Content and news by Rob Williams

Adobe conveniently released a Lightroom update a single day after I last checked, which brings the application to 1.3 status. Numerous aspects of the application have been improved, including faster performance, easier tabbing and more sensible scrolling. As this article points out though, the 1.3 update should have been what we saw when the application was first released.

According to a few reports around the web, some features are actually slower with the new update, and this doesn’t surprise me. For those who read our processor reviews, you know that I use Lightroom as part of our testing. In months past, I have found that 1.1 was the speediest of them all (for the export/resize process), however once 1.2 came out, the speed decreased about 10%. I haven’t tested 1.3 yet, but I am hoping the speed we saw in 1.1 returns.

Source: Adobe Systems

When a product goes on sale–even a version 1.0 that one might reasonably expect to be somewhat rough around the edges–a certain level of maturity is implied. In contrast, Adobe’s Lightroom approach has felt to me more like that of Google’s Gmail and Yahoo’s Flickr, whose Web sites were in widespread use for years even while their sponsors left “beta” tags affixed.

Source: CNET News.com

Mid-range displays keep on getting better and Samsung’s 2232GW is a great example of that. At 22″, it offers a 1680×1050 resolution, 2ms response and a 3000:1 contrast ratio and one of the sharpest images we’ve seen in a while.

On the desktop PC side of things, it’s not much of a surprise to see a new GPU be unveiled that totally blows away its predecessor at least once or twice a year. The notebook market is slightly different though, since we’ve seen NVIDIA’s Go 7950GTX hold the top position in terms of performance for the past two years. According to a new article at HotHardware, NVIDIA is finally releasing a proper successor – one that delivers both high-performance with DX10-support.

Although all of the benchmarks were NVIDIA-provided, the new 8800M GTX looks to surpass two 7950 GTXs in SLI mode. Compared to that setup, the 8800M GTX improved on 3D Mark 06 scores by 7.5% and when compared to a single 8700M GT, the 8800M GTX improved on a FEAR run by a huge 240%. More impressive is that the machine with the 8700M GT had a faster processor, which FEAR tends to love. If performance matches up all around once these hit the market, DTR fans are going to be pleased. Very pleased.

Source: NVIDIA

Another piece of good news is that notebooks equipped with GeForce 8800M series graphics cards will be shipping very soon. In fact, several manufacturers begin shipping 8800M equipped notebooks today in both single-card and SLI configurations. The GeForce 8800M GTX and GTS certainly cleaned house in NVIDIA’s benchmarks, but just imagine what a pair of these could do when configured in SLI.

Source: HotHardware

Apologies all around for not being able to post this yesterday (when it was actually news). For those sleeping under a rock (and thank you, since this news post is not for naught), AMD released their Phenom processors yesterday, after months and months… and months of waiting. It would be great to be able to report that the wait was well worth it, but AMD was unable to churn out a Phenom-enal processor this time around.

Anand took a hard look at the new processor and found that clock-for-clock, Phenom was about 15% slower on average over Intel’s Core 2 series. Performance aside though, could AMD make up for the performance loss with some competitive pricing? They could, but apparently that will not be the case until early next year. However, despite being slower than Intel’s current line-up, and despite Phenom being more power-hungry, and despite a late arrival, it’s finally good to see something out of the AMD camp. It’s just too bad it didn’t sweep us off of our feet like we hoped.

Source: Anand Lal Shimpi

To make the CPU more attractive AMD desperately needs to drop the price, and from what we’ve heard, that will happen in Q1. From what we’ve seen, AMD needs to be at least 200MHz ahead of Intel in order to remain competitive – that means bringing out a Phenom 9900 that’s cheaper than the Q6600, at least. If AMD can do that, it’s quite possible that in early 2008 we’ll have the first sub-$200 quad-core part as the 9500 drops in price.

Source: AnandTech

We took a look at Intel’s first 45nm desktop offering a few weeks ago and already have a preview of it’s successor. The QX9770 is equipped with a 3.2GHz frequency and is the first Intel CPU to support a 1600MHz Front-Side-Bus. Read on to see how it compares to the rest of our fleet.

I’ve often made known my thoughts on copy protection and the inconveniences of, but I feel compelled once again to step up and ask, what the heck? Specifically, when will companies learn that copy protection only inconveniences legal customers? One could argue that game crackers themselves are also inconvenienced, but I am willing to take the chance of assuming that the state of euphoria after successfully cracking a game well makes up for all of the hassle.

Last weekend, before Crytek’s masterpiece Crysis was released, a friend told me that he found the game uploaded on a variety of torrent tracking websites. I quickly scoured a few myself, and found that to be the case as well. I have no interest in downloading pirated games (I paid my hard-earned $49.99CAD the day of release), but it’s interesting to see the state of things. The fact: Crysis was fully cracked near a full week prior to the official launch.

SecuROM is designed to verify that the actual game CD is inserted into the drive. This flawed design attempts to void backup discs as well as the ability to play if you do not have a disc at all. The problem with this is that game crackers already have the knowledge they need to reverse engineer the game client. SecuROM does not change drastically between versions, but that’s almost besides the point. Crackers don’t crack SecuROM itself, but rather insert their own code into the client in order to bypass protections. Regarding inconvenience though, SecuROM is one of the more tame copy protections out there, although it did cause a lot of problems for BioShock players when that title was first released.

I am a firm believer that if a person purchases a product, they should not have to put up with protections that are installed to protect the game from piracy. If you purchase a game, you’ve supported it. Why do you need to put up with the bloat? Considering the fact that the game was cracked a full week prior to official release, isn’t it about time to drop this foolishness? I’m all for protecting content, but it’s obvious that copy protection is not working. Do the game publishers care? Nein. This is why we will likely not see an end to an instrusive form of copy protection for quite some time.

Since AGEIA first stepped onto the scene, we’ve obsessively covered every move they’ve made in hopes that they would finally leave their mark on the gaming landscape with their physics processor. To date, that has not yet happened, but things are looking good for the near-future. Following the recent acquisition of Havok by Intel, AGEIA know that they need to push harder than ever to get into developers code.

The APEX platform is designed to help them achieve that goal. APEX consists of three components that give developers total control over the scalability of PhysX capabilities in their games, regardless of platform. At current time, APEX is included as a standard feature with Unreal Engine III, but is currently unavailable in other engines at this time. In the future, AGEIA have plans to market APEX separately, likely to be bundled with the PhysX source code, which can all be added to an engine of the developers choice. Whether this will help AGEIA is yet to be seen, but I’m fairly certain it won’t hurt.

Santa Clara, Calif. – November 15, 2007- AGEIA(TM) Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced the introduction of the AGEIA Adaptive Physics EXtensions(TM) (APEX(TM)) Development Platform. AGEIA APEX provides game designers, developers and modders with a series of PhysX asset libraries and tools which help streamline the implementation of best-in-class in-game physics.

Source: AGEIA Press Release

When BMW made the announcement a few months ago saying that they were bringing their 1-Series to North American shores, there were mixed reactions. BMW fans overall were impressed and excited, while the rest thought the car was uglier than your first blind date. Who cares though, with a freaking 300HP (0-60, 5.3s) under the hood? Well, despite the critics, the cars smaller frame and youthful design did a great job of invoking immediate desire to tear up the road while behind the wheel.

The deal-breaker of course, would be the pricing. With the 3-Series Coupe starting out at $35,000, how low could it possibly go for the 1xxi? After all, BMW is not going to sacrifice their quality-associated name (Porsche Cayenne anyone?) to bring a few new customers on board. Well, that information is now known: $29,375 and $35,675, for the 128i and 135i, respectively. Not exactly the poor-mans Bimmer after all. Add on your options and the 135i would cost at least $45K including taxes and delivery. At that point, you might as well splurge another $5K and get a slightly more feature-rich and larger 335i Coupe…

Source: BMW

The small coupe made its North American debut at the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show this week. It will be sold in 3.0-liter inline-6 form as the 128i, making 230 horsepower, and – with a twin-turbo 3.0-liter six that makes 300 hp – as the 135i. The 128i will cost $29,375, while the 135i will be priced at $35,675. It’s “Year One of the One,” BMW says, claiming that the 1 Series coupe “will reinvent the niche that the legendary BMW 2002 created.” The company’s microsite offers prospective buyers an opportunity to sign up for the chance to pre-order.

Source: Inside Line

In an effort to fill the mid-range void in their line-up, AMD today announced their latest HD 3800 GPU cards. Recent launches haven’t been that great to either AMD or their ATI division, but that changes today as the HD 3870 is a surprisingly solid offering. Although it falls slightly behind NVIDIA’s 8800GT performance-wise, the HD 3870 costs $50 less.

Our friends at the Tech Report have taken a hard look at both new GPUs and found them to be a worthy revamp of the R600 architecture. Although performance was not vastly improved over the 2900 series, the power usage was. Their HD 3870 cut over 100W off the entire power draw… incredible. It shows how inefficient the previous 2900 cards were. You can read Scott’s review here and the full press release below.

Source: The Tech Report

Source: AMD Press Release

To be a professional gamer, you need to have the right equipment. Well, it’s more likely the fact that you need more than half of your life worth of free time for practice, but that’s besides the point. SteelSeries is a company which promise to deliver what pro-gamers want, while telling the world what other companies are doing wrong. Is it safe to assume that SteelSeries does no wrong, then? We will have to reserve judgement until we have their gaming peripherals in our labs.

The 7G “Professional Gaming” keyboard is comprised of high-quality components and long-life promises that gamers are after. What do you get for your hard-earned dollar? 18K gold mechanical switches, for one, and also an enhanced PS/2 buffer-system that allows the highest possible actions-per-minute. While some keyboards crap out when you push four or five keys at once, the 7G is supposedly able to handle all of the keys being pushed down at once. I am not sure I’d want to see the result of doing that, though! The 7G will be available next month for $149.99 (MSRP).

The combination of the powerful PS/2 buffer-system and 18K gold-plated mechanical switches, means that the SteelSeries 7G offers more Actions-Per-Minute than any other keyboard in the world. The keyboard was built specifically to offer gaming grade response times as well as an unmatched durability with a switch lifetime of 50 million operations.

Source: SteelSeries Press Release

While purchasing some music at popular Canadian music retailer Music World earlier, I was told that all sales were final due to the companies plans to go out of business. The exact date is not known, but it should be between Dec 31 and the first week of January. Music World has 72 stores across Canada, falling just behind HMVs 126.

Reasons cited for closing were simple: “Wal-Mart”. That’s an easy answer, however, as the bigger problem could be that music sales have been declining at an alarming rate in Canada for the past decade. A Reuters article published earlier this year noted a 35% drop in hard-copy music sales in the first quarter, compared to Q1 of 2006.

The rapid decline doesn’t look to be slowing down, and with a 72-store outlet closing shop, it’s not too reassuring on the state of things. The good news in all of this, if any, is that HMV will be gaining all of Music Worlds customers, which will better help them keep strong, although their stability is greater to begin with due to a much larger backing and loyal customer base.

Due to the closing, it’s to be expected that “fire sales” will occur before the final light switch is flicked off, so if you are a music fan, you may want to keep an eye out at your local store the second half of December.

Intel announced to much fanfare on Sunday that their 45nm processors have been launched, but at this point only very few e-tailers have them in stock. There have been no known shortage issues (and there shouldn’t be given the amount of prep time), so it should be just a matter of days before all e-tailers have them in stock.

If you still don’t know what the QX9650 is and why it’s great, then you need to check out our review which has all of the information you will need. Included is better efficiency and oh so desirable video encoding enhancements, not to mention the introduction to 45nm.

After some investigation, I only managed to find two websites that currently have them in stock, Tiger Direct (of all places) and also ClubIT:

• ClubIT – $1,159.99 (USD)
• Tiger Direct – $1,149.99 (USD)

Most websites don’t have a listing for the new CPU yet, but those that do are listing them as out of stock including Buy.com, Directron and Canadian e-tailer NCIX. Despite being such a massive e-tailer, NewEgg does not list the CPU at all. This will hopefully all change by the end of the week.

Ignoring all the downfalls of the Internet, its proven to be a valuable resource more than anything, becoming the preferred method for gaining information. As Internet usage grows, magazine circulations dwindle. According to a quote from the NY Times, PC Gamer had a circulation of 300,000 in 2003, but has since dropped to 200,000. Future US, its publisher, also noted a 10.4% revenue drop for all of their magazines between 2005 to 2006. Things are not exactly dire, but dropping numbers are hard to ignore.

I personally subscribe to eight different magazines, four of them being gaming-specific. I personally enjoy kicking back and reading well-written editorials and articles instead of being hunched around a bright computer screen all of the time. Not to mention it makes great bathroom material! (For reading!!) I’d hate to see magazines reach a point where they are cancelled in far greater numbers. Remember Tips & Tricks? Next Generation? Computer and Video Games? Atari User?

To keep print subscribers, Ziff Davis aims to offer better writing and reporting than is available from competitors’ Web sites, as well as striking visuals. Ziff Davis is also embracing the financial power of the special issue: a September issue that came out before the release of the blockbuster game Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft included a 19-page feature section.

Source: New York Times

When it comes to LCD displays, 30-inch models are a serious object of desire. Those who have them, love them. Those who don’t, want to kill those who do. Their sheer size is what sells most people, but the massive resolution is the biggest advantage. You can fit a lot of “work” inside 4.1 million pixels. One of the biggest players in the 30-inch realm have been Dell. Although their 3007WFP-HC offers good image quality and color, when I reviewed it last week, I found it to be lacking with regards to connectivity. But who can blame me? It has nothing!

According to the Inq, that’s going to change when Dell releases their 3008WFP, another 30-inch LCD that offers similar specs to current models. Where it’s different is with the connections. Instead of a single dual-link DVI port, the 3008WFP offers dual DVI-Ds, HDMI, VGA, Component, S-Video and even DisplayPort, a connection that’s superior to both HDMI and DVI, but is still only catching on. Actual display specifications are not mentioned, but if the brightness is kept up to par (400 cd/m2), then this might be -the- killer monitor to buy. I still can’t help but continue to eye Gateway’s offering though.

With 3008WFP, new benchmark will be set. This monitor comes with two dual-link DVI connectors, thus hardware testers will be able to hook up two testbeds via DVI, and one testbed via analogue D-SUB connection. This is only the beginning, since this baby also comes with Component, S-VHS, Composite in, USB upstream connector (for 4-port USB hub and 9-in-2 card reader). This normal (for 2405/2407/2707 monitors) is expanded with both Displayport and HDMI connectors.

Source: The Inquirer

It didn’t take long for PC boutiques to pick up on Intel’s latest 45nm processor, as both Alienware and recently acquired Hypersonic each have systems available. OCZs latest child is going all out, with a system that consists of Intel’s QX9650, 2GB of high-speed DDR3 RAM, ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi motherboard, 2x 8800 Ultras, 1000W Enermax PSU, 150GB (?!) Western Digital 10K RPM drive, among a slew of other components and peripherals. The base system is $5,649.00, but all individual parts can of course be upgraded if there are upgrades available.

Alienware is offering a similar system, although they don’t disclose the names of many of the components they use, only their specs. Of great interest though is the fact that their base system consists of two ATI Radeon HD 3870s in Crossfire mode – a GPU that is not even officially announced yet, but will be later this week.

Sunnyvale, Calif.,-November 12, 2007-OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, PC components, and system builds, today announced Hypersonic PC, the System Division of the Group, will be one of the first to offer Intel’s new high-end desktop processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 quad core. The exciting new CPU will be featured in the renowned Sonic Boom OCX series to deliver a state-of-the-art solution for the most hardcore gamers and media enthusiasts.

Source: Hypersonic PC

First they broke it off with iTunes and then they kicked YouTube to the curb. Now though, NBC have made progress on something that might actually benefit you… free shows! Although it’s been known about for a while, NBC Direct has just launched with a fair amount of shows available for download and also for online streaming.

At this time, only the current seasons worth of shows are included, and from what it appears, not everything has made it on the site. Not everything is downloadable either, and no, you cannot copy the video to any computer you please. If there are huge downsides right now, it would be a few browser incompatibilities and the absolute lack of service for those who reside outside of the USA.

As of right now, only shows from the current season are available to watch and there aren’t that many to choose from if you want to download a full episode to your computer. Shows available for download include the previous episodes of Bionic Woman, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and The Office and even more are available for online viewing but not download. It’s almost certain that further selections will be added in the future.

Source: Tech Blorge

Blockbuster made huge news in June with their announcement of Blu-ray exclusivity and at that time, many jumped on the “death to HD-DVD” bandwagon. But look at how fast things can change in just a few months. Sony was riding high, but Toshiba’s wits helped them become serious competition again. As a result, Sony is really feeling the heat and the CEO has gone as far as to call the entire situation a “stalemate”.

There’s no denying that the primary victims in the entire situation are the consumers themselves, so it’s foolish that two companies are just dancing around with each other while nothing really gets accomplished. Although HD-DVD and Blu-ray players are in many homes, it still pales in comparison to the amount of people who are sitting back, waiting for the entire “war” to end, before deciding on which side to take. Sadly, that doesn’t look to end, anytime soon.

“It’s a difficult fight,” Stringer was quoted saying by the Associated Press, going so far as to describe the situation as a “stalemate.” He candidly indicated that the war mostly came down to bragging rights over who was winning, and said that the two camps could have collaborated better in the past to develop one format. Stringer even said that he wished he could go back in time to make that possible-is that the smell of regret floating in the air?

Source: Ars Technica

The past few months have been great to gaming, and it looks to be getting a whole lot better… now. Both Super Mario Galaxy and Crysis are due out this week, and both titles have been receiving incredible reviews from websites and publications. PC Gamer went as far to award Crysis a staggering 98% despite a few minor flaws, while IGN awarded Galaxy a 97%.

Always being the pessimist, I have to believe that some websites and publications are way to lenient in their score giving. When’s the last time you played a game that you truly believed earned itself a 98%? But besides that, both of these games actually do look stellar. I haven’t turned on my Wii since January, but Galaxy is looking to be the first reason to dust it off. Are game developers finally realizing that they need to be innovative in order to keep our attention? Let’s hope so.

With these games and Unreal Tournament III, NFS: Pro Street, Assassin’s Creed, Rock Band also coming out this month… how is a guy to get work done?!

Super Mario Sunshine did absolutely nothing for me…hell, I didn’t even play it until a year and a half ago. I guess I was positive after several sequels that nothing could come close to the perfection of Super Mario Bros. 3. Well I am happy to report that I was completely wrong. While it doesn’t surpass what I still consider the masterpiece of the Mario world, Super Mario Galaxy is the best Mario title since the introduction of the Tanooki suit.

Source: Kotaku

Ahead of schedule, Intel issued a release yesterday afternoon announcing the launch of their 45nm processors… all sixteen. For the desktop/enthusiast segment, the lone initial model is the QX9650 Quad-Core, which we put to the test just two weeks ago. Penryn/45nm brings higher power efficiency with the help of the new High-K transistors, higher cache and front-side bus and also the introduction of the SSE4 instruction set, targeting video encoding.

The QX9650 is available for $999 in quantities of 1,000. On the server side, consumers have the choice of twelve different models right now, with dual-cores to be available next month. On the high-end, the Xeon X5482 offers a 3.20GHz frequency with a healthy 150W TDP, while the low-end sees a 2.0GHz 80W model. Pricing for Xeon Quad-Cores ranges between $209 and $1279.

Of great interest is the fact that five models utilize a 1600MHz FSB, proving that Intel is looking to make that the new standard as soon as possible. We began seeing 1333MHz FSB processors this past summer, so it took no time to see a push for an even higher frequency. The desktop will not see processors with a 1600MHz FSB until early 2008, with the launch of the QX9770 and QX9775 (Skulltrail) models.

At the time of writing, no American or Canadian e-tailer I checked had any of these processors available. Intel is announcing immediate availability, so they should begin popping up at your favorite e-tailer in the coming days.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 11, 2007 – Built using an entirely new transistor formula that alleviates the wasteful electricity leaks that threaten the pace of future computer innovation, Intel Corporation today unveiled 16 server and high-end PC processors. In addition to increasing computer performance and saving energy use, these processors also eliminate eco-unfriendly lead and, in 2008, halogen materials.

Source: Intel Press Release

The PlayStation 3 has finally had it’s firmware updated to 2.0 and as you’d imagine, there are a slew of improvements and feature updates. Most notable for me are themes, one feature that I’ve loved on my PSP since it’s 3.70 firmware was released. However here, more than one theme is included, such as Nature and Pixels. The new update also improves media support, revamped remote play and even the ability to turn on your console via its WiFi connection.

Other notables include the ability to watch a video before it’s fully downloaded, DualShock 3 gamepad support (for when they hit NA early next year) and a new information board that is just as it sounds… an information board. Very worthy firmware update though, so go on and grab it!

As first seen in the 1.94 firmware update, which was included with the game Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, today’s firmware update also has support for force-feedback controllers. The PS3 appears unable to distinguish between a SIXAXIS and DualShock 3 controller, so those curious may press the PS button on any PS3 controller to view the new vibration toggle option.

Source: DailyTech