Until I read this, I did not know Gigabyte made peripherals, and it appears that have for a while. Very interesting.
Gigabyte is not often being associated with keyboard and mouse. When mentioning Gigabyte and computer, I am sure everyone would think of motherboard or graphic cards instead of keyboard and mouse. The reality is Gigabyte is a big company and it has a wide variety of computer products ranging from keyboard, mouse, monitors, to cases and laptops.
In the past, we have looked at a few of Gigabyte’s keyboards. Their latest keyboard and mouse combo, the KM7580, is a compact unit designed for mobile users. Two colors are available: black and white. We have received the white version for the review. It seems like with the success of iPod, we are seeing more white color devices on the market.
The KM7580 comes in a fairly small box with plenty of marketing information highlighting the unique features of the keyboard and mouse. Here we can see that the devices connect to your computer through 2.4GHz wireless bandwidth. The back of the box gives you an overview of the different features of the mouse where you can adjust the DPIs and different multi-media buttons on the keyboard.
....with free DMM for game production and updated version of bullet physics.
SUNNYVALE, Calif. —3/8/2010
AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that, along with partners Pixelux Entertainment and Bullet Physics, it has added significant support to the Open Physics ecosystem by providing game developers with access to the newest version of the Pixelux Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), a breakthrough in physics simulation. In addition, to enabling a superior development experience and helping to reduce time to market, Pixelux has tightly integrated its technology, DMM, with Bullet Physics, allowing developers to integrate physics simulation into game titles that run on both OpenCL- and DirectCompute-capable platforms. And both DMM and Bullet work with Trinigy’s Vision Engine to create and visualize physics offerings in-game.
“Establishing an open and affordable physics development environment is an important accomplishment for both game developers and gamers, signaling a move away from exclusionary or proprietary approaches,” said Eric Demers, chief technology officer, AMD Graphics Division. “Not only does the integration of Bullet Physics into partner middleware help drive broader adoption of physics in games, it ensures that when those games are released, all gamers, regardless of the hardware in their PC, can benefit from the more realistic experience enabled by those effects.”
AMD’s announced open physics development environment now adds Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system provided with Pixelux’s DMM2 material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties.
In addition, AMD is announcing its sponsorship of FREE DMM2 for the PC platform. The Free PC version has no DMM license fee for development or production deployment and includes all the features of the premium version including GPU acceleration. Free PC DMM2 is expected to be made available shortly to interested developers.
“With today’s announcement, the incredible physical simulation effects seen in the latest games and blockbuster films can be used by all developers – a tremendous milestone for the industry,” said Mitchell Bunnell, chief executive officer, Pixelux. “Working closely with AMD and Bullet’s main author, Erwin Coumans, we’ve enabled tight integration of our DMM2 system and Bullet Physics, giving developers a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use physics pipeline they can use to create things that have never been seen before”.
“At Trinigy, one of our guiding principles is ensuring game developers have the freedom to use the tools they need to create the effects they want,” said Danie Conradie, president and chief executive officer, Trinigy Inc. “AMD’s Open Physics Initiative with Pixelux DMM and Bullet Physics, coupled with our long-standing relationship with all three companies, helped us deliver on that core philosophy by giving developers access to these state-of-the-art technologies for producing advanced effects in games.”
All of the Bullet Physics implementations described above can be run on any OpenCL- or DirectCompute-capable platform. On AMD platforms, ATI Stream technology is used to drive the enhanced game experience. As a further enhancement, AMD has developed new parallel GPU accelerated implementations of Bullet Physics’ Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Fluids and Soft Bodies/Cloth. The new code written in OpenCL and Direct Compute will be contributed as open source.
That fake CPU incident is still having repercussions at Newegg. The online retailer has posted a new statement on its Facebook page, revealing that the so-called Core i7-920 "demo units" some customers received were in fact counterfeit products. Newegg has also kicked the distributor that provided the parts to the curb.
Opening the statement by saying it is "conducting a thorough investigation" into the events, Newegg adds:
"Initial information we received from our supplier, IPEX, stated that they had mistakenly shipped us "demo units." We have since come to discover the CPUs were counterfeit and are terminating our relationship with this supplier. Contrary to any speculation, D&H Distributing is not the vendor that supplied us with the Intel Core i7-920 CPUs in question. Newegg’s top priority is to proactively reach out to all customers who may have been affected to ensure their absolute satisfaction. We have already sent out a number of replacement units and are doing everything in our power to resolve the matter promptly and with the least amount of inconvenience to our customers.
We have always taken pride in providing an exceptional experience for each customer, and we apologize for any inconvenience to our valued customers. We take matters like this extremely seriously, and are working in close cooperation with Intel and the appropriate law enforcement authorities to thoroughly investigate this incident."
As we explained yesterday, the counterfeit processors came in genuine-looking product boxes, but they were little more than slabs of metal accompanied by lumps of plastic shaped as coolers and blank paper leaflets.
Newegg called IPEX a "one of our long term partners" in its original statement, going on to say its customer service staff had already started reaching out to folks who received the duds.
At least according to [H]ard|OCP and Ars Technica, if you use a ad blocker, you're hurting your favorite sites! On the front page of HardOCP, they make a case for the point made in this Ars article:
If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you don't agree with, don't go there. I think it is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return. I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website. People talk about how annoying advertisments are, but I'll tell you what: it's a lot more annoying and frustrating to have to cut staff and cut benefits because a huge portion of readers block ads. Yet I've seen that happen at dozens of great sites over the last few years, Ars included.
Techdirt, on the other hand, takes a different stand on the issue:
Along those lines, if you are running a media site, if you're having trouble making money, it's your fault. Don't blame your readers. Don't blame your community by telling them they're "devastating" a site by blocking ads or failing to pay for a paywall. As the producers of that site, it's your responsibility to do things to get that site paid for. If you don't like what we're doing on Techdirt, go ahead and block our ads. Sure, just like Ars, many of our ads are paid for based on impressions and we may make less money from those ads, but that's our problem and the problem of advertisers who aren't willing to do more unique, creative and compelling projects that benefit the community rather than annoy it. We want the advertisers, sponsors and partners we work with to get the best results possible in a way that everyone wins. And that's not by forcing people who don't want to see their ads to see them, or by pissing off our readers by blocking them if they use ad blocking. It's by taking on the responsibility ourselves to put together compelling programs that make everything more valuable for all participants.
The .xxx domain proposal pulls off the covers and steps back into the spotlight.
The .xxx domain is back on the table. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will reconsider the top-level domain during a meeting in Kenya this week, nearly three years after it was shot down and nine years after it was first introduced as a way to identify pornography sites and hopefully confine them to their own Internet red-light district.
The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and approved in 2005 for exclusive (but voluntary) use by the adult entertainment industry. The idea was to provide a place for porn sites online that would be explicitly obvious from the domain, which would not only help consenting adults find the sites, it would also help parents and corporations better block access to them.
The latter, however, was not how some family groups saw the situation—the US Department of Commerce later reported having received 6,000 letters from concerned citizens over .xxx (many of which were auto-generated from the Family Research Council). The letters stated that they didn't want to give pornographers more opportunities to "distribute smut on the Internet" and that parents would have false hope in protecting their families. The heavy push from the US eventually led to ICANN's reversal of its earlier decision to green-light the top-level domain (TLD) and an official cancellation of the plans in 2007.
Three years later and we're back at square one. Two weeks ago, an independent panel from the International Center for Dispute Resolution said that ICANN goofed when it rejected .xxx. The decision was not a binding one, but ICANN clearly feels that the issue is worth reconsideration after all; the organization confirmed to the BBC that it would discuss the TLD again this week to decide whether it wants to move forward on it—again.
Gigabyte Technology's motherboard shipments are estimated to have reached 3.1-3.3 million units for the first two months of 2010, tied up with Asustek Computer's shipment estimate of 3.2-3.3 million units, according to market watchers.
To maintain its lead, Asustek is expected to start cutting its motherboard prices shortly which may trigger price war in the motherboard industry, sources from channel vendors noted.
Asustek is also reportedly planning to reshuffle staff in motherboard business unit.
Asustek declined to comment on market speculation, but said it is confident it will ship five million motherboards in the first quarter.
Sources close to Gigabyte commented that the shipment estimates are close to the company's internal figures.
We don't usually make a news posting relating to our Rage3D Deals page, but one of today's deals is particularly good. You can get a 15" Inspiron laptop with 3GB ram and 250GB HD for just $399. Follow This Rage3D Deals Link to the Dell Days of Deals page and your purchase will support Rage3D as well as get you a great deal.
Be sure to check our Rage3D Deals page daily as the deals are up updated every day and any purchase you make through our deals page supports Rage3D.
SAN FRANCISCO—An online retailer acknowledged Monday (March 8) that it unwittingly shipped counterfeit ICs to some customers who ordered Intel Corp.'s Core i7-920 microprocessors.
The retailer, Newegg.com, said it terminated its relationship with the supplier that provided the devices, identified as Ipex. Newegg said the supplier originally said it had mistakenly sent Newegg "demo units," but that the company later discovered that the chips were counterfeit. Newegg said it is conducting a full investigation into the incident.
The incidents of counterfeit Core i7 920s were reported Monday by several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and PC Magazine. A number of people who ordered the chips instead received crude knock offs, described as a piece of plastic that resembled a chip, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
The counterfeiting of electronic components has been on the rise in recent years despite increased efforts at corporate and governmental levels to fight the crime, according to a report released last month by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. The report described the counterfeiting of ICs as a threat to the health of the industry supply chain and recommended several steps for fighting counterfeiting.
Newegg (Whittier, Calif.) said it top priority is to proactively reach out to all customers who were affected to ensure their absolute satisfaction. The company said it has already sent out a number of replacement units.
Biostar had its TA890FXE motherboard on display and as the name suggests this board is based on AMD's 890FX + SB850.
The board will take AM3 CPUs up to 140W, comes with four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, two PCI slots and four DDR3 memory slots for up to 16GB.
This midrange board features SATA3 6Gbps, courtesy of the SB850 but it doesn’t have USB 3.0, which is pretty strange considering that USB 3.0 was on pretty much every motherboard company’s mind on this year’s Cebit. It’s true that such a move might reflect positively on the pricing, but we’re not sure how well will it fare in sales. The board should be reasonably priced when it arrives around April.
CeBIT 2010: Crosshair IV Extreme, Formula and more.
Asus has announced a nicely filled its lineup of 890FX based boards where just about everyone and their overclocking & gaming oriented dog should find something to their liking.
The main stars of Asus’ mobo offer were naturally the Crosshair IV series motherboards, Extreme and Formula editions, tailored for AM3 processors and boasting SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 for good measure.
Crosshair IV Formula is aimed at top of the line gaming and packs four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 and two PCI slots. It has six SATA 6Gbps ports as well as two SATA 3Gbps The board has 8+2 channel audio with SPDIF, gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, eSata, two USB 3.0 ports, plenty USB 2.0 ports, and pretty much all the bells and whistles. The Crosshair IV Extreme builds on what Formula has to offer and adds high quality build aimed at pure overclocking performance, including voltage measure points, Super ML capacitors and much more. As you can see the board is pretty hefty and it packs four PCI-Express x16 slots, an open-ended PCI-Express 1.1 x4 and PCI slot. It has six SATA 6Gbps ports as well as extra SATA 3Gbps controllers. Asus has something for mid-range as well as the company was showing its M4A89TD PRO, and this AM3 socket board features 10-phase VRM and supports up to 140W CPUs. It has two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, open-ended PCI-E 1.1 x4, a PCI-E x1 and two PCI slots. There is a total of six SATA 6 Gbps, courtesy of the SB850 southbridge and the board comes with Asus’ “Core Unlocker” switch, which makes unlocking physical cores easy. It has 7.1 channel audio, gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 connectivity.
Mac users getting access to entire Valve library next month.
March 8, 2010 - Valve confirmed this morning Mac users will finally be able to use Steam, the company's digital distribution service, and Source, its proprietary game engine this April.
"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."
Valve's titles, which includes Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series, will all be available at launch. The recently announced Portal 2 will also be Valve's first simultaneous release for both Mac and Windows. No word on when, or if, the entire Steam library will be made available to Mac users in the future.
DAILY FIX VIDEO MARCH 08, 2010
This news and more in the Daily Fix.
- Steam Coming To Mac
- New Iron Man 2 Trailer
- Scribblenauts 2
- Giveaway Winners!
"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve.
"Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac."
"This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
The only version confirmed to be affected so far is 10.50.
Marcin Ressel has discovered a vulnerability in Opera, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.
The vulnerability is caused due to an error when processing HTTP responses having a malformed "Content-Length" header. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via an overly large 64-bit "Content-Length" value, having the higher 32-bit part negative.
Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.
The vulnerability is confirmed in version 10.50 for Windows. Other versions may also be affected.
Upgrading to AMD's latest and greatest platform does not have to mean shunning potentially free performance.
Asus tells us it has implemented core unlocking functionality in its M4A89GTD Pro and M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 motherboards, potentially allowing users to unlock all four cores in Phenom II X3, Phenom II X2, and Athlon II X3 processors.
As you might recall, mobos based on AMD's 700-series chipsets provided similar functionality using either the built-in Advanced Clock Calibration feature or, once AMD closed that loophole, a reverse-engineered version of older firmware with preserved unlocking hooks. Asus now claims AMD has removed ACC from its new 890GX chipset, yet Asus' own Core Unlocker Technology "intelligently scans the installed processor to properly determine which cores and cache can be unlocked."
Asus adds that previous core unlocking implementations "did not always unlock the core and cache intelligently," so paradoxically, the loophole-free 890GX may provide a better unlocking experience—at least in these two mobos. Unlocking cores or cache on those offerings is purportedly as simple as "sliding a switch on the motherboard, changing a BIOS setting, or simply pressing the '4' key when the machine first starts."
Now, as before, core unlocking remains a gamble. Users have no guarantees AMD didn't lock cores in their dual- or triple-core CPUs for good reason, like because of a defect. Only certain chips may have had fully functional cores disabled to meet demand for cheaper, slower processor models.
It will be interesting to see whether Opera will retain those improved numbers when the next release ships.
The early results appear to validate Opera's claims that Microsoft's advantage was artificially produced. Describes Rolf Assev, Opera's chief strategy officer, "Since the browser choice screen rollout, Opera downloads have more than tripled in major European countries, such as Belgium, France, Spain, Poland and the UK."
Why does Opera care about browser market share so much? Opera was among the first browser makers to broker a deal with a search engine giant (in its case Google) to auction off the browser's default search engine. As search engines lead to advertising revenue, and many users rely on the default search, such deals typically bring tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to the browser maker. The size of the deal typically depends, though, on the number of active users, so getting users to download your browser is critical.
The browser ballot screen was delivered to EU users via Windows Update. When the users update, if their default browser is Internet Explorer (which is the case if you just installed Windows), the customer will receive an Internet Explorer Window that prompts them to pick between 12 browsers, including Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Opera is included among the randomly generated list along with Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Despite the apparent success of the experiment, and gains for third party browser makers like Opera and Mozilla, some aren't entirely satisfied with the results. Shawn Hardin -- chief executive of Flock, Europe's sixth largest browser -- says that even though there's a scroll bar to find more options (lesser known browsers), that most customers won't realize that there's more picks than the ones initially positioned onscreen in the frame (Opera, IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). That, he says, isn't fair.
He comments, "Frankly, nobody knows there are more than five options. We see this as unfair."
Lately, there is no hiding the fact that ATI’s latest releases are hogging the limelight and have been able to capture the public’s attention with a near-perfect mix of performance, efficiency and pricing. NVIDIA does have competing DX11 cards on the way but until that time, their offerings are few and far between. There are still a few GTX 260s and GTX 285s bumming around but the only area where there is still any meaningful NVIDIA presence is in the mid to low range market with the GTS 250, GT 240, GT 220 and GT 210 series of cards. While these products may not represent the best of the best at first glance, they still hold their own and with some recent price cuts, have become much more appealing for the budget gamers out there.
The release of the GT 240 went virtually unnoticed but it is now aimed right at the one market segment where ATI’s products are showing their vulnerable underbelly. The 5000-series hit the nail straight on the head in every price category over $150 but the offerings in the sub-$100 market are lacking. This provides the perfect opportunity for NVIDIA to whittle away at some of ATI’s convincing lead while testing out a 40nm manufacturing process that has been anything but consistent.
Beyond testing the 40nm manufacturing process, NVIDIA’s plan for the GT 240 was to offer gamers a card that would allow them to play games at reasonable settings while offering a giant leap in efficiency over past cards. Granted, DX11 is quite obviously the next big thing but for the vast majority of the GT 240’s life cycle, this new API will only be used in a few games. We have also seen in the not too distant past that sub-$100 cards just don’t provide the horsepower needed to enable DX11 features anyways. One way or another, NVIDIA aimed the GT 240 to replace the 9600 GT while being the first card in the green camp to offer DX10.1 functionality.
Budget gaming superiority isn’t the only target of the GT 240. It also does away with the somewhat archaic S/PDIF connector on G92-series cards and incorporates all audio pass-through onto the PCI-E interface which in addition to HDMI 1.3a compatibility and PureVideo HD could make it an excellent HTPC card. NVIDIA also has their CUDA technology that will allow the GT 240 to perform GPU compute tasks such as PhysX processing and video transcoding on a level unseen by even the fastest CPUs around.
In this review we will be looking at six GT 240 cards from four different manufacturers and while you won’t see any highly overclocked cards among the bunch, all of them are unique in some way or another. EVGA is represented by their Superclocked version that uses higher than reference clock speeds, MSI sent in their MD512/D5 OC Edition that has an interesting looking heatsink in addition to receiving an overclock. Meanwhile, Gigabyte’s two cards come from two totally different price ranges: the stock 512MB GDDR5 card and a slightly higher clocked 1GB DDR3 product that uses a unique heatsink design. Finally there are Sparkle’s two competitors and like the Gigabyte cards they represent both the 512MB and 1GB models.
This week NVIDIA had to pull its latest WHQL-certified graphics drivers on Windows due to a bug that would cause the fan controller to not respond correctly to the current conditions of the GPU workload and in some cases would even turn the GPU's fan off. This bug could potentially kill the NVIDIA graphics card due to overheating. It turns out this potentially fatal bug is also present in their newest 195.36.08 and 195.36.03 Linux drivers.
NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner has made an announcement that this driver fan speed bug may be present in the 195.36.08 and 195.36.03 driver releases so users should cease using those drivers and revert to the older 190.53 version. NVIDIA is in the process of pulling these drivers from their web-site.
Canonical has already issued a warning to those using the NVIDIA driver on Ubuntu 10.04 to disable the driver and switch over to the open-source Nouveau driver until this serious bug has been resolved.
By now most Ars readers have been saturated with statistical data about broadband adoption in the United States: who has access, who doesn't, where, why, and how we compare with the rest of the world. One of the conundrums with which all these surveys grapple is that allegedly stubborn portion of the population—mostly poor, rural, and older—who don't use the Internet at all, because they supposedly don't care to do so.
But a new study suggests that this community of broadband outsiders is rapidly disappearing from the landscape, particularly among low income Americans.
"We found no such group," concludes the Social Science Research Council, "even among respondents with profound histories of marginalization—the homeless, people with long-term disabilities, people recently released from lengthy prison sentences, non-English speakers from new immigrant communities, and residents of a rural community without electricity or running water. No one needed to be convinced of the importance of Internet use or of the value of broadband adoption in the home."
It may be that SSRC's staff didn't find these blasé types because their sample size was much smaller than the National Telecommunications & Information Agency's recent survey of 'Net use (based on census queries of 54,000 households), or last year's Pew study concluding that two-thirds of those without broadband just don't want it.
But the report—"Broadband Adoption and Low Income Communities"—is backed up with interviews that are of much greater depth than either of those previous studies. Produced for the Federal Communications Commission, the new study confirms the trend that the NTIA report hinted at: disinterest is taking a back seat to unaffordability, uncertainty, lack of equipment, and lack of skill.
More worrisome is SSRC's identification of a new category in the broadband sociosphere: "un-adopters"—households that once had high speed Internet, then dropped the service because they could not afford it any more.
Looking for a high-end Intel P55 chipset motherboard with an eye towards some hardcore overclocking? ASUS' Maximus III Formula might be just the board to tempt you as part of the company's Republic of Gamers range, and today Elite Bastards take a look at this particular part to see if it can live up to its potential.
ASUS' motherboard layouts always tend to impress, and the Maximus III Formula sticks to that clean but effective layout, which should prevent anything too major in the way of component placement conflicts or the like.
The rear of the motherboard offers up a single PS/2 port for a keyboard, nine USB 2.0 ports (one of which is offered up for ASUS' RoG Connect functionality), a single FireWire and eSATA port and a Gigabit RJ45 network jack.
The update will possibly be shipped in the next Linux kernel release.
A few months back HDMI audio support came to the ATI Radeon kernel mode-setting driver and while this support is in place with the mainline kernel, it's only supported up through the ATI R600 hardware with the KMS driver. However, HDMI audio support for the R700 (Radeon HD 4000 series) is soon coming. Rafał Miłecki who has done much of the HDMI audio work for the open-source ATI driver stack has shared that he has achieved R700 audio success and the support may land in as soon as the Linux 2.6.34 kernel.
The latest patches clean up the HDMI audio support and makes it compatible with a greater range of ATI hardware, and new bits for DCE 3.2 GPUs. The new patch(es) should be published in the coming days and will hopefully be merged in time for the 2.6.34 kernel release. The announcement was made on Rafał's blog. AMD has had patches for greater HDMI audio support (including audio interrupts), but these patches have been held up in legal review for months and so Rafał came up with this new alternative.
Newegg.com, one of America's leading online retailers of computer hardware and related sales, on its official Twitter page admitted to a botchup with one of its long-term partners that resulted in several customers who ordered Intel Core i7 processors receiving what it calls "Demo Boxes."
Newegg.com, one of America's leading online retailers of computer hardware and related sales, on its official Twitter page admitted to a botchup with one of its long-term partners that resulted in several customers who ordered Intel Core i7 processors receiving what it calls "Demo Boxes". These boxes probably are used to demonstrate what the boxes look like or weigh, or probably it's a case of "adulteration", forgery, and counterfeiting. Each of these so-called demo boxes contain a completely non-functional dummy of the processor, heatsink fan, and the instruction leaflet. When opened, the three don't really look like mockups, but when packed into the box, can easily pass off as the product.
Newegg swung into action after several customers got back to it reporting "fake Core i7 920" chips. Many of them were taken aback when their $290 investment yielded a big chunk of plastic, and a slab of metal on which is strapped on the processor's IHS. The chunk of plastic is molded roughly to the shape of an HSF, and a sticker of the HSF's top was pasted, so it could be visible from the little window on the box that lets you see the HSF. Newegg said that it has acknowledged that a number of "demo boxes" were shipped, and that its staff is working directly with each of the affected customers to resolve the issue at the earliest. It kind of begs the question: where did so many so-called demo boxes come from, and why are there so many of them?
Statement from Newegg:
"Newegg is aware of a shipping error that occurred with certain recent orders of the Intel Core i7-920 CPU. After investigating the issue internally it appears one of our long term partners mistakenly shipped a small number of demo boxes instead of functional units. Our customer service team has already begun proactively reaching out to the affected customers. In line with our commitment to ensure total customer satisfaction we are doing everything in our power to resolve the issue as soon as possible and with the least amount of inconvenience to our customers."
From the outside of the box, you can see where a cursory glance would pass these off as real. Once you open the box, which is supposed to be sealed till it gets to the customer, you can easily see that things are not right. The "book" of blank pages stapled together is supposed to be the instruction manual. Checking out the label on the box you see that it is very believable.
Another source is telling us that 300 counterfeit processors were purchased by Newegg from D&H Distributing and that the fakes were delivered last week in a shipment totaling 2000 pieces. It was also communicated to me that Newegg has now "discovered" all 300 counterfeit processors.
You may have seen other hardware sites posting about their Eyefinity6 configurations, courtesy of AMD. Whilst Rage3D wasn't lucky enough to get AMD engineers to visit and set it up for me, we were privileged to be included in the upcoming Eyefinity6 launch!
Watch for Rage3D's look at the AMD ATI HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition card, coming soon!
The rumor we are hearing today is that BFG is going RED! Totally unconfirmed, but given the history I have heard over the last few years...yes years...this does not sound implausible. I am waiting for a response from BFG's CEO, but none is forthcoming.
(Not 100% sure yet. I haven't checked up on their status with AMD since December when they announced they were looking into becoming an ATI partner... however ATI/AMD is already at their max spot for AIBs. They would need to spin off a new brand like "AMD HD5770" or something like that.)
Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.
Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007's Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards.
Officially released details on Valve's sequel to Portal were scant. Fortunately, retailer GameStop comes through with some major details, including the addition of a two-player cooperative campaign mode and all-new characters.
GameStop's description of the PC and Xbox 360 game indicates that Portal 2 is due later this year—the online retailer lists an October 26 release date—bringing with a cast of "dynamic new characters" and "never-before-seen areas of the Aperture Science Labs." And yes, as hinted at earlier, players will be reunited with GLaDOS.
The only details on Portal 2's multiplayer mode from GameStop are that it will feature its own unique story-driven campaign. The "new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals," requiring players "to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively."
Here's the full product description.
"Coming this holiday. Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007's Game of the Year and draws from the award-winning formula of innovative game play, story, and music that earned the original over 70 industry accolades. Features single and multiplayer co-op modes. The single-player portion of Portal 2 introduces a cast of dynamic new characters, a host of fresh puzzle elements, and a much larger set of devious test chambers. Players will explore never-before-seen areas of the Aperture Science Labs and be reunited with GLaDOS, the occasionally murderous computer companion who guided them through the original game. The game's two-player cooperative mode features its own entirely separate campaign with a unique story, test chambers, and two new player characters. This new mode forces players to reconsider everything they thought they knew about portals. Success will require them to not just act cooperatively, but to think cooperatively."
NVIDIA responded by removing download links of 196.75 from driver download page and asking everyone to revert to 196.21.
Several StarCraft II beta testers have reported their PC or video cards have died after installing the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers. The large amount of reports have prompted Blizzard Entertainment to issue an official statement on the tech support forums after identifying the source of the problem.
Some players were blaming the StarCraft II Beta client's latest patch, but a Blizzard Tech Support representative quickly explained the issue is caused by the latest NVIDIA 196.75 drivers.
Blizzard recommended to uninstall the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers, and to downgrade to the previous driver version: 196.21. Starcraft II Beta is not the only application affected, thus this is a worldwide alert to every gamer out there. Blizzard concluded the fans control in this NVIDIA driver is not working properly.
This is a 1.3GB download, so be sure you have a fast Internet connection or some sort of backup activity planned. Packed in all those bytes is a 35-square-mile open world through which players can grapple, parachute, and shoot to their heart's content, at least until the 30-minute time limit runs out. The demo's desert setting includes mountains, villages, military bases, and plenty of vehicles, and Avalanche Studios has prepared a nice cross-section of activities:
"Hunt down and assassinate one of the game's 50 military colonels; devastate military bases, bio fuel chambers, government infrastructure and more; hijack tuk tuks, military 4x4s, armoured vehicles, mopeds, helicopter gunships, light aircraft, mini vans and numerous other military and civilian vehicles; freefall from desert outcrops or from burning planes at 20,000 feet; and unlock one full, multi-stage mission, traversing the mountains to a heavily fortified government radar station and ending in an unforgettable desert car chase."
You can also strap bad guys to propane tanks that fly rapidly through the air when shot....
