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Saturday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 21-November-2009  02:39:47 (GMT +10) - by aftahours Media Players: Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Networked Blu-ray Player on I4U Toshiba RD99DT DVD/HDD Recorder on TrustedReviews Popcorn Hour C-200 Blu-Ray Networked Media Tank on Digital Reviews Cooling: Titan Skalli CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler on RWLabs Mouse: CM Storm Sentinel Advance Mouse on Hardware Secrets Coolermaster Sentinel Advance on XSReviews Logitech Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX on InsideHW SteelSeries 9HD Mouse Pad on techPowerUp Storage: Qnap TS-419P Turbo NAS on DragonSteelMods Synology Disk Station DS409slim NAS Enclosure on Futurelooks Vantec NexStar Vault NST-V290S2 2.5-inch HDD Enclosure on TweakTown Kingwin F-35 on PureOverclock StarTech Dual-SATA HDD Docking Station on BmR Seagate FreeAgent Go Dock+ on TestFreaks Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station on DragonSteelMods Kingwin F-35 HDD Enclosure on Virtual-Hideout EagleTech CSMDSU2-BK 3.5-inch Dual Drive Enclosure on PureOverclock Thecus N0204 miniNAS Pocket RAID Storage on Legit Reviews Audio: Panasonic SC-HC4 iPod Docking Station on Hardware Zone Tritton Technologies AX51 Pro Precision PC Gaming Headset on Futurelooks AVLabs AVL787 Bedside Companion Speaker System on TweakTown Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless Headset on Benchmark Reviews Logitech G35 Surround Sound Headset on DriverHeaven.net Motherboard: Gigabyte P55-UD6 & P55M-UD4 on Neoseeker Gigabyte MA-785GPMT-UD2H Motherboard on TechwareLabs Gigabyte P55-UD6 P55 Lynnfield Motherboard on PC Perspective ASUS P7P55D Premium Motherboard on Motherboards.org RAM: Patriot Sector 5 2x2GB 2000MHz Cas 8 on OCC OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 AMD Black Edition Ready 4GB Dual Channel Kit on Technoyard OCZ PC3-12800 OCZ3X1600LV4GK Intel XMP 2x2GB on OCC PSU: Ultra X4 500W PSU on DriverHeaven Nexus NX-5000 PSU on Rbmods Antec CP-1000 1000W Power Supply on Johnnyguru.com CPU: AMD 125W Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition on Techgage Intel Pentium E6300 2.80 GHz on TechPowerUp Case: NZXT LEXA S Crafted Series PC Chassis on Bona Fide Reviews Corsair Obsidian Series 800D enclosure on Techreport Azza Solano 1000R Full Tower Case on Pro-Clockers Portable: Speck Products TuckPack Sleeve on TestFreaks MSI X-Slim X600 - 15.6in CULV Laptop on Trusted Reviews Misc: Canon PowerShot S90 on Hardware Zone Lowepro Outback 100 Camera Bag on ThinkComputers.org De-Branded HP Sempron LE-1250 PC on MHW TRENDnet TEW-671BR Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Router on PCShopTalk LG BL40 Chocolate on TrustedReviews Misc Pics (29 Comments) (link)  Friday, 20-November-2009  14:15:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to mikloise and sciby for these:                               Thursday Night (13 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 19-November-2009  21:51:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg GamerLimit sent word of a QLD Govt E-Petition in support of an R18+ rating for games. Many campaigns for change in QLD have begun with one of these, and it’s certainly a great start to push the QLD Attorney General into action and pledging his support for a change in the system. Tweaktown looked at a laptop with 3D Vision. They are announcing, in conjunction with ASUS, the world’s first mobile 3D Vision capable laptop. This is based off of the G51 line up and will be dubbed the G51J-3D. To do this ASUS has packed a 120Hz 15.6-inch LCD screen that is capable of handling the 3D Vision. Australia has a new fastest supercomputer. The supercomputer was supplied by Sun Microsystems and contains 3,000 quad-core Intel Nehalem processors with 36TB of memory and a petabyte filesystem. Tweakhound have a Windows 7 tweaking guide. I highly recommend you use Windows 7 in its default state for at least a week before you start tweaking it. There are new features in Windows 7 that may seem like unnecessary bloat at first that you may discover actually help you get things done faster. Wizzard67 noticed that the Intel SSD toolkit and firmware should be fixed and re-released by the end of the month. Intel has confirmed an issue with the firmware update process for 34nm (G2) Intel® X25-M SSDs (80GB and 160GB). This predominantly affected Windows* 7 (64bit) users during or immediately after the upgrade process to 02HA firmware using the firmware update tool (version 1.3). Intel plans to release a fix for this issue by the end of November 2009. Brains spotted this laptop reliability study. Mac fans are often quick to claim superior performance from their Apple laptops, but a study from a warranty supplier in the US has ranked the reliability of their hardware fourth behind Asus, Toshiba and Sony. Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 19-November-2009  13:41:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Storage: Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual Hard Drive Docking Station on Tweaknews. Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual HDD Docking Station on Pro-Clockers. Kingston SSDNow V 40GB on Bjorn3D. Speck TwoZip HDD Case on TestFreaks. Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit on TrustedReviews. Motherboards: ASUS P7P55D-E Premium LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org. MSI NF980-G65 Mainboard AM3 board on TechWareLabs. Intel DP55WG LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org. Gigabyte G41M-ES2L LGA775 board on HWSecrets. Cases: IN WIN Maelstrom on OCClub. Antec Sonata Elite Mid Tower on ExtremeOC. Sunbeamtech Automaton on MadShrimps. Audio / Visual: HP DreamScreen 100 digital picture frame on DigitalTrends. LG 50PS7000 50in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews. Samsung LN55B650T1F 55-Inch LCD HDTV on FutureLooks. Canon SX20is 20x Ultrazoom Digital Camera on RamblingThoughts. Bluetrek Bizz Bluetooth Headset on iGadgetLife. Raidsonic Icybox IB-MP305A-B Media Player on RBMods. Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Blu-Ray player on DigitalTrends. Sony Bravia KDL-40Z5800 40in LCD TV on TrustedReviews. ASUS SBC-04D1S-U External Slim Blu-ray Combo Drive on ThinkComputers. Phiaton PS 300 NC headphones on DigitalTrends. Western Digital WD TV HD Live on DigitalTrends. Popcorn Hour C200 Networked Media Tank/HTPC on TechWareLabs. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 digicam on DigitalTrends. Misc: Asus RT-N16 router on DigitalTrends. Corsair H50 Liquid-Cooling System on XbitLabs. Kingston HyperX 4GB 2133MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory Kit on FutureLooks. ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review Round-up (5 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  22:31:22 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY The NDA has been lifted on ATI's new flagship video card. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics processing unit (GPU) joins a growing list of the world's first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card delivers 4.6 TeraFLOPS of compute power, 3200 stream procesors, 2GB of GDDR5 memory, ensuring superior performance in the latest DirectX 11 games, as well as in previous versions of DirectX and OpenGL titles. Coverage on AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Driver Heaven, ExtremeTech, Guru3D, FiringSquad, HardOCP, Hardware Canucks, HardwareZone, Hexus, HotHardware, Legion Hardware, Legit Reviews, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective, PureOverclock, Rage3D, TechPowerUp, TechPowerUp #2, TechSpot, Tom's Hardware and TweakTown. Click to join the forum discussion! Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  16:30:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum: Wednesday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  15:19:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with cancer. "Doctors say he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma," Jody Allen, who is Paul Allen's sister, said in the memo. "This is tough news for Paul and the family. But for those who know Paul's story, you know he beat Hodgkin's a little more than 25 years ago, and he is optimistic he can beat this, too." The Pirate Bay has shut their tracker down for good, thanks Khalil and others. Switching to trackerless and torrentless downloading on public BitTorrent sites does indeed seem to be an option. Previously, many people thought that BitTorrent would collapse if a dominant tracker like the Pirate Bay went down, but this doomsday scenario never unfolded. In fact, the recent downtime of the tracker did not slow down or stop many transfers, as DHT and PEX seamlessly took over. TechSpot have a 7-way P55 motherboard roundup. Should you decide to go with the Core i5 750 processor, the next and possibly most difficult choice is which motherboard to purchase. Already there are over 40 possible motherboard options to choose from and today we'll be taking a look at quite a few of the better examples. LegitReviews checked out two SSDs in RAID0. Today, we will be taking a look at the performance of two Kingston 40GB V Series Boot Drive SSDs. Two of these drives can be bought today for $115 each, which at $230. You can put them into RAID 0 and have a nice little 80GB data array. LegionHW meanwhile consider Left 4 Dead 2 graphics performance. Valve is about to officially release its latest gaming title, Left 4 Dead 2, and we decided to check it out. The focus of our article is not so much on game play, but rather how well certain graphics cards perform when using maximum in-game visual settings at a range of resolutions. InsideHW looked at NVIDIA PhysX performance. We decided to give you an insight on performance rates from GeForce GTS 250 (GeForce 9800GTX+) with price tag slightly above 100€ up to two GTX 200 GPUs that have slightly higher price tags than that. Support for these was powerful rig based on Core i7 920 CPU that we overclocked from default 2.66GHz up to 3.4GHz just to be sure no bottlenecks would appear. Hanes have a new range of gamer underwear. Erm. I don't really have anything more to say about that. NASA and Microsoft are giving you the chance to be a Martian, or at least, learn a bit about Mars. Seems to need their Silverlight plugin thing, though. Two timewasters today. a driving game from Toshiba and this simple Flash puzzle thing spotted by Khalil. NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 (3 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  12:42:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg NVIDIA have a new budget card, the GeForce GT 240. This is their first GDDR5 card but probably isn't too exciting for the performance crowd, lacking DirectX 11 support and largely aimed at replacing onboard video. Coverage on Tweaktown, HWZone, Guru3D, HotHardware, TechPowerUp and LegitReviews. Wednesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  12:23:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg Software: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC game on I4U. Star Trek DAC PC game on GamingHeaven. Left 4 Dead 2 PC game on GamingHeaven. Shattered Horizon PC game on TestFreaks. Video Cards: Sapphire 5870 Vapor X on Bjorn3D. Asus Matrix GTX285 on XbitLabs. HIS Radeon HD4850 iCooler 1GB. Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB on ThinkComputers. ASUS Radeon EAH5870 Voltage Tweak Edition on PureOC. ATI Radeon HD 5970 on HWZone. Portable & Prebuilt: Apple MacBook 2009 on DigitalTrends. HP TouchSmart 300 prebuilt PC on DigitalTrends. Storage: Synology Disk Station DS409slim pocket NAS on XbitLabs. Axus FiT 300 RAID Storage on CCEReviews. Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Desktop Bundle on PCPerspective. Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive on InsidwHW. Input Etc: Silverstone Raven 3200dpi Gaming Mouse on OCModShop. Coolermaster Mouse Mat Roundup on XSReviews. Razer Orochi Mouse & Kabuto Mouse Pad on Bjorn3D. Interesting Forum Threads (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 17-November-2009  19:12:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a quick snapshot of what's going on. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the new Who Quoted Me? feature. Air cooling in a dusty/dirty situation in Overclocking & Hardware. Performance computing advice in Overclocking & Hardware. AMD sheds light on Bulldozer, Bobcat & Desktop plans in AMD Hardware. Marantz 2275 Restoration - 1974 in Audio Visual. Upcoming PlayStation 3 Firmware (v3.10) Update Preview in Sony Consoles. Rolling out Desktops with SSD in Business & Enterprise Computing. Alphawest/Optus announce Cloud services in Business & Enterprise Computing. 32 * 1.5TB drives.. what PSU? in Storage & Backup. RAID 5 - Write Through & Write Back in Storage & Backup. G.Skill Falcon II 34nm SSD's Using New Indilinx ECO in Storage & Backup. Network enabled power meter in Electronics. pusbag's review on upgrading from iPhone 3G to 3G 'S' in Mobile Phones. Network Admin Toolkit - Must have apps! in Networking, Telephony & Internet. A look at Devin Townsend's ProTools session, really cool in Musicians. Film Showcase - Examples and Details of Films, Developing, Scanning in Photography. [VIDEO] The Making of 'Cardboard Wonderland' in Photography & Video Gallery. Do you play inverted or normal? in Game Consoles. Emdrive Electromagnetic Drive For Chinese Space Ships? in Science. Bettas/Siamese Fighters - FAQ in Pets & Animals. Fish Paprikash, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Carp in Geek Food. Icon A5 Amphibious Sports Aircraft in Other Toys. Fat in Japan? You're breaking the law in Current Events. IT Horror Stories in The Pub. Tuesday Afternoon (19 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 17-November-2009  13:39:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg Michael Atkinson has sent a 6-page reply to someone concerned about the lack of R18+ classification for games in Australia, thanks Vanguard. There's a summary here on Reddit, or you can find links to the letter itself here. I think you will find this issue has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than home entertainment in imaginary worlds. On a related note, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out recently, and apart from amusing pictures and annoyance about the lack of dedicated servers, it has also angered Russia enough to ban and recall all copies of the game. As everybody knows by now, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 includes an incredibly controversial level set in a Russian airport that has generated much discussion. The level has proven to be so inflammatory that the real-life Russia has acted, recalling all copies of the game from stores and effectively banning the title. GoN meanwhile have a review of Shattered Horizon, the 3d spacesuit shooter. Interestingly this is the first actual game from FutureMark, more famous for their benchmarks. Now, calling a shooter original in this day and age is high praise indeed. The originality comes in the form of true space combat; players don space suits and have the ability to move and orientate themselves in any, three-dimensional direction. Back to COD:MW2 - Guru3D have some VGA performance numbers. Last week the long awaited sequel to Call of Duty Modern Warfare was released -- COD Modern Warfare 2 probably has been one of the biggest anticipated PC game titles this year. This is Guru3D.com we have a fetish for graphics cards and games, as such we took no less than twenty-three graphics configurations and put performance to the test. HotHardware checked out the Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD. Today we've got a full deep-dive look at Fusion-io's ioXtreme PCI Express Solid State Drive. Weighing in at a pricey $899 for 80GB (standard card), it's definitely still a high ticket item but it's at least approachable now, for those of you that have the need for speed as they say. Just how much speed? And what about RAIDing a couple of these bad boys together? Thermaltake have a online cooler survey where you can win prizes for telling them what you think. Your responses will help us to address any issues that you may have as well as to better target our products and services to meet your needs.

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