Gadgetory

welcome back to the hardware box news corner it's episode 50 so I reckon that calls for a little bit of a celebration anyway the big session that happened this week was probably the launch of the nvidia geforce gtx 1660 you can check out Steve's review of that card yesterday I did read some comments about the pricing data that we used in that video as always that data does change rapidly and we made that video a week in advance so Steve who go on holiday so naturally prices did change a little bit but not really enough to significantly alter the conclusion for example the gtx 1660 is still a better buy at $220 then $190 RX 580 which is I guess the typical price right now aside from that one card on a limited time discount at that price both cards are about the same value but the gtx 1660 is a decent amount faster so it's probably worth spending the extra thirty dollars or so to get the faster product the RX 590 and as low as $220 also isn't quite cutting it given it's the same price as the MSRP for the 1660 yet it's slower on average and I thinks people have more on this in a bigger benchmark video next week onto the news stories of the week this one came as a big surprise for the gaming community DirectX 12 is now available on Windows 7 in fact is that a good reason to use another one of these I've got a few still remaining I mean you know why not since the launch of DX 12 it has only been available on Windows 10 which has been a problem for developers as many gamers are still using Windows 7 this effectively meant that any developer that wanted to use the X 12 also had to create a DX 11 version for games that refused to upgrade to Microsoft's latest OS today that's no longer the case Microsoft said they've ported the user-mode d 3d twelve runtime to Windows 7 which unboxed developers who want to take full advantage of the latest improvements in d3 D 12 while still supporting customers on older operating systems however it's not a situation where all DX 12 games will now magically run on Windows seven instead each game will need an update to support the ported d3 d12 runtime for Windows 7 presumably supporting this runtimes a lot easier than supporting an entire separate dx11 version the first game to make use of this is World of Warcraft with the lattice 81.5 game patch Microsoft says they're working with other developers to port their dx12 games to Windows 7 they also claim the juda critical OS improvements DirectX 12 games will still run better in Windows 10 which might be something we should benchmark to be honest I find Microsoft's reasoning for now suddenly supporting DirectX 12 Windows 7 a bit amusing they say at Microsoft we make every effort to respond to customer feedback so when we receive this feedback from blizzards and other developers we decided to act on it find a bit hard to believe that Microsoft has only just now received this feedback given Windows 10 as nearly four years old and the lack of dx12 supported Windows 7 has been a major complaint for gamers that don't care for Windows 10 at all from one angle the timing is also a bit strange given Windows 7 will hit an end of support state in January 2020 on the other hand Microsoft was clearly using DirectX 12 as an incentive to get gamers to upgrade to Windows 10 there really hasn't been a genuine technical reason why DirectX 12 wouldn't work with Windows 7 has always been an artificial limitation to make Windows 10 more attractive but at this point four years after launch I think mark soft believe that anyone that was gonna upgrade to Windows 10 has done so by now the remaining Windows 7 users probably aren't gonna upgrade anytime soon given if had plenty of time to do so but really makes the upgrad incentive unnecessary now with so many developers releasing jewel dx11 dx12 games though also hasn't been much of an incentive to upgrade to access specific games so at this point the best thing for developers and the best thing overall is simply to foster dx12 adoption and make it available to all gamers hopefully this will drive better dx12 implementations because there's still plenty of games where the dx11 mode runs better so yeah this is pretty big news for those on Windows 7 both AMD and NVIDIA say that with their latest drivers DirectX 12 should work in Windows 7 with World of Warcraft it will be interesting to see what other games will get updated with Windows 7 support some titles like Shadow the Tomb Raider that before a lot better in the dx12 mode would be prime candidates the other big story from this week is that NVIDIA has bought Mellanox for six point nine billion u.s. dollars earlier report suggested both Intel and NVIDIA were in the race to purchase the company with Intel offering around 6 billion Nvidia is bid was larger so it won the race and the acquisition should complete at the end of the year so what do Mellanox do well they are a data center networking company so not really related to the usual stuff we cover on this channel we're talking about you know networks which isn't Hardware enterprises connectivity tech and all that sort of stuff there's usually only seen in the background with Nvidia making big pushes into the data center with their GPU products acquiring Mellanox that allows them to also provide other hardware for those projects this is an all-cash deal and videos paying $125 per share so around 14% above the previous closing price we probably won't hear too much more about Mellanox for a while given we are mostly interested in envious consumer cheap use but it does add to their growing portfolio of products nicely OMB has quietly launched the Radeon rx 560 XT for the Chinese market the XT brand was famously used for many of Amy's older products back in the Radeon HD year so it's nice to see that make a little bit of a comeback here the GPU itself is a pretty interesting product as well the RX 560 xt is much closer to an RX 570 than an RX 560 but it isn't either of those GPUs so it's not a straight rave round of those cards it seems to be a cut-down rx 570 which itself is a cut-down Polaris 20 die what we're left with is 1792 stream processors down from the 2048 in the RX 570 but much higher than the 1024 in the RX 569 XT we're also looking at the same 256 bit gddr5 bus at the RX 570 rather than the 128 bit bus used in the RX 560 clock speeds are lower than both the rx 560 and 570 with the 973 megahertz pace and 10 73 megahertz boost on with 6.6 gigabit per second memory however this still makes it much faster than an Rx 560 but a decent amount below an Rx 570 according to AMD's benchmarks while it is a China only product you would still expect pricing to aiex 570 and IAC's 560 as well so probably around the equivalent of 120 dollars given a $100 ox 560 and 140 dollar RX 570 as video cards notes while this isn't a dodgy rebrand of the RX 5 6 2 r RX 570 this does look like just a slightly different version of the also china exclusive RX 470 date i guess there really isn't all how much more you can do with Polaris Silicon these days the halo Master Chief collection is coming to PC and in the surprise move from Microsoft is coming to steam as well as the Windows Store hopefully this is a bit of a strategy ship for Microsoft there have been a few murmurings that suggest Microsoft is going to take a more open approach to games rather than trying to lock down everything as an exclusive we'll probably find out more about that with the next generation of consoles but this move to release Halo and steam rather than the awful Microsoft Store could be the early beginnings of this it'll also benefit gamers and Microsoft pockets because plenty of PC gamers refused to buy anything from the Microsoft Store sure Microsoft would love people buying stuff from their own store exclusively but the reality is offering games on a wide variety of platforms including those that are popular with games like steam can lead to increase sales and lower piracy fingers crossed Microsoft continued to take this approach with their other game releases as for the Master Chief collection itself this will be the first time several Halo games will come to PC including halo 3 halo 3 ODST Halo Reach and halo 4 the collection also includes the original Halo and halo 2 with Halo Reach new to the collection overall 343 Industries is going to stagger the release so buyers will receive the games in chronological order starting with reach they're moving through combat Evolved halo 2 and so on they'll also be support for PC standard features such as custom resolutions aspect ratios frame rates and so on the first of invidious big format gaming displays is now here in the HP omen X Imperium these massive TV slash gaming display things were first announced at CES 2018 so it's taken a little while for them to become available but HP is now selling this for a super-high five thousand dollar u.s. price tag the display itself is a 65-inch 4k MV a panel that refreshes up to 144 Hertz and fully supports HDR with up to to peak brightness a 384 zone fa LD backlight and 95% DCI p3 coverage it also has a g-sync module inside an end of contrast ratio of 4,000 to 1 and 4 millisecond response times with overdrive and there's a soundbar included comparing this display to regular PC monitors does make it look pretty impressive you get proper HDR support 4k up to 144 hertz g-sync and so on and it's 65 inches but the comparison isn't as favorable up against modern TVs Samsung for example will sell you a high-end 65 inch q 90 q LED TV for 3500 us which packs at 4k resolution up to 120 Hertz free sync and excellent HDR you don't get G sync but it's overall a lot cheaper and LG's flagship all mtv's as well offer more features for less money I am interested to test one of these guys to see what they're like but fortunately this point I haven't had much success securing a reviewnit also suspect there will be supination product for games that specifically want a TV size display with g-sync and a 144 Hertz refresh rate I think that invidious lack of support for adaptive sync over HDMI is buying them a little bit here given what TVs are doing and ones that have come into the market right now final topic for this week asa has launched a 49 inch ultra wide gaming monitor called the ei4 9 1 CR it's a 32 9 be a pal at 38 40 by 1080 so double wide 1080p it has a 144 Hertz refresh rate and free sync to support through display HDR 400 certification that said without proper local dimming this isn't really an HDI display it's nice to see more of these high refresh super ultra wise hit the market this one will cost $900 and should become available in the next few months that's it for this week's news corner as always subscribe to get the segment in your inbox weekly consider supporting us on patreon to get access to our discord community and I'll catch you in the next one