We had the chance to get a first look at Zotac's new Steam Machine today at GDC 2015. The company first announced that it was part of Valve's Steam Machine initiative, along with 14 other partners, back in 2013 during CES. Despite the announcement though, Valve wasn't ready with the Steam controller or Steam OS at the time.
The new box from Zotac, dubbed SN970, is a compact PC akin to Alienware's Alpha, except a little bigger. The following are its specs:
"6th" gen Intel CPU: Zotac writes this on its spec sheet, but we reckon it'll be an Intel "Skylake" CPU, manufactured at 14nm
NVIDIA GeFoce GTX 970M MXM with 3GB GDDR5
8GB DDR3
64GB M.2 SSD
1TB 2.5" HDD
2 x Gig-E Ethernet
4 x HDMI 2.0 ports, supporting 4K @ 60Hz
1 x HDMI In
4 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0
802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
According to Zotac, the SN970 will ship with Steam OS and a Steam controller from the get-go, although users are free to install Windows if they so choose. Zotac also mentioned that Valve "wanted" the new round of Steam Machines to all have HDMI input, because Steam Machine will offer the ability to control and manage your television feed as well as offer the ability to record shows.
Zotac tells us that they will offer different Steam Machines that step down from the SN970, letting users integrate their own hardware options, but the SN970 will ship fully equipped for $999, although Zotac says the price may be lower.
The chassis is unlike anything Zotac currently has on the market, and the motherboard is custom too, supporting two 2.5" SATA drives, and an M.2 slot that's fully customizable by removing the bottom cover. This tells us that the cost of the SN970 is largely due to the custom hardware design.
Steam Machines have gone through several major bumps since their announcement back in 2013. With delays, pre-mature launches, as well as the continual dedication by Valve to make a perfect controller, they're turning out to be better than when initially launched. However, NVIDIA just announced its living room Shield console, which streams games from NVIDIA's Grid cloud delivery service. NVIDIA's CEO, Jen-Hsun, announced today, that "NVIDIA would do what Netflix did for movies, and Spotify did for music." Valve itself announced the Steam Link, which streams from any PC running Steam on the same network.
It remains to be seen how the Steam Machine platform will pan out, but for now, it looks like Steam Machines have direct, and serious competition, from both NVIDIA and Valve themselves.
Ever since Valve announced last year that it was delaying the launch of its Steam Machines, in order to perfect the Steam Controller, we have been wondering when that would be. Last week, the company then announced that it would showcase new living room devices, a SteamVR hardware system, and a finalized version of the Steam Controller. Now we are starting to see the new hardware as Syber has announced its line of Steam Machines at GDC.
Syber, which is a division of CyberPowerPC, revealed that it will be offering six Steam Machines, powered by SteamOS, with In-Home Streaming capability that will be available for purchase later this fall. Some of the Steam Machines will be shown at GDC and the company has provided some hardware specifications in addition to the price.
"We created the Syber Steam Machines to give gamers more power and more customization than the standard video game consoles like Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox," said CyberPowerPC VP of Product Eddie Vong.
At the cheaper end of the line, the company is offering the Syber Steam Machine-E which will be powered by a quad-core AMD processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics with a retail price of $449. For $549, there is the Syber Steam Machine-P that comes with an Intel G3258 3.2GHz processor and AMD Radeon R9 270X card. Those looking to spend more money can shell out $999, which will get them the Syber Steam Machine-K that has an Intel Core i5-4690K and Nvidia GeForce GTX 970.
Aside from the six models, the company went on to say that its Steam Machines are capable of being fully customized with the latest hardware from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel in addition to a new color being available called Syber fire-orange. However, such Steam Machines will have a starting price point of $1,399.
We interview AMD Graphics CTO Raja Koudari about the company's VR initiative
Providing presence inside a virtual reality headset, or trying to make you feel like you are somewhere you aren't, is a difficult challenge to solve. AMD is trying to help VR headset maker like Oculus VR and other head-mounted display (HMD) manufacturers better solve that issue with its newly announced LiquidVR SDK.
A big VR obstacle in the way of achieving presence pertains to latency. Minimizing motion-to-photon latency, i.e., having the image properly update as you move your head around, is critical to achieving presence. It also helps you not to throw up. Another challenge is that VR can be extremely taxing on hardware. Because VR has to render two separate images for both eyes, this essentially cuts your framerate in half as your system has to render the scene twice. In addition, VR experiences demand a high resolution to avoid screen door effects and a high framerate/refresh rate for user comfort. All of this amounts to a ton of challenges. And with LiquidVR, AMD is aiming to help developers solve latency, comfort, and compatibility issues.
Check out our interview with AMD CTO of Graphics Raja Koudari above.
AMD is pushing four pillars to topple these challenges. The first of which is what the company refers to as "latest data latch." Essentially what this does is it uses the GPU to provide the HMD the latest possible image data when rendering to the display. When old data is sent to the headset, users get the feeling of judder when the image is outdated.
AMD is calling its next pillar "Async shaders for VR." This allows for asynchronous time warp and essentially predicts the next pixels to be rendered based on head movement/trajectory. AMD says this will also help minimize latency, stuttering, and judder.
The third pillar pertains to CrossFire. With dual GPU setups (this includes Nvidia cards at the time of this writing), users should expect optimizations for throughput (that is raw power), but dual GPU setups are not currently optimized for latency, which is vital for good VR experiences. As a matter of fact, according to Oculus VR, dual GPU setups currently hurt VR experiences in this regard at the moment. With LiquidVR, not only will AMD cards be optimized for VR, but in a dual-card setup, each GPU can be used to render the feed for each eye.
AMD is calling its fourth pillar, "Direct to Display" rendering. This is a rendering technique that enables direct front buffer rendering to the headset, without having to go through Windows first. It will also be platform agnostic and will be able to work with a variety of HMDs, not just the Oculus Rift.
AMD acknowledges VR has a tough road ahead, but thinks VR is the next frontier of computing and wants to accelerate the process. The company outlined several uses for VR headsets which include: education, medical, big data visualization, training/simulation, entertainment, gaming, virtual-social world, and remote presence.
The company is currently in talks with several HMD manufacturers at the moment, and time will tell if AMD's tools will help and be adopted or will just be another cog in this ever fragmenting world of VR.
What do you think of AMD's VR initiative? Let us know in the comments below.
The Game Developers Conference is in full swing and we are starting to get a glimpse of what is being shown there. One of the more interesting parts of GDC revolves around Valve and what it is showing. Last week, the company said that it would be presenting some new living room devices in addition to its Steam Machines and finalized Steam Controller. Now, the wait is over as Valve has announced the Steam Link, Source 2, and two new technologies for its VR headset.
The Steam Link is a new product from Valve that has been designed to extend a user's Steam experience to any room in the house by streaming Steam content from any PC on the same home network. Steam Machines, Linux PCs, Windows PCs, and Macs will be able to take advantage of Steam Link which will support 1080p at 60Hz with low latency. According to the company, the Steam Link will retail for $49.99 in the US and is also available with the Steam Controller for an additional $49.99.
Valve also revealed two new technologies designed for its recently announced VR headset. There is Lighthouse, a room scale tracking system and then there is a VR input system. "In order to have a high quality VR experience, you need high resolution, high speed tracking," said Valve's Alan Yates. "Lighthouse gives us the ability to do this for an arbitrary number of targets at a low enough BOM cost that it can be incorporated into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices, or mobile devices."
Lighthouse will be free for any hardware manufacturers that might interested in the tech while developer versions of the VR headset will be available this spring and a consumer version available by the end of the year.
But Valve wasn't done. It also announced the Source 2 engine, the successor to its Source engine which has been used for games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source (check out our list of The 10 Best Source Engine Games). The company says that its latest graphics engine has been designed for both professional developers and gamers who might be interested in creating and developing their own games. This means that Valve will make Source 2 available for free to content developers.
VR demos are currently being shown at GDC along with Steam Machines from partners such as Alienware and Falcon Northwest that are scheduled to be released sometime in November. One such Steam Machine demo will involve a demonstration from Epic showing the recently announced Unreal Tournament running on a 4K monitor via a Falcon Northwest Steam Machine.
Which one of these announcements has grabbed your curiosity? Or do you think Valve has bitten off more than it can chew? Let us know in the comments section below!
Microsoft did users a solid when it announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade for Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users for the first year. That also means you can forge ahead with that new build you were planning and not have to have invest in another OS once Windows 10 comes out. Even better, today's top deal happens to be Windows 8.1 64-bit (OEM) for $80 with $3 shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCAPAP33]). So go ahead with that new build today, pick up Windows 8.1 at a discount, and make the jump to Windows 10 at no cost later this year!
There were rumors earlier this year that 4GB versions of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 960 graphics card would show up in March, and it turns out they were right. EVGA has emerged as the first to cross into 4GB territory with its GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC graphics card announced today. Though it's a mid-range card, EVGA is promoting the benefit of higher texture qualities and better 4K resolution gaming performance with the added memory.
To keep the things cool and quiet, EVGA has also outfitted its newest graphics card with its ACX 2.0+ custom cooler.
"The new EVGA ACX 2.0+ cooler brings new features to the award winning EVGA ACX 2.0 cooling technology. A Memory MOSFET Cooling Plate (MMCP) reduces MOSFET temperatures up to 11C, and optimized Straight Heat Pipes (SHP) reduce GPU temperature by 5C," EVGA says. "ACX 2.0+ coolers also feature optimized Swept fan blades, double ball bearings and an extreme low power motor, delivering more air flow with less power, unlocking additional power for the GPU."
EVGA's GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC sports 1,279MHz base and 1,342MHz boost clockspeeds, which are overclocked from the reference design's 1,127MHz base and 1,178MHz boost specifications. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory stays at stock (7,010MHz) on a 128-bit bus.
The card is also notable for its dual-BIOS design. Should something go wrong while tinkering, you can switch to a secondary BIOS with a quick flip of a switch.
No word yet on when the 4GB card will be available or for how much. There is, however, a "Notify Me" button on the card's product page.
In a blog post on Monday, AMD's Raja Koduri waxed nostalgic on Mantle and how it "revolutionized the industry's thinking on low-overhead/high-throughput graphics," among other things. But at the end of what reads like a reluctant death sentence, AMD told developers that if they're interested in Mantle 1.0's functionality, they should focus their attention on DirectX 12 or GLnext.
AMD never outright declares that Mantle is dead, and it even vowed to support its partners that have committed to Mantle in future projects, such as Battlefield Hardline. Likewise, AMD talked about a need for Mantle to take on new capabilities, to "evolve beyond mastery of the draw call," and that it will continue to serve the company as a graphics innovation platform available to select partners with custom needs.
So technically, Mantle isn't dead, it's just largely been rendered expendable with DirectX 12 in the wings. Rather than fight it, AMD is encouraging developers to move one, save for those with very specific needs. Or at least that's how we're reading the blog post.
Koduri also said that AMD no longer plans to release Mantle as a public SDK. Instead, the company is making available Mantle's 450-page programming guide and API reference, which developers will be able to download sometime later this month.
It's a very odd announcement, as Koduri tells developers interested in Mantle to focus on DX12 instead, and then ends things by saying, "Join AMD this week at Game Developer Conference 2015 to see not just the future of Mantle, but the future of PC graphics as well."
We'll have more details later this week as they emerge.
It's been a couple of months since Mushkin first trotted out its Striker line of solid state drives. First announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this year, the Striker line drew interest for its rated speeds, which can reach up to 565MB/s for read and up to 550MB/s for write transfers. Not quite recording breaking, but certainly one of the faster spec'd SATA 6Gbps SSD lines. If you've been waiting for them to be available, your wait is over -- Mushkin's Striker line is now available to purchase online.
Pricing looks pretty fair for the level of performance promised. On Newegg, the drives are currently selling for:
"Striker is aptly named for its purpose: to mark its place as the premier high-performance solid-state drive series," said Brian Flood, Director of Product Development at Mushkin. " The Striker will allow its users to experience highly-accelerated application load times, boot performance, multimedia editing, and general usage."
As a refresher, Mushkin outfits its Striker SSDs with a Phison PS3110-S10 quad-core controller. In addition to the aforementioned performance metrics, the drives also deliver 4K random read and write transactions of up to 90,000 IOPS.
Other features include end-to-end data path protection to thwart errors, SmartECC for an added layer of error correction, SmartRefresh (scans flash during idle and runtime to look for and replace weak blocks), and SmartFlush (proprietary algorithm to minimize DRAM utilization for user data and help reduce write amplification).
Company will offer six models
We interview AMD Graphics CTO Raja Koudari about the company's VR initiative
Source 2 will be free for content developers
Now with twice the GDDR5 memory
Goodbye Mantle, we hardly knew ye
Fast and capacious storage
