T Mobile : Angry Birds Live

Live-sized Angry Birds at Barcelona. Complete with real shooting birds and exploding pigs!


SOURCE  YouTube

Two weeks ago they already brought you a quick overview of the entry level Radeon HD 6450, well guess what ? AMD has more on the table. Three cards are now officially released in the low-end segment, namely the AMD Radeon HD 6670, HD 6570 and 6450.

All small, cute and tiny products that have been  released by AMD to address a sizable market.. Products that could be handy for desktop usage and hey now, it might sit mighty fine in a HTPC.

The Radeon HD 6400/6500 and 6600 series addresses the low-level market yet AMD has decided to double the number of stream processors available to the Caicos (6400) core over previous products and Turks for the 6500 and 6600 series. All these cards come with:

• Graphics core DirectX® 11
• Eyefinity displays Up to 3
• Low Board Power
• Frame Buffer 512MB-1GB
• Memory Type GDDR5/DDR3
• Available Display outputs HDMI 1.4, DP 1.2, DVI, VGA.
• Form factor Low profile
• Thermal Active or Passive cooling

The three low-segment series 6000 cards"

Radeon  HD 6450 -- All the graphics card have a 40nm based GPU and start at a very decent 160 SPs, as well as 8 texturing units, 16 Z/Stencil ROP units and 4 color ROP units for the 6450. The clock frequencies will vary based on models, ranging from 625 towards 725 MHz. The card can now be configured with faster GDDR5 memory, AMD is now allowing for up to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer to be installed that can be clocked between 800MHz and 900MHz. The TDP is 20W for the DDR3 models adn 27 Watt for the GDDR5 models.

Radeon  HD 6570 -- All the graphics card have a 40nm based GPU and start at a very decent 480 SPs, as well as 24 texturing units, 32 Z/Stencil ROP units and 8 color ROP units for the 6570. The clock frequencies will be 650 MHz. The card is configured with faster GDDR5 memory or could as well be equipped with DDR3 memory, AMD is now allowing 512 up to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer to be installed that can be clocked between 800MHz and 900MHz. This card will have a 44W TDP.

Radeon  HD 6670 -- All the graphics card have a 40nm based GPU, the transistor count for his model is 716M and is comes with at a very decent 480 SPs, as well as 24 texturing units, 32 Z/Stencil ROP units and 8 color ROP units for the 6670. The clock frequency will be 800 MHz. The card is configured with faster GDDR5 (4000 MHz effective) memory, AMD is now allowing 512 or 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer to be installed allowing it a 64 GB/s bandwidth. This card will have a 66W TDP.

The Radeon HD 6670 is the card we'll briefly review today.

Continue reading at guru3d

SOURCE:  guru3d

GeForce ForceWare 270.61 WHQL Released

This is the first WHQL-certified release from the Release 270 family of drivers (versions 270.xx to 274.xx). You can read more about this family of drivers on GeForce.com.

This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs. This driver package also includes the 3D Vision Controller driver.

Razer Hydra motion controller gets summer release, Portal 2 bundle

Remember the Razer Hydra controller that let you materialize portals with a real electromagnetic orb? Those motion sensing sticks will be available for pre-order in May and will go on sale in June, two months after this week's release of Portal 2, the game it was first demoed with. However, Razer'll still charge you for a copy of the murderous robot game if you want the fancy gizmo, as it's pricing the bundle at $140 -- understandably more expensive that the "below $100" price that it was targeting for the controller alone. Two months is a pretty long time to wait to play the already-available title, and Razer isn't offering any info on a standalone version of the Sixense-based magnetic peripheral. On the upside, though, Joystiq got its hands on a list of compatible titles, which includes 122 games on top of the aforementioned sequel. 

Crysis 2 Review

One of the most awaited games of 2011, Crysis 2 pits the player against aliens (Cephs) and human soldiers (CELL). Players will play as a one man army with a super suit named Nanosuit 2 in a devastated New York. I have personally played the game and it really looks nice! However many complained of the "watered down graphics" and the lack of DX11 support out from the box. Personally, it is one of the prettiest games I have seen. I can't alt+tab out of the game so I am sorry for the lack of screenshots proving the prettiness of this game. It might be one of the prettiest FPS you can play out there. Even my GTX460 1GB is stressed out even though it supports only DX9. I will take screenshots tomorrow when I play it again.

Apple reportedly hires top UK gaming PR execs from Nintendo and Activision

As you may have noticed, Apple has been more serious about gaming lately that it was even during its Pippin-fueled haze in the mid-1990s, and it's now offering yet more evidence of just how invested it is with a pair of new hires. While the company isn't confirming the move just yet, MCV is reporting that Apple has snatched up Nintendo UK's former head of communications, Rob Saunders, who just left the big N last week and will apparently be focusing on PR for iOS apps at Apple. What's more, he'll reportedly be joined at Apple by former Activision PR director Nick Grange, who's said to be focusing specifically on the iPad -- which, as we've seen, can be a pretty versatile gaming device in its own right.


 VIA  Apple Insider, Engadget
 SOURCE  MCV UK

Sony's Move.me database used to create gesture-enabled mouse driver (video)

Unless you're into weird promotional mascots, video games, or measuring the rotation of the earth, the PlayStation Move probably hasn't caught your eye. Here's an idea: what if you could wave it about to control your PC? Earlier this week, electronics hobbyist Jacob Pennock used the Move.me C library to build a gesture-controlled mouse driver, and we've got the project's tech demo after the break.

AMD Radeon HD6790 Review : GTX550 Ti Killer?

The HD 6790 is set to beat the GTX550 Ti, which is quite a failure by nVidia, performing even worse than the previous generation's GTX460. It is based on AMD's 40 nm "Barts" GPU which is the very same graphics processor used in the Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870. Next to that this product comes with a full 256-bit wide memory bus giving it very nice memory bandwidth and really, aside from slicing some shader processor clusters and ROPs away, this is a R6800 series card.

Armed with plenty of power for a products in the 125 EUR (RM544) range this product could be just what the doctor ordered for gamers on a budget, have a quick peek at the actual reference sample and then let's head on over into the review.

AMD Radeon HD6990 vs nVidia GTX590

A short history lesson on dual GPU cards.

Most consumers don't even need dual GPUs with single GPUs more than enough for gaming purposes. However, some people like to be extreme, and dual GPU cards are the most extreme cards one can buy in the market. Right now we are looking at dual GF110 and dual "Caymans", essentially giving you two slowed down GTX580 or two HD6970 respectively.

SPECIFICATIONS

	GeForce GTX 590	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 6990	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturing Process	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC
Die Size	2 x 520 mm²	520 mm²	2 x 389 mm²	389 mm²	389 mm²
Transistors	2 x 3 billion	3 billion	2 x 2.64 billion	2.64 billion	2.64 billion
Engine Clock	607 MHz	772 MHz	830 MHz	880 MHz	800 MHz
Stream Processors / CUDA Cores	1024	512	3072	1536	1408
Compute Performance	2.49 TFLOPS	1.58 TFLOPS	5.1 TFLOPS	2.7 TFLOPS	2.25 TFLOPS
Texture Units	128	64	192	96	88
Texture Fillrate	77.7 Gtex/s	49.4 Gtex/s	159.4 Gtex/s	84.5 Gtex/s	70.4 Gtex/s
ROPs	96	48	64	32	32
Pixel Fillrate	58.3 Gpix/s	37.1 Gpix/s	53.1 Gpix/s	28.2 Gpix/s	25.6 Gpix/s
Frame Buffer	2 x 1.5 GB GDDR5	1.5 GB GDDR5	2 x 2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	853 MHz	1002 MHz	1250 MHz	1375 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory Bandwidth	2 x 163.9 GB/s (384-bit)	192 GB/s (384-bit)	2 x 160 GB/s (256-bit)	176 GB/s (256-bit)	160 GB/s (256-bit)
Maximum Board Power	365 W	244 W	375 W	250 W	200 W

With the current top single GPUs  being so powerful, things will only get better when doubled, right? Read more on the GTX590 and how well it performs in SLI vs the HD6990 in Crossfire here.

For the AMD HD6990 review, please click here now.


SOURCE: Tom's Hardware, Guru3d, Guru3d

ASUS Rampage III Black Edition

If one thing is a fact then it's that the X58 chipset is technology that keeps on living on the edge. Quick match tells me that the X58 chipset is now roughly two and a half years old. And it is still alive and very much kicks ass big-time! While P67 for Sandy Bridge is the equivalent kickass product, the X58 based motherboards give you some advantages, and that would be the Core i7 socket 1366 processor, including the 6-core Nehalem based processors of course.

Study: Computer Gamers less likely to go to a University

A recent study at the University of Oxford indicates that those who play computer games are less likely to reach University level education.

As ZDNet reports, those who play video games on a regular basis and who have little or no other extracurricular activities were found to have slim chances of going to a University. Both males and females suffered a 5% drop in their likelihood of attending a University.

However, those who read a book for pleasure, spent some time at a movie theater watching a movie, or participated in something artistic at least once a month, had a higher chance of attending a University.

However, there is one thing to note. This study uses data from 1970 to the present. Gaming has changed over the years with the inventions of the Wii and the Xbox Kinect. Games are now more brain stimulating rather than one-dimensional. If Mr Taylor used current data reflecting the change in the gaming climate from the past few years, perhaps his findings might be a little different.


SOURCE  Winbeta