General Gaming Article |
- Shenmue 3 Reigns As Biggest Kickstarter Game Ever
- Newegg Daily Deals: Monitors, Monitors, and More Monitors!
- Asus Gives 'Strix' Treatment to Radeon R9 Fury
- Microsoft Addresses Windows 10 Subscription Fears with 10 Year Support Commitment
- AMD Preps Tiny Radeon R9 Nano Graphics Card for August Release
- Email Spam Level Plummets to 12-Year Low
- This Is Mario and Sonic in Unreal Engine 4
- Microsoft Will Force Automatic Updates to Windows 10 Home Users
- Build It: The Anatomy of a Powerhouse
| Shenmue 3 Reigns As Biggest Kickstarter Game Ever Posted: 17 Jul 2015 01:30 PM PDT The Verge reports that Shenmue 3 has become the most funded video game on Kickstarter to date, surpassing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which raised $5,545,991 as of June 11. As of this article, the Shenmue 3 project has just 7 hours to go and has gathered $5,779,046 from 63,856 backers. Yup, we have a new champ, folks. Shenmue 3 is slated for a December 2017 release and is a "true sequel" to the original Shenmue and Shenmue 2 chapters. The game will be offered as physical and digital copies for the PlayStation 4 and Windows PC and will be based on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. "If you were not around in 1999 when Shenmue first came out, or did not have the opportunity to play it if you were, you may have missed this game which has gone on to win the hearts of gamers everywhere, and influenced so many games to come after it," the Kickstarter page reads. The story focuses on Ryo Hazuki who travels to China from Japan to seek out his father's killer. The Kickstarter page reveals that Hazuki studies Kung-fu and will make both friends and enemies during his training. The game is open world, meaning that players can take their time in following the story. Shenmue is even packed full of mini-games to play. "If Shenmue 3 was going to get made, I wanted to make it with the fans. Through Kickstarter, I knew that could happen. Together, with Shenmue fans everywhere, I knew we could build the game that the series deserves," says Yu Suzuki. The first Shenmue game appeared on the Sega Dreamcast back in November 2000 here in the States, followed by Shenmue II in 2002 on the Dreamcast and Xbox consoles. Both were developed in the same timeframe and featured not only an open world, but some fighting action, role-playing and life simulation. According to the Kickstarter page, the new entry will be similar to the first two but feature "new fight mechanics" that will pull gamers into the virtual world like never before. Suzuki aims to not only reward long-time fans of the series, but to draw in a new audience with updated gameplay. The Kickstarter project originally sought out $2 million. However, the stretch goals reach $11 million, which will expand the Bailu Village and add a magic maze. Other goals include expanding the battle system, expanding the Choudu area, adding more mini games, adding a part-time job and more. Image: Ys Net |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Monitors, Monitors, and More Monitors! Posted: 17 Jul 2015 01:12 PM PDT Top Deal: If you're still rocking a bulky CRT monitor, you're doing it wrong. Yes, we know, color accuracy and all that jazz. But you can also get a flat screen display with good color accuracy, along with more pixel real estate than you shake a stick at. To wit, check out today's top deal for a Samsung U32D970Q 31.-inch 4K Monitor for $1,170 with free shipping (normally $1,300 - use coupon code: [EMCAVKV26]). This puppy boats a PLS panel wit ha 3,840x2,160 resolution and nearly a dozen calibration modes. Other Deals: Asus MX259H Black 25-inch 5ms IPS Panel LCD Monitor w/ Built-In Speakers for $203 with free shipping (normally $225 - use coupon code: [EMCAVKV26]) Acer B286HK ymjdpprz Black 28-inch 2ms 4K MHL LCD Monitor w/ Built-in Speakers for $405 with free shipping (normally $450 - use coupon code: [EMCAVKV26]) BenQ XL2420Z 24-inch 3D Gaming LCD Monitor for $297 with free shipping (normally $330 - use coupon code: [EMCAVKV26]) Dell E2414Hr Black 24-inch 5ms Backlight LCD Monitor for $131 with free shipping (normally $145 - use coupon code: [EMCAVKV26 ]) |
| Asus Gives 'Strix' Treatment to Radeon R9 Fury Posted: 17 Jul 2015 12:52 PM PDT A quieter R9 Fury Asus on Friday announced the Strix R9 Fury, and as with other Strix-branded graphics card, this one comes with a custom cooling solution sporting the new DirecutCU III air cooler. According to Asus, its Strix cooler keeps things 30 percent chillier than reference while being up to three times quieter. The Strix cooler features two 10mm heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU. It also has three fans with a new wing-blade design that supposedly offers a 105 percent improvement compared to traditional fan blades. AMD's Radeon R9 Fury has 3,584 shader processors, 224 texture units, 64 ROPs, and 4GB of HBM memory. The Strix model has an OC mode that gooses the GPU 1,020MHz, compared to up to 1,000MHz for reference cards. While nothing is guaranteed, you can probably push the card further. In addition to superior cooling, it has a 12-phase power design (up from 8-phase on reference cards) and high quality "Super Ally Power II" components to reduce power loss, decrease buzzing under load, and lower temps. Asus didn't say how much the Strix R9 Fury costs or when it will be available to purchase, the latter of which is a big question mark for R9 Fury in general -- R9 Fury of any make and model are currently hard to find. |
| Microsoft Addresses Windows 10 Subscription Fears with 10 Year Support Commitment Posted: 17 Jul 2015 12:27 PM PDT A decade of support As close as we are to the release of Windows 10, there are still some questions that remain. Microsoft seems to have answered one of the biggest ones by today officially committing to support Windows 10 for the next 10 years. The Redmond software giant updated its support lifecycle page to reflect that mainstream support for Windows 10 will run until October 13, 2020, with an extended support phase that lasts until October 14, 2025. Microsoft's support policy should put to rest fears that it would begin charging users a subscription fee to use Windows 10. That was the big "gotcha" some people were bracing for when it was first announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users for the first year. However, all that really meant was that qualified users who didn't upgrade for free during the first year, they'd have to buy a Windows 10 license, pre-orders for which are already being taken at places like Newegg and Amazon. Nevertheless, there was still concern that the transition to a Windows as a Service (WaaS) would one day mean a subscription cost, much like Office 365. Concerns were exacerbated when Microsoft's Tyer Myerson said that "once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device at no charge." The "supported lifetime" disclaimer gave Microsoft an out if it wanted to suddenly charge a subscription. However, by committing to support the OS for 10 years, it seems like a subscription fee is something users will not need to worry about in the immediate future. At the same time, there is a caveat -- users must keep their devices supported. "Updates are cumulative, with each update built upon all of the updates that preceded it. A device needs to install the latest update to remain supported," Microsoft states in fine print. "Updates may include new features, fixes (security and/or non-security), or a combination of both. Not all features in an update will work on all devices. A device may not be able to receive updates if the device hardware is incompatible, lacking current drivers, or otherwise outside of the Original Equipment Manufacturer's ('OEM') support period. Update availability may vary, for example by country, region, network connectivity, mobile operator (e.g., for cellular-capable devices), or hardware capabilities (including, e.g., free disk space)." In related news, for better or worse Windows 10 Home users will not be able to disable automatic updates. Windows 10 Pro users will have up to 8 months to apply updates, after which they either need to install them or they won't receive any future ones. |
| AMD Preps Tiny Radeon R9 Nano Graphics Card for August Release Posted: 17 Jul 2015 10:27 AM PDT A little graphics card with big performance Size doesn't matter when it comes to graphics cards, hence why we've seen some powerful options for mini ITX form factor systems. And come August, AMD will release its Radeon R9 Nano, yet another option in the mini ITX sector. AMD confirmed the August launch during an earnings call for its second quarter of fiscal of 2015, though the chip designer didn't offer up a specific date. "Fury just launched, actually this week, and we will be launching Nano in the August timeframe," said AMD CEO Lisa Su. The Radeon R9 Nano is another part that will take advantage of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). It will measure just six inches long, which is even shorter than the Fury X at 7.64 inches. But unlike the flagship Fury X, the R9 Nano won't require (or come with) a liquid cooling setup. According to WCCFTech and what are purported to be leaked slides from AMD, the R9 Nano will be based on Fiji XT with twice the performance per watt and twice the performance density of AMD's prior top-end Radeon R9 290X. Other rumored specs include 16 render backends for a total of 64 ROPs, 4,096 stream processors, and 256 texture mapping units. The GPU will be clocked around 890MHz while the and the 4GB of HBM memory will run at 500MHz on a 4,096-bit bus. What that all translates into is a smaller and slower clocked version of Fury X that you can stuff into a mini ITX system. In fact, if the rumored specs are anywhere near accurate, the R9 Nano will easily be the fastest mini ITX graphics solution available. There's no info yet on pricing, though as a point of reference, the Fury X launched at $649. |
| Email Spam Level Plummets to 12-Year Low Posted: 17 Jul 2015 09:38 AM PDT Spam Spam Spam Humbug First of all, award yourself 1,000 geek cred points if you got the "spam spam spam humbug" reference without Googling (or Binging or DuckDuckGoing or whatever). However, that's not the story here. The real point of focus is that spam is now at its lowest level over a decade, according to security outfit Symantec. In its June 2015 Intelligence Report (PDF), Symantec notes that the rate of spam has dropped to 49.7 percent. The last time Symantec recorded a spam rate below 50 percent was September...2003! This is a big deal, and not just because spam is annoying (which it most definitely is), but also due to the security threat unwanted emails pose. Spam is a popular vehicle for delivering malware, both by way of infected attachments and URLs. So, it's not a surprise that Symantec also noticed a decline in phishing attempts. "Phishing rates and email-based malware were also down this month. However, there were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June, up from 44.5 million pieces of malware created in May and 29.2 million in April," Symantec said. "This increase in activity lends more evidence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape." We'll probably never see the end of spam altogether, and being able to celebrate that just less than half of all email is junk is pretty telling. At the same time, it's also becoming more manageable. According to Google, its Gmail service thwarts 99.9 percent of all spam, and the company isn't stopping there. Google recently outlined some new ways it plans on reducing spam even further, including technological upgrades. |
| This Is Mario and Sonic in Unreal Engine 4 Posted: 17 Jul 2015 09:16 AM PDT Back in March 2015, Epic Games announced that it was dropping the $19 per month subscription fee for Unreal Engine 4 and making the software free for anyone to use. The catch is that when customers ship a game or application, Epic will receive a small 5 percent royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 "per product, per quarter." Thus, Epic Games will only rake in money if the developer makes money. "Our goal is to give you absolutely everything, so that you can do anything and be in control of your schedule and your destiny," Tim Sweeney said. "Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the Marketplace, or build it yourself – and then share it with others." Recently several videos have popped up on YouTube showing popular video icons in Unreal Engine 4. The first is Aryoksini who uploaded an awesome video of Mario. "All the environment assets were taken from the Unreal marketplace, all the character actions were scripted using blueprints only, all animations were re-created from scratch as well as the PBR ready textures," the caption reads. The Mario video is astonishingly beautiful, showing what our favorite plumber could look like in a next-generation game using the popular engine. The video throws Mario in a number of scenarios ranging from a castle interior to the cartoony world Mario has saved over and over to real-world settings such as a kitchen. All the while he's collecting coins and jumping about in his usual trademark fashion. In addition to Mario, CryZENx took to YouTube to upload a video featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. The popular SEGA icon is placed inside Unreal Engine 4's Kite demo, which contains "miles" of green hills. Like Mario, the hedgehog stays true to the official mascot, blazing through rolling plains of grass and jumping at amazing heights. Not only does the demo show what Sonic will look like, but what Unreal Engine 4 can do, and it's astonishing. For more information about obtaining Unreal Engine 4, head here. |
| Microsoft Will Force Automatic Updates to Windows 10 Home Users Posted: 17 Jul 2015 08:58 AM PDT Microsoft's way or the highway If you're planning to install Windows 10, be aware that you must first agree to receive automatic updates from the mothership. Or at least that's a requirement that's currently laid out in the end user license agreement (EULA) as currently constructed, which was released with the Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 10240. Here's what the pertinent section says about it: The Software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice. It's the first build of Windows 10 to make automatic updates a requirement for Home users, whereas previous versions let you put them off. Might the policy change? That depends on the public outcry, but as it stands now, Microsoft is planning to make the above wording part of the official EULA. "The license terms for Windows 10 require automatic updates be enabled as part of keeping our customers secure and delivering Windows as a service," Microsoft told Recode. It will be a little different for Windows 10 Pro users, who will have up to 8 months to put off updating. If they still haven't updated after 8 months, no future updates will available. "Customers who are embracing Current Branch for Business do need to consume that feature update within the allotted time period of approximately eight months or they will not be able to see and consume the next security update," said Helen Marmetz, Microsoft's Senior Product Marketing Manager, according to Neowin. There's a logical reason for forcing automatic updates on Home users. With Windows 10, Microsoft is transitioning to a Windows as a Service (Waas) model, which means a more steady stream of minor updates rather than rolling out large Service Packs and brand new versions of Windows every so often. However, just because it's logical doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. Though relatively infrequent, Windows updates have been known to bork systems in the past, which is one reason why some users put off installing them right away. It's an annoyance at best, and at worst, a major headache for users on a mission critical machine. Plus they could bring about changes that users don't want, like removing features. What's your opinion on this? Is forcing automatic updates a non-issue, a good idea, or a disaster in the making? |
| Build It: The Anatomy of a Powerhouse Posted: 17 Jul 2015 12:00 AM PDT This article was published in the February 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here. So, an eight-core Intel CPU, three video cards, and a new Samsung SSD walk into a bar…Length of Time 2-4 Hours | Difficulty: Medium The MissionOver the course of a year, hardware comes into the Maximum PC lair in trickles and deluges. We also end up stockpiling things we don't have an ideal use for. This month, a convergence of timing and opportunity leads us to this point: something kind of ridiculous, but also very good-looking and beefy. In other words, perfect Maximum PC material. We try to do different kinds of systems for a variety of budgets, but sometimes it's just more entertaining to put dollar signs aside and assemble the craziest Voltron we have the parts for. One piece of gear—the CPU cooler—is new enough to us that we haven't reviewed it before, while the Samsung 850 EVO SSD is fresh in the lab. In fact, the drive was still under NDA (non-disclosure agreement) as we were putting this system together. That means we might have gotten in trouble if we'd even publicly confirmed its existence. Now we can pull back the curtains. If You Build It, They Will ComeWe've been meaning to put the Corsair 760T full-tower case to use for some time. We've had it long enough that Corsair has produced the 780T as an evolution of it (we'll be getting our grubby hands on that one soon). This build will make ample use of a full-tower's dimensions, and the 760T has generous options for airflow. We've done two 980 video cards already, but not three. Powering them is a monster 1,600-watt EVGA power supply we've repurposed from the Dream Machine. It's a lot more juice than this system will ever need, even if we were to add a fourth GTX 980 and overclock everything to the hilt. But it seemed a shame for such fine equipment to go unused. We've built for an eight-core Intel Haswell-E CPU before, but not actually used the full-blown eight-core job. We used 6TB hard drives in the Dream Machine, but not in a real-world build. And this is the first time we've wrangled the Cooler Master Nepton 240M CPU cooler and the Samsung 850 EVO SSD. We also have a motherboard from ASRock, which doesn't get a lot of representation at the premium tier. There's also 32GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 RAM in the mix. But if this all sounds complicated, it's really more like LEGO parts than rocket science. The most time-consuming element is just giving the system a clean look after putting this much gear inside. 1. You Can Only Hope to Contain ItLike the Corsair Obsidian 750D, the 760T has a magnetized cover on the top of the case. This time, it's hard plastic instead of a mesh. Since we're exhausting air and not pulling it in, the lower airflow isn't a big deal, and this style is a bit cooler-looking. The top of the 760T takes 280mm and 360mm radiators, as well. If you're into serious overclocking, then a CPU the size of the Core i7-5960X would benefit from larger rads. As its name implies, our Nepton 240M cooler uses a 240mm rad, which is fine for less ambitious octo-core overclocking. However, if you want to install your fans on the underside of the rad, the 760T uses rubber grommets for which the Nepton's mounting screws are too short. You can get a variety of machine screws at your local hardware store. 2. Becoming UnhingedThis next shot demonstrates a couple of interesting properties. The main one is the 760T's side panel. It's actually a swing-out door with a levered handle, like on the Thermaltake Level 10 GT. When it's rotated this far out, you can lift it off its hinge and set it aside. No screws to deal with. We've also removed one 3.5-inch drive cage and mounted the other one right below the 5.25 drive bay. We did that mostly just to see what it looks like, but also to help visualize the placement of custom water cooling gear like reservoirs and pumps. Our SSD is secretly mounted behind the drive cage, on the same plane as the motherboard. 3. Down UnderLooking at the underside of the case, we have a set of six screws holding down the two drive cages. Two screws hold down the cage that's closest to the front of the case. It feels secure despite being half as many as we'd like, and you don't need to remove the case's front foot to access the screws holding down the cage. Removing the four-screw cage reveals a 120mm fan mount. This is ideal for intake, but you'll have to keep an eye on dust or add your own filter. To the right of that is the intake for the power supply, which comes with a slide-out filter. 4. Getting In My GrillThe front of the case has two 140mm fans pre-installed. The blades are made of clear plastic, presumably to let custom lighting shine through better. The case comes with a two-speed fan controller pre-installed, but we chose to skip it when wiring things up, in favor of testing the fan headers on the motherboard. We'd recommend a fan cable extension or two, because the cables on the front fans are not especially long. In contrast to the 750D, the fan grill on the 760T can be removed completely, making for easier access. In both cases, the grill snaps in and out easily. No screws or yanking required. If you remove the other 3.5 drive cage (or mount it over the 120mm fan on the bottom of the case) you could squeeze in a 240mm radiator, if you wanted. The 780T has even more room up front, enough to comfortably accommodate a 280mm radiator. 5. Building BridgesOne of the fun things about building with Nvidia cards is their SLI bridges. This fancy job comes courtesy of EVGA, and its design matches that of our cards, which use the "reference" design of the base model. At 30 bucks, the bridge is not cheap. But when this machine is powered on, the logo lights up green to match the lighting of the letters on the cards. The top section of the bridge is just barely short enough to wedge in underneath the case's pre-installed 140mm exhaust fan. It's one of the tightest clearances we've dealt with. You can flip it around and get a lot more space, but then the Nvidia logo is upside-down, which irks us. To get the GTX 980s installed this close together, by the way, you need to unscrew a raised plate near the cable connectors on the other end. 6. Tangles and DanglesWith three video cards, five fans, and two storage devices, there's a lot of cabling. We switched to the kit of individually sleeved cables to lend some flexibility, but we'd have liked to have made more adjustments, if we'd had time. The case comes with four 2.5-inch trays, but we removed all but one to make room. Since we didn't wire up the fan controller, we fed its cables back, tucking them into the empty 5.25-inch drive bay. The 8-pin PCI Express cables have two of their six pins on a separate cable, so we snaked the spares up with the fan controller cables. (The reference GTX 980 needs only 6-pin cables.) The cable connecting the front USB 2.0 ports to the mobo was just long enough to reach. You can buy extension cables online. 1.) The heatpipes on the mobo's heatsinks boost the heat the voltage regulators can handle, which helps with overclocks. 2.) There's enough clearance above the motherboard to fit a 38mm radiator, rather than the standard 25mm kind. 3.) Like Intel's X79 motherboards, the X99 version has eight ram slots and can take up to 128gB of ddr4 (but no DDR3). 4.) This power supply has so many plugs to choose from that we can connect all of these while leaving enough space to install a fan below. The Three MusketeersOne of the advantages of working with an X79 or X99 system is its support of more than 16 PCIe lanes. The i7-5960X can wrangle a whopping 40 lanes, in fact. For a pair of high-end video cards, 16 lanes is enough, but just. With the rise of 4K, extra lanes are welcome. Even the best GPUs need to whip out the buddy system to handle a resolution that high. With the GTX 980s, our gaming performance was 10–20 percent better than the system we assembled for the May 2014 issue that had three GTX 780s and a hex-core i7-4960K. This month's system averaged 110fps in Tomb Raider, at 4K, with everything but antialiasing enabled, while the other system didn't hit 100. Hitman: Absolution also recognized all three cards, so we averaged about 100fps there. The case's dimensions are also handy when wrangling this much hardware. Despite these cards being over 10-inches long, we didn't need to remove any drive cages to fit them in. And despite all that cabling, there's plenty of space behind the motherboard. Sometimes, after you're done hooking up, you need to basically squish the side panel down until you can secure it. Here, we needed only a gentle push. Now, the i7-5960X has a base clock of 3GHz, so we're never going to hit 5GHz like we did with X79. But because of Haswell's higher performance, plus the extra cores, multithreaded performance is hugely better. We got this rig up to 4GHz, very respectable for a 240mm closed-loop liquid cooler juggling up to 16 CPU threads. When those are all fully engaged, this chip will trounce 12-thread CPUs that reach 5GHz. For pure gaming, an i7-5960X is a poor choice, but highly threaded tasks like video encoding feast on power like this. Ultimately, we'd recommend a custom cooling loop to get the most out of eight cores. You'd probably want a roomier SSD, too. We used the 850 EVO because it's new and interesting. |
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