If you already have a high end card (780, 780Ti, Titan, 290 or 290X) they are not worth it unless the power savings are that important. It's better to wait for the 20nm Maxwell cards.

It will be like Nvidia's last cards: the 670/680 were based on the mid-performance design of Kepler (GK104 I think) while the 770/780/780Ti used the full chip (GK110). This time the 970/980 use again the mid-performance design (GM204) so with the full chip enabled and using the 20nm process those cards look to be beasts.

For everyone else, these cards offer a lot of performance with a very good power consumption, and the 970 launches with a surprisingly reasonable price!

Those are my 2cents.

Yeah. Figured I'd wait for the 20nm process, but at $330, the 970 is pretty tempting for what it should be. Still need to see real world benchmarks from more independent testing sources.

I sold my I7 920 OC @ 3.8 GHZ for 40 dollars and bought a xeon X5650 hexacore and over clocked it to 4.2 GHZ for 70 dollars.

Awesome 30 dollar upgrade.

I'm excited for more JRPG's coming to steam. Trails in the Sky. And FFXIII (though more for it's sequels that are much better and have much more potential for other modding if it's at all possible). And Lightning Returns Horrible framerate will be hopefully fixed on a powerful enough PC. The contrived story won't be fixed in that game. But the other flaw will be!

Euclideon Is Back With A New Video, Promises To Revolutionize Video-Game Graphics

Endless Legend trailer marks launch and addition of the horrifying Cultists of the Eternal End

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Unlike other strategy games where the different armies are largely similar but with a different skinjob and a few unique units, Endless Legend’s armies are fundamentally different at the core. The final army to be added to the Early Access turn-based strategy game is like no other. The Cultists of the Eternal End want one thing: to see their world destroyed. They don’t want to capture territories, they don’t want to increase the resources they can gain from their land, they can’t even build new cities.

With the release of Endless Legend we get an army that plays like no other.

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Clang Kickstarter cancelled by Neal Stephenson; some backers to be refunded

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More than a year ago Clang, a kickstarted swordfighting simulator, was put on hold by its developers. They’d burned through the $500,000 raised through crowdfunding and hadn’t found a publisher to take on the costs of making their prototype into a full game.

A year on and with no change in its successes Neal Stephenson, the author who fronted the campaign, has officially cancelled the project. This is so, he says, so “future announcements can then happen in their own good time, giving any new projects a fresh start.”

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Scrolls price drops to compete on tablets

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Scrolls is getting dressed up ready for release on tablets. Mojang’s CCG’s been on PC for well over a year and, while not being quite as successful as the developers’ other game, it’s formed a devoted following amongst its players.

However, with an impending mobile release Mojang have had to face up to the fact that few tableters/tablists/tablerians are likely to spend $20 on a game.

To that end, Scrolls’ price is being dropped to just $5.

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Train Simulator 2015 interview: “Oculus Rift is just perfect complementary technology for Train Simulator”

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Dovetail’s latest sim, Train Simulator 2015, has just launched in the Steam Store, bringing with it new trains, routes, and, for the first time in a Train Simulator game, an academy to take you through train driving step by step.

Another significant addition is support for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

I was able to ask producer Adam Lucas some questions about the recent rise of sims.

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Spacebase DF-9 release window set. Time Travel, holodecks, and killer robots cut

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Double Fine’s announced that Spacebase DF-9 will release this November, so they’ve a few more weeks to fix bugs and polish their management game to high sheen. The announcement does however have another implication, a few large features originally planned have yet to be implemented and, at this point, won’t be.

There’ll be no time travel, holodecks, legal system, multi-level bases, teleporters, or funerals.

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Age of Wonders III update 1.4 and Golden Realms expansion released

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It’s a big day, Age of Wonders III: Golden Realms has gone on sale and a massive update’s been released freely to owners of the vanilla game. 

Golden Realms sees the Halfling race appear as a playable faction, a new campaign, and a stack of new features that will filter through the game no matter which race you play as. 

Meanwhile, the update changes just about everything.

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Radiation warning: Wasteland 2 launches - and it's great

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Twenty-five years since the launch of the original and a few delays since it hit Early Access, Wasteland 2 has finally arrived, and you can start playing the final version today - complete with angry goats, angry toads, angry robots and regular radiation. 

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Battleborn's debut is flashy but familiar

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When Gearbox announced Battleborn in July, the studio had a real problem communicating what exactly it was. “Battleborn is: FPS; hobby-grade coop campaign; genre-blended, multi-mode competitive e-sports; meta-growth, choice + epic Battleborn Heroes,” said Randy Pitchford - which is just a string of nonsense. What it actually sounded like was a MOBA. 

Now the developer is ready to show it off, or at least the co-op campaign portion. The dev walkthrough released today might clear some things up. 

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Clarion Call 4 is an impressive player-made EVE Online propaganda film

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EVE Online's players never fail to impress. CCP are caretakers - it's the players that drive everything, and that's never been more clear than when watching Rooks and Kings: Clarion Call 4. 

It's a sprawling account of Rooks and Kings' development of a new - at the time - battle tactic: pipe bombing. Part historical documentary, part propaganda piece, it employs in-game battle footage from different perspectives, player comms and a slew of fan art and cinematics to tell the story. 

Watch it, and then - if you haven’t already - reinstall the game. 

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Meet Kilrogg: Warlords of Draenor's cyclopean berserker

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The Lords of War series continues, shining a spotlight on the titular Warlords of Draenor in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. The latest story to be shared by Blizzard is Kilrogg’s - the leader of the Bleeding Hollow clan.

It’s not a very nice one. 

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Roundabout Is Out And About A Revolving Limousine

By Graham Smith on September 19th, 2014 at 4:00 pm.

Roundabout is out! It– No, it’s not a game based on the Ballard novel Concrete Island, though yes that would make a lovely setting for a walking simulator. It’s– No! It’s not an homage to early-’60s kids cartoon The Magic Roundabout replete with less-than-subtle drug references. Shut up a moment and I’ll tell you what it is.

It’s an open world puzzle game in which you drive a revolving limousine around a colourful pastiche of ’70s B-movies, complete with live action cutscenes which tell the story of Georgio Manos, “arguably the world’s most famous revolving chauffeur.” Yes yes, this would have been your third guess. It came out last night and there’s a launch trailer below.

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Procedural Generation Jam Is Worth Watching On Nov 8th

By Graham Smith on September 18th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.

I wouldn’t normally post about something like this so early, but it’s cool. If you judge game jams on their potential to create interesting works, then the Procedural Generation Jam wins by hoping to ride the wave of interest in “making stuff that makes other stuff” towards a slew of fascinating games, tools and toys.

If you judge game jams on your ability to join in with minimum effort, then the Procedural Jam wins again by also livestreaming an afternoon of talks from experts, including Hazel McKendrick of No Man’s Sky, Mark Johnson of Ultima Ratio Regum and Fernando Ramallo of Panoramical.

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pply Directly To Hard Drive: Desync

Battlefield 4 Fall Patch is "right around the corner"

Fall is coming, and so too is the Battlefield 4 Fall Patch. It's a big one, with changes to game modes, sight improvements, changes to player movement and a "massive" final fix list, and it's expected to be here by the end of the month.

athologic stretch goals tease a trip to the "Termitary and Abattoir"

 

Andy Chalk at 07:10 on 20 September 2014

The Kickstarter for the Pathologic remake is going well enough that developer Ice-Pick Lodge now feels comfortable adding a few stretch goals. Each of them will allow the team to deepen the experience by expanding existing areas or adding brand new ones, some of which promise to lead to some very bizarre places.

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DirectX 12's new rendering features are coming to DirectX 11.3 too

 

Dave James at 06:30 on 20 September 2014

At this year’s Intel Developer Conference and Nvidia’s Maxwell Editor’s Day, Microsoft were busy banging the DirectX 12 drum. They were demonstrating its CPU efficiency boosts as well as talking up the new rendering features they’re implementing to show off the latest GPU hardware around.

Microsoft also announced the new rendering features are also going to be part of the DirectX 11.3 API, which is being shipped at the same time as DirectX 12. That sounds great, but it also fills me with fear. Back in 2007, DirectX 10 was exclusive to Vista, leaving popular Windows XP in the dust. The same thing could happen with Windows 7 and DirectX 12.

Dawn of War retrospective: ten years of war in the 41st millennium

 

Tom Senior at 03:59 on 20 September 2014

The Wraithlord is a twelve-foot tall monster crafted from psychic bone, imbued with the spirit of an ancient warrior who exists to only to kill. The Space Marine Captain is the champion of a barely-human warrior caste who runs around in power armour that compounds his ridiculous strength. When these two meet on a battlefield, something messy and exciting ought to happen.

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Yeah, there aren't many GTX 970 reviews so far, but so far it looks like its as fast or faster than R9 290 and GTX 780 while being cheaper than both and using less (a lot less in the case of the AMD card) power.

The "problem" is that, with no reference card, every 970 will be different making comparisons a bit harder. At least, from this review, I know that I won't get the EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2. Noise from the power circuitry in this day and age is unacceptable.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/09/19/crusader-kings-2-has-sold-one-million-copies/

Paradox has announced that Crusader Kings 2—their soap opera grand strategy of medieval war, politics and intrigue—has sold over a million copies. It's always nice to see a PC exclusive hit the landmark, and in this case it's particularly notable.

well finaly. realy nice game, deserves every sale