Tuesday, January 25, 2011

IT News HeadLines (Elite Bastards) 24/01/2011



Elite Bastards
Xbox 360 getting exclusive Crysis 2 multi-player demo
No love for us PC gamers by the looks of it then - a bit disappointing, especially when you pair it with the news that id Software's RAGE also most likely won't be getting a demo of any kind.
Electronic Arts and Microsoft have announced that Xbox 360 gamers can look forward to an exclusive Crysis 2 demo this January 25th.

The Crysis 2 demo will be multiplayer only, featuring one map - called Skyline - and two game modes. The first, Crash Site, has two teams earning points by protecting crashed alien ships. The other mode is basically team deathmatch.

The multiplayer demo will open on January 25th, though EA hasn't yet specified when or if the demo will end.
bit-tech has the story.
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Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 1GB WHDI Edition review
The possibilities of having a wireless graphics card are quite mouth-watering, for certain subsets of PC users in particular, but does it actually work well in practice?  PC Perspective take a look at the first WHDI graphics card to hit the market from Galaxy.
If any of you are familiar with what Sonos has done with audio and what Apple is attempting to do for audio/video with AirPlay, then the idea of WHDI is pretty simple to grasp at first even though it has many more facets and complexities to it.  WHDI is an open standard that has been accepted by Hitachi, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and Sony - some huge names in the consumer electronics space.  Adopting WHDI doesn't preclude the use of any OTHER standards, so the battle will continue to rage on which, if any, will really dominate.

From a technical perspective the WHDI standard operates in many ways just like the 802.11n standard by running on the 5 GHz frequency range and occupies bandwidth of 20 MHz or 40 MHz.  Because the 5 GHz spectrum has about 15-30 channels available for use with 802.11n or WHDI, the chips are intelligent enough to change channels to avoid conflict.  Past the use of the same spectrum, WHDI is quite unique in how it handles data.  While current video streaming over the 802.11n wireless standard CAN work, it treats all data in the same way and gives no priority to different types of information.  WHDI, on the other, sets up what are called "video modems" which are capable of handling completely uncompressed video signals of up to 3 Gbps (!!) and streaming at near zero latency.
Read the full review right here.
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AMD Radeon HD 6990 sighted
Truth be told you probably don't need the power of two Radeon HD 6970 parts (or thereabouts) in a single graphics board, but regardless AMD will soon be happy to sell you just such an offering.
The HD 6990 consists of two Cayman chips. On first glimpse, appears to be just as long as the HD 5970, but noticeably thicker. The power connector area does appear to be a bit different, though nothing can be concluded from such a low resolution picture. The "Batmobile" design is once again dropped in favour of the design used in the HD 6800/6900 series cards released thus far.

One of the characteristics of previous AMD reference dual-GPU cards had been that the two GPUs are relatively close together, and covered by a single heatsink. However, the two Cayman chips on the HD 6990 pictured are located on two opposite ends of the PCB. This could indicate two separate heatsinks for the two GPUs. The same idea has been executed on non-reference designs such as the Asus ARES, with better thermal results than the reference design.
VR-Zone has the full story, and a couple of images.
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Duke Nukem Forever has a release date
Yes, really... it honestly does... stop looking at me like that...
"Somehow the guys at Game Informer magazine discovered Duke Nukem Forever's launch date before I did," joked Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software and executive producer of Duke Nukem Forever. "But I cannot imagine any better video game news source team than Game Informer to reveal the moment of truth for the most inconceivable, incorrigible and inspiring turn around story in the history of the video game industry – the coming of Duke Nukem Forever on May 3, 2011."

“The moment fans all over the world have been waiting for is almost here,” says Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “May 3, 2011 marks Duke’s return as he unleashes his brash and brutally honest wit on the world. His return is going to be epic and one that will make video gaming history!”

May 3 is the North American release date. May 6 is worldwide.
Game Informer brings the life-changing news, while a new trailer is also now available:
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Optimizing Civilization V
Optimising any game to ensure that it runs as well as possible is a tough task these days, but it's one that's being made easier thanks to Intel's Graphics Performance Analyser tool - at least, it is according to Civilisation V developer Firaxis.
“When you are writing a game,” Dan Baker, graphics lead at Firaxis Games, said, “two things can potentially slow you down: the CPU or the GPU. You can’t run any faster than whichever one of those two is slowing you down. We have to use a two-prong approach and worry about what is happening on both the CPU and the GPU.”

With the addition of the new Platform View feature, Intel GPA 3.0 now provides developers with a system-level view of operations, offering a clear, visual depiction of CPU and GPU activities on the same scale. This capability, coupled with the ability to zoom down to a low-level to pinpoint performance issues, provides an extremely useful macro-level and micro-level perspective to developers. Firaxis capitalized on these features during Civ5 development to scope out large-scale problems and then address them at the code level.
Read the full article on Civilisation V and Intel's GPA at Firing Squad.
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