| Google Stock Tops $1,000 Mark for First Time Posted: 18 Oct 2013 09:23 AM PDT  How high can it go?
Google this week announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2013, and investors reacted in positive fashion to the news, sending the company's stock to an all-time high. The Mountain View company reported consolidated revenues of $14.89 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. That translated into a quarterly profit of nearly $3 billion, up an impressive 36.5 percent. "Google had another strong quarter with $14.9 billion in revenue and great product progress," said Larry Page, CEO of Google. "We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple, and intuitive experience regardless of your device." Google said the number of paid clicks rose 26 percent year-over-year, and 8 percent sequentially. However, the cost-per-click decreased 8 percent annually and 4 percent sequentially. That didn't seem to phase investors who collectively flocked to Google's stock, sending shares of the company up to an all-time high of $1,007.40. At present, Google's stock is trading at around $1,000 per share, valuing the company at over $334 billion. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti Announced Posted: 18 Oct 2013 09:19 AM PDT Nvidia announces new flagship graphics card at Montreal editor's event Nvidia has announced the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. The announcment was made at the end of Nvidia's The Way It's Meant to be Played editor's event in Montreal, Canada. Nvidia was very secretive about the announcement not revealing much other than the fact that it will release in mid-November. When we asked the green team how it stacks up in performance against the Titan and 780 GPUs before it, Nvidia simply said it isn't revealing any other details at this moment. We should be getting a review unit in soon, but until then check out the image of what the GeForce 780 Ti looks like below. 
As you can see, the 780 Ti uses a very similar PCB to the Titan and 780 before it. It will be interesting to see how the card performs. Nvidia Ti nomenclature hints that this GPU will perform somewhere between a 780 and Titan, but we won't know for sure until we benchmark it. This announcement makes the GPU wars much more heated as it wasn't long ago when AMD announced its new flagship R9 290 and 290X video cards. According to AMD, its new top tier 290X GPU outpeforms a GeForce 780 in 4K resolution running BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider. As always, you can count on us to put all of these new cards through our extensive benchmarks to determine the new pecking order of GPUs! What do you think of Nvidia's announcement? Let us know in the comments below! |
| Nvidia Posts Details on GeForce GTX 760 Ti Graphics Cards for OEMs Posted: 18 Oct 2013 08:54 AM PDT  Meet the rebranded GeForce GTX 670
If you poke around Nvidia's website, you may notice a new addition to its GeForce graphics card section for desktops. It's the GeForce GTX 760 Ti, a new part that's intended for OEM partners. Product images and full system specs are posted on Nvidia's website, and at a glance, this appears to be a rebranded GeForce GTX 670 graphics card. Let's have a look at what makes this thing tick. The GeForce GTX 760 Ti has 1344 CUDA cores, a base clockspeed of 915MHz, boost clockspeed of 980MHz, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6GHz on a 256-bit bus resulting in 192.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. It looks identical to the GeForce GTX 670 and features the same specs we just outlined. Both cards measure 9.5 inches (L) by 4.376 inches (H), have dual-slot coolers, and require two 6-pin power connectors. No pricing information has been announced for the GeForce GTX 760 Ti, and probably never will be since it's intended for OEMs only. However, it fits somewhere in between a GeForce GTX 760 ($249) and a GeForce GTX 770 ($399). As a point of reference in terms of performance, we awarded the Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP a perfect 10/10 with a KickAss rewarded when we reviewed it last year, as well as MSI's GeForce GTX 670 Power Edition. In other words, it's not a shabby card to rebrand for bulk OEMs to play with. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| SteelSeries Now Accepting Pre-Orders for Dota 2 and 9H Headsets Posted: 18 Oct 2013 07:40 AM PDT  Two headsets up for grabs
SteelSeries has begun taking pre-orders for two new pairs of audio gear, including its 9H headset and Dota 2 headset. Starting with the former, the 9H headset is "tournament grade" with a rugged industrial design that's lightweight, has custom enhanced sound, and three types of Dolby technology baked in, including Dolby Digital, Dolby Headphone, and Dolby Prologic IIx. It features a double enclosure design that's supposed to isolate outside noise. The headset also has in-line audio controls for volume control and muting microphone, a retractable mic, and extra padding on the earcups for comfort. Specs are as follows: - Frequency Response: 10 - 28,000 Hz
- Impedance: 32 Ohm
- Sound Pressure Level (SPL) @1kHz, 1Vrms:-110 dB
As for the Dota 2 headset, the themed headset is based on the Siberia V2 design. It features "Dota Red" illumination with half a dozen different modes, a USB sound card providing virtual 5.1 surround sound, and a retractable mic. Gamers who purchase the Dota 2 headset will receive the Scythe of Vyse, an exclusive in-game item for Nature's Prophet. Specs on this one include: - Frequency Response: 18 - 28,000 Hz
- Impedance: 40 Ohm
The Dota 2 headset is available for $120 and the 9H headset for $160. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| AMD Back in Black After Inking Lucrative Console Gaming Contracts Posted: 18 Oct 2013 06:52 AM PDT  Finally, a profitable quarter
Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 consoles feature AMD hardware inside, and it's primarily because of those deals that the Sunnyvale chip designer was able to return to profitability this past quarter. AMD said it made a profit of $48 million on revenue of $1.46 billion in the third quarter of 2013, compared to a $74 million loss in the previous quarter and a whopping $157 million loss in the same quarter one year ago. "AMD returned to profitability and generated free cash flow in the third quarter as we continued to successfully execute the strategic transformation plan we outlined a year ago," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "We achieved 26 percent sequential revenue growth driven by our semi-custom business and remain committed to generating approximately 50 percent of revenue from high-growth markets over the next two years. Developing industry-leading technology remains at our core, and we are in the middle of a multi-year journey to redefine AMD as a leader across a more diverse set of growth markets." It's good news for AMD that it managed to turn a profit again, but also concerning in how that money was made. AMD's CPU business actually declined 6 percent sequentially and was down 15 percent year-over-year. AMD blamed the declines on decreased notebook and chipset unit shipments. AMD's profit came from serving consoles. The company's Graphics and Visual Solutions (GVS) business, which includes semi-custom products like the chips found in the Xbox One and PS4, jumped up 110 percent sequentially and 96 percent year-over-year. While a little concerning, this isn't necessarily a bad thing for AMD if can continue to serve this market without hiccups. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Seagate 2TB Desktop Solid State Hybrid Drive, Corsair 750W PSU, and More! Posted: 18 Oct 2013 06:13 AM PDT |
| Nvidia The Way It's Meant to be Played 2013 (Day One) Posted: 17 Oct 2013 09:11 PM PDT  Nvidia discusses next-generation graphics, new development software SDKs, and games at its Montreal event
We had the chance to check out Nvidia's The Way It's Meant to be Played 2013 event in Montreal, Canada. The two-day editor's event officially kicked off today and centered around the company's new promising game development tools which the green team asserts will usher in truly next-generation graphics. New graphical features like "Flame Works" and "FLEX" were announced along with improvements to existing tools like PhysX and more. Today covered more of the software and game side of development, but Nvidia assures us that day two of the event will focus more on graphics technology. Hopefully we'll hear some new hardware announcements! (A tech geek can only hope!) Until then, you can check out all of today's slides below and let us know what you think of Nvidia's offerings so far in the comments below! |
