A recent casting call in Los Angeles reveals that Monolith is currently working on F.E.A.R. 3.

Looks as though the third installment to the F.E.A.R. series is in the works, with an official viral video promo slated hit the Internet soon. Details from a recent LA casting call--which took place on January 14 and 15--reveal that the web promo will be directed by Marcus Nispel, the man behind the recent remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. VG247 reports that this advert will also reveal "significant" plot and character details.

According to the data sheet supplied to the applicants, Paxton Fettel will be returning to this third installment. The description calls for a "malevolent genius with a diabolical sense of humor." Although he's strong and powerfully built (aka "meaty"), his features are "twisted" by the dark psychic power he commands. Although it appears that he may make a major comeback, Fettel will be narrating the promo.

Also included in the promo will be Fettel's mother, Alma. She's apparently given birth to a third child although the sheet doesn't reveal its age or gender. It also specifies that she'll be consumed with revenge, leading us to believe something may have happened to that third child. Alma's eldest son, Point Man, also plays a role in the video, turning his allegiance to his new-found mother.

Although Monolith and Warner Bros. have not officially announced the game, F.E.A.R. 3 was rumored to be slated for 2010. Monolith was discovered to be hiring for a new project last June, however the developer has yet to reveal it's details. Based on the recent casting call, it's safe to assume the developer is hammering out the new installment.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

In a press conference yesterday Intel offered a few more tidbits of information on the six-core Gulftown chips it plans to launch later this year.

Scheduled for release sometime in the first half of this year, Gulftown is aimed at high-end desktops and workstations. Intel yesterday offered some juicy deets on the Westmere chip, including that 1.17 billion transistors onto 240mm sq. die and carries 12MB in L3 and a thermal design power of 130W at 3.33GHz. But the part we're most excited about is improvements in power efficiency.

This is the first design that can do power gating with not just CPU cores, but also the "uncore" parts of the chip. Previously, power gating the L3 cache was not possible because all that core data needed to be stored somewhere after everything else was shut down. However, rather than saving core data in the L3 when it shuts off, Intel has added a dedicated SRAM to store core data and enable Westmere 6C to power gate the L3 cache.

Other information revealed yesterday is that Gulftown will be sold under the Core i7 brand, will be capable of running 12 threads at once, and will not include integrated graphics. Unfortunately, the folks at Intel kept it zipped in terms of clock speeds

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Up until now, we've been referring to the next-generation Nvidia GPU technology as Fermi or GF100. Today, Nvidia revealed the official marketing name for the new architecture.

Nvidia will be skipping the entire 300-range of model numbers as the Fermi-based cards will come in at the 400-level. As revealed in an Nvidia twitter update:

"Fun Fact of the Week: GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 will be the names of the first two GPUs shipped based on our new GF100 chip!"

Read more here for our exploration into the GF100.

Source : Tom's Hardware US