Month: January 2019

We’ve got a huge week coming up for tech fans as we roll into CES 2019 (Consumer Electronics Show). Nestled in among all the dung-powered hoovers self-driving washing machines lurks some big live events from the major hardware manufacturers.

Nvidia is, of course, present, and founder and CEO Jensen Huang will be hosting the Nvidia CES 2019 live stream today, and you can watch it all unfold right here.

The Nvidia CES 2019 livestream takes place at:

8pm PT 11pm ET 4am GMT (January 7th) 5am CET (January 7th)

In terms of what to expect from Nvidia, a reveal of the GeForce RTX 2060 range of graphics cards seems assured. While there have been leaks aplenty we’re still keen to hear about pricing and variants ahead of the expected January 15th launch.

We’re also hopeful we’ll hear about potential laptop Max-Q designs for the GeForce RTX 20 series, as well as an update to Nvidia’s Shield line-up.

Aside from that, you can expect to see all sorts of updates from Team Green in regards to AI advancements, new workstation GPUs, ray-tracing improvements, and in-car usage.
Watch live video from NVIDIA on www.twitch.tv

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A bug hunter has scooped a $20,000 bounty from Valve after identifying a bug which allowed seemingly limitless CD keys to be generated for any game on Steam. Hacker guru Artem Moskowsky stumbled across the vulnerability on Steam back in August, posting a $20,000 bounty on HackerOne.

Using the flaw in the Steam portal, Moskowsky was able to generate 36,000 activation keys for Portal 2 in a single swoop, equivalent to $360,000 worth of product. These keys could then be redeemed or sold as legitimate, working copies of the game.

“This bug was discovered randomly during the exploration of the functionality of a web application,” Moskowsky explained to The Register. “It could have been used by any attacker who had access to the portal.”

Valve has since revolved the case and paid out a $20,000 bounter to the ‘bug hunter’, outlining a summary of the issue on HackerOne. Just a single parameter was changed and Moskowsky was then able to make a request to bypass verification of game ownership and access the keys.

“Using the /partnercdkeys/assignkeys/ endpoint on partner.steamgames.com with specific parameters, an authenticated user could download previously-generated CD keys for a game which they would not normally have access,” writes Valve. “Audit logs were not bypassed using this method, and an investigation of those audit logs did not show any prior or ongoing exploitation of this bug.”

It’s not a bad payday for Moskowsky, who makes his living finding and reporting bug bounties in exchange for cold, hard cash. It pales in comparison to the sheer number of keys that could’ve been nefariously gained, but $20,000 is enough to truly live the dream and buy Train Simulator and its $7,000 worth of DLC, and still have $13,000 to spare.

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“Goes to see the train simulator on steam, WTF!”

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“The guy still can’t afford Star Citizens Legatus pack.”

TClawWolf –

Some madman has actually gone and made a PC Classic, attempting to emulate the success of Nintendo’s NES and SNES Classics, as well as Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Classic. We truly are creeping ever closer to our Brass Eye future

It was only a few months ago we were discussing the possible games that would be on a PC Classic Mini. It’s borderline crazy in a world where GOG exists, along with countless emulation methods, but we can’t help but admire the audacity, and the beige-ness, of it all.

The PC Classic is miniature PC that’s set to come loaded with 30 pre-installed DOS games from the 80’s and 90’s, all with joystick-enabled support and the token keyboard + mouse and gamepad support. At the moment, the plan is to include a gamepad with the system. However, they are in talks to offer a mini keyboard and mouse for the device as well.

Unite Technologies is set to open crowdfunding for the PC Classic in late November/early December 2018 with a release planned for early Summer 2019. There’s a target price of $99 for the box with 30 games installed. Unfortunately, none of that 30 games have been revealed just yet, although we’ll hopefully know a whole lot more once the Kickstarter goes live. If Hugo’s House of Horrors isn’t included it may be time to riot.

I think my favourite part of this whole thing is how they so bluntly address the usual critics that come out of the woodwork and scream Raspberry Pi into the infinite cosmos.

It’s all madness of course, but ever-so-slightly endearing. Would you ever be interested in such a device? What games do you think should be installed on it?

Attention all those with unfathomably deep pockets – Nvidia has unveiled the GeForce RTX 20 Series mobility GPUs set to power the next generation of high-end gaming laptops. Nvidia has gone in heavy this time around, announcing more than 40 gaming notebooks with GeForce Mobility graphics cards right out of the gate and over 17 Max-Q designs with the new 7nm Turing GPU.

While specs are going to vary from design to design, there are three core GeForce RTX 20 Series Mobility graphics cards inbound. These comprise the GeForce RTX 2060, GeForce RTX 2070, and GeForce RTX 2080. They will also be available in ultra-thin Max-Q designs for slimline notebooks.

All three GeForce Mobility RTX 20 graphics cards will come with support for DXR-powered real-time ray-tracing, although their ray-tracing capabilities will be significantly weaker as compared to their desktop counterparts. The GeForce RTX 2080 Mobility sits at the top of the pack with 5-7 GigaRays/s, the GeForce RTX 2070 can perform 4-5 GigaRays/s, while the GeForce RTX 2060 Mobility can achieve just 3.5 GigaRays/s. When Nvidia revealed its RTX family, Jensen himself claimed 5 GigaRays/s is the minimum required for satisfactory performance. As a result, we don’t have high hopes for the ray-tracing performance of either the RTX 2060 or the RTX 2070.

Specs-wise these graphics cards are certainly comparable outside of ray-tracing, sporting the same number of CUDA cores and equivalent VRAM as their desktop variants. However, the mobile demands mean they’re each clocked a chunk slower. The GeForce RTX 2060 mobility has a base clock of 960MHz and a boost clock for 1200 MHz, for example, while the desktop version has a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1680 MHz.

  GeForce RTX 2080 Mobility GeForce RTX 2080 GeForce RTX 2070 Mobility GeForce RTX 2070 GeForce RTX 2060 Mobility GeForce RTX 2060 GPU Architecture Turing Turing Turing  Turing Turing Turing GPU TU104  TU104-400A-A1 TU106  TU106  TU106 TU106 Process Node 12nm NFF  12nm NFF  12nm NFF  12nm NFF 12nm NFF   12nm NFF CUDA Cores 2944  2944  2304 2304 1920 1920 Tensor Cores 368 368 288  288 240  240 RT Cores 46 46 36 36 30 30 Ray-Traced Performance

5-7 GigaRays/s

8 GigaRays/s

4-5 GigaRays/s

6 GigaRays/s 3.5 GigaRays/s 5 GigaRays/s Core Clock

 1380 MHz

735 MHz (Max-Q)

1515 MHz

 1215 MHz

885 MHz (Max-Q)

1410 MHz 960 MHz  1365 MHz Boost Clock

1590 MHz

1095 MHz (Max-Q)

1800 MHz

 1440 MHz

1185 MHz (Max-Q)

1620 MHz  1200 MHz 1680 MHz Memory  8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6  8GB GDDR6  6GB GDDR6 6GB GDDR6 Memory Speed 14 GHz  14 GHz  14 GHz 14 GHz 14 GHz  14 GHz Memory Interface 256-bit  256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit  192-bit Memory Bandwidth 448GB/s  448GB/s 448GB/s  448GB/s  336 GB/s 336GB/s TDP 80-150W  215W 80-115W  175W 80-90W  150W Power Input N/A 1x 6-pin & 1x 8-pin N/A 1x 8-pin N/A  1x 8-pin Founders Price N/A $799 N/A $599 N/A  $349 Normal Price N/A $699 N/A $499 N/A  $349

“Laptops are the fastest growing gaming platform — and just getting started,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.

“The world’s top OEMs are using Turing to bring next-generation console performance to thin, sleek laptops that gamers can take anywhere. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide — an entire generation — are growing up gaming. I can’t wait for them to experience this new wave of laptops.”

Nvidia’s range of GeForce RTX 20 Series mobility graphics cards will be launching on January 29th through various hardware partners and laptop OEMs. Expect prices to be on the high end even for the weaker models, but even a mobile GeForce RTX 2060 should offer performance far in excess of a PlayStation 4 Pro. Not too bad for gaming on the go, not too bad at all.

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HTC has been having a hectic time at CES 2019 this week, showing off a whole host of new VR goodies inbound for PC gamers. Top of the heap is the HTC Vive Cosmos, an all-new VR headset specifically designed around ease of use, comfort, and ease of access. Basically, the three major things that consistently get in the way of the HTC Vive achieving mainstream appeal.

Rather than court the low-end like Oculus, the Vive Cosmos is once again going to be a premium PC VR system, this time with some very handy benefits like a flip-up design, no external sensors, new lightweight materials, and updated Vive motion controllers.

Flip-up design

The greatest strength of VR is its unprecedented immersion, but it’s also its greatest weakness. Anyone who’s spent a bit of time with VR will be all too aware of the need to look about your real-world surroundings occasionally. This necessitates hauling the headset off and on every time, which isn’t exactly convenient. The new Vive Cosmos has a flip-up design allowing the user to quickly lift the screen component up and over the eyes so they can see their surroundings or check their phone.

No external sensors

The Vive Cosmos consists of just the headset itself and the two motion controllers. Current versions of the Vive require external sensors to be permanently set up around a room so this would make for a much easier setup experience. Tracking is now handled through cameras on the front and sides of the Cosmos.

New Vive controllers

HTC continues to fine-tune its controller design and the Vive Cosmos will use the latest version of the controllers. They’re starting to look a whole lot like the Oculus Touch controllers, in truth, losing the old touchpad in favour of traditional analog sticks with face buttons. The new controllers can still do gesture controls and provides 6DOF tracking as well.

Big question over wireless

There’s still a big cloud of confusion over the wireless capabilities of the Vive Cosmos. Going totally wireless is the dream for any VR headset but it’s unclear whether the Vive Cosmos will need to be wired to a PC. In the marketing pictures, it looks wireless, but there’s no mention of wireless VR and HTC spokespeople are keeping schtum. This may even mean there are going to be both wired and wireless versions of the Vive Cosmos headset.

“We found that over 85% of VR intenders believe that ease of use and set up is the most important factor to consider while purchasing a headset“, said Daniel O’Brien, GM of HTC Vive Americas. “We believe Cosmos will make VR more easily accessible to those who may not have invested in VR before and also be a superior experience for VR enthusiasts.”

I think he’s absolutely right on that front. On first impressions, the Vive Cosmos appears to be a heck of a leap forward for the HTC Vive, at least in terms of usability. It’s less of jump in terms of technical capabilities though, not really offering anything from a gaming perspective that’s any different from the current headset. The tech behind VR is already proven to work though, it’s the cost and fiddliness that has turned people away. While we can’t comment on cost right now, in terms of usability, HTC could smooth off a lot of rough edges with the Cosmos.

What are your thoughts on the new VR headset design? Is improved comfort and ease-of-use the right direction for HTC, or does VR need to come down in price to achieve success? Let us know what you think below!

AMD has revealed both the official specs plus the first benchmarks for its upcoming AMD Radeon RX 590 graphics card and the results are pleasantly surprising.

Specs-wise, the Radeon RX 590 is along the lines of what had been rumoured all along – extremely similar to the Radeon RX 580 that’s already been on the market for over a year. The Radeon RX 590 features the same 2304 Stream Processor core count and the exact same 8GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 8Gb/s.

However, the big changed is a marked increase to the clock speeds, made possible thanks to the adoption of the 12nm FinFET fabrication process for the Polaris 30 GPU. The AMD Radeon RX 590 sports a 1469 MHz base clock speed right out of the box, along with a 1545 MHz boost clock. This compares to 1257 MHz and 1340 MHz base and boost clock respectively on the RX 580.

The end result is a graphics card with similar specs to the two generations that have come before it, but with an actual tangible jump in performance. In terms of raw numbers, it translates to a 15% gain in terms of TFLOPs, shifting from 6.2 TFLOPs on the RX 580 to 7.1 TFLOPs on the RX 590.

  Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 590 GPU Polaris 10 (14nm) Polaris 20 (14nm) Polaris 30 (12nm) Cores 2304 2304 2304 TMUs 144 144 144 ROPs 32 32 32 Compute Performance 5.83 TFLOPS 6.17 TFLOPS 7.1 TFLOPS Base Clock 1120 MHz 1257 MHz 1469 MHz Boost Clock 1266 MHz 1340 MHZ 1545 MHz Memory Up to 8GB GDDR5 Up to 8GB GDDR5 8GB GDDR5 Memory Clock 8 GHz 8 GHz 8 GHz Memory Interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit Bandwidth 256 GB/s 256 GB/s 256 GB/s

But what does this all mean for the Radeon RX 590’s gaming performance? AMD published its own gaming benchmarks so all the usual caveats apply here. Intel has only recently shone a spotlight on inaccurate benchmarks so we’d fairly optimistic AMD won’t risk the ire of its fans.

The test system slots in the RX 590 alongside an Intel Core i7-7700K CPU, 16GB DDR4 memory clocked at 3000 MHz and AMD Radeon driver 18.40.

As for the results, the AMD Radeon RX 590 scores consistently higher frame rates than the Radeon RX 580, with each gaming benchmarking showing 18-26% FPS gains. It’s a decent improvement, both more than we were expecting and also topping Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB in all-but-one benchmark test.

  Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 590 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 49 58 69 Monster Hunter World 44 51 63 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 69 103 125 PUBG 61 63 77 Fortnite 69 66 83 Overwatch 114 110 136

  Radeon RX 590 GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Shadow of the Tomb Raider 69 59 F1 2018 83 65 Monster Hunter World 63 50 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 124 100 Far Cry 4 82 74 Strange Brigade 95 77 PUBG 77 71 Fortnite 83 79 Overwatch 136 138

 

The one catch with the Radeon RX 590 is it’s going to retail for $279, which is a little more than the $240 the RX 580 typically retails for these days. However, Videocardz claims the Radeon RX 590 will be launching with a truly formidable bundle. This “blockbuster” bundle includes the AMD Radeon RX 590 plus copies of Devil May Cry 5, The Division 2 and the Resident Evil 2 remake. They’re all AAA titles, all new, and all due out during the first months of 2019 so this would be a fantastic deal for AMD. At full price, we’re talking about $180 worth of games here.

AMD’s Radeon RX 590 will be available to buy from tomorrow, priced at $279.

Project CARS 2
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UPDATE: Slightly Mad’s Mad Box game console is practically being developed before our very eyes. SMS CEO Ian Bell has joined Twitter for the purpose of shouting about the new top-end console, revealing the first prototype designs that are being worked on with hardware partners.

As you can see, the Mad Box bears a fair bit of resemblance to a flamboyant desktop PC, although Bell has reiterated it is most definitely a games console.

In terms of the components, SMS has chosen to blur the internals as they’re still in discussions for which parts to use. Considering this console isn’t even expected to launch for another 3.5 years, we’d be surprised if Slightly Mad even has a clue what’s going in it themselves.

Ian Bell has also addressed some confusion about the VR capabilities of the Mad Box, confirming it will deliver 90 FPS per eye.

There seemed to be a lot of confusion yesterday after Bell claimed that 60fps is all you need for great VR, which naturally set a few alarm bells ringing. A number of devs from BioWare, Bossa, and even Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman began weighing in, only to have their tech expertise shot down. Bell has clearly had a word with his own tech experts and revised the target to 90fps per eye.

It’s a worrying turn of events. Launching a new console and making it a success is next to impossible as it is, let alone if you’re going to ignore the advice from the experts.

Original Story: 03-Jan-2019 – Project Cars 2 Dev Slightly Mad Studios Announces ‘Mad Box’ 4K 120FPS Games Console

 Project Cars 2 developer Slightly Mad Studios has announced its working on a standalone games console that will compete directly with Xbox and PlayStation in a frankly bizarre move.

Ian Bell, CEO of the appropriately named Slightly Mad Studios, announced the ‘Mad Box’ via Twitter, claiming this next-gen console will be targeting the lofty goal of 4K/120fps and go toe-to-toe with the best high-end gaming PCs.

The current aim is to launch The Mad Box in 2021 with 4K/120fps support, as well as 60fps per eye in VR, which is oddly below the generally expected minimum of 90fps for VR. “What is the Mad Box? It’s the most powerful console ever built… It’s literally ‘Mad’… You want 4K, you want VR at 60FPS? You want a full engine for free to develop your games on it? You have it,” wrote Bell on Twitter.

Creation of the enthusiast-tier games console is still in its early stages right now. “We’re in early talks with manufacturers of components so we can’t say much more right now other than we have the designs specced out in detail”, Bell told Variety. “We have the required hardware contacts to be able to bring something epic to fruition based on our designs.”

In terms of specs, Slightly Mad Studios is targeting high-end PC specs from 2021. We’re probably talking the equivalent of Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs, for example. This would undoubtedly mean we can expect a sky-high price for this console box, which does beg the question as to why folks wouldn’t just build a top-end PC. Bell does claim it’ll be “competitive with upcoming console prices” though, hinting it may not totally break the bank. Does he also know something about the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett that we don’t?

The sheer weight of marketing dollars that need to be thrown at a successful console launch has us instinctively worried for The Mad Box. Console need momentum and third-party support in order to survive, and even the experienced minds at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can occasionally slip up and find themselves with dud consoles. Those three also have scale on their side, able to mass produce millions of consoles knowing they will sell, in turn bringing the cost-per-unit down. With a cold start, The Mad Box has its work cut out, although Slightly Mad has secured funding for the console and won’t be turning to Kickstarter.

It remains to be seen whether The Mad Box will be a closed ecosystem or whether we’re looking at a Steam Box-like device. The former seems the most likely, although this places a far greater emphasis on developer support. If the games aren’t there, no one’s going to buy this thing.

What are your thoughts on a newcomer to the console scene? Do Slightly Mad have the clout to compete with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? Let us know what you think below!

Nvidia could be set to face a class-action lawsuit representing investors who claim Team Green mismanaged the demand for graphics cards during the cryptocurrency mining craze. The bubble bursting on crypto mining cause Nvidia’s share value well below half what it was worth just three months ago. This led to investors losing potentially sky-high amounts of capital.

The class-action lawsuit against Nvidia is being prepared by Schall Law, a California-based law firm that has evidently spied a few bucks to be made. Schall Law claims Nvidia made “false and misleading statements to the market”. This concerns Nvidia’s capabilities at both monitoring the cryptocurrency market and being in a position to swiftly pivot depending on the situation. The knock-on effect of the plummeting of crypto demand was an allegedly huge quantity of surplus GPUs that needed to be shifted, all while trying to launch a new generation of graphics cards.

“Based on these facts, the Company’s public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period,” writes Schall Law in its class-action lawsuit. “When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages.”

They don’t hold fire there either. Schall Law continues: “The Company claimed to be “masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well.” NVIDIA also claimed to the market that any drop off in demand for its GPUs amongst cryptocurrency miners would not negatively impact the Company’s business because of strong demand for GPUs from the gaming market. Based on these facts, the Company’s public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages.”

Schall Law is fishing for investors who’ve lost in excess of $100,000 in an effort to give the lawsuit some traction. Without enough investors signing up there wouldn’t be enough momentum or pressure to get this lawsuit over the line. This is a fairly standard case of a law firm identifying the merest possibility of a hefty payout and attempting to pressurise Nvidia into taking action. We’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of it, although, from the outside looking in, it always seemed obvious that the crypto boom would eventually subside and Nvidia’s share value would drop. That’s all part and parcel of investment, spotting the booms and busts, getting out at the right time.

We’ll be sure to update you if we hear any progress and this class-action lawsuit against Nvidia.

Nvidia has partnered up with Samsung for the fabrication of its 7nm chips, according to a report from MyNavi.

Samsung kicked off risk production of 7nm silicon using EUV (extreme ultra-violet) lithography on October 18th, some two months ahead of its original early 2019 schedule. Taiwanese silicon foundry TSMC started risk production a little later, in October, prompting Nvidia to ink the deal with Samsung.

AMD is already making big headway with its 7nm Zen 2 and Navi chips but it looks as if Nvidia won’t be too far behind. It’s looking likely that the Turing architecture will be the last 12nm FinFET chips Nvidia will use, switching to 7nm for its next-gen graphics cards.

Based upon Samsung’s technology roadmap, sampling will be reading in late 2019, while we’re looking at mass availability at some point in 2020, giving us an indicator of when we can expect to see Nvidia’s successor to Turing. It should allow for a little more time for the 7nm process to mature when compared to AMD who are steamrolling ahead with the new technology.

On their part, Nvidia has been largely silent on what’s going to succeed Turing. That comes as little surprise as it’s a little preoccupied with getting its current RTX 20 series GPUs into gamers’ hands. This coming year is almost certainly going to be all about Turing, including the possibility of some lower-priced GTX variants before things heat up once again in 2020.

Nvidia dropped a megaton during its CES 2019 live conference last night, announcing it will be expanding its G-Sync compatible ecosystem to include AMD FreeSync monitors. Team Green is adopting the VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync protocol, massively widening the potential pool of compatible monitors.

The crucial part of this change is that G-Sync display typically commands a hefty price premium over FreeSync monitors but now certain AMD FreeSync monitors will be compatible with the G-Sync initiative.

Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) monitors allow for uncapped frame rates with no screen tearing or stuttering. Traditional V-Sync tech synchronises the GPU render rate to the monitor refresh rate, while VRR allows the monitor to alter its refresh rate in order to match the render rate of the GPU.

Nvidia’s being very particular with how it dishes out its G-Sync Compatible badges though. A grand total of 400 VRR monitors have been tested and just 12 have been handed the illustrious badge.

“There are hundreds of monitor models available capable of variable refresh rates (VRR) using the VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync protocol,” writes Nvidia. “However, the VRR gaming experience can vary widely.

“To improve the experience for gamers, NVIDIA will test monitors. Those that pass our validation tests will be G-SYNC Compatible and enabled by default in the GeForce driver.”

Nvidia’s tests stipulate that the displays must show no indication of flickering, blank imaging, or artifacting whatsoever in order to earn the G-Sync badge. Screw up just once and it’s a fail, so Nvidia’s setting an imperiously high bar here which rules out some cheap and cheerful FreeSync monitors.

Don’t worry too much about Nvidia’s strict policing of VRR though. While monitors that have been validated as G-Sync compatible will have VRR support on Nvidia GPUs following a driver update, users to untested or failed monitors will be able to manually enable VRR too, albeit without official driver support.

This marks a massive sea change for Nvidia’s way of doing things. Up until now, G-Sync support required a proprietary G-Sync module that has a knock-on effect on monitor pricing. A move to a more open standard, while potentially adding more confusion for the customer, does make variable refresh rates and tear-free gaming a more affordable option. The change also means that Nvidia GeForce graphics cards are compatible with both G-Sync and FreeSync displays.

Nvidia’s official support for the VESA Adaptive-Sync standard begins rolling out on January 15th with a new driver update.