Month: August 2024

BioWare has offered new insight into Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s seven companions ahead of the game’s October launch.

BioWare has revealed more details about Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s seven companions.

Following its PC and combat spotlight last week, the studio has officially kicked off what it’s calling the “Companion’s Week” part of its roadmap ahead of the release of its next Dragon Age game.

In an updated blog post, BioWare offered new insight into the characters you’ll be able to recruit as the playable hero Rook with updated character profiles, including Harding, Davrin, Bellara, Taash, Lucanis, Emmrich, and Neve. 

We’ve already seen sneak peeks of the characters through the 20-minute gameplay demo and the release date trailer the studio has previously released, but now we finally have confirmation on how these companions will aid you in battle, as well as what faction and class they belong to. 

You can take a look at their character profiles below, but we know that there will be two warriors, two rogues, and three mages available for you to build a party. As for what exactly their abilities do, BioWare could potentially release additional gameplay teasers showcasing each character  in action as we proceed through Companion’s Week.

Lace Harding (Rogue) – Inquisition

Harding’s skills with the bow are unmatched – her arrows can stagger enemies and shred armor.

Abilities: 

Davrin (Warrior) – Grey Wardens

Fiercely loyal, Davrin brings his enemies down hard with a combination of mighty attacks, teaming with Assan to keep their companions out of danger.

Abilities:

Bellara Lutare (Mage) – The Veil Jumpers

Bellara manipulates the Fade and uses electricity and control magic to support her Companions and diminish the powers of their foes.

Abilities:

Tassh (Warrior) – The Lords of Fortune

Blunt and straightforward, Taash is a mighty warrior, who wields dual-axes and breathes out flames, igniting enemies with draconic fury.

Abilities: 

Lucanis Dellamorte (Rogue) – The Antivan Crows

Lucanis stylishly deals necrotic damage in battle with his dual-daggers, whilst supporting his companions with potions and buffs.

Abilities:

Emmrich Volkarin (Mage) – The Mourn Watch

Emmrich summons forth spirits of the dead to both entangle and hinder his enemies and heal his companions.

Abilities: 

Neve Gallus (Mage) – The Shadow Dragons

Neve uses her talents as an ice mage to freeze and slow enemies, stopping them in their tracks.

Abilities: 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches on October 31 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.  

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Got an AMD Ryzen 7000 or 9000 chip? Then you’ll want to pounce on the Windows 11 24H2 update when it emerges.

Windows 11 24H2 is expected to deliver a considerable boost to AMD’s Ryzen 9000, 7000, and 5000 processors when it comes to gaming, and some fresh testing gives us a good idea of what kind of frame rate gains we’re looking at – huge ones, frankly.

According to some extensive testing (over a suite of 43 popular PC games at 1080p resolution) conducted by Hardware Unboxed – a YouTube channel that’s been making some major efforts in terms of evaluating Zen 5 performance – the new Ryzen 9700X is 11% faster in Windows 11 24H2 compared to the current version 23H2.

Now, that’s a massive boost as mentioned, when considered in isolation, but the twist here is that the Ryzen 7700X was also put through its paces – and was found to be 10% faster in 24H2 versus 23H2.

So, in other words, yes, the 9700X is a lot faster when 24H2 is applied to the benchmarking mix (and the update isn’t even fully finished yet, remember), but the 7700X gets the same boost really.

As Hardware Unboxed makes clear, this is an unprecedented situation, in that what are now last-gen processors from AMD are getting a 10% boost, on average, thanks to Windows 11 24H2, and some games at the top-end of the scale are 20% to 30% faster.

Think about that for a moment – that kind of 10% average increase is equivalent to a generational uplift (if admittedly a modest one), provided by a simple Windows update.

What’s driving these gains (which will also, to some extent, apparently apply to some apps, too)? As Team Red has explained before, it’s down to “optimized AMD-specific branch prediction code” and it’s not necessary to know the ins and outs of what that means. Essentially, it’s tinkering under the hood and fine-tuning said code for some evidently major gains (or, as others have theorized, Microsoft fixing a major spanner in the works somewhere with that code).

Analysis: Amazing boosts – but also something of a disappointment for current-gen buyers

So, this is amazing, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, it is, certainly for Ryzen 7000 CPU owners, who are getting major – almost generational – gains from out of nowhere, something that hasn’t happened before thanks to a software update (not that we can recall, anyway). Ryzen 5000 CPUs should benefit too, but those aren’t tested here, so we don’t know to what extent.

The disappointing aspect is for Ryzen 9000 processor owners, who do still get a big boost – it’s just not any better than that delivered with Ryzen 7000. A percentage point of difference is neither really here nor there, let’s be honest, and the apparent reality is that the Ryzen 9700X is only 2% faster for gaming (with the 24H2 update) than the 7700X, which is underwhelming and rather embarrassing for AMD, even.

Particularly when AMD has promised bigger gains for Zen 5 than other Zen processors with this 24H2 optimization, to the tune of approaching 10% in terms of the difference between Ryzen 9000 and 7000 – 2% is a long way off that.

As for Intel CPUs, Hardware Unboxed tested the Core i5-14600K in a small sample of games and found no difference in performance with the 24H2 update (save for one outlier, Gears 5). So, the conclusion is that this really is a set of AMD-specific performance improvements as Team Red has previously insisted.

In short, Windows 11 24H2 is going to be a superb update for PC gamers with Ryzen 9000 and 7000 chips (and possibly 5000 series CPUs too) – even if the overall gaming gains for Ryzen 9000 over the previous generation fall very flat still.

The obvious caveat is that this is just a single set of testing – albeit an extensive batch of benchmarks. Even Hardware Unboxed admits that it’s nervous that these results might be somehow awry, given that there is such a big performance difference delivered here by the 24H2 update. Partly because it is a bit of a head-scratcher as to how AMD has presented these 24H2 boosts – trying to frame Ryzen 9000 as having substantially bigger gains from the Windows 11 update, which apparently isn’t really true. (Technically, it is – but as we’ve seen, the difference is so minor it’s pretty much negligible).

We really need to wait for other third-party tests to verify the kind of boosts apparently on offer here, before we jump to any conclusions – but it seems for now that 24H2 will be pretty revolutionary for gamers with modern AMD CPUs.

The other obvious matter that remains here is Windows 10. Is Windows 10 affected by whatever’s currently dragging down Ryzen performance in Windows 11 23H2? It may be that it isn’t, and this whole set of optimization measures is meaningless for Windows 10. However, if not, the follow-up question is whether the work will be done to patch things up in the next big Windows 10 update, or are we too close to End of Life for Microsoft to bother?

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Phone launches can come with bugs attached – and that seems to be the case with the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

Smartphone launches don’t always go smoothly, and while in our Google Pixel 9 Pro XL review we gave the handset 4.5 stars out of 5, it seems that some users are rather less impressed with their new Pixel handset.

First up, issues with wireless charging are being reported on the Pixel Phone help forums (via 9to5Google). These issues take various forms, from charging stopping after a few minutes to excessive heat being produced during charging.

There are also discussions on Reddit (via Tech Issues Today) about wireless charging bugs, with a follow-up comment suggesting that it’s a “known bug” that Google is “looking into” – though we haven’t seen any official word on this from Google as yet.

Wireless charging can be less reliable than wired charging for a variety of reasons, but these problems seem to go beyond that – and while they’re not affecting every Pixel 9 Pro XL owner, it seems that a sizable number of devices and/or chargers aren’t working as they should.

Next up… video tilt

We haven’t noticed these issues on our own phones (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The second problem being reported online is a little more obscure, and involves an unwanted video tilt effect, as documented on Reddit (via Android Authority): it seems that the camera image doesn’t stay level when some users zoom in during video recording.

As with the wireless charging bugs, it’s difficult to estimate just how widespread the problem is, but several other Pixel 9 Pro XL owners have joined the thread to say they’re noticing the same issue with the camera.

It’s early days for both of these problems, so we’ll have to wait and see if Google is going to do anything in the way of product replacement units or software fixes – or if the Pixel 9 Pro XL isn’t responsible for these issues after all.

For now we’ll stand by our glowing review of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, but we’ll keep you posted. In the last year we’ve also seen display issues on the Pixel 8, washed-out colors on the Galaxy S24, and overheating problems on the iPhone 15 Pro, so post-launch bugs certainly aren’t unheard of.

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IBM is cutting R&D in China, moving projects to new locations.

IBM has announced it is shutting down its research and development operations in China, with hundreds of workers set to lose their jobs.

The closure will impact more than 1,000 IBM workers across the country, with most of the employees affected working in R&D and testing labs.

In a statement, IBM said the closure was needed as the business “adapts its operations as needed to best serve our clients.” (Via WSJ)

Operation Relocation

At a virtual meeting on Monday, IBM executive Jack Hergenrother briefed employees on the situation, citing increasing competition in China and the decline in IBM’s infrastructure business as reasons for the cuts.

Tom’s Hardware notes IBM’s R&D operations are located across several major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, all of which are apparently set to close.

Many of the cut R&D facilities will be moved to other overseas locations, with briefed employees stating that some projects will be moved to Bengaluru, India, as well as other locations outside of China.

The relocation of R&D labs will not affect IBM’s provision of services inside China, with the company stating that it will still be able to support clients within China.

Tensions between the US and China have led to many top technology companies making changes to their operations in the latter country, however IBM did not mention any geopolitical issues in its announcement.

Microsoft has also made moves to relocate between 700-800 employees based in China to other countries, including the US, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland as part of US sanctions on China’s access to advanced AI processing chips.

The move is the latest in a series of major announcements from IBM as it looks to re-position itself in an industry rapidly embracing AI. Earlier this year, the company acquired HashiCorp in a $6.4 billion deal to enhance its cloud and AI offering.

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