Here a roundup of the latest reviews and articles:

12K (Triple 4K Monitor) Graphics Test Bench Upgrade Review
AMD R9 Fury X CrossfireX 12K Eyefinity Review
ASUS STRIX GTX 980Ti DC3 OC Review
Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi Review
DXRacer OH/IS166/NB Iron Series Gaming Chair Review
How To Make Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Run Much Faster On AMD Catalyst For Linux
Intel Core i7-5775C Review: More Than Meets the Eye
LG G4 Review: A Worthy Top Contender
Microsoft: 10 reasons to upgrade to Windows 10
OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD Review
Open-Source Linux Graphics: A10-7870K Godavari vs. i7-4790K Haswell vs. i7-5775C Broadwell
Philips 288P6LJEB UHD Monitor Review
Steam in SteamOS 2.0 Beta hangs? Solution
Top 15 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu 15.04
Turtle Beach Stealth 420X Xbox One Gaming Headset Review

12K (Triple 4K Monitor) Graphics Test Bench Upgrade Review

1080p, 1440p, 1660p, 2160p; just a random bunch of numbers with a ‘p’ after them can mean nothing to some people; however, to gamers it means a whole world of display quality goodness. For the last few years, 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) monitors have been the normal standard for a ‘decent’ gaming setup and what most graphics cards are tested at. Then we started moving up to higher resolutions such as 2560 x 1440p and 2560 x 1600p.

For some, this wasn’t enough; despite the pixel densities growing larger, as humans we wanted even more pixels. This resorted to users buying multiple monitors and connecting them one next to another and activating AMD ‘EyeFinity’ or NVIDIA ‘Surround’ to have an almost 180° viewing range. Even though the latter part of the pixel count didn’t change, this meant that monitor set-ups were hitting 5760 pixels wide by using three 1920 x 1080p monitors.

Then we move onto today, 1080p and 1440p has been surpassed by what has now become the new ‘standard’ of gaming, 2160p, or 4K. At this resolution, even the most powerful of graphics cards can struggle to churn out the desired 60FPS which we have come to accept as the acceptable standard. So what about when you put three 4K monitors next to each other and ask for 11520 x 2160 of pixelated goodness (or 6480 x 3840 if you prefer your monitors in portrait mode.)

Read full article @ eTeknix

AMD R9 Fury X CrossfireX 12K Eyefinity Review

Triple monitor configurations were massively useful a few years ago when the ‘new’ standard was 1080p and everyone wanted to have huge workspaces to process more information at once. While this was good back then, nowadays monitors can have up to 4x the resolution of 1080p in the form of 4K (2160p) and workers can fit a huge amount of information onto a single monitor.

How about when it comes to gaming? The surround monitors engulf you in a wealth of visual stimulation and even presents some details which you cannot normally see in a typical single monitor setup.

Last time we looked at our current top end cards, they all faired reasonably well when stacked against the mighty triple 4K configuration, but what about when we pitch the R9 Fury X crossfire duo against it? Let’s find out in today’s article.

Read full article @ eTeknix

ASUS STRIX GTX 980Ti DC3 OC Review

ASUS DirectCU cooling has been a fixture of their high-end graphics cards for a few years now, and it's never failed to impress. The core concept behind DirectCU's inception is that intermediary layers between the GPU core and cooler heatpipes by their very nature impedes the heat transfer process, and so having a 'flattened' array of copper heatpipes touching the GPU directly would be the most efficient mode.

DirectCU Technology was introduced during the tail-end of the 40nm GPU generation, a generation which encompassed both NVIDIA's toasty Fermi-class GPUs and AMDs performance-leading dual-GPU 5970 cards. These cards had significantly higher TDP than those designs which came before, and almost every AIB manufacturer needed to come up with their own innovative design which not only improved on reference cooling, but also adapted to the changing demands of users. Low-noise was becoming an increasing focus, at a time when the trend of bigger and more powerful GPUs made things ever more difficult.

Enter DirectCU III, aka DC3. This major upgrade to ASUS’ cooling solution has been fed to a number of recently released cards including: R9 390X, R9 Fury and the graphics card in the spotlight today; GTX 980Ti. The STRIX GTX 980Ti DC3 OC arrives with a triple fan configuration which promises to deliver 30% better cooling performance and should be 3X quieter. Not only is this graphics card custom cooled but it’s also factory overclocked to squeeze even more out of NVIDIA’s flagship GPU.

Read full article @ Vortez

Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi Review

Not too long ago we looked at the Asus Transformer Book T100 Chi, a smaller 2-in-1 hybrid laptop. While the concept of a 2-in-1 is interesting, the T100 Chi simply did not have powerful enough components inside to be a true laptop replacement. The 12.5″ T300 Chi, however, incorporates an Intel Core M processor, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB M.2 SSD. We review the T300 Chi and measure how it stacks up against the competition.

Read full article @ Kitguru

DXRacer OH/IS166/NB Iron Series Gaming Chair Review

How many hours a day do you spend sitting on a desk chair in front of your computer? If you’re spending more than 4 hours a day it’s possible that you are constantly changing positions or even getting up more frequently as time progresses. Most home computer users very rarely purchase a chair that is more than $75 to $100 but even more shocking the average is actually $50 to $70 and of course there are those who even use a table chair.

If you’re like me you probably don’t think of a computer chair as something that should provide comfort, you consider it a necessary piece of furniture that allows you to interface with your system. Recently, I discovered that I was wrong and needed to rethink my conclusions. Due to a recent injury I found that I was spending more time testing, benchmarking and typing than I normally do (usually 6 to 7 hours a day) I was spending up to 10 hours a day in my computer chair. When I began to keep track of movement and repositioning as well as getting up and walking away I was in shock, within the first hour I may have moved or repositioned myself 2 to three times and actually got up from the chair once. As time progressed that multiplied by 10 and within four and a half hours I was moving or repositioning myself at least 4 times every 5 minutes and getting up to stretch at least 3 additional times with longer duration before I sat down again.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

How To Make Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Run Much Faster On AMD Catalyst For Linux

Should you be using a Radeon graphics card with the AMD Catalyst Linux driver and are disappointed by the poor performance, there is a very easy workaround for gaining much better performance under Linux... In some cases a simple tweak will yield around 40% better performance!

Like Catalyst for Windows, Catalyst for Linux also makes use of application profiles for managing any per-game optimizations or workarounds for addressing driver bugs, etc. On Windows, AMD routinely even puts out hot-fix releases or special drivers that are "optimized" for major new AAA game releases. Most often these application profiles just result in the game/application running a few percent faster or to just workaround incorrect visuals. The concept of per-game/app profiles by graphics drivers is nothing new and is even similarly supported by the open-source Mesa drivers in rare cases when needing to workaround buggy software, override the exposure of certain OpenGL/GLSL capabilities, etc. Application profiles have been within the Catalyst Linux driver for years, but unlike Windows, these profiles aren't apparently maintained worth squat and is part of the reason why at least some Steam games struggle under Linux with Catalyst.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Intel Core i7-5775C Review: More Than Meets the Eye

While it is important to recognize one's strengths and leverage it as an asset, accepting shortcomings and working on them is equally as important for the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For others, it is hard to admit weakness in a certain area and there are plenty of efforts placed on internal rationalization on why it …

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

LG G4 Review: A Worthy Top Contender

Every year, LG manages to impress me in one way or another with their new flagship Android smartphone. Whereas past models brought a near bezel-free design, great battery life, a crisp 1440p display and a laser-assisted autofocus system, this year with the LG G4, the focus is mostly on improving various aspects of the hardware, like the camera and display. It's an incremental update for sure but the results might prove impressive once again.

Read full article @ Techspot

Microsoft: 10 reasons to upgrade to Windows 10

Why should you upgrade a machine running a previous version of Windows to Windows 10? Or buy a computer with Windows 10? Or build one and install Windows 10 on it? That's what Microsoft attempts to answer with a new short video entitled "10 Reasons to upgrade to Windows 10: IT'S FAMILIAR".

Read full article @ gHacks

OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD Review

The Vector 180 from OCZ takes part from their high-end offerings and besides the useful Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+) addition, we do also benefit from the ShieldPlus warranty which implies no shipping costs and no extra hassles. Thanks to the OCZ Barefoot 3 M00 controller, the performances of the drive are top-notch and succeeds to stay in top for both read and write operations which is great for gamers or the usual workstation activities.

Read full article @ Madshrimps

Open-Source Linux Graphics: A10-7870K Godavari vs. i7-4790K Haswell vs. i7-5775C Broadwell

his latest i7-5775C Linux comparison is comparing the socketed Broadwell system to an AMD A10-7870K Kaveri Refresh / Godavari system and to an Intel Core i7 4790K Devil's Canyon rig. The i7-4790K is Intel's top-end Haswell desktop processor while the A10-7870K is AMD's recently released minor upgrade over the A10-7850K Kaveri. All three systems were running with 2 x 8GB of DDR3-2133MHz memory, solid-state storage, and running Fedora 22 Linux. The Fedora 22 installations all had their stable release updates installed at the time of testing plus the Rawhide Nodebug Kernel repository was enabled for using the Linux 4.2.0-rc2 x86-64 kernel. Mesa 10.6.1 from Fedora 22 supplied the stable user-space Intel/Radeon open-source graphics support. GNOME Shell 3.16.3 was the desktop in use during testing.

All three systems carried out the same Linux OpenGL tests in a fully-automated and reproducible comparison using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software. Various other Core i7 5775C Linux tests are still in the works, your feedback is appreciated via commenting in the forums or letting me know on Twitter. As always, if you appreciate all of the Linux hardware testing done at Phoronix that caters towards gamers and enthusiasts, please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium to help support these operations.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Philips 288P6LJEB UHD Monitor Review

Today we are testing at OCinside.de the Philips 288P6LJEB UHD Monitor. HD television exists for some time now. However, HDTV is not fully established yet, despite the better picture quality. The wide range of BluRay HD movies, the video on demand services and the amount of non-HD televisions keep the sales of HD TVs still high. For the manufacturers that is no reason to rest on their laurels and thus exist for quite some time televisions with a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels (UHD-1) and 7680×4320 pixels (UHD-2). Also for computer displays the time has come to support UHD resolutions. Therefore we would like to present and test the Philips monitor 288P6LJEB with UHD-1 resolution.

Read full article @ OcInside.de

Steam in SteamOS 2.0 Beta hangs? Solution

So hot, it's steamy. We have a problem, and we need to let off some steam. To wit, a tutorial explaining how to resolve the Steam hang problem in SteamOS 2.0 Beta when running in a virtual machine using VirtualBox and other virtualization products due to OpenGL errors, by removing custom Steam GCC and C++ runtime libraries, plus some other general troubleshooting tips and tricks.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo

Top 15 Things to do After Installing Ubuntu 15.04

Ubuntu 15.04 codenamed "Vivid Vervet" is the 22nd major Ubuntu release. Even though not as minor an iteration like Ubuntu 14.10, Vivid Vervet still doesn't bring any sweeping changes to the platform. This is to be expected since Unity 8 and Mir display server is still some time away. And no, Unity 8 will not become a default until at least Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. At the current rate though, even that is being overly optimistic.Ubuntu 15.04: The good old Ubuntu is back!My favorite Ubuntu versions has almost always has been the LTS releases. Ubuntu 12.04 could be termed as my favorite Ubuntu to date, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS could be a close second. But I've never faced much issues with any of the Ubuntu releases, except for Ubuntu 14.10, which was just beyond messed up. Things were so bad that I had to switch from Ubuntu to Freya almost permanently. And I have nothing but love for that incredibly clean and simple OS. Some of the reasons why I love elementary Freya so much.But Ubuntu 15.04 turned things around for me. Everything seems to work just as good as it has always been. It's a shame that I was not able to find out the real cause for all the trouble I had with Ubuntu 14.10.

Read full article @ Tech Drive-In

Turtle Beach Stealth 420X Xbox One Gaming Headset Review

Turtle Beach, easily one of the most recognisable audio brand names on the market today. Love them or hate them, there’s no doubt in my mind that Turtle Beach have created some truly fantastic gaming headsets over the years and after several recent successes, I’m hoping to see them continue that trend with the release of their Ear Force Stealth 420X. The 420X follows the premium grade, and premium priced, Turtle Beach 800X. The 800X is a £250 behemoth with a tour de force of features, but likely more so that most people need, or can afford. The 420X clocks in at a much more affordable £150, but still offers many of the thrills and features of its bigger brother, so let’s jump in and take a closer look at what it has to offer.

“Welcome to the Ear Force Stealth 420X, an officially-licensed Xbox One gaming headset with the freedom of 100% fully wireless, crystal-clear game and chat audio. The Stealth 420X comes loaded with a suite of must-have features for every Xbox gamer, including Mic Monitoring, independent game and chat audio controls, four audio presets including Bass Boost, a rechargeable battery with up to 15 hours of wireless gaming life and mobile compatibility via mobile cable with in-line mic — all packed into an cutting-edge, affordable, simple-to-set-up fully wireless gaming headset.”

The packaging is nothing too complex, with a nice picture of the headset on the front, a few of the main specifications; it keeps in theme with what we’re used to seeing from Turtle Beach.

Read full article @ eTeknix