Grand Theft Auto V Review
Read More ...
Electronic Arts Reveals Release Dates For Mirror's Edge 2 and More
As part of its earnings report yesterday, Electronic Arts showed a slide that has rough estimates for the release dates of several games. After being talked about for several years, gamers will finally get their hands on Mirror's Edge 2 early next year. A new Plants vs. Zombies game is also expected to release around that time. An unnamed Need For Speed title should find its way onto shelves before the holiday season, perhaps sometime in November. EA did include a disclaimer with the announcement stating "Note: Represents publicly announced titles only. Titles above are shown in alpha order. All launch dates are subject to change."
Source: Attack of the Fanboy
Read More ...
Intel Roadmap Confirms Skylake-S Processors For Q3 2015
A wave of details about the upcoming Intel Skylake based processors, including the Core i7 6700K and Core i5 6600K, were revealed in April. We learned about the CPUs starting with CPU speed and thermal characteristics and moving to benchmarks that compared the chips to the i7 4790K and other current generation CPUs. Also revealed were some motherboards using the Intel Z170 chipset from Chinese company Colorful, with an anticipated release of September 2015. The recently released Intel roadmap confirms that the new processors will be released in the third quarter of this year, indicating that initial estimates of a September release were accurate. In addition to confirming the release date of the processors, it was revealed that there will be a total of ten CPUs in the Skylake family. Full details for all chips can be seen by following the link.
Source: WCCF Tech
Read More ...
First Teaser Image Released For AMD 390X
WCCF Tech has obtained the first image of the upcoming AMD R9 390X, powered by the Fiji XT GPU. Information about the card including benchmarks and RAM details have been revealed in bits and pieces, but this is the first look at the physical appearance of the card. The image appears to confirm other rumors that the card would be water cooled as the picture shows "what appears to be a 120mm water-cooling radiator." It can also be seen from the image that the card will occupy two PCI slots and provide three DisplayPort and one HDMI connections.
Source: WCCF Tech
Read More ...
Major Step Toward Changing Blood Types Made
There are many reasons people may need a blood transfusion, and hopefully none of us will ever experience one of those reasons. In the event someone does need a transfusion though, it is imperative the donor blood is of a useable type, which can be a problem if supplies are limited. Researchers the world over have been working to solve that problem, and those at the University of British Columbia have made a significant leap towards such a solution.
There are various types of blood that are separated by the sugars, or antigens, connected to the cells. Type O lacks these components, which is why it is known as the universal donor, as people with other types of blood can accept it. Naturally a means to convert Type A or B blood to Type O would be desirable, and this is exactly what the British Columbia researchers have been working on. An enzyme to remove the A and B antigens already exists, but the researchers applied directed evolution to make it more efficient. Directed evolution involves inserting mutations into the gene and then selecting the mutant versions with the desired effect. After just five generations the enzyme became 170 times more effective.
While the new enzyme is significantly more effective at removing the antigens, it is not perfect, and the immune system is so sensitive to blood groups that only complete removal can be used in clinical settings. That means that this research will not directly lead to results at blood banks, but to more research that hopefully will, which the researchers are confident of.
Source: University of British Columbia
Read More ...
AMD Officially Unveils the Zen CPU Core
After plenty of leaks and rumors, and even a core block diagram, AMD has officially unveiled its Zen CPU core. During the company's Financial Analyst Day, the wraps were finally taken off the next-generation x86 core, and things are looking quite good. Zen is the successor to AMD's Bulldozer line and is the first processor from the company to make use of Simulatenous Multithreading (SMT). SMT allows for a processor to use multiple, independent threads to better execute tasks, which should speed things up considerably from AMD's past use of Clustered Multithreading. Zen also makes use of a high-bandwidth, low latency cache system to help improve cache performance compared to Bulldozer. AMD announced the Zen cores will make use of FinFET technology, but did not specifiy if it would be built on a 14nm or 16nm process. The 14nm chips sound most likely, especially if yesterday's roadmaps are any indication.
Compared to AMD's upcoming Excavator CPUs, the last of the Bulldozer line due out later this year, the Zen cores have a 40% increase in instructions per clock. It would put Zen performance on the same level as Intel Haswell, at least according to single threaded benchmarks. It's something AMD needs to aim for, especially with the financial woes.
The first AMD Zen products won't be available until next year when the Summit Ridge CPUs, part of the FX line, appear. Those FX CPUs will have DDR4 support and a "high core count with multi-threading," which could mean up to eight cores, or potentially more. There will also be Bristol Ridge and Basilisk APUs utilizing Zen cores for those who don't need quite that FX level performance. AMD also seems to be pushing the desktop Zen products over to the AM4 socket and not FM3 like yesterday's roadmap leak showed. The mobile APUs will be on the FP4 socket.
Zen right now sounds extremely promising, but we need a lot more information before we form any definitive thoughts on the matter. Hopefully that and more arrives during Computex next month.
Source: WCCFtech
Read More ...
Batman: Arkham Knight Features NVIDIA PhysX Effects
Recently it was revealed that those who purchase a GeForce GTX 970 or GTX 980 would also receive copies of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Batman: Arkham Knight. Along with the official announcement on NVIDIA's GeForce website was a brief description of at least some of the GameWorks effects integrated into the PC version of Arkham Knight. Previous games in the series used PhysX for destruction, clothing, and turbulence to create immersive fog, more realistically reactive cloth, and, of course, better destructible environments. Arkham Knight, the conclusion to the series, will continue the trend and use the latest versions of these technologies, and more.
We can expect more information on all of the integrated technologies as we approach the June 23 release date.
Source: NVIDIA
Read More ...
Hardware Roundup: Wednesday, May 6, 2015, Edition
The middle of the week is upon us, with some items to help you get over the hump. There is a look at several SSDs using the new Phison S10 controller, which sees use in the Kingston HyperX Savage, Patriot Ignite, and Corsair Neutron XT series. Sticking with the SSD front, we have a look at performance issues and what really is at hand with the read speed degradation on the Samsung 840 EVO line. Lastly there's the Fluance Fi30 Bluetooth Speaker System, which may be perfect for those needing strong sounds without portability.
Storage/Hard Drives
Phison S10 Roundup - Kingston HyperX Savage vs. Patriot Ignite vs. Corsair Neutron XT @ PC Perspective
When SSD Performance Goes Awry @ TechSpot
Speakers/Headphones
Fluance Fi30 Bluetooth Speaker System @ ThinkComputers
Read More ...
New Method Accelerates Subsurface Scattering for Computer Graphics
Materials are a very important concept in many games, as changing the material of an object can dramatically affect its appearance. Still, getting the appearance right can be very difficult because of how light passes through the material, like flesh. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology and Activision-Blizzard though have developed a means to take this into account, without resulting in a significant performance hit.
Subsurface scattering is exactly what it sounds like; the scattering of light beneath the surface. A classic example would be the red we see if we put our fingers in front of a light. To correctly emulate this in a graphics engine would require calculating the scattering for numerous light rays, which is too much to do in real-time. To simplify the process and make it useable with modern hardware, the researchers developed Separable Subsurface Scattering (SSSS). This method works by simulating a single light ray to create a filter profile. This profile can then be applied to the image repeatedly, and very quickly. On a full HD image, it would add just half a millisecond of time on standard hardware, which makes it viable for video, unlike previous methods that took too much computing time.
As you may be able to guess, Activision-Blizzard is already using SSSS, but it will not be limited to the one company. It is to be presented in the journal, Computer Graphics Forum so every developer will be free to use it.
Source: Vienna University of Technology
Read More ...
990FXA GAMING Motherboard Unleashed by MSI
MSI, one of the world's largest information technology manufacturers, has unleashed the 990FXA GAMING motherboard. The 990FXA from MSI, which supports socket AM3+, is the world’s first AMD motherboard that fully supports USB 3.1 as well as NVMe. MSI has built the 990FXA GAMING motherboard with Military Class 4 components, which according to the company offers consumers with ECO power, circuit protection, humidity protection, high temperature protection, EMI protection, and ESD protection. The latest motherboard from MSI also features a matte black PCB, an impressive M-Shield I/O panel cover, Killer high-performance networking, and Audio Boost 2 powered by Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2, all of which offer a premium gaming experience when coupled with high-performance AMD processors.
Source: Press Release
Read More ...
Available Tags:Intel , AMD , CPU , NVIDIA , Hardware , GAMING , MSI ,
No comments:
Post a Comment