The TR Podcast 131: News from GDC and FCAT attacks

Date: March 31, 2013
Duration: 1:57:46

Hosted by: Jordan Drake

Co-hosts: Scott Wasson and Cyril Kowaliski

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Show notes
This episode kicks off with some listener mail, including a rant from a disgruntled GeForce GTX 680 owner. Then, Scott gives us the scoop on AMD's, Intel's, and Nvidia's announcements and demos from the Game Developers Conference. To wrap things up, we spiral down the crazy rabbit hole that is Nvidia's FCAT frame capture system, which gives us new insights into the veracity of Fraps benchmarks and the problems with CrossFire.

Send in listener mail, and we'll answer on the podcast. - jdrake@techreport.com

Follow us on Twitter - Scott - Jordan - Geoff - Cyril - The Tech Report

Listener mail:

DDR3 Prices? - from Phillip - (0:02:11):

"As reported by yourselves and other tech reporters, DDR3 prices have been going up recently for various reasons (windows 8 launch, DDR4 coming in a few years). My question is: are these reasons enough to buy memory now, on the speculation that the all-time-low prices of last November are gone for good? Or, am I safe waiting for 3 months, which is when I plan to be building my personal gaming rig to coincide with Haswell?"

Is this it? - from Dan - (0:06:27):

"Just saw the early benchmarks on Haswell. 7-13% gains? Wooptee doo! That's it? Really? My question. When, if ever, are we going to see some actual significant bumps in real world performance? These constant and never ending baby steps year after year while we fork out big bucks for(upgraded my gtx580 to 680) for new hardware each year for what, 10% gains? 20% gains at best? What a **** joke. We're still using DDR3 for God's sake! And don't even get me started on Titan. $1000 clams for finally some actual significant numbers over a 680? Ok great! But $1000 bucks? Hey Nvidia, atleast pull my hair while screwing me! Is it great engineering? Sure, i'll give credit where credit is due, my 680 runs cooler and quieter than my 580 did, great thank you. But games today still stutter and hitch at times in 1080p on the highest end of gear. Are we going to be forever stuck in this endless cycle of baby steps year after year? And with mobile on the rise i'm afraid the focus now is ever more on less power, less heat, and not so much huge leaps in REAL framerate improvements."

Tech discussion:

• AMD at GDC - (0:14:11) - Cloud gaming - Radeon 7990 - Battlefield 4 Gameplay

  Intel at GDC - (0:30:08)

  Nvidia at GDC - (0:42:30) - Unreal Engine 4 demo

  Inside the second with Nvidia's frame capture tools - (0:54:51) - Read more

That's all, folks! We'll see you on the next episode.