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DF Direct Weekly #249 Is Now Available (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-31 15:59:50
Edited:
2026-02-03 18:08:58
Imported:
2026-01

Content

A bit of a quiet week, where even the launch of the new CPU gaming champion doesn't quite live up to the excitement of its billing. Rich talks 9850X3D, John talks 9800X3D system building, while a custom-built handheld PS4 perhaps gives us a hint of the PlayStation portable to come. John's been playing the Banjo-Kazooie decompilation project and memories are shared on the event of Duke Nukem 3D's 30th birthday. And a current-gen console upgrade for Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Sounds like a good idea!

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Files

DF Direct Weekly #249: Ryzen 9850X3D Review, Handheld PS4, Kingdom Come Deliverance Console Upgrade!

Digital Foundry is now fully independent! Join the DF Supporter Program and support the team: https://bit.ly/3jEGjvx A bit of a quiet week, where even the launch of the new CPU gaming champion doesn't quite live up to its billing. Rich talks 9850X3D, John talks 9800X3D system building, while a custom-built handheld PS4 perhaps gives us a hint of the PlayStation handheld to come. John's been playing the Banjo-Kazooie decompilation project and memories are shared on the event of Duke Nukem 3D's 30th birthday. And a current-gen console upgrade for Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Sounds like a good idea! Go here to check out DF merch! https://store.digitalfoundry.net Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe 0:00:00 Introduction 0:01:32 News 1: AMD releases chart-topping 9850X3D processor 0:19:19 News 2: Can you build an affordable PC in 2026? 0:41:58 News 3: Banjo-Kazooie recompilation released 0:52:17 News 4: Modder builds portable PS4 handheld 1:00:04 News 5: Kingdom Come: Deliverance current-gen enhancement leaks 1:08:08 News 6: Celebrating Duke Nukem 3D’s 30th anniversary 1:25:10 Supporter Q1: Why doesn’t AMD release an RDNA 4 based SoC for handhelds? 1:30:48 Supporter Q2: Why might Rockstar delay a physical GTA 6 release? 1:36:56 Supporter Q3: If PS6 is delayed to 2029, will Sony improve the hardware? 1:43:21 Supporter Q4: Will cross-gen PS5/6 titles run at 30fps on PS5? 1:49:59 Supporter Q5: What are your expectations for Nvidia’s 6000 series GPUs?

Comments

Perfect_Organism

Rich your pulled it out the bag to fill the two hours on a slow week.

Jeff Messer

I called off an Intel Core Ultra 265 build with an Arc B580 because the RAM and storage prices, exactly to your point of it being like a contagion for the rest of the PC industry. It's a sad state of affairs.

ConcreteLlama

Oh man this would have been the perfect week to ask a really stupid question

MattGPT

On the 9800X3D RAM slide from AMD I noticed that it does not mention resolution or settings in those games. Testers use 1080p/1440p and DLSS performance to push to for CPU limited performance but maybe AMD were using 4K FSR4 Quality/DLAA. Have they deliberately created a testing scenario to give them the figure they wanted?

Bulbous_Bow

On the PC building section, I think Hardware Unboxed relatively recently exposed that due to a CPU overhead issue Arc GPUs do not pair well with budget CPUs - I’m not sure how the performance of the particular parts you mentioned compared, but it might be worth considering when talking about budget builds in future: ironically budget Intel CPUs and budget Intel GPUs seem not to be a great match. I also felt like Radeon might have been worth a shout in the GPU chat? While 5070TIs might be better value in the UK compared to US, even here in the UK the 9070xt is almost £200 cheaper for similar performance (albeit worse but still respectable ray tracing and upscaling)… on that point, is it worth doing a review of MFG in 2026 across different Nvidia tier cards? I recall reviews at launch highlighting that it worked far better on higher tier cards than lower tier - one even giving an unflattering comparison to the 5080’s showing compared to the 5090’s. So I wonder: if someone’s looking to buy between a 5060 - 5070TI how much of a selling point is it?

Alex Ling

HEVC link is 404

Digital Foundry

Thanks Alex, this is now fixed. If you're on Discord, please @digitalfoundry and I can get to this stuff much quicker!

Digital Foundry

I kinda think a 12400F upwards would not be overly burdened by the Intel GPU overhead but it is worth looking into. I saw the same thing on a Ryzen 5 3600 but that's considerably weaker. On the subject of MFG, the 70-class video shows it running pretty well on 5070? The key is always to be looking at PCL more than frame-rate for base performance.

VintageGamerNZ

I can't wait for the absolutely huge, showstopping extravaganza that episode 250 will undoubtedly be....right?