Table of contents for June 2015 in Maximum PC

>SSD Migration >Water Cooling >GPU Drivers Feeling Bloated Doc, I’m looking to upgrade my rig. Currently, the hardware is liquid-cooled. I’m running an Asus P9X79 motherboard, an Intel 256GB SSD, three WD My Book External hard drives and one 250GB WD hard drive, a Core i7- 3930K at 3.2GHz, 32GB of RAM, an EVGA GTX 750 Ti Super-clocked graphics card, and a Sound Blaster X-Fi. Also, I’m using Norton Internet Security and Malwarebytes. I keep my signatures and scans up to date, but my system hesitates. I don’t know what’s causing this. I’ve Reimage Plus and WinZip Driver Updater installed. I keep getting errors from Reimage that the wzdu25. exe files are threats. Neither company is able to help. The scan on Reimage won’t complete. Is there anything you’d suggest?…

UNTIL THIS MONTH, Nvidia’s GTX 980 was the top single-GPU graphics card around. And then the inevitable happened. The green team dropped the full force of its GM 200 Maxwell core in the form of the GTX Titan X. We’ve gone into detail on the new ultra-enthusiast card on page 78, but suffice to say it’s the new GPU performance king. At nearly $1,000, however, it’s beyond the reach of most of our bank accounts, which is why it and the R9 295X2 aren’t included in this supertest. So we’re concentrating on cards you’re actually likely to buy, rather than just dream about. Still, the GTX 980 is no budget option. Prices start at around $550, with some manufacturers offering versions for another $100 or more. The GTX 980 is…

WITH THE RECENT AM D PRICE CUTS trying to shift existing stock before the new generation drops, plus take the sting out of the Titan X launch, its graphics card stack has been mightily squeezed. It’s more obvious with the three R9 28x cards below this R9 290, but it’s still getting tricky for the second-tier Hawaii card to make a name for itself. The issue is the R9 290X now costs just $350. That’s only around $45 more than this XFX OC Edition card, leaving the poor ol’ R9 290 in a bit of a no-man’s land. It’s a lot more expensive than the R9 285 and can’t quite catch up with its big Hawaiian brother. Granted the relative performance stats of the two Hawaii GPU-powered cards are incredibly…

THE GTX 960 IS ALMOST IDENTICAL to the R9 285 in so many ways. They are priced similarly, they perform almost identically in our gaming benchmarks, and they both have the same memory issues. Nvidia’s GM 204 GPU saw it working with some new compression algorithms. This new technique allows it to use a small memory bus and still retain a relatively high effective memory bandwidth. The GTX 960 then has a 2GB frame buffer running across a lowly 128-bit bus, which delivers some 112GB/s of bandwidth, though with the new compression jazz in place it estimates that to transform into 149GB/s effective. That makes sense from a manufacturing point of view—the 128-bit bus is obviously cheaper to make than that double-width 256-bit bus on the GTX 760 this card…

THE GTX 750 TI might go down as one of our favorite-ever graphics cards. It represented a shift in Nvidia’s scheduling, being the first GPU running on its new Maxwell architecture, but being resolutely low-end. It was almost like Nvidia saw the writing on the wall regarding the 20nm process transition and was testing how efficient it could get its new architecture on the 28nm lithography before committing its top cards. Almost. But none of that is why we love the GTX 750 Ti so much. Its real beauty is that it’s so low-powered—100W lower peak platform power compared with the closest AMD GPU—and yet still delivers excellent 1080p gaming. We were able to cobble together a passively cooled option which didn’t even throttle back its clock speed. This Zotac…

Try a new web browser When you’re browsing the web, the chances are you’ll be using one of the "big three" browsers: Internet Explorer, which comes pre-installed with Windows; Chrome (www.google.co.uk/chrome); or Firefox (www.mozilla.org/firefox). But, if none of these browsers hits the spot, why not give Opera (www.opera.com) a try? It uses the same browser engine as Chrome, which means each tab runs independently, so if a website crashes one tab, it won’t bring down your entire browser. But Opera also boasts some unique features of its own: Opera Turbo compresses web pages before they’re delivered to your PC to speed up browsing and reduce bandwidth usage, for example. Also, bookmarks are easy to manage—you can even share them with others. Ensure virus immunity Windows 7 and 8.1 both offer…

Calibrate your monitor for better color reproduction Calibrating your monitor means adjusting its color output so it’s as accurate as possible. You can splash out big bucks on a special device to do the job, but Windows actually includes its own calibration tool. It’s well hidden, though. To find it, press Windows–Q, type "calibrate," and then click "Calibrate display color." Follow the simple wizard to adjust your monitor’s brightness and contrast, plus the all-important color balance. Don’t expect dazzling image quality improvements, but if you’re a keen photographer and want to view your snaps at their best, calibration is essential. Ditch the Taskbar for the dock The Windows Taskbar is perfectly functional, but if you’re yearning for something a little more dynamic and attractive on the eye, why not replace…

WINDOWS TIP OF THE MONTH Play Anything With CCCP VLC is the go-to alternative media player, but there’s a second option— the Combined Community Codec Pack, or CCCP (www.cccp-project.net). Originally developed to play Japanese animé films with subtitles, it’s got the necessities to play just about any file, is small, and we’ve found it more stable than both Windows Media Player and VLC. BANISH BIG BROTHER Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? Well, maybe you are! It should come as no surprise that tools do exist for people to hijack your PC’s webcam. The most likely scenario is that it’s somebody you know, with physical access to your PC. But there’s growing evidence it’s also being done remotely by hackers. The FBI recently confirmed it had been doing it…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CHAMELEON Automatically update Lock screen photos with National Geographic images with this free, third-party app from the Windows Store. The Lock screen is the first thing you see in Windows 8.1, and it should be the first thing you make your own. Fortunately, there’s a whole heap of ways you can do just that, from changing the image and color on show, to the type of information updates you receive. You can even set up picture passwords. Likewise with the login screen. From playing around with accessibility, to personalizing your profile picture, there’s no reason why your PC experience shouldn’t start out exactly how you’d like it to. Read on to find out how. 1 CHANGING THE IMAGE The standard Lock screen looks pretty enough, but it’s…

THE LAST TIME Crucial launched an S SD, the extremely popular MX100 series, it basically decimated the market in terms of pricing. And now it’s back to pick over the bones with a drive very much aimed at the budget end of the market, the MX100’s lovechild, the BX100. A quick glance at the price tag of this flagship 1TB drive makes you stop and think. Could anyone 18 months ago have predicted a 1TB SSD for a fistful of dollars under 400 bucks? The market has come a very long way in a very short time. At roughly $15 or so cheaper than Samsung’s latest 1TB 850 EVO, the BX100 1TB is the cheapest 1TB class drive currently available (at time of writing). Admittedly the 850 EVO does have…

DID WE EVER MENTION how much we love Kingston’s luxuriant HyperX Cloud headset? Right. Once or twice. It’s a rare combination of audio and ergonomic engineering working in perfect harmony, the closed-cup memory foam pads naturally amplifying the low-end frequencies emitted by the 53mm driver. Sure, the Kingston model is little more than a revision of QPAD’s QH-90 headset with more bass and more branding, but the results are so good we can let all that go. But this is where it all gets a bit complicated. The HyperX Cloud II is a revision on that revision, updating the visuals (read: adding some red bits), refining the inline remote, and importantly adding virtual 7.1 surround sound. Crucially, all the things we liked about the original model are still present and…

Gaming Laptops Overclocked Graphics Cards CPU vs. GPU Upgrades Future-Proof Laptop I’m considering a new MSI gaming laptop to replace my way-over-the-hill Gateway P7811-FX. Price and weight are not major concerns, but gaming longevity is important. Certain 17-inch MSI models offer the ability to upgrade the GPU, while certain 18-inch models offer dual GPUs in SLI. Which feature offers the greatest gaming longevity? Which will allow me to game with all the eye candy turned on for the longest period over time? Is there a better system I should consider? Please help. I’m tired of not being able to play even 3-year-old games without my laptop crashing. Thank you for your advice. —Brian ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR JIMM Y THANG RESPONDS: Hey Brian, while adding a secondary GPU never doubles performance…

AT NVIDIA’S GPU Technology Conference in March, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang formally launched the Titan X (read our full review on page 78). But as well as unveiling its $1,000 graphics card, Nvidia also announced it‘s entering the PC-selling arena. Dubbed the Digits Devbox, the rig has four Titan Xs and will cost a staggering $15,000. Why so much, you ask? Because it’s designed for developers, and not meant for the retail market. The Devbox is specifically aimed at devs interested in doing research in the deep-learning field, a focal point of Nvidia’s presentation. GTC really is an event aimed at GPU compute, and Jen-Hsun Huang took to the stage to claim the company has seen a 10x growth in the area, adding that there are dozens of high profile companies,…

The shifting sands of the GPU market have changed into something a little less fluid in recent times. For a long while we’d find a new graphics card release every time we fell out of bed in the morning, tripping over press releases and new slabs of reference PCB. These days, however, we’re talking about a more glacial pace of product development, especially when we’re looking at actual GPU architecture and not just old cards with new badges on them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, given the board partners are themselves capable of adding in new features and new SKUs to bolster the native appeal of a particular GPU. The rise of the 0dB cooling array, the addition of extra video memory to the frame buffer, boosted power…

WITHOUT A NEW GPU IN SIGHT, AMD inevitably has to fight the good fight on pricing these days. The big, powerful Hawaii XT GPU inside this R9 290X is a complex ol’ graphics processor and must cost a few bucks to produce in numbers. And that’s why at launch it was the same price as the GTX 980 is right now. Some 18 months later we’re gearing up for a summer launch of AMD’s next generation of graphics cards— including a reworked Hawaii XT appearing with a new badge—and Nvidia has just unleashed its massive Maxwell card. With stock still in the channels, prices on older AMD cards have drastically dropped. That means this Sapphire version of the R9 290X is a stunning $350. The first, reference edition of the…

THERE’S SOMETHING ODD about the R9 280X. There’s also something old about it. That’s the Tahiti XT GPU at its heart. This card is essentially the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition from three years ago. We’ll let that sink in. Three years. It goes to show the slow progress AMD graphics tech has made. But also how capable its GCN architecture has been. The fact it’s still decent is incredible. But this card should’ve been put out to pasture, replaced by the R9 285X, with its Tonga XT GPU. And where is that card? It’s maybe still stuck in engineering hell because the Tonga GPU struggled playing nice with Mantle, possibly because of its changed memory system and funky new memory compression algorithms. So the 280X is still here and…

THE R9 280, with its ancient Tahiti Pro GPU, is like that old man you find in small town nightclubs. The girls laugh and dance with him in mocking amusement and yet he refuses to pass quietly into the night. Except in this case, the old man would be taking one of those girls home and showing her that with age comes experience… The R9 280, like the 280X, is a 3-year-old graphics card. It was the old HD 7950, a top card of its generation, meaning it’s still got a beefy memory bus and a healthy 3GB frame buffer. So, even though it’s looking kinda dated—it doesn’t have the latest GCN architecture’s new feature set—it’s still got the raw GPU horsepower and componentry to power its way to impressive…

Our GPU test rig is a stock-clocked Core i7-4770K in an Asus Maximus VI Hero Z97 board with 8GB DDR3 running at 1,600MHz. All of our graphics cards are tested with the latest release drivers on the same benchmark settings to ensure a fair test. We’ve included all the minimum frame rate results as well as the overall average to indicate how smooth an experience you’re getting from each graphics card. SPECIFICATIONS 1920x1080 Bench mar ks (1080p) The initial figures are the minimum frame rate over the benchmark, followed by the average frame rate achieved. All tests are run at their highest settings with 4x antialiasing where possible. Best scores are bolded. 2560x1600 bench mar ks (1600p) The initial figures are the minimum frame rate over the benchmark, followed by…

Consider your codecs Does Windows throw a wobbly when asked to play a DVD or downloaded video? Chances are Windows Media Player isn’t to blame. The issue is more likely down to missing codecs. These little files tell Windows how to decode the compression methods used to reduce the size of video files. Thankfully, Windows can be upgraded with a huge range of codecs to ensure slick playback of even the most modern or obscure video file formats. Just download and install the Combined Community Codec Pack from www.cccp-project.net. Windows Media Player alternatives Once you’ve installed copious codecs, you’d think Windows Media Player would be up for anything, but even with these upgrades, it’s still not immune to issues. Windows 8.1 users will note it can no longer play DVD…

If you’ve bought a brand new PC with Windows pre-installed and have concluded that Microsoft has finally lost the plot, now is the perfect time to switch to a better OS. Sure, Macs are shiny and expensive, but why go there when you can keep your existing PC and move to Linux? Fear not, gone are the days when Linux meant immersing yourself in command-line chicanery—we’ll show you how to install a user-friendly flavor of Linux alongside your existing OS without losing any data, so you can dip your toes into the free and open waters of Linux. To make the transition as smooth as possible, we’ve chosen Ubuntu 14.04.02 LTS as our Linux distro of choice. Ubuntu is one of the most user-friendly Linux distros out there, and 14.04.02…

You’ve installed Ubuntu and rebooted your PC. The first change you’ll see on startup is the presence of a new boot menu called GNU Grub (see “All About Grub”, p59). This enables you to choose which OS to boot into, plus gives you access to a memory testing utility. The default choice is Ubuntu, but before booting into it for the first time, we recommend selecting the "Windows" entry. This lets Windows boot for the first time since the Ubuntu installer resized your partitions—you’ll note it immediately runs the disk-checking tool to verify and update its own partition records. Let it do this, then once complete it’ll restart your PC. Select "Windows" again from the Grub boot menu to check all is well. Assuming it is, restart your PC again.…

YOU’LL NEED THIS MALWAREBYTES The anti-malware scanner is available, for free, from www.malwarebytes.org. Microsoft has spent a lot of time and effort improving the security mechanisms in its OSes, and Windows 8.1 builds on previous releases to protect you against malicious software, such as viruses, spyware, and other nasties. Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing team has outlined the improvements in Win8.1, and broken them down into four categories: trustworthy hardware, modern access control, protecting sensitive data, and malware resistance. The first three are focused on enterprise users, and are geared towards BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) scenarios. The good news for home users is that Microsoft is also beefing up its built-in malware resistance. For one, Internet Explorer 11 ships with the Enhanced Protection Mode enabled by default, which is designed to…

IF YOU’VE BEEN READING the papers, you’ve noticed our privacy isn’t as private as we thought, especially when we use the Internet. In response, some storage companies now offer “personal clouds” to replace cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox. This is basically a hard drive or SSD that’s connected to your local network at home, and you can access it remotely and transfer files back and forth. It’s not as reliable as a global network of data servers with redundancies and fallbacks in case of hardware failure, but there’s no monthly fee, and you know exactly where your data is and who’s looking at it. The Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay is an enclosure with two hard drives in it. We tested the “4TB” version, which defaults to RAID 1.…

IT’S WORTH REMEMBERING that the first game by Colossal Order was Cities in Motion, a pretty but buggy public transport simulation in static cities. It scored poorly. Given how Colossal Order has iterated on that shaky start to achieve the success that is Cities: Skylines, it makes us wonder what Maxis could have done if it’d been given one more chance at SimCity (the studio was shut in early 2015). That transport simulation heritage is key here. Cities are, after all, where almost all human life happens, where the richest interactions and complexity occurs. A game developer could make a city simulation about just about anything— road maintenance, epidemiology, or fashion tribalism. But Colossal Order’s grounding in Cities in Motion, and its obvious desire to outdo the failed SimCity by…

WE GOT A CHANCE TO TRY Valve’s VR system at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), and it’s the best VR experience we’ve had yet. This is the closest thing to a modern-day Holodeck there is at the moment. Built in partnership with HTC, and named Vive, the head-mounted display (HMD) uses two 1080x1200-resolution displays, one for each eye. The FOV is around 100 degrees. While we could still make out the pixels, it’s hardly distracting and is definitely sharp enough for consumer release. Like the Oculus Rift HMD, the Vive will be wired, and like Oculus’s Crescent Bay prototype, it supports a 90Hz refresh rate. Beyond that, there are some key differences. Instead of depending on a single external camera for head tracking, Valve has two “lighthouses,” which users must…

The big news at the Game Developers Conference was Valve’s Steam VR tech. Valve is the driving force behind the platform and the hardware. But it will be the wider community of developers who turn that into radical new game experiences, developers like Cloud Head Games, a specialist in VR interactivity even before Steam VR turned up. We caught up with Cloud Head’s Denny Unger and Joel Green for an exclusive insight into their The Gallery: Six Elements demo. It’s an impressive glimpse of the coming VR revolution… Maximum PC: Here at GDC, we got an early taste of Valve’s VR Experience and arguably the most impressive demo we saw was Cloud Head’s The Gallery: Six Elements. As its developers, can you tell us a little about it? Denny Unger:…

It would be remiss of us to talk graphics tech without mentioning the recent controversy surrounding Nvidia’s GTX 970 GPU and its “miscommunicated” technical details. Something happened between the engineers and the technical marketing team because the launch specs of the GTX 970 came out all kinds of wrong. Originally we were told the basic configuration of the GM 204 GPUs in both the GTX 970 and GTX 980 only differed in terms of the CUDA core count, with them having the same 104 texture units, 64 ROPs, 2MB L2 cache, 256-bit bus, and 4GB GDDR5 memory. Some parts of that official spec are plain wrong. Some are mightily misleading. Importantly, the GM 204 inside the GTX 970 actually only contains 56 ROPs and 1.75MB L2 cache. That mistake is…

THE POOR OL’ GTX 970 h as t aken a p ounding s ince t he nightmare that followed its release. It seems the engineering team hadn’t communicated the smart work it had done in splitting up the cache. That meant Nvidia’s marketing bods got confused, thought it had basically the same GPU and memory layout as the GTX 980, and ended up misleading everyone. And then it came out. And the Internet got all kinds of grumpy. It’s a real shame. If Nvidia had communicated what it had done, we’d have been impressed it’d kept hold of essentially a 4GB frame buffer through some unprecedented tech goodness, even if it was split between a speedy 3.5GB bit and a slower 512MB part. The performance problems only really start when…

THE R9 285 IS AM D’S MOST RECENT graphics card. Its Tonga GPU is the most modern GCN architecture around, utilizing a similar memory compression algorithm to Nvidia’s latest Maxwell chips. That means AMD has got similar effective memory bandwidth levels through more conservative buses and memory configurations. As such, the R9 285 comes with a 256-bit bus and a 2GB frame buffer compared with the R9 280’s 384-bit bus and 3GB frame buffer. For the most part that doesn’t make much difference. They’re within a few frames per second of each other in most gaming benchmarks. They’re also a similar price. But the 285 does give you access to things like AMD’s True Audio Technology and FreeSync. But, achieving parity in most of our benchmarks? Well, where they don’t…

AT $200, THE R9 270X is pushing towards the budget market, but with the midrange and high-end of AMD’s current graphics stack seriously compressing, this poor little GPU is really feeling the squeeze. When the R9 285 is only a night’s bar tab away and yet is a far more powerful and advanced graphics card, there’s no decision to make. We’re once again talking about a GPU only rocking the first iteration of AMD’s GCN architecture too. No TrueAudio, no memory compression funk, and not even a sniff of the FreeSync tech. That adds up to an unappealing card but one that demands a surprising amount of power. The squeeze isn’t just coming from a cascade of higher-performance cards either. Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture started at the bottom of the market…

Windows 8.1 and 7 are packed with features, many of them honed over years of development, so you could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft must have covered every base and satisfied every need by now. The reality is rather different, as anyone who’s had to spend extra on an additional antivirus package will appreciate. People tend to forget that essential virus protection, along with programs like Word and Excel, aren’t included with Windows, but are actually costly upgrades. Don’t worry though, because the free alternatives out there are just as good. While Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are both great programs, they’re fending off several third-party web browsers and media players that are brimming with innovation. Likewise, Windows’ updated Paint app may be streets ahead of previous versions,…

Make sure you have the latest hardware drivers Drivers are pieces of software that tell Windows how to communicate with each item of hardware in your computer, but Windows Update doesn’t always give you the latest driver versions, so you might need to do it yourself. You might also struggle to source drivers for older hardware too—often, drivers for older versions of Windows will work fine in Windows 8.1, just make sure you source the right type (32-bit or 64-bit, depending on your current version of Windows). If you’re struggling to track down updates or even compatible drivers, employ the services of Driver-Easy (www.drivereasy.com). The free version has all the functionality you should need. Choose "Custom" during setup to avoid potentially unwanted programs being installed. Free up space and resources…

YOU’LL NEED THIS FIXWIN Download the troubleshooting app for free from http://bit.ly/1BqhQ2R. FIXWIN IS A SIMPLE TOOL for troubleshooting your Windows installation. You can use the tool to repair more than 50 Windows problems and annoyances that might be caused by malicious malware. Anti-malware scanners can help you remove these harmful programs, but they won’t always undo the changes caused by the nasty malware to Windows itself; changes such as hiding the context menu, or disabling the Registry editor. With FixWin, you can repair these unwanted modifications to Windows. The tool lists all its fixes and their symptoms across several categories. Every problem has a “Fix” button that you can click to apply the suggested solution. It’s important to note that FixWin isn’t a diagnostic tool - it doesn’t search…

One important component of Windows 8.1 that plays a crucial role in keeping your computer safe and secure is the Windows Action Center. It monitors the most important aspects of the PC and divides them into two broad categories: security and maintenance. You can find the Action Center located within the desktop Control Panel, under “System and Security.” When something needs your attention, the Action Center flags up the problem. It color-codes any warnings that need your attention. Issues flagged with a yellow border could potentially affect the security or performance of the PC, while a red border is used for highlighting critical problems. In addition to the color-coding, the Action Center also displays a description of the problem, along with a link to open the configuration window of the…

IN ANCIENT GREEK MYTHOLOGY, the Titans are the immediate descendants of the primordial gods. So it is with the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan, offspring of the company’s top-shelf professional workstation GPUs. First debuting in March 2013, the original Titan was nearly the most powerful videocard Nvidia could offer. But it sealed off a couple of items of little interest to gamers, items which also prevented professionals from using these less expensive variants for workstation duties. Now the time has come for the GTX Titan X, based on Nvidia’s Maxwell generation of GPUs. And it’s a beast. Despite being stuck on 28nm for several years, the firm continues to extract more and more performance from its silicon. The Titan X also has an almost ridiculous 12GB of GDDR5 VRAM, and one…

THE FEE DING AND CARE of laptops is a fine art. Give your pet too much and its innards can burst out of its shell wherever there’s a gap, like an obese tortoise. Alternatively, you can reduce the size of those innards to fit a smaller shell, and with that in mind, Gigabyte has chosen Nvidia’s newest middle-end GPU, the Maxwell-class GTX 965M, to match this surprisingly svelte casing. Just because it’s middling, however, doesn’t mean it’s a clunker, and we got some fantastic scores out of it in our benchmark tests. TRACKPAD TERROR The hardware is nothing unusual, with a Haswell Core i7 and 8GB of RAM backed up by a 128GB SSD and a 1TB spinner for storage. You get four USB ports, an SD card slot, Ethernet,…

“WHO AM I? WHAT YEAR IS IT? Who’s the president?” These are not the cries of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue’s befuddled modern-day protagonist, but those of the very journalist writing this review. Rogue, you see, is the seventh instalment of the franchise, a sequel to 2013’s Black Flag, a prequel to 2012’s Assassin’s Creed III, and an introduction to Assassin’s Creed: Unity. In fact, the series h as b ecome s o ridiculously convoluted that another game, Assassin’s Creed: President Dog, disappeared into a black hole created by all the time-warping confusion. This head-scratching setup is partly due to the way Ubisoft chose to release the most recent games in the franchise. Rogue hit the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 last year, but very few people noticed because they were more…