Welcome back folks, I’ve been out of it for a while now and I apologize. I plan on making it up to you by offering one of my new more condensed and only what matters version of the News. the idea is that instead o f digging around for all the news which mostly sucks I will only pull the news that I saw as important for the genre. This will probably help to drive a focus to this site, as being the only contributing author can be taxing on a newbie like myself.
The first breadcrumb comes with a new ‘native six-core’ Shanghai derivative, currently codenamed Istanbul. This processor is clearly targeted at Intel’s recently announced six-core,: 45nm Dunnington processor.
Let’s get started shall we, first AMD releases information about their new chip design that will someday replace the Barcelona line they have now. The 45nm Shanghai is set be released in q4 2008 to the song of single-die 6 core, and dual-die 12 core versions. I have mixed feeling about these processors… as I know that technology should always push forward and it is impressive to get this many passable processors on a single chip; most consumers have yet to even properly use the potential found within 1 dual core processor found on the market today. I think that if these chip designers could save half of their budgets used for R&D and design of these new chips; and instead funneled that money into proper school and teaching programs to extrapolate the potential to use these processors down the road we would all be having much more enjoyable experiences as consumers.
Intel has put the E8300 right at the $163 (in 1000-unit tray quantities) price level so the E8200 is now probably on its way out of the picture.
From Intel’s table this week we have some interesting news. The e8300 is poised to replace the e8200 processors currently on the market. The e series core2duos are the dual core and the 8000 series points to the 45nm manufacturing process. This is great news for the people looking for gaming possible Intel chip with a lot of head room for over-clocking that costs nearly the same as a Celeron.
Intel’s Skulltrail, the new extreme dual CPU format coming from Intel later this year, has been successfully, though internally, clocked at 6Ghz. Now this is outstanding and should be the direction of gaming hardware. Let’s make the cores of each processor fast as fuck when they get released so that people can still get a performance boost from single applications.
The 6000 series CPUs received a much needed price cut, upwards of 50% at the top end of the spectrum bringing their Q6700 from $530 to $266. It seems that new technology is just around the corner of a release. Now is the time to buy a new processor if you enjoy performance and don’t want t pay too much for it.
Not as games/hardware related, Via has built a chip to directly compete with the atom called Isaiah. the importance goes without saying that Nvidia is partnering with via to enter the processor market and if via can make a name for themselves here then I am sure that entering the high-end processor market will be a step to come shortly. Here’s to hoping that via can make good with Nvidia and some actual 3-way competition can come from all of this.
Intel also released pics of a prototype 10Gb Ethernet card that uses active cooling. Seems a little ridiculous, but so did active cooling on graphics cards when they started that.
The new AM2+ parts are manufactured on 65nm, feature 2 MB of L2 cache and are in direct competition with Intel’s E8000 series CPUs
AMD has finally announced the retail ready version of the triple core Phenom processors. ranging from 2.1 to 2.4 they say they are in direct competition with the 8000 series CPUs from Intel, and at under $200 they seem to at least hit the price point perfectly.
Graphically speaking (remember, that’s our primary focus here), it employs an advanced engine, with both a DX9 and a DX10 pathway, with the DX10 one being faster according to Ubi.
Assassin’s Creed is out and is all the rage, the first game touting DirectX 10.1 support, which when running with an ATI 3000 series GPU and a Vista SP1 results in considerable performance gain over standard DirectX 10. Problem being is that assassin’s creed for Dx10 has been littered with problems from steam community not working to other problems that they had to remove 10.1 support. I am sure that once they figure out everything it the settings will be back, though I am running happy with Dx9 on my Crossfires.
For those of you looking to get in on the Ubisoft killing, their yearend earnings report boasts a 36% increase in revenue; and they are looking to hire 900 or so over the next 12 months. I wonder if this has anything to do with Assassin’s Creed being such a great game, expect a review in the coming days.
He then went onto say that because of the open, free-roaming nature of the game, a demo would prohibitively limit the experience.
Bethesda has refused to put out a demo for Fallout3, scheduled to come to stores this fall. He says that it is simply impossible to cut anything out of the game to make it demo size. Personally I am ok with this as not only does it give the devs time to work on their main project, the game, but also I am tired of playing through half assed demos that make the game look like crap.
Age of Conan is recruiting beta players; head over to fileplanet and sign up if you have an account. the specs aren’t bad either only requiring an Nvidia 6600 and 1 gig of ram. I am completely looking forward to this game as something to take players away from WoW, not that WoW is bad, I have played and enjoy playing periodically but I would like the diversity of talking to people about 2 games…
Talking about WoW I have some leeched Lich king screens for you WoWers to drool over. Though blizzard makes wonderful atmospheric effects, I would really like to see a graphical update sometime. it can be optional or whatever but that game is looking quite dated recently.
To begin with Capcom is taking advantage of your computers (hopefully) more powerful processing power to up the graphics and resolution throughout the game. That isn’t all though as the game will feature two new modes to play through.
Devil may cry 4 is heading to PC this summer, good news for all of us who have had to hear about how damn awesome this game was. Hopefully it will be available through a quality digital distribution method, steam preferably, as i would love to play this game and will report back if I hear anything in the way of specs.
If you are playing a game you haven’t bought, you are invisible as far as the developer is concerned.
Over at Bit-Tech there was an interesting article about making [PC] gaming better, I am assuming PC because most of what he talks about is in the PC realm and the PC has been hit the hardest recently with all of the harsh comments about it dying as a gaming platform. as I don’t agree with everything he says, I do think that we can all take a few and give a few tips on how to make gaming more enjoyable all around, and it never hurts to read other’s opinions.
Thus concludes another week of gaming tech.
Leave comments below. and dont forget to check out the links to articles below.
Until next week, stay class gamers!
-Shegs
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