Legit Reviews News History
May 24th to May 30th News From Around the Web
May 24th to May 30th News From Around the Web
Liquid cooling, once the realm of eccentric PC alchemists, has evolved into a relatively mainstream cooling solution available to the average user. While many liquid-cooling aficionados will scoff at the idea of buying a system in kit form, these kits make it very easy for the novice to get their feet wet, so to speak. Gigabyte is better known for marketing motherboards and graphics cards but has recently ventured into the chassis/cooling market. They've sent us their new Galaxy II system for evaluation and it represents the second generation of this product. It comes complete with everything you'll need to cool your CPU and has some interesting features that promise good cooling, safety and expansion. Let's put it through its paces and see how it performs.
Posted by | Wed, May 30, 2007 - 07:39 PM
New AACS key is found
You have to wonder if there is even a point to encrypting these movies anymore
The hackers over at the Doom 9 forums have once again conquered AACS by discovering the updated decryption key used on new HD DVD and Blu Ray discs. According to forum posters, the key has been verified to work on new movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Posted by | Wed, May 30, 2007 - 07:13 PM
Toshiba details its AMD laptops
Toshiba will launch three laptops in its Satellite range in North America based on AMD's Turion 64 X2 dual-core chip and M690 chipset, AMD said on Wednesday. Toshiba, which confirmed plans on Tuesday for AMD machines but offered no details, said Wednesday that the computers will be available in the third quarter.
The M690 chip set has just been launched by AMD and will, according to the company, help reduce power consumption and lead to a 25 percent increase in battery life compared to the previous-generation AMD platform. The Japanese PC maker, which ranked fourth in the laptop market in the first quarter of this year, hasn't used AMD chips in laptops since 2000.
Posted by | Wed, May 30, 2007 - 08:48 AM
ECS Announces Their Intel Bearlake Motherboards Will Be At Computex
Elitegroup Computer Systems Inc. (ECS), leading global motherboard and notebook manufacturer is set to unveil its latest Motherboard series at this year’s Computex exhibition. The new series from ECS which includes the new P35T-A and G33T-M motherboards is based on Intel’s new Bearlake technology.
ECS Bearlake motherboards have improved performance and efficiency thanks to the Northbridge chipset they feature. The only chipset supporting the forthcoming 45nm-process microarchitecture CPU, the Northbridge chipset ensures that users are future proofed for future technology upgrades. These chipsets feature a 1333 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) to work seamlessly with Intel’s new ICH9 Southbridge I/O chip. The ICH9 Southbridge will have at least three different versions, the ICH9R with added support for RAID storage, the ICH9DH which supports an additional 2 SATA ports and the ICH9 which will offer a useful new feature called ‘Intel® Robson Technology’, which not only improves system responsiveness while saving power but also allows users to boot and quickly system recover. The Bearlake chipset also allows support for DDR3 Memory.
Posted by | Tue, May 29, 2007 - 10:13 AM
Sony to debut HD radio products
Sony Corp. says it will introduce its first HD Radio products in July, joining the growing group of companies seeking to make the next-generation digital radio technology a standard feature in audio products over the next several years.
A listener, however, needs a special radio receiver to hear HD Radio signals, which also boasts improved sound quality. About 50 models are available already, often sold as part of a car stereo or home audio component, according to the alliance.
Posted by | Tue, May 29, 2007 - 10:09 AM
Toshiba to use AMD chip in laptop PCs
oshiba, the world's fourth-largest laptop PC maker, said Tuesday it expects to put AMD processors in about 20 percent of the notebooks it sells in the United States and Europe. The move follows an announcement last year by Dell, which had been procuring microprocessors only from Intel for more than two decades, that it would begin using chips from AMD.
"With PCs becoming commodity products, there seems to be a new way of thinking that competition should be introduced even in procurement of such core parts like processors as long as there are no major differences in product specifications," Macquarie Securities analyst Yoshihiro Shimada said. "This could be a message that an era in which Intel took the lion's share of microprocessor profits as the king of PC chips is over."
Posted by | Tue, May 29, 2007 - 06:13 AM
Intel reportedly to expand SiS chipset orders
Intel is reportedly to increase orders of SiS671 and SiS672 chipsets from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) in the third quarter of 2007. The increase is expected to benefit Taiwan-based wafer maker United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) plus packaging and testing houses Siliconware Precision Industry (SPIL) and King Yuan Electronics Company (KYEC), according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.
SiS's quarterly revenues and chipset shipments are expected to increase 30-50%, while SPIL and KYEC are expected to see a 10% on-quarter growth in revenues in the third quarter. Also UMC is expected to have the utilization rate boosted at its 12-inch wafer fab, noted the paper citing sources at foreign investors.
Posted by | Mon, May 28, 2007 - 07:18 AM
NVIDIA Released The Human Head Demo
I wanted to let you know that NVIDIA's latest demo, "Human Head" is now available to the public. This demo is a startling leap forward in realism for real-time characters, starring actor Doug Jones, who will portray the Silver Surfer in the upcoming film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. If you have a GeForce 8800 Ultra you really need to download this demo. It weighs in at 106.8MB and is really awesome. I just got done playing around on the demo on my system and it's impressive. Be sure to check out the wire frame mode if you run it.
NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra demo "Human Head" uses a new sum-of-Guassians formulation of subsurface scattering within a multi-layered skin model coupled to deliver a startling leap forward in realism for real-time characters. "Human Head" computes 17 off-screen textures every frame totaling over 40 Million pixels, each shaded with lengthy pixel shaders That amounts to 1.2 billion pixels every second! Ultra high resolution 4096 x 4096 color and normal textures provide photo-realistic detail even at extremely close ranges.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 06:21 PM
OCZ Purchases Power Supply and Cooling Company PC Power & Cooling
OCZ today announced immediate plans to bring PC Power & Cooling into the OCZ Technology Group. As a worldwide leader in high performance computer hardware, OCZ acquired PC Power & Cooling to utilize their keen expertise in power management and take the organization to the next level. OCZ is going to keep their current power supplies and will introduce a new line of high-end power supplies with the technology that PC Power & Cooling offers on their power supplies.
All OCZ and PC Power & Cooling product lines will benefit from the new collaboration efforts. Moving forward, PC Power & Cooling’s complete line of power supplies will become the premium-grade PSU collection from OCZ, and will continue to be branded under the PC Power & Cooling brand. In addition to combining current product lines, the focus of OCZ and PC Power & Cooling is to take innovation and industry leadership to new heights. As the founder and CEO of PCP&C, Doug Dodson, moves into the position of Chief Technology Officer at OCZ, the integration of his expertise will set new standards for OCZ product development and innovation. OCZ’s popular high performance memory modules, PSUs, and flash memory will continue to evolve ahead of the times and stay attuned to the needs of the industry. The outcome is a greatly differentiated range of OCZ and PCP&C solutions available worldwide that addresses the complete spectrum of applications.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 03:56 PM
Nvidia Faces 51 Suits With Price-Fixing Claims Over AMD Deal
Nvidia Corp. on Thursday said 51 civil complaints have been filed against it as of May 14 alleging price fixing and anti-competitive agreements, among other things, between Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).
As reported last December, Nvidia and ATI Technologies account for the lion's share of graphics chips that are sold as independent products, with sales leadership regularly shifting back and forth between the companies. In its annual report filed March 16 with Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia said 42 civil complaints as of March 14 were filed against it on the same allegations.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:28 AM
Apple will show off new MacBook Pro notebooks along with a full demonstration of the next operating
A new variant of the Stration worm, which has been plaguing Windows users for the past year, has made the jump from Skype to the ICQ and MSN Messenger networks.
This latest variant popped up earlier this week, according to Chris Boyd, a researcher at FaceTime Communications, who blogs under the pseudonym "Paperghost." "They're using Skype as a jump off into other more established networks," Boyd said. "The infection will go looking for other instant messaging clients that are on the PC and then attempt to send the infection message that it initially sends through Skype through these other chat systems."
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:14 AM
Nissan warns U.S. cellphones can disable car keys
Nissan North America has a warning for customers: placing your electronic key too close to your cellphone could leave you stranded. Sounds like these electronic keys still have a way to go in the lab before being out in the wild.
"We discovered that if the I-Key touches a cellphone, outgoing or incoming calls have the potential to alter the electronic code inside the I-Key," Nissan spokesman Kyle Bazemore said."The car won't start and the I-Key cannot be reprogrammed," he added.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:10 AM
Free PlayStation 3 Software Upgrade Delivers Better Images
A free download upgrade for the Sony PlayStation 3 enhances the image quality of movies and old video games and allows people to check out stored video, music files and digital photos through the Internet with the handheld PlayStation Portable.
The upgrade, available for download worldwide Thursday, will improve the visual quality of PlayStation 2 games, as well as original PlayStation games, although it won't be quite as dazzling as the quality of PS3 games, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. officials said. The software will also work to adjust the image quality of movies so they will look much better on the PS3, which is equipped to deliver higher image quality through next-generation Blu-ray disc technology.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:08 AM
Xbox 360 game prices jump with add-ons
New charges for online extras are sharply raising the price serious video gamers pay for Xbox 360 games, a profitable move by Microsoft Corp. , but one that could alienate some fans.
More than 3 million Xbox Live subscribers pay a $50 annual fee that allows them to play games online against one another. About 3 million more use the service without an annual subscription, taking the total to more than half Xbox users. Through Xbox Live, players can buy maps for fighting terrains and other add-ons that are indispensable to serious gamers, usually at a cost of $10 each. Such add-ons used to be free most of the time and the additions can raise a game's cost to $80 or even $100 over its life span .
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:06 AM
Nvidia claims the upcoming G92 video card will be a 1 Teraflop beast
NVIDIA is already talking about their next generation video card that is known right now as the G92. They have mentioned to the media that the G92 high-end graphics card will deliver almost a teraflop of computing performance, which is pretty impressive! If you just bought a GeForce 8800 Series card no worries as the G92 will likely be out no sooner than Q4 2007. If I had to guess this would also be an PCI Express 2.0 compatible card.
NVIDIA says its G92 high-end graphics card will deliver almost a teraflop of computing performance. In an analyst webcast, Nvidian Michael Hara says that the chip will be ready for Christmas, a release cycle the company adopted with G80, where high-end products come out for Chrimbo and the mid-range and low-end products hit in the spring.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 08:04 AM
Industry uncertain over recent DRAM spot price rebound
With DRAM showing a long-awaited price rebound on the spot market during the week May 18-25, industry watchers are still puzzling about whether it is a sign of an industry-wide rebound or just a short-lived phenomenon.
An upward price trend for 512Mbit DDR2 at the spot market was observed starting from May 18 for all frequencies including effectively tested (eTT) chips, according to figures posted by DRAMeXchange. Among all specification chips, eTT chips enjoyed the largest sequential growth over the week, appreciating almost 16%. Some industry players doubt the sustainability of this price rebound given that DRAM contract prices remained weak in the last update.
Posted by | Fri, May 25, 2007 - 07:58 AM
Dell signs sales deal with Wal-Mart
Dell will begin selling two models of its desktop PCs at Wal-Mart Stores on June 10, fulfilling a series of recent hints from CEO Michael Dell that the company would move beyond the direct sales model that once made it the world's largest PC vendor.
Wal-Mart will sell the desktops for less than $700 each in its thousands of stores located in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, according to a Wal-Mart statement issued Thursday. The store also said it expected to offer additional Dell PC models in its Sam's Club and Wal-Mart Canada stores, but did not provide model names or dates.
Posted by | Thu, May 24, 2007 - 01:33 PM
Net taxes could arrive later this year
The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful.
State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.
Posted by | Thu, May 24, 2007 - 01:33 PM
Release of Vista not having major impact on PC sales
Demand for new PCs has not been impacted significantly by Microsoft Vista's delay and subsequent release, reports market research firm In-Stat. The worldwide PC market forecast is still on track for 300 million units sold in 2009, noted In-Stat.
"With the recent release of Vista, a short-term rise in PC demand is anticipated," says Ian Lao, In-Stat analyst. "System sales that had been muted waiting for systems pre-loaded with Vista rather than XP are expected to work through sales channels in the next two quarters. However, these sales represent an offset from last year rather than actual new demand creation."
Posted by | Thu, May 24, 2007 - 01:30 PM
May 23rd News From Around the Web
Today's Web Reviews
Anyone who's built their own PC in recent years has no doubt heard of Thermaltake. They manufacture a wide variety of computer components from power supplies to cables to cases, but are probably best known for their CPU coolers. Thermaltake also has several choices when it comes to watercooling systems, and previously I had the chance to review their Symphony Mini DIY system which turned out to be a solid performer. Today I'm going to remove the stock waterblock included with the Mini and replace it with the Volcano 4005. Will it make an already good system great? Let's have a look.
Posted by | Wed, May 23, 2007 - 07:41 PM