Tech News
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ATI Radeon HD 5870 & 5970 with NVIDIA PhysX
Published: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 | By: WillIf people are ATI fans they are not going to buy a high end GeForce card, but for the sake of getting in on the PhysX support buying a mid range to low end card is perfectly understandable.
"If you haven't heard already, the 257.15 Beta ForceWare driver set from NVIDIA accidently had the ability for ATI users to again use an NVIDIA card as a second to do PhysX. The whole ordeal created a bit of drama around the web; as soon as it was discovered by NVIDIA they yanked the driver and put another one up that disabled the ability.
After a bit of uproar, they put it back up but said that it wouldn't be included in future drivers; they kind of dribbled on about how it's expensive to maintain it for ATI cards. It sounds like a load of crap to be honest, because it's been disabled for ages. We're sure in the last few months they've done nothing and all of a sudden it was slipped in and working fine on ATI cards. I don't know what NVIDIA have against making money, but the whole thing sounds stupid."Seems that NVIDIA is playing the heart strings and opened up PhysX support with ATI cards. Granted the driver is beta but still, once its in the wild it will stay there.
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The Best $500 NVIDIA PhysX Setup
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 | By: WillThis is an interesting article on a PhysX and building the best bang for your $500 bucks. I can see lots of combinations that could work on this subject.
"Some of my best article ideas come from forums. Talking the other day to some people, I mentioned how the GTX 480, while a great card, poses a PhysX related issue if you're using a high resolution monitor; something like a 30" with 2560 x 1600 support. The frame rate drop under games that utilize PhysX at its native resolution is so aggressive that a 30 FPS dip in performance means a game becomes unplayable.
Going through the ol' NewEgg.com and looking at some USA based For Sale forums, I found out that for about the same price as a GTX 480 you could buy a GTX 470 and a second hand GTX 260 to use as a PhysX card. Also, because you're going NVIDIA with NVIDIA, you don't have to worry about poor support from drivers since NVIDIA promote this kind of setup. So, with a GTX 480, GTX 470 and GTX 260 on hand, we show you how $500 can be best spent if PhysX is something that you're really after."I still think the GTS250 is an awesome PhysX card.
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How to make an SSD: Touring A-DATA's Taipei Factory
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 | By: WillWith a followup on the SSD Roundup is a factory tour of how to make them. I bet this was very cool to see. Just gotta keep the hands in the pockets. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want me touching everything.
While Chris, our head SSD guru guy, was in Taiwan for Computex, we thought we should hit up our friends at A-DATA and see if we could arrange a personal tour of their Taipei factory. On Monday 7th of June, still a little exhausted and also sick from the craziness of the busy show, we headed on down and got things rolling.
Walking distance from A-DATA's headquarters just out of Taipei City you will find A-DATA's factory production facility. It is here where all the magic happens. A-DATA has a capacity of 100,000 double sided memory modules per day and 3,000 SSDs per day."I want to go to one of these places someday.
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NL: SSD Roundup
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: WillThese things just keep getting more popular by the minute. I think they come out with a new faster control every other month. So let's round up some SSD reviews.
- OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SSD review @ Elite Bastards
- Corsair Force and Reactor 120GB SSD @ Technic3D
- Corsair Force Series F100 100GB Solid State Drive Review @ ThinkComputers
- Crucial's RealSSD C300 solid-state drive @ TechReport
- OCZ Agility 120GB SATA2 OCZSSD2-1AGT120G SSD Review @ OCInside
- Patriot Inferno 100GB SF-1200 Solid State Drive @ TweakTown
- Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 128gb @ LanOC Reviews -
MSI Big Bang XPOWER Intel X58 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: WillAll of the gaming and benchmarking fun that can be had out of this motherboard. Not sure I like the idea of it being named Big Bang. Gives a couple visuals that might not be right, or even shocking at times. Last thing I want is my board going boom on me.
"The MSI Big Bang XPower will support up to six single slot graphics cards for some hefty multi-monitor use. It also supports the latest Quad-SLI and CrossFireX technology from NVIDIA and ATI. If you are looking to do some extreme overclocking with the new Intel Core I7 980X you will need a board that can supply enough power. Under Extreme overclocking conditions the I7 980X can draw around 480 Watts, which is too much for a single 8pin cpu connector to supply. The MSI Big Bang XPower was designed for such a circumstance! The keen folks over at MSI added a second 8pin CPU connector to the Big Bang XPower! There should be no issues with power when pushing the latest processors to the maximum frequencies. They also decided to add a 6pin PCI-e which will aid when overclocking the graphics cards!"
Focus, Focus I was talking all about the board exploding.
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Scythe Ninja3 @ Technic3D
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: WillThis looks to be a nice cooler, but you know it is posted on Ninjalane news for the one commow thing. Yes, that is right how can we be Ninjas and look over a product named Scythe Ninja 3. It sound like an awesome movie.
"The Scythe Ninja 3 High-End CPU Heatsink arrived Technic3D. See you in the following Review the new Ninja 3 with eight 8mm Heatpipes compared with many other Cooler on a Intel Core i7 920."
Oh yeah, it is a heatsink as well. Just making sure I mentioned that.
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Prolimatech Armageddon CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Canucks
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: WillI'm not sure the name of this new heatsink inspires incredible cooling or the end of the world. Still it is a neat design that looks to do a great job without sacrificing too much space around the CPU socket. So that makes life a little easier.
"After releasing their now infamous Megahalems heatsink, Prolimatech followed up with the Mega Shadow which was basically a Megahalems finished in a stunning black anodized finish. They have now released a brand new heatsink called the Armageddon which is designed from the ground up to take advantage of low speed 140mm fans. Can Prolimatech capitalize on the lessons learned after the success of their first product?"
So far they are on a roll.
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nVidia GTX485: Less hot and noisy - insider info @ KitGuru
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: WillIf the rumor spin doctors out there have something here we might see a great new beast come from the green side. Also if this holds true than the yeilds are somehow getting better. Let's hope so at least.
"While we all like the idea of hot lovers, GPU hotspots are a killer. Each generation of chip gets more and more complicated, creating unwanted ‘electrical friction' - with billions of microscopic components interacting in unpredictable ways to generate current loss and heat. However, give an engineer time and he will find ways to distress the GPU design with the expert touch of a Swedish Masseuse. Will nVidia's GTX485 be able to woo the undecideds?"
Less heat and more power. Muhahahaha!
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Totally back stateside
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 | By: DennisQuick note, I am back stateside after an extended visit to Taiwan for Computex. It usually takes me a couple days to get adjusted to living in the past after having flown 14 hours into the future.
I still have several Computex related articles to finish and some other things to get caught up on, but neither should take long to do once I get adjusted.
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Biostar TA890FXE Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
Published: Thursday, June 10, 2010 | By: WillBiostar looks to have another winner in the AMD motherboard arena. The amount of full featured boards for the new Phenom II X6 is not extremely plentiful. So the new Biostar board looks like one of the top boards for most enthusiasts liking.
"AMD 890FX is the new high-end chipset for AMD processors and Biostar TA890FXE is a mainstream motherboard based on this new chipset, bringing nice features like four PCI Express x16 slots, six SATA-600 ports, solid capacitors, core unlocking utility and more. Check it out."
I'm sure the price is just right as well.
