Techgage News

Google Previews Chrome OS

In the world of software, new products of all stripes come out all the time, and rarely is a launch that exciting. But when the launch involves a brand-new operating system, and one that's being developed by none other than Google, people start to pay attention. Yes, I'm of course talking about Chrome OS, an operating system that was only announced this past summer, and hasn't been able to escape daily mention in the news ever since.

Google unveiled the OS for the first time at a low-key press conference yesterday, and it looks almost just as we'd expect. The entire OS is essentially a robust browser, with many tabs found at the top to access various parts of the system, or for various website tabs you might have open. It's important to note that this isn't a desktop OS, and it's absolutely not meant to be, so such a simplified design might prove to be fine for most people running it on a netbook or similar device.

Think that might change? Don't count on it. Apparently, Google is going to have rather tight hardware standards, so it's not going to work without issue on everything. Interestingly, it's not going to support typical HDDs, but rather SSDs. It will support x86 and ARM CPUs, however, which means it will support many mobile devices currently on the market. I wouldn't count on these restrictions as being a bad thing, because Google has released the entire OS as open-source, so there's little doubt that modified versions will come along for use on other platforms.

I'm quite interested to see just where Chrome OS is going to go, because Linux-based OS' for netbooks and the like have been done before, and people always seem to flock back to a Windows-based OS. But given the popularity of Google online applications, this Linux OS in particular might appeal to a much larger crowd of people, and might just put Google on a path to OS super stardom.

Interested in giving the OS a try for yourself? There's actually a torrent available, with a VMware image, and since VMware Player is completely free, as tackled in our news the other day, you have everything you need to see what it's made of. Note that this should be treated as nothing more than a preview, though, because that's what it is. The final version still isn't due until sometime late next year.

As far as going to market, Google's not talking details until the targeted launch at the end of next year, but Chrome OS won't run on just anything -- there'll be specific reference hardware. For example, Chrome OS won't work with standard hard drives, just SSDs, but Google is supporting both x86 and ARM CPUs. That also means you won't be able to just download Chrome OS and go, you'll have to buy a Chrome OS device approved by Google.

Source: Engadget

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Adobe Releases GPU Accelerated Flash Plugin Beta

There was a rather significant release that occurred earlier this week that I ended up forgetting about, but it's worth mentioning now even if I'm a few days late (whoops!). Adobe released its long awaited Flash 10.1 plugin. Before you say, "Who cares?!", realize that this is the version that brings GPU acceleration into things. That's right... the latest version (in beta) will allow you to run version Flash videos accelerated on the GPU rather than the CPU.

Right now, the acceleration is limited to H.264 encoded videos, but that's hardly an issue given just how popular that codec is. The GPU acceleration isn't just for the desktop either, but notebooks, and across all three graphics card producers. Yup, even Intel has added the support via its latest driver. There's a catch though, and it applies to all three graphic card vendors. The card you have must be relatively recent in order for the acceleration to work.

For ATI cards, both the desktop and mobile parts need to be part of the HD 4xxx family, or higher, while on the integrated side, HD 3xxx and higher is supported. NVIDIA supports pretty much every GPU that's been released since the 8000-series, including ION. For Intel, graphics chips part of the 4 series chipset family are supported. If you want to check the full list, or get additional details, you can download the official release notes (100KB PDF).

To make sure that the GPU acceleration works, be sure to download the latest possible driver from either vendor. ATI's latest, and stable, Catalyst 9.11 is fine, but for NVIDIA you'll need to download the beta 195.55 driver. For Intel, version 15.16.2.1986 or later is required. To take a look at some test videos while learning something about the new Flash, you can go here. The image I've posted below can be clicked to go to an H.264 YouTube HD video, in true 720p. Other 720p Flash videos are likely to also work fine.

I haven't had the chance to test out the beta plugin yet, but I'd like to soon. I was hoping my "netbook", the AMD-driven HP dv2 would be supported, but as it was built using an already-outdated GPU when I bought it this past spring, I'm out of luck. As far as I'm concerned, though, netbooks are the largest beneficiary of this feature. It's frustrating to run a YouTube HD video only to have it lag like no tomorrow. I'm very interested to know if the latest drivers and plugin solve this issue, so if you test it out for yourself, be sure to relay your thoughts in our thread!

This public prerelease is an opportunity for developers to test and provide early feedback to Adobe on new features, enhancements, and compatibility with previously authored content. Consumers can try the beta release of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks. You can also help make Flash Player better by visiting all of your favorite sites, making sure they work the same or better than with the current player. We definitely want your feedback to help improve the final version, expected to ship in the first half of 2010.

Source: Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Pre-Release

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Tech Roundup - November 20, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

Intel Core i5-750 - Vortez Hardware
Intel P55 Motherboard Round-up - TechSpot

Displays & Video Cards

AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB CrossFire - Elite Bastards
ASUS Radeon EAH5870 Voltage Tweak Edition - PureOverclock
HIS Radeon HD4850 iCooler 1GB - Tweaknews
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB - ThinkComputers
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X - Bjorn3D

Memory & Storage

Elixir 6 GB 1600 MHz CL9 Tri-Channel - techPowerUp
Two Kingston 40GB V Series Boot Drive SSDs in RAID 0 - Legit Reviews

Peripherals & Gadgets

ASUS SBC-04D1S-U External Slim Blu-ray Combo Drive - ThinkComputers
Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Blu-ray Player - Digital Trends
SilverStone Raven 3200DPI Gaming Mouse - OCModShop

Cooling

Antec Notebook Cooler 200 - Benchmark Reviews

Chassis & Power Supplies

Antec Sonata Elite Mid-Tower Chassis - EXTREME Overclocking
IN WIN Maelstrom Chassis - Overclockers Club
NZXT Beta EVO Chassis - BCCHardware
Sunbeamtech Automaton Chassis - Madshrimps
Thermaltake BlacX Duet Dual HDD Docking Station - Pro-Clockers

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera

Apple MacBook 2009 - Digital Trends
Editorial: Going Beyond Just Measuring Frame Rates - Phoronix
LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 - Digital Trends
Contest: NZXT Gamma Chassis - Benchmark Reviews

ASUS Launches G51J 3D Notebook, Featuring NVIDIA's 3D Vision

Think that NVIDIA's 3D Vision is nothing more than a fad? According to a press conference held earlier this week by the company, that couldn't be further from the truth, and it has a good handful of reasons to back up its claims. Unfortunately, a lot of what was discussed at the conference can't be repeated until a later date, but the most interesting tidbit can be... mobile 3D Vision. That's right, there exists a notebook out there that boasts such support. Is it a surprise that it's from ASUS?

ASUS touts the G51J 3D as being a "3D Gaming Notebook", for a few reasons. The first is that bundled in the box is NVIDIA's 3D Vision kit, which includes both the wireless shutter glasses and receiver. Worried about the fact that 3D Vision requires a 120Hz display, but that's never seen on a notebook? Don't worry, ASUS has taken care of that, and I believe that makes the G51J one of the first, if not the first, consumer notebook to feature a 120Hz display.

The question of just how useful 3D Vision is on a notebook has been debated, and in truth, it is quite hard to sell someone on the technology, especially since very few games natively support it. But at the press conference earlier this week, NVIDIA gave news of upcoming support from various game developers, so the support is indeed growing, and when a company like ASUS vouches support for a technology, especially like this, you know there's real potential.

It's important to note that for a game to look "cool" with 3D Vision, it doesn't have to be natively supported. NVIDIA has recently been demoing Left 4 Dead 2 to show off the technology, for example, and that's one game that doesn't list support. When the first Left 4 Dead came out, I tested it out also with the 3D Vision, and though it took a few minutes to get used to, I did find it to add to the experience overall.

In addition to the 120Hz display and 3D Vision inclusion, the G51J 3D includes NVIDIA's fast GeForce GTX 260M 1GB graphics card, Intel's Core i7-720QM processor (1.6GHz w/Turbo up to 2.8GHz), 4GB of DDR3-1066, up to 1TB (dual drives) of HDD storage, a Blu-ray ODD, a 15.6-inch display (1366x768) and a whole lot more. The suggested retail price is $1,699.99, and we should be able to expect availability on sites like Newegg very shortly.

As the first notebook capable of producing realistic 3D visuals in games and videos, the new ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) G51J 3D is designed to deliver a truly immersive gaming and multimedia experience to gamers everywhere. Equipped with NVIDIA 3D Vision and bundled with specially designed 3D glasses, the ASUS G51J 3D-which sports an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB DDR3 video memory - delivers adrenaline-pumping, edge-of-your-seat visuals anytime, anywhere.

Source: ASUS Press Release

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AMD Posts Final 40th Anniversary Contest, NVIDIA Holding Charity Auction

Both AMD and NVIDIA shot over some information regarding events that each is holding, one being a contest, the other being an auction. Both are equally as interesting, though. On the AMD front, the company is wrapping up its 40th anniversary celebrations by offering up some game consoles that use its technology, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii. The company's giving out 10 of each, and to win, it couldn't be much easier.

You'll first have to go to AMD's official Facebook page and become a fan (original idea, I know), and then you'll have to go to the "Giveaway" tab to complete the online form. It's not a survey, but simply AMD's way of collecting information (which would be needed to award the prize). You will be automatically opted into AMD's marketing list, but the form states that you can unsubscribe at any time.

NVIDIA's event might not be quite as exciting, but it's far more important. It's an eBay auction for a gaming PC valued at over $10,000, with 100% of the profits going to the Silicon Valley chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The PC, is as you'd imagine, jaw-dropping. It features Intel's latest and greatest Core i7-975 Extreme Edition CPU, 12GB of Crucial RAM, 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 (four GPUs!), an ASUS Rampage II GENE motherboard, not one, but two Crucial 256GB SSDs, two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drives and... *catches breath*.

Alright, so there's a lot of stuff here, including water-cooling, peripherals, the full-blown Ultimate version of Windows 7, a fleet of new games, a monitor along with NVIDIA's 3D Vision and so much more. What makes the PC all the more interesting, though, is that it's custom all over. It features a Danger Den box chassis that's designed with superb airflow and water-cooling in mind, and it's been lovingly caressed by the folks at Smooth Creations - you won't see this paint job anywhere else.

Since the machine is valued at over $10,000, it wouldn't be surprising to see the auction hit close to that, or even well over. When it comes to auctions like these, they're impossible to predict. If you're looking to go all out on a new PC, though, this looks to be a great way to do it. The best incentive might be the fact that the collective product is 100% tax deductible. Not only would you be supporting an important cause, but you wouldn't have to pay taxes on it. Talk about a win/win!

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Gigabyte's "333" Motherboards Bring S-ATA 3.0, USB 3.0 & 3x USB Power

Last week, Gigabyte held a press conference along with Marvell and Seagate to tout features with each of the respective company's new products. On the Seagate side, there was of course the Barracuda XT, the company's first drive to take advantage of the S-ATA 3.0 (6Gbp/s) spec. From Marvell was its SE9128 on-board chip, which is responsible for enabling S-ATA 3.0 on current Gigabyte motherboards that offer the support.

To coincide with the launch of both S-ATA 3.0 and USB 3.0, Gigabyte has relaunched a couple motherboards as revisions. To know if a board features these two technologies, you can simply look for the "A" addition in the model name. For example, the P55-UD6 becomes the P55A-UD6, and so on. Gigabyte calls the added technology on these boards the "333 Onboard Acceleration", where the "A" in "Acceleration" is the reason for the A in the model name.

The last of the three represents "USB Power 3x", which Gigabyte states is a unique feature at the current time. The 3x figure is literal, as in the slide below, you can see that the power output is indeed triple. The reason the company added this was because it will help negate the requirement of a power adapter for certain peripherals, such as external hard drives. It's really hard at this point to understand just how unique this particular feature is, but once such high-powered USB 3.0 devices hit the market, testing will need to be done. You can be sure that if this is indeed as useful as Gigabyte says it is, then other companies won't take long to follow.

Along with mentions of these technologies, Gigabyte included some light performance data as well, to help us gain a basic understanding of the improvements that can be seen. On the USB 3.0 front, and seen below, a massive 25GB HD movie would take only 70 seconds to transfer onto a perfect USB 3.0 storage device, down from 13.9 minutes on USB 2.0. Note that if this isn't theoretical, it's based on the best possible speeds out there, because 25GB in 70s equals 357MB/s, which current consumer SSDs can't even manage.

Of course, the presentation given wouldn't be complete without some S-ATA 3.0 benchmark results, and those are as we expected, "nice". The differences between S-ATA 2.0 and 3.0 aren't staggering on current-gen devices, but things should improve when even faster SSDs get out here, or HDDs with lower latencies. On a similar drive, a S-ATA 2.0 drive hit a burst speed of 223MB/s, while on S-ATA 3.0, the drive hit 298MB/s. We also see boosts of 9.5% on the average read and 9.7% on the average write. Again, not major, but certainly not worthy of complaint, either.

Motherboard vendor support for both S-ATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 has been great so far, so now it's just a matter of waiting for the respective devices to launch so we can take full advantage of what's given to us. It's kind of a weird situation to be in, because both of these technologies are so fast, that the products to take full advantage just don't seem to exist, at least not on the consumer side. Hopefully that means that USB 3.0 will enjoy a full life like USB 2.0 had.

Source: Gigabyte 333 Onboard Acceleration

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Intel Divulges Information on TRIM for Linux

This past Monday, I made a news post that explained my upcoming plans to install an SSD in my personal PC, to help get a better understanding of the real-world benefits of using one on a day-to-day basis. Simply put, I'm tired of boasting about how great the SSD revolution is without actually using one outside of our benchmarking machines. Once I'm prepared to do the upgrade, the drive to be installed will be Kingston's SSDNow M-series 80GB, based on Intel's X25-M G2.

Since that post, I got in contact with Intel who clarified a few of the points surrounding the issue of using TRIM under Linux. Sure, this is a topic that bores most people, but as a full-time user of the OS, I care about it quite a bit, and I'm sure a lot of others out there are in a similar situation as me. And as frustrating as I've found tracking down the information to be, I'm hoping this investigative sleuthing will affect a lot more than just me.

Intel made a couple of points that cleared up a lot, starting off with the fact that TRIM is indeed alive and well in Linux, and it comes down to having the right software installed to take advantage of it. I was pointed to a PDF that explains how the command can be executed (section 7.10.3.2), and that's all that's needed for a software engineer to implement the feature, whether it be someone in charge of a distro, a piece of software, or a file system.

I was also told that it wasn't only ext4 that currently supported TRIM, but Btrfs, GFS2 and XFS do as well, with more to be added later if the file system developers decide to add it (hopefully, they will). Past the file system, there are two things that need to be in place for TRIM to work: a TRIM-aware Linux kernel or an application capable of passing the command (like hdparm) and of course, also an SSD that supports it.

Intel also stated that it's been working with Red Hat and upstream Linux developers to provide guidance on supporting the feature in their (and other) operating systems for its particular SSD. TRIM in general isn't SSD-specific, however, so if the support is there, then any distro to natively support it should do so with any TRIM-capable drive. Sadly, Intel couldn't state when the fruits of this guidance would be seen, but I'm hoping it won't be too long before something pops up.

There's still just one thing I'm a little confused about. How can we use TRIM now? After all, even Intel said that it's supported, so where is it? Well, there's hdparm (a Linux hard drive benchmarking tool), but when looking at the help file, this message made me a little wary, "For Solid State Drives (SSDs). EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE THIS FLAG!!". Can you blame me?

I think a project is in order. In the next week or two, I'd like to install Kingston's SSD not in my personal machine, but in the benchmarking machine as a secondary drive. I'll install Gentoo Linux on the primary SSD or HDD, so as to make it easy to wipe the drive entirely should I need to during testing. Benchmarking the clean SSD, dirtying the heck out of it, and then running a benchmark again should be a good enough method of seeing whether or not TRIM works. I'm hoping that's not going to be easier said than done.

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NVIDIA Teases with Photo of GF100 Running DirectX 11

Hot on the heels of ATI's launch of the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, an NVIDIA employee posted a fun little image on his Facebook that shows off a GF100 card, also known as the first card to use the company's Fermi core. That's not what's important. What is, is that the card is seen running the Unigine DirectX 11 benchmark, with all its tessellation goodness in tact (you can tell tessellation is active by the spikes on the dragon). This is a good sign that the final silicon is right around the corner.

But... no matter how much NVIDIA tries to prove a point, there's always a minor issue that causes the skeptics to question the validity of it all, and to be honest, I can't blame them. The first problem is that this is a picture, not video, so there's no real proof that it's running at all. The second issue is that in the image, there's another motherboard on a riser, with an audio card conspicuously installed, blocking out the view of the graphics card that could be running behind it.

Whether the picture is legit or not is up to you, but despite the things that work against NVIDIA in the photo, I'm going to believe that it is. At this point in time, I just can't see NVIDIA putting out a "faked" photo after the issue with the mock card at Siggraph. Plus, we are at a point where Fermi cards are right around the corner, with a hopeful launch next month, or at the latest, very early 2010.

Aside from the benchmark being run, we can see that the GF100 card requires just two PCI-E 6-pin power connectors, which is nice to see given this is going to be NVIDIA's highest-end offering for a while. ATI's highest-end single-GPU, the Radeon HD 5870, is no different in this regard, but given that Fermi is supposed to be quite the power-hungry beast, seeing that we're going to be able to fore go an 8-pin power connector is nice.

Source: NVIDIA Teaser Shot

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Tech Roundup - November 19, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

7-Way Intel P55 Motherboard Round-Up - TechSpot
Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P - Technic3D
Intel DP55WG - Motherboards.org

Displays & Video Cards

ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Bjorn3D
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - The Tech Report
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - HotHardware
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - Legit Reviews
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - Neoseeker
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - Overclockers Club
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - techPowerUp
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - TweakTown

Memory & Storage

Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB SSD - Bigbruin
Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB SSD - PC Perspective
Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive - InsideHW

Peripherals & Gadgets

Cooler Master Mousepad Roundup - XSReviews
Raidsonic Icybox IB-MP305A-B Mediaplayer - Red and Blackness
Razer Orochi Mouse & Kabuto Mousepad - Bjorn3D

Cooling

Zalman CNPS10X Flex CPU Cooler - DeXgo

Chassis & Power Supplies

Antec CP-1000 1000W Power Supply - JonnyGURU
Azza Solano 1000R Full-Tower Chassis - Pro-Clockers
Kingwin F-35 HDD Enclosure - Virtual-Hideout
NZXT LEXA S Chassis - Bona Fide Reviews
Thecus N0204 miniNAS Pocket RAID Storage - Legit Reviews

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera

Contest: Gigabyte 2x GeForce GTX 275 - Bjorn3D
HP DreamScreen 100 Digital Photo Frame - Digital Trends

VMware Player 3 Allows Creation of VM's, Adds 3D Support

Last month, VMware released updated versions of its popular Workstation and Fusion virtualization software, for the PC and Mac, respectively. Of the new and updated features, we had full support for Windows 7, improved 3D rendering and a whole lot more. Seeing just what Fusion 3 packed in for Mac users, for an easy-to-swallow price of $80, I was a bit perturbed given the fact that the only solution for PC users is the $189 Workstation version.

I sent VMware's Sr. Product Marketing Manager of the Desktop Business Unit, Michael Paiko, a couple of questions last week, including a request as to the reason why PC users don't get a lesser-expensive version of Workstation, like Mac users do. The response surprised me, "VMware Player 3 has the ability to create virtual machines and it includes user friendly features such as easy install, seamless desktop integration (Unity), mutli-monitor support, and support for Windows 7 with Aero Graphics."

Anyone who's used VMware Player in the past would know that creation of virtual machines just wasn't possible. It's called "Player" for a reason, after all. I was a bit of a skeptic, but sure enough, after a download I saw that it was indeed possible to create virtual machines now, which puts Player on the same playing field as VirtualBox, which has allowed the same thing since its creation. Does VMware Player hold back important features to encourage upgrades to Workstation?

Not that I can see. The fact that Michael stated that Player supported Windows Aero gave me hope that it might support other 3D as well, and seen in the screenshot below, that's exactly the case. Google Earth ran surprisingly well, and even my modest MMORPG ran as decent as can be through VMware. You can also see that the VM is using four threads of the CPU, which is another new feature (up from two). Overall, I am quite impressed with my experience with the application so far.

VMware also states that Player is a far better solution to "Windows XP Mode" in Windows 7, because it has greater capabilities, and added features, such as 3D support. Now here's the real kicker. I was complaining that PC users didn't have an affordable version of VMware like Mac users do, but with Player 3, I've been proven wrong. The difference now is that the Mac version is $80, and the PC version is $0. There might be some features Fusion has that Player doesn't, and we plan on investigating that in the near-future, as our beloved Senior Editor and Mac fan Brett Thomas will be taking a hard look at Fusion 3, while I'll see all of what Player is made of.

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Tech Roundup - November 18, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

ASUS P7P55D-E Premium - Motherboards.org
MSI 785GM-E65 vs. DFI Blood-Iron LanParty 785G-M35 - TweakPC
Zotac IonITX-A - Technic3D

Displays & Video Cards

ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Hardware Canucks
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - HotHardware
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Legit Reviews
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Neoseeker
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - PC Perspective
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - PureOverclock
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - techPowerUp
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - TechSpot
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - TweakTown

Memory & Storage

Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD - HotHardware
OCZ PC3-12800 OCZ3X1600LV4GK - Overclockers Club

Peripherals & Gadgets

AVLabs AVL787 Bedside Companion Speaker System - TweakTown
Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless Headset - Benchmark Reviews
TRENDnet TEW-671BR Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Router - PCShopTalk

Cooling

Arctic Cooling NC Notebook Cooler - BCCHardware
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler - Hardwareoverclock

Chassis & Power Supplies

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Chassis - The Tech Report
Kingwin F-35 HDD Enclosure - PureOverclock
QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS - DragonSteelMods
SilverStone Raven RV02 Chassis - Phoronix
StarTech Dual-SATA HDD Docking Station - Benchmark Reviews
Thermaltake BlacX Duet HDD Docking Station - DragonSteelMods

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera

BlackBerry Storm 2 - Digital Trends
Contest: Ultra X4 750W Power Supply - Red and Blackness

OCZ Unleashes Colossus 3.5" SSD

At Computex this past June, OCZ unveiled an SSD unlike most others. Rather than stick to a simple 2.5" frame, or toss a whack of chips onto a PCI-E card, the company's "Colossus" drive is a 3.5" solution that packs in more than one SSD and RAIDs them together, for insane speeds, and densities. Since then, the drive has suffered multiple delays, but according to a newly-issued press release, they can be in owner's hands very shortly.

The Colossus comes in four flavors: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB and 1TB. Regardless of the version you pick up, you'll be able to enjoy top speeds of 260MB/s read and write. Each varies slightly in its IOPS performance and sustained writes, with the best choice for overall speed being the 250GB model, which has a sustained write of 220MB/s and performance rating of 16,100 IOPS (4k random).

To hit such speeds, OCZ has implemented a dual controller design, which essentially turns multiple internal drives into a RAID 0 configuration. Because of this, it would be imperative to make regular backups of important data, as if one of the internal drives fail (this would be ridiculously rare), the data would be truly lost. The company's choice does boost the performance though, and it's exceptionally drool-worthy.

The Colossus drives are shipping to e-tailers now, and should be shipping to regular consumers within the next couple of weeks. Curious about pricing? If so, then these are probably not for you. They're currently available for pre-order at ZipZoomfly, with the 120GB selling for $437.99, the 250GB for $826.99 and the 500GB for $1,530.99. It's probably safe to say that we won't be seeing the 1TB version readily available until these prices go down just a wee bit.

“The new Colossus Series is designed to boost desktop and workstation performance and is for high power users that put a premium on speed, reliability and maximum storage capacity,” said Eugene Chang, VP of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. “The Colossus core-architecture is also available to enterprise clients with locked BOMs (build of materials) and customized firmware to match their unique applications.”

Source: OCZ Press Release

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AMD's GPU Clock Tool Simple, but Effective

In our review of Sapphire's Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X last week, I had a major complaint in our overclocking section. For some reason, on certain cards, the "Overdrive" overclocking tool bundled with ATI's Catalyst Control Center is far too limiting. That card, for example, is clocked at 850MHz Core and 1200MHz Memory, and the tool only allowed a maximum boost of up to 900MHz Core and 1300MHz. That's not horrible, but as overclockers, we obviously want a little more breathing room than this.

What's a little bizarre, is that this limit can vary on the GPU itself. In our review of ASUS' Radeon HD 5850 posted yesterday, I was surprised to see limits that spanned 475MHz beyond the reference Core clock, and 400MHz beyond the reference Memory clock. Compared to the limits we saw on the HD 5870, there are no limits here, essentially. So that might be a little odd, but I found a work-around that makes everything better, regardless of which GPU you own.

AMD itself actually puts out a tool called "AMD GPU Clock Tool", although not so officially. It's not available on the company's website at all, but rather can be found on various tech sites, such as techPowerUp. I'm uncertain why this is, but it could be that AMD doesn't want people to download it off its website and kill its cards, but that would seem like a strange reasoning. As you can see below though, it's a simple tool, with the major benefit of expanded maximum clocks.

So where did AMD's GPU Clock Tool get me? As mentioned in the review of Sapphire's Vapor-X card, our top overclock was what the Catalyst Control Center limited us to, 900MHz/1300MHz. With this tool, though, I managed to push the card to 923MHz/1313MHz stable. Sure, that's not a stark difference, but it is a difference nonetheless. If we had control over the voltage as well, I have little doubt that the card could be pushed even further.

Source: AMD GPU Clock Tool

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Tech Roundup - November 17, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

ASUS P7P55D Premium - Motherboards.org
Gigabyte P55-UD6 - PC Perspective

Displays & Video Cards

ASUS Radeon HD 5850 1GB - TestSeek
EVGA GeForce GT 220 SSC - Legit Reviews
Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB Razor Edition - TweakTown
Leadtek PxVC1100 MPEG-2/H.264 Transcoding Card - Legit Reviews

Memory & Storage

OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 AMD Black Edition - Technoyard

Peripherals & Gadgets

Logitech Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX - InsideHW
SteelSeries 9HD Mousepad - techPowerUp

Cooling

Cooler Master Hyper N620 Heatpipe CPU Cooler - Tweaknews
NZXT Cryo S Aluminum Notebook Cooler - Bigbruin
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller - ClubOC
Tuniq Propeller 120 CPU Cooler - DeXgo
Tuniq TX-3 Thermal Grease - BayReviews

Chassis & Power Supplies

Azza Helios 910 Mid-Tower Chassis - Pro-Clockers
Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition - Overclockers Club
Seagate FreeAgent Go Dock+ HDD Dock - TestFreaks
VIZO Arius Ex HDD Dock - LanOC
XClio Godspeed One Advanced Mid-Tower Chassis - TweakTown
Xigmatek Midgard Chassis - Benchmark Reviews

Setting Up Wireless in Ubuntu is Hit or Miss

Earlier this month, I made a news post discussing some fresh changes unveiled with the latest version of Ubuntu, 9.04 (also referred to as Jaunty Jackalope). I've been using the latest OS on my notebook a fair bit since then, and I have to say, this is easily the best version of Ubuntu I've used to date, and it may well be the best version of an easy-to-deploy Linux that I've used to date as well. It installed easy, and has been working like a charm since.

Because my "netbook" doesn't have an ODD, I installed the OS using a thumb drive. That process in itself is a little complicated, but another option would have been to install it from within Windows. But regardless, on the first boot, everything was working just fine, except for one thing... the wireless. This actually surprised me, because from what I recall, Ubuntu 8.04 detected the wireless just fine on the initial boot.

If I have a major gripe against Ubuntu, it's the fact that minor things can change from release to release like this. Ubuntu 8.04, for example, booted up just fine on the dv2. Ubuntu 8.10 did not (in all fairness though, this could have been due to the thumb drive method I used, even though it's the same for all releases). Then again, with Ubuntu 9.04, it boots up just fine, but the wireless doesn't work. Luckily enough though, getting the wireless to function was unbelivably easy.

After I booted up with the thumb drive, I let the desktop sit for a minute, at which point a pop-up came up and told me I needed to enable a driver in order to use the wireless. Ahh, so there it is. The reason the wireless doesn't work, is due to the proprietary nature of the driver. Why it worked just fine in an earlier release, though, I have no idea. Either way, after I chose to enable the "Broadcom STA wireless driver" and clicked "Activate", I was online within two minutes (it had to download and install the driver via my wired connection).

That's all fine and good. I was able to browse the Web while the install took place (the install took exactly 12 minutes, and resulted in 2.6GB being used on the HDD). Once the install was done, I rebooted and went into my newly-installed desktop environment. No surprise, my wireless didn't work (changes to the Live CD are not reflected in the final install, and rightfully so). This time, though, simply plugging in the LAN cable and downloading the driver didn't work, because Ubuntu didn't come out and tell me like before that I needed to enable the driver.

After plugging in the LAN cable, and updating the entire OS through the built-in updater, something clicked, and I was able to see that a proprietary driver needed to be enabled. Once again, two minutes later, I was online via my wireless. The process wasn't entirely as smooth as I had hoped, but it's still a lot better than it could have been. As 2Tired2Tango mentioned in our forums not long ago, sometimes Ubuntu won't even pick up the wireless driver at all, but this might be limited to Atheros. Either way, Ubuntu 9.04 impresses me quite a bit, and it's reinvigorated my Linux spirit to some degree. It's been quite a while since I've last touched OpenSUSE, Fedora and others, so something tells me I'm going to have to do that soon...

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Personal SSD Usage: TRIM and Linux

SSDs might have been out and about for a couple of years, but up until now, I've never used one in my personal machine. I've of course fiddled with them on our benchmarking machines, but as for putting one to a more realistic, and long-term use, I haven't. That's going to soon change, though, as I have picked up one of Kingston's latest 80GB drives, based on Intel's X25-M G2. That means that this drive supports TRIM, and that's pretty much exactly what I was waiting for before committing to an SSD.

Under the hood, Kingston's G2 drives are a spitting image of Intel's own, except for the sticker. So, like Intel's G2 80GB, this drive features a 250MB/s read speed, and also a 70MB/s write speed. The write speed is lacking, it goes without saying, but as I have mentioned many times before, Intel's SSDs excel where random reads and writes are concerned, making it a no-brainer choice for those who aren't entirely concerned with sequential write speeds.

Installing the G2 drive, or any other that supports TRIM, in Windows is rather simple. As long as you're running Windows 7, TRIM will work if the SSD supports it. For previous Windows OS', a tool needs to be run on occasion to get the job done. It's a less elegant solution, but at least there's an option at all. For me, I have a challenge ahead. As many of you I'm sure are aware, I don't run Windows as my primary OS, but rather Linux (Gentoo to be specific). So the next few months should prove interesting.

The situation of TRIM on Linux is difficult to understand right now. Officially, TRIM support was added to the Linux kernel last fall (2.6.28), but how it's activated, or compiled in, I'm not sure. There's also the question of whether TRIM in Linux is filesystem-specific. So far, the only trace I see of TRIM support is usually linked to ext4, but once again, I am not sure if it's built in natively, or requires additional steps.

I've been asking around, and getting an answer to that has proven rather difficult. I plan to continue follow-up with various developers and companies to get a final answer, but unlike Windows 7, where the TRIM support is clear-cut, it's not so much in Linux. Part of this could be the fact that TRIM is called something different wherever you look, so it's likely easy to overlook it, even if you are staring right at it.

I'm hoping to learn a lot more in the coming weeks, especially before I install the drive. I have no real reason for holding off, except time, so I'm willing to wait to understand the situation better, so I know how to build the rig back up. Of course, if anyone out there in the Interwebs knows anything more of the TRIM situation in Linux, please comment in our thread and let me know. I should also stress that on a new SSD, especially Intel's, TRIM isn't that important. This is more of a major curiosity of mine, and since I'm such a performance hound, having TRIM functionality is definitely an interest.

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Tech Roundup - November 16, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

DFI LANParty DK P55-T3eH9 - TweakTown
Gigabyte P55-UD6 & P55M-UD4 - Neoseeker

Displays & Video Cards

Inno3D GeForce GT 220 1GB - techPowerUp
Lucid HYDRA 200 Multi-GPU Preview - HotHardware
Lucid HYDRA 200 Multi-GPU Preview - PC Perspective
XFX Radeon HD 5870 - Technic3D

Memory & Storage

G.Skill Trident DDR3 2000 - TweakPC
Patriot Sector 5 2x2GB 2000MHz - Overclockers Club

Peripherals & Gadgets

Cooler Master Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse - XSReviews
SteelSeries Siberia V2 Headset - Vortez Hardware

Cooling

Choiix Mini Air-Through Notebook Cooling Pad - Vortez Hardware
NZXT Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Controller - Red and Blackness
Thermaltake Massive23 ST Notebook Cooler - ThinkComputers
Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme CPU Cooler - PureOverclock

Chassis & Power Supplies

ABS SL Series 1050 Power Supply - Bjorn3D
Cooler Master Gladiator 600 Mid-Tower Chassis - OverclockersHQ
Cooler Master Storm Sniper Chassis - Legit Reviews
In Win Maelstrom Chassis - Dreamware Computers
NZXT Lexa S Mid-Tower Chassis - ThinkComputers
Thermaltake Element G Chassis - Modders-Inc

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera

Contest: NZXT Beta EVO - Bigbruin
Retail Electronics Buying Tips - Digital Trends
What Happened To Apple's Software Quality? - HotHardware

Installing DirectX 11 Under Windows Vista

Microsoft has good reason to be pleased with its launch of Windows 7, because for one, it was fairly smooth, unlike Vista's, and two, consumers are actually quite pleased with it. For gamers, a major technology came pre-installed with Windows 7, that of course being DirectX 11. Although once rumored to be a Windows 7 exclusive, that was put to rest shortly after the OS' launch. Don't expect to install it on XP, though... this is Vista and 7 only.

At this point in time, it's difficult to install DirectX 11 if you don't know where to look, because Microsoft has not made an installer available for public consumption at the usual sites, such as the official DirectX site. Rather, if you install DirectX from most sources, you'll get either 9 or 10, not 11. The skeptic in me says that Microsoft is complicating the process on purpose in order to sell more Windows 7 copies, but I could be wrong. Either way, the proper installer is still too hard to track down.

So how's the job done? You need to download what Microsoft calls a "Platform Update", which includes a variety of updates, not only DirectX 11. Looking at the page for the download, you'll notice mention of "Windows Graphics", and further mention of DirectX 11. You have two options here. You could either download the entire Platform Update, or single out the DirectX 11 update. I can't recommend either or, but I personally chose the former just because I like keeping things up to date as much as possible.

For those of you interested exclusively in DirectX 11, you can download the update here. For the rest of you, it appears that the Platform Update is now available through Windows Update, although it wasn't a few weeks ago when I took care of it. If it's not in your Windows Update for whatever reason, then the easiest thing to do would be to just grab the single DirectX 11 (and others if you want them) download, as Microsoft doesn't seem to be offering the full-blown Platform Update as a single executable anymore.

There's little reason to fuss over DirectX 11 at current time, but if you have an ATI 5000 series card, the update won't hurt. Dirt 2 is the first game queued up for launch to take full advantage of it, and if you want to give a good benchmark a go, you could always play around with the Unigine "Heaven" benchmark, which we talked about a few weeks ago.

The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library enables developers to take advantage of the advancements in modern graphics technologies for gaming, multimedia, imaging, and printing applications. The new features include: * Updates to DirectX to support hardware acceleration for 2D, 3D, and text-based scenarios * DirectCompute for hardware-accelerated parallel computing scenarios * XPS Library for document printing scenarios

Source: Microsoft Platform Update

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Lucid Hydra Performance is Promising

If there's one product that both AMD and NVIDIA would share an opinion on, it's Lucid's Hydra. This is a chip that's set out to essentially replace CrossFireX and SLI, if all goes according to plan. Rather than handle multiple GPUs with alternate-frame rendering, Lucid's Hydra shares the load in a way that the company won't reveal - probably for good reason. The question, of course, is whether the company's technology is worthy of belonging in any of our machines. Is it?

Well, it's far too early to answer that, of course, as the product isn't officially released, but our friends at The Tech Report have taken a trip down to Lucid's HQs to give the product a test in its lab. Benchmarking this way is never ideal, for obvious reasons, but it's better than nothing. After his exhaustive look within the time constraints, Scott was left impressed in some regards, but not entirely wowed in others. There's more work to be done before the product's final launch, it goes without saying.

In its current form, the scaling works well in some cases, but not well in others. For example, in F.E.A.R. 2, a single HD 4890 card proved faster than an HD 4890 + HD 4770, which makes no sense, as more power should equal more performance. This could be due to improper load balancing between a fast and slower card, but I'm hoping to see Lucid iron out this particular issue before the first iteration gets released. Not all combos suffer like this, however, as a GTX 260 + HD 4890 combination hit almost 25% more performance over a single GTX 260 (but it should be more like 50% at least).

Despite the issues, this technology has a ton of potential, and it's rather incredible to see what this small company has pulled off thus far. It's already received a bit of funding, and even Intel seems to be backing it, so with a little more time, and perhaps a little more money, Lucid could become a real competitor to CrossFireX and SLI. And who knows... it may even render those useless. For the time-being, though, and based off of the initial performance, neither AMD or NVIDIA has much to stress over.

To execute Lucid's load-balancing algorithms, the Hyrda chip also includes a 300MHz RISC core based on the Tensilica Diamond architecture, complete with 64K of instruction memory and 32K of data memory, both on-chip. The chip itself is manufactured by TSMC on a 65-nm fabrication process, and Lucid rates its power draw (presumably peak) at a relatively modest 6W.

Source: The Tech Report

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Tech Roundup - November 13, 2009

Motherboards & Processors

ASUS P7P55D Deluxe - t-break
ECS P55H-A - Motherboards.org

Displays & Video Cards

ASUS EAH5870 1GB - Vortez Hardware
ATI Radeon HD 5850 & HD 5870 Overclocking - Hardware Overclock
Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ Razor Edition - PC Perspective
Leadtek Geforce GT 220 Extreme Overclocking - Madshrimps

Memory & Storage

Kingston HyperX T1 4GB DDR3-2133 - PureOverclock
Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Boot Drive SSD - Benchmark Reviews
Testing Out Linux File-Systems On A USB Flash Drive - Phoronix
Verbatim Store n Go Micro 4GB Flash Drive - OCModShop

Peripherals & Gadgets

CM STORM Sentinel Advance Gaming Mouse - Overclockers HQ
Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Networked Blu-ray Player - i4u
Thermaltake Toughpower Ultra Slim 65W Univeral Laptop AC Adapter - Overclockers Club
TrickleStar TV TrickleSaver - Bona Fide Reviews

Cooling

Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Compound - Hi Tech Legion
CoGage True Spirit CPU Cooler - LanOC
Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme - Overclockers Club

Chassis & Power Supplies

Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition Chassis - Hardware Canucks
NZXT Beta EVO Mid-Tower Chassis - Overclockers Online
NZXT M59 Chassis - Neoseeker
SilverStone Raven RV02 Chassis - PureOverclock
Ultra X4 850W Power Supply - BCCHardware

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera

TomTom XXL 540S GPS - TechReviewSource