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November 2009 |
Thanks to petercr and others for these!
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 27-November-2009 13:35:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboards:
ASUS P7P55D Pro LGA1156 board on Techgage.
MSI NF980-E65 SLI AM3 board on PCPerspective.
AMD Athlon 2 X3 435 CPU on RBMods.
Asus Sabertooth 55i TUF P55 LGA1156 board on OC3D.
Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R LGA1156 board on XbitLabs.
AMD Athlon X3435 and X2 240e CPUs on LostCircuits.
Memory:
Elixir 6 GB 1600 MHz CL9 Tri-Channel on TechPowerUp.
OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Intel XMP LV on NeoSeeker.
Patriot Viper Series DDR3-1600 8-8-8-24 XMP Ready Triple Channel on OCIA.
Cases:
GMC X-7 X-Station on RealWorldLabs.
Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P50 on PureOC.
Cooler Master Sileo 500 on NinjaLane.
SilverStone SG04B-H on TechWareLabs.
Thermaltake SD100 mini ITX Home Theater on LegitReviews.
NZXT M59 Mid-Tower Computer Case on BenchmarkReviews.
NZXT Guardian 921 on DragonSteelMods.
Input Etc:
Ozone SMOG Gaming Mouse on Guru3D.
Razer Sphex Gaming Mousepad on OCModShop.
Video Cards:
Sapphire 5970 Cfx and HIS 5970 CFx on DriverHeaven.
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 5970 2 GB video review on Motherboards.org.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 OC on OCClub.
ATI Radeon HD 58xx in CrossFireX on XbitLabs.
Antec Two Hundred Mid Tower on VerdisReviews.
XFX GeForce GT 240 on Motherboards.org.
HIS HD5850 on OCrCafe.
oldnewby seems to have put the finishing touches on his Cygnus X1 custom case, which has been attracting attention for quite some time now. The finished project is absolutely stunning, and follow the link for more photos with the various panels opened, revealing the aluminium skeleton inside:
Click for more photos!
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 26-November-2009 15:37:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Digital Monkey spotted a five-day-long one-day-only sale on Steam. Looks like there's some gaming bargains to be had. Discussion here.
The Federal Government is considering an internet panic button for children. The panic button would be a recognisable icon that children can relate to (such as a cartoon dolphin) and would sit in the background while they are using the web. Children would be directed to different resources depending on the type of issue (bullying, grooming, etc).
Australia's first computer has turned 60, thanks Mindy. It is the first computer ever to be made in Australia; the fourth computer ever to be made in the world; and the only first generation computer that remains intact.
OCZ have launched a new range of honkin' big SSDs up to 1TB in size in 3.5" format, thanks Tony. In addition to ample capacity, the OCZ Colossus delivers excellent performance made possible by an internal RAID 0 architecture. Excelling at small file processes during common tasks such as emailing, web browsing, and file transfer, Colossus allows for a state-of-the-art computing experience from basic to complex applications.
DriverHeaven spoke to AMD about the lack of HD5000 series cards. Yes, we are impacted by TSMC's continued problems with production at the 40 nm process, however we feel we are tracking reasonably well to where we expected to be at this point, thanks in large part to our early start with 40 nm process technology with the ATI Radeon HD 4770. Tweaktown have some info as well.
LegionHW had some trouble overclocking a HD 5970. Today we had planned to show you how the Radeon HD 5970 performs when overclocked. However the more we began to play with the Radeon HD 5970 the less likely that article seemed possible and instead we began to head in another direction, which lead us to this article "ATI Radeon HD 5970 Overclocking Problems".
Hoopstar spotted this insteresting design concept for a roll-up laptop. The device of the flexible display allows a new concept in notebook design growing out of the traditional bookformed laptop into unfurling and convolving portable computer
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 25-November-2009 13:29:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Software:
Left 4 Dead 2 PC game on Bit-Tech.
League of Legends PC game on GamingHeaven.
Modern Warfare 2 Walkthrough & Guide on OCModShop.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Techgage.
Audio / Visual:
Bose Wave SoundLink Music System on DigitalTrends.
Samsung SyncMaster LD190G 19-inch Lapfit USB LCD Monitor on ThinkComputers.
Patriot Box Office HD Media Player Review on LegitReviews.
Sharkoon X-Tatic Digital Surround Sound Headset on DriverHeaven.
Western Digital WD TV Media Player on BigBruin.
Audio Technica CKF300 Bloom Series Headphones on HWZone.
Onkyo TX-NR807 AV Receiver on TrustedReviews.
ASUS HP-100U Dolby Headphone Set on OC3D.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Aspire 5738PG - 15.6in Touch-Screen Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Antec Notebook Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.
HP DM3 Laptop/Netbook on TechWareLabs.
HP TouchSmart 300-1025 Desktop PC on TechReviewSource.
Toshiba Satellite U500-178 - 13.3in Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Cooler Master SNA95 Slim Universal Notebook Adapter on ThinkComputers.
Novatech X16 HD Pro Notebook on DriverHeaven.
Video Cards:
Palit 240 GT Sonic on NeoSeeker.
Palit GT 240 Sonic on OCClub.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 on XSReviews.
Inno3D Geforce GT 220 on OCClub.
Palit GeForce GT 240 Sonic 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
Leadtek GT 220 on Bjorn3D.
Storage:
Thecus N0503 ComboNAS on Hi-TechReviews.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive on PureOC.
A-DATA SH93 Waterproof and Shock Resistant Portable HDD Video Review on Tweaktown.
OCZ Agility 60GB SSD (SLC) on Bjorn3D.
Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station on OCIA.
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB Hard Disk Drive on HWSecrets.
QNAP TS-419P NAS 4-Bay Network Storage on BenchmarkReviews.
AXUS FiT 500E Five-Bay RAID DAS Server on Tweaktown.
Apologies for the lack of news - I've been extremely busy. You should have recieved an email (or two) recently reinforcing the earlier recommendation that you change your forum password as soon as possible, and on any other services that you have used the same password on (but please, use different passwords in different places.)
Australia's CSIRO have a GPU-powered supercomputer on the way. The CSIRO said the supercomputer 's NVIDIA-based GPU technology can increase the speed of its scientific data crunching by a factor of between 10 and 100.
Speaking of which, TechReport have more info on the NVIDIA Fermi graphics architecture. If you've been following Fermi since it was announced, you'll know Nvidia didn't really talk about the specific graphics transistors in Fermi implementations. We're going to take a stab at that, though, using information gleaned from the whitepaper, bits teased from Nvidia engineers, and educated guesswork. Remember, however, that graphics transistor chatter does ultimately remain a guess until the real details are unveiled.
A few people sent word that smoking near your Apple computer may be bad for your warranty. When I asked for an explanation, she said he's a smoker and it's contaminated with cigarette smoke which they consider a bio-hazard! I checked my Applecare warranty and it says nothing about not honoring warranties if the owner is a smoker. The Applecare representative said they defer to the technician and my son's computer cannot be fixed at any Apple Service Center due to being listed a bio-hazard.
Some lucky folks on Telstra's HFC network could be enjoying 100Mbps internet soon. It's amazing what telcos can do when they put their heads to it. Telstra, TransACT and Optus announced last week that they would switch on 100Mbps internet services - making ADSL customers green with envy and, one might suspect, Stephen Conroy green with worry.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been breaking sales records, thanks IntelInside. In its first 24 hours on sale, Call of Duty made $US310 million ($333.23 million) in North America and the United Kingdom alone, while Grand Theft Auto made that same amount worldwide. It was also far above the record $US155 million ($166.61 million) opening weekend for the Batman movie The Dark Knight last year.
Guru3D have been overclocking the Radeon 5970. We boosted the Radeon HD 5970 Core from 725 MHz towards 935 MHz and the 4000 MHz memory is running and purring steady at 5240 MHz --- and that's a baffling result on just the reference air-cooler. Tweaktown meanwhile have two in CrossFireX.
Possible Security Issue
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Saturday, 21-November-2009 14:54:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Unfortunately last night I became aware of a possible security issue on one of our servers and noticed some unusual activity. I am investigating it in more detail and will be working with the vendor of our forum software and quite possibly the Police to determine what has actually occurred. For now it doesn't seem that the issue is too serious, but I would say as a precaution you might want to:
- change your forum password
- change your password on any other services that use the same password (although sharing passwords across services is a very bad idea, so you shouldn't be doing that anyway)
I'll give more info as it comes to hand.
Media Players:
Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Networked Blu-ray Player on I4U
Toshiba RD99DT DVD/HDD Recorder on TrustedReviews
Popcorn Hour C-200 Blu-Ray Networked Media Tank on Digital Reviews
Cooling:
Titan Skalli CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets
Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler on RWLabs
Mouse:
CM Storm Sentinel Advance Mouse on Hardware Secrets
Coolermaster Sentinel Advance on XSReviews
Logitech Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX on InsideHW
SteelSeries 9HD Mouse Pad on techPowerUp
Storage:
Qnap TS-419P Turbo NAS on DragonSteelMods
Synology Disk Station DS409slim NAS Enclosure on Futurelooks
Vantec NexStar Vault NST-V290S2 2.5-inch HDD Enclosure on TweakTown
Kingwin F-35 on PureOverclock
StarTech Dual-SATA HDD Docking Station on BmR
Seagate FreeAgent Go Dock+ on TestFreaks
Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station on DragonSteelMods
Kingwin F-35 HDD Enclosure on Virtual-Hideout
EagleTech CSMDSU2-BK 3.5-inch Dual Drive Enclosure on PureOverclock
Thecus N0204 miniNAS Pocket RAID Storage on Legit Reviews
Audio:
Panasonic SC-HC4 iPod Docking Station on Hardware Zone
Tritton Technologies AX51 Pro Precision PC Gaming Headset on Futurelooks
AVLabs AVL787 Bedside Companion Speaker System on TweakTown
Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless Headset on Benchmark Reviews
Logitech G35 Surround Sound Headset on DriverHeaven.net
Motherboard:
Gigabyte P55-UD6 & P55M-UD4 on Neoseeker
Gigabyte MA-785GPMT-UD2H Motherboard on TechwareLabs
Gigabyte P55-UD6 P55 Lynnfield Motherboard on PC Perspective
ASUS P7P55D Premium Motherboard on Motherboards.org
RAM:
Patriot Sector 5 2x2GB 2000MHz Cas 8 on OCC
OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 AMD Black Edition Ready 4GB Dual Channel Kit on Technoyard
OCZ PC3-12800 OCZ3X1600LV4GK Intel XMP 2x2GB on OCC
PSU:
Ultra X4 500W PSU on DriverHeaven
Nexus NX-5000 PSU on Rbmods
Antec CP-1000 1000W Power Supply on Johnnyguru.com
CPU:
AMD 125W Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition on Techgage
Intel Pentium E6300 2.80 GHz on TechPowerUp
Case:
NZXT LEXA S Crafted Series PC Chassis on Bona Fide Reviews
Corsair Obsidian Series 800D enclosure on Techreport
Azza Solano 1000R Full Tower Case on Pro-Clockers
Portable:
Speck Products TuckPack Sleeve on TestFreaks
MSI X-Slim X600 - 15.6in CULV Laptop on Trusted Reviews
Misc:
Canon PowerShot S90 on Hardware Zone
Lowepro Outback 100 Camera Bag on ThinkComputers.org
De-Branded HP Sempron LE-1250 PC on MHW
TRENDnet TEW-671BR Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Router on PCShopTalk
LG BL40 Chocolate on TrustedReviews
Thanks to mikloise and sciby for these:
     
     
     
Thursday Night
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Thursday, 19-November-2009 21:51:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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GamerLimit sent word of a QLD Govt E-Petition in support of an R18+ rating for games. Many campaigns for change in QLD have begun with one of these, and it’s certainly a great start to push the QLD Attorney General into action and pledging his support for a change in the system.
Tweaktown looked at a laptop with 3D Vision. They are announcing, in conjunction with ASUS, the world’s first mobile 3D Vision capable laptop. This is based off of the G51 line up and will be dubbed the G51J-3D. To do this ASUS has packed a 120Hz 15.6-inch LCD screen that is capable of handling the 3D Vision.
Australia has a new fastest supercomputer. The supercomputer was supplied by Sun Microsystems and contains 3,000 quad-core Intel Nehalem processors with 36TB of memory and a petabyte filesystem.
Tweakhound have a Windows 7 tweaking guide. I highly recommend you use Windows 7 in its default state for at least a week before you start tweaking it. There are new features in Windows 7 that may seem like unnecessary bloat at first that you may discover actually help you get things done faster.
Wizzard67 noticed that the Intel SSD toolkit and firmware should be fixed and re-released by the end of the month. Intel has confirmed an issue with the firmware update process for 34nm (G2) Intel® X25-M SSDs (80GB and 160GB). This predominantly affected Windows* 7 (64bit) users during or immediately after the upgrade process to 02HA firmware using the firmware update tool (version 1.3). Intel plans to release a fix for this issue by the end of November 2009.
Brains spotted this laptop reliability study. Mac fans are often quick to claim superior performance from their Apple laptops, but a study from a warranty supplier in the US has ranked the reliability of their hardware fourth behind Asus, Toshiba and Sony.
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 19-November-2009 13:41:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual Hard Drive Docking Station on Tweaknews.
Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual HDD Docking Station on Pro-Clockers.
Kingston SSDNow V 40GB on Bjorn3D.
Speck TwoZip HDD Case on TestFreaks.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit on TrustedReviews.
Motherboards:
ASUS P7P55D-E Premium LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org.
MSI NF980-G65 Mainboard AM3 board on TechWareLabs.
Intel DP55WG LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org.
Gigabyte G41M-ES2L LGA775 board on HWSecrets.
Cases:
IN WIN Maelstrom on OCClub.
Antec Sonata Elite Mid Tower on ExtremeOC.
Sunbeamtech Automaton on MadShrimps.
Audio / Visual:
HP DreamScreen 100 digital picture frame on DigitalTrends.
LG 50PS7000 50in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Samsung LN55B650T1F 55-Inch LCD HDTV on FutureLooks.
Canon SX20is 20x Ultrazoom Digital Camera on RamblingThoughts.
Bluetrek Bizz Bluetooth Headset on iGadgetLife.
Raidsonic Icybox IB-MP305A-B Media Player on RBMods.
Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Blu-Ray player on DigitalTrends.
Sony Bravia KDL-40Z5800 40in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
ASUS SBC-04D1S-U External Slim Blu-ray Combo Drive on ThinkComputers.
Phiaton PS 300 NC headphones on DigitalTrends.
Western Digital WD TV HD Live on DigitalTrends.
Popcorn Hour C200 Networked Media Tank/HTPC on TechWareLabs.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 digicam on DigitalTrends.
Misc:
Asus RT-N16 router on DigitalTrends.
Corsair H50 Liquid-Cooling System on XbitLabs.
Kingston HyperX 4GB 2133MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory Kit on FutureLooks.
The NDA has been lifted on ATI's new flagship video card. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics processing unit (GPU) joins a growing list of the world's first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card delivers 4.6 TeraFLOPS of compute power, 3200 stream procesors, 2GB of GDDR5 memory, ensuring superior performance in the latest DirectX 11 games, as well as in previous versions of DirectX and OpenGL titles.
Coverage on AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Driver Heaven, ExtremeTech, Guru3D, FiringSquad, HardOCP, Hardware Canucks, HardwareZone, Hexus, HotHardware, Legion Hardware, Legit Reviews, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective, PureOverclock, Rage3D, TechPowerUp, TechPowerUp #2, TechSpot, Tom's Hardware and TweakTown.
Click to join the forum discussion!
Photography Gallery
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Wednesday, 18-November-2009 16:30:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 18-November-2009 15:19:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with cancer. "Doctors say he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma," Jody Allen, who is Paul Allen's sister, said in the memo. "This is tough news for Paul and the family. But for those who know Paul's story, you know he beat Hodgkin's a little more than 25 years ago, and he is optimistic he can beat this, too."
The Pirate Bay has shut their tracker down for good, thanks Khalil and others. Switching to trackerless and torrentless downloading on public BitTorrent sites does indeed seem to be an option. Previously, many people thought that BitTorrent would collapse if a dominant tracker like the Pirate Bay went down, but this doomsday scenario never unfolded. In fact, the recent downtime of the tracker did not slow down or stop many transfers, as DHT and PEX seamlessly took over.
TechSpot have a 7-way P55 motherboard roundup. Should you decide to go with the Core i5 750 processor, the next and possibly most difficult choice is which motherboard to purchase. Already there are over 40 possible motherboard options to choose from and today we'll be taking a look at quite a few of the better examples.
LegitReviews checked out two SSDs in RAID0. Today, we will be taking a look at the performance of two Kingston 40GB V Series Boot Drive SSDs. Two of these drives can be bought today for $115 each, which at $230. You can put them into RAID 0 and have a nice little 80GB data array.
LegionHW meanwhile consider Left 4 Dead 2 graphics performance. Valve is about to officially release its latest gaming title, Left 4 Dead 2, and we decided to check it out. The focus of our article is not so much on game play, but rather how well certain graphics cards perform when using maximum in-game visual settings at a range of resolutions.
InsideHW looked at NVIDIA PhysX performance. We decided to give you an insight on performance rates from GeForce GTS 250 (GeForce 9800GTX+) with price tag slightly above 100€ up to two GTX 200 GPUs that have slightly higher price tags than that. Support for these was powerful rig based on Core i7 920 CPU that we overclocked from default 2.66GHz up to 3.4GHz just to be sure no bottlenecks would appear.
Hanes have a new range of gamer underwear. Erm. I don't really have anything more to say about that.
NASA and Microsoft are giving you the chance to be a Martian, or at least, learn a bit about Mars. Seems to need their Silverlight plugin thing, though.
Two timewasters today. a driving game from Toshiba and this simple Flash puzzle thing spotted by Khalil.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240
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Wednesday, 18-November-2009 12:42:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NVIDIA have a new budget card, the GeForce GT 240. This is their first GDDR5 card but probably isn't too exciting for the performance crowd, lacking DirectX 11 support and largely aimed at replacing onboard video. Coverage on Tweaktown, HWZone, Guru3D, HotHardware, TechPowerUp and LegitReviews.
Wednesday Midday Reviews
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Wednesday, 18-November-2009 12:23:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Software:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC game on I4U.
Star Trek DAC PC game on GamingHeaven.
Left 4 Dead 2 PC game on GamingHeaven.
Shattered Horizon PC game on TestFreaks.
Video Cards:
Sapphire 5870 Vapor X on Bjorn3D.
Asus Matrix GTX285 on XbitLabs.
HIS Radeon HD4850 iCooler 1GB.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB on ThinkComputers.
ASUS Radeon EAH5870 Voltage Tweak Edition on PureOC.
ATI Radeon HD 5970 on HWZone.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Apple MacBook 2009 on DigitalTrends.
HP TouchSmart 300 prebuilt PC on DigitalTrends.
Storage:
Synology Disk Station DS409slim pocket NAS on XbitLabs.
Axus FiT 300 RAID Storage on CCEReviews.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Desktop Bundle on PCPerspective.
Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive on InsidwHW.
Input Etc:
Silverstone Raven 3200dpi Gaming Mouse on OCModShop.
Coolermaster Mouse Mat Roundup on XSReviews.
Razer Orochi Mouse & Kabuto Mouse Pad on Bjorn3D.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Tuesday, 17-November-2009 19:12:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what's going on. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the new Who Quoted Me? feature.
Air cooling in a dusty/dirty situation in Overclocking & Hardware.
Performance computing advice in Overclocking & Hardware.
AMD sheds light on Bulldozer, Bobcat & Desktop plans in AMD Hardware.
Marantz 2275 Restoration - 1974 in Audio Visual.
Upcoming PlayStation 3 Firmware (v3.10) Update Preview in Sony Consoles.
Rolling out Desktops with SSD in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Alphawest/Optus announce Cloud services in Business & Enterprise Computing.
32 * 1.5TB drives.. what PSU? in Storage & Backup.
RAID 5 - Write Through & Write Back in Storage & Backup.
G.Skill Falcon II 34nm SSD's Using New Indilinx ECO in Storage & Backup.
Network enabled power meter in Electronics.
pusbag's review on upgrading from iPhone 3G to 3G 'S' in Mobile Phones.
Network Admin Toolkit - Must have apps! in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
A look at Devin Townsend's ProTools session, really cool in Musicians.
Film Showcase - Examples and Details of Films, Developing, Scanning in Photography.
[VIDEO] The Making of 'Cardboard Wonderland' in Photography & Video Gallery.
Do you play inverted or normal? in Game Consoles.
Emdrive Electromagnetic Drive For Chinese Space Ships? in Science.
Bettas/Siamese Fighters - FAQ in Pets & Animals.
Fish Paprikash, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Carp in Geek Food.
Icon A5 Amphibious Sports Aircraft in Other Toys.
Fat in Japan? You're breaking the law in Current Events.
IT Horror Stories in The Pub.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 17-November-2009 13:39:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Michael Atkinson has sent a 6-page reply to someone concerned about the lack of R18+ classification for games in Australia, thanks Vanguard. There's a summary here on Reddit, or you can find links to the letter itself here. I think you will find this issue has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than home entertainment in imaginary worlds.
On a related note, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out recently, and apart from amusing pictures and annoyance about the lack of dedicated servers, it has also angered Russia enough to ban and recall all copies of the game. As everybody knows by now, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 includes an incredibly controversial level set in a Russian airport that has generated much discussion. The level has proven to be so inflammatory that the real-life Russia has acted, recalling all copies of the game from stores and effectively banning the title.
GoN meanwhile have a review of Shattered Horizon, the 3d spacesuit shooter. Interestingly this is the first actual game from FutureMark, more famous for their benchmarks. Now, calling a shooter original in this day and age is high praise indeed. The originality comes in the form of true space combat; players don space suits and have the ability to move and orientate themselves in any, three-dimensional direction.
Back to COD:MW2 - Guru3D have some VGA performance numbers. Last week the long awaited sequel to Call of Duty Modern Warfare was released -- COD Modern Warfare 2 probably has been one of the biggest anticipated PC game titles this year. This is Guru3D.com we have a fetish for graphics cards and games, as such we took no less than twenty-three graphics configurations and put performance to the test.
HotHardware checked out the Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD. Today we've got a full deep-dive look at Fusion-io's ioXtreme PCI Express Solid State Drive. Weighing in at a pricey $899 for 80GB (standard card), it's definitely still a high ticket item but it's at least approachable now, for those of you that have the need for speed as they say. Just how much speed? And what about RAIDing a couple of these bad boys together?
Thermaltake have a online cooler survey where you can win prizes for telling them what you think. Your responses will help us to address any issues that you may have as well as to better target our products and services to meet your needs.
Forum Projects
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Monday, 16-November-2009 17:48:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some interesting things from the forums:
I went away for a couple of days and when I came back, turning on my PC gave me a really weird problem. It wouldn't pick up an address from DHCP and kept choosing a 169.* address which isn't valid for my LAN. After the usual things of renewing the lease, assigning a static address, trying a different cable and switch port, deleting the NIC driver etc, I still had no joy, but other PCs on the LAN were fine. Some Googling found a few more suggestions, one of which was to power the PC off, boot it with no LAN cable, then insert the cable after it had finished booting. That worked! Bizarre.
ASUS have a Mona Lisa of motherboards in the lobby of their headquarters in Taiwan. Asus designers reportedly dreamed up this Mona Lisa. The work represents two things: a reminder of the technology that Asus built its fortune on and the company’s ethos to encourage and support “any kind of crazy ideas.”
Rezin noticed that YouTube will be getting high-def 1080p soon. He also said, then, that YouTube stores all video it receives at the resolution it's uploaded at. So when YouTube ads a resolution option, as it did then and is doing now, it simply needs to re-encode videos for the new player, not get new raw content.
Wessam spotted this explanation of computation theory aimed at educating lawyers. It's freaking gargantuan so I haven't read it. Also, it's now clear that just as you wouldn't go into litigation without a lawyer, if you are wise, because that is their area of expertise, lawyers also shouldn't assume they understand software and patents and how they relate unless they get help from technology experts who know how software and computers, and the underlying math, really work.
The Large Hadron Collider has suffered a fair few setbacks, but will apparently fire up again this week. Right now, particles are circulating through six of the eight sectors of the LHC’s 17-mile track, and the last two sectors will be turned on in the coming week. If the machine doesn’t break down again, physicists will finally have their long-awaited collider and, hopefully, start answering those nagging questions about the universe.
A few people sent in this story of someone crashing his Bugatti Veyron into a lake. Driving weather's been perfect in southeast Texas lately, so it's anyone's guess how this genius skipped his million-dollar-plus Bugatti Veyron off the road and right into a freaking lake. Despite the cost, Veyrons certainly aren't amphibious. Video of the crash here, discussion here.
Apparently NVIDIA are not blocking Lucid Hydra after all. Brown contacted us earlier today and informed us that Nvidia "had nothing to do with MSI's decision to postpone its Big Bang Fuzion motherboard." Furthermore, he affirmed that Nvidia would not place any technical roadblocks in Lucid's path, stating: "As I mentioned, we welcome Lucid to the market and have no intention of blocking them with our drivers, etc."
TheInq reckon the RIAA has forced a small town to shut down its free WiFi service, thanks enigma. Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie.
Byteside have two new episodes, with the Games Show: On Games it's the uber-elite world of Pro-gaming, topics covered include: pro-gamer training tips, how to break into the big league, why is it all dominated by Counter-Strike and Starcraft and the perils of a pro-gaming career. And the Tech Show: Topics covered include: the evolution and future of overclocking, hot hardware, the modding scene, extreme components and cooling.
Once again we're having an OCAU Secret Santa. If you want to get involved, sign up by the 30th of November.
Sunday Evening Reviews
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Sunday, 15-November-2009 20:39:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Cooler Master Hyper N620 Heatpipe CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Feser One Non Conductive Fluid on Bjorn3D.
Software:
Star Trek Online MMORPG on GamingHeaven.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Graphics Performance on TechSpot.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Video Review Part 1 on Motherboards.org.
Machinarium PC game on GamingHeaven.
Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2 Pictorial Review on TechReviewSource.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte GTX260/275, HD 5870 Graphics Cards on IXBTLabs.
Asus Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 on TestSeek.
EVGA GeForce GT 220 SSC DDR3 on LegitReviews.
Sapphire Vapor X ATI RADEON HD 5750 Video Review on Motherboards.org.
AMD ATI Radeon HD 5770 on TrustedReviews.
Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB Razor Edition on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Azza Helios 910 Mid Tower on Pro-Clockers.
AZZA Helios 910R on Hi-TechReviews.
Cooler Master HAF 922 on Guru3D.
SilverStone Raven RV02 on Phoronix.
I'm going to be away much of this weekend, so things will be fairly quiet on the news page.. but in the meantime, thanks to Dopefish and Sugaris for these:
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 13-November-2009 14:10:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's Friday the 13th, and Dopefish sent in this list of top horror movies to watch.
It seems Intel and AMD have settled their differences, announcing an agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes includnig antitrust litigation and patent licensing disputes. Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement, Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement, and Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion. More info here.
Meanwhile HP are planning to acquire 3Com. The deal is valued at $2.7 billion, or $7.90 per share. HP says the purchase is intended to boost its networking business, particularly in China, where most of 3Com's business is focused. More info here, thanks SpudBoy.
Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has drawn fire for saying the 1 million bittorrent downloads of his film may affect the chances of a sequel being made, thanks Rage. Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us.
LostCircuits have an SSD primer explaining NAND flash technology in depth. The predominant SSD storage medium at this moment is NAND flash memory and this is not likely to change in the near future even though new technologies such as phase change memory, magnetoresistive memory, resistive memory, organic memory, nanotube-based memory and finally NOR flash are on the horizon.
A recent Microsoft interview contained comments that Windows 7 was deliberately Mac-like, but those comments were hurriedly retracted. Simon was incorrect in describing Windows 7 in this way and subsequent headlines claiming that the Mac OS inspired Windows 7 are totally inaccurate.
The Mars rover "Spirit" is stuck in a sand trap. NASA will begin transmitting commands to its Mars exploration rover Spirit on Monday as part of an escape plan to free the venerable robot from its Martian sand trap.
The latest odd happening caught by Google Maps Street View is an old lady being knocked off her bike, seemingly by a fire engine. Luckily, the Googlers stopped to help. Hey guys... where's the fire?
Jammahead reminded us of an easy way to contact your Attorney General and let them know your feelings on the lack of an R18+ classification for video games in Australia. Particularly if you live in South Australia. :)
PSU:
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M 600W Power Supply on Techware Labs
Nexus RX-6300 630 W Power Supply on Hardware Secrets
ABS SL Series 1050 Power Supply on Bjorn3D
Gaming:
Torchlight (PC Game) on Gaming Heaven
ZOWIE Hammer Gaming Headset on TweakTown
BUBBLE BOBBLE Neo! on TestFreaks
Roccat Vire Gaming Headset on DriverHeaven
Media Players:
Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Networked Blu-ray Player on I4U
Raidsonic IB-MP305 Network MultiMedia Player on RWLabs
Marantz BD7004 Blu-ray Player on Trusted Reviews
Storage:
Seagate Savvio 10K.3 SAS 2.0 6Gb/s 300GB 2.5-inch Hard Disk on Tweaktown
Samsung Spinpoint F1 (HD103UJ) 1 TB Hard Disk Drive on Techarp
Verbatim Store n Go Micro 4GB Flash Drive on OCModShop
Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Boot Drive SSD on Benchmark Reviews
OCZ Tech Agility Series 120GB SSD on Trusted Reviews
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9900A LED cpu cooler on Testseek
Titan Skalli CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets
NZXT Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Controller on RBMods
Thermaltake Massive23 ST Notebook Cooler on ThinkComputers.org
Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme on OCC
Motherboard:
DFI P55-T3eH9 (Intel P55) on Hardware Zone
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard on t-break
ECS P55H-A Motherboard on Motherboards.org
DFI LANParty DK P55-T3eH9 Motherboard on Tweaktown
Mouse/Input:
Logitech Performance Mouse M950 on Hardware Zone
Adesso CyberTablet 6400 on OCModShop
Laptop:
Samsung X120 (JA01UK) - 11.6in CULV Laptop on Trusted Reviews
Novatech X70 CA Pro - 15.6in Core i7 Gaming Laptop on TrustedReviews
Case:
NZXT M59 Case on Neoseeker
NZXT Beta EVO Mid-Tower Steel Case on Overclockers Online
NZXT Lexa S Crafted Series Black Steel Mid Tower Chassis on ThinkComputers
Thermaltake Element G Case on Modders-Inc
Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition Case on Legit Reviews
XClio Godspeed One Advanced Mid Tower Case on TweakTown
CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Black Edition on Overclockers Club
Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme on PureOC
Xigmatek Midgard-W Computer Case on BmR
Videocard:
Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ Razor Edition on Pc Perspective
ASUS EAH5770 on Guru3D
Inno3D GeForce GT 220 1 GB on Tech Powerup
Misc:
Logitech Squeezbox Boom on Techware Labs
Archos 3 8GB Touch-screen MP3 Player on Everything USB
Leadtek PxVC1100 MPEG-2/H.264 Transcoding Card on Legit Reviews
Toshiba Regza 46SV685D 46in LED Backlit LCD TV on Trusted Reviews
Kingston HyperX T1 4GB DDR3-2133 on Pure Overclock
AMD Phenom II 955 on Techware Labs
Thursday Night
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Thursday, 12-November-2009 23:52:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Thousands of gamers have been banned from Xbox Live for having modified consoles. "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live," Microsoft has said in a statement. Discussion here.
It also seems Microsoft have patented sudo, or something that looks a lot like it. Obviously, if they could figure that out, they'd never have issued this patent in the first place. The fact that they did, without realizing the implications, or the obviousness, or the prior art, tells us that the USPTO simply lacks the foundational technical information, or the awareness of technical history, to make wise patent decisions about software and patents.
Google have announced a new programming language called Go, thanks Chook. No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously. ... We believe it's worth trying again with a new language, a concurrent, garbage-collected language with fast compilation. Discussion here.
AusGamers have an article about building a high-definition HTPC for $500. Nvidia have changed all that with the introduction of VDPAU and their low-cost ION platform. VDPAU – which stands for Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix – allows Linux applications to offload video decoding to an Nvidia GPU. The ION platform is a small-form-factor motherboard/chipset combination that provides an Atom CPU, DDR2 memory, and a GeForce 9400M-class GPU.
One of the first released systems containing the ION platform is the Asrock Ion330.
Tech Report, HotHardware and PC Perspective all checked out the new Lucid Hydra GPU load-balancer. Now, a little more than a year after that first IDF showing, Lucid says its Hydra 200 chip is ready to ship in consumer systems. To underscore that point, the firm recently invited us to its San Jose, California offices to experience a Hyrda-based solution first-hand. We came away with our impressions of the Hydra solution in action, along with some of the first performance numbers to be released to the public.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 11-November-2009 16:49:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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MSI and HWBOT are having an online overclocking competition. Therefore, on behalf of MSI, we invite all overclockers around the world to join the Xtreme Speeder P55 Online Competition and to challenge undiscovered extreme overclocking territory of MSI P55 and Intel Lynnfield CPU.
Gigabyte meanwhile have a web-based competition. The GIGABYTE “Smart 6 Challenge” web activity started October 19, 2009, and ends November 27, 2009. Participants need to collect the energy of Smart 6 to help the GIGABYTE warrior defend the earth against a slew of alien invaders. Once you have successfully collected the Smart 6 energy within the set time, you will have a chance to win one of the latest GIGABYTE Intel P55 chipset based motherboards.
Matthew sent in this video-game with real-life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.
NinjaLane have some PhysX performance tests, while Bjorn3D looked at PhysX in Darkest of Days. Nvidia Physx has brought us some rather unique effects in this game for instance denser smoke, blowing leaves, more paricles from exploding howitzer rounds, and sparks flying everywhere after firing our weapon.
Rupert Murdoch, annoyed at Google "stealing" his news content by indexing it, is threatening to remove the WSJ and other News Corp sites from the index as well as charging readers for access. When asked why he would buck the trend of offering free content, Murdoch said: "(The public) shouldn't have had it free. I think we've been asleep." Sounds like a brilliant plan you have there, Rupert.
AMD GPU owners playing Need For Speed: Shift might want to check out this report from LegitReviews. This Need For Speed: Shift Patch isn't out yet, but we managed to work our magic and get both the latest beta drivers from AMD and the game patch from EA to see how much smoother and better the game play will be for AMD video card users. We also toss in some NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards into the mix to check out the SLI scaling since the patch is optimized for multi-GPUs.
You can get in trouble for using your mobile phone while driving your car, but what about controlling your car with your mobile phone? We then set up wi-fi communication so we can drive the car from an iPhone as well as from a modified Power Wheels truck. Thanks Rezin.
Tweaktown looked at USB 3.0 SSD performance. We compared USB 3.0 performance against USB 2.0, eSATA, SATA 2.0 (directly connected to the test system) and Firewire 400 and 800. Testing was done on a new system running Windows 7 with a Core i5 750 processor that was hooked into a GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P motherboard, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a NEC USB 3.0 PCI-E x1 controller card. The specific USB 3.0 chip used was the D720200F1 from NEC Japan, one of the few available at the time of writing.
MadShrimps played with some liquid nitrogen on a GeForce GT 220. We pour some -180°C LN2 over NVIDIA's 40nm GPU to see how high it will scale. With the help of some voltage modifications we are ready to breach some world records at the low end of the video card scale.
Today's timewaster is Cargo Bridge spotted by Tony_L.
Wednesday Morning Reviews #2
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Wednesday, 11-November-2009 00:48:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboards:
GIGABYTE P55-UD6 LGA1156 board on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte P55-UD6 LGA1156 board on HWSecrets.
ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org.
Intel DP55KG “Kingsberg” Extreme Series LGA1156 board on FutureLooks.
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe LGA1156 board on Tweaktown.
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe P55 LGA1156 board on PCPerspective.
ECS P55H-A LGA1156 board on PCShopTalk.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X on NeoSeeker.
Gigabyte GeForce 210 on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X on Tweaktown.
HIS Radeon HD4890 iCooler x4 on Tweaknews.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X on Techgage.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower Ultra Slim 65W Universal Laptop AC Adapter on OCClub.
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W on JonnyGuru.
Input Etc:
World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King Limited Edition Z-Board on PCShopTalk.
Logitech Anywhere MX "Darkfield" Wireless Mouse on EverythingUSB.
Storage & Memory:
Vantec NexStar Universal Storage Adapter on TestFreaks.
Promise SmartStor DS4600 DAS on Guru3D.
In Win AMMO 2.5 inch RFID Enclosure on TechPowerUp.
OCZ Agility EX 60GB SSD on Phoronix.
RunCore 64GB Pro IV 70mm PCI-e SATA SSD on TestFreaks.
Crucial M225 256GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Apacer A7 Turbo A7202 64GB Solid State Drive on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 8GB Kit on Bjorn3D.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 11-November-2009 00:34:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
Panasonic TZ7 Ultrazoom Compact Digital Camera for Travellers on RamblingThoughts.
Gameskulls GS-1 Tactical Gaming Helmet on OCIA.
Logitech Harmony 1100 Remote Control on CCEReviews.
Canon Powershot SD940 IS digicam on ExtremeMHz.
Tritton AX 720 Dolby Digital Surround Gaming Headset on LegitReviews.
Sharp Aquos LC-46LE700E 46in LED Backlit LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
ATEN VS481A 4-Port HDMI Switch on OCModShop.
Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5vi Earphones on TrustedReviews.
Cases:
CM Storm Sniper Black Case SGC-6000-KKN1-GP on BenchmarkReviews.
NZXT M59 - 001BK on OCClub.
Cooler Master Elite 310 on TestSeek.
SilverStone Raven RV02 on PureOC.
Portable & Barebones:
Asus G51J Core i7 Mobile Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
Acer Timeline 14" 4810T Notebook on TechSpot.
VIA ARTiGO A2000 barebones server on TechwareLabs.
Cooling:
NZXT SENTRY 2 5.25" Touch Screen Fan Controller on BonaFideReviews.
Choiix Mini Air-Through Notebook Cooling Pad on VerdisReviews.
Coolink SWiF2 Fan Series on RBMods.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on Vortez, thanks Scoobth.
Corsair H50 Hydro Series Liquid/Water CPU Cooling System on Tweaknews.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 10-November-2009 17:16:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Apparently Firefox is five years old already. That's a long time on the Internet, so let's celebrate five years of working together to make the Web better for everyone.
Meanwhile Sciby spotted this fairly neat customised free software installer. Ninite runs on Windows XP/Vista/7 and works in the background 100% hands-free. We install apps with default settings and say "no" to browser toolbars and other junk. All we do is install the latest versions of the apps you choose. Not even Ninite is installed.
NVIDIA's CEO has denied rumours of an x86 chip from them. "No," he said when asked if there was any truth to the rumor. "Nvidia's strategy is very, very clear. I'm very straightforward about it. Right now, more than ever, we have to focus on visual and parallel computing."
The Large Hadron Collider has been shut down by bread dropped onto it by a passing bird. You can't make this stuff up. The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
PCPerspective spent some time with GlobalFoundries, the fabrication spinoff of AMD. We spent some time recently with the team at GlobalFoundries to get an update on its status as an independent foundry company, its first and second customers, how the move to 32nm and 28nm is progressing and to speculate on what it means for the rest of the industry.
From BFM: Looking forward, there is so much excitement about the future that today sees the release of DarkBASIC Professional Online FREE - the full and unrestricted ad-supported version of the flagship product ... DarkBASIC Professional is definitely worth a look for anyone wanting to program their own games for use with Windows based systems.
XbitLabs checked out six SAS RAID controllers. We are going to compare six SAS RAID controllers we have reviewed before side by side in this roundup. Solutions from 3ware, Adaptec, Areca, HighPoint, LSI and promise - all in one article. They also have an ATI Radeon HD 5700 family review.
Sponsor Specials
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Monday, 9-November-2009 15:08:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum when you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have deals and specials on media players, data recovery, webhosting, fitness supplements, software, PC components, modding gear, monitors and other goodies. There's even the occasional competition. Check it out!
Is your mouse not quite bristling with enough buttons? Try the 18-button OpenOfficeMouse assuming it's not a joke. The OpenOfficeMouse, or OOMouse, isn’t exactly the most attractive piece of hardware, but its creator claims that “16 buttons divided into two 8-button halves were the maximum number of buttons that could be efficiently used by feel alone.”
Australian iPhone users are being rickrolled by a worm, thanks Aurak. The attacks, which researchers say are the world's first iPhone worm in the wild, target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH software installed and keep Apple's default root password of "alpine." In addition to showing a well-coiffed picture of Astley, the new wallpaper displays the message "ikee is never going to give you up," a play on Astley's saccharine addled 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up."
InsideHW checked out all DirectX 11 cards. And there you have it – all DirectX 11 graphics cards at this moment. NVIDIA does not have any card in this category, neither has anything announced. When it comes to power consumption at IDLE, we don’t know how ATI accomplished their levels, but we cannot confirm those. Don’t get us wrong, those levels are higher than those that ATI published, but still compared to previous generations, very low. This will have positive impact on your electricity bill, but more importantly on temperature inside your chassis.
PhysOrg have a worrying report about people being framed for child porn by malware. An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute - an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped - 11 months after it was filed.
A Danish anti-piracy group has thrown in the towel. In Denmark, the local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen has given up on trying to get illegal file-sharers convicted and has announced that it will no longer take them to court. This decision is the result of Antipiratgruppen’s inability to gather solid evidence, which has resulted in several lost court cases in the last year.
A visually-impaired gamer is suing Sony Online. Last month, disabled gamer Alexander Stern filed suit against Sony, Sony Online Entertainment, and Sony Computer Entertainment America in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The suit alleges that Sony is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to implement features to make its games accessible to visually impaired gamers.
On tonight's Good Game: In the face of the tsunami of protest over Junglists departure from the show, new presenter Hex and Bajo soldier on to bring you their experiences with this week’s new game releases. ... Catch Good Game Monday nights on ABC2 @ 8:30pm, or late Friday nights on ABC1, just before rage. Watch any episode at www.abc.net.au/goodgame. Or if you miss it, watch a higher quality version on ABC's iView service: www.abc.net.au/iview.
Resident code monkey matthudson has whipped up another neat little feature for the forums: Who Quoted Me?. This shows you the last few times you have been quoted in the forums, helping you find replies to you in threads you may have forgotten you posted in. You can find the link at top right in the forums under the "Welcome" message.
The USA's National Security Agency is apparently building a mammoth datacentre to house its ever-growing automated surveillance data - up to one yottabyte of it. There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. More info here.
NVIDIA is taking aim at Intel, via the medium of editorial cartoons. Nvidia representatives and the cartoonist himself confirmed that Nvidia hosts the site, which is also linked to on its corporate blog. So far, the IntelsInsides.com site has only poked fun at Intel, although Bob Sherbin, Nvidia's head of corporate communications, said that other targets could be forthcoming. The site is here.
Internode are trialling IPv6 for ADSL customers for the first time in Australia, thanks Cam. Today's announcement marks the first time an Australian broadband provider has offered IPv6 services running in native mode on its national ADSL network: This means that IPv6 can work directly with any Internode ADSL service, offering concurrent IPv6 and IPv4 PPP access with any router or computer that supports it.
PCPerspective checked out AMD VISION. AMD hosted a group of technology reviewers November 3 at their LoneStar campus in Austin, Texas, to brief them on their next generation of notebooks featuring their new VISION technology.
Frostytech meanwhile look inside heatpipes. It's impossible to tell what type of wick a heatpipe uses in your favourite heatsink just by looking at it from the outside. The heatpipe would need to be cut open to find out the answer to that question, and doing so obviously destroy the thermal solution in the process. Instead we offer a rare look at behind the scenes technology which greatly influences thermal performance of modern CPU heatsinks - the heatpipe wick structure.
Phone:
Motorola Endeavor HX1 Bluetooth Headset on Hardware Zone
Motorola DROID on HotHardware
HTC HD2 Windows Phone Smartphone on TrustedReviews
Case:
nMedia Wood HTPC 8000 Case on OCModShop
SilverStone Grandia GD04 Case on Hardware Secrets
Chieftec BL-01B PC Case on ThinkComputers
Corsair Obsidian 800D on Guru3D
Corsair Obsidian 800D on TechPowerUp
EVO Computer Case on TechwareLabs
Laptop:
Lenovo IdeaPad U350 on InsideHW
Dell Adamo XPS Laptop Wows at Just 9.99mm Thin on Digital Trends
Audio:
Monitor Audio Vector 5.1-Channel Speaker System on TrustedReviews
Yamaha RX-V2065 A/V Receiver on Digital Trends
Eagle Arion ET-AR504LR-BK 2.1 Soundstage Speakers on BmR
RAM:
Patriot Viper II Sector 5 PVV34G2000LLK Dual Channel Memory Kit on PCShopTalk
Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K2/4G Memory on OCC
Videocard:
DIAMOND 4890PE51GXOC Radeon HD 4890 1GB Video Card on Futurelooks
Xigmatek Bifrost VD1065 VGA Cooler on Tweaktown
Storage:
Seagate Savvio 15K.2 SAS 2.0 6Gb/s 146GB 2.5-inch Hard Disk on TweakTown
SanDisk Extreme Pro 32gb Compact Flash Card on Testfreaks
Motherboard:
ECS Elitegroup P55H-A on Phoronix
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO Motherboard on Motherboards.org
Input:
Apple Magic Mouse on DigitalTrends
Verbatim Easy Riser Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse with Nano Receiver on iGadgetLife
OCZ Eclipse Double Laser Gaming Mouse on Virtual-Hideout
Misc:
ASUS RT-N13U Wireless Router and Print Server on Thinkcomputers
Airlink101 SkyIPCam777W Surveillance Camera on OCIA.net
PowerMat Wireless Charging Unit on Testfreaks
Olympus E-P2 Camera on Hardware Zone
Phenom 2 X4 965 (125w TDP) on Bjorn3D
Zalman ZM500-RS PSU on Testseek
Archive Updated
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Saturday, 7-November-2009 15:51:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Our two recent articles reminded me that I've been a bit slack about updating the OCAU Content Archive in the Wiki. So I've gone through and added all the in-house articles since last time I did it, and they're also listed below:
2009 OCAU Server Upgrade
Lynnfield i5 or i7 - This is the Question
Kingston SSD vs Western Digital VelociRaptor
Radeon Shootout
Phenom Shootout
ATI Radeon HD 4890 in CrossfireX
AMD Live! HTPC
Attack of the Fake USB Sticks
AMD Phenom II X4 810
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and Radeon 4670
GIGABYTE Core i7 920 Overclocking Guide
Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD
Intel Core i7 - Nehalem Arrives
Intel Skulltrail - Dual Quad-Core Computing for Desktops
AMD Spider Platform
AMD Media Event Report
You may have noticed already, but we now have a free image hosting service for people with OCAU Forum accounts. You can use the QuickLink ocau.com/pix to get there quickly. Anyway, use your forum login, upload pictures, receive forum code to put them into threads. Easy! There's a multiple upload feature and even a "rehosting" feature to grab pictures from elsewhere on the net. You can organise them into galleries if you like. If you tick the "public" box, they will be browseable on this page.
Laptop/Systems:
Cooler Master SNA 95 on InsideHW
ASUS Eee PC 1101HA Seashell 11.6-inch Netbook on TweakTown
ASRock ION 330HT-BD Nettop on TweakTown
Medion Akoya E3211 - 13.3in CULV Laptop on TrustedReviews
ASRock ION 330HT-BD on OCWorkBench
Toshiba Satellite T135 Win 7 CULV Notebook on HotHardware.com
PSU:
OCZ Z Series 650 Watt Power Supply on OCIA.net
Sapphire PURE 1250W Modular PSU on Bjorn3D
Enermax Galaxy EVO 1250W on PureOverclock
Case:
NZXT Gamma Budget Case on OcModShop
Lancool Dragonlord PC-K58 on techPowerUp
Thermaltake Element Q Mini-ITX case on Metku.net
Motherboard:
Asus P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard on Techspot
MSI NF980-G65 Motherboard on Neoseeker
MSI P55-GD65 Motherboard on TrustedReviews
ASRock M3A785GXH/128M Motherboard on Legit Reviews
Cooling:
Thermolab BADA Heatsink on Frostytech
Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler on RWLabs
Dynatron Genius on OCC
Videocard:
Sparkle GeForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Car on ThinkComputers.org
Gigabyte GeForce GT220 on Bjorn3D
HIS Radeon HD 5850 1GB Video Card on TweakTown
Sapphire HD 5750 1 GB GDDR5 on techPowerUp
Leadtek Winfast Geforce GT 220 1Gb on Madshrimps
Storage:
LiteON iHAS424 Dual-Layer DVD Writer on PCStats
Synology DS209 Advance NAS Enclosures on Pro-Clockers
Misc:
Cooler Master Lab Test Bench V1.0 on Madshrimps
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Sith Ultimate Edition (PC) on Gaming Heaven
Pantech C790 Reveal Mobile Phone on Testfreaks
Athlon II X3 435 Triple Core Processor on TechwareLabs
Friday again! Time flies..
     
     
     
And this last one from Mindy, with a story: I'd briefly like to introduce you to TUNE! FM's new team member. He's yet to be named but we've established that his preferred sleeping space is inside our on-air Google Radio Automation server, on an AudioScience (Balanced) Soundcard!
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 125W
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Friday, 6-November-2009 14:30:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD recently released a new revision of their Phenom II X4 965 BE CPU. This CE Revision is intended to use less power and run cooler - hopefully allowing more overclocking.
Coverage on BenchMarkReviews, OCClub, LostCircuits, Guru3D, NeoSeeker, PureOC, HotHardware, ExtremeOC, DriverHeaven, XbitLabs, PCPerspective and PCStats.
Discussion here.
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 6-November-2009 14:23:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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New York's Attorney General has filed an antitrust suit against Intel. "Intel has engaged in a systematic worldwide campaign of illegal, exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market for x86 microprocessors," the suit asserts. "By exacting exclusive or near-exclusive agreements from large computer makers in exchange for payments totaling billions of dollars, and threatening retaliation against any company that did not heed its wishes, Intel robbed its competitors of the opportunity to challenge Intel's dominance in key segments of the market. This illegal behavior was highly detrimental to consumers, competition, and innovation."
Mike noticed an interview with Australia's first gamer rights political party on Kotaku. Established in the wake of the controversial banning – and subsequent censorship – of Left 4 Dead 2, the Gamers 4 Croydon party plans to run against South Australian Attorney-General and R18+ videogame opponent Michael Atkinson in next year’s state election. I caught up with party founder David Doe to discuss those plans.
BoingBoing have a leaked copyright treaty, and are quite concerned about it. The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad.
Timbot spotted a French gaming magazine firing consoles through walls. I'm not sure why. :) The District 9-esque gallery of cockroaches infiltrating data centers (above) is clever, but the "Overheating" photo shoot of products being thrown through a wall out of frustration is definitely the main highlight here.
Google Dashboard now centralizes privacy settings, thanks Rezin. Google has launched Dashboard, which enables users of its products - such as Gmail, YouTube and Blogger - to centrally manage privacy settings and monitor how much data is stored on Google's servers.
Fancy a crack at game development? Epic have released a free Unreal Development Kit. Gears of War and Unreal developer Epic Games today released its Unreal Engine 3 dev tools as a free download, aimed at providing noncommercial and educational use of the technology that powers many PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games.
Steve Jobs has been crowned CEO of the decade by Fortune. In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets - music, movies, and mobile telephones - and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.
NismoR31 sends word that voting is now open for OCAU Iron Photographer for October. Below we have every competitor’s entry listed anonymously. Voting is simple. Select your single favourite entry and the winning OCAUer will be revealed at the end of the month. Official October 2009 Theme: "There Is No Theme".
Interesting Forum Threads
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Thursday, 5-November-2009 21:21:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are looking at in the forums:
Unboxing Corsair Obsidian 800D in Overclocking & Hardware.
Gigabyte Readies GA-EX58-Extreme2, USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s in Overclocking & Hardware.
Asus P55 Premium with SATA3 and USB3 in the house! in Overclocking & Hardware.
New Silverstone Fortress FT02 coming soon! in Overclocking & Hardware.
Are ESD wrist band necessary for taking your motherboard out? in Overclocking & Hardware.
CPU at absolute zero? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Chopping some power bills in Electronics.
AMD v nVidia - nVidia moving away from gaming in Video Cards & Monitors.
Just got home from Nvidia/EVGA's launch for GTX 275 Co-op PhysX in Video Cards & Monitors.
Shrimp's eye points way to better DVDs in Storage & Backup.
Forza Motorsport 3 Discussion + Custom Car Pics in Microsoft Consoles.
VIA introduces new 3000 Series Nano CPUs in VIA Hardware.
We're overpriced: Telstra CEO admits in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
Why don't some websites have www anymore? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
The future of piracy? in Games.
Email your Attorney General with one click (almost) in Games.
Pyramid builders - how did they do it? in Science.
150 years after Darwins "Origin of Species" 50000 free copies ...but in Science.
Passenger accidentally ejects from plane in Current Events.
Logic Puzzle - Blue Eyes in The Pub.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 5-November-2009 17:45:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Wessam: Just stumbled upon this - looks like there's approximately a week to get your opinion in. A written submission process is underway by Australian Government Advisory Council on Intellectual Property: Review of Patentable Subject Matter. ACIP are currently seeking public comment to an options paper with a submission deadline in electronic form or hard copy of Friday, 13 November 2009. Cluey OCAUers would be suggested to read up on it here and here for the relevance of this submission process to software patents.
JC spotted this video on AusGamers that shows a bit more clearly the difference between the censored and uncensored versions of L4D2. For those wondering how they did it, I assume they recorded an in-game demo then played it back in both versions and used video software to split the screen. Clever stuff, anyway.
ArsTechnica meanwhile show how you can play as "infected" in the L4D2 demo. The Left 4 Dead 2 demo is a great time, but the lack of versus mode play with the new infected is something of a disappointment. You won't have to wait until the game launches on the 15th, however; a clever chap out there has created a plug-in to allow you to play competitive games with the demo, and to try out the new special infected.
If the Zombie Apocalypse does kick off, I'd hope to have a car like this to get around with. The TRAX STI is an experimental automobile that starts with Block's competition-ready Subaru WRX STI before ditching the tires, adding snow cat tracks, and upgrading to some next-level suspension to create the ultimate backcountry shred car. Maybe with cannons and flame-throwers on the roof instead of a snowboard rack, though.
ArsTechnica also have an article about the possibility of an x86 CPU from nVIDIA. The idea has cropped up again in an analyst note from Doug Freedman of Broadpoint AmTech, in which Freedman claims that NVIDIA has been hiring former Transmeta engineers to work on a secret x86 processor that will appear sooner rather than later.
Phoronix have a Linux Graphics Survey. For the past two years we have hosted an annual Linux Graphics Survey in which we ask well over 20,000 users each time their video card preferences, driver information, and other questions about their view of the Linux graphics stack. This year we are hosting the survey once again to allow the development community to get a better understanding of the video hardware in use, what open-source and closed-source drivers are being used, and other relevant information that will help them and the Linux community.
Thursday Afternoon Reviews
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Thursday, 5-November-2009 14:12:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Sapphire HD 5870 and HD 5750 Vapor-X on OCClub.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X on LegitReviews.
AMD Radeon HD 5750 Overclocking Guide on LegionHW.
Sapphire Radeon HD5750 and HD5850 CrossFire on BigBruin.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 Vapor-X on Motherboards.org.
ATI Radeon HD 5850 on XbitLabs.
Asus EAH 4890 on XSReviews.
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 CrossfireX on Hi-TechReviews.
Sapphire HD 5770 on NeoSeeker.
Audio Visual:
HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web multifunction printer on DigitalTrends.
amBX speakers on DriverHeaven.
Canon PowerShot S90 digicam on DigitalTrends.
OXX Digital Vantage DAB+ Portable Digital Radio on RamblingThoughts.
Haupauge HVR-1800 TV Tuner Card on TechWareLabs.
Panasonic Viera TX-P58V10 58in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Asus 24T1E - 24in LCD TV Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Memory:
Corsair Dominator 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory on FutureLooks.
Kingston HyperX 8GB Kit 1600MHz on Bjorn3D.
Storage:
Corsair Flash Survivor 32GB USB Drive on VelocityReviews.
AXUS FiT 500 RAID box on TechWareLabs.
Qnap TS-219P Turbo NAS on TestFreaks.
Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS 2.0 6Gb/s 600GB Hard Disk on Tweaktown.
Kingwin F-35 External SATA Hard Drive Enclosure on Tweaknews.
Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD on Motherboards.org.
Verbatim TUFF-CLIP 8GB USB Drive on BonaFideReviews.
2009 OCAU Server Upgrade
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Thursday, 5-November-2009 04:22:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I finally got around to finishing the article about our recent server upgrade and hosting change. I'll warn you now it's fairly long and waffly, but for interested people it'll give you some insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of a fairly busy website. If you just want the shiny pictures, they're on page 2. :)
Click for the article!
Geek Recipes
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Wednesday, 4-November-2009 14:58:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's been a while since I've done this, but here's some more yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum:
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 4-November-2009 13:49:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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SemiAccurate take a look at a 100-core CPU. TILERA IS CLAIMING to have the first commercial CPU to reach 100 cores, and while this is true, the real interesting technology is in the interconnects. The overall chip is quite a marvel, and it is unlike any mainstream CPU you have ever heard of.
BoingBoing report that an independent poll has found heavy illegal downloaders buy more music. This is in line with many other studies elsewhere and is easy to understand: people who are music superfans do more of everything to do with music: they see more live shows, listen to more radio, buy more CDs, buy more botlegs of live shows, buy more t-shirts, talk about music more, do more downloading -- all of it.
On a related note, TechDirt cover a 60 Minutes report on movie piracy. Except they don't show any proof whatsoever that organized crime has anything to do with movie piracy at all. They just claim it, talk about Mexican gangs, and then assume it must be true. But, of course, most of the report actually focuses on the internet and file sharing of movies -- which completely goes against the claim that organized crime is "making its money" off of video piracy.
Hector Ruiz, former CEO of AMD, has resigned as Globalfoundries Chairman amid allegations of providing information to inside traders. Mr. Ruiz provided information about A.M.D.’s efforts to divest its foundry operations to one of the defendants in the case, Danielle Chiesi, according to news reports. Ms. Chiesi shared that information with her then-employer, the hedge fund New Castle Funds, before passing it along to Mr. Rajaratnam of Galleon.
Games.on.net have a video showing the differences in the censored Australian version of L4D2. For instance, we miss out on the zombie riot cop character, because even killing an undead cop constitutes violence against an authority figure. It was that sort of content that got the otherwise fairly tame Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure banned outright.
The NSW Government has called for two new green datacentres for their IT needs. Over 30 agencies supporting dozens of data centres are currently in use by the NSW Government, which plans to move them all into the two efficient facilities by 2011. The request for tender will be released in early 2010, and will be issued as a 10 year contract, with two blocks of five year extensions for the design, construction and maintenance of the facilities.
Tweaktown give us a little preview of SATA 6G and some issues with it so far. So what of SATA 6G? - It eats up a hefty 600MB/s (theoretical) running on a single PCI-e Gen 1 lane, which means you lose 350MB/s; something you are bound to notice. But there is something even larger at stake here. When we tested the external PCI-e x1 SATA 6G controller on the ASRock P55 Deluxe, we saw performance that was less than 100MB/s when this controller was plugged into the only PCI-e x1 slot.
Phoronix compare CentOS 5.4 vs. OpenSuSE 11.2 vs. Ubuntu 9.10, performance-wise. With the release of CentOS 5.4 last month to bring this community enterprise operating system on par with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5.4, we decided it was a good time to see how the server / workstation performance between this new CentOS release compares to that of Ubuntu 9.10, which was released last week, and also how it performs up against the release candidate of OpenSuSE 11.2.
HWZone checked out the "Power of 3" platform. Intel and NVIDIA have allied themselves in the battle against AMD with the introduction of the "Power of 3" platform. Simply put, it is any combination of Intel's P55 chipset and Core i5 processors, and NVIDIA's graphics card. Today, we are going to pit it against an all AMD system to see if it is really the superior setup.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 4-November-2009 12:10:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable:
Lenovo ThinkPad SL510 on TechReviewSource.
Gigabyte M1022 Booktop on HWZone.
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte GA-P55 UD3R LGA1156 on OCClub.
AMD Athlon II X2 240e Processor on TechWareLabs.
MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 board on iXBTLabs.
AMD Athlon II 620 X4 on OC3D.
AMD Athlon II X4 620 & Sapphire PI-AM3RS785G on Bjor n3D.
GIGABYTE P55-UD3P Motherboard Overclocking Test on MadShrimps.
AMD Athlon II X3 425 2.70 GHz on TechPowerUp.
Software:
Left 4 Dead 2 Demo Impressions on OCModShop.
Cities XL PC game on GamingHeaven.
Dragon Age: Origins PC game on GamingHeaven.
Input Etc:
VidaBox Wireless HTPC Media Keyboard with Laser Trackball on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse on Modders-Inc.
Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse on DigitalTrends.
EFO Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touch Pad on DragonSteelMods.
Thrustmaster Ferrari Wireless Gamepad 430 Scuderia on I4U.
Razer Naga MMO Laser Gaming Mouse on HWZone.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU cooler on RBMods.
Tital Skalli CPU cooler on PureOC.
Arctic Cooling F Pro PWM & TC Case Fans on DragonSteelMods.
Cases:
NZXT M59 Classic Series on BonaFideReviews.
Antec Mini Skeleton-90 Open Air Mini-ITX on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake DH202 HTPC Chassis Video on eTeknix.
NZXT Gamma on HWSecrets.
Forum Projects
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Tuesday, 3-November-2009 21:29:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Some interesting things from the forums:
Tuesday Evening Reviews
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Tuesday, 3-November-2009 19:31:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
Corsair TX950W on DriverHeaven.
In Win Commander 850W on Pro-Clockers.
Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W on Guru3D.
Ultra X4 1050W on Bjorn3D.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Dell Latitude E6400 XFR - 14.1in Rugged Laptop on TrustedReviews.
Sony VAIO X laptop on HWZone.
Asus G51VX Gaming Notebook on I4U.
ASUS G51VX-A1 15.6-inch Gaming Notebook on Tweaktown.
Acer Aspire 7738 notebook on InsideHW.
Audio Visual:
Energy Sistem Xplosionn headphones on XSReviews.
LG 42PQ6000 42in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Patriot Box Office Media Player on HWSecrets.
MP4Nation Beta Brainwavz In-ears on TechPowerUp.
Zowie Hammer Gaming Headset on TestFreaks.
Asus HDAV 1.3 Slim sound card on PCPerspective.
Western Digital WD TV Live HD Media Player on LegitReviews.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD5870 Vapor-X on PureOC.
Sapphire Radeon HD5870 Vapor-X on BenchmarkReviews.
Sapphire Radeon HD5750 on PureOC.
HIS HD5870 on OCrCafe.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 CrossfireX on OC3D.
Storage:
Thecus N7700 Ultimate NAS Server on Virtual-Hideout.
Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD on NeoSeeker.
Super Talent Pico Mini 8GB USB Drive video review on eTeknix.
QNAP TS-419P Four-Bay Turbo NAS Server on Tweaktown.
LaCie Starck Mobile 320GB on TechReviewSource.
Lynnfield i5 and i7
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Tuesday, 3-November-2009 04:15:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Chainbolt has sent in a whopper of an article, exploring the new "Lynnfield" i5 and i7 CPUs from Intel. Lots of info on the new features, plenty of benchmarks and of course, some overclocking:
Click for the article!
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 3-November-2009 04:11:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Google are hitting the streets in Australia's capital cities once again, to update Google Maps Street View. Foster said the new images would be "crisper than before" and the face- and number plate-blurring technology would be more accurate. He said the new images would be added to Google Maps "sometime within the next year".
Here's a cool real-world take on the old Lunar Lander game. Replacing Atari's vector graphics, my Lunar Lander is a model that hangs on fishing line and flys over a paper mache landscape. Stepper motors provide accurate control of the position and a servo controls the rotation.
Microsoft have given the world a sneak peak inside one of their datacentres. Microsoft recently opened its Chicago Data Center. In its first phase, the ground floor of the facility is designed to hold up to 56 containers, each filled with anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers.
The flamewar surrounding Good Game ex-host Junglist's replacement by Stephanie Bendixsen continues, thanks Elv15. Now the broadcaster has dismissed the allegation by issuing a few choice words about the former host's performance. "The reason for replacing Jeremy Ray was ongoing behind the scenes performance based issues," said a statement from ABC TV publicist Tony Brooks.
Following up on Saturday's NSFW LAN cafe link, Hagar offers more info: My wife, who can speak Russian confirmed that this was at a professional computer games tournament and it was the tournament organiser who arranged the strippers, but the comment was that the players were ‘heroical’ enough to disregard the distractions and continue to play the tournament – how professional! Indeed!
I still think this kind of comparison is pretty silly, but now Australia's broadband has been proven to be slower than a pigeon, thanks HyRax1. The pigeon arrived first clocking in at one hour and five minutes, the car two hours and ten minutes and the internet dropped out twice and didn't even make it at all. So by this logic we should all be driving pigeons to work. ;)
ChrisH sends word that Iron Musician Voting is on again. So this month was huge. Some new competition showed up, and boy was it good! We also had the veterans in the mix, with Ed, nickeax and last months winner, Willy dropping in a track. The way my guitar lessons are going I'll be able to enter in about a year. :)
AMD Athlon II X4 620
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Monday, 2-November-2009 00:16:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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mAJORD has an impressively detailed review of AMD's Athlon II X4 620, a budget quad-core CPU. Athlon II X4 is codename Propus - A Quad-core Phenom II in every way, but with NO L3 Cache. That's really all there is to it. The plus side though, is that the die size is considerably smaller. ... End result.. more chips can fit on a single wafer.. many more infact, so they can be sold a LOT cheaper. Good for us.
Click for the review!
Sunday Night Reviews
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Sunday, 1-November-2009 23:43:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Spyder3Express Monitor Color Calibration Device on TestFreaks.
LG W2486L monitor on InsideHW.
SparkLAN CAS-673W Wireless Pan and Tilt MPEG4/MJPEG IP Camera on Tweaktown.
Motherboards:
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA1366 board on RWLabs.
ASUS Maximus II Gene LGA775 board on HotHardware.
AMD Athlon II X3 425, 435 Processors on iXBTLabs.
MSI P55-GD80 LGA1156 board on HWSecrets.
Power Supply:
Spire Blackmoon Series 550W on RBMods.
Ultra Products X4 1050W Modular on FutureLooks.
ASUS U-75HA 750W on HWSecrets.
Storage & Memory:
OCZ Platinum DDR3 PC15000 Memory on Pro-Clockers.
Asus PCIe GEN2 SATA6G on OC3D.
Input Etc:
Steelseries 7G keyboard on XSReviews.
The Apple Magic Mouse on Windows 7 and OSX on DriverHeaven.
Portable:
Asus Eee 1101HA Netbook on I4U.
nMediaPC HTPC 8000 Wooden HTPC Case on LegitReviews.
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