intel posts

While certain upcoming military shooters have yet to reveal if they will have any mod tools, Codemasters' recently released Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising game has a full mission editor for anyone to make their own maps and missions in the game. Now PC processor maker Intel will be rewarding folks who come up with the best missions for the game in a new contest.

People who own the game can use the mission editor to submitted their creations to the contest (they have to have, among other things, an Intel i7 processor as one of the mission's objectives). Deadline for entries is November 29. After the top 12 are decided by the game's community via their votes, the winners will be determined by a jury of people from Codemasters, Intel and others. The people who create the top two missions will each receive a gaming PC valued at over $2,000.

The idea of the living room PC where people can play PC games on their big screen televisions is a dream that's been around for a long time. However it's never really gotten mainstream traction. Now PC processor maker Intel is using its big investment mucles to a new effort called GameTree.TV, a games-on-demand project from company TransGaming.

You may have heard of TransGaming. They have created software to allow a number of PC games to run natively on Macs and Linux boxes. Now they are working on this new effort which will use a set-top box (powered by Intel's CE Media Processor) to allow PC games to be downloaded and played on demand for a person's TV. Specific financial details on Intel's investment in GameTree.TV were not disclosed. TransGaming hopes to launch GameTree.TV sometime in the second quarter of 2010.

PC maker Dell bought Miami-based gaming PC company Alienware back in 2006 and since the Alienware brand has continued to be used by Dell as their main brand to sell PCs to hardcore gamers. Today at the Tokyo Game Show, Alienware has revamped almost their entire line of PCs with four all new desktop models (such as the new Aurora model above) as well as a 15 inch version of their high powered gaming laptop.

One of the most interesting things about these new products is what's not inside them. In a phone briefing to Big Download earlier this week, Alienware confirmed that their current product line that is announced today will not have any AMD processors. Alienware simply feels that Intel's current line-up of Core i7 processors outperform AMD's current line up. Alienware will still give gamers options to put in AMD's ATI Radeon graphics chips.

Check out Alienware's new products after the jump:

While AMD is launching their DirectX11 graphics chip today (and we presume Nvidia has plans of their own for new products) Intel has been working on their own dedicated PC graphics chip which has gone under the code name or Larrabee. This week the company showed off the first public demo of their technology at their Intel Developer Forum.

As you can see from the brief video above, Intel choose to use a modified version of a PC game to demonstrate their chip's support for ray tracing. The game is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Intel actually took all of the content in the game and put it into its ray tracing tech to run on Larrabee. The result shows a more realistic looking level landscape along with some spectacular water textures. Larrabee is not expected to be released by Intel until sometime in 2010.

In less than two months, Microsoft plans to launch Windows 7. The next version of their PC OS has already been praised for months for being more stable and having better performance than its predecessor Windows Vista, which pretty much belly flopped when it was released just under three years ago.

Many PC games have felt that the poor reception of Windows Vista has affected PC games and their development so obviously they feel the launch of Windows 7 (and its support for DirectX11, the next version of Microsoft's game graphics tech) could help the PC gaming industry. But just what do PC gamers currently have in their rigs, just before the launch of Windows 7? Valve's hardware survey on Steam is always a good baseline to use and they have just released their latest info on the subject for August 2009. We've decided to take a look at some of the more interesting stats in the survey; you can check out the entire survey numbers on the Steam web site.

Click on the image above to continue reading how Steam's survey shows us the state of PC gaming rigs before Windows 7's release

If you are one of the folks who bought tickets to the now sold out Penny Arcade Expo this weekend then you could be one of the lucky few PAX attendees who might get invited to Capcom's Resident Evil 5 PC launch party this Saturday night. Capcom's blog site announced the details this week.

Basically if you are one of the first 250 who show up at Capcom's Resident Evil 5 PC booth at PAX on Friday and Saturday (500 total) you get a invite to the party at the Showbox in Seattle on Saturday night. The party itself (which will have a Tricell theme) will also have giveaways of the game (via digital download codes) and a raffle to win one of five Intel i7 Core processors. And everyone at the party will get a Resident Evil 5 "sand" globe featuring Chris and Sheva that we are sure will show up on eBay.

With BlizzCon coming up in less than three weeks (August 21-22 to be exact), the various sponsors of Blizzard's massive fan event are gearing up for their own promotions. Intel is doing what they can with special contests that will be held both before and during BlizzCon. No, Intel isn't offering trips to the event but they are giving folks a chance to win some gaming laptops from Asus if they pick the winners of the three main BlizzCon tournaments (World of Warcraft, StarCraft and WarCraft III) By the way, Blizzard plans to stream the BlizzCon tournaments in both SD and HD for free on the BlizzCon web site.

If you happen to be lucky enough to go to BlizzCon, Intel will also be running contests on the show floor as well including giving away five Intel Core i7 processors each day of the event. You can head over to the Intel blog site for more info.

With QuakeCon 2009 now less than a month away, the organizers of the free game tournament and show have now announced their plans for the tournament section of the event. Main sponsor id Software will be using their recently launched free-to-play FPS Quake Live as the main game for the professional and open tournaments.

The Quake Live Masters Tournaments will have 64 of the best Quake Live pro players competing in 1-on-1 matches at QuakeCon 2009 for over $25,000 in prize money including $14,000 for the champion. In addition the Quake Live Open Tournament will allow 128 amateurs to compete for $2,500 in cash including $1,500 for the winner. Both tournaments will be sponsored by Intel. id Software is also sponsoring a Quake Live Capture The Flag tournament where 32 teams of four will battle for $22,000 in prize money including $12,000 for the winning team.

Details on how players can enter the tournaments can be found at the Quake Con web site. As we previously reported the event has been moved from its original location to the Gaylord Hotel in Grapevine, Texas where it will be held August 13-16.

Windows 7 is now set for release on October 22 and with that release come DirectX11, the next version of Microsoft's 3D graphics API. So it's not a shock to learn that AMD (via their ATI brand) and Nvidia are prepping to launch their next major PC graphics cards this fall that will support DirectX11 features.

VentureBeat reports that AMD's director of software developer relations Neal Robison stated that AMD will be ready this fall with DirectX11 supported graphics chips. However, rumors that Nvidia's team are behind in their next-gen graphics tech are dismissed by anaylst Jon Peddie who believes the company will also have DirectX11 chips ready by this fall. Nvidia itself won't comment on their future plans. Intel is also developing their own high end graphics chips under the code name Larabee but it's now expected that it won't be ready for launch until next year.

It's been a while since we have heard anything from Saber Interactive. The game developer has been pretty quiet since the 2007 release of their temporal-themed sci-fi shooter Timeshift (shown above) for the now defunct Vivendi Games. However it appears that the company is still around thanks to a new press release today.

Intel-owned game physics software maker Havok have announced that Saber Interactive plans to use their software for a future game. Specifically, the unanounced games will use the Havok Destruction tool which will be used "to punch holes in walls, buckle scaffolding, shatter windows, and even bend metal to create a truly dynamic and evolving cityscape." No other details on the game were announced.