53143559
submission
MojoKid writes:
Microsoft has lifted the embargo on full reviews of the Xbox One and it's clear the system is more than just a game console. Of course, the Xbox One plays games—really well, actually. With its updated hardware, more refined controllers, new Kinect sensor, and strong developer support, the Xbox One is an excellent gaming platform. However, Microsoft’s incorporation of a hypervisor that allows the Xbox One to run the Xbox OS and Windows 8 kernel simultaneously opens up a world of additional possibilities. Essentially, you’ve got a device that’s equally as adept at running a cutting-edge game as it is playing back HD video, browsing the web, or video conferencing. The Xbox One's specifications read like a mainstream game PC. At the heart of the Xbox One is an AMD-built, semi-custom APU, featuring 8 "Jaguar" x86-64 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.75GHz and a GCN-based GPU with 768 stream processors, clocked at 853MHz. The APU also features a 32MB eSRAM cache. The APU is paired to 8GB of DDR3-2133 memory and the storage subsystem features 8GB of flash, a 500GB hard disk drive for game installs and bulk storage, and slot-loading Blu-Ray drive. The Xbox One also sports USB 3.0 supports, Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 2.4GHz + 5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a dedicated audio off-load processor. Xbox One games that are being shown thus far were expectedly a mix of bold and bland. The hottest titles like Ryse: Son of Rome, Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3, and Killer Instinct are likely to sell a ton of consoles. They simply look good, play well and will provide lots of fun. Ryse and Forza in particular look impressive.
53088577
submission
Deathspawner writes:
Following-up to a story reported on Slashdot yesterday of a "Blue Light of Death" that's been plaguing some PlayStation 4 owners, we now not only have confirmation that the problem exists, but are also being given some troubleshooting tips.
In the event of the BLOD being caused by a hardware issue, Sony primarily recommends double-checking all connections to make sure that no problems exist there, while it's also suggested that taking the top off of the console to get a look at the hard drive is worth doing. As a last resort, users are given a way to boot into the console's Safe Mode in order to adjust a variety of settings there — including the all-important 'Restore factory defaults'.
52960606
submission
MojoKid writes:
One of the major planks of AMD's APU13 developer conference has been an in-depth discussion of its next-generation API, Mantle. Mantle, which first debuted at the company's Hawaii GPU unveil in late September, has been billed as a high-performance alternative to DirectX 11. According to multiple sources, including Johan Anderrson from DICE, Mantle is a thin layer abstraction that sits over hardware, not an AMD-specific product. There's no reason NVIDIA couldn't use Mantle in future products and, not surprisingly, multiple speakers at the event expressed interest in seeing that happen at some point in the future. One of the issues plaguing DirectX development for years has been the fact that the API itself consumes a great deal of CPU overhead in certain scenarios. This is exacerbated if the developer launches many small batches of triangles for rendering. Every batch of draw calls consumes additional CPU power, so the goal is to group draw calls as efficiently as possible. According to AMD, you can reasonably hit 4-5K worth of draw calls in a given scenario. Really great programmers may hit as high as 10K, briefly, but even that's tiny when you consider that the PS3 and Xbox 360 can regularly field 20-30K in draw calls. With Mantle, AMD wants to close that gap and is targeting 100K draw calls per second with Mantle.
52863733
submission
MojoKid writes:
At APU13 today, AMD announced a full suite of new products and development tools as part of its push to improve HSA development. One of the most significant announcements to come out the sessions today-- albeit in a tacit, indirect fashion, is that Kaveri is going to pack a full 512 GPU cores. There's not much new to see on the CPU side of things — like Richland/Trinity, Steamroller is a pair of CPU modules with two cores per module. AMD also isn't talking about clock speeds yet, but the estimated 862 GFLOPS that the company is claiming for Kaveri points to GPU clock speeds between 700 — 800MHz. With 512 cores, Kaveri picks up a 33% boost over its predecessors, but memory bandwidth will be essential for the GPU to reach peak performance. For performance, AMD showed Kaveri up against the Intel 4770K running a low-end GeForce GT 630. In the intro scene to BF4's single-player campaign (1920x1080, Medium Details), the AMD Kaveri system (with no discrete GPU) consistently pushed frame rates in the 28-40 FPS range. The Intel system, in contrast, couldn't manage 15 FPS. Performance on that system was solidly in the 12-14 FPS range — meaning AMD is pulling 2x the frame rate, if not more.
52859961
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD is banking big on a heterogeneous server future, one where CPUs and GPUs work in unison to offer unparalleled performance. AMD calls this magic HSA, or heterogeneous system architecture. To aide developers for the future of HSA, AMD has been working with a couple of developers to release tools that are going to make the transition to CPU+GPU computing easier. Project Sumatra, for example, is a joint project between AMD and Oracle which will allow Java developers to take advantage of GPU compute, while GCC/HSA is the fruits of AMD working with SUSE to enable OpenMP APIs to work with the popular Linux compiler. Other updated software includes PGI Accelerator Compiler (OpenACC directives for C, C++ and Fortran under Linux and Windows), clMath (AMD OpenCL math libraries hat take advantage of APUs) and CodeXL 1.3, AMD's updated developer suite for Windows and Linux.
52756291
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA just launched their latest new, top-end graphics card dubbed the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. The card shares the same 3GB frame buffer of the original GeForce GTX 780, but on the Ti it is clocked at a much higher speed. The Ti’s GK110 GPU also has all of its functional blocks enabled, unlike the GTX 780. In short, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is a GeForce GTX 780 with faster memory and a GPU that’s more powerful than the NVIDIA's previous flagship, the GeForce GTX Titan. The GTX 780 Ti GPU has a base clock of 875MHz and a Boost clock of 928MHz. Unlike the GK110 on the Titan, however, all of the GPU’s SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors) are enabled on the GTX 780 Ti, which brings the card’s CUDA core count to 2880, up from Titan’s 2688. In the benchmarks, its beefier GPU and higher memory clock allowed it to overtake the GeForce GTX Titan and original GeForce GTX 780. And in the majority of tests, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti was also able to outpace AMD's Radeon R9 290X as well.
52637403
submission
MojoKid writes:
Apple's new A7 SoC that sits at the heart of the iPad Air and iPhone 5S is a fast chip. Benchmarks and analysis have shown that it picks up its additional performance over the older A6 thanks to a mixture of architectural tweaks and, in some cases, its new 64-bit architecture. On average, the gains are split about 60/40 between the two areas, with more performance gains from the microarchitecture enhancements. But in one notable case — the popular 3DMark, cross-platform benchmark — this hasn't been true at all. In 3DMark Ice Storm, the iPhone 5S is significantly faster in GPU workloads — almost 3x as fast in fact but its CPU performance is actually slightly slower than the A6, as measured in the Physics test. The iPad Air shows exactly the same performance issue, only its CPU is clocked faster than the iPhone 5/5S, and shows a small improvement as a result. Moving the code to 64-bit improved the A7's performance by about seven percent. What it doesn't answer, however, is why there's no performance delta between the two CPUs in 32-bit code. The difference, it turns out, is tied to the open source Bullet physics library that 3DMark Ice Storm relies upon for testing CPU performance. While this doesn't dramatically change how the iPhone 5S ranks in 3DMark, it shows how the advantage of a big change (32-bit to 64-bit) can actually be much smaller than the impact of a low-level optimization that better matches how a CPU best performs a task.
52597067
submission
MojoKid writes:
Microsoft has several valid reasons why you should upgrade to Windows 8.1, which is free if you already own Windows 8. However, there's a known issue that might give some gamers pause before clicking through in the Windows Store. There have been complaints of mouse problems after applying the Windows 8.1 update, most of which have been related to lag in video games, though Microsoft confirmed there are other potential quirks. Acknowledging the problem, Microsoft says it's also actively investigating the issues and working on a patch.
52480605
submission
MojoKid writes:
The PS4 and Xbox One aren't out yet, but that's not stopping them from facing off in Battlefield 4, the next-generation, just-launched title from EA/DICE. Now that the title has launched, what do we see? Quite a bit — some of it good, some not so much. The first thing that's going to jump out at you is that the contrast ratio and coloring is different — very different. The Xbox One version looks, at times, like the characters or objects have taken a hefty dose of spray-on tan, with oversaturated yellow-red tints that make colors pop in certain wavelengths, but also leaves the game looking oddly washed in places. The Xbox One variant is running at 1280x720, while the PS4 pushes 1600x900. Also it seems that the Xbox One version, on occasion, goes for tamped-down effects in comparison to the PS4. But we also can see that Microsoft's aggressive post-processing produces contradictory results when it comes to evaluating which console delivers the most detail. The Xbox One version of the characters looks better, with sharper textures and more visible detail. The same elements, on the PS4, are rather washed out and faded. Rock looks better on the Xbox One, but camo patterns on players are much more detailed on the PS4. The PS4 appears to using ambient occlusion for shadowing, while the Xbox One isn't. On the other hand, the use of ambient occlusion leaves certain parts of chartacters looking rather odd, with a light outline. The PS4 seems to have an advantage overall. Is it going to be big enough to tilt sales results? We'll find out shortly.
52333517
submission
MojoKid writes:
A few weeks back Intel officially launched their low-power Bay Trail Atom System-On-A-Chip for tablets and hybrid devices. Bay Trail, the follow-on to Intel's Clover Trail Atom design, comes in both dual and quad-core variants and offers better overall performance-per-watt than the previous generation, along with a significantly most robust graphics engine. At the time, only a few prototype devices we ready and Intel was still tuning drivers getting the solution ready for prime time. This week, however, the Windows 8.1 and Intel Bay Trail onslaught begins as both Microsoft and various OEMs release products to market. Asus officially unveiled performance and features of their Transformer Book T100TA Windows 8.1 tablet today. TheTransformer Book T100TA is a 10.1-inch Windows 8.1 tablet with companion keyboard dock that runs a full version of the Window 8.1 OS, not Windows RT. Asus also includes Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 and it's powered by a quad-core Intel Atom Z3740 Bay Trail SoC, paired to 2GB of RAM and 32 or 64GB of on-board storage. Performance-wise, the new Asus slate actually edges out an iPad 4 and Google Nexus 7 in some tests, but falls short of NVIDA's Tegra 4 driven SHIELD Android gaming device.
52280167
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD has launched their new top-end Radeon R9 290X graphics card today. The new flagship wasn't ready in time for AMD's recent October 8th launch of midrange product, but their top of the line model, based on the GPU codenamed Hawaii, is ready now. The R9 290 series GPU (Hawaii) is comprised of up to 44 compute units with a total of 2,816 IEEE-2008 compliant shaders. The GPU has four geometry processors (2x the Radeon HD 7970) and can output 64 pixels per clock. The Radeon R9 290X features 2816 Stream Processors and an engine clock of up to 1GHz. The card's 4GB of GDDR5 memory is accessed by the GPU via a wide 512-bit interface and the R290X requires a pair of supplemental PCIe power connectors—one 6-pin and one 8-pin. Save for some minimum frame rate and frame latency issues, the new Radeon R9 290X's performance is impressive overall. AMD still has some obvious driver tuning and optimization to do, but frame rates across the board were very good. And though it wasn't a clean sweep for the Radeon R9 290X versus NVIDIA's flagship GeForce GTX 780 or GeForce GTX Titan cards, AMD's new GPU traded victories depending on the game or application being used, which is to say the cards performed similarly.
52212749
submission
MojoKid writes:
In addition to Apple’s announcement of the iPad Air, the company talked up the innovative, cylinder-shaped Mac Pro that we heard about during Apple’s WWDC back in June. The Mac Pro’s premier feature is its “unified thermal core”, which is a shorthand way of describing its overall design with all of the components facing inward and the heat dissipation working vertically, all aided by a single bottom-mounted intake fan. Running on up to a 12-core Intel Xeon processor (at 3.9GHz Turbo), the Mac Pro boasts dual AMD FirePro GPUs (up to 12GB of G-DDR5 VRAM, 528GBps bandwidth, up to 7 teraflops); up to 64GB of 1866MHz DDR3 memory with a four-channel controller for up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth; and up to 1TB of PCIe-based flash storage with peak 1.2/1GBps read/write speeds. It also features six Thunderbolt 2 ports, dual Ethernet ports, HDMI, four USB 3.0 ports, a lone audio input, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a motion sensor. The system will ship with Mac OS X Mavericks and can support up to three 4K displays.
52070679
submission
Deathspawner writes:
At a press event held in Montreal, Canada, NVIDIA announced the latest update to its Surround multi-display technology. While it will require a ridiculous amount of graphics horsepower, the company has touted compatibility with 4K displays, resulting in a resolution of 11520×2160, effctively 1080p x 12. Prepare to open that wallet wide.
52036009
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA is holding a tech event currently in Montreal to showcase a number of the tools and technologies the company has developed to foster state of the art in game development. NVIDIA's VP of Content and Technology, Tony Tomasi took a moment to show off Faceworks, and the “Digital Ira” face that they’ve demoed at various events over the last year or so. This particular demo was a little different, however, in that it was running on Logan test kit. If you're unfamiliar, Logan is the codename for one of NVIDIA’s next-gen mobile SoCs, which features a Kepler-based GPU, like current GeForce GTX 600 and 700 series parts. The demo ran perfectly smooth and the quality of imagery was as good as we’ve seen on any other platform to date, console, PC or mobile. Incidentally, the demo was running on an Ubuntu Linux OS.
52033401
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Flow-based programming keeps resurfacing lately. FBP claims to make it easier for non-programmers to build applications by stringing together transformations built by expert programmers. Many projects have already been using similar approaches for a long time, with less (or different?) hype. Is it time to take a closer look at flow-based programming?
