We are giving away a brand new OCZ Neutrino Netbook with 30 GB SATA II SSD (solid state) hard drive and OCZ 2GB High Performance Premium PC 5400 RAM!! The contest is open to readers in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

How to Win:

US readers click here.

Canadian readers click here.

UK readers click here.

Aussie readers click here.

Based on the Intel® Atom™ processor, the 10.1” Neutrino was developed to push the envelope in the growing area of netbooks as the first DIY offering. Proving that good things come in small packages, the Neutrino provides all the day-to-day file viewing and web-surfing needs for on-the-go traveling, education, office or home use. Equipped with a built-in camera and microphone, Neutrino will expand your horizons through communications between family, friends, and colleagues.

Thanks for participating and good luck! We'll announce the winners on March 30th!

Looking for an inexpensive SSD you can use as a boot drive? OCZ enters the fray with their 32GB Onyx:

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (OTCBB:OCZT), a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the OCZ Onyx SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, an ultra-affordable MultiLevel Cell (MLC)-based solid state storage solution designed for consumers looking to take advantage of flash-based storage technology. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient SSD, the Onyx delivers reliable performance without the high price normally associated with SSD drives.

“As new technologies become available, OCZ continues to expand both our enterprise and consumer SSD lines, and one of our goals is to make SSDs more affordable to end-users. Our new Onyx series SSD does exactly that and is a perfect solution for netbooks, laptops, or home desktop PCs,” commented Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the new OCZ Onyx SSD delivers the speed and reliability of solid state storage to mainstream consumers at an aggressive price point that makes the technology more accessible to customers who want to take advantage of all the benefits of the SSDs without incurring the high cost normally associated with the solution.”

With a sub 100 dollar MRSP the aggressively priced Onyx 32GB SSD delivers an enhanced computing experience with faster application loading, snappier data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life. Onyx SSDs feature HDD-dominating access times, up to 125MB/s read and 70MB/s write speeds, 64MB of onboard cache, and unique performance optimization to keep the drives at peak performance over the long term.

OCZ Onyx SSD drives feature a durable yet lightweight housing, and because OCZ SSDs have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than conventional hard drives. Available first in 32GB capacity the Onyx state drives are ideal for use as a boot up drive or for mobile PCs and Netbooks as a quality hard drive replacement. Designed for ultimate reliability, Onyx SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time between failure (MTBF), and OCZ also offers a leading 3-year warranty and award-winning technical support with the series, making SSDs a more viable upgrade for users requiring ultimate levels of customer service.

The PC Gaming Alliance says that PC gaming revenue grew by 3% last year, with the industry bringing in $13.1 billion in software sales. While retail sales were down 20%, the rise in digital distribution easily offset this:

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) today unveiled its 2009 Horizons Report, an exclusive research study encompassing all aspects of the PC gaming industry worldwide. Among the key findings is that PC gaming software revenue was a $13.1 billion industry in 2009, up 3% from 2008.

The Horizon’s report encompasses PC Gaming revenue from every region around the world, and from every part of the PC gaming industry including retail, online gaming, digital distribution, and online advertising. Horizon’s research clearly shows that participation in PC gaming among consumers around the world continues to drive significant opportunities for PC vendors, gaming ISVs, supply-chain partners and accessory makers.

The latest figures were released in the annual PCGA Horizons software report prepared by market research firm DFC Intelligence. The report also looks at some of the key trends in the PC game market. Despite the severe worldwide recession, growth in the Asia Pacific region fueled the global PC game market.

"The most notable trend in recent years has been the movement to digital distribution and payment for subscriptions, and the growing popularity with consumers of online games as a service," said Randy Stude, PCGA president and Intel director. "In 2009 we saw North America and Europe experience a rapid uptake in purchasing virtual items. This model is what drove growth in Asia and we think it is just starting to come to Western markets."

The transition to free-to-play games and the emergence of social network sites like Facebook did cause revenue to decline in some established markets. High-end subscription games that charge a fee of $10 a month or more suffered from the lack of major new releases and a decline in usage for some older products. However, the biggest downturn was in retail boxed sales of PC games, which now accounts for less than 20% of total revenue. Nevertheless, the downturn in established markets was largely offset by the growth of digital distribution. Most countries in North America and Europe saw revenue declines in 2009 of only 10-15% from record highs in 2008. In addition, free-to-play games and social network sites continue to draw in thousands of new game players that can be progressively monetized.

"In our surveys of PC gamers in North America and Europe we found that over 70% indicate they have bought a full game online. Furthermore, over 50% indicate that they have bought a virtual item," said DFC Analyst David Cole. "This is very positive because, when done successfully, companies in Asia have found the digital distribution model to be significantly more profitable than the traditional retail boxed goods business."

OnLive Inc has announced that their cloud-based gaming service will be released in the US June 17th (the week of E3) priced at $14.95 monthly. Games from EA, THQ, and Ubisoft will be available at launch:

San Francisco, CA — March 10, 2010 — OnLive, Inc., the pioneer of on-demand, instant-play video games, today announced that the PC and Mac® versions of its game service will begin rolling out to consumers on June 17, 2010 during the E3 2010 show. The OnLive® Game Service is a revolutionary, on-demand video game platform capable of delivering the latest and most advanced games instantly via a broadband connection on virtually any PC or Mac, via a small browser plug-in, or on an HDTV, via OnLive's MicroConsole™ TV Adapter. The OnLive Game Service enables an entirely new way to discover, explore, purchase and experience video game content. Additionally, the game service offers instant access to purchase or rent new release games on an à la carte basis from many of the world's leading publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft® 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

"This marks a huge milestone for both OnLive and the interactive entertainment landscape as a whole, changing the way that video games are developed, marketed, accessed and played," said Steve Perlman, Founder and CEO of OnLive. "We are opening the door to incredible experiences for gamers and enormous opportunities for developers and publishers."

Starting on June 17, 2010, the OnLive Game Service will be available to early registrants throughout the 48 contiguous United States. The initial offering will be supported by a $14.95 monthly service fee, which will provide access to an ever-increasing library of high-end, new-release, instant-play game content without the need to purchase expensive PC gaming or console systems.

Loyalty programs, such as multi-month pricing, and special offers will be announced by the start of E3. For starters, OnLive is announcing an exclusive, pre-registration offer, wherein the first 25,000 qualified registrants will have their OnLive $14.95 monthly service fee waived for the first three months of service. During this special three month introductory period, full versions of games will be available for purchase or rental on an à la carte basis. For important details regarding the OnLive Pre-registration special offer visit www.onlive.com/special1.

The OnLive Game Service will include standard online game service features such as gamer tags, user profiles, friends, and chat. In addition, an evolving slate of OnLive-exclusive features will include state-of-the-art 3D graphics performance; instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; Brag Clips™ video capture and posting; massive spectating; always-updated games; cloud-saved games—pause and instantly resume from anywhere, even on a different platform; and much more. Individual game titles will be available for purchase or rental on an à la carte basis, with specific game pricing announced prior to the consumer launch event at E3.

"The OnLive Game Service creates a new opportunity for consumers to play the latest games without spending hundreds of dollars on a hardware system to make it happen," said Mike McGarvey, COO of OnLive. "As a Mac user myself, I'm excited about the opportunity to help bring high-end gaming to this new and significant market."

OnLive also confirmed ongoing platform support from the world's largest and most influential game publishers. While launch titles will be announced prior to E3 in Los Angeles, a few of the anticipated games include Mass Effect 2™, Dragon Age Origins™, Assassin's Creed® II, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™, Borderlands™ and Metro 2033™. OnLive will soon be announcing the availability of its MicroConsole TV Adapter which will bring the OnLive Game Service directly to consumers' television sets for the first time. An announcement about expected availability will be made later in the year.

OnLive's digital distribution model, instant-play capability and revolutionary video compression technology offers gamers of all skill levels the ability to experience the newest, most advanced, always-updated games with no downloading, no hardware upgrades, and virtually instant response time. As a result, consumers can enjoy more games more rapidly and with lower overall up-front investment than ever before.

This VentureBeat story says the service will initially be limited to resolution of 720p only. 1080p will "take time, perhaps not until 2011". In addition, the site says 12-25 games will be available on launch day.

As this article from the BBC points out, upcoming hard drives shipping early next year will utilize 4KB (versus 512-byte) sectors. The move will mean less wasted space, particularly on today's large capacity terabyte drives, allowing drives to get larger while consuming the same amount of power.

The downside though is that older operating systems like Windows XP weren't designed with 4K sectors in mind. Hard drives utilizing the 4K sectors in a WinXP environment will emulate 512-byte sectors, but this comes with a performance hit in some write situations. Seagate says the hit could be as high as 10%. "All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said Seagate's David Burks.

Newer operating systems such as Vista, Windows 7, and Linux builds newer than Sept 2009 are all 4K aware.

VG247 says that Infinity Ward's first map pack for Modern Warfare 2 will ship for Xbox 360 gamers at the end of the month. Due to an exclusive with Microsoft, PS3 and PC won't get the map pack for at least 30 days.

No other details have been provided, so we have no clue how many maps will be included or how much it will cost.

While speaking with CNN Money/Fortune about their patent spat with Intel, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that his company is "looking forward" to going to court over the dispute, and they aren't looking to settle.

At the heart of the issue is chipsets, and whether NVIDIA can make platforms for Intel's latest Core i and Pinetrail-based Atom CPUs. Intel says they can't, while NVIDIA argues they can. NVIDIA has countersued Intel, and feels they've damaged their chipset business, which had been doing quite well for the company.

You can watch the interview in its entirety at Engadget.

Codemasters announces that F1 2010 will hit Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 this Sept:

A new generation of FORMULA ONE games will come to high definition consoles and PC later this year as Codemasters® today announced that F1 2010 will be released this September for Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC Games For Windows®.

As the official game of the 2010 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™, F1 2010 will include all of the official teams, drivers and circuits from the coming season. F1 2010 will feature the return of seven times FORMULA 1 Drivers’ World Champion Michael Schumacher, the introduction of several new teams, and the brand new Korean International Circuit that will host the 2010 FORMULA 1 KOREAN GRAND PRIX.

The September launch will see F1 2010 become the first official FORMULA ONE game to appear for Xbox 360 and marks the return of FORMULA ONE to PC after an eight year absence. The arrival of the HD editions of FORMULA ONE follows Codemasters’ extremely successful launch of F1 2009 for Wii and PSP, which became a top five best seller throughout the past holiday period.

In F1 2010 gamers will take on the full, expanded grid in a variety of game modes including GRAND PRIX, Championship, Time Trial and an extensive, innovative Career mode. F1 2010 will also feature a highly advanced damage model, fully dynamic weather system and extensive competitive multiplayer options.

In production at Codemasters Studios Birmingham, F1 2010 is being developed using the EGO Game Technology Platform, Codemasters’ proprietary tech that powered the critically acclaimed, million-plus selling Colin McRae: DiRT 2 and Race Driver: GRID. The award-winning technology has been further developed to accurately recreate the unique aerodynamics and handling of 200MPH+ FORMULA ONE cars. The tech combined with Codemasters’ unprecedented access to FORMULA ONE teams and drivers will ensure that F1 2010 delivers the most authentic FORMULA ONE racing experience yet. F1 2010 will be released September 2010 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Games for Windows.

Looks like NVIDIA's got some pretty sweet tournaments lined up for PAX this year, both involving DICE's Bad Company 2:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Tournaments, Hosted by NVIDIA, EA, DICE, Alienware, and Bigfoot Networks!

Get right to the best action with the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Battle for PAX Tournament. Squad up with three of your closest buddies and dominate the all new Squad Deathmatch multiplayer mode as four teams of 4 duke it out in the fully destructible environments online. The top four teams of the online tournament will be invited to Penny Arcade Expo East, in Boston, Massachusetts for a chance to win in the $10,000 finals*! Register now before it’s too late.

While at PAX East, not only will you have the chance to compete in the $10,000 finals on Sunday the 28th, but you will also get your chance to compete in another tournament featuring Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on Saturday; the world’s first 3D tournament! This event will feature its own set of exciting prizes, brought to you by the folks at NVIDIA, Alienware, and Bigfoot Networks. Details on how to sign up for this tournament will be made available soon at http://www.geforcelan.com/?page=tournaments.

More details can be found at battleforpax.com

Rocksteady may be giving Batman company for Arkham Asylum 2, as Kotaku notes that an IMDB listing reveals that Vincent Martella will be lending his voice for Robin in the game. Martella already plays as Robin in the Batman: Under the Red Hood animated feature, which is coming to DVD later this year. IMDB also revels that Bruce Greenwood will play Two-Face in the game.

When Kotaku asked Warner Bros for comment, they received the following response: "To our knowledge, what you asked about is inaccurate information. We are not yet discussing details for the sequel."

DigiTimes says that Gigabyte is catching up to ASUS in motherboard shipments. The site believes Gigabyte has shipped 3.1-3.3 million motherboards through February, this is roughly the same figure as ASUS, which has shipped 3.2-3.3 million motherboards according to their estimates.

What does this mean for you and me? DigiTimes believes ASUS will have to counter with cheaper motherboard prices. Some believe this could ultimately lead to a price war between the two motherboard rivals.

I rarely post these sorts of deals here in news, but this is a pretty damn good deal if you are in the market or have a friend who is looking.

This is a 15.6" LED-backlit Inspiron 15 with 2.2Ghz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T4400 w/VT, 3GB DDR2 SDRAM, 250GB HD, 8x DVD+/-RW DL, 802.11b/g wireless, Windows 7 Home Premium x64, 15-month antivirus, and 1 year warranty for just $399 with FREE shipping, plus add a 10.1" Dell Mini 10v Netbook for just $149! This deal expires at 6am on March 10.

Valve's been dropping hints about this for a week now, but today they've made it official, Mac gamers (if there are any) will soon be able to get their hands on Steam and Source-engine games like Left 4 Dead 2:

Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac.

Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."

"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."

Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."

Cross-platform play is one feature Microsoft touts with their Live! Anywhere initiative. In the following video, Microsoft's Eric Rudder demonstrates cross platform play with Indiana Jones, where he's able to seamlessly game on his PC, phone, and Xbox 360, all while continuing the same saves on each platform:

(Spotted on Engadget)

As Vandy mentioned in his review last week, Battlefield Bad Company 2 is suffering through its own issues online at the moment, with EA suffering through multiple outages since the game's release last week. DICE updates the Battlefield blog with the following:

After optimizations and restarts yesterday, we had been stable across all platforms. Unfortunately, we encountered another outage at approximately 9:30 AM PST today.

- X360 was severely impacted, and the service is being restarted. It should be back online and we are monitoring closely.
- PC had an outage, but the service is offline currently and the service is being restarted. It should be back online and we are monitoring closely. We will then start checking the quality of the customer experience to determine possible next steps.
- PS3 appeared to have a brief outage, but has quickly recovered and the services is functioning properly at this time.

All teams are actively engaged in diagnosis and remediation. We are adding additional services to alleviate load. Despite having a major infrastructure in place, the peak traffic this weekend has been huge, 400% higher than any other Battlefield's peak simultaneous users. The teams will continue to monitor the services closely. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates on the latest developments as they are relevant.

Gamers in the UK hoping to play Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hill 5 for PC suffered through unusually long login times over the weekend, if they were able to connect to the Ubi servers at all. Many were unable to play.

As VG247 writes, the issues were apparently caused by a "server attack", most likely a denial of service attack. Ubi issues this statement:

“Ubisoft would like to apologize to anyone who could not play AC2 or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked and while the servers did not go down, service was limited from 2:30PM to 9PM Paris time. 95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors. All player with an open session during the attack were not affected. We also confirm that, at this time, no valid cracked version of either Silent Hunter 5 or Assassin’s Creed II are available”

Valve announces a sequel to the surprising hit, Portal, coming later this year:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007's Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards.

For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

Earlier this week, Vandy discussed Bad Company 2's single-player campaign, and in today's article he tackles multi. Does Bad Company 2 deliver the goods once you go online? Find out inside!

>> Click Here to read the article

Remember those ForceWare 196.75 drivers I posted earlier this week? Well, if you downloaded and installed them, you may want to uninstall them ASAP.

As Bright Side of News reports, it turns out that the driver has issues with fan control in certain games, and some users have lost their cards as a result. GeForce users running the StarCraft 2 beta and World of Warcraft seem to be affected the most. NVIDIA's Bryan Del Rizzo told the site:

"We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the meantime."

This is the second WHQL driver release in a row that's had one issue or another on launch. ForceWare 196.21 went out the door with a bug that prevented GPU OC'ing. NVIDIA fixed the issue with ForceWare 196.34 beta.

NVIDIA's updated their YouTube page with fresh video of the GeForce GTX 480 running Unigine. In the video, NVIDIA's Tom Peterson discusses Unigine's use of tessellation. NVIDIA feels their new PolyMorph engine in the GTX 480 gives them a distinct advantage over ATI when it comes to handling tessellation. At the end of the video, Peterson also shows GTX 480 running 3D Vision Surround:

Crytek has released the first two screenshots from Crysis 2, which is being released later this year for PC and consoles. In describing the screenshots, Crytek says:

Taking place in New York city, Crysis 2 brings highly vertical gameplay to the table, made possible with the Nanosuit 2, developed by Crynet Systems. The first of these images includes a Nanosuit-clad character in an all-too-familiar pose, with a backdrop of destruction as the city is laid to waste. The second features Crynet Ops infantry in combat with the Nanosuit 2 whilst the city crumbles down around them, for reasons that will be revealed in due time.

Steam News announces that a demo for Just Cause 2 has been released:

The Just Cause 2 demo features a massive 35 square miles of the Lautan Lama Desert, a vast expanse of stunning, sun-scorched scenery taking up just one of the many islands in the 400 square miles of the Panau archipelago. Packed with towns, villages, military installations, mountain ranges, missions and more, the demo will feature an astonishing amount of activities for the player... and opportunities for adrenaline-fuelled chaos are limitless.

Hunt down and assassinate one of the game’s 50 military colonels; devastate military bases, bio fuel chambers, government infrastructure and more; hijack tuk tuks, military 4x4s, armoured vehicles, mopeds, helicopter gunships, light aircraft, mini vans and numerous other military and civilian vehicles; freefall from desert outcrops or from burning planes at 20,000 feet; and unlock one full, multi-stage mission, traversing the mountains to a heavily fortified government radar station and ending in an unforgettable desert car chase.

"The Just Cause 2 demo is simply massive and with so much to do, the replay value is enormous," said Lee Singleton, General Manager of Square Enix London Studios. "It’s easily one of the biggest freeroaming demos of all time and for fans of openworld games, it’s unmissable."

Even though the game hasn't come out yet, Assassin's Creed 2 PC has already been patched to version 1.01. Among other things, the new patch includes support for ATI Eyefinity, and fixes performance issues with some multi-core CPUs, the first line in the patch release notes mention this however:
"Game can now be continued from the exact same point when connection is restored."

Sounds like Ubisoft's already responded to some of the outcry concerning their new DRM scheme. (Spotted on Blues News)

That didn't take long. Jason West and Vince Zampella hit Activision with a suit this morning alleging they were fired earlier this week to avoid royalty payments for Modern Warfare 2:

O'Melveny & Myers LLP today filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court a lawsuit against Activision Publishing, Inc., on behalf of video game developers Jason West and Vince Zampella. West and Zampella developed two of the most successful videogames in history – Call of Duty and Modern Warfare – at the Infinity Ward studio, a company they co-founded in 2001. After its acquisition by Activision in November 2003, West and Zampella served as president/game director and CEO, respectively. Activision terminated their employment weeks before they were to be paid substantial royalty payments as part of their existing contracts for Modern Warfare 2.

"Activision has refused to honor the terms of its agreements and is intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy of this State (California) that employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned," said their attorney Robert Schwartz. "Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st."

"We were shocked by Activision's decision to terminate our contract," said West. "We poured our heart and soul into that company, building not only a world class development studio, but assembling a team we've been proud to work with for nearly a decade. We think the work we've done speaks for itself."

Zampella added, "After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn't have to sue to get paid."

Modern Warfare 2 is arguably one of the most successful games in history and together with Call of Duty, has generated more than $3 billion in sales for Activision. In addition, Activision seized control of the Infinity Ward studio, to which Activision had previously granted creative control over all Modern Warfare-branded games. The suit was filed to vindicate the rights of West and Zampella to be paid the compensation they have earned, as well as the contractual rights Activision granted to West and Zampella to control Modern Warfare-branded games.

The suit includes claims for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, wrong termination in violation of public policy, and declaratory relief.

Going along with those GTX 480 pictures mentioned in the news below are two shots of a GeForce GTX 470 prototype board. TechConnect Magazine scored the photos, saying that the GTX 470 is shorter than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480, and also gets by with two 6-pin PCIe connectors whereas the 480 has one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

On the memory subsystem the GTX 470 features a 320-bit memory interface and thus 1280MB of memory total. The card features a dual-slot cooler and also supports 3-Way SLI. TechConnect believes that the GTX 470 will ship with 448 shaders, remember that the GTX 480 sports 512.

No word on clocks just yet, NVIDIA's apparently done a good job of policing this particular tidbit while at CeBIT.

For years now Intel has provided Extreme Edition CPUs for enthusiasts who wish to use the CPU's unlocked clock multipier in order to overclock. As you know though, these CPUs aren't cheap, with Intel listing them for $999 officially. That may soon change though.

Tweakers.net quotes Intel's Steve Peterson, head of marketing for Intel's chipset division, who says that Intel plans to offer a limited edition Core i CPU with an unlocked clock multiplier. Peterson wouldn't provide specifics on which CPU would get the unlocked multiplier, Tweakers.net reckons it could be a Lynnfield (Core i5/Core i7) or Clarkdale (Core i3/Core i5) derivative. He also wouldn't say when Intel plans to offer such a CPU and how much it would sell for. He did say Intel would charge a premium for the chip though, although tweakers.net says it will only be "marginally" more expensive than the standard edition CPU.

With CeBIT underway in Germany there's been a race amongst the media to obtain as much information about NVIDIA's upcoming GTX 480 GPU as quickly as possible. As such, Techpowerup has managed to score photos of the card sans cooling.

The shots reveal a board design that's quite similar to NVIDIA's GTX 200 series GPUs. Techpowerup notes a 6-phase power design for the GPU, plus 2-phase for the memory, of which there's 1536MB total.

For cooling, NVIDIA employed a dual-slot cooler with four heatpipes. No copper though. 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors are used to power the board, and you can also clearly make out the dual SLI connectors. The site says the board is outfitted with dual DVIs and one HDMI out, no DisplayPort is provided on the reference board pictured.

As always, keep in mind that the pictures most likely come from a prototype board, and these can often be deceptive as the board design may evolve into something else entirely by the time of actual release.

Atari announces Test Drive Unlimited 2, coming later this year for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360:

Atari, SA, one of the world's most recognized videogame publishers, and much-acclaimed developer Eden Games, are proud to announce the newest installment in the legendary racing franchise with Test Drive® Unlimited 2 for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC coming Fall 2010.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 expands on the traditional racing experience providing gamers with M.O.O.R.®: Massively Open Online Racing®; immersing drivers in a persistent online environment and revolutionizing multiplayer racing communities as players compete, team up, and share their achievements and creations online. Unlike any other driving game, TDU2 blends the open world experience with realistic vehicles and performance dynamics and for the first time, TDU2 features vehicle damage, weather effects, day and night cycles, and a brand new island to explore.

The first Test Drive® Unlimited innovated the racing genre with an immersive online and offline experience - over 1 million players created online accounts. Test Drive Unlimited 2 blends the single player and multiplayer experiences seamlessly, creating a dynamic world of unique content and challenges. Test Drive Unlimited 2 is "always live," with automatic updates and seamless online/offline integration. A revamped single player narrative mode can be played offline or as part of the multiplayer experience.

"After the highly successful Test Drive Unlimited which redefined the genre with massively open online racing, Test Drive Unlimited 2 will be an innovative evolution in racing games, expanding its unparalleled multiplayer experience and immersing players in a world full of new online content and lifestyle customization." said Jeff Lapin, CEO of Atari, SA. "The game fits squarely into our strategy of moving online and generating new revenue streams while maintaining our current retail business."

Test Drive Unlimited 2 puts the world's most desirable vehicles in the players hands. These ultra-limited edition masterpieces are flawlessly replicated with Eden's finely tuned driving technology. Players define their online persona through the customization of their vehicles, and the acquisition of property, clothing and all the accoutrements of a luxurious car-based lifestyle. The challenge comes to life with the most expansive and comprehensive multiplayer offering on the console and the ultimate refinement of the core Test Drive driving experience. All-new race types, vehicle classes, environmental challenges, locations and much more push this epic franchise to new levels of performance and luxury.

For more information on Test Drive Unlimited 2 please visit www.testdriveunlimited2.com or log on to www.atari.com.

When NVIDIA says Optimus saves battery life by powering down the GPU when it's not in use, they mean it. Literally. In this NVIDIA Optimus demo, the GPU is removed from the system while it's on, then re-installed without issue:

In a press released issued this afternoon, Activision lays out their immediate plans for the Call of Duty franchise, announcing that Infinity Ward is currently working on 2 map packs, and confirmed what we already knew: that Treyarch would release a new Call of Duty title later this year and that another CoD title would follow in 2011. More surprising is the announcement that Sledgehammer Games is also working on an action-adventure Call of Duty title separate from the first-person shooters Treyarch and Infinity Ward have been developing. Here's the PR:

Activision Publishing, Inc. today announced new strategic plans for the Call of Duty® franchise, one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.

The plans include the formation of a dedicated business unit that will bring together its various new brand initiatives with focused, dedicated resources around the world. The company intends to expand the Call of Duty brand with the same focus seen in its Blizzard® Entertainment business unit. This will include a focus on high-margin digital online content and further the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.

"2010 will be another important year for the Call of Duty franchise," stated Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing. "In addition to continued catalog sales, new downloadable content from Infinity Ward and a new Call of Duty release, we are excited about the opportunity to bring the franchise to new geographies, genres and players."

The company expects to release a new Call of Duty game from Treyarch this fall. In addition, Infinity Ward is in development on the first two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare® 2 for release in 2010.

The company is also for the first time announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre. Sledgehammer is helmed by industry veterans Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey. Prior to joining Activision Publishing, Schofield was the Executive Producer of the award-winning game, Dead Space and Michael Condrey was the Sr. Development Director on the game. The Dead Space franchise has won more than 80 industry awards worldwide including the prestigious A.I.A.S. Action Game of the Year and two B.A.F.T.A.S.

The Call of Duty business unit will be led by Philip Earl, who currently runs Activision Publishing’s Asia Pacific region and previously served in senior executive positions with Procter & Gamble and Nestle. Activision Publishing veterans Steve Pearce, chief technology officer and Steve Ackrich, head of production, will lead Infinity Ward on an interim basis. Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward.

Lastly, Activision Publishing announced that the company is in discussions with a select number of partners to bring the franchise to Asia, one of the fastest growing regions for online multiplayer games in the world.