Tech News
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NL: Review Block - Lots of Motherboards
Published: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 | By: DennisIn honor of the recent Sapphire office visit posting I have a nice motherboard centric review block to post.
Motherboards
- Asrock Z68 Pro3-M Socket 1155 Motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
- Gigabyte X58A-OC - Layout and Design @ ocaholic
- Funky Kit Review: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3-B3 Motherboard
- ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Performance (Intel P67) Motherboard Review
- Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Socket 1155 Motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
- OC3D: Gigabyte X58A-OC Sub Zero Review
- Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Motherboard review (mATX) @ Kitguru
- ASUS F1A75-V Pro (AMD A75) Llano Motherboard Preview
- MSI Z68MA-ED55 (Intel Z68) mATX Motherboard Review
- ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
- Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboard Review @ Kitguru
- Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7: Ready Bulldozer, AM3+ @ Bjorn3D
- Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 @ PureOverclock
- Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Motherboard Review @ HardwareHeaven
- Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 @ Bjorn3D
- Gigabyte 990 FXA-UD7 review
- ASRock H61iCafe Intel H61 Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers
- ASUS M5A99X EVO (AMD 990X) Motherboard Review
- ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Socket 1155 Motherboard @ Pro-Clockers
Doh! long list. -
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 Launch Day
Published: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 | By: DennisThe RevoDrive has to be one of the coolest storage devices since the creation of solid state storage. Normally devices like this are priced out of the consumer sector but by bulding these as single board solutions OCZ can bring the price down to a reasonable level.
- OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 review @ Guru3D
- OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 480GB PCIe SSD Review @ Legit Reviews
- OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 PCI Express SSD Performance Preview @ HotHardware
- OCZ RevoDrive 3x2 480GB PCIe SSD Review @ SSDReview
- OCZ Technology RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI Express SSD Review @ Bigbruin (the old one)They are still spendy but if you want the fastest storage performance you can't go wrong.
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Crysis 2 DX11 Now Available!
Published: Monday, June 27, 2011 | By: DennisI got wind of this late last week and was gddty with excitement to see the "Real" edition of Crysis 2 finally be released. This also marks the first time a game developer has actually tried to build two versions of the game for Console and PC.
The Crysis 2 PC 1.9 patch is also now available. Please ensure that you have the 1.9 patch installed before attempting to install the optional DX11 and Hi-Res Textures packages.
The following features will become available with the optional DX11 package installed:
- Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
- High Quality HDR Motion Blur
- Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra
- Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field
- Parallax Occlusion Mapping
- Particles Motion Blur, Shadows and Art Updates
- Water Rendering improvements and using Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
- Realtime Local Reflections (DX9)
- Contact Shadows (DX9)
- Improved Tone Mapping (DX9)W00t w00t!!
Be sure to check out the actual press release announcing the "Ultra Upgrade" for the PC and the following page where you can get details on the new 1.9 patch to enable these new features.
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The Neuroscience of the movie Inception
Published: Friday, June 24, 2011 | By: DennisI'm the type that likes all kinds of movies and doesn't go to the theater to rip a movie apart but rather to turn off my brain, sit back, and watch the show. That's not to say that after the movie I don't have an opinion of the film but rather that I don't concern myself with that going into the film or even if my 8 dollar popcorn was worth the wait.
With that being said I do have a favorite film type which is what I call the thriller that makes you think. This is also the kind of film that begs you to pay attention for subtle details that may reveal a crafty plot twist or somehow expose the mystery. The best of these films send you on a convincing ride that may later offer up some alternative logic that leaves you wondering.
One such film is Inception, a movie based on the concept of lucid dreaming and how you may exploit dream space in order to steal ideas from someone, or in this case infect them with a new one.I'd argue that Inception tries to collapse the already thin distinction between dreaming and movie-watching. It gives us a movie in which most of the major plot points are simultaneously nonsensical - Why are we suddenly watching a thriller set in the arctic? Why are all the subconscious mercenaries such bad shots? Why don't Cobb's kids ever age? - and strangely compelling, just like a dream. And so we bite our fingernails even though we "know" it's just a silly movie. Thanks to the subdued activity of the frontal lobes and the excited visual cortex, we sit in our plush chairs munching on popcorn and confuse the fake with the real. We don't question the non-sequiturs or complain about the imperfect special effects or the shallow characters. Instead, we just sit back and watch and lose track of the time together
The wired.com article explores the science of Inception and makes parallels what happens in the dream world to what happens when you simply lose yourself in a movie. Good stuff.
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Bitcoin Giant Mt. Gox Promises to Change Post-Hack
Published: Thursday, June 23, 2011 | By: DennisI like to think that I am up on some of the latest developments on the ole interwebs but the truth is I only know what I care about and distributed computing isn't on my radar. However when Podcast Co-Host, Darren, sent me this news story it sparked my interest.
A virtual currency system that can be traded for actual USD, and much like the stock market these Bitcoins have an exchange rate that changes on a regular basis. However, here is the kicker to get Bitcoins you "mine" for them by running a program that generates a "block" that ends up being worth about 50 Bitcoins. You can then take that "block" and trade it for real currency.
At the current exchange rate that works out to be about $850US.
Of course with the good comes the bad which is the basis of this news report, it would seem people have tried to fraud the system, which turned out to be rather easy since they only used MD5 encryption to secure user accounts.The fact that Mt. Gox was using salted MD5 is somewhat disappointing as for a financial institution -- particularly an exchange that handles nearly 90 percent of the $130M+ USD of Bitcoins in existence -- you would expect them to only use the latest and greatest in encryption (like the salted SHA-512, which they are now migrating too).
The fact that up until 2 months ago they used unsalted MD5 -- which has been easily crackable by rainbow tables and brute force attacks for years -- is downright disturbing. As it is, it appears very, very lucky that Mt. Gox decided to migrate to salted MD5 when it did. Otherwise the damage might have taken weeks or months to revert, not days.They claim that the new accounts will be encrypted using SHA-512 so account information will again be secure, but if you read carefully as part of the "upgrade" the Mt. Cox exchange also rolled back all transactions to a previous time and thus negating any trades that occurred during the missing timespan and in the process also altered the exchange rate.
Bottom line, this is like shorting a stock right before a major disaster. -
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3GB Review @ Hardware Canucks
Published: Thursday, June 23, 2011 | By: DennisIn the world of high resolution gaming, multi display graphics, and multi gpu rendering you have to ask yourself. "How much video memory do I really need?"
Much like with your system memory, more is better, especially when you consider the amount of post processing that happens in games or even calculations for 3D Vision and CUDA apps. In those cases every little bit helps.
In the last few months it has seemed like custom GTX 580 cards are being launched at a nearly breakneck space. Amid the hoopla surrounding some high profile launches from MSI, Gigabyte and ASUS, EVGA silently introduced their own "upgraded" GTX 580 which sports 3GB of GDDR5. While it shuns higher clock speeds and upgraded cooling, EVGA backs it up with their legendary Lifetime Warranty. But will this be enough?
Not to mention, the card looks cool too.
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NL: Review Block - Sapphire said what?
Published: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 | By: DennisWho knew the HD9000 series would be so popular?
Video Cards
- Sapphire 6950 DiRT 3 Edition @ PureOverclock
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 @ Phoronix
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6750 1GB Video Card Review @ ThinkComputers
- PowerColor HD 6850 SCS3 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 Ultimate @ LanOC Reviews
- ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum review
- Sapphire Radeon HD6950 Flex 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card reviewed in Metku
- HIS Radeon 6970 ICEQ Turbo reviewLong live the HD6800 and HD6900! your reinvention is our quest for fast gaming graphics.
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GIGABYTE X58A-OC (Intel X58 Express) Motherboard Review @ TweakTown
Published: Monday, June 20, 2011 | By: DennisOk I normally wouldn't post a review like this but I couldn't resist.
Below is their quote from the news release
Back at CES (during the G1-Killer launch) we were shown something pretty special; besides the G1 we mean. While Tim Handley was telling us about the virtues of the G1-Killer line-up, he flashed us a picture of a new board that was still under development. This was an early image of the X58A-OC. The concept was a streamlined product intended just for overclocking and performance.
You still get audio and LAN on the board, but for the most part the extras that are on many boards are gone. Of course, with the items removed other pieces have been dropped in to handle the extra voltage and current load from pushing the CPU and multiple GPUs to extremes. Despite the lack of all of the "extra" features, the price is still $380 from Newegg.com.Now we all are aware that the X58OC is a board designed for overclocking and also designed for Multi GPU configurations. While it is unreasonable for a review site to subject a board to LN2 overclocking for the sake of the review I do find it rather offensive that they use a 980X and don't bother using a "good" cooling method while exploring the overclocking aspects of a motherboard, designed for overclocking.
-- snip --
In our test setup we ran into a few issues. Our top OC was only 4.375GHz (175x25). This is only a 1.1GHz boost from the stock clock speed. The reason we could not get higher? Our cooling and the RAM we were using. Whenever I tried to push beyond that 175MHz BCLK, the voltage needed was just too much. I could get into Windows, but I would quickly see the temperatures get saturated under any real load.
- TweakTownTisk Tisk, I only bring this up since I was able to net a 4.6Ghz OC on the R3E with a custom watercooler. Would I have used a watercooler in any other instance? no.. But, then again the R3E is an enthusiast level motherboard designed for enthusiast usage.
Much like the Gigabyte X58OC.
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ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ @ techPowerUp
Published: Monday, June 20, 2011 | By: DennisThere is going to be a lot of talk about the new AMD 990FX chipset in the next couple months, especially when "Bulldozer" finally goes to market. Most people claim the 990FX isn't much different from the 890FX, and aside from additional features I'd tend to agree.
That isn't to say that the mobo makers won't add some special sauce of their own.
The brand-new ASUS M5A99X EVO, sports AMD's 990X and SB950 chipset. It is one of the first boards to offer full support for NVIDIA SLI and is also optimized for CrossFire configurations with its three PCI-E x16 slots.
EPU and TPU can both be found on this board along with the new EFI BIOS and everything good that comes from using it.
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NL: Review Block - Duke Nukem Fever
Published: Thursday, June 16, 2011 | By: DennisChanging things up a bit and am posting gaming news in a review block. I'm sure Duke Mania will subside by the end of the week, and until then. "Hail to the king baby!"
- Duke Nukem Forever Review @ Techgage
- Duke Nukem Forever (PC) Review: Fair and BalancedMore Duke news to come. (maybe
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