General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Maximum PC Will Be Doing Live Streaming Reactions to Apple's Big Event

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 05:47 PM PDT

Watch the Maximum PC crew poke fun of Apple live on Twitch!

The Maximum PC crew is going to do a live stream reaction to Apple's big 9/9/14 event at 10am PST (tomorrow). You'll be able to tune into the Twitch stream below.

In case the embed doesn't work for whatever reason (Sorry, but we're new to this), you can check us out on our Twitch page at http://www.twitch.tv/maximumpcmag

It should be fun!

Maingear Epic Force Video Review

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 02:05 PM PDT

See what a $12,000 gaming rig looks like

One of the best parts of this job is getting to play with hardware we can't afford. For this video, Gordon walks you through Maingear's Epic Force which is a tour de force of beautiful plumbing even Mario would be proud of. The machine, delivered to us before Intel's epic Core i7-5960X "Haswell-E" is built on an overclocked Core i7-4790K "Devil's Canyon" chip and packs a pair of water cooled Radeon R9 295 X2 graphics cards.

What do you think of the Maingear Epic Force PC? Let us know in the comments below.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, GTX 970, and GTX 980M Benchmarks Purportedly Leaked

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 12:58 PM PDT

Nvidia CardHere's a look at how Nvidia's next batch of graphics cards might perform

How about we kick off the work week with some rumors, speculation, and purportedly leaked info, shall we? Sure, why not! What we have tumbling out of the rumor mill today is the notion that Nvidia is going to launch its GeForce 900 Series cards based on its Maxwell architecture on September 19. Specifications are hard to come by, but in the meantime, some supposed benchmark scores of Nvidia's forthcoming GeForce GTX 980, GTX 970, and GTX 980M are making the rounds in cyberspace.

The folks at Videocardsz.com posted what they claim are benchmarks of the aforementioned cards, which they then assembled into a neat chart fleshed out with several existing graphics cards. In 3DMark Fire Strike, the GeForce GTX 980 sits pretty high with a score of 13,005 and is only trumped by dual GPU configurations. As a point of reference, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti posted a score of 12.702.There are three different clockspeeds posted for the GTX 980, and that's because Videocardz.com was unable to confirm which is the actual reference clock. The 13,005 score represents the fastest clocked version (1190MHz core). It's surmised that the card sports 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus and a 7GHz memory clock.

As for the GTX 970, it scored slightly above a GTX 780 (10,282 versus 10,008, respectively).
What's most impressive, however, is the purported performance gain of the GTX 980M. In 3DMark Fire Strike, the 980M scored 9,364, about twice as high as the 870M (4,697) and well above the 880M (5,980).

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GOG Turns 6 Years Old, Celebrates with Deeply Discounted Games

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 12:23 PM PDT

GOG.com SaleThey grow up so fast, don't they?

Six years is a damn good run in technology, so it's no small feat that GOG.com is celebrating its 6th birthday. The site formerly known as Good Old Games is not only notable for its six-year run, but also for proving during that time there can be a successful business model based on selling digital content free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions. That wasn't such a popular notion in 2008.

"It was 2008 when we've launched our service to the public, offering a modest collection of golden classics that every PC gamer would instantly recognize, in other words: the Interplay catalog. During the first year in business (September 2008 - September 2009) we've released a nice number of exciting titles and you've reacted to them accordingly," GOG.com stated in a blog post.

To celebrate the occasion, each day GOG.com will be discounting some of the games it released in any given year of its existence by up to 80 percent. Today's list contains two dozen titles, some of which include Far Cry ($2.99), Postal 2 ($1.99), Unreal Gold ($2.49), Unreal Tournament 2004 ECE ($2.49), and Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition ($1.99), to name just a sampling.

The deals included in today's batch will be available until September 9 at 9:59AM GMT (2:59AM PDT).

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Electronic Arts Chief Talks Being Voted Worst Company in U.S., Game Delays, and Other Topics

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 11:44 AM PDT

EA SignEA chief doesn't envision a third Worst Company in U.S. designation

There would be something terribly wrong with Electronics Arts' Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson if he wanted his company to be voted the worst company in America for a third time by readers of the Consumerist blog. Being voted as such twice in the last three years -- in 2012 and 2013 -- is enough, though we're willing to excuse Wilson for stating the obvious, because that's not the point.

Having replaced John Riccitiello as CEO of EA a year ago this month, Wilson inherited a company that had seen six consecutive years of declining revenue as it spent big money acquiring entities in its pursuit of being a major player in the casual gaming space. EA's reputation was arguably at an all-time low among gamers, and it appeared that EA might 'win' the anti-award of worst company several more times if something didn't change.

Wilson had a vision for the company, but he stumbled out of the gate with a botch Battlefield 4 launch plagued by server issues. It also served as a learning point -- these days, Wilson isn't afraid to delay a launch when necessary. Gamers hate delays, but they arguably hate buggy software even more.

"We decided that we couldn't get an innovative Need For Speed title out this year so for the first time in 17 years we're not launching one, we're giving the team extra time," Wilson told The Guardian. "We moved Titanfall on Xbox One out of our fiscal year; we moved Dragon Age, we moved Hardline. These were difficult decisions. The business of what we do, as measured by the stock price and fiscal returns, has grown - to me that's reassurance that we're doing the right thing."

Even with lessons learned, it's not always smooth sailing these days. There's also the lingering perception of EA as a company that buys and kills off good franchises, as well as releases buggy games while cashing in on DLC. Wilson's strategy is to deliver "amazing games" and "commit to engaging with gamers" when they think they've been wronged.

As for being voted worst company again, Wilson's wish is simple: "I hope we never appear on that list again, I truly do. But I expect that, as we push the boundaries of entertainment, we will get feedback from time to time that people want us to do different things. That's okay. That's the cool thing about our industry."

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Intel's Xeon E5-2600/1600 v3 CPUs Bring Haswell to the Server Space

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 10:33 AM PDT

Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3A big boost for Xeon

Intel today announced its new Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 v3 product families designed to crunch through diverse workloads and the growing needs of data centers. These new processors sport several enhancements that Intel claims will result in up to a three-fold increase in performance compared to the previous generation (Xeon E5 v2 family). Among those enhancements are more processing cores and an upgrade from Ivy Bridge to Intel's Haswell architecture.

While the core count ceiling for Intel's previous generation Xeon X5 v2 CPUs was set at 12, the new Xeon E5-2600 v3 product family tops out at up to 18 cores per socket and 45MB of last-level cache. On top of this, an extension to Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel AVX2) doubles the width of vector integer instructions to 256 bits per clock cycle for integer sensitive workloads and delivers up to 1.9x higher performance gains, Intel says.

These new chips will find homes in servers, workstations, storage, and networking infrastructure for a broad range of tasks such as data analytics, high performance computing (HPC), telecommunications, and cloud-based services. They'll also be used for back-end processing for the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) category.

"The digital services economy imposes new requirements on the data center, requirements for automated, dynamic and scalable service delivery," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel. "Our new Intel processors deliver unmatched performance, energy efficiency and security, as well as provide visibility into the hardware resources required to enable software defined infrastructure. By enabling the re-architecture of the data center, Intel is helping companies fully exploit the benefits of cloud-based services."

On the high end, the Xeon E5-2600 v3 family increases virtualization density with support for up to 70 percent more VMs per server compared to the previous generation. They'll also deliver a boost in memory bandwidth constrained workloads with the support of DDR4 memory.

Intel plans to offer its E5-2600 v3 product family with 26 different parts ranging in price from $213 to $2,702. It's E5-1600 workstations will be offered in six different parts in prices ranging from $295 to $1,723.

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Facebook Sees 1 Billion Daily Video Views, New Features Coming Soon

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 08:29 AM PDT

Facebook VideoFacebook is turning its attention to videos

The world's largest social playground is also becoming a popular hangout to watch videos. According to Fidji Simo, Facebook's Project Management Director of Video, the social network has been averaging over 1 billion video views on a daily basis since June. The majority of those video views are coming across mobile devices -- more than 65 percent, and that number could get higher since video on Facebook was built to be mobile first.

With so many video views occurring on a daily basis, it makes sense that Facebook is devoting resources making videos a more important part of the social experience. For example, there's an updated rolling out this week that will allow people to see how many views a video on Facebook has received. These views will be displayed on public posts from people and Pages to help users discover new and popular clips.

"Video is one of the most engaging and immersive ways to tell your story. Whether capturing breaking news, a baby's first steps, or rising to a friend's challenge for charity, it is a remarkable storytelling medium," Simo says. "Video uploaded directly to Facebook is an increasingly important part of News Feed, and more people than ever before are sharing, discovering, and engaging with videos that they care about."

There are other features in the pipeline too, some of which will roll out slowly so that Facebook can gauge user feedback and tweak the final result. Last year that included the auto-play feature -- videos start playing automatically as you scroll through your feed -- and one that's currently being tested is a feature that when a user finishes watching a video, he or she may be shown additional related videos.

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Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair HX Series 850W PSU, AMD A4-6300 Richland APU, and More!

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 06:35 AM PDT

Corsair HX850newegg logo

Top Deal:

When you're finished building your PC, you can raise your screwdriver and proclaim, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!" It will feel good, but if you forgot to purchase a power supply, it doesn't matter what you shout, your system isn't turning on. Hey, it could be worse -- you could have purchased a generic PSU and found out the hard way why it's a good idea to invest in a quality, name-brand PSU with a good reputation. Speaking of which, check out today's top deal for a Corsair HX Series HX850 850W Power Supply for $120 with free shipping (normally $150 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPF37]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). This is an 80 Plus Gold certified PSU with modular cables and plenty of amperage (70A) available through the single +12V rail.

Other Deals:

WD SE 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Enterprise Hard Drive for $125 with free shipping (normally $135 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPF26])

MSI R9 270X 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card for $170 with free shipping (Addtional $20 Mail-in rebate)

AMD A4-6300 Richland Dual-Core 3.7GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Desktop Processor for $38 with free shipping (normally $48 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPF29])

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory for $79 with free shipping (normally $87 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPF35])

FBI Says Glitch Helped it Locate Silk Road Server

Posted: 08 Sep 2014 12:42 AM PDT

Silk Road

Leaky login page and not NSA's Tor-cracking expertise led agency to SR server

The infamous Silk Road Tor-based website was on quite a high (pun intended), having established itself as the internet's largest illegal drug marketplace, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut it down in October, 2013. The agency also arrested a San Francisco-based man named Ross Ulbricht for masterminding the whole operation under the nom de guerre Dread Pirate Roberts. That man is now trying to have the court rule inadmissible all of the government's evidence against him.

The defense recently filed a pre-trial motion to suppress evidence "because the government obtained it as a result of unlawful searches and seizures – either directly because the specific warrant or order authorizing the search and/or seizure was unlawful, or because the search and seizure constituted the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' of a previously conducted invalid search and/or seizure – that violated the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, as well as certain applicable statutes."

Well, the prosecution filed its response to that pre-trial motion on Friday, dismissing any suggestions that the evidence against Ulbricht may have been obtained through unlawful means.

"Ulbricht offers no evidence of any governmental misconduct to support this sweeping claim. Instead, Ulbricht conjures up a  bogeyman – the National Security Agency ('NSA') –  which Ulbricht suspects, without any  proof whatsoever, was responsible for locating the Silk Road server, in a manner that he simply assumes somehow violated the Fourth Amendment," the filing reads.

According to the filing, it wasn't NSA shenanigans but a problem with the way the login interface had been configured (or misconfigured) that helped the FBI locate the Iceland-based server.

"The Internet  protocol ("IP") address of the SR Server (the "Subject IP Address") was 'leaking' from the site due to an apparent misconfiguration of the user login interface by the site administrator –  i.e. Ulbricht."

"FBI agents [from the New York Field Office] noticed the leak upon reviewing the data sent back by the Silk Road website when they logged on or attempted to log on as users of the site.  A close examination of the headers in this data revealed a certain IP address not associated with the Tor network (the 'Subject IP Address') as the source of some of the data. FBI  personnel entered the Subject IP Address directly into an ordinary (non-Tor) web browser, and it  brought up a screen associated with the Silk Road login interface, confirming that the IP address  belonged to the SR Server."

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Toshiba Unveils Dirt-Cheap Windows Notebook at IFA

Posted: 07 Sep 2014 10:13 PM PDT

Toshiba Satellite CL10-B

One of many cheap, no-frills Windows notebooks ready to take on Chromebooks

The influx of dirt-cheap Windows laptops that we had been warned about a couple of months back has begun. Among the first wave of such devices is the Satellite Cloudbook CL10-B, an 11.6-inch laptop that runs Windows 8.1 with Bing and is powered by an Intel Bay Trail processor.

Currently being showcased alongside the dirt-cheap likes of the Chromebook 2 and the Encore Mini 7-inch Android tablet at the ongoing IFA 2014 event in Berlin, the CL10-B is, as you would expect, very minimal in terms of specs.

Inside this device, you will find a low-end Intel Celeron Bay Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, HDMI out and an SD card reader. The 11.6-inch display on this thing is a non-touch TN (twisted nematic) display with a 1,366 x 768 resolution.

The CL10-B, which can last around 6 hours on a single charge, will be available globally before the year is out. Although we know it will cost £200 (roughly $330) in the UK, Toshiba has yet to spill the beans on pricing for other countries.

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Posted by Shri Krishna

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