Latest News - Page 3373

I thought I was just unlucky the first time but when something happens two times in the exact same fashion, you just got to check into it a little more.

System is Vista Ultimate 32-bit with RAID 10 on Intel ICH8R chipset. A couple of weeks ago I tried running a .mov file using Apple QuickTime software (latest version) and that is when things started to go downhill. The file seemed very slow to load and eventually QuickTime crashed after a lot of persuasion. Once QuickTime was closed, I was notified of a RAID error through the Intel Matrix Storage Console but the same thing will happen if you reboot during the lockup as well.

Thinking the worst, I promptly went about getting the affected drive replaced, naturally thinking it was dead. I got the drive replaced without any issues from the friendly chaps at Seagate, plugged it in and rebuilt the array without any issues and with everything back to normal. Just recently the exact same event occurred and I knew the chances of that exact same set of occurrences happening was extremely rare.

Recently we received some engineering sample DDR-3 1066 memory from our friends at Corsair.

We will be comparing it against DDR-2 at a range of different settings on two similar Intel P35 boards very soon, which should prove for some interesting test results.

For now, here are some photos for you to enjoy...

If you still have got enough RD 2900 XT news for today, then bad luck - here is some more for you addicts.

Here are some shots of retail cards from Sapphire, MSI and GeCube. The latter two cards are just using the reference cooler but Sapphire does things a little differently.

Reading around today, some over excited folk got their wires crossed and claimed AMD would be launching their upcoming R600XT on May 2nd.

That's simply not correct - Nvidia is launching the 8800 Ultra on May 2nd at a retail price of at least $999 USD but supply will be very low due to yield and pricing related issues. The word on the streets of Taipei tells us that unless Nvidia reduce their 8800 Ultra pricing, you'll have a hard time actually buying this part.

We got a little hot under the collar when the rumors starting circulating around that the Radeon HD X2900XT was being released on May 2nd but after some simple phone calls to our friends here in Taiwan, they confirmed the launch is May 14 and product should be for sale on the day or soon after with fairly decent quantity.

Our good friend Coolaler from Taiwan has teamed up with G.Skill at CeBIT to run some extreme overclocking demonstrations of the Core 2 Extreme processor.

Operating at around -50c using LN2 cooling they managed to impress hitting a maximum CPU clock speed of 4.5GHz (500MHz FSB x 9) and they had DDR-2 memory humming along nicely at 1300MHz DDR or PC2-10400.

A little while ago our friends at Sapphire announced they were going to produce dual Radeon X1950PRO cards and it seems like they are finally ready. Not only are they ready but they have a Quad Crossfire system up and running at CeBIT.

Woo, holy smokes! Cheers to the boys at PC Hardware and Games in Germany.

"Twice the performance of R580" - from AMD...

A little birdie recently sent some in-depth roadmap information into our inbox regarding AMD's upcoming R600 series of graphics cards including Radeon X2900XTX, X2900XT and X2900XL.

The folks over at PC Games and Hardware (German) have been busy hunting down R600 and finally managed to find a working demo behind closed doors.

While they don't have any pictures of the card itself, they have pictures of the R600 technology demo for your viewing pleasure.

Aaron from Shuttle was kind enough to send us along some pictures of their upcoming Car PC which they are showcasing on their virtual CeBIT website. It measures just 279(D) x 230(W) x 70(H)mm.

The interesting thing is that the CAR PC will be powered by your vehicles battery (11.2 - 32 volts). When you turn off your vehicle, the system will shut down properly without just powering off and hence save you from losing any data.

I was driving in a taxi here in Taipei yesterday on my way to visit some computer companies. When we stopped at a red light I happened to look to the right of me and saw something wrong on one of the building signs.

Can you spot the error?

News just hit our bench about upcoming information regarding nVidia's upcoming G80 based graphics cards. We want to first clearly state that we're not sure if the information is accurate and at best it would just be estimated prices.

Our friends over at OCW seem to be talking to the right people here in Taiwan and have a bunch of information regarding the most expensive GeForce 8950GX2 that will be sold for $599 USD. It is rumored to be a dual GPU solution much like the 7950GX2 and will come with a total of 512MB GDDR-4 memory per GPU.

The second on the list is the GeForce 8900GTX which will replace the current high-end 8800GTX. It will ship at a retail price of $549 USD and sees total pipelines increased to 128 which is an increase of 32 or 25% as suggested by Fudo over at the INQ recently. It will also see the inclusion of GDDR4 memory which allows nVidia to increase the clock speed to a huge 2200MHz DDR. It also seems like the manufacturing process is being reduced to 80nm from 90nm in the latest batch of G80 chips.

During the Taipei Game Show here in Taiwan today we spotted a black Xbox 360 console. It's been talked about for the past week or so about only being available in Australia but we're unsure how much truth there would be in that if its being shown at a game show in Taipei.

Take a look, if this is the rumored black Xbox 360 that's been talked about you may be somewhat disappointed as there was no HDMI port to be found or any extended storage capacity from the HDD.

Gary over at AnandTech has posted a review of Western Digital's updated and very famous 74GB Raptor hard drive.

The new revision is WD740ADFD and packs some modified technology inside to improve performance.

Transcend recently made their way into our news inbox with a press release about their new JetFlash T2K flash drives that weigh only two grams, almost weightless.

You've got the option of 1GB, 2GB or 4GB versions.

ThermalTake are claiming they have the world's first VGA water block for nVidia's GeForce 8800 range of graphics cards. If you looking at adding water cooling to your new GTS or GTX card, check out the TMG ND4 from ThermalTake.

We just got news from the folks over at OCZ Technology that they've just released a new memory kit which is designed for gamers using DX10 in Windows Vista. The kit comes with a couple 2048MB modules that are rated at 800MHz DDR with 5-5-5-18 timings.

You'll see more and more companies coming out with 4GB memory packs for Vista soon but it seems like OCZ were the first.

If you want a bit of benchmarking action under Windows Vista, here is some news for you from the UK.

The folks at Sharkoon in Germany have just come out with a new product which allows you to connect up most recent IDE or SATA hard drives directly to your system via USB and nifty adapter.

I've personally had use such devices many times before when needing to move data from a desktop hard drive to my notebook.

Are you willing to take the plunge and buy Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, but don't know which edition to buy? There is a quick guide over at ViperLair which provides plenty of good information on the subject.

Looking at building a new system that works well with the new Windows Vista operating system? Scott from The Tech Report comes to the rescue with a new article that discusses the exact issue.