The WAN Show : Thumbs up EA, Geek Squad Leaks Nudes?, and GUEST Ryan Shrout - August 16, 2013

The WAN Show opens with Linus greeting the audience and joking about his August 16th birthday and a cat incident that led to his jacket being peed on. He pokes fun at the audience while introducing the broad topics of the episode, including a new Witcher 3 trailer, AMD graphics rumors, and the guest for the show, Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective. The hosts discuss Razers Comms beta as a live-stream sponsor integration, highlighting overlays and gaming performance benefits. They announce the Humble Origin Bundle featuring eight EA games with a portion of proceeds benefiting charities, including the Human Rights Campaign and the American Red Cross, and explain the Steam code availability for several titles. Linus notes the bundle’s popularity, the charitable angle, and how EA’s involvement marks a notable shift in the segment’s tone toward philanthropy. The discussion moves to addressing activation issues with Sims 3 and Windows 8, while the team praises Humble Bundle and EA for publicizing the charity-driven bundle. They welcome Ryan Shrout to the show, discuss his background at PC Perspective, and set expectations for AMD driver news and graphics card rumors. The show delves into Ryan’s first impressions about AMD’s frame pacing driver and the challenges of multi-GPU setups, including how frame pacing aims to distribute rendered frames evenly across GPUs in crossfire configurations. Ryan explains that frame pacing is an art requiring careful timing between the game engine, DirectX, drivers, and GPU hardware, and credits AMD for a substantial driver rewrite that improves single-monitor experiences. The conversation shifts to broader GPU roadmaps, comparing Intel, AMD, and Nvidia strategies, and debating how roadmaps affect consumer buying decisions and motherboard SKU proliferation. Ryan and Linus discuss how processor and motherboard ecosystems might evolve if designers move toward socketless or reduced-sku configurations, considering implications for retailers and RMA processes. The team touches on the potential decline of independent motherboard manufacturers as larger players consolidate, and they reflect on how this could reshape the DIY PC market. A Twitter Q&A session is teased to gather live questions for Ryan, acknowledging bandwidth challenges and the hope of reconnecting later for more interaction. The show then pivots back to AMD’s frame pacing, with Ryan outlining how 13.8 Catalyst enables smoother multi-GPU gameplay by balancing frame delivery across GPUs, though noting DX9 games remain a challenge and Crossfire support for three-monitor setups is not yet fixed. They examine the timing implications of driver fixes for AMD’s upcoming GPUs, particularly in relation to marketing campaigns that claim leadership in performance, and discuss how real-world experience may diverge from synthetic benchmarks. The conversation broadens to the evolving nature of online gaming and DLCs, comparing Grand Theft Auto Online and Civilization Online to how game publishers are integrating persistent online layers with traditionally single-player franchises. The hosts share excitement for the Witcher 3 CGI trailer and speculate about future content and performance, while acknowledging the realities of streaming issues that occasionally disrupt the live broadcast. The episode includes lighthearted banter about fashion and a playful critique of Linus’s shirt, generating audience amusement and reinforcing the show’s informal, tech-savvy persona. As the show wraps, Linus thanks Ryan Shrout for joining and teases future collaborations, while the team reflects on streaming reliability and the ongoing balance between technical depth and accessible discussion. The WAN Show closes with a nod to upcoming hardware coverage, including potential Ivy Bridge-E delid discussions, and a tease for more Build Logs of the Week, leaving viewers eager for the next episode and the latest developments in hardware.

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