eyefinity posts

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has been out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 for three months now but at the moment PC gamers are still waiting for the promised PC version of the third game in the Ubisoft action game series. While Ubisoft has been silent on when the PC port will be released, the German web site Gamestar has posted up an article that looks at what PC players can expect when the port finally comes out.

According to the article (translated by Google) the game will have improved graphics compared to the console ports, including support for ambient occlusion for lighting. The game will also support Nvidia's 3D Vision tech for playing the game in 3D. PCs with AMD Radeon graphics chips will also be able to play the game with its Eyefinity multi-monitor support. The article also claims that all of the downloadable content that was released for the console versions will be included in the PC port. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood for the PC is supposed to be released by the end of March.

[Thanks wlodi}

As 2010 draws to a close, we look back and marvel at how far PC gaming has come over the past decade. The start of the new millennium brought technology and trends that will resonate for years to come. So we take this opportunity to examine some of those technology trends and see how they might grow over or fizzle out over the next ten years. Here are our predictions of what PC gaming might look like in 2020.

The first big patch for developer/publisher Codemasters' recent driving simulation F1 2010 is close to being released. The patch for the game will fix a number of issues including some AI bugs that were causing some AI drivers to have some "unrealistic finishing positions" in some races.

In a post on the game's message board, it was revealed that the patch will also have some additional PC specific features added. These will include support for some DirectX 11 graphical effects, a replay save and playback feature, support for AMD's Eyefinity multi-monitor features, better performance from PCs with multi-core processors and more. There is no specific release date for the patch.

[Via Eurogamer]

On the evening of March 26th, NVIDIA's GeForce General Manager Drew Henry officially announced the launch of the cutting edge GeForce GTX 470 and 480 video cards in front of packed crowd at PAX East in Boston. The 400 series ushers in the next generation of PC gaming as the company's most powerful graphics cards to date. The GPU includes 3 billion transistors, which equals four Intel Quad Core i7 processors, which gives a clear indication of the kind of might this card packs. What it comes down to for gamers is a chance, in Drew Henry's words, to "blow some sh#t up." When summed up, gamers can expect the GTX 480 to double the performance output of the GTX 285, NVIDIA's previous top-of-the line GPU, for many games. According to the chart shown at the presentation, there will be at least a 50% boost in performance for most games, including recent ones like Battlefield Bad Company 2. In any case, players will be free to dial up to detail levels to their most extreme levels without worrying about a single particle effect or lighting and shadow feature to hinder performance. In addition to blowing stuff up, the 400 series motto invites you to "Crank that sh#t up!"

Technically Nvidia isn't suppose to launch their next-gen graphics card until March 26 at PAX East but in the meantime the company keeps teasing us with some more info about the capabilities for their their GeForce GTX 480 and 470 products. The company put up a new YouTube video that shows off the product's DirectX 11 features, such as tessellation.

At the end of the video they also show off Nvidia's answer to ATI's Eyefinity multi-monitor tech. It's called 3D Vision Surround and lets players hook up three 1980p 3D supported monitors with the appropriate GeForce graphics card and see the view in full 3D with Nvidia's 3D Vision glasses. Yes, it's really cool but yes it's also really expensive to buy all the things needed for it to work. Our sister site Engadget has posted up a video that shows more 3D Vision Surround in action which you can check out after the jump:

This pre-release patch for Assassin's Creed 2 adds ATI Eyefinity support to the game in addition to enhancing performance and addressing a reported problem with the DRM. A list of changes can be seen after the jump.

Download Assassin's Creed 2 v1.01 Patch (19 MB)
Check out all Assassin's Creed 2 downloads

Digital Illusions announced some time ago that the PC port of Battlefield Bad Company 2 was going to be one of the first PC games to support DirectX 11 graphics and graphics card. Now the game's official blog has gone into more detail on the game's PC graphics features.

The military shooter, due out on March 2. will also support DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 as well as DirectX 11. DirectX 10 adds features like anti-aliasing and Horizon-based Ambient Occlusion (i.e better shadow effects) to the game. DirectX 11 will improve performance as well as "soften all the dynamic shadows as well". The game will automatically detect which version of DirectX to use based on your PCs OS and video card.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 will also be the latest game to support Nvidia's 3D Vision tech (with the appropriate monitor and glasses). Finally it will also support AMD's Eyefinity multi-monitor features. You can check out a video showing off that particular feature after the jump:

Yes, there is a sci-fi RTS game besides StarCraft II that's making news. Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander 2 is now less than two weeks away from its March 2 PC release and the game's newly revamped web site has posted up the system requirements for the title.

Overall the system specs (you can check them out after the jump) seem to be pretty tame, especially as the game is using the DirectX 9 graphics API exclusively. Gas Powered Games have said in previous interviews that they wanted the game to run on a large variety of systems. There's also a new post on the game's official blog by executive producer David Hoffman who confirms that the game will support AMD's Eyefinity multi-monitor feature for their ATI Radeon graphics cards. Look for the full version to be made available via Square Enix on March 2.

While some people are still waiting for Nvidia to launch their high end DirectX 11 graphic chip, AMD continues to add to their library of ATI Radeon graphics chips that support DirectX 11-based games. Today AMD announced the launch of their ATI Radeon HD 5670 chip. Graphics cards with the chip will sell for under $100, giving even cheapskates a way to upgrade their PC for DirectX 11 gaming.

AMD claims that in performance tests the 5670 outperforms the card's direct competition by over 20 percent in some high end games. The new card also supports the ATI Eyefinity tech which lets gamers hook up to three monitors to one video card. In other words you will be able to play Casino Kingdom on this card without any trouble.

AMD has been promoting its ATI Eyefinity multi-monitor technology for a few months now and today the hardware company announced that BioWare's recently released RPG Dragon Age: Origins now supports the technology. As you can see above the game is running on three monitors with a total resolution that's a whopping 5760x1200. In fact AMD states the maximum resolution the game support with the technology is 7680 x 1600. You can check out a video of the game running with the multi-monitor tech after the jump.

AMD has really taken advantage of its current lead in high end PC graphics. The company is still the only one that has video cards that support DirectX11. Meanwhile its main rival Nvidia has been quiet about their next-generation graphics plans and as we reported last week Intel has abandoned its plans, at least for now, to re-enter the high end graphics market.

Gallery: Dragon Age Origins Screenshots