Friday Arvo Game Reviews

Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder on Warcry Football Manager 2005 on Pro-G Half-Life 2 on Video Game News Painkiller: Battle out of Hell on Action Trip Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines on FileFront Worms Forts: Under Siege on IGN

Posted: December. 10, 2004 @ 07:18PM GMT +10 by erock

Intel demos 65nm dual-core CPU

Intel has shown off its dual-core, 65nm 'Yonah' mobile processor, but don't expect it to ship until 2006, the chip giant said. That could be seen as a slippage of the processor's release schedule, but since recent roadmaps have the part down for a very late 2005 introduction, a slide into 2006 shouldn't come as any great surprise. Doubly so, since Yonah is expected to be fabbed using the next generation of process technology. Last month, Stat/MDR analyst Jim McGregor, claimed Intel had "quietly pushed out manufacturing on 65nm [to] 2006". What McGregor called "challenging industry conditions" could see the process' ramp fall back to "mid-2006 or later". Full story [TheRegister]

Posted: December. 10, 2004 @ 05:43PM GMT +10 by BenSW

6600GT Overclocked!

With its 8-pixel pipeline architecture and 500MHz core, the GeForce 6600 GT is turning lots of heads in the mainstream price segment, but what happens when you overclock the 6600 GT AGP? How much of a performance improvement do you get, and is the overclocked card able to outgun a $300 GeForce 6800? Find out, as we run an overclocked 6600 GT through a wide variety of benchmarks (including DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2) against the GeForce 6800, RADEON 9800 XT, and RADEON 9800 PRO in this article! Source: FiringSquad

Posted: December. 10, 2004 @ 05:41PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Five Large P4 Coolers

Overclockers Australia take a look at five coolers for P4 CPUs, in the "this is getting silly" size range. On test they have Thermaltake's Silent Tower, Cooler Master's Hyper 6, Gigabyte's 3D Rocket, Zalman's CNPS7000B-Cu and Thermalright's XP-120. They test with two CPUs, one Prescott and one Northwood, and also consider the two stock coolers. Review

Posted: December. 10, 2004 @ 09:27AM GMT +10 by erock

World's First 512Mb GDDR3

Schwalbach/Ts., Germany - December 9, 2004: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, has begun shipping the world ’s first 512-megabit (Mb) GDDR3 memory device which is the most advanced graphics double-data-rate synchronous DRAM available for graphics card makers, as well as electronic game console manufacturers. The new Samsung device has at least twice the density of any graphics memory available today, enabling much richer textures in gaming imagery. “With our new 512 megabit GDDR3 memory, we can provide sharply improved performance, reduced power consumption and more efficient space utilization for 512 megabyte graphics cards,” said Mueez Deen, Director of Marketing, Graphics Memory, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. In November 2003, Samsung introduced 256Mb GDDR3 memory and holds the largest share of the market for graphics memory embedded in high-end graphics cards. Market analysts predict that the 2005 graphics DRAM market will be 30 percent higher than this year’s figure, reaching close to US$1.47 billion. The Samsung 512Mb GDDR3, the first JEDEC-standard GDDR3 to operate at up to 1.6Gbps, is faster than any other graphics memory on the market. Mass production of the 512Mb GDDR3 will begin early next year.

Posted: December. 10, 2004 @ 09:22AM GMT +10 by erock

Eight Core Opterons?

THE CHIEF technology officer of AMD spoke at a Lehman Brothers conference yesterday. Fred Weber said AMD had started working on 64-bit technology five years ago and that it had to extend previous X86 architecture. He claimed the most important benefit from 64-32 architecture was performance. Future Microsoft software will offer better security for such systems, Weber said. He said AMD had realised the importance of the server market and saw a trend towards mobility. AMD changed the focus of all of its efforts on the server and mobile sectors, rather than the desktop. Leadership in the server market would allow benefits to trickle down into the desktop market. Read More

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 09:33PM GMT +10 by erock

1.28 Terabits per second

Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that it, along with France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, recently completed a successful field trial achieving a Terabit per second transmission over an existing fiber link in France Telecom's network. This trial was conducted under the framework of the TOPRATE European research project, which began in 2001. The goal of this research project is to investigate advanced ultra-high channel bit rate transmission technologies (170 Gbit/s or more per channel) and to demonstrate Terabit per second (1 000 Gigabits per second) network transmission capacity over installed fiber infrastructure. The trial announced today resulted in a point-to-point DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) transmission of 1.28 Terabits per second over a 430 km standard (ITU-T G.652) single mode fiber link in France Telecom's network in the Marseille area. Test results were achieved using eight densely packed optical transmission channels, each carrying a record bit rate of 170 Gbit/s (160 Gbit/s plus an overhead so as to allow bit error detection and correction). This channel bit rate is 16 times higher than the 10 Gbit/s channel bit rate of current standard DWDM transmission products. As an example, each 160 Gbit/s transmission channel could transport the content of 4 DVDs in about 1 second. DAMN!! Read more

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 09:31PM GMT +10 by erock

Microsoft backs robots with .NET CPU

ROBOTS.NET said Microsoft has a product aimed at robotic and electronics fans in beta. That's the Microsoft product, not the fans... The site said that the kit Microsoft is selling includes an evaluation board, a special version of the Visual Studio .net development system, and a CPU module. The CPU is, according to the site, a 27MHz ARM7TDMI microprocessor. Do we really want Microsoft robots running about everywhere? Sorce: The Inquirer

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 02:19PM GMT +10 by flawmatt

AMD - New Desktop Sockets?

CHIP FIRM AMD appears to be re-thinking its attitude to sockets when it introduces desktop dual core chips - which might not come until the very end of next year or perhaps even 2006, according to reliable sources. According to those motherboard partners of AMD, it wants to avoid manufacturers having to re-tool too much when it launches dual core chips for desktops, but it is considering a pin out of 942 or 941, the sources said. AMD has had a lot of stick from its partners during 2004 over the shift to 939 pins and the simultaneous existence of 754 pins and 940 pin Athlon 64s. This didn't make life easy for them - and that's somewhat understating it. Read More

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 08:52AM GMT +10 by erock

Nvidia ships NV44

NVIDIA IS SHIPPING new 6200 cards as we speak. Don’t get confused, because Nvidia already launched card named 6200. The older one is based on the faster and more expensive NV43-V core. Actually those chips could be defined as the slowest of the NV43 series that were good enough to make slower chips by crippling the pipelines. Read More

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 08:50AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA SLI & ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe

NVIDIA SLI & ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Performance Showcase A couple of weeks back, during the Thanksgiving holiday break here in the United States, NVIDIA and ASUS teamed together and kitted up the first few sets of SLI- (Scalable Link Interface) capable motherboards and graphics cards that take advantage of NVIDIA's new nForce4 - Athlon 64 chipset. Powered by dual PCI Express GeForce 6 series graphics cards, does NVIDIA have the ability to make 1 + 1 = 2? Well, just as with most types of parrallel-processing techiniques, it really depends on the software or game you are running, in this case. However, our experience with NVIDIA's new breed of SLI indicates that it's a great start in the right direction. In the pages ahead we'll show you where SLI can offer substantial performance gains and even some senarios where it doesn't. Read the full performance review here

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 06:20AM GMT +10 by BenSW

NVIDIA to Create SoundStorm 2

Just spotted this bit of news posted over at the Warp2Search. Here at NVIDIA's Editor's Day event today, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang addressed questions about the company's plans for a possible second spin of its popular but ill-fated SoundStorm audio solution. Apparently, a reprise of SoundStorm will happen. Huang told the assembled press types, "We're gonna build SoundStorm 2. It's gonna be awesome." He was less clear on what form the next SoundStorm would take, saying that NVIDIA was still trying to figure out how to deliver SoundStorm as a product. Huang said, cryptically, that the new SoundStorm "will come in a way that you won't expect." Source:Warp2Search

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 06:12AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Nvidia readies Turbo Cache GeForce 6200

SOURCES SAID Nvidia will likely splurge out on a spin by introducing a Geforce 6200 with something called Turbo Cache in a week or so. This, we understand throws data dynamically memory so bungs data where it can deliver the best system performance. So with say 512MB of system memory, and local display memory of 16MB, 32MB and 64MB, you'll get effective frame buffer for apps of 128MB, 128MB and 256MB respectively. All of this isn't for free, but Nvidia figures it will help people out a lot on both price and performance. The way it does this is through proprietary algorithms and by changing the 3D pipeline. Nvidia will likely position this against ATI's X300 SE, which can't render directly to system memory. A PCI Express reference design from Nvidia will include DVI-I, VGA and TV Out, with the graphics firm claiming a putative 3DMark 03 at 10x7 of 2063, compared to ATI's X300SE with 128MB of 1779, and Intel's 915G chipset showing 1466. A 6200 with Turbo Cache using driver 70.9 will throw out 2906 3DMark03s, compared to 2624 for an X300LE, Nvidia will claim. Read more [TheInquirer]

Posted: December. 09, 2004 @ 06:04AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Telstra trials first FTTP home

A BigPond dealer's house in Queensland is the first Australian home to have Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology from Telstra. Noel Roberts' Brookwater house in Greater Springfield is the first home in Australia to have telephone services, high speed Internet and subscription TV on one optical fibre connection. In announcing the move Telstra, however, emphasised that Roberts "did not receive special treatment because of his relationship with Telstra." FTTP is an access infrastructure than can deliver telephony, broadband data and digital subscription television services to customer premises on an optical fibre platform. The Queensland home is part of an FTTP pilot program being conducted by Telstra and the Springfield Land Corporation and Medallist Developments joint venture. Homes in the pilot area can access FTTP technology to obtain multiple fixed-line phones, Internet and subscription TV services. Queensland managing director for Telstra Country Wide, Don Pinel, said the optical fibre access would be able to support anticipated future higher bandwidth services such as video on demand. "The optical fibre allows us to increase the speed or bandwidth of the connection to the house as new services are required by the home owner. We envisage that within a few years, more and more people will want to download movies on demand from the Internet, which requires very high-speeds that would be easily provided by a fibre connection," Pinel said. Telstra expects the technology to play a major future role in Telstra's network, along with copper, radio and satellite technologies. Read More

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:46PM GMT +10 by erock

Thursdays PC Game Reviews

Alexander on GameSpot Colin McRae Rally 2005 on GameSpy EverQuest 2 on Action Trip Half-Life 2 on Armchair Empire Half-Life 2 on Pro-G RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 on Strategy Informer

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:44PM GMT +10 by erock

Intel, 64 bits in desktops in 2005

Intel once said desktop buyers wouldn't really need 64-bit capabilities until toward the end of the decade, but the company will make such capabilities a feature across its desktop lines next year. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker disclosed at its analyst meeting in New York that it will include 64-bit functionality on its desktop chips starting in 2005, a schedule that roughly coincides with the release of a 64-bit version of Windows for desktops coming next year. The functionality will appear even in the budget Celeron line. The plan marks a definite acceleration for Intel. In February, company executives indicated that 64-bit chips for client computers--which will be able to access more data through a larger pool of memory than today's chips--wouldn't likely come until Microsoft releases Longhorn, a future version of Windows now due at the end of 2006. Read More

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:30PM GMT +10 by erock

Corsair, OCZ, Kingston Memory Shootout

Just letting you know that VR-Zone Hardware has just posted a 3 way memory shootout of 2-2-2-5 TCCD memory from Corsair, Kingston, and OCZ. The memory used is the Corsair XMS 3200XL, Kingston's Hyper X KHX3200UL, and OCZ's PC3200 Platinum Revision 2 Memory. "Our max FSB overclocking results showed a difference of 7MHz between the Kingston HyperX KHX3200UL sticks and the Corsair XMS 3200XL Pro. The OCZ EL DDR PC 3200 Platinum Revision 2 was right in the middle of the two, running at a max speed of 280MHz." Read the comparison at VR-Zone

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:28PM GMT +10 by erock

Nvidia Optimized Driver V0.4

TechConnect have a new optimized driver available for you. Its now at version 0.4 and based on the latest leaked Forceware drivers 70.90 beta. View the release notes below: * Based on Forceware 70.90 beta * Fixed some HL2 shimmering issues * Removed few useless tweaks * FPS improvement underL Download

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:25PM GMT +10 by erock

Thursday Morning Video Card Reviews

Chew on these ;) Leadtek Winfast PX6600TD on Trusted Reviews ASUS Extreme N6600GT on Legion Hardware Abit RX300 SE-Guru PCI Express on OcPrices ABIT RX600 Pro-Guru 256MB PCI-E Video Card on 3DGameMan XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP on Teamhardware Inno3D GeForce 6600 GT 128MB on Hexus Sapphire R9800Pro 128MB on Overclockers NZ Inno3D GeForce 6600 GT (PCX) on Guru3D

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 11:22PM GMT +10 by erock

ATI’s Next-Gen VPU on Track for Spring

Research firm Credit Suisse First Boston claimed in a recently released report that ATI Technologies, the world’s major supplier of visual processing units, is on track with introduction of its next-generation graphics processor in Spring, 2005, and said that the risks with major transition of process technology to 90nm are not tremendous. R520 Taped Out, Yields are Key Risk “ATI has completed test wafers on 90nm at TSMC and has hit its milestones to date for its next generation R520 product due out in Spring 2005,” CSFB wrote. In early November a high-ranking source close to ATI Technologies confirmed that the chip known as the R520 had been taped out, which means that the completed design of the processor had been sent to an ATI’s foundry partner. “Key risk ahead is achieving strong yields on 90nm, a point too early to call but potentially less risky since low-k and copper issues were resolved at 130nm. ATI noted that the next two years will see major architectural jumps (likely Pixel Shader 3.0 in 05 and DX10 for Longhorn in 06), raising the bar but requiring execution as well,” CFSB’s analysts Randy Abrams and Michael Masdea believe. Read more [XbitLabs]

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

PCI-X gets chipset firms' support

BOTH VIA and SIS announced two developments on the PCI Express front. Via said it had struck a deal with Broadcom to enable Gigabit Ethernet support for its K8T890 chipset family. Via will use Broadcom BCN5751 technology. SIS said its 656 north bridge chipset has passed the PCI SIG's compatibility tests, and completed validation for DDR2-667, DDR2-533 and DDR2-400 memory from Samsung, Micron and Elpida. Source: TheInquirer.net

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

nForce5 to feature soundstorm

Hexus had a chat with NVIDIA about soundstorm with nForce5: In an exclusive press briefing - the CEO of NVIDIA has just stated that we will see Soundstorm avaliable on nForce soon. This will be more than the old hat Soundstorm which was on nForce 1 and 2. NVIDIA chose not to do this with nForce 4 - but he for one acknowledges that the market wants it. This is a great proof of consumer power and that NVIDIA do listen to the consumer.

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 03:02PM GMT +10 by erock

Forceware 70.90 Performance Comparsion

latest Forceware 70.90 Beta driver plus a performance comparsion againist Forceware 66.93 We did some benchmarks with both Forceware drivers, version 66.93 and version 70.90. Half-Life 2 was done at a resolution of 800x600, 1024x768 and 1600x1200 with the [H]ard|OCP timedemo Canals. First benchmarks are done without Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering, the second with AA6 and AF16. Doom 3 benchmarks are done with our custom timedemo and in High Quality Video settings, we turned on Anti-Aliasing to 16x. View the driver comparison here

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 06:40AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Playstation 3 to use Nvidia graphics

THE GRAPHICS CHIP for the next generation of the Playstation will be based on some flavour of Nvidia technology. Sony and Nvidia made the joint announcement today, but gave little details of what the graphics processor will do for the Playstation 3. Nevertheless, the announcement is one in the nuts for Microsoft, as Nvidia has been livid over its previous collaboration with the chip software giant. When is the Playstation 3 out? Apparently in limited quantities next year and in spates the year after. The graphics chip will be made by Sony at its Nagasaki Fab Two and at a joint venture fab owned by Tosh-Sony. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is over the moon with delight. He trilled: "We are thrilled to partner with Sony Computer Entertainment to build what will certainly be one of the most important computer entertainment and digital media platforms of the twenty-first century". Read more [TheInquirer]

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 06:37AM GMT +10 by BenSW

p2p doesnt hurt most musos

Most musicians and artists say the Internet has helped them make more money from their work despite online file-trading services that allow users to copy songs and other material for free, according to a study released Sunday. Recording labels and movie studios have hired phalanxes of lawyers to pursue "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa, and have sued thousands of individuals who distribute copyrighted material through such networks. But most of the artists surveyed by the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project said online file sharing did not concern them much. Artists were split on the merits of peer-to-peer networks, with 47 percent saying that they prevent artists from earning royalties for their work and another 43 percent saying they helped promote and distribute their material. Read more [CNN]

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:27AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA Forceware 70.90

Get em while there hot! Leaked Forceware drivers 70.90! Download link

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:26AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA & SONY together for PS3

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and NVIDIA Announce Joint GPU Development for SCEI's Next-Generation Computer Entertainment System TOKYO and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) and NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today announced that the companies have been collaborating on bringing advanced graphics technology and computer entertainment technology to SCEI's highly anticipated next-generation computer entertainment system. Both companies are jointly developing a custom graphics processing unit (GPU) incorporating NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce(TM) and SCEI's system solutions for next-generation computer entertainment systems featuring the Cell* processor. This collaboration is made under a broad, multi-year, royalty-bearing agreement. The powerful custom GPU will be the graphics and image processing foundation for a broad range of applications from computer entertainment to broadband applications. The agreement will encompass future Sony digital consumer electronics products. "In the future, the experience of computer entertainment systems and broadband-ready PCs will be fused together to generate and transfer multi-streams of rich content simultaneously. In this sense, we have found the best way to integrate the state-of-the-art technologies from NVIDIA and SCEI," said Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO, Sony Corporation, and president and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "Our collaboration includes not only the chip development but also a variety of graphics development tools and middleware, essential for efficient content creation." "We are thrilled to partner with Sony Computer Entertainment to build what will certainly be one of the most important computer entertainment and digital media platforms of the twenty-first century," added Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO, NVIDIA. "Over the past two years NVIDIA has worked closely with Sony Computer Entertainment on their next-generation computer entertainment system. In parallel, we have been designing our next-generation GeForce GPU. The combination of the revolutionary Cell processor and NVIDIA's graphics technologies will enable the creation of breathtaking imagery that will surprise and captivate consumers." The custom GPU will be manufactured at Sony Group's Nagasaki Fab2 as well as OTSS (joint fabrication facility of Toshiba and Sony). Note: * "Cell" is the code-name for an advanced microprocessor under development by IBM, Toshiba and Sony Group. NVIDIA Press

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:16AM GMT +10 by erock

GeForce 6600 Standard AGP

Nvidia is working on a 6600 AGP card. To be precise, Nvidia is working on the card's printed circuit board (PCB) as all the other parts are ready. Its 6600GT AGP cards are very well accepted and Nvidia is selling them like extremely good hot baked cakes. People like the thought of a $200 card with Shader 3.0 and very nice performance. Read More [The Inquirer]

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:12AM GMT +10 by erock

nForce5 Details Expanded

The Intel Nvidia chipset will support both 800 and 1066FSB for P4 Intel CPUs. It will support socket 775 CPUs based on Prescott, a new 2MB 600 core and future dual core Smithfield CPUs. The chipset already has support for Intel's 64 bit marchitecture. We suggest that it will come in two versions, as the chipset can support one and two memory channels. It supports DDR2 667 and DDR2 533 memory. It cannot support plain DDR one memory. As with the Nforce 4 chipset, the Nforce 5 will have 20 PCIe configurable lanes and if you use two graphic cards you will end up with eight lanes per card with four left for other connectors. Samples are expected in Q1 2005 and actual boards should appear later in the same quarter. Nvidia hasn't even disclosed Nforce 5 details to most of its partners but will have to tell them about the boards that they have to sell soon enough. Read More [The Inquirer]

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:11AM GMT +10 by erock

NVIDIA expected to launch C19 core-logic

Nvidia expected to launch C19 core-logic chipset for P4 CPUs in 1Q 2005 Taiwan-based core-logic chipset makers are bracing for fierce competition in the Intel Pentium 4 chipset market as Nvidia plans to begin marketing its SLI (Scalable Link Interface)-enabled core-logic chipset, codenamed C19, at the end of first quarter of next year, according to market sources. Nvidia has delivered samples of the C19 to its motherboard customers, and volume shipments will begin at the end of the first quarter, or early in the second quarter of 2005, the sources said. Read More [Digi Times]

Posted: December. 08, 2004 @ 12:07AM GMT +10 by erock

BitTorrent servers under attack

nknown attackers have downed file-sharing networks based on a common peer-to-peer technology, according to the administrator of LokiTorrent, one of the networks affected. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the BitTorrent infrastructure prevented some users from downloading files for up to 10 hours on Wednesday, said the administrator, who asked to be identified only by his online handle, "Lowkee." The target was the central BitTorrent directories, or trackers, which are used by people to find movies, music and other content on the file-swapping network, he said. "It maxed out our 100-megabit connection," Lowkee said Thursday in an online interview with CNET News.com. "I can't say how many systems were attacking, because our Web server took a dive at the time." Read more [CNET News]

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 06:52PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Samsung To Invest $24 Billion in New Chi

"Pre-emptive investment is critical to success in the chip industry," says Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-Hee, in a statement announcing the firm's intention to invest $24 billion in new chip production lines. The semiconductor industry should continue to serve as a key "growth engine" for the South Korean economy, Lee adds. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. , the world's largest memory chipmaker, said Monday it will invest 24 billion dollars in new chip production lines over the next six years. The plan was unveiled by Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-Hee at a meeting with Samsung Electronics executives to mark the firm's 30th anniversary in the semiconductor business. "Pre-emptive investment is critical to success in the chip industry," Lee said in a statement announcing the 25 trillion won (24 billion dollars) investment in semiconductor chip production lines. Read more [Newsfactor]

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 06:51PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Intel 915 Roundup:

Intel launched the new Pentium 4 Socket 775 processors and the 925X/915 chipsets to support them on June 19th. Since that time, the demand for the new Intel motherboards has been underwhelming, to say the least. The new Intel architecture launched many new technologies and features to the market. We explored these new features in the launch reviews: Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2 and Intel's 925X & LGA-775: Are Prescott 3.6 and PCI Express Graphics any Faster? The bigger issue, though, is that the Intel 925X/915 didn't also bring with them a compelling reason for users to embrace the new socket or the new features... Read more [AnandTech]

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 06:49PM GMT +10 by BenSW

IBM Set to Sell PC Business

IBM, the world’s No. 3 maker of PCs, and Lenovo, China’s largest maker of computers, are rumoured to announce the buy-out of IBM’s PC business unit along with appropriate brand-names for $1.5 billion in cash shares by the Chinese firm. The move will emphasize the tremendous strength Asia-based manufacturing firms gaining nowadays. According to various media reports, IBM is talking to Lenovo and at least one another company over buy-out of the PC unit, the division that invented the PC as we know it today some three decades ago. Among other potential buyers for IBM’s PC unit Acer and Samsung Electronics are mentioned in addition to US buy-out groups, such Bain Capital or Thomas H Lee Partners. Along with the PC business, the buyer is likely to get IBM’s famous “Think” brand and the rights to use “IBM” brand-name on at least certain products. Lenovo is reported as the most likely purchaser of the business. IBM has been pulling out of the PC business for some time now. In the late nineties the company ceased to sell its desktops in retail stores, in 2002 it announced huge PC outsourcing deal and spun off its storage division that was then acquired by Hitachi. Read more (XbitLabs)

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 12:40PM GMT +10 by BenSW

Athlon XP reaches end of its existence

DOCUMENTS SEEN by the INQ indicate that we are living through the last weeks of Athlon XP CPUs. Athlon XP served AMD exceptionally well but it's time to replace it with a new core. Athlon XP, after years of loyal marchitecture service has reached the end of its life and AMD will stop selling them in Q4 2004, the end of the month. The Sempron will replace Athlon XP CPUs and this has already started. As you might remember Sempron comes in two variations, socket A and socket 754. I guess that Athlon XP's won't vanish immediately as there will be some stocks left over here and there. The "Sempron" will take over the complete value segment and Athlon 64 will be the only alternative. I have to remind you that Athlon 64 will be a more expensive alternative anyway that will sit in mainstream market. So if you still want an Athlon XP I suggest to go out and buy one now while stocks last. Sempr0n stocks will probably last forever, a bit like the Durons did. Source: TheInquirer.net

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 11:07AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Catalyst 4.12 WHQL this week

The 4.12 drivers, the last set of official WHQL drivers for this year, will be released at some point this week. They'll pretty much be the same as the 4.12 Betas that were released shortly after the 4.11 WHQL release last month. Source: Rage3D

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 09:12AM GMT +10 by erock

Tuesday Morning Video Card Reviews

MSI Radeon 9800 Pro review by Frozenmod XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP review by GamePC eVGA GeForce 6600 GT PCIe review by Gamers-Depot ATi Radeon X850 XT PE PCIe review by HardOCP ATi Radeon X800 XT PCIe review by TheTechLounge

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 09:06AM GMT +10 by erock

ASUS Software Updates

ASUS Ai Booster 2.00.48 ASUS has released a new version of their Ai Booster overclock utility for Windows. You can download it right here. ASUS Liveupdate 6.02.01 A new version is available of the ASUS Liveupdate utility for Windows. This utility checks for new bios versions for your ASUS mainboard. Download Liveupdate 6.02.01 here Enjoy

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:50AM GMT +10 by BenSW

USB Mouserate Switcher v0.1

I just found this interesting tweak over at TCMagazine, its for your mouse. If your interested in boosting your mouses precision and accuracy, read on. Here are the instructions.. Only for Windows XP SP2 - English version! Support: Logitech MX series Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3 Razer Viper series Instructions: 1. Restart your computer and login to Safe Mode 2. Run the utility in SAFE MODE and follow the instructions (duh!) 3. Reboot Notes: *Use it in your own risk! it may damage your motherboard or usb devices!!! Download here

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:46AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Nvidia nTune

The NVIDIA nTune is the easiest, fastest, and safest performance optimization and monitoring application available for your PC. Incorporating more features than any other system tuning or monitoring product, NVIDIA nTune is the only performance tuning application designed exclusively for your NVIDIA nForce-based PC. Read more about it here.

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:39AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Epox goes for ATI graphic cards

THIS IS NOT the first time that we have talked about Epox graphic cards. At the beginning of this year we mentioned it here but at that time Epox was supposed to launch Nvidia cards. Just a bit later we managed to get a picture of an Epox card and to announce those cards for it here. Despite the plans, Epox dropped out of this graphic race as its cards were too expensive to compete with the other companies. Now Epox has decided to revive its graphic business and to enter with ATI based cards. I bet that it got a very generous offer from ATI. It presented two cards. The first is based on 9250 chip and it comes with unromantic Borgish A925-LD8 name. The second one is based on a faster 9550 chip and its named A955-LD8 You can check the details here and here. Those cards should be available soon and they are built by Epox. Source: TheInquirer

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:30AM GMT +10 by BenSW

AMD projects Jan Shock'n'Awe

ABOUT A WEEK AGO there were various laments about AMD missing a golden opportunity to shout its advantages from the rooftops. The problem is that while AMD is technically missing an opportunity, it is doing it purposely, keeping quiet so it doesn't ruin the big surprise(1) in January. If you have two dog and pony shows in a few months, you lose the impact of the second one. The whole thing started about a year and a half ago when IBM seemingly begrudgingly gave AMD the 'good' 90 nanometre process, and with a stroke of the pen made most of AMD's process problems go away. This meant reworking the plans and delaying the 90nm chips a Q or two. If you look closely at the record, you can see when AMD went from cautious to grinning widely when mentioning 90nm. That delay meant the first generation of 90nm chips, basically a dumb shrink of the current 130nm chips, were 'late', and came within months of the second generation, due to be announced in late January. Make no mistake, the 'dumb' 90nm chips are very good, and if AMD ever published the power figures accurately, something it is blindingly bad at doing, you would see how good the things really are. Read more

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:28AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Nvidia's Nforce 5 details

The Intel Nvidia chipset will support both 800 and 1066FSB for P4 Intel CPUs. It will support socket 775 CPUs based on Prescott, a new 2MB 600 core and future dual core Smithfield CPUs. The chipset already has support for Intel's 64 bit marchitecture. We suggest that it will come in two versions, as the chipset can support one and two memory channels. It supports DDR2 667 and DDR2 533 memory. It cannot support plain DDR one memory. As with the Nforce 4 chipset, the Nforce 5 will have 20 PCIe configurable lanes and if you use two graphic cards you will end up with eight lanes per card with four left for other connectors. Some of the designs being developed will have three to maximal four PCIe 1X lanes. MCP04 will have support for two IDE ports, 10 USB 2.0, 1Gbit LAN, four S-ATA II ports capable of Raid 5 and 7.1 Audio. We are not sure what kind of audio it will support yet, but I guess it will be either AC97 or Axalia. I would not count much on Sound Storm two but it's still possible that Nvidia will announce such a plan. Source: Theinquirer.net

Posted: December. 07, 2004 @ 07:27AM GMT +10 by BenSW

Monday Night Video Card Reviews

Asus Radeon X700 Pro PCIe review by Ati-News.de Video Card roundup by BeHardware nVidia GeForce 6600 review by AmdZone Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT AGP review by HardwareZone Sapphire Radeon 9550 review by Overclockers.co.nz

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

Windows XP Optimization Guide v1.8.2

Optimize Windows XP to improve both work and gaming performance safely. Windows XP's default configuration is far from optimized. This guide will help you improve your overall system performance. I avoid using or recommending "all-in-one" Windows XP Tweak programs since many blindly adjust settings that have no affect on performance and can cause future problems. This guide is designed to be performed top to bottom, in sequence since some steps are required to be performed before others. Before using this guide make sure your system meets Microsoft's Official: Windows XP System Requirements This guide is not designed to be used in combination with other Windows tweaking guides or other Windows tweaking software. It is also not designed to be used in parts. Check it out | Source: Warp2search

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 06:26PM GMT +10 by erock

FUTUREMARK Interview

3D Velocity had a few things they wanted to put to the guys at FUTUREMARK. Here's what they had to say... How can you ever hope to convince people that results from a synthetic benchmark are as valid as those from a "real" retail games title? The stock quote the keeps appearing is that "people play games, not benchmarks". Tero: While it is true that people play games and not benchmarks, it really does not mean that only games can be used as benchmarks! Both games and synthetic applications can be designed well or poorly to serve as a benchmark. You really have to determine these case by case. There are good game benchmarks and there are bad game benchmarks, similarly, there are good synthetic benchmarks and then there are bad synthetic benchmarks. Read More

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 09:04AM GMT +10 by erock

World of Warcraft Breaks Records

Blizzard Entertainment today confirmed that World of Warcraft has broken day-one sales records in North America, making it the most successful PC game launch ever. World of Warcraft, the company's subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), sold through to over 240,000 customers at retailers in North America on Tuesday, November 23. Read More @ nZone

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 08:59AM GMT +10 by erock

Asus SLI available soon

Theres a chance that Asus could be the first company to ship Nforce 4 SLI motherboards. It has to be careful as Gigabyte is right behind its back. Asus was happy to show of its A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard powered with two 6600 GT cards at one of the Japanese hardware stores, recently. Read more @ The Inquirer

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 08:55AM GMT +10 by erock

Have your say on Broadband

There is just one week left for you to take part in this year's Australian Broadband Survey. The survey is designed to capture your opinions on important issues like download limits, pricing, reliability of service and excess usage charges — there's absolutely none of those silly advertiser-driven questions to be found. We're going to use the results to build a picture of what the community thinks about broadband, what their experiences were, and what they want out of it in the future. The results of the survey will be released to all media organisations, so be sure to make your views heard — you have until next Sunday to participate! Thanks to Whirlpool for the article, head over there and make your views heard!

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 08:52AM GMT +10 by erock

VIA Vows to Bring More Advanced Audio

VIA Technologies announced licensing agreement with QSound under which the Taiwan-based chipset designer will be able to use audio capabilities developed by QSound in its VIA Vinyl Envy24 Audio Controllers. Under the agreement, VIA will bring together its Vinyl Audio Controllers with QSound’s audio enhancement technologies and audio-processing algorithms that delivers a ready to market solutions for VIA’s audio partners. The forthcoming audio solutions are expected to bring enhancements for games, music, and movies as well as advanced feature control that allows users to fully customize their audio experience. “We are very proud to be working with VIA, as we believe that this partnership will allow customers to truly experience the strengths of QSound’s audio technologies together with VIA’s acclaimed Audio Hardware portfolio,” commented David Gallagher, president, CEO, QSound Labs. Read more

Posted: December. 06, 2004 @ 07:19AM GMT +10 by BenSW

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