Thue Rasmussen has announced that he will no longer be portraying Eskel in Season 2 of Netflix’s The Witcher due to scheduling conflicts caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The actor confirmed the news in an Instagram post on Wednesday, explaining to fans that he had to make the “heartbreaking” decision to exit the project after the production was rescheduled. Despite now not being involved in the next season, Rasmussen said that he was “grateful” for the days that he spent on-set prior to the shutdown.
Image credit: Instagram/thuerasmussen
At the end of the post, he thanked fans for their support and praised everyone involved in the production, calling his time on the project “a truly inspiring experience.” He also said that he was looking forward to watching Season 2 when it hits Netflix, as he’s sure it will be an “absolutely amazing” season, which he will now be watching as “a fanboy instead of as a Witcher.”
Rasmussen was originally cast to play Eskel, another Witcher from the School of the Wolf who established an early friendship with Geralt of Rivia during their time together at Kaer Morhen. For those of you who have played the video games, you’ll also know Eskel from CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. At the moment, it is unknown who will replace Rasmussen in the role.
If you want to explore the extraordinary world of The Witcher in the meantime, check out the behind-the-scenes specials Making The Witcher and A Look Inside the Episodes, both available to stream on Netflix.
The first Mafia game was one of the early pioneers of cinematic, open-world action, and an earnest Czech-made homage to Prohibition-era American crime fiction. Back then, the criminals were Italian, the cops were Irish, and the hooch was Canadian. Mafia: Definitive Edition is a captivating, reverent, and regularly gorgeous re-imagining of that highly-respected but not-so-gracefully aged 2002 original.
Its brisk pace meant it was over for me within a weekend – and there are definitely a few mission-stalling bugs and rough edges – but it’s otherwise proven to be a very enjoyable way to re-experience one of my favourite games of the early 2000s.
Set throughout the 1930s, including the final years of Prohibition, the story of Mafia unfolds in the melodramatically-named city of Lost Heaven. It’s a wonderfully-realised riff on Chicago, one of the key epicentres of organised crime during the gangster era. After a well-crafted intro that splendidly mimics the swooping tour of Lost Heaven that preceded the 2002 original, Mafia: Definitive Edition wastes little time getting down to the business of its 20 missions.
Despite the open-world backdrop, it should be noted Mafia is a largely linear, story-driven action game, and the Definitive Edition remake hasn’t changed that approach. Strictly single-player, the story will propel you from mission to mission, and Free Roam remains a separate mode. I’m certainly not advocating for any pointless filler content, and some missions have been tweaked or extended, but it is a bit of a shame that developer Hangar 13 didn’t see fit to inject a few additional story missions into the mix to take a bit of action to some otherwise unused corners of the map. For instance, it’s cool to see that Hangar 13 embraced the obvious opportunity to insert some relevant cameos into the iconic ending, which I won’t spoil here, but it’s a little naff to have what appears to be an exciting, full-blown gang war unfold in a cutscene montage when it could’ve been made playable. A few new surprise missions might’ve been particularly nice for veteran Mafia players. I understand remaining faithful to the original is an important factor of any remake, but the Mafia story definitely races through the decade at a fair clip and a ‘Director’s Cut’ inspired approach might’ve been an effective way to fill in a few gaps.
It’s fortunate, then, that the story is just as good as ever and worth revisiting. Its tale of warring crime families, booze, and betrayal treads a well-worn path, but for my money it’s the best in the Mafia trilogy. With cab driver turned mob soldier Tommy Angelo seeking to save himself from a sudden and severe bout of lead poisoning at the hands of the gang he’s turned his back on, the missions take place in flashbacks as Tommy relays the story of his rise and fall within the city’s infamous Salieri family to a detective who has been hunting him for years. Missions play out in the same order as they did back in 2002 but, while the story basically follows the events of the original, all the dialogue has been completely rewritten with new performances. The script is significantly improved as a result; it feels a lot more organic and is brimming with period authentic terms, phrases, and wiseguy banter that the original didn’t quite capture.
Leading man Andrew Bongiorno’s performance as working class mobster Tommy is an especially strong and subtle one. I wouldn’t say I ever necessarily felt sympathetic to Tommy, but there’s definitely a severity and a real potency to Bongiorno’s portrayal of him that’s compelling and believable. The repartee between Tommy and Detective Norman is particularly strong as they each bristle with mistrust and verbally wrestle for the upper hand during their unlikely conversation.
You Rascal, You
The Definitive Edition is an extremely handsome modern makeover, from the remarkably detailed faces to the superb reflections, and from the texture of a simple hat to the gleaming, handwrought appearance of metalwork on the many antique autos. There’s some impressive lighting during nighttime, also, especially the neon signs and the way brake lights struggle to pierce the evening mist. There are missteps, though: Fire is quite weak considering virtually every goon seems to be carrying a Molotov cocktail to toss at you, and there’s a peculiar but consistent visual bug where the glint of an enemy’s rifle scope will persist after they’re dead, giving their heads a bizarre, soft glow as they tumble from their perches. I’m also getting a strange ghosting effect on Xbox One, though only against certain surfaces.
The audio is consistently top-notch, however, from the bark of a Tommy gun to the chirp and screech of skinny vintage rubber. The music is strong, too, from the original score inspired by the original to the soulful sound of Louis Armstrong piping through the radio courtesy of the fresh soundtrack.
Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster
Mafia: Definitive Edition retains most of the idiosyncrasies of the original, the closest approximation of which is Classic Mode, where enemies are wilier, health kits are less effective, and even reloading your gun before it’s empty will forfeit any cartridges you have left in your magazine. The standard difficulty settings are less punishing and realistic, but you can still opt into some of these simulation-based gameplay modifiers, including Mafia’s infamous but cleverly nuanced felony system that will punish speeding and other traffic violations in a way games like GTA do not. For minor crimes you can still pull over, cop a symbolic fine – as there is no currency to collect or spend – and carry on. As a concession for gamers turned off by this traditional quirk carried over from the original, however, know that the system can be toggled to ignore minor indiscretions.
Vehicle handling can also be switched between regular and simulation, though the differences between the two don’t seem quite as stark as they do in Mafia III. Regular feels slightly lighter and more responsive – and it’s more forgiving under heavy braking, applying an ABS effect allowing you to still steer under full brakes. Simulation does not – lock up your wheels and you’re going to keep spearing forwards – but it’s easily still my preference. There’s an excellent sense of weight to the vehicles as they struggle on their tiny tyres and I love tossing them around 90-degree corners once I have some real momentum, which admittedly can take some time in cars built before World War II. Motorcycle handling is strong, too; they’re a new addition to Mafia: Definitive Edition and I’m a big fan of really backing it in on the bikes and getting that rear wheel to come loose and line up a quick corner exit. I think the driving is the best it’s ever been in the series, and I’m also a fan of the GPS-inspired directions organically inserted into the world as road signs – they take the frustration out of navigation and allow me to just enjoy hurtling through the streets at speeds that’d rip the wax out of a moustache.
In contrast, schlepping around on foot isn’t quite as airtight as the action on the road. There’s a nice sense of mass and presence to Tommy himself and his transitions from a casual stroll to a desperate sprint are smoothly handled, but the third-person cover shooting is a little unremarkable, the simple melee combat is prone to some camera jankiness, and I was stalled on a few occasions by odd bugs that would require me to manually reset to the previous checkpoint. For instance, at one stage I was chasing down an enemy who became stuck on a piece of the environment, but I couldn’t hit or shoot him because he hadn’t reached the section of the chase where we’re scripted to be allowed to do so. On another, I exited an overturned car during a police pursuit and promptly fell through the map. They weren’t major frustrations as the checkpoint system meant only a few minutes of time were lost, but they are blemishes.
Mafia: Definitive Edition places shootouts in some lovely-looking locations – from a highly-detailed art gallery to a dark, abandoned farm during a heavy storm, and from a bullet-riddled Italian restaurant to an old-timey parking garage – but it is all quite conventional. I can’t say I spotted anything that’d truly distinguish it from the last 10 years of competent third-person shooters.
Here’s some good news for fans of retro games: the SNK MVSX Arcade Machine has gone up for preorder on Amazon. It comes out November 24 and costs $499.
The arcade cabinet comes pre-loaded with 50 classic SNK games you can play without having to worry about how many tokens you have left in your pocket. The selection includes 10 King of Fighters games, eight Fatal fury games, six Metal Slug games, six Samurai Shodown games, plus a bunch more. You can find the full list of games below.
The machine’s design is based on the NEOGEO MVS arcade cabinet you may remember from the ’90s. The MVSX stands 57 inches tall (nearly five feet) and sports two full-sized control inputs for competitive or co-op gameplay. It has a 17-inch 1280×1024 LCD screen, stereo speakers, and a backlit marquee.
The top portion of the unit can be used by itself as a tabletop machine. Or you can place it on the included stand to play it while standing up.
As with many retro collections, this one has a couple of useful options for players. There’s an AES/MVS mode switch option in the settings menu that lets you choose to play the arcade and home versions of each game. You can also toggle between the standard perfect-pixel mode and a scan line mode that makes the onscreen image look like the arcade cabinets of yore.
SNK MSVX Arcade Machine Game List
The King Of Fighters ’94
The King Of Fighters ’95
The King Of Fighters ’96
The King Of Fighters ’97
The King Of Fighters ’98
The King Of Fighters ’99
The King Of Fighters 2000
The King Of Fighters 2001
The King Of Fighters 2002
The King Of Fighters 2003
Metal Slug
Metal Slug 2
Metal Slug 3
Metal Slug 4
Metal Slug 5
Metal Slug X
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Shodown II
Samurai Shodown III
Samurai Shodown IV
Samurai Shodown V
Samurai Shodown V Special
Fatal Fury
Fatal Fury 2
Fatal Fury 3
Fatal Fury Special
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2
Garou: Mark Of The Wolves
World Heroes
World Heroes 2
World Heroes 2 Jet
World Heroes Perfect
Art Of Fighting
Art Of Fighting 3
Sengoku
Sengoku 2
Sengoku 3
Savage Reign
Magician Lord
The Last Blade
The Last Blade 2
Kizuna Encounter
Shock Troopers
Super Sidekicks
Top Player’s Golf
3 Count Bout
Baseball Stars Professional
Football Frenzy
If that sounds like your kind of thing, preorder it and it’ll arrive before Thanksgiving.
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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
Tribeca Games, which operates within the yearly Tribeca Film Festival, has announced an expansion to its efforts, including a new advisory board featuring big names from both video games and film like Hideo Kojima, Jon Favreau, and more.
The Tribeca Film Festival will expand its gaming footprint with the 2021 show, including the first-ever Tribeca Games Award and the first-ever gaming Official Selections for the Tribeca Film Festival. The new advisory board includes:
The board will help shape Tribeca Games going forward, and its formation comes on the 10th anniversary of the TFF first featuring games in the festival with the inclusion of L.A. Noire as the first game to be designated as an Official Selection.
Submissions for the Tribeca Games Award are now open, with three deadlines to submit. Games eligible include games developed for “web, console, virtual reality, augmented reality and mobile devices.”
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna will be available on Digital on Sept. 29 Blu-ray on Oct. 6. It will debut in both English dub and original Japanese with English subtitles and will be available for download on iTunes, Microsoft, and Sony PlayStation Network.
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Popular animated characters have a tendency to stay ageless, but not in Digimon Adventures, a series that has long been concerned with ongoing maturity, approaching each new step in the lives of its protagonist with thoughtfulness. The series has come a long way from being (unfairly) branded a Pokémon knock-off, maintaining a distinct visual sensibility and willingness to change that sets it apart from that other franchise, which has contently remained in stasis even this year with the release of the CG remake, Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution. Digimon, to its benefit, has consistently evolved with each story arc, changing in ways that are permanent and meaningful rather than simply superficial. Characters move on with their lives, relationships change — and end. It’s all approached with a refreshing air of finality, too rarely seen in franchises as long-running and as popular as this one.
Set five years after 2015’s six-part film series Digimon Adventure tri., now taking place in 2010, Digimon Adventure: Final Evolution Kizuna finds the series’ longtime protagonist Taichi (Natsuki Hanae, returning along with the majority of the cast of Digimon Adventure tri.) as a university student, living alone with an undecided future before him. The more insular, carefree joys of childhood are long behind him, with worries about his future, his career, and his thesis consuming his focus. The rest of his “DigiDestined” friends are still working together to solve Digimon incidents and help others with their partner Digimon. With these characters now on the cusp of adulthood, the time has come for the most painful part of franchises so squarely focused on friendship like this one: accepting that things can’t always stay the same.
Tai and his friends soon discover that when they grow up, their partnership with their Digimon will end and they will be forever separated, the approaching end of this bond indicated by a countdown timer that expires quicker the more they fight together. This news all comes at a time where they’re needed to save the world once more, recruited by Digimon researcher Menoa (Mayu Matsuoka of the Palme d’Or winning Shoplifters) and her partner Kyōtarō (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s Daisuke Ono) to help stop a powerful Digimon called Eosmon, robbing other DigiDestined of their consciousness in an adventure billed as Taichi and Agumon’s last.
Directed by Tomohisa Taguchi (Persona 3 The Movie) and written by Akatsuki Yamatoya, Digimon Adventure: Final Evolution Kizuna’s attitude to such ongoing storytelling is frank and clear from the beginning, as a brief opening title card offers no exposition other than “this is not a story about the past”. It’s surprisingly measured and downbeat, immediately dispelling the idea of nostalgia and affirming how things have moved on since the series’ previous installment. Despite this, it’s still a joy to see how the older cast has both grown independently and how they coordinate, as even the more contentious relationships (read: Matt and Taichi) have softened in their long time together. It all kicks off with a thrilling kineticism, showcasing detailed and impactful action that is bound to satisfy even those who have checked out from the franchise since its earlier installments.
However, director Tomohisa never gets sidetracked by a desire to deliver bombastic, precisely storyboarded action sequences, balancing them with plenty of quiet moments of introspection and moving companionship between the characters and their Digimon partners. Despite the franchise’s long history, it’s a film that is more accessible to newcomers than one might expect, thanks to clear narrative stakes, established with impressively little verbal exposition.
The hallmarks of Mamoru Hosoda (who directed the first Digimon movie along with a number of short films) are still in play, with simple yet creative visual distinctions between the digital world and in the real world, clean red lines used to draw characters while moving about the former, sometimes flattening their coloring as the space around them changes. The space itself is depicted with abstract backgrounds and limitless potential, one digital environment appearing as a giant, crystalline floating island, surrounded by other smaller islands. There’s a comforting hesitance towards the use of 3D computer animation, which is carefully and sparingly integrated, leading to a film that feels both visually impressive, as well as cohesive.
It’s a wild sci-fi concept but one that is revealed to be grounded in a very personal struggle, one that’s depicted with immense and moving empathy as characters come face-to-face with their own pasts and the damage of clinging on. Tomohisa and Akatsuki set up the story in a way that the impact won’t be lost on new viewers, and only amplified for longtime fans of the series. There’s plenty of familiar faces and nostalgic joys to be found here, but as the film posits, such pleasures aren’t and shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of things.
Little moments involving the mundanity of everyday life like the fact that Agumon has never visited Tai’s flat, or their childlike naivety when they discover a certain kind of magazine in his room, is just as compelling as any of the spectacular and kinetic fight sequences the film delivers. The Digimon’s childlike excitability and inquisitiveness are all the more conspicuous, the film doing well to build on the idea that some relationships aren’t meant to last forever, and that even though it may be painful, such change is as necessary as it is inevitable. Final Evolution Kizuna never loses sight of its emotional through-line, as it heads towards a powerful, go-for-broke ending that gives immensely satisfying closure.
The conclusion recalls the likes of Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, as a film that trusts its audience to be able to let go, though here with a more definitive and perhaps even more heart-wrenching finality. It’s ultimately bittersweet, but the film’s embrace of change is tackled with inspiring optimism, positing that moving forward shouldn’t be treated as a loss, but as a new direction, definitively closing this chapter of Digimon Adventure while looking forward to what new things might spring from it.
Nier: Replicant ver. 1.22474487139 – an upgraded version of the 2010 Japanese RPG – will be released in Europe and North America for PS4, Xbox One and PC via Steam on April 23, 2021.
Announced during Tokyo Game Show, the… taxingly titled remaster also saw a gameplay demo, showing off combat and exploration in the game’s updated world. The game will be released in western territories with new cover art (although the Japanese boxart will be a reversible sleeve on phsyical editions).
Japan will receive a White Snow collector’s edition, including a display box, “unusually heavy” Grimoire pins, full voiceover scripts and more. It’s not clear if this edition will be released outside of Japan.
Nier Replicant was a Japan-only version of the original Nier, featuring a young version of the titular character. This new version will mark the first time that version of the game has been released in western markets, but significantly updates the original, expanding the story, world, and quests, and altering combat animations to make it more familiar to Nier Automata players.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Beyond the national refresh, which pledges to deliver a higher-definition look at “Japan’s proud buildings, nature, and culture,” multiple specific locations around the land of the rising sun will get an HQ overhaul.
Six cities – Sendai, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Tokyo, Utsunomiya, and Yokohama – will be recreated via high-resolution 3D photographic surveying. Six airports – Hachijojima south of Tokyo, Kerama and Shimojishima in Okinawa, Kushiro in Hokkaido, Suwanosejima in Kagoshima, and Nagasaki – will be upgraded with detailed models. Additional landing challenges around Japan will also be added as part of the free upgrade, as well as a “digital elevation map” of the entire country.
A highlight reel of the new upgrade in action showed planes of all sizes soaring over Japanese cities and scenic vistas alike, including a look at all the cities and airports listed above, as well as famous locations like Himeji Castle, Tokyo Skytree, and the famed “three beautiful views” of Japan: Itsukushima Shrine, Miyajima, and Amanohashidate.
Microsoft also confirmed that the Xbox Series S and Series X will launch in Japan alongside the rest of the world on November 10 with preorders in Japan starting this Friday, September 25.
Among the upcoming games “optimized for Series X/S” showcased in the presentation, the 2019 SNK fighting game Samurai Shodown (locally known as Samurai Spirits), trippy puzzler Tetris Effect: Connected, space shooter R-Type Final 2, and indie titles Bright Memory v1.0 and RPG Time: The Legend of Wright, will all be available at the Series X/S launch in Japan. Capcom’s Pragmata, a brand-new IP which debuted at the PlayStation 5 reveal event earlier this year, was also confirmed to be available from its planned 2022 launch on Xbox Series X/S.
Microsoft also announced that Project xCloud, the cloud gaming service which was added to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate last week, will be available in Japan “in the first half of 2021.” Allowing Japanese Android users to play Xbox games on their phones could be a big deal for Microsoft as the Xbox console has struggled to compete locally with Sony and Nintendo, but the Android platform is very popular in Japan.
Nvidia’s Ampere architecture is well on the way to redefining what gamers expect from high-end graphics cards. With the RTX 3080, Nvidia walked the razor’s edge, delivering outstanding 4K gaming performance for a reasonable price of only $699. Today, I’m looking at the big kahuna: the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. It’s massive graphics card inside and out with an incredible 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory. This is the cream of the crop, but is it worth $1499?
Design and Features
The RTX 3090 is a big card in every sense of the word. Pictures don’t do it justice. It dwarfs the RTX 3080 at 12.3 inches long and 5.4 inches wide, and made me question whether or not it would even fit in my case with a front mounted radiator. Thankfully, there’s about an inch of room to spare for airflow and cable management. It’s also thick, taking up a full three slots. Otherwise, it’s almost identical to the RTX 3080, save for larger fans to accommodate the bigger heatsink.
Under the hood, the RTX 3090 is a jaw dropper. It features 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X video memory clocked to 19.5Gbps on a 384-bit bus. This brings the total bandwidth up to 936GB/s. The rated out of box boost clock excels to 1.7GHz, but with Nvidia’s performance enhancing (and automatic) GPU Boost, it’s not uncommon to see it automatically overclock much higher. Our sample routinely ramped up to just over 1.9GHz, which translates to several extra frames per second of performance. As with the RTX 3080, it features the latest version of Nvidia’s three-part RTX processing system composed of the Programmable Shader (rasterization), the second generation RT Core (ray tracing), and third generation Tensor Core, which combine for massive performance potential.
TFLOPS aren’t necessarily comparable between different devices (you can’t reliably compare Xbox One TFLOPs to RTX 3090 TFLOPs, for example) but to give you an idea of the performance potential the RTX 3090 offers:
Programmable Shader: 35.6 TFLOPs (vs 30 TFLOPs on RTX 3080)
RT Core: 69 RT-TFLOPs (vs 58 RT-TFLOPs on RTX 3080)
Tensor Core: 284.7 Tensor-TFLOPs (vs 238 Tensor-TFLOPs on RTX 3080)
Of course, you shouldn’t expect your FPS to scale linearly with the increased CUDA core count. There absolutely will be an uplift if you’re coming from last generation’s 20-series, but how Nvidia has composed the second half of its CUDA expansion allows the cores to shift tasks, handling FP32 (shading) or INT32 (compute) depending on what’s needed at the time. Like the RTX 3080, how the cores are utilized and how performance scales will vary between games depending how it’s been programmed.
This level of performance brings with it a number of promises. As the top of Nvidia’s consumer stack, its product page promises “the ultimate gaming experience.” The company claims that it can both play and capture 8K HDR gameplay, a task previously unheard of. Along with that, you can connect an 8K TV and enjoy full-resolution HDR playback thanks to AV1 Decode Acceleration, which the company states is 50% more efficient than H.264. If you’re a creator, that massive frame buffer opens the door to working with 8K video files, previously a system crusher, and holding huge amounts of data in video memory. For 3D modeling, or simply work in multiple creative apps that press the GPU at the same time, a cache that large has the potential to dramatically decrease render times and increase workflow. And, of course, when you’re buying the best consumer GPU on the market, you expect the best gaming experience even under 8K, with all the bells and whistles enabled.
With all of that processing power, the RTX 3090 needs a hearty cooling solution to keep its temperatures in check and the new dual-axial cooler delivers. By all appearances, it’s the same design found on the RTX 3080 but bigger, and uses two fans to direct air both out the back of the card and into the path of the CPU to exhaust out the back of the case. Nvidia calls the 3090’s cooler a “silencer” and it’s easy to see why. The larger heatsink does an outstanding job of keeping the GPU cool, with a peak temperature in all of my testing of 71C and notably quieter acoustics than the RTX 3080. For most games, however, it would hover around 67-69C, and I could completely forget that it was even running behind my case fans. Performance increases while fan noise decreases? It’s true: Nvidia has simply nailed it with their coolers this generation.
Around the back of the card, we have three Displayport 1.4 connections and a single HDMI 2.1. Collectively, these can power up to four monitors for a maximum resolution of 7680×4320 (8K).
But enough with the background. Let’s see how it performed.
Performance
With such power under the hood, I was excited to put the RTX 3090 through its paces. Understanding that this card is uniquely positioned for gamers and creative professionals alike, I knew that I would have to expand the scope of testing beyond our current gaming and synthetic benchmarks. In addition to our current stable of tests, I also tested the 3090’s propensity for rendering tasks, video editing, and 8K gaming.
Starting with synthetic benchmarks, I ran the RTX 3090 through 3DMark’s Fire Strike Ultra test and Unigine Heaven to see how it stacked up against our larger crop of GPUs. In these tests, the RTX 3090 didn’t just lead the pack, it dominated.
With those out of the way, I loaded up 3DMark’s DLSS test. This test uses both ray tracing and DLSS upscaling to really push at the edges of what a graphics card is capable of with modern rendering technologies.
For the sake of time, I limited this testing to the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Founders Editions, as well as my RTX 2080 Ti sample, the Gigabyte AORUS Geforce RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme (which, it should be noted is factory overclocked and will run 5-6% higher than a reference 2080 Ti). At 4K, the 3080 and 3090 were neck and neck at 60+ FPS while the 2080 Ti averaged only 50 FPS. Since the RTX 3090 is marketed as an 8K gaming GPU, I also loaded that test. As a synthetic, it’s not representative of actual gameplay, but the card prevailed with DLSS enabled. The RTX 3080 was a literal slideshow and the 2080 Ti failed the 8K test within seconds.
Looking at these results, the RTX 3090 is certainly king of the hill in sheer FPS, though perhaps not by as much as I might have guessed when the card was first announced. These charts capture 1080p, 1440p and 4K. I wanted to dig a little deeper into 4K performance in particular, so I narrowed my focus to the core competitive cards. Here’s how it stacks up against it’s nearest last-gen competitor in the consumer GPU market, the RTX 2080 Ti.
The results are impressive, averaging out to a 52% speed boost compared to the RTX 2080 Ti. This is especially true considering the RTX 2080 Ti I had on hand for testing was factory overclocked. With that in mind, the 3090’s lead would be even greater (5-7% roughly) over the reference 2080 Ti than what I found in my testing.
If Ampere has done anything, though, it’s turned the price to performance expectation on its head. The RTX 3080 outperforms the 2080 Ti in many games, while also retailing for $699 compared to the latter’s $1199 or the RTX 3090’s $1499. Here’s how the RTX 3090 compares:
In this comparison, the card’s edge slims substantially, dropping to just 13%. There is still an uplift here, but for most users the 7-18% speed boost isn’t going to be worth the additional $800+ investment for 4K gaming alone for most people. Let’s look at ray tracing performance.
As I reported in my review of the RTX 3080, 4K gaming with RTX and DLSS on at 60+ FPS is a real possibility. That’s even more true here due to the all-around higher FPS the 3090 offers. That said, while some games do appear to be more efficient compared to last generation, the sample size of available games is still too small to draw any hard conclusions. In terms of efficiency, I found the greatest gains over last generation with Minecraft RTX and Shadow of the Tomb Raider while Wolfenstein, Metro Exodus, and Control all remained very close. Compared to the RTX 3080, the percentages are all very close.
With that out of the way, let’s dig into the more unique capabilities Nvidia shared with this card, beginning with 8K gaming. Like most people, I don’t have an 8K display, so the results you see below were found using Nvidia’s Dynamic Super Resolution feature. This allows the game to render at a higher resolution and then downscale it to match your display: in this case, from 8K to 4K resolution. According to Nvidia, this does lower performance by 3-5%, so native 8K figures would be slightly higher.
Even though Nvidia said it, I admit to being surprised that the RTX 3090 can actually play games at 8K. Only last generation, 4K was still a challenging target to meet. The results in the chart above were taken with each game on its highest preset (Shadow of the Tomb Raider bumped to AF16X), with RTX and DLSS enabled wherever possible. Seven of the dozen games tested performed near or higher than 60 FPS.
In other words, the RTX 3090 is fully capable of 8K gaming, but with caveats. The games that performed best fell into two camps: either esports games or those that were enhanced specifically for 8K. Other games that lacked DLSS, like Gears Tactics, or had it but weren’t designed for 8K, like Metro Exodus, fell well short of the mark. Games that are naturally less taxing, like Doom Eternal, or that have received a DLSS patch, like Wolfenstein Youngblood, are astoundingly playable.
The game selection is slim, which is to be expected with 8K still emerging into the market, but these results show the potential for 8K gaming to become a real possibility as it permeates the market. If you had told me even two months ago that we would actually be talking about gaming in 8K, with ray tracing, at playable frame rates, I wouldn’t have believed you. That Nvidia has been able to pull it off is both impressive and incredibly exciting for how far GPU tech has come. Further, it highlights that DLSS may well be the defining technology of this GPU generation, should developers continue to adopt it.
Next, I looked at rendering and this is really where the 3090 came into its own. The additional video memory is a huge asset with a meaningful impact on performance in professional 3D modeling and rendering. This was most clear in the Octane Renderer test where I completed the Three Head demo file, complete with ray tracing. Compared to the RTX 3080, the additional video memory allowed the GPU to cache the entire scene, never turning to system RAM to make up the difference. This alone dropped the rendering time from 327 seconds down to only 43. Comparing it to the 2080 Ti, we can see the impact of the additional CUDA cores and generational improvements Ampere brings, dropping the render time from 734 seconds to only 43. Twelve minutes, thirty eight seconds reduced to less than one. That’s incredible.
In the Blender test, the RTX 3090 continued to show improvements, but I applied my focus particularly on the BMW test, which is targeted specifically at GPU utilization. There, the RTX 2080 Ti rendered in 5 minutes 17 seconds what the RTX 3090 blew past in only 23. Again, mind blowing. I also spent some time testing the JunkShop render demo and was impressed at how seamlessly I could work in the live viewport even as the scene rendered in the background. The massive 24GB of GDDR6X video memory made this possible, as the RTX 3080 would crash the program under the same conditions.
Next, I swapped systems to my Ryzen 3950X PC and loaded up Adobe Premiere Pro. I put together a 4K video, 10 minutes long, with 12 animated transitions. Rendering the video resulted in only modest improvements: about 35 seconds faster than last generation. Compared to the RTX 3080, the render times were identical. This isn’t exactly surprising since video rendering also factors in most other aspects of your PC, so it isn’t GPU explicit. This was an important bench to include, however, because it illustrates that the “rendering” focus of the card isn’t referring to how quickly an editor will churn out an MP4.
That said, the RTX 3090 did offer a significantly better editing experience once I dove into a real video project. Like most video editors, when I’m cutting together footage for YouTube, I’ll hop between After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop depending on what the video requires. The memory buffer and sheer horsepower of the 3090 made that a breeze. On my 2080 Ti, I was used to slowdowns when rendering in one program that would make working in my timeline feel almost painful. That was much improved here and made the editing process feel much smoother.
The added frame buffer also opens the door to working with 8K footage. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to test this for myself, but with 24GB of GDDR6X, it makes sense that this would be a much more realistic possibility than on consumer cards of the past.
All of this leads me to a few core conclusions. First off, pricing aside, the RTX 3090 is an incredibly impressive card. It offers the best 4K performance out there, the ability to play games and watch movies at 8K in full HDR, huge improvements to 3D rendering, and smoother creative workflows. It’s also cool and quiet with a peak temperature of only 71C in all of my testing (commonly 69C or less, and notably quieter than the RTX 3080, which was already fairly quiet). This is an objectively excellent graphics card.
Understanding that, it’s clear that this card is much more of a Titan than a Ti. The 4K gaming performance is excellent, but is close enough to the RTX 3080 that the extra $800 just isn’t going to make sense for most people. Where the card comes into its own is in professional workflows: 3D rendering, video editing with multiple apps and massive files, data science… These are the high points of the RTX 3090 and help to explain why it’s more than double the price.
In that way, even calling it the “3090” is confusing. Labeling it the “ultimate” gaming GPU (while technically true), leads one to expect a bigger jump in 4K gaming performance than what’s actually here, especially with how massive the leap was from the RTX 2080 to RTX 3080. There is absolutely confusion in the market over what this card is.
So here’s the answer: The RTX 3090 is a Titan by another name, and for $1000 less than last generation’s Titan RTX ($2499). It’s a generational leap over the 2080 Ti. It is not for the average gamer. It is for the professional 3D artist, the gamer who wants only the best, and for the cutting-edge technophiles picking up 8K TVs and needing something to run them with. It’s a different class of card than the RTX 3080 entirely. When compared against its real last-generation counterpart, the Titan RTX, even the price doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
Purchasing Guide
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition is available from Nvidia with an MSRP of $1,499. Partner cards are available at retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy.
Microsoft has revealed the price of its proprietary expanded storage cards for Xbox Series X and S, which will start at $219.99 for 1TB of extra space.
As spotted by The Verge, a listing for the 1TB Game Drive for Xbox Series X and Series S appeared on Best Buy‘s website, confirming the pricing. According to the product overview, this is “the only available expansion card that replicates the Xbox Velocity Architecture – providing faster load times, richer environments, and more immersive gameplay.” As we’ve heard previously, it will only be used for next-gen games.
You can continue to use your USB 3.1+ external hard drives on Xbox Series X & run Xbox One, 360 and OG Xbox games directly from the external USB HDD. Games optimized for Xbox Series X & Velocity Architecture need to be run from the internal SSD or the Expandable Storage Drive
With the Xbox Series S sporting a slimmer 512GB SSD, the expandable drive may have been seen as a means of boosting the console’s usefulness. That may be less of an appealing option now, given that the price of the extra storage brings that console up to around $520, more than the $499 cost of the more powerful Series X console.
The Verge reports that Microsoft has said that, while this drive is currently the only one to interface correctly with Xbox Velocity architecture, other manufacturers may release their own expandable storage at a later date – that could potentially help to drive down prices.
The 1 TB Game Drive will allow players to “seamlessly” play Xbox Series X games from the drive “without sacrificing graphics, latency, load times, or framerates.” The drive has been developed in partnership with Seagate and will come with a three-year warranty.
External 3.1+ USB hard drives will also work with the consoles as standard, but players will only be able to run Xbox One, 360 and OG Xbox from the external drives. According to Microsoft spokesperson Larry Hyrb, “Games optimized for Xbox Series X & Velocity Architecture need to be run from the internal SSD or the Expandable Storage Drive.”
The Xbox Series X and S will launch on November 10, 2020 worldwide. We’ve already got our hands on an Xbox Series X, so stay tuned for more preview coverage as we approach the console’s release date.
Microsoft didn’t spend $7.5 billion on ZeniMax/Bethesda for its current pipeline alone–the company splashed out that giant fee because it believes in Bethesda’s future games. We don’t know exactly what those are, but now Xbox boss Phil Spencer has provided a tease.
In an appearance on Major Nelson’s podcast, Spencer said he knows the “future roadmap” for Bethesda’s game studios, and he believes it is an “incredibly exciting time.”
“I have the benefit of knowing the future roadmap and having some insight into the things that have been both announced and unannounced that the teams are working on,” Spencer said. “It’s an incredibly exciting time for the work that Bethesda’s studios are doing, as they continue with the craft of creating games and also thinking about how our medium of gaming continues to evolve and their role in that.”
Also in the interview, Spencer spoke about why he believes Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda was a “natural” next step in their existing relationship.
“You find teams out there that are always pushing themselves and their own capability, and I fundamentally believe that the more closely we work with teams like that, the better we are as a platform,” Spencer said.
For more on Microsoft’s blockbuster buyout of ZeniMax, check out our stories below.
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