HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.

The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.

Funcom the developer of the highly popular new MMO Age of Conan has stated that it will begin producing additional content to enhance the game experience. Anyone who has played the game or read about it has surely noticed that the game map covers a much larger area than players have access to. Funcom has promised to unlock the entire world throughout the summer. New areas will be opened; however, existing areas will also get new content. Already announced are a brand new dungeon in Aquilonia, a redesign of three dungeons in Stygia, and a complete mountain range in Cimmeria. New game play styles will also be added, such as a PvP Evolved - to the death mode. To-the-death brings more ranks and rewards to the PvP setting and adds a Fugitive system, which is a controlling method for high-level gamers that are killing lower level players. There is also Guild Alliance Warfare. This allows players in guilds to join alliances.

It would seem as though World of Warcraft finally has some competition when it comes to the very lucrative and addicting MMORPG enterprise. Since last Tuesday, over 400,000 MMORPG gamers have signed up for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, nearly half of which come from North America. This is quite significant for a game that's been on "the development backburner" for quite some time now. Even more interesting is that this game is pay-to-play, much like Blizzard competitor World of Warcraft. Whether or not this "savage, sexy and brutal MMO(RPG)" will be a long-term contender is yet to be seen. Whether or not the very strong Age of Conan fanbase comes through with a World of Warcraft killer, only time will tell. We'll keep you posted.