DF Direct Weekly: Is Intel's Rocket Lake really that bad? Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. DF Direct Weekly: Is Intel's Rocket Lake really that bad? Plus Xbox Series X performance tests, DF Supporter Q+A and much more. Blog by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry Published on 5 Apr 2021 22 comments Yes, it's a public holiday, but Digital Foundry Direct Weekly continues nonetheless! In this 91 minute episode, myself, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia tackle a number of topics, kicking off with the controversy surrounding Intel's Rocket Lake. From our perspective, it's certainly performant in games but with the Core i9 dropping two cores and the entire range debuting on a platform that will be phased out within the year, there's plenty to count against it too. Regardless, is it really as bad as the PC tech channels say it is? The discussion moves onto to a bunch of Xbox Series X performance tests - John took a look at Octopath Traveller and Samurai Shodown's 120Hz patch, while also revisiting Crash Bandicoot 4 on Xbox Series X. Is it really less performant than the PS5 version? After that, the team mourns the loss of the PS3 and PlayStation Vita digital stores and ponders Sony's commitment to its hugely important console back catalogue. Watch on YouTube Welcome to the latest Digital Foundry Direct Weekly with Rich Leadbetter, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia. After a collective moan about the state of the Windows Store, we move on to our favourite part of the show, where we take questions directly from users on the Digital Foundry supporter programme. What do we expect specs-wise from PlayStation VR 2? What about Elite Dangerous' new planetary rendering technology? And if we didn't have image quality and performance metrics to consider, what would Digital Foundry video content actually consist of... and are we able to enjoy video games regardless of technical issues? These are just a few of the highlights - be sure to watch or listen for the full-fat experience! Will you support the Digital Foundry team? Digital Foundry specialises in technical analysis of gaming hardware and software, using state-of-the-art capture systems and bespoke software to show you how well games and hardware run, visualising precisely what they're capable of. In order to show you what 4K gaming actually looks like we needed to build our own platform to supply high quality 4K video for offline viewing. So we did. Our videos are multi-gigabyte files and we've chosen a high quality provider to ensure fast downloads. However, that bandwidth isn't free and so we charge a small monthly subscription fee of £4.50. We think it's a small price to pay for unlimited access to top-tier quality encodes of our content. Thank you. Support Digital Foundry Find out more about the benefits of our Patreon More Blogs Digital Foundry DF Direct Weekly: do we really need a Horizon Zero Dawn remake? Plus: path-traced Quake, PSVR2 and the new Need for Speed. 34 VR Corner 13 confirmed PSVR2 games we cannot wait to play Pleasing to the eye. 51 Digital Foundry DF Direct Weekly: Stadia is dead - so what will it take to make cloud gaming a success? Plus: Intel's Arc GPUs arriving soon at a price that's right. 12 Support Eurogamer and get your first month for £1 Quid's in. 101 Latest Articles Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. Google announces cloud gaming Chromebooks less than a fortnight after Stadia shutdown GeForce Now preinstalled. 4 Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Genshin Impact Path of Gleaming Jade dates, login event rewards Including other anniversary rewards and how to claim them. Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store