General Gaming Article |
- Spotify Launching Video Service This Week
- Windows 10: Beware the Insider Preview Builds
- Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Gaming, Corsair 1,000W PSU, and More!
- PC Game News: Mighty No. 9 Delayed Again, Recommend Specs for The Division
- Microsoft Teaches Cortana to Poke Nose in Emails to Set Reminders
- Samsung 950 Pro 512GB Review
| Spotify Launching Video Service This Week Posted: 25 Jan 2016 02:12 PM PST The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify is finally rolling out video content this week in Germany, Sweden, the UK, and the United States. The content will first arrive on the Android app within the next few days, followed by the iOS app by the end of next week. Spotify originally said that video would be added to the music streaming service back in May 2015. So, what's taken so long? According to Spofity vice president of product Shiva Rajaraman, the slow rollout was intentional in order to gather content, experiment, and test the service on less than 10 percent of Spotify's users before launching to the masses. Back in May, the original announcement said that Spotify had landed deals with the likes of ABC, Adult Swim, BBC, Comedy Central, NBCUniversal, TBS, and numerous others. Since then, however, content has consisted of short clips, although there are companies producing original music-themed content specifically for Spotify. Rajaraman said that the problem Spotify will face is getting users to look directly at the app. The video service will be for the mobile clients only, people who typically have the Spotify app running in the background for listening to music. Getting customers to actually focus on the app will take some "consumer training." "Obviously, our primary user is a music fan, and they are not necessarily leaning in and looking into the app," he told the paper. "So there are no particular recipes for how to get this right." During the extended testing period, Spotify learned that people will watch videos that are relevant to the type of music they consume. However, Rajaramen told the WSJ that the company will focus on offering programming packages, such as "News of the Week" and ""Laughs at Lunch" rather than provide multiple ways of seeking out video content. Initially, video won't be a money maker for Spotify. In fact, the company is paying partners to license the content, so end users won't see advertisements in the video clips… at least, not yet. Spotify is more interested in end users, new and existing, to consume the service on a daily basis. Both subscribers and non-subscribers will have access to the new video content. Ultimately, Spotify's video service is about giving music fans what they want, Rajaraman said. Currently, the company makes its money selling a premium ad-free music streaming service, and from ads on the free service. Money-wise, Spotify is doing just fine, he indicated. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Windows 10: Beware the Insider Preview Builds Posted: 25 Jan 2016 01:35 PM PST Okay, let's get this out of the way: I'm an early adopter and I'm okay with doing a bit of beta testing. I've been using various builds of Windows 10 for about a year now, and while many had issues, this is the first time I've felt like a build was such a fundamentally bad move that I'm turning off Insider Preview builds and rolling back to an earlier build. What's the problem? In a nutshell, build 11102, which came out January 21 and installed on my desktop over the weekend. Here's the pertinent quote from Microsoft's build notes: "Some PC games will crash switching from windowed mode to full screen, upon game resolution change, or upon launch due to a bug in Windows graphics stack. We have observed this with The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, and Metal Gear Solid V but it may occur with other titles as well." Wait, what!? Microsoft basically broke gaming on Windows with this build. The problems extend to many other titles as well; in fact, in my testing, every game I tried had issues—I gave up when I was four for four on games having problems. The good news is that rolling back to an earlier build isn't super difficult. Just open up the Windows Settings app, go to Updates and Security, then click on Recover. From there you have a couple of options that will get you off the current build (though if you've deleted the files for the previous build(s), you only have one choice): I chose to go back to an earlier build, which left me on 11099, and games once again work properly. Whew! But what if you want to get out of Insider Preview altogether? It's not quite so easy. Depending on your current build, you might be able to go into the advanced update options and stop receiving Insider Preview builds; if you've been on the fast ring, however, this apparently doesn't work and you'll need to reset the PC and then install all your programs again. You can try waiting until there's a non-Insider build available that's more recent than your current Insider build…a process which could potentially take months. You can also elect to enter the slow ring of updates, which are less prone to risk, but again it might be a while before a new slow ring build becomes available. Now you might say that I deserved what I got from the Insider Preview fast ring—the notes even say it's "for people that enjoy being the first to identify issues, provide suggestions, and ideas" to make Windows better. I thought that described me, but it seems I was wrong. I'm usually okay being a beta tester, but when one of the big draws of Windows 10 is the availability of DirectX 12, breaking support for most games feels more like an alpha OS issue than a beta. The next fast ring update will almost certainly fix the gaming problem (and perhaps break other areas), but I've learned my lesson. I've opted to go for the slow ring of updates now, and I doubt I'll enable Insider Preview on any future builds. It sounded cool when I first heard about it, but despite frequent new builds, many of the changes aren't particularly dramatic or worth the hassle. It was a bit like running Linux and opting to build and install every kernel update, which is a really odd thing to say about Windows. Let's end with some questions. What's your take on the Insider Preview program; do you like it, and if so, are you on the fast ring or the slow ring? Have you encountered any other noteworthy problems with the builds, or have there been any features/changes that you particularly enjoyed? Let us know in the comments. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Gaming, Corsair 1,000W PSU, and More! Posted: 25 Jan 2016 11:33 AM PST Top Deal: Planning to play Tom Clancy's The Division when it releases later this year? You can skate by with a GeForce GTX 760 level card and the rest of the minimum specs, but for a better experience, Ubisoft recommends a GeForce GTX 970. As luck would have it, today's top deal is for an EVGA GeForce GTX 970 04G-P4-3975-KR 4GB SSC Gaming w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card for $310 with free shipping (normally $330). It's clocked faster than reference, boasts a custom cooler that's quieter and cools better than the stock one, and it comes with Rise of the Tomb Raider to boot! Other Deals: Corsair 1000W ATX12V v2.4 and EPS 2.92 80 Plus Gold Certified Power Supply for $130 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [EMCEFGJ23]; additional $30 Mail-in rebate) LG 29-inch Adaptive-Sync (Free-Sync) 21:9 UltraWide, 60 Hz 5ms (GTG) IPS, 5,000,000:1 LED Backlight Gaming Monitor with Built-in Speaker, exclusive game mode for $280 with $1 shipping (normally $300) WD Blue 2TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-inch for $70 with free shipping (normally $81 - use coupon code: [ESCEFGJ24]) WD 3TB White My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 for $120 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCEFGJ25]) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| PC Game News: Mighty No. 9 Delayed Again, Recommend Specs for The Division Posted: 25 Jan 2016 10:00 AM PST What's going on in the game world If you backed Mighty No. 9 on Kickstarter, the last thing you want to hear at this point is about yet another delay. it might also be the first thing you expect, even if you skipped the headline and despite a previous promise to the contrary. Either way, it's happening again. Keiji Inafune from Mega Man fame announced today that Mega No. 9's release is being pushed back one more time to Spring 2016. It's the third delay, the last of which nudged the release date to February 9, and as always it's to squash some unexpected bugs. "The reason for the delay is rooted in bugs inside the network modes, and specifically problems with matchmaking. There are two large reasons for this problem, one of them being the large number of platforms supported (the solution for each platform is slightly different) and the other stems from the fact that the engine we are using is no longer being updated which means adjustments for matchmaking and online code are being made manually (actually reprogramming parts of the engine by the dev team themselves). Unfortunately, this is all a result of miscalculations on the part of us, the development staff," Inafune explains. Granted, putting out a buggy game isn't what anyone wants. At the same time, backers are understandably frustrated with all the delays, not just to the game itself, but also for the demo. After the project was successfully funded—it raised over $3.8 million, far surpassing its goal of $900,00—delays and apologies started rolling out pretty consistently. Back in October of last year, Inafune told fans there wouldn't be any further delays. He was wrong. "For this 3rd delay of the game, we have no excuses for disappointing our fans and especially our backers once more. We want to take this chance to express our sincerest apologies to everyone who has looked forward to the release," Inafune added. Tom Clancy's The DivisionIn other gaming news, Ubisoft has released minimum and recommended system requirements for Tom Clancy's The Division. Here's a look at the minimum requirements:
And here's a look at the recommended requirements:
The Division releases to PC, Xbox One, and PlayStaiton 4 on March 8, 2016. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Microsoft Teaches Cortana to Poke Nose in Emails to Set Reminders Posted: 25 Jan 2016 09:18 AM PST Helping you keep your commitments Little by little, Microsoft is expanding its Cortana digital assistant to do new things in Windows 10. One of those new things is the ability to scan your emails for certain phrases, ones that might indicate a reminder would be helpful. According to The Verge, it's part of a new commitment option in Cortana for Windows 10 that's available to Windows Insiders. It's not all that different than flight and delivery tracking, both of which Cortana already does, but in this case Cortana will set reminders to help you keep commitments you might have promised, like telling your boss you'll have that financial report ready by Thursday. "Cortana will look for emails where you've said you're going to do something," Microsoft's Marcus Ash told The Verge. The email scanning for commitments is performed on a local level; data only gets sent to Microsoft if you choose to add a reminder for a particular commitment or event. On the flip side, if you're worried about the functionality being abused and pushing aside your privacy, you can disable the feature altogether and Cortana won't peek at your emails. It's just one of many ways Microsoft is working to make Cortana more than a novelty or afterthought. In addition to helping you remember commitments, the new version released in the latest Insider build alerts you if you receive a meeting request that runs outside the times you normally schedule meetings. Both features are available now to Windows Insiders for testing before rolling out to the general public. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 25 Jan 2016 12:00 AM PST At a Glance(+) Flamethrower: Great performance; compact form factor; power efficient; lowest price per GB for NVMe. (-) Flameout: Can throttle at times; needs M.2 NVMe support to use as a boot drive; where's the 1TB model? More in more ways than oneLast year, we looked at Samsung's speedy new 950 Pro M.2 NVMe drive. At the time, we noted that while it was fast, we really wanted to test the 512GB model. Nearly three months later, we're finally able to fix that omission. Much of what we said in our previous review still applies, with the advantages of the 512GB model being more than just the raw capacity. Unlike hard drives, SSDs benefit tremendously from increased parallelism. In general, this means the more NAND chips you have available for concurrent reading and writing, the faster your drive. It's sort of like RAID on a chip level, with the SSD controller frequently being the limiting factor. By doubling the capacity, Samsung also doubles the number of NAND chips, and that means it's better able to keep humming along at top speed.
We can easily see the expected gains by just looking at the spec sheet, where the 512GB model potentially offers a 10–15 percent improvement in read speeds, along with a more substantial 30–70 percent boost to write performance. This isn't too surprising, as reading NAND is less difficult than writing NAND. Writing NAND can potentially keep a chip busy for a few extra cycles, but thanks to wear-leveling algorithms, adding more chips gives the controller more options. The reason for wear-leveling, if you need a NAND 101 refresh, is that NAND cells have a limited number of program/erase cycles. Whereas on a hard drive, overwriting a file usually uses the same physical sectors on the spinning disk, with NAND it's better to mark a cell as "available" but do the actual write to a different cell—one with the fewest used P/E cycles. This improves performance as well as drive longevity. As a whole, the 512GB 950 Pro looks to improve performance by 10–50 percent, depending on the task at hand. It also doubles the endurance to 400TB TBW (total bytes written), with a five-year warranty. That means you could write over 200GB of data every day with the 512GB model and still not use up all the P/E cycles. Or to put it another way, even after a week of intensive use for our testing, we're only at 5TB TBW; once we stop running sequential write tests and just use an SSD as a regular drive, normal use generally averages less than 5GB per day. So no, we're in no danger of killing off any SSD, unless we specifically attempt to do so. And as a final bonus for the 512GB model, it drops the price per GB from $0.75 on the 256GB model to $0.64 per GB. That's still about twice the price per GB of the 850 Evo SATA drives (which use less expensive TLC V-NAND), but peak performance is much more than twice as fast, as we'll soon see. Too Hot to HandleAll of this is well and good so far, but there have been issues at times with small M.2 drives throttling performance due to excessive heat in the controller. The UBX controller used in the 950 Pro has three Cortex-R4 ARM cores clocked at 500MHz. While these cores are not as fast as the Cortex-A57/A53 cores in modern smartphone SoCs, they're substantially faster than the cores in most traditional microcontrollers. For reference, Samsung's progression in SSD controllers has gone from tri-core 300MHz in the MCX and MDX, to tri-core 400MHz in the MEX, MGX is a dual-core 550MHz design, MHX is tri-core 400MHz again (but with 2GB RAM vs. 1GB on the MEX), and finally, the UBX is tri-core 500MHz. Increasing clock speeds mean more power and heat, and thus the controllers are designed to reduce clock speeds if temperatures get too high. That wasn't a common issue when dealing with SATA drives, but with PCIe offering over 5x the throughput, the UBX controller can get a serious workout. While we don't have tools to measure the real-time clock speeds of the controllers, we did test the 950 Pro 512GB with and without additional cooling.   For our purposes, cooling was pretty simple: We placed a case fan near the SSD and angled it to blow across the drive. That was sufficient to eliminate throttling, as far as we can tell, and some companies are even creating M.2 add-in boards with heatsinks to help cool M.2 SSDs. In our charts, we'll highlight both the cooled and uncooled performance of the 950 Pro 512GB. That brings us to the benchmarks. For our SSD testing, we're running a Skylake processor in a Z170 motherboard. Below are the full specifications. When we first looked at the Samsung 950 Pro, we knew it was a great drive. Unfortunately, the drive we really wanted to test was in short supply at the time, so we had to settle for the 256GB model. We expected even better performance from the larger drive, and it doesn't disappoint. There are times when it's not the absolutely fastest drive we've tested, as the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB holds the crown in six of our 10 tests, but that's a bit unfair. For starters, the SSD 750 has three times the peak rated power draw, more than twice the raw NAND capacity, and it uses a PCIe card equipped with a large heatsink. It's also more expensive on a per gigabyte basis. Where the Intel SSD 750 excels is in long periods of sustained drive activity (which for consumers, mostly means benchmarks). It also wins out in 4K random write performance by a decent margin. But there's no putting an SSD 750 into a laptop, no matter how much you might want to, and for less strenuous workloads the 950 Pro 512GB often takes the checkered flag. This includes both of our real-world tests, the 20GB file copy and the PCMark 8 storage bandwidth. Potent PortableUltimately, what it comes down to is your intended use case, combined with how much capacity you need and how much you're willing to spend. The 950 Pro 512GB goes places other SSDs can't, and if you're lucky enough to own a modern laptop with an M.2 slot and NVMe support, it will allow you to upgrade from a weak-sauce 128GB drive that so many OEMs still insist on using, to a healthy half a terabyte. In daily use, the drive is so fast that storage is no longer a system bottleneck—games load as fast as your CPU can chew through the data, Windows boot times are frequently in the single digits (as in <10 seconds), and you still have room for plenty of games, images, videos, and music. Do you need this much storage performance? Probably not, as this is a classic case of diminishing returns. But if you've covered all your other bases and still have cash to burn, not to mention a system that supports M.2 NVMe SSDs, you definitely want one of these hot rods. Until the competition releases their next generation SSDs, this is the best M.2 NVMe drive you can find. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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