General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Palit's Triple Fan 'Jetstream' GeForce 680 Graphics Card Really Blows; Presumably Doesn't Suck

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 01:50 PM PDT

It's been exactly a week since Nvidia officially launched its Kepler architecture with the release of the GeForce GTX 680 GPU, and though parts are in short supply (a quick glance at Newegg shows that every single SKU is out of stock), manufacturers are nonetheless trying to stand out from the crowd. Palit's fashion statement comes in the form of a triple fan GeForce GTX 680 with alternating blade rotations.

Each adjacent fan on Palit's Jetstream GeForce GTX 680 rotates in a different direction to reduce airflow conflicts and improve overall cooling performance, Palit claims. The design is supposedly inspired by jet engines, with the idea of generating a powerful air stream and intense air pressure.

It's a slightly overclocked card with a base clock frequency of 1084MHz, up from 1006Mhz in Nvidia's reference blueprint, along with 2GB of GDDR5 memory sitting pretty at 3150MHz (6300MHz effective), up from 3004MHz (6008MHz effective) on the reference design. Other features include LED lighting, high current circuitry, a 6-phase PWM design, and simultaneous 3 x DVI monitor support.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Palit

Razer To Make Left-Handed Naga MMO Mouse -- If Enough People Ask For It

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 10:18 AM PDT

An old saying says that few people go as unloved as left-handed stepchildren. Things don't get better for those poor, uncared-for souls as time goes on, either; when they grow up and try to get their World of Warcraft on, left-handed stepchildren quickly find themselves just as shunned by most gaming peripheral makers. We're not sure which hand Razer boss Min-Liang Tan writes with, but he's definitely thinking of the chil… um, left-handed gamers out there with his offer to create a southpaw Naga MMO mouse if the concept gets enough Facebook love.

From Tan's Facebook post:

We've always taken care of the southpaw gamers of the world with our ambi mice and the LH DA - in fact, for every left-handed DeathAdder we make, we're losing money with each sale - and this in turn means we have less dollars for research and development of other products. But we do it because we believe that For Gamers. By Gamers - means for Left Hand Gamers too.

And we DO want to make a left handed Naga - but we can't just make it for 100 people - even for 10,000 gamers, it's a huge loss maker for Razer.

But I do hear all of you out there that have been asking for a LH Naga - and I'll throw the challenge back to you - if there are 10,000 Likes in a month from now on this post, we WILL make a LH Razer Naga. You'll need to be patient though - because it will take at least a year from when we start. But you will have my word that we will make one.

Gamers have until April 21st to garner the post with virtual accolades; seeing as how it already has nearly 9,000 Likes, the milestone will probably fall soon. Are there any southpaw Knights of the Old Republic fans out there looking forward to a left-handed Naga? Do your part on the "Left-handed raiders unite" page, then share your thoughts back here in the comments. And why not check out the latest issue of the print mag for a head-to-head deathmatch between the Naga and the Mad Catz Cyborg MMO 7 while you're at it?

Thanks to TechPowerUp for pointing this out!

Spotify Lifts Six Month Unlimited Listening Restriction On Free Accounts

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 10:09 AM PDT

Spotify users who signed up for the service right around the time of the Facebook login requirement have been counting down a musical doomsday clock since then -- the imminent ending of their six months of free, ad-supported songs. Spotify has always maintained that it would have to cut listeners down to 10 hours of gratis music per month after six months of freeloading. Today, the company changed its tune. To celebrate its ninth month anniversary in the U.S., Spotify announced it would let the ad-supported good times continue to roll.

How long the offer will stand is up in the air -- Spotify didn't mention any sort of new time constraints in its announcement. "We've been so overwhelmed by the US response to Spotify that we've extended the honeymoon for unlimited free listening." That's the extent of the details.

Free accounts get interrupted by the occasional ad and are limited to PC listening; signing up for a $5/mo. account ditches the ads, while the $10/mo. plan opens up higher-quality tracks, an offline mode, and the ability to listening to Spotify on mobile phones or other compatible devices (like Sonos or Squeezebox).

It's a thoughtful move from the streaming music service, but the silly "Facebook account required for signup" thing still hovers over Spotify like a specter. Does even more free music make you more likely to check Spotify out, or is forced Facebook entry just a bit too much?

AMD Catalyst 12.3 Adds Full Support for Radeon HD 7000 Series

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 07:22 AM PDT

AMD has made available a new version of its Catalyst driver suite that now fully supports the Radeon HD 7900, 7800, and 7700 series of graphics cards. Outside of boosting support for the latest graphics cards, Catalyst 12.3 is a fairly light update with no mention of any performance improvements, though it does fix a handful of issues some gamers have been experiencing in Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

One of the main resolved issues is that of flicker and texture corruption in Skyrim. AMD claims to have a handle on the situation, at least as far as Windows 7 is concerned.

After installing Catalyst 12.3, you'll also be able to play Alan Wake in DirectX 9 mode with CrossFire enabled and not have it crash, as it is apparently prone to doing with previous driver releases.

For a full list of fixes, you can view the release notes here. Driver downloads are available here.

Image Credit: AMD

Used Game Conspiracy Rages On as Next Generation PlayStation "Orbis" Details Emerge

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 06:08 AM PDT

Sony has been understandably tight-lipped about its next generation game console, most obviously because the company is still trying to move PlayStation 3 hardware. But could another reason be that Sony doesn't yet want to reveal its planned participation in killing off the used games market? It's a subject that was touched on earlier this week, and now new information about "Orbis," the codename for Sony's next gen console, seems to suggest that Sony's all-in with the idea.

Gaming news and review site Kotaku claims to have "learned some important details" about the PS3's successor, which first and foremost is apparently being called Orbis. According to Kotaku, Orbis will do away with backwards compatibility, shunning both PS3 and PS2 collections. That would be a stunning development if true, though even more concerning is the fact that "multiple sources" are telling Kotaku that Orbis will include built-in used game measures. The most likely scenario, according to the site's "main source," is that new games will either ship as PSN downloads, or on Blu-ray discs locked to a single PSN account. You won't need an always-on connection to play games, but you will need to hop online long enough to authenticate your copy.

As for the hardware, Orbis is said to feature an AMD x64 processor and AMD Southern Islands GPU capable of pushing pixels at a resolution of up to 4096x2160. It will also be able to play 3D games in 1080p.

None of this has been confirmed by Sony, of course, and it's being reported that Orbis will ship in time for the 2013 holiday season, which is still more than a year away. That's plenty of time for specs and details to change, especially if gamers start voicing their concerns over what could end up being the death of the used games market, not to mention services like GameFly.

Image Credit: Yanko Design (Chris Burns)

Surging Android to Eclipse Windows PCs by 2016, IDC Says

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 05:40 AM PDT

You can't walk down the street without noticing at least one person wielding a smartphone, and in more busy areas such as airports or even on the bus, you're likely to spot bipeds bouncing their fingers on a tablet. Connected devices are everywhere, and according to data released by International Data Corporation (IDC), shipments of smart connected devices, including PCs, media tables, and smartphones, topped 916 million units with revenues of more than $489 billion in 2011. By 2016, IDC expects shipments to reach 1.84 billion units, along with a changing of the guard.

IDC says there will be a "dramatic shift" in platform dominance between 2011 and 2016, where the "once-dominant Windows on x86 platform" sees its market share drop from 35.9 percent to 25.1 percent, while Android-based devices running on ARM CPUs grows from 29.4 percent to a market-leading 31.1 percent.

"Android's growth is tied directly to the propagation of lower-priced devices," said Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices. "So, while we expect dozens of hardware vendors to own some share in the Android market, many will find profitability difficult to sustain. Similarly, we expect a large percentage of application developers to continue to focus their efforts on iOS, despite the platform's smaller overall market share, because iOS end users have proven more willing to pay for high-quality apps."

iOS devices don't figure into the picture as prominently as Android or Windows-based PCs, with IDC predicting they'll grow from a 14.6 percent share in 2011 to 17.3 percent in 2016. But collectively, iOS and Android will account for nearly half of the connected devices market.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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