Thread: Anandtech News

Launching today is AMD's Radeon R9 290, the obligatory lower-tier part for AMD’s new flagship video card lineup. Making the usual tradeoffs for a lower-tier part, AMD is cutting down on both the number of functional units and the clockspeeds in exchange for a tantalizingly lower price of $399. But with their eyes distinctly on winning the price/performance battle, has AMD sacrificed too much elsewhere in the name of incredible performance?
Read on to find out.

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I’ll be honest with you: there are a lot of games we’ve used as benchmarks that I haven’t quite finished, and some that I hardly even play. So when a game is good enough to keep me playing, it’s usually worth a look. Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the games I completed. Now I’m not saying it was the greatest beat-em-up game ever, but it did a better job of making you feel like a superhero than any other game I can recall. It was visceral, and it controlled well with a mouse and keyboard or with a gamepad; it helped that the graphics were good as well, and the story kept me going.
All of that is a nice lead-in to the latest Humble Bundle, courtesy of WB Games. As you can guess, Batman: Arkham Asylum is part of the package, but it doesn’t stop there. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and F.E.A.R. 3 (or F.3.A.R. if you prefer) are also part of the base package, which means any donation of $1 or more snags you those games, with Lord of the Rings: War in the North rounding out the collection. You might notice a couple of things with the list; first is that they’re arranged in order of decreasing score, so Batman walks away with a 91%, FEAR2 gets 79%, FEAR3 71%, and LotR scrapes by with 66%. The second thing you’ll notice is that the original F.E.A.R. is sadly missing from the list, which is a shame as that was probably the best game of the series. The reason for the omission is pretty simple, though: it wasn’t published by WB Games.
There are two additional titles as part of the collection, provided you pay more than the current average ($4.47 at the time of writing). Scribblenauts Unlimited is a fun little game that’s perhaps better suited to a device with a stylus or finger input. The final title is a great way to wrap things up, Batman: Arkham City. The sequel to the original sports improved graphics and a larger game world, and it’s every bit as good (in my opinion at least). Even if the package only included the first two Batman games, it would be worth the price of entry – provided of course that you didn’t already own both, which I do; in fact, I already own most of the games, with LotR and Scribblenauts Unlimited being the only ones missing from my Steam list, and I’m still planning on buying the bundle. If you’re curious, the six games on Steam (Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, F.E.A.R. 2, F.E.A.R. 3, War in the North, and Scribblenauts Unlimited) would set you back a combined $124.94 (plus tax where applicable).
Interestingly, the only charity option this round is We Can Be Heroes, and not surprisingly Warner Brothers is involved with that campaign as well. You can read more about the charity on their site, or as usual you can send the money to the Humble Bundle or WB Games. The choice is yours.
Gallery: Humble Bundle: Batman Edition

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About a year ago, I stumbled across TeamViewer, a remote control/remote access utility. The details of the experience are still vividly clear: I had spent the better part of a weekend trying to help my mother get rid of a virus. She lives in another state, so just visiting wasn’t a possibility, and let me be clear: she is not at all computer savvy – I get that more from my dad, though with him having long since passed retirement age, he’s almost as bad as my mom when it comes to computer problems these days. Anyway, long story short is that after trying to get Windows Remote Access working (and failing repeatedly), I looked for an alternative and found TeamViewer. 15 minutes later, the last remnants of the virus were removed. Huzzah!
It’s now a utility that I use all the time to help friends and family, simply because it’s tons easier to do certain things on my own rather than trying to explain a few “simple” steps over the phone. Now, if someone has a problem, the first step is explaining to them how to install TeamViewer. I know the old saying: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Well, it’s true of computers as well, but trying to teach some people about computers is like trying to convince your dog that he needs to learn to read and write.
Cutting to the chase, TeamViewer 9 has just entered public beta. The changes from TeamViewer 7 to 8 weren’t particularly massive (it added support for Windows 8’s Charms Menu and a few other items, Apple Retina support, and additional items for commercial users), and the changes from 8 to 9 are likewise incremental updates in most areas. There’s a new tabbed view (so each session can be in a separate tab rather than in a separate window), Wake-on-LAN is now available on supported PCs, and they’ve added two-factor authentication. TeamViewer 9 is also “ready for Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks”, though I’d guess the previous version will work with the new OSes as well. Here’s the quick list of updates from the press release:

• Two-Factor Authentication – adds additional protection of TeamViewer user accounts by allowing users to retrieve an optional secondary code with their mobile device and a standard authenticator app.
• Easy File Sharing – ability to share files of any size without having to start a traditional remote access session. Faster than email and can transfer files cross-platform.
• Universal Clipboard – gives users the ability to copy files from their device and paste directly onto a remote desktop simply by using Copy & Paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V).
• Notifications – a friendly notification pop-up window located in the Computers & Contacts list that gathers all TeamViewer system notifications including ITbrain alerts in one place for easy management.
• Custom Branding – Businesses can customize the TeamViewer modules QuickSupport, QuickJoin and Host one time without the need to repeat after a software update. A unique customizable link guides supported users to the current version of a module stored within the TeamViewer Management Console, where the module can be shared and customized within a support team.

With the announcement of TeamViewer 9 Beta the company is also launching its public API that allows companies to integrate the TeamViewer software even further into their existing infrastructure. This is more for larger institutions with in-house developers who want flexibility for their applications, and it’s available to all users with a TeamViewer 9 license. The TeamViewer API consists of two features:

• Reporting API – a language-neutral and power REST API to retrieve report data from the TeamViewer Management Console, saving time by automating complex reporting tasks and integrating TeamViewer data with existing business data for deeper insights.
• User Management API – allows organizations to minimize disruption by synchronizing user data between the company’s existing user management system and TeamViewer. This allows developers to write applications to manage TeamViewer user accounts in a company profile as well as migrate from and integrate with existing IT infrastructure.

I can’t personally point at any of the new features as things I’ve needed, but for commercial use I can see some as being interesting. The ability to transfer files (without establishing a remote session) in particular looks promising. More important is the ease of use, and that’s one area I’ve noticed over the past year where TeamViewer tends stands out.
TeamViewer is simply easier to get running than competing solutions (e.g. Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop), and while I haven’t noticed screen updates as being substantially faster/better, the ease of setup factor is critical – especially when dealing with a computer neophyte. Chrome Remote Desktop is a nice free alternative, but the requirement of that I install the browser and Remote Desktop on each PC means a larger download and more time. Once set up, both work reasonably well, but for personal use I still gravitate to TeamViewer. Your mileage may vary.

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Yesterday we announced that we'd be doing our first (technically second) live mobile show tonight at 7PM ET. We're now just over 1.5 hours away from going live. I'll update this post with an embed of the stream for those who want to watch it live. For everyone else we'll be pushing it out to our YouTube channel as soon as it's done. I've heard the requests to toss it in the podcast stream as well, which we should be able to do but that'll come a little later. 
Brian and I will be talking about the following on the show later tonight:
The iPad Air
Investigations into Apple's A7 and Cyclone CPU Architecture
ASUS Transformer Book T100 & Retail Bay Trail
A Discussion of 64-bit in Mobile
The Haswell MacBook Pros
HTC's One Max
Brian's Initial Thoughts on Google's Nexus 5
On at least a couple of these topics we'll be disclosing details for the first time before ever appearing in written content on the site. This is a new format for us, but if we can get enough support both from you all and potential sponsors it won't be the last.
Check back here at 7PM ET for the live stream.

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In the office I am currently running through a series of smaller sized motherboards – both micro-ATX and mini-ITX.  Due to the size, there is plenty of scope to push towards something niche, something that works, or something that slips comically on a banana by missing the point entirely.  Today we have in the ASRock Z87E-ITX, a $150 $140 motherboard that flew under my radar until it landed on my test bed.

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Today Pebble has released a major update for its popular smartwatch, enabling better integration and notification delivery from attached iOS 7 devices, a new version of the SDK (2.0) with additional APIs, and newly-enabled support for Bluetooth LE on applicable iOS devices. 
I've been wearing Pebble basically nonstop since first getting it, and have watched the platform slowly mature from its initial state to where it is today. Changes initially focused on improving stability, adding more watchfaces, and changing navigation, but the update today seems to be the largest yet. Pebble gave us a few days with a prerelease version of the firmware and iOS application to play around with, which dramatically improves the types of notifications that can be delivered to Pebble from attached iOS devices. 

The update specifically enables notifications to be sent from ANCS (Apple Notification Center Service) over Bluetooth LE to Pebble. ANCS is a new part of iOS 7 which seems catered almost exactly for the kind of application Pebble is designed for – a service which works with iOS applications to deliver simple notifications. One of the limitations with Pebble previously was that lacking iOS integration due to limitations with the platform, this update fills in the gap and enables iOS to deliver notifications from all applications and system apps, from what I can tell. Apple has a list of categories that APNS works with, such as incoming calls, voicemail, emails, news, and so on, this also seems to extend to all the notifications delivered by third party applications as well. In practice the new ANCS based notifications worked well for me on iOS 7 and an iPhone 5s, although there were a few hiccups where Pebble would detach from Bluetooth while running the prerelease version of the firmware, although Pebble has a fix for this. 
Pebble simultaneously is launching their SDK 2.0 which includes the promised accelerometer data support and a few other new APIs – JavaScript, data logging, and persistent storage support. Accelerometer data APIs have been something people have wanted for a while now for health and fitness, the other APIs add support for web interaction and storing data on the watch for logging. 
Last but not least this update enables Bluetooth Smart (formerly Bluetooth LE) on the Pebble's integrated Bluetooth controller (TI's CC256x inside a Panasonic PAN1316 module), which initially shipped disabled. Interestingly enough the implementation under iOS has Pebble show up as two devices, one for Classic, another for Smart (LE). It's important to note that only notifications from ANCS are delivered on the LE connection, the Bluetooth 2.1 (Classic) connection is used for caller ID, music remote control, installing watch apps and faces, and updates. 

 

It hasn't been long enough to really tell what affect enabling LE has had on Pebble's battery life given the short time I've been using it. Going to Bluetooth LE shouldn't magically change the power demands from Pebble for the same notification workload, however, and Pebble's guidance is still 5-7 days. 
All in all though, this is a major update to Pebble that addresses many of the limitations that it previously had when used in conjunction with iOS.
Gallery: Pebble Update

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A couple weeks back, I posted a short article on battery life with Windows 8.1 looking at whether or not it had changed compared to Windows 8. The short summary is that no, it did not change appreciably, though at least one of the tests I ran showed worse battery life with Windows 8.1 compared to Windows 8. There are quite a few variables, and we try to minimize the impact of other elements on battery life, but since I can’t easily go back and retest the original Windows 8 results it’s difficult to say for certain if the drop is consistent among laptops or something specific to the Sony VAIO Pro 13.
One interesting subject did come up with that article, however, and it was something I wanted to investigate further. One of the readers asked about what program we were using for video playback in our “Heavy” test, and I responded we use Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPCHC). One of the main reasons we use MPCHC is that our test video is a 1080p MKV file with a high bitrate video, specifically it’s 10.4 Mbps using the MP4 High L4.1 profile. The file also has a 510Kbps 6-channel DTS audio stream, and that’s where we start to run into trouble with our choice of video playback software. MPCHC supports the file natively, as does VLC, but Windows Media Player and the Windows 8 Video app would require additional codecs. Rather than deal with those issues, I chose (back in the Windows 7 era) to simply use MPCHC 64-bit and call it a day.
Keep in mind that we’re dealing with something of a worst-case scenario in terms of battery life, so as long as the workload is consistent among tested laptops we’re don’t have a problem. However, I wanted to look at a variety of programs and decoding video on Windows 8.1, and as Windows Media Player and Video couldn’t handle our original file natively I had to resort to using a different video file.
For this testing, I grabbed a 1080p MP4 video that worked with all four video playback options. The file is a 2.03 Mbps MP4 L4.1 profile video stream with a 93.8 Kbps 2-channel AAC audio stream. I tested with MPCHC, VLC, Windows Media Player, and the Video App – and the last I tested with and without activating desktop mode to see if that made a difference. I also tested the original MKV file with both MPCHC and VLC as a reference point. In all cases the software is set to loop and a local file logs the time until the laptop shuts off (at 1% battery life remaining). Here are the results.
The results are interesting to say the least. If we start with the MKV file compared to the MP4 file, VLC actually ends up doing a bit better than MPCHC by 7%. Switch to the lower bitrate MP4 file and MPCHC comes out ahead by 3%. There are differences, but it’s not so much that one would worry much about it. It’s when we start to look at the two Microsoft applications that we get some startling results.
Windows Media Player manages 418 minutes of playback time with the MP4 file – or 32% better than MPCHC and 36% better than VLC. That’s a huge difference and suggests that Microsoft still knows a thing or two about optimizing better than the third part video applications. If that’s not enough, the Windows 8 Video app ends up surpassing Windows Media Player by an additional 13% in Modern mode – or nearly 50% more than MPCHC and 54% more than VLC. As for running in desktop mode vs. Modern mode, we see a 2% difference by staying within the Modern UI, so it’s measurable but not massive.
Of course there’s more to the story than simply which media player gets the best battery life. Are they all showing the same quality and doing the same work? That’s difficult to say without further analysis. It could be that WMP and Video are offloading more work to the GPU than CPU, or perhaps the opposite. Either way, the battery life results are interesting as they show just how big of a factor software optimizations can be.
Looking at the big picture, with the Windows 8 Modern Video app and sporting a 37Wh battery, the Sony VAIO Pro 13 manages nearly eight hours of battery life on a 1080p video file. Our tablet video file is a 720p video file with a higher bitrate but lower resolution, and with that Surface Pro 2 and updated firmware gets just under eight hours of battery life as well – on a smaller 10.6” display and with a higher capacity 42Wh battery. (Note that Anand tested Surface Pro 2 with the Modern Video app as well.)
I’m in the process of testing with the same 720p MP4 to see if that effects things, but it’s clear that Sony has done more to optimize for battery life on the VAIO Pro 13 than any other Haswell laptop that we’ve encountered. We’re still not at the point where Haswell with Windows 8 matches the various Android or iOS devices on video playback, but with the right tuning of hardware and software that goal may be within reach, especially with a 10” display and other hardware tweaks. Unfortunately, most laptop manufacturers haven’t put in the effort to get there, but Sony shows what’s possible and we hope to see better efforts in this area from other manufacturers going forward.

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First announced last month at an NVIDIA event, launching today is NVIDIA's newest flagship video card and the capstone to the GK110 family, GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Taking everything we like about the GTX 780 and GTX Titan and cranking up the performance, GTX 780 Ti taps the rest of GK110's held back capabilities to unlock the 15th and final SMX while also offering slightly higher clockspeeds than any GK110 card that has come before. As a result, and as we’ll see, after last month’s launch of the Radeon R9 290X threatened NVIDIA’s hold on the single-GPU performance crown, with GTX 780 Ti it is once again solidly back in NVIDIA’s hands.

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The holiday season is one of the busiest shopping seasons of all year. As it can be the lifesaver (or destroyer) of company's financials, having a competitive product lineup is extremely important. OCZ's offering for the performance orientated holiday shoppers is the Vector 150. It's based on the same Barefoot 3 controller as the original Vector and Vertex 450 but with the Vector 150 OCZ went with Toshiba's 19nm MLC NAND. With the market's and OCZ's focus being performance consistency, can the Vector 150 keep up with the competition? Read on to find out!

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Let me start with a couple disclaimers before I get into the meat of this week’s Humble Weekly Sale. First, I grew up back in the time when we actually had to load up games from floppies, and later that graduated to the glory of 40MB hard drives. I played nearly all of the classic Sierra Online games, which ironically were not online (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Heroes’ Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.), and as a youth I loved them – well, not Police Quest so much, as it was too tedious for my tastes. Later I graduated into playing more RPGs, and the classic point-and-click adventure games (and the text parser games they replaced) have largely given way to modern action-adventure games (e.g. Tomb Raider, Bioshock, etc.).
So I know a thing or two about adventure games, and I’ll be frank: in my opinion there’s a reason they have largely died out and become a niche market (hello linearity and trial-and-error object combination “games”). My second confession: I haven’t heard of a single one of the games in this week’s Humble Bundle, though I have heard of publisher Daedalic Entertainment.
With that out of the way, if you’re hankering for some old-school point-and-click adventuring, you might be interested in the latest weekly Humble Bundle. There are five core games available ($1 contribution or higher), and $6 or more will unlock three additional games. A few  of the games are apparently so far off the radar that they don’t even have entries on Metacritic, which might be taken as a bit of a red flag. Those that have been reviewed by a reasonable number of sites (many based outside the US) typically received fair to moderate scores, with a few enthusiastic reviews cropping up here and there. As usual, YMMV.
Here’s the complete list, starting with the core games. Any donation of $1 or more will get you Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes (10/2012, 75%), A New Beginning – Final Cut (12/2012, 72%), The Whispered World (04/2010, 70%), Chronicles of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (07/2012), and Chronicles of Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (07/2012). Other than the two Chronicles of Shakespeare titles, all of the games are available for Windows and on Steam; they’re also all available for OS X, with the exception of The Whispered World. I should pause here for a moment to note that the two Chronicles of Shakespeare titles really aren’t adventure games; instead they’re hidden object games where you basically click on objects based on hints in order to solve mysteries (and judging by most reviews, they’re rubbish, explaining perhaps why they’re not listed on Metacritic). Paying $6 or more gets you three additional games: Deponia (08/2012, 74%), Journey of a Roach (11/2013), and The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (06/2012, 75%).
Not all of the games are widely available, but with a bit of searching I found some prices. The three bonus games are, not surprisingly, more expensive titles. Deponia runs $20 on Steam, though you might be able to find a code on eBay for less than half that (and there are two sequels for Deponia if you happen to enjoy it). Journey of a Roach is brand new and currently priced at $13.49 on Steam. The Dark Eye is also a $20 Steam game. If you want any of those three, a $6 donation is obviously a better value. The Chronicles of Shakespeare games are, as mentioned, probably not worth the time required to get them (I’ve seen plenty of “free” Facebook games that look similar in concept), while Edna and Harvey ($20 Steam), A New Beginning ($10 Steam), and Whispered World ($10 Steam) bring the total value to around $100.
This is another bundle I’m going to skip, but if you’re (still?) a fan of adventuring there’s probably a few good ways to pass some hours. And if you have any personal experience with the games, let others know in the comments. On the bright side, you can always donate the money to charity (Red Cross or Child’s Play), and you could even give the games to someone else. Until next week….
Gallery: Humble Weekly: Pointing and Clicking with Daedalic Entertainment

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