General Gaming Article |
- Mainstream Support for Windows Vista Ends Today
- Gaming Showdown: Playstation Vita vs iPhone 4S
- TechRadar US is Open For Business
- FCC, Cellular Carriers Introduce New Initiative To Nerf Stolen Smartphones
- Epic Games Kills Bulletstorm Sequel, Dirty PC Pirates Partly To Blame
- Researcher Creates Cheaper, More Efficient Graphene-Based Cooling Method
- Nvidia 301.24 Beta Drivers Spread The Love To All GeForce Owners
- Zotac Announces Intel 7-Series Mini ITX Motherboards for Ivy Bridge
- Kingston Launches Reasonably Priced HyperX 3K Solid State Drives
- Father of Commodore 64 Passes Away at Age 83
| Mainstream Support for Windows Vista Ends Today Posted: 10 Apr 2012 05:37 PM PDT
But if you are an ardent Vista loyalist, there is no need to be overly alarmed. The end of mainstream support does not mean the end of all support, and you can continue using your favorite operating system just as you've done over the years -- even at the risk of seriously imperiling your social acceptability -- for a few more years. On Wednesday, Vista will enter its five-year extended support period, during which it will continue to receive free security updates. So what's the difference, you might ask? Well, non-security updates will no longer be free, and will require the purchase of an "extended hotfix agreement" within the first 90 days of the extended support period. |
| Gaming Showdown: Playstation Vita vs iPhone 4S Posted: 10 Apr 2012 12:59 PM PDT
After gaming extensively on both, we've come up with a point-by-point breakdown that we think explains why portable consoles aren't dead yet.
Round 1: Display
Now this is a tough call to make. The iPhone 4S and the PlayStation Vita have two of the nicest screens we've ever seen, though they're very different. The iPhone 4S's "Retina Display" is an absolute marvel of pixel density—text and game graphics are crisp and clear. The Vita, on the other hand, has the advantage of way more screen real estate, with a 5-inch screen that dwarfs the iPhone's 3.5-inch display. The Vita's OLED screen is significantly lower-res (two screens have approximately the same pixel count, but the Vita's larger screen is much lower density), but it looks fantastic, with good contrast and bright, vivid colors. Though both screens are top class, we think the Vita's is the better choice for gaming. The iPhone's smaller screen, usually partially obscured by fingers, doesn't give game UIs any room to breathe. Winner: PlayStation Vita
Round 2: Controls
Want an example? Try playing Street Fighter 4 on the iPhone 4S and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the PlayStation Vita. Both are ports of fighting games, but the former is a crude, oversimplified imitation, while the latter feels like the same exact game on a smaller screen. Winner: PlayStation Vita
Round 3: Hardware
Both the iPhone 4S and PlayStation Vita have 512MB of RAM, and you can get the iPhone 4S with 16, 32 or 64GB of internal storage. The Vita can also be configured with 16, 32, or 64GB of storage, though it requires an additional purchase of a (new, proprietary, expensive) memory card. In terms of overall build quality, the iPhone 4S is clearly superior. The Vita is a lovely device, don't get us wrong, but it's entirely plastic and just doesn't feel as solid as the metal-and-glass iPhone. Winner: iPhone 4S
Round 4: Software
But still, they're not deep. You won't find a game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss or Rayman Origins on the iPhone. These Vita titles are full-featured, console-quality experiences available on the go. Unfortunately, the launch lineup has some all-stars (all the games mentioned in this article, for instance) but also a lot of duds. Only time will tell what size of game library we can expect from the Vita in the years ahead. Winner: PlayStation Vita
Round 5: Other Features
Both also feature front- and rear-facing cameras. The iPhone 4S's rear-facing camera is quite possibly the best smartphone camera currently available. The Vita's… well, the less said about the Vita's cameras the better. Suffice it to say, you won't be using these for anything but augmented reality games. And, of course, there's the fact that the iPhone 4S is also a phone, and has a wealth of useful non-game apps—a counterpoint to the fact that the iPhone is significantly more expensive, taking the price of a phone contract into account. Winner: iPhone 4S
And the Winner Is…
If the PlayStation Vita couldn't distinguish itself as a gaming platform that's clearly superior to the iPhone 4S, it would be in big, big trouble. Fortunately for Sony, it's clear that the PlayStation Vita is simply the best way to play real, high-quality games while you're away from home. Games look better on the Vita's giant, colorful screen, and the array of physical controls opens up the whole world of responsive, fast-paced gameplay. You're not going to find the same buffet of almost-free, play-and-forget games that you see on the App Store—but you will get the kind of in-depth gaming experience you used to only be able to get on a console, anywhere you go. |
| TechRadar US is Open For Business Posted: 10 Apr 2012 12:18 PM PDT
If you're not familiar with TechRadar, it's the biggest tech news site in the UK, and now it's live in the US with nary a "£" or "rubbish" to be found. Check it out--we bet you'll find something you like. |
| FCC, Cellular Carriers Introduce New Initiative To Nerf Stolen Smartphones Posted: 10 Apr 2012 10:52 AM PDT
European networks already disable stolen smartphones, and theft rates in those countries are much lower as a result. The New York Times (and many, many others) report that under the new plan, the four major carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint -- will begin disabling phones that have been reported as stolen. That's expected to begin inside the next six months; sometime in the next year and a half, the four carriers -- with the help of the FCC -- will establish a central database to prevent stolen cellphones from being activated on any of the major networks, effectively blocking their use completely. The FCC and the cellular carriers are also joining forces with a handful of Congressional types to try and make it a crime to fiddle with a phone's identifying numbers in order to circumvent the banhammer. "Our goal is to make a stolen cellphone as worthless as an empty wallet," New York Senator Charles Shumer told the Times. Education is another goal: carriers also plan on informing less informed smartphone owners how to track and remotely wipe their stolen handsets. Image credit: iphone4jailbreak.org |
| Epic Games Kills Bulletstorm Sequel, Dirty PC Pirates Partly To Blame Posted: 10 Apr 2012 10:41 AM PDT
"We made a PC version of Bulletstorm, and it didn't do very well on PC and I think a lot of that was due to piracy," Epic President Mike Capps told Gamespot in an interview yesterday. "It wasn't the best PC port ever, sure, but also piracy was a pretty big problem." Since we're talking games, it's time to bust out a protip: If you don't want people pirating your game, don't treat PC gamers like second hand citizens and toss them a half-assed console port. And while we're tossing out protips, here's one for pirates: illegally downloading PC games makes developers less likely to make more of them. For what it's worth, Capps says that Bulletstorm's sales were "good, but not amazing" and he hopes a sequel pops up someday in the future. |
| Researcher Creates Cheaper, More Efficient Graphene-Based Cooling Method Posted: 10 Apr 2012 10:23 AM PDT
PC gaming lovers will understand the basics of the new cooling tech: it's basically a glorified heatsink. The heat spreader developed by materials science engineer Dr. Jag Kasichainula is made from a copper-graphene composite and attaches to <insert electronic device here> using an indium-graphene film. The combined forces of the heat spreader and film have a thermal conductivity that's 25 percent more efficient than copper alone, and thanks to the relative lack of that oh-so-expensive copper, creating the graphene-saturated tech costs less than traditional copper-based cooling methods. It's fairly slim, too, with just 200 micrometers worth of material needed. Some quick Google Fu shows that to be 0.2 millimeters thick. The full paper was published in a metallurgical materials trade publication, but NC State has a handy-dandy abstract up on their website. Via Engadget |
| Nvidia 301.24 Beta Drivers Spread The Love To All GeForce Owners Posted: 10 Apr 2012 10:02 AM PDT
In the examples listed -- GTX 560/560 Ti/570/580 -- performance increases range from a comparatively paltry 5 percent or so in Total War: Shogun 2 to a whopping 20 percent boost for Skyrim and Just Cause 2 (depending, of course, on your card and configuration). Nvidia's FXAA, Adaptive Vsync, Frame Rate Target, PhysX, HD Audio and Surround technologies were all beefed up in the beta driver, too. It doesn't stop there: a bunch of SLI and 3D Vision game profiles were also added or updated. Here's the list: SLI
3D Vision
As always, the download page for the 301.24 beta drivers contains even more nitty gritty details as well as the software itself. |
| Zotac Announces Intel 7-Series Mini ITX Motherboards for Ivy Bridge Posted: 10 Apr 2012 07:14 AM PDT
The Z77-ITX Wi-Fi is built around Intel's Z77 Express chipset. It has two DDR3 DIMM slots with support for up to 16GB of RAM. There are two HDMI ports, a mini DisplayPort, two SATA 6Gbps ports and two SATA 3Gbps ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 support, four SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports (two on the back panel and two via a pin header), eight USB 2.0 ports (four on the back panel and four via a pin header), dual GbE LAN ports, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 8-channel audio, and overclocking options. Zotac's H77-ITX Wi-Fi is similarly spec'd, but built around the H77 Express chipset and includes a DVI-I port (along with a single DisplayPort and HDMI port), an extra SATA 3Gbps port, and just one GbE LAN port. Both boards also boast a single PCI-E x16 3.0 slot and mSATA slot. No word on when these small form factor motherboards will ship or for how much. Image Credit: Zotac |
| Kingston Launches Reasonably Priced HyperX 3K Solid State Drives Posted: 10 Apr 2012 06:54 AM PDT
The HyperX 3K series is powered by the second generation SandForce SF-2281 processor and sport a SATA 6Gbps interface. Sequential read and write performance top out at 555MB/s and 510MB/s, respectively, on the 90GB, 120GB, and 240GB models. The 480GB model boasts 540MB/s reads and 450MB/s writes. "The new Kingston HyperX 3K SSD is specifically designed to meet the needs of budget-minded gamers, PC enthusiasts and A/V professionals looking for powerful upgrades." said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. "We are thrilled to offer an SSD that combines HyperX performance and Kingston quality at a lower price." Prices are as follows:
The additional $10 for the upgrade bundle gets you a 2.5-inch USB enclosure, 3.5-inch bracket and mounting screws, SATA cable, hard drive cloning software, and multi-bit screwdriver. Image Credit: Kingston via Amazon |
| Father of Commodore 64 Passes Away at Age 83 Posted: 10 Apr 2012 06:34 AM PDT
His wife Helen and three sons, Gary, Sam, and Leonard, were with him when he took his last breath, Forbes reports. Whether or not a huge crowd gathers for his funeral remains to be seen, but he probably would have preferred a small, simple gathering. "I'm quite happy if people do not know me," Tramiel told CNet in an interview in 2007, the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64. Most people don't know him, or didn't until now, which is pretty remarkable considering his impact on computing and the PC as a gaming platform. In a way, you could credit Tramiel with pioneering the idea of affordable computing for the masses. Around $600 bought a Commodore 64, which wasn't cheap in the late 1980s, but certainly attainable. "That was one of the reasons why I made sure that we reduced the price -- to make a fair profit, not to stop all the imports that came into the country... So I feel very responsible for that particular idea that I had, to give people a computer for the money, to make a computer for the masses, not the classes," Tramiel added. After being rescued by the 84th U.S. Infantry Division in 1945, Tramiel emigrated to the United States two years later. In 1953, he started up a typewriter repair business. From there, he starting building typewriters, then hopped over to calculators and, finally, computers. The rest, of course, is history. RIP Jack Tramiel.
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Over the weekend, Microsoft began a 
For those of us who remember wasting hours with the original, green-screened GameBoy, the thought that the era of portable gaming consoles may be coming to an end is a bit sad. While their TV-tethered cousins will be around for at least another generation or two, super-powerful smartphones like the iPhone 4S are calling into question the need for dedicated portable gaming devices like the new PlayStation Vita.
Here we find the iPhone's biggest drawback as a gaming platform. The capacitive multitouch screen of the iPhone is responsive, and has been put to great use in games like Infinity Blade and Angry Birds, which distill gameplay down to a series of swipes, but there's no getting around the fact that you can do a whole lot more with buttons. The PlayStation Vita also has capacitive multitouch (by the way) but the real standouts are the dual analogue sticks and full complement of face and shoulder buttons. 
It's difficult to directly compare the internals of the two systems, as neither Apple nor Sony have been very forthcoming about the exact specifications of the chips that run them: the iPhone's dual-core A5 system-on-a-chip and the Vita's quad-core ARM proc. Both systems feature PowerVR SGX GPUs—though, again, the iPhone's is dual-core, while the Vita's is quad.
Comparing the software available on the two platforms is a matter of breadth versus depth. The iPhone 4S, with its 500,000 (and counting) apps has more games than you could play in a lifetime. And lest this be confused with a quantity-versus-quality argument, a lot of them are quite good. Polished, clever, and addictive, iPhone 4S games can be a great way to kill five minutes or even an hour.
So far, we've been comparing the two devices strictly as gaming platforms, but both include a lot of non-gaming features. Both are media consumption devices, for instance, with applications for listening to music and watching video. The Vita does this job just fine, though it can't compete with Apple's iPod heritage and wealth of content streaming and discovery apps.
Just a quick head's up: 
The stolen cellphone trade is brisk business here in the U.S.; according to the FCC, a third off all robberies involves a burgled handset. Why are black market phones so popular? The answer is simple: they continue to work even after being pilfered -- at least for now. Today, the government is scheduled to announce a new initiative, backed by the four major carriers, which will turn swiped smartphones in nothing more than useless electronic bricks. Eventually, at least.
When 
A handful of technological quandaries are keeping our small, yet powerful gadgets from becoming even smaller and powerful; one of those issues -- as any iPad or Asus Transformer Prime owner can tell you -- 
Don't worry, legacy GeForce owners; the spiffy new GTX 680 graphics cards may be getting all the headlines these days, but you haven't been forgotten. Sure, Nvidia's new 301.24 beta driver is the first to officially welcome the 600 series into the fold, but every card back to 2004's GeForce 6 series get in on the love, too, and the majority of performance improvements target GTX 400 and 500 series GPUs specifically.
If Intel's Ivy Bridge ultimately crumbles, it won't be for lack of vendor support. While the tech world waits for Intel to launch its 3rd generation Core processor family, motherboard makers and system integrators are busy pushing out upgraded platforms that support the upcoming CPUs, everything from big and bad notebooks to little motherboards like 
In a perfect world, solid state drives would cost less than mechanical hard drives. Not just the small capacity, low performance SSDs either, but the beefier drives with fast read and write transfer speeds and big IOPS. We don't live in a perfect world, of course, so we have to settle for reasonably priced high performing SSDs, like Kingston's new SandForce-driven HyperX 3K line.
It was big news when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away, but how many people have heard of Jack Tramiel? Outside of tech circles, the answer is probably 'not many' and that's because Tramiel preferred to avoid the spotlight. At one time a taxi driver and an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, Tramiel founded the company that built the Commodore 64, only best selling PC of all time and an iconic piece of computing history. Sadly, Tramiel died on Sunday, April 8 at age 83.
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