| TP-Link's New Wireless AC Router Does 1733Mbps Posted: 08 Oct 2015 04:45 PM PDT 
Consumers looking for the latest Wireless AC router that can handle multiple devices without a drop in wireless quality may want to check out TP-Link's new Archer C2600. This new networking device boasts 4-stream and multi-user MIMO technologies that optimizes speed and connection performance. This router also offers one of the fastest speeds on the market, providing up to 1733Mbps on the 5GHz band. "The Archer C2600 is an extremely powerful router with an elegant, streamlined design," said Lewis Wu, executive vice president of TP-LINK USA. "Coupled with multi-user MIMO and 4-Stream technology, the Archer C2600 is designed to handle the increasing bandwidth demands of today's modern homes that are filled with multiple users' different devices that are all accessing the network simultaneously." According to the company, many routers on the market send data to one device at a time. However, with MU-MIMO technology, the router can "serve" several devices simultaneously, meaning your devices won't have to wait in line to send and receive data. This technology is backed by a dual-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz that can support multiple users. Ultimately you get better streaming and gaming thanks to this new router. In addition to the 1733Mbps speeds on the 5GHz band, the Archer C2600 provides speeds of up to 800Mbps on the 2.4GHz band, significantly higher than many Wireless AC routers on the market today. These speeds are complimented by four gigabit LAN ports, a gigabit WAN port and two USB 3.0 ports, which can be used to share a printer or external drive. "Archer C2600 routers provide faster, more efficient Wi-Fi connectivity for the growing number of smart devices on a network," the company adds. "Four high-performance external antennas and high-powered amplifiers help Archer C2600 routers maximize coverage area and stability within the home, while beamforming technology further improves the Wi-Fi coverage by helping it locate wireless devices to form stronger, more reliable connections, even when mobile devices move from room to room." Customers eager to get their hands on this networking speed demon can grab it from Newegg for a meaty price of $250. The company says that the router will be made available on TP-Link's store and other offline and online retailers later this month. |
| MSI GT72 with GTX 980 Gallery Posted: 08 Oct 2015 03:40 PM PDT |
| Kingston HyperX Predator NVMe 480GB Posted: 08 Oct 2015 02:38 PM PDT At a Glance (+) Great Find: Faster than SATA; high endurance; HHHL adapter for older systems. (-) NeVer Mind-e: Not as fast as other NVMe offerings; expensive; short warranty; requires NVMe BIOS support to use as a boot drive. Fly Like an Eagle With all the hullabaloo about M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs, users of older systems might feel left out. Enter the Kingston HyperX Predator, with an optional half-height, half-length (HHHL) adapter card that allows anyone with a spare PCI Express slot to use an M.2 drive. There's nothing revolutionary about the adapter card, as it just converts up to four Gen3 PCIe lanes into an M.2 connector, but it opens the M.2 doors to virtually any recent desktop. The catch is that you won't be able to use an NVMe SSD as your OS/boot drive unless your motherboard BIOS supports NVMe—it will still work in Windows as a secondary drive, but potentially you'd have a slower SATA SSD as the OS drive. Another interesting problem came up in testing the Predator that's worth passing along; Alex found that Windows 10 wouldn't actually finish the upgrade process on an NVMe drive, or at least not on the Predator. A clean install of Windows 10 worked, but if you're running Windows 7 or 8.1 and want to upgrade, last we checked it was a no-go with NVMe. Hopefully Microsoft addresses (or has already addressed?) the problem with a patch. | Kingston HyperX Predator NVMe Specifications | | Interface | M.2 PCIe x4 Gen3 | | Form Factor | M.2 2280
Optional HHHL PCIx x4 adapter | | Capacity | 480GB | 240GB | | Controller | Marvell 88SS9293 | | Memory Type | Toshiba A19 Toggle NAND | | Max Transfer Read/Write | 1100/910 MB/s | 1290/600 MB/s | | Max IOPS Read/Write | 130,000/118,000 | 160,000/119,000 | | Endurance | 882TB / 1.7 DWPD | 415TB / 1.6 DWPD | | Power Use | 1.38W Idle, 1.4W Avg., 1.99W/8.25W Max Read/Write | | Warranty | Three years / 882TB | Three years / 415TB | | Pricing | $440 without adapter | $205 with adapter | Checking out the specifications, one impressive statistic on the Predator is the endurance rating. Kingston specs the 480GB model we're testing at a whopping 882TB total bytes written, which equates to 1.7 drive writes per day (DWPD). Even the heaviest of home users is unlikely to be writing 800GB of data on a daily basis, so it's highly unlikely anyone will be burning through all the NAND cycles. We have to temper the high endurance rating with a less impressive three year warranty, however; many other SSDs carry a five year warranty—not that the warranty will do you any good if your drive fails and you lose data, so make sure you keep a good backup strategy in place! The remaining specifications are decent but nowhere near class leading. Of note is the high power use, which may make the Predator less than ideal for notebooks even if they have the requisite M.2 PCIe slot. The IPOS ratings look promising, though it's interesting that the smaller 240GB drive sports higher values, indicating perhaps that the Marvell controller isn't tuned for larger drive sizes. Finally, the maximum throughput is only about twice that of a good SATA drive, and clearly behind the current market leaders (Intel SSD 750 and Samsung SM951 NVMe). Where things really get dicey is the pricing. The Predator initially launched with MSRP well above $1 per GB ($746/$364 for the 480GB/240GB drives, not including the adapter card), but that was thanks to its early-adopter M.2 NVMe status. With more competition available, prices have dropped to under $1 per GB now, and interestingly you can actually get the 240GB drive with the adapter for less than the price of the 240GB M.2 card alone. The problem is that Samsung's SM951 NVMe sports much faster specs, and while the 256GB model is more expensive than the 240GB Predator, the 512GB model costs substantially less than the 480GB Kingston drive—and you get 32GB of additional storage capacity as an added bonus. Take this Broken Wing As noted in our revamped SSD test suite article, we've updated to a new test bed for storage, running a Skylake processor in a Z170 motherboard. Here are the details of our test system, followed by the benchmarks. With the SATA bottleneck out of the picture, M.2 SSDs can stretch their wings and fly… at least to the limit of their abilities. This is where the Predator runs into problems, ultimately falling prey to the substantially faster NVMe drives. While the Predator numbers look good compared to any SATA drive, it falls far short of the Intel SSD 750 and the Samsung SM951 NVMe. We measured 109K 4K read IOPS, which is close to Kingston's rated throughput, but only 60K write IOPS—well off the 118K rated value. In general, the Predator ends up delivering roughly half the maximum performance of the SM951 and SSD 750, which really hurts when coupled with the lower price point of the 512GB SM951. Another comparison point is the two Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SATA SSDs in RAID 0. These run neck and neck with the single Predator, often beating it in random IO workloads. The mixed random IOmeter results are particularly bad, with the Predator falling well behind even single SATA SSDs. In our real-world file copy test, it still manages to claim a third place finish, and PCMark 8 illustrates yet again that for everyday tasks there's only so far a fast SSD can take you. But if you're paying top dollar for an NVMe drive, chances are you'd also want a top performing SSD. Learn to Fly Again This just goes to show that using the latest buzzwords as a basis for your next buying decision can often lead to disappointment. The Predator has actually been out for a while now, and it was one of the first M.2 NVMe SSDs to hit the market. Unfortunately, while it's generally faster than any individual SATA drive, the Predator falls well short of the potential that M.2 NVMe offers. The Intel SSD 750 and Samsung SM951 NVMe easily surpass the performance of the Predator, and they do so without carrying a substantial price premium. With the Samsung 950 Pro set to launch next week at even lower prices than the SM951, the writing is on the wall: Kingston needs to cut prices on this drive to keep it relevant. That's the good news, though: With the only real difference between the Predator and other SSDs coming in the form of the controller and interface—items which shouldn't dramatically affect the cost of producing the drive—there should be plenty of room to lower the price. We're giving the Predator a 65 based on the performance and current pricing, but if it should drop to just above SATA price levels—say, $0.50 per GB—we would be less critical. Follow Jarred on Twitter. |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Intel Core-i5 Desktop, HP Intel Core-i3 Laptop, and More! Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:34 PM PDT |
| Razer Redesigns BlackWidow Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard, Extends Warranty Posted: 08 Oct 2015 10:54 AM PDT A flashy keyboard  Razer on Thursday announced a new mechanical keyboard, the BlackWidow Ultimate 2016. At a glance, it looks similar to last year's model, though Razer says it's been redesigned from the ground up with an all-new set of features. Chief among them is fancy per-key backlighting. Each green glowing key has its own LED and can be individually customized through Razer's Synapse software to display a range of fun and funky lighting effects. It comes with several presets, including Wave, Ripple, Reactive, Starlight, and others. Here's a look at some of them in action: Razer also made improvements to the smudge-free top cover, combined the audio and microphone jacks, added a USB pass-through port for easy cable management, and installed an enhanced indicator panel on the top-right corner of the keyboard. Finally, the 2016 model boasts a smaller footprint than last year's version. "There isn't a gaming keyboard out there that offers better value," says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. "From the customizable backlit keys to the fact that our Razer Mechanical Switches are the only ones designed especially for gaming, the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate 2016 is the perfect keyboard for any gamer looking to upgrade to mechanical keyboards." What remains unchanged are Razer's custom mechanical switches. They're "Razer Green" switches that are somewhat similar to Cherry MX Blues. Razer says they're built specifically for gaming with an actuation point of 1.9mm. You can read more about them here. Razer says that starting with this new model, all keyboards featuring Razer Mechanical Switches will have an extended warranty of two years. The new plank is available now for $110. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Vizio's 120-Inch Reference Series 4K TV Will Only Set You Back $130,000 Posted: 08 Oct 2015 10:07 AM PDT You won't find this in Walmart  Vizio announced pricing for its new Reference Series televisions with Dolby Vision, and yes, they're expensive. Crazy expensive, even -- Vizio's aksing $6,000 for the 65-inch model and a jaw-dropping $130,000 for the 120-inch version. No, our zero-key isn't sticking, Vizio's price tag of more than a $1,000 per inch of screen real estate is correct. And the craziest thing isn't the price alone, but that somebody out there is going to buy this thing. Probably multiple somebodies. More power to them. What they'll get in return is a cutting edge television with a 4K resolution and the first to support Dolby Vision, a proprietary High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging playback technology that's supposed to splash your eyeballs with incredible colors, contrast, and brightness. "Vizio and Dolby have worked tirelessly together to make true High Dynamic Range a reality for consumers. The picture quality achieved with Dolby Vision on the Vizio Reference Series is literally jaw-dropping and establishes a new level of excellence for the industry," said Matt McRae, Chief Technology Officer, Vizio. "High Dynamic Range and Ultra Color Spectrum is enabled through proprietary, custom panel technologies creating a television that pushes the limits of contrast ratios and color gamut while redefining the level of picture quality available at home." Yes, a $130,000 4K TV falls a bit outside of Maximum PC's usual coverage, but with Steam Machines and other PC consoles invading the living room and the monitor market innovating again (remember when a 30-inch 2560x1600 monitor was the best there was?), we couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about Vizio's Reference Series. It will also be interesting to see if Vizio or any other company brings this kind of technology to the computer monitor space. What's unique about these TVs is their ability to render colors closer to the range a human eye can see. Vizio says the effect is further enhanced by a full array 800-nit LED backlight with an unprecedented 348 active LED zones for a much wider range of luminance and precise color control. Netflix is on board with what Vizio has done here and has committed to remastering content in Dolby Vision, starting with season one of Marco Polo. Both the 65-inch and 120-inch models are special order items on Vizio's website. If you have the requisite funds and are interested, you'll have to fill out a form indicating interest. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Fast Forward: Are We Living in Sim City? Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:00 AM PDT This article was published in the November 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here. Is our universe an immense computer simulation? Is everything we perceive an illusion rendered in super-resolution pixels? Are we mere pixels, too? Lately, I've seen these questions debated more often in Internet forums, and often by reputable scientists. It's not just another crackpot conspiracy theory. Usually, I'm far too busy to waste attention on trending Internet debates, which can seem as pointless as medieval arguments over the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. But the "universe simulation hypothesis" intersects my knowledge of computers. And one thing often missing from the debate is a realistic forecast of future computing power. Many (though not all) simulation proponents assume, essentially, that Moore's Law is forever. They take for granted that computers will keep getting more powerful on a steep curve and will eventually be capable of simulating a universe as complex as ours appears to be. Whoa, I say. 
The view from Maximum PC's window is definitely real. In past columns, I've described the fallacies that sprout like weeds around Moore's Law. To recap, Moore's Law is not a scientific law; it's an astute observation of semiconductor progress that was first made in 1965 and modified in 1975. I've charted its course using all three common variations (doubling component density every 12 months, 18 months, or 24 months). Analyzing it by any measure, we're already falling behind the predicted curve. Similar curves are common in science. It took only 44 years for airplanes to advance from the Wright brother's wood-and-canvas contraption to the first supersonic flight. At that rate, airliners should be hypersonic by now, but the curve has flattened since the 1960s. Yes, future breakthroughs (carbon nanotubes, quantum computing, whatever) could breathe new life into Moore's Law, or even surpass it. Computers will keep getting more powerful for a long time. However, that doesn't guarantee they will eventually grow powerful enough to simulate our entire universe. Consider that to simulate a single atom in all its marvelous complexity requires simulating its subatomic particles (such as protons, electrons, neutrons) and the even-smaller quarks within them. Simulating a particle requires computer memory to store its properties, plus computing elements (such as transistors) to express its behavior and its interactions with other particles. Even tiny amounts of matter would demand enormous computer resources. To simulate an entire universe on this scale would require a computer that's larger and more complex than the simulation. Therefore, I reject a fully detailed simulated universe. However, we could be living in a partial simulation. Just as today's computer games simulate only one or a few main characters in some detail and fake the rest, it's possible our universe works the same way. Maybe the simulation creates a local instance of subatomic-level detail only when a scientist peers through an electron microscope or operates a particle accelerator. Or maybe, only one person is a fully detailed simulation for which everything else is either faked or created on the fly. A fully simulated Paris wouldn't exist until this person goes there, and it's faked again when they leave. Maybe that person is me. Maybe it's you. But if our universe is as vast and complex as it appears, the physical limits on computer power tell me it must be real.
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report. |
