TI may have blazed the trail, but today NVIDIA has announced that it’ll support Miracast as an integral part of its Tegra mobile platform. If you’ll recall, Miracast is a creation of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which aims to create a new standard for wireless displays by way of a reference specification and certification program. There are few concrete details to share at this point, as the Miracast spec has yet to be ratified, but NVIDIA has already engaged a number of manufacturers in an effort to drum up support for the new standard — think it’s reason enough for the WiDi and AirPlay crowds to worry?
Rambus has lost the ITC dispute it filed with most of the electronics industry back in the day. Only LSI and STMicroelectronics remained as respondents after the company negotiated settlements with Freescale, Broadcom, MediaTek and NVIDIA. In its decision, the court found that some of the patents were unenforceable, while others ceased to be under the “clean hands” doctrine because Rambus had allegedly destroyed relevant documents. Company general counsel, Thomas Lavelle, has said in a statement that its next move might be to make an appeal to the Federal Circuit — where it’s hoping for better luck.
You would think that, as time goes on, more and more Steam users would be adopting better hardware for their PCs. The Steam hardware survey for June 2012 tells us that may not necessarily be the case, as the company actually saw an increase in lower-end PC use over past hardware surveys. Take, for instance, the number of computers that use Intel Integrated Graphics – while NVIDIA and ATI GPUs are still by far the most common, in June Steam saw the use of Intel Integrated Graphics rise to 11%.
There was also a rise in the use of single and dual-core systems. Systems that use DirectX 11 and DirectX 10 GPUs rose ever so slighly (both by less than one percent), but the number of systems using DirectX 9 rose by 1.5%, meaning that DirectX 9 systems are now used by almost 20% of Steam’s user base. Also of note are the most common resolutions: 25% of participants in the poll are using 1920×1080, 18% are using 1366×768, 10% are using 1680×1050, and finally, 1600×900 comes in with 7%.
PCGamesN points out that this rise in older hardware could mean that more users are installing Steam on their laptops. There’s also the fact that indie games are all the rage at the moment, and those don’t usually require high-end hardware to run. Indeed, you can enjoy a lot of Steam’s game without having a beast of a rig, and considering that indie games are generally much cheaper than major releases by big publishers, it seems like that may be one of the reasons why we’re seeing more middling PCs accessing Steam.
It’s also worth pointing out that a bug in the system recently discovered by Steam prevented new computers from being included in the monthly surveys. While the bug was present, only computers that had participated in the poll before were polled again in recent hardware surveys, meaning if you recently installed Steam on a new PC, it may not have been included in the results. The bug has since been fixed, but it’s causing all of this data to appear all at once instead of over time as it would have normally. Still, despite the bug, this is an interesting development, and it will be exciting to see where the data goes in future hardware surveys.
MSI introduced the GT60 and GT70 notebooks in March, and the latter has already received an upgrade to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 675M GPU. Now both laptops are taking another step up, this time to the GeForce GTX 680M, NVIDIA’s latest GPU, with 4GB of dedicated memory. The refreshed 16-inch GT60 and 17-inch GT70 are available in the US today for $1,899 and $2,599, respectively. Specs remain the same aside from the revved-up GPU; both models come standard with an Intel Core i7-3610QM CPU, a 1,920 x 1,080 display, HDMI output, a Killer E2200 LAN card and three USB 3.0 ports. For more info, head to the press release below the break.
AMD has been suffering a conspicuous brain drain, with executives like ATI veteran Rick Bergman and CTO Eric Demers crossing over to tangentially or directly competitive companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm. Chalk up another one for the list — strategic development VP Bob Feldstein has bounded towards NVIDIA’s (literally) greener pastures. The blow cuts deeper than usual through Feldstein’s responsibility for graphics in most of the consoles from the past few years: he headed up work behind the Xenos chip in earlier Xbox 360s and the Hollywood core in the Wii, and he likely had some say in the Wii U’s video hardware as well. While the staff shuffle won’t directly affect AMD’s Fusion processors or Radeon cards, it’s hard to see much of a positive for AMD’s future in video gaming, even in the light of rumors that the next PlayStation and Xbox might use some of Feldstein’s work.
China Times is reporting that Microsoft is only letting an elite few companies build Windows RT tablets in order to focus its research and development resources. It reportedly asked three chipmakers to pick up to two OEMs to bring inside the tent, with NVIDIA grabbing ASUS and Lenovo, TI snagging Toshiba and Qualcomm selecting Samsung and HP. However, the latter company dropped out of the program to concentrate on x86 machines, so it’s rumored that Dell’s currently jockeying to take its place. The first wave of completed tablets will arrive on October 26th, and Redmond won’t open up the market until January next year — so expect Windows RT to be the buzz-word CES 2013.
LG has unveiled the V720, a new series of all-in-one PCs, featuring 27-inch IPS HD panels and an Intel Ivy Bridge processor option. The line consists of a high-end model with Intel’s 3rd generation Core i5 and an IPS 1,920 x 1,080 3D panel, and a lesser model with a 2nd generation Core i3 and the same display sans 3D. Other specs include 750GB SATA3 hybrid or standard drives, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, USB 3.0 and NVIDA’s GT640M 1GB graphics. Photos show a white and silver looker with well concealed computer guts, but don’t count on being able to pick up one of the minimalist units in the US — LG normally keeps its PC offerings exclusively in Asia.
Here you are new AIO or All In One computer from LG with the V720. This new 27” wonder comes with the usual IPS full HD screen but also includes LG Cinema 3D (on the i5 Version Only) Support and a Dual Digital TV Tuner with basic PIP (Picture in Picture). The V720 will be available in Korea in two flavors with the: V720-U.AE30K running on a Core i3-2370M at 2.4GHz with 4GB of RAM, 750GB of HDD and a GeForce GT640M with 1GB of VRAM but no 3D V720-U.AE50K running on a Core i5-3210M at 2.5GHz, …
The man responsible for Creative Strategy on Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty franchise has announced that his next big behemoth of a game, Human Element, will be given a prequel exclusive to the upcoming console known as OUYA. This console has gained significant traction in the last few weeks as its launch on Kickstarter blasted through all expected initial funding efforts, capturing the Android community as it did so. With an exclusive game launch as giant as this coming with it, the potential for failure should by all means be non-existent!
It’s Robert Bowling we’re talking about here, folks, and he’s announced his intent to release an episodic prequel to Human Element – a game slated for 2015 for PCs and whatever Xbox and/or Playstation is out by the time that year arrives. Have a peek at an interview Bowling did with Machinima at E3 on the 2015 game:
Robert Bowling has made it clear that this “episodic prequel” to Human Element made for OUYA will set the stage for the full Human Element in a few short years. For now, this will be the first ever release by the company Robotoki, a game developer company headed by Bowling.
Above have a peek at Bowling speaking about the prequel for OUYA and the rewards that backers will get even more exclusively than every other exclusive as well – so exclusive you wont be able to handle it!
Get your button smashing fingers out, folks, this is going to be a beast of a prequel without a doubt – even though this console is running Android, a traditionally lower-powered OS for systems that aren’t as beastly as, for example, the Xbox or the Playstation, here it’s powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. This processor has shown itself more than once to be more than beefy enough to take on high powered games – check it out here in our [Tegra 3 hub.]
Meanwhile you can still contribute to the OUYA project via Kickstarter. This project is at $5 million USD and growing!
The NVIDIA TegraZone has brought on many next-level shooters, racing games, and graphic-heavy beasts that show the power of Tegra processors plainly – with Auralux, it’s not quite so simple to see. What you’ve got here developed by Wardrum Studios is not a shooting game with rippling puddles of blood, nor is it a water shooting game where you put out realistic looking fires – instead its the most minimalistic vision of what Warcraft addicts fell in love with back in the 1990s with strategy and troop controls, but this time it’s in space. And it’s fought with bubbles.
This game is an instant buy for anyone who loves the game Osmos in that it requires you to look at your physics-heavy blob-controlling situation from a bird’s eye view – though you’re in space, so it’s more of a gods-eye-view. Everything is flat, but you’ve got hovering bodies living around planets which produce these bodies. These bodies – or bubbles – are your troops. The object of the game is to reduce your enemies to nothingness.
To defeat your enemies, you’ve got to control your troops by selecting them with your finger – this done by creating a circle around them – then commanding them to attack. But you don’t tell them to attack as you would a normal war-like game, you tell them to advance. You can tell your troops to move to a certain area on the screen, or you can tell them to make their way into one of the planets.
The planets are either controlled by you or one of your enemies, or they can be neutral. Depending on the setup of each level, you and your enemies will have different positions amongst different amounts of planets which can be taken over by your troops. To take over a planet, you’ve got to sacrifice an amount of troops to it.
Once you’ve activated a planet with enough troops, the planet will begin producing troops. The smallest planet size produces troops the slowest, the largest produces the quickest. Each dormant/gray planet has a limit to how large it can get, with the most challenging environments having only a collection of the smallest planets. The larger you make a planet, the harder it is for an enemy to take it, as well.
This game is played at a relatively slow pace, but you can purchase a Speed Mode from the Google Play store that allows you to rock and roll at what I just hate to call “blazing” speeds. There are also levels galore you can buy with an NVIDIA Tegra exclusive pack hiding near the end of the list – it’s the best!
This game is a home run for mobile devices, and on a Tegra-toting device it’s a powerful punch for tablet and smartphone gamers alike. Auralux sits somewhere between a rather involved game and a casual game, making it really great for lots of different types of people looking to make great use of their touchscreen interfaces on all manner of devices. This game has rather quickly become a first-install for all of the devices I’ll be reviewing in the near future – count on it.
You can download Auralux from the Google Play Store or catch it on the NVIDIA TegraZone starting this week as well. What are you waiting for?!
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