General Gaming Article |
- MtGox Files for Bankruptcy, $480 Million Lost
- Gaming Laptop Review Roundup
- Rumor: Microsoft May Offer Free Version of Windows 8.1 Bundled with Bing
- IBM's Hardware Division Could Bear the Brunt of Upcoming Job Cuts
- Server Market Sees Growth in Shipments, Decline in Revenue
- Acer Rolls Out 27-inch WQHD (2560x1440) Display for $450
- Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair 500W Power Supply, Seagate Hybrid 1TB/8GB SSHD, and More!
| MtGox Files for Bankruptcy, $480 Million Lost Posted: 28 Feb 2014 03:03 PM PST | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 28 Feb 2014 12:38 PM PST Four portable gaming notebooks square offBack in the day, to get any real power in a notebook, you needed to have a massive chassis to house all the most beefy mobile components. But today, with Intel's smaller, more power-efficient Haswell processor and shrinking mobile video cards, this is no longer the case. The advent of these new parts means it's now possible to get serious performance without sacrificing portability, hence the growing number of capable gaming notebooks measuring 15 inches or less. The trouble is, with so many portable gaming options, which one do you choose? In an attempt to answer that question, we've rounded up four of the more portable gaming laptops we could find: the 15.6-inch Lenovo Y510p, the 15.6-inch Eurocom X3, the 14-inch Alienware 14, and the 13.3-inch Digital Storm Veloce. We're also throwing in the CyberPower Zeus Hercules, which features Intel's Iris Pro, to see how a gaming laptop with modern, high-end integrated graphics stacks up against the discrete-graphics competition. Which gaming notebook is for you? Read on to find out!
Lenovo IdeaPad Y510pA good idea, but a flawed IdeaPad When we first reviewed the Lenovo Y500 back in our July 2013 issue, we praised it for being an amazing value. Though it wasn't a perfect gaming notebook, it did come with two GeForce GT 650Ms, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for a modest $1,250, which was such an awesome deal that we placed the notebook atop our esteemed Best of the Best list. Fast forward a few months and Lenovo has refreshed the notebook with a new Haswell CPU as well as a pair of beefier GeForce 700-series cards. This new IdeaPad has been rechristened the Y510p, and retails for a fair amount more than its predecessor, at $1,600. The question on our minds, of course, is whether the Y510p provides the same great value.
Lenovo really needs to add dedicated buttons to the trackpad. Despite its new moniker, the laptop comes with the same chassis as the Y500—a 15.2x10.2x1.4-inch brushed-aluminum enclosure adorned with a bold, red-LED-backlit keyboard that is flashy without being gaudy. It weighs in at a reasonable six pounds, 6.6 ounces—roughly the same as the smaller Alienware 14, although its carry weight is dragged down by a bulky two-pound power brick. It's worth noting that despite the Y510p's fairly thin profile for a 15.6-inch gaming laptop, we never heard its fans spinning loudly. The Y510p's 1920x1080 monitor offers a very bright and competent display for a TN panel, but it falls a bit short when compared to the IPS screens in the Alienware 14 and Digital Storm Veloce, which provide much greater viewing angles. Conversely, unlike those two smaller laptops, the Y510p provides a full-size keyboard with number pad, complete with chiclet keys that are quiet and feel good to type on. On the audio front, the Y510p uses the same JBL speakers we know and love; they have plenty of firepower and make everything sound clear. Sadly, the laptop retained the same frustrating trackpad as its predecessor, with integrated mouse buttons. Coupled with the trackpad's oversensitivity, the indistinct buttons often had us making small, accidental swipes whenever we tried clicking links. Another disappointment is that the Y500's unique, expandable drive bay, which allowed you to swap in a second GPU, fan, HDD, or optical drive, has been neutered to only allow a second, removable GPU, which is the stock configuration. Fortunately, that configuration consists of two GeForce GT 750GB GPUs in SLI. CPU-side, our Y510p came outfitted with a Haswell-based Core i7-4702MQ processor clocked at 2.2 GHz, and 16GB of RAM. For storage, our configuration came with a 16GB mSATA caching SSD anchored by a 5,400rpm 1TB HDD. Putting these specs through our barrage of benchmarks, the Y510p produced some mixed results. Its dual–video card setup gave our MSI GT60 zero-point laptop a smack across the face with a 74 percent gain in 3DMark 11, and it even bested both the Alienware 14's and Digital Storm Veloce's GTX 765M configs by roughly 10fps across all of our game benchmarks. In the CPU-intensive benchmarks, however, the Y510p fell short. Even our ZP's Ivy Bridge part was able to trade blows with it. In terms of battery life, the Y510p got hammered, lasting only 154 minutes in our video-rundown test. It turns out that SLI setups don't support integrated graphics through Nvidia Optimus, so we had to remove the second video card—which requires shutting down, removing the battery, and ejecting the second video card—to bolster the Y510p's battery life to 195 minutes. We would be inclined to dismiss the Y510p's shortcomings if it still came at the same great price as the Y500, but it's over $300 more for not much extra performance. Luckily, multiple configurations are available, so if you want a good IdeaPad, it's probably best to customize the Y510p to fit your needs. Specifications
Lenovo IdeaPad Y510p  $1,600 www.lenovo.com Eurocom X3Don't judge a gaming notebook by its cover The Eurocom X3 might look familiar, as it uses a Clevo chassis that's similar to the Eurocom Scorpius we reviewed in our March 2013 issue, sharing the same dull-looking, black, boxy design. But there are some key distinctions, with the biggest difference being its smaller size. At 15x10.7x1.8-inches, the X3 features a 15.6-inch screen compared to the Scorpius's 17.3-inch screen, and weighs seven pounds, 10.4 ounces, which is about three ounces lighter than our 15.6-inch MSI GT60 zero-point laptop. It won't break your back, but you won't want to lug it in your backpack all day.
In between the trackpad's buttons is a fingerprint scanner. The X3 uses a matte TN panel for its display that features decent viewing angles but still can't compete with the Alienware 14's and Digital Storm Veloce's IPS offerings. In addition, compared to the other notebooks in this roundup, we noticed a more ruddy cast to the X3's screen, lending people a sunburned-looking appearance. Considering that our particular configuration costs $3,300, it's a shame an IPS panel, which can offer more accurate colors, wasn't included. On the plus side, we didn't have any issues with the full-size keyboard, which, like the Lenovo Y510p's, was quiet, easy to type on, and includes a numpad. Unfortunately, also like the Y510p, we weren't super enamored with the trackpad. Although it's light years better than the Scorpius's trackpad before it, you'll definitely want to tweak the sensitivity settings. The trackpad also supports two-finger scrolling, though it often couldn't tell if we were trying to scroll down a page or pinching to zoom. Another gripe we have is that the speakers are a little underwhelming. While it comes with a built-in subwoofer underneath the chassis, the X3 doesn't have the greatest volume firepower and can easily get drowned out in a noisy room. So far, the X3 probably sounds like it's not worth its high asking price, but it's redeemed by what it has going on under the hood. This bad boy is equipped with a Core i7-4930MX Extreme Edition chip clocked at 3GHz with a Turbo Boost of 3.9GHz, 16GB of RAM, and Nvidia's new, leading laptop GPU, the GeForce GTX 780M. All in all, it's got enough juice to make Tim the Toolman howl. Our only real complaint with the specs concerns the SSD. The included 128GB storage isn't necessarily small, but for the price, we'd expect a 256GB drive. Even the much more affordable Alienware 14 in this roundup includes one. That quibble aside, the X3 managed to slaughter every gaming laptop in this roundup. As a matter of fact, Eurocom's laptop won in every single performance benchmark by significant margins, be it in the CPU-intensive applications or, more punishingly, games. Its only performance shortcoming came in the battery test, where it lasted a mere 167 minutes, shy even of our Ivy Bridge zero-point system's score. Unfortunately, with great power comes great battery loss. When you take into consideration that the X3 costs twice as much as both the Lenovo Y510p and the Digital Storm Veloce, it should come as no surprise that Eurocom's notebook mops the floor with them all. It's only disappointing that it has to make some compromises along the way. Specifications
Eurocom X3$3,300, www.eurocom.com Click the next page to read about the Alienware 14 and Digital Storm Veloce. |
| CPU | 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ |
| RAM | 16GB DDR3/1600 |
| Chipset | Intel HM87 |
| GPU | Nvidia GTX 765M |
| Display | 14-inch, 1920x1080 IPS display (matte) |
| Storage | 256GB mSATA SSD, 750GB 5,400rpm HDD |
| Optical Drive | Slot-loading dual-layer Blu-ray reader |
| Connectivity | HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, 3x USB 3.0, audio in, microphone, headset, 2MP webcam, built-in Bluetooth, Broadcom Wireless-AC 2x2, Gigabit Ethernet, 7-in-1 media card reader |
| Lap / Carry | 6 lbs, 6.4 oz/ 7 lbs, 13.6 oz |
Alienware 14
$1,900 www.alienware.com
Digital Storm Veloce
The eye of this storm could be calmer
Since mankind descended from the trees, we have struggled to combine the portability of a laptop with the performance demands of PC gaming. Sacrifices are inevitable. The Veloce crams an Nvidia GTX 765M into a notebook with a small 13.3-inch screen, which not too long ago would have qualified it for netbook dimensions. How does it manage? Not entirely well.
If the Veloce looks familiar, it's because it uses the Clevo W230ST chassis.
But let's start with the basics. The Veloce has Intel's shiny new Haswell mobile CPU, which is purported to bring much-improved battery life over Ivy Bridge–based systems. It also gets an IPS panel, so you don't have to fiddle with your eye level when you open the thing up. The keyboard is backlit with a gentle white glow, and the keys have a little spacing to prevent mis-types. Under the hood, you get a respectable 8GB of system RAM, a 128GB mSATA drive, and a 750GB 5,400rpm drive.
Its 765M averaged a little under 30fps in Tomb Raider, at 1080p with everything but TressFX enabled. We found that during our experiential play test, turning off tessellation and depth-of-field roughly doubled performance, without much of a hit to image quality.
The Veloce's exterior doesn't fare so well. Specifically, the keyboard area flexes a little as you type, especially in the middle. Right above the keyboard is an embedded plastic strip that wasn't quite flush against the surface. It's minor, but enough to mar our overall impression. The rubberized lid also smudges easily.
The ergonomics are also kind of disappointing, at least considering the $1,600 price tag. Almost all the external connectors are on the right-hand side, which is where right-handed people will be using their mouse. The left-hand side has only a headphone jack, mic jack, and a single USB 2.0 port. Meanwhile, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, and the AC power input make it awfully crowded on the other side of the table, unless you're primarily using the touchpad. But since the Veloce is billed as a gaming laptop, that scenario doesn't seem likely. Also, the fans frequently cranked up for 10–20 seconds when the system was idle or minimally loaded. It's distracting if you're just trying to watch a YouTube video or write an email. The system also uses the left-hand side to exhaust heat, unlike the Alienware 14 which pushes heat through the back; this means the fan noise can get pretty grating. One of the fans also rattled occasionally, sounding like a mechanical hard drive moving data around.
While the Veloce is definitely the thinnest and lightest notebook in this roundup, it may have too much power for its own good. Unfortunately, this meant the battery wasn't able to last that much longer than the zero-point MSI GT60, even with the more power-efficient CPU. If you don't mind a heavier laptop, the Alienware 14 can be configured with mostly the same specs for not too much more while yielding better durability and less noise.
| CPU | 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-4800MQ |
| RAM | 8GB DDR3/1600 |
| Chipset | Intel HM87 |
| GPU | Nvidia GTX 765M |
| Display | 13.3-inch, 1920x1080 IPS display (semi-gloss) |
| Storage | 128GB mSATA SSD, 750GB 5,400rpm HDD |
| Optical Drive | Not included |
| Connectivity | HDMI, VGA, 3x USB 3.0, USB 2.0, audio in, microphone, 2MP webcam, built-in Bluetooth, Intel Wireless-AC 7260, Gigabit Ethernet, 6-in-1 media card reader |
| Lap / Carry | 4 lbs, 4.4 oz/ 5 lbs, 12.8 oz |
Digital Storm Veloce
$1,600 www.digitalstormonline.com
Click the next page to see how the laptop equipped with Intel's Iris Pro graphics compared and to read our overall conclusion.
Good but Not Great
If only we could take the best parts of all these rigs and roll them into one
We wish we could declare a clear winner in this roundup—one that offers the complete package of performance and portability, but unfortunately, each notebook has different strengths and weaknesses, and none comes out as being particularly impressive.
Sure, the Eurocom X3 mopped the floor with the others in the performance benchmarks, but it's also the most expensive laptop by a long shot, offers weak battery life, is the heaviest, and features an unimpressive TN panel. On the flipside, the Lenovo Y510p is much more affordable and bests both the Alienware 14 and Veloce in the graphics department with its SLI setup. But it has a relatively lackluster CPU, a frustrating trackpad, and also goes the less-than-desirable TN route. While the highly portable Veloce is equally affordable to the Y510p despite an upgrade to an IPS panel and offers impressive performance for its size, its build quality feels cheap and its fans are annoyingly loud. Then there's the Alienware 14, which has the best battery life out of the bunch, offers the slickest aesthetics, but is on the pricey side and its overall performance is a bit lacking.
These are all respectable products, but it looks like the gaming laptop mountain doesn't have a king just yet.
| MSI GT60 (zero point) | Lenovo Y510p | Eurocom X3 | Alienware 14 | Digital Storm Veloce | |
| Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) | 1,092 | 1,118 | 856 | 962 | 981 |
| ProShow Producer 5 (sec) | 1,786 | 1,769 | 1,509 | 1,629 | 1,576 |
| x264 HD 5.0 (fps) | 12 | 9.7 | 14.9 | 13.5 | 12.8 |
| STALKER: CoP (fps) | 32.8 | 40.8 | 89.1 | 40.7 | 39.3 |
| 3DMark 11 Perf | 2,979 | 5,194 | 7,967 | 4,170 | 4,319 |
| Tomb Raider (fps) | N/A | 45.3 | 69.8 | 32.6 | 32.6 |
| Hitman: Absolution (fps) | N/A | 24.3 | 35.6 | 14.3 | 14.9 |
| BioShock Infinite (fps) | N/A | 39.7 | 58.6 | 28.1 | 29.2 |
| Battery (min) | 187 | 154 | 167 | 234 | 195 |
Best scores are bolded. Our zero-point notebook is an MSI GT60 with a 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM, 12GB DDR3/1600, two 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drives, a GeForce GTX 670M, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. STALKER CoP tested at 1920x1080 with Ultra settings, Tessellation, and contact hardening. N/A denotes that benchmarks were not run on the zero point.
Redefining 'Good Enough' Graphics
Intel's Iris Pro integrated graphics steps it up
We've long used the analogy that if Intel is Lucy and integrated graphics is the gaming-capable football, we're all Charlie Brown. Yup, that bald-headed kid who just keeps thinking that every time Intel says its integrated graphics are capable of playing games, we believe it and throw our back out trying to kick that football to the moon. Well, listen up, blockhead: Lucy is in front of you once again, dangling that pigskin, and this time, she's really serious that she'll let you kick it.
To find out if that football will stay in place or be snatched away again, we took CyberPower's new Zeus Hercules—a $1,300, 14-inch portable equipped with an Intel Core i7-4750HQ and its highest-end Iris Pro 5200 graphics with embedded DRAM—and benched it against an Ivy Bridge graphics–equipped HP Spectre Ultrabook, as well as an older Acer Timeline M3 Ultrabook. The Timeline M3 has an aged 32nm Sandy Bridge CPU but it also has an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M discrete card on board.
The results? First off, the Intel HD4000 graphics in the HP Spectre are not even in the running. We'll remind you that when Ivy Bridge came out, ol' Lucy touted its graphics as being substantially improved. Um, yeah.
Against the GeForce GT 640M, the Iris Pro 5200 proved surprisingly comparable in most of our tests. When it was introduced, Nvidia said the GeForce GT 640M was capable of playing Battlefield 3 at
Ultra—quite a feat in 2012 (of course, playing at Ultra meant settling for less than 30fps). Still, that Intel's Iris Pro 5200 integrated graphics can offer performance close to or better than that discrete part is finally proof that Intel won't always pull that football out from under our feet.
Of course, looked at another way, the GeForce GT 640M is a pretty old GPU at this point. We believe current midrange discrete graphics would easily step away from Iris Pro 5200. However, Iris Pro 5200 is actually capable of playing a lot of games at 1366x766 resolution with very satisfactory frame rates. In addition to our benchmarks, we played Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Minecraft with no complaints. Moving up to Battlefield 3, we had to turn down the settings a few notches, but the playability was far better than we've ever before experienced with integrated graphics.
One other performance metric we looked at was OpenCL computing. Since the Iris Pro 5200 features that massive 128MB of L4 cache we've been chattering about since Haswell launched (Intel, give us a socketed version, please), we wanted to see if the top-end IGP has it where it counts in compute. It does. It destroyed the Spectre's HD4000 graphics in the OpenCL benchmarks we ran and came pretty close to the GeForce GT 640M in the OpenCL 1.1.3 benchmark. In LuxMark 2.0, it crushed both the HD4000 and the discrete part.
There are two things to take away from this: The first is that the high-end discrete GPU has absolutely nothing to fear from Iris Pro 5200—we didn't even bother to compare it to the gaming notebooks in this roundup because it would be embarrassing for integrated graphics. They're that much faster in gaming. The second is that for a lot of people who just want a "normal" notebook, the Iris Pro 5200 is good enough, and a hell of a lot better than anything that has come before. Let's just say the next time Lucy approaches us with that football, we may not be so cynical.
| CyberPower Zeus Hercules | Acer Timeline M3 | HP Spectre | |
| GPU | Intel Iris Pro 5200 | Nvidia GeForce GT 640M | Intel HD4000 |
| CPU | Core i7-4750HQ | Core i7-2637 | Core i7-3517U |
| 3DMark 11 Extreme Overall | X637 | X607 | X210 |
| 3DMark 11 Extreme Graphics | 568 | 544 | 188 |
| 3DMark 11 Performance Overall | P2,054 | P1,840 | P611 |
| 3DMark 11 Performance Graphics | 1,811 | 1,750 | 532 |
| 3DMark New Firestrike Overall | 1,310 | 1,213 | 512 |
| 3DMark New Firestrike Graphics | 1,310 | 1,297 | 544 |
| 3DMark New Cloudgate Overall | 9,513 | 5,248 | 3,302 |
| 3DMark New Cloudgate Graphics | 11,585 | 9,044 | 4,344 |
| 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme Overall | 52,958 | 55,600 | 30,406 |
| 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme Graphics | 60,474 | 84,990 | 35,192 |
| Unigine 4.0 13x6 (fps) | 22.3 | 24.9 | 7.7 |
| STALKER: CoP Day (fps) | 56.3 | 67.8 | 21.7 |
| STALKER: CoP Night (fps) | 63.2 | 70.1 | 19 |
| STALKER: CoP Rain (fps) | 70.1 | 74.1 | 22.4 |
| STALKER: CoP Sun Shafts (fps) | 43.8 | 44.8 | 13.7 |
| OpenCL 1.1.3 Physics: SPH Fluid Simulation | 1,434 | 1,515 | 525 |
| OpenCL 1.1.3 Vision: Optical Flow | 1,389 | 1,649 | 302 |
| LuxMark 2.0 Sala (score) | 462 | 101 | 67 |
| LuxMark 2.0 Room (score) | 325 | 47 | 33 |
Best scores are bolded.
Rumor: Microsoft May Offer Free Version of Windows 8.1 Bundled with Bing
Posted: 28 Feb 2014 09:38 AM PST
Would you upgraded to Windows 8.1 if Microsoft gave the OS away for free?
There are some interesting things happening in Microsoft's world right now. The company has a new CEO in Satya Nadella, co-founder Bill Gates figures to devote more time as Nadella settles into his new role, and there's an update to Windows 8.1 on the horizon. Depending on what impact that update has on Windows 8.1, some big changes could be in store, including a free version of Windows 8.1 with Bing. Here's the scoop.
We've already heard rumors of Microsoft lowering its Windows 8.1 licensing fee by 75 percent to OEMs who install the OS on machines that retail for less than $250. Microsoft employed a similar strategy in the netbook era, though the Redmond outfit may be even more determined to move more copies of Windows 8.1 this time around since it's only sold 200 million licenses to date. Compared to Windows 7, that isn't all that impressive.
Now we're hearing chatter that Microsoft may offer a free version of Windows 8.1 called "Windows 8.1 with Bing." There are two separate reports, one from The Verge and one over at ZDNet. According to the former, Windows 8.1 with Bing would be offered as a free or low-cost upgrade for Windows 7 users, with Microsoft's goal being to increase its userbase.
Alternately, the Bing-powered version of Windows 8.1 could end up the hands of OEMs in place of discounted licenses. Both sites report there are likely to be some minor changes associated with the freebie SKU, though what exactly they changes would entail isn't yet known.
Image Credit: wzor.net
IBM's Hardware Division Could Bear the Brunt of Upcoming Job Cuts
Posted: 28 Feb 2014 09:06 AM PST
Big Blue is making some changes
IBM knows the business areas it wants to focus on going forward. The company also knows that job cuts are inevitable as it attempts to "rebalance its workforce" to the fit the direction it's headed, though exactly how many employees will be receiving pink slips hasn't yet been determined, at least not officially. Unofficially, IBM may reduce the number of workers in its Systems and Technology group by up to 25 percent.
Otherwise known as the hardware division, IBM's Systems and Technology arm builds the company's servers. The 25 percent figure was thrown around by a "source familiar with the plans," according to CNET. A spokesman for IBM also talked with CNET, though he didn't get into specifics about the layoffs.
"As reported in our recent earnings briefing, IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients, and to pioneer new, high value segments of the IT industry," IBM spokesman Doug Shelton said. "To that end, IBM is positioning itself to lead in areas such as cloud, analytics and cognitive computing, and investing in these priority areas."
There are more than 400,000 employees around the world who currently work at IBM. In addition, Big Blue isn't afraid to spend money, such as committing $1 billion to its Watson unit and $1.2 billion to expand its Cloud offerings. At the same time, IBM recently offloaded its x86 server business to Lenovo for $2.3 billion, so it wouldn't be a big surprise if the company's Systems and Technology group saw the most layoffs.
Image Credit: Flickr (Daniel Voyager)
Server Market Sees Growth in Shipments, Decline in Revenue
Posted: 28 Feb 2014 08:30 AM PST
Getting a grip on the server sector
Things are looking up in the server market, and at the same time, they're looking down as well. Say what? According to market research firm Gartner, worldwide server shipments grew 3.2 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2013, though overall revenue dipped 6.6 percent compared to the same quarter in 2012. Likewise, server shipments for all of 2013 rose 2.1 percent while revenue declined 4.5 percent.
Jeffrey Hewitt, who serves as Gartner's VP of Research, noted there was continued growth in web-scale IT deployments, but that the enterprise sector was relatively constrained. "In terms of hardware platform types, mainframe and RISC/Itanium Unix platform market performance kept overall revenue growth in check," Hewitt added.
Hewlett-Packard sits atop the server leaderboard. The company generated $3.8 billion in server-related revenue in Q4 2013, giving the firm a 28.1 percent state of the global market. IBM was a close second with $3.6 billion and a 26.5 percent stake, however those represents declines from $5.1 billion and 34.9 percent in Q4 2012.
Other than HP, only Cisco showed growth for the quarter, though it's share of the market is just 4.7 percent.
Acer Rolls Out 27-inch WQHD (2560x1440) Display for $450
Posted: 28 Feb 2014 08:00 AM PST
Big screen display isn't lacking for connectivity
Acer is closing out the month of February by offering up its K272HUL, a 27-inch monitor with an ultra-sharp WQHD (2560x1440) resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio. An ergonomic frame props up the large screen display with 5 to 25 degrees of tilt action. You can also mount the monitor to your wall and have it sit relatively flat (the monitor measures 2 inches deep by 17.4 inches wide by 10.5 inches high).
The K272HUL supports Picture-in-Picture (PiP) using both DisplayPort and either HDMI (there are two of these) or DVI simultaneously. In addition, it boasts wide viewing angles of up to 178 degrees horizontally and vertically, which makes it easy to collaborate with others.
Other features found on Acer's 27-inch monitor include a 100,000,000:1 maximum contrast ratio, 6ms response time, dual built-in speakers, and Acer's "ComfyView" technology, which is supposed to reflect less ambient light for more vivid colors, reduced glare, and more comfortable viewing.
You should be able to find the K272HUL online today for $450 MSRP.
Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair 500W Power Supply, Seagate Hybrid 1TB/8GB SSHD, and More!
Posted: 28 Feb 2014 07:00 AM PST
Top Deal:
If money were no object, we'd all fill our virtual shopping carts with 100-core processors clocked at 60GHz, 10TB of DDR8-99000MHz RAM, 200PB of quantum storage, and 18 graphics cards in super duper SLI, which we'd power using a 10-megawatt PSU that requires a direct connection to the power company. Then reality sets in, not to mention the budget, and we end up building respectable rigs with high bang-for-buck factors. That being the case, take the 10-megawatt PSU out of your shopping cart and check out today's top deal for a Corsair CX500M 500W Modular Power Supply for $45 with free shipping (normally $65; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). Though the price is low, the quality is high -- this is an 80 Plus Bronze certified model that's both SLI and Crossfire Ready.
Other Deals:
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory for $75 with free shipping
Seagate Hybrid Drive 1TB MLC/8GB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Desktop SSHD for $97 with free shipping
MSI A88XM-E45 AMD A88X HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard for $73 with free shipping and Free Battlefield 4 game w/ purchase
XFX Double D FX-787A-CDFC Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 Video Card for $200 (normally $230; additional $30 Mail-in rebate)
| 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 | |
