Content and news by Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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Rob's Recent Content

AMD Delivers New Communications Solution For Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team at The Tour De France

In its capacity as the Official Technology Partner of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, AMD collaborated with additional technology solution providers to deliver a new team communications system that delivers improved range, clarity, reliability and ruggedness. These new custom designed systems – using Alinco DJ C5 components – enable the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team’s riders and directors to communicate more effectively than the off-the-shelf solutions used by most other professional cycling teams competing in the Tour de France.

You can read the full press release here.

Published on July 14, 2006

OCZ Technology Announces the PC2-7200 Special Ops Edition

Sunnyvale, CA—July 13, 2006—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the PC2-7200 DDR2 Special Ops Edition. The new DDR2-900 SOE is part of the limited edition Special Ops series which is a line of memory that caters to the needs of gamers and features a unique camouflage motif XTC heatspreader.

Finally, a performance part with these spreaders! You can read the full release right here.

Published on July 14, 2006

Hardware Roundup for July 14

    Cases & Enclosures
  • Thermaltake SilverRiver 2.5 Laptop Hard Drive Enclosure – The Tech Zone
  • Ultra MicroFly Micro Case – 3D Gameman
    Memory & Storage
  • G.Skill DDR500 F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ 2x1GB – Overclockers Club
  • Seagate 2006 Technology Briefing – Rojak Pot
  • Thecus N5200 NAS Appliance – Hexus
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 35w and X2 4600+ 65w – AMDZone
  • Biostar TForce 6100 – OCIA
  • ECS KA3-MVP Extreme – Motherboards.org
Published on July 14, 2006

OCZ 2GB PC2-8000 Titanium Alpha VX2

The highly anticipated return of Voltage Extreme memory from OCZ is finally here. The latest revision rolls in with DDR2-1000 speeds and a very tight 4-4-4-15 timing set. They are not called Voltage Extreme for nothing though. Let’s see how far these can be pushed..

Published on July 14, 2006

IBM Says It’s Lucky to Get 10% to 20% Yields on Cell Processor

With a chip like the Cell processor, you’re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent. If you put logic redundancy on it, you can double that.” According to Reeves, Sony will be using Cell processors whether they have all cores functional or not. Reeves says that the PlayStation 3 requires at least seven of the eight cores operational.

Things are looking worse for the PS3 as each day passes. Really, with such low yeilds, you have to wonder if there will be even deeper routed problems discovered in the future.

Published on July 13, 2006

60% of XBOX 360 Gamers Use XBOX Live

According to the latest statistics, 60% of XBOX 360 users are using XBOX Live. That is a dramatic increase from the 10% attach rate with the original XBOX console. Of the 60% that are on XBOX Live, 75% use the XBOX Live Marketplace where over 30 million downloads have taken place. 65% of connected users visit the XBOX Live Arcade where more than 5 million games have been downloaded.

This is not really THAT much of a surprise. It’s a great service that just keeps getting better as time goes by, in my opinion. Hopefully it will keep up that way.

Published on July 13, 2006

AMD Begins First Revenue Shipments of AMD64 Products Manufactured At Chartered

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA AND SINGAPORE – July 13, 2006— AMD (NYSE:
AMD) announced that in June it began its first revenue shipments of
AMD64 processors manufactured at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing
in Singapore. AMD and Chartered ramped 300mm production at Fab 7 in
record time, hitting all major milestones and starting production at
mature yields. Initial shipments out of Chartered consisted of
microprocessors manufactured on 90nm process technology. The ramp of
volume production at Chartered combined with recent announcements in
Dresden shows that AMD will have the ability to intelligently scale and
flex production in line with customer demand.

You can read the full press release here.

Published on July 13, 2006

Hardware Roundup for July 13

    Cases & Enclosures
  • SilverStone Lascala LC20M – Phoronix
  • Vizo LUX-350SA-BK – MadBoxPC (Spanish)
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • ECS 945G-M3 – GamePyre
    Etcetera, Complete Systems & Contests
  • Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 – Digital Trends
Published on July 13, 2006

New Research Promises 50TB on DVD-size Discs

The next generation of high density storage media may come from the most unlikely of places. According to professor V Renugopalakrishnan of Harvard’s Medical School in Boston, the research he and his team are working on promises storage capacities of up to 50TB (50,000GB) on a disc the same size as a conventional DVD.

This is absolutely amazing, no doubt about it. The future looks good in terms of storage though. We may end up at a time where we will never have to worry about a new HDD upgrade again.

Published on July 12, 2006

Microsoft to Release 80’s Games for XBOX 360

Microsoft announced today that due to the popularity of its downloading service for the XBOX 360, it will release one game from the 1980’s era every Wednesday for the next five weeks. Available for subscribers through XBOX Live Arcade, the games will be updated versions of classic arcade games such as Pac-Man and Frogger. The going price will range from $5 to $15 per game.

I have downloaded Frogger, and it seems quite good so far. I am upset that Contra is no longer listed, but at least Street Fighter is on the way.

Published on July 12, 2006

Hardware Roundup for July 12

    Cooling
  • Vapochill Lightspeed Dress-up Kit – BurnoutPC
    Memory & Storage
  • OCZ Technology PC3200 DDR Special Ops Edition 2048MB Kit – Big Bruin
  • Super Talent’s 2.5″ IDE Flash hard drive – Tech Report
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • abit KN9 SLI – nForce 570 SLI – Hexus
  • AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (AM2) Overclocking Performance – TechSpot
    Etcetera, Complete Systems & Contests
  • Apple iMac Core Duo 17-inch – Digital Trends
  • Latest Turion X2 Notebook from Acer – AMD Board
  • Ubuntu 6.06 LTS – ASE Labs
  • Ultra Power Supply Tester – 3D Gameman
Published on July 12, 2006

Thermalright HR-01-K8 CPU Cooler

In the prospect of building a quiet PC, cooling the CPU can prove to be a problem. To take care of this ‘tall’ order, Thermalright brings us the HR-01. This passive cooler requires no fan at all to operate. If overclocking suits your fancy, they even offer a duct!

Published on July 12, 2006

More AMD 65nm Updates

Athlon 64 X2 and Sempron processors will be getting 65nm Fab process treatments. Single-core AMD Athlon products will remain on a 90nm Fab process with no foreseeable 65nm future. With the new 65nm Fab process AMD will be able to increase frequency increases of 100MHz increments unlike the 200MHz increments of current products. This will be interesting as AMD can theoretically abandon all 2x1MB parts in favor of 2x512KB parts with 100MHz frequency differences.

Everything seems fine, except for these 100MHz increments. Are we going to be seeing ‘more’ processor models, because of the extra freedom? I think it would pay off to keep things simple, really.

Published on July 11, 2006

Intel Lays Down Path for 32-Core Processors

Recent reports suggest that Intel is working on research for 32-core CPUs by 2010. The new processor will contain a total of 24MB of last-level LL cache split among processor nodes. The CPU is anticipated to contain eight processor nodes with four cores per node and 3MB of LL cache to each node. Intel says that BBUL packaging method (which was actually announced back in 2001) will be just as crucial to attaining these specifications as is reducing transistor size.

Unless they make huge strides in production, this is going to be one large CPU. I guess this begs the question though.. which games will support it? :)

Published on July 11, 2006

95 AMD End-of-Life Products

DailyTech previously reported AMD’s end-of-life dates for remaining Socket 939 and 754 products. It appears AMD has released a few more PCNs with updates on mobile and server end-of-life (EOL), which includes single-core Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Sempron, Turion and Opteron products. This brings the total number of EOL’ed products this quarter to 95.

Not that this will affect much, it’s interesting to see which have been EOL’ed. AMD is -really- starting to push AM2.

Published on July 11, 2006

End of Win 98 Support May Boost Desktop Linux

Microsoft kills off support for Windows 98 and Windows ME today, and ZDNet is reporting that the move will boost demand for Linux on the desktop. Unlike two years ago when support for Win98 was extended because Linux was seen as a serious competitor this time it seems there is no turning back.

Somehow I doubt that this will boost Linux use, unless it’s for a business.. maybe. It’s not like people are not allowed to use the OS anymore.. there’s just no more support.

Published on July 11, 2006

OCZ Technology Announces their Highly-Anticipated New Tempest CPU Cooler

Sunnyvale, CA—July 10, 2006—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the anticipated release of the OCZ Tempest, the pinnacle of air and heat pipe CPU cooling technology. A perpetual commitment to the enthusiast community and previous experience in advanced cooling led to OCZ’s unveiling of the Tempest. The Tempest implements a state-of-the-art design to address the demanding cooling requirements of gamers and enthusiasts.

You can read the full release here.

Published on July 11, 2006

Hardware Roundup for July 11

    Cases & Enclosures
  • Thermaltake Kandalf LCS – Technic3D
    Cooling
  • Cooler Master Hyper L3 Socket 775 CPU Cooler – PC Apex
  • Enermax Marathon Enlobal – Phoronix
  • Zalman VF700-AlCu VGA Heatsink – FrostyTech
  • Zalman ZM-STG1 Super Thermal Grease – Big Bruin
    Memory & Storage
  • G.Skill 2x 512MB PC3200 – OC Inside
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • Conroe nForce Chat – Thursday, 7-13-2006 – Bjorn 3D
  • nForce 4 590/570 SLI Intel Family Preview – Motherboards.org
    Video Cards & Monitor
  • World’s first pics of Vista D3D10 hardware? – Hexus
Published on July 11, 2006

PC: Prey

You are Tommy, a native American set out to save your girlfriend and more importantly, the entire world. It is not going to be easy.. as long as the Keeper is around.

Published on July 11, 2006

OCZ GameXStream 700W

Have a beefy system that requires a large PSU, but don’t want to suffer with an ugly unit? OCZ recently released their GameXStream series which are designed with gamers specifically in mind, and promise to deliver “XStream” performance.

Published on July 11, 2006

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