Thread: Anandtech News

Activision’s grand plan to create a Call of Duty social network, Call of Duty Elite, just ended its beta and will be up and running for consoles when Modern Warfare 3 releases next week. It will not, however, be ready for the PC.
Call of Duty Elite’s main appeal for fans of the franchise is the premium membership, which offers competitions, training videos, and $60 worth of DLC (in addition to all the free stat-tracking and social features) for $49.99. Beachhead has said that, while Activision will be selling map packs for the PC, they won’t be offering the premium Elite membership on PC anytime soon. And they are still working on the free version.
“The issue here is that the PC is an insecure platform,” Beachhead Studio’s Chacko Sonny told Activision blogger Dan Amrich. “Without a central, trusted resource for stats, a lot of our competition features become unfair. We can’t give away prizes when people can easily cheat their stats. Leaderboards are less fun when a lot of the users are there unfairly.”
Activision and the three studios behind Modern Warfare 3 (Beachhead included) haven’t shunned the PC audience entirely: dedicated servers will be supported at launch. But Call of Duty is a console franchise now, and Elite is a service designed to make money off that audience. Elite will come to the PC eventually, but they likely won’t rush it unless they’re sure they can monetize it.
Source: OneOfSwords via Joystiq



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Here's something I'm concerned about. AMD's Carrell Killebrew, part of yesterday's announced layoffs, was a Director of Product Planning for AMD's GPU division. His job, at least as he explained it to me so many times in the past, was to figure out what the next 3 - 5 years of AMD GPUs were going to look like. He's still technically with AMD today, although that will change in the not too distant future.
Carrell is a dedicated guy, he works hard and generally seems to know the right move for AMD in the GPU space. His track record as of late is a good one. The verdict isn't out on AMD's 28nm GPUs, but the last three years of AMD GPU releases have been excellent. They've been competitive and well executed.
When reducing workforce to cut costs, you don't go after your product planners - unless their vision and your vision don't line up. We all know what Carrell wanted for the future of AMD GPUs (as I wrote before, he wanted to deliver a first generation "Holodeck" by 2016), but what does AMD's new CEO want that conflicts with this goal?
Carrell's vision saw the continued growth of the high-end GPU. On November 9th we're supposed to hear more about Rory Read's new strategy for AMD. I am concerned that it may conflict with Carrell's vision. Maybe I'm reading too much into all of this. What do you all think?



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Back at CES 2011 EVGA showed off an interesting concept card featuring 2 GF104 GPUs on a single board. The resulting product was the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win, a true dual-GPU card packing 2 GTX 460s on to a single board. EVGA has since refined this product by replacing the GTX 460s with GTX 560 Tis, and today is launching the next 2Win card: the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win. Priced at $519, EVGA has the GTX 580 set in their sights, claiming to offer 30% better performance for the price. But can EVGA’s dual-GPU behemoth really surpass NVIDIA’s flagship video card? Let’s find out.

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Curve Studios, the indie developer behind Fluidity and the newly-on-PC action-platformer Explodemon, have just released their retro stealth game Stealth Bastard for free.
Described as a mashup between Metal Gear Solid and Super Meat Boy, Stealth Bastard features 28 levels of 2D sneaking goodness. Even though you’ll occasionally wind up waiting for a robot or camera to turn away from you, the levels do move briskly. They’re also relatively short, which means having to retry one after failure rarely feels like a chore. And you’ll need to replay them several times if you want to nab a good spot on the leaderboards.
The slick SNES-era retro aesthetic suit the stealth-puzzle gameplay well, with bold lighting schemes dynamically transforming the levels as you progress. Instructions pop up on walls à la the most recent Splinter Cell, though they’re a bit more fourth wall-breaking than Sam Fisher’s inner monologue.
Stealth Bastard is a shockingly robust package for the low price of zero dollars. It even features a built-in level editor, and user-created levels are already available for download. The only major bummer is that its release is currently limited to Windows. That said, assuming you don’t mind seeing an ad for Explodemon upon exiting the game, you should give Stealth Bastard a try pronto.
Source: Curve Studios



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Closed-loop liquid CPU cooling solutions are gaining popularity as more and more vendors are carrying their own variation. We've even seen both Intel and AMD announce the inclusion of liquid-coolers for their upcoming processor lines. Today we're going to take a look at the Corsair Hydro Series, consisting of the H60 High Performance, H80 High Performance, and H100 Extreme Performance liquid CPU coolers.

Corsair has teamed up with CoolIT Systems this time around, while they have also partnered with Asetek for other Hydro Series products (H40/H50/H70/H70 Core). For now, our focus is on the H60, H80, and H100. How well do these cooler work compared to top air-cooling solutions, and are they worth the added cost? Let’s find out.


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With recent reports showing a profit for AMD from Llano, we can safely say that the processors, and thus the chipsets, are selling. As a result, we have taken a full size A75 board each from ASUS and Gigabyte, in the $115-$120 range, through their paces to see which one we would use. Read on for the full comparison.



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Everyone old enough remembers Commodore 64. For many, it was their first computer. It was among the first computers aimed for home use and its unique form factor was unforgettable. Simply put, Commodore 64 had everything inside a keyboard-like chassis. The original Commodore 64 was made by Commodore International, which defuncted in 1994. Last year, a company called Commodore USA bought branding rights for Commodore brand.
Commodore USA launched C64x Ultimate in 2010, which was a direct copy of the classical Commodore 64 with new internals. It featured a dual core Atom CPU and NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics, so not exactly top-notch hardware, considering that it was priced at $999. The company has now announced C64x Extreme with Core i7-2720QM. The complete specs are below.

Commodore C64x Extreme Specifications
Processor	Intel Core i7-2720QM (4/8, 2.2GHz, 6MB)
Chipset	Intel HM67
Graphics	Intel HD 3000
Memory	8GB DDR3
Storage	2TB 7200rpm hard drive
Ports	2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, LAN, HDMI, DVI, VGA, PS/2, audio-in, audio-out, mic
OS	Mint 11
Price	$1499

Due to the price, C64x will most likely attract mainly Commodore enthusiasts. There isn't even a discrete GPU or Windows included. C64x comes with pre-installed Mint 11, which is a Linux distribution. There is a Linux based Commodore Vision OS coming from Commodore USA later on, though, for ultimate retro experience.
C64x uses regular mini-ITX motherboards and Commodore USA also sells a barebone model without any innards priced at $349. Not cheap, but it might be a good alternative in case you are not pleased with the configurations provided by Commodore USA. However, the form factor limits your components a lot so fitting a desktop CPU and GPU without modding is likely impossible.
C64x Extreme will start shipping on December 15th and can be ordered from Commdore USA's website.



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Barnes & Noble today unveiling its new Nook Tablet, the follow-up to its modestly successful Nook Color tablet. Like the Nook Color and Amazon's upcoming Kindle Fire, the device is being marketed as an e-reader that can also stream video, download apps, and view full-color magazines and comic books. The new tablet debuts for $249, $50 more than Amazon's upcoming tablet.
The Nook Tablet takes most of its design cues from the earlier Nook Color, right down to the cutaway corner - it's a 7" inch touchscreen tablet constructed mostly of plastic, is 8.1 inches high by 5.0 inches wide by 0.48 inches thick, and it weighs 14.1 ounces (a little less than a pound). The 1024x600 screen is the same as the one used in the Color, but it features double the memory (1GB) and storage space (16GB, along with a microSD slot), a 1GHz TI OMAP4 dual-core SoC, and improved battery life (with wireless turned off, B&N rates it at 11.5 hours for reading and 9 hours of video playback). It will run a customized Android Gingerbread distribution similar to the custom Froyo release currently used by the Nook Color.
The E ink Nook Simple Touch and older Nook Color tablet are still around - the new Simple Touch uses a combination of hardware and software improvements to increase page refresh speed (existing Simple Touch owners will get the software improvements via and update). The Nook Color has had its price dropped to $199 from $249, and will be getting a software update to bring it up to speed with the new Nook Tablet.
The new tablet is available for pre-order now, and will begin shipping on November 18.
Source: Barnes & Noble



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Sandy Bridge E is right around the corner and the amount of Socket-2011 related emails we're getting is going up. The latest is from MSI - we got an email with pics of the company's X79 lineup including the ultra high-end Big Bang XPower II and the micro-ATX X79MA-GD45. Check out the gallery below for shots of all the boards.
Gallery: A Quick Look at MSI's X79 Motherboards




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Those of you in the market for an Alienware M17x R3 or M18x (and if you're looking for a gaming notebook, you should really be considering the M17x R3), NVIDIA has some great news for you. The GeForce GTX 580M, which in our testing competes with the AMD Radeon HD 6990M as the fastest mobile GPU on the market (and tends to split the difference), has received a drastic price cut over at Alienware that suddenly makes it much, much more competitive.

Where before it was hard to justify the upgrade due to the outrageous $300+ premium for the GTX 580M, Alienware is now selling it at just $75 more than the 6990M in the M17x R3. That change in price also lines up with the M18x, where a pair of GTX 580Ms in SLI is $150 more than a pair of 6990Ms in CrossFire. The two solutions are essentially still neck and neck, but if you have need for CUDA support (like in Adobe Premiere CS5.5), want to enjoy PhysX (for Batman: Arkham City), or would rather use Optimus than manual graphics switching, the 580M is now a much more reasonable option.
Unfortunately this seems to apply only to Alienware; boutiques offering Clevo-based systems seem to still be dealing with the old pricing, which places an unreasonable premium on the GTX 580M. So if you're shopping those, it looks like your best bet is still going to be the AMD Radeon HD 6990M.



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