- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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The 12 Games of Xbox
The Xbox is five years old today, and to celebrate we’ve compiled a list of the finest exclusive games ever to grace the system. Exclusive you say? Well, exclusive in Microsoft’s terms of being ‘console exclusive’, so we didn’t have to chuck out Halo or KOTOR, because they later came out on the beige box. But given that the Xbox was actually a PC in all but name, it’s hardly surprising that there was a fairly fluid transition between the formats.
I couldn’t count how many hours I lost to some of the games mentioned on the list, Halo 1 of course being one of them. If you don’t want to let your Xbox rot in the closet, haul it out and pick up a few games!
VHS finally considered dead?
After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old. No services are planned. The format had been expected to survive until January, but high-def formats and next-generation vidgame consoles hastened its final decline.
The reason they note the “death” is due to the fact that most retailers are pulling them from the shelves. No surprise, what won’t sell shouldn’t be on the floor. I wonder how long it will take before it’s hard to even buy a VHS player? There’s no doubt some people have hefty VHS collections.
OCZ Technology Unveils the XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) Memory Cooler
Sunnyvale, CA—November 16, 2006—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today unveiled the premier memory overclocking accessory, the OCZ XTC Cooler. As active cooling becomes increasingly important for today’s high-speed memory solutions, OCZ developed the XTC Cooler for effective heat management of OCZ’s proprietary XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) modules.
You can read the full press release here.
Ultra Products Receives U.S. Patent for X-Connect Modular Power Supply Design
FLETCHER, OHIO – November 16, 2006 – Ultra Products, a global leader in technology solutions, is proud to announce that it has received United States Patent Number 7,133,293 for its Ultra X-Connect power supply, the world’s first completely modular design power supply.
You can read the full press release here.
Intel Announces 12.5 Percent Increase in Cash Dividend
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 16, 2006 – Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has approved a 12.5 percent increase in the quarterly cash dividend to 11.25 cents per share beginning with the dividend that will be declared in the first quarter of 2007.
You can read the full press release here.
Review Roundup for November 17
- Akasa AK-961 Socket 775 – FrostyTech
Cooling
- Corsair’s Dominator – Tech Report
- Vizo Paragon One Touch Backup – A True Review
Memory & Storage
- Abit IL-90MV Core 2 Duo – HotHardware
- ASUS P5W64WS Professional – Bjorn3D
Motherboards & Processors
- AOpen DSW1812P 18x Triple Format DVD Rewriter – PC Stats
- Flexiglow Cyber Snipa Intelliscope Laser Gaming – TweakNews
- Netgear Skype WiFi Phone – XYZ Computing
- Pertelian X2040 V4 USB LCD Portable Display – Big Bruin
- Tagan TurboJet 1100w Quad SLI Power Supply – Virtual-Hideout
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- ATI Radeon X1950 Pro vs. Nvidia GeForce 7900GS – Tech Spot
- Catalyst 6.11 Comparison – Technic3D
Displays & Video Cards
- Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Playstation 3 – OC Modshop
- Overclockers Online Cooler Master Contest – Overclockers Online
- Western Digital Contest – Club Overclocker
- X-Micro WLAN 11g Combo Finder Adapter – Red & Blackness
Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
PlayStation 3 Lacks Upscaler to 1080i
So the situation right now is that anyone with an HDTV that’s capable of only 480i, 480p, and 1080i will be unable to play games such as Resistance, NHL 2K7, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 and Need for Speed Carbon at anything higher than 480p.
Now this is harsh! Simply put, if you have one of the first-gen HDTVs that supports 1080i but not 720p, you will suffer with 480p. This is going to be a huge problem; hopefully Sony can fix this with a firmware update.
Nikon Announces D40 and SB-400 Speedlight
Mississauga, ON, November 16, 2006 – Nikon Canada Inc. today introduced the D40 Digital SLR, the most affordable, compact and lightweight Nikon digital SLR camera ever. Also announced are the ideal companion accessories for D40: new compact AF-S DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II Zoom-Nikkor Lens and Nikon SB-400 Speedlight.
The rumors have proven true, and the D40 will be available the first of December. I am excited to see what the camera is capable of, but am disappointed to see it priced right in line with the D50. Though, rumors also lead to the D50 stopping production. If that’s the case and you want a great starter SLR, you will want to move fast and pick up a D50 while they are still in stock. You can read the full press release here.
Object Desktop looks to Vista
Most of the improvements come in the form of the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) and new API set called Windows Presentation Foundation. In Windows XP, nearly all our improvements had to be done by working with a hodgepodge of APIs ranging from GDI, GDI+, DirectX, custom systems, etc. This resulted in software that would work incredibly fast and effective for some people…and horribly for others based on what video card they had, which version of the driver they had.
All fans of OD should look to this thread. It goes into detail the benefits that Vista offers, and also shows some early examples.
New Cray super computer uses 30,000 Opterons
According to the press release, the XT4 designed to easily and efficiently scale to a peak performance of more than one petaflops (1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second). Evolved from the Cray XT3 supercomputer, the Cray XT infrastructure provides a common, scalable environment for login, compilation, resource management, work scheduling and I/O. This environment also includes a unique globally shared, high-performance parallel file system, as well as network interfaces to other systems.
Now this is a lot of power! I’d hate to be the one to pay this power bill. You may wonder why they use 30,000 Opterons instead of 15,000 Core 2 Duo’s. Well, that’s a great question but likely has to do with how the Opteron can handle interconnects. I’d assume that Cray knows what they are doing.
Linux WoW players getting banned?
This account has been found to have employed third party software designed to automate many aspects of the World of Warcraft game play experience. Such software runs contrary to the essence of World of Warcraft and provides an advantage over other players. In addition, use of this software can lead to exploitation and destabilization of the World of Warcraft server economy. As such, this account has been closed and will not be reopened under any circumstances. The recurring subscription on the account has been disabled to prevent further charges.
This is the same message that many Linux players are receiving, simply because they are running the game on the non-native operating system. This is harsh, and Blizzard should work fast to rectify the issue. Not that I am a fan of time sinks, but many players had maxed out characters, just to have them taken away for a foolish reason. However, you will be able to get your account back by posting in this thread. It probably won’t be fast though.
Vista to be DRM nightmare?
If you ask five veteran Windows users to explain Vista’s take on digital rights management (DRM), you’re likely to get five different answers that have just one thing in common: Whatever it is, they know they don’t like it. In a nutshell, this is the dilemma Microsoft faces as it prepares to launch Windows Vista.
If DRM scares you, then just wait until you read this article. It goes in-depth about Vistas DRM features, and really makes you wonder how a new OS will be successful when it makes users experience more difficult!
Review Roundup for November 16
- Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 – Technic3D
- NZXT Adamas – Overclocker Cafe
Cases & Enclosures
- Cooler Master Aquagate Viva – Overclockers Online
- Noctua NH-U12F Cooler – Pro-Clockers
- Thermaltake TMG ND2 VGA Cooler – PC Modding Malaysia
- Zalman CNPS9500 AT Intel Core 2 Duo Heatsink – FrostyTech
Cooling
- Crucial 10th Anniversary 2GB DDR2-667/PC2-5300 – OC Inside
- Super Talent 2GB DDR2-800 – ClubOC
Memory & Storage
- abit AB9 Pro – Motherboards.org
- Abit Fatal1ty AN932X – Neoseeker
- ECS KN3-SLI2 Extreme – Virtual-Hideout
Motherboards & Processors
- Antec TruePower Trio 550w Power Supply – ClubOC
- Brando Workshop USB Powered Paper Shredder – DragonSteelMods
- Razer Barracuda – XS Reviews
- Razer Barracuda HP-1 Surround Headphones – The Tech Lounge
- Razer Tarantula – 3D Gameman
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- ATI 8.31.5 Linux Display Drivers – Phoronix
- Galaxy GeForce 7900 GS 256MB PCI-E – Digit-Life
- Gigabyte 7600GS w/ HDMI – Neoseeker
- Overclocking the GeForce 8800 – TweakTown
- XFX Geforce 8800 GTS – TweakPC
Displays & Video Cards
- EDOVA Innovations X-Pad Laptop Platform – Bjorn3D
- “I Am A Dumb Consumer” – TechARP
- Mid-Range PC Buying Guide –
- Nintendo Wii – Digital Trends
- Nokia E50 – BIOS Magazine
- Quad-Core Core 2 Extreme – GeForce 8800 GTX SLI NF680i Ultimate Gaming Rig – HotHardware
- Sony Playstation 3 – Digital Trends
- Tom Bihn Super Ego Laptop Bag – Think Computers
Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
10 worst consoles… ever
Blame base pessimism, or human nature. Maybe it’s the thought of camping outside Best Buy in hopes of trading a week’s pay for an always limited supply of systems. Then again, it could just be the fallout from these 10 high-profile disasters that tried to pass themselves off as cutting-edge, next-generation consoles and turned out to be little more than a taco-shaped cell phone (you know who you are, N-Gage).
I can’t disagree with any of the choices here. The Virtual Boy stands out in my mind as one of the worst I’ve ever seen. When a console gives you a headache within minutes, it has to be avoided.
AMD 65nm Product Plans Unveiled
Brisbane will be AMD’s first 65nm core and is expected to launch with four parts. The four 65nm Brisbane core based products include the Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 4800+, 4400+ and 3800+. All four models will have 2x512KB of L2 cache and a 65W TDP rating.
These are looking good, but expect to figure out their model number scheme all over. The X2 4800+ for instance, is 2.5GHz… which may result in a very odd multiplier. One noticeable benefit is the fact that these are all 65W as opposed to 90W previously. The Energy Efficient chips, currently maxing out at 2.3GHz uses only 35W. I cannot wait to see how these overclock.
Final list of PS3 launch titles
The total is expected to be below 1 million units in 2006, as a result many publishers have decided to delay their games so more time can be spent polishing them, since there won’t be many customers until 2007 anyway. We’re sure there are many other reason too, but remember you’ll have other ways to entertain yourself with the PS3 aside from it’s multimedia capabilities.
Official launch titles include Resistance: Fall of Man and Ridge Racer 7 in addition to other multi-console titles. 13 titles doesn’t offer that much to the consumer, especially considering 5 of those are sports titles, not including Tony Hawk. The 360 launch was not much better though.
Firefox 2.0 Trumps IE7 In Phish-Fighting
The evidence comes in a report released today by software testing firm SmartWare. The company tested each browser against the same phishing sites flagged by contributors to Phishtank, an anti-phishing network run by OpenDNS. Firefox blocked 243 phishing sites that IE7 overlooked, while IE7 blocked 117 sites that Firefox did not.
I guess you can feel good about using Firefox over IE for this reason, but really, a bragging right would be in order if the numbers were even lower. 117 is still a reasonable number, but that left about 20% of sites not caught in the filter. Of course, using common sense could personally reduce that number to 0.
Dvorak predicts the Zunes failure
Here’s what tells me the Zune is a disaster (aside from its own incompatibilities with other Microsoft initiatives): the reviewer’s kit itself. The reviewer’s kit that contains a cover document that will do nothing more than anger and insult reviewers. There’s a surefire way to get attention!
After reading this article you will likely agree. The rules sheet is ridiculous! Doesn’t seem to matter though. There really doesn’t seem to be a positive Zune review yet, sadly.
FLY with EVGA’S New NVIDIA 680i SLI Motherboard Contest
EVGA has brought you products that make your computer fly for years, but now it’s time to make our customers fly as well. EVGA has partnered with Zero G to bring our customers an amazing weightless experience. Imagine free falling 10,000 feet, without a parachute! Zero G makes it possible by flying a plane to approximately 34,000 feet and then going into a nose dive for 10,000 feet before pulling up. This rollercoaster effect will generate 25-30 seconds of weightlessness on each drop. This is the same type of training that NASA uses for astronauts.
Now this is what I call a unique contest! You can read the full details and more information here.
Intel Ignites Quad-Core Era
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 14, 2006 – Intel Corporation today kicked off the computer industry’s multi-core PC era by delivering four computing “brains” inside a single microprocessor with the introduction of the Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 and Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor families. These products deliver immense speed and responsiveness for general purpose servers and workstations and for digital media creation, high-end gaming and other market segments that crave absolute performance.
You can read the full press release here.
Medieval II On Steam
BELLVUE, WA (November 14, 2006) – Valve today announced an agreement to deliver Medieval II: Total War to Steam, the leading online digital distribution platform for PC games. Heralded on the cover of the December PC Gamer with an Editors’ Choice award, a review score of 90% and described by the magazine as “an epic strategy game that’s exquisitely big, bold and beautiful,” Medieval II: Total War advances the series with the most cinematic and realistic battles ever seen in the real time strategy genre.
These games don’t usually do much for me, but I have to admit the screenshots look great. If you want this one, it will set you back $50. Hop on Steam and add it to your account if you want it… simple.
AMD Introduces World’s First Dedicated Enterprise Stream Processor
TAMPA, Fla. – NOVEMBER 14, 2006 – At the Supercomputing 2006 show today, AMD (NYSE: AMD) introduced the world’s first dedicated stream processor designed to meet the specific hardware demands of high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Engineered specifically for compute-only systems such as workstations and servers, the AMD Stream Processor(tm) makes use of AMD’s new thin hardware interface called CTM(tm) to drive substantial performance gains in areas such as financial analysis, seismic migration analysis, and life sciences research, among others.
You can read the full press release here.
Systemax Launches Sabre II Gaming PC with Intel Core2 Extreme Quad-Core
MIAMI, FL – NOVEMBER 14th, 2006 – Systemax, the great American PC maker, has announced the release of the company’s first desktop gaming PC featuring the new Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor – the Systemax SABRE II. Intel’s highly-anticipated release raises the bar to levels not seen before for performance, graphics, and power efficiency. In addition to the high-performance Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor, the Systemax SABRE II is loaded with other features that make it the ultimate gaming and machine and latest addition to the company’s expanded line of high-end gaming PCs.
You can read the full press release here.
Review Roundup for November 15
- Thermaltake Mozart SX – Futurelooks
- VIZO Paragon & LUXON Drive Enclosures – Bjorn3D
Cases & Enclosures
- Cooler Master AquaGate Viva CPU/VGA Water Cooling – Virtual-Hideout
- Coolermaster Hyper TX – XS Reviews
- Thermalfly I75DUH Bifurcated Fin Heatsink – FrostyTech
- Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX – Legit Reviews
- Thermaltake Silent Water II – techPowerUp!
- TTIC NPH Big Cooler – PC Modding Malaysia
Cooling
- OCZ Roadster 1Gb Thumb Drive – TweakNews
Memory & Storage
- ASUS Striker Extreme – Motherboards.org
- ECS GeForce6100SM-M AM2 – Virtual-Hideout
- EVGA nForce 680i-SLI – Motherboards.org
- MSI K9N Diamond – Viper Lair
Motherboards & Processors
- BeQuiet StraightPower 700w PSU – Guru3D
- Everglide g-1000 – Xtreme Computing
- Icemat Siberia In:Ear Headsets – CyberWizardPit
- Icemat Siberia In:Ear Headset – Red & Blackness
- Lilliput CL8889NT 8 Inch Touch Screen LCD – XYZ Computing
- OCZ readies 1 KiloWatt PSU – techPowerUp!
- Scythe Kama-Meter Multi Functional Controller – Pro-Clockers
- Zippy Emacs G1 PSL-6850 850w PSU – Overclock3D
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- Club 3D 7600 GS 512MB Passive – Technic3D
- HannsG HC174DP 17″ – XS Reviews
- Pioneer PDP-5070HD Plasma TV – Digital Trends
Displays & Video Cards
- 10 Reasons NOT to Buy a DSLR – The Tech Lounge
- Albatron Mini-ITX Mobo turned into Car PC – TweakTown
- How To Get More Power From A Wireless Router – The Tech Zone
- HP Photosmart D7363 – Digit-Life
- Icemat Siberia In:Ear Contest – LAN Addict
- MESH Elite E6600 Express PC – Hexus
- MSI mPC 51PV SFF System – HotHardware
- Microboards GX-1 – BIOS Magazine
- Sony Playstation Portable – Think Computers
- WiFi Router Troubling Shooting Guide – DV Hardware
Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
Hacking the XBox 360’s HD-DVD for the PC
Double Double toil and trouble, well more accurately it’s Torx 5 Torx 7 toil and lots trouble. Enticed by the $199 price, we set ourselves on a mission to find out if the Microsoft’s XBox 360 HD-DVD player could work on a normal PC. Now, this can’t be an easy task, can it?
This has got to be one of the easiest, and coolest hacks ever. Plug in the 360 HD-DVD drive, install some drivers and load up WinDVD. Amazingly, the drive was detected under Mac OS X no problem, but there is currently no HD-DVD software developed for that OS yet. To see how this hack is done and to grab the drivers, check out the posting.