Specifications of NVIDIA's upcoming high-end graphics card, the GeForce GTX Titan, which were reported in the press over the last couple of weeks, are bang on target, according to a specs sheet leaked by 3DCenter.org, which is allegedly part of the card's press-deck. According to the specs sheet, the GTX Titan indeed features 2,688 out of the 2,880 CUDA cores present on the GK110 silicon, 6 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface, and draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The GeForce GTX Titan core is clocked at 837 MHz, with a GPU Boost frequency of 876 MHz, and 6.00 GHz memory, churning out 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The chip features a single-precision floating-point performance figure of 4.5 TFLOP/s, and 1.3 TFLOP/s double-precision. Despite its hefty specs that include a 7.1 billion-transistor ASIC and 24 GDDR5 memory chips, NVIDIA rates the card's TDP at just 250W.More slides and benchmark figures follow.

NVIDIA released the GeForce 304.48 Beta software suite, which include game-specific performance improvements, and fixes for bugs related to recently launched hardware. To begin with, GeForce 304.48 Beta claims performance improvements as high as 18%. The improvements are tested on GeForce GTX 680 and GeForce GTX 560, and are specific to game titles such as Batman Arkham City, Dragon Age 2, Lost Planet 2, STALKER: Call of Pripyat; SLI profiles were improved for games such as Battlefield 3 and The Witcher 2. The exact performance improvement numbers claimed by NVIDIA are charted below.

In addition to performance improvements, NVIDIA released fixes for outstanding issues, such as micro-stutter noted by some GeForce GTX 600 "Kepler" users in games with v-sync enabled; under-clocking of factory-overclocked graphics cards by certain manufacturers; and a performance issue with Total War: Shogun 2, with its latest patch enabled. NVIDIA also added and improved SLI profiles for a large selection of games.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 304.48 Beta

The complete change-log follows.

The games market went to Hell in May. Diablo III topping retail software sales for the month, according to the latest sales figures from NPD, and helped fuel a resurgence in the PC games space. Other top performers included Max Payne 3, which launched the same day as Diablo III, as well as Sniper Elite V2 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
While action titles continued their dominance of the top 10, 2K Sports' NBA 2K12 held the fifth spot for the second straight week. Blizzard continued to show its impact in the PC market with Diablo III at number 1, the first time since July 2010 that a PC-only title has accomplished that feat. The game that did it in 2010? StarCraft 2, another Blizzard mainstay.

Total video game sales continued to shrink, down 28 percent from last year. However, the PC market jumped 230 percent from the same time last year to $80 million, fueled by Diablo III sales. The overall spend in May, including digital sales and microtransactions was estimated to be $1.17 billion.

Playing against hackers and cheaters in multiplayer games is rarely fun, so now Rockstar is showing them just how it feels. It's hit upon a cruel and unusual punishment for cheaters in Max Payne 3's multiplayer: forcing them to play in a "Cheaters Pool" filled only with other hoodlums. "Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a 'Cheaters Pool', where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants," Rockstar explains in a blog post. They'll also be cut from the leaderboards. Rockstar could deign to allow these rapscallions to rejoin civilised society, but will permaban them for a second infraction. Lets hope that one day all online games will adopt such measures.

AMD just released the AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta. With the release of the Catalyst 12.6 Beta driver, AMD would also like to announce that we are moving away from our Monthly Catalyst release plan. Our goal is to ensure that every Catalyst release delivers a substantial benefit to our end users; as we have today with the release of the Catalyst 12.6a Beta. We will still continue with the Catalyst naming convention; Catalyst: Year.Month., You just won't see a new driver every single month. We are confident that this will only benefit the end user; you'll only need to upgrade to a new Catalyst driver, when it makes sense.

We would also like announce the introduction of our new AMD Issue Reporting Form. We made a number of improvements to the older Catalyst Crew Feedback form, making it more comprehensive, ensuring we get the best feedback possible. Feedback is very important in every product company's life, especially in our fast paced environment. This is not just a check-box for us - we take these reports very seriously. We will review every report posted here and investigate every issue encountered. Please use this form whenever you encounter something worth mentioning.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.6 BETA | AMD Catalyst Windows 8 Feature Preview Driver

In what could be a blow for gaming PC users with lower-capacity SSDs (such as 60 GB, 90 GB, etc.), the minimum system requirements list of Max Payne 3, published by Rockstar Games, asks for at least 35 GB of free space on the installation drive. The game will likely ship in four double-layer DVDs, if not more. It could also make for an extremely huge download (over Steam, Amazon.com Digital Download, and GameStop. Other system requirements, particularly the requirements that the game is capable of taking advantage of, are particularly steep. For example, the game can take advantage of 6-core Intel Core i7-3960X, 8-core AMD FX-8150, the fastest single-GPU graphics cards in the market, as well as 16 GB of RAM.

Max Payne fans among PC gamers are in for a visual treat with Max Payne 3, for which they don't have to wait six more months than console gamers, according to a latest news release by Rockstar. The PC version of Max Payne 3 will not only launch on the same day as its console counterpart (May 29th in North America and June 1st in Europe), but will also feature "gloriously increased resolution and graphical detail in both the epic story and the explosive multiplayer modes." The publisher then went on to release three screenshots from the PC version of the game. It didn't go into much more detail, saying that it will talk about special graphics hardware support and enhancements, as well as system specs a little closer to the game's launch.Higher resolution images can be accessed at the source.