Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Update: OK, we’ve now had correct answers to both questions, so please cease your frenzied entries now. Thanks for getting involved, all. Now updated with answers. Well done to our two winners! And for the avoidance of doubt, our two winners know who they are!

This is it, folks. Your chance to live the dream and kick off 2013 in style. I’ve scratched backs, pulled strings and fiddled with knobs. The result is that we’re giving away a pair of gaming rig kits composed of RPS’s favourite clobber. So, that’s an Intel Core i5-3570K processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 graphics and some Z77 motherboard action. And it can all be yours. All you have to do is riddle me these questions three. Well, two and a tie breaker… Read the rest of this entry »

Graphics, graphics, graphics. It’s all you lot care about. Actually, it’s what I care about most when it comes to PC performance. So why fight it? Instead, I’ve got a couple of graphics-related titbits for you this week. Firstly, I’ve had a chat with Intel’s graphics guru, Richard Huddy. Odds are, you’ll be gaming on Intel graphics one day. What’s more, the mere fact that Intel has snapped up the likes of Mr Huddy, previously known for his dev-rel uberness at ATI, when there was an ATI, is symptomatic of Intel’s increasingly full-on attitude to graphics. The other part of this week’s awfully exciting package is NVIDIA’s new GeForce Experience. It’s an automated game settings optimisation tool. The idea is to take the headache out of graphics settings and give you the holy grail of PC performance and visuals with console levels of setup pain, which is to say zero pain.
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Couple of questions for you hardware freaks to ponder this week. Is it time to think the unthinkable, to do the undoable and ditch the hallowed keyboard n’ mouse control interface for PC gaming? Oh, and is the desktop PC dead? The former’s something I’ve wondered for a while in relation to PC interfaces in general, but now somebody is actually having a proper stab at bettering ye olde rodent and fiddlestick. The latter bombshell, meanwhile, follows rumours Intel will stop selling desktop CPUs in a little over a year. That sounds bad. Fortunately, the reality isn’t altogether catastrophic. Read the rest of this entry »

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something doomed. That’s the remit, chaps, keeping you updated with all things hard and gamey every week. I’ll stick the best of the latest kit and most RPS-relevant trends under your snouts, a mix of kit I’ve tried, stuff I haven’t got my hands on yet but looks interesting and other things wot you need to know. This week, some sexy new screens, a new SSD from Intel, a pint-sized gaming portable, AMD on the ropes and more. So much more. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve dabbled with mobile gaming machines in Hard Choices passim. Gaming lappies are great, but they’re also punitively pricey. What if laptops with tolerable gaming chops were on the verge of an epic price drop? That might just be the case courtesy of Intel’s upcoming Haswell processors and a funky little software layer from a little known third party. For clarity, the context here is relatively low-end gaming portables, not full-on desktop replacement sorts. But if you’re strapped for cash or just looking for something casual for away days, read on.

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Bulldozer and Zambezi begat Piledriver and Vishera. Say that three times before bed for a month and you might just remember AMD’s latest chips. So it goes with silly CPU code names. Completely lost you? AMD has just tweaked its FX-branded PC processors. Out goes the AMD FX 8100 series, in comes the AMD FX 8300 series. But am I bovered? And should you care? Read on to find out.

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Quick (and slightly belated, sorry team – Jim) heads up to the RPS massive regarding a couple of interesting new SSDs from Samsung. I speak of the 840 and 840 Pro Series drives, which respectively promise to insert a bat up the nightdress of SSD pricing and performance. One will be uber cheap. The other crazy fast. Eventually, anyway.

Ideally, of course, we’d have cheap and fast in one drive. And big. Hold that thought. First, let’s consider these new Sammy drives. The plain 840 Series’ party trick is the the introduction of Triple-Level Cell or TLC flash memory.
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As promised, we’re back again with part two of our deep dive into gaming portables. {Part one} This time around we’re going to dig into the tricky choice between whitebooks and branded bricks, ponder the dark art of graphics upgrades, have a think about screens, and take a closer look at the budget options. And some other stuff. Like CPUs. So, lots to discuss. Let’s get cracking!
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