General Gaming Article

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• Lenovo's Yoga Tablet is Flexible So You Don't Have to Be
• Max PC No BS Podcast #212: GPU Wars, Broadwell delayed, and Battlefield 4
• Motorola and Phoneblocks Kick Off Modular Phone Movement with Project Ara
• HGST Zooms Past 100 Million Mobile Hard Drive Shipments
• AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 7 Driver Gives Battlefield 4 a Boost in CrossFire
• Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition, Antec Nine Hundred Case, and More!

Lenovo's Yoga Tablet is Flexible So You Don't Have to Be Posted: 29 Oct 2013 07:30 PM PDT Three modes, 18 hours of battery life Lenovo and Ashton Kutcher teamed up to unveil the OEM's first multimode Yoga Tablet during a livestream launch event this evening. Why Ashton Kutcher? Perhaps because he's played a variety of roles from portraying Steve Jobs to replacing Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men. If, then, you consider Kutcher a flexible actor, then it would make sense he be on hand to unveil the Yoga Tablet, which is also flexible. Otherwise, we have no idea. In any event, the Yoga Tablet features three different modes -- one for holding it like an e-book reader, a tilt orientation, and a stand mode for viewing movies. As Lenovo explains it, the Yoga Tablet adapts to the way you want to use it rather than the other way around. "Watching and discovering that people frequently use tablets in three main ways allowed us to break the mold on the current 'sea of sameness' designs, giving them a better way to read, browse, watch and interact with content," said Liu Jun, senior vice president and president, Lenovo Business Group, Lenovo. "As consumers' continue to demand innovative multimode designs we're thrilled to have Ashton Kutcher on board with us to help further develop the immersive and complementary hardware and rich content experience." It has a cylindrical handle you can grip when it's in hold mode, which makes it easier to wield one-handed than a traditional tablet, Lenovo says. To go into stand mode, you simply rotate the side cylinder 90 degrees. Users can change the viewing angle from 110 degrees to 135 degrees. Laying it down in tilt mode allows you to type directly on the tablet, play games, or surf the web with what Lenovo feels is a superior viewing angle. The Yoga Tablet will come in 10-inch and 8-inch SKUs, each with a 1280x800 resolution. Both also boast a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC storage, microSD card slot, dual front-facing speakers, microphone with noise reduction, micro USB, 3.5mm audio jack, micro SIM slot, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 5MP rear-facing camera, 1.6MP front-facing camera, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and either a 6,000 mAh (8-inch) or 9,000 mAh (10-inch) battery. Lenovo says the 8-inch version will be available starting October 30 for $249 exclusively at Best Buy; the 10-inch model will go for $299 at major retailers and directly from Lenovo online. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Max PC No BS Podcast #212: GPU Wars, Broadwell delayed, and Battlefield 4 Posted: 29 Oct 2013 02:20 PM PDT AMD and Nvidia go to war, Intel's Broadwell chipset gets delayed, Battlefield 4, and more! The Maximum PC Staff returns for episode #212 of the No BS Podcast! This time around we discuss the AMD Radeon R9 290X as well as the increasingly potent GPU war between AMD and Nvidia. We also chat about Intel delaying its 14 nanometer Broadwell chipset, Battlefield 4, and the results of some performance testing we did with the game in the lab. Finally, we wrap things up by answering some reader questions and delivering our editor picks before topping it off with Gordons' rant.    Editor's Picks Tom McNamara: Batman Arkham City Game of the Year Edition Gordon Ung: Google Nexus 7 2013 32 GB Josh Norem: Sanyo Eneloop rechargable batteries Can't get enough Maximum PC? Check us out on the following sites: Subscribe on iTunes Fan us on Facebook Tweet us on Twitter Subscribe to us on Youtube Check out our Windows 8 app in Microsoft's app store Subscribe to our RSS feed If you have any feedback or questions feel free to: Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or Leave us a voicemail at 877-404-1337 x1337 Subscribe to Maximum PC in Print or on Google Play, itunes, Kindle, Nook and Zinio. Thanks for listening!

Motorola and Phoneblocks Kick Off Modular Phone Movement with Project Ara Posted: 29 Oct 2013 10:36 AM PDT Upgradeable smartphones might become a reality Today's smartphones are essentially mini PCs that fit in the palm of your hand. The processing power and GPU capabilities of these devices, combined with the internal storage (and cloud storage) are nothing short of impressive when you stop and think about how compact these devices are. What really separates a smartphone from a PC, however, is that they're not upgradeable. Not yet, anyway. Motorola has plans to change that. Motorola this week unveiled Project Ara, a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. The Google-owned company says it wants to do for hardware what Android has done for software -- create a third-party developer ecosystem and lower the barriers to entry. A device inspired by Project Era would consist of an endoskeleton (the frame, if you will) and several modules. A module could be a processor, display, keyboard, extra battery, camera, or anything else. The idea is that you'd be able to swap out these modules for newer, faster ones as they come out, similar to popping in a new CPU in your desktop system. Motorola's already been hard at work on Project Ara for over a year. More recently, the company was introduced to Dave Hakkens, creator of Phonebloks, and going forward they'll collaborate on a phone platform that is modular, open, and customizable. We can't wait. In the meantime, check out the concept in more detail in this Phonebloks video: Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

HGST Zooms Past 100 Million Mobile Hard Drive Shipments Posted: 29 Oct 2013 09:47 AM PDT Demand for ultra-thin hard drives is growing We keep waiting for the day when solid state drives (SSDs) supplant mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), and even though prices for NAND flash memory storage has dropped significantly in the past year or so, HDDS still offer more storage space for the dollar. Combined with notebook makers offering lower cost models, the demand for HDDs just keeps growing, and that's just fine by HGST. Western Digital's subsidiary announced it has now shipped more than 100 million Travelstar Z Series 2.5-inch hard drives measuring 7mm thick. HGST is an active player in the thin HDD space, having also launched its new 2.5-inch 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, supposedly the industry's fastest 7mm 5400 RPM HDD with "best-in-class shock robustness," a critical characteristic for Ultrabooks and other thin laptops. "The 7.0 mm 2.5-inch mobile market continues to be a strategic space for HGST as evidenced by our record 100M shipments," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "With the addition of our new 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, HGST continues to offer the market's broadest 5400 and 7200 RPM 7.0 mm 2.5-inch hard drive portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile computing and storage segment." HGST points to an IHS iSuppli report in which the market research firm predicts the demand for thin HDDs will reach 133 million units by 2017. Meanwhile, the demand for thick 9.5mm drives is starting to wane and is forecasted to dip to 79 million in 2017. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 7 Driver Gives Battlefield 4 a Boost in CrossFire Posted: 29 Oct 2013 08:30 AM PDT This is the driver you want for Battlefield 4 We know that installing beta software can be scary. You never know what kinds of bugs might pop up or if stability will be an issue. At the same time, if you're wielding dual AMD graphics cards in a CrossFire configuration and play Battlefield 4, it's probably worth taking the risk on AMD's Catalyst 13.11 beta driver for Windows. This is the 7th beta release for this driver family, so any early bugs should have already been rooted out. The sole benefit of installing Catalyst 13.11 beta 7 versus beta 6 is that it increases CrossFire scaling up to an additional 20 percent for BF4. That's a significant bump, and it's yours for the taking if you don't mind chancing beta software. This latest release also incorporates all the performance boosts from previous beta releases, including: Batman: Arkham Origins - improves performance up to 35 percent with MSAA 8x enabled Total War: Rome 2 - improves performance up to 10 percent Battlefield 3 - improves performance up to 10 percent GRID 2 - improves performance up to 8.5 percent DiRT Showdown - improves performance up to 10 percent Formula 1 2013 - improves performance up to 8 percent DiRT 3 - improves performance up to 7 percent Sleeping Dogs - improves performance up to 5 percent​ In addition, these beta releases add support for AMD's recently announced Radeon R9 290 and 290X graphics cards, add automatic AMD Eyefinity configuration, and automatic plug-and-play configuration of supported Ultra HD/4K tiled displays. More info can be found in the Release Notes, along with links to download the driver to both desktop and mobile systems. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition, Antec Nine Hundred Case, and More! Posted: 29 Oct 2013 07:34 AM PDT Top Deal: New consoles are coming out next month, but if you're a PC gamer, you have it pretty good these days. There are lots of good titles available along with several that are coming soon (Assassin's Creed IV, anyone?). Best of all, you don't need to spend a fortune on gaming hardware. Case in point is today's top deal featuring an Asus Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition (HD7770-2GD5) Graphics Card for $115 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code EMCWXVR42; additional $15 mail-in-rebate). Asus says the its custom cooler lets you enjoy 11 percent greater air flow and a 14 percent quieter gaming environment. Be sure to add AMD's "Radeon Bronze Reward" for one free game to your cart, as well! Other Deals: Crucial Ballistix 8GB (2x4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $70 with free shipping (normally $80 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVR38]) Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 3.0 Black External Hard Drive for $70 with free shipping (normally $80 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVR63]) Asus VE278H Black 27-inch 2ms LED Backlight LCD Monitor w/ Built-in Speakers for $230 with free shipping (normally $250 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVR235]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case for $115 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVR53]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

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