ati posts

Help stress test LotRO to win cool prizes and meet devs

by Brooke Pilley May 12th 2009 at 10:30AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Contests, News items

Isn't it funny? People are always clamoring to get into closed betas but once an MMO launches, test servers are usually pretty empty, even for special events. Turbine has decided to offer some great incentives for players to participate in their upcoming Lord of the Rings Online performance test and is giving away several high-powered computer accessories and making sure the devs are online to interact with.

Subscribers and even trial-account holders can log into the Bullroarer public test server between 9:00PM and 11:00PM Eastern on Thursday, May 14 and have a shot at winning:

Two (2) first prizes - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
Five (5) second prizes - OCZ Vertex 60GB MLC Solid State SATA II Hard Drive
Ten (10) third prizes - ATI Radeon HD 4890 Video Card
Twenty (20) fourth prizes - Signed copy of The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria

In order to qualify, you must play the entire two hours of the event and be a resident of the United States. Disconnects will not disqualify you as long as you log back in immediately. You can download the Bullroarer client here. Good luck!

Tags: ati, bullroarer, contest, incentives, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, mines-of-moria, performance-test, play-test, prizes, test, turbine

PotBS video contest offers graphics card bounty

by William Dobson Jun 26th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Historical, Video, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Contests, Game mechanics, Guides

The Pirates of the Burning Sea community site has posted a neat guide to making videos of their game, covering a number of different programs, and the finishing touches that can turn a good movie into a great one. It's certainly a nice guide, but you might wonder if there is any particular reason that Flying Lab Software is educating their players so -- and of course, there is.

A new series of contests are on the way for PotBS subscribers, and the objective is to come up with some top-notch tutorial videos. The first contest is based around the art of Boarding Combat, and the winning video should be something that can explain to new players exactly how to succeed at this. The creator of the best video will sail away with a GeCube ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card, and entry closes on the 30th of June. You can visit the competition page to get all the specific requirements, and begin your career as a pirate teacher.

Tags: ati, boarding, boarding-combat, fls, flying-lab-software, graphics-card, guide, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, potbs, radeon, tutorial, video

Testing Age of Conan: Gamespot's hardware roundup + performance guide

by Matt Warner Jun 23rd 2008 at 7:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan

You got bills to pay, no computer upgrades in a year, heck maybe it's been two or three, and here comes along Age of Conan with eye-dazzling effects that you must play. It also comes with launch bugs that don't ease the stress on your computer or your nerves for that matter. Crash after crash will leave you infuriated, the problem could be drivers, maybe the PSU can't handle the load, or it's poor optimization code -- whatever it is let the debugging process begin.

PC Gaming really does need some better standards, especially MMOs, but let's get back the basic computer hardware needed to run Age of Conan. What hardware will make it run like a champ, and what hardware will even run the game at all in case Grandma wants to chop some heads off in Hyboria on the most sluggish computer. Everything you need to know is available in this in-depth, fantastic hardware performance guide by Gamespot.

Tags: 8800GT, 9800GTX, age-of-conan, ati, computer-guide, computer-hardware, conan, cpu, funcom, gamespot, graphics, nvidia, performance, ram, requirements, specs, video-cards

Guild Wars anniversary sweepstakes announced

by Shawn Schuster Apr 29th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, Contests, Events, real-world

In respect to the continuing Guild Wars third anniversary coverage, we're proud to announce an important new promotion from the good folks at ArenaNet. The Guild Wars Third Anniversary Sweepstakes runs from April 28th until May 31st with the actual drawing itself being conducted on June 11th, 2008. Not only is this one easy to enter for anyone, but it includes some pretty sweet real-world prizes.

One lucky grand prize winner will receive a powerful Alienware Area-51 laptop, while other prizes include an ATI Radeon HD 3870 video card, a Logitech 5.1 speaker system and many more valuable peripheral hardware devices. Be sure to read the entire rules on the main website and tell 'em Massively sent you! No, seriously, it would be awesome of you.

Tags: alienware, arenanet, ati, guild-wars, logitech, ncsoft, sweepstakes

Tim Sweeney's beef with Intel and PC gaming

by Kyle Horner Mar 12th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: News items, Opinion

Are PCs good for gaming? The short answer is yes, Tim Sweeney (of Unreal fame) is wrong because computers play many of the best games the platform has to offer without much struggle. Games like The Orange Box, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, The Sims 2, Company of Heroes or The Lord of the Rings Online all run fairly well without too much muscle behind them.

His primary complaint (and ours too, actually) is that integrated graphics chips which are installed on the computers that stores like Best Buy sell, are in no way capable of playing the newer games sold at the very same stores. Intel is largely to blame for this, but of course if you've ever looked into buying a brand new video card, then you know they're not the only culprits of PC gaming's issues.

Tags: age-of-conan, arena-net, ati, blizzard, company-of-heroes, funcom, guild-wars, intel, nvidia, pc-gaming, the-orange-box, the-sims-2, tim-sweeney, valve, world-of-warcraft, wow

EVE Trinity: New graphics engine calls for a video card checkup

by Matt Warner Dec 4th 2007 at 6:05PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, News items

Traders, Smugglers, Pirates, Miners, Capusuleers from every walk of life! Today marks a momentous occasion in the EVE Online universe. At approximately 6PM PST the EVE servers will be brought down and fitted for the new EVE: Trinity expansion. The downtime is estimated to last 24 hours, which means this is probably our last heads up beforehand to train a time appropriate skill in advance. The amount of new content is intense as Trinity is EVE's biggest expansion ever: New ships, tweaks, tutorials, new everything, and of course, the grand-daddy of Trinity's enhancements: The long-awaited graphical overhaul featuring EVE's new graphic engine dubbed Trinity 2. Confused yet? All that matters is that every ship, stargate, and station remodeled to sweet perfection.

There is a downside, and that is not everyone will be able to enjoy the new radical graphics. Players who do not have a Shader Model 3.0 or DirectX9c compliant video card will be left in the space dust with the classic client. EVE players with DirectX9c and video cards that support Shader Model 3.0 will be able to use the shiny new doodad client. The important thing is everyone can still play EVE Online regardless or not your rig meets the requirements to run the new graphics. What is SM 3.0 and how the hell do you know your video card supports it? To answer that, with the help of the EVE forums, I have compiled the necessary information to help you find out.

Tags: ati, ccp, ccp-games, directx, eve, eve-online, eve-trinity, expansion, graphics, nvidia, shader-model, sm3, sm4, technology, trinity, video-cards

Linuxworld on the Second Life viewer

by Tateru Nino Nov 3rd 2007 at 1:30PM

Filed under: News items, Second Life, Linux

Linden Lab's Second Life viewer, is available for a variety of platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux in varying degrees of support) - and the source code is out there. There's a Solaris version kicking around out there somewhere too.

Linuxworld takes a brief look at Second Life, and a rather longer one with the viewer, speaking to notable open-source community members as Jason Giglio and Callum Lerwick, Tofu Linden of Linden Lab.

The piece touches on licensing issues that are impeding voice support under Linux, blocking issues with closed-source video drivers (most notably with ATI, though nVidia are also implicated), OpenJPEG versus JPEG2000, codebase-forking and more.

Tags: ati, callum-lerwick, jason-giglio, linden-lab, linux, linuxworld, mac, nvidia, second-life, second-life-viewer, solaris, tofu-linden, windows