Finally a system for CRYSIS !

Courtesy :http://www.tomshardware.com/us/


Nvidia Unveils 3-Way SLI With Crysis

According to Nvidia, two graphics cards are better than one, especially when you're trying to play a PC game like Crysis at high settings. So how about three cards?

Nvidia took the opportunity to show of its new three-way SLI technology at CES 2008 this week. While packing three GPUs into a single desktop PC may seem excessive, think again. Nvidia was running Crysis on a custom Q6600 quad core system with three 8800 GTXs running at a full resolution of 1920 x 1080. And if that wasn't enough, the game's settings were all cranked to very high.

So how did the game perform on Nvidia's customer three-way SLI gaming rig? Not bad, actually. Nvidia representatives at the show said the game was getting about 30 to 40 frames per second, though the game was still extremely taxing for the system. Watching a demo of the first level of Crysis on the three-way SLI system, there were some points in the game where the frame rates had obviously dropped into the teens or even lower. Still, the game looked fabulous with all of the setting at maximum, and frame rates were mostly steady throughout the action sequences.

High-End DDR3 Memory on the Hook

Courtesy :  http://www.tomshardware.com/us/

Premium Prices And Petit Performance Prospects

DDR3 memory was introduced only half a year ago, to replace maxed out DDR2 technology. While the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) has specified speeds of DDR3-800 to DDR3-1600, memory vendors have already exceeded the intended top speed by 20% - and this is not the end. While DDR3 at 1066 and 1333 speeds still is many months away from entering the mainstream due to costs still higher than those of DDR2-800, enthusiast vendors are all offering DDR3-1600 parts now, and some have already announced DDR3-2000 products. Having looked at ten DDR3-1333 kits recently, it's time to x-ray the high-end offerings now.

Enthusiast memory has had an amazing career, ever since overclocking became some sort of popular sport. Once AMD and Intel restricted processor multipliers to prevent users from running a processor faster than specified, motherboard manufacturers introduced options to bypass this preset. Increasing the bus speed equals an increase of the other variable necessary to determine the processor clock speed, hence Front Side Bus overclocking effectively bypasses the overclocking block while introducing higher bus bandwidth as a side effect. Furthermore, main memory is accelerated proportionally, depending on its operating speed, which again directly depends on the system bus (or the processor speed, if we're talking about AMD processors). While memory followed the overclocking trend - at first rather slowly - today's offerings are specifically designed to excel in clock speed. They not only allow maximum system overclocking, but also increase memory bandwidth itself, which contributes to overall performance.

Thanks to power-saving mechanisms such as AMD's Cool'n'Quiet technology and Intel's Enhanced Speedstep, all modern processors can be operated not only at their default multiplier, but also at all lower ones; the power saving features require them to reduce the processor speed. This allows increasing the Front Side Bus while reducing the processor multiplier to limit the resulting core clock speed to realistic levels. Hence, it is possible to select a combination of a fast system bus, memory speed and processor core clock speed.

The enthusiast memory market is slowly but surely hitting some limits, as the advantage of super fast memory over ordinary products has been decreasing (see this article from Tom's Hardware in German - no translation available yet). That means that a highly overclocked processor will only show a few percent performance difference whether it runs with basic DDR3-1333 memory or at a much faster DDR3-1800 speed (check benchmark results of this article for details as well). The main reason is the highly efficient cache architecture of today's processors: the better the cache hierarchy, the less important the memory speed.

At the same time, high end memory faces cost issues that all premium products have to deal with: high memory clock speeds can usually only be achieved at a drastically increased operating voltage, and this requires careful product selection of the memory ICs provided by manufacturers Elpida, Hynix, Micron, Qimonda and Samsung. The resulting memory modules can be several times more expensive than mainstream DIMMs. Some memory vendors purchase entire memory wafers to cut, select and package the individual dies themselves. Others purchase the preselected memory or even the full memory modules.

For more details, refer
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/11/high_end_ddr3_memory_on_the_hook/

Jodha Akbar Audio Release Delayed

The most awaited Gowarikar-Rahman's Jodha Akbar audio launch had been postponed to 14th of Jan.
The actual scheduled date was on 27th of dec'07. After it was shifted to 9th jan and now finally 14th. Hope the audio clicks well for Rahman.

You can view the official site through this link :http://www.jodhaaakbar.com/

Far Cry 2 - First Look - screenshots !

Source : http://farcry.us.ubi.com/index.php



Far Cry® 2, the next-generation first-person shooter from Ubisoft, will take you deep into the most beautiful but also most hostile environments in the world: Africa! More than just a visual and technological achievement, Far Cry® 2, the true sequel to the award-winning PC game, will provide you with an unprecedented gaming experience.

Caught between two rival factions in war-torn Africa, you are sent to take out "The Jackal", a mysterious character who has rekindled the conflict between the warlords, jeopardizing thousands of lives. In order to fulfil your mission you will have to play the factions against each other, identify and exploit their weaknesses, and neutralise their superior numbers and firepower with surprise, subversion, cunning and, of course, brute force.

OPEN WORLD


The extensive artistic research combined with the next-gen engine will allow you to explore over 50Km2 of seamlessly rendered African landscape. No game has ever provided such freedom of movement!

DUNIA ENGINE

The Dunia Engine was built specifically for Far Cry® 2 by the award-winning Ubisoft Montréal development team. It delivers the most realistic destructible environments, amazing special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storm effects, real-time night-and-day cycle, dynamic music system, non-scripted enemy A.I. and so much more…

REAL-TIME IMMERSION

Real-time story telling, systemic auto-healing, minimal in-game interface are just few of the features that will make you feel the tension of being alone against barbarous warlords that threaten thousands of innocent lives.

WEAPONS OF CHOICE

Choose from a wide range of weapons to make your way to your primary target. Meet the fight head-on with your machine-gun, go berserk with your machete or make stealth kills as a Sniper. If you feel that the atmosphere is not warm enough, light up your flamethrower and let your enemies and everything around them feel the heat.

VEHICLES


Fly, Drive, Run, slide and hover over the huge open world with your glider, trucks, cars, boats and much more.

Zune Wireless Review

Courtesy : http://www.engadget.com/

we've seen the wireless, we know by now what it's capable of: sending tracks to any Zune player in the vicinity, which are then placed in an "inbox," and restricted to 3 plays or 3 days (whichever comes first). We all think it's lame, but apparently it's the best Microsoft could do in terms of sharing. We wish they'd taken a page out of MusicGremlin's book by allowing Zune Pass (unlimited download) members the ability to trade files wirelessly without restriction, but maybe they'll add that in the future. Then again, maybe not -- they're not saying. Whatever, either way we're pretty clear on our feelings about the wireless feature as it stands today; but if we had to make good on our promise to Mom to say something nice or nothing at all, we would definitely mention that sending and receiving music and photos is totally seamless. No configuration was required, no menus traversed. You're prompted to accept a file, and boom, it's done.


For the purposes of this review, we did not scientifically test wireless transfer speeds, but our use was about as expected. Zune transferred an average-sized song in a few seconds; small batches of pictures took about the same amount of time because of the file overhead. Interesting note: when your device is not yet registered with a Zune Tag through setup, the wireless options are totally disabled. (See above for the WiFi-free Zune; note the lack of Community menu item and wireless settings.) We guess they absolutely must keep track of who's transferring what!

Nvidia 8800GT 256-Mbyte Cards to Ship

Courtesy : www.extremetech.com
By ExtremeTech Staff

Cheaper Nvidia GeForce 8800GT cards with just 256 Mbytes of onboard memory are being announced, as Nvidia's answer to AMD's upcoming RV670 processor.

Nvidia confirmed the cards late on Tuesday, and XFX announced its entry, although the company gave its price as 149 euros ($217) rather than in dollars. Nvidia GeForce 8800GT cards with 512 Mbytes of onboard memory, the more common version, typically cost about $280, but are also reportedly in short supply.
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"GeForce 8800 GT 256 MB boards from major add-in card partners are arriving in the next two weeks and should be priced in the $179-$199 range," according to a question-and-answer document released to the press. Partners will include Asus, BFG, EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, XFX and others, Nvidia said.

The cards will contain 112 stream processors running at 600 MHz, with 256-Mbytes of GDDR3 memory that will run anywhere from 700 to 900 MHz, depending upon the add-in-card vendor, according to Nvidia.

Interestingly, Nvidia also notes that the card anticipates DirectX 10.1, but also notes that the upgrade will not be used by most developers. "We pride ourselves on being the first to adopt any important new technology that can improve our games so you would expect us to get with DX10.1 right away but we've looked at it and there's just nothing in it important enough to make it needed, according to Cevat Yerli, the chief executive of Crytek, whose high-performance game "Crysis" ships this week. "So we have no plans to use it at all, not even in the future."

NVIDIA 8800GT Price Drop !

Courtesy : http://www.cdrinfo.com/

The GeForce 8800 GT is defining solid performance per watt and performance value in the video card realm. Here we have a video card that is $100 less than the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB but it performs faster with less wattage. It is perched performance-wise between the GeForce 8800 GTS and GeForce 8800 GTX. The GeForce 8800 GTX is still faster with its greater number of stream processors and a much higher memory bandwidth.


The GeForce 8800 GT however has some interesting specifications, and you cannot deny the fact it beats the 8800 GTS in these newest games. It would seem that the GT is poised to cannibalize the GTS product line. There is really no point in purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTS since the GeForce 8800 GT is less expensive and supplies a better gaming experience. NVIDIA has stated that you will be able to buy GeForce 8800 GTS based video cards through the holiday season and has called today’s debut a hard-launch so we should be looking for etail GT cards immediately.

The GeForce 8800 GT impressed us greatly; it provides a better gameplay experience than the GeForce 8800 GTS for less money. That is a good deal in our book. Given the huge 90nm die size that NVIDIA has been stuck with for the last year, I am sure it is a welcomed product for it as well. Nothing about the core architecture has changed, but NVIDIA was still able to take the GeForce 8 series and manipulate it in a way that it could execute performance between the GTS and GTX in a lower power envelope, and most importantly less money from your pocket. And don’t fool yourself either; NVIDIA is not just being Mr. Nice Guy. It is preparing for a real threat from AMD’s RV670 GPU that is soon to be launched on an even smaller process.


Right now though, the GeForce 8800 GT offers you the best value on the planet when it comes to 3D gaming cards. You won’t be disappointed in its performance, and you won’t be disappointed in the cost. This was a reference-clocked video card; imagine how much faster factory overclocked video cards might perform? We will surely see double width coolers on faster clocked cards. With prices for the 8800 GT in the sub-$300 range you just simply cannot go wrong with the GeForce 8800 GT. The GT is a solid choice in video card value.

- Positive
Very good performance in most tests
Nvidia has upgraded PureVideo HD engine
PCI-e v2.0 certified
Higher performance when you pair two 8800GT cards, in some games
Price is very good, considering the gain in performance!

- Negative
The cooling system needs upgrading if you are into overclocking
Nvidia's SLI drivers need extra work
Availability is slow at the moment for the special editions

Nvidia GeForce 9800GX2 Price.

Courtesy : http://www.tomshardware.com/us/

The expected price: around $449 US. Expected announcement date: February 14, 2008.

The first pictures of what seems to be the GeForce 9800GX2 have just popped up on the web. We now have a good idea of what the card looks like.







We know that the 9800GX2 has 2 printed circuit boards (PCBs), as did the 7950GX2 in its time, two graphics processing units (GPUs) using 65 nm nodes (most likely G92s with 128 stream processors), 1 GB of memory (512 MB for each GPU) and two DVI outputs.

We don't know yet if the GeForce 9800GX2, which is supposed to be 30% faster than the 8800 Ultra, will support Quad SLI configurations.

Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 Only

Courtesy: http://www.tomshardware.com/us/

Sony's PlayStation 3 had a relatively low profile at CES 2008 - in fact, Sony press conference didn't even mention the product once - but the company did take the opportunity to preview what many believe will be the killer app for the console - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. And once again, Sony is insisting the game will only be on the PlayStation 3.

The game was being demoed on a single PS3 at Sony's booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center, and it drew a steady crowd. Metal Gear Solid 4 had become the center of attention for Sony not only because it's anticipated to be the most popular title yet for the console, but also because of persistent rumors that indicate the game will be ported to the Xbox 360; the Metal Gear Solid series has been a longtime exclusive for Sony. Sony still says the rumors are false and that the game is a PS3 exclusive (a nearby monitor said as much, and also said Metal Gear Solid 4 will support the new DualShock 3 controller).

While some news Internet news reports have claimed the Metal Gear Solid 4 demo at CES suffered from frame rate fluctuations, we didn't notice any such issues during gameplay. The demo used the same urban battlefield level as previous demos shown at E for All. Metal Gear Solid 4 features much of the same kind of stealth action of previous MGS games, but there looks to be a few differences for the fourth installment. The third-person view can be moved to a first-person view; in fact at several points during combat the camera zooms in on Solid Snake and resembles the "over the shoulder" view of Resident Evil 4. There's also a stress meter in the top left corner of the screen that replaces the stamina meter from previous titles.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is scheduled for release sometime this spring.