Galax GTX 970 HOF

Galaxy drops a letter, and boosts the build quality

This is the first graphics card we’ve reviewed with the Galax brand name, and it couldn’t be more different to the budget offerings we’ve previously associated with Galaxy graphics cards. This is one serious piece of hardware, redesigned from the ground up to extract every possible ounce of sweat out of the GTX 970 GPU at its heart.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X

Go big, or go home - and NVIDIA’s going very big!

Just when we thought NVIDIA couldn’t release a more expensive product, along comes its latest premium product, the Titan X. Unlike previous Titans, this isn’t just a slightly enhanced version of its flagship GPU; NVIDIA has gone the whole hog and developed a product t hat is a huge step up from the GTX 980. Whether or not it’s worth the audacious price tag is another question entirely.

GTA V. PC Performance Analysis

Make the most of your time in Los Santos with our handy guide

We’re trying something a little different this month in PC PowerPlay’s tech section, by taking one of the year’s most anticipated PC titles and putting it through its paces on a variety of GPUs and CPUs. The game in question is Grand Theft Auto V, and to say PC gamers have been itching to scratch their trigger fingers in its epic open world is like saying the media beat up around the hot coffee mod was only slightly sensationalistic. We’ve had to wait two long years for the PC version of Rockstar’s Magnum Opus to land on the one, true gaming platform, but the excruciating wait has been worth it. Past PC ports of Grand Theft Auto have been rough to say the least, but Rockstar has truly outdone itself this time around, delivering a magnificently polished experience with a huge range of graphics options. Crank these detail settings to maximum and it’s almost an entirely new game compared to the console versions, with vastly further draw distance, richer textures and a swathe of sexy new graphical effects. You’ll need an absolute beast to run it at maximum detail, yet Rockstar has ensured that even midrange systems get a console-beating experience.

Quarries of Scred

Pa, I’ve got the black lung!

Some games make a name with flashy graphics, an amazing storyline or a host of subtle mechanics that breathe life into the world. Quarries of Scred is not such a game. It’s a game predicated on simple, beautifully executed ideas and an immediate feedback loop that can get you hooked on game after game, even when death and restarting is an inevitability. Looking like something that would have been a hit on the Apple IIe or Spectrum, Quarries nonetheless has more than enough going for it to keep any player with an interest in retro-gaming involved for hours.

Magnetic: Cage Closed

This FPS Puzzle Platformer pushes all the wrong buttons

Magnetic: Cage Closed, begins auspiciously inside a prison cell, where the player’s first choice is to proceed, or die. From there, the nameless character is taken via shuttle to a gaol-cum-weapons testing facility. Two voices accompany you through the game; the prison’s Warden, and its resident head-doctor. Why? Because you’re a criminal, for some reason, testing weapons to use in a nuclear war of some kind.

Multi-device interactions

Your phone can be a camera. It can also be a compass, or a satnav. Or it can just be a phone. Ben Foxall explores devices in the modern age

When camera phones first appeared, I didn’t want one. I liked having a camera and a phone – but to mix the two seemed to the detriment of both (rubbish picture quality and rubbish-er battery life). Camera phones are pretty common now and have subsumed even more things: portable music players, satnavs, pagers, calculators, camcorders, pagers and alarm clocks to name a few.

With all our old devices being rolled into one, something interesting has happened: we’re using a bunch of new ones. We now communicate with the rest of the world (my original reason for having a phone) through more devices than ever before. As well as phones, we use laptops, tablets, TVs and watches to interact with other people.

What gives me comfort is that apps and web content have replaced our physical objects. When I visit a web page that has a timer, my device becomes a stopwatch. When I open a page that can record audio, I’m now holding a dictaphone. I’ve got my camera back ... it just looks like my phone.