a claimed 6 teraflops for Scorpio (and 4.2 teraflops for the PS4 Pro). And those PC cards seem to have significantly more raw power than what is being claimed by Microsoft-9 and 8.4 teraflops, respectively, vs. As we noted back at E3, it currently takes pricey, high-end PC graphics cards like the Nvidia GTX 1080 or the AMD R9 Fury X-cards that run $300 or much higher-to "barely scrape by" with a native 4K, 30fps game.
But no amount of upscaling can fill in those missing 4K pixels as well as hardware (and a game engine) that natively generates images at full 4K resolution-or so the argument goes.įurther Reading Xbox Project Scorpio: Will it really do 4K?With Scorpio, however, Microsoft seems to be arguing that every first-party game at launch will be able to generate and render nearly 8.3 million pixels (four times as many as a 1080p game) at an acceptable frame rate (i.e., at least 30 times a second). Sony says the PS4 Pro's internal rendering pipeline and some proprietary upscaling techniques will improve lower resolution base signals to take fuller advantage of a 4K display.
While the PS4 Pro can and does output a full 4K signal, it seems that only games with exceedingly simple graphics will be able to render at that resolution natively. For instance, according to developers Ars has talked to, many if not most games designed for the PS4 Pro will be rendered with an internal framebuffer that's larger than that for a 1080p game, but significantly smaller than the full 3840×2160 pixels on a 4K screen (the exact resolution for any PS4 Pro game will depend largely on how the developer prioritizes the frame rate and the level of detail in the scene).
However, there is a free trial available if you want to test MaxTo before committing.Further Reading First impression: No, PS4 Pro graphics aren’t as revolutionary as SD-to-HD shiftThe word "natively" is important there, because there has been a lot of wiggle room when it comes to talking about what constitutes a truly "4K" game these days. A lifetime subscription costs $29 at the time of writing. MaxTo is a premium monitor management app. You can program your MaxTo Recipe to open multiple programs across your window regions at the press of a single shortcut. You can load different screen layouts depending on your workflow without having to drag your sliders. There is also the option to save different screen region layouts. Once the regions are in place, you can shift your windows around the regions, holding the Shift key while dragging to snap your window to a region. You can readjust the sliders without issue, allowing you to control your dividers on the fly. You can use MaxTo to divide your monitor into regions using the app's sliders. As the tagline suggests, it is "The window manager you didn't know you missed." MaxTo is a great screen divider and window management app. The PowerToys team is also developing an animated GIF screen recording tool and a tool that allows you to maximize any window to a new desktop. Other tools already available include PowerRename (extensively integrate file renaming options) and the Windows Key Shortcut Guide (holding a Windows key for about 1 second produces a short keyboard shortcut guide).
You can install the PowerToys utility, then check back periodically for any new utilities.
Many of the original PowerToys are now integrated into the Windows operating system, such as Command Prompt Here (opens a Command Prompt window in your current folder) and Send to X (send the selected file to a location from the context menu).
PowerToys was a set of freeware system utility apps Microsoft developed for Windows 95 and Windows XP, and now for Windows 10. The Fancy Zones app is part of the revitalized Microsoft PowerToys project. To use Fancy Zones, you must install the PowerToys utilities, then enable Fancy Zones through the utility manager. If Fancy Zone's default grids are not to your liking, you can create a custom grid layout with multiple zones. Each grid adds extra snap-to lines to your monitor, allowing you to push your apps around the screen with ease.
The default layouts include rows, columns, grids, and a handy priority grid.
It brings the functionality of several other apps on this list into a Windows 10 specific app.įancy Zones splits your monitor layout into several easy-to-use monitor layouts. Fancy Zones is an extension of the Windows 10 snap tool. The winner of the best window manager tool undoubtedly goes to Microsoft's Fancy Zones.