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December 2007 |
Forum Articles
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Sunday, 30-December-2007 16:32:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A few things going on in the forums:
Nintek in Administration?
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Sunday, 30-December-2007 15:34:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Quite a few people have pointed out this article on a site named "NintekWatch", which suggests the parent company of Nintek has entered into administration. Perhaps the same industry crunch that claimed CWorld and PlusCorp (now reborn), or other factors, have brought down this cut-price vendor as well. There's a lengthy thread about it here on Whirlpool.
Bear in mind that for the moment this is just a rumour (although sniffing around does seem to support it), and you'd have to regard "NintekWatch" as perhaps not the least biased source for such news. :) So take it with a grain of salt until we have some official confirmation either way - I've emailed Matt from Nintek for an official comment, but given it's Sunday and Nintek is closed until early January anyway, we may not hear anything definite for a while.
Given Nintek are currently closed for Christmas I doubt anyone will be placing any orders regardless, but if you are thinking about sending them some money, perhaps wait until we have an official word and/or they re-open in January. I don't normally post rumours as news, but there's no harm in holding off your order until then anyway, and it might save you some dramas if the rumour turns out to be true.
Sunday Midday
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Sunday, 30-December-2007 12:55:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The end is nigh for Netscape Navigator, one of the very early web browsers. Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%. Interestingly that article quotes IE as having 80% market share, which is definitely not the case for OCAU readers. I'll whack some Google Analytics graphs up one of these days showing some interesting breakdowns. A little more info on Netscape's demise here. Discussion here.
Quite a few people sent word of a new Optimus Tactus keyboard from Art. Lebedev. Looks great, but is it just another prototype we won't see for years? The release date says 01.01.2008, so maybe not. More here from Revolution.
The state of New Jersey has banned some sex offenders from using the internet at all. The bill applies to anyone who used a computer to help commit the original sex crime. It also may be applied to paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but it exempts work done as part of a job or search for employment. More on ArsTechnica here.
There's a update to the iPhone on the way, adding a few cool features etc. Actually I have no idea about the iPhone but a few people sent this in so I assume it's interesting. :)
From Robert: Rolling Stone has an interesting story on how record producers alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Without enough low end, 'you don't get the punch anymore.
Geeks flying to/from the USA beware, there are soon to be limitations on taking lithium batteries with you on the plane. The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours. Seems to be some general grumpiness on the net about this, largely because nobody has explained WHY they're now restricted.
Dan has more letters. In this jam-packed end of year edition: Foraging for free NiCds, HAL's dimensions, Prius battery longevity, plug-in hybrid battery selection, dodgy Dells, add-on noise cancelling, immortal vacuum pumps, and fake instructional videos.
Saturday Midday
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Saturday, 29-December-2007 12:02:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Quan-Time spotted this interesting DS game where wlan signals in your environment become part of the game. wardive captures the wlans in the immediate area like a wardrive-tool and creates a game. it reads the names of the hotspots in your immediate area and turns them into enemies which try to take over your wardive-cristal.
If you've been looking for Jesus, perhaps you should have used a GPS, thanks Craig. Jesus was in a home on Suellen Circle, in a neighborhood across the street from the Nativity scene.
Craig also spotted a severe corruption issue with Windows Home Server. The document went on to list the software, which includes Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, OneNote 2003, OneNote 2007, Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007 and SyncToy 2.0 Beta. Others programs, however, may also corrupt files stored on a home server powered by Microsoft's operating system.
YouGamers look back at 2007 in PC hardware. Not content with that, they also look ahead to 2008 in PC gaming. Even after paring down the list of 2008 releases by removing not-so-anticipated titles and accounting for recently announced delays, the list of anticipated games is a long one.
Here's an article on using arrays of quantum dots for storage. Experimentally, they have found that quantum dots can have access times of around 10ns, faster than the current generation of RAM, and they require a refresh rate as low as 0.7Hz.
More from craig, this time about a book suggesting Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray. Shulman believes the smoking gun is Bell's lab notebook, which was restricted by Bell's family until 1976, then digitized and made widely available in 1999.
TechReport re-visit AMD's 790FX chipset. Our first impressions of the 790FX chipset were decidedly mixed. Were those impressions correct? We took a fresh look at 790FX motherboards from Asus and MSI in order to find out.
Meanwhile PCPerspective looked at the AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition processors. We also take the new AMD Overdrive utility for a spin and see how it stands up for modern overclockers.
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 29-December-2007 10:40:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9700 NT CPU Cooler on RBMods.
GlacialTech IGLOO 5710 Series CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Tuniq TX-2 Thermal Compound on LANAddict.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower 850W on OCIA.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610W on APHNetworks.
Tuniq Miniplant 950W on OCrCafe.
Xigmatek NRP-MC851 850W on TechPowerUp.
Tuniq Ensemble 1200W on Pro-Clockers.
Bgears 550 Watt Tarantula on OCrClub.
E-Power EP-1000P10-T2 1kW on RWLabs.
Tagan TG700-U88 BZ 700W on Pro-Clockers.
Video Cards:
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 Water Cooled Edition on Guru3D.
Leadtek WinFast PX8800GT 256MB (GeForce 8800 GT 256MB) on HWZone.
Asus EAH3870 TOP on NeoSeeker.
XFX 8800GT 512Mb Alpha Dog Edition XXX on CPU3D.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Friday, 28-December-2007 17:14:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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New Windows 2000 boot screen :) in Windows Operating Systems.
Ground Branch (New tactical/realistic FPS) in Games.
Ogame Uni 36 Thread in Games.
8800U vs 8800GTS G92 in 3DM06 @ 1920x1200 compare in Video Cards.
Why arent you people talking about the Seagate Savvio drives? in Storage & Backup.
Can't wait till boxing day (EK-Supreme photo) in Extreme Cooling.
internet filtering/monitoring over the network in Networking & Internet.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in Game Consoles.
What's your favourite microcontroller family? in Electronics.
More Photoshop madness! in Graphics and Programming.
Free Source Control for VS 2005 in Graphics and Programming.
Buying my first SLR in Photography.
Competition to Olympus's Tough Series? in Photography.
The "Photographers' Kids" Thread in Photography.
Christmas Song (*joke*) in Entertainment.
Your pet's odd/unique behaviour in Pets & Animals.
Are we looking at Peak Oil in the rear view mirror? in Current Events.
MV PASHA BULKER final report released in Current Events.
Internet Censorship Clampdown Begins In One Month In Australia in Current Events.
Your best / most memorable bits of '07 in The Pub.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 28-December-2007 00:58:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
Pioneer DCS-370 - 5.1-Channel Home Cinema System on TrustedReviews.
Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray Player on HWSecrets.
Cooling:
Icebox 5.25 UV Blue Dual Bay Reservoir for watercooling on Virtual-Hideout.
OCZ Vendetta CPU cooler on Bit-Tech.
OCZ Vanquisher CPU cooler on OCClub.
Motherboards:
ECS A770M-A AM2+ board on TechPowerUp.
MSI X48 Platinum LGA775 board on CPU3D.
Memory & Storage:
Super Talent 2GB T1000UX2G5 Memory Kit on TechwareLabs.
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200.11 Hard Drive on Tweaktown.
Kingston DataTraveler mini USB Flash Drive 4GB on CircuitRemix.
Portable:
Spire Endo Laptop Bag on ThinkComputers.
HP iPAQ 114 Classic Handheld PDA on TrustedReviews.
Cases:
Raidmax Aztec Gaming Case on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Armor+ VH6000 tower on HWZone.
iStarUSA S-9 Series Case on TechWareLabs.
Sigma Luna WB on TechPowerUp.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries SP Gaming Surface on TechPowerUp.
Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 on Techgage.
Steelseries Steelpad 5L Mouse Pad on CPU3D.
Misc:
GECUBE Radeon HD 3850 X-Turbo III video card on Tweaktown.
The Settlers: Rise of an Empire PC game on Tweak.dk.
Thursday Night
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Thursday, 27-December-2007 22:48:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Craig spotted this new battery research going on at Stanford. The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture.
From Tarrith: Johnny Lee's been at it again with his Wiimote. This time he's been working on Head Tracking, his results are nothing less than jaw dropping VR! Nuf said. C'mon all you developers THIS ROCKS. Make something of it! BFM spotted a YouTube video, too.
OC3D have a shootout between the XFX 8800 GTS 512 and Asus 8800 GT 512 G92-based video cards. I look upon the Nvidia naming conventions with some concern nowadays. Far from being clear we now have 8800 GT (G92), 8800 GTS 640 or 320 (G80), 8800 GTS 512 (G92), 8800 GTX (G80) and 8800 Ultra (G80).
DDsD spotted this article about the evils of Facebook. It’s understandable that social networks want to retain their users, but that doesn’t mean its ok to make it incredibly difficult for users to leave, particularly considering the quantity of personal data that is regularly fed into the networks.
ATI Catalyst Drivers v7.12 were recently released, thanks John. Phoronix looked at the Linux ones. This month, the ATI Catalyst 7.12 Linux driver (formally, what is known as fglrx 8.44) brings a host of new changes, mostly in the form of bug fixes.
PCMech want to tell you about Windows Slipstreaming, as do PCApex. For example, do you have an old Windows XP installation CD? How could you somehow combine Service Pack 2 in with your original installation disc to create a hybrid Windows XP SP2 installation CD? Or perhaps you want to combine several drivers, patches and other updates into a single installation procedure.
Bit-Tech have a carbon-fibre case mod worklog. Carbon fibre is not an easy material to work with, particularly when it's already been treated with resin - at that point, you'd better bring your demolition equipment. But, beggars can't be choosers - and though Ediejo had a lot of work ahead of him, he's never been one to pass on an opportunity to create a new, unique project.
Thursday Evening Reviews
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Thursday, 27-December-2007 19:13:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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*burp* ta to Cryo for keeping the news flowing. :)
Motherboards:
Abit IX38 Quad GT LGA775 board on OCClub.
ASRock 4Core1333-eSATA2 LGA775 board on XBitLabs.
Storage & Memory:
OCZ ATV Turbo (4GB) flash drive on OCOnline.
LaCie Ethernet Disk mini 500GB network HDD on Digitaltrends.
Corsair Twinx3x2048-1600 DDR3 memory on RBMods.
VIZO Milano Enclosure & Media Player on TechPowerup.
iStarUSA T-7M1-SA Removable Sata Hard Drive Rack on TechWareLabs.
Nexus DiskTwin HDD enclosure on BurnOutPC.
Audio / Visual:
Edifier C3 2.1 Speakers on TechARP.
Pioneer DV-LX50 DVD Player on TrustedReviews.
20" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part V on XbitLabs.
TerraTec NOXON iRadio Network Music Player on MadShrimps.
Turtle Beach Ear Force AK-R8 Headphones on Techgage.
Panasonic RP-HC500E-S noisecancelling headphones on TrustedReviews.
Video Cards:
ZOTAC GeForce 8800GT AMP! Edition on Tweaktown.
Gainward Bliss 8800 GT 512MB GS GLH on XbitLabs.
XFX 8800 GTS 512 XXX Alpha Dog on Bjorn3D.
PCMechanic have listed who they believe are the top 10 sexiest women in technology. Today I am doing something that is uncharted territory for PCMech. See, we can't be all business here. Sometimes we just need to have fun. We talk computers, Internet and gadgets all day long. However, there are some incredibly bright and beautiful women out there doing the same. So, if People Magazine can have a list of the sexiest people, why can't PCMech?
Stocktake sales are on (well not in Adelaide just yet), so there's no shortage of bargains to blow your money on. But nevertheless, Bit-Tech have posted an article providing suggestions on how to Spend Your Christmas Cash. Also, Digital Trends have posted up an article with the same flavour about finding the best post-holiday deals.
Phoronix have posted their 'AYiR' article focusing on nVidia's driver progress in 2007. In 2005 we started our annual AYiR (A Year in Review) articles for looking at the progress of the proprietary ATI and NVIDIA Linux display drivers over time. Now in our third year of doing this, it's time to see how NVIDIA's binary driver has panned out over the past year.
OCC have also had a look back over 2007 and posted an article focusing on the graphics cards of 2007. So, which card is right for you? The question is quite similar to being asked, "which card is right for you?" People with no budget limits will always go for the best performance, regardless of price. However, most people want to get the most for their money, while still craving the performance that will deliver a satisfying gaming experience.
A bit of an old article, but on the subject of graphics cards, but Ambush sent in this article detailing the upgrading of graphics cards in notebooks. Generally, it is not so easy to upgrade / replace notebook video cards than desktop video cards. If it is possible and how to actually replace a video card is described in the following article.
There's heaps of overclocking guides for beginners on the web. Techreport have just published their version. To help the uninitiated get their feet wet with overclocking, we've whipped up a handy guide covering the basics. This is by no means an attempt to document every technique associated with turning up your system's clock speeds, but it should be a good place to start for newbies looking for their first taste. We're all pros around here though, right guys?
Mindy (you came and you gave without flaking) has sent in some interesting articles, in no particular order. First, NASA has apparently discovered a Death Star. Second, it's been suggested that there will be more sharks this season. Third, Telstra are accusing Optus of having a 'lazy and underutilised' cable network. Fourth, ACCC has published their views on Next Generation networks. Fifth, Sun's petabyte datacentre has made its debut in Australia. And finally, Nintendo's brain-training expert is teaming up with Toyota for developing cars especially for the elderly.
Finally, Trusted Reviews have looked at the Top of the Flops when it comes to games. In the spirit of providing a semblance of balance, it seems a good idea to remind us all about those that promised much, but either didn’t deliver or were simply ignored.
Some reviews to help Christmas lunch go down. Hope Santa bought you all something nice!
Power Supplies and Cooling:
bGears b-Tarantula 650W Modular Power Supply at Virtual-Hideout
Tagan BZ-1100 - 1100 Watt Power Supply at Hi-Techreviews.com
Nexus HXR-5500 RAM Cooler at RbMods
Zalman VF1000 LED & RHS88 Coolers at PCPerspective
CPUs:
AMD Phenom 9900 at SharkyExtreme
AMD Phenom 9900 at OCC
Motherboards:
MSI X48 Platinum at Trusted Reviews
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe Motherboard at Legit Reviews
ASUS Blitz Formula Special Edition at InsideHW.com
ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n at Techgage
Memory:
Mushkin XP2-6400 4GB Memory Kit at Bjorn3d
Patriot Extreme Performance PC3-10666 DDR3 at Pro-Clockers
Kingston KHX13000D3LLK2/2G PC3-13000 DDR3 1625MHz at BmR
Other:
Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action at Trusted Reviews
Ultra Stackables at TechwareLabs
XFX Geforce 8500GT Fatal1ty Video Card at Madshrimps
Toshiba Satellite P205D-S7479 at Techgage
Saitek Notebook Optical Mouse & Mini Hub at ThinkComputers.org
Merry Christmas!
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Monday, 24-December-2007 02:38:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Righto, things are obviously going to get a bit (even more!) quiet around here for the next few days. I hope you have a great holiday break, enjoy some time with your friends and family, and drive safe if you're on the roads. Back soon, bloated with ham, turkey and prawns!
Sunday Night
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Sunday, 23-December-2007 23:34:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a fairly convincing phishing scam about Vista's Birthday doing the rounds, thanks Martin. Update: or maybe it's genuine. I just don't know anymore. :)
Another big rock is coming to kill us all! Actually it's not, but it might hit Mars - there's a 1 in 75 chance. If 2007 WD5, which is about 100 metres in diameter, does strike Mars on January 30, it would cause an explosion equivalent to several megatonnes of TNT.
China's first homegrown passenger aircraft has rolled off the production line. The first ARJ21-700 jet, powered by a turbofan engine, can carry 90 passengers with a maximum range of 2,000 nautical miles. Discussion here.
PCStats have maximum overclocking charts. In this document we've assembled every overclocking test result for every bit of computer gear PCSTATS has overclocked and put it all into one easy read. While your mileage may vary, the overclocking results PCSTATS has seen should give you a good idea at what each bit of hardware is capable of.
TechARP show you how to overclock a GeForce 8800GT. Let us show you how to do that by overclocking the GPU and memory bus. We will also show you the kind of performance boost you can expect from overclocking the GeForce 8800 GT in Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R., BioShock and Crysis.
TrustedReviews list their Top 20 Games of the Year, in part 1 and part 2. If you want to know what the best game of 2007 is, you'd better read the second part of our top 20 rundown.
Alch spotted this boat powered by human fat. Ew. Earthrace will attempt to circumnavigate the globe running 100 per cent biodiesel, and with a net zero carbon-footprint.
Independent Apple news site ThinkSecret is shutting down after a long-running battle with Apple, thanks IntelInside. Think Secret, an Apple rumour website run by Harvard student Nicholas Ciarelli since 1998, has issued a terse three sentence statement giving few details about the agreement reached between the two opposing parties but clearly running up the white flag.
Saturday Night Reviews
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Saturday, 22-December-2007 21:27:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Auras SLC-747 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on XSReviews.
OCZ Technology Freeze Thermal Paste on OCIA.
OCZ Vendetta CPU Cooler on Guru3D.
Motherboard and CPU:
AMD Phenom TLB Patch Benchmarked and Explained on LegitReviews.
DFI LanParty UT 790FX AM2+ board on Ninjalane.
Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT on TechARP.
ASUS EAH3850 TOP Overclocked Radeon HD3850 on BigBruin.
Audio / Visual:
Planar PD470 47in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Olympus SP-560 UZ digicam on DigitalTrends.
Boynq Alibi webcam on DigitalTrends.
Soundgraph iMon Ultra Bay in-bay media controller on RBMods.
Super Talent Vidego 24T media player on PenStarSys.
Storage:
DVD+/-RW Drive Round-up: Plextor, Asus, Lite-On on HotHardware.
Vizo Orbiter HDD cooler on XSReviews.
Silverstone MS05 HDD Enclosure on DriverHeaven.
Rosewill RX81US Hard Drive Enclosure on Modders-Inc.
Software:
Viva Pinata PC game on DriverHeaven.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance PC game on YouGamers.
Misc:
Digital Storm Twister Extreme 3-Way SLI System prebuilt gaming PC on PCPerspective.
Ultra Stackables peripherals on OCClub.
Dell XPS M1530 notebook on TrustedReviews.
Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600 MHz CL8 2GB Kit memory on TechPowerUp.
Sniper spotted some new restrictions from the ACMA. It is the first time content service providers will have to check that people accessing MA15-plus content are aged over 15 years and those accessing R18-plus and X18-plus content are over 18. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will be able to force content providers to take down offensive material and issue notices for live content to be stopped and links to the content deleted.
There's a WinXP SP3 Release Candidate available for download, thanks Craig. This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only. Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems. Microsoft recommends that you have a backup of your data prior to installing any pre-release software.
BFM spotted an interesting bit of speculation about the future of GPUs on TheInq. Remember what happened to the thriving sound card industry?
Bit-Tech have posted their 2007 Hardware Awards. Their CPU of the year? Intel's Q6600.. sounds fair enough.
Anandtech meanwhile overclock Intel's QX9650 quad-core 45nm CPU. You can read our review (with overclocking) here.
Supercomputers have been used to offer an explanation of the Tunguska event, thanks Craig. That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids are something to consider. Their smaller size indicates such collisions are not as improbable as we had believed.
Mpot spotted that iinet are offering free downloads on Xmas Day. C'mon Internode, follow suit!
Keith noticed these highly detailed renders of old sailing ships: HMS Agamemnon was a famous Royal Navy ship-of-the-line which took part in the Battle of Trafalgar. It was the first ship-of-the-line commanded by Admiral Nelson. Also on the blocks (literally) is HMS Bellona.
Friday Night Reviews
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Friday, 21-December-2007 22:54:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Razer Tarantula Keyboard on DigitalTrends.
Razer Diamondback 3G Gaming Mouse on CPU3D.
Motherboard & CPU:
NVIDIA nForce 700i Chipsets and Gigabyte 780SLI-DS5 Motherboard on Digit-Life.
AMD Phenom AM2+ CPU on XbitLabs.
MSI K9A2 CF AM2 board on Bit-Tech.
Video Cards:
ASUS EN8800GT TOP 512MB on Bjorn3D.
XFX 8600GT Extreme Overclock 256MB on CPU3D.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB (G92) on Digit-Life.
Visiontek HD2600 XT 256MB on Bjorn3D.
Cases:
Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 on DriverHeaven.
Lian-Li PC-7 SE-B III Aluminum on MadShrimps.
Thermaltake SwordM (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Ultra m998 on ThinkComputers.
Audio / Visual:
Diamond XtremeTV HDTV 110 HYBRID TV TUNER USB 2.0 on OCClub.
Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 sound card on XbitLabs.
PC Authority Survey Results Posted
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Friday, 21-December-2007 01:50:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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PC Authority have published the results of their Reliability and Service Awards for 2007, on their website. Congratulations again to Plus Corporation for taking out the "Best online retailer" award. There's plenty of other categories for vendors and products listed too.
Thursday Night Reviews #2
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Thursday, 20-December-2007 21:11:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard and CPU:
AMD Phenom 9900 AM2+ CPU on NeoSeeker.
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 Quad-Core Processor Preview on Guru3D.
EVGA nForce 780i SLI LGA775 board on HWSecrets.
XFX nForce 780i SLI LGA775 board on LegitReviews.
Cooling:
Thermalright HR-11 Videocard Backside Cooler on Tweaknews.
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on OCClub.
Scythe Infinity SCINF-1000 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Danger Den NVIDIA 4101 H20 Water Cooling Kit on MadShrimps.
GlacialTech Igloo 5610 Silent and PWM Coolers on HWLogic.
Thermaltake DuOrb Graphics Card Cooler on APHNetworks.
Thermaltake DuOrb VGA Cooler on OCIA.
Audio / Visual:
Ultrasone HFI-700 Headphones on Techgage.
Panasonic Viera TH-58PZ700 58in Plasma TV on TrustedReviews.
Philips DVDR3577H DVD/HDD Recorder on TrustedReviews.
Hazro HZ26W 26in Display on TrustedReviews.
Insignia Pilot 4GB MP3 player on i4u.
ASUS Xonar U1 USB Audio Station on Virtual-Hideout.
Memory:
Cellshock DDR2 1066 MHz CL5 2 GB Kit on TechPowerUp.
Kingston KHX11000D3LL DDR3 on TrustedReviews.
Patriot Memory PC3-15000 (1866 MHz) DDR3 on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB on TechARP.
XFX 8800 GTS 640MB Extreme Edition on OCClub.
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 20-December-2007 20:49:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 on DigitalTrends.
Razer Lycosa Gamer Keyboard on XSReviews.
Boogie Bug AIMB Pad Mousepads on DriverHeaven.
Razer Lachesis 3G Gaming Mouse on OCClub.
Razer DeathAdder Mouse on DigitalTrends.
Keysonic ACK-126 RF Silicone Keyboard on XSReviews.
Razer Tarantula Keyboard on DriverHeaven.
Storage:
A-DATA Nobility & Classic PD17, PD18 & PD19 USB Flash Drives on MadShrimps.
Rosewill USB eSATA HDD Enclosure on OCIA.
Rosewill RX81US-HT-35A-BLK Hard Drive Enclosure on TechWareLabs.
QNAP TS-209 Pro Turbo Station network storage on TechPowerUp.
Corsair Flash Padlock flash drive on RBMods.
Power Supply:
Shg Computers SPC 400FL PSU on Tweak.dk.
Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W on TechPowerUp.
Cases:
Ultra M998 Midsize Black Tower on LegitReviews.
GMC AVC-S7 Slim HTPC Case on Metku.
Ultra m998 on OCOnline.
In Win Allure on Tweaknews.
SilverStone Temjin TJ10 Premium Enclosure on ViperLair.
Thermaltake WingRS 100 black case on OCClub.
Thermaltake Xaser VI tower on Hi-TechReviews.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 20-December-2007 16:34:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Everyone is reeling at the news a Duke Nukem Forever Teaser has been released. Wow, at this rate it might only be a few more years until we get to enjoy this much-anticipated game. Discussion here.
Time's Person of the Year for 2007 is... Vladimir Putin. Abroad, he expanded his outsize - if not always benign - influence on global affairs.
SETI@Home are asking for donations to continue their work. To keep SETI@home operating for the next year, and to provide these new capabilities, we will need to raise approximately $476,000. Currently SETI@home is entirely funded by donations from people like you.
Daniel spotted this video about the LEGO Millennium Falcon. We got the LEGO Ultimate Collector's Millenium Falcon and here's a video of me getting all dorky and excited about this awesome 12 Kilogram, 5,159-block LEGO masterpiece.
Bit-Tech list their top 10 games of 2007. Whether you look at The Orange Box as one game, three games or five games – whether you’re a newcomer to the series who wants to play it in his living room on a console or a hardened fan who wants the PC experience, there’s still no faulting The Orange Box. If nothing else there’s still just an enormous feeling of value.
LegionHW have a Geforce 8 Series Performance Comparison. There you have it, the GeForce 8 series in a nut shell. Although this elite graphics card series has been out and about for over a year now, it will still be quite a few months before the new GeForce 9 series arrives.
PCPerspective compared two 8800 GT coolers from Thermalright and Thermaltake. The simple fact is that going from a stock cooler to either of these replacements from Thermaltake or Thermalright is going to be a great move.
HWSecrets meanwhile ponder SLI vs CrossFire. Everything you need to know about SLI and CrossFire, including the latest 3-way SLI and CrossFireX technologies.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 19-December-2007 16:27:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
KEF KIT160 2.1-Channel Home Cinema System on TrustedReviews.
Cirago Bluetooth BTA-3210 EDR dongle on GideonTech.
Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-Ray Player on HWSecrets.
V-MODA Vibe In Ear Headphones on TechPowerUp.
Sony CyberShot DSC-H3 digicam on DigitalTrends.
Optoma ThemeScene HD80 Projector on TrustedReviews.
Software:
Viva Pinata PC game on YouGamers.
Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa PC game on Tweaktown.
PC Doctor Service Center 6 on OCClub.
9 1/2 weeks with Ubuntu on MadShrimps.
Video Cards:
XFX 8800GT XXX 256MB Alpha Dog on Bjorn3D.
ASUS Radeon EAH3850 TOP on Tweaktown.
Motherboards:
NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI chipset on HotHardware.
XFX nVIDIA nForce 780i SLI LGA775 board on Guru3D.
Asus X38 Formula Maximus LGA775 board on NeoSeeker.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Panasonic Strada CN-GP50N Sat-Nav on TrustedReviews.
HP Pavilion Elite m9090a Desktop PC on HWZone.
Toshiba Satellite U300-134 notebook on TrustedReviews.
Skull Candy Hydro Link Pack backpack on TBreak.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 19-December-2007 01:40:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
NZXT Rogue Small Form Factor Gaming Chassis on BigBruin.
SilverStone Temjin TJ10 Premium Enclosure on ViperLair.
Antec P190 Silent Performer on HWZone.
Moneual 932T Home Theater PC Case on RBMods.
SilverStone TJ10 on HWLogic.
Power Supply:
Ultra ULT40064 X3 1000W PSU on Bjorn3D.
Hiper HPU-4M880 & HPU-4M630 Type M PSUs on BenchmarkReviews.
Eubiq Power Track System on HWZone.
Thermaltake Toughpower QFan 650W PSU on HWZone.
Ultra X3 800 Watt Modular PSU on OCClub.
Hiper Type R Mk II 880W PSU on PCPerspective.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Chipset Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Thermalright MST-9775 LE Intel Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Processor Cooler on XbitLabs.
Vizo Ninja II Sumo Notebook Cooler on TechPowerUp.
Asus Triton 75 CPU Cooler on SilentPCReview.
OCZ Freeze Thermal Compound on Mikhailtech.
ZEROtherm Premium: Nirvana NV120 CPU Cooler on DriverHeaven.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 18-December-2007 15:52:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Bit-Tech looked at NVIDIA's nForce 780i SLI chipset with boards from XFX and Gigabyte. We were prepared to be underwhelmed by the nForce 780i SLI, but in all honesty we’re actually impressed that it isn't simply an NF200 taped onto an nForce 680i SLI board – the nForce 780i SLI reference design looks far better than before and internally things have been re-jigged for the better. TechReport have their thoughts too.
Meanwhile PCPerspective puzzle over the AMD 770 chipset. There are six manufacturers that have AMD 770 based boards available (or at least will be available shortly). So far only ECS has chosen to send out review samples, while the rest of the manufacturers are sitting back and letting the more expensive 790X and 790FX boards take all the limelight.
RWLabs checked out AMD's Phenom. AMD's first quad-core is now available for mass consumption and faster Phenom 9900 parts will be available starting early in 08. Today we look at three speed grades of Phenom, 9500, 9700 and 9900 and compare them to an Intel QX6700.
From Metku: We just finished our latest modding article. This time Antti created the ultimate GhettoBlaster / iPod Doc / external speaker box for parties.
A few people noticed this free vista offer, with a catch. All you've gotta do is allow them to track your every move for a few months. Seems to only be for USA people anyway, thanks Idryss.
OzCaseMods have a modding competition running until February. Allot of prizes to be won, and allot of fun to be had. Someone buy them a spellchecker! :)
Jimx noticed the oldest person in the world has died. Nestor reportedly put his long life down to the fact that he had never been married.
From FranklinFry: Optus has just announced they are more than doubling the speed of their cable broadband network to 20mb/ps... The only problem is it's only for MyHome and Fusion customers, so the old school customers would have to move across to the new (worse value) plans to get the speed upgrade.
Phoronix look back at the greatest Linux innovations of 2007. After spending much time in considering what the "best" and most substantial Linux gains over the year have been, we have comprised a list of what we believe are the greatest Linux innovations of 2007 along with our reasoning behind these decisions.
Lil noticed these giant rats found in a "lost world" jungle. It's kinda comforting they're still finding new animals, even if they are 1.4kg rodents. "The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Monday Evening Reviews
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Monday, 17-December-2007 20:47:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Coolermaster Hyper TX 2 CPU Cooler on CPU3D.
EK Supreme CPU Water Block on OC3D.
Video Cards:
ASUS Radeon HD 3850 & 3870 TOP on Phoronix.
Storage & Memory:
Kingston HyperX DDR3 PC11000 Kit on Pro-Clockers.
Apiotek eSATA Express Card Adapter on Mikhailtech.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 Terabyte Hard Drive on TrustedReviews.
Vantec NexStar 3 HDD Enclosure on Mikhailtech.
OCZ Titanium CL3 DDR2-800 on SysOpt.
Fujitsu HandyDrive 300GB Portable Hard Drive on TrustedReviews.
Software:
PC-Doctor Service Center 6 on Virtual-Hideout.
Nero 8 Ultra Edition burning software on Techgage.
Kane & Lynch PC game on YouGamers.
Input Etc:
Logitech V470 Bluetooth Mouse on TechPowerUp.
SteelSeries QcK Mousepad on SweMod.
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 5000 on Mikhailtech.
Logitech G15 (New Updated) Keyboard on OCClub.
A few people wrote in to remind us that it was the transistor's 60th birthday yesterday. But I'm sure everyone had that event on their Outlook calendar already right? Coverage for those interested can be found here.
PCMechanic have posted an article discussing the Technology Flops of 2007. Sometimes we have very notable advancements in the world of technology. Sometimes things come and we THINK they will be advancements and then it just fizzles away. This is just how things work. So, what do I think are the technology flops of 2007?
The clock continues to tick down to Christmas. If you are looking for a gift for someone who might give it back to you, TheTechLounge have posted some suggestions. If you still can't decide, no geek would mind one of these Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPUs that LegionHardware have had fun overclocking.
Huntley sent in a two part article on Vista's UAC and 'luafv' driver. When you disable UAC, luafv is still enabled this causes a delay in boot up compared with having UAC enabled. However when both are disabled this yeilds an even shorter boot up time. Read about it here and here.
There has been a massive new genus of dinosaur discovered in Antarctica. A team of paleontologists working over two digging seasons, have unearthed the latest type of a sauropodomorph, a massive plant-eating dinosaur that lived 190 million years ago.
Craig's sent some interesting stuff in again. First, the man who sold a much sought-after game after catching his son smoking pot managed to get $9000 for it! And a look at whether XBox 360s are the cause of strange WLAN performance?
Finally, OCC have posted up a roundup of Motherboards of 2007. ...performance can be attributed to the CPU, RAM, and motherboard. The CPU and RAM configurations were not always the same, so let's look at the reviews to see what results can be achieved."
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3870 at Modders-Inc
Powercolor HD3870 and HD3870 Crossfire at Hardwareoverclock Austria
ASUS GeForce EN8800GT TOP 512MB at TweakTown
Palit GeForce 8800GT Sonic at TweakTown
Sapphire 2600 Pro AGP 512MB at XSReviews
Motherboards, CPUs and RAM:
Asus P5E3 Premium and Maximus Extreme at HotHardware.com
Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n at t-break
Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8400 at ChileHardware
AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ Black Edition at Gamepyre
Super Talent ProjectX PC3-14400 Memory at 3dGameMan
Displays:
Pioneer KURO PDP-LX608D 60in Plasma TV at TrustedReviews
Samsung SyncMaster 2232GW at Overclockers Online
Cases and Power:
NZXT Rogue LAN Case at OC Cafe
In Win Allure Case at Rbmods
Hiper Type R Mk. II 680watt PSU at HardwareLogic
Sigma Shark SP-635 635 Watt PSU at OCIA.net
SilverStone ST35F PSU at DriverHeaven
Other:
Realplay Games & Controllers for PS2 at TrustedReviews
Eagle Tech M Series HDD Enclosure at Mikhailtech
SteelSeries QcK Mousepad at SweMOD.Com
Griffin iClear & Headphone Adapter for iPhone at ThinkComputers.org
LG GGC-H20L (Blu-ray/HD DVD Combo Drive) at HardwareZone
Interesting Forum Threads
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Sunday, 16-December-2007 16:33:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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35GB 0.31ms seek 75mb/s Read/Write Flash Eat your Heart Out in Storage & Backup.
2GB Corsair Voyager USB Drives - hidden gems in Storage & Backup.
Optimising single server LAMP setup in Other Operating Systems.
Desktop imaging solutions in Enterprise Computing.
Horrible pictures of dead caps in Modding.
Compact Flash Card as an SSD in Portable & Small Form Factor.
Blizzard confirms new MMO in Games.
Can someone tell me what the attraction of online gaming is? in Games.
Brand new Speedball 2 - available now on Steam! in Games.
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach in Games.
Forgotten Hope 2 in Games.
The Great Big HTC Tytn II / Kaiser Thread in Mobile Phones.
Feedback on Home Automation System Design in Electronics.
2007 - Your Best Photograph in Photography.
Tears and cheers seal "unthinkable" climate deal in Current Events.
Great comic in Science.
Turning water into fuel in Science.
Kangaroo farts could fight global warming in Science.
Human evolution speeding up in Science.
The brain in a dish that flies a F22 in Science.
Kiev Nuggets in Geek Food.
Muscle Testing in The Pub.
Fruit buying etiquette in The Pub.
The Epic Story Thread in The Pub.
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 16-December-2007 15:19:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Google have posted on their blog about a possible competitor to Wikipedia called Knol. A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.
Craig spotted an official response to the Eve Online boot.ini issue. It might appear from the installer log that we made the mistake of explicitly deleting \boot.ini instead of just boot.ini. The former would delete the file from the root of the current drive whereas the latter would only delete from the current working directory. It is not quite so; the mistake was to assume that the file would be deleted from the current working directory without giving the full path.
Santa may know if you've been naughty or nice, but so does your dad. If you've been telling your parents exactly what you want for the holiday season (and think there's a fair chance you'll get it), don't go doing something silly that will get you in trouble, like... oh... getting caught smoking pot on your dad's patio. Such behaviour is likely to result in your father taking the copy of Guitar Hero III for Wii that he'd bought for you, and selling it on an online auction site, to teach you a lesson.
MadShrimps have a DDR2 Memory Roundup posted. In this second part of our DDR2 roundup we continue our stress test with a DFI 680i based board. Find out how different nVidia's 680i chipset clocks your ram in the following review, and see if the latest memory kits can threaten our previous champions.
AMD had an Analyst Day recently - PenStarSys have their thoughts, as do Tech Report. Meanwhile Scott spotted some new ATI cores on the way. The new R680 consists of two 55-nm processor cores with CrossFireX support sharing the same specifications of the RV670 processor at the heart of their Radeon HD 3870 -- thought to be AMD's best product of the year. The RV620 and RV635 GPU cores are nearly identical to their RV610 and RV630 processors only in a new 55-nm form.
Bit-Tech have a custom acrylic case project which turned out pretty well. By carefully blending smoke and clear acrylic, he's made a case that stands out in places, disappears in others, and provides a unique visual presence everywhere you look. As Luciano says himself, "I didn't want a fishbowl."
YouGamers list their Top 10 Must-Have PC Games.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 15-December-2007 14:53:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It seems that Auran, Australian developers of the Fury MMORPG mentioned earlier, have gone into administration. The statement from Tony Hilliam, CEO of the company, announces that all the staff will be paid all their owed money, including redundancy payments, leave entitlements, and work to date. Sounds like Fury and Trainz will keep going, too.
Due to the availability issues with AMD's Barcelona, SPEC have invalidated their benchmark results and removed them from the listing. AMD's Scott Carroll elaborates. "As soon as we determined that we could only ship Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors earmarked for specific customer deals, we began the process of withdrawing our SPEC scores. As we get closer to the launch of the updated Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors in Q108, we will submit new scores." Digitimes have some thoughts about AMD's shocker of a year.
XbitLabs have a roundup of 160GB 2.5" hard drives. Today we will discuss six 2.5 HDDs with 160GB storage capacity, 5400rpm spindle rotation speed and SATA interface. These will be solutions from Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital.
They also have a PSU roundup. All in all we will talk about 17 models from HEC (Ascot), FSP, In Win, Tsunami, Hiper and PC Power & Cooling. InsideHW meanwhile look at some PSUs from LC Power.
From Trevor68: The much anticipated Frontlines Fuel of War Open Beta went live this morning, with a special AU site, and 3000 keys reserverd for australia even. :-) We have mirrored the 1.7gig client here. The NDA has been officially lifted, and the Kaos forums are now open to all.
Australia's "Citizens Electoral Council" have published this hilarious press release about video games and social networks. It far exceeds the correlation of so-called unprotected sex, with HIV-AIDS. LaRouche says, violent video games are worse than AIDS! Thanks wheel.
SilentPCReview checked out a new hard drive from WD featuring green power. The marketing for the drive is filled with detailed numbers about the amount of power you (might) save, the amount of money it (may) save you, and equivalent amount of carbon it (potentially) saves.
APCMag have an interview with Linus Torvalds, thanks Nick. I very much work on it full time, but I no longer really work on any particular "part"of it - I end up spending almost all my time on not writing kernel code myself, but on working with the flow of code and merging it all.
A Canadian oilfield worker managed to rack up $96,000 in excess usage on his mobile phone internet plan, thanks Sebastian. "The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like 100 dollars over," he told CBC News. "Here, I'm 85,000 dollars over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on."
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 15-December-2007 01:09:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe Wi-Fi AM2+ board on TrustedReviews.
Foxconn Mars LGA775 board on Bjorn3D.
Asus P53K Deluxe LGA775 board on RBMods.
ECS A770M-A AM2+ board on OCClub.
Audio / Visual:
Onkyo LS-V501 Universal DVD system on TrustedReviews.
Samsung HP-T4264 42" Plasma HDTV on BonaFideReviews.
Asus Xonar U1 USB Audio Station on APHNetworks.
HT Omega Claro Plus+ AD8620BR Op Amp HD Sound Card on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooling:
Thermaltake NBcool T500 and T2000 USB Notebook Coolers on OCIA.
ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Scythe Mugen SCINF-1000 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Glacialtech Igloo 5710 Silent Heatsink on Frostytech.
Alphacool NVXP-G8 GPU Waterblock on CPU3D.
Input Etc:
Microsoft SideWinder Gaming Mouse on OZHW.
Logitech G15 keyboard on DigitalTrends.
Video Cards:
GIGABYTE HD 3870 with Ultra Durable 2 on Tweaktown.
XFX 8600 GT Fatal1ty on OCClub.
MSI GeForce NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC on XbitLabs.
PowerColor HD 3850 Xtreme on Bjorn3D.
Storage & Memory:
OCZ 8GB ATV Flash Drive on TCMag.
Corsair Flash Padlock 2GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive on ExtremeOC.
GeIL Black Dragon DDR2 800 MHz CL4 memory on TechPowerUp.
Samsung SH-S203N LightScribe DVD Writer on ExtremeMHz.
Kingwin Z1-35EU-BK USB 2.0 and eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure on BigBruin.
Misc:
NZXT Alpha case on XSReviews.
Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W (W0171) PSU on OC3D.
Dell Latitude D620 Notebook on XbitLabs.
Go outside, look up
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Friday, 14-December-2007 21:44:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A few people sent word that there's a meteor shower visible across Australia tonight. Sydney Observatory curator of astronomy Nick Lomb said conditions were good for Australians to view the shower this year, with no moon expected to be visible. He said the show was expected to start at about 11pm (AEDT) tonight, with the peak coming just before dawn at about 3.45am (AEDT). "It will look like streaks of light, like whitish flares,'' Dr Lomb said.
Friday Evening
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Friday, 14-December-2007 20:23:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a pile of interesting oddities from Mindy:
A team of Italian scientists think they've found the crater from the 1908 Tunguska event. On June 30, 1908, a ball of fire exploded about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground in the sparsely populated region, scientists say. The blast released 15 megatons of energy—about a thousand times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—and flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest.
Engadget report on a kit to let the cops move a PC without shutting it down first. The investigator simply plugs the HotPlug into the computer's powerstrip, and then unplugs the strip and plugs it into the UPS -- and takes the whole system away. Video here.
Here's some cool wet lamps. Dip the silver rod deeper into the water to brighten the bulb; less submerged silver means less light. It's a wonderful contradiction in reason, and a beautiful lamp.
Wikipedia are no longer being charged for displaying Nazi logos on pages about Nazis. "Filing charges is obviously the wrong path to go down in this dispute so I am today withdrawing them after intensive discussions with Wikimedia," Schubert said in a statement on the Left party's web site.
There's a cool animation from 24h of U.S. air traffic on npr.org. Designer Aaron Koblin composited a day's worth of FAA data to make some pretty fascinating (and deeply beautiful) animations.
The UK is rolling out broadband via sewer ducts. It cost Napier University in the order of £80,000 to have a 1.2km fibre network. With a traditional fibre network these costs would have been in the region of £400,000 to £1.2m, said Mr Thomas.
Here's one reason why it's a bad idea to chew your hair. According to NEJM, the young woman in this case had her hairball removed successfully. One year later, we're told, "She has regained approximately 9 kg of body weight and reports that she has stopped eating her hair." Which is nice.
AMD Hybrid CrossFire
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Friday, 14-December-2007 16:39:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD have launched "Hybrid CrossFire", but once again I can't find a press release about it on their site. However from sniffing around it seems that Hybrid CrossFire lets you supplement a integrated graphics machine by adding in another video card, which will work WITH the IGP instead of just disabling it. Sounds like a neato option for upgrading a budget machine down the track.
Coverage on Anandtech, Engadget, HardOCP, HotHardware, LegitReviews and PC Perspective.
Sponsor Specials
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Friday, 14-December-2007 15:28:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around for a good deal. In there our many sponsors have threads featuring energy drinks, sound cards, TV tuners, video cards, headphones, mp3 players and many other goodies. Check 'em out!
Friday Morning
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Friday, 14-December-2007 03:44:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Fury, the Australian-created MMORPG, is reportedly free to play.. either today only or from today on, I'm not sure. Anyway, more info here, discussion thread here.
It seems Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series of novels etc, has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's. :( We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism.
Anandtech have a 1000W PSU roundup. We conduct tests in two different temperature environments. One is normal room temperature of 25-26°C, while the second environment goes from room temperature and increases steadily up to 50°C.
Madshrimps meanwhile have a thermal paste roundup. Arctic Silver dominated the TIM (Thermal Tranfer Material) industry for many years. They may have invested more in R&D then all their competition combined. Many ask is there anything else out there? Today we hope to answer this question.
Stuart spotted some glow in the dark cats. South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday. In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.
A different Stuart sent in info about making a cheap multi-touch whiteboard with a Wiimote: Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR led in the tip. By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track upto 4 points, multiple pens can be used. Video here.
Xbit looked at a passively-cooled 8800GT from ECS. They also seem to be covering an MSI 8600GT in there too. Today we're going to examine the most interesting 8800 GT card in the market that is made by ECS/Elitegroup. Cooled passively, it allows for an optional fan. Besides, it's factory-overclocked.
Today's timewaster comes via a forum post from Bonkers: a fun free shooter called Xyro. We attempted to create a game that was extremely simple and easy to get into, and a hell of a lot of fun. It's a game suited for more casual gamers and to have a bit of a blast with your drunken mates on a saturday night, a good alternative to the hours upon hours of grinding in wow. It's just quick fun, in and out action ;)
NVIDIA 3-way SLI
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Friday, 14-December-2007 03:08:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NVIDIA have unveiled their 3-Way SLI technology. NVIDIA’s new 3-way SLI delivers up to a 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU system, giving high-end gamers 60 frames per second at resolutions as high as 2560x1600 and with 8x antialiasing. 3-way SLI technology means you no longer have to dial back the image quality settings on the newest PC games. For example, gamers with 3-way SLI can play Crysis at high resolutions such as 1920x1200 with all the advanced DirectX 10 effects such as motion blur, ambient occlusion, and soft shadows turned on.
Coverage on Bit-Tech, Guru3D, HotHardware and PC Perspective.
Discussion thread here in our Video Cards forum.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 14-December-2007 03:02:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboards:
AMD's Phenom Processors on Bit-Tech.
Biostar TF7150V-M7 GeForce 7150 LGA775 board on PCStats.
Abit IP35-E LGA775 board (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Foxconn MARS LGA775 board on HWZone.
Universal abit IP35 LGA775 board on Tweaktown.
Asus P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition LGA775 board on OCClub.
Audio / Visual:
SVS PC-Ultra Powered Cylinder 13" Subwoofer on eCoustics.
Logitech Harmony 1000 Remote Control on OCClub.
SteelSeries 3H USB Headphones on HWLogic.
Gateway XHD3000 30" LCD monitor on Digitaltrends.
Rosewill 10.4-Inch LCD Photo Frame RDF-104 on BenchmarkReviews.
Cases:
Ultra Products m998 Mid-Tower on BigBruin.
Gigabyte iSolo 210 on CPU3D.
Raidmax Aztec on OCIA.
Power Supply:
Ultra X3 800W on RBMods.
Ultra Power Partner additional PSU on OCCLub.
Ultra X3 Modular 600W on Hi-TechReviews.
Corsair TX750W on HWSecrets.
Portable:
Dell XPS M1730 notebook on TrustedReviews.
ASUS Eee PC on HWZone.
Thursday Midday Reviews
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Thursday, 13-December-2007 12:47:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage & Memory:
OCZ ATV 2GB & ATV Turbo 4GB flash drives on Techgage.
Rosewill RX81-CW-US Hard Drive Enclosure on ThinkComputers.
Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB PC2-9600 DDR2-1200MHz on OCClub.
PNY IronKey 4GB Flash Drive on I4U.
Corsair PC3-14400 DDR3 1800MHz 2GB RAM Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
SuperTalent FSD28GC25M 128GB Solid State Drive on PCStats.
Vizo Saturno One Touch Backup Enclosure on TechPowerUp.
Cooling:
Nanoxia Dualcontact Hybrid Base CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Arctic Cooling MX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound on OCClub.
Noctua NH-U12P and NF-P12 Cool & Quiet fans on Bjorn3D.
Thermaltake DuOrb VGA Cooler on ThinkComputers.
DangerDen M5 & MC-TDX CPU Waterblocks on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermalright SI-128SE Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Gigabyte G-Power 2 Pro CPU Cooler on SilentPCReview.
Glacialtech Igloo 5610 Silent Heatsink on Frostytech.
Scythe Ninja Mini SCMNJ-1000 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Asus Silent Square EVO Heatsink on Frostytech.
Video Cards:
ATI Radeon 3850/3870 (and here and here) on Digit-Life.
Sapphire HD 3850 on OCClub.
ZOTAC GeForce 8800GTS 512MB G92 on Tweaktown.
ASUS Extreme N8800GTS 512MB on LegionHardware.
Asus Radeon EAH3850 on SysOpt.
ASUS EN8600GT OC Gear 256MB on SharkyExtreme.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 on TechReport.
ASUS EN8800GTS TOP (GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB) on HWZone.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 13-December-2007 02:10:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Zillions of people sent word that Mirriam-Webster have crowned "w00t" as 2007 US word of the year. "It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all," Merriam-Webster said. Thread here.
Wayne spotted this interesting page about the search for alien civilisations. By coupling the laws of probability with our best current observations, we can be reasonably confident that some fraction of the 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 star systems in the visible universe are home to radio-sending species.
Ever been frustrated in a slow taxi? Here's what happens when Michael Schumacher is, and decides to take the wheel himself. "He drove at full throttle around the corners and overtook in some unbelievable places." Thread here.
NeoWin list some cool features of Vista SP1, including "hotpatching". It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot.
Quan-Time noted that the Spike TV Video Game Awards were on recently. Footage and info here and here.
There's a new battery on the way with fast recharge and long life. Toshiba described the Super Charge ion Battery, or SCiB, as a "breakthrough rechargeable battery" that can be fully recharged in five minutes and has a lifespan of more than 10 years if completely run down and recharged once a day.
The Mars Rovers are still doing cool stuff, even with a busted wheel on Spirit. The right front wheel of Spirit stopped turning in March 2006. Since then, the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along. This May, scientists noticed a bright spot in the trail of overturned dirt.
Dan managed to find a webcam that fits up his nose. I don't think I need to warn you as to just how disturbing the pictures in this article are.
Forum Projects
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Wednesday, 12-December-2007 15:29:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few more projects from people in the forums:
Wednesday Midday Reviews
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Wednesday, 12-December-2007 11:55:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
Cooler Master Cosmos on HWLogic.
Nexus Caterpillar on MadShrimps.
Antec Sonata III 500 on BurnOutPC.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 LGA775 CPU on TBreak.
Asus P5E-VM HDMI LGA775 MicroATX board on SilentPCReview.
Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP LGA775 board on OC3D.
Input Etc:
WOLFKING TROOPER Laser Gaming Mouse on OCClub.
XTracPads Pro Mousepad and Mad Dotz on OCIA.
Audio Visual:
Asus Blu-ray Rom Drive BC-1205PT on CPU3D.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 7MP digicam on DigitalTrends.
Rosewill 8" Digital Photo Frame on OCrCafe.
Yidsun SPK-796 Bluetooth Stereo Speaker on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD 3870 Overclocked on OCClub.
Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP (GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, TurboForce Edition) on HWZone.
Sapphire Technology Radeon HD 3870 512MB GDDR4 on TrustedReviews.
Leadtek WinFast 8500 & 8600GT with HDMI on Tweaktown.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT on PenStarSys.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Dell XPS M1730 Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
HP Pavilion Elite m9040n prebuilt desktop on TechReviewSource.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
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Wednesday, 12-December-2007 04:11:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Today NVIDIA launched the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB graphics cards offer an intense gaming experience with stunning special effects and high-definition visuals for the hottest holiday PC games, such as: Crysis, Hellgate: London, Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, and Call of Duty 4, along with full support for current DirectX 9 games. This card isn't really much of a surprise to anyone, having been discussed in detail for a long time before launch. It's the second card based on the G92 seen in the 8800 GT. Despite the name being confusingly similar to the previous 8800 GTS 640MB, it's based on the new GPU, is cheaper at launch and has 128 stream processors rather than 96. And slightly less memory obviously.
Coverage on Anandtech, Bit-Tech, DriverHeaven, Guru3D, HardOCP, HotHardware, I4U, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, OCWorkbench, PC Perspective, TechARP, TechPowerUp and Tweaktown.
Gigantic discussion thread here in our Video Cards forum.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 12-December-2007 03:46:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Not a whole lot of newsy stuff going on out there.
From FoderMe: I've been reading a new videogame review website which I find appealing for its "outside the box" approach. It also happens to be written by some Australian dudes, which is something I personally appreciate (cheque! colour! the metric system! etcetera!!) Some of the parts that amused me most: A literary deconstruction of a Sony press release. A 'booth babe' gallery consisting entirely of portrait shots.
NASA have decided to delay the Atlantis launch until early next year, thanks to the recurring fuel tank sensor issue. Meanwhile the Mars rover Spirit is preparing for winter and Voyager 2 has discovered the solar system is squished.
TonyR spotted a page about how the internet began. Not quite how I remember things but fair enough. :)
Iran have apparently built an AMD-powered supercomputer. This is all well and good, except AMD is an American company which means it's not allowed to trade with Iran. In response to questions about the IHPCRC's claim that it is using Opteron processors in the supercomputer, AMD officials issued the following written statement: "AMD has never authorized any shipments of AMD products to Iran or any other embargoed country, either directly or indirectly. AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products."
Soc reminded me of this funny sequence of images that apparently got James May fired from Autocar magazine. More info on his Wiki page. So I had this idea that if I re-edited the beginnings of all the little texts, I could make these red letters spell out a message through the magazine, which I thought was brilliant.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 10-December-2007 23:23:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Inno3D GeForce 8800GT OC 512MB on Tweaktown.
Leadtek WinFast PX 8600 GT THD on OCClub.
Motherboards:
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 LGA775 board on OCWorkbench.
Audio / Visual:
Rockbox Open Source MP3 Player Firmware on RoadLessTravelled.
Sharp BD-HP20H Blu-ray Player on TrustedReviews.
ASUS PG221 22-inch Wide-Screen LCD monitor on Techgage.
GIGABYTE GP-S7500 2.1 Speaker System on Tweaktown.
Cases:
ThermalTake Xaser VI super tower on DVHardware.
Ultra m998 Aluminum Mid-Tower ATX Case ULT40069 on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master Cosmo 1000 on InsideHW.
Memory:
Crucial Lanfest 2 GB DDR2-800 Kit on TechPowerUp.
OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 ReaperX HPC 4GB (DDR2-800) on LegionHW.
Cooling:
Noctua NF-P12 120mm Case Fan on RBMods.
Thermaltake iXoft Notebook Cooling Pad on Virtual-Hideout.
Noctua NF-P12 Cooling Fans on Pro-Clockers.
Software:
Spider Man Friend or Foe PC game on GamePyre.
SimCity Societies PC game on DriverHeaven.
Video Cards:
Ultra X3 600W on Pro-Clockers.
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512 on Techspot.
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 on Bit-Tech.
Christmas is rapidly approaching. Only a couple of weeks to go. If you are stuck with gift ideas, perhaps check out ThinkComputer's Holiday 2007 Wish List for some inspiration. I'll take one of everything!
Still with Christmas, if you want to maximise the quality of the pictures you'll be taking, head over the PC Mechanic who have some tips for you. People see photos like the one above and think Wow.. I wish I could take photos like that. You can. It's easier than you think. Follow my tips and you'll be taking pro-look shots in no time.
Some gaming news. A student from the Uni of British Columbia has done some research into games that 'learn'. The Internode Games Network have also published an interview with NetDevil about upcoming titles, Jumpgate Evolution and Lego Universe.
HardwareZone have published their 750GB External HDD Storage Roundup. We take a look at three different external storage drives, compare them against a DIY option and take them out for a spin in our lab to determine the right one for you.
A lot of our forum members will no doubt have come across the crazily cool work of member Tesla Downunder. His work has been published in a UK paper. Information about the article can be found here. Cool pictures and Tesla Downunder's latest project writeup here.
Phoronix have benchmarked 7 versions of WINE. Sparked by curiosity as to how the performance of WINE is affected release by release, we have gone through and benchmarked the past seven releases. While this only represents the past four months of work by the WINE community, the results may surprise you.
A couple interesting articles from forum members. H20 networks have adopted sewer piping as the route for its fibre. And some prospective 50GHz action on the horizon. Thanks for sending those in guys.
Cooling:
Apack Zerotherm BTF-92 OC Edition Heatsink at FrostyTech
Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Fans at Overclock3D
Coolermaster Hyper TX2 Heatsink at FrostyTech
OCZ FreeZe Thermal Paste at Overclocker Cafe
Tuniq TX-2 Thermal Goop at XSReviews
Cases and Power:
Antec Sonata III 500 at Hi-Techreviews
Thermaltake LANbox SFF Gaming Case at OCIA
Enermax Infiniti 650W at bit-tech
Games:
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles at bit-tech
Tabula Rasa at Gaming Heaven
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune at TrustedReviews
Motherboards and Graphics Cards:
DFI Infinity Blood Iron P35-T2RL at TweakTown
DFI LanParty UT NF680i SLI-T2R at NordicHardware
XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog XXX 512MB (Review Update) at xsreviews
Sapphire HD 3870 512 MB at techPowerUp
Galaxy GeForce 8600 GTS at TechARP
Displays:
Samsung PS-63P76FD 63in Plasma TV at TrustedReviews
Samsung SyncMaster 20XL LED-backlight monitor at SilentPCReview
Other:
WD Scorpio 320GB 2.5" & RE2-GP 1TB 3.5" HDDs at 3dGameMan
Novint Falcon Limited Edition Input Device at bit-tech
X-Gene Media Center Keyboard at Gamepyre
Razer Lachesis at HardwareZone
Saturday Evening
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Saturday, 8-December-2007 19:08:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Next time you think you're getting lucky online, apart from the obvious concerns about how your life got to this point, you might also have to worry about it being a flirting robot, thanks AirQ. Among CyberLover's creepy features is its ability to offer a range of different profiles from "romantic lover" to "sexual predator." It can also lead victims to a "personal" Web site, which could be used to deliver malware, PC Tools said. Fortunately it only seems to speak Russian at the moment, but give it time.
However it seems skills learned in World of Warcraft can be useful in real life, thanks Kian. They're talking about a 12 year old Norwegian boy, who survived a moose attack - using skills he learned in World of Warcraft.
25 years on, the Commodore 64 is still loved, thanks vec. By 2007 computing standards, the Commodore 64 is a dinosaur. A relic of the past, long made obsolete by the march of time. But the C64 isn't dead. It's very much alive -- on gaming Web sites, through music and in the memories of millions who owned and loved them.
Craig noticed that The Pirate Bay have lost a domain they snaffled from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The IFPI filed a complaint with the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), requesting that the domain be returned to their ownership. It seems their complaint paid off, as The Pirate Bay has been ordered by WIPO to return the domain.
PCStats have a guide to diagnosing bad hard drives. In this article, PCstats will look at the various reasons why hard disks typically fail, and what warning signs to look for. We will also introduce you to a grab bag of free utilities designed to analyze your drives and detect any flaws which may cause future problems.
From Velicoma: The Australian team of Sydney Underground is competing in Los Angeles for the Championship Gaming Series (CGS), the winning team taking home a cool $500,000 US dollars (not to mention a host of other individual prizes). The CGS encompasses 5 games for this series, those include: Counter Strike: Source, Dead or Alive (Female and Male player divisions), FIFA 2007 and Project Gotham Racing. More info here.
eDust has a new website about online fraud prevention. Some people here might be interested in visiting it, or might know beginners that would benefit from reading the articles.
Microsoft say the "One Laptop Per Child" PCs could run Windows, if they had more memory, thanks Nick. The XO currently runs on a Red Hat Linux operating system. Making the laptop compatible with XP would give students in poor countries access to "tens of thousands of existing educational applications written for Windows," said James Utzschneider, a Microsoft general manager, in a blog post Wednesday.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 8-December-2007 17:52:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Digital_Monkey sent all these:
Michael Bay has apparently accused Microsoft of sabotaging HD DVD and Blu-Ray. Responding to a question posted on Michael Bay’s official web forums asking once again why Transformers was released only on HD DVD and not Blu-ray Disc, Bay expressed his believe that Microsoft is behind a scheme to sabotage both high-definition disc formats. Mind you, Microsoft is one of the pioneers and largest backers of HD DVD.
IBM have a supercomputer-on-a-chip under research. The technology, called silicon nanophotonics, replaces some of the wires on a chip with pulses of light on tiny optical fibers for quicker and more power-efficient data transfers between cores on a chip, said Will Green, research scientist at IBM.
Here's a video of a Pac-Man Xmas Tree. Spanish language site but you can see it all in the video. And there's a chick speaking with a spanish accent which is never a bad thing.
There'll be a public test of Vista SP1 very soon. It is releasing the test code this week to the 15,000 or so people who have been beta testing SP1 already, and will also make it available on Thursday to those in the MSDN and TechNet developer programs. Office 2007 SP1 is coming soon too.
Xbit reckon AMD may be considering multi-die GPUs. It is little known about products code-named ATI R700 today, but, according to an article at PC Watch web-site, the next generation of graphics solutions from AMD may utilize multi-chip module (MCM) concept instead of multi-GPU concept, at least, in the high-end. Even though both approaches have drawbacks compared to single-chip solutions, in case of homogeneous MCM some issues are easier to solve.
Meanwhile Barcelona's ramp-up has been pushed back to Q1 2008. A chip-level bug, or errata, that affected both the quad-core Opterons and AMD's recently released quad-core Phenom desktop processors was "part of the reason" for the sluggish ramp-up, said Phil Hughes of AMD Global Communications.
In fact AMD has released a statement about the Quad-Core issues. However we did say during that call that we would ship "hundreds of thousands of quad-core processors" into the server and desktop segments during Q4. AMD is tracking to this guidance. Quad Core AMD Opteron processor is the most advanced x86 processor ever introduced to the market and as such there are design and process tuning steps that have taken longer than expected.
Saturday Morning Gargantu-reviews
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Saturday, 8-December-2007 00:29:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Powercolor HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB on TechPowerUp.
XFX GeForce 8800GT 256MB XXX on LegitReviews.
ASUS G92 EN8800GTS and EN8800GTS TOP on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
XFX nForce 680i LGA775 board on OCClub.
Intel DG33TL G33 Express chipset mATX board on SilentPCReview.
Intel Core 2 QX9770 and QX9650 LGA775 CPUs on DriverHeaven.
ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP LGA775 board on Virtual-Hideout.
Input Etc:
Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard on I4U.
Microsoft SideWinder Mouse on DigitalTrends.
Cooling:
Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste on XSReviews.
Noctua NH-U12P Low Noise Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Audio / Visual:
Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere iPod Speaker Dock on 3DXtreme.
ezGear ezVision HMD video glasses on I4U.
Samsung CLX-2160N Color Laser Multifunction Printer on BonaFideReviews.
iSkin Cerulean F1 Bluetooth Earphones on TrustedReviews.
HANNS.G HG281DPB 28-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor on BenchMarkReviews.
Samsung CLP-300 printer on OCOnline.
Razer Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headphones on CPU3D.
Toshiba Regza 40XF355D 40in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Portable:
Gigabyte U60 Ultra Mobile PC on CPU3D.
Fujitsu LifeBook N6460 Notebook on OZHardware.
Lenovo ThinkPad X61s laptop on TrustedReviews.
Storage:
Vantec NexStar MX Dual HDD Enclosure on Virtual-Hideout.
Adata PD-18 Flash Drive on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair USB Flash Padlock on Hi-TechReviews.
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB Hard Drive on TBreak.
Lexar 8 GB Jump Drive Secure II Plus on OCClub.
Plextor PX-PH160US Mobile USB and eSATA HDD on Metku.
Icy Dock MB664US-1SB Screwless eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure on BigBruin.
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 hard drive on TechReport.
ATP RoughDrive and Petito USB drives on RBMods.
Power Supply:
Hiper Type M 4M630 630W on DriverHeaven.
Ultra X3 800-watt Modular PSU on Bjorn3D.
Ultra X3 600 watt Modular on OCClub.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V PSU on HWSecrets.
Memory:
OCZ Reaper PC2-9200 2GB Kit on PCModdingMy.
Winchip PC3-10666 DDR3 1333MHz 64A0TRHN8G17E on BenchMarkReviews.
Buffalo Firestix PC2-8000 2GB Memory Kit on HWLogic.
Super Talent Project X DDR3-1800 2x1GB on APHNetworks.
Misc:
Ultra 7-Port USB 2.0 Buddy Hub on OCClub.
NZXT Alpha Classic Series Steel Mid-tower case on Pro-Clockers.
Friday Morning #2
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Friday, 7-December-2007 03:11:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Multi-GPU setup? Vista? There's a hotfix that might improve your performance. In some scenarios, games and benchmarks perform more poorly than expected on a Windows Vista-based computer. This issue occurs when the games and the benchmarks use multiple display adapters in a Linked Display Adapter (LDA) configuration.
A Florida database administrator has allegedly been stealing personal data and flogging it, thanks Craig. According to information presented to the courts, Sullivan is alleged to have sold the information to data brokers for a total of US$580,000 (£284,600).
Run away, there's violent video games afoot! Grand Theft Auto topped a list of the top 10 most violent video games that Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy released on Monday, urging families not to buy the items for children during the holiday season.
HotHardware have a sneak peek of DisplayPort and RV635 XT. We've got an as yet unreleased DisplayPort-equipped RV635 XT board here and have been testing it out on an also unreleased LCD panel that we'll be showing soon.
PenStarSys have an interview with Joe James from Super Talent, while Internode chatted with David Glenn about Hellgate: London.
Digit-Life play with some high-end goodies. Today we test the new generation of platforms from Intel and AMD. The first is represented by the 3.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor with a new 45-nm Yorkfield core and the Intel X48 chipset. The second is represented by the engineering sample of the newest 2.4 GHz AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor.
PCMech are looking at Pidgin. Pidgin is a free multi-protocol multi-platform instant messaging client. Prior to Pidgin I was a die-hard Trillian user. While it’s true that Trillian "Astra" will be available soon enough, the existing v3.1.8 client is old, ugly and is purposely limited in the "basic" version (the "pro" version costs $25). Pidgin on the other hand is free and does everything without costing a dime.
Atlantis has been delayed on the launch pad but should be good to go later today. Atlantis is slated to deliver the International Space Station's first European room, an RV-sized laboratory called Columbus. Its arrival will break the monopoly that the United States and Russia have had on the station's facilities since it opened in 1998.
Early Friday Morning
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Friday, 7-December-2007 00:19:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Right, this seems to be a "screwups" themed news post.
Screwup #1: The new expansion for the space-faring MMORPG EvE Online, "Trinity" aka Revelation III, seems to be bricking Windows PCs on installation, by deleting boot.ini. You know, the file that lets you, well, boot. Rioting in the official forum here. The official word seems to be "uh, don't reboot until we've worked out a fix". Thanks Moo dools.
Screwup #2: Microsoft make a nice Santa bot that kids can talk to via Windows Messenger about Christmas, pizza and oral sex. Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said the company's engineers tried to clean up Santa's vocabulary, but even after making changes to the software, the company was not comfortable keeping Santa online. Thanks Nick.
Screwup #3: Google's book search service occasionally returns a snapshot of hands wearing pink condoms instead of the page you wanted. Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said Google was now using improved scanning technology to ensure wayward fingers no longer get in the way. Thanks Asher.
Screwup #4: AMD's quad-core CPUs continue to draw flak - now it seems that fixing the errata mentioned in our earlier news post affects performance. HardCoreWare have some info too.
Thursday Midnightish Reviews
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Thursday, 6-December-2007 23:51:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Abit IX38 QuadGT LGA775 board on Bit-Tech.
AMD Athlon 64 5000+ X2 Black Edition AM2 CPU on NeoSeeker.
MSI X38 Diamond LGA775 board on TrustedReviews.
Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 LGA775 board on HWLogic.
ASUS ROG Series X38 DDR3 Maximus Extreme LGA775 board on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Coolermaster Hyper 212 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Belkin USB Laptop Cooling Pad on EverythingUSB.
Thermaltake MaxOrb CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Silenx Ixtrema 120mm Case Fans on RBMods.
Ultra Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler on LegitReviews.
Input Etc:
Sandio's 3D Mouse - Game 02 on Tweaktown.
Logitech G9 Laser Gaming Mouse on Virtual-Hideout.
Razer Lachesis Mouse & Lycosa Keyboard on 3DGameMan.
Memory:
High-Speed DDR3 SDRAM from Cell Shock and Patriot on XbitLabs.
OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 on Guru3D.
Thursday Evening Reviews
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Thursday, 6-December-2007 19:46:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
Nexus Caterpillar on PCApex.
Sunbeamtech Quarterback Mid Tower
Antec New Solution NSK 3480 MicroATX on OCClub.
Apevia X-Jupiter G-Type Black on Tweaknews.
Gigabyte 3D Mercury Water-Cooled Case on MadShrimps.
Apevia X-QPack 2 on Bit-Tech.
SilverStone Temjin TJ07 on 3DXtreme.
Thermaltake Mozart Tx Dual-ATX on MadShrimps.
Video Cards:
XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog XXX 512MB on XSReviews.
Leadtek GeForce 8800 GT on XbitLabs.
GeCube Radeon HD 3850 X-Turbo III 512MB on TechPowerUp.
ATI Radeon HD 3870 CrossFire on LegitReviews.
XFX 8800 GT 256MB XXX on I4U.
Leadtek PX8800GT Extreme on TrustedReviews.
ASUS Extreme N8800GTS 512MB on LegionHW.
Software:
Empire Earth 3 PC game on DriverHeaven.
Unreal Tournament 3 PC game on YouGamers.
Unreal Tournament 3 PC game on DriverHeaven.
Soldier of Fortune Payback PC game on GamePyre.
Power Supply:
Ultra Power Partner 325 Watt 5 1/4" PSU on OCIA.
Antec NeoPower 650 Blue on Bjorn3D.
Ultra X3 600W on Modders-Inc.
Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1250W on PCPerspective.
Cooler Master Real Power 1250W on OCClub.
Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W Modular on ThinkComputers.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 6-December-2007 02:06:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Telstra have copped a flogging in PC Authority's survey. The survey's architect, PC Authority editor, Nick Ross, said: "Last year, Telstra BigPond came bottom of the entire survey. But this year, while it didn't come bottom, its performance was just as bad.
HWSecrets take a look at Enthusiast System Architecture, the new open standard for enthusiast PCs. Of course in order to use ESA features you need to have ESA-compatible devices, which basically provide a USB output to be connected to any USB header on the motherboard.
HWLogic list their 25 must-have gifts for Xmas. OC3D have a wish list for Santa too.
Paul spotted these extremely creepy realistic sculptures by an Australian sculptor, Ron Mueck. It’s the attention to detail, technical brilliance and the (odd) scale of his figures that takes your breath away. His work, while proportionally correct, is either over or under-sized. For example, an enormous 4.5m crouching Boy, a 3 ft tall naked man, a 20 ft long newborn, a replica of his own head (seen above) 6 times its actual size.
Tweaktown compared the 8800GT and GTS 512MB video cards with a little overclocking. The overclocking ability on products is sometimes one of the most important features. More often than not in the computer world you’re given the ability to buy a model or two down, and with a BIOS or easy to use application you can take that said product up to and often above the level of the top model.
HardCoreWare meanwhile have a dual core war, comparing Intel and AMD CPUs. For this year's DUAL CORE WAR, we are taking the fastest model of each dual core available for under $200, as well as the next two models below that, price-wise.
Ever wondered what the first 100 .com domains registered were? Well, now you know, thanks Nick. Now for the first .com which was registered on March 15 1985 and it was symbolics.com which still happens to be up and running, although not much to look at.
Phoronix compared the ASUS P5K-E WiFi vs. Gigabyte P35-DS4, both LGA775 motherboards. We have previously reviewed Intel P35 motherboards such as the ASUS Blitz Extreme and Gigabyte P35-DS3P, but in this review, we are going back and looking at two more of these Intel Bearlake motherboards.
Tech Report have news of a chip problem affecting quad-core opteron supplies, and go on to say it affects Phenom 9500 and 9600 performance as well. And although AMD is no longer shipping quad-core Opterons to major server vendors and general customers, it is shipping Phenoms to large PC builders and distributors. In fact, AMD knew about the erratum before the Phenom product launch.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 5-December-2007 13:51:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboards:
ASUS M3A32-MVP DeLuxe/WiFi-AP AM2+ board on HWSecrets.
Foxconn Mars Intel P35 Express LGA775 board on PCStats.
Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H LGA775 IGP board on PC Perspective.
Prebuilt & Portable:
HP Blackbird 002 prebuilt gaming PC on DigitalTrends.
Aware A-Book AW-300 mini notebook on OCWorkbench.
Lowepro Factor Tote laptop bag on ThinkComputers.
Asus C905 Whitebook upgradeable laptop on HotHardware.
Shuttle SN68PTG6 XPC mini-PC on TBreak.
Memory & Storage:
Patriot Extreme Performance PC3-15000 2GB Kit (DDR3-1866) on HWZone.
Hitachi Desktar 7K1000 - HDS721010KLA330 hard drive on CoD.
ATP Petito & Tough Drive USB Flash Drives on Virtual-Hideout.
Aeneon PC3-10666 DDR3 1333MHz AXH760UD00-13G on BenchmarkReviews.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 5-December-2007 01:34:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A storm has damaged a major Australian internet link to the rest of the world. Southern Cross Cable operations vice president, Dean Veverka, has confirmed that hurricane-strength storms and flooding have wiped out the carrier's Oregon cable route and halved its bandwidth between Australian and the US. Southern Cross's customers in Australia include iiNet, Internode and AAPT. Haven't noticed any issues here, hooray for redundancy.
If you're a new Optus Fusion customer, be careful of excess usage as you could cop a hefty fee, thanks mpot. A cable user could reach $300 in excess fees in just 30 minutes once they had exceeded their 2GB quota. An Optus spokesperson claimed less than a week ago to ZDNet News that printed flyers explaining the new excess fees were erroneous.
DailyTech have some details on AMD's Tri-core Processors. AMD representatives, speaking on conditions of anonymity, confirmed the initial 2.4 GHz Phenom 8700 and 2.3 GHz Phenom 8600 tri-core processors will launch with a 95W thermal envelope.
Gibson have made a self-tuning guitar. For users who purchase the add-on technology, the guitar recognizes pitch. Then, its processor directs motors on its six tuning pegs to tighten or loosen the strings accordingly. I was actually wondering why this didn't already exist at a recent Slava Grigoryan concert, where before some songs he had to spend a few minutes tuning up his guitar. Another idea stolen from my brain, curses. Discussion here.
Microsoft are dropping the kill switch from Vista. However pirates won't be getting off the hook completely: "They won't lose access to functionality or features, but it will be very clear to them that their copy of Window Vista is not genuine and they need to take action." Anyway, apparently Vista's piracy rate is half that of XP, thanks mr_insideout.
From Justin: An interesting read on security in the future. Makes a few predictions and some obvious observations that were true 10 years ago, are true today and will be true in 10 years from now.
Dan has some thoughts about video cards. My latest Ask Dan is all about the perfectly straightforward and entirely non-confusing current video card market. Apparently some of my readers are, for reasons entirely unfathomable to me, having some difficulty figuring out what to buy.
Iron Photographer
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Tuesday, 4-December-2007 18:07:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Voting is now underway for November's Iron Photographer contest in our Photography forum. You can see and discuss the entries before deciding on your Top 10. The December contest is underway now too of course, and during this month you can post an entry or discuss them.
If you haven't entered before you might want to give it a go this month, because not only is the competition sponsor Road Mogul giving a 1GB CF or SD card to each monthly winner, but once the December winner is decided we'll be choosing an OCAU Photo of the Year for 2007 - and the winner will score themselves a camera. :) So get snapping!
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews #3
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Tuesday, 4-December-2007 13:46:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Input Etc:
Logitech G15 Keyboard on 3DXtreme.
Saitek Cyborg Rumble Pad game controller on DriverHeaven.
Logisys KB206BK Ultra Slim Soft Touch Multimedia/Internet Keyboard on OCIA.
Power Supply:
Belkin F6C1500TWRK 1500VA Battery Backup UPS on ExtremeOC.
Ultra X3 1000W PSU on Pro-Clockers.
Cases:
Thermaltake Mozart HTPC Case on OCClub.
GMC Noblesse K-1 Muse Multimedia Case on ThinkComputers.
Ultra m998 Mid-Tower on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermaltake Xaser VI on TechPowerUp.
Misc:
Vizo Master Panel II bay device on TechWareLabs.
ASUS WL-500W Super Speed N Multifunctional Wireless Router on XbitLabs.
SilverStone CP03 & CP04 cables on Phoronix.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews #2
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Tuesday, 4-December-2007 13:35:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
SteelSeries Siberia In-Ear Headset on InsideHW.
Apple iPod Touch 16GB media player on DigitalTrends.
Logitech Z-5500 speakers on DigitalTrends.
Humax LGB-19DTT 19in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Motherboard & CPU:
Phenom 9700 AM2+ CPU on Guru3D.
Phenom 9600 AM2+ CPU on NeoSeeker.
Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 LGA775 board on XbitLabs.
Gigabyte GA-73UM-S2H IGP LGA775 board on Tweaktown.
Biostar TA690G AM2 board on XSReviews.
Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 LGA775 board on LegionHW.
Gigabyte MA790FX-DQ6 AM2+ board on Bit-Tech.
Intel D201GLY2 Mini-ITX embedded Celercon board on SilentPCReview.
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 board on TheTechLounge.
Storage:
Kingston DataTraveler Mini Fun USB Flash Drive on TheTechZone.
HighPoint External RAID on Bjorn3D.
Corsair 2GB Padlock Flash Drive on TCMag.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 4-December-2007 13:08:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Glacialtech Igloo 5610 PWM CPU cooler on FrostyTech.
Tuniq Tower 120 LFB CPU cooler on FrostyTech.
Swiftech H2O-120 Compact watercooling kit on PCPerspective.
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme CPU Cooler on RBMods.
Scythe Mugen 5-Heatpipe CPU Cooler on BenchMarkReviews.
Noctua NF-P12 Fan on DVHardware.
Zalman Reserator XT External Hybrid Liquid Cooling System on Tweaknews.
OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU cooler on BigBruin.
Portable and Mini:
Shuttle XPC SG33G50 Intel G33 Express SFF PC on PCStats.
Zepto Znote 6225WD notebook on TrustedReviews.
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Mobile GPU on TechARP.
Video Cards:
ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro on XbitLabs.
EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT KO on PCPerspective.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB (and here) on Digit-Life.
EVGA 8800GT 256MB on GamePyre.
PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB on I4U.
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1550 on OCClub.
XFX Alpha Dog XXX 8800GT 256MB on Motherboards.org.
Memory:
Kingston 2x1GB DDR2-533 Notebook Memory on Virtual-Hideout.
Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB PC2-9200 DDR2-1150MHz on OCClub.
Forum Reviews
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Monday, 3-December-2007 19:02:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few reviews from people in the forums:
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 3-December-2007 15:42:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's a storm raging at the moment about an editor from Gamespot having been fired recently. People are suggesting it's because he gave a scathing review to a product from a company that heavily sponsors Gamespot, but others are saying that's not the full story. Unsurprisingly the community response has been extremely vocal, to the point where forums have temporarily closed due to the online rioting. More info here (thanks Greg), here and here. Discussion here.
Google Maps now has a "Terrain" option - see this Blue Mountains of NSW link for example. Meanwhile they've been working to make Street View anonymous, to allay people's privacy concerns, but also rolling out a mobile phone locator. Probably the best listing of Australian Google Maps locations is right here in our Wiki.
Here's some hard disk storage with a difference. Some potentially "not safe for work" links on that page btw.
EETimes report on the 60th anniversary of the transistor, thanks Timbot. In the first decade of the new century, Lee de Forest inserted a grid in the tube between the anode and cathode. With this new control element, a circuit could amplify, oscillate, and switch. Those are the basic operations of any bit of electronics.
Vivendi and Activision are merging to form Activision Blizzard, thanks Sounder. Press release from the other side here. Combination Brings Activision's Best-Selling Video Games, Including Guitar Hero®, Call of Duty®, and Tony Hawk, Together With Vivendi Games' Portfolio of Leading Franchises, Including Crash Bandicoot™ and Spyro™, and Blizzard Entertainment's® StarCraft®, Diablo® and Global #1 Subscription-Based World Of Warcraft®.
Craig spotted that the 1 millionth .au domain name has been registered. Adrian Kinderis, Managing Director of AusRegistry, the Registry Operator and wholesale provider for all commercial and non-commercial .au domain names concurs, "We too offer our congratulations, 1 million .au domains is a huge achievement for the .au namespace and for Australian internet users. It was only 5 years ago the tally was close to 250,000."
Monday Midday Reviews
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Monday, 3-December-2007 12:33:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio / Visual:
Asus Xonar D2 sound card on InsideHW.
Samsung YP-P2 8GB Media Player on TrustedReviews.
Tatung L22YMTT LCD monitor on BurnOutPC.
Tritton AXPC Gaming Headphones on Moditory.
Kodak Z710 7.1-Megapixel Digital Camera on ThinkComputers.
Pioneer BDC-202BK Blu-Ray drive on TrustedReviews.
Samsung Syncmaster 971P 19inch LCD Display on PCStats.
Soyo Group 20.1" TFT-LCD Monitor on OCIA.
Samsung YP-P2 MP3 Player (4GB) on HWZone.
Software:
Empire Earth III PC game on Tweaktown.
Sega Rally (Revo) PC game on YouGamers.
Company Of Heroes Opposing Fronts game expansion on DriverHeaven.
Unreal Tournament 3 PC game on TrustedReviews.
Mass Effect PC game on Bit-Tech.
FEAR Perseus Mandate PC game on YouGamers.
HL2: Empires game mod on StreamFriends.
Power Supply:
ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800W on Bjorn3D.
Rosewill RD600N-2DC-SL-SLV Stallion Series 600W on BigBruin.
Ultra X3 800W on SysOpt.
Ultra X3 800W and 1000W on OCrCafe.
Here's a few threads from The Gallery subforum of our busy Photography Forum. Always lots going on in there:
Note: As an experiment (and part of this process) I have opened up The Gallery Forum to guest viewing for tonight. So if you don't have an OCAU Forums account but would like to check out the threads linked above, you now can. Some parts of the site will look weird, particularly the main page, because you won't be able to see any forums listed. If you do have an account and want to see what guests see, just (make sure you remember your password!) log out then browse the forums as a guest. You may need to click the link directly to the Gallery forum above to see anything useful though. :)
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 2-December-2007 15:23:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A New Zealand teen is accused of being the ringleader of an international cyber crime network, thanks Craig. "We've got to analyse computer equipment which we've seized and then we've got to refer our findings back to the FBI and work with them and just making sure we understand how far this whole 'botnet' has gone." More info here.
SharkyExtreme have a Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide. Nice to see it's still one of the few Buyer's Guides left that isn't just a huge pricegrabber/newegg linkspam festival.
Once you have all the bits, Tech-Report show you how to build a PC, in case you haven't done it before. Building a PC can be a daunting task for a newbie who has never put a system together before. For those folks, we've crafted a step-by-step guide covering the basics of system assembly. Those of you who can do it in 18 minutes don't need to read this one.
Dan has more letters. Hard drive power consumption, the endlessness of pi, the weight of a bit, and solid diamond CPU coolers.
TBreak have some tech predictions for 2008 posted. So we’ve reached the last month of 2007 and I decided to write an article on how I think some things will shape up in the tech world in 2008. This is the first time I’m doing such an article and hopefully, we’ll be able to compare how I did at the end of next year.
HotHardware managed to get Penryn working on a 975X motherboard. The party line from Intel is that while technically, Yorkfield quad-core processors are not supported by chipsets like the 975X and P965, some motherboard manufacturers may choose to validate and support the product.
Craig spotted this tiny Linux PC which can apparently be solar-powered. It comes in a tough aluminium case and has no moving parts, it is also completely silent, and comes with everything you need including office compatible software, it runs Puppy Linux.
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 2-December-2007 03:01:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Asus EN8600GT 256MB on HWLogic.
AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870 on Bit-Tech.
Zotac GeForce 8600GT Zone Edition on Tweak.dk.
XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Alpha Dog on LegitReviews.
Sapphire HD 2600 XT Ultimate 256MB on SharkyExtreme.
Leadtek WinFast PX8600 GTS on ThinkComputers.
PowerColor ATI HD 2600 256MB on I4U.
Cooling:
Exos-2 LX Liquid Cooling System and Koolance Water-Blocks on XbitLabs.
Thermalright HR-09 Mosfet Cooler on OCIA.
Aerocool EasyWatch LCD Fan Controller on 3DXtreme.
Aerocool Silverwind CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Danger Den DD-29XT VGA Water Block (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Silverstone Tundra TD01 External WC Kit on MadShrimps.
Glacial Tech Igloo 5710 CPU cooler on TechWareLabs.
Storage:
Apacer Handy Steno AH421 4GB Flash Drive on Tweaktown.
OCZ ATV Turbo Dual Channel Flash Drive 4Gb on CPU3D.
ATP Pink Petito flash drive on OCOnline.
Cases:
Antec P190 + 1200 Super Mid Tower on Modders-Inc.
Antec Sonata Plus 550 on HWSecrets.
Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 on OCClub.
SilverStone Kublai KL01 on TBreak.
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