If Nvidia gets its way, enterprise desktops and games could soon be served off the cloud, thanks to new cloud technologies unveiled by the graphics chip giant this week.

Based on the company’s new Kepler GPU (graphics processing unit) architecture, the new technologies — Nvidia VGX and GeForce Grid — are designed for large-scale data centres and tout virtualisation capabilities that allow GPUs to be simultaneously used by multiple users.

The Nvidia VGX platform can be used by enterprises in remote computing that allows applications to be streamed to notebooks or mobile devices through virtualised desktops, while Nvidia GeForce Grid is targeted at gaming-as-a-service (GaaS) providers for delivering rich gaming experiences. …

It doesn’t work out of the box. Troubleshooting required.

Not cool.

And this was a huge surprise to me. Given the past quality of Blizzard’s games, and the extremely long wait fans had for Diablo 3, you’d expect it to be extremely polished and launched without a hitch.

After all, they run the world’s most massive and profitable MMORPG World of Warcraft, so you would think they know a thing or two about server loads and whatnot.

…

Singaporeans, it seems, are chronic queuers, and it’s not just iPhones commanding snaking lines.

Even in the age of convenient online pre-orders, hundreds, if not thousands still preferred to get their hands on Blizzard’s latest game Diablo 3 the old-fashioned way – by queuing at the Funan mall launch event yesterday. Some queued for three hours or more for a copy of the long-awaited game. …

While all the hype right now is about Diablo 3, one other game that PC buffs might also want to upgrade their machines for may be the much-awaited Company of Heroes 2 unveiled today by publisher THQ.

The followup to the ground-breaking Company of Heroes real-time strategy (RTS) game of 2006 will start firing up in PCs come early 2013, and is expected to feature some of the most eye-catching graphics for its genre. Yup, the perfect excuse to buy a new graphics card! …

The newly-opened up broadband market in Singapore has seen the entry of new players such as MyRepublic, which promises to cater to niche markets such as gamers with its differentiated fibre broadband offerings.

Just how do these smaller players get their game going and can they continue to prosper as the Big Three telcos in Singapore slash prices in an all-out fibre broadband war?

In this month’s Q&A, we speak to Malcolm Rodrigues, the CEO and co-founder of MyRepublic, the new kid on the block in the broadband market, for his views. …

Want that beast of a graphics card for your PC but not the noise that comes with it? There are now two versions of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680 from Asus that promise to run more quietly while enhancing performance.

Unveiled late last week, the new cards come after a slew of GeForce GTX 680s released last month, which as expected, all sported identical reference designs from Nvidia. In other words, little differentiated brand A from brand B, except for the decal on each card. …

The next instalment of the popular first-person shooter, Crysis, is set to hit the stores in Spring 2013, with the player taking on the role of Prophet, the elite solider from previous instalments now on a revenge mission against aliens and human goons from an evil corporation seeking world domination.

Fans of the cult series will be happy to know that the setting could be a cross between the two previous instalments – parts of New York will be overgrown with vegetation because of a land grab by the evil Cell Corporation.

According to a release by German developer Crytek today, the New York setting will be a “veritable urban rainforest teeming with overgrown trees, dense swamplands and raging rivers.”

…

DOTA fans who also happen to be StarHub Broadband, Mobile, and Pay TV customers should start packing up their queuing kit. Starting today (11 April), StarHub is giving away a neat 5,000 DOTA 2 invite keys to the above customers for free on a first-come-first-served basis. …

It’s April Fools’ Day and Google is playing a prank on users with an 8-bit version of Google Maps. The pixelated maps are meant to emulate the low-resolution graphics of the original Nintendo and Famicom video game consoles that many of us grew up with.

To switch to the retro-looking “8-bit Quest Maps”, click on the Start Your Quest box at the bottom left hand corner of the screen in Google Maps. In a dig at users, Google says the “8-bit Quest Maps is our Beta Maps technology and has certain system requirements. Your system may not meet the minimum requirements for 8-bit computations”. …

Gamers who have been looking out for the 3G version of the Playstation Vita will be happy to hear that SingTel will be selling it in Singapore from April 14 with a mobile broadband contract, and with a discount for those who sign up.

The much-awaited 3G version of Sony’s latest handheld console will go for as low as S$99 if you sign up for a S$40-a-month subscription that comes with 50GB data delivered at 7.2Mbps. …