Latest News - Page 2816

Corsair, mostly known for its rock solid power supplies, RAM and coolers, has announced a new division of the company: Corsair Gaming. Corsair Gaming has one goal in mind: "the elevation of PC gaming and the development of high-performance PC peripherals".

Andy Paul, President and CEO of Corsair explains it best: "For 20 years, Corsair has equipped gamers with high performance, precision hardware to build their dream PCs. Corsair Gaming now introduces new ways for PC gamers to optimize how they play. We've brought together our engineering expertise and our passion for gaming to build a line of products that delivers performance, customized for however you play". But what's the good of a new division, without a slew of new products?

Starting with the new Gaming RGB Keyboards, Corsair has three new button-mashing devices ready for disposal. The K95 RGB, K70 RGB and K65 RGB. The new RGB Gaming Keyboards all feature color-customizable designs, with 16.8 million color backlighting, are the "headliners of the Corsair Gaming brand". All three of the new keyboards feature German-made Cherry MX RGB mechanical keys, which is an exclusive-to-launch partnership with Cherry.

Rockstar Games had a support article on their website, which has since been ripped away, teasing some new features for the new version of Grand Theft Auto V coming to the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. One of these features was something never-before-seen, a first-person mode for both on foot and vehicles.

The full list included: "a brand new first person mode for vehicles" something that "shows off the interior of the vehicle, including working speedometers, tachometers, dash lights and more". This is a big, big change, as GTA V has countless vehicles that the developer would need to re-work the internals of. Better yet, Rockstar teased that there would be "a brand new first person mode while on foot" which changes the game, completely. A first-person mode on foot would propel Grand Theft Auto V to completely new heights, especially with the precision offered on a mouse for the PC.

The news was confirmed just today, with the RockstarGTAV account on Twitter teasing "First person #GTA V #PS4 #XBOXONE #PC". Other new features for the upcoming re-release include "a wealth of new easter eggs and random events for Story Mode", possible animals roaming Los Santos, player transfers from the Xbox 360 and PS3 releases of GTA V offering free new weapons and a free garage in GTA Online, and a "newly overhauled character selection screen".

After a massive Kickstarter game was officially cancelled on Thursday, the company has updated its terms to better protect people from being stung by cancelled projects. The project in question was science fiction author Neal Stephenson, with his $526,000 in funding up in the air after cancelling his project late last week.

Section 4 of Kickstarter's new terms states that it will help project creators set themselves up better for success, and to not upset their backers. If the creators behind a Kickstarter project can't deliver their goods, the company explains how it will try and make good when creators don't fulfil their goals, or backer rewards.

If this does happen, creators are expected to explain themselves as to what is happening, and where all the money has gone. If the project was cancelled, Kickstarter expects creators to issue refunds to anyone who asks for them. Kickstarter reiterates that when refunds are offered, backers can "explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form", but I don't see many people having faith in a creator if their project fails, but the option is there. Estimated completion dates, to Kickstarter, are just that: estimations. They are not deadlines, with Kickstarter having no power to issue refunds. But, backers can pull their pledge out anytime during the funding process.

One of the big issues with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, is high resolution support, and DPI scaling. Well, it looks like Microsoft is listening to feedback, with Windows 9 reportedly supporting up to 8K displays, and improved DPI scaling.

PCportal has gotten its hands-on a build of Windows 9, with the image above showing off the new sizes for the Windows Explorer icon in Windows 9, with the image below showing the scaling for classic apps that can use the higher DPI. Higher resolution monitors are becoming the norm now, with 4K getting cheaper with every display released, and 5K even being teased.

Video games are a big part of most of our lives, but most forget its origins. Generations of gamers will grow up thinking that consoles started it all, with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, but the seeds were planted before some of these gamers' parents were even born. Now, in Frisco, Texas, we can expect a new videogame history museum to be opened, known as The National Videogame Museum.

The National Videogame Museum will be opened in Frisco, Texas, which is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. The board of the Frisco Community Development Corporation voted last week, unanimously approving the terms to open up the museum. The board has teamed up with travel and tourism authorities to raise $100,000 for startup costs, with the Museum founders agreeing to match dollar-for-dollar.

By April 2015, the Museum will start a capital campaign in order to raise money to expand out the facility. We should expect The National Videogame History Museum to approach major industry sources, such as the aforementioned console makers, and large publishers in order to get donations to get the construction started. The collection that the Museum holds is already large, with the Classic Gaming Expo starting in 1999 which gets filled up easily, and it's only 7000 square feet.

NVIDIA is finally entering the market with multiple G-SYNC monitors, with 1080p, 1440p and 4K-powered G-SYNC monitors, but AMD is nowhere to be seen with its Project FreeSync technology. The company has just announced it is collaborating with MStar, Novatek and Realtek to build the scalar units that are required by the FreeSync-powered monitors.

Where NVIDIA's G-SYNC technology requires propietary licensed hadware in your monitor, as well as a GeForce GPU, AMD's FreeSync technology has no communications overhead, as it "does not need to poll or wait on the display in order to determine when it's safe to send the next frame to the monitor". AMD will be building FreeSync support into specific Radeon GPUs, with the new FreeSync-powered monitors hitting the market early 2015.

According to AMD's CVP of Graphics Business Unit, Matt Skynner, the FreeSync monitors will arrive with "lower prices and wider adoption" than its competitors' gaming monitor technology. Vice President of Realtek, Yee-Wei Huang, has said that customers in the channel are "really excited about AMD's FreeSync technology" and reiterates that "adopting the DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync industry standard by VESA is the best approach" in order to provide gamers with smooth, stutter-free gaming experiences. We should expect the first wave of FreeSync-powered monitors to be offered in three resolutions, with multiple display sizes, featuring 1920x1080, 2560x1440 and of course, 3840x2160 or 4K.

AMD has announced a new multi-year agreement with Synopsys IP that will see the chipmaker receiving a slew of Synopsys DesignWare intellectual property on its advanced 16/14nm technologies, as well as its upcoming 10nm FinFET technology. AMD will be handing over specific IP and engineering resources to the company. Considering NVIDIA just catapulted it's more-than-impressive GeForce GTX 900 series, there's never been a better time for AMD to partner up with someone who can handle the move to smaller processes.

The agreement sees AMD securing interface, memory compiler, logic library and analog IP from Synopsys, where it will use these technologies to create future generations of its chips on the 14nm and 16nm FinFET manufacturing process, eventually moving onto the 10nm process down the track. Synopsys will reportedly hire around 150 of AMD's IP & R&D engineers and receive access to AMD's leading interface and foundation IP. AMD will be saving money with this deal, but provides some holes in its resources, while Synopsys is only gaining from this deal.

If you've never heard of Synopsys, they are a leading power in silicon-proven IP for advance process technologies, with the company helping chip designers on a broad range of high-end IP for integration into system-on-chips, or SoCs, as well as delivering expert technical support. This power allows companies like AMD to come to them, in order to save money on pumping into their own R&D. But, AMD still packs a punch when it comes to the complex IP used in advanced microprocessors and GPUs. AMD will gain silicon-proven IP for its chips over the coming years, while handing over interface and foundation IP, as well as engineers to Synopsys, something the company explains will give it the ability to "focus its valuable engineering resources on its ongoing product differentiation and IP reuse strategy".

Oculus Connect is currently underway in Los Angeles, with Oculus VR announcing the latest prototype of the Rift, known as Crescent Bay. Crescent Bay features numerous improvements and new tricks even over the just-released, and still-shipping Rift DK2 unit, such as 360-degree head tracking.

Not only do we have 360-degree head tracking (which is done by having sensors on the back of your head, something completely new), but we have a higher resolution screen (no exact numbers, but most reports and hands-on use point to it being better than Samsung's Gear VR which uses the QHD or 2560x1440 panel from the Galaxy Note 4), lower latency, and a built-in headset.

Crescent Bay has been working out, dropping a little weight, with Oculus providing improved ergonomics so it feels better when wearing it, and with the integrated audio, 3D audio can now be something big thanks to Oculus' collaboration with licensed technology from the University of Maryland, and RealSP. Oculus' Brendan Iribe explains: "We're working on audio as aggressively as we're working on the vision side". For the various reports on the latest VR headset from Oculus, most have said that it is much closer to what is expected from CV1 (the first consumer, or retail Rift).

Microsoft has announced today that it is cutting 14% of its total workforce, or 2100 jobs. From those 2100 employees who are now out of jobs, 747 of them are from the Washington state, with the remaining jobs lost from Microsoft's other locations across the world.

It was only a few months ago that the Redmond-based giant cut a total of 18,000 jobs, with 12,500 of those jobs being cut from the recently-acquired handset and services division from Nokia. At the time, CEO Nadella said that he wanted to get Microsoft in better shape, with the reductions required in order to properly integrate Nokia's services and devices teams into the company. The cuts were to both professional, and factory workers.

We should see Microsoft feeling pre-tax chargers of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion over the next year, with $750 million to $800 million for severance and related benefit costs, and then $350 to $800 million for asset-related charges.

As soon as new top level domains (TDLs) are created, the massive Internet giants jump on them instantly, throwing millions of dollars in order to own them. This has just happened with a bidding war between Amazon and Google, fighting for the rights of new TDLs, including .buy, .tech, and .VIP.

Google bet on all three of the new TDLs, but Amazon beat them for .buy, throwing up $4.5 million. Dot Tech paid $6.7 million for the .tech domain, with .VIP going to Minds + Machines for $3 million. Google walked away with nothing, but the company is showing interest in as many as 100 TDLs, so their time will come.

ICANN auctions off the domains, with the organization responsible for coordinating and maintaining the domain names. ICANN is set to throw up a slew of new domains before the end of the year.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - Ubisoft is a very close partner of NVIDIA, with the hardware giant helping the software giant in most of its games, including the soon-to-be-released Far Cry 4. In Monterey Bay last week, we were greeted with an early peek at the GeForce GTX 980, as well as a slew of games, one of which was Far Cry 4.

We found out that Far Cry 4 will be utilizing a bunch of NVIDIA technologies, with an injection of features that will ensure that the PC version of Far Cry 4 will stand far and away from the console versions, current-generation consoles included. We have HBAO+, PCSS, TXAA, God Rays, Fur, and Enhanced 4K Support, as well as NVIDIA's just-announced MFAA, DSR and much more.

Starting with HBAO+ or horizon-based ambient occlusion, a technology that improves on ambient occlusion, which provides a much more realistic shadow around objects that occlude rays of light.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - There were two stations to play with the Oculus Rift and Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs at NVIDIA's Editor's Day 2014, with the first being the EVE: Valkyrie station, and the second Epic Games' "Car Flip" VR demo. It's hard to explain, so watch the video below.

As you can see, it's an on-rails VR demo that plays out in slow motion, with a blend of 'The Matrix' meets 'F.E.A.R.'. It was one of the more impressive demos I've witnessed, and while there's nothing you can do during the game with it being on-rails, the experience is like nothing else. Watching bullets fly past you makes you feel like you're in The Matrix, and watching the explosions take place in front of you while the car flips over you, is simply awesome, there's no other word to explain it.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - After the top press in the world heard about the new GeForce GTX 900 series, and its more-than-impressive Maxwell architecture, the demo room was open for a few hours for us to all go have play around in. One of the demos that I simply had to try was EVE: Valkyrie, on the Oculus Rift DK2, powered by NVIDIA's new Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 980 GPUs, in SLI.

You can see the video above, a tour of the various demos, toward the end we check out the EVE: Valkyrie setup - with four PCs running GeForce GTX 980 SLI, and the Oculus Rift DK2.

The four PCs filled with various media playing around in the deep space of EVE: Valkyrie.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - NVIDIA has now officially launched its new Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs, but at its Editor's Day event last week in the beautiful Monterey Bay, California, the company reiterated its stance on PC gaming.

The company has said that out of the 330 million or so PC gamers in the world, around 200 million of those game on GeForce GPUs, which is a huge number of gamers on NVIDIA hardware. One of the driving forces behind this, is that PC gaming is now considered a sport, thanks to eSports titles like League of Legends, StarCraft and many more.

The amount of eSports tournaments has grown considerably from 2000, where only 10 tournaments took place, to 279 in 2008. Between 2008 and 2012, that number has grown exponentially, to 1151 eSports tournaments last year. Professional eSports gamers are making some serious cash, and there are more people than ever tuning into live streams, with 40,000+ in live attendance at some of these events.

NVIDIA has officially launched its Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 900 series, with ZOTAC out of the gate with a bunch of new GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs. First off, we have three versions of each: Standard, AMP! Omega, and AMP! Extreme.

Starting with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Standard, we have the stock Core and Boost Clocks of 1126MHz and 1216MHz, respectively. The 4GB of GDDR5 RAM is clocked at 7010MHz, with the reference cooler, and the usual three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI 2.0 and dual-link DVI port. Moving onto the AMP! Omega edition, which cranks the Core Clock to 1202MHz, and Boost to 1304MHz.

We have the Memory clock up to 7046MHz, the same 4GB of GDDR5, identical display outputs, but the "Dual-fan IceStorm" cooler. Finally, the AMP! Extreme which doesn't have Core, Boost or Memory Clock speeds revealed yet, but we do know it comes with a sexy-sounding "Triple-fan IceStorm" cooler, so expect the clocks on this GPU to be much higher. All three cards have the same number of CUDA cores, sitting at 2048.

Manli has announced its new Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs, both rocking a reference cooler, with a third offering a cooling design by Manli for its GTX 970.

Starting with the Manli GeForce GTX 980 which is powered by NVIDIA's GM204 Maxwell-based GPU, which has a TDP of 178W, up from the stock 165W on NVIDIA's reference GTX 980. We have a 2048 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit memory bus, a Core Clock of 1126MHz, Base Boost Clock of up to 1216MHz, and 7010MHz Memory Clock. For display connectivity, the Manli GTX 980 has three DisplayPort outputs, a single HDMI 2.0 out, and two DVI outputs.

Moving onto the GTX 970, we have two models: the reference GTX 970 and then the aftermarket design. The reference card features 1164 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit memory bus, a Core Clock of 1050MHz, Boost Clock of 1178MHz, and 7010MHz on the memory, the same as the GTX 980. When it comes to the display connectivity, we have the same ports as the GTX 980: three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI 2.0 and two DVI ports.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - One of the more interesting things shown off by NVIDIA at its Editors Day was DSR, or Dynamic Super Resolution. DSR is capable of rendering a 4K image, and then downsampling it to 1080p, which has multiple use cases.

First, you can render at 4K, and then display this higher resolution image on your not-so-high resolution display, such as a 1080p panel. This provides a sharper image, without you needing to upgrade your display.

Above, we have the normal image on the left, with DSR on the right.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - One area of NVIDIA's new direction with Maxwell is virtual reality, with a totally new focus on VR with something NVIDIA calls VR Direct. VR Direct provides multiple technologies from the Maxwell architecture, and previous technologies from NVIDIA, to make the VR experience much better.

First, we have low-latency, which will reduce the amount of time it takes for the scene to be rendered on your PC, and displayed to the VR display sitting just an inch or so from your eyes. Second, we have VR SLI: something that will help your GeForce GTX SLI setup render the two scenes (one to each eye) much better, resulting in improved performance and better yet, scaling between your GPUs.

Latency is something NVIDIA is very concerned about, with the company wanting to remove as much of it as possible, in order to get a better VR gaming experience. As you can see, right now we have around 50ms of delay between the image being rendered and outputted to something like the Oculus Rift, but NVIDIA have some new technologies to remove much of this delay.

For the past week or so, we have been sitting on the information of NVIDIA's new GeForce 900 series GPUs, with the two latest cards now official: the GeForce GTX 980 (our review is right here), and GeForce GTX 970. NVIDIA is pricing the GTX 900 series very competitively, with the GeForce GTX 980 priced at $549, and the GTX 970 at only $329. These are some incredible price points considering the feature set, improved performance, additional features and reduced TDP. NVIDIA will be discontinuing the GTX 780 and GTX 770, shifting the price of the GTX 760 to just $219.

For starters, we have the new Maxwell architecture, which is where NVIDIA is pulling this rabbit from a hat from. NVIDIA has some serious magic from Maxwell, with the star of the show, the GTX 980, really pushing the boundaries of what is possible from a GPU, without requiring a nuclear reactor to power it. For starters, the "GM204" has 5.2 billion transistors, 2048 CUDA cores, 128 Texture Units, 64 ROPS, and a 256-bit wide memory bus with 4GB of GDDR5.

NVIDIA has achieved this huge jump over the GK104 thanks to twice the performance of the GK104 with the GM204, and two times the performance-per-watt over GK104, too. There's an improved schedular, new datapath organization, and over 40% delivered performance per CUDA core on GM204. The memory architecture behind Maxwell has also received an injection of improvement, with enhanced compression algorithms, and enhancing caching effectiveness, and when compared against the GTX 680, we have some big improvements.

We all know Halo is for the most part, an Xbox exclusive, but Microsoft is pledging better PC support, where is does the first-person shooter stand on the PC? Executive Producter on the game, Dan Ayoub, explains: "We've definitely heard the questions about PC. Right now we're a couple months out from the Xbox version's release, and that's our main focus right now. That's quite honestly where all our headspace is right now".

Considering that Halo: Master Chief Collection is close to release, one would've thought there is no better time than now than to release it onto the PC. But, with four games with one of them receiving a complete graphical overhaul, it might have been too much for the company: releasing an Xbox One version, and a PC version.

Ayoub added: "From a technical standpoint, you look at the architecture of the Xbox One and there are some similarities to the architecture of a modern PC. That certainly makes that sort of cross-platform development easier. But beyond that the ease goes away. Master Chief Collection is massive. We have to coordinate four games, 100-plus maps, a lot of new cinematics, and Halo 2 Anniversary". Microsoft seems to be all-in with Halo on Xbox, with Ayoub saying: "We wanted to do a great job on console. The anchor of Halo: Master Chief Collection is the ten-year anniversary of Halo 2 on console. So our approach was to focus primarily on console as a result of that".