Tech News
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New Features Added to Ninjalane
Published: Sunday, February 6, 2011 | By: DennisOver the past several weeks I have been working hard to update the Ninjalane website so to support some new features I have planned. The first of those updates has gone live today and consists of ... *drum roll* ... an image gallery.
On the surface an image gallery isn't "that" special but it was done for a variety of reasons.- To allow readers to spin thru all of the images quickly.
- Allows "us" to attach captions to each image.
- Another way to promote the article.
The Ninjalane CMS always supported doing something like this but due to time constraints during initial development I tabled the feature and figured I would come back to it.
The second update is more cosmetic and changes the way the enlarged images are viewed. In the past I used a JavaScript method to open a smaller browser window and loaded the image in there. This process worked great but it was very difficult for google to index and really isn't the cool way to do things anymore. So, to spice things up I have replaced this method with a customized version of Fancybox. Fancybox is a jQuery script that will expand the image when you click on it and shrink it down when you click again (along with tons of other things)
Give these features a try and let me know what you think.
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NL: Review Block - Collecting Dust Edition
Published: Friday, February 4, 2011 | By: DennisWith the massive reduction in Sandy Bridge motherboards until Mid March it would seem that review sites are scrambling to change their review schedule. Perfect time to revisit those video cards and X58 boards collecting dust in the corner.
Video Cards
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Review @ TweakPC
- ASUS HD 6950 2GB Overclock Edition @ Bjorn3D
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs. GTX 460 1GB - at the same clocks @ Hexus
- ASUS HD 6970 DirectCU II - Triple Slot Monster Review @ ocaholic
- Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic Video Card in SLI Review @ TweakTown
- OC3D: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II ReviewMotherboards
Yay more sapphire X58 goodness - grrr
- Sapphire Pure Black X58 @ PureOverclock
- Sapphire PURE Black X58 Intel Motherboard at Modders-IncMore to come
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MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal review @ Guru3D
Published: Thursday, February 3, 2011 | By: DennisConsidering the recall on the 6-Series chipset several of the in-process reviews have been halted per the request of the mfg. However in the big picture the flaw in the SATA2 controller has little effect on the review in general, especially considering that most boards will get a replacement chipset come march/april and will be back on store shelves.
One of the most anticipated motherboards from MSI is the Big Bang Marshal featuring Sandy Bridge support, Lucid PCI Express bridge chip, and 8 full length16x PCI Express video card slots. Only 4 of them are electrically wired for 16 lanes but that is to be expected.The board comes with 24-phase DrMOS power design, voltage monitoring points, an external overclock device called the OC dashboard, that all new EFI BIOS, dual-BIOS selectable with a simple button, and OC genie button that allows you to have say a 2500K processor run at 4200 with the flick of a switch. I'm not done though, we spot integrated audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi application (software) layer, ten SATA ports of which four are based on the all new SATA 6G. Thick heatpipe (passive and thus silent) cooling and more and more.
I'll have to admit this board will be on my top 10, once it goes back on sale.
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Intel Sandy Bridge CPU In-Depth Look At Overclocking, Memory Timings and More @ Madshrimps
Published: Thursday, February 3, 2011 | By: DennisSince getting my Core i7 2600K I have explored just about every aspect of Sandy Bridge overclocking, I have yet to master the new platform but have a pretty good idea as to what I need to change to get the most from the system.
Madshrimps has compiled a technology overview and mixed in some memory timing examples to illustrate how the new chip scales when overclocked.First introduced at the CES, Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPU architecture is here to flood the mainstream market with over 25 CPUs. Don't panic, most are foreseen for the mobile market and only 9 new models will be introduced for the desktop segment. Coinciding with this new release is also a new socket design. 1155 pins will be the new standard for Intel's mainstream lineup. Yes you guessed it, Sandy bridge is here to replace socket 1156. Slowly but steadily Clarkdale and Lynnfield will become End Of Life and will be phased out. At the Sandy Bridge Tech conference the representatives of Intel said that the current S1366 i7 lineup (Bloomfield and Gulftown) will remain their high end platform. Time to explore Sandy Bridge...
I can tell you from experience that a 2600K clocked up to 5100Mhz at around a 1900Mhz memory clock backed by high quality ram running at CAS 7 will provide you with around 26GB/s worth of memory bandwidth as reported by SiSoft Sandra. That is more bandwidth than a X58 running triple channel memory at comparable clockspeeds.
The chip is a monster, nuff said. -
AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB @ Techgage
Published: Thursday, February 3, 2011 | By: DennisThe AMD 6950 is a great card, solid performance and actually runs pretty cool for the performance. Of course one of the best things abuot teh card, at least the early ones, is the ability to flash and 6970 firmware and unlock more shaders and higher clock speeds.
AMD last week released a 1GB variant of its popular Radeon HD 6950 graphics card, and to see how the performance would be throttled with the GDDR cut, we benchmarked both versions with the latest Catalyst 11.1 driver. Does the 1GB card and its $20 savings prove too hard to ignore, or should the 2GB still be the one to scoop up?
Techgage is reviewing the 1GB edition, experence tells us that more video memory means better performance at higher resolutions and is likely to hold true.
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P67Motherboards pulled from Newegg
Published: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 | By: JimSeems the latest developments in the P67 chipset issue are fairly serious. I do appreciate Newegg stepping up, as did Intel, and shutting down the sales of the chipsets in question. I do wonder what will happen to those of us who bought the first boards? Will we get free replacements? Will there be refunds issued?
Intel has a real issue on their hands, but by coming out with the information and taking positive steps they have at least given the impression that they are on top of it. But I wonder , if the P67s are only expected to show an issue after 2+yrs of use then how are we to know if the "fix" hasd the same issues? And how did they discover it.....Have they been running them in the lab for 2+ years already? I would assume so.
Keep up to date on this and any other breaking news by checking in at Ninjalane regularly. -
More Info on the Intel 6-Series Chipset Flaw
Published: Monday, January 31, 2011 | By: DennisThis story is spreading faster than a movie star on a bender, goes to show that technology can be exciting too.
So as we have heard there is a "flaw" in the 6-series chipset that can degrade SATA performance over time. Intel is claiming a 5% failure rate over 3 years with typical usage and a 15% failure rate for systems with a higher use pattern, for instance video editing. This is why they have issued a recall.
Reports are also claiming that the flaw is limited to the four SATA 3 ports connected to the MCP and does not carry over to the two SATA 6 ports. The flaw also doesn't affect any additional SATA ports added to a system, either by PHY chip or addon card.
As you have likely figured out by now moving your drives to one of the "faster" SATA 6 ports will skirt around any performance issues caused by the flaw, and if you need more drive connections you have the option to add a cheap SATA card or something similar.
The TechReport appears to be spearheading this developing story, be sure to check out their coverage.
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Radeon HD 6950 1GB vs GeForce GTX 560 Ti review @ guru3d
Published: Monday, January 31, 2011 | By: DeanPitted head to head, I wonder which card will come out on top. Will it be the green or, red team? Or perhaps your wallet?
When the GeForce GTX 560 Ti was released shortly ago, one things was clear - the price versus performance ratio would be great. Especially with the extensive factory overclocked models in mind these cards perform really well. So a couple of weeks ago AMD decided to sort of 'Ambush' NVIDIA, by releasing a 1 GB version of the Radeon HD 6950, a product with the very same features and specifications as it's big brother the 2 GB version has yet priced way below we all expected it to be.
Performance wise these two are rather close. It boils down to which vendor you favor, or where the best deal can be had.
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Intel Finds Flaw in P67 Chipset - Cuts Revenue Forecast - Halts Shipments
Published: Monday, January 31, 2011 | By: DennisAnd just when I was finally getting my 24/7 clocks down.
Intel cut its first-revenue forecast by $300 million. It expects the total cost to repair and replace the chip to be about $700 million.
"It was the result of a series of stress tests conducted on the chipset. It didn't show up under normal testing," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy told Reuters. "The problem wouldn't happen immediately but after two to four years."
Shares were down about 1.1 percent in midmorning trade.The flaw is in the P67 chipset and can cause SATA performance to degrade over time. The bad chips have been recalled and shipments will be on hold until a new batch of silicon can be issued. This of course does not vote well for early adopters who already have motherboards in hand but something like this should be covered under RMA.
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Google starts censoring Torrent searches
Published: Sunday, January 30, 2011 | By: JimWe all saw this coming, once you start down the road of restricting the internet it will never stop. I don't see this as the result this seems to be the beginning. We have all seen how easy it was for Egypt to shut of the internet inside their borders.
Google on Thursday began censoring search tools to prevent piracy, as first announced in a policy shift last December.
The change affects Google's Autocomplete and Instant tools—the services that predict your results before you finish typing—not its search results. Basically many terms with the word "torrent" in them have been filtered out of Autocomplete, along with other terms related to downloading services. Examples include BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare, and Megaupload, according to numerous reports on Thursday morning.Sometimes it seems we should just be thankfull that 1984 took this long to get here.
