A Tribute Tio my wife!

I Love ANNE!

Nvidia ForceWare 101.41 Beta For Windows Vista

NVIDIA is committed to supporting Microsoft Windows Vista on current and previous GPU generations. It's important to the company that you have an excellent experience through the Vista transition, and driver development is the highest priority in our company.

They are working diligently to make sure we achieve and maintain the level of driver quality and reliability that NVIDIA is known for. Over the coming weeks NVIDIA and their partners, along with the industry, will continue to update Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add feature support.

Release Highlights:

• Beta driver that adds support for NVIDIA SLI™ support on GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs
• Improved OpenGL performance
• Improved NVIDIA SLI performance at high resolutions
• General application compatibility fixes
• This driver supports the following features:
• Single GPU support
• DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
• DirectX 10 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs
• OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
• NVIDIA SLI support
• DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
• OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
• NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD technology
• DirectX 10 NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available in a future driver

Release Notes - 101.41

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Gone Gold

At THQ's Gamer Day event on Thursday night in San Francisco, THQ worldwide publishing executive VP Kelly Flock announced that development on GSC Game World's incredibly long awaited S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl has wrapped, with discs ready to go into production. The game is now set for release this month. Originally titled the easier-to-type Oblivion Lost the game has been in the works for well over five years.

Graphics Card Partners Try To Keep Faith As AMD Pulls Rug On CeBIT

Reports from Taiwan's graphics card manufacturing industry are revealing that AMD's recently announced delay of its upcoming flagship graphics processing unit (GPU), the R600, was not just a shock and disappointment to fans of the former-ATI, who have been waiting for graphics cards based on the new chip, but also to AMD's partners, who were set to introduce products based on the chip at CeBIT in March.

AMD and its partners were arranging to launch R600-based products at CeBIT, according to industry sources, and live demos were being planned by individual partners. These have now almost all been canceled after the announcement by AMD, with only a few select few partners being allowed to show demo systems – provided by AMD – in private showings, while the rest will have to make do with showcasing old products or, at best, new variations of old products at one of the industry's largest trade shows, which starts in a little than over two weeks, on March 15.

But it's not the inconvenience that's causing problems for the card makers, but rather the uncertainty that the late change of plans casts over AMD's ability to deliver in the graphics card market and its hope of being able to compete with Nvidia following the AMD-ATI merger. Nvidia launched its current high-end GPU in November 2006.

According to graphics card makers, the R600 is AMD's hope of getting back on top and the delay only serves to highlight how far behind the company has fallen. The fear that many card makers now face is that supporters of the ATI brand who have been waiting months for the new product will finally decide enough is enough, the effect of which would be reduced confidence, and therefore sales, of all ATI-branded products.

However, despite the doubts, it still appears that graphics card makers are backing AMD and hope that the company will succeed. "We have our fingers crossed," said one maker while another asked everyone to "keep the faith." With the R600 launch now scheduled for early in the second quarter amid added speculation that mainstream (R630) and low-end (R610) parts will launch at the same time, the new plans could result in AMD having a complete top-to-bottom product lineup at launch, a rare occurrence in the graphics market, but one that many industry experts believe may prove successful for the company.

Mozilla Thunderbird E-mail Client 1.5.0.10 Released

Thunderbird is a full-featured email, RSS and newsgroup client that makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before.

Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 provides stability and security enhancements that are part of our ongoing program to provide a safer email experience for our users. We recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this latest version. The online updates as well as the full installers are now available.

Here's what's new in Thunderbird 1.5.0.10:

• Improvements to product stability.
• Several security fixes.

New Nvidia ForceWare Drivers For Vista Coming Soon

Nvidia tells us that it plans to release a new set of beta ForceWare graphics drivers for Windows Vista "in the next few days." The drivers will finally bring SLI support for GeForce 7- and GeForce 6-series graphics cards. Also on the menu will be performance improvements in OpenGL games, performance improvements for SLI setups running at high resolutions, and fixes for the following bugs:

- Brief corruption (flickering, boxes) on screen at Windows Vista login, CTR-ALT-DEL (Task Manager), or other function that requires Vista User Account Control
- Playback issues when playing TV/DVD/video in Media Center with Aero enabled
- Outputting via TV-Out shows only a black and white display
- HDTV output does not keep HDTV resolution after restart
- Adjusting Video Color settings from the NVIDIA Control Panel are not getting applied.
- Change Flat Panel Scaling page does not correctly work in the NVIDIA Control Panel.
- Brightness, Contrast and Gamma values remain the same in Adjust Desktop Color settings once closing and opening the NVIDIA Control Panel.
- Corruption on DVI monitor while going to hibernation from standby
- Call of Duty 2 has no performance gain when SLI is enabled
- Madden NFL 07 while playing the screen will freeze, but the game will continue to run and you hear the in-game sounds.

Not listed are some "general application compatibility fixes," which Nvidia says will be detailed in the release notes for the drivers when they come out. Just like Nvidia's previous Vista graphics drivers, this upcoming ForceWare release will support GeForce 8800, GeForce 7, and GeForce 6 graphics cards.

Update for Windows XP (KB929338)

This is a reliability update. Install this update to resolve an issue in which you receive a stop 0x1a or stop 0x0a error message on a computer running Windows XP Service Pack 2. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

File name	File version	File size	Date	Time	Platform	SP requirement
Ntkrnlmp.exe	5.1.2600.3051	2,136,064	19-Dec-2006	14:15	x86	SP2
Ntkrnlpa.exe	5.1.2600.3051	2,057,600	19-Dec-2006	12:55	x86	SP2
Ntkrpamp.exe	5.1.2600.3051	2,015,744	19-Dec-2006	12:55	x86	SP2
Ntoskrnl.exe	5.1.2600.3051	2,180,352	19-Dec-2006	14:17	x86	SP2

OpenAL Installer For Windows 1.9.9 (Driver Update)

A piece of older news but nonetheless quite important:

Creative Labs has released an OpenAL driver update to accomodate changes in the OpenAL sound API. OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D Audio API designed to be used by games, music and multimedia applications. The OpenAL library enables the application to model a collection of sound sources moving in a 3D space as heard by a listener in that space. With extensions such as EAX, realistic environments can be created using environmental reverberation and low-pass filtering effects. But that's not all, the OpenAL API includes support for streaming and audio capture too.

The OpenAL Installer for Windows will install the OpenAL 1.1 library, enabling support for core OpenAL operations as well as extensions such as EAX and EFX. The installer supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

DLL Version numbers:

• OpenAL32.dll version 6.14.357.19
• wrap_oal.dll version 2.1.4.0

Changes and Bugfixes:

• Fixed Windows 98 crash bug
• Fixed floating-point related slow-down in "Generic Software" device
• Fixed Source Gain problem on Stereo Buffers.
• OpenAL Router search path now includes Router's directory.
• Windows Vista Default Device and Device Enumeration fixes.
• ALC Capture Extension can now be used independent of playback.

GRAW 2 For Xbox 360 Has Gone Gold

Today Ubisoft, one of the world’s largest video game publishers, is pleased to announce that Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, the follow up to the massively popular squad-based action franchise, and next gen smash hit of 2006, has officially gone gold. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft will be available in retail stores on Thursday, March 8th.

AMD Reveals More R600 Info At 690G Chipset Launch

Various reports hit the net tonight reporting that at today's San Francisco launch of their new 690G chipset AMD decided it was also time to talk a little regarding their recently delayed R600 GPU. Taking advantage of press presence, AMD publicly demoed two R600s coupled to an AMD "Barcelona" CPU and working on a stream computing workload. AMD's Henri Richard took the blame for delaying the R600 launch, but assured everyone that "R600 is doing very well" an obvious bid to quiet rumours of a hardware problem with the GPU being to blame for the launch being pushed back. Further, AMD reported that the launch would only be delayed "by a few weeks" rather than the months some observers have feared. At least one source is reporting directly that the delay is in order that "AMD can roll out a full suite of graphics chips covering multiple market segments for the latest Microsoft DirectX 10 applications programming interface."

In the configuration demoed in San Francisco, each R600 is said to have used 200W, be comprised of 320 "multiply-accumulate units", and between the two units on display be capable of a total of one teraflop of math power. While it's not clear yet which bits are definite AMD marketing language and which are reporters trying to invent language to report with, it would appear to us likely that AMD will also be joining the scalar bandwagon, and that to reach 1 teraflop of compute power with 320 ALUs x 2, would most likely imply a clock of roughly 800MHz operating on MADD units. Going well back to early rumours and reporting of R600 last spring, and adding today's 320 ALUs, this would begin to look like a modified/improved version of Xenos at 4 arrays of 16, with the 5D ALUs improved to be scalar and fully MADD.

Restart

As you might have noticed "The Missing Files" is going again. I can not promise frequent updates as there were before but interesting news items surely will find their way onto the site.

Take care.

GeForce 8800 Drivers For Vista Overachieve In AA

Nvidia's ForceWare graphics drivers for Windows Vista recently received certification from Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs, but the drivers still suffer from a number of problems that have yet to be ironed out. Nvidia has informed TechReport.com of a particular issue that causes incorrect antialiasing modes to be enabled on systems running Nvidia's latest GeForce 8800 cards. The drivers apply 16X coverage sampling antialiasing (CSAA) when the user selects regular 4X antialiasing in some games, resulting in lower-than-expected performance.

Affected games include Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Sin Episodes, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. To apply 4X AA in those games, Nvidia says users must set that mode in both the game and in the Nvidia control panel. Interestingly, Nvidia claims the problem applies not only to ForceWare 100.54 and later driver revisions for Vista, but that it will also apply to future 100.xx ForceWare drivers for Windows XP. The company says it's currently working with developers to help them better implement CSAA support in their games.

Update For Windows Vista (KB929451)

Install this update to resolve an issue which may cause a network adapter to register invalid IP addresses into a DNS server when an adapter’s GUID is changed. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Vista License Terms.

AMD Introduces The AMD 690 Series Chipset

This is the company’s first chipset to bring together the combined strengths of AMD CPU and platform technology with the industry-leading features of the ATI Radeon™ X1250 GPU.

"As a result of the ATI merger, AMD is delivering innovative platforms for the commercial and consumer markets featuring best of breed performance, visual computing experience, energy efficiency and stability," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and COO. "With the launch of the AMD 690 series chipset, AMD is delivering on the commitment we made to our customers, channel partners and end users to bring to them customer-centric innovation. Our largest global customers are already committed to offering AMD 690 series-based solutions, and more than 30 motherboard designs will be available."

SiSoftware SANDRA Version 11.22A Released

SiSoftware has released an updated version of their popular benchmark and system information utility SANDRA. The new version is labeled Service Pack 1 (v11.22a). A detailed changelog is not available.

New OpenAL Installer 1.9.1 For Windows (Driver Update)

Creative Labs has released an update for OpenAL. OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications and many other types of audio applications. The library models a collection of audio sources moving in a 3D space that are heard by a single listener somewhere in that space. OpenAL is used in renowned titles such as Quake 4, Battlefield 2, UT 2004 or Doom 3.

Updated April 3, 2006 : Version 1.9.1

The OpenAL Installer for Windows will install the OpenAL 1.1 library, enabling support for core OpenAL operations as well as extensions such as EAX and EFX. The installer supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

Version note: Installs OpenAL32.dll version 6.14.357.13 and wrap_oal.dll version 2.0.8.0.

Changes and Bugfixes:

• The installer can install both 32bit and 64bit OpenAL run-time components. 32bit components are installed on all WIndows OS's, and if the installer is run on a 64bit Windows OS, the 64bit components are also installed.
• The wrapper (wrap_oal.dll) has been updated to support the new Effects Extension (EFX) to OpenAL.