The desktop GPU market is in decline, and is now a statistical two-horse race between AMD and NVIDIA, according to a recent report from Jon Peddie Research. The firm’s analysis revealed a 5.4 percent quarterly decline in shipments for the market overall and a 5.2 percent decline over last year. Looking at overall market share, NVIDIA continued to hold the top spot over beleaguered rival AMD in the second quarter, with 62 percent of the add-in GPU market share compared…
Ceton Brings 6 Tuners to a Single Slot with the InfiniTV 6 PCIe
HTPC firm Ceton turned heads earlier this year with the release of the first consumer-targeted, network-based, 6-tuner CableCARD device, the InfiniTV 6 ETH. In our review, we noted that the InfiniTV 6 ETH offered great flexibility, allowing whole households to simultaneously watch live and recorded television without reasonable fear of running into tuner limits. Now the company is out with an update to its PCI Express-based line, the InfiniTV 6 PCIe. This new model provides users with the same 6-tuner…
AMD Gives Gamers Choice with Never Settle Forever Bundle
AMD may have scored a major victory when it secured its placement as the APU supplier for both the Xbox One and the PS4, but the firm has had a tough time when it comes to the high end PC market. The company’s formerly venerable line of Radeon GPUs has lost ground in recent years to high performance offerings from NVIDIA. In response, AMD late last year began to entice GPU shoppers with impressive game bundles. Dubbed the “Never Settle…
id Software Co-Founder John Carmack Joins Oculus as CTO
In a surprising move, game pioneer and id Software founder John Carmack has left his company to join virtual reality gaming startup Oculus as Chief Technology Officer, according to a press statement early Wednesday. Update: Bethesda Softworks, id Software’s parent company, clarified that Mr. Carmack will retain a role at id after his transition to Oculus CTO: “The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected.” Oculus, founded by Palmer Luckey in 2012, is in…
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10Gbps USB Spec Finalized as USB 3.1
The next advancement for the USB specification, first announced in January, has been certified by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group. The new specification, to be called “USB 3.1,” will double current maximum bandwidth to 10Gbps while maintaining the backward-compatibility that USB is known for. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, which comprises representatives from HP, Intel, Microsoft, Renesas Electronics, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments, made the announcement via press release (PDF) today. SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps uses a more efficient data encoding…
Pushing It To The Limit: 2013 MacBook Air Battery Life Tests
When Apple released the 2013 MacBook Air in June, the company leveraged the increased power efficiency of the Haswell platform to provide significantly improved battery life. After spending some time testing the new MacBook Air’s 802.11ac Wi-Fi performance, we turned our attention to power efficiency. Just how accurate are Apple’s impressive claims for the 2013 MacBook Air battery life? Testing Hardware We’re testing an entry-level 2013 13-inch MacBook Air, with a 1.3GHz Core i5 CPU, Intel HD 5000 GPU, and…
Ultimate 4K Gaming System Pushes 1.5B Pixels Per Second at 60fps
Microsoft’s Extreme Windows Blog published a post Thursday showcasing a truly extreme gaming PC with three 4K monitors configured for Eyefinity and powered by AMD GPUs. And you can have it now…for the low, low price of around $18,000. Microsoft’s Gavin Gear used three 32-inch Sharp PN-K321 4K Ultra HD monitors, which currently retail for about $5,000 each. These displays support both 30Hz input via HDMI or standard DisplayPort, and 60Hz using Multi Stream Transport (MST), a new standard available…
4K Gets Even Cheaper This Fall With 50-inch TCL 4K TV for $999
2013 is quickly turning out to be the “year of 4K.” The ultra-high-resolution displays started the year priced in the tens of thousands of dollars but a series of developments have quickly redefined the market at a drastically lower price point. Now, Chinese electronics firm TCL is set to lower the 4K cost of entry again with the release of a 50-inch 4K TV for only $999. 4K (or “Ultra HD”) TVs and displays feature four times as many pixels…
Check Out a Hands-On Video of the $699 39-inch Seiki 4K TV
After announcing it in June, budget television manufacturer Seiki has released its highly-affordable 39-inch 4K TV and the fine folks at PC Perspective have a first-look hands-on video. The 39-inch 16:9 panel carries a retail price of $699 and sports a resolution of 3840-by-2160. It features HDMI, VGA, and component input, along with analog audio ports for both input and output. You’ll need to use HDMI or Component for 4K, but all inputs also support lower resolutions such as 1080p…
FastMac Announces External Optical Drive Perfect for the New Mac Pro
Apple’s radically redesigned Mac Pro will be heading to the market later this year but, like most of Apple’s other Macs, the new version ditches the optical drive. A missing optical drive can be easily justified for ultra-portable computers like the MacBook Air, but professionals who are interested in, and will be able to afford, the new Mac Pro may still need the capability to read and burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Any one of a number of external…