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5 Quad-Cores and 8 Dual-Cores Disappear by Q1 2009

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:52:37 -0500

[indent]Probably the most popular and best selling quad-core of all time, the 65nm Kentsfield-based Q6600 is walking toward its retirement. Intel has informed its partners that it scheduled a Product Discontinuance Notice for December and that the real End of life for this CPU is Q1 2009.

At the same time, Intel plans to retire Q6700 with the same schedule and Q9450 will receive Product Discont

Microsoft survey hints at Instant On OS concept

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:14:34 -0500

Hmm, what have we here? A recent Microsoft survey sent out to select users has us wondering what on Earth the mega-corp is planning to do next, and judging by the looks of things, it has everything to do with Instant On. We've seen a number of these lightning-fast boot applications, with the most recent being ASUS' Splashtop OS and the iteration loaded onto Dell's freshest Latitudes. The survey ma

ATI and Nvidia to Start Using TSMCs 40nm Process Technology by Mid-2009

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:11:29 -0500

ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia Corp. are rumoured to release their next-generation graphics processing units (GPUs) sometime in the middle of next year, if the information released by sources familiar with market situations and plans of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is correct.

The leading designers of graphics processors will not utilize TSMCs 45nm

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6: The Most Overclocker Mainboard Out There

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:11:14 -0500

Even Gigabyte representatives admit that their Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 mainboard is not ideal. The board itself as well as the BIOS Setup and the brand name software are not free from a few issues. We have pointed them all out in our todays review. However, all of them are not very serious and get completely forgotten in the light of phenomenal overclocking potential of Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6. We have

Firefox 3.1 beta 1 officially released

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:09:31 -0500

Mozilla has announced the availability of the first Firefox 3.1 beta release, an important development milestone for the popular open source web browser. Mozilla aims to make Firefox 3.1 a strong incremental improvement with user interface enhancements, new features, and increased support for emerging web standards. The new beta release includes a modest handful of noteworthy changes that improve

Dual-core Phenom pops up again in roadmap

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:06:34 -0500

Much (digital) ink has run on the subject of dual-core Phenom derivatives. Rumor sites initially expected such chips to launch quad-core Phenoms last year, but we later heard that AMD had shelved the concept until the 45nm switch. Then, 65nm dual-core Phenom listings somehow made their way onto a price search engine in Europe, and unofficial benchmarks of a 2.2GHz model surfaced. We still haven't

ForceWare 178.24 drivers support new chipsets, old GPUs

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:06:18 -0500

You can praise Nvidia for many things, but regular driver releases aren't the company's strong pointusers of GeForce 6, 7, and 8 graphics cards had to wait six months for a new a WHQL-certified driver release earlier this year. It's therefore unusual to see Nvidia roll out new, WHQL-certified ForceWare drivers for its GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, and GTX 200 cards barely three weeks after the previous rel

Adobe Flash 10 delivers GPU acceleration

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:05:34 -0500

After some uncertain beginnings in "multimedia" websites and poorly designed website navigation menus, Adobe Flash has become the de facto platform for streaming video online. Today, eWeek says Adobe has released the next major version of the multimedia plugin. Adobe's Flash Player 10 is available from this page for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linuxincluding Ubuntu 7 and 8, reportedly.

What's in st

Catalyst 8.10 drivers add fan-speed control

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:05:08 -0500

Starting with the speed boosts, AMD says users of Radeon HD 4000- and Radeon HD 3800-series cards can look forward to frame-rate increases of up to 15% in Unreal Tournament 3. Those using the same cards in CrossFire multi-GPU configurations may also see a 2-5% improvement in Prey.

More interestingly, the Catalyst 8.10 release adds a fan speed control setting in the Overdrive tab of the Catalyst

Intel® X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive Starts Shipping

jmke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:48:34 -0500

Intel® X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive

Extreme performance, reliability, and power savings for servers, storage and workstations

The Intel® Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) offers outstanding performance and reliability, delivering the highest IOPS per watt for servers, storage and high-end workstations.
Related links

[b][size="3"]Reduce

Sherwood announces $300 Blu-ray player

Shogun — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:06:07 -0500

Sherwood America has announced it will release a Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player next month with a retail price of $299.95.

The Sherwood BDP-5003, Sherwood's first attempt at a Blu-ray player, supports Profile 1.1, 1080p playback, and video playback at 60 Hz and 24Hz, among other features.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15134-S...ay-player.html

Intel posts record Third-Quarter Revenue of $10.2 Billion

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:41:58 -0500

Intel posts record Third-Quarter Revenue of $10.2 Billion

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 14, 2008 - Intel Corporation today announced record third-quarter revenue of $10.2 billion along with operating income of $3.1 billion, net income of $2 billion and earnings per share (EPS) of 35 cents.
[indent]"Intel delivered the best third-quarter revenue in its hi

Arctic Cooling Fans Review

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:32:08 -0500

Computer cooling is becoming a much more widespread topic with extra emphasis on silence in comparison to the past where this aspect of cooling was more or less disregarded in an attempt to produce maximum performance. The challenge that faces most manufacturers nowadays is the perfect combination between the two. Today at XSReviews, we have a whole series of Arctic Fans up for review. However, th

GELID GC1 Thermal Compound

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:31:52 -0500

Modern processors produce a lot of heat and it requires large heatsinks with fans to keep everything running to specification. Thermal paste is one of the most critical components for keeping your processor cool, especially for those of us who overclock. The surfaces of processors and heatsink bases may appear to be completely flat to the naked eye but on a microscopic level there are many imperfe

PR: MSI unveils its P7NGM Digital & P7NGM-FI mainboards - First Intel digital home so

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:31:36 -0500

Today MSI launches micro-ATX mainboards with Intel 45nm CPU support: MSI P7NGM Digital and MSI P7NGM-FI based on the latest NVIDIA GeForce 9300/nForce 730i chipset. The MSI P7GM mainboards support NVIDIA CUDA Technology, Hybrid SLI and PureVideo HD technology, which make these mainboards perfect for multimedia purposes. They deliver 7.1-channel audio and support peripherals connected through HDMI,

Nvidia's GeForce 9300 chipset

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:31:19 -0500

AMD's 780G has been our integrated graphics chipset of choice for nearly eight months, but Nvidia's new GeForce 9300 looks poised to claim the crown for the green team. Keep reading for the goods on the latest GeForce MCP and how it compares with the AMD's 780G and 790GX, Intel's G45 Express, and Nvidia's own GeForce 8300.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15690

NVIDIA GeForce 9300 Motherboards: Asus and Zotac

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:31:08 -0500

To say that there has been some tension between Intel and NVIDIA lately would certainly be putting it mildly. But the fact of the matter is, for now at least, the two companies share a somewhat symbiotic relationship. The products we've got on tap for today are proof of this fact.

What we have on tap is a new NVIDIA chipset with an mGPU (or IGP) designed for the Intel Socket 775 platform,

ECS GF9300T-A Black Series GeForce 9300 Motherboard Review

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:41 -0500

The ECS GF9300T-A Black Series GeForce 9300 motherboard is hopefully a BIOS update away from being an incredible motherboard. It seems well conceived and well designed, but there are just too many issues and limiting factors to get overly excited about it as is. The performance was respectable in many tests anyway, and it makes me wonder just how good this board could be (at stock speeds or overcl

Zotac's GeForce 9300 (MCP7a) Motherboard

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:00 -0500

Zotac's board isn't the fastest or most capable out there, but for just being stable and for HTPC playback it's the best Intel solution currently available. The Nvidia GeForce 9300 gives it an underlying boost to be something great with dual digital displays, perfect HD HQV numbers (that we've not seen before) and Blu-ray playback that the Intel G45 can't match.

We do feel it underperforms in g

Thermalright T-Rad² GPU cooler review

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:29:42 -0500

PCGH had Thermalrights T-Rad² GPU compete against Scythes Musashi and Arctic Coolings Accelero S1. We checked temperatures and loudness with different setups.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...oler_reviewed/

OCZ Gladiator Max

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:29:30 -0500

memory manufacturers in the computer market. Over the last few years though, OCZ Technology has started including other computer components to their product line such as power supplies & CPU coolers. Today I am going to show you one of their newest additions to their line-up of CPU coolers, the Gladiator Max, which uses a newer method of utilizing copper heat pipes, by making the heat pipes contac

Palit HD4850 Sonic Review

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:27:31 -0500

The Palit HD4850 Sonic is an overclocked card built on a purpose built PCB. That purpose is to provide a card that is both stable and overclocks like gangbusters. It delivered clock speed increases of 15% on the RV770 core and a hefty 26% on the memory. OverclockersClub has done a few reviews on the ATI based HD4850 cards to show a wide range of performance with non reference cards with unique hea

Thermalright T-Rad² Video Card Cooler Review

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:26:38 -0500

For the last few years Thermalright's video card cooling products were centered around the gargantuan HR-series of heatsinks which offered incredible performance but had an Achilles Heel: their size. In order to achieve their performance, coolers like the HR-03 relied on an upright design which made attaching a fan and running a second video card in SLI or Crossfire all but impossible. Enter the T

Thermaltake V14Pro CPU Cooler CL-P0471

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:26:18 -0500

Thermaltake, famed of their variety in air cooler selection, has just released their best performing CPU cooler: V14Pro. Claiming to have reached the highest cooling performance ever, the new V14Pro comes with the giant size 140mm fan, 6 copper heatpipes, and 98 extended copper fins. In this performance comparison, Benchmark Reviews tests the Thermaltake V14 Pro CPU cooler CL-P0471 against the bes

Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ 1GB Video Card

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:26:06 -0500

It's a great time for those in the market for a new video card, in just a few short months we've seen the debuts of over half a dozen different boards. At the high-end, high-priced segment Benchmark Reviews has showcased such great offerings from NVIDIA as the GTX 280 and ATI/AMD's HD 4870x2, while at the other end of the spectrum the mainstream budget cards releases are almost too plentiful and m

MSI Eclipse-SLI (X58) Preview

Massman — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:30:37 -0500

We already posted the first Nehalem overclocking results done by Coolaler on an Intel motherboard, but now he's tested the new i7 technology on MSI's Eclipse motherboard.

http://www.ocxtreme.org/forumenus/showthread.php?t=4023

SPARKLE Presents GeForce 8400 GS PCI Express x1 Graphics Cards

jmke — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:16:38 -0500

SPARKLE Presents GeForce 8400 GS PCI Express x1 Graphics Cards

Taipei, Taiwan Oct 14, 2008 - SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today presents the SPARKLE GeForce 8400 GS PCI Express x1 Graphics Cards, the first PCI Express x1 solution on SPARKLE family product. SPARKLE GeForce 8400 GS PCI Express x1 Graphi

[M] Thermalright Ultra Extreme 1366 CPU Cooler Preview

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:16:34 -0500

Intel will launch their new Core i7 CPU series in the very near future. It will have quite an impact as it will have an integrated memory controller, DDR3 only support, and a new Socket. Just as Socket 775 it will be a LGA based socket, with the pins on the motherboard. Only this time it will have 1366 pins and modified dimensions for coolers. Let's take a closer look at one of the first third par

Intel Havendale (the one with IGP) delayed until 2010

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:43:46 -0500

It turns out that a dual core IGP version of Nehalem codenamed Havendale will be delayed to 2010. The latest roadmap reveals that Nehalem with two cores, four threads, 4MB of smart cache and a dual channel memory controller and of course IGP in the CPU will after all be delayed.

According to the original plan, Havendale was supposed to launch together with Lynnfield as both of these new Nehalem

German Alternate doing an OCZ week

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:42:54 -0500

German e-tailer/retailer Alternate.de has started a new special deal memory week with OCZ memory. This wouldn't be so interesting but prices are just ridiculous, and DDR2 has dropped to a new low. For example, OCZ's 2GB DDR2-1066 Reaper HPC kit will set you back just 40, or you can get the OCZ 4GB DDR2-800 XTC Nvidia kit for 59.

The new special deal at Alternate spreads to all DDR modu

Crysis: Warhead Gameplay Perf and IQ

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:36:30 -0500

We have posted our Crysis: Warhead Gameplay Perf and IQ evaluation today. For those of you wanting to know what kind of performance you can expect out of the four best video cards currently on the market, todays evaluation answers all your questions and more.

Those gamers with a more modest video card budget are certainly not out in the cold for Warhead. The GeForce GTX 260 outperformed th

Google's Chrome Declining In Popularity

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:29:50 -0500

After launching in a blaze of publicity that even warmed Slashdot, Google's browser grabbed a 3% share of the market, but has been slipping ever since, and now accounts for 1.5%. Google has also stopped promoting the browser on its search page. Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?

[url]http://tech.sla

Nvidia Problems Hit HP Desktops

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:29:24 -0500

HP has revealed faults with 38 different models in its slimline PC range, sparking speculation that Nvidia's faulty GPU problems have spread beyond laptops. HP's official statement says the problems are 'attributable to the computer's motherboard" and that affected machines 'may not boot or may not display video' the same kind of terminology used to describe the previous faults with laptop GPUs.

DHL "lost" 21,600 Xbox 360 consoles: Microsoft seeks more than $2 million in damages

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:22:01 -0500

The software maker filed a complaint in the District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, claiming that mailing company DHL Express should responsible for losing valuable cargo that contained 21,600 XBox 360 game consoles. The shipment was picked up at the Microsoft office in McAllen, Texas and was planned to be delivered to distributor Flextronics in Hong Kong. Unfortunately,

Geforce GTX goes 40nm - New Names Revealed

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:20:14 -0500

So starting off with the high-end, these will be named as previously announced GTX 270 and GTX 290, although the GTX 260 and GTX 280 will co-exist. Performance parts are to occupy the 230-250 slots and add the prefix GT, as in GT 250. GS prefixes are the mainstream parts and take up the 210 through 220 slots and the lowliest of the low-end is the GeForce G 200 through 209.

Details are fuzzier

Asustek Computer Plans to Introduce Eee-Branded Mainboards.

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:18:08 -0500

In a bid to further popularize the Eee brand among different types of end-users, Asustek Computer has reportedly decided to add mainboards into the lineup. The reasons for the decision are completely unclear since Asus Eee is mainly associated with finished products, not components.

Asustek Computer has been expanding the Eee family of products for several quarters now by offering wider range o

Corsair Power Supply Units Roundup

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:17:54 -0500

Today we are going to talk about four power supply units from a well-known manufacturer of computer memory Corsair Company. We will discuss solutions targeted for different market segments and ranging from 450W up to 1kW capacity.

* Corsair VX450W (CMPSU-450VX)
* Corsair VX550W (CMPSU-550VX)
* Corsair TX650W (CMPSU-650TX)
* Corsair HX1000W (CMPSU-1000HX)

Mounting an external antenna on Asus Eee PC 900

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:17:12 -0500

This man added an external antenna to his EeePC 900. Initially, he mounted it on the side of the unit, but found that the location caused it to no longer fit in its carrying case, and made plugging in USB or Ethernet cables very difficult. His resolution was to move the mount to the rear portion of the case. His professional looking mount is definitely worthy of some attention. Check out the proje

More Thermalright Ultra-120 TRUE Copper Details

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:15:58 -0500

Thermalrights Ultra-120 True Copper will be on sale this month .The price is 100~110USD and only have 2000 PCs available.

Features:
● Use high quality copper material for consistent heat absorption and transfer.
● Utilizes six high quality 6mm heatpipes, strategically positioned to pick up the heat from the CPU.
● Proprietary bent winglet design to minimize airflow r

Windows 7 gets a name: Windows 7

jmke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:10:44 -0500

Mike Nash, corporate vice president for Windows product management at Microsoft, had the honor of announcing the official name of the new client Windows: Windows 7. Nash noted that he was excited to show a new product to the world for the first time and that he is very excited about the opportunity to tell [people] more about Windows 7 in the coming weeks. But clearly there is not much excitem