General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

PC Gaming: The Cause of My Joy

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 02:56 PM PST

Examining the uniqueness of PC gaming

The strengths of computer gaming are found at the extremes. It does two things very well: It enables hardcore users to get the best possible performance out of high-end games, and it allows small developers to deliver individualistic and quirky projects direct to users.

Both of these qualities are important, but the future of PC gaming as a unique platform is found in the latter rather than the former.

slender

Slender may not be the greatest game ever, but it's a true PC experience, nonetheless.

"Unique platform" is the operative phrase there. The console tail is wagging the design dog, and as even consoles gets battered by mobile gaming and the economy, we can expect further shifts.

People played PC games because they weren't console games. They were different, mature, sophisticated, fresh. You cannot measure the level of my indifference to the idea of yet another Call of Duty game, but show me a rough freebie like Slender and I get excited.

Is Slender any good? By most traditional standards, probably not, but it works because it does what it sets out to do. A slight game element provides some drive, but it's really just a mood piece. Its goal is to create mounting tension and then scare the hell out of you. And it does that in spades. It's uneven and flawed and brilliant at what it does, like the best kind of indie horror movie.

Gone Home is a uniquely PC game.

PC gaming is overflowing with this kind of small greatness. Monster Loves You is a charming interactive story-cum-adventure game that is unlike anything I've seen. Reus performs a dandy mashup of side-scroller, puzzler, and god game. And can you imagine the design-by-committee process of a big publisher turning out the kind of dazzling and detailed personal vision found in Monaco, the best game of the year so far?

Antichamber, Dust, Night of the Rabbit: All of them have flaws, yet all of them have something else: a unique and personal way of looking at the world, a different design sensibility, a pulse. It's what PCs do best.

CyberPower Zeus Evo Thunder 3000 SE Review

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 01:57 PM PST

CyberPower Zeus Evo Thunder 3000 SE: Just call it Zeus

Not everyone can afford a $16,500 Dream Machine. In fact, not many people could afford even half of what we spent to build this year's Dream rig. Well, actually, most people probably wouldn't even spend a third of that on a new rig.

This CFI chassis features mini doors to access the drives.

This CFI chassis features mini doors to access the drives.

Enter CyberPower PC's new Zeus Evo Thunder 3000 SE. Or if you prefer, Zeus, Zeus Thunder, or just ZET3KSE, if you're into the whole brevity thing. CyberPower is one of those vendors that has long had us wondering how it could pack so much hardware into a box so cheaply. Example: Purchased full retail, the parts in the Zeus add up to about $2,200. The price of the Zeus with a warranty and support? $2,200.

The Zeus is packing Intel's new 3.5GHz Core i7-4770K overclocked to 4.2GHz. That chip is joined by 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 and a pair of EVGA Superclocked GeForce GTX 770 cards. The cards and processor are powered by a Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1,000-watt PSU.

The enclosure features a CFI-A8007 design that's new to us. Case enclosures tend to be about as different as refrigerators: There's a door on the left and a door on the right. The CFI-A8007 has the typical compartment for the mobo and PSU but, uniquely, the storage section gets its own little swing-out doors. To extend the fridge metaphor, sorry, it's like the little doors that let you reach in to get just the milk. For a medium-size case, CyberPower does a very nice job tucking and hiding the wiring out of sight, too.

One thing we're not so enamored with is the storage config the company picked. The PC comes with a 64GB Corsair Neutron SSD and a 2TB HDD. We thought the SSD was used as a caching drive but CyberPower actually configured it as a stand-alone for the OS. We know you get the most performance that way, but 64GB doesn't go very far, and we'd much rather see caching using the Z87's SRT feature. Configured as such, we ran out of space just running our benchmarks.

In performance, the rig represents well against our zero-point, with its SLI 770 cards amazingly out-doing the single GeForce GTX 690 card our zero-point runs. The Haswell CPU also slams the zero-point's six-core SNB-E in Stitch.Efx and ProShow, but then itself gets slammed in the multithreaded workloads of Premiere Pro and x264—no surprise. Up against something more modern, such as this month's Build It PC, the Zeus is pretty close in the CPU-limited benchmarks. Not so in the graphics department, where the Build It rig is about 26 to 28 percent faster due to its overclocked and SLI'd GTX 780 cards. Of course, there's also a big difference between the two in price, with the Build It pushing $3,700. We'll note, however, that our Build It has the added amenities of a custom paint job and much beefier storage.

And storage is actually our No. 1 ding against the Zeus. The box really should have a larger SSD, or caching enabled. This ultimately hurts its score, but still, we have to give CyberPower props for delivering so much performance at such a good price.

$2,200, www.cyberpowerpc.com

Acer Co-Founder Stan Shih Returns to Struggling PC Maker After Record Loss

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 01:31 PM PST

AcerStan Shih faces some tough challenges

A recurring theme in the tech industry is that sometimes you have to look backwards in order to move forward. Apple did it when Steve Jobs came back to lead the Cupertino company into a new era of unprecedented riches, Dell's doing it with Michael Dell returning in an attempt to return the No. 3 PC maker back to glory, and now Acer's following the blueprint by bringing in company co-founder Stan Shih after a quarter of record losses.

News of Shih's return comes not even three weeks after former chief J.T. Wang announced his resignation, who stepped aside to make way for Jim Wong, while Shih was to serve on an advisory committee. Something happened between then and now, as both Wang and Wong have decided to step down, though they will remain as advisers, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Confused? The bottom line here is that Shih is back in charge. He will serve as Acer's interim president until an "appropriate candidate" is found, at which point there could be yet another round of management musical chairs. In addition, Shih will be offering his services pro bono.

Stan Shih

"Due to the situation that now faces Acer and my personal social responsibilities, I must stand up and take the reign without salary," Shih said in a statement.

Like other PC makers (save for Lenovo, which wields a magical formula for success, apparently), Acer's challenge is in finding a way to cash in on mobile devices without giving up on traditional PC sales. The problem there is that the mobile sector is dominated by Samsung and Apple, along with established competitors like Amazon (Kindle Fire).

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Maingear Adds AMD Chip Options to Customizable Nomad 17 Gaming Laptop

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 10:06 AM PST

Maingear Nomad 17The Nomad 17 now plays both sides of the fence

So, you're AMD guy or gal, is that it? If you've been losing sleep at night wondering why Maingear's Nomad 17 gaming laptop doesn't have an AMD option, get ready to snooze like a baby tonight. The custom notebook line is now truly customizable, in that you can choose to build around an Intel or AMD foundation. One advantage of going with an AMD configuration is that it's cheaper than the Intel alternatives.

The Nomad 17 is broken down into four baseline configurations labeled "Good,", "Better," "Best," and "Ultra." AMD lays ownership to the Good configuration starting at $1,289. For that, you get an AMD A10-5750 APU with Radeon HD 8970M graphics, 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 RAM, 500GB Seagate solid state hybrid drive, 8X DVD burner, GbE LAN, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 2MP webcam, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit all wrapped in a Nomad 17 "Performance Chassis" with DynAudio sound and backlit keyboard.

"The Nomad 17 now with AMD options answers what our customers have been asking for, performance and affordability wrapped into one powerful and stylish laptop," said Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of Maingear. "We are excited to offer our first AMD based laptop that bears the Maingear name."

Maingear's Nomad 17 with AMD (or Intel) inside is available to customize and order now.

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Underground Hacking Economy Values Your Identity at $25

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 09:22 AM PST

Identity CardIt's surprisingly cheap to purchase stolen credit card details and full blown identities

Your identity is worth around the cost of two movie tickets, or a pair of tickets and a bucket of popcorn, depending on where you live. That's according to a menu of items available in the underground market, a place where you can purchase someone's Visa or MasterCard details, including CCV code, for a mere $4. Fancy yourself an American Express gent? That runs $7, versus $8 for stolen Discover Card details.

These are just some of the prices revealed by Joe Stewart, Director of Malware Research for the Counter Threat Unit (CTU) at Dell SecureWorks, and David Shear, an independent researcher, who together dove into the dark underground marketplace to investigate what's being sold and for how much.

It's not really a surprise that so much stolen digital data is easily accessible with a little digging, but the low prices are certainly eye opening.  If you want banking login credentials for someone with between $70,000 and $150,000, it'll cost $300 or less. It 2011, $300 only netted you a bank account with $7,000 in it.

Going down the list, 1,000 infected computers is just $20, and the more you buy, the better the deal (5,000 infected PCs go for $90, 10,000 for $160, and 15,000 for $250). You can also purchase malware and exploit kits, as well as DDoS attacks and more.

"For the most part, it does not appear that the types of hacker services and stolen data for sell on the hacker underground have changed dramatically in the past several years. The only noticeable difference is the drop in price for online bank account credentials and the drop in price for Fullz or Personal Credentials," the researchers concluded.

As always, take a moment to make sure your security and computing habits are up to snuff. If you're a business owner, that also includes educating your employees on computer security.

For more, check out the full report.

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Intel Talks Next Generation Atom Processors Codenamed SoFIA and Broxton

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 08:44 AM PST

Brian KrzanichIntel outlines a new strategy

It's no secret that Intel fell behind in the mobile race. Even though Intel is the largest semiconductor company in the world, most smartphones and tablets run on ARM hardware. Intel chief Brian Krzanich told analysts and investors at a meeting this week that he's "a little embarrassed" at how he and his company "seemed to have lost our way" in terms of its mobile portfolio.

"We're paying a price for that right now," Krzanich said, according to VR-Zone.

Though Intel might have lost its way, the chip maker isn't about to throw in the towel. Far from it, Intel is continuing with plans to increase its presence in the mobile sector, and perhaps even dominate the way it does on the desktop and server markets.

In order to do that, Intel feels it needs to boost mobile GPU performance by a factor of 15 and CPU performance by a factor of 5 by the end of 2015. That's where Broxton comes in. Boxton is a next generation Atom platform aimed at the performance segment and due to arrive in the middle of 2015.

One unique feature of Broxton is that it will have a "chassis" that can be replaced by an upgraded model whenever Intel introduces new features. Intel didn't explain exactly how this will work, but color us intrigued.

For the value segment, Intel is planning to launch SoFIA, an entry-level Atom platform that Intel is outsourcing so that it can arrive to market quicker. SoFIA will have a 3G baseband initially, and will be upgraded to LTE in 2015. And unlike its original plans to use ARM for SoFIA, Intel now says it will be a x86 chip.

SoFIA and Broxton will both be 64-bit parts built on a 14nm manufacturing process.

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Newegg Daily Deals: Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD, Rosewill Blackhawk Blue Case, and More!

Posted: 22 Nov 2013 06:23 AM PST

WD 1TBnewegg logo

Top Deal:

Storage is a bit like cash, in that it never hurts to have a little extra lying around. Also like cash, the more storage you have, the more ways you find to utilize it. Maybe you're tired of deciding which vacation photos get to stay and which get deleted because you're running out of room, or perhaps your SSD nearly full. There's the cloud, and be sure to say 'Hi' to the NSA while you're up there. Alternately, today's top deal is for a Western Digital Blue 1TB Hard Drive for $60 with free shippping (normally $100 -- use coupon code: [PREBLKFR83]). This bare drive sports a SATA 6Gbps interface, 7200 RPM spindle speed, and 64MB of cache.

Other Deals:

Rosewill Blackhawk Blue Edition Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case for $80 with free shipping (normally $100 use coupon code: [PREBLKFR180]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Western Digital WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $100 use coupon code: [PREBLKFR83])

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS8G3D1609DS1S00 for $55 with free shipping (normally $70)

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard for $125 with free shipping (normally $145 use coupon code: [PREBLKFR125]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler for $75 with free shipping (normally $100)
Posted by Shri Krishna

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