God of War: Chains of Olympus

Ever played a God of War game? If not, you are missing out something you shouldn't. The first two games of the series were released for the playstation 1 and 2 leaving PSP users feeling like second class citizens. But the wait is finally over. Finally, a god of war game for the PSP. And it is as good as, if not better than the PS2 version.

The action takes place before the original God of War game when Kratos, the main character of the game is loyally serving Ares, the god of war in exchange for his freedom from his messed up past. The story unfolds in cutscenes which rival the best of Oscar winning movies.

 

The combat system is awesome, just like the PS2 version. The graphics are way better than the other PSP games. But the great graphics don't compromise on the frame rate. The game runs smooth even in the most intense scenarios. Dodging attacks involves pressing both the shoulder buttons and moving the analogue stick. This is more complicated than the PS2 version as the PSP has only one analogue stick but once you get used to it, its good.

The only alternate weapon in the game is the Gauntlet of Zeus which is used to pummel the foes and is great fun to use. Every enemy kill yields red orbs which are used to learn new attacks and upgrade skills.

The gameplay is mostly linear but contains some alternate paths leading to upgrades and extras. There are a few puzzles to solve though not as taxing as the ones in the Prince of Persia series. Like the PS2 version, there are a few extra costumes and movies unlocked after completing the game but the replayability is limited.

This game has a few not so good elements. The worst one is that it is nothing new. Everything in the game is the same as the first two games. It feels like a stripped down version of the original games. Another problem is that it is too short. After finishing the game, you'll be left asking for more.

If you don't have a PSP, beg or steal it. Or alternatively, you could buy it too(though that's a secondary option)! This is by far the best game on the PSP and a good reason to get a PSP too.

THE GOOD   Great gameplay Best looking game on PSP Loads of blood and gore

THE BAD Limited replayability. Too similar to the original GOW games. Too short

Quad SLi(2x9800GX2)

Hardly a week has passed since the launch of the new monster 9800GX2 and nVidia has launched a product to blow ATi out of the competition with its (partially)new technology-Quad SLi! This technology makes an enabled rig a different animal altogether.

REQUIREMENTS

I know you cant wait to know what you need for setting up a quad SLi rig! Here it goes:

• 2(yes! two!) Nvidia 9800GX2
• A number crunching processor(at least 2.7GHz dual core)
• 2GB of ultra fast memory
• Fully patched Windows Vista
• A monitor supporting at minimum of 1920x1200 resolution.
  
• 850W or higher PSU
• Games!

As you can see, Quad SLi is a costly affair and you'll have to pay your nose out to get your hands dirty on one. A piece of advice- spending such a huge amount will be pointless if you won't be playing games at very high resolutions(above 1920x1200).

OUR TEST RIG

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme 3.2GHz

Motherboard: Nvidia 790i SLi

Memory: 2x1 GB Corsair DDR3

That's some serious horsepower for our beast.

PERFORMANCE (Call of Duty 4)

The rig shattered our first benchmark- Call of Duty 4. At a resolution of 2560x1600, 4x Anti Aliasing, 16x Anisotropic filtering and all the settings maxed out, the rig cruised at 104 FPS versus 57FPS recorded by a single 9800GX2 with the same components!

PERFORMANCE (Crysis)

The rig performed poorly in crysis. The rate went down terribly at higher resolutions. The frame rate was only 4FPS better than a single 9800GX2. Maybe, a few driver updates will fix the problem.

The main problem with Quad SLi is that due to the huge load of data transfer between the four GPUs, the processor is put under a lot of stress. So, QSLi shows its real power only at resolutions above 1920x1200.

PERFORMANCE (3d Mark 06)

The performance at default settings was nothing special. At 16152, it was slightly lower than the single card.

PEFORMANCE(GRAW 2)

Again, here, due to the CPU bottlenecks, Quad SLi shows its power only at higher resolutions. The QSLi setup beats the single card by a huge margin at 2560x1600, amazing!

PERFORMANCE(F.E.A.R.)

This benchmark shows exactly what was expected from it. Forget words! Look at the results!

FINAL WORD

So, is four better than two? Both yes and no! Yes when Quad SLi works well. And no when scaling problems arise like in Crysis.

But at present, I don't see the need to invest in a second 9800GX2 as the games run just fine with "one" 9800GX2. And when they don't, like in Crysis, the Quad SLi fails too.Also, 56 FPS is equally playable as 110 FPS, so, why invest so much? You could add another card to your setup at a later time.

Nvidia 9800GX2

The graphics card market is getting heated up now. Nvidia is coming up with a new card every few weeks. The 8800 Ultra had been reining the graphics card market for quite some time now. To change it all, comes a new contender (or champion should I say), the 9800GX2. It is basically two 8800GT s bridged together and mind you, this is not any other card, it is a monster! With a gig of 512-Bit memory, this card eats every benchmark for breakfast.

PERFORMANCE
Benchmarks show that this card can take on two 8800 GTX in SLi! It shows blistering frame rates with all the eye candy cranked up in most of the games. It completely knocks out all the cards out there. You won’t like to waste such insane amount of power for running games at 1024x768 resolution, so you can pretty much ignore those benchmarks. It scores 12992 points in 3dmark 06 which is lower than 8800Ultra and HD3870X2 but the real world tests are more reliable than synthetic tests.

POWER CONSUMPTION
The power consumed by this card is good. The idle consumption was around 165 watts (The 8800 ultra consumes 160W). Under stress, the consumption jumps to around 375 W which 10W more than 8800 Ultra. So, the performance is doubled and consumption is the same! This is due to the 65nm fabrication process.

VERDICT
It is too early to say now. Buy this card only if you have money to throw. Moreover, this card cannot run Crysis in its full glory. To do that, you have to get two of these cards, a fast processor and a large hole in your pocket.

ATi Radeon 3870X2

The year 2007 was a real nightmare for ATi. There cards were slaughtered by their Nvidia counterparts. This year, ATi is making an attempt to better it. Their first attempts this year were HD3850 and HD3870. These cards offered enormous value for money as they performed nearly as good as HD2900XT at half the price and less power consumption. This was mainly due to the 55nm fabrication process. Now, ATi is moving on to the high end category with the launch of HD3870X2 which is basically two HD3870s bridged together on a single PCB much like Nvidia's now ancient 7850GX2. With a massive 1332 million transistors and 640 steam processing units, the X2 is expected to give stiff competition to Nvidia's high end cards.

PEFORMANCE
The card shows pretty decent performance in Crysis at 1024x768 resolution. The 8800GTS 512 MB beats it by a good 9FPS. But as the resolution is scaled up to 2560x1600, it is a shade faster than 8800 Ultra. In Call of Duty 4, at the lower resolutions, the card is a shade better than 8800 Ultra. Scaling up the resolution brings the two cards neck to neck.

VERDICT
The only thing I say about this card is that buy this card only if you have a very large monitor supporting resolutions upto 2560x1600 or if you are an ATi fan(this seems to be the only reason to buy Ati cards nowadays).