Tuesday, December 27, 2005
AMD Acknowledges Desktop CPU Shortages
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."
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:01 PM 0 comments
ATI Confirms R580 Product Launch Shortly
“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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:54 PM 0 comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
ATI Reveals Radeon X1900 Details Internally
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:55 AM 0 comments
New Western Digital Raptor Harddisk Coming Soon - 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
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:40 AM 0 comments
Nvidia ForceWare 82.12 Beta - Windows 2000/XP/x64
- Adds support for GeForce 6800 GS AGP.
- Adds support for Dell 3007WFP panel.
- 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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:34 AM 0 comments
Nvidia ForceWare 81.98 WHQL - Windows 2000/XP/x64
- WHQL Certified
- Application compatibility fixes. For a full list of fixed and known issues please view the Release Notes.
- 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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:16 AM 0 comments
Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client 1.5 RC 2
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:05 AM 0 comments
PlexTools Professional 2.32 Released
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:43 AM 0 comments
Seagate Acquires Maxtor
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:41 AM 0 comments
Call Of Duty 2 Retail Patch 1.01
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:38 AM 0 comments
ATI Radeon Catalyst 5.13 Drivers Released
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:33 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
New Quake 4 Mappack From id
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:47 AM 0 comments
Microsoft's New IE7 Browser To Have Increased Security
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:46 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
ATI's Avivo Update - H.264 Acceleration & Special Downloadable Surprise
Posted by WinterRaVen at 2:59 PM 0 comments
Info-Tek Unveils Radeon X1000 Graphics Cards For Old AGP Bus
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 2:52 PM 0 comments
Microsoft Patch Day December 2005
Posted by WinterRaVen at 2:47 PM 0 comments
Thursday, December 15, 2005
DivX Play / Create Bundle For Windows 2000/XP 6.1
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:15 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Nero 7.0.1.4 Update Available
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:10 PM 0 comments
New Valve Source Engine Rendering Effects
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:06 PM 0 comments
Nvidia To Acquire ULi
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:04 PM 0 comments
DirectX 9.0c End-User Runtimes (December 2005) Full Download
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:01 PM 0 comments
Monday, December 12, 2005
X1800XT Crossfire Cards Out
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:23 AM 0 comments
Modern Games And Modern GPUs: The Grand Clash
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:16 AM 0 comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification - December 2005
Posted by WinterRaVen at 6:35 AM 4 comments
ATI Catalyst Drivers 5.12 Released
Posted by WinterRaVen at 6:29 AM 0 comments
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Diskeeper 10 Released
- 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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:56 AM 0 comments
IE7 Public Beta Due Early Next Year
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:29 AM 0 comments
Monday, December 05, 2005
Hynix Debuts 512Mbit GDDR4 DRAM
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:03 AM 0 comments
ATI Catalyst 5.12 Performance Preview @ Anandtech
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:59 AM 0 comments
Sunday, December 04, 2005
New Unreal Tournament 2004 Patch
Posted by WinterRaVen at 2:23 PM 0 comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Counter-Strike: Source Update Available
- Added de_nuke with High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting
- 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
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:52 PM 0 comments
Nvidia 7800 GTX 512MB Retail Shortage
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:45 PM 0 comments
AMD Athlon64 FX-60 Toldeo On January 10th
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:41 PM 0 comments
Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS For OEM Only
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:33 PM 0 comments
New Logitech SetPoint Software 2.47 Released
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:27 PM 0 comments
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Java Runtime Environment Version 5.0 Update 6 Released
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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:12 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Nvidia GeForce 6 & 7 Series GPUs Windows WDM Driver 4.13
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:13 AM 3 comments
Raxco PerfectDisk 7.0 Build 46 Update Available
- We added support for the X64 processor. You cannot patch a 32 bit version of PerfectDisk to a 64 bit version due to limitations of Windows Installer. You will have to get a 64 bit installation of PerfectDisk in order to run on the X64 bit operating system. Please contact Raxco if you need assistance in getting a 64 bit version to install.
- Corrected a bug in the boot time defragmentation. If you exceeded 268,435,456 clusters, the verify stage of the boot-time defrag pass would fail.
- Corrected a bug on the enable/disable menu for Group Policy Schedules. The local User Interface (UI) should not be permitted to change the current status of a Group Policy schedule, however under certain conditions, the local UI could disable a Group Policy Schedule. This has been corrected.
- PerfectDisk Support Info feature will now gather additional information to assist in troubleshooting any issues.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:08 AM 0 comments
Mozilla Firefox Browser 1.5 Released
Firefox 1.5 has an intuitive interface and blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads. It delivers web pages faster than ever. And it’s easy to install and import your favorites. Packed with useful features like tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, and an integrated Search bar. Enjoy quick page loading as you navigate back and forward in a browsing session. Improvements to the engine that powers Firefox deliver more accurate display of complex web sites, support for new Web standards, and better overall performance.
It also features automatic updates, tabbed browsing, improved pop-up blocking and more.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 11:00 AM 0 comments
ATI Avivo XCode Video Encoder Software - In Development
Traditional video encoding tools rely solely on the PC’s main processor for the extensive calculations necessary when en- and decoding video sequences. The secret ATI Avivo XCode tool, however, additionally employs the power of ATI’s X1000 series’ architecture. They assume that the XCode tool mainly utilizes the programmable pixel shader units for it’s number-crunching.
There’s a hook however: Avivo XCode only runs on PCs with ATIs Radeon X1000 series VGA cards; i.e. X1300, X1600, X1800 in their respective Pro or XT versions, as well as their All-in-Wonder version. The tests indicate that even the cheapest model, a Radeon X1300 available for around 90 Euros in Europe, can achieve dramatic speed increases at crunching down videos.
For comparative benchmark results, the test configuration had to transcode two different MPEG-2 clips into the WMV9 format, using Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder (WME) and ATIs Avivo Xcode, respectively. For WME we chose the options „File download“, „DVD quality (CBR)“ and „High definition quality audio (CBR)“. Since the beta version of Avivo’s XCode doesn’t offer any detailed settings, they let the tool convert the test clips into the output quality levels „High“, „Medium“ and „Low“. You can find the rest of the test specifications below.
The results are (to say the least) impressive: The Avivo XCode beta transcoded the video clips about five times faster than Microsoft’s encoder (!), with the chosen quality level showing no significant impact: Comparing the picture quality, clarity and smoothness of the converted clips, even our codec specialists couldn’t identify any visual difference.
Remarkable: During the encoding process, XCode uses the main CPU to its maximum – the task manager continually shows 100 percent usage. In contrast, the Windows Media Encoder (who’s supposed to use only the CPU) shows fluctuations from 75 to 100 percent.
Video codec support
Avivo XCode beta supports 11 video codecs/profiles: MPEG 1/2, VCD, S-VCD, DVD, MPEG 4 (DivX Compatible), WMV9, Portable Media Center, H.264 (AVI), MPEG-4 (Sony PSP Compatible Video) and H.264 (MP4 Apple iPod Compatible Video). So Avivo XCode is suitable for PSP and iPod Video fans as well as owners of modern cellphones - they support the H.264/3GPcodec, too.
Limitations
The Avivo Xcode version in their possession offers no detailed settings for important parameters like bitrate, resolution or audio quality. It’s also not possible to join separate video files. Hopefully, ATI will add these features before the final release of the tool.
Conclusion
It’s more than impressive to experience a first glimpse of what the Avivo architecture in ATI’s X1000 series is capable of. At everything video-encoding, even (extremely expensive) high-end CPUs will soon suffer a staggering defeat by even the cheapest entry-level VGA cards.
If the soon-to-be-published final version of Avivo’s XCode contains the features we specified above, video-enthusiasts will without any doubt suddenly find ATI X1000 series extremely appealing…
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:37 AM 0 comments
New Windows XP Update Released - KB909441
Symptoms: After an application calls the Microsoft DirectSound SetSpeakerConfig method and specifies either the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_SURROUND value or the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_WIDE value, Sounds and Audio Devices in Control Panel does not correctly display the setting in the Speaker Setup list.
If an application specifies the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_SURROUND value, Sounds and Audio Devices should display the description 7.1 home theater speakers. Instead, Sounds and Audio Devices incorrectly displays the description 7.1 wide configuration speakers.
If an application specifies the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_WIDE value, Sounds and Audio Devices should display the description 7.1 wide configuration speakers. Instead, Sounds and Audio Devices incorrectly displays the description 7.1 home theater speakers.
Cause: This problem occurs because the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_SURROUND value and the DSSPEAKER_7POINT1_WIDE value are mapped incorrectly when Control Panel is initialized in Microsoft Windows XP.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:22 AM 0 comments
Monday, November 28, 2005
Symantec To Ditch Sygate Firewall
Posted by WinterRaVen at 3:10 PM 0 comments
Intel Adds Follow-up Series To 915 Chipset Family
Intel is scheduled to launch the 946-chipset family in conjunction with the ICH7 southbridge in the second quarter of 2006, the same time when the 965 series bundled with the ICH8 will also hit the market, indicated the sources. The full-line of Broadwater chipsets will be built using 90nm process technology and are aimed at pushing forward migration to DDR2 memory and dual-core CPU architecture, the sources noted.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 3:05 PM 0 comments
Unpatched IE Flaw Is Worse Than Expected
The realization caused Secunia to issue a rare "Extremely Critical" advisory. Once thought just to be a DoS vulnerability, it turns out that it also allows execution of arbitrary code. Benjamin Tobias Franz who figured out the original problem told Microsoft of the problem in March. Microsoft has done nothing to modify IE to reflect this information in the last six months. It may be because the risk of exploit was considered at the time to be "low".
Posted by WinterRaVen at 3:00 PM 0 comments
Friday, November 25, 2005
Potential Xbox 360 Crash Fix Found
Dan, from Duluth, or 'goldeneyemaster' as he is known, told the GameSpot forum here that he thinks the main reason that the Xbox 360 freezes is because the powersupply overheats. The solution is to lift the power supply off the floor and allow the air to circulate better around it.
Another simple method involved getting a box with no cover and putting the power supply on the edges.
As a result, he was able to leave his machine on for a stonking seven hours without it freezing up. Other gamers to the site report that the idea works for them too. Many of them note with relief that since it is the powersupply that is clearly the problem, rather than the box itself, it should be fairly easy for Microsoft to replace.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:17 AM 1 comments
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse Firmware Update v1.1
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:21 PM 4 comments
Civilization IV Retail Patch v1.09
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:16 PM 0 comments
New VIA Hyperion Pro Drivers 5.06A Released
K8 chipsets: K8T800, K8T800Pro, K8M800, K8N800, K8T890, K8T890Pro, K8T900
P4 chipsets: P4X400, P4X400A, PT800, PT880, PM800, PM880, PT880Pro, PT894, PT880 Ultra, PN800, PN880
Version 5.06A includes the following components:
INF V2.60A
AGP V4.50C
RAID V4.30H
IDE Filter V1.20D
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:05 PM 0 comments
Xbox 360 With Stability Issues
Pperhaps some cases of crashes and lock ups can be explained, not however different crashes, as for instance only being able to drive one round in "Project Gotham Racing 3". If the problem does not cease to exist after troubleshooting, players could return their Xbox 360 for repair, which would last however four to six weeks, so the Microsoft support.
It is unclear whether only individual loads of consoles are affected by the problems or if it is a fundamental error in the design of the console. Game testers meanwhile reported of stuttering frame rates in Quake 4 or incorrect collision inquiries in Madden NFL 06.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:48 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Preview
Next, Pete guided the character through a forest area toward an area of stone ruins. Though the graphics in the area were gorgeous, there were a significant number of objects that would pop in and out of visibility. Pete was quick to say that this build is still being worked on, and that by the time TESIV releases later this year the framerate and popping issues will be resolved. Will this actually happen? We're assuming so. After all, it was basically the reason the game was delayed in the first place. As Pete said today, all the game's content is finished and now the development team is hard at work on fine tuning.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:51 PM 0 comments
Nvidia nTune 3.00 Download
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:17 PM 0 comments
Battlefield 2 Retail Patch v1.12
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:09 PM 0 comments
Microsoft Promises To Patch IE Zero-Day Bug
Initially, the vulnerability was thought to only crash the browser, but new information, said researchers, point to a greater risk: that an attacker could run malicious code remotely on a compromised PC by luring users to a malicious Web site. The bug was labeled "extremely critical" by one security vendor Monday.
IE 5.01, 5.5, and 6.0 are open to attack, said Microsoft, even when running on up-to-date editions of Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows 2000 SP4. The advisory offered up several steps users could take to prevent an attack, including disabling Active scripting and requiring IE to prompt before running Active scripting.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 5:03 PM 0 comments
VIA Begins Sampling Of New AMD Socket 939 Chipset - K8T900
Integrating VIA's proprietary RapidFire™ technology that incorporates a number of PCI Express enhancements, the VIA K8T900 offers exceptional performance across the board, while also featuring industry leading low power consumption. With the Flex Express™ architecture the VIA K8T900 supports advanced connectivity options including dual x8 PCI Express connections for the latest multi-graphics card configurations or alternatively a standard single x16 PCI Express graphics connection. In combination with the VIA VT8251 South Bridge the K8T900 platform offers unparalled peripheral support with an additional six x1 PCI Express connections, as well as supporting up to four high speed SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drives, and VIA Vinyl High Definition audio.
Key Features
» Supports full range of AMD AMD Athlon 64 / Athlon 64 FX / Opteron / Sempron processors (939, 940 & 754-pin)
» Advanced VIA Flex Express Architecture
» PCI Express Dual x 8 Graphics / PCI Express x16 Graphics
» 4 PCI Express x1 high speed peripheral connections*
» VIA Hyper8 Technology with 1GHz/16-bit (per direction) HyperTransport processor-to-chipset link
» Asynchronous bus architecture
» Ultra V-Link 1066 MB/sec high bandwidth North/South Bridge interconnect
» Integrated VIA Vinyl HD Audio and support for Vinyl Gold Multichannel HD Audio Suite» Serial ATA support for up to 4 devices
» Integrated V-RAID with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5 and JBOD (SATA) support
» Support for up to 4 SATA 3.0Gb/s devices
» Parallel ATA133/100/66 support for up to 4 devices
» Support for up to 8 USB 2.0/USB 1.1 ports, UHCI compliant
» Support for VIA Gigabit Ethernet companion controller & Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet MAC
» Integrated MC'97 Modem
» Advanced power management capabilities including ACPI/OnNow
» 933-pin BGA North Bridge
» 645-pin BGA VT8251 South Bridge
Posted by WinterRaVen at 4:42 PM 0 comments
ASUS AGEIA PhysX Expansion Card Due In February
A source close to ASUS forwarded our attention to a few images of the actual PhysX expansion card online, but confirmed that the cards depicted in those images were not functional. Moreover, the source said, ASUS will debut the card in February 2006 when more games become available to take advantage of AGEIA’s innovation.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 4:38 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) Build 1.0.701 Available For Download
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:15 PM 0 comments
Official Nvidia ForceWare 81.95 WHQL - Windows 2000/XP/x64
• There is a possible incompatibility between the ForceWare graphics driver and the current WDM driver.
• GeForce 7 Series: Modifying any Performance and Quality Setting using the system tray icon turns off Gamma and Transparency Antialiasing.
• GeForce 6800 Ultra: Textures are corrupted upon the first time entering a zone in Guild Wars.
• GeForce 6 and 7 series, SLI: Updated F.E.A.R. SLI profile to achieve better SLI performance and compatibility.
• GeForce 6600, SLI: Blue-screen crash occurs when starting a new game in Civilization 4 with antialiasing enabled in the NVIDIA control panel.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:03 PM 0 comments
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Update for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update - KB910393
Posted by WinterRaVen at 4:51 PM 0 comments
Windows Media Encoder 9 Series x64 Edition
Posted by WinterRaVen at 4:43 PM 0 comments
AGP Radeon X1800 Confirmed As Misprint
Posted by WinterRaVen at 10:40 AM 0 comments
Friday, November 18, 2005
Nvidia Tray Tools Initial Release - NVTray
NVTray includes NVTweak, which unlocks many extra options in the NVIDIA control panel/driver, including but not limited to - Overclocking, AGP & Hardware settings, Fan control, Temperature settings, Debugging, Twin View, Video Mixing Renderer, OpenGL 2.0 support, 3D viewer types (for 3D Stereo drivers), and more.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 4:06 PM 0 comments
Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3 Out
Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3 is now available for download. This is the third release candidate of the next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to the developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback.
Note: This may not be the final release of the Firefox Web browser. Hit Read More for the release notes...
Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5 RC 3:
Posted by WinterRaVen at 3:53 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Quake 4 Retail Patch 1.04
id Software has released new retail patches for Quake 4 to bring the Win32 edition of Raven's sci-fi first-person shooter sequel to version 1.0.4, and the Linux client/server to version 1.0.5. This release fixes a map copying problem, adds numerous Game Browser improvements, and applies a few other changes.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:37 AM 0 comments
ATI’s Graphics Cards Partners Consider Radeon X1800 XT Boost
Some manufacturers of ATI RADEON-based graphics cards are reviewing possibilities to increase the RADEON X1800 XT-series clock-speeds to 650MHz – 675MHz for the visual processing unit (VPU) and up to 1550MHz or higher for the memory. While no makers among those questioned by X-bit labs confirmed that they had made the decision, at least one confirmed the fact of considerations.
Sources close to ATI Technologies noted that the company is unlikely to forbid its partners to boost performance of ATI-based products, however, they said there are special product guidelines that contain maximum speeds at which ATI still provides warranties. If those frequencies are not left behind, manufacturers will still have the warranty on products supplied by the Markham, Ontario-based graphics chip designer.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:35 AM 0 comments
Xbox 360 Dissected
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:33 AM 0 comments
Sony Recalls XCP "Rootkit" Copy Protected CDs
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:30 AM 0 comments
Maxtor DiamondMax 10: Exploring NCQ & RAID
The performance improvement offered by NCQ and a faster SATA interface on the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 line of drives is more evolutionary than revolutionary when compared to the DiamondMax 9. And these new features are still not enough for the new Maxtor drives to take the overall performance spot from the Western Digital WD740GD Raptor drives.
However, when pairing the new NCQ enabled Maxtor DiamondMax 10 drives with the Intel ICH7 integrated RAID controller in the right combinations and quantities, some very impressive performance numbers start to emerge. The maximum theoretical combined transfer rate of three Maxtor DiamondMax 10 drives is 450 MB/s. In a RAID 0 configuration with a 4K stripe size, we recorded a burst speed of 343 MB/s, which is about 75% of the theoretical limit.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:24 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
New Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Series Driver 2.07.0004
Creative Labs has finally released an updated driver for their X-Fi series of sound cards. This package contains an improved version of the driver found on the Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ installation CD. This driver includes the following application:
- Creative Audio Console The application enables you to use the Sound Blaster X-Fi features and functions.
Fixes:
- Removes randomly occurring audio distortion that may occur after you install drivers and restart your computer.
- Improves host CPU utilization performance when you play 3D/EAX games.
- Improves the usability of the Bit-Matched Playback feature in Audio Creation Mode.
- Resolves some MIDI/SoundFont® compatibility issues.
- Restores EAX presets properly when you select default settings in Entertainment Mode.
- Resolves the issue of a mode console sometimes not responding after you switch modes.
- Restores proper functionality to the EQ sliders when you select EAX effects in Entertainment Mode.
- Removes the error message that sometimes appears in THX Setup Console when you switch modes multiple times.
- Resolves the issue of your computer not responding when you change the Reverb Aux effect in Audio Creation Mode.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 12:54 PM 0 comments
OCZ Technology Announces The Opening Of OCZ Europe
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:54 AM 0 comments
Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX 512MB Reviews
Posted by WinterRaVen at 8:29 AM 0 comments
Monday, November 14, 2005
Nvidia Will Release New Official Forceware Today - 81.94
- Adds support for GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and GeForce 6800 GS
- Improved performance for Quake 4
- Improved performance and compatibility for Call of Duty 2
- 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.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 7:43 PM 0 comments
ATI X1800 Available As AGP Version Too
The company announced its X1800 product, available for both PCI Express and AGP 8x slots. Specifications are scarce, and there were no clock speed information at press time. It's obvious that the custom-built PCB features RIALTo PCIe-to-AGP bridge chip, and only makes us wonder why no single vendor stepped up and offered 7800GT(X) on a custom PCB with nVIDIA's own BR02 bridge chip.
The board features 256MB of DDR memory and spots a fully-featured R520 chip, so it sounds like AGP owners could be in for one heck of an upgrade. The company website states a November 2005 availability.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:32 AM 0 comments
ATI Has Been Testing R580 Since July – Sources
“It is really fast,” a person who knows approximate performance estimates of the code-named R580 graphics processor said. Another source noted that ATI Technologies has been “playing” with the code-named R580 part since early July, 2005, at least, trying to clock it at different speeds and measure its performance afterwards.
Rumours that have been circulating around the Web indicated that the internally known as the R580 graphics chip supports up to 48 pixel processors, 8 or more vertex processors and work at high clock-speeds. The chip, however, is expected to have from 16 texture mapping units (TMU), less that could be expected. The product is to support Shader Model 3.0, ring-bus memory controller, GDDR4 memory type and other innovations.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:29 AM 0 comments
Real Patches Two Serious Player Flaws
The other more serious flaw involves specially formatted .rm movie files. An attacker could use the file to trigger a direct stack overwrite and thus open up a backdoor to execute malicious code. "RealNetworks has received no reports of machines compromised as a result of the now-remedied vulnerabilities," the company said in an advisory, but pointed out that it "takes all security vulnerabilities very seriously." The patches are available through Real Player's built-in update mechanism.
Posted by WinterRaVen at 9:26 AM 0 comments