URCDKeys maintains great prices on genuine software year-round, Spend less on genuine software and allocate more of your new PC build budget on hardware. Use TechPowerUp-exclusive discount codes to avail special prices on per-PC licenses of Windows 10 Pro, Office 2019 Professional Plus, combinations of the two, or even combinations with other editions of Office. Have both a desktop and notebook to upgrade? Save more on twin-packs. URCDKeys prices on globally-valid, lifetime licenses of Office in particularly should save you big compared to annually renewing Office 365 subscriptions. Windows 10 Pro the preferred operating system for gamers and enthusiasts. URCDKeys safeguards your payment instruments with PayPal. Grab what fits your needs best from the links below.



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Buy Windows 10 Pro for $13.99 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 2-pack for $21.68 | Buy Office 2016 Professional Plus for $33.21 | Buy Office 2019 Professional Plus for $58.06 | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2016 Professional Plus Combo for $39.18 | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2019 Professional Plus for $64.54

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GDC Rescheduled to a Three Day "GDC Summer" Set for August 4-6
2020's Game Developers Conference (GDC), originally set to be live from March 16th through March 20th, was one of the first tech shows to be cancelled in wake of the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak. Now, the organization has announced that the event has been rescheduled a full 5 months later for August 2020. The event has been set for a three-day "GDC Summer" still taking place in Moscone Center in San Francisco, USA, starting August 4th and ending August 6th. Passes for the exhibition are already available, with early takers being offered heavy discounts over the on-floor passes.



GDC has been the stage for a number of high-profile gaming and services announcements, with the 2019 edition seeing announcements for Google's Stadia, EPIC Games detailing new features for its Unreal engine, and AMD taking the lid of their (then) upcoming 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs. Intel was first expected to detail their Xe graphics architecture at GDC 2020. It remains to be seen whether the blue giant will still be doing so in wake of this delay, or if the company will find an in-house (albeit likely online) alternative to get word of mouth flowing on their upcoming high performance graphics architecture.

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Goodram Introduces Value Series PX500 NVMe SSDs Available up to 1 TB
It's been a while since we've had a post on a Goodram product at TechPowerUp, with the company's releases mainly falling off the radar. However, the company's new PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are being positioned as value options in the segment, whilst being quoted with some respectable transfer speeds - provided you don't acquire the lowest capacity version. Available in 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities, the Goodram PX500 are DRAM-less SSDs driven by Silicon Motion's SMI 2263XT controller.



Quoted numbers for the 256 GB version stand at 1,850 MB/s sequential read, 950 MB/s sequential write, 102,000 IOPS 4K random read and 230,000 IOPS 4K random write. The 512 GB version posts 2,000 MB/s, 1,600 MB/s, 173,000 IOPS and 140,000 IOPS in the same performance metrics, while the 1 TB version maxes out at 2,050 MB/s, 1650 MB/s, 240,000 IOPS and 280,000 IOPS, respectively. The Goodram PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are backed by a three-year warranty, and prices have not yet been announced.

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Free Game Alert: Watch Dogs, The Stanley Parable Now Free to Grab from the EPIC Games Store
The current quarantine situation can be cut in two ways: as a major setback for your life, or as an opportunity. An opportunity, for instance, to mow down all the games you've got on backburner. To that end, and in case you're running low in Triple-AAA or quirky, interesting game experiments, the EPIC Games Store has now made available for free download both Ubisoft's Watch Dogs and Galactic Cafe's The Stanley Parable. Both offer a distinct gameplay experience, with EPIC thus catering to two completely different gamer demographics.



Watch Dogs is a well-known action-adventure RPG launched back in 2014, set in a fictionalized version of Chicago. Playing as Aiden Pierce, a hacker with a personal revenge motivation, you hack your way through security systems in a somewhat dystopian society. The game was not very well received, standing with a 77 score on Metacritic and a 4.9 user score (in no small part due to the considerable graphics downgrade seen between the showcased version and the final graphics the game shipped with). The Stanley parable, on the other hand, is a quirky first-person exploration game based on a mod to the Half Life 2 engine that seems set on exploring a quantum approach to storytelling. This one features a much healthier 88 score in Metacritic and an 8.0 in user score.

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AMD RDNA 2 GPUs to Support the DirectX 12 Ultimate API
AMD today announced in the form of a blog post that its upcoming graphics cards based on RDNA 2 architecture will feature support for Microsoft's latest DirectX 12 Ultimate API. "With this architecture powering both the next generation of AMD Radeon graphics cards and the forthcoming Xbox Series X gaming console, we've been working very closely with Microsoft to help move gaming graphics to a new level of photorealism and smoothness thanks to the four key DirectX 12 Ultimate graphics features -- DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback." - said AMD in the blog.



Reportedly, Microsoft and AMD have worked closely to enable this feature set and provide the best possible support for RDNA 2 based hardware, meaning that future GPUs and consoles are getting the best possible integration of the new API standard.
AMD RDNA 2 supports DirectX12 Ultimate AMD RDNA 2 supports DirectX12 Ultimate AMD RDNA 2 supports DirectX12 Ultimate AMD RDNA 2 supports DirectX12 Ultimate

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Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate: Why it Helps Gamers Pick Future Proof Graphics Cards
Microsoft Thursday released the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo. This is not a new API with any new features, but rather a differentiator for graphics cards and game consoles that support four key modern features of DirectX 12. This helps consumers recognize the newer and upcoming GPUs, and tell them apart from some older DirectX 12 capable GPUs that were released in the mid-2010s. For a GPU to be eligible for the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo, it must feature hardware acceleration for ray-tracing with the DXR API; must support Mesh Shaders, Variable Rate Shading (VRS), and Sampler Feedback (all of the four). The upcoming Xbox Series X console features this logo by default. Microsoft made it absolutely clear that the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo isn't meant as a compatibility barrier, and that these games will work on older hardware, too.



As it stands, the "Navi"-based Radeon RX 5000 series are "obsolete", just like some Turing cards from the GeForce GTX 16-series. At this time, the only shipping product which features the logo is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series and the TITAN RTX, as they support all the above features.
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs to Support the DirectX 12 Ultimate API
NVIDIA graphics cards, starting from the current generation GeForce RTX "Turing" lineup, will support the upcoming DirectX 12 Ultimate API. Thanks to a slide obtained by our friends over at VideoCardz, we have some information about the upcoming iteration of the DirectX 12 API made by Microsoft. In the new API revision, called "DirectX 12 Ultimate", it looks like there are some enhancements made to the standard DirectX 12 API. From the leaked slide we can see the improvements coming in the form of a few additions.



The GeForce RTX lineup will support the updated version of API with features such as ray tracing, variable-rate shading, mesh shader, and sampler feedback. While we do not know why Microsoft decided to call this the "Ultimate" version, it is possibly used to convey clearer information about which features are supported by the hardware. In the leaked slide there is a mention of consoles as well, so it is coming to that platform as well.

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AMD Releases Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.3.1 Drivers for DOOM Eternal
AMD released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers just in time for Asia and ANZ regions to begin "razing hell" with DOOM Eternal. Version 20.3.1 adds day-one optimization for DOOM Eternal, including an up to 5 percent performance improvement with "Ultra Nightmare" graphics settings. Optimization is also added for "Half Life: Alyx" and the Vulkan API mode of "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint." The drivers also add a few Vulkan extensions: VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage (only supported on RDNA or later graphics architectures); VK_KHR_shader_non_semantic_info, VK_EXT_texel_buffer_alignment, and VK_EXT_pipeline_creation_cache_control. Grab the drivers from the link below and raze hell!



DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.3.1 Beta
The change log follows.
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NVIDIA Releases GeForce 442.74 Game Ready Drivers for DOOM Eternal
NVIDIA today posted GeForce 442.74 WHQL Game Ready drivers. These come with optimization and bug fixes for the weekend's biggest release, "DOOM Eternal," which goes live in Asia and ANZ in a few minutes from now. Besides this, the 442.74 WHQL drivers address just one bug: an issue with "Red Dead Redemption 2," where task-switching with alt+Tab in the middle of the game may result in a black screen. Grab the drivers from the link below and start slaying!



DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 442.74 WHQL
Doom Eternal
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(PR) Intel Scales Neuromorphic Research System to 100 Million Neurons
Today, Intel announced the readiness of Pohoiki Springs, its latest and most powerful neuromorphic research system providing the computational capacity of 100 million neurons. The cloud-based system will be made available to members of the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community (INRC), extending their neuromorphic work to solve larger, more complex problems.



"Pohoiki Springs scales up our Loihi neuromorphic research chip by more than 750 times, while operating at a power level of under 500 watts. The system enables our research partners to explore ways to accelerate workloads that run slowly today on conventional architectures, including high-performance computing (HPC) systems." -Mike Davies, director of Intel's Neuromorphic Computing Lab.
Intel Pohoiki Springs Intel Pohoiki Springs Intel Pohoiki Springs Intel Pohoiki Springs
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(PR) BIOSTAR Announces the A68N-2100K SoC Motherboard
BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces the A68N-2100K SoC motherboard that comes with an in-built AMD E1-6010 Processor. Throughout many decades, BIOSTAR has been revered as one of the best manufacturers of robust, highly reliable motherboards with a wide array of models on both Intel and AMD platforms to choose from and a plethora of supplementary components catering to many user preferences globally.



Modern technology meets sleek, refined form factor as BIOSTAR's A68N-2100K SoC Mini-ITX motherboard is unveiled to the world with an inbuilt AMD E1-6010 Processor and support for AMD Radeon R2 Graphics.
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