News Rodeo

Since I'm still spending my time watching my torturously inefficient factory in Satisfactory slowly churn out numerous parts, I figured I'd do a bit of a roundup of recent newsworthy gaming items.  There have been a few noteworthy nuggets in the last few weeks that might pique your interest.  So let's start corralling those lil' doggies!

New Hardware is Coming!

I spent a bit of time watching coverage of the recent Consumer Electronics Show that wrapped up a week or so ago.  The big hardware news revolved around the two big dogs--AMD and NVIDIA.  AMD will be releasing new 9900 series CPU's "in Q1 2025."  If you're in the market for the uber-est CPU the 9950x3d and a 9900x3d look to be the new high end.  (Since Intel has been a bit of a crapshoot...there wasn't much Intel news on the CPU front.  As an Oregonian--Intel's headquarters are located here--I'm hoping they're able to make some sort of comeback.  I'd hate to see a big employer in my state go away.)  Here's the link to AMD's announcement page if you want to check out the specs on the new CPU's: AMD Announcement.

(*Paul's Hardware is an excellent channel that I would recommend subbing to on YouTube!)

The GPU front was where a lot of the hardware excitement seemed to be centered.  Both AMD and NVIDIA announced new GPU series coming out in 2025.  AMD announced 9000 series cards (they decided to skip the 8000's for some reason...) that promise better performance with new upscaling features and whatnot.  NVIDIA then followed up with their own announcement of their upcoming 5000 series GPU's.  Since NVIDIA dominates the GPU market, there was much more focus on their announcement.  There were some pretty...incredible, I would say, claims from NVIDIA about the capabilities of their new GPU's.  One of those claims was that their lowest end card of this new series (the 5070) would perform at the level of a 4090 (the current uber GPU that'll cost you a chunk o' change) for a much, much lower cost ($549).  This number had a lot of people pulling some very skeptical looks.  There was also a lot of selling of the new and improved features of this new series of cards--new DLSS that promises to improve ray tracing capabilities and whatnot.  The part that seems to have garnered the most scorn from the PC building/hardware community though is the addition of "AI frame generation."  One video featured in the NVIDIA presentation showed a certain game getting like 30 FPS and then 240 FPS with these new upscaling features.  This has been dubbed "fake frames" by the Internet and there were plenty of jokes and memes about using fake money to pay for fake frames.

Overall, I am waiting to see actual testing from Gamers Nexus and other sources to see how these new products actually perform.  Maybe the fake frames will actually be worth it?  I'm somewhat on the fence around building a new PC (especially with the looming end of Windows 10) in the near future.

Bold Claims of Gaming Ability

People bragging about how good they are at a certain game with no (or shaky) proof is nothing new or really newsworthy.  It is newsworthy when the richest man on Earth makes those claims though.  For quite awhile now Elon Musk has claimed to be one of the top Diablo IV players in the world.  He had ponied up evidence in the form of supposed videos of amazing speedruns at the highest levels of difficulty.  Myself, and many others, were very skeptical of these claims.  Dude has the time to run a major corporation, be neck deep in American politics, and become an elite gamer?  Umm, okay.

Well, Elon's claims of gaming prowess might've just been sunk by a disastrous livestream where he "played" the popular ARPG Path of Exile 2 (notably not Diablo IV.....but similar).  Many people watching noted some dicey aspects of the livestream--unfamiliarity with the game mechanics and map, odd inventory choices, labels like "Elon's Map" that seemed to indicate someone else was probably playing the account, and an entire litany of other glaringly silly things.  Immediately many elite streamers and players began calling foul on Elon's supposed skills and it has now turned into an entire Internet drama-fest that has made it into the mainstream media (here's a link to an NBC news article about the silliness).  It's all really stupid, but somewhat entertaining.

If I was the richest person in the world and was trying to claim to be awesome at video games, I think I'd figure out a way to better pretend at least.  I think I would pre-record a video of the actual pro playing and then just make a livestream with a nice, tight camera that notably doesn't show my hands and just pretend that I'm playing.  I'd also do my homework and at least familiarize myself with the game and what is going on.  But, you know, I'm probably not as busy as Mr. Musk so I might have more time to plan it out.