AMD extends 3D card lead with high-end ATI Radeon HD 5970

AMD extends 3D card lead with high-end ATI Radeon 5970

AMD announced its newest high-end graphics card this morning, the dual-chip ATI Radeon HD 5970. Available today for $599, the new high-end card features two clock speed-reduced Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single graphics card.

Based on the Radeon HD 5000-series chip design, the new Radeon HD 5970 card has the same features common to AMD's other new 3D cards, including DirectX 11 support, GPU computing via ATI's Stream technology, as well as support for up to three monitors via a technology AMD calls Eyefinity.

Unique to the Radeon HD 5970, AMD has budgeted overclocking headroom into the cooling hardware and unlocked the clock speed multipliers for both the GPU and the graphics memory. Included software will let you overclock the card, and AMD has also included multiple fail-safes to prevent overheating or damage to the card or your system.

Overclocked or otherwise, the Radeon HD 5970 performed well in various review from around the Web, taking over as the fastest graphics card currently available. It trumps Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 on almost every test we found. This isn't a surprise given that Nvidia's top single-chip card fell to the AMD's single-chip Radeon HD 5870 when it debuted last month, but it's particularly interesting because Nvidia's answer, the DirectX 11-based FERMI, isn't due until at least the first quarter of next year.
source:http://cnet.com

Dragon Age: Origins UK Review

Dragon Age: Origins UK Review

Choice has long been a buzz word used by developers claiming their game allows players to take any path they wish, that decisions they make have an important impact on how the story pans out. While some games have come close to fulfilling these promises, BioWare aim to edge even nearer with Dragon Age:Origins Indeed, BioWare is so keen to demonstrate how choices really do make difference for the latest showing it has rigged up to PCs alongside each other, each playing out the same scenarios but with two different teams. The first is led by a human noble supported by three other characters, one of which is Morgan, a red-hot mage whose smouldering look is matched only by her fiery attitude. Meanwhile, the other team is also headed up by a more amiable spellcaster, but the dominant force is definitely a brute called Sten, who as part of his back story killed an entire family with his bare hands.



The first scenario will be one familiar to anyone well versed in role-playing lore; both teams need to cross a lake but, unsurprisingly, there's an uncooperative guard standing in their way. Both teams include a Grey Wardens – guardians of the realm who should have the right to pass - but the guard is unimpressed by their credentials and stands firm. At this point the two conversations pan out in much the same way, but when the guard spots Morgan his tact changes, claiming a girl like her wouldn't want to go to a dark place like the tower. What he didn't bargain on was a bucketful of Morgan's attitude, with the hot-tempered wizard threatening to mercilessly tear off his limbs and gouge out his eyes, prompting the guard to let them pass. Playing as the other team, with vicious killer Sten towering over the guard you'd expect the same encounter to play out in much the same
way, but rather than ripping the guards arms off Sten offers him cookies. Hungry from standing in the cold for hours on end, the guard gratefully accepts the gift and lets them pass with not so much as a harsh word spoken.



BioWare is keen to point out that this is just one small way decisions change the way the story progresses, and that the situation could've panned out any number of ways, depending on the characters in your team and also the direction you steer the conversation in. For example, if you fail to sweet talk the guard into letting you pass you can always resort to violence, but this will almost certainly impact on what happens further down the line.
source:http://ign.com

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition

Fallout 3 is a special videogame. It's an open-world role-playing game that delivers an experience unlike anything on the market right now. It's a gripping and expansive showcase of how much depth and excitement can be packed into one videogame, and it does justice to the Fallout franchise. This sequel is the first made by Bethesda, the developers responsible for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You don't need to play any of their past games or any previous Fallout games to enjoy this one. It stands on its own as a memorable and well-crafted videogame. The Fallout universe paints a picture of a dystopian future. It exists in what people on the cusp of the atomic revolution in the 1950s saw as the sci-fi world of tomorrow…if several thousand nuclear bombs were dropped on it. It's a quaint sci-fi view of a future filled with atomic cars, robot servants, and incredibly basic computer terminals. A nuclear war has taken away most of these technological comforts, providing the backdrop for a game with a dreary, desperate atmosphere filled with glib and dark humor. It's a world that is both fantastic and somehow believable. And it is one that's exciting to explore.

You play as the Vault Dweller, a blank slate for you to write your story on. The game begins with your birth and then quickly moves through childhood with snapshots of pivotal events, such as the day you get your Pip-Boy 3000. It's a cleverly veiled character creation and tutorial sequence that sets the backdrop of the story. You live in Vault 101, a bunker designed to keep its occupants alive through the nuclear war that ravaged the surface. However, this vault didn't reopen when the war finished and as the opening cinematic informs you, it is here you will die because nobody ever enters or leaves Vault 101. But that wouldn't make for a very interesting game. At the end of your childhood, you awake to alarms and confusion. Your father has opened the vault entrance and taken flight. The fragile existence of the other vault inhabitants has been shattered. Nothing will ever be the same, especially for you since it is your charge to leave the relative comfort of Vault 101 and search for your father out in the wastes.

source:http://ign.com

Call of duty:Modern warfare 2 Trailer

Call of duty:Modern warfare 2 Trailer



Release Date Nov 2009

Norton AntiVirus 2010-Pc review

Norton AntiVirus 2010-Pc review

NAV2010 successfully scanned system in around a minute, which by means of comparison is only around 10% faster than the previous version of Norton 360, but significantly quicker than most other rivals. As Norton gets used to your system however, these times are reduced, and in fact we very impressed to see this drop to just 10 seconds during subsequent scans.
Part of the reason for this and one of the biggest improvements to this new version comes in the form of Quorum and the Norton Insight tools. The former represents a major breakthrough in reputation-based security and helps the software adopt a more cautious approach to managing "unknown" files, as well as offering the sort of scan-time improvements illustrated above.

Quorum uses reputation information to help guard against new and unknown threats and by building a database of Norton Community users it can help predict how safe a file is and therefore anticipate the arrival of potentially harmful data. It’s also possible to view the trust level, resource usage and discovery date of everything running on your system, and by selecting a file you’re provided with more details on its origins and activity.
System Insight is another useful tool and provides an overview of recent activity including downloads, scans, installed programs and threat detections to help more advanced users view and interpret recent activity and the correlation between this information, impact on performance and the emergence of threats. It’s also possible to view CPU and memory performance graphs and identify which programs are responsible for highest usage, allowing users to detect and diagnose resource-hogs and potential reasons for reduced performance.
Admittedly these tools may not appeal to all users but Norton does a great job of making this wealth of information as accessible and easy to interpret as possible, and those who do appreciate having the tools available to do a bit of detective work will find them invaluable.

Norton AntiVirus 2010 is an excellent progression for the series, offering performance improvements, peace of mind and being very easy to use. The only thing that has prevented it from getting a higher score here is the price. At £39.99 it costs around the same as more comprehensive security suites on offer from rivals, and most would consider this a lot to pay for an "antivirus-only" product.
In comparison to Norton Internet Security 2010, which is only £10 more, NAV omits a firewall, identity protection, anti-spam and security for home and wireless networking, so in this light we’d be inclined to recommend spending a bit extra on the more comprehensive suite, which also offers the benefits of all of these new features.


source:http://www.pocket-lint.com

Intel Core i7 975 CPU

Intel Core i7 975 CPU

Intel released their Core i7 family late last year. At the time there were three models, the Core i7 920, the Core i7 940 and the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. Intel CPUs have long been known for their high performance relative to the competition and are at the leading edge in terms of process technology, transistors on the die and features. Their main competition for the CPU market, AMD, has lagged behind in performance and has had to compete in the price/performance category to even stay in the game.

Intel is launching their second series of Core i7 processors in the form of the Core i7 950 and Core i7 975 which is the fastest available Intel CPU on the market today at 3.33GHz. This processor uses the same core features and design as the previous Core i7 CPUs taking up the $999 spot on their lineup previously taken up by the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. With unlocked multipliers and the ability to overclock automatically, it should be an interesting ride in the least.

Intel manufactures their Core i7 series on a 45nm process at their Fabs. The Core i7 CPU has 731 million transistors on a die 263mm2 in size. The transistor count and die size is the same for all Core i7 CPUs from the 975 to the 920. These are the first true quad core CPUs from Intel, with previous Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs having two processor cores on each of two packages on the same processor.

Each core on the Core i7 975XE has 32KB of L1 Data and 32KB of L1 Instruction cache, bringing the total to 256KB for all four cores. Level 2 Cache is 256KB per core bringing the total to 1MB on the Nehelam core. Intel's Core i7 processors have a shared “Smart Cache” of 8MB that feeds all four cores on the processor. The Core i7 family has HyperThreading which allows the CPU to work on two software threads at a time, effectively doubling the number of cores. A Core i7 can work on 8 threads.

One major change with the Core i7 is the memory controller has moved to the processor rather than the motherboard's Southbridge as on previous Intel CPUs. The memory controller on the CPU now supports Triple-Channel memory, which allows the Core i7 to have increased memory bandwidth over similarly clocked dual-channel memory. The maximum bandwidth on DDR3-1333MHz in Triple Channel mode is 25GB/second.

source:http://www.motherboards.org