Starsiege: Tribes
Starsiege: Tribes is the first in the Tribes series of multiplayer first-person shooters.
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10-Way CPU Shoot-Out for Gamers
It's a wide, wide processing world out there. A whole host of processing options are now available on the market. They run the gamut of extremes between high efficiency and high power. More and more are coming with built-in graphics, and those graphic options are now actually usable.
Should you save money on a CPU purchase, and instead put that towards a better (or possibly 2nd) GPU? Or should that money go to better equipment such as an SSD, higher quality input devices, or additional monitors for Surround/Eyefinity?
These are the questions we hope to answer here.
How to Survive
Bruised and stranded on the shore of a mysterious island after a shipwreck, our hero is quick to realize that his/her survival depends on gathering materials (and conveniently dropped blueprints) to create all the tools and weaponry required to sustain their living bodies and fend off the not-quite-dead ones. H2S features three pre-rolled characters to get through story and challenge modes, in either solo or 2-player local and online co-op.
Contrast
CONTRAST is a puzzle/platform game where you can move between a fantastic 3D world and a mysterious shadowy universe in 2D in the blink of an eye. Delve into a dreamlike and surreal 1920s world, inspired by the performance art world of vaudeville and film noir, and cradled by a smooth and sultry jazz ambiance.
Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer
Take to the waves and score points in this surfing spin-off of the Tony Hawk series.
Benchmarking AMD APU Steam Box
A while back I wrote a blog post about building a Steam Box out of an AMD APU. The idea was to build a SFF PC built around digital delivery of Steam content. The unit would focus on Steam's Big Picture mode, and use a wireless mouse/keyboard and wireless Xbox 360 controllers for input. There were a few things that I needed to work out before embarking on the project. One, I needed to find the case that fit the limited space of my entertainment center. And two, I needed to determine whether a Trinity APU was up to the task of powering a "Steam Box" gaming experience.
That initial blog post came out in June, and a bit has changed since then. IRL has been quite crazy, eating up time I had for component selection and benchmarking. Contributing to this craziness was buying a new house, which ate up most of that time. One good point is that the new house has a great built-in entertainment center, which allows for a much larger case. This article is the fulfillment of the second issue - benchmarking Trinity and Richland APUs.
WSGF Oculus Rift Interview at CultureMass
As many users are aware the WSGF helped to Kickstart the Oculus Rift and received a dev kit. Since I didn't have time to play with the kit, I decided to pass it around local users here in the Houston area. Three of those members - Zencyde, TheDestroyer and Peanut - were interviewed by CultureMass about their experience with the Oculus Rift and their viewpoint immersion, virtual reality and motion input.
Click the source link and check out their interview. Thanks to CultureMass for reaching out to the WSGF for our input, and the chance to do this interview.
Battlefield 4 (Triple Monitors / Eyefinity / Surround) [~4K]
Battlefield 4 is a multi-player focused first person shooter, if you've played any of the prior Battlefield games then you will know what to expect from the multi-player, and as seems to be the way of things the campaign is more of a token gesture. It's multi-monitor support appears to be spot on, the game is horizontal plus, has a FoV slider, the menus and UI auto centred for me, as have the pre-rendered cutscreens. There are some frame rate issue currently, but these should largely be fixed with future patches and driver updates.
The video itself is part analysis, part walkthough and part waffle, feel free to like or dislike my video and comment are always welcome too. The audio quality of this video might be a little hit and miss, you have my apologies, I was trying a slightly different audio setup which seemed OK in testing but hasn't turned out too well.
Direct Video Link: Battlefield 4 (Triple Monitors / Eyefinity / Surround) [~4K]
Channel Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/n11skid
While this video can be watched on any screen it has been encoded to look best on a multi-monitor system, so if your running such a system, then select original quality from the drop down box and watch in fullscreen.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 features several changes compared to its predecessor. The game's heads-up display is much the same, composed of two compact rectangles. The lower left-hand corner features a mini-map and compass for navigation, and a simplified objective notice above it; the lower right includes a compact ammo counter and health meter. The mini-map, as well as the main game screen, shows symbols marking three kinds of entities: blue for allies, green for squadmates, and red/orange for enemies.
AMD Radeon R7 260X, R9 270X and R9 280X Review
AMD has recently relaunched and rebranded its Radeon line of graphics cards. The first step of this was setting the "baseline" of the new product series with the launch of the Radeon R7 260X, R9 270X and R9 280X. These are a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7790, 7870 GHz and 7970 GHz - respectively. Outside of a few upward frequency tweaks, the real big news is a drastic price cutting of each card in the new product stack.
The R9 280X now has a street price of $299, down from the $499 7970 GHz. The R9 270X now sells for $199, versus the previous $349 of the 7870 GHz. A 4GB R9 270X will also be available for $229. The R7 260X will sell for $139 and come standard with 2GB of RAM. The HD 7790 1GB version sold for $150, and a 2GB variant sold for $170.
The two high end cards have massive price drops of $200 and $150 respectively. This puts high end graphics and Eyefinity well within the reach of many gamers. One additional improvement in the new boards comes from easier Eyefinity configuration. If you use three matching monitors, you no longer need to use at least one DisplayPort connector. With three matching monitors you can use 2x DVI-D and 1xHDMI connectors for Eyefinity. I have personally tested this on a Sapphire R9 280X using 2xDVI and one HDMI>DVI cable. It worked without a hitch. Just make sure you find a board that has both 2x DVI-D and an HDMI connector, and you're good to go.
In this article we'll run the cards through a series of quick tests in Metro Last Light, DiRT Showdown and Unigine Valley. To showcase the similar performance I tested the HD 7000 series with the 13.4 WHQL driver, and the 13.11 Beta driver (released for the R7 and R9). I then tested the new R7 and R9 cards with the same 13.11 Beta driver. Everything was tested in 1080p HD and Eyefinity.
