Assassin's Creed 3 to take place during the American Revolution

After much speculation it has been confirmed that Assassin's Creed 3 will take place during the American revolution. Images with hints of this have been floating around the internet for a few days now but Ubisoft has released the official box-art for Assassin's Creed 3, which confirms that the game will indeed take place during the American Revolution. Prior to this several images were seen on Kotaku, Game Informer, and Shacknews leading to this speculation. No word yet on a release date or if the game will use the intrusive DRM that previous titles did.

Source: Shacknews

AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series Specs. Table Leaked

Japanese media has got a hold of the specifications table of AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series products, the HD 7870 and HD 7850. Hermitage Akihabara has not cited a source as such, so we assume it vouches for the accuracy of this table. The table reveals Radeon HD 7870 as having 1280 stream processors, a 256-bit wide memory bus width (derived from the memory bandwidth and clock speeds figures provided in the table), 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and clock speeds of 1.00 GHz core, with 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory. This SKU has a typical board power of 175W.

The slide details the HD 7850 as having 1024 stream processors, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, the same 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, with the same memory clock speed as the HD 7870, but with a lower core clock speed of 860 MHz. the board power for the HD 7850 is mentioned to be under 130W. Interestingly, 2 GB is standard memory amount for both cards. The Japanese site mentions the official launch date of HD 7800 series as being March 8, but also goes on to add that market availability (we're assuming they mean the Japanese market), is only expected on/after March 19.

Sources: Hermitage Akihabara, VR-Zone, and 456,000+ search results for "AMD Radeon HD 7800 Specifications" on Google

Borderlands 2 PC uses Steamworks

More and more publishers seem to be seeing Steamworks as the best viable DRM on the market and 2K Games is no exception. All PC editions of Borderlands 2 will use Valve's Steamworks suite as their DRM. Steamworks supports snazzy features beyond simple copy protection, Gearbox's shooter-RPG will also use it for multiplayer matchmaking, Steam Cloud storage, achievements, auto-updating, downloadable content, "and more." How Steamworks... works is that if you buy a boxed edition of Borderlands 2, you'll need to register the game with a Steam account, and launch it through Steam. The box will still contain a disc to install the game from, but you'll have the option to download it directly through Steam whenever you please. Digital distributors other than Steam will simply sell you a product key to activate on Steam. Steamworks was to be expected, really, as 2K Games has used it for PC editions of games it's published since Mafia II in 2010. It briefly dabbled in Games for Windows Live before then but, thankfully, that was a short-lived experiment.

Borderlands 2 is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 18. As ever, a selection of shiny things are on offer as pre-order bonuses.

Source: Shacknews

Cougar Officially Launches the Evolution BO and Evolution Galaxy PC Cases

German feline-loving firm Cougar has now rolled out two more Evolution Series full tower PC cases, the Evolution BO (which we mentioned back in January) and the Evolution Galaxy. These models feature similar specs but come with their own color theme - black and orange for the EBO and black and white for the EG.

Seen below, Cougar's cases measure 223 (W) x 523 (D) x 514 (H) mm, and have a steel 'skeleton', an I/O panel with two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a top-mounted 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA drive dock, a built-in fan controller, six external 5.25-inch bays (with tool-free mounting systems), four internal 3.5-inch trays, and eight PCI slots. The Evolution BO also packs a 120 mm Vortex HDB rear fan.

Both the Evolution BO and Evolution Galaxy have a recommended price tag of $94.99.

Source

Battle-Ready MSI GT685 Gaming Laptop Comes to Thailand

MSI is rolling out its new generation GT685—the ultimate gaming machine. In addition to featuring the Intel second generation Core™i7 quad core processor, it is the first laptop to sport the nVidia GeForce GTX 580M, the world’s fastest discrete graphics card, 32G DDR3 of memory, and accelerated dual hard disk architecture. It comes with Dynaudio and THX TruStudio Pro smart wrap around sound as well as a full HD screen. The MSI GT685 was awarded Editor's Choice by Thai IT mag Notebook4game.com and to ensure that it remains the top-selling gaming NB brand in Thailand, MSI is holding activities on university campuses to give gaming enthusiasts the opportunity to experience its gaming laptops.

Source

Intel Core i7-3820 Overclocked to 5.666 GHz

GUN'G'STAR of TeamRussia successfully achieved an overclocking record of 5.666 GHz for the quad-core Intel Core i7-3820 processor; a feat that validates the LGA2011 i7-3820 of being a generally good chip for overclocking, despite being "Limited Unlocked" (BClk multiplier being unlocked only to a few notches above its stock setting). GUN'G'STAR achieved a clock speed of 5,665.99 MHz using a BClk speed of 131.74 MHz, a multiplier value of 43x, and core voltage of 1.6V. The chip was assisted with GeIL-made DDR3-1600 memory sitting on all four channels, and ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard. Only 2 out of 4 cores of the i7-3820 were enabled for the feat, HyperThreading was disabled. Extreme cooling was used. The CPU-Z validation can be accessed here.

Source: Expreview

ASUS Z9PE-D8-WS Motherboard Up For Pre-Order

ASUS' dual-LGA2011 workstation motherboard, the Z9PE-D8-WS, has been listed by Canadian retailer NCIX for pre-order. It is priced at CA $632.98 (US $634.56). The store page does not go on to mention availability, except that orders will be shipped whenever there are inventories. Given its pre-order listing, we expect the product-launch of the Z9PE-D8-WS not to be too far, considering Intel's launch of a large number of "Sandy Bridge-EP" Xeon processors is just around the corner (within Q1, 2012). The Z9PE-D8-WS is designed to support 2P configurations based on Xeon "Sandy Bridge-EP" processors. The motherboard is further detailed here. To PC enthusiasts, it presents a potential alternative to EVGA's SR-X.

Image Courtesy: VR-Zone

Lumus OE-31 Turns You Into a Cyborg

Display technology vendor Lumus showed off its newest optical engine, the OE-31. Taking advantage of the very latest tech., the OE-31 is a compact transparent HUD that you can stick into motorcycle helmets, prescription glasses, sunglasses, fashion eye-wear to even skiing (and we'd imagine diving) glasses. The optical engine is a little more than just a small display, it is backed by a small sensor that sees things from your perspective (in a mechanical sense), and overlays information accordingly (such as a GPS overlay for bike helmets, or finding your way around The Pentagon), in other words, it's an augmented reality engine that's a lot more compact.

The new sensor design allows for a 19-degree field of view and a full-color, 640x360 picture display, which Lumus believes will be sufficient for reading a lot of text, its viewing experience should be comparable to watching a 40-inch screen from 10 feet away.

Source: Engadget

Mass Shipments of Ivy Bridge Delayed to June

In what could come as a disappointment to some, Intel has reportedly put off mass-shipments of its third-generation Core processors (codenamed "Ivy Bridge") to June. The company, however, will go ahead with its April launch schedule, and will issue small shipments of these chips. This information comes from sources among notebook manufacturers.

This delay, however, doesn't appear to be linked to Intel's ability to ship the new 22 nm chips. Sources say that most notebooks vendors are having a very hard time digesting inventories of current-generation "Sandy Bridge" Core processors, and so the delay is merely to help them ship the last of their notebooks running current-generation chips, and to minimize the impact of the onset of new chips. Notebook vendors are currently seeing lukewarm demand.

Source: DigiTimes, Image Courtesy: LegitReviews

Radeon HD 7800 Series Inbound for March, NVIDIA Kepler in April: Report

AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series performance GPUs that target cost-benefit sweet-spots will be launched in the first half of March. The launch will include Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850. The two SKUs are based on a new 28 nm ASIC codenamed "Pitcairn". Little is known about its specifications at this point, from reliable sources at least.

In April, AMD's rival NVIDIA will get its GeForce Kepler family of GPUs, all guns blazing. In April alone, NVIDIA is expected to launch a high-end part, the GeForce GTX 690, a performance part, the GeForce GTX 660, and mainstream part GeForce GTX 640. The three will be based on three new ASICs built on the 28 nm process, the GK110, GK104, and GK106, respectively.

April will be the most interesting month for PC enthusiasts as Intel will launch its third-generation Core processor family, codename "Ivy Bridge". Little is known about AMD's high-end Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand".

Source: DigiTimes