This and that | Ripple's Web

NZXT H630 Review

Manufacturer: NZXT
UK price (as reviewed): £120.76 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): approx $149 (ex Tax)

We were quite excited by the recent announcement of NZXT’s H630 chassis, as it promised plenty of water-cooling support as well as low noise and a minimalist aesthetic, all for a price tag that’s relatively affordable compared with some of its other enthusiast cases like the Phantom 630 and Phantom 820. With these characteristics and its XL-ATX motherboard support, it immediately puts us in mind of Fractal’s Define XL R2, itself a solid performer. However, the H630 is £20 more than the XL R2, so it’ll need to work to justify this premium.

The dimensions of the H630 aren’t drastically different to those of Fractal’s chassis. Its slightly increased width is the most noticeable comparison, but the NZXT case is also a touch deeper and slightly shorter, so it will be interesting to see how the two differ in their use of internal space. Externally speaking, the H630 is all about minimalism, being both sleek and flat all around. Black steel is used on both the roof and the front fascia as well as both side panels (a white version is also available), and it has a very smooth finish to it. Build quality is very high too, as the H630 is a robust and weighty chassis with no wobbly, creaky or loose panels.

Click to enlarge – Along with the side panels, the overlapping roof and front panels are finished in a smooth steel
The front fascia consists of little more than a white hard drive activity LED above two steel optical drive covers. The protruded sections of the roof and front panel that overlap each other are reminiscent of the angular design of NZXT’s Phantom cases, while also being far more refined. The roof panel itself features the large, sturdy power button (with an LED lit ring around it to indicate power) and a small reset one, but is otherwise flat and smooth along with the featureless side panels. Ventilated strips along the left side of the roof panel and right side of the front one lend the case a subtle asymmetry, and their small size is indicative of NZXT’s commitment to keeping sound contained within the H630.

The similarities between the roof and front panels continue in terms of the fans they can house. While a single 200mm fan is mounted to the front of the case by default, it’s actually possible to mount two such fans to both areas, although users can also opt to install a pair of 140mm fans or three 120mm ones instead. There’s no filter supplied for the bundled 200mm fan, but the front ventilation strip is backed by material that will keep dust at bay. Oddly for a case geared towards silence, there’s no front door – initially, we actually pulled at the top of the front panel as if to open it – so you’ll have to fully remove the fascia to access the fan mounts.

Click to enlarge – The front I/O panel is located on the right side, and includes an SD card reader
The front I/O ports aren’t located in one of the usual areas, and are instead found along the top right side of the front panel, so you’ll ideally want to position the case to the left of where you sit. A standard array of USB 2, USB 3 and audio ports are joined by some of NZXT’s finishing touches, namely an SD card reader and a toggle switch for two white LEDs above the motherboard back panel and expansion slots. These are both features we wish we saw more of, but the absence of any fan control is an oversight for almost any case nowadays. It’s especially true, however, in an enthusiast chassis designed for low noise, where the ability to control airflow (and thus noise) is practically a necessity.

Click to enlarge – The rear PSU dust filter is easier to use than the front one
The rear of the H630 has a lot of ventilation for a low noise case, but doesn’t feature any water-cooling holes. What it does feature is a 140mm fan, the height of which can be adjusted to align with your CPU cooler’s airflow (120mm models are also supported). It’s a shame there isn’t another fan bundled with the H630, however, particularly as the Define XL R2 has a trio of them. Finally, the bottom of the case features large, solid feet affixed with good rubber grips. There’s also two slide out dust filters; one for the PSU that’s easy to remove and replace, and a longer one for the two bottom fan mounts, which is more fiddly to align when replacing.

Specifications

• Dimensions (mm) 245 x 567 x 547 (W x D x H)
• Material Steel, plastic
• Available colours Matte black (reviewed), glossy white
• Weight 14kg
• Front panel Power, reset, 2 x USB 2, 2 x USB 3, stereo, microphone
• Drive bays 2 x external 5.25in, 8 x internal 3.5in/2.5in, 2 x internal 2.5in
• Form factor(s) XL-ATX, ATX, micro-ATX, mini-ITX
• Cooling 2 x 200mm/140mm or 3 x 120mm front fan mounts (1 x 140mm fan included), 1 x 140mm/120mm rear fan mount (1 x 140mm fan included), 2 x 200mm/140mm or 3 x 120mm roof fan mounts, 2 x 140mm/120mm bottom fan mounts, 2 x 140mm/120mm internal fan mounts (fans not included)
• CPU cooler clearance 190mm
• Maximum graphics card length 354mm
• Extras Removable dust filters, NZXT Grid fan hub, rear I/O panel LED, SD card reader

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/hardware/~3/V1yGJw6j3aY/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/BYbTtfg6v90/

PointGrab’s gesture-tracking software works with no more complex hardware than a medium-resolution webcam, such as those already built in to most laptops.

Microsoft’s push to a touch-centric user experience in Windows 8, inspired in part by the tile-based Metro UI developed for its Windows Phone operating system, may not be driving the sale of touch-screens for desktops – but it’s certainly making developers think about other ways to deal with human-machine interaction.

Earlier this week Leap Motion demonstrated its eponymous finger-tracking technology being used on a Windows 8 machine to great effect. While the company may have missed every deadline it has ever set itself, indications are that the device is going to be hitting the market very soon – but when it does, it won’t be alone.

PointGrab looks to offer similar technology to Leap Motion, but in a software-only system that allows for gesture recognition using nothing more than a cheap, medium-resolution webcam – such as those already built into the vast majority of laptops on the market today. While not reaching anywhere near the sub-millimetre precision of Leap Motion – the system is designed to track hands, rather than individual fingers, at a range of up to five metres from the device – it does have the advantage of being accessible without the need to buy any dedicated hardware.

Founded in 2008, Isreali PointGrab has enjoyed niche success with its product: compatible with Android, Linux, Windows 7 and now Windows 8 and Windows RT, the software has already been picked up by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs.) First hitting the market in 2010, one of the company’s biggest partners is Samsung which uses PointGrab’s technology to bring gesture recognition – or what the company itselfterms ‘Natural User Interface’ technology – to its most recent range of Smart TVs.

Since the launch of Windows 8, however, the company has been heavily pushing for users to experience the Modern UI in a finger-friendly fashion without the need to splash out on a touch-screen. The company’s self-promotional video demonstrates its capabilities, running on Intel’s Ultrabook platform devices, and while cheesy in the extreme it certainly helps make sense of Microsoft’s tile-based Start Screen while also introducing a few tricks of its own – like allowing the user to mute a video simply by making a ‘shush’ gesture towards the camera.

The company already boasts of almost 10 million consumer devices in its roster, from the aforementioned Samsung TVs to products from Acer and Fujitsu – but, strangely, will not be releasing its software as a stand-alone product. Instead, the company has indicated its desire to continue to work with OEMs to integrate PointGrab technology into their devices – meaning those who want to retrofit gesture control into existing PCs will be left splashing out on a hardware-based solution like Leap Motion.

What PointGrab’s success does show, however, is that there is increasing interest in gesture control – and the low cost of entry for the software-based system means that it’s likely we’ll be seeing an increasing number of devices launching with the technology in the near future, despite Microsoft’s promise to improve the mouse-based experience in Windows 8.1.

If you’re curious as to how the system performance, PointGrab’s video is below – but before settling down to watch it, you may want to grab some wine to go with the copious volume of cheese on offer.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/news/~3/EAOfeCY8miI/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/2i8OQMtMA0s/

ASRock’s next-generation motherboards will come with A-Style Conformal Coating, making them waterproof – for certain values thereof.

Motherboard maker ASRock has shown off another of its upcoming A-Style features to appear on its Haswell-compatible next-generation boards, with a live demo of the waterproof coating selected models are to receive.

Dubbed A-Style Conformal Coating, ASRock’s latest gimmick allows the motherboard to survive getting splashed with water – making it a feature the company hopes will appeal to watercooling enthusiasts worried about a leak, or extreme overclockers who are concerned about the inevitable condensation that comes from the use of below-ambient cooling products like liquid nitrogen towers.

The technology isn’t exclusive to ASRock: the process of protecting circuits from damage using a conformal coating material is well established. ASRock, however, is claiming its coating goes above and beyond those offered by its competitors.

A demonstration video released by the company shows the Conformal Coating in action. An ASRock motherboard is suspended above a a container full of water at an angle while water is poured over the top, running down the length of the board and pouring from the bottom. While that’s something most computer owners would be reluctant to do with their products even while they’re switched off, a quick pan upwards reveals that the board is fully operational at the time.

It’s an impressive demonstration, but one that uses a little bit of trickery: the Conformal Coating is electrically insulative, which is why the demonstration works without anything releasing the magic smoke, but as a result it cannot be applied to anything that needs to be conductive.This means the exposed headers on the motherboard, its power connectors, PCI Express sockets – anything where you could be reasonably expected to connect a cable or jumper – must stay dry at all times to avoid a damaging short.

To be fair, it’s not a limitation ASRock is trying to hide: the company clearly states in its video description that ‘the pins need to stay conductive therefore they are not covered by Conformal Coating [and] the water in this video is designed to avoid the pins which still risks [a] short circuit.‘ Knowing that, however, the demonstration becomes significantly less impressive.

As mentioned, it’s very rare for a modern mass-produced and complex circuit board to have exposed traces; instead, the entire board is covered in a protective coating designed to prevent corrosion and damage to what are often hair-fine copper tracks. While ASRock’s A-Style Conformal Coating is likely a thicker and more robust example of this, most modern motherboards could equally survive a quick splash of water – providing, as in ASRock’s demonstration, the water avoids any exposed contacts on the board – thanks to their own non-A-Style conformal coatings.

The A-Style Conformal Coating is one of the methods by which ASRock is hoping to rise above its competitors when people start looking for Haswell compatible motherboards, along with other A-Style features including HDMI input for pass-through video, on-board 802.11ac WI-Fi, a Home Cloud storage system and A-Style Purity Sound on-board audio.

If you’re curious as to how ASRock’s Conformal Coating stands up, the company’s demonstration video is reproduced below.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/news/~3/YrvUi4y4Y8U/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/qWUhSMZg1Uw/

(CNN) — Sure, serious-minded folks from the White House on down have taken to Tumblr, the popular blogging platform that Yahoo announced it had purchased this week.

When you host 105 million blogs, you’re bound to have all types. But since hitting the Web in 2007, the blogs that have emerged as hits on Tumblr have tended to be silly, snarky or both.

Photos: Big acquisitions in the tech world

With its quick and easy tools for posting and image-friendly layouts, Tumblr has become a natural landing spot for folks in the entertain-me-now world of the Web.

CNNMoney: Tumblr’s David Karp on Marissa Mayer and dropping out of school

With lots of folks giving the site a look for the first time since news of the $1.1 billion deal was announced, here are 10 fun Tumblr blogs you might want to check out:

Reasons My Son Is Crying

This one will probably resonate the most with parents who will likely recognize those moments where frustration meets hilarity.

Greg Pembroke of Rochester, New York, started the blog to find the humor in those out-of-left field toddler meltdowns, as practiced by his sons William and Charlie. Among the captions on his photos of weeping wee ones:

“He can’t climb into the sea lion tank.”

“I touched his foot with my foot.”

“We helped him put on the boots he loves to wear.”

He’s since opened the blog up to reader submissions — meaning there are now daughters crying, too.

Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

This blog, like the Dear Leader himself, is no longer active. But scrolling back through its hundreds of photos is still pretty hilarious.

Say what you will about his anti-West rhetoric and dictatorial tendencies. Kim Jong Il knew how to rock a pair of giant sunglasses. And he loved looking at things.

Among the North Korean propaganda shots are images of Kim stoically examining such items as fish, snack food, pizza dough, soy sauce and a juice box.

“Why is it so funny?” wrote Joao Rocha, who ran the blog from Lisbon, Portugal. “I have no idea either.”

Once you’ve inspected Kim’s inspections, don’t give up hope. As a self-described “shameless knock-off” shows, his successor, Kim Jong Un, likes to look at things too.

How Do I Put This Gently?

Even if you don’t follow the blog, you’ve probably seen some of its posts crop up on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.

Tumblr probably played the biggest role on the Internet in reviving the animated GIF — those looping snippets of video that, when done right, are strangely entrancing.

This one takes scenes from movies and TV and uses them to describe everyday situations.

Humans of New York

If most of these are silly, HONY is captivating and, at times, poignant.

In 2010, having just lost his job in finance, Brandon Stanton set out to create a sort of photographic census of New York City. Three years later, he’s approached more than 10,000 people, taken 5,000 photos and, in the process, showcased the diversity of a city and a world.

He interviews each subject and usually captions the photos with a choice quote or detail from that interview.

Actresses Without Teeth

It’s actresses. Photoshopped. Without teeth. (Warning: Once these images are seen, they cannot be unseen.)

Literally Unbelievable

OK, folks. “Literally,” according to Merriam-Webster, means “in a literal sense or manner; actually.” So when you say something is literally unbelievable, it means no one should believe it.

If only some folks on Facebook could take their own advice.

This blog rounds up public Facebook posts in which people share articles from The Onion, a satire site, thinking they’re real. Its name comes from one reaction to “news” of Planned Parenthood’s “$8 billion Abortionplex,” complete with coffee shops, bars and a 10-screen movie theater.

“My favorite posts are the ones that express complete shock but not an ounce of doubt,” Hongo told CNN in 2011. ” ‘I can’t believe this!’ is a pretty funny response to something you should not believe.”

Rich Kids of Instagram

“They have more money than you, and this is what they do.”

This round-up of shots from the Facebook-owned photo app is enough to get even the biggest supply-side economist a little steamed.

Posing in front of their yachts. Partying in The Hamptons. Showing off their birthday-present Porsches or sipping Dom Perignon through a straw.

Each of those, and so much more, is on display for all the propaganda your class-warfare inclinations will ever need.

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

If you want to see famous people on the Internet, there are millions of places to find them.

But there’s something cool about the often-surprising meetings chronicled here that makes you wish you could be listening in.

Like President Gerald Ford kicking a soccer ball with Pele. Or Jack Nicholson listening to The Monkees warm up. Or CNN’s own Anthony Bourdain cooking something with a lot of tentacles while a horrified Christopher Walken watches.

From vintage images to glossy publicity shots, these are guaranteed to draw you in.

White Men Wearing Google Glass

A new entry to the Tumblr-scape, this one highlights, without words, an issue Google will face while pushing its innovative new piece of wearable tech. If you looked a little dorky before, you’ll look a lot dorky with these things strapped around your head.

Bun B’s Jumbo Coloring and Rap Activity Tumblr

Who among us has never wanted to color a picture of Vanilla Ice? Or do a connect-the-dots to put a crown on The Notorious B.I.G.’s head? Or pencil their way through a maze to help Humpty Hump find the Burger King bathroom (to get busy, obviously).

Almost all of us, I’m betting. But that’s what you get on this Tumblr, from the wonderfully twisted mind of rapper Bun B.

The mashup of childhood memories and hip-hop stars doesn’t make any sense. Which, in its way, makes perfect sense.

In other words, it’s perfect for Tumblr.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/tumblrs-to-follow/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/f0CSsA1ANCE/10-fun-tumblr-blogs

Based on its face-rec API released last year, Lambda Labs’ Google Glass Face Recognition API could help you recognize people who are less famous than Tiger Woods.

(Credit:
Lambda Labs)

Amid questions to Google from Congress about privacy concerns related to Google Glass, a San Francisco startup is preparing an API to recognize faces with the controversial gadget.

The Google Glass Face Recognition API (application programming interface) from Lambda Labs will be available to developers within a week, TechCrunch tells us, quoting co-founder Stephen Balaban.

Lambda Labs released its open-source Face API last year, and it’s apparently being used by 1,000 developers including large companies.

The Glass app would be based on that. It would let users recognize faces in a crowd as well as remember faces by storing data from personal encounters. That’s great if you’re terrible with names and faces — not so great if you care about privacy.

Beyond being a mnemonic tool, the app could show you who shares your interests. By looking up people’s faces at a gathering, it could perform functions like “networking event interest matching.” It would also be able to recognize objects.

Whether or not this would happen in real time as opposed to snapping photos with Glass and then querying a remote server is unclear. It’s also unclear whether Google will allow facial-recognition apps.

“This is the first face-recognition toolkit for Glass, so we’re just not sure how Google, or the privacy caucus, will react,” Balaban was quoted as saying.

A
Google Glass PR rep told CNET, however, that Google would not allow facial-recognition apps in its app store.

Steve Lee, Glass director of product management, was quoted as saying by The New York Times, “We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face-recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place.”

Everything clear as mud now?

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/pRza/~3/iQgINYb9XWE/

The Xbox 360 was initially backwards compatible with 279 of the games for the original Xbox.

Microsoft has defended its decision to skip backwards compatibility in the newly revealed Xbox One.

Microsoft Interactive Entertainment president Don Mattrick has confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that there are no plans for any form of backwards compatibility on the new system, saying ‘if you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards.’

According to Mattrick, only 5% of customers play older titles on a new system and the option was therefore deemed unnecessary. Whether this statistic encompasses both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 players is unclear and there is no mention on whether it also factors into the fact that the Xbox 360 was not fully backwards compatible with all original Xbox titles.

By contrast, Sony is being less strict in the backwards compatibility area and have plans to include a cloud-based streaming service to play older titles on its new console, possibly leveraging cloud gaming company Gaikai which it acquired last year.

At its launch, the Xbox 360 was capable of running 279 titles from the original Xbox library, although this number whittled down over time due to new bugs being discovered by players and updates to the console hardware.

Sony’s Playstation 3 had a marginally better offering with backwards compatibility with earlier models allowing for Playstation 2 titles to be played from them and all models allowing for original Playstation titles to be run.

Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One was revealed earlier this week and has sparked a great deal of discussion in the gaming community, in particular surrounding its ill defined stance on the second-hand games market.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/news/~3/T9l7NRDTNJo/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/1VFdTdCSFTc/

“Coming Home”

(Credit:
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

A picture depicting a girl’s reunion with her father returning from war has won the top award in a Google Doodle contest.

On display Thursday at Google’s home page, “Coming Home” is a simple but powerful piece of art that portrays a young girl holding an American flag and running to reunite with her father. The returning soldier appears. They exchange a glance. And finally they fall into a deep embrace as they treasure their moment together again.

Created by 12th grader Sabrina Brady of Sparta, Wisc., “Coming Home” faced great competition in being crowned the 2013 U.S. Doodle 4 Google national winner. Google received more than 130,000 submissions for the contest, which garnered millions of votes. But in the end, Sabrina’s drawing clearly moved the voters.

“Sabrina’s doodle stood out in the crowd,” Google said in its official blog on Wednesday. “It tells the story of her reunion with her father as he returned from an 18 month deployment in Iraq. Her creative use of the Google letters to illustrate this heartfelt moment clearly resonated with voters across the country and all of us at Google.”

Beyond seeing her doodle appear on Google’s home page, Sabrina will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, a Chromebook computer, and a $50,000 technology grant for her school. She’s headed to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design this fall, where Google says “she will continue her artistic pursuits.”

Google also singled out four national finalists, each of whom will be given a $5,000 college scholarship. All 50 state winners will be treated to an exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan where their artwork will be on display until July 14.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/pRza/~3/o_0ICAh6GIE/

The Last Of Us Preview

Platform: PS3
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

The Last Of Us is about scarcity. It’s about making do. That’s not just key to the way combat’s designed, it’s true of the entire development process. Seemingly The Last Of Us is about discovering what else you can provide in a game besides shooting another human. Figuring that out makes the moments where killing is inevitable stick out that much more prominently.

It’s probably not a coincidence that this echoes the setting. It’s a Cormac McCarthy-esque post apocalypse where only remnants of the current world still stand, ravaged by time. The majority of the population have been wiped out by a plant-borne infection that turns them rabid, but they’re only a portion of the threat to those that are left. Bandits roam the world trying to survive in less than admirable ways. There’s little to find in the world but danger.

Our preview build showed two brief slices early into the game’s narrative. The first contains an extended walk without seeing a single human that isn’t your character Joel or companion Ellie. They intend to meet with a friend holed up further into an abandoned town, in an attempt to barter for a car. The player is totally denied any sense of threat along the way, making it incredibly disturbing as the tension ratchets up in anticipation of what will inevitably come.

Along this walk there are a few puzzles. You have to get over a fence but it’s covered in barbed wire. You’ll notice a long plank of wood leaning against a wall which sure enough you can pick up. By climbing atop other nearby structures you can use the plank to create a bridge. Easy.

However, dropping the plank just slightly out of range of the correct position means that Joel will lay it down on the ground next to him. It’s a peculiar break in the sense of immersion; one minute the world feels real and malleable, the next you realise you’ve encountered something akin to a quicktime event. For a game that presents itself as so cinematic to suddenly remind you of the medium’s flaws makes them all the more notable. Hopefully in the full game these moments will be the exception rather than the rule.

While on your travels you can scavenge for supplies along the way. Everything you find is a consumable and mostly they’ll be converted into more useful materials. There’s a crafting system that you can access at any time, but terrifyingly it doesn’t pause the game. As such you’ll want to make preparations when you think you’re safe, especially as the equipment you’re crafting is important during combat.

On top of the risks of creating in real time, you’ll also have to choose carefully what you craft. Many items can serve multiple perhaps and be combined in a number of different ways, such that you could create a health pack or a molotov cocktail, say. For example, you can duct tape a pair of scissors to your melee weapon for two instant kills with it before they snap off, or you could fashion a shiv that can either be used for a single silent kill or break open the lock on a door. Even the weapon you’ve selected needs to be considered before a fight breaks out. You’ve a variety in your pack, but you’ll need to lay it down and root around for the one you’ll grab when necessary. That’s your choice and you don’t have the luxury of knowing what you’ll need for the situation, nor the time to decide once you’re up against it.

We do take umbrage with some of these decisions as it’s just as “unrealistic” that you wouldn’t think to fashion useful holsters for key weapons, or keep items in pockets, rather than have them all tucked away in a bag. Likewise it’s nonsense that a shiv should be single-use. Again, it’ll be interesting to see how these slight irritations feel in the full game.

When, in this preview, you’re finally attacked you’re vastly outnumbered and your only option is to run, briefly thinning out attackers who get too close to you or Ellie. Here she runs the risk of being too dependant, in stark contrast with the way that Bioshock Infinite handled the secondary protagonist of Elizabeth. Whenever she’s attacked she’ll require your help. This does of course make sense as Ellie is a young girl without the ability to rip holes in spacetime, but still. At best this’ll force you to be more bold in your combat to save her and make for better gameplay, but if it follows most other games the entire game runs the risk of feeling like an escort quest. It’d be a shame, because through dialogue Ellie is made about as great a character as only Naughty Dog appears to be able to provide. She’ll win you over the first time she calls someone a Motherf*cker, trust me.

The second glimpse of combat, a little later in the story, focused specifically on an attack by a manageable but still massive number of bandits. The combat is brutal and meaningful. It’s not something that you’re going to want to get involved in and you’re going to have to think carefully about how to handle yourself. Breaking line of sight and catching an attacker unawares is the only upper hand you have. You’ll run out of bullets if they aren’t used sparingly and you’ll be beaten bloody in any melee encounter if there’s more than one person around. You don’t want to get in fights, but you will. You’ll have to deal with the consequences when it happens.

Overall we’re so far impressed with what The Last Of Us has to offer and if the full game lives up to the preview build it’ll be well worth picking up. As one of the last major new titles for the PS3, before the PS4 arrives, it could make for a superb swansong for the console.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/gaming/~3/a9pCeOejDpE/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/veoKYDtVL4w/

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Review

Manufacturer: Nvidia
UK Price (as reviewed): MSRP £550 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): MSRP $649 (ex. Tax)

We must admit to being a little surprised by the GTX 780 3GB, not least due to its arrival just three months (almost to the day) after the GTX Titan 6GB. Titan was pitched as a range-topping single GPU card in the mould of the 8800 Ultra, albeit at an even higher price tag of around £900, so for the GTX 780 3GB to arrive so soon afterwards, and looking remarkably similar, is rather unexpected.

Despite the new 7-series moniker, GTX 780, and indeed any subsequent 7-series cards, do not take advantage of a new GPU architecture or even updates to the silicon in the way that GTX 580 differed from GTX 480 with the addition of low-leakage transistors. Instead, the 7-series is a continuation of the 28nm Kepler architecture we’ve already seen in the 6-series, with Nvidia’s next major architectural update, Maxwell, not due until next year.

Titan-Lite

However, the GTX 780 still raises the stakes in the endless GPU arms-race, with the switch from the GK104 GPU of the GTX 680 2GB to the same GK110 GPU as GTX Titan, albeit a little scaled down. While this doesn’t change the basic SM (streaming multi-processor) design in comparison to GTX 680, there are three SMs per GPC (graphics processor cluster) in GK110, in comparison to two per GPC in GK104/106.

The GK 110 GPU can also boast up to five GPCs in comparison to GK104’s four, although it’s here that those slightly scaled down specs come into effect. While GTX Titan sports 5 GPCs and 14 SMs (one GPC with 1 SM disabled), GTX 780 has that last GPC entirely disabled, instead boasting four GPCs with a full complement of SMs for a total of 12 SMs. This reduces the stream processor count from 2,688 of Titan to 2,304 for GTX 780; still a large improvement over that of the 1,536 of GTX 680. The loss of the two SMs also reduces the tessellation unit count by two (one per SM), and the texture unit count by 32 (16 per SM). It’s also worth noting that GTX 780’s SMs do NOT boast the double-precision units of GTX Titan, so for compute tasks the Titan remains the only current Nvidia card to offer double precision functionality.

Pleasingly, other than the loss of the two SMs, the GTX 780’s GK110 GPU is otherwise intact. This means it retains the 384-bit memory interface and the 48 ROPs of Nvidia’s super-card, although the amount of GDDR5 has been halved from the double-stacked 6GB of Titan to single-stacked 3GB of GDDR5. Running at 1.5GHz (6GHz effective), this means the GTX 780 boasts 288GB/sec of memory bandwidth, matching that of AMD’s Radeon 7970 3GB.

To compensate for the reduced amount of memory and drop in stream processor count, the GTX 780’s GPU actually runs a tad faster than Titan. As we’ve come to expect from Nvidia, it uses GPU Boost 2.0 to increase the GPU clock should thermal and power levels allow. A base clock of 8,36MHz matches Titan, but a guaranteed boost clock of 900MHz is actually a touch quicker. During our testing, we found the stock card would happily boost to 993MHz though, the same speed as the GTX Titan was happy to boost to.

Looking at the card itself, it’s clear Nvidia hasn’t deemed it necessary to change of the design in comparison to the GTX Titan; in fact, the GTX 780 basically shares the same 267mm PCB and attractive aluminium stock cooler as Titan, albeit with the branding adjusted to suit. That’s no bad thing as Titan was hailed for its sleek looks and high-quality engineering. The two-part cooler comprises a vapour chamber mounted on top of the GPU, which dissipates heat through an array of cooling fins, and an aluminium shroud which directly cools the power delivery circuitry and memory modules. A radial fan provides the airflow, pulling air in from the end of the card and exhausting it out the rear I/O, while a green-LED lit GeForce GTX logo on the cards top reminds anyone with a case window what make their GPU is.

It’s comfortably the most covetable stock GPU design we can recall, but seems likely to irk some of Nvidia’s GPU partners; we highly doubt we’ll see the same array of third-party coolers as usual and other than the radial fan’s motor there’s little-to-no space to put branding stickers. With the huge variability in after-market coolers though, we’re pretty happy Nvidia has started to invest in its stock models to such a degree, a trend that looks set to continue into the rest of the 7-series. All that said, though, as we found in our recent look at after-market graphics card coolers, there is often head room for reducing operating temperatures and noise levels, so we’ll be interested to see if any partners do attempt some more exotic solutions.

With a similar GK110 GPU and the same PCB and cooler as GTX Titan, it’s not surprising to find that GTX 780 matches it with power requirements. A TDP of 250W is 55W higher than that of GTX 680, but with the significantly uprated cooling it’s unlikely to cause problems.

So, GTX 780 is in truth, a slightly neutered GTX Titan, but considering Titan’s monster performance, this still makes GTX 780 a formidable card on paper. So formidable in fact that, rather than price it the same as the out-going GTX 680 (which launched at £429), Nvidia is going up another pricing rung, with the GTX 780 set to go on sale for £550. This, presumably, will result in the whole GeForce range shifting up a notch for 7-series, which, considering the reducing relevance of it’s low-end in the face of improving processor graphics, does make some sense. Nonetheless, we’re still not fans of dropping more than half a grand on a top-end single-GPU card, although there’s certainly precedent; the 8800 Ultra launched at a similar price back in 2007.

GTX 780 Specs

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/hardware/~3/ao12WvdQTzc/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/fJQg3iotVLk/

Lenovo has become the only top-five PC maker not to suffer from the so-called ‘post-PC’ slump, posting record profits for its last financial year.

The PC slowdown might be hitting many high-tech companies hard, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at Lenovo: the company has just posted record profits on the back of massively increased sales.

Founded in 1984, Chinese Lenovo hit the big time when it acquired IBM’s personal computer business in 2005 – giving it the right to produce laptops under the well-regarded ThinkPad brand. While not all of its decisions have gone quite as well – it famously sold off its smartphone and tablet division in 2008 for $100 million, only to change its mind and buy it back a year later for $200 million – the company has seen steady growth in the mobile computing arena.

Steady, that is, until its most recent quarterly earnings report. Despite its rivals complaining of flagging profits, slowing sales and the looming spectre of the so-called “post-PC” era – in which buyers stop picking up desktops and laptops in favour of tablets and smartphones – the company has had a bumper quarter. Figures released by the company late last night show a 90 per cent gain in profits year-on-year from $66.8 million this time last year to $126.9 million in the last quarter.

The whopping growth comes as the global PC market continues to shrink, the hoped-for sales boost from the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system having never materialised. Some of that growth, naturally, comes from Lenovo’s smartphone and tablet arm – but the company has sustained previous levels of desktop and laptop sales, increasing its market share to the cost of its competitors. In doing so, it has become the only one of the top five PC makers not to see its shipments slide.

The good performance its final quarter has led Lenovo to a record annual income of $801 million based on $34 billion in sales – suggesting that Lenovo, unlike its competitors, isn’t feeling the pinch of the market slowdown. That, however, would appear to be primarily thanks to its tablet and smartphone arm: desktop PC shipments held steady during the quarter, while its laptop division saw sales decrease two per cent year-on-year. Smartphone shipments, by contrast, grew 206 per cent in the fourth quarter.

That isn’t to say that Lenovo is becoming a smartphone company, of course: laptops still accounted for 53 per cent of the company’s overall sales for the quarter, despite the slip in shipments. Lenovo’s position as one of the very few companies in the PC market to show growth, however, does show a couple of things very clearly: PC makers without “post-PC” strategies are going to struggle in the coming years, and Lenovo’s $200 million buy-back of its hastily-sold tablet and mobile division may have been a sound investment after all.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/news/~3/dYlhVEfctJQ/1

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GamingRipplesWeb/~3/nn6Wun2Bnfw/