It will be three years in November since Intel launched their X58 chipset, a platform dedicated to enthusiasts, overclockers and professional benchmarkers. The platform served its purpose well for a long time and has managed to hold on to the ‘best performance’ crown all this while. The X58 chipset now makes way for Intel’s highly anticipated replacement, the X79 chipset. Why X79 and not X68 or X78 beats us, but it is what it is. Intel has a notorious habit of switching sockets time and again and they haven’t broken that streak this time too. Along with the new chipset, the 2nd Generation Core i7 family of processors will use the new 2011 socket so there’s no chance of any backwards compatibility with existing Z68 chipsets. Now, we can’t go into too much detail about the chipset due to Intel’s NDA but we can talk about Asus’s new line-up based on the X79 chipset.
Asus had a little media preview on the 21st of October where a select few journalists (us included) got a first hand look at their upcoming motherboards. Three flagship boards were showcased, each filling up a different segment and first we’ll be looking at the P9X79 mainstream motherboard which also includes a Pro and Deluxe model.
Asus P9X79/Pro/Deluxe The first major change is the 3rd generation Dual Intelligent Processors along with a new DIGI+ Power control system. Asus first launched the DIGI+ VRM on the P67 motherboard last year and this time, there’s a separate power controller chip for the memory modules as well. This dual chip design ensures dedicated power control to the CPU and memory for better stability during gaming or overclocking.
The P9X79 mainstream motherboard
The second big addition is Asus’s very own SSD caching technique. Intel’s X79 does not support SRT (Smart Response Technology) at the moment so this way, we can enjoy similar benefits like we do on Z68 motherboards. Through the bundled utility, all you have to do is plug in an SSD and let the software do all the configuration for you. You don’t have to re-install the OS either, which is a good thing. Asus BT GO 3.0 feature makes a return but this time the Bluetooth module has been bumped up to v3.0.
The rear ports of the P9X79
The third and perhaps the most interesting new addition (at least for us reviewers and enthusists) is the new USB BIOS Flashback. Now, it’s not something as mundane as being able to flash the BIOS via USB - that feature has already been with us for a while. This involves a physical button at the rear of the I/O ports that lets you flash the BIOS directly through a pen drive, even if none of the components like the CPU, RAM, etc. are installed! This is really convenient since you don’t have to enter the BIOS anymore in order to update it.
Asus SSD caching at work
Their popular UEFI BIOS is back along with some minor tweaks and changes. The DRAM SPD Info feature currently found on their Z68 boards makes an appearance. This utility lets you check the status of the DRAM modules right from the BIOS itself. The new ‘F3’ shortcut key brings up important BIOS features in a single list allowing you to quickly skip to them. Finally, Asus has incorporated a UASP USB 3.0 controller on the motherboard for better speeds from USB 3.0 devices. USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) is a replacement for Mass Storage Class and Bulk Only Transfers (BOT) protocols that will soon be standard on motherboards. In order for this to work optimally though, one needs a UASP motherboard as well as a UASP-based hard drive, which aren’t commercially available right now. However, existing USB 3.0 drives can get a slight speed boost from this as it uses the full duplex capabilities of USB 3.0 and is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well.
Asus has revamped the look of their AI SUITE II software to match the series of the board, so for instance the R.O.G series will have a Red theme while the TUF series has a Blue theme. The onboard audio supports DTS Ultra PC II which offers new functions like ‘Enhance’, ‘Surround Sensation’, etc. Next, let’s have a look at the TUF series motherboard, the SABERTOOTH X79.
With the holiday season coming up, Nvidia is busy prepping an ‘improved’ version of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti to win back the performance crown from AMD. The new card dubbed, GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores, will feature 448 CUDA cores over the original card which had 384. Another thing that’s changed is the memory bandwidth which is now 320-bit instead of 256-bit and will feature 1.2GB of GDDR5 memory. Nvidia should be announcing this card on the 29th of this month, just in time for the holiday shopping spree.
Interestingly, it won’t be based on the GF114 core as the only GTX 560 Ti, instead it will use the GF110 silicon, the same used in the GTX 570, GTX 580 and the GTX 590. The new 448 core card is more like a stripped down version of GTX 570. The clock speeds have been reduced to 730MHz whereas the memory runs at 3,800MHz. The TDP is also increased to 210W from the old card but is still under the GTX 570. The card will also support 3-way SLI for those who are mad enough to use three of them in tandem.
With the pricing sitting between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 570, Nvidia is going straight after the AMD HD 6950 2GB, which has no doubt giving them sleepless nights. The puzzling part is why release a card that’s almost 90 percent as powerful as the GTX 570? I would have been simpler to just drop the price of the GTX 570 which would no doubt guarantee a victory over the HD 6950. I’m sure all those who just bought a GTX 560 Ti are probably kicking themselves right now.
In the last couple of weeks that we’ve been testing graphics cards, there’s one thing that most of us agreed upon, which is - you do get a good amount of performance from graphics cards that are designed to be budget offerings. With many enthusiasts wanting to game at lower resolutions and build systems under the Rs. 30,000 mark, there have to be some compromises that need to be made. We’ve learnt that you can still manage to game at decent quality settings with graphics cards priced under the Rs. 8,000 mark. Here’s one graphics card that caught our eye when we reviewed it recently in our budget graphics card comparison test.
Features
The XFX Radeon HD 6770, like the rest of the Radeon 6000 series of GPUs is based on the 40nm fabrication process. The GPU runs at 850MHz and has 800 stream processors under the hood. XFX has gone with 1GB of Hynix’s GDDR5 memory. This isn’t an overclocked card, so most of the specifications as exactly the same as the reference card.
Basic connectivity options - D-Sub, HDMI and DVI
In terms of connectivity, there’s a D-Sub, a DVI and an HDMI port at the rear. In terms of power requirements, the card demands a single 6-pin connector. CrossFire is support and this card can be used in a 3-GPU configuration. Stereoscopic 3D is supported and inherently, so is HDMI 1.4a. DirectX 11 support is present, like it is on all modern GPUs.
Design
The XFX Radeon HD 6770 is different from the stock Radeon design. This card, however is smaller than the Radeon 6800 line of cards. XFX has gone with the standard black PCB and a large heatsink on top of the GPU. Although, the design of the heatsink is basic, but it is very effective.
A compact card
There’s no fancy designs and graphics on the card, either. The only visible sign of XFX is the logo on the fan. Although the card uses only one external slot, inside the cabinet, it’s likely to block the adjoining slot on the motherboard.
Performance
We reviewed a whole bunch of graphics cards using the budget graphics card comparison test. The XFX Radeon HD 6770 manages to get very close to the HD 6790 in most game titles. It’s as fast or faster than the Galaxy GTX 550 Ti, too. Across all benchmarks, the XFX HD 6770 trails behind by roughly 5 to 10 percent, which isn’t too shabby.
Comparison with other GPUs in the price and performance range
In terms of operating temperatures on idle, it settles down to around 40C and under load, that number rises to 56, which is still very commendable. The faster Radeon HD6790, for example will peak out at 77C, which on the other hand is pretty high.
Verdict
The XFX Radeon HD 6790 was the fastest card around followed by the GTX 550 Ti cards from Sparkle and Galaxy in the last comparison test.
A relatively large and effective heatsink
What the XFX Radeon HD 6770 does well is offer a good share of the performance at a lower price of just Rs. 6,785. So for those, with tighter budgets and demand most of the performance of the best performer, the XFX HD Radeon HD 6770 hits the sweet spot.
NVIDIA's Maximus combines Quadro and Tesla for serious warrior power
Back in August, NVIDIA sneaked us a few deets about its curious Maximus project, and now the joint CPU / GPU card is officially ready to rev up your workflow. The idea is simple: dramatically improve productivity by using one system to handle the graphics along with the processing to deliver it. You might say it's got the looks and the brains. By melding the graphics ham of its Quadro GPUs with the cheesy smarts from the Tesla C2075, NVIDIA has made one epic processing sandwich that 'transparently' delegates tasks to the right processor; also expect to see Maximus-optimized applications from the likes of Adobe and Bunkspeed in the not-too-distant future. Workstations can supe up their core immediately, but whether the Maximus will ever be accompanied by a companion Biggus Diskus is unclear.
Update: As many of you pointed out in the comments, Tesla is technically still a GPU. Though, in this case, the cores are being used exclusively for general computing purposes to offload work from the CPU while the Quadro half of the equation handles graphical tasks.
Video games aren’t usually associated with books—games have yet to reach literature’s level of sophistication in storytelling, and we all know books are for uncoordinated nerds who can’t get kill streaks in Halo. But the two mediums are sometimes combined, and not just into dozens of mediocre Lord of the Rings games. Some very fun and important games have been inspired by the written word, such as…
10. Shadow Complex
Orson Scott Card is famous for his classic science fiction novel Ender’s Game, but more recently he wrote a book called Empire. It’s about a second American Civil War between increasingly radical right and left wings—think of it as Fox News viewers going to war against MSNBC fans. It’s an interesting idea, although its execution falls flat. But it did inspire Shadow Complex, one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2009, which runs parallel to Empire’s plot.
Shadow Complex is clearly inspired by the Metroid style gameplay of “blow up everything in sight, then backtrack so you can blow up some more stuff with the cool new weapons you picked up.” It’s immensely fun, featuring a mixture of fast-paced shooting and addictive exploration.
Its connections to Empire are tenuous—if you hadn’t heard of the book beforehand you probably wouldn’t even realise there were connections. And since Orson Scott Card has dropped off the mainstream radar, making a game inspired by one of his weaker novels was an odd decision. But it paid off—Shadow Complex’s literary roots may not be remarkable, but we still have them to thank for one of the best action games in recent memory.
9. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is inspired by the 1970s Russian sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic¸ a loose film adaptation called Stalker, and the book based on the film based on the book, also called Stalker. You got all that?
Set in and around Chernobyl after a fictional second meltdown, players control an amnesiac stalker, a person who explores and scavenges the radiation infested wasteland. Along the way you’ll encounter mutated monsters, anomalous areas that defy the laws of physics, and plenty of good old-fashioned gunfights.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. drops most of the themes and ideas that led to the novel being heavily censored by Soviet authorities, but it does a remarkable job of capturing the bleak, depressing and often scary landscape—and an equally good job of making travelling through it feel grimly realistic. It’s one of the most memorable settings you’ll find in a video game, book or movie.
8. The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series of over a dozen long and often tedious novels, written by Robert Jordan. Naturally, it made perfect sense to adapt the franchise into an action-packed first person shooter.
The Wheel of Time didn’t get much attention when it was released, both because it was competing against the successful Unreal and Quake series, and because its source material is only popular amongst the geekiest of geeks. But don’t let its obscurity fool you—this is a fine game. It takes advantage of its fantasy setting, replacing guns with a complex spell system and letting players use those spells to blast monsters in locations that, for the time, were some of the finest displays of architecture in gaming. And it tells a decent story to boot.
If you’re a fan of the series you’ll appreciate the game’s attention to detail, and if you’re not a fan you’ll appreciate the fact that you can shoot chain lightning at bad guys. What’s not to like?
7. Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve is a beloved Japanese role playing game set in New York City about a woman who makes people spontaneously combust if they get too close to her. This freak of nature occurred after an experiment to cure cancer went wrong (you know you suck as a scientist when your attempt to cure cancer makes people explode), and it’s up to the player to stop this madwoman before she gives birth to a terrible monster. It’s a strange game.
Parasite Eve was made by SquareSoft, who are famous for their Final Fantasy series. Their sudden shift from swords and sorcery to modern biological drama was inspired by a book of the same name, a Japanese horror/sci-fi novel written by a pharmacologist (so it totally has a scientific basis). It’s gory, scary and often perverted (and footnoted), kind of like a Japanese Michael Crichton. And since it was translated to English in 2007, you too can read one of the weirdest, most over the top horror novels out there.
6. Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is set in post-apocalyptic Russia, where atomic war has forced survivors into the subway tunnels. The main character must defend his home station from a mysterious threat, while at the same time dealing with communists, Fourth Reich Nazis and mutants.
The story was first told online in 2002, where readers were encouraged to add to the universe with artwork and their own tales. A cult hit in Russia, it was published in book format and translated to English in 2005. The novel is both a sci-fi adventure and a commentary on modern Russian society, which is presumably plagued by radioactive freaks and future Nazis.
The game adaptation came out in 2010 and is similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in that, while the plot is nothing to write home about, the atmosphere is simply fantastic. Players shoot, sneak and occasionally run in blind terror through a creepy, engrossing world of metro stations. It’s a faithful take on an interesting literary project, one which has expanded into a second novel, with a second game and movie in the pipeline.
5. Alice
You’re no doubt familiar with the story of Alice in Wonderland, probably through the Disney movie but maybe the books if you had more literate parents. If as a child you said to yourself, “Alice in Wonderland is neat and all, but it would be better if Alice whipped out a knife and stabbed everybody,” then Alice is the game for you.
Alice (technically American McGee’s Alice if you’re a fan of egocentric, oddly named video game developers) is about Alice after she went insane when her family was killed in a house fire, turning Wonderland into a place warped beyond recognition by her broken mind. It’s uh… a little bit darker than the books.
It’s also one of the most visually creative games you’ll ever play—the new, macabre Wonderland is a horribly fascinating place. Unfortunately the gameplay, which largely consists of running around and smacking enemies, isn’t quite as compelling; but it’s such a twisted take on a childhood classic that you can’t help but be enthralled by it anyway.
4. The Witcher
A Witcher, besides being someone who witches, is a cult hit series of short stories and novels. They’ve been published in their native Poland since the early 90s, but were only translated into English in 2007. The role playing game came out the same year, introducing the franchise to the western world.
What’s The Witcher about? Slaying monsters, making difficult moral decisions and sleeping around, mostly. You play as a witcher named Geralt, a person raised from birth to travel the world and kill dangerous beasts.
Monster slaying is fun, but the game’s greatest draw is the decisions you make—unlike the moral choices in most games, The Witcher’s aren’t clear-cut. The consequences of selecting between various shades of grey are rarely made obvious, a theme carried over from the books. It’s that extra level of moral complexity that makes The Witcher worth playing. Also, you can collect naughty postcards featuring pictures of the women Geralt sleeps with. Now that’s literature!
3. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Enslaved is based on Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The book, set in mythological times, is about the pilgrimage of a Buddhist monk and his followers to India.
So obviously there were some changes, as the tale of a monk on a journey to enlightenment doesn’t translate into exciting gameplay. The main difference is that Enslaved is set 150 years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic world full of killer robots.
It’s a pretty serious change, but you can still see the core inspiration in Enslaved’s characters. Their names, traits and relationship to each other are similar to those of the novel’s heroes, and those familiar with the book will catch additional references to the work.
Connecting a post-apocalyptic action game to a 16th century novel may sound strange, but it worked—Enslaved was acclaimed for its excellent storytelling. Modernising the classic was a great idea, because with all due respect to one of the most important works of art in Chinese history, the killer robot fighting really spiced things up.
2. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is based on Harlan Ellison’s famous story of the same name about a supercomputer, AM, that annihilates the human race in a nuclear holocaust and tortures the five survivors into insanity. The game adaptation is a point and click adventure—you control each of the five survivors in turn as AM puts them through a trial that reflects their greatest flaws.
In each scenario you’re given the ability to do both good and evil—take the high road and you’ll have a better chance of destroying AM in the climax. But act immorally and, well… the game’s title should make it pretty clear what kind of ending you’ll get.
The game has its shortcomings, including some illogical puzzles and ridiculous overacting by Harlan Ellison as AM. But it’s a rare game that tackles serious subjects like rape and genocide with the respect they deserve, and the adventure is both thought provoking and genuinely unsettling.
1. Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
Dune, the classic science fiction novel about the decay of a mighty space empire, a rare drug that turns men into supermen, and gigantic worms, has received numerous video game adaptations. Dune II was the second in a series of strategy games, but it’s more than just another take on the franchise—it’s one of the most important titles in gaming history.
Okay, so you can tell from the video that Dune II hasn’t aged well—but its influence can’t be overstated. Dune II is a real time strategy game, and while not the first of its kind it laid down many of the conventions gamers know today. StarCraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires… these beloved franchises are all based on ideas that Dune II established.
It was also a pretty fun game. As for its literary influence, Dune II did a fine job of capturing the feel of the Dune universe. The storytelling isn’t exactly on par with the novel, but the source material was put to good use. Dune II may not be the greatest game based on a book, but it’s certainly the most important.
Infinity Ward Bans 1,600 Modern Warfare 3 Players For Cheating
As the saying goes, cheaters never win. While it doesn't always prove true, a huge number of cheaters definitely won't make it to the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Infinity Ward has banned more than 1,600 players from MW3 for cheating using glitches uncovered in the new game.
ComputerAndVideoGames.com reported that the number of banned MW3 players is expected to rise as more people exploit these illegal loopholes.
IW creative strategist Robert Bowling explained on Twitter: "Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works. Please [continue] to report offenders."
He later added: "We are doing mass bans on PC as well while we work on updates." and also said that IW is holding "daily meetings [to] investigate cause and solutions" as well as working on "hot fixes."
By Thursday, Activision had nearly doubled that figure. The company announced that in its first five days, Modern Warfare 3 generated more than $775 million in sales, smashing the the $650 million record set a year ago by its predecessor, Call of Duty: Black Ops, in addition to the the $500 million record established two years ago by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
"With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment," Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, said in a statement.
As a whole, the Call of Duty series has logged more than $6 billion in sales worldwide, making it one of the most valuable franchises to date.
For more on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, see PCMag's first look and the slideshow below.
One and a half years in the making, this fan video based on Portal is easily one of the best fan films ever made. CalledPortal: No Escape, the 7-minute video stars actress Danielle Rayne as she tries to get out of a mysterious enclosure using the classic Portal Gun.
With a score by Inception trailer composer Mike Zarin, it will probably be the closest we will ever get to seeing an officialPortal movie, despite my angry letters to Valve.
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