Hardware

Source: Overclockers Club

New NVIDIA Game Ready Drivers are available, with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Far Cry 4, The Crew, and World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor all getting some nice improvements. The new GeForce 344.75 WHQL drivers offer performance improvements in those four games and others, so if any of you picked them up or are planning to pick them up, now is a good time to update your drivers. There are also new SLI profiles for Heroes of the Storm Alpha and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, plus an updated one for Assassin’s Creed Unity. NVIDIA does state that both BioWare and Ubisoft are working to get any single and multi-GPU issues ironed out for Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4, so please be patient while that is being resolved. Ubisoft plans to get something out today, while BioWare is still working on it.

The 344.75 drivers also provide support for NVIDIA’s Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA), which helps to improve anti-aliasing quality while minimizing the performance hit. It only works on the GTX 980, 970, 980M, and 970M right now, as well as about 20 games. In order to take advantage of MFAA, you simply need to enable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel and then set MSAA in the games to either 2x or 4x. You can see the full list of supported games at GeForce.com, but some examples include: Civilization: Beyond Earth, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, and Saints Row IV.

NVIDIA’s GeForce Game Ready 344.75 WHQL drivers can be downloaded from GeForce.com or through GeForce Experience.

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.

• MSI Launches GeForce GTX 970 Golden Edition OC
• Corsair Hydro Series HG10 GPU Liquid Cooling Bracket Released – VIDEOS
• Thermalright Announces HR-02 Macho Rev. B CPU Cooler
• be quiet! Announces its First High-end PC Case
• SeaSonic Announces Snow Silent 1050W Power Supply
• GIGABYTE Announces X99M-Gaming 5 Micro-ATX Motherboard
• Corsair Launches the Neutron XT Line of Performance SSDs
• NVIDIA Announces Tesla K80, First Graphics Card with 24GB RAM
• NVIDIA Breathes Life into Kepler with the GK210 Silicon
• OCZ Slips Out Vertex 460A SSD
• Swiftech Announces the MCR140-X Drive Radiator, Pump, and Reservoir Integration
• EK Releases MSI® GTX 970 Gaming 4G Full-Cover Water Block
• Aqua Computer Introduces Farbwerk RGB LED Controller
• Alphacool Announces Laing DDC Pumps

By David Yee @ Legit Reviews

Today, we’re giving our attention to a reasonably priced gaming keyboard from Thermaltake’s gaming division. The Tt eSPORTS Challenger Prime costs $29.99 plus $1.99 shipping at Newegg, but packs features normally expected from more expensive gaming keyboards including tri-color backlighting, dedicated macro keys, and dedicated media keys. Already, the Challenger Prime is looking like the keyboard to beat at this price.

Read The Review Here

By Stuart Davidson @ Hardware Heaven

Past experience with Mad Catz products tells us that they are happy to step away from the norm when it comes to product design. The S.T.R.I.K.E. keyboards for example are pretty unique in their design. And of course the R.A.T. mice with movable parts isn’t a design you see every day. So we always look forward to seeing what they have to offer and today we cover one of their latest mice in our Mad Catz M.M.O. TE review.

Read The Review Here

By Ian Cutress @ AnandTech

There are many ways to do something different in the motherboard space, especially with respect to functionality and design. In terms of the design element, we have seen many motherboards recently go for a black and red theme, but in the past we had yellow, pink, and all sorts of interesting combinations. Upon popular request, ASUS is releasing the ASUS Z97 Mark S, an arctic camouflage special edition version of the TUF Z97 Sabertooth Mark 1. We were lucky to get motherboard number #0001 for review.

Read The Review Here

Source: techPowerUp!

In what is NVIDIA’s third Game Ready driver release in the past three months, the new GeForce 344.65 WHQL is launched specifically for the week’s hottest game release, Assassin’s Creed Unity. The driver comes with optimizations for the game, its SLI profile, and optimal settings for GeForce Experience. The driver also tags along improvements to the optimizations of the past two “Game Ready” releases, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Civilization: Beyond Earth.

You can download the GeForce 344.65 WHQL drivers from the GeForce website.

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.

• Noctua Presents Three New 92 mm Premium Coolers
• Speedlink Intros the Decus Limited Edition Gaming Mouse
• Inno3D Teasing Accelero Hybrid S, New Cooler for iChill GTX 900 Series
• GIGABYTE Announces GeForce GTX 980 WaterForce Tri-SLI AIO Cooler
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN II Detailed
• EK Introduces Short Type GeForce GTX 970 Water Block
• ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Poseidon Pictured – VIDEO
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan II Reportedly Detailed Alongside GTX 960
• DeepCool Introduces the Smarter Line of Cases
• Cooler Master Silencio 652S & 352 Coming to North America
• Zalman Denies Bankruptcy Rumors
• ASUS Announces Limited-Edition TUF Sabertooth Z97 Mark S

By Don Woligroski @ Tom’s Hardware

Better late than never, though. Today Sapphire introduces its Vapor-X R9 290X 8GB card, a factory overclocked model with twice the amount of RAM found on the reference 290X that was released just over one year ago. A lot has changed in that year, but most importantly Nvidia has launched the similarly-performing $330 GeForce GTX 970, pushing the Radeon R9 290X’s original $550 MSRP down to a the same range. From a marketing perspective the timing is right for Sapphire to release a 290X with twice the video memory, at a time when the Radeon R9 290X can use an edge against the tough Nvidia competitor.

Read The Review Here

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.

• AMD Confirms 8GB VRAM Bump For Radeon R9 290X And Civ: Beyond Earth Bundle
• Club 3D Launches R9 290X 8Gb royalAce Graphics Card
• Sapphire Ships New 8GB R9 290X Vapor-X OC Graphics Card
• PowerColor Launches Radeon R9 290X PCS+ 8GB
• MSI R9 290X GAMING 8G Graphics Card Now Available
• XFX Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation 8GB Smiles for the Camera
• True Wireless GAMING with New X99S GAMING 9 AC and Z97 GAMING 9 AC Motherboards with ACK
• Spire Announces the Swirl IV CPU Cooler
• ASUS X99-Pro Motherboard Now Available
• Reported Fraud By Moneual Executives Brings Zalman Tech To Bankruptcy
• MSI Adds Two FM2+ A68H Chipset Based Motherboards
• Tesoro Unveils Excalibur RGB 16.8 Million Color Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
• Logitech G Unveils G302 Daedalus Prime MOBA Gaming Mouse - VIDEO
• Xigmatek Announces Maverick S Line of Power Supplies
• Xigmatek Also Launches the Eris Cube-type Mini-ITX Case
• MSI Readies GeForce GTX 970 GAMING Gold Edition
• NZXT’s H440 Razer ‘Special Edition’ Now Available
• EK Water Blocks Announces AMD Tonga Pro Full-Cover Water Block Starts Shipping
• EK Introduces GIGABYTE X99 Series Motherboard Water Blocks
• Dell’s 27-Inch 5K Monitor Available Soon For Under $2000

Source: techPowerUp!

While AMD launches WHQL-signed drivers every three or so months, NVIDIA seems to be making a habit of launching one ahead of every major game release. The company’s new 344.60 WHQL “Game Ready” drivers, released today, come just in time for the year’s biggest shooter, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. In addition, the driver comes with an updated PhysX System Software (version 9.14.0702), CUDA (version 6.5), and GeForce Experience (16.13.56.0). Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare doesn’t support Windows XP, so NVIDIA didn’t bother with an update for that OS. Grab your driver from the links below.

You can download the GeForce 344.60 WHQL drivers from the GeForce website.