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Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT review: AMD brings the fight back to NVIDIA
The unveiling of the Radeon 5000 family and Ryzen third-gen chips at Computex made it clear this was going to be a special year for AMD. Its latest CPUs include a monster 12-core chip for just $499. And with its latest video cards, the Radeon RX 5700 ($349) and RX 5700 XT ($399), AMD is finally bringing its long awaited "Navi" architecture (now called Radeon DNA, or RDNA) to a consumer GPU. But NVIDIA was paying attention. Last week it announced beefed up "Super" versions of its RTX cards, which, on paper, seemed to erase AMD's performance advantage. All of this is great news for gamers, who now have a strong new lineup of affordable midrange graphics cards to choose from. But AMD is once again at risk of being overshadowed by its flashier competitor. (No wonder it rushed out a last-minute price drop.)
NVIDIA's got a new GPU monster, and it's called Titan X
NVIDIA just announced the Titan X, its latest powerhouse graphics card, at Epic Game's GDC session this morning. And boy, it sounds like a monster: According to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, it's now the world's most powerful GPU with more than 8 billion transistors (a bit of a jump from the 7 billion in last year's Titan Z). Titan X is powered by the company's new Maxwell architecture, and it packs in 12 gigabytes of VRAM, just like the Titan Z. NVIDIA isn't revealing much else about the new GPU yet -- it has its own conference in a few weeks, after all -- but at this point it sounds like the video card we'll all be pining for this year.
NVIDIA's newest GPU crams in tons of power without a hefty price
If you've been tempted by NVIDIA's high-end GTX 970 and 980 video cards, but couldn't justify their high prices, the company's latest entry is made for you. NVIDIA is rounding out its Maxwell family of video cards today with the GTX 960, a desktop GPU that it describes as hitting the "sweet spot" when it comes to price and performance. It's far more powerful than the entry-level GTX 750 and 750 Ti announced a year ago, but at $199 it's significantly cheaper than its high-end siblings (though some variations may be a tad more expensive). Just how powerful is the GTX 960? Enough for you to be able to play modern games like Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity in 1080p with the highest settings and still get a silky smooth frame rate of 60 FPS -- at least, according to NVIDIA. Expect to see video card makers roll out their GTX 960 cards over the next few weeks.
Cyber Monday deals for gamers
You've all seen the $4.99 World of Warcraft deal, but if you're looking to speed up your gaming PC or get your hands on some new peripherals, Cyber Monday is going to be one of your last big sale days before Christmas. Here's a quick roundup of some of the US-based deals out there. Starting with the peripherals, Steelseries is running a Cyber Monday sale which includes some WoW mice and mouse pads at up to 40% off. They also come with a free set of touchscreen controls for your tablet and free shipping. You'll also find some headsets and other accessories on sale at Steelseries. Once you make the move to a mechanical keyboard, there's no going back. Newegg has one on sale for $49.99 after rebate. They also have a 27" IPS monitor half price at $199.99. PC hardware deals I believe that the single greatest upgrade you can make for your PC's overall performance is to get a SSD (solid state drive). Even a small sized one will be enough to hold your Windows installation, some applications, and a few games including WoW. Games will load quicker, and your entire PC experience is smoother and more responsive. Amazon.com has a large list of SSDs on sale, as does Newegg.com. A good rule of thumb for SSDs is that anything 60 cents per GB or below is a pretty good deal, but you will obviously pay quite a bit more for performance brands.
World of Warcraft's evolving engine
Some people say that World of Warcraft's visuals are outdated. The game's graphics haven't been updated since launch, they say. In terms of some older art assets, I would agree, but the overall picture is a different story. The system requirements when WoW launched were a meager 800MHz CPU with 256MB RAM and a 32MB graphics card. Today, the bare minimum requirements are a dual core CPU with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB graphics card. Mists of Pandaria requires an expensive computer to run smoothly at the highest possible graphic settings, and yet it will still run on hardware from 8 years ago. Do you know of many other games with a spread like that?
NVIDIA working on Linux support for Optimus automatic graphics switching
Linux godfather Linus Torvalds may have a frosty relationship with NVIDIA, but that hasn't stopped the company from improving its hardware's support for the open-source operating system. In fact, the chipset-maker is working on the OS' compatibility with its Optimus graphics switching tech, which would enable laptops to conserve power by swapping between discrete and integrated graphics on the fly. In an email sent to a developer listserv, NVIDIA software engineer Aaron Plattner revealed that he's created a working proof of concept with a driver. There's no word on when the Tux-loving masses may see Optimus support, but we imagine that day can't come soon enough for those who want better battery life while gaming on their mobile machines.
CyberPower jumps on the GeForce GTX 690 bandwagon, promises to melt your eyes for $1,700
Dying for NVIDIA's latest, but not so much that you'd bother to learn to build your own PC? No worries, CyberPower's got your back, answering its competitor's GPU offerings with a resounding echo: Get your GeForce GTX 690 here. The customizable PC builder is now letting customers drop NVIDIA's dual GPU Kepler card into its Fang III, Zeus, Gamer Xtreme and Ultra series PCs. CyberPower says they can build a tricked out rig for just under $1,700. Looking for more oomph? More powerful configurations can breach $4,000, if your pockets are deep enough. Read on for the official press release.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 review roundup: (usually) worth the one grand
Now that NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690 is shipping through some vendors, gamers have been wondering if it's worth the wallet-busting $999 to get those higher frame rates. Surprisingly, the answer is "yes." As AnandTech notes, the GTX 690 is often almost as fast or faster than a pair of GTX 680s working together in SLI mode, only using less power and running at cooler and quieter power levels through those two 28-nanometer Kepler chips. Across multiple reviewers, though, the GTX 690 was sometimes slower than two Radeon HD 7970 boards using CrossFire. HotHardware and others found that it's definitely the graphics card of choice for Batman: Arkham City enthusiasts: problems with AMD's CrossFire mode leave a dual Radeon HD 7970 setup running at just half the frame rate of its NVIDIA-made challenger. Caveats? There are still some worries beyond the price tag, as the twin Radeon cards are as much as three times faster at general-purpose computing tasks than the latest and greatest GeForce. PC Perspective likewise warns that fans of joining three displays together for some 3D Vision Surround action will still take a big frame rate hit when they put the 3D glasses on. Still, the GTX 690 looks to be tops if you're looking to get the fastest single-card gaming on Earth, and as Legit Reviews adds, that trivalent chromium-plated aluminum makes it one of the "better looking" cards, to boot. Read - AnandTech Read - HotHardware Read - Legit Reviews Read - PC Perspective
EVE Online offers video cards for PLEX
Are you in the market for a video card? Are you an internet spaceship pilot? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then boy are you ever in luck. As you may have already heard at Fanfest 2012, CCP and NVIDIA have teamed up to bring EVE Online players a new initiative that will allow them to trade in their PLEX for new video cards. That's right, players will be able exchange 20 PLEX for a shiny new GeForce GTX 560 video card, courtesy of NVIDIA. The supplies are limited to 100 video cards for now, and players are limited to a single video card purchase per account. The folks at CCP note that the reason for the limited quantities is because they are "proceeding carefully... to enable [the studio] to evaluate any impacts of this unique and innovative offer on the EVE economy, and understand any challenges arising from this form of exchange of game world currency for real world goods." So get to it, space cowboys, and earn yourself a new shiny.
The Daily Grind: How often do you upgrade your gaming PC?
Well, it's that time of decade again, the cycle that comes around every three or four years when I'm forced to put an aging PC out to pasture. Age of Conan's new Khitai zones have brought my four-year-old gaming rig to its knees and, rather than run around looking at circa-1998 environment textures (and six minute load times), I recently took the upgrade plunge. Luckily, most MMORPGs don't have the stringent hardware requirements that a lot of single-player games feature, and you can generally get away with relying on outdated hardware in our particular subset of gaming. For example, aside from a video card upgrade (driven by the silly desire to play Crysis a couple years ago), I've been playing dozens of MMOs on a PC that hasn't been state-of-the-art since early 2006. What about you, Massively readers? How often do you upgrade your gaming PCs, and has an MMORPG ever driven you to do so?
Ask TUAW: Taming unruly windows, updating OS X, booting from an SD card, and more.
We're back with another edition of Ask TUAW. This time around we've answering questions about how to resize windows too big for the screen, "compulsive" updating, booting from an SD card, Open GL in Snow Leopard, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.Steph asks:I recently switched from an iMac to a MacBook Pro and now many of my windows are sized to big for the screen of my laptop. I can't reach the corner to resize them and clicking the "Plus" sign in the corner doesn't help. What can I do?Fortunately, this is very easy to fix. Instead of clicking on the "Plus" sign (the green button) in the top left corner of the window you are trying to resize, Option-click it and the window will fill your new screen size instead.John asks:I realize there's a method for updating Mac OSX all the time and sometimes I get the window popping up saying I have updates. Should I always update immedietly when it tells me I have some?
Testing Age of Conan: Gamespot's hardware roundup + performance guide
You got bills to pay, no computer upgrades in a year, heck maybe it's been two or three, and here comes along Age of Conan with eye-dazzling effects that you must play. It also comes with launch bugs that don't ease the stress on your computer or your nerves for that matter. Crash after crash will leave you infuriated, the problem could be drivers, maybe the PSU can't handle the load, or it's poor optimization code -- whatever it is let the debugging process begin. PC Gaming really does need some better standards, especially MMOs, but let's get back the basic computer hardware needed to run Age of Conan. What hardware will make it run like a champ, and what hardware will even run the game at all in case Grandma wants to chop some heads off in Hyboria on the most sluggish computer. Everything you need to know is available in this in-depth, fantastic hardware performance guide by Gamespot.
HD decoding CPU usage shootout: ATI vs nVidia
While around here you're more likely to see a flame war erupt about Blu-ray versus HD DVD, on many computer gaming websites the war is over ATI and nVidia, with the two major video card manufacturers constantly leapfrogging each other in an attempt to benchmark the highest scores on games like Unreal Tournament and Doom. Ars Technica has a head-to-head comparison on how well the their latest offerings perform decoding high-definition content, using an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive and some prerecorded 1080p and 1080i content. While both camps did similarly well, ATI was better at playing back VC-1-encoded HD DVD content, and nVidia held a slight edge on 1080i recordings. The benefits to both allow even older video hardware to take a load off the CPU, meaning home theater PC builders can pair a cheaper CPU and video card for playing back HD on the cheap.
EVE Trinity: New graphics engine calls for a video card checkup
Traders, Smugglers, Pirates, Miners, Capusuleers from every walk of life! Today marks a momentous occasion in the EVE Online universe. At approximately 6PM PST the EVE servers will be brought down and fitted for the new EVE: Trinity expansion. The downtime is estimated to last 24 hours, which means this is probably our last heads up beforehand to train a time appropriate skill in advance. The amount of new content is intense as Trinity is EVE's biggest expansion ever: New ships, tweaks, tutorials, new everything, and of course, the grand-daddy of Trinity's enhancements: The long-awaited graphical overhaul featuring EVE's new graphic engine dubbed Trinity 2. Confused yet? All that matters is that every ship, stargate, and station remodeled to sweet perfection. There is a downside, and that is not everyone will be able to enjoy the new radical graphics. Players who do not have a Shader Model 3.0 or DirectX9c compliant video card will be left in the space dust with the classic client. EVE players with DirectX9c and video cards that support Shader Model 3.0 will be able to use the shiny new doodad client. The important thing is everyone can still play EVE Online regardless or not your rig meets the requirements to run the new graphics. What is SM 3.0 and how the hell do you know your video card supports it? To answer that, with the help of the EVE forums, I have compiled the necessary information to help you find out.
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 and 8500 launch deets outed
Still haven't scraped together enough change to get yourself a fancy new 8800? Well just wait 10 more days and you can get (a little bit of) that hip-cool technology for peanuts. The GeForce 8600 GTS, 8600 GT and 8500 GT are all due on April 17th, hitting at the $199-$229, $149-$159 and $89-$129 price points, respectively. Specs scale nicely, with 256MB of GDDR3, a 675MHz core clock and a 1000MHz memory clock at the top end, on down to the 128 to 256MB DDR2 or GDDR3, 450MHz core clock and 700MHz memory clock at the bottom. Before too long, the even more basic 8400 GS and 8300 GS will round out the set, but hopefully you won't have to stoop that low to get your DirectX 10 on.
