This is the greatest motherboard that has ever lived. It’s the Asus Rampage III Extreme, and it’s designed for people who do insane things like run three video cards simultaneously alongside an Intel Extreme Edition processor. People need to run Metro 2033 (and, soon, Crysis 2) at 200 frames per second. Origin is the first enthusiast builder to offer the motherboard.

My guess is that someone who’d buy an Asus Rampage III Extreme (which retails for $379.99 on NewEgg) would be comfortable with building a PC from scratch, but not everyone has all day to research memory timings and the like—maybe you have a nice bonus coming your way from work and simply want a new PC without having to know a damn thing about it? “I want the fastest computer money can buy, do whatever you have to do to get me there.”

That’s what I’d do if I were an investment banker or highly paid athlete. I am, in fact, neither.

Back to the motherboard—it has everything. Try USB 3.0, SATA III, 3-Way SLI or CrossFire (for Nvidia and ATI GPUs, respectively), and plenty of overclocking options.

I do believe it is the absolute top-of-the-line motherboard available.

The 3-Way SLI or CrossFire is most intriguing to me. My current motherboard, some mid-end Asus, technically supports CrossFire, but only at 1/4 of the maximum memory bandwidth. Why bother? Plus, it’s be an awfully tight fit trying to get two beefy video cards in there. No room for fans, wires would be pressed up against the case, etc. Pure and utter chaos.

Now, I have no idea who these Origin people are, but I’ve dealt with, similar companies. But if they’re offering the Asus Rampage III Extreme, you know they’re right-thinking.

It was only a few days ago that Crytek and EA showed off Crysis 2 to the world’s gaming press—and CrunchGear. It looks crazy, yes, and that finely tuned opinion—”it looks crazy”—is based on the Xbox 360 version. But if we believe Crytek’s business development boss, then the game runs even better on the PS3 than it does the Xbox 360. The games may look identical, or extraordinarily close to it, but the Xbox 360 is being pushed far harder than the PS3. You probably already knew that, yes.

The bossman, Carl Jones, told ComputerAndVideoGames.com:

At the moment, we’re getting slightly more performance from PS3 compared to 360. I’m very confident that products using CryEngine 3 are going to come out as the best looking, or at least in the top three, on every platform.

Unless the PS3 version, I don’t know, also washes your laundry, I doubt you’re going to see a huge difference between the two console version of the games. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII, where the Xbox 360 version looks like a 2007 YouTube video compared to the PS3 version.

Not that any of this matters, since we all know the PC version will be the best! There’s a reason I burned a hole in my bank account for the ATI Radeon 5970!

Actually, there isn’t; I just wanted the damn thing for no particular reason.

More 3D broadcasts are sweeping across Europe. The next countries up are Belgium and Poland. They follow the UK and Germany—oh, and the U.S.

The broadcasts will be football (soccer) matches. The Belgian one is between Andrelechtand Sint-Truidense, and will be on Belgacom. We all know Anderlecht thanks to its exploits in the UEFA Champions League, but I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about Sint-Truidense. I’m sure they’re nice blokes.

Poland’s games will be on Canal+. Hi, Poland!

Other countries better hurry up: these “[Country] will have a 3D sports broadcast” stories are very rapidly losing their appeal. Frankly, I’m surprised the NFL hasn’t announced its plans yet. We all know the NFL will be all, “THE FIRST 3D SPORTS BROADCAST IN THE WORLD,” conveniently ignoring all of these soccer stories.

What’s it going to take to dethrone World of Warcraft? One of two things, I’d say: one, an asteroid smashing directly into the planet, with Blizzard at the exact location of impact, or two, Blizzard releasing World of Warcraft 2. The asteroid is more likely at this point. So you can imagine the time and money EA is putting into The Old Republic, the only MMO with a chance in hell of taking away even a fraction of WoW’s subscribers.

At some fancy financial-type meeting in New York, EA said that BioWare’s The Old Republic is the “largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company.” Considering the amount of money that Ea throws at its games these days, yeah, you can assume the company has high hopes for the game. I do.

The game is currently scheduled for release spring, 2011. I don’t know a damn thing about Star Wars, but I’ll at least give the game a shot. It’s gonna take the jaws of life to pry me away from WoW full-time, though. I wish I could put that in a resumé.

Man alive, Twitter is blowing up right now at the expense of Real Madrid. That has nothing to do with the following story, but it had to be mentioned. The real story is: an electric motorbike! Is that any more exciting than Real Madrid being the laughingstock of Europe? I’d say no, but maybe six of you have any idea what I’m talking about. Back to the bike, then.

It’s created by Japan’s Iwatani Corp., and it’s powered by a lithium-ion battery+polymer electrolyte fuel cell combination. Hydrogen is stored in small cartridges, and if conditions are absolutely perfect, it can go about 45 km per charge.

It’s not really a proof of concept, per se, but the company doesn’t have any plans to commercialize the bike.

Again, for the zillionth time, I don’t know a damn thing about cars, so anytime I write about them or whatever, feel free to invest your time elsewhere, like Chatroulette or something.

via TreeHugger

Ron and Fez, the fantastic Sirius XM radio show that makes my day every day, will host the world’s first second Twitter party on Sunday! It’s a follow-up to last month’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Twitter Party, which was pretty much a gigantic success. What’s being celebrated this time around? The Oscars (gi gi gi)! It gets even better: a live radio show will actually accompany the Twitter party. I’m excited.

You know the drill: be sure to keep your eye on @202Friends once Sunday rolls around for a chance to win some sweet swag. Among the prizes: a copy of the movie Titanic signed by James Cameron, Ordinary People signed by Timothy Hutton, and—and this should be a treat for all you sci-fi fans—a copy of Lord of the Rings signed by Peter Jackson!

Considering that all you’d have to do is follow @202Friends to win this stuff, you’d be a fool not to play along!

All that, and a live, special edition of Ron and Fez at 8pm on Sirius 197/XM 202? Count me in, dogsy! I don’t know a damn thing about movies, but hearing the guys discuss ‘em is one of the highlights of the show.