General Gaming Article |
- This Week's Hottest Reviews on TechRadar
- Rasberry Pi vs. Intel NUC
- Geekbox Ego Maniacal Review
- Razer Accidentally Leaks 90 Percent Off Promo Code, Will Honor Purchases
- LulzSec Hacker Receives One-Year Sentence for Sony Shenanigans
- AMD's Beats Expectations, Cuts Losses Significantly in Q1 2013
- Newegg Daily Deals: Graphics Cards Galore!
| This Week's Hottest Reviews on TechRadar Posted: 19 Apr 2013 03:55 PM PDT
Call Facebook ubiquitous and you're understating your case. Unlock any random smartphone and you're guaranteed to find a little blue F icon waiting on the home screen. Facebook is so big, so everywhere, so omnipresent that it's already on everyone's phone, but apparently that's not enough for the sharing mogul. Now Facebook has decided to completely take over devices with Facebook Home, and has collaborated with HTC to create the HTC First, a phone meant to show just what that experience can be. The First moniker comes from being the first phone with Facebook Home preloaded. It's a well built, unassuming little handset, nowhere near as big, flashy or as fast as the quad-core HTC One.
Being the middle child is always difficult, so in that respect the Nokia Lumia 720 has it tough as it nestles slap bang in the center of the Finnish firm's Windows Phone 8 range. Arriving on the scene alongside the budget-focussed Nokia Lumia 520 at MWC 2013, the Lumia 720 provides a happy middle point in a line up which also includes the Lumia 620, 820 and 920. The Nokia Lumia 720 is available for around $460 SIM-free, while on contract you'll be able to pick it up for free with two year contract.
Like love, sensors are all around us. The astronomic growth in smartphone uptake means that most of the people you know now carry around a device that is constantly monitoring movement, light, sound and location. To date, the data captured by these sensors has found limited application, but this will soon change. At its core, the Jawbone Up is a pedometer, but with pretensions of being much more. Within its "medical grade" rubber casing, the Up houses a number of motion sensors and shares the information it collects with a smartphone app for iPhones and Android. Other reviews on TechRadar this week:Computers HP Envy TouchSmart 4T-1102 review Phones Hands on: Samsung Galaxy Mega review GPS Hands on: TomTom Multi-Sport GPS Watch review Cameras Hands on: Nikon Coolpix P330 review Media Streaming Device Portable memory Transcend Wi-Fi SD Card review Tablets Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 review
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| Posted: 19 Apr 2013 01:50 PM PDT Rasberry Pi vs. Intel NUCThe unique $35 Raspberry Pi computer set the PC world on its ear last year. Part computer science project and part incredibly cheap PC, the DIY single-board computer is such a hot item, some retailers are charging double what the unit originally cost. Of course, where there's money, there's Intel. The chip giant has formally introduced its $320 "Next Unit of Computing," or NUC, PC concept—basically a bare-bones, hobbyist kit PC. While this is admittedly an apple–to-orange comparison in many respects, we felt that hobbyists deserve to see an accounting of the pros and cons of each in a head-on fight. Round 1: SizeIntel's NUC is built around an amazingly small 4x4x2-inch chassis that Intel is hoping to make the standard for subminiature-but-powerful PCs. The NUC isn't the first we've seen this small, though. The Zotac Nano XS is slightly thinner than the NUC, by about half an inch, and VIA has its Pico-ITX boards. Of course, the Raspberry Pi has them all beat. It comes as a single-board computer at just over 2x3 inches for the whole package. Winner: Raspberry Pi
Other single-board computers have been available, so the Raspberry Pi's real breakthrough is its $35 price, making it exceedingly accessible for experimentation. Round 2: PricingIntel's Ivy Bridge chips have been amazingly lean on power consumption for the high-performance x86 chips they are. The NUC ships with a 65-watt power brick, and the dual-core Hyper-Threaded Core i3 is rated at 17 watts. Pretty impressive for an x86. However, when you consider that the Raspberry Pi can run off your cell phone charger (provided it puts out 700mA), Ivy Bridge and even the next-gen Haswell are unlikely to ever compete with the Pi in the power- consumption game. Winner: Raspberry Pi Round 3: ApplicationsWe don't mean applications as in specific apps, but the possible uses for these wee PCs. The NUC can be used as an HTPC, a mini Big Picture Steam Box, or slung behind a monitor to create an almost-all-in-one. The Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, is the perfect hobbyist machine for students and tinkerers young and old. It's being used to run everything from MAME cabinets to controlling quad-copter drones. As a device intended to introduce folks on super-tight budgets to computing concepts and programming, the Raspberry Pi is a win no matter how you cut it. However, Intel's NUC is also quite superb at what it's meant for. With its included VESA-mount adapter, it can be used in signage applications and is basically an incredibly powerful small machine. Winner: Tie Round 4: SpecsmanshipAt $35, the Raspberry Pi is pretty low-powered. As a desktop UI, for example, it's not exactly something you want to push regularly, with its 700MHz Broadcom ARM 11 CPU, 256MB of RAM, HDMI, and LAN and USB support. The NUC, on the other hand, is like everything Intel does: a tour de force of specs and hardware. The NUC we have here packs a 1.8GHz dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Core i3 chip and has Mini PCI Express slots to run an mSATA SSD and wireless card. With its HD4000 graphics, the box is capable of reasonable gaming with older titles, too. Hell, our version even packs that new-fangled ultra-fast Thunderbolt port. This round is an easy win for the NUC. Winner: NUC
Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is meant to spur interesting and unique uses for Intel hardware. Round 5: PerformanceAgain, there's no debating this. The NUC's size isn't really exciting, but its performance is. Most mini PCs have been based on VIA's CPUs, which aren't exactly speed kings, or AMD's Brazos chips, which don't light any fires themselves. The NUC is really fast for its class. The Raspberry Pi, while incredibly cool for $35, isn't something we'd be happy pushing all day. Yes, it can run a desktop OS, and yes, it can stream some media, but would you really want it to? The answer is no. And the Winner Is…The fact is, both are winners. OK, now quit your bitching; we honestly wouldn't feel right if we called this for one or the other. We think the Intel NUC is a freaking-cool little box and we can imagine it at the heart of several projects around the house and car. At the same time, the Raspberry Pi has so much charm and the price is so damned good (that's the Raspberry Pi's real breakthrough, you know) that there's no reason not to buy one or two of these bare-bones kits to experiment with. So maybe those of you who thought these two devices couldn't be compared were right. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2013 12:13 PM PDT A matte-black benchmark bruiserGeekbox's Ego Maniacal system pays homage to Maximum PC's Dream Machine—but probably not the one you're thinking of. Sure, last year's Dream Machine featured the same Silverstone TJ11 chassis as the Geekbox Ego Maniacal, but we're told that the actual inspiration for this custom-built box was 2002's Dream Machine, which was painted to match a classic BMW 2002 Turbo. Except Geekbox has updated its tribute to the car by nodding its head to the more current special edition BMW M3 in "frozen black."
The Ego might owe its inspiration to that Dream Machine of old, but its internals are a closer match with 2012's DM. Full details of the Ego's specs are down below, but the highlights include Intel's new king, the 3.5GHz Core i7-3970X, a pair of liquid-cooled GeForce GTX 690 cards, two 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX SSDs, 32GB of Corsair DDR3/1866, and a 1,200W Corsair AX1200i PSU. The most impressive part of the Ego may be its liquid cooling, which uses both a quad-rad and dual-rad to keep the parts cool—that includes the voltage regulation modules on the Asus Republic of Gamer board. That's probably a good idea, too, because the Ego pushes the new 3.5GHz Core i7-3970X to a very stable 4.8GHz. That's about 1GHz further than our zero-point's overclocked six-core, and with its 25 percent higher clocks, the Ego offers that much more of a performance edge. In fact, the six-core Ego gave our zero-point—which is certainly no slouch in specs—a pretty good pummeling in every single benchmark. What about something a bit beefier, such as DM2012?
Geekbox individually sizes and sleeves the cables for each PC it builds. Between the two, it was a classic battle of cores vs. frequency, with DM2012 sporting eight cores at 3.1GHz vs. the Ego's six cores at 4.8GHz. In the apps that can't exploit all the cores of the DM2012 (or even the Ego, for that matter), clock speeds won out, with the Ego pulling up a score 27 percent faster in Stitch.Efx 2.0 and 30 percent faster in ProShow Producer 5.0. When you get into the heavily multithreaded tasks, however, the cores-vs.-frequency argument gets interesting. The Ego was faster than the DM2012 in Premiere Pro CS 5.0 by about 4 percent and about 1 percent faster in the x264 HD 5.0 benchmark. That's a victory for frequency, but at the same time, we're talking about a 1.7GHz difference between the six-core and eight-core chips, so the core crowd can claim a moral victory. We also have to acknowledge that the Ego set benchmark records in all six official benchmarks we run. Although not everything was by a large margin, it's still one hell of an accomplishment for one single system to sweep all six. The real magic of the Ego is in the phenomenal amount of detail paid to its construction. Geekbox says it spends no less than 40 hours to build its high-end custom machines and it shows, from the washers on the case-door screws that prevent scratches to the paint, to the custom-length cables that are each sleeved and heat-shrunk by hand (nary a zip tie is present). There are other loving details about the case that we just don't have the space for here, but we must admit we were a bit let down by the decals. Rather than covering them with a clear coat, Geekbox just stuck them atop the matte-black paint job, which is decidedly less impressive—you can feel the decals' edges when you slide your hand over them. It's also odd for the company not to include mass storage, but Geekbox says that's more of lifestyle statement. In your garage, you'll have your M3 for weekends and your minivan for weekdays, so why clutter the M3 with baby seats? We understand that rational but we don't buy it, because while this machine is fast, it's also expensive at $7,995. Yeah, that's a deal next to DM2012's $11,055 but one HDD couldn't hurt. Despite the interesting storage configuration and heart-stopping price, we can't argue with the raw performance and attention to detail that might take custom rigs to the next level. $7,995, www.geekbox.com |
| Razer Accidentally Leaks 90 Percent Off Promo Code, Will Honor Purchases Posted: 19 Apr 2013 11:38 AM PDT
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| LulzSec Hacker Receives One-Year Sentence for Sony Shenanigans Posted: 19 Apr 2013 08:12 AM PDT
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| AMD's Beats Expectations, Cuts Losses Significantly in Q1 2013 Posted: 19 Apr 2013 06:30 AM PDT
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| Newegg Daily Deals: Graphics Cards Galore! Posted: 19 Apr 2013 05:49 AM PDT
Top Deal: One of the reasons why PCs trump consoles for gaming is that you can upgrade at any time. And if you're in need of a GPU upgrade, you're in luck. Today's top deal is for an XFX Core Edition Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card for $220 with free shipping (normallyy $240 - additional $20 mail-in rebate; Free Gift: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock and Tomb Raider game). Other Deals: EVGA SSC GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card for $161 with free shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code: EMCXSWM37 additional $15 mail-in rebate; Free Gift: Nvidia $75 value in-game coin coupon) XFX Double D Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card for $210 with free shipping (normally $230 - additional $30 mail-in rebate; Free Gift: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock and Tomb Raider game) HIS iCooler Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card for $99 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code:[EMCXSWM42] additional $10 mail-in rebate) Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Video Card with Boost for $290 with free shipping (normally $320 - additional $20 mail-in rebate) |
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