Tuesday, December 27, 2005

New Version Of Windows Media Player Soon?

The software giant next month will roll out a new version of the media player which executives say will change the experience of watching Internet-delivered video. Already, MTV Networks has announced it will roll out its own music download service on this new version of Microsofts player, competing with Apple Computer Inc.s iTunes and Real Networks Inc.s Rhapsody.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 5, founder and chairman Bill Gates will not just tout MTVs new service, known as Urge, but is likely to announce agreements with other content providers as well.

AMD Acknowledges Desktop CPU Shortages

Advanced Micro Devices said it expects to solve supply issues with some of its desktop processors by the first quarter.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker sent a letter to some of its partners stating that several of its desktop processor models were in high demand and would continue to be difficult to obtain, said two systems builders who asked to remain anonymous. One of those systems builders said the note specified the Athlon 64 3500, 3800, the dual-core X2 3800 as well as the lower end Sempron 2600 and 2800 as being in tight supply.

An AMD spokeswoman acknowledged shortages in the low-end desktop space but would not comment on specific model numbers. In a statement e-mailed to CRN, the spokeswoman said: "AMD is experiencing unprecedented demand for our desktop processors and this unprecedented demand has depleted our supply of packaging components."

ATI Confirms R580 Product Launch Shortly

ATI Technologies chief executive David Orton said in a recent financial conference call that his company would launch its new high-performance visual processing unit (VPU) within the following 90 days. The claim confirms unofficial information about the R580 chip, which is due to be released in late January, 2006.

“Over the next 90 days, you will see us recapture the performance leadership from ourselves, with our R580 launch in Q2, delivering the most compelling multi-GPU graphics platform with CrossFire, and ramping OEMs with this solution in the quarter as well,” said Mr. Orton.

According to some sources with knowledge of the matter, ATI Technologies received the first commercial batch of R580 wafers several weeks ago. Sources close to the company suggest that ATI will be able to supply enough code-named R580 VPUs to fulfill the demand towards them.

The R580, , is a revamped version of the currently shipping RADEON X1800-series VPU, which code-name is R520, has been tested by ATI since July, 2005. Unofficial information hints that the R580 has 48 pixel shader processors, 8 or more vertex processors and works at high clock-speeds. The chip, however, is expected to have 16 texture mapping units (TMU), less that could be expected. The product is to support Shader Model 3.0, ring-bus memory controller that supports GDDR4 memory type and other innovations.

The primary competitor for ATI’s forthcoming R580 is recently released NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512 product from the company’s arch-rival. Nevertheless, ATI is expected to release various versions of its R580 targeting different segments of the high-end graphics cards market. According to market sources, ATI is unlikely to price its R580-based products at unprecedented levels, e.g., the part will not cost $649, a suggested retail price for the GeForce 7800 GTX 512.

Friday, December 23, 2005

ATI Reveals Radeon X1900 Details Internally

ATI secretly released its Silver Bullets material to AIBs this week and the picture of R580 is slowly coming together. R580, or Radeon X1900 as it is called internally, is expected to "launch" in January according to ATI documentation. Unfortunately, ATI's track record has not been spectacular with the last few product launches. ATI's Crossfire chipset "launched" twice, once in June and again in October.

ATI released their Silver Bullets for Radeon X1800 approximately two months before the launch of the card, but it took nearly six weeks after the launch for master card variants of the X1800 to show up on store shelves (and nearly as long for Crossfire motherboards as well).
The Silver Bullets presentation was a little light on details, but did confirm the R580 GPU has 48 pixel shader processors and higher clocks than R520 (a.k.a. Radeon X1800). Radeon X1900 uses a 90nm process also found on Radeon X1800.
The internal briefing also confirmed that there will be two separate versions of the card, RX1900CF "Master Card" and RX1900 "Crossfire Ready" card. Like the Radeon X1800 series, you will need at least one master card to enable Crossfire support. Avivo and Shader Model 3.0 will also appear on Radeon X1900.

New Western Digital Raptor Harddisk Coming Soon - WD1500AD

Although Western Digital a leading manufacturer of high performance HDD's has not yet officially announced the new product, a major german etailer - Alternate - has listed a new model of the very popular WD Raptor series - the WD1500AD!

WD Raptor is a unique class of hard drives that matches SCSI reliability and performance while providing simplified connectivity - all at a lower cost than Parallel SCSI drives. The SATA drives which are extremely well received at PC enthusiasts for high end gaming systems and for server and workstation environments will get an updated sibling with new features.

The new model WD1500AD is expected to be launched in late January 2006 and has the following features: 150GB storage capacity, SATA-II interface, Native Command Queing (NCQ) support, 16MB cache and 10000RPM speed. Alternate's retail price currently is 319 €. Link: http://www.alternate.de/html/shop/productDetails.html?showTechData=true&artno=A9BW18&#tecData

Nvidia ForceWare 82.12 Beta - Windows 2000/XP/x64

Nvidia has a second ForceWare release ready for christmas, this time it's in beta status only.
Release Highlights:
  • Adds support for GeForce 6800 GS AGP.
  • Adds support for Dell 3007WFP panel.
  • Mixed vendor support for NVIDIA SLI.
  • TV-Out/HD-out support for NVIDIA SLI.
  • Added support for VSync on Direct3D games when running NVIDIA SLI.
  • Performance enhancements for dual-core CPUs.
  • PureVideo high definition MPEG-2 de-interlacing support.
  • Usability enhancements when connecting to an HDTV.
  • Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 2.0 support

For a full list of fixed and known issues please view the Release Notes.

Nvidia ForceWare 81.98 WHQL - Windows 2000/XP/x64

Nvidia has released a new set of ForceWare drivers for their GeForce series of GPUs. This set is WHQL certified and is available in english as well as multilanguage versions.
Release Highlights:
  • WHQL Certified
  • Application compatibility fixes. For a full list of fixed and known issues please view the Release Notes.
  • Mixed vendor support for NVIDIA SLI.
  • TV-Out/HD-out support for NVIDIA SLI.
  • Added support for VSync on Direct3D games when running NVIDIA SLI.
  • Performance enhancements for dual-core CPUs.
  • PureVideo high definition MPEG-2 de-interlacing support.
  • Usability enhancements when connecting to an HDTV.
  • Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 2.0 support.

Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client 1.5 RC 2

Thunderbird is Mozilla's next generation e-mail client. Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before. It features intelligent spam filters, built-in RSS reader, quick search, and much more. Thunderbird 1.5 RC 2 is meant for the early adopter community, and Extension developers.

PlexTools Professional 2.32 Released

PlexTools gives extra support to Plextor hardware by enhancing the possibility to directly control specific functions.

PlexTools Professional has proven to be stable, precise and useful. It offers high quality audio and multimedia capabilities and advanced control of several powerful features of Plextor drives. The distinctive design allows ease of use for newcomers without compromising on the powerful features that experienced burners demand.
PlexTools has the following other editions available: PlexTools Professional XL.

Seagate Acquires Maxtor

Seagate and Maxtor, producers of hard disk drives from the U.S., announced Wednesday that they had signed an agreement under terms of which the former would acquire the latter. The announcement continues the consolidation trend of hard drive manufacturers and outlines just how complex the business is.

Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies, Maxtor shareholders will receive 0.37 shares of Seagate common stock for each Maxtor share they own. When the transaction is completed Seagate shareholders will own approximately 84% and Maxtor shareholders will own approximately 16% of the combined company. The value of the transaction is approximately $1.9 billion.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of calendar 2006, subject to obtaining shareholder approvals and customary regulatory approvals. There is a termination fee of $300 million payable to Maxtor under certain conditions. The transaction is intended to be tax-free to Maxtor shareholders. Prior to the closing, Seagate and Maxtor will operate as separate businesses.

Call Of Duty 2 Retail Patch 1.01

Activision has released a special HTT patch for Call of Duty 2, upgrading the World War II first-person shooter sequel by Infinity Ward to version 1.01 for users on Windows 2000/XP with "Intel Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology) enabled processors, multiple processors, or systems with a dual core processor. This upgrade will not affect pure server, and will not affect your ability to join or host multiplayer games with version 1.0 players."

ATI Radeon Catalyst 5.13 Drivers Released

ATI Customer Care now offers downloads of new version 5.13 Catalyst reference drivers for Radeon graphics accelerators running under Windows XP as a christmas gift. Some game-related fixes and CCC bug fixes are listed among the release notes, and word is: "Catalyst 5.13 software suite introduces H.264 hardware acceleration for the ATI Radeon® X1800, X1600, and X1300 product line. [...] ATI CrossFire Support for the ATI Radeon X1800. [...] " As noted, the "old" control panel edition of the drivers is no longer available, and the CCC edition is now required. CCC requires .NET framework 1.1 to be installed.
NOTE: Using the Catalyst® software suite 5.13, along with the Cyberlink H.264 decoder available from http://www.ati.com/technology/h264.html provides H.264 hardware acceleration. (not yet available)

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

New Quake 4 Mappack From id

Shaking up the holiday season with a trio of aftershocks, id Software, Raven Software and Activision, Inc. have released the Quakemas Map Pack - three new downloadable maps for QUAKE 4 on the PC. The maps - Railed, Tremors, and Campground Redux - offer all-new gameplay environments for more fast-paced, intense multiplayer combat. These latest maps are now available for free download at www.idsoftware.com.

Microsoft's New IE7 Browser To Have Increased Security

Microsoft's Internet Explorer will get significant security improvements with the upcoming IE 7.0 version. In recent months, millions of Internet users have switched to alternative browsers, like Firefox, because of security concerns with IE. Microsoft hopes to lure those people back with a newly designed browser that will have protected mode, phishing filters and even tabbed browsing.

IE7 is currently only available to developers in a Community Technology Preview (CTP). The browser's new protected mode will run IE7 with lower privileges than the main operating system and the browser can only access and write to browser specific files. A "broker" process will provide communication if the browser needs to save regular files. This feature is not currently available with this preview build of IE7, but will show up with Windows Vista reaches beta 2 status.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

ATI's Avivo Update - H.264 Acceleration & Special Downloadable Surprise

Anandtech has their Catalyst 5.13 preview online: Whenever ATI tells us they have some announcements to make two weeks before the end of the year, we usually get a bit worried. The fact of the matter is that it is very rare for a company to release and ship new products this close to the end of a year, so we tend to get suspicious when new announcements happen like this. There is one exception, however - and that is software, or in this case, drivers.
Just earlier this month, ATI released their Catalyst 5.12 drivers, which offered support for dual core processors, but without any really tangible gains in performance as we found out. ATI had also alluded to the potential of another Catalyst release before the end of the year, and as their predictions would have it, Catalyst 5.13 is due out for release this coming Thursday (12/22/2005).

Info-Tek Unveils Radeon X1000 Graphics Cards For Old AGP Bus

Info-Tek Corporation, the major supplier of the world's leading graphics card brand GECUBE, announced the world's first RADEON X1000 AGP Series Graphics products with the launch of the RADEON X1300 and RADEON X1600 graphics cards.

This simultaneous release of the GECUBE RADEON X1300 and GECUBE RADEON X1600 highlights an embedded memory of 256MB DDR2 memory that enhances game visuals and facilitates real-time responsiveness. Extremely realistic colors at higher resolutions (1920x1440 and 2048x1536) transport users to a gaming dimension bordering on surrealism. The AGP interface also allows gamers to easily upgrade without replacing large PC components such as motherboards.

The GECUBE RADEON X1000 AGP series all support Avivo technology. Video capture and playback is radically improved resulting in quality at 64 times higher the number of colors currently available in current PCs. An unprecedented 10-bit processor via Avivo's display engine makes this possible.

The GECUBE RADEON X1000 AGP series also support ultra-threading technology and Shader Model 3.0, which groups together brand new pixel and vertex shaders in order to create accurate lighting and shading. Thus, gaming settings and conditions drastically raise the bar in 3D gaming.

Microsoft Patch Day December 2005

On December 13, 2005, Microsoft releases its monthly security bulletins. This month's security updates affect Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, a component of Windows.
Affected Software: Internet Explorer 5 and up on all operating systems
Affected Software: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

Thursday, December 15, 2005

DivX Play / Create Bundle For Windows 2000/XP 6.1

DivX is a package that includes all the DivX codec, player, utilities, and documentation that you need to play DivX files. DivX codec is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This codec can reduce an MPEG-2 video (DVD format) to ten percent of its original size. DivX is a digital video compression technology based on the ISO MPEG-4 standard.

It includes DivX Player and DivX codec. To convert movies to DivX, download the Create Bundle.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Nero 7.0.1.4 Update Available

Ahead Software has released a massive 100MB update to Nero 7. The word is:

Dear valued customers,the new demo version and the new update contain a number of bug fixes*. Please note that by the end of the year, a new demo and update version will be available.
Your Nero Team

*An overview of all release notes and features is coming soon.

New Valve Source Engine Rendering Effects

[H]ardOCP had the opportunity to meet with Valve and discuss features that the company plans on implementing in their next generation gaming engines. The goal is to bring a more cinematic experience to the gamer given the massive processing power available with graphics cards now and in the near future:
This is very interesting what Valve is talking about here because this is something you may not have thought of. In gaming graphics, the goal is to achieve a very detailed environment that immerses you in the game, but, at the same time, you must have enough performance to actually enjoy it. Well, what if you could render effects that hide some of the nasty imperfections game exhibit to help increase your immersion in that game? What if you could render fewer polygons and use an effect that still makes the player model appear like he/she is detailed? With the effects Valve is talking about today, this is the goal.
You can also see videos of the effects in action over at Bit-Tech.

Nvidia To Acquire ULi

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ULi Electronics Inc., one of the PC industry’s most highly-regarded core logic developers. Headquartered in Taipei, ULi also has offices in Hsinchu; Shanghai; Shenzhen; and San Jose, California. ULi is recognized for its innovative core logic technology as well as other multimedia and embedded products. The acquisition represents NVIDIA’s ongoing investment in its platform solution strategy, which leverages the acclaimed NVIDIA nForce media and communications processors and NVIDIA GeForce and NVIDIA Quadro graphics processing units.

DirectX 9.0c End-User Runtimes (December 2005) Full Download

This download provides the DirectX end-user redistributable that developers can include with their product. This update includes the DirectX for Managed Code Update from the DirectX SDK Update (December 2005).

The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes the bi-monthly D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX components.

If you would like the websetup version of the runtime package, please click
here.

Monday, December 12, 2005

X1800XT Crossfire Cards Out

ATI finally released out the X1800XT crossfire boards, and performance appears to be pretty solid. As is usual with new product launches, if you know where to look, you can find them a bit early. This early peek has numbers to boot, check here, look at the screenshots on the right side.

Modern Games And Modern GPUs: The Grand Clash

The Holiday season is approaching and a lot of people will be playing the latest games during their spare time. X-bit labs has decided to help you choosing a graphics card in the range from below $99 and up to $649 for the latest and most demanding games that are available today.

This article is dedicated to the graphics cards that are relevant to the current situation and the latest games, which is why it does not test relatively outdated titles like Doom III or Far Cry and also does not touch upon multi-GPU setups, as it is obvious that due to lack of competition multi-GPU NVIDIA GeForce-based solutions are the fastest and the most expensive today.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification - December 2005

As part of the monthly security bulletin release cycle, Microsoft provides advance notification to our customers on the number of new security updates being released, the products affected, the aggregate maximum severity and information about detection tools relevant to the update. This is intended to help our customers plan for the deployment of these security updates more effectively. On 13 December 2005 Microsoft is planning to release:
Security Updates
• 2 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft Windows. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will require a restart. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA).
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
• Microsoft will release an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and the Download Center.
Non-security High Priority updates on MU, WU, WSUS and SUS
• Microsoft will release two (2) NON-SECURITY High-Priority Updates on Windows Update (WU) and Software Update Services (SUS).
• Microsoft will release three (3) NON-SECURITY High-Priority Updates on Microsoft Update (MU) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)

ATI Catalyst Drivers 5.12 Released

ATI Customer Care now offers downloads of new version 5.12 Catalyst reference drivers for Radeon graphics accelerators running under Windows XP. Several game-related fixes and performance improvements are listed among the release notes, and word is: "The Catalyst 5.12 software suite introduces dual core support for CPU bound cases. This feature provides improved graphics performance for DX 9 supported graphics adapters installed in systems running the Windows XP and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating systems." As noted, the "old" control panel edition of the drivers is no longer available, and the CCC edition is now required. CCC requires .Net framework to be installed.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Diskeeper 10 Released

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Diskeeper for Windows, Diskeeper Corporation announced the release of Diskeeper 10.0. New Diskeeper 10.0 has defragmentation and storage performance technology that is light years ahead. The market leading automatic disk defragmenter continues to provide the most advanced technology to increase performance for Windows based networks.
Included in Diskeeper 10.0 is Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAASTTM). This Disk Performance Calibration technology is a new class of disk technology that will allow users to squeeze more performance out of storage devices and is expected to deliver performance gains of 10-80% beyond defragmentation. New functionality includes:
  • Core enhancements to the new comprehensive defragmentation engine offer faster performance, less resources usage and more thorough file and free space defragmentation
  • Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST™) learns the performance characteristics of each drive and sequences the most commonly-used files for the fastest possible access
  • Enhancements to I/O Smart™, which intelligently monitors drive access during defragmentation, allows transparent background defragmentation so you never experience a performance hit, even during system peak production times
  • Terabyte Volume Engine™ defrags large volumes, SANs, RAIDs and NAS, quickly and more thoroughly.
  • Enhanced user interface provides easy configuration and scheduling as well as reports on disk health, real time performance and fragmentation statistics.
  • Native 64 bit operating systems support.
  • New Diskeeper Professional Premier Edition is the ultimate edition for power users and high powered workstation computing.

Diskeeper 10.0 is now available for sale and can be purchased through your favorite reseller.

IE7 Public Beta Due Early Next Year

Those eager to get a taste of the next Internet Explorer release with tabs and RSS support only need to wait a couple more months. A public beta of IE7 for Windows XP is slated to arrive in the first quarter of 2006, IE team head Dean Hachamovitch confirmed on Tuesday, posting this information on his blog.

It's not clear if the public pre-release will be branded Beta 2; however, it does coincide with the expected Beta 2 launch of Windows Vista, which will also be open to the public. "We want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to try a pre-release version of IE7 and tell us how it works with their web sites, their applications, their add-ons, and how they use the web overall," said Hachamovitch.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Hynix Debuts 512Mbit GDDR4 DRAM

Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. yesterday announced the availability of the world’s first 512 Megabit GDDR4 DRAM, the DRAM industry’s fastest and highest density graphics memory. GDDR is an ultra-high speed graphics DRAM that processes moving pictures and graphic data in personal computers and game consoles.

The fourth-generation graphics memory GDDR4, which improves data processing speed by close to two times than that of GDDR3, is ideal for 64-bit computer operating systems that manage vast amounts of data at once. The Hynix’s 16Mx32 512Mb GDDR4 operates at 2.9Gbps and processes 11.6 Gigabytes of data in 1 second.

Hynix will shortly begin to sample its GDDR4 products to leading graphic chipset suppliers and plans to start mass production in early 2006. Hynix plans to introduce its GDDR4 DRAM with 14.4GB speed by second half of 2006.

ATI Catalyst 5.12 Performance Preview @ Anandtech

Anandtech has received the latest ATI beta driver for Radeon graphics cards. The interesting part of this is that ATI claims to have introduced dual core optimizations into this driver build just as Nvidia did in their recently introduced ForceWare series 80 drivers. Here is i a snippet:

There are really quite a few questions to be asked about this driver. After adding up everything we wanted to do, the sheer number of tests we had laid out was enormous. In an effort to be more efficient ourselves, we decided to break our analysis of the 5.12 driver up. This article is meant as a quick look at the benefits of ATI's dual core enhancements on a few select games running on X1K series hardware. We will compare this driver to the old one as well as dual core performance to single core performance.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

New Unreal Tournament 2004 Patch

After a ten month hiatus, Epic Games sends along a new Win32 retail patch for Unreal Tournament 2004, advancing their multiplayer first-person shooter sequel to version 3369. This upgrade implements more gameplay, networking, and engine improvements and fixes, as detailed in the accompanying release notes.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Counter-Strike: Source Update Available

Updates to Counter-Strike: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
New Map
  • Added de_nuke with High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting
Counter-Strike: Source Enhancements and Bug Fixes
  • The Bomb (C4) can no longer be planted on breakables, movable physics props, or other players
  • Fixed problem where players were not always “grabbing onto” ladders that were approached from above
  • Crouching while traversing a ladder reduces the player’s speed (matches CS 1.6 behavior)
  • Improved door logic to prevent doors from opening into the player using them
  • View-smoothing is now done when going down stairs as well as up
  • Bomb-related sounds play for everyone correctly now (not just the bomb-planter)
  • First-person spectators are blinded and deafened just like the person they are observing
  • Fixed incorrect bullet penetration calculation through concrete+grate materials
  • Fixed changeteam exploit
  • Fixed DX7 early prop fade-out
  • Fixed rare player animation issue while holding grenades
  • Fixed apparent lockup/hang due to the disconnect dialog showing up over the quit menu and hiding it
  • Fixed crash when shooting explosive objects that would result in the shooter’s immediate death
  • Opening the buy menu and equipment menu on the same frame no longer leaves the buy menu in a bad state
  • DEagle no longer always plays deploy animation when starting to spectate its owner
  • Non-localized HintText displays correctly again
  • Added "mp_disable_autokick " so players with rcon access aren't idle-kicked
  • “soundscape_flush” no longer forgets about soundscape entities
  • Exposed VIP player index to plugins/mods

Counter-Strike: Source Bot Changes

  • Several navigation improvements (jumping, ladders, general movement)
  • Various CPU performance optimizations
  • Bots are more attentive to enemy noises now
  • Bots throw their grenades when surprised by an enemy correctly now
  • Bots can open doors when attacking with a knife now
  • Fixed bug preventing CT bots from hiding to guard a bomb defuser
  • Fixed a few issues where bots were trying to plant the bomb in bad places
  • Bots now break breakables they touch while stuck or crouched
  • Fixed bots not knowing if the cs_havana window is shut
  • Adding the “bot_join_delay” ConVar to delay bots joining after a map change

Nvidia 7800 GTX 512MB Retail Shortage

Most people eager to get their hands an a brand new GeForce 7800GTX 512MB have been disappointed in the last few weeks. Count myself in as I am waiting for a preordered Asus version for 2 weeks already. Despite Nvidia's claims about immediate availability of the 7800GTX 512MB, it was true for the first and second shipment only. The problem actually lies in Samsung's spanking' new GDDR3 memory chip, 1.1ns, cutting edge of DRAM technology. those chips aren't exactly in mass production, and the chips had the status of only "sampling" not a long time ago. Samsung massively produces 1.2ns and 1.26ns GDDR3 memory chips, as tens of thousands of 7800GTX and X1800XL/XT can witness, but 1.1ns is in rather short supply, consumed entirely by Nvidia's 7800GTX 512MB baby.

AMD Athlon64 FX-60 Toldeo On January 10th

According to The Inquirer, the FX-60 based on 90nm Toledo core will be launched by AMD on January 10th and folks at HKEPC have got a hold of a FX-60 clocked at 2.6GHz (13.0 x 200MHz), Dual Core, 2 x 1MB L2 cache, 1.35V VCore and JH-E6 stepping. It will be the last Socket 939 processor of the Athlon 64 FX family where the its successor will be the FX-62 which is Socket M2 based and supports Dual Channel DDR2 667. Athlon X2 and FX-60 share similarities since both are dual-core and are based on the Toledo core where FX-60 is essentially a "higher clocked" version of the current X2 4800+ at 2.4GHz. The next X2 in the line will be based on the "Windsor" core and Socket M2 based and will start appearing in Q2 2006. The Athlon 64 X2 5000+ will be clocked at 2.667GHz (8.0 x 333.3MHz) and contains 2 x 1MB L2.

Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS For OEM Only

According to sources from the OEMs, NVIDIA will still release GeForce 7800 GS but will only make the product available to the OEM market in the current plan. GeForce 7800 GS will be based on G70 architecture but will only sport 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipes. It will be clocked at 375MHz core and 1GHz memory with 256-bit memory interface. For its performance, the 7800 GS can replace 6800 Ultra and GT. Also there will be AGP version of the 7800 GS as well but it will require BR02 bridge to change it back to AGP interface.

New Logitech SetPoint Software 2.47 Released

Logitech has released an updated version of their SetPoint Software for their newer mice and keyboards. The new version is 2.47 and works with the MX518, Mediaplay Cordless, MX1000, the new V series and the new G series of mice as well as a few other and some keyboards. There is no word on what is new or what has been fixed since the last release. A version for Windows XP 64bit is also available.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Java Runtime Environment Version 5.0 Update 6 Released

Java technology is a groundbreaking computing platform released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Originally called OAK, it was renamed as the Java programming language in 1995.

Java technology opens up a wealth of exciting possibilities for consumers. It enables just about any application - including games, tools, and information programs and services - to run on just about any computer or device. From desktop PCs to mobile handheld devices and cell phones, Java technology today is just about everywhere.