Geforce 6200TC with 512MB memory

OUR DUTCH friend, winner of the INQ 2004 fashion award, has noticed something about 6200TC that many other people haven’t. When he tested NV44, Geforce 6200TC he didn’t want to follow Nvidia's master plan. Nvidia advised people to use fast CPUs and 1024 MB of memory. That’s not any kind of entry level system to us. A normal entry level system these days comes with 512MB and it is natural to choose this amount of memory for testing rather than 1024 MB. It turns out that X300SE gets very competitive in Half Life 2 when you use 512MB of memory. When using 1024MB of RAM, the Nvidia 6200TC is the clear winner over X300SE. With 1024MB in Doom 3 Geforce 6200TC scores 20.9 FPS, while when you use 512MB, the performance drops three times to a rather pathetic and non payable 6 FPS. Oops. Futuremark 3Dmark03 and 05 are not affected by the amount of memory. After all it turns out that there is a dark side to Turbo Cache marchitecture. Source: TheInquirer

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 07:56PM GMT +10 by BenSW

ATI Ships Over 5 Million Chips for HDTV

ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) announced that in 2004 ATI’s Digital Television division shipped more than 5 million chips for HD (high-definition) TVs and HD cable and terrestrial set-top boxes. In addition, ATI announced market leadership in ATSC/able™ silicon solutions with an ATI-estimated 85% market share for THEATER™ and NXT demodulators and a 40% market share for XILLEON™ MPEG decoders and display processors. ATI’s NXT, THEATER and XILLEON chips enable consumer electronics manufacturers to create a wide variety of products that feature exceptional reception and video display performance. Manufacturers also have access to ATI’s extensive software support and reference designs to help them bring to market unique products that conform to worldwide industry standards. Read more

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 09:57AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Flaw found in Google's new desktop

A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool for personal computers that was recently distributed by Google. The glitch, which could permit an attacker to secretly search the contents of a personal computer via the Internet, is what computer scientists call a composition flaw--a security weakness that emerges when separate components interact. "When you put them together, out jumps a security flaw," said Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice in Houston, who, with two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, discovered the flaw last month. "These are subtle problems, and it takes a lot of experience to ferret out this kind of flaw," Wallach said. Read more

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 09:56AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Tuesday Morning Video Card Reviews

ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 review by RojakPot Point-of-View GeForce 6800 GT review by Beyond3D ATi Radeon X700 Pro review by SystemCooling ATi Radeon X800 XL review by Beyond3D ATi Radeon X800 XL review by PCPer ATi Radeon X800 XL review by Techreport Asus GeForce 6800 AGP review by TCMagazine nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP review by TweakTown

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 09:01AM GMT +10 by erock

The NVIDIA N48

Nvidia has not given up on the NV48 and is expected to roll out the GPU in the second quarter of next year, despite market rumors saying the company has cancelled the chip, according to sources at Taiwan graphics card makers. However, Nvidia plans to have Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produce the NV48, instead of IBM, as originally planned, the sources noted. The NV48 will be built using a 0.11-micron process, the sources added. Improved yields of the GeForce 6600 and GeForce 6200 manufactured at TSMC would probably be the reason for Nvidia to shift the production of the NV48 back to TSMC, the sources said. The NV48 will take on ATI’s next-generation high-end graphics chip, the R520, which is also expected to be launched in the second quarter of 2005. The R520, however, will be the industry’s first GPU produced using a 90-nm process at TSMC. Source: Digi-Times

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:58AM GMT +10 by erock

Choosing a Graphics Card

Choosing a graphics card, ATI Radeon, Nvidia GeForce 2004 seems to have flow past rather quick and we are here again doing our choosing & buying a graphics card. We have tried to simplify the now rather extensive list of available cards that are presently available but hope that our guide gives you the basic information you need to make your choice and have focused on ATI & Nvidia. Read the Guide @ A1-Electronics

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:52AM GMT +10 by erock

Low-End PC Buyer’s Guide

Tech-Lounge have a Low-End Buyer's Guide: The goal of this guide is to outline an entire low-end computer system for around $750. This includes the internal hardware, input devices, monitor and speakers. The components we have chosen for this system are what we consider to be good all-around products with the best bang for the buck.

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:51AM GMT +10 by erock

AMD N-BENCH3

N-Bench is a benchmark program that will measure the performance of your computer. Measurement is performed by "CPU Benchmark" which measures CPU performances, such as integer operation and a floating point arithmetic, and "3D Benchmark" which used the real-time display performance of 3D graphics as the base. The measurement results are displayed as the numerical values that comprise the "N-Bench Scores". Check it out

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:48AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA PureVideo

SANTA CLARA, CA—DECEMBER 20, 2004—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today announced NVIDIA® PureVideo™ technology, a combination of hardware and software technologies designed to raise the bar on the video capabilities of today’s desktop and notebook PCs. The addition of PureVideo technology to the GeForce™ 6 Series of graphics processing units (GPUs) allows for accelerated playback of MPEG-2 and high-definition (HD) video content at home-theater levels of quality, resulting in crisp, vibrant and stutter-free video on any display. Key features of PureVideo include: High-definition MPEG-2 Hardware Acceleration. A dedicated 16-way vector processor enables smooth playback of HD video with minimal CPU usage. WMV High-definition Hardware Acceleration. Programmable support of the newest format enabled by Microsoft Windows Media Player and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 for fluid playback of WMV and WMV HD content. High-quality Real-time Video Recording. An advanced motion-estimation engine makes it possible to record in real-time without a loss in quality. Spatial / Temporal Adaptive De-Interlacing. Experience interlaced content from satellite, cable, and DVD feeds in full detail and without jagged edges or artifacts. 3:2 Pull-down Correction and “Bad Edit” Correction³. Restore video to its original 24fps film format to experience a crystal clear picture, frame after frame. Flicker-free Multi-Stream Scaling. High-quality 4-tap by 5-tap scaling maintains image detail, even when scaling a small video to a large area of the screen. Display Gamma Correction. Automatic format detection adjusts the color quality of video playback so that it is not too dark, overly bright or washed out, regardless of the display. Read More

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:45AM GMT +10 by erock

PowerStrip 3.56

PowerStrip 3.56 has been released, adding support for the latest GPUs from NVidia and XGI, a custom resolution designer to assist in eliminating overscan on HD displays, and improved EIA/CEA-861B timings. Year after year, it continues to be the only program of its type to provide driver-independent hardware support to multiple graphics cards from multiple vendors, under every OS from the original retail release of Windows 95 to the latest 64-bit Editions of Windows 2003 and XP.

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:28AM GMT +10 by erock

Half-life 2 Demo Out

The Half-Life 2 demo is out, its a hefty 700mb download! By taking the suspense, challenge and visceral charge of the original Half-Life, and adding startling new realism and responsiveness, Half-Life® 2 the door to a world where the player's presence affects everything around him, from the physical environment to the behaviors even the emotions of both friends and enemies. The player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him. ATI and VALVE have teamed up to give you the chance to play Half-Life® 2. The demo features some of the amazing digital actors and physical gameplay that has made Half-Life® 2 the leading contender for Game of the Year 2004, the demo takes players through some of the early levels of the game and later transports them to the area of the game known as Ravenholm. The demo will debut on ati.com, and requires a Steam account to install. Download Link

Posted: December. 21, 2004 @ 08:02AM GMT +10 by erock

The BitTorrent P2P file-sharing system

Even though many P2P file-sharing systems have been proposed and implemented, only very few have stood the test of intensive daily use by a very large user community. The BitTorrent file-sharing system is one of these systems. Measurements on Internet backbones indicate that BitTorrent has evolved into one of the most popular networks [8]. In fact, BitTorrent traffic made up 53 per cent of all P2P traffic in June 2004 [12]. As BitTorrent is only a file-download protocol, it relies on other (global) components, such as websites, for finding files. The most popular website for this purpose is suprnova.org. There are different aspects that are important for the acceptance of a P2P system by a large user community. First, such a system should have a high availability. Secondly, users should (almost) always receive a good version of the content they request (no fake files) [10]. Thirdly, the system should be able to deal with flashcrowds. Finally, users should obtain a relatively high download speed. Read more @ TcMagazine

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:37PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Google Launches Print Service

Search engine Google has offered geeks and non-geeks alike an early present this Christmas. Launching Google Print, the company hopes to begin the long task of integration between searching offline content in the online world. Google Print is integrated with standard search results; for example, a search for literary classic Romeo and Juliet leads to the follow page from Google Print. Google only show content related to the search query - in cases where there are multiple results, excerpts are shown. Currently in beta testing, Google are working with publishers to get as much content into the system as possible; they are offering the scanning service for free. Google have placed contextual adverts at the bottom of pages which serve as the source of income for the project. Google also offer a link to purchase the book at various e-retailers, but will not be taking a cut of any purchases. Read more [Neowin]

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:34PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Hack the Catalyst and Find a SM3 Chip

Just spotted this bit of Info posted over at Beyond 3D's forum by Demirug. If you use a disassembler with the "ati3duag.dll" you can find code that set the DX Caps for a SM3 chip. # VS: 3.0 with 1024 slots (NV40: 544) and only pointsampling (like NV40) # PS: 3.0 with 512 slots (NV40: 4096) Hack the Catalyst and Find a SM3 Chip

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:31PM GMT +10 by BenSW

AnLetter to a Digital World

As a Linux desktop user himself, system administrator Chris Spencer did not relish having to clean up his wife's infected Windows PC after it had become compromised. By the time he'd solved the immediate problem, Spencer had become so fed up with spyware, trojans, viruses, and spam, that he decided it was time to write a letter to the world. It's a simple message: it's time to switch from Windows to Linux. "The letter serves as a guide," Spencer explains, "taking you through some of the history of Microsoft right up to this present day."

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:29PM GMT +10 by BenSW

IsoBuster 1.7.0.0

IsoBuster lets you explore a CD's File System while by-passing Windows. It is a CD/DVD and (Disk)Image File data recovery tool that can read and extract files, tracks and sessions from CD-i, VCD, SVCD, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, DVD, DVCD and others. It also supports the following image file formats: *.DAO, *.TAO, *.ISO, *.BIN, *.IMG, *.CIF, *.FCD, *.NRG, *.GCD, *.P01, *.C2D, *.CUE, *.CD and *.GI. It uses several retry-mechanisms to aid you in getting the data, even if Windows is not able to do so. Additional features include Mpg (*.dat) Extraction, support for file system properties, CDText support and much more. The vast majority of the features available are free, however some advanced features like UDF support are only available in a registered version. View the change log here

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:27PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Suprnova.org goes offline for good

A MESSAGE on Suprnova.org, which describes itself as the Universal Bit Torrent Source, said that it is "closing down for good" in the way that "we all know it". It won't host or track any torrent links either, and the lads and lasses said they've tried everything to stay up. The message said they've tried everything, including mirrors, including everything but it's a "sad day" for them. There has been quite a bit of Bit Torrent stuff going on in the last week, but our Bulgarian correspondent hasn't been around to report it. Sorry 'bout that. Source: TheInquirer

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:23PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Club 3D won't give up on XGI

DUTCH BASED Club3D won't abandon XGI, the Taiwanese graphics chip designer. XGI is still struggling for its place in the graphic sun and Club 3D isto allcomers. XGI sure picked the wrong year to enter the business as Nvidia and ATI are literally killing each other with chips and prices. At least they've given us something to write about. Club3D is the only company which is brave enough to ship all graphic chip providers at the same time. It ships ATI, Nvidia, S3 and XGI and I am sure that it would ship any newcomer as well. We are sure that has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. XGI in this case made some killer cheapo cards based on its Volari V3XT chip. Its two pipeline Direct X 9 solution are powered with 64 bit memory interface. It comes in 64 and 128MB variations where the 64 MB card costs only €36 and the 128MB card costs €44.50. We are talking about suggested retail prices in December 2004 and January 2005. Full story @ TheInquirer

Posted: December. 20, 2004 @ 06:21PM GMT +10 by BenSW

World of WarCraft Patch News

Blizzard Entertainment has updated the official World of WarCraft website with an "Under Development" section, giving us an idea of what to expect in the upcoming patch. Some features that are noted include a new dungeon, class improvements and more! Click here for the goods.

Posted: December. 19, 2004 @ 11:19AM GMT +10 by BenSW

AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor Driver

AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor Driver for Windows XP allows the system to automatically adjust the CPU speed, voltage and power combination that match the instantaneous user performance need. Download this Setup Installation program (EXE) to automatically update all the files necessary for installation. This package is recommended for users whom desire a graphical user interface for installation. This .EXE driver is a user friendly localized software installation of the driver designed for end-users. Source:Warp2Search

Posted: December. 19, 2004 @ 10:48AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Seagate's Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ hard

ATA Hard Drives are easily the slowest components in today's PCs. They may also be the dumbest and most inefficient, but Native Command Queuing (NCQ) could change all that. By intelligently re-ordering I/O requests, command queuing can make drives smarter, more efficient, and ultimately faster, all without increasing spindle speeds or adding on-board cache. Sweet. Chipset-level support for NCQ has been around since Intel launched its 900-series chipsets this summer. NVIDIA's new nForce4 chipset also supports Native Command Queuing, as does SiS's latest south bridge chip. Hard drives that support NCQ are also trickling into the market and Seagate has been shipping an NCQ-equipped version of its popular Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA hard drive for some time. We've snagged a 'cuda 7200.7 NCQ and run it through an exhaustive suite of benchmarks, putting NCQ to the test against not only queue-less Serial ATA drives, but also a Western Digital Raptor that supports Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ). Read on for more on what command queuing is all about, where it helps performance, and where it might actually slow you down. Read more

Posted: December. 19, 2004 @ 10:46AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Mobile GPU Guide

Check out Rojak Pot's Mobile GPU Comparison Guide Rev. 3.0 They have added all the new mobile graphic chips listed below to the review. Here are the updates:- - Added the ATI Mobility Radeon X800 Pro, X800, X300, FireGL T2, FireGL 9000 and FireGL 7800 GPUs - Added the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800, Quadro FX Go1000 and Quadro FX Go700 GPUs. - Updated the specifications of the ATI Mobility Radeon X600, Radeon 9700, Radeon 9600 Pro and Radeon 9600 GPUs. - Total GPUs : 38

Posted: December. 19, 2004 @ 09:44AM GMT +10 by erock

Saturday Night Game Reviews

EverQuest 2 on RPG Vault Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault on 3D Avenue Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth on Boomtown RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 on Ferrago Sid Meier's Pirates! on FileFront

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 10:28PM GMT +10 by erock

Saturday Night Video Card Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce 6200 with TurboCache on HardwareZone Apollo 6600GT PCI-E on ClubOC ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition on TCMagazine Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D GeForce 6600GT on PCStats ATI X850XT PE on Hexus Gigabyte GeForce 6200 on Legion Hardware NVIDIA 6200 with TurboCache on PcPerspective

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 10:25PM GMT +10 by erock

Letter To ATI

GamersDepot have put up anLetter to ATI in an effort to get them to discuss many of the issues that are affecting their profitability and ultimately you, the customer. Read the letter here

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 02:29PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Half-Life 2 Sweeps Edge Awards

EDGE, Future Publishing's internationally respected multi-format videogame magazine has revealed its favourite games and hardware for 2004 in its annual Edge Awards. In the decade since it was founded, Edge has become considered as required reading for consumers and games developers alike. For this year's eight awards, Edge has selected games and hardware that have redefined the horizons of videogaming over the past twelve months. Valve's Half-Life 2 led the field, winning three Edge Awards. The game won The 2004 Edge Award for Best Game in recognition of the far-reaching excellence of its design and execution. The game also received The 2004 Edge Award for Visual Design, reflecting its technical and aesthetic achievements and acknowledging Valve's success in making these accessible to gamers with less powerful PCs. Read more

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 11:57AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Call of Duty and United Offensive patche

The 1.5 patch for Call of Duty includes a new multiplayer map titled Tigertown - a small town located in Normandy, France which has been partially destroyed by heavy artillery. The environment is designed for Search and Destroy as American Airborne forces push their way up the town's hillside to knock out a Flak88 and Tiger tank heavily guarded by the German Waffen SS. The 1.5 patch also includes new commands for enhancing scripting, mods and tournament support, and HTTP redirection for servers running mods and/or custom maps as well as other gameplay updates (all for Windows). The 1.5.1 patch for Call of Duty: United Offensive includes new commands for enhancing scripting, mods and tournament support, decreased CPU utilization on maps containing vehicles, and optimizations and improvements for single and multiplayer maps as well as other gameplay updates (all for Windows). Read more

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 08:40AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Intel expands core concept for chips

Intel plans to release chips with two processing cores next year, but that's just the start. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant intends to exploit the concept of using multiple processor cores--the part of the microprocessor that does the math--as a way to increase performance of its chips during the next few years. Chips with four cores and eight cores will eventually join dual-core chips. The company's research department is also looking at the feasibility of creating chips with hundreds of cores to assist servers and supercomputers with large numbers of relatively repetitive calculations, said Steve Smith, vice president of the desktop platforms group at Intel. Read more @ CNET News

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 08:33AM GMT +10 by BenSW

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition

TCMagazine check out the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition videocard: ASUS sent us the V9999 Gamer Edition videocard and we are proud to review this very fast card, based on the NVIDIA 6800GPU. This card ofcourse supports all the latest and greatest features like CineFX 3.0 (100% support for DX9.0 Shader Model 3.0 andL 1.5 APIs for complex special effects) and UltraShadow 2 (boosts the performance in games with complex scenes and with multiple light sources and ofcourse objects) The following benchmarks are done: - FutureMark 3DMark03 - FutureMark 3DMark05 - Doom 3 - Far Cry - Painkiller - BOH - Half-Life 2 - Need for Speed Underground 2 - Colin McRae Rally 2005

Posted: December. 18, 2004 @ 05:41AM GMT +10 by erock

Seasonable mail zaps Hotmail/MSN

WHAT'S THIS? HAS upping the storage capacity assigned to existing users backfired on The Vole? One of the INQ's ageing email addresses – with an suffix – has only just been upgraded to 250MB of storage (from a mere 2 MB). But access to the mail system has been slowing enormously. Today we got this error message: "We are experiencing higher than normal volume and are therefore unable to service your request at this time. Try one of the following: In your browser, click Refresh In your browser, click Back, and try again Wait a few minutes and try again We apologize for this inconvenience Surely the Vole hasn't miscalculated the demand on its server farms

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 10:46PM GMT +10 by Tokemon

6800 STD/GT/Ult PCIe almost unavailable

ASUS SLI MOTHERBOARDS were harvested from the markets and few e-tailers told us that they sold all of the boards and that people backordered as much as they sold in first batch. Hot cakes indeed. German e-tailer claims that he sold three digit number of those boards while whole Island of New Zeland got and sold whole batch of 20 boards. Even if you manage to get Asus Dual PCIe SLI board people across the globe from Japan to USA from Europe to the rest of the Asia readers told the INQ that it is impossible for most of them to buy any 6800 generation PCIe cards. Read more...

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 10:45PM GMT +10 by Tokemon

Inhouse Review: Zen Creative 20Gb Mp3

CaptainCode from our forums reviews his Zen Creative Touch 20gig Mp3 Player. He shares a good overview of the product, pros and cons, screenshots and more! Quote: The multi gig! mp3 market is dominated by the ipods and i can see why... They look fantastic and very stylish. However i wasn't looking for stylish looks. I wanted something that would have huge battery length and take as much music as possible. So I went for the zen creative and am not in the least disappointed! Check it out

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 07:10PM GMT +10 by erock

Gigabyte creates dual-GPU graphics card

Gigabyte will announce Friday a graphics card running two graphics processors on one board. According to sources, the SLI card will lift current 3DMark2003 record levels by a significant margin while being priced lower than ATI's and Nvidia's single-GPU high-end cards. If two graphics cards in one system are too expensive or simply not fast enough, Gigabyte's new 3D1 board may be worth a serious look. Sources told Tom's Hardware Guide, that the company prepares to launch a dual-GPU card Friday, saying that it will "revise the VGA performance ranking". Check out what Toms Hardware says about it here

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 06:34PM GMT +10 by erock

Friday Arvo Video Card Reviews

NVIDIA 6600GT AGP by HardAvenue Hauppauge WinTV USB2 TV tuner by BIOS Chaintech GeForce 6600 GT AGP by Legion Hardware NVIDIA GeForce 6200 review by Bit-Tech NVIDIA GeForce 6200 review by Gamers-Depot NVIDIA GeForce 6200 review by Hexus ATi Radeon X800 XL review by Beyond3D Albatron GeForce 6800 GT review by Bjorn3D Radeon X800 XT PCIe roundup by FiringSquad ATi Radeon X800 XL review by PCPer ATi Radeon X700 XT 128MB PCIe review by SimHQ

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 06:32PM GMT +10 by erock

AOL to be charged with fraud

Media giant Time Warner Inc. will pay fines of $210 million under an agreement with the U.S. government to be announced on Wednesday to settle charges that its America Online unit inflated revenue, a Justice Department official said. Time Warner is also expected to pay about $300 million more to settle charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission related to its buyout of a stake held by Germany's Bertelsmann AG in AOL Europe, a source familiar with the matter said. Time Warner in the third quarter took a reserve of $500 million to cover expected legal costs related to government probes into AOL's accounting practices. Read more

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 02:24PM GMT +10 by flawmatt

No problem with Winchester

CHIP FIRM AMD has denied a report on a forum that that it's got a problem with its 90 nanometre 3500+ "Winchester core" microprocessors. The reports surfaced on this this forum, but AMD has told us there isn't a problem at all. An AMD representative said that the firm's techies say that because the Athlon 64 chips are locked and cannot be overclocked, an attempt to increase the mobo's system clock is causing all the components to respond, rather than just the microprocessor. He said: "A small increase in the signal clock speed - say 5MHz on the 200MHz signal clock - is probably within the tolerances of all of the components". But, he continued: "These overclockers are trying to get all teh components to respond to a 25 per cent increase in the speed of the signal clock, which would cause multiple components on the board to become unstable". FX Athlon 64 products aren't locked, and allow a fair amount of overclocking. But AMD doesn't endorse overclocking its chips. It's at your own risk. It will be happy to sell you another chip if it goes pfit. Source: The Inquirer

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 02:21PM GMT +10 by flawmatt

PCI Express 2.0 to double bandwidth

The guardian of the PCI Express specification, the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), has agreed to increase the bus' data rate to 5Gbps - double its current throughput. The increase will come when the PCI-SIG finalises the next generation of the specification, expected by the end of 2005, though unlikely to appear in products much before 2007. Three speeds were proposed for 'PCI Express 2': 5, 6 and 6.25Gbps, the latter favoured by bandwidth-hungry graphics chip and card vendors. However, the PCI-SIG's board ultimately voted in favour of the slowest of the three speeds. Not surprisingly, the vote was not unanimous, with a number of groups pushing for each speed as the one best suited to their individual technology roadmaps. Read more

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 09:24AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Doom Movie Update

As a result of the recent events surrounding the Doom movie, MegaGames has been informed of an online petition designed to bring awareness to the producers of the DooM Movie that the DooM community is not at all happy with the supposed changes. In that respect, the letter by Dave Callaham, DooM movie scriptwriter, published yesterday served more as a confirmation of those changes rather than as any form of an attempt to appease fans. The petition has already managed to gather almost 2000 signatures and fans seem to be determined to do whatever is possible to get their message through. If you wish to sign or view the petition follow the download tab above. For those of you who are not certain about what all the noise is about, below is a list of possible DooM movie changes as listed by the petition. Read more @ Megagames.com

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 08:44AM GMT +10 by BenSW

GTA:SA PC and XBox Confirmed and Dated

As almost everyone expected, Rockstar Games has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is making its way to the Xbox. Developed by Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for Xbox and PC will be in stores in North America on June 7th, 2005 and in Europe on June 10th, 2005. Expect more details about the content of the ports as soon as we get them. Source: Megagames

Posted: December. 17, 2004 @ 08:42AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Thursday Night Video Card Reviews

Heres the latest reviews for you to take a look at! Albatron GeForce 6800 GT review by Bjorn3D Apollo GeForce 6600 GT PCIe review by ClubOverclocker ATi Radeon X800 XL PCIe review by ExtremeTech ATi Radeon X800 XT PCI-E Video Card roundup review by FiringSquad nVidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP review by HardAvenue ATi Radeon X800 XL PCIe review by TheTechReport

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 09:43PM GMT +10 by erock

New GeForce 6200 with TurboCache

SANTA CLARA, CA—DECEMBER 15, 2004—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today introduced the NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6200 graphics processing unit (GPU) with TurboCache™ technology. NVIDIA TurboCache is a new, patented hardware and software technology, which allows a GPU to render directly to system memory, instead of using local memory on the graphics card. NVIDIA TurboCache technology lowers on-board memory requirements, enabling system builders to deliver PCs with more feature-rich GPUs and offer their customers better graphics performance and advanced capabilities previously unattainable at value prices. “Customers in the value segment previously have had to settle for technology that was one generation behind the cutting edge, high-end GPUs,” said Ujesh Desai, general manger of desktop graphics for NVIDIA. “For the first time ever, NVIDIA TurboCache will deliver the award-winning feature set found on current-generation high-end GPUs to the value segment of the PC market.” NVIDIA has re-architected the 3D graphics pipeline for the GeForce 6200 GPU with TurboCache to allow direct rendering from the GPU to system memory by leveraging the bi-directional PCI Express bandwidth. The TurboCache Manager dynamically allocates memory for maximum system performance while intelligent software algorithms maximize application performance. Read More

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 09:37PM GMT +10 by erock

Anarchy Online Now Totally Free

Now you can experience Anarchy Online totally free of charge. You don't pay for the software. You don't pay any subscription. All we ask is that you register prior to January 15th. How about that for a Christmas present! Click here Source: Warp2Search

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 09:32PM GMT +10 by erock

Nintendo Feeling The Heat

Nintendo are feeling the heat with Sony releasing its superior PSP portable device, to stop Sony capturing the market Nintendo have made an addin for the DS and GBA to allow them to play music and video, this is to compete with these features already available on the PSP. Link Sony have also rumored to release a PSP with 2gb of internal memory early next year to take a bite of the mp3 player market.

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 08:50PM GMT +10 by Ps2

ATI R520 is a 90 nanometre chip

ATI IS HAPPY with the R520 "Fudo" even it might not be happy with the real Mc Fudo. This chip is definitely good enough to bring some smiles to their faces - at least that's what ATI hopes for. To be happy with R520. Despite the other news, we can now add that R520 codenamed "Fudo" is going to be ATI's first chip based on 90 nanometre architecture. Earlier, Xbitlabs was running this news which it got from some analyst company. This is the first time in a long while that ATI is willing to risk the potential problems and try new shrinked marchitecture on new high end part first. We all know what happened to Nvidia when it tried to do this with its NV30. ATI is confident that it will get things right and 90 nanometre chip will mean less heat, a smaller and cheaper die and more space for an almost endless number of transistors. Read more TheInquirer

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 06:41PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Nvidia's NV47 never existed

THE KNOWLEDGEABLE 3D community gathered at Beyond 3D forum has talked about the Nvidia chip codenamed NV47 for a while. This chip is supposed to give "Fudo" R520 a run for its money. Those chaps suggested 24 pipelines, eight Vertex Shader units and suggested it's based on NV40 marchitecture with more shaders and pipes. Or something like that. I have to disappoint you all as Nvidia never had such a chip. Nvidia never had anything codenamed NV47 and this chip never existed. Very learned sages with long grey beards close to Nvidia's plans confirm this. Despite this, NV48 and NV50 are cancelled, leaving us clueless about Nvidia's future high end plans. So far. Read more TheInquirer

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 06:39PM GMT +10 by BenSW

AMD readies price cuts, new chips

RELIABLE SOURCES said that AMD will respond to pricing by Intel by dropping prices, dropping some chips and introducing some new Opterons on February the 14th next. AMD will do this by introducing the Opteron 252 and 852, a 2.5GHz processor, at the current 250 prices, and racking down the lower CPUs by one price level. This will mean that the 140, 240 and 840 become end of line models. AMD is also suspending rebates on Athlon 64 chips for the channel on December the 26th, but this is only a temporary suspension. The rebates will be brought back on the 10th of January, and then become part of the price cuts the following month. Read more TheInquirer

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 06:37PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Ati's new Radeon X800XL

Source: Warp2Search.net When we reviewed ATI's new Radeon X850 series of graphics chips a couple of weeks ago, we said that the more exciting development in ATI's re-spin of its high-end products was probably the Radeon X800 XL, a card slated to replace the Radeon X800 Pro. We are, after all, notorious cheapskates, and a sixteen-pipe card for under $400 is the kind of proposition we tend to appreciate. In fact, the GeForce 6800 GT has been one of our favorite high-end cards, often edging out the 12-pipe Radeon X800 Pro at the same basic price. To read some reviews of Ati's new X800XL, click on any of the links below. TechReport Beyond3D PCPerspective AnandTech FiringSquad

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 12:06PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Steam Update

A platform update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include: Steam # Source MODs will now automatically appear in the games list # Improved startup process for Steam # Fixed crash when creating a backup that would span multiple DVDs # Fixed a bug that would unnecessarily validate Steam caches after a cache corruption # Fixed Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes and Codename Gordon failing to backup correctly # Fixed a bug where the message "the game files will be deleted and re-acquired" would repeat # Fixed offline mode failing after not connecting to Steam for more than a month Half-Life 2 # Optimization to the Steam filesystem to reduce game launch and level transition time Source SDK # Simplified debug-launch process for MOD developers. MOD developers no longer need to place a config file in their directory # Added a registry key for MOD developers to use to locate a user's Steam installation located at HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareValveSteamSourceModInstallPath Source: [Warp2Search]

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 11:48AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Halo 2 & Broadband?

Statistics show that Xbox-Live traffic quadrupled when Halo 2 was launched. ISP's may have to increase their broadband capability in the future in order to be available to PC and Console gamers out there. "ISPs need to enhance the broadband experience for these high-end users by prioritizing or reserving bandwidth for games and other kinds of latency-sensitive and feature-rich applications," source: Cnet

Posted: December. 16, 2004 @ 10:13AM GMT +10 by [DBE]killer

SiS to obtain PCI-SIG Certification

Taipei, December 15, 2004 –Leading core logic chipset manufacturer Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) announced today that its PCIe chipsets including SiS656, SiS649, SiS756 and SiS965 are successfully designed-in with over 20 different motherboard designs. SiS is the first and only chipset manufacturer in Taiwan to be officially certified by PCI-SIG organization. The PCI Express specifications supported by the SiS656, SiS649, SiS756 and SiS965 have been certified and listed on the PCI-SIG website (see Figure 1), signifying that SiS’s new-generation PCI Express chipsets meet the leading-edge and international standard. PCI-SIG's main goals are to manage and develop the standards for PCIe bus interface technologies, promote the innovation and development of PCI in accordance with industry needs, and to guarantee product quality through a strict validation process. SiS’ dedicated efforts to obtain the PCIe certification represent not only its product strength recognized by international and industrial standard but also the results adopted by worldwide customers to plan as design-in products with more than 20 models. Read more [TCMagazine]

Posted: December. 15, 2004 @ 06:51PM GMT +10 by BenSW

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