TechLighten

TechLighten yourself on everything tech!

Well no doubt Crysis is a real power-hungry game and I can understand about people being worried if their rigs would be able to handle the almighty follow up in the series, that is Crysis: Warhead. Fear not though, EA has just released the official system specifications and they are not THAT much extra-ordinarily demanding, just compare your rig, I know most of you will happily find yourself (and your beloved rig) in the safe-zone. Here are the official specs:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista), Intel Core 2.0 GHz
(2.2 GHz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better
RAM: 1GB (1.5GB on Windows Vista)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
(Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or better
VRAM: 256MB of Graphics Memory Storage: 15GB
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible ODD: DVD-ROM
OS: Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Vista
DirectX: DX9.0c or DX10

The official site is ready for pre-orders. Crysis: Warhead will be released on Sept, 12th in Europe, followed by a Sept, 16th release in North America. For some new screenshots of the game  Read the rest of this entry »

There were some issues between the parties involved in the USB3.0 game back then in May, that could’ve possibly led to forks (and ended as a disaster, same as what happened to USB1.0). Now though, it looks like all the parties i.e. Microsoft, AMD, Dell, NEC have finally signed up for the new specs and all the forking issues have been resolved (through unknown negotiations probably).

Intel has already released the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) as well. Hit the read link for Intel’s USB3.0 specs page.

You might be thinkin’ whats so good about USB3.0? Well, we’re talking about 5Gbps of bandwidth for all our future USB devices. That’s alot of data transfer speed to handle. I can’t wait to copy all of my favorite MP3s at speeds of 5Gbps to my future USB3.0-ipod. Can you?

[Read] [via The Inquirer]

Motherload is probably the most addictive and time-wasting flash game i’ve played so far.

You control a drilling tank on Mars, the goal is simple; keep drilling going deeper and deeper, filling your storage bay with precious minerals. Once your storage tank is full, get back to surface, sell your minerals, earn cash,  refuel, then get back to drilling.

The game is addictive in the sense that in the beginning you are pretty much limited on all accessories. Your fuel-tank holds very little fuel so you have to get back to surface at short intervals, as you earn more you get to buy new upgrades and your drilling machine gets more faster and convenient, although the game’s difficulty also increases as you go more deeper.

You get rewards for finding treasures and artifacts. All in all Motherload is an awesome way to spend a boring afternoon on. I’d recommend to try this 2D game atleast once. Do comment about how addictive you think this game is.

[Play Motherload]

With less than 3 months left to the release of Tombraider: Underworld, Eidos Interactive has brought a new Lara Croft Model into the spotlight, this time a 23 year old professional display-gymnast, Alison Caroll. She had to make her way up by beating out hundreds of other applicants, each of which was wishing to be the next Lara Croft Model.

The first few release pics look promising albeit a bit amateurishly done. See the mole on her left knee? Click on the thumbnails for close ups. The 3rd and 5th pics look specifically gross.

[Source] [Source]

So we’ve all been hearing about how the efficiency of solar cells is being increased after every couple of months, well how about solar cells that could generate energy even at night? And even cool your PC components in the process of generating energy for your devices? That’s the kinda solar cells the Idaho National Laboratory’s physicist Steven Novack and his team has been working on lately.

These flexible solar cells consist of massive arrays of nanoantennas, which can collect energy from light and other sources. These nanoantennas absorb a targeted wavelength range of mid-infrared rays. Since heat is mostly emitted in form of IR, so these solar cells can actually cool your future gadgets by absorbing those IR rays that your overheating gadgets release, and create useful energy during the process.

Another good thing is that our beloved planet Earth is actually emitting these IR rays all the the time, because of the sunlight it absorbs during day time. So if these solar panels actually make it to the mainstream market it’d be a massive upgrade to our current solars cells that operate during day time only. Hit the source link for more info.
[Source]

Like most of you Prince of Persia fans out there, I was surprised in a positive way to see pictures of this Hollywood version of the Prince of Persia, Jake Gyllenhaal, who is currently on the set of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film is being shot in Morroco and the UK, and will be starring Gemma Arterton (as Tamina) along with Jake. Jake’s surely got the physique and hair like the Prince of Persia we all love and like, lets hope he proves to be as tough as the real prince when the movie is released in May 2010. More pictures, after the break.

Word on the street is, Apple is working on dedicated video chips for their Mac line of computers. The rumored video hardware, which currently is “pure speculation” will supposedly loosen the load on Mac computers’ CPUs by taking the responsibility of most of the video processing activities. The video processing chips will support decoding H.264 videos, which by the way, is one of the codecs being used in Blu-Ray High definition video discs.

Alley Insider, which is the source of this speculation went as far as saying that Apple will be adding this dedicated video hardware to all of its upcoming Mac computers.

…the rumor I have heard, that I believe to be a fact, that has simply yet to be confirmed. I have heard that Apple plans to add hardware video decoding to ALL of its new computers beginning fairly soon, certainly this year.

Well this is good news for all you Apple-lovin’ folks out there, lets wait and see what else Apple’s got for all your geeky needs.
[Source]