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August 2008 |
Some interesting photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
Interesting Forum Threads
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Sunday, 31-August-2008 17:28:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hope your weekend is going ok. :)
Microsoft hints at new mice: "Say Goodbye to Laser" in Overclocking & Hardware.
AMD Phenom Dual-Core "Kuma" Gets Listed in AMD Hardware.
AMD Socket G34 Presented in AMD Hardware.
AMD stunt during IDF in AMD Hardware.
iPod Nano Rumors in Apple Hardware & Software.
Intel Atom on an ATX mobo? One for the industrial market in Intel Hardware.
Monitor Manufacturers Cheating Users with Less Viewable Area? in Video Cards & Monitors.
Thermalright Readies HR-03 GTX Cooler for GeForce GTX 200 Cards in Video Cards & Monitors.
A bit about yourself and electronics? in Electronics.
Auzentech X-Fi Home Theater 7.1 - HDMI 1.3, EAX 5.0, PCI Express in PC Audio.
To partition or not partition 1TB disk on Storage & Backup.
780i RAID 5 Vs 0+1 in Storage & Backup.
The Internet's Biggest Security Hole Revealed in Networking & Internet.
ASUS XG Station gets reviewed (Chinese website) on Portable & Small Form Factor.
[HOW TO] Change domains on a WinXP computer in Windows Operating Systems.
My experience with Vista *gets gun* in Windows Operating Systems.
On the Surface, it's a revolution - New Surface info in Windows Operating Systems.
Even thieves don't want Vista... in Other Operating Systems.
Obscure and Obsolete Operating Systems in Other Operating Systems.
FreeNAS, SmoothWall and Myth - My Dilemma in Other Operating Systems.
24-core Linux cluster in Other Operating Systems.
Sued for using Microsoft? in Other Operating Systems.
Open-source Easter Eggs in Other Operating Systems.
Building a pizza oven in Lifestyle.
Sony Announces PlayStation Portable PSP 3000 in Game Consoles.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 31-August-2008 02:51:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
NZXT Guardian 921 on DriverHeaven.
Moneual Labs MonCaso 972 HTPC Case on ThinkComputers.
Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master Sniper early look on Bit-Tech.
Lian Li PC-XB01 XBox360 case on Bit-Tech.
Cooling:
Rosewill RCX-V100 VGA Cooler on OCIA.
Glacialtech Igloo 5063 Cu Silent E Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Thermaltake BigTyp VP and MaxOrb EX CPU Coolers on Digit-Life.
Video Cards:
Point of View GeForce 9500 GT on Tweaktown.
ATI All-In-Wonder HD video card with the lot on Motherboards.org.
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 on TechWareLabs.
Games:
Legend Hand of God PC game on GamePyre.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People on GamingNexus.
Audio / Visual:
Philips PET940 Portable DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
BenQ G2200WT 22in Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Misc:
Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition External 2TB HDD on Tweaktown.
Air Live HP-3000E 200Mbps Ethernet over Powerline Adapters on TechPowerUp.
APC Power-Saving SurgeArrest P7GT Power Strip on TechWareLabs.
Genius Ergo 555 gaming mouse on XSReviews.
Gigabyte GA-EG43-S2H LGA775 motherboard on CPU3D.
tkArena look at the past, present and future of notebook batteries. When it comes to mobile computing, battery life is of utmost concern. … Mobile computing batteries have undergone many changes over the past several years and at present there are three discrete battery types on the market. Let's take a closer look at each type.
If you're using a pirated copy of Windows XP Pro, this news from Gunna may interest you. Users of XP Pro that fail validation then their desktops turn black and a water mark appears near the task bar. Users can change the desktop again, but after 60 minutes it will go back to the watermarked black screen. Discussion in this thread in the Windows Operating Systems forum.
According to Hardware Zone, Intel's X58 chipset will have native SLI support. SLI support is only applicable to motherboard OEM/ODM folks whose Intel X58 motherboards have passed NVIDIA's certification process, for which NVIDIA will issue a special code string (or otherwise known as a token) to the motherboard OEM/ODMs to reprogram the board's system BIOS and enable SLI support.
A new survey by Cyber-Ark found that 88% of IT administrators admitted they would take corporate secrets if they were made redundant. The research also revealed that, of that 88 percent, a third would take the privilege password list to gain access to valuable documents such as financial reports, accounts, salaries and other privileged information.
AnandTech look at the performance of several gaming laptops. The first thing you need to realize going in is that gaming laptops aren't your everyday laptop. Yes, they are more than capable of running all of the tasks that you would do on a typical business laptop, but the addition of a high-end graphics card invariably means that battery life will be a secondary consideration.
Motherboard:
ECS GF8200A Motherboard on Digit-Life
DFI X48 UT-T3RS Motherboard on Overclock3D
Foxconn Digital Life ELA on Trusted Reviews
Gigabyte MA78G-DS3H on Digit-life
Asus Maximus II Formula Motherboard on RBMods
Games:
Bionic Commando Rearmed (Xbox 360) on Gaming Nexus
City Life on Gamepyre
Notebook:
Asus Eee PC 1000H - Windows XP Edition on Trusted Reviews
ASUS Eee PC 901 on Phoronix
Asus G70 Laptop on Bit-tech
RAM:
CSX Diablo 2000MHZ DDR3 on XSReviews
Patriot Viper DDR2 1150 2 X 1 Gig Kit on Bjorn3D
Mouse/Printer/Keyboard:
WolfKing Trooper MVP Gaming Mouse on Overclockers Club
Razer Salmosa Gaming Mouse on Bjorn3D
SilverStone RVM01B "Raven" Mouse on Ninjalane
Canon Pixma MX7600 on Hardware Zone
nMedia HTPCKB Media Center Wireless Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews
Videocard:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic Video Card on TheTechLounge
Gigabyte 9800GT on Overclockers Club
Palit HD 3850 Super +1GB Graphics Card on OCIA
BFG GeForce GTX 280 OCX on Guru3D
Misc:
Zalman CNPS9300AT CPU Cooler on Pro-clockers
Sony Ericsson W980i on Trusted Reviews
Toshiba XD-E500 DVD Player on Digital Trends
AMD Spider Platform 9950 Black CPU on Motherboards.org
NEC VT-800 LCD Projector on Trusted Reviews
Belkin N1 Vision Wireless N Router F5D8232-4 on Benchmark Reviews
RAZER Piranha Gaming Communicator on Overclock3D
Happy Friday, bet you all wish you were as lucky as me and never had to work Fridays. :)
The guys over at Techpowerup have a chat to the co-founder and co-owner of Lavalys, Tamas "Fiery" Miklos, who created Everest, the popular hardware monitoring software. He talks about his personal background, first experience with computers and how he came to make Everest.
PCPro have an interesting article posted up here, about the Space Cube. It's a 2 inch square computer, boasting 300MHz CPU, a SD card slot, and 64MB of DDR RAM.
It has been confirmed by Hexus that Abit are infact exiting the mainboard market by the end of the year. [Aww, my KX7A (I think it was) was such a great board after it was RMA'ed 3 times.]
TeamXbox had a chance to talk to George Broussard, who is co-owner/president of 3D Realms, who talks about Duke 3D coming soon to Xbox Live Arcade, and they even ask him about Duke Nukem Forever. Read the full interview here.
HotHardware attended NVIDIA's very first NVISION 08 visual computing conference that took place August 25 - 27 in San Jose, California and captured some of the sights and sounds from the event. This video is a compilation of the featured speakers and artists that participated in the keynotes.
Tech ARP have posted an article about NVIDIA refuting claims of bad GPUs. Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer reported last month that NVIDIA G84 and G86 GPUs were failing left and right. Unfortunately, not only the G84 and G86 parts are affected. According to the Inquirer, even G92 and G94 parts are failing as well. If true, it is really very bad news, as the G92 and G94 are very popular parts, powering the GeForce 9800 GTX, the GeForce 9600 GT, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and the GeForce 8800 GT. So we queried NVIDIA to get their view of the matter.
Squirt758 sent in news about Psystar countersuing Apple. Wannabe Mac cloners Psystar hired itself some hotshot lawyers to defend against Apple's lawsuit, and they're not wasting any time earning their fees -- as Psystar's hinted in the past, it's going to countersue Apple for antitrust violations and ask that the court declare the Leopard EULA void.
The guys from Madshrimps took a trip to Amsterdam, where MSI held its first European Overclocking Challenge. Full read here.
Bit-tech have a pretty insane case mod by 'cc3d' reviewed here.
PCStats had a tour around the Gigabyte motherboard factory. Without a doubt, motherboards are the most complex and essential part of the modern PC. With this in mind, it's surprising to learn the amount of work and machinery involved in manufacturing a single motherboard. As PCSTATS recent trip to Gigabyte's Nan-Ping factory in Taiwan showed us, there's a lot more to it. In fact, producing and testing a single motherboard involves a mind-boggling host of automated machines, people and processes; follow along and we'll show you how things are really made.
Tweaktown have a DIY guide on how to use an old router as a wireless access point.
And finally, to make your Friday that bit more awesome, here is an awesome ninja timewaster sent in by Squirt758.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 29-August-2008 04:06:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Noiseblocker Multiframe Fans on DriverHeaven.
Scythe Ninja 2 (SCNJ-2000) CPU cooler on XbitLabs.
Glacialtech Igloo 5063 Light E CPU cooler on FrostyTech.
Storage:
Western Digital's Caviar Black hard drive on TechReport.
ATP ToughDrive 4GB Camo USB Flash on ASELabs.
Thecus N3200 network storage on Hi-TechReviews.
Vantec NexStar MX eSATA Dual HDD Enclosure on Virtual-Hideout.
Cases:
Gigabyte Poseidon 310 on TechWareLabs.
NZXT Tempest on HWLogic.
Apevia X-Sniper G-Type Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Tagan EL DIABLO A+ on Motherboards.org.
Akasa Omega BKCSE-05 on DriverHeaven.
Audio / Visual:
Samsung LE32A558 32in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Toshiba SD-480E DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Video Cards:
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic on Tweaktown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic on TheTechLounge.
Gigabyte Geforce 9800GT (512Mb DDR3) on CPU3D.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 on LegionHW.
XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+ on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte Overclocking Grand Finals Sydney
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Thursday, 28-August-2008 23:30:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Very short notice, but here's some good news for Sydneysiders who are keen to go along to the Australian grand finals of the Gigabyte Overclocking Competition TOMORROW (FRIDAY) NIGHT in Darling Harbour. According to moloko_vellocet there are 15 tickets up for grabs for OCAU readers. First in first served!
See this thread for more info.
Native SLI on X58
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Thursday, 28-August-2008 21:35:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NVIDIA have dropped a bit of a bombshell at the last minute in their NVISION08 show. In short, Intel's X58 will be the first non-NVIDIA motherboard chipset to natively support SLI multi-GPU technology. Here's some slides with info:
    
More info on Techgage, Tech Report, HardOCP and PC Perspective.
Discussion here.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 28-August-2008 14:42:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This story has been doing the rounds for a week or so now, but Sciby found a good article that sums it all up. Anyway, someone got their shiny new iPhone and discovered photos of a factory worker on it. A CHINESE factory worker has become an internet celebrity after her smiling face was accidentally loaded onto an Apple iPhone and shipped to the other side of the world.
Speaking of iPhones, someone in IRC pointed out this interesting blog about adding controls to make gaming better. You guys are really going to enjoy playing games with this thing, it is like night to day in terms of how much better it is with real controls.
Thermaltake have made another gargantuan CPU cooler, discussion here. The BigTyp14 Pro features a VR-controlled 14cm fan that promises excellent cooling performance and noise output at low as 16dBA. It offers a universal clip that'll support most CPUs, and a mirror-coated copper base. There are six copper heatpipes and 69 aluminium fins on each side to help dissipate heat.
Apparently some of the Space Station's laptops have been infected with a virus. Not a cool space virus, just a boring old Earth computer virus. NASA declined to name the virus, but SpaceRef.com, which broke the story, reported that the worm was W32.Gammima.AG worm -- a worm first detected in August 2007 that installs software that steals credentials for online games. So if they're playing WoW in their spare time they could be in trouble. :) Another link here, thanks Murray. Discussion here.
Nick sent word about Mozilla Ubiquity. Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.
From Mr.Sinister: Hey guys thought you might be interested in posting this up (along with news of the Canon 50D heh). Nikon have released the D90. OCAU thread here.
German site ModMyMachine have some tutorial videos (in English). They're about mounting waterblocks on video cards, covering the HD4850 and HD4870.
More NVISION08 coverage on Bit-Tech, LegitReviews, PCPerspective and HotHardware.
These newsposts have been quite popular lately, so here's a few more oddities. :)
     
     
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 27-August-2008 17:10:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Vantec Aeroflow FX 120 CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
VIZO Ninja II Laptop Cooler on TechWareLabs.
NZXT Sentry LX fan controller on OCIA.
Cooler Master GeminII S CPU cooler on InsideHW.
Thermaltake Bigwater 780e ESA 3-Bay Liquid Cooling System on ThinkComputers.
Motherboards:
MSI X58 Eclipse LGA1366 board early look on Bit-Tech.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H AM2 board on Bit-Tech.
ASUS M3A78-T AM2 board on TechWareLabs.
ECS P45T-A Black Series LGA775 board on LegitReviews.
Portable:
Asus Eee PC 1000 netbook on Bit-Tech.
Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Ultraportable Notebook on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire One netbook on TechReport.
HTC Touch Pro smartphone on TrustedReviews.
Software:
Code of Honor 2 PC game on GamingNexus.
Space Seige PC game on TrustedReviews.
Audio / Visual:
Acer X193W+ 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor on TheTechLounge.
iLuv i199 High Fidelity Mini Audio System for iPod on FutureLooks.
Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 earphones on DigitalTrends.
Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX 22in + 7in LCD Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Misc:
CyberSnipa Stinger mouse on LegionHW.
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 896MB FTW video card on TheTechLounge.
FSP Everest 80Plus 700W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair XMS2 DHX DDR2 800MHz 2 x 2GB memory on OCClub.
Tom's Hardware have published a massive 11-Way P45 motherboard shootout. When Intel released its mainstream P45, the biggest news was that it supported PCI Express 2.0. Formerly available from Intel only on high-end X38 and X48 motherboards , many of us still failed to understand the significance of this bandwidth-doubling technology to current-generation hardware. After all, the first-generation x16 slots found on P35 Express motherboards are still fast enough for any graphics card, so why bother updating?
The Tech Report gets hands on with Acer's Aspire One netbook. Perhaps because netbooks are generally seen as accessories to a primary computer, Acer has designed the One with an aesthetic flair that is second only to the HP Mini-Note 2133. A pearl white finish with black trim and metallic orange hinge accents delivers more visual impact than the Eee. Discussion on the forum.
Canon have announced the introduction of the Canon EOS 50D. The replacement for the prosumer 40D, with a 15.1 Megapixel APS-C size sensor, ISO 100-3200 (expandable to 12800) and 6.3fps continuous shooting with a max. burst of 90 JPEGs with UDMA cards. Discussion on the forum.
TweakTown get busy with Western Digital's VelociRaptor. The Western Digital VelociRaptor is more than just a platter upgrade. The new controller takes advantage of Native Command Queuing and also reduces access time even more. Chris tests three generations of Raptors including the latest VelociRaptor in both single and RAID 0 modes.
HardwareZone preview Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 and Y530 netbooks. Some of you may have already seen Lenovo's latest netbook in action online since it's unveiling in Taiwan, but because the people over at Lenovo are really nice folks and we asked really nicely, we now have an engineering prototype to play with and for you to get a quick look at before the actual launch in September.
Meanwhile, Hot Hardware review Lenovo's ThinkPad X200 Ultraportable Notebook. The X200 is not as stylishly thin or technologically advanced as the X300 and its missing a few of the X300's novel features like an ultra compact optical drive. However the X200 still has plenty going for it, not the least of which is twice the processing power and half the price, compared to the X300. With a compact 12.1" chassis, full-power Core 2 Duo processor and ThinkPad durability.
Extreme Tech compared performance between 2GB and 4GB memory configurations. This article sets out to try to answer all kinds of memory questions herein. Using nearly identical motherboards to test both DDR2 and DDR3, we ran all kinds of performance tests, subjective and repeatable, synthetic and real-world.
Ever wondered where cell phones go to die? Technology Review has a photo essay on the process. If you've recently replaced your cell phone, you're not alone. More than half a billion cell phones were swapped for newer models in 2007, according to a study by the research firm Gartner.
Girls, girls and more girls! TechPowerUp have over 240 photos of girls from the recent Games Convention 2008. Not much to be said really... ;-D
Some random flash based games: Mad Monday and Boom Bot.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 27-August-2008 03:44:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AirQ reminded us that Photosynth has been released for free. The company demonstrated Photosynth, software that arranges photo sets in their real-world, 3-D context and allows people to navigate smoothly around the canals of Venice, for example, or zoom in to read the serial numbers on the space shuttle's heat shields. Check it out here, discussion here.
Microsoft apparently hired Jerry Seinfeld recently, to promote Windows Vista. More info here. Seinfeld will reportedly receive some US$10 million for his role in the curiously titled "Windows, Not Walls" campaign.
TGDaily have more info about NVIDIA's GPU problems which may be more widespread than originally thought. According to our sources, the failures are caused by a solder bump that connects the I/O termination of the silicon chip to the pad on the substrate. In Nvidia’s GPUs, this solder bump is created using high-lead. A thermal mismatch between the chip and the substrate has substantially grown in recent chip generations, apparently leading to fatigue cracking. Discussion here.
Tweaktown have a suitcase PC DIY guide. Up on the bench today we have a special DIY workshop tutorial in building your own LAN party case on a budget. We take an ordinary cheap flight case and mount a full PC inside so you can truck it to and from the party with ease.
PCPerspective keep on reporting live from NVISION 08, while HotHardware cover Jen-Hsun Huang's keynote. A few months ago, NVIDIA first told us about their plans to organize a massive event called NVISION that focused on all things in the visual computing field. NVIDIA planned to take over a number of major venues in downtown San Jose, including the convention center and a number of adjacent hotels, and invite experts and celebrities from the high-performance computing, gaming, video, movies, and graphics fields, to participate. Tech-Report have their coverage posted too, as do Modders-Inc.
VUNet report on a traceless browsing mode for IE8. Many industry pundits have been quick to point out the most obvious use of the feature, nicknaming it "porn mode," in reference to the ability to view adult sites without leaving a trail for employers or family members to follow.
Some snippets from AirQ: Sale of bank data alarms Germany. A vocal joystick helps those with injured hands. Space junkies ask who owns the moon? What Linux will look like in 2012.
PCPerspective, have Nehalem microarchitecture details, while HWSecrets look in detail at QuickPath Interconnect. QuickPath Interconnect is the name of the external bus used by the Intel forthcoming CPUs with integrated memory controller, like the Core i7. In this tutorial we will explain how this bus works.
SecretNet Ceases Trading
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Tuesday, 26-August-2008 17:20:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The industry crunch claims another scalp, with long-term OCAU sponsor SecretNet ceasing trading. Things have been increasingly difficult the last two years for SecretNet. We have watched a large number of competitors, both friendly and hostile, strain and collapse. We've even seen some of our own distributors collapse under the changing marketplace that has now faced the industry.
I've actually known Andypoo and SecretNet since before OCAU began, and of course Andypoo is an OCAU admin and has appeared on our podcast several times. SecretNet's focus has always been on customer service. They carved out a little niche of their own with their amazingly automated website, system builder function and family-service feel. SecretNet customers tended to be extremely loyal and it was obvious why. It's a real shame to see them go but I completely understand and support their decision. Andypoo of course already has plenty to keep him occupied, now living in Estonia, and our best wishes go to the rest of the staff.
Discussion here.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 26-August-2008 16:42:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
OCZ Alchemy Series Elixir Keyboard on Virtual-Hideout.
Logitech MX 1100 Cordless Laser Mouse on I4U.
Saitek Cyborg Keyboard on DigitalTrends.
QPAD|UC Gaming Surface on TechPowerUp.
OCZ Elixir Gaming Keyboard on HWSecrets.
XtracPads Gammer mousepad on BurnOutPC.
Motherboards:
Gigabyte EP45-Extreme LGA775 board on HWLogic.
Super Micro C2SEA G45 LGA775 board on Phoronix.
Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H LGA775 board on OCWorkbench.
Storage:
Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000RPM Hard Disk in RAID 0 on Tweaktown.
Icy Dock 3.5 Inch Screwless Internal HDD Enclosure on AseLabs.
Audio / Visual:
Samsung SyncMaster 2263UW 22-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor on ThinkComputers.
LG 32LG4000 32in LCD TV/DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Power Supply:
BFG Tech ES 800W on SysOpt.
Topower PowerBird 900W on OCOnline.
Antec TruePower Quattro 850W on TechWareLabs.
BFG Tech LS-680 on OCIA.
Cooling:
Glacialtech Igloo 5058 Light E Heatsink on FrostyTech.
NZXT Sentry LX fan controller on Bjorn3D.
Misc:
NZXT Guardian 921 case on OCClub.
ASUS GeForce GTX 280 TOP video card on Tweaktown.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and Y530 Preview laptops on HWZone.
The Nigerian high commissioner has apparently suggested that Australians ripped off by scams are as guilty as the fraudsters. He said media coverage of fraudulent activity stemming from Nigeria had given the country "a bad image" and "those who want to transact business with us are always very suspicious". Discussion here.
Gary spotted some handy tips for optimising Photoshop CS3 performance. Some obvious ones, some less so. If there is a damaged font on your system and you have WYSIWYG font preview turned on, your computer can slow significantly. If you turn off font preview and your computer performance improves significantly, test for a damaged font.
Mpot noticed this cool video about using Wiimotes to make an interactive multi-touch whiteboard. Also the 3D head-tracking we saw a while ago.
Digit-Kife ponder the NVIDIA nForce 700a and GeForce 8000 Chipsets. The idea to integrate a graphics core into all chipsets looks quite natural for NVIDIA, which strategical task has always been to promote its own graphics solutions in its chipsets.
HWSecrets want to tell us about wireless USB. Wireless USB (WUSB) products are finally arriving at the market and in this article you will learn more about this technology and see some usage examples.
Wired report on Olympic gadgets, thanks AirQ. Nike's MaxSight contact lenses filter out reflections caused by the sun and enhance contrast -- details appear a bit clearer and colors pop more.
From mshagg: Not sure if you guys are aware of the newest thing in PC sim racing - iRacing. This is from the crew who made the Nascar 1/2/3/4/2002/03 series, GPL etc. A few of us on the forums have been driving for a few weeks, some of them months. Anyways it goes live to the public tomorrow morning, local time (there’s a countdown on the website). Up until now its been beta testers and invitations via their mailing list, so we all get to see how it does as a commercial product now.
Monday Evening
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Monday, 25-August-2008 18:13:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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SMH have an article on case modding, with a few big names mentioned from Australia and overseas. No mention of OCAU though, boo. ;) Anyway, discussion here in the Modding forum, naturally enough.
Lucid's HYDRA technology attracted a lot of interest at IDF, with people suggesting it could make ATI's Crossfire and NVIDIA's SLI obselete. Techgage checked it out, as did Tech Report. Their claims sounded odd and perhaps too good to be true. But not only were they were present on the show floor at IDF, they were showing a demo of working silicon. Remarkably enough, it appears they may just be on to something big.
IDF coverage continues meanwhile on HotHardware, HWZone and Bit-Tech. In fact, HotHardware have a video slideshow of IDF, as well as more Nehalem info.
NVIDIA have their own big event, NVISION 08. Techgage report on it, as do LegitReviews. NVISION 08 is a first-of-its-kind mega-event that has been designed to take attendees behind the scenes of the visual revolution.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 25-August-2008 15:17:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Travagans Green & Mini Speakers on TechPowerUp.
Logitech Harmony 670 Universal Remote on HWPacers.
Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB mp3 player on TrustedReviews.
Motherboards:
Asus P5QL-E LGA775 board on InsideHW.
Gigabyte EP45 DS4R LGA775 board on Motherboards.org.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Apple MacBook Air laptop on DriverHeaven.
TomTom GO 930 GPS on RBMods.
PC Specialist Apollo prebuilt PC on DriverHeaven.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic 512MB on ThinkComputers.
Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 on GamePyre.
Cooling:
Thermalright Ultima-90 Intel/AMD Processor Cooler on Tweaknews.
Tuniq Potency 550W PSU on OCClub.
Patriot Viper 2GB DDR3-2000MHz memory on Virtual-Hideout.
DFI LanParty Dark P45
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Sunday, 24-August-2008 21:25:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Another review from windwithme! This time it's DFI's LanParty DK P45. Loads of photos, overclocking and benchmarks as always:
Click for the thread!
Interesting Forum Threads
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Sunday, 24-August-2008 16:55:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Firstly a quick shout out to hardcore overclocker Youngpro who has been having some health issues recently. Get well soon mate and get back to pushing stuff to the limit! :)
Asus Blitz series, P5k/P5K3 DX, Commando, Striker Extreme bios updates in Intel Hardware.
Intel Core i7 Processor Discussion in Intel Hardware.
Is your CPU stable? - New load test inside in Overclocking & Hardware.
Gigabyte & Asus - Support Downloads.... A joke in Overclocking & Hardware.
Shuttle Prepares X27 Nettop With Tiny Footprints in Portable & Small Form Factor.
Dry ice, have you tried it? Tell us all... in Extreme Cooling.
Cool Cisco Switch Tool for Solving Layer 1 Cable Issues in Networking & Internet.
Overclocking related to hdd being wiped? in Troubleshooting Help.
Project - "Pay for my wedding photos" MAME cabinet in Modding.
Portable PC in a Briefcase in Modding.
10k rpm as a standard in Storage & Backup.
DVD longevity - How to know burns that will LAST? in Storage & Backup.
HDTune Benchmarks in Storage & Backup.
Guide: plugpack selection in Electronics.
Comments on this circuit please? in Electronics.
PC Connected to home theatre, provides bass feedback in PC Audio.
Corporate antivirus options in Business & Enteprise Computing.
Free Teacher management for classroom PCs in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Security Thread V2.0 in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Teaching English in Japan in Lifestyle.
The official energy drink poll in Geek Food.
Flow - who owns the water? in Entertainment.
Evo X Training Videos in Motoring.
50D - Leaked on China Canon website in Photography.
Olympic events I would like to see in The Pub.
You can also keep on top of current topics in the forums via the new posts function, the live view and now the thread tags system.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 24-August-2008 02:40:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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CPU and Motherboard:
Intel E8600 Core 2 Duo LGA775 CPU on LegitReviews.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R LGA775 board on PCPerspective.
Cooling:
Xigmatek Achillies S1284 CPU cooler on CPU3D.
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU cooler on TechWareLabs.
OCZ Vendetta 2 CPU cooler on Bit-Tech.
Scythe Ninja 2 CPU cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Storage & Memory:
Silicon Power 32 GB Solid State Disk on Guru3D.
Super Talent Pico-C Gold 8GB USB Flash Drive on APHNetworks.
OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II on NeoSeeker.
Case & Power Supply:
Cooler Master HAF 932 case on Motherboards.org.
Silverstone KL01 case on TechWareLabs.
Apevia X-Sniper Mid-Tower case on OCIA.
Thermaltake Xaser VI VG4000BWS case on OCClub.
Cooler Master UCP 700W PSU on Tweaktown.
Audio / Visual:
LG DP391B Portable DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Tension Labs EAP03 Earphone Audio Processor on TechPowerUp.
Razer Piranha Gaming Headset on Tweaknews.
Portable and Prebuilt:
Smooth Creations Trek 08 prebuilt PC on NordicHW.
Smooth Creations Neptune prebuilt PC on NeoSeeker.
TomTom One GPS on ThinkComputers.
Video Cards:
VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB on Phoronix.
XFX GTX280 XXX on Bjorn3D.
Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic on Tweaktown.
BlueAvatar sent in an e-mail asking everyone to be cautious of a 4GB MP4 player that Aldi is currently selling as his contained a virus. It looked suspicious so I scanned it with clam and it came back as a trojan. I then uploaded it to Virscan.org (after renaming it so I didnt accidentially execute it) to double check. Results are here.
Following on from TweakTown's Guide to Buying Blu-rays from Overseas is the August 2008 Buying Guide. In the first of an on-going series, Ben takes a look at the best and latest overseas titles now available.
NordicHardware have coverage of the Advanced Overclocking Championship held in Berlin. As we were closing in on the end of the Advanced Overclocking Championship a tensed aura was hovering the room. Would Kinc and crotale managed to reclaim the lead from the Polish team?
A recent discussion hosted by NASA's CoLab included topics such as 'can someone own land on the moon?' and 'can one sell the resources gathered from the moon in a mining operation?'. Within the next 10 years, the U.S., China, Israel, and a host of private companies plan to set up camp on the moon. So if and when they plant a flag, does that give them property rights?
AirQ sent in this article on the 'Deus Ex Machina' – "a wearable motorbike that brings superhero-style transport into the real world." The pretentiously named vehicle clamps to the rider like Ripley's exoskeleton in Aliens, and will power them to 60 mph in just three seconds, topping out at 75 mph.
Apparently any Team Fortress 2 updates on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 may not be free. "On the PC side, we've done as many as four updates in a day, and that's great: we can respond very quickly." … "On the consoles, they want us to charge money for them, because that's in their model, and our model is very much more to grow the community by giving out free updates."
Matt sent in this timewaster for a lazy Sunday morning. Shadez: The Black Operations is the first in the series of this game. The player is placed into the role of General of a Mercenary force. This force has been hired by the governments around the world to fight the wars they do not want to fight or they don't want to declare this, keeping it top secret and out of the hands of the press.
The Games Convention 08 in Leipzig, Germany, is in full swing this week. Many exhibitors use the GC – Games Convention as a launch pad for the earth-shattering market introduction of their new products, because the fair gives them the ideal platform for the strategic positioning of their own games and equipment in full view of the media, the public and industry.
You can find coverage on: GameSpot, GameInformer, Guru3D, IGN, Kotaku, Game Trailers and UGO Games.
TweakTown analyse AMD's new Catalyst version 8.8 drivers and see 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. Discussion on the forum.
Driver Heaven round-up eight popular motherboards for Intel processors. Today we will be comparing eight motherboards for Intel processors and showing how each performs as well as looking at the features they have to offer. Tests include gaming, media playback, image manipulation and more, so by the end of the article we should be a bit better placed to know which chipset or board is ideal for consumers using Intel processors.
AnandTech take a moment to explain Intel's upcoming Nehalem microarchitecture. It’s a new architecture, at least newer than Penryn, but still built on the same 45nm process that debuted with Penryn. Next year we’ll have the 32nm version of Nehalem called Westmere and then Sandy Bridge, a brand new architecture also built on 32nm. But today is all about Nehalem. Discussion on the forum.
Nvidia yesterday released CUDA 2.0, a new version of its C language development environment for its graphics processing units. Nvidia released the second generation of CUDA, the company’s C-based programming environment that enables developers to tap into GPUs to accelerate their applications. There are several new features included, most interestingly a Photoshop plug-in example that provides guidelines how to design plug-ins that run on the GPU. Download available here.
The Tech Report take the time to review Asus' Eee PC 1000 40G netbook. The first Eee PC, despite its infectious novelty and honest-to-goodness utility, what is now known as the 700 series is hampered by too many limitations to be a viable notebook replacement for most folks. Asus' new Eee PC 1000 40G, however, is another beast entirely.
Microsoft's Live Labs have released Photosynth, an PC tool/plug-in that allows you to upload your own photos and have them automatically transformed into what Microsoft call a 'synth', basically a 3D fly-through reconstruction of your home, your vacation, or anything else you can take pictures of. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to try it myself, so i can’t comment on how good it works.
Tech ARP have updated their desktop graphics card comparison guide. These days, there are so many desktop graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications.
New versions of Nvidia Mobility Modder, Core Temp, Radeon Bios Editor and SpeedFan have been released this week.
A few more from here and there:
    
    
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 22-August-2008 15:17:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sciby spotted this almost-too-good photographs enhancing video technology. I'm not quite convinced that the entire process is quite as automatic as the students would make it, but the technology is extremely promising all the same.
Meanwhile from Silicon Angel, about facial animations: TimesOnline have an article covering new animation technology from Image Metrics (the company behind facial animations in the GTA series) including a video sample of their work, ‘Emily’. Obviously this kind of work is only possible by image-capturing a live actor and overlaying a computer generated model with a new skin – we’re still quite a way from this level of realism in a pure animated-from-scratch model.
Intel's X58 chipset keeps drawing closer, with a presentation from ASUS in Germany covered by MadShrimps. Bit-Tech looked at an early ASUS board too.
Intel are focussing on wireless recharging, thanks AirQ. "Something like this technology could be embedded in tables and work surfaces," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, "so as soon as you put down an appropriately equipped device it would immediately begin drawing power."
Phoronix looked at AMD OverDrive and ATI Radeon CrossFire on Linux. While AMD is still working to address some issues with their ATI Linux driver, they have been working hard on new features like CrossFire. How does this feature work though on Linux and does it deliver similar performance gains to their Windows driver?
HWZone are celebrating their 10th anniversary on the web, looking back at 1998-1999 and the Y2K era. OCAU turns 10 in less than a year now, actually! I should probably start doing something like those Five Years Ago on OCAU newsposts again.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 22-August-2008 14:16:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
Creative HS-1200 Wireless X-Fi Gaming Headset on EverythingUSB.
Pioneer DCS-580 DVD Home Cinema System on TrustedReviews.
Samsung SyncMaster T240HD 24in DTV Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Monster Beats by Dr. Dre headphones on DigitalTrends.
Nikon Coolpix S600 Camera on HWSecrets.
Motherboards:
ASUS Striker II NSE LGA775 board on LegitReviews.
J&W RS780UVD-AM2+ mATX on OCIA.
Foxconn A7DA-S AMD 790GX on TrustedReviews.
Portable:
Toshiba Satellite L300-11G notebook on InsideHW.
MSI Wind U100 netbook on TechReport.
Novatech X80r Pro laptop on DriverHeaven.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Power Express 650W VGA PSU on RBMods.
BFG ES800 on Virtual-Hideout.
Memory:
AData Vitesta G-Series Memory 4GB DDR2-800 on TechWareLabs.
OCZ DDR2 Flex II XLC PC2-9200 4Gb kit on CPU3D.
Misc:
Wolfking Trooper MVP Gaming Mouse on Bjorn3D.
Apevia X-Sniper G-Type on Hi-TechReviews.
ASUS Silent Knight II CPU cooler on Digit-Life.
TweakTown visited Gigabyte HQ to check out a dummy sample of the GA-X58-Extreme motherboard. GIGABYTE's X58 Extreme lacks some features such as onboard hardware RAID and TPM (which are found on DQ6 and some other models) with the philosophy being that the Extreme range of mobos is designed purely for overclockers and high-end enthusiasts and they don’t need these extra features.
Meanwhile, Bit-tech looked at another Gigabyte motherboard, the GA-EP45-DS3R. The performance is excellent once you get it in the sweet spot, although we can't really recommend the board in its current state if you want to use CrossFire - we had to dial back the memory performance really quite far, and in our stability test the graphics portion again couldn't take it, even if Prime95 continued to churn out results unhindered.
Madshrimps got their hands on a pair of OCZ DDR3 PC3-16000 Flex II Edition RAM modules. After we solved the multiplier glitch with the motherboard, the memory moved to 2Ghz without complaining. It actually felt like it was barely stretching its legs. 1.85 Volts was enough to reach 2Ghz, and though our motherboard wouldn't play getting higher, I have no doubt it is capable of more.
AirQ noticed this article about five of the world's top games developers demanding payment from 25,000 people in the UK suspected of illegally downloading computer games. This week Isabela Barwinska, an unemployed mother of two, became the first person in the UK to be ordered to pay damages to a manufacturer. She must pay more than £16,000 to Topware after downloading Dream Pinball through a file-sharing site.
Hardware Zone are wondering whether the new iPhone 3G is worth all the hype surrounding it. Even before its official launch, rumors of the iPhone's second coming were rampant. When Mr. Steve Jobs finally announced it during the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier this year, the media were quick to feed on the news, and constantly generated a buzz about the phone.
These next two were spotted by Tabris. The weird one is a cat called Yoda... that has four ears, and an interesting cycling safety vest that "displays the wearer's current speed on their back in easy-to-read lighted numerals."
Geek Recipes
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Thursday, 21-August-2008 22:05:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some yummy recent threads from the Geek Recipes forum:
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 21-August-2008 17:51:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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HotHardware report on Anand Chandrasekher's Mobility Keynote on day 2 of the Intel Developer Forum. Techgage have more Nehalem overclocking info, while Bit-Tech and HWZone continue their coverage. A machine with 160GB of RAM caught LegitReview's eye, while live IDF blogging continues on PC-Perspective.
Elsewhere in the world, OC3D report on the ASUS Advanced Overclocking Championship and Futurelooks were at Fragapalooza 2008 in Canada. In four days this huge event crams in a convention centre sized BYOC area, gaming tournaments, random draws and prizes, and more caffeine then is healthy for human consumption.
Apparently Aussies are taking up Macs quicker than people in other nations. If Mac sales continue to grow at this rate, the platform will have a double-figure market share within a few years. Wow! ;) Discussion here.
InsideHW look at multimedia streaming. If you are TV fan and you have wireless network and notebook, than you probably at some point thought how it would be nice to take your notebook and simply move to other room, go on balcony or backyard and with no interruptions from other householders watch your favorite show or some sport event.
Here's an oddball timewaster from Ashley - pimp my kettle.
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 21-August-2008 17:32:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Thermaltake BigTyp VP CPU cooler on LegionHW.
Noctua NH-C12P CPU cooler on BurnOutPC.
CoolerMaster GeminII S CPU + Board Cooler on TechWareLabs.
Video Cards:
Palit GTX 260 on OCClub.
Palit GeForce GTX280 on GamePyre.
XFX GTX 280 on XSReviews.
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ on TechARP.
ASUS GeForce EN9600GT Matrix on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Danger Den Tower-26 on HWLogic.
In Win Metal Suit - GunDam Case on TechWareLabs.
Lian-Li V1100 Black on Motherboards.org.
Thermaltake Armor+ MX VH8000BWS Mid Tower on BigBruin.
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 20-August-2008 22:26:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wayne sent word that the RBA is talking to eBay and PayPal about the recent payment rules changes. "Consistent with this, the bank will shortly be holding discussions with PayPal with a view to seeking the removal of these rules," the RBA said today.
TomsHardware report from IDF about some automatic overclocking features of Intel's upcoming i7 (aka Nehalem) CPUs. Although not quite like the retro turbo mode button found on computers of the late 1980’s, the turbo mode on Core i7 will still result in increased single threaded performance.
Actually there's quite a lot of Nehalem stuff coming down from IDF, not too surprisingly. HardOCP have some slides and a video with lots more info. Techgage have more details also.
PCPerspective meanwhile have live blogging from IDF. What does that entail? I sit in a conference hall or press meeting and listen to technical and executives at Intel and post up notes, information, pictures and more live as it happens so you get the news in as close to real time as possible.
It's been a while since we've heard anything about ATI's "All-In-Wonder" graphics/tuner cards, full of bells and whistles. HotHardware discovered a new HD version on the way. This was an area of the market where ATI had exclusivity, yet we haven't seen a new All-In-Wonder offering since May 2006. Rest assured however, ATI has not abandoned the All-In-Wonder, they've simply been working on the next iteration of the Graphic/TV-Tuner stalwart, with their latest offering coming in the form of the ATI All-In-Wonder HD.
There's a cool NES stealth PC mod worklog over on exoid.com. That's right, I will be building a retro gaming computer using my favorite mini-itx board the D201GLY2, and my trusty companion that has been in the family for longer than most of my brothers and sisters. The goal with this build is going to be complete sleeper looks. What I mean by that is that the NES will be absolutely indistinguishable from a stock NES, completely stealth.
You might remember Mr Chilled reviewing the Popcorn Hour A-100 media player a couple of months ago. Lanko069 noticed there's some new versions, and they're reviewed here on DigitalReviews. To the untrained eye, the A-100 and the A-110 are nearly identical. Both units share the same case and bar a few minor technical changes, look exactly the same. By contrast, the B-110 is a Mini-ITX variant of their Popcorn hardware - and while functionally similarly, it looks completely different.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews #2
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Wednesday, 20-August-2008 17:34:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Thermaltake DuOrb Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin.
Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
IcyDock MB453SPF-B SATA Multi-Bay Backplane Module on PCStats.
Icy Dock 3.5 Inch Screwless External Enclosure on AseLabs.
Super Talent PICO-C Gold 8GB USB Flash Drive on FutureLooks.
ATP EarthDrive USB drive on OCrClub.
Motherboards:
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L & EP45T-DS3R LGA775 boards on Phoronix.
ECS GF8200A AM2 board on OCClub.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 LGA775 board on XbitLabs.
ECS P45T-A Intel P45 Express LGA775 board on PCStats.
ASUS Republic Of Gamers Maximus Formula II LGA775 board on Motherboards.org.
Audio / Visual:
ATEN CS1782 Dual Link DVI KVM Switch on Tweaktown.
Toshiba Regza 37XV505DB 37in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Denon AVR-2808CI receiver on DigitalTrends.
Philips Cineos 42PFL9703D/10 42in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Samsung SyncMaster XL30 LED Backlit LCD on Bit-Tech.
Aerocool Modern V Display in-bay screen on TechWareLabs.
Astro Gaming A40 headset on GamingNexus.
Flip Video Mino digital video camera on ASELabs.
Power Supply:
Corsair TX750 750W on NinjaLane.
Corsair TX750W on OCOnline.
Misc:
TRENDnet 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N Gigabit Router on TweakTown.
Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit on HWLogic.
Corsair 2GB DOMINATOR DDR3 2133MHz Memory Kit on LegitReviews.
LukWerks WiLife Security System on TechWareLabs.
"The Overclocker" Magazine
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Wednesday, 20-August-2008 16:23:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Nick Ross and Josh Collins have teamed up to create an online international magazine called "The Overclocker". It's not going to compete with anyone. It's going to bind all the world's overclocking communities together, promote overclocking and overclockers, raise the profile within the industry, and offer the odd review. If somewhere like OCAU does something interesting on overclocking we'll tell the world.
We're not going to have our own (proper) website and we're not going to have any forums. Every month we'll be asking questions and directing the global readership to a forum like OCAU for the answer. We'll also be asking questions on your behalf to major people in the industry.
You can view the first issue on their site. There's discussion going on here in our Overclocking & Hardware forum.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 20-August-2008 16:00:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From ojk007: Heres a good article from mactalk that sums up the current state of ISP filtering in Australia. In short, we need to get off our arses before our ignorant polictians go ahead with this. I send this to you with a sense of urgency, in that unless we make enough noise we will silently lose this battle. See also nocleanfeed.com.
XbitLabs compared the Force 3D Radeon HD 4870 Vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, wondering if mid-range cards are up to the task of high-resolution gaming. Today we are going to check how well 300-dollar graphics cards can perform in video games in 2560x1600 resolution.
They also have a Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX Extreme Overclocking Experience posted. Will extreme overclocking help Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX to defeat ATI Radeon HD 4800 and how greatly? Will an extremely overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX be able to complete against the new GeForce GTX 260?
HotHardware report from the Intel Developer Forum, with Craig Barrett's Keynote speech from Day 1. Gelsinger equated the childhood book series Where's Waldo with trying to figure out where in the world Intel chairman, Craig Barrett might be at any given moment. As to "Where in the world is Craig Barrett," the answer could easily be any one of over 30 countries, where Gelsinger suggested that Barrett has become the chief ambassador for the IT industry. HWSecrets have their coverage too.
TechWareLabs have some SAS RAID testing in Linux, with Fujitsu SAS Drives and a Highpoint RocketRAID 2640X4 controller. Michael Bosse tests the Fujitsu SAS hard drives in a linux environment and brings to you expected performance in an enterprise setting.
PCPerspective have a sneak peek at an interesting multi-GPU technology called HYDRA. This start-up company promises to scale GPUs at nearly linear rates and is completely chipset and GPU technology independent. Is it worthy of the hype?
Dennis noticed that Australian company PC Tools has been acquired by Symantec. With the addition of PC Tools, Symantec will expand its consumer product portfolio to include award-winning PC utilities software and point security technologies.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 20-August-2008 15:33:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD4870x2 on CPU3D
Gigabyte 9600GT TurboForce on GamePyre.
ATI RADEON HD 4870 X2 2x1024MB on Digit-Life.
Asus EAH 4850 TOP on RBMods.
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 on TrustedReviews.
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB on ThinkComputers.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 on BenchmarkReviews.
ASUS Radeon HD 4870 TOP 512MB on Tweaktown.
ASUS HD 4870 X2 (EAH4870X2) 2GB on OC3D.
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC on Bit-Tech.
Diamond HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 on LegitReviews.
ATi Radeon HD 4870 X2 on InsideHW.
Portable:
ASUS M50Sv notebook on XbitLabs.
MSI Wind mini-laptop on DigitalTrends.
The New Dell Latitude E Laptops - Serious Business Indeed on HWZone.
ASUS Eee PC 1000 40G netbook on TechReport.
Cases:
Sunbeamtech Tuniq 3 on BurnOutPC.
HFX Mini HTPC on Bit-Tech.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Tuesday, 19-August-2008 20:14:11 (GMT +10) - by Rezin
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2008 Olympics - Events & Results in Major Sporting Events.
X-Fi sound bugs? I think I have a solution in PC Audio.
Horrible pictures of dead caps in Modding.
NVidia G84 and G86 Problems in Video Cards and Monitors.
Anyone Into Photography Using Linux based Apps? in Other Operating Systems.
Solar powered exhaust fan? in Electronics.
My slow internet is costing me ~7,300 ppw in Team OCAU - Distributed Computing.
Going from 32 to 64 bit in Windows Operating Systems.
Stop Internet After Bandwidth Limit Reached... in Networking, Telephony and Internet.
CB Radio Install Advice in Electronics.
The insoluble and emotive issue of the points system in Team OCAU - Distributed Computing.
What file system are we all using for Storage? in Other Operating Systems.
Headphone recommendations in PC Audio.
ATI 4870 Driver problem? in Video Cards and Monitors.
Many members have Celerons in there system in Intel Hardware.
How to use Folding@home GPU 6.20 in Team OCAU - Distributed Computing.
9800GX2 to HD 4870 X2,WORTH IT? in Video Cards and Monitors.
FreeNAS, SmoothWall and Myth - My Dilemma in Other Operating Systems.
Guide: plugpack selection in Electronics.
Cool Cisco Switch Tool for Solving Layer 1 Cable Issues in Networking, Telephony and Internet.
Dremel cutting disc help in Modding.
want to try out linux in Other Operating Systems.
New Drivers - nVidia 177.83 WHQL, Physx included in driver in Video Cards and Monitors.
GPU Physx right here baby! in Video Cards and Monitors.
Foxconn's Black Ops
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Tuesday, 19-August-2008 12:34:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Windwithme has written up another detailed review - this time it's Foxconn's BLACK OPS motherboard based on Intel's X48 chipset. They're presenting this as their ultimate overclocking motherboard, and (among other things) it boasts a northbridge cooler which can handle passive and forced aircooling or watercooling. In fact, they even provide a plastic container for using liquid nitrogen or dry ice!
click for the review!
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has put together a historical timeline of the Internet, incorporating video clips, pictures, and other items from their archives. So, in twenty short years, the Internet has gone from a few networked labs and universities to a multi-layered network connecting hundreds of millions of people. What will the next twenty years hold?
Tom's Hardware Guide roundup fourteen Solid State Drives from a variety of manufacturers. Today, an SSD isn’t necessarily the better choice over a magnetic hard drive, as there is a catch with most of the options out there. Some flash SSDs are much more efficient than hard drives, others are much faster than hard drives, and only a small minority can achieve both. But all are more expensive, especially when you consider cost per gigabyte.
Driver Heaven revisit the Intel Skulltrail platform, by using it to compare performance with three GeForce GTX 280's in Tri-SLI and two Radeon 4870X2's in Crossfire. Even though comparisons will be made, our intention is not to directly compare ATI against Nvidia in this article, but more to see how both leading ultimate solutions will run on a system which should in theory be less CPU bound than most.
Bit-tech Interview ASUS' Richard Liu, senior director of their motherboard division. In amongst the hundreds of litres of liquid nitrogen we had a chance to ask a few questions to Richard Liu, Senior Director of Motherboard Division at Asus. Sadly due to a typhoon in Taipei, we were unable to sit down and get one on one with him, but we were still able to pose him some questions on Nehalem, X58, overclocking and ExpressGate via email.
Tom's Hardware got their hands on an AMD's Athlon 64 2000+, which operates at only 1GHz and draws a maximum of 8W. With the development of the Atom processor, Intel introduced a totally new chip design that consumes very little energy. AMD had to strike back, and did so by clocking down its Athlon 64, employing the K8 micro architecture, down to the lowest possible frequency of 1 GHz.Discussion on the forum.
X-bit Labs continue their series of 19-inch LCD monitor reviews. It covers eight models with a screen aspect ratio of both 5:4 and 16:10. Although the latter aspect ratio is quickly penetrating the low-end market sector, classic 5:4 models are in demand still. Moreover, it is among these classic models that you can occasionally see 19-inchers with matrix types other than TN whereas widescreen 19-inch models are all based on TN technology with its notoriously small viewing angles.
Tech ARP have updated their workstation graphics card comparison guide. These days, there are so many workstation graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 18-August-2008 22:35:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 280 on Tweaktown.
Leadtek WinFast PX9800 GTX+ on Bjorn3D.
Motherboards:
ASUS P5Q Deluxe LGA775 board on MikhailTech.
ASUS P5Q Deluxe LGA775 board on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme LGA775 board on OCClub.
Cooling:
Thermal Paste Roundup on APHNetworks.
NZXT Cryo LX Notebook Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Portable:
iPhone vs iPhone 3G on TechWareLabs.
Navman S50 3D GPS on TrustedReviews.
Audio / Visual:
Philips DVP3980/05 DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Sony Ericsson C702 Cyber-shot camera on TrustedReviews.
TrekStor i.Beat Motion 1GB mp3 player on TrustedReviews.
Sennheiser MM 50 iP Headset For iPhone on TrustedReviews.
InFocus IN80 DLP Projector on TrustedReviews.
Misc:
Level One WBR-3460, WBR-3408 & WAP-0006 routers on InsideHW.
Thermaltake Xaser VI MX Midtower case on Pro-Clockers.
Photography Gallery
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Monday, 18-August-2008 20:11:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some recent highlights from our Photography Gallery forum:
Monday Evening Reviews
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Monday, 18-August-2008 19:03:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Skulltrail - XFX GTX 280 XXX 3-Way SLi /4870X2 CFx on DriverHeaven.
BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX and 8800 GT OCX on Guru3D.
Foxconn GeForce 9500 GT G96 on BenchMarkReviews.
Zotac 9800GTX+ AMP Edition on TBreak.
ASUS EAH4870 Radeon HD 4870 on TechARP.
PowerColor HD 4850 PCS 2GB on OC3D.
Storage:
Vantec NexStar USB/eSATA Hard Drive Dock on ThinkComputers.
Thecus N5200 NAS network storage on HWSecrets.
Thecus Thecus N5200B PRO Five Bay NAS Network Attached Storage on Tweaknews.
Memory:
OCZ Technology 4GB PC2-6400 Fatal1ty Edition on OCIA.
OCZ SOE Urban Elite Edition DDR3-1600 2GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
Power Supply:
Silverstone Zeus ZM1200M 1200W on JonnyGuru.
Kingwin 1220 watt Mach 1 on OCrCafe.
Not a lot else going on out there tonight! Timbot sent in most of these a while ago, some amusing error messages, dialog boxes etc:
     
     
Saturday Evening Reviews
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Saturday, 16-August-2008 18:11:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
OCZ Alchemy Elixir Gaming Keyboard on I4U.
OCZ Alchemy Elixir Gaming Keyboard on Techgage.
Cases and PSU:
Akasa Omega case on Bit-Tech.
NesteQ ECS7001 700W PSU: A Modular Twist on SilentPCReview.
Lian Li V1010b mid-tower on DriverHeaven.
Cooler Master Centurion 590 case on OC3D.
Storage:
Transcend 2.5-Inch 32GB Solid State Drive on OCIA.
Thermaltake BlacX eSATA & USB 2.0 Dock on Tweaktown.
Memory:
Mushkin XP2-6400 4GB CL4 Kit on TechPowerUp.
Patriot Viper Series 4GB DDR3-1800 kit on TechWareLabs.
Games:
Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island PC game on Bit-Tech.
Beijing Olympics 2008 PC game on GamePyre.
Video Cards:
PowerColor HD 4870 on Bjorn3D.
Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition on Tweaktown.
ASUS TOP 512MB GeForce 9600GT on BigBruin.
Motherboards:
ECS "Black Series" P45T-A LGA775 board on Techgage.
Asus CrossHair II Formula AM2+ board on Bit-Tech.
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L S-Series Intel P45 LGA775 board on ThinkComputers.
Misc:
Kobalt Comanche SLI gaming notebook on Bit-Tech.
HANNspree Xm-S Verona W22 monitor on TrustedReviews.
Philips DVP3980/05 DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller on OCClub.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 16-August-2008 16:18:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sniper noticed that the Australian Do-Not-Call Register could be expanded to include faxes and indeed ALL phone numbers. It this is unacceptable, it suggests a more modest expansion to enable phone numbers used by emergency service organisations and phone and fax numbers used by small businesses to be listed. I'll certainly be happy if it turns out to be true!
HotHardware have a 4-way Gigabyte P45 mobo roundup. On the low-end, we have Gigabyte’s EP45-DS3L for DDR2 based systems along with the EP45T-DS3R for DDR3 based systems. On the high-end, we have the much more exciting EP45-DQ6 platform for DDR2 based systems, and for the high-end DDR3 landscape, we have the crème de le crème of Gigabyte’s P45 lineup, the EP45T-Extreme.
They also report on GPU-based ray tracing from NVIDIA. During SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles NVIDIA is demonstrating a fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer. The demo is based purely on NVIDIA GPU technology, and according to NVIDIA the ray tracer shows linear scaling rendering of a complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application.
Paul sent word of a coordinated cyber attack between Russia and Georgia. The attacks have already managed to compromise several government web sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against numerous other Georgian government sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the U.S, with Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertaking a desperate step in order to disseminate real-time information by moving to a Blogspot account.
Shadowman sent in this robot you can control. Pretty groovy, gotta wait forever to have a shot, and it only works during daylight hours as its solar powered.
TrustedReviews compared Intel's Atom and VIA's Nano mini platforms. However, technology being the way it is, the two products have converged and in particular are set to cross swords in the highly lucrative netbook market. So, we set out to find out which one is truly the best.
There are now patches for VMWare to fix the bogus product expiry issue we mentioned earlier, thanks Silicon Angel. Info here and here. An issue has been uncovered with ESX 3.5 Update 2 (build 103908) and ESXi 3.5 Update 2 (build 103909) that caused the product license to expire on August 12, 2008. New patches and updates are now available.
Frostytech checked out some of the first socket LGA1366 heatsinks, for Intel's Nehalem CPUs. In the mean time, answers to questions like: 1). Will current Intel socket 775 heatsinks fit on Intel socket 1366 motherboards? 3). Do Nehalem socket 1366 heatsinks use the plastic push pin clips, or something new? 2). If I use a socket 775-to-1366 adaptor bracket to make my existing Intel heatsink fit onto a Socket 1366 motherboard, is that okay?
TechWareLabs rounded up six DDR3 kits. We've seen the best that next generation DDR3 has to offer, but how does each kit compare side by side? Which DDR3 kits were good for overclocking? And possibly the most important question, which DDR3 kit meets your needs?
SuperRoach and OCZ's NIA
(6 Comments)
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Friday, 15-August-2008 21:19:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's an interesting one - SuperRoach has gotten his hands on one of those brainwave-reading gaming controllers from OCZ, the "Neural Impulse Actuator". He's made a few YouTube videos about his experiences with it. Check 'em out with more info here.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
(1 Comments)
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Friday, 15-August-2008 13:51:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Memory:
Super Talent ProjectX 2GB DDR3-1800 on TechWareLabs.
Crucial Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 on RBMods.
Kingston HyperX 2GB PC3-14400 Memory Kit on LegitReviews.
PQI Turbo 4GB DDR3-1600 kit - Immortality Edition on TechWareLabs.
Storage:
OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4GB Flash Drive on TCMagazine.
Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525 on BenchmarkReviews.
Vantec NexStar MX NST-400MX-SR RAID enclosure on Modders-Inc.
ATP ToughDrive USB storage on OCClub.
Audio / Visual:
Samsung Syncmaster 943B 19-inch LCD Display on PCStats.
Audio-Technica ATH-CK7 Canal Headphones on TheTechLounge.
Samsung YP-S3 Portable Media Player on HWZone.
Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Headset on BurnOutPC.
Merconnet MP3 Player / FM Modulator on Tweaknews.
Motherboards:
ASUS Crosshair II Formula AM2+ board on InsideHW.
ECS P45T-A Intel P45 LGA775 board on PCPerspective.
DFI LanParty Dark X48 LGA775 board on NinjaLane.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9300-AT CPU Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Xirex 4mm Thick Water Block Tested for Geforce 8800 GT on MadShrimps.
XIGMATEK HDT-SD964 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
Powercolor PCS HD 4850 512 MB on TechPowerUp.
Sapphire HD 4850 on XSReviews.
ECS GeForce 9600 GT on Tweaktown.
ECS GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra on HWSecrets.
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 14-August-2008 17:25:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some interesting things from the forums:
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 14-August-2008 15:59:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A serious programming error by VMware has led to ESX machines thinking they are expired when they aren't. When the time clock in a server running ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2 hits 12:00AM on August 12th, 2008, the released code causes the product license to expire. So don't reboot or suspend until you've got the patch! Discussion here.
Apparently Crysis Warhead is on the way in September. But that's not all -- also announced was Crysis Wars, a new multiplayer feature in Crysis Warhead that'll come with three modes of play: InstantAction and PowerStruggle from the original Crysis, and the new TeamInstantAction mode that, obviously, adds teams to the mix. Crysis Wars will include 21 maps in total, including six new maps for TeamInstantAction and InstantAction, and one new map for PowerStruggle.
Tweaktown compared a Single HD 4870 X2 vs Two HD 4870s on P45. Meanwhile MadShrimps checked out the 4870 X2 Crysis AA vs DX9/DX10 Performance. The increased level of detail with 4xAA doesn't really reduce performance all that much. While the GTX 280 takes a serious performance hit.
Techgage have part 2 of their ASUS Republic of Gamers coverage. The ASUS RoG Con is done and over with, so we take a look back at what made the weekend so great. Depending on who you ask, the LAN was a great success, with nobody leaving without some sort of swag in their hand. But, there was so much more to it than just that. Will we see another? We sure hope so.
IGN mention some religious hullabaloo about Spore, but more interesting is the casual remark that it's coming out in the first week of September. I thought we'd never see it! Anyway, discussion in the gargantuan Spore thread as always.
Cooler Master's Cosmos S is becoming a hit with the modders.. here's a nicely finished project over on Bit-Tech. After a second, I thought, "What better than a new Skulltrail system to prove the capability of the heavily modded Aquagate?"
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 14-August-2008 14:18:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
320GB Hard Disk Drive Roundup on HWSecrets.
Maxtor BlackArmor 160GB Encrypted Portable Drive on BigBruin.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR3-1600 kit on TechWareLabs.
Corsair XMS3 DHX 4GB DDR3-1600 kit on TechWareLabs.
Video Cards:
MSI's N280GTX-T2D1GOC GeForce GTX 280 on HotHardware.
XFX GeForce 9600GT XXX Edition on LegitReviews.
Sapphire Toxic HD 4850 on Bjorn3D.
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 on Bit-Tech.
Motherboards:
Asrock X38 TurboTwins-Wi-Fi LGA775 board on Pro-Clockers.
OCZ Rampage Extreme LGA775 board on OC3D.
Gigabyte EP45-DS3P (P45) DDR2 LGA775 board on OC3D.
Misc:
NZXT Sentry LX Front Panel Display on Pro-Clockers.
Metadot Das Keyboard Professional on HWLogic.
Interesting Forum Threads
(12 Comments)
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Thursday, 14-August-2008 03:50:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Can't sleep? :)
AMD Fusion details leaked in AMD Hardware.
Deneb ES Review in AMD Hardware.
Intel details future 'Larrabee' graphics chip in Intel Hardware.
45nm Wolfdale & Yorkfield Overclock Database in Intel Hardware.
Nehalem gets a name - "i7" in Intel Hardware.
Apple hardware costs demystified in Apple Hardware & Software.
Is Ubuntu for me? in Other Operating Systems.
PC vs Mac Survey in Newbie Lounge.
Do you need new thermal paste when cpu HSF has been removed? in Newbie Lounge.
Vista HDD Rating in Newbie Lounge.
GPU Physx right here baby! in Video Cards & Monitors.
Deleting files from HDD permanently in Storage & Backup.
Protecting PCBs from fauna in Electronics.
File system to handle photos (millions of photos) in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Pandora - GP2X sequel in Game Consoles.
2008 Beijing Olympics TV coverage, Event Schedules and News in Entertainment.
FAH power usage reality in Team OCAU.
1 Billion points and [H]orde in Team OCAU.
Direct Note Access - mind=blown in Musicians.
Olympics fireworks faked using CG in Current Events.
What animal is it? in Science.
For those who missed Intel's announcement this week. Intel Corporation announced that desktop processors based on the company’s upcoming new micro architecture (codenamed "Nehalem") will be formally branded "Intel Core processor." The first products in this new family of processors, including an “Extreme Edition” version, will carry an "i7" identifier and will be formally branded as "Intel Core i7 processor." Discussion on the forum.
Nvidia has officially released a new Forceware driver package, version 177.83 which supports PhysX. Nvidia also released a bundle of software and demos to promote its new products, including a free "full version" game that makes the most of PhysX compatible GeForce cards. Other parts of this pack include the GeForce Folding@Home client, a 30-day trial of the Badaboom Video Transcoding software and Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX mod. Discussion on the forum.
Driver Heaven has released version 0.3 beta of their Nvidia Mobility Modder. With the success of our free ATI modding tool we felt it was a good idea to begin development of an automated tool for nVidia enthusiasts who like to game on the go. Newer drivers have bug fixes, performance enhancements as well as possibly making a hot new game playable on various platforms.
TechGage take the time to clear up some misconceptions about Nvidia's CUDA and Intel's Larrabee. Both Intel and NVIDIA have lots to say about their respective GPU architectures, as well as the competition's. Partly because of this, there are numerous misconceptions floating around about both Larrabee and CUDA, so we decided to see if we could put to rest a few of the most common ones.
Tech ARP has released an overclocking guide for the Nvidia Gefore 9800GTX+. While the use of the new 55 nm G92 processor does provide the GeForce 9800 GTX+ with some overclocking potential. After all, our temperature tests showed that the new GPU was actually cool enough to run 3D games with the fan set to the absolute minimum! So, we just had to try overclocking it to see just how much more overclockable the new GPU would be.
TweakTown compare ultra compact PC platforms from Intel and VIA. Today we will be pitting the Atom platform against the Nano platform. Who has the best performance and energy savings? – Well, we don’t know yet, but by the end of this we will have an informative answer to that. Let’s move on and check out the platforms individually before we get into the testing phase.
Virtual-hideout wrap up their QuakeCon 2008 coverage. So Quakecon is over. I know I promised more updates while things were still going on. But I got to say, being with 3000 gamers, some friends I knew from before, a few new friends I got to know pretty well, you guys get the short end of the stick. So he’s our final coverage of this massive event. Enjoy!
Thanks to all those that sent in the BSOD story from the Beijing Opening Ceremony. So does this make it the biggest BSOD? Or just the most publicised?
Memory:
Kingston HyperX PC3-14400 2GB Memory Kit on ASE Labs.
Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 4GB Kit on PC Perspective.
Motherboards:
Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 LGA775 board on Motherboards.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on CPU3D.
Biostar TPower I45 LGA775 board on Overclockers Online.
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+ board on TweakTown.
Chassis:
Antec Performance P190 Mid Tower Case on TechGage.
Hiper Anubis Mid Tower Case on Extreme Overclocking.
Moneual Lan Moncase 972 HTPC Case on Big Bruin.
Akasa Omega Mid Tower Case on techPowerUp.
Cooling:
Thermaltake NBCool T500 Notebook Cooler on Bjorn3D.
Scythe Kaze Master Fan Controller on MikhailTech.
SilverStone NT06-E CPU Heatsink on 3DGameMan.
Thermalright IFX-14 CPU Heatsink on Pro-Clockers.
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB on Hardware Secrets.
Evga GeForce GTX 280 HC 1GB on FudZilla.
Palit ATI Radeon 4870 X2 2GB on Legit Reviews.
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 512MB on TweakTown.
Palit ATI Radeon 4870 X2 2GB on Motherboards.
MSI Radeon HD 4850 512MB on Overclockers Club.
Power Supply:
In Win Commander 1200W PSU on Hi-Tech Reviews.
Nexus NX-8060 600W Silent PSU on MikhailTech.
Cooler Master 1250W PSU on ThinkComputers.
Gaming:
Geometry Wars 2 (360) on Trusted Reviews.
Bionic Commando Rearmed (360) on IGN AU.
Battlefield: Bad Company (PS3) on Real Gamer.
Madden NFL 09 (PS3) on GameSpot AU.
Race Driver GRiD (DS) on IncGamers.
Madden NFL 09 (360) on TeamXbox.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 13-August-2008 02:53:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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We've heard rumours of this for quite a while, but Sniper has spotted more info about a Star Trek themed MMORPG in the works. Emmert said players will begin Star Trek Online as the captain of a small Starfleet or Klingon Empire ship. They can customise their characters from pre-existing "Trek" species - from Klingons to Gorn - and can create entirely new alien races. As they progress through the game, players can increase in rank and gain larger vessels and more crew. Dopefish spotted more info here.
YYK noticed this interesting timeline of internet memes. An interactive view of the all the memes that swept across the internet and burrowed in our zeitgeist. Built from Wikipedia and Memelabs, open for you to add and maintain.
Techgage report from the Republic of Gamers event in Dallas, Texas. There's an exciting event happening in Dallas that comes in the form of a LAN party. Not any usual LAN though, as it's sponsored by some of the biggest companies in the business, including the event leader, ASUS. While the Dallas heat sure isn't fun to deal with, the event more than makes up for it so far.
Notebooks.com have a story about an interesting new ThinkPad from Lenovo. Lenovo’s making a serious first-splash into the mobile workstation market with the ThinkPad W700, a 17-inch workstation that can be configured with an integrated Wacom digitizer and an integrated color calibration system.
From Jon: Thought maybe this would interest a few MythTV and media centre users around the OCAU community. Hopefully you can spam this link on front page to raise awareness of what the TV stations are trying to do to freely available guide data.
Some snippets from Murray: super-stretchy electronics, a computer has beaten a professional Go player and journalists have been expelled from the Black Hat conference for hacking into fellow journalist's computers.
Apparently the edited version of Fallout 3 has been approved for sale in Australia, report IGN. While the Classifications Board can take anywhere from a few days and a few weeks to hand down their decision - it seems that the edits made to the Bethesda Softworks title have been successful, with the second edition of the game granted a new MA15+ rating this afternoon. There's an interview about Fallout 3 with Pete Hines from Bethesda on Bit-Tech.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 13-August-2008 01:12:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
ATI RADEON 3870 X2 vs RADEON HD 4850 vs. RADEON HD 4870 on LostCircuits.
GeForce GTX 260/280 versus Radeon HD 4850/4870 on Techspot.
Sapphire HD 4850 CrossFire on XbitLabs.
ASUS ROG Extreme N9600GT Matrix on LegionHW.
AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 On Linux on Phoronix.
Portable:
Palm Centro Smartphone on Futurelooks.
HTC Touch Diamond vs Apple iPhone 3G on TKArena.
Misc:
TRENDnet 200Mbps Powerline Network Kit on Tweaktown.
Noctua NH-U9B, Thermalright Ultima-90I and Zalman CNPS9300 AT CPU coolers on XbitLabs.
Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W PSU on Bit-Tech.
Smooth Creations Asylum Gaming PC on Tweaktown.
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
(4 Comments)
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Tuesday, 12-August-2008 17:35:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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As you may have guessed from our media event report, AMD have unveiled their ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 video cards. Believe it or not - the best just got better. For the first time ever, 2.4 teraFLOPS of graphics horse power, 1600 stream processors and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory have been combined to create the fastest and most powerful graphics card available today.
Coverage on OCClub, Guru3D, NeoSeeker, TechReport, TechGage, DriverHeaven, TechPowerUp, HotHardware, Tweaktown and MadShrimps.
Discussion here in our Video Cards forum.
AMD Media Event Report
(5 Comments)
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Tuesday, 12-August-2008 13:10:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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OCAU member dirtyd went along to a recent AMD Media Event in Sydney, and has reported back with what went on.
click for the article!
Motherboards:
ASRock X48 TurboTwins-WiFi LGA775 board on DriverHeaven.
Asus P5E64 WS Professional LGA775 board on phoronix.
ECS P45T-A Intel P45 LGA775 board on HardwareLogic.
Cooling:
Thermaltake DuOrb AX VGA Cooler on Legion Hardware.
Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer on XSReviews.
Scythe Ninja 2 CPU Cooler on Overclockers Club.
NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller on R&B Mods.
Storage:
Rosewill SATA External HDD Enclosure on I4U News.
OCZ Core Series 64GB SSD Drive on DriverHeaven.
Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB Mini on R&B Mods.
Thermaltake BlacX Hard Drive Dock on Bjorn3D.
Thecus N5200PRO NAS External Storage on techPowerUp.
Supertalent PICO Gold 8GB Flash Drive on Bjorn3D.
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB on Modders-Inc.
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB on TechARP.
MSI GeForce GTX 280 OC 1GB on TweakTown.
Palit GeForce 9800 GT 1GB on Hardware Secrets.
Power Supply:
Tagan BZ Series 900W PSU on ThinkComputers.
BFG Tech LS-550 550W PSU on Overclock IA.
Miscellaneous:
Philips GoGear Music Player on Trusted Reviews.
Razer Destructor Mouse Pad on HardwareLogic.
Nikon D700 Digital SLR on Trusted Reviews.
Razer Piranha Headset on BurnOutPC.
Some interesting photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
It looks like Australian ISP's might join the copyright fight against illegal downloads. The Australian entertainment industry wants internet service providers to act as file-sharing police and caution people who download illegal copies of films, TV shows and music via peer-to-peer networks. The ISPs have made a counter proposal, that they are prepared to support streamlining the process to allow the copyright holders access to subscriber details so they can take legal action," he says. "But ISPs stop short of taking action themselves. Discussion on the forum. Thanks BlaYde
Bit-tech interview one of Bethesda's top men, Pete Hines, and get the low-down on Bethesda's post apocalyptic FPS RPG; Fallout 3. We got a chance to go see Fallout 3 in action recently, and obviously we couldn't turn it down. Though the event itself was the usual blur of excitement and curiously small burgers on cocktail sticks, we bemusedly came to the next day to find that not only had we done a preview, but we also had the chance to interview Bethesda's Pete Hines.
Hardware Zone review Gigabyte's touch screen Vista-based netbook. The M912V crosses a barrier by being both a netbook - and a UMPC due to its form factor and touch screen capabilities. While we wouldn't actually classify the M912V as a UMPC, it's probably pretty close to the original intent of the UMPC makers, especially when you take into consideration that netbooks in general tend to be much cheaper and closer to the price target of US$500 that was originally intended to be for UMPCs.
Hardware Canucks have published their Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850 Crossfire performance review. In this performance review we will be taking a look at Crossfire configurations with HD4870 cards from Palit, HD4850 cards from Sapphire and a few little interesting twists (Mixed Crossfire) and turns (Crossfire by combining 4800-series and 3800-series cards) along the way.
Techware Labs share their recent experience testing the HP 2133 Ultra Portable Netbook. With all of the sub-notebooks available it becomes increasingly difficult to select one with the right choices. HP has done an excellent job in separating themselves from the rest of this growing market by investing into the overall design and usefulness of the 2133.
Tech ARP have updated their mobile GPU comparison guide. These days, there are so many mobile GPU models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications of the various mobile GPUs in the market as well as those already obsolescent or obsolete.
X-bit Labs published their gaming performance review of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280 and 260. Our study of the theoretical potential of Nvidia GeForce GTX 200 graphics architecture showed that these new solutions are pretty promising, however, have a few issues of their own. The test session in contemporary games should cross all t’s and dot all i’s on this matter.
NVIDIA will be releasing the new GeForce drivers and a PhysX driver/pack next tuesday for their GeForce series 8 and newer cards, with Guru3D giving their opinion on what to expect. The features are good, your options in choosing whatever PhysX solution you want to compute in is wide-spread and then the gaming user experience is just great. If you own a capable card; heck, it's free to even try-out.
DriverHeaven look at seven graphics cards that fall into the budget category. The products on test today are all priced between £20 and £70, yet the performance differences between them are vast, making some usable only for HTPC use and 2D gaming while others can be used to power a relatively decent gaming machine.
OCIA have posted another system buying guide, with this one focussing on the parts you'll need to build a mainstream system for around USD $1,200. Our guides are designed with overclocking in mind, so we often select lower-end processors / memory / video cards to save money, because we know these can be overclocked to equal or outperform higher priced hardware.
Invitations for the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta have been sent out. They will play on servers located on mainland Australia and will pave the way for the simultaneous launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning across North America, Europe, and the Oceanic region on September 18th. Thanks Peter! Discussion in this thread.
CPU3D went along to the i34 LAN − one of the UK's largest LANs. We'll be checking out the booths from manufactuers such as Coolermaster Crucial, Foxconn, MSI, Antec and many more. Retailers Scan, Aqua PCs, Kustom PCs and CyberPower will also have booths to show off their new range of products.
Several companies are developing technology which can detect and remove debris from airport runways. Most airports have safeguards for identifying and handling FOD, but they come down to little more than dispatching some guy with a broom to sweep the runway twice a day. Fortunately, a handful of companies are taking a more sophisticated approach.
Ubisoft have released the minimum requirements and recommended hardware for the PC version of Far Cry 2.
Motherboards:
XFX nForce 750a SLI AM2+ board on Motherboards.
Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on APH Networks.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R LGA775 board on Virtual-Hideout.
Intel DX48BT2 Intel X48 LGA775 board on HardOCP.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on ExtremeTech.
Chassis:
Cooler Master CSX Medusa Cosmos Chassis on TweakTown.
Sunbeamtech Quarterback Mid Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Norcotek RPC-450 Rackmount Enclosure on Virtual-Hideout.
Displays:
Sharp Aquos LC-32XL8E 32" LCD TV on Trusted Reviews.
Asus MK241 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor on ThinkComputers.
Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 50" Plasma TV on Trusted Reviews.
Graphics Cards:
MSI GeForce 9600 GT Hybrid Freezer on CPU3D.
Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT Passive on Guru3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic on phoronix.
Asus Radeon HD 4870 TOP on Legion Hardware.
Palit GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB on Overclockers Club.
Input:
Logitech diNovo Mini Keyboard on HardwareZone.
Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse on PureOC.
NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse on techPowerUp.
Gaming:
Space Invaders Extreme (DS) on GamePyre.
Deadliest Catch (360) on GamingNexus.
Civilization Revolution (PS3) on GamePyre.
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (PS3) on Trusted Reviews.
Madden NFL 09 All-Play (Wii) on IGN AU.
Siren: Blood Curse (PS3) on GameSpy.
Saturday Morning
(7 Comments)
(link)
Saturday, 9-August-2008 04:45:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's going to be an overclocking demonstration by youngpro and moloko_vellocet in Sydney this weekend, during WCG at Luna Park. More info in this thread.
Guszast3r found some info about the person allegedly behind the beijing ticketing scam. Shepherd, now believed to be hiding in Barbados, had planned "one last massive sting" before retiring, Sydney private investigator Ken Gamble, who has been tracking the fraudster's activities since 2003, said yesterday.
Scon spotted this awesome slow-motion lightning video. It's a lightning bolt that's shooting down from the sky, shot in slow motion. I'm not sure exactly how fast this camera is, but it's got to be shooting at a speed faster than the Casio EX-F1 can shoot at, at least at a resolution this high.
Ubisoft are suing a disk replication company, thanks Rezin. It seems that Optical Experts Manufacturing is said to be the source of the PC version Assassin’s Creed that was downloaded over 700,000 times prior to the game’s official release. According to what we are hearing, a copy of the title was leaked by an employee after the game was removed from the company’s premise.
A new curved electronic eye brings us closer to bionic eye technology, according to Nature. John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues have taken inspiration from our own eyes to create an electronic version.
If you've ever felt you just wanted to get away from it all and do some hardcore gaming, maybe a gaming pod like this is what you need, thanks WishBone17.
Digit-Life consider the problem of balancing CPU power and graphics card power. These tests are time-consuming - in order to find an optimal processor for a given graphics card, we have to try all combinations of CPUs and cards, so each processor increases the number of configurations many times.
So, it being 08/08/08, the Beijing Olympics will be getting underway today. I personally won't be paying much attention to it, but if you are, or just want to talk about it, keep an eye on our Major Sporting Events Forum which will no doubt be bristling with Olympics-related threads for the next couple of weeks. Bring your smog mask!
Memory:
OCZ ReaperX HPC 4GB PC2-6400 Kit on Benchmark Reviews.
Kingston HyperX 3GB Notebook Memory on Virtual-Hideout.
Corsair Dominator DDR3 2133MHz 2GB Kit on TweakTown.
Motherboards:
ECS P45T-A Intel P45 LGA775 board on OverclockersClub.
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-EXTREME LGA775 board on Benchmark Reviews.
Intel DG45ID Intel G45 LGA775 board on Trusted Reviews.
ASRock P45R2000-WiFi LGA775 board on Hardware Canucks.
Storage:
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB on Trusted Reviews.
OCZ SSD 64GB Core Series Solid State Disk on OC3D.
Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS2UTN+B on Bjorn3D.
Thermaltake BlacX Hard Drive Dock on Mikhailtech.
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic on techPowerUp.
Asus GeForce 9800 GTX+ TOP 512MB on TweakTown.
Sapphire HD 4850 Toxic in Crossfire on TweakTown.
MSI Radeon HD 4850 512MB on HardOCP.
Gaming:
Soul Calibur IV (360) on Trusted Reviews.
Space Invaders Extreme (DS) on GamingNexus.
Soul Calibur IV (360) on bit-tech.
Siren Blood Curse (PS3) on DriverHeaven.
Race Driver: GRID (PC) on AnandTech.
Miscellaneous:
BlueAnt Bluetooth Handsfree on LegitReviews.
HTC Touch Smartphone on TheTechLounge.
Asus Eee Box B202 SFF PC on TechReport.
Sony Ericsson W760 Mobile on Trusted Reviews.
The crew from Good Game will be back on our TV screens next Monday night resuming their fourth season. For our first ep back we'll do a quick rundown of what came out over the break, including MGS4, Brawl, Ninja Gaiden 2, Bourne and Age of Conan. We'll also be reviewing Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Soul Calibur IV, and Bajo will chart his progress at this year's E3, talking to the likes of Peter Moore, Peter Molyneux, Cliff Bleszinski, Rod Humble and more.
Bit-tech check out the EVGA GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked. The core is running at 621MHz, up from 602MHz on the stock, the 1GB of GDDR3 runs at 2,268MHz up from 2,214MHz stock, and the shaders are running at 1,350MHz compared to 1,298MHz. These increases represent roughly a three percent overclock, which while not as much as the ten or eleven percent you can get from the very top end of the pre-overclocked GTX 280s, should still produce a noticeable performance advantage over the stock card.
IGN Australia look at what they believe are the five worst games available on the Nintendo Virtual Console. Looking over the selection you could be forgiven for thinking that the range is the result of a work experience kid screw up. … No attention seems to have been paid to appropriateness or quality control. It'd be funny if it wasn't so depressing.
Metku Mods report on their time at The Assembly, Finland's biggest LAN and Demo party. With over 5000 participants this four day event offers a lot of lights, noise and great people. … Like in the past events, the Assembly organization gathered a nice package that included outdoor sports, seminars, tons of combos including music, graphics, demo coding and naturally gaming etc.
If you're looking for a NAS which can hold five SATA drives in any RAID configuration, techPowerUp rates the N5200 PRO from Thecus highly. With plenty of features and a modular design, when it comes to both hardware and software, it fits anyone's needs. As the N5200 PRO uses a fast 1.5 GHz CPU it has serious potential to stomp the competition.
Tech ARP have updated their Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked guide. This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk drive that are still being propagated in many discussions. As you read through this guide, you may think that some of these myths may have been made up. We wished it was true.
Some interesting images on the CNET News site look at a new camera with a layout that is similar in the size and shape of the human eye. The curved technology will put an entire image in focus in contrast to today's cameras which take images that are sharper in the center than near the edges, according to researchers. Plus, the technology could be a big step toward the development of a bionic eye similar to the one worn by the "Terminator."
AMD have unveiled its 790GX chipset today. The AMD 790GX chipset is here to give gamers an incredible experience with unprecedented graphics scalability and new performance tuning innovations. Featuring ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics, get the best DirectX 10 gaming experience right out-of-the-box. With the addition of an applicable ATI Radeon graphics card, ATI Hybrid Graphics technology leverages powerful motherboard graphics to give your performance a boost.
Coverage can be found on AnandTech, Bit-Tech, HotHardware, Legit Reviews, PC Games Hardware and The Tech Report.
Tom's Hardware take a look at 15 unforgettable processors from Intel. We've seen a lot of Intel CPUs, but a few are real stand-outs. We pick 15 of the most memorable in anticipation of Nehalem, expected to be Intel's next big landmark. The story of the Intel x86 processors doesn’t end with the Core 2, and obviously other models are planned for the Future. Nehalem, Larrabee, and Atom are also on the horizon.
X-Bit Labs analyse Nvidia's GT200 architecture and design. The new Nvidia GTX 200 graphics architecture is just as interesting as the recently announced ATI Radeon HD 4800 that is why it deserves thorough and detailed discussion. Today we are going to talk about the results of synthetic benchmarks obtained from Gainward GeForce GTX 280 and Leadtek GeForce GTX 260.
TweakTown continue their QuakeCon 2008 coverage with booth babes and modified cases. QuakeCon is many things to many people. For the pro gamer it is a place to show your skills; challenging the best of the best and competing against the world’s top teams in everything from Guitar Hero to different variations of Quake. Gamers old and new travel to Dallas, Texas every year, trying to compete for their piece of the prize money.
Hot Hardware evaluate the Asus Eee Box Desktop System. It’s obviously safe to say that Asus put plenty of engineering resources behind their Eee PC project and you almost have to wonder, are they done yet? Not quite. In the realm of small form-factor, low cost computing, there's another market niche' that, believe it or not, the Eee product line has yet to bring out an offering for -- the low cost desktop.
Bit-tech preview the eagerly awaited Fallout 3. So, in short, be afraid. Lock away your wallets and board up your front doors. Handcuff yourself to the furniture and demolish your hard drives and consoles – Fallout 3 is coming and as far as we’re concerned, it’s going to be as excellent as we could have ever hoped. When it launches then it will demolish your life, soak up your spare time and tear apart your relationships.
Motherboards:
Asus Striker II Extreme LGA775 board on TechwareLabs.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on PC Perspective.
Evga nForce 750i SLI FTW LGA775 board on TechGage.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H AM2+ board on OCWorkbench.
Chassis:
SilverStone Lascala HTPC Case on phoronix.
Tagan Aplus CS Full Tower on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake Armor VH6001 Case on Motherboards.
Zalman GS1000 Full Tower Case on Hardware Secrets.
Storage:
Eagle Consus N-Series SATA to USB External on COD.
Pioneer BDC-S02 Blu-ray Combo Drive on R&B Mods.
Icy Box IB-3218 HDD Enclosure on Overclockers Club.
VOX V1 500GB USB & eSATA External HDD on TweakTown.
Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 512MB on OverclockersClub.
XFX GeForce GTX 280 XXX 1GB on Elite Bastards.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic on CPU3D.
BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB on TechLounge.
Power Supply:
NZXT Performance Power 800W PSU on OCIA.
FSP Everest 1010W PSU on HardOCP.
Hiper Type-M 780W PSU on DriverHeaven.
Miscellaneous:
Apple iPhone 3G on Hardware Secrets.
Razer Gaming Mouse Mat on HardwareZone.
iRiver Lplayer Player on Trusted Reviews.
Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 on HardwareLogic.
Pink Shirt Day
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Thursday, 7-August-2008 03:54:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Apparently tomorrow (Friday) is Pink Shirt Day. In Australia close to 3000 men will die this year from prostate cancer. Pink Shirt Day is a day to raise awareness and encourage men to get checked. Show your support and wear a pink shirt on August 8th.
There seems to be some debate about how "official" Pink Shirt Day is, but I figure promoting awareness of prostate cancer is no bad thing regardless. If you want a more official organisation, try the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, who don't seem to be directly involved with Pink Shirt Day.
Discussion here.
Oldnewby's Dual PC Wooden Case
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 21:40:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I notice oldnewby has added a PCDB entry for his amazing dual PC wooden case:
Click for the PCDB entry! (11 pics)
There's a worklog here in the Modding forum.
Gigabyte P45T Extreme
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 20:36:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Windwithme has posted a gargantuan review of Gigabyte's P45T Extreme motherboard. Zillions of photos and benchmarks etc, and even some playing with SSD's. Check it out!
click for the thread!
Google Maps, Continued
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 14:49:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's still a lot of interest in the forums about Google Maps Street View's new Australian coverage. People are finding interesting places and even playing a Where Am I? game. Not much has been added to the Wiki page yet, though! There's also some funny videos with a "Google gone wrong" theme on YouTube: Google Maps, Google Moon, Google My Maps and Google SMS. Funny stuff.
Age of Avatars
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 13:03:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Nik: I forgot to mention earlier, but there is a docco on SBS, Wednesday 6th, 10:05pm, here in adelaide (not sure about other states, but im fairly confident) about online "identity" and gamers. Its called "Age of Avatars" on the "My Generation" segment. Its made by a guy names Sean (BarracudA) and involved some interviews from Valhalla LAN.
Also, try looking up a docco called "doing it at 100mbit". Its about lan culture / games / etc.. That was his first effort when he went to uni with my missus and they did screen studies.
Memory:
OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB Kit on bit-tech.
OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600MHz 4GB Kit on techPowerUp.
Motherboards:
ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi LGA775 board on phoronix.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R LGA775 board on InsideHW.
XFX GeForce 8200 AM2+ board on Motherboards.
Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-P80R Armorsuit on GamePyre.
Raidmax Aura Mid Tower on Hardware Secrets.
Antec Twelve Hundred on HardwareLogic.
Lian-Li PC-A77 Full Tower on Pro-Clockers.
NZXT Khaos Full Tower Case on TechSpot.
Cooling:
Zaward Gyre CPU Cooler on techPowerUp.
Thermalright TRUE Black 120 on Hardware Canucks.
Akasa Vortexx Neo VGA Cooler on DriverHeaven.
Thermaltake MaxOrb CPU Cooler on FrostyTech.
Graphics Cards:
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 265MB on Legit Reviews.
Galaxy Silent GeForce 9600 GT on Guru3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB on BigBruin.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ Amp! on techPowerUp.
Galaxy & Leadtek GeForce 9500 GT's on MadShrimps.
Input:
Logitech V450 Nano Notebook Mouse on SysOpt.
Revoltec Fightpad & Lightmouse on DriverHeaven.
OCZ Alchemy Elixir Gaming Keyboard on OCIA.
Miscellaneous:
Apple iPhone 3G 16GB on Digital Trends.
Acer Aspire One Netbook on Trusted Reviews.
MSI Wind U100 Netbook on FutureLooks.
Creative Aurvana X-Fi Headphones on InsideHW.
Some PCDB entries worth a look..
  
  
Remember, you can view the top-voted PC's for the following criteria: Looks, Functionality, Effort, Ingenuity and Overall. The latest gallery entries are here, why not add yours?
David sent in word of a new PayPal scam: Someone is sending out emails showing that they come fgrom Paypal asking that you (by name) have a credit card which has expired, they then ask that you reply with your new credit card details to paypal@email.paypal.com.au. Beware accordingly, good chance some will be caught out with such a neat and well made paypal fake page.
Yesterday, Intel unveiled architecture details of its Larrabee processor. The first product based on Larrabee will target the personal computer graphics market and is expected in 2009 or 2010. Larrabee will be the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture, meaning it will be based on an array of many processors. Initial product implementations of the Larrabee architecture will target discrete graphics applications, support DirectX and OpenGL, and run existing games and programs. Discussion on the forum.
You can find coverage on AnandTech, PC Perspective, TechReport, Extreme Tech, TechARP, HardwareZone and Trusted Reviews.
Driver Heaven roundup a trio of motherboards made by XFX. High end is not their only area of expertise however and recently XFX offered us the opportunity to review a number of their value segment motherboards with onboard graphics, they told us that their products were capable of taking on the best AMD and Intel had to offer. This is quite a claim so after tracking down some impressive AM2/Socket 775 boards we put XFX to their word.
The Tech Report gets busy comparing seven new power supplies. We've rounded up seven PSUs between 600 and 800W from BFG Tech, Enermax, ePower, Mushkin, OCZ, Thermaltake, and Zalman. We've thrown them all into the ring against not only our beastly load generator, but also our current favorite in this wattage range: PC Power & Cooling's Silencer 750W.
TweakTown have published their QuakeCon 2008 coverage, with a nice selection of videos and photos. QuakeCon was a perfect spot for these companies to showcase their products to users. While many attendees were only roaming the Vendor Halls looking for free swag, several were knowledgeable consumers looking to make their purchasing decision based on the companies that support their growing sport.
TweakTown also reviewed a pair motherboards from ASRock, based on Intel's P43 and P45 chipset. Today we have been sent two of the newest members of the 4 series family from ASRock, and they are loaded with features for the home user along with some nice overclocking for the enthusiast. Today we take a look at the ASRock P45R2000-WiFi and the P43R1600Twins-WiFi.
Bit-tech have published their review of the Acer's Aspire One, ultra-portable notebook. Building an UMPC shouldn't be all that hard, but the sheer number of companies out there struggling to get it right seems to imply that there are hidden complexities to the task. The Aspire One from Acer is, I admit, a subnotebook I fell in love with almost as soon as I got my hands on it.
ThinkComputers take a look at the latest motherboards features from Gigabyte. Rather than try to cram this information in an already too-long motherboard review, I thought that I'd describe Gigabyte's Smart Backup, Ultra TPM, and DES Advanced in an article, and refer to the article when needed in motherboard reviews. Read on to find out about these cool features!
Some random timewasters: Bollix and 3D Logic.
Motherboards:
ECS A770M-A AMD770 AM2+ board on HardwareLogic.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on CPU3D.
ASRock P45R2000-WiFi LGA775 board on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on Bjorn3D.
Chassis:
GMC H-70 Mid Tower Case on DriverHeaven.
Tagan Monolith Mid Tower Case on Bjorn3D.
Antec Twelve Hundred on Virtual-Hideout.
In Win Alpha360 Mini Tower on TechLounge.
Cooling:
Thermaltake TMG2 Rad & Block on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on FrostyTech.
Zalman CNPS9300 AT CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Storage:
Eagle Consus HDD Enclosure on Overclockers Club.
Super Talent Pico 8GB Flash on Overclockers Online.
SilverStone RFID External Drive on Benchmark Reviews.
Icy Box IB-3218 HDD Enclosure on Overclock IA.
Graphics Cards:
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 512MB on HardwareZone.
Sapphire Toxic HD 4850 512MB on OverclockersClub.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition on techPowerUp.
PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2GB on Guru3D.
Asus Radeon EAH 4870 TOP 512MB on R&B Mods.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB on Overclock3D.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower 650W on Aph Networks.
Rosewill Xtreme 630W PSU on ThinkComputers.
Antec Signature 850W PSU on jonnyGURU.
Miscellaneous:
Sony Ericsson W350 Mobile on Trusted Reviews.
Logitech G51 Speaker System on InsideHW.
Etymotic Research HF2 Headset on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung Q210 12.1" Notebook on Trusted Reviews.
Google Street View - Now Covers Australia in Detail!
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Tuesday, 5-August-2008 03:26:31 (GMT +10) - by aftahours
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Google Street View for Australia has just been officially released, now covering most of the country. Check it out here. AUSTRALIA will today become the third country to have its cities, streets and landmarks "scanned into" Google as the search giant unveils its most ambitious Street View project to date. Google Street View is an online tool that lets users take a virtual tour of landscapes from their computer by perusing an interactive database of millions of 360-degree snapshots. The snapshots are taken by a fleet of cars fitted with special cameras that drive across the country, capturing images on every street corner and along every highway.
There is a thread in our forums discussing it here. Find your house! To use the Street View feature, zoom in on a blue road until you see the little orange man, then click on him.
Given we already have a huge list of Google Maps Australia Locations, let's start up a comprehensive list of Google Maps Street View Australia Locations as well. Feel free to add any interesting Street View links to that page.
Some interesting things from the forums:
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 4-August-2008 14:23:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Thermaltake are having a best build competition which is open to Australians. This competition will run from August 1st to the 31st. By the end of the month we will look through all of the entries and the owner of rig with the most wide spread praise will be awarded with a brand new system courtesy of Thermaltake Australia, GeCube, AMD and OCZ Technology. Discussion here.
The Large Hadron Collider grows ever closer to completion, with some amazing photos over on boston.com. For those hip(hop)sters who don't understand the cool sciency stuff it's going to do, here's an explanation in rap form, discussion here.
Bit-Tech report on the Advanced Overclocking Championships 2008. The two men feverishly dismantling the high end hardware in the room are Paul and Barry, AKA Sacha35 and BazX, the UK team taking part in this year’s Advanced Overclocking Championships (AOCC), now in its second year and held this time in the sprawling high rise of Hong Kong.
A new Vista driver for Creative's X-Fi restores some features that mysteriously vanished earlier. When successive driver updates failed to bring back the features, a Creative forum member known as Daniel_K got to work, but his efforts didn't go over well with the company at first. Now, over a year and a half later, Creative has finally released a batch of official Vista X-Fi drivers that brings back some of the missing functionality. More details and links in this post.
HWZone looked at some new Centrino 2 notebooks. Find out what's new and cool as we cover three separate Intel Centrino 2 notebook launches held this week by Toshiba, NEC and Sony. Catch the newest models and updates to their well-known series and get your wallets ready!
LegitReviews are the latest to compare Atom vs Nano. The Intel Atom and VIA Nano processors have been making a ton of noise in the market place as they are inexpensive, energy efficient and fit into sleek and sexy devices that consumers are looking for today. Armed with the VIA Nano processor and the Intel Atom processor, I can now do a direct performance comparison against two of the most talked about processors for 2008.
IGN and, err IGN both report that a modified version of Fallout 3 has been submitted to the Australian Classification Board and will hopefully be approved. This first popped up over the weekend as a rumour, but the Board has confirmed the new submission today. They have up to 21 days to make their decision, but generally seem to take less than a week.
Dirtyd sent in some PCMark05 oddness discovered by ArsTechnica. None of this constitutes proof of wrongdoing, but it flies in the face of Futuremark's neutrality claims. Bad code is a fact of life, but companies that write benchmarks for a living and sell those benchmarks as evaluation tools have a responsibility to ensure that their software delivers the neutral framework that it promises.
Checkers spotted this funny minesweeper movie. Calm down, it's never the first one! *boom*
Interesting Forum Threads
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Sunday, 3-August-2008 19:10:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I upgraded the forum software to the latest version on Friday night - there's some new features like the tag system and social groups. But anyway, here's some interesting threads:
AMD Socket G34 Presented in AMD Hardware.
NVidia "Big Bang 2" in Video Cards.
Hydra - Lucid "world's first real-time distributed processing engine" in Video Cards.
Order of things in the rack in Business & Enteprise Computing.
How CPUs Work - Part 1, 2 + 3 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Is it a bad idea to buy 4 HDDs at once? in Storage & Backup.
Team Xtreem 2 x 2GB Kit Review (mini!) in Memory.
Do you need new thermal paste when cpu HSF has been removed? in Newbie Lounge.
Wolfenstein (new one!) in Games.
Great games for the great Logtech G25 wheel!
The "Mojave Experiment" in Windows Operating Systems.
ASUS motherboards to get Linux ROM chips in Other Operating Systems.
Would mass solar farms cool the planet? in Science.
Cheaply securing an old car in Motoring.
2008 Hungarian GP Thread - Race live on 10HD in Motoring.
What bands from today will still be listened to in 20 years? in Entertainment.
Movies based on illegal activities/topics in Entertainment.
Cooking with USB 101 in Geek Food.
Will Current 30yo & Younger Be The Coolest Old Ppl Ever? in The Pub.
Excessive Packaging II in The Pub.
Processors:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 on X-bit Labs.
AMD Phenom X4 9350e on TweakTown.
Motherboards:
Asus Maximus II Formula LGA775 board on Trusted Reviews.
Foxconn X48 BlackOps LGA775 board on NinjaLane.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on Elite Bastards.
Chassis:
Cooler Master CSX Broodling Case on ThinkComputers.
Raidmax Iceberg Mid Tower Case on Modders-Inc.
ZXT Tempest Mid Tower Steel Case on TechARP.
Cooling:
Vizo Xena II Notebook Cooler on HardwareLogic.
Thermaltake V1 CPU Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Vigor iSURF II Hard Drive Cooler on AnandTech.
Asus Triton 79 CPU Cooler on FrostyTech.
Displays:
Panasonic Viera 42" Plasma TV on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung SyncMaster 2493HM 24" LCD Monitor on HotHardware.
LG Flatron M2294D 22" LCD TV Monitor on Trusted Reviews.
Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte GeForce 9600 GT 512MB on NeoSeeker.
Galaxy GeForce 9500 GT 512MB on FudZilla.
BFG Tech GeForce GTX 280 H²OC on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB on Pro-Clockers.
Galaxy GeForce 9500 GT OC 512MB on techPowerUp.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake 1500W PSU on Hardware Secrets.
OCZ EliteXStream 800W PSU on Big Bruin.
Miscellaneous:
Olympus E-520 Digital SLR on InsideHardware.
Toshiba DR18DT DVD Recorder on Trusted Reviews.
Renegade Gaming Chair on XSReviews.
From forum member Deltoid: Prompted by my sister's own battle with cancer while pregnant she has started a charity to help other mums battling cancer whilst pregnant or with young children. For more information about the charity or to make a donation see www.mummyswish.org.au. As part of a fund raising drive Mummy's Wish has a signed and framed 2008 State of Origin Canterbury Baby Jersey for auction. Signed by 8 of the 2008 winning QLD team. This jersey is a "one-off" (being the only baby jersey signed by the Qld team). This jersey is a size 1 all in one, beautifully framed with an engraved plate. See Deltoid's thread in the forums for more information.
Caligari Corporation have made trueSpace7.6 available as a free download! Registration is required. trueSpace7.6 is a fully-featured 3D authoring package that will let you model, texture, light, animate and render 3D content. As well as traditional images and movies, you can also make 3D content for online shared spaces, and for Virtual Earth. Thanks Adam!
Mindy sent word about the Rocket Racing League demonstrating its first racing plane in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. During the demonstration, the plane alternated between unpropelled gliding and rocket-powered flight. The rocket is turned off to preserve fuel and to slow the craft, as the airframe is not meant to withstand speeds much greater than 560 kilometres per hour.
Hardware Secrets have a new article looking at how to identify Japanese electrolytic capacitors. Not all electrolytic capacitors are manufactured equally. Japanese and solid caps have better quality, protecting your equipment from the infamous capacitor leakage problem and also increasing the life-span of your equipment, especially if it works at high temperatures, like it is the case with power supplies.
Hardware Zone check out the AMD Puma. … AMD's latest notebook platform, Puma consists of three ingredients:- The new Turion X2 / Turion X2 Ultra mobile processors (codenamed Griffen), an AMD M780G (RS780M) mobile chipset and 802.11a/b/g/n compliant Wi-Fi chip from third party vendors. Discussion in this AMD Puma (related) thread.
The Tech Report look into the rumours that are circulating about how Nvidia is set to exit the chipset business. Puzzled, we asked Nvidia Platform Products PR chief Bryan Del Rizzo to weigh in. Del Rizzo's response came swiftly and left little open for interpretation.
PC Perspective also weigh in on these rumours. It's been a whirl-wind past few weeks for NVIDIA - bad mobility GPUs, the possibility of seeing NVIDIA inside Apple machines and now the death of the NVIDIA chipset products. Quite a bit for a single company to take all at once, but how much truth is there to the idea of the end of the nForce?
OCAU's Folding@Home team has been pushing hard this winter to beat the [H]orde and regain the number one spot. While the team has been contributing over 2.5 Million points per day, we still need your help to increase this number and make the most of the winter season, as during summer this lead tends to drop off somewhat.
The team is still looking for 200 new 8800GT (or greater) cards to fold on, if you are ready to start, then check out this thread for instructions. Don't have a GPU to spare? Folding@Home works on your CPU as well! There's a guide to getting started here.
So, if you would like to help scientists 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.
Some Wiki entries worth a look..
2008 Motorsport Calendar - Listing of the 2008 events in various motorsport championships.
Aquariums – A comprehensive guide to tanks, fish, filtration, plants and much more.
Programs & Links For Overclockers – Handy programs and links to manufacturer websites.
Australian Apple iPhone 3G – Variety of handy information and popular applications.
OCAU Forum Greasemonkey Scripts - Handy scripts that can enhance your forum experience.
Vista Compatibility List – User updated list of games that are compatible with Windows Vista.
Audio Visual & Graphical – List of codec's, editors, conversion and media playback tools.
Photo Printing Vendors - Online based photo printing services available throughout Australia.
Playstation Network IDs – OCAU member listing for the Playstation Network.
Programming Interfaces & Utilities – A variety of languages/editors and websites.
Homebrew – A guide to the wonderful world of brewing beer at home.
Xbox GamerTag Contact List - OCAU member listing for the Xbox Live Network.
Freeware & Open Source – A variety freeware, GPL & Open Source software.
New System Recommendations – Pre-design systems for a variety of applications.
Online Vendors – A lengthy listing of Australian PC vendors, categorised by state.
Team Fortress 2 – Handy information/links and OCAU player listing.
Blu-ray – A comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions.
MythTV – Everything you need to know about MythTV.
Remember, the beauty of a Wiki is that you can make your own pages or edit other people's pages if you have information to share. So, what can YOU add? :)
NASA says it has proof that water exists on Mars, after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander. Dr Boynton says traces of water have only been observed from a distance before by the Mars orbiter."But we've now finally touched it and tasted it. That's one thing that hasn't been done before and I'd like to say from my standpoint, it tastes very fine, I'm very glad to be in this position". Discussion on the forum.
Scientists at MIT have come up with a new fuel cell process that mimics the way plants store the sun's rays, overcoming a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine. Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases.
Tom's Hardware compare Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI based Motherboards. Nvidia's history left us expecting little in the way of improvements from its 790i series chipsets. But we were in for a surprise. In spite of its antiquated 90 nm production process, the new northbridge features a fully modernized design.
QuakeCon 2008, the world's premier multiplayer gaming event is happening right now in Dallas, Texas. QuakeCon isn’t just a gaming event, many of the world’s hottest technology companies are there to demonstrate their products and meet their customers. You can find coverage on GameSpy, MaximumPC and Shacknews.
Dan answers questions about Memory access patterns, de-gooping a CPU, measuring the thickness of one's pipe, and mysterious LCD resolutions. His latest letter can be found here.
TweakTown have a simple guide to buying blu-ray movies from overseas. Where the good ole' DVD is no longer bound by region locked woes, Blu-ray still is. TweakTown assists you bypassing this issue.
Dell made a statement earlier this week regarding Nvidia's mobile graphics chip issue, now Hewlett Packard has released a list of affected notebook models, which may have defective GPUs from Nvidia. A list of notebooks and links can be found here.
Some random time wasters: Amorphous+, 3D Logic, Bollix and Orange Runner.
FearTec's RAM Tree
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Friday, 1-August-2008 14:26:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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RAM is getting so cheap nowadays, you might be thinking it grows on trees..
click for the thread!
Memory:
Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR2 Memory Kit on Virtual-Hideout.
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 4GB DDR2 Kit on Benchmark Reviews.
Motherboards:
Asus P5Q-E P45 LGA775 board on ThinkComputers.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on Legion Hardware.
Gigabyte X48-DS5 LGA775 board on Legit Reviews.
Cooling:
Scythe Shuriken CPU Cooler on MikhailTech.
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU Cooler on Legit Reviews.
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Graphics Cards:
Palit GeForce GTX 280 1GB on Overclockers Club.
ECS GeForce 9500 GT 512MB on OCWorkbench.
Evga GeForce GTX 280 HC Watercooled on FudZilla.
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 256MB on HotHardware.
Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic 512MB on TweakTown.
Power Supply:
Corsair TX750 750W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 650W PSU on bit-tech.
Tuniq Ensemble 1200W PSU on Big Bruin.
Gaming:
Command & Conquer 3 (360) on Games Xtreme.
Hellboy: Science of Evil (Multi) on GameTrailers.
Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360) on Games Xtreme.
Soulcalibur IV (360) on TeamXbox.
Lost Planet (360) on Gaming Nexus.
Soulcalibur IV (PS3) on GameSpy.
Spectral Force 3 (360) on TeamXbox.
Nvidia announced a trio of video cards a couple days ago. The new GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, and the 9500 GT GPUs deliver exceptional graphics quality, performance, and application compatibility, along with support for NVIDIA SLI technology, the industry’s leading multi-GPU solution for gaming and enthusiast platforms across a wide variety of price points.
Anandtech get busy with Foxconn's Black Ops motherboard, aimed for those wanting the best or overlockers wanting to push the limits. Usually we can't wait to get boards off the subzero benching station as the effort required does not justify the end result; not so with the Black Ops. We thoroughly enjoyed using this board at subzero temperatures; it runs insane speeds with relative ease, leading to a truly exhilarating benchmark experience.
Tom's Hardware take a look at Nvidia's graphic card history over the past 13 years. This article will show you that it hasn’t been all successes for Nvidia along the way, and that the company didn’t have an easy time of it in the early days. But it also shows how two companies have managed to do away with most of the competition in the field of graphics cards for gamers.
HardOCP compare VIA's Nano and Intel's Atom processors. These are very different products with a surprising amount of overlap in their intended target markets. VIA's Nano will stretch from mini-notes and UMDs to standard notebooks and optimized desktop PCs. Intel's Atom processor will be found in small MIDs and will stretch into mini-notes and MAYBE some notebooks, etc.
X-bit Labs roundup a variety of Adaptec RAID Controllers. Today's comparison will be devoted to five Adaptec RAID controllers. We will test not only the popular Serial ATA models, but also the solutions supporting SAS storage devices.
Bit-tech have published a hands-on preview of Crysis: Warhead. EA and Crytek are actually billing Warhead as neither an expansion or a sequel to the original game, responding even to direct questions about the matter with the here-nor-there reply of “This is the latest instalment, not a sequel or an expansion.” In other words, though Crysis was announced as a trilogy, this second game is not the second game in the series.
Digit-Life compare Low-End Single and Dual-Core processors from AMD and Intel. We are going to review the slowest modern processors from both competitors: Low-End single-core AMD Sempron LE and Intel Celeron (Conroe-L) processors, as well as the weakest dual-core CPUs: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ and Pentium E2140. These processors are manufactured for a reason, aren't they? So, we'll find out what they can do and how fast.
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