Nvidia drivers boosts Skyrim performance by up to 45%, makes Modern Warfare 3 prettier

If you’re playing Skyrim and have an Nvidia card, you’ll definitely want to grab the latest driver update. The Nvidia site boasts of significant improvements to Skyrim framerates. Indoor scenes should run 45% faster and Skyrim’s grand outdoor vistas will see a 16% boost. The drivers also come with an improved version of the ambient occlusion effect added by the last set of drivers. This adds a subtle layer of extra shadowing and darken the deep cracks in Skyrim’s rocky landscapes, boosting their cragginess factor by about 14%.

Modern Warfare 3 gets the same ambient occlusion treatment, boosting war torn grittiness by 32%. Additional AO for the Diablo 3 beta applies a chunky 35.2% hike to lingering sense of dread levels and PhysX fixes improve Batman: Arkham City’s bat-punchiness with 10% extra Pow! 4% extra Zam! and a minor increase to overall levels of Biff! You can download it now from the Nvidia site, where they also have some fancy interactive screenshots that show off these Ambient Occlusion updates quite nicely.

Posted by GodSm4cker on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 07:11:53 EST
 

According to august engineering journal the EE Times, solid state storage specialist SanDisk is working on bringing a new form of system memory known as ‘ReRAM’ to market, a fact apparently revealed in a job ad posted on the company’s website last week.

Why is this interesting? Because ReRAM, or ‘resistive RAM’, is one of those disruptive technologies like wireless power or 4G that’s been under development for years, but is suddenly looking like it might happenin our lifetime. ReRAM could, if manufacturing kinks are worked out, replace both system RAM and hard drives in PCs of the future.

ReRAM is being touted as the successor to both current system memory chips and hard drives. And it’s not just SanDisk that’s been showing an interest in this super-storage of late.

Posted by GodSm4cker on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 07:00:07 EST
 

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand review

The Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield 3 started a war inside my head. On one side, the cynic. On the other, the boy who likes shooting things. “£12 for four old maps, ten old weapons and a few scrappy vehicles?” The cynic scoffed. “Shut up!” the boy cried. “I just killed a tank by shooting a rocket through a hole in an apartment block!” It’s an argument the cynic was never going to win.

The maps are fantastic. But then they should be: Wake Island, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Strike at Karkand are all Battlefield 2 maps, rebuilt to work with the graphical power and explodiness of the Frostbite 2 engine. The four-year old architecture has been tweaked and iterated upon countless times. They’re finely honed, fair, and consistently deliver great games.

Posted by GodSm4cker on Tuesday, February 21, 2012 @ 19:09:41 EST