IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 2/7/2015

Players and community members call for shortened Valve CS:GO bans
Given the recent lifetime bans issued to American and Canadian CS:GO players due to their match-fixing and betting ring scandals, multiple professional players and community members have spoken up - stating that a lifetime without CS:GO tournaments is too harsh, requesting that the ban be shortened to one year at most.

One of the most notable people having their voice heard is that of Filip "NEO" Kubski. Widely regarded as one of the best Counter-Strike players of all time, NEO has won the 'player of the decade' award twice throughout his CS 1.6 history and has seen his fair share of global tournament attendances and wins throughout his CS 1.6 and CS:GO careers.

In a post to his public Facebook page, NEO states:

If you're wondering what the link on his post points to, it's a comedic yet saddening video likening the bans of these players as their deaths. With a full funeral ceremony taking place within CS:GO's popular De_Dust2 map.

The petition currently has 2,204 supporters at the time of writing this article, with only 296 needed until the bar is completely full. Do you agree with this statement? What do you think the ban consequences should be? The banned players in question are as follows:

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French CS:GO player fxy0 released from Epsilon with a 1-year Valve ban
French CS:GO player Joey "fxy0" Schlosser has had a harsh few weeks. After being reported by former team member Robin "GMX" Stahmer for match-fixing, fxy0 came clean in a video confession, admitting he purposefully played badly during the match that was under investigation.

Given this news, two major things have happened. Firstly, Epsilon have officially released both fxy0 and another player, Kévin "Uzzziii" Vernel from their sponsorship, alongside Valve issuing both of these players with 1-year tournament bans across any Valve-supported event.

As seen on a post to his Facebook recently, fxy0 stated:

Despite the ban, fxy0 has decided to stick around the CS:GO scene - streaming online matchmaking games and promoting any videos released of his previous play highlights. As for Uzzziii, the future is uncertain. The only thing notable released on his public Facebook recently is the following comment:

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French CS:GO player 'fyx0' admits his team partook in match-fixing
We recently reported a story on ex-Epsilon CS:GO squad member Robin "GMX" Stahmer reporting his old team for match-fixing, then later adding that their world-class player Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom was not involved.

In a breaking news report by HLTV, Epsilon CS:GO squad member Joey "fxy0" Schlosser has admitted to match-fixing in his heartfelt video.

The video is uploaded to YouTube as unlisted and is already reaching over 64,000 views, with the outcome of Valve and ESEA's investigation not yet set in stone. We've seen previously that people found guilty of match-fixing have been handed life bans from almost all major tournament providers globally, alongside Valve themselves damning the players from any event they support.

We will continue to report as the story develops.

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Bitspower unleash a water block for the ASUS GTX 970 Strix
We previously teased an EK Waterblocks release, toting it as one of the most simplistic and beautiful blocks we've ever seen - low and behold, here's something better.

Bitspower have come into the market with this 'VG-NGTX970ADIIS', a water block designed for ASUS' GTX 970 Strix. Shared by Kurpiewski Concept, this block will seemingly suit any kind of design or build - once again going for the simplistic route overall, as is most common in mods in this day and age.

We will let the images speak for themselves, take a look below.

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Ubisoft announces Assassin's Creed: Rogue for March 10
Just months after the mess that was Assassin's Creed: Unity, Ubisoft has announced Assassin's Creed: Rogue for March 10. Assassin's Creed: Rogue launched back in November for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but will be launching next month on the PC.

Assassin's Creed: Rogue will have gamers playing as a Templar named Shay Patrick Cormack, who becomes an Assassin Hunter. Rogue takes place in North America during the Seven Years War, which will also see the return of naval-based combat, something we saw from Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. Ubisoft Kiev is the studio behind Assassin's Creed: Rogue, with the studio teaming up with eye-tracking company Tobii Tech.

Tobii Tech will see their technology baked into Assassin's Creed: Rogue, where you can use SteelSeries' Sentry eye-tracking hardware to pan the game's camera left and right through eye movement. Ubisoft teases that this creases "an 'infinite screen' experience". PC gamers are also in for a treat if they choose to allow themselves to purchase another Assassin's Creed title, with Ubisoft offering a free Assassin's Creed game through Uplay if they pre-order Assassin's Creed: Rogue.


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Mortal Kombat X won't perform a fatality to your PC specifications
NetherRealm Studios, the developer behind Mortal Kombat X, has revealed the PC specifications of its upcoming fighting title. In a world where 60GB installations seem normal, you'll only require 25GB to 40GB to get Mortal Kombat installed.

Mortal Kombat X requires a 64-bit version of Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, as well as 3GB of RAM. 8GB of RAM is recommended, however. The minimum requiremetns have you needing an Intel Core i5-750 at 2.67GHz, or AMD's Phenom II X4 965 at 3.4GHz. The GPU required is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or an AMD Radeon HD 5850. As for the recommended specifications, Mortal Kombat X would run better on an Intel Core i7-3770, or AMD FX-8350. An NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7950 would also run the game better, so would an additional 15GB of HDD space for a total installation of 40GB.

Mortal Kombat X launches on April 14 for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC.


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Activision announces Treyarch is developing the next Call of Duty
It's a new year, so a new Call of Duty is on its way for the annualized first-person shooter franchise, with Activision announcing that Treyarch will be developing the 2015 version of Call of Duty.

We're expecting it to be announced in May, but nothing has been confirmed yet. During Activision Publishing's earnings call, company CEO Eric Hirshberg said: "This fall's game will be Treyarch's first on the three-year development cycle. It will be loaded with innovation, and we're excited to share more details with our community soon".


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Intel to launch its new 10nm CPUs in early 2017
Intel is expected to unveil its new 10nm processors sometime in early 2017, with the news coming from Intel's GM for the Middle East and North Africa region, Taha Khalifa.

Khalifa, when talking about the new Intel CPUs, said: "We have been consistently pursuing Moore's Law and this has been the core of our innovation for the last 40 years. The 10nm chips are expected to be launched early 2017". When it comes to this year though, we should expect Intel to unveil its new 14nm Skylake processors in the second half of the year.

Intel was originally meant to roll out its 14nm processors in late 2013, but there were various technical setbacks with the Broadwell architecture, which was eventually delayed into 2014. This has pushed back the rest of Intel's upcoming processors, with the 10nm-based Skylake being included. Intel will most likely unveil tablet and mobile parts under its 10nm umbrella, before moving it into the desktop family in the later parts of 2017.


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NVIDIA rumroed to be working on a Tegra X1-powered Shield Tablet
NVIDIA announced its powerhouse mobile SoC, Tegra X1, at CES 2015 last month, but now it looks like we might see a new Shield Tablet emerge powered by this new processor.

The new Shield Tablet would reportedly be powered by the Tegra X1 chip, and announced during GTC 2015 next month. The current Shield Tablet is powered by the Tegra K1 processor, released back in July 2014 at $299 and $399 (Wi-Fi only, and LTE, respectively). The new Tegra X1 processor should arrive on a 20nm process, arrive as an 8-core processor with some serious power behind it.

We should expect it to feature around 500 GFlops of performance for 32-bit workloads, and 1 TFlops of compute power in 16-bit workloads. 2MB of L2 cache is found, while one of the quad-core CPU stacks (the Cortex-A57) includes 48KB of L1 instruction cache, and 32KB of L1 data cache. The GPU side of things should also be incredibly fast, as we have a Maxwell GPU inside of the Tegra X1 processor. It'll arrive with 256 Maxwell cores, thanks to the 2 SMMs from the Maxwell architecture.

As for pricing, NVIDIA will most likely keep the same $299 price that the Shield Tablet launched with, but the display resolution is going to be the big question. It's being speculated that we'll see a 1080p display, which is the same resolution found on the current Shield Tablet. I'm hoping for at least 1440p, while being hopeful for NVIDIA to push boundaries and unveil a 4K tablet. We will be live at GTC 2015, so we'll be sure to keep our ears to the ground and report on the new Shield Tablet, or anything Tegra X1 related at GTC 2015.


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AMD Radeon 300 series release is imminent, according to AMD
We know it's coming, but AMD is beginning to acknowledge its forthcoming Radeon 300 series more and more. First, we had company CEO Lisa Su confirm the new GPUs for Q2 2015, but now the official AMD Facebook page has said they're coming.

In a response to someone asking about whether AMD would reveal its next-gen GPU shortly, they replaced with "We don't have an official date to share just yet but hte second we know, we will definitely announce it on Facebook". Another reply added "We're still putting the finishing touches on the 300 series to make sure they live up to expectation. Can't wait to reveal them though. We're pretty excited".

We should expect AMD to reveal the new GPUs in the near future, which should feature the exciting new High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) which should provide a huge memory bus. 4GB of RAM is expected, but I think we'll also see 8GB models coming thorugh, too.


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Microsoft scoops up calender app maker Sunrise for $100 million
Microsoft has reportedly acquire Sunrise, which is a calendar app maker for a swift $100 million. Both sides haven't confirmed the deal, but sources close to TechCrunch have said that the deal is wrapped up for over $100 million.

Sunrise was founded in 2012, where it has since raised $8.2 million from investors like Balderton Capital, SV Angel and BoxGroup. But what can make it an attractive acquisition target for Microsoft? Well, Sunrise consolidates calendars from various providers, making them available on different platforms like iOS, Android and the web.

The acquisition of Sunrise by Microsoft is an interesting one, as it shows that Microsoft is happy to support other, competing operating systems. If Microsoft does indeed acquire Sunrise and continues development of the application for iOS and Android like it does for Office, it could eventually lead to great things.


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WhatsApp rolls out voice calling to certain users
WhatsApp is now providing a select number of its 700 million strong users with a new voice calling function inside of its Android app. It was first spotted on Reddit, with a user based in India posting a screenshot of the new voice calling function icon.

Others began noticing the same thing, where basic functions like speakerphone, mute and other call options were found within WhatsApp for Android. This will be a small test for now, before it is rolled out into a bigger update for WhatsApp in the near future. It is being suggested that it wasn't intended for the new voice calling function to reach WhatsApp, as it is still very buggy and not ready for the public.

If you've received the voice calling function for WhatsApp, let us know!


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Plextor M6e Black Edition 256GB PCIe SSD Review

Introduction

We looked at the Plextor M6e Black Edition 512GB SSD just a few days ago, and found it lacked the performance we expect from a native PCIe SSD. On paper, the 512GB model is faster than the two smaller capacity drives, but after some investigation, we learned that wasn't always the case. The difference in performance comes down to the wear leveling Plextor uses.

Larger drives take longer to clean the flash, and smaller drives are able to tidy up a bit faster. Under normal consumer use, this wouldn't be an issue, but if you have a SSD that breaks the SATA 6Gb/s barriers, you will most likely want to use it under heavy loads.

Specifications, Pricing, and Availability

The M6e Black Edition is Plextor's follow-up to the original M6e released one year ago. The Black Edition models ship in three capacities, 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB. We've already published the results of the largest capacity model, and today we will look at the mid-sized model.

Electrically, the M6e Black Edition is nearly identical to the older base model. The base performance is the same as well. Both read sequential data at 770 MB/s, and write sequential data at 580 MB/s. The original M6e shipped with a different firmware, but you can update it to the same firmware Plextor ships on the Black Edition. This is important because the updated firmware allows you to run Plextor's new DRAM cache software, PlexTurbo 2.0.

The Black Edition differs from the original model aesthetically, and there is a functionality difference that comes in the form of a heat sink used to keep the Marvell 88SS9183 controller cool. The new Black Edition also uses newer Toshiba A19 NAND flash, which is a newer process node than the 19nm flash used on the first M6e.

At this time, we don't have pricing information for the M6e Black Edition 256GB, but Newegg has the first M6e 256GB for $310. We did manage to find the drive online for as low as $256. We expect the Black Edition to cost more than the M6e 256GB since the new model has an elaborate heat sink, a black PCB, and official support for PlexTurbo 2.0.

Plextor covers the M6e Black Edition with a five-year warranty.
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