Tech News
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Gaming in 2010 and Beyond - Where do we go from here?
Published: Monday, December 7, 2009 | By: WillThis is a pretty good article that I do agree with for the most part on the new game subject matter. Still a very good read to get the mind flowing, and let's hope the game developers listen to this and get some new good stuff on DX11.
The other day I took a look back at 2009 and the applications and games that have been released. I was rather unimpressed with what I saw. Out of the games that were released only a couple stood out as having any redeeming value. Even Modern Warfare 2 is diminished by choices made by Infinity Ward regarding the multiplayer side of the game (despite record breaking sales). 2009 was really not much of a good year for gaming. For the most part we were given follow-on titles and remakes of old ideas. Even Borderlands (which claims to be a unique game) turned out to be a new twist on an old idea.
So why was 2009 such a disappointing year for gaming? Well, one of the biggest reasons was the change of the guard with respects to Direct X. It looks like many developers held their breath while waiting on Microsoft, NVIDIA and AMD to drop the DX11 shoe. Out of those that did release games, most were stuck back on DX9 (a decision made to get the most money out of their titles)."I do think Borderlands is pretty fun though.
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How to play Dirt 2 now! (applies to steam only)
Published: Sunday, December 6, 2009 | By: DennisBeen looking to play Dirt2 but Steam keeps giving you the shaft? Well one of our forum members seems to have figured how to get around it.
Might be worth checking out.
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NL: Case Reviews Roundup
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillLooks like the case reviews are out in full effect. So let's highlight a few of them.
- Antec Nine Hundred Two Mid Tower Case Review @ ThinkComputers
- SilverStone SUGO SG04-FH Case Review @ Motherboards
- Cooler Master HAF 922 Full-Tower Case @ TheTechLounge
- Thermaltake Element G Gaming Case Review @ Legit Reviews
- Review of LanCool Dragonlord PC-K58 case@ Testseek
- NZXT GAMMA Classic Series PC Case @ Bona Fide Reviews
- Cooler Master HAF 922 @ Technic3D
- Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case Review @ PCStatsWait! Wait! we have about all of these cases in our Case Review section already.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillHere is some more games to check out for the holidays. Plus one of them is already pushing the envelope for DX11 gaming.
Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (PC)@ Elite Bastards
"If it's been a while since you touched a game like this, there's certainly something of a learning curve initially to readjust to the skills required to compete in your average DiRT 2 race, but once it all comes flooding back to you you'll soon find yourself enjoying the almost balletic juggling of brake and accelerator required to safely but quickly traverse each circuit. The track layouts themselves are certainly designed to get the adrenaline pumping - Quite brilliantly so at times, as you find yourself hanging mere inches from a sheer cliff face at times in the name of shaving a few fractions of a second of your lap time or to sneak past an opponent, and taking the word "dangerous" into a whole new league way beyond simply hitting a tree or wall on your way around the track. Once you get into some of the faster cars and find yourself faced with narrow, rock-lined tracks with huge drops around every other corner, nobody will blame you for finishing a race with sweating
palms and dilated pupils, such is the wonderful recreation of high speed that this game offers."Dragon Age: Origins Review (PC, PS3, 360) @ OCModShop
Bioware's new epic, dark fantasy RPG has been receiving a lot of attention lately. The game's marketing team has hit the internet hard and you would practically have to be blind to miss all the online ads for the game. This is a special case in which all the hype and pomp is very much deserved.
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ASRock X58 Extreme Motherboard @ PCShopTalk
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 | By: WillAsRock is not known for making boards that are extremely overclocker friendly. So I could see the lack of super cooling on this board. They tend to stay in the lower priced market with lots new options on their boards. So let's read this review to see if they are staying in that model set for them.
"The VRM and X58 chipset cooling solutions are linked together with a heatpipe; I do not consider this a very good solution because, as we already know, the X58 chipset is very hot also, like the VRM, and when we overclock the system and they will transfer the heat from one to another. I would have preferred this board to have some bigger heatsinks, with one or two heatpipes between the VRM and the X58 chipset."
It is not a horrible looking board.
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Intel: Initial Larrabee graphics chip canceled
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 | By: DennisWow, I mean Wow.
"Justin Rattner (Intel Senior Fellow) demonstrated Larrabee hitting one teraflop, which is great but you could walk across the street and buy an ATI graphics board for a few hundred dollars that would do five teraflops." A teraflop is 1 trillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of graphics chip performance.
Larrabee, a chronically delayed chip, was originally expected to appear in 2008. It was slated to compete with discrete graphics chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit.
Under the circumstances I can understand why they did this. Seems any future Larrabee development will be in the form of a software development platform.
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Intel unveils 48-core cloud computing silicon chip
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 | By: WillVirtual computing and Cloud computing is looking to be the next big thing for computers. We here at Ninjalane just have to ask the big quetion. Wonder how well these beast will overclock?
Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp.
The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known, contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology.
Each processing core could, in theory, run a separate operating system.Also wonder what kind of cooling it will take to keep these guys humming along.
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Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W Power Supply Review @ TechwareLabs
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 | By: WillWe here at Ninjalane have the Thermaltake EVO Blue 650 Watt PSU up for review. This was just a friendly reminder is all. Here is a review of the TT Toughpower XT 750 Watt for you to read after you enjoy our review.
"Current power supplies are all about efficiency and power and for good reason, you want enough power for power hungry system while being efficient enough not to destroy your power bill. Thermaltake has updated their famous Toughpower line with the newer Toughpower XT 750w which we will be looking at today."
Shameless.
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Corsair® launches Dominator™ GTX 2250MHz ultra-performance DDR3 memory
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 | By: WillCorsair® launches DominatorTM GTX 2250MHz
ultra-performance DDR3 memory
- World's fastest DDR3 memory for extreme overclockers and performance enthusiasts -FREMONT, California, December 3, 2009 - Corsair, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer and flash memory products, today announced the launch of its new Dominator GTX ultra-high performance DDR3 memory modules for Intel® and AMDTM platforms, designed specifically for performance enthusiasts, gamers and extreme overclockers.
Corsair Dominator GTX modules are individually screened and tested on multiple high-performance Intel X58 and P55 chipset platforms to ensure that they operate at the incredible frequency of 2250MHz at low-latency timings of 8-8-8-24 at 1.65V. They are designed specifically for performance enthusiasts and overclockers who want to achieve the highest performance possible and to break benchmark world records.
"Corsair has a long history of delivering the fastest overclocking memory on the planet, and our engineering expertise and unique understanding of the enthusiast market allows us to continue to push boundaries," said Kevin Conley, VP of Engineering at Corsair. "Corsair Dominator GTX modules are the most tightly-screened, highest-quality and fastest DDR3 memory modules in the world, and we look forward to seeing what the enthusiast and overclocking community can do with these exciting new products."
In addition to the incredible frequencies possible on Intel platforms, Dominator GTX modules have also been tested and verified to operate at up to 1800MHz CL6 in high-performance Socket AM3 motherboards for AMD PhenomTM II processors, providing AMD enthusiasts with a powerful new weapon in their overclocking arsenal. The following table shows baseline performance in a number of popular DDR3 platforms.
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Silverstone Temjin TJ10B: Water Cooled with Silence @ Bjorn3D
Published: Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | By: WillWe at Ninjalane love the super highend giant roomy cases out there and here is one very elegant Silverstone version that just rocks. I am diggin the way this Silverstone case has been thought out for the watercooling crowd out there.
The Silverstone Temjin TJ10 chassis comes in many different styles. Depending on what the user prefers, some of the most known models are the Black and Silver TJ10, which are named TJ10B and TJ10S respectively. These models come with either a windowed or solid closed side panel. Many of the reviews written in the past have taken a look at the TJ10 with the window side panels and just some of their features, so we here at Bjorn3D, decided to take it one step further and try to build a killer gaming rig from the parts that we gathered over time. To accomplish this, our goals were to have an internal water cooling system that will cool the CPU, but also try to install AcoustiPack Ultimate Soundproofing Kit and AcoustiPack Acoustic Noise Reduction Foam Blocks to fight the annoying noise some of the latest computer systems make.
Stop reading and check it out the review.
