Tech News
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Unpopular Science - Proof humans are subject to the laws of physics
Published: Thursday, October 28, 2010 | By: DennisI was trolling google news today and came across this little gem that made me laugh. Here is a little something about Ice Cream, Calories, and Heat.
By the by: I had an idea for a carb-neutral ice cream.
All you need is to freeze a pint of ice cream to -3706 F.
The energy it will take your system to bring the ice cream up to a digestible temperature is roughly 1,000 calories, neatly burning away all those carbohydrates from the fat and sugar.
The only snag is the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which says it’s impossible to go below -459 F.
Bummer.Overclockers (like us) will already know a little something about cold and potential energy.
Be sure to check out the rest of the blog post for the rest of the funny.
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Some cool SSD drives for you to check out
Published: Monday, October 25, 2010 | By: DennisWhile we have no doubt that SSD "might" eventually replace rotational drives it won't be anytime soon. So until then, let's focus on the one redeeming factor of SSD, Speed
Funky Kit Review: OCZ IBIS 160Gb SSD with HSDL
What OCZ has done is to slap 2 x Sandforce controlled 80Gb SSDs sub-units (PCBs) and configured then in RAID 0 mode using a Silicon Image RAID controller. These PCBs are then housed in a 3.5" inch anodised Aluminum casing, and features OCZ's new proprietary HSDL (High Speed Data Link) interface. This new interface basically eliminates the existing I/O bottlenecks and take SSD technology to new levels of performance, with a max read speed up to 740MB/s and max write speed up to 690MB/s.
Think RevoDrive, but faster :)
Speaking of RevoDrive, Hardware Canucks has a review posted of the 120GB model
OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review @ Hardware Canucks
OCZ has been at the forefront of the SSD market for as long as we can remember. However, the current SATA interface has constrained the performance and solid state drive manufacturers have been left scrambling for alternatives. OCZ has now turned to the PCI Express interface in order to increase performance. But has their gambit paid off?
Can't lie, I really want to get my hands on one of these.
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MSI Geforce GTX 480 Lightning 1536 MB @ techPowerUp
Published: Monday, October 25, 2010 | By: DennisThere are 2 schools of thought about how video cards should be. On one side we have the overclocker and hardware enthusiasts. These people love to push their gear in hopes of smoothing out game play or tinkering on the weekend for more HWBot points. This is a small group of people who are very vocal, and tend to think everyone is just like them. On the flip side you have the mute majority who really don't give a crap.
In true form of the saying "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" we have started seeing a ton of new products designed and built for the vocal majority with overclocking in mind.MSI's GeForce GTX 480 Lightning promises to be an overclocker's dream. It is build around a completely redesigned PCB and thermal solution with overclockers in mind. The card offers unique features like control for up to three voltages, dual BIOS with liquid nitrogen support and easy to reach voltage measurement points.
I am of the opinion that cooler is better, I may not overclock 24/7, or even run my main desktop in an overclocked profile but I can respect the potential these super overclocked videocards can provide. -
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 @ PureOverclock
Published: Monday, October 25, 2010 | By: DennisGigabyte's Ultra Durable line of video cards has a pretty clear distinction between the mainstream and the high-end that is usually denoted by the UD number in the name. All boards feature the same basic features however the higher up you go the better the components you get.
Gigabyte has made what we'd call an "Ultra High-End" board for AM3, if you'd want to call it that. Made for overclocking and for QuadFire, it's not for the timid of heart, or budget. But at least it won't require a 2nd mortgage like the UD9 would. Let's take a closer look at the Gigabyte 890FX-UD7.
UD7 boards typically feature multipurpose MCP coolers that can accept water while UD5 and UD3 are typically left having an aircooling only option, Be sure to check out our review of this very same board in UD5 trim.
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Nvidia lowers prices for GeForce GTX 460 and GTX 470
Published: Friday, October 22, 2010 | By: DennisNvidia on October 21 announced price cuts for three GeForce GTX 460 GPUs of 12.6-15.1%, and for 470 chips of 25.8%, according to Taiwan-based card makers.
The price reduction is to cope with potential competition from Radeon HD 6000-series cards to be launched by AMD on October 22, the sources analyzed.The launch would be today and the price drop is real. (don't believe us, check Newegg and/or Tiger Direct). The average price drop is between 15 and 25% making the cards extremely attractive from a purchase standpoint.
I have not checked to see if the price drop extends to Overclocked and Super Overclocked cards but there is no reason to think otherwise.
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AMD Radeon 6000 Series Launch Day - Review Roundup
Published: Friday, October 22, 2010 | By: DennisWhoa, something exploded today, as you can tell today is launch day for the AMD 6XXX. This is a midrange card (with a high end name) priced and targeted at the GTX 460.
Today also marks the 2nd day after a major price drop in NVidia GTX460 and GTX470 graphics cards. (Normally issued thru a MIR)
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 @ Techgage
- AMD Radeon HD 6850 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
- ASUS Radeon HD 6870 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
- HIS Radeon HD 6850 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- ASUS Radeon HD 6850 Direct CU 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- HIS Radeon HD 6870 1 GB @ techPowerUp- AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 Review @ Hardware Canucks
- HIS Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card in Crossfire @ TweakTown
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB Video Card @ TweakTown- Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 @ Pro-Clockers
- Gigabyte Radeon 6850 1GB @ PureOverclock
- ASUS Radeon EAH6870 1GB @ PureOverclock
- Sapphire Radeon 6850 1GB @ PureOverclock- AMD Radeon 6870 and 6850 Launch Review @ HardwareHeaven
- Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card Review @ ThinkComputers
- OC3D: ASUS HD6870 Crossfire EXCLUSIVE Review (ohhh exclusive *tremble*)
- OC3D: HIS Radeon 6850 and 6870 Review- Diamond Multimedia HD 6870 @ LanOC Reviews
- Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 review @ Guru3D
- Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 CrossfireX review @ Guru3D- AMD Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Graphics Debut @ HotHardware
- HIS Radeon HD6870 @ Bjorn3D
- Sapphire HD 6850 @ Bjorn3D
- AMD HD6850 and HD6870 @ Bjorn3D- AMD Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 CrossFire Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 cards benchmarked and reviewed @ Hexus
- Radeon HD 6850: Grinding Diamonds @ InsideHW
This might be the longest review block ever! Normally I filter out multiple review links to the same site, makes posting the links faster and will be easier for you to read. However this time I figured "what the hell, lets post them all". -
Planning One-Way Human Trip to Mars - How do you do it?
Published: Thursday, October 21, 2010 | By: DennisIn other news... (and direct from ExtremeTech)
What would you think about a one way trip to Mars? While many of us have used that as a harmful threat it seems that NASA and DARPA are exploring the prospect for real.Worden said that despite the allure of settling distant worlds, we should first go to the moons of Mars, in order to do comprehensive telerobotics exploration, the report said. We're not sure about that idea; we heard Phobos and Deimos could be pretty scary.
Of course you may remember Phobos and Deimos were the moons where Doom takes place, while I think landing on the larger planet might be a little easier that doesn't seem to be the case with these guys.
The article talks about building a "Hundred Year Starship" powered by electricity and with enough room to ferry the crew and supplies on a one-way trip to the distant planet. Considering it takes about 200+ days to get to Mars, and that you're going to be there "forever" you need more than just a few astronauts to make it happen. You need a settlement expedition similar to what Europe did when discovering new world.
First you send your scouts to setup base camp, gather food, and setup shelter. Then send wave after wave of settlers until you have enough people to maintain a community. It was expensive back in the 1700's, and it's not going to be any cheaper now. Not to mention the ships won't be reusable, they need to be recyclable by the settlers, oh and there is no going back.
Anyone on board? -
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 expected to perform 20% faster than 480
Published: Thursday, October 21, 2010 | By: DennisThis is some good news for those of us waiting for the next big thing.
Nvidia is preparing to launch its GF110-based GeForce GTX 580 by the end of November or early December 2010 with performance 20% faster than its current GeForce GTX 480, according to sources from graphics card makers.
After GF110, Nvidia is also set to gradually unveil its GF112, GF114 and GF119 in 2011 with market positions similar to its GF104, GF106 and GF108, respectively. The company is also preparing to announce 28nm Kepler GPUs by the end of 2011 and is currently developing Maxwell as Kepler's successor.Assuming this is using the same Fermi architecture can likely expect a full 512 shader cores and maybe a 512-bit memory interface. Of course there isn't anything keeping nVidia from increasing the number of CUDA cores, maybe the GF11X will have 640?, or maybe more.
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Thermaltake Armor A60 @ techPowerUp
Published: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 | By: DennisLooking for a great case, with tons of features, and USB3 support built in? Then give the Armor A60 a look.
The Armor A60 is a smaller version of the popular Armor A90. It retains the cool and edgy look of the larger brother, but also offers a few new and interesting features and updates. We throw everything we have at the case to see if the Armor A60 remains standing once the dust has settled.
Thermaltake also offers this case as a Case/PSU bundle if you happen to be building from scratch.
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ASUS Rampage III Gene review @ Guru3D
Published: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 | By: DennisIt would seem that X58 is still very popular despite the pending Sandy Bridge release and for good reason, X58 isn't getting upgraded and remains the flagship product from Intel.
Cute tiny and sexy .. don't we all like it ? Within that motto ASUS has it's own Gene series within the motherboard line up. Now if you put that on the X58 platform, it's called Rampage by ASUS. And then when this apocalyptic group of minions and demons called 'Republic of Gamers' aka ROG gets their hands on a product like this, you can expect improvements and extra overclock features.
The end results is is, the ASUS Rampage III Gene ROG edition.Its MicroATX too. Not a bad thing, but X58 and Core i7 both get extremely hot and very view MicroATX cases deliver enough cooling power to keep things short of melting.
