PC Format reviews

Price £7 Publisher Nimbly Games Developer Nimbly Games
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I say there, "Chocks away" and all that...

On the surface Altitude is little more than a multiplayer 2D side scrolling dogfighting combat game. But it doesn't take long to discover this retro genre has been super charged with the steroid powers of a dozen meatheads.  read more »

Can we really have an ultra-portable gaming machine?

Alienware is enjoying a revival at the moment. It managed to loosen our collective jaw recently with the M15x - a machine that not only kicked serious bottom in our gaming tests, but managed to pick up the coveted PC Format Gold Award in the process. Not content with piecing together one of the most impressive gaming laptops of recent times, it’s also managed to get tongues wagging with this, its performance take on the netbook.  read more »

Kingston makes SSD-on-SSD RAID array sexy-time more affordable

Many things would make our computing lives simpler. A Euromillions lottery win, for instance, wouldn’t exactly hurt. Even a little one that we had to share with a syndicate of bakers from Turin and a nice old lady from County Tipperary. At the very least, we could pull the trigger on an array of pointlessly pricey solid state drives without caring whether their snappy performance would last longer than a week.

Back in the real world, where such trivialities as money actually matter, SSD performance doubts  present a real conundrum. Thanks, therefore, goes to Kingston for making things even more complicated with the latest addition to its SSDNow V Series of affordable SSDs.
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Only the extreme need apply, only the extremely rich can afford

The Republic of Gamers motherboards from Asus have always been the performance kings of its product catalogue, and as such have always had a fairly hefty price premium slapped on top of them. They’re not just great performing items, they also come with all the bells and whistly things you could want in a board. In short, the ROG mobos are the money’s-no-object parts you throw in your machine if you never have to ask how much they cost.

At £330, the oversized X58-based Rampage III Extreme (R3E) definitely fits then, but it’s not a board that you can just throw into a PC to instantly make it faster. It’s designed to be the overclockers’ motherboard of choice. We’re not just talking the sort of person who wants a couple of extra FPS in their favourite shooter, oh no. This board is designed for people with a penchant for liquid nitrogen and names like sno.lcn and Sf3d.
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The graphics duel we've been waiting for: GTX 470 vs. HD 5870

After a lot of waiting, phone calls, emails and Dexter using his especially hard stare, here it is: the GeForce GTX 470. Representing the more affordable side of NVIDIA’s newest GPU, the Graphics Fermi 100 (GF100), the GTX 470 is being lined up to take out AMD’s single-GPU hero, the HD 5870. Zotac was the first company to thrust the slab of warmed silicon into our sweaty grasp, so here’s its take on the great green hope.

When the GTX 480 first rocked up last month you could colour us impressed. In terms of single-GPU performance, it’s the fastest thing on two power connectors, blowing AMD’s HD 5870 out of the water with a clear lead in the benchmark tables. That said, it’s retailing for nigh-on £200 more than AMD’s competing card and so should be delivering such a lead over its rivals. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, it couldn’t garner a lead over the pricier still HD 5970, AMD’s twin‑GPU monster.
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Can a new chipset give AMD's sluggish CPUs some much-needed shizzle?

Pity AMD’s current CPUs aren’t a bit more competitive, because there are some cracking AMD-compatible motherboards available. They really do stick it to Intel in terms of features and value. Asus’s new M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 is a prime example.

The big news is the arrival of the 890GX chipset from AMD. With it come a number of upgrades – some significant, some less so. You’d think a new integrated GPU, known as the Radeon HD 4290, would be worth a butchers. But apart from an incremental step from DirectX 10 to DirectX 10.1, there’s not much to get excited about. The paltry total of 40 shaders hasn’t been increased, for example. Compared to AMD’s fastest discrete graphics chip, the 1,600-shader Radeon HD 5870, that’s totally feeble.  read more »

Are you the proud owner of an Intel quad-core processor? You know, one of the latest Nehalem-class bad boys in Core i5 or Core i7 trim? If so, we doubt you’re desperate for more performance. They’re very fine CPUs indeed and a damn sight quicker than anything AMD can currently offer.

But this is PC technology we’re talking about, people. Nothing must be allowed to slow the march of progress. Especially not the piffling matter of whether anybody needs more performance. Thus, this month Intel is launching a chip you almost definitely don’t need at a price you certainly cannot afford. Give it up for the mighty Core i7-980X Extreme Edition. Before you dismiss this preposterously priced CPU as irrelevant, remember this: It’s the shape of things to come.
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The air of relief is palpable in the room as the great and the good of NVIDIA gather beside their latest graphical opus in its downtown Paris office. The relief is not just my own having finally gotten hold of a working sample of the new GPU, but, representing the culmination of a lot of hard work, a lot of missed launch slots and a lot of rumour-mongering in the world’s tech press, it’s one hell of a relief for everyone at NVIDIA that’s associated with the GeForce brand.

The opening slide of the inevitable PowerPoint-a-thon launch presentation is simply one word standing clear on a black background: FINALLY.
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Intel’s new Lynnfield CPU looks like a winner. Its performance is near-as-dammit on a par with the more exotic Bloomfield Core i7 processors. At the same time, it promises to be a whole lot cheaper both as a chip and as an overall platform. OK, the branding is a bit fubar, what with the confusing use of both the new Core i5 and existing Core i7 monikers. But the idea of quad-core Nehalem with added Turbo-tastic goodness and all at a lower price than ever before is a bit of a no-brainer. We want one and we’re pretty sure you’ll want one, too.  read more »

The PC Format crew love classic sci-fi cinema. We lap up films like 2001, Alien, Blade Runner and Aliens. David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, has made a film called Moon, and it should be a celluloid haven for PC Format's staff. But was it? I went to see it on Friday, and it seems particularly apt to be posting my review today, as it's the 40th anniversary as the Apollo moon landings. Just as Neil Armstrong conquered a strange new world, I'm entering the uncharted territory of film reviews.

Moon's premise is delightfully strange: alone on our natural satellite, mining Helium-3, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) comes across his own double. Who is this mysterious stranger? Why do they both have the same memories? And does their robot compatriot, Gerty (Kevin Spacey), have a hidden agenda?  read more »