Latest News - Page 3228

If you're tired of the hassles that come with manually and regularly replacing/recharging batteries for your multiple Wii-remotes, Konnet has come up with a sleek looking solution that makes it 10x easier.

using advanced wireless induction charging technology, the PowerV Quad charging station supports charging of up to four Wii-motes simultaneously. Together with the supplied rechargeable battery packs it's as simple as resting a Wii-mote on the PowerV (you can leave your Motion Plus / silicon casing on it) and it will automatically detect the battery life and commence charging the battery if needed; no cable clutter here. If the charging status light is red, it's charging; if blue, it's full.

One very practical and convenient solution that would be impossible to regret the purchase of once you have one in house. For $50 U.S. you get the PowerV Quad, AC/DC adapter cord and four supporting rechargeable Ni-MH 800mAh battery packs.

Ouch! - In being the first to 'get hold of' and show off the next gen iPhone on the web in detail has come at one helluva hefty price for Gizmodo, not only counting the $5k transaction they made to get it into their posession from an unknown entity.

The site's editor Jason Chen has indicated he's in a world of hurt after performing this little stunt last week.

Last week it was reported that law enforcement in the Silicon Valley area had begun investigating how this iPhone was mysteriously lost and had gotten into wrong hands.

Following AMD's recent decision to provide more regular, consistent Catalyst Mobility driver support for mobile GPUs, NVIDIA has now focused attention on giving better support for its mobile GPUs.

In the past notebook users have had to depend on notebook OEMs to make available mobile graphics driver updates for NVIDIA GPUs residing in select models, of which the timeframes between each of these updates was most always significantly longer than the rate at which GPU makers can make driver updates available to the public.

This problem will soon be solved, it seems. NVIDIA is looking to unify its desktop and mobile drivers and will put things into action as of release 256, due to come out in a few months. This will mean updated GPU drivers will hit the web from NVIDIA themselves for both desktop and notebook users at the same time; albeit they will be in separate packages.

There have been stories going around the web this week stating that a limited edition high-end ATI video card had been stolen from the factory carrying the XFX band. XFX had warned people to not buy the card, which was supposedly listed on eBay.

XFX sent out another email this week that again stated the supposed story that one of the limited edition 5970 Black Edition cards had been stolen, specifically serial number 68. The email stated that people involved with the theft would be prosecuted and it looked real overall.

If you glance under the picture of the car in the email, you will notice that it states clearly the email is an XFX Gamertainment Campaign. In other words, a viral marketing stunt that clearly worked very well. Did you fall for it?

While Microsoft's Windows 7 Touch Pack was first made available to OEMs selling Windows 7 PCs last year, Microsoft have now made it available for all at their Download Center.

Weighing in at 239.2MB, this executable file contains six applications that work in with the touchscreen features of MS' latest operating system :-

Microsoft Blackboard, an intricate game of physics in which you solve a puzzle by creating a fanciful machine on a blackboard.

Earlier today we were invited down to the GIGABYTE Technology headquarters here in Taipei where we were given an exclusive demonstration of its new "On/Off Charge" technology for the Apple iPod and other Apple products such as the iPhone and iPod.

GIGABYTE quietly launched a software driver a little while ago that allowed its motherboards to charge Apple products via USB even when your computer was turned off. Now the Taiwanese motherboard heavyweight steps things up some more with its new On/Off Charge tech.

With this new hardware based solution, the engineers at GIGABYTE have programmed their motherboards to be able to detect what sort of Apple product needs charging and allows for Quick Charging by sending out more power over the 3x USB Power ports on some new GIGABYTE motherboards. This is done by detecting the Apple product device ID on a power supply database and sending out more power than a traditional motherboard (can) - that is, over 0.5 amps. We saw an iPad getting over 0.9 amps, in fact.

For a while now we've been seeing some motherboard makers incorporate USB 3.0 into select boards via means of an additional NEC controller (no thanks to Intel being slow to adopt until well into next year), but the list of USB 3.0 supporting boards versus how many new boards continue to hit the market is still somewhat lacking.

However, that may well be changing soon with ASMedia (a subsidiary of ASUSTek) said to be offering up USB 3.0 chips for less than $3 to mobo makers; half that of what NEC charges for theirs, making the inclusion much more attractive on a wider range of boards not only in the high-end market segment, but mainstream and possibly entry level areas, too.

ASUS has of course been quick to make the transfer from NEC to ASMedia and all of its orders hereon will stay with them. Meanwhile, MSI, GIGABYTE and ECS are expected to transfer all their orders to ASMedia in the not too distant future.

A significant update has been made to Extreme.Outervision's popular online PSU Calculator tool that assists in helping one determine not so much just how many Watts their exact system configuration needs, but even more importantly how much amperage is required to back said Wattage up.

You can access their Lite version of the facility for free, but a Pro version is also available for a small charge which will give out more details specific to Amperage on all rails, support for systems with multiple video cards, recommended UPS rating and print-out functions.

This latest update includes stacks of new and not so new hardware not previously selectable in the dropdown lists, including the new GTX 400 series cards, latest Core i5 and i7 processor range, all the latest Phenom and Athlon processors and more.

Not so long ago an ingenius fellow going by the name of GenL over at the NGOHQ forums came up with a working Hybrid PhysX mod for NVIDIA's GeForce drivers that gives the ability to enable hardware level PhysX support for NVIDIA GPUs even if one's primary display device is not NVIDIA made.

Several fine tuned versions of this mod have since come out to make the mod easier to implement and with better support. The latest has just been released dubbed NVIDIA GeForce driver 19x.xx Hybrid PhysX mod [x86/x64] v1.03 and here's a list of improvements :-

- added support for fixing a timebomb, introduced in 196.75 and 197.xx drivers (gravity reverse + overall slowdown after a few seconds of PhysX processing)

The folks at bit-tech visited ECS' office in Taipei yesterday to see what the company has in store for budgeteers in the near future and caught a good glimpse of an AMD 880G based motherboard they've been working on.

Interestingly this board uses a full-ATX form factor, despite the lower-end market the chipset and this particular board is aimed toward. This was the first sign that ECS wasn't going as cheap as possible in the development of this board.

From there it was quickly discovered that they kept with the SB850 Southbridge as opposed to the cheaper/older SB750 some other mobo makers are still choosing to implement as another form of cost cutting, meaning this board gets native SATA 6Gbps support and a couple extra USB 2.0 ports.

There are a number of micro four thirds cameras on the market today. These cameras all have interchangeable lenses and cost about the same as some of the DSLRs on the market. The difference is that the DSLR has a mirror inside whereas the micro four thirds cams don't.

Sony is rumored to be getting ready to enter the micro four thirds market with a new Alpha camera supporting the format. The new camera is said to have a snap on lens mount system that needs no twisting for faster lens changes.

Along with the camera three lenses are rumored. The lenses include a 16mm f/2.8 lens, an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, and an 18-200mm zoom lens is rumored as well. The launch date for the camera is supposed to be May 11.

As we know, AMD's new hexa-core processors in the form of the Phenom II X6 series are set to make their debut early next week and will give users the ability to get six-core grunt out of their desktop systems without the massive cost that comes with doing it Intel style in its only hexa-core powered Core i7-980X processor.

However, Intel will make the gap a little smaller with a cheaper six-core i7 processor soon after, though still not as cheap as some would have hoped.

This processor will be dubbed the Core i7-970 and from what we're hearing a the minute it will still cost a hefty $900+ for ownership, only slightly less than their flagship model. The processor runs at 3.2GHz with 12MB of L3 cache and of course sports Hyperthreading for 12 logical cores.

Cooler Master's HAF 922 has been an attractive little winner in the mid-tower market for some time now, so the company thought they'd spice it up a little more with a limited edition run that features a shiny red exterior coating (with black mesh covers on the front bezel) and a black and red interior.

The mesh side panel of the standard version has also been changed in favour of an acrylic one and there's now a mounting spot for a 200mm fan on top, though that doesn't appear to come included with the case. The fans that come shipped in the case include a 200mm one mounted up front and a 120mm at the rear.

Apart from this the case remains much the same as the stock HAF 922 with five 5.25" bays, five 3.5" internal bays (all of which give tool-free installation) and front I/O panel with audio, USB and eSATA connectivity.

Tuniq has been working on improving its thermal paste recipe and has come out with the new TX-4 branded paste which it's aiming to release to market next month.

It goes without saying that Tuniq made sure TX-4 would offer better performance than TX-3. TX-4 has increased thermal conductivity and broader thermal range over previous pastes from the company. More specifically, its thermal conductivity is 6.53 W/mK and it has a temperature range of -45°C to 160°C.

A chart giving performance estimates hints that TX-4 will lower temps by as much as 5% over TX-2 and 11% over generic thermal pastes. Of course, they use their impressive Tower 120 Extreme to obtain these readings nestled atop a Core i5 750 processor at 4GHz under load (using Stress Prime 2004).

We've known for a while now about "Zosma" which is the codename for AMD's Phenom II X4 900T series of processors scheduled for launch soon after the company's X6 (six-core) "Thuban" processors hit the market; on the 26th of this month to be exact.

Zosma is basically a cut down version of Thuban with two cores disabled, giving the potential to unlock the other two cores and get a six-core Phenom for quad-core Phenom money (sub-$200 bracket).

But as was the case with earlier Phenom II X2 and X3 processors, unlocking was always a case of hit and miss where some could do it successfully, others not a chance.

It's no secret that Apple has been using Intel processors for several years now. However, a story over at AppleInsider hints that perhaps Apple's relationship with Intel isn't as strong as it seems.

Rumour has it the company is considering jumping ship to AMD and has even been testing AMD based chipsets in their labs. But there's no form of substantial evidence to support this as yet.

Apparently there are two main reasons for why Apple might decide to do this. The first is due to Apple having to push back the launch date for their latest MacBook Pro line-up with Core i5/i7 based processors because of chip shortages. This had Apple pretty steamed and they are concerned repeats will occur with future refreshes.

So there has been a lot of news about Slate PCs, like phones and SSDs I swear that everyone is working on one. However we have found out something very interesting. It seems that the little NVIDIA Tegra SoC that we all loved in the Zune HD will be getting a serious upgrade in the form of the Terga 2. Now, that all by itself is not interesting at all. What is very interesting is the information that NV might be gearing the new Tegra 2 towards Google's Android over Microsoft Windows Phone 7.

This was found in some information relating to Google's plans for a slate and the fact that even internal information from NV does not seem to show any movement towards an OS from the gang up in Redmond. What is disappointing though is that a Tegra 2 based Windows Phone 7 would have been a serious threat to both HTC and Apple. Of course it would be serious if Microsoft knew how to market anything.

Still we are waiting to get more information as the time nears for these devices to see daylight. As of right now our little birdie is saying June...Just about the time someone else is planning a launch too.

The concept of virtual house windows has been talked about and demonstrated in various forms for years now, but always left much to be desired and getting the right kind of effect to give a realistic and convincing impression was the most challenging and difficult hurdle.

However, what you're about to see in the video demonstration below is by far the most impressive setup known yet and goes the extra mile in making the illusion much more convincing than anything we've seen before with the use of an IR necklace (complete with baby for this particular demo) interacting with a Wiimote and the brains of the setup being a Mac Pro in this case.

As you can see in the video above, as widdle bubs physically moves around the room, the images from the pair of 1080p plasma screens shift in the opposite direction to give that true feeling of looking out of a real pane of glass to the detailed scenery beyond.

MSI has made the first step in giving GTX 400 series owners more flexibility in obtaining higher than stock clock rates with its latest Afterburner software (1.6.1 Beta 4). The installation of this software together with a GTX 480 gives the ability to start tinkering with the voltages.

Shane has confirmed that the software is not restricted to MSI-only branded cards either; you can see in his latest article here that he used a GIGABYTE branded GTX 480 to test with and it worked a treat.

GTX 470 owners don't get the ability just yet, but don't worry guys, we've been informed there's another Afterburner update coming out within the next week or two that will make it possible to do the same on your card(s).

Ah, remember yesterday evening when we told you that there was more to the delay of the Apple iPad than great sales? Well we have some new information to add to the fire here.

It seems that Israel has banned the new iPad due to it not being compatible with European wireless standards. They have even gone so far as to confiscate ones that were bought in the US and brought back.

They are more than a little miffed over this one; it seems that while Apple can do pretty much what they want in the US with wireless they are not going to get away with it overseas. The problem is that they iPad uses frequencies that are different than those typically used in the US and the broadcast power is also a little higher. Israel is concerned that an increase in iPad usage with these differences could cause a breakdown of services or at least serious interference.