General Gaming Article

---

• Column: My Experience as a Zombie at Comic Con 2013
• Canon Launches Pair of Sub-$100 Pixma Photo and All-in-One Printers
• Samsung Doubles the GPU Performance in Updated Exynos 5 Octa Processor
• Apple Overhauling Developer Website in Wake of Security Breach
• Seagate Unveils Enterprise Turbo Solid State Hybrid Drive
• Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AM3+ Motherboard, Intel Core i5 4670, and More!

Column: My Experience as a Zombie at Comic Con 2013 Posted: 23 Jul 2013 03:43 PM PDT Maximum PC Editor Jimmy Thang talks about his experience walking the show floor as a zombie I've been to many costume-friendly conventions like FanimeCon and Pax Prime, but have never cosplayed before. I don't have anything against dressing up, but I simply never felt compelled to do it. I was always the guy on the other end of the camera…until this past weekend. Because our Comic Con booth was sponsored by Hyundai and the Walking Dead, we were fortunate enough to have a "zombification booth" where makeup artists would turn ordinary civilians into the undead. Considering the makeover was free and professionally done, I figured I would give it a go on the last day of the convention. …The results were far more shocking than I could have ever expected.  Zombie Jimmy The amazing Liza Macawili Ramos was my makeup artist and spent time making me look as ugly and scary as possible – which was about 30 minutes... As I sat in the makeup chair in front of our booth on the convention show floor, people would walk by and drop their jaws during the transformation process. Visitors began taking pictures of me as Liza began applying all manner of plaster and blood to my rotting face. Considering there were no mirrors, I had no idea how it was shaping up. I would ask onlookers, "Is it looking good?" And people would just stare at me with eyes wide open and nod their heads.  With the makeup process completed, Liza took a picture of me with her phone (the image seen above) and showed it to me. "Holy hell," I thought to myself. "This is amazing!" I quickly ran to the restroom to get a look at it in the mirror and couldn't believe my eyes. It blew away my expectations.  Zombie selfie: Look at the gashes on my face and neck. No, LOOK AT THEM. Now I knew it was time to roam the show floor.  Let the fun begin! Everywhere I walked, people were either telling me there was something wrong with my face or asking for pictures (To see some of these pictures, scroll to the gallery at the bottom of the page). Those that didn't want to take a picture with me would jeer, "Whoa…that's one messed up face." I used my newfound hideousness to harmlessly scare women and children. It was a blast! It wasn't all fun and games, however, as I still had some articles to finish and ultimately a plane to catch later that day. As I finished writing my stories on my laptop with zombie makeup still intact, I headed to the convention center's restroom to wash my face (I didn't want to get patted down by airport security because of my looks). However, as I headed off to the bathroom, a young bright-eyed kid approached me and said in the cutest voice ever, "He mister! Your face looks awesome!" I thanked the kid and said to myself, "You know what? I'm just going to wash off my face when I get back to the hotel!" This, as it turns out, may not have been the greatest idea… Walt and Jessie from Breaking Bad tell me that I'm infected. My original plan was to get to the airport at least an hour early to catch my flight, but I totally underestimated how long it would take to get out of the crowded convention center. A process that I thought would take 15 minutes ended up taking over an hour (it was super crowded!). This meant that I would have to rush to the airport and forego washing my face. As I got back to my hotel, I quickly grabbed my bags and boarded the shuttle to the airport. People on the shuttle exclaimed, "I don't think security is going to let you on the plane looking like that." I started to panic, thinking that I would miss my flight. The shuttle arrived at the airport just 20 minutes before my plane was supposed to take off. I printed out my boarding pass and waited anxiously in the baggage-check line. People started taking pictures of me and I nervously laughed for them. I started to think about how all the other flights back into San Francisco would be booked because of Comic Con and that I would be stranded in San Diego. At that moment, I was the most worried-looking zombie in the world. As I made my way through to the security line, I knew that I had to remove the zombie makeup lest I run the risk of getting pat down and missing my flight. I quickly ran to the airport bathroom and shimmied my way to the sink. Considering I was wearing tons of make-up, the plan was to turn the faucet on full blast and wash it all away, but it was the worst.sink.ever. The sinks were sensor-activated and would sprinkle for three seconds before shutting off. To make matters worse, the sinks all had horrible sensors! So there I was trying to scrub off a bucket load of paint and plaster off my face with the equivalent of a little kid's water pistol. It also didn't help that the ink was dang near permanent and the sticky plaster was in love with my face. In the end, I scrubbed it all off to the best of my ability and ended up boarding the plane just as it was about to take off. It was certainly a dramatic affair, but one that was all worth it in the end.  Jimmy Thang is Maximum PC's Online Managing Editor and often hears his face looks scary (with or without zombie makeup).

Canon Launches Pair of Sub-$100 Pixma Photo and All-in-One Printers Posted: 23 Jul 2013 11:12 AM PDT Printing made affordable Canon on Tuesday added a couple of new members to its Pixma printer family, namely the MG3520 Wireless Photo and the MG2420 All-in-One (AIO). Both are billed as being "easy-to-use models" and targeted at users in need of "superb quality and functionality at an affordable price." While we can't speak of the quality without having any samples on hand to play with, we do like that they're both priced less than a C-note. The Pixma MG2420 sports a compact body and prints at a clip of 8 pages per minute in black-and-white and 4 pages per minute in color. It has a built-in 600x1200 dpi scanner, 4 color cartridge system, and "improved print, copy, and scan features" compared to previous models. Canon's Pizma MG3520 cuts the cord and goes wireless. It features built-in automatic duplex printing, a FastFront feature for easy changing of ink and paper from the front the printer, and the ability to print or scan documents, photos, and other items from virtually anywhere in the home. The MG3520 is available in black, red, or a mirror-finished white for $80, and the MG2420 AIO in white for $70. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Samsung Doubles the GPU Performance in Updated Exynos 5 Octa Processor Posted: 23 Jul 2013 09:45 AM PDT It's a GPU thing Now that we have reasonably fast dual-core and quad-core processors powering our mobile devices, attention is starting to shift to the GPU to drive gaming and advanced graphics technology. Enter Samsung's Exynos 5420, the newest addition to the company's Exynos 5 Octa family of eight-core processors, though that bit needs a little bit of explaining before we dive into the GPU side. Though Samsung markets the Exynos 5 Octa family as being eight-core processors, they're broken up into two quad-core segments using ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. In this particular case, what you have are four ARM Cortex A15 cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.3GHz. You never have access to all four cores at once, and instead tap into the faster A15 cores during heavy workloads, and the slower A7 cores for less intensive tasks. It's a battery saving measure that gives you a boost in performance when you need it. That said, the real story here is the six-core ARM Mali T628 GPU processor. According to Samsung, this is the GPU's first appearance, the upside being that it boasts 3D graphic processing capabilities over two times that of the previous generation Exynos 5 Octa processor. "Demand for richer graphic experiences is growing rapidly nowadays," said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics. "In order to meet that demand from both OEMs and end users, we developed this processor which enables superb graphical performance without compromising power consumption." Outside of raw graphics performance, the Exynos 5420 boasts memory bandwidth of 14.9GB/s paired with a dual-channel LPDDR3 at 933MHz, delivering support for Full HD Wi-Fi displays. The new chip is currently sampling to customers and will go into mass production in August. With any luck, we could see new mobile devices built around the Exynos 5420 by the end of the year. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Apple Overhauling Developer Website in Wake of Security Breach Posted: 23 Jul 2013 09:04 AM PDT Security researcher steps forward Apple recently pulled the plug on its developer portal after an "intruder attempted to secure personal information" from the site, the Cupertino company indicated in an email and in a message on its website. The company went on to say that while sensitive information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, it couldn't rule out the possibility that some developers' names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed, and indeed they were. Ibrahim Balic, a security researcher based in London, claimed responsibility for the breach, saying it was done in the name of research and not with any malicious intent. "This is definitely not a hack attack, I have reported all the bugs," Balic posted to his Twitter account. In another tweet, he reiterated that his actions were not intended to be a hack attack, adding "I am not a hacker, I do security research." Be that as it may, Balic got the attention of the Apple, which has now been in contact with him about the security vulnerabilities he discovered. In addition, Apple said it's overhauling its developer portal to prevent something like this from happening again. "We're completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database," Apple said in an email. "We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon." You can now access the main page of Apple's developer site, though the members area is still offline. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Seagate Unveils Enterprise Turbo Solid State Hybrid Drive Posted: 23 Jul 2013 08:30 AM PDT World's fastest enterprise hard drive Seagate on Tuesday said it has begun shipping what it claims to be the world's speediest enterprise-class hard drive, the Seagate Enterprise Turbo SSHD. In addition to being the fastest enterprise HDD around, supposedly it's also the first enterprise-class solid state hybrid drive (SSHD), which combines the low cost and high capacity of traditional HDD storage with the speed and performance of solid state flash. According to Seagate, its Enterprise Turbo SSHD offers up to a 3X increase in random performance over today's 15,000 RPM drives. It does this by using specialized algorithms to jettison frequently accessed data to the solid state portion of the drive for quick access. "Typically the most demanding mission critical applications for 15,000 RPM drives have improved performance by compromising on capacity and cost per GB," said Rocky Pimentel, Seagate executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. "With the Enterprise Turbo SSHD, we deliver a no compromise drive that provides high-speed performance while enabling customers to leverage all of Turbo's capacity. The result, a combination of performance and capacity that we believe represents a new paradigm shift for mission critical, enterprise storage— a real game changer in storage solutions now and for generations to come." Is it reliable? Seagate says it's been working with major OEMs to put the drive through its paces, and after months of testing and partner labs, the drive has been shown to improve overall system performance for servers running mission critical applications without issue. The new drive is offered in capacities up to 600GB. No word yet on price or availability. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AM3+ Motherboard, Intel Core i5 4670, and More! Posted: 23 Jul 2013 05:59 AM PDT Top Deal: You might not know it from all the Haswell hype, but Intel isn't the only chipmaker that caters to enthusiasts. Today's top deal happens to come from the other camp and is for an AMD Sabertooth 990FX $2.0 AM3+ motherboard for $162 with free shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code COMPNTSAL26). This is a high-end board with overclocking-friendly components and quad-GPU support. Other Deals: Corsair CX430M 430W 80 Plus Bronze Certified Modular Power Supply for $43 with free shipping (normally $50 - use coupon code: [EMCXNWL32]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Intel Core i5-4670 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 Quad-Core Desktop Processor for $210 with free shipping (normally $220 - use coupon code: [COMPNTSAL23]) Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $65 with free shipping (normally $75 - use coupon code: [COMPNTSAL32]) HGST 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive for $50 with free shipping (normally $60 - use coupon code: [COMPNTSAL26])

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
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610