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OCAU News |
Well, thank god we avoided that Facebook disaster. Anyway, news!
First up, you may have read in the last few days that Samsung had been installing keylogger software on their freshly built laptops. Well, it seems that the anti-spyware software used to detect the alledged keylogger actually generated a false-positive. "Samsung has denied allegations it installed secret spyware software on its laptops that monitors and records users' activity - including their keystrokes - without their consent. Further, the security firm whose antivirus software was used to detect what it thought was spyware has published a statement on its blog apologising to Samsung." I say "Derp" on behalf of the anti-spyware people.
Most of us want to save as many pennies as we can when building a new computer and Benchmark Reviews have written a "Fast-Enough" budget PC article to show how it's done. "Just to be clear: I'm not trying to build the ultimate gaming box; rather, my goal is to build a gaming system that will play most modern games at an average frame rate of 30fps or higher at a resolution of 1680x1050 pixels for the least amount of money. A secondary goal is that the system should be easily upgradeable to increase its performance so that it can last at least a few years without requiring major expenditures."
Amazon recently announced their new "cloud" service for their digital music customers, Digital Trends have taken a closer look at the offering: "Music may have kicked off the digital media revolution with the rise of the MP3, but in recent years audio has taken a major backseat to video and communications. The more devices we pile up, the more fragmented our music collections become. Some don’t even bother downloading music at all anymore, instead opting for unlimited monthly services or radio alternatives like Pandora. Well, Amazon has taken a step toward changing that."
Know nothing about Intel's Core i7 products? Want to know more? Love obsessessing about obscure tech specs? (don't we all?) Then Hardware Secrets have you covered with a perusal of Intel's i7 chips currently available. I wanted to include a nice intro quote from the article, but it's just *bang* straight into the meaty techy stuff, so just go read it. Trust me. It's full of numbers.
TweakTown US have done an analysis of the AMD Catalyst v11.3 drivers: "I knew this driver was going to come, but I have to admit I was a little worried that for the first time in a few years AMD might just miss it. Of course they didn't, and today we're looking at the latest version of the Catalyst drivers - the 11.3s." Normally I'd write more, but it's kinda hard to jazz up a link about driver analysis.
While we're in a testing mood, Phoronix have looked at using Gallium3D on AMD FirePro Workstation GPUs: "How well do AMD's FireGL/FirePro workstation graphics cards work with the open-source graphics drivers for Linux? It's something we never have really focused on up to this point, since after all, most workstation users are satisfied with using proprietary display drivers on Linux. It is the workstation market that drives the proprietary Linux driver development after all for AMD and NVIDIA, and that is really the focus of development, not Linux gamers or enthusiasts. But curiosity got the best of me, so here's what happens if you try to use an expensive FirePro graphics card with the open-source driver stack and the Mesa Gallium3D driver."
While we're with Phoronix, they've also looked at the continuing improvement of Sandy Bridge performance: "At the beginning of the month I reported on a small patch to Mesa that resulted in a huge performance improvement for Intel Sandy Bridge graphics, but Intel's OSTC developers have bumped up the performance of the latest-generation graphics processors even more. With the LLC caching patch-set, which should be committed to the Linux 2.6.40 kernel (not the current 2.6.39 cycle), there are measurable OpenGL performance improvements."
Back into video card testing and performance, nVidia have released a "Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing Demo" - Er, righto. "Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing (SRAA) combines singlepixel (1x) shading with subpixel visibility to create antialiased images without increasing the shading cost. SRAA targets deferred shading renderers, which cannot use multisample antialiasing." Sounds great. Will it make the bodies in my games explode more prettily?
In an interesting move, nVidia are going to officially unlock SLI on AMD 990-chipset motherboards. "For so long, AMD enthusiasts have to resort to unofficial patches to make SLI work on their boards but not anymore. NVIDIA has finally agreed to make their SLI technology available for AMD 9-series chipsets boards supporting the Zambezi processors based on Bulldozer architecture. Only 990FX and 990X will be supported though so no luck for 7 and 8 series boards owners."
Onto portable computing and Techspot have taken a look at the latest in notebooks: "The year kicked off to a good start in the laptop sector with AMD finally delivering its promised Fusion chips -- five years in the making -- and Intel launching its Huron River platform powered by Sandy Bridge processors. Fusion is doing well at the entry level market with limited competition from the Atom, but things didn't go so smoothly for Intel. The company discovered a design flaw in its 6 Series chipset, which resulted in product launch delays across the board for new Sandy Bridge-based notebooks."
Finally, if 2011 just isn't to your liking, you can always buy yourself a DeLorean and drive off to a different year! "In 1995, a Texas business man bought the rights for the DeLorean brand and all the inventory of the short-lived company. Through the DeLorean Motor Company you can buy an original 1982 DeLorean DMC-12, buy a brand new DeLorean, built from scratch using new parts, or repair your used DMC-12. If this story wasn't amazing enough, a guy built a replica of the DeLorean used in the Back to the Future movies and is selling at eBay for USD 450,000." That's a lot of bucks just to be able to drive around and rant incoherently like Doc Brown.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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