General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

BlizzCon 2013 Cosplay Pictures

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 03:33 PM PST

kerriganPictures of the best cosplayers from BlizzCon 2013

Did you miss BlizzCon's exciting cosplay action this past weekend? Don't worry, we've got you covered. We scanned the convention floor in Anaheim in search of the coolest costumes and took plenty of pictures for your perusal.

In the gallery below you'll see some of the best cosplayers dawning outfits from Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft franchises. Make sure to let us know what your favorite costume is in the comments below!

*Make sure to click on each image for the full-size photo.

Toshiba Kirabook Review

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 02:57 PM PST

Kirabook review: The luxury lover's laptop

While much of the PC industry is hustling to bring lower-cost Ultrabooks to market, Toshiba is unabashedly raising the high end, complete with an all-new brand meant to ooze excellence. The first product to wear this proud badge is the 13.3-inch Kirabook. With its upmarket looks, über-high-res screen, and serious-for-its-size parts, this high-priced newcomer is gunning for no less than Apple's Retina display–boasting MacBook Pro.

The Kirabook's Harmon Kardon speakers pack a nice punch for such a portable device.

The Kirabook's Harmon Kardon speakers pack a nice punch for such a portable device.

Aesthetics are obviously central to the equation, and the Kirabook's got them, exuding elegance in everything from the subtly wedged profile that measures just 0.7 inches at its thickest, to the rounded rear corners of the chassis, to the brushed-metal finish, to the matte-black keyboard with backlighting. It's all packaged in a magnesium-alloy body that's both thinner and lighter than its MacBook Pro equivalent, but still feels sufficiently sturdy while being sure to draw approving looks.

One of the Kirabook's most visually distinct features, however, isn't evident until you power on and its 2560x1440 screen comes to life. That's the highest-res panel of any Windows-based ultraportable and just 160 pixels shy of the vaunted Retina display in the 13-inch MBP. At 221 pixels per inch (the MBP has 227ppi), the Kirabook's panel, which sits behind protective Corning Concore glass, looks lovely, with nice color and impressive detail. Besides being a boon to HD videos and pictures, the increased resolution gives multitaskers a welcome boost in real estate. Just be warned that when using the notebook's 10-point touchscreen (something the MBP doesn't have, incidentally), it can be tricky to accurately tap a given box, word, or menu item when working in the less touch-friendly desktop environment—a frustration we've encountered on even 1920x1080-res notebook touchscreens. Fortunately, the Kirabook's touchpad is capable. It's not quite as smooth as the MBP's touchpad (sadly, few Utlrabook touchpads are), and we did have to tweak the sensitivity some to keep the cursor from jumping randomly, but we were able to do real work on the Kirabook without resorting to a mouse.

The Kirabook sports a full-size HDMI-out port, and thankfully it's version 1.3, so it supports 2560x1600 resolution. The Kirabook lacks an Ethernet port, but has three USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot. It does not support 802.11ac.

Component-side, the Kirabook packs some decent horsepower for its size, most notably a 2GHz Core i7-3537U, 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, and a 256GB SSD that hit near-500Gb/s sequential-read and -write speeds in CrystalDiskMark. The only benchmark where the Kirabook stumbled was in our Adobe CS3 tests, but that has less to do with the notebook's hardware than it does with the age of the benchmark, and likely incompatibilities with the full versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements that come bundled with the Kirabook.

Those programs plus two years of Norton Anti-Theft Security and a two-year warranty that includes 24/7 technical support contribute to the Kirabook's high asking price of two grand.

If you're into those extras and having the highest-res screen on an Ultrabook, the Kirabook's your ticket to living large.

$2,000, www.toshiba.com

SteelSeries Announces H Wireless Headset for Platform Agnostic Gamers

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 01:15 PM PST

SteelSeries H Wireless HeadsetA wireless headset that works with virtually any device

You may own a gaming PC, Xbox 360 console, tablet, and other devices, all of which pipe out audio. Buying a dedicated headset for each one can be both unwieldy and expensive. To get around that, SteelSeries today introduced its multi-platform H Wireless Headset with support for PC, Mac, game consoles, and a range of other devices via an array of inputs and outputs  including mini USB, optical in/out (S/PDIF), analog input (3.5mm, 3-pole), and chat output (3.5mm, 3-pole).

"SteelSeries headsets deliver three important things to gamers: great sound, incredible comfort and technology that makes it easy and convenient to use," said Bruce Hawver, SteelSeries CEO. "We have always prided ourselves on delivering exceptional audio for gaming. The H Wireless headset does that and takes it to the next level, bringing a world-class audio experience to every aspect of our users' gaming and entertainment lives."

It's an all-black headset with contrasting glossy and matte finishes. It ships with a pair of 20-hour lithium-ion batteries, so when one runs out of juice, you can swap it out and keep jamming while you recharge the lethargic battery.

SteelSeries promises lag-free performance through a fixed-latency, frequency-hopping system that is continuous and automatically searches between available wireless frequencies. Other features include Dolby Digital, Dolby Headphone, and Dolby Pro Logic IIx technologies.

SteelSeries is taking pre-orders now for its H Wireless Headset ($300). Shipments are scheduled to take place within the next 15 days.

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Humble Store Feeds Your Appetite for Discounted Games Around the Clock

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 11:37 AM PST

Humble StoreScore great deals and good will whenever the urge strikes

Here's a dose of awesome to start off your work week. The good hearted folks behind the popular Humble Bundle launched the Humble Store today. What is the Humble Store, you ask? It's a virtual market with new, fixed-priced titles arriving each day. Similar to the Humble Bundles you may have participated in, part of the proceeds goes to charity -- in this case, ten percent to select charities including the American Red Cross, Child's Play, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

You don't get to name your own price like you do during the two-week Humble Bundle events, but it will have more games to choose from with a catalog that gets updated daily. The debut sales feature the following games at the following sale prices:

  • Don't Starve: $7.49
  • Prison Architect Alpha: $14.99
  • Orcs Must Die! 2 - Complete: $6.25
  • Gunpoint: $4.99
  • Rogue Legacy: $7.49
  • The Swapper: $4.99
  • Natural Selection 2: $6.25
  • Euro Truck Simulator 2: $6.25
  • Chivalry Medieval Warfare: $6.25

"I am extremely excited by the Humble Store because I think it expands Humble Bundle's ability to be useful to game developers and gamers while supporting great causes," said John Graham, Co-Founder and COO of Humble Bundle.

The Humble Store is now open.

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Samsung Accounts for Nearly Two Thirds of Mobile Android Devices

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 10:20 AM PST

Samsung Galaxy S IIIOnly scraps for the competition

When it comes to Android, mobile users are mostly living in Samsung's galaxy, with relatively few venturing off with other device makers. Based on the latest data from Localytics, Samsung has a 63 percent share of all Android mobile devices, leaving the competition to fight for the remaining 37 percent. Samsung's closest competitor in the Android space is HTC, which lays claim to just 6.5 percent of the market.

After HTC, it's LG with 5.9 percent, Sony with 5.6 percent, and Motorola with 5 percent. All the rest collectively account for the remaining 13.5 percent. At this rate, it won't be long until Samsung controls the aggregate of all other manufacturers by a ratio of 2-to-1.

On a model by model basis, Samung accounts for 8 out of the 10 most popular Android devices. Seven of them include:

  • Galaxy S III: 15.1 percent
  • Galaxy S IV: 7.4 percent
  • Galaxy S II: 5.2 percent
  • Galaxy Note II: 4.8 percent
  • Galaxy S III Mini: 1.5 percent
  • Galaxy Note: 1.4 percent
  • Galaxy Ace: 1.3 percent

After those devices, the most popular are the HTC One (1.3 percent), Droid Razr (1.1 percent), and Samsung's Galaxy Y (1.1 percent). It's pretty interesting to see the HTC One so far down the list.

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Valve Taking Beta Registrations for Steam In-Home Streaming Service

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 09:15 AM PST

SteamBeta participants will be randomly selected

Valve has been quite the busy developer as of late. Following the recent unveiling of its Steam Machine, Steam OS, and Steam Controller, Valve has now opened up beta registrations for Steam's upcoming In-Home Streaming service. For your chance to participate, you need to head over to the service's group on the Steam Community website and click the Join Group button.

The service will in all likelihood be compatible with Steam Machines running Steam OS. What it entails is allowing people to stream games from one PC to another anywhere in their home. So, if you have a Steam Machine or home theater PC hooked up to your big screen TV in the living room, you could stream games from your primary gaming PC upstairs in the game room.

"This feature will be available for beta testing later this year," Valve said. "Beta participants will be randomly selected from members of this group, so join, have fun, and stay tuned for more details!"

The group is currently comprised of over 18,000 members. It's not clear how many beta testers Valve will look to recruit.

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Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 780 Ti Overclocked Edition Sports Tri-Fan Cooling Solution

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 08:28 AM PST

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti Overclocked EditionThree fan design boasts 14 percent better cooling performance

NVIDIA swiped the fastest single-GPU crown from AMD with the launch of its GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics card (tough to argue with the benchmarks), but why stop there? Gigabyte decided to kick things up a notch with its GeForce GTX 780 Ti Overclocked Edition, an OC'd version of NVIDIA's reference speed demon outfitted with a Windforce 3X cooling solution consisting of "Triangle Cool" technology.

Cutting through Gigabyte's fancy marketing buzzwords, the dual-slot cooler on the company's OC'd card features three ultra quiet PWM fans supplemented with two 8mm and four 6mm copper heat pipes. RAM heatsinks round out the cooling package, and according to Gigabyte, it all adds up to 14 percent better cooling performance compared to reference.

Unfortunately, that's where most of the details stop. Gigabyte's press release doesn't contain any technical data, nor does a product page yet exist for the card. We did a little digging and found the card on Amazon for $725 (currently out of stock), but outside of mentioning some high-end components, there's no indication of clockspeed.

For reference, a stock clocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti has a core clockspeed of 875MHz, boost clockspeed of 928MHz, and 3GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7000MHz (effective). Gigabyte's cooling solution alone might be worth the $25 premium this card carries, but it sure would be nice to know how far it's overclocked from the factory.

We've reached out to Gigabyte for clarification and will update this article when we know more.

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Newegg SeasSonic Platinum 860W PSU, Thermaltake Armor Reveo Case, and More!

Posted: 11 Nov 2013 06:32 AM PST

SeaSonic Platinum PSUnewegg logo

Top Deal:

With all the good deals that have been handed down over the last several weeks and months, hopefully it's allowed you to score some sweet upgrades, or maybe even build a whole new system. Now all that's left is to feed those parts reliable power. Today's top deal will certainly do that without decimating your bank account. It's for a SeaSonic Platinum SS-860Xp2 860W Modular Power Supply for $150 with free shipping (normally $190 - use coupon code 1105GAMES17; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). That's a nice discount for an 80 Plus Platinum certified PSU from a name-brand vendor

Other Deals:

Asus Z87-Pro (V Edition) LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard for $170 with free shipping (normally $180; - use coupon code: [1105GAMES33];additional $10 Mail-in rebate)

PowerColor AX7750 1GBD5-DH Radeon HD 7750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card for $90 with free shipping (normally $100; additional $30 Mail-in rebate)

Thermaltake Armor Reveo Mid Tower Computer Case for $90 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [1105GAMES14]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Samsung S20B350H HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $110 with free shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code: [EMCWWXR52])
Posted by Shri Krishna

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