Valve Games Available Through EA's Origin Store

In an ironic development following months of public squabbling over digital distribution practices, Electronic Arts is now offering Valve games through its Origin service.

EA is running a buy-two-get-one-free special this weekend, and three Valve titles are included: Counter-Strike: Source, Left For Dead: Game of the Year Edition, and Left 4 Dead 2. The Valve games (each priced at $19.99) are boxed retail copies, and the free games available are downloadable copies of select EA titles.

The promotion is raising eyebrows after EA announced last month that its flagship shooter Battlefield 3 would not be available on Valve’s Steam platform, citing “a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content.” EA issued similar statements after removing Crysis 2 from Steam following Origin’s launch.

Without offering any concrete solutions, both sides have expressed a desire to resolve this dispute. Valve president Gabe Newell recently told Develop, “We want EA’s games on Steam and we have to show them that’s a smart thing to do.” EA’s Jens Uwe Intat told Eurogamer last week that the company isn’t planning on making its games Origin-exclusive. “Competition and choice go hand in hand,” he said. “So the fact we will only distribute our own games on our own platform, I don't see that.”

Neither company has issued a statement regarding the promotion. EA does hold the distribution rights to retail copies of some Valve titles, so this may be less of a sign that the two companies are newly cooperating and more of a message from EA saying they’d like to cooperate.

Source: Origin via Joystiq

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GeForce GTX 570M Available in MSI's GT683DXR and GT780DXR

We've known the GTX 570M was coming for a while now, but MSI is the first to start shipping notebooks with the new GPU. Sitting between the GTX 560M and GTX 580M, the GTX 570M packs 336 CUDA Cores clocked at 1150MHz, with 3GB of  GDDR5 running on a 192-bit bus and clocked at 3GHz (72GB/s of bandwidth). That compares to 192 cores clocked at 1550MHz with 2.5GHz GDDR5 (60GB/s) for the GTX 560M, giving the 570M 20% more bandwidth and 34% more processing power. The big brother GTX 580M on the other hand comes with 384 cores clocked at 1240MHz, with 3GHz GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus (96GB/s), so it has 33% more bandwidth and 23% more processing power.

Like all the 500M GPUs (and the 400M parts before them), the 570M supports NVIDIA's Optimus graphics switching technology, though it's up to the notebook manufacturers to actually use it or not. Unfortunately, it appears MSI has decided to not support Optimus with their G-series updates, so we'll have to wait for a future model to get that feature.

That brings us to MSI's new notebooks. The GT683DXR and GT780DXR update the GT680R and GT780R respectively. We reviewed the GT580R a few months back, and it sits in the middle of a bunch of similarly specced notebooks. The new model upgrades the GPU along with packing in 12GB RAM (2x4GB + 2x2GB), keeps the 2x500GB RAID 0 hard drive setup, and continues to offer a GPU overclocking tool dubbed Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) that boosts GPU clocks 3-5%. Newegg and Amazon already have the GT683DXR in stock, priced at $1600 and $1594 respectively.

The larger GT780DXR sports roughly identical specs, with the chief difference being the larger chassis and 17.3" display. The GT780DXR also includes a third USB 2.0 port and a VGA port, to go along with the two USB 3.0 ports and the HDMI port offered on the GT683DXR. and it has a backlit keyboard with three color zones. We haven't had a chance to look at the GT780 series before, so we can't comment on the display quality, but it can hardly be worse than the panel we tested in the GT680R. Considering it costs an extra $100 for a larger notebook with otherwise identical specs, not to mention the use of a matte LCD, we're hopeful that display quality is substantially better on the GT780DXR. The GT780DRX is also available at Newegg for $1700, or at Amazon for $1700.

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Acer Aspire One 722 Brazos Available In Europe

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GIGABYTE Tech Daily now available in Traditional Chinese

We’re proud to announce that from now on a Chinese language version of this blog will be available to those of you who prefer to keep up with the world of GIGABYTE motherboards and read our ramblings, opinions and general musings in Traditional Chinese.  We might well be a global leader in motherboard and design and innovation, but we’re still very much a Taiwanese company at heart,  so it’s great that we now have a mirror site in the local language.

You can check out the new site at this URL: http://gigabytedailycht.blogspot.com/

技嘉科技日報中文版全新上線

我們榮幸地宣布，技嘉科技日報中文版即日起正式上線，以便服務所有喜歡閱讀我們的隨筆、關心技嘉主機板動態以及科技趨勢，但又習慣閱讀繁體中文的讀者們。雖然技嘉科技是主機板設計及創新領導廠商，但我們從來沒忘記，我們仍是一間立足台灣的公司。所以能將我們部落格的內容以本土語言忠實呈現，對我們來說是非常值的高興的事，希望您也跟我們一樣興奮，並喜歡我們的新網站。

您可以點選下列網址瀏覽技嘉科技日報中文版：http://gigabytedailycht.blogspot.com/

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Crysis 2 PC Demo Available for Download

Well EA Games released the Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo for PC and users can download the game on internet for free of cost. The new Multiplayer Demo contains various maps, game modes and classes that you can get your hands on. The game developed with new crytek  engine 3 and very well optimized for PC and Console versions like PS3 and Xbox 360. Seriously the gameplay looks very interesting feels like we are really in newyork city and buildings, objects are designed very detailed and most important thing in the game is physics engine, only nvidia gamers can feel the real gaming experience while playing the game in physics engine mode with decent frame rates. 

Therefore the  Final Version of crysis 2 is available on march 22 in 2011 with price tag around 60$ and users can pre-order the game in Amazon site.

In order to Download the Crysis 2 Mulitplayer Demo plz click on these link.

Crysis 2 Gameplay Video 

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Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot is Available Now For Verizon Users

Verizon and Samsung today announced that the Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot is available for order today in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a 4G Mobile Broadband plan. The 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot will be available in stores on March 31.

Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot Key features:

• Share 4G LTE internet connection with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices at the same time
• 4G LTE – customers can expect download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G Mobile Broadband coverage areas
• Backward compatible with the Verizon Wireless 3G network
• Dimensions: 2.32”(H) x 3.54”(W) x 0.45”(D)

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iPhone 4 and iPhone 4G in white is available , Price

Apple has announced today that their highly anticipated and terribly delayed white iPhone 4, will be available to purchase tomorrow in stores, worldwide.  The white iPhone will be arriving in the US on both AT&T and Verizon, for $199 on contract for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB.

White models of iPhone 4 will also be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand and UK.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president explained in the press release:

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

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Toshiba-Made MacBook Air SSD Hardware Now Available to All

If you were wanting to get your hands on some of the Toshiba-made SSD hardware that found its way into the latest MacBook Airs, you’re in luck. Toshiba has announced that their Blade X-gale SSDs are now available for the masses. Offering up speeds of 220MB/s read and 180MB/s write, the X-gale hardware will certainly add some pep to your computer’s step. Though not the fastest SSD on the market, they are certainly faster than your standard platter-based drives.

The X-gale SSD drives will come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. Pricing is not yet available.

Source: http://gadgetsteria.com/2010/11/08/toshiba-made-macbook-air-ssd-hardware-now-available-to-all/

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