March 2010

M-m-m-m-ulticore! (7 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-March-2010  13:19:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg AMD have unveiled their 8 and 12 core Opteron processors. AMD (NYSE: AMD) announces availability of a new server platform featuring the world’s first 8- and 12-core x86 processor for the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market. The AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform addresses the unmistakable needs of server customers today - workload-specific performance, power efficiency, and overall value - while delivering more cores and more memory for less money. TomsHardware have more info, thanks Kosta. PCWatch has some photos of motherboards for these CPUs, with up to four sockets. Anandtech checked out the new Opteron 6174 as well. Intel have responded with their own 8-core Xeons. Largest performance leap in Intel® Xeon® processor history, with an average improvement of 3x across a range of benchmarks. Data centers can replace 20 single core servers with a single new Intel Xeon 7500 processor series-based system. Again there's more info and a couple of videos on TomsHardware, thanks Kosta. Wednesday Midday (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-March-2010  12:56:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Large Hadron collider is a smashing success at last. After two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light and to record-high energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe. Anandtech check out RAID SSDs. Using the same Intel X58 testbed I've been using for all of my SSD tests, I created a 74.5GB RAID-0 array out of the two drives and quickly ran them through almost all of our benchmarks. At a total cost of $250, a pair of X25-Vs will set you back more than a single 80GB X25-M and you do give up TRIM, but is the performance worth it? Novell have won again in their case against SCO. Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux. Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front. Meanwhile a Usenet indexing site has lost its High Court battle in the UK, which is worrying because it implies that indexing content is as legally dubious as hosting the content. Newzbin developed a now widely-used indexing format called NZB, which uses XML code to compile the message numbers of multi-part newsgroup posts into a single file that, with an appropriate software client, can be automatically downloaded and reassembled. Shamino has cranked a GeForce GTX 480 to 1156MHz using LN2, thanks enigma. By using LN2 cooling on a GeForce GTX 480 video card he was able to take the core clock from 700MHz up to 1165MHz, which is an amazing 66% overclock! He then used an Intel Xeon E5640 processor at 4GHz and was able to score just shy of 30,000 3DMarks in the Performance test of 3DMark Vantage. From stmok: Looks like Microsoft has just released a series of "out-of-band" patches to cover Internet Explorer, Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Office Excel. All of the patches largely cover "Remote Code Execution" issues; so it would be wise to update ASAP. Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 31-March-2010  02:11:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: Gigabyte 790XT-USB3 AM3 board on Bjorn3D. ASRock P55DE3 LGA1156 board on Tweaktown. Audio Visual: Microsoft Zune 30GB Media Player on BigBruin. Sony Altus SA31iR iPod speaker dock on DigitalTrends. Technocel Ear Vibe earbuds with bass on Bjorn3D. Storage: Corsair Flash Padlock 2 8GB Secure Flash Drive on EverythingUSB. Cirago USB Hard Drive Dock with Card Reader CDD1000 on DragonSteelMods. Corsair Nova V128 SSD on Guru3D. Video Cards: Gigabyte GV-R577UD-1GD Radeon HD 5770 on Pro-Clockers. Sapphire TOXIC HD5850 2GB DDR5 on Motherboards.org. XFX Radeon 5970 Video Card w/ 4GB of Memory on LegitReviews. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 on Techgage. Cooling: Thermaltake SpinQ Six Heatpipe CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Noctua NH-D14 on OCOnline. Thermalright Venomous X CPU cooler on Overclockers.com. Xigmatek Durin D982 CPU cooler on Tweaknews. Prolimatech Armageddon CPU cooler on LegionHW. Portable: Samsung 15.6" R580 Multimedia Notebook on HotHardware. Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand on InsideHW. CoolerMaster NotePal ErgoStand Notebook Cooler on MegaTechNews. Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand on ThinkComputers. ASUS UL50Vf NVIDIA Optimus on LegitReviews. Power Supply: Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 400W on HWSecrets. Akasa Essential Power 350W on HWSecrets. Amacrox Free Earth 85PLUS 650W on HWSecrets. Input Etc: SteelSeries 7G Professional Gaming Keyboard on PCShopTalk. Gigabyte Ghost Xtreme GM-M8000X Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews. Misc: Geil Black Dragon PC3 12800 CAS 9 6GB on OCClub. In Win Maelstrom Case on OC3D. Tuesday Evening (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 30-March-2010  17:52:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Large Hadron Collider will attempt to perform its first collisions at 7 TeV today, thanks Viljar. There's a live webcast, too. The beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing. Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology, describes the challenge of lining up the beams as being akin to "firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way." Google is the latest to challenge the Government about its internet censorship plans. Google, which has recently been involved in a censorship spat with China, has been one of the filtering policy's harshest critics. It has identified a range of politically sensitive and innocuous material, such as sexual health discussions and discussions on euthanasia, which could be blocked by the filters. There's also a poll here. Motherboards.org have a video comparison of NVIDIA GTX 480 vs ATI RADEON HD 5870. In this video we do a head to head comparison of the new NVIDIA GTX480 against its rival the ATI Radeon HD 5870. This compares the two cards in a spec by spec and other feature catagories against one another. Linux support for older PS3s will vanish soon, thanks HyRax1. The next system software update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) system will be released on April 1, 2010 (JST), and will disable the “Install Other OS” feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009. This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update. Some larger SSD reviews: A-DATA S599 100GB SandForce SF-1200 on Tweaktown, Kingston SSDNow SNV425-S2 128GB on PureOC and Plextor PX-128M1S 128GB on PCStats. Monday Evening (13 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-March-2010  20:49:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg The US Government has joined the throng expressing concerns about the proposed internet filter for Australia, thanks fabricator. More info here. Officials from the State Department have raised the issue with Australian counterparts as the US mounts a diplomatic assault on internet censorship by governments worldwide. GoN report from the opening of Australia's first "video game bar", The Mana Bar. Located in the heart of Brisbane's nightlife district, Fortitude Valley, owners Yug, Pras, Shay and Yahtzee are attempting to create something that simply doesn't exist outside of Asian shores - a purely videogame themed bar. The biggest draw of the Mana Bar is its unique mixture of booze and gaming, with a dash of great music thrown in for good measure. That's Yahtzee of ZeroPunctuation fame, of course. More photos and info here, thanks dfcowell! Von Stalhein spotted this article about F1 technology. In accordance with the Federation Internationale de L’Automobile (FIA) regulations, each car has roughly 100 sensors placed in key data capture positions and send anywhere up to 20 gigabyes of data back to the pits during a race. Phoronix report that NVIDIA are dropping their open-source Linux driver, thanks MP. NVIDIA will continue supporting their high-performance, feature-rich proprietary Unix driver on Linux / FreeBSD / OpenSolaris systems, but they are kissing goodbye to xf86-video-nv. This is not a bad thing per se as the Nouveau driver is certainly a superior solution, but it is unfortunate that NVIDIA will not be supporting the Nouveau development, releasing open-source documentation, or providing other open-source support like their competitors at ATI/AMD and Intel have done and continue to do in supporting X.Org. Guru3D play around with a Phenom II X4 and LN2. We'll have our tame race driver 'OldScarface', a Dutch overclocker, tryout the latest revision of the Phenom II 965BE -- the latest stepping with a lower TDP. The objective is to pass 5 or maybe even 6 GHz on this processor. Wired report on a mini 3D display that doesn't need glasses. A handheld cube-shaped display promises to offer all the thrills of 3-D without the annoyance of the glasses. The device called pCubee arranges five LCD screens into a box-like shape so viewers can pick it up, watch content or play with virtual objects inside. It's not exactly a cinema screen, though. From Amfibius: Cooking for March 2010's Iron Chef competition is finished and the entries are up for judging. Vote for your favourite entry in this thread. Meanwhile I'm eating leftovers.. Monday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-March-2010  19:44:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: Sapphire HD5770 Crossfire on OC3D. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 Video Card Overclocked on Tweaktown. NVIDIA GeForce GTX480 on Motherboards.org. Audio Visual: Ozone Strato 5.1 Surround Sound Headphones on OCIA. Arctic Cooling E361-BM headphones on TechPowerUp. Razor Mako Speakers on ITShootout. Power Supply: FSP Group Zen 400 Watt Fanless Silent on Tweaknews. Antec Truepower New 750W on ThinkComputers. Memory: G.SKILL Eco Series PC3 12800 2x2GB on OCClub. GeIL Black Dragon 6GB DDR3-2000 on PureOC. Storage: Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed 3.5" SATA to USB 3.0 External HDD Enclosure on TestFreaks. USB Drive Performance Roundup on TBreak. Misc: In Win Maelstrom case on VerdisReviews. Thermaltake Contac 29 CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods. AMD Athlon-II X2-255 AM3 Processor on BenchmarkReviews. EFA Fund Raising (4 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-March-2010  02:55:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg Electronic Frontiers Australia are running a fund-raising campaign, to help them continue their work. Now more than ever, we need independent bodies like EFA keeping an eye out for our rights online. They've got some blog posts on their front page with more info. As an independent not-for-profit organisation, EFA relies on donations to run our campaigns. We need your support to protect online civil liberties in this country! Since 1994 EFA has campaigned on a wide range of issues relating to Internet regulation, including censorship, copyright, defamation, R18+ for computer games, telecommunications, ISP liability, privacy, domain names, trade marks, and the digital economy. If EFA is to continue to expand and launch further campaigns, we need money for media, organisation and lobbying. Monday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 29-March-2010  01:25:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: ASUS Maximus III Extreme LGA1156 board on PureOC. ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on OC3D. MSI Big Bang Trinergy LGA1156 board on RBMods. Video Cards: XFX Radeon HD5830 on BenchmarkReviews. SPARKLE Geforce GTS250 Series SXS2501024D3L-NM on PCShopTalk. Audio Visual: Logitech Harmony 650 remote on DighitalTrends. Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card on APHNetworks. JayBird SB1 Sportsband Bluetooth Stereo Headphones on LegitReviews. Klipsch Image X10i in-ear headphones on DigitalTrends. HIS Multi-View II Adapter on ViperLair. Input Etc: Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse on OC3D. Microsoft SideWinder X4 Keyboard on DragonSteelMods. Mionix NAO 5000 Gaming Mouse on FutureLooks. Ozone Smog mouse on DigitalTrends. Cases: Thermaltake Level 10 Gaming Station on HotHardware. Aerocool Qx-2000 cube on 3DXtreme. Xclio A380Color Plus on PureOC. Microcool It Banchetto 101 on OCIA. Portable: Samsung N130 Netbook on OCClub. Asus Eee PC 1201n Netbook on TechReviewSource. Power Supply: Seasonic S12II Bronze 520W on HWSecrets. Tuniq Potency 750W on HWSecrets. Misc: Brite-View LinkE PowerLine Kit on TestFreaks. Corsair Nova Series V128 128GB Solid State Disk on Tweaktown. Just Cause 2 PC game on GamingHeaven. Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 & 470 Review Round-up (14 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 27-March-2010  10:42:02 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY The NDA has been lifted on Nvidia's long awaited 400-series of Fermi based video cards. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 series gives your games an adrenaline shot with incredible performance and futuristic, visually-stunning graphics. Experience heart-pounding, cinematic visuals on your favourite games with the combined power of DirectX 11, CUDA, 3D Vision Surround and NVIDIA PhysX technologies. And expand your visual real estate across three HD displays in jaw-dropping stereoscopic 3D for the ultimate in immersive gaming. Coverage on AnandTech, Benchmark Reviews, Bjorn3D, Bit-tech, Elite Bastards, ExtremeTech, FiringSquad, Guru3D, HardOCP, Hardware Heaven, Hardware Canucks, Hexus, Hot Hardware, Legion Hardware, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective, TechPowerUp, Tom's Hardware and TweakTown. Click to join the forum discussion! Misc Pics (40 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-March-2010  14:10:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to mpot, JK, JC and Heartstarter this week! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-March-2010  13:39:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg LegionHW have a Metro 2033 Performance Guide, while Xbitlabs consider GPU performance in the same game. They also ponder GPU power consumption. The graphics cards power consumption is always of interest to gaming fans and as the new GPU generations come out, we do our best to respond to this interest in the most extensive manner. Adobe have given a sneak peek of content-aware filling in Photoshop. One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. From retouching to completely reimagining an image, heres an early glimpse of what could happen in the future when you press the delete key. More thoughts about this here on Elated. Opera have submitted a Mini version of their browser to the Apple Apps Store, in the hope people will be able to use an alternative browser on their iPhones. Given there's some pessimism as to how Apple will respond to this idea, Opera have made a time since submitted counter. Bill Gates and Toshiba are planning to work on the next generation of nuclear power plants. Gates is said to be considering investing personal assets worth several hundreds of billions of yen in developing the new type of reactor. We've seen this before but it's worth another look: a giant poster of computer connectors and sockets to help you identify odd things you find. Version 1.7 hot off the press. I have added even more ports, slots and cards. As well as improved pictures of some existing hardware and fixed some errors. Prints are available. iXBT also consider GPU vs CPU performance. To make the review more interesting, we used two configurations of similar price. One had a more expensive graphics card, while the other had a correspondingly more expensive CPU. Let's see which configuration would be the optimal. Ivan has sent an update on his travels: I was on the front page before and wanted to give an update because I know so many people love to read about my travels in the forums. On March 19th, it was one year since I left Australia on a round the world trip through 25 countries, 5 continents and countless adventures. I was in Tibet, all over Central Asia and the Caucasus. I had someone try and set me up with heroin in Uzbekistan and saw Christmas in Bethlehem. I hitchhiked in many of the countries I've been to. I'm only 22 years old and write about my adventures and share my photos on my blog. Friday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-March-2010  13:21:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg Memory: OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 AMD Black Edition Ready 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on FutureLooks. Transcend aXeRAM 4GB DDR3-2000 on PureOC. OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600 4GB Low Voltage Dual Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers. Motherboard & CPU: Intel Core i7 980X Extreme CPU on TechSpot. Gigabyte X58A-UD3 LGA1366 board on Bjorn3D. Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 board on OC3D. ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Intel P55 Express LGA1156 board on PCStats. Foxconn A9DA-S (AMD 890GX) AM3 board on Tweaktown. MSI 890GXM-G65 Review Featuring AMD Latest 890GX Chipset on MadShrimps. ECS H55H-I LGA1156 board on HWSecrets. ASUS ITX-220 Celeron board on iXBTLabs. Storage: Icy Dock 2.5" to 3.5" SATA SSD HDD Converters on OCIA. Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640 GB Hard Disk Drive on TechARP. LaCie Rikiki external HDD on DigitalTrends. Corsair Padlock 2 8GB on TechPowerUp. Plextor PX-128M1S 128GB Solid State Drive on PCStats. Plextor PX-128M1S Solid State Drive on PCPerspective. ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVD-RW Optical Drive on Bjorn3D. Portable: Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 15 laptop on TBreak. Acer Aspire AS5738PG-6306 Touch Screen Notebook on TestFreaks. Nintendo DSi XL portable game console on DigitalTrends. Friday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 26-March-2010  12:39:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Zalman CNPS10X Performa Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin. Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler on Tweaknews. Cogage Arrow CPU Cooler on Guru3D. Zalman CNPS10X Performa CPU Cooler on Tweaktown. NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller on Pro-Clockers. Video Cards: Testing AMD's New FirePro Linux Driver With The FirePro V8750 on Phoronix. ASUS EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5/A Radeon HD 5770 on PCStats. Sapphire Radeon 5850 Toxic 2GB on PureOC. High-End Radeons: Then and Now on Tweaktown. ATI Radeon HD 5670, Radeon HD 5570 and Radeon HD 5450: A Multimedia Ideal? on XbitLabs. Gigabyte Radeon HD5770 on NinjaLane. Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 1GB on LegitReviews. Audio Visual: SteelSeries Siberia V2 headset on OC3D. Plantronics .Audio 476 DSP Foldable Headset on LegitReviews. Arctic Cooling E361-WM & E352 Earphones on HWHeaven. 23" HP De-Branded HDMI 1080p Widescreen LCD Monitor w/Speakers on BonaFideReviews Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound E361-WM Earphones on PCShopTalk. LGS 42SL90 LED HDTV on TechReviewSource. Misc: Hercules ePlug 200 Duo Powerline Network Kit on TestFreaks. Dell Alienware Area-51 Core i7-980 X Infused Gaming PC on HotHardware. Thursday Morning (8 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 25-March-2010  03:12:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg South Australia's new Attorney-General is John Rau, who arrives as part of a larger front bench re-shuffle. According to Chris from gamers4croydon, Mr Rau is a supporter or the R18+ classification for games (and a nice guy, to boot). Meanwhile the internet censorship submissions received by the Government have roundly attacked the idea. But many reiterated their concerns that the policy is fundamentally unsound and would do little to make the internet a safer place for children. Many said the scope of blocked content was too broad and would render legitimate sites inaccessible, while the process of adding sites to the blacklist could be subject to abuse by bureaucrats and politicians. The Scotsman noticed this texting world record set by Samsung and Swype. Using the official phrase of the Guinness World Records® for records related to text messaging, “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human,” Franklin Page, a recent employee of Swype and resident of Seattle, WA successfully texted the phrase in 35.54 seconds using Swype technology. There's a new DirectX 11 benchmark, Unigine Heaven 2.0. The company has already made a name among the overclockers and gaming enthusiasts for uncovering the realm of true GPU capabilities with previously released Sanctuary and Tropics demos. Their benchmarking capabilities are coupled with striking visual integrity of the refined graphic art. It has Linux support, too. Speaking of pretty videos, StoneGiant is a new DX11 demo from Sweden. Game engine developer BitSquid, and game developer Fatshark, both based in Stockholm, Sweden, today jointly announced StoneGiant, a demo designed to showcase the power of Microsoft DirectX 11 technology. Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise has had its first flight. "VSS Enterprise remained attached to its unique WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, for the duration of the 2 hours 54 minutes flight, achieving an altitude of 45,000ft (13716 metres)." Both crafts are developed for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic by Burt Rutan and team at Mojave-based Scaled Composites. YouTube now recieves 24h of video uploaded every minute. In May of last year, we announced 20 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. We then challenged you to keep the uploads coming to see whether or not we could get a day’s worth of video – 24 hours – uploaded in the same brief time span. Much to nobody's surprise, China is reacting strongly to Google's uncensored search results by breaking ties. Similarly, China’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, was said by analysts and others to have delayed or scrapped the imminent introduction of a cellphone based on Google’s Android platform. One popular Web portal, Tom.com, already ceased using Google to power its search engine. The company is controlled by Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire who has close ties to the Chinese government. Interesting Forum Threads (4 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 24-March-2010  21:55:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a catch-up of what's going on in some of 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 try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature. Gigabyte X58A-UD7 Gulftown smackdown at 6GHz looking pretty easy in Overclocking & Hardware. Intel Readying Core i7 875K and Core i5 655K OC-Friendly CPUs? in Intel Hardware. Western Digital VelociRaptor VR200M Series..Up to 600GB! in Storage & Backup. 8TB Raid 5 - How big for Partiy stripe/NTFS Sectors in Storage & Backup. Using public IPs inside your network in Networking & Internet. What server hardware do you use? in Business & Enterprise Computing. System Uptime Records in Business & Enterprise Computing. Gigabyte Readies Feature-Packed Mini-ITX LGA1156 Mobo in Portable & SFF. Nvidia GeForce GTX 400 Series | GTX 480 GTX 470 in Video Cards. GPGPU accelerated Macromedia Flash is EPIC! in Video Cards. How do I calibrate my screens in Eyefinity? in Video Cards. The BEST PDF program ever! in General Software. EA to try DLC first strategy in Games. MySQL: Beware of FLOAT in Programming & Software Development. Scientists Successfully Embed Silicon Chips Inside Human Cells in Science. World's hottest chilli: the new weapon against terrorism in Geek Food. Good cheap beer? in Geek Grog. Augmented reality for the windshield in Motoring. Stunning car control videos in Motoring. Mercedes and BMW eye entry to V8 Supercars in Motorsport. Telstra to stop installing copper lines in Current Events. NSW consumers, biggest increases in household electricity bills ever in Current Events. Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 24-March-2010  16:21:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cases: AZZA Helios 910R on PureOC. NZXT Beta on Tech-Reviews. NZXT Tempest EVO on TechWareLabs. Microcool Banchetto 101 Open Air Bench on Pro-Clockers. In Win Griffin on HWSecrets. Raidmax Quantum on OCClub. Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced on ThinkComputers. Motherboard & CPU: Jetway NC94-510-LF IPC ATOM board on PCShopTalk. Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 AM3 board on Bjorn3D. ASUS Maximus III Extreme LGA1156 board on Tweaktown. Intel Xeon X5680 Processor on iXBTLabs. Storage: QNAP TS-459 Pro NAS Server on BenchmarkReviews. Corsair Flash Voyager GTR 32GB on OCClub. Corsair Force Series F100 100GB SSD Featuring the SandForce 1200 on Tweaktown. Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 on TechPowerUp. BlackArmor PS 110 USB 3.0 Performance Kit on BonaFideReviews. ECS U3N2 and S6M2 USB 3.0 and SATA 6G Expansion Cards on PCPerspective. ASUS BC-08B1ST Bu-Ray Combo Drive on Motherboards.org. Input Etc: I-Rocks KR-6401-BK Slim Keyboard on Tweaknews. Mionix Naos 5000 Mouse on RBMods. Microsoft Arc Wireless Compact Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews. Photography Gallery (1 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 23-March-2010  17:38:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum: Also over in the motoring forum, Chainbolt has posted some pics and videos of the tasty new racing Porsches: click for the thread Tuesday Afternoon (12 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 23-March-2010  13:48:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Google have followed through on their plan to stop censoring their services in China. So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. More info here. Gamepron report on a (possibly disturbing photo) game-rage attack where someone was apparently stabbed in the head for cheating in a game. A bunch of kids had been watching the 17-year old boy allegedly see through walls as he played the game, and – predictably – they accused him of hax. An argument began and the youths took it outside, continuing their brawl on the footpath before one of them pulled out a foot-long blade and thrust it into the gamer’s left temple. Ow. He's apparently ok.. ish. Skymaster notes that the acquisition of PIPE networks by Soul/TPG has been approved by QLD's Supreme Court. PIPE shares will be now transferred to TPG on March 31, and PWK will be delisted by April 7, unless TPG sets a later date. Facebook is now bigger than Google, at least in terms of raw US traffic, thanks Viljar. Facebook has changed the way we approach relationships. You don't meet somebody at a party and hope you run into them again five months later. You add them to your "friends" list on the social networking site. Hmm.. no, I don't. :) kombiman sent in this 1968 ASCII animation from Russia. Ascii art, animated kitties, photography and Russia scientists from 1968, this story has everything! There's a couple of competition things: firstly OCAU sponsor Data Retriever are giving away a 500GB USB HDD for the funniest backup solution. Secondly a QUT phD candidate is asking for OCAU members to complete a survey and maybe win an iPad. There's not a lot else going on out there today, so in the meantime check out this forehead-smackingly simple cable-tidying idea: Click to enlarge! Tuesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 23-March-2010  12:56:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 AM3 board on MadShrimps. Asus Rampage III LGA1156 board on OC3D. Software: Bioshock 2 PC game on Tweaktown. Assassin's Creed II PC game on YouGamers. Portable: Samsung N220 10-Inch INTEL ATOM N450 “PineTrail” Netbook on FutureLooks. ASUS G73Jh DX11 Gaming Notebook on LegitReviews. Cases: Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on OCOnline. Corsair Obsidian 800D on OCIA. Storage: ADATA S596 128GB SSD on Motherboards.org. OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB SSD on Techgage. Imation Pro WX 1.5TB Wireless USB HDD enclosure on AseLabs. Cooling: Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU cooler on OCClub. Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler on OC3D. Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Plus 750W Modular on ThinkComputers. Enermax MODU87+ GOLD 600W on HWHeaven. Misc: Devolo dLAN 200 AVeasy powerline adapter on Guru3D. Steelseries Sibera V2 Headset on RBMods. Sunday Night (19 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 21-March-2010  23:37:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Australian gamers will be excited to hear that Michael Atkinson is stepping down from his role as South Australia's Attorney-General. The controversial Mr Atkinson has attracted a string of criticism over internet censorship, a so-called “stashed cash” affair and high-profile defamation cases. He also has been criticised nationally for his refusal to allow an R18+ rating for video games. The ACCC have forced PC retailer Mwave to change their warranty/refund policy, thanks IntelInside. The ACCC was concerned Mwave's previous policy breached the Trade Practices Act 1974 as it doesn’t respect consumer rights that would be in place if a customer shopped at a physical retailer. “Consumers have the same rights online as if they were to walk into a store,” ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel, said in a statement. Google's Nexus One smartphone is in some hot water, given they have been denied that trademark. In its ruling, the USPTO argued that due to the similarity of the marks, (Nexus One vs. Nexus), the similarity of the goods and/or services (both are telecommunications products), and similarity of trade channels, there is reason to believe issuing Google the mark could cause confusion. However the next step for their search engine sounds interesting. The firm is currently developing a visual search tool called Google Goggles - it lets consumers use a picture instead of keywords as the search query. The tool compares an image captured on a mobile phone with Google's database in the cloud to return relevant information. But everyone knows ze googles do nuzzink! From dd32: A rather interesting read on how Amsterdam wired itself for FTTP starting in 2005 and some of the challenges hit. Could be applied to certain metro areas of Australia, Regional areas would be a different story for sure however. I wonder if MoonShadow is aware he could be sitting on a video game goldmine? While the game itself is valuable, the winning bidder was most interested in the cardboard box it came in. Since most kids threw the box away after tearing open a new game, intact boxes for any game are really hard to come by, but especially so for Stadium Events. Empty Stadium Event boxes have been known to sell for $10,000 alone. Tarrith sent word of a Lobby a Lib campaign by EFA. The mandatory Internet filtering legislation will only become law if it is passed by both Houses of Parliament; that is, it must be passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. It will almost certainly pass in the House of Representatives, where the Labor Party has a clear majority. However, to pass in the Senate, where the Labor Party doesn't have a majority, it will need the support of the Coalition (the Liberal Party and the National Party). Therefore, possibly our best chance to stop the filter from ever becoming law, is to convince the Liberal Party to vote against it in the Senate. Sunday Afternoon Reviews #2 (1 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 21-March-2010  16:29:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cases: Aerocool PGS Qx-2000 Cube Case on ThinkComputers. Thermaltake Level 10 Super Gaming Case on LegitReviews. NZXT Tempest Evo Crafted Series on Pro-Clockers. Audio Visual: Arctic Cooling ArcticSound E361-BM and E351-WM Stereo Headsets on MegaTechNews. Able Planet True Fidelity NC300B Active Noise Canceling Headphones on Tweaknews. CiragoTV Pro CTP1000 Multimedia Player on TestFreaks. Epson WorkForce 610 All-in-One Printer on HWSecrets. Trust SoundForce USB Powered Portable Speakers on DragonSteelMods. Canon PIXMA MX870 Office All-In-One Printer on TestFreaks. Portable: A few months with Acer's Aspire 1810TZ budget ultraportable notebook on TechReport. MSI Wind12 U230 Netbook on TestFreaks. ASUS Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid Collection Netbook on InsideHW. Video Cards: Intel Atom: NVIDIA ION vs. Radeon HD 4330 Graphics on Phoronix. HIS Radeon HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo on Tweaktown. HIS Radeon HD 5670 is TweakNews. HIS 5870 V iCooler Turbo on Guru3D. XFX Radeon 5750 XXX on OC3D. Sunday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 21-March-2010  16:14:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg Memory: Patriot Gamer-Series DDR3-1600 Memory Kit on BenchmarkReviews. Patriot Viper II Sector 5 2000MHz 4GB Memory Kit on LegitReviews. Crucial Ballistix Tracer 6GB DDR3-1600 Memory Kit on BigBruin. Storage: Hard Drive Enclosures Roundup on HWHeaven. ICY DOCK MB662US-2S External RAID Dual Hard Drive Enclosure on ThinkComputers. Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6G HDD on HotHardware. Motherboards: 4-Way Intel H55 Motherboard Shootout for LGA1156 on TechSpot. MSI Motherboards Sneak Peek on OC3D. Asus P6X58D Premium LGA1366 board on OCClub. ASUS Rampage III Extreme Sneak Peek on OC3D. ECS A890GXM-A AM3 board on PureOC. Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R LGA1366 board on OCClub. Intel DP55WB "Whitesburg" LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs. MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on HardCoreWare. Power Supply: Cooler Master UPS 100 on PureOC. Chill Innovation 450W on HWHeaven. Cooling: CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler on Tweaktown. Akasa Orion Notebook Cooler on HWHeaven. Koolance VID-AR587 GPU Water Block on PureOC. NZXT Sentry 2 5.25-inch Touch Screen Fan Controller on LegitReviews. Misc Pics (34 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-March-2010  14:22:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg Friday again - thanks to Rob, James and Gary this week. And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Morning (7 Comments) (link)  Friday, 19-March-2010  00:59:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg NVIDIA have released ForceWare 197.13 which addresses some serious fan issues in an earlier beta version, as well as increased performance and some other goodies. Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for top new gaming titles including Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver. Not to be outdone, AMD have released a Catalyst 10.3 preview driver. ShaneBaxtor.com has some more info about interesting things in this driver. If you have a car on finance, it might behave annoyingly if you fail to meet your payment obligations. Or if someone hacks the system. More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments. LG have been accused of misleading consumers about the efficiency of their fridges. LG Electronics has agreed to compensate potentially thousands of consumers after two of its fridges - models L197NFS and P197WFS - were found to contain an illegal device that activates an energy-saving mode when it detects room conditions similar to those in a test laboratory. Discussion here. Mpot spotted a security issue with MS Virtual PC. As a result, some applications with bugs that are not exploitable when running in a not-virtualized operating system are rendered exploitable if running within a guest OS in Virtual PC, according to Ivan Arce, chief technology officer at Core. Here's a couple of amusing Google Maps images: firstly an enthusiastic seagull, and also, God making some fine adjustments to the universe, thanks Rob. If you find mouse acceleration annoying in Windows 7, JimX points out a fix, with more info here and here. It is a registry file that removes Windows 7 mouse pointer acceleration. It is like the CPL Mouse Fix and Cheese Mouse Fix, but gives exactly 1-to-1 mouse to pointer response for Windows 7. Atomic have published issue #3 of their KitLog. Issue 3 of Atomic's KitLog brings you an exclusive guide to watercooling your system that you won't find anywhere else in the world - not even in the printed magazine! To top off this exclusive info, we've also updated the seven builds and added an eighth build into the fray! Tech Report have info on AMD's Gamers Manifesto. AMD has released a Gamers Manifesto that details how the company works with developers to benefit all gamers, not just those with Radeon graphics cards. Join us as we take a closer look at the manifesto's guiding principles and how they apply to DirectX 11, Eyefinity, and GPU-accelerated physics. Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 18-March-2010  13:07:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Intel P55 LGA 1156 on ThinkComputers. GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H (AMD 890GX) AM3 board on Tweaktown. ECS A890GXM-A (AMD 890GX) AM3 board on Guru3D. ASRock H55DE3 LGA1156 board on ITShootout. MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on OCIA. Asus P7H57D-V EVO LGA1156 board on XbitLabs. Memory: OCZ 4GB DDR3-1600 Intel XMP on PureOC. G.SKILL PIS Series 4GB Kit 2000MHz (F3-16000CL6D-4GBPIS) on Bjorn3D. Cases: Thermaltake V3 Mid-Tower on PureOC. Xclio A380 Color Plus on OCClub. Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced on Tweaknews. Thermaltake Element V Full ATX Tower on LegitReviews. Audio Visual: LITE-ON iHOS104-08 Blu-Ray Drive on TechWareLabs. Arctic Cooling E352 Earphones on Tweaktown. Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound E352 Earphones on PCShopTalk. Arctic Cooling E361-WM Earphones on HWSecrets. NEC MultiSync EA231WMi Monitor on XbitLabs. Samsung LN46B550 46inch LCD TV on CCEReviews. Storage: Seagate BlackArmor PS110 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Drive on BigBruin. JMicron JMF612 Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews. Seagate Barracuda ES.2 750GB Hard Drive on Modders-Inc. Synology Disk Station DS410j NAS on HWHeaven. Power Supply: 7-way 600 Watt PSU Roundup on MadShrimps. Enermax MODU87+ 700W on OC3D. Corsair TX950 on RBMods. Video Cards: MSI Radeon HD 5870 Lightning on Tweaknews. ATI Radeon HD 5770 - MSI Hawk vs PowerColor Arctic Ice on InsideHW. Misc: NZXT Premium Cables on OCIA. Fantastic 4: Four AMATech Coolers Reviewed on XbitLabs. Mionix Naos 5000 Mouse on HWSecrets. Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-March-2010  22:02:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a catch-up of what's going on in some of 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 try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature. Are long USB cables no good? in Newbie Lounge. Microsoft Hoax in Overclocking & Hardware. ASUS Crosshair III + 965, 9.985s superpi 1M in Overclocking & Hardware. Asus Maximus III gene & i5 670 @ -180.1 on LN2 in Overclocking & Hardware. Wish List for the Ultimate Computer Case in Overclocking & Hardware. Why are desktop computers so unreliable?? in Overclocking & Hardware. HOWTO Adding non standard (non 00:) MAC addresses to your Netgear router in Networking. Show us your crazy SSID wireless network name in Networking. PS3's 'Move' Motion Controller revealed in Sony Consoles. GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD7 (rev. 1.0) Motherboard Overview in Intel Hardware. Gigabyte H55/H57 IGP comp. Win a X58A-UD7 or just enter for lucky draw in Intel Hardware. Xeon 5600 series brings six-core chips to 2P systems in Intel Hardware. [SURVEY] Gamers buying decisions and preferences in Games. Lake Gairdner - Salt Lake Speed Week in Photography & Video. Slot cars, my AFX discussion and builds in Other Toys. Your Asset Allocation? in Career, Education & Finance. Hungry Beast: The Levitt Institute & the Gullible Cities Report in Current Events. Australia and NZ merger 'inevitable' in Current Events. The Face in The Pub. Tesladownunder's Open Day in The Pub. Wednesday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-March-2010  14:08:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg The "hexacopter" linked earlier reminded Lemming of the UAV Challenge - Outback Rescue 2010 which starts in September. Entrants in the competition will embark on an Outback rescue mission, which involves finding and assisting 'Outback Joe', a lost bush walker in Australia's vast outback using UAVs. You will need to design and build a machine to do this. More info here, discussion thread here. HotHardware have a video how-to for building an HTPC. In this video, we'll give you some suggestions on a few component selection options for building an HTPC, as well as a high-level overview of its assembly and a few key design points to look out for. We'll then of course demo our systems for you to show you what you can do with an HTPC. Amfibius sends word that Iron Chef March 2010 is now open. This month's theme ingredient is... cheese! The latest chapter in the current Chat Roulette frenzy is Mr Improv Piano ChatRoulette, which is safe for work and pretty funny, thanks Mitch. PR spotted this amusing site about the national internet filtering scheme. On this site you can find important information about Australia's exciting new regime of Internet censorship. Please participate in our reader's poll, or read about how Internet filtering will protect your children, pets and other livestock. From mpot: Canon have released firmware version 2.0.3 for the Canon 5D mark II, which includes some new video frame rate options that some people have been hanging out for. More info and firmware is available from here on Canon's website. TechWareLabs went to Megacon 2010. The walls were lined with memorabilia and every gizmo and gadget from your favorite show, comic, and film. Check out our huge gallery of pictures from the event where people dressed as their favorite characters. HotHardware meanwhile report from the Game Developers Conference 2010, as do PC Perspectove. Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 17-March-2010  13:45:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Power Supply: Antec CP-850 850W on ThinkComputers. OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W on Tech-Reviews. Cooling: ProlimaTech Armageddon CPU Cooler on BenchmarkReviews. Coolink Corator DS Gapless Direct Touch CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Thermaltake SpinQ CPU cooler on TechPowerUp. Cases: NZXT Hades on Futurelooks. GMC H-80 on OCClub. Video Cards: HIS Radeon HD 5770 1GB on Tweaktown. XFX Radeon HD 5670 1GB on OC3D. HIS Radeon 5830 Turbo on ViperLair. Motherboard & CPU: Xeon 5600 series brings six-core chips to 2P systems on Tech-Report. Overclocking Core i7 980X with LN2 on MadShrimps. Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Ultra Durable LGA1366 board on NinjaLane. AMD 890GX Chipset on iXBTLabs. Prebuilt & Portable: Overclockers UK Titan Goliath Core i7 Full Gamer System on VerdisReviews. Novatech X1 CA Gaming Notebook on HWHeaven. Acer AspireRevo nettop on DigitalTrends. Forum Projects (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 16-March-2010  14:15:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg Some interesting things from the forums: Uncy Ef checked out the i5 670 & ASUS P7P55D-DELUXE EC MEISTER reviewed the C4NGen Medium Gaming Pad savy reviewed the CM Storm Sentinel Mouse Phill looked at the Lian Li PC-A71F case Stygian-Shane is making his first custom guitar outbackozzie has a huge update to his aquaponics Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 16-March-2010  12:58:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: Intel "Gulftown" Core i7-980X CPU on LostCircuits. Jetway XBlue H55 LGA1156 board on Pro-Clockers. MSI P55 GD85 LGA1156 board on OC3D. Portable: Alienware M11x gaming laptop on HWHeaven. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13" Notebook on TechSpot. Cases: NZXT Hades on RBMods. Antec Two Hundred Mid Tower on Tweaktown. Video Cards: PowerColor HD 5750 Go Green on TechPowerUp. Sapphire Radeon HD5830 1GB on PureOC. MSI R5870 Lightning on Guru3D. MSI R5770 HAWK on Bjorn3D. ATI Radeon HD 5850/5870/5970 on iXBTLabs. Cooling: Coolink Lapchilla Laptop Cooler on Tech-Reviews. Zalman CNPS10X Flex Heatsink / Cooler on Tweaknews. Thermaltake Contac 29 CPU Cooler on PureOC. Zaward Vapor 120 CPU Cooler on OCOnline. Audio Visual: Sennheiser HD800 headphones on TechPowerUp. Arctic Sound E361-BM Earbuds on Techgage. Masscool MP-1371RS Media Player on HWHeaven. Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound E361-BM Earbuds on ASELabs. Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 USB on OCClub. Storage: Kingston 128GB SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2 Gen 2 SSD on LegitReviews. Samsung EcoGreen F2 (HD154UI) 1.5 TB Hard Disk Drive on TechARP. Kingwin Dock Master USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station on OCCafe. Misc: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC game on GamingHeaven. Kingston vs. Mushkin high-speed DDR3 memory kits on InsideHW. Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-March-2010  20:46:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have specials and info on monitor stands, media players, fitness supplements, amplifiers, headphones, watercooling gear, office chairs, data recovery, web hosting and lots of other goodies. There's also a Glamour Photography Workshop coming up in Melbourne soon. Monday Afternoon (11 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-March-2010  16:02:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg Our (other) man in Japan, Sciby, has a blog about all the interesting food he's been finding over there. That's right, he'll eat things like "Strawberry Chocolate Sandwich Lunch Pack" so you don't have to. Cracked have an article on how games get you addicted in creepy ways. They call these "Variable Ratio Rewards" in Skinner land and this is the reason many enemies "drop" valuable items totally at random in WoW. This is addictive in exactly the same way a slot machine is addictive. You can't quit now because the very next one could be a winner. Or the next. Or the next. HardOCP have played around with Eyefinity, in a video review. Given that Eyefinity gaming has had some time to mature, we wanted to kick the tires on it and see just how easy it was now day to get Eyefinity up and running with the latest games. We execute Bad Company 2, Supreme Commander 2, and Aliens vs. Predator for the first time and show you what it takes to configure the games for a 3x1 Eyefinity Landscape configuration at 5760x1200. BenchmarkReviews compared some CPU coolers. Using both the overclocked 140W AMD Phenom-II X4-965 BE and six-core Gulftown Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processors, Benchmark Reviews tests several new thermal solutions for our Best CPU Cooler Performance Intel/AMD Q1-2010 article. Notable entries include the ProlimaTech Armageddon, Cogage Arrow, Noctua NH-D14, Thermalright Venomous-X, and Zalman CNPS10X-Performa. Motherboards.org have a video taking an Intel i7-980X to 4.02GHz on air. Follow along as we take the new Intel i7 980X up to 4.02GHz using air cooling. Special thanks to Asus/Kingston and Noctua for there participation in this review. Check it out, this is one mean ass system that will blow the doors off most anything. HyRax1 spotted this personal propellerpack. Our research and development program has spanned almost 30 years. The Martin Aircraft Company was founded in 1998 specifically to develop a jetpack that could fly 100 times longer than the 26 seconds of the Bell Rocket Belt. Which reminds me, how cool is this hexacopter? InsideHW compared seven H55/H57 motherboards. We’ve decided to gather round all motherboards available at the market at the time of this review and determine whether it is wiser to base the decision about which motherboard to buy on the chip itself or the accompanying equipment and capabilities. We’ve had a total of seven models tested, signed by ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI, which are the most common choice of buyers. Orgone500 points out what can happen when Google Street View unexpectedly visits. Unfortunately it seems to have coincided with Grafton and other centres having their streets littered with rubbish for the annual kerbside collection service and residents are now in for a nervous three-to-six month wait to see what will appear. OpenGL 4.0 has been released, thanks wes. The OpenGL 4.0 specification has been defined by the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos, and includes the GLSL 4.00 update to the OpenGL Shading language in order to enable developers to access the latest generation of GPU acceleration with significantly enhanced graphics quality, acceleration performance and programming flexibility. Photography Gallery (1 Comments) (link)  Monday, 15-March-2010  12:37:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum: Geeky Self-Portrait Contest Winner! (10 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  21:50:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg So, the winner of our geekiest self-portrait contest has been decided, and it was this entry from hoopstar: click to enlarge 2nd prize went to DrFrag, 3rd to MoonShadow and a bonus extra prize to Gypsyking. Hoopstar of course scores a triple-LCD monitor stand from Proluma! You can read a review of one here on Tweaktown if you're keen. Saturday Evening (3 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  20:46:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg iXBTLabs have a 59 CPU roundup posted. As we promised late in 2009, today we shall sum up test results obtained with our Test Method v4.0. Initially, we planned on publishing the article in mid-January, but then we decided to do it according to updates in manufacturers' product series. January brought us nearly ten new processors which we added to this summary. China have warned Google to comply with the censorship laws in that country. Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was speaking at China's annual legislation session. "We need to preserve our nation's interest, our people's interest, we cannot be relaxed with any information that will cause harm to the stability of our society, to our system, and to the health of our under-age young people," he said. Discussion continues in this thread. A New Zealand inventor has created a cool-looking folding electric bike for scooting around the city. YikeBike is a statement about using smart technology to solve the problems of our increasingly congested, polluted, stressful cities. It is the first commercial expression of the mini-farthing concept, created up by a bunch of successful entrepreneurs, engineers and dreamers. Pink Floyd have won a lawsuit against EMI, preventing EMI from selling individual songs (as opposed to entire albums) without the band's permission. Their latest record deal, signed with EMI before legal downloads came along, said individual songs must not be sold without the band's permission. They argued that the same rule should apply to digital sales as well as CDs. JimX sent in this video clip with a Heath Robinson contraption. Or if you're American, a Rube Goldberg machine. Either way, they're cool and fun and I must build one one day. :) A few places are reporting that new hard drives might confuse Win XP. The big obvious name missing from this list is Windows XP (and its server counterpart, Windows Server 2003). Windows XP (along with old Linux kernels) has, somewhere within its code, a fixed assumption of 512 byte sectors. Try to use it with hard disks with 4096 byte sectors and failure will ensue. mpot spotted this Australian dot com crash quiz. Test your knowledge about the dotcom boom and its spectacular end. It is now ten years since the bubble burst. I remember it well, because I left my "real" job and started work full-time on OCAU right as everything collapsed. Still, here we are. :) While we're quizzing, you can test your video game knowledge. You click on the image and guess what computer game they're trying to convey. Discussion here. And if you're STILL not quizzed out, there's another huge game-identifying image here. Saturday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Saturday, 13-March-2010  19:27:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Noctua NF-P14 FLX 140mm Fan on RBMods. Zaward Golf Fan II on Tech-Reviews. Prolimatech MK-13 VGA Cooler on OC.com. Storage & Memory: Terabyte Hard Disk Drives Roundup: Round Three on XbitLabs. Unitek USB 3.0 SATA HDD Docking Station (Y-1071) on BonaFideReviews. Tsunami Ultimate II 3500 HDD enclosure on XSReviews. A-DATA PC3-17600 (2200MHz) Gaming Series 4GB Memory Kit on Tweaktown. Kingston V+ SNVP325-S2 128GB on PureOC. Axus FiT RAID 500 Storage Device on ThinkComputers. Audio Visual: Mionix KEID 20 gaming headset on OC3D. QNAP NMP-1000 Network Media Player on APHNetworks. Motherboards: Asus P7H55-M Pro vs. Gigabyte H55M-UD2H LGA1156 boards on LegionHW. Jetway NC96 NC96-510-LF mITX Atom board on Phoronix. MSI 770-C35 AM3 board on IXBTLabs. Asus Maximus 3 Extreme LGA1156 board on Bjorn3D. Cases: SilverStone Fortress FT02 on PureOC. Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on OCClub. CoolerMaster 690 II Advanced vs. CoolerMaster 690 on NinjaLane. Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition Full Tower on LegitReviews. Silverstone Fortress FT02 90 Degree Motherboard Case on Modders-Inc. Video Cards: HIS Radeon HD 5570 Fan on HWSecrets. PowerColor HD 5830 PCS+ on NeoSeeker. Radeon HD5830 DirectX-11 Gaming Performance on BenchmarkReviews. Axle GeForce G210 512MB on OCOnline. Misc: Lexmark Interact S605 All in One Inkjet Printer on TestFreaks. Epson WorkForce 610 printer on TechReviewSource. Logitech Speaker Lapdesk N700 on OCIA. CAPE 7 - ION PC on HWHeaven. Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse and Vespula Mouse Mat Video Review on Tweaktown. OCZ Z Series 850W PSU on HWSecrets. Misc Pics (20 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-March-2010  14:28:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to Manaz and Danske this week! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 12-March-2010  12:40:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg CPUs: Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Six-Core CPU on HardCoreWare. Core i7-980X CPU on HWSecrets. Intel Core i7 980X 6 Core Gulftown CPU on Motherboards.org. Intel's new Gulftown Six Core CPU meets LN2 Extreme Cooling on Tweaktown. Intel I7-980X Gulftown Six Core Processor on Tweaktowns. Intel Core i7-980X Six-Core Processor Extreme Edition on LegitReviews. Intel 980x Gulftown on OC3D. Intel Core i7-980XE Gulftown 6-Core 32nm Processor on FutureLooks. AMD Athlon II X2 215 on iXBTLabs. Intel i7 980x Extreme on Bjorn3D. Phenom 2 X2 555 BE C3, Athlon X4 635, X3 440 and X2 255 on Metku. Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128GB Solid State Drive on BigBruin. Imation M-Class 128GB SSD on HWLogic. Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT SATA6 Desktop Hard Drive ST32000641AS on TestFreaks. Misc G.Skill PC3-18400 (2300MHz) PI Series 4GB memory on Tweaktown. Seasonic X Series 750W PSU on PureOC. Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse on TechwareLabs. COGAGE TRUE Spirit LGA1366 Heatsink on Overclockers.com. MSI HD 5870 Lightning video card on TechPowerUp. Thursday Night (5 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:45:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg New Zealand's internet filter has gone live. O'Brien says there is no compulsion for ISPs to tell their customers their internet service is being filtered. "It's a voluntary system and there's no legislation," he says, adding he understands the ISPs currently on the system have informed their customers. Closer to home, the Labor Party will reportedly vote within two weeks to decide if mandatory filter plans will become legislation in Australia, thanks enigma. The move puts Senator Lundy up against Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, both of whom have publicly backed the filter. Senator Conroy is known to be a strong advocate and has rejected public protests as well as political opposition from Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and the Australian Greens. Meanwhile the European Parliament has strongly opposed the ACTA. A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online. In addition, the Parliament's decision today states that MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject ACTA rules, including cutting off users from the Internet "gradually" if caught stealing content. Gearlog got their hands on one of the fake Intel Core i7-920 CPUs, thaks mpot. They are, err, very fake. When turned it over, we quickly discovered that this was not a real processor. It looked and felt a lot like lead. Oh, yeah, this looks legit. You've probably seen them in the CPU reviews linked below, but in case you're only interested in the new gargantuan stock cooler from Intel, there's some photos here. Text isn't English but the pictures are pretty good. iiNet are in a trading halt, probably due to another acquisition, most likely Netspace. iiNet has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy over recent years in a bid to cement its position as the nation’s third largest ISP. In 2005 the ISP spent $100m to buy OzEmail and in 2008 acquired Perth-based Westnet. Over the past four years, iiNet has bought out about 30 small ISPs. William Shatner has launched a science-fiction themed challenger to Myspace, kinda. Myouterspace.com (and can you see what they’ve done there?), is not quite the Next Generation of websites. It’s essentially a nicely constructed portal where creative professionals who have a love of the arts – and in particular science fiction, horror and fantasy – can talk with each other, network, and find jobs. Guru3D took a look at USB 3.0 performance, while iGadgetLife checked out two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards. Today for review I’ve got two USB 3.0 34mm Expresscards, each feature two USB 3.0 ports and they’re basically the same really. One is from Unitek and the other is a no-name or generic one. Is there really a difference between them? Read on to find out. Gamepron report on a police raid going wrong and ending up with some game developers in handcuffs, thanks KF. Y’see, the gamers, who are currently hard at work on golf/thug-life release Ghetto Golf, have offices right next to a medicinal marijuana store. One evening, an alarm was triggered in the store, and police were dispatched to check out the ‘break-in’. Hangon, hangon.. Ghetto Golf? Seriously? Apparently so. Thursday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  21:05:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg Portable & Prebuilt: MSI Wind Box Intel Atom 330 NetTops on Phoronix. Asus UL30A & Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 CULV Notebooks on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkCentre A70Z & Asus EeeTop ET2203 All-In-One PCs on SilentPCReview. Lenovo ThinkPad T410 laptop on HotHardware. Cases: Cooler Master 690 II Advanced on OCOnline. Raidmax Skyline Windowed Mid-Tower on Tweaktown. NZXT Hades Crafted Series Tower on Pro-Clockers. Lian Li PC-T1R Spider mini-ITX on TechPowerUp. Antec P183 Advanced Mid Tower on ThinkComputers. Inwin Maelstrom on SilentPCReview. InWin Diva MITX on TechWareLabs. NZXT Hades on TechPowerUp. Audio / Visual: Proluma Deluxe Triple LCD Stand on Tweaktown. Samsung PN58B650 58 Inch Plasma TV on Tweaknews. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 ultra-compact camera on TBreak. Mionix Keid 20 Headset on RBMods. Video Cards: ASUS EAH 5850 TOP DirectCU on TechPowerUp. Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB on XSReviews. PowerColor PCS+ 5830 1GB on PureOC. Asus EAH5750 Formula on SilentPCReview. Cooling: Scythe Setsugen GPU Cooler on SilentPCReview. Cooler Master V8 Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BigBruin. Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler on HWSecrets. Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU Cooler on OCIA. Zalman CNPS10X Performa CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  16:50:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Intel have unveiled their first 6-core, 12-thread desktop CPU, the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition. This is a 3.33GHz 32nm CPU with 12MB L2 cache, for LGA1366 platforms, and comes with a beefy new cooler design. Coverage on Tech Report, Anandtech, HotHardware, Tweaktown, Guru3D, OCClub, Techgage, NeoSeeker, BenchmarkReviews, PC Perspective, HardCoreWare, HWHeaven and Motherboards.org have a video review. Discussion from here. Thursday Morning (2 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 11-March-2010  11:49:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Victoria is expanding their use of Linux-powered voting kiosks, thanks mazzanet. However, in tender documents released last week, the state revealed it would expand its use of the machines. About one hundred kiosks will be deployed to early voting centres (including mobile facilities) around the state as well as in the United Kingdom. You and I might not think too much of the iPad, but a certain Fat Kid from St Albans really wants one. Now I'll be doing it again, but 17,000km away - in New York City, a small place somewhere in the USA, which is a whole different country. The iPad is being released a month earlier in the USA than in Australia, which bums me out, as I'm an impatient nerd with too much time on his hands. I can't explain it, but gadgets are what I live for. I don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, don't stay out all night and don't have any other vices except for a terrible technology addiction. Plus it's a great excuse to see one of the world's most amazing cities - so why not!? Someon3 sent in an interesting article about somewhat dodgy SD cards. Armed with this evidence, we confronted Kingston — both the distributor in China as well as the US sales rep. First, we wanted to know if these were real cards, and second, if they were real cards, why were the serialization codes irregular? One of our most popular Wiki pages is still the fake memory cards guide from a few years ago. Bizarrely, there's a reports of a USB battery charger with a trojan. The charger at fault is the Energizer Duo USB Battery Charger, you’re only at risk if you’re a windows user and downloaded the software for the charger from the Energizer site. Energizer have released more info about the problem. In addition, the company is directing consumers that downloaded the Windows version of the software to uninstall or otherwise remove the software from your computer. This will eliminate the vulnerability. In addition CERT and Energizer recommend that users remove a file that may remain after the software has been removed. The file name is Arucer.dll, which can be found in the Window system32 directory. LegionHW have a Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire CPU Scaling article. The time has come once again for us to take a pair of the gaming industry’s fastest performance graphics cards and couple then with a range of processors from both AMD and Intel. In this first part, which will be just one of many, we are taking the Core i7, Core i3, Phenom II X4, Phenom II X2 processors and testing them with Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards at frequencies from 2.0GHz through to 4.0GHz. Meanwhile TechSpot checked out Battlefield: Bad Company 2 GPU Performance. Any game that looks this good is going to be demanding. What we experienced is that tuning down visual settings along with the resolution still hurt budget and even some mid-range graphics cards. DICE recommends at least a GeForce GTX 260 or Radeon HD 4780 graphics card to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and it is rare to find this kind of high performance GPUs falling under the recommended specifications. Read on for our in-depth findings on GPU performance and CPU scaling. The Large Hadron Collider's woes continue, with the operators now admitting there are design issues which require the machine to be shut down for a year while they are addressed. He said: "The standard phrase is that the LHC is its own prototype. We are pushing technologies towards their limits." ... "You don't hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well." Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man, having been pushed down a spot by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world's richest 14 of the past 15 years. There's more CeBIT 2010 coverage on Guru3D and MadShrimps. Today's timewaster is a Lynx ad game (possibly NSFW, ish) called Keeping Keeley, with discussion here. Wednesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 10-March-2010  23:40:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 890GX AM3 board on PureOC. Gigabyte H55M-USB3 LGA1156 board on Techgage. MSI H55-GD65 Gamer Series LGA1156 on FutureLooks. ASUS M4A89GTD AM3 board on Guru3D. ASUS P6T7 and P7P55 WS Workstation Motherboards on PCPerspective. Input Etc: Gigabyte KM7580: Keyboard and Mouse Combo on Bjorn3D. Steelseries Xai gaming mouse on XSReviews. Mionix NAOS 5000 on OC3D. Power Supply: Coolermaster GX 750 on Pro-Clockers. Nexus RX-6300 on PureOC. Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W on OCClub. CoolerMaster GX Series 750W on FutureLooks. Storage: WD SiliconEdge-Blue Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews. Kingston SSDNow V-Series 30GB Solid State Boot Drive on ThinkComputers. Mushkin Mulholland Drive 2GB USB Drive on OCClub. Thecus N7700 Pro 7 Drive NAS Server on Tweaktown. Asus TS Mini Home Server on Tweaknews. Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive on EverythingUSB. OCAU 10th Anniversary Stubby Holders (13 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  15:47:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg Polo shirt orders are now closed and should ship in a couple of weeks. But we still have quite a few stubby holders left over from the first batch, and they're ready to ship now! Click for ordering info! Beer not included :) Right now you can get two of these shipped to you anywhere in Australia for twenty bucks total! Get some cool stuff and support OCAU, it's win-win. :) Tuesday Afternoon (6 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  15:02:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Federal Government apparently recieved over 55,000 submissions on whether or not an R18+ rating should be introduced for video games in Australia. The federal Attorney-General's Department will prepare a report for the Standing Committee of Attorneys General based on the submissions. Information on submissions that didn't request confidentiality would be made public in "due course". Some more info on Electronic Frontiers Australia. A particularly noteworthy submission is here. Kotaku meanwhile report that the recent game violence vs smoking study was done by a group funded by Michael Atkinson, a vocal opponent to R18+ game classification. Now, as reported by News.com.au, it comes to light that the ACCM has received considerable funding from the office of Michael Atkinson, the censorship minister who opposes the introduction of an R18+ rating for videogames. Mr Atkinson also apparently demanded $20k from someone who had posted a rude remark about him online. Kytro sent in a radio interview where Dr Christopher Ferguson criticises the moral panic about video game violence in Australia. Dr Christopher Ferguson has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Central Florida and is the co-author of: Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Vido Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al. (2010). USA retailer NewEgg have released a statement about the fake Intel processors people received from them recently. Initial information we received from our supplier, IPEX, stated that they had mistakenly shipped us “demo units.” We have since come to discover the CPUs were counterfeit and are terminating our relationship with this supplier. Ford have unveiled their first electric vehicle, and it's a van aimed at fleet users. Ford says as many as one in four cars it builds in 2020 will be a hybrid or electric vehicle, and it’s rolling out an electric Focus next year. But it’s starting with a delivery van because fleets are a perfect market for EVs. The vehicles tend to follow set routes, so range isn’t an issue. They return to a centralized location, making recharging a snap. The up-front cost is higher, but the operating costs are lower. Kingston have released a 30GB SSD "Boot Drive". Seems like an odd move, but there's some logic to it. Coverage on LegitReviews, TestFreaks and HWLogic. The idea of an SSD boot drive like the Kingston 30GB V Series drive works well of a lot of users who just can’t dump a load of money into a drive but would really like to get rid of the HDD bottleneck in their system. Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 9-March-2010  11:26:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Video Card in CrossFire on Tweaktown. PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 PCS+ on OCClub. Portable: HP dv6-1390ev Notebook on TBreak. ViewSonic ViewBook Pro VNB131S 13.3-inch Notebook on Tweaktown. Alienware M11x Notebook on TBreak. Toshiba Satellite E205-S1904 Laptop on HotHardware. Cooling: XtremeGear HP-1216B HSF on OCOnline. Thermaltake ISGC-300 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews. Noctua NH-D14 and C12P-SE14 CPU coolers on XSReviews. Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks. Thermaltake Contac 29 Direct Touch CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer Red PC3-12800 on OCIA. Kingston HyperX PC3-17066 (2133MHz) 4GB on Tweaktown. Cases: NZXT LEXA S Crafted Series on DragonSteelMods. In Win Fanqua Mid Tower on ThinkComputers. Coolermaster USP100 on Hi-TechReviews. Raidmax Skyline on OCIA. NZXT Panzerbox on OC3D. Software: Mass Effect 2 (PC) on YouGamers. Aliens vs Predator (PC) on GamingHeaven. Audio Visual: Auzen X-Fi Bravura 7.1 sound card on Guru3D. Masscool MP-1370S 'Media Mate' Media Player on LegitReviews. Mini USB 2.0 LED Projector with Tripod on BigBruin. Arctic Cooling E361-WM Headphones on RBMods. EOS wireless loudspeaker system on TechwareLabs. Misc: The WikiReader on TechwareLabs. ASUS U3S6 USB 3.0/SATA 3 6Gbps PCIE Card on TestFreaks. Brother HL-3070CW LED Printer on CCEReviews. Monday Night (7 Comments) (link)  Monday, 8-March-2010  21:00:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Popular Science magazine have made 137 years of back issues available for free on the net. As you will soon see, it's an amazing resource. Aside from bringing back memories for longtime readers, as a whole the archive beautifully encapsulates over a century of PopSci's fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. Tweakguides have some info on Ubisoft's new DRM. It seems it was recently cracked in a matter of hours. More recently people were unable to play games with the new DRM when the authentication servers were having an issue. Well, as it turns out, when the Ubioft severs go down, no one can play their games and Ubisoft customers get very upset. At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games. enigma sent in some photos from the March 6th "Stop the Filter protest, in Melbourne and Perth. Melbourne also copped some freak hail and rain recently. Check out the amount of water coming down the road towards the end of this video. AirQ spotted this article about killing mosquitoes with lasers. In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light. ... The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Tweaktown have a couple of articles looking into the software side of Thecus NASs, here and here. At first it started out as a harmless test with a single drive on a different file system to see what would happen to performance. Forty-eight hours later has evolved into a nonstop Bawls fueled obsession to see how much improvement we could find just by setting our NAS up differently. Interesting Forum Threads: Gulftown testing begins in Intel Hardware. Are subs that important for movies/games? in PC Audio. This guy's macro-fu is better than yours in Photography. What's your colour IQ? in Photography. Radio circuit in Electronics. Dolphins are non-human persons in Science. Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples in Science. Car Motion Simulator in Modding. How much money is enough? Salary poll in Career, Education & Finance. The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations in Career, Education & Finance. Sunday Afternoon (14 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-March-2010  17:06:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg Lots of people sent word that Zgeek have won the defamation lawsuit against them. The $42.5 million lawsuit against ZGeek has been settled after our lawyers required the plaintiff to provide proof of the movie deal that was purportedly lost due to comments posted on this site. So, congratulations to them. :) You'll be surprised to hear that the Police have no sense of humour when it comes to drug trafficking. Michael the Police Officer has kindly pointed out to me that it is a criminal offence to solicit money with the intent to purchase drugs and sell them at a profit. Beware the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers, as it seems they are killing cards, thanks Sniper. NVIDIA 196.75 drivers were released on March 2nd, and have now been removed from the download site. If you are running these drivers it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you uninstall this driver and immediately downgrade to the 196.21 drivers. Portal 2 has been confirmed for 2010 by Valve. Game Informer has revealed that its April 2010 cover story is none other than ... Portal 2 -- which Valve has given a release window of "this holiday season." The magazine's site teases the 12-page feature, calling the game "a full-fledged, standalone sequel" with "new gameplay mechanics, storyline, and some surprising new twists." It seems there's some fake Intel CPUs doing the rounds. More info here, thanks Ambush. Some of our forum members are reporting that they purchased Intel i7 920 processors from Newegg, but what they received was anything but a usable processor. The box looks real enough until you look closely and notice things like spelling errors and fake security tape. Some people think these might have been meant for display purposes in a retail store and were shipped on error. HyRax1 notes that Open Source is bad, evil and un-american. But is it Unawstraaaaan? What has Indonesia done to make it onto the Special 301 Priority Watch list? Turns out it had the temerity to send out a circular endorsing the use and adoption of open-source software within government organizations, which it hoped would "result in the use of legitimate open source and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) and a reduction in overall costs of software." HotHardware played around with a 6-screen EyeFinity setup. A little simple arithmetic reveals the effective desktop resolution of a setup like this is 5760x2160, or 12.4 megapixels. You want high res? We've got it right here. What's more interesting than sitting at the Windows desktop, is gaming on a 6-screen setup like this. With that in mind, we also snapped a couple of quick videos showing that a single Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition can do in H.A.W.X. and Left 4 Dead 2. We haven't heard all that much about Cebit 2010, but there's coverage on Hexus and HWHeaven (and Day 2 and Day 3). With the first F1 race for 2010 happening next weekend, here's a video of Australia's Mark Webber previewing the Bahrain GP in Red Bull's rFactor Pro-powered simulator. There's some more info on the simulator here and discussion here. It sure beats my setup! Sunday Afternoon Reviews (2 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 7-March-2010  15:03:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg Portable & Prebuilt: Gateway EC14D07u Ultraportable Laptop on Tweaktown. Puget Echo I HTPC System on TestFreaks. Dell Inspiron Zino HD Desktop on HotHardware. Sony VAIO EB12FX/T notebook on TechReviewSource. Asus G73J: The Ultimate Gaming Notebook on InsideHW. Storage: Synology DiskStation DS210j NAS on TestSeek. Patriot Valkyrie NAS on NeoSeeker. OCZ Agility Series 120GB SSD on OCClub. ADATA S596 128GB SSD Video Review & Benchmarks on Motherboards.org. Western Digital RE4-GP 2 TB Hard Disk Drive on TechARP. A-DATA N002 USB 3.0 and SATA II 128GB SSD on Motherboards.org. Kingston 128GB V Series Notebook Upgrade Kit on Motherboards.org. LaCie Network Space 2 on DigitalTrends. Cases: Four Mainstream System Cases from AeroCool, Enermax, NZXT and Scythe on XbitLabs. Xclio Nighthawk on PureOC. VidaBox vCase3 Premium mATX HTPC chassis on Guru3D. Thermaltake V3 Black Edition Mid Tower on OCIA. DimasTech Bench Table V2.5 on TechPowerUp. Motherboard & CPU: AMD 785G Motherboard Roundup on iXBTLabs. Intel's Core i3-530 - The Budget Powerhouse? on Techgage. Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale Processor on PCPerspective. ECS A890GXM-A 890GX AM3 board on OCClub. Gigabyte H55M-S2H Budget 1156 on Pro-Clockers. AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE on RBMods. Intel D510MO Mini-ITX on BigBruin. Athlon II X4 635 CPU on InsideHW. ASUS TUF SaberTooth 55i LGA1156 board on Bjorn3D. Zotac ION-ITX-A dual-core Atom on XbitLabs. Video Cards: XFX RADEON HD 5830 on Motherboards.org. Gigabyte GV-567OC-1GI Radeon HD 5670 on PCStats. MSI R5770 HAWK Radeon HD 5770 on PCPerspective. Power Supply: Chieftec Power Supply Units Roundup on XbitLabs. Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W on NinjaLane. OCZ Z Series 1000W on HWSecrets. Misc Pics (26 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-March-2010  12:01:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg Slightly early this week! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. OCAU Graffiti Wallpaper (11 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-March-2010  11:52:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg Graffiti_tech has responded to requests and produced an OCAU wallpaper in his 3D graffiti style. Very nice! Click for the thread! Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 5-March-2010  02:26:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg Input Etc: Logitech MX-620 Cordless Laser Mouse on BenchmarkReviews. Verbatim Nano Wireless Notebook Mouse on ASELabs. SteelSeries Kinzu Optical Mouse on Tech-Reviews. Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128GB SSD on HWLogic. Verbatim InSight Portable HDD 500GB on RBMods. Indilinx Barefoot Firmware Testing with the RunCore Pro IV SSD on Tweaktown. Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 SSD Controller on BenchmarkReviews. OCZ Vertex Limited Edition 100GB on TechSpot. Memory: G.Skill ECO Kit 4 GB PC3-12800U CL7-8-7 on TechPowerUp. Patriot Memory Sector 5 2250MHz DDR3 Kit on MegatechNews. Cases: NZXT Hades Crafted Series on TechWareLabs. Thermaltake Element V Full Tower on Tweaktown. LUXA2 LM100 Mini HTPC Case on PCShopTalk. Geek Recipes (7 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-March-2010  22:47:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg Catching up on some more yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum: Pig-based dining by kingjam Burger Night by RETARD Chicken Fried Steak by username_taken Chicken Wellingtons by pugsley Spanakopita by AussieHusky Beef and Guinness Pie by pugsley Greek Lamb by Bastard Child Potato Bake by RETARD Bacon, Cheese & Beet Quiche by RETARD Thursday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-March-2010  14:44:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg The top 10 finalists in our geekiest self-portrait contest have been posted, so go vote for your favourite! The winner will score a triple-LCD monitor stand courtesy of Proluma. This coming Saturday is a National Day of Action against internet censorship in Australia. This Saturday 6 March 2010, some of the other organisations that are working for an Open Internet and against the Government’s impractical and costly policy of Government censorship are holding a series of events around the country Looks like there's events in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. InTheFade spotted a superfast system from Patriot. Well, superfast on the storage side of things at least. hey managed to build the worlds fastest PC, using five LSI controllers to connect forty SSDs to them. The system manages a sustained 155,000 IOPS/s This may not give you and idea about the actual speed, but we were given a great example. Ripping a Blu-Ray takes 2-3 hours on a good PC. It takes a mere 0.9 seconds on this one. There's a new issue of TheOverclocker out, and it's a special edition about "The Science of Overclocking". Could be interesting.. Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-March-2010  14:02:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have specials and info on monitor stands, media players, fitness supplements, amplifiers, headphones, watercooling gear, office chairs, data recovery, web hosting and lots of other goodies. Check 'em out! Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-March-2010  13:51:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards: Asrock H55M Pro Socket 1156 on Pro-Clockers. ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 - 890GX/SB850 AM3 board on ExtremeOC. AMD's 890GX integrated graphics chipset on TechReport. Gigabyte 790XTA-UD4 AM3 board on iXBTLabs. MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on Overclockers.com. Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H AM3 board on LegitReviews. AMD 890GX on Bjorn3D. ECS A890GXM-A AM3 board on HWSecrets. ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA1366 board on PureOC. Asrock P55 Deluxe3 LGA1156 board on LegionHW. ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 board on InsideHW. ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AMD 890GX AM3 board on PCStats. ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA1366 board on Motherboards.org. Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 750W on OCIA. CyberPower AVRLCD UPS Battery Backup for PCs on BenchmarkReviews. Cooler Master 750 Watt GX on Bjorn3D. Amacrox Free Earth 85PLUS 650W on HWSecrets. Cooling: XtremeGear HP-1216B CPU Cooler on PureOC. Thermaltake Silent 1156 Heatsink on NinjaLane. Arctic Cooling ARCTIC F12 Pro TC Case Fan on VerdisReviews. Coolermaster Hyper 101 CPU Cooler on XSReviews. Misc: UNITEK 2 Port USB 3.0 PCI Express Card on TestFreaks. Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand on ThinkComputers. Ozone Gaming Roundup mouse/pad/headphones on OC3D. WD SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD (3 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-March-2010  01:46:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg Western Digital have entered the consumer SSD market. Western Digital (WD) today announced its first consumer-oriented solid state drive (SSD) with the new WD SiliconEdge 2.5-inch SSD family. With sequential read speeds up to 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write transfer rates up to 170 MB/s could this be your next SSD? Coverage on LegitReviews, HotHardware, Tweaktown and PC Perspective. Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-March-2010  17:51:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg Catching up on some projects from the forums: slipperyskip has a new pico-ITX project MikeCheck improves his case with a simple paintjob Imperitos goes to town on a CM HAF 932 case EpicPCCases has some cool cable management Pr3dator8 watercooled a mini PC windwithme reviewed Corsair's HX750W PSU Wednesday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-March-2010  16:41:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Matthew sent in this video report on Channel 10, linking real world violence and video games. Experts claim there's a link between violent video games and youth crime. NASA have found further evidence pointing to large amounts of water on the moon. The “anomalous” craters (green circles) have high CPR within, but not outside their rims. Their interiors are also in permanent sun shadow. These relations are consistent with the high CPR in this case being caused by water ice, which is only stable in the polar dark cold traps. We estimate over 600 million cubic meters (1 cubic meter = 1 metric ton) of water in these features. Teddy spotted this flying hovercraft in New Zealand. It becomes airborne once it reaches a speed of 70 kilometres an hour, but in other respects it rides like a normal hovercraft. It took more than a decade for Mr Heeman to build the machine, using some household parts including a barbecue gas bottle. Guru3D have a video showing 6 cores + LN2 = 5700MHz. Bodar will take you through some low-level game benchmarks to show performance differences in-between 2, 4 and 6 CPU cores. Then use liquid nitrogen on the setup and will take this hexa-core processor towards 5800 MHz with Hyper Threading enabled. He ended at 5724 MHz for table PI scores and for the Futuremark benchmark sessions roughly got pure 5400 MHz love on all six cores. Gaz spotted a tutorial on making those tilt-shift photos in Photoshop. A Tilt-Shift effect on your image gives it the impression that the subject is actually a scale model. It does this by dramatically simulating a shallow Depth of Field along with an increase in the color saturation. Tech-Report checked out what's going on with Shuttle lately. Recently, we decided to check in with Shuttle and see what was new with this unlikely survivor of the consolidation trend in the motherboard business. Turns out Shuttle is still very much alive and kicking, and it's working on new ways to promote its barebones systems, along with an unusual modular notebook initiative. LegionHW looked at SupCom2 Performance. It has been 3 years since the original Supreme Commander game was released, along with our performance analysis of the game. Now with the release of Supreme Commander 2 we are taking a look at how your gaming system might handle this second installment, by testing a huge range of current and past graphics cards. Microsoft are now legally bound to advertise alternatives to IE, thanks enigma. The ECC's website states that Microsoft agreed to remove barriers to competition and is mandated by the legislation for five years. What must be particularly galling for the Vole is that it has to advertise a web browser 'Choice Screen' where users can choose one of at least 12 browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera, Sleipnir, Green Browser, Maxthon, Avant, Flock, K-meleon, and Slim. From stmok: There's a recent security issue that concerns Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 users... It can be caused simply by pressing F1 when told to by a malicious website! Microsoft Security Advisory (981169): Vulnerability in VBScript Could Allow Remote Code Execution. There's a "Workarounds" section that tells you how to block/prevent the vulnerability. (Basically, to use access control to prevent any user from using winhlp32.exe). This does NOT affect Windows Vista/7, and Windows Server 2k8/2k8 R2. Graffiti Wallpapers (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-March-2010  04:01:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Graffiti_tech has been updating his wallpapers thread since we linked it early last month. Now represented are ASUS, Razer, Corsair, Gigabyte, EVGA, nVIDIA, ATI, AMD and Intel: Click for the thread! AMD's 890GX and NVIDIA's Next-Gen ION (1 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-March-2010  02:03:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg AMD have released their 890GX chipset. As its name suggests, the 890GX features an integrated graphics core, but there's more to the story than just graphics. AMD has specifically stated that the 890GX will officially support upcoming 6-Core Phenom II X6 processors and courtesy of a new Southbridge, the SB850, the AMD 890GX is the first core logic chipset to natively support SATA 6G. Coverage including motherboard reviews on HotHardware, Guru3D, TechWareLabs, Techgage, PCPerspective, Tweaktown, HWSecrets, OCClub, (and here), NeoSeeker, HWHeaven and Techspot. Meanwhile, NVIDIA have unveiled their Next-Generation ION platform for mobile PCs. With the NVIDIA ION GPU now having its own dedicated memory, the next generation of ION promises better performance without sacrificing battery life by leveraging the recently announced NVIDIA Optimus technology to dynamically switch between the integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics and the NVIDIA ION GPU. Coverage on LegitReviews, TechARP, Tweaktown, PC Perspective, HotHardware and TBreak. Wednesday Morning Reviews (3 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-March-2010  00:40:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboards; Biostar TH55XE H55 LGA1156 board on OC3D. Jetway NC94-510-LF Mini-ITX Atom on TechWareLabs. ASUS X58 Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on LegitReviews. ECS A785GM-AD3 AM3 board on NeoSeeker. Cases: Thermaltake V3 Black on Pro-Clockers. NZXT M59 Classic Series Mid Tower on Tweaktown. Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on ThinkComputers. Zalman Z7 Plus on Tweaknews. Corsair Obsidian 800D on Bjorn3D. Storage: Corsair 8GB Padlock 2 USB Flash Drive on LegitReviews. Patriot Valkyrie 2-Bay NAS on Tweaknews. OCZ Technology’s Vertex 2 Pro 100GB Solid State Disk on Tweaktown. Thecus N2200 on TechPowerUp. OCZ Vertex Limited Edition SSD on HotHardware. Kingston DataTraveler 310 256GB USB Flash Drive on TestFreaks. QNAP TS-259 Pro Turbo NAS on CCEReviews. OCZ Technology 60GB Agility Series SATAII SSD on Futurelooks. Audio Visual: Mionix Keid 20 Gaming Headphones on DragonSteelMods. JVC HA-NCX78 noise cancelling headphones on GamingNexus. Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (1 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-March-2010  14:35:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg Portable: Palm Pre Plus smartphone on DigitalTrends. Verizon Wireless Palm Pre Plus on TestFreaks. Palm Pixi Plus on DigitalTrends. ASUS G51J 3D 15.6" Gaming Notebook with 3D Vision on Techgage. Lenovo IdeaPad U150 on DigitalTrends. Video Cards: ATI Radeon HD 5750/5770 on iXBTLabs. ASUS Ares on OC3D. Radeon HD 5830 on InsideHW. AMD's Radeon HD 5830 on TechReport. HIS Digital HD5570 on Hi-TechReviews. Cooling: Zalman CNPS10X Flex Heatsink on Frostytech. XSPC 5870 Razor GPU Water Block on PureOC. Noctua NH-D14 on Bjorn3D. Zalman CNPS10X Flex Heatsink on PCPerspective. OCZ Gladiator Max CPU Cooler on OCOnline. Evercool Ever Green 40mm Fans on PCShopTalk. Xtreme Gear HP-1216B CPU cooler on OCClub. Thermalright Venomous-X CPU cooler on Guru3D. Scythe Grand Kama Cross SCKC-2000 Heatsink on Frostytech. Geek Recipes (6 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-March-2010  22:01:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's been a while since I've done this, but here's some yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum: BBQ Chicken by tunagirll Eye Fillet Beef Wellingtons by Adro85 Brazilian Sucos by doug81 Simple Bruschetta by !nsane Traditional Indian Upma by bejay Biltong by Quan-Time Easy Spaghetti Marinara by platinum Baking bread by RETARD Risotto with Salmon by glasnt Monday Evening (1 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-March-2010  20:38:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg Unsurprisingly, Aussies are leading the way when it comes to social networking. That certainly explains why whenver any new web thing comes along there seem to be a disproportionate number of Aussies on it. :) The study found the social sites, whose use exploded 82 per cent worldwide last year, were used by an estimated 9.9 million of Australia's 22 million population. If your PS3 is acting oddly, it's probably due to a widespread PSN issue. Forum members and e-mail tipsters are saying this problem is primarily affecting owners of the older model of the PlayStation 3, and is even causing users to lose trophies previously earned. Many titles, such as Heavy Rain, are also now unplayable due to connection issues with Sony's servers. Discussion near the end of this thread. TheReg reports on the US Department of Commerce's recent statement on internet governance, which states they intend to be more hands-on in future. The new approach is a far cry from a US government that consciously decided not to intrude into the internet’s functioning and growth and in so doing allowed an academic network to turn into a global communications phenomenon. Online scammers may have swindled up to one billion dollars </dr_evil> from Australians, thanks IntelInside. Scam complaints tend to peak midyear with online scams increasing in popularity, the report says. About 54 per cent of scams involved a "mass-marketed advance fee" whereby consumers pay costs up front for a product that is never supplied. Speaking of which, beware bogus news sites with malicious code. Unfortunately, as Graham Cluley regularly blogs, any breaking news topic tends be exploited by hackers who use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to lure people to visit their malicious pages. Today's news of a large earthquake in Chile seems to be no exception. Exetel's chief won't be making many gamer friends with some recent comments, thanks Quan-Time. There’s probably well in excess of three million people using wireless, mainly for different applications at the moment. And they’re certainly not gamers playing, or those other things. They’re the other half of Australia that has a life [pause] rather than a half life. From mpot: Google have released a competitor to Microsoft's PhotoSynth. There's a video describing it here and some discussion on slashdot here. What is it? The latest to launch is a kind of user-generated layer to Street View that uses photos uploaded by individuals to create a pseudo-3D panorama of a specific spot. Although there aren’t going to be enough user photos to do this for every site or building, it’s an additional way to get different perspectives on popular landmarks. From ChrisH: The voting for this month's Iron Musician is now open. The topic was Travelling and it attracted a variety of genres. Come have a listen, and vote for your favourite home grown hit.

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