Tech News

Hardware Roundup for April 5

Posted on April 5, 2006 12:17 PM by Rob Williams
    Cases & Enclosures
  • A three-way ATX PC case shootout – Guru3D
  • Sansun Bat Case – GamePyre
    Memory & Storage
  • Patriot PDC2G3500LLK 2GB PC3500 Dual Channel Kit – Bjorn3D
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • ABIT AN8-32X nForce4 SLI x16 – PC Stats
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU Overclocking – 3D Gameman
  • Intel Pentium Processor 965 Extreme Edition – Legit Reviews
    Peripherals & Power Supplies
  • Altec Lansing iM11 Portable Audio System – Think Computers
  • Etasis EFN-560 550W PSU – Technic3D

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When and Why to Use Network-Attached Storage

Posted on April 4, 2006 12:16 PM by Rob Williams

One of the most powerful tools for data storage is a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) device. A NAS device is any product which connects to a network in order to provide file access to the network’s systems. A NAS device generally has on-board hardware aside from the hard drives which control the file storage and distribution, it can even have its own operating system. NAS products range from things as basic as external hard drive enclosures which are attached to a router to large, multi-drive devices which house a controllable operating system, a switch, and other useful accessories.

Check out the full article at HDD Saver.

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BFR Inside of Mortal Kombat – The art of using a Bluescreen

Posted on April 4, 2006 12:12 PM by Rob Williams

We at BFR recently came across a blue screen and decided to have some fun with it. First we’ll show you the video we created and then we will show you how we did it so you too can create interesting videos. It’s a lot easier than you may think.

This is a great video if you want to learn how to use a bluescreen to make cool vids. The video they made is a good example. Check it out at Bona Fide Reviews.

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Half a Million Gamers Played More Than Three Million Hours in Guild Wars Landmark Weekend Event

Posted on April 4, 2006 12:09 PM by Rob Williams

April 3, 2006 (BELLEVUE, WA): ArenaNet®, developer of the award-winning online roleplaying game Guild Wars®, and NCsoft® Corporation, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, opened the virtual door for a weekend-long sneak peek at its new game Guild Wars Factions™, and players around the world responded in record numbers. From 12:01 am on Friday, March 24 until 11:59 pm on March 26, more than 500,000 players participated in the invitation-only preview event and cumulatively spent more than three million hours online, making the Guild Wars Factions Preview Event (FPE) one of the largest preview events in gaming history. Guild Wars Factions is set to hit store shelves April 28, 2006 with an estimated retail price of $49.99 (US).

You can read the full press release here.

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Hardware Roundup for April 4

Posted on April 4, 2006 12:07 PM by Rob Williams
    Memory & Storage
  • OCZ 2GB Gold PC4000 XTC – Tech-Mods
    Peripherals & Power Supplies
  • Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard – 3D Xtreme
  • Wolfking Warrior & Timber Wolf – techFEAR
  • XtracPads Xtrac Ripper and Insta Glide – Extensive Mods
    Video Cards & Monitor
  • AVerMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180 HDTV PCI TV Tuner – Big Bruin
  • Connect3D X1900XT 512MB – 3D Gameman
  • Diamond Viper X800GTO – techPowerUp!
  • XFX GeForce 7600 GT, 7900 GT, 7900 GTX in XXX Editions – TweakPC

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Infineon Gets Out of DRAM Business

Posted on April 3, 2006 12:31 PM by Rob Williams

Infineon’s jump out of the DRAM business was not without foreshadowing. Besides the accusations of its price fixing, Infineon was also in a drawn out court battle with DRAM IP company Rambus. After roughly $5 million of legal expenses, Infineon agreed to settle with Rambus.

Wow this is really a surprise. Infineon has been around for quite a while. There’s little doubt that most of us have used Infineon memory at some point or another. Check out the full posting at Daily Tech.

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Novell Extends Open Source Leadership with SUSE Linux 10.1

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:49 AM by Rob Williams

BOSTON (LinuxWorld Conference & Expo) – April 3, 2006 – Novell today announced the upcoming availability of SUSE® Linux 10.1, the newest version of Novell’s award-winning community Linux* distribution. The first version of SUSE Linux created in full partnership with the open source community, SUSE Linux 10.1 features more than 1,500 software packages containing the latest open source innovations such as the new OpenOffice.org office suite, Firefox* Web browser and multimedia tools, and delivers them to users in a single stabilized distribution. It also includes extensive desktop innovations for both GNOME and KDE users. As a result, SUSE Linux 10.1 provides everything a user needs to get started with Linux while showcasing the very best the open source community has to offer.

Check out the full press release here.

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Movie Downloads to Coincide with DVD release

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:42 AM by Rob Williams

The movie download firms Movielink and CinemaNow have made a deal with the big five studios to ensure that downloads will coincide with DVD releases at Blockbuster and WalMart. Unlike previous deals, these will be full purchase downloads, and not merely for a rental period.

Finally, the movie studios are starting to get the hint. It’s really going to come down to whether it’s worth it to ‘buy’ a download instead of owning an actual copy. It’s a start though. Read more at Slashdot.

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3DMark06 Under the Magnifying Glass

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:31 AM by Rob Williams

The new year brings the prospects of innovation and development, with new products showing up all the time. Thankfully, there are independent software developers who see the need to analyze these technological advances. Over the years, the Futuremark Corporation has become a beacon in 3D graphics testing, and has thus played an essential role in the analysis process.

This is an in-depth look into the inner workings of 3D Mark. They make some great points throughout, so hopefully Futuremark is taking note of the advice. Check out the full article at Toms Hardware.

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Best Buy “We Have Lots Of 360’s”

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:29 AM by Rob Williams

Just returned from my local Best Buy without an Xbox 360. Oh, they had tons of them, but I’m still holding out hope that Microsoft is going to get back to me about my complimentary console any day now. The Best Buy down the street had, according to employees, some 60-plus in stock, with about 20% of those being “Core Packs”. No noteworthy crowds, but they did go through about a dozen while I was milling about the store.

Looks like we are closer to a time where these systems will not be rediculously difficult to acquire. Check out the posting at Kotaku.

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PCs to have Vista Capable Stickers

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:26 AM by Rob Williams

The announcement of a delay in the availability of the Windows Vista home edition might have deterred many… But to their relief – if it can be called as such, Microsoft is coming up with new “Windows Vista Capable” stickers for PCs in anticipation of the release of the 50 million lines of Vista code to business users (end-2006) and consumers (probably beginning-2007).

It looks like that a computer will only receive such a sticker if the GPU is DX9 capable, which most would be anyway. If you are buying a new computer, it’s a doubt you have to worry anyway, but it’s an additional layer of ‘protection’ I guess. Check out the read at Tech Tree.

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Heroes Of The Pacific Review

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:25 AM by Rob Williams

It’s time to rain hell from the skies above in World War II’s fiercest
aerial battles. Codemasters’ Heroes of the Pacific (also available for
PlayStation 2 and Xbox) puts you in the boots of the those who fought in the
incredible aerial and naval conflicts from the Pacific Theatre, 60 years
ago. And it rocks!

Check out the full review at BIOS Magazine.

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GarageGames / Mark Frohnmayer Interview

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:24 AM by Rob Williams

Mark Frohnmayer is the President and co-founder of GarageGames, the company behind the wildly popular Marble Blast series and the new Xbox Live exclusive, Marble Blast Ultra. We discuss MBUltra, Microsoft, and indie gaming.

Check out the full interview at HardOCP.

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Energy lab to run petascale computer

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:20 AM by Rob Williams

Cray Inc. of Seattle will supply the system, named Baker. It will run approximately 24,000 2.6 Ghz quad-core Opteron processors made by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The nodes will be housed in 187 liquid-cooled cabinets. The system, which is still in early stages of design, will have either 187 or 400 terabytes of working memory (depending on the cost of memory modules) and from one to 11 petabytes of storage.

Now THIS is a computer! Seriously amazing stuff, it’s hard to actually comprehend the raw power of this beast. Check out the full look at GCN.

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Town of 12,000 calls in bomb squad over Super Mario power-up cubes

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:15 AM by Rob Williams

Five girls from Ravenna, Ohio placed 17 cardboard replications of the Super Mario power-up cubes throughout their town. The town has a population of approximately 12,000 people, some of which felt threatened by the power-up cubes and called in the bomb squad.

As serious as this may seem, I think this is hilarious. Girls trying to have some innocent fun end up causing a bomb squad to take action… too funny. Check out the read at On Nintendo.

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Hardware Roundup for April 3

Posted on April 3, 2006 11:14 AM by Rob Williams

Good Monday peeps. There are numerous memory related reviews today, including our look at some GeIL PC2-8000. If that stuff is too pricy or maybe too fast for your liking, there are many reviews to help with your decision. Both Technic3D and ByteSector take a look at some PC2-7200 Kingston memory, and it’s fast! Both reviews use the very high-end 955XE CPU, so the results are amazing. On the lighter side of things, XS Reviews takes a look at a 1GB PC3200 GeIL kit. If that much memory isn’t enough for you, check out PC Modding Malaysia for their review of my favorite memory, Corsair 2GB PC4000 Platinum.

    Peripherals & Power Supplies
  • i-PHONO PLUS Bluetooth Stereo Headphone – Blue Tomorrow

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Logitech G5 and G7 Mice Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:12 PM by Rob Williams

If you happen to own an optical mouse and believe it is good enough for gaming then you had better get your wallet out, else you will suffer at the hands of laser-users at your next LAN. And if you think that just because you already own an MX-1000 or some other laser mouse that this article doesn’t apply to you – THINK AGAIN! Now so more than ever the humble mouse has become a very large factor in gaming.

Check out the full review over at NGOHQ.

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Seagate 160GB Momentus 5400.3 Hard Drive Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:11 PM by Rob Williams

Is your notebook hard drive feeling cramped? Is 40GB too little for your use? Then consider upgrading to a bigger hard drive! Thanks to perpendicular recording technology, you can now buy a 160GB hard drive like the new Seagate Momentus 5400.3! Let’s take a look!

Head on over to the Rojak Pot for the full review.

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ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:10 PM by Rob Williams

At the beginning of last month we published our preview of the
ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2, however, now that Fedora Core 5 was released two
weeks ago, and we have in our hands the NVIDIA 1.0-8751 Beta Linux
display drivers, we are prepared to deliver the remainder of this
article. This portion of the article includes the Linux compatibility,
overclocking, and of course, its performance by means of benchmarks.

Check out the full review at Phoronix.

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ATI’s CeBIT Graphics Press Coverage Analysis

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:08 PM by Rob Williams

At this year’s CeBIT NVIDIA had a load of new products and was very aggressively marketing them, which made ATI’s existing customers feel insecure. In order to level the playing field and reassure distributors that ATI is indeed able to compete, this presentation was created. It quotes several big websites on topics like X1800GTO, 7600 and 7900.

Check out the full slides at techPowerUp!.

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Tt Tai Chi M and M2 Accessory Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:04 PM by Rob Williams

Regardless, we are left with a very fine product that far exceeds the offerings of most all other notebook coolers available. Add in the matching silver/black of the Tai Chi M2 Mousepad and you really have a winning combination of both aesthetics, function and performance. Something that is very easy for us to recommend to you.

Head on over to Overclocker Cafe for the full review.

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BFG Tech 7900GT 256MB Video Card Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 1:03 PM by Rob Williams

Overall, I think this video card is worth purchasing if you are looking to upgrade or are moving to PCI-E. For a mid-high range card it holds well in FPS games and does well in RTS and MMORPGs as well. It stays cooler than the 6600GTs which it replaces, which idled around 50c, a temperature this one only reaches after a gaming session. Although I’d still like to see the card come with RAM heatsinks, I have not run across a time where the extra cooling was required. The biggest disappointment I had was having to wait for the second card to arrive after the first one arrived DOA.

Head on over to Gideon Tech for the full review.

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Linspire v5.1.365 Beta Italiano

Posted on April 2, 2006 12:59 PM by Rob Williams

While Linspire/Lindows can be considered a distribution
oriented for those beginning the Linux adventure, up on the Linspire
Italian mirrors is a new Beta release for Linspire v5.1 – surprisingly,
the American site doesn’t seem to be sporting this free access to the
Beta program. While there are quite a few noticeable (and visual)
improvements to Linspire v5.1.365, the Linux kernel used is 2.6.14 and
it uses X.Org v6.9.0. While an experienced Linux user is best off
looking elsewhere for their distribution mate, the beginner may find a
comfortable niche using this Linux distribution, which shares traits
from both Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X.

Check it out at Phoronix.

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Thermaltake Silent Boost RX K8 Review

Posted on April 2, 2006 12:48 PM by Rob Williams

When silent is golden, the options that we have to cool our processors and video cards are becoming more and more numerous. No matter the performance level there is something out there for you. If you are looking to overclock the mess out of your CPU have can have the Big Typhoon. If you want to just have a small cooler to use for a HTPC or something like that you can get our next product up for review, the Silent Boost RX K8 from Thermaltake.

Check out the full review at Pro-Clockers.

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April Fools Roundup for.. duh April 1

Posted on April 1, 2006 1:00 PM by Rob Williams

I will keep this list updated throughout the day as more great April fools jokes are found.

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