Author - Jerry Paxton

GMC Noblesse K-2 Ebony Review

2008/07/23
Jerry Paxton
Reviews

The Korean PC case developer GMC has long been known for their stylish and novel enclosure designs. One of their latest designs, the Noblesse K-2 ended up in our capable hands so we put it through the motions.

As you can see, the Noblesse K-2 Ebony is no slouch in the looks department. Everything on the front of the case is a button of some kind, and the integrated LCD panel that displays temperature and fan speed (among other things) is a blessing for those performance-minded individuals out there. The case would look equally great in an a/v cabinet or out in the open. It is not only functional but also a good conversation piece. Also included in the case is an ir remote control.

Here is the full list of front-panel controls:
-Volume control and mute function
-Multi Memory Card Reader(9 in 1)
-System condition LCD display
-Hot key, Navigation jog button
-Music and Movie control by play control button

Most of these functions are readily accessible through the included iMedian software, which acts a Windows Media Center replacement. Something we appreciated was that this application comes with most of the code cs you will need whereas the Windows Media Center usually requires some additional codec downloading.

We enjoyed many hours of South Park videos, HD-DVDs (yes we are one of those), and even some streaming vids of the ‘net. The experience was very enjoyable, and the K-2 Ebony was a joy to use.

The side-swapping hard drive bays are an excellent addition to the case which allows for a quick installation and removal of HDDs without having to take off both sides of the case. We wish more enclosure manufacturers would take note of this feature.

The only real problem we could see is the issue of space. When fitted with a large Nvidia graphics card there is not a lot of wiggle room left in there. This can make cable management a slippery slope. One change they might want to consider is swapping the location of the power supply from the top of the case to the bottom and shifting everything else upwards.

Bare in mind, however, that this case is designed as a multimedia PC more than anything else. If they were to come out with a ‘gaming model’ of this enclosure, we would hope they would another fan or two to compliment its front-mounted 140mm and rear-mounted 120mm fans.As it stands, we would not recommend a Gtx 280 be placed in this case as we were getting temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius at its core when playing Age of Conan, however it is worth noting that the Gtx 280 is the hottest-running GPU on the market today.For an upper mid-level gaming system running a Radeon 4850 or 4870, the K-2 would work great and also turn heads at a LAN event to boot.

The case is a bit pricey at an MSRP of $250 dollars, but if you are looking for the ultimate desktop-style multimedia PC case you can’t do much better than the Noblesse K-2 Ebony. It is a solid upgrade from the K-1 and features a ton of improvements in case design which make it an excellent home theater PC enclosure.

Official Product Page

Sapphire HD 4850 512MB Review

2008/07/22
Jerry Paxton
Reviews

Here at the GamingShogun office, we are always looking for great gaming hardware. We got our hot little hands on a Sapphire HD 4850 video card with 512MB of DDR3 RAM recently, and thought we would bring our findings to the fore so you can enjoy them as well. We know, you can thank us later.

The 4850 represents the first of the ‘next-gen’ line of graphics processing units which is pinnacled with the Radeon 4870. The 4850 is the more budget-minded of the two, retailing for roughly $180 dollars. When we first heard the price, we thought that there was no way we would be happy with a GPU like that. We came to the realization that we had believed a video card needed to be expensive in order to be good. Happily, my friends, I can say that ‘axiom’ has proven false in the 4850.

Radeon 4850 Quick Specs:
-Display Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+HDTV
-Core Clock: 625 MHz
-Memory Clock: 993MHz, 1986 Mbps.
-PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
-512MB /256bit GDDR3 memory interface
-Single Slot Active Cooler
-HDMI compliant via dongle
-7.1 Audio Channel Support
-Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
-Shader Model 4.1 support

Our computers here in the Shogun offices run Nvidia Gtx 280 GPUs, so we thought there was no better opponent we could pit our ‘little’ 4850 against. And I say ‘little’ because in comparison to even an Nvidia 9800gtx, the Radeon 4850 has a much thinner profile. Not only is the profile thinner, meaning it will more handily fit inside even cramped PC cases, but it also only requires one 6-pin PCI-E power connector. These are already pluses in our book, but I digress. So we are pitting it against a Gtx 280 in a severely unfair fight. One is a budget gaming GPU and the other is a flagship model. For us, if the 4850 can perform reasonably, it will have succeeded where many others have failed. Remember, the 4850 retails for $180 dollars whereas the Gtx 280 retails anywhere from $500 to $800 dollars depending on the edition you purchase.

So, we fired up our rigs and began the benchmarking goodness. For our tests, we are using 3dMark06 and 3dMark Vantage. Vantage takes advantage of alot more modern features and is capable of bringing even the latest multi-GPU setups to their collective knees. 3dMark06 is the more mainstream, forgiving test of a GPU’s capabilities. The rig we chose to test the cards on is an average dual core system:

-AMD Athlon AM2 X2 6000+ 3.0gHz Black Edition CPU
-4096 GB DDR2 800 RAM
-Asus M2N-SLI dlx Mobo

In each benchmarking applications, we ran a series of tests with different resolutions, anti-aliasing, and anisotropic filtering levels. Now that we have gotten this out of the way…FIGHT!!!

3d Mark 06 – Return to Proxyon

The Radeon performs admirably in all of these tests, only dropping to some unplayable frame rates at 8XAA and 8XAF at the 1920×1200 resolution.

3d Mark 06 – Firefly Forest

The results of the lighting-effect heavy GPU test are slightly worse than the those of Test 1, but not by much. The 4850 is still pulling its own weight at the 2XAA and 2XAF settings at the high resolution mode.

3d Mark Vantage – Jane Nash

This is where things start turning to molasses for even a Gtx 280 at the highest settings. The 3d Mark Vantage stresses every nook and cranny the GPU has. While not playable at the higher settings, the 4850 performs very well at both 1024×768 modes.

3d Mark Vantage – New Calico

New Calico is the most taxing of the new 3d Mark tests, so it is no surprise that all the scores are on the low side. This being said, even at the 1024×768 modes, the 4850 is still playable. By turning off AA and AF altogether, the performance would increase by a bit more as well.

The results of these benchmarks show that while out-gunned and out-classed on paper, the Radeon 4850 provides solid performance at most of the benchmark modes, save for the highly-advanced tests. Couple these results with the fact that two Radeon 4850s on a CrossFire build would cost roughly $360 dollars (a full $140 dollars cheaper than the cheapest Gtx 280) and you have yourself an inexpensive power house with low power requirements. Even with just one Radeon 4850, you will be able to play the latest games at varying levels of graphics detail without issue. We wish the 4850 had the DDR5 memory of its older brother but that is a very minor negative considering the 4870s are roughly $100 dollars more expensive.

We are most interested in seeing what happens to our frame rates when we put three 4850s in a rig at the same time. That configuration would only be $40 dollars more expensive than the cheapest Gtx 280! We have scored the Sapphire 4850 with high marks as we could not find a better performance-to-value GPU on the market at the time of this writing anywhere. Even Nvidia’s 9800 GTX+ models are not scoring as high according to various benchmarks.

Official Product Page

E3 2008 – Bionic Commando Hands On Impressions

2008/07/17
Jerry Paxton
E3, Previews

Today we got the chance to play Grin’s upcoming Bionic Commando. We would like to thank Grin’s Gunnar Johansson for graciously giving us a peak at this title. They have three levels on display for us to play in: two within a nuked city and the other in a densly-wooded forest.

We start off in our destroyed city, buildings collapsing around us with smoke billowing out like liquid in every direction, enveloping the shattered streets. The scene is fairly eerie and reminiscent of 9/11 – further enhancing the gravity of the situation. Unfortunately, with the city being as torn up as it is, the quickest way around is to make use of your VERY cool bionic arm. Swinging from broken street lamp to broken street lamp is a very cool experience, if you can master the technique of using the arm.

It took us about thirty minutes to really get a grasp on the system, which involves pushing and holding the left trigger button on your Xbox 360 controller in order to shoot out the bionic arm and keep it attached to your target. Then, in mid-swing, you let go of the left trigger to release the arm, followed by shooting it out again to grasp your next pendulum point. While sounding easy, the strange human habbit exists to let go of the trigger at the apex of your swing, which will send all of your momentum straight up…then straight down again, not good. Ideally, you will let go of the trigger just at the bottom of your swing to fully make use of your built up kinetic energy. There is definitely a learning curve to making use of the bionic arm. However, once you get the hang of it – it is a thing of beauty to watch.

The bionic commando of the title has a variety of weapons at his disposal, including machine guns, grenades, shotguns, etc. However, the coolest weapon he has is the arm. By shooting it out to grasp bad guys you can hurl them great distances, zip-kick over to them, knocking them down, bringing them to you, and a whole lot more that the developers are planning to implement.

Enemy troops we fought in the E3 demonstrations version seemed intelligent enough to seek cover as well as press their attack at the right moments. Eventually, you can learn new moves aside from using the bionic arm. You can learn to uppercut large objects (even cars), jump up, and then punch them in the air towards the direction of your enemies. There is nothing quite as satisfying as killing your opponents by dropping a car on them.

Overall, Bionic Commando looks to have great promise and fun when you get the hang of it. While the game has no announced release date yet, we would guestimate it to be early next year.

E3 2008 – Bethesda E3 After Party

2008/07/16
Jerry Paxton
E3, News

Well Shogunites, we’ve just gotten back from an E3 after party, generously hosted by Bethesda at the Saddle Ranch Chop House, off Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles. I’d estimate around 100 people attended.

What can I say? Good food, free drinks, karaoke, and (insert dramatic pause) a genuine mechanical bull! Yes, many attendees threw caution (and pride) to the wind and tried their hands to best the fowl faux beast! All failed. In between bull bouts, the Shogun bestowed a rare gift upon the crowd by singing Bon Jovi’s Wanted: Dead or Alive as well as Oasis’ Wonderwall. All were mesmerized and raised cheer at the Shogun’s harmonic prowess.

For dinner, we were offered a wide variety of fried foods: onion rings (covered with what appeared to be parmesian cheese), jalapeno poppers, fried mushrooms (I think that’s what they were), mini burgers, buffalo wings, and a variety of dipping sauces. Finger licking good! For dessert, there was chocolate cake as well as smores ingredients. I must note, however, that no flame was provided to toast the marshmallows. This makes for pisspoor smores, so I tried to roast one over the oil lamp flame at our table. The Shogun cautioned me against ingesting the result. I learned years ago to take the Shogun’s advice when offered and refrained from consuming the smore. As well I did. In better light I noticed the oil lamp flame provided some odd purple/black (not char) coating to my marshmallow that probably wouldn’t have been healthy to eat.

Thanks Shogun!

Thanks Bethesda! Can’t wait till Thursday for our Fallout 3 demo. Stay tuned for udates Shogunites!

E3 2008 – Our Preparations Underway

2008/07/09
Jerry Paxton
Articles, E3


You can feel it coming…Anticipatory excitement like mild electricity surging through your body… E3 is close. And this year, we will be covering the expo for the first time. And yet, many people I talk to about E3 seem ambivalent. They tell me how last year’s was ‘lame’ and disorganized. Thats when it hits me. That electricity I feel is a remnant from the previous incarnation of the expo, when it was huge and a spectacle to behold.

The whole point in downsizing the expo was to save everyone money but all thats seemed to happen is that exhibitors are spending more than ever not only on the E3 expo, but their inhouse showings and other gaming events like Leipzig.

E3 must make a comeback this year. Its very survival depends on it. All hope is not lost, thankfully. There is still enough memory of ‘what was’ to get us through this rough patch should they improve the show. Bring back some of the spectacle, the glitz, the energy. Everyone here is pulling for the event and hopes it lives up to our expectations.

Which brings us to this…Only a handful of days remain until it begins. Our preparations are fully underway. The hotel room has been booked (long in advanced thanks to the Shogun), the right configuration of bags have been selected and are waiting for their final payloads, and our transportation has been arranged. Pfgonzo will be flying down early next week before the festivities begin to meet the rest of us so we can get underway. Our meetings have all been scheduled save for a few select timeslots which I am wrestling with as I type this. We have been contacted by several last-minute requests to meet, so I am confident we will get those assigned in no time.

We will post again soon with our official GamingShogun.com equipment list so you know what tech we will be using in our coverage.

Reel Deal Casino Gold Rush Review

2008/07/09
Jerry Paxton
Reviews

I love Las Vegas. I love the town, the hotels, the action, you name it. Personally, I can’t wait for CES next year just to go back. So, you could imagine my excitement when I was asked to review Phantom EFX’s Reel Deal Casino Gold Rush by our mighty Shogun. What follows is the harrowing account of my evaluation, highs and lows.

Reel Deal Casino Gold Rush utilizes the same standard layout as in most Phantom EFX games. You look down on the casino in an isometric view, and scroll around the area by moving your mouse. To select a game, simply click on it. However it is far easier to select a game from the hot buttons where you can read the names of the available games instead of hovering over tables attempting to remember where that darn Pai Gow was.

There are 36 different games of chance in Gold Rush, the newest additions to any Phantom EFX title would be the Race & Sports Book. You can place bets on horse and dog races as well as utilize live feed data from real sporting events online to play in the sports book. That part of the game is only available online (although dog and horse racing can still be played locally). The casino games, as with most Phantom EFX titles, feel ‘dead on’ to their real-life counterparts in terms of odds, etc. Sometimes the order of operations in a casino game feels a bit disjointing but overall the system works. For example, after every phase of a table game, you muse click a button to allow the action to proceed. This button can be something important such as ‘hit’ or ‘stand’ in Blackjack, but sometimes is a silly ‘Continue’-style button which serves no purpose except to propel the game. In those moments you tend to wish it would just continue on its own to create a better game flow.

The online component of Gold Rush is an excellent improvement in game dynamics. This online component is not unique to this title, however, as a good number of Phantom EFX Reel Deal games are compatible with it. The online aspect not only gives players a chance to meet up and play against one another, but it also gives players a location to trade gambling stories, tips, general chit chat. This community will spur alot of growth in the franchise.

The biggest issue with Phantom EFX titles, and this is no exception, is that the graphics of the title need to be created with much larger resolution variants. We run, as many gamers do, a widescreen LCD at 1920×1200 and the game looks really bad when all stretched out. If played in windowed mode you can see how small the textures were really meant to be. While the textures need alot of help, at least the animations are smooth and the music/sound effects seem appropriate to the game being played. In fact, one hardly notices the graphics issues when playing in windowed mode on a video poker or slot game. We have gotten use to windowed casual games and thats what it feels like (minus the real-world odds of course) when enjoyed. We would definitely like to see a resolution increase in future Phantom EFX titles in order to enjoy it at our larger monitor sizes.

A slightly more confusing issue is that it can be difficult to suss out what a game truly is meant to be a virtual representation of. For instance, in the video poker line of games available to you, there are the self-explanatory ‘Jacks or Better’ and ‘Deuces Wild’, but then we expected to find Double Double and Triple Bonus poker in there as well. As it turns out, Double Double Bonus poker is in the title but under the name ‘Triple Premium Poker’.We verified this using the standard Double Double Bonus payout table and it checks out. This is fairly misleading and, as previously mentioned, confusing.

Despite the issues I have mentioned, Reel Deal Casino Gold Rush is an enjoyable casino title which can be used to keep your skills honed in downtime between trips to Las Vegas, and also is a great way to introduce a newbie to gambling especially given the authenticity of its game’s odds settings. Furthermore, the online component helps to increase community awareness and socialization.
To clarify, this review was written by the mighty Boothby, but submitted by yours truly as he could not do it this morning.

GamingShogun.com E3 Appointment Calendar

2008/07/07
Jerry Paxton
E3, News


With E3 just around the corner, we thought we would share our official appointment calendar with our loyal readers. We have set up some pretty cool demos such as Left4Dead, Fallout 3, Project Origin, and a bunch more. This list is only our appointments mind you, we will still be bringing news from the show floor as well throughout the event.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Review

2008/07/04
Jerry Paxton
Reviews

I must start this by saying that I am no audiophile. I am a gamer. So I do not know about decibels and other things with complex molecular structures. I know frame rates and how things sound to me as I smite my numerous enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their virtual women. Its what I do.

The Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card is their second foray into the world of the PCI-E interface. Primarily used for graphics cards up to this point, it is good to see some additional hardware for the faster interface. This is, without a doubt, the coolest-design for a card that Creative Labs has ever made. The circuit board is semi-enclosed and shielded by a black metal casing that gives the X-Fi Titanium the look of a cartridge that would record data aboard Blue Thunder. It features color-coded input ports on its backside that make connecting your speakers extremely simple. I remember a time when I would connect the plugs, run the surround sound test, and try again and again until it was correct. Well, times have changed. We have colors now. On our original X-Fi Fatality, the lack of optical plugs was disturbing. Creative has added such an option now with an optical input and output. This makes it much easier to connect to your home theater’s receiver/decoder. On the outer edge of the card when seated on the mobo is the standard X-Fi logo, back lit in white when the PC is running.

Installing the card physically was not a chore by any means, the card itself is fairly small and it fit within the case without issue. If you have two video cards installed, there could be an issue getting it to fit, however. After installing the software, you have to type in this special code to activate your product over the web. This is a new security feature Creative has introduced and we are still not sure what their long-term reasons are for doing this. The biggest problem we encountered while installing this new Sound Blaster was a problem with the drivers in Windows Vista. At first setup, the OS would not recognize the card. We had to reinstall everything (did not take too long thankfully) and the second time, the card was identified. During our research on this issue, we found that most people having issues with the X-Fi Titanium are Windows Vista users, so hopefully we will see improvements with the next-gen Creative drivers.

Now for the technical gobbledygook, with talk of all the incredible features and things the card can do (no, I don’t understand alot of this either):

Technical Specs

  • 24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of analog inputs at 96kHz sample rate
  • 24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 96kHz to analog 7.1 speaker output
  • 24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of stereo digital sources at 192kHz to stereo output
  • 16-bit to 24-bit recording sampling rates: 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz
  • ASIO 2.0 support at 16-bit/44.1kHz, 16-bit/48kHz, 24-bit/44.1kHz 24-bit/48kHz and 24-bit/96kHz with direct monitoring
  • Enhanced SoundFont support at up to 24-bit resolution
  • 64MB of X-RAM

We ran a benchmark during play of our favorite current title, the MMO Age of Conan. We ran the FRAPS benchmark utility in three separate trials per mode and then averaged each together. Our build:

  • AMD AM2 6000+ Black Edition CPU
  • 4096 DDR2-800 RAM
  • BFG GTX-280 OC Video Card
  • ASUS M2N-SLI DLX Mobo

Our three modes of operation were using the new X-Fi Titanium, the older X-Fi XtremeGamer (which is a PCI card), and the standard on board Asus sound chipset. Age of Conan’s audio settings were all set to MAX and all to 5.1 surround sound mode. Video settings were set to 1920×1200 with 8xAAQ, SM 3.0, and 75% slider settings. Once was all said and done, we ended up with this:

What we saw was that when it came down to sheer FPS, the on board sound card actually performed better than the new X-Fi Titanium by one frame per second, a negligible increase at best. The older X-Fi XtremeGamer fared only slightly worse, falling two frames per second behind the newer model. With these numbers, it is safe to say that the kind of sound card did not matter in this title. The X-Fi cards we used had 64MB of X-RAM each, but this did not sway the bench at all due to Age of Conan’s not taking advantage of that feature. The X-RAM has been a mixed bag with only a handful of games taking advantage of its abilities of off-loading audio to the sound card itself, freeing up more CPU cycles.

By these results, you would think we would be denouncing the X-Fi Titanium, but in reality, we are praising it for two simple reasons: Sound quality and channel separation. In our tests, the biggest thing that stuck out to our ears was that the audio coming from the newer X-Fi model was noticeably ‘crisper’ and ‘richer’ than even the older X-Fi. Additionally, the 5.1 channel separation was MUCH more defined and immersive. We can’t wait to try it out on a 7.1 channel system as soon as possible.

With that and the additional features that EAX, the Crystalizer, and the inclusion of Dolby Digital Live provide, it is hard not to recommend this card to gamers looking for the most immersive audio experience possible. Audiophiles will enjoy the card with all its audio-processing mojo, as will home theater PC builders, but REALLY big audio geeks (we use the term with love) might consider picking up the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty ‘Champion’ series card that comes with a 5.25” drive bay panel with lots of extra sweet audio ports, knobs, and switches to rub your ears all over in aural glee.

Overall, however, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty is an excellent sound card for your PC with the best sound quality our ears have perceived and some wicked surround sound processing. At an MSRP of $149 dollars, it won’t break your bank either.

Official Product Page

STALKER Clear Sky Box Art Released

2008/07/04
Jerry Paxton
News

GSC Game World and Deep Silver have released the box art for the upcoming prequel to the popular FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is set for release on August 29th.

Packshot after the jump!

Official Release:
GSC Game World, computer games developer, its publishing subdivision GSC World Publishing and Deep Silver, the games label of Koch Media, a leading producer and distributor of digital entertainment products, today announce the official box shot for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the long-awaited prelude to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is a survival FPS game for PC based on a ‘what-if’ scenario of the second Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident. The game is created as a warning to mankind against mindless play with technologies. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the official prequel to the renowned S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game by the Ukraine-based GSC Game World studio. The game is set in 2011and brings forth the events to have preceded the third cam-paign of Strelok to the Zone center. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky introduces an alternative look onto the events of the original game and offers the player to try himself out as a mercenary s.t.a.l.k.e.r. in search of his own path in the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Midnight Club Los Angeles Pushed Back

2008/07/03
Jerry Paxton
News

Rockstar Games has pushed back their upcoming racer, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, to October 7th for North America and October 10th for Europe. They are also releasing the PSP title Midnight Club: L.A. Remix simultaneously. Midnight Club: Los Angeles promises an open-world where players are free to roam and explore as they like.

Official Release:
Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) today announced a new release date for the fourth installment of its critically-acclaimed and genre-defining Midnight Club franchise, Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Set for release on October 7th in North America and October 10th in Europe and developed by series creator Rockstar San Diego, Midnight Club: Los Angeles will give gamers the unprecedented freedom to race through a hyper-realistic LA.

Also scheduled for release simultaneously, Midnight Club: LA Remix for the PSP® system will provide another incredible portable racing experience. Developed by Rockstar London, the game will take full advantage of the hardware to deliver the unrivaled sense of speed and style that the best-selling Midnight Club series is known for.