In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Microsoft Game Studios Europe Business Development Manager Peter Zetterberg has made some interesting comments about how PC and Xbox 360 games fit into Microsoft's business plan

Source : ggmania.com & gamesindustry

Tagan PipeRock TG1100-BZ 1100W @ Technic3D
Corsair Voyager GT 16Gb and Voyager 4Gb USB Stick Review @ Madshrimps
Samsung CLP-610ND Color Laser Printer Review @ Tweaknews.net
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler Review @ Futurelooks
SilenX iXtrema IXC-12HA2 CPU Cooler Review @ ThinkComputers.org
QNAP TS-209 Pro Gigabit SATA NAS @ Benchmark Reviews
XFX GTX 280 XXX Edition Review @ Metku.net
Kingston Technologies DataTraveler HyperX 4GB @ TechwareLabs
OCZ EliteXstream 800w Review @ DriverHeaven
HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X4 @ TechwareLabs
Mushkin XP2-6400 4GB DDR2 Memory Review @ Technic3D
Zalman Reserator XT Liquid Cooling System Review @ HardwareLogic
Super Micro C2SBX+ @ Phoronix
SilenX IXTREMA Pro IXC-120HA2 @ Bjorn3D
Thermaltake Xaser VI VG4000SNA Computer Case Review @ Tweaknews.net
OCZ 800w EliteXStream Power Supply Review @ Virtual-Hideout

I finally had some time to fix the messed up Rage3D Daily Deals page. It should be working in all browsers again and it will be continuously updated each day with new deals around the 'net. Look for further improvements in the future.

Enjoy

Blizzard have announced Diablo III at the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris today. The official US and European Diablo III sites are now live (and getting hammered!) and feature a cinematic teaser and gameplay video, among other goodies.

Join the celebrations hysteria in our Diablo III thread!

Making certain no one forgets exactly how many Teraflops have been recently unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, ATi has designed a great new wallpaper for everyone to celebrate, especially the fans that requested it.

Grab it from the AMD GAME Community Site, under the "ATi Radeon 4800 series" tab, and be sure to check out the other great wallpapers and screensavers ATi have to unleash on your desktop!

AMD have created a new section on their site detailing the features and specifications of the newly revived ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD.

All-in-One HD Graphics and HD TV Tuner
With the ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD, your PC and your TV “play nice”. It is now easy to create the ultimate digital entertainment center. With the ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD graphics and video card your PC is transformed into the ultimate high-definition PVR and 1080p Blu-ray and DVD movie showcase. Enter the realm of high-def gaming and experience life-like graphics or use your PC to create your own custom video and entertainment library. It’s highly immersive, extremely versatile, and undeniably entertaining for The Ultimate Visual Experience™. It’s your PC, and it’s waiting to do more.


The Ultimate High-Definition PVR on your PC
Don’t miss a thing. With the ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD you can watch or record live TV. Choose between analog TV, free-to-air HDTV and ClearQAM unencrypted digital cable. The options are plentiful, picture clarity is breathtaking and navigating the user interface is easy. With Windows® Media Center you can take advantage of the built in Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) with time shifting functionality. Schedule recordings or watch your favorite TV programming when it’s convenient for you. Just sit back and enjoy the show.


Reach the Highest Levels of Definition and Clarity at 1080p
Optimize playback of the latest Blu-ray movies and other HD content with the Unified Video Decoder. Watch standard definition video in near-HD quality at up to twice the display resolution with enhanced DVD up-scaling. ATI Avivo™ HD TV Enhancement Technologies prepare you for brilliant colors, sharp images and smooth video playback on a wide variety of HD TVs and displays. Amaze your senses and bring your entertainment to life with full-HD 1080p.


Enter the Realm of High-Def Gaming
Get blown away by the latest HD games featuring life-like 3D graphics realism created with Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 technology1. With PCI Express® 2.0 support you’re ready to play hard with games that demand fast throughput. With 120 stream processors you now have the horsepower to support the most amazing games and graphics applications. Brace yourself for an intense experience in high speed action and unprecedented realism.


Create, Edit and Share
Be creative and discover the pleasures of creating, editing and sharing your own videos/DVDs. With the ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD you can digitize your home videos and start building your video library to preserve those priceless memories. Convert recorded TV shows, videos and other media into various formats (DivX, WMV9, H.264, MPEG4) and take them with you on your portable media player for entertainment on-the-go. With AMD LIVE!™ On Demand you can also access your TV shows, videos, music and photos on almost any device with a broadband connection, anytime, anywhere. Immerse yourself in AMD Live Explorer to manage and interact with your entertainment library from almost anywhere (only on Windows Vista® OS).


ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD Accessory Kit*
Upgrade your PC into a media powerhouse with an ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD accessory kit. The kit adds composite video, S-video, stereo audio input and component output. The perfect addition to your ATI All-in-Wonder HD (* may be sold separately).


USA DTV Broadcast Transition Ready
Get ready for the DTV broadcast transition (switch from analog to all-digital broadcasting). There is no need for a DTV converter box with the ATI All-in-Wonder HD™.

Source: AMD

TheInquirer has posted an article detailing the unveiling of the new ATi All-In-Wonder HD™, a combination graphics card/TV tuner card multimedia solution based on the Radeon 3650 GPU. This series of ATi graphics card was discontinued in September 2006 after the release of the Radeon AIW X1900 due to poor sales and market interest, but it seems AMD have reason to revive the series now.

ARE YOU A BELIEVER in life after death? The folks at DAAMIT obviously are, as they have resurrected the previously torpid All in Wonder line of graphics cards with a new version based on the Radeon 3600 series.

Dubbed the 'All in Wonder HD', the card features an HDCP-compliant HDMI connection, dual link DVI port, as well as component jacks. There's a TV player / capture device attached too, and full HD video acceleration with support for hardware Blu-ray decoding through the Unified Video Decoder engine.

The card will work with Vista Media Center and will cost a mainstream-friendly $199.

Source: The Inquirer

Discuss here.

Gainward, who until recently have been making exclusively nVidia graphic cards, have decided to include the latest ATi 4000-series cards to their line-up.

Palit-owned Gainward has decided that monogamy isn't all that great and a little ménage à trois would be a lot nicer and more profitable. As a result, the company has now announced that it will be adding a couple of RV770 cards to its product line-up. Leaving Nvidia exclusivity to rot in the desert, Gainward revealed its own Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 cards, both of which you can see below.

All red and lovely, the cards are based on AMD/ATI's reference design and thus feature stock cooling system and clocks. The Radeon HD 4850 has 512MB of GDDR3 memory set to 1986 MHz, 800 Stream Processors and a GPU clocked at 625 MHz while the HD 4870 can say it's equipped with 3600 MHz-clocked 512MB of GDDR5 memory and a GPU with a frequency of 750 MHz.

Source: TechConnect

Discuss here.

It seems that Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has managed to get the Nvidia PhysX layer to run on ATI Radeon cards, with remarkable results...

After playing with Nvidia's CUDA SDK and PhysX SDK, Eran apparently got the PhysX layer to play along with Radeon cards. He mentioned that enabling PhysX support on Radeon cards is not particularly difficult, leading us to believe that physics on graphics cards may not so much be a technology problem but a game of politics.

Eran said that he will be offering the ATI PhysX-enabling utility on NGOHQ.com as soon as he gets his hands on more hardware to check the application on more than one graphics card. We are told that he is testing hardware already, which means that the software should be available “soon”.

On his first run, Eran got a 22,606 CPU score in 3D Mark Vantage, enhancing the overall score to P4262. A comparable system without PhysX-support will cross the finish line at about P3800.

Source: TG Daily

Discuss here.

Thanks to DBT for bringing this to my attention.

Here is a collection of reviews so far covering the latest ATi flagship card, the Radeon 4870. Thanks to KickAssCop for organizing the list, and everyone else for posting the links as you find them.

Anandtech Review
CHW Spanish
Computerbase German
Hardocp
Hardware Canucks
Hardware.fr French
Hexus Review
Hothardware Review
Expreview
Extremetech
Elitebastards Hardware Architecture
Firingsquad
Bjorn3d 4850
PC Perspective
Arse Technica
Tweaktown 4870 CF
Techreport

For more information, check the Official 4870 Review Thread.

Breaks over. Time to dive into our HD4850 DX9 tests! Remember ... feet first!

ATi HD 4850 Single Card DX9 Tests

Discussion Thread

We've posted the second in our Launch Day RV770 Series. Enjoy!

Hello again gents. How has release day treated you until now? Scoured all writeups around the web (don't miss Beyond3D's and TechReport's ones, those are two constant sources of quality content). As promised earlier in the closing bits of our architecture investigation, we're back with the performance numbers for a single HD 4850 card, in DX10 titles, with DX9 coming a bit later.

ATi HD 4850 Single Card DX10 Tests

Discussion Thread

A law, approved by Swedish parliament on June 19, allows the FRA (National Defense Radio Agency) to monitor all national phone, e-mail, and web traffic for the purposes of National Security. The Pirate Bay are joining the fight against it.

A new, recently-approved Swedish wiretapping law angered The Pirate Bay earlier this week, and the site’s administrators have decided to fight back. The Pirate Bay administrator Peter “brokep” Sunde, writing in his blog, announced that the site will be adding SSL encryption to its list of features for all visitors, and a VPN-tunnel system for Swedish visitors that will soon be rolled out worldwide.

More importantly, however, is The Pirate Bay’s attempt to organize a global internet ban against Sweden.

“Yes, that’s right!” wrote Sunde. “We want Sweden to be banned from the Internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers’ integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”

The law in question, approved by Swedish parliament on June 19, allows the FRA (National Defense Radio Agency, In English) to monitor all national phone, e-mail, and web traffic for the purposes of National Security. The bill was passed by a narrow majority – 143 to 138 with 1 abstaining – and became law despite heavy criticism by journalists, bloggers, lawyers, and the Swedish intelligence agency.

Source: DailyTech

Talk about having a long product life, which is extremely rare in the tech industry.

How many operating systems still receive security patches 12 and a half years after their release? According to InformationWeek, that's the treatment Microsoft will give Windows XP. The site says Microsoft VP Bill Veghte has sent a letter to customers saying Microsoft will continue to update Windows XP with security patches "and other critical updates" all the way until April 2014.

Source: The Tech Report

RV770 Launch Day is here! Join Rage3D for the first in our series of Launch Day articles: ATi HD4850 RV770 - An Architectural Overview

As an opener to our launch day coverage, we'll be taking a plunge into the RV770 and seeing what what is new, what has changed, what stays the same (quickie note: not much) and how it all fits together. We'll also check and see if we can actually achieve the theoretical numbers using a number of synthetic tests ... don't worry, the whole gaming enchilada will soon follow, we haven't lost our focus.

ATi HD4850 RV770 - A Rage3D Architectural Overview

Discussion Thread

Last week Rage3D attended AMD's announcement of their Cinema 2.0 future. We bring you coverage of AMD's Cinema 2.0 vision to whet your appetite for the upcoming in-depth coverage of the Radeon HD 4000 generation of GPUs.

Breaking the Sensory Barrier With Cinema 2.0

Discussion Thread

Enjoy!

I'm a bit surprised on the turn around for an nvidia WHQL certified driver even though this is only a bug fix release.

There's a new ForceWare 175.19 driver release out for GeForce 6, 7, 8, and 9 graphics cards. Nvidia's official release notes for Windows Vista (PDF) and Windows XP (PDF) list no major changes compared to last month's 175.16 release, but Nvidia has apparently fixed a handful of bugs for both single- and multi-GPU configurations.

Bug fixes in Windows Vista span Painkiller: Overdose, Splinter Cell Double Agent, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, while the Windows XP fixes cover Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007, Lego Star Wars 2, Sid Meier's Railroads!, and HDTV-related issues. You can check out a detailed list of bugs and remaining problems in the aforementioned PDF files.

Source: The Tech Report

For any of you Left 4 Dead fans.

Valve will release Left 4 Dead on November 4, Shacknews reports, almost two years after Turtle Rock Studios first announced the game. Based on the same Source Engine that powers the Half-Life 2 series, Left 4 Dead will feature cooperative multiplayer and a survival horror-style environment filled with zombies.

Source: The Tech Report

This news is really starting to make DDR3 look even more appealing now, hopefully the Nehalem will make full use of DDR3's bandwidth potential.

Improvements in silicon production processes have enabled a reduction in the core and I/O voltage for an incremental improvement in DDR3. Called “DDR3L” for Low Voltage, the new devices will operate from a single 1.35V rail, compared to the 1.5V of existing devices, resulting in a power savings of 20% in many mainstream applications.

These devices are intended to be compatible with existing 1.5V DDR3 systems and may operate without restriction in those applications. All JEDEC standard DDR3 memory modules include a Serial Presence Detect (SPD) device, an EEPROM readable over an SMbus, that informs the host system of the capabilities and characteristics of the module, including the supported supply voltages, so that system designs can be aware of and take advantage of the new DDR3L devices. The standard for module labels has been updated for consistency as well, with “PC3L” indicating end-user modules such as personal computers, and “EP3L” for modules targeted at embedded products.

Source: X-bit Labs

When we told you to stay tuned after the closing of our last competition, you might've thought it would take quite a while until we had something new to give you guys - think again! Teaming up with our great friends from ATi, we're bringing you serious gaming power - 2 Teraflops of it! You might've heard about that little 4850 card that was launched yesterday? Yeah, that one, with incredible performance and a lovable price . . . well, two of them are up for grabs, for twice the fun.

Read the full Contest Instructions and get to spamming posting!

Antec System Cases Roundup: Six Models for Each and Everyone @ X-bit Labs
Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 ECO 80 ATX Case Review @ MADSHRIMPS
BFG ES-800 PSU Review @ Bjorn3D
NVIDIA GeForce 8200 IGP Review @ Phoronix
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB Preview @ PC Perspective
OCZ OCZ600SXS 600W StealthXStream Power Supply Review @ DragonSteelMods
Thecus N5200BR NAS (Network Attached Storage) Review @ Hardware Logic
VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 X2 Overclocked Edition Review @ DriverHeaven
WD VelociRaptor VR150 10,000 RPM HDD Review @ The Tech Report

AMD Technologies has released a performance- and stability-enhancing hotfix driver for their brand-new ATI RADEON HD 4000 series of video cards.

If you've managed to snap up a Radeon HD 4850 graphics board early, then you'll be wanting to download this...

The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):

- Radeon HD 4870 series
- Radeon HD 4850 series

This Hotfix improves overall performance and stability. The Hotfix includes the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center.


You can find this 'hotfix' available for download (for both Windows XP and Windows Vista in 32 and 64-bit varieties) at AMD's Support portal - Simply pick out the Radeon HD 4800 Series Hotfix topic on the linked page.

For a more direct link, click HERE.


Source: Elite Bastards

Click HERE to discuss this topic in our CATALYST Drivers forum!

This article is a bit of a continuation of the one below. Enjoy!

In our article this morning entitled AMD Makes An Evolutionary Leap In Linux Support, we briefly touched on the fact that AMD would be continuing in their open-source support for the Radeon HD 4000 generation of GPUs. AMD will release register information for the RV770 and the code to TCore and KGrids will help the community developers when it comes to 2D and 3D acceleration. Though, with not much work at all, this afternoon we have the ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB running with the open-source xf86-video-ati driver! The Radeon HD 4850 will not currently work with the xf86-video-radeonhd driver as it doesn't rely upon the AtomBIOS in these areas, but in this article we have enclosed our patch and other information for using this open-source driver on AMD's latest hardware.

Using the git code for xf86-video-ati and creating a trivial patch had allowed us to use this open-source driver on this just-released hardware in just a few minutes. The patch just adds in the identification data for the RV770 we were using (0x9442) and then creates the CHIP_FAMILY_RV770 and PCI_CHIP_RV770_9442. Our patch can be downloaded here.

Once installing the patched Radeon driver, it immediately began working with our Diamond Radeon HD 4850 (identified as a Wekiva RV770 B50102 Board through AtomBIOS). Granted, of course, there is no 2D or 3D acceleration yet for the Radeon HD 4800 series. Once the R600 series has 2D/3D support, it should be easily ported to the RV770. The only other issue we have run into is the driver not being able to read the EDID information from the monitor. We have tried with multiple monitors and with all of them reading the EDID had failed, which resulted in the X server defaulting to 1280 x 768.

Source: Phoronix

Click HERE to discuss this topic in our Linux Drivers forum!

This is truly excellent news for those ATI users who run a Linux-based OS.

Less than a year ago we shared with you the revolutionary steps AMD was taking to deliver significant improvements to their once infamous proprietary Linux display driver and at the same time the work they were doing to foster the growth of an open-source driver for their latest graphics card families. These steps have certainly paid off for both AMD and the Linux community at large. AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver and there are two open-source ATI drivers picking up new features and improvements on an almost daily basis. AMD also continues to publish new programming guides and register information on a routine basis for their latest and greatest hardware. This has been truly phenomenal to see, but AMD has now evolved their Linux support by taking it a large step further. AMD is in the process of pushing new high-end features into their Linux driver -- such as Multi-GPU CrossFire support -- and with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 they have even begun showing off Tux, the Linux mascot, on their product packaging and providing Linux drivers on their product CDs!

While AMD has been making great strides in both their open and closed source investments, their performance-oriented proprietary driver isn't yet feature equivalent to the Windows Catalyst Suite and they have had problems delivering same-day (or close to same-day) Linux support when introducing new graphics processor generations. As of late they have been able to deliver same-month support for their new products that are just minor revisions within a series, but when introducing the Radeon X1000 "R500" series it had took a staggering seven months for any level of Linux support. Most recently, when the Radeon HD 2000 "R600" series was released, it had taken AMD about six months for any level of support. Today though we are excited to share that all of this should be an issue of the past. AMD has not only provided same-day support for their just-announced Radeon HD 4800 "RV770" series, but they're now beginning to ship the Linux drivers on the retail CDs included with these newest graphics cards. In addition, AMD is very close to reaching feature parity between their Windows and Linux drivers.

Source: Phoronix

Click HERE to discuss this topic in our Linux Drivers forum!

Speed and reliability increases are always good news when it comes to new hard drive models.

In the wake of its Caviar Black launch last week, Western Digital has taken the wraps off a new line of workstation-class 3.5" hard drives. The company says its new RAID Edition 3 (RE3) drives build upon their RE2 predecessors with higher speeds and better reliability, while retaining the same 7,200-RPM spindle speeds, 16MB cache sizes, 300MB/s Serial ATA interfaces, and Native Command Queuing support.

WD quotes a performance jump of 20%, and it says the new drives outdo the RE2s by up to 60% in "high-vibration environments." Users can chalk up some of those increases to WD's rotary acceleration feed forward (RAFF) technology, which monitors the drive and corrects linear and rotational vibration. The RE3 launch press release also attributes the 20% gain to "dual processors," which it says double processing power compared to RE2 drives.

Source: The Tech Report