MSI
As you would expect from a hardware vendor coming to a gaming convention, the focus for MSI was high end gaming, and boy did they come loaded for bear. Here are the top three products they had to show off.
MSI GS60 Ghost Pro
Gaming laptops have historically been large enough to be put in the category of desktop replacement, but with the latest wave of ultrabooks, we’ve seen a slimmer form factor with only a slight reduction in features. The GS60 Ghost Pro is no exception, featuring a 3K display, Intel i7-4700 HQ processor, GTX 860M graphics card sporting 2G of GDDR5 and a 128GB SSD with 750GB HDD. Its younger brother, the GS60 Ghost, has almost identical specs, but only features a 1080p screen (pshaw, right?). Coming in at less than an inch thick and under 5 pounds, this gaming monster is pretty much all you could ask for in a gaming ultrabook. It even has a fully programmable, rainbow backlit keyboard. Which is just so baller. The only downside is that when I was playing around with it, the fan was painfully hot. Maybe that wouldn’t be an issue normally, but after 4 hours of playing Bioshock Infinite, it was not advisable to touch that fan.
AG2712A
Even a few years ago, PC proponents would talk about how terrible the all-in-one paradigm that Apple had stuck to was a terrible idea, but now we see tons of PC all-in-one popping up from every manufacturer. MSI has taken this idea and run with it, creating an all-in-one aimed at gamers that’s sure to chew through anything you throw at it.
The AG2712A features a 27” touch screen with Windows 8 (come on, it just doesn’t make sense without a touch screen) and an Intel i7-3630QM processor. The 16 GB of DDR3 RAM and 128GB SSD are sure handle any modern game, and the 2TB HDD is ready to hold your collection of anime and completely legitimately downloaded movies. Perhaps the most interesting feature of this all in one is its HDMI in port, allowing the computer to be used as an external monitor or TV. So if you’re looking for a gaming PC and a TV at the same time, you’ve got one right here. “But I want to mount it,” you say? Well you can! VESA mounts are built in, though the ports are in such a position that you’d probably want an extendable arm to fit all the cables behind it. The screen also features flicker-free technology, anti -glare matting, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Coming in at around $1800 bucks, this unique form factor PC is optimal for low desk space or multipurpose use.
R9 290X Lightning
What? Just look at this thing and join me in asking “what?”
The R9 290X Lightning is the biggest graphics card I’ve ever seen. Not only was it longer than all of the motherboards MSI showed off, but it took up more than two slots! With that kind of size, it has to have wildly awesome specs.
And it does! 1.08 GHz core with 4GB of GDDR5 at 5GHz memory puts this thing toward the top of its class. This monster is kept cool with three fans, all of which you can monitor and control through software. It outputs to 2 Dual-link DVI-D ports, one display port and an HDMI port and has a maximum supported resolution of 2560×1600. It also supports DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3 and has support for Crossfire, which just seems unnecessary. If you can fit two of these in a case and decide to do this, you must be a mad scientist.
I’m told there’s also a shortage of product, not only due to ravenous gamers, but also Bitcoin miners looking to upgrade their rigs. If it comes back in stock and you have three slots to spare in your box, you can’t get much better than the R9 290X Lightning.
And if you’re interested in the full interviews, you can listen to them here:
Gigabyte
Not to be topped by MSI, Gigabyte also had some great products to show off this year.
P35W v2
Coming in at 20.9mm, the P35W v2 has a crazy thin design for all its monstrous components. It sports a GTX 870M with 6GB of GDDR5 Ram and an Intel i7-4710HQ processor. Combine that with 8-16GB of DDR3 RAM, RAID support with 2 SSDs and one HDD, and a 1920×1080 resolution and this laptop is a beast. And for those of you still stuck on physical media, it also has a Blu-ray RW drive. One of the best things about this model is that it’s configurable, configurable, allowing the user to choose from a few different processors, RAM, storage, and graphics offerings.
If you’re looking for a thin, light gaming laptop with some configurability, Gigabyte has a great solution in the P35W v2.
Brix Gaming
PC manufacturers have been trying to do smaller and smaller enclosures for machines for some time now, but it only really picked up when HTPCs became a big deal. As a result, it’s taken a while before something small, but gamer-oriented was released, but now it’s here. Meet the Brix Gaming.
Gigabyte’s Brix line has been one of the best small form factor PCs for a while, but it’s difficult to fit all you need in a gaming PC into a box that tiny. Gigabyte’s finally figured it out, though. The Brix Gaming features an AMD A8-5557M processor and a Radeon R9 M275X GPU featuring 2GB of DDR5 RAM. 2 DDR3 slots mean up to 16GB or RAM (you can configure this), and it supports 2.5”thickness hard drives with a 6Gbps SATA3 port. Throw in 4 USb3.0 slots, an HDMI port, mini DisplayPort, RJ45, and VESA mount support and the Brix Gaming is pretty desirable. For all of this, you’d think it’d be huge, but it only stands at 59.6mm thick, and 128×115.4mm around, small enough to throw in a backpack and take to the LAN party down the block. Now if only they made foldable monitors…
R929OC-4GD
Featuring AMD’s latest R9 design, the R9 290, the R929OC-4GD features 4GB of GDDR5 RAM and a 1.04 GHz core clock. It outputs to an HDMI port, a Display Port and two DVI ports. It also supports a max resolution of 4096×2160, so everyone trying to get a leg up on the new 4k wave, this card has you covered with the HDMI or DP ports.
The R929OC-4GD also supports DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3. Somehow, Gigabyte also managed to cram all of this into a 2 slot design, making it easy to Crossfire this bad boy.
If you’re looking for the latest AMD has to offer, Gigabyte has a card with all the right specs.
You can hear our full discussion here:
Oculus
I wasn’t sure if I should include this in gaming or hardware, but since I got to play with an Oculus last, it’s improved its hardware so much that I felt it was best to talk about its components.
The fine people at Oculus sat me down and let me play Couch Knights, a small demo game in which you control little warriors fighting each other in a living room. It looks something like this:
I think the best part of the demo was being told to look around to get my bearings. Left was fine, right was fine, up was fine, down was temporarily terrifying. I this demo, you’re a static body sitting down, so when I looked down, I saw limbs that were not my own positioned very similarly to my own body. And my brain couldn’t handle it. For about a second, I had a feeling like “OH MY GOD I CAN’T MOVE MY BODY WHOSE LIMBS ARE THOoh wait, right, VR.” So cool.
The Oculus Rift will be hitting retail shelves this year and if my hunch is right, will have better hardware than even this design does currently. Get hyped!
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
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Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Let me tell you, I was glad to get to Seattle a night early before the festivities of PAX 2013 started Friday morning. After the flight from east coast to west it was weird (yes, weird) to see the Pacific Ocean on the weather map on the local news instead of the Atlantic hazing on the time difference but hey, I was there for PAX so it was cool. The Penny Arcade Expo spanned the total volume of the Washington State Convention Center with exhibits, vendors and meeting rooms scattered not only throughout the place, but the nearby Sheraton for panels and another building across the street for BYOC gaming (yeah, that’s “bring your own computer”) and press.
Intel
The day picked up early – instead of taking advantage of media getting an hour early access to the floor, I opted to go across the street and check out Intel’s press event showing off some gaming laptops and mobile devices from partners that were packing Intel parts. The Razer Blade we’ve already seen, but this was the first time I got to get my hands on its rival from MSI, the GS70. The GS70 has all the bells and whistles of a gaming machine at 17″ – nVidia graphics, the latest i7 inside, 16GB memory and huge storage space – but weighs less than 6 pounds with its ultralight aluminum chassis. Before i got to play with it i picked it up and kind of moved it around in the air (under the watchful eye of the Intel folks) and can tell you the weight’s no joke. And they had it running Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which looked all sorts of candy-like delicious. The chips inside ran with Intel’s Iris graphics built in, which are reported to support 4K Ultra HD (on up to three screens) and much quicker video editing and processing than the 3rd generation i-core chips that came before. I can’t really vouch for how well my eyes can tell that precisely, but they can tell that the screens looked pretty damn good.
They were also showing off their Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices – tiny little boxes (as you can see from the image) that pack some power and seemed to have grown since I saw them at PAX East earlier this year. Instead of Ivy Bridges, the guts of these units were running i3 and i5 Haswell core chips (with turbo) and Intel HD graphics 5000, which isn’t bad for starting at $400. The outside featured network, USB 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPorts. So what did they do after showing us the specs on these units? We got to game on them. There were a few stations there that were driven by a NUC stuck to the back of the monitor, that still provided a high-grade gaming experience that I would expect from a desktop build. They mentioned that they were going to release a Pro edition, which we’ll keep an eye out for. To be honest I’d consider using these in the enterprise too in pro mode. On a personal note, what was probably the nicest part of the Intel show had nothing to do with going over specs or gaming on their ultrabooks – it was the business card raffle from which I won an i7 4770K processor. So guess what kids? It’s build time.
Square-Enix
S-E had a decent amount of stuff lined up for PAX goers – I didn’t check out all of them because there were a couple reruns from PAX East but there were still some things worth seeing. First and foremost we know they’re big on remakes and remasters, so there’s no surprise that Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix, Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster and Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut all made appearances at their booth. KH 1.5 and Deus Ex were reruns from PAX East, so I started by taking a look at the remasters of Final Fantasy X/X-2. The gameplay graphics are definitely sharper and a cut above how they looked on the PS2, when back then they were amazing. The CG cutscenes also looked pretty good, but not as much of an improvement from S-E’s PS2 edition of the game. Otherwise, I heard mumblings of rumors that the remaster would be delayed from this year to next. While it makes sense, I’m not going to say it’s true since I didn’t hear it straight from Square-Enix.
The other game I was glad to finally get my hands on was Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns. Having played the first and second one through, the series kind of grew on me, and Lighting became one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters of all time. I knew the gameplay on this one was going to be a little bit different than the previous games in the XIII universe, and did like what I saw. Lightning is a solo player (at least in the demo) and the overworld work that has to be done is more than just walking around and only being able to jump where there’s a flashy spot on the ground. The demo featured a slice of the game where you have to chase Snow down, of course learning the mechanics of the game on the way. Similar to paradigm shifts Lightning can switch between classes on the fly to unleash a broad range of attacks. These classes each have a different orientation – in the case of this demo it was defense/life, attack power and magic. It almost reminded me of the dress spheres in Final Fantasy X-2, just done a lot better in the combat style of the XIII universe. Staggering your opponents changes a little bit, but the core concept is similar. I for one enjoyed it, and as I am a glutton for completion, will definitely be picking it up to close out the trilogy.
They also showed some trailers for Thief, Final Fantasy XV and the Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 HD Remixes in the theater section they had set up. I’m going to link you the one for Final Fantasy XV. It’s a rerun from E3, but boy is it delicious.
As for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, S-E seemed have a good (maybe?) problem, actually suffering downtime because they weren’t expecting as many western players as they have. Director Naoki Yoshida admitted this freely, that he thought players would let others give FFXIV:ARR a try first before jumping in. The server loads were supposedly spread out properly as of today, and more importantly to some, the restriction on YouTube playthroughs and videos has been lifted. Other than that, new updates will bring more Primal fights, the Gold Saucer in-game (once they get three mini games to kick it off, woot!), and maybe some new jobs and classes. On that as far as class mounts go for the hopeful, not much more information has been revealed – but if you want a unicorn, roll a conjurer.
Stay tuned for the next segment tomorrow featuring my faves from the Indie Megabooth and a gameplay review of Dying Light. Also later in this series will be the 2K roundup featuring X-COM and Borderlands 2, as well as my pick of the litter for the best of PAX 2013. And you can always find photos from the whole PAX proceedings on our IHOGeek Facebook page.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
