Author: AkG @ Hardware Canucks

Despite being launched years ago, Linksys’ WRT54G is still considered one of the best wireless routers available on the market. While most of this appeal is due to very capable third party firmware, the WRT54G set a high water mark that was only recently surpassed by some of the latest AC-band products. In order to keep up with the competition Linksys is now launching a spiritual successor to their storied router. Called the WRT1900AC, it brings high performance, a user friendly design and a broad feature set to a market that’s already filled with alternatives.

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By Ian Cutress @ AnandTech

The initial set of Z97 reviews demonstrated that most motherboard manufacturers were implementing at least one the new storage options offered by the chipset: SATA Express and M.2. The motherboard we are testing today, the Z97-Pro, uses both but incorporates a switching system so only one is active at the time. Similarly to the Z97-Deluxe which we have reviewed, ASUS’ new brushed metalling gold design is here on the Z97-Pro as well.

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Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• SteelSeries Unveils the Rival: Dota 2 Edition Gaming Mouse
• Palit Releases the Silent GeForce GTX 750Ti/GTX 750 KalmX Series Cards
• ASUS Unveils the Strix GTX 750 Ti OC Graphics Card
• Phanteks Releases the Enthoo Luxe Full Tower PC Case
• Spire Debuts the CoolBox F12 and F14 Mid-Tower PC Cases
• Creative Introduces the SB Inferno Gaming Headset
• ASUS Announces the Xonar U5 USB Soundcard and Headphone Amplifier
• ViewSonic Launches 28-inch VX2858Sml Desktop Monitor
• GIGABYTE’s EasyTune App Makes Overclocking a Breeze on New Intel® Pentium® Anniversary Edition CPUs
• 4K Monitor Being Made by Acer, Will Have 28-Inch Diagonal
• EK Readies New Full-Cover Water Block for Radeon R9 290X Graphics Cards
• BIOSTAR Presents Its System-On-Chip Solutions
• Club 3D Launches World’s First USB 3.0 to 4K Graphics Adapter
• Freecom Launches Three New External SSDs
• KINGMAX Unveils an M.2 SATA3 Solid State Drive
• Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB Flash Drive Now Available
• Most Intel Broadwell CPUs to arrive in Q1 2015
• Xilence Presents Performance A Power Supply Series

HMS Campbeltown and the Raid on St Nazaire, 28 March 1942

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

The embattled German battleship Bismarck shuddered as British 14 and 15 inch shell salvos rained down around her, sending huge, cascading waterspouts skyward. One British shell struck her up forward at the waterline near the bow, piercing a number of fuel tanks and venting her to the sea. Bismarck’s 15 inch guns thundered back at her British tormentors HMS Hood and Prince of Wales, straddling and striking both ships. Bismarck’s heavy cruiser escort Prinz Eugen fired her lighter, but still dangerous main battery 8 inch guns at the British as fast as they could be serviced. In the highly confused sea battle that followed, a German shell struck the lightly armored battle cruiser Hood amidships, causing a massive chain reaction explosion that touched off her secondary magazines and broke her back, splitting the ship in two. Hood immediately sank, taking all but three of her crew to the bottom of the Denmark Strait. German observers on both their warships momentarily froze in shock and horror as they gazed uncomprehendingly at the sight of the mighty Hood exploding and sinking. The greatest and most storied, symbolic warship of the Royal Navy had just blown up before their very eyes. The two German warship’s guns now switched targets to bring all their fire down upon the newly built HMS Prince of Wales. The new British battleship was rocked while taking a number of direct hits, tearing up her upper works and setting fires, but her armor belt prevented more serious damage. Just as Prince of Wales appeared about to undergo the same fate as the Hood, the German task force sheered off and withdrew from the action. The battered Bismarck, now trailing an oil slick and running a few degrees down at the bow, set a course for German occupied France to repair damage to her shell punctured hull. There was but one dry dock outside of Germany that could repair and accommodate so large a warship as Bismarck. The Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire, France.

Read on…

Bohemia Interactive today released Arma 3 Bootcamp – a major new update for Arma 3, which delivers additional single- and multiplayer tutorials, a Virtual Reality training environment, a character- equipment- and weapons-viewer called Virtual Arsenal, refinements to the fatigue and weapon sway game mechanics, plus the anticipated Addon integration for Arma 3’s Steam Workshop. The update is further introduced in the brand new Arma 3 Bootcamp trailer.

The Arma 3 Bootcamp Update is now available for free to all owners of Arma 3 and will download and install automatically via Steam.

Get more information on the Arma 3 Bootcamp Update via the official Press Release.

Who is really leading the French Revolution?

Source: CVG

A critical moment in the French Revolution sets the scene for Assassin’s Creed Unity in this new trailer from Ubisoft.

“Paris, 1789. Commoners starved in the streets while aristocrats squandered the wealth of the nation,” reads the video description.

“Desperate and angry, they united and revolted against the power at hand and started the Revolution… But did the people truly lead the fight? Or did obscur forces use this time of chaos to spread their power?”

Assassin’s Creed Unity is set in 18th century Paris, during the French revolution, with players cast as French-Austrian assassin Arno Victor Dorian.

Ubisoft has said the game features its “biggest playground ever”, which has been “filled with hundreds of quests, activities and rewards”.

This is the second AC Unity trailer released today – an earlier video discussed the oppression of the people at the hands of “an arrogant and decadent aristocracy”.

The Assassin’s Creed Unity release date is set for October 28 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

System Requirements Revealed

Firefly Studios has just released the minimum system requirements for their long awaited ‘castle sim’ sequel Stronghold Crusader 2. Having entered closed Beta last week, most of the remaining developing time on Crusader 2 will be spent optimising the game’s performance on PC and tweaking gameplay.

“When we first announced Stronghold Crusader 2 one of the first pieces of information released was that the game will use a newly enhanced 3D engine. By this point the team was so experienced with the Havok Vision Engine that learning something completely new and moving away from 3D would be a waste of that knowledge. Our stated goal with Crusader 2 was to create the best 3D Stronghold game yet and that’s exactly what we intent to deliver.

Everyone here at Firefly wants the playability of the 2D Stronghold titles within a 3D space and our enhanced version of the Vision Engine has thankfully provided us with the tools needed to achieve this. Naturally a concern for players at the time was ‘Will the game run on my machine?’. This is a fair question and of course we are aiming to get the game running on a wide range of systems, performance being just as high on our list of priorities as bug fixing. With the game currently in beta and as such feature-complete, we have already had time to focus on optimisation and performance testing. As a result, we have been able to determine the minimum system requirements for Stronghold Crusader 2.”

The minimum PC system requirements for Stronghold Crusader 2 are as follows:

• Operating System: Windows® XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 (latest service packs) with DirectX 9.0c
• Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2Ghz or equivalent
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Video: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800GT 512MB or AMD Radeon™ HD 2900XT 512MB or better
• Storage: 6 GB available HD space
• Internet: Broadband Internet connection

The latest entry in Firefly’s best selling series of medieval real-time strategy games, Stronghold Crusader 2 is set to appear online and in store shelves on September 2nd 2014.

For more information please visit the official Stronghold Crusader 2 website.

By David Yee @ Legit Reviews

Turtle Beach is perhaps a name better known amongst console gamers since you can easily find their Ear Force lineup of headsets somewhere close to where the boxed console games are in certain stores. Most Turtle Beach Ear Force headsets are compatible with computers or any electronic device with a 3.5 mm jack nonetheless because most gamers or even most people make due with one set of headphones for all their devices. The Turtle Beach Z SEVEN we have for review is actually part of a much larger family of SEVEN headsets. The Z SEVEN is posited as the version for PCs and Macs, the XP SEVEN drops the computer compatibility and goes for Xbox 360 and PS3 compatibility, The M SEVEN is the mobile variant, and the XO SEVEN is the first third-party headset compatible with Xbox One. Then there’s also a bunch of limited edition SEVEN headsets with alternate earcup decorative plates themed after games and movies such as Captain America, Thor, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Titanfall.

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By Joe Kershner @ PureOC

Today’s high demanding games can cause serious heat issues with improperly cooled graphic cards, so what do we do when they start to overheat? Look into water cooling? Not if your graphics card uses a non-referenced PCB. I’m in that boat; I picked up a few video cards without realizing they were non-referenced. The question is, what other options do we have in order to better cool the GPU and memory? Arctic has came up with a solution with the Accelero Xtreme IV 280(X), which is an upgraded air cooling solution that cools the GPU and memory utilizing 5 heatpipes and a custom rear heatsink.

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By: Hilbert Hagedoorn @ GURU3D

A while ago NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX Titan Black which we review. We never tested it as it was supposed to be a professional series and targeted card. Nvidia’s Board partners however are slowly re-releasing this product as a gaming graphics card, as well as Nvidia who is plugging the product in their gaming benchmarks on their own website. As such, we figured that it is about time we review this puppy as well. Meet Joe Black, ehm Geforce GTX Titan Black.

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