[H]ardNews 1st Edition - Press Releases

AMD’s Worldwide Plans:

AMD today formally unveiled a business strategy with initial participants in India, Mexico and the Caribbean to enable 50 percent of the world’s population with Internet connectivity and computing capabilities by 2015. As part of its 50x15 strategy, AMD is announcing the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), an innovative consumer device that enables affordable, managed Internet connectivity and offers Microsoft® Windows®-based computing capabilities to help fulfill the communication, education and entertainment needs of people in high-growth markets.

Itanium 2 System Fastest In World:

Intel Corporation today announced that its latest Intel® Itanium® 2 processor powers the world's fastest supercomputer. Intel has congratulated NASA and SGI on building Project Columbia, a system that boasts a world-record speed of 42 trillion floating point operations per second (42 teraFLOP/s) and was deployed in less than six months.

VIA Q3 Results:

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced financial results for third quarter 2004. Net sales for 3Q’04 were NT$5,591 million, and net income was (NT$50 million). Based on the current 1,238.911 million shares outstanding, earnings per share were reported as (NT$0.04).

[H]ardNews 11th Edition

P4 Heatsink Round-Up:

The majority of you out there still air cool your burning hot Pentium 4 based boxes so the crew at Mad Shrimps thought a P4 heatsink round-up is just what the doctor ordered. Hit the link to see what those crazy crustaceans learned from hours of testing today’s hottest heat sinks.

A whole year passed since our last roundup of Pentium 4 heatsinks, as with the Athlon XP roundup I did in August we see the integration of heat pipes on a lot of the high end models. This will be a to the point review, each heatsink will be evaluated on easiness of use and installation, compatibility with different platforms and of course its performance will be thoroughly tested.

More Flaws Found:

Ugh. Another set of flaws have been found in non-Windows based media players so, if you are like most of us that use multiple media players, you better get patched up.

Apple Computer and RealNetworks have both issued fixes for their Windows software to patch serious security vulnerabilities. Apple released Quicktime 6.5.2 on Wednesday to plug two holes in its Windows media player.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

PowerColor X700Pro GameFX:

If you are and ATi guy in need of a mid-range graphics card this PowerColor X700Pro GameFX might just be what you are looking for. Here is what the Neoseeker crew had to say about the X700Pro GameFX:

For those who want to play future games at maximum texture settings, then the X700 Pro may be the way to go if DOOM 3 and CS: Source / HL2 are any indication of what is ahead because 128MB may just not cut it anymore.

Sun & Infinium Labs:

It looks like Infinium Labs has teamed with Sun to work on their content delivery system for the Phantom console.

Infinium Labs and Sun Microsystems have announced plans to create a network and infrastructure to stream content for Infinium's flagship Phantom Game Service, direct to the living room. The Phantom Game service will be built upon a scalable, cost-effective and highly secure solution that harnesses the power of the network, allowing consumers access to a huge library of PC games on-demand.

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

PowerColor Radeon X800Pro ViVo:

InsaneTek has a down and dirty one page review of the PowerColor Radeon X800Pro ViVo. PowerColor has made a name for themselves by offering basically a reference card for a lower price point than other manufacturers so if cost is an issue, this card will definitely appeal to you.

All ATI Radeon X800 Pro graphic cards are pretty much the same. Enthusiasts will usually make the purchase on the one with the lowest price. However, PowerColor's X800 Pro VIVO seems to be just about the best available.

Muskin LII-V2 PC3200:

More low latency memory madness for you today with this Muskin LII-V2 PC3200 review from ipKonfig.

Mushkin seems to have a sure winner on its hands with a low latency memory setup for those wanting max system performance.

First Person Treadmill?

Here is one for all you couch potatoes…the FPGamerunner. While this is not even close to a new idea (see our exercise bike version from 5yrs ago below), it is fun to look at. There is a video showing it working but I’m not sure if that is actual game play or the guy just walking along to a pre-recorded demo.

Blame Mark Jacobson for reminding us we even had an exercise bike version of this here in the underground bunker years ago.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

Caller-ID Spoofing Site Opens:

Well, we can only hope that this caller-ID spoofing site closes as fast as it opened. The new service called “Camophone” allows anyone to spoof (mask/alter) their phone number from the people they are calling. With any luck this kinda junk will die off quick, I know first hand that political groups are already using these methods to mask their phone numbers so they can bug the hell out of you even after you’ve asked them to quit calling. Think about it for a minute or two and just imagine how this can be misused. Ugh.

Web-based caller I.D. spoofing is back, and this time it's available to everyone. A new website offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a caller I.D. spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

LANParty 925X-T2 & UT 915P-T12:

The Tech Report crew have posted a review of the DFI LANParty 925X-T2 & UT 915P-T12 motherboards. Ultimately the reviewer had mixed feeling about both boards, preferring the bundle on one and the backwards compatibility of the other. Here is a quote from the review:

A perfect 900-series LANParty motherboard would meld the UT 915P-T12 board with the full 925X-T2 bundle. That combination would mix the best bundle of goodies with backward compatibility, and it would do so without a discernible performance hit.

Shuttle SN95G5 XPC:

If you have been holding out for a decent 939-pin small form factor PC, this Shuttle SN95G5 XPC review will be of great interest. Not only does the SN95G5 give you all the power of the latest Athlon64 processor in a SFF, it is pretty damn good looking too.

The SN95G5 is easily one of the best looking SFF systems around, with the new drive covers and black design going a long way on the aesthetic side of things. Installation was a breeze and really it's hard to find things that are wrong with the SN95G5.

ASUS AX800XT/2DT:

There is another ASUS AX800XT/2DT review on the net today, this one is courtesy of the guys at Legion Hardware. The AX800XT/2DT throws in tons of features you might expect from a high dollar graphics card…plus some you might not expect *cough*webcam*cough*:

The positive aspects of this product in a nut shell are the physical appearance, the power connector setup, excellent performance, superior stability, quite operating volume, ASUS Game Face and the PCI Express support.

Shuttle XPC SB775G5:

Shuttle Inc, the leading designer and manufacturer of small form-factor (SFF) computers and accessories, is proud to announce the XPC SB77G5. This high-performance SFF computer joins our industry-best XPC product-line as an upgrade to the extremely popular SB75G2, and the first 875P-based SFF computer to support LGA 775 CPUs and 8X AGP cards. “The XPC SB77G5 once again demonstrates Shuttle’s ability to deliver cutting-edge hardware for high-demand environments".

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Radeon X800XT PCI-Express:

SimHQ has a review of the PCI-Express version of the ATi Radeon X800XT on the review bench. It is nice to see the performance of the X800XT evaluated from a flight sim perspective every once in a while instead of just the standard first person shooter perspective we are so used to.

The Radeon X800 XT used in this review displayed no issues rendering any of the games in the benchmark suite, nor were there any stability problems with the test system while running the board.

DDR2 Shootout:

HotHardware has a DDR2 Shootout posted today that pits memory from Corsair against Kingston’s DDR2 offering. Who came out on top? You’ll have to read the whole review to find out, here is a snippet from the conclusion:

Corsair's TWIN2X1024-5400C PRO modules were slightly faster then the Kingston modules is a few of the benchmarks we ran, but the Kingston KHX5400D2K/1G modules were able to run at a higher clock speed with more aggressive 3-3-3-10 timings.

Inno3D GeForce 6600:

There is another GeForce 6600 review on the net today for your viewing pleasure. This time around it is the gang at 3DVelocity reviewing the mid-range GeForce 6600 from Inno3D.

This Geforce 6600 is one from a big line of many Geforce chips. NVIDIA always had some outstanding chips in the past, except for a minor set back with the Geforce FX series.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

[H]ardForum [H]appenings:

Thursdays [H]ardForum [H]appenings is here already, damn…time flies when your having fun. Speaking of fun, how cool is it to get two DOOM 3: Project Mars City mod updates in a week? There are a bunch more pictures of this incredible mod posted. Our SM 3.0 and Far Cry article is being discussed in this thread. Drop in and leave your thoughts on our article. There is also a big discussion going on right now about “hiccups” with the FarCry 1.3 patch on the GF 6800GT. Apparently it is making some people so mad they are ready to quit playing Far Cry all together. Deal of the Day is still the $50 off a BFG 6800 OC. If you haven’t jumped on that one yet, you might want to before it is gone. Get in the forums now, start your own thread and leave your mark. I’ll see you there.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

VIA Share Of Market Up:

VIA’s share of the chipset market is up from 15% to 18.5% in the 3rd Quarter of this year. Good news for sure for the hard working folks at VIA.

The growth came as VIA’s third-quarter shipments of core-logic chipsets supporting Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CPUs rose 17% and 67%, respectively, from the second quarter, Heyler noted.

Fighting Piracy With Free Stuff:

Now here is a cool idea. Microsoft gives out free software to people who have a legitimate copy of Windows as a way of rewarding those who actually buy their products.

As part of its growing effort to thwart piracy, Microsoft is offering free photo slideshow software to customers who verify that they have a genuine copy of Windows.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition - Mods & Ends

Cooling:

Spire Cooler CoolForce 2 VGA Cooler @ Hardware Hounds - Thermalright XP-90 HSF @ SilentPC Review

Etc.:

ATI HDTV Wonder @ Designtechnica - Ideazon ZBoard Gaming Keyboard & Doom 3 Keyset Review @ Buddha's LAN Room - ePower Tech Xscale-600 @ Phoronix - ASUS DRW-1604P Double Layer 16x DVD±RW @ CDRLabs - The Saint USB Virtual HDD Key @ Bit-Tech

Cases & Modding:

Raidmax Samurai ATX Gaming Case @ BigBruin - SilverStone Temjin 5 Case @ OCIA

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Mozilla FireFox RC1.0:

Mozilla FireFox RC1.0 is out today for all of you alternative browser folks! This is likely to be the last official release candidate before the big November 9th release date. Get it if you want it, try it if you haven’t.

The safer, faster, better web browser featuring tabbed browsing, integrated search and live bookmarks. Stop pop-ups, spyware and viruses. Get Firefox and spread the word!

[H]ardNews 1st Edition - Press Releases

AMD Launches Personal Internet Communicator:

VSNL, India’s largest telecommunications service provider, a member of TATA group of companies and AMD today launched the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a high-quality, affordable, and easy-to-use, consumer device that will help provide managed Internet access to first time technology users. The PIC will be offered as part of the TATA Indicom Broadband Services.

AMD Austin Turns 25:

AMD today celebrates its first 25 years in Austin, TX. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1969, AMD began operations in Austin in the fall of 1979 with 72 employees. Today, the global technology company employs more than 3,000 employees in Austin where it designs industry-leading 64-bit microprocessors, low-power embedded processors and operates a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facility, AMD Fab 25, which produces Flash memory – a pervasive technology that is powering the rapid growth in digital devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, and DVD players.

Intel Cellular Flash Kit:

Intel Corporation released its first Flash Software Developer Kit for Cellular and Intel® Flash Data Integrator 6.0 (Intel® FDI) that offers powerful features and improved performance to help developers design advanced applications for next-generation multimedia phones. Flash software is a critical component to the wireless platform. Intel FDI and the software developer kit help designers more quickly integrate and develop such cellular phone applications as Java* applets, Bluetooth* file transfers, voice recognition tags, mp3, pictures and video files to the hardware.

IBM Uses Mobile NVIDIA:

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that the GeForce(TM) FX Go5200 graphics processing unit (GPU) has been selected for use in the IBM ThinkPad G41 notebook PC. IBM ThinkPads are built for business, with users who value improved efficiency and increased productivity. The Thinkpad is highly regarded as the notebook-of-choice in the commercial PC notebook market, and the addition of sharp visuals and outstanding reliability, courtesy of the GeForce FX Go5200, will enhance productivity and usability.