*Updated* BioShock fans, get ready!

Steve Dougherty | | Aug 20, 2007 11:54 PM CDT

A quick heads up for those of you eagerly awaiting more info on the (now very) soon to be released blockbuster FPS "BioShock".

Great news! A demo will be available later tonight (around 7 PM EST apparently) but you'll be working out your broadband connection pretty hard if you want it as it is said to weigh in at 1.84GB.

This should give those of you not quite sold on purchasing the game a good opportunity to see if it's your cup of tea.

Continue reading: *Updated* BioShock fans, get ready! (full post)

Sony DSC-T200 coming soon, 3.5in display

Lars Göran Nilsson | | Aug 20, 2007 6:27 AM CDT

Sony is about to launch a new Cyber-shot T-series camera, the DSC-T200 and it looks like it's going to be a real stunner. Not only does it feature a massive touch sensitive 3.5-inch widescreen display, but it also has 5x optical zoom in a body that measures just 93.5mm x 59.3mm x 20.4mm (WxHxD) and it weighs in at 186g with the battery fitted.

It features a fairly bog standard 8 Megapixel sensor by today's standards, but this is more than enough for most users. It has 31MB of built in memory which according to Sony is good for 10 shots at full resolution. It will take a variety of Memory Stick Duo cards to expand this.

One downside is that it can only shoot 16:9 images at 1,920x1,080 (HD resolution) which seems odd, but it will shoot at 3:2 up to 3,254x2,176. It can't record video in widescreen which is a shame, so you're stuck with 640x480 at 30fps.

Continue reading: Sony DSC-T200 coming soon, 3.5in display (full post)

Creative to launch X-Fi headphones

Creative is about to launch a pair of new headphones in the Aurvana series and these ones are simply called Aurvana X-Fi. It's the first set of headphones to features built in X-Fi technology from Creative, although Creative did promise a wide range of X-Fi enabled products at the time when the sound cards launched.

Although the Aurvana X-Fi headphone only features the X-Fi Crystalizer and the CMSS-3D technology, these new headphones also features active noise-canceling, which means they're ideal for using in-flight. If you've ever spent over 12 hours on a plane, you'll know why you'd want a pair of headphones with noise-canceling technology.

The X-Fi Crystalizer restores the highs and lows that are lost in compressed audio formats and although you won't get the quality of uncompressed music, in can in most cases improve the overall quality of your compressed music files. The CMSS-3D technology is simply Creative's 3D surround sound technology, although it's one of the better yours truly has heard.

Continue reading: Creative to launch X-Fi headphones (full post)

Nine Penryn CPUs planned

Steve Dougherty | CPUs, Chipsets & SoCs | Aug 19, 2007 9:25 PM CDT

Motherboard makers have hinted that Intel plan to release NINE 45nm-based (Penryn) CPUs for the desktop market.

Digitimes report that the lineup comprises five dual-core variants (Wolfdale), with the remaining four to be quad-core offerings (Yorkfield).

Four frequencies are known for the Wolfdale processors, these being 3.16GHz, 3.0GHz, 2.83GHz and 2.66GHz, with the fifth chip's frequency not yet disclosed. All of these will each feature 6MB of L2 cache.

Continue reading: Nine Penryn CPUs planned (full post)

Samsung goes MP3 crazy

Lars Göran Nilsson | | Aug 17, 2007 6:27 AM CDT

Samsung has announced three new MP3 players today, the YP-P2, the YP-S5 and the YP-T10. All three models will be officially unveiled at IFA in Berlin next month, but it has already pre-announced many of the features of the upcoming models.

The YP-P2 (pictured below) features a huge 3-inch 428x240 pixel touch screen and it looks like Samsung has borrowed a few design cues from Apple's iPhone. It will have 8GB of built in flash memory and it plays MP3 and WMA audio files as well as WMV, H.264 and ASF video files. IT's also got built in Bluetooth, integrated speaker and mic and an FM radio. Pretty neat, especially as it only measures 100 x 52 x 9.2 mm (HxWxD).

Continue reading: Samsung goes MP3 crazy (full post)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ tested

Lars Göran Nilsson | | Aug 17, 2007 12:59 AM CDT

HKEPC has got its hands on the brand new, upcoming AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition CPU and given it a thorough trashing through a wide range of benchmarks. They've also compared it against Intel's Core 2 Duo to see how it stands up against the competition.

Although it performs quite well in comparison to the Core 2 Duo E6750, it doesn't really have a chance compared to the E6850. Nor does it stand up well in the game tests, as it's beaten hands down in the real world games, but manages to better the E6750 in 3DMark 06.

But AMD is going to have to suffer until the next quarter, since it will be launching its new Phenom CPU then, although at very low clock speeds of around 2GHZ initially. The Phenom FX80 might hit 2.4GHz at launch, but AMD hasn't confirmed any clock speeds as yet. HKEPC has a list of what they presume the launch speeds will be and what features the various Phenom chips will feature if you have a look on page one of the article below. Please note that it's all in Chinese.

Continue reading: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ tested (full post)

Upcoming Razer product pre-announcement

Lars Göran Nilsson | | Aug 17, 2007 12:15 AM CDT

Razer has launched a new website for an upcoming product, which we presume is a new mouse, but we and you have to wait until the 23rd of August to find out what it really is. The site features a sliding cartoon and some sound effects, but it doesn't reveal anything about the product itself.

The picture above is from an email that was sent out from Razer and it says even less. From what we can guess, this will be a new mouse, but what Bringers of Silent Death stands for is something we'll have to wait and see.

Continue reading: Upcoming Razer product pre-announcement (full post)

Corsair intros Padlock USB flash drives

Corsair have introduced some new "Flash Padlock" secure USB 2.0 drives today which have a hardware-authentication lock feature. If you want to keep your data secure whilst on the go, one of these would be a perfect partner.

The drive will "auto-lock" everytime you remove it from a computer, requiring you to key in your PIN number on the simple touch-pad interface.

The Flash Padlock comes in two capacities, 1 and 2GB with pricing of $29.99 and $39.99 USD respectively.

Continue reading: Corsair intros Padlock USB flash drives (full post)

More details surface on Vista SP1

Cameron Wilmot | | Aug 13, 2007 7:53 AM CDT

James Bannan, our former collegue over at APC Magazine, has got hold of build 16549 of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista - and as you do, it played around with it all weekend.

It's no secret that there's a leaked beta of Vista SP1 floating around, but no-one yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.

I made it my mission this weekend to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best I could exactly what SP1 does.

Continue reading: More details surface on Vista SP1 (full post)

Real story on Intel X38 and SLI graphics

Cameron Wilmot | Video Cards & GPUs | Aug 11, 2007 8:42 AM CDT

There has been numerous reports floating around the web that Intel's upcoming X38 enthusiast chipset motherboard will officially support not only AMD Crossfire dual graphics but also Nvidia SLI technology.

We heard plenty of those rumors ourselves from one source to the next and at one point, we were even so sure it was going to happen we even started saying you could probably look forward to X38 supporting SLI. Sadly though, all these rumors are untrue!

During Computex back in June of this year, a couple motherboard companies slipped up and claimed that their X38 boards would support SLI. Technically and as far as the hardware goes, X38 does support SLI but it is not officially sanctioned at all by Nvidia. During a drunken Taipei rampage last year in a place which will be left unnamed, we asked the question to an Nvidia senior rep who is high up on the food chain and the answer was something along the lines of that Intel would never get a SLI license unless Intel gave them a free CPU bus license in return (loosely quoted). Of course, neither are likely to ever happen.

Continue reading: Real story on Intel X38 and SLI graphics (full post)

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