Gadgety News

If you opt for a netbook you do so with the knowledge that it will crumble when faced with Crysis, Left4Dead and the likes.

Well, Nvidia plans to introduce “chip technology” that could allow low-cost netbooks run those lovely high-def games and media.

The Ion platform, announced on Thursday, effectively combines Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 graphics processing unit (GPU) with Intel’s Atom chipset. According to Nvidia, this combination will provide “up to ten times the graphics performance” of other graphics chipsets currently used with Atom in small, low-cost PCs.

The GeForce 9400 has 16 processing cores and is more than suited for graphics-intensive apps such as Adobe’s Photoshop CS4.

It’s already chugging under the hood of Apple’s latest MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

“Until now, a high-definition, affordable PC was an oxymoron,” said Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s media communications processor business unit, in Thursday’s statement. “The Ion platform pairs the GeForce 9400 with a truly great Intel Atom CPU and lets consumers surf the Internet, play top games, edit photos and watch videos — all in high definition.”

Nvidia said that the new Ion platform will be designed to support the full Windows Vista user interface, however, and the upcoming Windows 7.  That news may be exciting to some of you I guess……….

In addition, it will be capable of running “full-spec 1,080 [pixels]” high-definition video and games as graphically intensive as Call of Duty 4.

According to Nvidia, “the GeForce 9400 GPU does all of this in about half of the space of today’s Atom CPU-based solutions, with minimal effect on battery life”.

The Ion platform will also let netbook users experience full Blu-ray playback on the smallest PCs and laptops, according to Alice Chang, chief executive of optical-drive maker CyberLink, who was quoted in Nvidia’s statement.

A spokesperson for Nvidia told ZDNet UK yesterday that the company expects manufacturers to offer netbooks using Ion sometime towards the end of the first half of 2009.

Portable gaming a-go-go! FTW!

Znet

Left 4 Dead – it’s almost here!

If you’re not familiar with the title let me tell you a little about it.

The ‘4′ in the name underlines that this is a 4 player First Person Shooter (FPS) (and not an homage to Prince’s whacky way of writing) and the ‘Dead’ bit is a nod to what will happen to you if you don’t work as a team.

Oh; and perhaps the fact that you’re fighting zombies!

The game comes from those great people, Valve (they gave you Counter-Strike and Half-Life), and is set in the immediate aftermath of the zombie apocalypse.

Theses zombies aren’t your Dawn of the Dead slow moving types – think more 28 Days Later. These deads move quick!

Thanks to “the AI Director” you can play the same level repeated times and it will be different each time you play – You’re actually meant to keep coming back, charging through each zombie-infested level again and again, in the company of your buddies.

The Director tailors the frequency and ferocity of the zombie attacks to your performance, putting you in the middle of a fast-paced, but not too overwhelming shooty-shooty-kill-kill game!

Obviously the other aspect to the randomness is your 3 playing partners – you know how it goes: One will go off on a killing spree leaving the rest behind.  We’ve all been there and/or been guilty of doing that

Most games it’s ok and you generally can get away with it but this game reminds you to stay as 4.

But even then you could be handling the zombie horde as a group when suddenly a molotov is thrown, or a cannister explodes, and everything is engulfed in flames! You watch in horror as one of your team is caught by a lasso-tongued smoker zombie and dragged off to their doom and then….then……I sharn’t spoil it!

Here’s a quick look at those bad-guys:

• Boomers: Big, fat explodey meatsacks. Players caught in the blast/vomit radius become a great big beacon for a huge, bonus wave of zombies

• Smokers: These use huge Gene Simmons-esque mouth-snakes to grab a player from a good forty metres away, rendering him helpless until his mates save him

• Hunters: Stupily fast undeads that’ll pin a player to the ground, again until a heroic buddy intervenes

• Witches: Tend to sing a lot and remain motionless until disturbed by light, noise or an errant gunshot. Their eerie song and simultaneous sobbing are by far the most terrifying thing in the game. Upon waking up, they’re a whirling dervish of destruction. Fight every instinct to shoot the apparently frail things and sneak around them.

• Tanks: Are armoured and rather large. You’ll hear them stomping towards you from about half a mile away. On Normal, they’ll fall over before they do too much damage. On Advanced, their hitpoints are such that it’ll be the shortest route to an endgame situation.

If you like gaming, killing zombies and having your mates join in the fun you will want to click this link and try on the demo for size!

The game costs $44.99 through Steam and is available for pre-order now (you get access to the demo straight-away) and the full game is released on November 18th.

Good luck - keep your friends close!