Content and news by Rob Williams

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) today changed the rating of Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from “M” to “AO,” and in keeping with the historic maneuver, brought on by pressure from high-level politicians and watchdog groups, Rockstar etched its name in the videogame history books by halting production of the AO version of GTA: SA, is offering labels to retailers, and will be issuing a new, edited version of the game this fall to the North American market.

I still think an ESRB rating change is completely rediculous, but I guess only attention-whoreish politians are the ones who really know. Check out the interview at IGN.

You have to want the M500 for its productivity, not for the look of it, it’s a functional device that does very well for the business user, not so for ‘joe public’. If you want someone else to organise your life for you I would heartily recommend this for the sheer capability and performance.

Head over to Hexus for the full review!

I always look forward to getting my hands on the latest heatsink from the fine folks at Scythe, ever since I reviewed the Kamakaze for them a couple of years ago the quality of their products has only gotten better with each item they release and so has the performance. That tells me that Scythe is not releasing heatsink just to be releasing heatsinks but they are actually do some research to see what does and doesn’t work long before we ever get the chance to see on their web site. That why when I saw the Kamaboko’s picture on Scythe USA’s web site earlier this spring I just had to see if I could get my hands on one of them to review. I liked the fact that it looked like a real “Manly Man’s Heatsink” and not some sissy thing with an 80mm fan spinning on top of it.

Check out the full review at Hi-Tech Reviews.

But that said from our graph you can see this Spire SPA04S4-U does OK at our low power test which it is the intended for while the Spire SPA04S4-U and is only outclassed as we increase the heat beyond what it is designed to be able to remove. Our 170 watt test is a rather harsh test as we are sure you agree.

I like the look of Spires coolers.. simple but cool. Check out the full review at A1 Electronics.

InsaneTek is here again with another contest. This time the prize is a great power supply from the excellent memory maker OCZ
Technology. The ModStream 520W Power Supply will be up for grabs for only a week. Get in now and get a chance to get a free power
supply!

Check out the full details over at InsaneTek.

Although SCSI is not a common choice for enthusiasts, it’s definitely the wise solution when building a high performance reliable
server. Seagate’s latest Cheetah 15k.4 SCSI drives satisfies both conditions.

If you like having heart attacks, be sure to check out how much this drive costs! Check it out at Insane Tek.

WHEN ATI FIRST ANNOUNCED its CrossFire multi-card graphics platform to the world in late May, the clever folks on the red team had a few interesting new twists to offer in their answer to NVIDIA’s SLI. One of the more appealing features of the CrossFire platform was to be a “super antialiasing” mode, allowing two graphics cards to team up in order to produce higher quality antialiasing than available on a single card alone.

Check out all the info over at Tech Report. 16x AA is definitely a lot, but would there even be a noticable difference from 8x AA?

New York, NY – July 20, 2005 –Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) announced today that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has changed the rating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on all platforms from “Mature 17+” (M) to “Adults Only 18+” (AO) because of the so-called “hot coffee mod,” an unauthorized third party modification that alters the retail version of the game. Take-Two cooperated fully with the ESRB’s investigation.

Wow.. this is retarded. AO rating because of content that has to be ‘hacked’ to unlock, to make people have sex with their clothes on. I fully believe the ESRB shouldn’t have to hack a game to rate it fully. It deserved the M rating then, and deserves it now. They are releasing a patch so that the hot coffee mod cannot be accessed. Yeah.. I’m sure people are going to install a patch to disallow the mod.. Read the full PR here.

Exclusive to Stratics, we present this week’s Irth Online screenshots! The world of Irth is populated by three civilizations, the Arcadians, the Morbus and the Mezoteks. Players may apply for Open Beta at this time and join Irth in a period of fragile truce. Help determine the course of each race’s civilization…..

The Gold line from OCZ now targets gamers who require plug-n-play low latency memory. The memory is rated with low voltage and runs
timings of 2-2-2-5. It also overclocks quite well after giving it some juice.

Check it out at InsaneTek.

At this year’s Computex in Taiwan, ECS announced the big brother of the successful KN1 Extreme Motherboard – the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme. It is based on NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI chipset and aims at delivering an affordable SLI motherboard, while still having features like Dual Ethernet and IEEE1394.
During all our testing the KN1 SLI showed excellent performance, but can it deliver the overclocking the enthusiasts want?

Check out the full look at techPowerUp!

Most of you already have seen the original Golden Orb from Thermaltake and are familiar with their legendary Orb series. Now it’s time for the second coming of their Golden Orb Cooler. Those of you who were at Computex have already seen the new Golden Orb. Thanks to the staff from Thermaltake we are going to take the new Golden Orb II for a test drive and give you the chance to see it in action.

Does this cooler live up to the legend of the first one? Check out the full review at NGOHQ to find out.

It happened in Diablo, so why not Blizzard’s other RPG, too? Slashdot is reporting that someone has found a way to duplicate items in World of Warcraft. While the details are sketchy, as many of the posts on how to duplicate are being removed, Slashdot has a link to one working post…..

Today we’ll be looking at XFX’s latest flagship graphics card, the XFX GeForce 7800GTX. Shipping in large quantities since the NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX’s launch on June 23rd, is this the ultimate graphics card you’ve always been looking for? Let’s take a closer look.

Check out the full review over at Silicon Factor.

The packaging of the G.Skill modules is very simple. A simple plastic package holds and protects the modules while shipping. Not really something that could prevent damage to them if someone (or something) hits them hard, but sufficient to keep them safe while in a package during transportation. At least they made it from Taiwan to me without a scratch.

Head over to Xtreme Resources for the full review!

Broadband Internet access via TV cables could reach 100 megabits per second as early as next year–50 times faster than the average broadband speeds now offered to cable TV homes, a Finnish company said Wednesday.

Speeds of 100mbps can be accomplished.. and that’s more than anyone needs really. Transfer capabilities like that, would almost allow people who better set up servers from home, or host files for people to download. Check out the full post at ZD Net.

In what looks like a growing row over staff defections, Microsoft has announced that it is suing Google over its bid to hire Redmond’s former head of research and development in Beijing.

Microsoft has filed lawsuits against Google and the employee, Dr Kai-Fu Lee, in respect of confidentiality and non-competition agreements.

For more information, you can check out the full news posting at VNU Net.

Welcome to the newest in the latest line of astounding quality unique articles – with ultra performance boost and Extreme HyperboleTM technology which will change your digital life, your way, all ways for the next generation of industry-leading capability – the Kn9PQY73962-2n V.2 GTX UltraMAX edition – a remarkable innovation with royal performance!

Check out the full article at Hexus.

If you need high data rates and really don’t need the hassle of downtime thanks to a dead hard drive, RAID is your answer. If you want efficient usage of disk space, you’re going to need an add-in card for a decent solution. If you want to combine all that with low CPU usage and ease of use, then the XFX Revo 64 is the card for you.

I didn’t know XFX made RAID cards, but it looks quite good. Head over to Hexus for the full look.

Today 3DXtreme is featuring two of the latest Memory offerings from our friends at OCZTechnology. These two new products target two different user types and two different price points. For the gamer looking to squeeze every last frame out of their game OCZ has created the OCZ EL PC-3500 Gold GX Dual Channel Memory kit. The PC-4800 product is targeted towards the true enthusiast looking to run their Memory 1:1 with high HT overclocking primarily on the AMD64 platform. PC-4800 is rated to run DDR600 (300HT) with the memory timings of 2.5-4-4-10.

Check out the full review at 3D Xtreme.