One of the world's leading gaming monitor and IT accessories brands - AGON by AOC - is proud to announce the AGON PRO AG274QGM, the fastest mini LED monitor. The 68.6 cm (27") AG274QGM boasts an IPS panel with QHD resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels), a whopping 300 Hz refresh rate, NVIDIA G-SYNC ULTIMATE support and includes the NVIDIA Reflex Analyzer. Complementing this impressive monitor, AGON by AOC announces that the gaming mouse AOC GAMING GM510 now supports NVIDIA Reflex, too, which can be used together with the AG274QGM to give players accurate figures on their system latency. Gamers can now enter competitive matches knowing their latency is as low as it can be and their fast reflexes are not hindered by their equipment. Let's drop into the hot zone.

In the competitive environment of fast-paced games, where victory is measured in milliseconds, the stakes are sky-high and a single miscalculated aim or even a slight input lag can mean an early loss. Games using NVIDIA's Reflex API will reduce the input latency by dynamically synchronising Geforce GPUs with the CPU, so gamers can acquire targets faster, react quicker, and aim accurately. Furthermore, NVIDIA's Reflex Analyzer suite can work in tandem with the NVIDIA Reflex supported monitors and input devices, letting users see exactly what their total system latency is and allowing them to jump into games knowing their PC is operating at the lowest possible latency.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of high-performance quality PC components and peripherals. With the Light² 180, Sharkoon introduces the newest member of the Light² family. The gaming mouse aims to impress with an extremely low weight and easy handling. It boasts a high-performance PMW3360 sensor with up to 12,000 DPI and a symmetrical design with a honeycomb-structured upper shell.

A particularly pleasant handling is offered by the low weight of the Light² 180 at only 63 grams. The honeycomb structure of the upper shell should support a secure hold in the hand while it also contributes to the light weight of the Light² 180. However, the shell can be exchanged for a closed version, which is supplied with the mouse, in just a few simple steps - allowing the mouse to be adapted to individual needs. With dimensions of 120 x 63.5 x 39 mm, the Light² 180 is not only one of the lightest, but also the most compact representative of the Sharkoon Light² series. Thanks to its symmetrical shape, the Light² 180 should offer comfortable use, regardless of the preferred grip and playing style.

We already posted our review of the Sharkoon Light² 180.

It 'tis the season of rumors and assumptions for this years winter time blockbusters. According to Computer and Video Games, the following information, claiming to reveal the game's release date and a load of multiplayer features, was first posted on the official Black Ops forums in a thread that was later taken down, and its cached version is unavailable. It was then reposted in another thread on Activision's forums, which was also killed off by the publisher, but its cache remains available (via MP1st). None of this information is confirmed, but there's no reason it couldn't be genuine as it all sounds feasible. The list is full of new modes but makes no mention of a new game engine.

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), announced today that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crossed the $1 billion mark in sales since its launch on November 8, 2011, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information. Highlighting the trend of interactive entertainment gaining a greater hold of audiences worldwide, the game achieved this milestone in just 16 days, eclipsing the record set in 2009 by the feature film "Avatar," which reached the $1 billion milestone in 17 days.

While 2011 box office revenue is on the decline - down 4 percent this year at $9.4 billion, compared with $9.8 billion in 2010 -- the number of people purchasing and participating in gaming is on the rise, with no sign of slowing.(1) With more than 30 million gamers, the Call of Duty community now exceeds the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid.

The latest beta drivers and the first in the 290 series have been released by NVIDIA today, supporting all graphics cards since the venerable 6-series. Their main new feature are official support for enabling ambient occlusion settings in the control panel separately for specific games and enabling NVIDIA Surround on the new X79 SLI-certified motherboards. Ambient occlusion (AO) is settable for uber-popular games The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. So, what does AO do? We'll let Andrew Burns of NVIDIA explain:

If you're unfamiliar with Ambient Occlusion, it is most easily described as a way to make in-game shadowing more realistic, and therefore better.

What he doesn't say of course, is how it kills your frame rate, especially on lower end hardware. Anyway, there's all the usual goodies in this release: 3D Vision game profiles for games such as MW3, Diablo 3 & LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (yes really). There's a HD audio update and nine fixes too, including one for random flickering of the Windows boot logo as it's loading or fading away and a fix for the mouse cursor flickering and shaking in games such as Crysis 2 & Deus Ex when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play. The NVIDIA product release page is here and they have a snazzy-looking driver selector here. The release notes follow.

In news, that will be sweet music to the ears of honest gamers, InfinityWard has been busily banning cheaters who exploit loopholes and coding errors in the game to get one over others. The figure is currently around the 1600 mark and rising, as InfinityWard's community man Robert Bowling posted on Twitter: Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works. Please cont. to report offenders. He then added: We are doing mass bans on PC as well while we work on updates. He has promised that a hot fix is in the works for multiple glitches that have been reported.

Now, while cheating is wrong, it can also be an incredibly fun, but guilty pleasure. So, is it really all the cheater's fault, when opportunities like this are laid at there feet? It's like giving someone a cake and telling them not to eat it. Perhaps the program code should have been more bug free in the first place, too?

While the Modern Warfare 3 launch has got off pretty smoothly overall with few technical glitches and made Activision a shed-load of money, it seems that some XBOX 360 players are not so lucky. g4tv.com reports that there is a "A 14-page thread on Xbox.com points to multiple XBOX 360 gamers getting similar disc read errors from the game." The general symptoms seem to be that the console will either not read the disc at all, or starts, but then falls over flat on its face with an ungainly crash a little while later. While many posters have suggested solutions, there doesn't appear to be a definitive fix. Therefore, the best course of action for this problem is to return the disc to the retailer and ask for a replacement.

Finally, If you're a console gamer, then this of course serves you right for not being a PC gamer and enjoying the benefit of superior hardware. It should also be noted that the PC version comes as a download on the Steam online network. This eliminates any DVD read issues as there's no DVD (the installation disc in the retail version can be ignored) and also greatly improves loading times both at the start and during level changes, since it loads from the hard disc.

Shattering its own day-one sales records, Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced that its highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of more than $400 million and more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.

This marks the third consecutive year that the Call of Duty franchise has set day one launch records across all forms of entertainment, something no other entertainment franchise in any medium has ever accomplished. Last year, in North America and the United Kingdom , Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops had estimated day-one sell-through of $360 million and in 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, set day-one records with estimated sell through of $310 million, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.

On November 8, 2011, millions of fans attended more than 13,000 midnight openings at retail stores worldwide. According to Microsoft, after just two days, the number of gamers playing simultaneously on Xbox Live set a new peak concurrency record.