Archive for category: Blog

Remember the days of your childhood when you would sit with a group of your mates around the TV playing games via a console?

Most likely your childhood was in the 1980s and 90s, when technology had not advanced to the online gaming that is the norm today, albeit still via a console. Now, you can still play greames with other people, but they are most likely people you have never met and often on the other wide of the world.

However, human beings are still deep down social animals who like getting together in the same space as a group and a combination of this plus nostalgia could be what has fuelled a massive revival in what is now called “retro gaming”.

Many people have retained a fondness for characters like Sonic, Zelda, or Super Mario. These people are now adults and possibly parents, and the desire not only to do something with the children may be another influence on the revival.

Perhaps this year’s launch of the new Nintendo Switch, with its updated Zelda and, soon, Mario games has also contributed.

While many people may have bought the new consoles each time they were launched, it seems they never actually got rid of their earlier ones.

Now, they are being rescued from the attic to entertain a whole new generation and perhaps also resurrect the idea of spending “family time” together.

Not only that, but there are now thriving businesses developing from the resurgence.  There is a large and lucrative market for games cartridges and consoles on places like eBay – to prove that hanging onto “stuff” for once can earn money, even if it’s the long-suffering parents who have had to store it all. Some enterprising small business people have even opened physical shops in their neighbourhoods and there are also specialist arcades and gaming cafés.

There is also an opportunity for anyone with some technical/handyman skills.  These consoles are old and no longer manufactured. The older a piece of equipment is the more likely it is that something will break, wear out or go wrong so repairers are likely to find themselves much in demand.

So, the next time your mum asks when you’re going to get rid of the clutter you’ve left behind at home when you moved out you have the perfect answer!

The GTX 1080 Ti the newest and most powerful gaming graphics card ever?

It was only released last Friday but already demand has outstripped supply for the new The GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti, NVIDIA’s new flagship gaming GPU.

Its GPU frequency has been boosted by 50 MHz and has a redesigned cooling set-up which has doubled the airflow compared to the Titan X Pascal.

In design terms it looks and feels identical to the GTX 1080 Founders Edition.  It has a die-cast aluminium body and 7-phase dualFET power supply. It is cooled by a radial fan with an advanced vapor chamber designed to for consistent performance in even the most thermally challenging environments.

Reviewers are already raving about its “extreme gaming horsepower” and ability to deal with thermally challenging environments.

Richard Leadbetter, of eurogamer.net put the new GPU through its paces setting it the challenge of whether its performance at ultra HD matches up to the 1080p prowess of GTX 970 at the same settings.

His findings were that while it wasn’t a complete match it was “astonishingly close” and occasionally, given its 4x increase in pixel count, it was even faster.

His conclusion? “The only real difference between GTX 1080 Ti and Titan X Pascal is 1GB of VRAM: memory that will likely remain completely untouched for a long, long time” and he described its performance as “sensational”.

The new GPU was also reviewed by pcgamer.com. Their reviewer pushed the power up to its maximum 120%, set the fan speed at 80% and while running it with a heavy workload for “hours” he captured an image that “completed with no crashes, despite the healthy overclock”.

Processors
Not all processors are created equal, single core, dual core, triple core, quad core, even 8 core processors are now available, most entry level computers will come with a dual core processor, between 2 and 3.0Ghz depending on if it’s a laptop or PC tower, this will allow you to do the basics with ease, you can pick up triple core or low level quad cores at reduced prices or with entry level systems. If you are looking to do something a little more demanding such as gaming, Sage accounting or other resource hungry programs then a quad core would be a sensible upgrade, a dual core can still cope with these tasks however performance will be greatly reduced! Also worth noting with budget systems make sure that you are not buying a 1.2 or 1.4Ghz processor as these are put into budget systems and can really struggle with doing the very basics after you have installed your desired software.

RAM
RAM is generally an easy area to cover, this is because most computers now days are supplied with a lot of ram and with the introduction of Windows 8 and 10 these operating systems are much less taxing on your RAM compared to Windows 7 and Vista. You will struggle to find a machine with less than 4GB and can even get them with 16GB. Upgrading the RAM is only worth doing if the rest of the system is up to scratch otherwise you will more than likely cause a bottleneck and the machine won’t be able to utilise it.

Graphics cards?
When it comes to graphics cards, unless you are looking to have dual screens for a desktop, or looking to be able to play games or even some serious photo or video editing, on board graphics cards should be more than capable of doing what you need, with new on board graphics being capable of full high definition (1920 x 1080) resolutions. If you do require an external graphics card there are so many to choose from, the best thing to do is if you are looking to play a particular game is checking what the minimum specification is that it will play on and going up from there is a good start.

I think I have covered the majority of the basics that you need to know before you go out and buy yourself a new computer, on the whole its really about what you are looking for and what you need it to do, as well as what your budget will allow, if there is a special offer you may find going for the higher specification option cheaper than you first thought!