Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - AMD Unveils The Liquid-Cooled, Dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2 At $1,500 (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by wesbascas
wesbascas writes: This morning, AMD unveiled its latest flagship graphics board: the $1,500, liquid-cooled, dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2. With a pair of Hawaii GPUs that power the company’s top-end single-GPU Radeon R9 290X, the new board is sure to make waves at price points that Nvidia currently dominates.

In gaming benchmarks, the R9 295X2 performs pretty much in line with a pair of R9 290X cards in CrossFire. However, the R9 295X2 uses specially-binned GPUs which enable the card to run with less power than a duo of the single-GPU cards. Plus, thanks to the closed-loop liquid cooler, the R9 295X doesn’t succumb to the nasty throttling issues present on the R9 290X, nor its noisy solution.

Submission + - Nvidia Shield Review Roundup: Tegra 4-Powered Handheld Gaming (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today, Nvidia officially releases the SHIELD. After an unexpected delay last month, the company dropped the price of its hotly-anticipated handheld gaming system from $350 to just $300. Sporting a 5-inch 720p touchscreen attached to an XBox-style controller, the SHIELD is the first serious Android-based handheld gaming device. The SHIELD is also the first major device top ship with Nvidia's new Tegra 4 SoC. But the potentially killer feature of the SHIELD is its ability to steam heavy-duty PC games from your desktop right into your hands. Right now the selection of PC games is pretty scarce, with just 21 titles to choose from so far, though Nvidia promises more to come.

Tom's Hardware just posted an exhaustive review of the Nvidia SHIELD, which includes demos of both Android gaming and PC streaming, display and battery testing, plus the usual bevy of performance tests versus the Tegra 3-based Nexus 7 (2012), the new Nexus 7 carrying a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, the iPhone 5, and a Wintel tablet with the Atom Z2760.

Tegra 4 presents nearly four times the performance of Tegra 3, and leaves most of its competition in the dust. However, it also means that Nvidia is now the only ARM competitor without an OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation on the horizon, making Nvidia's new position as top dog quite uncertain.

PCPer and HotHardware have also posted SHIELD reviews.

Submission + - Next-Gen Video Encoding: x265 Tackles HEVC/H.265 (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Late last night, MulticoreWare released an early alpha build of the x265 library. x265 is intended to be the open source counterpart to the recently released HEVC/H.265 standard which was approved back in January, much in the same way that x264 is used for H.264 today. Tom's Hardware put x265 through a series of CPU benchmarks and then compared x265 to x264. While x265 is more taxing in terms of CPU utilization, it affords higher quality at any given bit rate, or the same quality at a lower bit rate than x264.

Submission + - Pico Projector That Adapts to Surface, Can Use Random Objects as Input Devices (engadget.com)

Submitted by jpwilliams
jpwilliams writes: This tiny projector can use random surfaces to project an image. Using a webcam, it adapts to the surface, not just by adjusting keystone, but also following that surface and displaying different amounts of information (in certain cases). The guy in the video also uses a coffee mug as an app changer.
Open Source

Submission + - Canonical puts Ubuntu on Android smartphones (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Canonical has revealed Ubuntu running on a smartphone — but the open source developer hasn't squashed the full desktop onto a tiny screen. Instead, the Ubuntu for Android system runs both OSes side by side, picking which to surface depending on the form factor. When a device — in the demo, it was a Motorola Atrix — is being used as a smartphone, it uses Android. When it's docked into a laptop or desktop setup, the full version of Ubuntu is used. Files, apps and other functionality such as voice calls and texting are shared between the two — for example, if a text message is sent to the phone when it's docked, the SMS pops up in Ubuntu, while calls can be received or made from the desktop."
Idle

Submission + - Mathematical parrot reveals his genius with posthumous paper (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Even in death, the world’s most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex – a grey parrot trained to count objects – have just been published. They show that Alex could accurately add together Arabic numerals to a sum of eight and three sets of objects, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates (abstract http://www.springerlink.com/content/q08n44457x236ln6/).
User Journal

Journal Journal: General Relativity Trumps Quantum Mechanics Twice.

Journal by mburns

The predictions by quantum mechanics of net vacuum energy and of slowing of ultrashort wave radiation by a quantum foam do not work out. This is because general relativity has theorems to the contrary. But why would those theorems win out? General relativity wins within the domain of its axioms, because a lockin theorem applies, namely the Bianchi identities that follow simply from the existence of the metric. It prevents the subject matter, spacetime, from experiencing alternatives to govern
IT

Submission + - IT salaries edge up back to 2008 levels (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "A soon-to-be released salary survey finds that the average salary for IT professionals in the U.S. is $78,299, putting overall compensation back at January 2008 levels. More heartening: Midsize and large companies are both aiming to hire more IT pros. The midsize are seeking IT executives (such as VPs of information services and technical services), as well as programmers, database specialists, systems analysts, and voice/wireless communication pros. Enterprises are moving IT and data center operations back in-house, which means greater demand for data center managers and supervisors."
Government

Submission + - Lawmakers Intent On Approving SOPA, PIPA (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "U.S. Congress appears likely to move forward with SOPA and PIPA, despite widespread opposition, IDGNS reports. The U.S. Senate is expected to begin floor debate on PIPA shortly after senators return to D.C. on Jan. 23, and supporters appear to have the votes to override a threatened filibuster. Some opponents of the bills hold out hope: 'We're optimistic that if members really understood the Internet architecture and cybersecurity measures, they would not support SOPA as written. Instead, members who are really committed to combatting online piracy would look for effective ways to do that without compromising cybersecurity or the open architecture of the Internet,' said a CCIA spokesperson. Others remain doubtful that Congress will come to this understanding."
Idle

Submission + - Why US Gas Mileage Advances Don't Help Consumers a (inhabitat.com) 2

Submitted by
greenrainbow
greenrainbow writes: "The average, fuel efficiency for US vehicles actually increased by 60 percent between 1980 and 2006 but at the same time cars in the US got bigger (by 26% on average) and their horsepower increased (by 107 hp on average), which, when factored in, means that the average fuel efficiency of American cars only increased by a mere 15%. Almost all of the new technology went into making cars more efficient per pound of weight so that the cars could get bigger and still fit within average mile per gallon expectations."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Ben (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by wesbascas
wesbascas writes: Have you ever wanted to play a new PC game, but weren't sure where your PC falls between the minimum and recommended system requirements? I don't have a whole lot of time to game these days and with new hardware perpetually coming out and component vendors often tweaking their model numbering schemes, knowing exactly what kind of experience I'm buying for $60 can be difficult. Luckily, somebody benchmarked Battlefield 3's campaign on a wide range of hardware configurations and detail settings. If you've purchased a system in the past few years you should be in luck. The video cards tested start with the AMD Radeon HD 4670 and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and go up to the brand new Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590. I hate it that my aging Radeon HD 4870 isn't going to cut it at 1080p, but am glad that I found out BEFORE buying the game. I suppose it's time for an upgrade anyway, there's no way I'm missing this title.
Android

Submission + - Dolphin, a 3rd Party Android Browser, relays visit (androidpolice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "As it turns out, Dolphin HD, one of the top browsers the Android platform has to offer, sends pretty much every web page url you visit, including those that start with https, to a remote server en.mywebzines.com, which belongs to the company. In fact, the WebZines feature was introduced only recently back in June with version 6.0, so it's safe to say this tracking started around the same time."

Dolphin's team says a fix is coming shortly.
Cloud

Submission + - Intel gives up on TV (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Bloomberg is reporting that Intel, on the cusp of having low-power embedded chips that can do true HD in a flatscreen, has given up on getting their chips embedded in TVs.

While many might say their efforts to date have been fruitless because of energy issues, Medfield might have had a chance on this field. Thoughts?

Slashdot Top Deals

Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde

Close