Month: July 2014

Bohemia Interactive today released a brand new video to further introduce the role of the ground vehicle crewman in Arma 3. Just as in real life, most vehicles in Arma 3 require multiple people – either controlled by AI or co-operative players – to operate efficiently, which are typically divided into a driver, gunner, and vehicle commander position. The new video takes a closer look at each of these crew member’s responsibilities, while exploring some of the core principles of ground vehicle combat.

In continuation of the official Arma 3 Community Guide series, the Ground Vehicle Crew video is narrated by Andrew Gluck (better known as Dslyecxi, former service member and leader of the popular Arma community group Shack Tactical), who discusses the strengths and weaknesses of ground vehicles, the responsibilities of each vehicle crew member, and some of the basic communication protocols. While there are many more ways to play Arma 3, it represents one possible method by which players can go more in-depth with their vehicle operations in Arma 3’s open military sandbox.

For more game information, please visit the official Arma 3 Website.

By: Hilbert Hagedoorn @ GURU3D

We review the new HIS Radeon R9-280 IceQ X2 OC. Yep R9 -280 You read that right, anyone remember the Radeon HD 7950? Armed with a customized PCB and their top model IceQ coolers; they factory overclocked the product and will try to get you as much value for money as they can. Follow us into this review where we’ll look at temperatures, noise, performance, Frame latency and we’ll even give Ultra High Definition gaming a go with the latest game titles on the globe.

Read The Review Here

Written By: Nathan Kirsch @ Legit Reviews

The Intel Pentium G3258 20th Anniversary Edition processor was released to the public this week and Legit Reviews have been waiting for weeks to pick this processor up. Why have we been highly anticipating a low-end Intel Pentium processor? Well, we remember the old days when you could get massive overclocks on inexpensive processors and get some decent performance out of them. The days of using a pencil or rear window defogger kit to get a sick overclock are certainly a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean that there still aren’t budget friendly processors that can be overclocked to the hilt. When Intel announced that they were coming out with a Pentium Processor Anniversary Edition processor we were excited. The thought of a cheap processor that was unlocked was no longer going to be a thing of a past that old timers reminisce about at LAN parties or to friends. The Intel Pentium G3258 20th Anniversary Edition processor has been released and it will be the budget overclocking champion for the DIY PC enthusiast of this generation!

Read The Review Here

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• Deepcool Launches the Maelstrom Series AIO Liquid Coolers
• EK Introduces New ASUS ROG Matrix Water Blocks
• Scythe Releases the Mugen MAX CPU Cooler
• GIGABYTE Helps Set DDR3 OC Record with Z97X-SOC Force LN2 Motherboard
• MSI Launches the Nightblade Z97 Gaming Barebone
• BitFenix Releases Vented Side Panel Accessory for the Phenom Chassis
• Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition G3258 Reaches 6861.7 MHz on MSI Motherboard
• Corsair and compLexity Gaming Team Up to Promote eSports
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880 Pictured?
• CYBERPOWERPC Configurator Lets You Build a Dream PC
• OCZ Vector 150 SSDs Now Feature on OriginPC Gaming Desktops

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

With the final American victory on Guadalcanal in February 1943, US Admiral Halsey’s forces planned to advance further north up the Solomon Islands chain, but were barred for lack of aircraft carrier units to both project air power into the region and protect his invasion forces against Japanese aircraft carrier counter attacks. Until the new Essex Class fleet carriers and lighter Independence Class carriers started arriving later in the year, the prospects of further strategic advances in the Solomon Islands appeared bleak. Therefore, in December 1942 a request was made to the British Royal Navy asking for the temporary loan of one of its aircraft carriers to the US Navy.

Read on…

Sledgehammer Games parades its new graphics tech

By Mike Jackson, US News Editor, CVG America

A new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare developer diary has been released, showing off the game’s animation and face capture technology. Animations director Christopher Stone and art director Joe Salud discuss how the developer has done “whatever it took to make the game look as photo realistic as possible”. The Sledgehammer developed shooter is said to be set in a plausible future, specifically the year 2054, and stars Kevin Spacey as main antagonist Jonathan Irons.

Source: Blue’s News

This trailer shows off F-15C: DCS Flaming Cliffs, an upcoming standalone release of the F-15C from the DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3 DLC for those who don’t want the full Monty. The DCS website has more details, and here’s word from the trailer’s description:

“As a DCS Flaming Cliffs title, F-15C focuses on ease of use without complicated cockpit interaction, significantly reducing the learning curve. As such, F-15C features keyboard and joystick cockpit commands with a focus on the most mission critical of cockpit systems.”

Bohemia Interactive is pleased to announce the release of update 1.63 for Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead.

Besides the numerous fixes and optimizations which were introduced during the 1.63 beta program which covered almost a 2 year period for this iteration of the engine, the update focuses on the transition of the multiplayer from GameSpy matchmaking to Steam.

As you may have heard, GameSpy is discontinuing its services and it was therefore of paramount importance to offer an alternative for the passionate Operation Arrowhead players who have supported our game and our company for so many years.

Due to the fact that Steam based matchmaking requires Steam to work, this update is only available through Steam. If you have purchased a retail copy of the game, please do not despair. As announced previously all Arma 2 (including DLCs and Operation Arrowhead expansion) keys may now be activated on Steam. Just follow this walkthrough (link), take your Arma 2 CD key, use it as a Steam product key, and the game will be added to your library.

For our other games affected by the GameSpy shutdown, but not updated to work with Steam (Arma 1, Arma Cold War Assault, Take On Helicopters), and also for those players who wish to stick with the older non-Steam version of the game, we have implemented a system to help host and connect to servers even without a functioning GameSpy – http://master.bistudio.com/. Here server owners may add their servers and players may use the listed IP addresses to connect to them. Also to help players overcome difficulties we have added a number of articles for each game to our FAQ (link) and as always our technical support staff is ready to help via [email protected].

For more information about Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, please visit the official website at www.arma2.com.

Author: SKYMTL @ Hardware Canucks

AMD rolled out their long-anticipated R9 295X2. Not only did it take NVIDIA completely by surprise but it approached cooling in a new and innovative way (for a reference card that is); instead of sticking to a sometimes-inefficient air based heatsink, AMD incorporated a water cooling setup. As a result, its dual R9 290X cores were able to operate at full speed without the throttling and it demolished everything in its path.

PowerColor’s R9 290X Devil 13 goes back to basics by utilizing virtually the same specifications as the R9 295X2 but backing things up with an infinitely more adaptable fan-based heatsink. Ditching the water cooler wasn’t easy since the Hawaii cores and 8GB memory produce an astonishing amount of heat but the Devil 13 compensates by throwing a massive amount of thermal dissipation power at the problem.

Read The Review Here

By Marco Chiappetta @ HotHardware

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of new solid state drive releases, from the likes of Plextor, Crucial, and SanDisk. Our review of the Plextor M6M mSATA drive can be found here, and we covered Crucial’s MX100 series here. And reviews of some new SanDisk drives are currently in the works. Today, however, Samsung is unveiling something new we think you’ll really take interest in.

Up next for your reading pleasure, we have Samsung’s brand-new SSD 850 PRO series. The 128GB and 1TB Samsung SSD 850 PRO drives we’ll be showing you here are the company’s latest flagship solid state drives, targeted at client applications. Like the previously-released SSD 845 EVO series, the 850 PRO leverages Samsung’s MEX controller, but these drives are also packing bleeding-edge 32 layer, stacked, 3D V-NAND flash memory that purportedly offers better power, endurance, and performance than traditional MLC NAND.

Read The Review Here