General Gaming Article |
- AMD GPU14 Tech Day 2013 (Live Blog)
- Build a PC: Recommended Builds (September 2013)
- Seagate Desktop HDD.15 4TB Review
- Zalman LQ-320 CPU Cooler Review
- Valve's Second Big Reveal is a Steam Box Prototype with Third Party Steam Machines to Follow
- Samsung Strikes Gold, Applies to Galaxy S4 Smartphone
- Awesome Catzilla Benchmark Claws Its Way to Version 1.0, Now Available
- Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX Tablet Changes the Game with Live 24/7 Tech Support
- Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair Obsidian 550D Case, Samsung 21.5-inch Monitor, and More!
| AMD GPU14 Tech Day 2013 (Live Blog) Posted: 25 Sep 2013 12:39 PM PDT
Watch as AMD unveils its new GPU, sponsored games, and moreNote: The live blog is now over AMD's GPU14 Tech Day press conference is about to begin and we're live in Hawaii to cover the event. We will update this live blog as more info comes in. You should expect AMD to officially announce its new GPU, codenamed Hawaii (pictured to the right), along with other announcements that include new software tools for developers and new AMD sponsored games. Hopefully we'll get even more surprises! Stay tuned! 12:48 pm HST: There is some trouble with the Youtube live stream of the press conference so AMD has advised viewers at home follow along here: http://www.livestream.com/amdlivestream?t=637320 12:54 pm HST: AMD sent me an email just now about how I killed the live stream. Apparently I was the last thing the camera saw when the stream broke and then it had me waving at the camera in an infinite loop. :/
01:00 pm HST: AMD's Corporate VP John Taylor takes the stage, the conference begins. 01:04 pm HST: He introduces AMD general manager of graphics Matt Skinner. Matt unveils a new zombie-killing like FPS on screen (Dying Light). It focuses on immersive sound effects 01:06 pm HST: Skinner says the company is working to create tools to enable a "unified gaming strategy" which will allow developers to easily port games from consoles to PCs and vice versa. 01:06 pm HST: Skinner says PC gaming is growing, at 18 billion dollars in revenue and projected to reach 21 billion by 2016. 01:10 pm HST: He asserts higher-res screens will mean you'll need a beefier GPU
01:15 pm HST: R9 and R7 GPU series announced. The R9 will be the higher end series: - r7 250, less than 89$ - r7 260x ($150) - 2gb GDDR 5, 2700 in 3dmark firestrike - r9270x (fastest card under 200$, ) - r9 280 (fastest card under 300, 3gb GDDR5) - r9 290X (AMD says its the most powerful GPU its ever built). It has 4gb of memory and will come with Battlefield 4 in limited edition bundle packs. Skinner says it will be great for 4K gaming, because he asserts you need 4GB of GDDR5 RAM. 01:19 pm HST: DirectX 11.2 will be supported on the new R9 290 series cards. It will support over 5 teraflops of compute. It will offer over 300 GB/sec memory bandwidth. It will allow you to edit hundreds of layers of effects at 4K res, AMD says. - It will offer more than 4 billion triangles/sec. - it will have more than 6 billon transistors. 01:24 pm HST: AMD says it is the first GPU company to support Ultra HD 4K. The company says it will be manual to configure for users, but easy. - enable drivers to automatically confiugure the known 4K displays. - AMD is proposing a new VESA standard. It will automatically stich 4K monitors. Supported in AMD catalyst. Panasonic Viera TV is a set that supports this technology today, AMD says. 1:27 pm HST: AMD talks "True Audio Technology." AMD compares these audio advancedments to programmable shaders in graphics. The company says it will provide the same artistic freedom to audio artists. It will enable to hear hundreds of more real time audio effects and voices that are not possible on just the CPU today. - Working with gen audio for immersive sound experiences (virtual surround sound). It will provide very accurate three dimensional audio using info from the 3D game engine. - It will be available on the R 290, 290x, and 260x - AMD says it has many game developers on board. 1:31 pm HST: Jerry Mahabub, CEO of GenAudio, takes the stage. He's about to play a 7.1 surround sound demo mix. He promises pin-point sound accuracy. 1:35 pm HST: The audio plays. Thunder roars, rain falls, horns sound off. Crickets chirp. A car slams the brakes, a bird chips. It sounds very loud and you can clearly have positional awareness. It sounds very realistic. Now we hear thunderous helicopters. It sounds epic, like a summer blockbuster movie. We hear a train rolling by, it sounds a lot like the train I take to work everyday... Very immersive. The demo ends and the crowd claps. 1:40 pm HST: Now Mahabub explains how the surround audio will work with just two speakers... - He says the room has disabled all but two of the front speakers. Now music is playing, it sounds very "Japanesee" (I can say that because I'm Ssian). Now we hear an "alien" demo. It sounds like a swarm is flying across the room. My god, it's loud! A musical cresendo picks up. You can imagine sci-fi waves move about the room, quite impressive for just two speakers. 1:45 pm HST: He says they need processor horse power for the 3D audio to work and praises AMD for being forward thinking enough to take this project on. He says true audio is truly the next generation sound for games. - He adds that they base their audio technology on 25 years of human brain research to create realistic depth and surround. 1:54 pm HST: VP and cofounder of audiokinectic Simon Ashby takes the stage. I'm surprised how much AMD is pushing audio at a GPU press conference... He says their Wwise audio technology will be CPU-efficient, and won't take up much load. Traditionally he says an audio effect like convolution reverb takes up a lot of the CPU. 2:00 pm HST: Eidos developer takes the stage. He talks about its upcoming Thief game. He says they'd like to use convolution reverb in their game because it sounds so great, but reiterates that it has generally been very cpu-intensive in the past, but mentions that TrueAudio Technology will allow them to "push the limits of what was previously believed to be the industry standard." 2:02 pm HST: Thief trailer plays. It's prerendered (bleh). Like its predecessors, the game looks very dark and will have a big emphasis on stealth. 2:05 pm HST: Lichdom: Redeemer FPSRPG revealed through a trailer. Takes advantage of TrueAudio technology. Looks like Skyrim from the 10 seconds we saw. Producer from Xaviant, the game's developer, takes the stage. It is a new development studio. - The game will use Crytek's CryEngine and will support AMD's technologies that include tressFX, eyefinity, etc. 2:11 pm HST: Xaviant's CEO interrupts the stage and now they're bickering about how to best present the game in a bit of a cringeworthy sketch... Now they're bickering about which difficulty people should play their games on...Is this as uncomfortable to watch at home? - The game is expected to ship next summer on PC. - now the company reveals a full length trailer to the game. The game is fantasy-based, we see snowy lands, zombies, and evil mages. 2:20 pm HST: Wallace Santos, maingear of CEO, takes the stage. He says they believe AMD's strategy of supporting PC games. He adds that working with all the consoles means "no more crappy console ports." He reveals a new red Maingear system featuring a new R9 series GPU. Says it will be coming within the next couple of weeks. 2:23 pm HST: Ritche Corpus, stage director of ISV gaming alliances, takes the stage. He talks about AMD's never settle bundle and some of AMD's exclusive game technologies: TressFX in Tomb Raider (which improves hair physics). He reveals a new updated AMD Ruby mascot. She has red flowing hair powered by AMD's TressFX tech. Now she's fighting futuristic robots in a real-time tech demo. It looks like the demo is trying to capture some of the Samaritan demo that Nvidia showed off in terms of atmosphere, though the facial graphics don't look nearly as good. The demo ends and Corpus reveals that the tech demo used the CryEngine. 2:32 pm HST: Chris Roberts takes the stage to talk about his new game, Star Citizen. A trailer plays: It's a futurisitc sci-fi space ship game. It looks very much like a modern Wing Commander, with you sitting in a cockpit, though it looks like you can also walk around on space stations. Roberts says it will feature a dynamic, persistant universe. His goal with the game is to make the "best damn space sim ever." He reminds the crowd that the game is 100% completely crowd funded and adds that the game will support user-generated content and modding. 2: 42 pm HST: Roberts walks us through a live demo of the game using a wireless controller on stage. He says they are rendering 8 million polygons a frame using AMD's R9 290 GPU. Now we're walking around the space station and checking out different ships and sitting in different cockpits. Hopefully this game supports the Oculus Rift. Flying in space with it would be pretty kick-ass. 2: 54 pm HST: The game looks good but the demo is running pretty long, especially when you consider that there is no in-game audio yet. AMD seems like its getting a little antsy and Corpus comes on stage to rush the presentation along. It's a bit awkward.... 2:58 pm HST: Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr, takes the stage.He talks about how many gamers don't know how to tweak game settings. He asserts that there is no "Xbox-like service that brings everyone together." So he started Raptr, which is an attempt to make the PC experience more like consoles. It provides an instant messaging service that allows you to loop in your Steam friends, Xbox Live friends, and more. Also, their app will allow you to chat with your friends in-game, so you don't need to ALT+TAB to minimize your screen anymore. Raptr will also support live streaming, and it is free. Fong announces an AMD Gaming Evolved Raptr app to determine optimal playable settings for games (Hmmm...this sounds like Nvidia's GeForce Experience). Unlike Nvidia, however, they are crowdsourcing their data (Nvidia does all its testing in house). The app will detect hardware and games. Fong says the app is smart and knows when you start a game, and when you end it. Then it will provide a FPS histogram which it uploads to the Raptr cloud. It then uses data mining software to come up with optimal play settings. For the user, all you need to do is just clikc a red button that says "optimize settings." He says that it should be really simple and easy to use for the end user. The app is out now (in beta). Sometime around 3 pm HST: My laptop dies. :( Dang long press conference! 3:54 PM: I return back to my hotel after the show concludes. Towards the tail end of the press conference, AMD brings up Johann Anderson, technical engineer at DICE, to talk about Battlefield 4 and the company's alignment with AMD. Battlefield 4 uses DICE's Frostbite 3 engine, which the company asserts is a next-gen engine used across many genres for EA, genres that include racing games and RTS games even. He talks about how Battlefield 4 will push destructible environments with what the company calls "levolution" or level evolution. This involves having tall buildings collapse, etc. He adds that Battlefield 4 will support DX 11.1, but will also use AMD's new exclusive API called Mantel. Mantel is a developer tool that will make it really easy to port code from one AMD system to another, considering AMD is in all the next-generation system, AMD is considering this a big win for team red. Eventually we're shown a single player demo of Battlefield 4 that takes place on a ship. There's a lot of gunfire with the protagonist blasting his shotgun at enemies and eventually the ship breaks in half and sinks into the ocean. The DICE rep says that the game will offer multiple pathways this time around and offer a bit of a non-linear experience. Finally, the demo has the player riding a small naval attack ship. The ship is equipped with a turret and homing missiles. The epic demo ends with a jet flying towards the boat. AMD then proceeds to conclude its presentation by once again talking about Mantel. The company reiterates that it will allow porting assets across different AMD setups super easy for developers.
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| Build a PC: Recommended Builds (September 2013) Posted: 25 Sep 2013 12:19 PM PDT Budget, baseline, performance PC builds!What time is it? It's time to build a PC with our Blueprints! This month, we've built three rigs at three approximate price points: Budget, Baseline, and Performance. Budget gets you a capable but affordable rig, Baseline gets you a powerful that is suitable for gaming and content creation at 1080p, and Performance gets you even more. These rigs are lab-tested and editor-approved. Feedback is, of course, welcome. Tell us what you think!
Intel has finally released its budget Haswell chips, so we've upgraded our Budget build's Ivy Bridge Core-i5 3350P CPU to the new Core i5-4430. Switching to Haswell also gives us the Z87 chipset, granting us four SATA 6Gb/s ports while the older Intel chipset was limited to two. The Thermaltake PSU we used last month is no longer on sale, so we swapped it with the reliable Corsair CX500M. On the SSD front, we upgraded from the 64GB SanDisk Ultra Plus to the 120GB Kingston HyperX, as the prices for 120GB SSDs are so low now that a sale allowed us to squeeze one in without busting the budget. We also swapped out the RAM because the Crucial Ballistix RAM we had last time went up in price.
At this tier, we had already switched to Intel's fourth-generation Haswell CPU last month, so things are quieter on that front than in the Budget tier. We swapped GPUs though, because this model Sapphire HD 7950 is $20 cheaper than the 11196-19-20G model we used last month, but performs the same. We also found a 240GB Intel SSD on sale, allowing us to upgrade from the 120GB Samsung 840 Evo that was in here last month. The bigger SSD caused a $40 bulge in this rig's budget, but we like having the extra space for Steam games. If you can't find the Intel 335 at this price, the 250GB Samsung 840 Evo or Crucial M500 are good alternatives. We swapped the RAM from Corsair Vengeance due to price increases.
Intel's Ivy Bridge-E CPUs have finally arrived, allowing us to upgrade from a Sandy Bridge-E Core i7-3820 to a Core i7-4820K. Sure, we could have gone Haswell, but we prefer having the option to upgrade to a six-core CPU down the road, and we also like the extra PCI Express lanes for multi-GPU setups. Plus, the Core i7-4820K's unlocked multiplier makes overclocking easier than with the Core i7-3820, and it's also a faster chip. On the storage front, we doubled our SSD capacity this month by upgrading from a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro to a 500GB Samsung 840 Evo. Sure, the Pro version is Samsung's top-tier drive, but the Evo is still blazing-fast and more reasonably priced. The 512GB 840 Pro would have cost us another $100 or so, which was difficult to justify. Otherwise, we are holding steady with the Corsair HX850 PSU and the Asus Sabertooth motherboard since they are both tried- and-true, and totally rock-solid. The Corsair H80i CPU cooler re- mains a great value at $85, and the NZXT Phantom 530 case is a smokin' deal. |
| Seagate Desktop HDD.15 4TB Review Posted: 25 Sep 2013 11:21 AM PDT Finally, a 1TB-per-platter hard driveFor over a year now, we've been asking for just three things in a desktop hard drive: 7,200rpm speed, 4TB capacity, and 1TB per platter. That's all we've asked for, and we don't think we're being unreasonable, since all we want is the maximum amount of space and performance in a disk drive.
Seagate's drive is surprisingly affordable, but only includes a 2-year warranty. Regardless, first we got 4TB, but at 5,400rpm in a five-platter design from Hitachi. Then we got 4TB, also in five platters, but at 7,200rpm from both Hitachi and WD. "Nice," we thought, "progress!" So when we heard Seagate was finally wading into the 4TB waters, we figured this would be the drive we have all been waiting for—4TB, 1TB per platter, and 7,200rpm. Unfortunately, our prophecy remains unfulfilled, as the Seagate drive, dubbed plainly "Desktop HDD.15" is certainly 4TB, and it uses 1TB per platter for improved transfer speeds, thanks to higher platter density, but its spindle only rotates at a lowly 5,900rpm. The upside of this slower rotational speed is the extra-dense platters help it actually perform like a 7,200rpm hard drive, all while remaining quiet, running cool, and actually being affordable, too. All these qualities combine to make this new Seagate drive the best 4TB disk drive we've tested yet. As stated previously, this is the first hard drive available that uses four 1TB platters, which gives it a speed advantage over its five-platter rivals from WD and Hitachi. Since there is more data on each platter, the read/write heads don't have to move as much to collect data, and when they are in motion over the platters, they can hover over more data, as well, which increases transfer rates. As to why it's just 5,900rpm, Seagate recently announced it was abandoning 7,200rpm 2.5-inch hard drives in order to focus on both SSD and hybrid SSD drives. We assume Seagate is thinking along similar lines when it comes to desktop hard drives, focusing on SSD for speed and HDD for capacity and price-sensitive needs. In testing, we saw Seagate's 4TB drive post average sequential read speeds that were equivalent to 7,200rpm drives like the WD Black and Hitachi 7K4000, which is a significant accomplishment, but the 4TB drive was also slower than the Barracuda 3TB. As expected, its access times hovered in the 17ms region, which is totally normal and makes this drive a pokey one for OS usage, but we doubt anyone would do such a thing. Its average write speeds were slower than the WD Black, but it's in the neighborhood of the other 7,200rpm drives, so it gets some kudos for punching above its weight class. In our simulated "real-world" test of PCMark Vantage, the Seagate scored below even other 5,400rpm drives, which is a bit curious but reinforces this drive's role as a storage volume instead of an OS device. The good news here is if you're just looking for 4TB of storage for the least amount of money, this is the drive you want. Its asking price of $190 is righteous when compared to $300 for the 7,200rpm WD Black 4TB and $380 for the 7,200rpm Hitachi 7K4000. The bad news is this drive includes a meager 2-year warranty, which is the lowest we've seen on a desktop drive but on par with other "budget" drives. In the end, this is a fast drive at a great price, making it easy to recommend. $190, www.seagate.com |
| Zalman LQ-320 CPU Cooler Review Posted: 25 Sep 2013 11:15 AM PDT Respectable performance, but not for the priceZalman has a well-earned reputation for high-quality air coolers. The "flower" design of its older all-copper heatsinks was eye-catching and distinctive, and its large (for the time) fans ran quietly even under load. Lately, though, liquid cooling has been all the rage. Closed-loop units from companies such as Corsair and NZXT are packaged with the cooling tubes and pump pre-attached to a radiator—referred to as an "all-in-one" (AiO) design. These units are much less expensive than cobbling together separate components, and there's little maintenance required. The LQ-320 marks one of Zalman's first forays into the AiO market, and it's a respectable part, though arguably priced too high for its performance.
The LQ-320's radiator gives it 7.7cm of total length, once the fan is installed. Its noise level isn't a problem, though. Left to its own devices, the LQ-320 hovered around 1,700rpm under load, creating a noise level that was noticeable but not distracting. Even with the fan cranked to 2,000rpm, it wasn't that distracting and our overclocked Core i7-3960X test machine never cracked 70 C under a pretty hefty load. We use an internal Intel tool to load up the CPU to its limit, more so than with Prime95. Under normal operating conditions, the LQ-320 noise level blends into the background—pretty much on par with a Phanteks or Noctua air cooler. The radiator is large and in charge. At about 2 inches thick (that's thicker than two stacked case fans), to which you must bolt a 1-inch-thick fan. If you're sporting an LGA2011 board with tall RAM, there's a chance the DIMMs will bump into the cooler but it depends on your case and motherboard. Unlike a typical fan, the included unit has only four mounts on one side so it can only be mounted to the radiator where air is pushed through it. The fan uses a 4-pin PWM plug that goes directly into your motherboard as opposed to the USB-controlled (and similarly priced) Corsair H80i or NZXT Kraken X40 "intelligent" coolers. If your mobo has really granular and intelligent control over fan headers, such as Asus Fan Xpert 2, it's probably OK. But if you're using a budget board that's "dumb," don't expect much control. The pump is powered by a separate 3-pin plug that goes directly into an available mobo fan header. On boards that give you very little or no control over the fan headers, we'd advise you to get a $3.50 Molex-to-3-pin adapter to give the pump as much power as possible. Even on boards with control, we'd recommend that you make sure the pump is getting the proper voltage to get the full performance out of this cooler. But although it lacks control software and unified cabling, it doesn't really need software tweaking, and you don't have to factor in software glitches. And plugging it directly into your power supply is not a major inconvenience. The biggest problem with the LQ-320 is actually its street price of about $90, which is virtually the same as the superior NZXT X40 and Corsair H80i. Granted, the X40 requires a 14cm fan mount, so it's not directly comparable. But since you can buy it for under $100, it's a factor, and the LQ-320 does not emerge victorious. If the LQ-320 settled into the $60-$70 range, it would probably fare better. $110, www.zalman.com |
| Valve's Second Big Reveal is a Steam Box Prototype with Third Party Steam Machines to Follow Posted: 25 Sep 2013 10:21 AM PDT
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| Samsung Strikes Gold, Applies to Galaxy S4 Smartphone Posted: 25 Sep 2013 09:32 AM PDT
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| Awesome Catzilla Benchmark Claws Its Way to Version 1.0, Now Available Posted: 25 Sep 2013 09:09 AM PDT
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| Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX Tablet Changes the Game with Live 24/7 Tech Support Posted: 25 Sep 2013 08:41 AM PDT
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| Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair Obsidian 550D Case, Samsung 21.5-inch Monitor, and More! Posted: 25 Sep 2013 06:30 AM PDT
Top Deal: You may have heard that Corsair announced its Obsidian Series 750D full-tower, a toned down version of the massive 900D that you park a tank inside of. If you're looking for a mid-tower in the same mold, check out today's top deal for a Corsair Obsidian Series 550D case for $130 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code 0924CLRNCE80; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). Designed to reduce noise while still providing ample cooling, you'll find plenty of amenities aimed at both. Other Deals: Corsair HX650 650W 80 Plus Gold Certified Modular Power Supply for $110 with free shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [0924CLRNCE85]) Rosewill 15.6-inch Notebook Cooler with Dural 80mm Adjustable Fans for $18 with free shipping (normally $25 - use coupon code: [0924CLRNCE48]) Samsung S22C350H Glossy Black 21.5" 5ms LCD Monitor for $130 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: -inch[0924CLRNCE293]) LG Black Sata 14X Blu-ray BDXL Internal Rewriter for $130 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [0924CLRNCE80]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) |
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