NVIDIA’s new video cards are set to receive a much-needed price drop in order to compete more effectively with AMD’s 4800 series. As we reported last week, the G200 cards were not selling as quickly as anticipated for a new GeForce release. Whilst this might attract new buyers, we can’t help but feel sorry for those who just shelled out up to £400 for their 280 only to see its price plummet by as much as £100!
Intel has now officially launched its Montevina platform which is set to make up the Centrino 2 architecture for high spec notebooks. Centrino branding has been a real hit for Intel, though with the new graphics subset scoring a ‘rip roaring’ 3DMark score of just 429, you will still want to make sure the words GeForce or Radeon are in your gaming notebook’s spec.
“In San Francisco on July 14, the Intel Montevina project morphed into the Intel® Centrino® 2 platform. Beyond jacking up performance and improving battery life, this beauty spread its wireless wings with the latest in Wireless-N (Draft-N) technology.”
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In a move that could see the UK move into the broadband fast lane for the first time, BT has pledged to lay enough fibre optic cabling to allow ten million customers access to ultra high speed broadband. Virgin customers in digital cable areas can of course already access the technology, which the media giant intends to crank up to 50Mbps before the end of the year.
“We will deliver a sea of fast broadband, with islands of super-fast broadband…[but] We need to be able to demonstrate that we can make a better return for shareholders than putting the money in the bank”
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Total PC Gaming has arrived in LA! The city of gang violence, hardcore pornography and, lets not forget, angels. We may have just endured a grueling 12 hour flight - sat next to a man who insisted on giving us a smell of his colon every 15 minutes - but we’re now in the LA Convention centre to bring you news and ramblings from this year’s E3 (the video game trade show that’s kind of lost its magic, but is going to stick around for a little while longer until someone starts-up something better).
For our latest coverage of the event you should direct yourself to our Blog page here
CD Projekt, developer of award-winning PC title The Witcher, is taking a retro step into distribution future with GOG.com, a digital platform that allows you to download classic titles for a very modest fee. These will be optimized for Windows XP and Vista, and will be available for a modest $5.99 or $9.99. More significantly, they’ll all be DRM free and once paid for, downloadable as many times as needed - giving GOG.com a clear advantage over Steam. CD Projekt has already secured licences for games from Interplay and Codemasters’ back catalogues and hopes to add Lucasarts titles such as Sam & Max and the Monkey Island games in the near future. Currently CD Projeckt have a tantlising line-up that includes Fallout, Fallout 2, MDK, Freespace 2, Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year Edition and TOCA Race Driver 3, with their ultimate goal being to offer “a comprehensive collection of classic PC games from the 80s, 90s and 2000s.”
Check out our GOG.com competition on the TPCG forum.
That’s right. Not only can you get the best prices on PC games direct from the pages of www.totalpcgaming.com, you can also save a fortune on the latest graphics card, CPU or an entire gaming PC courtesy of our shiny partners PriceGrabber.com!
www.totalpcgaming.com/shop will find you the cheapest online prices on tens of thousands of computer components and those that click through will not only save hours of mucking about and money - they’ll be supporting Total PC Gaming while they’re at it.
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In a sad day for those of us who love to see computing pushed to its bleeding edge, high-end PC specialist Vadim has ceased trading. The global credit crunch and reluctant investors have been cited as the cause.
“It is with great regret that I must inform you that V-Solutions LTD, the official company behind Vadim Computers, as from today, 07/07/08 has gone into voluntary liquidation. One of the reasons for this sudden action is the credit crunch that unfortunately hit the electronics and PC hardware industry hard..”
We wish the owners and employees at Vadim all the best in their future projects
Read more here
In a recent interview with IGN, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli says the vast majority of PC gamers pirate their games. He gives enormous figures of 15:1 to 20:1, which may or may not be true, at least for Crytek. However, as an industry, this number seems too large, yet reports of pirating Crysis specifically are numerous; not to play, but to test machines to see if they will run it.
Asked about online verification, Yerli stated that there will always be some way to crack the game or go around the system, and if not other problems can occur. The recent Mass Effect PC dilemma may hold back sales for publisher EA, but as of press time reports were not available for sales numbers.
In an unexpected move towards action against videogames, the UK government published a plan to make videogames safer for children: reclassify games over a four month period to better help children and their parents properly understand what games they can and cannot play. You can find Gameindustry.biz’s angle here.
As some of you may be aware this plan was recommended by Dr. Byron in the Byron Review, but according to EA’s VP and General Manager for the UK, Ireland and Nordic regions, this will make delays in games reaching store shelves. Will citizens and game developers/publishers step up and denounce this plan? Should they? Let us know what you think…
Ultraviolet Machines will be showing off their wares at this year’s M Festival in Stoneleight Park, 8-11 August. Among their latest Xodus gaming laptop hardware will be a real monster of a desktop PC: the Genesis XXX. Sound a bit sexy, does it? Cop a load of these specs:
