IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 23/04/2014

AMD Posts Catalyst 14.4 Release Candidate Drivers

Coinciding with this week’s launch of the Radeon R9 295X2, AMD has posted their latest Catalyst drivers, now at version 14.4. Catalyst 14.4 is the first driver set for the R9 295X2, and once certified will be AMD’s first WHQL driver release of the year.
As we briefly noted in our review of the R9 295X2, Catalyst 14.4 is from a new driver branch (14.100), and as is usually the case for new branches AMD has rolled in some new features with this driver. Of note, these drivers bring support for OpenGL 4.4 to AMD’s GPUs, which among other additions sees support for sparse textures (partially resident textures) and buffer storage objects for use with processors that have unified memory between the CPU and the GPU (Kaveri, etc).
AMD’s latest drivers also come with a number of Crossfire improvements – not unexpected given the tie-in with the R9 295X2 – with AMD listing improvements for Crysis 3, Titanfall, Metro: Last Light, and more. The Mantle component of AMD’s drivers has also been updated to fix some edge cases in Battlefield 4, such as performance hits from alt-tabbing.
It bears mentioning that AMD is classifying these drivers as release candidate drivers. AMD typically only releases drivers as either betas or WHQL certified, so the release candidate stage is a rare occasion where AMD is releasing drivers that are either close to or in the process of being certified, but have yet to finish the process. Assuming everything goes well for AMD, we’d expect to see these drivers released with WHQL certification in the near future.
As always, you can grab the Catalyst 14.4 RC driver from AMD’s driver download page. The driver weighs in at 301MB, which also makes this the first AMD graphics driver to pass the 300MB mark.

Google Updates Hangouts: Merging IM and SMS

Today, Google announced an update to Hangouts that brings some new features. The first mentioned is merging conversations, which brings feature parity with iMessage in that regard. Google has also improved contact sorting with phone and Hangouts sections as seen below, and added a homescreen widget to view messages on the homescreen. Google has also noted some reliability and performance improvements such as higher quality video chats and better SMS/MMS sending and receiving.

Overall, nothing major seems to change with this update, but it does fix some points of friction for those that use the application.

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HTC Adds Sense 6 Progress to Software Update Page

HTC has updated their software update status page with a section that displays the current status of the HTC Sense 6.0 upgrade. The page indicates that they intend to update the HTC One M7, HTC One mini, and HTC One Max across all US and Canadian carriers as well as the unlocked and developer edition versions of the HTC One M7.

According to the website, all the devices — with the exception of the HTC One M7 on T-Mobile USA — are on the integration state of development which involves HTC working with cellular providers to incorporate software modifications, applications, and other services that are specific to that carrier and creating the maintenance release. T-Mobile USA seems to still be in the state of development for their HTC One M7, which entails bring-up of the board support package (BSP), but given the fact that it uses the same hardware platform as the other versions this is likely to change soon. For the majority of the devices HTC is currently developing the maintenance release, and afterwards all that is left is to conduct their internal testing of the update and to receive certification from applicable regulatory and industry groups as well as from Google.

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AMD Announces Refresh of Never Settle Forever Program

After letting their Never Settle Forever gaming bundle program slowly lapse over the past few months, AMD sends word this morning that they’re going to be significantly refreshing the program. The updated program will now include virtually all of AMD’s current discrete video cards and will be adding a number of new games to the program.
First and foremost, the latest iteration of the program will now cover almost the entirety of the Radeon 200 series. In short, every GCN based card will be covered, from the low-end $70 R7 240 right up to AMD’s new flagship R9 295X2. In fact the only retail card not covered by this program is the R5 230, AMD’s Radeon HD 6450 rebadge.

AMD Never Settle Forever Tiers

Video Card

Tier

Number of Free Games

Cur. Number of Games on Tier

R9 295X2

R9 290 Series

R9 280 Series

Gold

17+4

R9 270 Series

R7 260 Series

Silver

17+4

R7 250 Series

R7 240 Series

Bronze

10+4

R5 230

N/A

As was the case with the previous iteration of the program, the cards are still separated into three tiers: bronze, silver, and gold. Each tier gets a larger number of free games and a better selection of games within those tiers. This latest rendition of the program will see the R9 280 series, R9 290 series, and R9 295X2 in the gold tier. Elsewhere the R9 270 and even the R7 260 series qualifies for the silver tier, while the R7 250 and R7 240 fall under the bronze tier.

Meanwhile on the games front AMD has added several different games and thrown in a twist in how games are counted for the program. Alongside traditional full budget and bargain bin titles, AMD is also rolling in some indie titles into the program: Guacamelee, Dyad, The Banner Saga, and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack. The indie games – which are typically lower priced items to begin with – are bundled in a 2-for-1 fashion with 2 of the indie games counting for a single game selection.

As for full budget titles, AMD’s new anchor title for the program is the forthcoming Murdered: Soul Suspect, a GCN-optimized game which is due in June. Murdered, along with AMD’s True Audio showcase game Thief, are only 2014 games in the program and are only available at the silver and gold tiers. The rest of the program is being fleshed out with a number of older titles – primarily from the Square Enix and Sega catalogs – ranging from relatively recent summer 2013 games like Company of Heroes 2 and Payday 2, to games going back as far as 2010 such as Darksiders. Many of these titles are essentially classic games at this point, particularly the games available at the bronze tier, so it’s worth pointing out that while AMD is giving out free games their catalog isn’t as aggressive as in previous Never Settle programs (though it’s certainly still stronger than NVIDIA’s Spring GeForce Bundle). AMD for their part says that this greater emphasis on classic titles is due to customer demand, though it goes without saying that this is certainly a cheaper option for AMD too.

Moving on, as with the first iteration of the bundle AMD is allowing the offer to be banked for a few months, with the idea being to redeem the offer later for newer games. Vouchers from this wave of the bundle will be good until August 31^st, a bit over 4 months from now. The availability of any individual game meanwhile depends on how long AMD’s supply of keys last and how long AMD is allowed to offer the game. Based on what we saw for the previous iteration of this program and looking at Square Enix’s and Sega’s release schedule, we suspect the best move is to redeem sooner than later before keys for popular games run out. It doesn’t look like either publisher is launching any further major games before September, and while AMD is promising to add further games to the program there doesn’t appear to be much that AMD could add other than a handful of recent titles not already part of the program.
On a final note, as always with these bundle programs the distribution of vouchers is taking place at the retailer level. So while most of the usual suspects are participating, including Newegg, Amazon, and Microcenter, it’s always a good idea to check with retailers to make sure a purchase qualifies.
Wrapping things up, it’s interesting to note just how quickly AMD’s supply situation has changed in the last couple of months. 2 months ago AMD’s retail partners couldn’t keep their $300+ cards in stock even at prices well over MSRP. Now those cards are near or back to their original MSRPs, and AMD is now offering a video game bundle to sweeten the deal. The computer industry is a history of boom and bust, and AMD’s fortunes this year have certainly been a microcosm of that.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 23/04/2014

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