by Intel's cheaper $250 B580. And yet, the 5060's lackluster improvements are overshadowed by a juicier story: inexplicably, Nvidia decided to threaten GamersNexus' future access over its GPU coverage. Yes, the same GamersNexus that's developed a staunch reputation for defending consumers from predatory behavior, and just last month published a report on 'GPU shrinkflation' that accused Nvidia of misleading marketing. Bad move! In a 22-minute video, GN claims Nvidia threatened to cut off access to Nvidia's cooling and latency experts unless GN agreed to do the thing you see in the charts above — compare cards with fake frames to cards without. GN claims it has the recorded phone conversations to prove it, which are likely legal because Nvidia was recording them too. 'Just to be clear, Nvidia, I am prepared to release them,' GN editor-in-chief Steve Burke threatened. Recording every conversation isn't how companies and reviewers normally operate. There's been a serious breakdown in trust if we find ourselves here! Nvidia is within its rights to withhold access, of course. Nvidia doesn't have to send out graphics cards or grant interviews. It'll only do it if it's good for business. But the unspoken covenant of product reviews is that the press, as a whole, gets a chance to warn the public if a movie, video game, or GPU is not worth their money. It works both ways: the media also gets the chance to warn that a product is so good you might want to line up in advance. That unspoken rule is what Nvidia is trampling here. Nvidia is trampling an unspoken rule On Wednesday, May 14th, I asked Nvidia in a group press briefing: 'Are there not going to be reviews of the RTX 5060 before our readers are able to buy it?' Nvidia didn't deny it. 'Units will be available from May 19th,' was Nvidia GeForce PR boss Ben Berraondo's response, seemingly implying that a lack of early supplies of the GPU, not an underhanded campaign to influence early reviews, would be to blame for the gap. Earlier in the same briefing, Hardwareluxx 's Andreas Schilling wrote a similar question and got a similar answer: 'Could you share your thought on why Nvidia is going to release the driver for RTX 5060 with availability and not giving us the chance to do our reviews prior to this?' Berraondo answered, 'We are focused on delivering a great day-one experience for GeForce RTX 5060 gamers with our Game Ready Driver that will be available to everyone on May 19.' But as GamersNexus and other publications soon revealed, not 'everyone' had to wait until the 19th to start testing. Nvidia didn't respond to repeated requests for comment about the GamersNexus allegations. It wasn't Nvidia's only misleading statement about the card. During that same Wednesday briefing, rather than sharing Nvidia's benchmark charts, GeForce product management director Justin Walker claimed the new GPU would 'let you play your games maxed out at over 100 frames per second,' including demanding titles as Black Myth Wukong at 130fps, Cyberpunk 2077 at 148fps, and Half-Life 2 RTX at 130fps. I laughed when I read the fine print and saw what Nvidia meant by 'maxed out.' It meant a paltry 720p render resolution, DLSS-upscaled to 1080p, with up to three of every four frames imagined by AI — and even then, only when you paired Nvidia's budget $299 GPU with a decidedly not budget $599 AMD CPU, one of the best money can buy. One of Nvidia's other pieces of news from that same briefing was that DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation is available in over 125 games and apps. 'DLSS 4 is the fastest adopted gaming technology in our history,' Walker proclaimed. Does that mean GPU reviewers can no longer ding these graphics cards for marketing features only a handful of game developers bother to use? I thought to myself. But no: as of today, Nvidia's website lists just 29 games with full native support for DLSS Multi Frame-Generation. The only way Nvidia can get to 125 is by counting games where players have to force it through Nvidia's drivers, which doesn't give any indication of adoption by game developers. So now, I'm wondering: where else might Nvidia be trying to pull the wool over our eyes? I can't quite understand why Nvidia would risk fracturing trust the way it did this week. I mean, yes, Nvidia now has fuck-you money from AI, and gaming can feel like an afterthought. Nvidia's networking business is now bigger than gaming, which now represents less than 10 percent of Nvidia's total revenue. The company makes more pure profit from AI in a single quarter than total gaming sales in a year. It's no wonder the GPUs are in short supply at MSRP when their makers are richly rewarded for putting silicon capacity toward AI chips instead. But that feels like a good argument for Nvidia to stop caring whether its gaming GPUs sell, not why it might feel the need to meddle with reviews. If the desktop RTX 5060 doesn't hit sales goals, the company will be more than OK. Nvidia would be less OK if everyone started questioning its integrity. What might help explain this push, though, is Nvidia's seeming need to make its founder's new vision for gaming into a reality. At CES 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off a huge debate about 'fake frames' among PC gamers when he suggested they were the future of graphics — effectively, that the idea your game should draw each and every scene 60, 120, or more times per second will seem antiquated. That AI not only can, but should fill in the gaps. It's not so far-fetched an idea: as my colleague Tom Warren noted in January, 'so much of modern gaming is already 'fake,' and it has been for years.' That might be why Nvidia has been so pushy about reviewers adding such comparisons to their reviews. (Nvidia has even bugged us to include MFG results in our AMD reviews, a request we've largely ignored.) But in the end, Huang's claim that the $549 RTX 5070 would deliver $1,599 RTX 4090 performance didn't ring true. The thing about Nvidia's MFG is it needs enough real frames to begin with, or it doesn't feel smooth, and if it already feels smooth, you may not need the extra frames. It's not a silver bullet that can make a 1440p card feel like a 4K card and, according to Dave James with PC Gamer, it isn't enough to make Nvidia's new 1080p card feel like a 1440p one, either. In one of the first real reviews of the RTX 5060, with video examples, James explains: You're not going to be able to use MFG to be able to up the resolution on your low-end RTX 5060 to match your 1440p monitor, even with DLSS running. And you're not going to be able to use MFG to enable you to run at the highest in-game settings, even sometimes at 1080p. The extra latency and low input frame rates either make it a latency spiking nightmare or the AI generated frames end up creating a ton of unpleasant artifacts as you run around whatever gameworld you're in. Meanwhile, HardwareUnboxed published a review that shows the new 5060 may not be that much faster than the old 4060, even at 1080p. They found it 20 percent faster on average across 18 games, and as low as 8 percent faster in Star Wars Outlaws, 9 percent faster in Stalker 2, and 10 percent faster in Black Ops 6. At 1440p, the $250 Intel Arc B580 offered better 1 percent lows and is the superior deal if you can find it at that price. We may never know how many PC gamers bought an RTX 5060 without seeing any such comparisons, because Nvidia kept proper reviews from arriving on time. But in many cases, it won't be too late to return those GPUs. Maybe Nvidia's bad behavior is enough to push us to buy AMD's new card or wait for Intel's next card instead, challenging Nvidia's 90-percent control of the market and, perhaps, bringing some much-needed competition.
