TPG Daily Links

Set your mice to “click” as you take a journey into the world of PCs and PC gaming.  Today you can read an article on the impact Windows 8 will have, E3 from a PC gaming perspective, portable storage reviews, motherboards, cases, notes on the released Max Payne 3 patch and more.

PC Hardware/Software

1TB Western Digital VelociRaptor Review – Maximum PC

Western Digital releases a new Raptor drive every couple of years, and each time the performance and capacity increase while the price for the highest-capacity model stays around $300. This year’s iteration finally breaks 1TB, but the VelociRaptor remains caught between increasingly fast 7,200rpm drives and increasingly capacious SSDs. Is it the best of both worlds, or the worst?

Will Windows 8 Kill Anything? – PC Mag

I’m happy to see that the Microsoft PR folks are cranking up the publicity machine to extol the virtues of Windows 8. I haven’t seen this much activity since Windows 95. I’m on the record as predicting that this thing is a failure on the desktop and has already failed on the smartphone. But, we all know that this is actually a tablet OS. What about that?

ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Motherboard Review – PC Perspective

ASUS’s Sabertooth X79 motherboard is their one of their latest products to bear the TUF series label and sport customized hardware and thermal components as well as a desert camo color scheme to complete the military look. This $329 motherboard comes with a five-year warranty, digital power management system, rugged chokes, solid capacitors, and MOSFETs that have been certified through third party, military-grade testing.

Western Digital My Passport 2 TB Portable Review – TechARP

With so many choices in the marketplace, external hard disk drives have become somewhat of a commodity, differentiated mainly by storage capacity and price. Hence, branded manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital try to differentiate their products by offering value-added features like faster interfaces, E-labels and backup and encryption software.

Cubitek ATX-ICE Case Review – Overclockers Club

It is yet another new company for me to shine opinions on. Cubitek – a company founded in the late half of 2010, by some IT industry techs in Taiwan, attempting to add a third dimension to a boring two dimensional view on current computer products. Cubitek is focusing on this “third dimension” of PC cases. It isn’t a company I am familiar with, but its philosophy is something well appreciated if it can be held up: “Build something we would want to buy at a price we want to pay.”

PC Gaming

E3′s Press Events Do Not Represent The Gaming I Know – Rock Paper Shotgun

After alternately watching live feeds of the press conferences last night, and watching colleagues’ reactions to them on Twitter, I awake with a heavy cynicism for the entire industry. While a couple of new IPs were announced, and they were perhaps even interesting, the overwhelming message of the LA evening was one of partisanship, stagnation, and a disturbing lack of awareness of what is most problematic in the gaming world. Which can pretty much be summed up in the frighteningly repeated phrase, “With exclusive DLC for our console.”

Max Payne 3 Patch – Official Rockstar Site

We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the community on the launch of Max Payne 3 on PC and our support for a wide range of specs. That said, there are still a few commonly reported issues, and we’ll be rolling out a series of patches that address these starting tonight.   Issues fixed by tonight’s patch are below. Our goal is to get everyone up and running as smoothly as possible so be sure to hit http://support.rockstargames.com if you are having any specific issues.

Title reference can be viewed here.

 

 

468 ad
  • Steven S

    I stopped paying attention to E3 years ago. It seems that it is geared more towards the console makers trying to show that the ever evolving PC is dying and the years old static technology in their console is the wave of the future. I have used the web cam on my computer to play motion controlled flash games, and even some that were voice controlled, so I’m not that impressed by the novelty of yet another Kinect game.

    I do agree that exclusives are hurting gaming, not just exclusive DLC either. Exclusive platform and distribution rights have just as negative an impact. If the home video market had behaved like gaming does today then movie watchers would have needed separate movie players as some studios would release movies in one format but not another, or worse release different versions for each format. Video rentals would have been a nightmare as the studios signed exclusive deals with the various video chains. Are there two movies you really want to see? You need to go to two different stores on the opposite sides of town. Well there is that one place right down the street, but half the time all they do is sell you a voucher and you still have to go across town to actually get the movie.

    I’m all for the competition, as I believe it drives innovation and costs, but exclusivity contracts greatly detract from that. After all, there is no actual competition between the only hardware store and the only shoe store in town.

    • http://truepcgaming.com Adam Ames

      You can look at the downturn in the PC sports market to show exclusivity deals stifle innovation and make an already lazy development team even lazier.