Oblivion has been named ultimate game of the year at the 2006 Golden Joystick Awards.

The Bethesda Softworks title also picked up the game of the year prize for both the PC and Xbox.
Oblivion fought off competition from the likes of Call of Duty 2, Resident Evil 4, Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Pro Evolution Soccer 5 to scoop the ultimate game accolade.
The honour for the best online game of the year went to Age of Empires III, while Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories took home the online handheld game of year prize.
This year's awards, held at London's Park Lane Hilton hotel, were voted for by more than 500,000 readers of computer and video games magazines.
Resident Evil 4 picked up the PlayStation game of the year award and New Super Mario Bros was crowned Nintendo game of the year.
Sony's highly anticipated PlayStation 3, which is set for release in the US in November, scooped the one to watch for 2007 award.
US-based Electronic Arts was named publisher of the year and Game was named top retailer.
Other winners on the night included Nintendogs for girls' choice and family game.
The coveted Golden Joystick Awards were first held back in 1982, when Atari, Commodore and Spectrum ruled the market and Sony were still best known for the Walkman.
This year, for the first time ever, the awards were webcast on the Computer and Video Games website.
Event organiser James Ashton-Tyler said: "It's great to see that gamers have rewarded Elder Scrolls IV with three awards. The game represents a genuine advance for the role-playing genre both in its structure and presentation. Its success at this year's Joysticks is just reward for the talented team responsible for its creation.
"The Golden Joystick Awards are the only way UK gamers can directly tell games publishers which games made their year. With a record number of votes cast in 2006, the Golden Joystick Awards have cemented their position as a benchmark for the industry. Winning an award chosen by expert gamers is the ultimate accolade."
The video game sector is a $10bn industry in the US and more than 90 per cent of all American children and teenagers play video games, on average for about 30 minutes daily.

The winners of the 2006 Golden Joystick Awards in full are as follows:

Ultimate Game of the Year - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Editor's Game of the Year - Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Family Game Award - Nintendogs
Girls Choice Award - Nintendogs
All-Nighter Award - Pro Evolution Soccer 5
PlayStation 2 Game of the Year - Resident Evil 4
Nintendo Game of the Year - New Super Mario Brothers
Xbox Game of the Year - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
PC Game of the Year - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Handheld Game of the Year - GTA: Liberty City Stories
Online Game of the Year - Age of Empires III
Soundtrack of the Year - Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Innovation Award - Xbox Live Marketplace
The One to Watch for 2007 - Sony PlayStation 3
Favourite Character Award - Lara Croft
Publisher of the Year - Electronic Arts
Retailer of the Year - Game

The latest entry in the budget video card space comes in the form of the ATI Radeon X1650 XT. Designed to supplant the Radeon X1600 XT in ATI's product lineup, the X1650 XT appears to be targeted at the popular NVIDIA GeForce 7600XT.

ATI's newest card uses the RV560 GPU, which is almost identical to the RV570 powering the X1950 Pro, but has some of the RV570's functionality disabled. The X1650 XT sports 24 pixel shaders, eight vertex shaders, and eight texture units. Clock speed on the GPU is set at 575MHz with the 256MB of GDDR3 running at 675MHz. The data path between GPU and GDDR3 is only 128-bit, compared to the 256-bit path on the X1950 Pro.

The Radeon X1650 XT does CrossFire, and ATI has indicated that they will eventually support for three- and even four-card CrossFire configurations down the line.

As is the case with any video card launch, there are a bunch of reviews of the card available with detailed benchmarks on popular gaming titles. In summary, performance is about what one would expect from a $149 video card. As an illustration, The Tech Report's tests using Half-Life 2: Episode One showed that the X1650XT held its own against the 7600GT, hitting 51.2fps at 1280x1024 in a single-card setup and 93.9fps in a CrossFire configuration. Having said that, the X1650 XT was near the bottom of the tested video cards in the HL2 shootout.

When it comes to power and noise, the X1650 XT is a mixed bag. According to The Tech Reports's measurements, the X1650 XT consumes 148W when idle and maxed out at 209W. Both figures were in the lower third of the cards evaluated. Noise-wise, the X1650XT was near the top when idle, at 44.1 decibels. The only louder cards in a single-card configuration were the X1900XT, X1900 XTX, and GeForce 7900GT. It was much better under load, the the noise level only increasing to 46.3 decibels.

At $149, the Radeon X1650 XT is a decent performer. However, discerning gamers will likely be best servyed by spending another $50 to get a significantly better video card like the Radeon X1950 Pro or the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS.

ATI says that the Radeon X1650 XT will be available in stores on November 13.
Some gaming screenshots.

It was bound to happen, but a number of our readers have recently sent in e-mails asking what graphics cards would be best for rendering graphics in adult video games. With the adult industry quickly growing its obvious why 3D sex technology is starting to take off. ThriXXX Technology is one of the leaders in realtime 3D rendering for adult ‘game’ titles and has produced a number of game titles in this genera over the years. ThriXXX is also the software behind porn mega star Jenna Jameson’s latest online venture – Virtually Jenna. Virtually Jenna is the official video game of Jenna Jameson and since it uses the popular ThriXXX graphics engine to render it we figured this would be the best combination to test out ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards to see who is best when it comes to adult gaming performance.

Since testing graphics cards on adult video games is something unheard of it wasn't surprising to not find a single ThriXXX game title listed on NVIDIA's SLI optimized game list even though it has 350 games that are SLI optimized. To be fair ATI doesn't list any adult titles for their CrossFire platforms either. It seems that those that play adult game titles really have no clue of what works and what doesn't, so it makes sense why we got those e-mails.

After looking into the game Virtual Jenna it was found that the system requirements seemed pretty easy as the game requirements state that it needs at least an Intel Pentium 4 processor and 256MB of system memory and a 3D graphics card that has at least 64MB of memory on board.

So have fun playng this new XXX game.

We’ve been very impressed with Ati’s high end cards over recent months but there’s been a gaping hole in its product line in the $250 mark for some time: Nvidia’s 7600-series cards have proven to be the best price-performance combination. Ati’s X1600 series just couldn’t compete.

The X1650 Pro is another increment in what’s becoming an increasingly fragmented and confusing series. To make matters worse the X1650 Pro is available in two flavours: one with GDDR2 memory and the other (like this one) with GDDR3. Both flavours have 256MB of 128-bit memory.

The original X1600 XT was poor and GeCube’s X1650 Pro is not a massive upgrade. The core clock speed has been boosted 10Mhz to 600Mhz and the memory clock has increased to 740MHz. There are still 5 vertex shaders and 12 pixel shaders.

In our medium (1280 x 1024) tests it averaged 21fps in Far Cry and 23fps in Call of Duty 2. In other words it made no difference to Far Cry over an X1600 XT and provided a 5fps boost in CoD2. None of these scores are playable.


The fan is an unobtrusive whoosh and GeCube bundles no software: keeping the price down. Ati believes this card will rival Nvidia’s 7600 GS but it’s $50 more expensive (with similar performance). Nvidia’s 7600 GT is significantly more powerful and $40 cheaper. However, if you want to stick with Ati for the excellent AVIVO features, video transcoding and ability to use HDR and antialiasing at the same time, we recommend choosing an X1800 GTO. These now cost just $30 more and play all games at 1280 x 1024. Ati’s aggressive price drops have returned to bite it in the bottom.

We’ve been very impressed with Ati’s high end cards over recent months but there’s been a gaping hole in its product line in the $250 mark for some time: Nvidia’s 7600-series cards have proven to be the best price-performance combination. Ati’s X1600 series just couldn’t compete.

The X1650 Pro is another increment in what’s becoming an increasingly fragmented and confusing series. To make matters worse the X1650 Pro is available in two flavours: one with GDDR2 memory and the other (like this one) with GDDR3. Both flavours have 256MB of 128-bit memory.

The original X1600 XT was poor and GeCube’s X1650 Pro is not a massive upgrade. The core clock speed has been boosted 10Mhz to 600Mhz and the memory clock has increased to 740MHz. There are still 5 vertex shaders and 12 pixel shaders.

In our medium (1280 x 1024) tests it averaged 21fps in Far Cry and 23fps in Call of Duty 2. In other words it made no difference to Far Cry over an X1600 XT and provided a 5fps boost in CoD2. None of these scores are playable.

The fan is an unobtrusive whoosh and GeCube bundles no software: keeping the price down. Ati believes this card will rival Nvidia’s 7600 GS but it’s $50 more expensive (with similar performance). Nvidia’s 7600 GT is significantly more powerful and $40 cheaper. However, if you want to stick with Ati for the excellent AVIVO features, video transcoding and ability to use HDR and antialiasing at the same time, we recommend choosing an X1800 GTO. These now cost just $30 more and play all games at 1280 x 1024. Ati’s aggressive price drops have returned to bite it in the bottom.

ATI Technologies has launched its mid-range Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card.

The company says that the Radeon X1950 Pro is the first graphics card to make use of new native CrossFire technology, simplifying the multi-GPU experience by eliminating the need for a branded CrossFire Edition card.
The Radeon X1950 Pro is also ATI's first 80nm graphics core, and features 36 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders, and 12 texture processing units.
In a statement, Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager at PC Business, ATI Technologies, said, "The Radeon X1950 Pro has an incredibly good value, which shows that ATI is taking gamers feedback to heart with the introduction of new native CrossFire technology to make it easier than ever for gamers to get up and get running with a CrossFire set-up."
The Radeon X1950 Pro offers the same image quality as ATI's flagship Radeon X1950 XTX, including the ability to enable FP16 High Dynamic Range effects with anti-aliasing at the same time.
The graphics card provides exceptional video quality while playing today's high-definition media formats, displaying one billion colors, or 10-bit throughout the graphics pipeline. The new card is also HDCP-compliant, including a built-in EEPROM and HDCP key. In addition, the card is ready for Windows Vista.
The Radeon X1950 Pro is shipping at an estimated street price (ESP) of $199 (Rs 9,154).

Nvidia Corp., a leading supplier of graphics technologies, has announced a new graphics processing unit (GPU) for mobile computers. The new chip targets systems designed for gamers that are mostly desktop replacement type of laptops and are hardly tailored for use on the go. Nevertheless, the launch increases the gap between performance offered by ATI and Nvidia in the mobile graphics space.

The GeForce Go 7950 GTX has 24 pixel processors, 8 vertex processors and is clocked at 575MHz, up 75MHz compared to the predecessor, the GeForce Go 7900 GTX. Nvidia recommends to use 512MB of 1400MHz GDDR3 memory with 256-bit along with the new mobile graphics chip, which is another 200MHz improvement over the previous high-end graphics part.

Even though the market of high-performance mobile computers for gamers is relatively small, it is highly profitable and Nvidia enjoys the lead over ATI Technologies here. Currently the fastest mobile graphics chip the Markham, Ontario-based developer can offer is Mobility Radeon X1800 XT, which has 16 pixel processors, 8 vertex processor and 550MHz clock-speed. Technical specs of the GeForce Go 7950 GTX are close to those of pre-overclocked GeForce 7900 GT graphics boards for desktops, which usually either deliver equal performance with desktop Radeon X1800 XT (625MHz core-clock), or outperform the rival tangibly.

“2006 is a phenomenal year of growth and technology leadership for Nvidia notebook GPUs. The efficient Nvidia GeForce 7-series GPU architecture continues to deliver the ultimate visual experience in notebooks of every class – from lightweight ultra-portables to HD DVD multimedia machines,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of the GPU business unit at Nvidia.

The GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics processor is produced using 90nm process technology and has power envelope of 45W. To preserve energy, the chip supports PowerMizer 6.0 technology as well as some other features.

Notebooks featuring the Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPU are available for order from notebook suppliers in North America and Europe, including Dell, Sager, ABS, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, ProStar, Voodoo PC, Chiligreen, Cybersystem, Evesham, Multirama, Rock, and XS2.

PCMagazine says the NVIDIA GeoForce Go 7950 GTZ is the world's fastest mobile graphics processing unit (GPU), supporting games and applications for DirectX 9.0, Shader Model 3.0, and high dymanic range (HDR) lighting.

"2006 is a phenomenal year of growth and technology leadership for NVIDIA notebook GPUs. The efficient NVIDIA GeForce 7 series GPU architecture continues to deliver the ultimate visual experience in notebooks of every class—from lightweight ultra-portables to HD DVD multimedia machines," says Jeff Fisher, Senior Vice President of the GPU Business Unit at NVIDIA. "Notebooks based on our flagship GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPU will deliver the premiere visceral experience for gamers."

"Dell is fully committed to delivering the most intensely realistic gaming and entertainment experience to PC gamers," said Brett Faulk, director of Inspiron and mobile XPS product marketing. "Dell XPS notebooks have swept the awards thanks to their sheer gaming performance and the Dell XPS M1710 with GeForce Go 7950 GTX is our best yet."

Among those planned to introduce new laptops featuring the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics adapter are Dell, Sager, ABS, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, ProStar, and Voodoo PC.

This past week, 99.7 percent of ATI stockholders voted in favor of AMD’s acquisition of ATI. There was almost no question for these stockholders that aligning themselves with the fastest growing chip company and number two worldwide supplier of microprocessors would be beneficial for the GPU company. With the ability to pair ATI’s already advanced graphics processing units with AMD’s efficient, fast, and energy-saving microprocessors, and with the further gains from integrating the two systems together, the acquisition should turn out quite well for both companies involved.

But if NVIDIA stockholders were given the ability to vote at the ATI shareholder meeting mentioned earlier, they would have voted even more overwhelmingly in favor of the acquisition. In fact, since AMD announced it would attempt a friendly takeover of ATI in July of this year, NVIDIA’s shares stopped plummeting and have since grown over 73 percent.

NVIDIA’s shares from May-Present. Notice how stock prices, which were quickly decreasing, took a turn for the better right around the time of the AMD and ATI merger announcement. Image courtesy of MSN|Money

This result may sound counterintuitive at first. In fact, one may think that the pairing of ATI and AMD would create a juggernaut, an incredible foe that NVIDIA would have to wrestle with. This would most likely have the opposite effect on NVIDIA shares, driving them down in value, instead of straight up through the roof.

Some might argue that this stock price jump resulted from shareholder expectations that Intel, AMD’s largest rival, will soon purchase NVIDIA. This doesn’t make much sense, however, for two reasons. First, Intel is a sinking ship, and no NVIDIA shareholder wants to sink with it. Second, Intel already devotes thousands of its employees to graphics processors (however inferior some believe they are), and so the overlap of resources by acquiring NVIDIA would be wasteful.

Upon careful examination of the results of the merger, however, the opposite becomes clear: ATI is using this as an opportunity to step out of the high-end market and into the general consumer market. With 3DLabs already bowing out of the high-end 3D GPU industry, this leaves NVIDIA the only company that will be supplying top-notch graphics processors to the DCC industry.

This becomes all the clearer once you consider AMD’s goals and the announcements at the most recent ATI shareholder meeting. AMD’s slogan is “50 by 15”, a reference to the fact that they want 50 percent of the world’s population to own computers by 2015 (presumably with AMD processors in them). ATI’s President and CEO, David Orton, echoed this sentiment at the latest ATI stockholder meeting, saying he believed that they can make available $100 personal computers “before 2010”.

The kinds of computers that will cost $100 and will be available to a half of the global population will most definitely not be the kinds of computers that one could use a serious 3D modeling program on, let alone render a scene (in under a week). Although AMD’s goals are laudable, they also mean that a powerful 3D GPU company, ATI, has just stepped out of the running for producing graphics processors for our use.

No wonder NVIDIA shareholders were excited; now they are the unparalleled dominators of the high-paying high-end market.

Whether or not this is a cheerful outcome for the DCC industry as a whole remains to be seen. Usually when there’s only one unchallenged ruler of an industry (NVIDIA), the results are bad for consumers (us), because the ruler can charge incredibly high prices and produce otherwise inferior goods, because, after all, who are the consumers going to turn to instead?

At the same time, NVIDIA may try to keep at the cutting edge of quality and price in order to deter potential future challengers, and to ensure it gets repeat business from all of us. I certainly hope it chooses the latter option, since it looks like I will be buying quite a few NVIDIA cards well into the future.

The 8800 GTX (in prototype above) and GTS are the first models to be pulled off the company’s G80 processing core and describing them as anything other than jaw dropping would pretty much be an understatement.

Being 11 inches in length the GTX is a monster but it backs up this bulk with a 575MHz core, 768MB of 900MHz GDDR3 memory, a 384bit memory bus capable of a whopping 86GBps of memory bandwidth, 128 shaders at 1.35GHz and an incredible 38.4bn pixels per second theoretical fill rate.

As for the GTS edition we’ll see slightly toned down specs with a 500MHz core, 640MB of GDDR3 memory, a 320bit memory bus creating 64GBps of memory bandwidth and 96 shaders speeding along at 1.2GHz. Physcially, the card will also be smaller at a less intimidating nine inches.

The new Ati chipsets are aimed at supporting the upcoming 4x4 platforms (the next quad-core solutions from AMD the K8L).

The budget range will see the arrival of the RD550, a chipset that has been derived from the existing RD580 chipset that powers the current 1900 XTX series. The RD580 itself will continue to evolve and will be able to support three GPUs and two CPUs by the first half of next year.
The mid-range and high-end will see the arrival of the RD970, RD790 and RD740 chipsets, both of which will support the AM2 processors. The RD790 will be aimed at the enthusiast market, and will feature support for either 4 GPUs on 8X PCIe lanes or two GPUs on dual 16x Lanes. Nothing has been revealed yet about the RS790 or the RS740.

London, 2038.

According to legend, when the ravens depart the Tower of London, it will crumble to rubble and disaster will befall England. As man became more dependent on science, believing only in what he could define or create, ancient knowledge and rituals were lost to the antiquity of time. Prophecies that had stood as warning for untold generations were seen as archaic folly or ignorant superstition; so when the harbingers of evil began to manifest, few saw and fewer believed.

When the demons finally came, there was little that stood in their way.

Emerging from the swirling chaotic Hellgate, they overwhelmed humanity's defenses quickly and systematically. Even the nuclear and biological weaponry employed by a few desperate nations did little more than slow the apocalypse. The nature of the demons’ attack presented little in the way of strategic military targets to the generals of mankind’s armies. With no obvious headquarters to bombard, visible supply lines to cut, or known leaders to assassinate, the usual tactics of war were useless.

Only those that still practiced the holy, ancient, and arcane rights could stand against the dark invaders, using weapons and spells forged in the traditions of their forefathers. Their successes were scattered, and the leaders of the great military forces could neither understand nor accept their strange ways. This mystical resistance drew the immediate attention of the immensely powerful creatures, seemingly immune to the weapons of mankind. Soon, those that had preserved the knowledge of how to combat the demons shifted their focus from driving them back into the twisting nether to saving as many of their fellow humans as they could. They retreated to the relative sanctuary of the London Underground, a haven whose construction they had orchestrated decades before.

Now, the once great city lies in ruins. A massive, sinister gash in the fabric of our reality swirls and churns, dominating the horizon as it blends into a permanently darkened sky. The Invasion, the unspeakable cataclysm that befell London, eventually engulfed humanity. The powerful nations of man were eradicated, and the decades-long process called The Burn – the transformation of our world into theirs – had begun.

But mankind is a race of survivors. Men and women hide in the shadows of their former dominance, struggling to survive, yearning to strike back at their conquerors. These survivors banded together, and they are learning.

Learning how to travel undetected.

Learning how to forge weapons capable of piercing unfathomable defenses.

Learning how to harness the forgotten and arcane powers of magic.

Learning how to kill demons and close the Hellgate...

Video card specifications and reviews that really get into the nitty-gritty are great - that is, if you have the time to digest everything. At the end of the day, all a gamer really needs to know is what is the best video card for the money.

Best PCIe around 100$

Ati's Radeon X800 GTO 128MB

GPU name: R420, 13 micron technology12 Pixel Shaders, 6 Vertex Shaders, 12 Texture Units, 12 Raster Operations processors, 256 bit memory bus, 400 MHz core, 350 MHz DDR (700 MHz Effective) Memory

A card with 256 bit memory in the lowest price category? No way!

This card has been comfortably in the $100 - $150 price category, but now that it retails for less than $100, it hands other cards in this league their butts - the vanilla 6600, X700, and X1300 PRO simply can't compete with an X800 GTO. These cheap X800 GTOs usually come with slower memory and clock speeds than their 256MB counterparts, but they are still amazing for the price. Some people will complain about their lack of SM 3.0 capability, but in this category it really doesn't matter, the GTO has the power to pull good performance regardless.

From nVidia:

Geforce 7300 GT GDDR3

GPU name: G73, 90 nm technology, 8 Pixel shaders, 4 Vertex shaders, 8 Texture units, 8 Raster operations processors , 128 bit memory bus , 500 MHz core, 700 MHz GDDR3 (1000 MHz Effective) Memory
Not to be confused with the slower DDR2 Version of the 7300 GT, the GDDR3 equipped 7300 GTs are pretty darn quick; they at least keep up with the 7600 GS. It holds up well against the X800 GTO, and is another great sub-$100 choice that can make a cheap gaming rig a reality.

Best PCIe card for around 140$

Geforce 7600 GT

GPU name: G73, 90 nm technology, 12 Pixel shaders, 5 Vertex shaders, 12 Texture units, 8 Raster operations processors, 128 bit memory bus, 560 MHz core, 700 MHz DDR (1400 MHz Effective) Memory

The 7600 GT is an amazing card in this price range, sporting new SM 3.0 technology and very high clock speeds to deliver excellent performance. Its weakest feature is its 128 bit memory bus, but its high memory speeds offset that disadvantage and make it competitive with 256 bit cards like the X850 XT.

Best PCIe Card For ~$200

Ati's Radeon X1900 GT

GPU name: R580, 90 nm technology, 36 Pixel shaders, 8 Vertex shaders, 12 Texture units, 12 Raster operations processors, 256 bit external memory bus (512 bit internal ring bus)

Version 1: 575 MHz core, 600 MHz DDR (1200 MHz effective) Memory
Version 2: 512 MHz core, 660 MHz DDR (1320 MHz effective) Memory

The X1900 GT is based on the X1900 XT core, except it is crippled with some pixel shaders disabled and has a lower clockspeed. There are now two versions: the original 575 MHz core/600 MHz memory version, and the new 512 MHz core/6600 MHz memory version. Both perform similarly.

The card's main competition is the 7900 GS, which it soundly beats in almost every benchmark. The worst thing I can say about the X1900 GT is that its X1900 XT 256MB cousin performs much better for not much more money.