- 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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Cyanide Studios Supports AGEIA PhysX Processor in Upcoming Action RPG Loki
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 19, 2005 –AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced that renowned French developer Cyanide will support the AGEIA PhysX processor in its upcoming ACTION RPG Loki. Known for its popular sports titles such as Pro Cycling Manager and Pro Rugby Manager, Cyanide is taking full advantage of AGEIA’s PhysX system in its bold leap into the world of role-playing games (RPG).
Read the full release here!
Hardware Roundup for Dec. 19
Happy Monday! GruntVille is taking a look at the TT Shark case today, which looks fantastic especially with the bright blue LED’s! Arctic Cooling has recently released their Freezer 64 Pro cooler, and Hardware XL is taking that one for a spin today.
There are many memory reviews up today, including two for the Corsair PC4000 2GB Platinum which Madshrimps and Big Bruin are evaluating. It’s my memory of choice this season, because the price is right and quality is there. It also overclocks quite well also!
- Thermaltake Mambo VC2000 Case – Trusted Reviews
- Thermaltake Shark – GruntVille
- Xion II Case – Technic 3D
Cases & Enclosures
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler – Hardware XL
- PrimeCooler MegaCool 6 AMD Athlon 64 & Sempron Heatsink – A1 Electronics
Cooling
- Corsair XMS TWINX2048-4000PT 2GB Dual Channel DDR – Big Bruin
- Corsair 2GB TwinX2048-4000PT – Madshrimps
- G.SKILL F1-3200USU2-2GBHS PC3200 – techPowerUp!
- Intel Centrino DDR2 Investigation – Phoronix
- OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Gold GX XTC – Legion Hardware
- OCZ PC2-5400 Gold Edition – Overclocker Cafe
Memory & Storage
- ASUS K8N-DL Opteron Server – TweakTown
- ECS 945P-A (2.0) – Digit-Life
- Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 Micro – Cool Tech Zone
- Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS – TweakTown
Motherboards & CPU’s
- Antec TrueControl 2.0 550W – TweakNews
- X-Arcade Trackball – XYZ Computing
Peripherals & Power Supplies
- ATI X1000 (X1K) Series Video Card Roundup – Legit Reviews
- ATI Radeon X1800 XT Crossfire – Guru 3D
- Sapphire X1800XT Performance Edition – Case Mod God
Video Cards & Monitor
- Casio Exilim EX-S500 5.0 Mega Pixel Digital Camera – Bona Fide Reviews
- Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB – Everything USB
- D`zign DV-5 3.2MP Digital Video Camera – Think Computers
- XPSC LCD Character Display – Xtreme Review
Etcetera & Contests
XSPC X2O Performance PC Water Cooling Kit Review
With the bolts installed we can test the fit of the water block and mounting
plate. With no obstacles in the way, you can easily use the configuration
illustrated on the left. If large tall standing capacitors are in the way XSPC
includes a mounting ring which elevates the mounting plate an extra 6mm away
from the motherboard. This is a very thoughtful innovation and adds to the
universal compatibility of this system.
Check out the full review over at Mod The Box.
Viruses..Why?..What’s the point?
I want to know what exactly is the point of people making viruses. Do the people that make them have an inferiority complex? Does it make them feel ‘L33T’ to see that their creation has infected so many people? What makes a person sit down and write a program that’s sole purpose is to make the lives of everyone else miserable? Are the creators that miserable in their own lives that they feel the need to share their misery? Misery loves company right? Better yet, are they that pathetic and anti-social that they have nothing better to do than cause trouble?
Check out the full article at Think Computers.
Thermax Tech XtFlux-GA Thermal Grease Review
There is a new addition to the world of Thermal Compounds, a company called Thermax Tech. They have developed a new type of thermal compound, that I believe is going to give the competition a run for the crown of the top thermal paste. So is this stuff any good or is just the normal thermal gook that we find everywhere? I think we need to run some tests and check it out. So read on to learn something about Thermax Tech XtFlux-GA Thermal Grease.
Is this a good competitor to some AS5? TC gave it a perfect score, so check out the review here to find out why.
The Buttkicker Gamer Review
The Buttkicker, sounds like someone that goes around kicking butts. Well there is a little truth to its name because you do get your but kicked… But in a good way. The Buttkicker is essentially an add-on to your sound system, be it your PC or home theater setup, which enhances your listening pleasures by enabling you to feel, rather then just listen to your audio.
Check out the full review at Extensive Mods.
Swiftech APOGEE Extreme Performance Waterblock Review
Swiftech used their Patent Pending Diamond Pin Matrix design and was optimized using Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis to optimize flow and performance. By looking at the layout and design, it seems that this is an updated and improved version of their older MCW5000 series blocks.
Check out the full review at OCIA.
OCZ PC-4000 Gold Gamer eXtreme XTC DDR Memory Kit Review
Want a large and fast memory kit for your system? The new OCZ PC-4000 Gold Gamer eXtreme XTC might be just what you are looking for.
Sporting the new XTC heatspreader and double the memory capacity of usual OCZ memory kits, the PC-4000 Gold GX XTC is an interesting new subject for us to investigate.
Head on over to Rojak Pot for the full review.
Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF 560W
When it is all said and done, the SilverStone Zeus ST56ZF is a very
solid offering. The package is top notch with very little chance of damage
being done to the unit during any amount of transport and the power supply
inside is just as good. In addition, the quality of the cables is excellent,
with clean heatshrinking and artistic cable tying. Another nice feature of
this power supply is that the length of the cables should allow this power
supply to be used inside of any case no matter how big.
Check out the full review over at Overclockers Online.
Keynesis Portable Sweeper
Not long ago, I took a look at security software from Keynesis called Lockngo. Keynesis also has a program to compliment Lockngo called Portable Sweeper. The two programs together provide a great set of tools for anyone wishing to have their portable devices secure and safe. Portable Sweeper is a bit different in that it cleans your system or your hosts system of all traces that you were on it and what you were doing on it. Let’s take a closer look and you can get a better idea of what I am talking about.
Check out the full look at Think Computers.
ATI Avivo Winter 2005 Update
ATI recently released a range of top-to-bottom graphics products with what they call Avivo technology. Avivo is responsible for making 3D and video pixels look good on your display. Trouble is, some of it wasn’t working.
Check out the full look at Hexus!
Mobile HDD Cache Comparison
In an effort to gain a larger mobile penguin presence we have
numerous notebook related articles under works and our first to deliver
is a mobile cache comparison examining the benefits of an increased
ATA-6 cache size, which is one of the ways to seek an increased
performance over a HDD speed increase with the downfalls of that being
an excessive amount of heat along with being noisy and wearing down the
battery life. Just how well does the standard 8MB compare to 16MB on the
Pentium M front?
Phoronix has been some busy today! Check out this article right here.
GAIM v2.0.0 BETA 1
GAIM, the popular open-source multi-protocol multi-platform
instant messaging client, has finally released its initial BETA for the
upcoming v2.0.0. Since the GAIM v1.5.0 release, the developers have
dedicated their time and efforts on version two and their strenuous work
is definitely visible in the latest BETA. In GAIM v2.0.0 BETA 1 there
are improvements with everything from status drop-down menu to improved
plug-ins.
I like what I’m seeing of this so far, it made me download the beta right away. Check out the full pictorial at Phoronix.
Customizing Fedora 4
With the number of fresh Linux installs we perform on a weekly
basis with a variety of hardware, simply using the stock install CDs
have become a sizable task due to the number of FOSS updates available
on a daily basis. In fact, alone on Red Hat’s servers and mirrors are
over 839 updates just for the FC4 i386 architecture!
If you use FC4 on a regular basis, then you may find this article over at Phoronix to be quite helpful.
ATI Radeon X1800 Crossfire Review
If you’ve held off buying anything up to just to wait and see how it pans out just before Christmas, or you’ve already splashed out on an ATI Radeon X1800 XT or XL (I’ll come back to that later), or you simply have that car crash curiosity about high-end 3D graphics right now, today’s article will have your interest.
If you are pondering Cross-Fire, check out the in-depth look at Hexus!
Deeper with the GeForce 7 Series
From a rendering perspective, the GeForce 7 series is not that much
different from NVIDIA’s own GeForce 6 series. So, image quality will be the
same if not similar between the two. However, there is one major
difference – the GeForce 7 series can perform antialiasing on transparent
(or alpha) textures, either using multisampling or supersampling. Naturally,
we’re very interested in this feature and just like we promised in our last
article, we will focus on this feature in this article.
Check out the full article over at Tech-Hounds.
HEC WinPower 480W SLI Power Supply Review
This power supply performs well for this category of product. While the 12V rail is a little low it has no problem powering an overclocked system. Stability is also important, especially when overclocking. This really reflects the quality of power it’s providing. I experienced no locks or system instability…
Head on over to 3D Gameman for the full review.
ATI Catalyst 5.13 Beta HQV Test
This is the latest beta of ATI’s Catalyst Drivers which supports the new AVIVO functionality of the X1000 Series. Several websites have been reporting about this, now you can try it yourself.
Grab the beta over at techPowerUp!
FCC to Reverse Decision Regarding ? la carte Cable Pricing
As most readers are now aware, the FCC is about to issue (or reissue) a report stating that cable companies should offer à la carte pricing to their customers instead of force-feeding them prepackaged tiers. According to the FCC, consumers should have the ability to select and pay for only the channels they want to watch, versus having to pay for bundles or “tiers” comprised of many channels they never view.
If something like this is passed, I could see it affecting some channels to the point that they must shut down. It will be interesting to see if this actually plays out. Check out the full article at Design Technica.
Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Surprisingly, an
expansion was released in less than a few months of the original,
bringing a new angle to the online carnage: Special Forces, or more
specifically, delicate situations with use of specialised weaponry and
equipment.
Check out the full review over at Xtreme Review.
Intel and ECS Contest
Intel and ECS have partnered up to bring a great contest with great prizes. There are still 2 weeks left before the contest is
over so hurry up and get in on the action before it is too late!
Check out the full contest details over at InsaneTek!
Kazaa Back in Aussie Court
SHARMAN Networks executives are in hot water with wigged ones down under and could be facing porridge for contempt.
Sharman, the outfit that makes Kazaa filesharing technology, blocked access to its file-sharing network in Australia on December 5 rather than install keyword filters to prevent the download of copyright music.
First, I am surprised that people still use that piece of junk software. Second, I hope they get taken down. Third, link.
Sneak Preview of NVIDIA Quad GPU SLI
Enter Asus with its brand new Extreme GeForce 7800 GT Dual. This monster of a graphics chip sports two 7800 GT chips running in parallel. We’d like to note a few things that are special about this card. First, only 2000 samples of this my-card-is-faster-than-your-card graphics board exist, worldwide. Second, the THG lab received two of them. Third, although the cards lack the usual SLI connectors, two of these monsters can nonetheless be combined via SLI. That means we can now achieve Quad SLI with four GeForce 7800 GT chips and a total of 1 GB of video memory.
I still have no real idea why they release cards like these, that are not available for the public to touch. Not only that, they don’t have perfect drivers for it yet, so what’s the point of benchmarks? At any rate though, it’s an interesting concept, but may be a little overboard. Check it out at Toms Hardware.
Dell recalls 35,000 notebook batteries
Dell on Friday announced a recall of about 22,000 notebook computer batteries sold in the United States and an additional 13,000 abroad.
The 35,000 recalled batteries were sold with several models of Latitude and Inspiron machines and Precision mobile workstations between Oct. 5, 2004, and Oct. 13, 2005.
My laptop almost hit it close, but I guess I am safe. If you bought your Dell laptop between those dates, look for more info at News.com.
eBay slammed over level of fraud
The BBC is reporting that companies and law enforcement agencies are becoming increasing frustrated and concerned at the high amount of fraud at eBay. There are reports that it can take two months for eBay to pass details to fraud investigators, and that even for companies with a ‘special relationship’ with eBay it can take 5 days for fraudulent auctions to be shut down.
No doubt things need to be taken care of, because people fall for clever schemes on eBay everyday. Check out the posting at Slashdot.