Hardware Roundup: Friday, May 22, 2015, Edition
We are here at the end of the week with some reviews to help you welcome the weekend. There is a look at the GIGABYTE Champion Series X99-Gaming 5P motherboard, which has enhanced overclocking features and is also part of the company's G1 Gaming line to appeal to gamers. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt arrived earlier this week, so if you're wondering how it performs on various hardware, we have an article for you. We have something a little different, as the 2015 Chevrolet Trax LTZ gets checked out to see what kind of technology it offers and how it drives. A new case mod based on the Corsair 900D gets shown off, with a sweet looking reservoir and solid tubing. Ending for the day is a podcast covering the latest news and reviews from the past week.
Motherboards
GIGABYTE Champion Series X99-Gaming 5P @ PC Perspective
Gaming
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Benchmarked, Performance @ TechSpot
Miscellany
2015 Chevrolet Trax LTZ AWD @ LanOC Reviews
Case Mod Friday: Refl3ctoR 900D @ ThinkComputers
Podcast #350 @ PC Perspective
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Less Can Be More with Graphene
Graphene is almost certainly going to be a wonder material of our time, with its amazing properties and many potential applications. Different applications pose different challenges for the material though. An example of this is polymer composites that contain graphene, but researchers at ORNL have found a solution to some of the problems.
The idea with polymer composites is to add flakes of graphene to the mix, so that they can add strength and conductivity. Graphene, despite being an atom-thick sheet of carbon, is exceedingly strong and tremendous electron mobility. When added to polymers though, the tiny flakes can clump together and not disperse correctly. The ORNL researchers' solution was to use chemical vapor deposition to create larger laminates of graphene. This resulted in the desired electrical conductance despite using only half as much graphene. Being large pieces, approximately two inches by two inches, the graphene also will not stick together.
Polymer composites with graphene could find many uses from aerospace and land vehicles to electronics and the energy sector. Before that can happen though, the researchers have to bring down costs and show the process can be scaled up, to meet manufacturing needs.
Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
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MSI is the First Motherboard Manufacturer to Receive Windows 10 WHQL Certification
MSI has announced that it is the first motherboard manufacturer to receive the official Microsoft Windows 10 WHQL certification, after its H81M-P33 motherboard passed the certification test recently. The board, which offers MSI Click BIOS 4 that is apparently optimized for the latest version of the Windows operating system from Microsoft, offers great stability and customizability that customers of MSI products have come to expect. MSI has also revealed that besides its recently certified H81M-P33 motherboard, other motherboards from the company will receive the official Windows 10 WHQL certification in the near future.
Source: techPowerUp
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Google Working on New Android Based OS
According to the latest rumors, Google is working on a new version of its Android OS targeted at low-power devices. These devices fall into the Internet of Things category and usually have very little processing power and resources. The OS is currently identified under the Brillo codename and will work on devices that have as little as 32MB of RAM. The targeted devices "need to boot up, use an SoC, handle input and output, and communicate over a network," a process that is currently handled by the manufacturer of each device. Google wants to create Brillo to handle these tasks and plans to give OEMs free access to the OS. More information is expected to be revealed at the Google I/O conference next week.
Source: The Information via Ars Technica
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YouTube Announces Live Streaming Service
Services like Twitch have seen great success lately, aided by the growth of eSports, among other factors. Amazon entered the space with its acquisition of Twitch and now Google is attempting to get a piece of the pie with the YouTube Live streaming service. The streaming service is currently in an early preview stage for HTML5-compatible browsers. Streams can viewed at 60fps on desktop machine or 30fps on other systems. YouTube worked directly with makers of popular streaming software such as Xsplit to provide support for 60fps, and promises that more improvements to the service are coming soon.
Source: Digital Trends
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Cutting Data for Cloud Gaming
Streaming and cloud services has become a popular solution for many people as a means to access media they otherwise would not be able to, at least not at the same quality or quantity. One problem with streaming content though is running into data caps, especially if someone is using a cloud gaming service. Researchers at Duke University, however, have deployed a technique that can significantly cut the data transmitted, without degrading quality.
The tool the researchers developed is named Kahawai, the Hawaiian word for stream, and what makes it special is collaborative rendering. Typical cloud gaming services work by doing all of the rendering on the remote servers, with the local client only being for display and input. Collaborative rendering splits the workload between the server and the local device, which could be a smartphone or tablet. While the finer details will still be rendered by the remote server, the local device still renders a rougher view for each frame, or a few highly detailed frames with the remote server filling in as needed. Either way, by having the local device do part of the work, the same visual quality can be achieved while cutting bandwidth down to one-sixth what current methods allow.
Another advantage over traditional streaming methods is that Kahawai can work offline by just showing the lower quality graphics the local device renders. While gaming is a logical place to start applying Kahawai, the researchers see it finding uses in other fields, such as medical imaging and CAD.
Source: Duke University
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Hardware Roundup: Thursday, May 21, 2015, Edition
The week is drawing to a close, but before it does, we have some items for you to check out. There is a review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X, the massive and current top of the line offering from the green team. We have a look at the Supermicro SuperChasis S5 mid-tower case, which offers a good look, but may not hold up for the pricetag. Zalman's ZM-GM4 Knossos gaming mouse gets put to the test to see how it competes. If you need something to put that new mouse on or any others, perhaps the Kingston HyperX FURY Pro gaming mouse pad is the one for you.
Video Cards
NVIDIA Titan X @ LanOC Reviews
Cases
Supermicro SuperChasis S5 @ PC Perspective
Mice/Keyboards
Zalman ZM-GM4 Knossos Gaming Mouse @ Benchmark Reviews
Mouse Pads
Kingston HyperX FURY Pro @ ThinkComputers
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Full-Duplexer Developed for Potential Use in Mobile Devices
We may not realize it, because we cannot see it, but wireless congestion is an issue that limits rates and the number of users connecting to a single access point. It does not help matters that devices must transmit and receive on different channels. That may change soon though, thanks to researchers at the University of Bristol developing a duplexer small enough and cheap enough to integrate into phones.
The reason devices have to transmit and receive on different channels is because the emissions would interfere with each other if they were on the same frequency. A duplexer allows for the same frequency to be used by effectively removing this interference. The prototype made at Bristol suppressed the interference by a factor of over 100 million, all while using inexpensive and small components that can fit in mobile devices.
With this duplexer, filtering components could be removed from the devices, which would open up the possibility for unrestricted global roaming by allowing the devices to use any frequency band. This in turn could reduce costs as a single model could be manufactured for the entire world, and thus take advantage of the economics of scale.
Source: University of Bristol
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Available Tags:Hardware , MSI , Windows , WHQL , Google , Android , YouTube , Gaming ,
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