Battlefield 1943, Bad Company 2 PC System Requirements Revealed

by Alice O’Connor Dec 02, 2009 7:10am CST

DICE has unveiled the PC system requirements for the ‘Frostbite’ engine which powers Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 1943, neatly providing their requirements too.

Bad Company 2 lands on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 2, with the PC version boasting various improvements over the console editions. Battlefield 1943 is slated for a PC release in the first quarter of 2010, having hit PS3 and 360 in July.

Minimum Frostbite PC Specifications for BFBC2 & BF1943.

• Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz
• Main memory: 2GB
• Graphics card: GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900… Read more

Gaming Performance Compared: Windows 7 vs Vista vs Windows XP (firingsquad.com)

by Brandon Sandman Bell
August 18, 2009

For some of you, Windows 7 is here. For others, it’s coming soon. The question we as gamers all want to know is will Windows 7 finally deliver on all the hype that began during the run up to Vista’s launch. Will it finally “unite the clans”: gamers who love Windows XP’s performance and scalability, versus the Vista gamers who have been enjoying DirectX 10 visuals and performance enhancements found in games like Far Cry 2.

I’m not going to spoil the answer on the first page of this article – that’s what the benchmarks are for – but I will say that as much as I rightly criticized Vista’s gaming performance back in January 2007, it ultimately did get a bit of a bad rep.

Sure, eye candy features like Aero Glass performed terribly with some hardware, USB transfers were slower, and user account control was so annoying most people just turned it off, but just as Microsoft was to blame for some of Vista’s problems, equally culpable were the hardware manufacturers. Intel had no business lobbying Microsoft to lower requirements in order to get their 915 chipset certified as “Vista Capable”, and nearly all the manufacturers were too slow in optimizing their Vista drivers for performance, if they had a Vista driver at all. Despite the fact that Microsoft had issued numerous public betas and release candidates for Vista, graphics drivers for instance were missing features and suffered from poor performance in some games on launch day.

All this bad news weighed heavily on the Vista launch. As the saying goes “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. Well, Microsoft learned this lesson the hard way with Vista. Even though many of these issues were resolved within 8 months of Vista’s launch, public perception had already dragged Vista down….Read more

Wireless computer power connections coming

Wireless computer power connections coming

Written by Nick Farrell

Monday, 27 July 2009 09:05

WiTricity brings Tesla’s dream A new system that will allow laptops, mobile phones and televisions to be left unplugged in the home while being recharged, has been unveiled by a US company. WiTricity can send electricity “wirelessly” through the air and can switch on a light bulb or keep a computer running thanks to a new development in physics. The outfit hopes to do away with mountains of disposable batteries and miles of wiring required to charge gizmos and computers. Unlike a Tesla device which has the same vision, energy is largely transferred through magnetic fields without the need for great flashes of lightning. Boffin Marin Soljacic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed the system after he was woken up three nights in a row by his mobile telling him it had a low battery. His theory was to use resonance to make it all happen. Resonance means that when two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy without having an effect on surrounding objects. WiTricity uses the resonance of low-frequency electromagnetic waves and transfers energy between two magnetic coils. The first coil is placed in a box attached to a home’s electricity mains, and can be embedded in a wall or ceiling. The second coil is attached to a device such as a television or laptop. Electromagnetic waves are transferred between the two coils and the second coil absorbs energy. The Institute of Physics in London confirmed that the technology was safe, as it used a magnetic field that “had no detrimental effects on the human body”. Unfortunately it only works on smaller devices which must be within two metres of a wall that provides wireless power. Later it is hoped that the range can be extended to as much as 30 metres. http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14802/1/

Valve Adds Support for Three-dimensional Novint Falcon Controller

by Nick Breckon

After announcing an agreement nearly one year ago today, Valve has updated its Orange Box games–Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and Portal–to support Novint’s Falcon three-dimensional controller.Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat will also soon receive similar updates.

The $150 Novint Falcon (shown left with optional pistol grip) was released in 2006. The three-dimensional “haptic” device is operated by a small spherical grip connected to three robotic arms.

The device’s motors react to in-game events, with the end result… Read more

Xbox 720 to arrive in 2010?

Written by David Stellmack

We don’t think that it is likely at all Over the weekend we heard a lot of talk about the possibility of a new console from Microsoft arriving in 2010. While some like to call this new console the Xbox 720, we don’t think that the 720 is Microsoft’s next generation console at all. The start of a lot of this talk was the comment that when Natal does launch it will be as big as a console launch. It is possible that with strides in cost reductions that Microsoft has made, coupled with the improvements in reliability, that it could be possible that Microsoft might launch a revised version of the Xbox 360 and call it the 720. The 720 would include the Natal device as part of the bundle along with a more streamlined design with larger integration, modifications, and die shrinks that will be focused on cost reduction. It is also possible that it will have a revised GPU that is faster and can deliver high frame rates and better performance while offering 100% compatibility on a smaller die which would run cooler and give off less heat. It is also expected that the CPU might get a little speed bump, as well. As Nintendo did with the Wii, which is really nothing more than a repackaged Game Cube with new motion controllers, Microsoft might engage in this bit of re-packaging itself. The 720 would be initially sold as an upscale or high-end alternative for Xbox 360 users who want more. Despite the confidence of our sources, we just don’t think Microsoft would split the platform without making sure that it was not really possible for developers to optimize for the high-end hardware without providing full compatibility to the older units. Right now, it is hard to say. We think it is unlikely that you will see new consoles until at least 2011, and pushing the hardware up a notch might help extend the sales window. http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14204/1/

Slim PS3 is confirmed

Written by David Stellmack

Will wait for Tokyo Game Show for launch As we expected, the new slim PlayStation 3 has been confirmed by our sources; and again as expected, you can pretty much take to the bank the fact that we will not be seeing Sony launch it at E3. Instead of an E3 launch, Sony will wait for the Tokyo Game Show to launch the latest revision of the PlayStation 3 console. The decision to delay the launch of the new version of the PlayStation 3 has more to do with the fact that Sony has plenty of PlayStation 3 consoles still in the channel and sitting in warehouses. It is necessary to move this inventory before bringing out the new version of the console. It is expected now that once the new slim version of the PlayStation 3 is launched, Sony will cut the price on the PS3; but according to whispers, it could be only a temporary thing as the price decrease might only apply to older versions of the console that are left in inventory. A second reduction could then come toward holiday time on the slim version once the remaining inventory of the older consoles is depleted. Sony is expected to focus on the PlayStation 3 new bundle at E3 that we told you about previously, as well as the new PSP.

Speed Test: Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista

Nick Mediati, PC World

Windows 7: What You Need to Know

Here’s a series of reports on what’s new and improved (or not) in the next version of Windows, along with some tales of caution, and where you can get your own copy.

• Windows 7’s “XP Mode” Won’t Run on Some CPUs »
• Windows 7 Speeds on Solid State Drives »
• Is Windows 7 for Netbooks a Non-Starter? »
• Hands On: Running Windows 7 on a Netbook »
• Teaching Mac OS X a Few Windows 7 Tricks »

Improving performance is one of Microsoft’s design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.

The largest difference was 4 points–102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

WorldBench 6 consists of a number of tests involving ten common applications, including Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Photoshop. On the individual tests, the benchmark results were generally within a few percentage points of each other. One notable exception, however, was Nero 7 Ultra Edition, where Windows 7 made significant improvements, ranging from a 12 percent speedup to a 26 percent speedup, depending on the PC we used in our tests. Although we have yet to confirm it, PC World Test Center Director Jeff Kuta notes that this difference may be due to updated hard-disk drivers in Windows 7. Any improvements to Windows 7’s disk support will be more noticeable in an application like Nero, which uses the hard drive heavily. The test involving WinZip, another hard-drive-dependent task, also showed marked improvement under Windows 7.

We also measured a noteworthy 7 percent speed increase in our Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP3 (DirectX) test on the HP Pavillion desktop, which had an nVidia GeForce 9300GE graphics board. nVidia’s drivers appear to be better optimized for Windows 7 than Windows Vista.

In contrast, however, each of the systems took slightly longer to perform the tests in Microsoft Office and Firefox when they were running the new operating system than when they were running Vista.

Of course, it’s important to remember that we performed these tests with the release candidate of Windows 7. Though the operating system’s features likely won’t change in the final version, Microsoft’s engineers may still find ways to tweak the code to improve performance.

If these test results remain consistent with those for the final version of Windows 7, the news will likely be disappointing to many Windows users. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 doesn’t significantly improve that situation, it may fail to convince people to move away from Windows XP.

That said, there may be other areas we didn’t cover in our testing–such as startup times–where Windows 7 may outperform Windows Vista by a wider margin. The best way for you to get a feel for Windows 7’s performance is to download the release candidate and take it for a test drive on your system.

How We Test

We used three PCs in our testing: a Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop, an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop, and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. The powerful Maingear comes equipped with a 3.2GHz AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU overclocked to 3.71GHz, 4GB of memory, and dual ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics processors. The Pavilion, a mainstream desktop, features a 2.6GHz dual-core Pentium E5300 with 3GB of memory and an nVidia GeForce 930GE graphics chip. Lastly, the Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop packs a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 graphics card. On all three systems, we ran our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite on a clean installation of the 32-bit edition of Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and repeated the process with the Windows 7 Ultimate release candidate (again, the 32-bit version). We made both operating systems current with Windows Update, and we installed the most current hardware drivers available.

$10 Laptop

NEW DELHI – INDIA has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just US$10 (S$15) in a bid to improve the skills of millions of students across the country.

The laptops will be mass-produced as part of a government-sponsored education scheme launched on Tuesday in the southern city of Tirupati.

Details about the computer remain scarce, but Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within six months.

“Once the testing is over, the computers will be made available on commercial basis,” he told the Press Trust of India news agency.

“Its cost will be 10 US dollars. If the parents want to gift something to their kids, they can easily purchase this item.”

The laptop will reportedly have a two gigabyte memory and wireless Internet capability, but officials have not publicly demonstrated a prototype – or yet explained how it can be produced at such a low cost.

The government has earmarked more than 46 billion rupees (S$1.4 billion) to develop the low-power gadget to work in rural areas with unreliable power supply and poor Internet connectivity.

The planned laptop is part of a push to increase the number of students in higher education and give them the technological skills needed to further boost India’s economic growth.

New Delhi rebuffed a previous attempt to bring cheap laptops to India, led by MIT computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child programme.

The government cited hidden costs for its rejection of that computer, which was dubbed the US$100 laptop.

Turn off that gaming console

Written by David Stellmack

Wastes more electricity than you think According to an industry study conducted by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Ecos, a consulting firm, most gamers do not turn off their gaming consoles when they are not using them and the consoles continue to burn a fair amount of electricity, even when not in use. The analysis released its results last week, which claims that gamers could save as much as $100 per year just by turning off their gaming machines when they aren’t using them. The study’s total results are also a bit shocking: idle machines consume almost as much electricity as those that are in use and merely turning them off could cut the U.S. electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year. This would save 11 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, while avoiding seven million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. These figures are based on statistics that almost 40 percent of U.S. residences have video games. The NRDC and Ecos estimate that gamers consume roughly as much electricity in one year as does the City of San Diego, California. The NRDC wants the gaming industry to do something about this, starting with adding automatic power-down features on gaming machines that are easy for consumers to find. The Xbox 360 has a power-down feature, but its default setting is set to “on” and setting it to power-down is not easy to do, as the ‘how to’ is buried deep within a menu. Energy consumption also varies by model: The Microsoft Xbox 360 consumes 119 watts in active mode, more than that of many desktop PCs. The Sony PlayStation 3 uses 150 watts in play mode, although it has software that can be updated to activate power management (but the power management is disabled by default). The most conservative energy user is the Nintendo Wii, which uses only 16 watts, less than most laptops. The NRDC recommends that the next generation of video game machines incorporate power-management features into their design, such as an auto-save game feature, a “sleep” button on the console, and automatic power-down that shuts off the console after several hours of inactivity. For information on how to find power-down features on gaming machines, click here

PC version of GTA IV looks much better

Written by Nedim Hadzic

Requirements? Our colleagues from GamesRadar.com have had a chance to try out the PC version of GTA IV and they found that the game looks much better on the PC, which is not quite shocking as this was the case in previous installments too. However, it comes at a price as longer draw distances, smoother faces and graphics in general, etc., require some serious gaming power. In case you think you’ll run it on just any PC you’re dead wrong – so here are the recommended and optimum requirements for this game: Minimum System Requirements OS: Windows Vista – Service Pack 1 / XP – Service Pack 3 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz Memory: 1.5GB, 16GB Free Hard Drive Space Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA 7900 / 256MB ATI X1900 Recommended System Requirements OS: Windows Vista – Service Pack 1 / XP – Service Pack 3 Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X3 2.1Ghz Memory:  2 GB (Windows XP) 2.5 GB (Windows Vista) 18 GB Free Hard Drive Space Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 / 512MB ATI 3870 The game is hitting the shelves on November 18th, so sit tight.