The long awaited Meet the Pryo video is finally very close to release and the three days leading up to it are being called Pyromania. Today being the first day Valve introduced a new game mode called Doomsday. To go along with it they added 11 more achievements that correspond with the map. I know if I get the time I will be checking the new map out, who's with me? Here are the links to both Valves blob posting and the landing page for pyromania. 

http://www.teamfortress.com/pyromania/

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8260

Hello everyone and welcome to your Friday edition of the affiliate news. Todays big announcement was the AMD HD 7970 Ghz edition. But all of those postings are in our news posting about the card itself. Everything else posted up by our affiliates is in here. I hope this gives you a few things to help get you through the day to your weekend. Enjoy!

Cases

SilverStone Temjin TJ04-EW Evolution ATX Computer Chassis Review

BitFenix Shinobi XL Full Tower Case Review @ Legit Reviews

Cooling

Deepcool UF120 Review @ OCC

Xigmatek Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets

Storage

SSD prices in steady, substantial decline

OCZ Vertex 4 128GB Review @ Vortez

Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 10K RPM Hard Drive Review @ Techgage

ADATA SP900 128GB SSD Review @ RWLabs

Audio

Steelseries Diablo III headset review @ Hardware.Info

Teufel Audio Concept C 500 THX PC Speakers @ eTeknix.com

PSU’s

FSP Aurum Xilenser 500 W @ techPowerUp

Input Devices

Ozone Strike Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review @ eTeknix.com

Other

Microsoft's Surface Could Kill HP, Dell, Other PC OEMs

Powerfreakz Evolution 3000 Portable Solar Charger Review @ eTeknix.com

MSI GT60 Gaming laptop review @ Rbmods

Two stock market stories have captured the attention of the games industry in recent months - the weak post-IPO performance of Zynga, and the dramatic bellyflop of THQ, whose shares have lost 80 per cent of their value over the past 12 months. Against that backdrop, few people seem to have noticed what's happening to Electronic Arts' valuation - yet a quick glance at EA's performance reveals a worrying situation and suggests a tough time ahead for the company which used to be the industry's biggest third-party publisher.

Link to the source, check it out for the full article 

To celebrate Tahiti's (half) birthday (and to compete a little more with the competition) AMD has introduced a new version of the HD 7970, the HD 79070 Ghz edition. With all of their other models having a Ghz edition, this isn't a total surprise. While introducing the Ghz edition they have also slipped in another feature that might be familiar to some of you, AMD's powertune "with boost" works a lot like Nvidia's variation. Meaning the card will overclock itself slightly as needed when it’s not being pushed to use the full wattage. This is a great way to handle things, giving you the best performance possible in games and programs that don't push your GPU to the limit. With those two things, AMD is calling this the fastest and most versatile GPU on the market now. Until I get one in my hands to test out I can't confirm, but I will list all of our affiliate reviews of the card at the end of this news posting for you guys to see what they had to say. 

More pictures and links to the reviews in the read more

Update**

Saphire will be introducing a couple versions of the new HD7970 Ghz Edition in the next few weeks as well.

Within the next few weeks, SAPPHIRE will introduce the eagerly awaited TOXIC Edition and Vapor-X models in its HD 7970 family. The TOXIC Edition is a limited edition factory overclocked model – delivering best in class performance and targeted at the enthusiast. The Vapor-X models use SAPPHIRE's exclusive Vapour Chamber cooling technology to deliver optimised performance whilst retaining low noise and cool operation. Full specifications will be announced as the products become available.

I hope everyone is keeping cool during this heat wave. To give you guys something to keep your minds off the heat I have for you todays affiliate news postings.

Video Cards

MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk 2GB Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews

Motherboards

EVGA Z77 FTW Motherboard Review @ Hi Tech Legion

Cases

SilverStone Fortress FT03-MINI Review @ Vortez

Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Case Review @ Legit Reviews

Memory

 Samsung 8GB 30nm DDR3 1600MHz Memory Kit Review @ Legit Reviews

Storage

Kingston Wi-Drive 64GB Wireless Storage for Android, iPhone and iPad

Other

Everything You Need to Know About the Thunderbolt Connection @ Hardware Secrets

BEHRINGER Guitar Link @ TechwareLabs

AMD Heaven GamExperience @ Madshrimps

NZXT Aperture M USB 3.0 Multi-Media Hub Review

I can't be the only one, with work and life taking up a lot of time I have picked up games many times and never touched them. It’s shameful, it’s upsetting, and it’s a waste of money. But I still get a little excited when there is a new steam sale. This is one of my dirty secrets. Finally someone has actually put together a analysis program to take a look at your steam games and graph out how much you are playing them and most importantly, how many games have you never played. As you can see from my results, I really should just take the summer off and catch up. 

Take a look at the link below to check out your score as well, and then post them up here. I can't be the only one. Even then I wouldn't be shocked if I was the worst offender.  

http://www.lambentstew.com/webblog/miniproject/steamanalysis

If you are looking for a laugh this morning head on over to IGN, they posted up a whole collection of "Texts From Video Game Companies". To give you an idea of what to expect check this one out

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/20/texts-from-video-game-companies

It feels like we just had a Wednesday, but we are back at it again with our mid-week affiliate news.  

Video Cards

MSI GeForce GTX 680 Lightning 2 GB @ techPowerUp

Motherboards

BIOSTAR TZ77XE4 (Intel Z77) Motherboard Review

Cooling

Noctua NH-L12 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review @ Bigbruin.com

Cases

CM Storm Stryker @ techPowerUp

PSU’s

Xigmatek Tauro 700-watt Power Supply Review

Storage

Western Digital Sentinel DX4000 @ TechwareLabs

Audio

Corsair Vengeance 2000 Headset Review @ OCC

Other

Samsung Galaxy S III Smartphone Review: Style, Grace, Substance @ HotHardware.com

Reviewing the NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 Experience Featuring the ASUS VG278H 120Hz LCD Monitor 3D Bundle

Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok posted this tweet after initially poking a little fun at the two. They managed to power through with not only the stress of playing on the games hardest setting, but also in hardcore mode where if you die you never respawn again. On top of all of that they managed to do with while broadcasting both their faces and games to everyone. If you ask me, that's far to much stress to deal with! Congrats to them on their completion. For those of you who havn't completed the game yet, be careful going to our source link as it does have a few spoilers. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/20/world-first-diablo-3-hardcore-inferno-completion-confirmed-by-blizzard/

iBUYPOWER is introducing their latest laptop, the Valkyrie CZ-17. Seeing that I have been on the market for a new gaming laptop the price for this one caught my eye. Starting at $1299 you end up with a full 1080p screen, an Ivy Bridge based i7-3610QM Processor, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M GPU. What is even more interesting to me is that iBUYPOWER is pulling away from the generic laptop designs that we normally see from most botique builders and going with a unique design specific just to them. This will help set them apart while still packing in the power than botique builders are known for. Click the read more for their full pr.

Here I am sitting here on this lovely Tuesday morning when I realize that the affiliate news that I did yesterday was never published. So today you guys/girls get a double dose of news today, I hope you enjoy it.

Video Cards

XFX Radeon HD 7850 Black Edition 2GB Video Card Review

MSI GEFORCE GTX 670 Power Edition 2GB Overclocked Video Card Review

MSI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3GB Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix.com

Motherboards

Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Motherboard Review @ HCW

Cases

LEPA LPC302 Mid-Tower Case Review @ HardwareLOOK

Thermaltake Level 10 GTS Mid-Tower Chassis Review @ eTeknix.com

Coolermaster HAF XM @ Rbmods

Silverstone Kublai KL04 @ techPowerUp

Zalman Z11 Plus Black Case Review @ Legit Reviews

Bitfenix Shinobi XL: mild-mannered powerhouse @ Hardware.Info

Cooling

Cooler Master GeminII M4 Low Profile CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion

Thermaltake Frio Advanced CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets

Thermaltake Frio Advanced CPU Cooler Review @ Hi Tech Legion

Prolimatech Lynx CPU Cooler Review @ Legit Reviews

Network

Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Wireless Router Review @ Legit Reviews

Input Devices

Steelseries Kinzu v2 Pro Edition Review - XSReviews

SteelSeries Simraceway S1 Steering Wheel Review @ Madshrimps

Rosewill RK-9000RE Mechanical Gaming Keyboard @ techPowerUp

Storage

OCZ improves Vertex 4 with firmware 1.4 @ Hardware.Info

Corsair Accelerator Series 30GB Cache SSD Review

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive Review @ Bigbruin.com

OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD Review @ RWLabs

MyDigitalSSD SMART 256GB mSATA Solid State Drive Review

OCZ Agility 3 2.5" 120GB SATA III Review at Overclockers Online

OCZ Vertex 4 Solild State Drive @ Benchmark Reviews

Adaptec 6805TQ maxCache RAID controller @ TechwareLabs

Gaming

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier PlayStation 3 Review

Dragons Dogma PS3 Review @ eTeknix.com

Audio

Tt eSPORTS SHOCK One Gaming Headset Review @ ThinkComputers.org

Razer Tiamat 7.1 True Surround Sound Headset Review @ eTeknix.com

PSU’s

NZXT HALE82 N 650-watt Power Supply Review

Memory

G.Skill Ripjaws Z 16GB Memory Review @ HCW

Other

Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display hands-on preview @ Hardware.Info

Samsung Series 9 15? NP900X4C Ivy Bridge Ultrabook Overview and SSD Performance Analysis

E3 2012 Awards @ OCC

Computex 2012: The Big Picture @ TechwareLabs

Apple's iOS 6: What's New and What's Missing @ HotHardware.com

Intel Announces MIC Xeon Phi, Aims For Exascale Computing @ HotHardware.com

Is Nvidia's GRID About to Change the Face of Gaming Forever? @ Virtual-Hideout.com

Asus VG278H 3D Vision 2 Monitor Kit Review @ eTeknix.com

The big news yesterday was the introduction of Microsoft's new tablet called the Surface. To give you guys an idea, here are all of the articles publish just by engadget alone!

Editorial: Engadget on Microsoft's new Surface tablet line

Microsoft pilfers Surface name from its smart table, now called the PixelSense (video)

Will Surface tablets use Microsoft's new MagSafe-like power and data connector?

Hands-on with Microsoft Surface for Windows RT, Touch Cover and Type Cover (update: video!)

Microsoft Surface tablets: the differences between Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro models

Microsoft one ups other tablet 'smart' covers with Surface's Touch Cover and Type Cover

Microsoft reveals its own Windows 8 tablet: meet the new Surface for Windows RT

Live from Microsoft's mystery press conference in Los Angeles!

It's interesting to see Microsoft's upcoming tablet, and the keyboard built into the cover is an amazing idea. I am curious if they will really be able to get market share away from the iPad. So my question to you is are you considering one? Do you have an iPad? If given the choice between the iPad and the Surface what would you get?

Over at the Valve blog late last week a new catagory and writer popped up. A guy by the name of Yanis Varoufakis has started a new blog called Valve Economics. After giving his introduction blob post a read I am excited to see what he will have to say in the future. Yanis is an academic economist and an author whom Gabe contacted and later hired to look at Valves in game economics. Specifically how things work when trying to combine multiple economys like DOTA 2 and TF2. It will be interesting to see how having him on board will effect things in the future. 

If you guys would like to read more, or follow what he has to say in the future you can check it out at the following link. 

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/category/economics/

Steam is planning hardware updates today. Because of that everyone can explace to see downtime at some point during the day. This means that a few people might actually see sunlight today as well. Here are all the details Valve provided. 

We'll be updating some of the Steam servers on Monday, June 18th, 2012 at approximately 15:00 PDT (GMT-0700) and we should be finished by 15:30 PDT.

We expect all users to be affected, but do not expect all users to be affected at the same time. Chat, game lobbies, and the community web site will be affected for a set of users for a portion of the maintenance. Some content downloads may be briefly interrupted. Game play should generally not be interrupted but may be impacted for some multi-player titles.

 

SteelSeries introduced their partnership with The Breast Cancer Research Foundation along with a new all pink Siberia v2 headset. 10% of each headset sale goes to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, with a goal of $10,000 total. For pink lovers this headset is going to be at the top of a lot of wish lists, our experiences with Siberia V2's have always been very comfortable with great audio quality, something that is rare to find in most cheap pink headsets on the market. 

I also feel bad for our editor Adam's wallet, once again Steel Series has grabbed his wallet and spent his money for him. His wifes pc is almost all pink, combining that with his interested in SteelSeries products, I wouldn't be shocked if the $25 showing on SteelSeries's donation goal tracker were his. 

For those of you wanting to check out more about Dreamhack check out http://www.dreamhack.tv/. You can watch all of the events different streams. This is interesting for both people who enjoy LAN's as well as people who like watching e-sports. 

Most of you are aware but this weekend (and until tomorrow) is Dreamhack, the worlds largest LAN party. I came across an interesting page where you can track their live bandwidth usage. Everyone should take a peak at this. They are tracking a bunch of different variables. One that I find interesting is the breakdown comparing traffic between WoW, HoN, SC2, LoL, D3, and COD BLOPS. 

http://dashboard.dreamhack.se/

Nvidia introduced their latest beta drivers this morning. Promising performance inprovements from a few different games as well as what they are calling "user experience enhancements and a number of new NVIDIA Control Panel enhancements" for titles like Diablo 3. 

Furthermore, MSAA overrides Diablo 3’s post-process anti-aliasing blur, allowing you to see the game’s textures as designed by Blizzard’s artists. Specifically, focus on the Waypoint’s artistic flourishes and its shiny, specular edges that are now more vibrant. In motion the impact of this change is dramatic, and especially so in the later, more colorful chapters.

The dirver also includes new and updated 3d profiles and SLI profiles along with a few bug fixes as well. For those of you running Nvidia in your pc (like me), check out the link below to see the rest of the details and download the driver. 

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-304-48-beta-drivers-released/

It’s finally Friday; you can breathe a breath of relief, and prep yourself for a couple days off. This weekend is one of those weekends that might be good for splitting your gaming and outside time up on. Plan a cookout and then when the lights kick on, it’s time to go inside and kill a few zombies in the office.  But before you do, I do have a few different affiliate postings for you to check out.

Motherboards

ASUS Maximus V Gene Intel Z77 Express LGA 1155 @ techPowerUp

ASRock H77 Pro4 MVP Intel LGA 1155 Motherboard Review

Zotac Fusion Mini-ITX Motherboard (Fusion-B-U) @ TechwareLabs

Video Card

Sapphire HD7770 GHz Edition Vapor-X Review @ Custom PC Review

Cooling

Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 Review @ OCC

Audio

Tritton Detonator Xbox 360 Headset Review @ eTeknix.com

Cases

Lian Li PC-TU200 @ techPowerUp

Corsair Obsidian 550D Mid-Tower Quiet Chassis Review @ Techgage

MSI Stealth Mid Tower Case Review @ Hi Tech Legion

BitFenix Shinobi XL Window Version Full Tower Chassis Review

Storage

Kingston SSDNow V+200 vs Zalman F-Series 60 GB SSD Review @ Hardware Secrets

MyDigitalSSD SMART Series 256GB SSD Review

Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD Review @ Custom PC Review

Western Digital Scorpio 1TB (9.5mm) review @ Hardware.Info

Gaming

Dirt Showdown Performance Review @ RWLabs

Network

Thecus N5550 5-Bay NAS Review @ eTeknix.com

Input Devices

Leetgion Hellion Review @ Vortez

Other

Silverstone Office Visit @ Ninjalane

Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition Review @ eTeknix.com

The other side of Computex

Eclipse Stealth FX812R795 Extreme Review @ Vortez

 I found this little tid bit of deleloper news to be interesting this morning. Activision is adding another developer to the list of teams working on Call of Duty games. As PC Gamer mentioned, I really hope they are brining on a team to work on redoing the series's engine as it is very overdue. 

"Working "in support" suggests they might be handling ongoing DLC content for an upcoming Call of Duty, in the same way that Sledgehammer are supporting Modern Warfare 3 with Call of Duty Elite content. Alternatively, they could be working on a new CoD title entirely, but will it have skateboards?"

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/15/tony-hawk-devs-working-on-call-of-duty/