Tech News
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MSI Product Launch - GTX 760 Hawk
This news launched a few days ago but there seems to be a new video card on the loose, the MSI GTX 760 Hawk. Strangely enough I thought all the Hawk edition cards went away with the new MSI.
Seems I was wrong, and all on the day rumored to be the GTX 780 Lightning launch which will forever be known for the EVGA GTX 780 Classified.
Web Review
- MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK review
- MSI GTX 760 HAWK @ PureOverclock
- MSI GTX 760 Hawk @ LanOC ReviewsSadly in the old days I might have gotten one of these cards for launch, Seems I traded video cards for motherboards with the MSI camp.
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G.SKILL TridentX - DDR3 4400MHz Reached!
Congratulations to professional overclocker “YoungPro” from TeamAU, setting a new milestone for DDR3 memory frequency, officially the new “King of Memory!”
Taipei, Taiwan - 9th August 2013 - G.SKILL International Co. Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and superior solid-state storage, tops the memory frequency world record chart once again with “G.SKILL TridentX” overclocked to an amazing DDR3 4400MHz!
1st Global rank validation on hwbot.org: http://www.hwbot.org/submission/2411631_teamau_memory_clock_ddr3_sdram_2202_mhz
Using 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 4770K, ASUS Maximus 6 Impact and a steady flow of LN2, professional overclocker James “YoungPro” Trevaskis from TeamAU were able to push the factory spec G.SKILL TridentX DDR3 3000MHz C12 4GB stick to the world’s fastest DDR3 4400MHz CL13!
About G.SKILL
Established in 1989 by computer hardware enthusiasts, G.SKILL is a leading memory & Solid State Drive manufacturer based in Taipei, Taiwan. The company's top priority is quality. All of the products undergo a series of the most rigorous tests and strict quality control processes. In addition to a committed, qualified IC testing house to examine the products, all G.SKILL products are 100% tested to ensure the highest yield, reliability and quality. -
SilverStone Air Penetrator SST-AP123 Cooling Fan Review @ APH Networks
These are some of the best fans, hands down, feet down, air down, it doesn't matter they are the best.
Is it an improvement from the past even if the specs don't say so? Let's see how the testing goes.
In checking out the review I rather like the tissue paper test which helps to show directionality. At Computex several years ago Silverstone levitated a balloon with an Air Penetrator fan using the Bernoulli Effect. (the same one that allows planes to fly)
Most case fans exhaust air in a cone which is why you always position fans to pull air thru a radiator when you are watercoolig. With the Air Penetrator you no longer need to do that however, the fans tend to work best cooling cases rather than heatsinks.
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Oculus Rift hires FPS Developer John Carmack to be CTO
For some reason this doesn't surprise me and I think it will be extremely good for both parties involved.
Carmack said in a prepared statement that the first time he wrote code for Oculus, it stood up to many firsts he's experienced in modern gaming: "the intensity of the first-person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods and so on." Additionally, he believes VR "will have a huge impact in the coming years" -- Carmack is the first announced big new hire at Oculus.
The key word in the above snippet is "coming years". We all know that VR exists and that past versions of the technology were limited by the very technology that created it. Of course the Oculus implementation is considerably better there are still issues with the technology.
Sadly enough, those issues are with the 2D content that is digitally converted to 3D and then displayed on the screen. Movies recorded in 3D are usually pretty good but games where the pictures are generated in real time often suffer from motion sync issues and just poor 3D implementation.
Let's hope that Carmack can make a difference. Given his track record in the FPS world, I'm sure he can. -
Microsoft Drops $100 from Surface Pro Price
Who saw this one coming?
Following the drastic price cuts on Surface RT tablets the Redmond giant has slashed $100 from the Surface Pro price in hopes of selling a few.
Microsoft is discounting its Surface Pro tablet this weekend, following heavy reductions to its Surface RT costs recently. The 10 percent price cut to Surface Pro reduces the cost of the 64GB and 128GB models by $100 each in the US. Not all regions appear to have Surface Pro price cuts just yet, but the US, Canada, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are all showing price cuts on both models.
I am not surprised it came to this, assuming Surface Pro is a failure. Microsoft is accustomed to meeting expectations but in terms of selling computer hardware they have a lot to learn. The first lesson: "just because you build it doesn't mean people will buy it". Most content creators don't like Windows 8 and hardware reviewers still compare Slate style tablets to the iPad and those things aren't good for selling powerful tablet devices.
Of course some have speculated that Surface Pro 2 might be coming out which would explain the price drop. Still, i'm not holding my breath, Haswell is a great processor and should help with battery life issue but when it comes down to actually using the tablet you're going to be faced with "meh" performance and a butthurt wallet. -
Corsair Carbide Air 540 Case Review on Technic3D
Most cases you can buy are designed to conform to a variety of different situations such as that single person who wants to run ten hard drives at once, or another person with a fan fetish wanting the largest fans possible because large fans equal less noise right? (The answer is "No" in case you were wondering).
Most normal people don't need these things in a mainstream chassis, especially when you have to sacrifice stuff like cable routing or cooling performance. Thankfully Corsair has revived an old server design based on the cube format. The Cube allows you to separate components for better cooling and cleaner lines.
The Corsair Carbide Air 540 is the next PC-Case in the Technic3D Editorship. The Air 540 Cube supports E-ATX, ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ATX motherboards and have place for five 120mm Cooling-Fans or five 140mm Fans. We will check this and many more in the following Review.
No telling what this case can do provided you are logical in your component choices.
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PowerColor HD 7870 Devil 2048 MB @ techPowerUp
Some people may be wondering what AMD is thinking by not releasing a new GPU this year. However, had they gone ahead with a new chip launch companies like Power Color couldn't pump out "Devil" cards at an alarming rate.
The PowerColor HD 7870 Devil is a highly overclocked custom design that comes with a triple fan cooler and software voltage control. Priced at $240, it sits right in the sweet-spot segment of cards that provide a decent gaming performance without breaking the bank.
If HWBot is any indication of current GPU power you'll find many record holders still running the MSI HD 7970 Lightning. Seems that after you disable tessalation the vast number of stream processors really does make a difference.
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Has Walmart sold out of Microsoft Surface RTs?
That is the question that CNET is asking after checking Walmart and not finding any tablets for sale. We all know Walmart responds quite well to the stinky wind and when something stops selling they cut bait and walk away. Well, that might be what has happened.
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Walmart discounted the crap tablets in hopes of clearing some wareshouse space for boxes and other assorted storage stuff. Basically if this was "Office Space" the Windows RT Tablet is Milton and he is headed down to the basement.
Don't look now, but Walmart may have just sold out temporarily of Microsoft's recently discounted Surface RT devices.
Yes, those same Surface RTs that Microsoft repriced and are now $350 (plus $100-plus for a keyboard/cover). The Surface RTs that were responsible for Microsoft's $900 million write-down which it took in the fourth quarter of 2013.Sounds a lot like what HP did back in the day, the difference was the HP fondlepad was actually some good hardware with a crap OS.
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Razer Hammerhead Pro In-Ear Gaming Headset Review @ Custom PC Review
As a hardware enthusiast I rarely concern myself with headphones but that doesn't mean I don't care, in fact that is just the opposite.
Luckily it seems like Razer is catching onto the fact that there is such a void in the market and have introduced the Razer Hammerhead along with the Hammerhead Pro – the only difference between the two is that the Hammerhead Pro comes with an inline microphone and play/pause/call/stop/etc. button while the Hammerhead standard doesn’t. Today though we’ll be reviewing the Hammerhead Pro..
This should be an interesting review.
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Online pornography to be blocked by default in UK
This is interesting, I really had no idea that pr0n was such a huge deal in the UK and instead of just blocking "the really bad stuff" they decided to block everything and call it a day.
Most households in the UK will have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron has announced.
In addition, the prime minister said possessing online pornography depicting rape would become illegal in England and Wales - in line with Scotland.I wonder what process someone would have to go thru to get pr0n unblocked and what happens when someone shares out their wireless (with pr0n enabled) to people who don't want to see it?. I suspect it would be 60 days in the stocks with Internet privileges revoked for 2 years. (you know something harsh)
Of course if they request to have access to pr0n they might go into a national register of sex watchers and be denied simple things in life like walking in a park during the day or getting married.
