Elite-Gaming-Community

The Humble Voxatron Debut

Posted by {E}Stalker — 2011-11-06T00:02:25-05:00

The Humble Bundle

*--There are only about 9 days remaining on this deal!--*

Pay what you want. If you bought these games separately it would cost around $25 but we are letting you set the price.

All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Be the first to tackle Voxatron -- a voxel-based, old-school-gone-new platform shooter. Pick up your trusty pea gun and shoot your way through more than twenty challenging areas. The included Voxde level editor grants you the ability to create mind-blowing new environments to share with the world. And, as a customer of the Humble Voxatron Debut, you'll receive access to all of Lexaloffle's future updates to Voxatron.

BINDING OF ISAAC

Dive into a twisted basement dungeon in The Binding of Isaac. Get ready for a delicious brew of randomly generated, Legend of Zelda-esque dungeons; Robotron-esque run-and-gun; and action-RPG progression. The recently launched Halloween update adds a ton of content -- a new chapter, new bosses, new enemies, new items, a new character, a new ending, and more! (Stalker recommends this game as a challenging time waster)

Blocks that Matter

Learn new tricks with tetrominoes in Blocks That Matter. In this award-winning, charismatic, platform-puzzler mashup, you play as the Tetrobot, a plucky robotic drill that ***imilates blocks of varying materials and properties, like sand, wood, stone, obsidian, iron, and diamond. After absorbing blocks, you’ll need to recreate them in various tetromino-shaped patterns to solve puzzles and traverse levels.

You can support charity. Choose exactly how your purchase is divided: between the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Child's Play Charity. Also, if you like this deal, a tip to the Humble Bundle itself would be much appreciated!

BattleField 3

Posted by {E}DoNNiE — 2011-07-05T11:14:34-05:00

Developer(s): EA Digital Illusions CE

Publisher(s): Electronic Arts

Series: Battlefield

Engine: Frostbite 2

Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Release date(s): NA October 25, 2011, EU October 28, 2011

Genre(s): First-person shooter, action

Mode(s): Single-player, cooperative, multiplayer

System requirements: Microsoft Windows

Windows Vista or later[1]

DirectX 10 or 11 video card

Team Fortress 2

Posted by {E}DoNNiE — 2011-07-05T11:14:12-05:00

Developer(s) Valve Corporation

Publisher(s) Valve Corporation

Distributor(s) Electronic Arts (retail), Steam (online)

Designer(s) John Cook, Robin Walker

Composer(s) Mike Morasky

Version 1.1.6.1 (28 June 2011[1])

Platform(s) Microsoft Windows[2], Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X

Release date(s) October 9, 2007

Genre(s) First-person shooter

Mode(s) Multiplayer

Rating(s) BBFC: 15, ESRB: M, OFLC: MA15+[6], PEGI: 16+[7]

Media/distribution DVD, Blu-ray Disc, Digital download

System requirements

? See More Details section for requirements

6870 + 6850 review

Posted by {E}STIVnz — 2010-10-25T21:17:44-05:00

All things considered, the Radeon HD 5000 series has gone very well for AMD. When they launched it just over a year ago, they beat NVIDIA to the punch by nearly 6 months and enjoyed a solid term as the kings of the GPU world, with halo parts like the 5870 and 5970 giving them renewed exposure at the high-end of the market while mainstream products like the 5670 redefining the HTPC. Ultimately all good things come to an end though, and as NVIDIA has launched the GeForce 400 series AMD has needed to give up the single-GPU halo and lower prices in order to remain competitive.

But if spring is a period of renewal for NVIDIA, then it’s fall that’s AMD’s chance for renewal. Long before Cypress and the 5000 series even launched, AMD’s engineers had been hard at work at what would follow Cypress. Now a year after Cypress we get to meet the first GPU of the next Radeon family: Barts. With it comes the Radeon HD 6800 series, the culmination of what AMD has learned since designing and launching the 5800 series. AMD may not have a new process to produce chips on this year, but as we’ll see they definitely haven’t run out of ideas or ways to improve their efficiency on the 40nm process.

Launching today are the first two members of AMD’s HD 6000 series. At the top end we have the Radeon HD 6870, a card utilizing a full-fledged version of AMD’s new Barts GPU. The core clock runs at 900MHz, which is driving 32 ROPs and 1120 SPs. Attached to that is 1GB of GDDR5 running at 4.2GHz effective. AMD puts the load TDP at 151W (the same as the Radeon HD 5850) and the idle TDP at 19W, lower than the last generation parts.

Gallery: AMD Radeon HD 6870

Below that is the Radeon HD 6850, which in the long history of 50-parts is utilizing a harvested version of the Barts GPU, which along with a lower load voltage make the card the low-power member of the 6800 family. The 6850 runs at 775MHz and is attached to 960SPs. Like 6870 it has 1GB of GDDR5, this time running at 4GHz effective. With its lower power consumption its load TDP is 127W, and its idle TDP is unchanged from 6870 at 19W.

The Barts GPU at the heart of these cards is the first GPU of AMD’s Northern Islands family. We’ll dive more in to its architecture later, but for now it’s easiest to call it a Cypress derivative. Contrary to the (many) early rumors, it’s still using the same VLIW5 design, cache hierarchy, and ROPs as Cypress. There are some very notable changes compared to Cypress, but except for tessellation these are more about quality and features than it is about performance.

Compared to Cypress, Barts is a notably smaller GPU. It’s still made on TSMC’s finally-mature 40nm process, but compared to Cypress AMD has shaved off 450 million transistors, bringing the die size down from 334mm2 to 255mm2. Much of this is achieved through a reduction in the SIMD count, but as we’ll see when we talk about architecture, it’s one of many tricks. As a result of AMD’s efforts, Barts at 255mm2 is right in the middle of what AMD considers their sweet spot. As you may recall from the 5870/Cypress launch, Cypress missed the sweet spot in the name of features and performance, which made it a powerful chip but also made it more expensive to produce (and harder to fabricate) than AMD would have liked. Barts is a return to the sweet spot, and more generally a return to the structure AMD operated on with the 4800 series.

Gallery: AMD Radeon HD 6850

With a focus on the sweet spot, it should come as no surprise that AMD is also focusing on costs and pricing. Realistically the 6800 series composes a lower tier of cards than the 5800 series – the performance is a bit lower, and so is the pricing. With a smaller GPU, cheaper GDDR5, and cheaper/fewer components, AMD is able to practically drive some members of the 6800 series down below $200, something that wasn’t possible with Cypress.

For today’s launch AMD is pricing the Radeon HD 6870 at $239, and the Radeon HD 6850 at $179. This is a hard launch, and boards should be available by the time you’re reading this article (or shortly thereafter). The launch quantities are, as AMD puts it, in the “tens of thousands” for the entire 6800 series. Unfortunately they are not providing a breakdown based on card, so we don’t have a solid idea of how much of each card will be available. We do know that all the initial 6870 cards are going to be relabeled reference cards, while the 6850 is launching with a number of custom designs – and in fact a reference 6850 may be hard to come by. We believe this is a sign that most of the card supply will be 6850s with far fewer 6870s being on the market, but this isn’t something we can back up with numbers. Tens of thousands of units may also mean that all the cards are in short supply, as cheaper cards have a tendency to fly off the shelves even faster than expensive cards – and the 5800 series certainly set a record there.

The rest of AMD’s products remain unchanged. The 5700 continues as-is, while the 5800 will be entering its twilight weeks. We’re seeing prices on the cards come down a bit, particularly on the 5850 which is caught between the 6800 cards in performance, but officially AMD isn’t changing the 5800 series pricing. Even with that, AMD expects the remaining card supply to only last through the end of the year.

Countering AMD’s launch, NVIDIA has repriced their own cards. The GTX 460 768MB stays at $169, while the GTX 460 1GB will be coming down to $199, and the GTX 470 is coming down to a mind-boggling $259 (GF100 is not a cheap chip to make, folks!). NVIDIA is also banking on factory overclocked GTX 460 1GB cards, which we’ll get to in a bit. Seeing as how AMD delivered a rude surprise for NVIDIA when they dropped the price of the 5770 series ahead of the GTS 450 launch last month, NVIDIA is a least trying to return the favor.

Ultimately this means we’re looking at staggered pricing. NVIDIA and AMD do not have any products that are directly competing at the same price points: at every $20 you’re looking at switching between AMD and NVIDIA.

www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-review/

AMD Radeon HD 6870
AMD Radeon HD 6850
AMD Radeon HD 5870
AMD Radeon HD 5850
AMD Radeon HD 4870

Stream Processors
1120
960
1600
1440
800

Texture Units
56
48
80
72
40

ROPs
32
32
32
32
16

Core Clock
900MHz
775MHz
850MHz
725MHz
750MHz

Memory Clock
1.05GHz (4.2GHz effective) GDDR5
1GHz (4GHz effective) GDDR5
1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective) GDDR5
1GHz (4GHz effective) GDDR5
900MHz (3600MHz effective) GDDR5

Memory Bus Width
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit

Frame Buffer
1GB
1GB
1GB
1GB
1GB

FP64
N/A
N/A
1/5
1/5
N/A

Transistor Count
1.7B
1.7B
2.15B
2.15B
956M

Manufacturing Process
TSMC 40nm
TSMC 40nm
TSMC 40nm
TSMC 40nm
TSMC 55nm

Price Point
$239
$179
~$349
~$229
N/A

Sandy Bridge Preview

Posted by {E}STIVnz — 2010-09-01T22:50:55-05:00

The mainstream quad-core market has been neglected ever since we got Lynnfield in 2009. Both the high end and low end markets saw a move to 32nm, but if you wanted a mainstream quad-core desktop processor the best you could get was a 45nm Lynnfield from Intel. Even quad-core Xeons got the 32nm treatment.That's all going to change starting next year. This time it's the m***es that get the upgrade first. While Nehalem launched with expensive motherboards and expensive processors, the next tock in Intel's architecture cadence is aimed right at the middle of the market. This time, the ultra high end users will have to wait - if you want affordable quad-core, if you want the successor to Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge is it.

Sandy Bridge is the next major architecture from Intel. What Intel likes to call a tock. The first tock was Conroe, then Nehalem and now SB. In between were the ticks - Penryn, Westmere and after SB we'll have Ivy Bridge, a 22nm shrink of Sandy.

Did I mention we have one?

While Intel is still a few weeks away from releasing Sandy Bridge performance numbers at IDF, we managed to spend some time with a very healthy sample and run it through a few of our tests to get a sneak peak at what's coming in Q1 2011.
New Naming
The naming isn’t great. It’s an extension of what we have today. Intel is calling Sandy Bridge the 2nd generation Core i7, i5 and i3 processors. As a result, all of the model numbers have a 2 preceding them.

For example, today the fastest LGA-1156 processor is the Core i7 880. When Sandy Bridge launches early next year, the fastest LGA-1155 processor will be the Core i7 2600. The two indicates that it’s a 2nd generation Core i7, and the 600 is the model number.

Sandy Bridge CPU Comparison
Base Frequency L3 Cache Cores/Threads Max Single Core Turbo Intel HD Graphics Frequency/Max Turbo Unlocked TDP
Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4GHz 8MB 4 / 8 3.8GHz 850 / 1350MHz Y 95W
Intel Core i7 2600 3.4GHz 8MB 4 / 8 3.8GHz 850 / 1350MHz N 95W
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.7GHz 850 / 1100MHz Y 95W
Intel Core i5 2500 3.3GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.7GHz 850 / 1100MHz N 95W
Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.4GHz 850 / 1100MHz N 95W
Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz 3MB 2 / 4 N/A 850 / 1100MHz N 65W
Intel Core i3 2100 3.1GHz 3MB 2 / 4 N/A 850 / 1100MHz N 65W
The names can also have a letter after four digit model number. You’re already familiar with one: K denotes an unlocked SKU (similar to what we have today). There are two more: S and T. The S processors are performance optimized lifestyle SKUs, while the T are power optimized.

The S parts run at lower base frequencies than the non-S parts (e.g. a Core i7 2600 runs at 3.40GHz while a Core i7 2600S runs at 2.80GHz), however the max turbo frequency is the same for both (3.8GHz). GPU clocks remain the same but I’m not sure if they have the same number of execution units. All of the S parts run at 65W while the non-S parts are spec’d at 95W.

Sandy Bridge CPU Comparison
Base Frequency L3 Cache Cores/Threads Max Single Core Turbo Intel HD Graphics Frequency/Max Turbo TDP
Intel Core i7 2600S 2.8GHz 8MB 4 / 8 3.8GHz 850 / 1100MHz 65W
Intel Core i5 2500S 2.7GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.7GHz 850 / 1100MHz 65W
Intel Core i5 2500T 2.3GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.3GHz 650 / 1250MHz 45W
Intel Core i5 2400S 2.5GHz 6MB 4 / 4 3.3GHz 850 / 1100MHz 65W
Intel Core i5 2390T 2.7GHz 3MB 2 / 4 3.5GHz 650 / 1100MHz 35W
Intel Core i3 2100T 2.5GHz 3MB 2 / 4 N/A 650 / 1100MHz 35W
The T parts run at even lower base frequencies and have lower max turbo frequencies. As a result, these parts have even lower TDPs (35W and 45W).

I suspect the S and T SKUs will be mostly used by OEMs to keep power down. Despite the confusion, I like the flexibility here. Presumably there will be a price premium for these lower wattage parts.

R.I.P. {E}HARLEY{HHR}

Posted by DoNNiE — 2009-10-13T19:09:29-05:00

Rest In Peace Harley. You will be missed dearly.
Mark Mezzoni
Feb. 11, 1956 - Oct. 9, 2009

Wolfenstein

Posted by {E}DoNNiE — 2008-08-13T19:05:18-05:00

Third time lucky for the Third Reich

Words: Tim Edwards, PC Gamer UK