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August 2009
Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 31-August-2009  20:38:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:



















Monday Afternoon #2 (7 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 31-August-2009  14:36:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 recently, AKA "Snow Leopard". DigitalTrends have a complete guide, while Phoronix looked at performance gains. We firmly believe that as of right now these are the most detailed desktop performance numbers available concerning Snow Leopard, but we already have more figures on the way. Discussion here.

Metku have an ancient phone mod. It could have been nice to replace the hardware inside the old Xbox but I wanted to combine the project with the dream of mine, using an old cell as a base for the project.

I4U upgraded WinXP with an SSD. The performance gains are well worth the money especially if you have not to spend a day reinstalling Windows XP and all the apps. That is right I dared to use Linux DD command to copy Windows XP from my old HDD to the new SSD.

HotHardware meanwhile discuss upgrading your laptop to SSD. Upgrading your notebook's legacy hard drive to a new, fast SSD is a substantial upgrade that makes good sense for a number of reasons. First, Solid State Drives offer orders of magnitude higher performance under certain conditions, with blazingly fast random access times. They also produce much less heat versus a standard 2.5-inch notebook hard drive and are virtually immune to shock and vibration trauma that will send your old spinning hard drive to an early grave.

DriverHeaven checked out Quad SLI with the ASUS MARS. Asus have just rewritten the Nvidia rulebook with the release of their 1 grand video card - the Asus MARS. Its basically two 285's on one board with 4GB of high performance ram. Asus sent us TWO of these limited edition boards and we put them in a watercooled system to see just how many frames they can deliver with all the modern gaming titles.

Some odd tidbits: David noticed a mobile phone that turns stoves on and Jason spotted Cockney cash machines. The young people laughed when the ATM asked them if they required "some moolah for ya sky rocket".

Good Game is on tonight, with Batman, Wolfenstein and Shadow Complex, as well as TOG interviews. Catch Good Game Monday nights on ABC2 @ 8:30pm, or late Friday nights on ABC1, just before rage. Watch any episode at www.abc.net.au/goodgame. Watch a higher quality version on ABC's iView service: www.abc.net.au/iview.

Today's timewaster is E Motion, a physics game with tutorial, suggested by Tzorst.



Monday Afternoon (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 31-August-2009  13:48:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Australia's defence force has a new open-source based flight simulator, thanks Paul. According to a Defence spokesman, the simulator boots in about 30 seconds and uses a cluster of 4-core Opteron 2218 servers, with nVidia Quadro FX 5600G graphics cards. The avionics and aerodynamics simulations run on a number of 8-core Opteron systems. All the nodes run Suse Linux.

HWZone report from MSI's Master Overclocking Arena. Master Overclocking Arena 2009 is underway, and we are reporting live from the Shangri-La Hotel, Beijing. An overclocking event not to be missed, stay tuned for the latest up to the minute updates as we cover all the action and more.

Tweaktown were in Beijing recently too. Yesterday we made some time to visit the incredibly vast and massive Beijing computer market for a look at what was on display and how it varies from other markets around that world that we have visited in the past. The visit was not without incident, though.

Meanwhile LegitReviews look back at BlizzCon 2009. BlizzCon 2009 came as fast as it went. The news Blizzard dropped on us last week during their 4th BlizzCon from the Anaheim Convention Center was very exciting and definitely delivered the thirst for previews and fun that we all have come to expect from BlizzCon. Read on to see our recap on this years event.

HotHardware ponder NVIDIA's future with Tegra. To date, the GPU designer has spent some $600 million on Tegra development, with nary a cent in revenue to show for it just yet. Viewed strictly in the short term, it might seem that NVIDIA has mistakenly pumped a good deal of cash into a niche product at a time when it could ill afford to do so. Longer-term, however, there's good reason to think that Tegra really could grow to become a revenue pillar.

If you happen to be near Oxford, England, you could check out this Steampunk Exhibition. It is my singular honor to have been asked to curate the first museum exhibition of Steampunk design. The Museum of the History of Science is located at Oxford University in the original Ashmolean Building. This building housed the oldest museum in the western world. It was eminently appropriate that Steampunk would have it's first, bona fide museum premier at this prestigious location.



Sunday Night Reviews #2 (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 30-August-2009  21:50:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio / Visual:
KEF KHT2005.3 K1 Speaker System on TrustedReviews.
ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim Audio Card on BigBruin.
BenQ Joybee GP1 Mini Projector on LegitReviews.
Sungale ID800WT Digital Photo Frame on CCEReviews.
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GH1 digicam on HWZone.

Storage:
Verbatim 2-Disk RAID External 2TB Hard Drive on InsideHW.
Preview: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB SSD on HWZone.
Kingwin F-35 external HDD on OCClub.
OCZ Throttle 32GB eSATA on PureOC.
Kingston SSDNow V+ SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Thermaltake Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack on DragonSteelMods.
Super Talent 32 GB Pico Drive on OCIA.
Kingston EZ-Dock 2 on Virtual-Hideout.

Power Supply:
Corsair HX750w on OC3D.
OCZ StealthXStream 400W on HWSecrets.

Cases:
SilverStone Fortress FT01 on Motherboards.org.
Thermaltake Element G Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower on Tweaktown.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 30-August-2009  21:27:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cooling:
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus on NinjaLane.
Noctua NH-C12P CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Kingwin XT-1264 HTC CPU Cooler on RBMods.
Tacens Fero notebook cooler on TestSeek.
DeepCool IceWing 5 Pro Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Cooler Master NotePal X2 and U2 Coolers on OCrCafe.
Noctua NF-S12B FLX and NF-S12B ULN Cooling Fans on APHNetworks.

Software:
QuantZ Videogame PC on TestFreaks.

Input Etc:
Genius EasyPen i405 Graphics Tablet on TestSeek.
Wacom Bamboo Fun Digital Pen Tablet on BenchmarkReviews.
Genius EasyPen i405 4" x 5.5" Graphics Tablet on DragonSteelMods.

Memory:
OCZ XMP Ready Series DDR3-1600 6GB Triple Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
OCZ PC3 16000 Gold 6GB Triple Channel on TrustedReviews.



Sunday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 30-August-2009  02:22:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
Asus ROG Maximus III Formula P55 i5 board on OCClub.
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme LGA1366 board on Bjorn3D.
ASUS Crosshair III Formula AM3 board on LegitReviews.
Gigabyte P55-UD5 Preview i5 board on Techgage.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 GHz Socket AM3 Processor on PCStats.
ASUS AT3N7A-1 NVIDIA Ion Motherboard on HWZone.
Gigabyte MA770-UD3 AM3 board on IXBTLabs.
AMD Athlon II X2 250 Processor on OC3D.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Aspire 7535G-824G50Mn - 17.3in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
ASUS Eee PC T91 on HWZone.
Packard Bell EasyNote TJ65-AU-010UK - 15.6in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Acer TravelMate Timeline 8371-944G32N - 13.3in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Dell Latitude 2100 Netbook on TrustedReviews.

Video Cards:
VisionTek 4850 1GB B2 on OCClub.
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4770 512MB on TechGage.
MSI GeForce GTX 260 Lightning on Tweaktown.
Sparkle 285 GTX 2GB on DriverHeaven.
MSI HD 4890 Cyclone SOC 1 GB GDDR5 on TechPowerUp.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 x2 2G/1G on Motherboards.
ASUS EAH 4890/HTDI/1GDD5/A RADEON HD 4890 on GamePyre.



Discovery Launch (5 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 29-August-2009  13:24:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg

After a couple of delays, the Space Shuttle Discovery seems likely to launch in a little over half an hour. The weather is forecast "go" and the launch team is not working any technical issues. There's not going to be too many more of these launches before the shuttles are all retired, so it's worth watching the night launch on NASA TV. Discussion here in the Science forum.


Misc Pics (17 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-August-2009  14:20:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Another big week! Thanks to Ian for the first one. :)

         

         

         



Friday Afternoon (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-August-2009  13:54:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg

IntelInside sends word that there may be in-game psychiatrists in WoW soon. World of Warcraft is so addictive that a psychiatrist is planning to send a team of counsellors into the game to treat players before they lose touch with the real world. I predict them getting killed a lot. :)

Tech Report take a look at Win7 from a desktop user's perspective. Does Windows 7 really live up to the hype? Is it a worthwhile upgrade over Vista and XP for desktop users and enthusiasts? We took the final release of Microsoft's next operating system for a prolonged spin in order to find out.

HotHardware have a little LN2 Core i7 action. While we are used to seeing processors operate in air-cooled settings of around 40'C, the use of LN2 will allow us to push clock speeds all the way down in the -80'C range in order to unlock the overclocking capabilities of both the motherboard and CPU. We paired a Core i7 975 processor with the EVGA X58 Classified motherboard to find out just how far we can go with the X58 platform and Intel's current flagship CPU.

HWZone have a three-way AMD 785G roundup. The heir to the popular mainstream AMD 780G chipset, the 785G has arrived but it appears to have kept with the status quo. Can these three new motherboards from ASUS, ECS and Gigabyte convince us otherwise? We take these boards for a spin in our lab and paint the results for you.

In Hornsby, somebody reacted to excess traffic in their street by putting up a fake "no left turn" sign which was so convincing even the Police believed it. Police said about 200 motorists were pinged over a three-month period, each of them fined $175. Police urged all drivers fined for disobeying the sign to call the State Debt Recovery Office.

HardOCP have a Core i5 Performance Preview, as well as an overclocking preview of the platform. Our first preview of our Intel Core i5 processor that we purchased online last week. We put the 2.66GHz Core i5 model 750 through some overclocking paces to show you what can be achieved easily with an enthusiast air cooler.

Twitter seems to be a convenient way for botnets to communicate. While digging around I found a botnet that uses Twitter as its command and control structure. Basically what it does is use the status messages to send out new links to contact, then these contain new commands or executables to download and run. It’s an infostealer operation.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-August-2009  03:48:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio / Visual:
Razer Moray+ Mobile Gaming Communicator on OCIA.
Panasonic Viera TX-P54Z1 54in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T90 on DigitalTrends.
SteelSeries 5H v2 Gaming Headset on Tech-Reviews.
Logitech Harmony 900 Universal Remote Control on I4U.

Power Supply:
Antec Basiq BP500U 500W on HWSecrets.
Nexus RX-8500 850W on SilentPCReview.
Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W on PureOC.
Enermax Galaxy EVO 1,250W on PCPerspective.

Storage:
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 1 Terabyte SATA HDD on RBMods.
ioSafe Solo 500 GB Rugged USB External Hard Drive on OCIA.
Corsair X128 SSD on Guru3D.
Corsair Flash Voyager GT 128GB Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.
Patriot Corza NAS network storage on Bjorn3D.
Kingston SSDNow V-Series 128GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD on PureOC.
Panasonic UJ-875A Slim Optical Drive on BenchMarkReviews.

Cases:
NZXT Apollo on InsideHW.
Luxa2 LM100 Mini: "Exquisite & Desirable" m-ITX HTPC Case on SilentPCReview.
NZXT Panzerbox LAN Case on TechWareLabs.
Thermaltake Luxa2 LM200 HTPC Case on Pro-Clockers.
Coolermaster HAF 922 on XSReviews.
AZZA Solano 1000 Tower Case on Hi-TechReviews.
Cooler Master Gladiator 600 on NeoSeeker.
Cooler Master HAF 922 Mid Tower on PCShopTalk.
Aerocool Vx-9 Pro Mid-Tower ATX Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Antec Mini P180 Micro-ATX on VerdisReviews.

Misc:
Joby Gorillapod SLR Flexible Tripod on RamblingThoughts.
TRENDnet TPE-80WS 8-Port Power Over Ethernet Web Smart Switch on Tweaktown.
Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot on I4U.



Thursday Afternoon (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 27-August-2009  14:40:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Our new servers are currently surviving a slashdotting, with flying colours. Most users ever online was 2,076, Today at 5:20 AM. Everyone's checking out this cool thread in the Extreme Cooling forum.

SCO are back in the news, with an earlier UNIX copyright decision being overturned. The move is another chapter in a case that appeared to have come to a close nearly two years ago. Novell said it is carefully studying the court's decision, and it is not backing down.

Torrent site Mininova is in legal trouble too, with a court ordering they remove all copyright-infringing torrents. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros. More info here.

Netbooknews take us on a trip to the Kingston USB flash drive plant, to show how these handy gadgets are made. Join us on a tour of the Kingston Manufacturing Plant and learn how a USB is made and gets packaged.

Ages ago I linked to a petition to save Bletchley Park. Well, the Office of the UK Prime Minster has responded to the petition with some (indirectly) good news: In November 2008 English Heritage announced the award of a grant of GBP 330,000 to Bletchley Park to cover urgently needed repairs to the roof, and in March of this year it was announced that Milton Keynes Council, in partnership with English Heritage, will provide a further GBP 600,000 for critical restoration work.

Adelaide has an internet-enabled bus. The i-Commute system utilises a 3G USB dongle plugged into a Wi-Fi router and allows for any Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled device to connect to the internet whilst in transit.

The bones of a dinosaur have been found on a QLD cattle station. The dinosaur awaits official identification but is believed to be a species of the long-necked sauropod. In the meantime, it has been nicknamed Zac. The sheep and cattle station already boasts Australia's largest dinosaur, Cooper, a new titanosaur species, measuring about 26 to 28 metres long.

Des sent in this article about building an Apple 1 from scratch. But going back even further than that is the Apple-1 (a.k.a. the Apple I or the Apple 1), the machine Steve Wozniak invented and first demonstrated at the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club in 1976.

From the lads at Good Game: It's the 100th episode for Australia's show for gamers, by gamers, and there's no better excuse to go on a self-indulgent clip show rampage. Laugh at the awkwardness of the first few episodes, see some of the segments that didn't work, the few that did, and some old friends stop by as well. Also, there will be cake. And that's not a lie. Madden NFL 10 is also looked at on PS3 and Wii, as well as G.I. Joe for Wii, and TMNT Re-shelled. All that plus an appearance from the lads at Pure Pwnage! Catch Good Game on Monday nights @ 8:30pm on ABC2, or late Friday nights on ABC1, just before rage. You can download/stream any ep of Good Game at www.abc.net.au/goodgame.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 26-August-2009  05:09:42 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Mouse/KB:
Ultimat Mouse Mats on XSReviews
Logitech Performance Mouse MX on I4U
Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX on Digital Trends
Mionix Saiph 3200 Gaming Mouse and Alioth 400 Surface on TweakTown
OCZ Behemoth Double-Laser Gaming Mouse on OCC
Razer Arctosa USB Gaming Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard on APH Networks
Logitech G19 on Inside HW

Storage:
In Win Ammo encrypted hard drive enclosure on Tech Report
Thermaltake VI-ON 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure on TestFreaks
Rosewill RX82-MP-SUF82-BLK on Bjorn3D
QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS on CCE Reviews
Thermaltake Vi-on 2.5” SATA HDD USB Enclosure on iGadgetLife
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 on Hardware Logic
QNAP TS-809 Pro Turbo 8-Bay NAS on Tweak Town
Vantec Nexstar TX 2.5" HDD Enclsoure on Pro-Clockers
OCZ Agility 120GB MLC Solid State Drive on OCIA.net
Patriot 64GB Torqx SSD on OCC
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 2TB Network Attached Storage on TestFreaks

Home Theatre:
Western Digital WD TV Mini Media Player on TweakTown
Cowon S9 Media Player on Driverheaven
Pioneer BDP-LX52 Blu-ray player on TrustedReviews

Misc:
Sumo Lounge Omni on Phoronix
Vantec ezShare Pro Transfer Cable on Pro-Clockers
PURE EVOKE-2S and PURE AVANTI Flow Digital Radios on Ocau member - Draco II's blog.
Antec Earthwatts 750W PSU on JohnnyGURU.com
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition on TrustedReviews

Cooling:
Thor's Hammer HDT-S126384 CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus & TX3 Heatsinks on OC3D
ASUS Triton 81 Universal Heatsink on Pc Perspective
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets
Nexus FLC-3000 Heatsink on Testseek.com
Scythe Big Shuriken SCBSK-1000 Heatsink on FrostyTech
Scythe Kaze Q 3.5" Fan Controller on PcShopTalk
Corsair H50 Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler on Techgage.com

Case:
AeroCool Vx-E - Performance Gaming Case on Legit Reviews
In Win X-Fighter Mid Tower Chassis on ThinkComputers.org
Cooler Master Elite 310 Case on Neoseeker
Thermaltake Element T Mid-Tower PC Case on TestFreaks
In Win X-Fighter AL-13 Series Gaming Case on Tech-Reviews.co.uk
Lian Li PC-A70F on PureOverclock
Kingwin F-35 Enclosure on Overclocker Cafe
Thermaltake Element T Case on Overclockers Online

Display:
Panasonic 1080p 3D HDTV on Digital Trends
Sony Bravia KDL-46Z5500 46in LCD TV on TrustedReviews

Laptop:
Alienware M17x on Digital Trends
Cooler Master SNA 95 Universal Power Adapter on Benchmark Reviews
Suzuki Kuiper 1562 WKS Notebook on Hardware Zone
HP Pavilion dv6-1240ea - 15.6in Laptop on TrustedReviews
Alienware M17x Laptop on Driverheaven.net

Videocard:
MSI N275GTX Lightning on Guru3D
Asus Matrix GTX285 on Motherboards.org
Onboard Graphics Shootout – AMD 790GX vs. 785G on Tweak Town

Audio:
Head-Direct HiFiMAN EF2 Headphone Amplifier on TechPowerUp
Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Microphone on BigBruin.com

Motherboard:
ASUS P7P55D Premium P55 on Pc Perspective
MSI 790FX-GD70 - AM3 High End Mainboard on Tweakpc.de
Asus P7P55D Premium Lynnfield Motherboard on HotHardware.com



Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-August-2009  21:46:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more interesting things from the forums:


AMD2400 reviewed the
Asus P6T i7 board

windwithme reviewed the
MSI X-Slim X600 Notebook

as well as Corsair's
CMFSSD-64GBG2D SSD



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-August-2009  20:25:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a quick snapshot of what's going on in the forums. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also something a lot of people don't know about is the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu).

[TEAM.AU] P55 first look... Gigabyte P55-UD6 + i7 870 in Overclocking & Hardware.
New ghetto mouse pad in Overclocking & Hardware.
I finnally managed to oc a celeron 2.2ghz e1500 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook Revealed: 12hr battery, HSPA and GPS in Portable & SFF.
Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB (ST32000542AS) hard drive in Storage & Backup.
AS SSD Benchmark - Post your results in Storage & Backup.
J&W IG31-MKII first impressions in Intel Hardware.
Snow leopard available early - 28th Aug! in Apple Hardware & Software.
Blu-Ray Must Haves in Audio Visual.
Agent - Rockstar's (R*) exclusive PS3 title in Sony Consoles.
FIFA 10 in Game Consoles.
The oven trick works in Video Cards & Monitors.
Hacking into your own laptop (story included in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
iPhones in a business environment in Mobile Phones.
Follow me on your iPhone? in Photography.
Going back to WoW: How to break it to my wife in MMORPGs.
Check out this cool robotic hand in Science.
Israeli scientists show DNA evidence can be faked in Science.
Oz Garage TV Show now streaming in Motoring.
Iron Chef August: Almonds! Voting Thread in Geek Food.
Student fee defeated in Senate in Current Events.
Ban high-caffeine drinks, says NSW Govt in Current Events.
Best movie moment of your childhood in Entertainment.



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-August-2009  16:07:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our many sponsors have special offers and deals on fitness supplements, games, software, media players, web hosting, office chairs, optical media and a huge range of PC components. Check 'em out!


Tuesday Morning (18 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-August-2009  03:21:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've updated our OCAU Server Hardware wiki page with current info, for those who were wondering. More pics etc soon. BTW, I've moved all services off the USA servers now, so if you notice anything weird, let me know. :)

NASA's Shuttle Discovery is launching in about 12 hours from now, Tuesday afternoon our time. Space shuttle Discovery is in the final stages of preparation before its flight to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Not many of these launches left before the Shuttles are all retired, and this one will be a night launch, so worth catching on NASA TV.

A printed magazine will have a video advertisement in September, the first ever. The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries. The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned. What's the bet someone finds a way to hack these little gadgets into something useful. :)

The ACCC has proposed a revamp of Telstra wholesale pricing. Announcing the changes, ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said: "we aim to give a direction to industry about the level of price the ACCC considers is a reasonable starting point for negotiations between Telstra and its wholesale customers over the next three years."

Top Gear fans might get a chuckle out of this lego version of the show's hosts. Legoland designers were so impressed when the car scooped BBC TV's Top Gear Car of the Year that they captured the moment in the famous plastic bricks.

The Pirate Bay's woes continue, with their ISP being ordered to disconnect them, thanks Chris. The court ordered the site's major bandwidth supplier, Black Internet, to disconnect TPB from the Internet or face penalties of 500,000 kroner ($70,600). The ISP complied, saying that it had no choice but to uphold the law. They are apparently back up on a different connection now, though.

There's been a few conferences on recently. LegitReviews report on vendor booths and babes & cosplayers of BlizzCon, while DVHardware have booth babes and case modding from Gamescom. PC Perspective report on days 2 and 3 of Quakecon, (with a DX 11 preview in DiRT 2), while Futurelooks went to Fragapalooza in Canada.

Bjorn3D attended a Lynnfield Core i5/i7 demo, as did HotHardware. The affair promised to provide an informative look at Intel's Lynnfield processor, along with the P55 platform. Representatives from Gigabyte, Intel, and Kingston were available to provide demonstrations and answer questions on their upcoming technology and product line-ups.

Wolfenstein was released recently, and Techspot have a graphics performance report. As with any new game release there is always the chance it may not run on your current setup, or at the very least, not run well. That's the reason we like to bring you a complete set of tests based on new games such as Wolfenstein using a range of current graphics cards and some other not so current ones.

Tweaktown checked out CPU & memory performance in Windows 7 and Vista. Today we'll be looking at two core components; the memory and the CPU. We’ll be using a triple channel memory configuration with our Core i7 920 processor clocked at 4GHz. We'll be running our testbed through our standard memory benchmark line-up which does a good job of testing both the memory and CPU.



Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 24-August-2009  20:39:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some interesting things from the forums:


triggerpeg compared the
Canon 70-200mm f2.8IS & f4.0

mAJORD unlocked an
AMD Sempron 140

dinos22 checked out the
GB P55-UD6 and Intel i7 870


ruffy01 has a cool
watercooled TJ07 project

Team.AU has some LN2
4890 quad-fire action

Deanzo played with an i7 975
& Asus Rampage II Extreme



Monday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 24-August-2009  14:58:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Australian taxpayers are being targeted by scammers, warns the ATO. Some of the scams cited included a fake website that mirrored the ATO's and offered a $9500 tax refund, and an internet-generated cold-calling scam that directed victims to phone a number and asked them to hand over personal information. Scammers also contacted victims via text message.

The Government's Future Fund has sold many of their Telstra shares. TELSTRA shares fell almost five per cent as nearly one billion shares were traded after the Federal government's Future Fund sold a major stake in the telco. Telstra shares lost 18 cents on Friday, or 4.93 per cent of their value, to close at $3.47, their lowest close in almost a month.

The case between AFACT and iiNet continues, with computer forensics playing a part. A senior scientist at Northrop Grumman in the U.S., Michael Caloyannides visited iiNet and Telstra facilities in Sydney and Perth last week to prepare his affidavit.

PC Perspective have an SSD Roundup. Today we test new offerings from OCZ, PhotoFast, Corsair and Crucial, pitting them against the Intel X25-M G2. Techspot have one too. As a follow-up to our previous SSD coverage, today we will be looking at four popular mainstream SSD offerings which include the A-Data S592 128GB, Corsair P Series 128GB, OCZ Agility 120GB and the OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB.

LegionHW checked out Wolfenstein Multiplayer Performance. Today we are taking a quick look at the multiplayer performance using various high-end graphics cards in the new Wolfenstein game. This is the sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which has been built using the id Tech 4 engine, a heavily modified version we might add.

Google has been forced to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger, thanks Joanna. Model Liskula Cohen sued Google in January in the hope of forcing the company to reveal the person responsible for allegedly defamatory comments on a blog called Skanks in NYC, which was hosted by Google's Blogger service.

Glasnt spotted that MySpace has turned off auto-playing music. But all that popularity comes at a price - billions of free streaming songs are costing MySpace up to $10 million a month in streaming fees, says a source, and the joint venture may lose $20 million or more this year. To minimize those losses, MySpace has made a big change to its product - songs no longer auto-play when you visit a MySpace user profile.

BFM sent in this article about the carbon footprint of downloading vs shipping media. The worst-case retail scenario - a customer driving to a retail store and buying a CD - produces an average of 3,200 grams of CO2 per album. The best-case digital-download scenario - a customer downloading a CD's worth of tunes and not burning them to a CD-R - produces an average of 400 grams of CO2.



The Overclocker Issue 6 (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 24-August-2009  12:58:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There's a new issue of The Overclocker to read. Check it out here.

In this month's magazine we unveil overclocking's new super contest
We examine the fall-out from Gigabyte's World Championship Finals
We find out how to break the SuperPi World Record
We see a load of overclockers naked.
And much much more!


Discussion here.



The Imperator (5 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 23-August-2009  20:18:23 (GMT +10) - by matthudson

Forum moderator BlueSmurf has posted an update for his massive scratch built computer case The Imperator. For those that are being exposed to the Imperator for the first time, you're probably wondering what the hell it is. Well, put simply, it's a 1m long Star Destroyer PC case. Lots of brand new close ups and even a time-lapse video detailing the latest construction efforts.


Click here for the worklog

Discussion here in our modding forums.



Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 23-August-2009  20:14:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:



















Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 23-August-2009  04:05:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Vantec NexStar Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock on TechPowerUp.
Crucial 128GB SSD (CT128M225) on Bjorn3D.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB Solid State Drive on BigBruin.
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 Laptop Hard Drive on TechWareLabs.

Cooling:
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 Special Edition Intel i7 Cooler on Tweaknews.
Tuniq TX-3 Thermal Compound on OCOnline.
NZXT Sentry 2 LCD Touchscreen Fan Controller on BenchMarkReviews.
Scythe Zipang 2 SCZP-2000 Heatsink on Frostytech.

Video Cards:
BFG GeForce GTX 295 H2OC LE on Guru3D.
AMD 4890 Roundup - XFX/Powercolor/Asus on DriverHeaven.
VisionTek HD 4770 on NeoSeeker.

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H AM3 board on TrustedReviews.
MSI X58M mATX LGA1366 board on NeoSeeker.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz AM3 Processor on Tweaktown.
AMD Phenom II X3 705e and Phenom II X4 905e Processors on LegitReviews.
ECS X58B-A2 LGA1366 board on PCShopTalk.
Intel Core i7 975 LGA1366 CPU on Motherboards.org.

Software:
Sherlock Holmes Vs. Jack the Ripper PC game on GamePyre.
Super Laser Racer PC game on TestFreaks.

Cases:
Enermax STARAY on GamePyre.
SilverStone Raven RV02 on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake Element T on OCClub.

Portable:
Acer Aspire Timeline 13.3-inch ultraportable notebook on TechReport.
HTC Touch Pro2 smartphone on DigitalTrends.
Lenovo IdeaPad U350 notebook on HWZone.
Sony VAIO W netbook on HWZone.

Input Etc:
Logitech Anywhere MX Mouse on I4U.
OCZ Behemoth Gaming Mouse on HWSecrets.
Mionix Alioth 320 & 400 Mousepads on RBMods.

Audio Visual:
Asus EHD3-100 Dual Hybrid TV Card on Bjorn3D.
Callpod Dragon v2 Bluetooth Headset on DragonSteelMod.
Samsung SyncMaster LD190 LCD Monitor on FutureLooks.
Genius GHP-05Live Headphones on TechWareLabs.
Axis Communications M1031-W Network Camera on TechWareLabs.
Warpia Wireless USB Display Adapter on LegitReviews.
19" Sanyo DP19648 720p Widescreen LCD HDTV on TestFreaks.
Vuzix iWear AV310 Widescreen Video Eyewear on Tweaktown.



Saturday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 22-August-2009  16:13:35 (GMT +10) - by matthudson

Blizzard have shown off Cataclysm at BlizzardCon. Blizzard Entertainment kicked off BlizzCon 2009 by showcasing its third World of Warcraft expansion. Cataclysm - which introduces two new playable races - is expected to bring "sweeping changes" to Azeroth.

Apple are denying denying Google Voice. - In responses to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) inquiries about Google Voice, Apple today denied that it has rejected the application, AT&T said it played no part in Apple's iPhone application review process, and Google asked the agency to redact its answer about Google Voice's App Store status.

Microsoft have lets the public loose at their new X-box controller. Microsoft has allowed the public to get their hands on its new hands-free games controller for the first time. The US firm showed off the "Natal" technology, designed for use with its Xbox 360 console, at the European games convention gamescom in Germany.

A small tweak is allowing free trials of Windows 7. By deleting one small text file from a Windows installation DVD, users can choose to install any of five different editions, according to Woody Leonard, a contributing editor to the Windows Secrets newsletter.

64 bit Google Chrome will soon be running on linux. As open-source proponents will tell you, there are several advantages to running Linux, and the open-source camp is about to have another bragging point, at least if you're a Chrome user. Google Chrome will soon be available in 64-bit form, but only for Linux.

How much does it really cost to build a motherboard? The pressure is on the motherboard makers to deliver affordable P55 solutions. Without affordable motherboards, Lynnfield will fail - so Intel and end users are both expecting a healthy supply of ~$100 motherboards. As I'm about to show you, doing so is quite difficult.

There's a new Segway-eske mode of transport on the way. As much as there is to like about the Segway, it's not the most practical option out there - it's bulky and expensive. The Orbis Urban Mobility Vehicle, on the other hand, could do a lot to make scooting a smidge more plausible.

Looking for a weekend project? How about a fireball cannon? This build is not for the casual or haphazard inventor. This project is inherently dangerous. DO NOT DO THIS PROJECT - unless you know what you are doing. We are not responsible for any damage to self or property you may cause with the information found in this article.



Misc Pics (23 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-August-2009  13:55:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A bumper crop this week!

         

         

         



Friday Morning (5 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-August-2009  04:09:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

This has probably been there for months, but I noticed a few days ago that YouTube now has a cool "Statistics & Data" dropdown thing on each video, and you have to choose to see the comments now. Interesting.

NASA are planning a night launch of Discovery, which I guess will be next Wednesday our time. Commanded by veteran astronaut Rick "C.J." Sturckow, the STS-128 mission crew will deliver refrigerator-sized racks full of equipment, including the COLBERT treadmill, an exercise device named after comedian Stephen Colbert.

Speaking of space stuff, the Stardust project has found an amino acid in a comet. "Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

VRZone have an SSD Stackup. The burning question for enthusiasts is: Are the supposed benefits of SSDs worth the added cost? We've rounded up seven solid state drives from various manufacturers to answer this question.

FatMan spotted this article about 37.7 trillion hard drive simulations to determine which RAID configuration best suits various scenarios. If you absolutely, positiviely can never, ever, ever lose your data and have it go offline for a second, you need a 4 disk RAID 1. It never failed in over 1 million simulations.

TheAge have an article about people volunteering CPU time for distributed computing projects. AUSTRALIANS are curing cancer and addressing global warming in their sleep. From classical musicians to council workers, they are donating their idle computer time to science - BOINCing, to be precise. Naturally we'd like you to be Folding for Team 24. :) Discussion here.

PCPerspective compare mid-range GPUs. We will pin Gigabyte's GTS 250 and 9600GT against ATI's first 40nm GPU dubbed the Radeon 4770. Let's see what performance offerings these graphics cards will give us in our gaming and GPGPU benchmarks.

ITNews have pictures inside Equinix's new datacentre in Sydney. Sydney2 has also instituted a 'lights out' policy in the data centre when no one is inside. As network administrators swipe their access cards, a path of sensor lights illuminates a path to their co-location cage. Upon entry, motion sensors trigger light in that area to enable them to carry out their work in normal lighting conditions. I believe OCAU is now hosted in the Sydney1 datacentre, btw.

Not got enough buttons on your mouse? Try this one with a dozen more. The Naga, as it's so beautifully called, gives users a dozen customizable buttons on the side in order to take some of those keyboard macros (or just the 1 - 12 number keys) and put them within thumb's reach. Am I the only person who accidently hits random buttons when picking up his mouse? God knows what I'd end up opening with 12 more buttons to hit.

Mpot spotted this big list of Windows 7 secrets. Few, however, have noticed one small but hopefully appreciated feature: WordPad can now read and write both the Word 2007-compatible Office Open XML file format but also the OpenDocument specification that IBM and Sun have been advocating.

Today's timewaster is this multitasking tester. How well can you multitask? Put your multitasking skills to the test by seeing just how many games you can play at once! Discussion here.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-August-2009  03:11:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cooling:
Thermaltake MeOrb Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Scythe Kaze Server 5.25" Fan Controller on PCShopTalk.
Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus Socket 1156 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Evercool Rifling Fan 80mm RF-8 on OCClub.
AMA Phantom CPU cooler on OCClub.
CoolerMaster Hyper TX3 CPU cooler on OCModShop.
Corsair Hydro H50 - Low Cost Water Cooling on Metku.
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller on HWSecrets.

Input Etc:
Ulti=Mat Breathe Heavy Fabric FX-3 mousepad on HWPacers.
G-Cube Breeze-Tini G4T-10BR 2.4Ghz Notebook Wireless Optical Mouse on Tweaknews.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Sony VAIO VGN-NW11S/S - 15.5in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook on ThinkComputers.
Mesh Matrix II 955BE Hush Gaming PC on OC3D.
HP Pavilion Slimline s5160f prebuilt PC on DigitalTrends.
HP iPAQ Data Messenger smartphone on HWZone.
Samsung I7500 Galaxy Icon Android Mobile Smartphone on RamblingThoughts.
Dell Studio 1555 Midnight Blue on TrustedReviews.

Cases:
Xclio Godspeed One Advanced on Hi-TechReviews.
GMC R4 Bulldozer LAN case on NeoSeeker.
Cooler Master Gladiator 600 on Motherboards.org.
Cooler Master Sileo 500 RC-500-KKR3-GP quiet case on BenchmarkReviews.
Thermaltake Element G on OCClub.
Silverstone Sugo SG05 and SG06: Gaming mini-ITX cases on SilentPCReview.



OCAU - Now Hosted by Internode! (135 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 20-August-2009  15:41:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Hopefully you've noticed the blistering speed of our new servers and hosting. I'll tell you all about OCAU's new servers in an upcoming article, but for now I wanted to let you know that after a 3 month stint overseas, we are now hosted in Australia again. Our new hosting is very kindly provided by Internode, in a Sydney datacentre. Internode need no introduction really, being one of the largest ISPs in the country, and the speed of OCAU today is testament to how awesome they are. So, thanks to Simon, Kingsley, Scott, Kate and Marcus from Internode who organised and approved everything. Here's to our new home, hopefully for a very long time!


Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 20-August-2009  14:21:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
ASUS My Cinema EHD3-100 Dual Hybrid TV Card on GamePyre.
Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray Player on TrustedReviews.
Samsung SyncMaster P2350 LCD Monitor on CCEReviews.
X-mini II Capsule Speaker on HWZone.
Samsung LE40B550 - 40in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Onkyo HTX-22HD + SKS11 Surround Sound System on TrustedReviews.
LG HS102 - Ultra Mobile Projector on TrustedReviews.
Altec Lansing BackBeat 906 Stereo Bluetooth Headset on TrustedReviews.
LG 55LH90 HDTV on DigitalTrends.
Sharp HT-SB200 Soundbar on TrustedReviews.

Power Supply:
BFG LS1200 1250W on JonnyGuru.
Coolermaster Extreme Power Plus 550W on RBMods.
SilverStone Element ST50EF-Plus 500W on HWSecrets.

Video Cards:
Powercolor HD 4770 PCS 512 MB on TechPowerUp.
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4770 on I4U.
Asus Bravo 9500 media centre card on TrustedReviews.

Storage:
Kingston SSDNow V 128GB Laptop Upgrade Kit on Bjorn3D.
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB Solid State Disk on Tweaktown.
QNAP 639 Pro NAS System on DriverHeaven.
Super Talent Pico Mini 16GB USB Drive on Bjorn3D.
Kingston Data Traveler 200 32GB Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 on HWZone.
Patriot Memory PCXL25SR Convoy XL 2.5" Dual HotSwap RAID Enclosure on FutureLooks.



New Servers! (59 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 20-August-2009  04:45:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Well, if you're reading this, you are seeing the new servers. Everything seems to be humming along smoothly, but feel free to let me know of any oddness. I'll be posting more info on our new hosting arrangements and server hardware soon!


Outage Tonight (22 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 19-August-2009  17:31:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU will be a little flaky from about midnight onwards this evening (Sydney time) as I will be moving us to new servers. More details will be forthcoming after the smoke has cleared. :) You don't need to change anything at your end, the process should be completely transparent.


Wednesday Morning (5 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 19-August-2009  10:28:33 (GMT +10) - by matthudson

Dan has more letters! Heavy heatsinks, motherboard power connectors, RAM disks and the 3gb barrier and keyboard lovers.

Acer is jumping on the touch bandwagon. Another company producing yet more products that take advantage of Windows 7's much-vaunted touch capabilities? Amazing but true, at least according to DigiTimes, which is reporting that Acer is set to launch no less than three "touch-enabled products" loaded with Windows 7.

Google Chrome OS screenshots have apparently been sighted. A number of screenshots have since surfaced online today, claiming to offer a glimpse at what the upcoming operating system may look like. The images reveal an overall minimal interface, including a Mac OS X-style dock at the top of the screen offering easy access to a number of Google services such as Gmail, YouTube, and Google Reader.

Microsoft have asked for the Word injunction to be halted. A judge last week issued an injunction that would force Microsoft to stop selling versions of Word with a custom XML function that a jury found infringes on a patent held by Canadian software maker I4i. In its "emergency motion," made Tuesday, Microsoft asked an appeals court to halt that injunction and also to speedily hear the company's appeal, once it is filed.

IBM are one step closer to DNA based semiconductors. The latest research breakthrough from IBM was made in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology. The breakthrough uses DNA, the building blocks of the human body, as the starting point for microprocessors built at under 22nm size.

The PS3 Slim has been announced, and price drops are expected. Sony today officially announced the PS3 Slim at GamesCom. As previously reported, the PS3 Slim will retail for $299.99 when it is launched during the first week of September. Sony says that the PS3 Slim will have all the functionality of the currently available PS3 models and will be available in a single 120GB SKU.

A new study has found Twitter messages are pointless babble. Pear Analytics, based in San Antonio, Texas, said that it randomly sampled 2,000 messages from the public stream of Twitter and separated them into six categories. Pear said "pointless babble" accounted for 811 "tweets" or 40.55 per cent of the total number of messages sampled.

Today's timewaster is This Is The Only Level. The elephant forgot the rest of the levels, but luckily he still has one left! Help him beat it in all his metagaming glory. Use your keen knowledge of gaming and dexterity to manhandle your way through a variety of challenges. Get your mind out of the box for once! Take it outside for a walk, or maybe grab a bite to eat with it.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 19-August-2009  03:29:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
Asus Rampage Gene II MicroATX LGA1366 board on XbitLabs.
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe i5 board preview on OCClub.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE AM3 CPU on OC3D.
AMD Phenom 955 II X4 AM3 CPU on XSReviews.
GIGABYTE P55-UD6 Lynnfield Motherboard Video Unboxing and Preview on Tweaktown.

Portable:
Acer Aspire 7735Z-424G32Mn - 17.3in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Asus G51VX-RX05 Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
Delorme Earthmate GPS LT-20 USB GPS Receiver on TestFreaks.

Cooling:
Thermaltake Massive23 CS Notebook Cooler on OCIA.
Corsair H-50 Water Cooling System on NinjaLane.
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Acoustifan 120mm Anti-Vibration Fan Gasket on OCModShop.
Thermaltake ISGC-100 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
AeroCool Touch 2000 LCD Fan Controller on ThinkComputers.

Cases:
Azza Solano 1000 ATX Full Tower on LegitReviews.
SilverStone SUGO SG06 mini-ITX on BenchmarkReviews.
Silverstone FT01 on DriverHeaven.
Thermaltake Element G on BigBruin.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-August-2009  16:18:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a quick snapshot of what's going on in the forums:

[VIDEO] Gigabyte Open Overclocking Competition (AU in World Final) in OC & HW.
Are you upgrading to Core i5 / i7? in Intel Hardware.
First Images of Alleged Apple Mobile Internet Device Transpire in Apple Hardware & Software.
My new favourite statistic - 360 owners don't look in here! in Sony Consoles.
How can a pc be UNIQUELY identified online? in Programming & Software Development.
.html vs .htm in Programming & Software Development.
Top 10 of viruses? in General Software.
Section 8 - Open Beta Client (Worldwide) in Games.
ID: RAGE in Games.
Prettiest out of the box Linux distro? in Other Operating Systems.
Home Server - OS, etc Setup? in Other Operating Systems.
Man on Mars in Science.
NASA aims to move Earth in Science.
Memory test: the effect of sleep on temporal memory in Science.
TomTom for iPhone released in Mobile Phones.
Glow-stick and stop-motion animation in Photography.
Canon Sports Photographers. Stuck until the 60D? Or go Nikon/PentaX in Photography.
The Bird Thread - Part Deux. SHOW US YOUR BIRD in Pets & Animals.
NSW Police Given Device To Detect Illegal Tints in Motoring.
Decided: Porsche and VW merging in Motoring.
Newscorp to start charging for online content in Current Events.
Man carries assault rifle to Obama protest -- and it's legal in Current Events.
Mini Review - Wet Shaving w/ Merkur Heavy Duty Double Edge in Sport, Fitness & Health.



Tuesday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-August-2009  15:33:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Four Corners had an interesting show last night about internet security in the light of Australia's commitment to national highspeed broadband, thanks ikt. Info including more airing dates/times here, or you can watch it on ABC iView here. The superfast internet will provide enormous benefits to Australia, but both law enforcement agencies and the industry are rightly worried. Andrew Fowler reports on the very real threat posed by cyber crims.

However as a followup, SMH report that Australian Federal Police computers were hacked in response to their surveillance of a hacking forum. A spokeswoman for the federal police confirmed that the hacker broke into a computer system used in its investigation but denied that any evidence was compromised, saying the computer was not connected to other federal police systems.

XbitLabs checked out seven large HDD's. Some time ago we already discussed the first HDDs with 500 GB platters. Now time has come to compare side by side seven solutions with 1.5 and 2 TB storage capacities.

Meanwhile Metku have a gaming mousepad roundup. In the Assembly Summer '09, while by day we spend our time modding at the Dremel stand, we spend the nights gaming. So this time we decided to make some use of all of the gaming-time which we rack up at the event and write a Gaming Mouse Mat roundup. Included are: Ulti-mat Breathe F-X3, Ulti-mat Solid X3, Roccat Taito and Steelseries S&S.

From csimpson: In the course of my work, I got to go to Blizzard and have a sit-down with the single player campaign of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. I thought all the regulars might be interested in checking out what's new with the game and what's stayed the same, so here are my thoughts. I've also put together a slideshow of screenshots from the single-player campaign and cinematics. I hope y'all enjoy it - there aren't too many spoilers! Kotaku also has some great coverage.

PCStats toured an LED factory, while Tweaktown went to the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. This event is the premier expo where expert attendees learn about the latest developments in flash memory, learn to design with the latest flash chips, find new tools for developing flash applications, hear about the latest market trends, find new ways to replace disks in applications, identify new applications for non-volatile memory and find new methods for reducing power consumption.

FrostyTech report on new cooling technologies. This includes vapour chambers, thermoacoustic and phase change waterchilling, conduction cooled PCB and stirling Cycle Cryo Coolers among many others.

BFM sent in a story about an IM client donating CPU cycles without making it very clear to its users. Turns out those of us who have been using the IM client Digsby have also been donating our idle CPU cycles to research. The question is, have we been researching cures for cancer, or the next atom bomb?

Tweaktown have a ATI Catalyst vs NVIDIA ForceWare in Win7 performance test, while Guru3D compared game performance in Win7 vs Vista. With Windows 7 already released on MSDN as Final, Guru3D figured now would be a good time to look at ATI, NVIDIA, Single- and Multi-GPU game performance in-between Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Dave sent in this guide to making your own diamond thermal compound! Without the compound, small imperfections in the surface of the heat sink can render the heat sink almost useless and lesser compounds can actually insulate your processor. Thermal compounds that are available for purchase have remained unchanged for some time. So I descided it was time to reinvent my thermal compound needs with some diamond dust!



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-August-2009  14:12:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Software:
Windows 7 Media Center on DigitalTrends.
Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt PC game on GamePyre.
Joint Task Force PC game on GamePyre.

Video Cards:
MSI N275GTX Lightning GTX 275 1792 MB on TechPowerUp.
XFX Radeon HD 465X-YAF2 on Motherboards.org.
VisionTek 4770 on Bjorn3D.
Asus GTX 285 Matrix on MadShrimps.
ASUS EAH4770 FML/DI/512MD5/A Radeon HD 4770 on PCStats.

Cases:
Coolermaster Sileo 500 on RBMods.
SilverStone Sugo SG04B SFF on Tweaktown.
Chieftec BL-01B on OCClub.

Storage:
Crucial M225 Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews.
OCZ Vertex TURBO SSD on Guru3D.
SilverStone Raven RVS01 HDD enclosure on Phoronix.
A-DATA 32GB XPG Series Xupreme USB Flash Drive on LegitReviews.



Monday Night (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 17-August-2009  21:06:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NASA's Ares I-X is fully assembled and moving closer to a test launch. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle stands ready in NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building. Ares I-X will form the backbone of NASA's future human spaceflight once the Shuttles are retired.

China seems to have backed down on net filtering software. A top Beijing official said that a controversial internet filter software was optional for all users after plans to install it on computers sold in China triggered a storm of protest. "After you install the software, you can use it or you can decide not to use it," said Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology. Keep on top of the Australian internet filtering debate via our Wiki page, which I note Jay is still diligently updating with new info.

Diskeeper say they will be pre-emptively stopping defragmentation soon. But the filter driver is designed to weed out about 75 percent of fragmentation before it ever occurs, by intercepting the data before it is written to the file system, and organizing it appropriately. Hrm, is fragmentation really an issue nowadays? I haven't manually defragged a hard drive in years.

QuakeCon was on recently, and LegitReviews have 15 case mods they thought worthy of attention. Meanwhile AMD demoed some DX11 hardware there, with coverage on PC Perspective and LegitReviews. This SDK demo was showing off shadowing effects that are made easier in DX11 - notice the softness of the shadows as they run along the ground away from the pillars.

Still at QuakeCon, LegitReviews checked out the vendor booths, while PCPerspective has Day 1 general coverage and Tech Report have a new Rage trailer. More than 2,600 gamers (and counting) rushed the doors of the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas today to kick off North America's largest computing gaming event dubbed Quakecon 2009.

Tim Sweeney has predicted (some way off, admittedly), the end of the GPU. This presentation was delivered in a context where Intel will introduce Larrabee, a graphics processor that gets rid of almost all (except texture filtering) fixed graphics functionalities.

Here's an amazing tiny Xbox mod. Enter the Xbox Micro, a 1-inch thick celebration of all that is good and holy about the world of DIY mods. It took six months to make, with a few clever design decisions along the way, but it looks good enough to make even the ninja-black Wii suck its gut in.



Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-August-2009  17:31:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:



















Sunday Afternoon Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-August-2009  16:25:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable:
Asus Eee PC 1005HA Seashell Netbook on FutureLooks.
Samsung Omnia PRO B7320 mobile phone on HWZone.
HP ProBook 4411s laptop on HWZone.

Storage:
Thermaltake Max4 Active Cooling eSATA and USB 3.5" HDD Enclosure on TestFreaks.
QNAP TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS on PCPreview.
Synology Disk Station DS409slim NAS on BigBruin.
Intel X25-M 160gb SSD Drive (34nm) on DriverHeaven.
Bone Collection USB Flash Drives on TechWareLab.
RunCore 32GB Pro IV SSD Home Theater PC Upgrade on Tweaktown.
G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD on PureOC.

Cooling:
XClio One Notebook Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller on Bjorn3D.

Cases:
In Win X-Fighter Mini-Tower on Tweaktown.
SilverStone Raven RV02 on HWZone.
Thermaltake Element G on NeoSeeker.
Thermaltake Element T on Motherboards.org.
NZXT Panzerbox on RBMods.
nMediaPC HTPC 8000 Wood MCE Case on BenchmarkReviews.
GMC X-7 'X-Station' on OCClub.
In Win X-Fighter Mid Tower on Modders-Inc.
Lian Li PC-8N on HWSecrets.



Sunday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-August-2009  15:09:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard and CPU:
Asus Rampage II GENE MicroATX LGA1366 board on OCClub.
Asus M4A79T Deluxe AM3 board on Bjorn3D.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE AM3 CPU on Bjorn3D.
EVGA X58 SLI Classified E760 LGA1366 board on TrustedReviews.
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe P55 i5 board on Tweaktown.
ASUS P7P55DX Deluxe P55 i5 board on Motherboards.org.
EVGA X58 x3 Classified LGA1366 board on OC3D.
Intel DP55KG Motherboard Preview for i5 on LegitReviews.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE AM3 CPU on LostCircuits.

Input Etc:
Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard on InsideHW.
Zowie P-RF Mousing Surface on DragonSteelMods.
Ulti-mat Breathe F-X3 Mousing Surface on DragonSteelMods.

Audio / Visual:
Jabra Halo Stereo Bluetooth Headset on TrustedReviews.
Panasonic Viera TX-P42V10 42in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Astone Media Gear AP-100 1080p Media Player video review on Tweaktown.
Parrot Zikmu Speakers by Philippe Starck on HWZone.
Zune HD Preview & Comparison portable media player on TechReviewSource.
Philips PET744 Portable DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Maximo iMetal iM-590 Earphones on APHNetworks.
Samsung YP-Q2 Media Player 8GB on TrustedReviews.



Misc Pics (21 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-August-2009  14:38:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Friday again! No hugely funny ones this week, but thanks to JK and Hua for sending some in.

         

         



Friday Afternoon (10 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-August-2009  14:08:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

We haven't heard much about ZGeek's legal dramas lately, but they are still a concern apparently, with papers having been re-filed after initially being rejected. There also seems to be a strange trademark claim now too. Anyway, if you want to help out with their legal fund, they are accepting donations here (seems you have to be logged in) or via paypal to thepirate at zgeek .com.

Gateway are planning a comeback in Australia, it seems. I remember the Osborne -> Gateway acquisition a zillion years ago but hadn't heard anything about them since. Acer bought the US company for $US710 million ($846 million) in 2007 but says Gateway will remain a stand-alone brand. Harvey Norman is the first retail partner, with Gateway products to appear on Friday in their trademark cow-print box packaging.

Another game has been banned in Australia - this time the RPG "Risen". Kotaku was informed by the game's Aussie distributor that the board was concerned by "sexual activity and drug use related to incentives or rewards."

Frostytech have compared 161 Intel heatsinks. Intel heatsinks are ranked according to their performance on a 150W heat load, ranging from -50C to 50C over ambient! The warmer heatsinks in the chart account for many of the low-noise coolers, sound level data can be found in each of the full 161 detailed reviews.

Australia's Federal Government is giving you the chance to talk to aliens. Discovered in 2007, Gliese 581 d was the first planet found circling in the ''Goldilocks'' or ''habitable zone'' around another star, where it is neither too hot, nor too cold for life. The messages will be beamed to the planet from NASA's Tidbinbilla space tracking station, outside Canberra, to mark National Science Week, which starts on Saturday.

Timbot spotted this article about the desks of game designers. Currently the project includes photos from nearly 20 studios. You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Have fun.

XbitLabs have a roundup of AeroCool cases. As if alluding to the developer’s name, many of its system cases employ an original cooling solution based around a huge 400mm fan. This is not the only special feature, though. You will see temperature controllers, touch-sensitive screens, fan speed management, and a very exciting small-size cube-shaped computer enclosure.

TechARP have a bit of a walk-through of the whole PhysX thing, in case you've lost track of where it's all up to nowadays. Instead of using a dedicated PhysX PPU, NVIDIA uses some of the stream processors in the GPU to process the physics calculations. This allows NVIDIA to divert some of their GPUs' tremendous processing power to physics calculations without using a separate PPU. The result? Physics acceleration by the GPU at no additional cost.

A few people sent in this Google Street View of Laguna Seca raceway. Hrm, seems to be missing quite a bit of the corkscrew, but still, cool! I wonder what kind of car they had the cameras mounted on.

OCAU member sum_1 has an interesting travel blog: I quit my job to go travelling in March and have been on the road for five months now. I've been robbed in Cambodia, taught English in Tibet and almost killed myself in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. I've worked as a farmer clearing a field using a sickle, have hitchhiked on a tractor with an angry yak and am now in Kazakhstan, with no sign of Borat. There's a thread about my travels on the forums here and the blog is here.



Friday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-August-2009  13:28:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
ASUS ENGTS250 1GB GTS 250 on BigBruin.
GeForce GTX 295 SLI on XbitLabs.

Portable:
Viliv S5 MID pocket PC on HWZone.
Packard Bell Easynote NJ65 - 14in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Rock Xtreme 840SLI-X9100 Gaming Laptop on TrustedReviews.

Cooling:
3RSystem Iceage 80 Prima Mini Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Cooler Master Hyper N620 CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
Coolermaster TX3 Low Cost CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Kingston HyperX Memory Fan on LegitReviews.
Noctua NF-S12B FLX 120mm Fan on OCOnline.
Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Kingwin XT-1264 Heatsink on Frostytech.

Power Supply:
Corsair HX 750W Modular on ThinkComputers.
Tuniq Potency 550W on Tech-Reviews.



AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 13-August-2009  18:37:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg

AMD have unveiled their fastest quad-core CPU to date, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. As usual there is no press release on AMD's website, but I can tell you it's a 3.4GHz AM3 CPU with 2MB of L2 and 6MB of L3. In fact it's identical to the previous 955BE apart from a speed bump and a TDP 15W higher at 140W. It's the highest-clockspeed CPU AMD has ever released.

Coverage on Anandtech, BenchmarkReviews, DriverHeaven, Guru3D, LegitReviews, HotHardware, EliteBastards, I4U, TechSpot, TomsHardware, Tech Report, Hexus, TechWareLabs, FiringSquad, OCClub, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective and XbitLabs.

Discussion here.



Thursday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 13-August-2009  17:38:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The Large Hadron Collider has apparently been fully repaired, but will be run at half power when it's fired up again in November. The LHC "will initially run at an energy of 3.5 TeV per beam when it starts up in November this year," the organization said in a news release. "This news comes after all tests on the machine's high-current electrical connections were completed last week [the week of July 27], indicating that no further repairs are necessary for safe running."

Gus sent in this funny n00b boyfriend video on CollegeHumor.

PureOC have a gaming value comparison between Phenom II and Core i7. Today we have a special treat as we'll be tackling that debate head-on with the question: Is a Phenom II or Core i7 system provide better gaming performance and value? To find out, we'll be running single card, dual cards, stock CPU speeds, and overclocked CPU configurations to bench the snot out two gaming systems and give you a definitive answer.

Another thief has been caught out by technology, this time using a stolen laptop on facebook. An 18-year-old, accused of stealing a laptop in Melbourne and surfing porn on it, thought he was home free after evading police for two months, but he came undone when he logged on to Facebook.

Microsoft has apparently been ordered to stop selling Word due to a patent infringement, thanks Peter. The implication of today's ruling is that Microsoft won't be able to release the forthcoming Office 2010, due next year, which will also use "custom XML" and see even tighter links between SharePoint and SQL Server.

Intel have issued a firmware fix for their new SSDs, thanks IntelInside. This firmware update tool provides the latest firmware for the Intel® X25-M/X18-M SATA SSD on 50nm (black case, G1) and 34nm (silver case, G2). This firmware will enable your SSD to deliver the best performance in your PC. Use this update tool to get the latest production firmware.

The OECD has released its "Communications Outlook" report, and Australia's results are not good, including having the most expensive mobile broadband. But at the same time, Australia also has one of the highest investments per access path or per capita in the OECD - giving some weight to arguments that the country is comparatively more expensive to serve than other geographically smaller and more populous nations.



Geek Recipes (2 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-August-2009  17:10:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

More yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum:


Kung Pow Chicken
by username_taken

Saltimbocca
by username_taken

mushroom and squid broth
by adya


Mongolian Lamb
by ApathyGates

Triple Chocolate Mousse Tart
by Bambi 1319

2 grain porridge
by Subcommandante



Wednesday Morning (4 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-August-2009  04:13:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg

MadShrimps have an i7 performance scaling analysis. In this article we take a closer look at the overclocking aspects of the Core i7 platform. Core, uncore, QPI, memory, bclk... all have been analyzed with performance scaling tests to you help extract the most performance from your setup.

TechReport checked out some headphone-specific sound cards. Asus and Auzentech recently released the Xonar Essence STX and X-Fi Forte sound cards designed specifically for use with headphones. We've taken them for a spin to see which sounds the best and whether you should consider either over integrated motherboard audio.

Tweaktown compared VGA performance in Win7 and Vista. Today we'll be having a look at how the new Windows 7 operating system goes against Windows Vista which has really got a love / hate relationship going for so many people. The uptake on the OS was never great, which is the main reason why today we're still including XP in our graphics card benchmarks.

Here's a bizarre Apple security issue, using a keyboard with hacked firmware. While it's not yet possible to perform this hack remotely, the fact it occurs at the firmware level means no amount of OS cleanser or anti-virals will remedy it -- which might be a bit of a bother to MacBook owners who can't simply swap to an uninfected keyboard.

Mpot sent word that you can help Google test their next-generation search infrastructure. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

The Malaysian government seems to be backing away from internet censorship plans, in the face of commercial pressure. Malaysia's government drew criticism from rights groups when news of the plan leaked and political analysts said it would have put at risk high-technology investment attracted by incentives and a promise made in the 1990s not to curb the internet.

HardOCP checked out video card performance in ARMA II. ARMA II puts the current generation of video cards to the test, this realistic and demanding game is a graphics hog. We'll evaluate eight video cards running this game and let you know what kind of gameplay experience to expect.

Timbot sent in this editorial strongly criticising Apple. I'd like to discuss four major issues around Apple’s current product line that I believe are stifling the industry, consumer choice and pricing. Instead of just giving a simple solution to the problem, I thought long and hard about the opportunities for Apple to be less controlling and more open.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-August-2009  01:59:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Raidsonic Icybox IB-NAS902 on RBMods.
Corsair P64 Performance Series 64GB SSD on CCEReviews.
Patriot Corza NAS PCZ35SNAS2 on BenchmarkReviews.
Vizo Arius II ARS-250 Dual 2.5-inch SATA Drive Bay on Tweaktown.
OCZ Agility SATA 2.0 SSD 120GB on Phoronix.
Synology Disk Station DS409+ NAS on HotHardware.
ASUS SDRW-08D1S-U External Slim DVD R/RW Drive on ThinkComputers.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB SSD Upgrade Kit on Tweaktown.

Audio Visual:
SoundMAGIC PL11 and PL50 Earphones on TrustedReviews.
Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW 16:9 Widescreen LCD Monitor on Tweaknews.
Razer Megladon Headset on Bjorn3D.
ASUS 22T1E monitor on InsideHW.
Denon AVR-2310 AV Receiver on TrustedReviews.
Eizo Foris FX2431 - 24in Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Plextor PX-B310U External PX-B310U Blu-Ray USB DVD Writer on PCStats.
Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ on DigitalTrends.
LG 42LH4000 42in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
OXX Digital "Classic DAB+" Digital Radio on RamblingThoughts.

Memory:
OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Platinum LV Triple Channel on TBreak.
G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBHK on OCClub.



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 11-August-2009  17:35:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Inno3D GTS 250 TwinTurbo Pro on Guru3D.
Palit Radeon 4870 Sonic Dual Edition in CrossfireX on TechWareLabs.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AMP! Edition on TestFreaks.

Cases:
Thermaltake Element G on TechWareLabs.
NZXT Panzerbox Aluminum Mid-Tower on Hi-TechReviews.
GMC X-7 gamer case on XSReviews.
AZZA Spartan on TechPowerUp.
Maxcube Amoris 6010 Computer Case Evaluation on Tweaknews.
nMedia HTPC 2000B on TechReport.
Thermaltake Element G Mid-Tower on OCIA.
Azza Fantom 900 Mid-Tower on Pro-Clockers.

Cooling:
Titan Fenrir CPU Cooler on PureOC.
Thermaltake Massive23 CS Gaming Notebook Cooler on OCClub.
Aerocool Touch-2000 Fan Controller on HWSecrets.
Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Cooler Roundup Part 2 August 2009 on DriverHeaven.
Noctua NF-S12B FLX fan on PureOC.
Thermaltake ISGC-400 CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.



More Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-August-2009  16:06:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more interesting things from the forums:


windwithme previewed the
BIOSTAR TPOWER I55 i5 board

eva2000 has some OCZ Platinum
Animal Series DDR3-1333

NoGi is building a
Zotac Ion N330 HTPC


The Derro sneak previews
Cisco's Project California

eva2000 has an i7 920
@ 4493MHz on ASUS P6T6 WS

HyRax1 shows how to set up
custom MythTV channel icons



Monday Afternoon (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-August-2009  14:54:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Betanews reckon that WinXP is quicker for browsing than Win 7. In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 -- our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday -- the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

MadShrimps have a DDR3 roundup. Corsair Dominator and Mushkin Redline modules have always looked better than nice, and now they have the performance to match. We put these two against the OCZ Blade, a real high end kit based upon Elpida's "hyper" chips, and against our 8 previous triple channel kits, in order to get a good view of the Core i7 memory landscape to date.

PC Perspective are the latest to check out the new garbage-collection firmware on OCZ's Vertex SSD. This is OCZ's first crack at rolling their own firmware, and they aim to address some of the issues Indilinx has not been able to correct on their own. Can OCZ pull it off? Come on in and find out!

Coolaler seem to have an i5 750 running at 4GHz - the text isn't English but the pictures tell the story. Just looks to be air-cooling, nothing too fancy.

THG have some info and screenshots from id Software. At Siggraph id Software gave a presentation entitled "id Tech 5 Challenges: From Texture Virtualization to Massive Parallelization," which conveniently included new screenshots from the developer's upcoming Rage title.

Paypal has apparently added some fees recently, and people are saying they should have made it clearer. "We didn't want to make a huge formal communication out of this pricing change, because we weren't really adding any fees, and we were hoping it would be a more useful experience for people," Hill said.



Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 9-August-2009  15:51:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some interesting things from the forums:


skinnee checked out the
PrimoChill Typhoon III

gigs is building a
concrete slab WC loop

mAJORD reviewed the
Phenom II X4 905e CPU


as well as affordable
DDR3 from Gigabyte+G.Skill

windwithme reviewed the
Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI

and the MSI X58M
Micro-ATX i7 board



Sunday Afternoon (2 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 9-August-2009  14:39:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Texas Memory Systems have announced a new 100TB flash memory system, for those with bottomless pockets. It comes with 40 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel ports by default, and can be expanded up to 160 ports. In fact, it's little more than a rack filled with 20 of their RamSan 620 storage units announced earlier; so you can basically think of it as a SAN consisting of 20 storage units, with the TeraWatch software added to provide a unified management console.

Meanwhile there's a couple of videos showing how to upgrade to an SSD, courtesy of Active Media Products. There's a video upgrading a Dell Mini 9 here and an Eee PC here. Our 3-minute tutorial videos teach netbook owners step-by-step how to install a SaberTooth SSD into popular netbooks.

TechWareLabs report from the Black Hat 2009 conference. We put on our black hat while you put on your tin foil hat, as TechwareLabs visits this year's Black Hat convention. Black Hat is a yearly event which is known for providing new and exclusive insights about upcoming information security trends. It serves to inform the IT community of potential threats that will sweep the internet.

LegitReviews have an article on installing Windows 7 from a USB Flash Drive. Read on if you want to find out how you can install Microsoft's upcoming operating system from a USB key with our step-by-step directions from either Windows XP or Windows Vista! I've been installing all kinds of O/S's from flash lately - I found this guide useful for Windows variants and this program useful for installing Linux from USB.

RamblingThoughts has some info on digital radio in Australia. Digital radio officially launched in Australia on August 6th 2009 with a one-off special simultaneous outside broadcast in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide by more than 40 different commercial and public radio stations. Discussion here, thanks NanoDuke.

Tweaktown continue the SSD fun, with four SSDs in RAID0 in Win7. Kingston was kind enough to send over four of their SSDNow E Series 64GB drives and if you didn't know, they are actually relabeled high-end Intel X25-E drives.

Driverheaven have an SSD roundup posted. A few months down the line and two further companies have brought to market drives based on Samsung and Indilinx controllers. Today we take a look at those products to see what Corsair and Crucial offer us. Also included in this review is an updated SSD from OCZ which takes their excellent Indilinx based Vertex range and enhances the performance to create the Vertex Turbo.

HotHardware look at some improved garbage collection on SSDs. OCZ, working in combination with Indilinx, is poised to release new firmwares for OCZ's entire line-up of Vertex Series SSDs that performs active garbage collection while the drives are idle to restore performance to like-new condition, even on a severely "dirtied" drive. We just got our hands on a 120GB Vertex SSD that has been flashed with the new garbage collecting firmware, and wanted to give you all a glimpse as to how it works.

PCPerspective have a GPGPU computing shootout between ATI's Stream and NVIDIA's CUDA. Both of these platforms use parallel computing architectures to utilize their GPU's stream processors, in tandem with the CPU, to significantly increase any system's video transcoding speeds. Today, we are going to discuss both of these technologies as well as benchmark a couple video transcoding applications from Cyberlink that actually support both CUDA and ATI Stream.



Saturday Afternoon Reviews #3 (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 8-August-2009  16:18:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Software:
Officers PC game on GamePyre.
Fallout 3 PC game on GamingHeaven.
Windows 7 on DigitalTrends.

Motherboard and CPU:
Asus M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 board on TrustedReviews.
AMD 785G Chipset Motherboard on OCClub.
MSI X58M LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX on MadShrimps.
Intel Celeron E3300 LGA775 CPU on XbitLabs.
Zotac ION-ITX-C Mainboard Atom board on XbitLabs.
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA1366 board on XbitLabs.
GIGABYTE MA785GMT-UD2H AM3 board on Motherboards.org.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Processor on Tweaktown.
ASRock X58 Extreme Core i7 LGA1366 board on Tweaktown.
Asus : Gigabyte : MSI : P55 Motherboard Preview on Motherboards.org.

Audio / Visual:
Cresyn C750E Premium Sound Isolating In-Ear Headphones on Tweaknews.
Eagle Arion 2.1 iDock Speakers with Subwoofer on ThinkComputers.
Samsung HT-WS1G Wall-Mountable Speaker System on TrustedReviews.
Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7b headphones on DigitalTrends.



Saturday Afternoon Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 8-August-2009  15:18:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Zotac GeForce GTX285 AMP Edition 1204MB GDDR3 on Motherboards.org.
AMD FirePro V8750 2GB workstation card on Phoronix.
The Vaporizer - Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 2GB GDDR5 on HWZone.
VisionTek HD 4890 OC on NeoSeeker.
nVidia GeForce GTX 280 on LostCircuits.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 2GB Vapor-X on Tweaktown.

Cases:
Thermaltake Element T Mid-Tower on OCIA.
Antec P183 Advanced Super Mid Tower on OC3D.
Zalman GS1000 and Z-Machine GT1000 on XbitLabs.
Xclio Blackhawk Supertower on Hi-TechReviews.
Antec P193 on Hi-TechReviews.
Thermaltake Element G on OCOnline.
Ikonik Ra X10 SIM Aluminum Full Tower on ThinkComputers.

Memory:
Kingston Hyper DDR3 2000MHz 3GB Memory Kit on Pro-Clockers.
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB SATA 2.5 on OCClub.



Saturday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 8-August-2009  14:14:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Power Supply:
BFG LS-550 (New) on HWSecrets.
SilverStone Strider 1500W on PureOC.
ASUS P-50GA 500W on HWSecrets.

Storage:
In Win AMMO 2.5 External SATA HDD Enclosure on GamePyre.
Corsair P64 SSD on Bjorn3D.
In Win Na Hard Drive Enclosure on Modders-Inc.
Kingston 32GB DataTraveler 112 USB Flash Drive on LegitReviews.
Areca ARC-1680ix-16 SAS RAID Controller on XbitLabs.
OCZ Vertex 60GB & Agility 128GB on Bjorn3D.
ioSafe Solo 500GB Rugged USB External Hard Drive on TestFreaks.

Cooling:
Jetart ezFan Laptop Cooler on XSReviews.
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller on NeoSeeker.
NZXT Cryo S laptop cooler on RBMods.
3RSystem Iceage 90 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Thermaltake TMG IA1 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Aerocool Touch 2000 Touch Panel fan controller on Pro-Clockers.
CoolIT Systems Domino A.L.C. CPU Cooler on BigBruin.

Portable and Prebuilt:
Asus U80V - 14in Laptop Hands-On on TrustedReviews.
Apple's New 13" Macbook Pro, Video Review on HotHardware.
Nokia 6700 Classic mobile phone on TrustedReviews.
OCZ Neutrino 10" DIY Netbook on OCIA.
Mesh Slayer Elemental prebuilt gaming PC on DriverHeaven.
HP Mini 5101 Preview notebook on HWZone.



Misc Pics (25 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-August-2009  15:09:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Friday again!

         

         



Friday Afternoon (1 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-August-2009  14:45:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A few people pointed out that not long ago it was 12:34:56pm on the 7/8/9. :)

Twitter and some other social networking sites are being DDoS'd recently. As you know, a DDoS is where millions of PCs submit tiny useless bits of information to a service.. hey.. sounds like Twitter's normal traffic!

The National Broadband Network company has named its directors. A part-time productivity commissioner, an ex-Freehills law chief and finance executives from Westpac and Wesfarmers are among five directors appointed to the NBN Co board today. People are saying the chosen board lacks net smarts, however.

Gazza spotted this article about driving the Warthog from Halo. "And really," I reasoned, "what’s the worst that could happen?" Actually, I already knew the answer to that one, thanks to a YouTube video of Bungie producer Curtis Creamer putting the same vehicle into a wall during Bungie’s trip to New Zealand.

XbitLabs compared 500GB 2.5" drives. Some time ago we already reviewed the first 2.5-inch models with 500 GB storage capacity. Now time has come to compare side by side the solutions from all manufacturers that are currently available in the market.

Qwertylesh spotted a snippet about SLI hacked onto older chipsets. A member of Expreview's Chinese enthusiast community has successfully enabled SLI on an Intel chipset based LGA-775 motherboard, the first feat of its kind since much older attempts on i975 platforms using much older GeForce hardware.

Gavinnorthants sent word that one of the oldest BitTorrent communities has been targeted in the UK. But Geeker soon discovered that things were different in his case. "I asked again as I was put in the cell, if I could contact someone or make a phone call, I was told no I couldn’t do that, I asked why and was told that the Inspector had put a block on any and all communication from me to anyone."

Win7 was RTM via TechNet and MSDN recently thanks AB, and TechReviewSource have a roundup of its new features. Many new features have been included in Windows 7, some big and some small. We have listed some of the more major and noticeable changes to help you make the switch to Windows 7.

Pink Floyd's David Gilmour has joined the battle to free Gary McKinnon, the UK-based alleged hacker who recently lost his appeal to avoid extradition to the USA. There's a new single featuring David, Gary, Bob Geldorf and others, appealing to President Obama, and hoping to raise donations to Aspergers and Autism causes, and to help Gary's continuing battle.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-August-2009  03:54:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable:
Acer Aspire One D250-1165 Netbook on Tweaktown.
Nokia N97 Smartphone on TBreak.
HTC Hero Android Smartphone (G2 Touch) on TrustedReviews.
LG enV3 smartphone on DigitalTrends.
ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Seashell Netbook video review on PCPerspective.
ViewSonic VNB100 netbook on InsideHW.
Samsung X460 - Black Beauty netbook on HWZone.

Video Cards:
Zotac GTX 285 Infinity on XSReviews.
Inno3D GeForce GTS 250 iChiLL FreezerX 1GB on Tweaktown.

Cases:
Enermax Staray midtower on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake Element T on Hi-TechReviews.
NZXT Panzerbox Mid-Tower on OCIA.
NZXT Beta on OCClub.
Xclio Blackhawk on DragonSteelMods.
Antec ISK 300-65 on HWSecrets.

Audio / Visual:
RaidSonic Icy Box IB-MP309HW-B HD Network Media Player on Tweaktown.
PhiatonPrimal PS200 in-ear headphones on DigitalTrends.
Philips 42PFL9664 42in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Vizio 47" LCD 120Hz HDTV SV470XVT on TestFreaks.
Nikon Coolpix P90 digicam on DigitalTrends.

Misc:
EVGA Killer Xeno Pro Gaming Network Card on HWSecrets.
D-Link DUB-CR200 USB 2.0 Hub with Card Reader on TechWareLabs.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 6-August-2009  15:13:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 board on Motherboards.org.
MSI P55-GD80 (Intel P55) Core i5 board preview on HWZone.
AMD 785G Chipset Review: Integrated Evolved on PCPerspective.
DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8 and JR X58-T3H6 LGA1366 boards on TechSpot.
AMD 785G Graphics Performance Update on HWZone.
AMD 785G Chipset IGP Video Performance Preview on NeoSeeker.

Input Etc:
OCZ Behemoth Gaming Mouse on Guru3D.
Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard on Phoronix.

Storage:
Crucial M225 128GB SSD on LegionHW.
OCZ Agility 120GB SSD on PureOC.
OCZ Agility 120GB SSD on Guru3D.

Cooling:
LGA1366 CPU Cooler Roundup on BenchmarkReviews.
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 4870X2 VGA cooler on DriverHeaven.
Scythe Mugen 2 CPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Xigmatek S126384 Thors Hammer Stacked Heatpipe Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Evercool Buffalo Socket 1366 CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU cooler on Bjorn3D.
NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller on NeoSeeker.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-August-2009  20:41:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A quick snapshot of what's going on. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also something a lot of people don't know about is the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu).

[TEAM.AU] superpi world record back in australia hands! in Overclocking & Hardware.
Kingston 12GB (3x4GB) 12800 Review in Overclocking & Hardware.
Intel Updates Mainstream, Performance, and Extreme CPU Roadmap in Intel Hardware.
Who here has used an SSD and felt the real world AMAZING? in Storage & Backup.
WD Debuts 750GB And 1TB 2.5" Scorpio Blue HDDs in Storage & Backup.
Google apps for small business? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Project: aokmans return to overclocking in Modding.
My Lian Li PC-B70 Server Case in Modding.
Gigabyte iSolo 230 - opinion of the case and what I have been up to in Modding.
LED vs Plasma show-down: What would you want to see? in Audio Visual.
AMD's DX11 "Evergreen" cards due soon in Video Cards & Monitors.
Searching for the best PC rally experience in Games.
Heroes of Newerth (General Discussion) in Games.
MY tips for getting certain guitar tones [beginners only] in Musicians.
TerminalVeloCD's Review of the Nikkor 24-85mm AF-D Macro in Photography.
TerminalVeloCD's Review of the Nikkor 18-105mm VR in Photography.
TerminalVeloCD's Mini-Review of the Nikkor 28-105mm AF-D in Photography.
TerminalVeloCD's Mini-Review of the Nikkor 24-85mm AF-S in Photography.
NAB cuts overdrawn account fee in Career, Education and Finance.
Study: Organic food offers no health benefit in Current Events.
Weird personal facts in The Pub.



Wednesday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-August-2009  16:03:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NASA have an astronaut using Twitter from the International Space Station now. What a fun shuttle mission - especially w 13 people on board station. Life here is amazing - still getting used to floating!

New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery has criticised the internet filtering plan. "Crime prevention methods need to be practical," Cowdery told the symposium matter-of-factly. "The talk of filters and blocking mechanisms, ultimately in a society like ours, would have only limited if any success."

Foliage has posted a thread about browsers storing credit card details in plain text on your PC. Now I don't think it would be very difficult at all to write a small trojan that steals these databases and uploads them, certainly a lot easier to do than setting up a keylogger that has to run for weeks. Quite an easy way to steal some ones identity.

Some Mac users are grumpy about MacBook cases cracking and splitting, thanks von Stalhein. Richard Olsen bought his white Macbook at the opening of the Sydney Apple Store in June last year and within months the case began to crack. "I didn't take much notice of it until one day I ran my wrist across the side of it and it pierced into my wrist," he said.

They're having trouble with exploding iPods too, it seems. Ken Stanborough, 47, from Liverpool, dropped his 11-year-old daughter Ellie's iPod Touch last month. "It made a hissing noise," he said. "I could feel it getting hotter in my hand, and I thought I could see vapour". Mr Stanborough said he threw the device out of his back door, where "within 30 seconds there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10ft in the air".

Here's a fairly impressive 30TB gaming PC on YouTube. Not much more to say, check out the vid.

Phalanx spotted this stainless steel printing which is interesting. The process lays down a thin layer of stainless steel powder, this is bound by a binding material. Layer after layer is applied and the resulting model is then lifted out of the powder. The model is then heated, cured and infused with bronze. Then in this case it is polished. This is a very new process and we're taking it straight out of the lab and bringing it to you.

Tech Report have an interview about OpenCL. We recently got to speak with Neil Trevett, who is both the Khronos Group's President and Nvidia's VP of Embedded Content. We asked Mr. Trevett about the status of OpenCL, how it compares with Microsoft's DirectX Compute Shader, and about the future of general-purpose computing on the GPU.

BenchmarkReviews have a CPU cooler roundup. Looks like HardOCP had one recently too. This exponential growth is unfortunately not shared in the realm of heatsinks. Sure we have heat pipes and direct-touch coolers which didn’t exist years ago. But we also know where the finish line is; ambient temperature.



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-August-2009  17:09:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Power Supply:
Kingwin Mach 1 1000watt ABT-1000MA1S on Tweaknews.
Corsair HX750W on OCClub.

Portable & Prebuilt:
GIGABYTE Booktop M1022 Netbook on Tweaktown.
Hannspree HANNSnote SN10E1 - 10in Netbook on TrustedReviews.
Toshiba Mini NB205-N210 netbook on TechReviewSource.
Alienware M17x Dual-GPU Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
HTC Touch Pro 2 windows smartphone on VerdisReviews.
Verizon Blackberry Tour smartphone on I4U.
Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60 GPS on HWZone.
ASUS EeeBox B202 mini PC on InsideHW.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10e Netbook Computer on Draco II's blog.

Memory:
OCZ Low Latency Blade DDR3 1600MHz Triple Channel on Pro-Clockers.
G.Skill Trident Extreme Performance F3-16000CL9 DDR3 on OC3D.
Kingston Hyper X PC3 12800 CI9 6GB on OC3D.

Cases:
Cooler Master Elite 310 on Bjorn3D.
Chieftec Dragon Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Element G on PureOC.



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-August-2009  16:12:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our many sponsors have special offers and deals on office chairs, headphones, fitness supplements, speakers, netbooks, media players, cases, monitors, video cards, memory and a range of other goodies. Check 'em out!


Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-August-2009  15:56:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Envizen Digital Duo Box - Portable Digital TV + DVD Player on TestFreaks.
Samsung HT-BD1250 Blu-ray Home Cinema System on TrustedReviews.
Plantronics Voyager PRO Bluetooth Headset on LegitReviews.
Sony Bravia KDL-22E5300 22in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.

Cooling:
NZXT Cryo S Aluminum Notebook Cooler on TheTechZone.
Thermaltake Massive23 CS Notebook Cooler on Tweaknews.
NZXT Sentry 2 Touch Screen Fan Controller on TechWareLabs.
CoolIt Domino ALC CPU Cooler on JonnyGuru.
Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler on HiTechReviews.
Rosewill FORT 120 / RCX-SHDT120X1 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.

Storage:
OCZ Vertex Turbo MLC SATA SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Icy Box IB-168SK Trayless Drive Enclosure on VelocityReviews.
Patriot Memory 128GB Xporter Magnum USB Flash Drive on FutureLooks.



Tuesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-August-2009  15:40:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg

AMD have a new motherboard chipset with integrated graphics, the 785G. There's reviews on HotHardware, Tech-Report, Tweaktown and Guru3D. For the last several years AMD has delivered a series of solid, cost-effective mainstream chipsets with integrated graphics. First with the original 690G which offered a wealth of features and surprisingly competent IGP performance. Then later with the 780G and 790GX chipsets, which added a little more graphics horspower and IGP features, while keeping the price palatable. Now AMD is ready to kick it up another notch with today's announcement of the new 785G chipset. OCW have two reviews here and here too.

If you're going to put a fake ATM at a hotel and try to skim credit card numbers, try not to do it at a hotel hosting a huge hacker conference. As the conference was kicking off a few days ago, attendees noticed that an ATM placed in the Riviera Hotel, which plays host to the annual event, didn't quite look right, according to a senior conference organizer who identified himself only as Priest. "They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera," he said. "It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC."

Microsoft are apparently giving away Windows 7 licenses to the members of the invitation-only Technical Beta program. I'm not sure exactly who qualifies there but I imagine if you do, you know about it already. :)

Tech Report compared two little laptops. These two little laptops from Acer and Gateway are close cousins. They share the same 11.6" displays and nearly full-sized keyboards, and as a result, they're two of the most compelling netbooks yet. To hold one is to want one. But which is better? Let's find out.

West Africa is suffering reduced internet connectivity at the moment. Around 70% of Nigeria's bandwidth was cut, causing severe problems for its banking sector, government and mobile phone networks. Before you start thinking this will silence the spammers for a while, remember the USA are the biggest spammers according to Sophos.



Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-August-2009  14:29:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:



















Monday Morning Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-August-2009  02:43:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cooling:
AMA Orc CPU cooler on OCClub.
Thermalright HR-03 GTX (On GTX275) VGA cooler on Bjorn3D.
AeroCool Touch-2000 LCD Fan Controller on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master V10 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Corsair Hydro Series H50 Tested on AMD Phenom watercooling on MadShrimps.
Cooler Master SNA 95 fan controller on OCIA.

Audio / Visual:
Sony Ericsson Satio Preview digicam on HWZone.
Toshiba SD-490E DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player on TechARP.
Gear4 CDB-50 Portable iPod/CD Speaker System on TrustedReviews.
Olympus E-620 digicam on InsideHW.
Eagle | Arion ET-AR502-BK Speakers on Hi-TechReviews.

Motherboards:
MSI AMD 785GM-E65 AM3 Micro-ATX board on PCPerspective.
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA1366 board on FutureLooks.
Gigabyte GA-EP55-UD4P i5 board preview on OCClub.
MSI P55-GD80 i5 board preview on Guru3D.
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 board on PureOC.

Software:
ARMA 2 PC game on GamePyre.
Callpod Keeper Desktop password software on TestFreaks.

Misc:
CoverBee 8.9" Mini Laptop Sleeve for Netbook - Black Dahlia on TestFreaks.
ZeroShock III Netbook Case on TestFreaks.
Dell XPS 630i prebuilt PC on DriverHeaven.
Datel WildFire Wireless PS3 Controller on OCModShop.
Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard on Modders-Inc.
OCZ Platinum PC3-10666 6GB memory on HWLogic.



Sunday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 2-August-2009  16:38:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If you're looking around for some burning software, it seems there's a free version of Nero 9 available at the moment. Enjoy basic data burning and copying capabilities for your CDs and DVDs from the world's most trusted digital media brand, Nero. Seems to be a bit more cutesy and wizardy than I prefer, but worth a look anyway.

Cory Doctorow has an article about expiring media. It's hilarious that the same yahoos who argue for perpetual copyright (implying that copyrighted works have value forever) also argue for time-limited ownership (implying that people who buy copyrighted works should be content to enjoy them for a few weeks or years until the DRM stops working).

Speaking of which, another enormous fine has been aimed at a file sharer, with a student copping a $675K fine for downloading 30 songs. Joel Tenenbaum, 25, of Providence, RI admitted to a federal court that he downloaded and shared more than 800 songs, but the court case focused only on 30. Tenenbaum's case is just the second of its kind to go to trial in the U.S.

iXBT checked out all the Core i7 LGA1366 CPUs. This family includes five models so far. Two of them are leaving soon. Another one will probably be discontinued later. We've heard some rumors that Core i7 950 won't live through the end of the year either: it may be replaced with the 960. But we decided to test all five processors using our new test method in order to evaluate performance gains of the new models versus old ones.

DriverHeaven have an NVIDIA graphics cards roundup. Today we have one product from each of the mainstream and high-end GeForce families on our test bench to see what performance each offers for its price point. Read on to find out what can be achieved through a simple upgrade as we test each in a selection of the latest games and GPU computing applications.

AMD and HP have proposed some extensions for PCI Express 3.0. Both extensions are aimed at addressing the rising need for I/O subsystems and accelerators to support dozens of functions in systems that are increasingly using multicore processors and virtual machines. Both extensions are designed for use with the 2.5, 5 and 8 GHz versions of PCIe.

The head of the Centos project has gone missing. Wrote Angenendt: "Lance is the only one, who can make active changes to the centos.org domain, as he "owns it". Nobody else in the team is able to add nameservers, for instance. Recently he put an anonymizing service on the domain, so that nobody from the outside can see who that domain belongs to."

HotHardware have an interview with game developer Terminal Reality. After years of delays (including one cancellation), developer change-ups, and a lot of hard work, Terminal Reality succeeded in bringing a Ghostbusters game to market for the PS3, XBox 360, Wii, and PC. Terminal Reality committed to building their own graphics engine—dubbed the Infernal Engine—to facilitate game development; we recently had a chance talk with them about the game, the new engine, and the future of multi-core gaming.

On Good Game this week: Ninja Blade, 'Splosion Man, Madballs in Babo Invasion, plus Rod Humble from EA talks about games as art. Catch Good Game at 8:30pm on ABC2 Monday nights, or late Friday nights on ABC1 just before rage. You can download/stream any episode at www.abc.net.au/goodgame.



Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 2-August-2009  03:48:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 285 (1Gb GDDR3) on CPU3D.
GIGABYTE GV-R465D2-1G1 Radeon HD 4650 on Motherboards.org.
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 285 2GB OC on Tweaktown.
Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 2G GDDR5 on Motherboards.org.

Cases:
Xclio Godspeed One Advanced PC Case on DragonSteelMods.
GMC Noblesse K-2 Ebony Case on PCPerspective.
ThermalTake Element G on NinjaLane.
NZXT Zero 2 on Virtual-Hideout.

Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W on HWSecrets.
Corsair HX850 on HWZone.

Storage:
Patriot Xporter Magnum 64 GB Flash Drive on TechPowerUp.
Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB SATA Hard Drive on BigBruin.
Super Talent Pico Mini USB Drive video review on Tweaktown.
Eagle Tech ET-CSIU2-BK I-Series 3.5" Dual Bay JBOD Enclosure on Tweaktown.
PhotoFast G-Monster-PROMISE (1000MB/s) 128GB PCIe SSD on Tweaktown.




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