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ATI R600 graphics card benchmarked, cruises by NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX
If one of your New Year's resolutions involved spending a massive chunk of change to kick out as many frames per second as technologically possible, you may want to put the brakes on that impending NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX purchase. Lvl505 got their palms on a pre-release ATI R600 graphics card and put it up against the best NVIDIA currently has to offer, and the results thus far show ATI's device as "the clear winner." Of course, these benchmarks have to be taken with a certain grain of salt, as the drivers used were "a modified version of a 32-bit Vista pre-build version," which should have yielded less-than-optimal results; interestingly, the R600 still ran all over the optimized NVIDIA setup. Testing the cards on an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700-powered machine with 2GB of RAM, the single R600 card bested the solo 8800 GTX in basically every benchmark they tried, with common applications seeing minimal gains, but games saw between ten-percent (Half-Life 2: Lost Coast) and 42-percent (1701 A.D.) hikes. Apparently, the R600 was exceedingly impressive, as reviewers actually suggested that you "return your NVIDIA" card as soon as humanly possible while patiently waiting for January 22nd, when you can gleefully drop your $630 or so to pick up your very own R600. Oh, and you might end up paying somewhat of a monthly surcharge to use this bad boy too, as the 230-watts (which beats the estimations, actually) it'll require to operate could kick your power bill up a notch or two. Nevertheless, it's not exactly shocking to see a newer graphics card outgun one that's been on the shelf a moment or so, but we're still holding out for a finalized unit before making any final judgments on the combatants.[Via Inquirer]
Doh! Assassin's Creed plot leaked
In an interview with Kristen Bell, IGN TV asks about her roles in Veronica Mars, Fanboys, and the upcoming not-so-PS3 exclusive (yes, we're going to keep saying that) Assassin's Creed. Everything in the interview seems pretty safe, no real dirty secrets revealed, that is until Kristen talks about her roll in Assassin's Creed, where she gives a little glimpse into what the story is really about saying ... It's sort of based on the research that's sort of happening now, about the fact that your genes might be able to hold memory. And you could argue semantics and say it's instinct, but how does a baby bird know to eat a worm, as opposed to a cockroach, if its parents don't show it? And it's about this science company trying to, Matrix-style, go into people's brains and find out an ancestor who used to be an assassin, and sort of locate who that person is. So there you have it. Assassin's Creed may not only be about killing in the Crusades, but may be a sci-fi mind traveling adventure where you go back to live the life of your assassin ancestors ... and yes that came out of left field. Commence discussion as we're out to find the meaning of life, why cockroaches are so ugly, and why the Matrix movies got progressively worse.
Nintendo Power January issue details leaked
In getting all the news that's fit to print in the January issue of Nintendo Power, Codename Revolution has dropped several delicious morsels onto our plate. In an effort to save you the trouble of reading our paragraphs of text here, we'll just consolidate all of the important news into bullet points below. WarioWare: Smooth Moves is to utilize a 'pass-the-Wiimote' 12-player multiplayer mode and Mii support (which we already knew). The Wii Play bundle everyone else is getting has finally been confirmed for a January release in North America and will be bundled with the Wiimote. A new baseball game has been revealed in The BIGS, which is set to release in Q3 2007 and will support online gameplay. It is being handled by 2K Sports and Big Castle Games. The issue has an interview with Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi, where he claims that the Wiimote is too gimmicky for a Castlevania title.
1UP urges us to buy, not steal
1UP reports that Final Fantasy XII is being illegally distributed via bit torrent, with multiple bit torrent user comments confirming that the torrents house playable English versions of Square Enix's RPG. In response to the alleged leak, the site has issued the following PSA:"Forgetting that pirating is a criminal activity, 'Final Fantasy XII' is supposed to be an absolutely incredible RPG -- we strongly encourage gamers to wait a few more weeks for the real game to properly reward Square Enix for their labored work."We can't think of a better way to put it. Keep it real right, y'all!
Draenei and Blood Elf Voices Leaked
If you're in the mood for more Burning Crusade spoilers, Elüna sent along a page that links to leaked voice files of the Draenei and Blood Elf male and female characters from the upcoming expansion, including their /charge, /silly, and /flirt emotes, and a few others.Personally, I'm not real impressed with the ones I listened to (I have to save a little bit of the new content for the game, right?), but maybe that's because I'd rather hear them in context rather than from leaked .wav files. But a few of them are pretty good, and go a long way towards fleshing out the cultures and personalities of the two new races. True RPers probably won't be real happy about the pop culture references that show up (one of the funnier Blood Elf female /flirts actually makes a pretty good meta-game joke), but these leave little doubt that the same quirky Blizzard charm we're used to is coming with the expansion.And there's one more thing I noticed about one of the voices. This one's really a spoiler, so I'll put it after the jump...[ Thanks, Elüna! ]
More juicy in-depth Leopard screenshots of Spaces, Mail, Safari and more
At this point it seems like these websites are placing bets between each other to see who can get closest to an NDA violation without actually getting nailed with one. HardMac has posted the latest set of (non-blurry, properly grabbed) screenshots of some hitherto unforeseen areas of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, including the Spaces and Time machine system preference setup panes, Mail.app stationary and a photo browser (which might make these iTunes and iPhoto library browsers extinct), RSS feeds and setup, notes in Mail with todos and calendar settings, as well as exclusives of new Finder functionality (note the lack of brushed metal in the Smart Folder) and Preview features.So far I'd have to say this is probably the most exciting set of screenshots as they are some of the most revealing of new features and abilities in Leopard. Er, I mean, a friend told me they look really great... check them out while they're still live boys and girls.
Another blurry Treo "Hollywood" shot, plus specs?
Palm's sieve-like reputation for keeping a lid on unreleased devices continues to the current round of Treos in the pipeline, and we're happy to feed the fire today with possible specs of the upcoming "Hollywood" accompanied by the obligatory hastily-snapped shot (blurred here to protect our valiant tipster). Though we still don't fully understand the relationship between this bad boy and Cingular's upcoming "Nitro" and "Lennon," it's said that we're looking at an antenna-less GSM Treo rocking Windows Mobile 5, 128MB of internal storage, and a 412MHz XScale core, all gussied up in a package "considerably lighter" than its 700w stablemate. If our source is accurate, all this goodness will drop sometime this September -- not a moment too soon for Treo fans on GSM carriers getting a little jealous of their CDMA brethren. Naturally, skepticism is in order here, but the engraving on the device lends some validity to the thought that it's a prototype, and this all lines up pretty nicely with Cingular's roadmap, no?[Thanks, anonymous tipster]
Nokia N83 shot and specs
We still can't guarantee the N83 is the real deal, but it certainly looks to be taking shape, and New Mobile has a very slick looking front-on of the device with those same promising details: UMTS, 2.5-inch 352 x 416 QVGA display, 4GB drive, 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, FM radio, MicroSD, and 3.5mm headphone jack. The over the top specs make it out to be one of the hottest Symbian devices we've ever seen, which is exactly why we're not going to go getting our hopes up just yet that all those pie in the sky features are going to turn up roses.[Thanks, MacBoy]
