| 60 E3 2013 Pictures Posted: 17 Jun 2013 02:40 PM PDT E3 booth babes, booth tours, and more! We had the chance to check out E3 2013 in Los Angeles, California last week. As expected, the gaming/tech event was a big one with Microsoft and Sony showing off their new Xbox One and PS4 consoles. But it wasn't all about the next-generation consoles. PC vendors such as Nvidia, AMD, Alienware, and Razer were at the expo showing off their latest gaming toys and there were a bunch of PC-exclusive titles at the event. In our E3 2013 picture gallery below, we'll provide a look at some of this hottest tech, booth babes, and much more. What did you think was the coolest thing at the show this year? Let us know in the comments! |
| Newegg Daily Deals: All Networking Gear Edition! Posted: 17 Jun 2013 12:22 PM PDT |
| It's Official: China Owns the Supercomputing Crown Posted: 17 Jun 2013 09:24 AM PDT  We saw this coming.
Earlier this month we said that China was poised to sit atop the supercomputing summit with its Tianhe-2, a system built by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). Armed with over 3 million physical processing cores and 1 petabyte of memory, there was no way this thing wouldn't shoot right to the top, and so it did, taking pole position on the TOP500 chart. Tianhe-2 became the world's fastest supercomputer with a performance metric of 33.86 petaflop per second on the Linkpack benchmark, according to the 41st edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. What's more, Tianhe-2's ascent to the top came far earlier than expected. "The surprise appearance of Tianhe-2, two years ahead of the expected deployment, marks China's first return to the No. 1 position since November 2010, when Tianhe-1A was the top system," TOP500 said. "Tianhe-2 has 16,000 nodes, each with two Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors for a combined total of 3,120,000 computing cores." It's an incredible machine equipped with 32,000 Xeon processors and 48,000 Xeon Phi accelerator processors. The machine also has 12.4 petabytes of storage and consumes 17.8MW of power. It's cooled by a closed air cooling system. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Were Xbox One E3 Demos Powered by Windows 7 and Nvidia Graphics? Posted: 17 Jun 2013 08:36 AM PDT  Things that make you go hmmm.
Microsoft made a splash at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week by showing off a number of fantastic looking games for its upcoming Xbox One console. It was hard not to get excited by some of the titles, including Dead Rising 3 and Forza Motorsport 5, but as it turns out, the game demos we saw might have actually been running on Hewlett-Packard PCs running Windows 7. Before we go any further, let's be clear that it's not all that unusual for game developers to use PC hardware to show off future titles, so that in and of itself isn't reason to rake Microsoft over the coals. However, it's at least a little bit interesting that these tech demos were being run on Windows 7 rather than Windows 8, which the Xbox One's OS is partly based on. Secondly, it was discovered that the HP PCs were equipped with Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 Series graphics cards. Given the risk of exposure, it would have made more sense to use machines running AMD graphics cards since the GPU in the Xbox One is an AMD part that's comparable to a mid-range Radeon HD 7790. All of this came to light when Julian Rignail from U.S. Gamers posted to Twitter a message saying, "I just played an Xbox One game using an Xbox One controller that crashed... to a Windows 7, Hewlett Packard-branded desktop. Magic!" The Internet demanded pics, and lo and behold, there are a couple shots of Windows 7 PCs tucked inside Xbox One cabinets. Again, using PCs to show off console games isn't unusual, but the choice of OS and GPU certainly raise an inquisitive eyebrow. And according to Cinema Blend, which first broke the story, developers have confirmed that PlayStation 4 game demos shown off at E3 were running on PS4 Dev kits, not PC hardware. File this under "T" for "Things that make you go hmmm." Update 12:30 PM Or maybe not. A developer for Twisted Pixel's LocoCycle claims that his game was the only one of the bunch running on a PC, and that the choice of hardware was "solely [Twisted Pixel's] decision," not Microsoft's. That would certainly explain a few things, and hopefully blunt those pitchforks and douse the torches. Kudos to "dracx619" for the update in our comments section. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Samsung Starts Mass Producing World's First PCI-Express SSDs for Skinny Laptops Posted: 17 Jun 2013 05:38 AM PDT  Slim design, big performance.
Samsung has ramped up production of what it claims is the industry's first PCI-Express solid state drive (SSD) for next generation ultra-slim notebooks. Dubbed XP941, these new drives come in the new M.2 form factor and measure just 80mm by 20mm. They weigh a scant 6g, which is about 9 times less than a standard 2.5-inch SSD, Samsung says. Though they're small and light, these drives kick out some heavy-hitting performance numbers. Sequential read performance is as high as 1,400MB/s. To put that into perspective, Samsung says its new drive can read 500GB of data or 100 HD movies as large as 5GB in just 6 minutes, or 10 HD movies at 5GB in 36 seconds. A typical hard drive would need 40 minutes to perform the same task. "With the Samsung XP941, we have become the first to provide the highest performance PCIe SSD to global PC makers so that they can launch leading-edge ultra-slim notebook PCs this year," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung plans to continue timely delivery of the most advanced PCIe SSD solutions with higher density and performance, and support global IT companies providing an extremely robust computing environment to consumers." While the drives are just now going into mass production, Samsung said it's been supplying the parts to major notebook players with 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacity SSDs since earlier this quarter. New and thinner laptops that use these drives should start showing up soon. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Patriot Memory and Meteor Tag Team Hawken Themed Rage XT USB 3.0 Thumb Drive Posted: 17 Jun 2013 05:14 AM PDT  Free in-game bonus with purchase.
Patriot Memory on Monday announced that it's teamed up with Meteor Entertainment to launch a "one-of-a-kind" SuperSonice Rage XT promotional bundle with Meteor's online mech action game, Hawken. The bundle pairs Patriot's 64GB USB 3.0 Supersonic Rage XT NAND flash memory drive with a game changing 7-day Hawken Double XP Boost, allowing gamers to level up faster in the multiplayer mech title. Hawken is a free-to-play first person shooter built around Unreal Engine 3. It uses a freemium model, though up until June 25, gamers can test drive the Scout and Rocketeer mechs at no cost. As for the flash drive, the Supersonic Rage XT sports an "extra tough" rubberized housing. It's rated to read data at up to 180MB/s and write at up to 50MB/s when plugged into a USB 3.0 port. It's available in bundled form exclusively at Newegg for $60. In semi-related news, Patriot recently launched new Intel Extreme Masters Limited Edition DDR3 memory. Built for gamers and intended for 2nd and 3rd Generation Intel core processors, the Limited Edition RAM is certified for Intel XMP 1.3 delivering frequencies of 1600MHz, 1866MHz, and 2133MHz. It's available in dual- and quad-channel kits in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
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