Tech News
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Duke Nukem Forever Released - Nobody seems to care
Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: DennisArsTechnica seems to be pulling out the big guns to rip on Duke. I hate to admit it but I happen to agree with the author.
Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
As for the levels, remember when you could walk around in Duke Nukem 3D, exploring the environments, finding items, and locating the path needed to get ahead? That's over and done with. Duke Nukem Forever is one long corridor. You shoot your way through it, then there's a joke about a penis, then you shoot through another corridor - and then maybe you backtrack! - and then someone says something with curse words in it because that's edgy. With no exploration, no sense of joy at discovering something, there's no real way to forge your own path in the game. It's all point A to point B.”
- ArstechncaI now want to find their review Call of Duty Black Ops, if they are any good it should be a word for word copy.
Be sure to check out the article, they drew up an excellent map of a modern FPS.
Another famed editor over at mercurynews.com wrote up an article that started out ripping on Duke but then later changed tone as he starts describing elements of the game. It’s a good read, but he clearly takes the easy way out.
Review: 'Duke Nukem Forever' not worth wait"It's one of the most cliched setups in video games, and one of the ways that "Duke Nukem Forever" shows its age. At a time when narratives are more subtle and nuanced, the development teams trot out a tale that could have been written on the back of a cocktail napkin. It's not terribly complicated, and all it does is fuel the power fantasy that's the life blood of the franchise."
- Mercurynews.comAll good stuff, and I'm sure there will be more.
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A tour of Zotac's Dongguan factory @ TechReport
Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: DennisTruth be told once you have seen a SMT factory you have seen them all. Despite this, I do love factory tours.
Our tour was cut short before we had a chance to tour the motherboard wing, but at that point we were all high on solder fumes and dripping with sweat thanks to layers of anti-static gear. Besides, the workers had already been kept on shift past their usual lunch break to serve as subjects for the staccato of DSLR snapshots that ensue when you let journalists loose in a factory filled with fancy machinery and half-built PC components. You can find more than 40 shots of the factory in the associated image gallery below.
Maybe next time we'll be able to see this in person.
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NL: Review Block - Motherboards and Chassis
Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | By: DennisIn a way cases and mobos are very dependent on each other, and beyond putting the motherboard into the case but rather making sure the case is big enough to support the motherboard you choose. Back in the early days this didn't matter since all mobos followed a specific pattern. However, these days you can get extended ATX designs along with several custom sizes depending on what mobo you buy.
Motherboards
- GIGABYTE X58A-OC LGA1366 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
- ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
- ASUS Maximus IV Extreme (Intel P67) Motherboard Review
- ASRock Z68 Extreme4 @ PureOverclock
Cases
- Thermaltake Level 10 GT Review @ XSReviews
- In Win Dragon Rider Case Review @ XtremeComputing
- NZXT H2 Silent Mid-Tower Chassis Review @ Techgage
- Silverstonetek PS05 System Enclosure reviewed in MetkuLets hope our future case reviews start addressing supported mobo designs since that will be a huge selling point for one case over another.
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THQ Shuts Down Kaos Studios
Published: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | By: DennisThis is what happens when you make a bad game and spend more money marketing it than actually developing the game. I had really really high hopes for this game, the single player story line was awesome but totally failed to deliver and was way too short.
The official statement doesn’t outright say it, but one can imagine that this has something to do with Homefront‘s relatively poor reception. The game did manage to sell over one million copies, to be fair, but it ultimately failed to hold the attention of gamers and received lukewarm, at best, reception from critics.
Thing is businesses do this kind of thing all the time. However, while the reasons for a sudden change rarely make sense the writing on the wall is clear.
"If you spend our money and end up making a steaming pile of crap be prepared to receive not only a pink slip but eradication from the industry."
Just sayin.
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LSI 9265 MegaRAID Supplementary Review: The Beauty of CacheCade! @ The SSD Review
Published: Monday, June 13, 2011 | By: DennisRAID has always been the quickest way to get super performance from any sort of storage subsystem. Considering how fast SSDs are you have to wonder if RAID really makes a big difference over a single drive.
Today we are going to take an indepth look at Cache Cade, a new approach to storage systems that allow the perfect fusion of HDD capacity and SSD speed. W ith many large databases and enterprise users ‘caught in the middle’ with large HDD arrays, yet needing more performance from their existing infrastructure, CacheCade is a great option that allows the best of both worlds.
The concept behind CacheCade is that it will be integrated into several consumer products by several big players in the computing industry, thus becoming very prevalent in the long term storage outlook. Both the enterprise and consumer segments are coming to grips with the changing landscape of storage brought about by the emergence of the SSD as the premium storage option. As always, the enterprise applications are trickling down into the consumer realm, and LSI is right at the forefront of development with this new method of storage enhancement.They seem to think so but if I am reading this correctly they are using a cache method to speed up performance much like what Intel is doing with Smart Response or even what hardware RAID controllers have been doing for years. Either way it should be fast.
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The Sexiest Booth Babes of E3 2011 @ Legit Reviews
Published: Monday, June 13, 2011 | By: DennisSeveral years ago the promoters of E3 had to put a stop to how skimpy the booth babe outfits could be, after that I lost all interest in attending. It is good to see that they still have a good assortment of babes there to help promote stuff.
Legit Reviews was there and put together this little E3 booth babe gallery for us to enjoy.
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Infinity Ward aiming to have dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 3
Published: Sunday, June 12, 2011 | By: DennisI caught this while trolling neoseeker this evening and the promise of this news is exciting to say the least.
One of the top concerns for Modern Warfare 3 is the potential lack of dedicated servers for the PC version. Bowling could not confirm whether or not there would be dedicated servers but there is an effort underway to allow players run their own servers. Ideally, Bowling would like to see dedicated servers and IWnet coexist.
I also like the comment they made about if you should buy Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3, check out the article for more details.
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AMD Radeon HD 6870 CrossFire with 5x1 Eyefinity @ HotHardware
Published: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 | By: DennisEyefinity technology is a great thing but really only remains useful in the hands of people who can use it. HotHardware shows you how to setup Eyefinity using a single card and then explains some of the benefits of doing so.
With the performance of more mainstream cards on the rise, monitor prices on a downward slide, and support for 5x1 Eyefinity available (sort of), we decided to see what a pair of Radeon HD 6870 cards running in CrossFire mode could do with a quintet of screen out in front.
The cleanest way to pull off a 5x1 Eyefinity configuration, without using an array of adapters, is with a card that has at least five, similar outputs, connected to matching monitors. To that end, we got our hands on a pair of PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 2GB Eyefinity 6 Edition cards and five Dell 22” screens with DisplayPort inputs...I'm still a dual screen kinda guy, not because I can't benefit from more screen real estate but rather because I have more than enough already. You won't believe how much space is used by dual 24" flat panels.
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NL: Review Block - Cases System Memory and Video Cards
Published: Monday, June 6, 2011 | By: DennisMore reviews than anyone will click on at once.
Cases
- Silverstonetek Raven 3 System Enclosure reviewed in Metku
- Coolermaster Storm Enforcer Review - XSReviews
- Corsair Graphite 600T White Special Edition Case Review @ Legit Reviews
- Corsair Special Edition White Graphite 600T Chassis Review @ Techgage
Memory
- G.Skill Sniper 8GB CL7 DDR3 memory review @ Guru3D
- Kingston HyperX 2x4GB DDR3 RAM Review @ APH Networks
- Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer 6GB DDR3-1600 @ PureOverclock
Video Cards
- Gigabyte GTX 560 SuperOverclock @ PureOverclock
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 OC (1Gb GDDR5)
- HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Turbo 2GB Video Card Review @ TT
- Zotac GTX 560 TI Amp! Edition Review - XSReviews
- MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme Edition 3 GB @ techPowerUp
- MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme Edition (XE) 3GB Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Gainward GTX 560 Ti 2048MB Reviewed in Metku
- Zotac GTX 580 Amp! Edition Review - XSReviewsMore news to come
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Still in Taiwan - Post Computex Coming
Published: Sunday, June 5, 2011 | By: DennisWow what a crazy week.
Typically my Computex trips last about two weeks with a week for the show and a week following to catch up with some friends and travel around. I don't have a travel buddy this year so I've resorted to forcing myself to find stuff to do but it is still fun.
I still owe the website some news updates and I still owe all of you my post Computex write-ups along with the famed Booth Babe edition. So stay tuned for those and with any luck the Booth Babes gallery should be going up later today.
