Microsoft's E3 Event Showcases Major Improvements

Microsoft's E3 conference just ended, and the company dished out a lot of new information. First and foremost, they showed off new footage of Gears of War 2, Fable II, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero On Tour, Resident Evil 5 and, in a much more surprising note, Final Fantasy XIII (!), which was unveiled at the end of the event.

Along with the major games, partners also showed off Geometry Wars 2, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Portal: Still Alive, Galaga Legion (a sequel to the famous arcade game), as well as others. Microsoft also announced their plans to include NBC, Universal, MGM and Constantin's content in their HD video marketpalce (which is available now) and integrate Netflix's Instant Queue feature to the new version of the dashboard.

Finally, the redesigned dashboard features Avatars, a digital replication of yourself, and "Primetime," featuring a virtual gameshow which will offer real prizes. All of this thrown into a new user interface. Games will finally be allowed to run off the hard drive, and the Xbox 360 will add support for 16:10 resolutions over HDMI and VGA.

Source: Engadget

AMD's HD 4870 X2 Gets Early Testing

When AMD launched their HD 4000 series last month, good things happened. Both cards (HD 4850, HD 4870) debuted at fantastic prices, and competed severely with NVIDIA's recent offerings. It was the first time in a while we saw such a thing. Well, what could top that launch might be the X2 cards, starting off with the HD 4870 X2.

Our friends at the Tech Report have scored themselves an engineering sample and put it to some early tests. Compared to the older HD 3000 X2 cards, not much has changed in way of board layout, so it all lays with the performance now. Not surprisingly, the card delivers.

Interestingly, the card not only manages to out-perform SLI'd GTX 280's in many tests, the performance between the X2 and dual HD 4870's in Crossfire deliver almost identical performance. I might have to change my opinions from last week on the GeForce GTX 280, with new performance numbers like these. By the looks of things, it will all come down to price. Too bad we'll have to wait a bit longer to see what those will be.

Credit: Tech Report

Although this product's code name, R700, follows a naming convention similar to past high-end Radeon GPUs, it's not really a new GPU at all. Instead, it's just two RV770 graphics processors having a party together on one PCB, pretty much like the Radeon HD 3870 X2 was in the last generation. In fact, the new X2 looks an awful lot like the old one at first glance.

Source: Tech Report

Albatron Refuses to Give Up on PCI

When the PCI-Express standard began to overshadow AGP, some people were upset. Sure, AGP was still capable, but PCI-E was pushing things towards the future. Faster bus speeds, lower latencies... perfect for the ultra-powerful GPUs we see today. So with AGP pretty-well phased out almost entirely now, who could even consider using a PCI slot for a GPU?

Apparently, Albatron. They have released three brand-new GPUs for PCI, those being the 8400 GS, 8500 GT and 8600 GT. Obviously, these are not meant to offer compelling gameplay experiences, but neither of these cards are that bad considering they should prove more powerful than many late-gen mid-range AGP cards.

Most interesting might be the fact that both the 8500 GT and 8600 GT feature HDMI output. The site doesn't mention HDCP support, however, so I'm led to believe it's not going to be suitable for HD video (no surprise, I guess). Pricing and availability is also not known, but if you just so happen to be in or around China, chances are these are readily available.

Albatron Technology has unveiled three new NVIDIA GeForce 8-series graphics cards that use the practically outdated PCI slot. While the appeal of the PCI8600GT-256X, the PCI8500GT-256X and the PCI8400GS-256 may not be obvious for anyone who has a PCI Express or even AGP slot on their motherboard, there are still quite a few systems (particularly small form factor or HTPC ones) where expansion options are limited, creating an niche market for these cards.

Source: DigiTimes

Microsoft Officially Drops Price of Premium Xbox 360, Adds 60GB Model

In a case of "we all saw that coming," Microsoft officially announced their plans to drop the price of their Premium ( or "Pro") console to $299 and release a new 60GB version at the old 20GB's price point. What we weren't so sure about was their intention to discontinue the 20GB model altogether, so this price cut is really a clearance sale in disguise. The remaining SKUs were left unaltered.

Even though the Xbox 360 Elite is sticking to it's original price of $449, Amazon.com is offering a seemingly limited-time discount, which brings the price down to $399, presumably to better fit with Microsoft's other offerings. Hopefully this price will follow the Elite to other outlets as well.

It seems that with the growing sales of the PS3, Microsoft is looking for a way to increase adoption of its console in an already saturated market, as well as increase its ground with more casual gamers. With prices this low and many of the quality control problems stamped out, its hard to resist.

Redmond, Washington—Microsoft is giving consumers more gigabytes for their buck. The company today announced an Xbox 360® console with triple the storage space of the original console, but for the same price of $349 (U.S.) estimated retail price.

Available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada starting in early August, the upgraded Xbox 360 will include a 60GB hard drive for storing the growing wealth of digital entertainment available for the console, including music, movies, television shows, and game content. In addition, Microsoft today dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 console in the U.S. and Canada to just $299 (U.S.) (ERP) while supplies last, a savings of $50.

Source: Xbox Press Release

July 14th Tech Roundup

• MSI K9A2 Platinum - InsideHW
• ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP - Phoronix
• ASUS Maximus II Formula - TechSpot
• Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H - Overclockers Club
• Intel Core 2 Extreme Mobile X9000 - Legit Reviews

• ASUS ENGTX260 - Hardwareoverclock Austria
• Visiontek Radeon HD 4850 - Rbmods
• PowerColor HD 4850 512MB - TheTechLounge

• Crucial Ballistix Tracer Red DDR2-800 4GB - ThinkComputers
• Aeneon XTune DDR3 1600 4GB - Pro-Clockers
• Silicon Power Ultima 150 - Viper Lair
• A-DATA SDHC Class 6 Eee PC Edition 8GB - APH Networks
• Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB SSD - Benchmark Reviews

• SteelSeries Ikari Gaming Mouse - Tech-Reviews

• ZEROtherm Zen ZF120 CPU Cooler - Pro-Clockers
• Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer CPU Cooler - Tech-Reviews
• Xigmatek Porter N881 Chipset Cooler - DragonSteelMods

• NZXT Rogue - HardwareLogic
• Cooler Master CSX Limited Edition Red Dragon - PC Perspective
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W Quad - Viper Lair
• Cooler Master Ultimate Circuit Protection 900W - techPowerUp

• LapDawg X4 Multi-Desk - Virtual-Hideout