Before that little was known about the developers of Metro. 4A Games was founded by Oles Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, former programmers at GSC Game World, who left about a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. It’s no coincidence that Metro 2033’s visuals bared resemblance to those of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, though we would argue that they were better. Both Shiskovtsov and Maksimchuk had worked on the development of the X-Ray engine that powers GSC’s first person shooter....

Sources close to Microsoft recently told Business Insider that the new feature would provide a marketplace for ad placement companies to work closely with developers to secure space and place ads in free-to-play titles. The move would expand Xbox’s in-game advertising model, historically limited to Xbox dashboard ads or specialized ads purchased and placed through third parties. Despite its intent to increase advertising, Microsoft claims it understands potential user concerns....

During Sunday’s Xbox Game Showcase, hosted by Microsoft and Bethesda, developers finally revealed some of Starfield’s gameplay (masthead). Until now, we’ve only seen some cinematic teasers, concept art, and background on “The Settled Systems.” Yesterday’s presentation gave a delicious look at character customization, shipbuilding, and combat, both on foot and in space. Character customization appears more robust than in previous Bethesda RPGs, which is actually saying something because customization has been a strong point in games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls....

In case you’re wondering what’s new in Microsoft Office Professional 2021, a key highlight is real-time co-authoring on Word, Excel and Powerpoint. That means you can work with others in the same document at the same time. While collaborating, you can know who’s in your document in real-time, so you can send comments to each other, @mention them while you make changes and more, so you can forget about going back and forth on emails when you can all work more seamlessly....

I’ve been using Mionix mice for years now, because being a regular person, and not a pro gamer, I value ergonomics over performance. But what happens when Mionix get around to making a mouse that feels as good as it works? You get, at least in theory, the Naos 7000. Which is an awesome gaming mouse. On the outside, it looks exactly the same as the company’s last few flagship mice....

Tomb Raider Shipwrecked and inexperienced, a 21-year-old Lara Croft is physically and emotionally tested as she escapes her captives and explores a mysterious island near Japan. The reboot maintains elements that popularized Tomb Raider, such as puzzles and platforming. However, there will be a greater emphasis on survival (you’ll find your own tools, weapons and other essentials) as well as combat (no more lock-on aiming). The developers are also striving to achieve more of an emotional bond between players and Lara over the 12-plus-hour campaign....

There are a number of basic features that can be found on all motherboards using the Intel X58 chipset. The X58 IOH (Input/Output Hub) otherwise known as the “north bridge” supports up to 36 PCI Express lanes. This means that multi-card configurations of 2x16 are supported, while 4x8 is also possible. It is important to note that while the MSI X58 Pro-E does support CrossfireX, users must purchase a special “X58 Pro-E SLI” version if they wish to use SLI technology....

The letter, filed by Musk’s legal counsel on Friday, claims Twitter’s representatives did not comply with contractual obligations to provide information regarding the prevalence of bots, spam accounts, and other fake accounts across the platform. Musk’s legal team representative Mike Ringler says Twitter has ignored requests for information multiple times, provided unjustified rejections to queries, or responded to Musk with incomplete or inaccurate information while claiming they’ve complied with full disclosure....

WASP-39 b is a gas giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of Jupiter and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. It is toasty, too, with a temperature of around 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit thanks in part to the fact that it orbits very close to its star – about one-eighth the distance between Mercury and the Sun, or around 4.5 million miles away. Previous observations using NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes confirmed the presence of sodium, potassium and water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere....

Netflix started experimenting with releasing full seasons of new shows all at once with originals like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Going against the grain and trying something new is always risky, but the gamble paid off as viewers loved the newfound freedom. The term “binge-watch” was even selected as the Collins English Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year. The streaming giant has expanded its use of the innovative viewing model over the years, but lately, some have publicly encouraged Netflix to reconsider weekly, paced releases....

Nintendo writes that it will no longer be possible to make purchases in the eShop for either console of late March next year. Users also won’t be able to download free content, including game demos, or redeem download codes. However, they will still be able to redownload previously bought games and DLC, receive software updates, and play online after this point. The changes will start taking place on May 23, 2022....

Video quality is also quite good, and I really just adore the swipe-accessed filmstrip view of photos and videos that the camera offers. It’s much more convenient than having to switch modes into a viewer section of the application. Photos and video recorded with the Lumia are synchronized automatically to a personal computer through the Zune software when you connect via USB, but can also be uploaded to Facebook or Microsoft’s SkyDrive, or shared via email using a wireless connection....

It’s not uncommon for motherboard vendors to include unreleased processors in their lists of supported hardware, which is what’s happened here. In the tables below, we have core counts, base clocks, and TDPs from Asus and Colorful, and the boost clocks from leaked marketing materials and prematurely published product pages. Not included in the tables are the leaked prices from Best Buy, but you can look at those here. *There are both vanilla and “F” versions of this processor and they share their specs....

Following weeks of swirling rumors regarding a potential event for Nvidia to reveal new additions to the Ada Lovelace family of products, those rumors can finally come to rest as the date has been set for “GeForce Beyond,” days before CES 2023 opens doors in Las Vegas. As you may recall, Nvidia unveiled its next generation graphics cards last September which would kick off with three products: the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 16 GB, and the RTX 4080 12 GB....

We expected the GeForce GTX 1080 to be efficient, but damn this is impressive! Testing with The Witcher 3 saw the GTX 1080 match the power consumption of the GTX 980, a card that it beat on average by 60% at both 1440p and 4K. This also means that the GTX 1080 consumed 14% less power than the Fury X and 21% less than the Titan X. The GTX 1080 consumed 10% more power than the GTX 980 in CoD Black Ops III, however it was still less power hungry than the Fury X and the Titan X, both slower cards....

All that power makes for one seriously hot graphics card as well. The 97 degree load temperature was the maximum temperate that we recorded during our tests, and had the fan spinning so fast things started sliding across my desk towards the test system. The GeForce GTX 480 was truly deafening when running at full load. Letting the card sit at the Windows 7 desktop for 20 minutes saw the temperature drop only to 65 degrees....

This time the R7 265 was just 1fps (2%) faster than the GTX 750 Ti with 48fps, though it was 17% faster than the GTX 650 Ti and 12% faster than the HD 7850. Nvidia’s newcomer was 15% faster than the GTX 650 Ti, but 16% slower than the GTX 660. The GTX 750 Ti and R7 265 really struggled when testing Crysis 3 using high quality settings with the former earning 25fps, 19% faster than the GTX 750 Ti and 47% faster than the GTX 650 Ti....

The Titan X is good for 47fps at 2560x1600 in Dragon Age: Inquisition, making it 31% faster than the GTX 980 and 47% faster than the R9 290X, while it trailed the R9 295X2 by an 18% margin. Upping the resolution to 4K didn’t change things too much as the Titan X was 39% faster than both the GTX 980 and R9 290X while being 14% slower than the R9 295X2....

News that Nvidia was ending production of the RTX 2060 arrived earlier this month via Chinese media outlets. ITHome has backed up these reports, adding that the GTX 1660 is also being killed off. The RTX 2060 line covers three cards: the standard 6GB version from 2019, the RTX 2060 12GB released in 2020, and the RTX 2060 Super. The original card sits behind the GTX 1060 as the second-most-popular GPU among Steam users....

Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become one of the primary resources supporting DL due to their inherent capabilities and optimizations. The COPA-GPU is based on the realization that traditional converged GPU designs using domain-specific hardware are quickly becoming a less than practical solution. These converged GPU solutions rely on an architecture consisting of the traditional die as well as incorporation of specialized hardware such as high bandwidth memory (HBM), Tensor Cores (Nvidia)/Matrix Cores (AMD), ray tracing (RT) cores, etc....