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RIFT beta powow with Scott Hartsman
This is, by any measure, a busy week for RIFT. Fresh off the second beta event, Trion Worlds has dropped the NDA for the game and announced a third beta to take place over the holidays. As the process speeds exponentially faster toward launch, Scott Hartsman and his team have a white-knuckled grip on RIFT for all the bumps, shimmies, dips and hills that such a high-profile title offers. Even with a heaping amount of work on its plate, the team has been willing to share its passion for RIFT with the press and community. During this slight lull between betas two and three, Hartsman sat down with us over the phone to jaw about lessons learned from the beta, why Trion has dropped the NDA, how RIFT's already made history, and when we might be seeing this game on the shelves. Hit the jump and let's do this thing. As Hartsman is fond of saying about the game, "S**t just got real."
ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video)
Promising "visually rich user experiences not previously seen in consumer electronics devices," ARM has introduced its latest embedded GPU architecture, Mali-T604, at its Technology Conference 2010 in California today. Though we're unlikely to see it in devices any time soon, the introduction means that the new design is available to ARM licensees -- and notably, the company points out that partner Samsung will be the first to get hooked up. Considering Sammy competes in the high-end embedded system-on-chip space already with its ARM-based Hummingbird line of cores, adding in the Mali-T604 is probably the next logical step for them. ARM says that it's designed "specifically" with the needs of general purpose GPU computing in mind and includes extensive support both for OpenCL and DirectX, so look for some insane number-crunching capabilities on your next-generation phone, tablet, and set-top box. Follow the break for ARM's press release. Update: We sat down with ARM's Jem Davies to get some more details about the new Mali, and discovered it's only the first of several potential next-gen GPUs to come as part of the Midgard platform -- while this particular processor is available with up to four shader cores, successors might have more. The T604 itself is no slouch, though, as it can theoretically deliver two to five times the performance of the company's existing Mali 400 GPUs core for core and clock for clock -- which themselves run circles around the PowerVR SGX 540 competition if you take ARM at its word. Davies told us that not only does the Mali-T604 do DirectX, it supports the game-friendly DirectX11 as well as the always-popular OpenGL ES 2.0, and will appear in an system-on-a-chip together with an ARM Cortex-A15 "Eagle" CPU, when both are eventually baked into silicon several years down the road. Of course, in the eyes of marketers the future is always now, so get a look at conceptual uses (hint: augmented reality) for ARM's new Mali right after the break. Additional reporting by Sean Hollister
Final Fantasy XIV launches benchmark application
Curious as to whether or not your computer will be able to handle Final Fantasy XIV? We're due for an exclusive interview with Square-Enix in the very near future at E3, but that's focusing on game mechanics and story details. Luckily, much like Final Fantasy XI before, Square has made an official benchmark program available for prospective players. But it's more involved than its predecessor, allowing you to select from any of the game's races as well as supporting a test for high-definition displays. The download itself is being hosted on NVIDIA's site, at a fairly reasonable 172 megabyte download. Once you have the program downloaded (and DirectX 9.0c installed, but that's more or less a given in this day and age), it runs without any complications and produces a numerical score after it runs through tests. Anything above a score of 1500 will be able to run the game just fine, but a look at the official rundown is well worth the time -- to see how much upgrading you'll have to do before Final Fantasy XIV's launch if nothing else.
ATI Radeon HD 5450 focuses on multimedia features, neglects gaming
It's rare to see a rumor -- hell, even a roadmap -- pinpoint the timing of new releases quite so accurately, but our earlier report of ATI refreshing the middle and lower parts of its lineup turned out to be bang on. Following in the footsteps of the HD 5670, we have the Radeon HD 5450, which drags the entry price for DirectX 11 and Eyefinity multi-monitor support all the way down to $50. Course, the processing power inside isn't going to be on par with its elder siblings, but that also means the 5450 will run cool enough to be offered with half-height, passive cooling solutions as seen above. ATI's focus here is on media PCs, with a DisplayPort, um... port, alongside HDMI 1.3a, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreaming support. For the money, you really can't argue with all this extra multimedia juice, but if you must have benchmarks to sate your soul, check out the early reviews below -- they're full of bar charts and performance comparisons, don't you know.
NVIDIA Fermi / GF100 architectural details revealed
Fermi hardware might still be two months away, but NVIDIA has done the sage thing and released some tantalizing numbers and architectural details to keep the fanboys chirping in the meantime. The GF100 will signal the end of tiresome rebadging and clock speed massaging, and early adopters will find 512 CUDA cores, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface sprawled across three billion transistors. Big changes are also afoot in how the card will do its work, with a reorganization toward a more parallel workflow leading to promises of up to eight times better geometry performance than on the GT200. HardOCP reports that anti-aliasing results have improved "notably," while the video we've got stashed after the break for you shows the GF100 beating the GTX 285 handily in a Far Cry 2 benchmark. Still, the PC Perspective crew expressed some apprehension about the massive die size and how it could impact yields given the still young 40nm production process -- a sentiment echoed by other publications who questioned whether NVIDIA would not have been better off trying for a less ambitious, more gaming-oriented board. We should all know that answer soon enough. Read - AnandTech Read - Hot Hardware Read - PC Perspective Read - HardOCP Read - Tom's Hardware
Darkfall offers up community Q&A session
Darkfall has pegged itself from the beginning as a niche title, focusing on a brand of open PvP that doesn't necessarily appeal to everyone. And it's certainly handled that title with aplomb, earning our staff pick for best PvP in a 2009 MMO. But one of the most important aspects of its existence as a niche game is a strong sense of community among the players, a goal that Aventurine has been meeting more than adequately. Tasos Flambouras, Claus Grovdal and Kjetil Helland recently took part in a question-and-answer session, with the results just posted for all of the game's players to see and enjoy. Summarizing the breadth of the questions and details released is difficult at best. The game's third large content update, preliminarily named "Darkfall 2010," is discussed in depth, and it promises a variety of changes and improvements. Aside from graphical improvements such as DirectX 11 support, it promises to add a variety of new crafting items and an armor dye system. The developers are also keeping a close watch on PvP hotspots and balance, as well as promising to expand the game's specializations and diversify player skills. Read through the full Q&A for a great deal of information about what's promised and coming soon. [ Thanks to Paragus for the tip! ]
ATI Radeon HD 5670 brings DirectX 11 and Eyefinity to the budget-minded market
AMD and ATI have got yet another GPU contender under their sleeve, and this one's got quite a one-two punch. The Radeon HD 5670 can boast DirectX 11 and Eyefinity support are for a suggested price less than one Benjamin Franklin. The usual suspects have weighed in on the card, and the consensus is that this is a "solid value" that outperforms its analogous NVIDIA GeForce GT 240. That's not exactly an A+ grade, but we weren't expecting it to go toe-to-toe with its older brothers costing hundreds of dollars apiece. AnandTech also points out that some DX11-compliant games (e.g. Battleforge, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) couldn't pull off manageable framerates. Hit up the source links for more thorough analysis, and join us after the break for the official presser. One last word of advice, as noted by TweakTown: make sure the model you pick up uses GDDR5 (instead of GDDR3), as it could make a world of difference. %Gallery-83101%
ATI serves up DirectX 11-compatible Mobility Radeon GPUs, helps nerds fall in love
DirectX 11 has been chewed up and spit out by desktop GPUs over the past few months, but until CES 2010, laptops at large were left out of the raving. This week, AMD has introduced what it's calling the world's first mobile graphics with DX11 compatibility, and the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 -- which just so happens to be featured in ASUS' recently revealed G73jh -- is leading the way. The HD 5800, HD 5700, HD 5600 and HD 5400 series are all new at the show, and each one comes with baked in support for ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and helping tech-adoring geeks find their soulmates (as is clearly shown above). Hit the source link for more details on each, and figure on seeing these filter out to new ultraportables, mainstream rigs and gaming lappies in the seconds, days and weeks ahead.
NVIDIA Fermi pushed back to March, ATI prepping midrange refresh for early Q1?
Considering the present date, it's no longer a mystery that Fermi won't be seeing the glaring lights of store shelves this year, but now DigiTimes reports that the delay might be even longer than feared. Sources from within board manufacturers have been informed by NVIDIA that the launch of the 40nm GPU will be pushed back to March 2010. Though NVIDIA's flagship DirectX 11 card has yet to get out of the starting blocks, ATI -- already the proud papa of a litter of DX 11 parts -- is said to be preparing a renewed onslaught on the mainstream market with two new releases slated for late January or early February. The HD 5670 (Redwood) and HD 5450 (Cedar) will slot in alongside the unannounced HD 5570 and HD 5350 to flesh out the lower and middle portions of ATI's Evergreen refresh. So that's one whole family of DirectX 11 parts from ATI, and one long wait from NVIDIA.
VIA's power-sipping VN1000 chipset brings Blu-ray playback, DX 10.1 support to low-end rigs
VIA may not have the clout that AMD or Intel have, but one thing's for sure: these guys sure love to bring as much heat as possible to the broke-as-a-joke among us. Take the all new VN1000 chipset, for instance, which is designed for Windows 7-based all-in-one PCs and other low-end desktops that yearn for the ability to handle modern day multimedia. The chipset is compatible with VIA's range of Nano, C7, C7-M and Eden processors, and aside from supporting DDR3 memory, up to five PCI slots, up to four SATA II drives, a multicard reader and 12 USB 2.0 ports, it also allows for Blu-ray playback. Users can slap up to 16GB of RAM around it, and the integrated Chrome 520 GPU is apparently potent enough to support DirectX 10.1 and BD films. Who says 1080p is reserved for royalty? %Gallery-80089%
DirectX 11-powered Dirt 2 heading to PCs in early December
During Microsoft's big coming-out party for Windows 7 today in New York City, Codemasters showed off the new DirectX 11 version of the upcoming PC port of Dirt 2 that you see above. Though the developer said little of new content additions being made to the game, the already gorgeous visuals have been gussied up with help from DirectX 11, and cheevos will be ready for the taking on Games for Windows Live. Meeting its previously announced delay head-on, Dirt 2 starts shipping in North America on December 1, with December 3 and 4 release dates for the rest of the world (in your face, world!).
AMD's 40nm DirectX 11-based Evergreen GPUs could be ready for bloom by late September
Looks like AMD's heading off trail with its upcoming 40nm DirectX 11-based Evergreen series processors. The Inquirer's dug up some details, and while clock speeds are still unknown, the codenames for the lineup include Cypress at the top of the pile, followed by Redwood, then Juniper and Cedar for the mainstream crowd, and finally Hemlock for the lower end. The series could reportedly be ready by late September, which gives a month of breathing room before DX11-supporting Windows 7 hits the scene. Could this give AMD its much-desired lead over NVIDIA? Hard to say, but things should get mighty interesting between now and late October.
AMD shows off world's first DirectX 11 GPU
On a roll of late, aren't we AMD? Just when you thought the fun was slowing over in Taiwan, in flies this: the world's first official DirectX 11-friendly GPU demonstration. We also learned that DX 11 (and presumably, AMD cards to push it) will debut prior to the dawn of 2010, but outside of that, most everything else is being kept under wraps. Indeed, the demo was mostly to show that things were still on track and for the chip maker to assure us all that it will "deliver DirectX 11 first." Alright, AMD -- now you've something to prove. Full release is after the break.
Dubious marketing: Microsoft makes DirectX 9 look REALLY bad
Microsoft has been caught using misleading images to promote the power of DirectX 10. Digg user, LtGenPanda, has spotted a Games for Windows Live DirectX 10 product page featuring the dubious marketing images. In order to easily characterize the power of DirectX 10 versus previous versions, Microsoft compared pre-release rendered screens of 2007's Crysis (using DX10) against the 2003 PC release of Halo: Combat Evolved (running DX9). Considering Crysis can also be played using DirectX 9 (albeit at lower quality), we call shenanigans! If the misleading images weren't enough, Microsoft adds some choice words to spin its web of deceit. In regards to the OMGness of DX10, the page reads: "The facial expressions, details of the face, the handle-bar moustache and the glazed looking eyes all add to the realism." Kids, the harsh truth is that handle-bar mustaches will only lead to a loss of friends and respect.
Age of Conan's DX10 put to the test
It's been a long time coming, but Age of Conan's Testlive server is now running a version of the game that can output DirectX 10 graphics, a feature that many people missed at launch. The current implementation probably isn't indicative of what will end up on the Live servers, but if you just can't wait and want to see the work-in-progress, Age of Conan Vault has a number of DX9 to DX10 comparison screenshots on show right now. The test client as-is doesn't have some of the cooler features like volumetric fog or windy trees just yet, but these would be better seen in video form anyway.The most stand-out difference between the screenshot pairings that we can pick is the upped brightness and visibility in dark areas on the DX10 side. In some (but not all) of the shots, the textures look noticeably better too. The AoC Vault reviewer experienced a significant FPS drop, from roughly 50FPS down to 20FPS, when switching from DX9 to DX10, but this is apparently not that common among other testers -- most do get their share of graphical glitches and crashing though. Hopefully it's all ironed out when Funcom decides to push DX10 to the live servers at a later date.
Windows 7 WARP system to allow for DirectX 10 CPU acceleration
We've already heard that Microsoft plans to make use of GPU acceleration in Windows 7, but it looks like the company is also going to be doing its part for the GPU-less out there, with the OS's new so-called WARP system promising to allow for DirectX 10 acceleration using nothing more than a plain old CPU. Among other things, that's apparently being done to avoid a recurrence of the Vista-capable debacle that happened last time around, when some systems that were said to be capable of running the OS were, in fact, anything but. According to Microsoft, WARP (or Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) will work with as little as an 800MHz CPU, although it says it'll work better on multi-core processors with SSE 4.1. To really put it to the test, Microsoft apparently even went so far as to run a few Crysis benchmarks with the system, and managed to clock in a blistering 7.36 fps frame rate at 800 x 600 on a Core i7-equipped PC, which is actually slightly better than what Intel's current integrated graphics were able to eke out.
S3's Chrome 500 graphics processors handle Blu-ray, HD video
Movin' on up in the world, are we S3? Just a month after the VIA-owned S3 Graphics returned to the scene with its Chrome 400 line of discrete graphics cards comes this, the predictably named Chrome 500 series. The new line is capable of handling Blu-ray / streaming HD video playback and provides support for DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 applications. You'll also find a built-in Dolby 7.1 digital surround sound processor, GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) technology, ChromotionHD (which offloads video processing from the CPU) and compatibility with DisplayPort / HDMI / DVI (with HDCP). The first off the blocks is the 512MB Chrome 530 GT (pictured), and the bargain-bin-styled $44.95 should work wonders given the economy.
Troubleshooting dynamic shadows on OS X and Windows
This forum thread, about the new shadow technology appearing on the Mac in 3.0.2, is confusing. There are four Blue responses in the first 10 posts, and at the end of it, I still don't have a clear idea of whether shadows work on the Mac or not. The issue seems to be this: shadows do work on the Mac, but not the highest quality shadows. Why? Because while Windows uses DirectX to do its 3D processing, OS X still uses OpenGL. And while shadows do work in OpenGL (and eventually can work just as well in OpenGL), Blizzard needs Apple to put some extensions in which aren't there yet, so the highest quality shadows aren't yet possible.Did your eyes glaze over from all that tech talk? Let's make it simple: if you're on Windows or OS X and you don't see shadows, odds are that your settings are wrong. Open up Video settings in game, and slide the Shadows slider all the way to the right as far as it will go, and then escape out and see if Shadows appear. Note, however, that this will slow your computer down, and as we said earlier today, older computers might have trouble doing this. If you're running an older PC or Mac, you may have to forget about the dynamic shadows completely.That said, according to the Blues, with the shadow slider flipped all the way up on a PC and a Mac, the PC's shadows will look a little better. That's not a limitation of your computer (or of Blizzard's designers), it's a limitation of the technologies that Blizzard is using to make the game. When OpenGL (the code that allows game makers like Blizzard to draw 3D graphics within OS X) gets updated, then we'll see some higher quality shadows.
Before and after images of Age of Conan's DirectX 10 support
Let's say you play Age of Conan, your computer runs on Windows Vista, and you have a fairly new video card (GeForce 8-series and better or the ATI equivalent). Honestly, we're not sure there are really that many of you that touch all those bases, but for those who are: congratulations! You can play games in DirectX 10 mode! Too bad there aren't really that many games that support DirectX 10!Thankfully, Age of Conan will soon be one of the elite few. It looks like the difference in visual quality will be significant. We make that observation based on a handful of before-and-after screenshots hosted at Ten Ton Hammer. Give them a look to find out what you're in for if you're one of the folks who have the hardware and software to experience it, or what you're missing out on if you're not.
Intel discusses ATI and Nvidia killing Larrabee, launching as early as 2009
While Intel's Larrabee might not be a household name for consumers just yet, it's certainly at the table where Nvidia and AMD/ATI eat. The many-core (8 to 48, at least, according to that Intel graphic) x86 chip runs all your existing apps while tossing in support for OpenGL and DirectX thus eliminating the need for a discrete graphics chip. At least that's the plan. While the exact number of cores remains a secret as does the performance of each core compared to current GPUs, given the importance Intel places on Larrabee, it's reasonable to assume that an 8-core chip will launch in 2009 or 2010 with comparable performance to GPUs on the market at that time. Intel does say that Larrabee cores will scale "almost linearly" (read: within 10%) in games; that means that a 16-core chip will offer nearly twice the performance of an 8-core chip, 32-cores twice that of 16, and so on. Apparently this has already been proven in-house with Intel name-dropping Larrabee-coded titles such as Gears of War, FEAR, and Half-Life 2, Episode 2. It's no coincidence then to hear that Intel's first Larrabee product will target PC gamers. Click through if you're just dying to read about Larrabee's 1024 bits-wide bi-directional ring network and other bits of technical wonderment sure to create at least the hint of a silicon malaise. [Via CNET and Washington Post, Thanks Dan R.]