News Archives

Our news archive search is now powered by Google. The entire site is indexed, apart from the forums, which have their own internal search engine.   Web overclockers.com.au Or, you can use our old archive search engine. This is better for some kind of searches, but be aware it can be a bit unpredictable: Search : View News : Last 7 Days, Last 14 Days, Last 30 Days. View Monthly Archives. Possible Security Issue (217 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 21-November-2009  03:54:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg Unfortunately last night I became aware of a possible security issue on one of our servers and noticed some unusual activity. I am investigating it in more detail and will be working with the vendor of our forum software and quite possibly the Police to determine what has actually occurred. For now it doesn't seem that the issue is too serious, but I would say as a precaution you might want to: change your forum password change your password on any other services that use the same password (although sharing passwords across services is a very bad idea, so you shouldn't be doing that anyway) I'll give more info as it comes to hand. Saturday Morning Reviews (6 Comments) (link)  Friday, 20-November-2009  15:39:47 (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 (30 Comments) (link)  Friday, 20-November-2009  03:15:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to mikloise and sciby for these:                               Thursday Night (14 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 19-November-2009  10:51:10 (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  02:41:28 (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  11:31:22 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY The NDA has been lifted on ATI's new flagship video card. [i]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.[/i] 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  05:30:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum: Wednesday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 18-November-2009  04:19:17 (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  01:42:47 (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  01:23:37 (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  08:12:03 (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  02:39:27 (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. Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 16-November-2009  06:48:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg Some interesting things from the forums: HyRax1 has a guide to resizing Windows partitions with Linux pyriX reviewed the Dell Latitude 2100 ravencs re-sleeved a Revolution 1050 PSU STUdog has a 24TB watercooled monster Trucrymz shows how to lap an i7 CPU and a contest-winning NVIDIA ION cube PC from mnpctech Monday Morning (13 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 15-November-2009  15:37:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg I went away for a couple of days and when I came back, turning on my PC gave me a really weird problem. It wouldn't pick up an address from DHCP and kept choosing a 169.* address which isn't valid for my LAN. After the usual things of renewing the lease, assigning a static address, trying a different cable and switch port, deleting the NIC driver etc, I still had no joy, but other PCs on the LAN were fine. Some Googling found a few more suggestions, one of which was to power the PC off, boot it with no LAN cable, then insert the cable after it had finished booting. That worked! Bizarre. ASUS have a Mona Lisa of motherboards in the lobby of their headquarters in Taiwan. Asus designers reportedly dreamed up this Mona Lisa. The work represents two things: a reminder of the technology that Asus built its fortune on and the company’s ethos to encourage and support “any kind of crazy ideas.” Rezin noticed that YouTube will be getting high-def 1080p soon. He also said, then, that YouTube stores all video it receives at the resolution it's uploaded at. So when YouTube ads a resolution option, as it did then and is doing now, it simply needs to re-encode videos for the new player, not get new raw content. Wessam spotted this explanation of computation theory aimed at educating lawyers. It's freaking gargantuan so I haven't read it. Also, it's now clear that just as you wouldn't go into litigation without a lawyer, if you are wise, because that is their area of expertise, lawyers also shouldn't assume they understand software and patents and how they relate unless they get help from technology experts who know how software and computers, and the underlying math, really work. The Large Hadron Collider has suffered a fair few setbacks, but will apparently fire up again this week. Right now, particles are circulating through six of the eight sectors of the LHC’s 17-mile track, and the last two sectors will be turned on in the coming week. If the machine doesn’t break down again, physicists will finally have their long-awaited collider and, hopefully, start answering those nagging questions about the universe. A few people sent in this story of someone crashing his Bugatti Veyron into a lake. Driving weather's been perfect in southeast Texas lately, so it's anyone's guess how this genius skipped his million-dollar-plus Bugatti Veyron off the road and right into a freaking lake. Despite the cost, Veyrons certainly aren't amphibious. Video of the crash here, discussion here. Apparently NVIDIA are not blocking Lucid Hydra after all. Brown contacted us earlier today and informed us that Nvidia "had nothing to do with MSI's decision to postpone its Big Bang Fuzion motherboard." Furthermore, he affirmed that Nvidia would not place any technical roadblocks in Lucid's path, stating: "As I mentioned, we welcome Lucid to the market and have no intention of blocking them with our drivers, etc." TheInq reckon the RIAA has forced a small town to shut down its free WiFi service, thanks enigma. Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie. Byteside have two new episodes, with the Games Show: On Games it's the uber-elite world of Pro-gaming, topics covered include: pro-gamer training tips, how to break into the big league, why is it all dominated by Counter-Strike and Starcraft and the perils of a pro-gaming career. And the Tech Show: Topics covered include: the evolution and future of overclocking, hot hardware, the modding scene, extreme components and cooling. Once again we're having an OCAU Secret Santa. If you want to get involved, sign up by the 30th of November. Sunday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 15-November-2009  09:39:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper N620 Heatpipe CPU Cooler on Tweaknews. Feser One Non Conductive Fluid on Bjorn3D. Software: Star Trek Online MMORPG on GamingHeaven. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Graphics Performance on TechSpot. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Video Review Part 1 on Motherboards.org. Machinarium PC game on GamingHeaven. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2 Pictorial Review on TechReviewSource. Video Cards: Gigabyte GTX260/275, HD 5870 Graphics Cards on IXBTLabs. Asus Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 on TestSeek. EVGA GeForce GT 220 SSC DDR3 on LegitReviews. Sapphire Vapor X ATI RADEON HD 5750 Video Review on Motherboards.org. AMD ATI Radeon HD 5770 on TrustedReviews. Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB Razor Edition on Tweaktown. Cases: Azza Helios 910 Mid Tower on Pro-Clockers. AZZA Helios 910R on Hi-TechReviews. Cooler Master HAF 922 on Guru3D. SilverStone Raven RV02 on Phoronix. Misc Pics (54 Comments) (link)  Friday, 13-November-2009  03:47:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg I'm going to be away much of this weekend, so things will be fairly quiet on the news page.. but in the meantime, thanks to Dopefish and Sugaris for these:                               Friday Afternoon (11 Comments) (link)  Friday, 13-November-2009  03:10:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's Friday the 13th, and Dopefish sent in this list of top horror movies to watch. It seems Intel and AMD have settled their differences, announcing an agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes includnig antitrust litigation and patent licensing disputes. Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement, Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement, and Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion. More info here. Meanwhile HP are planning to acquire 3Com. The deal is valued at $2.7 billion, or $7.90 per share. HP says the purchase is intended to boost its networking business, particularly in China, where most of 3Com's business is focused. More info here, thanks SpudBoy. Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has drawn fire for saying the 1 million bittorrent downloads of his film may affect the chances of a sequel being made, thanks Rage. Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us. LostCircuits have an SSD primer explaining NAND flash technology in depth. The predominant SSD storage medium at this moment is NAND flash memory and this is not likely to change in the near future even though new technologies such as phase change memory, magnetoresistive memory, resistive memory, organic memory, nanotube-based memory and finally NOR flash are on the horizon. A recent Microsoft interview contained comments that Windows 7 was deliberately Mac-like, but those comments were hurriedly retracted. Simon was incorrect in describing Windows 7 in this way and subsequent headlines claiming that the Mac OS inspired Windows 7 are totally inaccurate. The Mars rover "Spirit" is stuck in a sand trap. NASA will begin transmitting commands to its Mars exploration rover Spirit on Monday as part of an escape plan to free the venerable robot from its Martian sand trap. The latest odd happening caught by Google Maps Street View is an old lady being knocked off her bike, seemingly by a fire engine. Luckily, the Googlers stopped to help. Hey guys... where's the fire? Jammahead reminded us of an easy way to contact your Attorney General and let them know your feelings on the lack of an R18+ classification for video games in Australia. Particularly if you live in South Australia. :) Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 12-November-2009  19:05:21 (GMT +10) - by aftahours PSU: CoolerMaster Silent Pro M 600W Power Supply on Techware Labs Nexus RX-6300 630 W Power Supply on Hardware Secrets ABS SL Series 1050 Power Supply on Bjorn3D Gaming: Torchlight (PC Game) on Gaming Heaven ZOWIE Hammer Gaming Headset on TweakTown BUBBLE BOBBLE Neo! on TestFreaks Roccat Vire Gaming Headset on DriverHeaven Media Players: Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Networked Blu-ray Player on I4U Raidsonic IB-MP305 Network MultiMedia Player on RWLabs Marantz BD7004 Blu-ray Player on Trusted Reviews Storage: Seagate Savvio 10K.3 SAS 2.0 6Gb/s 300GB 2.5-inch Hard Disk on Tweaktown Samsung Spinpoint F1 (HD103UJ) 1 TB Hard Disk Drive on Techarp Verbatim Store n Go Micro 4GB Flash Drive on OCModShop Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Boot Drive SSD on Benchmark Reviews OCZ Tech Agility Series 120GB SSD on Trusted Reviews Cooling: Zalman CNPS9900A LED cpu cooler on Testseek Titan Skalli CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets NZXT Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Controller on RBMods Thermaltake Massive23 ST Notebook Cooler on ThinkComputers.org Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme on OCC Motherboard: DFI P55-T3eH9 (Intel P55) on Hardware Zone ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard on t-break ECS P55H-A Motherboard on Motherboards.org DFI LANParty DK P55-T3eH9 Motherboard on Tweaktown Mouse/Input: Logitech Performance Mouse M950 on Hardware Zone Adesso CyberTablet 6400 on OCModShop Laptop: Samsung X120 (JA01UK) - 11.6in CULV Laptop on Trusted Reviews Novatech X70 CA Pro - 15.6in Core i7 Gaming Laptop on TrustedReviews Case: NZXT M59 Case on Neoseeker NZXT Beta EVO Mid-Tower Steel Case on Overclockers Online NZXT Lexa S Crafted Series Black Steel Mid Tower Chassis on ThinkComputers Thermaltake Element G Case on Modders-Inc Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition Case on Legit Reviews XClio Godspeed One Advanced Mid Tower Case on TweakTown CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Black Edition on Overclockers Club Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme on PureOC Xigmatek Midgard-W Computer Case on BmR Videocard: Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ Razor Edition on Pc Perspective ASUS EAH5770 on Guru3D Inno3D GeForce GT 220 1 GB on Tech Powerup Misc: Logitech Squeezbox Boom on Techware Labs Archos 3 8GB Touch-screen MP3 Player on Everything USB Leadtek PxVC1100 MPEG-2/H.264 Transcoding Card on Legit Reviews Toshiba Regza 46SV685D 46in LED Backlit LCD TV on Trusted Reviews Kingston HyperX T1 4GB DDR3-2133 on Pure Overclock AMD Phenom II 955 on Techware Labs Thursday Night (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 12-November-2009  12:52:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thousands of gamers have been banned from Xbox Live for having modified consoles. "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live," Microsoft has said in a statement. Discussion here. It also seems Microsoft have patented sudo, or something that looks a lot like it. Obviously, if they could figure that out, they'd never have issued this patent in the first place. The fact that they did, without realizing the implications, or the obviousness, or the prior art, tells us that the USPTO simply lacks the foundational technical information, or the awareness of technical history, to make wise patent decisions about software and patents. Google have announced a new programming language called Go, thanks Chook. No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously. ... We believe it's worth trying again with a new language, a concurrent, garbage-collected language with fast compilation. Discussion here. AusGamers have an article about building a high-definition HTPC for $500. Nvidia have changed all that with the introduction of VDPAU and their low-cost ION platform. VDPAU – which stands for Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix – allows Linux applications to offload video decoding to an Nvidia GPU. The ION platform is a small-form-factor motherboard/chipset combination that provides an Atom CPU, DDR2 memory, and a GeForce 9400M-class GPU. One of the first released systems containing the ION platform is the Asrock Ion330. Tech Report, HotHardware and PC Perspective all checked out the new Lucid Hydra GPU load-balancer. Now, a little more than a year after that first IDF showing, Lucid says its Hydra 200 chip is ready to ship in consumer systems. To underscore that point, the firm recently invited us to its San Jose, California offices to experience a Hyrda-based solution first-hand. We came away with our impressions of the Hydra solution in action, along with some of the first performance numbers to be released to the public. Wednesday Afternoon (22 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 11-November-2009  05:49:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg MSI and HWBOT are having an online overclocking competition. Therefore, on behalf of MSI, we invite all overclockers around the world to join the Xtreme Speeder P55 Online Competition and to challenge undiscovered extreme overclocking territory of MSI P55 and Intel Lynnfield CPU. Gigabyte meanwhile have a web-based competition. The GIGABYTE “Smart 6 Challenge” web activity started October 19, 2009, and ends November 27, 2009. Participants need to collect the energy of Smart 6 to help the GIGABYTE warrior defend the earth against a slew of alien invaders. Once you have successfully collected the Smart 6 energy within the set time, you will have a chance to win one of the latest GIGABYTE Intel P55 chipset based motherboards. Matthew sent in this video-game with real-life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. NinjaLane have some PhysX performance tests, while Bjorn3D looked at PhysX in Darkest of Days. Nvidia Physx has brought us some rather unique effects in this game for instance denser smoke, blowing leaves, more paricles from exploding howitzer rounds, and sparks flying everywhere after firing our weapon. Rupert Murdoch, annoyed at Google "stealing" his news content by indexing it, is threatening to remove the WSJ and other News Corp sites from the index as well as charging readers for access. When asked why he would buck the trend of offering free content, Murdoch said: "(The public) shouldn't have had it free. I think we've been asleep." Sounds like a brilliant plan you have there, Rupert. AMD GPU owners playing Need For Speed: Shift might want to check out this report from LegitReviews. This Need For Speed: Shift Patch isn't out yet, but we managed to work our magic and get both the latest beta drivers from AMD and the game patch from EA to see how much smoother and better the game play will be for AMD video card users. We also toss in some NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards into the mix to check out the SLI scaling since the patch is optimized for multi-GPUs. You can get in trouble for using your mobile phone while driving your car, but what about controlling your car with your mobile phone? We then set up wi-fi communication so we can drive the car from an iPhone as well as from a modified Power Wheels truck. Thanks Rezin. Tweaktown looked at USB 3.0 SSD performance. We compared USB 3.0 performance against USB 2.0, eSATA, SATA 2.0 (directly connected to the test system) and Firewire 400 and 800. Testing was done on a new system running Windows 7 with a Core i5 750 processor that was hooked into a GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P motherboard, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a NEC USB 3.0 PCI-E x1 controller card. The specific USB 3.0 chip used was the D720200F1 from NEC Japan, one of the few available at the time of writing. MadShrimps played with some liquid nitrogen on a GeForce GT 220. We pour some -180°C LN2 over NVIDIA's 40nm GPU to see how high it will scale. With the help of some voltage modifications we are ready to breach some world records at the low end of the video card scale. Today's timewaster is Cargo Bridge spotted by Tony_L. Wednesday Morning Reviews #2 (1 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 10-November-2009  13:48:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: GIGABYTE P55-UD6 LGA1156 board on Tweaktown. Gigabyte P55-UD6 LGA1156 board on HWSecrets. ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org. Intel DP55KG “Kingsberg” Extreme Series LGA1156 board on FutureLooks. ASUS P7P55D Deluxe LGA1156 board on Tweaktown. ASUS P7P55D Deluxe P55 LGA1156 board on PCPerspective. ECS P55H-A LGA1156 board on PCShopTalk. Video Cards: Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X on NeoSeeker. Gigabyte GeForce 210 on Bjorn3D. Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X on Tweaktown. HIS Radeon HD4890 iCooler x4 on Tweaknews. Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X on Techgage. Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Ultra Slim 65W Universal Laptop AC Adapter on OCClub. Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W on JonnyGuru. Input Etc: World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King Limited Edition Z-Board on PCShopTalk. Logitech Anywhere MX "Darkfield" Wireless Mouse on EverythingUSB. Storage & Memory: Vantec NexStar Universal Storage Adapter on TestFreaks. Promise SmartStor DS4600 DAS on Guru3D. In Win AMMO 2.5 inch RFID Enclosure on TechPowerUp. OCZ Agility EX 60GB SSD on Phoronix. RunCore 64GB Pro IV 70mm PCI-e SATA SSD on TestFreaks. Crucial M225 256GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers. Apacer A7 Turbo A7202 64GB Solid State Drive on Pro-Clockers. Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 8GB Kit on Bjorn3D. Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 10-November-2009  13:34:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg Audio / Visual: Panasonic TZ7 Ultrazoom Compact Digital Camera for Travellers on RamblingThoughts. Gameskulls GS-1 Tactical Gaming Helmet on OCIA. Logitech Harmony 1100 Remote Control on CCEReviews. Canon Powershot SD940 IS digicam on ExtremeMHz. Tritton AX 720 Dolby Digital Surround Gaming Headset on LegitReviews. Sharp Aquos LC-46LE700E 46in LED Backlit LCD TV on TrustedReviews. ATEN VS481A 4-Port HDMI Switch on OCModShop. Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5vi Earphones on TrustedReviews. Cases: CM Storm Sniper Black Case SGC-6000-KKN1-GP on BenchmarkReviews. NZXT M59 - 001BK on OCClub. Cooler Master Elite 310 on TestSeek. SilverStone Raven RV02 on PureOC. Portable & Barebones: Asus G51J Core i7 Mobile Gaming Notebook on HotHardware. Acer Timeline 14" 4810T Notebook on TechSpot. VIA ARTiGO A2000 barebones server on TechwareLabs. Cooling: NZXT SENTRY 2 5.25" Touch Screen Fan Controller on BonaFideReviews. Choiix Mini Air-Through Notebook Cooling Pad on VerdisReviews. Coolink SWiF2 Fan Series on RBMods. Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on Vortez, thanks Scoobth. Corsair H50 Hydro Series Liquid/Water CPU Cooling System on Tweaknews. Tuesday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 10-November-2009  06:16:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg Apparently Firefox is five years old already. That's a long time on the Internet, so let's celebrate five years of working together to make the Web better for everyone. Meanwhile Sciby spotted this fairly neat customised free software installer. Ninite runs on Windows XP/Vista/7 and works in the background 100% hands-free. We install apps with default settings and say "no" to browser toolbars and other junk. All we do is install the latest versions of the apps you choose. Not even Ninite is installed. NVIDIA's CEO has denied rumours of an x86 chip from them. "No," he said when asked if there was any truth to the rumor. "Nvidia's strategy is very, very clear. I'm very straightforward about it. Right now, more than ever, we have to focus on visual and parallel computing." The Large Hadron Collider has been shut down by bread dropped onto it by a passing bird. You can't make this stuff up. The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine. PCPerspective spent some time with GlobalFoundries, the fabrication spinoff of AMD. We spent some time recently with the team at GlobalFoundries to get an update on its status as an independent foundry company, its first and second customers, how the move to 32nm and 28nm is progressing and to speculate on what it means for the rest of the industry. From BFM: Looking forward, there is so much excitement about the future that today sees the release of DarkBASIC Professional Online FREE - the full and unrestricted ad-supported version of the flagship product ... DarkBASIC Professional is definitely worth a look for anyone wanting to program their own games for use with Windows based systems. XbitLabs checked out six SAS RAID controllers. We are going to compare six SAS RAID controllers we have reviewed before side by side in this roundup. Solutions from 3ware, Adaptec, Areca, HighPoint, LSI and promise - all in one article. They also have an ATI Radeon HD 5700 family review. Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 9-November-2009  04:08:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum when you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have deals and specials on media players, data recovery, webhosting, fitness supplements, software, PC components, modding gear, monitors and other goodies. There's even the occasional competition. Check it out! Monday Midday (17 Comments) (link)  Monday, 9-November-2009  01:18:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg Is your mouse not quite bristling with enough buttons? Try the 18-button OpenOfficeMouse assuming it's not a joke. The OpenOfficeMouse, or OOMouse, isn’t exactly the most attractive piece of hardware, but its creator claims that “16 buttons divided into two 8-button halves were the maximum number of buttons that could be efficiently used by feel alone.” Australian iPhone users are being rickrolled by a worm, thanks Aurak. The attacks, which researchers say are the world's first iPhone worm in the wild, target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH software installed and keep Apple's default root password of "alpine." In addition to showing a well-coiffed picture of Astley, the new wallpaper displays the message "ikee is never going to give you up," a play on Astley's saccharine addled 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up." InsideHW checked out all DirectX 11 cards. And there you have it – all DirectX 11 graphics cards at this moment. NVIDIA does not have any card in this category, neither has anything announced. When it comes to power consumption at IDLE, we don’t know how ATI accomplished their levels, but we cannot confirm those. Don’t get us wrong, those levels are higher than those that ATI published, but still compared to previous generations, very low. This will have positive impact on your electricity bill, but more importantly on temperature inside your chassis. PhysOrg have a worrying report about people being framed for child porn by malware. An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute - an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped - 11 months after it was filed. A Danish anti-piracy group has thrown in the towel. In Denmark, the local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen has given up on trying to get illegal file-sharers convicted and has announced that it will no longer take them to court. This decision is the result of Antipiratgruppen’s inability to gather solid evidence, which has resulted in several lost court cases in the last year. A visually-impaired gamer is suing Sony Online. Last month, disabled gamer Alexander Stern filed suit against Sony, Sony Online Entertainment, and Sony Computer Entertainment America in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The suit alleges that Sony is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to implement features to make its games accessible to visually impaired gamers. On tonight's Good Game: In the face of the tsunami of protest over Junglists departure from the show, new presenter Hex and Bajo soldier on to bring you their experiences with this week’s new game releases. ... Catch Good Game Monday nights on ABC2 @ 8:30pm, or late Friday nights on ABC1, just before rage. Watch any episode at www.abc.net.au/goodgame. Or if you miss it, watch a higher quality version on ABC's iView service: www.abc.net.au/iview. Find Your Quotes (20 Comments) (link)  Monday, 9-November-2009  00:17:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg Resident code monkey matthudson has whipped up another neat little feature for the forums: Who Quoted Me?. This shows you the last few times you have been quoted in the forums, helping you find replies to you in threads you may have forgotten you posted in. You can find the link at top right in the forums under the "Welcome" message.

All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.