Quantum Break on Steam missing SLI support, DirectX 12

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2016 2:45 PM CDT

Remedy's recent overhyped time-busting Quantum Break won't be pushing any of your rigs to their limits any time soon.

Quantum Break on Steam missing SLI support, DirectX 12

Months after launching as a hot mess on Microsoft's Windows 10-exclusive storefront, Quantum Break is now available on Steam. But even after this long sojourn between the Windows Store and Steam, some of the game's most disappointing technical issues are still intact and haven't been fixed: Quantum Break's Steam port won't support multi-GPU setups in SLI or CrossFire and is locked at DirectX 11 instead of leveraging the new DirectX 12 API.

"Like mentioned on other topics, the game doesn't support SLI. But even with one GTX 1080 and the right settings, you should be able to get an enjoyable experience out of the game. I recommend comparing visual differences between 'high' and 'ultra' options in different areas of the display settings page," said a Remedy dev on the Steam forum page.

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NX will get Nintendo 'back into the race,' says Ubisoft

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 29, 2016 1:53 PM CDT

Nintendo's mysterious new NX console will propel the Japanese console-maker into the big leagues dominated by Microsoft and Sony, says Ubisoft.

NX will get Nintendo 'back into the race,' says Ubisoft

Ubisoft has seen Nintendo's new NX hardware, which is purportedly a transforming console handheld hybrid, and the publisher is extremely impressed. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has praised the NX vocally in the last few months, delivering practically the only real meaty bits of information outside of unverified rumors and reports. Now Guillemot drops even more praise in Ubisoft's most recent earnings report, saying that the NX will be good enough to put Nintendo back in the Big Three.

"Nintendo will be back in the race with the NX," Guillemot said. Just a few weeks ago the Ubisoft CEO called the NX a "fantastic totally new approach," strongly hinting at the unique handheld hybrid theory that's been rolling around.

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Commodore 64 still running auto shop after 25 years

Anthony Garreffa | Computer Systems | Sep 29, 2016 11:29 AM CDT

For those old enough to remember the Commodore 64, can you believe that one is still being used to run a small auto repair shop?

Commodore USA's official Facebook page reads: "This C64C used by a small auto repair shop for balancing drive shafts has been working non-stop for over 25 years. And despite surviving a flood it is still going...". That's a great achievement, because most PCs wouldn't last 25 more years and still be operational like that (for the most part, anyway).

The Commodore 64 was released all the way back in 1982, featuring a whopping 64KB of memory at the time, with its CPU running at a blistering 1MHz, with a 16-color graphics chip. It was the highest-selling single computer model of all time according to the Guinness World Records.

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Apple's next-gen MacBook Pro expected mid-October

Anthony Garreffa | Laptops | Sep 29, 2016 4:22 AM CDT

Apple has unleashed its iPhone 7, so now its onwards towards the next-gen MacBook Pro laptops which are looking to be announced sometime next month.

The new MacBook Pro is expected "some time in the second half of October", with Apple working on macOS 10.12.1 so that it fully supports the purported Touch ID sensor, and OLED touchbar. Apple is expected to fully revamp their 13-inch and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which should rock Intel's new Kaby Lake CPUs - making for thinner, lighter MacBook Pros.

Apple is expected to unveil their Touch ID fingerprint sensor onto the next-gen MacBook Pros, borrowing the security side of things from the iPhone and iPad. The fingerprint sensor would allow MacBook Pro owners to log-in to their laptops using their fingerprint, or they would allow for Apple Pay purchases with your fingerprint, which is now supported by macOS Sierra, and iOS 10.

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Xbox Scorpio's true 4K res won't be easy for developers

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 29, 2016 2:45 AM CDT

Microsoft has been touting the 4K gaming abilities of its new Project Scorpio Xbox console, but when Microsoft's Albert Penello spoke with The Guardian recently, he talked about Microsoft's full 4K gaming on the Xbox Scorpio, and how developers will have to deal with new challenges.

It looks like we won't be seeing 4K 60FPS on the Xbox Scorpio anytime soon, and nowhere near the launch in 2017, as it will be up to developers to decide where to use the additional horsepower provided by Xbox Scorpio, in their games. Penello said: "But we've said very clearly that it's up to the developers how they want to take advantage of that power. Some developers focus on effects, some on frame rate some on resolution - it's up to them what they want to do".

Penello continued, saying that developers will be able to meet, and master 4K gaming on the Xbox Scorpio after a while. He added: "If you look at game engines like Frostbite and Unreal, developers have got really good at scaling - they're excellent at figuring out how to build textures at very high resolutions, then being able to optimise that artwork for various platforms. With that in consideration, it will be easier to take advantage of the performance difference of Scorpio because these guys are already building games that far surpass what consoles can do today".

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NVIDIA shows off 4K 60FPS footage of Titanfall 2 on PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 29, 2016 1:29 AM CDT

NVIDIA has used its marketing prowess perfectly with the impending release of Titanfall 2, by teasing exclusive 4K 60FPS gameplay from the PC version of the game, powered by their new Titan X graphics card.

NVIDIA's own "NVN", or NVIDIA Gaming Network, posted the gameplay footage of Titanfall 2, with every single graphics setting maxed out on a single Titan X at 4K, hitting 60FPS. As for the graphics settings available in Titanfall for PC gamers, we have:

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NVIDIA's new Xavier chip is super-fast, powered by Volta

Anthony Garreffa | Electric Vehicles & Cars | Sep 29, 2016 12:28 AM CDT

We've been hearing lots of nuggets of information on Volta, NVIDIA's next generation GPU architecture, and now the company has just pushed its first Volta-based product out with the announcement of Xavier, its new supercomputer designed for autonomous cars.

NVIDIA unveiled Xavier out of the blue at its GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam, with the Volta-based system-on-a-chip wicked fast, thanks to the new 512 cores from the next-gen Volta architecture. Volta allows the Xavier chip to support dual 8K HDR video inputs, with NVIDIA saying in the past that Volta would be much more memory bandwidth efficient, and smaller than previous designs.

Xavier also supports NVLink thanks to the Volta GPU, with the GPU being joined by IBM's upcoming Power9 chips, with both being installed into the U.S. Department of Energy's Summit supercomputer in 2018. NVLink is 7-10x faster than PCIe 3.0, so the Summit supercomputer will be a huge chunk faster than ever thanks to NVIDIA's new NVLink tech.

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Star Citizen boss: it's the 'best damn everything sim'

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 28, 2016 11:25 PM CDT

We all know Chris Roberts can say some pretty crazy things, where during my exclusive interview with him at PAX Australia 2014, Roberts said "I don't care about consoles" when it came to Star Citizen.

The guys over at Gamers Nexus recently visited the CIG offices, talking with Roberts where he said: "Right. It's not even 'best damn space sim' anymore, it's 'best damn everything sim.' Especially with the way the procedural planets [...] we were able to do that with everyone's support, which allowed us to open up the Frankfurt office and hire up people that are incredibly talented".

He continued: "That's the iterative way that Star Citizen works, because I wasn't thinking we were going to be able to do what we are going to be able to do now, but the additional play possibilities that come with it and what players will be able to do by themselves, it's really exciting. You've opened up a much bigger palette of things you can do because you have planetary locations, you can do things, recover things, rescue people, create your own little place - whatever you want to do.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti teased for January 2017

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Sep 28, 2016 10:16 PM CDT

If the massive array of Volta GPU architecture leaks weren't enough yesterday, we had teases of the purported Pascal 2.0 refresh coming in 2017, as well as the massively fast graphics cards from NVIDIA sometime in 2018, and beyond - well, now we're hearing more concrete information about the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti... the card everyone has been waiting for.

The new report has NVIDIA releasing the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in January 2017 (most likely at CES 2017 in early January), with very similar specs to the blazingly fast Pascal-based Titan X. NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will reportedly rock most of the same specifications as the Titan X, so we have 12GB of GDDR5X being used at 10Gbps on a 384-bit memory bus that will provide 480GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

NVIDIA's purported GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will have some CUDA cores shaved away, down to 3328 CUDA cores from the 3584 CUDA cores on Titan X. The GP102 GPU used will be clocked at 1503/1623 for Base/Boost clocks, respectively - providing 10.8 TFLOPs of compute performance, all with a 250W TDP. So we're looking at a very close competitor to Titan X, but cheaper.

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Windows 10 is now on over 400 million devices

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Sep 28, 2016 9:34 PM CDT

As I type this news from a Windows 10-powered desktop PC, news has landed that Microsoft has hit a milestone of 400 million active devices running Windows 10.

It has taken Microsoft around 14 months to hit 400 million users on Windows 10 since its launch, with 100 million users poured into the Windows 10 pool since May 5. Towards the end of March, there were 207 million active devices running Windows 10 - now remember, "active devices" is a considerable team of products.

We're talking about desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, Surface Hubs, HoloLens devices, and more. Microsoft isn't quite at its 1 billion goal yet with Windows 10, but the latest desktop OS is definitely the fastest-growing Windows platform in history.

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