Xbox One...Oh My

Hey Guys, so yesterday Microsoft announced the Xbox One and my god I am preordering two, one for me and one for the wife, she will not be left in the dark trust me. I hope everyone took the time to watch the reveal, if you haven’t start here.

There were a lot of assumptions about it being similar to the PlayStation 4, which it is hardware-wise, but this isn’t about the PlayStation 4. From a hardware perspective the Xbox One has 8 GB of RAM (DDR3), an 8 core x86 AMD processor and specialized GPU that is being equated to an AMD Radeon HD 7790 GPU, a Blu-ray player (thank God) and comes packaged with the new Kinect, a 500 GB HDD (standard) Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI in/out. All this hardware allows for a seamless switching between all of the software. The hardware working in concert with said software will create a very centralized (hence One) platform which actually leads us to the real marvel of the Xbox One the software.

The Xbox One Team has really stepped its game up here. For starters there are 3 Operating Systems: The Xbox platform that we know and love, albeit with a graphical upgrade, a Windows Kernel based on Windows 8 for applications and to deal with the multitasking and a middleware which I believe is hypervisor based (see: hypervisor) that makes it all play nice. One of the features that I like is the Live TV, this takes advantage of the HDMI in/out. This will work great for me because I have Direct TV so when football starts….imagine the possibilities. This also piggy backs on another cool feature: Active Fantasy Stat Tracking. The new Xbox One experience will track your fantasy stats (they've only showed NFL and NBA so far) and you will get a small popup notification when your players score points for your league, kind of like the achievements popup on the Xbox 360 just with smaller real estate. The other way you can track fantasy stats is with the new snap-in system. This basically works like picture in picture but is displayed side by side instead of the one screen being superimposed on the other screen. Speaking of the snap-in feature leads to another useful feature that we touched on earlier: Multitasking. They take this to extremes as are as I am concerned, as if Microsoft’s own words, “You can start matchmaking in one game while playing another”. This tech specifically is called Smart Match. Other multitasking that they showed were interesting as well. They show the first Star Trek (2009) and span-in(ed) the trailer for what I believe is Star Trek: Into Darkness and they were both playing. I couldn't tell if they were using split audio, but I would think that probable, specifically when you take into account that During the COD: Ghost expose’ they spoke of multiple video out. I started to give a entire sections to the Kinect but it can be summed up into a few sentences. It’s always on and always listening. It takes human range of motion into deep account, it even notices when you twist your wrist now and it is going to be an integral part of the system. Make your decisions on if that is a good thing as you may.

There were some mention of games but not much. EA is releasing 4 titles within earshot of launch all powered by EA’s new Ignite Engine (*Note: He got the life kicked out of him.Watch the video on IGN that I linked to understand). These titles are mainstays and should be expected on any new system: Madden, FIFA, NBA Live and UFC. Microsoft also spoke of 15 games that are coming from their internal studios with 8 being new franchises, but the show stealer was Call of Duty: Ghost. Everyone was waiting for that announcement. You should have seen me and my wife. This is primarily the reason why I am preordering two.

I refuse to compare the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 right now as these are new systems and we don’t have "complete" details about either systems or all of the launch titles. After E3 that should change but you never know.

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PC Gaming Workhorse

Hey Guys, today we are going to go into (as most of you know) one of my favorite areas, gaming. This time we are moving away from the console war and over to the PC side of the wheelhouse.

Your gaming performance depends on a lot of factors but one of the major ones is your graphics card. There are two primary types, discrete graphics cards and an intergraded graphics which are our topics of discussion.

Discrete graphics cards are what you hear about when a separate card that is specifically for processing graphics it is also known as a GPU. They come in a variety of sizes and speeds; also prices can start relatively low and get astronomical quick. Two of the newest and fastest so far the GTX Titan and the Radeon 7990 but of which will set you back $1000, but if you want to play your games on the highest graphic settings then you can do no wrong here.  There is a caveat here though; you will need a good CPU as well. The Intel Core i3/i5/i7 series CPU are the best for high end gaming, under almost all circumstances you can get away with a middle of the road CPU like the Core i5 with a decent card like a GTX 660ti and not have to worry about graphic tears or low frame rates for a while. Want even more power out of GPUs? Put them in a SLI (NVidia) or Crossfire (AMD) configuration. That takes 2 (or more) GPUs and bundles their processing power together to increase the graphics output and frame rate. Obviously there are other considerations like System RAM and the memory of the GPU.

Integrated graphics are graphics that are built into the CPU that share their memory with the system. This is usually represented as like this: Up to 3061MB Total Available Graphics Memory. This means that the APU (accelerated processing unit) can siphon up to just under 3GB of System RAM to accelerate the graphics. AMD APUs are generally the industry standard when it comes to APU for gaming, that might change soon with the introduction of Haswell architecture announced from Intel which promises to be up to 2x faster compared current APU technology. This is a major step up from the Intel HD 4000 graphics which is the current for the Core Series CPUs.

The great thing is that you can build a very good gaming rig for relatively cheap nowadays, as long as you don’t go too overboard with the other parts, but one of the things that I highly suggest is do research online for you next GPU/APU. The reviews that you might read/watch can be subjective, when you find a part that you like and you buy it make sure to do benchmarks like 3dMark and use Fraps to find out what your frame rate is compared to others people with similar builds. In closing as always stay tuned as you never know we might be giving away some high end parts in the future #wink.

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Update 3 Bringing it Forward

Morning Guys,

Yesterday’s blog will be delayed a week due to unforeseen traveling that I have to do. We will be back next week, but I wanted to take this time out to mention a few things:

1. We here at TRT are very excited about the upcoming reveal from Microsoft on May 21^st and we will have full coverage of the event, hopefully next time there is a major announcement we will get an invite.
2. We are also looking for guest writers that appeal to a variety of audiences and on more specific technology topics like gamer culture, hardware and software problems and mobile technology. If you would like a guest spot please let me know via email at blog@teamrevolutiontechnology.com
3. We are coming up on our one year anniversary on July 5^th and we are excited about that. We are planning something special for that blog posting, but we can’t tell you yet. We will be leading up to it in the posts that are coming up at around that time.
4. We will also be making a push to have more diverse content, so some of my future blogs will have pictures and other articles attached, especially as I begin to deal with bigger and better tech in my daily travels.

For more info on Team Revolution Technology, please visit is at the following social media sites:

FaceBook: Team Revolution Tech
Twitter: @TeamRevTech
Google+: Team Revolution Technology
Web (Coming Soon): http://teamrevolutiontechnology.com/