Latest News - Page 2409

For those old enough to remember the original Unreal, you'll have to rewind your memory all the way back to 1998 - and you might remember the original fly-by intro scene that some of you might have used to benchmark your video card back in the day. I know I did, I put hundreds of hours into watching that scene, and have the best memories of it.

Well, someone has recreated the fly-by scene from the original Unreal, in the much better looking Unreal Engine 4. It isn't quite the stunner that it was back in 1998, but it's something that floods my brain with memories of Unreal. Do you remember the original Unreal? And more specifically, do you remember the fly-by intro scene?

If you haven't heard about the power consumption issues on the Radeon RX 480, you might want to read our article on it here. To bring you up to speed quickly, some reputable sites like PC Perspective and Tom's Hardware have discovered that AMD's new Polaris-based Radeon RX 480 is consuming too much power over the PCIe slot, above and beyond the specification of 75W.

Well, AMD has come out defending the Radeon RX 480, saying: "As you know, we continuously tune our GPUs in order to maximise their performance within their given power envelopes and the speed of the memory interface, which in this case is an unprecedented 8Gbps for GDDR5. Recently, we identified select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, we can adjust the GPU's tuning via software in order to resolve this issue. We are already testing a driver that implements a fix, and we will provide an update to the community on our progress on Tuesday (July 5, 2016)".

We had this update in our original story, but I felt it needed it's own headline and special attention. Remember that it's the 4th of July weekend in the US right now, but there's a fix on the way. I dare say that the custom RX 480s won't have this problem, so by the time you get your hands-on the RX 480, the issues should be fixed.

Valve's new Steam survey for June 2016 revealed that 56% of gamers are using an NVIDIA GeForce video card of some kind, while AMD Radeon cards are used by 25% - and it also saw Windows 10 become the most-used OS by Steam gamers, with 40% of gamers using Microsoft's latest and greatest OS.

But what about VR? The latest Steam survey has 66% of gamers using the HTC Vive, while just 27.7% of gamers are using the Oculus Rift. The Oculus Rift DK2 headset is still being used, for now at least, by 6.2% of gamers - but these numbers are dropping every week.

Personally, I own both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift and would always recommend people to buy the HTC Vive. It's a better VR experience thanks to the room scale technology, while the Rift is a seated only experience - for now at least, and even with the upcoming Touch controllers, you'll just be standing around with the Touch controllers, not walking around the room enjoying the VR experience.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Rick and Morty: Season Two' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have three Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Madman Entertainment.

Wubba Lubba Dub Dub! Rick Sanchez is still living with his daughter Beth's family and causing more trouble than ever. This season the rest of the family are dragged into Rick's intergalactic adventures, as he faces new threats and mysteries of his secret past are revealed. Can the family survive Rick's insanity and all the chaos the universe throws at them?

To go into the running to win a prize, simply answer the following question in 50 words or less:

NVIDIA's GeForce cards are a dominant force on the latest Steam hardware survey, with 56.7% of gamers using a GeForce GPU of some kind. AMD has lost a little of its steam in the last 12 months, with 25% of gamers using Radeon.

You can see that in January 2015 that AMD had 28.9% of users, but has declined over the last 18 months down to 25%. I'm sure the numbers will increase for AMD, now that it's next-gen Radeon RX 480 is here. In that same amount of time, NVIDIA went from 51.6% to its new lead of 56.7% - all of those users buying GeForce 900 series cards, like the GTX 950 through to the GTX 980 Ti.

It's always an interesting time when the Steam survey rolls around, with Valve using its extensive network of gamers to provide it with data to display how many gamers are using NVIDIA or AMD video cards, or what operating system the majority of gamers are using.

Windows 10 is now the most used operating system on Steam, where 40.53% of gamers are using Windows 10 with a DX12-capable GPU. Another 29% of gamers are using a DX12-capable GPU but with a version of Windows that's before Windows 10, such as Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 - or even Vista.

It's an interesting statistic to see, as Windows 10 seems to be quite popular with nearly half of the gamers on Steam using Microsoft's latest DX12-powered operating system.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we reported on the leaked photos of the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 480 Nitro, but now we have some high-res shots of the RX 480 Nitro that look positively gorgeous. Our review on the reference AMD Radeon RX 480 is right here.

In the new photos we can see the beautiful detail that SAPPHIRE has used on the RX 480 Nitro, with a black and silver backplate - but also a button that reportedly switches the LED illumination from temperature to GPU load mode indicators. You should be able to turn it off completely, too.

SAPPHIRE's new Radeon RX 480 Nitro will have its Polaris 10 GPU running at between 1325 and 1350MHz, while it also rocks removable fans. Why would you want removable fans? Well, for cleaning - it makes total sense. Secondly, if one of the fans becomes faulty over your years with it, you can easily replace it instead of replacing the entire card.

LG isn't the only one who is restructuring their mobile business, with Sony reportedly telling investors in Japan at a recent event that it's mobile business will continue "defocusing" in the US, India, China and Brazil.

Sony's new Xperia X line of smartphones haven't been received well, with the company 'defocusing' on the US market - just as its new line of Xperia X smartphones are launched. Sony will use fiscal 2016 to "achieve this intentional business contraction in the markets where it does not see much potential for the mobile business" reports Android Police.

It looks like the US isn't a place for Sony to try and push its smartphones, as they simply cannot compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple in teh country. Sony will continue to sell phones in the US, but it will only market and push smartphones it knows will generate the company profit - versus trying to push smartphones into a market where they won't be successful.

Following the disappointing sales of its G5 smartphone, LG has just announced a huge shakeup of its mobile division - where the company is firing some executives and forming a new "program management office" that will oversee product development going into the future.

LG was confident in its restructuring plans, announcing: "Friday's announcement is because LG Electronics' latest flagship G5 smartphone failed to generate sales". The KoreaTimes reports: "Mobiles chief Cho Juno will oversee the PMO, which has authority to handle strategies for product development, manufacturing, marketing and sales; while Oh Hyung-hoon, a former research lab head, will be its chief, supported by mobile division Vice President Ha Jeong-wook. Kim Hyung-jeong, a senior vice president at LG, has been named head of the company's mobile research lab".

LG's push with the G5 was a good one, with an interesting twist on the smartphone game with its ecosystem of friends - such as a camera attachement, and more - but it wasn't enough. Samsung's new Galaxy S7 was a more popular smartphone, but I think we'll see a return to form for LG with its next smartphone - but will the "friends" still be around? I hope so.

The DX12 patch for Total War: WARHAMMER has been released, with Alien: Isolation developer Creative Assembly stating that the DX12 renderer is still in a beta stage.

Right now, there's no benefits for NVIDIA GeForce owners in DX12, as GeForce cards perform worse under the DX12 renderer. DSOGaming did some testing using the Extreme scenario, and the in-game benchmarking tool on their Intel Core i7-4930K, GeForce GTX 980 Ti system.

The GTX 980 Ti on DX11 in WARHAMMER forms at 96FPS while in DX12 we have 27% less performance, with just 70FPS average. We will be doing our own testing in Total War: WARHAMMER in the near future, testing out my entire suite of video cards.

Samsung bossed the phablet market with its original Galaxy Note smartphones, with their current 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 5 still one of the best phablets you can buy - even with Apple on the market with its iPhone 6S Plus.

Well, notorious mobile leaker Evan '@evleaks' Blass who has retired, and now out of retirement - has confirmed Samsung's new Galaxy Note7 - yeah, without the space. The new Note7 will reportedly arrive in three colors; Black Onyx, Silver Titanium and Blue Coral. As for their innards, we can expect that information when Samsung fully reveals the Galaxy Note7 smartphone.

Blass does tease some specs, with a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display, 12-megapixel rear-facing camera backed by a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 64GB of storage and IP68-rated water resistance.

If you've ever seen a movie in IMAX, and more specifically 70mm IMAX, you'll know that there's nothing quite like it. The company has just released the first-ever commercial shot entirely on IMAX, with an action-packed commercial that wants to drag you into your nearest IMAX theater.

IMAX's new campaign is a 60-second long tribute to all movies, with the company shooting the entire spot with its own IMAX cameras. The idea of the commercial started with a poem that the ad agency's creative team wrote about their love of film, but then the director of the commercial Ash Boiliand said it would work better if the characters broke the fourth wall, and spoke directly at viewers.

Personally, the ad does nothing to me that makes me intrigued about IMAX at all - and if I was someone who had not experienced a movie in IMAX, this commercial would do absolutely nothing to convince me. IMAX should've explained, quickly, how superior the IMAX experience is - showing what you'd see on a traditional cinema screen compared to the 70mm IMAX extravaganza.

Microsoft has officially confirmed the new slim $299 Xbox One S will upscale all games from 1080p to 4K, adding even more benefits to the upcoming system.

The confirmation came from Xbox exec Mike Ybarra, who Tweeted that all existing Xbox One games can be upscaled to 4K with the new Xbox One S. The upscaling capability is made possible by the Xbox One S' newly designed AMD SoC (System-on-Chip) that provides a GPU and CPU boost for the console as well as power efficiency and the 40% smaller size. It's also highly likely the Xbox One S makes use of AMD's brand new console-centric upscaling technology--the same tech that will allow Sony's new PlayStation 4 Neo to upscale to 4K.

We still have no clue what the AMD SoC is packing, and there's been no specification leaks or anything so far, but the $299 Xbox One S will directly combat Sony's new upgraded PlayStation 4K console in the 4K gaming department--at least when it comes to upscaling. Given the $299 price tag, the Xbox One S surely won't go head-to-head against the PS4 Neo's boosted specs, but it's quite interesting to see Microsoft offering 4K upscaling in its mid-tier system.

Apple wants the new iPhone to be thinner, but without reducing the size of the internal battery, it's a hard job. The second largest part of most flagship smartphones is the touch display, with Apple rumored to be tapping Samsung for 40 million Super AMOLED displays.

Up until now, Apple has been using LCD panels on its iPhones, but there are significant benefits in moving over to AMOLED panels. First, the colors are superior and there are faster refresh rates, allowing for smoother operation on everything on the iPhone, as well as games. Reduced power consumption which will see the iPhone run cooler, with additional battery life, and it'll make the AMOLED-based iPhone thinner, too.

The iPhone 8 won't arrive until at least 2017, and according to DigiTimes the AMOLED deal was struck with Samsung - Apple's main, and biggest competitor - by far. Samsung will be providing multiple companies with AMOLED panels, which allows them to ramp production up to probably close to 100%, reducing their manufacturing cost as they're selling tens of millions of AMOLED panels to the largest companies in the world.

We've known for a while that Blizzard is hiring for a brand new Diablo game, but a new game director job opening tells us that the project won't be a small excursion.

According to a new Blizzard job listing, the company is looking for a brand new game director for a "new unannounced Diablo game," outright confirming that Diablo III's current game director Josh Mosqueira won't be overseeing the next game. Given the gravity of this position--the creative director will be the "vision holder for the franchise, setting the creative goals for the team"-- we can pretty much assume Blizzard is preparing the next chapter in the landmark ARPG franchise, Diablo IV.

"Blizzard Entertainment is seeking a game director with outstanding communications skills, proven experience in creative direction, strong ability in system design, and a stellar track record of shipping AAA games to lead the Diablo series into the future," reads the listing. There's absolutely no reason for Blizzard to hire a new game director unless they're working on a massive new chapter of the series, so it pretty much has to be D4.

Google has just made the internet infrastructure that connects the US with Asia magnitudes faster, with the FASTER Cable System now connected and online. The new FASTER Cable System is packed with the latest technology, and with its six-fiber pair cable it is able to deliver 60Tbps of bandwidth, with Google receiving 10Tbps of that bandwidth.

The super-quick FASTER Cable System was constructed by NEC and funded by a consortium of six companies that included Google and multiple Asian telecom giants. There's a huge 5590-mile trans-Pacific submarine cable that was designed from its inception to "support digital coherent transmission technology, using optimized fibers throughout the submarine portion. The combination of extremely low loss fiber, without a dispersion compensation section, and the latest digital signal processor, which compensates for the huge amount of cumulative dispersion at the end of the cable, enable this six-fiber pair cable to deliver 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific", according to the press release from NEC.

Some of the best technology was used to built the FASTER Cable System, with the "latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology" being used, there would be some problems, right? According to NEC's Project Manager, Kenichi Yoneyama, there were issues - with Yoneyama saying there were "many challenges during the construction", but he said that the now-connected FASTER Cable System would "not only bring benefits to the United States and Japan, but to the entire Asia-Pacific region".

NVIDIA users can test drive a new version of GeForce Experience today, which brings a brand new interface, ShadowPlay improvements, and more.

The new look takes inspiration from digital distribution platforms like Netflix and Origin and is said to be much faster. It also features gaming tech news from NVIDIA itself.

As for ShadowPlay, features new and old include 60FPS and 4K recording, fullscreen and windowed mode recording, YouTube uploading, livestreaming support, and game joining via Chrome.

Last week, Overwatch's Competitive Play mode launched on PC, and now Xbox One players can get in on the action too.

Competitive Mode means ranked matches, and an overall much higher skill level than what you see in Quick Play. It also means best of 5 rounds, sudden death, map tweaks, golden weapon rewards, and a whole lot of other things.

Remember, you need to be level 25 before you can try it out.

Intel has just announced it is partnering with BMW and Mobileeye, a machine-vision technology company, on developing autonomous driving technology. The autonomous technology will be detailed to the press on Friday.

Mobileeye is a company that supplies high-end cameras, software and other required components that are required in driver assistance systems, with clients like BMW and Tesla. Mobileeye has also talked about its partnerships with Volkswagen, Nissan and General Motors on developing new mapping technology that's capable of taking in crowd-sourced real-time data from automakers' fleet of vehicles.

Intel has wanted an edge in the autonomous car market, so a deal the magnitude of this with BMW and Mobileeye is a big splash, but we'll only see the fruits of this labor in 2020 or beyond.

AMD did wonders with its Radeon R9 Nano, a bite-sized video card that is mighty powerful, in a small package thanks to its HBM1 technology.

Well, now GIGABYTE has announced its new GeForce GTX 1070 Mini-ITX OC, which is a smaller version of the GTX 1070. The card has a factory overclock on its GPU, with 1531/1721MHz on the Gaming Mode and 1556/1746 in OC Mode. If you want the higher clock speeds offered by OC Mode, you'll need to download GIGABYTE's overclocking software to reach it.

GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 1070 Mini-ITX OC features a custom PCB with 5+1-phase power delivery, 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, a 90mm cooler with a 3D active fan, one click Super Overclocking, and measures in at just 17cm (or 6.7 inches). An incredibly small, and incredibly fast video card. Be careful with its display output, as GIGABYTE has provided 1 x DP, 1 x HDMI and 2 x DVI ports - compared to the 3 x DP, 1 x HDMI and 1 x DVI on most GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards.