Wednesday 5 August 2015

Sony KD-75X9405C

Sony KD-75X9405C

With its bold design and 75in panel, this TV puts the 'big' into bigscreen entertainment

If the current trend is to try and minimise the space the new generation of TVs take up by giving them incredibly slim frames, Sony’s KD-75X9405C is the untrendiest TV of the year. It's not just content with assaulting your living room space with a vast 75in screen; this monolithic beast adds sidebars down each side of that screen, making it look more like an 85in set.

LG 55EG960V

LG 55EG960V

Representing OLED in our high-end TV tussle is this curved, 4K style icon from LG

OLED technology has finally gone from being the stuff of AV fantasy to a living, breathing reality you can actually buy. What’s more, you can actually already buy it for less than you might imagine. The 55in 55EG960V costs £3,800, despite being only the second native 4K/UHD OLED TV we’ve seen. That makes it the most affordable set in this roundup, albeit at a smaller screen size. Expect to pay £6,000 for the 65in model of the 960V series.

SiSoftware Sandra 2015 SP2b

SiSoftware Sandra 2015 SP2b

SiSoft's Sandra (the Sytem ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) had a recent upgrade last November with the 2015 edition and followed by SP2b, which was released on 6th July this year. Better support for all current versions of Windows along with Windows 10 were included with the new version, along with updated hardware, Device Performance Certification, new GPU, APU and CPU Scientific Analysis Algorithms and an updated overall score. There were also many other tweaks and improvements to the main structure of the program itself and a dash of Windows 8-esque flair with a set of new styles and themes.

UniGine Valley Benchmark

UniGine Valley Benchmark

UniGine is the commercial game making engine that allows you to design multi-platform game environments. As a result and because of its use in the industry, the company has on offer a number of GPU stress testing tools available.

There are a four main benchmark stress testing tools for download: Valley (which is what we're reviewing here), Heaven, Tropic and Sanctuary.

Futuremark PCMark 8

Futuremark PCMark 8

PCMark 8 is the sister program to the Futuremark main product, 3DMark 11. The difference here is the fact that PCMark is more of a whole system benchmark solution, rather than being focused on gaming, DX11 and graphics, like the 3DMark tests are.

Windows Experience Index

Windows Experience Index

The Window Experience Index (AKA the Windows System Assessment Tool - WinSAT) first appeared as a module in Windows Vista as Microsoft's attempt to create a base score for all PCs so buyers could better ascertain which systems would run the OS better than others. In theory, it was a good idea, but it didn't quite work out as well as planned.

Maxon Cinebench

Maxon Cinebench

The benchmark purists among you may regard Maxon's Cinebench as more of a fancy display suite rather than a fully fledged benchmarking tool. However, there's more to this program than you first imagine, and the results can be taken quite seriously.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Futuremark 3DMark 11

Futuremark's 3DMark became the de facto benchmark software some time ago, and with the launch of DirectX 11 it then went on to be an absolute necessity when it comes to measuring one system's performance against another.

It's designed to measure the computer's gaming performance using all the newest elements and features inherent to DirectX 11, which include tessellation, compute shaders, GPU and combined CPU stress testing and multi-threading.

Jurassic Sparks

Horizon Zero Dawn

From the makers of Killzone comes Horizon Zero Dawn: a far-flung vision of hunting robot dinosaurs. Matthew Pellett explores the newest, most exciting universe on PS4…

Every Jurassic Park fan should know how this one goes: “God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God.” But Killzone dev Guerrilla Games has put its own spin on the rest of that classic Hollywood quote for its brand new IP Horizon Zero Dawn: “Man creates robo-dinosaurs. Robo-dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the Earth.”