| IDF 2013 Photo Gallery Posted: 11 Sep 2013 05:11 PM PDT  192GB of RAM in a system, Bay Trail, and Haswell-E—Oh my!
We'll admit it, it was damned hard to find desktop and enthusiast-related hardware at the 2013 Intel Developer Forum. It was almost as if old desktop PCs were like the Intel's crazy aunt living in the basement. Fortunately, the desktop PC and PC enthusiasm was alive at well at IDF—if you looked hard enough. Click through our photo gallery for the most important PC news from IDF and—gasp!—proof that Haswell-E on desktop lives! Note: Some of the images may appear to be cropped off in the preview window so make sure you click on the picture for the full-sized photo! |
| Valve Announces New Steam Sharing Service Posted: 11 Sep 2013 04:55 PM PDT 
New service lets you share Steam games with up to ten people Today Valve announced a new service called Steam Family Sharing which allows users to share their games and software with other people on their friends list. It launches in limited beta next week, and is open to the first 1,000 who sign-up. Those who gain access will allow be able to share the contents of their Steam library with up to ten Steam accounts. The service will allow people you designate to be able to download and play games from a shared library, but it won't allow access to a specific title from more than one computer at a time. If the owner of a title logs into Steam while a "friend" is playing, the borrower will be given a notice to purchase the game for themselves, or quit playing. Similarly, if a "friend" is playing a shared game, only the owner will see it as being available, but it will be inaccessable to anybody else the account is shared with. Valve has stated it implemented the service in direct response to user requests, which is certainly nice of the company, but could also be a move to compete against the next-gen consoles, which have both made the ability to share games a top priority in their marketing campaigns. The maneuver also gives Valve an advantage over EA's Origin download service, which recently became the first digital delivery for software to announce a refund policy. |
| Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review Posted: 11 Sep 2013 04:35 PM PDT 
A worthy installment to the famed survival-horror series Your heart pounds in your chest. Your palms sweat on your keyboard and mouse. Your stomach churns. No, you're not having a heart attack, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has got you in its grasp with no signs of letting go. In collaboration between publisher Frictional Games and new developer The Chinese Room, the latest installment of the Amnesia survival-horror series has arrived. The game is set in London in the year 1899. You are Oswald Mandus, an elite and wealthy industrialist whose empire has been built upon the commercial slaughter of swine. Drawing on the dark and gruesome themes from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs casts you into the pit of Mandus' own industrial slaughterhouse in a desperate and frantic search for your twin sons. Veterans of Amensia: The Dark Descent will instantly recognize familiar gameplay elements while simultaneously being stripped of previously key aspects. There are no weapons to speak of in Amnesia, meaning you can't fight your scary foes. Both the sanity system and the inventory screen, for example, have been removed from the series which grants you the freedom to use your lantern without fear of running out of oil. Standing in the dark no longer makes your character grind his teeth or sway on the screen in a blurry incomprehensible terror nor do bugs slither across your screen anymore. In addition, unlike its predecessor, A Machine for Pigs follows a strict and linear progression with no option for multiple endings. 
Mansion artwork in Amnesia is both captivating and creepy. Even so, The Chinese Room stays true to Amnesia's psychological horror theme and delivers a worthy successor to the original. Everything from the mansion to the intricate factory setting is crafted meticulously well. Mandus' mansion, in particular, was constructed with so much charm that it reminded us of the time when we first set foot in the original Resident Evil mansion. And then there are the journals. We found ourselves more repulsed by the journal documents than by the actual grotesque pig-men, i.e., the abominations stalking the halls in search of you throughout the game. Musically, the works of composer Jessica Curry's piano melodies still resonate throughout our heads transporting us back to the cursed slaughterhouse. As the composer of haunting adventure game Dear Esther, Curry's musical score alone is enough to send chills down the spine, serving as the perfect foundation for ambient effects to the game's environment; the deeper the descent into the factory, the more haunting and melancholic the score. Combined with the squeals from our disfigured swine stalkers, A Machine for Pigs provides a superb ambient sound experience. 
There are some rituals that you don't want to understand. Fans of the survival horror genre will be disappointed by the fact that, despite how well the sound, story, and production levels are, gameplay is actually not as challenging or scary as its predecessor. Puzzles have been greatly simplified and don't require much more attention than a few flicks of a switch or the turning of a valve. Encounters with the enemy feel relatively low and the sudden rattles of the factory and mansion feel predictable. Even with the reliance of scripted and triggered events, the game never got scarier than the original. All in all, however, the Amnesia experience lives on and A Machine for Pigs proves to be a good successor. Do yourself a favor and forgo the YouTube gameplay videos; Amnesia is a title that is well worth experiencing for yourself. |
| Humble Indie Game Bundle 9 Revealed Posted: 11 Sep 2013 01:20 PM PDT 
Includes Trine 2, Mark of the Ninja, and more! The pay-what-you-want model is back, this time with six independently developed cross-platform games. For as little as a one dollar donation, you get a Steam product key in addition to DRM-free direct downloads to the complete story of Trine 2, Mark of the Ninja, Eets Munchies and Brütal Legend. If you pay more than the average price (currently at $4.36), you can get access to FTL: Faster Than Light and FEZ. The combined price of these games totals more than $120 when purchased separately. The Humble Bundle allows you to choose exactly how your donation is divided whether it be through foundations, the game developers or even the Humble Bundle staff. This Humble Bundle deal will expire on September 25th at 12:00pm |
| Apple Stock Falls 6 Percent Following iPhone Event Posted: 11 Sep 2013 10:07 AM PDT  New iPhones, same 4-inch display
The trouble with being a mega-company like Apple is that the bar is eventually too high. It certainly seemed that way when Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, a modest upgrade to the iPhone 4S, though at least it introduced a much needed bump in screen size. Yesterday, however, rumors of an even larger size iPhone were debunked when Apple trotted out a pair of new iPhone models still featuring a 4-inch display. A day later, the company's stock is taking a beating. In case you missed it, Apple on Tuesday introduced the iPhone 5S and 5C. The 5S model is an upgraded device with a 64-bit A7 processor (the first smartphone ever to have a 64-bit CPU), better optics, a fingerprint reader embedded into the Home button, and some new color options like gold. The iPhone 5C takes the place of the iPhone 5 with a starting price of $99, but it's made of colorful polycarbonate plastic with a steel reinforced frame that doubles as an antenna. It's available in a variety of colors like the iPod touch. Apple may have made two mistakes here, one for each device. First, it seems the public wants a bigger display, and if Apple needs proof of that, it need only look at Samsung and how well it's Galaxy line sells. The 5S didn't deliver, and while the 64-bit CPU is cool, only tech savvy users are likely to be geeked about that. 
Secondly, the iPhone 5C is priced too high. Apple is choosing to make money straight away from iPhone 5C sales rather than aggressively go after market share that it lost to Android. Imagine if Apple priced the iPhone 5C at $50 or even free on a two-year contract. That probably would have swayed potential Android buyers into jumping ship, the hardcore anti-iOS crowd notwithstanding. As a result of those mistakes, or perhaps because the expectation is so high these days, Apple's share price is down around $28 today, or about 6 percent. The company is still worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but if you're an investor, this is not wanted you wanted to wake up to in the morning. What do you think about Apple's new iPhone models? Do you agree that they're overall underwhelming, or are the expectations too high? Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Asus Unveils Rampage IV Black Edition Motherboard for Ivy Bridge-E Posted: 11 Sep 2013 08:52 AM PDT  A badass board for power users
The Republic of Gamers (ROG) line of products from Asus rarely disappoints, and though we'll reserve judgement until we have to time to play with the company's new Rampage IV Black Edition motherboard, this thing looks like another winner, both on paper and in pictures. As the model name suggests, Asus blacked out the motherboard, save for a spattering of red and silver throughout. Asus says don't confuse this with the Rampage IV Extreme Black it showed off back in April. There were only three of those boards made, and they never went on sale. Unlike last time, the new offering isn't just for show, it's for purchase, and there are plenty of reasons why enthusiasts will want to pick one up. There are a dozen reasons right off the bat -- 12 SATA ports, 8 of which are SATA 6Gbps. The blacked out board also boasts 8 USB 3.0 ports, built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, SupremeFX Formula audio with headphone amplifier and 120dB SNR, and a design optimized for Ivy Bridge-E. 
"The ROG team went through 5 full layout designs to find the best possible 8 DIMM memory layout topology, and where the ROG team was working on the five new Z87 boards in the first half on this year, that whole team has focused efforts on just the Black Edition this time around!," Asus stated in a blog post. Asus also says this is the only ROG motherboard with an all-black color scheme, a privilege we're sure will cost a pretty penny, though the company hasn't yet announced any pricing details. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| G.Skill Adds 15 DDR3 Quad Channel Memory Kits to RipjawsZ Family Posted: 11 Sep 2013 08:17 AM PDT  A memory kit for every occasion
G.Skill went a little nuts today (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you) and expanded its RipjawsZ line with a whopping 15 new DDR3 quad-channel memory kits, all of which the company claims have been optimized for Intel's Core i7 processor line for socket LGA2011 and X79 motherboards (Ivy Bridge-E, in other words). The new kits range in frequency from 1866MHz (10-11-10-30 timings) to a blistering fast 2933MHz (12-14-14-35 timings). If you favor capacity over raw speed, two of those 15 kits are 64GB packages (8x8GB) running at DDR3-2666. They're not the fastest of the bunch, but at the same time, 2666MHz is hardly considered slow. In fact, G.Skill also rolled out four other 64GB kits at slower frequencies (1866MHz, two at 2133Mhz, and 2400MHz). While overclocking performance is never guaranteed, G.Skill said it was able to push one of its 16GB (4x4GB) kits to 3000MHz on air cooling using an Intel Core i7 4960X processor and Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard. Good stuff, though we'll temper our excitement until pricing and availability becomes known. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Thermaltake's Toughpower DPS Series Power Supplies Come with Software Control and Monitoring Posted: 11 Sep 2013 07:17 AM PDT  Unique software solution keeps track of energy costs
Thermaltake has come out with a new kind of power supply (PSU), one that will let you monitor and control its vitals to provide your system with clean and stable power, and to help you keep track of how much juice it's sucking from the wall. The new units are the Toughpower DPS 850W and 750W, both digitally controlled via a free software download (DPSApp) available on Thermaltake's website. Using the software, you can essentially do three things: - Monitor the electricity cost of your PC
- Actively monitor and record the status of your PC
- Share that information in the cloud with friends, if you desire
It's a pretty nifty software suite that will help you determine just how much an all-night gaming session costs, or what you're paying to run a distributed computing project like Folding@Home or SETI. The actual power supplies themselves are fully modular, 80 Plus Gold certified, and ready to run Haswell without a hitch. No word yet on how much either model costs or when they'll be available. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: OCZ Fatal1ty 1000W PSU, Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard, and More! Posted: 11 Sep 2013 06:51 AM PDT |
