General Gaming Article

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• AVADirect Begins Shipping Llano-equipped Desktops
• Forum Feature: The Star Trek PC is Done!
• Dream Machine 2015: 7 Maximum PC Editors Predictions
• Google Apps Users Promised Google+ Access Someday
• Battlefield 3 System Requirements Revealed
• Sony's PSN Pass Cripples Content In Used Games
• Nevermind Obama - Vote Anonymous in 2012
• Cool Site of the Week: NoPhoneTrees
• Net Neutrality One Step Closer To Becoming Law
• Private Investors Overvalue Twitter at $8 Billion

AVADirect Begins Shipping Llano-equipped Desktops Posted: 08 Jul 2011 08:15 PM PDT The first accelerated processing units (APUs) for desktops from AMD became available in late June. The first installment of desktop APUs comprises two quad-core chips, the A6-3650 and A8-3850, both of which have garnered mixed reviews. PC manufacturers, too, haven't quite warmed up to the new chips so far. Nonetheless, boutique system builder AVADirect has announced a couple of Llano-equipped PCs. Both the AVADirect DTS-FM1-PD33XTP and DTS-FM1-2CFD33XTP can be customized around either the A6-3650 or the more powerful A8-3850. They have a starting price of $450.15 and $601.66, respectively. The base configurations of both models are almost identical. Both of them feature the A6-3650, 2GB of RAM, and 1TB HDD storage. The latter, however, ships with a Radeon HD 5750 graphics card with 1GB GDDR5 memory.

Forum Feature: The Star Trek PC is Done! Posted: 08 Jul 2011 05:08 PM PDT It's real, and it's spectacular. This week's Forum Feature gives pride of place to Bill Owen's amazing Star Trek PC, which is finally finished, packed up, shipped out, and now living in our offices for a few weeks while we cram it full of beautiful top-notch hardware. Then we're gonna bring it to Comic-Con and GIVE IT AWAY. Because we love you. David Gerrold—Maximum PC columnist, science fiction legend, Tribble inventor, commissioner of the case and recipient of its twin—will be at our booth at Comic-Con this year to sign autographs next to his aluminum child. Check out the shots of the completed case in the build log on our official forums, and at MNPCTech's website. We'll have more details as Comic-Con approaches, plus a full writeup on the build in a later issue of the mag! In other forum news: Trkkr wants to know which laptop brands are worth looking at when shopping for a customizeable gaming laptop. Cakeflan (mm!) is building a small formfactor gaming rig and wants input. DJSPIN80 gives a quick primer on threads and how they related to CPU cores. Share your wacky SSIDs in the Network Nook. davidm71 wants to know which is the better tablet: the Samsung 10.1 Tab or Asus Transformer? Have a great weekend!

Dream Machine 2015: 7 Maximum PC Editors Predictions Posted: 08 Jul 2011 05:08 PM PDT Want more Dream Machine 2011 coverage? Check out our gallery of 30 Unbelieveable Custom Cases You know what's always fun? Dream Machine predictions. Not because they ever turn out to be very informative, but because it's always fun to look back and see just how wrong we were about the future. Why's it fun to be wrong? Because even though sometimes we get a little too optimistic, more often than not our predictions are wrong because the future turns out even more awesome than we expected. We asked everyone around the office to make their predictions for Dream Machine 2015, so that in 4 years we'll have something to have a good laugh about. Check out what we thought, then hit the comments and leave your own predictions for the future. NATHAN EDWARDS, SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR: The 2015 Dream Machine? First, it'll still be a desktop computer, but it'll probably be smaller. As laptops and tablets gain prominence in the lives of average users, desktops will become more and more the domain of the power user, but that doesn't mean they'll stay as huge as they are. I predict the 2015 Dream Machine will have a micro-ATX or Mini-ITX motherboard, a 24-core processor, and maybe 48GB of RAM. Sure, that's a lot, but it's only 3x the RAM of this year's DM, and twice the RAM of last year's. The Dream Machine will still have dedicated GPUs, but that doesn't mean most machines will—GPUs integrated with the processors will be the de facto standard of 2015, and only enthusiasts will bother to have dedicated GPUs—which means the Dream Machine will have 'em. And the GPUs it does have might not be PCIe at all—optical Light Peak could have superceded it by then. The DM will also have at least 1TB of solid-state storage, though I'm sure it'll still have mechanical drives for mass storage. Most computers of 2015 will be glorified docks for smartphones and tablets (take the Atrix concept to its logical conclusion), but the Dream Machine, though it'll surely have a phone dock, won't rely on the portable processor for most of its juice. Beyond that? 30-inch panel (what? It's a sweet spot!), mechanical keyboard, laser mouse (we're classicists), a really great headset, and we'll be in business. ALEX CASTLE, ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR: I think that picking 2015 for a year to make predictions about was an interesting choice—it's close enough at hand that we can make some pretty educated guesses, but just far enough away that in our current climate of perpetually accelerating technological progress, all those guesses could be totally wrong. What I think we can say for sure is that (despite contrary predictions) the desktop PC will still exist in more or less its current form in 4 years. It'll still feature an x86 processor, but with 12 or more physical cores running at more than 5 GHz. You'll find at least 64GB of RAM (probably more) in the system, and one or more terabyte-class SSDs. If we're even still bothering with HDDs and that point, we'll only need one for massive capacity storage. I don't think Dream Machine 2015 will feature any optical drives. Finally, I think DM 2015 will still be running Windows 8. Microsoft will have to step up their game, though, or I think it's unlikely that DM 2020 will be running a Windows OS at all.     GORDON MAH UNG, SENIOR EDITOR: To really appreciate what Dream Machine 2015 will look like, you have to look backwards four years. In 2007, the "Ultimate PC" ran a 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor overclocked to 3.66GHz. Graphics were courtesy of two XFX 8800 Ultra (remember those?) XXX Editions on an EVGA 680i board, a 750 Watt PSU and yee haw – four 1TB Hitachi drives. In the RAM department we opted for a controversial 2GB of DDR2/10000 to aid overclocking instead of "maxing" it out at 4GB and well, because, Vista was a mess. So what possible configuration will make today's Dream Machine seem pathetically antiquated in comparison? I'm going to say that the rig will run one single x86 processor sporting 12 cores. It will be built on a 15nm process and clock in at the 4.5GHz range (overclocked). The CPU or APU or BPU by then will have eaten even more graphics capability but discrete graphics will continue to be king. Switchable graphics, however, will finally work so the 90 percent of the time your PC isn't pushing heavy duty 3D needs, it'll be running on the onboard chip's graphics. Hardware encoding acceleration in the processor will allow native 4K editing and encoding without breaking a sweat. Security features in the chip will also continue to help Embedded DRAM, or eDRAM, will be present in the chip as well but likely won't play a large role in an enthusiast configuration. The box will likely sport 64GB of DDR4/3333. As I said, discrete graphics will still be king for anyone who actually cares about gaming and DM2015 will sport no fewer than two GPUs in the PCIe 4.0 slots. I'd guess it'll have two 2TB SSDs in RAID 0 plugged in to the SATA 12GB/s slots, which, believe it or not, will still be a bottleneck for the SSD's of 2015. Hard drives will continue handle bulk store with say, a total of three 9TB drives for 27TB of storage. USB 4.0 running Thunderbolt will be integrated into the chipset as well. The PSU, interestingly, will continue to be topped out at 1,500 watts as there's simply no where to go from there. The panel will support native 4K or 4096x2160 pixels and 120Hz capability for 3D and touch capability. The OS will be the next, next-generation of Windows, but by then, Microsoft will have learned a lesson from Apple and simply increment by tenths for future iterations. Thus, Dream Machine 2015 will run Windows 8.5 codename: T-Rex.     MARKKUS ROVITO, ONLINE EDITOR, MAXIMUM TECH: Being completely unqualified never stopped anyone from assuming oppressive dictatorships, and it's in that spirit that I pull my predictions for the 2015 Dream Machine from my posterior. We'll begin with a motherboard accommodating 96GB of RAM, which we will max out, of course. The board includes four Thunderbolt slots, as well as plenty of USB 4.1 and SATA7 ports, as well. These are just for show, however, because as dutiful early adopters, you are already on board with the health-hazardous, but ever-so-convenient 802.11x standard and transfer anything and everything wirelessly. For storage, we've finally gone all solid-state. Three 3TB SSDs make a respectable 9TB data dump. We wanted to break double-digit terabytes, but what do you think this is, 2016? Dual octa-core processors clocked at 5.5GHz and four graphics cards clocked at 2GHz each ensure that you'll have a top-notch machine for at least a good three months before ridiculously bloated software and Windows X knocks it down a peg. This machine will certainly win a Kick-Posterior award. In fact, this machine will be so powerful, that President Ron Paul will declare it a threat to national security and put the offices of Maximum PC under constant surveillance. Okay, I admit there's no way Ron Paul will ever be president, but you can take the rest of these predictions to the bank.     KATHERINE STEVENSON, DEPUTY EDITOR: In 2015 there may very well be large numbers of people who don't own a desktop PC, or even a notebook, as smartphones are showing all signs of evolving into pocket-size powerhouses capable of meeting many computing needs on their own– in conjunction with the cloud, natch. But I certainly don't think the PC will be extinct. That's because content—be it games, video, or data—will itself continue to evolve, getting ever more intensive and requiring ever more computing muscle to manage and manipulate—more than what would be practical in a mainstream device. Just as now, there will be power users who want a machine that's up to any task. It's quite likely, however, that the Dream Machine of 2015 will be smaller than DMs past, while packing way more power. The processor will have a massive number of cores, of course, many of which will be GPUs. Indeed, by then, discrete graphics cards will probably be obsolete. Local storage—because who would entrust the cloud with all their data?!—will be handled by flash memory. And advances in cooling will further shrink the rig's size. This mighty mite will be paired with a large, high-res display, possibly curved, that's capable of displaying 3D content sans glasses and 4K video in all its glory.     AMBER BOUMAN, ONLINE FEATURES EDITOR: Dream Machine 2015 will almost certainly feature a glasses-free 3D display of some sort - and with the average display size creeping ever larger, the display in question will likely be 30+ inches. Maybe 35 or 37 inches, and there will be at least two monitors.I also think that there will be some type of mobile aspect to it - an associated tablet that docks to the PC, or a smartphone dock...perhaps some sort of flexible tablet? Perhaps a projected hologram or 3D image? Either way, the mobile aspect will be impossible to ignore or exclude. I'm also thinking... and this is pure speculation... improved/increased voice controls, better/more cloud adaptation freeing up memory and hard drive space, and heavy home integrations i.e. controlling your front door, home theatre or alarm system with your PC.     JON PHILLIPS, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: I wouldn't hazard to posit anything about the specific components we might find in Dream Machine 2015. But I do think that on the CPU side of things, the so-called "power wall" will continue to forced Intel and AMD to mitigate clock speed limitations with multi-core designs. How many cores exactly? I'll reserve speculation! Sure, new process technologies will eventually emerge that allow us to handle thermals and power issues at very fast frequencies, but don't expect any mass-market breakthroughs within the next four years. All that said, I'm willing to state with utmost certainty that the CPU in DM2015 will be running an X86 architecture. It won't be ARM so that we can all play the desktop version of Angry Birds 4. And we'll probably see some type of iteration of Thunderbolt. And while notebook, tablets and even smartphones will continue to chip away at desktop sales, we'll still see a thriving PC hardware enthusiast community in 2015, and we'll continue to be using desktops for games, video editing, and mundane office crap. Home entertainment box functionality will also be more important than ever before. None of this is a matter of idle speculation. It's on industry road maps.

Google Apps Users Promised Google+ Access Someday Posted: 08 Jul 2011 03:06 PM PDT It is nothing new for users of Google Apps. A cool new Google service comes out, but they can't access it. These dedicated users have been clamoring for access to Google+ (like half of the Internet seems to be), but Apps access to the social network is not happening. According to Google's president of enterprise, they're working on it, though. Google tends to roll out new features and service to paid Google Apps users slowly. Part of the deal, and what users expect, is that Apps will have a certain uptime and reliability guarantee. So Google often delays beta products for Apps. But in the case of Google+, they may be adopting an accelerated timetable for the rollout.  We know that Google is in the process of setting up business pages on Google+, and the Apps support would seem to go hand-in-hand with that. Are you an Apps user hankering for access? Is Google just stalling, or is the change imminent?

Battlefield 3 System Requirements Revealed Posted: 08 Jul 2011 02:09 PM PDT VG247 report that GameStop have listed system specifications for Battlefield 3. These aren't an official announcement from DICE so we can't confirm the required rig, yet, though we have contacted EA to verify the specs. Still worth a peek though, eh? MINIMUM Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7 Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHzRAM2GB Video Card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible Nvidia or AMD ATI card RECOMMENDED Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version OS: Windows 7 64-bit Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPURAM 4GB Video Card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, GeForce GTX 460, Radeon Radeon HD 6850 Looks like it's nowhere near as intensive as ARMA 3, the equally beautiful PC-only war sim that's due out next summer. Battlefield 3 is due for release in October. Read our preview and watch the latest gameplay footage, for your next battlefield fix. And here's all our Battlefield coverage in one handy place. Do you need to upgrade for Battlefield's incredi-visuals? PCGamer.com is the global authority on PC games, with exclusive news, reviews, demos and updates.

Sony's PSN Pass Cripples Content In Used Games Posted: 08 Jul 2011 11:47 AM PDT Game makers love stores like GameStop because – duh! – the stores sell their games. There's one thing game makers don't like so much about Gamestop, though; the stores often sell the games used. Second-hand sales are great for cash-deficient everyman gamers who can't afford a $60 diversion, but buying a used game denies the original manufacturer a slice of the profit pie. Sony's new "PSN Pass" program is geared towards milking more moolah out of used and rental games, placing the company alongside EA and THQ at the forefront of the used-games war. Gamasutra reports that some first-party PlayStation 3 games from Sony will include a special one-time-use code that gamers will need to enter to receive "full online access" to the game. Presumably, players with used or rented games will need to pay to access those same features, neatly tying Sony back into the used-game moneypit. If it sounds familiar, that's because EA uses a similar model for its releases. Dragon Age 2, for example, included codes for the Black Emporium and Mabari Warhound inside the game's packaging, but gamers with used copies needed to pony up $10 to download the features (Protip: Save your money). Resistance 3 will be the first Sony title sporting a PSN Pass when it hits the shelves in September. You'd think Sony would want to attract consumers back to the PS3 with gamer-friendly incentives after the whole "PSN Outage" debacle, but nope -- they're all about the dollah bills, ya'll. Image credit: Engadget

Nevermind Obama - Vote Anonymous in 2012 Posted: 08 Jul 2011 10:51 AM PDT LulzSec may have been in it for the laughs, but Anonymous has always claimed that its hack attacks and DDoS bombs are designed to push forward a liberating social agenda. "Hooey," you might say, "What about that time Anonymous harassed that kid with the No Cussing Club?" and we'd have no option but to nod our heads thoughtfully. Someone in the group takes the social message to heart, though; Anon recently announced a splinter political group called the Anonymous Party Of America, made for people who empathize with Anon's civil liberties message, but disagree with hacking the Church of Scientology. Some elements in Anonymous disagree with the idea of Anon being a group, rather than a loose coalition. A tweet on Anonymous' @Anon_Central account says "Anonymous is not a f**king group or a party. If someone is telling you that they can lead this then you are getting butt f**ked and you don't even know it." Whoa! Slow your horses, Anon – the Anonymous Party of America isn't looking to steal your DDoS thunder. Testudo Smith, a spokesman for the political splinter group, told ComputerWorld that "This (party) is just another group that wants to support the goals of Anonymous. It isn't going to replace it... We have no control over Anonymous as a whole. There aren't any leaders, and it would be futile to attempt to control Anonymous." So what's the point, then? Smith, who apparently doesn't believe the "anonymous" part of "Anonymous," says that the political party's goals line up with what Anon's been asking for all along: transparency and accountability from the government and a focus on individual rights. If you're picking up what Smith and the Anonymous Party are putting down, you can check out their website at anonymouspartyofamerica.com, but you might want to give it a few hours; the server's not resolving at the time of publication. Google's cached different portions of the site, though, so you can check out their populist rants by going that route.

Cool Site of the Week: NoPhoneTrees Posted: 08 Jul 2011 10:49 AM PDT When you buy a product or invest in a service, it's reasonable to assume that you're going to get what you paid for. Sadly, this doesn't always happen. Computers break down. Credit cards get stolen and baggage gets lost. Often. At stressful times like these, the last thing any of us wants to do is navigate the byzantine phone system of a multi-billion dollar corporation to get the assistance that we, as their devoted customers, deserve. So of course, the first thing you'll have to do in order to get the assistance you deserve is navigate the byzantine phone system of a multi-billion dollar corporation in order to get the help you deserve. Unless of course you pay a visit to NoPhoneTrees, our Cool Site of the Week. Offering consumers cut-to-the-chase access to thousands of corporate help desk and customer service phone numbers with an actual human being on the other end of the line, NoPhoneTrees is about as mission-specific as a website can get. Have a bone to pick with your car rental company's head office? Sick of paying for cellular features that you didn't sign up for? NoPhoneTrees will have you venting your rage via the appropriate direct dial telephone number in no time. The site allows users to search for phone numbers by entering the company's name, scrolling through an alphabetical list or by industry. After just one use, we're sure you'll agree that the value of this site cannot be overstated. Be sure to check back every Friday for another edition of Maximum PC's Cool Site of the Week.

Net Neutrality One Step Closer To Becoming Law Posted: 08 Jul 2011 10:15 AM PDT Net neutrality's motto is simple: Hey ISPs, don't tell us what to do with the Internet. Comcast's P2P traffic-shaping fiasco kicked the movement into high gear a few years back. The net neutrality dream took one step closer to becoming reality yesterday, as the FCC officially registered its hotly debated rules with the Office of Management and Budget – a vital step towards getting the new law on the books. There's still a hard road ahead, however; pissed-off companies are expected to throw legal challenge after legal challenge at the proposed regulations. A five-person FCC panel approved the new net neutrality regs way back in December in a 3-2 vote. The three "Yays" came from Democrats, while the dissent came solely from Republicans – including a "Nay" vote from new Comcast-NBC VP and former FCC commissioner Meredith Baker. The other "No" came from Robert McDowell, who wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed claiming the FCC (his employer) overstepped its bounds and calling net neutrality "the beginning of a long winter's night for Internet freedom." Verizon's already challenged the upcoming regulations, Cnet reports, but the DC Court of Appeals slapped it out of the court, saying you can't sue to stop a law that isn't even technically a law yet. The proposed regulations can be commented on for the next 30 days (well, 29 now) and become legally enforceable 60 days after that. Internet providers and other companies are expected to fight the proposal every inch of the way, but the Obama administration backs the new bill.

Private Investors Overvalue Twitter at $8 Billion Posted: 08 Jul 2011 09:22 AM PDT For now at least, Twitter isn't in a mad rush to go public and watch its stock price soar in what some are calling the second coming of the dot-com bubble. But that doesn't mean the microblogging service is hard up for cash, either. On the contrary, Twitter is trying to finalize an additional $400 million in funding that, if successful, would value the company at around $8 billion, the New York Times reports. What is Twitter really worth? That's not an easy question to answer, so let's instead look at some of the other numbers. There are currently more than 200 million registered Twitter users, everyone from average Joes tweeting about their weekend plans, to celebrities and politicians posting updates on all matter of things. Even the Pope isn't immune from Twitter. Analysts believe Twitter pulls in about $200 million a year from online advertising, putting the company close to profitability, NYT reports. A valuation of $8 billion is about 40 times Twitter's sales, and according to Rory Mayer of Hudson Square Research, that's a bit much. "It's a small business," Maher said. "The ad volume isn't there. They're going to have to come up with products that drive more volume for them, and they need to increase the number of users." The most recent high-profile online company to file for an IPO is Zynga, which recorded nearly $600 million in revenue last year with a profit of $90.6 million. Zynga is expected to offer shares at a valuation of at least $20 billion, or 33 times its sales.

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