Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 review: The most badass graphics card ever created

Hail to the new king of graphics cards, baby.

Ansel: The supercharged future of screenshots

Speaking of super cool features limited to Nvidia’s new graphics cards, there’s Ansel, which Nvidia calls “an in-game 3D camera” and I call the supercharged future of screenshots.
Rather than simply capturing a 2D image like Steam’s F12 functionality, Ansel lets you pause a game, then freely roam the environment with a floating camera (though developers will be able to disable free roaming in their games if desired). You’re able to apply a several filters and effects to the scene using easy-to-use tools, as shown in the image below, as well as crank the resolution to ludicrous levels. Nvidia plans to release more filters as time goes on, plus a post-processing shader API so developers can create custom filters.

In a demo of Ansel running on The Witness, for example, I was able to jack the resolution to a whopping 61,440x34,560. Out of the box, the tool can support up to 4.5-gigapixel

Nvidia’s Ansel will give you the ability to take a Kodak moment in a video game.

Creating a masterpiece like that takes Ansel several minutes to stitch together files of considerably large size, however. Ansel snaps up to 3,600 smaller images to capture the entire scene—including 360-degree pictures that can be viewed in a VR headset or even Google Cardboard—and processes them with CUDA-based stitching technology to create a clean, final picture that doesn’t need any additional lighting or tone-mapping tweaks. It’s also capable of capturing RAW or EXR files from games, if you feel like tinkering around in HDR.
Ansel’s a driver-level tool, and games will need to explicitly code in support for it. On the plus side, doing so takes minimal effort—Nvidia says The Witness’s Ansel support required 40 lines of code, while Witcher 3’s integration took 150 lines. The company also plans to offer Ansel for Maxwell-based GeForce 700- and 900-series graphics cards. Look for The Division, The Witness, Lawbreakers, Witcher 3, Paragon, Unreal Tournament, Obduction, No Man’s Sky, and Fortnite to roll out Ansel support in the coming months.

How Fast Sync fixes latency and tearing

The GeForce GTX 1080 has a big problem: It’s almost too powerful, at least for the popular e-sports titles with modest visual demands. Running Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, or Dota 2 on a modern high-end graphics card can mean your hardware’s pumping out hundreds of frames per second, blowing away the refresh rates of most monitors.
That puts gamers in a pickle. The disparity between the monitor’s refresh rate and the extreme frame output can create screen tearing, a nasty artifact introduced when your monitor’s showing results from numerous frames at once. But enabling V-sync to fix the issue adds high latency to the game as it essentially tells the entire engine to slow down, and high latency in the fast-paced world of e-sports can put you at a serious competitive disadvantage.
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The new Fast Sync option in the GTX 1080 aims to solve both problems by separating the rendering and displays stages of the graphics process. Because V-sync isn’t enabled, the game engine spits out frames at full speed—which prevents latency issues—and the graphics card uses flip logic to determine which frames to scan to the display in full, eliminating screen tearing.
Some excess frames will be cast aside to maintain smooth frame pacing, Nvidia’s Tom Peterson says, but remember that Fast Sync’s made for games where the frame rendering rate output far exceeds the refresh rate of your monitor. In fact, enabling Fast Sync in games with standard frame rates could theoretically introduce stuttering. So yeah, don’t do that.
The results seem impressive. Here are Nvidia-supplied latency measurements tested with CS:GO.
Look for Fast Sync to expand beyond Pascal-based graphics cards in the future. “Expect [GPU support] to be fairly broad,” says Peterson.

GPU Boost 3.0

Nvidia’s rolling out a potentially killer new overclocking addition in the GTX 1080, dubbed GPU Boost 3.0.
The previous methods of overclocking are still supported, but GPU Boost 3.0 adds the ability to customize clock frequency offsets for individual voltage points in order to eke out every tiny little bit of overclocking headroom, rather than forcing you to use the same clock speed offset across the board. Overclocking tools will scan for your GPU’s theoretical maximum clock at numerous voltage points, then apply a custom V/F curve to match your specific card’s capabilities. It takes all the guesswork out of overclocking, letting you crank performance to 11 with minimal hassle.

Nvidia supplied reviewers with an early, mildly janky copy of a new EVGA Precision X build that supports GPU Boost 3.0, and finding then pushing your card’s limits proved pretty straightforward. Settings let you choose the minimum and maximum clock speed offset to test, as well as the “step” value, or how much the clock frequency increases from one offset to the next. After my card repeatedly crashed with Precision X’s normal OC scanner settings, decreasing the step value increase from 12.5MHz to 5MHz calmed things down—but also caused the scan session to become abominably slow.
If I’d had time to let it run in full, I would’ve been left with a highly granular overclocking profile specific to my individual GPU. But because the tool landed my hands late in the testing process, I went the manual route, overclocking the GPU by hand with a copy of the Unigine Heaven benchmark. I’ll share the final results in the performance section.

HDR and DRM support

The GeForce GTX 1080 continues Nvidia’s tradition of supporting technology built for home theater PCs. After the GTX 960 and 950 became the first major graphics cards to support HDCP 2.2 for copyrighted 4K videos over HDMI, the GTX 1080 embraces high dynamic range video technology, a.k.a. HDR. HDR displays boost brightness to create more range between darkness and light. As simple as it sounds, the improvement in visual quality is borderline startling—I think the difference between HDR and non-HDR displays is much more impressive than the leap from 1080p resolution to 4K displays. AMD’s Polaris GPUs will also support HDR.
Pascal GPUs support HDR gaming, as well as HEVC HDR video encoding and decoding. Pairing the GTX 1080 (and its HEVC 10b encoding abilities) with an Nvidia Shield Android TV console (and its HEVC 10b decoding abilities) enables another nifty trick: GameStream HDR. Basically, you can stream a PC game from your Pascal GPU-equipped computer to your TV via the Nvidia Shield, and because both devices support HDR, those deep, deep blacks and vibrant colors will appear on your television screen just fine. It’s a smart way for Nvidia to leverage its ecosystem and skirt around the fact that HDR display support is limited to traditional televisions right now, though it won’t roll out until later this summer.
Currently, Obduction, The Witness, Lawbreakers, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Paragon, The Talos Principle, and Shadow Warrior 2 are the only games with pledged HDR support, though you can expect more titles to embrace the technology as hardware support for it becomes more widespread.
​Pascal GPUs are also certified for Microsoft’s PlayReady 3.0, which allows protected 4K videos to be played on PCs. Presumably thanks to that, Pascal-based graphics cards will be able to stream 4K content from Netflix at some point later this year. Embracing 4K video on the PC means embracing Windows 10 and DRM as well, it seems.

The Nvidia GTX 1080’s port selection.

To push out all those fancy new videos, the GTX 1080 packs a single HDMI 2.0b connection, a single dual-link DVI-D connector, and three full-sized DisplayPorts that are DP 1.2 certified, but ready for DP 1.3 and 1.4. That readiness enables support for 4K monitors running at 120Hz, 5K displays at 60Hz, and even 8K displays at 60Hz—though you’ll need a pair of cables to run that last scenario.
Next page: Testing setup, SLI changes, and WTF is the GTX 1080 Founders Edition?

The GTX 1080’s answer to AMD’s async compute 

AMD’s Radeon cards hold an ace in the hole when it comes to games based on Microsoft’s radical new DirectX 12 graphics technology: asynchronous compute engines.
This dedicated hardware essentially allows multiple tasks to be run concurrently. The async shaders didn’t provide much of an advantage in DirectX 11 games, which run tasks in a largely linear fashion, but they can give certain DX12 titles a major performance boost, as you’ll see in our Ashes of the Singularity benchmark results later. And it can make a major difference in the asynchronous timewarp feature that the Oculus Rift VR headset uses to keep you from blowing chunks if there’s a hiccup in processing.
Nvidia’s Maxwell GPU-based GeForce 900-series cards don’t have a hardware-based equivalent for that. Instead, they rely on software-based “pre-emption” that allows a GPU to pause a task to perform a more critical one, then switch back to the original task. (Think of it like a traffic light.) Maxwell’s pre-emption gets the job done, but nowhere near as well as AMD’s dedicated hardware (which behaves more like the flow of cars yielding in traffic).
Pascal GPUs introduces several new hardware and software features to beef up its async compute capabilities, though none behave exactly like the async hardware in Radeon GPUs.
The GeForce GTX 1080 adds flexibility in task execution with the introduction of dynamic load balancing, a new hardware-based feature that allows the GPU to adjust task partitioning on the fly rather than letting resources sit idle.
With the static partitioning technique used exclusively by all previous generation GeForce cards, resources for overlapping tasks each claimed a portion of the GPU resources available—let’s say 50 percent for PhysX compute and 50 percent for graphics, for example. But if the graphics finishes its task first, that 50 percent of resources allocated to it sits idle until the compute portion also completes. The Pascal GPU’s new dynamic load partitioning allows unfinished tasks to tap into idle GPU resources, so the PhysX task in the previous example gains access to the resources available when the graphics task wrapped up, which would obviously allow the PhysX task to finish sooner than it would with the older static partitioning scheme.
A fluid particle demo shown at Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Editors Day hit 78 frames per second with the feature disabled, and climbed to 94fps when it was turned on.
The Pascal GPU also adds “Pixel level pre-emption” and “Thread level pre-emption” to its bag of async tricks, which are designed to help minimize the cost of switching tasks on the fly when time-critical tasks (like Oculus’ asynchronous timewarp) come in hot.
Previously, pre-emption occurred at a fairly high level of the computing process, between rendering commands from the game engine. Each rendering command can consist of up to hundreds of individual draw calls in the command push buffer, Nvidia says, with each draw call containing hundreds of triangles, and each triangle requiring hundreds of individual pixels to be rendered. Performing all that work before switching tasks can take a long time. (Well, relatively speaking.)
Pixel level pre-emption—which is achieved using a blend of hardware and software, Nvidia says—allows Pascal GPUs to save their current workload at pixel-level granularity rather than the high rendering command state, switch to another time-critical task (like asynchronous timewarp), then pick up exactly where they left off. That lets the GTX 1080 pre-empt tasks quickly, with minimal overhead; Nvidia says pixel-level pre-emption takes under 100 microseconds to kick into gear. We’ll talk about real-world results with Pascal’s new async compute tools when we dive into our DirectX 12 testing with Ashes of the Singularity. (Spoiler alert: They’re impressive.)
Thread level pre-emption will be available later this summer and performs similarly, but for CUDA computing tasks rather than graphical commands.

Simultaneous multi-projection

Simultaneous multi-projection (SMP) is a highly intriguing new technology that improves performance when a game needs to render multiple “viewports” for the same game, be it for a multi-monitor setup or the dual lenses inside a virtual reality headset. A more granular SMP feature can also greatly improve frame rates in games on standard displays by building on the groundwork laid by the multi-resolution shading feature already enabled in Nvidia’s Maxwell GPUs.
This fancy new technology’s at the heart of Nvidia’s claim that the GeForce GTX 1080 is faster than two GTX 980s configured in SLI. The card never hits that lofty milestone in traditional gaming benchmarks—though it can come pretty damn close in some titles. But it’s theoretically possible in VR applications coded to take advantage of SMP, which uses dedicated hardware inside the Pascal GPU’s PolyMorph engine hardware.

Sony Xperia Z6 release date, rumours, news, specs and price

Everything you need to know about the Sony Xperia Z6

Looking for all the latest on the Sony Xperia Z6? Here's what we know about the expected Xperia Z6 release date, new Xperia Z6 features, and the latest Xperia Z6 specs info.
Update: You've found this page, which means you're probably looking for for information about the Sony Xperia Z6. Well we've got bad news: it appears Sony has no plans to launch a new Xperia Z-series device. Boo!
Everybody – us included – was under the impression that Sony would finally lift the lid on the Xperia Z6 at MWC 2016, but instead the company launched a brand new range of handsets under fresh name – X-series. You can find out about the new devices here before their August launch:
Sony Xperia X and X Performance hands-on
Sony Xperia XA hands-on
It's also worth noting that the Sony Xperia X is now available for pre-order in the UK. Check out the latest Sony Xperia X deals here.
But if you'd like to reminisce about times gone by, or you're just a big fan of the Xperia Z phones, you'll find the original rumour roundup piece below.
Original Article:
The Sony Xperia Z6 is already in our sights and, despite the very recent launch of the Sony Xperia Z5, there's a good chance the handset will arrive during today's Mobile World Congress press conference.
What's more, Sony operates a supersonic launch cycle that sees new flagship smartphones released every six months.
As such, it’s expected that the Xperia Z6 will launch in the first half of 2016 – and probably this weekend – so we’ve rounded-up the latest Xperia Z6 news, rumours, and leaks – plus a bit of educated guesswork.
The most recent rumours are that the Xperia Z6 display will be pressure-sensitive, just like the iPhone 6S, and run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It's also tipped that there will be five different Xperia Z6 variants.
The next opportunity for a smartphone launch is MWC 2016, one of the year's biggest technology tradeshows, assured to host a number of high-profile product launches. But will the Sony Xperia Z6 launch at MWC? It's hard to say right now, but the rumour mill is heavily favouring an imminent release.
Here’s the latest:

In Brief

When is the Xperia Z6 coming out? Feb-April 2016, maybe MWC
What’s new about the Xperia Z6? Snapdragon 820, Marshmallow
How much will the Xperia Z6 cost? £500-550

Sony Xperia Z6 Release Date UK & US – When does the Xperia Z6 come out?
Sony isn’t one for surprises when it comes to release dates; it’s adhered to a clear pattern for core Xperia Z releases.
What’s notable about Sony however, it that it runs on a 6-month release cycle, which is why we’re already looking towards the Xperia Z6 so soon after the launch of the Xperia Z5.
In the past, Sony has launched smartphones around March and September – the former in line with Mobile World Congress, and the latter in line with Berlin’s IFA tradeshow.
It looks set to be no different this year, with Sony widely tipped to show off its next flagship at Barcelona’s MWC in February.

Xperia Z6 Features – What’s new about the Xperia Z6?
The previous generation of Sony Xperia smartphones were the first to come in three core size variants – Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium. We’ve still had no word on whether this trend will continue with the Xperia Z6.
While most things will remain the same – design, screen resolution, storage – we are expecting a few changes.
Firstly, there’s Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 820 chip, which is poised to offer significant performance improvements over previous models. It’s widely expected that the 820 will feature on the Xperia Z6.
We’ve also heard talk of a pressure-sensitive display appearing on the Sony Xperia Z6, following Apple’s suit with the iPhone’s 3D Touch panel.
Unfortunately, we won’t really know what Sony is plotting until the official launch, so stay tuned.
Should I wait for the Sony Xperia Z6?
Sony Xperia smartphones are easy to predict, and launch frequently. That makes it easy to work out whether you’ll want to wait for the next one.
If you’ve just bought the Sony Xperia Z5, skip the Xperia Z6; there won’t be enough of an upgrade. Older models like the Xperia Z3 could be worth a trade-up, however

The convention will run from February 22 to February 25, although handsets are often unveiled on February 21, one day before proceedings really kick off.
But if the Sony Xperia Z6 skips MWC, we’d still expect to see the handset launch in the surrounding weeks. And the company is running out of time, as the Z6-free Sony CES 2016 press conference is now well behind us.
At the very least, it's likely that a Sony smartphone will arrive in the first half of the year. That's supported by a recent leak from T-Mobile Poland that pointed to two new Sony Xperia smartphones coming in the second quarter of 2016.

You also have to weigh up which rival handsets will be available at launch. The first half of 2016 is likely to see the release of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5, both of which may be formidable handsets.
However, Apple probably won’t have unveiled a new iPhone by the time the Xperia Z6 lands, so you’ve got plenty of time to work out whether the iPhone 6S or iPhone 6S Plus are for you.
To help with that, check out our iOS 9 vs Android 6.0 Marshmallow guide

Latest Xperia Z6 News – Pressure-sensitive display, five variants

• 16 February 2016 – Sony Xperias to get Android Marshmallow
• 06 January 2016 – CES 2016: No sign of Xperia Z6
• 12 December 2015 – Sony smartphone release date leaked?
• 24 November 2015 – Xperia Z6 could feature pressure-sensitive display
• 10 November 2015 – Snapdragon 820 will make 2016's phones 40% faster
• 25 September 2015 – Android 6.0 Marshmallow rollout to start October 5

In-Depth: Xperia Z6 Specs & Features Explained

Xperia Z6 variants
Sony has never been shy about releasing several versions of the same handset, but it could be about to take a leaf out of prolific rival Samsung's book.
The Sony Xperia Z6 will be available in five – yes, five – different variants, according to a new report from China-based social media site Weibo.
The models will allegedly arrive in the following formats:

• Sony Xperia Z6 Mini – 4-inch
• Sony Xperia Z6 Compact – 4.7-inch
• Sony Xperia Z6 – 5.2-inch
• Sony Xperia Z6 Plus – 5.8-inch
• Sony Xperia Z6 Ultra – 6.4-inch

Sony Mobile has been struggling to turn a profit in recent years, and it's not clear exactly how fragmenting its flagship series even further will help.
Fortunately, there's no hard evidence that this product roadmap is real, so take this report with a pinch of salt.

Xperia Z6 display
The debate is still raging over whether the Sony Xperia Z6 will use a Full HD (1080p), QHD, or UHD display. Similarly, will we see 4.7-inch, 5.2-inch, or 5.5-inch panels?
The company has struggled to settle on an optimal screen resolution in recent years, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see several different variants of the Xperia Z6, each with different displays.
Perhaps the panel we’re least excited for is 4K, because it’s presence was notably underwhelming on the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium.
The most likely scenario is either a Full HD or QHD display; they’re big enough for a smartphone form factor, and don’t cause too sizable a drain on battery life. And similarly, we'll probably see a 5.2-inch or 5.5-inch screen.
Xperia Z6 design
When it comes to Sony Xperia devices, there are generally very few design surprises.
That’s because Sony maintains its OmniBalance aesthetic across its entire Xperia smartphone and tablet line-up.
Here’s how Sony describes OmniBalance, which first debuted on the Xperia Z:

“Omni means ‘all’ or ‘everywhere’ – it represents the omnipresence and the multitude of smartphone uses. This principle of OmniBalance is embodied in the design execution – a minimalistic form where only the essentials remain, with balance and symmetry throughout. It is essentially a plate of glass that has the edges and corners softened and strengthened in an encasing frame.”

As such, we’re expecting to see the usual flat, rectangular shape, plenty of glass, and the chic minimalism Sony is used to.
While reception to OmniBalance has largely been positive, some argue that the design of Xperia phones is beginning to grow tired.
With Sony's history in mind, you're probably also wondering: will the Xperia Z6 be waterproof? The truth is that we're not sure, but it seems likely.
However, do note that Sony has recently shied away from the "waterproof" branding, seemingly due to the customer service difficulties that arise from marketing a phone as such.
Nevertheless, it still seems probable that the phone will boast an IP67 certification, even if Sony isn't so blatant about the Xperia Z6's aquatic credentials.
Related: Sony Xperia Z5: Camera features explored
Xperia Z6 camera
Sony Xperia smartphones have always shipped with good cameras, and with good reason: Sony is one of the biggest smartphone image sensor manufacturers in the world.
The company may have announced a splitting-off for the image sensor business earlier this year, but it’s likely that Sony Mobile will still hold a good relationship with the brand.
Recent flagship Sony Xperia handsets have shipped with either a 21.7-megapixel

sensor, or a 23-megapixel sensor. Both are more than large enough for smartphone photography.
Upgrades to smartphone cameras are slow however, so we’d expect to see a similar imaging module appear on the Xperia Z6.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands

E3 2016 preview

Available on PS4, Xbox One and PC
Ghost Recon Wildlands release date: March 7, 2017
The first instalment of Ubisoft’s popular tactical squad-based shooter since 2012’s Future Soldier sees something of a reboot, and if early indications prove accurate, Wildlands could propel Ghost Recon into stellar realms. The first Ghost Recon game to boast a fully open world, ditching the franchise’s gimmicky reliance on technology in favour of high-octane missions that you can approach however you want. The result is a deeply enjoyable sandbox-style romp.
Wildlands has an interesting premise, albeit a scary one if you happen to come from Bolivia. It’s set in the present day, but posits an alternate reality in which a corrupt government has allowed Santa Blanca, a Colombian drug cartel, to move into Bolivia, effectively taking over the country. As an elite Ghost, you’re fighting on two fronts: your primary objective is to destabilise the drug cartel and ultimately take out El Sueno, its leader, but you also have to contend with a corrupt military backing El Sueno. The more disruption you cause, the more resistance the locals will be able to organise.

It’s an intriguing setup, played out against a stunning backdrop. Ubisoft says that the area in which Wildlands takes place is the biggest it has ever put into a game, with no fewer than 11 different ecosystems (including island archipelagos, mountainous areas, rainforests and deserts) – we were able to have a look around the map and it is giant.

The Wildlands hands-on at E3 consisted of one mission, but it was long and involved, and I played it a number of times, confirming that it is possible to take wildly differing approaches. The co-operative aspect of Wildlands is properly drop-in, drop-out: you can play on your own with AI-controlled squad-mates or bring in friends whenever you want.

At E3, I formed part of a four-human team, with a team-leader directing, often splitting into two-man sub-teams. After a period getting used to the (thoroughly intuitive) controls, my squad regrouped on the hillside above a camp which, we knew, housed one of our target’s associates – we would have to arrest and interrogate him, so an indiscriminate guns-blazing approach was ruled out.

After launching a couple of drones, tagging enemies and our target, we swapped from silenced assault rifles to sniper-rifles (the loadout also included a silenced automatic handgun) and each reserved a target, taking out most of the foot-soldiers out on a count of three, before rushing down to finish off the rest of the enemies and grab our main target for interrogation.

On the first play-through, he managed to jump into a vehicle, so the Ghost squad did likewise and pursued him to a petrol station, discovering it is possible to lean out of the window of any vehicle and shoot. Reinforcements arrived, so half the squad fought them off, while the other half finally cornered our prey and interrogated him. On a later play-through, I managed to arrest him at the first opportunity, showing that Wildlands is dynamic, rather than scripted.
Calling in a chopper to take us to our next destination, we could then parachute down to terra firma, and regrouped above a major camp equipped with alarms, snipers, machine-gun nests and a mortar (all of which we again tagged with drones). Having decided on priorities – taking out the mortar, machine-gun nests and alarms first, we again split into two groups, sustaining a stealth approach for as long as possible.

Working through the camp, taking out enemies at close range, one group went for the intel, while the other freed some locals from cages, who picked up weapons and joined in to help us. Reinforcements then arrived, and I found it impossible to resist the temptation to lob a grenade at a huge gas-tank, which took a lot of them out. Again, that emphasised Wildlands’ play-how-you-want nature. A vehicular getaway left an almost GTA-like after-taste

First Impressions

I found Ghost Recon Widlands intensely enjoyable to play. I played the demo mission three times, each play-through was different. It’s much more immediate than previous Ghost Recon games, plunging you straight into the action after a reconnaissance period, and the control system has bags of feel.

Question-marks remain, most notably surrounding the mechanism with which you will control your AI squad-mates if you play solo – which was a tiny bit fiddly in previous Ghost Recon games. However, I can’t imagine that will be the case for Wildlands, since in human co-op mode, it’s strikingly pick-up-and-play.
In general, Ghost Recon previously felt like a slightly niche title, aimed at those with something of an obsession with modern soldiering. But Wildlands feels very mainstream. And with an epic storyline, a huge game-world (which, in itself, should generate some wildly differing missions) and the chance to play through it with your friends, it has the potential to be a smash-hit.

GTA 5 Review

GTA 5 PC Review

Also available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PS3
The long wait has been worth it. If you’re a PC gamer who’s spent the last eighteen months envying the console crowd while they all got stuck into the latest, greatest GTA, then rest assured that you can now play the definitive version. Sure, the Xbox One and PS4 versions were amazing, delivering GTA 5 at higher resolutions with more detailed textures, smoother surfaces, better lighting and cool depth of field effects (see our full review below), but the PC version offers even more enhancements plus a couple of additional features that play to the PC’s strengths. In doing so, it adds a few more metres to one of gaming’s towering achievements.
Having covered the game twice already, we won’t go too far into the detail of what makes GTA 5 so good. Partly, it’s a question of experience. With four previous 3D GTAs under its belt plus Red Dead Redemption, Bully and assorted DLC packs, Rockstar has had time to refine its vision for open world gameplay and its systems, and GTA 5 has the best driving, the best shooting and some of the best mission design of the series.
It’s also a question of structure. Dividing the action amongst three protagonists with three interlocking storylines and three distinctive flavours means you nearly always have the option to flick from Michael’s ageing career criminal saga to Franklin’s ambitious hoodlum story to Trevor’s crazed, amoral brand of mayhem, where the dumb, cathartic slapstick violence we all – deep down – love GTA for finds its natural home. With repeated play, it only becomes clearer how well all three tales mesh thematically with Rockstar’s savage satirical take on the Californian dream.

And the budget definitely helps. The more time you put into GTA 5, the more you come to appreciate what a large and intensely detailed creation Los Santos is, and just how much is packed into the surrounding Blaine County. That’s because Rockstar had the ambition and the money to put in all the golf and tennis mini-games, all the stunt challenges, all the bizarre side missions and all the weird, hidden stuff that probably 90% of players will never see. The amazing thing about GTA 5 is that you can spend hour after hour playing it yet still be struck by all the stuff you haven’t done yet. No other open world feels this coherent. No other open world has so much to do.

So, what does playing on PC bring to the experience? Well, for a start there’s the most visually impressive and immersive version yet. Those lucky enough to have a 1440p or 4K monitor and the rig to run it will have ample cause for amazement, and the rest of us who have to struggle along at 1080p won’t go short. GTA 5 PC benefits from the new lighting model, post-processing effects, day-to-night cycle and added vegetation of the next-gen console versions, but also additional levels for textures, shader effects, reflections and shadow detail that affect everything from the way characters’ faces look close-up to depth-of-field effects, water and grass.

It’s open to a huge amount of tinkering, but then it needs to be. Basic gaming systems, like a budget Core i3 with an old GTX 660, will struggle to run GTA 5 at a decent frame rate unless you reduce the resolution and start pulling settings down from high. Our test system, with a Core i5 and a Radeon R9 285, still wouldn’t run smoothly with settings above high at 1080p.
What’s more, GTA 5 is really tough on video memory. Try to set Texture Quality to High with a 2GB graphics card and you’ll be warned that you’re exceeding the limits. Ignore the warnings, and you may be gobsmacked by the detail on skin, background textures and – particularly clothing – but the frame rate will stutter all the time. It might just about be bearable when you’re walking around, but get in a car and try a driving-heavy mission and you’re in for a nasty shock.
GTA 5 scales up beautifully if you’re rocking a Core i7/GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290, but if you have a lesser system then you’re going to have to make some compromises. It’s also worth noting that we’ve experienced the odd collision-detection bug and some weird texture drop-outs, occasionally affecting whole scenes at a time. It’s early days with early GPU drivers, though, so we suspect these issues will be nailed down with time.

Beyond this, we get support for mouse and keyboard gameplay – a definite plus if you play in first-person view – and some new options for background music. Not only is there a new radio station to listen to – The Lab FM – but a rather ingenious way of adding custom soundtracks to the game. Drag your own music files into a subfolder called User Music, and they’ll play through a new Self Radio station while you’re in the game. It’s a shame that Rockstar didn’t make this a little more obvious or accessible, but playing GTA 5 with your own background tunes is a blast.

GTA Online comes bundled in, of course, bringing Rockstar’s online multiplayer crime sim to the PC for the first time. It’s due a reappraisal now that the new Heist missions have been dropped in, but it’s still a slightly odd combination of open-world exploration and ad-hoc PvP larceny and murder (all good) and more straightforward shooter and racer events, which don’t really play to GTA’s strengths. It’s fun, but not Battlefield: Hardline

No, if we had to say that the PC version had a killer feature, it would be the new Rockstar Editor and its accompanying Director Mode. At any point, you can start recording the action, the game recording clips of up to 90 seconds in length. You can also use an instant replay function to grab footage from an always-on buffer after you do something cool or crazy. You can then use the Rockstar Editor to edit and montage these clips, trimming them down, adding markers and changing camera angles, so that you can switch from a behind the character view to a front view, then a custom view and back again within one clip. On top of this you can add a range of colour, vintage movie and TV effects, and also add and edit soundtracks, with a solid selection of songs from all the radio stations available for use.
Credit to Rockstar here; it has created an editing tool that’s both fairly sophisticated and surprisingly easy-to-use. Sure, serious video editors will bemoan the lack of multiple video and audio tracks and the limitations on transitions, but this isn’t that kind of tool. We can see a lot of players using the Rockstar Editor to create their own cool scenes – and that’s good enough for us.

With Director Mode you can take this one stage further. Switch out of Story Mode to Director Mode and a caravan appears, from which you can summon one of a range of weirdos, freaks and background extras, plus any principal story characters and heist recruits that you’ve unlocked. You can then teleport your start to a range of locations, kit them out with any vehicles you’ve unlocked, then get up to whatever you fancy in Los Santos, Blaine County and their environs. You can even throw in dialogue, if your star has any, and a range of actions. Most importantly, you can record what happens, edit it, and turn it into your own mini movie, which you can then upload to YouTube if you fancy.
It’s a whole new way to enjoy GTA. Want to see Michael’s wife, Amanda, going loco stealing golf carts in the sticks? Now’s your chance. Want to see LiveInvader’s Rickie Luken pulling outrageous stunts in the mountains? Be our guest. You could even create multiple clips starring multiple characters and stitch them all together into one weird little drama.

Since GTA 3, Rockstar has created games which feel like movies, and worlds where players can play out their own slapstick scenes or blockbuster set-pieces. Now it’s given us a way to record, refine and share our funniest, stupidest, boldest, most spectacular moments, and a way to make new ones that Rockstar might never have conceived. This isn’t just another clip editor. It’s closer in spirit to Lionhead’s The Movies or the old LucasArts classic, Stunt Island. In-game movie-makers should rejoice.

Maybe Rockstar Editor and Director’s Mode won’t be for everyone, but they and the other enhancements are enough to elevate GTAV on PC above its console brethren. We’d still hesitate to recommend a double or triple-dip if you’ve already played the existing versions to death, but if any game would make such a thing worthwhile, this is it.
Verdict
We called the next-gen console versions definitive, but this one is just that little bit more so. GTAV is as tweakable as it is replayable, and owners of high-end hardware and high-resolution screens are in for a treat. Owners of less stellar gaming rigs can expect a game that matches the PS4 and Xbox One versions, and potentially exceeds them. Throw in the new music options and the superb video capture and editing tools, and GTAV on PC is a major win for PC gamers.GTA 5 is one of the best games in the world

Nokia Lumia 1320 review

What is the Nokia Lumia 1320?

The Nokia Lumia 1320 is a very large Windows phone. It has a 6-inch screen, and is quite an imposing presence. The more affordable sibling of the Lumia 1520, it cuts out some of that phone’s higher-end features to sell for around £270 SIM-free, or around £21 a month on a contract.
However, its sheer girth makes it a little hard to live with, and the extra screen inches aren’t beneficial enough yet.

Nokia Lumia 1320 – Design

Nokia has for years proudly boasted of the high build quality of its phones, and with some reason. It makes quality mobiles, and its colourful Lumia phones stand out from the crowd.
However, that the Lumia 1320 continues with established Lumia design approaches becomes a problem here. More on that in a minute. First – what is it made of?
Like other affordable Lumia phones, the Nokia Lumia 1320 uses a removable plastic back whose design successfully mimics the unibody look of Nokia’s more expensive phones. It comes in a few different colours too – yellow and red as well as the more conventional black and white.
The design style doesn’t work perfectly with a 6-inch size in this case, though. There’s clearer flex in the thin plastic cover than in Nokia’s smaller phones, it creaks on one side and the Lumia 1320 is extremely heavy by current standards.

It weighs 220g, where most of the 5.5-6-inch phones manage to stay well under 200g. The Galaxy Note 3 is just 168g, for example. Nokia has never paid all that much attention to how feather-light its phones are – and most of the time it’s a strategy we’re totally on-board with – but here the chunk factor is a bit too noticeable.
It’s the same story with the Lumia 1320’s dimensions. A combo of 86mm width and 10mm thickness make it quite a handful, to an extent that will put people off. Nokia has made one important adjustment to help out – the power button sits in the centre of the right side, within reach of your thumb.
Still, there is something a little strange about the Lumia 1320 design. Its relative lack of nods to the large size make it seem like a "Honey, I Blew up my Lumia" phone – more so than the sharper-looking Lumia 1520.

Nokia Lumia 1320 – Screen

Perhaps the most serious difference between the Lumia 1320 and 1520 is screen resolution. The Lumia 1520 has a 1080p display, the Lumia 1320 a 720p one.
As a phone whose screen is always going to be under close scrutiny, it’s a big sacrifice. In past years we’ve commented that Windows Phone deals fairly well with limited screen resolutions, but here the difference is quite obvious. From normal viewing distances interface text looks soft – get a little closer and pixellation is obvious.
It raises an obvious question – is a larger screen a good thing when what it does best is to reveal the screen’s technical deficiencies?

The Lumia 1320’s pixel density is 245ppi. This isn’t terrible, and the phone’s screen is not outright bad by any means, but when we’re used to seeing better in mid-range phones it’s a little hard to accept.
Screen elements other than clarity and resolution are much better. The Lumia 1320 uses an LCD, IPS-based display whose colours are vibrant but not overcooked, with a backlight that’s strong enough to make the screen look quite dazzling if needed. Outdoors visibility is decent too. Nokia also offers control over the colour temperature and saturation of the screen, which display obsessives will appreciate.
The Lumia 1320’s screen is also pretty quick – you need a pretty fast LCD panel to avoid ‘tails’ forming while you’re whizzing around the super-quick Windows Phone interface, and the phone copes very well.
Contrast and black level are typical of a decent mid-range LCD panel. In a darkened room, there’s some visible luminance, which a slight blue ‘lean’ to the tone of blacks, but nothing major.

Is a big screen better?

The only thing that irks about the screen on a technical level is resolution. Just as important, though – is the larger screen of the Lumia 1320 useful?
There is a clear difference between the Windows Phone 8 interface on the Lumia 1320 and the smaller Lumia 1020 – here you get three full-size app tiles per row, rather than two. This may also be one of the reasons font scaling doesn’t entirely compensate for the limited resolution, but without it having a 6-inch screen would be fairly pointless.
Beyond the Live Tile home screen, though, we hit something of a dead end. Windows apps do not tend to make optimisations for these phone-tablet hybrid size screens, and Windows-based tablets run a version of Windows, not Windows Phone. The two systems remain separate at present, so tablet apps can’t bleed into phones like this as they do with Android.

Of course, large screens don’t excel only with apps designed for large screens – games and video eat up such displays too. The big, bright Lumia 1320 screen is mostly a great fit for such activities, and it’s more immersive than a smaller one. However, with high-end 3D games like Asphalt 8 the lower screen resolution does become apparent. It looks jaggy-tastic compared with an iPhone 5S, or a higher-res tablet.

12 Best Smartphones and Mobile Phones

Our best smartphone round-up includes only the very best mobile phones right now. If you're looking for a new phone then it's in this list somewhere.

2016 is now in full swing, and we've started to see a flood of flagship smartphones hit the shelves. If you're getting ready to upgrade your phone, now is probably the time to do it. Unless you have your eyes set on the upcoming iPhone 7 or OnePlus 3.
Samsung's fantastic Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are strong options, but both the LG G5 and stunning HTC 10 are also worth a look if it's an Android phone you're after. iOS fan? The superb iPhone SE is certainly a good choice.
Of course, we also have the iPhone 7 coming up later this year, which will mean the debut of a totally new iPhone design. Some of the more extreme rumours suggest Apple will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in favour of audio via the Lightning port, though you should take that with a pinch of salt for now.
If you really can't wait, however, there are still many great phones to choose from. Click here to browse our best smartphone list now, or read on for more more smartphone buying advice.

Best Smartphone Buying Guide

Not sure where to start in your quest for a new phone? Whether you're seasoned buyer or are looking to buy your first smartphone, here are a few pointers to help you get started.

How much should you spend on a new smartphone?

While flagships seem to be getting more expensive by the year, laying your hands on a good smartphone is actually cheaper than ever. By all means splash the cash on a show-stopper like the iPhone 6S or LG G4 if you want to, but bear in mind that some crackers like the the 4G-enabled Motorola Moto E (2015) cost a fraction of the price and are brilliant phones in their own right.
It's also worth considering last year's top phones. The LG G4 and S6 now available for much less and are better than many new mid-range phones.

What size smartphone should you buy?

Large-screened mobiles are very much in demand these days, with even Apple embracing phablet fever. Phones measuring in at 5.5 inches and above can be considered as such, and are usually blessed with excellent displays that are great for watching videos and playing games on.
Anything between 4.5 and 5.1 inches is more practical for fingers and pockets, while still good for browsing the web, gaming and more. 4-inch smartphones, meanwhile, are ideal for children and users who aren’t fussed about games and videos. If you're unsure what's best for then a 5-inch is a good size for most people.

Other things to consider

You might consider extra features to be like the sprinkles on top of a cake, but they’re far more important than that. Things like microSD card slots, NFC, fingerprint scanners and water-resistance can dramatically affect the overall user experience of a smartphone.
Of all those, fingerprint scanners and NFC are quickly becoming must-have features. Not only does the former add extra security to your phone, the two combined open up the potential for contactless payments. Believe us when we say paying with your phone using your fingerprint is very cool.

Android vs iPhone vs Windows: Which is best?

The smartphone world is notoriously divisive, with Apple-worshipping ‘fanboys’ on one end of the spectrum and Android-obsessed ‘phandroids’ on the other. The smaller Windows Phone OS has similarly militant supporters who don’t yet have a collective name, and you should ignore all of them.
We’ve explained the main advantages and disadvantages of each of the three main mobile operating systems below.

Buy an Android smartphone if you want a wide range of options

The Android operating system offers a better balance of variety and affordability than its rivals, due to the sheer diversity of Android smartphone manufacturers. There's a phone to suit any desire or budget and even the flagship ones are often much cheaper than iPhone rivals.
In Google Play, Android has the largest selection of apps and games too, but there’s a lot of rubbish mixed in with the good stuff. Overall, it’s a great operating system and it’s certainly the best option if you’d rather not spend big money on a shiny new smartphone.

Buy an iPhone if you value simplicity

iPhones are some of the most expensive smartphones you can buy, and the last-generation iPhone 6 will still set you back a fair amount SIM-free. However, design is always on-point, the apps are great and they're very easy to use.
Apple’s App Store isn’t quite as populated as Google Play, but its restrictions are tighter, meaning that the overall quality of iOS games and apps is higher than what you’ll find on Android.
It’s also a great option if you own other Apple gadgets, like MacBooks and iPads, as the tightly integrated services make life easy.

LG 5 REVIEW

What is the LG G5?

The LG G5 isn’t a great modular phone – it’s biggest feature – but it’s still a worthy rival to the HTC 10, OnePlus 3 and Samsung Galaxy S7 thanks to a sharp screen and equally impressive camera. It might not quite match those illustrious competitors, but LG once again shows it can think outside of the box when it comes to building a phone.
Actually, the G5 has us very excited for the possible LG G6 that we’ll no doubt see next year. The groundwork has been laid here, but there’s improvements that need to be made; notably the poor build quality.
Still, it's a nice improvement over the LG G4.

LG G5 – Design and Modules

Metal body, removable battery, modular system, rear fingerprint sensor, sloped top, 159g
In pictures the LG G5 looks curvy and sleek, but pick up the smartphone and it feels oddly hollow.
LG played up its switch from the plastic body of the LG G4 to a metal one on the G5. However, in the hand the G5 really doesn’t feel like any other metal phone I’ve come across. the handset has an odd finish that feels much more like plastic than the advertised “microdized” metal. I do like the slightly sloping top, though, but it's the only feature that sets it apart.

The G5's design is very clean too, with only a single volume clicker and SIM-tray present on either side. The volume control suffers from having a very shallow push, but it's usable nonetheless. While LG has ditched the volume keys on the rear, the lock switch remains in the slightly unorthodox position just below the camera sensors.
In my opinion it's far better to have all the buttons in the same spot, be it on the back or sides of a phone. Positioned as they are, I’m forced to move my hands around the G5 more than normal just to reach everything.

The standby switch now also houses a fingerprint scanner – something I consider a must for any 2016 flagship. V10 aside, for which there's been no UK launch, this is the first phone from LG to use a fingerprint scanner.
I'm pleased to report that it does a superb job – it’s fast and accurate. In addition, you don’t even have to press down to unlock the phone; simply glide your digit across and it’ll bypass the lockscreen completely.
As with all back-mounted scanners I’ve tried, it can sometimes go off randomly in my pocket. On more than a few occasions I’d pull it out of my pocket to be met with a message reporting "too many incorrect attempts, fingerprint blocked". But I guess this is a side-effect of it being so sensitive. The scanner itself is also quite small, which might be issue if you have large fingers.

The LG G5’s modular system is its stand-out feature. Now, it isn’t quite at Google Project Ara levels of customisability – so you won’t be switching out the RAM or CPU – but it’s clever and unique nevertheless.
It works like this. Along the side of the handset there sits an almost indistinguishable button set just almost flush to the body. Press this in with the tip of your nail and the bottom chin of the phone will pop out; pull it off and out comes the battery.
The battery comes apart from the bottom unit – which can feel like you’re breaking the device – and then you can attach it to other modules, or "Friends" as LG calls them. At launch, there are two modules available and neither are going to be a draw in themselves to sell the phone.
The camera grip adds a touch more battery, a separate shutter button for both photos and video, and a jog dial for zoom. The second module is a DAC powered by some B&O tech. The DAC gives you 32-bit audio and an extra headphone jack.

I find myself wishing that LG had started off with slightly more enticing accessories. The DAC is a nice idea – I’m all for ways to improve smartphone audio – but the camera grip doesn’t actually make the camera any better; it just makes the shooting process "easier". I also don’t like the fact it encourages people to use digital zoom – photo tech that universally produces terrible photos on all the smartphones I’ve tested, including the G5.
These two modules are also much pricier than I'd anticipated. The B&O DAC costs £150, while the camera grip will set you back £79. Problems will also likely arise when you’re ready to upgrade to the LG G6 – will the new device support the same modules? I'm not convinced.
LG is encouraging third parties to make their own Friends, so hopefully they’ll be a few more to choose from in the coming months. However, if the LG G5 fails to sell in large enough numbers then maybe there won't be much incentive to build a costly module.
The modular system also hampers the build quality of the device. Both parts of the phone don’t quite fit flush together; there’s an ever-so-slight gap between the two. It’s minimal, but wide enough that I can see light filtering through.

LG G5 – Screen

5.3-inch, IPS LCD, quad-HD display with always-on mode
LG’s past few flagship devices have benefited from impressive displays.
While they can't be described as perfect, they’ve always adopted new tech and utilised it well. LG was one of the first manufacturers to really bring quad-HD, 2,560 x 1,440 panels to the mainstream, for example, and since the G3 it has gone from strength to strength.
I’m happy to say that the display on the LG G5 is the best yet – even though on the surface it appears that not a whole lot has changed.
LG hasn't made the switch to a 4K display; it remains quad-HD. Although in my opinion this isn't a bad thing – quad-HD is the highest resolution a phone needs to be unless it will be used for VR. The display on the G5 remains a IPS LCD panel too, rather than the AMOLED panels favoured by Samsung and Google.
The biggest change here is that the screen is actually marginally smaller than before – 5.3-inches as opposed to 5.5-inches. But the number of pixels remain the same; they're simply crammed into a smaller surface area.
The display is ridiculously sharp, far more true-to-life and softer than the Galaxy S7 display. This isn't necessarily a positive, though – it’s all down to personal taste, with some preferring accurate colours over vibrancy. Viewing angles are on point.
LG has also improved the brightness of the screen, not that the G4 suffered much in this area. At its highest, it's at 900 nits, but there will be few instances in which it will need to be set so high. Around 50% is right, or you can opt for auto-brightness.

I'm not a fan of auto-brightness on Android devices, and it's no different here. It’s too obvious, results in a stuttering motion and is rarely accurate in its judgements

The G5 display's black level – an area in which many IPS displays struggle – is solid. While not as deep as those on the Samsung Galaxy S7, blacks on the LG G5 are suitably inky and deep, and mean the display has a great contrast ratio.
Just like the Samsung Galaxy S7, the LG G5 has an "always-on" display mode, so the time and your notifications remain visible even when the phone is locked.
LG’s implementation is much better than that of Samsung in just about every way. It uses less battery, about 12% a day (8am to midnight) as opposed to the Galaxy S7’s 15%. The LG G5’s always-on screen also displays all your notifications, including those from WhatsApp and Gmail. This makes it far more useful than the S7, which pushes alerts from only a limited selection of apps.
The display on the G5 is less customisable, however, and since it isn’t AMOLED, it lights up every pixel rather than just the clock. This means it’s far more noticeable, and more distracting, in low light.