AMD Fake Frame Image Quality, AFMF, & FSR 4 vs. FSR 3.1 Comparisonjimmy_thang April 21, 2025

We compare AMD's in-game frame generation, AFMF, and FSR against “native” rendering in many games

The Highlights

• Our tests were performed using an AMD RX 9070 XT and RX 7900 XTX
• With frame generation, you still get some really nasty images that aren’t representative of how the game was intended to look
• FSR 4 generally improves image quality and stability over prior versions

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

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Intro

Today, we're giving AMD the NVIDIA treatment: We're inspecting AMD's fake frames to compare them to real frames, but we aren't yet comparing NVIDIA's fake frames to AMD's fake frames, because that'll come later.

That means that this article will include frame-by-fake frame analysis of AMD's generated images versus native-only rendering.

Editor's note: This was originally published on April 8, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing, QC

Patrick Lathan
Jeremy Clayton

Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara
Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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Sometimes, you can see ghost images, such as in Kratos' swing over this snowy background, where there's a blurring of the axe and arms as AFMF, or Advanced Fluid Motion Frames from AMD, interpolates in-between frames. 

We'll also talk about FSR 4 vs. prior FSR iterations and native: In some scenes, like the one above, image clarity and stability are greatly improved over prior FSR versions. 

The Ultramarine's armor and hanging cables both show significant improvement in the newer version versus the older.

In other scenes, like the one above showing an air assault, we can see heavy warping with FSR 3.1, but still modulation with FSR 4 for the flying units. 

The ground assault shows issues with shadows pulsing underneath the Tyrannids in both versions. 

Smeared trails behind NPCs and barrels are improved upon with FSR 4, but sometimes still present.

So, we'll be looking at AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution version 4 with the new RX 9070 XT (read our review) GPUs and comparing it against the prior version. This is an image quality specific test, and like we said in the NVIDIA coverage of DLSS and MFG, not all fake frames are created fake equal. This will look at that in part. What we're not doing here yet is comparing FSR 4 and AFMF to DLSS and MFG. That might be a later piece if there's interest, but we need to lay the groundwork for each technology independently first.

One important thing to remember with all of this, just like with NVIDIA’s that we looked at, is that we’re closely inspecting these images today for image quality. That means we’re pausing things and zooming in. In real play, it’s likely that some of these differences would go unnoticed at full speed and “zoomed out.” One other note is that YouTube/video compression makes things sometimes difficult to fully appreciate.

Let’s get into it.

FSR 4 Overview

AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling has finally moved into the “AI” buzzword era with FSR 4’s machine-learned Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model co-developed with Sony. Sony and AMD announced a collaboration effort back in December of 2024, dubbed “Project Amethyst.”

Sony strongly implied that it’s going to use a rebranded version of FSR 4 as its own “PSSR” in order to target 1080p native rendering on the PS5 Pro, but with the upscaler doing the work to output a good looking image at “4K.” 

On the PC side, FSR 4 will only run on the new Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards for the time being, with no official word on back-porting to RX 7000. We’re unsure at this time whether it’s a technical limitation or a product segmentation move on AMD’s part.

The official support list for FSR 4 has 36 games at the time of writing, which is late March. That’s not a lot, but the number will hopefully grow as more games are updated. Several of the listed games are big Sony titles as well, indicating that the company is serious about utilizing the tech, but also shows the partnership between them.

The previous generation, FSR 3.1, is technologically distinct from its predecessor (FSR 3) by way of being implemented as a modular .dll file rather than being entirely baked-in to the game. This paves the way for future revisions of FSR to be more easily implemented by the game developers or just in general.

FSR 4 also uses a .dll file, and can be swapped-in officially in FSR 3.1 games via a driver-level override in AMD’s Adrenaline software in a very similar way to NVIDIA’s DLSS override. However, the games have to also be on AMD’s official whitelist to get the toggle to appear in the driver software. 

Unofficial tools like OptiScaler open the door for a lot more flexibility, but we haven’t tested them yet so we can’t make a recommendation, but there’s stuff like that out there.

AFMF 2.1 Overview

AMD also includes in-game frame generation, or “fake frames,” under its FSR umbrella, and we haven't seen any indication from AMD that its in-game framegen algorithm has changed since FSR 3.1. 

In AMD's words, "Advanced frame generation interpolation technology when used with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3 inserts 1 frame between existing ones."

However, AMD also has separate driver level frame generation known as Advanced Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) that can be applied without in-game support. AFMF 2.1 is a new introduction alongside FSR 4.0. To use it, you need AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.3.1 or newer, RX 6000 or newer, and a DX11, 12, or Vulkan game. RX 6000 only supports AFMF in exclusive fullscreen mode, while RX 7000 and newer support borderless windowed, and the AMD 9070 (read our review) reviewer guide stated that "in-game display setting should be set to borderless fullscreen mode." 

And that's a lot of rules, but keep in mind that Smooth Motion, NVIDIA's answer to AFMF, is exclusive to the RTX 50-series. 

NVIDIA has stated that "support for GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs will be coming in a future update." 

We're focusing on AFMF 2.1 here, so this isn't a direct 1:1 equivalent to the piece we just ran on NVIDIA's in-game frame-gen, but we’ll also be looking at the frame generation performance for AMD. For this article, the performance we care about is image quality, and not the actual literal framerate performance. That will be a separate test along with potentially latency. 

This is an isolated test so that we can build foundational knowledge first, just like we did for NVIDIA. The direct comparison would be NVIDIA Smooth Motion versus AMD Fluid Motion Frames, but we’re focusing on just AMD today. That comparison may come later.

As for FSR testing, our FSR comparisons will focus on FSR 3.1 vs. FSR 4, with a couple references to native capture as an anchor. We captured everything at 4K resolution with FSR running at the Performance preset, meaning it’s upscaling from 1080p base render resolution. We disabled anti-aliasing, camera effects, and motion blur where possible to get the cleanest images we could.

The objectives today are purely image quality, not performance. We’ll be comparing frame-by-fake-frame image quality, FSR iteration quality, and looking at behavioral patterns in general.

Let’s get into the image quality comparisons.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2

First up is Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2. Like everything else we tested for this piece, FSR 4 support comes by way of the driver-level override. We used the High graphics preset, turned off camera shake, and set motion blur to off; however, we found the latter doesn’t actually work and motion blur persists regardless, but that’s a game thing.

Armory

We’ll start the comparisons with a scene in the Armory, or “Armouring Hall” in native Grimdark. Even before walking forward, the difference between FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 is stark. Static elements like the floor of the walkway that shift and shimmer heavily with FSR 3.1 are now stably locked-in. On top of that, the entire image is much clearer and more detailed. 

Examples of this include the floor, where we see improved image stability and clarity, the Ultramarine’s armor showing similar improvements in a side-by-side, the distant hanging cables, and the tech priests’ hoods. Distant candle flames that can’t even be made out with FSR 3.1 are visible with FSR 4, bringing them back into existence.

As we walk forward and the… we’ll call it a “kiosk,” drops down, the difference in clarity is so obvious it’s almost like looking at two different resolutions. No matter where you look there’s improvement. The fine details under the main monitor, the tech priest’s mask, and even just the general contrast and visual discernability of all the mechanical arms and tubes are all vastly improved. We double-checked our settings and confirmed that they were running as intended for a like-for-like comparison, so it really is just that much better in this example.

This is a very promising start for FSR 4.

Let’s compare FSR 4 to native 4K. Space Marine 2 forces either TAA or upscaling at all times (even at native), so we went with the default of TAA for the native capture. 

We also did this in our DLSS comparison, which showed how some scenarios, like Cyberpunk, can actually look worse than upscaling because of TAA.

The flickering and shimmering on the floor in Space Marine 2 we saw with FSR 3.1 is also present at native with TAA. That makes FSR 4 look even more impressive here – even at the performance preset – since it’s taming an undesirable behavior. We said this before, but we shouldn’t be seeing things that look worse with all defaults at native than with an upscaling technology. 

General detail before moving – like in the floor, walls, and priest hoods – is a toss-up between native with TAA and FSR 4 Performance mode. That’s simultaneously a critique of TAA and a praise of FSR 4. 

The green orb far in the distance looks very slightly better with native TAA. As the “kiosk” drops down, the level of detail between native with TAA and FSR 4 Performance is very close. However, we think FSR 4 actually comes out slightly ahead – most obviously in the round speaker-looking elements on top of a couple of the monitors.

Like we said in the DLSS piece, upscaling should never look better than “native,” and game developers shouldn’t be leaning on upscaling technologies in this way. The only reason it ever does look better is because of issues such as those with TAA, which is the default here.

Command

We’ll briefly look at another indoor scene in the campaign’s command bridge before moving on to a mission. Again, everything is sharper, clearer, and easier to discern when using FSR4. Gadriel’s face, Titus’ hair, and Chairon’s armor – particularly the chest decoration – stand out as night-and-day differences.

Looking at the bridge’s holographic map area, FSR 3.1 suffers from distracting flickering on some of the round grates (underneath the three skulls and on the right side of the main terminal). Switching to FSR 4 almost entirely eliminates this behavior. The thin lines within the hologram that shimmer and boil with FSR 3.1 come across as much cleaner with FSR 4. The other ship visible out the left windows doesn’t show much difference, however.

It could be that the largest areas of improvement with FSR 4 are in dimly-lit or low contrast scenes. We’ll test that with the next comparison.

“Decapitation” Mission - Scene 1

Loading into the “Decapitation” Operations mission gives us a brighter outdoor area. While the marine’s armor is again visibly better-looking with FSR 4, the effect on the rest of the scene is more subtle, more like lifting a haze rather than a transformation. You can clearly see this in the texture of the ground and on the shoulders of the statues.

Once in motion, FSR 3.1 starts to deteriorate, but FSR 4 keeps the image clean. Unfortunately, the bugged permanent motion blur makes it hard to draw a distinction between the two FSR revisions while the marine is rolling down the stairs. Elements such as the detail in the inlaid stone floor and the buildings to the right look better during motion with FSR 4. So far, it looks like most of the FSR 3-to-4 improvements are visible in motion.

“Decapitation” Mission - Scene 2

Strafing to the side shows off a huge improvement favoring FSR 4 over FSR 3.1. Every single element on screen looks better with FSR 4 – the textures on the sides of the stairs, the statues, the murals against the far wall, and the guardsmen. It again gives the impression of running at a higher resolution.

This would be a very interesting scene to compare the most up to date implementations of DLSS and FSR head-to-head in a future piece.

“Decapitation” Mission - Scene 3

Last for Space Marine 2 is an upscaling torture test by way of a slow pan of the Tyrranid assault. The flying creatures passing over the front of the massive building cause the windows to warp and blur heavily when using FSR 3.1. It still happens with FSR 4, but to a lesser extent. This is close to a worst case scenario for any upscaler, period.

In both the air and on the ground, FSR 3.1 causes the creatures to blur into a mass, sometimes phasing in and out of existence or blending together. FSR 4 isn’t totally immune here either, but again does a way better job than the prior version.

Since this scenario is so hard on upscalers, let’s compare to native with its forced TAA again. Watching the flying creatures in front of the windows shows us what it’s supposed to look like, free of the heavy warping seen with FSR 3.1, or even the warping-lite modulation seen with FSR 4.

Looking at the ground assault again shows just how well FSR 4 is handling this relative to FSR 3.1. It’s very close to the look of the native capture, but still suffers from an effect that makes the shadows underneath the Tyrranids appear to pulse and shift underneath them. At this level of fine detail and chaotic movement, even native with TAA struggles a little bit with grain and warp. Some areas are cleaner, but like we said earlier, this particular game has toss-up comparisons between them.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Monster Hunter Wilds is up next. We used the High graphics preset, but turned off anti-aliasing and camera effects like motion blur, vignette, and depth of field. We also reduced camera shake to its minimum levels. Cutscenes are entirely in-engine, which is useful, so we got a mix of those with some actual in-game capture.

Title Screen

Taking a quick look at the title screen animation shows little difference between FSR 3.1 and FSR 4. Textures and edges are slightly sharper with FSR 4. The stippled effect on fur as seen with FSR 3.1 is also almost entirely gone with FSR 4. There’s not much else to discuss here so we’ll move on.

Oasis

Jumping into the actual game at the point you choose your weapon by the small oasis shows an ugly pattern superimposed over the sand when using FSR 3.1 that goes away with FSR 4. It doesn’t make the game unplayable or anything, but it’s pretty distracting.

When talking to Alma, we can see that FSR 4 handles the fine strands of her hair a little better than FSR 3.1 does. It also adds sharpness to the weapons immediately to her left. While running towards the training barrel, we see that FSR 4 keeps the detail of the hunter’s clothes and equipment sharper. It’s not a huge difference, however.

Going to Camp

The long cutscene that takes you to the main camp shows much the same. FSR 4 has a slight advantage to image quality via sharpness and minor detail enhancement. Hair, fur, and feathers benefit the most by way of FSR 4 reducing the appearance of patterns or stippling superimposed over them.

One clear difference is in trails behind objects moving across a patterned background. For example, when the two Felynes drop the barrel, it leaves a smeared trail behind it on the wooden walkway, as does the NPC on the left side of the screen and the unfortunate Felyne as it falls backwards. We think FSR 3.1 handles this very poorly – FSR 4, while not perfect, definitely does better.

Considering what we saw in Space Marine 2, the less drastic differences between FSR revisions in Monster Hunter Wilds is surprising.

Marvel Rivals

The final game we'll analyze for FSR upscaling is Marvel Rivals. To keep things consistent, we used the training range to gather footage.

Rocket Jump

Static scenes don’t differ much between FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 in Rivals, possibly because of the game’s art style and strong default sharpening filter. We’ll need to look at movement to suss out the differences, and blasting forward with Rocket’s dash is a good place to begin.

Even before dashing, we can see a blob of pixels around Rocket’s head getting distorted in the FSR 3.1 recording, which isn’t nearly as pronounced with FSR 4. As soon as we blast forward, FSR 3.1 turns into an over-sharpened, grainy mess, as seen on Rocket’s gun, jetpack, tail, and the ground below. FSR 4 is able to cope with the sudden movement far more gracefully, and only gets bad around the finer points of detail like the spikes on Rocket’s knees and the hair/fur on his head.

Rocket Strafe

Next we strafed to the side while shooting. Before moving, we can see a repeating pattern overlaid on the left side of the ground, similar to what we saw in Monster Hunter Wilds, that’s not present with FSR 4.

Once we do start moving and shooting, FSR 4 retains more detail in the bullet trails than with FSR 3.1. After dropping off the first ledge and reloading, FSR 3.1 responds to all the motion by giving everything in the vicinity of Rocket’s model a kind of deep-fried-meme look, and ghosting on the trailing edge of his jetpack. There’s still a little bit of ghosting with FSR 4, but it’s greatly reduced – and the deep-fried look is gone.

Rocket Wallrun

Last, we tried a wallrun. FSR 3.1 handled it overall better than we anticipated, but still left horrible ghost images as Rocket climbs up across the purple banner. FSR 4 still has them slightly, but they’re not noticeable to us at full speed in real-time.

For the rest of the run, there’s not a huge difference between the two FSR revisions outside of a slight clarity advantage and reduced ghosting with FSR 4.

AFMF 2.1 Image Comparisons

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We’re getting into the AFMF and frame generation comparisons now. We’ll play some side-by-side, frame-by-frame comparisons while setting this section up.

For comparison purposes, we selected games that support in-game frame generation to compare with driver-level changes. In the real world, you should almost always opt for in-game frame generation over AFMF at the driver if in-game is available. The most obvious downside of AFMF is that it has no awareness of UI elements, so menus, text, and icons may be distorted (although we saw NVIDIA struggle with this even with in-game frame generation).

All footage for AFMF comparisons was captured at 4K 120FPS. A 7900 XTX (watch our review) with Adrenalin 25.2.1 was used for AFMF 2.0 capture and a 9070 XT with Adrenalin 25.3.1 was used for everything else. AFMF Search Mode was set to High and Performance Mode was set to Quality, the recommended settings for our setup. 

AMD is more direct than NVIDIA about recommending framegen only in scenarios where the game can already run at at least 60FPS, and we stuck to that recommendation.

As with NVIDIA framegen, the vendor's capture utility (Radeon ReLive in this case) was the most practical way to capture, but because we can't manipulate the rate of frame generation (like we could for NVIDIA), we'll have to rely more on frame-by-frame comparisons. We constantly had issues with AMD's Record & Stream tab disappearing after reboots, so if AMD is reading this, please fix that (and yes, our IGP is disabled).

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2

We used the same settings for Space Marine 2 that we did for the FSR comparisons, with Resolution Upscaling set to FSR and Render Resolution set to Native since it can't be explicitly disabled. We set Motion Blur Intensity to Off even though the setting doesn't work. Framegen worked with fullscreen enabled, so we left that setting alone.

Screenshake

We’ll start with the worst-case scenario.

We recorded an additional scene in Space Marine 2 to show the downsides of frame generation. These clips aren't tightly controlled or synchronized; we just loaded into the main hub and shook the mouse around violently, so we’ll freeze frame some parts to show the issues. Besides making it very obvious that motion blur was still on (despite being toggled off), this allows us to see multiple frames where AFMF is definitely applied on top of UI elements like the "Assemble" waypoint. Applying frame generation on top of UI elements can cause ghosting and duplication of UI elements, which just looks bad. We can compare this to the in-game frame generation option, which is also a garbled, muddy mess in this scenario, with distortions around the edges that almost look like eye floaters. It completely breaks in this scenario, but perfectly preserves the UI layer even in the worst frames. 

Rapid movements like this aren't out of the question for mouse-and-keyboard users. They’re especially common in certain types of games, like shooters in particular where a fast or twitchy response necessitates them. Compared to native, these types of rapid movement scenarios are a worse experience with frame generation.

Armory

Our armory scene is relatively slow, but we can still see the effects of frame generation on moving limbs versus native rendering. The telltale sign of generated frames here is the slight blurring of detail on the marine's armor in frame-by-frame playback, like the back of his right leg as he passes under the light, but this is only really visible when closely examining individual frames in a specific location. The mandatory motion blur and application of FSR also help disguise the generated frames, since both of these effects lead to the same kind of temporal smearing that generated frames are subject to.

The frame-by-frame playback of AFMF 2.0 versus 2.1 reveals greater differences, with a prominent secondary image surrounding the marine's right arm in advance of its movement in the next "real" frame. This only affects moving elements of the scene; there's no noticeable sign of frame generation in the relatively static background even with the older version.

“Decapitation” Mission - Scene 1

By rolling down the stairs, we can see a weak point of frame generation, although the inescapable motion blur makes it harder to detect. There are multiple frames where the fine details on the marine's armor are blurred, like the bottoms of his boots where lines are lost. Moving frame by frame with native and AFMF 2.1 capture side by side, there's a clear difference between the even and predictable motion blur and the irregular, faded outlines of generated frames. The marine's feet change position more than any other part of his armor during the dive and roll, which is why they're especially prone to blurring and transparency.

The generated frames are also identifiable by ghosting behind the bullets being fired in the background, with classic ghosting behavior causing an undesirable look. In our recent piece discussing NVIDIA's framegen, we noted similar behavior with raindrops that made the rain effects look softer and more transparent in motion.

Comparing AFMF 2.0 to 2.1 at similar framerates, 2.1 appears to have less ghosting than 2.0, which should help make the effect less noticeable during gameplay. In each generated frame of the AFMF 2.0 capture, there's a clear secondary image of the marine in advance of the next real frame, as we noted to a lesser degree in the armory scene. Blurring and loss of detail can be issues, but ghosting is a much more visible downside of framegen and one that can ruin the experience. 

A comparison to in-game frame generation at the same timestamp demonstrates that it's predictably much better at preserving detail, since it's given more information to work with directly from the game engine. 

The in-game generation causes a crisp outline in advance of the marine's movement, visible above around his gun and his arms, but the detail within his boots isn't distorted at all. This could still lead to the shimmering outlines that we saw with NVIDIA's framegen, but the individual frames are closer to reality than with AFMF.

“Decapitation” Mission - Scene 2

We'll start off this next scene with another native comparison to establish which elements are due to regular motion blur and which are due to frame generation. The AFMF 2.1 capture matches native with its rendered frames, but it's interspersed with generated frames where the marine's armor loses sharpness on the fast-moving legs. That's clearly the area we need to focus on, so we can move to a 2.0 versus 2.1 comparison with that knowledge.

Walking sideways in front of a light background makes the difference between 2.0 and 2.1 more obvious, with 2.1 showing some slight irregularities around the edges of the marine's legs where 2.0 shows massive secondary images. As usual, the resulting effect would be easier to notice in motion if there weren't already other blurring effects forced on us with this game.

God of War Ragnarök

God of War ran well above 60FPS on the 9070 XT even at Ultra, which made it harder to capture generated frames, so we kept our testing brief. The ultra preset was used with motion blur, film grain, and camera shake disabled. We expected FSR to be forced when in-game framegen was enabled, but the options menu didn't reflect that, so the scaling method was set to TAA and the quality to Native for all tests (scaling cannot be explicitly disabled).

Axe

As expected, the moments of rapid movement during Kratos' windup and swing are the most difficult for AFMF to deal with. Whereas the native capture clearly shows each frame of his arms and the axe as it moves, the AFMF 2.1 capture has individual frames with obvious attempts at interpolation. This is most noticeable directly on the models, since the trail of particles behind the axe is already an intentional smear.

By swinging Kratos' axe in front of the white snowy background, we can clearly see ghost images with the older AFMF 2.0 frame generation. Direct frame by frame comparison is more difficult here due to the lower frequency of generated frames, but it's clear that the generated frames with 2.0 more commonly have ghosting around the axe and even Kratos' model. 2.1 shows some artifacts as well, but it's usually in the form of unevenness in the outline of the axe and Kratos' arm as they swing forward, while the core of his model is better preserved.

Checking back against God of War's specific implementation of in-game frame generation, we see the same behavior as in Space Marine 2 where the details of Kratos and the axe are excellently preserved, but there's a distinct outline where framegen has done its version of content aware fill in the area that those objects will occupy in the next real frame. In comparison, the fullscreen AFMF 2.1 effect has more distortion around the usual axe and arm area.

Log

The movement of the axe in this small QTE was too rapid for either 2.0 or 2.1 to keep up with, with the large deltas between frames leading to a similar appearance from both AFMF versions. The head of the axe appears doubled in some generated frames, with additional distortion around the handle. It's difficult for any type of frame generation to compensate for large deltas between frames, which is part of why AMD recommends running at 60FPS before turning it on (with latency being the other part).

Marvel Rivals

Marvel Rivals is next.

Mantis 3

Starting with the jump pad, we can see at the beginning of this scene that both AFMF 2.0 and 2.1 show ghosting on the rings that rise up from the pad. Once in motion, both iterations have trouble keeping up with the rapid movement, but 2.1 does a moderately better job of preserving Mantis' outline. 

The distance between the secondary image and the core of Mantis' model with 2.0 creates a greater blurring effect, and although the generated frames with 2.1 only roughly maintain the shape of her hands and feet, the resulting silhouette is stronger. As she approaches the apex of the jump, the distortion occurs in the background instead, with 2.0 more commonly showing doubling of scenery elements like the railing immediately in front of her.

Marvel Rivals' in-game frame generation version behaved in the same way as God of War's and Space Marine 2's,  with crisp outlines around the next known position of Mantis' model, visible above the knees in these frames, coupled with some afterimages trailing behind the arms. The overall effect is still far cleaner than AFMF, especially since the artifacts only apply to Mantis' model, leaving the scene behind her almost completely clear of framegen problems.

Mantis 2

We don't recommend using framegen for games like Marvel Rivals where latency is a concern and rapid mouse movements are common. Framegen is kind of like v-sync in that at best it's a cosmetic upgrade maybe, and at worst it's a source of latency. 

In this scene, we can see distortion around Mantis' hands with AFMF 2.1 in advance of the motion they're about to make as she fires, but a rendered frame was buffered in order to generate that image, whereas without framegen, rendered frames are simply delivered when they're ready.

Notice also that with AFMF, Luna Snow's nametag is distorted on the first frame where the camera shakes, which is a further disadvantage of AFMF versus in-game frame generation. Using the in-game option, the nametag is preserved.

Cyberpunk 2077

In Cyberpunk, we used the High preset without ray tracing and set FSR 3 to Native AA, since FSR was required in order to enable in-game framegen.

Car

First is a car scene. Keeping an eye on the headlight beam as it passes over shrubs and rocks to the right of the road, we can see that the scenery appears to wiggle slightly with AFMF 2.1 as the generated frames don't place objects in precisely the correct location. With AFMF 2.0 in the same areas, there's a much simpler loss of detail as every generated frame is a blurry mess. The area on the shoulder that tracked slightly wrong with 2.1 is instead completely layered with a ghost image with 2.0; we prefer the newer version here, but native rendering without fake frames still looks cleanest.

Moving to a 2.1 versus native comparison, we can see that the wiggling behavior is definitely an artifact of AFMF and not something carried over from the original native render. The native capture has fewer frames, obviously, but the objects to the right side of the road track in a clear, straight line between frames as opposed to the slight side-to-side shifting with AFMF 2.1. Native should typically be crisper, even if less smooth, so this makes sense.

Benchmark

Using the game's built-in benchmark scene, we can again see that 2.1 is more prone to distortion in areas where 2.0 would blur and ghost, with the vertical pillar here turning into a wavy line in fake frames. 

As the camera passes the corner with pages from the Night City Journal, 2.1 does a much better job of preserving text and fine detail where 2.0 just ghosts. 

Moving to a later part of the scene, frame by frame playback reveals more distortion visible with 2.1 as the camera passes over the barbed wire fence: straight lines remain clear with 2.1, but they don't remain straight. As usual, 2.0's equivalent is a fully duplicated ghost image of the fence in each generated frame.

Again, we can check back against the native footage for confirmation that the behavior we're seeing comes from AFMF. The horizontal fence bars are straight and uninterrupted in each frame of the native capture, whereas they're frequently broken up and uneven in the AFMF 2.1 footage, although AFMF 2.1 does do a fairly good job of preserving the scene behind the fence without major framegen distortion.

Conclusion

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In terms of image quality, FSR 4.0 is an improvement over FSR 3.1. And AFMF 2.1 is an improvement over 2.0. Both of these are good things because if those weren’t the case, then AMD is using numbers wrong. 

Whether or not it’s worth using these technologies at all is more situational, just like with DLSS. First of all, it’s going to be highly specific to the games and also the person playing them. The use case for these, take FSR for example, is definitely a good alternative to lowering the settings, but when we’ve polled our audience in the past, there are a lot of people who prefer to lower the settings than to use an upscaling approach like FSR or DLSS. It’s really going to be something that users should toggle and decide if they like. 

While that might sound like a wishy-washy answer, that is the answer. It is very situational. The good news is that it’s easy to turn these technologies on and off to see if you like it. 

Some people will prefer the higher graphics quality with the potential image quality losses that upscaling technologies provide and other people won’t. 

Going back to whether it’s worth turning on, the best answer we can provide is that we think it’s a good alternative, just like DLSS, to lowering settings in some games compared to running games at lower performance. So if you’re trying to fix performance issues and you want the higher settings, generally speaking, both the newest versions of DLSS and FSR work well for that. 

In the games we tested using FSR 4.0 as an override was an improvement over past versions, which is good. 

While AMD has made improvements to these technologies, the question you should ask is whether you want to use them at all. With frame generation, you still get some really nasty images that aren’t representative of how the game was intended to look. 

You get ghosting, doubling up of images, and distortion of text. A lot of people will see that and want to turn it off. This will also depend on the game. 

It’s a little less clear what the decision should be on the upscaling front because it will depend on how much you’re struggling to run a particular game. It becomes a choice of sacrifice between graphics settings or image quality crispness. For some people, it may not be a choice if the game is running too poorly. Overall, FSR 4, just like DLSS 4, is an improvement over its preceding version. This is what we want to see. But like DLSS, the degree of improvement on the scale of a little bit better vs totally transformative, it’s going to be closer to the a-little-better side. It won’t change how you fundamentally see games. 

Next, we may look at FSR 4 vs DLSS vs XeSS in a future content piece. That will let us look at the direct comparison between competitors.

---

Apple's latest ad spot demonstrates how Apple Intelligence can make your dating profile better, thanks to Clean Up in iOS 18 Photos.


One of the early features of Apple Intelligence, Clean Up is a Photos tool that can be used to remove unwanted objects from within a picture. Its effectiveness is aptly demonstrated in a new ad from Apple.

Posted to YouTube on Monday, the video titled "Clean Up Photos: Flex" shows a young man showing off his physique to the iPhone 16's camera. The photographs are all taken by an older woman, using an iPhone 16.


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Apple is now on its third round for its current generation of developer betas, testing new builds of iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, macOS 15.5, tvOS 18.5, watchOS 11.5, and visionOS 2.5.


The third round of testing for iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, macOS 15.5, tvOS 18.5, watchOS 11.5, and visionOS 2.5 arrived after the second, which landed on April 14. The first round for this generation was handed out on March 17.

The third iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 developer betas share build number 22F5053j, replacing 22F5053f. The third macOS Sequoia 15.5 build uses number 24F5053j, up from 24F5053f.


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Apple could be severely affected as Trump reportedly pressures countries to limit their business dealings with China, which will result in more retaliations against US companies.


China previously called Trump's trade war a joke and said it would not retaliate further than matching what was then said to be a 125% tariff imposed by the US. That tariff was then revealed to actually be 145%, and China did not escalate its own tariffs — although it did halt rare earth mineral exports.

Now, however, CNBC reports that China has responded to what appears to be Trump's next move. While not announced by Trump or any other country involved, it is believed that isolating China is a key part of the White House's tariff negotiations worldwide.


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Bargain hunters looking for the best MacBook Pro deals can save hundreds on a variety of configurations, with current M4 and closeout M3 configs up to $800 off.

The lowest price at press time is on the closeout M3 model with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which is marked down to $1,099, a $500 discount off the original MSRP.



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Bethesda has officially confirmed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. However, the full reveal won't be happening today as originally thought, instead it will be taking place tomorrow. 

In a tweet this afternoon, Bethesda announced plans for a livestream at 4PM BST on the 22nd of April, which is tomorrow at the time of publishing. The announcement was also shared on The Elder Scrolls social accounts and was accompanied by an image of a warrior looking out to an Oblivion gate. To really get the message across, IV is imposed over the image.

This confirms the recent leaks, all pointing to a new version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion hitting the market. The remaster is developed by Virtuos, with assistance from two of Bethesda's smaller in-house teams. The game looks to offer completely new Unreal Engine 5 graphics.

The game is expected to launch for PC and Xbox, while also being a day-one title for PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. As this is a remaster of an old game, it could potentially come to Game Pass Standard subscribers as well, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure.

KitGuru Says: It is not happening today as previously thought but as Microsoft tends to schedule much of its PR around Tuesdays and Thursdays, the April 22nd date makes a lot of sense. 

The post Bethesda confirms Oblivion Remastered reveal plans first appeared on KitGuru.

On the latest episode of the HomeKit Insider Podcast, your host breaks down the latest Matter development on long-range devices, Arlo adds more HomeKit support, and we round up the best Find My devices.


Chipolo has announced its latest Find My-enabled tracker with the colorful Chipolo Pop. It comes in six different colors, has a built-in keychain hole, and has a replaceable CR2032 battery.

Unlike its predecessor, the new model works with both Apple Find My and Google Find My Device. They start at $29 for one, or four for $89.


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Cupertino has paid Apple $12.1 million, settling a sales tax dispute that reshapes how tech giants and cities do business in California.


Since 1998, Apple has treated all of its online sales within California as if they originated in Cupertino. That arrangement allowed the city to collect 1% of Apple's 7.25% sales tax, according to Silicon Valley.

In its latest move to resolve the long-running dispute, City Council approved the payment during a Tuesday meeting with no discussion. The refund covers sales tax revenue Apple generated between January 2023 and June 2024.


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The European Union denies that it has been holding off on fining firms including Apple and Meta because of concerns of reprisals from Trump.


Reports began in January 2025 that the European Union and the European Commission were holding off on fines and rulings as they waited to see the impact of the Trump administration. Then more recently, it was specifically claimed that a decision to announce fines had been delayed at the last moment.

That delay was said to be in order to avoid announcing fines while officials from various EU member states were meeting with Trump to negotiate on tariffs. According to Politico, the EU has now publicly stated that it will enforce its Digital Markets Act (DMA) on any infringing company, whether in the US or not.


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A Minnesota man is suing Apple for failing to do enough after having his iPhone stolen, demanding access to 2 terabytes of data and at least $5 million in damages.


The loss of a smartphone can be devastating to a person, especially when it's the center of their digital existence. However, while there are ways to recover data, such as that stored on iCloud, sometimes the remedies that are available are not enough.

In a filing at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in January, surfaced by the Washington Post in April, Michael Mathews of Minnesota is suing Apple for access to his data and compensation.


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Now available to order, this "Severance" imspired keyboard ditches the Escape key because leaving was never an option.


The MDR Dasher is a compact mechanical keyboard from Atomic Keyboard — not Apple — and the makers say it is inspired by the vintage Data General Dasher terminals featured in the Macrodata Refinement department, but it's instantly recognizable as coming from the Apple TV+ hit show "Severance." It uses a 70 percent layout with a built-in trackball, deep blue housing, and rounded keycaps that match the eerie aesthetics of the series.

But its most striking feature is what it leaves out — Escape, Control, and Option keys are all missing. That design choice feels intentional.


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We are just a few weeks away from DOOM: The Dark Ages launching for PC and consoles. Ahead of the May 15th release, id Software has now revealed the official story trailer for the game. 

The new trailer showcases the Doom Slayer being transported to a new semi-medieval realm where the demons are beginning their invasion. While there will be swords and shields, the Doom Slayer still has access to a wide variety of guns, all of which hell need to take on the incoming demon army.

Canonically, DOOM: The Dark Ages is a prequel to DOOM 2016. The game is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on the 15th of May. It will also be a day-one release for PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers.

KitGuru Says: I've been a huge fan of the modern DOOM series, so I'll be diving into this the second it unlocks. Are many of you looking forward to DOOM: The Dark Ages? 

The post DOOM: The Dark Ages gets new story trailer ahead of May 15th launch first appeared on KitGuru.

By all accounts, today is the day that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will be officially announced to the world. We've already seen leaked trailer screenshots, as well as references to the game on Bethesda's own website. Now, a little bit of digging in the Steam back-end has revealed a massive 120GB file size. 

According to dataminer XOX, who is primarily known for leaking Marvel Rivals content, installation details on the Oblivion remaster can now be found on the backend of Steam, revealing a 120.94GB total install size for the game.

This is a massive increase over the original game, which took up less than 5GB of storage space. The original Oblivion Game of the Year Edition requires just 4.6GB of storage space, a figure that includes the game's expansion and other DLCs.

Of course, this is a modern day remake of the game, not just a remaster as the game's official title implies. All of the in-game assets have been reworked, as well as the game world, giving it a complete makeover. Previous reports have also claimed that the game's combat system has been changed.

KitGuru Says: There is a rumour that the Oblivion remaster will land later today, so we'll be keeping an eye out for updates. 

 

The post The Oblivion remake to require 121GB storage first appeared on KitGuru.

It appears that Intel's LGA-1851 platform, introduced alongside the 800-series motherboards in Q3 2024, may have a surprisingly short lifespan, potentially supporting only a single generation of CPUs. Despite repeated inquiries from reviewers about future upgrades for the platform, Intel has remained tight-lipped on the matter. While rumours of an Arrow Lake Refresh have circulated, this is not expected to deliver a substantial performance uplift.

A recent leak originating from shipping manifest data (via @Olrak29_) suggests that Intel may have never intended to support Nova Lake-S, the successor to Arrow Lake-S, on the LGA-1851 socket. The manifests indicate that Intel is currently testing Nova Lake-S (NVL-S) on a new LGA-1954 platform, implying that the existing 800-series motherboards will be limited to the Arrow Lake CPU generation. The voltage regulator test equipment referenced in the shipping manifests suggests that the new LGA-1954 platform will continue to support the high-bandwidth PCIe Gen5 standard.

Delving deeper into shipment manifests, ITHome (via VideoCardz) has uncovered references to the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) for the Nova Lake-S platform. This chipset utilises a BGA888 socket and measures 24x25mm. In contrast, the current chipset for 800-series motherboards with the LGA-1700 socket has dimensions of 28×23.5mm, highlighting a physical change in the supporting silicon. The shipped components, likely jigs and mechanical fixtures used in the production process, come in various sizes and materials, indicating the preparation of testing equipment for the Nova Lake chipsets.

These findings, however, don't mean Nova Lake-S is right around the corner. The arrival of Intel's new platform is most likely targeting 2026, so LGA1851 should have at least one more year of life.

KitGuru says: Can Intel regain the performance crown with Nova Lake-S processors?

The post Intel Nova Lake-S processors will likely use a new socket first appeared on KitGuru.

Intel's Arc “Battlemage” series certainly turned some heads. However, following the initial flurry of releases in late 2024 and early 2025, updates from Intel's Graphics division have seemingly gone quiet, leaving enthusiasts wondering about the future of their Arc ambitions.

Despite the recent change in CEO, Intel has affirmed its commitment to discrete graphics. So far, Intel has only announced to SKUs for its Battlemage GPU line-up, but recent evidence shows that there could be more on the way in the near future.

Shipping manifests from NBD (via Tomasz Gawroński and Haze) have revealed ongoing development related to Intel discrete GPUs. The entry shared by Haze refers to a BGM-G31, which seems to be a higher-end variant of the G21 chip found in the Arc B580. The entry shared by Tomasz (BMG, IBC C32 SKT) could either be an updated Battlemage GPU (“BMG”) or even a Celestial GPU (“C32”).

In related news, a job listing has also revealed that Intel may be working on incorporating GDDR7 memory into its cards. The job posting titled “Memory Tuning and Qualification” and spotted by Haze indicates that the company is actively exploring faster memory standards for future Arc GPUs. The job description mentions “GDDR6/7” compatibility for discrete Arc graphics but doesn't specify beyond that.

KitGuru says: Do you think Intel's next-gen ‘Celestial' graphics cards will use GDDR7 memory?

The post New Intel Arc Battlemage GPUs appear to be on the way first appeared on KitGuru.

While the gaming Radeon RX series is expected to introduce the RX 9060 XT and RX 9070 GRE soon, those looking for a new Radeon Pro graphics card have been left waiting for news. Fortunately for the latter, it seems AMD is set to bolster its professional workstation GPU lineup with a new Navi 48-based card, potentially offering a significant upgrade for professionals.

According to Hoang Anh Phu, the Radeon Pro line will soon welcome a GPU codenamed Navi 48 XTW. This currently unidentified card is expected to feature 32GB of memory, most likely GDDR6 ECC (Error-Correcting Code) memory. While this capacity falls short of the 48GB or 64GB offered by some previous-generation professional cards, the final specifications could still be subject to change.

 

It's worth noting that AMD's “Advancing AI” event is scheduled for June. While the primary focus of this event is expected to be on Instinct GPUs for data centres and the ROCm (Radeon Open Compute) platform, it could also serve as a stage for the official unveiling of these new professional workstation GPUs.

KitGuru says: Do you think AMD will launch a workstation graphics card based on a Navi 44 die?

The post AMD reportedly gearing up for RDNA 4 Radeon Pro graphics cards first appeared on KitGuru.

A UPS driver is accused of stealing $175,000 worth of iPhones in 90 days, birds meet a grisly end at an Apple Store in Australia, and a football coach is charged with hacking iCloud, all on this week's Apple crime blotter.


A man who worked for UPS in Florida was arrested and accused of stealing 171 iPhones, valued at $175,000, over the course of 90 days. According to WEAR TV, the man made the habit of stealing the product, each containing an iPhone 16, out of packages.


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Nvidia scaled back its Computex presence last year but the company is looking to ramp things back up for Computex 2025. Nvidia has now announced its keynote, taking place on the 18th of May. 

Nvidia's Computex keynote is scheduled for May 18th at 8 p.m. PDT/May 19th at 4 a.m. BST. While TAITRA, the organisers of Computex, haven't explicitly detailed the keynote's content, the official description strongly suggests that Artificial Intelligence will be the central theme of the presentation.

It's worth recalling that there were previous expectations that Nvidia might unveil its first desktop CPU family at Computex. Nvidia has also established a new social media presence focused on “AI PC” concepts, signalling its intention to compete in the desktop PC market. This keynote could provide further insight into Nvidia's strategies in this area.

Interestingly, AMD, one of Nvidia's primary competitors in the PC space, currently has no plans to hold any press events at Computex. However, AMD CEO Lisa Su is slated to deliver a keynote presentation titled “Advancing AI” the following month.

KitGuru says: Will you be watching Nvidia's keynote at Computex 2025? What do you expect from the event?

The post Nvidia will host its Computex keynote on May 18th first appeared on KitGuru.

Avalanche Software has released a new patch for Hogwarts Legacy, introducing official support for AMD FSR 3 and Intel XeSS 2.0. This update enables both AMD and Intel GPU users to use frame generation, potentially leading to significant performance gains.

As part of the integration of Intel XeSS 2.0, the April 17th update brings integration for Intel's Low Latency (XeLL) and Frame Generation (XeFG) technologies. The patch further refines the game's graphics settings by updating the GPU list to accurately default graphics options for newly released GPUs. Ray Tracing has also received attention in this update, as the patch addresses specific issues, such as a bug causing the shadow of the Hogsmeade watermill shadow to remain static, and various resolution problems within the Ray Tracing reflection system.

Beyond graphics enhancements, the update addresses various bugs and introduces fixes for several known issues. The detailed patch notes for the latest update can be found below:

Localization

• Resolved issue where the unsupported mod crash popup would be incorrectly formatted in some languages.

UI

• Resolved large font rating text being cut off on mod page.
• Resolved issue where mod order numbers were exceeding the bounds of their icons while using the large text option.
• Removed the state change of the report button to avoid confusion if clicked multiple times.
• Resolved issue where pressing the continue button in the load game window would not load the game.
• Resolved issue where the prompts for enable and disable mods were reversed.
• Resolved search input losing focus after page content loads.
• Resolved in game date not matching CurseForge website.
• Removed search bar from all tabs in the mod menus except for the “Browse” tab as the search function always brings you to the browse tab.
• Minor visual improvements for mod image loading.
• Resolved infinite spinner while offline in mods screen.
• Resolved issue where offline notification window could not be closed.
• Added an easier way to batch repair and update multiple enabled mods at once.
• Added improvements to the usability of modded save UI.
• Resolved seams with pagination in mod page.
• Resolved banner resize and transitions issues.
• Added view all buttons to Discovery tab shelves.
• Resolved certain resolutions causing overlapping issues in mod description and details.
• Resolved not showing notification when repair was completed in tab.
• Resolved manual sorting of categories in related widgets on the Discovery and Browse tab.
• Resolved favorite legend text not being correctly set in the mod page.
• Resolved display settings issues where low latency options would not update upon changing upscaler type.
• Resolved an issue where details pages for unavailable mods were displaying incorrectly.
• Resolved an issue where unavailable mods were showing the “Not Installed” alert title.
• Resolved style card grid having 5 rows.
• Resolved large text issues in mod’s detail page.
• Resolved no repair prompt being available when launching save file repair option.
• Better aligned sorting terminology with its actual meaning.
• Resolved an issue where the UI was displaying multiple confirm prompts on the same error window.
• Resolved an issue where mods could be uninstalled while they were updating.
• Resolved issues with the sorting function not being reset upon changing tabs.
• Added additional error messaging for when staging a mod fails due to a corrupt mod.
• Changed the default input on controller for “copy save” to be the options button.
• Resolved issue where uninstalled mods remained in the installed list after switching tabs.
• Resolved issue where creators were unable to update installed mods in the uploaded section.

Raytracing

• Resolved Hogsmeade watermill shadow not rotating with asset.
• Resolved Raytracing reflection system resolution issues.

Stability/Performance

• Resolved performance hit when accessing library tab with a large number of mods installed.
• Resolved a hitch when hovering on character slot that has a large number of mods enabled.
• Resolved an issue where older saves using mods sometimes were unable to refresh store inventory.
• Fixed bug where Low Latency Mode would not update when Frame Generation was changed.
• Resolved FSR2 screen space reflection noise.
• Resolved various minor upscaler issues.

Miscellaneous

• Implemented support for Intel’s Low Latency (XeLL) and Frame Generation (XeFG) Technologies.
• Updated Intel’s XeSS 2 version to latest revision.
• Implemented AMD FSR3.
• Resolved SSL verification issue which prevented some players from connecting to WB Games Online Services.

KitGuru says: Are you still playing Hogwarts Legacy? Will you be trying Intel and AMD frame generation technologies?

The post Hogwarts Legacy patch adds FSR 3 and XeSS 2.0 with Frame Generation first appeared on KitGuru.

Researchers at Fudan University have developed a new non-volatile flash memory technology that could revolutionise storage. Named “PoX”, this flash memory could potentially bridge the performance gap between volatile and non-volatile memory, paving the way for advancements in data-intensive AI systems.

Traditional volatile memory solutions, such as SRAM and DRAM, offer fast write speeds (1-10 nanoseconds) but lose data when power is lost. Conversely, flash memory retains data without power but suffers from significantly slower write speeds (ranging from a few microseconds to milliseconds, depending on the technology), making it unsuitable for the real-time data processing demands of modern AI accelerators.

According to Tom's Hardware, Fudan University researchers, led by Prof. Zhou Peng of the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Chips and Systems, revolutionised flash memory physics by replacing silicon channels with two-dimensional Dirac graphene and harnessing its ballistic charge transport properties. Their key innovation lies in achieving “two-dimensional super-injection” by manipulating the “Gaussian length” of the channel, which allows for a significantly higher and faster surge of charge into the storage layer, thereby overcoming the inherent limitations of traditional injection methods.

These techniques enabled the memory to operate a single bit in 400 picoseconds (0.0000000004 seconds), which translates to roughly 25 billion operations per second. This represents a substantial improvement over the previous non-volatile memory programming speed record, which was approximately 2 million operations per second.

Flash memory's low cost and scalability have made it a cornerstone of the global semiconductor industry. However, experts believe Fudan's innovative approach, offering a “completely original mechanism”, could disrupt the existing memory landscape. In practical terms, mass-produced PoX-style memory could potentially replace separate high-speed SRAM caches in AI circuits, leading to space and energy savings. It could also enable instant-on, low-power operation for laptops and phones, as well as database engines with persistent RAM storage capabilities.

Fudan engineers are actively working to scale up the cell design for array-level demonstrations. While commercial partners have not been named, if the technology fulfils its promise while being able to be mass-produced, it shouldn't take long for companies to start developing products with PoX.

KitGuru says: Do you think we'll ever see consumer devices with PoX memory?

The post Chinese researchers develop non-volatile flash memory capable of 25 billion operations per second first appeared on KitGuru.

CD Projekt Red at one point had ambitious plans to implement a GTA Online style multiplayer mode for Cyberpunk 2077. However, due to developmental challenges, those plans were scrapped after several years. Now, it looks like CD Projekt Red is reviving its multiplayer plans for the sequel.

Project Orion, the codename for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, ramped up development in 2024 at CD Projekt Red's new studio in Boston, USA. Originally, Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to feature its own standalone multiplayer mode, and while it was eventually cancelled, CD Projekt Red executives still have high hopes that the company can push into the multiplayer market with future projects.

According to Game Rant several new job listings have appeared in recent months, seeking developers to work on the Cyberpunk sequel. The studio has been looking for a Lead Network Programmer to spearhead the development of online functionalities, and a more recent job listing for a Senior Gameplay Programmer makes mention of multiplayer as well. Unfortunately, both job listings have since been removed from CD Projekt Red's website, indicating that they've found someone for the position.

With Project Orion / Cyberpunk 2, CD Projekt Red is shifting its development over to Unreal Engine, leaving behind the RED Engine due to the challenges it presented in development. With access to more industry-wide tools and a wider pool of knowledgeable developers, multiplayer Cyberpunk may no longer be the pipe dream it once was.

KitGuru Says: CD Projekt Red is well known for its single-player expertise, but I wouldn't mind seeing a bigger push for multiplayer, just as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the single-player experience.

The post CD Projekt Red might revive multiplayer plans for Cyberpunk 2077 sequel first appeared on KitGuru.

If you have signed up to DICE's new testing platform, Battlefield Labs, then it is time to check your inbox as EA and DICE have sent out another wave of invites ahead of the next playtest. 

Battlefield Labs launched earlier this year, acting as a new testing platform for DICE to gather player feedback much earlier in the development process. Previously, DICE has held Battlefield beta tests mere weeks before launch, leaving no time for them to pivot or make substantial changes. This has led to several disastrous launch situations, as seen most recently with Battlefield 2046.

The first Battlefield Labs playtest took place earlier this year, featuring a small slice of what DICE is working on for the next major title in the Battlefield series. Another playtest is being planned for the near future. As reported by Insider Gaming, EA has now sent out another wave of invites ahead of the next playtest.

Naturally, inviting members of the public to test the game will inevitably lead to leaks. However, it is worth remembering that we have no idea when the next Battlefield game will actually release, so much of what is being tested now could be experimental and may not make it to the final game.

KitGuru Says: Have any of you signed up to Battlefield Labs? Did you get an invite in the latest wave? 

The post More Battlefield Labs invites sent out ahead of next playtest first appeared on KitGuru.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is due to launch next week according to numerous leaks. These leaks have come from Xbox Support, Bethesda.net and the Virtuos Studios website, indicating a high likelihood of accuracy. Now, the latest leak indicates that the remaster will also include Oblivion's excellent expansions. 

So far through numerous leaks and rumours, we've only heard about and seen portions of the main game. However, according to the folks at the Xbox-focused Defining Duke podcast, the remastered release will include all of the DLC from the original game, that means Horse Armor, the Shivering Isles questline and the game's major expansion, Knights of the Nine.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is a remake of the original 2006 game, featuring enhanced Unreal Engine 5 visuals, improved combat and an adjusted UI. The game is being developed by Virtuos Studios, a company well known for supporting remakes, remasters and other AAA game projects. Aside from Oblivion, the company is also working on the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 3: Delta remake.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is expected to be announced and released next week for PC and consoles.

KitGuru Says: Are you looking forward to the Oblivion remake? 

The post The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to include Knights of the Nine expansion first appeared on KitGuru.

At Star Wars Celebration this weekend, EA, Respawn Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games officially unveiled Star Wars Zero Company. This is a new tactics game, developed by Bit Reactor studios, a game studio founded by former XCOM veterans.

In Star Wars Zero Company, players will step into the shoes of Hawks, a former Republic officer, to command an elite squad of cunning operatives through a gritty and authentic story set in the twilight of the Clone Wars. As an unconventional outfit of professionals for hire hailing from across the galaxy, Zero Company must set aside their differences to overcome nearly impossible odds and take on an emerging threat that will consume the galaxy if left unchecked.

Speaking on the game, Bit Reactor CEO and creative director, Greg Foertsch, said: “Our vision for Star Wars Zero Company is grounded in gameplay design pillars that weave in the immersive Star Wars galaxy with engaging turn-based tactics gameplay. It’s our aim to deliver a game with an original Star Wars story from the Clone Wars era that has meaningful outcomes from player choices, and deep turn-based tactical combat with an approachable and cinematic presentation.”

Like in XCOM, players will be able to customise their squads by changing combat classes, changing character appearance, and mixing things up by recruiting new squad members from various factions to open up new tactical advantages on the battlefield. The game even features XCOM's famous ‘Iron Man' permadeath mode for those who want to turn every skirmish into a high-stakes affair.

Unfortunately, we are still some ways off from getting to play the game. Currently, Star Wars Zero Company is planned to launch on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2026.

KitGuru Says: I was very much looking forward to this reveal but the 2026 release window has taken the wind out of my sails a bit. What did you think of the Star Wars Zero Company reveal? Will you be picking this up next year?

The post Star Wars Zero Company isn’t coming out until 2026 first appeared on KitGuru.

A couple of weeks ago, Blizzard unveiled its 2025-2026 roadmap for Diablo 4. One of the more secretive notes on the roadmap was a new IP collaboration event. We've already seen Diablo 4 crossing over with Warcraft for a set of skins, but the next collaboration will be venturing outside of Blizzard's stable of franchises and into one of the greatest dark fantasy manga of all time. 

Blizzard has announced the Diablo x Berserk crossover. The limited time event will see a set of Berserk skins added to both Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal. A short teaser trailer gives us a sneak peek, confirming that the Barbarian class will be getting armour inspired by Berserk's main character, Guts.

Unfortunately, not much else is known right now. There will likely be a new legendary skin available for each class, just as we saw with the Warcraft crossover. The Barbarian will get Guts' Berserker armour, and his famous sword will also be added to the game. We should see skins inspired by other famous Berserk characters like Griffith, Skull Knight, Zodd and others.

There is no release date yet for the Diablo x Berserk crossover but with the trailer now live, we'd expect to see it within the next few weeks.

KitGuru Says: Crossovers can be great when done well and as a fan of both, Diablo x Berserk makes too much sense for it to not work. 

The post Diablo is getting a Berserk crossover event first appeared on KitGuru.

The KitGuru Reader Survey helps us understand what kind of products you are keen to learn more about in 2025/2026. It takes less than 5 mins to complete and it really helps us to target our editorial efforts. As a thank you to those of you who participate, we are offering the chance for you to win one of THREE brand new Sapphire RX 9070 XT graphic cards! 

This survey has been designed to be quick and easy – and it's open to everyone – whether you’re a casual reader or a hardcore enthusiast. You can enter with a click and you can choose to answer/skip any questions – it won't affect your chance of winning. You can also choose to do the survey and opt out of the prize draw.

So what can we tell you about the prizes?

Well, Sapphire has donated three of its brand-new Radeon 9070 XT graphics cards, each worth up to £800.

They are built for speed, visual fidelity and AI-enhanced performance. This latest GPU is ready to take your system to the next level – whether you’re gaming or creating.

So if you’ve got a few minutes spare and a passion for tech, please click here to start.

Share your views and you could be one of three lucky winners installing Sapphire’s latest powerhouse into your PC.

Terms and Conditions: This giveaway is open worldwide starting at 3pm on 8th April 2025. Entries must be received by 11:00AM GMT on Friday 28th April 2025. In compliance with GDPR, we will not collect or store any personal information as part of this competition. Once the winner has been contacted and their prize received, personal details will be deleted from our email servers. Your details will not be shared, we respect your privacy.

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Apple's latest 14-inch MacBook Pro equipped with an M4 Pro chip is on sale for $1,829 today at Amazon, with total discounts on the range delivering up to $493 in savings.


Pick up the standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip in Space Black at the discounted price of $1,829 at Amazon this week, a savings of $170 off MSRP. This markdown on the current model delivers the lowest online price across popular Apple resellers.

Buy for $1,829


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A new post from leaker Majin Bu shows off iPhone 17 Pro's camera bar yet again in possible case marketing material.


The new photos from Bu show the iPhone 17 Pro in marketing material for an unknown company's cases. The pictures show the elongated and long-rumored "camera bar" type design for the back, that places the cameras on the left side, while the flash and LiDAR sensor move to the opposite side.

The colors shown in the photos posted by Bu suggest case colors of off-white, light blue, light green, a light purple, and a charcoal gray. In one photo, the camera bar is shown in a dark gray, but most images show the camera bar as white — suggesting Apple will keep the color choices for the 17 Pro models themselves the same as the iPhone 16 Pro.


Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely


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Apple has highlighted how an Australian shoe company replaced its traditional point-of-sale machines with iPhones, making for a better customer experience.


Firms are regularly spotlighted by Apple in its now long-running "Apple at Work" series, which focuses on small-business use cases for various Apple technologies. The latest explores how Australian shoemaker and retailer R.M. Williams is now using iPhones for nearly every aspect of its retail business.

The Head of Technology for the company, Peter Ratcliffe, said that the switch to the iPhone has been "pivotal". "[iPhone is] revolutionizing our in-store experience, resulting in a significant increase in sales and a more personalized customer experience," he said.


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The wait is over: the podcast about the performance of a card you probably can't buy is finally here! And the best part: our MSRP is always enforced.    But also in…

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We could see haptic buttons on a future iPhone after all, as Apple's previously abandoned Bongo project has surfaced in a recent patent application.


In 2022, Apple came up with the idea of adding haptic volume and power buttons to more expensive iPhone models. Relative to the standard buttons used on the iPhone 14 range, the new haptic buttons would have incorporated a dedicated haptic engine for vibration feedback.

The change was also meant to facilitate a visual distinction between Apple's base model iPhones and the more expensive "Pro" lineup. In April 2023, the hardware was abruptly removed from the iPhone 15 Pro, and it was believed that all work on the Bongo design had ceased. Surprisingly, however, it turns out that Apple had filed a patent application for its haptic button design.


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If you decide to report a bug on a beta version of iOS, you now apparently have to let Apple use the uploaded content for Apple Intelligence training with no way to opt out.


On Monday, Apple announced its plans for a new opt-in Apple Intelligence training program. In essence, users can let Apple use content from their iPhone to train AI models. The training itself happens entirely on-device, and it incorporates a privacy-preserving method known as Differential Privacy.

Apple took measures to ensure that no private user data is transmitted for Image Playground and Genmoji training, as Differential privacy introduces artificial noise. This makes it so that individual data points cannot be tracked to their source.


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With the Taichi Lite, ASRock aims to offer a cost-optimized, RGB-less, trimmed version of the popular X870E Taichi. The result is a price that's $50 lower than the big Taichi. Is it a no-brainer if you want the same basic package, or did ASRock cut away too much?

A recent leak suggests that AMD might be using an older architecture for one of the Ryzen Z2 series APUs. The leak claims that the Ryzen Z2 A might be using the Van Gogh architecture, the same architecture found in the Steam Deck APU.

The Ryzen Z2 series already features various architectures, including Rembrandt, Hawk Point, and Strix Point. AMD is reportedly planning to add two more: the Ryzen Z2 A and the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme. The latter is understood to be an enhanced version of Strix Point, featuring an integrated NPU. The architecture of the Z2 A, however, has been a source of speculation.

Hoang Anh Phu now claims that the Ryzen Z2 A is based on the “Van Gogh” APU found in the Steam Deck. This APU features a 4-core Zen 2 CPU and an 8-CU RDNA2 GPU. This would mean that the Ryzen Z2 A, like the Ryzen Z2 G, would be an RDNA2-based APU designed for handheld devices.

Based on what has been said about this series, the Ryzen Z2 is becoming increasingly complex, with a somewhat confusing naming scheme. The current Z2 lineup already encompasses a mix of CPU architectures (Zen 2, Zen 3+, Zen 4, and Zen 5) and GPU architectures (RDNA 2, RDNA 3, and RDNA 3.5), making it difficult to determine which APUs feature specific architectures.

The first handheld devices based on the Ryzen Z2 APUs are expected to be released later this year, but to date, we are not aware of any console that will utilise the Ryzen Z2 A. However, based on the specifications we have for this APU, we guess that it will be used in entry-level consoles.

KitGuru says: Do you think it makes sense to launch an APU based on GPU and CPU architectures that are now five to six years ago?

The post Upcoming Ryzen Z2 A chip reportedly based on Van Gogh architecture first appeared on KitGuru.

The Apple Watch Series 11 will probably arrive this fall alongside the iPhone 17. Here's what the next generation of Apple's smartwatch could bring to the table.


The Apple Watch is much like the iPhone and other products in Apple's ecosystem, in that it is often the subject of rumors and speculation. With Apple's famous regularity when it comes to releases, the rumor mill expects that the Apple Watch Series 11 will be arriving in the future.

Here's what analysts and leakers believe is on the way for Apple's next-gen wearable device.


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The European Union has reportedly postponed fining Apple and Meta over alleged Digital Markets Act violations, specifically so the decision would not affect trade negotiations.


In January 2025, it was reported that the EU appeared to have put its planned rulings and fines against Apple on hold. It was partly because key EU staff were being replaced, but also because the European Commission was waiting to assess what the then-new Trump administration would do.

Subsequently, it was reported that the EU was planning to drastically reduce its fines against Apple and Meta, because of fears it Trump would impose retaliatory tariffs. Now according to the Wall Street Journal, the EU has delayed fines still further.


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The steady additions to the Apple Sports app are continuing, with a new option for users to share dynamic game cards.


Following its launch in February 2024, Apple Sports was initially considered too basic, but it has been slowing adding features. Now a new addition is intended to get users sharing Apple Sports with friends.

The new feature is called Game Card Sharing, and Apple says that fans "can now generate and share dynamic game cards across all supported leagues, whether the matchup is upcoming, live, or completed." It's a free addition to the iPhone-only Apple Sports app, which is itself free to download from the App Store.


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Weekend deals are in effect on Apple products at Amazon, as the retailer looks to start Q2 2025 off strong.


Amazon's weekend Apple sale offers discounts of up to $600 off dozens of devices. Save on Macs, iPads, Apple Watches, AirTags, and more.


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Following a federal judge ruling that Google is effectively an unlawful monopoly, the search company say that it will partially appeal.


On April 17, 2025, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google's control over advertising markets amounted to an unlawful monopoly. Google has now been reframing the ruling as a partial victory, while saying it will also file an appeal.



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It has been a few days since we covered some power supply shenanigans, which was a story that got us all fired up for a much-needed refresher on PSU purchasing strategies. Processors, graphics cards, and memory standards may come and go, but one fact remains: they all need a copious supply of clean power. Never skimp on your PSU, at the...