If you're interested in a chance to participate in the Final Fantasy 14 beta, now is your chance! Over the next two days a name will randomly be drawn from names on the IRC Channel. All you need to do is be a member of OCC from August 1st, be in IRC, and check your forum PMs to win! What will happen is a name will be randomly drawn from the channel, matched up with a member name on the forums and a PM will be sent to the winner. The winner will have 1 hour to respond to that PM in order to claim his/her prize. If the winner does not respond with in the hour, another name will be chosen at random. Don't miss out on your opportunity to enjoy the company of your fellow forum members along with a chance to win a key to participate in the FF14 beta. Check out the IRC forum thread for more information on connecting to IRC.
Happy Labor Day and look forward to seeing you in IRC!
In case you missed out on our recent contest featuring a MSI Big Bang XPower motherboard as the main prize, Overclockers Club has announced yet another contest courtesy of our friends at Mushkin. Now, the goal is pretty easy - score as high as you can using the Futuremark 3DMark06 benchmark. You can only post once in the scoring thread, but you can edit that post as many times as necessary before the end of the contest.
Here is what you have to do in order for your score to count:
Run 3DMark06 at default settings:
1. You must submit your score to 3DMark for it to be valid and post your validation link.
2. You must show a CPU-Z and GPU-Z screen shot along with your 3DMark score.
3. You must show the date and your forum user name in your screenshot as well.
4. List your system specs in your post below or above your screen shot or include it in your screenshot.
Here is how the prize break down is going to work:
Grand Prize - 2 X Mushkin 40GB SSD's. (These are under NDA but all I can tell you is they are very fast.)
2nd Prize - A set of Mushkin 6GB Ridgebacks or a 4GB set of Ridgebacks for AMD or P55 depending on the winning platform.
3rd Prize - Mushkin 800 Watt PSU - (Under NDA)
4th Prize - Mushkin 32GB USB flash drive
5th Prize - Mushkin 8GB USB flash drive
Winning scores will be broken down into ranks as follows, with the winners in each rank eligible for the corresponding prize:
Rank 1-3 - Grand Prize
Rank 4-6 - Second Prize
Rank 7-10 - Third Prize
Rank 11-15 - Fourth Prize
Rank 16-20 - Fifth Prize
That means the top 20 scores posted will be eligible for a prize. The contest is currently under way and ends on September 12th at 9pm Pacific time. Any questions or comments can be posted in the contest thread here. For scores only, post in the scoring thread. Good luck everyone!
Well this is surely a bit of surprising news. The SD Card Association has announced that it is working on a revision to current memory cards that will triple the speeds by 2012. This revision is being made possible because the SD Card Association realized it could add another row of pins lower than the already placed ones. The Association is still debating on how many contacts the second row will have but either way this will allow the speeds of SD cards to triple. Current SD cards have a maxium speed of 104MB/second but the actual transfer rates are slower. The new revision, simply called SD 4.0 for now, will have a maximum speed of 300MB/s which will be blistering fast for any use. This will surely be a welcome boost to users of smartphones and tablets who rely on SD cards for storage.
In addition to not knowing how many contacts to add, the Association does not know exactly what to call the new cards. The current crop of high speed cards are called UHS-I for ultra high-speed bus so it is possible these new cards will be named UHS-II. However that name is still up in the air so it could change over time. This new revision should be finished in the first part of 2011 with products, including microSD cards, hitting retail in 2012.
Another weekend is upon us and here in the States we get to enjoy an extra day as Monday is a national holiday. That should give you plenty of time to check out our weekend roundup. Let's start off with something completely out of the ordinary - the Soundrace V10 Engine Sound Effects. I'll leave it up to you to figure what it's all about. We have another review on the Cooler Master Storm Inferno gaming mouse. In video, we have an article on a USB video capture device, another article on Nvidia's new mobile GPU lineup and a look at Sapphire's Radeon HD 5770 Flex graphics card.
Typically, as parts get smaller the amount of transistors on each part has doubled. It is a basic principle called Moore's Law and one that has been eating away at engineers lately who keep shrinking the chips in all of our hardware. However, a graduate student at Rice University has demonstrated that strands of silicon oxide, typically an insulator, can form memory pathways a mere five nanometers wide. Researchers at Rice were conducting experiments with graphite and electricity to make 10nm wide memory paths. They would apply some electricity which would break and reform the pathways with silicon oxide as the insulator.
However, graduate student Jun Yao showed that the silicon oxide was the main part as the electrodes would strip off the oxygen and leave behind tiny silicon crystals. These crystals then functioned as a switch that was either on or off depending on the amount of current going through. Now, a five nanometer width is really tiny as it is five billionths of a meter wide. This is a huge breakthrough considering flash memory cannot really get below much more than 20nm and using other conventional means, like the graphite, will only get down to 10nm. What this means for the silicon oxide is that storage solutions using a single chip in five years could be as large in volume as hard drives today. Quite the feat, no?
Don't say we didn't tell you so, but it seems Duke Nukem Forever is finally going to see the light of the day. At PAX today, Gearbox Software showed off a playable demo of Duke Nukem Forever to the press and general public. This marks the first time, at least to my knowledge, that a playable version of the game has ever been shown. That is not all but DNF is slated for a release either late this year or early next on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Well, I guess we can all take this title off the list of vaporware, especially once it actually releases.
Gearbox Software, makers of Brother's in Arms and Borderlands, took over development from 3D Realms late in 2009. I am hopeful Duke Nukem Forever lives up to its legacy though I am sure Gearbox can treat it well. Discuss it here or in the forums.
NVIDIA has released seven new GPUs for use in the mobile market and each will support the company's Optimus technology. The processors are split into enthusiast and performance categories with the former getting two processors and the latter five. Our roundup has a preview of the processors and some of the first notebooks to feature the new technology. XFX is out with its HD 5970 Black Edition, a lmited edition video card with 4GB of memory and GPU clocks of 850 MHz. There are other reviews to keep you busy reading today including a look at the Streak Android tablet from Dell, SilverStone's Strider 1500W power supply and more.
Hot on the heels of Sapphire announcing plans to launch active DisplayPort to single link DVI adapters, AMD itself has announced plans that it will launch adapters of its own. These adapters will be very inexpensive compared to the active DisplayPort to dual link DVI adapters that go for $100 as AMD states that the single link adapters will cost no more than $30. How does that sound to get some Eyefinity action going on? Just like Sapphire's adapter, the ones by AMD are only single link to help reduce the price but that means you are limited to a resolution of 1920x1200 on the connected monitor. With an adapter costing $30, anyone will be able to run Eyefinity provided they have the room and expenses for three or more monitors. AMD is hoping more people will be able to experience Eyefinity, not just for gaming but also for enhanced productivity during office tasks.
AMD is going to have various partners, like Sapphire, sell the adapters though no launch date was announced. For a cost of $30, I think there will be many people interested in these.
Verizon Wireless has just announced new prepaid smartphone data plans which will cover pretty much every smartphone in its stable. The 3G Prepaid data package will encompass various 3G smartphone and multimedia phones for $30 a month data access. There is also a $10 a month package that gives you 25MB of data per month with a fee of 20 cents per MB overage. The $30 a month plan gives you unlimited data so it will be up to you on which plan is the best choice. The supported smartphones are the BlackBerry Curve 8350, Curve 8550, Storm 9530, Storm 2 9550, Tour 9630, Bold 9650, Palm Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, Motorola Devour, Droid, Droid X, Droid 2, HTC Droid Eris, Droid Incredible, and LG Ally. The multimedia phones are the LG enV Touch, enV 3, Chocolate Touch, VX8360, Samsung Alias 2, Renown, Nokia Twist, and Casio Exilim.
The prepaid data plans are available in store today and online on September 28th.
Today's roundup hit the motherboard jackpot with four articles covering five different motherboards from Gigabyte, ECS and Asrock. With two P55 chipset boards on the Intel side and 870, 880G and 890GX chipsets on the AMD side, there's sure to be something of interest to everyone. We have a review of the Cooler Master Storm Inferno gaming mouse along with a look at the Mad Catz Eclipse wireless keyboard. Also in our roundup are a pair of articles covering more news from AMD about its CPU road map and the architecture of upcoming processors.
Corsair is getting set to expand its offerings by announcing the HS1 USB gaming headset today. This marks Corsair's inaugral audio offering and will fall under its Gaming Audio Series. The HS1 features 50mm drivers and an acoustically tuned sound stage which Corsair claims is great for gaming, music, and movies. The headset is a circumaural and closed-back design so it should help to block out any outside noise during an intense gaming session or big LAN parties. The ear pads use memory foam so they should cushion your head without binding or pinching your ears. The microphone is of the uni-directional, noise-canceling variety and it is on an adjustable boom. Since the headset connects via USB, Corsair employs Dolby Headphone technology to provide immersive multi-channel sound up to 7.1. The whole headset is covered by a two year warranty.
The Corsair HS1 headset should be available now though no price was given.
Microsoft first teased a new device a little while back and from then on it had been shown in unofficial leaks. Now Microsoft has finally made it official and has named it the Arc Touch Mouse. This is a mouse just like any other but it has a few unique features to distinguish itself from the competition. First up is the shape of the mouse. It is perfectly flat when you first open up its box and in order to use it, you bend the rear portion to form an arc. The rear features a soft rubber grip so it should be quite comfortable to hold. The front portion of the mouse features two buttons for left and right click along with a capacitive strip in the middle in the place of a scroll wheel. The capacitive strip has sensor buttons that can be used for scrolling, like the typical wheel, as well as customizable shortcuts giving you the option to launch whatever you want. The capacitive strip has some haptic feedback which will let you know when you are using it so it should be similar to a scroll wheel's feel.
The Arc Touch Mouse will launch this December for $69.95. It seems a bit weird to me to announce the mouse so far in advance so maybe there is something else planned to launch around that time. Whatever the case may be, stay tuned for more information.
Today's roundup turned up a pair of reviews on the Colossus full-tower PC case from a new company called BitFenix. For extra storage and backup there's the Ineo dual-bay RAID enclosure which features a USB 3.0 interface. We also gathered up a trio of heatsinks covering offerings from well-known manufacturers including the Corsair A50 CPU cooler.
OCC über reviewer ccokeman took a quick look at the performance of the new Mafia II game and showed us some preliminary performance results. One of the comments posted in the forums asked about the visual differences with PhysX turned off versus playing with the effects enabled. Here's your chance to see the differences in scenes from the game with PhysX turned on, then the same scenes without PhysX as posted by NVIDIA. Enjoy!
This coming Friday, Antec palns to introduce soundscience, a newly formed wholly-owned subsidiary, along with its first product, the soundscience rockus 3D 2.1 speaker system. Antec will be making the announcement at this year’s IFA trade show held in Berlin, from September 3 – 8, 2010. The soundscience rockus is designed to deliver an immersive 3D listening experience similar to 3D video. The speakers use soundscience’s proprietary 3Dsst 3D technology to actively analyze incoming stereo audio signals and intelligently place them into a 3D sound field. The rockus speakers also feature a dedicated music mode to allow you to listen to music with clarity and fidelity.
The soundscience rockus 3D|2.1 speaker system features:
Anodized aluminum satellites that reduce vibration and minimize distortion, resulting in clear mid and sparkling high-range sound
Active subwoofer with passive radiator technology, delivering an expansive range of bass comparable to larger footprint subwoofers
3D-tuned drivers to deliver audio optimized for soundscience’s 3Dsst technology
Dual-mode operation: 3D mode for enveloping games and movies, and music mode for faithful stereo music playback
Optical input for playback of digital audio from game consoles (Xbox 360, PS3) and other, similarly equipped devices
Remote control pod for volume adjustment, 3D/music mode selection, muting and digital/analog input selection
The soundscience rockus 3D|2.1 speaker system will be available this fall for a suggested retail price of $249.95.
Kingston Technology Company, Inc., an independent manufacturer of memory products, ended in in the top ten in Inc. magazine's 2010 list of fastest growing private companies. The company ranked number 6 in total revenue with 2009 revenues of $4.1 billion (US).
“Kingston is grateful to have made the Inc. 5000 list again. David (Sun) and I are happy that Inc. continues to publish this list as it demonstrates their support of private companies and the strong commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit which is necessary in today’s difficult and competitive environment,” said John Tu, co-founder, Kingston.
Kingston also managed a top 20 showing for gross-revenue growth for the three-year period 2006-2009 coming in at number 20 with an annualized growth rate of 12 percent. Kingston is no stranger to Inc. magazine's lists, having been recognized by the magazine in 1992 as the fastest growing private company. In 2007 the magazine recognized founders David Sun and John Tu with the inaugural Distinguished Alumni Goldhirsh Award, for leadership, guidance and the embodiment of the American entrepreneurial spirit.
Scythe has unveiled a new CPU cooler it is dubbing the Rasetsu. The Rasetsu measures in at 131 x 140 x 130mm which makes it a horizontal cooler instead of the typical tower style. The new cooler features two blocks of aluminum Trident Multi Layer Fins, or TMLF, six copper heatpipes, and a 120mm Slip Stream PWM fan to cool it all down. The fan can go as high as 4700RPM which will generate 37dBa but no word on the CFM produced. The Rasetsu is compatible with Intel sockets 775 / 1156 / 1366 and AMD sockets 754 / 939 / 940 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3, so you should be just fine in using this on virtually every processor you would want.
The Scythe Rasetsu cooler should be available now for 55 USD or 33.50 Euro.
Here is something sure to appease users of ATI Eyefinity who may not want to get a monitor with a DisplayPort. Typically if you want to hook up three monitors to your ATI HD 5000 series video card, you would need one that has a DisplayPort or get an active DisplayPort adapter to use on a DVI connection. If you go for the active adapter, it isn't exactly the cheapest solution on the market. However, there will soon be another alternative courtesy of Sapphire which is going to introduce a DisplayPort to single link DVI adapter. Since the typical active adapters are for dual link DVI the price is quite high but Sapphire's solution is only single link which should drop the price to make it more affordable for everyone. Now, since it is single link you are limited to 1920x1200 on the connected monitor but that should be more than enough for almost everyone.
Sapphire did not release any information on when the single link adapter will be available or for how much but expect that information before long.
Mafia II from 2K Czech (see the performance review from OCC here) was recently released and we have another review on how it performs on the PC. In mobile computing our roundup includes reviews on a notebook from Toshiba and a new Eee netbook from ASUS. In cooling there's the Thermolab BADA2010 as well as Corsair's Hydro Series H70 (you can find the OCC review here) water cooling kit. There are a lot more reviews for you to check out today like the In Win Dragon Slayer mini-tower case (also reviewed by OCC here), so be sure to check out all the links posted below.
Intel is in a buying mood lately as it has just acquired the mobile unit of Infineon. Infineon is the company behind the baseband chips in various mobile phones and Intel has purchased the Wireless Solutions Business, or WLS, of Infineon for $1.4 billion. The WLS part of Infineon accounted for nearly one third of Infineon's total revenue of $3.83 billion last year so the division is a heavy hitter. Intel assures everyone that WLS will continue to function as a standalone business and still support ARM-based devices. Intel bought the division to help out in future smartphones, tablets, and laptops as well as advancing the 4G LTE market. Intel will still support Wi-Fi and WiMAX just it wants to get 4G LTE in as many markets as possible and presumably as quickly as possible. The WLS acquisition is expected to finalize in the first quarter of next year.
Well, I can't say this is exactly surprising but perhaps a bit unexpected and disappointing. Microsoft announced today that it will increase the price of an Xbox Live Gold subscription in the US, the UK, Canada, and Mexico on November 1st. The cost of a one month subscription in the US will go from $7.99 to $9.99, a three month will go from $19.99 to $24.99, and a one year sub is going from $49.99 to $59.99. A one month sub for the UK will go from £4.99 to £5.99, Canada will see a bump in the one month from $8.99 to $9.99, and Mexico is seeing the one year subscription jumping from 499 Pesos to 599 Pesos. Microsoft will have a discount on the one year subscription for $40 starting on November 1st so if your sub expires around then, you will get a small discount on the renewal. No word was given as to why Xbox Live Gold is seeing an increase so close to the launch of Kinect and Windows Phone 7, but there could be any number of reasons, including inflation. In any case, is anyone happy about this? Feel free to sound off here or in the forums.
Comments (7)
| Posted at 08:24AM PST by CheeseMan42
AMD purchased ATI in 2006 in an attempt to better compete with Intel, and saw losses for several quarters as it dealt with the acquisition. ATI has now hit its stride and continues to pump out powerful cards to compete with Nvidia. AMD has announced that it will do away with the ATI brand name, but will keep producing the same quality video cards of the Radeon and FirePro lines. Citing internal research, AMD believes that it has better brand recognition than ATI. The three reasons given by AMD are:
1) AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger.
2) The AMD brand is viewed as stronger than ATI when compared to graphics competitors (presumably NVIDIA).
3) The Radeon and Fire Pro brands themselves (without ATI being attached to them) are very high as is.
This news comes at a time when AMD is hard at work on its upcoming processors and new architecture, and the CPU/GPU combo project, Fusion. Fusion stands to be the first notable collaboration between the two companies since the acquisition. Fusion products are expected to ship later this year under the Ontario brand. The end of ATI is expected to occur sometime around the release of Ontario, and all products released until then will still carry the ATI logo. Discuss the move in the comments or in the forums.
How does this sound for an iPad competitor? Nvidia Tegra 250 1GHz Arm A9 CPU, Android 2.2, 10in 1024x600 resolution screen, 1.3MP webcam, 16GB built in storage with 32GB removable, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, 3G, HDMI, USB 2.0 and USB 2.2 mini audio?
Not too shabby eh? That's the latest spec rumor for Toshiba's upcoming 10in, Android tablet, now called the Folio 100. Slated to be revealed at IFA in Berlin on September 3rd, Toshiba will be poised to enter the Apple-dominated tablet market (along with Samsung)
It will be interesting to see how the two electronic giants' tablets will be received by the technology community (and more importantly the general user).
There's a brand new week ahead of you and that means lots of reviews and news from around the web. We'll start off by looking at some news out of AMD which says it is retiring the 'ATI' moniker and sticking with just the Radeon and FirePro names when it comes to graphics cards. AMD has also introduced an Eyefinity active DisplayPort adapter for those wanting to drive multiple monitors from a single 5000-series card. In the cooling arena we have a face-off between the Nexus FLC-3000 R2 air cooler and the CoolIT ECO A.L.C. liquid cooling kit. We also have a review on the Silenx Effizio Extreme CPU cooler.
It's the weekend and we had a quick look around the web for some reviews for you to check out. In the video department we turned up a look at the latest Catalyst 10.8 drivers from ATI. We also have a review on the Sapphire Radeon HD 5550 viceo card (also reviewed by OCC here). Also included in the roundup today are the GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD5 motherboard and Enermax's MODU87+ 900W power supply.
Comments (0)
| Posted at 12:46PM PST by CheeseMan42
Mozilla, the company behind the very popular Firefox web browser, is setting its sights on the Android OS. Available today is Fennec 2.0, a web browser built on the Gecko engine, used by Firefox. This version of the browser seeks to increase performance by adding synchronization and separating user interface and rendering processes. The latter improvement is possible due to the inclusion of Electrolysis, allowing Fennec to handle user input better while CPU intensive tasks are running. In the future, Electrolysis will also be able to handle add-ons. The Firefox Sync feature allows users to share passwords and bookmarks across different computers and smartphones. A full list of compatible phones is available, and includes the recently released Droid X and Droid 2.
Well, it took longer than I thought but now there is some competition in the 32GB microSDHC card market. Team Group announced today that it is going to launch a 32GB microSDHC card of its own which is aimed squarely at smartphone users who need a ton of storage. The microSDHC card is a Class 2 device so you won't experience really fast transfer rates compared to Class 4 or 6 devices, but you will have a large amount of storage space to fit all your music, photos, files, and even apps.Team Group decided to equip this card with an ECC function to ensure your data remains safe and error-free. There is a full size adapter included as well so if your phone doesn't support microSDHC cards this size, you can always snap it into the adapter and use it with your digital camera. Team Group provides a lifetime warranty and replacement service on the memory card so if anything goes wrong, you are covered.
No word on pricing or availability was announced at this time though I expect it to be similar to the already released models.
Now, we've all seen solid state drives as a standalone drive, a PCI-e add-on card, and even integrated on to the motherboard. Next up on the list is apparently a stick of RAM that will house an SSD. Viking Modular announced today that it has outfitted a RAM stick, or at least the form factor, with an SSD. The SSD fits onto a 240-pin form factor so it will work just fine in a spare DDR3 memory slot on your motherboard and requires a SATA connector to transfer the data. Viking Modular promises a transfer rate of 260MB/second for both read and write which is pretty outstanding for an SSD. The SSD, dubbed a SATADIMM, will be available in 50, 100, and 200GB capacities and is powered directly from the voltage supplied to the DDR3 slots. I am sure there are plenty of people who have a spare memory slot or two who could benefit from more physical storage space and this could be the solution. However, Viking Modular is sticking just with enterprises and OEMs for now but hopefully if the product is successful we will see it readily available for the masses.
We've got a good mix of reviews for you this morning starting off with video cards from Palit (GeForce GTX 460) and Sapphire (Radeon HD 5670 Ultimate). Our roundup also includes a pair of prebuilt computers in the form of the Zotac Zbox HD-ND22 barebones mini PC plus a back-to-school build from Cyber Power PC. In cases, we managed to find another review of the Cooler Master HAF X full-tower chassis. That's not all as we have reviews on the Thermalright HR-02 CPU cooler, Mafia II game performance and much more.
The PlayStation Move is now less than a month away and an executive at Sony has shared his opinion on the device. Sony Computer Entertainment senior vice president Ray Maguire likens the PlayStation Move to the original EyeToy that launched for the PS2. He said that like the original EyeToy, the Move needs to be sampled and demoed in order to get a true grasp of what it can do. Once someone gets their hand on the device and sees all that it can do and bring to gaming, he expects people will start to understand it more. However, Maguire did say that he does not expect huge day one sales of the Move but rather sales will grow over time as early adopters tell their friends and more people get to try it out. I am still a little up in the air about what all the Move can do but perhaps a demo will change that perspective. In other PlayStation news, Sony's Kaz Hirai talked down speculation that the PlayStation 4 will be a download-only device stating problems with certain areas PlayStations are sold not having fast access to the Internet to get the titles. He expects the PS4, whenever it launches, to use discs since that is usually the easiest way for thousands of people to get a game.
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