No More Intel Motherboards? Nvidia's Titan and THQ says goodbye

This week No more Intel motherboards, Nvidia's going to unleash a Titan, THQ's says its last goodbye and more!

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Ok, I'm no Chicken Little but PCPer got some disappointing news the other day.  Seems Intel is getting out of the motherboard business after Haswell comes out.  That works out to about 3 more years of Intel setting the tone for motherboard makers that use their chipset. 

That Intel is going to stop making motherboards in a declining and increasingly competitive market with razor thin margins is really no surprise.  Intel's board designs tend to be rock solid but not exactly cutting edge.   Intel boards are really just a reference design for everyone else.  As such they tend to not be that exciting except for boutique builders who have to warranty their rigs. 

What concerns me is that without that Intel "reference design," the remaining board makers may have difficulty providing a stable platform for Intel centric designs.

I'm far more concerned, however,  that it may spell the beginning of the end of desktop chipsets from Intel as they focus their designs on mobile and SOC.  Intel's chasing the market and the market says mobile, not desktop.  With the news last week of historically low Desktop PC sales and this week's news of a decline in sales of Mac PC's (Intel based BTW) the writing on the wall says the day of the desktop may be coming to an end.

Intel leaving mobo biz

What's better than a GTX680? If you said GTX690 you're shooting too high and a little late to the game.  No, there's a rumor out there (and a very strong one at that) that in late February a new Nvidia graphics card called "Titan" is coming.  This is the full GK110 GPU with 2688 CUDA cores, 384 Bit Memory bus and  6 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM at 5.2Ghz.  It's also reported to be 30% faster than a GTX 680 and 85% as fast as a GTX 690.  It's a powerhouse card but it's also likely to draw a lot more power and throw out a lot more heat than a 680. 

It's likely Nvidia held this one back to avoid comparisons to the high heat and high power draw of the previous 4x and 5x cards on Kepler's launch.  Prices are said to be around $900 as well which puts the single GPU card within $100 of a 690.  While this may end up being the fastest single GPU card, the price point is about $200 too high in my view.  I'd still go for the 690, at least while I could as this card is supposed to replace it. 

Now the real question is will Nvidia stick with the Titan name or are we going to see something similar to the 280/285.  685 anyone?

BTW, the site's in Swedish so use chrome to translate it.       

                   

Nvidia's Titan

Kotaku has reported on the latest PS4 (Orbis) development kit that may give some hints at the kind of horsepower you can expect from the upcoming console.  Current information still suggests we won't see anything definitive before the 4th quarter, however.  What does seem likely is a new controller with a touch pad, a combined CPU/GPU with graphics based on what's being called an R10xx GPU or roughly a low end 7700 series equivalent. 

PS4 dev kit hardware update

What was the one thing most lacking in Skyrim?  Give up? Multiplayer, or rather Massive Multiplayer which is exactly what Bethesda's cooking up with Elder Scrolls online.  Apparently applications for Beta testing are now being accepted.  If nothing else at least we know the game will look better than WoW.

Elder Scrolls Online

Hey all you urban planner wannabes! The game you've waited your whole life for is opening up its beta this weekend.  Well, at least for an hour since that's all you'll get.  A new SimCity game is coming and since it's on Origin you know it's going to be screwed up somehow.  Hey! that would be just like doing it in real life! 

Wow, the realism....

SimCity Beta opens

Well this is it.  Just like my future in IT, THQ is over and done.  Thursday was the last day with remaining employees meeting with former THQ CEO Brian Farrell and President Jason Rubin.  The company's been carved up and sold off to a number of buyers including Sega and Crytek.  At least it's over and the employees can finally get off the rollercoaster that's been the last 3 months at THQ.

THQ finally gone

Crysis 3's multiplayer beta opens up on January 29th.  IGN got early access this week. Check it out on IGN link below.

Cysis3 Beta