The livestream platform Twitch is experiencing some issues, according to Twitch Support. Various features aren’t loading on the site, including streams. While the company has identified the issue, it’s still investigating it to see what’s preventing the site from loading.
🔎 We are investigating an issue causing various features on Twitch not to load. Stay tuned!
As a result of streams not loading due to these server-side issues on Twitch, many broadcasts are moving over to YouTube, bumping to next week, or sitting on waiting screens while Twitch resolves the problem. The official Twitter accounts for Gears of War, Paladins, and Smite have all announced their plans in response to the current Twitch hiccups.
This downtime comes on the heels of two notable moves on Twitch’s part: removing PogChamp’s emote due to the livestreamer’s comments on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and disabling Trump’s account because of his “incendiary rhetoric.” However, there isn’t any indication this is anything other than a standard outage from Twitch, which last experienced downtime earlier this week.
Since the launch of the RTX 30-series, I’ve been able to take a look at a wide array of cards from many of the biggest GPU manufacturers in the business. Of that line-up, one notable absence has been Zotac. That changes today. I’ve spent the last week putting the Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Amp Holo through its paces to see exactly how it holds up. Coming to market at $799, it definitely has the looks of a flagship graphics card, but does it have the performance to match?
Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Amp Holo – Design and Features
The Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Amp Holo is a gorgeous GPU. It’s clear that the designers put a lot of time into making it an eye-catching centerpiece for your gaming PC. This is largely because of the striking RGB strip and logo along its side. It’s shielded in glossy plastic, which is terrible for fingerprints, but in person makes the card look a bit fancier and higher-end than comparable cards like the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio. The backplate is also cut with a pattern of RGB stripes. Curiously, the face of the card is completely un-illuminated, so it’s a bit less impressive in a vertical orientation, but given its comparatively higher temps, it’s better to avoid this mounting style if at all possible.
Compared to the Founders Edition, the Amp Holo is large. In fact, it’s even longer than the RTX 3090 Founders Edition at 12.5 inches, but is slightly slimmer at 5.2 inches wide and a 2.5 slot width instead of the BFGPU’s triple-slot girth. You’ll want to check your case carefully, especially if you have a front mounted radiator.
That extra size is to accommodate the card’s large, triple-fan cooler. The RTX 3080 Amp Holo uses Zotac’s Icestorm 2.0 cooling system. Compared to prior generations, the fans feature more blades which increases airflow up to 10%. The finstack built around seven copper heat pipes to efficiently transfer heat from the components into the aluminum fin array. The speed of each fan can also be independently controlled.
In practice, the cooler is only so-so. In my testing in the Lian Li LanCool II chassis, the card peaked at 78C, making it the hottest RTX 3080 I’ve tested yet. Unlike many AIB cards, Zotac didn’t follow Nvidia’s lead by installing a meaningful vent into the backplate and the one that is there appears blocked by the PCB. I wanted to see how it would perform in a more air-limited scenario, so left it to run a cycling benchmark with the case fans reduced to 20%. When I returned, the card had spiked all the way to 85C and scaled the fans up to 85% speed, which sounded like a small jet engine. There is no way I would ever use this card in a vertical mount where a glass side panel might obstruct airflow, so it’s a good thing it looks best on its side. However at fan speeds below 60%, where it runs most of the time, it blended in well with my case fans, so it wasn’t overly noisy.
The Amp Holo features the same baseline specs as every RTX 3080: 8704 CUDA cores, 10 GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X VRAM, and Nvidia’s Ampere architecture which combines RT cores for ray tracing, Tensor Cores for AI operations, and Shader Cores for normal game rendering. Where the Holo takes it up a notch is with its factory overclock, which comes in at 1770 MHz, 60 MHz higher than the Founders Edition. With GPU Boost, Nvidia’s automatic overclocking behavior, I regularly found myself gaming between 1900 – 1950 MHz, even with the higher temperatures – so, even though it’s warm, it’s not enough to cause the card to throttle down.
Along with this, it includes the other highlights of RTX cards this generation, including DLSS upscaling, RTX Broadcast, and RTX Boost, as well as H.265 and AV1 encoding and decoding for streaming and media consumption. The biggest and best of these is clearly DLSS, which allows you to game at 4K with ultra settings, RTX on, with FPS closer to what you would expect at 1440p. This upscaling can have some anomalies – such as flickering decals – at lower settings, but is generally extremely good. Textures sometimes can even look more crisp than at native resolutions which is downright remarkable.
Finally, when it comes to video outputs, the card supports three DisplayPort 1.4a connections and HDMI 2.1 for a maximum resolution of 8K across four displays.
Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Amp Holo – Performance
I test every graphics card using a combination of real-world and synthetic tests. I also include a mix of ray tracing and DLSS-enabled games and benchmarks to provide a wide representation of the kind of performance you can expect across multiple games and genres. All games are set to Ultra settings and DLSS is enabled wherever possible.
Beginning with rasterization-based synthetics, the Amp Holo performed well in both 3DMark Fire Strike and Unigine Heaven. It offered a moderate lead over the Founders Edition in both tests, though the architecture powering AMD’s RX 6800 allowed that card to remain reasonably close in each test.
Zotac Gaming RTX 3080 Amp Holo – Ray Tracing Synthetics
Turning to ray tracing, I use a combination of two 3DMark tests and Surgical Scalpel’s Boundary benchmark. Again, the results are very close, with the Amp Holo besting the FE in both Port Royal and 3DMark’s Ray Tracing Performance Test. Technically, the Founders Edition outperformed the Zotac in Boundary; however, the results are so close as to be negligible.
When it comes to gaming, the Zotac Amp Holo finds itself in good company with the rest of the RTX 3080 line-up. Thanks to GPU Boost, most RTX cards, whether they’re Founders Editions or not, will offer similar levels of performance, but the card still turned in impressive results. Across every resolution, the card delivered excellent frame rates of 60 FPS or more on Ultra settings and ray tracing turned on. The only exception is Total War: Three Kingdoms which is a system crusher at Ultra settings, stopping even the RTX 3090 from topping 55 FPS in my testing.
When it comes to comparisons, the Amp Holo was faster than both the RTX 3080 Founders Edition and AMD’s RX 6800 XT. At 4K, what I consider the target resolution of this card, it averaged 3% faster than its FE counterpart. Thanks to DLSS, the cumulative average against the RX 6800 XT is a whopping 87% percent faster, but in a more fair comparison focusing squarely on rasterization, it was 8% faster. At 1440p and 1080p, the Holo was only 1% faster than the original RTX 3080. Against the RX 6800 XT (rasterization only), it was 2% faster at both 1440p and 1080p.
Mortal Kombat 11 is gruesome in all the ways we’ve come to expect from NetherRealms’ organ-shredding fighter, but what if you could witness all that viscera from a more intimate perspective? Well, stay away from me you weirdo; and also, you can!
Modder Ermaccer (via DSOgaming) has released the Custom Cameras mod on Github. It includes both first-person and third-person modes, the latter of which places the camera behind your back similar to what you might find in a third-person action game. The first-person camera is really the draw, though, letting you see your opponent straight-on.
A video shows the mod in action, and it seems to run pretty smoothly on the whole. Be sure not to use this in any competitive modes, though, because as a mod it could be determined to give you an unfair advantage.
CES 2021 is days away, but Acer has gotten ahead of the new tech announcements with one of its own. The company unveiled its May lineup of gaming monitors, including one that boasts HDMI 2.1, the technology that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S both use to output 4K and 120Hz. The Acer Nitro XV282K KV will be the company’s first HDMI 2.1 gaming monitor, and among the first to release in general, as the technology is just now being adopted by monitors.
The HDMI 2.1-capable Acer Nitro gaming monitor features a 4K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and $900 price tag. While the PS5 and Xbox Series X may be more widely used with this monitor, users who are able to snag an RTX 3000 series graphics card will also be able to make use of the HDMI 2.1 tech. And while HDMI 2.1 offers its own VRR (variable refresh rate) technology, it will also support FreeSync Premium for PC gaming with DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0 cables–though your features will be limited with the latter. Potential buyers can also expect HDR600.
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige’s Star Wars film project has taken a significant step forward. Michael Waldron, writer and executive producer of Marvel’s Loki series, has been tapped to write the screenplay according to Variety.
Waldron also wrote the upcoming Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Waldron got his start in Hollywood working for Dan Harmon on Community, eventually winning an Emmy for his work on Rick and Morty. He also co-wrote and executive producer Starz’s wrestling drama Heels.
Waldron’s deal is also expected to bring him back for season two of Loki.
Understandably, there’s still no major details about Feige’s Star Wars film, although Feige has said that he is interested in exploring “new people and new places in that universe.” Disney has played its Star Wars lineup closer to the chest than its Marvel properties, but a slate of new movies have been announced in the past year. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is slated to direct a Rogue Squadron movie covering the titular ace pilots, and a second untitled film is being directed and co-written by Thor: Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi and 1917’s Krysty Wilson-Cairns.
Call of Duty: Warzone players have been using a companion app to cheat the battle royale’s competitive matchmaking system. The creators of Warzone Companion, an app that helps players avoid cheaters by displaying K/D ratios before a game, was forced to adjust the stats it displays in pre-game lobbies. Some players were using the stats to back out of lobbies that had players with high K/D ratios.
“Cheaters are one of the worst problems of Warzone and online gaming overall,” Dmitry Shymko, the CEO of COD Stats, the company that runs the app, told Eurogamer. “We wanted to help the community and highlight those players that are having extremely high metrics in their previous matches and at the same time give an instrument for players to see that they just might die to the lucky shot.”
Yep it’s Official Warzone is Chalked This app ruins the game completely and now makes a lot of things make sense🙃 pic.twitter.com/6J5hwYKtvw
The app was designed to help players check pre-game lobbies to see if anyone had stats that are only attainable through cheating. Players ended up using the app to avoid unfavorable lobbies altogether. COD Stats issued a patch that now displays the K/D ratio information after the pre-game warmup, among other changes, earlier this week. Now the app can no longer serve its original purpose of helping players avoid Warzone’s rampant cheating problem.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘ 10.2 patch is now live on the game’s test servers. Several changes are coming with it, including in-game TVs streaming esports events, a new car, a reputation system, and an update to ranked mode.
First up for the patch is the new PGI.S (PUBG Global Invitational.S). This event pits teams from around the globe against each other in weekly tournaments. Each week these teams will fight it out for placements, and will earn prize money as the overall tournament continues. If you want to watch these skirmishes play out, you can do so in-game as PUBG will now have 10 displays set up around the Miramar and Erangel maps which will livestream the tournaments while they’re happening. There will also be an event called PGI.S Pick’em where players can earn PGI.S gear for correctly predicting tournament winners. If you don’t want to see the livestreams in your game, you can opt to turn the TVs off in your settings menu.
Now for what this patch is bringing to the regular game. A new vehicle is entering the arena, the Coupe RB. It’s a vintage two-seater sports car that can hit a top speed of 150km/h. Be warned, it only spawns on the Miramar, Sanhok, and Erangel maps.
Activision has rolled out the newest playlist updates for Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War, adding new multiplayer modes and, in Warzone’s case, removing a few as well. Additionally, wider patches for both games are now available.
Starting January 7, playlist updates for both titles will go live on Thursday. You can find what’s new in each title, as well as what’s been removed from Warzone, in the list below. Read on for the full patch notes.
In a move that is seen as the biggest removal ever in a single day, Apple has deleted some 39,000 mobile games from its Chinese app store, according to Reuters.
The mass removal comes as Apple initiated a year-end crackdown on unlicensed games by Chinese authorities. As a result, including the 39,000 pulled games, the company took down a total of 46,000 apps from the Chinese iOS app store on New Year’s Eve. As cited by Reuters, the research firm Qimai said only 74 of the top 1,500 paid games made it through the purge.
Publishers had until December 31, extended from end-of-July initially, to submit a government-issued license number allowing the use of in-app purchases in their games. The titles affected include the mobile-exclusive Assassin’s Creed Identity and NBA 2K20, according to Qimai. It’s unclear which others games have been removed from the app store.
