Gaming

The 2017 annual major release of AMD's Radeon Software has arrived, called the Adrenaline Edition. In addition to a refined UI, the main features it brings are an in-game overlay that allows performance monitoring and on-the-fly setting changes, as well as a mobile app that can be used to monitor performance or handle recording and streaming settings.

Everybody's favorite Department of Death Travel Agent, Manny Calavera, can now lead your PC to the Ninth Underworld for free, courtesy of GOG.com.

Bottom line: the Titan V is indeed a mining powerhouse, but the prohibitive price does not scale well with the price/perfomance factor.

The new DisplayHDR certificate aims at a more clear classification for HDR-grade LCD displays. It includes three tiers that have distinct logos and are differentiated according to luminance, color gamut, bit depth and rise time. Commercial DisplayHDR-certified screens will be available as soon as Q1 2018.

Atari is set to release its first all-new gaming console in years. The Ataribox will be powered by a custom AMD chipset and is going up for pre-order this week.

Measuring just 414 x 118 x 394 mm in volume, the system manages to integrate a 450 W PSU and GTX 1070 Ti GPU to be a powerhouse of a HTPC.

Sony announced yesterday that the PlayStation 4 has now passed 70 million lifetime sales, along with almost 618 million games sold.

The Titan V AI compute card may seem too expensive for an extreme gaming solution, but it is US$7,000 cheaper than the Tesla V100 card that served as basis. Considering the notable price difference, the Titan V actually offers almost the same performance as the Tesla V100, with slightly inferior specs, and essentially the same Tensor, single and double precision speeds.

Razer's partnership with Ignition Design Labs has led to the 'Portal by Razer,' a version of the Portal router with optimizations for gamers.

Rambus released some preliminary details about the HBM3 graphics memory modules that are expected to hit the market in 2019, at the earliest. With a transfer rate of around 4 Gbps, the HBM3 modules could double the memory bandwidth, making them faster than the GDDR6 modules included in Nvidia's GTX 2000 GPUs.

Due to the high volatility and growing transaction fees associated with Bitcoin, Valve is no longer accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment method for purchases made on Steam. This decision sheds some light on the economic ramifications of the rapid growth of a currency.

The XPC SZ270R9 mini PC enclosure from Shuttle offers versatile customization options combined with easy overclocking functions for gamers who want compact, efficient and silent systems.

The Nvidia GTX 1070-equipped Alienware 15 R3 is currently on sale at Best Buy for USD $1450, or $350 less than its retail price.

Buyers should pay attention to what Radeon RX 560 cards they are purchasing, as AMD was discovered to allow OEMs like Sapphire, Asus and PowerColor market RX 560 versions with 14 compute units instead of 16. These downgraded versions are most likely to be found on Amazon and Newegg.

AMD announced its partnership with Qualcomm to integrate the latter's X16 LTE modem on Ryzen APUs, thereby, bringing always-on LTE connectivity to high-performance notebooks.

Ubisoft is offering the acclaimed RTS World in Conflict now through December 11th. They will then release Assassin's Creed: Black Flag for free from December 12 through the 18th.

The Vega 11 GPU core will only be featured in upcoming Raven Ridge APUs and will not be released as budget versions of the Vega 56/64 GPUs. These should bring a notable performance boost over the Ryzen 5 2500U chips that integrate Vega 8 cores.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, popularly referred to as PUBG, may be the hottest thing in the gaming industry right now, with the MMO reaching a Steam record of close to three million peak players.

After five years in development, Skyforge entered the open beta stage in early 2015. This free-to-play MMORPG was released for PlayStation 4 in April, and now the time has finally arrived for the Xbox One console to get it as well.

Other new features include enhanced audio return channel, variable refresh rate, quick media switching, quick frame transport, auto low latency mode, and display stream compression (DSC). The 2.1 standard actually allows 8K@120Hz and 10K@120Hz, but only through DSC. A new "Ultra High Speed HDMI" cable with 48 Gbps throughput will also be required.

Nintendo's latest mobile title, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, may be a solid win for the Japanese juggernaut. The app has eclipsed 15 million downloads in its first week of release, and Nintendo's stock shot up 4.16% over the past week and has risen 92% year-to-date.

Min-Liang Tan has posted an explanation of why the gaming company dropped the venerable audio jack on its new Razer Phone. The demise of the headphone jack is all about giving users better features, according to Razer's CEO.

Not all Max-Q laptops are created equal.

Palit (via their sub-brands Galax and KFA2) are releasing their compact eGPU solution, the SNPR External Graphics Enclosure, within the next few weeks. Their solution is more along the lines of Aorus’s compact enclosure or the Breakaway Puck from Sonnet, rather than the larger and more modular docking hubs that are available from Razer and Alienware.

The mobile Core i9 looks to be essentially the same as the Core i7 in core count, thread count, and cache size but with an unlocked multiplier similar to the Kaby Lake 45 W HK-class.

Humble Bundle inc. is offering up the tower-defense-cum-FPS game, Sanctum 2, for free as long as you claim it within the next 48 hours.

Futuremark's brand-new VRMark Cyan Room benchmark arrived earlier today and the first set of interesting results is already available. According to AMD's own tests that were conducted using this DirectX 12 benchmarking tool, the RX Vega 64 is 20 percent faster than the GeForce GTX 1080.

HoloTouch claims Microsoft's HoloLens is infringing on two of its patents involving a touch-less way of controlling devices, and a design that optimizes the power consumption, size and weight of a holographic head-mounted device.

Reviewers were quite displeased with the overall quality of the dual 12 MP camera setup on the Razer phone, so the Razer CEO himself came forth and ensured everyone the company is well aware of the camera bugs and it will roll out fixes in the coming weeks.

DJI is getting serious about drone racing. The latest version of its Goggles is targeted at the burgeoning drone racing market and offers a number of feature upgrades over its standard model.

The previously rumored MX110 and MX130 are now listed on Nvidia's website, and unlike the MX150 that they join these cards are Maxwell based rather than Pascal. Based on Nvidia's performance figures these cards provide around 38 to 63 percent of the performance from an MX150.

Nintendo sprung a surprise by announcing the availability of popular game, Animal Crossing, on iOS and Android app stores for free. The company aims to capture both console and smartphone gamers with its offerings.

The 17-inch ROG Strix GL702ZC can easily replace a desktop gaming rig, as it is powered by desktop versions of the Ryzen 7 1700 CPU and Radeon RX580 GPU. It also comes with a 1080p IPS Freesync display, 16 GB of DDR4-2400 and a storage combo made up of a 1 TB 5400 rpm HDD and a 256 GB M.2 SATA SSD.

The upcoming iteration of the Dell XPS 15 will finally have full speed 4-lane Thunderbolt 3 along with possibly a 5K display option according to Dell's VP Gaming and XPS, Frank Azor, who also confirms that Dell is waiting for Intel to ship its 8th generation H-series processors.

Hardcore gamers may just have to accept the fact that casual gamers of free-to-play titles are making publishers too much money for them to not integrate similar monetization practices elsewhere.

The MSI GT83VR Titan is not your usual gaming laptop. It packs all sorts of premium features like the unlocked gen 6 i7-6820HK CPU coupled with 64 GB DRR4-2400 RAM, two 256 GB NVMe SSDs + 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD storage combo, 18.4-inch 1080p IPS-grade display, BD writer + SD card reader, and a SteelSeries backlit mechanical keyboard with RGB backlight and separate numerical touchpad.

Lineage 2: Revolution has been available in South Korea, Japan, and China since early 2017, and today it finally hits North America and Europe. The game is available for both iOS and Android.