If you're planning on grabbing Far Cry 2 this week, you better check out the new hotfix that AMD has released. The hotfix is specifically for improving DX9 and DX10 performance in Far Cry 2.

ATI has a new version of their Catalyst 8.10 Drivers out today. There's not a whole lot to see in terms of bug fixes and performance improvements. However, the new drivers do allow you to modify your GPU's fan speed. So it's well worth the download.

I've been lusting after the Antec Skeleton for several months now. The new open air case from Antec has been turning heads ever since the specs first showed up on their website. Well the wait is finally over this week as the product hits the store shelves. The reviews are coming in, and they're all good. So what's so great about this case? Read on to find out why I want an Antec Skeleton!

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ATI has released version 8.9 of their Catalyst Display Drivers. The update is not huge, but it does include several important new features:

• Catalyst™ Control Center: New Display mode support
• OverDrive™ support for QUAD CrossFireX configurations
• OpenGL™ 3.0 extension support

The update also includes the regular bug fixes. There is an unusually large number of fixes for Age of Conan.

It's been a long time since we've seen any serious improvements in mouse technoloy. The last major improvement we saw was the switch from optical to laser, and some don't even believe that was really an improvement. That's why we were so excited when we first heard about the new Microsoft mouse. Finally we might actually get the improved accuracy that was first promised with laser mice. Is this mouse really what we've been waiting for?

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Several months ago a story surfaced about EA planning to sell Crysis ready PCs. The general idea was to create a PC that was powerful enough to run the game, but still low on price. Of course as soon as I heard that it was "EA" leading the effort we were highly skeptical. Well Chris Remo visited Crytek recently and got the lowdown on the new machine. I have to admit that I was completely wrong. Here's the specs:

• CPU: Intel Core Duo e7300 (@2.66GHz)
• Video card: Nvidia 9800GT
• RAM: 2GB

The PC is set to be announced next week. Given the initial specs it looks like this machine could actually have an impact. Entry level users will finally have a great PC for a decent price without having to build it by themselves. If successful it would help to eliminate one of the biggest barriers to the PC gaming industry's success.

You can now comment on articles. Just click on the comment link underneath each news article to post a comment. We'd like your help testing out the new system so we thought we would start out with a simple question. What kind of videocard do you have? Is it an ATI or NVIDIA, and why did you choose that brand?

ATI has released version 8.8 of their Catalyst display drivers. This update is quite a bit larger than the past few updates. Here is a list of some of the new features from the release notes:

• Dynamic Gamma/Contrast correction, available on the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series, improves video image quality by delivering more vivid color in content with sharp contrasts and scenes with low and bright images.
• Improved video presets, available for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 and ATI Radeon™ 4800 Series, delivers a newly optimized video presets that users
• Windows XP support: Edge enhancement, which adjusts the level of sharpness of video content and Noise Reduction, which removes ghosting artifacts while preserving details of the original video. The new slider controls can be found in the All Settings page of the Avivo Video tab found in the Catalyst™ Control Center
• Hybrid Graphics Support for Windows XP. Hybrid Graphics delivers a significant 3D performance boost for systems featuring an AMD 780G/780D integrated graphics motherboard and an ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series or ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series graphics accelerator. It also provides support for up to four independent displays

There are also countless bug fixes. Some of the games affected are Age Of Connan, Call Of Duty 4, and Crysis.

After a few weeks of hard work FrameRage finally has a layout. The graphics are thanks to the guys at WebWorx. We've also added a few pages like our about section. Stay tuned. We are hoping to be able to roll out comments, and user logins soon. We only have a few features left before we can move on to phase two.

In the wake of the recent storm brewing concerning defective NVIDIA GPUs in various laptops HP has posted it's list of affected machines. Like Dell they have also posted a BIOS update to help prevent the problem. If you own a HP laptop of any kind you should check out their support page to see if you are affected.

Creative has released an update for their X-Fi series of soundcards. The update includes some new features for Vista users:

• Dolby® Digital and DTS® decode re-established for sound cards that included decoding in their Windows XP drivers (Not applicable for products that included a 3rd party software DVD player license in the package).
• DVD-Audio playback re-established for sound cards that included the application in their Windows XP software suite (For Windows Vista 32-bit only).

The following sound cards are affected by this update

• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty® Professional Series
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi

You can find the drivers by visiting the Creative's Driver Downloads page.

Lionel Menchaca has posted on the Official Dell Blog in regards to some potential problems with dell laptops containing NVIDIA Mobile GPUs:

The issue is a weak die/packaging material set, which may fail with GPU temperature fluctuations. If your GPU fails, you may see intermittent symptoms during early stages of failure that include:

• Multiple images
• Random characters on the screen
• Lines on the screen
• No video

To battle the issue Dell has released Bios updates for several of their laptops. The update modifies the fan profile to help better regulate the temperature of the GPU. Note however that this only helps to prevent potential issues. If you are already experiencing the above issues you will have to seek help through your Dell product warranty. Below is a table of all the affected products and the link to the bios updates.

ATI released another new version of the Catalyst Drivers today. This update is relatively small with only a few small changes. It includes the usual fixes and performance increases, but nothing serious. One of the most notable features of the patch is improved Linux support for the following operating systems:

• Ubuntu 8.04 production support
• SLED 10 sp2 production support

NVIDIA has posted version 177.41 of it's drivers for GeForce cards specifically to support the GeForce 200 series cards. The release notes have not been posted yet, so there's not a lot of specific information on the drivers. Get the drivers now!

ATI has made a huge leap with it's it's new 8.49.7 drivers for Linux. The download looks to be an absolute must have for any Linux user with an ATI card. Check out the performance claims from the press release:

Availability of this enhanced 8.49.7 Linux driver represents a significant leap for Linux customers seeking improved performance of CAD and digital content creation applications that can offer up to approximately 33 percent faster OpenGL performance than the previous driver.

Visit ATI's drivers downloads page now!

HotHardware did a little bit of investigation and wrote a great article about cheating allegations against NVIDIA in relation to it's impressive 3dmark scores with drivers for their recently announced GPU-PhysX port. In the article they quote Mark Rein of Epic Games who had this to say:

We couldn't care less about synthetic benchmarks. Real players play real games and in this case there is a real performance gain for a large number of users playing our game. The updated drivers that people are talking about allow properly-equipped Unreal Tournament 3 players users to use some amazing UT3 content that was specifically designed to take advantage of hardware-accelerated physics. So now that content works on high-end Nvidia graphics cards, as opposed to Ageia PPUs. This is a great thing as high-end Nvidia cards number in the millions, or tens of millions, compared to Ageia PPUs which obviously numbered far, far less. So Nvidia has done a cool optimization that allows their customers to get more value and performance out of their graphics cards. How anyone could possibly confuse this for a bad thing is beyond me.

As a website dedicated to real life benchmarks we couldn't agree more. When push comes to shove all that matters is the performance you get while you're playing, and in this case it's a win-win situation for everyone.

A hotfix has popped up on ATI's customer care for the 4800 series video cards. The page doesn't provide very much information other than this:

This Hotfix improves overall performance and stability. The hotfix includes the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center.

After only a month since the release of 8.5 ATI hasn't wasted any time in releasing version 8.6 of their display drivers. The new features of the card include:

• OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support
• OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD) support - 3 or 4 GPUs in CrossFire™ mode
• Catalyst Install enhancement - No reboot required after Catalyst upgrade install

Some of the performance improvements claimed by the release notes are pretty impressive. For instance, ATI claims users can see up to 35% improved performance in select maps in Call of Duty 4. This combined with some of the fixed issues make this update a must have for Call of Duty 4 players.

The GeForce 200 series cards are here, and the internet is overloaded with hardware reviews, benchmarks, and information. Here are some of my favorites:

• Official NVIDIA Press Release - The official source
• VR-Zone - Press releases from various brands.
• TweakTown - Long list of links to other reviews.
• AnandTech - All the dirty little details.
• TheInquirer - Comprehensive list of benchmarks.

EA has released the system requirements for Spore. Here's the quick information for windows users:

• 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
• 512 MB RAM
• A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
• At least 6 GB of hard drive space

There are more detailed system requirements at their website, which includes supported video cards.