Original Half-Life Turns 10

Ten years ago, one of the most influential 3D shooters to ever grace the PC was released. That of course being Half-Life. High-profile 3D shooters were released long before it, but Half-Life was the first to become so critically acclaimed. If you were a PC gamer at the time of its release, then you no doubt recall the incredible amount of "Game of the Year" awards that the game earned in its first year alone.

When's the last time you saw a game with over fifty of these awards? To my knowledge, the only other PC game to supersede that accomplishment was Half-Life 2. Today, it has the privilege of being one of the top-rated games at Metacritic and even now, it's still a blast to play. It's also one game to enjoy Source engine upgrades, so the control is much smoother and today's resolutions are supported. Not to mention it looks better in pretty-much every regard.

Until today, Valve was offering an incredible deal for the game... just $0.98, but I have a hard time believing that there exist people who still haven't played this masterpiece. I've sunk so much time into this game, that to buy it ten times over, it still would have been worth it. Half-Life 2 Deathmatch is enjoyed by many, but even today, the original Half-Life offers a great multi-player experience as well. It might not be as pretty, but it's far more fun, in my opinion. If you still haven't played what's considered to be a true classic, definitely give it a try.

Named Game of the Year by over 50 publications, Valve's debut title blends action and adventure with award-winning technology to create a frighteningly realistic world where players must think to survive. Also includes an exciting multiplayer mode that allows you to play against friends and enemies around the world.

Source: Half-Life Steam Page

Tech Roundup - November 21, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• Gigabyte & MSI Core i7 Motherboards - Tech Report
• MSI K9A2 Platinum AMD 790FX - PC Stats

Displays & Video Cards
• Acer F-22 Monitor - InsideHW
• XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition - Motherboards.org

Memory & Storage
• Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2x2GB DDR3 10666 - Overclockers Club
• Kingston HyperX 3GB DDR3 2GHz - Legit Reviews
• OCZ SLI Edition DDR3 2000MHz - Pro-Clockers
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 Terabyte - Overclockers Club
• Thermaltake BlacX SE Hard Drive Dock - Big Bruin

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Silverstone FP35 Bay Card Reader - Ninjalane

Cooling
• November's Top 10 Best Heatsinks for Intel and AMD - FrostyTech
• Thermalright TRad2 VGA Coolers - Virtual-Hideout

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master ATCS840 Case - Overclockers Club
• Lian Li Maxima Force 750 Watt Power Supply - Modders-Inc
• NZXT Tempest Airflow King - Madshrimps
• QNAP TS-109 II vs. QNAP TS-509 Pro - TweakPC
• Silverstone Decathlon 1000W Power Supply - Bjorn3D
• Sunbeam Automation Mid Tower Case - Think Computers
• Thermaltake V9 - Red and Blackness

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Alienware Area-51 m15x Gaming Notebook - i4u
• Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-111FD - Digital Trends

Indie Game Developer Earns $250K in Two Months with iPhone Game

It might seem a little odd to some people, but mobile gaming is an extremely hot niche right now, and in some regards, it's much more successful than typical PC/console gaming. Less money is generally made as well, since the games don't sell as high as full-blown productions, but sometimes they can even make more, if the game is successful enough to push that much volume.

The good thing about mobile games is that it doesn't take massive developer teams to create them. Some of the best are created by a single person, and if you are that single person, the potential to earn a good amount of cash fast is easy, as long as you can create a game people enjoy. In the case of Steve Demeter, creator of an iPhone game called "Trism", sometimes the cash can roll in really fast.

This puzzle game took a few months to build, and even though it's priced at a modest $5, it earned him $250,000 through the iPhone App Store in a mere two months. That's the upside. The downside is that these results are not typical, and unless your game is near-perfect, it's not going to sell as well as this. It's made worse by the fact that the arena is becoming much more crowded, with many developers clamoring to the mobile segment... not surprisingly. Still, if you have a good idea, can code and don't mind sinking your time into development, it might just pay off. Big time.

"A single one of these titles can be turned around for pennies by comparison in just weeks by a single hobbyist working in their off-hours," said Scott Steinberg, publisher of DigitalTrends.com and author of "Get Rich Playing Games." "The overhead and barriers to entry are so low that virtually anyone can afford to take a crack, if not several, at hitting a home run."

Source: CNN

AMD Boasts 4GHz Air Overclocks on "Phenom II", 6GHz on LN2

With Intel's Core i7 processors now available, and kicking ass through most benchmarks, one has to wonder what's up with AMD. How will they be competing anytime soon? It's true... lately all we've heard from them has been related to their business practises, but there's no need to worry... they definitely look to have some tricks up their sleeves.

Our friends at the Tech Report attended a press briefing this morning where AMD showed off their latest and greatest... 45nm "Phenom II". While benchmark results weren't revealed, raw clock frequencies were, and if you've been waiting for AMD to give people a great reason to consider them again, this might be it.

Stock speeds were not disclosed, but on an air cooling setup, one of their processors clocked to 4.0GHz with 1.55v, which is around what we've been expecting. Make no mistake, that's a lot of voltage, and it's too bad that it has to go so high, but if these CPUs are better-designed to handle such voltages (compared to Intel's offerings), it might be alright. We'll have to wait and see on that one.

While we are used to seeing massive overclocks on Intel's processors when using liquid nitrogen, we've never seen anything major on the AMD side... until now. At this event, the same CPU as mentioned above was clocked to 6.0GHz... something that's sure to excite many of the more hardcore overclockers out there. It took -185°C temperatures to accomplish it, but that's not the point!

This is a very exciting time for AMD, and enthusiasts alike. For a while, Intel has dominated the desktop space, especially where enthusiasts are concerned, but AMD is looking to improve that situation, and fast. "Phenom II" isn't a major architectural upgrade like Core i7 was to Core 2, but by moving to the 45nm node, we'll have lower power consumption and overall improved efficiency, lower temps, and as we can see, far better clocking-abilities. We should be learning more about these CPUs very soon, so stay tuned.

The slowest system-cooled with a heatsink and fan-managed to reach just under 4GHz with a 1.55V core voltage. With liquid cooling, AMD successfully pushed a 45nm Phenom II in another machine just over the 4GHz mark. That required kicking up the CPU voltage to 1.6V, however. For the other two systems, AMD took out the big guns.

Source: Tech Report

GeForce 180 Driver Brings Multi-Monitor SLI, Dedicated GPU PhysX

I posted yesterday about Mirror's Edge becoming the first PC game to fully utilize the PhysX physics engine, but what I somehow forgot about was the new 180 driver that brings some great new functionality to the table. Two major new features include multi-monitor SLI support and the ability to dedicate a GPU for PhysX use. This is also the first driver that allows SLI support on Intel X58 motherboards.

The ability to run PhysX on a dedicated GPU has been a desire shared by many gamers ever since NVIDIA first released support for the technology to run off of the GPU. In order to take advantage, you will need to use an 8, 9 or 200-series GPU. Anything older is not supported, sadly. The cards also have to include at least 256MB of memory, but that's a rather simple target.

For those with an ATI card as their primary, you might be able to still dedicate an NVIDIA GPU for PhysX, but only if you are using Windows XP. Because of how Vista handles display drivers, it makes it virtually impossible to accomplish, but XP is much more lenient. In addition, NVIDIA doesn't recommend dedicating a GPU if using an SLI setup, as performance will be hit. It works, but they said improvements are definitely en route.

The new driver has also been tweaked a great deal to offer performance to a handful of games, including Assassin's Creed, BioShock, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2, GRID and others. Overall, this is one of the most important driver releases from NVIDIA in a while, so if you have one of their GPUs, it's definitely worth the time to upgrade.

Enables NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on a dedicated GeForce graphics card. Use one card for graphics and dedicate a different card for PhysX processing for game-changing physical effects. Learn more here. (Note: GPU PhysX is supported on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory. This driver package automatically installs PhysX System Software version 8.10.13).

Source: NVIDIA Driver Download Page

Tech Roundup - November 20, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• ASUS P6T Deluxe - Bjorn3D
• ASUS Rampage II Extreme - t-break

Displays & Video Cards
• GTX 260/216 vs. HD 4870 1GB - Five Game Shootout - Bjorn3D
• GTX 260/216 vs. HD 4870 1GB - Five Game Shootout - Overclockers Club
• NVIDIA ForceWare 180.47 Analysis - XP & Vista - TweakTown

Memory & Storage
• Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC3-12800 - XS Reviews
• iStarUSA xAGE-902 Dual HDD Docking Station - techPowerUp
• Walton Chaintech APOGEE 2.5" Solid State Disk- TweakTown

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Ikonik Zaria A20 Case with SIM Fan Controller - TweakPC

Cooling
• Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler - Legit Reviews
• Vantec AeroFlow FX 92 CPU Cooler - DragonSteelMods

Chassis & Power Supplies
• be quiet! Pure Power 350W - Technic3D
• Cooler Master HAF 932 - Elite Bastards
• Cooler Master UCP Ultimate 700W - Pro-Clockers

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Blackberry Bold - Digital Trends
• Exciting Features For Ubuntu 9.04 - Phoronix
• The Best Free Software Programs - Digital Trends

Mirror's Edge PC Version to Support PhysX

To say that we've been waiting a while for a game to make good use of the PhysX engine would be a huge understatement. Since we first covered PhysX well over three years ago, we've seen some freeware games come and go, but rarely did we see good use of the technology in a commercial game. One exception would be Unreal Tournament III, where two downloadable levels utilized it to a good degree.

Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief, as NVIDIA has just announced that upcoming PC game Mirror's Edge, will make heavy use of the technology. This game has been on many gamer's radar for some time, as it attempts to stray away from typical gameplay and deliver one that's totally unique. As you can tell from the screenshots below, the game definitely looks unique, too.

In previous PhysX-enhanced titles, we've seen realistic shattering glass, smoke, liquid, cloth and more, and all of that will be present in this game. Pushing things further, the physics enhancements can both affect the player and the overall gameplay. Ground fog, for example, will react to the player walking through it.

The screenshots below can give a quick glimpse of what to expect from the game, and the video below links to our Vimeo account which houses the preview video in its original 720p format. I can honestly say that this is one game I'm really looking forward to, and perhaps PhysX-support makes up for the game being delayed on the PC. The game's received great reviews so far, so I'm hoping we can expect equally-impressive gameplay on the PC in January.

With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the world of Mirror’s Edge comes to life with real affects of wind, weapons impact, and in-game movements. Every-day objects within the game become part of the overall experience. Cloth, flags, and banners can now impact weapons and players; ground fog interacts with the player’s footsteps; explosions fill the air with smoke and debris; and weapon impacts are enhanced with interactive particles.

Source: Mirror's Edge - NVIDIA PhysX Video

Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian Scammers

Online scams are nothing new, and by now I'm sure most people visiting this site are bored stiff of even hearing about them. One of the more rampant scams on the Internet for a while has been tied to the country of Nigeria, where there are apparently many ready to find a sucker on these and other shores to make a quick buck. In a recent case, it was revealed that people continue to fall for such ploys, some to the worst possible degree.

In the case of Janella Spears of Oregon, her naivety cost her an incredible $400,000. She originally was contacted by some Nigerian scammer who promised huge payoffs for small donations. Originally, the money she was asked to send didn't total much, but after the scammers realized how naive she was, they ended up stealing over $400K, which is hard to even comprehend.

This wasn't a quick transaction, either. The entire event took over two years to finish, and despite her family telling her that it was a scam, she continued until she was broke. It's easy to outright flame someone like this, but the important thing to gleam from it is that people actually still do fall for these scams. Hard to believe that the largest known Nigerian online scam to happen, happened now, even years after they've been known about.

When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course. She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.

Source: KATU News

Left 4 Dead Redefines What Co-Op Modes Should Be

It might be a bit hard (read: very hard) to wait for Half-Life 2: Episode Three to surface, but Valve hasn't been slack in delivering updates to their current games to give us something to do. To help make us forget HL2 for a while longer, they just released a brand-new title called Left 4 Dead that furthers their stance on just how important multi-player gaming is.

With L4D, they took things to the next level. While some games offer co-op gameplay as an option, Valve encourages it to such a great degree, that the single-player campaign is highly discouraged by all of the reviews I've seen so far. Ars Technica is one such site to take a look at the game, and overall, "Left 4 Dead was a game that was made with love" just about says it all.

Their review puts the game in a great light, noting that the Source engine still has what it takes to deliver a great-looking experience, the audio looks (or sounds) to be top-rate, and despite the fact that the game is short, the replayability is high, which is something I've read in every review I've taken a look at. Overall, Valve has a winner on their hands, and I only wish I had time to play it now.

It's surprising that a game that only has five to six hours of content has been made infinitely replayable via the AI that mixes things up. Every time I step into a level I move slowly and cautiously; you never know what you're going to see around the corner. The camraderie that comes with playing with good friends and defending their characters is also a big draw; you'll be recounting the stories of your exploits to bored wives and girlfriends for the next few months.

Source: Ars Technica

NVIDIA Helps Create "Personal Supercomputers"

Over the course of the past year, NVIDIA has been actively pushing their GPUs as excellent performers outside of gaming, and for most of us, this was a rather new concept. We quickly found out, though, that GPUs were indeed superb performers when executed in a certain manner.

It goes without saying that where GPGPU programming is concerned, we're still in its infancy, but over the course of the past year, I've slowly become more of a believer in what the technology can accomplish. If you care at all about the progress of research in the medical field, then just taking a look at how much more a GPU can accomplish with Folding@home when compared to a normal CPU will help make you a believer.

"Personal Supercomputer" is a term that's been thrown around quite a bit in the past, but when dealing with scenarios that can execute off of a GPU architecture, then it's far easier to accomplish. To help make this point even clearer, NVIDIA has published a release that unveiled their "Personal Supercomputer" platform, which numerous vendors are currently supporting. Each configuration will vary, but the fastest ones will include the Tesla C1060. The largest configurations in a single-chassis/rack unit will deliver upwards of 3.732 TFLOPS of computing power.

By using their GPUs, NVIDIA claims, you can achieve "Cluster Class" performance with 1/100th of the available space, and at 1/10th the overall power consumption. Those claims are huge, but believable. I'm no coder, and I certainly don't handle any supercomputers, but I'm still not entirely confident that GPUs can replace CPUs for any kind of SC computing, but if you're lucky enough that GPUs will work out just fine, the performance benefits are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

"GPUs have evolved to the point where many real world applications are easily implemented on them and run significantly faster than on multi-core systems," said Prof. Jack Dongarra, director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee and author of LINPACK. "Future computing architectures will be hybrid systems with parallel-core GPUs working in tandem with multi-core CPUs."

Source: NVIDIA Press Release

Tech Roundup - November 19, 2008

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS EN9800GT Matrix 512MB - PC Perspective
• MSI GeForce 9800GT 512MB - Phoronix
• Sapphire Radeon HD4650 OC Edition 512MB - Modders-Inc
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 - Budget Overclocking - Overclock3D
• Sapphire HD 4850 X2 - Overclockers Online
• XFX 9800GTX+ Black Edition - Bjorn3D
• XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition - Legit Reviews
• ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT 512MB AMP - TheTechLounge

Memory & Storage
• Kingston 4GB DataTraveler Mini Slim - Hardware Bistro
• OCZ Diesel and ATV Stick - Technic3D
• Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1TB External Hard Drive - Think Computers
• Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB External Hard Drive - Big Bruin
• Thermaltake BlacX External Hard Drive Docking Station - TweakNews

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Sanyo R227 Internet Radio - Digital Trends

Cooling
• Gelid Solutions Silent Spirit - Hardware Bistro
• Scythe Musashi GPU Cooler - Pro-Clockers

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master HAF 932 Full-Tower - Virtual-Hideout
• Corsair HX1000W Power Supply - Bjorn3D
• Revoltec Seventy1 Computer Case - TweakPC

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Velocity Micro Edge Z55 - Intel Core i7 Gaming System - HotHardware

No Immediate Price-Cuts for Intel Core 2, Upcoming Models Leaked

Those who were hoping for immediate price-cuts of Intel's Core 2 line-up are out of luck, as the company posted their updated processor pricing list yesterday and listed not a single one. The lone update to the list was of course the addition of the Core i7 line-up, which I'm assuming every-single person reading this already know enough about. If you don't... you might be doing too much snoozing and not enough reading the top of our page!

In other related news, DailyTech found themselves with a leaked list of upcoming non-Core i7 processors, including 65W versions of the Q9550, Q9400 and Q8200 Quad-Core chips. These will be priced at $369, $320 and $245, respectively. This equates to a $52 - $54 price hike compared to their 65W counterparts. Personally, I'm not quite sure that power savings of a 65W CPU will ever negate the $50 premium, but prices are very unlikely to remain high for too long.

Another notable release is the Q9000 2.0GHz Quad-Core mobile part. It will become the first "affordable"  Quad-Core offering for notebooks and will sell at $348/1,000. It's still high compared to desktop counterparts, but far more affordable than previous mobile offerings. Lastly, for those looking to pick up an Intel X-25M SSD, it might pay off to wait, since it's set to drop $75 on November 30th. You can see even more releases and price-drops over at DailyTech through the link below.

Intel also hasn't forgotten about its other businesses when it comes to price cuts. Intel's multi-level cell (MLC) X25-E solid state drives (SSDs) have been burning up the benchmark charts thanks to its highly optimized memory controller. The street price for the 2.5" 80GB X25-M -- and its 80GB 1.8" X18-M counterpart -- will drop from $600 to $525 on November 30. 160GB variants of the X25-M/X18-M will show up in the first half of 2009 and will initially be priced at $990.

Source: DailyTech

SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive Offers Superb Disk Image Mounting

Yesterday, I posted about a cool little application that allowed you to both create and mount ISO disk images, but little did I realize, that application pales in comparison to some of the free competition. Thanks to one of our eagle-eyed readers, we now see what might be the ultimate free solution.

SlySoft, creators of the ultra-popular AnyDVD and CloneDVD applications, offer a completely free tool called "Virtual CloneDrive", which improves upon ISODisk in almost every-single way. Rather than limit you to just the .ISO format, CloneDrive supports that, as well as DVD, CCD, IMG, UDF and BIN files. Nero's NRG format isn't supported, not surprisingly. I think it's safe to say that by using proprietary formats like that, you are only going to suffer a headache down the road.

When launched, the application will offer a few simple questions, as seen below. You can select up to 15 virtual drives, which the OS will see as "BD-ROM Drive". Yes, that's right. This application doesn't only mount CD and DVD images, but can also handle Blu-ray. You can also set the application to mount previously used images when next used, as well.

You can't create images with this tool, but there are many others out there that can do it for you. CloneDrive definitely looks to be the best solution available for mounting disk images though, and you can't beat the price. Thanks to Ron for the heads-up!

Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

Source: SlySoft's Virtual DriveClone

Dell Offering Core i7 PC with Included 20-inch Widescreen for $999

I don't make it a point to look around and hunt for great hardware deals, but while visiting Dell's website last night, I happened upon one of their "XPS Winter Savings" deals that seemed too good to be ignored. Until the 19th (6AM PST), the company is offering a fully-featured XPS machine, complete with Core i7 processor and 20-inch widescreen monitor... for $999.

So how good is this deal? If you were to build your own Core i7 machine right now, the least-expensive motherboard would set you back $220, while the CPU itself would bring the tally up another $300. Tack on 4GB of RAM ($75), a 500GB hard drive ($65), ATI's HD 3450 ($30), ODD ($25), chassis ($80), miscellaneous peripherals and modest PSU ($150), and the total would sit at $945.

So where exactly is the steal? Well on top of the pre-configured PC, they also throw in their SP2009W 20-inch widescreen, valued at $240. So in total, the machine to build separately would cost $1,185, or $999 through this offer. It's not a mind-blowing deal, nor is it a deal most of our audience is looking for, but for a PC that offers Intel's latest and greatest, looks good and comes complete with a monitor for $999... it's definitely an interesting deal.

This deal expires first thing tomorrow morning, but it's not the only one Dell is offering. You can keep checking back to their event page to scope out the latest deals.

Source: Dell Core i7 Machine - $999

Tech Roundup - November 18, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe - t-break
• DFI X48-T3RS - Madshrimps
• ECS A790GXM-A - Overclockers Club
• ECS GF9300T-A - Overclockers Club
• Gigabyte EP45-UD3P - Overclock3D
• Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition Processor - Benchmark Reviews

Displays & Video Cards
• ATI Catalyst 8.11 Analysis - XP & Vista - TweakTown
• BFG GTX 260 OCX MAXCORE (216SP) 896MB - Hardware Canucks
• Gigabyte GV-R485OC-1GB - ocaholic
• Sapphire HD 4830 512MB - XS Reviews
• Sapphire HD4870 Toxic - Bjorn3D
• XFX 9800GTX+ Black Edition - Motherboards.org

Memory & Storage
• G.Skill DDR3 1600 Triple Channel - Bjorn3D
• Patriot Viper PC3-16000 4GB Memory Kit - Hardware Logic

Cooling
• ASUS Lion Square and Triton 85 CPU Coolers - Digit-Life
• Gelid Silent Spirit Heatpipe CPU Cooler - Elite Bastards
• Gelid Silent Spirit Heatpipe CPU Cooler - TweakNews
• NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller - PC Perspective
• Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 Heatsink - FrostyTech

Chassis & Power Supplies
• AeroCool S9 Pro Mid Tower Case - Think Computers
• BFG Tech ES-800 800W Power Supply - eXtreme Outer Vision
• Cooler Master HAF932 - Overclockers Online
• FSP Power Mod 700 Watt Power Supply - Dreamware Computers
• Thermaltake Spedo Advance Chassis - Phoronix

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• ASUS N10Jc Performance Netbook - HotHardware
• Gateway MC7803u Laptop - Digital Trends
• MP3 Player Buying Guide - Digital Trends