Tech News
-
EVGA X58 Classified 3 – The Best Just Got Better!
Published: Tuesday, October 5, 2010 | By: DennisThe mother of all upgrades is here! In keeping with their Computex promise EVGA has released the anticipated upgrade to the X58 Classified to fully support USB 3.0 and SATA 3/6. While this doesn't mean a huge boost in overall performance it does increase overall compatibility and makes the Classified competitive again with the rest of the market.
Based off of the original record-shattering "Classified" design, EVGA has pushed the envelope even further on design and performance by adding the next generation high speed USB3 and SATA 3/6G Ports. These additions allow the extreme performance potential of this highly overclockable motherboard to be unleashed without reservation or delay when paired with a lightning fast SATA3/6G SSD or other high performance drive. With the capability to RAID the two attached next-generation SATA ports, you can get even more from the ultimate high performance experience.
With any luck we may get one of these new "3" boards in for testing and see what other new things EVGA may have done.
-
GTX 480 Water Block Roundup @ PureOverclock
Published: Monday, October 4, 2010 | By: DennisWhat is the best cooling method for maximum heat removal with a minimal noise footprint? If you said Liquid cooling, then you are correct.
We have full coverage blocks from the top companies on the market, ranging in price from $85 to $135 and various aesthetics to suit just about any preference. We’re going to load each one onto the test bench and find out which is best suited to cool the mini furnace known as the Nvidia GTX 480.
Keep in mind that full coverage waterblocks only work on reference design video cards, sadly this is the primary reason most Super Overclock video cards are never bought by enthusiasts if they plan to watercool their entire system.
-
Asus Rampage III Gene and Sabertooth X58 motherboard Review @ TechReport
Published: Monday, October 4, 2010 | By: DennisTwo distinct motherboards based on the same chipset for slightly different market segments. Sounds confusing, but is the reality of the situation. The Rampage III featured in the review is a MicroATX design with a heart for overclocking, while the Sabertooth is a low cost bulletproof design for the mainstream market.
Calling the Sabertooth a retro motherboard doesn't do justice to the fact that this is cutting-edge high technology. Still, I can't help but feel like the board is a bit of a throwback—in a good way. The color scheme, for example, looks like it was inspired by the palette from the original Quake.
Both boards look great, however the green, brown, black color found on the Sabertooth is butt ugly.
-
Intel Core i5-760 Performance-Review @ TweakPC
Published: Monday, October 4, 2010 | By: DennisSeems I have been out of the processor loop for awhile and didn't even notice the Core i5-760 in the current lineup. Based on the specs the i5-760 is a 2.8Ghz version of the Core i5-750 with the obvious performance enhancements.
Be warned thsi review is in "de" language, but they offer an American flag link that will do a google translation into English.
We did a preview of the Core i5-760 before. Now we check the real CPU. How does the Core i5-760 perform in our benchmarks?
On a side note I have been trying like crazy to get my trusty Core i5-750, featured in several P55 motherboard reviews, up to 5Ghz. So far the best I've been able to accomplish is a meagar 4.4Ghz on Air, Water, and Phase.
-
Psyko Audio 5.1 Gaming Headset @ Techgage
Published: Monday, October 4, 2010 | By: DennisWe have all seen 5.1 surround sound heatphones before; some have more than one speaker while others just claim they do. Being somewhat of an audio buff I pride myself in knowing when proper surround sound has been implemented vs when it is faked using speaker timing.
Psyko Audio has the real deal.The gaming market isn't lacking of quality headsets, but it is lacking of any that seem to do anything unique. Psyko Audio looks to break that mold, by delivering a 5.1 gaming headset that defies convention. The speakers aren't in the earcups, but rather the headband, and that results in quite an interesting aural experience.
I was able to demo these headsets at CES 2 years ago and was totally blown away. The technology was there, the imaging was there, and most importantly, ALL of the requred speakers were present and accounted for.
-
NL: Review Block - Forgetting to Remember, Memory
Published: Monday, October 4, 2010 | By: DennisWe don't see many memory reviews anymore despite there being several really cool modules currently being sold. Here are a couple memory related reviews that fell into the inbox this week.
System Memory Modules - Overclocking Baby!!
- G.Skill Trident 2000 MHz DDR3 CL9 8GB Kit @ techPowerUp
- G.Skill Ripjaws PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 8GB Kit @ TweakTown
Solid State Disks
- 11-Way SSD Roundup 2010 @ Real World Labs
- Funky Kit Review: OCZ Vertex 2 60Gb SSD
-
Electronic Arts deny access to play Taliban in new Metal of Honor
Published: Friday, October 1, 2010 | By: DennisThis is a strange turn for EA, normally they play the (freedom of speech / talk to the hand) card when people complain about what they do. I guess "in these tough economic times" they aren't taking any chances and actually listening to the public.
In this case, for good reason.
Bravo!
Electronic Arts Inc. will no longer allow gamers to play the newest edition of its military-themed video game "Medal of Honor" as Taliban fighters "shooting" U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the video game publisher said Friday.
In a posting on the company's "Medal of Honor" blog, EA said that it is renaming the "Taliban" team "Opposing Force" in the wake of concerns voiced by friends and families of soldiers who have died.
The option to play as the Taliban was to be included in the multiplayer mode of "Medal of Honor" that is coming out Oct. 12.It is about time game developers were given a reality check. Granted games become more real when they relate to current events, but also become very dated at the same time.
Of course the best solution would be to create to "fake" sides like they did in Command and Conquer. At least then nobody can complain that it is US vs USSR since it says GDI vs NOD on the box.
-
Gigabyte ships 5.2 million motherboards in 3Q10
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | By: DennisWhoa, now this is interesting.
Gigabyte Technology has revealed that its shipments of motherboards increase substantially in September which will bring total motherboard shipments for the third quarter of 2010 to at least 5.2 million units.
Order visibility for the fourth quarter is not yet clear with motherboard shipments likely to drop slightly from the third, but the company will be able to reach its target of shipping 19-20 million motherboards in 2010, according to vice president Richard Ma.
Of course these boards don't all go to consumers; the majority go to OEMs and to fulfill custom orders. -
AMD to delay the launch of Radeon HD 6000
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | By: DennisIn an interesting turn of events it would seem AMD/ATI is pulling an Intel on NVidia and is going to delay the 6000 series, but only a month.
AMD has recently postponed the launch schedule of its next-generation Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs (Southern Islands) from the original October 12 to November, according to sources from graphics card makers.
Seeing its chance, Nvidia aims to launch its new entry-level GPUs as well as cut its existing GPU prices in October to boost the market share, the sources noted.
Both AMD and Nvidia declined to comment on their products' launch schedule.Not a huge deal, and gives enthusiasts 30 more days of interest from the money they saved.
-
Padding Oracle Attack Affects Every ASP.NET Web Apps - Patch Now
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | By: DennisThere is a patch being issued this week that is supposed to fix an "Out of Band" issue with ASP.Net encryption. The flaw has been known for several years, however back then it was used as fuel to make programmers and website architects more responsible in how they designed websites.
However, despite how good (or bad) an ASP.Net programmer is they cannot escape this particular flaw considering the information used to exploit and root the web application is key to how ASP.Net applications run. Namely the encrypted session keys and cookies.
Crypto isn't really my thing; however this article (and the ones it links to) is pretty good explaining the issue at hand."We knew ASP.NET was vulnerable to our attack several months ago, but we didn't know how serious it is until a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that the vulnerability in ASP.NET is the most critical amongst other frameworks. In short, it totally destroys ASP.NET security," said Thai Duong, who along with Juliano Rizzo, developed the attack against ASP.NET.
The pair have developed a tool specifically for use in this attack, called the Padding Oracle Exploit Tool. Their attack is an application of a technique that's been known since at least 2002, when Serge Vaudenay presented a paper on the topic at Eurocrypt.
Funny thing is, I heard about this issue back in 2002 but it was considered a minor flaw since most examples showed that with proper use of error messages and proper application fallover you could protect yourself from the attack.
The reality is far worseIn addition, an attacker could execute this technique without waiting for the error messages by using information gained through side-channel leakages.
"It's worth noting that the attack is 100% reliable, i.e. one can be sure that once they run the attack, they can exploit the target. It's just a matter of time. If the attacker is lucky, then he can own any ASP.NET website in seconds. The average time for the attack to complete is 30 minutes. The longest time it ever takes is less than 50 minutes," Duong said.
Needless to say, I'll be patching my systems sooner rather than later.
