Rise of the Tomb Raider's SLI fix provides 95% scaling with SLI

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jan 31, 2016 11:30 PM CST

Now that Rise of the Tomb Raider is out, people are finding out just how useless their second GPUs are - except now, someone has found a fix for SLI users with multiple NVIDIA GeForce video cards.

3D Center's "Blaire" found some things to play around with in the NVIDIA Inspector Tool for SLI, which enables awesome SLI results. In order to do it, you'll need to search for Rise of the Tomb Raider's profile, and then change the SLI bits (DX11) to 0x080002F5. After that, click the magnifier icon that will reveal NVIDIA's Undefined options, and search for 0x00A0694B and change it to 0x00000001.

After you've done this, you've enabled full SLI support for Rise of the Tomb Raider, with DSO Gaming reporting that they've noticed 95% scaling on their GeForce GTX 690 - a damn good result for SLI scaling.

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Join 'The Last Witch Hunter' in our latest Blu-ray giveaway

Ben Gourlay | Contests & Giveaways | Jan 31, 2016 10:47 PM CST

To celebrate this week's release of the action romp 'The Last Witch Hunter' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Films.

The modern world holds many secrets, but by far the most astounding is that witches still live among us; vicious supernatural creatures intent on unleashing the Black Death upon the world and putting an end to the human race once and for all. Armies of witch hunters have battled this unnatural enemy for centuries, including Kaulder, a valiant warrior who many years ago slayed the all-powerful WITCH QUEEN, decimating her followers in the process. In the moments right before her death, the Queen cursed KAULDER with immortality, forever separating him from his beloved wife and daughter. Today, Kaulder is the last living hunter who has spent his immortal life tracking down rogue witches, all the while yearning for his long-lost family. However, unbeknownst to Kaulder, the Witch Queen has been resurrected and seeks revenge on her killer, leading to an epic battle that will determine the survival of mankind.

To go into the running to win a prize, simply correctly answer the following question:

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AMD Radeon R9 Fury X2 should see 12 TFLOPS of compute performance

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jan 31, 2016 9:26 PM CST

AMD was all systems go at VRLA last week, but during the VRLA Winter Expo keynote, the company teased its dual-GPU... the Radeon R9 Fury X2.

AMD's Roy Taylor said that the Radeon R9 Fury X2 has around 12 TFLOPS of SP, compared to the Radeon R9 295X2 which has 11.5 TFLOPS of SP compute performance. The big difference between the Fiji-based R9 Fury X2 and the Hawaii-based R9 295X2 is that the Fury X2 uses only 375W of power, compared to the R9 295X2 which would chew 500W. This means that the Fury X2 is around 40% more power efficient than the R9 295X2.

During his speech, Taylor said: "Last time I was here I also promised you that we would make the world's most powerful small computer for developers. We promised you we would take two of our highest end GPUs and put it inside that tiny box and if you go downstairs we actually have a demonstration of a dual GPU, 12 TeraFlops, fastest GPU solution in the world, inside of Tiki. It's a feat of engineering we are delighted with".

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Samsung's Galaxy S7 rumored to go from 0-100% charge in 100 minutes

We aren't far from the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphones, with the latest rumor surrounding the 'new generation' battery Samsung is preparing for its new handset.

According to blogger Eldar Murtazin, the Galaxy S7 requires 100 minutes of charge to go from 0-100%, thanks to its 'new generation' battery. We don't know what the 'new generation' battery is just yet, so we could be looking at Samsung increasing the capacity of the battery without requiring too much room inside of the body - or, Samsung is using new technology that will charge the Galaxy S7 much faster.

The Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 already charge quick, taking around 110 minutes to get to full charge, so the 100 minutes on the Galaxy S7 would be pretty impressive to see. We should also expect the Galaxy S7 to rock wireless charging, so I'd like to see just how fast the new smartphones from Samsung charge over wireless charging. Give me 100 minutes of 0-100% on wireless charging, and I'll be very, very impressed.

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The Division beta extended, now ends on February 2

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Jan 31, 2016 5:55 PM CST

With thousands of gamers entering The Division beta, Ubisoft has taken to the official Twitter account of The Division, announcing that the beta has been extended until Tuesday, February 2 @ 12PM CET, or 6AM EST, or 3AM PST.

Ubisoft opened up The Division beta for the PS4 and PC last week, with those who pre-ordered getting access, and those who were lucky enough to score a key from somewhere else. NVIDIA released their new GeForce 361.75 drivers for both Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Division, while Jeff gave his thoughts after his first day in the post-apocalyptic New York setting in The Division.

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FPS campaigns usually cost '75% of a game's budget', says Cliffy B

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Jan 31, 2016 5:31 PM CST

Let's face it: campaign modes in modern shooters are dying. But why would studios avoid the opportunity to flex their creative muscles and tell a riveting singleplayer story? Well, it's pretty expensive to make campaign modes, and coupled with the fact that most people just play multiplayer anyway, studios are moving towards MP-only releases.

FPS campaigns usually cost '75% of a game's budget', says Cliffy B

According to FPS guru Cliff Bleszinski, the push away from singleplayer is simple: "campaigns cost the most money." But how much money does it cost to make a campaign? Sometimes more than half of the entire budget. "[Campaigns] usually cost 75% of the budget," Cliffy B said in a recent interview with PC Gamer. "And you burn through the campaign in a weekend, and then [players] go to multiplayer."

Cliffy B makes a good point, even if it is disappointing for campaign-lovers like myself. At the same time, however, there's a reason most people skip the campaign: they just don't care about it and want to get in on the action right away. What if devs put more effort into making the campaigns last longer? That would likely cost even more, so it's not bound to happen, but we know that the standard three-act story arc is antiquated in our age of constantly-evolving digital consumption.

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Final Fantasy 15 info blowout: combat, story, and release date info

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Jan 31, 2016 3:32 PM CST

Final Fantasy XV is looking outright incredible. Square Enix showcased a bunch of new content in its latest Active Time Report, including an interesting three-minute combat sequence, new story info, new details on magic, and confirmation that the game's release date will be revealed in March. We also have the final progress report for the game that details new changes and features.

Final Fantasy 15 info blowout: combat, story, and release date info

The combat footage introduces a surprising mashup of Metal Gear Solid with modern Final Fantasy. Noctis and co. sneak into a nefarious Niflheim base, espionage style, and then go up against a hulking Magitek mech straight out of Kojima's imagination. We get to see how stealth will work in the game: users can warp from place to place without blowing their cover, and even stealthily warp-kill enemies.

The real fun happens once the all-out brawl begins, and once again we get a hefty glimpse at the svelte, almost beatific fluid grace of FF15's combat. We get to see Noctis perform some aerial warp combos that underline the potential and magic of the game's Active Cross Battle system. Gladius swipes his mighty blade to smash a whole line of soldiers, and the whole time the group works together in tandem with devastating results.

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OpenSSL gets patched for a problem that probably doesn't effect you

Jeff Williams | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Jan 31, 2016 8:27 AM CST

The OpenSSL project has found, and patched, an issue that was fairly serious though it likely didn't effect very many people, or businesses for that matter.

The problem seems to have stemmed around how the open-source implementation of SSL and TLS reuses prime numbers while the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol is used, making it far easier for a would-be attacker to decrypt your information. The good news is that in order for that to happen, a particular setting has to physically be set on, because it's not on by default.

Even better is that in order to have enough information to actually crack the encryption, there the attacker would have to connect (and reconnect via separate handshakes) several times. So it's not something that's of too much concern, certainly not at the same level of the Heartbleed vulnerability of 2014.

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New Ghostbusters tie-in game reportedly coming to PS4, Xbox One

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Jan 30, 2016 3:09 PM CST

The Ghostbusters franchise is no stranger to huge merchandising deals--Paul Feig's new all-female Ghostbusters has already lined up action figures from Mattel, and it looks like the reboot will be getting its own video game, too.

According to Retail Merchandiser, the new Ghostbusters is a "fully-fledged" game from Activision that will release alongside the movie in July of this year. The publication also says that the upcoming Ghostbusters game will be a movie tie-in, so the all-female cast will obviously reprise their ghost-busting roles, and it'll be available on PS4 and Xbox One.

But why is Sony taking this route? It all goes back to the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise. To celebrate 25 years of the iconic paranormal investigators, Sony helped make the successful Ghostbusters: The Video Game in 2009. The game, which was written by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, featured voice acting from the original cast and was a big hit. Arkoyd said that the video game was "essentially the third movie."

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Apple has a secret division experimenting with VR hardware

If recent reports can be believed, Apple has a secret division that's been experimenting with VR and AR technology long enough to develop Hololens and Rift-like prototypes.

According to a report by Financial Times (via Macrumors), Apple's "secret research unit" consists of hundreds of employees who are actively studying virtual and augmented reality tech. The team is made up of field experts like Virginia Tech VR specialist Doug Bowman as well as others hired from Microsoft and Lytro--who developed a Light Field Camera similar to RealSense.

The evidence of Apple VR has been building in recent months, and specific clues hint what Apple might do with its VR/AR tech. The Cupertino tech giant recently snapped up key startups like the motion capture guru Faceshift, whose tech was used in The Force Awakens, and the German AR Metaio, which made augmented reality software and content. We know what the startups are, and what their tech does, but we just don't know how exactly Apple is using them--the Financial Times suggests the AR/VR tech could somehow mesh with Apple's Project Titan electric car.

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