Video Card Reviews: Friday Late

Sapphire Radeon X850 XT-PE AGP review by Bjorn3D Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro review by PimpRig ASUS X800XL vs ASUS X850XT PE by TechConnect The Great and Last AGP Graphics Card Roundup - ATI vs. nVidia by TweakTown

Posted May. 27, 2005 @ 10:52PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Thursday: Video Card Reviews

Asus Radeon X800 XL review by HotHardware Chaintech GeForce 6800 review by LegionHardware Gigabyte Radeon X600 XT 128MB PCIe review by NGE

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 10:30PM GMT +10 by erock | top

BitTorrent Site Owners face charges

The battle escalated today as US federal law enforcement took down Elite Torrents, a tracker site that gained recent notoriety for making Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith available prior to the theatrical release. According to investigators, the movie was downloaded over 10,000 times by the site's over 133,000 members. Acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter was pleased with the action: Read More

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 10:28PM GMT +10 by erock | top

KOTOR 2 Review

nVnews reviews KOTOR 2 (Starwars: Knights of the old republic II) As an avid RPG fan, this game provided me with hours and hours of entertainment. I enjoyed almost every aspect of the game except the numerous cut scenes and inability to get some of my good items back from wandering party members.

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 10:24PM GMT +10 by erock | top

ATI talks Xbox 360 in London

ATI revealed this afternoon that every single Xbox 360 game will be required to run at a minimum of 720p resolution with 4x Anti-Aliasing. Speaking at a press conference in London, ATI technology specialist Rene Froeleke told journalists that Microsoft had specified that games must run at the 1280x720 resolution at 4xAA with no slowdown. Every single game will be supported at this graphical specification, which we think is great news for gamers playing on big-screen TVs. Read More at Bit-Tech

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 10:21PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Microsoft's J Allard on Xbox 360

If your an Xbox fan or console gamer in general there is a must see interview with Microsoft's J Allard on Eurogamer: Eurogamer: Why is it important for you to be first in the next generation when you could end up having less power than your competitors? J Allard: But we're talking about months! They [Sony] are buying the exact same sand as we are. They are! Believe me; I talk to every single person and company in the world that's making silicon. I know exactly what they're doing; they know exactly what we're doing. We're all buying from the same guys, right? I mean, we chose different partners on the graphics front but all three companies have the same partner on the CPU front. We have a price point to hit; they have a price point to hit, right? I mean, it's business. It's business. There's no special silicon that you can go and buy. You can decide how you want to tune your system, but what we really focused on was creating a balanced system, you know Read More

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 12:10AM GMT +10 by erock | top

IBM will unlock door to Cell

The three developers of the Cell processor are preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries in an effort to rally thesource community around the device that powers the Sony Playstation 3. With the outlook for the multicore chip's use beyond Sony's internal systems cloudy at best, the partners are hoping to spark its uptake in applications ranging from HDTVs to supercomputers. Read More @ EETimes

Posted May. 26, 2005 @ 12:02AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Nintendo Rev: Details end of 2005

Gamerfeed reports that according to a story by Reuters, Nintendo is planning on revealing the launch date, price and controller design for their next-generation game console by the end of 2005. Nintendo did not confirm when or where the details will be revealed.

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:55PM GMT +10 by erock | top

PS3: Not a games machine?

Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation, has gone on record as saying the PlayStation 3 "is not a game machine. We've never once called it a game machine." Instead, the focus of the console will be that of a home entertainment device, capable of SGI-based graphics and converging all electronic entertainment devices into one machine. Read More @ Gamespot | Source: Shacknews

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:51PM GMT +10 by erock | top

GF6800U 512mb Voltage Mod

VR-Zone volt mod a GeForce6800 ultra 512mb card.

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:37PM GMT +10 by erock | top

G70 beats R520?

Tim Sweeny, founder of Epic Games, maker of the Unreal and Unreal Tournament games confessed that he believes that G70 Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX is actually going to end up better than ATI's upcoming R520. More

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:36PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Unlocking the GeForce 6800

Earlier this month FiringSquad took a look at EVGA's e-GeForce 6800 graphics card. In the review, they gave the card high marks for its excellent price/performance ratio. But what if you could turn NVIDIA's 12-pixel pipeline, $200 GeForce 6800 into a 16-pixel pipeline/6 vertex unit card for free? In today's article, that's exactly what we did! See how the 16-pixel pipeline/ card performs as well as the 12-pipe GeForce 6800 with 6 vertex shaders. Is the card able to take down GeForce 6800 GT and RADEON X800 XL? Find out in this article!

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:35PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Athlon X2 ships 31 May?

The Register reports that AMD will formally launch its dual-core desktop processor, the Athlon 64 X2 - aka 'Toledo' - on 31 May, the company has said. The event - which takes place on the first day of this year's Computex show, in Taipei, Taiwan - will come five days after the launch of Intel's rival chip, the Pentium D, if speculation surrounding the chip giant's schedule proves correct. Read More

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:33PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Mass Confusion on NVIDIA G70

Last week some of the first good looking information on the G70 from NVIDIA was leaked. Now, this info pointed towards the G70 being a 110 nm part clocked at 430 MHz and it featured 24 pixel pipelines (six quads), and gave some other pertinent information. The materials leaked with the specs also made it look like it was legitimate. Now, I am just not so sure. Read more @ penstarsys

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:32PM GMT +10 by erock | top

AGEIA PhysX Physics Preview

AGEIA is attempting to break the mold of the PC gamer's box by adding a completely new card into the mix: a physics processor. With promises of fully interactive worlds and fluid dynamics unseen before, how can you go wrong? Check out the preview at PC Perspective.

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:26PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Wednesday: Video Card Reviews

Chaintech AE6800 Apogee by Legion Hardware Gigabyte X800 & X800XL by Hardcoreware ATI Radeon X850 XT PE 256MB PCI-Express by TheTechLounge Asus Extreme Radeon AX800XL/2DTV by HotHardware EVGA GeForce 6200 TurboCache 64MB PCI-Express by Techniz Sapphire Radeon X850 XT PE VIVO AGP by Bjorn3D Gigabyte GV-RX85X256V-B (RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition) by HardwareZone

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 11:09PM GMT +10 by erock | top

AusFX Official Merch

You can now get Offical AusFX Merch from our online store! Check it out here and look out for more items!

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 01:46AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Video Card Reviews: Tuesday

BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB PCIe review by FiringSquad PowerColor Radeon X700 review by PCStats

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 01:42AM GMT +10 by erock | top

BitTorrent to have search engine

BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen is working on a search engine that will index movies, music, software, and other files being traded over the popular peer-to-peer protocol. The web-based search engine will be supported by banner ads and sponsored links, and rank search results by both relevance and availability. Cohen may have to keep the search engine free of links to copyrighted content, though: Read More

Posted May. 25, 2005 @ 01:39AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Apple recalls notebook batteries - again

Apple has asked 128,000 notebook computer users to return their PowerBook or iBook batteries on the off-chance the components could overheat and catch fire. The recall, which covers all 12in and 15in PowerBooks, and 12in iBooks sold worldwide between October 2004 and May 2005, inclusive. The batteries in question are model numbers A1061, A1078 and A1079, with serial numbers HQ441 - HQ507, 3X446 - 3X509 and 3X446 - 3X510, respectively. You can view your battery's model and serial number by removing the cover and taking a peek. Full Story

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 11:24PM GMT +10 by [DBE]killer | top

E3 2005 Wrapup

GameArena has a wrapup of all the action at E3: The conference is wrapping up as the industry hordes slowly and sheepishly make their way home after leaving a swath of destruction across the whole planet. Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 09:07PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Playstation 3 Preview

The 3D Accelerated website has written up a preview of the playstation 3: Sony punched back, hard, at E3 with the unveiling of their next-gen console the Playstation 3. Today we'll take a look at the console and some of the features Sony hopes to offer.

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 09:01PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Xbox 360 compatibility explained

Following earlier indications that the Xbox 360 will only be backwards compatible with some Xbox games, Microsoft has attempted to clear up the issue by waffling on about chip architectures. And failed. Read More

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 08:56PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Unreal 2007 Interview

Beyond Unreal got a chance to have an interview with with Steve Polge, heres a snip: BeyondUnreal: We have seen some amazing footage of both the PS3 and XBoX360. Will UT2007 be available on these consoles as well as the PC? Steve Polge: We haven't announced any plans yet. Unreal Tournament's roots are at the PC games, and that's what we're focusing on right now.

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 05:49PM GMT +10 by erock | top

NVIDIA to introduce mobile SLI

NVIDIA is set to introduce SLI for laptops: The Mobile SLI won't be part of any thin and light notebook - it's of course for heavy desktop replacement machines. Nvidia launched Geforce Go 6800 Ultra cards together with Dell, and those machines are already available but SLI will push the boundaries a little further.

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 05:41PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Google's Home Page Gets Personal

Users will be able to view news, weather, and Gmail messages on the company's home page. The service allows visitors to Google's site to display content of their choosing below the query box on Google.com. Examples include headlines from The New York Times or the British Broadcasting Corp., stock quotes, weather information, and as many as nine incoming Gmail messages, says Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google. Currently available for preview at Google Labs, the personalized service allows visitors to include information from 12 different feeds on their view of the Google home page.... Full Story Source: PCWorld

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 01:41AM GMT +10 by [DBE]killer | top

Lonhorn by Christmas 2006

Microsoft Corp. assured computer-makers Monday that the next version of Windows is on track for release by the 2006 holiday season, after several years of delays. And Bill Gates himself conceded that he's impatient to see the company finish the new operating system, code-named Longhorn. "Whenever I see those demos, I just think, 'Gosh, let's get Longhorn done, ' " the Microsoft chairman said in a speech at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle. The company used the conference to demonstrate several of the underlying technologies and features planned for Longhorn, which the company initially scheduled for release in 2003...... Full Story

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 01:38AM GMT +10 by [DBE]killer | top

TDK Develops 100GB Blu-ray Disc

TDK has developed a prototype Blu-ray Disc that can store twice as much data, and record it at twice the speed, as existing Blu-ray Discs. The disc, unveiled at a TDK exhibition in Tokyo this week, can record data at 72 megabits per second, double the 36 mbps rate for current Blu-ray Discs. TDK increased the write speed by using a more powerful laser and making some changes to the material of the disc's recording layer, says Nobuyuki Koike, a spokesperson for TDK. Four Layers To achieve the higher capacity, TDK added two additional recording layers to the disc to take it up to four layers. Blu-ray Disc stores 25GB on each recording layer and the standard currently includes single layer and dual layer versions. Source: PCWorld.com

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 12:53AM GMT +10 by [DBE]killer | top

Video Card Reviews: Sunday

PowerColor Radeon X700 review by PCStats Gigabyte Radeon X800 review by RBMods Crucial Radeon X850 XT 256MB PCIe review by XtremeResources

Posted May. 23, 2005 @ 12:14AM GMT +10 by erock | top

ATI demos Xbox 360

ATI was happy to show the world the Xbox 360 rendering a cool demo of its Ruby. Ruby looks cool, but I don't think there is anything on that demo that R520 would not be able to do and I believe that Nvidia's Mermaid from Playstation 3 would surely work just fine of Geforce 7800 GFX aka. G70. We have a picture of the unit, but Ruby looks just fine on that machine and of course it's million times better than anything that Xbox one can render. There's no question about it. ATI is talking massively about this chip and we know it's R500 and that this beast has 10MB of EDRAM memory. This memory has 512Mbit interconnections with the core making it at least twice as fast as external memory. And 10MB is enough for HDTV picture isn't it? Read More at The Inquirer

Posted May. 22, 2005 @ 11:57PM GMT +10 by erock | top

G70 vs. R520?

At the end of the interview I popped "the" question. Straight and to the point. G70 vs R520. He actually had an answer too. And it was one of the two cards I just mentioned. Which card was it? Well.... you'll have to see the interview. Read More @ nVnews

Posted May. 22, 2005 @ 11:54PM GMT +10 by erock | top

AGEIA and PhysX cards

Representatives for AGEIA, a developer of the so-called physics processing units, at the E3 show disclosed official recommended pricing of the world’s first PhysX add-in cards that will be available late this year. With rising prices for powerful microprocessors and graphics cards as well as additional cost of physics processing unit, PC gaming seems to be becoming a rather expensive entertainment. Read More

Posted May. 22, 2005 @ 11:52PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Xbox 360 vs. PS3

Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems. There are three critical performance aspects of a console: - Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance. - The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell. - Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance - The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU. Memory System Bandwidth - The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3’s by five times. (Part 1 of 4) - (Part 2 of 4) - (Part 3 of 4) - (Part 4 of 4) Source: Warp2Search

Posted May. 21, 2005 @ 10:52PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Video Card Reviews: Saturday

PowerColor Radeon X850 XT-PE AGP review by Bjorn3D Sapphire Radeon X300SE HyperMemory review by Bjorn3D ATi Radeon X300 HyperMemory-32 review by DriverHeaven Sapphire Radeon X700 PCIe review by GDHardware Sapphire Radeon X850 XT-PE AGP review by HotHardware Gigabyte GeForce 6200 TurboForce vs TurboCache by LegionHardware ATi Radeon X800 XL review by Techreport nVidia GeForce 6200 TC review by TomsHardware

Posted May. 21, 2005 @ 10:45PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Interesting Forum Threads

There are a number of interesting threads going on in the AusFX forums at the moment... heres a couple. - Almost Exclusive Unreal 2007 Screenshots [PC] 56k Warning - A reality check on next-gen console power - GameBoy Micro - PLAYSTATION 3 PICS HERE !!! FIRST EVER - PS3 killzone 2 ingame video WOW!!! - NVIDIA GPU - Next-Gen Specs? - Renaming 6800 GT to 6800 Ultra? - Massive Hailstorm In Brisbane

Posted May. 20, 2005 @ 11:09PM GMT +10 by erock | top

E3 2005: Day 2 Game Impressions

Shacknews have written up their gaming impressions of day 2 at E3 2005. The List Gears of War (Xbox 360) StarCraft: Ghost (PS2, Xbox, GCN) Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360 Prey (PC, Xbox 360) Quake 4 (PC, Xbox 360) Mario Kart DS (NDS)

Posted May. 20, 2005 @ 10:38PM GMT +10 by erock | top

New Consoles Ruin PC Gaming

Code Reality has posted an article about there thoughts on Consoles ruining PC Gaming, heres a snip: As a PC gamer, the announcement, and subsequently the launch, of new consoles horrifies me. The sound of cash registers ka-chinging in the ears of PC game developers can be heard quite easily, and often. Console gaming has a much wider audience than PC gaming, with young kids having easy access to them compared to powerful PC’s. Thus the money-making possibilities are much easier and quicker for game developers in the console gaming market, compared to the PC gaming market. It’s easy to make a bad game, and get away with it on consoles, than it is for PC gaming. PC gamers tend to be less forgiving, and remember easily if a certain developer creates a bad title. This is a double-edged sword that we’ve had to live with for a long time. Our standards are higher, our demands are greater, but our appreciation carries over the years, and we tend to be more loyal. Read More

Posted May. 20, 2005 @ 10:26PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Inside the graphics - XBOX 360

We all know that the XBOX 360 features an ATI based graphics card, but what exactly are the specs? How is it structured? And how will it run? Read articles at HardOCP | TechReport and FiringSquad

Posted May. 20, 2005 @ 10:45AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Video Card Reviews: Friday

Gigabyte GeForce 6200 TurboForce vs TurboCache by LegionHardware Sapphire Hybrid RADEON X800 XL 512MB (PCIe) by HWZ Sapphire Radeon X800 256MB review by Tech-Mods Leadtek GeForce 6800 LE AGP review by Hardware-City Connect3D Radeon X800 XL PCIe review by CDRInfo Albatron GeForce 6600 GT review by AmdZone nVidia GeForce 6600-6600GT Video Card roundup by PCStats

Posted May. 20, 2005 @ 09:52AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Nintendo Revolution Article

ByteSector check out the Nintendo Revolution: Each generation of video game consoles builds on the past to set new standards for the future. As the company with the strongest heritage of innovation, Nintendo redefines expectations for all next-gen systems by employing a wide-ranging strategy to attract more kinds of gamers to more kinds of games. When Nintendo's new console, code-named Revolution, arrives in 2006, everyone will discover the meaning of All-Access Gaming.

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 08:12PM GMT +10 by erock | top

TurboCache in Next-Gen GPU

The graphics chip inside the PS3 is co-designed by Under the cross licensing agreement undertaken by NVIDIA and Sony, we expect NVIDIA's next high-end chip will utilise TurboCache technology in a similar manner to the Playstation 3. Read More @ BitTech

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 08:10PM GMT +10 by erock | top

E3 Photos: Day 1

Shacknews put up some photos from the action of Day 1 at E3

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 08:08PM GMT +10 by erock | top

E3 Impressions

IGN have posted there Impressions on new games shown at E3 thus far: Call of Duty 2, The Lord of the Rings Online, Hellgate: London, Prey, Star Wars: Empire at War, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Alan Wake, Dark Age of Camelot: Darkness Rising, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Battlefield 2, Shattered Union, Brothers In Arms: Earned With Blood and Civilizations IV.

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 07:43PM GMT +10 by erock | top

ATI demos R520 GPU at E3

Apparently ATI was showing Remedy's upcoming title Alan Wake on R520 silicon: We aren't expecting to see the official R520 launch until later this year and not at Computex, based on information we've been hearing from Taiwan. The fact that there is working R520 silicon at this point is important, as NVIDIA is sure to be talking quite a bit about their GF70 GPU at the show. Read More

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 12:30PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Possible Next Gen NVIDIA GPU Specs?

NVIDIA G70 Spec's 256-bit Memory Interface 38.4GB/sec mem bandwidth 10.32 billion pixels/sec fill rate 860 Vertices/sec (million) RAMDACS 400 Core clock- 430MHz Superscalar GPU architecture 64-bit floating point texture filtering and blending Intellisample 4.0 technology SM3.0 OGL 2.0 The product that has been leaked is the GeForce 7800 GTX. It is a 24 pixel pipeline design with 10 vertex shaders made on TSMC's 110 nm process. I had originally thought that the clockspeed would be around 450 MHz to 500 MHz, but for this SKU the clock is at 430 MHz. Now, note that this is the GTX, and not an Ultra branded product. Source: Warp2Search, nVnews

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 12:22PM GMT +10 by erock | top

ASUS EN6800Ultra Dual Preview

VR-Zone manage to get a sneak preview the upcoming ASUS EN6800Ultra Dual card that is going to be launched at Computex later this month. This card features two 6800Ultra GPUs on a single card and comes with 512MB GDDR3 memory onboard.

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 12:04PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Age of Empires III: Live Demo

Another big name game to be shown live at E3 2005. Check it out here.

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 12:01PM GMT +10 by erock | top

Battlefield 2: Live stage demo at E3

Check out the live demo of Battlefield 2, as seen from the GameSpot booth at E3 2005.

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 11:58AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Video Card Reviews: Thursday

ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon X800 XT review by Ascully Gainward GeForce 6800 GT AGP review by Cooling-Station Connect3D Radeon X800 XL 256MB review by GamerGod Sapphire Radeon X800 PCIe review by Skynet-Online Sapphire Radeon X800 XL PCIe review by Skynet-Online Sapphire Radeon X800 XL Ultimate Video Card review by TheTechZone ATi All-in-Wonder Radeon X600 Pro review by TrustedReviews

Posted May. 19, 2005 @ 11:54AM GMT +10 by erock | top

Quake 4 News

One of the big news items this evening is Quake 4. First up an interview IGN conducted with Tim Willits of id Software: QUAKE 4 Interview IGN: What kind of experience do you want the gamer to have when playing QUAKE 4? And how do you think these experiences will differ from gamers who have played DOOM 3 and QUAKE 3? Tim Willits: What we did with QUAKE 4 is to look at all the QUAKE titles, and we knew we wanted to create a compelling single and multiplayer game. We looked at the QUAKE 2 universe, and QUAKE 2 had the best single-player campaign. You know, it had the classic good versus evil plot, and it was easily our best selling game. We also wanted to make great a multiplayer game, and so we looked to QUAKE 3. Combining these experiences you're going to get the best QUAKE experience of them all wrapped up all in one. Check the full interview here Next up, the official trailer for Quake 4 has been release! This is a proper 2min long movie! Download it here And finally, Shacknews has some nice new screenshots for Quake4.

Posted May. 18, 2005 @ 09:02PM GMT +10 by erock | top

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