Tt eSPORTS ISURUS PRO

Anyone who has spent much time playing PC games is likely very familiar with the pros and cons of big, over-the-ear gaming headsets. For top-shelf sound (and especially for directional/surround sound), full-sized headsets are hard to beat. They have massive, powerful drivers and, in some cases, comfortable padding on the ear cups, and they do a nice job of shutting down external noise and creating your own little cone of silence to game in.

GIGABYTE GA-X99-GAMING 5P

As the gaming-centric member of GIGABYTE’s lineup of Champion Series motherboards, the X99-GAMING 5P is actually a new take on an old favorite — as old as any LGA 2011-3 motherboard can get, that is. This board is actually nearly identical to the X99-GAMING 5 motherboard that the company launched earlier this year. In addition to the P suffix appended to the end of this motherboard’s model name, GIGABYTE widened the board from 9.6 inches to 10.3 inches, making it an E-ATX form factor board. In doing so, GIGABYTE was able to tweak things here and there and offer enthusiasts a more compelling piece of hardware.

SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 390 8GB

If you were starting to wonder what AMD had been up to since late 2013, the Radeon R9 300 Series is here to answer that burning question. Our first look at the slightly tweaked Hawaii Pro GPU, now code-named “Grenada,” comes courtesy of SAPPHIRE.

Transcoding For Consoles Or Tablets

Is your device of choice picky about the video file it will play? Here’s our guide to getting around it’s restrictions...

If you’ve ever tried to watch video on your games console or tablet, you’re probably familiar with the number of ways things can go wrong. Video without audio. Audio without video. Common video types almost entirely unsupported. No matter how smart these devices become, there’s still an element of chance in trying to play media files that your PC wouldn’t blink twice at.

Unfortunately (or possibly annoyingly), the way these systems work means that if they don’t recognise the media the first time, there’s not a lot you can do. Unlike your PC, you can’t install a new codec or try opening the content a different application. Your best alternative is to head back to your PC and see if you can do anything there. Luckily, you normally can – you just need to know how.

SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 380 4GB

Of the two SAPPHIRE NITRO Series cards featured in this issue, the R9 380 4GB leverages the newer architecture. That said, it’s still not completely new; the GPU in this graphics card is nearly identical to the one used in the Radeon R9 285, which launched less than a year ago under the codename Tonga. This card’s 28nm GCN 1.2-based GPU, code-named “Antigua”, features 5 billion transistors, 1,792 stream processors, 112 texture units, and 32 ROPs. Compared to GCN 1.1-based GPUs like those on the Radeon R9 390 and 390X, it is capable of parallel instruction processing between SIMD lanes, better compute task scheduling, and enhanced compute and media processing capabilities, thanks to a new set of 16-bit floating-point and integer instructions.

Getting A Better Signal

Keir Thomas looks at the options available if you’re one of the growing minority who has to deal with a poor or non-existent cellular signal

Arecent home move brought with it a most serious and modern of crippling afflictions: poor to non-existent mobile reception. At the front of the house family members are lucky to get three bars of antediluvian GPRS/Edge reception, while at the back of the house no bars is commonplace. Batteries drain quickly. Nobody is happy.

More than a MOBA

Battleborn’s multiplayer online battle arenas take a backseat during our time with the genre mash-up’s story-driven co-op missions. By Matt Cabral

Given all the buzz about Battleborn being a MOBA-inspired shooter from the studio that brought us Borderlands, we were as surprised as anyone when our extended hands-on session didn't plop us into a five-vs-five arena match, but had us tackling a rich, objective-driven story mission. As Orendi, a Chaos Witch that Gearbox software creative director Randy Varnell enthusiastically describes as a "wild channeler of chaotic and shadowy energies", we're tasked with escorting a bomb-strapped sentry bot to an enemy spawning portal. Our ambitious plan is ultimately thwarted by a screen-swallowing Golum... but we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

Brother DCP-J4120DW

An A4 printer that prints A3

This is a good idea from Brother: an A4-size colour multi-function printer that can take A3 sheets, twice the size, when you need bigger prints. It saves paying for a full A3 model and finding the extra desk space.