General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

AMD Releases CAP3 Profiles for Catalyst 11.11

Posted: 11 Dec 2011 04:16 PM PST

Serious SamAMD and Nvidia driver teams have been putting in some pretty serious overtime trying to keep up with the flood of new titles hitting the market just before the holidays, and a third profile update just went live for AMD's less than one month old Catalyst 11.11. Just in-case you'd lost count, in addition to the three profile updates, AMD has also released three separate beta drivers to fix various other issues with specific titles. If you like to be on the bleeding edge, make sure you have Catalyst 11.11C, along with the just released CAP3.

CAP3 includes the following improvements:

 

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Improves CrossFire performance

- Saints Row 3 (DirectX 9 version): Improves CrossFire performance

- Serious Sam 3: Improves CrossFire performance

- Java Control Panel: Fixes black screen corruption seen on single and multi GPU configurations when Anti-Aliasing is forced on through the Catalyst Control Center   

Intel Drops 19 Desktop CPUs from Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge

Posted: 11 Dec 2011 03:26 PM PST

CPUIntel is shaking up its CPU lineup a bit, and while some of the older parts on the chopping block make sense, even some newer Sandy Bridge chips are getting the axe. A total of 19 CPU's from Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge are being phased out effective immediately, and any new orders from OEM's will only be filled while supply lasts. 

The List includes the Pentium G6950, G6960, G620, G620T, and G840; the Core i3 540 and 2100T; the Core i5 650, 660, 670, 680, and 2300; and the Core i7 860, 870, 930, 950, 960, 980, and 990X. Some of the parts on this list are over two years old now, however the Sandy Bridge Pentium G630, G630T, and G860 are less than 4 months old.

With Ivy Bridge just around the corner the cuts weren't completely unexpected, especially with Sandy Bridge E now in the mix.  

Google-Funded Study Awards Security Crown to Chrome; Firefox Comes in Last

Posted: 11 Dec 2011 05:48 AM PST

Browser vendors are constantly on the lookout for things to brag about. While just about any type of bragging rights are welcome, vendors are mostly found crowing about either speed, security or HTML5 compliance. This time it's Google's turn to break into a victory lap, for Chrome has just been crowned the most secure browser in a study conducted by Accuvant Labs (PDF).

Not that it's going to affect Google's celebrations, we'd like to point out that the study in question was commissioned by the web giant itself. Now that we have made the take-this-with-a-grain-of-salt appeal necessary with a study that ends up portraying the party that funded it in the most positive light, it's time to proceed to the details.

Accuvant Labs only considered Internet Explorer (version 9), Chrome (versions 12 and 13) and Firefox (version 5.0.1) for its research. In its 102-page report, the firm concluded that Chrome is the most secure browser of the three, with Internet Explorer and Firefox coming in second and last, respectively.

According to Accuvant, it  adopted a different approach from other similar attempts that mostly "rely on statistical analysis of vulnerability data", opting instead for a thorough analysis of anti-exploitation mechanisms baked into the concerned browsers.

"The URL blacklisting services offered by all three browsers will stop fewer attacks than will go undetected," said Accuvant in its report. "Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement state-of-the-art anti-exploitation technologies, but Mozilla Firefox lags behind without JIT hardening."

"While both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement the same set of anti-exploitation technologies, Google Chrome's plug-in security and sandboxing architectures are implemented in a more thorough and comprehensive manner. Therefore, we believe Google Chrome is the browser that is most secured against attack."

Regarding the question of conflict of interest, Accuvant said, "[W]hile Google funded the research for this paper, Accuvant Labs was given a clear directive to provide readers with an objective understanding of relative browser security."

Mozilla, though, does not agree with Accuvant's findings and sees no reason to be alarmed. "Firefox includes a broad array of technologies to eliminate or reduce security threats, from platform level features like address space randomization to internal systems like our layout frame poisoning system," said , Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox engineering at Mozilla.

"Sandboxing is a useful addition to that toolbox that we are investigating, but no technology is a silver bullet. We invest in security throughout the development process with internal and external code reviews, constant testing and analysis of running code, and rapid response to security issues when they emerge. We're proud of our reputation on security, and it remains a central priority for Firefox."

Google Turns Chrome into Gaming Platform with NaCl

Posted: 11 Dec 2011 05:25 AM PST

Its many detractors think it is regressive, but Google is pretty sure of Native Client (NaCl), a technology that allows Chrome to run native compiled code across different OSes, being "the ideal way of putting rich content and game engines in the browser." To prove its point, Google hosted a special event at its Mountain View headquarters on December 8.

Google used the event to showcase Native Client's gaming prowess by showing off NaCl-based versions of games like the critically acclaimed Xbox 360 and PC game Bastion and Square Enix's multi-platform title Mini Ninjas. The former is already available from the Chrome Web Store, with Mini Ninjas set to enter "an open beta in December without download."

"In September, we started supporting a set of core Pepper interfaces, suited for 2D graphics, audio, and compute-intensive applications," wrote Christian Stefansen, Native Client product manager, in a blog post  Friday. "Since that release, we've shipped additional APIs and capabilities, providing native code with more of the capabilities available from JavaScript. These include hardware-accelerated 3D graphics via OpenGL ES 2.0, a mouse lock API, a full-screen API, and much more."

"The community is actively involved in Native Client, porting some of the most popular application middleware. Ports include Unity and Moai game engines, programming language environments Mono and Lua, audio middleware such as fmod and Wwise, as well as the Bullet physics engine. These Native Client ports make the web more accessible to hundreds of thousands of application developers."

However, Google seems to be going against the grain with NaCl as many people within the browser industry, including Mozilla's director of web platforms Chris Blizzard, aren't convinced. Blizzard  told PCMag.com. "Google's Native Client approach is another way of running compiled, platform-specific binary code in a Web browser. It's not part of the standards-based Web as it's locked to specific combinations of hardware and operating systems. It's Mozilla's mission to ensure that the open technologies of the Web offer all that's needed to make Web applications powerful and interesting, and to see the need for native code use to diminish over time."
Posted by Shri Krishna

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