intel posts

Razer announced its Switchblade mobile gaming PC concept design a few months ago at CES to huge acclaim. Now the company has announced a deal with China-based Tencent to have the Switchblade be optimized to run the games from the publisher, including Tencent's recently acquired game League of Legends.

Just a reminder: The Switchblade design has a 7-inch screen, an Intel Atom processor and a keyboard that can adjust to work specifically with games designed to work with the Switchblade. Razer has already said the design is just a concept and that it will be made by other companies. There's no word on when the first products with the Switchblade design will be released.

[Via email press release]

Steam is without a doubt the most popular of all the PC game download services and part of the reason is that folks can download the client software and use it on any PC. But what if for security purposes you wanted to just have your Steam account work on just one PC? That's where the newly announced Steam Guard feature comes in.

Valve has just announced the new feature for Steam and the Steamworks tools that will let Steam users only allow one PC to have access to his or her Steam account and all the games on that account. Steam Guard will also allow users to see if any third parties try to log in or change settings in their Steam annount from outside PCs.

Steam Guard will also work with a new feature in Intel's second generation Core PC processors, the Identity Protection Technology. It's a hardware-based feature that generates a new password every 30 seconds. Valve's Gabe Newell is quoted in the press release as saying, "Account phishing and hijacking are our (number one) support issues. With Intel's IPT and Steam Guard, we've taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods." There's no word on exactly when Steam Guard will be made available for Steam owners.

[Via email press release]

If you just bought and received a new gaming PC with an Intel-based chipset you might want to pay attention to this news story. Intel's launch of its new Series 6 chipset has run into a major issue. The company announced today that the new chipset, which supports Intel's new "Sandy Bridge" based second generation Intel Core processors, has a design error. According to Intel's press release, "In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives." The Sandy Bridge processors themselves are not affected by this issue.

Intel has now halted production of its Series 6 chipsets and will release a new version with the design error corrected in late February with mass production expected in April. While Intel states that in its opinion, "relatively few consumers are impacted by this issue" it is working with PC makers who have shipped out systems with the affected chipsets for returns, modifications and replacements. Intel expects that fixing this issue will cost the company $700 million and it has lowered its first quarter 2011 financial guidance down by $300 million.

Intel's new version of its Core PC processors, previously known by the code name "Sandy Bridge", were officially announced earlier this week. At Intel's CES 2011 press conference, Valve's head man Gabe Newell took the stage to demo the upcoming puzzle shooter Portal 2 running on the new processor.

According to a story over at the International Business Times web site, Newell praised the technology in the new Intel Core processors stating that Portal 2, due out in April, was made with the new processor in mind. He's quoted as saying, "It's a real game changer for us. This allows for a console like experience on the PC." We are not quite sure what that means, exactly. We will email Valve to get a little clarification.

Earlier this week, Intel revealed its new next generation Core processors and since then PC makers have been sending out press releases by the bucket load announcing their new PC systems with the new chips installed. But the folks at Origin PC have something for the hardcore gaming PC crowd that should turn some heads.

During CES 2011 Origin PC announced that its Genesis and The Big O gaming PC rigs (The Big O also, as some of you may remember, has a working Xbox 360 inside its case) will not only have the new Core i5 and i7 processors from Intel but they will also have support for overclocking up to and over 5.0 GHz. We think you will agree that's pretty speedy.

[Via email press release]

If you are a PC gamer you have had only two real choices for your gaming rig's processor; one from Intel or one from AMD. Now Nvidia has announced it is throwing its considerable hat into this ring. At its CES 2011 press conference today the company revealed plans for "Project Denver", an Nvidia-developed CPU that will be based on the ARM architecture. The CPU will be integrated with Nvidia's GPU graphics chip.

Nvidia says that it will extend the ARM architecture, which is mostly used inside mobile phones and devices, for its CPU to include being used on PCs. That means in theory your next gaming PC could have Nvidia-made or designed parts for your processor, motherboard and graphics chip. There's no word on when the first "Project Denver" CPUs will be released. In a separate press release, Microsoft announced today that the next version of its Windows operating system will support ARM-based processors.

Last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, PC gaming peripheral maker Razer and its partner Sixense showed off a prototype of its upcoming PC game motion sensing controller while playing Valve's zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2. Unfortunately that motion controller still hasn't come to market but at today's Intel press conference at CES 2011, the motion controller was demoed live to the crowd.

This time the game that was used was Valve's upcoming puzzle-shooter sequel Portal 2. Our sister site Engadget got part of the demo on video which you can check out over on their site (for some reason there's no embed code for the video; sorry). Sadly there's still no word on when the Razer-Sixense motion controller will be released.

Intel still is the number one maker of PC desktop and laptop processors and today, just ahead of CES 2011 later this week, the company officially announced its next generation version of its Core processors which until now were known by its code name Sandy Bridge.

Intel's official name for the processor family is the rather dull Intel Core 2011. It will keep the i3, i5 and i7 naming structure but, according to our sister site Engadget, there's a lot new under the hood, including putting the processor, memory controller, and integrated graphics on the same die. You can expect a ton of announcements from PC desktop and laptop makers, including gaming PC makers, this week about using the new Core 2011 processors.

While not nearly as big as E3 for the gaming industry, the annual Consumer Electronics Show can be a place for some interesting gaming related product announcements. The previous show, for example, had the debut of Alienware's popular M11x gaming PC laptop and the announcement of a motion sensing PC game controller from Razer (which as of this writing has yet to be released).

The 2011 edition of CES will be held in Las Vegas on January 6-11 and the show will once again have its own game-based section called the CES Gaming Showcase. AMD, Intel, Logitech, Microsoft and others will have gaming related exhibits at the show. And for you console gamers out there Nintendo will also be exhibiting at CES 2011. This will be the first time that Nintendo has come to CES in 16 years.

[Via email press release]

Lately we have seen the San Diego Comic-Con become more and more interested in the game industry with new game reveals, exhibits, panels and more. The biggest rival to San Diego Comic-Con is the New York Comic Con. While it's only a few years old the pop culture convention had over 77,000 people attend in 2009.

For the 2010 edition to be held on October 8-10 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in Manhattan, there will be quite a few game publishers on the exhibit hall including 38 Studios, Activision, Capcom, EA, Gazillion, Sega, Square Enix, THQ, Ubisoft and more. Intel will also be there with not only PC game demo stations but also the US finals of its Intel Extreme Masters PC pro gaming tournament. Pro PC gamers will compete for over $60,000 in prize money playing games like Counter-Strike, Quake Live and StarCraft II. The winners will also be heading to Germany in 2011 to compete in the world finals of the tournament.

NCsoft won't be on the show floor exhibiting but it will be conducting panels at New York Comic Con. It will also hold an meet and greet between fans and its developers for City of Heroes and Guild Wars 2 at the nearby Hudson Hotel on Friday.