Free deal : Pay Rs.0 to win a Fujifilm Finepix HS20EXR (Black

Snapdeal has come back with another free lucky draw deal, This time you get a chance to win fujifilm Finepix HS20EXR (Black).

The Fine Print

• Offer makes you eligible to win a Fujifilm Finepix HS20EXR (Black)
• One entry allowed per person
• Winners will be decided by an electronic draw of lots
• Voucher sent over e-mail and SMS confirms that you are eligible to win; it does not indicate that you have won
• Winners will be intimated by e-mail by 01:00 pm on Friday, March 16
• Winner will also be announced on Facebook by 01:00 pm on Friday, March 16

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DEAL PAGE

Rayman Origins (PS Vita)

I’m not too proud to admit this, but Rayman Origins is the first Rayman game I’ve played - ever. The only thing I knew about this franchise was that it was a child friendly universe that gave birth to a whacky spin off in the form of Raving Rabbids. I did not, however, anticipate the sheer amount of joy that can be derived from this title on the PlayStation Vita. 

For my brethren who’ve never dabbled with this franchise in the past, Rayman Origins is an old-school 2D platformer that perfectly blends combat with platforming in a very vibrant world. Story, of course is not an integral part of this game, but it’s there all right. You see Rayman and his band of friends have through their obnoxious snoring awakened the dead who now inhabit their turf, the Glade of Dreams. And of course, it’s up to Rayman to evict the new tenants. 

Bad Rayman

The game starts off in a jungle-based level, but soon expands to include multiple game worlds, each of which can only be accessed once you clear the previous one. Each world is thematically different, so in one you could be floating around the desert on mosquito shooting birds, while in the other, you could be sliding down frozen slopes avoiding tricky glaciers and what I presume are piranhas. The game packs in so much environmental variety that you’ll never get bored, even though you’re almost doing the same thing in every level. Also I recommend playing each level multiple times, because it looks real cool when you know the map by heart and (near) flawlessly breeze through it. Plus you get to upload your score online, so that’s always nice for the male ego. 

Every few levels you’ll have to rescue a nymph in distress after which she’ll bestow a special ability upon you like the ability to glide mid-air, dropkick stuff or even shrink in size to access certain areas. The levels that follow suit very cleverly put your new found abilities to the test. For example, once I earned the hovering ability, I was thrust into a game world full of air vents that made sure I mastered this ability to progress.

Umm what!

While this game looks very innocent, it’s also fiendishly tough at times requiring near perfect timing, razor quick reflexes and of course, tons of patience. It is, in fact quite ironic that such a kid friendly game made me spew out quite a few expletives at my poor Vita multiple times during my playthrough. However, none of these moments felt cheap and can be passed after a few tries. If for some reason you just can’t pass a roadblock, the game allows you to skip that level, altogether. However, if you do that, (and no one will judge you if you do), you may lack the required amount of Electoons to progress to the next level. In that case you’ll have to man up and complete the level or replay older levels to earn more Electoons. 

Rayman’s transition from consoles to the Vita is flawless and besides Uncharted, this has to be the most visually appealing game I’ve played on the Vita. Its art style is a unique blend of hand-drawn levels fused with fluid animation and gorgeous 3D design. It is a game largely meant for kids, so naturally levels are very vibrant and cheerful and truth be told, it was a nice change of pace from all the gritty/authentic games, I’ve played recently. The only thing I had to tone down was the in-game audio, since the constant gibberish and annoying music got to me after a few levels. 

I'll save you nymph

If you’ve picked up a Vita for yourself, Rayman Origins is the perfect addition to your library. It’s fun, insanely addictive and is capable of challenging the most hardened of gamers. It also offers players a surprising amount of replayability and is the perfect fix for gamers who don’t have a lot of time on their hands, since it can be enjoyed for five minutes or five hours. We most definitely recommend it.

Asus HD 7950 DirectCU II TOP graphics card Review

While we still await the arrival of Nvidia’s Kepler GPU, we can occupy ourselves with AMD’s newly launched “Tahiti” chipset, in the form of the HD 7970 and the HD 7950 graphics cards. These are built on the new Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture using the 28nm fabrication process. Due to this, Tahiti-based graphics cards have almost twice the transistor count, as compared to AMD’s previous flagship Cayman graphics cards (HD 6970). They’ve also managed to squeeze in more shader units, though the ROPs remain the same. The memory bandwidth has also been bumped up, thanks to a 384-bit memory bus, same as the GTX 580. Overall, the new chip looks like a worthy upgrade, on paper at least, but how this power translates into the real world is what we’ll find out today.

This brings us to the Asus HD 7950 we’ll be reviewing, which is their flagship HD 7950, based on the DirectCU II custom cooler and is also their TOP edition, which means it’s factory overclocked. The HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 (we’ll just call it the Asus HD 7950, for simplicity sake) is priced similarly to last year's Nvidia GTX 580, so it’s not cheap by any means. Let’s see what Asus has done to sweeten the deal. 

Design and Build 
Asus bundles the card in their usual packaging with the model name and other features clearly highlighted on the outside. The card is packaged extremely well, with the card cocooned in a strong Styrofoam mould. As part of the bundle, we get a CrossFire cable, two power cables, one miniDP to DVI converter, driver and utility disk and a manual. A word of warning, this card is not for meant for the average joe and by that I mean someone who has any run of the mill chassis, since this is a big card and I’m not exaggerating. Due to the DirectCU II cooler, it takes up expansion slots, so be prepared to move some things around before you install it. Also, if you happen to have a motherboard, where the SATA ports don’t face outwards, then this thing is going to block most of them. Despite being so monstrously big, it’s not very heavy, since it uses as aluminium heatsink.

A striking looking card

The rear ports include two miniDP ports, HDMI 1.4a and a DVI-I port. The card also supports Eyefinity up to 6 displays with the correct cables. The main USP of this card, however is the superior cooling ensemble fitted onto the GPU. DirectCU II uses copper heatpipes that come in contact directly with the GPU core, rather than having an extra piece of metal in between, which slows down the heat transfer. We’ve seen this type of technology being used in CPU heatsinks very often.

Good set of connectors

The heat is then spread across the two blocks of aluminium fins, which is eventually cooled by the two fans. This is a much simpler and cheaper solution, than using a vapor chamber. The metal shell covering the heatsink doesn’t cover the card entirely, so even though there are exhaust vents in the back, little hot air will escape into the cabinet. Asus have done a good job with the design and build of the card; we don’t have any complaints here.  

Features 
Asus hasn’t messed around with the specifications too much and other than the bump in the core frequency by 100MHz, the rest of it remains the same as AMD’s reference card. The core clock is now 900MHz, while the 3GB DDR5 memory runs at 5000MHz (effective speed). The new series also supports PCIE 3.0 interface and is backwards compatible with PCIE 2.0 as well. Other features include full DX11 support, 4K resolution support via HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2, AMD HD3D ready, etc. The card also supports quad CrossFireX , 7.1 channel audio over HDMI, along with Dolby TrueHD and DTS enhancements. The card also requires just two 6-pin power connectors to run, so it’s a bit more power efficient, compared to their previous generation of cards.

One of the best utilities out there

Asus bundles the GPU Tweak utility, which is by far one of the best in the market. Replacing the Smart Doctor utility, the functions remain pretty much the same, along with some new ones, all packaged in a slick little interface. The program lets you adjust the core and memory speeds for both 2D and 3D modes as well as the voltages. The fan speed can be manually set or you can leave it at auto. Each setting can be saved as a profile, so you can easily switch to it before firing up a game. Along with this, you also get a monitoring window on the side, which lets you track the temperature, voltages, clock speeds and even log this data, which helps you to figure out the limit when overclocking