Nvidia’s Tegra 2 has been quite the popular boy around the Android marketplace as the dual-core boy to go for. However, Nvidia hasn’t really abandoned their core business, which is desktop GPU.

When Nvidia launched their new GTX 560 Ti graphic card, it was considered a top-notch successor to the aging GTX 460 which was highly regarded. However, between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 550, there’s quite a small gap in between. That makes us wonder why Nvidia placed a ‘Ti’ suffix there, and now the question has been answered. There will be a ‘Ti’ edition and ‘non-Ti’ edition.

Because the GTX 560 Ti serve the $250 and above segment, and at times are priced nearly $300, the GTX 560 is slide into the $200 gap to have a fight with AMD’s Radeon HD 6850 with its 336 CUDA cores. The thing is that graphic card manufacturers are keen on releasing cards with dual-slot coolers. I actually prefer if they can develop single-slot cards.

Check out the full review at the links below:

• Tech Report
• AnandTech
• Guru3D

SOURCE via Nvidia

It’s been quite some time since I last checkout Bing from Microsoft. To be honest, I’ve not search things using Bing at all. But of course, Microsoft doesn’t want to lose out to their biggest rival yet, Google, so here goes the race again. Since Google lets you share things that you found using their search engine on your Facebook wall, Microsoft is going to do something similar.

Bing now has a new “Friend Effect”, which is basically the “Like” on Facebook. According to Microsoft’s study, most people usually want opinions from friends and family before they make a decision on something. So by including friends’ and families’ Facebook-based Likes in the search results the company lets you know their input without ever having to ask. So if you search on something at Bing, you’ll be able to authenticate which sites that you actually want to go by seeing how many “Likes” from your friends.

Also, Microsoft has added a universal like button to the Bing Toolbar that you can use to mark your approval on anything you find on the web, which in turn, can help out your friends’ searches in a socially, antisocial kind of way. Bing uses “Collective IQ” of the internet hive-mind to optimize search results should your friends lack opinions about your interests.

Can’t understand how all these works? Then perhaps you should watch the videos below.

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The Nokia N9 has been making appearance around for quite some time now, and we still doubt if it’ll actually hit the market, all the more reason after Nokia announce partnership with Microsoft to form the MicroKia gangster clan lead by Steven Elop. But now it seemed that the N9 is seriously coming to the market, with this new teaser video.

The phone is confirmed to be running on Meego skinned to look like Anna so that users will find it familiar to the dying Symbian. Also, the phone will be able to challenge its sibling the Nokia N8, as the Meego QWERTY slider also has a 12MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens that has auto focus.

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Kotaku has spotted potential boxart of the upcoming Hitman: Absolution game by IO Interactive in a marketing survey. There are three possible covers shown here. What’s interesting here is that the game is called Hitman: Subtitle, which likely means that this concept art drawn here were drafted out before the title Absolution was decided. This leads me to think, how long has the game been developed before it was revealed?

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These days if you’re building a new decent computer that’s considered high performance, then SSD should be included in your build. SSD has been providing a huge jump in the performance of the computer, especially in loading time. The increment in performance is said to be significantly noticeable.

But if you’re considering upgrading, or building a new system with SSD, then we have good news for you. Corsair is said to be launching a new line of solid state drives which the company consider it ‘a bargain’ in terms of price and performance ratio. It’s going to be very fast thanks to the new SandForce SF-1200 controller, and it’s going to be affordable, but I’m not sure how affordable is ‘affordable’.

It’s called the Force 3 and it’ll be available in 60GB, 120GB and 240GB capacities. It’s going to feature the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller chip, which was made famous thanks to its superior performance on OCZ’s Vertex 3 drives. This also means that the upcoming Force 3 SSD from Corsair will be using the brand new SATA 3 connectors on your new Sandy Bridge mobo.

The better news is the pricing. SRP for the 120GB model is $219, which is around $40 less than the comparative OCZ drive is selling for, which makes buying SSD considerable. Previous prices are somewhat ‘cut throat’.

However, full reviews of the SSD aren’t available yet until end of this week, so we’ll have to wait till then to see if the drives are really top notch as Corsair claimed to be.

Is Revelation a case of too many chefs in the kitchen?

It’s been four years since the first game shown up and four games in four years! Is Ubisoft turning into EA and Activision and milking the franchise?

Assassin’s Creed has always been a big game, developed by multiple studios under Ubisoft (if you’ve notice the credit scroll), but the latest in the series, Revelations will be the biggest one yet. Six studios under Ubisoft’s arm are working on the title, combining into one of the largest development team Ubisoft has ever had working on their games.

According to Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed Revelation is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Massive in Sweden, Ubisoft Singapore, Ubisoft Quebec City and Ubisoft Bucharest. Of course, as usual the development will be led by Ubisoft Montreal Studio, which has 200 man powers to spare.

“This is a huge game,” explains creative director Alexandre Amancio ,”the amount of time and data that goes into all of these systems to build the game is tremendous. So it’s a cooperative venture. We have different studios cooperating on different elements of the game.”

But there’s one more. Yes, a seventh studio is development a movie, an Assassin’s Creed film to run alongside the series. Yes, this is the Ubisoft Motion Pictures that was acquired lately. Ubisoft Motion Pictures are working on three new films, and one of them is for Assassin’s Creed.

Marketing VP says that the film hopes to “reflect the brands accurately and consolidate our fan base,” which we think means you can expect to see the wristblades and free running of the games make the leap to the silver screen. Ubisoft Motion Pictures are also working on films for Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell.

SOURCE via PC Gamer

Choose 2 free games from a list of 5 for PSN users, and 2 free games from a list of 4 for PSP users

Sony had many things to explain regarding its PSN downtime and Qriocity downtime, but they’re also giving freebies to users of PSN as part of their “Welcome Back” program, under their “Customer Appreciation Program”. Thus far North America and Europe has their PSN lit up, but not for Japan and the rest of Asia though.

Aside from offering the previously announced free 30 days of PlayStation Plus for all PSN users, the company is giving away two free PlayStation 3 games and two free PlayStation Portable games, all from two lists of (mostly) wonderful releases. The European Union is being offered similar titles, with a few notable swaps.

There will also be free movies on the “Movie Rental” section on unspecified weekend in the coming weeks. Existing PlayStation Plus users will get additional 60 days of free subscription time, and also “100 free virtual items” for everyone. Read more…

Artists can find inspiration from the oddest place, and do things in the oddest way. Sometimes the oddest thing can be called an art, and will funnily be bought up for millions, well mostly after the artist died.

Here is something we rarely see, which is painting an art using a rarely used painting device, which is a paintball gun! Yes, anything that can hold paint can be used to paint.

But what’s even more epic about this artistic painting with 840 paintball guns, is the location. The face of the crowds when they saw the guns are whipped off from the side of the truck, that’s priceless! Right, and some people had balls even bigger than bulls and harder than steels, those are the people that walk pass it just in front of the barrels.

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