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June 2008 |
Some interesting things from around the forums:
Motherboards:
Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L LGA775 board on Hardware Secrets.
MSI P43 Neo LGA775 board on Trusted Reviews.
Gigabyte GA-EP45 DQ6 LGA775 board on CPU3D.
MSI P7N2 Diamond 790i LGA775 board on TweakTown.
Chassis:
Antec Fusion Black 430 HTPC Case on Hi-Tech.
Antec Three Hundred Gamer Case on circuitREMIX.
In-Win Metal Suit GD Mid-Tower Case on CPU3D.
Cooling:
Zerotherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler on SilentPC.
GlacialTech Igloo 5710 CPU Coolers on Modders-Inc.
SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2 CPU Cooler on TweakTown.
Nexus XiR-2300 and XiR-3500 CPU Coolers on Mikhailtech.
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire HD 4850 512MB on Hardware Secrets.
VisionTek HD 4850 512MB on NeoSeeker.
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB on HardwareZone.
Asus EN9600GT TOP 512MB on Legit Reviews.
Input:
Logitech G15 Revision 2 Gaming Keyboard on Big Bruin.
Zalman FPSGun FG1000 Mouse on Hardware Secrets.
Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 on HardwareLogic.
Gaming:
Battlefield: Bad Company (360) on AtomicGamer.
Crazy Machines 2 (PC) on IGN AU.
Alone in the Dark (PC) on bit-tech.
Top Spin 3 (PS3 & X360) on DriverHeaven.
Supreme Commander (360) on TeamXbox.
Miscellaneous:
Meridian F80 Audio System on TheTechLounge.
Toshiba Qosmio x305 Gaming Notebook on Legit Reviews.
i.Tech VoicePRO Bluetooth Headset on HardwareZone.
Iron Photographer
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Sunday, 29-June-2008 09:25:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From White Rhino: It's Iron Photographer time again. May's competition was a free challenge open to any and all photographic subjects and we ended up with quite wide range. You can vote for your favorite here.
There is also still time to get your entry in for the June Iron Photographer. This month's theme is "Light" - a subject available to everyone - so there is no excuse to not give it a go. You can submit your entry here. Voting and entries for both competitions closes 10pm AEST, Monday June 30th.
We've also had a few nice shots posted in the Photo Gallery recently:
A zillion people sent word that Blizzard have announced Diablo 3. Discussion here in our Games forum.
Thanks to everyone who sent these in.. the first two are from the half-forgotten depths of my inbox, thanks to Chris and war3d for those. As you know ... Windows Vista has several problems, the first being that it takes far too much RAM. In fact, it took us 32gb to even load the word VISTA in this test scenario! If we consider that today's minimum stick size is 512mb that's still a whopping 8gb. Heh.. and the second one is a rather unfortunate choice of business name.
 
and these are just misc from various people and my wanderings:
    
    
Techgage have posted an in-depth look at NVIDIA's PhysX performance. Before testing, I had a few goals in mind. The first was to find out if using PhysX on a GPU is much faster than using the add-in PPU, and in the same vein, would using the PhysX acceleration severely throttle overall gaming performance, when compared to the PPU? … I next wanted to see what sort of effect overclocking had on the results, on both the CPU and GPU. Which overclock would increase the physics more?
Meanwhile, Benchmark Reviews compares the FPS impact going from NVIDIA's ForceWare 175.16 driver to their 175.19 driver. Anyone familiar with their updates would agree that the version number difference is so small that it would suggest nothing has really changed. But did NVIDIA take two steps backward instead? Benchmark Reviews offers this small article to demonstrate what we discovered while testing the GeForce 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2 video cards.
A new article by Hardware Secrets explains everything you need to know about Serial ATA. Serial ATA - or simply SATA - is the hard disk standard created to replace the parallel ATA interface, a.k.a. IDE. SATA provides a transfer rate of 150 MB/s or 300 MB/s against of a 133 MB/s maximum using the previous technology.
HotHardware check out the performance of three WD VelociRaptor drives in a RAID 5 configuration with an Areca PCIe X8 hardware RAID card. Though packed in a 3.5" form-factor for desktop system compatibility, the 2.5", dual 150GB platter platform that the VelociRaptor was built on allows it to outperform virtually all standard 3.5" SATA drives on the market today, even WD's 10K RPM Raptor WD1500 series.
This Bit-tech guide shows you how to build your own Linux-based router. Today, Ken is going to introduce some of the most powerful security and networking tools to allow you to start building an entire home or SOHO (Small Office / Home Office) network from the ground up with security in mind.
Sil80 sent in this amusing look at a server room with a difference. Obviously, the new second-floor tenant wouldn't want their neighbors walking through their office to access a server room, so building management and the company's executives came up with an alternative: wall off the server room door and build a new one. It seemed simple enough, but there was, however, just one small hitch. The only available wall to install a door was adjacent to the women's restroom. Inside the handicapped stall.
TweakTown believes this is the perfect Razer desktop ensemble. Razer have dished up a triple whammy this time with a desktop setup that's going to turn your red squishy heart blue. With the Razer Lycosa Keyboard, Lachesis Mouse and Destructor Gaming Surface, we have a serious gaming setup and a sweet looking desktop.
This PC Perspective NVIDIA 9600 GT roundup compares a few of the latest models from ASUS and XFX. No other product is upgraded quite as often as the GPU and since most users don’t live on infinite budgets or feel the desire to spend $600 every few months for gaming hardware, the 9600 GT card from NVIDIA has been a great success since its introduction.
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix DDR3 PC3-16000 2GB Kit on Pro-Clockers.
G.Skill Pi Series DDR2 PC2-8800 4GB Kit on 3DGameMan.
Chassis:
In-Win B2 Stealth Bomber ATX Case on MadShrimps.
Shuttle KPC K45 Barebones System on TechLounge.
Zalman LQ1000 Z-Machine Liquid Case on XSReviews.
Cooling:
Zerotherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler on Bjorn3d.
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermalright TRue Black 120 CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Storage:
Areca ARC-1231ML SATA RAID 6 Controller on TweakTown.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB on SimHQ.
Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station on Virtual-Hideout.
SanDisk Mobile Ultra 8GB microSDHC on I4U News.
Graphics Cards:
Asus Radeon HD 4850 512MB on TechGage.
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB on Guru3d.
Diamond Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire on BootDaily.
BFG Tech 8800 GT OCX & 9600 GT OCX on bit-tech.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 896MB on Digit-Life.
Miscellaneous:
Sony Ericsson CyberShot C902 Mobile on RegHardware.
Nyko Frontman Wireless Guitars on FutureLooks.
Dell Vostro 1310 13.3" Notebook on Trusted Reviews.
Sony Ericsson Z750i Mobile on Trusted Reviews.
Tired of doing your University homework? Outsource it! This is what Information Technology students in the UK have started doing. UK IT students are hiring coders in India to complete their coursework for as little as £5 a go. A-level and university pupils are logging onto computer coding websites and farming out their work to foreign IT graduates. Furthermore It is hard to detect, the number of these sites is spreading all the time and it is impossible for us to monitor all of them.
For all those Lego fans, Gizmodo has been invited to their headquarters for a full tour of their facilities. You can find some interesting video and images from their trip, including a sneak peak inside the “Lego Vault” which contains every Lego set ever made, photos of a 750,000-Brick Kennedy Space Centre Lego Model and even a Lego Airbus A380.
Phoronix review the Radeon HD 4850 and test how it does in a Linux environment. Now that we have had time to complete testing of the Radeon HD 4850, today we are sharing the first Linux results from this brand-new ATI graphics processor. Before you think the Windows and Linux performance is equal for the Radeon HD 4800 series, this isn't the case, at least not yet.
Benchmark Reviews share their experiences using ATI’s Crossfire technology over the past 6 months. Right now going multi-GPU is the most cost-efficient way to maximize video performance, a complete 180 from just a year ago. It isn't without its quirks, but computers in general are rife with idiosyncrasies, so adding one more may not be a big deal to you.
IGN have a Q&A with Crytek's CEO, Cevat Yerli. During our visit to Crytek's Budapest studio, where Warhead is being developed, we had the chance to sit down with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli. We asked him about Crysis, Warhead, and the company's future as a PC developer.
TechwareLabs has published a review of the Digsby 'Public' Beta. Looking for a good program to help you keep in contact with all your friends, family, and online pals? Chris has a look at the new program called Digsby which is in its beta. Does Digsby work and how well? Find out in our review.
Microsoft has released the Xbox 360 Content License Transfer Tool, which lets you move games or movies that were purchased via Xbox Live Marketplace from one console to another console. Discussion on the forum.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a plan that removes virtually all limits from URL extensions. According to the plan, every extension, even your name, a city or could be registered and free up an enormous range of new Internet addresses; which are currently limited to 21 top level domains (257 including country codes).
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2000 2GB Kit on ThinkComputers.
Corsair XMS3 DHX DDR3-1600 4GB Kit on Overclock3D.
OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB Series on Vr-Zone.
Motherboards:
Asus Crosshair II Formula LGA775 board on Overclockers Club.
Zotac NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI LGA775 board on TweakTown.
Chassis:
NZXT Tempest Midtower ATX Case on FutureLooks.
Hiper Osiris HTC-1K514 Mid-Tower on Benchmark Reviews.
Displays:
Samsung SyncMaster T200 20" LCD Monitor on Trusted Reviews.
InFocus X10 DLP Home Theatre Projector on Trusted Reviews.
NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi 30" LCD Monitor on bit-tech.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD 4850 512MB on Overclockers Club.
Point Of View GeForce GTX 260 895MB on Guru3d.
Zotac GeForce GTX 280 1GB on Trusted Reviews.
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB on Tom's Hardware.
Asus Radeon HD 4850 512MB on t-break.
Power Supply:
Kira CS 630W PSU on jonnyGURU.
OCZ EliteXStream 800W PSU on phoronix.
Seasonic S12-II 500W PSU on bit-tech.
Gaming:
Dragon Ball Z - Burstlimit (PS3) on DriverHeaven.
Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS) on IGN.
Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) on Play.tm.
Operation Darkness (360) on IGN.
Alone In The Dark (360) on Trusted Reviews.
Forum member dirtyd, visited Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) graphics headquarters recently, and has posted answers to some of the questions OCAU members asked previously. He’ll soon have a write-up of more detailed responses and a bit more about the tour, so keep an out eye on this thread.
Shacknews has posted twenty minutes of footage from the upcoming FarCry 2 blockbuster. At this week's DreamHack computer festival in Sweden, Ubisoft Montreal showed off more than 20 minutes of its upcoming shooter Far Cry 2, currently in development for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
With all the talk about cheating in 3DMark Vantage by Nvidia with their recent driver release, Hot Hardware decided to clear up the accusations and chat with them directly. We jumped on the phone with not only Roy Taylor, Director of Developer Relations and Brian Burke, Senior PR Manager of NVIDIA but also spent some time talking to and trading emails with Oliver Baltuch, President of Futuremark. You can also find similar interviews at PC Perspective and Legit Reviews.
X-Bit Labs roundup seven power supply units from Antec. In this article we are going to discuss seven power supply units from Antec that can be purchased separately and also come bundled with the system cases we have tested earlier. Besides that we will also measure how much power a contemporary computer actually needs.
Driver Heaven compare the Radeon 4850 against the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+. For a few weeks it appeared as if ATI would easily achieve this goal but some aggressive price repositioning of the 9800 GTX by Nvidia as well as a snap announcement of the 9800 GTX+ mean the 4850 is hitting a very crowded but interesting market.
TweakTown get busy with three of ATI’s newest Radeon HD 4870's and put them to the test in a triple crossfire configuration. The HD 4870 is an impressive piece of kit and does a good job of outperforming the GTX 280 when in Crossfire configuration, providing the game makes use of the technology, that is.
HardwareZone test the latest Intel Atom based netbooks, the ASUS Eee PC 901 and MSI Wind NB U100. Intel's Atom processors are the new market drivers in this netbook segment and luckily for you, we got our hands on the MSI Wind NB U100 and the ASUS Eee PC 901 - the first netbooks to sport this new processor and we'll be pitting them against each other in this shootout!
Seattle PI has uncovered an interesting e-mail from one of the antitrust suits against Microsoft. Dated January 15, 2003, the e-mail includes a long rant Bill Gates wrote to then-Windows chief Jim Allchin about the ease of use of Windows XP. It’s actually quite funny and something most have experienced in terms of Windows useability.
As expected, AMD/ATI have revealed their new generation of graphics processors, the Radeon 4800 Series. ATI's Radeon HD 4800 Series GPUs bring the power of graphics ‘supercomputing’ to gamers, setting a new standard for visual computing. Redefine the way you play and take HD gaming to the extreme with best-in-class performance. With one teraFLOPS on tap, the TeraScale graphics engine delivers an immersive, cinematic gaming experience. Add this graphics card to your PC and watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity or take your experience to another level with new multimedia capabilities. Do it all with break-through efficiency that doesn’t compromise performance or your budget.
Coverage on AnandTech, Ars Technica, HardOCP, Expreview, HotHardware, ExtremeTech, FiringSquad, FudZilla, Hardware Canucks, Hexus, LegitReviews, PC Perspective, Tech Report and TweakTown.
Join the big discussion thread on the forum here. You can find more reviews as they are released here and here.
Processors:
Intel Core 2 E7200 on Legion Hardware.
AMD Phenom X3 8750 on Digit-Life.
Intel Atom 230 ULP CPU on RegHardware.
Cooling:
Kingwin Revolution RVT-12025 CPU Cooler on DSM.
Noctua NF-P12 120mm Fan on TechConnect.
ZEROTherm ZEN FZ120 CPU Cooler on Hardware Logic.
Noctua NF-B9 90mm Fan on Overclockers Club.
Storage:
Brando 2.5/3.5" SATA HDD Dock with USB Hub on MadShrimps.
Iomega eGo Camo Portable Hard Drive on Bios Magazine.
TheCus N3200 RAID 5 Three Bay NAS on Tweak News.
Video Cards:
eVGA GeForce 9800GTX 512MB on Phoronix.
XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition on Guru3d.
XFX GeForce GTX 280 XXX Edition on TweakTown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB on Club Overclocker.
Gaming:
Stronghold Crusader Extreme (PC) on BoomTown.
Supreme Commander (Xbox 360) on 1UP.
Rock Band (Xbox 360) on CrispyGamer.
Battlefield: Bad Company (PS3) on GameSpy.
Miscellaneous:
HTC Touch Diamond Mobile Device on Trusted Reviews.
Flip Video Mino Digital Camcorder on FutureLooks.
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-TZ15 Digital Camera on HardwareZone.
Asus EeePC 900 (Windows XP) on GadgetZone.
Biostar Tpower P45 does 724mhz fsb WR + 6006mhz E8500 in Overclocking & Hardware.
New Modding Project: File Server Case in Modding.
ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Discussion in Video Cards and Monitors.
Nvidia Apparently Cheating 3DMark With Drivers in Video Cards and Monitors.
The beginning of the SSD price war? in Storage & Backup.
Gaming Comparison, 2gb vs 4gb. 4gb FTW! in Memory.
Which DDR3 kits be better for Overclocking? in Memory.
New Gigabyte EP45-DS3P P45 chipset board on the test bench in Intel Hardware.
AMD/ATI support in Linux, how is it now? in Other Operating Systems.
Why does Java suck so much? in Graphics and Programming.
Gigabyte EP45 Extreme motherboard on the test bench in Intel Hardware
W427 enters production priced at $150K. Would you buy one? in Motoring.
Martial Arts as a Self Defence mechanism? in Sport, Fitness and Health
The most beautiful Console game? in Game Consoles.
Custom Made E-Trike Project in Other Toys.
GPU folding on Nvidia 8xxx, 9xxx and 260/280 cards in Distributed Computing.
Good Floorstanding Home Theatre Setup? in Audio Visual.
How Do You Save/Invest Money? in Career, Education and Finance.
The benefits of high fuel prices? in Motoring.
Tech ARP have updated their x264 HD benchmarking package. The video encoder (x264.exe) reports a fairly accurate internal benchmark (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encode and it also uses multi-core processors very efficiently. All these factors make this an ideal benchmark to compare different processors and systems to each other.
Tech ARP have also found a bug in the recently released Firefox 3 regarding the WGA plug-in. While validating my installation of Windows Vista Ultimate X64, I came across a bug with the new Firefox 3 browser. It seems the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) plug-in for it has been added to the Mozilla Add-Ons blocklist …
BurningFeetMan has created an OCAU Wiki entry on Spore for OCAU members who are playing this game. You can talk about Spore in this thread.
According to a recent survey conducted by a US information security company, one in three senior IT professionals had accessed confidential data that was not relevant to their role. "All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you're privy to everything that's going on within your company," Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark's UK director, said in a statement released along with the survey results.
An exhibition by US photographer Trevor Paglen will display shots of 189 secret reconnaissance satellites. With the help of a computer program that controls the mount of the telescope and keeps it focused on the heavenly body, Paglen says he can get the telescope to swivel with the Earth's rotation. He then uses another telescope attached to a high-end digital camera for his deep-sky shots, similar to the rig he used for his desert shots.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that RFID tags can interfere with medical devices. Out of a total of 123 tests (there were multiple tests with each system on each device), there were 34 incidents of electromagnetic interference. … A panel of medical specialists determined that 22 of these incidents were potentially hazardous …
Australian iTunes users are now able to purchase a selection of ABC, Seven and Nine television shows. "We're thrilled to bring television programming to the iTunes Store in Australia," Eddy Cue, Apple iTunes vice-president, said in a statement. "We're off to a great start with shows from Australia's top networks combined with favourites from the US."
Today's timewaster is from Subcommandante − Monsters' Den: Book of Dread. An expanded and updated version of the popular dungeon crawl RPG. New classes, items, monsters, quests.. as well as an improved interface. Also, a shop!
For those worried, Microsoft has stated they will support Windows XP until 2014. In a letter sent to customers this week, Microsoft senior VP Bill Veghte said the software maker will provide security patches "and other critical updates" for Windows XP until April, 2014. "Our ongoing support for Windows XP is the result of our recognition that people keep their Windows-based PCs for many years."
Bit-tech analyse Nvidia's GT200 architecture and design. Today we’re going to spend time looking at the more theoretical side of things and the architecture behind the chip. That will then shortly be followed by our look at gaming performance on both the GTX 280 and GTX 260, and then we’ll see where that takes us.
TweakTown had a chance to play with Blu-ray’s fancy new BD Live (Profile 2.0) system. It’s a momentous moment for Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association; it now means that the messy profile business is behind them, including the picture in picture that held back many releases. It makes things easier to consumers, less confusing to explain and paves the way forward to mass adoption.
One of the first legitimate reviews for ATi's Radeon HD 4870 has been published by Expreview. It’s quite a comprehensive review comparing the 4870 to its little 4850 brother, Nvidia 2-Series and ATi’s previous high end card, the Radeon HD 3870 X2. Its best to wait for other sites to publish their findings, but it at least gives you some idea of what to expect. Discussion on the forum.
TechGage roundup 22 CPU coolers from brands like Thermalright, OCZ, Noctua and Arctic Cooling, comparing how they perform on hot Quad core CPU. One of the most important but often overlooked aspects of a new PC build is the CPU cooler. When you add the fact that many people want to overclock their processors to the moon, you have a recipe for disaster when a sufficient cooler is not selected.
Virtual-Hideout travelled to Shenzhen (China) for a factory tour at ECS and a couple of their PCB manufacturing facilities. In the first half of this article, we'll be exploring the creation of a world class PCB from beginning to end. In the second half of this article, we'll be exploring the process of assembling those PCB's into world class retail and OEM motherboards to be shipped around the world to dozens of the world’s most famous name brands.
AnandTech preview the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ (Plus), set to counter ATI’s Radeon HD 4850 graphics solution. Originally we thought the GTX+ was a silly last minute afterthought as it looked like nothing more than an overclocked 9800 GTX. While its clock speeds are higher, it also happens to be the very first 55nm NVIDIA GPU.
Memory:
A-Data Plus-Series DDR2 800 4GB Kit on Overclockers Club.
Corsair Dominator & Crucial Ballistix 4GB Kit's on DriverHeaven.
Winchip DDR2 667 MHz 16 GB Quad Kit on techPowerUp.
Motherboards:
Asrock P45R2000-WiFi LGA775 board on Pro-Clockers.
Asus P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP LGA775 board on Legit Reviews.
Sapphire PURE Hybrid CrossFire 780G AM2+ board on Hi-Tech.
Video Cards:
XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition on TweakTown.
Nvidia Geforce 9800 GTX+ 512MB on Bjorn3D.
Asus Extreme Radeon HD 4850 512MB on TechSpot.
Diamond ATI Radeon HD4850 512MB on Motherboards.
Leadtek PX9800 GTX 512MB on techPowerUp.
Input:
Razer Lachesis High Precision 3G Mouse on FutureLooks.
Razer Destructor Professional Gaming Mat on Modders-Inc.
Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard on Bjorn3d.
OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator on Overclock3D.
Gaming:
Blast Works (Wii) on DriverHeaven.
Nascar 2009 (PS3 & X360) on DriverHeaven.
The Incredible Hulk (360) on GamersHell.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (360) on TweakTown.
Miscellaneous:
HTC Touch Diamond Mobile Device on HardwareZone.
Klipsch Custom-3 Noise Isolating Earphones on Trusted Reviews.
Sony DAV-F200 Home Cinema System on Trusted Reviews.
TekNmotion Pulsar SX PC Gaming Headphones on OCIA.
OCAU'er in Australia's Got Talent grand finals!
(5 Comments)
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Tuesday, 24-June-2008 20:58:50 (GMT +10) - by Lowgoz
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Forum regular Morax has managed to get himself and his popping and locking troupe, Shift-1, into the grand finals for Australia's Got Talent. Although their act was easily the best of the night (and there was a valiant attempt at an Australia wide rickroll), they need your support and votes to take out the $250,000 prize.
Dial 1902 55 33 37 Or SMS 'SHIFT' to 199 77 77 2. Full voting details on the official website.
Congratulations Morax!
OCAU forum member slate37 set off on his bicycle with his father and step-brother, to ride unsupported across from Brisbane to Broome (~5000km) to raise donations and awareness for Plan and Beyond Blue charities.
Quite simply we wish to improve awareness of major global issues, especially poverty and the impact it has on children in developing countries around the world. There are a number of fantastic charities providing hope for the future and Australians are showing an increased willingness to help. We've chosen to support Plan since they have no political or religious affiliation and have a proven record of delivering results efficiently. Plan guarantees at least 80% of money donated gets to the children, families and communities they work with, meaning maximum bang-for-buck.
Currently they have raised over $5,000 dollars with a final target of $10,000. You can keep track of their journey and donate some spare cash through their website. Discussion on the forum.
Cooling:
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU Cooler on Hardware Canucks.
SilenX ICX-120HA2 Extreme CPU Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Xigmatek Achilles CPU Cooler on TechPowerUp.
Asus Lion Square CPU Cooler on Legit Reviews.
Video Cards:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1024MB on Digit-Life.
PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MB on Overclockers Club.
VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 X2 OC on DriverHeaven.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB on Hexus.
XFX 9800GX2 Quad SLI on Overclock3D.
Portable Devices:
Asus U6E 12.1" Notebook on TechGage.
Toshiba Portégé G910 Mobile Device on Trusted Reviews.
Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31Z 15.4" Notebook on Trusted Reviews.
Nokia N78 N-Series Mobile Phone on RegHardware.
Input:
Razer Lachesis Mouse & Destructor Gaming Mouse Pad on SysOpt.
Logitech Driving Force GT Steering Wheel on I4U News.
Steel Series Ikari Gaming Mouse on PlayIt 3D.
Gaming:
RooGoo (Xbox Live) on DriverHeaven.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP) on IGN AU.
Deca Sports (Wii) on FutureLooks.
Top Spin 3 (360) on IGN AU.
Miscellaneous:
SanDisk Sansa Fuze Music Player on Trusted Reviews.
Aliph Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Headset on Digital Trends.
Amazon Kindle e-Book Reader on Hardware Secrets.
The Tech Report retests Western Digital’s VelociRaptor after receiving one with the final shipping firmware, also comparing it the engineering sample they received earlier this year. Read on to see whether finished firmware reels in the VelociRaptor's propensity to outrun the competition or if Western Digital has managed to wring even more performance from its radical Raptor redesign.
TweakTown analyse the new ATI Catalyst version 8.6 drivers and how they perform under XP and Vista. This month, looking through the release notes for the latest incarnation of Catalyst drivers we see that a few performance increases have been promised. We'll see if these performance increases translate to any of the games we use.
CPU3D compare a pair of mainstream motherboards based on the Intel P45 chipset. The ASRock P45R2000-WiFi is pitted against the ECS P45T-A (Black Series). Both motherboards utilises the Intel P45 chipset/ICH10R southbridge. While the ASRock supports 1600FSB, DDR2 and DDR3 ram, the ECS will only support 1333FSB and DDR2 ram. Who will win the battle of the mainstream?
Bit-tech published an interview with Jim Vesella, executive producer for C&C Kane's Wrath. Now, as Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath prepares to launch on the Xbox 360, we chat to executive producer Jim Vesella about the future of the Command and Conquer series, the difference between the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game and how Red Alert 3 is shaping up…
Digit-Life compares high-end chipsets from Nvidia and Intel to see how they compare. Today we examined two chipsets that shook themselves free of DDR2 and introduced support for top Intel processors with the 1600 MHz FSB. We should admit that these solutions offer similar characteristics, possessing support for all necessary technologies to become top products.
Trusted Review take a look at AMD’s recently announced Puma platform for the notebook market. As TR reported when the NDA finally lifted, the platform sees the introduction of new power-optimised dual-core processors called Turion X2 Ultra, as well as a new chipset, an accompanying range of HD 3000 series discrete mobile graphics cards and many much more.
Agg sent in details on how to make a cheap red laser light show, consisting of 3 laser pointers, a package of balloons, a small mirror and a couple of things around the house.
FLB sent in a pair of links, which contain a wide selection of high quality/resolution wallpapers that didn’t make it into the final shipping version of Windows Vista. They are available free of charge for download here and here.
Nvidia has now released a new set of GeForce drivers. The GeForce 175.19 drivers are WHQL certified, feature support for the GeForce 6, 7, 8 and 9 series cards (GeForce FX support in XP only).
Memory:
Aeneon XTune 2GB DDR3-1333 CL8 Memory Kit on circuitREMIX.
G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1600 Pi Series Memory Kit on Big Bruin.
Motherboards:
Asus Crosshair II Formula AM2+ board on TechSpot.
MSI P45 Platinum LGA775 board on bit-tech.
MSI P7N SLI Platinum LGA775 board on MadShrimps.
Chassis:
Antec P182SE Special Edition Mid-Tower on PC Perspective.
Boogie Bug Black Pearl MicroATX Case on MadShrimps
Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 ECO 80 Case on MadShrimps.
Tagan A+ Black Pearl Mid-Tower Case on Hardware Secrets.
Tuniq 3 Mid-Tower Case on FutureLooks.
Cooling:
SilenX ICX-120HA2 Extreme CPU Cooler on R&B Mods.
Zalman VF900-Cu VGA Cooler on Benchmark Reviews.
Thermaltake ProWater 850i Cooling System on OCO.
Storage:
Tagan Icy Box External HDD Enclosure on Hardware Logic.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB on Hardware Secrets.
BlacX and BlacX-SE HDD Docking Stations on Modders-Inc.
Power Supply:
Corsair TX750 750W PSU on TechwareLabs.
BFG Tech ES-800 800W PSU on Bjorn3D.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W PSU on OCIA.
OCZ OCZ600SXS 600W StealthXStream PSU on DSM.
Coolermaster M500, M600 and M700 PSU's on XSReviews.
Miscellaneous:
MSI Wind Windows XP Edition Sub-Notebook on RegHardware.
Bang & Olufsen Earset 3 Headphones on eCoustics.
Lowepro Primus AW Camera/Video Backpack on FutureLooks.
Logitech Squeezebox Duet Network Music System on TechLounge.
Ian Usher of Perth has decided to put all of his possessions up for auction, leaving only his wallet and passport to begin a new life with. ALife4Sale.com is exactly what it says. My whole life is for sale. Everything. Lifestyle. House. Car. Motorbike. Job. Friends. Everything that I own, and all of the things that I don't own, but that are still an important part of my life! Thanks Rob.
Bit-tech have published a hands-on preview of Tom Clancy's EndWar, a game that is controlled entirely by voice commands. Endwar is perhaps best described as a 3D action-RTS as the focus of the game is very much set on using small numbers of units to take over medium-sized locations with minimum casualties. Supreme Commander this is not – if anything it's more like a shrunken down version of World in Conflict with a much darker palette and a more sympathetic Russian antagonist.
IGN Australia recently interviewed Quinton Flynn - the voice of Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 4. Having worked as a professional voice actor for more than a decade and with a successful screen and musical career on his resume, the venerable Quinton Flynn sat down with IGN Australia to discuss the ins and outs of the trade. Specifically, Flynn digs deep and discusses his work on the widely acclaimed Metal Gear Solid 4 as Raiden, plus his response to the fan reaction to Metal Gear Solid 2.
tkArena have a guide on how to use Windows Vista's native backup program. Everyone has heard horror stories about computer viruses wiping out hard drives, hardware failures causing loss of work, and other data woes. Performing regular backups remains the only solution. A good backup can get your computer back to working condition in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days. Windows Vista has a built in backup utility that can help you keep your computer settings, photos, documents, and videos safe.
APH Networks look at Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, a photo manipulation program targeted at amateur photographers. Released in 2001 alongside Photoshop 7.0, Elements remains an important part of Adobe's Photoshop line. It's evolved through five stages to get to this version we have in our hands - Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, which was bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.
TweakTown tested the performance of four Radeon HD 4850s in CrossfireX on an ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution motherboard. While ASUS use a x16/x16/x4/x4 configuration, it's really one of the best on the market. So, with four HD 4850s in hand and hopefully a driver that was going to work, it was time to take four of these single slot bad boys to town.
An anonymous Slashdot reader recently posted a one line AppleScript script which forces ARDAgent to load any program as root in Apple's OS X operating system, though Apple has advised it is "not a cause for concern." While most of the coverage of this vulnerability so far says it exists in both OS X 10.4 and 10.5, I could not get the test script to work on my Tiger installation, and all attempts to exploit this on the systems of other 10.4.11 owners I spoke with generated the same error message: "AppleEvent timed out." It worked flawlessly on numerous 10.5 machines in use at washingtonpost.com, however.
OCAU's folding@home team has smashed their previous record set earlier this week by producing 1.5 Million points in 24 hours. OCAU's daily average (based on the last 7 days production) has also entered new territory, with it now standing above 1.3 Million points per day.
The new Nvidia GPU client for 8400GS cards and greater has been the main catalyst for the increases of the valuable scientific work done by the team. It uses the very fast computational power of today's video cards to process the data. There is also a client for ATi cards, most 2000-series cards are supported, but it runs best on 3000-series ATi hardware or higher.
If you would like to help science to learn about diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta - possibly help find a cure for it and put OCAU back in the number one spot - then drop by the Distributed Computing section and see how you can be a part of it.
Vr-Zone get busy with the latest offering from AMD, the Radeon HD4850. The RV770 supersedes its predecessor, the RV670, and is designed to give NVIDIA a tough time in the midrange consumer graphics arena. Will this new offering breathe new life into ATi's range? We'll walk you through with our cards from Powercolor, Asus and Sapphire.
The Geforce 9800GTX+ hasn’t been released to the public yet, but Legit Reviews already have their overclocking results written up for you to compare. We set off by finding the limit of our card and running a number of benchmarks to see just how well it does. Our original review showed that the GeForce 9800 GTX+ was 10.4% faster than the Radeon HD 4850, so any gains should be money in the bank.
Sniper sent in details of a recently published interview and video series by the BBC with Bill Gates. As Bill Gates prepares to end his full-time work at Microsoft, he tells the BBC in an interview that it wasn't just what Microsoft did, but what his rivals didn't do that let Microsoft get ahead
Via Technologies has launched generation 2 of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard.
TweakTown got their hands on the new Atom powered ASUS EeePC 1000H, and decided to pull the whole thing apart. The Eee PC is sexier, more mature and certainly more endowed than ever before. The features are similar to predecessors, but the performance is much higher with the Intel Atom CPU and chipset.
X-Bit Labs roundup six different system cases from Antec, to fine which comes out on top and has the best feature set. Today we are going to talk about six completely different system cases from Antec: starting with the miniature NSK1380 and finishing with a full-size P182. You should be able to find one that will suit your needs.
TechArp have updated their Desktop CPU Comparison Guide. Currently covering 653 desktop CPUs, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare 18 different specifications for each and every CPU. We hope it will prove to be a useful reference. We will keep this guide updated regularly so do check back for the latest updates!
Motherboards:
Asus P5Q Deluxe P45 LGA775 board on Overclockers Club.
MSI K9N2GM-FD GeForce 8200 AM2+ board on Tweak.dk.
Asus Striker II NSE LGA775 board on Trusted Reviews.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler on Bjorn3D.
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 CPU Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Scythe Ninja Copper CPU Cooler on bit-tech.
Thermaltake ProWater 850i Cooling System on TechwareLabs.
Displays:
Asus MK241H 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor on I4U News.
Samsung SyncMaster 2693HM 25.5" LCD Monitor on InsideHW.
LG Flatron W2252TQ 22" LCD Monitor on Trusted Reviews.
Storage:
Super Talent 8 GB USB Pico Drive on TechwareLabs.
Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB on DigitalTrends.
Thecus N5200BR NAS Storage Server on HardwareLogic.
A-Data 32GB Speedy Compact Flash on TechPowerUp.
Video Cards:
ATI Radeon HD HD 4850 512MB on FiringSquad.
Visiontek HD 3870 X2 Overclocked Edition on Bjorn3D.
BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC Edition on Guru3D.
Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2 1GB on Hardware Secrets.
Gaming:
RooGoo (Xbox Live) on DriverHeaven.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP) on IGN AU.
Deca Sports (Wii) on FutureLooks.
Top Spin 3 (360) on IGN AU.
Blast Works (Wii) on DriverHeaven.
GPU acceleration for PhysX
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Friday, 20-June-2008 22:16:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NVIDIA have released some new drivers which apparently allow PhysX acceleration on certain video cards. Trizae has kindly collected the info and some results in this thread in our Video Cards forum. Lots of discussion and info in there now!
Whirlpool is reporting that Blitz Telecom, purchaser of G-Node and Koala Telecom, is in financial trouble and was placed in administration earlier this month. Despite the trouble, Omer attempted to further reassure users, saying that the "Administrator has confirmed that services will not be interrupted during this period." But this didn’t stop Blitz customers losing their broadband connections earlier this week. Blitz reports that some customers should now have their broadband connections back, albeit with some potential slowness. There are issues with some customers in Victoria though, said Omer. Discussion on the forum.
It has been a busy week for graphics cards releases and technology announcements, and it is about it get busier. AMD lifted the NDA date for its Radeon HD 4850 graphics card almost a week early, catching many people off guard. You can find reviews/previews of this card on AnandTech, ExtremeTech, Tech Report, Guru3D, Legion Hardware, TweakTown, techPowerUp and PC Perspective. Discussion on the forum.
While AMD was moving dates and times around, Nvidia felt threatened by the cards performance and value, so they decided to announce a new revision of the 9800GTX called the 9800GTX+ (Plus). Sporting higher clocks all round and support for the newest technologies like CUDA, PhysX, Folding@Home; Nvidia will be keeping the price for this card at $229USD, while reducing its current 9800GTX price to $199USD. Discussion on the forum.
TweakTown recently published an interesting article comparing the latest chipsets from Intel, focusing on performance between PCI-Express configurations and how they can affect gaming performance. While there are a few differences between the two, we only cared about one of them. We wanted to know the performance difference between the X48 and the P45 when running Crossfire.
TweakGuides have released their Firefox Tweak Guide for Firefox 3.0. The guide provides all the information you need to know about Firefox 3's new features, and how you can customize and use them to your advantage. Consider it a crash course in all things Firefox.
BurningFeetMan spotted the first official trailer of a game called Cities XL. This next-generation take on the city building genre, realism will be pushed to the limit with cities that are bigger, more realistic and more sophisticated than ever before. CITIES XL™ will expand upon all the features that make city builders fun and interesting, while also letting players take their game online, as they interact with others in a massive online environment.
MadBoxPC travelled to Shenzhen (China) for a factory tour at ECS facilities, and showed them how to build a motherboard from scratch. Unfortunately, the article is not in English and I had to translate it, but there are plenty of pictures to give you an idea of what is going on.
Daniel sends in word that Valve’s Team Fortress 2 is again free to trial over the weekend and is available for pre-load via this page. Discussion on the forum.
Hot Hardware have a in-depth look at NVIDIA’s latest line-up of Tesla products based on their new 10-series GPU that you’ve seen also driving their new line desktop cards today. Graphics processors for the desktop, workstation, and server space still dominate NVIDIA’s portfolio. But it’s also involved in notebooks, handhelds, software development, and more recently, high-performance computing; we take a look at the later.
Memory:
Adata Vitesta DDR2-800+ 4GB Kit on CPU3D.
Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 4GB Kit on HardwareLogic.
Motherboards:
MSI P45 Platinum LGA775 board on CPU3D.
ASRock K8Upgrade-1689 AM2+ board on ThinkComputers.
Asus P5E64 WS Evolution X48 LGA775 board on Big Bruin.
Cooling:
Thermalright XWB-1 CPU Water Block on Virtual-Hideout.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods.
Scythe Ninja Copper CPU Cooler on bit-tech.
Koolance CPU-340 CPU Water Block on Virtual-Hideout.
Displays:
Asus MK241H 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor on HotHardware.
Acer AL2016WB 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor on Think Computers.
Samsung SyncMaster 226CW 22" LCD Monitor on Trusted Reviews.
Storage:
Synology Disk Station DS508 on Legion Hardware.
HP DVD-1040e External DVD Writer on CDFreaks.
Western Digital SE16 Caviar 640GB on SilentPC.
Power Supply:
Silverstone ST70F Strider 700W PSU on ExtremeMhz.
Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
X-Spice Kira 630W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
Misc:
Logitech Pure-Fi Wireless Speaker System on Legit Reviews.
Yuin OK3 Earphones on techPowerUp.
Epson Stylus Photo R1900 Printer on Bios Magazine.
Samsung Glyde SCH-u940 Mobile Phone on Digital Trends.
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 19-June-2008 21:41:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Various interesting things from the forums:
Thursday Evening
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Thursday, 19-June-2008 18:28:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AusGamers are looking for a freelance hardware writer. If you like living on the cutting edge of PC hardware, can rattle off the pros and cons of things like the Asus eeePC off the top of your head, can argue for hours in precise detail about why PC hardware is superior to Macs (or vice versa), and like pulling apart gaming consoles to see what makes them tick, we want to hear from you.
With all the FireFox 3 hubbub lately, it's worth noting that Opera 9.5 came out recently, if you like to keep your options open. Grab it from opera.com.
A photo has been found of the great grandfather of modern computers. The panoramic black and white image, which has been unearthed in the archives at The University of Manchester, shows a development version of 'The Baby', also known as The Small-Scale Experimental Machine.
How cool is this? A first-person RC car. A set of wireless VR goggles provide the display, and there's a built-in accelerometer in the goggles to control the tilt and pan of the camera installed on the car.
On a slightly larger scale, Rio Tinto are spending $371M on unmanned trains, thanks Sniper. Trials of the automated system have already been run between Paraburdoo to Tom Price with unloaded and loaded iron ore trains, while rail safety officers watched on.
I think Folken sent this in, I forgot to make a note. Anwyay, people are experimenting with using brain waves to navigate Second Life. A computer detects brainwaves from the sensory-motor cortex when the subject slightly moves fingers of his/her right and left hand, and moves the avatar accordingly.
Keeping with its monthly release schedule, AMD/ATI have released their Catalyst 8.6 software suite for Windows and Linux. It comes with the usual list of bug fixes and performance enhancements, including better performance in games like Call Of Duty 4, Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes and more. Discussion on Forum.
Folding@Home's GPU client for Nvidia based cards, has been officially released. You can find a big FAQ here on Stanford's site as well as details where to download. If you have any questions or problems check this thread for details, or this "How-To Guide" made by forum member synmnky. Go team 24!!
Guru3D get busy with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 280 1GB, this time comparing single, dual and triple SLI configuration. So pretty much today we'll place two cards together in SLI, and then do everything over again with three cards (3-way SLI). What we'll do today is keep it clean and simple, first a little quick intro to SLI gaming and installation.
Skype has just launched version 4.0 beta and the company has been busy overhauling just about every feature of the software. The interface has been updated; the video call feature has been improved, as well as many other little tweaks. You can grab the beta here.
I recently stumbled upon this interesting plug-in for Gmail, called Xoopit. It is currently in beta stage, but looks very promising. Xoopit index’s every attachment as well as every link to photos and videos from sites like YouTube Flickr, shutterfly, Kodak, Picasa, and allows you to easily search for and find any picture or video and view it from directly inside Gmail.
Vr-Zone have coverage from the annual CommunicAsia Exhibition, which is the region's premier Infocomm Technology event held in Singapore. We've stormed the grounds and brought you coverage on the latest phones by Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Garmin & NTTDocomo, not forgetting the babes on display as well!
RegHardware compare some AMD Phenom X3 and X4 processors in a CPU shoot-out. There's no question, AMD's Phenom's cut the mustard. But they do they offer any major advantage over Intel? We find out!
Overclock Intelligence Agency published an AMD Phenom Overclocking guide. So if you're finally thinking about taking the K10 plunge, or you are looking to get a little more out of your Phenom processor, this guide was written with you in mind.
X-Bit Labs review the CoolIT PURE, a compact CPU liquid cooling system. While FutureLooks review CoolIT’s Dual Drive Bay VGA cooler for Nvidia 8800 Series video cards.
Mackieaus sends in this link, for those avionics fans amongst us! That allows you a 360-degree view inside the cockpit of an Airbus A380.
Memory:
Aeneon XTUNE DDR3-1600 4GB Kit on 3DGameMan.
Mushkin Ascent PC3-16000 DDR3 2GB Kit on Bjorn3D.
Super Talent Project X PC3-16000 2GB Kit on HardwareLogic.
Motherboards:
ECS A770M-A AMD 770 Chipset AM2+ board on Pro-Clockers.
Asus Rampage Formula LGA775 board on InsideHardware.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on bit-tech.
MSI P45 Platinum LGA775 board on TweakTown.
Video Cards:
EVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB FTW Edition on Motherboards.
BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX 512MB on I4U News.
PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB on Sharky Extreme.
Sparkle Calibre 9600 GT 512MB on FudZilla.
Input:
Cyber Snipa Stinger Gaming Mouse on TweakNews.
Roccat Sense Mousing Surface on PlayIt3D.
Power Supply:
BFG Tech ES-800 800W PSU on DriverHeaven.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W on ViperLair.
Gaming:
The Bourne Conspiracy (PS3) on DriverHeaven.
Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) on Trusted Reviews.
Mass Effect (PC) on BoomTown.
Elements of Destruction (360) on IGN AU.
The Incredible Hulk (PS3) on GameSpy AU.
Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles (DS) on IGN AU.
Death Jr: Root Of Evil (Wii) on Play.TM.
Let's have another quick look into the Geek Recipes forum:
Mmm! Lucky I've already eaten. :)
OCAU's Folding@Home team is on track to produce more points than any other team today. For the first time since August 2006, OCAU's very own members both in Australia, New Zealand and scattered around the globe may just have the biggest points total for the day. Also the new Nvidia GPU client has been leaked, and we are making the most of this early release, while the other teams seem oblivious. So get that Nvidia card folding!! Remember, OCAU is Team 24!
Just a reminder, Firefox 3 is finally available. They're trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. So if you're at work, or at home, give it a try and see how this new version stacks up. Discussion can be found here.
Bit-Tech got their hands on a new Atom powered ASUS EeePC 901, and decided to pull the whole thing apart. Yet again my inner seven year old has taken hold of me and insisted I find out what's inside the new Eee PC 901 without general consideration about how it goes back together.
After months or rumours and waiting, the official Playstation blog has now confirmed that version 2.40 of their system software update for PS3, will include “XMB” access in-game. The update will also include trophy like achievements, as well as some other new enhancements.
Stardock has launched their new digital platform today called Impulse. The new platform is designed to allow users to associate PC games, applications, and utilities with a unified account that users can then update and install software from many supporting studios.
TweakTown decided to put three newly released GeForce GTX 280’s in SLI, to see how well they scale and perform. So we’re back in the bunker for the last night of GTX 280 palooza, and I have to honestly say that it couldn’t come any sooner. No doubt that we’ve left the best till last with our 4GHz clocked system and three GTX 280 cards.
Benchmark Reviews have compiled a Nvidia GPU Computing & CUDA FAQ. Benchmark Reviews offers this FAQ to help our readers understand what is happening within our world of technology, and help introduce them to what is coming as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 video card is launched
InfoWorld compiled a list of colossally stupid mistakes made by IT admins. Of course, not all computer users live to cause mayhem, sowing the seeds of destruction in our metaverse. In fact, sometimes the worst offenses spring from our own ranks, hatched by individuals whose stated mission is to help technology work better: the IT admin.
Valve have released the latest addition to their series of meet the Team Fortress 2 characters trailers; Meet the Sniper. The remaining three classes--Pyro, Medic, Spy--are expected to receive their long-awaited and undoubtedly humorous introductions in due time. You can watch the video on AusGamers.
After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release.
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-6400 4GB Kit on XSReviews.
OCZ Reaper HPC PC3-10666 DDR3 2GB Kit on circuitREMIX.
Motherboards:
Asrock A780FullDisplayport AM2+ board on Pro-Clockers.
Asrock X48TurboTwins-WiFi LGA775 board on Pro-Clockers.
Asus Crosshair II nForce 780a SLI AM2+ board on Overclock3D.
Cases:
Antec Twelve Hundred Full-Tower Gaming Case on Techware Labs.
Cooler Master CSX Warfare Stacker 830 on Motherboards.
Sunbeamtech Acrylic HTPC-style ATX Case on MadShrimps.
Displays:
Toshiba Regza 32XV505DB 32" LCD TV on Trusted Reviews.
Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ80 46" Plasma TV on Trusted Reviews.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte TurboForce 8800GT on Pro-Clockers.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB on VR-Zone.
Zotac GeForce GTX 280 Amp! Edition on techPowerUp.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 & 260 on AnandTech.
Power Supply:
Coolmax CUG-950B 950W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
OCZ Stealth X Stream 600W PSU on Overclockers Club.
Thermaltake Toughpower QFan 650W PSU on jonnyGURU.
Misc:
Altec Lansing M812 Wireless Speaker System on Techware Labs.
SanDisk Sansa Fuze MP3 Player on RegHardware.
Nikon CoolPix S550 Digital Camera on Trusted Reviews.
Asus Eee PC 901 Linux Edition on RegHardware.
FireFox 3 Download Day
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Wednesday, 18-June-2008 10:23:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Today's the day, it seems. Mozilla are trying to set a world record for the most downloads of a piece of software in 24h, and that software is of course their new FireFox 3 browser. I think you've got until 3am tomorrow AEST if you want to be part of the count.
Discussion here.
Spore Creature Creator Demo
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Tuesday, 17-June-2008 22:20:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AusGamers have the Spore Creature Creator Demo available for download. This will allow you to play with the Spore creature creator and make your own critters, make a movie, upload it to youtube, take a snapshot an mail it to friends and eventually use it in the Spore game. This demo version is fully functional, but only contains 25% of the full version's content.
Discussion towards the end of this giant Spore thread in our Games forum.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 17-June-2008 16:52:22 (GMT +10) - by Rezin
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Power Supply:
In Win Powerman Commander 1200W PSU on TweakNews.
Coolermaster Silent Pro M500 PSU on CPU3D.
Portable:
Asus M530W smartphone on TrustedReviews.
Samsung OMNIA SGH-i900 PDA phone on OCWorkbench.
Sony Ericsson W350i mobile phone on Hardware Zone.
Lenovo IdeaPad U110 laptop on Digital Trends.
Cases:
Sigma Unicorn mid-tower ATX case on Modders-Inc.
Silverstonetek SUGO SG03 & Nitrogon NT06-Lite on MetkuMods.
Cooling:
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU cooler on TweakTown.
Noctua NH-C12P CPU cooler on Silent PC Review.
Scythe Orochi CPU cooler on X-bit Labs.
Cooler Master Aquagate Max liquid-cooling system on X-bit Labs.
Storage:
Buffalo LinkStation EZ 500GB network storage on Overclockers Online.
Goodmans GHD2521F2 twin-tuner PVR on TrustedReviews.
Misc:
Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 gaming headset on ThinkComputers.
Lowepro Fastpack 350 camera bag on Futurelooks.
t00ch posted a worrying set of photos in a thread titled "Here's why you shouldn't use cheap power supplies":
click for the thread
NVIDIA GeForce 200 Series
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Tuesday, 17-June-2008 02:33:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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As expected, NVIDIA have revealed their new generation of graphics processors, the GeForce 200 Series. One of the most powerful processors in the PC is the GPU. Rendering 3D images in real-time is just about the most mathematically intensive task your PC will ever undertake, but it’s not the only one. As PC applications become increasingly visual, many ordinary tasks will benefit from the graphics horsepower provided by the GPU, including encoding and playing high-definition videos, editing photos, getting driving directions off the Internet, or simply running a new operating system like Windows Vista. Quite a big mention of Folding@Home in the press-release, too.
This is quite a big deal, with CUDA and PhysX support, as NVIDIA push the market closer to using the GPU for general-purpose computing. So far the products include GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 280.
Coverage on Bjorn3D, BenchmarkReviews, CPU3D, DriverHeaven, Guru3D, HardOCP (and interesting pricing info here), HotHardware, HWSecrets (and here), I4U, InsideHW, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, nV News, OC3D, OCClub, PCPerspective (and Folding/Transcoding info here), t-break, TechReport, TechPowerUp and Tweaktown (and here).
There's a big discussion thread here.. and if you do buy one of these for Folding@HOME purposes, remember OCAU is Team 24. :)
Interesting Forum Threads
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Monday, 16-June-2008 21:30:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Western Digital working on 20,000rpm Raptor Drive? in Storage & Backup.
The beginning of the SSD price war? in Storage & Backup.
IBM aims to cool "3D" chips with water in Extreme cooling.
OCAU VMware Virtualisation Group! in Business & Enterprise Computing.
26,000 marks, PCMark05, 4x Gigabyte I-Ram in Raid0 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Antec Skeleton in Overclocking & Hardware.
Anand's Nehalem preview is up in Intel Hardware.
Thermalright T-Rad2 Revealed, 6 Heatpipe VGA Monster in Overclocking & Hardware.
Military Supercomputer Sets Record in Overclocking & Hardware.
AMD's 'Secret weapon' to push Phenoms to 3-3.2GHz? in AMD Hardware.
Crytek Blame Piracy - No More PC Exclusive in Games.
Router Crashes (Need Cisco Guru's as it turns out) in Networking & Internet.
Interview: Oz SF Writer Simon Haynes in Entertainment.
Apple iPhone 3G Discussion: Coming to Oz 11th July in Mobile Phones.
Would you drive/buy a smart ForTwo? in Motoring.
2009 Porsche 911 Facelift Revealed in Motoring.
Canon EOS 1000D in Photography.
Have you formatted your Vista installation yet? in Windows Operating Systems.
Learning to program for fun in Graphics and Programming.
Aliens, are they real? in The Pub.
It's been a while since I last mentioned Folding@Home. We're still in second place in the world, behind the [H]orde, where we've been for quite a while now. Traditionally as the heat of summer fades away our production ramps up again, so if you'd like be part of that push, check out the Team OCAU Forum and the Folding Page. There's a guide to getting started here. Have fun, compete with your friends and help find cures for diseases - remember, OCAU is Team 24!
Case:
Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid-Tower on Bjorn3D.
Tagan Monolize Mid-Tower Case on TechwareLabs.
SilverStone TJ10 ESA Edition Case on 3DGameMan.
Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid-Tower on Hardware Canucks.
Cooling:
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Scythe Orochi CPU Cooler on Overclock3D.
VIZO Propeller II System Cooler on FutureLooks.
Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound on Pro-Clockers.
Gelid GC1 Thermal Compound on Overclockers Club.
Video Cards:
Asus GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB on Trusted Reviews.
Chaintech 9600 GT 512MB OC Edition on TechLounge.
Asus GeForce 9800 GTX TOP Edition on TweakTown.
Gainward BLISS 9800 GX2 1GB on MVKTech.
Power Supply:
Seasonic M12II 500W PSU on aph Networks.
Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W Modular PSU on OC3D.
Coolermaster M500, M600 and M700 PSU's on R&B Mods.
Gaming:
Race Driver: GRID (PC) on GamePyre.
Lego: Indiana Jones (PC) on bit-tech.
Mass Effect (PC) on TweakTown.
Soul Bubbles (DS) on Trusted Reviews.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) on 1UP.
Misc:
HP 2133 Mini-Note Notebook on bit-tech.
Asus Eee PC 901 20G Linux Edition on Trusted Reviews.
Pentax K20D Digital SLR on RegHardware.
Pentax Optio S12 Digital Camera on RegHardware.
HardwareZone have published part one and part two of their annual PC Show 2008 Coverage. Unlike previous years, this year's PC Show opened a tad later, closer to the middle of June. That however doesn't change the fact that the yearly PC Show and it's great mid-year bargains are here to grab your attention.
In a statement issued recently, eBay said it was disappointed with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission decision, and will challenge the ACC watchdog's ruling to block a plan to force its users onto a PayPal-only payments system. Discussion on the forum. Thanks IntelInside!
The Folding@Home distributed computing project is going to get a huge boost in production next week, when the Nvidia GPU F@H client is finally released. Dubbed GPU2/Nvidia, this CUDA-enabled client combined with one of Nvidia's GTX 280 video cards can produce over 650 nanoseconds of protein simulation in one day; in comparison, a single Playstation 3 can hit 100ns of simulation, and one quad-core CPU can only put out 4ns of simulation in the same amount of time. Remember, OCAU is Team 24!
Laptop Magazine has a first-look at Toshiba’s Qosmio G55 notebook, the first gesture controlled laptop. This 18.4-inch beast isn’t notable just for its futuristic good looks, but because it’s the first notebook to boast a dedicated Quad Core HD Processor (powered by the same Cell Processor that runs the PlayStation3). This enables gesture control, blazing fast video encoding, and more.
LifeHacker take a moment to test latest editions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows and see how they do in regards to start-up times, multi-tab loading, JavaScript, CSS and memory usage. Scientific and precise? Heck no. Easy to understand and free from selective prejudice? Very much so.
MySpace will unveil next week a large-scale redesign that will alter major components of the social-networking site, like its home page, navigation scheme, search engine and video player. On Wednesday, MySpace users will see the first phase of the redesign, which has been in the works for the past six months, according to the company.
X-bit Labs continue with part six of their 20" LCD Monitor roundup. This roundup covers six 20-inch LCD monitors. These are mostly inexpensive models for the office environment where a super-fast matrix and a glossy case may be not only unnecessary but even distracting.
How much would you pay for a 1.5 meter Ethernet cable? A couple of bucks? How about $499! At first glance, “Monster Cables” came to mind, but this for DENON audio products. Sure, it’s not touted as Ethernet cable as it’s for A/V use, but I’m sure a basic Ethernet cable will do the job for a lot cheaper.
In addition, something to kill the time, a flash based World War 1 plane shooter called Dogfight: The Great War. Or try Twist 2 a multi-tasking, brain twisting game. Can you get the highest score?
Motherboards:
Asus M3N78-EMH HDMI AM2+ board on Digit-Life.
Zotac GeForce 8300 AM2+ board on TweakTown.
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 LGA775 board on Pro-Clockers.
Cases:
NZXT Tempest Mid-Tower Case on Overclockers Club.
Silverstone Temjin TJ07B Case on techPowerUp.
Antec Twelve Hundred Case on Club Overclocker.
Storage:
Tagan Icy Box NAS4220 NAS Enclosure on phoronix.
Western Digital 1 TB My Book Home External HDD on TechArp.
QNAP TS-409 Pro Turbo NAS on Virtual-Hideout.
EagleTech JBOD External HDD Enclosure on Pro-Clockers.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD3870 X2 Atomic Watercooled on techPowerUp.
XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition on DriverHeaven.
Asus GeForce 9800GX2 1GB on Elite Bastards.
MSI NX8800GT Zilent 512MB on TechReviews.
Power Supply:
E-Power Thunder EP-650-TD1 650W PSU on TweakTown.
OCZ EliteXStream 800W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
Kingwin ABT-1000MA1S Mach 1 1000W PSU on CPU3D.
Gaming:
Chaos Theory (PC) on IGN AU.
Mass Effect (PC) on I4U News.
Lego: Indiana Jones on DriverHeaven.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (PC) on YouGamers.
TweakTown got their hands on an ASUS Eee PC 1000H and wondered how it would go running Microsoft Vista. Windows XP is so yesterday... we couldn't get really super downright excited about the new Eee PC 1000H until we installed Windows Vista Ultimate. So that's just what we tried to do.
Tech ARP have upated their Desktop CPU Comparison Guide to include the Intel Celeron E1200 & E1400 processors. Currently covering 649 desktop CPUs, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare 18 different specifications for each and every CPU.
Meanwhile, Hardware Secrets compare the performance of a Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Phenom X3 and Phenom X4 to find out which one is the best USD$200 CPU. In this review we will compare the performance of these four CPUs to answer a simple question: among these processors, which one is the fastest? We will also answer another common question: what is the best option, a CPU with more processing cores but with a lower clock rate or a CPU with less processing cores but with a higher clock rate?
Bit-tech have published a preview of the new Prince of Persia game, scheduled for release later this year. In the Prince's latest outing, the developers and designers at Ubisoft Montreal have gone back to the drawing board. There, they've wiped the slate clean and decided to start a brand new series of adventures with the Prince – this time heavily influenced by the mythology of Scheherazade.
techPowerUp look at the latest NAS from QNAP − the TS-409 Pro Turbostation. It shows quite some resemblance to its little brother, the TS-209. Though where the TS-209 stops at two disks and mirroring, the TS-409 allows up to four disks and supports a myriad of advanced RAID features and hardware monitoring. In addition it features everything its little brothers does, countless file sharing services and supporting services to utilize these to the fullest.
InsideHW have a brief interview with Pierre Brunswick − AMD's regional Sales Manager in CIS, Russia, Turkey and Eastern Europe. On the presentation of AMD PUMA platform we have met our old acquaintance Mr. Pierre Brunswick … Since we were interested in details not mentioned in formal presentation we asked him some questions. As you will see his answers gave us very interesting informations.
Rockwell Collins' Automatic Supervisory Adaptive Control technology allows autonomous controlling and landing of an airplane that has sustained catastrophic damage or failure in flight. During the first flight test, nearly half of the airplane's right wing was ejected to simulate battle damage and in-flight failure. During the second flight, almost 60 percent of the airplane's right wing was ejected. Upon ejecting the wing section during both flights, Rockwell Collins' Automatic Supervisory Adaptive Control (ASAC) technology reacted to the airplane's new vehicle configuration, automatically regained baseline performance, continued to fly the plane, and then autonomously landed it using internal Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System (INS/GPS) reference only.
Hardware Zone preview the HP Voodoo Envy 133. Measuring a thin 0.7-inches (1.77cm) and weighing in at 3.4 pounds (1.54kg) on a carbon-fiber chassis and featuring a 13.3-inch LED backlit display, the Envy's compact frame and features looks set to give its competitors a run for their money.
Processors:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 on APH Networks.
AMD Phenom X4 9850 Quad Core on Digit-Life.
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 on TechSpot.
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC3-16000 DDR3 Kit on ASE Labs.
OCZ Platinum Edition 8GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Kit on FudZilla.
Kingston 2GB 800MHz HyperX FB-DIMM Kit on Legit Reviews.
Cases:
Lian Li PC-A77 Full-Tower Case on OCIA.
Sunbeamtech Tuniq 3 Mid-Tower Case on Pro-Clockers.
Silverstone Kublai Mid-Tower on Benchmark Reviews.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler on Legit Reviews.
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme & Ultima-90 Coolers on Digit-Life.
Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer CPU Cooler on CPU3D.
Displays:
Marantz VP-15S1 DLP Projector on Trusted Reviews.
Asus MK241 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor on ExtremeTech.
Loewe Connect 37 37" LCD TV on Trusted Reviews.
Storage:
OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive on Modders-Inc.
Raidsonic IB-390StUSD-B HDD Docking Station on R&B Mods.
Spire HandyBook 2.5 Inch External HDD Case on MadShrimps.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB HDD on SilentPC.
Misc:
Audioengine Audiophile AE2 & AE5 PC Speakers on MadShrimps.
Logitech Z Cinéma Surround Sound System on OCIA.
Lubix NC1 Bluetooth Headset on Pro-Clockers.
Sponsor Specials
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Friday, 13-June-2008 16:18:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around for a good deal. In there our many sponsors have threads offering cooling products, lego flash drives, web hosting, tv tuners, notebooks and various other components. Check it out!
Guru3D roundup the latest Heatpipe CPU coolers from Noctua, OCZ, Tuniq, Cooler Master and Coolink. All coolers really are way above average and are great products. We were just really curious how far it could handle an overclocked Quad Core processor, as much like you guys would like to know.
VR-Zone has some 3-way SLI Action with the unreleased NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and 3DMark Vantage. Since we have some GTX 280 cards with us so we put them together and run some tri-SLI action. We overclocked our QX9650 to 4GHz to remove some CPU bottleneck. Discussion on the forum.
With all the rumours about Intel's plan regarding the development of USB 3.0, they have decided to address and dispel these rumours circulating around the net. There has been a lot of unanswered speculation recently regarding USB 3.0 and Intel’s involvement; I thought it was about time to set the record straight. USB 3.0 will be a new wired USB standard – operating at faster speeds than previous USB generations.
HardOCP put the latest LS series of power supplies from BFG Tech to the test. BFG has recently proven its worthiness in the high end computer power supply market by providing extremely stable and innovative products. Can BFG pull off another win as it wades again into the middle of the wattage war with many competitors?
Tech Report have a comprehensive look at the Intel P45 Chipset, as well as comparing it to chipsets from Intel and Nvidia. Intel's mid-range chipsets have been consistently solid year after year, establishing a virtual dynasty in an industry that doesn't always look kindly upon incumbents. It's no wonder, then, that expectations are high for the P35's successor, the new P45 Express.
Bit-Tech have published a report of a recent factory tour they attended with Gigabyte in Nan-Ping, Taiwan. Are you planning to pick up a Gigabyte GA-P45-DQ6? Over the course of this article, we'll show you where it was made as Gigabyte invited bit-tech to one of its Taiwanese factories, allowing us to roam around its facilities.
Opera 9.5 has been released to the public. Version 9.5 focuses on Speed, better malware & phishing protection, improved quick find and a revamped look. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS systems, in more than 30 languages, Opera 9.5 can be downloaded from this page. Discussion on the forum.
After many release candidates, Mozilla has finally announced that Firefox 3 is set for release June 17, 2008. Firefox 3 sets the innovation bar very high with exciting new features, including one-click bookmarking, the smart location bar and lightning fast performance. Discussion on the forum.
Motherboards:
MSI P45 Platinum LGA775 board on HardOCP.
Sapphire AM2RX780 AM2+ board on Pro-Clockers.
Cases:
Sigma Unicorn Case Mid-Tower on Hardware Secrets.
Tagan Black Pearl WCR Case on Overclockers Online.
In Win Metal Suit GD Designer Case on TweakNews.
Lian Li PC-V2110 Full Tower Case on AnandTech.
Storage:
VOX V1 External Hard Drive Enclosure on Techware Labs.
QNAP TS-409 Pro TurboNAS Enclosure on Bjorn3D.
SilverStone TS01 2.5" HDD Enclosure on 3DGameMan.
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB HDD on Hardware Secrets.
Eagle Tech L-Series External HDD Enclosure on Hardware Logic.
Video Cards:
MSI HD3870 Overclocked 512MB on Hardware Logic.
Sapphire HD3870 Toxic 512MB on ProClockers.
Gigabyte 9600GT TurboForce 1GB on TweakTown.
Power Supply:
E-Power Thunder 550W PSU on Hi-Tech Reviews.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W on AnandTech.
Atrix 500T Extreme 650W PSU on Overclockers Club.
Gaming:
Lego: Indiana Jones (360) on Trusted Reivews.
Race Driver: GRID (PS3) on BoomTown.
Aces of the Galaxy (Xbox Live) on DriverHeaven.
Misc:
Oppo HM-31 Advanced 3x1 HDMI Switch on Motherboards.
Philips DVP5980 DVD Player on Trusted Reviews.
Sleek Audio SA6 Customisable Earphones on Trusted Reviews.
Aten CS1782 USB 2.0 DVI KVM Switch on Bjorn3D.
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 12-June-2008 21:41:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Voting for May’s Iron Photographer Top 10 is underway; you can discuss the entries here, or submit your own for the June Iron Photographer contest. June’s theme is “Light” which should aid in some interesting photo submissions.
If you are interested in submitting a photo for the June Iron Photographer Contest, make sure you have your entry in before 10 pm AEST Monday, 30th June 2008. Discussion can be found here, for those unsure of the rules they can be found here and here.
TweakTown have posted up a write-up of their factory tour of GIGABYTE Technologies. GIGABYTE invited us to its Nan Ping fab for a tour of it operations. We take a close look with pictures and video handy. This is only one of the many factories that GIGABYTE has around Asia, but this is the heart of GIGABYTE. They also have at quick look at AMD's upcoming 790GX motherboards on show at Computex.
Western Digital yesterday launched an all-new desktop brand, Caviar Black. Western Digital believe it to be "Their best hard drive ever" as well the "Fastest 3.5-inch 7200 RPM Drive on the Market". The first products in this new line will be 750GB and 1TB models. Discussion on the forum.
Benchmark reviews test three of the industry's most coveted coolers from Thermalright, Xigmatek and OCZ. After even more testing, we now have a full understanding of each CPU coolers individual characteristics and deliver the results to you. Benchmark Reviews is proud to present a three-way fight to the finish.
HotHardware roundup three Nvidia 9600GT’s from PNY, MSI and ASUS. As you might expect, all three of these cards sport 512MB of GDDR3 and a 256-bit memory interface. What you may not expect is how different these three cards actually are in terms of cooling and clocks.
TweakGuides released their Mass Effect Tweak Guide. Designed to make sure that everyone understands all the in-game settings, but more importantly, so that all the major advanced tweaks which allow further optimization and customization of both graphics and gameplay.
Trusted Reviews preview the latest instalment in the Battlefield series, called Bad Company. All in all, this is a very promising FPS package and one that might make up for the disappointments (mild or otherwise) of Frontlines, R6: Vegas 2 and Haze. Bad Company might be the name, but this is one game I'm looking forward to spending more time with.
Callan sent in details about an interesting Origami V-12 Four-Stroke Engine, it’s a paper engine that pumps just like real engines (with the help of some electricity). One V-12 engine consists of 195 sheets of fine-printed patterns. From those sets, 1,978 pieces are used in total. And it only weighs 3.2 lbs when finished. This makes your 1,000-piece puzzle look like a piece of cake.
Motherboards:
ASRock Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi LGA775 board on CPU3D.
Asus P5Q Deluxe P45 LGA775 board on Trusted Reviews.
Asus P5E3 Premium X48 LGA775 board on Hardware Canucks.
Cases:
Sigma Unicorn Case Mid-Tower on Hardware Secrets.
Tagan Black Pearl WCR Case on Overclockers Online.
In Win Metal Suit GD Designer Case on Tweaknews.
Cooling:
Thermaltake ProWater 850i Liquid Cooling on TweakTown.
Asus Lion Square CPU Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermolab Micro & Nano Silencer CPU Coolers on Legit Reviews.
ZEROtherm Zen CPU Cooler FZ120 on Overclockers Club.
Displays:
Philips 42PFL7603D 42in LCD TV on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung SyncMaster 305T 30” LCD Monitor on Hardware Canucks.
NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi 30" LCD Monitor on Trusted Reviews.
Video Cards:
XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Black Edition on Guru3d.
BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX 512MB on TweakTown.
Palit GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB on TechPowerUp.
Power Supply:
Hiper Type-M 780W PSU on phoronix.
Kingwin Mach 1 1000W PSU on XSReviews.
NorthQ Black Magic Flex 850W PSU on jonnyGURU.
Misc:
Toshiba Satellite A300-177 Notebook on Trusted Reviews.
Asus Eee PC 2G Surf 7-inch on ThinkComputers.
Jawbone Bluetooth Headset on BlueTomorrow.
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 11-June-2008 22:03:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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SMH seem to have made an embarrassing typo recently, confusing Osama with Obama. Glad I'm not the sub-editor!
So, if you find yourself a juror in a million-dollar drugs case, playing Sudoku half the time is probably a bad idea. In the District Court in Sydney, Judge Peter Zahra discharged the jury after hearing evidence from two accused men, one of their solicitors and the jury forewoman, who admitted that she and four other jurors had been diverting themselves in the jury box by playing the popular numbers game.
Phoronix talked to AMD about the Stream SDK on Linux. The version released was Stream SDK 1.1 Beta, which arrived at the same time as the SDK for Windows XP. With this new Linux support, we ran a small Q&A session with Michael Chu, who serves as the product manager for AMD Stream software.
From Radix: I've posted up my review of the HTC Touch Diamond on my gadget blog if anyone is interested. The HTC Touch Diamond is one of the smallest Windows Mobile phones to date and should be available in Australia in Late June/July officially. More discussion on the HTC Touch Diamond is found in the OCAU forums in this thread.
TrustedReviews have an article about NVIDIA's CUDA. The more consumers are aware of the advantages the GPU can offer the faster this progression is likely to happen. There?s no telling where the future could lead us - so kudos to CUDA and nVidia for helping, if only in small ways, to make out productive lives that bit simpler and more enjoyable.
Silicon Angel sent in this link to a forum thread where some guy is unearthing a Nazi bunker in his backyard. I got up to page 19 and not much had happened, but I'll check back soon. :)
LegionHW have a CPU head to head between Intel's Core 2 Duo E7200 and AMD's Phenom X3 8450. These two processors cost less than $150 US and are both capable of delivering a considerable amount of performance, the question is which one should you buy?
c0ld Aussie sent word that Engadget are reporting a July 11th launch for the iPhone in Australia. Not much more info in that article unfortunately. Update: More here, thanks mattidude.
Spamfest Reminder
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Wednesday, 11-June-2008 12:32:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Congrats to the winners of the recent Friday Spamfest:
mr.daneo
Bullseye81
flurex
Elvi5
lazerin
rhysxanthis
dribbleboy
gmuaa
mugginz
synmnky
glimmerman
WindMinstrel
Don't forget to PM me your postal details for prizes!
Also of course today we have another competition sponsored by QUICKsms.com.au. Rules and entries here, discussion here. It starts at 1PM AEST - under half an hour from now!
Motherboards:
Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 LGA775 board on NeoSeeker.
Asus Rampage Formula LGA775 board on Overclockers Club.
MSI P45 Diamond LGA775 board on t-break.
ASRock X48 TurboTwins-WiFi LGA775 board on CPU3D.
Cases:
Hiper Anubis Mid-Tower Case on DriverHeaven.
Apevia X-Jupiter G-Type Case on Virtual-Hideout.
Antec Performance One Mini P180 on NordicHardware.
Cooling:
Zalman Reserator XT Water Cooling on ThinkComputers.
Thermalright HR-01 Plus CPU Cooler on SilentPC.
Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer on Overclocker Cafe.
CoolIt Eliminator Liquid CPU Cooler on Motherboards.
Storage:
Thermaltake Max 4 HDD Enclosure on R&B Mods.
Tagan Icy Box NAS Enclosure on Bjorn3d.
3ware SAS/SATA RAID Controller on TechwareLabs.
Input:
Wolfking Warrior XXtreme Gaming Keyboard on I4U.
Logitech MX Air Cordless Mouse on TechLounge.
Misc:
Canon IXUS 80 IS Digital Camera on Hardware Zone.
Philips SHE9850 Earphones on Digital Trends.
Ultrasone HFI-580 Headphones on Digital Trends.
Yuin OK2 Earphones on TechPowerUp.
Early Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 11-June-2008 02:15:57 (GMT +10) - by Rezin
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Silent PC Review look at the 750GB and 1TB Samsung F1 drives and compare the airborne acoustic and vibration-induced noise levels against several other HDDs. Both forms of noise are evaluated objectively and subjectively. Both the subjective and objective analyses are essential to understanding the acoustics of the drives. Airborne acoustics are measured using a professional caliber SLM. Measurements are taken at a distance of one meter above the top of the drive using an A-weighted filter. Vibration noise is rated on a scale of 1-10 by comparing against our standard reference drives.
Hewlett-Packard will be releasing 50 new products at a conference being held in Berlin today. Of those products, HP added new touches to just about everything, freshening up its Touchsmart all-in-one desktop, commercial and consumer notebook lines, as well as two machines within its high-end gaming brand, Voodoo PC. You can find more information on this conference here.
One of the products that HP have already introduced at this event is the 30-bit 24" DreamColor LCD monitor. Designed for professionals for whom accurate color management is essential and consumers who seek to use only the best in technology innovations, the HP DreamColor display achieves more than 64 times the colors available on mainstream LCDs. Reds, blues and greens are visibly deeper, blacks are four times darker and whites are adjustable.
Fudzilla believes the price of 120GB SSD drives could be as low as USD$299 by Christmas. Just a few months ago you would have to spend more than twice as much to get half of the capacity, but we believe that the prices of MLC memory are rapidly going down and therefore the SSDs are getting cheaper.
A new variant of a crypto virus discovered at the start of last month which encrypts your data until you pay the ransom has been cracked. "Now the password has been uncovered, there should be no reason for anyone hit by this ransomware attack to have to make any payments to the criminals behind it," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security firm Sophos. Update: A few people are saying that's an old version, and the new one has not yet been cracked.
Apple will be cracking down on UK citizens looking to purchase an iPhone outright and unlock it. According to our sources at O2, Brits who want to buy a 3G iPhone are going to have to sign up to a contract before they can get their hands on one, wherever they buy it. … If you don't want to get tied to a contract you'll have to choose the pay-as-you-go option, which hasn't been priced yet but is likely to be more than a couple of hundred quid.
If they don't like that they can choose a phone which resembles an iPhone, the Samsung Omnia. Like the iPhone, Samsung's Omnia aims to make Internet browsing easy, and has a wide screen for viewing video as well as music capabilities and a 5 megapixel camera. It runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile software.
Motherboards:
Biostar TF8200 A2 AM2+ board on OCIA.
DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R LGA775 board on InsideHW.
Asus Striker II Extreme LGA775 board on Overclockers Club.
Cooling:
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on ASE Labs.
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler on Legion Hardware.
Thermaltake Bigwater 760i Water Cooling on ThinkComputers.
Video Cards:
PNY Verto GeForce 9600GT 512MB on Legit Reviews.
XFX GeForce 9800GX2's In Quad SLI on XSReviews.
BFG 8800GT OCX ThermoIntelligence on FudZilla.
Sapphire Radeon HD3870X2 Atomic on Modders-Inc.
Inno3D GeForce 9600GT iChill Hurricane on TweakTown.
Power Supply:
Tuniq Miniplant 950W PSU on Overclockers Club.
NorthQ Black Magic Flex 650W & 850W PSU's on 3dGameMan.
SilverStone Zeus ZM1200M 1200W PSU on Driverheaven.
Kingwin Mach 1 1000w PSU on OCIA.
Gaming:
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) on IGN AU.
Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis (PC) on DriverHeaven.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Wii) on GamePyre.
Ninja Gaiden 2 (360) on Trusted Reviews.
Race Driver: GRID (PS3) on Trusted Reviews.
Misc:
Samsung R410 14.1in Notebook PC on Trusted Reviews.
LG Voyager Mobile Phone on Techware Labs.
iRiver E100 Media Player 8GB on Trusted Reviews.
The folks over at QUICKsms.com.au decided our Friday spamfest was such a good idea, they've offered prizes for another one on Wednesday. :) Final details will be announced soon, but basically, each hour from 1pm to Midnight AEST on this coming Wednesday they'll be giving a free 100 SMS credit to the first 5 people to post in the entries thread (which I'll create on Wednesday). Easy and fun like the last one, and a total of 6000 free SMS's given away. Stay tuned for final details!
windwithme has uploaded another huge pile of photos from Computex, this time day 2:
Click for the thread!
His day 1 pics are here.
Happy birthday, your majesty! Even though it's not really your birthday.
Sun are talking about including MySQL-optimised SSDs in future servers, thanks Sniper. The drives will start shipping in the second half of this year. Pricing information or storage capacity of the SSD drives was not immediately available. Sun said users will be able to try the drive for 60 days before buying it.
Weezer have a new music video featuring lots of recent internet memes. Cullen hatched the idea for the video five weeks ago and shot it in early May, he told technology website Wired. "For people who aren't on the internet, this is like a web CliffsNotes to getting into internet culture," he said.
There's a battle brewing over USB 3.0. AMD and Nvidia aim to wrest control of a crucial PC specification from Intel, arguing that the chip giant is trying to box them out as they move to a new era of faster peripherals.
LostCircuits are the latest to check out OCZ's Neural Impulse Actuator. Brain Computer Interfaces are the trend of the year. After almost one year of development, OCZ Technology's Neural Impulse Actuator is finally shipping. We have some of the inside scoop on the nia relating to the hardware and software development, as well as some glimpses at the more advanced possibilities of the device.
It turns out video game addicts aren't all shy nerds. Well, golly. However, they might be death threat sending nutters, sadly. Infinite Interactive, based in Melbourne, received threatening emails from gamers frustrated by a battle malfunction in Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords.
Dan has more letters. In this edition: Electricity from exhaust heat, AA-cell enlargers, the Power Conditioner of Mystery, unorthodox Spotlight charging, powering an emergency services office, hurting yourself with magnets, and hurting magnets back.
Phoronix looked at some desktop Linux performance. Last week we released Phoronix Test Suite 1.0 and one of the article requests we received as a result was to do a side-by-side comparison between the popular desktop Linux distributions. Ask and you shall receive. Today we have up 28 test results from Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 9, and Mandriva 2008.1.
Today's timewaster is this fairly silly egg attack game from Radon. Life as a CEO is not easy. Especially when your company is Microsoft. Last week Steve Ballmer was egged by an angry student during a speech at a Hungarian University. Ballmer showed great reflexes and dodged the attack, hiding behind the desk.
For those who missed it, AnandTech previewed Intel's next-generation processor called "Nehalem". We had access to a 2.66GHz Nehalem for the longest time, unfortunately the motherboard it was paired with had some serious issues with memory performance. But never fear, Nehalem is fast enough that it didn't end up mattering. Discussion on the forum.
PCStat’s snapped quite a few photos and details of upcoming Intel Nehalem Socket 1366 motherboards from Computex 2008. This week, Intel showcased a half dozen socket 1366 Nehalem-ready motherboards in its booth at the new Nangang exhibition hall in Taipei. The Nehalem motherboards and demo system were all based on the upcoming Intel X58 "Tylersburg" chipset.
Mozilla wants to set a world record with the upcoming release of Firefox 3.0. Mozilla is asking users to join in a pledge campaign promising to download the latest version of its Firefox browser on release day in an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the most number of software downloads in 24 hours.
Overclock3D put three dual-GPU cards against each other so see which offers the best performance per dollar. While many of the aforementioned cards have already been reviewed on OC3D at some time in the not so distant past, both the HD3850x2, HD3870x2 and 9800GX2 are all still top of the charts when it comes to brute performance.
X-bit Labs review the latest passive CPU cooler from Scythe, the Scythe Orochi. We have never tested a cooling solution of that size before. So does size matter for CPU cooling and in what conditions? The answer to this question is in our today’s article.
Google is inviting Gmail users to test out 13 new features its considering adding to the Webmail service. Available via the 'labs' function in Gmail's settings, the services include a quick-link tool that allows users to bookmark specific messages, the ability to assign mouse gestures to various actions, and customizable keyboard shortcuts. The most popular features will then become standard within Gmail.
Engadget get hands-on, up close and personal with the latest gadget from HTC, the Touch Diamond. As cool as it sounds to have one of the world's great Windows Mobile torchbearers just drop off its hottest new handset to us like it's an extra large pepperoni and mushroom, it's a bittersweet gift at best... Discussion on the forum.
Long Zheng over at IStartedSomething has begun a taskforce to document the most significant failings of the Windows Vista user experience. Users are encouraged to submit new ones or help promote existing ones using a Digg-like system. The hope is that Microsoft or some third party will do something to address these short-comings in Windows Vista.
A few days ago the first smidgen of gameplay footage from 3D Realms' long anticipated shooter Duke Nukem Forever, has been released online. But still no specific release date has been announced for the long-in-development title; which is no surprise. Discussion on the forum.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX DDR2-1150 2GB Kit on Trusted Reviews.
G.Skill DDR3-1800 F3-12800CL7D 2GB Kit on R&B Mods.
Motherboards:
Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 AM2+ board on Motherboards.
Asus P5Q3 Deluxe LGA775 board on HardOCP.
ECS A780GM-A 780G AM2+ board on TweakTown.
Displays:
Samsung LE46A656 46" LCD TV on Trusted Reviews.
Lenovo L220X 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor on Techgage.
Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" LCD on Hot Hardware.
Storage:
Verbatim 500GB Desktop External HDD on Reg Hardware.
SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB USB on Madshrimps.
Video Cards:
Asus GeForce 8800GTS 512 TOP 512MB on CDRInfo.
BFG Tech GeForce 9600GT OC2 512MB on TweakTown.
Palit 9600GSO Sonic 768MB on NeoSeeker.
BFG Tech 8800 GT OCX 512MB on I4U News.
Misc:
Onkyo TX-SR606 Home Thearte Receiver on Digital Trends.
KEF KHT2005.3 5.1 Speaker System on Trusted Reviews.
Sony Ericsson Z555i Mobile on Trusted Reviews.
HP Elite Autofocus Webcam on Techware Labs.
CS Hyde C4 NGen Mouse Mats on Dan's Data.
Razer Destructor Mouse Mat on BurnoutPC.
Computex Continued
(3 Comments)
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Saturday, 7-June-2008 16:09:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Computex Taiwan 2008 coverage continues on Guru3D, TechARP, CPU3D and TechWareLabs. There's Babes and Booths on HWZone.
Videos on TechWareLabs, and TheTechZone, multi-touch Albatron LCD on Tweaktown and GDDR5 GPUs on Bit-Tech.
VIA and NVIDIA vs Intel's Atom on Bit-Tech, Nehalem motherboards on PCPerspective and more babes on Tweaktown.
Update: SSJX pointed out that windwithme has posted loads of Computex photos in the forums:
click for the thread!
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 7-June-2008 02:19:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Professional Graphics Accelerators from the Mid-Range Segment roundup on XbitLabs.
MSI N9600GT Hybrid Freezer Graphics Card on Tweaktown.
Diamond Viper HD 3650 PE 512MB on TheTechLounge.
Portable:
Toshiba Satellite X305-S6845 Notebook on HotHardware.
I.R.I.S. IRIScan Executive 2 Portable Scanner on BIOSMag.
Cases & Cooling:
Cooler Master Centurion 590 case on InsideHW.
Cooler Master Hyper Z600 CPU cooler on XbitLabs.
Memory:
A-DATA G Series DDR2 800 2 x 2GB Memory Kit on OCClub.
Crucial Ballstix PC3-16000 2GB EPP Memory Kit on HWLogic.
Corsair XMS3 DHX DDR3-1600 EPP 2.0 Certified 4GB Kit on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
Thermaltake BlacX SE SATA to USB Dock on Tweaktown.
HP SimpleSave Photo Disks on TechWareLabs.
Motherboards:
Asus Striker II NSE LGA775 board on I4U.
XFX 790i Ultra LGA775 board on Bjorn3D.
Input Etc:
Everglide DKTBoard keyboard on DriverHeaven.
Razer Lachesis laser mouse on XbitLabs.
Audio / Visual:
Airlive AirView-2000 WiFi Projector Server on TechPowerUp.
Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor 2220WM-HAS on BenchmarkReviews.
Spamfest is (almost) go!
(14 Comments)
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Friday, 6-June-2008 12:19:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Less than an hour until the Friday spamfest gets underway! Here's a reminder of the prizes:
1pm: Misc Prize Bundle #1
2pm: XSPC X20 Watercooling Kit from XSPC
3pm: 4 OCAU Stubby Holders
4pm: ActiveCool TEC Cooling System from PCCaseGear
5pm: Misc Prize Bundle #2
6pm: Signed copy of Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes
7pm: Zalman HD135 HTPC Case (Black) from Zalman
8pm: 4 OCAU Stubby Holders
9pm: Sytrin KuFormula VF1 Plus VGA Cooler from Sytrin
10pm: Signed copy of Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes
11pm: Misc prize bundle #3
Midnight: 2 "M4 Mini Monitor" Speaker Kits from TheLoudSpeakerKit
There's some great prizes there, so it's definitely worth a go! :)
Processors:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 on Aph Networks.
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 on Hardware Secrets.
Memory:
Mushkin Ascent DDR2-1066 4GB Kit on Bjorn3d.
Super Talent DDR2-800 2GB Kit on DragonSteel Mods.
Crucial Ballstix DDR3-2000 EPP 2GB Kit on Hardware Logic.
Cooling:
NorthQ 3580 Siberian Tiger Water Cooler on OCIA.
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on X-Bit Labs.
Asus Triton 77 CPU Cooler on Overclockers Club.
CoolIT Freezone Elite CPU Cooler on Hardware Canucks.
Displays:
Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" LCD on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW 21.6" LCD on bit-tech.
Storage:
Vantec NexStar-SX 2.5" USB Enclosure on Techware Labs.
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX USB Drive 4GB on circuitREMIX.
Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB SATA-II SSD on Legit Reviews.
Video Cards:
Diamond Viper HD 3870 1GB on TechLounge.
XFX GeForce 9800GX2 Black Edition on Motherboards.
Twintech GeForce 9600GT XXT OC Edition on TweakTown.
Foxconn GeForce 9800 GTX OC 512MB on Benchmark Reviews.
Asus Extreme N9800GTX TOP on Legion Hardware.
Misc:
Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR on Reg Hardware.
Razer Mako 2.1 Speaker System on TechLounge.
Asus Xonar DX 7.1 Sound Card on HardwareZone.
The Phoronix.com Web site had its four year anniversary yesterday and to mark the occasion they've released version 1.0 of the Phoronix Test Suite for Linux. "The Phoronix Test Suite is an impressive, fast-developing general-purpose testing suite for both software and hardware on Linux...Its range and flexibility set it apart from the current batch of benchmarking tools," said Carla Schroder, author of The Linux Cookbook and The Linux Networking Cookbook.
Techware Labs provide some tips which may help if you're having a hard time choosing a mouse pad. Believe it or not, choosing a mousepad is just as important as the mouse you use! With gaming as intense as it is today, shouldn't you be at the top of your game? Today, Ian Garris looks at mousepads and tells us how to make a decision on the perfect mousepad.
June 8 marks the 30th anniversary for Intel's 16-bit 8086 microprocessor − the first of a long line of x86-based microprocessors. Why has the x86 been so successful for so long, beating back and in some cases completely vanquishing competing microprocessor architectures? For starters, the x86 came along at just the right time. By 1978, computing had been migrating from huge, expensive mainframes to smaller, cheaper minicomputers for several years. The desktop was the logical next frontier.
Intel have been fined approximately USD$25 million by South Korea's antitrust regulator for "offering discounts to prevent customers from buying products from Advanced Micro Devices Inc." Intel offered about $37 million in rebates over 2 1/2 years to Samsung and Trigem on the condition that they wouldn't buy from Advanced Micro, according to commission's statement. The practice helped Intel's market share average at 91.3 percent in the five years ending in 2005 in Korea, higher than 79.6 percent globally, according to the statement.
Hackzine.com link to the Gentoo-Linux Wiki which looks at using the RAM on your video card as swap space in Linux. If you are into the headless or console experience, there are a couple of ways to put your machine's graphics card to good use. Most new boxes come with a GPU that has a substantial amount of RAM that is normally used for direct rendering. Using the Memory Technology Device (MTD) support in the Linux kernel, you can actually map the video card RAM to a block device and format it for swap use or as a ramdisk.
Network World has an article looking at a recent security assesment by McAfee which suggests that domains in Hong Kong and China are the "most dangerous" places to surf the Web based on country domain. Hong Kong (with its .hk domain) had ranked 28th in last year's study but jumped to No. 1 to gain the "most dangerous" title. China, which had ranked #11 in last year's report, jumped to the #2 spot for riskiest this year. The McAfee report says 19.2% of all sites tested associated with .hk were dangerous and 11.2% associated with .cn were.
Don't forget, today we have a Spamfest Contest running, where you can win one of 12 prizes (some of which are pretty awesome) simply by posting in this thread! It all kicks off at 1pm AEST. :)
The long awaited Call of Duty 4 Map Pack for PC has been released. The Variety Map Pack includes four new multiplayer maps as well as the v1.6 patch which adds support for the new maps, fix a server crash exploit recently reported by the community, and a few additional features and bug fixes. You can grab the patch here (296MB) on AusGamers.
Mozilla has now delivered the second and last release candidate of its upcoming browser, Firefox 3. Most of the bugs found in RC1 gone, RC2 can be downloaded from here. Firefox 3 users can just update their browser to make use of the latest update.
Shacknews reports that Crytek has revealed plans for a new Crysis episode dubbed Crysis Warhead. They have posted a teaser image on the main Crysis website, yet failed to reveal any specifics. The title could turn out to be either a full title or an expansion, and it might show up on consoles the way Crytek are going.
SilentPC have photos from Computex 08 displaying an interesting case from Antec, called the Antec Skeleton. Antec's new Skeleton chassis is meant for gamers and perpetual tinkerers. The motherboard sits on the upper level. One the lower level, a power supply, two optical drives and two hard drives can be fitted. Discussion on the forum.
Ronn Motors has begun accepting orders for its Scorpion sports car, which, according to its manufacturer, will be able produce hydrogen on-demand from an on-board water tank. They expect it to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3.2 - 3.5 seconds while the quarter mile test is promised to come in the mid 10s at 130 mph. The car will be initially available with a 6-speed manual, with a 6-speed automatic following in 2009.
Extreme Tech preview the latest sound card from Creative, the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty. This X-Fi looks totally different from any you've seen before. It's shielded to prevent any interference from nearby expansion cards. Its rear ports are colour coded, It contains a standard front-panel connector for cases with front-panel mic, headphone jacks and of course uses the PCI-Express interface. Discussion on the forum.
Tom’s hardware compare Energy-Efficient Hard Drives from well known manufactures Hitachi and Western Digital. These hard drives are not meant to break new records in performance, but they might be able to break records when it comes to storage capacity per watt of power used. Both Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Western Digital have now released disk drives that cater to the power-conscious audience.
VR-Zone happened to spot one of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 280 on the show floor at Computex and grabbed a couple of pictures of it, unfortunately no benchmarks yet. This is one of the cards Nvidia is expected for release soon; you can find more discussion about this here.
They also have some photos of a new case from Silverstonetek, the Silverstone Raven. The first thing you’ll notice a horizontally mounted motherboard. Utilizing their engineering base, Silverstone has meticulously made use of the convection principle, allowing hot air to escape from the top of the case instead of the back, successfully removing the potential dead zone found in usual cases.
NVIDIA has just announced their latest generation of notebook GPUs, GeForce 9M Series, and NVIDIA Hybrid SLI technology which will become available in over a hundred notebook models. Beginning this summer, GeForce 9M GPUs and Hybrid SLI, paired with AMD and Intel CPUs, will enable a new breed of notebooks and graphics experiences.
Motherboards:
Asus M3N78-EMH HDMI AM2+ board on HardwareLogic.
Asus P5Q Pro P45 LGA775 board on InsideHW.
Cases:
NZXT Tempest Mid-Tower Case on Hardware Secrets.
Hiper Osiris ATX Tower Case on Big Bruin.
Sigma Unicorn Mid-Tower Case on OCIA.
Cooling:
Cooler Master Hyper Z600 CPU Cooler on X-Bit Labs.
GlacialTech Igloo 5750 Silent CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Xigmatek Battle-Axe GPU Cooler on Metku Mods.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP CPU Cooler on TweakTown.
CoolLink GFXChilla GPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
Displays:
Dell UltraSharp 2709W 27" LCD on CNET AU.
Acer P243W 24" LCD Monitor on Overclockers Club.
Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" LCD on Digital Trends.
Zalman Trimon ZM-M220W 22" LCD on R&B Mods.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte GeForce 9600GT TurboForce 512MB on TweakTown.
Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic on Benchmark Reviews.
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB on TechLounge.
ECS GeForce 8800GT 256MB on Virtual-Hideout.
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate Edition on TweakTown.
Power Supply:
Apevia Warlock Power 900W PSU on JonnyGURU.
Corsair TX750 750W PSU on Overclockers Club.
Thermaltake Purepower RX 600W PSU on HardOCP.
Misc:
Griffin RoadTrip with SmartScan for iPod on ThinkComputers.
Toshiba Portégé G710 Smartphone on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung HT-X810 Soundbar and DVD/CD Player on Digital Trends.
Friday Spamfest Contest!
(73 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 4-June-2008 22:20:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Time to clear out the AggCave some more! To that end, on Friday I'm going to give away a prize every hour from 1pm to Midnight AEST. :) How do you win? Well, the same as the Silly NYE Game we played once, you have to be the first person to post in this thread in The Pub, during the x:00 minute of each hour. Only one prize per person, but feel free to have a go at each one, and then you can pick the one you wanted to win and the others will go to the 2nd person who posted, etc.
So what are the prizes? Well, they're things that have been here too long, and were either donated as prizes or were sent for review and not reviewed for whatever reason (sorry!). Also some OCAU stubbies and the "Misc Prize Bundles", which are 3 or 4 misc things I've received from Zazz/CatchOfTheDay etc.
1pm: Misc Prize Bundle #1
2pm: XSPC X20 Watercooling Kit from XSPC
3pm: 4 OCAU Stubby Holders
4pm: ActiveCool TEC Cooling System from PCCaseGear
5pm: Misc Prize Bundle #2
6pm: Signed copy of Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes
7pm: Zalman HD135 HTPC Case (Black) from Zalman
8pm: 4 OCAU Stubby Holders
9pm: Sytrin KuFormula VF1 Plus VGA Cooler from Sytrin
10pm: Signed copy of Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes
11pm: Misc prize bundle #3
Midnight: 2 "M4 Mini Monitor" Speaker Kits from TheLoudSpeakerKit
There's some great prizes there, so it's definitely worth a go! :)
Note: ONLY ONE POST PER USER PER HOURLY GAME. General chitchat in the entries thread is fine, but between server timestamps of xx:58pm and yy:02, if you post more than once, you'll be disqualified. Where xx is the hour before the prize hour and yy is the prize hour, obviously. So for the 3pm game for example, only post once between 2:58 and 3:02.
VIA C7 NX15000G Nano-ITX
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Wednesday, 4-June-2008 14:34:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Quan-Time has checked out the VIA C7 NX15000G Nano-ITX motherboard and CPU. Even built into a little case with internal PSU and CompactFlash for storage, it's tiny. There's plenty of benchmarks and info in the review:
Click for the review!
Computex 2008 in Taipei, the biggest information technology show in Asia is in full swing. During this show you can find some of the latest technology announcements from many manufacturers. Daily coverage can be found on Tom’s Hardware, Guru3d, T-Break, TweakTown, Hexus, Bit-tech and CPU3D. I’m sure there are many more covering the event, but these should keep you busy for now.
Hardware Zone also have a comprehensive amount of coverage from Computex 08, with its most recent articles covering a wide range of products from MSI, AMD, ASUS and Gigabyte. A lot of juicy photos of upcoming motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks and other toys from these manufacturers.
Techgage compare the details of three new ASUS Eee PC’s being released. At Computex 2008, ASUS has just introduced three new models into its Eee PC line-up of sub-notebook PCs, all three infused with Intel's Atom CPU technology, as well as two with larger displays. We've got all the details you want right here.
Tech ARP preview Intel’s updated line of x45-series chipsets. The names and specifications of these products have been rumoured and reported on for the past few months, although today everything is set in stone and products are beginning to hit the market.
Tweak Town have video and photos of an Intel Nehalem system and touch interface in Taipei. Intel demonstrated the speed of Nehalem and SSD in RAID 0 by opening various applications under Vista and even if they were cached in local memory, everything that was click popped up instantly almost with no delay – responsiveness was amazing.
Bit-tech have published a hands-on preview of Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 may yet have problems we haven’t uncovered and granted that a single mission is no basis on which to judge an entire unreleased game – but if we were so foolish as to do judge in that way then Far Cry 2 is one game that we’d definitely get very excited about.
Legit Reviews were lucky enough to visit Centaur Technologies where they make the Via Nano CPU. The crew over at Centaur gave us a tour and showed us how they make low-cost x86 compatible microprocessors. We also talk about the VIA Nano and show off some benchmark numbers. The Intel Atom better watch out!
PC Perspective cover the recently announced Nvidia Tegra aimed at the mobile market. NVIDIA just announced the new Tegra line, a complete system architecture on one chip. Built around a licensed x86 ARM 11 CPU, this tiny chip (smaller than a US dime) includes a processor, memory controller, southbridge, and 3D and video processor.
AirQ send it some details that advertising companies are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers; by their gender, approximate age, and how long they looked at the billboard.
Marc sent in this interesting video of a flying manta ray. Air_ray, modelled on the manta ray, is a remote-controlled hybrid construction consisting of a helium-filled ballonet and a beating wing drive.
Memory:
GeIL PC2-8500 1066MHz EVO One 4GB Kit on 3dGameMan.
G.Skill PC2-8500 PI DDR2 4GB Kit on Virtual-Hideout.
Adata Vitesta DDR3-1600 X-Series 2Gb Kit on CPU3D.
Motherboards:
Asus P5N-T Deluxe LGA775 board on HardOCP.
DFI LANParty UT X48-T2R LGA775 board on HardwareZone.
ECS A780GM-A Black Series AM2+ board on BigBruin.
Asus Rampage Formula X48 LGA775 board on TweakTown.
Cases:
Akasa Mirage-62 Mid-Tower on bit-tech.
NZXT Tempest Steel Mid-Tower on XSReviews.
SilverStone Sugo SG02-F m-ATX on Phoronix.
NZXT Tempest Steel Mid-Tower on OCIA.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler Mikhailtech.
Scythe Shuriken Low Profile CPU Cooler on OCC.
2pcom PS964U CPU Cooler on CPU3D.
ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Video Cards:
Asus EAH3850 X2 1GB on ThinkComputers.
XFX GeForce 9600 GT XXX Alpha Dog on TweakTown.
Palit Geforce 9600 GSO Sonic 768MB on TechWareLabs.
Visiontek Radeon HD3870 X2 OC on Overclockers Cafe.
Input:
Cyber Snipa Stinger on BurnOutPC.
Enermax Aurora Premium Keyboard on Trusted Reviews.
Belkin Nostromo n52te Gaming Keypad on I4U News.
Misc:
Acer Aspire 6920G Notebook on InsideHW.
Atomic Bass Earphones on I4U News.
AudioEngine A2 Speakers on SilentPC.
Asus Xonar D2X PCI-E Sound Card on Future Looks.
HighPoint RocketRAID 2302 RAID Controller on Hardware Secrets.
Interesting Forum Threads
(0 Comments)
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Monday, 2-June-2008 21:39:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Quite busy in the forums tonight.. why not join us? :)
Antec P182 vs Antec 900 - The Results in Overclocking & Hardware.
aaNet launches ADSL2+, joins iPrimus with 200GB* plan in Networking & Internet.
TPG 500G plan.. no catch in Networking & Internet.
2 ISP's, 1 house? in Networking & Internet.
[Team.AU]2GB DDR3 1800MHz Corsair Dominators TORTURED in Memory.
Intel and NVIDIA headed for licensing standoff in Intel Hardware.
ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series | R700 RV770 | 4870X2 4870 4850 in Video Cards.
OLED almost ready for retail in Video Cards.
C# - Reading first 1MB of file for MD5 hashing in Graphics & Programming.
What are the most beautiful games ever? in Games.
ASUS EeePC - Take 2 in Portable and Small Form Factor.
Are internet cafes still viable? in Career, Education and Finance.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in Entertainment.
IQ-145 (New web based sci-fi series) in Entertainment.
What the hell is this all about: Running Car on Water in Science.
Michael Duffy: A nuclear world the solution to a burning question. in Current Events.
Food prices are set to double in Current Events.
A Polaroid each day, until you die in Photography.
Post processing help in Photography: Gallery.
Get out of here S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in Photography Gallery.
How's this for luck... in Motoring.
New BMW N63 Twin-Turbo V8 - A unique engine layout? in Motoring.
Demonstration of the Roland Jupiter 6 in Musicians.
Ebay cheap stuff bah! 8GB USB drive in The Pub.
So you think you're safe? in The Pub.
Popcorn Hour A-100 Review
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Monday, 2-June-2008 16:16:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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MrChilled has shared his thoughts on the Popcorn Hour A-100, a networked media player that can handle modern hi-def formats.
Click for the review!
Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around for a good deal. In there our many sponsors have threads offering all kinds of goodies. Worth checking out!
There's quite a bit of chatter about a DDoS launched against Revision3, a legal internet TV site. It's interesting because, allegedly, MediaDefender were behind it as part of a misguided anti-piracy attempt. We use the internet and peer-to-peer networks to accelerate the spread of legally traded materials that we own.
Bit-Tech have some sneak peek pics of Nehalem and X58. First, the CPU and its new socket: while the roadmaps say the high-end Nehalem to be launched in Q4 will have up to eight cores, the one MSI had in its office was just a quad-core but with eight threads. They also have pics of AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4850 reference card.
PCPerspective compared AMD's Phenom with the older Athlon X2. It turns out that AMD had been quite busy under the hood, and the results were more impressive than I had originally expected.
Meanwhile, HWZone think AMD are in better shape than they have been for a while. We've got some interesting details of the company's current and upcoming plans for their desktop, mobile and handheld platforms, so read on.
AirQ spotted this page about James Bond gadgets, 100 years on. The subsequent Bond books and films brought to public notice everything from luminous watches to car phones and pagers--long before they became commonplace commodities in contemporary society. The list of gadgets is here on Wikipedia.
Speaking of gadgets, OC3D have had a play with OCZ's Neural Impulse Actuator. The OCZ nia is finally here and Overclock3D has been lucky enough to receive one of the first retail samples. Over the next month we'll be taking you through our experiences with the device. But for now - Day 1.
TrustedReviews wonder what the future holds for Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games. If EndWar and HAWX can reach the heights that Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon have done in the past, that's no bad thing.
Lil spotted this fantastically geeky solution to stopping a cat bringing animals indoors. To put an end to this we have built a computer-controlled device that visually determines if Flo is carrying anything in her mouth when she enters, and if she does, it simply does not let her in.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 2-June-2008 13:20:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
Yuin OK1 Earphones on TechPowerUp.
Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth Headset on LegitReviews.
InFocus IN35W and LiteShow II Wireless Projector on TrustedReviews.
Cooling:
Thermaltake MaxOrb EX CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on RBMods.
Portable:
MSI Wind sub-notebook hands-on preview on Bit-Tech.
MSI Wind sub-notebook first looks on TrustedReviews.
LG Secret KF750 mobile phone on TrustedReviews.
Misc:
TrackMania United Forever PC game on Tweaktown.
ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution LGA775 motherboard on InsideHW.
E-Power Zumax ZU-750 PSU on Hi-TechReviews.
You've no doubt been aware of the silly shenanigans surrounding Admiral and Cee's efforts in the MS Australia Fun Run. In total over $10,000 was raised by Admiral and Cee, and all because they promised to do the run like this:
Click for the report and more photos!
Shuttle Discovery Launch
(2 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 1-June-2008 00:12:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The Space Shuttle Discovery will launch later this morning. Shuttle launches are always worth watching on NASA TV if you're interested. This mission will carry the largest payload so far to the station and includes three spacewalks. It is the second of three missions that will launch components to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. The crew will install Kibo's large Japanese Pressurized Module and Kibo's robotic arm system.
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