Game Tech News

When AMD and Nvidia announced their product refreshes this year, both companies chose to stick with GDDR5 or GDDR5X for their respective GPUs. For AMD, this was a straightforward business decision — High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is too expensive for the $100 – $240 segment that the company’s Polaris GPU targets, while Nvidia opted for GDDR5X since HBM2 wasn’t ready yet. A recent update from SK Hynix makes it clear that HBM2 is tiptoeing towards launch, with availability expected as soon as Q3 of this year.

According to its catalog, SK Hynix will offer a 4GB stack of HBM2 at both 1.6GT/s (GT = gigatransfers) and 2.0GB/s. Each layer will pack four 1GB layers, so a four-way HBM2 interface in late 2016 or early 2017 will pack 16GB of HBM2 memory — more than 4x the amount of RAM that AMD was able to use on its Fury and Nano products in 2015.



Maximum memory bandwidth also gets a huge boost with HBM2. While Fury X topped out at 512GB/s, HBM2 is expected to double that, up to a massive 1,024GB/s of memory bandwidth. That much memory will give modern GPUs plenty of room to spread their wings when top-end cards debut later this year — so much so, that AMD and Nvidia should finally be able to deliver real 4K performance without compromising on eye candy or visual effects. Then again, it’s not clear if Nvidia will adopt HBM2 for consumer GPUs this product cycle. Its already-announced Nvidia Titan X and GTX 1080 both use GDDR5X and don’t appear to have any problems with memory bandwidth bottlenecks. We know the company’s GP100 Pascal GPU will use HBM2, but that card is slated for the HPC and deep learning markets, not the consumer space. AMD’s upcoming Vega, in contrast, is explicitly an HBM2-equipped consumer market and is expected to go toe-to-toe with the already-launched GTX 1080 and 1070 for the top end of the consumer market.


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When Microsoft announced the Xbox One S and Xbox Scorpio earlier this year, the company’s strategy raised more than a few eyebrows. While the Xbox One midlife refresh was widely expected, there’s the chance Xbox One S sales will suffer if customers choose to wait for the significantly more powerful Project Scorpio, which is currently expected to launch at Christmas, 2017. Now that the refresh has dropped, does the Xbox One S pack enough improvements to justify its purchase?

The Xbox One S SoC has been overhauled and is now built on a 16nm FinFET process at TSMC. Die size has decreased from 363mm² to 240mm². The new chip also includes an updated HEVC decoder, HDMI 2.0 support, and HDCP 2.2. All of these changes were integrated on-die, though the GPU is still based on AMD’s earlier GCN architectures rather than Polaris.



The Xbox One S’s motherboard. Image by Eurogamer

Microsoft has said very little about any performance improvements in the Xbox One S, but extensive testing by Eurogamer has shown that the SoC’s GPU is sometimes faster than its predecessor. The GPU’s base clock has been increased to 914MHz, up from 853MHz in the original console. This small boost also increased the maximum theoretical bandwidth of the Xbox One’s ESRAM cache, up to 219GB/s from 204GB/s (actually achieved bandwidth in games is typically much lower).

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When Nvidia launched the GTX 1080 earlier this year, it didn’t take long before rumors of a new Titan-branded card followed in its wake. Unlike the GP100, which will utilize HBM2 and launch in early 2017, the Nvidia (not GeForce) Titan X is based on a different piece of silicon: GP102. This new top-end card combines a wider memory bus and higher core counts with the same GDDR5X that debuted with the GTX 1080, and it offers significantly higher performance — if you can stomach the price.

Multiple reviews of the card are up at Hot Hardware, PC Perspective, and Tom’s Hardware Guide. The Titan X packs 3,584 cores, 224 texture units, and 96 ROPS, with a base clock of 1417MHz and a boost clock of 1531MHz. That’s 40% more cores and texture units than the GTX 1080 and 50% more ROPs, though these gains are offset by decreased clock speeds, which are roughly 12% lower than the GTX 1080. Memory bandwidth is up to 480GB/s, and the TDP is just 250W — impressive for a card with specs like these.



Here’s the bottom line: This GPU is statistically a monster, and it performs like one. THG notes: “If you were of the mind that one GP104 couldn’t handle 3840×2160, Titan X could be your solution.” AMD’s Fury X has already been generally outclassed by the GTX 1070 and 1080, but fans of Team Red could at least point to a handful of DirectX 12 titles where the Fury family competed well against Nvidia’s latest GPUs. That’s gone at the top end — even when the Fury X manages to trade shots with the GTX 1080, Nvidia’s Titan X obliterates them both by 20-40%. This is the first GPU that can drive 4K at high frame rates — but boy, it comes at a price.

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One of the ways manufacturers coerce users not to modify or even open hardware they’ve purchased is through warranty-void-if-removed stickers. These stickers are common on electronics equipment — Microsoft uses them on the Xbox One, Sony has them on the PS4, and you’ve probably owned a phone that had at least one somewhere.

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Update (8/8/2016): When this story initially ran, only one RX 460 was listed on NewEgg. Multiple cards are now listed for sale at that retailer and via third-party utilities like NowInStock.net.

When AMD unveiled its new Polaris architecture last December, the company declared the new GPU family would arrive in two flavors: Polaris 11 and Polaris 10. Polaris 10 launched in July with the RX 480 and RX 470, while Polaris 11 powers the RX 460, which debuts today at $110.

The RX 460 is a smaller, cut-down version of the Polaris 11 GPU, with 896 shader cores, a boost clock of up to 1.2GHz, 56 texture units, and 16 ROPS. It uses a 128-bit memory interface instead of the 256-bit path favored by the RX 470 and RX 480, which limits total memory bandwidth to 112GB/s. It has two Compute Units disabled (14 active from a total of 16), and an estimated TDP of less-than 75W.



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Sony’s PlayStation Neo (also sometimes called the PlayStation 4.5 or PlayStation 4K) has been a hot topic since rumors of its existence started spreading earlier this spring. Sony is expected to unveil its mid-cycle upgrade platform in just under a month, at a special press event held in New York City. Sony supposedly chose the September 7 date to avoid going directly up against Nintendo’s anticipated announcement of its NX platform at the Tokyo Game Show on September 12.

This report, by French website Gameblog, confirms rumors we’ve heard concerning the PS4 Neo’s anticipated launch. Sony is rumored to want both the new platform and PlayStation VR to launch in time for Christmas 2016, and the resulting hardware extravaganza could contribute to significant earnings for the company — assuming customers bite.

What can the PS4 Neo do?

The rumors we’ve heard to date suggest that Sony will rigidly enforce backwards compatibility requirements for this new PS4. Games can’t include all-new modes of play or Neo-specific features, though developers are allowed to enhance existing capabilities for the new platform. The new console will supposedly feature eight AMD “Jaguar” CPU cores clocked at 2.1GHz (a 31% improvement), a Polaris-derived GPU with double the GPU cores and a higher clock frequency (2,304 cores total and a 911MHz clock, up from 1,154 cores and 853MHz), and 218GB/s of memory bandwidth, up from 176GB/s on the PS4 standard.

That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t tell us much about actual game performance. While there are a number of differences between the PC ecosystem and its console counterpart, we should be able to draw some relative performance data by looking at our own AMD RX 480 review. While none of our desktop GPUs is an exact match for the PS4 or PS4 Neo, the R9 270X comes fairly close to the PS4, while the RX 480 isn’t far off the PS4 Neo. In the graphs below, pay attention to just the 270X and the RX 480 — those are the GPUs we’re comparing against each other.

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Ever since we got our first peek back at VGX 2013, No Man’s Sky has been one of our most hotly anticipated releases. Developed by Hello Games, a small British studio known for creating Joe Danger, this massive procedurally generated galaxy offers a level of visual splendor that makes it stand out among a sea of indies vying for attention. Now that the game is on store shelves, it’s time to see just how well it holds up.

Unfortunately, most outlets haven’t spent very much time with the game just yet. Sure, some early copies of the game made it out to the public, but the day-one patch was only made available this week. Don’t expect to see many final review scores for the next couple of days, but you can read about the early experiences with the game over at IGN’s review in progress.

From what we’ve seen, the first impressions run the gamut from distaste to love at first sight. Where you’ll fall on the spectrum will likely depend on your expectations and personal preferences. If you were banking on No Man’s Sky being the single greatest video game of this generation, you’ll probably end up disappointed. On the other hand, if you’re just looking to explore new worlds, collect tons of resources, and fly around a beautiful galaxy, early reports point to this being $60 well spent.

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The rate at which Apple refreshes its hardware has come under fire in recent weeks. While we’ve noted that the company’s laptops are mostly reasonably new, there are some old MacBook Pros in need of a refresh and the Mac Pro desktop is now nearly three years’ old.
A new report*from Bloomberg*claims that Apple will refresh its entire MacBook Pro line this fall, with a new design and a number of new features. The company is supposedly working on a new programmable strip of OLED-based function keys that can be switched to perform different functions depending on which application you’re using. Apple’s goal is to simplify shortcuts and allow it to reprogram hardware buttons to add capabilities with software updates, rather than refreshing internal hardware.

Other changes supposedly include a thinner body (but not a tapered one like the MacBook Air), a smaller footprint with shallow curves around the edges of the device, a slightly larger trackpad, and integrated Touch ID support. Some systems will reportedly offer GPUs based on AMD’s Polaris architecture, while the lower-cost models will use Intel’s integrated graphics. USB Type-C is also rumored to be on the way and Thunderbolt 3 is logically expected, though whether Apple will use USB Type-C for it is a matter of debate. Previously, the company used DisplayPort to provide Thunderbolt capability.


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Quantum Break’s troubled PC launch on the Windows 10 Store may not have been Gears of War Ultimate Edition-levels of bad, but it was far from ideal. A massive 27GB patch in May alleviated some problems, but feedback from sites like Eurogamer and PCGamesHardware.de (German) indicates that the game as a whole remains in pretty rough shape, especially on certain cards.

News that the title will get a Steam release and DirectX 11 support is interesting, but it’s left those who backed the title as a Windows 10 exclusive in a bit of a rough spot. Despite later patches in July, many Quantum Break users still report problems, especially on older cards as detailed by GameSpot.




Adding insult to injury, a follow-up tweet indicates that the developers expect the DX11 version on Steam may well be better than the DX12 version released on the Windows 10 store, noting “We have worked on this release for a while. We got [sic] a lot more experience in shipping DX11 titles.” Asked if the company would offer Steam codes to the Windows 10 buyers who bought the crappy “exclusive” version, Thomas Puha stated “We don’t make those business decisions. We make the game.”


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Ever since we found out a new Star Trek TV show would be coming to CBS, there have been questions about the show’s scope, timeline, and focus. According to showrunner Brian Fuller, the new Star Trek: Discovery will focus on seven main characters with a female lead who’s a Lieutenant Commander rather than the Captain. It’ll feature a diverse crew, and address an incident that supposedly was referenced in the original series but wasn’t explored in any great detail (Axanar and black ops like Section 31 are off the table and supposedly it’s an incident discussed in the original series). It also takes place in the original Star Trek universe, not the rebooted Abramsverse.

Setting the show in the original timeline and so close to the original series is both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand, Fuller has already said he intends to explore a significant event referred to on the original show, even if he’s being coy about which event it is. The ten-year gap between the two shows even offers the option to visit familiar characters or settings, though we’d hope the show avoids this initially (and Fuller’s comments seem to imply it would).

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