General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Rockstar Teases Grand Theft Auto Fans with Three GTA V Vehicle Screenshots

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 10:01 AM PDT

There's still no word from Rockstar Games on when exactly it plans to launch Grand Theft Auto V, the fifteenth installment in the popular GTA series that was announced back in October of last year. In lieu of a release date, the rambunctious developers decided to drop a trio of screenshots on its blog, each one depicting a different type of vehicle you'll have the chance to pilot in the upcoming game.

Unfortunately, there isn't any commentary that accompanies the images, which show a bicycle, sports car (Cheeta), and a jet. Still, it will be enough to excite fans of the franchise, especially those anxious to take to the skies in GTA V piloting a high powered aircraft.

You can view the pics in high res glory on Rockstar's blog, and if you haven't already, take a peek at the GTA V trailer (embedded below).

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CyberPower's Pro Gamer FTW Series Brings HD Streaming to the LAN Party

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 09:30 AM PDT

CyberPower PC today introduced the Gamer Pro FTW, a new series of desktop PCs intended to seamlessly mesh gaming performance with live HD streaming capabilities, without breaking the bank. The Gamer Pro FTW starts at $1,085 and is available in half a dozen base configurations built around the user's choice of Intel's X79 Sandy Bridge-E platform, Z77 Ivy Bridge, or with an AMD FX Bulldozer foundation.

Each system is equipped with an Avermedia Live Gamer HD capture card, a part that sells for over $200 as a standalone item. It's capable of capturing, recording, and streaming live action footage.

"With the Live Gamer HD, you don't need another setup for recording game footage because the Pro Gamer FTW is the capturing machine. The solution works flawlessly with Nvidia Kepler-powered GTX or AMD Tahiti graphics cards for perfect recordings of 1080p at 60 frames per second," CyberPower PC says. "With its efficient pass-thru system, the Live Gamer HD is able to synchronize zero-delay video capture with real-time gaming through the Pro Gamer FTW's HDMI and DVI ports."

You can also record color commentary alongside in-game footage, even when pausing game play recording. As for the rest of the Gamer Pro FTW system, it all depends on what your budget allows. The cheapest default configuration is the above mentioned $1,085 setup, which includes an AMD FX-6100 processor, 8GB of G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7750 graphics card, 1TB Western Digital Black hard drive, 12X Blu-ray reader, Azza Genesis 9000 case, 700W power supply, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Gamer Pro FTW Product Page

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AMD Issues Another Round of Radeon HD Price Cuts

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 09:09 AM PDT

Summer might be coming to an end in the coming weeks, but the GPU price wars between AMD and Nvidia are just starting to heat up. To wit, AMD rolled out a series of price reductions in July for its Radeon HD 7970, 7950, and 7870 graphics cards, and now that Nvidia has made Kepler affordable with its GeForce GTX 660 Ti part, AMD is once again responding in kind with another round of cuts.

First, lets take a look at what happened in July:

  • Radeon HD 7970: $480 down to $430
  • Radeon HD 7950: $400 down to $350
  • Radeon HD 7870: $350 down to $300

On top of those $50 price cuts, AMD shaved another $20 off certain models. A quick glance online shows the Radeon HD 7970 going for $410 street and the Radeon HD 7950 for $320 street (the Radeon HD 7970 is unaffected by the latest round of cuts).

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which competes with AMD's Radeon 7950 GPU, sells for about $300 street (and up, depending on model). You can see how it fares in our recent roundup of three GTX 660 Ti cards.

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Samsung to Inject $4 Billion into Texas Chip Factory

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 07:37 AM PDT

Samsung, the world's largest producer of memory chips, is planning to invest a whopping $4 billion in its Austin, Texas factory in order to renovate the facility and boost production of mobile chips used in smartphones and tablets, according to several reports. The investment is in addition to nearly $2 billion the company committed to spending on a new plant in South Korea last June.

This latest spending will be used, in part, to convert the production of memory chips to logic parts so that Samsung can better serve the growing mobile sector, according to Bloomberg. Simply put, there's more money in processors than memory chips, and this particular factory is where Apple's A5 and A5X processors are produced, which are used in iPad and iPhone devices.

Samsung certainly isn't afraid to spend money beefing up its operations. According to a MarketWatch report, injecting another $4 billion into its Texas facility brings the total investment up to $13 billion since it began operating in 1996.

Image Source: Samsung

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PopCap Promises Plants vs Zombies Sequel in Spring 2013

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 07:10 AM PDT

Who knew that all you really needed to fight the inevitable zombie apocalypse is a well kept garden filled with a variety of plants and those ever-important sunflowers? It's a survival lesson PopCap Games, a division of Electronic Arts, taught us with its highly addictive Plants vs Zombies title, and lest you forgot the power a green thumb wields, the developer plans to launch a sequel in the first half of 2013.

The sequel is expected to launch in late spring of next year, to be semi-exact. PopCap says it will include a boatload of new features, settings, and situations, though has opted not to share any specifics at this time. You can, however, expect the same brand of brain dead zombie humor and quirkiness that made the original such a delight to play, along with new types of plants and zombies.

"Spring is crullest curlie ungood time, and plantz grow dull roots," noted an unidentified spokesperson. "So, we are meating you for brainz at yore house. No worry to skedule schedlue plan… we're freee anytime. We'll find you."

So you next spring, zombie horde. Now if you'll excuse us, we have some gardening to tend to.

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Microsoft Now Accepting $14.99 Windows Pro Upgrade Registrations

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 06:48 AM PDT

So you bought a new Windows 7 PC on or after June 2, 2012 and you're anxious to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro already, is that right? Well, you might be in the minority on the latter part (see User Experience Expert Pans Windows 8), but if that's your end game, registration is now open for Microsoft's $14.99 upgrade offer to Windows 8 Pro. You can't actually download your copy of Windows 8 Pro until it launches to the general public on October 26, 2012, but you can fill out the form and validate your eligibility.

In case you need a refresher on what we're talking about, Microsoft's Windows Upgrade Offer allows you to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $14.99 if you purchase or have purchased an eligible Windows 7 PC between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013. It's a low cost way to ensure that if you buy a PC today you can still rock the latest version of Windows once October 26 rolls around.

To register (or pre-register, as it were), you'll need to fill out a few personal details and provide information about your Windows 7 PC, including the 25-digit Windows 7 product key that came with it. After that, you sit back and wait for Microsoft to shoot you a promo code via email so you can redeem your upgrade at the discounted price.

On a related note, if you're a student, don't forget you can snag a free Xbox 360 console with the purchase of a new Windows PC for $699 or more from participating retailers.

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Amazon Glacier Delivers Pay-As-You-Go Cloud Storage for $0.01 Per Gigabyte

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 06:22 AM PDT

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced Glacier, an inexpensive cloud-based data archive service primarily aimed at enterprise and small business users willing to go with a tapeless solution. There's no free tier to choose from like there is with Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), but for data heavy users that require 5TB of redundancy or more, pricing starts at just a penny per gigabyte per month.

Glacier isn't necessarily a storage option for quick retrieval. The cloud service houses data as archives, which can be a single file or several files uploaded as a single archive, and when it comes time to retrieve data, Glacier initiates a "job" that can take 3.5 to 4.5 hours to complete, Amazon says.

The real allure here is low cost redundancy that's both secure (256-bit AES encryption and Identity and Access Management technology) and reliable (Amazon touts average annual durability of 99.999999999 percent for an archive). It's also purportedly simple to use and, in the coming months, will allow users to seamlessly move data to and from S3 plans.

There is a caveat to all this. Amazon expects data retrievals to be infrequent and "unusual," and with that in mind, there's a fee for users who retrive more than 5 percent of their average monthly storage. Currently that fee starts at $0.01 per gigabyte.

Image Credit: Flickr (brewbooks)

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Benchmark Your Body: 8 Sites to Measure Your Fitness

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 07:51 PM PDT

For many of us, one of the most enjoyable aspects of fitness is seeing the results. It's not the only reason we workout, of course--fresh air and the endorphin rush make it pretty worth it, too--but who doesn't enjoy the thrill of running a faster mile, climbing a bigger hill, or lifting increasingly more weight? 

Just as we do with our computers, we love analyzing the data from our workouts. Be it the speed at which we run, the power we output when we cycle, or simply the number of calories we burn, these sites will help you record it all, complete with graphs and charts to track your progress in the various activities you do to stay fit. Whatever your sports are, there's sure to be one or more that will help you take your fitness to the next level. Pair them with your smartphone to get the most out of your workouts.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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