Brian

@Khenglish could probably tell you what to do. Those are capacitors and the card will probably still work but if you take it to a local electronics shop the can probably solder those back on for you.

So with the new Turing GPUs having been announced and up for purchase, do you plan to upgrade to one given the price increase of each segment? How important are the new ray tracing and dlss functions in making a purchasing decision for you? 

A New Battle Royale Experience - Ring of Elysium

I'm sure by now everyone is familiar with the battle royale genre that took PC gaming by storm with PUBG's introduction last year. Since then, Fortnite and many other BR clones hit the market and that trend shows no signs of slowing down in the future as well known franchises such as Battlefield make the foray into battle royale. 

 

Tencent, one of China's largest game publishers, is currently testing its own free to play BR game in Asia called Ring of Elysium (ROE). If you haven't heard of Tencent, they're the company that Bluehole (makers of PUBG) partnered with to create the mobile version of PUBG and they also own a large chunk of Epic Games which makes the game engine for both PUBG and Fortnite.

 

Free to Play In Asia (for now)

Ring of Elysium is Tencent's version of PUBG for the desktop which is currently beta testing in Asia with plans to expand availability of the game in the future. The only way to get this game if you are a NA/EU player is to download the Garena client and go through a few additional steps to get it working. You can skip ahead to the download instructions and grab a cup of coffee while ROE downloads and you finish reading the rest of this article. 

 

Quality of Life Improvements

ROE has the same premise as PUBG and Fortnite where players eject from an airplane onto the map and then frantically search for weapons and armor to fend off other hostile players before the zone closes in on them. Even the inventory UI (user interface) in ROE looks eerily similar to PUBG but when you look beneath the surface and dig a little deeper, you'll find ROE plays quite differently than PUBG while also bringing with it sorely needed quality of life improvements that PUBG still lacks.

 

When I began my first match, I noticed there was no lobby like PUBG but instead I was already inside the airplane coasting along in the sky with less waiting time than a traditional PUBG lobby.  Next, a sound rang out indicating it was time to eject and when I did, my character was equipped with a glider which seemed more maneuverable and enjoyable to use than a parachute.

 

The first place I landed was a theme park aptly named "Ocean Park" and quickly made my way to a table containing weapons and grabbed the LVOA-C (a 5.56 mm AR) and accompanying ammo while watching the player adjacent to me do the same. I lucked out and managed to dispatch my opponent with the LVOA-C and immediately noticed a difference in the gun play compared to PUBG, my bullets hit exactly where I aimed despite the high ping to Thailand. Next I ran over and grabbed an SMG (MP5) along with a 4x scope, 2x scope and vertical foregrip. 

 

While perusing through my inventory, I noticed each gun had two slots for scopes and that I could switch between them using a hotkey--a simple yet badly needed quality of life improvement I'd always yearned for in PUBG! I tossed the 2x scope on my MP5 and 4x on the LVOA-C and continued running around looking for more loot when I came across the G28 DMR. I figured I'd toss the MP5 in favor of a AR/DMR combo and as I grabbed the G28, I noticed the vertical foregrip and 2x scope automatically switched from the MP5 to the G28 so I didn't have to manually remove and add them myself like I would have had to in PUBG. Here's an example of this mechanic at work:

 

 

Another quality of life improvement that is featured in ROE is the ability to ping 3D positions using a hotkey which makes callouts infinitely less cumbersome than trying to describe the location of your opponent based on landmarks like PUBG. Additionally, ROE has hit markers so when your bullet hits another player, feedback is given to the player via a hit indicator which gives better feedback than a tiny speck of blood like in PUBG. 

 

Hit Detection, Bullet Velocity & Combat

Having grabbed a level 2 helmet, backpack and vest, I was ready to make my way out of Ocean Park and head towards a town called Whale Town (these names are probably placeholders). While heading over there, I saw a guy about 150 meters out running out in the open and I decided to take a shot at him with my G28 + 4x scope. As I tracked him, I led my shot like I normally do in PUBG and fired but noticed I missed because I had overcompensated thinking bullet velocity and drop were like PUBG when in fact they were nothing alike. Next, I aimed slightly ahead of him and fired again and the bullet hit him dead on and I continued by firing a few more successive shots until he was dead. 

 

ROE bullets seem to travel at a greater velocity and have less drop (even though they are affected by wind like PUBG) compared to PUBG. In addition, the hit detection seems to be spot on for the most part (when taking high ping into account) unlike PUBG which can quite often seem spotty. I wanted to test this theory further by trying other sniper weapons out and I eventually came across a Remington 700 5.56mm sniper rifle and gave up the G28 in favor of it. 

 

Thanks to the quality of life improvements, my extended mag and scope from the G28 were automatically added to the Remington 700 and I was good to go. I decided to perch on top of the roof and wait on a victim to test out the Remington 700 and it wasn't long before I found my next target who was blissfully running across an open field about 150-200 meters out. Seeing how little I had to compensate for movement with the G28, I figured the Remington 700 would be similar and I was right, as soon as I fired, the bullet lasered in on the guys skull and he was down for the count. I also noticed there was no delay when aiming down the sights compared to PUBG and other games.

 

 

Some players who value realism above all else may argue that less bullet drop and immediate ADS isn't a good thing but it seems Tencent has decided that a more casual approach to gun play could be more enjoyable for many and for me personally that is indeed the case.

 

Dynamic Weather

As I was running from one town to the next trying to survive the onslaught of other players, I noticed the weather had changed from a sunny day to one with rain and strong winds. It turns out each ROE match has unique dynamic weather which includes rain, wind, lightning and fog.

 

Dynamic weather isn't just for looks (though it looks great), as it drives players to change their tactics. In a sunny setting, one can easily discern other players footsteps and see them from a distance but when the weather shifts to strong winds and rain, footsteps and other sounds become more muted and visibility is also reduced which forces the player to be more careful and aware of their surroundings. Here's an example of the dynamic weather at play (yeah I got shot up pretty bad): 

 

 

Eventually, the rain cleared up and I continued on my journey to the center of the zone and came across a silly looking Mr. Bean car (a mini cooper knock-off) and decided to take it for a spin.

 

Vehicles Not Quite Up To Par

While PUBG's vehicle physics aren't exactly the best, they do have ROE beat by far for now. As I mentioned above, I was driving around in my tiny Mr. Bean car and while accelerating, I tried turning and and rather than a gradual turn like I intended, it did a hard right into a tree. You could argue this is a side effect of a 230 ms ping but that isn't exactly it, the vehicle physics seem almost non-existent and as a consequence, they drive more like a cheap mobile game than a fully fleshed out desktop BR game. However, since the game is in beta testing and nowhere near complete, this can be excused. 

 

 

Performance & Limitations

The good news is that despite being in early beta, the game runs quite well and anything with a 1050 Ti and above should run it smoothly at 1080p. Unfortunately, because the game is still in its infancy, Tencent hasn't fully fleshed out all the graphics and bind options yet so you can't technically go above 1920 x 1080 px resolution unless you tab out of the game and use the NVIDIA control panel to manually adjust the resolution above 1080p. Similarly, rebinding keys to the mouse isn't yet possible so one workaround right now is to use your own mouse's software (e.g. Razer Synapse) or a third party one like X-Mouse. 

 

Should You Try It Out? Of Course!

Even with the game limited to Asia right now, it is free and well worth checking out if you are a battle royale and especially PUBG fan. It offers a similar experience to PUBG with with the noted quality of life and gun play improvements I mentioned above. In addition, the map itself is quite beautiful and is definitely a step above what PUBG has to offer. I've been playing this game for roughly two weeks now and haven't gotten tired of it yet so I recommend every BR/PUBG fan to give this game a try since you have nothing to lose. 

 

How to Download Ring of Elysium (Updated 5/2/2018)

Downloading ROE has become a lot less complicated now thanks to official English language support from Tencent. So let's begin:

 

1. First thing you will need is Garena client so head on over here and grab it:  https://www.garena.sg/gpc

2. Next, launch Garena and switch your region to Thailand and then restart your Garena client.

3. Select Ring of Elysium from the list of games in the Garena client and start your download. 

4. Once the download is complete, launch ROE.

5. Hit Esc and press the middle button (see picture below) which is for settings and you will then see a drop down menu that lets you change the language from Thai to English, do this and then press the "Apply" button (it will be in Thai, see second picture below). Afterwards, it will prompt you to restart the game which you will need to do. 

6. Restart ROE and now it should be in English.

 

And you're all set! 

 

Come Join Us!

If you would like to join the T|I crew and others in a game of ROE (and other games), then hop in our discord and say hello! We're always looking for new players to game with. 

 

 

 

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You can download immediately. 

On 3/1/2018 at 7:30 PM, MatheusKS said:

Edit: Received the email with the software

 

Has anyone bought the software lately? Do you know how to get in touch with the developer? I made the purchase but received no email. I tried to contact via email and Facebook, but I haven't had any feedback so far.

 

We're no longer affiliated with him so can't help you there. 

Everyone knows of the plight Syrian refugees have gone through since their civil war started and I'm sure some gamers out there have wondered how they could help out. Well UNICEF has created a pretty cool website that lets you register and download an application that runs on your PC utilizing your GPU's spare power to help mine ethereum that will be used for the children. Here's their explanation about why they're doing this:

 

Quote

For the last 6 years, Syrian children have been living the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, on such a scale that it exceeds the borders of Syria. As conflict gets bogged down, the number of people in need of life support increases dramatically. For UNICEF, nearly 8.3 million children need help in Syria but also in neighboring countries that host refugee families.

An estimated 13.5 million people in Syria are in need of life-saving assistance, including 6 million children. The stagnation of the war, of a rare violence, traumatizes the population forced to live the terror, to move into the country or to take refuge elsewhere. Nearly 8 million people are displaced in Syria, and nearly 4 million are refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Today, almost 50% of the population is refugees or displaced.

 

Check out UNICEF's website for more information if you'd like to help out with a good cause: https://www.chaingers.io/en/index.html

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Once more everyone: If you have an issue with a mod, take it up with the author via PM. If you cannot find a resolution, then you should ask for a refund and only as a last resort mention something here on the forum. Personal attacks against other members calling them "swindlers" etc will not be tolerated and will result in account suspensions. 

Please stay on topic everyone and do not resort to personal insults. If you have an issue with someone, take it to PM.

If you didn't save the PDF properly then there's not much you can do to recover the changes you made. 

On 8/30/2017 at 4:18 AM, BlackSheepA1 said:

I been searching for the M18X R1 SVL7 A05 unlocked BIOS. Links are broken. Can somebody please lend a brother a hand?

 

 

An unlocked bios will most likely not help with temperature and you can probably use Throttlestop to lower your multipliers and/or CPU voltage instead.

8 hours ago, RandyTucker said:

 

Thanks! It's definitely a one-off mod to my knowledge. I've seen a few people use aluminium flight cases to make something similar to this but I've never seen anyone mod a laptop in this way. It serves my needs thus why I went down this route. Still have more bells and whistles to add, such as USB 3.0 ports on the side panel and a unique feature I will be adding soon.

 

Do you plan on integrating a more powerful GPU?

So now that we've had ample time to digest all the new AMD Vega 56/64 reviews and information, lets start a discussion about them. Performance wise, the Vega 56 more or less equals a GTX 1070 while the Vega 64 lines up with a GTX 1080. However, to many people's dismay, the Vega 64 is far too overpriced with the cheapest one currently available on Newegg being an XFX one for $689 which is nearly the same price as a GTX 1080 Ti but about 35-40% slower. 

 

In addition, both the Vega 56 and 64 use more power than their counterparts and this especially applies to the Vega 64 with it nearly consuming twice as much power as the GTX 1080. Some of the reasons I've read over the internet from Vega buyers for their purchases are the ability to utilize their FreeSync monitors as well as some Linux uses. 

 

I know our community here also utilizes desktop GPUs for eGPU uses and AMD does support eGPU now so with that in mind, do you plan to purchase a Vega 56 or 64 and if so, why? 

That is an insane mod, well done! 

Thanks for your hard work! We look forward to seeing more creations from you. 

Do you have any benchmark scores showing % gain from OC'ing?

Alright everyone, the server was wiped this morning for a few reasons:

 

1. We want to give new players a fresh chance to level up since those of us who started with the server had a pretty big advantage.

 

2. We need to set some rules and a fresh wipe will set those in stone. 

 

That said, the rules are as follows:

 

• No offline raiding - if you're caught doing this, all your buildings will be demolished by an admin and you will be killed forcing loss of your belongings. If it happens a second time, you will be banned. 
• No placing objects inside mountains where they cannot be reached. If you do this by mistake, contact an admin to rectify it.
• No foundation spamming, this will result in a warning then ban. 
• Because avatars are disabled, building bases in unreachable locations (e.g. on mountains that require stairs to reach) is prohibited.
• Building near NPC spawn (e.g. NPC towns/villages/caves) that causes them to cease to spawn will result in your building being removed by an admin. 

 

In addition, we are testing settings and right now the server is at 3x ALL so if you are happy with that, let us know. Good luck and have fun! 

This game does push the GPU hard so you absolutely need good TIM, airflow and if you're on a notebook stock clocks.

EDIT: Due to the extremely alpha state of the game, the server has been put on hold until it is more feature rich. 

 

Survival games are all the rage these days it seems and while games like Rust, ARK and DayZ have grabbed the lions share of attention, Funcom has decided to toss its hat into the fray with the release of Conan Exiles. Loosely based on the movies, you are an exile in a hostile land where you start out nude with nothing but your wits and will to survive. The game is populated with hostile NPCs such as hyenas (and boy are they frustrating), rhinos, undead, giant spiders, humans etc. that are all out to kill you.

 

 

This game features a very robust crafting and building system similar to Ark/Rust but with a more medieval take on it. There are no guns in this game so you will be fighting hand to hand with most people in PVP servers such as the one run by Tech|Inferno. Currently the Tech|Inferno server is run on a dedicated box that has been optimized for Conan Exiles and we invite everyone from our community to come join us! 

 

BONUS: If you are a Tech|Inferno registered member, let an admin in-game (5150 Joker or HuskyMatt) know and you will be granted bonus starting items such as medium armor, sword and shield. 

 

Server information:

IP: 158.69.120.222

Port: 24000

 

 

See you there!

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On 1/1/2017 at 8:23 PM, QDIR said:

Can this program fix the internal display problem? 

 

i dont have the adapter yet to try it but it can be a solution. Someone brave Enough? 

 

Your post was edited.

We previously mentioned that Ubisoft was giving away free games to celebrate it's 30th anniversary and in case you missed out on any of them, now is your chance to get them all as a bundle! There are a total of 7 games which include Rayman Origins, The Crew, Tom Clancy Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Beyond Good & Evil, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and last but not least Assassins Creed III. 

 

You will need uPlay and an Ubisoft account to redeem this bundle so if you're interested in free games courtesy of Ubisoft, check out this link. 

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2 hours ago, Khenglish said:

What do people think the odds are of Vega showing up in some sort of MXM format? It's hard to tell, but it seems to be offering GTX 1080 performance with similar power draw. If it did I'd immediately jump to AMD. Their MXM cards back when they were competitive were always far cheaper than Nvidia cards. The $1200+ price tag for the MXM 1080 and $900+ for the MXM 1070 are utter BS.

 

I think it depends on whether Clevo, Dell, Asus, MSI etc push for mxm based notebooks. If they have moved away from it then the chances of getting mxm from AMD are slim. Nvidia stopped furnishing reference mxm designs since it was supposedly too costly and that could be a reason why AMD won't bother either since they have even less working capital. 

More information on Zen now known as Rizen: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/amd-zen-performance-details-release-date/

 

• AMD RIZEN
• 3.4 GHz base-clock (or greater) at launch.
• 20 MB L2+L3 Cache
• Processor chipset
• SenseMI

 

[gallery800x800]
[album]9[/album]
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I gotta say I'm getting more excited about Rizen now that it's release is approaching. Getting an 8 core CPU that has a higher base clock than Intel 8 core CPUs and uses less power is pretty great. I hope that it is able to keep up with Intel's IPC because that's the last remaining factor and if it can in most games and applications, then damn it will be an attractive platform for gamers. If AMD offers enthusiast notebook gamers socketed CPUs then all the better but I suspect that may not be the case simply because most of these ODMs want super thin and light and with that comes BGA filth.

11 minutes ago, Khenglish said:

Modding AMD vBIOS is a breeze. Power limits, clocks, voltages, and even memory timings is very easy to do. None of this inconsistent clocks crap that Pascal has. AMD vBIOS just works logically.

 

AMD just recently added bios signature enforcement in their driver for Polaris so it made vBios modding a bit more difficult but still doable: https://www.techpowerup.com/228536/amd-bios-signature-check-re-enabled-with-relive-locks-out-polaris-bios-modders

 

But I agree it is far easier than the b.s. NVIDIA has done with Pascal. I think with Zen + Vega we're going to see AMD come back into the fight in 2017 so it should be an interesting year. Plus AMD recently licensed their Radeon IP to Intel for use in Intel iGPU so they're going to get a nice revenue bump from that. More money for AMD hopefully means more R&D money so they can put pressure on NVIDIA.

On 12/11/2016 at 9:11 PM, Mr. Fox said:

I suppose anything is possible, but I'd never entertain the idea of spending money on any AMD product at launch. I'd want to see tons of examples proving that is it equal to or better than the Intel equivalent before I would consider the notion of buying an AMD CPU instead of Intel. Same thing applies to AMD versus NVIDIA. Taking a chance on anything from AMD being desirable based on marketing hype has great potential to end in disappointment.

 

Answer:  I don't think they'll be able to pull it off.

 

Fair enough, I share in your sentiments as well. What makes me slightly optimistic about Zen is the fact that OEMs have pre-purchased it and the few leaks we have seen seem promising. I don't think it will keep up with Intel in power efficiency and IPC either but if AMD can hit  90% of the performance Intel achieves with more cores + less cost then I think they will have a very solid platform on their hands. They also have been improving quite a bit on the GPU front with their drivers as they have started a regular cadence of releases again and now they have a Shadowplay equivalent called ReLive which is nice. We need two healthy viable competitors in the CPU and GPU space and AMD is definitely fighting against two opponents who are giants in their respective fields but at least on the CPU side of things, Intel has dragged its feet for years so this will push them to release something worthwhile I hope.