Items tagged with lab
Well, this kind of make it official. Here's a review of Microsoft's Zune player, and it's featured on a news outlet with Microsoft in its name: msnbc, and they no likey much. Lately I've been playing with the fruits of that insomnia: Zune, due for sale on Tuesday. I should say, Zune Version One of many to come. The division that created Zune is the same one that created the Xbox project, another very long-term assault on a dominant competitor. Like the Xbox, Microsoft sees Zune as a Long March, and is ready to spend five or even 10 years evolving the product so that somewhere in the mid-twenty-teens, it becomes your music device....
Read more...
Intel Announces Collaboration to Launch Web 2.0 Business Internet Suite SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 7, 2006 - Intel Corporation today announced at the Web 2.0 Conference today that it is collaborating with several software companies on the launch of SuiteTwo, a business Internet suite. The integrated suite, a family of interconnected services combined to improve productivity and enable high-engagement marketing, is comprised of business Web 2.0 capabilities from leading software companies, including Six Apart, Socialtext, NewsGator, SimpleFeed and SpikeSource. Intel Capital, Intel's venture capital organization, pioneered the assembly of this suite. Intel's Software and Solutions Group plans to make...
Read more...
OK, this is pretty HOT. We've been waiting for a set of good quality wireless speakers and it looks like we just might have found them. Speaker Power: 36 Watts RMS per channel (5 channels) 130 Watts RMS subwoofer Frequency Response: 35Hz ~ 20kHz THX Certification assures ultimate performance in games and movies Wireless technology eliminates cables between subwoofer and rear speakers. Wireless remote also controls popular compatible Creative MP3 players Advanced satellite design with high-efficiency, three-inch driver and flared port tube for impact, mid-bass output. New dual flared, dual-ported subwoofer with heavy-duty, eight-inch long-throw driver for room-shaking bass Auxiliary input...
Read more...
Imagination Technologies Announces Expanded Multimedia Collaboration with Intel and Investment from Intel Capital 2 October 2006 - Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG; "Imagination") - a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property ("SoC IP") - today announces that it has reached a new major collaboration agreement with Intel Corporation ("Intel"), which extends the licensing and deployment of its graphics and video IP cores for use with Intel's PC, mobile computing and consumer architectures in certain segments. Imagination also announces an investment by Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel. Intel Capital will invest ?5.28m in Imagination,...
Read more...
AMD ANNOUNCES SOCKET COMPATIBILITY PLANS TO DRIVE INDUSTRY COLLABORATION Sunnyvale, Calif. - Sept. 21, 2006 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport(tm) technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption...
Read more...
New Half-Life 2 Trailer Available New footage from the second installment in Valve's first episodic trilogy is now available. In addition to revealing a little more about where the trilogy leads after Freeman's time in City 17, Trailer2 shows off the Cinematic Physics system enabled in the Source Engine by Gray Horsfield and others at Valve for Episode Two. Half-Life 2: Episode Two is targeted for release in Q1 2007 on the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The movie is available for download from a number of locations, like 3D Gamers, GGMania, Filefront, Gamershell and Fileshack. If you have the bandwidth to quickly pull down this movie, definitely take the time to check this out. Visually,...
Read more...
NGOHQ is reporting that Creative Labs is blaming NVIDIA for cracking and other sound quality issues when an X-Fi sound card is installed in an nForce 4 motherboard. This reminds me of the good ol' days of installing the PCI Latency patch on VIA chipset-based motherboards when using a Creative Labs sound card. "We have observed through direct observation of the PCI bus on the nVidia nForce 4 motherboards that when the crackle symptoms are occuring, the Soundblaster X-Fi card PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off (not serviced) for very long intervals. We have observed peak holdoffs of up to 2 milliseconds in...
Read more...
ATI has just made their Catalyst v6.7 drivers available for download. Highlights of the Windows Catalyst 6.7 release include: Enhanced Crossfire Support: This release of Catalyst introduces Enhanced CrossFire Support. The enhanced support allows for CrossFire Alternate Frame Rendering mode for Direct3D applications to be forced on by setting the Catalyst AI slider to the Advanced position. Users are encouraged to enable this setting if they are not seeing significant performance gains in applications when Crossfire is enabled. This enhancement is available for all Direct3D applications except for Direct3D applications known not to work with Alternate Frame Rendering. Highlights of the Linux...
Read more...
GamePC has an interesting article on-line detailing their experience testing a Quad-SLI setup. Some of the numbers look absolutely fantastic, while others will leave you scratching your head. There is no doubt that Quad-SLI is the most powerful graphics configuration currently available. But is it worth your hard-earned cash? That's the question GamePC tries to answer. If you'd like a second opinion, Dave took a Quad-SLI rig for a spin as well. His thoughts are in this article from a few weeks back. "Today at GamePC, we've taken a look at nVidia's "consumer-level" Quad SLI solution, consisting of dual GeForce 7950 GX2 1 GB graphics cards and their newly released Forceware...
Read more...
Infoworld reports that Sony and Samsung will team up to build the world's most advanced liquid crystal display panel factory. The two companies will invest $1.9 billion (USD) on machinery and equipment for the new LCD panel factory and Samsung will spend an additional 940 million to construct the building. The new factory will be located next to an existing plant in Tangjeong, South Korea. Both plants will be operated by Sony and Samsung's LCD manufacturing joint venture, S-LCD Corp. Sony and Samsung will divide the output of the plant equally and use the panels in their own products. The plant is currently slated to open in late 2007. "Strong worldwide demand...
Read more...
Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Conroe) is now available for your purchasing pleasure through Newegg. As with any hot new technology though, you'll be paying a premium to get the latest and greatest from Intel. If you've got $1,360 to burn and a thirst for new hardware, don't hesitate to get started....
Read more...
The demo for 3D Realms' Prey is finally out, offering five single player and two multiplayer levels. 3D Realms has gone ahead and compiled a good list of file mirrors, so head on over. Unfortunately it could be a few days until the XBox 360 version appears on Marketplace. ...
Read more...
Intel, Microsoft Collaborate To Bring Pay-As-You-Go PCs To Millions Of New Users Microsoft FlexGo Technology to be a Key Element of Intel World Ahead Program SEATTLE, May 22, 2006 - Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the companies will collaborate to engineer and deliver flexible, pay-as-you-go PC purchasing models for consumers in emerging markets. Intel's support of Microsoft FlexGo technology is a key part of Intel's broad World Ahead program to help speed access to uncompromised technology and education for people in developing regions around the world. The collaboration between Microsoft and Intel to implement FlexGo technology is another example of the successful...
Read more...
AGEIA PhysX Powered Add-in Cards Now Available Worldwide AGEIA's PhysX Processor is Available Now on PC add-in Cards from ASUS and BFG MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - May 9, 2006 - AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced the availability of its PhysX processor on add-in accelerator cards from ASUS Computer International and BFG Technologies, Inc. The first physics processing unit (PPU) designed to power pervasive real-time physics in PC gaming can now be purchased by consumers worldwide, thus delivering true physics interaction on a massive scale to serious gamers everywhere. Click Here to read more... ...
Read more...
It looks like Best Buy isn't the only reseller to have let the Radeon X1900 GT loose at little early. If you do a quick search in our Price Grabber engine, you'll see that Dell has cards available and Directron is taking pre-orders as well. Could end up being a nice card for the money. We'll let you know for certain once we get a chance to test one... ...
Read more...
Sun Fire(TM) x64 Servers and Sun Ultra(TM) x64 Workstations, Boosted by Solaris(TM) 10 and Sun(TM) Studio 11, Deliver 16 New World Records SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 11 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the availability of Sun Fire(TM) x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers and Sun Ultra(TM) Workstations powered by the newest, highest-performing single-core AMD Opteron(TM) Model 156, 256 and 856 processors. The faster processor speeds, combined with the inherent performance advantages of Sun's x64 servers and workstations, give customers increased processing power and a performance edge over competitive systems. "Sun is the first vendor to take full performance advantage of...
Read more...
An exploit has become publicly available for a newly disclosed critical -- and as yet unpatched -- vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer Web browser.The exploit has been posted on several Internet sites and gives even relatively novice hackers an easy way to take advantage of a flaw in the way IE processes information using the createTextRange () method, according to Secure Elements Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based security firm. "It's just a matter of time before the exploit gets turned into a virus or a worm" capable of creating considerable damage on unprotected systems, said Scott Carpenter, director of security labs at Secure Elements....
Read more...
Hey folks, just thought I'd remind you all that Nvidia will be posting some new drivers tomorrow(Forceware 84.25), which should provide some performance improvements to the new Elder Scrolls, Oblivion. I picked up my copy earlier today, and while it runs decent, any kind of performance improvement is welcomed. Nvidia hasn't elaborated on what kind of boost we'll see from the drivers though. We'll post the drivers(and opinion) as soon as possible....
Read more...
TechReport have managed to get their hands on a new Creative Labs X-Fi Fatal1ty to see whether the bundled I/O ports and 64MB of X-Ram warrant the price increase over cheaper models in the X-Fi product line. Granted, this card features the same X-Fi architecture that impressed us when we reviewed the X-Fi XtremeMusic. However, it appears as though the I/O ports can be had in much cheaper X-Fi versions and the performance benefits of the 64MB of XRam were questionable at best.Only Battlefield 2 and Quake 4 even support X-RAM, and neither's use of the X-Fi Fatal1ty's 64MB of onboard memory results in higher in-game frame rates or superior audio quality. That's a disappointing result, although since...
Read more...
GamePC Labs has gone ahead and rounded up four 500GB hard drive's... I still remember when 500MB was a lot. These are some quality drives though, manufactured by names such as Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, and Maxtor. Even though each brand is known for quality, when the drives average around 77 cents per gigabyte, you'll still want to pick the best drive possible."Today at GamePC, we've taken a look at four of the highest capacity disks on the market, all sporting 500 GB of storage capacity. We've got the largest drives on the market from Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital all in the labs for a round of competitive testing. We've also thrown in Western Digital's Raptor 74 and...
Read more...
Beyond3D has posted word from 3DLabs that the company is exiting the professional 3D GPU market and will instead be focusing their attention on handheld graphics. Being a cornerstone of the OpenGL 2.0 spec amongst countless other contributions, the loss of yet another competitive GPU vendor is sure to be a loss for the consumer. Regardless, it is a bit odd to see the company now focusing on handheld graphics. Does anyone else see a strong resemblance to an announcement by BitBoys?"3Dlabs will transition from the shrinking professional workstation graphics market to focus on portable handheld devices which require intensive media processing for video, audio and increasingly powerful 3D graphics."...
Read more...
Josh at Penstarsys has just posted an interesting editorial regarding the current availability of various graphics cards in the marketplace. Here, the author steps through the latest and greatest offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA and illustrates their availability. Somewhat surprisingly, the article even mentions S3 products for those who are not dedicated ATI or NVIDIA fans. While you're there, be sure to scroll down to the previous article regarding the AEG and NVIDIA fiasco as there are some very good points made by the author.We are now seeing some of the X1900 XTs hitting $499, which is $50 lower than MSRP. We are also seeing X1900 XTXs for around $589, a full $60 under MSRP. ...
Read more...
