Rising Kingdoms Demo

A playable demo is now available for Rising Kingdoms, the upcoming fantasy-themed real-time strategy game in the works at Haemimont Games. The demo is a 166 MB download, which can be found on Gameguru Mania, Gamer's Hell, and Worthplaying.

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 09:24AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Stronghold 2 Patch

Getting you ready for the weekend, Firefly Studios has released a new patch (v1.1) for their hit strategy title, Stronghold 2. Here's a list of what's new: # User selectable invasions added to Free Build # A few campaign chapters have been made easier # Increased feedback of impending invasions # Formations now place shields at the front and weaker units at the back of the formation # Non-missile troops now respond to more aggressively to missile attacks # Additional speech added to Carter Post system # A.I. more effective at using mantels, cats and burning logs # Health bars on buildings added # All units of one type are selectable by double-clicking # Advanced patrols implemented # LAN support for Multiplayer added # Various bug fixes implemented FileShack 3DGamers WorthPlaying

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 09:22AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Star Wars: Battlefront II Preview

PC.IGN has slapped up a preview on Pandemic Studios' upcoming multiplayer shooter, Star Wars: Battlefront II, after getting a chance to check this sucker out hands-on. Here's a nugget on the vehicles available: Each of the four factions will include four controllable flight vessels (not counting map specific vehicles). Imperials have access to the Tie Fighter, Tie Interceptor, Tie Bomber and Transport, which somewhat resembles Larry Holland's Missile Boat from Tie Fighter. The Republican Army uses the ARC-70, Jedi Starfighter, Republican Gunship transport (from EPII) and one other ship we have not yet seen. Rebels have access to the A-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wing and miscellaneous transport. Only the Confederacy of Independent systems is unaccounted for thus far. Sadly, the cockpit modes for all these craft will not make it in this year.

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 09:21AM GMT +10 by BenSW

ATI R520 3DMark05 Benchmarks

Thanks to the Chinese website PCPOP and HardwareOC! we have the first benchmarks for ATi's R520 GPU using Futuremarks 3DMark05!

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 08:23AM GMT +10 by erock

Xbox 360 Graphics Chip Patent?

Some news from TeamXbox this morning. "A new patent from ATI Technologies, Microsoft's graphics chip partner for the Xbox 360, might be the final piece of the puzzle that confirm the specs leaked last year." Check It

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 08:18AM GMT +10 by erock

Video Card Reviews: Sunday

ATi Radeon X850 XT-PE AGP review by HardOCP Asus GeForce 6800 PCIe review by HardwareZone GeForce 6600, 6600 GT review by A1-Electronics Gigabyte Radeon X800 review by Bjorn3D Gigabyte 3D1 Dual GeForce 6600 GT review by GDHardware GeForce 6800 Ultra vs Radeon X850 XT by PCModdingMy Gigabyte GeForce 6600 review by Techniz.co.uk MSI GeForce 6600 GT review by Viperlair

Posted: April. 24, 2005 @ 08:11AM GMT +10 by erock

Half-Life 2: Afermath

Planet HalfLife has an article on HalfLife2: Aftermath. Half-Life 2: Aftermath is due in late summer. The episode continues the adventures of Gordon Freeman, and begins immediately following the conclusion of HL2. It will be available via Steam and may appear in retail boxes as well. It is not slated to appear at E3. Lost Coast is slated to appear in the Games for Windows areas at E3, and is scheduled for release during the summer months. Half-Life 2 Xbox, featured on this month's issue of the Official Xbox Magazine, is slated for completion in August and will be shown in Microsoft's booth at E3.

Posted: April. 21, 2005 @ 10:51PM GMT +10 by erock

ATI Radeon X850 XT-PE AGP

With the RADEON X850 XT-PE, ATI has expanded its product lineup offering up their fastest video card for the AGP platform. In this evaluation we put it up against the fastest GeForce 6800 Ultra-based video card in DOOM 3, FarCry, Half Life 2, Need for Speed 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Chronicles of Riddick, and EverQuest II to see which one games best. Review @ HardOCP

Posted: April. 21, 2005 @ 10:49PM GMT +10 by erock

AMD May Skip DDR2

Some more DDR2 news on the front today... It is claimed that AMD may skip DDR2 altogether! In our Industry Insider Report from yesterday, we pointed out that DDR2 would take some time to mature in the market until AMD adopts the standard. This is certainly the case in the enthusiast market; AMD is the force behind DDR and will remain that way until it adopts a newer standard. However, a recent discussion with an industry source seems to hint otherwise. Although such information is never set in stone, educated speculations from industry insiders usually tend to be somewhere close to the final plans of a particular company. Read the entire article at CoolTechZone

Posted: April. 21, 2005 @ 10:47PM GMT +10 by erock

Intel Knew DDR2 was Poor Design

We all know how DDR2 is struggling to keep up with DDR, which in turn makes Intel struggle against AMD who has better performing microprocessors for the gaming and enthusiast crowd. Although Intel has managed to be "successful" with its latest generation of hardware in the OEM segment, thanks to Dell, majority of the enthusiasts tend to stay far away from Intel’s latest platform due to an unfortunate performance hit with newer standards and technologies. Read More

Posted: April. 21, 2005 @ 10:44PM GMT +10 by erock

Video Card Reviews: Thursday

Asus GeForce 6800 GT PCIe review by GDHardware Chaintech GeForce 6800 GT review by HTPCnews Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro review by 3dAccelerated Connect3D Radeon X800 XL review by ClubOverclocker

Posted: April. 21, 2005 @ 10:40PM GMT +10 by erock

AMD's Chip Production

Toms Hardware checks out what happens behind the AMD chip production closed doors...

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:29AM GMT +10 by erock

Pentium EE 840 Dual-Core Chips Out

Intel Corp., the world’s largest producer of microprocessors, on Monday said at least three makers of computers had started selling personal computers based on the company’s first ever dual-core chips. “Computer manufacturers Alienware, Dell and Velocity Micro today started selling desktop PCs and workstations based on Intel's first dual-core processor-based platform. The dual-core processor-based systems are geared for computer hobbyists and entertainment enthusiasts,” the company said in its statement. Intel's first dual-core processor-based platform includes the Intel Pentium processor Extreme Edition 840 running at 3.20GHz and the Intel 955X Express chipset. The Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 840 is priced at $999 and the Intel 955X Express Chipset is priced at $50 in 1000-unit quantities. Read More

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:27AM GMT +10 by erock

Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2

Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 with GeForce Go 6800 Ultra: Mobile gaming has never looked so good. Read inside to see what Dell is bringing to the table with the new Inspiron XPS Gen 2 using the new NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra GPU. Could this be the best gaming notebook ever? Check out the article on HardOCP

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:26AM GMT +10 by erock

Radeon X800XL Overclocking

Bit-Tech overclocked three video cards and came up with some interesting results whereby the Club3D Radeon X800 XL overclocked considerably further than both MSI’s and Sapphire’s, which incidentally topped out at roughly the same clock speed. There initial thoughts were that the Radeon X800 XL really benefited from the additional power connector when overclocking, but cooling could come in to play with overclocking the video cards individually. Also, there is no way to guarantee that both the MSI and Sapphire Radeon X800 XL’s cores were as receptive to overclocking as the core from Club3D. Read More

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:25AM GMT +10 by erock

AGP vs PCI-E

TechConnect Magazine have an article up which compares AGP based cards to the newer PCI-E standard: With its increased bus bandwidth, PCI-E should allow the latest generation of graphics cards - almost little PCs within a PC, nowadays – to fully unleash their polygon crunching, rendering and painting abilities. It is a new technology, though, and like its siblings (DDR2 and SATA) it’s aimed at providing performance increases in the long run development of components, rather than in the immediate application of current hardware. Check it

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:22AM GMT +10 by erock

Doom 3 Graphics Mod

A member of the nVnews forums has made a Doom3 Graphics mod which further enhances the already incredible graphics in the game! Check out this link

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:20AM GMT +10 by erock

Xbox 360 Backward Compatiable?

Teamxecuter spent today doing a little more digging. It seems the Xbox 360 will use AES Encryption (XeCryptAesCbc), executable files are XEX and not XBE (xshell.xex) and after studying the kernel there is everything in place for backwards compatibility.

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:17AM GMT +10 by erock

Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4 billion

The Inquirer reports that Adobe has snapped up Macromedia for $3.4 billion. It's an obvious fit. The deal is being accounted for by shares and is expected to close by the end of this year. Stephen Elop, Macromedia's CEO will become president of worldwide field operations at Adobe.

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:09AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA tapes out G70 silicon

Apparently it has been heard through the grapevine that NVIDIA taped out its next-generation graphics chip codenamed G70. Whispers say that it's in good shape and that the first silicon is up and running nicely. Our pro-Nvidia sources believe that it will end up faster than ATi's R520, but ATiers will pooh-pooh that claim, for sure. We don't have much information about specifics but we strongly believe that the G70 will be released very close to the R520's shipping date. Read More

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:05AM GMT +10 by erock

Video Card Reviews: Tuesday

Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro review by 3dAccelerated Connect3D Radeon X800 XL review by ClubOverclocker Asus GeForce 6800 GT PCIe review by GDHardware GeCube Radeon X800 XL review by Tweakers Australia

Posted: April. 20, 2005 @ 12:00AM GMT +10 by erock

Pariah Interview

GameBiz Australia has a new Pariah video interview, asking Digital Extremes founder James Schmalz about his company's upcoming sci-fi shooter. Check it

Posted: April. 18, 2005 @ 10:45PM GMT +10 by erock

Pariah Multiplayer Demo

Digital Extremes has released the playable demo for Pariah, offering the first opportunity to try out their imminent futuristic first-person shooter. This multiplayer demo contains a Team Deathmatch map titled Twisted, a Capture The Flag map called Recoil, and a Front Line Assault map named Survivor, along with three different vehicles and all multiplayer weapons. Download

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 11:28AM GMT +10 by erock

Firefox 1.0.3 Released

Mozilla has released version 1.0.3 of their popular Firefox browser, fixing several security issues which were recently uncovered. Download

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 11:21AM GMT +10 by erock

Video Card Reviews: Sunday

HIS Radeon X850 XT-PE 256MB AGP review by 3dGameMan Sapphire Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCIe review by XtremeComputing Sapphire Radeon X850 XT PCIe review by Bjorn3D

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 11:02AM GMT +10 by erock

Steam Reveals Hardware Choices Of Gamers

As part of one its recent Steam updates, Valve asked gamers to fill out a new survey geared to find out what hardware their users are using. With close to 900,000 submissions returned, we can start to get a clear idea of the hardware choices of gamers. For instance, who do gamers like more, ATi or nVidia? It's actually a pretty close race with nVidia at 51% and ATi at 41%. However, the most used card is from the ATi 9800 series, most likely due to all the gamers who bought the card to get a free copy of Half-Life 2. As for processors, it's even closer, with Intel at 52.5% and AMD at 47.5%. Another interesting stat would be that 86% of users have DVD drives. Looks like it's now a good time to start releasing those games on DVD!

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 07:55AM GMT +10 by BenSW

First Half-Life 2: Aftermath Screenshot

Valve have released their first official screenshot from the Half-Life 2 expansion pack, Aftermath, to titillate us all. Click here

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 07:54AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Halo 2 Updates

We finally give up a date for the autoupdate that will kill cheating, fix glitches and do some cool stuff you totally didn't expect. Read this update to have your expectations rocked hard. Click here for details.

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 07:52AM GMT +10 by BenSW

New Quake 4 Details Emerge

Publisher Activision and developer Raven Software have finally released a new information update and one new screenshot for Quake 4, the next game in the well-known shooter series. GameSpot

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 07:45AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Area 51 secrets unveiled by Google

AN ENTERPRISING surfer has found a way to harness Google's new mapping facility to uncover the secrets of Area 51. The American military base, in the Nevada desert, is steeped in history and rumour - allegedly being the place where all of Uncle Sam's work with extra-terrestrials and physics-defying technology takes place. The place is so heavily guarded, it's almost impossible to get within miles of it. However, with satellite map technology, you can uncover some pretty spectacular pictures of the base, including some interesting structures in and around it that can't quite be identified. If you want to go take a peek around Area 51 for yourself, have a look at this ilustrated guide here. It's a fascinating read. Source: TheInquirer

Posted: April. 17, 2005 @ 07:43AM GMT +10 by BenSW