For those who still have zero clue as to what NVIDIA’s G-Sync is lets get you up to speed: NVIDIA’s G-Sync makes the promise to do away with tearing, lag and stutter by giving the graphics card direct control over the monitor’s refresh rate. The result, the company claimed, is a far smoother gaming experience. We made a video at CES 2014, but due to the differences in the technology between the camera lens and the screen we were unable to accurately capture what G-Sync does, but it does work very well.  Personally I would wait and not even touch this kit as the technology has just emerged and as it matures it will only get better and the prices will drop.

Doing this also ‘Voids” your warranty, so you buy a kit for $199.99 plus shipping and handling, take an hour to install and then get left with a “You are on your own” if anything goes wrong scenario. This to me is just not worth doing since monitor technology is growing exponentially all the time, just putting a little patience in your diet may be advisable at this time point.  Those interested in picking up the kit can do so on the official website, although at present NVIDIA is only shipping the units to the US, Canada, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands with no word as to when it will be made available in the UK. Below is a video provided by NVIDIA showing exactly how this upgrade path is to be taken and claims it takes about an hour of your time to accomplish. Thanks for reading Tech Of Tomorrow my friends, so what say you Win or Fail?

Source and Video: Bit-Tech.net

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For the most part both companies did a pretty solid job of getting us newer, better cards, but they both went at it in very different ways. NVIDIA for their part I feel really sort of held back and could have devastated the entire playing field, but instead just set their throttle to idle and let AMD do all the hoop jumping. AMD however caught the attention of many a gamer by offering very nice gaming packs that included strong and very popular game titles as well as a lower price point and regardless of their running hotter, AMD fans embrace them warmly. NVIDIA had some gaming packs, but just not the same as AMD’s.

One card totally worth mentioning in honorable status is the GTX 650Ti as this card kicks ass in games at 1920X1080p and in some cases even on high settings and this card is priced at right around $150.00 US so even though its not in the top 5 its still a very viable product for the budget gamer. So what are the Top 5 VGA cards of 2013? Well the story goes a bit like this folks, even though AMD broke loose with a few really good cards this year NVIDIA at the last moment pulled a roaring rabbit out of their collective hat in the form of the GTX 780Ti, but I am getting ahead of myself.  So in the number 5 position we have the AMD R9 270X coming at $200.00 this is a great card. Next up the GTX 770, which would have taken a seat to the R9 280X, but stock went down and the price went up opening the door for the GTX 770.

Availability of the 280X has become slim, but the R9 290 card comes up next as it is priced right and has great scores to boot. For the 2^nd place position we have a tie between AMD and NVIDIA as the R9 290X and the GTX 780 go back and forth between various aspects that make them both a viable card for the serious gamer who wants raw performance. The R9 290X is a bit faster than the GTX 780, but it also runs hotter and has less room for overclocking, the GTX 780 is a bit slower, but has the potential for better overclocking out of the box.  So who had the number 1 video card of the year? I spilled the beans earlier and I think you all know the fastest card of the year goes to NVIDIA’s GTX 780Ti that just pushes the envelope that extra bit to get it into the number 1 position. NVIDIA timed their release with just enough time to beat the competition, but also did not leave them enough time to make a comeback in 2013. Thanks for reading tech Of Tomorrow, and if you have a different favorite we would love to hear why and what. Happy Holidays.

The post AMD vs NVIDIA: Top 5 Gaming Video Cards of 2013! appeared first on Tech of Tomorrow.

For our first series of Haswell builds, we opted at the $1500 price point and centered the system around Intel’s i5-4670K and NVIDIA’s GTX 770 video card. The i5-4670K boasts a 3.4GHz Quad-Core CPU, comes unlocked for overclocking, and is a great choice for gaming to save some cash versus going with Intel’s i7-4770K.

We opted to go with Gigabyte’s version of the GTX 770, which features their Windforce cooling and comes overclocked out of the box. Enclosing the build is Thermaltake’s Revo Gene Snow Edition Mid Tower Case, complete with 8GB of RAM, SSD, Hard Drive and more! For the complete parts list, as well as pricing, check out the list below!

• Thermaltake Revo Gene Snow Edition Mid Tower Case ($135)
• Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Motherboard ($150) 
• Intel i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Haswell CPU ($230) 
• Thermaltake Frio Extreme CPU Cooler ($100)
• Gigabyte GTX 770 Windforce OC Edition Video Card ($410)
• 8GB ADATA XPG 1600MHz DDR3 Memory ($80)
• ADATA SP600 128GB SATA III SSD ($110)
• Western Digital 1TB Black Hard Drive ($90)
• Thermaltake Smart Series 650W Power Supply ($75) 
• Samsung SH-224DB DVD+RW Optical Drive ($20)
• Windows 7 Home Premium ($90)

Grand Total $1490

The post Killer $1500 Intel Gaming PC Build: Part 1 – The Parts! (2013) appeared first on Tech of Tomorrow.

What is modding?

If you are new to modding games or don’t understand what modding is yet I’d direct you to this link for a easy to understand generalization of modding. If you know what modding is then you can skip this link.

Modding: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modding

In our case, we are adding new user created content into Skyrim that is playable, usable, or tweaks the base game to something different. It may be content, graphical differences, or expanding on the gameplay.

How does modding in Skyrim work?

Skyrim has for the most part two ways of getting mods: downloading them from ‘Skyrim Nexus’ or ‘Steam Workshop’. Your game, as far as I know must be registered to Steam in order to play so you should have access to the Workshop. This is what I recommend to many people who are new to modding and also veterans.

Skyrim Nexus: – http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/

Skyrim Nexus VS Steam Workshop:

The above title is slightly misleading, this is not a match to see who is better but each method requires a different level of skill. Steam Workshop is a very easy to use, ergonomically designed application that requires you to subscribe to the mods of your choice and that’s it. It downloads the mods for you and makes them work, simple and quick. On the Skyrim Nexus, you download the files and must follow the instructions supplied with the download or on the mod page in order to make the mod work. It doesn’t sound much harder and it isn’t, but many people forget to read the instructions or miss a step and then the mod doesn’t show up correctly. However if you dislike Steam, you may want to stick to Skyrim Nexus for your download.

Compatibility and performance:

What I will get out of the way first is performance issues. If you download a graphical mod, and your PC already can’t run the game at say Ultra or High settings, then you are not going to able to run graphical mods with playable frame rates (unless a mod says it doesn’t decrease performance). However, if you can play the game at Ultra at 60fps smoothly then you have some room to work with but again cramming 50 graphical mods onto your game will slow it down regardless. A lot of large texture mods such as 2k Skyrim textures, ENB mods, and many other mods recommend you to have more than 1GB of V-RAM and at least 4GB of RAM minimum. That’s usually higher than your average gaming system so it’s not always an option for some gamers; however most of Skyrim’s best mods are non-graphical mods so this is not much of a loss.

So know your PC, understand what it can handle and don’t try to force too much down the neck. Read every detail about the mod you are downloading for compatibility notes, performance factors, and if it has any direct know conflicts with other mods or hardware. This is a very important thing you MUST DO.

Now looking at compatibility, lets presume you have a mighty liquid cooled dual Xeon CPU and SLI Nvidia GTX690 system, performance won’t be an issues but you’re not free as of yet. Compatibility between mods is something everyone runs into, any combinations of mods can cause conflicts in many different ways and they can arise at any given time. Let me tell you my experience with some of these conflicts. I was running various mods in conjunction that you can see above in the screenshots. It was working perfectly fine together, more than playable to boot as well. However when I went back into the Workshop and downloaded 3 mods called the “Unofficial Skyrim Fix”, random graphical glitches started appearing to the point when it was unplayable. Shown below is an example of the type of issue I had.

I had several ways to fix this problem but it was getting the right one that is the tricky part. We can either:

1)      Change the load order

2)      Remove the newest added mods to check compatibility

3)      Make sure my drivers were up to date (I do this every day so I knew it wasn’t this)

Normally I try the first method if it’s a Steam Workshop item as they can be disabled with ease and re-enabled at any time. I disabled all the newly installed mods and presto the game worked with no problems. Now a second batch of testing, this can be a long process and slightly boring for those who just want to get playing but it’s generally something that comes with using mods in some cases.

We now must enable the mods 1 by 1 to see what mods cause the conflict or what combination of mods is causing the conflict. Start with the load order first as this is the fastest and easiest. Make sure the mods you want to load first are at the top, followed by game tweak mods such as Unofficial Skyrim fix, then gameplay mods. This is the basic order as it loads textures first, then fixes issues, and then adds gameplay mechanics. Doing it this way avoids any incompatibility issues between the mods. Remember to organize them though, if you have a lighting mod make sure that goes above any other lighting mod as then it will take full priority over that mod. However I don’t recommend having more than 1 type of graphical mod such as water and other texture mods. I had the mistake of adding around 2 to 3 water mods together giving me awkward changes of water in areas making the game look ugly as well as graphical issues.

So after doing all of that, if nothing seems to fix your issues or you can’t find the source of the problem its best to just delete the Skyrim mod’s you have downloaded recently and make do with the mods that you have working. Disabling a few mods can fix some problems but everyone’s computer is different and reacts differently to issues with mods.

If you were wondering it was the mod “Random Alternate Start” that was causing issues with pre-existing saves. Thus I removed the mod when I’m playing with old characters and like magic no more performance issues.

-          General incompatibility

This is pretty much what I mentioned above, having un-godly numbers of graphical mods will slow your system down and possibly cause issues. And at the same time having 20 or so of the same types of mods will also cause you issues and problems such as conflicting textures and features not working on mods because other mods are adding similar features.

-          Load order compatibility

Again like I’ve already mentioned it’s really important that you keep your load order clean and understandable. This is the order I generally follow.

-          Graphical mods

-          Gameplay Fixes (Bugs, etc.)

-          Gameplay Mods

These keeps conflict to a minimum and remember to order them in those groups correctly as well, so the texture mod you want to have priority make sure that’s at the top of the graphical mod section and vice versa.

Hopefully this little guide will help you on issues you may encounter, other rules that apply to gaming in general is:

-          Always update your graphical drivers

-          Make sure you system can handle that you’re throwing at it

-          Intel GPU users, expect some graphical issues 60% of the time

-          Don’t overload Skyrim with too many mods. I will add however I’ve had 100 mods on Skyrim at once and I had no issues with it other than it was very demanding on my system.

When you get it all working together, with a good enough system you could easily get some great Skyrim moments going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbByL1EUO4c

Or you could even make your own little story in the Skyrim lore like I did with this video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGttRgn_deA

But whatever you choose to do with Skyrim, I hope you have a blast doing it.

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Masters of the Techverse

With the economic problems from 2007 onwards, the tech industry struggled, but Apple went from strength to strength. It continues to hire highly qualified tech graduates and those working for rival firms, who meet their personality and skill requirements. Getting an Apple job is insanely tough for techies. The third biggest growth skill required by the tech industry in America is iPhone development, which has grown by 220 percent in the last two years. Apple has around 300 software engineers, 220 iPhone engineers and 900 other jobs going in America at any one time. Of course this fluctuates depending on the time of year and the need to fill positions.

There are three main things Apple are looking for in terms of engineers and it is not just a good degree. They want a reference from inside the company, an active member of the Apple Developer Program and a passion for Apple products and design. When preparing to work for Apple or to at least try to, the future applicant needs to make decisions from day one of college. This means selecting the right programs and modules of study including data mining, artificial intelligence, web analytics, user experience, technical communication, business and also project management. Think ahead and plan ahead.

Apple Retail 101

The Apple retail operation, which has grown extraordinarily fast in the last decade or two, places more interest in personality than tech skills for its face-to-face helpers. This is not necessarily the case with the Genius Bench. This means that enthusiasm for customer service and for Apple counts for more with many store managers than inside technological information. Apple is looking for friendly, outgoing, kind and generous staff who are able to talk well and excite customers in wanting to buy something or to sooth those with a problem. They want employees who are able to ask questions and who are able to find out which member of staff to ask about a broken iPhone when they do not know the answer themselves. The interview process has been likened to a puppy sale by some, but is also similar to the process for an air hostess. Intelligence and tech savvy is useful, but personality rules too in retail.

Resume and Reference Building

Apple is a company that places a lot of weight on knowing people. This is not to say that it is insiders only, but getting noticed helps. As a developer, you will need to do two things to get noticed in Apple. First, develop something. The obvious way to do this is to develop an app of some kind. This acts not only as a means of getting noticed and some money, but also it is an electronic reference and resume. It is a “see what I made.” Second, help users out on the forums. No trolling, but polite, kind, helpfulness that people like. Personality is very important for Apple.

Resume building also means finding internships, summer jobs and part-time work not just at Apple (using the retail store as a job platform will not hurt), but at big and small rivals or associated companies. Get to know members of staff at your local Apple Store. When a new job comes up you might find your shoulder getting tapped. Also consider the power of LinkedIn, this is a great tool for promoting yourself, your cyber-resume and for building links. Do any of your professional links work for Apple? They could be former classmates, summer job co-workers or some other relationship. Work them. Get them onside and get them to give you references. Apple will be impressed.

Smart Application Strategies

The big three tech giants; Apple, Google and Microsoft hire in different ways. Each one starts off with its own jobs website. Here is the Apple jobs site. They then farm out vacancies to online recruitment agencies to help them find additional members of staff. The former strategy tends to be used for permanent staff at non-retail sites for development or corporate management. The latter strategy is used for temporary, contract and part-time work. Apple does outsource a lot of its recruitment to agencies after it expanded at an unexpectedly fast rate in the 2000s.

Working for Apple requires a smart strategy. This is especially the case for HQ and development work. Future technicians and engineers will need to develop not just their skills and persona, but also their contacts. This is where resume and reference building come in handy. Where possible, Apple still recruits through internal references. Second, you need to own Apple products. Retail workers do not have to have an inside knowledge of how everything works, but a passion for customers is a bigger selling point, but for everyone else, knowing and owning the products really helps. Next up, be active in the Apple community and do not be afraid to flaunt it.

Working for Apple is rarely going to be something done by accident. This is especially true for software engineers, technicians and so on. Mould yourself into the right shape for Apple, acquaint yourself with the logic puzzles and questions they use based on the Khan Institute, foster a happy, smiling and outgoing image and prepare yourself for up to a dozen interviews before you get the name badge, the company parking space and the staff discount.

The post How to score a job at Apple appeared first on Tech of Tomorrow.

Some memory will have both a XMP 1 and XMP 2 setting with the 1 setting at higher than normal and setting 2 for even higher settings. Not all memory will have this ability, but most will have at least one XMP profile available. Doing this ensures that your system is taking full advantage of the available speed your memory is capable of. In today’s How-To video I show you how to install and then set your XMP profile to its correct settings. I am using the new Crucial Ballistix Elite 1866Mhz and the ASUS Maximum V Extreme motherboard for this video. This is a very easy and simple thing to accomplish and doing so will make sure you are getting your moneys worth out of your memory.

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