The new version of the software is designed to exercise the latest in DirectX 11 gaming technology featuring such challenges as volumetric lighting, tessellation, depth of field and lens effects in real time. From the looks of the “deep sea” demo reel below, you’ll definitely want to upgrade your video card before giving this bad boy a whirl.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Expect 3DMark 11 to hit in Q3 2010. For more info, head on over to the Futuremark’s website.

[via CrunchGear]

The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian says sources have confirmed to him that Intel paid to get a new chip, code-named Larrabee, into Sony’s next console. Also per Demerjian’s sources, AMD will be handling Nintendo and Microsoft’s next-next gen systems under the ATI label. We’re gonna have to start working on a name for this round, because next-next gen is going to get difficult after a while.

Seems sudden, doesn’t it? There’s a bright side, however, and it’s that all this is rumor as yet, with nothing confirmed and no official statements made. In fact, Sony has already issued a denial about their purported switch to Intel, so this particular story may be a complete bust.  But one thing is pretty likely: these decisions are being made, and the reliability (or lack thereof) of Demerjian’s intel doesn’t change that. The future of gaming is just around the corner.

[The Inquirer via VentureBeat]

Gamespot recently conducted a side-by-side comparison of the graphics in several launch titles running on both the 360 and PS3. At best the PS3′s visuals were comparable to the 360, at worst, the PS3 was trounced in both texture detail and frame rate. Included in the evaluation was EA’s Fight Night Round 3, which EA was saying would have much improved visuals when compared to the Xbox 360 (including an “amazing sweat modeling engine”). Not only are the backgrounds and crowds arguably less detailed, the HDR lighting is far less realistic, and the game takes much longer to load. Now before you start flaming me with “but the game is a port” messages, the fact that they share the same library of models and textures should mean that the games would be nearly identical if the NVIDIA chip in the PS3 was as capable as the ATI chip in the Xbox 360.

That said, some future games such as Motorstorm do show promise in the graphics department. As is the case in every generation, it takes a while for developers to learn all of the intricacies and tricks of a new console. There’s no doubt that we’ll see better graphics on the PS3 in the future, but it’s unlikely that they’ll ever achieve the cinematic quality boasted by Sony’s hype machine.