While expectations for the System Shock franchise may have cooled a little following last week's report that the much-awaited System Shock 3 had been dropped by its development team and rights sold to Chinese giant Tencent, all is not terrible in the land of Shodan. Nightdive Studios, the actual holders of the franchise development rights, have just dropped a demo for the game on both Steam and GOG - a show of faith on the developers' part regarding their work of love in rebuilding the original game from the ground up.

Alongside the demo (which weighs in at a mere 2.3 GB on GOG), Nightdive Studios has also released a 40 minute video showcasing gameplay on the rebooted game, including developer commentary. The developers also coordinated with Shacknews in order to release an in-depth interview regarding the development of the game and its original reception.

At a media event on Wednesday, Intel invited us to check out their first working modern discrete graphics card, the Xe DG1 Software Development Vehicle (developer-edition). Leading the event was our host Ari Rauch, Intel Vice President and General Manager for Graphics Technology Engineering and dGPU Business. Much like gruff developer-editions of game consoles released to developers several quarters ahead of market launch, the DG1-SDV allows software developers to discover and learn the Xe graphics architecture, and develop optimization processes for their current and future software within their organizations. We walked into the event expecting to see a big ugly PCB with a bare fan-heatsink and a contraption that sort-of looks like a graphics card; but were pleasantly surprised with what we saw: a rather professional product design.

What we didn't get at the event, through, was a juicy technical breakdown of the Xe graphics architecture, and its various components that add up to the GPU. We still left pleasantly surprised for what we were shown: it works! The DG1-SDV is able to play games at 1080p, even if they are technically lightweight titles like "Warframe," and aren't maxing out settings. The SDV is a 15.2 cm-long graphics card that relies on the PCI-Express slot for power entirely (and hence pulling less than 75 W).

Unity has grown from a relatively simple engine to one of the most flexible options available for developers, allowing everything from 2D platformers to 3D games and short cinematics, all rendered in real-time, in-engine. The new Heretic real-time demo, showcased at GDC 2019, is one such example of a 3D engine being used to render a breathtaking cinematic.

The Heretic builds upon learnings derived from both the Adam and Book of the Dead shorts, and take advantage of the latest technologies embedded into the Unity engine. Motion blur, bloom, depth of field, film grain, color grading, and Panini projection, including by real-time lights and usage of a probe-based lighting solution. Just take a look at the video yourself, right after the break, and read on for the other part of this Unity-related piece: the Megacity Tech Demo.

Crytek has released a new video demonstrating the results of a CRYENGINE research and development project. Neon Noir shows how real-time mesh ray-traced reflections and refractions can deliver highly realistic visuals for games. The Neon Noir demo was created with the new advanced version of CRYENGINE's Total Illumination showcasing real time ray tracing. This feature will be added to CRYENGINE release roadmap in 2019, enabling developers around the world to build more immersive scenes, more easily, with a production-ready version of the feature.

AMD is looking to further push the adoption of FreeSync with the release of FreeSync 2 HDR Technology. The primary goal of the new standard is to take what FreeSync already offered including wide variable refresh rates and low framerate compensation and to pair that with HDR for a truly immersive experience. To show off what FreeSync 2 can do while also pushing for broader adoption has resulted in AMD creating their new Oasis Demo. Following the familiar principle that seeing is believing, AMD will be looking to compare their FreeSync 2 monitors against their non-HDR counterparts with this new demo at retail locations. This will allow consumers to see the difference for themselves in a way static images and youtube videos cannot convey. The Demo itself has been built using Unreal Engine 4 and has full support for HDR10 and FreeSync 2 HDR transport protocols. When it comes to settings the demo packs numerous options including FPS limits with various presets or custom options, vertical sync on/off, FreeSync on/off, Content modes, etc. You can view AMD's overview of the Demo in the video below.

If you had not heard of Sonarworks prior to this or the press release that went out last week, you may not be alone. The Latvian company is a little over 6 years old, and has since already managed to grab attention of some of the largest players in the audio market, including car makers interested in stereos, DJs, music producers, and of course more typical headphone and speaker makers. Their True-Fi desktop program claims to calibrate headphones to where everyone is able to hear the same sound no matter where they are- provided you use a supported headphone. This makes use of software sound processing and filtering, and the process works well enough to where they say over 30,000 recording studios worldwide currently use their technology.

At CES 2019, Sonarworks demonstrated the mobile version of their True-Fi program, currently in the Apple and Google Play stores as unreleased versions that will remain free until ready, following which it will cost $3.99/month or $99 for a lifetime license (the desktop version costs $79 by itself at this time). I was able to try out the app at their suite, and then also at home on my own phone, and came out impressed with the changes made. I did happen to have one of the ~300 currently-supported headphones though, and Sonarworks say they are working on adding more all the time. Users can also specifically request support to their own headsets if not on the list, although that might involve round trip shipment to Latvia. Read past the break for more, including their equally exciting personalized audio feature coming later this year.

Two months have passed since the release of Project CARS 2 and the community is racing hard and growing bigger day by day. Now, for those who haven't yet had the opportunity to be part of the Ultimate Driver Journey, Slightly Mad Studios and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment are proud to announce the Official Project CARS 2 Demo. The demo is scheduled for release on 23rd November, 2017 for PlayStation4, Xbox One and PC.

The Official Project CARS 2 Demo was designed and created to allow players to get a taste of the racing action on offer in the full game. Experience why Project CARS 2 is one of the highest rated multi-platform racing games of the year. Jump into a Ferrari 488 GT3, Lamborghini Huracán LP610-4, and Formula Renault 3.5 and race at the laser-scanned Red Bull Ring. Furthermore, the demo showcases the Xbox One X and PlayStation4 Pro enhancements that will be rolled out in an imminent update, as well as the extensive virtual reality support in the PC version of Project CARS 2.

Haven't had a chance to jump into Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus yet? Starting today you can download the free trial on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC and play through the entire first level of the game. Should you choose to upgrade to the full version of the game, all of your save data will carry over. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launched on October 27 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, to widespread praise from the critics and community. Wolfenstein II has also been nominated in several categories for The Game Awards, including Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Action Game and Best Performance (Brian Bloom as BJ Blazkowicz). You can vote now for the winners, and be sure to tune into the live awards show on Thursday, December 7.

At its pre-Dreamhack launch show for the GeForce GTX 1080, NVIDIA treated the audience with a fairly long gameplay segment from the "relentless" campaign of Doom (2016). The big takeaway from that reveal is that Doom will support the Vulkan API. Projected on a large-format screen at 1080p, with its details maxed out, Doom was shown running at upwards of 110 frames per second (fps), never dropping below 60 fps. The brief gameplay reveals that Doom could feature a pretty fun single-player campaign for fast-paced, almost Serious Sam-like, rapid monster-bash. You use unique new weaponry to take on hordes of monsters that come out of nowhere. We were at the event, and took a brief video.

AMD demonstrated a new reference air-based CPU cooling solution. Called the AMD Wraith, the cooler addresses the noise problem affecting AMD's stock CPU cooler, particularly on 95W-125W CPUs and APUs; and is more easy to deal with, than the company's liquid cooling solution. AMD Wraith could either be sold standalone, or as part of premium bundles with certain current or upcoming CPUs/APUs.

In its demo, the AMD Wraith is shown to be significantly quieter than AMD's stock cooling solution at maximum speed. Much like the stock cooler, the AMD Wraith is a top-flow aluminium fin-stack cooler, but with a larger heatsink, and a bigger fan. A groovy LED backlit AMD logo decks the black cooler shroud.The video presentation by AMD follows.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory solid state storage, power supplies, and gaming peripherals, demos two ultra-fast DDR4 memory kits at DDR4 4266MHz 8GB (2x4GB) and DDR4 4133MHz 8GB (2x4GB) extreme speed at the Intel IDF 2015 event this week.

Featuring the latest 6th Generation Intel Core processors and Z170 motherboards, G.SKILL is pushing dual channel DDR4 speed to new heights. The DDR4 4266MHz 8GB (2x4GB) kit is demoed on the Intel Core i7-6700K processor and ASRock Z170 OC Formula overclocking motherboard, while the DDR4 4133MHz kit is demoed on the Intel Core i7-6700K CPU and ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero motherboard. Both kits represent the fastest DDR4 memory speed ever seen on live air-cooling demo systems.

NVIDIA announced the first WHQL-signed driver for Windows 10. GeForce 352.84 WHQL offers full compliance to WDDM 2.0 specification, and offers support for DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0) on supported GPUs (all chips based on the "Kepler" and "Maxwell" architectures). There are no games that take advantage of DirectX 12 right now, but NVIDIA suggested a few tech-demos you can toy with, such as Forza DX12 renderer, Fable Legends DX12 Game Demo, Witch Chapter 0 DX12 SLI_support, King of Wushu DX12, and the Unreal Engine Race DX12 demo. DirectX 12 is highly anticipated among game developers, as it provides a leap in performance due to the way it handles multi-CPU. For the first time, 3D graphics rendering can take advantage of any number of CPU cores you throw at them, allowing game developers to increase eye-candy and detail. DirectX 12 will debut with Windows 10, which launches this July.DOWNLOAD: GeForce 352.84 WHQL for Windows 10 Desktop GPUs | Notebook GPUs

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced revenue for the fourth quarter of 2014 of $1.24 billion, operating loss of $330 million and net loss of $364 million, or $0.47 per share. Non-GAAP(1) operating income was $36 million, non-GAAP(1) net income of $2 million and breakeven non-GAAP(1) earnings per share.

"We made progress diversifying our business, ramping design wins and improving our balance sheet this past year despite challenges in our PC business," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "Annual Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment revenue increased over 50% as customer demand for products powered by our high-performance compute and rich visualization solutions was strong. We continue to address channel headwinds in the Computing and Graphics segment and are taking steps to return it to a healthy trajectory beginning in the second quarter of 2015."

G.SKILL International Co., Ltd., the leading extreme performance memory manufacturer and designer, is excited to feature two extremely high end DDR4 memory at 3333MHz 32GB (4GBx8) and 3200MHz 32GB (8GBx4) during Intel Developer Forum 2014 (IDF 2014). Driven by the newest Intel i7-5960X CPU on the newest ASUS Rampage V Extreme X99 and X99-Deluxe motherboards, the Ripjaws 4 series DDR4 3333MHz 4GBx8 and 3200MHz 8GBx4 memory demonstrates the highest DDR4 speed available in 4GB and 8GB modules, respectively.

"It's very exciting to show the world what we can do with the new DDR4 memory standard for the latest Intel X99 platform. There is no doubt that breaking the 3000MHz memory barrier with ease is the next big thing in desktop performance, effectively doubling bandwidth throughput compared to the previous DDR3 memory standard," says Frank Hung, Product Marketing at G.SKILL.

Wish you could run one of those awesome Unreal Engine 4 tech demos on your own hardware instead of watching its lossy, pixellated video-grabs on YouTube? Well, now you can. Epic's "Elemental" tech demo for Unreal Engine 4 cropped up on the web, and we wasted no time in re-hosting it for you. The demo doesn't appear to be a public release, but something developers put together for demos to be run by Epic and its partners, only. To begin with, it doesn't come with an installer. You have to extract its files into a folder, and manually edit its settings INI file to specify resolution, window behaviour, and other settings. You then have to install VC++ 2013 runtime if you don't already have it (the redistributables are included in the archive), and then run the demo from the relevant batch file. Unreal included both 32-bit and 64-bit executables. When you're done drooling rainbows at the demo, only an Alt+F4 closes the thing down (there's no in-demo UI). There's no internal benchmark, and you're left to use third-party frame-rate loggers. These little issues aside, the demo sure makes Unreal Engine 4 look promising. We also added a collection of five other tech-demos for your viewing pleasure.DOWNLOAD: Unreal Engine 4 Elemental Demo (RAR archive) | Unreal Engine 4 Five Tech Demos

While you are waiting patiently for AMD to get their Mantle drivers out of the lab and into gamers' hands, you may want to head over to Steam as Oxide Games and Publisher Stardock have released a free demo of their Nitrous Engine there, which supports Mantle.

The demo is called "Star Swarm Benchmark", and is a real-time showcase for what the engine is capable of doing. The demo shows two artificial intelligence controlled fleets of starships battling it out. The developers want you to know that the demo is not a deterministic simulation, and repeated runs may produce varying benchmark results due to the highly threaded nature of the Nitrous Engine.

ASUSTOR Inc. , a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced today the launch of a new live demo site for users to test ASUSTOR Data Master (ADM) 2.0, the latest version of ASUSTOR's in-house developed NAS operating system. The ADM 2.0 live demo will allow users to experience ASUSTOR's intuitive software first hand before making any purchasing decisions. ADM 2.0 features an array of new and innovative features along with all-new mobile apps, AiMaster and AiData, which will allow users to truly experience the convenience of cloud computing while on the go.

Douglas Engelbart, the computing visionary who saw a future in the graphical user interface (GUI), and co-developed the modern mouse, passed away. He was 88. Engelbart conducted most of his work at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and his team's most noted work laid the foundation of the GUI and windowed multi-tasking as we know today. Among his inventions are windowed GUI, the mouse as we know it, hypertext (text on the screen that you click to perform a function), and networked computers. "The Mother of All Demos," nickname for a tech-demo presented by Engelbart, which dates back to 1968, reveals just how much we owe today's computing innovations to the groundbreaking work done by him and his team.

DisplayLink, the leading provider of USB Graphics technology, today announced plans to show the latest solutions for Wireless and USB Docking at Interop 2013. Targeting Ultrabook and Tablet expansion and connectivity for business users, DisplayLink will feature wireless WiGig Docking, Enterprise Class USB Docking, and the latest Mac drivers, with demonstrations to be held at the Interop Expo.

Introducing the latest solutions, John Cummins, VP Sales and Marketing for DisplayLink said, "IT Managers are struggling with BYOD. At Interop 2013, DisplayLink will showcase our customer's products, including monitor-docks for tablets with touch screen and integrated Webcams, WiGig Docks for wireless graphics and peripheral expansion, and Enterprise-Class USB Docks with multiple display connections for both Windows and Mac. These products solve problems and enhance productivity."

TRENDnet, a best-in-class wired and wireless networking hardware brand, today displays from Computex Taipei, the AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router, model TEW-812DRU, and the AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Media Bridge, model TEW-800MB.

The explosion of wireless devices in the home and office, coupled with high demand for HD video content, continue to drive demand for increased wireless bandwidth. 802.11ac is a new wireless standard designed to meet tomorrow's extreme wireless bandwidth needs.

NVIDIA stunned reporters at its GeForce Kepler press-event, by smoothly-running running Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 "Samaritan" tech-demo on a single GeForce Kepler GPU, when the demo needed up to three previous-generation GPUs. However, Samaritan isn't Kepler's official tech-demo. It is reportedly called "New Dawn", and is a retake on the "Dawn" tech-demo, which baffled the industry, nearly a decade ago. "Dawn" displayed its central character, a fairy by its name, in stunning detail (at the time).

While Dawn was incredibly detailed, its environment was pretty-much just a textured sky-box. "New Dawn" could bring Dawn back into action, focusing on environmental elements such as realistic physics simulation, improved hair animation, and greater detail. NVIDIA has a wealth of new elements to play with, such as a level of tessellation that could be impossible to render smoothly on the competitor's GPU (even if one could run it). NVIDIA could distribute this demo on its websites (NVIDIA.com, GeForce.com), soon. NVIDIA, and rival AMD, release tech-demos with each new GPU architecture, which demonstrate the capabilities of their new flagship GPUs. Pictured below is a frame from the 2003 demo.A "sneak-peek" video of the demo follows.

One year after its debut, Epic Games' Samaritan Tech Demo is back at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) and it's there to tease the power of NVIDIA's Kepler 28 nm GPU. At last year's GDC Samaritan, which is based on Unreal Engine 3, was running in real-time on three GeForce GTX 580 cards set in SLI. This year Epic is showing off the demo running on a single NVIDIA Kepler graphics card.

PMC-Sierra, Inc., (Nasdaq:PMCS) or PMC, the semiconductor innovator transforming storage, optical and mobile networks, today announced that Adaptec by PMC is demonstrating a server that doubles storage performance, reduces power consumption and increases reliability in a smaller data center footprint to help meet the soaring demands on data centers while driving down total cost of ownership. The CeBIT demonstration features a RAID controller card prototype based on the industry's only PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 capable 24-port RAID-on-Chip (RoC) from PMC, installed in a system based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family, and 22 Seagate Pulsar enterprise solid state drives (SSDs). Visit Adaptec in the CeBIT Storage Pavilion, Hall 2, Stand E51 to view the demonstration.

The server configuration delivers a sustained data transfer rate of 6600 MB/s in reads and 5000 MB/s in writes. This performance is made possible by the significant bandwidth advantages of the new Intel platform's PCIe 3.0 interface combined with the SRCv's 24-6Gb/s SAS interfaces and Seagate's SAS Pulsar SSDs that deliver sequential reads of 370 MB/s and sequential writes of 200 MB/s. Previous-generation systems based on PCIe 2.0 are typically capable of less than 3000 MB/s data transfer rates.

Yesterday, we reported on Intel's embarrassing gaffe at demonstrating racing game F1 1 2011 running on a prototype ultrabook with an Ivy Bridge processor, where it was really just a video. Since then, AnandTech has seen that game play on an Ivy Bridge notebook just fine, but the best proof has come now, where they got hold of the actual ultrabook at the centre of the controversy and tested it with that game. The result? It works just fine, like we suspected. It looks like Intel just need a little PR makeover, is all. Video proof follows.

Acer America today elevates its highly-touted Acer Aspire TimelineX series notebooks with a new sleek and stylish, thin and light design complemented by long battery life and the latest technology and new entertainment features, including Dolby Home Theater v4 Audio. Models are available now in the United States.

The Acer Aspire TimelineX Series is a best-in-breed notebook line that combines performance and portability in an incredibly beautiful and refined form factor. The notebook's upscale look and feel centers around its uncluttered, elegant design. The notebooks have a clean layout with a large touchpad and chiclet keyboard to promote both enjoyment and productivity. Available in three sizes -- the 13.3-inch 3830T, 14-inch 4830T and 15.6-inch 5830T -- the designs measure about an inch thin and are very lightweight.