Articles tagged Pc

Latest Andru Edwards Videos

Xbox Disc to Digital Is Live for Insiders, and Your Series S Can’t Play Along

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,

Xbox Series X console with a Gears 5 game disc next to the text Your Discs. Now Also Digital.

There is a shelf in a lot of living rooms that has turned into a problem. Fifty Xbox games, maybe two hundred, and a growing suspicion that the next console you buy won't have anywhere to put them. Microsoft's answer started reaching Xbox Insiders on Monday, and the pitch is refreshingly boring. Put the disc in, launch the game, keep the digital copy.

Xbox announced the feature on its blog on August 26 and filled in details during a Gamescom livestream with Jason Ronald. Insert a supported disc into an Xbox One or Xbox Series X, start the game, and you claim a digital entitlement tied to that disc. The disc keeps working exactly as it always has. You just stop needing it in the tray.

Click to continue reading Xbox Disc to Digital Is Live for Insiders, and Your Series S Can’t Play Along


Advertisement

Nvidia’s DLSS 5 Ships September 3, and It Changes What the Artists Drew

Nvidia DLSS 5 3D-guided neural rendering in NBA 2K27

Every version of DLSS so far has been a clever way to draw the picture developers already designed. Render fewer pixels, let the AI fill in the rest, get your frame rate back. DLSS 5 is different. It reaches into the finished frame and adds detail that nobody at the studio put there.

It ships September 3 alongside NBA 2K27, it runs only on RTX 50-series cards, and Nvidia calls it 3D-guided neural rendering. The pitch is that it puts back what real-time budgets force studios to cut: light scattering under skin, light passing through hair and foliage, contact shadows, ambient occlusion. The reception so far has been rough. Early demos built on Resident Evil: Requiem and Starfield drew a pile of complaints about faces that landed square in the uncanny valley, and a leaked build that modders bolted onto older games made the criticism louder.

Click to continue reading Nvidia’s DLSS 5 Ships September 3, and It Changes What the Artists Drew


Maingear’s New Gaming PCs Hide Every Cable, and the Top One Costs $6,499

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Design, PC / Laptop,

Maingear render of its zero-cable desktop PC showing internal components and rear connections

You know the moment. You've finished a build, the glass side panel is on, and instead of admiring the graphics card you're staring at a nest of black cables you spent forty minutes trying to route behind a motherboard tray that was never going to fit them.

Maingear's new Zero lineup is built so that never happens, and you don't have to do the building. These are pre-built desktops that use the company's rear-connection design to move every power and data cable to the back of the board, out of sight. Look through the glass and you see the CPU socket, the memory, the water cooling tubes, the PCIe slots. Nothing else.

Click to continue reading Maingear’s New Gaming PCs Hide Every Cable, and the Top One Costs $6,499


Is the new MacBook Pro really worth the price? Hands-on with Apple’s high-end notebook

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop,

Apple’s new MacBook Pro comes with an eye-catching feature, a Touch Bar across the top of the keyboard that replaces the function keys with virtual buttons and sliders that change in context, depending on which program or app you’re using at any given moment.

But starting at $1799 for a 13-inch model with Touch Bar, this is no small investment. So is the new MacBook Pro really worth it? Andru Edwards of Gear Live & Todd Bishop of GeekWire have a new MacBook Pro in-studio for this special GeekWire podcast and video segment to give us their take.

Click to continue reading Is the new MacBook Pro really worth the price? Hands-on with Apple’s high-end notebook


Western Digital Blue SSD review: A solid SSD

WD Blue SSD review

For decades, Western Digital has been recognized as one of the very few leaders in the world of storage and hard drives. If you open up that pre-built computer you bought, there's a good chance that on the inside you'll find a Western Digital-branded drive. If you're building your own, you likely purchased (or at least considered) going with Western Digital for your internal storage solution.

Where this might now have been the case is if you wanted to be a part of the growing trend of users switching to solid state drives. SSDs allow for faster speeds, both in read and write times, as well as the benefit of having no moving parts. They are faster, quieter, and more durable. When they were first released, they were prohibitively expensive, but as time has gone on, prices have dropped substantially as they do with any new form of technology.

The problem that Western Digital had was that it's class-leading hard disk drive prowess didn't mean that it was prepared for the new age of SSDs, and it had nothing to offer customers who wanted to go this route. It's solution was to purchase SanDisk in March 2016, a company that excels at flash storage solutions, and 8 months later we have the first results in the Western Digital Blue SSD.

Click to continue reading Western Digital Blue SSD review: A solid SSD


So, what is an Ultrabook anyway?

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Microsoft, PC / Laptop,

Lenovo yoga ultrabook

If you've been shopping for a laptop lately, you may have a vague idea that "ultrabook" means "lightweight" and "small" but otherwise you may be a little confused about why some laptops are called ultrabooks and others aren't. It's understandable – this is one of those areas where names sort of caught on and many different manufacturers started using it, often with different ideas about what it meant. Here are the major points that define an ultrabook, and more importantly the top ultrabooks, and why they matter if you are getting ready to buy a computer.

Click to continue reading So, what is an Ultrabook anyway?


2 Powerful & Stylish Gaming Laptops

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, PC / Laptop, Video Games,

Asus ROG G75

The key feature of a gaming laptop is that it should be, you know, a laptop: Easy to pack up and carry around for gaming sessions at a friend's house or on the go. Too many gaming machines add so many extra bells and whistles that you need a crate just to carry them around, which kind of ruins the point. The best gaming laptops should be light enough to easily tote, offer enough customization for you to make them your own, and include powerful features that can deal with demanding games without burning out your hardware by the end of the month.

Click to continue reading 2 Powerful & Stylish Gaming Laptops


2015 Holiday Gift Guide: Fallout 4

Fallout 4

Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, have released Fallout 4 – their most ambitious game ever, and the next generation of open-world gaming, and it's completely worthy of being featured in our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. As the only survivor of Vault 111, you re-enter a world that’s been destroyed by nuclear war in an attempt to locate and get back your kidnapped son as you make your way through the nuclear wasteland.

You can pick up Fallout 4 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Read More | Fallout 4

The Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 is the convertible PC for this holiday season

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop,

toshiba satellite radius 12

If you're looking for a 2-in-1 convertible notebook to add to your holiday wish list this season, be sure to consider the Toshiba Satellite Radius 12. Built and designed for Windows 10, the Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 can go from laptop mode over to tablet mode with a quick flip of the display. It sports an amazing 12.5-inch 4K UHD touchscreen, which is one of the best you'll see in this category. On the inside, you'll find an Intel Core i7 processor paired with 8GB RAM, and a blazing fast 256GB SSD.

Click to continue reading The Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 is the convertible PC for this holiday season


Bleeding Edge TV 539: DTS Play-Fi Multi-room Wireless Music Streaming

Play-Fi is the whole-home wireless streaming technology from the audio experts at DTS. With Play-Fi, compatible speakers and receivers can be controlled from your smartphone, tablet, or PC, sending music from your favorite music services like Spotify, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, and Deezer, as well as songs stored on your local home network DLNA server.

You can find Play-Fi compatible audio components from companies like Phorus, Definitive Technology, Polk, Wren, and Hewlett-Packard.

You can get Play-Fi-compatible devices now!

Don't forget to subscribe to Gear Live's YouTube channel--also, we are giving away awesome perks for our Patreon backers - thanks for your support!

 

Click to continue reading Bleeding Edge TV 539: DTS Play-Fi Multi-room Wireless Music Streaming


Advertisement