| Our Six Favorite Events From The PC Olympics Posted: 01 Aug 2012 04:25 PM PDT Once every four years, there's a chance for the best of the best to compete for international acclaim and recognition. The competitors, who have spent their lives training for this moment, come prepared to put it all on the line. That's right, it's the 2012 PC Building Olympics, held right here in the Maximum PC lab. This year we've put together a list of our 6 favorite events from the games—let us know if we missed your favorite. |
| Blueprints: The Maximum PC Recommended Builds - August 2012 Posted: 01 Aug 2012 01:51 PM PDT  What time is it? Blueprints time! We've built three rigs at three approximate price points: Baseline, Deluxe, and Ultra. Baseline gets you a powerful, no-compromises rig, suitable for gaming and content creation at 1080p. Performance gets you more, and Ultra gets you into six-core, dual-GPU territory. Starting next month, we'll be adding a sub-$700 Budget machine to the lineup as well.
These rigs are lab-tested and editor-approved, and we'll update them every month. Feedback is, of course, welcome, and we're in the middle of a debate as to whether to include a lower price range into the lineup. Tell us what you think! Blueprints is sponsored by NewEgg.com. All parts selections are made by MaximumPC editors. Note: Updated 8.01.2012 with the builds from the October 2012 magazine issue. Baseline 
This is a no-BS, sweet-spot gaming machine that's forward-compatible and powerful without being overkill. It's exactly what the Doctor ordered. There are some minor changes this month: We've swapped the Fractal Define to its new R4 version, changed out the budget SSD for one we like better, and finally gone for the Radeon HD 7850 instead of the 560 Ti 448 for its power savings and cost. We'd recommend holding off this month, though; the GTX 660 Ti is (rumored to be) coming soon and may take the sweet spot. Baseline | Parts list | | | Case | Fractal Design Define R4 | www.fractal-design.com | | PSU | Corsair HX650 | www.corsair.com | | Mobo | Asus P8Z77-V | www.asus.com | | CPU | Intel Core i5-3570K @3.4GHz | www.intel.com | | Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo | www.coolermaster.com | | GPU | XFX Double D Radeon HD 7850 | www.xfxforce.com | | RAM | 8GB Patriot Gamer DDR3/1600 | www.patriotmemory.com | | Optical Drive | Samsung SH-222B | www.samsung.com | | Solid State Drive | 128GB Samsung 830 Series | www.samsung.com | | Hard Drive | 3TB Seagate Barracuda | www.seagate.com | | OS | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit | www.microsoft.com | Approximate Price: $1,330 Deluxe 
If you add an extra $500 to your budget from the Baseline rig, you get more stuff: eight processor threads instead of four, eight RAM slots, and an upgrade path to a six-core CPU down the line. You also get a Blu-ray burner and one of the fastest GPUs we've ever tested. This Sandy Bridge-E rig stays pretty much the same as it was in September, except for the SSD, which we've swapped for the Samsung 830. We just like it better. We're curious, though: For Deluxe, should we go Ivy Bridge? How important is Sandy Bridge-E to you at this price range? Deluxe | Parts List | | | Case | NZXT Phantom 410 | www.nzxt.com | | PSU | Corsair HX750 | www.corsair.com | | Mobo | Asus Sabertooth X79 | www.asus.com | | CPU | Intel i7-3820 @4.7GHz (overclocked) | www.intel.com | | Cooler | NZXT Havik 120 | wwww.nzxt.com | | GPU | Asus GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP | www.asus.com | | RAM | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 | www.corsair.com | | Optical Drive | LG WH12LS39 BD-R burner | www.lg.com | | Solid State Drive | 128GB Samsung 830 Series | www.samsung.com | | Hard Drive | 3TB Seagate Barracuda | www.seagate.com | | OS | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit | www.microsoft.com | Approximate Price: $1,870 Ultra 
Our Ultra configuration is for the Maximum PC reader who needs ultra-fast encoding and rendering, tip-top graphical prowess, and speedy storage. Intel's Core i7-3930K is $600 worth of six-core madness, and the Corsair H100 cooler makes it easy to push the CPU to 4.8GHz from its 3.6GHz stock speed. Cooler Master's Cosmos II case is huge and luxurious, with plenty of airflow to cool everything, and the Asus motherboard is great for overclocking and will hold another GTX 690 if you go absolutely out of your gourd for power. We're keeping the 256GB Samsung 830 SSD and 6TB of speedy mass storage. Also, we've heard your input! From now on we'll be augmenting Blueprints with a sub-$1,000 build, starting next month! Send your rig opinions to comments@maximumpc.com! Ultra | Ultra | | | Case | Cooler Master Cosmos II | www.coolermaster.com | | PSU | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W | www.thermaltakeusa.com | | Mobo | Asus P9X79 Deluxe | www.asus.com | | CPU | Intel i7-3930K @4.8GHz (overclocked) | www.intel.com | | Cooler | Corsair H100 | www.corsair.com | | GPU | Asus GTX 690 | www.asus.com | | RAM | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 | www.corsair.com | | Optical Drive | LG WH12LS39 BD-R Burner | www.lg.com | | Solid State Drive | 256GB Samsung 830 Series | www.samsung.com | | Hard Drive | 6TB Seagate Barracuda (3TB x2) | www.seagate.com | | OS | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit | www.microsoft.com | Approximate Price: $3,370 Suggested Pairings Kick-ass peripherals for your new rig Keyboard 
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate $130, www.razerzone.com Mouse 
Cyborg R.A.T. 9 $100, www.cyborggaming.com Speakers 
Corsair SP2500 $205, www.corsair.com Gaming Headset 
Corsair Vengeance 1500 $100, www.corsair.com Midrange Monitor 
Asus PA238Q $300, www.asus.com Premium Monitor 
Dell UltraSharp U3011 $1,200, www.dell.com |
| Microsoft's Windows 8 Reaches RTM Milestone Today Posted: 01 Aug 2012 10:36 AM PDT  Microsoft today released its touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system to manufacturers (RTM, or Released to Manufacturing). The release signals a milestone that indicates the software juggernaut has completed product development and exterminated enough bugs to feel confident enough to hand out final code to OEM partners. Companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard can now begin prepping new Windows 8 PCs and tablets, which they'll introduce to the public next month.
Windows 8 is scheduled for general availability on October 26, 2012, though it will trickle out to other sectors before then, starting today. On August 15, developers and IT professionals will be able to download Windows 8 via MSDN and TechNet subscriptions, and on August 16, customers with existing Microsoft Software Assurance for Windows will have access to Windows 8 Enterprise through Microsoft's Volume License Service Center (VLSC). Microsoft Partner Network members will also be able to get their hands on Windows 8 starting August 16. The two remaining pre-launch dates include August 20 (for Microsoft Action Pack Providers) and September 1 (for Volume License customers without Software Assurance). It's still a nearly two-month wait for the general public, though users are invited to get acquainted with the Metro-sexual OS by downloading the Release Preview. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Hey Android Users, Want Some Ice Cream Sandwich with Your Raspberry Pi? Posted: 01 Aug 2012 09:33 AM PDT  The folks responsible for Raspberry Pi have already concocted a delicious, inexpensive recipe for micro-sized computing, but the project is about to get even tastier with the introduction of one more ingredient: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Raspberry Pi's developers are working on porting ICS to its $35 device and have "been making great progress" towards that end.
"Hardware-accelerated graphics and video have been up and running smoothly for some time; AudioFinger support is the only major missing piece at the moment," Raspberry Pi's developers stated in their most recent blog post. There are other issues to work through as well, but it's all coming along nicely. The developers said that this particular implementation uses a different kernel and VideoCore binary image than the one that's available on GitHub, explaining that's the reason they've kept quiet about it all so far. Once they figure out a feasible way to converge the two code lines to produce a single common platform, they'll release the source code to the general public. Raspberry Pi is a $35 device the size of a credit card with an ARM processor clocked at 700MHz, VideoCore 4 GPU capable of Blu-ray quality playback, 256MB of RAM, two USB ports, and an Ethernet port. There's also a $25 version that does away with Ethernet and drops one of the USB ports. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Star Wars: The Old Republic Getting Free-to-Play Option in Fall Posted: 01 Aug 2012 09:16 AM PDT  Bioware said it's adding a free-to-play (F2P) option to its online game Star Wars: The Old Republic this fall. The F2P option will give players access to each of the eight Star Wars character class storylines, which they can grind up to level 50. Bioware's pro bono mode will also include unlimited game access and new higher-level game content and features made available through individual purchases or via a subscription.
"Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe," said Matthew Bromberg, GM of Bioware Austin. The F2P play option will carry restrictions on access to new content and advanced player features, though some of those will be unlockable via Cartel Coins. Bioware also vowed to increase the frequency of game content updates, the first of which will be rolled out in August. You can view a comparison of subscription versus free play accounts in Bioware's handy online chart. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Apple CPU Designer Jim Keller Heads Back to AMD as Chief Architect and VP Posted: 01 Aug 2012 07:47 AM PDT  Jim Keller, now 53 years old, was a chip designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) over a decade ago. His roots in the industry go back much further than that, all the way back to his DEC days where he cut his teeth on Alpha processors, but most recently he served as Director of Platform Architecture at Apple where he had a hand in designing the A4 and A5 processors employed in millions of iPads, iPhones, iPod touch devices, and Apple TV boxes. In a refreshing change of pace for AMD, which has lost some top level talent in recent months and years, Keller is back in Sunnyvale where he'll serve as the company's corporate vice president and chief architect of microprocessor cores.
AMD wasted little time in boasting Keller's return. "Jim is one of the most widely respected and sought-after innovators in the industry and a very strong addition to our engineering team," said Mark Papermaster, senior vice president of technology and engineering, and the person Keller will be reporting to. "He has contributed to processing innovations that have delivered tremendous compute advances for millions of people all over the world, and we expect that his innovative spirit, low-power design expertise, creativity and drive for success will help us shape our future and fuel our growth." Keller came to work at Apple when the Cupertino outfit acquired P.A. Semi, a fabless semiconductor design company he was employed at. Prior to that, he worked at SiByte and Broadcom as chief architect for a line of scalable, MIPS-based network processors. And before Broadcom, Keller helped AMD design its Athlon 64 and Opteron 64 processors, the first to feature native x86-64 bit architecture. He also co-authored the HyperTransport specification. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Awesome Internet Map Arranges 350,000 Websites in a Traffic Based Cluster Posted: 01 Aug 2012 07:09 AM PDT  Giving the Web a sense of scale, a guy named Ruslan Enikeev plotted 350,000 of the most popular websites and 2 million links from 196 countries on a colorful, bubble filled map, forming a giant cluster viewers can zoom in and out of on a whim. As you get closer to any particular bubble, the web address it represents comes into view, or you can punch in an address in the search field and Scotty will beam you there.
It's a small sampling of the Web at large, and it gives you an idea of just how massive the Internet really is. As you zoom in, more and more circles come into view as if you're sailing through the solar system at light speed. It's also more complex than that. While bigger circles represent sites that draw in more traffic than others, they're not simply splattered in random fashion, or at least they don't remain that way. There are unseen links between websites based on users jumping from one site to the other. The stronger these links, the closer sites are drawn towards each other. "To draw an analogy from classical physics, one may say that websites are electrically charged bodies, while links between them are springs. Springs pull similar websites together, and the charge does not let the bodies adjoin and pushes websites apart if there is no link between them," Enikeev explains. "Originally, all such electrified bodies (websites) are randomly scattered on the surface of the map. Springs are stretched, repulsion energy is high – the system is far from being at equilibrium. Then the websites start moving under the influence of the forces exerted and in a while come to a halt – forces of attraction now become equal to forces of repulsion, the system has reached its equilibrium. It is exactly that state that is shown on the Internet map." Enikeev's algorithm creates an interesting alignment that can be fun to theorize. For example, Facebook, one of the largest circles on the map, is surrounded by Drupal.org, Joomla.org, Android.com, HTC.com, Slideshare.net, HP.com, Google.com, Live.com, and the list goes on. Twitter, which is in fairly close proximity, is flanked by Slashdot.org, Nike.com, GettyImages.com, Style.com, SmugMug.com, Palm.com, and so forth. What does it mean? We're not sure, but we bet someone out there is trying to figure it out. Check out The Internet Map for yourself. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Online Poker Sites, Department of Justice Reach $731 Million Settlement Posted: 01 Aug 2012 06:37 AM PDT  PokerStars, the largest Internet poker site on the planet, has agreed to acquire former competitor Full Tilt Poker and fork over $184 million in owed money to overseas poker players in order to settle civil charges brought on by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which accused the site of sidestepping U.S. regulations related to online gambling and money laundering. As part of the settlement, PokerStars will also forfeit $547 million to the U.S. government.
"We are pleased to announce these settlements by Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, which allow us to quickly get significant compensation into the victim players' hands," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "Today's settlements demonstrate that if you engage in conduct that violates the laws of the United States, as we alleged in this case, then even if you are doing so from across the ocean, you will have to answer for that conduct and turn over your ill-gotten gains." The Manhattan branch of the DOJ said that U.S. victims will be compensated out of the $547 million PokerStars is forfeiting to the U.S. government, though it's unclear exactly how much is expected to be released. Also as part of the settlement, PokerStars is prohibited from offering online poker in the U.S. for real money unless and until it because legal to do so. "We are delighted we have been able to put this matter behind us, and also secured our ability to operate in the United States of America whenever the regulations allow," said Mark Scheinberg (PDF), Chairman of the Board of PokerStars. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Microsoft's Outlook.com is Hotmail Reimagined Posted: 01 Aug 2012 06:02 AM PDT  Say goodbye to Hotmail (as you know it) and hello to Outlook.com, Microsoft's new personal email service that launched in preview form on Tuesday. To listen to Microsoft describe it, Outlook.com represents "the first major improvement to cloud mail in eight years," and is yet another reimagined cloud service as Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 roll into view. It's "modern email designed for the next billion mailboxes." Marketing hype aside, just what exactly is Outlook.com all about?
Outlook.com is a cloud service with a diminished emphasis on the browser. It's Hotmail renamed and rebuilt with a new interface, new features, and social integration. Microsoft paid a ton of attention to the UI and cleaned up the clutter with 60 percent fewer pixels in the header, making room for 30 percent more messages visible in your inbox, and there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space (there are, however, Bing Shopping ads in a column on the right). The revamped service uses Exchange ActiveSync, so it can power your mail, calendar, and contacts, and maintain a consistent look and feel across desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices. It's also connected to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, with Skype support just around the corner. Connecting to a social network is completely optional, and Microsoft vows never to scan your email content or attachments to send to advertisers or any other company. Office Web Apps (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote) are included so you can view and edit attachments within your inbox, and so is SkyDrive. Microsoft might be on to something with Outlook.com, and at the very least, curiosity has piqued the Internet community. According to Microsoft's Outlook.com Twitter account, a million people signed up for a new mail account within a few hours of the preview going live. You can kick its tires yourself by heading to Outlook.com. For more information, Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, covers the many changes in a detailed blog post. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Dropbox: Hacked Employee Account Behind Spam Attack Posted: 31 Jul 2012 10:50 PM PDT  Confronted with a large number of reports of Dropbox-associated email addresses being targeted by spammers, the cloud storage company brought in "outside experts" to probe the issue earlier this month. Those experts have now concluded their investigation and identified the exact cause behind this entire fiasco.
The probe put together by Dropbox has found that the problem began when usernames and passwords stolen from third-party websites were used to compromise a small number of Dropbox accounts. But things got as bad as they did because one of the accounts compromised was that of an employee and "contained a project document with user email addresses." The company has announced that it plans to implement a number of security measures to avoid similar embarrassments in the future. These measures include two-factor authentication and a new page to help users keep an eye on active logins (and hopefully an internal mechanism to ensure that employee Dropbox accounts don't contain unencrypted user data). "At the same time, we strongly recommend you improve your online safety by setting a unique password for each website you use," Dropbox said in a blog post Tuesday. " Though it's easy to reuse the same password on different websites, this means if any one site is compromised, all your accounts are at risk. Tools like 1Password can help you manage strong passwords across multiple sites." |
When Microsoft released Windows 7 in late 2009, it became an instant hit, especially in the consumer PC market. In contrast, enterprise users did not display quite the same eagerness in adopting the operating system, with most of them choosing instead to cling onto Windows XP for as long as possible. Earlier this month, though, Microsoft triumphantly announced that over 50 percent of all enterprise desktops were now running Windows 7. But stats don't always tell the full story, do they?
The folks responsible for Raspberry Pi have already concocted a delicious, inexpensive recipe for micro-sized computing, but the project is about to get even tastier with the introduction of one more ingredient: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Raspberry Pi's developers are working on porting ICS to its $35 device and have "been making great progress" towards that end.
