Top 5 Graphics Cards you can wish to buy.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 670:

Almost identical in performance to the AMD Radeon HD 7970, despite costing £30 less, the nVidia GTX 670 is a fantastic deal. And the best news is that this is only the card running at its default settings. It's also much lighter on power – around 55 watt – and quieter. It's still not cheap, but it's clearly the card to buy if you want excellent game framerates without a £400+ price tag.


nVidia GeForce GTX 680:

AMD's 7000 series relies on a graphics architecture that is drastically different from previous AMD chips, so we may still see much better performance with driver improvements, but right now, if you have £400 to spend on a graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680 is the clear winner.


Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti:

The Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a nice card that offers decent performance, and just about gets the nod ahead of the now rather old-fashioned 7870 cards. However, the loss of a memory controller is a significant setback, and given that the price difference between this and the GTX 670s is only around £20, it's really not recommend this over its more expensive sibling. Once the price falls another £20, it may start to become a very interesting product.


HIS 7970 3GB:

The new architecture marks quite a change for AMD, although this hasn't yet turned into a card that'll blow away gamers. The 7970 is a nice card, but not one that's ground-breaking in terms of performance, and we suspect there is potential for nVidia.


Asus Radeon HD 7870:

Overall the Asus Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II looks like a pretty good graphics card. The problem is that it finds itself up against the brand new nVidia GTX 670. And on that score it's a loser. The latter card may be more expensive, but for an extra £50 it gives you far more performance, and a slight improvement in power consumption too. Unless you really can't go up the extra, the 7870 remains, without a price drop, the second choice in its category.

Read More

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Review - Futuristic 2007.

A game released in 2013 with a tagline 'The year is 2007. It is the future,' is really going to be crazy, absurd and insane. That's exactly what Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has absolutely no relation to the game Ubisoft released last year. Instead, it takes the mechanics of the game but wraps them in something completely different. It's worth pointing out that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a standalone downloadable game and doesn't require Far Cry 3 to play.

In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, you take on the role of Sargent Rex Power Colt, a Mark IV Cyber Commando who is voiced by Michael Biehn, best known for playing the roles of Kyle Reese in the first Terminator film and Dwayne Hicks in Aliens. In the game, Rex is tasked with stopping Colonel Sloan and his Omega Force from launching missiles fueled with the blood of the Blood Dragons. Blood Dragons are creatures in the game which mysteriously appeared after the world was ravaged by nuclear war at the end of the 20th century. 

Like Far Cry 3, the game is a first person shooter and set on an island. Only this time the island is infested with mutated animals and cyborg soldiers, as well as the Blood Dragons. The game is open-world in that you can explore the island at your leisure. You can find collectibles in the form of VHS tapes, TV Sets, and diary entries while you explore the land. The collectibles unlock different weapon attachments that you can use to upgrade your weapons, while the weapons themselves are great to use as they have an excellent feel to them. The shooting in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is one of the most enjoyable games in recent times in terms of shooting.

There aren't many weapons though, but each one is unique and has their use. A number of the weapons are references to late 80s/early 90s sci-fi movies. For example, the AJM 9 pistol is a reference to Robocop, as the initials of AJM stand for Alex J. Murphy, who was Robocop himself and the gun looks identical to the one he uses in the movie. The description of the gun in the game mentions a fallen cop in Detroit as well. Another example is the Galleria 1991 shotgun, which is a reference to Terminator 2, as Galleria is named after the arcade in the movie, 1991 is the year the movie was released and the look of the shotgun and reload animation where Rex spins it is the same as when the Terminator does when riding the motorcycle. 

Moving around in FC3: BD is faster than in most FPS games as Rex can run pretty fast and he never stops to catch his breath; it's the same when swimming as well, unless you end up being attacked by a cyber shark. Oh yeah, those exist. There are also vehicles in the game, all of which appear to have come over from Far Cry 3; boats, jeeps and jet skis make an appearance, along with a hang glider, which feels out of place as it doesn't really fit with the sci-fi theme. They can be useful but aren't that necessary thanks to Rex and the speed he can move at. Also in the game is a mini-map as well as a full blown map. On the map you can place Waypoints on certain things, namely objectives or Garrisons, which are bases which can be taken over. To take over a Garrison, you simply have to kill all of the Omega Force cyborgs who reside in it. You can also press up on the d-pad to scan the area for enemies or animals, which are then marked on the mini-map. This is handy for going stealth in the game.

Pros

• The excellent shooting mechanics and weapons
• Great soundtrack
• The constant nods to 80s TV and movies

Cons

• The lack of variety in the side missions
• Too few enemy types
• End of game too easy

Read More

Nvidia launches the $250 GTX 760, a fine video card at a fair price.

Over the past few months Nvidia has been steadily updating its desktop product lineup. The GTX Titan kicked off the year with a bang and new single-GPU performance records, theGTX 780 offered most of Titan’s performance for $350 less than Nvidia’s halo product, and the GTX 770 is a slightly faster GTX 680 for about the same price.

If the sudden deceleration from “record-breaking graphics card” to “Slightly faster than last year’s model” left you feeling whiplashed, we apologize, but that’s the general shape of things this time around. The GK110 (found in the GTX 780) boosted high-end performance dramatically, but Nvidia’s cards below the $650 price point aren’t moving much.

The GTX 760 is Nvidia’s new midrange card for the $249 price point, and it’s somewhat different from the GTX 660 Ti that it replaces. Specifics on the two are shown below:

There’s a little information that these charts don’t show you. The GTX 660 Ti has 112 TMUs (texture mapping units) but just 24 raster operations pipelines (ROPs). The new GTX 760 has fewer TMUs (96) but more ROPs (32) and thus a significantly higher pixel fill rate (33GP/s as compared to 23.5GP/s for the GTX 660 Ti). The GTX 660 Ti has 17% more cores than the 760, but the 760 has 33% more memory bandwidth and makes up for the core differential with a 7% faster clock speed.

Both the GTX 760 and GTX 660 Ti are based on the GK104 GPU. That chip is built with 1536 cores by default — Nvidia locks out damaged cores when it bins the product for board mounting. This makes it relatively easy for the company to fine-tune the GPU core/TMU/ROP ratio, and I suspect that’s what happened here. The original GTX 660 Ti is still a strong card, but the 760 Ti has had its features tuned to better balance performance and cost.

The price comes down a bit, to $249. Average performance should be quite close to the GTX 660 Ti, with the GTX 760 possibly taking an edge in higher resolutions due to increased memory bandwidth. Benchmarks I did at 1920×1080 with 8x MSAA — all detail levels set to maximum — show the Radeon 7950 consistently outperforming the GTX 760, though the gap is in line with the difference in price. Currently, the Radeon 7950 is selling for $299 — $50 more than the $249 Nvidia card.

Read More

PS4 The game is on.

The PlayStation 4 will go on sale later this year and it'll be cheaper than the Xbox One - $399 in the US, £349 in the UK and €399 - compared to $499 and £429.

Following the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, Sony Computer Entertainment appears to have won the first major battle against the Microsoft Corporation in the war of new video game consoles between the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

The PS4 itself was shown off for the first time at E3 and it's black, just like the Xbox One.

"It is a design that is sleek and visually good wherever it is placed," said Andy House, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment said during the reveal. And that's probably true, or at least, it's fair to say that the PS4 isn't any more obtrusive than the PS3 was. But it still looks a bit bulky at first glance, like an onyx coffee table book that you keep propped up by your television.

There are over 140 games in development currently for the PS4, including 40 that include "experiences" that are exclusive to PlayStation. But just to remind you all, that "experiences" don't mean the full game.

If you're watching the live stream  don't worry. They're better than that, easily. In fact, the graphics are definitely more impressive in person than any picture or stream of them you've seen so far.

PlayStation 4 Specs:

Main processor: Single-chip custom processor

CPU:  low power x86-64 AMD "Jaguar", 8 cores

GPU:  1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon™ based graphics engine

Memory:  GDDR5 8GB

Storage size:  500GB Hard disk drive.

BD/DVD Drive (Read Only):  BD x 6 CAV DVD x 8 CAV

Input/Output:  Super-Speed USBx (USB 3.0) port x 2 AUX port x 1

Networking:  Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 1 IEEE 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)

AV Output:  HDMI out port DIGITAL OUTPUT (OPTICAL) port

DualShock 4 specs:

External Dimensions: Approx. 162mm x 52mm x 98mm

Weight: Approx. 210g (tentative)

Buttons: PS button, SHARE button, OPTIONS button, Directional buttons (Up/Down/Left/Right), Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square), R1/L1/R2/L2/R3/L3, Right stick, Left stick, Touch Pad Button, Touch Pad 2 Point Touch Pad, Click Mechanism, Capacitive Type

Other Features: Light Bar, Vibration, Built-in Mono Speaker

Ports: USB (Micro B), Extention Port, Stereo Headset Jack

Wireless communication: Bluetooth® Ver2.1+EDR.

Read More

Sony’s PlayStation 4-$100 Less Than Xbox One, Only For $399.

The PlayStation 4 will launch in the US for $399 “this holiday season”.

On the other-hand Microsoft’s Xbox One, will launch in the US in November for $499. This brings the PS4 in at a full one hundred bucks cheaper than the Xbox One, with the One already facing its fair share of criticism.

Sony specifically targeted many of the things that the Xbox One has been publicly criticized for, from its lack of support for independent developers, to its publisher-set restrictions on the selling and trading of used games, to its requirement that gamers periodically connect their consoles to the Internet to authenticate their games. Sony says that the PS4 will have “no restrictions” on used games, and that PS4 game will require no online authentication. Sony just won a lot of fans. And I think you also know that.

The biggest surprise is the design. The Xbox One is a rectangular cuboid and the PS4 is a parallelepiped. Both are jet black, with incredibly sharp angles from edge to edge, the PS4 is just a bit more laid back, with a slight lean to its corners when compared to the Xbox One’s VCR-esque boxiness.

Read More