Hasta La Gadget!

As if shelling out $900 this holiday to snag the two next-gen game consoles wasn’t enough, Xi3’s Piston modular gaming PC is arriving on November 29th for $1,000. Should money be no object to you, the adorable little box is available for pre-order right this minute, and that’ll lock in an earlier arrival by two weeks. Included in today’s news of the Piston’s launch date is word that internal storage capacity was upped by another SSD connector; Xi3 says up to 1TB of SSD storage is now supported.

In a hilarious nod to Valve’s Steam Machines news last week, Xi3 notes, “By adding a second SSD to their Pistons, users will be able to load a second operating system onto their machines, including the newly announced SteamOS.” As previously reported, Xi3 is (at least in part) financially-backed by Valve, and the Piston is a bit of a “Steambox” (the previous name for Valve’s Steam Machines effort) itself. SteamOS is said to be coming “soon,” ahead of Steam Machines’ official launch in 2014, and you’ll see no surprise on our faces should SteamOS arrive ahead of Piston’s November 15th pre-order availability.

On Xi3’s homepage, the Piston is positioned with a wireless, Piston-branded gamepad (seen above). It’s unclear if it ships with the system later this year, so we’ve reached out to Xi3 for more info.

Filed under: Desktops, Misc, Gaming, Peripherals, HD

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Look, we’re with you: pre-orders are for losers. You’re giving over your hard-earned cash so some company can bank interest and gauge sales allocations, just to guarantee you get it on day one. You’ll be glad to know then, pre-order hater, that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 smartphone and its Galaxy Gear smartwatch are available for purchase sans pre-order via AT&T’s website and stores on October 4th. Those of you less averse to pre-orders will still get your Note 3 a few days earlier on October 1st. Still undecided on the Note 3? Our review’s right here to help you make that decision. Dig it!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Peripherals, Wearables, Mobile, Samsung, AT&T

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Valve revealed Steam Controller today, a controller for its living room PC-based game console initiative. It’s the third announcement this week from Valve, following reveals of SteamOS and Steam Machines on Monday and Wednesday (respectively). The controller is shaped like a standard game console controller, but in place of thumbsticks there are two clickable trackpads. Valve’s saying that the dual trackpads provide resolution that “approaches that of a desktop mouse,” making previously PC-only games playable on a couch.

In the middle of the controller is a “high-resolution” touch screen (also clickable) that enables both control and navigation. “Players can swipe through pages of actions in games where that’s appropriate. When programmed by game developers using our API, the touch screen can work as a scrolling menu, a radial dial, provide secondary info like a map or use other custom input modes we haven’t thought of yet,” the controller’s announcement page says. There are also haptic sensors all over the controller, which offer “super-precise” haptic feedback to players — they’re in both trackpads on the front, as well as in the shoulder buttons and around the rear grips. Valve says that these sensors not only relay physical information to players, but also “play audio waveforms and function as speakers.”

Like any gamepad, the Steam Controller has a handful of buttons as well: 16 in total, according to Valve. Two are around back, while the majority are found out front — one sits in each corner of the middle touchscreen, and three sit below that screen. Game devs should have no issue getting their games working with the controller, according to Valve, as the API will become available for free for devs at the same time that the Steam Machines beta goes live “later this year.” Additionally, gamers interested in beta testing Valve’s controller can sign up the same way you signed up for the console beta: a quest is now available in your Steam account.%Gallery-slideshow99391%

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, HD

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Source: Valve

Graphics cards aren’t normally our go-to choices for audio processing, but we may have to make exceptions for AMD’s just-unveiled Radeon R9 and R7 lines. The R9 290X (shown above), R9 290 and R7 260X (after the break) will support TrueAudio, a new programmable pipeline that enables advanced audio effects without burdening a PC’s main processor or a dedicated sound card. Not that the range will be lacking in visual prowess, of course. While the company isn’t revealing full specifications, it claims that the R9 290X flagship will have five teraflops of total computing power versus the four teraflops of the previous generation. The boards will ship sometime in the “near future,” with prices ranging from $89 for an entry R7 250 to $299 for the mid-tier R9 280X. AMD isn’t divulging the R9 290X’s price, but pre-orders for the card will start on October 3rd.

The firm has also revealed a new programming interface, Mantle, that makes the most of the Graphics Core Next architecture found in many of its recent processors and video chipsets. Developers who build the low-level code into their games should get better performance from GCN-based devices without having to re-optimize for each platform — a title meant for Radeon-equipped PCs should still behave well on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, for instance. Mantle will debut on Windows through a December update to Battlefield 4, and should spread to other platforms in the months ahead.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, AMD

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Via: AnandTech

Source: AMD

Sure, you could try and measure the motion-to-photons latency present in various Oculus Rift virtual reality games using your naked eye, but the latency tester Oculus just put up for pre-order is much easier and far more accurate. As demonstrated by Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey in the video after the break, simply pop off one of the Rift dev kit’s two lens caps and pop on the latency tester. After plugging it in via mini-USB, the tester reads the latency per eye and outputs a number on the rear — voila ici.

Like with so many things Oculus, folks who put in their name early have first crack at the latency tester. The rest of us can put in our names now for pre-order and they’ll start shipping out in early October — Oculus tells us, “they’re sitting in our warehouse now, waiting for new homes.” If you’re looking to get in on the action you probably shouldn’t wait, as only a “limited quantity” is available for now, though more could be produced “based on demand.”

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software

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Source: Oculus Rift