AMD Takes a Shot at the Titan Z

After Intel announced a $3,000 graphics card, the Titan Z, AMD responds by announcing a $1,500 card that appears to challenge it for half the price.  A water-cooled dual-GPU card that can run games easily at 4k has me actually considering the jump to 4k within the year, paired with Samsung's $650 4k monitor.  More information on the Radeon R9 295X2 at Tom's Hardware.

AMD Fires Back at Nvidia

For a generation, AMD has been playing a significant amount of catchup to Intel, and their new graphics subsidiary, Nvidia.  AMD has been so far behind that Intel floated a graphics card that costs more than most people put into their computers -- the GTX Titan, with a whopping MSRP of $1,000.  AMD has finally bested that with a graphics card that releases at half that graphics price point, the 290x, reviewed here.

Update: Not to be outdone, Intel dropped their prices, only for AMD to drop a $400 290, again staying on top at half the price.

Putting the Phenom Out to Pasture: Part 3

Having identified the optimal parts, and coming to the conclusion that either build I would consider would run upwards of $800, I looked at the games I would be planning to play for the next year, and hazarded a guess at the hardware needed to run each.

•  Total War: Rome 2
• Wasteland 2
• Project Eternity
• Shadowrun Returns
• Torment: Tides of Numenara
• Crusader Kings 2

Putting the Phenom Out to Pasture: Pt 2

After identifying my ideal desktop build, I identified that I could go with a mITX build from a boutique builder called the Revolution. One of the advantages of mITX is portability. I thought about laptops, and found this set of reviews on Anandtech identifying the best values in recent laptops.

Putting the Phenom Out to Pasture: Pt 1

Intel's next "tick" Haswell is around the bend, and early previews suggest that it's not going to make a significant difference in gaming PCs early on -- the real gains appear to be in the mobile and low-end processors.  My Phenom II system is aging, and between a failed power supply, a long-in-the-tooth Radeon 6800, and limited expansion opportunities, I'm looking at greener pastures.

Landing a Piledriver

As a primarily PC gamer, I build my own machines.  While the process is one for another day, since I don't have a picture-based tutorial ready, I do feel the need to weigh in on AMD's latest release, the Piledriver CPUs they've been delaying for a year.