Crave Talk: Nintendo must make a mobile phone

Playing games on a mobile phone is about as enjoyable as untangling a pair of headphones when you're stuck in the middle of a train during rush hour. The quality of titles available is very low, and today's phones simply aren't designed for fast, reliable button pressing. Don't get me wrong--things are getting better--but for the love of thumb-tapping, Nintendo must make a mobile phone.
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Nvidia's new GeForce card aims to bring 3D power to the masses

Nvidia seems to be offering a steal of a video card this morning. Its new GeForce 8800 GT will go for about S$400 (US$294.12), and Nvidia claims it's faster than the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, and Nvidia's own GeForce 8800 GTS cards. Based on the results of a handful of review sites, Nvidia seems to have delivered a bargain here, taking out both its own and ATI's previous bang-for-the-buck winners.

Aside from the price-performance value, the GeForce 8800 GT has a few other notable features. It's the first graphics card to come with PCI Express 2.0 support. That won't mean much today, because few motherboards offer the wider-bandwidth slot and PCI Express 1.1 still provides a wide-enough data pipe. But it's nice to know that when that might matter, these new cards will be able to take advantage.

The other benefit is that the 8800 GT also seems to be a single-slot card. Both the GeForce 8800 GTX and the 8800 GTS have double-wide fan and heat-sink hardware, which takes up a ton of space inside your PC. The single-slot 8800 GT not only makes it easier to add one card, it also means you can run two of them in SLI mode in a wider variety of systems and without sacrificing as many expansion slots.

And it's a good thing this new card is so SLI-friendly, because from the look of early benchmarks and Nvidia's own testing, even a single high-end GeForce 8800 GTX card won't deliver truly smooth, 60 frames per second gameplay when you turn all of the DirectX 10 graphics features on in next-gen poster-child Crysis. But with two 8800 GT cards, which cost less than a single 8800 GTX, you might be able to get better performance by doubling up on two of the new midrange cards. The single player Crysis demo that went online over the weekend can't tell us because it has no SLI support, so we'll have to wait for the full version to be sure.

Via CNET Crave

Hangman in 3D, anyone?

This is certainly a lot more interactive fun than the original paper and pencil guessing version. If you've never played the game (which leads us to ask which rock you live under), this involves drawing one part of the hanging victim's anatomy at a time as a tally mark against each bad guess. In 3D, it gets a lot more graphic than a stick figure. Although the noose, erm, news is I Want One Of Those offers a sanitized cartoony version complete with crossed eyes, albeit in blood red. To play, you build your victim up one limb at a time, all attached magnetically. Which is great since one can envision creating a Frankenstein to up the gallows of fun. C_ _ _!

Via Coolest Gadgets

Ricoh has a new AA battery camera

It's not anything exciting like the GX-100 or GR2, but the RR770 looks to be a decent everyday camera. It's powered by AA alkaline batteries, so it's not exactly environmentally friendly unless you switch to rechargeables. 7 megapixels is slightly below average (standard's 8 megapixels) and the 3x optical zoom is pretty run-of-the-mill. It accepts SD cards, has a 32MB internal memory and a 3-inch LCD screen.

Pricing in Asia was not available at press time. But without frills like face detection and an optical image stabilizer, it probably isn't pricey.

Twice the contrast at double the price

The upcoming BenQ W20000 projector promises twice the dynamic contrast of its W10000 predecessor. While its 20,000:1 rating still pales in comparison to the current 35,000:1 record held by the Sony Black Pearl, this Taiwanese offering is still ahead of the other full-HD DLPs currently available in the market. Other notable enhancements include a highly sought-after Hollywood Quality Video processor by Silicon Optix and dual 1080p24-ready HDMI inputs. In addition, this beamer is also upgraded with Texas Instruments' BrilliantColor technology which boosts color depth from 16.7 million to a staggering 1.07 billion.

The only catch is its estimated S$16,000 (US$11,764.71) price tag. This makes the W20000 one of the most expensive full-HD DLP projectors in the market which is quite unusual coming from BenQ, a company known for its value-for-money product proposition. The W20000 is expected to be available in Singapore in the first quarter of 2008. Pricing and launch details for the rest of Asia are not available at press time.

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