Content and news by Rob Williams

“Homeland security agents from several divisions served search warrants on 10 people around the country suspected of being involved with the Elite Torrents site, and took over the group’s main server. The agency said it was the first criminal enforcement action aimed at copyright infringers who use the now-popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology.”

Wow, they can shut down a website, but when you look at the source code.. I wonder if they took it down via a wysiwyg program as well. At any rate, this is just bound to happen to more and more torrent sites. Read about it here.

“Logitech is one of the most well known makers of computer peripherals. Founded in 1981 in Switzerland, this company has grown to near 7,000 employees and have their products sold in more than 100 countries worldwide. Here in North America they have achieved an extremely deep market penetration, evidenced by their presence in nearly every electronic retailer in the country. If you walk in any Best Buy or Fry’s Electronic you will see Logitech keyboards and mice for sale.”

It’s an in-depth look at both mice, and you can check it out here.

“One of the reasons that Sapphire impresses me a bit more than most other video card manufactureres is the fact that they are willing to try new ideas and offer products that are out of the ordinary… in a good way. When I met with Stephen (from Blue-Alien) at last years E3 he told me about this product coming up 6 months or so down the road which sounded pretty impressive. The line of products was going to be called “Toxic” and the cards would come packaged with an overclocking utility which would overclock your video card automatically to max factory determined speeds as well as include an eye-catching, high-performance GPU cooler. Well, about 8 months later I had the Toxic X700 Pro in my hands for testing. I will be comparing this Toxic X700 Pro with a number of other cards I have tested recently to see how it performs. I expect this card to run pretty on-par with the X700 Pro I previously reviewed.”

There are a lot of comparison graphs to check out, between most top ATI cards. Check it out at PimpRig.

“In the technology world improvements in speed, quality, and price are constant. Better, faster, and cheaper are key and true ideals in the marketplace. One area that has seen massive gains in size is the storage market but unfortunately the technology behind it hasn’t seen as many improvements until recently. Previously tied down to the parallel interface Serial ATA drives are now more and more becoming the standard and we look at one today, Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K80.”

It looks like the SATA II has the advantage over a regular SATA drive.. faster in all tests. Check out the full review at AMD Zone.

“The case takes after the concept of having front mounted gauges to monitor audio output, temperature, and manual fan control. The Aspire X-Cruiser has striking front-lighting as well as a barely sufficient cooling design. Unfortunately the front electronics are functional but not amazingly accurate or useful. The chassis window has an 80mm blowhole along with front breakouts for audio, USB 2.0, and Firewire ports. The case measures 19.25″ x 7.75″ x 17″ and weighs in at 19 lbs without the optional 420 watt power supply, which we were not provided.”

This is a great looking case, so check it out at Virtual-Hideout.

“As computer’s become increasingly complex, so too do their power requirements. This need for power has given birth to a new breed of power supplies which now have more power leads than ever before. Power wires are usually the ugly bane of a desktop computer, so Xmod have released a product which aims to make your power wires a highlight, and not a low-light, of your modded case.”

Check out the full review at Ozcasemodz.

A new version of ATI Tool that has been in development for awhile, is now released. There are many fixes, and they highly recommend you get this version. Here are a few of the new features:

• When multiple ATI cards are installed, you can now select the one to use
• Crash issues when returning from standby/hibernate with Catalyst 4.8+ fixed
• Added Memory Timings options to profile
• Added Gamma options to profile
• Added option to control artifact detection sensitivity
• ATITool will now try to use the D3D device which matches the active card

You can get the new version over at Tech Powerup.

“IT’S THE GEEKY equivalent of a conversation that most guys would have about a Maxim girl versus the Olsen twins. Would you rather have a single, very fast CPU or a pair of somewhat slower processors? That’s a tough question, and it’s precisely the one that Intel has prompted by releasing a couple of new CPUs today, the Pentium D 820 and the Pentium 4 670. The P4 670 is the fastest single Pentium 4 processor ever released, running at nearly 4GHz. The Pentium D 820, meanwhile, runs a full gigahertz slower, but it has two complete Pentium 4-style CPU cores onboard for a very nice price.”

Head over to Tech Report for the full look.

“This Silent 939 K8 is being marketed as a silent but powerful AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Sempron socket 754 / 939 processor heatsink for those of you who are not looking for the ultimate and usually noisy heatsink but for peace and quiet but still with an efficient heatsink for your computer.”

Check out the full review at A1 Electronics.

“Even though most of our reviews here at Phoronix focus on computer hardware or software, today is one of the rare occasions where we are looking at electrical testing equipment. The digital multimeter up for review today is the Triplett 3526-B Digi-Probe from Cable Organizer.”

Check out the review at Phoronix.

“This case looks fantastic and has excellent build quality. At the front there are two USB ports, Firewire port, microphone, and headphone jack. There are lots of drive bays: 2×5.25″(Ext.), 2×3.5″ (Ext.), and 2×3.5″ (Int). One big plus is it’s designed for standard ATX PSUs and motherboards. Also, the inside is quite accessible and air flow is great. Includes; two 60mm fans at the rear and one 92mm fan at the front. Watch the Video to find out more…”

Check out the full video review over at 3D Gameman!

AMD detailed today the full specification of its “Pacifica” technology, meant to enhance 64-bit client and server virtualization for x86-based servers, workstations, desktops and mobile computers.

“The potential benefits of virtualization for businesses of all sizes and consumers alike are significant,” explained said Marty Seyer, corporate VP and general manager of AMD’s microprocessor solutions sector, in a statement.

Pacifica won’t be available in processors until next year, but you can read all about it here.

“NEW YORK – Developers of the open source Linux operating system are about to lose a crucial software tool that lets them keep track of version changes. The loss could delay Linux development and even make the operating system more vulnerable to security breaches.

Since 2002, Linux creator, Linus Torvalds, and thousands of Linux programmers have enjoyed free use of a development tool called BitKeeper. But as of July, BitKeeper’s creator, Larry McVoy, will stop providing free software and support to the Linux effort.”

This is no doubt going to hinder Linux development.. hopefully it won’t be substantial, or it will take much longer for new Kernel versions to be released. Read about it at Forbes.

“Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens for computer monitors and televisions, announced today its standard sizes of new motherglass to make bigger LCDs at a lower cost, according to a company executive.

Samsung decided its eighth-generation motherglass will have a width of 2,160 millimeters (85 inches) and a length of 2,460 millimeters (97 inches), while its ninth-generation motherglass is to be 2,400 millimeters (94.5 inches) wide and 2,800 millimeters (110 inches) long, said Lee Sang-wan, the company’s head of LCD business, in a speech during an industry fair in Boston.

Bigger and cheaper would be great, since LCD’s can get pricy, quick. Read it here.

“I’ve just been told from a very, very reliable source that the G70, Nvidia’s next generation card will officially be called the 7800 (we all new that, didn’t we?). It will be available in three versions, the 7800 GTX, 7800 GT and 7800. The new GTX moniker will replace the Ultra, respectively. Read on to find the specification for the 7800 GTX…”

Check out the full story at Pure Overclock.

“Our latest contest is one of a different creature, it is a modding contest but not quite a modding contest. Ok the idea behind this contest is to give someone his or her ’15 minutes of fame’. This contest will run approx 1 month, a few days longer actually but will officially end on June 30th 2005, winners will be announced after the July 4th holiday, or Tuesday the 5th of July. Prizes: Atrix Case, Mutant Mods EL Ide Cable, Blue Bubble Lights, Blue Round Floppy Cable, Geil Mouse Pad, Phantom Robot Cold Cathode Fan Grill, Geeks.com polo shirt, and Usb Deco lights!! Lots of prizes to win so check this contest out!!”

Check out the contest rules here!

“The thermal imaging camera (a Mikron Infrared Thermal Imager) is back, and we have a detailed look at a couple of modern motherboards and 6600GT PCIe graphics cards… This time around we take a look at some thermal images of DFI’s latest creations, the Lanparty nF4 Ultra-D and SLI-DR. The majority of the images shown in this article are of the DFI Lanparty nF4 Ultra-D with the exception of the last three. Shown in the last three photos are the significant areas of increased temperature of the SLI-DR board. Everyone knows the importance of cooling computer components, and we’ll see what areas on these boards may need extra cooling for optimum performance.”

For a cool thermal look at the boards, head over to Big Bruin.

“ABIT Fatal1ty AN8’s passes its biggest test, that is, being a supreme enthusiast-orientated S939 motherboard. What makes it so good is the sensible choice of a feature-rich chipset, nForce4 Ultra, and due care and attention that’s given over to both frequency and fan-speed manipulation. These two factors combine to push the sample’s stable HTT frequency to 320MHz – the highest yet seen at HEXUS. It’s achieved without any additional cooling and it paves the way for the Fatal1ty AN8 to be paired with the best S939 overclocking CPUs available today, be they Venice or San Diego cores.”

Head over to Hexus for the full review!

“The memory performed beautifully at very aggressive 2-2-2-5 timings and we pushed memory bandwidth towards ~5100 MB/sec on a (normally) 800 MHz FSB Pentium 4 processor which really needs memory bandwidth. It would have gone much further with a higher Voltage. This product uses Winbond BH chips. The nature of these chips is such that they do very firm 2-2-2 timings at 200mhz with 2.8v, yet for a good overclock at 2-2-2 timings, they generally require 3.4v to 3.5v.”

Check out the full review at Guru 3D.

“Today we thought we would try and make a guide a review to the different processors from AMD to help you make a choice out of the now different substantial number of versions available. We are going to start with what are the latest socket 939 processors before looking at the other processor socket options.”

They take a look at the whole range of AMD CPU’s, so you can understand the basics of them all. Check it out at A1 Electronics.