Unigine Heaven Benchmark with DX11 Tessellation
DX 11 Tessellation in real-time 3D. The Unigine Heaven Benchmark supports DX11 with Tessellation and we have taken a look at Tessellation in this unique application. Tessellation has the potential to improve the gameplay experience, and you will see why once you see these screenshots.
Kingwin LZ-1000 1000W Power Supply Review
No matter how you look at it, 1 kilowatt, or 1000 watts, it is a lot of power that most computer enthusiasts will never need. Rest assured though, some of us do need all that power and we are generally very picky about that much power gets delivered to our enthusiast computer builds. Kingwin's LZ-1000 is up to that job?
Resident Evil 5 Gameplay Performance and IQ
Greedy multinational biotech corporations have infected hordes of African citizens with an apocalyptic mind-controlling parasite, and it's up to you and your sexy sidekick to save the world! But before you get started, you better make sure your video card is up to the task. Check it out with us as we test the best video cards out today including all of the new Radeon HD 5000 series video cards!
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO Motherboard Review
The ASUS’ latest offering for the AMD crowd does not have all the bells and whistles of the flagship offerings. The M4A785GTD-V EVO does however offer a mix of good performance and HTPC friendly integrated add-ons.
Galaxy has supplied us with 8 video cards to give away to HardOCP readers for the holidays. We will be drawing one winner a week for 8 weeks. Cards will range from low end to high end. This week will draw one person from this HardForum thread for a free NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS 512Mb. One entry per person. Shipping to North America only.
EMI has announced that it has plans to sell recordings of live concerts on flash drives, CDs and/or DVDs immediately following the show.
Instant concert recording isn't new: EMI sub-label Mute Records has had a similar program in place since 2004--according to the press release, 10 percent of fans at a recent Blur concert downloaded the show afterward--and Willie Nelson has been selling flash drives with on-the-spot concert recordings for several years. But having a large record label like EMI on board legitimizes the practice.
I like Facebook as much as the next guy, but spending over 125 hours per year on the site? That seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it?
The average person who used Facebook in each of the last 12 months has spent 70 hours 26 minutes on the site during that period, according to a spokesman from Nielsen Online, the company which conducted the research. They also calculated that the most addicted users have spent over 125 hours on the site during the last year – the equivalent of more than a whole working week.
The good news is that Managed Copy will hit Blu-ray discs starting next month. The bad news? There will not be any hardware support when it does.
Less than five months since AACS was finalized and the details of Managed Copy were revealed and so far we've only seen one demo and not a single product announcement. This doesn't surprise us, but AACS-LA is apparently surprised because although all Blu-ray Discs sold after December 4th have no choice but to allow at least one copy to be made, the requirement to label the packaging as such has been postponed until Spring of next year.
For those of you running Windows 7 on a PC with a Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4P motherboard and you can’t sync with your iPhone, a new beta BIOS update might be just what you need.
On Friday, a few people posted on the forum that they'd downloaded the new BIOS from Gigabyte, a motherboard maker, and it solved the problem. In the description of the update, Gigabyte calls it a Beta BIOS and says that it fixes the iPhone sync issue, among other enhancements.
Microsoft Partners in Learning announced the winners of the 2009 Worldwide Innovative Teacher Awards at the Worldwide Innovative Education Forum. Partners in Learning recognizes and rewards teachers who demonstrate exemplary use of technology in the classroom to improve student learning. The 14 winning teachers — awarded first, second and third place in four categories — were chosen from among the 250 at the Forum representing more than 60 countries.
Anyone interested in reading that secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement document we told you about earlier this week can do so by clicking here.
We wrote that the document, (.pdf) if true, amounted to policy laundering at its finest -– that the United States was pushing the world to require ISPs to adopt "graduated response" policies that amounted to terminating internet service of repeat, copyright offenders.
Steve Jobs and Sarah Jessica Parker stole the iPod idea and went on to make billions off the artistic genius of this guy. The FBI can prove it, they were in on the deal. Wait. What?
The suit claims that Wakefield also developed a friendship with Parker and "made a trade secret deal" with her to commercialize the iPod classic, nano, mini, shuffle, video, touch and photo, as well as iTunes and the iPhone. The supposed agreement would have granted Parker 2 percent of gross revenues from the products. Wakefield said he asked the FBI to watch over him to ensure the security of his inventions and deal with Parker.
Apparently NVIDIA has constructed a new site with the sole purpose of mocking Intel. I’ll keep my comments to myself and let you guys decide what you think of this.
Cases & Modding
NZXT BETA EVO Computer Case @ TechwareLabs
Cooling
Heatpipe Wick Structures Exposed @ FrostyTech
Memory/ Storage
Seagate XT 2TB SATA 6GB/s Hard Drive Testing @ Legit Reviews
Video
Sparkle GeForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB @ ThinkComputers
Google’s CEO says the company is trying not to cross the creepy line. I wonder if Schmidt would be so kind as to share the location of that line with the general public. You know, so we know where it is too. :D
Google is quite used to facing charges that it has become a little too Big Brotherish in its conquest of the Internet search market. In response, it emphasizes that Google users have control over the data the company collects on them, most recently introducing Google Dashboard as a way of letting users see all the personal data the company has assembled in a single Web page.
Are you one of those people that takes everything too serious? Are you perpetually bummed about life? This high-tech hat will keep you smiling (at least grimacing):
Here is a story about how surprisingly little effort was needed to catch several software pirates…because they are all idiots. Step 1: Check Craigslist. Step 2: Agree to buy stolen merchandise. Step 3: Call the cops.
Activision Blizzard, the game’s publisher, called in IPCybercrime.com, a Dallas private investigation firm that specializes in online investigations. The investigators tracked down the seller and stumbled into a scheme to pirate the game and sell a bunch of fake copies over the Internet. While the bust led to the arrest of just one hacker among many, it sheds light on the shadowy underground of the business of illegal piracy. It also offers a peak at how investigators try to head off a major piracy disaster before it happens.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Impressions @ Kotaku
First Footage of Netflix on PS3 @ Joystiq
Resident Evil: Darkside Trailer Gets Deep @ Shacknews
Twitter, Facebook, Last.FM and Xbox 360 Family Settings @ Major Nelson
We’ve taken the Unigine Heaven DX11 benchmark around the block a few times with and without Tessellation to show you just what it is and what impact it can have on your gaming experience.
What does DX11 Tessellation look like in a real-time 3D engine? Unigine’s Heaven Benchmark supports DX11 with Tessellation and we’ve taken a look at Tessellation in this unique application. Tessellation has the potential to improve the gameplay experience, and you’ll see why once you see these screenshots.
Look, more multi-touch stuff!! This time around it is the folks from Sony demonstrating their multi-touch technology.
Cases & Modding
Corsair Obsidian 800D @ techPowerUP!
Memory/ Storage
Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K2/4G Memory @ Overclockers Club
Patriot Viper II Sector 5 PVV34G2000LLK @ PCShopTalk
Motherboards
ECS Elitegroup P55H-A @ Phoronix
Power Supply
Ultra X4 750 Watt Power Supply Giveaway @ OCIA
According to this article, fourteen more people have been charged in that Galleon insider trading scandal. That brings the number of people charged up to twenty with law enforcement saying more arrests are coming.
The case has also touched the tech world. This week, Hector Ruiz, former CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, stepped down as chairman of AMD spin-off Globalfoundries. Ruiz is not charged but is linked to the Galleon case in a U.S. attorney's complaint. In addition, Robert Moffat, a senior vice president at IBM who is charged in the case, has left the company. Others at IBM and Intel have been charged as well.
Would you live in something like this "mobile home of the future?" While this thing is pretty cool, I can still hear Jeff Foxworthy in my head telling redneck jokes…"[i]If you spent $100k on a high-tech trailer…"
Would you live in a mobile home? No? What if it were solar and wind powered, and tricked out with the latest modern conveniences and looked sharp? Treehugger's Lyod Alter is selling his one-of-a-kind miniHome Solo prototype for $100,000.
A price war on DVDs? Bring it on! And just for the record, I think $10 is where the price of new DVDs should've been for a while now. They need to keep the prices there and sell Blu-ray for $5 more.
The world's biggest retailer said late Thursday that it would lower the online prices of new DVDs such as "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" and "Star Trek" to $10. But when Amazon reduced some of its DVD prices to $9.99, Wal-Mart shot back by lowering its DVDs to $9.98 as of Friday morning.
I don’t think the mayor of Louisville is too happy that his town tops the country in online porn searches. I almost asked "what the hell is up with Louisville" but I think that is rather obvious, isn’t it?
But the 'Ville now has another distinction: It ranks No. 1 as the city most likely to search for obscene material online, at least according to BusinessInsider.com, which used Google Trends for a 2008 study. According to their math, Louisville has the greatest percentage of people searching for naughty words online.
Seriously, you can’t possibly make this stuff up.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
"The Download Blog" explains the reasons behind the recent back-to-back updates for both Firefox and Chrome. It would seem that both browsers needed quick fixes for bugs introduced by newer versions of the browsers. Those of you that didn’t immediately upgrade actually lucked out by not having to update your update (if that makes sense).
Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5 is out, just eight days after the browser updated to version 3.5.4. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, the new version of the browser fixes three bugs: one critical bug across all platforms, and then one lower priority one for Windows and one lower priority one for Mac.
The Microsoft Tech•Ed Europe 2009 keynote speech with Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, and Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Server and Tools Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp., will discuss the state of IT and the new generation of business solutions that help customers reach their full business potential.
The numbers have been tallied by the folks at NPD and Windows 7 sales have so far exceeded Vista sales by 234%. It’s still too early to make big predictions but that is definitely an impressive start.
According to the NPD groups' weekly tracking service, Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. increased 234% over Windows Vista's first few days of sales. "A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season," said Stephen Baker at NPD.
Toshiba Corporation, the industry pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today introduced a new line up of 1.8-inch HDDs with a maximum capacity of 320GB, the highest yet announced by the industry, targeted at thin and light mobile PCs and portable external hard disk drives. The new series delivers three models in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB capacities, and will start mass production from December.
Cases & Modding
Thermaltake Element Q Mini-ITX Case @ Metku
Cooling
Dynatron Genius CPU Heatpipe HSF @ Overclockers Club
ETC.
AMD VISION Program Analysis for Desktop and Mobile @ PC Perspective
Memory/ Storage
Synology DS209 Advance NAS Enclosures @ Pro-Clockers
Video
Sapphire HD 5750 1 GB GDDR5 @ techPowerUP!
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 CrossfireX @ Hi-Tech Reviews
Thinking of using Psystar's Rebel EFI software? You might want to read this first.
As the days have worn on, Psystar's response to this customer's issue has deteriorated to the point that they are no longer responding to his attempts to email for a refund. In fact, they stopped taking customer-support calls entirely, and have switched to a far less personal (and helpful) email-based help program.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…there are a ton of "open backdoor" jokes that can be made here but, it’s too easy, I’ll take the high road this time.
For example when accessed, a automatic "post update" could be made, that would lure friends of the user to access the exploit URL, and the exploit would spread virally. An more invasive and hidden exploit could harvest all the users personal photo's, data and messages to a central server without any trace, and there is no reason why this wouldn't be happening already with both Facebook and MySpace data.
Microsoft, during the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy in Madrid, released a whitepaper outlining privacy concerns associated with cloud computing.
Shifting to software being hosted online as services in the Internet "cloud" brings enormous economic potential as well as serious questions about protecting data, according to Microsoft. Companies should know where their data is sitting in the cloud and be guaranteed that they dictate who accesses it and when, according to Microsoft.
While he may not be a philanthropist like Gates or cuddly like The Woz, say what you want about Steve Jobs, no one can deny what he has done for Apple in the last decade.
Fortune traced "the decade of Steve" back to 1997, when Jobs returned to Apple's helm and took the California company on a course that gave the world iPhones, iPods, and increasingly popular Macintosh computers.