General Gaming Article

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• SteelSeries to Showcase New H-Series Headset Line at E3 2013
• New MSI Gaming Laptops Get Haswell and Kepler Treatment
• Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt 500GB Review
• GeForce GTX 770 Video Card Roundup
• Origin PC Adds Silverstone's SG10 Chassis to SFF System Lineup
• Uh Oh Microsoft, AMD Wants to See Other OSes (Android and Chrome)
• Microsoft Gives a First Look at Windows 8.1
• Newegg Daily Deals: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, Seagate Barracuda 1TB, and More!
• AVADirect is First U.S. System Builder to Nab Clevo's P375SM Gaming Laptop

SteelSeries to Showcase New H-Series Headset Line at E3 2013 Posted: 06 Jun 2013 08:28 PM PDT Range starts at $39.99 The  Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is right around the corner and gaming peripheral maker SteelSeries is super excited about the new products that it has lined up for this year's event. The company will be showcasing a trio of headsets at E3 2013, which gets underway on June 11, SteelSeries announced in a press release Thursday. The three headsets together form the new H-Series line and, according to the press release, have been designed to deliver "tournament-grade" audio. Featuring 7.1 surround sound, new sound isolation tech, a USB soundcard and a robust-yet-lightweight design, the 9H is chief among the three H-Series headsets. In fact, the $159.99 (MSRP) headset is not only supposed to be the series flagship, but the company says it is also "our best competitive gaming headset yet." At $79.99, the 5Hv3 costs half as much as the 9H, but has the same sound isolating double enclosure earcup technology as the latter. Further, it also packs a retractable microphone. Completing the triad is the entry-level 3Hv2, which costs just $39.99 and features next-gen SteelSeries audio drivers, extra-padded leather cushions, a retractable microphone, and in-line audio controls on its soft-rubber cable. The 5Hv3 and 3Hv3 headsets will be hitting the market this summer, with the 9H making its commercial debut "this fall in Q3." Follow Pulkit on Google+

New MSI Gaming Laptops Get Haswell and Kepler Treatment Posted: 06 Jun 2013 04:35 PM PDT Company announces refreshed GT70 Dragon Edition gaming notebook and more. MSI launched several new gaming laptops at Computex 2013 featuring Intel's new Haswell CPUs along with Nvidia's new 700 series mobile GPUs. MSI's new GT70 Dragon Edition is the company's flagship gaming PC. MSI's flagship gaming notebook is their GT70 Dragon Edition 2 Extreme which boasts a quad-core i7-4930MX CPU clocked at 3.0GHz with a turbo boost of 3.9GHz. On the GPU side, it features an Nvidia GTX 780M video card rocking 1536 CUDA cores and a core clock of 823MHz. Storage on the GT70 is MSI's flagship laptop which features its new Super Raid 2 specification that has a read speed of 1,500MB/s with three SSDs in RAID 0. Rounding out the laptop is a keyboard and touchpad from Steel Series and speakers from Dynaudio. MSI also launched a portable gaming notebook called the GS70 Stealth that is a slim 0.85 inches thick and a light 5.73 pounds. To give you a frame of reference, most gaming notebooks are 8.5 to 9 pounds, and usually have a thickness of two inches or more. When it comes to internals, the GS70 will be offered with an i7 configuration, but there is no word on what particular Haswell CPU it will come with. The laptop is also fitted with Nvidia's new GTX 765M discrete video card which has 768 CUDA cores and a clock speed of 850MHz. MSI's GS70 is one of a few gaming notebooks under six pounds. MSI also showed off a few other laptops at Computex 2013 called the GE 40 Dragon Eyes and GE70/GE60 which all feature Haswell CPUs and Kepler GPUs.

Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt 500GB Review Posted: 06 Jun 2013 12:50 PM PDT Designed for Mac users and priced accordingly PC users have been in a bit of a quandary about the new Thunderbolt interface from Intel. On the one hand, we're all about maximum performance, so given its sizable speed advantage over USB 3.0, at least on paper, we're eager to adopt it. On the other hand, there are three issues that have prevented us from jumping on the Thunderbolt bandwagon with both feet. The first is the fact that it debuted on the Apple platform. Granted, we're a bit sensitive, but this just rubbed us the wrong way. Second, Thunderbolt doesn't exist on LGA2011 due to a requirement for integrated graphics. And finally, we already have USB 3.0, so do we really need Thunderbolt? Sure, it's twice as fast on paper (10Gb/s versus 5Gb/s), but will we see that benefit in the real world, and is it worth the cost? To help us answer all these nagging questions we snagged a very special hard drive, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt, which has both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports, allowing us to test both interfaces back-to-back and make an apples-to-apples comparison. The MiniStation has a belly-mounted white LED that "breathes" when there's drive activity; we dig it. Upon first glance, it's apparent this is a Mac-oriented drive, both in its Thunderbolt support as well as its aluminum exterior and rounded edges. It doesn't help that the documentation for the drive states that it comes preformatted for Macs, but don't prejudge the drive just yet—that's our job. In addition to shipping with both T-bolt and USB 3.0 interfaces, the drive also includes both cables, which is amazing since a Thunderbolt cable costs $50 alone. Inside the enclosure lies a 5,400rpm Samsung hard drive with 8MB of cache. The drive includes a 3-year warranty, is also offered in 1TB capacity, and includes no software whatsoever. To test the drive, we performed real-world and synthetic tests, and came to a somewhat unsurprising conclusion—in this iteration, with a 5,400rpm hard drive inside of it, this device is hamstrung by the drive itself, not the interface. In every test we ran, the drive performed exactly the same regardless of the interface we used, making the benefit of Thunderbolt in this instance primarily one of convenience rather than performance. For example, it would be useful if you are a person who owns both a Mac with Thunderbolt and a PC with USB 3.0, or an older MacBook with just USB 2.0 ports. Or you could be a PC user who wants the flexibility of using Thunderbolt and USB for file-sharing with buddies. Either way, the drive isn't any faster on either interface in its current form. Not only did it score the exact same write times down to the second when we copied 30GB of data, but it scored the same read and write speeds in HD Tune and ATTO, as well. For example, HD Tune clocked the drive at 80.7MB/s read speeds via Thunderbolt, and when using USB 3.0 it ran at 80.8MB/s. Now for the bad news: This drive costs $200 for 500GB, which is wildly expensive since you can get a Toshiba Canvio 1.5TB drive that is just as fast as the MiniStation for just $110. Thunderbolt could one day be the bitchin' interface we're all using, but for now it's too exotic and overpriced compared to USB 3.0. $200, www.buffalotech.com

GeForce GTX 770 Video Card Roundup Posted: 06 Jun 2013 11:45 AM PDT Let the overclocking commence! The GTX 770 was released last week and along with that announcement came a flurry of new cards from video card vendors such as MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, and EVGA.  MSI MSI has introduced a pair of overclocked cards rocking its newest aftermarket Twin Frozr IV cooler. The two cards by MSI are the GTX 770 Lighting and the GTX 770 Gaming. Both video cards require two 8-pin connectors unlike the reference design which only requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.  MSI's Lighting GTX 770 is the only card to boast a core boost clock over 1,200MHz. MSI's premium GTX 770 is the Lighting Edition card which sports a base clock of 1,150MHz and a boost clock of 1,202MHz sporting a price tag of $460. Meanwhile, the company's Gaming Edition GTX 770 features a core clock of 1,098MHz and a boost clock of 1150MHz and has a price of $410. MSI's Twin Frozr GTX 770 Gaming Edition video card comes in red and black. MSI also launched a new overclocking tool called MSI Gaming App as a result of many people not knowing how to overclock their GPUs. The company says the new overclocking software is extremely simple and has three predefined profiles called Gaming, Eco, and Default. The Gaming mode overclocks the card automatically while the Eco mode runs the card in silently by reducing the card's power consumption. The default mode runs the card at its normal clock speeds. Gigabyte's GTX 770 sports its intense Windforce cooler that comes with three fans for cooling. Gigabyte Gigabyte has released its newest GTX 770 the GV-N770OC-2GD which uses a beefy Windforce aftermarket cooler. According to Gigabyte, the cooler as much as 450 Watts. The card's core and boost clocks are overclocked to 1,137MHz and 1189MHz, respectively and retails for $410.  Asus has brought its' Direct CU II cooler to the GTX 770. Asus Asus's overclocked GTX770-DC2OC-2GD5 GTX 770 features its DirectCU II cooler along with custom VRM and enhanced power efficiency. According to Asus, the card consumes 30% less power and gennerates less noise compared to the reference design, while also offering 2.5 times the durability. The card is priced at $410 and is clocked at 1,050MHz core and 1,110MHz boost, respectively. Asus also came out with a new version of GPU Tweak which provides a real-time monitoring of your video card's temperatures, core clocks, and memory clocks. ASUS's GTX 770 is now supported by this overclocking tool as well. EVGA uses a ball bearing design for its ACX cooler which according to EVGA allows the card run quieter and cooler. EVGA EVGA dispatched ten GTX 770's following NVidia's GTX 770 release. Six of EVGA's 770 feature the company's new ACX cooler which supposedly runs cooler and quieter than a stock GTX 770 cooler. The ACX uses a ball-bearing design instead of a standard sleeved bearing which EVGA says gives the fans a lifespan of 12 years. The company has a couple cards currently on Newegg for sale which include its new ACX cooler and its reference cooler design. EVGA also has a stock-clocked card with its new ACX cooler which retails for $410. The overclocked version of the company's GTX 770 with the new ACX is $420 and features a core clock speed of 1,111MHZ core and 1,163MHz boost clock. EVGA also has a Superclocked GTX 770 with its stock blower cooler which retails for $420 and sports a core base clock of 1,085MHz and a boost clock of 1,137MHz. For the other EVGA GTX 770 cards you can check out its page here. EVGA also released a new version of its Precision X Software to support the launch of its new GTX 770s. Precision X offers overclocking tools as well as temperature, memory monitoring, and fan controls. All of the overclocked GTX 770s should provide decent improvement in performance and cooling over the reference design. Look out for the reviews of these cards in the coming months. Below are a couple of charts showing the differences and similarities between the new GTX 770 cards.

Origin PC Adds Silverstone's SG10 Chassis to SFF System Lineup Posted: 06 Jun 2013 11:07 AM PDT Small but spunky. Small form factor (SFF) systems are growing in popularity, especially as PC gamers look to venture out of their bedrooms and into the living room. Luckily for them, SFF cases are increasingly capable of housing high-end hardware, which is thanks in part to optimized designs but also power efficient hardware. We bring this up because boutique system builder Origin PC just dropped us a note to let us know it's now building systems inside Silverstone's box-like SG10 SFF chassis. "Designed as the ultimate SFF with full support of standard size components such as ATX power supplies, full tower CPU coolers and up to dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 690s in quad-SLI, the SG10 has the ability to play any PC game, including popular AAA titles like Crysis 3 and Metro: Last Light at a visually stunning 2560x1600 resolution with buttery smooth frame rates," Origin PC says. "Who says power can't be achieved with a small footprint? With the new SG10 you can now experience the performance of a full-size desktop, but at a fraction of the size." Therein lies the main selling point: being able to cram big and powerful components into a smaller box that won't dominate the living room, or any other room you decide to plop it in. At present, we don't see the SG10 option on Origin PC's website, which still lists the SG08 as a $208 upgrade option over the BitFenix Prodigy in its Chronos line. It should be available soon, however, with support for micro ATX Z87 and X79 motherboards, dual graphics cards, and other high-end goodies. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Uh Oh Microsoft, AMD Wants to See Other OSes (Android and Chrome) Posted: 06 Jun 2013 10:06 AM PDT AMD to bring chips to Google's OS party. Never has the future of Microsoft looked as uncertain as it does right now. Not only are PC sales down, but Windows 8 is such a drastic change over previous versions, it has OEMs and hardware makers looking at supporting alternative platforms. That includes AMD, which revealed at Computex that it's suddenly interested in developing hardware for Google's open source Android and Chrome OS platforms. Lest we overstate AMD's decision, it's not as though the chip designer is wiping its hand of the Windows ecosystem, or even just Windows 8. "We are very committed to Windows 8, we think it's a great operating system, but we also see a market for Android and Chrome developing as well," Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD, said in an interview at Computex, according to PCWorld. Do you think AMD would go this route if Windows 8 was the raging success Microsoft had hoped? Not a chance. The company previously stated it wasn't interested in serving Android, but with Windows 8 failing to win fans, especially among mobile users, the Sunnyvale chip designer is singing a different tune. This is a trend Microsoft needs to nip in the bud, to borrow one of Barney Fife's commonly used phrases. While there's no immediate threat to Microsoft's business model, AMD isn't the only one looking at other platforms. HP, for example, launched a Chromebook earlier this year, and according to Amazon, Samsung's Chromebook is its best selling laptop. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Microsoft Gives a First Look at Windows 8.1 Posted: 06 Jun 2013 09:34 AM PDT First public demo of Windows 8.1. Microsoft last week formally introduced the world to Windows 8.1, an upcoming update to Windows 8 that will bring back the Start button (yay!) but not the Start menu (boo!), along with a handful of other features. Following up that announcement, corporate vice president of Windows program management Antoine Leblond joined Windows CFO and CMO Tami Reller and a few other top Microsoft executives on stage at Computex do demo the upcoming free update. Don't worry if you couldn't attend, the software giant also released a YouTube video highlight the release. Of course, the big news yesterday was that Outlook 2013 RT would be hitching a ride to Windows RT tablets via the Windows 8.1 update, but if you're not interested in Windows RT, there's still plenty to digest in the Windows 8.1 update. For starters, the lock screen is transformed into a cloud-powered photo stream. Once you jump into Windows, you'll notice some new tile sizes, both big and small. If you swipe up, you'll see a list of all the apps you have installed, which you can sort by name, date installed, most used, or by category. Have a look at these and other changes: Windows 8.1 will be available later this summer. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, Seagate Barracuda 1TB, and More! Posted: 06 Jun 2013 09:12 AM PDT Top Deal: Feeling blue because gaming graphics are pushing you around? Push back with a new high-end videocard and show those pixels who's boss. Lucky for you, today's top deal is for a Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card for $191 with free shipping (normally $240 - use coupon code: [EMCXPXP25]; additional $15 mail-in-rebate). If the price isn't enough of an incentive, just check out the free games you get courtesy of AMD: Crysis 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, BioShock, and Tomb Raider! Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $75 - use coupon code: [EMCXPXP22]) Rosewill CHALLENGER-U3 Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case for $40 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCXPXP26]) Rosewill Green Series 630W 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply for $50 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCXPXP45]) Corsair Voyager Air 1TB USB 3.0 / Ethernet / WiFi External Hard Drive for $200 with free shipping (normally $220 - use coupon code: [EMCXPXP53])

AVADirect is First U.S. System Builder to Nab Clevo's P375SM Gaming Laptop Posted: 06 Jun 2013 08:59 AM PDT Hello again, Haswell. The braggadocios system builders at AVADirect are hooting and hollering about being the first vendor in the U.S. of A. to offer Clevo's P375SM gaming laptop, a powerhouse machine built around Intel's new HM87 chipset for Haswell. Pricing starts at just shy of two grand for the 17.3-inch notebook equipped with an Intel Core i7 4700MQ processor, though there are plenty of upgrade options at your disposable if you have too much cash in your pockets weighing you down. A baseline configuration comes with the above mentioned CPU along with 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory, AMD Radeon HD 8970M graphics, Seagate 750GB Momentus hard drive, DVD burner, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, Thunderbolt support, eSATA, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and a few other odds and ends typical of a laptop system. "Since the release of Clevo's P570WM, end-users have become accustomed to receiving desktop-grade performance in a mobile platform. A downside to a desktop replacement solution is mainly attributed to the power consumption and battery life," AVADirect explains. "AVADirect's Clevo P375SM Gaming Notebook is designed to not only alleviate the concerns of power consumption, but set an industry-wide standard for performance and comfort in a new mobile platform. The AVADirect P375SM Gaming Notebook is uniquely high-end for its exceptional capabilities and AVADirect is the first to unleash it within the U.S." Indeed, one of the upsides to Haswell is better power management, though if you intend to mostly play games on this thing, you'll want to make sure there's a wall socket nearby, especially if you go with a dual-graphics option such as two Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M GPUs in SLI. The Clevo P375SM laptop is available from AVADirect now. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

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