Rumored SteamBox Specs

Looks like it will kill the next gen consoles in terms of performance, even while turned off.

Source: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=169806

AMD's new API - Codenamed: Mantle. It Supposedly Makes Everything Obsolete.

Mantle and Graphics Core Next: Simplifying Cross-Platform Game Development
The award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture in the AMD Radeon R9 and R7 Series graphics cards continues to serve as a driving force behind the Unified Gaming Strategy, AMD's approach to providing a consistent gaming experience on the PC, in the living room or over the cloud -- all powered by AMD Radeon graphics found in AMD graphics cards and accelerated processing units (APUs). The four pillars of the Unified Gaming Strategy -- console, cloud, content and client -- come together with the introduction of Mantle.

With Mantle, games like DICE's "Battlefield 4" will be empowered with the ability to speak the native language of the Graphics Core Next architecture, presenting a deeper level of hardware optimization no other graphics card manufacturer can match. Mantle also assists game developers in bringing games to life on multiple platforms by leveraging the commonalities between GCN-powered PCs and consoles for a simple game development process.
With the introduction of Mantle, AMD solidifies its position as the leading provider of fast and efficient game development platforms. Mantle will be detailed further at the AMD Developer Summit, APU13, taking place Nov. 11-13 in San Jose, Calif.

Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/191453/amd-gpu14-event-detailed-announces-radeon-r9-290x.html

AMD claims Mantle enables nine times more draw calls per second than other APIs, which is a huge increase in performance.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-amd-launches-mantle-api-to-optimize-pc-gpu-performance.html

SteamBox / Steam Machine / SteamOS

Valve is finally doing what we have all been hoping.  Skynet... err... I mean a new console / open PC format / and an operating system.

SteamOS will be based off of Linux.  Many many fascinating details behind Valve strategy can be found at the source.

Source: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

AMD Radeon R9 290X

AMD announced the new Radeon R9 290X, its next-generation flagship graphics card. Based on the second-generation Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture, the card is designed to outperform everything NVIDIA has at the moment, including a hypothetical GK110-based graphics card with 2,880 CUDA cores. It's based on the new "Hawaii" silicon, with four independent tessellation units, close to 2,800 stream processors, and 4 GB of memory. The card supports DirectX 11.2, and could offer an inherent performance advantage over NVIDIA's GPUs at games such as "Battlefield 4". Battlefield 4 will also be included in an exclusive preorder bundle. The card will be competitively priced against NVIDIA's offerings. We're awaiting more details.

AMD announced the R9 series for enthusiasts and gamers ; R7 for price-conscious buyers
AMD lists out a new product stack
R7 250 and R7 260 under $150, R9 270X under $200, R9 280X $299, and R9 290X
R9 290X Battlefield 4 Edition
"Three pillars of the R9 series: GCN 2.0, 4K, TrueAudio, etc
- DirectX 11.2 and improved energy efficiency
- >5 TFLOP/s compute power
- >300 GB/s memory bandwidth
- >4 billion trig/sec
- >6 billion transistors

Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/191453/amd-gpu14-event-detailed-announces-radeon-r9-290x.html

STEAM/Valve Announce Family Sharing Plan!

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

A bit of good news on a sad day!

Source: http://store.steampowered.com/news/11436/

AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta Driver Released (Supports Windows 8.1)

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta Driver for Windows:

AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta includes all of the features/fixes found in AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2

PCI-E bus speed is no longer set to x1 on the secondary GPU when running in CrossFire configurations

Rome Total War 2: Updated AMD CrossFire™ profile

• improves CrossFire scaling up to 20% (at 2560x1600 with extreme settings)
• resolves corruption issues seen while playing the game

Saints Row 4: Updated AMD CrossFire profile

• improves CrossFire scaling up to 20% (at 2560x1600 with ultra settings)

Metro Last Light: Updated AMD CrossFire profile

• improves CrossFire scaling up to 10% (at 2560x1600 with ultra settings)

Includes a number of frame pacing improvements for the following titles:

• Tomb Raider
• Metro Last Light
• Sniper Elite
• World of Warcraft
• Max Payne 3
• Hitman Absolution

Source: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-10WINBetaDriver.aspx

Xbox One CPU Speed Boosted

A few sources have discovered that Microsoft has boosted the Xbox One's CPU by 150 MHz, making it now 1.75GHz.  This in addition to the GPU boosted earlier last month from 800 MHz to 853 MHz.  While this is good for consumers, every little bit helps, but from a professional stand point I see one of two things:
1.) They were rushed in planning the console.
2.) There is a noticeable discrepancy in performance compared to the rival (PS4) and this is an attempt to bridge the gap.

In all likelihood, it could be both, there unrealistic and unwanted policies being changed is a sign of disconnect with the community or potentially haphazard ideas thrown together hastily.  One thing is for sure, we don't know the actual speeds of the PS4's hardware, but from the start in the GPU is approximately 50% more powerful at rendering than the Xbox One.  Realistically we will see this show up at 10~30% boost in frame rates at equal settings, possibly more as developers get more and more used to the hardware in question.

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/04/xbox-one-is-now-in-full-production-with-an-improved-cpu