The Game Druid

Don’t we remember this from way back in 2006, when AMD spoke about a unified CPU and GPU on a single die? Well, we couldn’t be further from the truth. “Fusion is AMD’s way to express how we blend our customers‘ needs, dreams and desires with our unique passion for enabling innovation,“ said Nigel Dessau, AMD senior VP and chief marketing officer. “While this unique approach has always been our practice, ‘Fusion’ is the most focused articulation yet of how AMD marries innovation with collaboration in ways that can yield benefits to the marketplace greater than the sum of its parts.“

The new marketing line is “The Future is Fusion,” and could soon replace the current “Smarter Choice” tagline before the next buying season. Dessau explains that the new words encompass an entire company philosophy across the product line: “At work, Fusion means delivering leading server performance against real-world workloads with best-in-class performance-per-Watt and powerful virtualization capabilities.”

“At home, Fusion means enabling people to share the full range of digital content on any screen they choose,” Dessau continued. “At play, Fusion builds on the AMD and ATI record of leadership in providing the first 3-D graphics processing unit and driving the graphics for both the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii game systems.“

Essentially, AMD is hoping with its new ad campaign to convey the company’s technical prowess and the advantages it has over the competition by being able to integrate its CPU and GPU technologies in one box.

AMD’s new marketing strategy could be reflective of the changing times that the company is currently going through. AMD’s seen far better days and a new, fresh company image could be the first step in the company’s return to previous glory.

Unfortunately for those eager for new silicon, Fusion has nothing to do with a new chip design, though AMD did tell Tom’s Hardware specifically that an initiative to marry the CPU and GPU is still underway. Such chip will likely appear first as an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit).

So the Druid has finally come to need a new monitor (does this even sound right?) I was thinking about the Dell 22″ HDMI variant. Do let me know your thoughts on this…

This way I can also connect my 360 and ps3 to the monitor. Do any other brands come in mind? I’m not sure about Samsung and HP, but i’ve heard a lot of good things. The only downside I see to the dell monitor is that its not 1080p ready.

Surprised anyone? Not really I would say, becuase the game is SO FRIGGIN awesome!! It’s actually the feeling of being mmmm.. God like? that makes it so cool. Sure, you had tons of other games like black and white and civilization and stuff, but yeah, this gives you so much MORE!

Anyway, according to Voodoo Extreme, here’s the top ten list of games:

• 1. Spore Creature Creator - Electronic Arts
• 2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
• 3. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Funcom/Eidos
• 4. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
• 5. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
• 6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
• 7. The Sims 2 FreeTime - Electronic Arts
• 8. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff - Electronic Arts
• 9. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision
• 10. Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures - LucasArts

Enjoi

The Game Druid

Rats - that reminds me to upload the Spore videos and finish the Sims 2 review

Wednesday morning the Internet heated up with the possibility of a playable Fallout 3 demo. The flame was originally sparked over on the Bethesda Blog, where the developers listed what they are currently playing. Producer Craig Lefferty, Ashley Cheng, Pete Hines, Matt Grandstaff and Fred Zeleny all claimed to be playing Fallout 3; it was Matt Grandstaff’s offering that sparked hope in the eyes of the fans, saying “Fallout 3 demo - over and over again.”

However, according to Bethesda’s Pete Hines, there will be no demo. “We are on the record that there will be no demo for Fallout 3,” he told Tom’s Games. “Bunch of folks ran news items on it a few weeks ago based on an interview I did. [Matt is] playing the Fallout 3 demo we showed at E3. He was traveling and showing it to a bunch of retail folks that hadn’t seen it. He’s not playing an actual demo.”

Apparently, Tom’s Games wasn’t the only press site to question the blog entry. Hines edited Grandstaff’s blog entry and posted the following message: “Let me clarify that Matt is playing the original E3 demo we showed to the press over and over again as part of a trip to show the game to retail folks…he is not playing an actual demo, because there isn’t one and won’t ever be one. -Pete”

Curious as to why they were holding firm on the decision, one huge question came to mind and was emailed to Bethesda: with piracy of PC games to rampant, wouldn’t it be a good idea to release a demo anyway? It’s no secret that many people pirate games just to try them out when no demo is available.

Hines followed up with a prompt response. “We don’t build our games in section,” he told Tom’s Games. “They’re one giant…”thing.” It’s all tied together, and there’s no way to break it apart. So the only way we could release a demo is to release the full game and “section off” part of the world or something to limit how much you can do. No way in hell we’re doing that.”

And perhaps rightfully so. If Fallout 3 will be as massive as Oblivion, a demo would certainly be next to impossible to carve out a demo. Currently Fallout 3 is slated to hit the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this fall. Taking place 36 years after Fallout 2, the role-playing game thrusts players into the post-apocalyptic world of 2277. Players valiantly search for the protagonist’s father who ventured out into the wastelands for unknown reasons. Bethesda boasts that the game reached Oblivion standards in regards to size, and features over 10,000 possible endings.

The official Mass Effect forums have an update from Jay Watamaniuk, community manager of Bioware, which reveals the final minimum and recommended system requirements for the PC Version of Mass Effect.

Minimum System Requirements:
Operating System:
Windows XP or Vista
Processor:
2.4+GHZ Intel or 2.0+GHZ AMD
Memory:
1 Gigabyte Ram (XP)
2 Gigabyte Ram (Vista)
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 6 series(6800GT or better)
ATI 1300XT or better (X1550, X1600 Pro and HD2400 are below minimum system requirements)
Hard Drive Space:
12 Gigabytes
Sound Card:
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers

Recommended System Requirements:
Operating System:
Windows XP or Vista
Processor:
2.6+GHZ Intel or 2.4+GHZ AMD
Memory:
2 Gigabyte Ram
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or higher.
ATI X1800 XL series or higher
Hard Drive Space:
12 Gigabytes
Sound Card:
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers – 5.1 sound card recommended

These speculations are fairly moderate, so most of us should be able to run it. How about you, will your machine be able to power Mass Effect? Leave your comments.

Ok I know this is not your idea of extreme gaming…but think about it for a second…Perhaps you have an AGP gaming system you just can’t bear to part with, or perhaps you have an anomalous motherboard that has both a dual-core CPU and AGP slot. Whatever the reason, the card for you is the Radeon 3850 512 MB…here’s are the specs:

Codename        RV670
Process                       55 nm
Universal Shaders    320
Texture Units           16
ROPs                          16
Memory Bus              256 bit
Core Speed MHz        670
Memory Speed MHz    833 (1666 effective)
DirectX / Shader Model    DX 10.1 / SM 4.0

Costing approximately about Rs.9000 or $250..this is the fastest card your AGP system will take! IMO, it might be too powerful for single core processors.