The gaming community finally has a networking product it can call it’s own. While many segments in the computer industry embraced gamers with custom motherboards, tweaked memory, and even keyboards, the home networking companies largely ignored the interests of PC gamers and concentrated on the larger, more mainstream market. It’s great to see that D-Link has engineered a product that even it’s employees, many themselves being avid gamers, are proud to use in their own homes.
The bottom line really is that the DGL-4300 does what it is intended to do: keep online game latencies low while still allowing other internet tasks to run smoothly. However, there is a catch, since gaming packets have priority over their FTP and HTTP counterparts when GameFuel is enabled, download and upload speeds are slower as evident by our performance results. The DGL-4300 is limited by the width of your internet pipeline, and therefore cannot maintain 40kb/s uploads, 500kb/s downloads, and 40ms ping in your games; in fact, no router can do that.
As you can see from our tests, GameFuel essentially takes the bandwidth usually diverted to these uploads and downloads and allots them to your online games, a feature I’m sure many of you could have used many times over the last few years if you share bandwidth with others.
Talking about features, the DGL-4300’s Gigabit connectivity will allow for incredibly fast home networks and ultra-low latencies in games when throwing LAN parties. It’s great to see that D-Link has taken the initiative and incorporated Gigabit Ethernet into the DGL-4300. This feature alone is a huge selling point to many enthusiasts that have wanted to build their own Gigabit networks.
The web-interface is the best I’ve personally seen in a home router, both from an aesthetic and features standpoint. The DGL-4300 gives you a level of control commonly associated with enterprise level networking hardware, another first in the home networking segment.
Really the only downside to the DGL-4300 is its price, around $140 at most places. However, when one takes a look at the DGL-4300’s excellent performance and unique features, it can easily be justified as money well spent.
D-Link is definitely a step ahead of the game with the DGL-4300, but you can bet that they won’t be the only networking company we’ll see embracing the gaming community in the months to come.
Batman: Arkham City PC Review Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to 2009’s smash-hit action game Batman: Arkham Asylum. As the name suggests, you will be reprising your role as the Caped Crusader and going against an even larger 'prison' filled with Gotham's criminals and villains. A textbook example on how to do a proper sequel, Arkham City takes what worked in the original, excised or improved upon what didn’t, and elevated everything to an even greater scope. The PC version suffered from a few months of delay, but in that time, Rocksteady worked closely to NVIDIA to implement some familiar technologies from the last game, such as PhysX and 3D Vision, along with new DirectX 11 optimizations. But how well was the whole package executed? Read on to find out!
Saints Row: The Third PC Review Saints Row is one of most unique series of games to build upon the open-world action template forged by Grand Theft Auto, and has met with plenty of critical and commercial success since it began on consoles back in 2006. This latest iteration, titled Saints Row: The Third promises the most outlandish fun and freedom of customization of them all, and in a much more PC-friendly package than its predecessor. Does it live up to those expectations and, more importantly, is it worth the price of admission? Find out in Will's latest review!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Review The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda Softworks’ latest offering in their series of epic fantasy RPGs, as well as one of the most highly-anticipated PC titles of 2011. As the Dovahkiin, or Dragonborn, prepare to take the fight to the mythical beasts that have returned to the realm after centuries of slumber, all the while exploring a huge and highly-detailed open world.
The PC version of the game promises enhanced graphical fidelity, standard RPG trimmings such as hotkeys and quick-save, as well as unbridled mod support, something we’ll all be thankful for once they release that SDK. Skyrim has already sold millions of copies and set records for play-time on Steam... Find out why in today's review, which happens to be one of the biggest and most in-depth articles on the subject out there!
L.A. Noire Complete Edition PC Review L.A. Noire, as the name clearly states, is a video game built on the tropes of one of the greatest periods of American cinema: film noir. Developed by the now defunct Australian developer Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games, this title has been out on consoles for a full six months before finally making its way to the PC. This “Complete Edition” of the game features improved graphics, keyboard/mouse controls, and every bit of previously-released DLC for free. But was it truly worth the wait? Read on and find out!
Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E Performance Review
Today marks the launch date for Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E line of processors, a new family of high-end Core i7 products based on the LGA 2011 platform. This new socket is poised to replace the existing LGA 1366 specification used by the more powerful Nehalem and Westmere parts from the past couple years, specifically Bloomfield and Gulftown, the Core i7-9xx+ line of CPUs.
With 6 cores, 15MB of cache, and support for quad-channel DDR3-1600 memory, the Core i7-3960X sounds like quite a catch. Want to know more about it and how it performs? Read on!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 Review
The self-appointed "most anticipated game in history" launched worldwide this past Tuesday. Why, it's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, of course (of course), what else? Unsurprisingly, the military FPS debate between this and Battlefield 3 rages on, but now that both have been released, surely we can take a look and objectively evaluate them both? Luke's taken the Xbox version of MW3 for a spin this week, so to find out what he thinks of it in today's review!
Stronghold 3 Review
The latest sequel in the long-running real-time strategy franchise from FireFly Studios, Stronghold 3 is all about building your dream castle and defending it against sieging enemies. Almost exactly one decade after the first game was released, this new title promises a return to the classic and well-received gameplay that has been strayed so far from in more recent iterations. Does it live up to those expectations? Will (AKA Synchronous Failure) tells us all about it in his first official FiringSquad review, so read on!
Battlefield 3 PC Review - Single-player Impressions
One of the most highly-anticipated PC games of the year is upon us; Battlefield 3 is now available in North America! EA/DICE have finally delivered a sequel to the core Battlefield franchise, a proper follow-up to BF2. Having played through the game's single-player campaign already, ahead of the multiplayer festivities kicking off around midnight, I figured I'd share my impressions ASAP. Is it really a worthy addition to the core Battlefield series, or just another bullet point on the back of the box? Read on and find out!
Wrecked: Revenge Revisited Supersonic Software Interview
Following up on our hands-on preview from earlier this month, here's an interview with Supersonic Software, creators of Wrecked: Revenge Revisited. The game's coming out on XBLA and PSN in a matter of weeks, but for now, Luke chats with the developer about its predecessors Mashed and Micro Machines, how difficult it can be to get an indie game published, the closure of Codemasters' Guildford branch, and more!
Orcs Must Die! PC Review Orcs Must Die! is the first release from an independent developer named Robot Entertainment. Fans of classic real-time strategy games may have heard that name before, as the outfit is comprised of many veterans from Ensemble Studios, creators of the Age of Empires series.
Equal parts action and strategy, this is a tower defense game that not only puts you in command, but on the front lines of combat, as well. Slaughter thousands of orcs, ogres and other vile creatures of fantasy that invade your fortresses through 24 levels of the story-based campaign. With high levels of replayability thanks to its scoring and leaderboard functionality, multiple difficulty levels, and various styles of play, it sounds a steal at only $15. Does it deliver on all that’s promised, though? Read on and find out!
Ballistics Report
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