Tech News
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NVidia Crushes MSIs Lucid Based Board
Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | By: WillWe have posted news about the new Lucid based motherboards in the past and have bothered MSI regularly to get us the new board to test out. Well if this is true and holds any kind of water we might never see this board out in the wild.
"The MSI boards were shown off at IDF a month ago, and there were several working models on display. They ran dissimilar ATI and Nvidia GPUs, basically putting a 48xx and a 47xx in 'crossfire', or two dissimilar NV GPUs in 'SLI'. It worked, and Lucid is promising a driver in Q1 or so that will allow NV and ATI cards to split the rendering loads.
That functionality was shown off behind closed doors, and the author did not personally see it, but you can read about it here. It is not final yet, and there is still a bit of work to do on the drivers, so for now, the Hydra is ATI + ATI, or NV + NV. Then again, given that the Hydra 200 only intercepts DX calls, it should work with just about any rendering hardware, with a bit of tweaking.
Nvidia is very protective of it's SLI 'technology', if you define technology as blacklisting those who don't tithe in the drivers. They use it as a blunt weapon to tax users and enthusiasts, not to mention to bring in money. We heard through the grapevine at IDF that Nvidia was not happy about Lucid, and was going to break Lucid's Hydra chip at the driver level to protect its SLI tax."Okay maybe not that drastic, but it will be a hard battle for Lucid to win.
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First DirectCompute Benchmark Released @ NGOHQ
Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | By: WillWe all love a good benchmark every now and then. The none hardware sponsored versions are the best for giving the real facts at what we are looking at. DirectCompute is going to be a very strong part of the next generation of GPU power.
"A forum member by the name of Pat has recently released a new benchmark tool for DirectCompute. This tool allows you to benchmark DirectX 11 latest general-purpose computing feature by calculating tons of FFT-like data and some memory transfers. DirectCompute is an application programming interface (API) that takes advantage of the massively parallel processing power of a modern graphics processing unit (GPU) to accelerate PC application performance. Be advised that DirectX 11 and the latest display drivers are required to run this benchmark."
Good stuff here.
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Can We Trust the 80 Plus Certification? @ Hardware Secrets
Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | By: WillThis is a very good article for all of us that want to understand the 80 Plus program, and if it is really being done the right way. I myself have heard some white lies stuff and happenings from time to time from the 80 Plus program.
"The 80 Plus certification was an important step to change the scenario from the power supply industry: now the savvy consumer knows that he or she should buy a power supply with at least 80% efficiency. New certification levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold) raised the bar even more. But maybe it is time for a change on the 80 Plus certification methodology. Let's see why."
I have no way to prove anything so I just go on my happy little way.
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AMD Phenom II X4 965 - 125W TDP Processor
Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | By: WillWith all of the i5 and i7 talk here recently it is sometimes hard to remember the other guys have processors as well. So to be fair we have a link to a review on the newest revision of the now growing to be a classic Phenom II X4 956 Black Edition processor.
Today AMD is releasing a revised Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor. The TDP has been lowered from 140W to 125W, and also happens to be the new C3 stepping. Along with this new processor launch the prices for the 965's have been lowered to an expected price of $195 USD, a savings of about $20.
Enjoy!
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SATA 6G Implementation Preview - Ironing Out The Creases
Published: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 | By: WillWith the SSD drives putting out some amazing performance that even fills up the SATA 3.0 specs. It is time to push out the next level of performance to keep up with these new drives. So SATA 6G is born, and getting ready for the limelight.
"SATA 6G is the next big drive transfer standard. As it stands right now Marvell is the only company with an available controller. Because of this we see them being hastily added to motherboards. In their first run the controllers failed to provide the anticipated performance and caused stability issues on the P55 boards they were placed on. These were quickly removed and the P55 was launched without SATA 6G.
However, the issue was and still is one of implementation. You see, the P55 Express chipset only has PCI-e Gen 1 lanes in it. All of the PCI-e Gen 2 lanes were moved to the Lynnfield CPU. This is normally okay as the only AIB (add in boards) that need this much bandwidth are graphics controllers. Not a problem, right? - Actually, it is a big problem."Very Interesting, indeed.
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ATI Radeon HD 5970 Performance Preview with Benchmarks
Published: Monday, November 2, 2009 | By: WillThe review needs a good translator in order to understand it. Still the pics do paint the picture and the numbers are pretty much universal.
The Radeon HD 5970, the AMD "X2" Radeon 5000 family card, will come to market. How fast will it be?
Is this the real thing or just a hoax? Time will tell soon enough.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Monday, November 2, 2009 | By: WillTimes to take a look at a few new games out on the PC.
Cities XL (PC) Review @ Gamingheaven
"Most of us love a good strategy game - the problem however is working out the ones really worth playing and those which need to be filed away to the ‘bargain basement' option for a later date. Today we are looking at Cities XL - a game by French developer Monte Cristo which is targeting the SimCity 4 audience. Is it worth a look?"
Left 4 Dead 2 Demo Impressions @ OCModShop
"Last night I got a nice little surprise. I managed to score a copy of the demo for Left 4 Dead 2. I don't think I could have been happier if I had found the lost city of Atlantis. Okay, maybe that's an overstatement, but still, it's an awesome find. Xbox 360 owners supposedly have to pre-purchase the full game to download the demo, but that may not be so for PC gamers. Since OCModShop has a press account for Steam we were able to download it when it was available, but I'm not sure if it's available for everyone. So I installed and played the content that was available. And I liked what I saw."
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EVGA GTX275 CO-OP PhysX
Published: Sunday, November 1, 2009 | By: WillEVGA is proud to announce the EVGA GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX graphics solution. This card takes a GTX 275 dedicated for graphics, and a GTS 250 dedicated for PhysX® and combines them on a single card.
The EVGA GTX 275 GPU with CUDA technology delivers astonishing gaming performance with dazzling gaming effects along with incredible GPU computing performance for everything from video transcoding to video and photo editing. Pair that with the raw PhysX power of the GTS 250 PPU and you have a card ready to take on any of the latest games with full power!
NVIDIA PhysX technology adds an element of realism never before seen in gaming. With an EVGA GPU and PPU in your PC, experience dynamic PhysX effects like blazing explosions, reactive debris, realistic water, and lifelike characters.
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FIRST LOOK - USB 3.0 in the PCSTATS Labs (ASUS U3S6)
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009 | By: WillThe new USB 3.0 is about to be sprung upon the masses and it sounds like it is going to give eSATA a very good run for it's money. Well from the specs side of this USB 3.0 could very well kill eSATA right in it's tracks.
"USB 3.0 comes via a new PCI Express x4 drop in card called the ASUS U3S6. It features two USB 3.0 ports powered by the NEC D720200F1 USB 3.0 host controller, a PLX Technology PEX8613-BA50BC PCI-E bridge chip and two SATA 6G ports care of the Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2 chip. The new name for the USB 3.0 standard is "SuperSpeed USB " and it is backwards compatible with Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports. Data transfer speeds are being spec'd at 5000 Mbps for USB 3.0, a significant speedboost from 480 Mbps for USB 2.0."
I love the smell of new technology in the air.
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Intel Core i7-930 Arriving Q1 2010
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009 | By: WillWell, well I guess Intel is not going to let the 1156 socket kill off the lower end Core i7 1366 socket. This is great news for us 1366 socket guys out there.
Intel Core i7-930 arriving Q1 2010
Intel's Core i7 930 will become the new low-end LGA1366 chip next year.
Intel may be set to discontinue its excellent Core i7-920 chip within the next few months, but we've just heard confirmation that its replacement will arrive in Q1 2010.
It'll be called the Core i7-930.Where are the Core i9 12 core 1366 processors at?
