Get Involved In The Techgage Community

We at Techgage are proud to announce the addition of a site feature that makes it easier than ever to get involved in our growing community of knowledgeable PC enthusiasts: the "Latest Forum Posts" ticker. The ticker appears in the far-right column of every page of our site, beneath the "Site Search" feature. Now, it's more convenient to keep tabs on our forum than ever before! Simply click on a post heading to visit the thread and become part of the discussion.

Also, if you've got a knack for writing and are interested in contributing your talents to our site, check out the recruitment notice at the bottom of the About Us page.

Gateway Shifts Focus to Others to Sell Their Products

Gateway has been gaining momentum in the PC market for a while now, but despite that, they have decided to scrap their own personal online sales entirely in favor of allowing e-tailers and retailers to have all the fun. Their current retailer list includes Best Buy, Office Depot, NewEgg, CompUSA, Circuit City, Costco, Tiger Direct, HSN, OfficeMax and Wal-Mart.

The move is an interesting one, but it's apparent that many people didn't go to their site to ultimately purchase their products anyway. When I bought the XHD3000 a while back, I was forced to purchase it through Best Buy, due to their absolute lack of support in Canada. So it's no real surprise to me that their online sales presence is now gone.

On the other side of the coin, moving to this model may make more sense in the future as they are focusing 100% on that method of sales, which may entice other e-tailers and retailers to sign on board with their products. If recent notebooks and displays are anything to go by, then any retailer has a good reason to begin carrying their products, if not already.

"We believe that our retail and e-tail partners offer consumers the best, easiest and most effective way to purchase Gateway products," said Mark Hill, Acer Group U.S. General Manager. "Customers can rest assured that they will continue to get the award-winning products and outstanding technical support they’ve come to expect from Gateway for the last 23 years."

Source: Gateway Press Release

AMD Tops the SPECweb2005 Charts in Both 2P and 4P

It's no secret that in the past two years, AMD's processor line-ups have been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. But, their products are still undeniably high-performance parts, and they prove it once again today with new reports that they now hold two top spots on SPEC's web2005 benchmark.

SPEC is a company that produces advanced benchmarks for many various test types. web2005 is built around stressing a systems ability to handle common web server traffic, such as e-commerce, banking and support tickets. AMD now holds the top spot for both 2P and 4P systems, with their 2356 and 8356 Opteron processors, respectively.

The higher-end of the two is the 8356, found inside an HP ProLiant DL585 G5. The machine scored 43,854, beating the second-place system, using an Intel X7350, by 1,071 points. The jaw-dropping rig features 16 cores operating at 2.31GHz, 64GB DDR2-667 RAM and ran Linux, using the ext2 filesystem.

Demonstrating its superior ability to handle the strenuous and increasing demands placed on today’s high-traffic Web-based businesses, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that the power- and cost-efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor Model 2356 and Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor Model 8356 now hold the top x86 web performance records for both 2P and 4P servers, as measured by the SPECweb2005 benchmark.

Source: AMD Press Release

Steve Jobs Clears Health Issues with Reporter

In a conversation with New York Times' reporter Joe Nocera, Steve Jobs discussed his current health off-the-record. The issue of Jobs' health has been a troubling question for investors and speculators for the past few months over the concern that his rare form of pancreatic cancer may have returned, putting the company at possible risk.

Nocera admits in his post - though he is unable to give specific details - that Jobs' condition is more than a "common bug" that certain Apple spokespeople have used in their dismissals when questioned about the chairman's health, but it is not as serious as the pandemonium was making it out to be, and certainly not life-threatening.

Steve Jobs is said to have made the call when he was outraged about Nocera's comments that Steve's cancer may have resurfaced. He reiterated that his health was a private matter, and seems to be of the belief that he doesn't have a reason to disclose it. Though there is some debate whether or not exposing possible health issues will affect the company and its stock price, given Steve Jobs' role and influence, he does have some say to privacy.

After receiving multiple statements from Apple's press relations that simply echoed the company's official position that Jobs' health "is a private matter," the New York Times' Joe Nocera received a personal phone call from Steve Jobs that appears to have settled some of the doubts about his physical condition.

Source: AppleInsider

July 28th Tech Roundup

• ASUS P5QL-E - Overclockers Club

• Palit GeForce GTX 280 - Motherboards
• ASUS EN9800GTX TOP - HotHardware
• Sapphire HD4870 - t-break
• Sapphire Radeon HD4870 - Technic3D
• HIS Radeon HD3650 - Motherboards

• G.Skill F2-8800 Pi Series DDR2 CL5 4GB - techPowerUp
• Kingston DataTraveler BlackBox 2GB USB Drive - Overclockers Online
• Eagle Consus HHD Enclosure - APH Networks

• FatMat Sound Control - Mikhailtech
• Altec Lansing inEar Headphones - InsideHW
• Man & Machine UCool Keyboard - Man & Machine UCool Keyboard

• Nexus HOC-9000 CPU Cooler - Frostytech
• Zerotherm FZ120 CPU Cooler - DragonSteelMods
• Thermalright TRUE Black 120 CPU Cooler - Virtual-Hideout
• Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Paste - DragonSteelMods

• Lian-Li PC-V1010 - techPowerUp
• Thermaltake M9D - Rbmods
• vThermaltake Toughpower 1200W - Tweaknews
• NZXT Performance Power 800W - Pro-Clockers

• Antec Power Supply Givaway - Tech Lobby
• Modding Competition - PCApex
• Toshiba Satellite A300D-125 Notebook - InsideHW