This Week on JungleDrums:
Your JungleDrums host, AcuteJungle66, is joined by Gimboid and SergeantJay to delve into this week’s gaming and tech news! The Xbox One X launched, Amazon UK customers displeased, Microsoft will have game streaming, and Nvidia unleashes the force!
- Fans rushed to pre-order the ‘world’s most powerful console’ months ago so they’d be able to scale 4K pyramids in Assassin’s Creed Origins moments after getting home from work on Nov 7. But days before the $500 console’s release, several had said over Twitter and gaming forums that their consoles’ shipment dates don’t match with its release date—basically the whole point of pre-ordering. Eurogamer reported that, in the U.K., “stock issues,” in Amazon’s words, have caused shipment delays for lots of local customers. AJ and Jay were both affected.
- Much of this week’s show is spent discussing the Xbox One X, from the perspective of gamers. We all play on a variety of platforms, and I certainly consider myself a PC enthusiast more than a console gamer. Whilst there is a lot of the usual ‘console-war’ shade being thrown at the X1X, there is no denying the sheer power this console contains. I personally-and I imagine many others out there-do not own a 4K television or monitor, but the improvements even on a 1080p display are staggering. Imagine playing a video game on PC, with no AA (anti-aliasing) and a low AF (anisotropic filtering) setting; that is the typical experience on console. Now take that same game, turn on AA and max out the AF; THAT is how playing games on the X1X with a 1080p display is. Online videos just don’t do it justice, it has to be seen firsthand to be fully appreciated. It is also worth noting that the increase of AF applies to ALL games, not just ‘enhanced’ titles.
- NVIDIA unveils gorgeous TITAN Xp Collector’s Editions for Star Wars fans for the same price as the original at $1200, pre-orders opened November 8. It houses the full blown GP102 die, which means that the TITAN Xp has 3840 CUDA cores with 547.7 GB/s worth of bandwidth. This equates to roughly 142.6 MB/s/core which is a pretty decent gain. The important thing when dealing with an increasing core count is to make sure that the bandwidth available per core doesn’t drop while you scale, and this isn’t the case here – so you can expect some decent returns with the TITAN Xp. This also means that the compute performance of the card is going to be phenomenal, topping the 12 TFLOPs mark and very easily a 4K 60fps capable gaming monstrosity.
About JungleDrums:
JungleDrums is a weekly news show run by Scholarly Gamers’ Content Coordinator, AcuteJungle66. Topics discussed in the show focus heavily on gaming, highlights, streams, and tech, but will typically hover around hot-button topics of the week. Joining AcuteJungle66 are a rotating selection of guests, ranging from friends and those interested in the topic at hand, fellow Scholarly Gamers, or members of raiding parties from gaming staples of his such as Destiny 2, The Division, or Rainbow Six Siege.
