Thursday, May 30, 2013

Pioneer announces XDJ-R1 all-in-one digital DJ deck with MIDI, iOS control features (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/pioneer-announces-xdj-r1/

Pioneer announces XDJ-R1 all-in-one CD player with MIDI and iOS wireless control (video)

Sure, DJ controllers might be the emerging force in spinning, but CDJs are still largely the club standard. Pioneer has always had thumbs in both of these pies, of course, but the new XDJ-R1 sees the brand uniting them for the first time. The all-in-one unit offers two CD players, USB media playback and MIDI controller functionality. Additionally, you can keep things moving wirelessly via an iOS device thanks to a new dedicated "remotebox" app. Wireless direct means that you won't need to worry too much about flaky connections while you wander into the crowd with your iPhone. You'll still be able to control almost everything directly in the app. Back on the physical (and built-in) two-channel mixer you can spice things up with the usual loop, sync, hot cue and sampling features, plus a choice of color effects. The inclusion of XLR outputs and booth out shows that Pioneer wants to see this in the DJ box, and at $1,099, it should appeal to anyone who'd been eyeing up the component parts. It's available in June, but in the meantime there's a video tour cued up past the break.

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Posted by Augustine at 7:05 PM

NVIDIA reveals GeForce GTX 700M series GPUs for notebooks, we go eyes-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/nvidia-geforce-gtx-700m-gpus-eyes-on/

NVIDIA reveals GeForce GTX 700M series GPUs for notebooks -- we go eyes-on

We've already seen a couple of new desktop GTX cards from NVIDIA this month, and if the mysterious spec sheet for MSI's GT70 Dragon Edition 2 laptop wasn't enough of a hint, the company's got some notebook variants to let loose, too. The GeForce GTX 700M series, officially announced today, is a quartet of chips built on the Kepler architecture. At the top of the stack is the GTX 780M, which NVIDIA claims is the "world's fastest notebook GPU," taking the title from AMD's Radeon HD 8970M. For fans of the hard numbers, the 780M has 1,536 CUDA cores, an 823MHz base clock speed and memory configs of up to 4GB of 256-bit GDDR5 -- in other words, not a world apart from a desktop card. Whereas the 780M's clear focus is performance, trade-offs for portability and affordability are made as you go down through the 770M, 765M and 760M. Nevertheless, the 760M is said to be 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and the 770M 55 percent faster.

All of the chips feature NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 and Optimus technologies, and work with the GeForce Experience game auto-settings utility. The 700M series should start showing up in a host of laptops soon, and a bunch of OEMs have already pledged their allegiance. Check out a video with NVIDIA's Mark Avermann after the break, where he shows off a range of laptops packing 700M GPUs, and helps us answer the most important question of all: can it run Crysis? (Or, in this case, Crysis 3.)

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Posted by Augustine at 7:05 PM

Razer reveals the Blade Pro and 14-inch Blade gaming laptops (update: $999 Pro for indie game devs)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/razer-blade-pro-14-inch-models/

DNP Razer reveals two new Blades Pro and 14inch versions

Razer promised it was aiming to iterate its Blade gaming laptop on a yearly basis, and despite the company's recent focus on tablets, it appears to be keeping its word. Today, a mere eight months after releasing the second-gen Blade, Razer unveiled two new members of the Blade family: the 17-inch Blade Pro and its 14-inch sibling. As you might expect, the Pro tops its elders with new silicon and storage options. It's exchanging third-gen Intel Ivy Bridge silicon for a fourth-gen Haswell chip and upgrading from an NVIDIA GTX 660M to a GTX 765M GPU. Oh, and Razer's nixed the HDD options from the big Blade's menu -- the Pro packs a 128GB SSD standard, with optional upgrades to 256 or 512GB. That new hardware is evidently smaller than what it's replacing: though the Pro shares the same size chassis as its predecessor, it packs a 74Wh battery (the older Blade has a 60Wh cell). Other than that, the Blade Pro comes with Razer's Switchblade interface, a trio of USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a 1920 x 1080 display, just like the prior Blade.

Meanwhile, the new 14-inch Blade will come with mostly the same hardware as the Pro, meaning it's got a Haswell chip and GTX 756M graphics along with a buffet of SSD choices. Those components are stuffed inside a chassis that measures 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.66 inches, and weighs 4.13 pounds. Naturally, given its smaller size, it lacks the Switchblade LCD and buttons, has a 1.3 megapixel webcam (as opposed to the Pro's 2 megapixel unit) and a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display. And, despite its relatively svelte dimensions (for a portable gaming rig), the baby Blade still has a 70Wh battery inside. The Pro starts at $2,299, or $200 less than prior Blades and the 14-inch model will set you back a minimum of $1,799. Each will be available in North America in Q2, with a worldwide rollout of the Pro coming sometime later this year.

Update: Good news, Indie game developers! Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan just announced that those devs with a successfully funded Kickstarter can get a new Blade Pro for just $999.

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Posted by Augustine at 7:05 PM

NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 770 for under $400, says it's faster than last year's GTX 680

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/nvidia-announces-geforce-gtx-770/

NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 770 for 329, beats lastgen with faster memory and clock speeds

It probably won't come as a huge surprise, given the GTX 780's appearance last week, but today's launch of the GTX 770 nevertheless brings us a very interesting product. The card is claimed to be about five percent faster than last year's much more expensive flagship, the GTX 680, thanks to a faster memory interface (7Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s), a slightly higher base clock speed (1,046 vs. 1,006GHz) and an equivalent number of CUDA cores (1,536). Seeing as how the the GTX 680 still holds its own with current games, this performance parity strikes us as something of a deal -- assuming independent benchmarks back it up. We're still awaiting a confirmed US price, but we'll eat our SATA cables if it's anything other than $399 for a 2GB model (the press release just says "under $400"). UK and European prices match those of the GTX 670 (£329 inc. VAT, 329 euros exc. VAT), and availability begins today. Check out NVIDIA's slide deck for more details, including power consumption and noise, SLI scaling (which looks healthy) and some in-house frame rate comparisons against other products.

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Posted by Augustine at 9:18 AM

LG's Optimus G Pro launching across Asia in June

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/lg-optimus-g-pro-asia/

LGs Optimus G Pro launching across Asia in June

Right now, Asians who want LG's Optimus G Pro have to make a sneaky trip over to South Korea, but not for much longer. The handset will begin rolling out across the continent through June, starting in Hong Kong and spreading to places like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia before the end of that month. Just remember, that unlike the Galaxy Note II, you'll have to spring for the stylus yourself.

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Posted by Augustine at 6:53 AM

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