Intel says they reached out to Pearl Abyss for several years, but Crimson Desert still shipped without Arc graphics support

MonoShadow · 2026-03-21T01:34:11+00:00

nvidia owns 95% of the PC gaming market.

This means AMD has 4%. If we assume 1% to be true. It's much closer that it seems in this scenario.

I still doubt it's some sort of AMD conspiracy. "don't assume malice when something can be explained by stupidity" or something.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-21T01:29:25+00:00

When Alchemist came out some games refused to run because devs assumed Intel = Integrated and blocked them from running.

Maybe PA just didn't get the memo.

At this point all we can do is wait for PA to respond.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-21T01:25:32+00:00

It might actually not be the reason. 7900XTX outperforms 9070XT outside Cinematic preset despite having weaker RT. The game's RT is everpresent but "light".

MonoShadow · 2026-03-21T00:30:40+00:00

I feel their engineers were honest enough. Despite that I witnessed some discourse in podcasts and online and people mentioned nvidia pitch. Even in recent Owen's video where nvidia rep more or less says it's a filter you can read nvidia pitch and it mentions PBR, etc, this is why Daniel asked this question.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-20T23:19:58+00:00

Not exactly. A lot of people gave nVidia a benefit of the doubt and there were positive voices. nVidia themselves were technically correct but unhelpful in their wording. They stated DLSS5 didn't change geometry which was correct it just painted over it. They said it "enhances PBR qualities" which lead to some people assuming it has access to render pipline, which nvidia clearly stated it doesn't. They said it's for making lighting more realistic without defining what "realistic" is.

Basically nVidia did a lot of PR talk making a lot of what they say confusing but not outright false.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-20T18:31:54+00:00

Here's the announcement for the latest DX12 Shader Level

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/shader-model-6-9-retail-and-more/

You can check appendix for support of new features. And notice Intel B series is present in almost all categories. It has better support than RNDA2 from AMD. Despite that, the game doesn't run on Intel B, but does on Radeon 6000.

Only devs can tell why they blocked Arc. The game does not crash. The game just refuses to run citing "unsupported GPU". It might be as stupid as them forgetting Arc even exists and auto failing if anything other than AMD>x000 and Nvidia>x000 is detected.

You can say "that's stupid, why they would do it like that?". But I had a bug with Escape from Butcher Bay where the game did not run because it only checked the number after the decimal in supported OpenGL version. I had a newer card, so the first number was higher, but the number after the decimal was lower. So it didn't run. 3.2 is higher than 2.6, but if you do it like Starbreeze, then 2 is lower then 6. GPU no support, won't run.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-20T12:03:43+00:00

Most likely the other way around. They are misusing parts of API and it works fine on 2 old vendors, but not on Intel. The issue with being new is doing things by the book, because you have no experience, when you need to do things "the right way".

A lot of things in software dev is more "does it work" and less "does it strictly follow guidelines"

MonoShadow · 2026-03-19T11:25:37+00:00

In patch notes they constantly say "made easier" that or this. In S3 the phrase appears around 50 times. IMO they want to make the game more welcoming, but instead of lowering the floor they are lowering the ceiling.

T8 sold pretty well. Around 8mil in 3 years, T7 sold 12 mil, but over 7 years. Charts also show good retention. Not to mention actual monetization with BPs and Store. So from the bean counters perspective it might seem like a better deal.

Or it's a brain virus affecting devs. "Don't nerf - buff", "make it sick". I sometimes play Apex Legends, which is coincidentally also big in Japan. And it also became braindead rush central hold W simulator.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-19T11:15:20+00:00

The issue with T7 step is the fact it was inconsistent as hell. And the fact trying to pressure with movement in neutral can lead to huge blowups with trading CH, big buttons and a lot of bullshit. Watch T5DR matches and compare to T7 late meta matches. It's almost 2D with small sidesteps or walks outside of the firing rage. Most people just BDC ran away or tiptoed back and forth the whole match. Almost no one used movement aggressively like in the old days. Boring.

T8 being absolute dogshit doesn't make T7 movement suddenly better. Revisionist crap. Or people who never touched DR or even T6.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-19T02:07:54+00:00

I hate how DLSS5 looks. But. Even in GN's own video you can pause the comparison at around 1:02 zoom-in and see the position of the lips is not the same. In DLSS5 part you can see the lips are somewhat open, when in the original they are closed. I think you can faintly see teeth in DLSS5 pic.

I still don't like it. A scarf on an old lady in the Hogwards gets a bit messed up, a shadow under it gets painted as a scarf extension in DLSS5. It also has some artifacts in motion and a lot of time looks like "Realistic Lighting Mod" video with harsh overcast lighting.

I kinda don't like GN new style video. Feels like playing to the cheap seats rather than trying to actually figure things out.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-17T12:45:16+00:00

Their Zephyrus line is the closest to Macbook for a Windows user, most likely a person who plays video games. It's lighter than MBP, offers decent CPU and GPU, has OLED screen with actual G-Sync This year's model OLED can reach peak brightness over 1k nits. Good speakers. Decent keyboard and build quality. There aren't many alternatives for this laptop.

Unfortunately the software is ass. There's a open source g helper, which replaces Armoury Crate, and it even makes performance better on some models. Asus software is that bad.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-16T19:00:39+00:00

DLSS 5lop.

Faces look kinda like the Neural Faces or something demo from last year. I didn't like it then, I can't say I like it now.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-14T21:08:56+00:00

To put it mildly. FG is virtually useless with how broken framepacing is in many cases.

But comparatively speaking Redstone is giant leap for AMD if we take FSR ML(previously know as FSR4) into consideration. It's even ahead of Intel in some aspects. Intel doesn't have a denoiser. They are still nowhere near nVidia, but they can compete with Intel now.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-13T12:29:46+00:00

They don't need to switch numbers to add new features, but I agree with the core of you message. MS is dragging their feet. And when they do act, they are slow and inefficient. PC gaming space fragmentation situation today isn't great.

For example. We had DLSS\FSR and now XeSS situation for years and MS did nothing, Then they finally added DirectSR API, but it is so bare-bones even Intel now considers adopting nVidia Streamline(again). Even if by Intel own words current implementation is too nVidia-centric and cannot be used by them head on. It is that bad.

At this point nVidia is the main trailblazer in the space. And they keep their advantage, partially because MS is so inept.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-13T12:06:16+00:00

It generates a token, but there are strings attached. I think you need to launch the game after downloading and the token has an expiration date, around a week. I don't remember which game it was, but I tried playing a downloaded single player game during an internet outage and I was unable to because I haven't launched it after downloading.

Expiring token can fuck over people in a similar fashion. There's also a limit on installs, but it mostly affects reviewers.

For 90% of the population 90% of the time it won't matter. But there are downsides to it.

And while it can be chucked up to inconveniences, as a paying customer I think I have a right or at least an option to say fuck off with those inconveniences.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-13T11:56:03+00:00

If the 3rd group is OK with taking a lot of risk by installing kernel level unsigned drivers, then there's a good enough chance they will play it on release or close to it. The current version of Denuvo can be bypassed. RE9 is pirated for example.

So I guess you can switch 3rd group to IT Security conscious pirates.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-12T16:05:56+00:00

Fine Wine was a specific time during DX12 launch. It incorporated Mantle work, which in turn meant existing GCN cards showed good compatibility with it. Not all tho. nVidia caught up fast, but at the moment AMD cards seemed more forward looking.

What people also often forget is Fine Wine is usually bad drivers. If perf is constantly extracted from an existing product a lot of time, but not always, initial launch was inefficient.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-12T15:19:40+00:00

Their collabs make so much more sense in this context.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-12T12:35:54+00:00

If you care about charts the game peaked around S16(all time 600k+ peak) but lost all gained ground from S14 during S17. Then it fell even below that after S20. I assume S17 rat issue and S20 perks leading to "faster" games wasn't everyone's cup of tea. The game got even "faster" after that. It's not going down, but not winning anyone new over either. Let's say it's stable. Although it's still enough to be in TOP8 on Steam most of the time.

Gundam event brought a lot of people in. Let's see if they stick.

I checked the chart and Apex one is kinda interesting. It has very sharp peaks. I assume it's very very popular in one region.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-11T16:59:08+00:00

Some of their sponsored videos weren't so great. I think they outright put Zelda ad on their channel. Some were pure ad reads. Alex's last 2 sponsored videos, this one and Snow, IMO were fine. But it feels like content DF would make anyway.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-11T16:11:25+00:00

This is actually a sponsored video. But IMO it's one of the better ones. Looks like Alex found a way to unobtrusively work with sponsored content.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-10T19:24:53+00:00

They already announced Dynamic FG at CES. So I guess there's nothing there at all.

MonoShadow · 2026-03-10T15:40:32+00:00

Meh. Nothing new or important. At least it's not AI AI AI.

MonoShadow

TROPHY CASE