PS4 out of box update takes less than 5 minutes

I just updated the normal way on launch day and the servers were much faster than anticipated delivering the update in seconds with the majority of the time for the resetting.

New Nexus 7 taps Snapdragon S4 Pro to Good Reviews

The new Nexus 7 has utilized the Snapdragon S4 Pro and has shown to be a positive choice in the long term versus the Tegra 3 which had stuttering issues when built by ASUS.

Amazon Buy One Get One Free PS4 Pre-Order

If you have preordered a system from Amazon you should check your inbox for an exclusive promo to buy one game get one free. This is the best deal on next gen games yet. I've seen a few black friday ads but this is the best for PS4, next is the Buy two get one free any games at target XBONE included, finally I've seen Assasins Creed 4 by itself for 38 or so on next gen.

PS4 and XBOX ONE Video Games buy 2 get 1

The photo captures showing the Target Video Game Sale has proven to be true. I checked out Target today and they only have COD Ghosts Adventures as their only PS4 game. Amazon has followed suit but Amazon's sale starts tuesday with the code GR8TNESS. Buy 2 Get One Free

PS4 vs XBOX One / XBONE Hardware Overview

So in the past there has usually been a compute winner and a gaming system that's easier to develop on.  In the 8th generation of Video Game Systems we see a move toward x86 (Will ARM be a player here next gen?) sort of mini computers.  However, these are much more integrated leveraging its advantage over actual computers.

The PS4 utilizes low power but out of order optimized 8 core x86 which can apparently turbo to 3.6GHz.  The APU is integrated and shares a pool of 176GB/s GDDR5 Memory which in the past has only been used for video ram.  This cuts down on the need for RAM and will allow the system to compete against higher priced gaming computers.  At $399 the PS4 offers bang per buck with an optimized unified architecture and a 1156 shader Radeon GPU which has been optimized for tessellation and GPGPU.

The XBOX One is a lot like the PS4 but it lacks some deep level integration between the CPU and GPU in the APU, the parts are slightly less powerful, and it utilizes 32 MB of 107/GB/s  ESRAM.  I do not understand adding the ESRAM.  It is not enough to render a 1080p 24bit picture, the number should have been like 128MB or 512MB to not be a bottleneck.  The choice of 32MB for the ESRAM optimizes the Xbox One for 720p 16bit resolution since its not enough for 1080p.  The Xbox One also utilizes a similar AMD/ATI Radeon GPU but with 768 Shaders vs 1156. 

Xbox One opted for 8GB 68.4 GB/s DDR3 (vs GDDR5) which took one of the major advantages of the PS4 unified system and made it a disadvantage.  The Xbone GPU will also be gasping for RAM during graphical sprints. 

This is a pretty big step back for the XBOX One, however, the Original XBOX 360 didn't have a HDD and had some other small issues like overheating.  I would think Microsoft may upgrade the ESRAM or the DDR3 to GDDR5 in later versions.  This would help increase minimum frame rate and make it easier for later games to run at 1080p. 

In conclusion, I would have liked to see this generation run at 4k 60fps or upscale to them competently.  All is not that bad though we do have computers which can run that and the introduction of the 8th gen systems means we all will benefit from DirectX 11 visuals which has long been held at bay by the least common denominator.

EDIT UPDATE:  Sources from China have confirmed a "new" version of the XBOX ONE is in the works.  What's not confirmed is what's different.  Some have posited its the $349 version without a kinect but that doesn't seem to hold water as they would just ship the current version without a kinect.  The new version is a new Xbox One with modifications to the hardware hence "new" not just "re-bundled".    It is likely that this report confirms an Xbox One is in the works using GDDR5 to be built early next year.  

h100i quad fan push pull with SP120

I recently went with the h100i over an earlier corsair all-in-one, closed loop, water cooling system which performed well for years. The earlier h50 lasted about 3 years with an OG Core i7 running at 4.2Ghz. A task which it wasn't up to the task under full load with HT on. So I went to a push pull setup with different fans and it helped a lot but it was still noisy and would occasionally crash. This instability under full load led me to a larger all in one cooler that could run my i7 930 at 4.2GHz without a hiccup.

If your H100i doesn't seem to be controlling SP120 you should install the inline supplied SP120 voltage droppers.  For some reason this allows the h100i to have a much broader range of RPM variability and it will then sync all of the fan RPMs up to 1700 RPM which seems to be the reduced maximum.


Here's what I've found in traditional mark tech bullet format:

• Push Pull lowers idle temp about 5-7 C from stock intake setup on HAF
• Setting up the rear fan and case side fan to exhaust further dropped temperatures vs these being intakes as well as a top intake.
• I didn't measure front and bottom which also remain intakes.
• Expect another 2-3 C drop If you match fans on each side
• e.g. 2 SP120s on top, 2 Stock h100i on the bottom vs mismatched fan sets.
• You need to run the SP120s with the voltage droppers for them to match the rest of the H100i fans. 
• Otherwise they run in a very narrow rpm band around 1800-2000.
• With the voltage droppers the H100i will match RPMs between the fan sets nearly perfectly to 1700 rpm
• not utilizing the voltage droppers does not seem to significantly increase cooling performance.  maybe 2 C
• The SP120 voltage droppers allow the H100i to control the SP120 RPM
• 4.2GHz I7 on Push Pull H100i ~55GFLOPS
• quiet 37 idle 91max core reading Intel Burn Test extreme 8GB 10 runs
• balanced 32-33 idle 89 C max ,, ,,
• performance 86 C Max
• max 31-32 idle 84 C Max ,, ,,
• temp spikes seem to occur as the H100i catches up to a maximal load, however they never seem to get hot enough to cause concern in terms of stability.
• Arctic Silver 5 drops the temperature only a degree or so from OEM goo.

Amazon Has PS4 Pre-Orders Available Now.

PlayStation 4 Battlefield 4 Launch Day Bundle Available Now as of time of posting,  Update gone within hours but what a cool gift a launch day ps4.