Podcast #245 - Frame Rating, Ivy Bridge-E, Oculus Rift and more!

Subject: General Tech | April 4, 2013 - 03:39 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: podcast, oculus rift, Ivy Bridge-E, gtx 700M, GTX 670 Mini, giveaway, frame rating, bioshock infinite

PC Perspective Podcast #245 - 04/04/2013

Join us this week as we discuss more Frame Rating, Ivy Bridge-E, Oculus Rift and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malventano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 1:18:58

1. 0:01:45 You missed our Bioshock Infinite Game Stream!
2. 0:02:40 Win the Roccat Kave Real 5.1 Gaming Headset
3. Week in Review:
   1. 0:04:30 Frame Rating: HD 7990 vs GTX 690 vs GTX Titan
      1. Frame Rating: HD 7950 vs GTX 660 Ti
   2. 0:30:10 Oyen Digital USB 3.0 UASP / eSATA Dock
4. News items of interest:
   1. 0:33:00 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700M Announced
   2. 0:37:50 Oculus Rift Future from GTC
   3. 0:42:15 Activision Faces are scary!
   4. 0:44:15 Ivy Bridge-E Processor Leaks
   5. 0:49:15 64-bit ARM A57 SoCs are nearly here
   6. 0:52:30 AMD Fan Event in San Francisco!
   7. 0:53:45 Seagate has 1TB platter drives now
   8. 0:59:00 Could Lenovo makes it own chips?
   9. 1:02:45 ASUS Mini-ITX Ready Small GTX 670 card
5. 1:05:45 Hardware/Software Picks of the Week:
   1. Ryan: Nerdytec Couchmaster
   2. Jeremy: Already modded Oculus Rift
   3. Josh: Used it this weekend. Nice
   4. Allyn: iBackupBot
6. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
7. http://pcper.com/podcast
8. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
9. Closing/outro

PCPer Live! Bioshock Infinite Game Stream - Win Games and Graphics Cards from AMD!

Subject: Graphics Cards | April 2, 2013 - 07:50 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, tahiti, radeon, never settle reloaded, live, crysis, bioshock infinite, amd

UPDATE: If you missed the live stream...sorry, better luck next time!  However, you can still view the on-demand version below to see the Bioshock Infinite game play!

On April 2nd on the PC Perspective Live! page we will be streaming some game action of Bioshock Infinite.  Easily the most well received and reviewed game of the year, I am probably more excited to play this game than other we have stream to date!

We will be teaming up with AMD once again to provide a fun and exciting PCPer Game Stream that includes game demonstrations and of course, prizes and game keys for those that watch the event LIVE! 

Bioshock Infinite Game Stream

5pm PT / 8pm ET - April 2nd

PC Perspective Live! Page

Warning: this one will DEFINITELY have mature language and content!!

The stream will be sponsored by AMD and its Never Settle Reloaded game bundles which we previously told you about.  Depending on the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU that you buy, you could get some amazing free games including:

• Radeon HD 7900 Series
  • FREE Crysis 3
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
• Radeon HD 7800 Series
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
  • FREE Tomb Raider
• Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Set
  • FREE Crysis 3
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
  • FREE Tomb Raider
  • FREE Far Cry 3
  • FREE Hitman: Absolution
  • FREE Sleeping Dogs

AMD's Robert Hallock (@Thracks on twitter) will be joining us via Skype to talk about the game's technology, performance considerations as well as helping me with some co-op gaming!

Of course, just to sweeten the deal a bit we have some prizes lined up for those of you that participate in our Bioshock Infinite Game Stream:

• 1 x Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB card
• 1 x MSI Radeon HD 7870 2GB card
• 3 x Combo codes for both Tomb Raider AND Bioshock Infinite

Pretty nice, huh?  All you have to do to win is be present on the PC Perspective Live! Page during the event as we will announce both the content/sweepstakes method AND the winners!

Stop in on April 2nd for some PC gaming fun!!

Of Pinkertons, Comstock, the Songbird and Columbia

Subject: General Tech | March 27, 2013 - 02:42 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: gaming, bioshock infinite

After the long wait, BioShock: Infinite is here, not as a sequel but carrying forward some of the atmosphere of the first two out of the water and into the clouds.  The reviews are positive, both in terms of game play and story line, as you can see by Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN's preview of the game here.  That particular article is spoiler free, not revealing any secrets that those following the release already know, but you can also venture into spoiler territory if you wish as they have already published some feedback about subplots they would have liked to see fleshed out more.  For those jsut about to start playing they offer some tweaks to improve your experience, including the all important FOV hack, as well as a Konami-ish code to unlock sadistic mode immediately.

"BioShock: Infinite is a new first-person shooter from Irrational, creators of BioShock, System Shock 2 and SWAT 4. It’s set on a flying city in 1912, where racism and religious fundamentalism dictate society. You’re up there, wielding guns and magic, to bring someone the girl and wipe away the debt. Here’s what I thought, spoiler-free."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Gaming

• BioShock Infinite review: In the sky, Lord, in the sky @ Ars Technica
• A Look at Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition @ Techgage
• WARFACE Puts Its War In Your Face @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Tripwire’s Rising Storm Whips Up A Trailer @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• Age Of Wonders III First Footage @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN
• First Look: Space Hulk @ Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN

Get more out of Columbia with the all new GeForce 314.22 driver

Subject: General Tech | March 25, 2013 - 01:30 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: bioshock infinite, geforce, GeForce 314.22, nvidia, gaming

BioShock Infinite launches tomorrow and promises to be an exciting third installment to the award-winning franchise.

GeForce gamers today can get ready for a great Day 1 experience with BioShock Infinite by upgrading to our new GeForce 314.22 Game Ready drivers. These drivers are Microsoft WHQL-certified and available for download on GeForce.com.

Our software engineers have been working with Irrational Games over the past two years to optimize BioShock Infinite for GeForce users and, as a result, these drivers offer game-changing performance increases of up to 41 percent.

Also, with a single click in GeForce Experience, gamers can optimize the image quality in BioShock Infinite and have it instantly tuned to the capability of their PC’s hardware.

GeForce 314.22 drivers also offer several other significant performance increases in other current games. For more details, refer to the release highlights on the driver download pages and read the GeForce driver article on GeForce.com.

GeForce 314.22 Highlights

• Delivers GeForce Game Ready experience for BioShock Infinite:
  • Up to 41% faster performance
  • Optimal game settings with GeForce Experience
  • Microsoft WHQL-certified
• Increases gaming performance in other popular titles:
  • Up to 60% faster in Tomb Raider
  • Up to 23% faster in Sniper Elite V2
  • Up to 13% faster in Sleeping Dogs
• Adds new SLI and 3D Vision profiles for upcoming games.

The NYT Claims BioShock: Infinite Had an Irrational Budget... Ken Levine Responds with Satire

Subject: General Tech | March 23, 2013 - 04:25 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: bioshock infinite

So The New York Times wrote an editorial about Irrational Games to lead-off the upcoming release of Bioshock: Infinite. The piece is fairly typical, describing co-founder Ken Levine along with the very nondescript studios nestled away within Quincy, Massachusetts. The piece focused on how much the team cares for their game Bioshock: Infinite...

... and then it speculated a quantity for how much they cared, citing unnamed analysts.

Of course this could not help but become a minor controversy like just about everything else surrounding Bioshock: Infinite these days. The piece reported a budget that was "upward of $100 million", excluding marketing which could add an extra $100 million to that figure. Naturally, $200 million dollar stories began to spring up online.

200 million for Infinite? Did someone send some checks to the wrong address? #unnamedanalyst

— Ken Levine (@IGLevine) March 22, 2013

This prompted a tweet-based response from Ken Levine, because who needs a PR firm when you got Twitter? Anyway, the man has a sarcastic sense of humor and this is no different.

While funny, this is not actually a denial. Games are quite expensive to produce and can be very expensive to market. Sure, the NYT figure is still probably an overshoot even if you were to zealously round up, but I would still hesitate to mock.

Bioshock Infinite Season Pass: Thinking Inside the Box

Subject: General Tech | February 26, 2013 - 02:54 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: 2K, bioshock, bioshock infinite

So it was announced just a couple of days ago that Bioshock Infinite will be boosted with three pieces of expansion DLC. What will they be? Who knows! Rest assured, the marketers have declared there will be “new stories, characters, abilities, and weapons.”

Phew! I was worried that I would only get a soundtrack or something... wait, no I wasn't.

Give me more money, or I cut you.

Publishers, these days, have been looking for new methods to increase the price of games and prevent their discs from being resold on the used market. We seem to be escaping the dark era where single-player games were condemned as fiscal black holes from which your capital would never be seen again. The view was that a solo experience would be completed before they finished monitoring their sales figures and the used market would eat the rest of their sales curve. The solution clearly was to toss even more capital at those games to tack on a multiplayer component that no-one played and make the loss look really bad on paper and further justify your fears of used sales and piracy.

And really we are part of the problem as consumers when we expect the $50 or $60 price-point. Of course, we expect that price-point because we have been conditioned to expecting that value fairly across-the-board. We have begun to see games, mostly indie titles, come in at lower launch prices in particular with digital distribution platforms.

The biggest problem is this: publishers do not need to find the largest value customers would pay for their content; publishers need to find the largest product of any given price and its corresponding probability of purchase for all potential buyers. On Steam you see this explode with sales where a moderate price reduction yields a massive sales increase with even a halo effect when the price returns to its norm.

So what about Bioshock?

In this case, honestly, the game will probably be worth more than its $60 price tag when speaking from a development effort versus the risk in finding its audience standpoint. As such, the publisher will add some attach rate of slightly extra content for a moderate price addition. This is one more example of how members of the industry continue to avoid risks. In this case, they want to spread the risk out over multiple products.

At least they didn't, you know -- be Irrational (heh heh heh), and toss that development money going after the used sales boogyman. At least they will get the money they expect.

AMD Never Settle Reloaded Bundle Campaign Includes Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider

Subject: Graphics Cards | February 2, 2013 - 02:30 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: tomb raider, never settle reloaded, never settle, Crysis 3, bundle, bioshock infinite, bioshock, amd

You might remember over the holiday season of 2012 that AMD had a simply amazing bundle of games to entice PC gamers to choose purchasing Radeon graphics cards instead of GeForce.  That bundle included Medal of Honor, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: Absolution and Far Cry 3.  We were stoked to see that kind of comittment to the gamer and even did a set of three game streams with AMD on each games' release. 

Well after a behind-the-scenes battle that was finally decided just about two weeks ago, AMD is ready to announce the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle that might actually be MORE impressive based on the games included. 

First up is the reboot of Tomb Raider, a fresh look at the Lara Croft character that I got to get hands on at an event in Toronto last year.  Due out on March 5th, the visuals in this game are damn good.

Bioshock infinite is the third game in the acclaimed series and has a few DirectCompute additions to the game engine code.  Release is set on March 26th.

DMC Devil May Cry is included for the APAC region (instead of Tomb Raider).

And the biggest name in the bundle is no doubt Crysis 3 - a game that many PC gamers have been looking forward to and one that promises to push gaming performance on high-end GPUs to their limits.  I was playing this on a GTX 680 recently (the MP beta) and couldn't get more than 40 FPS at 1080p and Ultra settings. 

So how doese the bundle break down?

If you buy a single Radeon HD 7970 or HD 7950 you'll be able to get keys for both Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite, completely free!  HD 7800 series buyers will get both Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider.

Just to make things MORE interesting, if you invest in a set of HD 7900 cards for CrossFire, or even a dual-GPU HD 7900 card like the Devil 13, you'll get Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs.  That is 6 full PC games worth at least $300 that you'll get keys for just for picking AMD's Radeon cards over NVIDIA's GeForce.

A not-so-subtle jab at the competition...

So there you have it, the Never Settle Reloaded bundle.  This iteration doesn't include anything for HD 7700 series cards but I think most enthusiasts are going to stay in the HD 7850 and above range of options anyway. 

NVIDIA has definitely fallen behind when it comes to these kinds of deals for PC gamers and I want to know what YOU think - do these bundles affect your purchasing decision?  We heard from AMD that at least one major reseller of PC hardware saw an "order of magnitude" increase in sales during the holiday season with the original Never Settle bundle and they even won a Newegg award for best marketing campaign. 

Get ready for game streams again as well - we'll be hosting a few of them in February and March with more hardware and game keys to give away!

UPDATE: These deals are live right now!  You can find a list of the HD 7970 cards at Newegg.com, starting at just $379 and even the HD 7950 cards starting at $295 that come with Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite keys!  If you are looking more in the HD 7800 series range, you can find HD 7870s starting at just $209 with Bioshock and Tomb Raider keys!