Ryzen Arisin’
Although the release of AMD’s new Ryzen processors wasn't tied to GDC per se, it was certainly a specter that hung over the whole event. Last week, editors were briefed on the new chips, and the NDA on reviews lifted on Thursday, in the middle of GDC, which left editors aplenty scrambling to balance show coverage with finishing off their Ryzen reviews. (Our full review is here.)
The AMD folks certainly seemed a bit giddy early in the week at the “Capsaicin And Cream” event (where we learned about this and this and this); whether or not they felt the same after reviews like ours, not to mention issues like this one, is a matter for debate.
In any case, this was a major CPU launch for AMD, and it's one that the PC market has sorely needed. Anything resembling competition will be a boon for consumers, in the end. And you can be certain that AMD reps spent a great deal of time this week talking to game developers about ways to optimize for the new Ryzen family of CPUs.
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The Wrestler
There was that time that a professional wrestler bombed a VR demo we were doing. While I (Seth Colaner, Tom’s Hardware News Editor) was under the hood zipping around in Sprint Vector, WWE Superstar Xavier Woods showed up. The Survios folks put him in a headset and put us in a race together.
This was all unbeknownst to me; I knew only that I was going to race someone. The in-game characters are just avatars, so I had no clue that I was about to race a professional athlete. I did think it was curious that the crowd was suddenly so pumped up about the race. (Literally no one in the crowd around the booth was cheering for me except for one Survios staff member who I think was just trying to be polite.)
Because Sprint Vector is a game wherein the faster you pump your arms the faster you move, and Mr. Woods has a pair of arm pythons the size of my thighs, it goes without saying that he beat me. (However, he beat me by only 10 seconds in a race that lasted over two minutes. Further, my time was 2:19, which was good enough to be on the leaderboard at the time. So.)
Mr. Woods was very nice, and he was not breathing hard at all after our race. My arms are still sore.
(Pictured: Tom’s Hardware’s Derek Forrest, who did not cheer for me, with WWE Superstar Xavier Woods.)
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