After months—nay, years—of buildup, AMD's Ryzen is finally here. Well, almost. Today, AMD is revealing the official launch specs and pricing for its new Ryzen 7 processors, and select partners will have the processors available for pre-order. The actual hard launch of Ryzen products will occur on March 2, so one more week until we can unleash the hounds and provide full benchmarks. Today, AMD is providing a sneak peek at performance to whet your appetite.
Earlier this month, Microsoft confirmed a new Windows 10 feature meant to improve performance when playing games is on the way. Microsoft is now set to begin public testing of Game Mode to Windows Insiders this week.
A select group of Windows Insiders will receive Game Mode as part of a Windows 10 update sometime "later this week," according to a tweet from Microsoft's Larry Hryb. The video below provides some further insight into exactly what it does and how it's turned on.
"We're targeting performance enhancements in two ways," Microsoft explains in the video. "One, an increase in overall framerate, or peaks, and two, an increase in average framerates, or consistency."
This update adds a section devoted to gaming in the system settings. From there, you can enable Game Mode. Then, you can bring up the Game Bar while in-game to access the settings menu and ensure Game Mode is turned on. "Once you press Game Mode, the system will work to prioritize CPU and GPU resources to your game running in the foreground," it says. Microsoft intends to test automatically enabling Game Mode with some games; Forza Horizon 3 is presumably one of these, as it's a Microsoft-developed game featured in the video.
Game Mode is intended to work with all Win32 games, and not just Universal Windows Platform games released through the Windows Store. However, Microsoft warns that "it's possible not every game will work with Game Mode right now."
We still don't have a firm grasp on how meaningful the performance gains will be with Game Mode enabled. It seems unlikely to result in major improvements, but we should have a better idea as people start to get their hands on it over the next few days.
Game Mode will be released to all Windows 10 users sometime this spring, when Microsoft releases the Creators Update. Also coming as part of the update, and the preview version arriving this week, is integrated streaming through Microsoft's Beam service.
This story has been updated with new information about when the update arrives for Insiders.
A new feature may be on the way to Windows 10 that improves performance when playing PC games. That's according to a file discovered in a leaked version of a forthcoming preview update.
Twitter user WalkingCat reports the addition of a dll called "gamemode" in the latest build of Windows 10 (version 14997). A subsequent tweet notes it "looks like Windows will adjust its resource allocation logic (for CPU/[graphics] etc.)" for the purpose of prioritizing game performance.
WindowsCentral lends further credence to this, indicating that its sources say it works similarly to how Xbox One runs a game. The feature will reportedly launch as part of the Creators update and will be enabled for Windows Insider users soon.
What's unclear is exactly which games this is compatible with. It's possible it could be limited to only to those downloaded from the Windows Store, or it might be much more far-reaching. We should know more once Windows Insiders testers get their hands on the feature.
The Creators update is slated for release sometime this spring. Microsoft has announced it includes some additions of interest to those playing games, including new streaming and tournament features.
Sega and Nintendo are launching mini entertainment systems featuring classics from both their iconic consoles.
The Nintendo Classic Mini will feature 30 in-built games including Super Mario Bros (see video of how Nintendo celebrate 30 Marion years above), The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Kirby's Adventure.
Meanwhile the Sega Mega Drive Classic Gaming Console comes with 80 in-built games including Sonic, Streets of Rage and Golden Axe.
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