General Gaming Article |
- Are Asus, Gigabyte Working on VR Headsets?
- Samsung May Be Producing CPUs, GPUs for AMD
- AMD Delays Dual GPU Radeon R9 Fury X2 Graphics Card Until 2016
- Holiday Savings: Steam Winter Sale and Google Play Store Discounts
- YouTube Accuses T-Mobile of Throttling Video Streams
- Technolust: Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire, Volkswagen Golf GTE, Oakley Airwave Goggles
| Are Asus, Gigabyte Working on VR Headsets? Posted: 23 Dec 2015 01:50 PM PST We've already reported that Asus says it's getting into the augmented reality business next year. The revelation was made by both chairman Jonney Shih and CEO Jerry Shen over the last few months. During an earnings webcast, Shen confirmed that a product would be released in 2016. As reported in October, Shih hinted that Asus was working with Microsoft to create a cheaper version of HoloLens, similar in nature to how Samsung worked with Oculus VR to release Gear VR last month. Shih said that augmented reality headsets would be more useful to the general consumer than virtual reality devices. However, according to sources in the Taiwan-based supply chain, Asus is shooting to release a virtual reality headset in the first half of 2016 that will plug into Asus gaming notebooks with high-end GPUs. Sources claim that because notebook sales are down, Asus is looking at new ways to bring in revenue, one of which is virtual reality. The supply chain sources also point out that Gigabyte may be jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon, too. The company is said to have teamed up with China-based virtual reality developer 3Glasses. Jessie Wang, the CEO of 3Glasses, actually revealed back in July that her company plans to shoot for North America in order to narrow the gap between the D2 Vanguard Edition and the Oculus Rift. The idea of 3Glasses teaming up with Gigabyte, which has an established presence in North America, isn't completely far-fetched. The last line of Jessie Wang's July blog says that 3Glasses was being acquired by four different companies. Perhaps Gigabyte is one of them? According to the D2 Vanguard Edition specs, the VR glasses offer a 2560x1440 resolution, a density of 534 pixels per inch, a 110 degree viewing range, a 60Hz refresh rate, and a latency of less than 13ms. The base hardware specifications call for an Intel i3-540, a Nvidia GeForce GTX660 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64-bit Windows 7 or Windows 8. Recommended specs include an Intel i5-4590, a Nvidia GTX960, and 8GB of RAM. If the supply chain sources are correct, 2016 will turn into an even bigger arena for virtual reality. While choice does matter, the general consumer may get confused by the available options. Hopefully, we'll see stations in retail outlets that will educate consumers on virtual reality hardware and what's the best solution for them. However, a word of caution: Wednesday's report, supplied by DigiTimes, does not mention Asus' AR plans, so there's some speculation that the sources could be referring to the AR glasses, and not separate VR hardware. The report clearly specifies virtual reality, but take it with a grain of salt anyway until Asus and Gigabyte officially come forth with their VR plans. |
| Samsung May Be Producing CPUs, GPUs for AMD Posted: 23 Dec 2015 12:50 PM PST Unnamed sources have informed Korea's ET News that Samsung's foundry business has signed on to manufacture AMD's next graphics chip, code-named Greenland, starting in Q2 2016. The chip will be produced using second-generation 14nm FinFET LPP processing, making it more power efficient and faster than the current 28nm Fiji GPU on the market. GlobalFoundries, who has licensed Samsung's 14nm FinFET technology, will produce the Greenland GPU as well. According to the report, in addition to Greenland, Samsung and GlobalFoundries will also begin producing AMD's Zen CPU, once Greenland is in production. The CPU will be manufactured using the same 14nm LPP process, sources told the Korean paper. The Zen CPU is expected to launch by October 2016 and see better performance per core, as opposed to a higher core count, though in the past AMD has indicated the chip will launch first for servers. Reportedly, Taiwan's TSMC was originally in charge of producing AMD's GPUs, but the AMD decided to end the contract due to yield issues and unstable supplies. AMD turned to Samsung and GlobalFoundries when the two manufacturers opened the doors for new 14nm processing contracts last year. AMD will be skipping the 20nm node altogether, as will Nvidia. AMD sold its equity stake in GlobalFoundries to a firm in Abu Dhabi back in 2012. GlobalFoundries was originally AMD's fab division, but was spun off as a separate business in 2009. Selling its stake in the fab company meant that AMD could use other facilities to manufacture its chips, such as TSMC. While AMD has historically used TSMC for their GPUs, more recently the company may have been involved with producing the Kabini/Temash and Beema/Mullins APUs. As for Samsung, the company is seeing a decline in sales in its smartphone division. There is speculation that the company is looking to take on more business in its fab facilities to offset the loss. The company already produces chips for Nvidia, which is ahead of AMD in the GPU market, and smartphone/tablet rival Apple. Engadget points out that if the report of Samsung producing AMD chips is true, then AMD may actually get ahead of Intel in the CPU market, as Samsung is expected to ship even more energy efficient and faster 10nm chips by 2016. Meanwhile, Intel's 10nm chips aren't slated to arrive until 2017. There's more to manufacturing than the process node, of course, so right now speculating on who will be leading the processor wars in 2016 and 2017 is premature. Neither Samsung nor AMD have issued statements regarding the ET News report. |
| AMD Delays Dual GPU Radeon R9 Fury X2 Graphics Card Until 2016 Posted: 23 Dec 2015 10:44 AM PST It's a VR thing Sorry folks, but if you were hoping AMD would release a dual GPU variant of its Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card by the end of the year, you're going to be disappointed. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that plans have changed and the company is now looking at a 2016 release. During E3, AMD said it would ship its Fiji Gemini card, which we'll go ahead and call Radeon R9 Fury X2 (unofficial name), by Christmas. Since then, AMD apparently changed its mind, opting instead to align the release more closely with the launch of virtual reality headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. That's the story, anyway. "The product schedule for Fiji Gemini had initially been aligned with consumer HMD availability, which had been scheduled for Q4 2015 back in June. Due to some delays in overall VR ecosystem readiness, HMDs are now expected to be available to consumers by early Q2 2016," Dr. Su told French language website Hardware.fr. "To ensure the optimal VR experience, we're adjusting the Fiji Gemini launch schedule to better align with the market." Dr. Su added that working samples of Fury X2 have already shipped to a variety of B2B customers and the "initial customer reaction has been very positive." From AMD's vantage point, it will be worth the wait. Fury X2 is basically a dual GPU version of Fury X based on Fiji XT. It will have 8,192 stream processors, 128 GCN compute units, 128 render output units, 512 texture mapping units, and 8GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), which works out to 4 per GPU. Look for the GPUs to run at up to 1,000MHz, with the memory racing along at 500MHz (1GHz effective) for 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth. |
| Holiday Savings: Steam Winter Sale and Google Play Store Discounts Posted: 23 Dec 2015 10:13 AM PST Last minute gift options Whether you scored an actual holiday bonus (and not a Jelly of the Month Club membership) and want to splurge on yourself or are scrambling around for last minute gift ideas, you have some digital options. Lots, actually. First, Valve's annual Steam Winter Sale is going on now. Yes, right now. It actually started yesterday, though the neat thing about digital is you don't have to worry about Steam running out of stock. We didn't go through and count the collection of titles on sale, but according to Steam, there are "thousands" currently available for a discount. Some are modest discounts, like saving 20 percent on Just Cause 3 ($47.99 instead of $59.99) while others are fairly deep, like 80 percent off Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition ($4.99 instead of $21.99). You can get three free trading cards each day just by exploring your Discovery Queue, and for the first time, there's a free comic to check out. It's called "Gingerbread Jake in Northpole Noir" and Steam is revealing a new page on each day of the sale. The sale runs until January 4, though if you're stressing over an obscenely large catalog of games that you purchased (and have yet to play) from prior sales, you can head over to Google's Play store for more options. Google is offering up several discounted digital goodies for the holiday, including 75 percent all movie rentals, half off album sales, up to 80 percent off books, and even discounts on in-app purchases. You can also find three month magazine subs for $3, along with a three month Google Play Music subscription for a buck. |
| YouTube Accuses T-Mobile of Throttling Video Streams Posted: 23 Dec 2015 09:48 AM PST Net neutrality shenanigans? T-Mobile purposely delivers lower quality video streams for select services through its Binge On program, which allows subscribers to watch unlimited video in at least 480p without it counting against their data caps. That's fine and dandy, except YouTube says T-Mobile is throttling all streaming video, not just the services that participate in Binge On. "Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn't justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent," a YouTube spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. T-Mobile's already walking a fine line with Binge On. After drafting the Open Internet Order, which is a set of net neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission has been keeping a close eye on ISPs and wireless carriers. Binge On is a service that caught the attention of the FCC, though for now, the agency hasn't said it breaks any rules. Just the opposite, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler called it a "highly innovative and highly competitive" service. At the same time, the FCC has sent letters to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers asking for details about their streaming services. The FCC says it's not an investigation, just an inquiry at this point. Binge On is an optional service for subscribers. It's also open to all video providers that meet a set of technical requirements, including YouTube, though there's an issue that excludes it at the moment. According to WSJ, the software T-Mobile is using can't always accurately identify YouTube streams, so until that's worked out, YouTube can't be part of Binge On. There are two dozen services that participate in Binge On, some of which include Netflix, HBO Go, ESPN, DirecTV, Crackle, Sling TV, Hulu, and Starz, to name just a few. |
| Technolust: Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire, Volkswagen Golf GTE, Oakley Airwave Goggles Posted: 23 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST Extreme sports wearables, and electric hybrid road carsThese Technolust posts are always torture to write. It's like going on your favorite PC hardware website, stocking up your basket with your own personal Dream Machine, and then writing a 1,500 word thesis on how and why your life would be so much better with it. With one major difference, of course: All of us here tend to deviate from the norm. When you're exposed to the level of hardware we often are, there's little room to crave AMD's Fury X or Intel's Core i7-5960X. Indeed, we often have to think far and wide to gadgets and gizmos that are well beyond our usual remit. For me, there are a few passions I can never really satisfy in this profession, and these revolve around my fanatical love of both extreme sports (in the form of mountain biking) and the internal combustion engine. So, let's begin. Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire This little beauty is Garmin's Fenix 3 Sapphire. The third iteration in a long line of wrist watches designed to enhance and improve your sporting prowess out there in the wilderness. It comes crammed with all forms of ungodly gadgets and sensors. From barometric altimeters, to heart rate monitors, to accelerometers and cadence sensors. You can even get weather and temperature alerts. And that's just to name a few. There's of course all the usual hullabaloo you get from smart-watches: music control, quick notifications and all that. But more interesting to me (bar the obvious use for mountain biking), is the inclusion of a fully GLONASS-enabled GPS EXO antenna—this would quite merrily take your smartphone's GPS system and throw it under the bus. In short, it's the perfect watch for your outdoor hiking and climbing pursuits. The Fenix Sapphire also addresses one of the biggest problems that we've often found with all of these smart devices: battery life. According to Garmin, this little guy can last up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode, up to 20 hours in GPS training mode, and a stunning six weeks in standard watch mode. God knows how they've done it, but not having to recharge the thing every day sounds like a godsend to me. It's almost too good to be true. But then, of course, you get to the price. It's not cheap. Not by a long shot. $600. Yep, I'll just leave that there and keep going. WHAT DOES THE FENIX 3 SAPPHIRE PROVIDE ME THAT A NORMAL SMARTWATCH DOESN'T?Ultimately, it's all about that utility for me. Cycling and backpacking are major passions of mine. Combining that with sophisticated technology in the form of a smart wearable creates an almost holy trinity of enjoyment for me. Couple that with the fact that this smartwatch lasts six weeks as a standard watch, is waterproof, and can get me out of a tight spot when I'm lost and well, hell, it's just about perfect. Volkswagen Golf GTE As long as I've been alive on this planet, I've loved Volkswagens. Yep, according to my folks, from the earliest age the best thing to put me to sleep was the soft puttering of an air-cooled engine. Namely the one situated in the back of my old man's 1972 bay window campervan. And ever since then, Volkswagen has been in my blood. Couple that with my mother's family being fanatically obsessed with the almighty American V8, and well, you can probably guess where this is going. Alas, I'm very aware of one thing in particular. Regardless of your stance on climate change, what we can take away from all this hoohah is that we will run out of oil eventually. Whether that's in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, it's going to happen. And when it does, the days of petroleum-guzzling V6 and V8 engines will be lost to us forever. However, I'm not willing to give up on the old girl just yet. Electric cars seem—to me at least—impractical. Most only having the range of a small teacup, they don't provide anything substantial in the way of genuine utility, or more importantly, power. Couple that with my deep-seated judgmental almost hatred of anyone who does drive one as being just a touch pompous, and EVs become a symbol of ridiculousness. One thing that we've been seeing a lot lately, however, is more and more car companies taking the technology found in the electric motor and incorporating it into that diabolical combustion engine. In short, taking the best of the new and mixing it with the best of the traditional. Admittedly, It's an odd concept, like weaponizing a windfarm almost. Utilizing research and development that's meant to reduce the overall impact of the combustion engine and instead using it to increase that impact. OK, I may be paraphrasing a little bit here from ex-Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, but you get what I mean. SPECS POWER: 204 PS AC CHARGE TIME: 135 minutes Currently, some of the fastest production cars on the planet are powered by hybrid engines. The McLaren P1, the Ferrari Laferrari, and the Porsche Spyder 918. So when I heard that Volkswagen was making a Golf GTE, taking those same hybrid principles and downsizing them into an (almost) affordable, economical engine, I was in. By the sound of things, Volkswagen is onto a winner with the Golf GTE: certainly the perfect daily driver for me. With a total range of 580 miles, and raking in a stunning 166 miles to the gallon, it does sound purely incredible. Especially in the UK, where fuel prices are almost three times higher than the US average, you can see where I'm coming from. On top of all that, you get all the mod-cons you'd expect: dynamic chassis control; high beam assist, lane assist including dynamic mainbeams; parking assist; keyless entry; and a fully integrated Discover pro sat-nav system. What's not to like? WHAT DOES THE GOLF GTE PROVIDE ME THAT OTHER CARS DON'T?This car is a stunning piece of craftsmanship. The phenomenal range and combined hybrid engine tickles all of my fancies and would be fantastic for both commuting and traveling on the weekend to see family, friends, and just to escape out to the countryside. On top of that? Well, it's a VW Golf, and they truly are my jam. And all for a cushy £43,206 (that's about $64,000), at least in my config. Oakley Airwave Goggles And finally, the coup de grâce to this sorry state of torture that is Technolust, we have Oakley's Airwave goggles. Built in collaboration with Recon Instruments, Oakley's Airwave goggles feature an innovative GPS heads-up display. In theory it's meant to provide the user (that'd be me, in this case) with a "perceived 14-inch screen viewed from a distance of 5 feet." Very snazzy, and what's on that? Well, the Airwave can determine how fast you're traveling, review your performance stats over the course of a run (including maximum air), measure your vertical feet by run, pinpoint your location on a map, track your buddies, control your music, and of course, connects directly to your smart phone for added utility. SPECS CPU: 1GHz Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 Of course, I have one big problem with these goggles. Now, I can snowboard... ish, sort of. OK, I'm not great at it, admittedly, and I'm certainly nowhere near good enough to warrant dropping $650 on a set of goggles. Mountain biking, on the other hand, that's another story. I can easily drop 15 to 20 miles on a weekend plummeting up and down those slippery slopes. Problem is, I can't use these here. They just won't fit inside my helmet. Sounds dumb, right? Mountain bikers use goggles just like the rest of the extreme sports junkies. And not having access to a set of smart-goggles like these is a huge missed opportunity, certainly for a sport that year on year is becoming incredibly popular. Come on, Oakley, get it together, let me buy these bad boys for my MTB escapades and I'll love you forever! WHAT CAN I DO WITH THE OAKLEY AIRWAVE GOGGLES THAT I COULDN'T DO BEFORE?Well, ironically, not a lot at the moment. I suppose I'd have to take up snowboarding again, but in the UK, that's a hell of a lot easier said than done. It's hardly the coldest country in the world, and the lack of mountains in my area would force me into the indoor snow domes and dry ski slopes. A less than ideal location for a set of $650 goggles. Since we're smack-dab in middle of the holiday season, use the comments to tell us about your technolust list, and whether you've been gifted anything on it!
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