General Gaming Article |
- Newegg Daily Deals: 2 x WD Red 6TB HDDs, Asus 23.8-Inch Monitor, and More!
- Intel's Blazing Fast DC P3608 Series SSDs Read Data at 5GB/s
- Nvidia GeForce WHQL 355.98 Driver Now Available
- G.Skill Launches Ripjaws MX780 RGB Gaming Mouse
- Asetek Wins Another Round of Litigation Against Cooler Master
- Toshiba Refreshes Chromebook 2 with Broadwell and Backlit Keyboard
- Microsoft Releases Office 2016 with Co-Authoring Capability
- SSD Performance: Resetting the Benchmarks
| Newegg Daily Deals: 2 x WD Red 6TB HDDs, Asus 23.8-Inch Monitor, and More! Posted: 23 Sep 2015 02:38 PM PDT Top Deal: Congratulations, you recognized the importance of backing up your data and picked up a NAS box! It sure is pretty, isn't it? Look at it sitting there, just dutifully waiting to do the one thing it was born to do, which is archive your data. There's only one small problem -- it can't get to work until you fill it with storage drives. The solution? Today's top deal for not one, but TWO WD Red WD60EFRX 6TB 3.5-Inch Hard Drives for $470 with free shipping (normally $498). That's a total of 12TB. Each drive boasts 64MB of cache, a SATA 6Gbps interface, and NAS optimized technology for added reliability. Other Deals: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016 Product Key Card - 1 PC for $150 with free shipping (normally $150) Asus VN248H-P Black 23.8-inch 5ms Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS for $150 with free shipping (normally $170 - use coupon code: [EMCAXNN24]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Samsung 850 Evo 2.5-inch 1TB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $330 with free shipping (normally $370 - use coupon code: [EMCAXNN25]) EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 Superclocked Video Card for $320 with free shipping (normally $320; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Intel's Blazing Fast DC P3608 Series SSDs Read Data at 5GB/s Posted: 23 Sep 2015 11:50 AM PDT Intel's most powerful SSD line yetThe key to offering increasingly fast solid state drive options has been tapping into the power of the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) interface. Samsung did it with its gum-stick sized 950 Pro SSDs announced yesterday, and Intel continues to do it, this time with its new DC P3608 Series. These drives are intended for data centers. They're also the fastest SSDs Intel has released to date -- when paired with multi-core Xeon processors, Intel says the unique NVMe dual controller architecture on this line allows them to evenly distribute I/O across the PCI-Express 3.0 x8 link to obtain real-world transfers topping 5,000MB per second, along with up to 850,000 random read IOPS. Write speeds aren't quite as fast, though at up to 2,600MB/s, they're nothing to scoff at. Here's a look at how performance breaks down for each of the 1.6TB, 3.2TB, and 4TB drive options: Since the new drives are intended for data centers, they're only available in the half-height, half-length, low-profile add-in card form factor, which is common in the industry. And at these capacities, it also allows Intel to offer twice the storage in the same physical volume versus its DC P3600 Series. Intel envisions its new SSDs finding a home in some of the world's largest supercomputers where they can provide real-time analytics and High Performance Computing (HPC) chores. In terms of the latter, Intel says a single node can achieve up to 6GB/s of burst write performance when using two DC P3608 Series SSDs. The buzzkill for home consumers is that these drives aren't destined for gaming machines. However, they do show where the market is headed, which is pretty exciting -- we've come a long way since complaining about storage being the bottleneck of system performance. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Nvidia GeForce WHQL 355.98 Driver Now Available Posted: 23 Sep 2015 09:52 AM PDT Best gaming experience for Killing Floor 2 Nvidia has a new WHQL-certified driver available for users running GeForce brand graphics, version 355.98. According to Nvidia, this is the driver you want if you plan to play Killing Floor 2. "This new GeForce Game Ready driver ensures you'll have the best possible gaming experience in Killing Floor 2. This driver is also aligned with the new flagship gaming GPU for notebooks, the GeForce GTX 980. In addition, this Game Ready driver also includes updated features and functionality for the GameWorks VR software development kit (SDK)," Nvidia states in the release notes (PDF). Nvidia didn't add any SLI or 3D profiles this time around, though it did manage to fix a few issues across Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, and Vista. Some of the more notable issues fixed include:
There are several open issues that the latest driver doesn't fix, such as tearing and corruption when playing VR content while changing display resolutions on a non-VR display or after opening several VR applications in succession. You can download the new driver here. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| G.Skill Launches Ripjaws MX780 RGB Gaming Mouse Posted: 23 Sep 2015 09:34 AM PDT A colorful rodent If you followed our coverage from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, then you might recall G.Skill's MX780 RGB gaming mouse. G.Skill showed it off alongside several other gaming gear and we just received word today that it's now available to purchase. The MX780 RGB has a cyborg look to it and an ambidextrous design so both left- and right-handed gamers can use it. Interchangeable side grips are supposed to add comfort points to the rodent. Though it's ambidextrous in design, G.Skill doesn't expect its newest mouse to feel the same for every gamer. With that in mind, it built in a height adjustable palm rest to support different grip styles. You can also adjust the weight. The mouse is constructed on a solid aluminum base and comes with additional 4.5-gram weights, which optionally install inside the side grip on each side. The MX780 RGB has eight programmable buttons, Omron switches rated for 20 million clicks, 8,200 DPI Avago laser sensor, 512KB of onboard memory to store up to five profiles, and four-zone RGB lighting. You can find the Ripjaws MX780 RGB on Newegg for $60. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Asetek Wins Another Round of Litigation Against Cooler Master Posted: 23 Sep 2015 08:43 AM PDT Keeping your cool in court Asetek, a CPU and GPU cooling company, has won another legal victory against Cooler Master's CMI subsidiary. It's the second win for Asetek in less than two years. A bit of background information is in order. Back in January 2013, Asetek filed a lawsuit against CMI USA, a subsidiary of Cooler Master, claiming that the company infringed on two of its patents. Asetek sought a cease and desist order on the sale of Cooler Master's Seidon 120M, 120XL ,and 240M liquid cooling systems on the basis that the pumps were too similar to its own design. In late 2014, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sided with Asetek and awarded the company $404,841, which amounted to a 14.5 percent royalty rate for infringing sales dating back to 2012. The cease and desist request was to be determined at a later date. Fast forward to today and Asetek is once again on the winning side of this legal dispute. In a post trial motion, CMI demanded a judgement as a matter of law, which is a motion claiming the opposing party lacks sufficient evidence to reasonably support its case, and requested a new trial. The court denied CMI's demands and instead issued the injunction that Asetek wanted. CMI and Cooler Master are now barred from selling "certain infringing products into the United States," which presumably include the aforementioned coolers. In addition, a judge increased Asetek's damages award by raising the royalty rate to 25.375 percent. The enhanced royalty applies to CMI's revenues for sales of infringing products made since January 1, 2015. This is good news for Asetek, though the legal battle might not be over -- Asetek's notes that the case can be appealed. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Toshiba Refreshes Chromebook 2 with Broadwell and Backlit Keyboard Posted: 23 Sep 2015 06:00 AM PDT Don't call it Chromebook 3 Toshiba is adding new hardware to its Chromebook 2 laptop, though not so much that it would warrant calling it Chromebook 3. More specifically, the Chromebook 2 is getting 5th Generation Intel Core i3 and Celeron processor options, otherwise known as Broadwell, and an all-new LED backlit keyboard. The Chromebook 2 wields a 13.3-inch Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) IPS display that Toshiba squeezed into a 12-inch chassis for added portability points. Towards that end, it checks in at just 2.9 pounds and can last up to 8.5 hours on a single charge, according to Toshiba. Chromebook 2 models will come with up to 4GB of RAM (not user upgradeable), 802.11ac Wi-Fi, USB 3.0 and 2.0 connectivity (one each), HDMI output, a SD card slot, and a security lock slot. Customers will also receive 100GB of Google Drive storage, 90 days of unlimited music streaming on Google Play, 12 in-air passes for Gogo Internet, and other goodies yet to be announced. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to new Chromebook models now that Windows-based laptops have come down in price. Chromebooks have never been able to penetrate the general home consumer market and instead have found some success in education. The emergence of sub $300 and $200 Windows laptops could steal back some of that market share. Toshiba's refreshed Chromebook 2 models will be available in October priced at $330 for the Celeron system and $430 for the Core i3 version. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Microsoft Releases Office 2016 with Co-Authoring Capability Posted: 23 Sep 2015 05:00 AM PDT Getting acclimated to a new Office In what could be the most important update ever to Microsoft's popular productivity suite, Office 2016 for Windows is now available, Microsoft announced on Tuesday. The new Office suite puts a much bigger emphasis on collaboration than ever before. One of the key ways it does that is through real-time co-authoring, which is now built directly into Microsoft's native apps (real-time co-authoring has been available in Microsoft's web apps since 2013). Now when another project participant makes an update in Word, you'll see what's being written as it happens. To go along with co-authoring support, Skype for Business is now available in the client apps. This allows you to IM, screen share, talk, or video chat right within your docs. You can also start a real-time co-authoring session from any conversation or meeting. Another feature geared towards collaboration is Office 365 Groups. It's available as part of Outlook 2015 and in a new Outlook Groups app on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Each group includes a shared inbox, calendar, cloud storage, and a shared OneNote notebook. These are just some of the many new features included in Microsoft's standalone productivity suite. Some of them are specific to the enterprise segment, including built-in Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Multifactor Authentication. On a related note, Microsoft also released Office 2016 for Mac as a standalone release. Previously this was only available to Office 365 customers. Finally, Microsoft is promising ongoing value for Office 365 subscribers. "Going forward, Office 365 customers will now enjoy new features and capabilities delivered continuously in the Office desktop applications as part of their subscription. It's a new day for our desktop apps," Microsoft said. A one-time purchase of Office Home and Student 2016 runs $150. If you're an Office 365 Home ($10/month) or Personal ($7/month) subscriber, you can install Office 2016 apps at no additional cost. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| SSD Performance: Resetting the Benchmarks Posted: 23 Sep 2015 12:00 AM PDT Just how fast is that SSD?Every now and again, resetting the benchmark charts is necessary. Now is such a time, for several reasons. First, we have a new testbed (Skylake) that enables potentially higher performance, particularly for M.2 PCIe drives. Second, some of the benchmarks we were using have gotten a bit long in the tooth and needed an update. We want to have a good selection of both drives and benchmarks for use in future reviews, so we've wiped the slates clean and will have several SSD reviews over the coming weeks. First things first, let's talk about our SSD test bed. Initially, we had intended to use the same LGA2011-3 test bed that we use for graphics cards reviews, but then we ran into a problem. The Gigabyte X99-UDH4 motherboard has NVMe support and an M.2 slot, but the M.2 slot only gets x2 PCIe 2.0 lanes and bandwidth. That puts the brakes on faster M.2 drives, capping throughput at less than 1000MB/s. What's the point in splurging on a high-end M.2 NVMe drive if you can't even utilize its potential? With Skylake having recently launched, we had a second option: move to a Z170 motherboard. The ASUS Z170-A is more of a mainstream offering, but it does support an M.2 slot with x4 PCIe 3.0 connectivity, which is enough for current SSDs. With that in mind, here's our new SSD test system:
One of the key goals is to provide a selection of reference points. To that end, we've selected three of the top performing options. Setting the high water mark, the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB is one of the first NVMe enabled drives you can buy. There's a drawback in that you have to use a PCIe slot (x4 PCIe 3.0 for maximum performance), but if you have the space, it will provide all the performance you need from your storage subsystem. The reality, of course, is that most users are still on SATA, and many are running RAID 0 as a way of improving throughput and/or capacity while keeping costs down. The 2x250GB Samsung 850 EVO provides a great reference point as a "bang for the buck" solution, with a price currently sitting south of $200. That's a far cry from the $439 you'll pay for the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro, which is arguably the fastest SATA drive you can currently buy, though it's also half the capacity. Note also that a single 500GB 850 EVO only costs $162, so you're paying a bit extra for RAID 0—though two 500GB drives actually cost less than a single 1TB drive. For those that want a single high-capacity SSD, our final baseline SSD reference point is the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB. Sporting Samsung's V-NAND and with a high-performance controller, the 850 Pro remains the fastest SATA drive across a broad range of benchmarks. It also has a high endurance rating, roughly 6,000 Program/Erase cycles, which is far more than the TLC drives that are becoming increasingly common. The rest of the system is more than enough to ensure there are no other bottlenecks for storage, though in some cases they're obviously overkill. (Hello, Mr. 850W PSU!) The be quiet! case, CPU cooler, and power supply keep noise levels down, and we use the same system for other testing at times, so having the option of running a GPU or two is important. Meet the BenchmarksOur benchmarks include a mix of real-world and synthetic testing. Each test is run multiple times, ensuring we have repeatable results. In many instances, the first run may show higher (or lower) performance, but subsequent testing will usually show results within a narrow range. Here's what we're using along with the settings for each: The latest version of AS SSD (1.8.5636.37293) provides theoretical sequential and random transfer rates, and typically represents the best-case and worst-case performance you'll see from an SSD. We use 10GB of data for the sequential and 4K-64 thread results and 1GB for the 4K-single thread results. We looked at several other similar pieces of software, specifically ATTO 3.05 and CrystalDiskMark 4.1.0, but the data provided was largely redundant with AS SSD. IOmeter is our second theoretical benchmark, again looking at sequential and random transfer rates. We run 10 tests of mixed read/write performance, from 100 percent read/0 percent write to 0 percent read/100 percent write in 25 percent increments. We do this for both 100 percent sequential and 100 percent random IO; we then average (technically, we use the geometric mean so that all results are given equal weight) the five test runs for sequential and random performance to give an aggregate value. The big difference with IOmeter is that each test is run for five minutes, which means the SSDs get a bigger workout than the usual 10–30 second load that you'll see from AS SSD and similar utilities (25 minutes of total testing per average score). Some drives are able to maintain a high transfer rate for shorter periods of time, and this should stress the hardware enough to give a realistic measurement of sustained performance. For the "real world", we have a file copy test. This test copies just shy of 20GB of data (the contents of our Steam Batman: Arkham Origins folder) from one folder on the drive to another folder, so the workload is split 50/50 between reads and writes. Since this test uses core Windows functionality, the results are likely to differ from the theoretical testing the other benchmarks provide. We use Windows PowerShell to perform the copy and time how long it takes for the copy to complete; we then calculate the MB/s based on the amount of data copied. Finally, we have PCMark 8's Storage test, with two metrics: the overall Storage score, as well as the Storage Bandwidth score. Rather than a pure test of storage performance, PCMark 8 uses traces of real-world applications and runs these on the test drive. What's interesting to note with PCMark 8 Storage is that even substantially faster drives tend to deliver diminishing returns. We'll see this as significantly higher bandwidth results but only marginally higher overall scores. For most users, PCMark 8 Storage is a good representation of the sort of performance you will actually get from your device. Rarely are desktop users maxing out transfer rates on an SSD for one minute, let alone several minutes; instead, most applications will hit the storage hard for a few seconds and then wait on the user. For example, consider a game where loading a level takes 5–15 seconds, followed by the user playing that level for long periods of time; a fast SSD might load a few seconds quicker than a slow drive, but after the initial work, the SSD goes on siesta. If AS SSD is a best-case result, the PCMark 8 score is more of a worst-case result. What's interesting is that the bandwidth result of PCMark 8 Storage matches up pretty well with our other tests, again illustrating how faster storage only gets you so far (unless you're doing a lot of file copying). Setting the StageWith the benchmarks and hardware established, here's what our initial testing results look like. This is a starting point, and while the three drive configurations listed here will remain, we will include additional drives as we go forward with testing and reviews. We've gone ahead and highlighted the Intel SSD 750 NVMe drive in our charts; it should come as little surprise that this is the drive to beat right now when it comes to flat-out smoking storage performance. Our reviews of newer SSDs will generally fall into one of four categories: contending with the SSD 750, somewhere between the 850 Pro and the SSD 750, somewhat close to the 850 Pro, or significantly slower than the 850 Pro. There's plenty of information to cover, so let's quickly run through each benchmark and discuss what the results mean. First off, the AS SSD sequential throughput is generally the best-case result; accessing large files will generally correlate with these figures. Sequential read speeds are quite a bit higher than sequential write speeds, as writing data to NAND is a more involved process. The next two results are for purely random file accesses, but in this case AS SSD is only using a queue depth of one (a single thread); it's about as bad as it can get, and the throughput reflects this. Even the mighty SSD 750 only musters 36MB/s, and it's effectively tied with the EVO 850 RAID 0 for read speeds; write speeds, on the other hand, still heavily favor the robust controller in the Intel drive. Last up for AS SSD, we have random IO again, but this time with a queue depth of 64 (64 threads). This gives the drives lots of data to deal with and the controllers can usually find parallel accesses that allow them to optimize performance. Better controllers and faster NAND help here, and RAID 0 can also boost throughput. It's worth pointing out, however, that most consumer workloads will never come anywhere near a queue depth of 64; in fact, even a queue depth of 5-10 is uncommon except for short bursts. Next up, IOmeter shows some similar results to AS SSD, but throughput drops off quite a bit due to the amount of data that's accessed over the length of the test. Consider that the 850 Pro 1TB averages over 500MB/s reads and writes for 25 minutes; that's about 750GB of data being accessed, and roughly 375GB of writes. Hard drives can actually generate some decent numbers in the sequential tests, and we measured 94MB/s write on a Seagate 3TD drive. It's the random access patterns where SSDs are often a couple of orders of magnitude (100x) faster than hard drives; the same Seagate drive scored a dismal 0.50MB/s in our random testing. If you're worried about burning through all of an SSD's program/erase cycles, don't be. The 850 Pro 1TB is rated for roughly 6000TB of writes. Even with 5X write amplification (which is normally under 2X in client workloads), you could still write over 500GB of data per day for five years without having the drive go kaput. In a more realistic scenario, you could write 1.5TB of data every day for five years without running into problems, or if you're like a typical client user and you're pushing less than 100GB of writes per day, it would take 82 years to burn through the P/E cycles on the NAND. Needless to say, it's far more likely some other element on the SSD would give out first, and in 10 years the 850 Pro will be a dinosaur even if it's still running. With all of the massive throughput results so far, you might think copying files on an SSD would show similar results. We're dealing with nearly 9000 files totaling 20GB, however, and many of these are smaller files. This leads to a real-world scenario where performance falls somewhere between the pure sequential and pure random performance. Intel's NVMe drive still wins out by a large margin, followed by the RAID 0 850 EVO, then the solo 850 Pro. Don't jump to conclusions about the 850 Pro being outclassed, however—we're looking at three of the fastest SSD storage options currently available; there are plenty of SSDs that don't do very well in these tests. If you want a fun comparison, running this same file copy test on a 3TB Seagate hard drive resulted in throughput of 67MB/s; it's still a mostly sequential IO test, so the HDD isn't absolutely terrible, but it definitely feels slow compared to a good SSD. Last but not least, PCMark 8 Storage shows two very conflicting views. In terms of pure bandwidth (throughput), the numbers are similar to our file copy test. This is what happens when the bottleneck is your storage subsystem. But if you're doing lots of other things, which is how most people use their PCs, the overall PCMark 8 Storage score reflects this. The SSD 750 delivers 80 percent higher throughput compared to a single 850 Pro, but in the overall Score metric it's only 1.6 percent faster. This is why, for many users, going out and spending a lot of money on the fastest SSDs isn't really necessary. If you're just surfing the Internet, playing some games, and doing everyday Microsoft Office work, an SSD will still feel a lot snappier than a hard drive… but even a slow SSD will feel about the same as the fastest SSD. Storage MattersWith the stage now set, we're ready to start posting new SSD reviews. Ideally, we love the performance offered by NVMe drives, and we're certainly looking forward to Intel and Micron's XPoint Technology. They've told us that we should see consumer and enterprise class SSDs using XPoint in 2016, which is awesome… but we'll believe it when we see it. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of users, the cost of current NVMe drives is very high, plus you need a compatible motherboard. That means SATA is still a viable option, and in many cases it may simply be the best solution. Do you want a 1.2TB Intel SSD 750 taking up a PCIe slot, or would you rather save $600 and give up a bit of capacity and a moderate amount of real-world performance by going with a 1TB 850 Pro? Or save an additional $100 and move to the 1TB 850 EVO? Our benchmarks also show that sticking two SSDs together in RAID 0 can definitely improve performance over a single drive, so if you're not space constrained that's a compelling alternative to expensive hardware. As we go forward with SSD reviews, these drives are the heavyweights that you need to beat. If you make an NVMe drive that costs as much as the Intel SSD 750, it needs to at least equal it on performance and features. Alternatively, less expensive NVMe offerings that clearly beat SATA drives but may not reach the top of the charts are worth considering. On the SATA side of things, the Samsung 850 Pro and 850 EVO deliver great performance, with the EVO priced extremely competitively. Drives either need to beat Samsung on price, features, and/or performance to stand a chance. Given the newness of NVMe and M.2 drives, along with their associated cost and hardware requirements, there's still a big market for SATA drives. Perhaps by the time Cannonlake rolls out, we'll see pricing on NVMe drives reach the point where they're no longer out of reach of mainstream users. And if we're lucky, we'll also have an interface to our storage devices with enough bandwidth to run multiple NVMe drives at full performance. With 3D-NAND, XPoint, and other new technologies, the next couple of years in the SSD arena are sure to prove exciting. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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