General Gaming Article |
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Source Code Released
- Sprint Rolls Out New Tiered Mobile Broadband Plans
- Schools Reserving .XXX Domains To Protect Good Name
- Breaking in Sandy Bridge-E: Building A Kick-Ass Rig with Intel's New Chip
- Chrome Web App of the Week: Zoho Writer
- Nab An Eee Pad Transformer For The Price Of A Bookstore Tablet At Best Buy On Black Friday
- Survey Reveals Students Dream of Landing a Job at Google or Apple
- Japan's K Supercomputer Still the Fastest in the World, Top500 Says
- Intel, MasterCard Bringing Mobile Payments To Online Shopping
- PETA: Battefield 3 Turns German Boys Into Sadistic Rat Murderers
| Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Source Code Released Posted: 14 Nov 2011 03:03 PM PST
This is perhaps biggest for Android modders and fans of custom ROMs. Now that the code is free, we expect popular devices to be running stock Android 4.0 in a matter of days. An official update for the Nexus S is expected in a few weeks, and the Galaxy Nexus is launching in Europe in just a few days. The US release date for the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon is unknown. In the coming hours, there will surely be some goodies found in the Android source code, so keep an eye out. Will you be flashing to ICS as soon as possible? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sprint Rolls Out New Tiered Mobile Broadband Plans Posted: 14 Nov 2011 02:48 PM PST
For $49.99, users of tablets and hotspot devices will get 6GB of data, which is more than other carriers. There are also lower tiers at $19.99 and $34.99, offering 1GB and 3GB of data respectively. A $79.99 12GB plan rounds out the new offerings. As usual, those going over the allotted gigabytes will be charged an overage, and in this case it's 5-cents per MB. Users of smartphones are currently off the hook and continue to enjoy on-device unlimited data -- for now. Any Sprint users out there feeling slighted by this move? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Schools Reserving .XXX Domains To Protect Good Name Posted: 14 Nov 2011 02:30 PM PST
Many schools are seeking to lock down the .xxx version of their domain names in order to stop any clever pornographers in their tracks. A University of Missouri-Columbia official was quoted as saying, "We don't want someone coming across our trademark on a porn site. God only knows what they'd come up with." The adult industry has been critical of the planned domain, with some believing that they will eventually be forced to restrict their activities to the .xxx domains. It costs $200 per domain for Universities to lock down the .xxx site. Most schools have said they will not forward the .xxx link to the .edu one, but perhaps a snarky IT admin someplace will make use of the forbidden address. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Breaking in Sandy Bridge-E: Building A Kick-Ass Rig with Intel's New Chip Posted: 14 Nov 2011 01:31 PM PST Intel's new enthusiast platform is here. I'm going to put it through its paces with a quiet riot of a gaming rig.
I've gotten my hands on the Sandy Bridge-E flagship CPU: the Core i7-3960X, a $1,000, six-core beast at 3.3GHz. Oh, and a motherboard and cooler to go with it. I've rustled up a passel of RAM, a titanic GPU, a quiet case, and a speedy SSD. I'm going to see whether X79 has what it takes to wrest the enthusiast crown from X58, and whether it can do so quietly. Ingredients
Building From the CPU OutWhy a $1,000 CPU? Well, it's the only Sandy Bridge-E chip we could get our hands on, but it's also multiplier unlocked, so in a matter of moments that 3.3GHz hexa-core becomes a 4.3GHz without even trying, thanks in part to the desktop overclocking software included with Asus's P9X79 Deluxe motherboard. Intel's RTS2011LC cooler is Asetek-made, and should enable nice overclocks without causing much noise. The mobo's eight memory slots and the low cost of 4GB DDR3 DIMMs make the RAM choice easy—two 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 kits cost less than $200. A 256GB Samsung 830 SSD will hold my OS and games, with a 3TB Deskstar for storage. Asus's ROG Matrix GTX 580 is one of the quietest full-powered videocards we've ever tested, and its massive fans mean it stays quiet even when overclocked and overvolted. Speaking of quiet: Antec's P280 combines the quiet competence of the P180 series with modern niceties like cable-routing cutouts and USB 3.0 front-panel connectors. Thermaltake's Toughpower Grand 850W provides the juice for my build while promoting good cable management with its modular design. Add in a Blu-ray combo drive, and I've got all the ingredients for a fantastic, overclockable, quiet gaming rig. With 32GB of RAM. Still not tired of that. Assembling the HardwareStep 1: Prep the BoardUnlike previous Intel LGA sockets, Sandy Bridge-E's LGA2011 socket requires the use of two levers to secure the CPU, not just one. When installing the CPU, make sure the first arm is secure over the socket top's lip (image below, top), then secure it. Afterwards, secure the bottom arm (image below, bottom).
Because LGA2011 comes with its own universal backplate, you don't need to install a separate one for the cooler. Instead you'll just follow the instructions on the cooler to prep the retention mount for LGA2011 install.
I'm using all eight DIMM slots on the X79 board, so I don't need to worry about which slots to populate first. If you are only using four, however, install your DIMMs in the blue (outer) sets of slots, not the black ones. Step 2: Prep the CaseI'm using Intel's RTS2011LC cooler, which usurps the rear exhaust fan mount, so the first thing to do is remove the 12cm exhaust fan (don't forget to detach its speed toggle from the rear panel). The P280 doesn't ship with any intake fans by default, though it provides mounts for two 12cm fans fore and aft of the hard drive tray. The fan's power cable won't reach the motherboard from the front intake mounts, so either mount it on the inside of the hard drive cage (image below) or invest in an extension cable.
Install the motherboard's I/O shield, then the motherboard itself. Step 3: Install the CPU CoolerHere's where it gets tricky. The P280's rear-panel fan-control switch won't allow us to install the radiator directly against the rear panel; we have to put the fan in first. The fan that comes with Intel's RTS2011LC, though, only has mounting holes on one side of its housing. In order to mount the fan as intake (rather than exhaust), we'll need to use the four aluminum spacers Intel ships with the cooler. Install as shown (image below).
Once the radiator and fan are installed, apply a dollop of thermal paste half the size of a pea to the CPU's heat spreader, and attach the CPU retention clamp to the backplate by using the shorter of the two sets of mounting screws included with the cooler. Seat the cooler on the CPU, then align the ledges on the cooler with the barbs on the mounting plate, and tighten the screws, opposite corners first, like changing a car tire (image below). Connect the fan's power cable to the header on the pump, then connect the pump's power cable to the CPU_FAN header.
Step 4: Install DrivesRemove the top-most optical drive bezel and slide the Blu-ray drive into the slot; the toolless mechanism will engage when the drive is in all the way. Secure the drive with screws if you'd like, then connect a SATA cable from the optical drive to one of the blue SATA ports on the motherboard. The P280, like previous Antec cases, is all about silence, and its hard drive trays bear that out. Rather than attaching to the sides of the hard drive, like most trays, the P280's trays attach to the bottom of the drive through thick silicone grommets (image below). These dampen vibration and prevent noise.
Since SSDs don't produce vibration, they just mount to the middle of the drive tray. Install both drives, slide the trays back into place, and attach each drive to the top gray 6Gb/s SATA ports on the motherboard with the black-and-white 6Gb/s SATA cables that come with the motherboard. Step 5: Install PSU, Route WiresConnect the front-panel connectors to the motherboard, then install the PSU in the bottom of the case with the fan pointing down. Use the four extra-long screws that come with the PSU. Route the 24-pin and 8-pin ATX power cables behind the motherboard, as well as one Molex power connector, which you should bring behind the motherboard tray with the 8-pin ATX power cable, to plug into the fan controller at the top rear of the case (image below).
You should be able to power the optical drive and both storage drives with a single SATA power strand; I found it helps to bring the cable through the bottom cutout, back out through the top, and use the first SATA power port on the optical drive, then bring the rest of the strand back through the cutout and down to the hard drive and SSD. Don't forget to attach two 8-pin PCIe power cables (the ones with the red connectors) to your PSU and run them up to where the videocard will be. When completed, the right side of my case looked like the image below.
If you haven't already, take the time to plug in the front-panel connectors: the USB 2.0, HD Audio, and front-panel controls go to the bottom of the motherboard, and the USB 3.0 internal header attaches at center right. Step 6: Install the VideocardFrom an installation perspective, the only unusual aspect of the Asus Matrix GTX 580 we're using is its tremendous size—it uses three expansion slots instead of the usual two. Install it in the case's second through fourth expansion slots, which correspond to the top PCIe x16 slot on the motherboard (image below). Attach the two 8-pin power connectors. Double-check to make sure everything is connected and powered, and you're all set!
It's a Quiet Riot, All RightEven before I overclocked the machine, its results were impressive, but once I got the CPU up to 4.4GHz and the GPU up to 930MHz (from its 816MHz default), it blew our zero-point out of the water. Thanks to those six overclocked cores and 32GB of RAM, the Sandy Bridge-E rig was a whopping 60 percent faster than the zero-point in our Vegas Pro 9 test, 45 percent faster in Lightroom, 40 percent faster in ProShow, and 54 percent faster in MainConcept Reference. The overclocked GTX 580 even outperformed the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 from our zero-point. In CPU- and RAM-dependent tests, my X79 also trounced Dream Machine 2011's overclocked 2600K, though the single GTX 580 in my rig, overclocked as it was, couldn't match the three GTX 580s in the Dream Machine, producing just 51.6fps in our Stalker benchmark to the Dream Machine's 125.9fps. It fared a bit better in our Far Cry 2 benchmark, at 124.5fps, but the tri-SLI Dream Machine pushed over 203fps to our 2650x1600 panel. Still, with a few more GPUs, the Sandy Bridge-E machine would trounce our Dream Machine.
One thing I didn't get to try was building out a RAM disk—yet. With 32GB to play with, I could make a 20GB RAM disk with read speeds in the 4,000MB/s range and still have 12GB of RAM for day-to-day tasks. I also probably could have clocked the CPU up a bit more, but I ran out of time. Still, 4.4GHz is quite nice. I'm also really impressed with how easily the Matrix GTX 580 overclocked with Asus's GPU Tweak software, and how quietly it ran even at a 13 percent overclock. Another nice surprise was Antec's P280 chassis. This was my first build into that case, and frankly, I expected to have to add more fans. While it's not the easiest build I've ever done, the P280's guts are miles ahead of Antec's older designs, and the darn thing is quiet. It did feel weird to pay just $200 for 32GB of RAM, yet more than $350 for a 3TB hard drive. The flooding in Thailand had just started to affect hard drive supplies at the time I was building, and I was startled to see prices on existing stock double nearly overnight. After this build, I'm definitely excited for Sandy Bridge-E. The platform's sheer power and ease‑of‑overclocking breathe new life into enthusiast computing. Most people will find that Socket 1155 Sandy Bridge machines are still a better buy from a cost/performance standpoint, but those who need power by the bucketful will find it here. Benchmarks
Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chrome Web App of the Week: Zoho Writer Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:32 AM PST
Stomping into Google Docs' well-marked territory, Zoho Writer is robust web-based word processing application with a style and functionality reminiscent of the productivity experience typically associated with high-priced, resource hungry software developed in Redmond. In addition to basic document editing musts such as formatting, fonts, and spellchecking, ZoHo also provides a wide variety of tools and touches that'll make users forget they're using a web app: document information, the ability to post content directly to a number of popular blog services, and offline editing for up to 25 recent documents are all available for the very reasonable price of absolutely free.
What's more, when you sign up for a Zoho account, you're not only gaining access to Zoho Writer, but also the company's full line of online tools and applications, all of which are worth your attention. Be sure to check back every Monday for another edition of Maximum PC's Chrome Web App of the Week.
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| Nab An Eee Pad Transformer For The Price Of A Bookstore Tablet At Best Buy On Black Friday Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:30 AM PST
Sure, the new, quad-core Eee Pad Transformer Prime is slated to arrive before Christmas, too, but that'll set you back at least $500. And going by specs, the normal Eee Pad Transformer that we know and love(d in our review) stands up strong against the bookstore tablets, with a bigger display and better resolution and twice the storage and RAM of the Fire, at 16GB and 1GB, respectively. The Transformer also has a lot of nifty features that the bookstore tablets just can't match, including a plethora of ports, Bluetooth support, an HD camera and more. The price doesn't include the cool, super-functional optional keyboard dock, though, and it's for a Best Buy Exclusive "X1" model -- which may not be quite as well equipped as the already-existing base Transformer. But at $250 (down from the normal $400 MSRP), you could do a lot worse for, well, a lot more. But you'll have to venture down to the old brick-and-mortar on Black Friday if you want to take advantage of the offer. Does it entice any of you? (P.S. Don't worry -- Maximum PC is not turning into w00t.com. I just thought this was a cool deal to pass on.) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Survey Reveals Students Dream of Landing a Job at Google or Apple Posted: 14 Nov 2011 11:17 AM PST
Regardless of the field of study, students would love to land a job at Google, which ranked the No. 1 ideal destination in both business and IT, No. 2 in engineering, No. 5 in humanities/liberal arts, and No. 9 in natural sciences. Average those out and Google becomes the third or fourth most dreamed about destination among the 61,726 survey respondents. Apple also ranked high in all five categories, including No. 2 in business, No. 3 in IT, No. 5 in engineering, No. 8 in humanities/liberal arts, and No. 11 in natural sciences. On average, respondents perceive Apple as a little better than the sixth most ideal employer. Other relatively high ranking tech companies include Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, and IBM, depending on which field of study. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Japan's K Supercomputer Still the Fastest in the World, Top500 Says Posted: 14 Nov 2011 10:53 AM PST
"The K Computer is the first supercomputer to achieve a performance level of 10 Petaflop/s, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second," Top500 said. "In June 2011, the partially built K computer had taken the No. 1 position with a performance of 8.16 Petaflop/s. Contrary to many other recent very large systems, it does not utilize graphics processors or other accelerators. The K Computer is also one of the most energy efficient systems on the list." As a matter of fact, there wasn't any movement whatsoever among the top 10 systems in the Top500 List, which is the first time that's happened since the organization began publishing the list back in 1993. With regards to the No. 1 spot, Japan's Super K system is well ahead of the pack, with China's Tianhe-1A system at a distant second with 2.57 Petaflop/s performance. With the November release of the Top500 List, supercomputers are now required to handle 50.9 Teraflop/s to even be considered, which is higher than the top supercomputer in 2004. There are 39 systems now using GPUs for some computing tasks, and IBM inches ever closer to supplying half of the top 500 systems (223, to be exact). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Intel, MasterCard Bringing Mobile Payments To Online Shopping Posted: 14 Nov 2011 10:41 AM PST
Confused? Don't be. The new initiative doesn't turn your fancy new Asus Zenbook into a mobile identifier, but will instead enable users of future generations of Ultrabooks (and Intel-powered PCs) to pay for their online purchases by tapping their MasterCard PayPass-enabled smartphone against their Intel Identity Protection Technology-packing Ultrabook. Intel says its Identity Protection Technology "can enable consumers to use strong two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection." Speaking of saying things, Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard's chief emerging payments officer, says the collaboration will bring all kinds of benefits to consumers. "The collaboration with Intel will deliver enhanced security and faster checkout – with the convenience of a simple click or tap." So, Maximum PC readers: is this new feature cool, or is it meh? Are you looking forward to never having to enter your credit card details into a website again? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PETA: Battefield 3 Turns German Boys Into Sadistic Rat Murderers Posted: 14 Nov 2011 10:18 AM PST
The original press release is in German, but a little Google Translation magic lets you get the garbled gist of the announcement. (BF3) gives players the option to kill a rat with a combat knife in the back in order to then lift it by its tail, then toss it away. Killing virtual animals can have a brutalizing effect on the young male target audience. There have been repeated cases of animal cruelty in Germany, where young people kill animals. Inspiration behind these acts often came from movies and computer games. So watch out, Battlefield gamers – you might be being programmed to be the animal version of Dexter. PETA doesn't mention whether or not they think killing hundreds of human enemies might have an even more significant effect on apparently fragile psyche of young German boys, but don't worry, German moms! Links between video games and violence have been thoroughly debunked by all kinds of super-intelligent, non-biased folks time and time again. Though, come to think of it, we can't think of a report that studied if virtual rat stabbings led to increased actual rat stabbings… |
A little ahead of schedule, Google has 
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Intel has just released its new Sandy Bridge-E platform. With six- and eight-core processors, eight DIMM slots, and multiple PCIe 3.0 slots, it's Nehalem's true heir and the answer to complaints that Sandy Bridge, while awesome, just isn't enthusiast enough. (Check out our
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Up until this point, the whole NFC/Mobile payments craze has largely been focused on smartphones, since, well, you're more likely to have a cellphone than a notebook on you when you're shopping. But hey, what about e-shopping? Intel and MasterCard just announced that they've teamed up to make Ultrabook a little more "Ultra" by adding mobile payments to the support list for the ultraportable laptops. You'll still need your cellphone, though. 
Battlefield 3 isn't The Sims; no matter how you decide on approaching the game, a ton of virtual people are going to die gory virtual deaths. That doesn't faze the German arm of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, though. No, what really grinds PETA's gears is a scene in the game in which a rat is stabbed and then tossed into a trashcan, and the organization has written a press release to let the world know of its outrage. OUTRAGE!| 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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Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's 
