New Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Drivers 7.15 - Windows XP/2000 32-Bit

Nvidia today also released a new driver package for their nForce4 SLI Intel Edition based motherboards. Windows XP users must install Service Pack 1, at a minimum, prior to attempting to install this package. Failure to do so will result in the inability to support USB 2.0. Installation of DirectX 9.0 or higher is required in order to use NVMixer.

Release Notes:

• General compatibility fixes for nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboards.

Windows XP Driver Versions:

• Audio driver version 4.62 (WHQL)
• Audio utility version 4.51
• Ethernet NRM driver version 4.82 (WHQL)
• Network management tools version 4.88
• SMBus driver version 4.45 (WHQL)
• Installer version 4.78
• Legacy PATA RAID driver version 5.52
• IDE SATARAID driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• IDE driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• RAIDTOOL application version 5.52

New Nvidia nForce4 430/410 Drivers 8.22 - Windows XP/2000 32-Bit

Nvidia has also released a new driver package for their new nForce 4 430/410 integrated graphics based motherboards. Windows XP users must install Service Pack 1, at a minimum, prior to attempting to install this package. Failure to do so will result in the inability to support USB 2.0. Installation of DirectX 9.0 or higher is required in order to use NVMixer.

Release Notes

• First driver release to support nForce4 430/410 motherboards.

Driver Versions

• Ethernet NRM driver version 5.09 (WHQL)
• Network management tools version 5.09
• SMBus driver version 4.50 (WHQL)
• Installer version 4.93
• SATA RAID driver version 6.22 (WHQL)
• IDE driver version 6.22 (WHQL)
• RAIDTOOL application version 6.22

New Nvidia nForce3 Drivers 5.11 - Windows XP/2000 32-bit

Nvidia has released a new driver package for their nForce3 based motherboards. Windows XP users must install Service Pack 1, at a minimum, prior to attempting to install this package. Failure to do so will result in the inability to support USB 2.0. Installation of DirectX 9.0 or higher is required in order to use NVMixer.

Release Notes

• General compatibility fixes for nForce3 motherboards.

Driver Versions

• Audio driver version 4.42 (WHQL)
• Audio utility version 4.44
• Win2K ethernet driver version 4.16 (WHQL)
• WinXP ethernet driver version 4.16 (WHQL)
• Ethernet NRM driver version 4.82 (WHQL)
• Network management tools version 4.88
• GART driver version 4.36 (WHQL)
• Memory controller driver version 3.38 (WHQL)
• SMBus driver version 4.04 (WHQL)
• Installer version 4.46
• IDE driver version 4.46 (WHQL)

Nvidia 7800GTX 512 MB Clocked At 550/1800 MHz?

Nvidia won't have a new Ultra card but instead it will dramatically increase the speed of its upcoming 7800 GTX 512 MB card. The regular Geforce 7800 GTX with 256MB is working at 430MHz core and 1200MHz memory.

Nvidia won't call it an Ultra, but the Geforce 7800 GTX 512 MB will be indeed clocked at ultra speeds. Those cards won't be available and launched on the seventh - they should surface toward the middle of the month but Nvidia should have 6800GS already by next Monday.
We know that new Nvidia card is a very much tweaked original G70, Geforce 7800 GTX PCB design and this time the card will work at a magnificent 550MHz core and at 1800MHz memory. Nvidia felt threatened by the X1800XT and therefore decided to use new Samsung memory. You can find details about this memory here. However, we are not sure whether Nvidia will use an exact 1800MHz clock but should be close to this number.

When it comes to cooling, we know Nvidia is using a new type and we kind of expect dual slot cooling because of the chip's high frequency. Nvidia is still using 110 nanometre based G70 chip, but it managed to clock them more than we ever managed to using clock water cooler cards. If you recall, 520MHz was the highest possible clock that we achieved. Our cards worked at 500MHz stable but Nvidia managed to clock its new cards to 550MHz and can still cool them with air. We believe that Nvidia tweaked its existing PCB design big time so managing to get those cards to such high speeds.

Intel Launches Next Wave Of Multi-Core Server Platforms

Originally planned for early 2006, Intel Corporation’s first dual-core, hyper-threaded processors for servers with four or more processors started shipping today. The processors deliver record levels of performance and are optimal for multi-threaded applications such as database, supply chain management and financial services software.

The Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 7000 sequence, formerly codenamed “Paxville MP,” is shipping today with speeds up to 3.0 GHz and a 667 MHz dual, independent system bus. The new processors will fit into existing platforms using the Intel® E8500 chipset that was architected for dual-core and shipped earlier this year. In early 2006, Intel plans to ship new versions of the chipset and processorthat will support an 800 MHz dual, independent system bus.

The platform shipping today includes DDR2 Memory, PCI Express, advanced reliability features, and hardware-enabled support for Intel® Virtualization Technology. This new technology is designed to provide hardware support within the processor for virtualized server applications, providing enhanced functionality and workload support. Intel is working with the industry to turn on this capability via a BIOS switch in early 2006.

Servers based on the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7000 sequence are expected to be available from system manufacturers worldwide beginning today and into next year including Dell, Egenera, Fujitsu Siemens, Gateway, HP, HCL Infosystems Ltd, IBM, Kraftway, Lang chao, Lenovo, Maxdata, NEC, Samsung, Supermicro, Unisys and Wipro Infotech.

Looking ahead, Intel disclosed additional details on future Intel Xeon processor MP-based platforms. In the second half of 2006, Intel plans to deliver “Tulsa,” a 65nm dual-core Intel Xeon processor MP with a larger 16 MB shared L3 cache for servers with four or more processors. Tulsa will fit into the same systems as the dual-core Intel Xeon processor 7000 sequence introduced today and begin shipping to customers for evaluation by the end of 2005.

Mozilla Firefox Browser 1.5 RC1 Out

Firefox is Mozilla's award-winning next generation Web browser. Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. This is the first release candidate of the next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback.

Note: This is not the final release of the Web browser, it has been made available for testing purposes only, with no end-user support. Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5 RC 1:

• Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
• Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
• Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
• Improvements to popup blocking.
• Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
• Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
• Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and "Safe Mode" experience.
• Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
• Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
• Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
• New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
• Many security enhancements.
• List of notable bug fixes since Firefox 1.5 Beta 2

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service For Windows XP / 2000

On Windows 2000 the service deals with application event log event 1000 from source Userenv where the message indicates that the profile is not unloading and the error is "Access is denied". On Windows XP and Windows 2003 the equivalent events are 1517 and 1524 from source Userenv.

To accomplish this the service monitors for logged off users that still have hives loaded. When that happens the service determines which applications have handles opened to the hives and releases them. It logs the application name and what registry keys where left open. After this the system finishes unloading the profile.

Sony Installs 'Rootkits' On Users Machines

In what's set to be 2005's hottest story yet Sony have been found to install illegal Trojan horse-based digital restrictions management (DRM) technology that installs itself as a rootkit on Windows PCs.

Users who purchase certain Sony Music CDs from online stores like Amazon are subject to this rootkit being installed on their machines. According to Sysinternals' Mark Russinovich the kit installs itself in hidden directories and attempts to mask its existence as "Essential System Tools". What's more fun is that attempting to remove the rootkit with common tools that perform a RKR scan will render a Windows XP machine useslesss.

"Users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files," Mark wrote in an online blog entry yesterday. So what exactly is Sony playing at? Installing rootkit software that's not identified in its EULA and rendering machines useless if users try to remove the software! This is taking the RIAA effort a little too far.

View: Mark - Sysinternals Blog Entry

View: Sony Music

View: The Devil aka RIAA

Exploring The Performance Impact Of Memory Latency

These days, seemingly every major memory module manufacturer is producing fancy low-latency DIMMs. These DIMMs are equipped with tricked-out heat spreaders and come in a variety of different colors, making them easy to pick out in a crowd. There's more to them than funky cosmetics, though. The most exotic low-latency DIMMs are rated to run at extremely tight 2-2-2-5 timings at 400MHz. Unfortunately, you'll pay a small fortune for the privilege. Low-latency modules cost close to twice as much as more pedestrian DIMMs, if not more.
Lower latencies are a good thing, of course, but how much can they really improve system performance? Are exotic, low-latency DIMMs worth the price premium? Read on as TheTechreport explores the effects of memory latency on Athlon 64 performance in synthetic memory benchmarks, games, and real-world applications.

Trend Micro Intros New PC-Cillin Internet Security Suite 2006

Trend Micro™ PC-cillin™ Internet Security 2006 combines award-winning antivirus security and a personal firewall—for comprehensive protection against viruses, worms, Trojans, and hackers. It also detects and removes spyware and blocks spam. It even guards against identity theft by blocking phishing and pharming attacks. Plus, PC-cillin protects your wireless network with Wi-Fi Intrusion Detection, an innovative security feature that alerts you when an intruder uses your Wi-Fi connection.

North American pricing remains the same as last year ($49.95 SRP and $24.95 renewal/upgrade), which includes one year of free product support and pattern updates. A “Home Security Pack” for up to three (3) PCs is offered at $89.95 in North America. PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 is available immediately through on-line retail and is being distributed through Best Buy, CompUSA, Fry’s Electronics, Walmart, Target, Circuit City, Amazon.

AMD PowerNow! Software 3.0.5

AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology PowerNow! Software for Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0 & Windows 2000 Version (exe) 3.0.5 - AMD PowerNow! Technology allows the system to dynamically and automatically select CPU speed, Voltage and Power combination that match the instantaneous user performance need. These changes can happen as often as 30 times per second.

ATI Interview

The crew at Hardware Fanatics has posted an interesting interview with ATI’s Senior Product Manager, Terry Makedon. There is actually a lot of good info in the interview, here is a bit on OpenGL performance:

HF – We continue to hear many journalists, programmers, and enthusiasts say that ATI’s OpenGL drivers do not offer all of the performance that they could. Could you talk a bit about your OpenGL driver development efforts and what is being done to close the performance gap with your competitors?
TM – There is no gap to close. With our latest X1000 series of products and with the latest beta driver posted (which, by the way, will be a full Catalyst driver in November) we are actually ahead of the competition in real gaming scenarios. A few Websites are showing these numbers so far, and I urge HF to do such a review to show these results.
There is also a secondary project going on to re-write certain parts of our OpenGL driver. This is not expected to give big performance boosts, but just generally will improve stability, and clean up the code a bit.

F.E.A.R. Retail Patch 1.02

A new retail patch for F.E.A.R. is now online, upgrading the US edition of the recent supernatural first-person shooter by Monolith Productions to version 1.02. This Halloween-themed update adds the new Asylum multiplayer map, along with making preparations for the upcoming SDK/mod tools and fixing some localization issues.

Nvidia’s 7800GS Graphics Card To Debut Soon

It’s been roughly a quarter or so since the availability of NVIDIA’s 7800GTX and already speculation is circulating online that NVIDIA is preparing a new launch during the month of November. While we can confirm that NVIDIA will indeed be announcing something new, we can’t say exactly when they will do it, but it’ll occur in November.What we have discovered, however, thanks to some clever users, is that NVIDIA may potentially announce two products: the GeForce 7800GS and a 512MB version of the current GeForce 7800GTX. From the evidence, we believe that NVIDIA plans to introduce a new entry-level model and to accompany the top-end 7800GTX 512MB to give consumers more choices, both in features and in price.

Havok Intros Havok FX Engine To Compute Physics Effects On GPUs

Havok announces plans to support GPU-accelerated physics through Havok FX™. This new product from Havok will utilize the native power of Shader Model 3 class graphics cards to deliver physics effects that integrate seamlessly with Havok’s industry-leading game-play physics technology found in Havok Complete™. Havok FX will be cross-platform and will take advantage of current and next-generation GPU technology to deliver eye-popping effects that visually enhance the gaming experience.

Havok FX will allow developers to leverage the growing installed base of cutting edge graphics cards and their powerful, standardized APIs - to offload floating-point operations that are necessary for simulating a broad-range of dynamic visual effects. What kinds of effects will Havok FX™ enable?

Havok FX will enable dynamic in-game effects that are based upon rigid-body collisions and constraints – including debris, smoke, fog, and ultimately simulated liquids - but on a scale that goes well beyond the magnitude and volume of objects normally simulated in CPU-based game-play physics. By performing simulation, collision detection and rendering directly on the GPU, Havok FX avoids the transfer of large amounts of data between the CPU and GPU, enabling a level of performance never seen before in physics simulation. Because physics effects generated by Havok FX demand less interaction with game-play physics and CPU-side AI interaction, a far greater number of objects– and resulting detail- can be achieved.

Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet For Windows XP

The Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet adds a new 'Color' item to the Windows control panel, providing a single place to view and edit color management settings in Windows XP. Using it, you can install and uninstall color profiles, change color profile associations for displays, printers and scanners, view detailed properties for color profiles (including a 3D rendering of the color space gamut), and rename color profiles, keeping the filenames and "internal" names consistent. This tool also enables Windows to automatically adjust the gamut curve of the display when a color profile containing gamut table information is set as the default profile for the display.

Typically, such profiles are created by custom monitor calibration tools, such as those available from ColorVision, GretagMacbeth, and X-Rite. If a color profile has this information, it is shown with an asterisk (*) in the user interface. Using the Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet, you can:

• Install and uninstall ICC color profiles
• Inspect, rename, and compare two different color profiles
• View a 3D graphics plot of color profile color gamuts
• Associate color profiles with devices such as printers, monitors, and scanners
• Apply custom color gamut adjustments to one or more displays “on the fly”
• Set up display calibration reminders at intervals you specify

Note: .NET Framework is required.

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Final Released

The Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 redistributable package installs the .NET Framework runtime and associated files required to run applications developed to target the .NET Framework v2.0.The .NET Framework version 2.0 improves scalability and performance of applications with improved caching, application deployment and updating with ClickOnce, support for the broadest array of browsers and devices with ASP.NET 2.0 controls and services. For more information on the .NET Framework 2.0, click here.

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Available Now

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is now available for play for all Half-Life 2 owners.Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, a single-player level custom-created to showcase High-Dynamic Range lighting (HDR) in the Source engine, is available now to all owners of HL2. As a technology showcase, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast's system requirements are very high. During installation, Steam will prompt you if your system does not meet the recommended configuration.

Nvidia Official Beta ForceWare 81.87

Nvidia today also released a new official beta ForceWare driver version 81.87 that fixes problems with Call of Duty 2. Among the issues fixed are:

• GeForce 6 and 7 Series GPUs, Windows XP: Improved compatibility and performance on GPUs when playing Call of Duty 2.
• GeForce 7800 GT/GTX: Reflections are corrupt when set to high in Serious Sam 2.
• GeForce 7800 GT/GTX: There is screen corruption when panning in overscan shift mode.
• GeForce 7800 GT/GTX: Cyan-colored pixels appear randomly on the water tower in F.E.A.R.
• GeForce Go 7800 GTX, Sager system: LCD compressed scaling mode is not retained after rebooting the system.
• GeForce 6800: After switching playback from one DVR-MS file to another, the second file experiences dropped frames.
• GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault has sky and ship rendering artifacts.
• GeForce 6800/ 6600: Silent Hunter III characters located outside experience random fogging effects.
• GeForce 7800 GT/GTX, GeForce 6800 Ultra, SLI: The NVIDIA panel intermittently prompts for a reboot after enabling dynamic SLI coming out of Dualview.
• [SLI]: It is not possible to reliably switch the output to a specific display after enabling SLI.
• [SLI]: The screen goes blank after switching to the flat panel display on the second GPU once after rebooting the system.

New Official Nvidia nForce4 Drivers AMD Edition

Nvidia has released new standalone driver updates for their nForce4 AMD edition platform. The version is 6.70 and is WHQL certified. This release includes general compatibility fixes for nForce4 AMD Edition motherboards, according to the release notes.

Windows XP/2000 Driver Versions

• Audio driver version 4.62 (WHQL)
• Audio utility version 4.51
• Ethernet NRM driver version 4.82 (WHQL)
• Network management tools version 4.88
• SMBus driver version 4.50 (WHQL)
• Installer version 4.93
• IDE PATARAID driver version 5.52
• IDE SATARAID driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• IDE SATA_IDE driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• RAIDTOOL application version 5.52

Nvidia has also released a new driver package for their nForce4 X16 solutions. This includes nForce4 AMD X16 and nForce4 Intel X16 based motherboards. The version is 6.82 and is WHQL certified. According to the release notes this is the first driver release to support nForce4 AMD/Intel X16 motherboards.

Windows XP/2000 Driver Versions:

• Audio driver version 4.62 (WHQL)
• Audio utility version 4.51
• Ethernet NRM driver version 5.09 (WHQL)
• SMBus driver 4.45 (WHQL)
• Network management tools version 5.09
• SMBus driver version 4.5 (WHQL)
• Installer version 4.89
• IDE SATARAID driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• IDE SATA_IDE driver version 5.52 (WHQL)
• RAIDTOOL application version 5.52