After Blu-ray disc association this week finalized the Ultra HD Blu-ray specifications, industry watchers believe that the new players and discs will show up on the market by the end of the year. Panasonic expects new UHD BD hardware to cost two or three times higher compared to current players initially, whereas …
Read More »BDA finalizes Ultra HD Blu-ray spec: hardware to emerge this holiday season
The Blu-ray disc association (BDA) this week said it had completed development of the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification and released the new logo. The upcoming technology will enable delivery of video content in up to 3840*2160 resolution using optical discs. The first Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD BD) movies and players …
Read More »PowerNAS launch CMA Central Hub NAS
At the PC Retail Boot Camp up in Northampton, British storage specialists PowerNAS has just launched its latest consumer and small business products, including a unit known as the Converge Media Appliance or CMA for short. Based up in Tamworth, Staffordshire, PowerNAS specialises in creating custom storage set ups and system …
Read More »Intel to integrate programmable components into standard Xeon processors
Intel Corp. has announced plans to integrate programmable logic from eASIC into its future standard Xeon processors. Programmable logic will allow big server customers to add their own features into Xeon central processing units in order to speed up security, big data and other applications. In a bid to offer …
Read More »ARK could be the dinosaur hunting game we’ve been waiting for
There have been a lot of disappointing dinosaur games over the years, from many of the lacklustre Jurassic Park experiences, to more recent fare like the buggy and expensive The Hunter: Primal, or the Kickstarter disappearing act, The Stomping Land. Still, perhaps one developer can finally end this drought of …
Read More »Christopher Lloyd, Zelda Williams and others sign on for King’s Quest
The reboot of classic adventure series King's Quest has become a little more star studded, with the announcement that the man who delighted us as Doc Brown, and terrified us as Judge Doom, will be joining the cast as Old King Graham. He'll be acting as narrator and protagonist, speaking about his …
Read More »Microsoft details cross-IHV multi-GPU tech in DirectX 12
Microsoft Corp. has revealed first details about its cross-vendor multi-GPU technology supported by its upcoming DirectX 12 application programming interface. As reported, the new tech allows using graphics processing units developed by different companies to work together. However, there is a catch: applications should be designed to support the Multiadapter …
Read More »AMD confirms plan to release datacentre-oriented APU in 2016 – 2017
Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday confirmed development of its first accelerated processing unit for high-performance computing and workstation applications. The chip will integrate many high-performance general-purpose cores as well as high-performance graphics processing unit. The company did not reveal any exact information about the upcoming chip. “In 2016 – 2017 …
Read More »Intel unveils 18-core Xeon E7 v3 processors for heavy-duty servers
Intel Corp. has unveiled its new Xeon E7-8800/4800 v3 microprocessors designed for mission critical, real-time analytics, Big Data and in-memory applications. The new chips integrate up to 18 cores, feature all-new RAS [reliability, availability, serviceability] features and support a number of new technologies that greatly improve performance of specific applications. …
Read More »New Witcher 3 dev diary breaks down world’s monsters
Although the combat mechanics for Witcher games have changed a lot over the years, it's always been apparent that Geralt has a lot of weapons in his arsenal for taking down the monsters he's tracked to their lair. There are various sword types and magical options and of course alchemy …
Read More »Nvidia to cease development of software modems, may sell Icera
Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday said that it will cease development of its Icera modems in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2016. At present, the company is considering to sell its soft modem technologies or Icera business completely. Nvidia acquired Icera in 2011 in order to develop competitive system-on-chips …
Read More »Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s screenshots will make your PC creak
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is much like Star Citizen, in that its forward thinking, graphical beauty makes the PCs of today look on in horror at the numbers they'll have to crunch to output the depth and detail shown in trailers for the dragon-free, medieval world. The latest batch of screenshots are …
Read More »Consumer Oculus Rift may have facial tracking too
There's a lot of speculation ongoing at the moment about just what Oculus is working on. While many believed the Crescent Bay prototype to be a pretty good indicator of what the consumer version of the Rift headset will be like, we've since heard rumours that Oculus has delayed things …
Read More »League of Legends Tribunal to return soon
The League of Legends's player run Tribunal system was an ambitious attempt to curb negative attitudes and comments from players of the highly competitive, and often toxic game. However about a year ago it was pulled, with Riot stating that it wanted to revamp the feature and improve it in …
Read More »Phytium to detail 64-core ARMv8-A processor for HPC in August
The U.S. government recently banned sales of Xeon Phi co-processors for high-performance computing applications to numerous supercomputer sites in China, slowing down development of local research. But perhaps, China will not need any HPC chips from the world’s renowned suppliers in the future as domestic companies are developing a number …
Read More »Square Enix’s DX 12 crying ‘witch’ is more real than ever
Over the past two decades, as dedicated GPUs have given us more and more powerful PCs, able to render more and more impressive visuals, we've all become intrepid spelunkers of the uncanny valley. That's the sloped sided trough, where visuals are just good enough to make our brains think they're real, …
Read More »Valve can now ban you from non VAC protected games
Valve is opening up the Steam platform even more for developers, allowing them to report hackers and cheaters directly to Valve, who can then block access to a specific title on your account. This means that Valve can now ban you for cheating in non VAC protected games. Valve announced …
Read More »Microsoft’s Hololens lets you take your TV with you
Microsoft has been showing off a lot of new features at its Build conference over the past 24 hours, but one of the more exciting technologies was a realtime, expanded demonstration of Hololens, the company's augmented reality headset. Utilising a camera that could show the audience what a user was …
Read More »More Overkill Walking Dead details released
If you were thinking that of all the titles out there at the moment, the one thing missing was another zombie shooter, then you and the maker of Payday, Overkill Software, have something in common, as it's working on just that. Based on the Walking Dead universe, Overkill's co-op, FPS …
Read More »The Spartan browser has been renamed to Microsoft Edge
Microsoft has announced the official name for its new Windows 10 browser today at its annual build conference. The browser has been known as Spartan since its announcement in January but the final version will be called Microsoft Edge. Alongside the announcement, Microsoft released a video showing off the browser …
Read More »Team Fortress 2 to get competitive matchmaking
Apparently competitive matchmaking will be making its way to Team Fortress 2 soon, a feature that has been sought after for quite some time by the community. The feature is currently said to be a “high priority” over at Valve, which has not given TF2 many significant content updates as …
Read More »Shadow of Mordor is getting a game of the year edition
Warner Bros has announced that it will be releasing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor next week with all of the previous DLC included in a new Game of the Year Edition. The GOTY edition of the game will be heading to the PC, Xbox One and PS4- last gen gamers …
Read More »Dwarf Fortress now has a Patreon page
There's been a big focus on difficult games in recent years, with learning cliffs considered far more of a legitimate choice for developers than the traditional smooth curve that makes a game easy for new players to get into. However as difficult as games like Dark Souls or Crusader Kings …
Read More »You can’t please everyone: some people miss paid mods
Even though Valve appears to have made the correct decision when it comes to pleasing its fan base by removing the paid-for mod feature on Steam – for now at least – it's a classic tale of not being able to please everyone, as there are certainly a number that …
Read More »Broken Age full game launches with new trailer
Although we still have 24 hours to wait until it becomes available in the EU, the second half of Double Fine's Kickstarter over-funded, point and click adventure game, Broken Age, is now available. The first part debuted way back in January 2014, with the developer then using funds from its …
Read More »Valve, Bethesda remove Skyrim paid mods
Valve and Bethesda have reversed their decision to sell a select number of mods through the Steam Workshop, amid a violent backlash from gamers that saw thousands around the world up in arms over what many perceived was an assault on the community driven mod scene. While initially talked about …
Read More »Gabe Newell defends paid for mods
Poor Valve probably has no idea what's going on at the moment. It's normally the apple of every gamer's eye, unable to do no wrong, but that's not the case right now. Since it was announced late last week that the Half Life developer had made it possible for modders …
Read More »32-core AMD Opteron to feature quad-die MCM design
Advanced Micro Devices will continue to use multi-chip-module design for its upcoming AMD Opteron processors. This should greatly help the company to reduce its development and manufacturing costs, but may affect performance of its central processing units for servers. The forthcoming AMD Opteron processors with up to 32 cores based …
Read More »ARM: 20% of servers to be ARM-based by 2020
Despite of a lot of hype about ARM-based servers in the recent years, actual number of their deployments remains very low. However, ARM Holdings is optimistic about its market opportunities and expects 20 per cent of servers to be ARM-based by 2020. In a bid to dramatically increase its share of …
Read More »Kerbal Space Program will hit 1.0 in just six days
Planet Kerbin was thrown into disarray at the start of April, when it was announced that Kerbal Space Program was entering the experimental phase for its official, 1.0 release. While many predicted that it would be weeks or months until that phase of testing was over, it turned out to …
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