Content and news by Rob Williams

AGEIA is a company with huge ideas. They plan to make our gaming experiences much more immersive with their PhysX add-in card. We sit down and chat with Andy Keane to answer some burning questions.

The reference Geforce 7800GTX core is clocked at 430 MHz and the memory is clocked 1200 MHz. The Gainward 7800GTX Golden Sample core is clocked at 480 MHz for the core and the memory is clocked at 1300 MHz. Yep you read it right; this is the fastest air-cooled Geforce 7800GTX card clocked at 480/1300. Memory bandwidth reaches 41.6GB/second. And the best part is that you are under warranty from Gainward at that speed.

Gainward is one company that’s sometimes overlooked when it comes to video cards, but should they be? Check out the full review at NGOHQ for the full review.

Microsoft is no longer providing updates to non-genuine versions of its Windows XP operating system. From today, the company has switched over to a full launch of its Windows Genuine Advantage Programme as part of its ongoing anti-piracy campaign.

Users will now have to join the WGA authentication program if they want to receive software updates from the Microsoft Download Centre or from Windows Update. However, MS says it will still provide security patches for pirated systems, which will be available via Automatic Updates in Windows.

Check out the full news posting at The Register.

Once envisioned as a minor upgrade to Windows XP, Windows Vista (formerly codenamed “Longhorn”) first took on all-new importance in early 2002 when Microsoft decided to reach for the brass ring and make this upcoming Windows release an all-encompassing major upgrade with a new security architecture, a hardware 3D-enabled user interface, and many more exciting new features. Here’s the first–and most comprehensive–Windows Vista/Longhorn FAQ ever created, constantly updated to include the latest information about this exciting release.

This was a great Longhorn FAQ, but has been completely updated in support of the Vista name. Check it out at Win Supersite.

Many users logged into Battlefield 2 today to discover that they had access to all of the game’s weapons unlocked in their profile. We have fixed the root issue that caused this to occur and by tomorrow morning all users will return to having access only to the weapons which they had earned. Once our solution is in place, if you find that you do not have access to weapons appropriate to your in-game rank, please direct inquiries to the Support sites linked below. In some cases users may be prompted to re-select the Unlock weapons that they are eligible for (if you are eligible for two weapons you will get to choose the two you wish to have unlocked).

Wow, EA’s track record for July 2005 has hardly been smooth! Check out the full post here.

OCZ provided a simple blister pack to safely house the RAM modules. The packaging is simple yet effective, holding each stick of RAM securely in place. The packaging is clear so that you can completely visualize the RAM. At the top “HIGH PERFORMANCE” is written in large bold type to assure the buyer that this is not the generic RAM. You can see the bright chrome heatspreaders and the large OCZ logo.

Head over to Gruntville for the full look at this memory!

The murder of Russia’s biggest spammer Vardan Kushnir was not connected with his Internet activity, but with a straightforward robbery, Moscow investigators reported.

Kushnir, 35, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head. Investigators, quoted by the Kommersant newspaper, said this was not a contract murder or revenge for spamming. “Things are simpler. He became a victim of clonidine. For now, this is the only theory.”

So it turned out to be a huge coincidence. Check out the posting at Mos News.

Japan has announced plans to manufacture a super computer that will be 73 times faster than IBM’s Blue Gene/L, currently the fastest computer in the world capable of making 136,8 trillion calculations per second. Construction will start next year.

They want the computer to run 10 quadrillion processes per second, and it will set them back near 100 Billion Yen. Ouch! Check out the posting at Zaman.

Covering over 220 desktop graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison allows you to easily compare 15 different specifications for each and every card! If you need to find out about the specification of any card, just come over and check out our Desktop Graphics Comparison Guide!

We hope it will prove to be a useful reference. We will keep this guide updated regularly so do check back for the latest updates!

This is a great chart that you could even print out for a reference. Check it out at Rojak Pot.

ECS’ PF5 Extreme has its fair share of good and bad points. Let’s take the good first. The company’s Scalable D.G.E. technology offers up a possible quad-display setup that’s run off two PCI-Express cards. No, it’s not SLI or CrossFire, so don’t expect true dual-card 3D performance, but it’s handy for those that need the screen real estate and a step up from mixing onboard graphics displays (i945G) and discrete cards’. The layout and feature-set for a £90 board are both good, too.

Check out the full review of the board over at Hexus!

Thermaltake Technology Co. Ltd. is founded in 1999. The American branch of the company is established at the same time. After 5 years they are still going strong making and designing eye-catching hardware. As hardware gets more and more powerful the cooling solutions change just as fast. Air-cooling works great but is pretty noisy in some cases. Switching to water cooling will take care of the noise but how do they perform? Today I’m looking at the Liquid Cooling System aka “Rocket” from Thermaltake.

This is no doubt unique looking, it’s taller than the computer case! Check out the whole review at HardwareXL.

For those of us water coolers, one issue that we all have to deal with eventually, is the kinks that end up forming within our tubing. Swiftech has come out with a solution!

It looks like these do a great job of keeping kinks out of the cooling, and look great as well. Check out the review at WC 101.

The possibilities seem to be endless… I never knew the power of a PLED screen, and the ability of Matrix Orbital’s MX610 to monitor any information your computer can obtain is overwhelming. In addition, the accessories proved to be very useful; such as the LED indicator, internal USB cable and the temperature probes. These features are coupled with a bright easy to read screen that can be seen from any angle.

If you are in the market for a cool looking LED panel, check out Big Bruins review of this product!

Among the Honda or Accura line of cars we can find the Integra Type-R, a High Performance car tuned to give you the utmost output. So it makes sense that UK based High Performance Group (Hiper) would use the Type-R label to indicate their top of the line PSU. The goal of the Hiper Group is to try and bridge the gap between affordable and enthusiast (read expensive) components such as power supplies, modding accessories and media centre chassis’.

This is a cool PSU with neat ideas, but some we can’t be too sure about. Check out the full review at Viper Lair.

This month we’re pleased to give our video card yet another slight boost. Unfortunately a 256-bit 9800PRO or a vanilla GeForce 6600 (non-GT) is still out of reach, but we were able to squeeze in a 256MB, 256-bit 9600XT. This particular model uses a 500MHz/600MHz core/memory configuration. This card is more than capable of playing every new release on medium settings at the very least.

Check out the latest version of the guide over at MikhailTech!

Overall, Titan Bianca is a good budget water cooling kit that suitable for entry level user who does not have much experince on water cooling. Besides that, it’s portable and suitable for every cases since it is an external water cooling kit. The price is acceptable but we wish it could be cheaper as there are entry level users who can’t afford to spend much.

Yet another great looking WC kit! I gotta get me into one of these someday. Check out the full review at PC Modding Malaysia.

Im happy, it performs a lot better than I expected from a water-cooling kit that fits in one 5 1/4 bay, and im really impressed by the easiness of getting this kit running and how silent it was. Installation was easy, the waterblocks look really nice and aside from the somewhat higher temperatures than with a normal water-cooling kit, I would still recommend this product since it’s so cheap, it’s almost a steal.

This is a great looking WC kit which turns out to be a fantastic value. Check out the full review at Burnout PC.

Stratics is pleased to announce a House of Commons with the developers of the Developers of EVERQUEST on Thursday July 28th. It will be at 6pm PST / 9pm EST in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. The topics of discussion for this HoC are Depths of Darkhollow and Live Events. The…..

Today, PCStats will be checking out the econo line Foxconn WinFast NF4K8AC-8EKRS socket 939 Athlon64 motherboard. This motherboard is based on the vanilla nForce4 chipset and it seems like the only difference between this and the Ultra version is Serial ATA II (this version supports standard SATA). Other onboard features include a PCI Express x16 and two PCI Express x1 slots, an integrated 7.1 channel audio codec, Gigabit LAN and IEEE 1394a firewire.

Head over to PC Stats for the entire review!

Once the modules are out of their bags, we get a good look at the platinum mirror finish. There’s a nice-looking holographic sticker at one end of the heat spreader with the memory specifications on it, and at the other end is GeIL’s innovative temperature thermometer. One thing though is that the plating is very susceptible to fingerprints, so if you’re at all worried about looks you might want to handle these along the edges or with a cloth so as not to mark up the surface.

Head over to OCIA for the full review!