| MSI Takes Stab at Bare Bones PC Market with Nightblade Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:51 PM PST  A small form factor skeleton with one-touch overclocking
MSI seems to have its hands in quite a few different cookie jars, which now includes bare bone PCs for gamers. The new MSI Nightblade is a small form factor (SFF) setup with an MSI Gaming Z87I motherboard, 600W power supply, and Dragon case fan. Your job is to drop in a CPU, graphics card, storage, optical drive, and you're ready to game -- and you can overclock using MSI's OC Genie Button on the front of the chassis. The foundation of the Nightblade is its LGA 1150 motherboard. It supports up to 16GB of DDR3-3000 RAM and has onboard 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Though the Nightblade is a mini-ITX setup, the board supports ATX graphics cards, and MSI says there's room enough for two of them in there. You can also install up to two SSDs and one HDD. Other features include six USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, DisplayPort, eSATA, E2200 Killer Gigabit LAN, a Clear CMOS button, and a few other odds and ends. If you're the LAN party type, you'll also enjoy the front-side handle that makes transport a breeze. Look for the Nightblade to be available later this month starting at $599, which will also include a SteelSeries Siberia V2 Dragon headset. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Razer Builds a Mechanical Switch Designed Specifically for Gaming Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:17 PM PST  Re-engineering the mechanical switch
People are always talking about not having to reinvent the wheel, but what if the purpose of the wheel changed? It's an admittedly rough analogy to what Razer has done, which is try to reinvent the mechanical switch. According to Razer, all mechanical switches up to this point have been designed for typing, whereas the new Razer Mechanical Switch was purpose-built for gaming applications. "Instead of focusing solely on typing comfort, as traditional mechanical switches have done, we had to completely rethink the conventional approach behind the actuation and reset points of mechanical switches in order to fine-tune them for gaming," says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director. ""Our engineers' focus for the specification was on speed, accuracy and durability to bring the unfair advantage to gamers worldwide. The new switch makes the most popular gaming keyboard in the world even better." There are lots of mechanical switch types out there, though Razer contends its own is a different breed. How so? According to Razer, its team of engineers were able to identify the optimal actual distance for a gaming switch to a fraction of a millimeter, and they reduced the distance between the actuation and reset point by almost half, for faster and more precise gaming commands. Razer built two types of switches -- the Razer Green that is tactile and clicky with a required force of 50g to actuate, and the Razer Orange that is also tactile but silent, requiring a force of 45g to actuate. Both types are available on the new Razer BlackWidow family of mechanical keyboards. Razer's also making the switches available to third-party peripheral makers. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Toshiba TrasnMemory 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Intel Core i7 4770, and More! Posted: 06 Mar 2014 09:41 AM PST |
| Psst, Developers, CUDA 6 Release Candidate is Now Available to Download Posted: 06 Mar 2014 08:28 AM PST  Unified memory is one of the bigger feature additions to CUDA 6
It's been a little more than two years since Nvidia decided to open source its CUDA platform, and with the latest release, Nvidia says it's made improvements to parallel programming, as well as made it faster and easier for developers to create next generation applications. Towards those goals, the CUDA 6 Release Candidate that's now available comes with several new features. One of the biggest is unified memory support. Using CUDA 6, applications can access CPU and GPU memory without needing to manually copy data from one to the other. "This is a major time saver that simplifies the programming process, and makes it easier for programmers to add GPU acceleration in a wider range of applications," Nvidia stated in a blog post announcing the release. Other feature highlights include drop-in libraries that can automatically accelerate BLAS and FFTW calculations by replacing the existing CPU-only BLAS and FFTW library with a new GPU accelerated equivalent, and multi-GPU scaling. Nvidia also packed in a full suite of programming tools, GPU-accelerated math libraries, documentation, and programming guides. You can check out the Release Notes (PDF) for a full list of changes and then grab the appropriate download from Nvidia's Developer Zone page. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Surprise! Getty Images Gifts the Web 35 Million Photos to Embed for Free Posted: 06 Mar 2014 07:46 AM PST  They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, though if you post a copyrighted image without the owner's consent, it can actually be worth more than that. Much more. One of the most difficult parts about running a frequently updated website or blog is finding amusing images that are legal to use (hello, Creative Commons!). However, it's about to get a lot easier thanks to Getty Images, the world's largest photos service. In a surprise move, Getty Images is freeing up around 35 million photos from its collection spanning over a hundred years so that websites and bloggers can post them without getting smacked in the face by a lawsuit.
These images will not contain a watermark, though people who post them will need to use Getty's Embedded Viewer tool and abide by the company's Terms of Use. "You may only use embedded Getty Images Content for editorial purposes (meaning relating to events that are newsworthy or of public interest). Embedded Getty Images Content may not be used: (a) for any commercial purpose (for example, in advertising, promotions or merchandising) or to suggest endorsement or sponsorship; (b) in violation of any stated restriction; (c) in a defamatory, pornographic or otherwise unlawful manner; or (d) outside of the context of the Embedded Viewer," Getty Images states. Images that are free to use can change at any time, and if they do, users agree to remove images upon request. That said, the process of finding and posting a Getty Image is rather simple -- all you have to do is type in what you're searching for on the Getty Images website. Once you find an image, click its embed icon from the search results or image details page, copy the embed code, paste it into the source code for your website, and publish. While there won't be a watermark, there will be a footer underneath the photo giving credit (and linking back to) Getty Images. Image Credit: Flickr (Rodrigo Senna) Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Microsoft Plans to Detail DirectX 12 at GDC 2014 Posted: 06 Mar 2014 07:05 AM PST  Don't go shoveling dirt on DX12's grave
It's been nearly three and a half years since Microsoft last released a major version of its DirectX API, followed by a few point releases between then and now. However, if you feared DirectX was essentially done, you can sigh a breath of relief knowing that's not the case. As a new DirectX 12 (DX12) Twitter account exclaims, "Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated...." Not only that, but DX12 is only two weeks away. Microsoft created the special Twitter account and also put up a teaser page on its MSDN blog. Next to a giant DirectX 11 box, it says, "Join us at GDC March 20, 2014 10:00am." Underneath the text are logos for AMD Radeon Graphics, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm Snapdragon, and Windows. One of the sessions that's scheduled for GDC is "DirectX: Direct3D Futures," which will be presented by Max McMullen, head of the Windows Graphics team. According to the description, McMullen will discuss how future changes to Direct3D will enable next generation games to run faster, as well as how future improvements will allow developers an unprecedented level of hardware control. He'll also talk about reducing CPU rendering overhead across a broad ecosystem of hardware, which could tie in with Qualcomm's involvement here. 
In any event, stay tuned -- we'll have more in a couple of weeks when DirectX 12 is officially unboxed! Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
