May, 2008

Gaming / Technology — No Comments
25
May 08

Starcraft 2’s system specs leaked?


We have received word from Blizzard directly that these system specs are by no means the official specs for the game. Micromania did not receive these specs from Blizzard in any way, nor did Blizzard even answer a question in regard to the specs. Therefore, these figures should be taken as, at best, incredible speculation!

The originally published article will continue below for discussion purposes.

These are by no means official just yet, but after a visit to Blizzard’s offices the Spanish gaming magazine Micromania has had a look under the hood of Starcraft 2 and got some outlines of what the system requirements will be.

While Blizzard is apparently yet to comment on the suggested requirements, they seem reasonable to us and are in line with current expectations for the upcoming strategy juggernaut. Check out the minimum and recommended specs below.

Minumum Requirements
GFX: GeForce 7/8 Series or Radeon 1000/2000 with 256 MB RAM
CPU: Pentium 4
RAM: 1 GB
Internet: ADSL 1 Mbit

Recommended Requirements
GFX: GeForce 8000 or Radeon 2000 series with 512 MB RAM
CPU: Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2.
RAM: 2 GB
Internet: ADSL 3 Mbit

Starcraft 2 hasn’t gone gold quite yet, so you should be prepared for these figures to change somewhat as the developer finalises the requirements for the game, but as it is at the moment this is the best anyone has to go on.

Gaming / Technology — No Comments
22
May 08

GDDR5 for AMD’s next-gen graphics chip is shipping


Qimonda has announced that it has started shipping GDDR5 memory for AMD’s next-generation graphics processors, meaning that the launch of the “R700” generation of products is imminent.

The memory manufacturer says that it has already started mass producing and shipping GDDR5 512Mbit modules (rated at 4.0Gbps per pin) to AMD.

“We are very proud to supply AMD with GDDR5 volume shipments only six months after first product samples have been delivered,” said Robert Feurle, Vice President Business Unit Specialty DRAM of Qimonda, in a statement.

Sources close to AMD have said that RV770 will be the first chip to support GDDR5 memory, but only one of the two RV770-based cards at launch will use the new memory technologies. The second part, which is believed to be called RV770PRO internally, will use GDDR3 memory instead. Both products will likely feature 480 stream processors (in a similar arrangement to the current RV670 chips – i.e. 96 5-way shader units) and a 256-bit memory interface.

Word in Taiwan is that the shader units will run at a higher clock than the rest of the GPU, but none of the clock speeds are finalised yet on either product. We’ll be keeping our ear to the ground in the run up to the launch.

AMD has been quite public on its intentions for the future – it no longer intends to make ‘big’ GPUs in light of the problems it had with both R520 and R600. Instead, it intends to take the fight to Nvidia with multiple GPUs, further expanding on the transparency of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 implementation.

How AMD plans to improve on the 3870 X2’s implementation is unclear at the moment, but everything is pointing towards driver transparency—in other words, the driver will see the multiple GPUs as ‘one’. Whether or not that will happen in this next round of releases is not certain, but that appears to be the ‘holy grail’ having spoken to several sources ‘in the know’.

Technology — No Comments
19
May 08

Windows Home Server ditches auto-backup


If you’re a Windows Home Server user making sure that your backups are up-to-date in case the file eating bug – which still hasn’t been fixed – bites you, you’ve probably been looking forward to Power Pack 1’s automated backup features. Sadly, it looks like you might be relying on third-party packages for a while longer.

According to an article over at BetaNews, Power Pack 1 – a kind of value-added service pack for the OEM-centric home server OS – was originally set to introduce a feature by which the WHS database containing the backups gathered from client machines on your home network could itself be automatically backed up in case of corruption. It took a member of the Windows Home Server Community Forums asking how to prepare for the feature for Microsoft to admit that the automated backup facility had been quietly removed.

Ken Warren, a moderator over at the WHS Forums, claimed that the news shouldn’t have come as a shock, saying that “as I’ve been saying for some time, Power Pack 1, will not provide a tool to back up your backup database. It was an announced feature, but it has been removed because it doesn’t meet the quality bar. I know of at least half a dozen bugs submitted around that feature that left end users in a bad place with no obvious way back.”

Warren was keen to point out that manual backups of the database are still a possibility, but many users are put off by the complexity of such a task. The only way to create a copy of the backup database – which does not get copied to multiple hard drives when using Windows Home Server Drive Extender, so if the main system drive is lost so are your backups – is to connect an external hard drive to the WHS box, initiate a Remote Desktop Connection via the command line, stop the automated backup service, browse to the {00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4} folder in a second command line, and manually copy the contents to the external drive before restarting the backup service. Not quite the easy, automated duplication that users were looking forward to being introduced in Power Pack 1.

Microsoft was unwilling to comment on whether the feature has been deep-sixed for all eternity, or whether we can expect to see a more reasonable method of keeping an external copy of the backup database in a future update to Windows Home Server.

Art — No Comments
17
May 08

Mission Bazaar, A Unique Craft & Performance Expo at The Armory

Mission Bazaar, a unique craft and performance expo, takes place this Saturday, May 17th and Sunday, May 18th at the historic San Francisco Armory (currently owned by Kink.com). This will be the first public event at The Armory in over 30 years.

Mission Bazaar will showcase a diverse collection of artisans exhibiting their creative works, products, fashion and accessories. There will be over 20 hours of live performances on three stages featuring live music, circus and dance acts, performance artists and DJs, including gypsy jazz, bellydance, spoken word, beatbox, choral ensembles, fashion shows, puppetry, flamenco guitar, and much more. In addition, Mission Bazaar has invited a diverse cross-section of Mission-based non-profit organizations to attend.

Here’s more info on Mission Bazaar, including the full list of exhibitors.

Gaming — No Comments
13
May 08

Call of Duty 5 in the works


Activision has confirmed that the next installment in the Call of Duty series will be set in an entirely new military theatre and that Treyarch is currently working on a new James Bond game.

The news, which came in a conference call to Eurogamer, co-incides with the announcement of Acitivision’s 2.9 Billion USD profit this year.

According to Activision the new Call of Duty will be released on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and DS, just like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – though PlayStation 2 and Wii versions are also planned this time around.

Activision would not confirm if the game was being developed by Treyarch or Infinity Ward, but did say that Treyarch is currently using the Call of Duty 4 engine to make a new James Bond tie-in game for the new Quantum of Solace film due out this year.

“We’ll bring the intensity of the recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare title to a new military theatre, to engage our significantly larger user base which nearly doubled last year as new users came into the franchise,” said Activision CEO Mike Griffith.

Technology — No Comments
8
May 08

XP SP3 now available


It’s official – the wait for Windows XP Service Pack 3 is officially over, with the update finally making its way to a permanent home at Windows Update yesterday.

Although the issue which resulted in the update being withdrawn from the Windows Update site – a critical incompatibility with Microsoft’s RMS point-of-sale software – has yet to be fixed, a filter has been introduced that prevents the service pack being downloaded if you are running software affected by the bug.

For the vast majority of users, Service Pack 3 should be a seamless install – at least, as seamless as major system updates ever are under Windows – which holds the promise of a ten percent performance boost on average, along with various security updates and bug fixes. If you’re the anal retentive type, you’ll also be pleased to find that the vast majority of entries in Add or Remove Programs for Windows updates also get tidied up into a generic Windows XP Service Pack 3 entry.

The update is also freed for installation via Automatic Updates, so if your system is configured to automatically download new patches expect a reboot in the near future as your Windows install gets automagically upgraded to the latest version.

This latest service pack for the popular Windows XP operating system is also likely to be its last, as Microsoft gently ‘encourages’ users to upgrade to its latest and greatest, Vista.

← Older Entries