Posts

About $100 billion has been spent on game studios and publishers in the past year. Microsoft spent the majority of that picking up Activision Blizzard and Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax, and Sony responsively grabbed Bungie and other smaller developers. Now, the few publishers still on single-player mode are reconsidering their positions. Ubisoft expressed interest in being acquired in February, and Puck reports that EA has been approaching potential buyers and negotiating mergers....

“We’re trying to build a very immersive college football experience,” the executive added. EA Sports announced it was working on a new college football game in early 2021. At the time, EA said it had acquired the rights to more than 100 colleges to feature their logos, stadiums and unique traditions fans know and love. Student-athlete names, images and likenesses were not part of the original deal, meaning the game would not feature the players you see take the field each week....

The system, dubbed Lift Energy Storage Technology (LEST), would rely on elevators already installed in existing buildings. When not being used to transport people, autonomous trailer devices would load / unload wet sand containers or other high-density materials into elevators and transport them between the bottom and top floors. Regenerative braking systems on the elevators, which are most effective when carrying a heavy load, would generate electricity that could be stored on site and used as needed....

Recently, an unpublished draft of European Union legislation leaked. The new draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) adds language singling out web browser engines for protection against “gatekeepers.” It reads like a direct attack on Apple’s requirement that iOS browsers use its WebKit engine. The legislation says that when a gatekeeper imposes a browser engine on developers, it effectively controls functionality for a platform’s browsers and other apps built on web software....

The Pentium J2900 was just 12% faster than the Celeron J1900 in Cinebench 11.5’s multi-thread test, while the single thread performance remained much the same. When it comes to 3D benchmarks, the Pentium J2900 delivers very limited performance due to its integrated Intel HD Graphics. The Pentium J2900 was just 6% faster than the Celeron J1900 while being 34% slower than the Athlon 5350. The Pentium J2900 doesn’t fare any better in the old 3Dmark06 benchmark, delivering a score of just 2472pts – 3% faster than the Celeron J1900 and 32% slower than the Athlon 5350....

The GTX 680 delivered 62fps when testing Deus Ex at 2560x1600, a 3% lead over the HD 7970 and a 35% jump on the GTX 580. Gainward’s card offered an 8% increase over the standard GTX 680, pushing the average frame rate from 62 to 67. Nvidia’s single-GPU flagship dominated in Hard Reset, averaging 57fps at 2560x1600, a whopping 30% faster than the HD 7970, 36% faster than the HD 6990 and 50% faster than the GTX 580....

The power consumption for the R9 390 isn’t as bad as I recall. Total system consumption only increased by 13% over the GTX 970, so that’s not an issue at all. Not only that but with a high-end Core i7-7700K CPU overclocked the entire system consumed well under 400 watts when gaming. Overclocking the R9 390 did push consumption up to 351 watts, but that’s still very manageable. Of course, when compared to current generation GPUs such as the GTX 1060 and RX 480 the R9 390 does look like a bit of a power pig....

Although few G1.Sniper2 owners would game at 1280x800, by running the game at such a low resolution it helps remove GPU and CPU limitations. In such a scenario, the G1.Sniper2 actually extended its lead over the Z68 Extreme4 to 5fps on average, with 2fps edge at minimum. Moreover, it was 12fps faster than the original G1.Sniper and 22fps quicker than the Asus Crosshair IV. The Z68 G1.Sniper2 was considerably faster than the X58 G1....

Gigabyte goes as far as encouraging users have a stab at overclocking the GTX 580 SOC even further with its OC Guru utility, which allows you to fine tune GPU, shader and memory clocks with virtually no limits. The GPU and memory voltage can also be tweaked, though there are stricter limits in place here. Gigabyte’s OC Guru utility allows you to save up to five different overclock profiles while also providing custom gaming and power saving modes as well....

The card spans 11.4" (29cm), but why should you care? Most enthusiast cases can handle that with room to spare – though it also occupies three expansion slots, which could be a concern depending on your motherboard’s layout and the number of expansion cards you need. Surprisingly, the SOC was fairly quiet when gaming until we cranked the settings up to 1.3v and 1.26GHz, at which point it was about equal to the HD 7970 GHz Edition....

The European Commission opened an investigation into Google’s digital advertising business in June last year. As reported by Reuters, the EU regulators recently expanded their scope of the case by taking over the Portuguese competition watchdog’s probe into the same issue. There was also a €220 million fine imposed on Google last year by the French competition watchdog for abusing its market power in the online advertising industry. Now, Google is facing a lawsuit filed in British and Dutch courts that seeks to recover advertising revenue lost due to the company’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior over a period of several years....

During my regular usage of this device across a week or so, the Nexus 5 doesn’t quite qualify as an all-day battery device. Doing the usual array of everyday tasks - messaging, web browsing on HSPA+, social media, emailing with background sync, a few photos and maybe a call across at least 12 hours - the handset did last through the day with around 15% of the total juice remaining....

The Pixel C packs a 10.2-inch high-res display alongside powerful internals and an interesting magnetic keyboard accessory. Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the device is positioned as Google’s flagship tablet and with a price of $499 for the 32 GB model, there’s no mistaking the Pixel C for a high-end device. That price is just for the tablet, too: if you want the keyboard accessory, be prepared to fork out an extra $149; and if you want 64 GB of storage, that’s an extra $100....

I’ll start with what’s new in Android 7.0 and 7.1. All of the features available in the preview version of Android ‘Nougat’, which I examined earlier this year, are available in the Pixel XL. Some of these features are fantastic and improve the software experience significantly. I love Android 7.0’s improved app switcher, which switches to your last used app with a double-tap of the recent apps navigation button. The recent apps menu is larger and easier to navigate, plus there’s split-screen functionality available for every Android app....

Follow up: March 2022, April 2022, May 2022, June 2022, July 2022, August 2022, September 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022 This past month we also saw two new GPU launches, so let’s take a look at how they are shaking up first. The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, a card that we very much did not like, and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050, a reasonable product that was always going to be overpriced....

One may be tempted to point fingers at Nvidia and AMD for the chaotic GPU market we’ve experienced for the last two years, but according to analyst Jon Peddie, it was mostly distributors and retailers who raised prices to unaffordable levels. This was done under the pretext of supply and demand forces beyond their control, but the supply part has been slowly improving over the past several months. And with governments cracking down on mining, growing energy prices, and Ethereum’s impending transition to a proof-of-stake consensus, the demand has slowed considerably....

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) further noted that over $8.6 billion in standalone GPUs shipped in Q1, a sizable drop in revenue from the $12.4 billion worth of cards moved in Q4 2021. This was due to falling average selling prices of cards, which is great news for consumers that have been paying well over MSRP for the past several quarters. Nvidia maintained its lead in the category with a 75 percent market share while AMD’s share increased slightly to 24 percent....

The Verge reports that 254 tokens purchased from OpenSea were stolen from the wallets of users between 5 PM and 8 PM ET on Saturday. Some of the more expensive NFTs came from Decentraland, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club—here’s a complete list of pilfered digital assets. Devin Finzer, the co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, has reassured users that the site is fine. He added that “as far as we can tell,” the victims had fallen for a “phishing attack....

Today’s release isn’t a tick or a tock, it’s simply a refresh – like what we saw with Sandy Bridge in 2011 when Intel released the Core i7-2600K in January, then refreshed it with the 2700K in October. Those new CPUs offered a measly 100MHz speed bump and based on what we’ve seen, we don’t expect much more from the updated Haswell parts. Considering the small boosts between Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell, it’s fair to say Intel has been taking baby steps for years....