General Gaming Article |
- Windows RT Devices to Initially Ship with Preview Version of Office
- Daily Deals 9/13/12: Corsair Vengeance Mouse, 120GB SSD, Radeon HD 7950 and More
- AMD Stays in the Game with Another Round of Radeon HD 7000 Series Price Cuts
- Nvidia Rounds Out Kepler Line with Budget Friendly GeForce GTX 660 and 650 Graphics Cards
- GoDaddy Takes Responsibility for Massive Outage, Compensates with Free Month of Service
- The GeForce GTX 660 Debuts
| Windows RT Devices to Initially Ship with Preview Version of Office Posted: 13 Sep 2012 06:01 PM PDT
The final version of Windows RT will be rolled out in a graduated fashion between early November and January, with the choice of language pack determining who gets the update when. Microsoft will be revealing the exact update schedule on Windows 8 launch day, October 26, on the official Office blog. This announcement occupies a very small part of what is a fairly lengthy blog post. It, the Office team has touched upon a number of things, including the raison d'être of Office for Windows RT and the various tablet-specific optimization it packs. According to Microsoft, the Office for Windows RT project was started with the aim of delivering the "same level of polish and reliability" as Office for x86/x64 on ARM-based tablets. The task was easier said than done, though. The Office team had to accomplish this while keeping in mind the many special requirements associated with Windows RT tablets, including touchscreen support, portability, and the optimum use of limited resources. If Microsoft is to be believed, Office for Windows and Office for Windows RT are very similar, with only a few subtle differences here and there. Office 2013 RT lacks the following features:
Image Credit: Office Next Blog |
| Daily Deals 9/13/12: Corsair Vengeance Mouse, 120GB SSD, Radeon HD 7950 and More Posted: 13 Sep 2012 03:01 PM PDT
Top DealToday's top deal is the Corsair Vengeance M60 which is on sale at $29.99 (with free shipping). Corsair says the M60 was designed for first-person shooters and it has incorporated 5,700 DPI sensitivity and eight programmable buttons to the wired mouse to accommodate. In addition, the M60 features adjustable weights to allow gamers to further fine-tune their experience. You can check out the deal here. Today's other deals are posted below. Laptops: Toshiba Satellite P755-S5194 15.6" Core i7 Laptop w/640GB Hard Drive, for $599.99 with free shipping (normally $699.99). Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon UltraBook for $1,196 with free shipping (normally $1,329 - use exclusive coupon: LOGICBUY). Desktops: Dell Vostro 470 Core i5-3450 3.1GHz Quad-core Ivy Bridge Desktop w/4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Windows 7 Professional, Wireless-N & $100 Gift Card for $549 with free shipping (normally $679 - use $50 coupon code: W9D06J14FX10WM). Computing Hardware & Peripherals: ASUS PA248Q 24.1" HDMI LED-Backlight IPS Panel Monitor + $20 NewEgg Gift Card for $309.99 with free shipping at NewEgg (normally $370). Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 Video Card (100352SR) + Free Sleeping Dogs game for $279.99 with free shipping at NewEgg (normally $369.99). Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (GV-N670OC-2GD) + Borderlands 2 PC Game for $360 with free shipping at NewEgg (normally $400 - use coupon code: HARDOCPX912G). OCZ Vertex 2 120GB Solid State Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G) for $49.99 with free shipping at NewEgg after $20 mail-in rebate (normally $99.99). Corsair Neutron Series 2.5" 120GB SSD for $84.99 with free shipping (normally $120). Netgear 200Mbps Powerline AV Adapter Kit with Ethernet Switch for $60 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code EMCNAJG55). |
| AMD Stays in the Game with Another Round of Radeon HD 7000 Series Price Cuts Posted: 13 Sep 2012 10:25 AM PDT
Here's how it breaks down, according to Softpedia:
Outside of mail-in-rebates, we saw prices that were slightly higher online in most cases, but not by much. And if you are willing to play the MIR game (your mileage may vary), the deals get even better. Either way, there are a lot of capable GPUs out there that are more than up to the task of playing today's games without putting you in the poorhouse.
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| Nvidia Rounds Out Kepler Line with Budget Friendly GeForce GTX 660 and 650 Graphics Cards Posted: 13 Sep 2012 07:15 AM PDT
Starting at the top, the GTX 660 part (two of which we've already reviewed) is based on Nvidia's GK106 architecture and sports 960 CUDA cores, 80 texture units, 24 ROP units, 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 192-bit bus, 980MHz base GPU clockspeed, 1098MHz boost GPU clockspeed, and 1502MHz (6008MHz effective) memory clockspeed. Nvidia's GTX 650 is based on GK107 and is a much milder card. It has 384 CUDA cores, 32 texture units, 16 ROP units, 1GB or 2GB of GDDR5 clocked at 1250MHz on a 128-bit bus, and a 900MHz core clockspeed. Both cards support up to four displays with a maximum digital resolution of 2560x1600, and both have a Dual-Link DVI-I and DVI-D ports. The 660 adds a full-size HDMI port and DisplayPort, whereas the 650 features a mini-HDMI port (and no DisplayPort). The GeForce GTX 660 and GeForce GTX 650 are available today for around $229 and $109, respectively. |
| GoDaddy Takes Responsibility for Massive Outage, Compensates with Free Month of Service Posted: 13 Sep 2012 06:14 AM PDT
"The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a 'hack' and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables," GoDaddy said in a statement. "Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again." At the beginning of the week, GoDaddy was working feverishly to restore operations for millions of websites that had been knocked offline. A rogue hacker affiliated with Anonymous (but working on his own) took credit for the outage, but it now appears he was merely blowing smoke up the Internet's collective backside.
GoDaddy maintains that at no time was any sensitive data compromised, including credit data, passwords, or any other identifying information. "As a result of this disruption, your account will be credited for the value of 1-month of service for each of your active/published sites. This credit will be available to you for the next 7 days. Please click the button below to redeem your credit," GoDaddy states in emails sent to customers. If you're a GoDaddy customer who was affected by the outage but didn't receive an email, you can give the company a ring at 1-480-505.8877. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Posted: 12 Sep 2012 03:33 PM PDT The sweet-spot GPU has finally arrivedThe GTX 660 is the first 28nm Kepler board based on a new GPU dubbed GK106, and the final 6-series card to support high-performance features like GPU Boost and SLI. Compared to the GTX 660 Ti, the GTX 660 offers the same 2GB of DDR5 memory, the same 192-bit memory interface, and the same number of ROP units, but loses two SMX units compared to the GTX 660 Ti, giving it just 960 CUDA cores compared to 1,344 in the previous cards (and the 1,536 in the GTX 680). At $230 it's our new favorite GPU in the price-to-performance category. Gigabyte GTX 660 OC Version
Gigabyte's OC Edition offers additional clock speeds and cooling at no extra charge. Gigabyte's GTX 660 is similar to MSI's board in that it's overclocked and has a cooler with a silly name—Windforce. The board is clocked at the same base and boost clock speeds as the MSI card, too, running at 1,033MHz and 1,098MHz, respectively. The cooler features four copper heat pipes, aluminum fins, and two large 10cm fans breathing down on the whole shebang. Even though the board sports a smallish 7.5-inch PCB, the cooling apparatus is so large that it's 2-inches longer than the PCB and extends the length of the card to 9.5 inches. With a cooler this large you expect it to perform quite well, and it does. It kept the card absolutely silent even when the board was being tortured in the Lab, and allowed it to run at a moderately cool 63 C under full load. The board's benchmark performance was good enough for it to edge out the MSI card in most tests, but by a margin that's insignificant. Since both cards are clocked the same and spec'd the same, this level of parity is not surprising. On the software front, the included OC Guru II app is easy to use for monitoring the card's vitals and overclocking, but the charts it provides showing change over time are hard to read due to teeny text. There's also a "bundle" in the box but we are putting it in quotes because it's so meager—a single Molex-to-PCIe adapter. The biggest surprise with the Gigabyte card is its MSRP is $230—exactly the same price as a bone-stock GTX 660, so it's like the extra overclocking and cooling are free. Since it offers roughly the same software, cooling, performance, and bundle as the MSI card, the price advantage is all we need to give the nod to Gigabyte in this round. Gigabyte GTX 660 OC Version GANGNAM STYLE Great performance; quiet and cool; rock-bottom price. OAKLAND STYLE Minimum bundle.  $230, www.gigabyte.com MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr OC Edition
MSI's overclocked GTX 660 sports a sexy metallic cooling shroud.
MSI's GTX 660 is an all-around great card that includes a healthy dollop of overclocking and a side of Frozr to keep it cool. Its base clock speed is a decent 53MHz over stock at 1,033Mhz, and when running at full load we saw its boost clock speed rise 130MHz over stock to 1,110MHz, which is also higher than the stock boost-clock spec. The Twin Frozr III cooler sports three copper heat pipes, aluminum fins, and dual 8cm fans housed in a metal-alloy shroud to direct the airflow. Like the other GTX 660 cards, it uses just a single 6-pin power connector, but unlike the others it sports an extra-long 9-inch PCB (Gigabyte's board is just 7.5 inches but the cooler is actually 9 inches long). In testing, the MSI board ran neck-and-neck with Gigabyte's similarly clocked offering, losing every test but one by a very slim margin. The cards were also a tied in the category of noise/cooling, as they both ran silently under full load at a mild 63 C. The MSI Afterburner software is usable but nothing to email home about and the board's skimpy bundle consists of a single Molex-to-PCIe adapter along with the software CD. Overall there's a lot to like about MSI's Twin Frozr OC Edition card. It's quiet, cool, and performs very well, and we like the look of its gunmetal shroud and glinting metallic badge. However, the Gigabyte GTX 660 board performs just as well and is just as quiet, and since it costs $10 less, that's enough to give Gigabyte the advantage. If you are an MSI fan and/or a Frozr aficionado, you can get the 660 OC Edition for the same $230 price via a mail-in rebate, but since we hate rebates we'd rather just go with the Gigabyte and get the savings at the virtual cash register.
MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr OC Edition Version SOLID STATE Very quiet and cool; great performance. ALTERED STATE Tiny Bundle; $10 more than the Gigabyte card.  $240, www.msi.com Benchmarks
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P9X79 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and an AX1200 Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA and all settings maxed out, except for the 3DMark tests, and Shogun 2, which is run at 1080p High settings. Specifications
*Note: Nvidia and AMD graphics compute cores are not directly comparable. |
Initially, Windows RT devices, including Microsoft's own 
Talk about a buyer's market if you're a gamer. It's great to time to go videocard shopping, both because there are new GPUs landing on store shelves, and also due to the fact that prices are coming down. Perhaps looking to steal some thunder from 
A few weeks ago, 
GoDaddy
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