by Veridian3 on 16/10/2009
Since our last articles on Windows 7 the ATI Radeon 5800/5700 series of graphics cards have launched and two games are now available which have DirectX 11 features. Today we take a look at performance and image quality differences between DirectX 10.0 /10.1 and DirectX 11 when running Windows 7 on ATIs latest hardware. The article also includes the worlds first detailed look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat running in DirectX 11 mode.
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by Zardon on 25/09/2009
We will analyse multiple physX setups to suit all ranges of investment, from a wallet busting dual 295 GTX quad sli configuration to a much more affordable 250 GTS with 9400 GT. You don't need to spend a fortune to enjoy Batman: Arkham Asylum, but you certainly can get benefits from more than one video card if you research carefully.
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by Veridian3 on 12/09/2009
In the latest of our articles focusing on Windows 7 we look at the gaming performance when compared to Microsoft's older operating systems, namely Vista and XP. Many people (and websites) still hail Windows XP as the OS of choice so today we will ascertain if you should be making the leap to Windows 7 when it is released next month. We think you will find the results very interesting, we know we did !
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by Veridian3 on 12/08/2009
In anticipation of Windows 7 going on sale in October we are publishing a selection of articles which will help our readers get the most out of the operating system. Last month we published a guide explaining how to install Windows 7 and this month we take a look at some of the new and enhanced features the operating system offers over Vista and XP.
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by Zardon on 09/08/2009
It appears many of you remember my Photoshop guides from years ago as I still get emails asking to create more to help you guys get the most out of your designs and creative ideas. As you may know I don't believe in making these guides extremely complex because many people reading this will have a copy of Photoshop installed but have really no idea how to use even the basic features. Let's have a look at implementing a texture layer to get a creative end result.
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by Zardon on 05/08/2009
Let's be honest, most of the major laptop makers are normally lagging many months behind the latest official driver sets from either nVidia or ATI. Our easy to use tool cures this...
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by Veridian3 on 13/07/2009
This is the first in a series of articles on Windows 7 with the first focusing on a guide for beginners. Featuring step by step instructions and screenshots which show exactly what to expect as the installation takes place, this guide should allow those who have very limited knowledge the ability to take advantage of the great features and improvements in Windows 7.
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by Zardon on 08/09/2008
When we released our recent review of the Macbook Air, we were inundated with requests via email to detail some information on Macintosh OSX. Today we are having a look at the differences you can expect between both OSx (Leopard) and Windows Vista.
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by Veridian3 on 05/08/2008
In this article we will be testing numerous PhysX configurations using the Zotac GeForce 9800 AMP! Edition as our primary card and will include multi GPU configurations as well as a look back at the original Ageia PhysX performance with the newest Nvidia driver.
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by Zardon on 25/09/2007
The moment Bioshock was released it was abundantly clear that it would mark the face of gaming forever. The spiritual successor of the famous System Shock 2 delivered an equally amazing experience in the underwater city of Rapture. And the gameplay is not the only good quality Bioshock has.
Using the Unreal 3.0 engine the game is a technical marvel, pushing the Xbox360 to its limits. On personal computers the game looks just as good, and with a high end computer system even better. With the help of higher resolutions and DX10 effects nothing less should be expected.
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by Zardon on 26/05/2006
DirectX 10 is an evolutionary step over the current DirectX 9 which you see today in Windows XP and earlier operating systems. It will include a plethora of features which game and application developers have been asking for from Microsoft for some time. These additions will not only make developers lives easier, they also speed up the wealth of effects and features that a title can display.
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by Zardon on 23/05/2006
t can be safely said that when ATI released Catalyst Control Centre it received less than a stellar reception by many of the companies core enthusiast gamers. Load times were slow, memory overheads were high and many felt it was perhaps a step in the wrong direction. Currently while ATI still back this .net based driver interface as the way forward many enthusiast users feel the memory overhead is still high and it is slower in operation that the older standard style Control Panel. There has been heated debate on our forums since the inception of CCC with .net framework and if you visit any active tech based forum there will still be debate on the matter. "Are nVidia going to go down the same road" was a question often asked?
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by Chaos on 19/04/2006
With all the new high quality video options available today, ATI's AVIVO technology is a truly exciting experience for home media enthusiasts. ATI claim AVIVO will revolutionize the quality of multi media and how it is incorporated into a home Media Center PC. To be more specific AVIVO specifically targets high definition formats like HDTV, Blu-ray and HD-DV and ATI’s new cards with AVIVO technology strive to give end users the best, most vibrant video quality available.
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by Veridian3 on 14/12/2005
Today we are taking a short look at a feature included in ATI's Catalyst 5.12 drivers - Dual Core optimisations. The article also includes a Q+A session with Phil Rogers. Phil is ATI's senior software architect and as a whole it makes for very interesting reading...
Driverheaven: How do the driver optimisations differ between AMD and Intel CPUs - if at all?
Phil Rogers: Currently we use the same multithreading path for both AMD and Intel. I suspect that your question comes from seeing larger gains on Intel for some applications. The optimizations are equally effective on both CPUs, but we tend to hit graphics hardware performance limits sooner on AMD due to their faster single core performance.
One other thing to note on this is that our multithreading path is also enabled for Intel's Hyperthreading. Again it is the exact same path. Naturally we see a smaller gain for hyperthreading vs dual core, but its nice to deliver some value from this work to the large installed base of HyperThreaded PCs.
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by Zardon on 02/10/2005
Today I will be looking at Uniblue’s latest backup and archival application, WinBackup 2.0 Professional. Uniblue claims that this software is 100% reliable and offers superior performance with complete data protection through a comprehensive and powerful set of enterprise-level features. Strong claims. Let’s see how they hold up.
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by Zardon on 20/09/2005
ATI is proudly introducing Avivo technology, allowing video to become yet another integral part of your computing experience. Thus it becomes even more important to deliver a high fidelity experience to the consumer, by providing a solution of the highest quality. This entails treating the video data properly, from the moment it first enters the PC, to when it is displayed. This end-to-end process is hereafter referred to as the video pipeline.
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by Veridian3 on 28/01/2005
In future reviews we will be using “The Project” as one of our standard tests of graphics card capabilities, however due to time limitations it wasn’t included in our X800XL review. We had some free testing time over the last week and have ran the demo on both the 6800GT and X800XL to ascertain how they should perform in future Crytek(/Cryengine) releases.
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by Zardon on 08/01/2005
This article is based on the Metroid Series - a collection of games created by Nintendo which many gamers will love and remember throughout the years. I will be giving a brief description on this page before I go into a more indepth analysis of each title.
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by Veridian3 on 16/11/2004
Little really needs to said about this game, the hype surrounding it has been escalating for over a year since the failed release to tie in with ATI's 9800XT series in September of 2003. Having been at the ATI Munich launch for the aforementioned card it came as a major disappointment to all the journalists there as we had all hoped to be at least seeing a playable version. All that is history and today at last Valve finally unlocked the vault to first person heaven with the much sought after follow up to the ground breaking original masterpiece.
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by Tastyweat on 23/09/2004
Today we are going to have a look at a software package WinTasks 5 Professional from LIUtilities. What is WinTasks 5 and what can it do for me? Well off the top of my head I would say it's a tool to control the services that are running silently in the background of your PC's operating system.
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