[H]ard|OCP

NVIDIA About-Face Brings Questions

There is an interesting editorial posted by C|Net’s Brooke Crothers that examines NVIDIA’a recent about-face when it comes to native SLI support for Intel’s X58 chipset. After months of non-stop Intel bashing and all those “Cans O' Whoop Ass” that have remained unopened, we think most people were caught off guard by NVIDIA’s announcement.

Representative of the shock expressed after the announcement, a headline at AnandTech said: "Hell Freezes Over: Nvidia Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset." Translation: Nvidia must use Intel supporting silicon to get its technology into future gaming systems--not its own.

Ongoing Discussion

Gigabyte Factory Tour

PCStats takes you on a tour of Gigabyte’s factory in Taiwan and shows you how motherboards are made. It is funny how little has changed in the last decade. Looking back to 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2006 it is easy to see that even though the components and chipsets may change, the process is still the pretty much the same.

It's surprising to learn the amount of work and machinery involved in manufacturing a single motherboard. We'd vaguely imagined some sort of stamping process where all components are slapped onto the bare board in one step and soldered, before being boxed in a big room full of bored workers.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cases & Modding

Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming Case @ Legit Reviews

ETC.

nMedia HTPCKB Media Center Wireless Keyboard @ BmR

Motherboards

Gigabyte GA-EG43-S2H Motherboard @ CPU3D

Video

Gigabyte GeForce 9800GT @ Overclockers Club

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 @ TechwareLabs

Industry Rethinks Moneymaking Software Practice

Is this the beginning of the end for bloatware? We can only hope so. We have been outspoken critics of bloatware for years and companies like Dell went to great lengths to remove unwanted software from its line of PCs a few years back but it seems the rest of the industry is just now catching up.

But Best Buy, the nation’s largest electronics retailer, tells computer buyers that the preinstalled software, also known as bloatware, can clutter their machines and slow them down. You’d be surprised how often consumers tell us to get rid of it,” said Robert Stephens, the head of Geek Squad, the technical support division of Best Buy that removes the software. He declined to say how many people were paying for the service, but said that “it’s going to increase in popularity.”

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Four Foot Long Working SNES Controller

Talk about a conversation starter (or date killer if you are a single guy), a four foot long SNES controller that actually works.

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All The [H]orde Guides In One Easy Link

For all of you contemplating joining the greatest folding team on planet Earth (ummm, duh...Team #33), [H] folder extraordinaire "Xilikon" has put all the Folding guides into one easy-to-find location so that you can get the right client for you and be up and folding in no time at all. C'mon, what are you waiting for? Join the [H]orde and start Folding for a great cause today!

Welcome to the [H]orde guides page. You will find the guides you need to setup a Windows SMP (both MPICH and DEINO versions), linux SMP or Windows GPU, including a multi-GPU guide. This is 99% identical to the official guides which can be found on the Folding@Home official site at http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Guide.

Gaming News

5 New FallOut 3 Gameplay Moviews FileShack

Dead Space Pushed...Forward? @ Kotaku

Gigantic Gears of War 2 Giganto Screenshots VE3D

Halo Wars: Box Art Revealed @ Gamerscore Blog

Left 4 Dead DLC Will Include More Levels @ Shacknews

BFG Tech FTW

BFG’s CEO has been making it a point to get AFK lately and in doing that he has just won his first “CEO Challenge” Ironman competition. Our congrats go out to Scott. In the 10:56:45 that it took him to finish the 141 miles of the Swimming, Biking, and Running, I drank 4 liters of Mountain Dew, ate 12 Kit Kat bars, and played 28 rounds of Team Fortress 2. Who’s the man now Scott? ;)

Discussion

The Gamer's Bill of Rights Unveiled

The Gamer's Bill of Rights has been unveiled today. Of the ten “rights” listed, I personally think that number eight on the list is the most important. In fact, I think number eight would actually eliminate the need for at least two of the other rights listed.

Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

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IBM Tests 4-Terabyte Solid-State Drive Tech

Engineers and researchers at the IBM are testing a 4-terabyte, high-speed solid-state drive array and the results are nothing short of impressive.

Under the rubric Project Quicksilver, IBM coupled solid-state drives with its storage virtualization technology to achieve a sustained data transfer rate of more than 1 million input/output per second (IOPS), with a response time of less than one millisecond in a 4.1-terabyte rack of SSD storage. SSDs are being supplied by Fusion-io.

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Psystar Countersues Apple on Antitrust Grounds

Mac clone maker Psystar officially responded to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit by countersuing for anticompetitive business practices. Say what you will about these guys, they may not be very smart but they got balls.

As expected, the 54-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, charges Apple with restraint of trade, unfair competition, and other violations of antitrust law. Miami-based Psystar, owned by Rudy Pedraza, requests that the court find Apple's end-user license agreements (EULA) void and seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

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[H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals

Welcome to the Friday edition of [H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals! Need storage? Grab a few of these 1000GB Hitachi 7200rpm SATA Deskstars for $169.99 each. That’s a $30 saving just for being an [H] reader! You can also get a 2GB OCZ Fatal1ty PC8500 kit for half price while supplies last. This Core 2 Duo E8400 is $164.99 and this EVGA GeForce 8600 GT is just $44.99 and both deals come with free shipping. On the subject of free shipping, we are still offering $5 off on all RatPadz GS and RatPadz XT and free shipping in North America.

Students in Brazil Get a New Classmate

Get it? Kids in Brazil are using Intel’s Classmate PCs so they are “getting a new classmate.” Oh so clever.

The stakes are also high for the technology companies involved. Intel and Microsoft hope to show not only the power of giving laptops to students--but also to show the world that they too have a product in this area--with so many headlines in the U.S. focused on Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project.

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Kevin Mitnick Tells All in Upcoming Book

Kevin Mitnick has a tell all book coming out next year and my only question is “what is there to tell?” Seriously, we have seen this guy’s whole life / exploits in the news for the last decade, unless he is going to dish on how prison life was, what is there to tell? At least Mitnick did say this about the book:

I'm trying to save that all for the book. What I can tell you is what won't be in the book--I won't be whining about my trial or my mistreatment by the government or [Mitnick-chronicling] John Markoff.

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Microsoft Spending $486M On European Shopping Site

Microsoft is dropping almost a half a billion dollars on a company that has several consumer shopping sites, including one of the leading price comparison and online shopping sites in Europe.

The deal calls for Microsoft to commence a cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Greenfield for $17.50 per share, or roughly $486 million. Wilton, Conn.-based Greenfield, which acquired Ciao in 2005, also owns an Internet survey business, which Microsoft plans to sell off. Microsoft said it has already secured an unnamed buyer for that unit.

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Trial Against The Pirate Bay Delayed

The trial against The Pirate Bay has been delayed until later this year or early next year. It seems the prosecution is having a bit of a hard time with the case and rounding people up, getting damage estimates and serving summons are all causing delays.

“The process has taken a lot of time. First, it took time serving judicial summons to the defendants and then we had to gather damage claims from the complainants,” Anita Thimberg, a clerk at the Stockholm District Court, told DN.se.

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Lian Li PC-XB01 Review

According to the folks at Bit-Tech, that new Lian Li PC-XB01 case doesn’t really provide much more than a new way to void the warranty on your Xbox 360. Kind of a bummer, I thought it was pretty cool looking.

For the rest of us, what real advantages does the PC-XB01 offer over the stock setup? The sad answer is, right now, not a great deal. While operating temperatures with the XB01 are a good deal better, the die shrink from 90nm to 65nm has, for the most part, solved the 360's overheating and red ringing problems.

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Yahoo Mash Gets Smashed, Bashed, Quashed

Yahoo Mash is closing down, apparently no one liked it. Well, at least not enough people liked it to keep it open. Any of you ever use the site?

An e-mail to Mash members from Yahoo community manager Matt Warburton read, "Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it. Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available."

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Comcast To Make Monthly Internet Use Cap Official

It is official, Comcast announced that they will have a 250GB per month cap on internet usage starting October 1st. What do you think? Is the 250GB cap enough or do you think it should be more?

Comcast floated the idea of a 250 gigabyte cap in May and mentioned then that it might charge users $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over, but the overage fee was missing in Thursday's announcement. Curbing the top users is necessary to keep the network fast and responsive for other users, Comcast has said.

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IBM Breaks Performance Records Through Systems Innovation

Engineers and researchers at the IBM Hursley development lab in England and the Almaden Research Center in California have demonstrated groundbreaking performance results that outperform the world's fastest disk storage solution by over 250(1) percent. IBM has demonstrated, for the first time, the game-changing impact solid-state technologies can have on how businesses and individuals manage and access information.

[H]ard|OCP Motherboard Proving Grounds

Nothing like having two four core systems running flat out at 50C+! The reason I am posting this is to welcome a new piece of equipment onto our test bench. The new incubator is working well and at a minimal cost. (That is because it is a corrugated cardboard box, but just don't tell anybody.)

Together the systems are pulling about 800 watts of power. EVGA's 780i SLI FTW and Foxconn's A79A-S are our victims today.

Discussion

Good PC Industry News

Dell's earnings are in and I know that while the media keeps telling me how bad off we all are, seems as though people spent their money on something other than $4 a gallon gas. I suggest you take time to digest the whole page if this is of interest to you. Some good points towards the bottom.

We announced Q2 results today. Revenue was up 11% to $16.4 billion on 19% unit growth. EPS were down 6% to $0.31 per share and cash from operations was $1.1 billion and $3.4 billion on a trailing four quarters basis. We strongly encourage investors to read the full press release and earnings presentation; and listen to a replay of our conference call that can be found on the investor relations web site after the earnings call.

This quarter we enhanced our competitiveness by introducing a more robust enterprise solutions portfolio, a new commercial notebook line and expanding our product portfolio in consumer, including our new Studio brand of desktops and notebooks. Again this quarter we saw share gains in all major product categories and regions including rapid growth in BRIC and emerging countries. Global Consumer revenues grew 28% on unit growth of 58%, and BRIC revenues were up 46% on unit growth of 41%.

Discussion

Dell Earnings Down 17 Percent

Dell reported a seventeen percent dip in its second quarter results today but, despite the lower profits, the company's server and laptop shipments were way up.

Despite lower-than-expected profits, Gladden called it "a great growth quarter" for Dell. The cost of growth in Europe in particular, he said was partly to blame for this quarter's results. In other words, in an attempt to gain share in both consumer and enterprise markets Dell spent more than it did last year.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cooling

Glacialtech Igloo 5063 Light E Heatsink @ FrostyTech

ETC.

Air Live HP-3000E 200Mbps Powerline Adapters @ techPowerUP!

DigiMate III Touch Screen 2.5" SATA HDD Enclosure @ DSM

OCZ Dominatrix Gaming Mouse @ OCAholic

Vantec NexStar MX eSATA Dual HDD Enclosure @ Virtual Hideout

Researchers Offer New Way to Avoid Bogus Web Sites

Carnegie Mellon researchers created a program that helps you avoid bogus websites. According to the article, the program can tap into a network of publicly accessible servers that have been programmed to ping web sites and record changes in the encryption keys they use to secure data. A change in the data could mean the site has been compromised.

Intercepting Internet traffic, and spying on the communication between two computers, is a gold mine for hackers. Now Carnegie Mellon University researchers hope software they've built will make it harder for criminals to hit that jackpot.

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Stringer Jokes That Sony Won’t Recover PS3 Investment

During an interview with Welt Online, Sony’s CEO commented on the Wii’s “superior” business model and went on to say (as he laughed) that that the company will never recover the $3 billion spent on making the PS3 “in his lifetime.” The good news is that Sony is making money on its games, so that is a good thing.

You have spent three billion dollars on the Playstation 3, disregarding research and development. Can you ever get your money back?

Stringer: Not for as long as I live (laughs). It will certainly take some time. The traditional business model for the Playstation envisaged us making a loss with the hardware in the early years until the production costs had decreased to a point that enabled us to break even. In the meantime, we earn money with the games. We are currently at the stage in which we need to get a grip on the production costs. That takes time. We are already making more money with the games than we are losing with the hardware.

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Target Will Become More Accessible to Blind

That has to be headline of the day…“Target will become more accessible to the blind.” Heh, that is one of those unintentionally funny headlines that makes you call your blind mother (mine) and read it to her out loud.

Target has settled a class-action dispute with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) whereby the retail giant will pay $6 million and make its Web site more accessible to the visually impaired by next year, the company announced Wednesday.

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Closing In On Another Folding Milestone

Yes, our amazingly awesome Folding team is the only team to hit the one billion points milestone…but that is not what we are here to talk about today, we are here to talk about ME…my milestones damn it!

Last month, using our handy GPU Folding Guide, I kicked my folding efforts into high gear and jumped up almost 189 spots and broke into the top 500 folders on our team. This month I am up another 73 spots and up to 420,000 points. The reason I am telling you this is because I am Folding with one GPU and a PS3 and I am kicking some ass. No high end hardware or server farms and it is as easy as you can get. So if I can do it, you can do it…join Team #33 today and kick some ass too!

Heated Seats Bad For Reproduction

The AutoBlog crew says “they knew it all along” that heated seats bake your balls. What does that mean for all of you with heated seats trying to have a family? Heh…you need a heatsink for your huevos. Peltier powered pantaloons. TIM (thermal interface material) for your testes?

Scientists studying male fertility have discovered that the proliferation of heated seats raises the temperature of your junk by a full degree Fahrenheit verses sitting in the car without artificially warmed seats. That's enough to cut your chances of reproducing, and it makes us strategically point a fan at close range just thinking about it.

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Update to WGA Notifications for Windows XP Pro

If you are running a pirated copy of Windows XP Pro, prepare to be nagged into buying a legit copy. New features in the latest version of WGA Notifications promise to nag you until you do the right thing and get a legit product key.

Starting this week, we will begin deployment of the latest version of WGA Notifications for Windows XP. In addition to the usual updates to validation that improve WGA's ability to detect the latest stolen or fake product keys and other attempts to circumvent product activation, this release will also include a couple of other significant updates.

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