Corsair Vengeance DDR4 16GB

Corsair’s first DDR4 kit might make you want to pay more for your memory.

As someone who might have been Francis Bacon once said, “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” He wasn’t actually talking about some battle for a Scottish throne… he was referring to the fact that once you’ve spent a vast sum of money on a new X99 motherboard and Haswell-E processor, it’s as boring shopping about for a cheap memory kit as it just dropping another fortune on a high performance Corsair set. Prescient fellow, that Bacon.

Crucial 16GB DDR4

If you’re trying to save some cash on your X99 build, Crucial has you covered.

So, here it is. This is DDR4. Side-loaded into the new highperformance Intel X99 platform comes the next generation of system memory – and it’s a bit underwhelming on our desktop PCs. In the server space though it’s a different matter, because that’s where DDR4 gestated.

Next-gen displays

What exactly is 4K? That is the question. At least, it’s the first question we need to address – and the answer isn’t altogether straightforward. It’s not as simple as defining, say, 1080p. That simply means 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, progressively scanned rather than interlaced. The end.

4K started out as a sort of high-end cinematographic standard, involving 4,096 x 2,160 pixels and a resulting odd 19:10 aspect ratio. And for some diehards, that’s what 4K is. Nothing more, nothing less. However, for PC monitors, the reality is that 4K involves 3,840 x 2,160 pixels in the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. As a result, the popular definition of 4K today boils down to a display with roughly 4,000 horizontal pixels.

The other way to look at 4K PC monitors is as four full 1080p displays on a single panel. That 3,840 x 2,160 pixel grid is precisely four 1080p grids arranged in two rows, one atop the other. So, yes, 4K PC monitors offer precisely four times the pixels of a bog standard 1080p panel.

Wild

Michel Ancel isn’t just any old highly respected French videogame designer in his early 40s that we might have a bit of a mancrush on. He, like Shigeru Miyamoto and Peter Molyneux, is also a Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature. But then again so are Kylie Minogue and Shakira, so we won’t take that honour too seriously. Still, after joining Ubisoft as an artist when he was 17, he went on to create and direct Rayman in his very early 20s, and therefore is responsible for the UK’s best-selling PlayStation game of all time.

Resident Evil

Well if it isn’t an HD remake of the grandparent of the survival-horror series that was Resident Evil, released back in 1996 when full-motion cut-scenes involving actors mostly made of ham were seen as a pretty nifty idea. Actually, it isn’t. Instead it’s a remake of the Nintendo GameCube remake of Resident Evil that was released in 2002, then in 2008 for the Nintendo Wii.

That remake replaced those meat-filled cut-scenes with stylishly unamusing computer-generated imagery and ever so slightly more professionally delivered dialogue, extra puzzles and extended areas, but kept the static pre-drawn backdrops. Oddly, considering its lineage, this remake of a remake won’t be appearing on the Wii U despite appearing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC – and despite Nintendo’s console blatantly being up for the job.

Quantum Break

It’s an experiment in cross-media production, but is Quantum Break really the game to convince us that the blending of videogame and live-action show is a route worth investigating?

There’s a lot riding on Quantum Break’s success, with both the publisher and developer desperate to see it reach a wide audience – albeit for different reasons. Microsoft is keen to add it to its presently limited Xbox One ‘system seller’ catalogue, while remedy surely understands the risk of the cross-medium approach.

You see, Quantum Break is not ‘just’ a game. It’s also a live-action series, these two halves coming together to create what is hopefully a successful hybrid of entertainment formats. Unlike the disaster that mostly befell Defiance, however, the live-action component here is provided on the disc – so you can consume everything at your own pace, rather than have to wait for the tv schedule to meet your own.