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Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

In January, Nvidia's GTX 970 became the most popular graphics card on Steam—a remarkable feat considering the next most popular chip at the time, HD Graphics 4000, isn't really designed for gaming at all, but is instead integrated into Intel CPUs. Today, the GTX 970 still commands a hefty five percent share of the Steam audience. Its successor, the GTX 1070—the second graphics card based on Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture following the powerful but pricey GTX 1080—has some big shoes to fill.

And it does fill them... for the most part. As Nvidia promised, the GTX 1070 is indeed faster than both the GTX 980 Ti and the Titan X, and by some margin: as much as 12 percent in some tests. Just a couple of months ago these cards cost upwards of £500/$650—the GTX 1070, at the high end, costs just £399/$449.

In its Founders Edition form (Nvidia's new nomenclature for reference cards), the GTX 1070 is cool and quiet too, the smaller, more efficient TSMC 16nm FinFET manufacturing process letting Nvidia ramp up performance to Titan-beating levels, while keeping the TDP down to a reasonable 150W.

(credit: Wikimedia)

Google successfully made its case to a jury last month that its use of Java APIs in Android was "fair use," and the verdict rejected Oracle's claim that the mobile system infringed its copyrights.

After Google argued its case, though, Oracle filed a motion arguing that the judge should decide as a matter of law that fair use didn't cover it. In the wake of the jury's pro-Google verdict, Oracle's motion was its last hope of a trial victory.

It didn't happen. US District Judge William Alsup shot down the motion on Wednesday. The same order also denied Google's motion making similar arguments, filed at the close of trial but before the jury's verdict.

Enlarge (credit: http://www.e3expo.com)

E3 informally kicks off today, and Ars will be on the scene this week covering all the action. Before the event begins, we're surfacing our liveblog schedule.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo may be a bit smaller this year, thanks to some high-profile publisher departures. But that doesn't mean the show overall won't be the same loud, in-your-face cavalcade of big-name game announcements and demos that it has always been. Oh, and the gaming public will be right outside the doors this year, which should amp up the excitement a bit.

This year's E3 has the added potential of a heavily rumored new console announcements from Microsoft (and an actual mid-cycle upgrade announcement from Sony). And then there's virtual reality, which is poised to be a major presence once again now that big-name hardware is starting to get into consumers' hands.

Warcraft

Garona is a half-orc slave of Gul'dan who knows how to slice a man in two with a sword, but decides to join the humans because they have warm, fluffy blankets.

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I'm not too proud to confess that I love watching vaguely humanoid creatures smash each other with hammers and broadswords. I mean, that's what's best in life. So here's some good news about Warcraft, the new movie based on the PC games: it delivers quite a bit of orc-on-orc action, particularly in the giant hammer department. The gryphons are good, too. But in spite of the action, you're left wanting more. That's because this movie lacks compelling characters whose adventures we actually care about.

The plot of Warcraft is needlessly complicated, though it all boils down to orcs fighting humans. Orc warlock leader Gul'dan has brought the Horde together to flee Draenor, the orc homeworld, because he's trashed the environment with evil fel magic. The Horde is preparing to head through a giant portal to the human world of Azeroth and take over. Meanwhile, the humans have never seen orcs before and are not crazy about orc colonial tactics, which involve the aforementioned hammers, as well as general burning and killing. All the battle scenes are genuinely fun, and it's entertaining as hell to watch the humans figuring out how to exploit orc weaknesses in one-on-one combat.

Too many cooks

Instead of telling a relatively straightforward story of the clash between two worlds pitted against each other by dark magic, Warcraft zooms from land to land, character to character, delivering a stew of a tale that suffers from way too many ingredients. There's the drama of Anduin, a great warrior whose son has finally reached soldiering age, who struggles to overcome the fear his son will die just like his wife did. There's Garona, the half-orc slave girl, torn between the world of the noble Horde and the vaguely democratic Alliance. Then there's Khadgar, a young sorcerer questioning his powers, whose mentor Medivh is sworn to protect Azeroth but is stricken by a mysterious ailment. And NO I'M NOT EVEN DONE, because then there's Durotan, a good orc leader who questions Gul'dan's fel-infused power-mongering. And there are also Orgrim and Draka, who secretly support Durotan's rebellion against Gul'dan.