Microsoft has published some details on its upcoming DirectX 12_2 feature level and which companies will be supporting these new capabilities in upcoming GPUs. If you’re wondering how DirectX 12_2 and DirectX 12 Ultimate relate to each other, they’re the same thing — if a GPU supports DX12U, it’ll also support 12_2 and the reverse appears to also be true. A DirectX feature level is Microsoft’s way of defining what specific capabilities a GPU is capable of. A GPU that can only handle DX 12_0 or 12_1, for example, would support the low-latency command structures and performance-improving aspects of DX12 as an API, but would offer no support for Microsoft’s DXR (DirectX ray tracing) technology.
Android’s application ecosystem has proven to be versatile and developer-friendly after a bit of a slow start. You are free to develop an app for Android and publish it to the Play Store with Google’s restrictions, or you can distribute it yourself outside the Play Store. This has led to a plethora of really cool Android apps, some of which aren’t available on iOS or other platforms. Even in this age of giant phones, you might occasionally want to use those apps on a bigger screen, like the one connected to your Windows PC. Fortunately, with a little leg work, you can run Android apps on a PC.
At first glance, it’s easy to overlook a simple pair of in-ear headphones like the . They don’t look cheap, but they don’t have the otherworldly aura of some of the high-end earbud brands that come with triple-figure price tags either. However, a pair of 2020 awards from CES Innovation and iF Design should be enough to get your attention. Then, there have been reviews like this one from What HiFi that explicitly calls out their outlying status. “Until now, we’ve never awarded five stars to a set of true wireless headphones at this budget level,” the site states.
It’s been a minute since I’ve referenced his work, but CPU software architect and low-level feature researcher Agner Fog is still publishing periodic updates to his CPU manuals comparing the various AMD and Intel architectures. A recent update of his sheds light on a feature of AMD’s Zen 2 chip that’s gone previously unremarked. Disclosure: I’ve worked with Agner Fog in the past on collecting data for his ongoing project, though not for several years. Agner runs each platform through a laundry list of micro-targeted benchmarks, in order to suss out details of how they operate. The officially published instruction latency charts from AMD and Intel aren’t always accurate, and Agner has found undisclosed bugs in x86 CPUs before, including issues with how Piledriver executes AVX2 code and problems in the original Atom’s FPU pipeline.
Step up your game with a Dell Alienware desktop. Today you get one of these systems with an RTX 2060 graphics card and a Core i5 processor on sale with over $200 knocked off the retail price. Dell’s new Alienware Aurora gaming desktops utilize a new case design with RGB LED lighting and high-end hardware, which is capable of running the latest games with next-gen effects including ray tracing. You can get it now from Dell marked down from $1,149.99 to $912.99 with promo code IGD17. Asus’s VivoBook features a fast Intel Core i7 processor that’s great for running multiple programs at the same time.
Doom Eternal launched earlier this year, continuing the story of the Doom Slayer as he battles the forces of hell. Developer id talked up the improvements in the new Tech 7 engine prior to launch, noting Doom Eternal was even . At the time, that was a theoretical ceiling. After all, no computer in the world could push 1,000 frames of Doom! Well, it’s thanks to some liquid nitrogen. Bethesda, which published Doom Eternal with id, has posted a video on its Polish YouTube page showing a massively overclocked gaming rig breaking the 1,000 FPS threshold. The hardware is high-end, but it’s not an outlandish setup with multiple video cards and server-style components.
Amazon has wormed its way into most areas of consumer electronics, such as smart speakers, security cameras, routers, and even wearables. The new Halo fitness band focuses on health, which is not a unique approach. However, it does stand apart from the crowd in one notable way: there’s no screen. The Halo . But it’s not free to use. The Halo hardware will run you $99.99, but it’s with a limited time price of $64.99. The smart part of the Halo hides under the band, and plans to sell a lot of different styles. Because there’s no screen, it’ll just look like you’re wearing a slightly chunky bracelet.
The Soviet-era Lun-class ekranoplan, aka MD-160, looks a bit like a unit you might see in the Command & Conquer series. It’s also currently beached in the Caspian Sea and taking on water. It’s possible the ekranoplan may be hammered apart by Mother Nature, joining the original “Caspian Sea Monster” on the sea bottom, before it can be repaired and put on display as a museum showpiece as originally intended. The MD-160 is designed to fly by taking advantage of the increased lift and decreased drag an aircraft’s wings experience when close to the earth during flight. Where an ordinary plane only experiences ground effect during takeoff and landing, an ekranoplan exploits ground effect during the entire time the vehicle is operating.
Ever since Microsoft and Sony announced their upcoming consoles, there have been questions about the design of both platforms. Historically, new console generations have always come with a large increase in available RAM. That’s not happening with the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, both of which will offer ~2x the RAM of their baseline predecessors, as opposed to the 16x increase from the Xbox 360/PS3 to the Xbox One/PS4. We’ve seen a few tech demos from companies like Unreal that hinted at the power of these platforms, but little to directly confirm it — until now. A new, 6-minute+ gameplay trailer for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart showcases how the high-speed storage of the PlayStation 5 can be used for fast world loads beyond anything we’ve seen from a current-generation title.
