This week,
Valve starts to sell boring stuff, PhsX works better on Nvidia, A video game
luminary walks and more!
Well, it's
been another slow week for gaming news.
So I can take a little time and report on a little project I did this
week on my ASUS G72GX gaming laptop.
Yes, I know it's ancient but it handles BF3 and Torchlight 2 just fine
thank you. Anyway anyone who owns a G71
through early G73 ASUS laptop eventually has a problem with their LCD backlight
flickering. It finally happened to me so
I went in search of an answer.
It seemed
strange that I'd start having trouble considering the relatively light use this
laptop gets but it turns out the problem stems from video connection leads that
are just a tad too short. That means
they get loose over time. I'm told the
backlight is LED so I knew that wasn't going to burn out anytime soon. Anyway the fix is to pop off the hinge covers
to expose the two connectors and just reseat the plugs. Mine were indeed loose and so far the problem
hasn't returned. ASUS has a $100 cable
set that's supposed to fix this but I'm ok with popping the covers off once in
awhile. It's cheaper and a lot less
work! Here's the link to the process...
Valve has
begun selling non-game software on Steam.
Among the titles available are Microsoft Word, Corel Wordperfect, Adobe
Photoshop and....not really. They're offering mostly independent titles
with names like 3D-coat, Source Filmmaker and Futuremark's 3DMark vantage and
3DMark 11. With 10% off all titles till
Tuesday October 9th. Valve says the
non-game software will enjoy many of the same benefits as the usual offerings
including automatic updating and portability between computers. It's definitely more accessible than
Microsoft or Apple's offerings being an independent platform but so far the
apps look to be one step removed from the bargain bin. Ah, but everyone has to start somewhere.
PCPER's
been playing around with PhysX at Nvidia's suggestion again. Apparently they got a special game demo that
will be showing up in a future Bordlerlands 2 patch. It enabled them to compare performance of
PhysX between Nvidia and AMD! cards.
So much for
exclusive hardware! Anyway, PhysX is
just a bit of software these days.
Apparently, however, it's a piece of software written to take advantage
of Nvidia's hardware because when it runs on AMD platforms, performance on higher
quality settings goes downhill fast.
That's due to the PhysX portion of the drivers going to the serial
processing CPU instead of the parallel processing GPU for its enhancements on
non-Nvidia hardware. That means no
matter how many CPU cores running at breakneck speeds you have, the threads
will still have to wait in line to be processed.
Remember
that in the driver setup on most Nvidia cards you can choose either the CPU,
GPU or another dedicated GPU for PhysX's processing tasks. Of course all this just proves that PhysX is
still an artificially gimped proprietary
enhancement that would be better off in a game engine or DirectX than a video
driver. False proprietary platforms are
just bad faith marketing in my view.
Now for a
quick rundown of this week's DLC releases.
Next week
Mass Effect 3 gets a new DLC pack that includes new play modes, weapon mods and
unlocks and a new Challenge feature for Multiplayer that acts as a public
scoreboard. Of course new enemies and
class kits are also included.
In our, "should I really
care about this?" department...
Cliff Bierszinski has left
Epic games after a two decade stint that produced Unreal and Gears of War. Described as a game design
"luminary" his departure has apparently caused a stir in the
industry. Official word was that he is
just "looking for a break."
Too bad he took his break before releasing another Unreal Title. Sad to have an engine but no game bearing its
name to go with it.
Finally,
Take a guess at what game
holds the biggest videogame launch record for 2012 in the UK, I'll Wait...
Borderlands 2? Close but
nope...
Fl 2012?
Mists of Pandaria?
Nope.
It's FiFA 13. Yes, apparently Europe is as still as in love
with FIFA Soccer as the US is with Madden Football. Just another example that humans would rather
play games on their TV than go outside and do it for real. Doesn't matter what continent you're on
either.
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