In the second week of March, from the 9th to the 16th, more stories broke. Microsoft, AMD and Bose were all in the news for vastly different reasons, but all of these reasons were relevant to the world of VR. Or, in Bose’s case, AR. This segment, Stories You Might’ve Missed, is for news stories that broke but weren’t given articles on our site. Let’s see what we missed. Microsoft shows off prototype CLAW VR controller One of the most interesting stories to break in March was the debut of the CLAW VR controller from Microsoft. In their blog post and YouTube video (embedded above),
AMD: We are ramping our GPU production
Because of the increasing market demand, AMD said that they are planning to increase production of graphics cards which are currently in short supply. Recently they launched RX Vega GPU that you simply can not buy anymore because of the raising popularity inside of the crypto mining community. AMD admitted that their Radeon cards were also in short supply and said that the “guilty ones” were exactly the mining applications. Therefore, the company promised to increase production and said that they are hoping to satisfy the growing demand without disappointing any of its customers. “The graphics channel is very low, and we are certainly working
Intel’s Greatest Mistake: Meltdown, Spectre and Why Your CPU Is In Danger
To start the New Year, two major new hardware exploits have been publicized. And people are going nuts. Since the news of these exploits has come out, AMD stock has skyrocketed while Intel’s has dipped significantly. PC hardware enthusiasts everywhere are running around screaming, and if you aren’t hyper-tuned into the world of hardware you may not understand why. Let us break it down for you. What’s happening? Two new hardware-based exploits have been publicized: Meltdown and Spectre. While both issues can be mitigated, it may be impossible to fix them outright without fundamental changes in hardware architecture from manufacturers. What is Meltdown? Meltdown is an attack
Varjo Alpha Prototype VR Headset: What You Need To Know
If you haven’t heard of Varjo Technologies yet, there’s a good chance that’ll soon change. The Finnish startup is working on an advanced VR headset, built from modified Oculus Rift’s and other components, and is aimed at professional users. The Varjo Alpha Prototype (a work-in-progress name) offers a 1080p display for each eye, with a 35-degree horizontal FOV for each. There is also a “context display”, which offers a 100 FOV view and runs at 1080 x 1200 at 90hz refresh rate. According to Varjo, the refresh rate on these headsets may eventually go as high as 120hz, for true-to-life motion. While the headset may
New Mining-Oriented GPUs from AMD, NVIDIA Launching Soon
As new cryptocurrencies become available, as is the case of Ethereum and Zcash, more and more people try their luck in mining. Even the difficulties increased in BitCoin (BTC), the record growth over the past 12 months (365 days ago, BTC traded at $579.35. Today it trades at $2783.43) got people investing in purchasing mining computers. This increased interest in mineable cryptocurrency has led to a virtual lack of availability in shops of high performance video cards, and specifically all AMD-based GPUs since 2009, from 7000-series until today’s RX580 videocards from AMD. These cards are basically nowhere to be found. We received comments from some of
News Roundup
In today’s roundup, we look at the most interesting news around the world. AMD’s Financial Analyst Day PDFs Available for Download http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-analystday AMD’s Financial Analyst Day was marked with the stock shooting for the stars one day, and then crashing down the other, as investors didn’t got the expected Intel announcement. Intel is currently operating in dangerous territory with a month-to-month agreement with NVIDIA, after the original contract expired on March 31st, 2017. Intel has to sign either with AMD or NVIDIA, or face the (legal) music again. But forgetting about the legal wranglings, if you’re an enthusiast or want to see what AMD is cooking for
Intel Reacts to AMD, Accelerates New Processors and Platforms
Following what was expected, yet still surprising launch of AMD RYZEN, and lackluster performance from its broken “Tick-Tock-Tock-Tock…” cadence refresh called “Kaby Lake”, Intel started to pull multiple moves in the background to react to the threats to their core business. Just like the rise of GPU was met with a multi-billion acquisition of Altera, whose combined x86-FPGA processors are still nowhere near the market launch, upcoming End of Life / Termination notice for Xeon Phi and rushed multi-billion acquisition of Mobileye… the reactions are starting to look chaotic and unplanned. Reliable sources report that Intel brought forward the launch of their 2017/18 platforms: two month
AMD Launches Polaris Refresh, Wants to Make World VR Ready
After a series of leaks, AMD finally launched a refresh – or a rebrand – or their Polaris GPU product family. Some minor tweaks enabled Polaris 10 became Polaris 20, and so on, and so forth. The products launching today are Radeon RX 550, 560, 570 and 580. As AMD states, the new line-up is designed to further reduce the barrier of entry to VR capable i.e. “VR Ready” hardware, enable performance at higher resolutions such as 2560×1440 or 3440×1440 etc. Gamers should be able to stream their titles, and achieve great frame rate in the most played titles of today and hopefully tomorrow. According to AMD,
AMD Ships One Million Ryzen Processors for the Launch
During the official launch event in San Francisco, AMD revealed / confirmed rumors about their upcoming Ryzen family of processors. Focus seems to be on what seems to be “Intel-beating” Ryzen 7, their new top of the line processors. Ryzen 7 line-up consists solely out of 8 cores, 16 threads processors. A trio of fastest Ryzen models will launch globally on March 2, and according to Digitimes, the company prepared no less than one million processors for the launch itself. That one million is essentially consisted out of three models, plus the upcoming Ryzen 3 and 5 Series. In all fairness, it is weird to
What Do You need to Play Battlefield 1
In the eternal battle of Battlefield vs. Call of Duty, Electronic Arts once more pulled the trigger first and released Battlefield 1 on October 21th (to be followed by Call of Duty on November 4th). Following the first in-game experiences, we decided to do a review on game itself and on hardware needed to run this baby. There was much controversy surrounding Battlefield 1 and its return to World War I, also known as The Great War. Concerns about whether or not such delicate subject matter could ever be given the treatment it deserves, especially in a video game, are justified. This is unquestionably the
Sony CEO Confirms High-End PlayStation Console for VR
Ever since we revealed the specifications of new PlayStation Neo console, rumors were about when SONY will pull the trigger and introduce the console. Our sources told us that the time of introduction is Tokyo Game Show – scheduled for September 15-17, 2016. As such, we’re afraid that the next week’s E3 will pass with perhaps just a teaser for the new console – or will be the biggest (silent) elephant in the room. In an interview with Financial Times, Andrew House, President and Global Chief Executive Offices at Sony Interactive Entertainment said that the high-end PlayStation 4 “Is intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4,
On the Eighth Day of VR, God Created Radeon RX Series
At the Computex Taipei trade show in Taiwan, AMD officially introduced the first products based on Polaris GPU architecture. Radeon RX Series also marks AMD’s arrival to 14nm and FinFET process technologies, delivered by GlobalFoundries. This manufacturing process, alongside the design decisions the team made several quarters ago marks the return of graphics wars, hitting the price points old 28nm planar process could not dream off. When the company originally announced the formation of Radeon Technologies Group, it made a critical decision to change its product strategy. The new strategy is called “Water Drop,” where products are being released to select markets after serious discussions and evaluations of the market where
AMD Discloses Impressive ZEN Performance
During the recent 2016 Annual Shareholding Meeting, AMD’s leadership disclosed their targets for the upcoming three years. The company is building its strategy on the only possible growth plan – building the fastest technology their engineers came come up with, and then produce the silicon which will come to market branded either as AMD, an AMD-THATIC joint-venture or as Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony… and a new mysterious client for the semi-custom business. “We have new Semi-Custom business in the back half of the year that commences then, and we have the traditional Semi-Custom business with our game console partners that seasonally peaks in the third quarter. So a
Did Microsoft Fix its Biggest Mistake?
Microsoft is ending its ‘free Windows 10’ upgrade program. Ever since the company announced the availability of Windows 10 and a free upgrade for the older versions, the company was adamant it will only offer free upgrade program ‘for a limited amount of time’. That free upgrade program ends on July 29th, 2016. While there is a loophole that can keep your systems running on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 and still get the Windows 10 upgrade, discovered thanks to ZDNet: “When you upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, the Windows 10 setup program checks your current activation status and reports the result to the activation
AMD is Finally Fabless, Dead Certain to Secure a Profit in Q2 2016
When Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced its first quarter 2016 results, the company executives stated that they’re on track towards return to profitability in the second quarter of this year. In Q1 2016, the company suffered a $109 million loss on $832 million revenue, during a silent quarter stifled with the lack of orders (post-holiday blues in the West meets Lunar New Year two-week slowdown). The announcement of the Chinese Joint-Venture which might lead to AMD enterprise x86 processors becoming a standard feature in Chinese government institutions is going to earn company much more than the $293 million licensing fee, as AMD now has access to a plethora of R&D grants
New AMD Corporate Strategy Starts to Pay Off
Over the course of last year, AMD’s upper management started to split the company into two key elements – one that would drive the technology forward (Radeon Technologies Group) and one to make sure the technology brings back ‘best bang for buck’, mostly through licensing agreements and new industry collaborations. Radeon Technologies Group is being lead by Raja Koduri and his management and engineering team, while Dr. Lisa T. Su is driving the monetization aspect of AMD as the corporate entity. Less than a year after making an announcement that AMD is ‘open for business’ by licensing the core IP technologies such as CPU or GPU cores. We’ve
Sony PlayStation NEO Console for VR Revealed?
According to multiple sources we managed to talk to during the last couple of industry conferences, and the story that just break today, Sony is rushing ahead towards introduction of “Playstation 4.5”, codenamed NEO. The company decided to update the console rather than performing a ‘simple’ die shrink, a tactic both Microsoft and Sony utilized over the lifetime of their Playstation 2 and 3, Xbox and 360 consoles. The original plan for NEO was to introduce a 14nm die-shrink of 8-core Jaguar processor and an update of a GCN-based graphics processor. However, a shift from 28nm to 14nm is significantly more complex due to the fact that 28nm process used
Radeon Graphics: The Intersection of Speed and Sophistication in the DirectX 12 Era
AMD announced their impressive roster of state-of-the-art DirectX 12 games and engines, each with extensive tuning for the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture at the heart of modern Radeon GPUs. This marks another milestone in the quest to adhere to newer game/application requests, creating a great showcase of performance and visual appeal. This also provides owners of the newest AMD Radeon graphic cards a chance to fully utilize all the advancements of DirectX 12 games, engines and design. This news comes in mid of recent talk and rumors about potential developments by AMD in the field of processors and graphics, giving the fans of the brand
AMD Gaming Evolved Gets Updated
It seems that streaming is ‘all the rage’ right now. Showcasing your skills, giving fans across the world access to your gaming and showing your neat tricks. This is basically what’s it all about. Thanks to AMD’s Gaming Evolved this is now even simpler and even more easy to use. We’ve talked a lot about the future of streaming/showcases of gameplay in recent months. For certain games, giving the individuals a first eye witness into the world of pro’s and other popular players is the way to go. Simply put, it increases the popularity and allows gamers, specially with certain titles, to earn more money than ever
AMD, Crytek Team Up for VR Dev Labs
AMD announced on Monday that it has teamed up with game developer studio Crytek to provide colleges and universities with hardware and software for dedicated virtual reality (VR) labs. AMD said it will fork over new Radeon Pro Duo graphics cards to these labs as well as the LiquidVR SDK, which will be provided for free thanks to the GPUOpen initiative. AMD’s hardware and software offering is part of Crytek’s “VR First” initiative, which was established to provide educational institutions a “ready-made” VR solution for researchers, developers, and students. The studio, famous for its CRYENGINE solution and games such as Crysis 3 and Far Cry,