Tech News
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Patch Re-enables PhysX When ATI Card is Present @ NGOHQ
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 | By: WillWell it looks like NVidia came to there senses and wanted to sale lower end video cards to ATI Video Card owners. So everyone can get there PhysX fix, and still run there Radeons.
"As you may or may not know, Windows 7 allows two display drivers to be used at once - like in Windows XP. Therefore, it is possible to use an Nvidia card for PhysX and ATI card for graphics rendering. Sadly, since the release of 186 graphics drivers, Nvidia has decided to block this feature anytime a Non-Nvidia GPU is present in the system. In addition, for some incomprehensible reasons, the latest version of PhysX System Software also prevents PPU cards from working if a Non-Nvidia GPU is present.
As expected, this move by Nvidia generated a lot of criticism from both consumers and even Nvidia's competitors. Luckily, a forum member by the name of GenL has released an experimental beta patch which intercepts disable-PhysX-if-Radeon-is-present-code. So far, according to user comments the patch delivers successful results. At this stage, the patch only works for PhysX GPU rendering and not PPU rendering. However, the developer claims that work is still in progress."Stay tuned for an PhysX Article might be on the way.
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Asus Maximus 3 ROG LGA 1156 Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 | By: WillThe Ninjalane color are starting to show up on all of our favorite hardware. That red and black color combo is juat awesome looking. The board I hope is just as awesome to be allowed to have these colors.
Once in a while when the stars align themselves just right and the moon has a blue ring around it a motherboard of epic proportions falls from the sky and graces mankind with the gift of ultimate overclockability and sheer beauty. Every feature works perfectly and the overclocking flows like a mountain stream during spring snow melts. It doesn't happen very often that such a motherboard is gifted to use from the computing gods high on top Mount Geek but when it does it's something you will never forget.
The Asus Maximus 3 Formula ROG (Republic of Gamers) motherboard is without a doubt one of those legendary boards. Gifted with style and grace and pretty enough to soften the heart of the hardest core overclocker the board is a sheer joy to run and overclock. Despite the ability to deliver great performance for the casual end user and self overclock the i7 870 to 3.52GHz with just a mouse click, the Maximus 3 has more than enough features for the enthusiast hard core overclocker. We would warn you though once you've gone Maximus 3 other boards might seem muted by it's beauty and performance.I so want to try one of these out.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Thursday, October 1, 2009 | By: WillHere is a couple PC games to making the PC gamer pretty happy.
Risen (PC) Game Review @ Technic3D
"A sweeping story captivates players from the start! An epic story in an authentic world hand-crafted with an eye for detail and populated by "real", plausible characters. A Mysterious Volcanic Island The heavy tremors on the island bode ill for its inhabitants. Ancient temples have risen from the ground recently, bizarre creatures are terrorising the area. Fear and terror is spreading among the population. The End of All Hope? See you in the following Review from Technic3D the better Version from Ghotic 3."
Batman: Arkham Asylum - PC review, performance and PhysX evaluation @ Elite Bastards
"If the gameplay isn't enough to convince you that this is a worthwhile gaming experience on its own, then mixing it together with the narrative that Arkham Asylum weaves might just change your mind. Put simply, it's sensational... We've often heard talk of "cinematic computing" from the major GPU manufacturers, but this is the first PC title that I would genuinely care to label as "cinematic" in every meaning of the word with regards to its presentation. The story and the way it develops is compelling, polished and professional (while also doing the necessary when it comes to making actual gameplay entertaining), the voice acting is above and beyond your average PC game (we'll discuss that a little more shortly though), and the visuals are stunning throughout. Assuming that you don't loathe Batman with a passion, I can't think of any way I can fault the overall presentation of Arkham Asylum as a body of work at all."
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ATI Radeon HD 5850 CrossFire Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | By: WillThe lower priced high end 5850 is coming out and looks to be another power house in a special price range. These GPU beasts are just incredible, but is all this power needed to push the console ported games of today.
"When it comes to the performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5850 we found it to be 15-25% slower than the Radeon HD 5870 in the vast majority of the benchmarks. It was also faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 graphics card, which is currently NVIDIA's flagship single GPU video card! If we had to suggest a screen resolution size to go with the Radeon HD 5850 it would have to be 1680 x 1050 and under if you like to turn all the eye candy on. Sure, the majority of the benchmarks that we ran here today showed the Radeon HD 5850 was able to run above 60FPS at 1920 x 1200 with 8xAA enabled, but we would like to plan for the future. With DirectX 11 game titles coming out soon a Radeon HD 5870 would be the better choice for gamers with monitors greater than 24" and screen resolutions in the 1920 x 1200 and beyond range..."
Then again we might actually get games that are DriectX 11 driven. Don't hold breath for your breath for them.
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Lucid HYDRA 200 Details and Interviews with AMD, Lucid & NVIDIA @ Legit Reviews
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | By: WillLooks to be that the cat is out of the bag and everyone is going to be wanting to try out this new technology. Has the line really started to blur for AMD and NVidia? Let's take a read to see.
"The demo that we were shown behind closed doors was of course an MSI Big Bang motherboard that was running Windows 7 and ATI Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards at the same time with both cards being load balanced. Notice that the Lucid HYDRA 200 load balancing solution has no interconnects, bridges, external dongles or adapters that are needed. Both cards were running fine and we were able to change which card had the monitor output on it from the Windows 7 desktop, which was pretty slick. Lucid gave us a chance to try out PC Game titles F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and Bioshock to see what the future of scalable graphics looks like with the Hydra 200. We must admit that we were fairly impressed with what we saw as the technology appeared to be working without any issues on these two game titles..."
Very interesting indeed!
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Nvidia's 'Fermi' GPU architecture revealed
Published: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | By: WillLooks like some information on the next GPU architecture from the green team is getting revealed. Let's read and find out what NVidia may have in store for us with it's new GPU's.
"Graphics processors, as you may know, have been at the center of an ongoing conversation about the future of computing. GPUs have shown tremendous promise not just for producing high-impact visuals, but also for tackling data-parallel problems of various types, including some of the more difficult challenges computing now faces. Hence, GPUs and CPUs have been on apparent collision course of sorts for some time now, and that realization has spurred a realignment in the processor business. AMD bought ATI. Intel signaled its intention to enter the graphics business in earnest with its Larrabee project. Nvidia, for its part, has devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort to cultivating the nascent market for GPU computing, running a full-court press everywhere from education to government, the enterprise, and consumer applications."
I honestly cannot wait for this one.
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ATI Eyefinity Review @ Guru3D
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 | By: WillWe here at Ninjalane think this new technology is pretty cool but, is this really the best time to try to get people to 3 monitors and a pricey video card. The game videos of this technology are cool to watch in this review.
"The current available Radeon HD 5870 card come on average with four display output connectors which you can combine, utilize and literally group all of them to create one big funky screen resolution. Not only is this fantastic news for profession and desktop users as you can expand your work environment, but also for you as a gamer. Quite a number of games will support this technology out of the box, and if they are not supported you can rest assured that in the upcoming year that's going to change with the newer titles."
I give it three months and we will all have forgotten about this technology.
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HDD vs SSD on a Netbook – Acer Aspire One D250 @ iGadget Life
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 | By: WillHere is another spin on the SSD vs. HDD drives This time it is for a Netbook. This in my mind seems to be overkill, but hey it still is cool to play with.
" My Acer Aspire One D250 came with a standard mechanical hard drive, and recently I acquired another SSD drive so I figured why not swap the HDD out for the SSD as that seems the popular way to go these days. Now I knew the read and write speeds of the SSD would be much faster than the lowly 5400RPM hard drive, but I was curious as to how much of an actual affect it had on the system as a whole though. I wanted to know just how much an SSD effects everything in the system and not just the transfer rates or read/writes. So of course I took the time to run a whole lot of tests, not only comparing the SSD to the HDD but I ran system wide tests as well to see where anything might be different, or if anything had improved elsewhere besides just the reads and writes. So read on t find out what I did..."
Enojy!
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OCZ Z Series 850W PSU Review @ JonnyGURU
Published: Monday, September 28, 2009 | By: WillLooks like OCZ has a very serious PSU beast on there hands with just super efficiency. Go on over and see if JonnyGURU get this thing to show it's true numbers.
"Since 80 Plus began their certification program to help us consumers find the most efficient power supplies out there, power supplies have sought to make the most of the program by making their units more and more efficient. Before too long, 80 Plus added new classification ratings to their program (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) to help distinguish between high efficiency units.
Of the four 80 Plus certification levels, Gold has been the hardest to pull off for power supply companies. Requiring efficiency levels of 87%-90%-87% efficiency between 20% of full power and full power operation, it is a difficult design endeavor indeed. Today OCZ becomes the first 80 Plus Gold unit to be tested at the site. Come on in, and we'll see what a Gold unit can do on the load tester. This should be interesting."I'm betting it just might be a great PSU.
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Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 (CDM4GX3M2A1600C8) @ Bjorn3D
Published: Sunday, September 27, 2009 | By: WillThey look just super cool and the Corsair Dominators just might run super cool as well. Let's take a read and find out.
Along with Core i5/i7 (LGA 1156) came different requirements for RAM than previous platforms. The predecessor to LGA 1156 was core i7 LGA 1366 and it needed low voltage DDR3 in the triple channel flavor. The LGA 1156 platform needs Dual Channel DDR3, and it has the same 1.65v low voltage requirement as the previous platform.
When LGA 1366 hit the streets memory vendors were scrambling for low voltage memory IC's and the manufacturers of the low voltage controllers couldn't keep up. Kit's were slow in appearing because of the lack of an adequate supply of memory IC's that fit the bill for voltage. Our first kit was a triple channel kit that ran at 1066MHz and we were glad to have it because prices were extremely high at the time.
When Core i5/i7 launched vendors were ready for it and memory in every speed and flavor was ready for the shelves, which means that one of our favorite brands was ready to ship. Corsair sent us a 4GB kit of Dominator 1600MHz with timings of 8-8-8-24. Let's run the Dominator a few different ways and see how far we can drive it before it screams for mercy.These do look just sexy.
