Tech News
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GIGABYTE demo On/Off Charge for Apple products @ TweakTown
Published: Friday, April 23, 2010 | By: WillHere is something for the gadget guy that loves to charge his iPods, and what not without having your PC on. Gigabyte now allows for the motherboard USB headers to charge gadgets while turned off. Now that is neat.
"Earlier today we were invited down to the GIGABYTE Technology headquarters here in Taipei where we were given an exclusive demonstration of its new "On/Off Charge" technology for the Apple iPod and other Apple products such as the iPhone and iPod.
GIGABYTE quietly launched a software driver a little while ago that allowed its motherboards to charge Apple products via USB even when your computer was turned off. Now the Taiwanese motherboard heavyweight steps things up some more with its new On/Off Charge tech."I have to say that I have been pretty impressed with Gigabyte lately.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Friday, April 23, 2010 | By: WillLooks like we have another roundup for all of you PC gamers out there.
Splinter Cell Conviction (PC) Review @ GamingHeaven
"What a difference a beard makes... Seriously. The promotional material for Splinter Cell: Conviction saw pictures of a bedraggled Sam Fisher plastered everywhere just to let us know that things had changed. Its the classic movie convention - clean cut equals a by the book good guy, stubble equals either a bad guy or a good guy with a tendency to make up the rules as he goes along but the full beard is the uniform of a broken man."
Bioshock 2 - PC @ LanOC Reviews
"When the first Bioshock was released back in 2007, one may have considered it a sleeper hit. At least at first. It wasn't long before the title became immensely popular, even to the point of spawning perhaps one of the most substantial phrases in the current gaming era. Bioshock 2 has since enjoyed the limelight its predecessor had acquired, being one of the most anticipated games of 2010. Several weeks after it's release, and some fresh DLC, I take a look back on the title. Would you kindly join me?"
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Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB Video Card @ TweakTown
Published: Thursday, April 22, 2010 | By: WillThis Radeon HD 5970 Toxic from Sapphire looks like one of the best packages around. Not only do they give you 4GB of memory over the standard. Sapphire even gives you a super awesome cooler for that swell card as well. Then the goodies added are just to sweet. They give you two full games on Steam, and then a power DVI-Displayport adapter as well to get your Eyefinity groove on.
"The other day we gave you a little bit of a sneak peek at the latest video card from Sapphire, the HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB. In that article we mentioned that we tend to leave previews to products we've seen at tradeshows or at the manufacturers headquarters. However, due to the limited samples of the HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB and the actual time frame it takes to do a review, we thought that we would just give you a bit of a sneak peek at what looked to be the fastest video card on the market.
Today we'll be giving the HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB from Sapphire the normal review treatment which means a bucket load of pictures and even more benchmarks. The HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB was actually first seen at CEBIT and word got around the interweb that the model was the HD 5990; this of course turned out to be incorrect. It was just a pimped out version of the HD 5970 sporting a heap of RAM."In the end though I bet this bad boy is expensive.
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Swiftech Komodo 5870 GPU Water Block @ PureOverclock
Published: Thursday, April 22, 2010 | By: WillWith all of the new graphic cards coming out with incredible potential for overclocking. The full cover water block for the GPU has really started taking hold now. This does rescrict the water block to a single type of graphics card, but the performance and ease of installation is well worth it. Check out this review to see what I'm talking about.
"Swiftech is a very well known water cooling company that understands the demands and the needs from the water cooling enthusiast. They've launched the Komodo HD5800 full cover water block series; it's a cooling solution for high-end graphics cards, and is designed to have superior thermal performance for the top dog Radeons HD5870 and HD5850. Let's find out how it performs on a 5870."
I think I need one of these.
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Proof In Steam's Mac Client Of Linux Support @ Phoronix
Published: Thursday, April 22, 2010 | By: WillValve is moving the Steam client over to the Mac. Well there goes those days of us making fun of no Mac gaming rigs. Well maybe not. They might be able to play a mean game of Peggle already. Truth be told adding more gaming to the alternate OSes out there is a very good thing for all gamers.
"We have our hands on the bash launcher used by Valve's Steam client for Mac OS X that was recently announced -- along with the Source Engine for OS X -- and is currently in closed beta. While such scripts are usually insignificant, there is something interesting within it and that is explicit support for Linux."
Linux is next and then what?
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Hybrid PhysX Mod v1.03 @ NGOHQ
Published: Thursday, April 22, 2010 | By: WillI think that NVidia needs to get there head out of the sand and notice that people want to use NVidia GPUs for PhysX. Not only are people wanting it. People are fixing the issue NVidia has created on Using a primary ATI graphics card for graphics and a secondary NVidia card for PhysX. Go check out this interesting piece of software if you want your cake and eat it too.
"This mod will enable hardware PhysX support for NVIDIA GPU, when non-NVIDIA GPU is used as a primary display device."
NVidia give the people what they want break down your walls.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | By: WillIt is now time for another PC game review roundup for all of us gamers.
Mount and Blade Warband Review @ XSReviews
"Since quite a few people were saying that Warband wasn't much of a change over the original game, I did my research into the series by playing around ¾ of a year of Mount & Blade senior, checking out the different features, learning the combat model and just getting a feel for the franchise. Now I could go completely in depth with this review and describe every facet of Mount & Blade Warband and is predecessor but that would take forever; really it's a huge game. So instead I'll focus on a few key points of the game, giving some pros and some cons and ultimately conclude it to see whether it's worth its price tag."
God of War 3 PlayStation 3 Review @ TweakTown
"When Sony first decided to publish God of War it was highly unlikely they would have realised how popular the series would become. Now a system seller, God of War and Kratos is synonymous with the PlayStation system, one of those games that almost every PlayStation owner has at least heard of, if not owns. When the PS3 was announced, everyone awaited the announcement of God of War, but to our surprise the second title remained on PS2. Finally, the third and final (so they say) title in the series is here and if epic is what you want, epic is what you get.
For those of you who have played GOW 1 and 2, you would be very familiar with the gameplay mechanics. It's an action adventure with a bit of puzzle solving thrown in. The game is designed in such a way that you generally will only get stuck for ten or so minutes before figuring out what to do. The puzzles are not taxing and the combat is designed for action rather than difficulty and as such God of War is an incredibly enjoyable game to play."Okay one of these is not a PC game, but it is on top of most gamers list. So I had to list it on here.
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DFI MI P55-T36 Mini ITX @ PureOverclock
Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | By: WillDFI has turned over a new stone with there boards, but are these new boards still allow overclocking. I guess we have to read the review in order to find out. Let's hope DFI has brought overclocking to a new platform.
"The DFI MI P55-T35 is a mini ITX motherboard, a positively tiny product that looks to offer big performance. Overclocking ability and tweaking are hallmarks of DFI products, and this little board is no exception. Based on the P55 chipset, the feature list is robust, even if the formfactor may be deceiving. Let's take a closer look at the DFI MI P55-T36 and find out if good things do come in small packages."
Overclocking a Mini-ITX board might be cool.
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Microcool Banchetto 101 Case Review @ ThinkComputers
Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | By: WillOne of the best open review bench on the market is right here. It not only looks cool, but it has tons of extra stuff for watercoling setups. This is my dream review bench right here.
"Being a reviewer of computer hardware I am constantly exchanging components in and out of my test systems. If you don't have a large open case this can really be stressful, as it is very annoying to have to pull everything out when installing a new motherboard or even a CPU cooler. Traditional cases work for most people, but for people who are constantly changing out parts and testing components a tradition cases usually does not cut it. Microcool, a company mainly known for cooling products has come out with the Banchetto 101 case. A case that has an all open design for easy access to all components and allows for rapid component removal / replacement and real-time monitoring. Let's take a look..."
For all the coolness comes a price though.
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Overclocking GeForce GTX 480 with extra GPU voltage @ Guru3D
Published: Monday, April 19, 2010 | By: WillI played with this new version of MSI AfterBurner software on the GTX 480, and all I can say is awesome. The big to worry about with pushing these hot video cards on air is the extreme heat. They do get extremely hot and get your ear plugs out while running that fan at a 100%.
"Yesterday we released an update of AfterBurner, we implemented and thus added voltage control for the 470/480 cards in MSI AfterBurner revision 1.6.0 beta 4 and upwards. Now as you guys probably know the default clock frequency for the GeForce GTX 480 is 700 MHz on the core, 1400 MHz on the shader domain and 3700 MHz on the memory.
With an additional voltage we where able to push close to 850 MHz on the core. The first group of people that will really benefit from what we'll show you today are the people that opt a liquid cooled GeForce GTX 470 or 480. Well read the next couple of pages with a step-by-step guide and then we'll show some results based on our overclock experience."The benchmark numbers though are just awesome.
