Thursday, March 30, 2017

“PREPARE FOR BATTLE” bundle now includes GeForce GTX 1060: Free games for midrange Pascal




NVIDIA has some good for performance-mainstream gamers. According to its website, the company’s “Prepare for Battle” gaming bundle now includes the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards. What it means is that if you buy a GTX 1060, you also get to download a free copy of “For Honor” or “Ghost Recon: Wildlands” by using the promotional code. Prior to this, the “Prepare for Battle” bundle was exclusive to the GTX1080ti, GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 – the upper-tier Pascal based GPUs. So, it’s good to see the free goodness trickling down to the midrange of things. The offer is also available on laptops and pre-built systems equipped with aforementioned parts.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

AMD’s rumored super-HEDT platform: 16-core/32-thread Ryzen CPU on its way?




It’s becoming increasingly difficult these days to keep AMD’s Ryzen out of the limelight. The latest rumor to hit the inter-web speaks of an upcoming and yet unnamed 16-core desktop processor from AMD with an accompanying new socket. According to these unconfirmed speculations (originally from Chinese tech-site Chiphell), the new processor would be pitted squarely against Intel’s HEDT champion i7-6950X – a 10-core/20-thread behemoth. If the rumors are to be believed, AMD’s answer to that is going to be an even larger chip, accommodating 16 physical cores with equal number of logical ones by virtue of SMT.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Corsair releases Vengeance RGB DDR4 Memory


Burning red or nobler blue, corsair makes it sure that Vengeance comes in many shades! Corsair, The renowned maker of PC components and memory products, has just launched Vengeance RGB DDR4 Memory  modules. Rated for high bandwidth performance and compatibility, these new memory modules also feature effortless and exciting RGB lighting for ultimate customization of your gaming rig. Vengeance RGB comes in 16GB, 32Gb and 64GB packages with each module having a capacity of 8GB. It's available in both dual-channel and quad-channel kits.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs: Here comes the mainstream - specs, features and performance expectation


With the Ryzen 7 series of desktop processors AMD has made its much awaited return to the high-performance computing market and what a come-back story it has been! After years of frustration and misfiring, the perennial underdog has finally delivered a truly competitive x86 core design that can, in most cases, give Intel a good run for its money. But the Ryzen saga is just beginning and after launching the initial salvo comprising the flagship trio of Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X and 1700, AMD wants to shift its attention to the mainstream. The result is Ryzen 5 which forms the mid-range of AMD’s new processor line-up and brings the same Zen goodness to a more affordable package.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

NVIDIA announces GTX 1080 Ti: A smaller Titan-X for $699




We were expecting it and now it’s official. Yesterday, at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) NVIDIA made the announcement regarding its upcoming high-end consumer graphics card – the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Based on the company’s highly successful “Pascal” architecture and build on a cutting edge 16nm process, this new flagship should deliver almost 35% higher performance gain over the existing GTX 1080, according to the presentation slides. The card is expected to hit the stores worldwide during the first week of March, 2017 with a price tag of ~$700 and sits in-between the GTX 1080 and the prosumer GTX Titan-X.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Intel core i3-7350K performance analysis: unlocked, overclockable and overpriced?



One of the more interesting highlights of the Kaby Lake launch was the introduction of a multiplier unlocked core i3-7350K. Traditionally, the “K”-stamping which denotes the unlocked status of an Intel CPU is reserved for much costlier chips, namely the highest range i5s and i7s; dual-core i3 processors on the other hand represent excellent value thanks to their lower prices. So, when the news broke of an overclockable i3 - many enthusiasts, especially those on a budget, thought they’d found the dream chip. After all, not everybody can afford a 21K i5-7600K to entice their overclocking urge! We however wasn’t particularly captivated by its price tag and decided to hold our opinion for a later day. Meanwhile some of the leading hardware review-sites have recently published benchmark results of i3-7850K and that gives us ample reasons to go back and tackle the question of whether or not this is the right processor for you.