Minimum

Windows: XP (32-Bit), Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.2 GHz Dual Core e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 2GB
Direct X: 9.0c
Graphics Card:
DirectX 9, Shader Model 3 compliant e.g. NVIDIA GTS 250 (or AMD equivalent e.g. HD Radeon 4000 series) or higher

Recommended

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.6 GHz Quad Core e.g. Intel Core i5
RAM: 4GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card:
NVIDIA GTX 580/660 Ti (or AMD equivalent e.g. 7870) or higher

Optimum

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 3.4 GHz Multi-Core e.g. Intel Core i7
RAM: 8GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card:
NVIDIA GTX 690 / NVIDIA Titan

Now, if you happen to not own one of Nvidia's Titan cards, don't worry. The reason you do not see the Radeon 7970 listed is becasue, as of the time of this release, AMD has not released an "official" competitor to the GTX Titan or 690, and the Radeon 7990 is just now being released. However, there are "Overclocked" versions of the Radeon 7970 that can keep up with the GTX Titan in keeping your frames well in the world of playable and stable, even though the Titan is currently the "fastest" single GPU solution on the market. So no need to drop $1000 on a single GPU card just to max out Last Light. 

Skyrim is Done!

Bethesda has officially announced that it is done with Skyrim and is moving on to new projects, and the "biggest and best work yet.” Skyrim already has three DLC expansions, Dawnguard, Heathfire, and Dragonborn. As well as a high resolution texture pack that's simply amazing.

Bethesda has not officially announced what new project they are referring too, whatever it is, they pulled the entire Skyrim staff to work on it and give it the company's full focus. Making note that bug fixes and minor patches for Skyrim would still be released on an as-needed basis.

There are many rumors as to what this "biggest and best work yet" can be. It's know not to be Elder Scrolls Online, that is being developed by ZeniMax Online Studios, Bethesda's parent company. Could it be the next in the Fallout series? Or perhaps Doom 4 since id Software is under the gun to put out or possibly be shutdown?  Or maybe it's "The Evil Within", a new upcoming survival horror game. See "Related Links" below. Who knows, only time will tell. 

Ultimate Bioshock Infinite Steampunk Case Mod

Well known modder "FlashGordon" has created one of the most impressive and detailed case mods I have seen in a very long time, all based on the "Steampunk" theme of Bioshock.

The guts of the system are as follows:

• Core i7 3930K CPU
• 2x GTX680 Video Cards
• 1200W PSU
  
• 120GB SSD
• TB HDD
• 16GB of RAM
• All water cooled

But who cares about all that! Let the pictures speak for themselves!

Link: http://www.overclock.net/g/a/812221/the-steampunk-pc-gears-spin-around/

id Software under the gun with Doom 4. Rage 2 Canceled.

id Software, a staple of the gaming industry for so long, has just one year to complete Doom 4 or face "drastic action" from it's owners ZeniMax. The problem is the lack of development and  performance of the only game, Rage, id has released since the takeover and the fact that Doom 4 has been in development for 5 years, and no one wants to see Doom 4 walk the same path as Duke Nukem Forever.

It would seem that a lack of proper internal management and guidance has lead to Doom 4's stalled development, and left the game in very poor condition. So the decision was made to completely reboot the development of Doom 4 back in 2011. Now ZeniMax has said that id Software has one more year to complete Doom 4.

With the poor sales of Rage, even though the game itself got generally good reviews and is fun to play for how short of a game it is, and the debacle over Doom 4, ZeniMax said they would not fund Rage 2 even though the game was already in development.

So the focus is now all on Doom 4, and you would think this would be a good thing. However with Rage 2 being canceled, the team was merged with Doom 4 and as a result of the new management, and power struggles, issues arose that lead to a lot of the company's talent to leave in frustration.

So is this the end of id Software as a game development company? We will have to wait and see, but as of today, it's not looking good. It looks as though if they can not pull off Doom 4 on time, they may be reassigned as an engine only development team. 

The Official Radeon HD 7990 is Here...Finally!

This beast of a card has finally, and officially, made it to release. Taking the crown away from the GTX 690 as the worlds most powerful graphic card. However, with it's late release, who knows how much of an impact it will have. It truly is a beastly card, with the reference design retailing for $999, however coming with a $325 bundle of 8 games. So also a better deal than the GTX 690 at the same price point. Though the list of games is not officially released, leaked information suggests these titles are all a part of AMD's new "Never Settle Evolved" bundle that will be included, in part, with many AMD GPU sales, with the full list for the 7990 is would seem.

• Battlefield 4
• GRID2
• Company Of Heroes 2
• Total War: Rome II
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist
• Lost Planet 3
• Raven’s Cry
• Watch Dogs

Specs: 

Impressive? Yes. Is it worth it? That's a matter of opinion. The GTX 690 has been out much longer and Nvidia is already working on their next gen cards. AMD is also doing the same. So if you are in the market for a dual-GPU single card solution, and you are a fan of the red team, do you buy the 7990 or wait for the 8000 series to hit the market and hope they get it's 8990 out a lot sooner than they did the 7990? Tough call.

Related Links and Information

The Evil Within is being lead by Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 fame, and developed at Japanese studio Tango Gameworks. The game is set for release in early 2014, so we have a while to wait.

The Evil Withing Debut Trailer (Warning, it's a very graphic live action trailer, discretion is advised if images of horror disturb you. You need to be signed into YouTube in order to watch the trailer.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pjgkk5OT2M

• AMD Facial log-in - Uses facial recognition technology and a webcam to allow quick log-in to Windows and other browser-based websites and email.

• AMD Gesture Control - Tracks a user's hand gestures, via webcam and advanced image processing and machine-vision algorithms, and converts them into commands to control functions on media players, browsers, e-readers and other popular applications.

• Improved graphic and compute performance -  Using the new AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series, supporting  AMD Eyefinity technology, AMD Radeon Dual Graphics, and DirectX 11.
  

• Enhanced power management - The 2013 AMD Elite A-Series enables up to 7.9 hours of web browsing, 5.7 hours of HD video playback and up to 10 hours of resting battery life on a 55 watt/hour battery.

• AMD Screen Mirror - Wirelessly share content such as photos, videos, HD media streams, and webpages from a PC or tablet based with any supported TV or display with a DLNA receiver, or with other PCs.

• Faster Turbo Speeds - Improved AMD Turbo CORE technology with higher boost frequencies than the previous generation.

These amazing little chips just keep getting better and better.

•     Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
•     DirectX 11 graphics card with 1Gb Video RAM
•     Dual core CPU
•     2GB Memory (3GB on Vista)
•     Example 1 NVIDIA & Intel):
•     NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
•     Intel Core2 Duo 2.4 Ghz (E6600)
•     Example 2 (All AMD):
•     AMD Radeon HD5770
•     AMD Athlon64 X2 2.7 Ghz (5200+)

•     Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
•     Latest DirectX 11 graphics card
•     Latest quad core CPU
•     8GB Memory
•     Example 1 (NVIDIA & Intel):
•     NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
•     Intel Core i7-2600k
•     Example 2 (All AMD):
•     AMD Radeon HD7970
•     AMD Bulldozer FX4150

Among the modified files are some Linux-related files including a hardware driver compatibility list, optimal graphics settings, and a shell script launcher (previously only for OS X, now with a case for Linux as well)."

Possible Linux support for Team Fortress 2? How cool is that! Kudos to Valve if this pans out.

Minecraft 1.4 Update

The 1.4 "Very Scary Update" releases on Oct. 25th, pushed back a few days to address an issue where mobs would fall through wooden floors and suffocate.

This is going to be a huge update for Minecraft. Featuring "a number of new mobs and variants, wearable and placeable heads, a new boss (the Wither), the command block, the anvil and the beacon."

Full Update Details: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Pretty_Scary_Update

• Big open worlds to explore between 200 to 400 square kilometers
• Two modes of play: Normal and Hardcore
• Combination of first-person and third-person perspectives
• Meld of PvE (player versus environment) and PvP (player versus player)
• Strong Role Playing Elements
• Multiple playable characters with customizable features
• Unique social elements, including bounties, help requests, trap setting, etc.
• Safe settlements where players can purchase, sell and store items as well as post notes for other players
• Dozens of unique skills that can be learned and improved
• Up to 250 players per game server
• New weapons and items become available as players explore the game world
• Full developer support with regularly scheduled, free content updates
• Dedicated public servers as well as private servers that can be completely self-managed in game client
• Single purchase, downloadable client with ability to play full game without subscriptions or requiring in-game transactions

"We have realized the first prototype of a quantum network”, Stephan Ritter concludes. "We achieve reversible exchange of quantum information between the nodes. Furthermore, we can generate remote entanglement between the two nodes and keep it for about 100 microseconds, whereas the generation of the entanglement takes only about one microsecond. Entanglement of two systems separated by a large distance is a fascinating phenomenon in itself. However, it could also serve as a resource for the teleportation of quantum information. One day, this might not only make it possible to communicate quantum information over very large distances, but might enable an entire quantum internet."

Though still a long way of in the future. The end goal here is quantum communication, no more wires carrying electrons, fiber optics carrying beams of light, but photons at the atomic level using quantum entanglement to transmit data over very large distances, nearly instantly. One of the major benefit side effects of this form of communication, is that by its very nature, is next to impossible to hack, intercept, or steal without the "transmitter and receiver" to know it happened. The reason being that quantum information can not be cloned. So if you intercept it, you intercept it, it stops there, you can not clone it and send it on. So it will be known its been done. Though there is no known way to even intercept it since quantum entanglement is a state of being where two atoms react exactly the same relative to each other over vast distances with no perceivable connection between the two. So there is no "stream" of data to intercept. Fascinating as hell is you ask me.

"As CPU core count goes up, communications between the cores begin to hit significant bottlenecks. This is because these cores are still using the decades old data bus model of transferring data between each other, which prevents multiple simultaneous communications and is because it only works between two cores at a time. To get over this, researcher Li-Shiuan Peh at MIT is looking to use internet-style packet-switched networks right within the CPU itself. The idea is to replace the long wires of the traditional data bus with much shorter ones connecting one core to another and using a router on each core to arbitrate the data exchange between cores. This work is still very much in the research phase however, so don't expect any products based on this technology anytime soon. This approach isn't all that surprising when one considers that the PCI Express bus uses a network-style connection model."

Something to keep an eye on, this "bottleneck" has been well known for a long time. Not just as core counts go up, since this is already a bottleneck on 8+ core processors, but as the speeds on those cores go up. If those cores had a more efficient way of communication between themselves on the die, you would be able to get more data processed faster, even at lower physical core clock speeds. Pretty cool stuff.

People ripped on Crysis 2 because EA rushed Crytek to get the game out, and the game we got on PC was a direct console port, DX9, and lightyears behind the original Crysis on the PC. Later on, they finally got to release the the full DX11 and high resolution version for PC. Yet even then it did not truly show off the power of the engine running DX11.

This is a short video that shows what this engine can actually do, rendering in real time, as it would in a video game. Amazing if you ask me. THIS is why CryEngine 3 hold top spot next to Frostbite 2 as my favorite modern game engines.

This video really needs to be watched full screen and in HD. Amazing.

On the same topic, Crysis 3 has been announced for release early next year, and you can pre-order it already! Wow, that's fast.

Nvidia has officially killed the GTX 580 in favor of the next gen 600's that hit the market recently. The GTX 580 is still a beastly card, so if you are in the market for an upgrade, you might see these cards hit a price drop soon. Might be able to pick one up before they are gone.

That being said, just like AMD, Nvidia is having trouble meeting market demand for its 600 series cards due to TSMC's tight supply of 28nm chips. So they are looking into contracting other manufactures to help meet demand. Such as Samsung Electronics, Globalfoundries and United Microelectronics. Both Nvidia and AMD need to meet market demand, and this may be the only way to do so, at least until sometime around first quarter 2013 when TSMC will be increasing its 28nm production line capacity.

As most of you know, I paid $500 for my Radeon 7950. Well, now that the GTX 680 is on the market, and was priced under the 7970, AMD has lowered its reference design prices to reflect this. Though the AMD 7900's and GTX 680's perform very similar to one and other, the AMD cards were more expensive, so this was a very welcome change.

The reference MSRP for the 7970 is now as low as $479, a drop of $70 in many cases, putting it $20 behind the GTX 680. The reference MSRP for the 7950 is now $399, a drop of about $50 on average. The 7770 was dropped by $20 to $139. AMD has also announced that the upcoming and much anticipated 7870 will sell for $330.

MIPS is an application ARM processor architecture designer.

AMD comes from a decades old presence in the microprocessor industry, while Google is a satrap with smartphones, tablets, and other mobile computing devices thanks to its Android operating system. With Microsoft opening up to ARM architecture with Windows 8 RT, it is in Google's interests to hedge its bets on an alternative machine architecture to both x86 and ARM. The easiest way to that is buying out MIPS and funding development of powerful processors based on it. For AMD, it's a bid to stay competitive in the low-power processor market as Intel began making inroads to smartphone processor market.

Will be interesting to see how this turns out.

"Well it seems Ivy Bridge wont be the successor enthusiasts were hoping for on socket 1155. The new Ivy Bridge processors look to carry 95W TDPs instead of the originally expected 77W TDP Intel had been seeking. On top of this, the next blow to Ivy Bridge comes in the form of overclocking headroom, these CPUs tend to hit the wall at after 4.6-4.7 GHz due to temps getting so high it throttles down to protect itself from damage. The fact Sandy Bridge has an extra 200-300MHz over Ivy Bridge in terms of overclocking headroom and runs cooler at max clock has Ivy Bridge not looking so good. It seems the blame for these shortcomings is being placed on the 22nm Tri-gate transistors which have further increased transistor density in an already small die size, so much so in fact that heat can't be removed quick enough with air or water for high clock speeds. The speeds seen with liquid nitrogen have the chips looking stellar, but don't let that cloud your expectations, on air and water Ivy Bridge looks to be disappointing compared to what Sandy Bridge offered."

I know I am a realist, not an enthusiast, but I think people are being too nit-picky about processors these days. "Sandy Bridge has an extra 200-300MHz over Ivy Bridge in terms of overclocking headroom", that's not that much in my mind, and it will make little system performance difference. Sure, its fun to see what numbers you can hit, see how far you can push your system, but seriously?

Too many people think that OC and core speeds on their processors somehow relate to e-penis size. Too much misinformation out there on the benefits of core clock speeds vs architecture, hardware environments, and software designed to use them. More MHz does not always translate into noticeable system performance improvement.

Bah, guess this is just an old school tech head ranting. I apologize. haha

• Kit Shortcut Bundle for all class unlocks for $25.
• Vehicle Shortcut Bundle for $18.
• Co-op Weapons Shortcut for $5.
• Individual class unlocks sell for $7 each.
• Air Vehicle and Ground Vehicle Shortcuts sell fro $10 each.

Needless to say, this has met with mixed feelings among gamers. On one side of the coin, not everyone has the time available to play the game for the hundred plus hours needed to unlock everything. On the other side, why should someone be able to pay $40 and bypass everything others had to work for?

Edit: These "shortcut bundles" are available on all three platforms. The PC versions available through Origin.

The Problem with Game Trailers

This GameSpot article brought up a good point that most of us have thought about, but have not really discussed. At what point does the gap between the game trailer and the game become too large? Too much Hollywood movie and not enough game?

Dead Island, Epic Games, and the Uncharted series are is used as examples in this video, but there are many others. You have games like Modern Warfare 3 making Hollywood style game trailers that do not represent the final product much at all. Then you have Battlefiled 3 where most all trailers are actual in-game footage, sounds, ect.

So what's your thoughts on this subject?

Personally, I would like to see less Hollywood CG or live video, and have trailers better represent what you get when you play the game.

Need for Speed Fan? Movie May be in the Works!

Warner Bros, Sony, and Paramount Studios have all expressed interest to Electronic Arts to make a movie based on the Need for Speed franchise. So far, no official word on anything else.
As long as its not just another "Fast and Furious" type film, and represents the franchise well. I am all for it.