James Bond: Skyfall Trailer and sneak peaks

If you are like me (a James Bond fan) then you have probably seen all of the 22 films, and are waiting for the 23th. As promised earlier I will be following the rumors and news on Skyfall until it is released. Many of us are happy that production is continuing, as last year MGM was close to bankruptcy and production stalled, I myself was a bit nervous as throughout my childhood I have really enjoyed watching Bond films and I would not have liked this to be the last. It is sad that things come to an end, like my favorite T.V show, House M.D which ends next Monday, but thankfully the filming of James Bond's new adventure, "Skyfall" continues.

Now for the plot: what we know til now is that the organization that Bond works for, MI6 is under attack, now if you have guessed that Bond will attempt to save it then you are indeed correct. In the movie Bond's loyalty to M will be challenged, and he will undertake new risks to save MI6, and stay loyal to M.

The cast:
Good news, as all of you probably know Daniel Craig is returning as James Bond, as for the villains, and Bond girls we are going to see some new characters, but first some more good news, Judi Dench is also returning to play the role on M. Now as for the villains we will see Javier Bardem play the role of the lead villain, Raoul Silva. However this is no ordinary villain, Javier Bardem himself stated that, "[he is] more than a villain." Could he somehow be connected with Bond, or maybe M, we'll have to wait and see. The last of the important characters is Naomie Harris, she is to play the role of Eve, an agent and accomplice to James Bond. Her character lacks much experience in the field, however she believes she can match Bond. If you truly are a James Bond fan then you probably remember Q, and his absence in some of the newer movies, well he is returning, being played by Ben Whishaw. So thats what you need to know about the characters, of course there are more characters but these are the main ones.

Now what would a movie be without some controversy? Apparently rumors are that James Bond will be moving away from his traditional Martini, instead he is to drink beer. This news was leaked out a month or so ago, and it brought with it a lot of outrage and controversy. I myself think that Bond drinking beer is a terrible idea, it takes away from his class, and traditional view. For 22 consecutive movies Bond was either seen with a Vodka Martini ("Shaken, not stirred"), or in the newer films a Dry Martini. I think that Bond drinking beer will tarnish his image, as it will make him look more ordinary.

Recently Bond was seen with an Aston Martin DBS, however some fans claim they have seen a DB5 on sight while filming, and it also appears in the trailer. However the powerful DBS is also on scene. It is nice to see these beautiful cars present, something we have seen in past films too. Remember that scene in Casino Royale when Bond flips his DBS in order to save Vesper? Well in that scene more than a dozen cars where destroyed, painful to watch for some, and for others pure action. In Skyfall there is to be some interesting chase scenes too, so stay tuned.

Sony Pictures has recently released a trailer, check it out for yourself:

Nvidia Kepler: Problems (Updated)

Remember in my last article I mentioned "problems", well it turns out that there may be more problems. In my last article what I meant by problems was TSMC's yield/shortage issues. The Gtx 600's appear to have yet more issues besides not being in stock, in fact technical issues. There are already problems with the adaptive V-Sync in some cases, but that will be quickly fixed in a driver update, so that is not the problem in question here. The problem in question is a new mysterious problem, one that many sites claim may involve the recall of all GTX 670, 680, 690 cards. That would mean that the already out of stock cards would require replacement, and that cant be good, add to that the severe shortage issues and you got yourself a problem, and by you I mean Nvidia, and of course the gamers that could be experiencing issues. That is all what is currently known, however we should be seeing more on this problem soon. Anyway, remember how in my last article I said that the Gtx 680 beat the Hd7970, that is because it did, the problem is that it is nearly impossible to find one in stock, the same goes for the Gtx 690, and in some cases the Gtx670. Nvidia has had shortages for the Kepler cards, but are all the Gtx600's running on the Kepler architecture? Well the truth is no, all of the lower end Gtx 600 cards like the GT605 all they way through the GT645 are re-branded Fermi cards, not the new Kepler Cards, bummer eh? Anyway real gamers will probably not be looking at those as an option, but many budget users will not get the benefits of the new architecture. It is a bit disappointing to see the shortages of such great cards, and I hope that there are no serious problems, however Nvidia has announced a few weeks ago that shortages of the Kepler cards are to improve somewhere in May, lets hope this happens, as today it is May 21, and I still don't see any Gtx 680's, 690's, and I only see one Gtx 670 in stock at Newegg.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Earlier today the web has spit out rumors about "eventual degradation under load", which lead many of us to believe that the cards may have a problem. However we may lay our minds to rest, Nvidia has announced that these rumors are not true, and that the GK104 chips are fine. According to Xbitlabs, "Before making it to the market, all the new GPUs are vigorously tested in various applications; they also pass Microsoft HCL tests, which not only stress graphics chips, but take hours to complete. Therefore, chances that chips may degrade in performance over time are pretty low." Now all that is left to be fixed are the low production numbers, but hey, thats better then knowing that something is wrong with that shiny new GPU sitting next to you in your case.

Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20120521120817_Nvidia_Denies_Plans_to_Recall_GeForce_GTX_600_Due_to_Performance_Degradation.html

Nvidia Gtx680- AMD once again defeated?

Hello guys,

The long awaited Nvidia Kepler cards are no longer hidden to us, at least not unofficially.

Now that was the beginning of my blog post a couple of weeks ago, but technology moves so fast that I didn't even have time to post it before the Nvidia Kepler GPU's were released, well at least the Gtx 680. Weeks before the launch of the Nvidia Kepler GPU's I have been looking into all of the rumors I could find, to get a sneak peak at the power that was to be unleashed. I have been a PC gamer for years and I can tell when a rumor is too good to be true. Some of the rumors were in fact, based on the actual product, while some of them were just insane. However as weeks passed and time got closer to the launch date I began seeing rumors that were more and more realistic. The rumors began showing specifications that were actually plausible, and for those of you who check out my blog regularly you will notice that I covered some of these rumors in depth. As time got closer to the rumored launch date (March 22), it turned out to be the launch date if I remember correctly. However the Kepler architecture was announced in September 2010. I will not be talking too much about the rumors, if you want to know what they were then check out my previous post. Anyway about three days before launch I got to see the real benchmarks, they were released by an actual shop owner who had gotten the card, and yet not everyone got to see them. However the benchmarks that he showed had one major problem, if I remember correctly he had run them on an Intel Core i3, along with other components of not the best performance, so many gamers were not satisfied, however it was nice to see some benchmarks that actually showed some truth. The day before the launch I stayed up a bit late, and I got to see the leaked preview video with Nvidia talking about some of the Keplers features. The video was officially released the next day along with the Gtx 680, so I was happy to have seen the real features. Many of them confirmed some new features that were previously rumored, have been confirmed, and are now part of the Gtx 600's series (ie. 670-690). It is amazing how little power the Gtx 680 uses, it has lower power consumption that the competition, ie the AMD Radeon HD 7970, of course us gamers care about power consumption, but that is not even close to as important as the performance a graphics card provides, and the good news is that the Gtx 680 provides loads of power, in fact it leaves the Hd7970 in the dust. Another thing that it has is GPU Boost, which is similar to Intel's Turbo Boost technology, as the card is no longer manually overclocked, it is now overclocked using overheads, for example you move a slider to raise the power overhead, that means that the card will have more power to reach its target boost clock, that means that it is also more likely to do so. In a program like Evga Precision X, or MSI's AfterBurner you can now set overheads, and target clocks which the GPU will boost to under the right conditions, ie. if the temperatures and power consumption allow it to do so. That means if you set a boost clock of +100mhz over the standard boost clock, the card will not always run at that clock speed, it will only do so if it has the right conditions, and if it is running a stressful application like a game or a benchmark. That means the card uses less power and produces less heat when it idles, and it boosts its clock speed when it needs the performance. This technology makes overclocking much easier, as the user simply sets targets, while the card adjusts the clocks, and takes care of the voltage. Other new features include the ability to run up to 4 screens simultaneously off one card, this previously required two cards running in a SLI configuration. Other new features include new anti aliasing features. All this amazing performance runs on TSMC's 28nm process. It is amazing, once again Nvidia beats AMD, and you know what that means, price cuts! The AMD HD7000's cards came out a couple of months ahead of the Gtx 600's (Kepler), so they did have a head start, and that was not to good. Since they had no competition at that time they could set prices as they wished as there was no competition to force that to change. That meant that the HD7000's were not something I would call well priced. Then came the Gtx 680, it embarrassed the Hd 7970, while also being $79 cheaper, coming in at $499. So until now the Gtx 680 looks great, however there is one problem, stay tuned for my next article to find out more about this "problem".