General Gaming Article |
- Galaxy Nexus Up for Pre-Order Tomorrow, Says New Report
- Google I/O Pushed Back, Extended
- Did We Just See the BlackBerry PlayBook Fire Sale?
- Ultra Battlebox: Building a Battlefield 3 PC For Under $1,600
- Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Review
- Chrome Web App of the Week: SparkChess
- US Seizes 150 More Domains In "Operation In Our Sites"
- Could 4G Success Force Sprint To Ditch Its Unlimited Data Plans?
- Website Details Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge Desktop Processor Lineup
- Last Day to Score a Free SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 Upgrade on Select Origin Systems
| Galaxy Nexus Up for Pre-Order Tomorrow, Says New Report Posted: 28 Nov 2011 03:20 PM PST
ComputerWorld arrived at this conclusion after hearing from a few readers that had been in contact with Verizon Customer Service in recent days. All told much the same tale. In addition to the device being up for pre-order tomorrow, ComputerWorld claims the $199 launch price is all but confirmed. We find this part much more dubious. The European Galaxy Nexus dropped a few weeks ago and received mostly positive reviews. The US edition will be exclusive to Verizon and will be packing LTE 4G data. Anyone out there have the credit card at the ready? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google I/O Pushed Back, Extended Posted: 28 Nov 2011 02:59 PM PST
The new dates for the even are June 27-29, but the venue is the the same; Moscone Center in San Francisco. Google says the change has allowed it to extend the length of the event from 2 days to 3. Since no tickets have been sold, the change shouldn't affect anyone too badly. The other change is a vague suggestion that developer that want in should brush up on coding before tickets are available in February. Some have insinuated that Google I/O will only be open to devs with skills to compete, but we suspect that Google will just hold a certain number of spots for talented coders. Last year's Google I/O sold out so fast that most interested parties were unable to go. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Did We Just See the BlackBerry PlayBook Fire Sale? Posted: 28 Nov 2011 02:48 PM PST
Best Buy usually keeps products on the website if they are just temporarily sold out, which leads many to believe that the PlayBook is not going to be restocked. The price drop was supposed to be part of RIM promotion running all the way through December, but customers can't even snag rain checks for the tablet. The PlayBook had a rough launch with many die-hard BlackBerry devotees lamenting the lack of native email. RIM has dropped the official price to $300, with $200 being common for promotions. With the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire on the market, can RIM even give this thing away anymore? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ultra Battlebox: Building a Battlefield 3 PC For Under $1,600 Posted: 28 Nov 2011 01:33 PM PST You can't get the full BF3 experience on a console, but what does it take to get it on a PC?In an age of sloppy console ports, Battlefield 3 is a huge relief for PC gamers. Not only is the PC a "lead platform" for DICE's flagship modern shooter, but we're getting all the good stuff: 64-player maps? You won't find 'em on a console. DirectX 11 graphics? Only on a PC, Sparky. Indeed, Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine brings fully destructible environments, ambient occlusion, MLAA, and full DX11 support—and it reaches its full potential only on the PC. But with great power comes great power requirements: DICE's minimum recommended GPU is a GeForce GTX 560 or AMD Radeon HD 6950, and performance scales up from there. That means a lot of us are going to have to go get new videocards—or a whole new rig. Any Neanderthal can slap together a $3,000 box and play Battlefield 3 like a dream, but that's out of reach for most people. So we decided to build a machine that can play BF3 as nature intended—at 1920x1200 resolution, with all settings at Ultra—and do it for less than $1,600.
[Note: This story was originally written for the Holiday 2011 print magazine, and predated both the retail release of Battlefield 3 and the flooding-related hard drive shortage.] Print deadlines being what they are, we didn't have access to the final Battlefield 3 code, but we played the open beta and used Battlefield 3-optimized drivers from AMD and Nvidia as they became available. We'll start by explaining the parts we chose and why. Some were obvious, and some—like the videocards—changed multiple times. Then we'll talk about our testing and gameplay experience, and describe some alternate configurations. If you've ever needed a good excuse to upgrade or build a new rig, Battlefield 3 just might be it. CPU - Intel Core i5-2500K
We think the Core i5-2500K is the best midrange processor on the market. It's a 3.3GHz quad-core chip, and though it lacks Hyper-Threading, it's multiplier-unlocked and overclocks like a dream, thus extending its usable lifespan (though we left ours at stock speeds for this rig). Sandy Bridge is a great platform, and the 2500K hits the price/performance sweet spot for that platform. Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge-E CPUs weren't available when we built our system, but even if they were, we'd probably still go with the 2500K. It's that good a value. Motherboard - Asus P8Z68-V Pro
Asus's P8Z68-V Pro is the perfect complement to our i5-2500K. Not only does it have Intel's excellent native 6Gb/s SATA chipset and USB 3.0 support, but it also brings three PCIe x16 slots—although the third is restricted to x4 mode, and the first two, if both used, default to dual x8 speeds. A UEFI BIOS enables use of hard drives bigger than 2.2TB, and Intel's Smart Response Technology (SRT) is an option if you prefer a large mechanical boot drive with a small SSD for caching—an option we considered before settling on the final storage loadout. RAM - 8GB Patriot Division 2 DDR3/1600
DICE's minimum RAM requirement for Battlefield 3 is 2GB, and its recommended specs call for 4GB. 4GB is, frankly, the bare minimum we'd consider putting into a new rig, and it's not very future-proof. The Z68 chipset is dual-channel, and our motherboard has four DIMM slots. With memory prices so low, it only made sense to go with two 4GB DIMMs. That gives us 8GB of RAM now, and room to double up later. GPU - XFX Radeon 6970 2GB
This was the trickiest part to pick. Throughout the beta period, Nvidia and AMD kept releasing beta drivers that would put their respective GPUs in the lead. AMD's second preview drivers, though, kicked the 6970's average frame rate on Ultra at 1920x1200 up to 45fps on our system—well in the playable range, and for $150 less than Nvidia's GTX 580. If we had gone with the GTX 560 Ti or Radeon 6950, we would have had to ratchet down the graphical quality or the resolution. With the Radeon 6970 we get a tasty balance of performance and price. SSD - 120GB Corsair Force GT
Our original plan called for a 3TB boot drive with a 40GB SSD for caching via Intel's SRT. That install fell over and died twice, thanks to some bugs with SRT and drives greater than 2.2TB, so we went back to the drawing board. We decided on a blazing-fast 6Gb/s SATA SSD with 120GB of storage as our boot drive. That's enough for the OS and a few of our favorite games and applications, with a larger traditional hard drive for documents, movies, music, and other media. A 120GB drive, right now, is the sweet spot between price and capacity. Hard Drive - 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000
We had our eyes on a 3TB Deskstar and 40GB SSD, as noted previously, but—in addition to the aforementioned buggy install—we realized we could get a 120GB SSD and 2TB drive for around the same price. We figure we'll miss 1TB of mass storage less than we'd miss the ultra-fast load times of a dedicated SSD for our OS and gaming. For now, two terabytes is plenty for us, and the Deskstar is both speedy and reliable. 11.28.11 Update: The price for the 2TB Deskstar is now approximately $200, instead of the $120 it was at the time this story was written. PSU - 750W Corsair TX750 V2
Not much to talk about here; we needed power. Power enough to run our rig without stuttering, freezing, or crashing. Power that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Corsair's TX750 V2 isn't frilly or fancy—we didn't spring for the modular version—but it does what it says on the tin, and that's enough. 750W is sufficient for our solitary Radeon HD 6970, and should even enable us to throw another card in the system later, if we so choose. Case - Rosewill Thor v2
For price-conscious builds we normally opt for mid-tower chassis, as they're usually less expensive than their full-tower kin. However, we reviewed Rosewill's Thor V2 last month and it really captured our imagination. Either it's well built for a budget full-tower, or it's cheap for a good full-tower, but either way, we dig its roomy interior, easy cable routing, and fantastic stock cooling. The Thor has two variable-speed fan controllers that support three fans each; we connected its intake fans (23cm, front and side) to one and its exhaust fans (14cm rear and 23cm top) to the other. Inside Scoop
1. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus is our favorite step-up-from-stock CPU cooler. 2. The Thor has room for even the longest of graphics cards. 3. We skipped a Blu-ray player to save money. Why watch movies when you can play games? Price List
Our Battlebox In ActionYou go to war with the drivers you have
For our Battlebox, we set a simple performance goal: We wanted a rig that could play Battlefield 3 at 1920x1200 at Ultra, the highest of its four performance presets, without having to turn down any of the settings. Neither the GTX 560 Ti nor the Radeon HD 6950 could stay above 35fps at Ultra, though both were fine at 1920x1200 on the High preset. Nvidia's GTX 580 delivered excellent performance at Ultra, averaging more than 45fps with the 285.38 beta drivers, while AMD's Radeon HD 6970, using the first set of Catalyst 11.10 preview drivers, mustered an average of 35fps—playable, but not quite the frame rate we were looking for. However, just a few days before the open beta period ended, AMD released the Catalyst Preview 11.10 (version 2) drivers, which promised big Battlefield 3 performance gains. And boy, did they deliver. The new drivers let our Radeon HD 6970 average 42fps in Battlefield 3's Operation Metro map. That's an average frame rate we're comfortable with—enough to choose the Radeon HD 6970 over the GTX 580. The GTX 580 is an objectively faster card, and Nvidia's release drivers will doubtless bump its performance higher than the 45fps we saw. But the Radeon is $150 cheaper, and in a rig that's all about bang for the buck, we couldn't pass it up. It goes without saying that upping your GPU will up your performance. DICE's "recommended system requirements" for Battlefield 3 advises using an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or AMD Radeon HD 6950. Nvidia provides more detail, saying that a GTX 560 or higher will play the game at 1920x1200 at High settings, while a 580 is required for Ultra settings. This is borne out in our testing. If you're OK with High quality, or you're playing at a lower resolution, you can get away with a GTX 560 or Radeon HD 6950. For Ultra at 1920x1200, we recommend a Radeon HD 6970 at minimum. The more GPU you bring to the game, the better it will look.
If you've built a gaming system in the past few years, you shouldn't have to do much to ready your rig for Battlefield 3, beyond adding a bit of RAM, perhaps, and upping your GPU power a bit. If you're running a Radeon HD 5870 or 6870, or a GTX 480 or 570, you probably don't need to upgrade at all. If you have a midrange card, you might consider adding a second one for an SLI or CrossFire configuration. One thing the frames-per-second numbers don't tell you is how awesome Battlefield 3 looks at Ultra settings. Shoot, it even looks fantastic on High. So even if your current videocard is ancient, you can swap it out for a GTX 560 Ti or Radeon HD 6950 and still get a kick-ass experience—for less than the cost of a console. Don't get us wrong—we're sure BF3 will be just fine on a console, if you're OK with the 24-player maps, plodding dual-analog controllers, and prehistoric graphics. We're super-excited for Battlefield 3, as much for its unabashed PC-centricity as its gameplay, which is addictive as all get-out. But if Battlefield isn't your bag, never fear—the rig we built is a great general-purpose gaming PC, with enough power to handle any modern game you care to throw at it. We just happen to want to throw Battlefield 3 its way and never stop playing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Review Posted: 28 Nov 2011 12:40 PM PST The hybrid drive gets a capacity boost and more NAND cacheIn the storage world, nothing matches a solid-state drive for speed, and nothing matches a mechanical hard drive for capacity and price per gigabyte. Recognizing these two great tastes would go great together, many vendors have attempted to find the perfect hybrid storage solution, with variable—and often clunky—results. Seagate's Momentus XT, which we first reviewed in September 2010, offered a 500GB 2.5-inch drive with 4GB of NAND flash with an adaptive algorithm to ensure that the most frequently used files are mirrored in the NAND. This means your boot drive feels faster than a mechanical drive, if only for the stuff you use the most. We liked the first Momentus, but complained that it could use more NAND. Seagate aims to remedy that complaint with this new Momentus. The Momentus XT ups the mechanical portion of the drive to 750GB, while doubling the NAND cache to 8GB. The SATA controller is now 6Gb/s, the industry standard for all new drives. Unlike other hybrid solutions, the onboard controller performs the entire caching computation, so there's no CPU hit. And there are no weird driver issues or frustrating installation procedures—we're looking at you, OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid. Seagate's adaptive memory algorithm simply moves the most-accessed LBAs to the NAND cache.
On the raw disk level, the Momentus XT 750GB is identical to a standard Momentus 750GB drive, as borne out by low-level benchmarks like HDTune. The adaptive algorithm shows its worth in real-world benchmarks and tests, such as PCMark Vantage's HDD subtest and PCMark 7's secondary storage suite. As we ran PCMark Vantage multiple times, the algorithm copied the LBAs we accessed most to the NAND, bringing the HDD subscore from a first run of 5,471 to a stable score of 14,759. That number is three times higher than what the standard Momentus is capable of, but it doesn't come close to 52,000-plus score a second-gen SandForce drive can rack up. In the more modern PCMark 7, scores stabilized around 3,295—almost double that of the standard mechanical drive, but nowhere near the 5,070 of the SSD. When we installed Windows on the drive, our system stabilized at a boot time of around 25 seconds—just a few seconds slower than a SandForce-powered SSD, and a solid 13 seconds faster than the vanilla Momentus.
The ongoing hard drive shortage makes prices on existing drives, and thus the Momentus XT's value proposition, difficult to determine. At press time, the 750GB Momentus XT's MSRP of $245 makes for a $95 premium over the street price for existing stocks of the first-gen 500GB Momentus XT, or the vanilla 750GB Momentus, but those existing stocks could run out any time. A 120GB SSD would presumably cost about the same as the 750GB Momentus XT, but would deliver just a fraction of the latter drive's capacity. The 750GB Momentus XT offers a solid speed boost in real-world applications that you use frequently, compared to a regular mechanical drive. Its updated capacity, 6Gb/s SATA controller, and 8GB of NAND are much appreciated. If you don't want to deal with clumsy multi-drive hybrid solutions or shell out for a tiny SSD, the Momentus XT offers an easier, better way to get both capacity and speed.
$245, www.seagate.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chrome Web App of the Week: SparkChess Posted: 28 Nov 2011 11:47 AM PST
Available as ad-supported, free, or paid ($7.95) installation, SparkChess provides deep, intelligent gameplay anywhere users have access to Google's Chrome web browser. As a single player game, SparkChess offers three different levels of difficulty, with each move saved immediately after it's made, making it a great choice for individuals with little time to spend on anything as lengthy as a full game of chess in one sitting. The game's multiplayer offerings are just as impressive: Allowing players to challenge their friends or strangers to a game over the interwebz, SparkChess provides six different save slots, allowing you to be kept on your toes by multiple opponents through the course of multiple games.
In its paid iteration, SparkChess provides users with the ability to play games offline, gives hints and move suggestions, provides compatibility with a wide range of tablets, and multiplayer chat. For chess players on the go, it'd be fair to say that SparkChess is a dream come true. Be sure to check in with us every Monday for another edition of Maximum PC's Chrome Web App of the Week.
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| US Seizes 150 More Domains In "Operation In Our Sites" Posted: 28 Nov 2011 11:09 AM PST The poorly named Cyber Monday may be a great time to cash in on online deals and discounts, but your chance to grab some criminally low-priced items may have been snatched away today by the US government. Last year, the DOJ and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency caused a big online stir when they joined forces for "Operation In Our Sites" (har, har) and seized the domains of 82 different sites that sold counterfeit goods on the Web. Today, one year to the day after last year's announcement, the agencies announced that they've seized yet another 150 counterfeit sites.
Forbes reports that federal officers bought products from the websites prior to seizing them. If the actual copyright holder confirmed that the products bought were in fact fraudulent, the feds got court authorization to seize the domains that sold the offending products. All told, the operation has shut down 350 counterfeit-pushing sites to date. "Most of the actual counterfeiters and criminals involved are overseas and they're using the Internet as a means to defraud consumers here without actually having to set up shop on U.S. soil," John Morton, head honcho at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, told Reuters. Your turn, Maximum PC readers: Is this a smart, proactive move by law enforcement or a bad sign for the future of the Internet? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Could 4G Success Force Sprint To Ditch Its Unlimited Data Plans? Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:49 AM PST
Sprint is finally switching over to LTE (rather than WiMAX), but Reuters reports that the company has allotted just 10 MHz of its useable spectrum to the 4G network – half the amount Verizon and AT&T have earmarked. A Sprint executive told the publication that the company has no plans of ditching the buffet-style plans, but one analyst said they might not have a choice. Ironically, Sprint's success could be the problem. "The risk is, if you don't have headroom as your LTE subscriber base grows, then the speeds will go down," Tolaga Research analyst Phil Marshall told Reuters. "Unlimited is going to kill them. I think they're going to have to back off from the all-you-can-eat plan." Sprint counters that the 10 MHz being allotted is currently unused, and the company is in talks with Clearwire to tap into that provider's LTE network, too. What do you think: is Sprint's unlimited plan here to stay, or will the company be forced to kick it to the curb the way the other mobile carriers have? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Website Details Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge Desktop Processor Lineup Posted: 28 Nov 2011 09:19 AM PST
Russian website overclockers.ru compiled the list based on information it plucked from Chinese colleagues over at CoreSCN. At the top of the list is an unlocked Core i7 3770K processor with four cores and eight threads. It's clocked at 3.5GHz (3.9GH Turbo) with 8MB of L3 cache and a 77W TDP. Bringing up the rear is a Core i5 3330S processor with four cores and four threads. It's clocked at 2.7GHz (3.2GHz Turbo) with 6MB of L3 cache and a 65W TDP. Several other processors sit in between clocked anywhere from 2.5GHz to 3.5GHz, all with at least 6MB of L3 cache. According to Overclockers.ru, Ivy Bridge will start to trickle out in April 2012. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Day to Score a Free SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 Upgrade on Select Origin Systems Posted: 28 Nov 2011 08:55 AM PST
The 'Buy One Nvidia 580 & Get One Free' is one of several weekend specials Origin PC is offering, and to us it's the most exciting one. It applies to the company's Genesis and Millennium desktop systems, and not only is the second GTX 580 card a free upgrade, it's actually cheaper than going with a single GTX 580. A single 580 adds $493 to the Millenium's base price ($1,234), but the Black Friday option adds two 580 cards for $409. That's a pretty sweet deal. On the Genesis system, it's $409 for a single card or for dual cards. On Eon17 and Eon17-S laptops, Origin is offering a free upgrade from a 250GB hard drive to a 120GB SSD along with free videocard overclocking. And on the Eon15-S, Origin PC will quadruple the amount of RAM from 4GB to 16GB at no charge. All of the above mentioned systems also come with Batman Arkham City, while the Genesis and Millennium rigs also ship with Battlefield 3 for no additional charge. If any of these sound like good deals, you have to decide fast because the Black Friday sale goes through today only. |
This is the story that will not die. When will the US variant of the Galaxy Nexus launch? According to a new investigation by 
Google's Spring conference, known as Google I/O is one of the most anticipated events in tech these days. The search giant demos new products, talks about big ideas, and gives away a ton of gadgets. But Google I/O 2012 is going to be a little 
As Black Friday approached, several retailers including Best Buy lowered the price of the much-maligned BlackBerry Playbook. After selling an undisclosed number of the device, Best buy has taken to 
There's no school like the old school, and when it comes to gaming, it doesn't get much more old school than chess. More or less unchanged since 1475 A.D., it's a game of strategy, patience, and study like none other. No matter whether you're new to the game or have been an aficionado for decades, 
If you've watched any television over the holiday weekend, you probably saw one of Sprint's iPhone commercials, which claims that the company "doesn't limit the iPhone" thanks to its unlimited, unthrottled data plans – something no other major mobile carrier provides. It's been a big marketing ploy for the company for a while now, but a new report suggests that limited airwave space may force Sprint to yank its unrestricted plans off the table sometime soon.
A Russian website made a list detailing a slew of upcoming Ivy Bridge desktop processors for socket LGA1155 motherboards, complete with model numbers, core counts, number of threads, clockspeeds, Turbo speeds, L3 cache, and TDP ratings. There are 18 models in all, and all but one of them are quad-core parts (the one that isn't is a dual-core processor).
Origin PC is looking to get a leg up on other boutique system builders with a series of free upgrades on select systems. Normally we don't post this kind of stuff, in part because we know you don't come here to read about sales, but when a company offers a free upgrade to a second Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 videocard, well, we make an exception.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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