Game Tech News

Last fall, Micron announced that it would bring a new type of GDDR5 to market, GDDR5X. At the time, it wasn’t clear if the announcement would amount to much, since Micron didn’t expect availability until the end of 2016, and both AMD and Nvidia will have likely refreshed their desktop and mobile products by then. Now, the memory standard consortium JEDEC has officially recognized and published GDDR5X as a new memory standard, which could make it much more attractive to both AMD and Nvidia.

GDDR5X vs. GDDR5

Unlike high bandwidth memory (HBM, HBM2), GDDR5X is an extension of the GDDR5 standard that video cards have used for nearly seven years. Like HBM, it should dramatically improve memory bandwidth.

GDDR5X accomplishes this in two separate ways. First, it moves from a DDR bus to a QDR bus. The diagram below shows the differences between an SDR (single data rate), DDR (double data rate) and QDR (quad data rate) bus.




An SDR bus transfers data only on the rising edge of the clock signal, as it transitioned from a 0 to a 1. A DDR bus transfers data both when the clock is rising and when it falls again, meaning the system can effectively transmit data twice as quickly at the same clock rate. A QDR bus transfers up to four data words per clock cycle — again, effectively doubling bandwidth (compared to DDR) without raising clock speeds.


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File this one under “Didn’t see this coming.” Today, Sony announced that its transforming its PlayStation business and creating a new LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). The new company is comprised of Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment International. These two divisions cover Sony’s entire PlayStation business, including R&D, game development and publishing, and the PlayStation Network.

The new company will be known as Sony Interactive Entertainment, and will begin operation on April 1, 2016 (and no, it’s not an April Fools’ joke).

“By integrating the strengths of PlayStation’s hardware, software, content and network operations, SIE will become an even stronger entity, with a clear objective to further accelerate the growth of the PlayStation® business,” said Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Group Executive in charge of Network Entertainment of Sony Corporation.



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Back in November, Rise of the Tomb Raider launched on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 to massive critical acclaim. As a sequel to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, it was seen as an improvement in nearly every way possible. However, the limitations of Microsoft’s consoles tripped up the game in the performance department. Thankfully, the PC port launches today, and it looks incredible.

The folks over at Digital Foundry took an in-depth look at the PC release, and they were thoroughly impressed by the attention to detail that Nixxes Software put into this port. After the nightmare of Arkham Knight and the apparent abandonment of the PC version of Mortal Kombat X, it’s just nice to see such a top-notch port hitting the PC.

Interestingly, one of the most noteworthy improvements here isn’t the increased graphical fidelity — it’s the latency. In the Xbox One version, there is significant input latency that wasn’t found on the 360 port (also handled by Nixxes Software).

After putting the PC port through its paces, Digital Foundry found that the input latency was reduced even further in this version of the game. It doesn’t make much of a difference when you’re just walking about the open world, but when it comes time to aim your gun quickly, the latency can definitely cause some frustration in the Xbox One version.

While the PC port is capable of outperforming the Xbox One original, don’t expect a budget gaming PC to hit 60fps on high settings. The game’s minimum requirements list a Core i3-2100, 6GB of RAM, and a 2GB GTX 650, but the fidelity will suffer substantially if that’s all you’ve got. If you want to run the high settings, you’re going to need a graphics card with at least 3GB of memory. Very high? Invest in a 4GB card. Square-Enix recommends using a GTX 970, but Digital Foundry says a GTX 960 will be able to deliver a 1080p30 experience superior to the Xbox One version.

Of course, hitting 1080p60 requires a bit more horsepower. A GTX 970 can deliver 60fps, but it drops some frames in the village area. If that bothers you, turning off tessellation will solve the problem. Even if you don’t have top of the line hardware, you can make some sacrifices in the name of frame rate. Like any good PC game, this port allows you to switch most effects on and off at will, so you can decide exactly which features you can live without.

Earlier this week, the single-player DLC Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch landed on both the Xbox One and Xbox 360 to mostly positive responses. While some people were disappointed in the length of this $10 release, any excuse to jump back into Rise of the Tomb Raider is a good one. And since the DLC is launching day-one for the PC crowd, they can get the full gameplay experience from the get-go.

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he VR game scene is heating up, and it’s not just about AAA titles, as we’re finding in our new series on developing for VR. Hot off the heels of our interview with No Goblin’s Dan Teasdale, I had the pleasure of speaking to an indie developer named Samantha Kalman. She’s been making games for years, and now she’s decided to take on the challenge of making multiple new VR games on her own.

Thanks to her fascinating background in both the creative and technical aspects of game development, hearing Kalman’s thoughts on VR lends a new perspective — not just a better understanding of what VR is now, but a hopeful vision of what VR can become. If you still classify yourself as a VR skeptic, Samantha’s infectious passion might just change your mind.

Samantha Kalman interview

Grant Brunner: Can you tell us about who you are and your experience in gamedev?
Samantha Kalman: Sure. I’m Samantha Kalman. I started making games as a hobby in my early twenties when I discovered [the Unity game engine] which was at version 1.0 at the time. I was working in software testing when I found it and started doing hobby stuff. I became QA director of Unity when it was very, very small — fewer than ten people. Followed through with Unity up until 3.0 — released that as part of the team.
And then I became an indie developer full time. I tried a couple of times to make it work. I made a game called Sen, which is a music game that’s up on Kongregate.com. That made me no money, so I went and got a job at Amazon where I was a design technologist, which is basically a designer who writes code, on the Amazon Fire Phone. I was there for a year and a half working closely with the user experience and the 3D presentation of the device. And then tried again with indie games.
I felt like Sen was an unrealized idea — like unfinished business. I returned to this idea of “how do you make a game that helps people make music?” So, I spent the next couple of years making Sentris, and that’s out, and it kinda did it. Since that has been finished, I’ve been going into a lot of VR experiments. You know, just playing with a couple of different projects and ideas with the platforms.
GB: You’ve publicly discussed two of your current projects: Project Red and Unwinding. Can you give us an overview of what those are?
SK: Yeah, so, they’re two projects, and they’re pretty different. Unwinding is an experiment for me to do what’s called ground-up game design. Where as Sentris was top-down — I sort of had a goal, and I was aiming toward that. Unwinding is a ground-up where I’m trying to play with mechanics, and learn about what’s interesting in VR. And sort of build toward an undefined goal and see what kind of fun and challenging experiences can emerge in the meantime. Both projects share a similarity of creating a feeling of existing in an impossible space. So, Unwinding is kind of like a space metaphor. Like, there’s kind of a planet thing and then you are solving puzzles maybe within the planet — very abstract puzzles.
Project Red is more of a world building experiment. I love the look of Rez, and wanted to build something Rez-like that has a sense of impossibility. But in “Red” it’s really about the motion — the sensation of moving through space. Kind of being surrounded, and maybe even being overwhelmed by geometry and how close it is to you. There’s some light Metroidvania mechanics on the table for that game.



GB: All I’ve seen of these projects are your blog posts and screenshots from the early stages of development, and they’re both very abstract in appearance. Do the games take place in first-person, or is it so abstract that you’re not even really a person — you’re an abstract form as a camera in the game world?
SK: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think that all VR games are inherently first-person — even ones where you’re controlling an avatar. The really incredible thing about VR is that you are a person who is wearing this thing that is providing you a lens into the world. It’s like picking up a pair of binoculars, and looking at the world far away. But you’re picking up a pair of goggles, and you’re looking into a different world. This is one of the most incredible things about the medium: to be looking first-person into a world.
When the iPhone came out, people were like “Oh, when we start developing games from the ground-up for a touch screen, that’s going to be a game-changer.” I think that for VR, building a game from the ground-up means acknowledging that the person playing it is a person. It’s almost like a fourth wall thing, but it’s not exactly. I think it’s important to acknowledge that there are people stepping inside these worlds.

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E3, and the Nintendo NX’s full review, are still months away, but news around Nintendo’s next-generation console has been hot lately. Today, we’ve got a new pair of rumors around the device: Nintendo is supposedly seeding software development kits already, and the platform will combine a full-fledged handheld device with console play.

According to the WSJ via Geek.com, analyst Hiroshi Hayase, from IHS Technologies, expects “a small recovery in shipments of flat-panel displays for game devices because of Nintendo’s new game hardware expected to be released in 2016.” Hayase expects shipments of 3.1 – 5-inch panels to increase from 14.1 million units in 2015 to 16.5 million units this year.

Nintendo’s NX: Console hardware, standalone handheld?

Like the Wii U, the NX will supposedly combine a handheld gamepad with a living room console. Unlike the Wii U, however, the NX controller will supposedly be an independent unit. Instead of being tethered to the base console by an invisible wireless leash, gamers can take the handheld gamepad anywhere they want.

Sony has tried an approach like this with the PlayStation Vita, with mixed results. Since the PS4 has a different controller from the Vita, not all titles map well to handheld. From what we’ve heard, the Vita is technically capable of streaming a game over the Internet, but you’ll realistically want WiFi and a local PS4 to use the features.
As for the NX controller, a recent patent granted to five Nintendo employees show a rather odd device:


The entire face of the device is one screen, with embedded thumbsticks on the left and right. While Nintendo loves being edgy and trying new things, I’m deeply dubious of this design. First, there’s the practical question of how well any display would survive rigorous gameplay sessions day after day. I’ve never cracked an iPhone screen from touching it, but I’ve never tried to play Smash on my iPhone for hours at a time, either.

What about the hardware?

If the Wall Street Journal is correct, one of the major features of the Nintendo NX will be the ability to transfer a game session to a gamepad and take it with you. A 5.1-inch panel would actually be smaller than the current Wii U Gamepad, though far larger than the 3DS.

The big question is how Nintendo would handle the local rendering and associated battery life hit. If the console has a target of 60 FPS and 900p, the handheld version may be able to get away with a somewhat lower resolution target. But would the handheld the same hardware as the console (albeit likely at a lower clock rate) Would save game sessions you completed locally synchronize with the NX when you stepped back in range? If the console offloads gaming sessions to handheld hardware, can a family take advantage of this to use the NX console for an entirely different game?

If the game controller contains a significant amount of standalone hardware, that will drive up costs and weight. The final product wouldn’t need to be as complex or expensive as a modern smartphone, but it would still need physical interface buttons, some type of operating system, storage, wireless radios, and at least a moderately powerful SoC. While there have been rumors that AMD is building the NX, the focus of those rumors was that AMD would be building the console, not the handheld.

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Nintendo is currently one of the biggest question marks in the world of gaming. We’re likely to see the next-gen NX system for the first time later this year, and that could lead to an early demise for the Wii U. The company’s first mobile game is set for release next month, and there are already four more titles lined up for smartphones. Even better, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima finally expressed interest in modern virtual reality hardware. With so many balls in the air, everyone in the industry is lining up to see how many Nintendo will be able to catch.

Last week, word started circulating that dev kits for the NX have already begun to ship. The rumor mill has the device pegged for a holiday 2016 release, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nintendo wait it out until sometime in 2017. Either way, a four or five year lifespan is pretty short these days. The Wii lasted around six years before being replaced, and the Xbox 360 was able to pull off a whopping eight years. But thanks to the Wii U’s lack of traction, pulling the plug early is starting to seem pretty appealing.




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After a whopping eight years in development, Bethesda has finally given a date for the next iteration of Doom. On May 13, players will finally suit up as, erm, Anonymous Space Marine, to take on the forces of Hell and/or an evil corporation. It’s all a bit vague, you see. All of Bethesda’s trailers have been heavy on action, extremely short on gameplay, and today’s launch trailer is no different.

Today’s launch trailer builds on the E3 gameplay trailer that came out last year. Both show a game that’s exceedingly heavy on action and apparent combos — tearing off limbs, gouging out eyes, being ripped in half by a Cyberdemon — you know, the usual events of an Anonymous Space Marine’s life.

If the gameplay trailers are anything to go by, Bethesda’s Doom is a different beast than the brooding, jump-scare, darkfest that was Doom 3. id’s 2004 shooter may have sold well, but as someone who loved both Doom and Doom 2, I couldn’t get into it. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 debuted within months of each other, but the contrast between the two couldn’t have been larger.

Half-Life 2 was one of the first FPS games to successfully integrate object manipulation and physics into the game engine (we shall not speak of Trespasser). Doom 3, in contrast, relied on static environments and a number of already-tired tropes in the genre. Enemies that spawned behind you or leapt out from hidden closets in rooms you’d thought you cleared might have been cutting edge in 1993 and 1994, but they were already worn thin ten years later.



As for this new Doom, it looks a fair bit like the Brutal Doom mod for the modern game. I’ve actually spent a fair bit of time playing Brutal Doom this year, and it’s a hilariously fun way to replay the original maps. Scavenged weapons, grenades, mouselook, fatalities, and many of the other tweaks collectively update the classic Doom, while simultaneously remaining true to the original title in a way Doom 3 never managed. The mod effort to implement Doom’s shareware levels in Doom 3’s engine were much closer to the original game, in my personal opinion.

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Welcome to ExtremeTech’s comprehensive RAM guide, in which we’ll answer a broad range of questions related to how much system RAM you need these days, whether or not it’s worth it to upgrade older systems, and whether DDR3 or DDR4 (the new main types of system RAM) is a better investment option.

It’s interesting to look back and see how much things have changed over the past twenty years. People have been writing RAM guides for decades, but back when I was learning about computing, much more emphasis was paid to the specific technical implementation of any given RAM standard.* Fast Page Mode RAM, EDO RAM, SDRAM, DDR, and RDRAM are just a few of the standards that existed elbow-to-elbow, and which type of memory your system used often determined if it was worth upgrading.

Nowadays, things are simpler. While a few of you may still have DDR2-based equipment from 2005 to 2009, the majority of systems today are likely using DDR3. That’s the memory standard we’ll focus on; if you have DDR2-related questions you’re welcome to drop them in the comments.

How much RAM do you need?

How much RAM you need in a system depends on what you intend to do with it, how long you intend to keep it, and whether or not you can upgrade your memory post-purchase. This last point is important, as many high-end laptops have eliminated user-upgradeable RAM in order to reduce system thickness by roughly six nanometers.
Adding additional RAM to any laptop generally increases power consumption by a measurable (if small) amount, but this shouldn’t be an issue for most users. It’s also better to have a bit too much RAM than too little, as whatever you gain in power savings you’ll promptly lose to increased disk paging.

Apple’s MacBook Air offers 4GB of RAM, but most of the systems from Dell, HP, and other OEMs start at 8GB, and I think that’s the better sweet spot. That’s not to say you can’t get by on 4GB — you absolutely can — but 8GB gives you a bit more breathing room.

The MacBook Air ushered in the era of soldered DRAM. Everyone followed.

There’s at least some evidence that modern desktop applications have slowed the rate at which they demand more RAM. From 1990 to 2000, Photoshop’s minimum RAM requirement rose from 2MB to 64MB, a 32x increase in 10 years. It took another 16 years to match this early rate (from 64MB in 2000 to 2GB in 2016).
A lightweight system today can get by with 4GB of RAM. 8GB should be plenty for current and near-term future applications, 16GB gives you comfortable space for the future, and anything over 16GB is likely overkill unless you specifically know you need it (such as for video editing or audio post-production). This holds true for desktops as well as laptops.

DDR3 or DDR4?

Right now there’s plenty of DDR3 systems still being sold, but DDR4 has already begun to replace it on the mass market. If you’re building a new system and don’t have a specific reason to use DDR3, we’d recommend buying hardware that’s compatible with DDR4.
With that said, if your system does use DDR3, that’s not the problem that it used to be. In the old days, a computer stuck on, say, PC133 SDRAM was at an intrinsic performance disadvantage compared with systems that used DDR, particularly at higher clock speeds. That’s less true than it used to be, and it may make sense to upgrade a DDR3 system depending on what you have and when you bought it. The reason to use DDR4 at this point has more to do with long-term memory pricing trends and future compatibility than fundamental performance. We’ll explore current price and the performance question later in this guide.

Does faster RAM boost system performance?

Short answer: Sometimes, but not by much.
Medium answer: It depends on other system components, workload, and whether or not you’re using integrated graphics.
Longer answer: See below.
RAM performance is controlled by two metrics: Clock speed and access latency. Access latencies tend to fall much more slowly than clock rates — as this diagram shows, the memory cell cycle time of PC100 is roughly equivalent to DDR4-2133. DDR4 doesn’t match DDR3-2133 cycle times until you hit DDR4-4266.


RAM cycle times at various clock speeds

Conventional wisdom is that RAM latency has become relatively less important in recent years, thanks to a combination of factors. Back when L2 caches were small, memory controllers were off-die (and clocked at a fraction of CPU speed), and there were no L3 caches, memory latency had a larger impact on overall system performance. Modern CPUs are typically backed by 512 to 1MB of L2 (per core), and 1.5MB to 2MB of L3 cache (per core). Memory controllers are now integrated on-die and run at full processor speed. As a result, RAM latency simply doesn’t play as large a part as it once did in determining performance.
As for raw memory bandwidth, the same large caches that minimize the impact of RAM latency in most applications also limit the impact of memory bandwidth. Desktop applications are, for the most part, latency-sensitive, not bandwidth-sensitive.


These performance results are from Corsair, but they match extensive testing on the topic. AMD APUs love fast DRAM.

There’s one major exception to this rule: Integrated graphics performance. Both Intel and AMD integrated graphics see some benefit from higher-speed memory, but the gains are particularly large on the AMD side. This has proven true for every APU since at least Trinity, and will likely continue to be accurate for DDR4-based hardware. The advent of HBM2 in APUs will finally throw open the bandwidth floodgates — until then, integrated graphics will always be somewhat bandwidth-limited.

What about high-end gaming performance?

Until recently, I would’ve told you that high-speed RAM had very little impact on high-end gaming. A recent report from Digital Foundry, however, appeared to show otherwise.

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Oculus promised it would unveil certified PCs and bundles that would meet the demands of its own VR solution. It’s now unveiled the first of those systems, as promised, though there’s been some confusion regarding price points and bundles. We’ll help you sort it out.

The first wave of systems consists of desktops from Asus and Dell (Alienware is a Dell subsidiary). The cheapest configuration is an Asus G11CD, a desktop tower with an Intel Core i5-6400, 8GB of DDR4-2133, a GTX 970, and a 1TB HDD for $1,049. Alienware and Dell both offer systems with identical specs for $1,199, which raises the question of why anyone would buy them when the Asus rig is $150 cheaper.

Bundles, discounts, and Oculus pre-orders

There’s been some confusion over which systems are bundled with an Oculus Rift and which are not, so let’s clear that up first. Bundled systems — by which we mean systems that include the Oculus Rift, an Xbox One controller, and all the software that the Rift ships with start at $1,499. But not every system sold above $1,500 comes with a Rift bundled — none of the systems on the Rift blog post actually include a Rift headset. Oculus notes that this $1,499 bundle price point is for a limited time only, implying that the cost of bundled hardware will rise afterwards.



Asus system specs

There is one caveat to this. The various manufacturers are offering a $100 discount if you already pre-ordered an Oculus Rift. The website notes: “For those who’ve already pre-ordered Rift, you’ll be able to purchase discounted Oculus Ready PCs in select countries and regions. To claim your discount, check your order status and opt into partner offers if you haven’t already. Offer codes will appear on your order status page February 16.”

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CBS has announced that the upcoming Star Trek TV show will be helmed by Brian Fuller, creator of Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, and Hannibal. Before he created these shows, Fuller was a writer on both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine*and Voyager, and has talked about the idea of bringing the series back to television for nearly a decade.

Fuller, who has been a Star Trek fan since he was a child, has pitched multiple ideas around a new series since 2008, when he told IF Magazine: “I would love to return to the spirit of the old series with the colors and attitude. I loved Voyager*and Deep Space Nine, but they seem to have lost the ‘60s fun and I would love to take it back to its origin.”

More recently, Fuller has speculated about setting a Star Trek TV show on the USS Reliant rather than the USS Enterprise, or rebooting the TNG universe within the Abrams timeline rather than returning to the original timeline in which all of the previous television shows took place.
Watching Brian Fuller

I’m not familiar with Fuller’s later television shows, but it just so happens that I’ve been re-watching all of the Star Trek spin-offs. Fuller wrote just two DS9 episodes, “The Darkness and the Light,” and “Empok Nor.” Both are solid, though I’d argue “Empok Nor” is the better of the two.



Bryan Fuller. I have no explanation for the fox.

His Voyager repertoire is more extensive, at 20 episodes. My initial opinion of Voyager when it aired wasn’t very positive, but I’ve actually warmed to the show more now that I’m watching it again. It’s still my third-favorite behind DS9 and TNG, but it deserved more credit than I initially gave it. Now that I’ve seen which episodes Fuller wrote, I think some of that credit belongs to him.

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