Hot on the heels of NVIDIA's GeForce 313.95 Beta drivers, AMD launched Catalyst 13.2 Beta, targeting EA's release of Crysis 3 multiplayer open-beta. The driver improves performance by up to 15 percent, but in highly specific scenarios, vaguely put by AMD as "in high MSAA cases." There is no general performance improvement announced, but that future Catalyst releases could address performance. Catalyst 13.2 Beta also addresses frame latency issues related to three titles, TES5: Skyrim, Boderlands 2, and Guild Wars 2. Single GPU performance for Devil May Cry is improved by up to 50 percent. CrossFire systems running Crysis 2 could see a 10 percent performance improvement. Lastly, a texture-flickering issue seen with DirectX 9.0c applications is resolved.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta

AMD posted its first major release of the Catalyst software suite for this year, Catalyst 13.1 WHQL. Much along the lines of its 12.11 "Never Settle" driver, the new 13.1 WHQL brings performance enhancements for a boatload of games, targeting Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture. We know that AMD is yet to unlock the full potential of GCN, and 13.1 WHQL appears to be a step in that direction. In addition to performance enhancements and fixes, AMD introduced a new 3D settings and profile management user interface within Catalyst Control Center (CCC).

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.1 WHQL for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

A slice of the change-log follows.

Portal 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim won big at the Game Developers Choice. Bethesda's smash-hit title bagged the coveted "Game of the Year" (GOTY) title, while Portal 2 bagged three top honors, winning "Best Narrative", "Best Game Design", and "Best Audio".

The year 2011 also saw the raising of the technology bar with two new game engines, CryEngine 3 from Crytek, and Frostbite 2 from EA-DICE. The two were implemented in flagship titles, Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, respectively; both of which were published by EA. In the end, Battlefield 3 won "Best Technology". "Best Visual Arts", however, went to Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.A list of top honors follows.

Today Kotaku is reporting the top 5 games pirated for major platforms this year according to TorrentFreak. As usual the PC platform is the most guilty almost doubling in pirated copies then its competitors.

Some of the titles listed are not surprising but the lack of a certain title filled with dragon slaying is. Why Skyrim didn't make the top five is anyone's guess. Either Steam is in fact the most user friendly DRM or people just love Skyrim. Either way this is just a small glimpse into the world of pirated software.

Top Five Pirated PC Games

1. Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (March 2011)
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) (November 2011)
3. Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (October 2011)
4. FIFA 12 (3,390,000) (September 2011)
5. Portal 2 (3,240,000) (April 2011)

The U.S. Army might be financing one of the most epic videos games ever made that very few people may ever play. The "game" is called Dismounted Soldier Training System and was commissioned by the U.S. government back in May for a staggering cost of 57 million dollars. The contract was awarded to RealTime Immersive Inc. All of this according to PC Gamer. Everything about this simulator is said to be cutting edge but the hardware it runs on. In a GamePro interview with the director of strategic programs at Intelligent Decisions, Floyd West is said to have stated, "With CryEngine 3 being used for Crysis 2 and the capabilities that game engine provides, it allows us to make the most realistic simulation possible. We're able to transport soldiers to accurately recreated locales like Afghanistan and Iraq, where we can simulate everything from visuals to 360-degree sound."

The virtual reality headsets the trainees wear will run from a backpack unit similar to a top of the range gaming laptop, called the 'Man Wearable Unit'. "While the man wearable units aren't running on an off-the-shelf Alienware, the internal components themselves are commercial off-the-shelf CPUs and GPUs like NVIDIA graphic cards and whatnot."

As this is an internal military training simulator we the public may never play it. However that doesn't mean we cannot watch the trailers in awe and wonder if our own rigs could render thousands of kilometers in such massive detail.

Trailer 1 | Trailer 2

The latest beta drivers and the first in the 290 series have been released by NVIDIA today, supporting all graphics cards since the venerable 6-series. Their main new feature are official support for enabling ambient occlusion settings in the control panel separately for specific games and enabling NVIDIA Surround on the new X79 SLI-certified motherboards. Ambient occlusion (AO) is settable for uber-popular games The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. So, what does AO do? We'll let Andrew Burns of NVIDIA explain:

If you're unfamiliar with Ambient Occlusion, it is most easily described as a way to make in-game shadowing more realistic, and therefore better.

What he doesn't say of course, is how it kills your frame rate, especially on lower end hardware. Anyway, there's all the usual goodies in this release: 3D Vision game profiles for games such as MW3, Diablo 3 & LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (yes really). There's a HD audio update and nine fixes too, including one for random flickering of the Windows boot logo as it's loading or fading away and a fix for the mouse cursor flickering and shaking in games such as Crysis 2 & Deus Ex when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play. The NVIDIA product release page is here and they have a snazzy-looking driver selector here. The release notes follow.

Just a handful of days ahead of Sandy Bridge-E's launch, a Chinese tech website, www.inpai.com.cn (Google translation) has done what Chinese tech websites do best and that's leak benchmarks and slides, Intel's NDA be damned. They pit the current i7-2600K quad core CPU against the upcoming i7-3960X hexa core CPU and compare them in several ways. The take home message appears to be that gaming performance on BF3 & Crysis 2 is identical, while the i7-3960X uses considerably more power, as one might expect from an extra two cores. The only advantage appears to come from the x264 & Cinebench tests. If these benchmarks prove accurate, then gamers might as well stick with the current generation Sandy Bridge CPUs, especially as they will drop in price, before being end of life'd. While this is all rather disappointing, it's best to take leaked benchmarks like this with a (big) grain of salt and wait for the usual gang of reputable websites to publish their reviews on launch day, November 14th. Softpedia reckons that these results are the real deal, however. There's more benchmarks and pictures after the jump.

Homefront creator KAOS studios shut its doors in the summer, leaving the sequel without a developer - and players of the cliffhanger ending of the first game well, hanging. However, publisher THQ has hired Crysis 2 developer Crytek to develop the sequel (Homefront 2?) which is expected to be out in 2014 for PC and console platforms. This is perhaps unsurprising, as Crytek recently made a very impressive DX11 upgrade for Crysis 2, as reported by TechPowerUp (with video) so this appointment is likely to make the next Homefront visually exciting at least and will do its bit to help keep up the graphics quality of games written for the PC. I'm looking forward to their high quality DX11 graphics that will push our PC's to the limits and once more give us a reason for upgrading to the latest hardware. They now just need to concentrate on making the gameplay as good as those graphics.

Crytek today delivered on its promise to the PC gaming community by giving Crysis 2 a potent dose of updates that enables jaw-dropping new graphics and eye-candy on capable PCs equipped with DirectX 11 graphics cards. The updates consist of a primary patch, version 1.9, that lets you install the DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade (free DLC), and the optional High Resolution Texture Pack (another free DLC).

The DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade brings with it redone maps, objects and models that are enhanced with Tessellation and displacement mapping, that greatly increases geometric detail. Next, is a suite of new lighting effects that DirectX 10 and 11 introduced, including higher quality HDR motion blur, and DirectX 11 depth of field with Bokeh shapes. To install the DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade, your Crysis 2 installation must be patched to version 1.9, and the PC must have a DirectX 11 compatible graphics card.DOWNLOAD: Crysis 2 Patch v1.9 | Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Upgrade Pack* | Crysis 2 High-Res Texture Pack**install patch 1.9 first

EVGA is celebrating the release of what is touted to be this year's blockbuster game title, Crysis 2. The company released the EVGA GTX 560 Ti Crysis 2 Maximum Graphics Edition bundle, which combines a GeForce GTX 560 Ti (NVIDIA reference design) graphics card with a copy of Crysis 2 (PC), and some Crysis 2 memorabilia, including a Crysis 2 poster, and a black t-shirt. The special edition GTX 560 Ti graphics card features clock speeds of 900 MHz core, 1800 MHz CUDA cores, and 4212 MHz memory. It packs 384 CUDA cores, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. The GTX 560 Ti should typically let you play Crysis 2 at full-HD resolution (1920 x 1080), with hightened eye candy. The EVGA GTX 560 Ti Crysis 2 Maximum Graphics Edition bundle is priced at US $299. A bargain, if you ask me.