Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, or a disappointment. Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who’s covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it’ll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing.
Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming, computers Gaming, Vista, Win7, windows 7, Windows Vista
The SATA 6G standard offers more than simply a faster 6.0 Gb/s data throughput speed, to wit: improved NCQ support, better power management, and a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives.
While modern-day, spindle-based hard drives struggle to keep up with SATA 3G speeds, modern SSDs are nearly saturating the existing standard, and a move to SATA 6G was welcome in the hardware community. It looks like that technology will be delayed, though. The only chip supporting the standard today, the Marvell 88SE9123, is having major issues.
Motherboard vendors including ASUS and Gigabyte, which had planned on releasing SATA 6G technology using the chip on Intel Lynnfield platform motherboards later this summer, are having to remove the Marvell 88SE9123 and redesign their boards at the last minute due to significant speed and reliability issues.
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming, computers 6.0Gb/s, asus, Gigabyte, Marvell, Marvell 88SE9123, SATA, SATA 6G
Sony just announced the PSP Go at E3 yesterday.
The new PSP will be a handheld slider, with a 3.8in screen, 16GB of internal memory and a whole lot smaller and lighter that the original. The catch no more UMD drive. That’s right, the Go doesn’t have a UMD drive — games will instead load in through the Memory Stick Micro slot or over PlayStation Network. Sony’s beefing up the desktop client and renaming it Media Go for easier access and syncing with Playstation Network media, but you’ll be able to get PSN content directly from the Go as well. The PSP’s music features have also been beefed up with a new auto-playlist feature called Sense Me, which sounds a lot like Pandora or iTunes Genius playlists, and there’s a new video delivery service being rolled out.
For more details see here
Tracy Jones-Harris Gadgets, Gaming E3, Playstation, PSN, PSP, PSP Go, Sony
Zeebo is a video game console produced by Tectoy and Qualcomm. Announced in early2008 as the first ever Brazilian-designed console, it was released in Brazil yesterday with a suggested reatil price of R$ 499,00 and it will be licensed for other countries by Zeebo Inc.
Zeebo was launched with three games installed - FIFA 09, Action Hero 3D and Brain Age. Prey, Quake and Need for Speed Carbon will be available for download for free, all in Portuguese. In addition to these titles, Zeebo’s library has more than ten games, all developed for this platform.
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming 3G, Action Hero 3D, Brain Age, Brazil, FIFA 09, Need For Speed Carbon, Prey, Quake, Qualcomm, Tectoy, Zeebo
Tony Hawk’s new game “Ride” will come with a skateboard peripheral so you can do all kinds of amazing tricks. The motion controls are pretty detailed and feature an advanced mode that will allow for in-place 180s, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be lifting the board off the ground.
Grabs are performed by actually grabbing the board as it senses your hand position, and pushing is performed by running your foot along the side of the board. Obviously, ollies and flip tricks are going to be different than the real thing.
Sounds like Tony Hawk sees the controller as a “standard,” which could work with snowboarding games, surfing games, exercise games and other stuff
Tracy Jones-Harris Gadgets, Gaming Activision, Playstation, Skateboard, Skateboard peripheral, Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk's Ride, Wii, XBox 360
Mac users — are you tired of being taunted by your PC friends over their myriad GPU options / killer gaming rigs? Well, here’s one less front they can battle you on. NVIDIA is due to launch GTX 285 for Macs in June. Like the PC version, we’re guessing you can expect two things here: it’s killer… and it’s expensive.
Tracy Jones-Harris Gadgets, Gaming, computers GeForce, GTX 285, MAC, NVIDIA
According to a little site called Siliconera, Sony’s European arm has filed a patent for a remote-controlled car uses the PSP as an interface. This bad boy is equipped with a camera that feeds video back to the hand held and allows the user to upload the footage to a website. If that weren’t all, the patent makes mention of an augmented reality racing game incorporating virtual markers and paths that the players physically create — that is, the junk in your apartment is incorporated into on-screen game play. Innocent fun, right?
Tracy Jones-Harris Gadgets, Gaming augmented reality, patent, PSP, Remote-controlled, Sony
The absurdly titled Game Wheel Speed-X is evidently geared to work with Apple’s latest iPod touch, though an iPhone 3G should slide right in without too much effort. Clearly, this aims to be a Wii Wheel for your favorite Apple handheld, though we have to wonder how many individuals plan on carrying this ridiculously large piece of plastic around with their touch. Check out the demo of Engadget playing around with it.
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming Apple, ipod, ipone, racing wheel, touch
Sony is now claiming that they are looking to produce a backcatalogue of games for the PSP. Here’s what Sony’s head of US marketing told MTV Multiplayer:
“In general there’s a lot of discussion about [publishers'] back catalogs that will finally find its way to PlayStation Network in the back half of this year.
PSOne is included, but everything is on the table…We look for some of those big hits from all of the past games in their history and look for ways we can bring them over. It’s not always easy. There’s obviously technical areas that need to be bridged. But when those are solved, consumers will see a wide variety of retro games and brand new games coming to PSN.”
These claims are probably intentionally vague, but send promising signals
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming Emulators, PSP, Sony
Datel is expanding its range of retro style controllers now to include the original Nintendo Famicom! Now that is old skool!
Codejunkies now has this NES-resembling classic pad, but with the SNES’s four buttons. It’s $US20. Wii old skool
Tracy Jones-Harris Gaming controllers, nintendo, retro, snes, Wii