General Gaming Article |
- Nvidia 304.79 Beta Drivers Enable TXAA Antialiasing, Welcomes Windows 8 To The Family
- AMD FX-8350 "Vishera" CPU Could Hit Desktops This October
- Blizzard Denies Barring Linux-Loving Diablo III Users, Says Banhammer Hit Actual Cheaters
- Electronic Arts Aims for 100 Percent Digital Distribution Model
- iFixIt Deconstructs First Jelly Bean Tablet, Google's Nexus 7
- First Twitter Transparency Report Tattles on Uncle Sam
- Move Over Notebooks, Tablets are Taking Over
| Nvidia 304.79 Beta Drivers Enable TXAA Antialiasing, Welcomes Windows 8 To The Family Posted: 03 Jul 2012 11:08 AM PDT
TXAA antialiasing wasn't enabled before for the simple fact that no games supported it. That changed today with the launch of "The Secret World," a new MMO by Funcom, though Nvidia's GeForce blog notes that the smoother textures won't take hold until the game releases an update of its own to activate the TXAA functionality. Another downside: only GTX 600-series video cards support TXAA. Other than that, there isn't much. Some bugs were squashed, and the 304.79 drivers add SLI profiles for the following games:
As always, you can read about the new beta drivers on the GeForce blog or grab them on the GeForce website. |
| AMD FX-8350 "Vishera" CPU Could Hit Desktops This October Posted: 03 Jul 2012 10:47 AM PDT
That news comes courtesy of Fudzilla and Hexus sources, who also detailed what we can expect to see from the FX-8350. If those sites' information proves to be true -- and it often is -- the FX-8350 will sport 8 Vishera-based 32nm cores clocked at 4.0GHz/4.2GHz turbo with a 4x2MB L2 cache and 8MB L3 cache. The chip is also expected to have a 125 TDP, the same as the FX-8150, and it will be AM3+ compatible. Will the rumors turn out to be true? Who knows? As it stands, does the FX-8350 and Vishera pique your interest? AMD's 2013 desktop roadmap doesn't anticipate the launch of any new traditional desktop CPUs beyond Vishera as the company focuses on its APU-centric heterogenous computing concept, so hopefully it's enough to satisfy AMD fans for a while. The company does expect to launch a "Kaveri" desktop APU next year with 2- to 4- Steamroller CPUs and an integrated Graphics Card Next-based GPU, as well as a lower-powered "Kabini" APU based off of Jaguar CPUs. Steamroller is the successor to Piledriver; Jaguar is the successor to the Bobcat cores found in Brazos APUs; and GCN is the architecture powering in this generation's 28nm Radeon HD series of video cards. |
| Blizzard Denies Barring Linux-Loving Diablo III Users, Says Banhammer Hit Actual Cheaters Posted: 03 Jul 2012 10:04 AM PDT
In a word, no. A Blizzard moderator leaped out of the woodwork to drop the following tidbit o' knowledge: We've extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We've not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings. Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will. Some tinfoil hat types continue to claim that Blizzard is lying, but a small horde of users have posted that they're still playing Diablo III with Wine with no problems whatsoever. So there you have it, demon slayers: as long as you're not trying to transmogrify your Wine-based Diablo III experience into bot-herded gold, you should be good to go. |
| Electronic Arts Aims for 100 Percent Digital Distribution Model Posted: 03 Jul 2012 08:08 AM PDT
Frank Gibeau, president of EA Labels, sat down for a chat with GamesIndustry International and revealed that his company has a "clear line of sight" on putting all its eggs into a digital streaming basket. "For us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future - much like your question about streaming and cloud - we're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period. It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable," Gibeau promised. Going strictly digital means tapping into various distribution opportunities, like IP televisions and streaming, both of which Gibeau said EA is prepared for. He also indicated that NPD's monthly reports are largely irrelevant and erroneous in scope. "The number of Nucleus accounts we're growing, the amount of engagement time that we have, the amount of services that we're running - those are more important metrics for us than unit sales according to NPD and North America," Gibeau said. None of this should be shocking to anyone who's followed EA. Company CEO John Riccitiello said a year ago that EA was transforming "from being a packaged goods centric company to a fully integrated digital model." Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| iFixIt Deconstructs First Jelly Bean Tablet, Google's Nexus 7 Posted: 03 Jul 2012 07:23 AM PDT
Rest assured, iFixIt gave the Nexus 7 the full teardown treatment, carving it open like a Halloween pumpkin. In place of seeds and stringy pumpkin guts, iFixIt discovered a 4326 mAh battery, which unlike the iPad, was "actually quite easy to remove." There was just a small amount of adhesive holding it place around the metal frame, iFixIt says. Interestingly, iFixIt discovered a pair of drivers, even though the official Nexus page only advertises a single speaker in the back. These were also relatively easy to remove, as was most of the hardware, resulting in a 7 out of 10 score on iFixIt's repairability chart (10 being the easiest to repair). Image Credit: iFixIt Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| First Twitter Transparency Report Tattles on Uncle Sam Posted: 03 Jul 2012 06:53 AM PDT
Twitter said it drew inspiration from the "great work" done by Google, and with that in mind, the goal is to shed light on how often the governments around the world request information for user information and to withhold content, as well as the number of DMCA takedown notices it receives from copyright holders. Dating back to the beginning of the year, Twitter's transparency report reveals the microblogging service received 849 user information requests, 679 of which came from the U.S. government. Officials in Japan were the second most curious, accounting for 98 requests for user information. "We've received more government requests in the first half of 2012... than in the entirety of 2011," Twitter noted. "Moving forward, we'll be publishing an updated version of this information twice a year." Twitter doesn't always comply with user information and takedown requests, though the microblogging service didn't attach a number or percentage to how often it does. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Move Over Notebooks, Tablets are Taking Over Posted: 03 Jul 2012 05:48 AM PDT
On the contrary, DisplaySearch's Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report predicts that notebook PC shipments will grow from 208 million units in 2012 to 393 million by 2017. Pretty good, right? Tablets are expected to perform even better, ballooning from 121 million units to 416 million units in the same time frame, and actually surpassing notebook shipments a year earlier in 2016. "Consumer preference for mobile computing devices is shifting from notebook to tablet PCs, particularly in mature markets," said Richard Shim, senior analyst at NPD DisplaySearch. "While the lines between tablet and notebook PCs are blurring, we expect mature markets to be the primary regions for tablet PC adoption. New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets. Services and infrastructure needed to create compelling new usage models are often better established in mature markets." It's hard to imagine tablet PCs replacing notebooks outright, but the two segments do seem to be moving closer towards each other. The Ultrabooks of tomorrow will be even thinner and lighter than they already are and sport touchscreens, while tablets like Microsoft's Surface are starting to implement hardware keyboards. Five years is an eternity in tech time, and it will be interesting to see what separates a notebook from a tablet by the time 2017 rolls into view. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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Nvidia's engineers sure have been busy recently! Just days after releasing a WHQL-certified driver designed specifically for the Windows 8 Release Preview, a new beta driver has landed in our laps today. The GeForce 304.79 beta drivers are important for a couple of different reasons: they're the first drivers to enable TXAA anti-aliasing as well as the first unified Windows drivers to integrate Windows 8 in with Windows XP, 7 and Vista. The drivers are promised to work with notebooks and desktops alike. 
We've got Ivy Bridge, we've got Trinity, when are we going to see a desktop follow-up to AMD's Bulldozer chips? Some hub-bub around the Web says we'll be seeing the Piledriver-based Vishera lineup sometime in the third quarter, with the flagship AMD FX-8350 possibly coming at the end of October.
Despite its record-setting sales success, Diablo III has seen its fair share of criticism Yesterday saw a damning new accusation leveled at Blizzard: several 
Remember when you could walk into a store like Software Etc. and wade through aisles and aisles of PC games packaged in gigantic boxes? Those days are long gone, and though you can still find a single rack of PC titles at your local GameStop, boxed copies are becoming something of a rarity these days. For Electronic Arts, the demise of boxed games, PC and console, can't happen fast enough as it looks to go all-in with digital downloads.
The folks at iFixIt have a penchant for tearing apart hardware and giving us more than just a passing glimpse at what lies underneath the hood of the latest gear. We always look forward to these teardowns, in part because it means we don't have to risk destroying our own hardware to peek inside. Another reason is because iFixIt has a way of securing tech toys that aren't available to the general public yet, like Google's recently unveiled Nexus 7 tablet.
Good old Uncle Sam can be awfully nosy when he wants to be. The U.S. government poking its head into personal affairs isn't news to most, but it is reiterated by Twitter's first ever transparency report, which was released on Monday just two days ahead of July 4th, otherwise known as Independence Day in the States. Not by coincidence, Twitter notes "July 4th serves an important reminder of the need to hold governments responsible, especially on behalf of those who may not have a chance to do so themselves." Let the fireworks begin.
With devices like Amazon's Kindle Fire and the upcoming Surface by Microsoft freeing would-be tablet buyers not interested in the iPad from the tyranny of Apple's ecosystem, there's something in the tablet space for everyone, regardless of platform affinity (webOS notwithstanding). What that's going to do over the course of the next several years is propel demand for tablet PCs past that of traditional notebooks, though don't mistake that to mean laptops are dead.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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