Avalanche Software has shared four different PC specs across multiple presets and resolutions on their official Twitter account. For the least acceptable experience at 720p at 30fps, you'll need at least an Nvidia GTX 960 or Radeon RX 470 paired with an Intel Core-i5 6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400.

On the other hand, for best playback at 4K resolution at a constant 60fps, Hogwarts Legacy will require an RTX 3090Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XT along with an Intel Core-i7 10700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X as the CPU. Regardless of your quality settings, the game requires 85 GB of free space on your PC.

Minimum Specs (720p@30fps):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5 6600 (3.3GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
RAM: 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960GB or AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB
DirectX version: DX12
Memory: 85 GB HDD
Notes: SSD (preferred), HDD (supported), low quality settings.

Recommended (1080p@60fps):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7 8700 (3.2 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 5700 4
DirectX version: DX12
Memory: 85 GB HDD
Notes: SSD, high quality settings.

Ultra Specs (1440p @ 60FPS):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7 10700K (3.80 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 5800
RAM: 32 GB GPU
: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800
DirectX version: DX12
Memory: 85 GB HDD
Notes: SSD, Ultra-Quality settings.

Ultra 4K specifications (4K at 60 fps):

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7 10700K (3.80 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 5 5800
RAM: 32 GB GPU
: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090Ti or AMD Radeon RX 7900
DirectX version: DX12
Memory: 85 GB HDD
Notes: SSD, Ultra-Quality settings.

The game requires 16 GB of RAM even for the minimum specifications, and 32 for the maximum. Hogwarts Legacy will also use Denuvo anti-piracy protection on PC.

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The new beta version of the NVIDIA Broadcast software stack offers content creators a new feature that will improve the interaction between viewers and the speaker. The eye contact effect allows you to follow the speaker's eyes, copy eye color and control blinking. This creates the effect of a continuous gaze into the camera, enhancing the emotional connection with the audience.

NVIDIA's Broadcast software is already a valuable tool for content creators, but a new feature improves viewer interaction with the speaker. It allows you to control the position of the speaker's eyes and improves the effect of eye contact with the audience.

In addition, the new feature improves the quality of video recording, making it more professional. Innovative technology allows you to create continuous contact with the audience, creating a more emotional connection.

The new NVIDIA Broadcast software version 1.4.0 also introduces a vignette feature that creates a lens effect by darkening the corners of the frame for a cosmetic effect. This is an optional feature that enhances the visual effect of video recording.

The new version of the software also updated the virtual background effects, including blur, replace, and delete. These changes improve the quality and stability of segmentation.

The updated app also added new mirror camera preview and selfie options. Tooltips have also been added for better accessibility. If the camera selected as input is used in another application and the user tries to display the NVIDIA Camera virtual device, the application will display the icon of the camera in use instead of a gray box.

 

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The AMD RX 7900 series of GPUs has issues with power efficiency in idle mode and video playback. As noted by a German reviewer from ComputerBase, the power efficiency issues of the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX were initially noticeable, but AMD continues to work on fixing them.

In December, AMD released a driver that optimized power consumption for certain workloads, which also resulted in improved power consumption in games, albeit only in specific scenarios. A test conducted by ComputerBase has shown that the December GPU Driver Update significantly improves the power efficiency of Radeon RX 7900 cards during video playback and partially in standby mode.

Prior to the release of the December driver, YouTube video consumption was 71W on the RX 7900 XT and 81W on the RX 7900 XTX. The driver significantly improved the power consumption of both cards to 46W and 54W respectively. However, these figures are still significantly worse than the latest generation Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU consuming just 34W or the RTX 4080 consuming 30W.

According to ComputerBase, RX 7900 GPUs use less power while capping framerates in some games such as Doom Eternal at 1440p, where the RX 7900 XTX shows a 57% increase in efficiency and the RX 7900 a 34% increase while reducing power consumption by 57W to 90W.

AMD has not yet released a unified driver for its RDNA2/RDNA3 GPU, and the latest driver (23.1.1), which only works with RDNA3 GPUs, showed no improvement over the 22.12.2 driver tested by a German reviewer.

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Intel is preparing to release its new Lunar Lake architecture, which will use Foveros technology and is based on the Intel 18A node. There is no official release date yet, but it should be available in 2024, either after Arrow Lake or right after. Lunar Lake will be a completely new architecture from the ground up and will focus on mobile devices, where power efficiency is the most important aspect, according to Intel CEO of Client Computing Michelle Johnston Holthaus.

Intel Lunar Lake is expected to feature upgraded CPU, GPU, and VPU units with lower power consumption, allowing products to last all day on battery without compromising performance. In addition, Lunar Lake will use the updated Xe2-LPG graphics architecture and have a disintegrated and scalable architecture that will give Intel the freedom to choose logic blocks for each silicon. The scalable architecture will span multiple architectures and share IP blocks to cover different performance segments. This principle should also apply to the future architecture of Meteor and Arrow Lake.

More information on Lunar Lake will be announced on Jan. 26, the day of Intel's Q4 2022 financial disclosure, said Dr. Ian Katressu of TechTechPotato. For the time being, Intel continues to work on solving energy efficiency issues and optimizing the operation of the new architecture, which should set new performance standards for mobile devices.

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 Download AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 23.1.1 (RX 7900) WHQL

   Download from AMD.com

Issues fixed

An intermittent driver timeout may occur when applying the auto overclocking performance setting.
While playing Valheim™, an application crash or driver timeout may occur when using the Vulkan® API.
While playing The Witcher® 3: Wild Hunt, an intermittent application crash or driver timeout may occur if ray tracing settings are enabled.
A slight decrease in performance may be observed after a factory reset.

Known Issues

Situationally, we have experienced high standby power consumption when using some high resolution, high refresh rate displays.
When using Radeon Super Resolution with some advanced display configurations, intermittent application crashes or driver timeouts may occur.
You may experience stuttering or video performance drops during gameplay or when playing videos with some advanced display configurations.
Stuttering can be observed in UNCHARTED™ 4: A Thief's End during the initial part of the game.
Some VR games or applications may experience slower performance than expected.

package contents

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.1.1 for AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 Series Graphics Driver version 22.40.00.62 for Windows® 10 and Windows® 11 (Windows Driver Store version 31.0.14000.62003).

Product Compatibility

Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Radeon RX 7900 XT

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AMD has published a document detailing the low-level architecture of RDNA3, which is intended for developers who wish to interoperate with this architecture and use certain instructions included or modified for 3rd generation RDNA. The document contains information about the RDNA3 shader code execution model, memory hierarchy and lists all available instructions, which can be useful for low-level optimization or compiler level tuning. 

The AMD RDNA™ 3 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) Reference Guide is designed to optimize processor performance by providing language constructs and behaviors, including the organization of each instruction type in both textual syntax and binary format. 

AMD RDNA3 only has one GPU so far, Navi 31, which is used in the Radeon RX 7900 graphics cards. However, the company has already announced the Navi 33 GPU for mobile devices, which is scheduled to launch next month. In addition, AMD is also rumored to be planning to release three Navi 3X GPUs for desktops and laptops, as well as using the architecture in the Phoenix APU integrated graphics. 

Information about the low-level architecture of RDNA3 can be useful for developers who want to create optimized applications and take advantage of the latest features of AMD GPUs. The ISA RDNA3 Reference Guide contains all the necessary information about the instruction set and behavior, making it a valuable resource for developers working with AMD GPUs.

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An updated version of the popular recording and streaming software, OBS Studio 29.0, now supports improved AV1 encoding for Intel, NVIDIA and AMD Radeon GPUs. The latest AV1 encoding and decoding capabilities that have been added to graphics architectures can now be used in OBS Studio 29.0 to capture gameplay in the most efficient codec available.

Although support for the AV1 codec is now available for the AMD Radeon GPU series, streaming using this codec is not yet supported by streaming services.

One of the other improvements in the new version of OBS Studio is better support for NVIDIA video and audio filters. The program now supports temporal processing, which should significantly improve the quality of masking.

In addition, OBS Studio 29.0 now defaults to the P5 preset for the NVENC encoder, improving performance and compatibility. The new version also adds other features, including a compressor upstream filter and a 3-band EQ filter.

macOS users can now use native HEVC and ProRes encoders with P010 and HDR support. Support for macOS Desk View has also been added.

It's worth noting that OBS Studio is still a work in progress, and updating through the built-in updater may not be available until a new version of the program is released. However, WebSockets has been updated to version 5.1.0, which fixes a number of bugs, improves the user interface, and adds new stream reconnect events.

Thus, the updated version of OBS Studio 29.0 can be useful for gamers and streamers who want to record their gameplay in the most efficient codec available, as well as for those who use NVIDIA filters and work on macOS.

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Due to political sanctions affecting companies in connection with the ongoing war in Ukraine, the developer of the popular overclocking tool for video cards, MSI Afterburner, has faced licensing problems. MSI is unable to fulfill its obligations under the agreement signed with the developer, which has left the project dead for more than 11 months. The developer confirmed that now the project is supported only by him in his spare time, which is not full support.

MSI Afterburner is one of the most popular discrete GPU overclocking tools, but users may have trouble finding an alternative that supports all of the many GPU vendors. It is worth noting that MSI still officially lists software for newly released GPUs, but scammers are trying to take advantage of the popularity of the software by releasing cloned applications with malware.

 

However, there is a tool for statistics and overlays, RTSS (RivaTuner Statistic Server), which is not an MSI tool and is not subject to sanctions. This software is fully supported by the developer and will continue to be supported as always.

Sanctions may be limited not only to financial compensation, but also to access to pre-release equipment, which can lead to a stop in the development process. The developer confirms that he will continue to support the MSI Afterburner project in his spare time, but this is not the full support that many users would prefer.

Most GPU manufacturers include their own monitoring and simple overclocking software in their products that also controls GPU functions such as lighting or fan speed control.

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AI has been used in graphics drivers for a long time, but NVIDIA is about to add more AI optimizations to its GPU drivers. New optimizations will focus on instructions, throughput, hardware usage, multithreading, and settings. This should lead to an average performance improvement of 10%.

There are no details yet on how this user-side AI optimization will work. Now gamers can already use the built-in optimization profiles for each game through GeForce Experience. However, NVIDIA's new technology should provide a more versatile and automated approach to performance optimization.

AMD competitor is also working on a similar feature, HYPR-RX, which will also include Radeon Super Resolution, system-wide driver-level scaling, and latency improvement features.

However, there is a possibility that some features may be blocked for RTX graphics only, as support for current DLSS technologies is segmented.

Overall, this new AI optimization should improve performance in games and increase the smoothness of the gameplay. It is expected that such technologies will be actively developed and expanded in the future, providing higher quality graphics and improved gaming performance.

Note that AI optimization is already being applied in other areas, such as the automotive industry, where it can improve driving safety and improve vehicle performance. In the field of PC games, such technologies can significantly improve the gaming experience and make games more immersive and realistic.

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At CES 2023, Intel introduced a new driver 31.0.101.4032 that now supports the just-announced 13th Gen Core series codenamed Raptor Lake-S. The update expands Intel driver compatibility on 6th to 13th Gen Core GPUs to include Arc and Iris Xe graphics drivers as well as Arc Pro drivers. Intel drivers support both desktop and mobile computers, including Arc Mobile and Arc Desktop GPUs, as well as Intel Core mobile processors.

This means there will be no more "Intel Graphics Driver", at least for the most recent CPU/GPU releases. Instead, Intel provides two main branches of drivers: the Arc and Iris Xe drivers, and the Arc Pro drivers. The second is updated less frequently and is intended for professional users.

Now GPUs from Intel have received extended support, and users can be sure that the drivers will work with the latest releases of Core processors. Updated Intel drivers provide smoother graphics applications and improved GPU performance for gamers and video and graphics professionals.

It's worth noting that the Intel drivers not only support Arc GPUs, but also Iris Xe integrated graphics. Users may see a message about the Intel Arc GPU driver, but be aware that this driver also supports Iris Xe integrated graphics.

The updated Intel drivers are already available for download on the company's official website, and users can easily obtain them and update their systems. However, if you are not sure which driver you need, it is better to seek the help of specialists in order to avoid errors and malfunctions in your system.

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