AMD today announced three new game developer partnerships for Mantle, its highly acclaimed, groundbreaking graphics API. Cloud Imperium Games, Eidos-Montréal, a part of the Square Enix Group, and Oxide Games are the latest game developers to join AMD in optimizing the way PC games are developed to extract maximum performance from a modern graphics architecture that spans desktop PCs, notebooks and consumer devices like tablets.

"AMD is proud to play an instrumental role in transforming the world of game development with Mantle," said Ritche Corpus, director of ISV gaming and alliances, AMD. "With the support and close collaboration between AMD and industry-leading game developers like Cloud Imperium, Eidos-Montréal and Oxide, Mantle can maximize optimization for highly anticipated PC titles, bringing an unparalleled gaming experience for players."

Finding the optimal performance for a PC's CPU and graphics card just became quicker, more nimble and more entertaining than ever before with the official release of Catzilla, an optimization test developed by three hardcore gamers. Catzilla software tests and compares a computer's capabilities based on benchmark CPU and GPU performance, which is critical in video games and other applications with advanced graphics, using a battle scene between rival "Catzilla" monsters. Catzilla is an all-inclusive program that provides benchmark scores, and software and hardware recommendations based on the test results in order to keep PCs running at their optimum condition.

Catzilla, a cross-API benchmark designed for OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 9 or 11, and Windows operating systems (64-bit and 32-bit Windows 8, 7, XP and Vista), is a quick, yet comprehensive benchmarking program that uses algorithms found in the latest PC video games, so users can see how their PCs will handle the most demanding games. Catzilla runs one set of tests to fully benchmark the users' PCs, so it's easier for them to overclock their processors squeezing every last bit of juice and test for stability.

At its spot in AMD's GPU'14 tech day, EA-DICE confirmed to major technical features of Battlefield 4, one of the hottest online multiplayer shooters of the season. To begin with, the game will include 64-bit binaries that let the game take advantage of vast amounts of system- and video-memory. 8 GB of system- and 3 GB of video-memory are part of the game's recommended system requirements list. The next big feature is a DirectX 11.1 renderer, which takes advantage of shader tracing, and seamless switching between various DirectX feature levels. DirectX 11.1 is exclusive to Windows 8 (and above), and isn't fully implemented on GeForce GTX 600 series GPUs.

DICE did announce that there are fallbacks to both. Out of data pulled by Origin, DICE claims that 91 percent of Battlefield 3 players run 64-bit operating systems, which encouraged their 64-bit move, but the game should also include fallbacks to 32-bit for the remaining 9 percent. The percentage of gamers running DirectX 11.1-ready GPUs and Windows 8 (and above) will no doubt be a small percentage, and for them not much should be lost. Battlefield 4 should launch on October 29. In December, the studio plans to roll out a major update that includes support for a new 3D graphics API built by DICE, codenamed "Mantle."

Battlefield 4 minimum system requirements (MSR) lists released to the web show them to be largely identical to those of Battlefield 3, with a few changes in the GPU requirements. The RSR (recommended system requirements) list is interesting. There's no support for Windows XP, much like Battlefield 3, but contrary to rumors, Battlefield 4 doesn't mandate 64-bit platforms. It includes 32-bit executables, even if it can take advantage of over 4 GB of system- and over 3 GB of video-memory. Battlefield 4 needs at least a Windows Vista 32-bit installation, with Service Pack 2 and KB971512 update. An AMD Athlon X2 processor clocked at 2.80 GHz or Core 2 Duo 2.40 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM (which 32-bit platforms don't fully make available anyway), and 2009-class DirectX 10 graphics cards, are part of the MSR.

Moving on to the recommended system requirements list, EA-DICE recommends 64-bit Windows 8, making us wonder why not Windows 7 64-bit, and if it has something to do with the fact that Windows 8 supports DirectX 11.1, which Windows 7 doesn't. Any six-core AMD CPU, and any Intel quad-core CPU will do. 8 GB of RAM is recommended. The developer recommends at least Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 660 graphics cards with at least 3 GB of video memory, which strangely disqualifies the Radeon HD 7870 from the RSR list, as there's no known HD 7870 variant with ≥3 GB of video memory. Hard drive space is consistent between the two lists, at 30 GB. It was 25 GB for Battlefield 3. In all, we expect Battlefield 4 to be another eye-feast, which rewards faster hardware, and perhaps even upgrading to Windows 8.

NVIDIA followed up on Monday's OpenGL 4.4 API launch with its first preview driver that includes GL 4.4 ICD (installable client driver). Unlike Direct3D, which comes included with Windows, OpenGL is distributed by GPU driver vendors. The OpenGL 4.4 Preview driver from NVIDIA bears the canonical version numbering "GeForce 326.29," is dated 18/07/2013, and supports GeForce GPUs from GeForce GTX 400 series onwards; and Quadro K600 onwards. NVIDIA's OpenGL 4.4 Preview driver adds an increasing number of GL extensions and features, with increase in GL version number hardware support.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA OpenGL 4.4 Preview driver (desktop v326.29) for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Linux 64-bit | Linux 32-bit

Details follow.

As the massive growth of information technology services places increasing demand on the datacenter, Intel Corporation today outlined its strategy to re-architect the underlying infrastructure, allowing companies and end-users to benefit from an increasingly services-oriented, mobile world. The company also announced additional details about its next-generation Intel Atom processor C2000 product family (codenamed "Avoton" and "Rangeley"), as well as outlined its roadmap of next-generation 14nm products for 2014 and beyond. This robust pipeline of current and future products and technologies will allow Intel to expand into new segments of the datacenter that look to transition from proprietary designs to more open, standards-based compute models.

"Datacenters are entering a new era of rapid service delivery," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel. "Across network, storage and servers we continue to see significant opportunities for growth. In many cases, it requires a new approach to deliver the scale and efficiency required, and today we are unveiling the near and long-term actions to enable this transformation."

Despite its $900-ish retail presence, AMD's 5 GHz eight-core processor, the FX-9590, was designed to be an OEM part, where OEMs could deploy the right motherboard and cooling solution for the 220W TDP chip. One of the first OEMs to [dare to] come out with one such contraption is Japan's Mouse Computer. The company's G-Tune Masterpiece a1500BA1 desktop includes an AMD FX-9590 processor, and Radeon HD 8990 (re-branded HD 7990 "Malta") graphics card as standard equipment.

The Masterpiece a1500BA1 uses a Cooler Master Seidon 120XL to tame the 220W AMD FX-9590, and an unannounced MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 motherboard to seat it. Other components include Kingston HyperX DDR3-1866 MHz 16 GB dual-channel memory, Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD, an additional 3 TB HDD, a Blu-ray writer, and an unknown 1200W 80 Plus Gold-certified PSU. Windows 8 64-bit comes pre-installed. Based on the 32 nm "Vishera" silicon, AMD FX-9590 is an eight-core processor in the AM3+ package, with 4.80 GHz nominal and 5.00 GHz TurboCore frequency. The 5.00 GHz Turbo state spools up for all eight cores. Backed by a 1-year warranty (besides individual component warranties), the Masterpiece a1500BA1 is priced at a staggering 449,800 JPY (US $4,500).

Earlier today NVIDIA published the GeForce 320.49 WHQL certified drivers in support of the newly launched GeForce GTX 760 graphics card, 32-bit and 64-bit versions for Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP are made available by today's release. The WHQL verion of the drivers comes exactly six days after the Beta version was made public, release which generated some issues for many of those who immediately downloaded and installed the 320.49 drivers, freezing, error messages and crashes were reported in a variety of games by more than few users, so you might want to have a look at the official feedback thread before you download and click install.

DOWNLOADS:

• NVIDIA ForceWare 320.49 Vista / W7 32-bit
• NVIDIA ForceWare 320.49 Vista / W7 64-bit
• NVIDIA ForceWare 320.49 XP 32-bit
• NVIDIA ForceWare 320.49 XP 64-bit

AMD today publicly disclosed its strategy and roadmap to recapture market share in enterprise and data center servers by unveiling innovative products that address key technologies and meet the requirements of the fastest-growing data center and cloud computing workloads.

Additionally, AMD revealed details of its 2014 server portfolio including best-in-class Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), two- and four-socket CPUs, and details on what it expects to be the industry's premier ARM server processor. This is on the heels of announcing the general availability of the AMD Opteron X-Series processor, code named "Kyoto," which dominates the small-core server market on every performance benchmark. These forthcoming AMD Opteron processors bring important innovations to the rapidly changing compute market, including integrated CPU and GPU compute (APU); high core-count ARM servers for high-density compute in the data center; and substantial improvements in compute per-watt per-dollar and total cost of ownership.

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today introduced the company's first Windows 8 device designed for business users, the Portege Z10t Detachable Ultrabook. The versatile Portege Z10t is an Ultrabook when needed and a tablet when wanted. Switch instantly between notebook and tablet by simply detaching the screen. Equipped with an 11.6-inch diagonal, Full HD, IPS anti-glare touchscreen display1, the Portege Z10t is an ideal choice for on-the-go professionals looking for a single, versatile device that offers more screen real estate than most tablets, but all the same ultra-responsive performance of a laptop.

The built in digitizer adds even more functionality for those who want to write and take notes on-screen. Ultra-slim, lightweight, encased in sleek style and dressed in durability with all the essential ports and security features, the Portege Z10t makes it easy to create, share or consume content anytime, anywhere. Powered by the latest Intel Core processors the device is equipped with all the business essential ports needed for a "dongle-free" experience, the Portege Z10t delivers excellent speed and performance - everything expected from a business-class Portege.

After bagging chip supply deals for all three new-generation consoles -- Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U, things are looking up for AMD. While Wii U uses older-generation hardware technologies, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 use the very latest AMD has to offer -- "Jaguar" 64-bit x86 CPU micro-architecture, and Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture. Chips that run the two consoles have a lot in common, but also a few less-than-subtle differences.

PlayStation 4 chip, which came to light this February, is truly an engineer's fantasy. It combines eight "Jaguar" 64-bit x86 cores clocked at 1.60 GHz, with a fairly well spec'd Radeon GPU, which features 1,156 stream processors, 32 ROPs; and a 256-bit wide unified GDDR5 memory interface, clocked at 5.50 GHz. At these speeds, the system gets a memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. Memory isn't handled like UMA (unified memory architecture), there's no partition between system- and graphics-memory. The two are treated as items on the same 8 GB of memory, and either can use up a majority of it.

Intel Corporation today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont. The technology is aimed squarely at low-power requirements in market segments from smartphones to the data center. Silvermont will be the foundation for a range of innovative products beginning to come to market later this year, and will also be manufactured using the company's leading-edge, 22nm Tri-Gate SoC manufacturing process, which brings significant performance increases and improved energy efficiency.

"Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments," said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer. "Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including "Bay Trail" and "Avoton" is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence."

AMD launched its first WHQL-signed Catalyst Software Suite in three months, with the Catalyst 13.4 WHQL, coinciding with the launch of Radeon HD 7990, earlier today. The Catalyst Software Suite installs device drivers and system software for AMD Radeon GPUs, IGPs, and integrated HDMI audio devices, in additional to AMD APP runtime environment, and certain media acceleration software.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.4 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

The change-log for Catalyst 13.4 WHQL follows.

During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, discussed how her company is helping users harness powerful new capabilities that will improve the lives of people by building smarter cities, healthier communities and thriving businesses.

Bryant unveiled details of upcoming technologies and products that show how Intel aims to transform the server, networking and storage capabilities of the datacenter. By addressing the full spectrum of workload demands and providing new levels of application optimized solutions for enterprise IT, technical computing and cloud service providers, unprecedented experiences can be delivered.

Definitely, 2013 starts with a big boom at Thecus. After the launch of the N12000PRO and N16000PRO, the announcement of the 64 bit ThecusOS 6.0, the unveiling of the N2520/N4520 and Intelligent NAS utility at CeBIT 2013, it's time for the NVR family to impress the world with 7 new devices with updated architecture to offer superior performances.

We here by present you in tower format the V2510, V4510, V5510 and V6810; and for the rackmount category, we have the new V4510U, V8810U and V16810U. All equipped with the VisoGuard security system management software developed in partnership with Netavis, these new NVR will offer better performances than ever for all type of users with needs of 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 or 16 bays of storage.

FinalWire announced AIDA64 v2.85, the popular system diagnostic and benchmarking suite is updated with 64-bit benchmarks optimized for AMD's "Richland" APUs, improved support for "Kaveri," "Kabini," and "Temash" APUs; and Intel "Haswell" and "Valleyview" CPUs; early support for AMD "Beema" APU, Intel "Avoton" SoC, "Crystalwell," "Ivy Bridge-E," and "Haswell-E" CPU, "Haswell-ULT" SoC; preliminary support for DDR4 and GDDR5 system memory types; and GPU support for AMD Radeon HD 8000 series and NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 v2.85 Installer (EXE), Archive (ZIP)

NVIDIA posted GeForce 314.22 driver-suite, just in time for Bioshock: Infinite. The WHQL-signed drivers offer performance increments as high as 41 percent in Bioshock: Infinite; and up to 60 percent in Tomb Raider (2013), up to 23 percent in Sniper Elite V2, and up to 13 percent in Sleeping Dogs. These results were produced using a GeForce GTX 680, and NVIDIA claims the gains "will be seen on other GPUs also, though to varying degrees." The results are in comparison to the previous GeForce 314.07 WHQL drivers.

GeForce 314.22 WHQL is also claimed to improve SLI performance (tested using GTX 680), for Sniper Elite V2 by up to 21 percent, up to 14 percent in Sleeping Dogs, up to 10 percent in StarCraft II, and up to 15 percent in Civilization V. SLI support is added/improved for Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, Dungeons and Dragons: Neverwinter, and BioShock Infinite.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 314.22 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP, and Windows XP 64-bit

Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, is now shipping its Caustic Series2 PC boards, the R2500 and R2100, which accelerate PowerVR OpenRL applications including the Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max and the Neon viewport in Rhinoceros 5 from Robert McNeel and Associates.

The Caustic Series2 is the first family of high performance ray tracing accelerator PC boards using Imagination's unique ray tracing technologies in the world's first chipset dedicated to high performance, fully interactive ray tracing in a workstation environment.

AMD today announced that Charles Matar and Wayne Meretsky have joined the company to assume critical new engineering leadership roles driving hardware and software intellectual property (IP) development for AMD's system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. Matar will draw upon his expertise in SoC and processor design to lead AMD's SoC methodology and client SoC execution. Meretsky will lead the company's software development, ensuring tools will be in place that will enable developers to take advantage of the compute power in AMD's SoC designs.

"Charles and Wayne will serve as key members of our engineering brain trust, bringing with them years of expertise in SoC design and developing 64-bit software ecosystems, respectively," said Mark Papermaster, AMD Chief Technology Officer. "The fact that these computing experts have returned to the company underscores AMD's unique position and opportunity, based on differentiated IP, to take a leadership position in low-power clients and dense cloud servers."

NVIDIA closed its Sunday launch extravaganza by posting a new version of its GeForce software suite, a combination of drivers and software for its GeForce graphics processors. The new GeForce 310.90 introduces a much-needed security update for its driver service manager that patches a recently-discovered vulnerability. In addition, it brings improved stability and performance for the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, in 3D production applications. SLI profiles are added or updated for several games.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 310.90 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

The change-log specific to this release follows.

Intel's next-generation Atom processor platform, codenamed "Bay Trail" doesn't arrive before 2014, but that's not enough to stop the company from talking at great lengths about it. A new presentation intended for Intel's pals in the PC industry was leaked on German tech-forum 3DCenter.org, and reveals quite a bit more about the platform than the Bay Trail-T we already know about.

The first two slides (below) detail key scoring points of the platform over its predecessor, the "Cedar Trail." These include a true single-chip SoC (with complete integration of the chipset into the processor die), being built on the 22 nm Tri-gate transistor fab process, up to four x86-64 cores with out-of-order execution capabilities, 7th generation Intel graphics that features DirectX 11 and supports resolutions as high as 2560 x 1600 pixels, a native USB 3.0 controller, and support for DDR3L memory, that allows device makers to do away with DIMM/SO-DIMM modules to conserve board foot-print, using smaller, space-optimized DRAM chips on the main PCB.

NVIDIA released the GeForce 310.70 WHQL software suite, which isn't much more than a WHQL-signed version of the GeForce 310.70 beta drivers posted a couple of weeks ago. Available for 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, the drivers, much like the 310.70 beta, are a cumulative of several R310 beta releases from over the past two months. They add significant performance increases over the previous 306.97 WHQL drivers.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 310.70 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, Windows XP 32-bit

Following last week's announcement of the ARM Cortex-A50 series, SoC designers formed a bee-line to license the ARMv8 IP. Among them is NVIDIA, and not just for its Tegra line of high-performance mobile chips, but also for Tesla, its GPU compute accelerator line. In an interview with InfoWorld, NVIDIA CTO for Tesla, Steve Scott, was quoted saying, "Tegra is going to become GPU computing capable in the not-so-distant future. Sometime this decade we are also going to start bringing integrated CPUs and GPUs together in the Tesla line". NVIDIA perhaps is looking at building Tesla GPU compute servers with the x86 CPU completely replaced with efficient ARMv8 64-bit processors.

ARM announced the new ARM Cortex-A50 processor series based upon the ARMv8 architecture, extending ARM's leadership in performance and low power. The series initially includes the Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors and introduces a new, energy-efficient 64-bit processing technology, as well as extending existing 32-bit processing. The scalability of the processor series enables ARM partners to create system-on-chips (SoCs) that address diverse markets, from smartphones through to high-performance servers.

The processors launched today will continue the evolution of the mobile computing experience by delivering up to three times the performance of today's superphones and extending today's superphone experience to entry-level smartphones. With a comprehensive set of ARM and ARM partner development tools and simulation models already available to enable faster and easier software development, both processors are fully compatible with the extensive ARM 32-bit ecosystem and integral to the rapidly evolving ARM 64-bit ecosystem.

In a bold strategic move, AMD announced that it will design 64-bit ARM technology-based processors in addition to its x86 processors for multiple markets, starting with cloud and data center servers. AMD's first ARM technology-based processor will be a highly-integrated, 64-bit multicore System-on-a-Chip (SoC) optimized for the dense, energy-efficient servers that now dominate the largest data centers and power the modern computing experience. The first ARM technology-based AMD Opteron processor is targeted for production in 2014 and will integrate the AMD SeaMicro Freedom supercompute fabric, the industry's premier high-performance fabric.

AMD's new design initiative addresses the growing demand to deliver better performance-per-watt for dense cloud computing solutions. Just as AMD introduced the industry's first mainstream 64-bit x86 server solution with the AMD Opteron processor in 2003, AMD will be the only processor provider bridging the x86 and 64-bit ARM ecosystems to enable new levels of flexibility and drive optimal performance and power-efficiency for a range of enterprise workloads.