Tuesday, April 26, 2016

IT News Head Lines (Overclockers Club) 27/04/2016

Overclockers Club



Dota 2 Update 6.87 Announced
Just over 24 hours after Chinese team Wings Gaming beat Team Liquid at the ESL One Manila event, Valve has announced gameplay update 6.87 for Dota 2. This is the first major update since version 6.86 was released in December and it brings many significant changes to heroes, items, and gameplay mechanics. Some players will probably be disappointed that the update doesn't contain a new hero, but complaints about a stale "meta" are sure to be reduced. The addition of a ban phase to the ranked All Pick game mode is the most significant and exciting development in my opinion and should make for more interesting, diverse, and fun games. A total of seven new items were added to the game while a number of others had functionality, recipes, and costs altered. There are too many changes to be able to go into depth on all of them here, so be sure to check the patch notes for information on all of the changes. A number of professional players have already chimed in on Twitter with mixed reactions to the changes as far as people that I follow. Others are planning to do in depth analysis of the changes, likely on Twitch with the videos later available for viewing.
Source: Dota 2 Blog


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First Benchmarks Leak For AMD Radeon Pro Duo
Earlier this month it was revealed that tomorrow was the expected release of the AMD Radeon Pro Duo, a card that packs two Fiji GPUs onto a single PCB. Now that we are just a day away, the first benchmarks comparing the card to the Radeon R9 Fury X and NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti have been leaked. The card was tested using several of the latest, graphically intensive games such as GTA V, The Witcher 3, and The Division and synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark Firestrike. The Pro Duo offered significant improvements over both cards, but this should be expected from a dual card solution. Average performance across all tests at 1080p offered an increase of 50% compared to the R9 Fury X and 32% over the GTX 980 Ti. The Pro Duo really shined at tests running at 4K resolution, with a performance increase of 60% over both comparison cards. It is clear that for a single card solution the Pro Duo offers an enticing choice for users looking for 4K performance, but the $1500 price tag may not be worth it for 1080p usage. The Pro Duo offered comparable temperature readings to the Fury X, and managed to beat the GTX 980 Ti under load, but was slightly warmer when idle. Total system power consumption was within 100W for all cards, with different cards performing better at different tests.
Source: Expreview via WCCF Tech


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Radeon Software Crimson Edition Version 16.4.2 Released
AMD has officially released version 16.4.2 of its Radeon Software Crimson Edition, which includes a variety of highlights. Some of these highlights include new or updated Crossfire Profiles for Elite Dangerous and Need for Speed, as well as full support for Thunderbolt 3 eGFX enclosures that are configured with Radeon R9 Fury, Nano, or 300 Series GPUs. The latest version of the Radeon Software Crimson Edition for AMD also includes a wealth of resolved issues, to include things like The Division experiencing flickering while utilizing AMD Crossfire technology, GPU clocks being stuck on some products after an application crashes, flickering within the SteamVR Performance Test while utilizing AMD Crossfire technology, the power efficiency toggle showing up for some unsupported products, and more.
Radeon Software Crimson Edition version 16.4.2 is available to download immediately for 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, 8.1, and 10.
Source: AMD


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Hardware Roundup: Monday, April 25, 2016, Edition
The final week of April is here, bringing a few items along for the ride in order to start things off. There is a look at what is expected to be the full details of AMD's upcoming Radeon Pro Duo video card, a massive beast shoving two Fury X GPUs onto a single board to make it the new champion card. For those needing a small new home for their system or future system, the Fractal Design Core 500 case, with its mini-ITX design and support for water cooling, just might be the solution. Ending things for today is a way to get your dance groove on with the Edifier M1370BT 2.1 Bluetooth Speaker System, which can connect to Bluetooth devices or via a wire for those still sticking to our ancient ways.
Video Cards

AMD Radeon Pro Duo Preview - Final Details Leak @ PC Perspective
Cases

Fractal Design Core 500 @ ThinkComputers
Speakers/Headphones

Edifier M1370BT 2.1 Bluetooth Speaker System @ Madshrimps


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Study Finds Roles Influence Behavior in Video Games
Something shared across many video games are certain specific archetypes, such as tanks, fighters, mages, rogues, assassins, and so on. In some games you are able to select what role you get to play as, while in other games it may be selected for you, or never even described. Researchers at North Carolina State University decided to look into these roles and see if they influence a player's behavior, and if selecting a role makes any difference.
To do this experiment, the researchers create a single-player RPG (which you can play at http://go.ncsu.edu/ixd-demo-rpg) and had 210 people play it. Of those, 78 were assigned the role of fighter, mage, or rogue, while 91 were allowed to select their role, and the final 41 played without a role. The game contained twelve multiple choice decisions that were careful constructed to be aligned with the three roles, to see if players maintained the role as they played. The results showed that whether the players selected or were assigned the role, they maintained them most of the time, with fighters being consistent 65.7% of the time, mages 76.1% of the time, and rogues 69.7% of the time. Even for the players who were not given a specific role, made decisions consistent with a specific role.
This study indicates that even without explicit role-playing elements to a game, players will assume and maintain roles on their own, which could influence how game designers develop games. It also means that other studies that examine player choice should be careful to remove role as a variable, as it could skew results.
Source: North Carolina State University


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Available Tags:AMD , Radeon , Hardware

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