General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Microsoft's HoloLens Heading to the Space Station

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 09:30 PM PDT

Seemingly yanked right out of a science-fiction novel, NASA announced on Thursday that it has teamed up with Microsoft on a new project called Sidekick. This project will utilize the Redmond company's HoloLens technology to provide virtual help to the astronauts manning the International Space Station (ISS). The first two units will be shipped to the ISS by way of SpaceX at the end of the month.

Microsoft's HoloLens Has the Potential to Be Transformative

"The goal of Sidekick is to enable station crews with assistance when and where they need it," NASA said. "This new capability could reduce crew training requirements and increase the efficiency at which astronauts can work in space."

NASA explains that there are two Sidekick modes. The "Remote Expert Mode" combines with Skype and essentially allows those on the ground to see what the astronaut is doing. This will allow a ground operator to assist in a task in real-time, eliminating the need for written and voice instructions.

Sidekick also has a "Procedure Mode" that projects animated holographic illustrations in HoloLens that blankets the object the astronaut is manipulating. NASA indicated that this mode will be great for long space missions to Mars and beyond that otherwise would have delayed communications. NASA hints that this mode may record procedures to lessen the amount of training.

According to NASA, the software and hardware of the first HoloLens pair will be tested by astronauts in a standalone mode. A second pair will be shipped to the ISS in the near future and will be tested on a network and in Remote Expert Mode. NASA doesn't expect the Sidekick project to fully begin until the end of 2015.

"Our team is excited to be building virtual and mixed reality tools that will make our explorers more efficient and effective," said Jeff Norris, project lead for Sidekick and OnSight at JPL. NASA added that the first two HoloLens units have already been tested on NASA's Weightless Wonder C9 reduced gravity aircraft.

Microsoft's HoloLens is an untethered see-through holographic "computer" worn on your head. Seen only by the wearer, HoloLens projects high-definition holograms in the user's line-of-sight. The company boasts that HoloLens will "unlock all-new ways to create, communicate, work, and play."

HoloLens is expected to ship sometime around Windows 10's launch window.

Hololens Revisited

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 06:27 PM PDT

Heavy, and small FOV, but still amazing

When I tried the HoloLens when it was first unveiled five months ago at Microsoft's Windows 10 event, I was completely blown away. It had the potential to be "transformative," I wrote. Admittedly, this is in part due to the fact that I had never seen anything like it before. Now that I've had some time to digest the possibilities, I wanted to jack back into a HoloLens demo at E3 to see if the initial wow factor had worn off.

Microsoft's HoloLens Has the Potential to Be Transformative

No pictures were allowed, but this is what the headset looked like.

While I've tried Hololens before, this was the first time that I've had the chance to try out the wireless version. Microsoft wouldn't let me take any pictures of the headset, but it looks like the prototype that the company shows off in its press materials. Judging from what I saw after wearing it, I want to say the field of view seems slightly smaller than what I saw before. The FOV was never great to begin with and here I'd say it's akin to holding a 5-inch phone horizontally seven inches away from your eyes. Arguably more limiting than the horizontal FOV was the vertical view. Any holograms slightly above your brow line, for instance, will be invisible to you. If you're hoping this will get better when the headset launches, you're going to be disappointed considering Microsoft says that the FOV won't change dramatically when it officially launches. Still, what I was able to see within the limited FOV is still incredible.

At E3, I was able to try out a very brief Halo-themed demo. After getting my interpupillary distance (IPD) measured by a Microsoft representative, they placed the headset on top of my head and I was asked to look at a wall. With the HoloLens on, the wall displayed four floating circles spaced out in rectangular fashion. I was told that I would need to line these four circles at the four corners of my FOV before tightening the knob on the back of the headset to secure it in place. One issue that I kept on running into was that the headset would just constantly droop down my face towards my nose.

While I appreciate that this version of the headset is wireless, it also means that there is a whole Windows 10 computer sitting atop my head. This was noticeably heavier than the headset I tried at Microsoft's Windows 10 event, which had the headset connected to a chest pack. In general, the headset felt uncomfortable to wear and before trying this HMD on, I was initially thinking that run-and-gun laser tag games would be great with the Hololens, but I don't think I would feel comfortable running with that heavy headset flopping all over my face… A part of me wants to bring the chest pack back if it amounted to better weight distribution and more comfort.

Regardless, once I got the Hololens up and running, I was directed down a hall where I saw a Halo style waypoint floating in the air. It looked just like it did in the games, and even had a distance marker telling me how far I was from the waypoint. Once I walked through the waypoint, it directed me to look outside a "window." The window was really just a wall, but inside this fake window I could see a hanger with Halo-style aircraft. I could angle my head left and right, and it displayed seamlessly, without any lag.

I continued to follow the waypoints down a hall and it directed me to stand in front of a circular warzone briefing table. The table was lit blue and here holographic battle plans were displayed. A Spartan soldier appeared and gave us the layout of the battlefield and outlined what type of enemies and terrain we would encounter. The visuals would shift, animate, and highlight areas of interest. This battle strategy was all to set up a Halo 5 game play demo on the Xbox One right next door, but I was much more interested in the HoloLens technology. One thing that I regret not doing too much of at the initial HoloLens event is sticking my hand out in between the holograms to see if I could obstruct the view, and when I did this, the holograms would just project through my hands, making them look almost translucent. Again, there was no lag, no latency, I never felt motion sick, and the holograms projected quite boldly and brightly.

I'm still a little confused by how developers will be able to program for it, considering everyone has different living room environments, but Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda, who is one of the Hololens leads, says that Microsoft has done a lot of that work on its end, and that developers wouldn't have to worry about that. He unfortunately didn't delve into it more than that, but that at least sounds reassuring for Hololens developers.

There's still no precise release date for HoloLens yet and Microsoft is only saying that it will launch within the Windows 10 launch frame, but when I pressed Tsunoda if that meant 2015, considering Windows 10 is launching this July, he could not confirm.

While I wish the headset offered a greater FOV and was lighter, the visuals are still mystifyingly magical and there's a lot of potential here if Microsoft plays its cards right.

Microsoft CEO Outlines New Mission Statement, Wants to 'Achieve Magical Things'

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 03:58 PM PDT

It's all about empowerment

Satya Nadella

Microsoft has a new mission statement, and like the one it replaces, the overarching theme is about empowering the planet's population. However, it's not a simple rewording or reiteration of Microsoft's previous goals, but a straightforward and ambitious plan to make the world a better place.

Let's back up a moment. Before he left Microsoft to ultimately become owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Steve Ballmer laid out a corporate mission for Microsoft "to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work, and on the go, for the activities they value most." Not long after, Ballmer became a footnote in Microsoft's history, the reins having been handed over to Satya Nadella, who at the time was the Executive Vice President of the company's Cloud and Enterprise group.

Now not quite a year and a half later, Nadella has left his footprint on Microsoft with a series of moves and is ready to move forward with this new mission statement:

"Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more," Nadella stated in an internal email to employees obtained by GeekWire.

It's a rather long and at times preachy email, though the mission statement is short and to the point. And like the one before it, empowerment of the people is at the center of Microsoft's vision, though Nadella's version seems to have a more philanthropic undertone. You get the sense that Bill Gates could have just have easily wrote the email -- not the Gates from yesteryear, mind you, but the one that's now hyper focused on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

That's not to say Nadella is no longer concerned with profits -- 18,000 layoffs around this time last year suggests otherwise. But as Microsoft finds its way in what Nadella repeatedly refers to as a "mobile-first, cloud-first world," there's a desire to "do magical things," a sentiment that Nadella also repeated in his email.

Windows 10 Cortana

One of the keys to Nadella's mission statement for Microsoft is Windows 10. He points out to employees that Windows 10 is an opportunity to connect with 1.5 billion Windows customers in 190 countries.

"Certainly we want to upgrade as many of our current Windows 7 and 8.1 customers to Windows 10 as possible through our free upgrade offer. More than that, though, we see this as an opportunity to support and celebrate how people and communities upgrade their world every day," Nadella says. "To that end, starting on July 29 when Windows 10 becomes available, employees are invited to volunteer some time and upgrade their communities as part of the broader movement."

Much of what Nadella discusses in his email are things Microsoft is already doing or plan to do. That's to say there's not really much in the way of new information -- Nadella didn't drop any bombshell announcements or anything of that nature. But what's different from what we already know is Nadella's passionate desire to intertwine Microsoft's business strategy with "making a difference in lives and organizations in all corners of the planet."

By Nadella's own admission, his ambitious strategy won't be an easy one. In his email, he talked about needing to remain "insatiably curious" and being willing to take risks.

Lip service? Perhaps. Skeptics will say that even though Nadella never intended for his email to be made public, he had to know that it would be leaked to the web for the world's eyeballs to see. That's probably true, though it doesn't automatically negate or invalidate what he wrote down. 

"We are in an incredible position to seize new growth this year. We will need to innovate in new areas, execute against our plans, make some tough choices in areas where things are not working and solve hard problems in ways that drive customer value," Nadella states in the email's final paragraph. "I really do believe that we can achieve magical things when we come together as one team and focus. I'm looking forward to what we can achieve together in FY16."

Admittedly, Microsoft is up to some exciting things at the moment, like HoloLens and what seems like a renewed interest in PC gaming via Windows 10 and DirectX 12. How it all pans out is something we're eager to find out.

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Archos PC Stick Will Ship With Windows 10

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 03:34 PM PDT

Looking for a computing solution for the living room but don't want the bulk of a desktop? Look no further than the new PC Stick from Archos. Costing a mere $99, the device measures just 4.45 inches long and connects to any TV or monitor with a HDMI port. The device also includes Windows 10 right out of the box, indicating that this Archos solution may not arrive until late July.

According to Archos, customers can connect a keyboard, mouse or another input device via the PC Stick's USB port. The company also mentions that users can connect their smartphone or tablet and use it as a keyboard no matter the operating system. There's also a microUSB port presumably for powering the device.

In addition to those features, the Archos PC Stick comes packed with a dual-core Intel Atom Z3735F SoC clocked at 1.3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, a surprising 32 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for expanding the already generous storage limit. The device is also Bluetooth 4.0 "Smart Ready" and provides RF and Wi-Fi connectivity.

As a comparison, Intel's ComputeStick ships with Windows 8.1 with Bing, keeping the overall price low. The device is also powered by Intel's Z3735F chip and includes 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wireless N connectivity and a USB 2.0 port.

Based on the hardware comparison, Archos seems to be selling the same hardware configuration but with a different casing and the Archos logo stamped on the front. Heck, even Intel has its name on the device.

"Companies have constantly pushed boundaries to make computers smaller, and we've taken this challenge to the next level by offering a matchbox-sized PC for less than $100," says Loic Poirier, CEO of Archos. "Mobility is at the center of our lifestyles and the PC Stick allows us to be on-the-go and productive."

Do you really need a PC crammed into a stick? Again, this device would be a great addition to the living room if you want to surf the web, watch videos or listen to music without having to give up a chunk of space. Even more, this device would be great on business trips and for students who don't want to use a laptop or desktop.

Unfortunately, Archos doesn't provide a release date, but the device will presumably be offered on July 29 if not sometime shortly thereafter.

Newegg Daily Deals: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD, Intel Core i5 4460 CPU, and More!

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 12:35 PM PDT

Samsung 850 Pro

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ECS Denies Rumored Plans to Ditch Own Brand Motherboards

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 12:18 PM PDT

An official denial

ECS Motherboard

Don't go bidding farewell to ECS in the branded DIY motherboard business just yet. After catching wind of yesterday's rumor claiming that ECS decided to stop pushing its own brand mobos in favor of building solutions for ODM and OEM partners, company president Sunny Yang sent a letter to the press calling the rumor "untrue."

It's a poorly translated letter, so rather than post its contents verbatim, we'll summarize Yang's statement as such: "Hell no, we don't plan to quit making our own brand motherboards, what kind of fresh nonsense is that!?"

Okay, we may have taken some liberties with Yang's wording, though not with the sentiment. Yang said "ECS would never give up" on building its own brand motherboards. He acknowledged the presence of stiff competition, but said that ECS is up to the challenge. Not only that, but ECS plans to pour even more resources into cutting edge products and attending marketing events, like the recent Computex convention.

ECS has been around the PC scene for nearly three decades (since 1987). It merged with PCChips in 2005, which helped the company thrive in the entry-level sector with budget boards. ECS has also attempted to make a name for itself among overclockers and power users with higher end options from time to time, and continues to do so under its L337 Gaming series. However, many people still associate ECS with budget offerings.

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Batman: Arkham Knight PC Pulled From Steam

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 12:17 PM PDT

Batman Arkham Knight

Console fanboys are probably laughing right about now. Why? Because just two days after the general release of Batman: Arkham Knight, developer Rocksteady Studios and publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have decided to pull the PC version until further notice due to serious performance issues.

"We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC," the developer writes. "We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards. We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall."

The two companies add that they will continue to monitor all threads that are posted on the Steam forums and the official Batman: Arkham Knight forums. They also encourage disgruntled PC customers to sit back and wait for the bug issues to be ironed out. If that's too much to ask, then customers can request a full refund on Steam or from the retailer where the game was purchased.

"The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played," the update concludes.

Complaints regarding the PC version began on Tuesday and Warner (aka WB Games) quickly provided an update stating that it was aware of the performance problems. Later on, the company tossed up a list of recommended settings for hungry PC gamers wanting a fix. These settings were based on the minimum hardware specs and the recommended specs, thus PC gamers can choose from two recommended lists. Both seem to cap the framerate to 30 fps.

"It is incredibly important that users with a min spec video card with 2 GB of dedicated VRAM (or 3 GB on AMD) to keep the Texture Resolution set to Low," WB Games warned. "Increasing this to Normal will cause significant performance issues."

The company also warned PC gamers not to change anything in the game's .ini files and to stay away from Nvidia's GeForce Experience and AMD's Gaming Evolved Optimization tools. On the drivers side, customers should be using GeForce GameReady WHQL Driver version 353.30 or AMD's Catalyst 15.6 beta driver.

Over the last two days, PC gamers trying to run the latest Batman: Arkham game have suffered significant game-halting crashes, various framerates dipping into the single digits and stuttering. Nvidia is supposedly working with the developer to help clear up a number of issues that are causing the problems.

That all said, the problem with Batman: Arkham Knight is unfortunate, but keep in mind that it's not experienced by all PC gamers. Many customers are reporting that they're not experiencing any show-stopping problems whatsoever. Still, those affected by the issues are leaving bad marks in their reviews of the game, which is unfortunate.

What's also unfortunate is that these issues plaguing the new Batman game will likely play as an example of how consoles are "better" than the Windows PC platform. With consoles, developers have two hardware sets to work with (PS4 and XB1). On the PC side, they must develop a game that runs on a huge number of hardware configurations, which probably isn't an easy task.

On that note, maybe we should give Iron Galaxy Studios, the team that ported the game to Windows PC, a break?

Be Ready to Bring Your Own CPU Cooler to Intel's Skylake-S K Series Party

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 11:33 AM PDT

Playing it cool

Intel Sign

Many enthusiasts are waiting for Intel to release processors based on its forthcoming Skylake architecture before building a new system, and with good reason. Skylake is a "tock" in Intel's "tick-tock" strategy, meaning it's a major new architecture, one that will require a new socket (LGA 1151) and possibly new RAM (Skylake-S will have both DDR3 and DDR4 memory controllers). And of the things you'll need to buy, you can add a heatsink fan combination, if you're planning to roll with an unlocked K series CPU.

According to WCCFtech, all K series Skylake-S processors will ship naked. You'll have the option of purchasing a high performance air or self-contained liquid cooling solution from Intel, but they'll be sold and packaged separately.

This isn't really a bad thing. The main attraction of a K series CPU is its unlocked multiplier, which makes overclocking a bit easier. And if you're going to overclock, why mess around with a stock cooler? Third party cooling solutions are typically much better at dissipating heat than the coolers that Intel and AMD bundle with their CPUs.

The two K series Skylake-S parts on tap from Intel are the Core i7-6700K and the Core i5-6600K, both with a 95W TDP. Intel's optional coolers are both rated as capable of cooling chips with a 130W TDP, so if you choose one of those, there should be a fair amount of thermal headroom to play with overclocking.

Here are some other stats on the two K series CPUs:

  • Core i7-6700K: 4/8 cores; 4GHZ-4.2GHz; 8MB cache; DDR4-2133
  • Core i5-6600K: 4/4 cores; 3.5GHz-3.9GHz; 6MB cache; DDR4-2133

Both are built on the same 14nm manufacturing process as Broadwell, but it's a different architecture. Some highlights include support for 20 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, support for Thunderbolt 3.0, and as previously mentioned, both DDR3 and DDR4 memory controllers.

Skylake is expected to launch at Gamescom on August 5, 2015. And if you're wondering what comes after Skylake on Intel's tick-tock roadmap, it's Cannonlake (tick). It will see a die shrink to 10nm and, barring any delays, ship sometime in 2016.

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Microsoft in Talks with Samsung to 'Address the Issue' of Disabling Windows Update

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 09:47 AM PDT

Microsoft and Samsung speak out

Samsung

Samsung made headlines yesterday when it was discovered that its own software update utility that keeps drivers up to date and installs third-party programs (bloatware) was intentionally disabling Windows Update. If you thought that wouldn't sit well with Microsoft, you were right.

"Windows Update remains a critical component of our security commitment to our customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. "We do not recommend disabling or modifying Windows Update in any way as this could expose a customer to increased security risks. We are in contact with Samsung to address this issue."

After the story broke, Samsung said it was investigating the issue, though the conclusion it came to isn't one that makes a whole lot of sense.

"It is not true that we are blocking a Windows 8.1 operating system update on our computers," Samsung said in a statement to numerous media outlets. "As part of our commitment to consumer satisfaction, we are providing our users with the option to choose if and when they want to update the Windows software on their products. We take product security very seriously and we encourage any Samsung customer with product questions or concerns to contact us directly."

Samsung's statement amounts to a half-assed denial, though what's quirky about the wording is that the issue never had anything to do with blocking a Windows 8.1 OS update. Instead, it was discovered that Samsung's utility was disabling Windows Update altogether, and if users tried to change the setting, it would revert back upon the next reboot.

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AMD Fanboy vs. NVIDIA Fanboy: So Much Rage

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 02:44 AM PDT

AMD's Fury X is now out the door, and the performance benchmarks show what they show. We have a card priced the same as NVIDIA's GeForce 980 Ti. Performance is honestly good from both parties, but in the community, it all doesn't matter. Somehow, all that matters is that one person is an "AMD fanboy" and another person is an "NVidiot." Yes, that's an actual term.

Why is this? Frankly, it's just bad human nature.

I've been writing about technology for 20 years and I've never seen the community as rough as it is today. People always say that competition is good for the consumer, but it seems like the consumer these days prefers if one company is outright dead. This is never a good thing, especially when there is only really just two in one playing field. Without one company on the tails of another, improvements will stall and we'll all be on the losing end.

Make no mistake though, I'm not here to defend one company over another. But the infighting in the community is a tragic and ill situation. Not only is there more than enough fighting between PC users and Mac users, PC users fight amongst themselves too. It's really quite sad and the community tends to fall into a state of decay.

I'm a lover of technology, all technology. I use both iOS and Android devices. I use PCs and Macs, Windows, OS X, and Linux. I have a PS and an Xbox. Technology moves and I move with it. The more I know about the broad technology landscape, the better I am for it. The sort of discrimination that happens in the PC community extends to phones as well. But this torrid situation doesn't exist in just tech, it exists in all forms of human interaction and it's an unfortunate thing.

There are so many differences between us as humans, and we already have enough grief as a society. Technology is the one thing we can rally behind and be on the same boat about. 

Maximum PC has always been about technology at its root. As users of technology, we should be opened minded in our pursuit of great tech, new tech, transformative tech, and the future of tech. We should be happy that people are using different things and embracing different ideas. Use the technology that you like and whatever is suitable for what you want to do. 

So which camp do I fall into? Green, Blue or Red?

Who cares. I fall into the camp that makes the best technology.

/ Tuan

This is Windows 10's Cortana Virtual Personal Assistant

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

Microsoft's Answer to Siri and Google Now is Cortana

A look at the settings Windows 10 users can manipulate for a more useful, enjoyable Cortana experience

Wouldn't it be just grand if we could have a virtual personal assistant that took care of all of our needs, and not just keep track of scheduled appointments or weather conditions? There's no doubt that we're heading in that direction and Google, Apple, Microsoft, and even Amazon seem to be in a race to create the ultimate solution. Unfortunately for the other contenders, Microsoft has an advantage: Windows 10.

As previously reported, the operating system will be dished out to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers for free in July, and with it will be Microsoft's virtual assistant, Cortana. If allowed, this assistant will sit back and wait for the user to say its name; in turn, Cortana will provide the requested information. Yes, it's just that simple.

Cortana1

After the initial setup, the user simply places the cursor in the search field on the taskbar to pull up Cortana's main interface. This interface isn't a glowing red eye like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but rather a clean menu that includes weather, national and local news for the day, along with buttons on the left for Home, Notebook, Reminders, Places, Music, Help, Settings, and Feedback options.

If enabled during the setup process, Cortana will keep an ear open at all times. This means that anytime you simply say, "Hey, Cortana" into the microphone, "she" will respond with a small "listening" window. This window will show what you are saying to Cortana, and then expand to include your virtual assistant's response.

For instance, say, "Hey Cortana, show me the weather." These words will appear in the small window, which is essentially a visual confirmation that the message between human and AI is correct. Once the command has been accepted, Cortana will pull up the local weather and verbally dictate the current local conditions, such as temperature and cloud cover. This information can be removed by clicking the Home button.

Cortana3

The next button, the Notebook section, is rather large; this is where Cortana's settings are stored. The Notebook is broken down into five parts: Daily Routine, Music, News, Travel, and Weather. The latter weather aspect provides settings regarding the local weather, such as choosing a unit and turning on notifications for when there's a weather "incident."

Above the Weather button is the Notebook's Travel feature, which has a switch for turning on the Trip Planner. This planner will relay information regarding a scheduled trip hours before departure, such as the status of the flight, weather conditions at the destination, and more.

Next, we have the Music section of the Notebook, which doesn't control music stored on the hard drive but, when activated, will enable Cortana to provide information about concerts and shows by your favorite artists.

Moving on, the Notebook's News section enables Cortana to pull up national headlines as well as the local news, and the Daily Routine section will provide traffic conditions and suggested routes. The Daily Glance settings within the Daily Routine allow Cortana to provide a quick snapshot of what's going on in the USA, such as headlines, appointments, the weather, and so on.

Cortana Reminders

The next button on the main Cortana Settings menu is Reminders, which should be self-explanatory: have Cortana remind you of an event that can be listed by Time, Place, or Person. After Reminders is Places, where users can list their favorite destinations and retrieve turn-by-turn directions. This is followed by the Music button, which will play any song and pull up relevant information associated with it.

Finally, the Settings section provides a number of switches including one to turn off Cortana. If that does happen, Microsoft warns that everything Cortana knows on the device will be erased except the Notebook settings. Users can also change their name in the Settings menu, have Cortana learn the user's voice, and turn off Cortana's ability to listen for "Hey Cortana." Also listed under Settings is Bing SafeSearch settings, user tracking, privacy settings, and more.

Cortana2

Need a little help getting started? Cortana's Help section will do just that. This can show you how to add an appointment, create a reminder, set an alarm, listen to music, get directions, and search the Web, as well as Windows Phone. That said, you can say, "Hey Cortana, remind me to go shopping on Thursday." Cortana will ask what time. After that, this reminder will be pinned to the Reminder section. This is done verbally, of course, which is why Cortana is such a cool Windows 10 feature.

OK, so Cortana can do cool stuff like reminders and directions. Can Cortana sing? Yes. Can she tell jokes? Yes. Microsoft has seemingly gone out of its way to create an artificial intelligence that could live up to the fictitious HAL 9000's expectations. Can Cortana control a spaceship? Probably not, but she can provide you with a recipe to make tasty homemade chocolate chip cookies.

"I'm named after Cortana, a character in the Halo game series on Xbox. She's an artificial intelligence, like me," she will say when asked about her name. Cortana is also a math whiz: just relay a problem to her and she will provide the answer within the Cortana window. Ask her what's playing at the movies and she will bring up a list of flicks playing at your local theater.

Cortana joke

Now, keep in mind that this hands-on with Cortana is based on Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10130. There will likely be more changes to Cortana over the next month. Based on this build, Microsoft has a few bugs that need squishing in order to provide a smooth Cortana experience. Windows 10 required a Windows Explorer restart twice during testing for this article because Cortana couldn't respond to verbal commands or pull up the Cortana interface.

And Cortana doesn't always get your commands right… at least, not in the early days of use. Like a child, she doesn't seem to have her listening ears on at times and will state that "something's not right" and to "try again later." The movie question was actually spoken several times before we gave up and manually typed the question into Cortana's search field.

Regardless, Cortana is an awesome addition to Windows 10, and may bring customers on board the Windows 10 express who were previously afraid to upgrade to Windows 8/8.1. Despite the current flaws, we can't help but be in awe of technology that was previously only seen in movies and is now camping out on our computer screens. 

Newegg Daily Deals: MSI GS60 Ghost Pro Laptop, Dell 21.5-Inch Monitor, and More!

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 02:33 PM PDT

Msi Gs60

Top Deal:

Summer is upon us and that means taking vacations. The only thing is, how do you get your gaming fix when the evening rolls around and you're stuck with nothing to do in your hotel room? The easy solution is a gaming laptop. If you're in the market for one, check out today's top deal for an MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 15.6-inch Gaming Laptop for $1,455 with free shipping (normally $1,499 - use coupon code: [EMCATNP224]; additional $100 mail-in-rebate; Free game: Batman: Arkham Knight w/ purchase, limited offer). This thin and light laptop features a Core i7 4710HQ CPU, 12GB of RAM, 1TB HDD + 128GB SSD, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M GPU.

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Seagate Expands Backup Plus Line to 4TB, Sweetens Pots with 200GB OneDrive Storage

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:33 PM PDT

Double the backup

Seagate Backup Plus

Why choose between offline and cloud storage schemes when you can have both? That's essentially what Seagate proposes with its Backup Plus line of external USB 3.0 drive solutions, which now include 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage for free.

Seagate also announced a new 4TB option housed in a 20.5mm chassis, making it a portable solution that should be able to fit into your pocket. The drive inside is a single-platter model.

Each Backup Plus drive comes with Seagate's Dashboard software that makes plug-and-play backups a cinch. The software also allows mobile and social media backups. According to Seagate, the Backup Plus line is the first family of external drives to extend backup capabilities to include content from social networks.

The new 4GB carries an MRSP of $240 and will be available around the middle of next month. Other capacities include 500GB ($80), 1TB ($100), and 2TB ($130).

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EVGA Adds Lower Wattage Options to High End SuperNova Platinum P2 PSU Line

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 01:11 PM PDT

Go Platinum without breaking the bank

EVGA SuperNova P2

EVGA is home to some of the best power supplies in the business, particularly its SuperNova P2 series. They're all 80 Plus Platinum certified, which means they're highly efficient, and backed by a generous 10-year warranty. Good stuff, except prior to today the series only consisted of 1000W, 1200W, and 1600W options.

If you don't need that much wattage but still want the benefits of EVGA's SuperNova P2 series, you'll be happy to know that EVGA just added three more models to the mix -- 850W, 750W, and 650W.

Like their higher wattage brethren, these are all fully modular units with braided cables, single +12V rails, and high quality Japanese Nippon Chemi-Con solid state capacitors. And because they're 80 Plus Platinum certified, you can expect 92 percent efficiency (or even higher) under typical loads.

The 850W model boasts 70.8A on the +12V rail. It has a 24-pin ATX cable, two 8-pin (4+4) connectors, four 8-pin (6+2) connectors, two 6-pin connectors, ten SATA connectors, four 4-pin peripheral cables, and a single floppy connector.

EVGA's 750W model offers up to 62.4A on the +12V rail and the exact same cable connectors, while the 650W model features 54.1A on the +12V rail and the same cable set except for two 8-pin (6+2) connectors (two less than the other two models), 9 SATA connectors (one less), and six 4-pin peripheral connectors (two more).

The EVGA SuperNova P2 850W and 750W models are available now direct from EVGA for $180 and $150, respectively; the 650W will be available soon for $120.

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Microsoft MVP Calls Out Samsung for Slyly Disabling Windows Update

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 12:43 PM PDT

Shame on Samsung

Samsung Laptop

It's a given that pre-built PCs might come with bloatware installed, but one thing you don't expect third-party software to do is disable Windows Update on the down low. Yet that's exactly what Samsung is doing on some of the PCs it sells. Talk about a "WTF?" moment.

Patrick Barker, a Microsoft MVP who specializes in analysis, debugging, and reverse engineering, discovered Samsung's dubious behavior while assisting a user with a computer issue. Some sneaky program kept disabling Windows Update on the user's PC, and after some troubleshooting, Barker found the cause to be Samsung's SW Update software.

Samsung's software is an OEM updating tool that updates the system's drivers and keeps third-party utilities (bloatware) installed. 

"You can install relevant software for your computer easier and faster using SW Update. The SW Update program helps you install and update your software and driver easily," the tool's description reads.

Barker had the user audit his registry and found an entry for Disable_Windowsupdate.exe, which was found to be part of Samsung's own software tool. It's downloaded as part of a ZIP file from Samsung and is configured to load when Windows boots.

When speaking with a support rep at Samsung, Barker was told that Samsung's software always disables Windows Update, and that if a user tries to re-enable it, the software will disable it again upon reboot.

What's the point? The rep explained that Windows Update installs the default drivers for the hardware on a laptop, and that they don't always work. So to prevent that from happening, Samsung's software tool automatically disables Windows Update.

We can understand the reasoning, and perhaps Samsung's intentions are truly good and all. Still, disabling Windows Update on PCs leaves a bad taste in our mouths, the same way Lenovo's Superfish did.

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ECS May Bow Out of Branded Motherboard Business

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 09:13 AM PDT

Another one bites the dust

ECS Motherboard

The branded motherboard business isn't finished shrinking, at least not according to supply chain makers in Taiwan chirping in Digitimes' ear. They say that Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) will no longer actively market its own-brand DIY motherboards, choosing instead to focus its efforts on ODM and OEM production.

If you've ever purchased a pre-built system from an OEM builder before, you may have used an ECS board without realizing it. That's been the company's bread and butter, though it also catered to the DIY crowd with branded boards. At times ECS made a run at enthusiast buyers with high-end offerings, but for the most part, ECS is known as a budget brand.

Going forward, it's one less name you'll see in the marketplace. ECS made the decision based on shrinking global demand and increased price competition from Asus and Gigabyte, the two top dogs in the motherboard business.

According to those same sources, another motherboard maker is expected to quit selling branded boards sometime next year. They didn't mention which one, but did say that ASRock, MSI, and Biostar are facing similar situations (reduced demand) as ECS.

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AMD Radeon Fury X Review

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 04:55 AM PDT

In this corner, wearing the red shorts: Fury X

We've known about Fiji for months: AMD's latest and greatest GPU, with HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) capable of an impressive 512GB/s of memory bandwidth. Couple that with 4,096 shader units compared to the previous 2,816 in Hawaii's 290X/390X, and on paper, we can expect some impressive results. Considering the GPU clock speeds are similar, in theory, the Fury X ought to be somewhere around 35–45 percent faster than the newly released R9 390X. When we reviewed the 390X, we found that 980 Ti typically outperformed that GPU by 25 percent, which meant there was a real chance that AMD would emerge victorious and the Fury X would reign as the highest-performance desktop GPU. AMD even released some preliminary performance results, showing their new GPU besting 980 Ti and Titan X in a variety of games. AMD looked ready to cash in on enthusiasts waiting for the Next Big Thing™.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. We received a card for benchmarking… sort of. The whole of Future US, which includes Maximum PC, PC Gamer, and TechRadar, among others, received one Fury X for testing. We asked for a second, since our GPU testing is done at a different location, but to no avail. And we're not alone—eTeknix, for example, reported last week that AMD was planning to sample only ten Fury X cards to the whole of Europe, which is awfully strange for a top-tier product. We have no idea how many Fury X GPUs actually went out to press, but unfortunately, Maximum PC had to share with PC Gamer. (No worries—PC Gamer had to share 980 Ti launch hardware with us, so turnaround is fair play, right?)

Anyway, we had a small problem, since our GPU test bed is in a different state from the central office. We could have tried to overnight the card and then spend a frantic eight hours testing Fury X. In retrospect, this probably would have been best, but instead we did our best to put together a similar test bed at Future US HQ, eliciting benchmarking help from PC Gamer. The idea was to mirror our GPU test system, with parts as close to identical as possible. That didn't quite work out; here are the two test systems:

(Thanks goes to CyberpowerPC for supplying the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB)

We ended up with an i7-5960X instead of i7-5930K, 4x 8GB DDR4-2666 instead of 4 x4GB RAM, and an ASRock motherboard instead of Gigabyte. But the CPU was still overclocked to 4.2GHz, so results should be pretty close to comparable. We also checked performance with Titan X in both systems, and other than some minor discrepancies at 1080p (where things like motherboard BIOS/firmware optimizations and CPU bottlenecks may be more apparent), the scores were within a couple of percent.

[Ed—The Fury X should be on its way to our GPU test labs by the time you read this; we'll update performance as soon as we're able. We don't expect any significant changes, but should that occur, we will make note of it as needed.]

Based on specifications and initial reports, we had high hopes for the Fury X topping the charts, though there were always a few concerns—the biggest of those being the memory configuration. HBM uses a silicon interposer, sort of like a simplistic microchip of sorts, to route all the traffic from the HBM modules to the GPU. The reason the silicon interposer is required is that each HBM module has a 1,024-bit interface, which would be very difficult to route using traditional methods. The catch is that the silicon interposer has to be quite large—large enough in area for the GPU core along with the HBM modules. And Fiji is a big chip to begin with, meaning the interposer is effectively about as large as it's possible to manufacture. The net result is that while in theory it should be possible to use two to eight HBM modules, space constraints limited AMD to four modules. And since each module for HBM 1.0 is 1GB, that means 4GB total graphics memory—less than the new R9 390/390X as well as the GTX 980 Ti. If you happen to run games at settings and resolutions that exceed 4GB VRAM use, performance could suffer.

AMD Fury X/390X and Nvidia GTX 980 Ti/980 Specs
Card R9 Fury X GTX 980 Ti R9 390X GTX 980
GPU Fiji GM200 Hawaii
(Grenada) 		GM204
GCN / DX Version 1.2 DX12.1 1.1 DX12.1
Lithography 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm
Transistor Count (Billions) 8.9 8 6.2 5.2
Compute Units (SM) 64 22 44 16
Shaders 4,096 2,816 2,816 2,048
Texture Units 256 176 176 128
ROPs 64 96 64 64
Core Clock (MHz) 1,050 1,000 1,050 1,216
Memory Capacity 4GB 6GB 8GB 4GB
Memory Clock (MHz) 1,000 1,750 1,500 1,750
Bus Width (bits) 4,096 384 512 256
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) 512 336 384 224
TDP (Watts) 275 250 275 165
Price $649 $649 $429 $499

So, there's the competitive landscape at the top of the pricing stack—we've left off Titan X, though it's mostly the same as 980 Ti, only with twice the GDDR5 and 3,072 CUDA cores. AMD's R9 390X takes on the GTX 980, and performance is generally competitive even if power requirements are not. Fury X, meanwhile, is going up against the best of the best, supposedly with memory bandwidth and compute performance to spare. But we can't just trust theoretical performance and specifications; drivers and other elements can come into play. This is why we play the games, fight the fights, and run the benchmarks.

We're running the same collection of tests as in our 980 Ti review, but we're making a couple of additions. First, Grand Theft Auto V is an absolute beast to run at maximum settings. Last time we decided it would be interesting to max out everything, but it can really punish GPUs with less than 6GB VRAM. We still have those numbers, and we'll show them below, but for our averages we've turned off the Advanced Graphics settings—they're nice, and perhaps future GPUs will enable us to run with those settings maxed out at 60fps, but right now even the mighty Titan X struggles with such settings.

Second, The Witcher 3 has been accused of having a poorly optimized HairWorks code that "punishes" AMD GPUs; we'll see if that accusation holds any merit in a moment, as we've also run the game at the Ultra settings only without HairWorks. It potentially helps level the playing field, and it also improves frame rates across all hardware. Otherwise, the remaining games are run as before: Batman: Arkham Origins is maxed out with 4xMSAA but no PhysX, Hitman: Absolution runs at Ultra with 4xMSAA, Metro: Last Light maxes out all settings but leaves off SSAA and Advanced PhysX, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor uses the Ultra preset, Tomb Raider runs the Ultimate preset, and Unigine Heaven 4.0 runs at Ultra quality with Extreme tessellation.

Before we get to the benchmarks, we also need to make note of a couple of final items. First, our reference GTX 980 Ti is back at HQ as well (for a photography session, if you must know), which meant we had to test with EVGA's GTX 980 Ti SC cards. These are clocked at 1,100MHz core, compared to 1,000MHz stock, and GPU Boost can go higher still. The net result is that the EVGA 980 Ti ends up outperforming the Titan X in all of our benchmarks—the higher clock speeds are more important than 12GB VRAM, which should come as no surprise. There are plenty of factory overclocked 980 Ti cards, so it's not entirely unreasonable, but we the Fury X at least is running stock and should have some juice left for overclocking enthusiasts. (We'll report on that in a separate article, once we've had more time to test.)

Second, we didn't have time to rerun benchmarks on all of our Nvidia GPUs, but we did retest the 980 Ti with the latest 353.30 drivers, and all of our less-demanding GTAV and The Witcher 3 results use the new drivers. The reason we mention this is that, in addition to being Game Ready for Batman: Arkham Knight, we noticed a measurable increase in performance in several other titles as well, particularly Metro: Last Light. Along with the EVGA 980 Ti's overclock, the boost in performance thanks to the updated drivers is enough to consistently put the 980 Ti ahead of the stock Titan X.

Rounds one through ten: Fight!

Amd Radeon Fury X Average Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Batman Arkham Origins Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Gtav Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Hitman Absolution Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Metro Last Light Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Mordor Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Tomb Raider Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Unigine Heaven Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Witcher3 Fps

When we first heard of the Fiji chip, we were excited and hoping to see some serious competition. AMD sort of delivers, but despite internal benchmarks showing the Fury X leading across a collection of 12 games, we were unable to corroborate those results. In fact, out of our eight games, AMD only wins the matchup in Hitman: Absolution, and then only at 1440p and 4K. But no one should be plunking down $650 to game at 1080p, or at least that's our view of things, so it's a win. One out of eight ain't bad, right? It's also, quite clearly, not what we were hoping to see. Even if we subtract 10 percent from the EVGA 980 Ti results (which is the absolute maximum performance delta we would see from the overclock), at best we're looking at overall parity, but only at 4K and only with settings that won't use more than 4GB VRAM.

Performance parity wouldn't be a bad thing, as competition usually benefits consumers. There are still other factors to consider, however. Notice, for example, that in general, AMD's performance on newer titles—GTAV and Witcher 3—is farther off the pace of Nvidia's GPUs than on older titles? We ran one other game, which we're reporting separately from the above averages because the launch has been, at best, rocky. That game is Batman: Arkham Knight, and at least with the current drivers, AMD's Fury X struggles yet again. Another factor that we still can't shake is the 4GB VRAM limitation. When R9 290/290X launched as the top AMD GPUs eighteen months ago, they included 4GB VRAM and it was considered a good choice for a top-tier GPU. Now we're already starting to see games utilize more than 4GB RAM, particularly at higher-quality settings. GTAV is the poster child right now for this issue, where cranking up the advanced quality settings means it needs just under 6GB VRAM at 4K, but more importantly, it needs slightly more than 4GB VRAM even at 1080p.

Finally, for better or worse, Nvidia is doing a very good job of proselytizing their GameWorks libraries, some of which are Nvidia-specific features that won't work without an Nvidia GPU. Looking at the past nine months or so of major releases, it seems Nvidia has had more "wins" than AMD. AMD had Battlefield: Hardline, Civilization: Beyond Earth, and Dragon Age: Inquisition; Nvidia had Assassin's Creed: Unity, Dying Light, Far Cry 4, Project CARS, The Witcher 3, and most recently, Batman: Arkham Knight. There are other titles we've missed, but without reading too much into things, it does appear Nvidia is doing better of late getting developers to use GameWorks libraries. If one of your "must have" games works better on AMD hardware, that could easily sway your buying decision, and vice versa for Nvidia. And having more games using Nvidia resources will in general mean more gamers will want Nvidia hardware, right?

Rounds 11-13: TKO?

Amd Radeon Fury X Batman Arkham Knight Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Gtav Advanced Fps

Amd Radeon Fury X Witcher3 Hairworks Fps

These three games are perhaps a best-case scenario for Nvidia and a worst-case scenario for AMD. In short, they show what happens to Fury X when the wheels come off. GTAV uses too much memory at higher-quality settings, Batman: Arkham Knight is apparently in need of some patching as well as additional drivers help, and The Witcher 3 with HairWorks taxes the tessellation hardware and can experience a big hit to performance on many GPUs. (And for the record, the Fury X actually does better against the competition with HairWorks enabled, except at 4K; it also does slightly better against the competition in GTAV at maxed out settings, again with the exception of 4K.)

All of these games would benefit from updated drivers as well, no doubt. And objectively, having tested many games with GPUs from both companies over the past couple of years, Nvidia is winning the drivers wars of late.

By our count, Nvidia had ten WHQL driver releases in 2014, and has already added eight more in 2015; by contrast, AMD had four WHQL drivers in 2014, and hasn't had a new WHQL driver since Omega last December, though that will hopefully change soon, now that the 300 series and Fury X have launched. There was a time when AMD tried to release a new WHQL Catalyst driver every month, but tying the driver cycle to each month probably wasn't the best approach. Nvidia for most of the past year has been aggressively working to get Game Ready drivers out for all major game launches; it doesn't always guarantee a perfect Day 0 experience [Ed—Looking at you, Arkham Knight!], but it's better than the alternative.

Preparing for the Inevitable Rematch

There were times leading up to this heavyweight championship bout that we really thought Fury X would pull off the win. And to their credit, niggles with drivers and hardware sampling notwithstanding, Fury X gives a decent showing. But those hoping to see the "underdog" AMD pull off an upset and surpass the Titan X, never mind the identically priced GTX 980 Ti, are going to have to wait and see how things develop going forward.

We can't help but feel that there's plenty of room left to improve Fury X performance with driver updates. It has 33 percent more memory bandwidth than the already well-fed 390X, and shader computational performance should be up to 45 percent faster than the 390X. We're also not looking at situations where we're CPU limited or VRAM-capacity limited, so why then does the Fury X only average 18.5 percent faster than 390X across all of our tests? Like we said: drivers.

The Fiji architecture is the first new high-performance architecture for AMD since fall of 2013. (We don't count Tonga, as it was effectively a lateral move from Tahiti.) AMD has had plenty of time to improve their drivers on the Hawaii architecture, but Fiji changes the playing field. Not only does it sport a third more shaders, but it also has a different memory subsystem to contend with. 512GB/s of bandwidth is all well and good, but if latencies and other elements have changed compared to GDDR5—and they almost certainly have—previous "best practice" driver code from AMD may no longer be properly tuned.

It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened to AMD, either; AMD discovered more than a year after the launch of Tahiti that they had missed out on a lot of potential performance. Their "frame pacing" driver optimizations helped to improve both the smoothness of the gaming experience as well as performance in general, but even after determining there was work to be done, it was nearly a year before the second "frame pacing driver" was released to the public. Hopefully, AMD can improve Fiji performance much more quickly, and if so, they may actually come out on top—provided you don't need more than 4GB VRAM.

There is good news to be had as well. Besides providing competitive if not chart-topping performance, Fury X also uses a similar amount of power as 980 Ti in our testing. We ran tests recently to look at power requirements, and where 390X and GTX 980 offer pretty similar performance, the 390X ended up using 125W more power during gaming sessions than the 980—that's almost enough to power a second GTX 980! The Fury X, on the other hand, used 60W less power under load than the 390X, with power use falling between that of the Titan X and EVGA 980 Ti—and the overclock on the EVGA card caused it to use 20W more than the Titan X. Considering the 275W TDP, the similar real-world power use is good news.

There are other elements of the Fury X that can be good or bad, for example, the built-in CLC (Closed Loop Cooler). It's pretty awesome to see a GPU this fast packed into a 7.5-inch card, but the CLC definitely increases the overall space requirements. It's also a potential issue for anyone who might want to put together a 2-way or 3-way CrossFireX setup. Finding a spot for one radiator isn't too difficult, but two or more becomes a lot more cumbersome and necessitates a larger case. This is definitely a niche market, as $650 is more than most are willing to spend on a graphics card and $1,300 is more than many entire gaming PCs. Still, swapping between the Fury X and other GPUs definitely wasn't a highlight of the review process. AMD does have an air-cooled Fury card scheduled to launch on July 14, with a price $100 south of the Fury X, and it might be a better fit for smaller cases. We also need to check out overclocking, as the CLC should keep the GPU cool and allow users to push the Fury X far beyond the factory clocks. Stay tuned for that.

It takes grit to enter the ring against the reigning heavyweight champion, and Fury X managed to land a few solid punches in the early going. As the match progressed, however, 980 Ti proved to have more stamina and legs. This one didn't come down to a split decision, and there was little in the way of referee controversy; Fury X just wasn't quite ready for the belt. It's a product with plenty of guts, but it also has some bad habits picked up in the amateur ranks. With additional training in the form of drivers, Fury X could come back as a force to be reckoned with. The question is whether that will be in a few weeks, months, or possibly it will take so long that 980 Ti and Titan X will be replaced by even more formidable hardware. We'll be in line for tickets as soon as a rematch is announced, though we still have reservations about Fury's 4GB glass chin.

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[Ed—Final score may change pending further discussion.]

Windows 10 Start Menu: the Details

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

Start Menu

Windows 10's new Start menu, what it comes with, and how to customize it

One of the big beefs desktop consumers have with Windows 8 is the lack of a proper Start Button/Menu. Even Windows 8.1 doesn't fully return the coveted feature back to its original taskbar seat. The thinking on Microsoft's part during the Windows 8 launch was that consumers, even those on the desktop, would love the new Start Screen and Modern UI apps. Unfortunately, for many desktop customers, the Start Screen and a lack of a Start Menu were such drawbacks that they decided not to upgrade.

Windows 10 plans to change that.

For this article, we used Windows Technical Preview Build 10130. Appearance-wise, the Start Menu button appears to be a little smaller than the one in Windows 8.1. However, it resides in the same virtual place on the taskbar. The Windows 8.1 version, when clicked, pulls up the Start Screen, whereas Build 10130's Start Button brings up the new Modern UI–laced Start Menu.

Context Menu

For power users, the context menu is still in place when right-clicking the Start Button. This menu provides quick access to the task manager, the control panel, File Explorer, Search, and more. Presumably, Microsoft plans to keep the context menu in place when the final version of Windows 10 ships in July.

Despite a unified appearance, the Start Menu consists of two components: the standard Menu layout we've known for decades on the left, and a Start Screen–like panel on the right that plays host to Modern UI apps. This is the best of both worlds without one dominating the other and, quite frankly, should have been the solution for desktop users in Windows 8. Live and learn.

On the left-hand side of the Start Menu, users will see their name and image at the top. This is followed by a list of eight of the most-used apps. After that are links to File Explorer, the Settings app, Power, and an icon for All Apps. This last option is where users will click in order to pull up a full list of apps and desktop programs installed on the computer. Users can leave this list by clicking the "back" button.

On the Modern UI side, with Build 10130 the window no longer consumes the entire screen as it did in earlier builds. Instead, the Modern UI area uses far less space and plays host to a number of default Windows Store apps including Skype, Mail, Calendar, Music, Movies & TV, and more.

Pin To Start

In order to place apps on the Start Menu, just hit the Start button, click "All Apps," find the app or program, and right-click it. This brings up a context menu with "Pin to Start," "Pin to taskbar," "Uninstall," "Run as a different user," "Run as administrator," and "Open file location." For the purposes of this article, we pinned the Epic Games Launcher and a few other non-Modern UI apps to the Start Menu, and they appear as they would on the Start Screen.

Notice that you can uninstall an app or program by simply right-clicking it, which takes you to "Programs and Features" in the Control Panel; it doesn't automatically begin the uninstallation process. As previously mentioned, this area can be accessed through the context menu by right-clicking the Start Menu button.

As expected, the Start Menu can be resized by clicking on one of its edges and dragging it up, down, left, or right. That means customers who actually liked the Start Screen in Windows 8/8.1 can continue to have that experience to some degree. The Start Menu won't cover the entire screen on desktop in high resolutions, at least not in this build.

In addition to the Start Menu, the apps can also be resized. Right-click any tile and a menu appears, with options to unpin the app from Start, pin to taskbar, uninstall, resize, and turn the live tile off. Sizes include Small, Medium, Wide, and Large. Don't want the Modern UI side of the Start Menu at all? Simply unpin all of the apps and programs from Start.

Move Tiles

As with the Start Screen, Windows 10 users will be able to move tiles around and create groups on the Start Menu. For example, suppose the user wants to group together entertainment-based apps and programs while also creating a separate group for the basic Windows 10 apps like News and Calendar. To move an app, simply click it and hold while dragging it to the desired empty spot. When making a new group, drag the tile to an empty space under the previous group, then provide a name for that group. To add apps, drag the apps into the new group.

Colors

Windows 10 Build 10130 "ships" in a default gray color. Users can change this by right-clicking the desktop and choosing "Personalize" and then "Colors." Click the desired color in the menu's palette and tick "Show color on Start, taskbar and action screen." Like the transparent look? Make sure the transparent switch is ticked as well.

Start Screen Switch

In addition to changing colors, users will also notice a "Start" section for controlling the behavior of the Start Menu. Customers who liked the Start Screen can turn it back on by flipping a switch. That said, the Start Menu is gone when the Windows key is tapped, and everything in the Modern UI aspect of the Start Menu now resides on the Start Screen. The good news is that there's no reboot necessary: simply flip the switch and you're good to go.

As with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, Windows 10 users can change the name of an installed program by right-clicking its icon and choosing "Open file location." This brings up the "Start Menu/Programs" area, which lists shortcuts and program folders. To change the icon, just right-click the shortcut and click the "Change Icon" button.

Given that this article is based on Technical Preview Build 10130, there's a good chance that some of the Start Menu features will change before Windows 10 goes retail on July 29. The platform will be a free upgrade for one year after its release for those running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

Currently, Microsoft is insisting that customers get in line for the upgrade by launching a notice in the Windows 7/8/8.1 system tray. This icon will send users to Microsoft's website, where they can register for a spot in the upgrade rollout. The icon also provides a link to more information about Windows 10.

Game Theory: The Charms of Nostalgia

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

This article was published in the January 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

The strong pull of nostalgia in games

Nostalgia is a sweet, sweet drug. It screws with our perceptions and judgment, but pays us back with a warm feeling and a sure sense that, once upon a time, things existed in an ideal state.

The power of nostalgia is that there's almost always a solid truth at the heart of the myth. In gaming, for example, design tends towards the mean. Publishers spending lots of money on an A-list game know they can hedge their bets on a success by shooting for the mushy middle rather than pushing into new territory. Thus, once-complex tactical shooters like those found in the Tom Clancy series lose the prickly bits—the tactical planning and go-codes—that made them challenging. Strategy games get reduced to simple point-and-click affairs. Role-playing games become, essentially, first person shooters with stats and skill trees.

It's this last change that has hurt the most. I logged over 100 hours on Skyrim, and I think it's a rich and satisfying game. But is it really role-playing? Computer RPGs grew out of Dungeons & Dragons, and D&D was always a party-based, character-rich, stat-and-skill-driven experience.

MMOs return the party and thus the social element, but again: most modern MMORPGs are just action games with leveling.

The first game I ever wrote about was Eye of the Beholder, and through my nostalgia goggles it's The Best RPG Ever. All subsequent games, for me, are measured against it, as well as Gold Box games, Ultima, Wizardry, Dungeon Master, and Might and Magic. And by those standards, a lot of contemporary role-playing games, while offering their own pleasures, come up short.

I've been spending a lot of time with an Eye of the Beholder nostalgia act lately: Legend of Grimrock II. Like both the original LoG and Might and Magic X, it brings the grid-based, multi-character old school RPG into the 21st century.

MPC107.qs mcdonald.grab2

Legend of Grimrock II harks back to "the best RPG ever," Eye of the Beholder.

If you have no experience with the old grid-based system, in which movement is stepped rather than free, the restriction will just feel bizarre. There's a good reason for that feeling: it is bizarre. It was done at the time because they couldn't render the world freely. When Ultima Underworld came out and you could move and look anywhere, it was like the clouds parted and the angels sang. It was wonderful. And yet… in the 20-plus years since, I've always thought fondly of Beholder, and Grimrock returns that warm feeling, all nicely packaged for my 46-year-old frame.

There is no earthly reason for an RPG in 2014 to tie movement to a grid. It works like haiku or genre fiction or a sonata, using certain restrictions of form and style to create a particular kind of art that embraces its rules and limitations. In doing so, it shows us that we don't always need to seek out realism in our game worlds. Sometimes, artificiality has its own charms.

Thomas L. McDonald is editor-at-large of Games Magazine.

Time Warner Smacked With Net Neutrality Complaint

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 02:53 PM PDT

Time Warner Cable has been hit with an informal net neutrality complaint

Broadband provider Time Warner Cable was hit with an informal net neutrality complaint on Monday that claims the company is violating the FCC's "no paid prioritization" and "no throttling" rules. The complaint was filed by streaming company Commercial Network Services (CNS) and essentially insists that Time Warner is forcing the company to use the highly populated traffic routes unless it wants to pay for low-latency connections.

"By refusing to accept the freely available direct route to the edge-provider of the consumers' choosing, TWC is unnecessarily increasing latency and congestion between the consumer and the edge provider by instead sending traffic through higher latency and routinely congested transit routes" said CNS chief executive officer Barry Bahrami. "This is a default on their promise to the BIAS (Broadband Internet Access Service) consumer to deliver to the edge and make arrangements as necessary to do that."

Bahrami states in the complaint that Time Warner Cable's setup directly degrades the quality of service on the consumer end because of the increased latency. The only way to rectify the problem is to sign a "commercial transit agreement" that requires what he calls a "ransom."

Bahrami goes on to clarify that the company doesn't want to go through Time Warner Cable, but rather is requesting peering access to the paying BIAS subscribers on the Time Warner Cable network. This will allow CNS to deliver broadband-quality content that customers are requesting and Time Warner Cable customers are paying for and expecting.

In the complaint, he lists three examples: Any2 Los Angeles, NYIIX, and Equinix NYC. "TWC has repeatedly refused to peer and instead offered 'a commercial transit arrangement that will provide you with a functionally equivalent solution,'" he said.

Time Warner Cable responded to Bahrami on Tuesday, indicating that CNS doesn't have high volumes of traffic and thus doesn't qualify for fast peering arrangements as used by a number of network operators.

"Most companies like Commercial Network Services purchase transit service from one of the many commercial operators that interconnect with Time Warner Cable, and such transit providers have ample capacity available at low, market-based rates. TWC also offers comparable transit service at a competitive price," the company told The Register.

"TWC's interconnection practices are not only 'just and reasonable' as required by the FCC, but consistent with the practices of all major ISPs and well-established industry standards," the company added. "We are confident that the FCC will reject any complaint that is premised on the notion that every edge provider around the globe is entitled to enter into a settlement-free peering arrangement."

For now, the complaint is informal, but Bahrami will make it official if the problem isn't settled. As the Washington Post points out, the FCC may discover that Time Warner Cable isn't in the wrong here. The rules seemingly only pertain to the connection between the consumer and the Internet Service Provider, and not the area of the Internet that's causing so much drama between Time Warner Cable and CNS.

Verizon Finishes Acquiring AOL

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 01:00 PM PDT

12aol

It's official: Verizon and AOL are now one.

Back in May, Verizon Communications announced that it planned to purchase New York-based AOL Inc. for $50 per outstanding share in cash, valuing the latter company at around $4.4 billion. Verizon then confirmed on Tuesday that it is indeed making AOL a wholly owned subsidiary.

According to Verizon, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will continue to lead the AOL branch after the acquisition deal closes. He will report to Marni Walden, Verizon executive vice president and president of Product Innovation and New Businesses. The President of Verizon Digital Media Services, Bob Toohey, will report to Armstrong.

"Verizon's acquisition further drives its LTE wireless video and OTT (over-the-top video) strategy," Verizon said back in May. "The agreement will also support and connect to Verizon's IoT (Internet of Things) platforms, creating a growth platform from wireless to IoT for consumers and businesses."

Verizon will now have direct access to AOL's brands including Engadget, TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, AOL.com and AOL's OTT original video content. The company will also inherit the 200 million monthly customers who subscribe to AOL's premium brands, Verizon said.

"AOL is at the center of disruption of how content is being produced, distributed, consumed and monetized by connecting publishers with advertisers on its global, programmatic content and advertising platforms," Verizon added. "AOL's opportunity lies in shaping the future of the digitally connected world for decades to come."

AOL merged with Time Warner back in 2000 while the former Internet-based company was still America's number-one Internet platform. In 2009, AOL was spun off and began purchasing media properties such as TechCrunch (2010) and the Huffington Post (2011). By 2013, the company had begun sinking its dollars into video products such as Adap.tv and HuffPost Live.

In a report by the Huffington Post, HuffPost president and EIC Arianna Huffington was said to have signed a new contract that will keep her in the company for the next four years. She indicated to her staff in an email that HuffPost is in a stronger position now thanks to the acquisition, and that HuffPost can build on its core mission.

TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that all AOL employees will receive a Verizon tablet as a welcome gift. That said, it's probably safe to say that AOL's media sites won't be yanked offline or spun off at this time.

"Today marks a seminal moment for AOL and Verizon as we become the #1 global media technology company, connecting consumers, creators, and advertisers across all screens – online and offline," AOL said in an open letter.

The acquisition deal between Verizon and AOL is expected to close sometime this summer.

Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i5-4690K CPU, PNY XLR8 16GB DDR3-1866, and More!

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 10:36 AM PDT

Intel Core i5 4690K

Top Deal:

Itching to build a new gaming PC? We don't blame you! There are lots of good games out there, and today's hardware is more capable than ever of delivering a high-end gaming experience. Looking for a place to get started? Try today's top deal for an Intel Core i5 4690K Devil's Canyon CPU for $228 with free shipping (normally $240 - use coupon code: [EMCATNP22]; Free Intel Game Bundle with purchase, limited offer). This quad-core part runs at 3.5GHz, though you may be able to go even higher if you're into overclocking.

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PNY XLR8 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1866 Desktop Memory for $90 with free shipping (normally $95 - use coupon code: [EMCATNP32])

Intel 535 Series 2.5-inch 120GB MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $60 with free shipping (normally $65 - use coupon code: [EMCATNP28])

Google Play Music Now Boasts a Free Ad-Supported Tier

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 10:26 AM PDT

Rock out without taking your wallet out

Google Play Music

Google today added a free radio tier to its Google Play Music service. It's an ad-supported option for music lovers living in the U.S. who don't want to pay the $9.99/month subscription for the full service. It's Google's hope that the free tier will entice listeners to eventually become paying subscribers.

"We hope you'll enjoy it so much that you'll consider subscribing to Google Play Music to play without ads, take your music offline, create your own playlists, and listen to any of the 30 million songs in our library on any device and as much as you'd like," Google product manager and Songza CEO Elias Roman stated in a blog post. "You'll also get ad-free, offline and background features for music videos on YouTube. And with or without a subscription, you can store and play up to 50,000 songs from your own collection for free."

The announcement comes just one week before Apple's own subscription-based streaming music service kicks off. Starting June 30, Apple Music will be available with a three-month free trial, followed by individual plans that run $9.99/month and family plans for $14.99/month.

I've been a Google Play Music subscriber almost since day one. It's still not as good as Spotify, but I stick with it because I signed up during a promotional period where the monthly fee was $7.99/month. Google Play Music is a bit feature-thin overall, though my a favorite part of the service is creating radio stations based on songs I like. It's a great way to discover music.

The free service operates similarly in that aspect—you can type in the name of a song and play a radio station that offers related tunes. Alternately, you can pick radio stations based on your mood and popular activities, such as "Brand New Music," "Driving," "Working Out," and several others.

The free service is available now on the web and will roll out to Android and iOS later this week.

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Amazon Crams Virtual Assistant into New 'Echo' Speaker

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 09:43 AM PDT

AmazonEcho

Amazon has entered the virtual personal-assistant race with Echo

Amazon announced on Tuesday the public launch of Echo, a voice-controlled speaker with a built-in virtual assistant named Alexia. The device was previously offered by invitation only, but consumers can now purchase the device from Amazon for $179.99. The device will start shipping on July 14.

Just like Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, Echo accepts verbal commands and will connect to the Internet to provide relevant information. For instance, Echo owners can get the latest traffic conditions, check the weather, and play music stored in Amazon Music simply by using a voice command. Amazon Echo can even control Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue devices, allowing users to switch on lights or adjust a thermostat without lifting a finger.

Amazon Echo features seven microphones mounted under the light ring. These microphones use beam-forming technology so that Amazon Echo can hear the user from any direction. The device also features noise cancellation so that it can receive the user's commands while performing other tasks like playing music.

"Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word," the press release explains. "When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where it leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request."

Amazon's Echo consists of a volume ring, a reflex port for enhancing the woofer's output, a 2.5-inch woofer, and a 2-inch tweeter. The device stands 9.25 inches tall, weighs 26.9 ounces, and includes a dual-band/dual-antenna Wireless N component for connecting Echo to the local network, and Bluetooth connectivity. To connect the device to the local network, customers can use the companion app (Android, iOS, Fire OS) or a web browser.

According to the product page, a number of features have been added since the Echo closed beta was launched back in November including the ability to play Audible audiobooks, connect to Google Calendar, hands-free shopping of previously-purchased items, getting traffic conditions and sports scores and schedules, and listening to Pandora.

In addition to Pandora, Amazon's device is capable of playing music from different sources such as Tunein, iHeartRadio, and more.The  Echo can also pull information from Wikipedia to answer questions, and provide "up-to-the-minute" weather and news from a handful of different services. There are also voice-controlled to-do lists, shopping lists, alarms, timers, and so on.

Amazon Echo is designed to be always on, but customers can shut off the microphones by tapping a button on the top of the device. There's also an "Action" button that wakes up the device if there's no wake word set, if it can't hear the wake word because of noise or the microphones are turned off.

For more information on how Amazon Echo works, there's an FAQ located here that explains how Amazon Echo will improve over time, how the device works, and more.

Google's 'Undo Send' Option for Gmail is Finally Official

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 09:23 AM PDT

Take a mulligan on your emails

Gmail Undo Send

Maybe you typed an angry email to your boss or noticed a typo right after hitting the Send button. Either way, if you're using Gmail and wish you never never sent that email, you can use the new Undo Send feature.

Actually, it's technically not a new feature, though it is now official. For the past six years, the Undo Send feature existed as part of Gmail Labs, a landing spot for experimental features that aren't a part of the official Gmail experience. Well, the Undo Send command has finally graduated.

To enable it, go into your Gmail's Settings (click the little gear icon in the upper-right corner and select Settings). Under the General tab, you'll see a checkbox for Enable Undo Send about halfway down the page. Check the box, then select a cancellation period from the pull-down menu—it can be 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds. When you're finished, scroll all the way down and click Save Changes.

Now when you send an email, there will be a message at the top of Gmail saying, "Your message has been sent," along with Undo and View Message options. Click Undo and Gmail will cancel the send command. You'll then have a chance to edit your email or nuke it altogether.

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Lenovo's $129 IdeaCentre Stick 300 Turns Your Display into a PC

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 08:40 AM PDT

Little stick packs a punch

Lenovo Stick

It's pretty amazing to think that a full-fledged computing experience can now be crammed into a package about the size of a USB thumb drive. There are several examples out there, including Lenovo's new IdeaCentre Stick 300, a tiny PC powered by Intel's Bay Trail-T platform.

The Stick 300 features an Intel Atom Z3735F, a 22nm quad-core part clocked at 1.33GHz to 1.83GHz and 2MB of cache. It also has 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage space, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

Lenovo's little device measures just 15mm thin. Oddly enough, it will ship with Windows 8.1 even though it won't be available until October, well after Windows 10's July 29 release date. Nevertheless, you'll be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for no cost.

Like other compute sticks of this nature, you plug it into an HDMI port on your TV or monitor. Once you add a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, you're left with inexpensive PC capable of basic computing chores and specialized tasks, such as a smart multi-media hub.

"Designed for consumer usage in the home and on-the-go, the new pocket-sized compute stick is powerful enough for entertainment and web browsing, while affordable enough for existing PC owners to justify owning a second or third mobile PC option," Lenovo says. "The ideacentre Stick 300 expands the mobile computing experience and options for savvy shoppers and is suitable for use in the home, dorm or office, while simultaneously offering portability and convenience for travelers."

Lenovo says pricing will start at $129 for the stick, possibly indicating that higher end units will be available, perhaps with more RAM or storage.

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Palmer Luckey talks Oculus Touch Controller and VR Porn [Video]

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 06:00 AM PDT

We sit down with the Oculus founder to talk VR for 14 minutes

We had an opportunity to sit down with Palmer Luckey at E3. In our 14-minute interview with him, the Oculus VR founder talked in-depth about how the newly revealed Oculus Touch motion controller works, and dove into some of the other kooky designs that the company played around with. Palmer also talked about why the Oculus Rift headset would ship with Xbox One controllers in Q1 of 2016 (instead of the company's own Oculus Touch controllers), and addressed concerns over whether this would lead to market fragmentation.

Oculus Demo

Check out our hands-on impressions of the new Oculus Touch controllers.

Palmer also confirmed that the HMD will support multiple sensors, so users could get a larger encompassing sensor area, but said that the company isn't pushing it, as to not alienate users who aren't willing or able to buy multiple sensors. While there's no specific release date for the HMD yet, Palmer did reveal that the company does have a date in mind.

Finally, Palmer also addressed whether you'll be able to run VR porn through the headset.

Fast Forward: Big-Iron Processors Preview the Future

Posted: 23 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

This article was published in the January 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

Frequently, the out-of-reach tech of today becomes mainstream a short way down the road

Although few Maximum PC readers actually build our annual Dream Machine, it's still fun to see what a no-compromise machine looks like. Sooner than you think, equally powerful PCs will be on sale at Best Buy for a few hundred bucks.

For the same reasons, high-end microprocessors are a fascinating study. Designed for modern mainframes ("enterprise servers") and gym-sized supercomputers, these specialized chips stop at nothing to deliver kickass performance. Their innovations often trickle down into mass-market processors several years later.

Two new big-iron processors are Fujitsu's SPARC64 XIfx and Oracle's SPARC M7. Both are compatible with the SPARC architecture pioneered by Sun Microsystems in the '80s. They're relics from a bygone age when Intel's x86 architecture and Microsoft Windows didn't rule the world, but they still survive, and they're still innovating. Fujitsu designs its own SPARC-compatible chips, and Oracle took over SPARC development after buying Sun in 2010.

Common folk can't buy these things. Fujitsu designed its 34-core SPARC64 XIfx for its own supercomputers, which are sold only to governments and perhaps a few rich corporations. Oracle's 32-core SPARC M7 will be more widely available in business servers, but is optimized to run Oracle's enterprise database software. Nevertheless, both chips have features that breed envy.

MPC102.feat dream1.beauty

Maximum PC's Dream Machine can't compete with Oracle's 32 cores.

Fujitsu's SPARC64 XIfx is the first processor to use Micron's Hybrid Memory Cubes. Each cube is a stack of DRAMs with a proprietary interface. The SPARC64 XIfx can link to eight of these cubes to provide up to 240GB/s of peak DRAM bandwidth. By contrast, Intel's Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition in the 2014 Dream Machine provides only 59.7GB/s, and the Dream Machine's Core i7-4790K has only 25.6GB/s. (Feeling constipated?)

Another unusual SPARC64 XIfx feature is its layout. Its 34 cores occupy two 17-core clusters, each with 16 primary cores, one "assistant core," 12MB of L2 cache, and private interfaces to four memory cubes. The assistant runs the control software, freeing the primary cores for computations. Physically, the XIfx isn't a heterogeneous processor—all 34 cores are the same—but they shoulder different duties. This goes beyond the "affinity" concept in which a program prefers to run on a particular core.

Meanwhile, Oracle's SPARC M7 sets a record by integrating more than 10 billion transistors. By comparison, the Core i7-4960X looks dwarfish with only 1.86 billion. Even when fabricated in advanced 20nm process technology, the M7 will have a huge die (700mm2, by my estimate). But it's got more than 70MB of cache and 32 cores, and each core runs eight threads. Each chip has 341GB/s of memory bandwidth using 16 channels of DDR-2667 DRAM. Not enough? M7 supports systems with up to 64 sockets—up to 2,048 cores, 4.4GB of cache, 16,384 threads, and 128TB of DRAM. Now that's a Dream Machine!

For me, the most fascinating M7 feature is real-time data integrity checking. It can supplement every 64-byte block of data with metadata that includes a version identifier. This follows the code from main memory to the caches and through the on-chip multicore network. The M7 compares each identifier with a valid reference and triggers an exception on any mismatch, helping to keep out buggy or malicious code.

High performance is expected from big iron, but security at every level is becoming equally important. And that's what I'd like to see trickle into my little iron.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

Warner Makes Curious Update to Batman: Arkham Knight Minimum Specs

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 06:46 PM PDT

Batman Arkham Knight

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced on Monday that it has "adjusted" the minimum requirements for the Windows PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight, which goes on sale tomorrow, June 23. Compared to the previous list, this "adjustment" merely adds the AMD Radeon HD 7950 GPU to the minimum hardware lineup. Here's what you'll now need to run the PC game:

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz | AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB Memory Minimum) or an AMD Radeon HD 7950 (3 GB Memory Minimum)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection required
  • Hard Drive: 45 GB available space

As a refresher, here are the recommended specs:

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required) 
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz 
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM 
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 - 3 GB Memory Recommended 
  • DirectX: Version 11 
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection 
  • Hard Drive: 55 GB available space

In addition to updating the minimum requirements, Warner also stated that it is aware of performance issues related to AMD graphics cards and is working on a fix. The post doesn't explain the cause of the problems, but the issue may have something to do with the Radeon entry in the minimum system requirements being added just one day prior to launch. Coincidence?

"We are working closely with AMD to rectify these issues as quickly as possible and will provide updates here as they become available," the company said on the WBGames forum. "We thank you for your patience in this matter."

Batman: Arkham Knight takes advantage of Nvidia's proprietary GameWorks technology. Some of the effects rendered by Nvidia's tech include interactive smoke and fog, enhanced rain and interactive paper debris that reacts to player movement and environmental conditions. Nvidia customers who want to squeeze every ounce of performance out of their GPU for Batman: Arkham Knight can download the latest drivers here.

Developed by Rocksteady Studios, Batman: Arkham Knight launches tomorrow and will be the latest installment in the Arkham series, following Batman: Arkham Asylum in 2009, Batman: Arkham City in 2011 and Batman: Arkham Origins in 2013. This latest installment takes place one year after the events in Arkham Origins.

Newegg Daily Deals: Monitors Galore Edition!

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 02:02 PM PDT

LG UltraWide

Top Deal:

Remember that feeling you got when you tried a multi-monitor setup for the first time? A single monitor configuration would never suffice again, or so we thought. That is, until we tried an UltraWide display. Talk about horizontal real estate! What would be even better is if a company would offer an UltraWide monitor with an IPS panel and AMD FreeSync support. Well, wish no more. Just check out today's top deal for an LG 29UM67P 29-Inch UltraWide IPS Monitor for $342 with free shipping (normally $380 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX25]). This fantastic display offers a 2560x1080 resolution, dual HDMI outputs, and a DisplayPort.

Other Deals:

Asus MX259H 25-inch 5ms IPS Monitor w/ Built-In Speakers for $203 with free shipping (normally $225 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX25])

Acer B276HK Black 27-inch 4K IPS LCD Monitor w/ Built-in Speakers for $495 with free shipping (normally $550 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX25])

Dell U3014 Black 30-inch 6ms IPS LCD Monitor for $927 with free shipping (normally $1030 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX25])

ViewSonic VA2037A-LED Black 20-inch LED Monitor for $90 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX25])

Nvidia Releases New GeForce Drivers Ahead of Batman: Arkham Knight Launch

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 10:07 AM PDT

Holy display drivers, Batman!

Batman Arkham Knight

Nvidia graphics card owners who pre-ordered Batman: Arkham Knight or plan on picking it up tomorrow may find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Do you download Nvidia's new Game Ready 353.30 WHQL drivers and hope everything's copacetic, or let others be the guinea pigs who try out new drivers on day one and make sure there aren't any funky issues?

If you choose to roll the dice (and for what it's worth, these are WHQL drivers, not beta), Nvidia says you'll have the best gaming experience for the new Batman title, including support for SLI and GeForce Experience one-click optimizations.

Aside from tweaking things for Batman, the 353.30 driver release adds a DirectX 9 SLI profile for Lord of Vermilion Arena. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot going on here.

Fans of the series already know that the Batman games have been one of the best showcases for Nvidia's PhysX technology, making a noticeable difference to the appearance of the game when enabled—assuming you have the requisite hardware, naturally. With Arkham Knight, there are some new additions including GameWorks enhanced rain spray and lighting shafts; these will run on any GPU, despite using Nvidia's GameWorks libraries. Other effects include PhysX turbulence and particles, used for smoke and fog, and PhysX cloth and destruction; require an Nvidia GPU. CUDA is also used for interactive debris, likewise limiting it to Nvidia graphics cards.

Batman: Arkham Knight releases tomorrow (June 23, 2015). One of the things fans of the franchise have been looking forward to is the introduction of the Batmobile as a drivable vehicle. The game takes place a year after the Joker's death from Batman: Arkham City. So far it's been getting good reviews, though they've all been for the PlayStation 4 version.

You can download Nvidia's new drivers here.

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Samsung Rolls Out a Pair of 4K Displays Supporting AMD FreeSync

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 09:37 AM PDT

Ultra high resolution display options for gamers

Samsung U28E590D

Samsung on Monday announced a couple of new 4K (UHD) monitors with AMD FreeSync support. They include the 23.6-inch U24E590D and 28-inch U28E590D. Though they both boast a 4K resolution and AMD FreeSync capabilities, there are some key differences other than just display size.

The main difference is panel type -- the smaller display uses a PLS panel while the larger model wields a cheaper TN panel. That gives the U24E590D greater viewing angles at 178 degrees for both horizontal and vertical compared to the U28E590D's 170-degree horizontal and 160-degree vertical. However, the U28E590D has a higher brightness (370 cd/m2 versus 300 cd/m2) and lower response time (1ms versus 4ms).

Ratings and size aside, both sport HDMI and DisplayPort connectors, Picture-in-Picture support, and a Game Mode that Samsung claims intensifies the visual experience by rapid response to changing colors and brightness. We'll have to reserve judgment until we see it for ourselves, though typically we find that it's best to use a monitor's normal/standard setting and tweak the visuals as appropriate.

What's of most interest here is pairing AMD's FreeSync technology with 4K resolution panels. FreeSync is AMD's open version of Nvidia's proprietary G-Sync technology, both of which purport to eliminate screen tearing and reduce things like input lag for an overall smoother gaming experience.

The U28E590D is available today for $600 MSRP and the U24E590D will be available July 26 for $400 MSRP. FreeSync is AMD's open version of Nvidia's proprietary G-Sync technology, both of which purport to eliminate screen tearing and reduce unwanted things like input lag for an overall smoother gaming experience.

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Acer Unveils a Chrome OS All-in-One with a Touchscreen Display

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 08:55 AM PDT

Do you wanna touch?

Acer Chromebase

Acer's new Chromebase DC221HQ begs two questions. The first one is, are you interested in an all-in-one desktop running Google's cloud-oriented Chrome OS? And if so, do you want touch functionality? If you answered yes to both questions, you're a prime candidate for a system like this.

There are actually two models of the Chromebase DC221HQ series -- one with touch and one without. So even if you answered yes to just the first question, there's something to look at here. For everyone else, it's just another Chrome OS machine trying to carve out a place in a world run by Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Let's assume you're interested. Both models sport a 21.5-inch Full HD 1080p display powered by Nvidia's Tegra K1 quad-core processor, 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory, and Kepler graphics. They also feature 16GB of built-in storage flanked by a microSD card slot, an HD webcam, a pair of 3W speakers, HDMI output, USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivity, and of course Chrome OS. The systems also come with USB keyboard and mouse.

The Chromebase without touch will be available this month for $330 MSRP while the touch version will debut next month for $430 MSRP.

It's an interesting product, though like Chromebooks, the likely candidates for a machine like this will probably be students. The question is, will they prefer this over a cheaper Chromebook? We'll have to wait and see.

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Bing Improves Video Search With Nifty Layout Changes

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 06:18 AM PDT

Special emphasis on music videos

Bing Update

Bing has updated its video search page, making many small but important changes to the way it serves up results. Those of you who rely on the search engine for your daily supply of feline videos may have noticed the video thumbnails are now bigger, and that each thumbnail is now accompanied by additional information like channel, upload date, and number of views.

"To make the Bing video-search experience even better, we just released a new layout that makes searching easier and faster," the company wrote in a blog post Friday. "The design changes give you the information you need to quickly pick the right videos to watch."

That's not all. When searching for a song, you'll probably see an extra large thumbnail at the top of the results page. That's the "hero", the top result for a particular search query. You can play the hero in its entirety on the results page itself or click through for the source.

Finally, related searches now appear inline with your original query. This means they are accessible even when you scroll down for more results.

Librem 13 is a High-End Laptop That Runs Free, Open Software

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 04:34 AM PDT

Built with privacy, security, and freedom in mind

Librem 13

Last year, a San Francisco-based company named Purism showed up on crowdfunding platform Crowd Supply with a promise that nearly 700 privacy-conscious people couldn't resist: a high-end laptop sans any "mystery software in the kernel, operating system, or any software applications." It ended up raising $475,000 against a funding goal of $250,000 for Librem 15, the 15-incher in question. It now wants to replicate that success on a somewhat smaller scale — er,we mean to say with a smaller laptop.

The Librem 13 is also built on the same promise as its older, bigger sibling. It runs PureOS, the firm's home-brewed flavor of Linux. According to the company, the 3-lb device will ship with a modern Intel Core i5 processor fused to run unsigned BIOS code. Other key specs include 13.3-inch FHD display, 4GB of RAM (up to 16GB), 500GB of HDD storage (up to 1TB SSD), Intel Iris graphics, 802.11n WiFi, a 720p camera, three USB 3.0 ports, one HDMI port, and a 48 Wh LiPo battery (up to 8 hours on a single charge).

The most basic variant, which will retail for $1,649, is right now available for pre-order for $1,449. And if you're worried about the possibility of your own laptop being used to spy on you, you can have your unit fitted with hardware kill switches that completely disable the laptop's Wi-Fi and camera/mic for an extra $90.

"The Librem 13 ships with PureOS, Purism's Operating System that leverages the Free Software Foundations certified freedom respecting distribution Trisquel, adding in many security and privacy protecting features, such as Privacy Badger, HTTPS-Everywhere, and strong encryption," reads the Librem 13 Crowd Supply page. "Making privacy, security, and freedom installed by default takes the difficulty out of keeping up with best practices for users."

"[The Librem 13's] bootloader, Linux kernel, GNU OS, and all software applications are completely free/libre software without any binary blobs," the company says, but concedes the BIOS does include a binary from Intel called FSP. However, Purism is apparently trying to have it freed, too.

Another day, Another Windows 8.1 HDMI Dongle

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 12:01 AM PDT

It is raining stick PCs

Splendo

It appears as though everyone is busy making a PC-on-a-stick device these days. The latest to join this list is Indian electronics company iBall, which recently announced a Windows 8.1 HDMI dongle in partnership with Microsoft.

Called Splendo, the device is set to go on sale in India next month, priced at 9,000 rupees or roughly $140. It isn't much unlike the many stick PCs that have come before it, including the $150 Intel Compute Stick that we found brimming with promise but low on performance in our review.

There's an as-yet-unknown Intel Atom quad-core chip, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, micro SDXC slot for external storage, HDMI port, USB port, and a micro USB port. For connectivity, it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. According to Microsoft, the device will ship with a keyboard and mouse.

OS Security: Windows and Linux/UNIX

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

How each OS handles security, and how to set up basic configuration on your system

Security in OSes is a fairly hot topic in our modern, connected world. We don't want unauthorized people gaining access to our systems and making our computers do terrible things. Surprisingly, OS security boils down to one simple concept: Does the user have permission to do an action? So, how does the modern OS handle granting and denying permission?

Basic Concepts

OS security is divided into three major components: memory space, accounts, and file permissions.

Memory space security involves separating programs into two levels: kernel mode and user mode. Kernel mode is where important operating system programs are run. User mode is where the rest of the programs and applications run. Kernel-mode programs usually handle the hardware-level aspects of managing the system. If a user-mode program wants to access something in kernel-mode space, it has to make a system call in order to do so. The system call will check the appropriate permissions before committing the action.

Accounts are also divided up into two levels: administrators and users. Administrators generally have permission to perform actions that affect kernel-mode applications. These include setting up an IP address for a network interface or creating a partition. Users normally can't do these actions without administrative permissions, which they usually get by entering an administrator's login or elevating the permissions level temporarily.

File permissions are attributes built into a file system that tell the OS which accounts can do what. Some file systems, like FAT32 and exFAT, don't have a permissions system. File permissions are usually implemented based on the OS they're primarily used in; other OSes that don't normally use them will not enforce them. For example, NTFS file permissions are not supported on Linux because Linux doesn't normally use NTFS.

As administrator accounts have permission to do many things, a lot of attacks and exploits on computers essentially boil down to getting that access. Once an attacker has it, they are free to do anything.

Linux/UNIX Security

Both of these families of OSes derive their security from the POSIX standard. In POSIX, practically all aspects of the system are treated as files. For example, if you want to print something, the idea is that you "write" to the "printer file." A user can do three things to a file or directory:

r - Read the contents of a file or directory
w - Make changes to the file (including delete) or directory (make new files/folders or delete them)
x - Execute a file or search within a directory.

Files and directories are tagged with these permissions flags to say whether a user can do one of those actions. POSIX also allows users to be grouped for administrative/security purposes. This creates a total of three types of users who each need to have those permissions flags defined:

The owner of the file
Everyone in a group
Everyone else who is not the owner of the file or in the group

If you pull up the permissions of a file, either from a file explorer or the console command ls -l, you'll find a string of 10 characters laid out like this:

Table 01

If a file has a dash (-) as the flag, the user associated with the type does not have permission to perform that action. The directory flag says the "file" is a directory. If it's a dash, the file is just a file.

Image 01

Example output of the ls -l command, showing permissions on the left side.

Most POSIX OSes have a special account called root. Root has permission to do anything regardless of the permissions flags set. If a user also needs to perform an action to a file and they don't have permission to do so, they can invoke the action with sudo from the command line. This elevates the user temporarily to root privileges.

Linux and UNIX have a variety of ways to change permissions done to a file or directory, but they all have one command: chmod.

chmod (short for change mode) is invoked by the following command in a console: chmod [options] [mode] [file1] [file2] ...

Options you can set are:

-r - Recursive, if performing this on a directory, this makes changes to all subdirectories as well, rather than just the contents of the directory.
-f - Force, this continues the operation even if an error occurs.
-v - Verbose, this shows what's being processed.

Modes are basically the permission flags. It is three numbers from 0-7 representing the 10-character string described above (directory flag is implied). What each number means:

NumberMeaning
0No permission
1Execute/search
2Write
3Write and execute/search
4Read
5Read and execute/search
6Read and write
7Read, write, and execute/search

And here are some examples of what chmod will do to a file or directory:

chmod 700 example.sh Allows only the owner to read, write, and execute "example.sh."
chmod 664 example.txtexample2.txt Allows the owner and the group to read and write to "example.txt" and "example2.txt." All others can only read the files.
chmod –r 754 apps Allows only the owner to view the contents, create new files or directories, and execute everything in the directory "apps." The group can only view the contents and execute everything in "apps."
Everyone else can only view what's in "apps."

If your account does not own and/or have write permissions to the file or directory, you must prepend chmod with sudo before changes can be made.

For those new to Linux/UNIX command line interfaces, there are lots of Internet sources that provide cheat sheets for the most common commands you'll need to navigate and perform actions. Here's another option we like because it's particularly handy.

Windows Security

Microsoft started taking security seriously with Windows NT. Windows based on DOS had no concept of security; it allowed any user to do anything. The only limitation in Windows is that only NTFS partitions have security provisions. As stated before, the FAT family of file systems doesn't have built-in permissions.

Like POSIX, Windows has several flags that define permissions for what a user can do to a file or directory. Unlike POSIX though, Windows has a laundry list of permissible actions. The main ones are:

ActionAllowedDenied
Read View files or folders Execute files, view contents of subfolders, delete files or folders, or change permissions or ownership
WriteCreate new files or folders; Modify current files or folders Execute files, delete files or folders or change permissions or ownership
List folder contents View contents of a folder, its subfolders, and execute files Delete files or folders or change permissions or ownership
Read and execute Same as "List folder contents" Same as "List folder contents"
Modify Read, write, modify, execute, and delete files or folders Change permissions or ownership
Full control Same as modify, but allows changing of permissions and ownership Nothing

Also like POSIX, Windows has an account called "Administrator" that acts as root and has permission to do anything, regardless of what permissions were set. This is different from an administrator-type account, which still has some restrictions on what it can and cannot do.

To change permissions of a file or folder in Windows, open File Explorer and go to the file or folder. In this example, we'll use a folder.

1. Right click on the folder and select "Properties"

2. Go to the "Security" tab

Image 02


3. Click on the "Edit..." button in the middle, underneath the "Group or user names" listing. This will display another dialog where you can change permissions.

Image 03

By default, Windows lists the permissions of the following groups:

Authenticated Users: These are users who have authenticated with a domain. This is more a concern for people that use network-based logins.
SYSTEM: This is a Windows internal account that system processes and services use. It runs at the highest privileges by default and cannot be edited by anyone.
Administrators: All accounts that have Administrator privileges.
Users: All accounts that have Standard User privileges.

4. To change a group's permissions, select that group and tick off each action you want to allow or deny. Then press OK or Apply.

5. If the option is grayed out, you're running an account that does not have permission to change permissions. You'll have to give that group "Full Control" first before you can change permissions.

6. If you want to change an individual account's permissions, click on the "Add..." button:

Image 04

7. In the text area labeled "Enter the object names to select," type in the user's account and press "Check Names." If the name was typed correctly, the box will populate with the user's account. If you're having trouble trying to find out how the account is named, you can look it up in the C:\Users folder.

Image 05

8. This will add the user's account to the list of groups, which you can then set the permissions flags.

Image 06


Good Security Practices

The following are some tips you can use to increase protection and security in your OS. These aren't foolproof, but practicing these will limit the damage malware can do.

Do not run as root (Linux/UNIX) or as administrator without UAC (Windows) as your daily driver. Running as an account that allows everything to happen dramatically increases the chances of allowing malware to run its course.

Do not change the permissions of system folders willy-nilly. There's a reason why most of these are only given read or execute permissions only. If you must make a change in permissions, do it at the deepest level possible.

On Windows, run as a standard user account as your daily driver. This helps limit what damage a program can do. While the downside is that UAC prompts require an admin login, it's similar to Linux/UNIX requiring your password every time you invoke sudo.

AMD Said to be Mulling Splitting Into Two

Posted: 21 Jun 2015 11:32 PM PDT

But the company has denied having any such plans

Lisa Su PC Gaming Show

How far is perennially beleaguered chip maker AMD willing to go in its quest to turn the corner in its duel with Intel? According to Reuters, the company is open to separating its graphics and licensing business from the server division. Even a spin off is not currently off the table, though the news agency warns everything is at a preliminary stage and (ergo) far from final.

Crediting "three people familiar with the matter" for the information, the agency said the company has engaged a consulting firm to help identify possible options and outline the way forward. The unnamed sources, however, admitted it's entirely possible that nothing might come of these deliberations. After all, they say, this is not the first time that the company is exploring such extreme steps.

As for AMD, it has dismissed the report, saying nothing of that sort is "in the works" at this stage. A spokesperson told the news agency it remains committed to the long-term strategy it outlined in May at its Financial Analyst Day. The multi-year plan calls for greater focus on high growth areas such as gaming, immersive platforms, and the datacenter business, whereas areas such as IoT, low-end tablets, and smartphones are to be avoided.

Here's How to Get Windows 10 for Free (UPDATED)

Posted: 20 Jun 2015 07:39 PM PDT

Microsoft previously announced that users of Windows 7 and higher will be eligible to upgrade to Windows 10 for free when it ships in about a month. But today, the Windows team announced via the Windows blog that Microsoft will be giving away Windows 10 for free to users of Windows 10 Preview.

Windows 10

That's right. Even if you're on an older version of Windows, like XP, just go and install Windows 10 Technical Preview now, and when Windows 10 comes out, you'll be prompted for the full, free upgrade.

It was previously noted that the free upgrade wouldn't be available to those using Windows XP and older, but now it's easy to get your free ticket through the door. In fact, you it doesn't matter what OS you're using or if you don't have one installed at all. Just install Preview.

Good move, Microsoft.

Those who are interested will want to check out our guide to the top 7 reasons to upgrade to Windows 10. You'll also want to keep in mind that you'll lose a few things as Microsoft stated previously that it'll remove features, such as games and widgets. If you're eager for Windows 10, check out the hardware you'll need to run it.

Keep in mind that you only have one year to use the free upgrade from the date that Windows 10 is released. After a year, Microsoft will no longer provide the free option.

Here's how:

Step 1: Sign up for a MSA (Microsoft Account), it's free
Step 2: Grab the ISO
Step 3: Install
Step 4: Wait for Microsoft to release Windows 10 on July 29th, 2015
Step 5: Update to the full version

You'll want to grab the Preview soon, since Microsoft will be closing the Windows 10 Preview program as the Windows 10's actual release date nears.

Update 1: Microsoft edited the original post, removing official support for this method. There's no firm word on whether or not it will still work, but as of now, it's no longer an officially supported method.

Update 2: Microsoft posted an updated blog today in an attempt to clear confusion around who exactly will be getting Windows 10 for free and how. Essentially it bowls down to this:

1/ If you're participating in the Windows 10 Preview, then you get to install the full version when it arrives, as long as you opt-in to continue to receive preview builds.

2/ This applies to Windows 10 Preview being installed as a clean install, provided you opt-in to preview builds.

3/ If you install Windows 10 Preview (clean install or not) opt-in to preview builds to get the retail for free, and then opt-out after July 29th, then you will no longer stay "genuine." This means you'll have two choices:

- Roll back to your previous OS
- Acquire a genuine Windows 10 license

If you don't do any of the the above, your Windows 10 install will expire and you'll be locked into activation request mode.

Newegg Daily Deals: The All Graphics Card Edition!

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 11:23 AM PDT

GeForce GTX 980 Classified

Top Deal:

Are pixels pushing around your graphics card instead of the other way around? Then it's high time you thought about an upgrade! There are lots of great options out there, including today's top deal for an EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Classified Kingpin Video Card for $684 with free shipping (normally $760 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX36]; additional $50 mail-in-rebate). This blazing fast card boasts a 14+3 power phase design and a digitally controlled VRM that can deliver up to 600A of current.

Other Deals:

XFX Black Edition Double Dissipation Radeon R9 290X 4GB Video Card for $306 with free shipping (normally $340 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX36]; additional $30 Mail-in rebate)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 960 4GB Support Video Card for $234 with free shipping (normally $260 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX36])

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card for $567 with free shipping (normally $630 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX36]; additional $40 Mail-in rebate)

EVGA G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 750 1GB FTW w/ ACX Cooler Video Card for $120 with free shipping (normally $133 - use coupon code: [EMCATKX36]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Dell Begins Taking Pre-Orders on Windows 10 PCs

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 10:18 AM PDT

Getting a jump on Windows 10

Dell Windows 10

Do you think maybe Dell is excited about Windows 10? That's an understatement, as it's the only major OEM to begin offering pre-orders for select Windows 10 devices. And while we haven't checked all the boutique system builders, Dell might be the only PC seller to do so, period.

"Ready for Windows 10? Great! So are we. Which is why customers in the U.S. can pre-order select Dell devices with Windows 10 starting TODAY that will ship starting July 29 –the big day Microsoft releases its new operating system," Dell stated in a blog post. "Plus with Same Day Ship from Dell, you can receive your order as early as July 30 and be the first to show off your new Windows 10 device."

The Windows 10 system pre-order page currently includes Inspiron desktops, an Inspiron 11 2-in-1 device, Inspiron 15 laptop configuratons, and an XPS 8700 rig -- seven systems in all. Pricing ranges from $380 (Inspiron 11 2-in-1) to $830 (XPS 8700).

These are all pre-configured systems. You can't change or upgrade the hardware components, though some of them allow you to add accessories and other bits like monitors, various software, and warranty extensions.

Any pre-orders placed by 2:00 PM CT on July 29 will ship out that day.

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E3: Insomniac Games Boss Ted Price Discusses Edge of Nowhere [Video]

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 09:56 AM PDT

Horror slash adventure meets VR

Ted Price

The promise of VR has been around for a long time, but it wasn't until the Oculus Rift came onto the scene that we started truly buying into the hype. While it's still a little early to bet the farm, what we've seen has us pretty convinced that VR is finally on the verge of being an awesome experience. Helping us to come to that conclusions are well made games and demos like Insomniac's Edge of Nowhere.

Insomniac President and CEO Ted Price talked with us about the title, which is a new action-adventure title with some horror elements. The game puts in you Antarctica in search of a missing expedition. As you hike and climb through the mountains, you uncover a surreal world that gets increasingly strange the deeper you get.

It's one of the better AAA VR titles out there, if not the best to date. The game uses a third-person perspective and is somewhat reminiscent of Uncharted and Tomb Raider. One of the goals with the game is to create a sense of unease as you explore the unknown.

Price says Edge of Nowhere draws definite inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft so you can expect Lovecraftian horror elements and surprises. However, it's not strictly a horror title -- there are lots of other elements at play as well.

Third person seems like an odd perspective for VR, though Price says Insomniac has learned a lot about how to best utilize the perspective. For example, taking the camera control away from the player is something that he says can be uncomfortable. so even though Edge of Nowhere is a third person title, you still have control of the camera.

Have a look at the full interview below:

E3: Sanzaru Games Talks VR Sports Challenge [Video]

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 09:03 AM PDT

The Wii Sports of VR

Tin Guerrero

The inherent weakness of Oculus Rift and VR headsets in general is that you have to wear gear on your head. A lot of effort has gone into designing lighter-weight and more comfortable designs, but at the end of the day, you're still required to wear a piece of equipment. The same is true of certain sports, allowing Sanzaru Games to turn a negative into a positive.

We sat down with Sanzaru Games's Tin Guerrero at E3 to talk about the company's VR Sports Challenge title, which they hope will be the Wii Sports of VR. VR Sport Challenge will include several games, and the one they demonstrated at E3 was a hockey title.

One thing they've done with the hockey game is incorporate the hockey mask into the game. It's a neat idea since Oculus requires wearing a headset anyway. It adds a layer of immersion to the game, and also helps you forget that you're wearing a VR headset, or that's the goal, anyway.

VR Sport Challenge is aiming for more of an arcade feel than a hardcore simulation. For example, you might hop into a football game with two minutes to drive down the field and score a game-winning touchdown, or be the guy/gal who sparks a comeback victory in basketball. And as far as game play goes, think Wii Sports meets NBA Jam.

Find out more of what Tin Guerrero had to say below:

Playing Co-op VR with Palmer Luckey is Mindblowing

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 07:29 AM PDT

Oculus Touch + Toy Box is the best VR experience I've ever had

Up until a few hours ago, I've only had the pleasure of trying out Oculus VR's seated/controller demos, but I recently got to go hands-on with the new wireless Oculus Touch controllers. It was the single best VR experience I've had up until this point. It also helped that it was a co-op demo, one where Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey was my virtual buddy.

Oculus Touch

The wireless controllers are like Wii Nunchuks on steroids.

In case you haven't heard about Oculus's new controller input, it's sort of akin to Wii's Nunchuck controller, but has a few key differences and enhancements. It's roughly the same size as a Nunchuck and also has a buttons for your index and middle fingers, but it also has two face buttons on top near the joystick. What really distinguishes it from Nintendo's solution, though, is that it offers 1:1 controls, meaning that your hand movements are pretty much exactly like your real hand movements in real life (Nintendo's equivalent was more based on exaggerated gestures). The controller also has a little ring along the outside of your knuckles, which allows the controller to track the position of your thumb and index finger. This means that you'll be able to give thumbs-up gestures and be able to point at objects for the benefit of your online VR buddies.

Oculus Touch_demo2-650-80

Lilly from sister site TechRadar steps into the Matrix.

The room where I had my demo was a very controlled environment. It measured roughly 12 by 12 feet, with a  mat in the middle that measured 4 by 4 feet to stand on. Otherwise, there was hardly anything else in there, so I can't speak to any clipping or obstruction issues that may occur in a more typical real-world scenario.

Dsc04826-2

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey personally worked on the input solution.

There was only one Oculus Touch demo—built internally by Oculus and dubbed "Toy Box"—but oh, man, what a demo it was! It's a co-op sandbox experience, and I was originally going to play it with an Oculus representative I hadn't met before, who would be playing from a separate room. To my surprise, following a video interview with Palmer Luckey (which will be published soon), the Oculus VR founder decided to hijack the HMD on the other end, and got on the headset's mic. I was already surprised to realize that the Rift even had a built-in mic, so it was even more of a shock.

It's worth mentioning that the headset used here appears to be Crescent Bay, which is the prototype for the consumer-version headset. This article is mainly about Oculus Touch and the co-op Toy Box demo. If you'd rather read more about the CV1 headset, check out our coverage of the consumer-version headset.

What ensued was a roughly 20-minute demo that took me into another dimension. The demo takes place in a quirky sci-fi, playful laboratory environment. As I put on the headset, I can see two floating hands and a generic bald blue head staring at me from about four feet away, representing Luckey. He looked directly at me in this virtual environment and walked me through how to use the controller.

"Pick up the controller and use your index finger to point at something," he says. I do so, and it works great. "Give me the thumbs-up signal," he says, and that works swimmingly, too. "Clench down on the controller and make a fist for me," he says, and as expected, my two virtual hands made fists. While I love Valve's similar VR controllers, these simple finger gestures add an unprecedented level of immersion. Yes, given what I know so far, I do think it's better than Valve's already-stellar VR controllers.

Palmer Luckey shows off CV1 and Oculus Touch.

Between virtual Luckey and me is a large, wide table with a bunch of little colored boxes on it. Luckey asks me to pick up some boxes. After just a few seconds of trying to get used to the controller, I've got the hang of it and it really feels intuitive. "Go ahead and throw them at me," he says, and so I chuck a piece across the room. I start throwing more boxes around until Palmer says, "Check this out. Grab a box, push it toward me as I push a box toward you, and we'll simultaneously trap a box in between and pick it up together." Lo and behold, it works like a charm. If anything is going to take VR experiences, which have been mostly isolated and lone journeys up until this point, to the next level, it's co-op. Never had I felt the sensation of VR presence more, or the feeling that my mind and body were transported to a different place, than during this demo.

Palmer Luckey talks controller, VR porn, and more.

That was merely the beginning of my wacky but amazing experience with Luckey. As the demo progressed, sticks started popping up on the table in front of me and I started picking them up. They weren't just any sticks, however—they were essentially flares. Luckey summoned a lighter on the table and started lighting the tops of his sticks. He pointed the lighter toward me and I reached over with my flares and lit them. And I thought to myself, "F***ing awesome!"

Oculus Touch1

You can point, give the thumbs-up, and make a fist with Oculus Touch.

Then, Luckey summoned a little dynamite box and asked me to light it and put it near a wall. I lit it and before I could drop it, the bomb exploded in my hand and blew up the wall, too. Surprised, I jumped a bit. In case you were wondering, the Oculus Touch does offer the slightest of haptic feedback vibrations, though Luckey says that, internally, the company has controllers with more vibrant haptic feedback sensors. Regardless, the little jolt does a good job of letting you know when you're hand has clipped through a table, or when you have made contact with a hard surface. It adds a slight sense of tactility to what has otherwise been a weak aspect of VR until this point. 

Moving along, Luckey summoned a ball into the room and he threw it up into the air and caught it. He then threw it at my face, and I felt surprisingly disrespected. It was as if someone in real life was chucking a fastball at my noggin. Maybe it unseated some dark memories of PE class dodge-ball that I've been trying to suppress…. Anyway, considering this was all done in a VR environment, I'll say that it was rude in the coolest way possible. One thing I learned from this experience is that if you thought people were sore losers in online games before, you ain't ready for the competitive anger that may stem from forthcoming multiplayer VR titles.

I started punching the ball back at him, and then he summoned a tetherball scenario, with both of us punching the ball back and forth at each other. He totally mopped the floor with me. I was able to hold my own with him a little bit better when we started playing ping pong, though. VR ping pong alone could make for a compelling game with these controllers. Luckey then conjured up some giant hulk hands and gave them to me to slip on. From here, a big dummy appeared, which I proceeded to punch the hell out of with my new-found fists. I ended the beating with a double-handed "Hulk smash"-type gesture, which made the dummy crumble. It was wicked cool.

Eventually, Luckey summoned a slingshot, which required both hands to operate. I used my left hand to hold the stick and pulled on the virtual rubber band with my right hand to send little ping pong balls flying at objects across the room. It was interesting to note that here, Luckey appeared right alongside me, and we were slinging shots side by side. Again, he was much better than I was with the controls, and was able to sling at a much faster clip.

Speaking of clips, the next weapons that we picked up were guns, specifically alien laser guns. I started to shoot at some moving wooden animals (think the Circus) and had to really focus and use the sights to aim. Luckey then started throwing some discs in the air for me to shoot, and I wasn't very good at it. Apparently, you need to lead your shots a little if you're blasting from an alien pistol.

One of my favorite moments of the demo was when Luckey used a shrink ray to shrink me down to the size of a mouse. There I was, standing atop a massive table, looking up at his floating head and hands as if he were a giant. A really nice touch about this experience is that his voice got super deep and started echoing with a cavernous reverb. He then used the shrink ray in reverse, making me the giant. There I saw him as a tiny little guy moving around. And yes, he had a tiny squeaky voice to go along with his new diminutive stature.

This was the first time I've been able to use the mic and hear it in action. It's fantastic, and the positional audio brings a true immersion experience; you believe that you're really physically with someone who's not actually in the room with you. Throughout the demo, the backdrop changed from space-like environments to underwater scenarios, and Luckey's voice would echo or be muffled appropriately. I felt a childlike wonderment. Imagine playing a sci-fi flight simulator and having your friend sound all electrostatic-like on the other end. How freakin' cool would that be?

This is a demo that will stick with me forever, an unforgettable experience that offered an unparalleled level of presence that I haven't felt before. It also helped that Luckey was obviously bent on providing me a great experience. It felt oddly intimate at times, as if I might have to apologize for bumping into him if our virtual bodies got too close. I've never felt more confident in the future of VR than I do now, and I'm excited about how the medium will grow moving forward. The only real pressing question I have on my mind now is: When can I have these new toys, damn it?!

Build It: Overclocking in a Budget Gaming PC

Posted: 19 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

This article was published in the November 2014 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

Intel's new Pentium K CPU comes with both a bargain price and bargain specs—so we put it to the test in a budget gaming system

Length of Time: 2-4 Hours | Difficulty: Medium

The Mission

MPC104.rd buildit.8237

As our monthly blueprint roundup demonstrates, putting together a budget gaming system for under $800 is very doable. It just comes with trade-offs—one of which is giving up on CPU overclocking. Unlocked Intel Core i5 chips start at $100 more than the AMD FX-6300 part in our budget Blueprint build, and in a rig where even going up or down by $20 becomes noticeable, that extra cost is beyond justifi cation.

But this summer, Intel released the Pentium G3258—or as we like to call it, the Pentium K. At $70, this unlocked 3.2GHz dual-core Haswell chip looks pretty attractive on paper. It undercuts the AMD FX-6300 by $40 and the cheapest Core i3 CPU by about $50, making it economically feasible as an alternative CPU… so long as the ability to overclock gives it a big enough boost to shore up its budget architecture. There's only one way to find out if it's worth it in order to chase the dream of overclocking in a budget build, so we put together a rig with the Pentium K as the star of the show.

Cleaning Up Nice

As this is a budget system, we weren't ultra-picky in parts selection. We made some compromises, such the case, deciding to show last issue's Enermax Coenus some love. Despite its seemingly Transformers-themed appearance, the Coenus is spacious and has a thoughtful layout that accommodates many random part swaps. It also looks much more attractive than a cutthroat-cheap Rosewill case. Likewise, we stuck with modest but reliable parts for our RAM and PSU: two sticks of 4GB Corsair Value RAM to run in dual-channel mode, and the Corsair CX500 to take advantage of its 80-Plus Bronze rating, ample cables, and three-year warranty.

Ingredients

We spent a little more on parts that future-proofed us (the Z97 mobo), affected overclocking (the H60 CLC CPU cooler), or improved our gaming experience (the larger-than-bare-minimum SSD). We felt our spending was warranted, given we wanted to push our Pentium K as high as it could go and also go for better gaming.

The only part we struggled with was the GPU. Our rig could handle a beefy and elaborate setup, but we chose to spend conservatively, which resulted in ignoring our mobo's Crossfi re-only compatibility and going with a GeForce GTX 750 Ti card from EVGA.

1. Decisions, Decisions

MPC104.rd buildit.8249

Part of the reason we chose the Coenus for our case (besides its cost) was the flexibility it gave us in determining the order of our build. For example, since the optical drive installs from the front, you can do that at any time. And pulling off the panel behind the motherboard gives access to cutouts, allowing you to install the CPU cooler's backplate after you mount the motherboard to the case, or install your hard drives at your leisure. We chose to install our motherboard first, and then followed with attaching the CPU's backplate to the board. We put in the processor next, taking care (as always) to drop it straight down into the socket while matching up the notches correctly.

2. Cool Running

MPC104.rd buildit.8248

We first tried installing the H60's fan and radiator at the top of the case, but changed tack due to the motherboard's awkward position relative to the top of the case and the length of the H60's tubes. Instead, we swapped them in for the Coenus's rear fan—a fiddly operation. We managed it by fi rst holding the fan in place, then threading a screw through the fan's two top-right holes and lining up the radiator's corresponding hole with the tip of the screw, before beginning to screw the pieces together. (Note: Orient the tubes toward the bottom of the case to give you more room later.) We then repeated this process with the hole diagonal from the first screw, working in an "X" pattern, and by attaching the pump.

3. Gutsy Moves

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To make the installation of our CPU cooler easier, we waited to install our RAM until after we'd secured the cooler's pump. The thought behind what type of RAM we used was a little less studied—given the dependability of Corsair's value line, we grabbed two DIMMs of 4GB and popped them in. Settling on an EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti card, however, required more debate. We considered future-proofing by selecting a Radeon card, since this Biostar mobo supports only Crossfire dual-GPU configurations. But we settled on E VGA's 750 Ti, since in the real world few people use dual-card configurations at this price range, but well over half of gamers (on Steam, at least) prefer Nvidia. We inserted the video card now, so that after putting in the PSU we could hook up all the connectors at the same time.

4. Shutting Up and Driving

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As we wanted to plug in all of the power connectors at once, the optical, solid-state, and hard-disk drives went in next. Our Samsung SH-224 is a standard DVD/CD burner and nothing fancy; neither is our Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD (the latter is for documents and media storage). By contrast, our OCZ Vertex 460 240GB SSD is almost double what we recommend for our Blueprint budget gaming build. As we noted earlier, the Vertex was a conscious splurge in order to get faster performance and more space to hold games, but it could be pared back to a 128GB SSD if you want to save $40–$50. The CX500 that feeds our budget rig doesn't take much space (the Coenus will easily hold larger), so popping it in was easy. If you're strapped for cash, opt for the CX430—but note it could limit your choice of future video cards.

5. Preparing for Takeoff

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After installing Windows 8.1, we first configured and ran all of our benchmarks under stock settings to set up a baseline for our comparison between the Pentium K's stock and overclocked performance. Then we prepared for our overclocking efforts by downloading CPU-Z and CPUID from www.cpuid.com/softwares.html, as well as Prime95 from www.mersenne.org/download and then installing all three tools. If you haven't used these programs before, CPU-Z provides clock information; CPUID lists the core temperatures; and Prime95 serves as the stress test for determining the stability of an overclock. Biostar also provides a Windows-based utility for overclocking, but we didn't have much luck with it. Even when installing the most recent version of the utility from the Biostar website, loading the utility caused our system to spontaneously reboot. Instead, we decided to stick to Biostar's esoteric but functional UEFI-BIOS interface for our overclocking tweaks.

6. Absolute Power

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To overclock the Pentium K, we worked in the "O.N.E." UEFI-BIOS submenu, found by clicking on the second-from-right icon at the bottom of the main BIOS screen. Increasing the amount of juice fed to the CPU had to be done via the "Voltages Configuration" option. First, we changed the "CPU Voltage Mode" to "Override," then we changed the "CPU Override Voltage Target" to 1.3V as our starting point (the CPU was automatically drawing just a little over 1.0V at stock speed). All the clock changes had to be tweaked via the "CPU Configuration" option. The first step was to switch the "CPU Ratio Mode" to "ALL cores," then we could up the clock speed via "CPU Ratio." We began with an overclocked speed of 4.0GHz and eventually got it to a stable 4.7GHz.

Callout

So, How Special Is the Pentium K?

As the first overclockable Pentium CPU, the G3258 doesn't disappoint. We built this rig to see how much power we could squeeze from this low-end chip, and the answer is quite a bit—after overclocking the Pentium K, we saw a sizable jump in performance in CPU-heavy tasks. It also beat CPUs with more cores. Not bad for $70.

Overclocking went butter-smooth, too. Our initial leap from 3.2GHz to 4.0GHz showed such a moderate jump in temperature that we went to 4.2GHz after just 15 minutes of stress testing. The K's temperatures held steady in the high 60s/low 70s in the 4.4GHz–4.6GHz range, and it wasn't until we tried to hit 4.8GHz that our system protested. Increasing the juice to 1.35V and then 1.4V didn't change our near-instant BSODs at 4.8GHz, and it wasn't until we stepped it down to 4.7GHz and dialed the voltage back to 1.3V that our rig happily chugged along in the low 70s. All in all, overclocking took us 10 minutes of troubleshooting; the bulk of our five hours spent on the task was letting Prime95 do its work. Our H60 defi nitely earned its keep.

Benchmarks

The Pentium K also held up well. Our budget choice of video card impacted the benchmark results more than our choice of CPU. When we switched to a Radeon R9 280X, we saw notable improvement in two of our benchmarks. Tomb Raider shot up to 65.7fps, while Metro: Last Light rose to 56fps. Oddly, Hitman: Absolution dropped to 40fps, but our guess is that has something to do with the game not being well optimized for AMD graphics cards. Of course, benchmarks don't guarantee equal performance throughout games, but a K build should be a palatable budget gaming system. If you want to save cash for a better GPU, hunt for mail-in rebate deals on parts. We saw some available but excluded them from our price list. Had we done so, we'd have cut $50–$70 from the total price.

'Halo 5: Guardians' Limited Collector's Edition Will Cost $250

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 06:33 PM PDT

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Are you a fan of the Halo series? Are you big enough of a fan to spend $250 on a limited edition copy of Halo 5: Guardians when it ships for the Xbox One this October? If you are, then you'd better head on over to Amazon right now and reserve your "copy" before this limited Collector's Edition is completely sold out.

"The Limited Collector's Edition is the ultimate expression of Halo 5: Guardians with a commemorative statue designed by 343 Industries," reads Amazon's description. "The Master Chief and Spartan Locke appear as a team – but there's another story… the statue splits and they separate, ready to face-off. Which scene tells the true story?"

So what's inside this high-priced bundle? In addition to the actual Halo 5 game, the package includes:

  • Commemorative Statue of the Master Chief and Spartan Locke by Triforce
  • Guardian model by Metal Earth
  • Uniquely designed Spartan themed SteelBook
  • Warzone REQ Bundle: 14 Premium Requisition packs
  • Dossiers on Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris
  • Spartan Locke's Classified Orders
  • Halo: The Fall of Reach - Animated Series
  • Xbox Live Gold 14-day Trial

If $250 is a bit much to spend on a game, there's also a cheaper Limited Edition bundle for $99.99. Essentially, this package includes everything in the Collector's Edition save for the statue of Master Chief/Spartan Locke and the Warzone REQ bundle:

  • Uniquely-designed Spartan themed SteelBook
  • Guardian model by Metal Earth
  • Dossiers on Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris
  • Spartan Locke's Classified Orders
  • Halo: The Fall of Reach—Animated Series
  • Xbox Live Gold 14–day Trial

Customers who pre-order either Halo 5 bundle will receive the Projection SMG with Long Barrel, a compact, fully automatic two-handed weapon. This gun is typically used by the UNSC and will become yours within two days after the completed shipment. Amazon lists the release date as October 27, 2015.

Lian Li's Two New Desk Cases Are Taller, More Durable

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 04:15 PM PDT

Dk Q2 00

Two new desk-style cases

Having a desktop is great, but wouldn't a computer crammed into a desk be even better? That's where Lian Li comes in, as the company has added two new desk-based solutions to its chassis portfolio: the DK-03, which supports two systems, and the DK-Q2, which supports only one. Both will be made available later this month at Microcenter.

According to Lian Li, both desks include motherboard trays that can be removed, allowing the system builder to manage the cable layout more easily, which in turn promotes better airflow through the main body of the desk. This feature should come in handy in the DK-03, which allows for two motherboards: one SP-ATX board on the primary side and one mini-ITX mainboard on the other side.

Lian Li said on Thursday that, based on feedback, the desks now offer more legroom than previous models, as the company has added 30mm to their overall height. Not only are the legs taller and adjustable, but they're stronger too, holding up a thinner body so that system builders don't feel so cramped when using their desk-based PC.

For those who want a sporty look despite the desk-based form factor, customers can change the lighting by opting for an RGB lighting kit that comes packed with a dimmer, a controller that's mounted on the front, LED strips, and a cord clip. However, both desks have a default base color of black and are made of tempered glass (desktop surface) and aluminum (body and legs). You'll need to apply your own coat of paint if you're looking for something a bit more flashy.

As for what can be crammed inside these desks, Lian Li indicated that they can accommodate graphics cards up to 44cm long and CPU coolers up to 90mm tall. On the hard drive front, the larger DK-03 can house ten 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives. The smaller DK-Q2 provides enough space for eight 2.5-inch drives or seven 3.5-inch drives.

The specifications show that both desks include four 120mm fans on the left and four 120mm fans on the right. These tables also support water cooling, as they feature a designated spot for radiators up to 480mm. The smaller table can accommodate one; the larger table has enough space for two.

The specs also show that both models include ports for HD audio and USB 3.0. More specifically, the smaller DK-Q2 provides four USB 3.0 ports and an HD audio port whereas the larger DK-03 provides four USB 3.0 ports on side one and two USB 3.0 ports on side two. Both sides have an HD audio port.

As for pricing, the Lian Li computer tables don't come cheap. The DK-Q2 has a price tag of $990 and the bigger DK-03 table has a price tag of $1,490. As previously stated, both models will be offered on Microcenter toward the end of June.

AMD Internal Fury X Benchmarks Revealed

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 02:56 PM PDT

Fury X Performance Revealed

AMD's launch of the 300 series and Fury X were supposed to have been a carefully orchestrated release of materials at specific times during the past week and going into next. The Fury X and various other cards are currently on display at E3, and AMD has held several conferences this week giving us pieces of information. Officially, we were supposed to only talk about what was shown at the press conferences, and today is the retail launch of the 300 series. You can read our coverage of the 300 series, as well as our review of the Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X, but one thing we weren't supposed to discuss until next week was Fury X performance. Except there was a misunderstanding and the Fury X information got posted on the web a week early, so now it has been declared fair game for everyone.

Here's the thing: internal benchmarks, whether they come from AMD, Intel, Nvidia, or some other company, are never 100 percent trustworthy. They come from a biased source. Which is why most sources will say to "take this with a grain of salt." By tweaking settings and resolutions, performance can be made to favor a certain product more than it might at different settings. As long as we all understand that, posting the information is fine, but until everyone can publish their own independent benchmarks—which still won't happen until June 24 for the Fury X—it's too early to draw any final conclusions. We're not saying AMD has done anything fishy, and according to our preliminary numbers, we think AMD has some accurate numbers, but we'll post our own benchmarks soon to verify.

Let's use an example that we can talk about to clarify. Here's a chart showing our testing results of the R9 390X against the GTX 980, and next to it is AMD's own chart showing a similar comparison:

AMD 390X Internal vs External Benchmarks

Many of our results match up, like Batman: Arkham Origins and Shadow of Mordor. But we happened to run four games/tests that AMD doesn't include for this particular comparison, and of those, three (GTAV, Tomb Raider, and Unigine Heaven) happened to favor Nvidia. We also had different results with The Witcher 3, because we enabled HairWorks and ran at the Ultra preset. Coincidence? We think not. And we've encountered similar behavior from Nvidia, so we're not trying to make AMD out as the bad guys. This is simply Marketing 101, and it's why we say, "take internal benchmarks with a grain of salt."

Details and Statistics

With that introduction out of the way, then, here are the AMD Fury X vs. GTX 980 Ti performance comparisons in all their glory. We're going for full disclosure here, with all the extra information that sometimes gets left out. No, we didn't run these benchmarks, and we're not going to pretend we did. The test system, if you're wondering, is an i7-5960X running stock clocks, which means there's also a potential for the CPU to be a bottleneck in some cases—it's why our GPU test bed is overclocked to 4.2GHz.

The following are taken from the reviewer's guide that accompanies the Fury X:

Amd Fury X Benchmarks

Amd Fury X Benchmarks 2

Amd Fury X Benchmarks 3

Amd Fury X Benchmarks 4k

Amd Fury X Benchmarks 4k 2

And what we see is that the Fury X wins in every single benchmark that AMD ran—at least at the selected settings and in the selected games. Notice how the 390X was compared to the GTX 980 in Alien Isolation, Battlefield Hardline, Civilization Beyond Earth, Project Cars, and Skyrim, but in the Fury X vs. 980 Ti they're missing. In their place we have a few other titles, however: Assassin's Creed Unity, Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, and Hitman Absolution. That doesn't mean Nvidia would have performed better in every missing game—e.g., we know Hitman Absolution at least clearly favors the 390X over the 980—but the decisions on what to include and exclude aren't simply made at random.

But there's only so much you can do with customized settings to "improve" performance, so taken at a higher level, one thing is certain: even at 4K, where the 4GB HBM compared to 6GB GDDR5 might present some issues, AMD's Fury X is quite competitive with the 980 Ti. There will undoubtedly be times where it's slower, and there will also be times where it's faster. The two cards cost the same, so that's to be expected—if the Fury X were significantly faster than the 980 Ti, no doubt it would carry a price premium. The naming also suggest that perhaps AMD was hoping to go up against the Titan X rather than the 980 Ti, and Nvidia spoiled their fun by shipping 980 Ti a couple of weeks ago. C'est la vie! However, you can compare numbers with our original Titan X review and see that Titan X is only slightly faster than 980 Ti.

Tying it up with a bow

There are still other questions to consider, of course. Even if performance is basically tied, or even favors the Fury X by a small amount, do you want a graphics card with a closed-loop cooling solution? It can work wonders for cooling with one GPU, but if you wanted to run 2-way or 3-way CrossFireX, you need a case that can actually handle all of the CLCs. The Fury X also has a slightly higher TDP, though 250W vs. 275W isn't nearly as problematic as the 390X's 275W vs. the 980's 165W. And even though we aren't seeing any major issues in the AMD-provided benchmarks with 4GB HBM vs. 6GB GDDR5, the omission of GTAV (which can use nearly 6GB at 4K with all setting maxed) suggests lack of memory can still be a problem at times. Not that you need to max out every setting in every game, of course.

The takeaway right now is that, generally speaking, we expect the Fury X to match up well against the 980 Ti. AMD has said that Fury X will be the fastest single-GPU card when it comes out, which indicates the company is aiming to beat even Titan X. But since 980 Ti has 98–99 percent of the performance of Titan X in most cases, beating one effectively means beating the other as well.

We'll have fully independent results next week, at which time we can finally declare a winner—or a tie. Until then, happy gaming, on whatever hardware you currently happen to run.

Newegg Daily Deals: Asus GeForce GTX 970, LG 24X DVD Burner, and More!

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 12:48 PM PDT

Asus GTX 970

Top Deals:

It's a great time to be a gamer. Steam's summer sale is going on, Microsoft is getting back into the fray with Windows 10, and there are lots of fun titles in the pipeline. If the only thing holding you back from enjoying all the gaming goodness out there is a slow graphics card, then check out today's top deal for an Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB for $321 with free shipping (normally $330 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT79]). This card using a custom cooling solution, is fast, and comes with Batman: Arkham Knight.

Other Deals:

Sennheiser Momentum On-Ear Headphones-Black for $70 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT65])

LG 31MU97-B Black 31-inch 5ms WQHD 4K Widescreen IPS Monitor IPS w/ Built-in Speakers for $1100 with free shipping (normally $1200 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT38])

Samsung D3 Station 5TB USB 3.0 3.5-inch Desktop External Hard Drive for $120 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT35])

LG Internal 24x Super Multi with M-DISC Support DVD Burner for $13 with free shipping (normally $20 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT29])

E3: Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda Talks HoloLens, PC Gaming, and More [Video]

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 12:14 PM PDT

Having fun with holograms

Kudo Tsunoda

When you get a chance to sit down with someone like Kudo Tsunoda, you jump at the opportunity. Many know him as the man behind Microsoft's Kinect motion-control sensor. He's the corporate president of Microsoft and is now overseeing multiple Xbox teams. Tsunoda is also in charge of developing HoloLens, a mixed-reality or augmented-reality platform that fills real-world environments with virtual objects.

Microsoft is keeping a lot of the underlying technology in HoloLens under wraps at the moment, though Tsunoda did tell us that one of the parts is a custom piece of silicon called the Holographic Processing Unit. Obviously there are multiple sensors involved too, but the overall spec sheet isn't something Microsoft is ready to reveal—we doubt the parts have been finalized yet anyway.

Though Microsoft has been focused on its Xbox consoles for the past several years, the company is getting back into PC gaming with Windows 10. Not that Microsoft ever completely left, but few would dispute that PC gaming hasn't exactly been a top priority of Microsoft's as of late.

Part of the reason Microsoft is making a bigger effort to cater to PC gaming is so that Xbox gamers can play with their PC gaming buddies. For example, Fable Legends features cross-play between Windows 10 and Xbox One gamers. This mindset, if fully embraced by developers, bridges the gap between PC and console gamers and creates one large community of gamers.

Tsunoda also talked about its partnerships with Oculus and Valve. Check out what he had to say about both:

E3: Probing Alienware's Steam Machine and Steam Controller [Video]

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 11:41 AM PDT

Invading the living room

Alienware Steam Machine

Valve finally finished tweaking its Steam Controller and certifying is Steam OS, and as a result, official Steam Machines went up for pre-order two weeks ago. Dell, an OEM that's been collaborating with Valve for years, was one of the first to offer a Steam Machine under its acquired Alienware brand, and we got a chance to see one of these systems up close at E3.

Alienware's take on the Steam Machine starts at $450. The base model is configured with an Intel Core i3 4130T dual-core desktop CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, an unspecified Nvidia GeForce GTX GPU that's on the level of a GTX 860M, and a 500GB hard drive (7200 RPM). Alienware told us it opted for a 7200 RPM drive because the 5400 RPM models it shipped in the Alienware Alpha didn't meet the expectations of its customers.

As an official Steam Machine, there's no version of Windows included here, just Valve's Linux-based Steam OS. Alienware said it will continue to offer its Alpha line for those who prefer to roll with Windows.

For $100 more, you can double the storage and memory to 1TB and 8GB, respectively. At the $650 price point, Alienware trades the CPU for a Core i5 4590T quad-core chip, while the $750 model jumps up to a Core i7 4765T quad-core CPU. All four models come with a Steam Controller.

Unfortunately there are no SSD options, though all the parts are upgradeable, meaning you could swap out the HDD for an SSD on your own.

Have a look:

E3 Hands-On: Logitech G920 Driving Force Racing Wheel

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 11:09 AM PDT

Feel the pavement beneath your wheels

G920 wheel

Last week, Logitech announced the launch of a pair of racing wheels: the G920 and G29. At E3, we got our grubby paws on the G920 and took it for a spin.

The first thing to know about the racing wheels is that they are pretty much identical, save for input buttons on the face of the wheel. Both have dual-motor force feedback, paddle shifters, leather grip, and responsive floor pedals. The G920 has XBox One buttons on its face, while the G29 has buttons for PS4. Both wheel units can be used on PC, so you can take your pick of button preference. Logitech also has an optional six-speed manual stick shifter.

When we got a demonstration of the G920, our unit was hooked up to an XBox One, but we were assured that everything would work identically on a PC. The wheel felt natural, but the way the rig was configured caused a problem: Logitech had the driving rig set up in a way that put a vertical metal bar between crotch and brake pedal, making it nearly impossible for a 6-foot 1-inch editor to slow his car quickly. This made for an interesting driving experience, to say the least.

G920 pedals

The lack of braking access did show off how the wheel reacted when the car had power and traction, lost traction, and when it hit a wall. Repeatedly. When coming into a turn, we felt how the car would carve into the road before our excess speed caused us to lose traction and send us into a skid.

The floor pedals come with the full set of clutch, brake and accelerator, and react pretty well. There is a definite disconnect between the real-world seat-of-your-pants feeling of acceleration and simply seeing it on screen. That disconnect led us to accelerate much faster than would be sane or traffic laws would advise.

The unit we tried also included the stick shift, which we opted to use instead of the wheel paddles. Despite our claims that we knew how to drive stick, a Logtiech engineer set the game to use "auto clutch" for us, so we wouldn't futz with stalling the car and trying to find the control to restart it in-game (which would take away from the limited time we had).

Logitech Shifter

The shifter has a relatively short throw distance, and we treated it gently so we wouldn't damage the show floor model Logitech had on display. When we get a review unit in our office, we'll definitely put the shifter through its paces.

The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the wheel will both be available for $400, and come with the floor pedals. The Driving Force Shifter is sold separately for $60.

E3: I Got to Try the Consumer Version of Oculus Rift

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 11:00 AM PDT

Jumping into an out-of-body experience with Edge of Nowhere

Some people said it would never come out. Said people called it vaporware. But I have seen it with my own eyes. Today, I got to try the consumer version of the Oculus Rift.

The head-mounted display will officially release in Q1 of 2016, with the recently revealed Oculus Touch controller following sometime within the first half of the year. I only got to play one demo today via a game called Edge of Nowhere (more on that experience later), and unfortunately that demo uses an Xbox One controller. I should be getting some hands-on time with the wireless motion controller later in the week, so please stay tuned for that write-up.

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This is my O face.

What were my impressions of the actual head-mounted display then? It was great. As previously announced, the resolution runs 2160x1200 split across two displays. Like the Crescent Bay prototype before it, the "screendoor" effect is largely a non-issue. Can you still see the pixels? Yes, if you try. There's going to be plenty of room for improvement here over the years (I want an 8K-by-8K solution, personally), but for consumer version 1 (CV1), it's certainly good enough, and the pixels tend to disappear the deeper you dive into experiences.

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The consumer version of the Oculus Rift sitting next to its new sensor.

In terms of field of view, without any official measurements, I would say it's 110 degrees, give or take 10 degrees or so. Do I wish it had a wider field of view? Of course, but it's good enough for CV1. I also made sure to use my pupils to peer at things off-center of the screen and saw no issues with the visuals on the outskirts of the optics.

Because everyone has different distances between their pupils, one new feature that CV1 introduces is an interpupillary distance (IPD) adjuster. Unfortunately, on the version that I used, the IPD adjuster was sealed off, and I couldn't adjust it. Luckily for me, the default distance worked fine for my eyes.

One annoying issue with past Oculus prototypes is a negative effect called chromatic aberration. This is the effect where you see a faint unintended rainbow of light on the optics. If you've ever rubbed your oily fingers over a glossy monitor, you might get the idea. While we saw some hints of it when the main character in our third-person platformer was carrying a torch, it looks improved upon when compared to Crescent Bay, though I'll need more hands-on time with it to fully test.

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Through the looking glass.

Latency was also a non-issue. With CV1 using a 90Hz refresh rate, I tried moving my head side to side and up and down as fast as I could without breaking my neck, and saw no blurring and felt no motion sickness. This is coming from someone who could get pretty sick with the development kit 2 headset.

As much as Oculus has tried to solve the nausea issues people have been having with VR up until now, Oculus has also spent a lot of time trying to perfect the ergonomics of the headset. In my opinion, it was time well spent, as CV1 feels light, balanced, and comfortable to wear. I've got a fairly small head (and a super small brain, from what I've been told), but I was able to strap my noggin in tight. There are three straps in total: two along the sides and one straight down the top of your head. Once I got it in place, it fit snugly and I encountered no wobbling issues.

Could you play with it for hours on end? Considering I only got to play with it for about 15 minutes or so, it's hard to say, but it's the most comfortable VR headset I've worn thus far. Oculus says there will be different facial templates you can swap out on the headset, because everyone's face is shaped differently. The version that I tried had plenty of room for people with large nose bridges. Considering I don't have a large nose bridge, there was a bigger gap then I would have liked and this inadvertently let in some unwanted light. It wasn't a deal-breaker by any means, but was more noticeable for me over development kit 2.

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This is the new tracking sensor.

Another tweak that CV1 offers over the previous developer kit is that it does away with the external tracking camera in favor of a tracking sensor. The sensor is basically a little stick on a stand that just sits atop a table. When we asked the rep in the room how far the sensor would extend to, he mentioned that it was roughly 10–12 feet. It is worth mentioning that the rep was a hired hand for the event, and not an Oculus employee, so we should probably take his word with a grain of salt.

Regardless, this 10–12 foot guestimation also coincides with the length of the headset cable I saw, although I don't know if that will be indicative of the final length of the shipping units. In terms of tracking, it was definitely a step up from the DK2's tracking camera. I tried blocking the sensor by waving my hands, I tried turning my body a full 360 degrees, and not once did I see any weird clipping issues, which is something that is typically seen with DK2. It does help that there are tracking sensors on the back of the headset. If someone stands in between you and the sensor, however, or you move off center too far, tracking comes to a halt.

Edge of Nowhere trailer.

With the technical aspects out of the way, I was able to choose among nine different titles to play in my short session. I chose Edge of Nowhere because Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell told me it was amazing at the recent Step Into the Rift press event. And yea, I'd have to agree. Developed by Insomniac Games, the guys responsible for the Ratchet and Clank games, the game plays a lot like Uncharted or Tomb Raider in that it's a third-person adventure/platforming game. It veers away from the aforementioned titles by incorporating some sci-fi/horror elements, however. Some small spoilers follow, so skip to the end if you don't want to hear about the actual demo contents.

Stepping over the edge

The demo starts off with your character atop a snow-capped mountain environment. Off in the distance you see a giant monster/alien-looking creature roaming around the frozen tundra. You can look all around your character to check out the environment in 360 degrees and it feels like you are there watching over your protagonist. You eventually jump inside a cave and climb down a deep, dark hole with a rope to allow you to slide down. It really feels like you have a bat's-eye view (well, if bats could actually see with their eyes) of this ice climber sliding down this deep dark cave here.

Eventually, you find some flat footing, and in the darkness some monsters start jumping out toward you. I literally jumped out of my seat for a second (mostly because I'm a wimp) and proceeded to run and platform the hell away from them. Later, you see an outside opening in the cave, and the giant monster from the beginning of the demo peers inside at you. It's a little unnerving. Finally, the monster walks off and the demo ends. I'm generally not into horror games, but I'm looking forward to playing this game, and it's nice to see a AAA game made exclusively for VR.

Dsc04892

CV1 features a pretty interesting fabric texture wrapping the shell of the HMD.

With the game being in third-person, it sort of feels like an out-of-body experience, one that allows you to watch your virtual character go through this seemingly real journey. And in case you were wondering, you can't really lean down toward your character. The camera kind of defaults to a certain distance. You are able to look wherever you'd like, however. In addition, the integrated headset still sounds great and the positional audio is amazing.

All in all, it was a great experience, and Q1 2016 can't come soon enough for me.

E3: Microsoft Details Its Modular $150 Xbox One Elite Controller [Video]

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 09:27 AM PDT

This is what a $150 controller looks like

Xbox One Elite Controller

Microsoft made the most out of E3 with several different announcements, one of which included the unveiling of a $150 game controller for the Xbox One. Apologies if you just spat your morning coffee all over your monitor and keyboard. What makes a controller worth $150?

That's what we wanted to find out, so we headed to Microsoft's booth for a closer examination. The Xbox One Elite controller's main characteristic is that it's modular; it comes with several different buttons that attach magnetically, including two versions of the D-Pad. One is a traditional four-way D-Pad button in the shape of a plus sign, while the other is a flatter design more suited for eight-way operation.

According to Microsoft, the alternative D-Pad is great for games like Street Fighter and Killer Instinct. The company won't claim it will make you better at either game, but it says that the new D-Pad is definitely one that gamers like, based on feedback it's received.

As for the thumbsticks, you can choose between concave or convex imprints, plus taller or shorter thumbsticks. Depending on how you grip the controller, you may find that one is more comfortable than the other.

The controller features 18 digital inputs—14 traditional ones found on the regular Xbox One controller, plus four additional paddles on the back. You'll be able to map these however you want, then save your custom profile in the controller itself for zero lag (since the custom button assignments don't need to be re-translated on the console). It will support up to 255 profiles.

Check it out and let us know if you think the Xbox One Elite controller is worth the asking price:

E3: Getting Up Close with Razer's Wireless Mamba Mouse [Video]

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 09:06 AM PDT

A mouse for ultra high resolution displays

Razer Mamba

Razer got our attention the other day when it announced its new and rebooted Mamba mouse for gamers. This flagship rodent has a brand-new 5G laser sensor capable of tracking up to 16,000 DPI, and even more interesting is the ability to adjust the tracking in 1 DPI increments rather than the more standard 50 DPI. We knew we had to check it out, and that's exactly what we did at E3.

One of the things Razer was quick to point out in person is that the Mamba is laced with seven customizable LEDs on each side. This allowed Razer to add a wave effect to the Mamba, marking the first time Razer's done that on a mouse. And since the LEDs are customizable, you can create your own effects, too.

The LEDs aren't just there for the bling factor—you can configure the mouse to light up in a certain way when the battery is low. When that happens, you can plug it into your PC via USB so you can continue using it while the battery charges.

We mentioned before that the Mamba has an adjustable click system. To make adjustments, you take the screwdriver that's included with the Mamba and turn a pair of dials on the belly of the mouse, one for each main button. Turning left decreases the click force, and turning right increases it.

Check out our video interview for more information, including a look at the fancy hardware that Razer tests its mouse with:

AMD Officially Launches the Radeon 300 Series

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 05:00 AM PDT

No More Rumors: the Official Radeon 300 Series Specs Are Here

AMD has been leaking information on their "currently under NDA" 300 series graphics cards like a sieve. Never mind the press conference held earlier this week or demonstrations of their new GPUs at E3; it's been a well-known fact for months now that the 300 series will be rebranded versions of existing GPUs, with some minor clock speed increases to help improve things in some cases. We're not fans of renaming hardware and sending it out for another spin on the GPU merry-go-round, but both AMD and Nvidia have done it enough that we're used to it by now. The fact that the major fabrication partner for high performance GPUs, TSMC, has been stuck at 28nm for three years certainly hasn't helped matters, but regardless, we now have five "new" Radeon graphics card options in AMD's 300 series. Let's start with the specs table:

AMD 300 Series Specifications
Card R9 390X R9 390 R9 380 R7 370 R7 360
GPU Hawaii
(Grenada) 		Hawaii
(Grenada) 		Tonga
(Antigua) 		Pitcairn
(Trinidad) 		Bonaire
(Tobago)
GCN Version 1.1 1.1 1.2 1.0 1.1
Lithography 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm
Transistor Count (Billions) 6.2 6.2 5 2.8 2.1
Die Size (mm2) 438 438 359 212 160
Compute Units 44 40 28 16 12
Shaders 2816 2560 1792 1024 768
Texture Units 176 160 112 64 48
ROPs 64 64 32 32 16
Core Clock (MHz) 1050 1000 970 975 1050
Memory Capacity 8GB 8GB 2GB/4GB 2GB/4GB 2GB
Memory Clock (MHz) 1500 1500 1425 1400 1625
Bus Width (bits) 512 512 256 256 128
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) 384 384 182.4 179.2 104
TDP (Watts) 275 275 190 110 100
Price $429
 $329
 $199
 $149
 $109

One of the interesting aspects of the 300 series is that AMD actually has new code names for the graphics cards, i.e., Hawaii is now Grenada. But don't let that codename fool you; just like Curacao was the same core hardware as Pitcairn last year, we're still looking at GPUs that have already seen the light of day. There might have been a respin of the die to tweak a few minor details, but fundamentally, performance at the same clocks shouldn't change. While that might be disappointing for the high-performance enthusiasts, rest assured that AMD has also given plenty of information on their upcoming Fury X graphics card that will launch next week. Basically, the 300 series launch is the calm before the storm.

Amd Radeon 390x Gpu Z

There are a few items worth calling out, even with these recycled GPUs. For one, the R9 390X and R9 390 are only shipping in 8GB configurations. That's good for those times when you're pushing so many textures at such a high resolution that 4GB VRAM proves insufficient, but AMD already quietly launched an 8GB R9 290X last year. Perhaps even stranger, the 390X MSRP is currently $50 higher than the least expensive 8GB 290X, though once supplies dry up that may change—or the street prices on 390/390X may end up lower than the MSRP. The other item worth noting is that both the 390X and the 390 are now sporting official TDPs of 275W—25W higher than previously. As far as clock speeds go, nearly all of the 300 series GPUs are seeing a 50MHz increase to core clocks speeds (give or take a few MHz), and that's about it. The one major exception is that the R9 390X/390 now clock the GDDR5 at 1,500MHz (effectively 6,000MHz), a rather impressive 20 percent increase over the stock 1,250MHz clock of the 290X/290.

Moving down to the R7 series, the 370 now holds the distinction of being the oldest GPU core in AMD's lineup, with the Trinidad/Pitcairn core dating all the way back to March 2012 with the HD 7850—and strangely, we're missing the full 1,280-core version, so we might even see a 370X in the future. These are all basically baby steps, and while there will be 2GB and 4GB models of the 370, this time we're not as worried about having additional VRAM—the GPU isn't going to be fast enough to benefit from having 4GB in most games. Then there's the R7 360, which uses the Bonaire core that's only two years old.

If you're wondering, the main advantage of GCN 1.1 is that it added TrueAudio and an improved version of AMD's PowerTune technology. The bigger jump came with GCN 1.2, which made some architectural tweaks and improved efficiency, including lossless delta color compression, improved tessellation, a higher quality video scaler, and a new multimedia engine. To date, GCN 1.2 is only found in the Tonga GPUs, but the Fury X will likely use the same features. Finally, it's worth noting that the R9 300 cards all support bridgeless CrossFireX now, routing data over the PCIe bus via AMD's XDMA instead of using a bridge connector;however, the two R7 GPUs still use a bridge connector.

AMD didn't sample any GPUs to the press for this launch, leaving it up to their board partners. We were able to get the Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X, but since it's not a stock configuration, we're covering that in a separate review. The takeaway here is that the 300 series refresh is mostly about making the model numbers look new and current. Yes, performance is going to be a bit higher, and the added memory will certainly prove beneficial on certain models, but the Fury X is what everyone really wants to see. And for that, we have to wait another week.

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R9 390 BlackReflective 4c 10inch
Radeon R9 390X Reference Card

R9 380 BlackReflective 4c 10inch
Radeon R9 380 Reference Card

R7 370 BlackReflective 4c 10inch
Radeon R7 370 Reference Card

Sapphire Tri-X AMD R9 390X Review

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 04:58 AM PDT

At a Glance

(+) Muscle Cars

Lots of memory; high performance; good price; reasonably quiet.

(-) Muscle Heads

Power hungry; weak factory overclock; requires a big case.

That's a Lot of Power

Sometimes you have to admire the power cars of the world. Forget being environmentally friendly and efficient: we want all the power you can give us and we want it now! That's apparently the thinking behind Sapphire's latest graphics card, as it takes AMD's new Radeon HD R9 390X—which is really just a rebranded version of the R9 290X but with 8GB GDDR5 memory—and gives you three fans to keep the power-hungry GPU cool. Sapphire is clearly intending users to overclock the card as well, as it includes two 8-pin PCIe power connections; combined with the x16 motherboard slot, the card has access to a staggering 375W of power. Without some form of exotic cooling, however, the GPU will top out long before it uses its full capacity.

AMD's suggested pricing on the new R9 390X is $429, and with the Tri-X cooling you'd expect to pay a slight premium, but that's not actually the case. The Tri-X 390X is listed at $429 on Newegg, which is Sapphire's recommended price. It's difficult to say where prices will actually settle this soon after launch, and we've already seen 290X 8GB cards for quite a bit less, including Sapphire's own Tri-X 290X 8GB. At least you're not paying for the factory overclock, though Sapphire only bumped speeds by 5MHz over the standard 1050MHz clock. Why even bother at that point?

The good news is we were able to goose things and managed a stable 10 percent (105MHz) core overclock. The memory is already running 20 percent faster than the 290X, so for most games there's no need to push the GDDR5 any farther, but we were able to run stable at 1,600MHz. The results from the overclock are a consistent 5–10 percent improvement to performance, but power draw under load increases by more than 10 percent.

Amd Radeon 390x Gpu Z

This is our first chance to take the new R9 390X out for a spin, so we're going to be pitting the Sapphire Tri-X against some of the other top-performing GPUs, including the new GTX 980 Ti along with the GTX 980, GTX 970, and R9 290X; we'll even toss in an old GTX 770 for those wondering how the previous generation of hardware fares. AMD's goal is clearly to take on the GTX 980, and with the increased clock speeds they're able to go toe to toe with Nvidia. Who wins depends as much on the game of choice and settings as much as anything, with the Tri-X winning in several titles but trailing in others.

The usual suspects favor AMD and Nvidia cards, with the notable exception of Batman: Arkham Origins. Previously an Nvidia-ruled title, the latest drivers and hardware from AMD give the 390X an edge over the 980. The 390X also holds onto a moderate lead in Hitman: Absolution, with a smaller lead in Shadow of Mordor. The GTX 980 wins the rest of the match-ups, with Unigine Heaven, The Witcher 3, and GTAV all favoring Nvidia by 10 percent or more, depending on the resolution.

Of course, we're running at standardized maxed out (or nearly so) settings, and it's possible to tune each game to run substantially faster without sacrificing too much in the way of image quality—turning off HairWorks in The Witcher 3, for example, can provide a serious boost to frame rates. On average, however, Nvidia's GTX 980 maintains a lead at 1080p and 1440p settings, but the 390X claims a victory at 4K, in part thanks to the 8GB memory, but mostly thanks to the 30 percent lead in Hitman; remove that game from the list and the 980 holds onto a small lead.

The GTX 980 Ti wins in all the races, but at $220 more than the 390X it's understandably not in reach of many gamers. In terms of bang for the buck, the GTX 970 and R9 390 are the best values.

Lost in the woods

The big problem here is that focusing purely on performance is missing the forest for the trees. Yes, AMD's 18 month old design can still compete with Nvidia's newer GTX 980, but even after overclocking, the GTX 980 is still going to use far less power than the stock R9 390X. And just to be clear, the GTX 980 can typically hit 15–20 percent overclocks, which puts it firmly ahead of the R9 390X.

As for the Tri-X, Sapphire's inclusion of two 8-pin connectors is probably more than is strictly necessary, and we only managed 120/100MHz overclocks. Even with only a moderate overclock, we had to boost the fan speeds to keep the card stable, which made the Tri-X pretty loud. It behaves a lot better at stock settings, where it's much quieter than our old R9 290X blowers. In other words, while the sheer power of a muscle car can really sound impressive, when it gets beat regularly by a smaller car with better handling it loses some of its glamor.

Toss in the fact that we know AMD's Fury X is coming out next week, with promises of the standard Fury and the Fury Nano due later this summer. Even AMD knows R9 390X is a stop-gap solution, as they're already bragging how the Fury Nano will deliver twice the performance per watt as the R9 290X. So if you haven't already purchased an R9 290X, this is a tough sell, even with twice the memory.

From a performance standpoint, at stock speeds, the 390X may be slightly better than the GTX 980 for 4K gaming, depending on the games you run, and it costs less as a bonus, but if you're really serious about 4K gaming you should look at the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Yes, it costs 40 percent more, but it also delivers 25 percent better performance, which is pretty impressive scaling at the top of the performance pile. And if you simply don't want to play for team green, we still recommend waiting to see what the Fury X brings to the table. Meanwhile, those looking for better value continue to be best served by lesser GPUs; the GTX 970 and now the R9 390 deliver 80-90 percent of the 390X's performance for only $330.

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[Ed—Some have wondered how it is that a 390X, which is as fast as a 980, "only" earns a score of 75. There are several factors at play, including price, efficiency, the age of the core hardware, and the pending launch of AMD's Fury X. Sapphire's own Tri-X 290X 8GB is currently available for $50 less, with very nearly the same hardware and performance. The reduced price alone would net a 5–10 point increase in the score. But the real problem is that with Fury X coming next week, plus the air cooled Fury and Fury Nano later this summer, we feel those are the better options and they're worth the wait. The final score reflects all of these facts. On a similar note, a brand new GTX 980 card released today wouldn't score as high as when the card first launched ten months ago; progress marches on, and what was once Kick-Ass hardware eventually becomes good, then average, and then too slow. Imagine if Nvidia released a slightly overclocked GTX 980 today, called it the GTX 1080, and charged $50 more, only it was the same hardware as in the current GTX 980. We would give that a 75 as well, not because it's bad but because it's promoted as something new and improved when in reality it's only a minor change to existing hardware.]

Samsung Launches 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drives

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 05:37 PM PDT

Samsung M3 dynamic 1000

Samsung has updated the M3 Portable and P3 Portable lines with 4 TB models

Samsung is calling "world's first" with the launch of two external USB 3.0–powered drives that sport a 2.5-inch form factor and a massive 4TB of storage. More specifically, these drives measure just 0.78 inches thick (or thin) and weigh in at a mere 8.3 ounces, making them great for moving loads of data from one office to another.

"Previously only attainable in desktop or bulky multi-drive internal designs, we can now achieve a 4TB capacity in a compact drive thanks to the latest Samsung HDD technology," said Dave Klenske, director of product line management, Samsung HDD. "By going to a single-drive solution, we can power the drive through just a USB connection while fitting it into a case that is only a 1/10 of an inch thicker than our 2TB drive.

These hard drives are offered in two flavors: the M3 Portable External Drive and the P3 Portable External Drive. The hardware specifications, thin as they are, seem to be the same, save for their appearance. The M3 Portable has a blocky, etched design whereas the P3 Portable has a thinner, smoother casing.

However, after taking a closer look at the specs, they reveal that the M3 Portable has a USB 3.0 transfer rate of up to 4.8Gb/s whereas the P3 Portable has a USB 3.0 transfer rate of 5.0Gb/s. Despite the USB 3.0 transfer rate and general appearance, both presumably have the same components as previously indicated.

With capacities ranging between 500GB and 4TB, the new drives should prove useful to customers with laptops who need more space than what the internal hard drive has to offer. Customers will also need a desktop or laptop with USB 3.0 ports if they want to take advantage of the blazing SuperSpeed transfer rates. Otherwise, the drives are compatible with USB 2.0 and older.

Currently, Samsung isn't offering pricing details for the two drives, but said that they will be made available in late June. As a point of reference, Newegg is selling the P3 Portable external drives for $44.99 (500GB), $59.99 (1TB) and $89.99 (2TB).

Phil Spencer Talks Xbox One, PC Gaming at E3 2015

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 05:31 PM PDT

Phil Spencer talks about PC gaming and Windows 10

Last night during the PC Gaming Show, Xbox division head Phil Spencer took the stage and admitted that at times Microsoft has "lost its way" when it comes to PC gaming. The statement isn't surprising, given that Microsoft seemingly disowned the PC gamer over the last decade and a half as it pushed the three Xbox consoles into the living room.

So, what's different now? Why this sudden push back into the PC gaming limelight? Blame it on Microsoft's unified platform called Windows 10. Not only will it be a free upgrade to those using Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, but it will also come packed with DirectX 12. Those two factors should entice Xbox One owners, PC gamers, and game developers to jump on the Windows 10 bandwagon.

"We have Windows 10 coming out in July, and one of the early moves was to make it a free upgrade," he told moderator Sean "Day[9]" Plott. "Really, we thought about that from a developers' standpoint, that as developers look at a common ecosystem, with everybody on one version of Windows, it just makes it easier for people who are developing games. Building DirectX 12 and making it common across our platform, and Xbox Live with the same API set and same service—we're just trying to make it easier for developers as they're developing Windows games."

Spencer was then asked about cross-platform titles that play on Xbox One and Windows 10. He noted that there will be games played solely on Xbox One, games that only play on Windows 10, and those that will be cross-platform; where a game resides is up to the developer. He later confirmed that Killer Instinct will not only reside on Xbox One, but Windows 10 as well.

And what about first-party games from Microsoft? Are there any in the near future? "There's been a lot of push for us to do more in first-party, and we will," Spencer said. "We're dedicated to that. As our portfolio builds out, you'll hear more from us."

In addition to Phil Spencer, The Coalition's Rod Fergusson dropped a big gaming bombshell during the show, announcing that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition will be a Windows 10 title. The game's graphics will be upgraded to 4K and the game itself will be compatible with DirectX 12. He added that Ultimate Edition will include five new campaign chapters and 60fps multiplayer framerates. The multiplayer aspect will include 19 maps.

While cloud-based games like Farmville and Candy Crush Saga helped lead gamers back to their faithful PCs, Windows 10 seems to be set to open the doors wide for PC gaming. This is definitely an exciting time for gamers, and will be even more exciting when we see PC-based and Xbox One games take advantage of DirectX 12 and cross-platform gameplay later this year.

Blizzard Working on Prologue To 'Legacy of the Void'

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 02:50 PM PDT

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Blizzard's three-mission "prologue" leads up to StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new StarCraft II installment, Legacy of the Void? Blizzard may have something new to keep you busy until then, in the form of a "Prologue." Called Whispers of Oblivion, the Prologue will consist of three missions that will bridge together the story of Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.

According to Blizzard, StarCraft II players will join the Dark Temple mystic called Zeratul, an alliance that hasn't been seen since the release of the first installment, Wings of Liberty. The final piece of the Xel'naga prophecy will be uncovered thanks to this new cooperation between the two parties, Blizzard said.

"We will be making Whispers of Oblivion available to all players before the game's release, but prior to that, we will be providing early access to the Prologue missions with pre-purchase of the game," Blizzard revealed.

For now, that's it for details. The company concluded this tidbit of StarCraft II news by stating that more details will arrive in July 2015. There's no indication that this little "Prologue" will be free despite the "available to all players" comment, but it's quite possible Blizzard could reel in new players by offering this standalone Prologue for free.

Meanwhile, Blizzard is currently banging out Legacy of the Void for an undisclosed release date. On Wednesday, Blizzard defended its use of beta feedback by stating that yes, the company is indeed making changes to the PC game based on feedback despite rumors stating otherwise.

"Some are concerned that the feedback being provided isn't being considered or used. This has come as a bit of a surprise to us, as so many changes that we've tested and implemented in Legacy of the Void were from player feedback," Blizzard said.

Some of the feedback-based features added to Legacy of the Void include the existence of the Liberator, chat system improvements and more. The full list of feedback-based changes can be found here.

Omnidirectional Treadmills Show Off VR's Viability in FPS (Video)

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 01:05 PM PDT

Chasing immersion

Virtuix Omni

Virtual reality is really awesome for some game genres. The Oculus demonstration of Eve: Valkyrie at E3 is a prime example. Other genres, however, have a lot of ground to cover to really maintain the feeling of immersion. The first-person shooter, a staple of PC gaming, is one of those genres.

At E3, Virtuix and Cyberith showed off their ideas of how to address running and walking movement in VR first-person games.

It may sound straightforward, but take a moment to think about all the movements you can execute in an FPS: jumping, crouching, running, strafing, going prone, and of course, teabagging fallen foes.

Virtuix showed a demonstration of their omnidirectional treadmill product, the Omni. (We saw an earlier version of the Omni at GDC back in 2014.) The Omni takes a person, puts them in a harness, and detects their walking and running movements using a slick, concave surface. To an observer, it looks like the user is blindly running in a bowl, unable to escape, with a bizarre expression of wonder gracing their mouth. Imagine a hamster on a wheel that had just been fed sunflower seeds laced with drugs. Kind of like that.

 To use the treadmill, the user slips on special shoes that reduce friction on the bowl. The ring around the player supports the harness, and detects which direction the user is facing. The user also holds a rifle, which has its own orientation, allowing the user to look in one direction and fire in another.

Virtuix also had a pair of Marine Corps combat boots on a table, with slip-over pads that covered the outsoles of the boots. Virtuix said that they were indeed working with the US Department of Defense to develop training products, but couldn't go into detail because, you know, war stuff.

Virtuix wasn't the only treadmill peddler in evidence in the E3 halls, either. A coupe of booths down, Cyberith was busy showing off their Virtualizer treadmill. The Virtulizer uses a slightly convex surface in contrast to Virtuix's concave design. Instead of using custom shoes, the user simply slips on oversoles that reduce friction. The resulting display looked like a drunken moonwalking contest for the blind.

Virtualizer

Like the Omni, the Virtualizer has a ring that surrounds the user, but the Virtualizer's design features springs that can adjust for vertical variations. (The Omni's ring is rigid.) As users ran, the ring bounced up and down, adjusting for the change in height of their hips.

While these input devices are innovative, they're still too restrictive for true FPS play. Crouching still looks challenging, and prone positions appear impossible with the current designs. We're looking forward to seeing how these and other VR challenges are overcome.

Polk Audio Shows Off Striker Pro Headsets At E3

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 12:51 PM PDT

Can you hear me, Agent 47?

Striker Pro Cans Contract Edition

In the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, Polk Audio was showing off its latest headset made specifically for gamers—the Striker Pro.

The Striker Pro is aimed at PC, Xbox One, and mobile-device gamers. Three different detachable cables are available. The cables are designed to fit in different console controllers, attach to your PC, or use a simple 3.5mm jack with in-line control for mobile. The PC cable comes in a length of 3 meters, while the console cables come in lengths of 1.3 meters. The adjustable mic is also detachable.

The construction is light, and features aluminum can swivels and vinyl earcups. The headband is an adjustable metal band with a vinyl guard, which protects stray hairs from ouchies. We wore them for a few minutes while playing a couple of rounds of Mortal Kombat, and the cans were pretty comfy and light.

Striker Pro Cans

The Hitman Contract Edition versions of the Striker Pro will feature cosmetic features like serial numbers inside the earcups.

Polk is offering a limited number of the Hitman Contract Edition version, as well. The Hitman editions will come with serialized numbers inside the earcups and feature a barcode printed on the headband.

The Striker Pro will be available in September for $130. The Hitman Contract Edition versions will also be $130.

Newegg Daily Deals: LG 27-Inch IPS Monitor, Crucial MX200 500GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 11:57 AM PDT

Lg 27mp33hq

Top Deal:

There was a time when IPS monitors were cost prohibitive for the average users. And these days? We largely ignore the crop of TN panels, which are still less expensive than their IPS brethren, but no longer by leaps in bounds. To drive the point home, check out today's top deal for an LG 27MP33HQ Black 27-Inch IPS Monitor for $190 with free shipping (normally $200; Free SanDisk 128GB solid state drive with purchased, limited offer). For less than two Bennies, you can bring home a 27-inch IPS monitor with a Full HD 1080p resolution, 5ms response time, and a 128GB SSD to boot!

Other Deals:

OCZ Arc 100 2.5-inch 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $90 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT22]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Asus Z97-A/USB 3.1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard for $145 with $2 shipping (normally $155 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT28])

Crucial MX200 2.5-inch 500GB Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $190 with free shipping (normally $200 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT27])

Acer G7 G237HLbi Black 23-inch 6ms IPS Monitor for $110 with free shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [EMCATKT36])

FCC to Spank AT&T with $100 Million Fine for Throttling Unlimited Data Plans

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 11:25 AM PDT

Record setting fine

Att

AT&T faces a $100 million fine that the Federal Communications Commission plans to impose on the wireless carrier for "misleading its customers about unlimited mobile data plans." In short, AT&T is in hot water for throttling speeds to customers of its unlimited data plans without adequately notifying them that they could receive slower connections.

While AT&T no longer offers unlimited data plans to new customers, the FCC says AT&T sold millions of unlimited plans to customers who previously signed up and chose to renew.

"Consumers deserve to get what they pay for," said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. "Broadband providers must be upfront and transparent about the services they provide. The FCC will not stand idly by while consumers are deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure."

AT&T first began offering unlimited data plans in 2007. Four years later, the wireless carrier implemented a "Maximum Bit Rate" policy that put a cap on the amount of data an unlimited data customer could consume. Anyone who went over the data cap suffered deliberately slower speeds.

The FCC said it received thousands of complaints about the policy since 2011 and subsequently determined that AT&T violated the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule by falsely labeling the plans as "unlimited."

"Unlimited means unlimited," said FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. "As today's action demonstrates, the Commission is committed to holding accountable those broadband providers who fail to be fully transparent about data limits."

Those who saw their speed reduced by AT&T were slowed for an average of 12 days per billing cycle, the FCC said.

AT&T denies any wrongdoing and plans to fight the hefty fine.

"We will vigorously dispute the FCC's assertions. The FCC has specifically identified this practice as a legitimate and reasonable way to manage network resources for the benefit of all customers, and has known for years that all of the major carriers use it," AT&T said in a statement. "We have been fully transparent with our customers, providing notice in multiple ways and going well beyond the FCC's disclosure requirements."

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Intel Scoops Up Wearable Display Maker Recon Instruments

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 10:58 AM PDT

Getting into wearable displays

Recon Jet Wearable

Intel has gone and finalized an acquisition of Recon Instruments, a wearable display maker that just recently came out with the Recon Jet smart eyewear for sports and high intensity environments. The Santa Clara chip maker didn't disclose what price it paid or other financial details of the buyout, though online reports have the figure pegged at around $175 million.

Whatever the sale price, the acquisition gives Intel a team of developers who are experienced in wearable computing, a somewhat new and emerging field. Intel said it's looking to expand the market for head mounted display products and technologies, a move that could put it in direct competition with Google and its Glass project.

On the consumer side, the Recon brand will remain the same. Recon products will continue to be sold "without disruption," it just has a new owner, one that happens to be in great financial shape.

In addition to continuing the sale of existing Recon products, the Recon team will join forces with Intel's New Devices Group to build smart device platforms that will appeal to a broader market segment.

"We are excited to welcome the Recon team to Intel, and we look forward to the amazing experiences we'll invent together," Josh Walden, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's New Technology Group, said in a statement.

The Recon Jet ($699) is one of two main products that Recon sells, the other being the Recon Snow2 ($399), the company's fourth generation heads up display (HUD) for alpine sports.

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Ex Nokia Boss Stephen Elop and Three Other Top Executives Jump Ship at Microsoft

Posted: 17 Jun 2015 08:59 AM PDT

Easy come, easy go

Stephen Elop

For the second time in five years, Stephen Elop is leaving Microsoft. Elop last resigned from Microsoft in September of 2010 to take charge of Nokia, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo as the company's CEO. That position came with a $6 million signing bonus and $1.4 million annual salary.

It was during Elop's time at Nokia that the Finnish handset maker went all-in with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform. Microsoft ended up acquiring Nokia's mobile business and brought Elop back on board last year. Now he's out the door as Microsoft boss Satya Nadella restructures the company from the top down in an attempt to align "engineering to strategy."

Elop isn't the only high level executive leaving Microsoft. Also gone are Kirill Tatarinov, head of the company's business solutions group; Eric Rudder, a Microsoft employee of 25 years who most recently drove the company's advanced technology and education efforts; and chief strategy officer Mark Penn.

Penn had told Nadella back in September that he was planning to leave to form a private equity fund. Rudder, who has played a number of key roles at Microsoft over the past two and a half decades, "decided to try something new." And Tatarinov is "going to explore what's next for him."

It's not known what's next for Elop, who's a casualty of Microsoft's reorganization efforts. According to Nadella, the two mutually agreed that this was the right time to retire from Microsoft.

Going forward, Nadella is organizing Microsoft's engineering strategy into three groups that will work together -- a new Windows and Devices Group (WDG) led by Terry Myerson; Cloud and Enterprise (C+E), which will continue to be led by Scott Guthrie; and Applications and Services Group (ASG), which will continue to be led by Qi Lu.

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AMD Announces Fury and 300 Series Graphics Cards

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 01:13 PM PDT

Updated: AMD's Fury X takes on 980 Ti at $649, while the 300 series recycles existing GPUs and targets lower price points

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AMD's new top tier Fury X card is water-cooled.

Much to the surprise of absolutely no one, AMD announced today that their next-generation graphics cards will be sold under the Fury brand. They're giving out the specifications in pieces it seems, so today they're officially announcing the names and price points, along with a few of the other details. Here's what we know so far, along with educated guesses (indicated by question marks). We've added in Nvidia's GTX 980 Ti for comparison.

In the video above, AMD walks us through its new Fury and 300 series graphics cards. 

Fury X pair

AMD Fury vs. Nvidia 980 Ti Specifications
Model "Dual Fury" Fury X Fury Fury Nano 980 Ti
GPU 2xFiji Fiji Fiji Fiji GM200
Lithography 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm
Transistors
(billions) 		2x 8.9 8.9 8.9 8.9 8
Compute Units 2x 64? 64 64? ? 22
Shaders 2x 4,096? 4,096 4,096? ? 2,816
Texture Units 2x 256? 256 256? ? 176
ROPs 2x 64? 64 64? ? 96
Core Clock
(MHz) 		? 1,050 1,050? ? 1,000
VRAM Capacity 2x 4GB? 4GB 4GB 4GB 6GB
VRAM Clock
(MHz) 		1,000? 1,000 1,000? 1000? 7,010
VRAM Bus
(Bit Width) 		2x 4,096? 4,096 4,096 4,096 384
Bandwidth
(GB/s) 		2x 512? 512 512? 512? 336
TDP (W) 375? 275 275? 175 250
Availability Fall June 24 July 14 Late
Summer 		Now
Price ? $649 $549 ? $649 

It's not clear if the Fury and Fury X contain the same core hardware, only with liquid cooling on the 7.5-inch Fury X, or if the Fury will have some functional units disabled. AMD did say the Fury X should run at a cool 50 C, and given the moderate price difference as well as the hardware being shown, we expect the Fury has the same core specs as Fury X. AMD also noted that the liquid cooling should provide some significant overclocking potential, though obviously at the cost of power. Based on the pricing, AMD is gunning for GeForce 980 Ti levels of performance or better, and we should have a better idea of how the two cards compare in the next few days.

Fury X in system

Above is an R9 Fury X. There are no non-X Fury GPU designs at this time.

Fury X

AMD also teased other cards. The Fury Nano will be a super short 6-inch card with "half the TDP of the 290X." They showed off a crazy-looking custom SFF case called "Project Quantum" with two Fury Nano cards as a proof of concept, but they didn't provide any details on pricing. AMD did tell us that the clocks on the card will be clocked a little bit more conservatively than a standard Fury X, however. In terms of launch date, the company said, "later this summer." The other card is even farther out, a dual-GPU version of the Fury (which was not present at the show) coming in the fall. That will most likely use a similar closed-loop cooling solution as the R9 295X2, but we'll have to wait and see.

It is worth mentioning that Nano, Fury, and Fury X will all use high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which replaces GDDR5. The advantages here, says AMD, are three times the performance per watt of GDDR5 and 94 percent less PCB surface area than GDDR5 graphics cards. So if you're wondering why AMD's new top tier cards are six and 7.5 inches, that's why.

Dsc04819

Fury X will have 4096 stream processors, 8.6 Tflops, and 8.9 billion transistors.

Dsc04821

Compared to 290X, the Fury X is 1.5 times more efficient perf per watt and the Nano is 2x times better perf per watt compared to the 290X.

AMD also revealed pricing, names, and a few official details of their refreshed 300 series of GPUs. The R9 390X and R9 390 will be priced at $429 and $329, respectively, and both will include 8GB of GDDR5 memory. Retail cards have been spotted with clocks of 1,050MHz on the 390X and 1,000MHz on the 390, both with 1,500MHz (6,000MHz effective) GDDR5. The 390X/390 both use the same Hawaii GPU core as the existing 290X/290, so if you want to get in early, Sapphire's R9 290X 8GB only needs a small bump to core and RAM clocks to equal the 390X, with a $50 discount.

Dsc04815

The super small six-inch R9 Nano using AMD's high-end Fiji GPU.

Moving down the stack, all we officially know is that R9 380 will start at $199. This is expected to have similar specifications to the existing R9 285, with minor improvements to clock speed, but with the option for 2GB or 4GB memory, with the latter carrying a small price premium. The R7 370 and R7 360 round out the list, both going after the mainstream 1080p crowd. These cards are really aimed at MOBA players who play less-intensive games like League of Legends and Dota 2. The R7 370 starts at $149, again likely for the 2GB version, as the card will feature "up to 4GB" memory. Meanwhile, the R7 360 has a starting price of $109, and it only supports "up to 2GB" memory, so that may be for a 1GB model.

Dsc04832

AMD proof of concept "Project Quantum" PC has two Fiji GPUs at the base (along with the mobo and the rest of the computing components) and has all the cooling located at the top of the system.

Dsc04780

From top to bottom: R9 390X, 390, 380

All of these "new" 300 series GPUs are expected to go on sale starting Thursday, but since the only truly new GPUs are in the Fury cards, there's a good chance we already know what to expect from the rest of the 300 series.

Note: Jimmy Thang contributed to this article.

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Square Enix is Remaking Final Fantasy VII

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 12:59 PM PDT

Give the gamers what they want!

Ffvii E3 2015

This week during E3 2015, Square Enix announced that it is currently working on a remake of the company's most popular Final Fantasy installment to date, Final Fantasy VII. Members of the team that worked on the original game are also heavily involved in the project, including scenario writer Kazushige Nojima, director Tetsuya Nomura, and producer Yoshinori Kitase.

The original Final Fantasy VII launched on the PlayStation console back in 1997, followed by a release on Windows PC in 1998. Since then, the game has appeared on a number of other platforms including Android, Steam, and the PlayStation Network.

Looking back, the original PlayStation version of the RPG shipped on three discs. Presently, the digital PC version for sale on Steam requires 3GB of drive space and costs a mere $11.99.

"The original title received high praise for its epic storyline, unique characters, and movie sequences that utilized the most cutting-edge technology of the time," Square Enix said. "Since then, the game has sold over 11 million copies worldwide and continues to receive widespread acclaim from critics and fans around the world."

The Final Fantasy VII remake appears to be heading to the PlayStation 4 first. However, there may be a chance that the new "upscaled" release will make its way to Windows PC much like the original game did nearly two decades ago. The company also mentioned that it has "begun production," which indicates that the game will likely not arrive until 2016 or later.

As of this article, Square Enix has not released any details regarding the game save for launching an E3 2015 trailer right here on YouTube. The video indicates that more information will come this winter, so stay tuned.

PC Gaming Show Goes Live At E3

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 11:23 AM PDT

Red-headed stepchild no more

The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles has long been a place where games and gaming tech is announced to the cheers of the exclusive industry and tech journalism crowds that attend. Most of the announcements at E3 have been for the various console platforms, with PC-centric content left to be more of a side-note. This year, the PC Gaming Show carved out its out enclave to cater to PC gaming enthusiasts specifically.

The PC Gaming Show is sponsored by AMD, hosted by our friends at PC Gamer, and will be streamed on Twitch. The PC Gaming will go live just a few blocks away from the Los Angeles Convention Center at Belasco Theater on Hill Street at 6 p.m. PDT.

Developers and manufacturers including Dean Hall, Fullbright, CCP, AMD, Tripwire, Bohemia, Paradox, and Obsidian will be featured on the show.

You can watch the show live here or on PC Gamer's Twitch channel.

Watch live video from PCGamer on www.twitch.tv

Xbox One Preview Now Streams Games To Windows 10

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 11:01 AM PDT

Microsoft now allowing Xbox One Preview participants to stream games to a Windows 10 PC

In addition to announcing that the Xbox One is now backward compatible with a list of Xbox 360 games, Microsoft has also revealed that participants of the Xbox One Preview program can now stream games to a computer or tablet running Windows 10 Technical Preview. To take advantage of this feature, the Xbox One operating system must be version xb_rel_1507.150609 or later.

"With the streaming functionality, not only can you stream games but you can also access your friends, achievements, Party Chat, multiplayer, Snap mode, and more," Microsoft explains. "Game streaming is then initiated from the Xbox on Windows 10 app on a PC or tablet in the same home network."

To get started, Xbox One owners in the Preview program should see "Allow game streaming to other devices (beta)" in the Preferences section of the console's Settings menu. Once that is selected, Xbox One owners can connect the Windows 10 device to the console by using the Xbox on Windows 10 application (version 5.6.11034 or higher).

Microsoft notes that both devices must be on the same network in order for streaming to work. The company also stresses that in order to get the best performance out of the streaming feature, both the Windows 10 PC and Xbox One should access the network through a wired connection. Microsoft also insists that gamers use a wired Xbox controller on the PC or tablet.

To initiate game streaming, Xbox One owners in the Preview program are instructed to head to the Connected/Stream area in the Xbox on Windows 10 app. On the console, gamers will see a notification stating that a game streaming event has commenced. An "in use" notification will remain on the screen throughout  the streaming session.

Microsoft also notes that gamers streaming from the Xbox One can take advantage of the console's "Instant-on" mode. This will allow the user to load up the Xbox on Windows 10 app and "turn on" the console and begin a streaming session.

The streaming feature should be good news to Microsoft customers who are enrolled in the Xbox One Preview program and Windows Insider. Not a member of the Xbox One Preview? You'll have to ask for an invitation, as that's the only way, for now, to take advantage of the new streaming feature.

For more information about the Xbox One Preview program, check out Microsoft's FAQ here.

Razer's New Mamba Gaming Mouse Boasts a 16,000 DPI Laser Sensor

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 09:28 AM PDT

Optimized for multi-display setups

Razer Mamba

If having a mouse with an ultra-high DPI is your preference, let us introduce you to Razer's new and rebooted Mamba, purportedly the world's most advanced gaming rodent. Razer makes that claim based in part on the new 5G laser sensor that's capable of tracking up to 16,000 DPI.

According to Razer, the high DPI is suitable for multi-display configurations and displays with ultra high resolutions, such as all those 4K Ultra HD panels that are either available now or soon to be released.

Razer also focused on precision -- the Mamba can track up to 1 DPI increments rather than the industry standard 50 DPI. It can also track lift-off cut-off distance as precise as 0.1mm, which Razer says will reduce on-screen jitter so that your aim remains fixated on the target, even when you move.

The other reason why Razer is hyping the Mamba as being tops is because of the new adjustable Click Force technology. Rather than having users adapt to a mouse's predetermined click force, gamers can adjust the level of click force required to activate a left or right mouse button press. The way Razer sees it, FPS gamers may prefer a distant click for high accuracy actions, while MOBA gamers will want a lighter click action for rapid button presses.

There are nine programmable buttons on the new Mamba, including the tilt-click scroll wheel. It works in both wireless and wired mode and comes with a magnetic charging dock. Other features include Chroma lighting with 16.8 million customizable color options and Razer Synapse support.

The Razer Mamba will be available in the third quarter for $150. There will also be a Tournament Edition available for $90, which dumps the adjustable Click Force technology and wireless mode.

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LastPass Will Prompt Users to Change Master Passwords in Wake of Security Breach

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 09:06 AM PDT

Don't hit the panic button (but do think of a new password)

LastPass

LastPass, the the popular password manager that remembers and automatically inputs your various passwords so you don't have to, fell prey to a cyber attack that could have been worse than it is. In a blog post, LastPass said its team discovered and blocked suspicious activity on its network that turned out to be hackers.

No encrypted user value data was taken and no user accounts accessed, though the bad guys did make off with LastPass account email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes. Sounds scary, though LastPass is downplaying the severity of the attack.

"We are confident that our encryption measures are sufficient to protect the vast majority of users. LastPass strengthens the authentication hash with a random salt and 100,000 rounds of server-side PBKDF2-SHA256, in addition to the rounds performed client-side. This additional strengthening makes it difficult to attack the stolen hashes with any significant speed," LastPass said.

Even though it's unlikely that the cyber thieves could crack the encryption scheme and unlock user passwords, LastPass is requiring that all users update their master password. In addition, any users logging in from a new device or IP address must verify their account by email, unless multifactor authentication is enabled.

That said, LastPass says it's not necessary to change any passwords on sites stored in your LastPass vault since encrypted user data was not taken.

As to changing your master password, LastPass says you don't need to do so until you've been notified by email, which are in the process of being sent out.

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Razer Adds Android Support to OSVR Platform

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 08:39 AM PDT

Building a better OSVR

Osvr

Razer and other organizers of the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform just took a big step towards legitimizing the open standard by adding support for Android devices. By bringing the world's most popular mobile operating system into the fold, mobile VR development is likely to get a big boost.

It's a bit early to determine the full significance of adding support for Android, though in time, we suspect the addition of both hardware and software support will  lead to Android-based smartphones being used as VR displays.

Outside of the Android news, OSVR also added positional tracking to the fray. Like Android support, it's included in the OSVR Hacker Development Kit (HDK) version 1.2, which has been approved for distribution and is now shipping to select developers. The next version of the OSVR headset will include 360 degrees of IR positional tracking at 100Hz. This will provide positional information no matter which direction a user is facing.

OSVR has the potential to be very big. There are now 144 contributing members, including nearly two dozen new partners that just recently joined the ranks. Even though many of those members are small in the grand scheme of things, OSVR qualifies as the largest organization of VR developers in the world.

If you want to become one of them, the HDK 1.2 is available for $299. That includes the IR positional tracking kit, though the hardware won't ship until next month. For those who already paid for HDK 1.1, an IR Upgrade kit is available for $130.

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V3 Gaming's Avenger: Packed Powerhouse

Posted: 16 Jun 2015 12:23 AM PDT

Need to Know

Pros:
- Great for 4K gaming
- RAID 0 OS drive
- Good factory overclock
- No bloatware

Cons:
- 16GB of RAM may be limiting for some
- Cooling could be more efficient
- 1TB HDD

The underdogs are the ones we tend to root for

There are two ways to get your PC gaming fix satisfaction: buy a pre-built system from a reputable system integrator, or build your own. As Jimmy pointed out in his editorial, buying a pre-built systems is totally OK, even with us folk here at Maximum PC. We love PCs, in all forms.

When V3 sent its new Avenger system to us for review, we were in a bit of an unusual place. This is because V3 is lesser known than some of the other manufacturers that you may have come across. But as we found out, the company's gaming rigs are well up to the task when it comes to dishing out raw performance, and being precisely tuned.

One big annoyance with system integrators, especially the ones that are huge, is that systems tend to come loaded with bloatware, and a bunch of manufacturer utilities that we just don't need. The bundled crap slows down system performance and is an overall nuisance to the experience. And what about system optimizations? Forget it. Typically, you'll only get those details from companies that have proven to be able to build capable machines and pay attention to things like clean wiring. Let's find out if V3 has the chops.

Beefy enough to power Ultron

The Avenger is a fully stocked system, and we mean stocked to the brim. The motherboard cavity is filled more than we thought could naturally fit inside the rugged Corsair Vengeance C70. The chassis itself is one of Corsair's best built cases, and the rugged styling is something we're pretty fond of. The C70 has clamps that hold in the side panels, which make accessing the system for tweaks and upgrades a cinch. Couple these with the built-in handles, and moving the Avenger from place to place is an easy task. The large power and reset buttons on the outside make things simple too, for when that excessive overclock you tried wedges your PC.

On the inside, the Avenger is packed with the following:

Hardware Specifications
CPU Intel Core i7-5960X
Motherboard MSI X99S SLI Plus
Graphics Card 3x Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
Memory 16GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4
SSD 2x Samsung 850 Pro 250GB (RAID 0)
HDD Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
PSU Corsair HX1050
Optical TSST Bluray/DVD Combo
Cooling V3 Components Voltair V3TEC120-FC01 TEC
Network Intel i218 Gigabit (motherboard)
Audio Realtek ALC892 (motherboard)
OS Microsoft Windows 8.1 Core Edition
Extras No software bloat!

Intel's Core i7-5960X is a beast, there's no question about it. In fact, it's still our top pick for best CPU until something else comes out in the same class. The 5960X hums along at a 3GHz default clock speed, but V3 has overclocked the nipper to 4.3GHz stable. During our looping benchmarks, never once did the system lock up or produce any anomalies.

Uncommon cooling

To cool the CPU, V3 uses its own custom cooler called the Voltair TEC, which is an enormous copper/aluminum heatsink coupled with a custom thermoelectric cooling plate—you may know it as a Peltier cooler. Essentially, the pad has two sides—one is hot and the other is cold when DC current flows through the elements sandwiched between the two sides. The TEC itself is solid state, with the only drawback being that it requires energy and requires a beefy heatsink to draw heat away from the hot side.

V3 Avenger Pc 2

The Voltair TEC is big. In fact, it's so big that it actually pushes against the clear panel of the C70. Obviously, the Avenger could benefit from a slightly larger case, but this isn't a show-stopper. In actuality, you hardly notice it, but there is a very slight bulge. Included with the Voltair is a manually adjustable fan speed knob that takes a single slot above the first GTX 980. The fans (push-pull configuration) on the Voltair do spin up by themselves during load, but users can set minimum speed.

Idle 29 C
AIDA64 Stability Test 74 C
Prime95, Maximum Heat, 16 threads 99 C

The above test was run using the Voltair's manually adjustable fan speed set to maximum, which hovered around 1,800rpm.

V3 Avenger Pc 3

This tells us that while the Voltair TEC performed well at lower casual loads, it wasn't able to quite keep up at high-stress loads, which are thankfully not typical of normal day-to-day use. Even during games such as GTAV and The Witcher 3, the Voltair held temperatures between 45 C and 47 C, which are respectable but not excellent. The reason is that using a TEC requires exceptional heat dissipation to cool the hot side of the TEC. It's clear that as big as the Voltair's heatsink is, it's not efficient enough to keep the TEC operating at maximum efficiency. Some TEC configurations use water cooling as a more effective means of keeping the temps down, and we would have loved to see that here as well.

Setup and configuration

V3's configuration of the Avenger is loaded. Three Nvidia GeForce GTX 980s is more than enough to run just about any game, and especially so at 4K. We'll take that. Subsystem wise, the Avenger was configured to use two Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSDs in RAID 0, and Windows was installed on the RAID map. The spare Western Digital Black 1TB drive sits as extra storage, but we would have liked something a little bigger.

Cpu Z 1

The Avenger came with the 5960X overclocked to 4.3GHz while using stock voltage. This isn't unusual for such an overclock on a good 5960X, as anything higher than 4.3GHz is where we usually see a need for a minor voltage bump. It's recommended that if you plan to overclock higher, you should be using adaptive voltage settings instead of fixed, and of course it depends on the quality of your 5960X. The MSI X99S SLI Plus board's overclocking features are good, and its OC Genie does a fine job of finding the highest possible stable overclock based on your settings and temperature. During Prime95 torture tests, the CPU became uncomfortably hot, but did not crash.

On the software side, V3 kept the OS setup clean. The necessary drivers were installed for all devices, and that was it. No antivirus trials, no bloatware, no excess of any kind. This is what we appreciate in a pre-built system.

The included Corsair HX1050 80+ Gold PSU handles a pegged load nicely, sitting at a total of 761W of power draw, so no complaints there. You won't be able to do 4-way SLI on the MSI X99S SLI Plus anyway, so beefier PSUs aren't needed. At load, the HX1050's fan does spin at maximum RPM, and with all fans roaring, the system's noise is definitely noticeable. During gaming or movies though, you won't hear it. The loudest part of the system was the Voltair cooler, so if you want to curb some noise, we suggest swapping out for a closed-loop cooler.

Benchmarks

So, how does the Avenger perform? We'll let the numbers speak for themselves. All benchmarks were run at 2160p Ultra HD resolutions, except for 3DMark Fire Strike and one instance of GTAV, which were benched at 1080p for reference against our Maximum PC Spring Turbo Build. Fire Strike Extreme was benched at 2160p.

Nvidia GeForce Drivers: 353.06
All benchmarks are on maxed settings with 4x AA.

BenchmarkV3 Avenger ScoreTurbo Build
3DMark Fire Strike (1080p)26,411-
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (2160p)13,044-
Unigen Heaven 4.0 (fps)65
-
The Witcher 3 (fps)42.9
-
Grand Theft Auto V (1080p) (fps)80.447.2
Grand Theft Auto V (2160p) (fps)50.7-
Crysis 3 (fps)45.1-
GRID Autosport (fps)92.9
-
Metro: Last Light (fps)54
-
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (fps)105
66.8
Crystal DiskMark (Sequential Read)1103 MB/s939.9 MB/s
Crystal DiskMark (4K Random Read)637.5 MB/s-
Crystal DiskMark (4K Random Write)642.1 MB/s-

The Avenger performs admirably and we expected nothing less. When we received the Avenger, Nvidia hadn't announced the new GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but the difference between what we have here and the a 3-way Ti system is minimal at best. However, if you're configuring a system from V3, you'll be given the option of using the newer GTX 980 Ti.

Wrap-Up

There's nothing underdog about V3 Gaming, especially with a system like the Avenger. Packed to the gills with some of the best hardware, the brisk performance is of little surprise to us. We appreciate the attention to detail: clean wiring, clean operating system install, and good BIOS tweaks for overclocking. Some minor things stuck out at us, such as the 16GB of RAM and small storage drive, but none were show-stoppers. There's still plenty of room inside the chassis to hold more drives if you run out of space.

We went ahead and used PCPartPicker to build a system similar to the Avenger. The exact RAM and CPU cooler weren't found, so we used price-equivalent parts: Corsair's H110 AIO cooler, Corsair's Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 memory. Our price came out to: $3790.71. At the time the Avenger was sent to us, the pricing was a tad higher only because the GTX 980 was still priced at $699. But with the Ti out, the 980 is now sitting at $499.

All-in-all, the Avenger impressed with its smooth handling of all the latest titles. Some recent games like Witcher 3 won't be able to maintain a solid 60fps, but if you have a G-Sync monitor, it'll be a non-issue. Dial back a few minor settings and 60fps should be no problem at 4K.

Xbox 360 Compatibility Arrives on Xbox One

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 03:43 PM PDT

Microsoft has opened the doors to backward compatibility with the Xbox One console

One of the big juicy news nuggets coming out of Microsoft's E3 presentation on Monday was the announcement that the Xbox One console will be backward compatible with a number of Xbox 360 games this fall. Customers enrolled in the Xbox preview program can get an early taste of the beta starting today, June 15.

According to a list provided here, the Backward Compatibility beta is compatible with Mass Effect, Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Piñata, Geometry Wars Evolved, and 16 additional titles. By the time the service opens its doors to all Xbox One owners, there should be well over 100 compatible titles.

Unfortunately, there's a catch. For disc-based games, users must download the entire game to the console's hard drive. Even more, these customers will also need to keep the disc handy, as they're needed in order to play the associated game. Compatible titles that are already downloaded will show up in the program's "Ready to Install" section.

The good news is that Xbox One owners won't be required to purchase the digital edition if they already own the disc-based copy. The Backward Compatibility program is also free and will store achievements, DLC, and game saves in the cloud. Other features include Windows 10 streaming, Game DVR, and the ability to take screenshots.

This is a bold move for Microsoft and the Xbox One, as the feature will open up a whole new (and familiar) library for Xbox One owners. Microsoft tried its hand with backward compatibility in the past by including this feature in the Xbox 360, so the Xbox One announcement shouldn't be a shocker to most Xbox-brand gamers.

According to Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, all game developers have to do is give Microsoft a seal of approval in order for a specific game to show up; no extra leg work needed. Thus, it's possible we'll see a huge library of Xbox 360 games by the time the holiday shopping days are upon us.

Newegg Daily Deals: Refurbished Asus Transformer Flip, Corsair Flash Voyager Go 64GB, and More!

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 11:07 AM PDT

Asus Transformer Flip

Top Deal:

We like what Microsoft has done with the Surface, it just seems that for the asking price, a keyboard should be included. Towards that end, some of the best 2-in-1 Windows devices are those conceived by Microsoft's hardware partners. One of them is the topic of today's top deal -- a Refurbished Asus Transformer Book Flip TP500LA-UT31T 2-in-1 Laptop for $330 with free shipping (normally $340 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK67]). This is a 15.6-inch laptop with an Intel Core i3 4030U processor 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and Windows 8.1 64-bit.

Other Deals:

Refurbished: Razer Kraken Pro 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Analog Gaming Headset for $25 with free shipping (normally $40 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK58])

Corsair Flash Voyager GO 64GB USB 3.0 OTG Flash Drive for $27 with $1 shipping (normally $31 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK55])

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Intel Core i7-5775C Review and Overclocking

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 10:42 AM PDT

Better Late than Never. Maybe.

Broadwell. We've known the codename for Intel's 14nm part for several years, but as a "tick" in Intel's yearly tick-tock cadence, it's extremely late to the party. Officially, Broadwell did hit the 2014 launch target, though barely, shipping in a few Core M laptops late last year. But that was with Broadwell-Y, a completely different sort of processor that's built to run in low power (i.e., < 4.5W) tablets and hybrids. Earlier this year, the second round of Broadwell parts came to market with Broadwell-U, the Ultra-Low Voltage variant designed for Ultrabooks and NUCs.

All of our coverage of Broadwell up to this point has focused on these two parts, and for the target markets they do quite well—Broadwell-U offers slightly improved performance, but more importantly, it increases battery life by as much as 15–20 percent in laptops. Of course, much of this was planned from the beginning; Broadwell was always a mobile-focused product, and the past several generations of Intel CPUs have had more to offer laptops than desktops. Intel even talked about skipping the desktop entirely at one point, but apparently decided against it.

Now, almost a year later than many of us expected, desktop Broadwell is finally here, along with the higher-performance 47W notebook parts as well. Broadwell for the desktop, aka Broadwell-DT (or if you like the three-letter abbreviations, BDW-DT) is both more and less than expected. Here's what Intel is offering:

Broadwell vs. Haswell Specifications Overview
Model i7-5775C i7-4790K i5-5675C i5-4690K
Cores/Threads 4/8 4/8 4/4 4/4
Base Frequency (GHz) 3.3 4.0 3.1 3.5
Max Turbo Boost (GHz) 3.7 4.4 3.6 3.9
Processor Graphics Iris Pro
Graphics 6200 		HD Graphics
4600 		Iris Pro
Graphics 6200 		HD Graphics
4600
Graphics Units 48 20 48 20
Graphics Max Frequency 1150 1250 1100 1200
L3 Cache 6MB 8MB 4MB 6MB
eDRAM/L4 Cache 128MB N/A 128MB N/A
TDP 65W 84W 65W 84W
1ku Pricing $366 $339 $276 $242

There are only two real desktop options right now, the i7-5775C that we're looking at today and the i5-5675C that disables Hyper-Threading and drops the base clock speed 200MHz. There are also three non-socketed desktop parts available, with an "R" suffix, but those are intended for pre-built systems so they're of less concern for desktop enthusiasts. Compared to the 20 BDW-U models and seven BDW-Y (Core M) models, not to mention the five new HQ/H models designed for notebooks, having just two socketed desktop processors is telling. Again, this is a mobile-focused processor, and as we'll see later, the performance improvements and other changes will be of far greater benefit for mobile platforms.

Then there's the elephant in the corner. Broadwell-DT is so late that it has run up against Intel's next "tock," codenamed Skylake. Where Broadwell is a "tick" that builds off an existing architecture (Haswell) and moves it to a new manufacturing process (14nm), as a "tock" Skylake uses the presumably now-mature 14nm process combined with a new architecture. We don't have much in the way of details on Skylake's architecture yet, but we do know that it will use a new socket—LGA1151—and will support DDR4 memory, which means there will also be new chipsets and motherboards. Given the pending launch of Skylake, expected around August of this year, most "mainstream enthusiasts" are planning to wait and will likely bypass Broadwell-DT completely.

Broadwell-DT: In Search of an Audience?

It's worth pointing out that Broadwell is not intended to compete with or replace Intel's true enthusiast/high-performance platform, Haswell-E and the X99 chipset. Broadwell continues to use the Z97/H97 chipset, perhaps even the older Z87/H87 provided you can get an appropriate BIOS update from your motherboard manufacturer. That means it remains limited to 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU and dual-channel DDR3 memory. While there's no technical reason Intel couldn't support additional CPU cores on the platform, Broadwell also remains limited to quad-core with Hyper-Threading at the top—and it's unlikely we'll see any dual-core desktop parts, as Skylake will handle that market segment.

So, the true performance enthusiasts are likely already running a Haswell-E processor, and they're waiting for Broadwell-E or Skylake-E. Meanwhile, the mainstream desktop users have had Haswell for two years, and it continues to serve them well. They're going to want something more than a minor bump in performance, so they're looking at Skylake. All of that helps to explain the lack of desktop parts, but then why would Intel even bother creating two BDW-DT processors?

Broadwell Labeled Dieshot
Check out how much of the processor is devoted to graphics!

The current outlook is that Broadwell-DT targets a different market segment rather than the high-performance enthusiasts. You see, with Broadwell-DT Intel is doing something they haven't previously done for socketed processors: they're equipping them with the fastest graphics solution that Intel currently offers. Intel is shipping the BDW-DT Core i5 and i7 (including both the C-series and R-series) with their Iris Pro Graphics 6200 solution, which pairs 48 EUs (graphics Execution Units) with 128MB of high-speed embedded DRAM. Codenamed Crystal Well—that's apparently where the "C" suffix on the i7-5775C comes from, if you're wondering—the eDRAM acts as a large L4 cache, potentially speeding up any tasks that need a lot of memory bandwidth. Graphics is an obvious case, but as we'll see in a moment, there are other times where Crystal Well will help performance. Note that the eDRAM is segregated into two parts for the CPU and GPU if you're using the Iris Pro Graphics, but if you plug in a discrete GPU and disable the processor graphics, the CPU gets to use the whole 128MB.

The inclusion of Iris Pro Graphics on the new Broadwell parts again stems from the mobile origins. There are many laptop users who don't have a discrete GPU, so improving graphics capabilities and performance can be very beneficial. On the desktop, Iris Pro isn't quite so interesting. It's definitely more potent than any other previous graphics solution we've seen out of Intel, but it still can't hope to compete with even a moderate dedicated graphics card. At least the L4 cache aspect can still help performance in other areas, and we'll see some of this in the benchmarks.

If the graphics solution is the part where we get more from Broadwell than some of us expected, the part where we get less is clock speeds. Intel's current i7-4790K comes with factory clocks of 4.0–4.4GHz and the i5-4690K is clocked at 3.5–3.9GHz. By contrast, i7-5775C is clocked at 3.3–3.7GHz and i5-5675C at 3.1-3.6 GHz. We don't normally see a step back in clock speeds from Intel, at least not without an accompanying change in architecture (e.g., the NetBurst Pentium 4 to Conroe Core 2 Duo transition), and Broadwell should be very similar to Haswell in most respects. While the eDRAM will help performance in some tasks, the fact is that we expect there to be plenty of cases where a stock-clocked 4790K outperforms a stock-clocked 5775C.

There are a few likely reasons for the reduced clock speeds. Perhaps the size of the chip combined with the manufacturing process and eDRAM is to blame—hey, it's possible. Intel has also dropped the TDP (Thermal Design Power) from 84W on i7-4790K to just 65W with the i7-5775C, and that's almost certainly the bigger factor. But the cynic will look at Skylake and the expected launch clock speeds of 4.2–4.6GHz and conclude that both the lower TDP and lower clock speeds are a way for Intel to keep some separation between Broadwell-DT and Skylake-DT. The good news is that while the suffix has changed from a "K" to a "C," the new Broadwell-DT parts are still multiplier unlocked. (Note that the "R" series processors are not unlocked.) As long as your motherboard BIOS is up to the task—more on that in a moment—overclocking Broadwell should prove beneficial… and interesting.

Arriving Early to the Broadwell Party

While we're late with our Broadwell review [Ed—Just following Intel's example!], we're actually still early as far as retail availability goes. Intel has technically launched the desktop Broadwell parts, but they're not available for purchase just yet; that will likely happen later this month. Intel didn't even sample us a Broadwell CPU for testing, but we have our ways around that. Engineering sample in hand, we set out to get Broadwell up and running, and in the process we may have uncovered more reasons for the delay.

Our test motherboards first needed to be updated with Broadwell-compatible BIOS revisions, and while that was expected, it's something to consider. If you want to buy straight into a Broadwell setup, you might end up with a "new" motherboard still running an older BIOS, in which case you'd need a Haswell chip installed just to update. Caveat emptor. Proper BIOS installed, we moved to the next stage of testing performance. Or tried to.

The first board we used worked reasonably well at stock settings, but the CPU clocks were higher than expected—it ran at a constant 3.7GHz, the maximum Turbo Boost clock, rather than dropping down to lower clocks with heavily threaded workloads. Changing the BIOS settings helped, but ideally, we want "Auto" to run a chip at stock settings, not overclocked. The board also had all sorts of instability running games, but that was most likely caused by using older Intel drivers; you'll want to install the latest Intel drivers (currently 15.36.21.4222), though even then you may encounter some glitches. But the real deal-breaker was when we tried to install a discrete GPU and the system refused to boot; we couldn't even get to the BIOS—AMD or Nvidia GPU, it didn't matter. This same motherboard worked flawlessly with our Haswell chip, but the current BIOS has some clear problems. We have since received a new beta BIOS, but as we were busy testing our single Broadwell chip in a different board we have not been able to check compatibility yet. Next!

Board number two behaved much more reasonably, particularly at stock settings. All of the benchmarks completed, and while performance in some cases was lower than board one, that was thanks to the CPU using the correct clock speeds. Then we tried overclocking and ran into problems again. We've seen reports of people hitting anywhere from 4.4–4.8GHz with Broadwell samples, but our CPU doesn't want to go much beyond 4.2GHz. We were able to hit that on all four cores at 1.36V, which represents a respectable 14–27 percent overclock, but 1.4V at 4.3GHz proved unstable, so we stopped there. 4.2GHz also matches nicely with our 4790K clocks, which range from 4.0–4.4 GHz but generally run around 4.2GHz.

The problems with overclocking continued, however, as the BIOS doesn't properly override certain safety features. Intel CPUs have the ability to exceed their TDP by a small amount for a period of time. Not surprisingly, 4.2GHz at 1.36V ends up requiring more than 65W—around 80W according to our monitoring software—and after 10–15 seconds, the power protection would kick in and the clocks would drop to around 3.3–3.6GHz. Normally, you can adjust the power limit, current limit, and even the amount of time you're able to exceed the power limit, but the BIOS on this motherboard doesn't appear to have the right microcode updates yet, so that didn't work. Good news, however: We found a "current offset" feature in the BIOS that appears to trick the CPU into thinking it's using about one third as much power, so we're back in business. As with the first board, the manufacturer is working on a BIOS update that should fix the problems we encountered with overclocking.

The point of these two experiences is to convey the newness and potential pitfalls associated with a platform that is not yet publicly available for purchase. Hopefully, most motherboard manufacturers will be able to get Broadwell running properly on all their Z97 boards by the time you can buy the processors, but don't be surprised if you encounter a few bugs at first. Pre-built systems shouldn't have any problems, as the system integrator should handle all the compatibility testing, but pre-built systems aren't usually as cost effective, and that doesn't help potential upgraders.

Broadwell Performance: Benchmarked and Overclocked

Having put the early teething problems behind us, let's get to the real meat of the story: What does Broadwell do for performance on Z97 desktops? We've covered the core specs of the two Broadwell-DT parts, and armed with an i7-5775C we're ready to see what sort of performance we can coax out of Intel's new baby. We're going to open things up a bit and test several configurations. First, we have a Haswell (Devil's Canyon) i7-4790K, running at 4.0–4.4GHz stock. Next, we have the Broadwell i7-5775C, and for this we've tested both stock clocks as well as our 4.2GHz overclock. Finally, we have our beefy Haswell-E i7-5930K clocked at 4.2GHz. This will allow us to do some equivalent clock speed comparisons between Broadwell and Haswell/Haswell-E, and while we could likely coax a few more MHz out of each CPU, realistically, there's not a whole lot to be gained by another 200MHz. Here are the two test beds:

Maximum PC 2015 CPU Test Beds
Platform LGA2011-3 LGA1150
CPU Intel Core i7-5930K @4.2GHz Intel Core i7-4790K (4.0-4.4GHz)
Intel Core i7-5775C (3.3-3.7GHz)
i7-5775C w/4.2GHz Overclock
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SOC Force (HSW)
ASUS Z97-Deluxe (BDW)
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW)
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 (BDW)
SSD 2x Samsung 850 Evo 250GB Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 480GB
HDD Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM
PSU EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2 Seasonic SS-760KM
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 4x4GB DDR4-2666 G.Skill Ripjaws 2x8GB DDR3-2133
Cooler Cooler Master Nepton 280L be quiet! Dark Rock 3
Case Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper be quiet! Silent Base 800
Drivers Nvidia 353.06
 Nvidia 353.06
Intel 15.36.21.4222

We'll take the benchmarks in groups of similar tests, starting with a look at general processing performance. Our test suite this time includes old standbys like Adobe Premiere Pro CS6, Cinebench, POV-Ray 3.7, ProShow Producer 5, Stitch.Efx, and x264 HD 5.0, but we've also added 7-zip and PCMark 8 to the mix. PCMark 8 in particular can be interesting, as it's more of a full-system workload, as opposed to focusing on raw computational performance. Where clock speed is generally king on most of the CPU-centric tests, PCMark is more likely to benefit from the added eDRAM/L4 cache on Broadwell.

General System Performance
Test i7-4790K
Stock		 i7-5775C
Stock		 i7-5775C
@4.2 1.36V		 i7-5930K
@4.2GHz		 i7-5775C
@4.2 dGPU
Cinebench R15 1-thread 173 155 177 163
Cinebench R15 Multi-thread 832 767 887 1235
Premiere Pro CS6 (sec) 1088 1139 963 760
ProShow Producer 5 (sec) 1296 1497 1233 1203
Stitch.Efx (sec) 770 850 733 731
x264 5.0 1st Pass (FPS) 88.66 81.12 95.24 129.67
x264 5.0 2nd Pass (FPS) 18.06 16.16 18.84 27.04
7-zip Compress (KB/s) 20548 20059 23219 32078
7-zip Decompress (KB/s) 271152 240160 281718 415594
PCMark 8 Home 3508 4359 4803 4917 5273
PCMark 8 Creative 4863 5966 6339 8097 7839
PCMark 8 Work 4561 4871 5397 5010 5189
POV Ray 3.7 PPS 1706.93 1551.58 1819.12 2577.54

If you're not inclined to pop the hood on your Broadwell-DT system and instead choose to run stock clocks, as expected, the performance for most tasks is going to be a step back relative to the existing i7-4790K. The overall average change in performance in the above set of benchmarks is only a drop of 3 percent, but PCMark 8 skews the results. Remove PCMark from the list and the i7-5775C looks to be around 9 percent slower than an i7-4790K in pure CPU performance. The flipside is that for general use, which PCMark 8 represents a bit better than our number-crunching tests, the L4 cache can help quite a bit, allowing the i7-5775C to outperform i7-4790K by 18 percent—and nearly 25 percent in the Home suite.

With overclocking on Broadwell, effectively giving us similar clock speeds, the story changes a bit. Thanks to architectural improvements and the 128MB eDRAM cache, the 4.2GHz Broadwell chip manages to outperform the i7-4790K by an average of 12 percent across all the above benchmarks. Again, PCMark 8 skews those results, as it shows nearly a 30 percent improvement; drop PCMark 8 from the average and it looks like architectural tweaks and the larger cache give about 7 percent more performance to Broadwell-DT. Of course, we could overclock Haswell (Devil's Canyon) to at least 4.6GHz, which would overcome that deficit, but then there's a good chance final Broadwell processors running with updated motherboard microcode could reach a similar level.

Haswell-E meanwhile wins as the fastest processor and the 5960X variant is still recommended as our top CPU, at least when it comes to multi-threaded tasks. The relatively low score in the single-threaded Cinebench result is a bit odd, as with similar clocks it should be right next to the other processors, but the result was consistent over numerous test runs (even with affinity forced to a particular core). The other less-threaded tests, ProShow and Stitch.Efx, fall right where expected. Since PCMark 8 on Haswell-E can utilize the Titan X GPU, we've added a column showing how the overclocked Broadwell chip fares in those tests with the same GPU. The Creative suite benefits the most, the Home suite makes moderate use of the GPU, and the Work suite actually ran faster on Broadwell without the GPU. But in programs that can make use of the six Hyper-Threading enabled cores on the i7-5930K, it can't be touched by the mainstream platforms, boasting a 25–45 percent advantage over the overclocked Broadwell system.

Gaming Performance at 1080p Medium
Benchmark i7-4790K
Stock 		i7-5775C
Stock 		i7-5775C
@4.2 1.36V
Batman: Arkham Origins 20 46 49
GTAV 25.6 37.9 42.3
Hitman: Absolution 33.3 31.2 35.0
Metro: Last Light 17 30.3 32.9
Shadow of Mordor 12.6 19.6 20.9
Tomb Raider 23.5 49.5 53.3
Unigine Heaven 4.0 13.5 23.8 26.5
The Witcher 3 7.3 11.5 12.7
3DMark Fire Strike 892 1742 1930
3DMark Sky DIver 3860 6542 7369
3DMark Cloud Gate 8235 12595 14100
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited 69576 119527 140910

While the CPU performance hasn't changed all that much, the graphics performance has improved dramatically. Every game and graphics test we ran showed substantial gains in performance, with the exception of Hitman: Absolution. A driver update will likely fix the Hitman problem, or maybe Intel could contract another hitman and absolve themselves of responsibility, but otherwise we're looking at 50 percent to more than 100 percent improvements to frame rates. Toss overclocking into the mix and the situation improves another 10 percent on average, indicating Broadwell is likely bumping into the 65W total TDP limit when running games at stock settings.

We're comparing apples and oranges, of course, as Broadwell has the eDRAM plus over twice as many graphics units (48 EUs compared to 20 in 4790K). Previously, the Iris Pro Graphics was only available on notebook processors like the i7-4750HQ as well as the R-series (e.g., i7-4770R) non-socketed desktop chips. You can see in the above image that shows the labeled die shot how much die space Intel allocates to graphics in Broadwell-DT, and it's roughly half of the total processor die. It's also interesting to see how the four CPU cores take relatively little space; Intel could easily build an octal-core processor for the mainstream market by giving up half of the graphics unit, but that remains the domain of Haswell-E and its ilk.

On a related note, for notebook and pseudo-desktop users (e.g., NUC devices), the new 47W Broadwell parts are a lot more interesting. Decent graphics performance and reasonable power requirements are both desirable for those markets. HTPC users may also find the R-series parts worth a look, and pulling reasonably playable frame rates at 1080p medium settings is nothing to scoff at for integrated graphics. The CPU overclock also improved graphics performance, and since we're overclocking already, we pushed the GPU as well and overclocked the graphics an additional 100 MHz (9 percent) to 1250 MHz, bringing an additional 6-18 percent improvement to gaming performance. But on true desktops, the Iris Pro Graphics isn't that important.

It's not all sunshine and roses with Intel's graphics division, however. At least one of the games we tested, GTAV, had some pretty severe rendering errors. [Ed—The latest updated drivers fixed this.] Hitman, as we noted above, also didn't improve compared to Haswell, which indicates a driver problem. Perhaps more concerning is that Shadow of Mordor performance is poor unless we drop below medium quality, while The Witcher 3 proved to be unplayable at any settings. The above chart shows performance at 1920x1080 with medium quality, but we tried again at 1366x768 with minimum quality settings and still failed to break 20fps in The Witcher 3. That's another recent release, so drivers could potentially fix the situation, but at present the Iris Pro Graphics 6200 remains adequate for 1080p medium settings in most but not all games.

Gaming Performance at 1080p Ultra with Titan X
Test i7-4790K
Stock		 i7-5775C
Stock		 i7-5775C
@4.2 1.36V		 i7-5930K
@4.2GHz
Batman: Arkham Origins 180 182 183 182
GTAV 61.4 64.3 66.1 66.2
Hitman: Absolution 92.5 91.5 94.4 93.7
Metro: Last Light 106.9 110.6 111.3 109.3
Shadow of Mordor 113.8 119 119.4 114.8
Tomb Raider 129.8 137.2 135.4 136.3
Unigine Heaven 4.0 97.6 100.1 100.2 99.9
The Witcher 3 55.2 55.9 55.7 58.5
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra 3944 3956 4066 4001

For gaming performance with a dedicated graphics card, the difference between the three processors becomes far less dramatic. Paired up with the fastest current GPU, the GeForce Titan X, at 1080p ultra settings we see very little difference between the processors. Interestingly, even at stock clocks we see a consistent improvement in gaming performance on Broadwell compared to Haswell, but it's only 3 percent on average. The large L4 cache again plays a role, and it looks like the larger L3 cache of Haswell-E in some cases has a similar benefit, but anything less than 10 percent typically won't be noticed in normal use.

Playing the Waiting Game

Two years later, Haswell continues to hold its own when it comes to most tasks. For that matter, unless you're running applications that specifically leverage some of the newer features of the fourth- and fifth-generation Intel Core processors, even Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge are still performing admirably—at least when you have a dedicated graphics card handling visual duties. At times it feels like things just aren't progressing as fast as they used to.

Remember back when Intel took the original Pentium chips from a launch speed of 60/66MHz up to 200MHz, and overclocking could get you as far as 250MHz? Or how about Pentium II, which launched at 233MHz and finished at 450MHz, with overclocking reaching the low-500MHz range? Pentium III went from 450MHz at launch to a final clock of 1.4GHz, and then Pentium 4 scaled from 1.4GHz to 3.8GHz. Those were heady days! Sure, it took four years for Pentium 4 to more than double its starting clock speed, but the NetBurst architecture kept hanging around like an albatross for six years.

Six years ago we were looking at the first-generation of Nehalem Core i7 processors, with clock speeds as high as 3.0–3.2GHz. While there are many similarities between today's Broadwell and those early Nehalem parts, in practical terms we've had four moderate architecture updates and clock speeds have improved by nearly 50 percent. The cumulative effect is that in six years, Intel has almost doubled processor performance for the mainstream user. Almost.

The problem is that calling these processors first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and now fifth-generation Core processors implies that there is a substantial change between each family. We could make that case for Intel's processor graphics, but much of the past six years has been spent improving efficiency as much as improving performance. We have an old i7-920 kicking around, which just happens to be clocked at 3.6GHz—a great comparison point for Broadwell's i7-5775C. There's no question that Broadwell is faster, but at stock clocks it's only about 35 percent faster on tests that don't use the newer AVX/AVX2 instructions. Put another way, architecturally, it looks like Intel is averaging about an 8 percent improvement between each generation of Core processors—not bad, but not earth-shattering either. Then again, Broadwell is using at most 65W while that overclocked Bloomfield chip is pulling north of 150W, so that's certainly something to talk about.

If your main question is whether Broadwell is worth the wait and a worthy upgrade to Haswell, the answer is that it represents about as much of an upgrade as Haswell provided over Ivy Bridge, or Ivy Bridge provided over Sandy Bridge. Or in other words, it's faster once it's running similar clocks, but out of the gate there's a governor installed that will keep you under the speed limit. We think that sucks, and we'd much rather have seen Broadwell running 4.0–4.4GHz with an 84W TDP, but we can still get there.

Skylake, however, is set to start at those higher clocks, which means anyone looking at stock performance should be suitably impressed. Assuming Intel gets similar performance improvements from the architecture updates with Skylake, coupled with a higher clock speed, and we'll probably see a 35 percent performance gap. Just try not to remember that at stock clocks, the i7-4790K is typically 10–15 percent faster than the i7-5775C.

Online Banking Site Lets You Trade Your PIN for an Emoji Passcode

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 08:53 AM PDT

Banking on emojis

Phones Emoji

Security is evolving. We're seeing trends towards biometric logins like fingerprint and retina scans, while many sites are starting to adopt two-factor authentication. And when it comes to banking sites, PIN codes are the norm. Maybe not for long, as a British firm is letting users of its Android app use a combination of emojis instead of numbers.

That company is Intelligent Environments and it claims the world's first emoji-only passcode launched today is more secure and easier to remember than traditional passcodes.

"Emoji passcode is mathematically more secure than traditional methods. There are 480 times more permutations using emojis over traditional four digit passcodes," Intelligent Environments says. " In addition, it will prevent hackers from identifying common and easily obtainable numerical passcodes, like a date of birth or a wedding anniversary."

The company said it developed its app in response to research showing that over 25 percent of Brits have forgotten their PINs in the past. Emojis, on the other hand, offer an advantage in that research also shows that humans tend to remember pictures more easily than words or numbers. The decision to use emojis also can about as a way of catering to a younger generation of users.

"We've had input from lots of millennials when we developed the technology. What's clear is that the younger generation is communicating in new ways," said David Webber, Manager Director at Intelligent Environments. "Our research shows 64 percent of millennials regularly communicate only using emojis. So we decided to reinvent the passcode for a new generation by developing the world's first emoji security technology."

What do you think about using emojis instead of traditional PIN codes -- good idea or bad?

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Steam Breaches 10 Million Concurrent User Mark For First Time

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 04:39 AM PDT

The previous record for concurrent users was 9.5 million

Steam Users

Steam is on a record-breaking spree. This year there have been three instances of the client shattering its previous concurrent usage record and setting a new one. It first did it in January, when the number of concurrent users breached the 8.5 million mark; in March, when it recorded over 9 million simultaneous users; and on Sunday, when the client witnessed over 10 million logins.

Based on Steam's game stats page, the number of concurrent logins first exceeded the 10 million mark a few minutes before the clock struck 11 (PST) and stayed at those record levels until a few minutes after noon. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that many of these record logins were on account of the ongoing Steam Monster Summer Sale. Set to run until 10:00 AM PST, June 22nd, the event presents Steam users with new deals and discounts on a daily basis.

HP Launches $299 Accessory to Boost Sprout’s 3D Scanning Capabilities

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 04:28 AM PDT

HP 3D Capture Stage is a table that tilts and turns so you can get that perfect scan

HP Sprout

Though you wouldn't be wrong in calling it an all-in-one PC, HP's Sprout "immersive computer" is in many ways a sui generis device. The company is marketing it as a sort of a dimensional leap for computing; an attempt at turning the PC into a 3D creation tool. According to Eric Monsef, the man spearheading the effort, Sprout is "HP's onramp to its Blended Reality strategy."

He made that remark in a press release announcing the release of HP 3D Capture Stage, a $299 accessory that should significantly bolster the $1,899 PC's 3D scanning capabilities. It is essentially a turntable that automatically tilts 15 degrees while rotating, enabling the Sprout's depth-sensing camera capture the object being scanned in its entirety. The turntable, when combined with a new application announced on the same day, can turn a real object into a 3D digital model in a matter of "a few taps."

Sprout is an all-in-one PC with an appendage that juts out from over its 23-inch multi-touch display, and includes both a DLP projector and 14.6-megapixel depth-sensing camera. The combination of the projector and a capacitive mat mean you don't need a mouse or keyboard.

"The innovative 3D Capture solution uniquely allows users to easily capture an object in 3D that can then be further modified, shared, and printed," Monsef said.

The Top 7 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 10

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

There's no question that Microsoft launched Windows 8 with touch-based devices in mind. As we've seen over the past several years, that feature didn't sit well with the majority of Microsoft's desktop customers. The new Start screen was jarring to the point that Microsoft released Windows 8.1 to correct the experience for mouse-and-keyboard users.

Because of this, there's a good reason why customers may be hesitant about Windows 10. That's where the Insider program comes in: Customers can see what's on the Windows 10 menu through hands-on impressions and build reviews by the press. Unlike previous builds, Windows 10 is shaped by the community, and that's a good thing.

So, why should you upgrade to Windows 10? Here are seven good reasons:

3dmark Dx12 Api Overhead

DirectX 12

Gamers stand to benefit from Windows 10, as the latest iteration of DirectX will only be available on the new operating system. Designed to provide low-level access to the graphics hardware, DX12 is already showing promise as a way to reduce the CPU bottleneck in games. The demonstrations so far (e.g., Star Swarm and 3DMark API Overhead Feature Test) have focused on the increased number of draw calls that can be sent using using DX12 compared to DX11, in many cases showing an order of magnitude improvement. How much that will benefit future DX12 games isn't entirely clear, but improvements to driver multi-threading should make DX12 on Windows 10 at least a bit faster than DX11 on Windows 7/8.1, even on existing games.

Floating Apps

It's a Free Upgrade

The big surprise from Microsoft is that Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 customers. There is a catch, however: The upgrade is only free until one year after the Windows 10 launch. This means that if the platform launches in August 2015, customers will have until August 2016 to take the free Windows 10 plunge.

Once Windows 10 is installed, customers will receive constant updates to the platform instead of Service Packs. According to Microsoft, the company will supply these updates for the supported life of the device. Thanks to this rollout method, customers will see new features and tighter security on a regular basis.

Start Menu Expanded

There's No Start Screen

The Start Screen hasn't gone away, it's just not available for the desktop setup. Microsoft made a daring move when it introduced Windows 8 with the new Start Screen. The resulting backlash brought about Windows 8.1, which was aimed at making Windows experience better for desktop consumers. How? By allowing the same background image to be on the desktop and Start Screen, and by allowing Windows 8.1 to boot up directly into the desktop. For Windows 10 desktop users, Microsoft has eliminated the Start Screen altogether.

Start Menu Screen

The Start Menu Is Back

Yes, the menu we've known and loved since the launch of Windows 95 makes its return. But it's not the same Start Menu we've seen over the decades. Instead of a list of apps, Microsoft has crammed together Live Tiles and app listings, providing the best of both worlds. The Live Tiles even feel 3D, thanks to a cool rotation animation.

From this menu, customers have quick access to the File Explorer, Documents, Settings, and a list of most-used apps. The All Apps button provides access to every app installed manually or via Windows Store. The Live Tiles on the Start Menu include Search, Settings, Mail, the Calendar, Weather, News, and so on. This portion of the Start Menu can be expanded to fill the screen, emulating the original Windows 8 Start Screen.

Another Cortana 2 Screen

Cortana

After making her debut on Windows Phone, Cortana is now available on the Windows 10 desktop. This personal-assistant tool is backed by Microsoft's Bing search engine, and appears next to the Start Menu button on the taskbar. She will call users by name and provide local news and other information that she decides is useful.

For example, tap on the microphone and say, "How is the weather?" She will not only give a verbal response, but will also show the week's forecast in a window. Ask her to find local Chinese food, and the default browser will open up with a list of nearby Chinese restaurants. Ask her when your next appointment is, and Cortana will pull information from the Calendar. Good stuff.

Another Edge Shot

Microsoft Edge

This is Microsoft's new browser, which is already installed in Windows 10. As of the latest build, Edge is set as the default browser, even though Internet Explorer 11 still resides on the desktop. According to Microsoft, the new browser is on the cutting edge, with support for new Internet-based technologies. Internet Explorer 11 is still in residence to support older websites.

Microsoft promotes this browser as "fast and clean." That's a good description, as Edge focuses on the Internet and doesn't provide a fancy user interface. This new browser also introduces a viewing mode called Reading View, which eliminates all the distractions from a website, including animated ads, buttons, and other website clutter. Essentially, Reading View emulates a PDF, so that the user only focuses on the article's text and associated images.

Microsoft's Edge also provides tools for virtually marking up websites. These tools include a pen with an adjustable width, a highlighter, an eraser, a text tool, and a clip tool. This toolset is a good way to make personal notes on websites that can be saved to disk and/or shared with others.

Store Beta Screen

A Redesigned Store

The latest build of Windows 10 features a new Windows Store. Currently in beta, the store provides a different format cosmetically, and includes sections for movies and TV shows. Reminiscent of Netflix's user interface, this new store allows customers to browse vertically and in some cases horizontally. For example, scroll down vertically, and you'll see "Picks for you," "Top free apps," "Best-rated apps," "New and rising apps," and so on.

The Windows Store Beta movies and TV shows section provides quick links to content, including "Top movie rentals," "Last night on TV," "Featured collections," and "Your video library." Categories include "New movies," "Top-selling movies," "New TV shows," "Best-Selling TV Shows," and more. Each category has a "Show all" link for unveiling additional content. As with the current Windows Store, there's a search box in the top-right corner for finding content.

Should You Upgrade?

Will these seven features be enough to bring Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users over to the new platform? That remains to be seen, but based on hands-on experience, Windows 10 is shaping up to offer a fantastic desktop experience. These seven features are just a handful of what's to come this summer when Microsoft launches its new Windows platform.

Technical Preview Users Won’t Have to Reserve Their Free Windows 10 Copies

Posted: 14 Jun 2015 11:23 PM PDT

Those running Insider Preview will be able to upgrade when the OS RTMs

Windows 10

Earlier this month, Microsoft quietly woke up update KB 3035583 from hibernation, and thus began a massive effort to get millions of Windows 7 and 8 users to ditch their existing operating system for a free copy of Windows 10. All they have to do is reserve their Windows 10 upgrade within the first year of the OS's availability, something they can do from the comforts of their desktop via the Get Windows 10 upgrade prompt.

But what about the 4 million or so people already running Windows 10 in Insider Preview (formerly Technical Preview) form? We know that the finished product, set to arrive on July 29, 2015, will be delivered to them for free as well — a token of gratitude for their help building it. What was unclear was whether they too would need to reserve their free copies?

Someone asked Gabriel Aul, the man in charge of the Windows Insider program, this very question on Twitter the other day, and he had this to say: "You won't need to reserve, and if you're running Insider Preview you'll be upgraded." And for those of you wondering: Yes, you will need a valid Windows 7/8.x license even if you are part of the pre-release testing program.

Future Toshiba Laptops Will Have a Dedicated Cortana Key

Posted: 14 Jun 2015 10:24 PM PDT

Good for times when the voice-activated digital assistant isn't paying attention

Microsoft's Answer to Siri and Google Now is Cortana

Microsoft's voice-activated digital assistant Cortana is among a handful of visible changes that set the about-to-RTM Windows 10 apart from its predecessors, but the company has made sure not to tout it as a defining feature — that honor is reserved for the Start Menu. That's probably because it's new to the desktop and lacks the necessary polish to headline an operating system release as important this one. But do you know what's worse than a sporadically misfiring digital assistant? One that doesn't fire up at all.

This is one issue that Toshiba is trying to tackle. It has decided to give Cortana a dedicated keyboard button on each and every one of its Windows 10-running laptops, or, as the company itself put it, "across the board, top to bottom." Jeff Barney, general manager and vice president of Toshiba's American PC division, told PCWorld the dedicated Cortana key will sit right next to the function key in the top left corner of the keyboard.

Newegg Daily Deals: CM Storm Tropper Case, Samsung 850 Evo 120GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 12 Jun 2015 12:47 PM PDT

CM Storm Trooper

Top Deal:

Not everyone has $400 to spend on a case. Does that mean you can't give your precious PC components a big and luxurious home? Not a chance! While going big is generally pricier than going small, the former doesn' necessarily mean you have to rob a bank (we strongly advise that you don't, by the way). Instead, check out today's top deal for a CM Storm Trooper Gaming Fully Tower Case for $144 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: [EMCATKN66]; additional $15 mail-in-rebate). Not only is it very large, but there's also a handle, in case you ever need to lug it to another room or want to enter a LAN party like a boss!

Other Deals:

Turtle Beach Ear Force XP400 Wireless Dolby Surround Sound Gaming Headset for $80 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCATKN72])

Turtle Beach Ear Force PX51 Premium Wireless Dolby Digital PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 Gaming Headset for $80 with $6 shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [EMCATKN74])

Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E120B/AM 2.5-inch 120GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCATKN83])

EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 850W Full Modular Power Supply for $145 with free shipping (normally $155 - use coupon code: [EMCATKN33]; additional $35 Mail-in rebate)

Lian Li's Dual Compartment PC-O8 Case Gives Your Motherboard Its Own Living Space

Posted: 12 Jun 2015 12:30 PM PDT

A case for clean looking builds

Lian Li PC-O8

Building PCs isn't particularly difficult. Where the real challenge comes in is when you try to tidy up the joint for a clean looking interior. Not only is it pleasing to the eye and easier to work in, a clean layout also promotes better airflow. Many of today's cases offer conveniences that can help you build a clutter-free system, including Lian Li's new PC-O8.

The PC-O8 is a dual-compartment aluminum enclosure that separates the power supply and storage drives from the main motherboard area. Whereas most cases allow you to hide cables behind the motherboard tray where they sit squished between the back panel, that area in the PC-O8 is an entirely separate compartment dubbed Zone 2. Zone 1 is on the flip side and is where the motherboard sits.

Rubber lined cable cutouts along the interior allow users to snake cables from the PSU and storage drive to the motherboard and PCI/PCI-E components. There's still a bit of cable management that will be required for a clean looking build, but one thing users shouldn't lack is space.

Zone 1 can also house a 240mm radiator for liquid cooling setups, or you can plop a 360mm radiator in Zone 2's front intake.

Other features include edge-to-edge side panel windows, tool-less installation, slide-in dust filters, clamps for holding cables, and a top I/O panel with four USB 3.0 ports and HD audio connections.

Ready for the deal killer? Lian Li's pricing the PC-O8 at $395. If you don't mind dropping that kind of cash on a computer case, you'll be able to bring one home at the end of this month from Micro Center.

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Nvidia Begins Shipping Pro Version of Shield Pro Android TV

Posted: 12 Jun 2015 09:24 AM PDT

Going Pro gets you more storage

Nvidia Shield Android TV

Nvidia today has begun shipping the Pro version of its Shield Android TV gaming console. It costs $300 MSRP and comes with an integrated 500GB hard drive, and for a limited time, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is included as well.

That's $100 more than the standard Shield Android TV, which doesn't come with a game and is limited to just 16GB of internal storage. Considering the additional storage space and bundled game, the markup is pretty reasonable, though whether or not you want to spend three Benjamins on an Android console is another issue entirely.

To help soften the blow, buyers of either version (standard or Pro) also receive $30 of Google Play credit and three free months of Google Play Music.

Shield Android TV and Shield Pro Android TV are both powered by an Nvidia Tegra X1 processor with a 256-core GPU and 3GB of RAM. Other specs include 802.11ax 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GbE LAN, HDMI 2.0 output, two USB 3.0 ports, micro USB 2.0, microSD card slot, IR receiver, and Android 5.1 Lollipop powered by Android TV and Google Cast.

Pre-installed apps consist of Netflix, Google Play Store, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Google Play Music, Photos & Videos, and Plex.

Shield Android TV is a bit expensive compared to set-top boxes/streamers like Roku and Fire TV. However, it's also more capable in that it can stream PC games from the cloud via Nvidia GRID, as well as from your PC, and comes with a game controller. It also supports 4K Ultra HD and Dolby 7.1 surround sound.

Shield Android TV and Shield Pro Android TV is direct from Nvidia, Amazon, or Best Buy.

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pfSense SG-2440 Gateway Review

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 04:04 PM PDT

The SG-2440 offers IT-grade networking options for your home or SOHO

pfSense SG-2440 beauty

AT A GLANCE

Pros
Powerful and versatile pfSense OS; Expandability with mSATA and 2x mini PCIe; Can be upgraded with software packages

Cons
Not novice-friendly; Wi-Fi option doesn't offer 802.11ac; Pricier than most consumer gateways and routers

When we first got the pfSense SG-2440 in our office, it sat on a desk for a few weeks before we knew exactly what to do with it. After all, exactly how exciting can a firewall/router device be?

As it turns out, it can be friggin' awesome.

One of the interesting things about building PCs is that even the most ardent enthusiasts seldom invest the time or money to create a truly impressive home networking setup. After all, how many people simply use the router given to them by their ISP? Even if you buy your own router, modem, or combination device, seldom will devices offer more than a couple of tools that power users want. Even devices that soar north of $300 can be so-so with security and customization.

The SG-2440 is the polar opposite; it allows a wide and dizzying range of customization and configuration options. 

It's what's inside that counts

The SG-2440 isn't much to look at, and lacks attention-grabbing features like the Netgear Nighthawk X6's antennas. In fact, this particular box didn't come with Wi-Fi antennas at all (you can add Wi-Fi as an option when ordering online, if you like). What it did come with was four gigabit Ethernet RJ45 connections, a couple of USB 2.0 ports, and a power connection.

pfSense SG-2440 rear panel

The most important thing that it came with, however, was four external Phillips head case screws. That's right, this is a router you can customize and upgrade.

Stock, the SG-2440 comes with a 1.7GHz Intel Atom dual-core processor coupled with 4GB of low-voltage DDR3L RAM and 4GB of flash memory soldered to the board. The Atom processor and respectable amount of RAM makes this a very zippy device, compared with many other consumer routers and gateways. Configuration pages were served up quickly, and applying settings took only a few seconds.

Our unit came with a Micron 128GB mSATA SSD attached to the single mSATA slot. There are two mini PCIe slots, which means you can have two different Wi-Fi devices, if you so choose. It also has a SATA connector, though we had a hard time imagining just where you'd put a 2.5-inch SSD inside this tiny box. There's no connector for SATA power anyway, which makes the data connector even more odd.

pfSense SG-2440 gutshot

The SG-2440 allows for expansion with an mSATA port and two mini PCIe ports.

There are five holes for Wi-Fi antennas on the rear panel that are covered by rubber plugs. You can get a unit with a 802.11a/b/g/n mini PCIe card pre-installed. There aren't any FreeBSD drivers to provide 802.11ac support in pfSense yet, so we'd upgrade the Wi-Fi card to AC as soon as drivers are available.

Keep in mind that the SG-2440 is not a modem, it's technically a gateway. You'll still need a cable, DSL, or fiber modem in order to use this box. DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems run around $70 at time of writing. If you have an old router/modem combo or an ISP-supplied router, you can save 70 bucks by enabling bridging mode (which turns off NAT, Wi-Fi, and other routing capabilities) on the old router. That is, if your router has an option to enable bridging mode.

For our testing, we connected the SG-2440's WAN port to a Motorola SURFboard cable modem/router. We then set the 2440's WAN IP address as a DMZ on the Motorola. You can technically attach the SG-2440 to your existing LAN behind your existing router, which would allow a second line of defense on your network.

THE MIND'S STRONGER THAN THE BODY

The brains behind the SG2440 is the pfSense Project, an open-source firewall and gateway distribution based on FreeBSD. Since the project is open-source, you can actually build your own router box and install pfSense on it. The SG-2440 is for those who don't feel like buying a bunch of parts for a new box, or buying extra network cards for an existing old box. Buying a pre-built device also also means you don't have to check hardware compatibility and install an OS.

pfSense home screen

The pfSense dashboard displays resource usage in addition to basic settings.

The first thing to understand about pfSense is that it is an OS running on a storage device. In this way, it runs more like a traditional desktop or server OS than a custom firmware like DD-WRT. It also runs on the 32- or 64-bit architectures we're used to on desktop machines. The pfSense software can also be installed as a firmware for compatible routers.

The primary way to interact with pfSense is through the web interface, which is a bit overwhelming at first. There are a slew of options that range from the most basic to IT professional–level features. You can set up a VPN, use it as a dynamic DNS client, and perform a wide range of advanced routing tasks.

Pfsense VPN options

The OpenVPN options in pfSense's web interface offer more than preset values.

If you can convince your ISP to install multiple broadband connections, you could easily take advantage of the second line. The pfSense OS also allows you to use multiple wide-area network (WAN) connections by configuring one of the other Ethernet devices as a DHCP (or PPPoE) client. You can then configure traffic scheduling and load balancing. It's basically like being able to double-fist the Internet.

pfSense LAN configuration

The pfSense network device configuration screen gives you more than just DHCP or static IP options.

The software allows you to add an arbitrary number of network devices, though the SG-2440 has all the installed devices added for you. Devices can be designated as WAN or LAN, depending on your requirements.

The OS also allows you to download additional software packages like Avahi service discovery, the Apache web server, and the Squid web proxy cache. Of course, you need to actually get the box configured correctly before you can download a package list (or packages).

Great power requires great knowledge

The pfSense software is powerful and versatile, almost to a fault. There are so many options, it can sometimes be tricky to find just what you need quickly. This isn't a device that we'd expect the cable tech to know how to troubleshoot, let alone your mom (unless she's an IT professional).

If you purchase a pfSense gateway or appliance, you get two free support requests that are good for up to one year. If you'll need more support, the project offers support plans starting at $400 per year. That ain't cheap, so we suggest you brush up on your networking knowledge if you want to use this platform.

If you've got the tech chops to know how to set up a network properly, pfSense lets you fine tune just about anything you could want. Though we think we could build our own pfSense box for maybe slightly less than the SG-2440's price of $500, this little black box offers plenty of power in a compact form factor.

If $500 is a bit steep, pfSense offers the SG-2220, with only two Ethernet ports and a single USB 2.0 port for $300. You can also get the OS preloaded on a USB stick for $20. The unit we reviewed (with 128GB SSD and USB cable) prices out to $628. You can get 128GB mSATA SSDs at Newegg for as little as $60 or as much as $142.

We really like what we've seen so far. The pfSense platform offers so much that we think we'll find even more cool stuff the deeper we dive into the OS.

Price: $500; pfSense.org

 Hardware Specifications
CPUIntel "Rangeley" Atom C2358 1.7 Ghz with Intel QuickAssist
CPU CoresDual Core
Networking4x Gigabit Ethernet Ports
SoC Intel I354 Quad GbE on-die MACs
Storage4GB eMMC Flash on board
Memory4GB DDR3L
Expansion1x mSATA, 2x mini PCIe
Console PortMini USB
USB Ports2x 2.0
Dimensions1.5" tall x 6.8" deep x 7" wide
Form FactorStandard mini-ITX 170mm x 170mm
PowerExternal ITE P/S AC/DC 100-240V, 50-60 Hz, 12V 4.16A
Power Consumption7W (idle)

One last thing: We kind of wish the "p" in "pfSense" wasn't lowercase. Starting sentences with "pfSense" will melt a grammar Nazi's brain.

This review has been updated to reflect the fact that pfSense doesn't yet support 802.11ac due to a lack of FreeBSD drivers. This is less of a slight against the appliance and pfSense itself, since it relies on upstream driver projects for AC support. The upgradable nature of the device means that as soon as drivers are available, AC upgrades will be trivial.

Oculus Unveils Oculus Touch VR Controller

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 02:47 PM PDT

Microsoft also partners up with Oculus to offer traditional controller support 

Oculus VR unveiled Oculus Touch this morning at the company's Step into the Rift event held in San Francisco. Oculus Touch is the company's unique input method designed for VR. Teased for months, Oculus Touch features two wireless controllers that both feature a thumb stick, two face buttons, and a trigger button. While the headset is on schedule to release during Q1, Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell mentioned to us that Oculus Touch won't be available until sometime within the first half of the year.

Dsc04811

Palmer Luckey shows off the company's new Oculus Touch controllers.

We unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to try out the new controller system (which is something the company assures us that we will be able to do at E3 next week), but Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey mentioned that the codename for the current Oculus Touch controller is "Half Moon" and that its goals are to provide you with a sense of "hand presence," or a sense of feeling for your hands within virtual realities. 

Dsc04845

Up close with Oculus Touch and the final version of the headset.

A couple key pillars that Palmer touched upon about the controllers is that the tracking is perfect and offers six degrees of freedom tracking (same as the Rift headset). The latency is also extremely minimal. He also mentioned that the controller will allow you to manipulate objects, and gave an example of how you could pick up a gun, fire it, and then throw the gun away. Palmer also said a key design philosophy was that he wanted the controller to offer a "low mental load," meaning the company doesn't want you to think too heavily on how to use the controller and that it should feel natural and intuitive. Communicative gestures were also a key selling point, and he mentioned that you would be able to point at in-game objects with your online buddies. In addition to the aforementioned traditional inputs (control sticks and face buttons), Palmer wanted to ensure that the controllers would be wireless and lightweight, so that you would feel comfortable using it for hours on end. 

Palmer Luckey shows off Oculus Touch and the final headset

While Oculus didn't demo the controller for us, the company said it created a controller demo called Toybox, which will showcase what the controller is capable of (we'll get our sweaty palms on it next week at E3). 

Dsc04807

From left to right: the new external sensor, Oculus Rift, Xbox One controller 

Oculus Touch isn't the only official input method that the Rift will support, however. The other surprising announcement at the event was that every Rift headset will ship with an Xbox One controller. Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, took to the stage to talk about Microsoft's commitment to the PC and VR space and mentioned how the Rift will work natively with Windows 10 and will support DX12 to ensure state of the art VR experiences. Spencer also revealed that users will be able to stream their Xbox One games into the headset through Windows 10. 

Dsc04821

Oculus Touch will support index finger gesturing.

Beyond the newly announced input methods, Oculus also revealed that the consumer version of the head-mounted display will support a new Constellation tracking system that will offer a more precise, and low-latency head movement solution. In conjunction with that reveal, the company also unveiled a new, small external sensor that you simply drop on your desk. Gone is the camera that you have to place on top of your monitor. 

At the event, Oculus also spent a lot of time talking about the ergonomics of the final version of the HMD and mentioned that it's really lightweight and comfortable. The final version doesn't pull against your face and is designed in a way that will allow you to play for hours on end. The company has also worked hard on getting the balance just right so it sits comfortably on top of your brow. One new feature that we learned about the final consumer version is that it will have an interpupillary distance (IPD) adjuster, since everyone has different distances between their pupils. The adjuster will be a simple scrolling knob on the bottom side of the HMD. Oculus also confirmed that the headset will have room for glasses, and revealed that the HMD will be wrapped in fabric, which is used to ward off dust. 

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The backside of the HMD.

Oculus also showcased a few games on the stage. First up was CCP with Eve Valkyrie, which is a futuristic space flight sim that we've seen before. Oculus then unveiled Chronos, which appears to be a third-person labyrinth-crawling adventure game in a similar style to Zelda or Ico. The final game Oculus showcased was called Edge of Nowehere, which is being developed by Insomniac Games. Designed from the ground up for VR, the game is a third-person adventure game that appears to take place in a frigid landscape, but also has some horror/Lovecraftian elements to the game. Oculus also briefly highlighted some other games such as 2D platformer Lucky's Tale and VR Sports Challenge which will allow you to play football, baseball, and hockey mini-games (could this be Oculus' WiiSports?). 

Designing games for VR is tough and is unfamiliar ground for most game developers, so Oculus also announced that it will be investing 10 million dollars into accelerating independent game development in that space. 

Dsc04804

Oculus introduces the Oculus Home user interface.

The last interesting bit of news from the event pertained to the HMD's user interface. The company revealed its Oculus Home UI, which the company says will be the portal to everything Oculus. When you put on the Rift, you will jump straight into Oculus Home. Here you will be able to preview and buy games, and you will also be able to check out your friends list as well. There's also going to be a 2D interface on traditional desktops, so you can manage game downloads and more. 

There's still a lot we don't know about the consumer version of Oculus Rift. How much will it cost? Will it play well with Steam? Perhaps our questions will be answered next week during E3. We'll be live at the show, so stay tuned to Maximum PC for more info on everything Oculus.

Government Union Leader Says Cyberattack Compromised Personal Data of All Federal Employees

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 02:17 PM PDT

He said, she said

White House

It's a bit ironic that some government officials want companies like Apple and Google to tone down their encryption methods and allow backdoor access to electronic devices so that law enforcement can investigate illegal activities. The reason it's ironic is because the lack of encryption may have resulted in the personal information of each and every federal employee being compromised in a recent security breach.

The Associated Press obtained a letter by J. David Cox, president of the American Federal of Government Employees, to Katherine Archuleta, the director of the Office of Personal Management. In the letter, Cox said that hackers were able to obtain all kinds of personal information, things like Social Security numbers, pay history, life insurance information, names, addresses, birth dates, and more.

"We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolute indefensible and outrageous," Cox wrote.

Cox added that after an assessment of internal OPM briefings, he believes "the hackers are now in possession of all personal data for every federal employee," including federal retirees and as many as one million former federal workers.

The OPM has so far held firm that the actual damage is far less severe and that only limited personally identifiable information was compromised. 

It seems as though there's quite a bit of secrecy going around. While the U.S. government is reluctant to publicly point the finger at China, Senator Harry Reid, one of eight lawmakers who was brought up to date on secret intelligence information, said on the Senate floor that the attack was performed by "the Chinese."

Newegg Daily Deals: MSI X99S SLI Plus Motherboard, Intel Core i5-4430, and More!

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 01:47 PM PDT

Msi X99s

Top Deal:

We get it, you don't want to play the waiting game. Sure, Skylake is around the corner, and like you, we're hoping it's awesome. But that doesn't you help right now, does it? So if you're looking to build a dream machine configuration now, another route is warranted, like Haswell-E. And if that's your destination, then check out today's top deal for an MSI X99S SLI Plus Motherboard for $190 with $3 shipping (normally $220 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK29]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). The nice thing about Haswell-E is that you need DDR4 RAM, so if you do upgrade to Skylake down the line, at least you won't have to re-buy memory.

Other Deals:

PNY CS2111 2.5-inch 960GB SATA-III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $350 with free shipping (normally $360 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK23])

Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell Quad-Core 3.0GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor for $175 with free shipping (normally $185 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK24])

AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Desktop Processor for $162 with free shipping (normally $170 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK22])

EVGA SuperNOVA 750W ATX12V Modular Power Supply for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCATKK32]; additional $10 Mail-in rebate)

Steam's Monster Summer Sale for 2015 Starts Now

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 10:32 AM PDT

Resistance is futile

Steam Monster Sale

Sorry folks, but your wallet's going to take a hit today. And if not today, then certainly sometime within the next week and a half. That's how it goes when Steam has a major sale, and effective now, the Steam Monster Summer Sale for 2015 is underway.

The sale runs from June 11-21. You know the drill -- head over to the Steam store and see what marked down titles tempt you to pull the trigger. Sure, you're still trying to catch up on your catalog of titles that you added to the last time Steam had a sale, and the time before that, but why fight it? You know damn well that you're going to cave, and we're here to tell you it's okay and that you're not alone.

For the few of you who can resist stockpiling games, more power to you. For the rest of you, there are big savings to be had, like 40 percent off Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty ($11.99, down from $19.99).

As an added incentive, you can play the Monster Game to work towards community milestones, like unlocking special discounts. The first milestone has already been reached, unlocking a 50 percent discount for Crysis 2 ($14.99, down from $29.99).

Head here to check it out, and let us know which titles you picked up!

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Mozilla Tosses More Money into Firefox Bug Bounty Program

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 10:10 AM PDT

It pays to bug hunt

Firefox Logo

Mozilla says it's awarded bug hunters around $1.6 million to date, and while that's a tidy sum, the browser maker is willing to up the ante in order to increase the security of Firefox.

Five years ago, Mozilla increased the award amount for discovering security flaws to $3,000. However, they had to be rated Critical or High to qualify for a monetary award. That's no longer case -- going forward, Mozilla will fork over funds for fishing out vulnerabilities rated as Moderate with awards ranging from $500 to $2,000. Mozilla also added a category that pays out $10,000 or more for what it considers a "Novel" vulnerability or exploit.

Here's a look at the new pay scale:

  • $500 to $2,500: Medium vulnerability
  • $3,000: Minimum for a high or critical vulnerability
  • $5,000: High quality bug report of a critical or high vulnerability
  • $7,500: High quality bug report with clearly exploitable critical vulnerability
  • $10,000+: Novel vulnerability and exploit, new form of exploitation or an exceptional vulnerability

While $10,000 and higher awards will obviously be rare, it's nice that Mozilla has added a $500 to $2,500 tier for bugs that aren't as severe. The exact amount will continue to be determined by those serving on Mozilla's Bug Bounty Committee, and while not all medium vulnerabilities will qualify for an award, "some will," Mozilla says.

Details of Mozilla's bug bounty program can be found here.

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Microsoft is Drop Kicking Modern UI Version of Skype for Windows

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 09:45 AM PDT

No more multiple Skype versions for Windows users

Skype Desktop

If you're using the Windows Store version of Skype with the modern UI interface, be advised that beginning July 7, the program will cease to exist. That's because Microsoft is retiring the Windows Store version in favor of the desktop build, the company announced in a blog post today.

"With the upcoming release of Windows 10 for PCs, it makes sense to use the Skype application optimized for mouse and keyboards use, capable of doing touch as well rather than 2 separate applications performing the same function," Microsoft said.

You can download the desktop version of Skype here. Otherwise, if you try to sign into Skype using the old version once July 7 rolls around, you'll be directed to download the desktop application anyway.

Your same username and password will work -- it's basically a change in app appearance only, as Microsoft is looking to simplify things by having a single version rather than two. And it makes sense, considering that the Windows Store version was built with Windows 8 in mind, where you had separate interfaces for the modern UI and desktop. That's no longer the case in Windows 10.

The sole exception to this is Windows RT tablet owners -- your version of Skype will remain the same.

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Razer May Make a $10 Millon Bid for Ouya

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:24 PM PDT

There's still hope for Ouya

Ouya

Ouya was supposed to shake up the game console market after a successful run on Kickstarter, but it just hasn't been able to gain much momentum. Now the company is for sale with Razer reportedly in advanced talks to acquire the microconsole maker.

According to GamesBeat, a division of VentureBeat, debt holders initiated the sale talks and would need in the neighborhood of $10 million to be bought out. At that price, it's a relatively low risk gamble for Razer, which would gain access to Ouya's storefront with 1,124 Android games, a lot of which are exclusive titles.

That would probably be Razer's main motivation for making the sale happen. Razer already has an Android console of its own in Forge TV, and adding all those Ouya titles to its library would help it compete with other microconsoles and set-top boxes on the market.

In a statement provided to GamesBeat, Razer said it "has always been supportive of Ouya, in particular, their work toward building an open platform for Android gaming in the living room and the empowerment of developers, especially the indie developers, all over the world." Unfortunately, Razer wouldn't go so far as to confirm or deny the rumor, though the fact that it said anything at all beyond a terse "no comment" suggests that there's validity to the story.

Newegg Daily Deals: SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC, Acer 27-inch Monitor, and More!

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 12:17 PM PDT

SanDisk Card

Top Deal:

Remember when the wireless rep tried to sell you a smartphone without a built-in memory card reader? The stink-eye you gave him let the dude know that you like having the option of beefing up your phone's storage on a whim, thank you very much. A good thing too, because all those photos, videos, and games you amassed take up a ton of space. If you don't want to worry about storage for a long time, then check out today's top deal for a SanDisk Utra 128GB microSDXC Flash Card w/ Adapter for $79 with $1 shipping (normally $98 - use coupon code: [EMCATKA27]). It's a Class 10 card with a rated read speed of 48MB/s, and of course oodles of storage space. What more is there to say?

Other Deals:

RiDATA 4.7GB 16X DVD-R 100 Packs Cake Box, Magic Silver Logo for $15 with free shipping (normally $23 - use coupon code: [EMCATKA26])

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12-inch i3-4020Y 1.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, QHD 2160x1440 Tablet for $570 with free shipping (normally $590 - use coupon code: [EMCATKA29])

Acer XG270HU 27-inch 1ms 144HZ WQHD HDMI DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync (Free Sync) LCD Monitor w/ Built-in Speakers for $450 with free shipping (normally $470 - use coupon code: [EMCATKA23])

Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive 2TB IntelliPower 64MB 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $85 with free shipping (normally $96 - use coupon code: [ESCATKA22])

Futuremark Preps VRMark Benchmark to Test Virtual Reality Gear

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 12:06 PM PDT

Keeping VR headset makers honest

VRMark

Virtual reality is one of the hottest technologies right now, and as more and more manufacturers step to the plate with their own solutions, it may get difficult separating the good from the bad and everything in between. That's where Futuremark's VRMark comes into play.

Futuremark is currently developoing VRMark, a benchmark that will use a combination of software and hardware to measure the performance, latency, and accuracy of a VR headset's sensors.

"There are already more than a dozen different head-mounted displays for VR at various stages of completion. Analysts forecast that VR will reach 10.8 million users by the end of 2016. But delivering a great VR experience relies on overcoming significant performance challenges," said Jukka Mäkinen, Managing Director at Futuremark. "With VRMark, we're aiming to help everyone, from industry engineers and press reviewers to the end user at home, discover the best performing VR technology."

The benchmark is really intended for manufacturers, and as such, Futuremark is currently inviting VR system makers to join its benchmark development program. That's not unusual, as Futuremark also collaborates with GPU and CPU makers when cooking up its other benchmarks, like 3DMark and PCMark.

Futuremark says it's planning to release the first test builds of VRMark to industry partners sometime this year.

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3DMark Benches: AMD Fury X and Nvidia Titan X are neck and neck

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 11:43 AM PDT

Early look at Fury X's performance

AMD Radeon

Just so everyone is aware, it's way too early to draw any conclusions about AMD's upcoming Fury X (Fiji XT). All the answers you're looking for should be available soon, however, as it's rumored that AMD will officially announce Fury X in less than a week. In the meantime, we have to rely on leaked information and speculation, and there's an increasing amount of both as we get closer to launch.

Today, for example, the folks at Videocardz.com posted 3DMark FireStrike benchmarks of the Fury X provided by what they consider a reliable source. In addition, they're pretty confident the Fury X boasts a 1050MHz core clock, 500MHz memory clock, and 4GB of HBM-1 memory on a 4096-bit bus.

Here are the results, along with those of a GeForce GTX Titan X:

  • Fury X FireStrike Extreme: 7,878
  • Titan X FireStrike Extreme: 7,989
  • Fury X Firestrike Ultra: 3,960
  • Titan X FireStrike Ultra: 3,862

And here's a look at CrossFire performance versus two Titan X cards:

  • Fury X CF FireStrike Extreme: 13,925
  • Titan X SLI FireStrike Extreme: 13,964

An Ultra score wasn't provided for the Fury X in CrossFire, leaving us to analyze the above. What it shows is that the Fury X performs a hair better in 4K compared to the Titan X, which is the resolution FireStrike Ultra runs at. But at 1440p (FireStrike Extreme), the slight edge belongs to the Titan X.

It's not known if the Fury X was water cooled, and you also have to consider that updated drivers at launch will make a difference as well. All that said, this is a pretty good showing for Fury X.

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Giant-Sized Microsoft Surface Hub to Ship in September, Will Cost $19,999

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 09:22 AM PDT

A better (and pricier) whiteboard

Surface Hub

We'll admit that Microsoft's Surface Hub seems pretty slick. There are two versions, a 55-inch model and ginormous 84-inch model, both of which are essentially fancy digital whiteboards with plenty of tricks up their respective sleeves. It's all about collaborating in the conference room, but if your company has aspirations of owning one, it'll need a decent sized budget.

Microsoft revealed pricing information for the Surface Hub, noting that the 84-inch model will run $19,999. If that's too rich for your company's blood, the 55-inch model can be had for $6,999. Businesses that can afford either device can place their order starting July 1, with shipments scheduled for September.

The Surface Hub is powered by either a Core i5 (55-inch) or Core i7 (84-inch) Haswell CPU, 8GB of RAM, Intel HD 4600 or Nvidia Quadro K2200 graphics, and a 128GB solid state drive. Other specs include two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GbE LAN. It's a little disappointing that Wireless-AC isn't utilized, especially given the price point.

Each Surface Hub has a pair of wide-angle 1080p cameras for video conferencing, along with depth sensors so that it knows where to pick up audio. Two pressure sensitive pens are included for manipulating 100 points of touch. And when someone draws or manipulates objects on the Surface Hub, it will be shown in real-time on computer screens around the conference room. Likewise, employees can send their visuals to the Surface Hub.

Pretty neat. As for the cost. Microsoft says it's not that bad compared to alternative technologies that quickly add up.

"As a complete, all-in-one solution, Surface Hub delivers incredible value. In an average conference room, Surface Hub replaces a number of disparate tools and technologies, including the audio-video conferencing system, display, projector, wireless receiver, and the analog or digital whiteboard at a lower upfront cost," Microsoft says. "And when you look at ongoing management costs, the story gets even stronger. Rather than having to manage multiple components separately, as a Windows 10 device Surface Hub can be easily and centrally managed by IT."

The U.S. and Canada are two of 24 markets the Surface Hub will available when it ships in September.

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How To: Spring Cleaning for Your Drives

Posted: 10 Jun 2015 12:00 AM PDT

How to clean up the clutter on your rig

Maybe you're a pack rat like some of us here at Maximum PC, downloading and keeping files unsorted in a folder for months before getting to them. But when drive space is running low and outright buying a new drive to store even more files is out of the question (or just silly), it's time to clean house and figure out what needs to be pitched. The question is, where do you even start? And while it's easy to go through personal folders and toss out old data, what about the crud from programs that don't clean up after themselves?

We'll help you figure out where to start and how to (safely) clean up your PC's clutter.

The First Wave

On Windows, there are two popular tools that you can use to do a good job of scrubbing for files that are no longer necessary, and they're both free. The first is the venerable CCleaner. The second is Windows' built-in Disk Cleanup tool.

Using CCleaner is easy: Download, install, and launch the program. Next, click the "Cleaner" tab on the left, then click "Run Cleaner." When the cleanup is done, CCleaner will report how much space it recovered and from what applications. By default, when cleaning up web browser data, CCleaner will not mess with your history, important cookies, saved passwords, and autocomplete entries, so you don't have to worry about losing them.

Fs 01ccleaner
CCleaner in action.

To use Disk Cleanup:
Open up File Explorer and go to "Computer."
Right-click a drive you want to clean, and select "Properties."
Where the drive space is detailed, click the "Disk Cleanup" button; this will launch the Disk Cleanup utility.

Fs 02disk Cleaup Step3

By default, the list contains temporary files from applications, files generated from File Explorer itself, and the drive's Recycling Bin contents. You can get a more thorough list, which has system level files, by clicking the "Clean up System Files" button.

One nifty category of files this exposes are old Windows update files that are no longer needed, or have been superseded by a newer version.

Fs 03disk Cleaup Step4

The "More Options" tab takes you to the "Programs and Features" utility, and a way to delete all but the most recent System Restore point and Shadow Copy.

Fs 04disk Cleaup Step5

The files that Disk Cleanup removes are those that are in the temporary directory and Windows files that can be removed, like log files and update files that are no longer needed.

The Second Wave

While CCleaner and Disk Cleanup provide a nice, easy way of mass-deleting files that are known to be of no use, what about files that aren't covered? Where do you start looking? One tool that's really handy for finding out what files and even directories are taking up space is WinDirStat. This tool will analyze your drives and creates a graphical representation of their contents.

Fs 05windirstatAn output of WinDirStat. Each of these blocks represents a file. Groups of blocks are folders.

You can also use a duplicate file finder app to weed out unnecessary files. While basic ones only perform file name and checksum comparisons, more advanced versions can check for similarity, such as if you have two image files that are the same, but maybe one has different dimensions.

One free tool that you can use to search for exact and similar duplicate files is Anti-Twin.

Fs 06anti Twin

The feature that makes it stand out among other duplicate file finders is that it comes with a content-compare option. This isn't limited to images, either. For example, you can use it to compare MP3 files by their ID3 tags, by lowering the "Match min" threshold a bit.

Odds and Ends

Here are some tips to help you free up disk space.

Reduce the Size of the Page File
By default, Windows allocates the page file (where chunks of memory are stored if RAM gets too full) on the C: drive and takes up about 1–1.5 times the amount of RAM in your system. Here's how to make changes to the size of your page file.

1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System
2. On the left pane, click "Advanced system settings"

Fs 07turn Off Hibernate Step2
3. Click the "Settings..." button in the Performance section.

Fs 08turn Off Hibernate Step3
4. In the "Advanced" tab, click the "Change..." button in the "Virtual memory" section.

Fs 09turn Off Hibernate Step4
5. Make sure "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" isn't ticked.
6. Select the drive that holds the page file you want to change(usually it's just the C: drive), and tick the "Custom size" radio button.
7. Set the initial and maximum size to 1024.
8. Do this for your other drives or select "No paging file," if needed.
9. Press "Set," then "OK" to save.

Fs 10turn Off Hibernate Step9

10. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Do not completely disable the page file. Some programs will not work correctly or will complain.

Turn Off Hibernate

Hibernate is only really useful for two things:

You're on a laptop and you don't want to lose your system state even if the battery runs dry in standby mode.
You want to take advantage of Windows 8's Fast Boot feature

Otherwise, Windows keeps a file for hibernating that can be as large as the amount of RAM you have in the system. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a tool that can enable or disable hibernate on their support page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/920730

Move Space Hogs Elsewhere (Without Affecting Anything)

While this doesn't free up overall disk space, it's helpful if you need to relocate a large chunk of files from one drive to another drive without affecting anything. An example: your C:\ drive is running out of space and you find that your games on Steam are the culprit. However, you don't want to uninstall then reinstall them because that'll take forever.

Running with this example, here's what you can do:

1. Make sure Steam is closed.
2. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
3. Move the "steamapps" folder to where you want to store it.
4. Open Command Prompt as an Administrator

a. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories. Find Command Prompt and right click it. Select "Run as administrator"
b. Open Start and pull up search. Type in "cmd" and it should be displayed in the results. You can either right-click it and select "Run as administrator," or if it's highlighted, press CTRL + Enter.

5. Type cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" (the path must be in quotes)
6. Type mklink /J steamapps [your path to steamapps]

a. So, if I moved steamapps to D:\Games\steamapps, the command would be:
mklink /J steamapps D:\Games\steamapps

To generalize the above:

1. Move the folder that you want to relocate.
2. Open a command prompt as an administrator
3. Navigate to where the folder was by using cd [path]
4. Then type the command mklink /J [name of folder] [new path of folder]

What about Linux?

Linux has a CCleaner-like tool called BleachBit (http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/). It works similarly to CCleaner in that it looks for temporary and other files that may be of no use generated by programs like web browsers. However, when you run the program, you'll have to manually select the categories of files you want cleaned up. But after that, one button press takes care of the cleanup for you.

Fs 11bleachbitBleachBit in action.

Linux also has an app similar to WinDirStat called KDirStat. Much like WinDirStat, you select which parts of the drive you want to scan and a graphical representation of the file's sizes will be displayed.

Fs 12kdirstat

If you're having trouble with the download and/or install of either app from the links we provided, check your distribution's package manager.

Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay Review

Posted: 09 Jun 2015 02:06 PM PDT

We got personal; we did not double our fun

at a glance

(+) Cloud Nine
Local backup software works well; RAID redundancy built in.

(-) Storm's A-Comin'
Poor setup experience; middling remote connectivity.

If you've been reading the papers, you've noticed our privacy isn't as private as we thought, especially when we use the Internet. In response, some storage companies now offer "personal clouds" to replace cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox. This is basically a hard drive or SSD that's connected to your local network at home, and you can access it remotely and transfer files back and forth. It's not as reliable as a global network of data servers with redundancies and fallbacks in case of hardware failure, but there's no monthly fee, and you know exactly where your data is and who's looking at it.

The Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay is an enclosure with two hard drives in it. We tested the "4TB" version, which defaults to RAID 1. It's about two inches tall and nine inches square, so it needs a moderate amount of real estate. You'll find a gigabit Ethernet connector and one USB 2.0 connector in the back, and one USB 3.0 connector on the side, the latter of which is kind of an odd placement. The power button is also on the rear, which is awkward.

It came with no documentation. Instead, in tiny print on the device, was the URL: www.seagate.com/personalcloud-setup. On this web page, you'll find the actual stuff needed to make the thing work. Several Youtube videos and PDFs await, though we had to dig around to find the actual steps for the setup process. It's in the Quick Start Guide rather than the manual, and the guide is just a handful of pictographs without captions. We eventually discerned that you must also wait up to 10 minutes before the device shows up on the Wi-Fi portion of your network. No reason was given. This page also has a link to the "Sdrive" storage management software.

When we clicked on the drive in Windows Explorer, we were greeted with another EULA agreement. Then we were informed the device was going to download and install a firmware update, which requires the device to reboot. Twice. The firmware process took about five more minutes, after which we had to re-agree to Seagate's terms and conditions. After choosing between RAID 1 and RAID 0, given minimal information to work with, we created a Seagate Access ID to access the device remotely. This turned out to be unrelated to the Sdrive software, which for some reason requires its own ID and password.

The Sdrive desktop software reportedly hooks into the "Sdrive" app for Android and iOS. Not to be confused with the "Seagate Backup" app, which uses a "Seagate Account" instead of a Seagate Access ID or Sdrive login. And on the desktop, there's also a "Seagate Dashboard" client. Which you can't use without registering the device. Which we couldn't do because there was an error communicating with the server. We were then given the option to ignore registration and install the software anyway. Which required another EULA agreement. The device also has a web interface that operates independently of all this. You can't do backups there, but you can investigate the device's network settings, which are exhaustive.

Sdrive stubbornly resisted all attempts to connect our devices to the drive. The Seagate Backup app could coordinate with the Seagate Dashboard in theory, but it failed to detect the drive when on the local network. Eventually, we stumbled upon yet another piece of software, the Seagate Media App. Using our Seagate Access ID credentials, we were able to instantly see the drive both over Wi-Fi and over a cell network, the latter of which even supported streaming videos. After some fiddling with ES File Explorer, we could exchange files over the local network, and the Media App even recognized our Roku 3 and could cast photos and videos to it. When operating remotely, however, we could only transfer videos and photos using a cell network.

The 2-Bay actually works well enough as a locally networked storage backup device. That part of the Dashboard software is pretty sensible for creating, restoring, and maintaining local backups. And the builtin RAID redundancy is a nice feature. But the actual "cloud" part of things made us want to lie down and stare at the ceiling.

$300 (street), www.seagate.com

Specifications
Interface
Ethernet
Capacity
4TB
Dimensions (W x D x H)
9.25 x 9.21 x 1.89 inches
Weight
4.8lb
Warranty
Two years
Posted by Shri Krishna
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