AMD have had quite the trouble lately with drivers, a botched RAGE driver, no CrossFire support in Battlefield 3 without micro-stuttering for most users, and Skyrim took nearly a month to get going for HD 5000-Series owners with CrossFire.

But, 2012 is a new year, and AMD have their Graphics Core Next (GCN) debuting, which is their first architectural change since the R600 (2900XT). With it, AMD have added some herbs and spices to their drivers, to not propel the new series of GPUs, but to revamp their old ones, too.

AnandTech really cover the Preview drivers well, but a rundown is that they're heavily modified, and have tonnes of new features baked in that should impress pretty much everyone. One thing most people are going to love: custom application profiles. Hooray! This new feature allows users to create new application profiles and to modify the application profiles that are distributed through drivers and CAP updates.

Valve have always been masters of secrets, as we all know Gabe has been playing Half-Life 3 for a few years now and just wants to master it completely in every way possible before releasing it. Until, that is, the Spike Video Game Awards over the weekend.

The VGA's saw quite the number of teases, and announcements and this nugget of info is no different. Steam's message boards have been going absolutely crazy trying to figure out if Valve actually teased the upcoming game, with theories heavily relying on a half-speed YouTube video of Portal 2's AI "Wheatley" giving a speech.

The center of attention lies on a line of text at the top of the video, which is written in Greek. The translation for this text, according to the Steam message boards, is "OBSERVATION SATELLITE "LANTHANUM."

Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. announced today that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 passed the $1 billion mark in sales in just 16 days since its November 8 launch. This beats the record set in 2009 from James Cameron's "Avatar" which hit $1 billion in 17 days.

The Call of Duty community now consists of more than 30 million gamers, which is more than the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid. Some crazy, crazy numbers. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard has said:

Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world. Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.

Sequel to the 2009 action flick, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is nearly here, with G.I. Joe: Retaliation arriving in the middle of 2012. Today we have the first teaser trailer to the new movie, which has some new stars in the form of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Bruce Willis. Yes, Bruce Willis!

The above trailer shows off a bunch of scenes from the movie, and a tease of the storyline. It seems the G.I. Joe's have been wiped out after an attack, and the 'retaliation' from them is what the movie seems to be about. Bruce Willis is in it, so it's an instant buy for me, as cheesy as he has become lately, I have an old school 80's/90's action movie love for the guy.

The new G.I. Joe movie still includes some other big name stars such as Channing Tatum, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Stevenson and Arnold Vosloo who plays Zartan, whom the G.I. Joe team have to face off against.

ASUS are reportedly working on a new ultrabook style laptop where they are said to be baking in a swivel design display that transforms the device into a tablet. Since Windows 8 is much more tablet-friendly, this move would actually be quite the bold move by ASUS. DigiTimes says the device will be unveiled at 2012 Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, and might hit retail shelves in time for the launch of Windows 8 next September.

ASUS have been here before, with their Eee PC T91 netbook (as pictured above) in 2009. The device did not sell that well, but with tablets being more popular than ever, and Windows 8 having the OS build a tablet UI directly into the OS itself, it could really work.

There has, to this day, not been a device that could do both. Apple have the iPad and their MacBook range, but nothing that can do both. I personally own a 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro and I've wished for a long time now that I could disconnect my 17-inch display and use it like a big iPad. If ASUS can pull this off, I can tell you now, I'll be all over that in a heartbeat. I can see it now, it'll be called Asus Ultrabot or similar, in line with their "Transformer" line of products. You heard it here first, folks! I call Ultrabot from here on out.

Behar Merlaku was sitting on a slot machine at a casino in Bregenz, Austria when he thought he hit the big time. Not just a few thousand dollars, but he hit the jackpot winning an astounding, life-changing $57 million. At just 26 years old, this would be one of those life-defining moments, where you realise everything will be OK from here on out.

Until he went up to the cashier to cash his prize to have the casino owners say it was "all a mistake", and just a "software glitch'. They argued that the jackpot alarm went off erroneously and that Merlaku's game had not actually hit the required five matches. He had only gotten four, they said. Instead of the $57 million Merlaku thought he'd won, the casino spat in his face an offered him $100 and a free meal. Yep.

This is the point when I would most likely form myself into a ball of pure hatred and darkness, and either implode without a trace of my existence, or explode in a fire of pure rage.

U.S. cyber security analysts and experts are reporting that fewer than 12 different Chinese groups are responsible for most of the China-based cyber attacks that have resulted in critical data being stolen from U.S. companies and government agencies. The analysts spoke to The Associated press where they've said the intrusions have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars of intellectual property and other critical data.

The attacks may have been stealthy, agressive and somewhat ninja, but the distinct signatures the hackers leave behind make it possible for U.S. cyber security investigators to more or less accurately identify which teams were responsible for the attacks. According to the report, the U.S. gives unique names or numbers to the attackers, and at times can tell where the hackers are and even who they may be.

It's virtually impossible, however, to prosecute hackers based in China due to the lack of any form of agreement between the two countries. Even if it were 100-percent possible to provide definitive proof of where and who the attacks came from, China would most likely not even bat an eyelid. Given that at least a handful of the groups are believed to have financial backing from the Chinese government or military.

The development team responsible for the amazing Uncharted series of games on the PlayStation 3, have some good news for the world. Shortly after Uncharted 2: Among Thieves came out, Naughty Dog split its focus into two separate projects.

One team handled the sequel to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception, while the other tem handled a new IP, "The Last of Us" and have been working on this new title for the last two years. The Two uf Us is a PS3-exclusive game, about an apocalyptic Earth, in which you'll find abandoned cities reclaimed by nature. The population has been decimated by a modern plague, There are survivors killing each other for food, weapons, or whatever they can get their hands on.

Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.

Every time I read the word "atom," I say to myself "up and Atom" from the character "Radioactive Man" from the Simpsons. Anyway, researchers from McGill University and Sandia National Laboratories have built a circuit that has two wires that are separated by just 150 atoms, built on a 15nm process.

Circuits of this size include the usual benefits of lower power consumption and heat, as well as bringing extra functionality due to the larger transistor density. The challenges at this level, as you can imagine, are great. Dan Olds, an analyst at The Gabriel Consulting Group said of this research:

This kind of research also uncovers other potential problems arising from ever smaller shrinks. Getting to 15nm or 16nm will mean smaller and more powerful devices that are more energy efficient. But when we're talking about such a small scale, designing chips that can be mass-produced with decent yields is quite a challenge. There will also be challenges for the design of devices that will use these processors. Devices based on 15nm processes will pack more performance and functionality into much smaller form factors. Functions that used to take two or more chips will be accomplished by one transistor-jammed processor.

The studio responsible for S.T.A.L.K.E.R have reportedly closed down, with Ukrainian developer GSC Game World closing their doors. The company was founded back in 1995, and have had quite the run of success with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., their first-person shooter game.

There were multiple games in the series, Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was being developed and was looking to have a release next year.1C Ukraine's Sergey Galenkin blogged about the closure, with 1C being one of the publishers of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The blog states the shut down has been confirmed, with Galenkin attributing this to a combination of things including a failed publishing deal for a console version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and the difficulties in self-publishing a PC game in Eastern Europe.

It's a sad, sad day and I'm truly disappointed that GSC Game World have gone. What next?