Tech News
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Slackware 13.0 Released - The 64-bit Edition
Published: Friday, September 4, 2009 | By: DennisAfter a long wait the Slackware team has finally released an update to the famed 12.2 and this time complete with an x86_64 port for all of us wanting to run Linux on the latest 64-bit hardware.
Personally I have been using Slackware for years now but not as a main system, the development tools I use are not available on Linux so only my servers are Linux based and it is not uncommon for them to run 7-8 months without me checking on them. Yep they are that stable.Probably the biggest change is the addition of an official 64-bit port. While the 32-bit (x86) version continues to be developed, this release brings to you a complete port to 64-bit (x86_64). We know that many of you have been waiting eagerly for this, and once you try it you'll see it was well worth the wait.
Well here is to a new chapter in Slackware, if you are looking for a powerful distro look no further.
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Foxconn Blood RAGE X58 Motherboard @ PCShopTalk
Published: Friday, September 4, 2009 | By: WillThis board has gotten a little bit of time on it now after being one fo the few first enthusiast X58 boards out at the beginning. With age though it has not lost it's strong enthusiast spirit.
"I was amazed how much bundle I found with this motherboard : plenty of hardware components, but also a lot of useful utilities on the CD. The board performance was excellent and when I was overclocking, I never needed to reset the CMOS even once. When the board was not recovering, all I had to do was to push the Force Reset button, and the board was booting fine; I could modify this way the settings that did not work on the previous boot."
You gotta love those Ninjalane colors all over the Blood Rage.
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EVGA X58 SLI Classified @ HardOCP
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 | By: WillHere is a good review of one the most sexy motherboards on the market for the X58 chipset. Don't worry though we have a review of one of the other most sexy board out there as well.
"EVGA decided to take the Intel camp by storm with its introduction of the X58 SLI Classified on to the Core i7 scene. Boasting a vast array of overclocking features and hardware optimizations, this could very well be the board to beat..."
Oh yeah! Here is the link to the Blood Rage.
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NL: PC Game Reviews Roundup
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 | By: WillHere is a few new PC games that are either coming or are out on the PC platform.
Assassins Creed II @ Technic3D
"Some people found the previous game superb, others were just bored by the monotone gameplay. No other game has divided gamers and critics as much as the assassin adventure Assassin's Creed. The sequel title Assassin's Creed 2 is ringing smoothly to the second round, where last year Ubisofts flagship assassin has fought one of his last fights. Still the main story is around the barkeeper with the name "Des mond Miles" who is facing old memories from his ancestor. Ubisoft is promising to those who don't have played the previous game that the sequel will follow to the story without having any kind of comprehension problems."
Section 8 Preview @ TheTechLounge
"I'm having a hard time trying to find something original in Section 8. And it matters not. Even the engine is used - it's based on the multi-platform Unreal Engine 3, which irritates me since I can't get anti-aliasing to work; but fine, it doesn't seem to disrupt my ability to womp the shite out of 16 of my temporary nemeses, bot or human, and try as I might, I can't stay away from this title for very long. Oh, and I've been playing the beta, the demo version.
It's free. It's kinda buggy. So what is the thing that makes this incomplete game so damn appealing? It's everything Team Fortress 2, or Left 4 Dead, and so many others, aren't. Starting with scale; you literally begin each round a mile off the ground, screaming and on fire like the codpiece of God. Your nearest base is half a click away and your current objective is twice that, and there're three walkers between you and the VIP. So what do you do? Lock your suit into sprint mode, just before the armor closes in on your delicious red triangle, hit your jets and sail over them. If your aim is right, you land on that enemy general feet-first before teabagging him with your grenades." -
PhotoFast G-Monster eSATA V2 Portable SSD on a Stick @ TweakTown
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 | By: WillFinally something comes out that is just down right cool for the eSATA stard port. SSD on a stick. What more can you ask for.
"eSATA has been widely adopted by the industry and if your motherboard doesn't have a port on the back, most likely it comes with a bracket to give users access to blazing fast external storage. Even if your motherboard lacks any eSATA ports, most new PC cases have a dedicated eSATA port within reach making the tech accessible to all. The next generation of eSATA puts power at the port and in the coming months nearly every case will implement this feature. Power at the port is going to give eSATA the convenience of USB while maintaining the high transfer speed rates of SATA.
PhotoFast has been producing products that are on the cutting edge. Their G-Monster V5 and V4S push the limits of SATA and the G-Monster Promise PCIe takes solid state drives to the next level by eliminating the SATA bottleneck. For PhotoFast the horizon is just the starting point and they are now taking what they have learned from SSDs and moving it into the portable market. The new PhotoFast G-Monster eSATA V2 gives users SSD speeds and merges it with the convenience of USB. The end result is portable storage that is able to transfer data faster than many users primary hard drive."SSD on a stick!
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BlizzCon 2009 - Recap & Review @ Legit Reviews
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 | By: WillBlizzCon is over, but everyone is already getting ready for the next one. It is good to see that some companies are still pushing the PC gaming industry.
This year's BlizzCon has definitely been the best one for me. The new World of Warcraft expansion looks like it will be the best one yet. I love the old world and getting to go back there and visit all the old content with new activities looks like it will be a lot of fun. The new raids and dungeons look amazing. The fact that they chose to concentrate on end game and environment rather than quest lines..."
Get Diablo 3 out already!
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ASUS Crosshair III Formula AM3 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
Published: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 | By: WillLooks like AMD has really driven up it's demand with the new Phenom 2 processors among the enthusiast. Also factor in the slumping economy and people lacking tons of cash to buy the more expensive Core i7 processors.You have a receipe for better motherboard support.
"If we went back in time to just a few short months ago, there really wasn't anything that was really exciting about what motherboard manufacturers had on tap for AMD's lineup. Now, with the resurgence of the AMD brand's Phenom architecture, things are rapidly changing and the AM3 platform is being noticed by enthusiasts. Today we take a look at the board that is supposed to lead all others when it comes to AMD processors: the ASUS Crosshair III Formula."
I know those people could have just bought a Core2.
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Can Ubuntu 9.10 Outperform Mac OS X 10.6? @ Phoronix
Published: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 | By: WillFor all of the people out there that like something different than the normal Windows environment can rejoice for Mac OS X Snow Leopard is out. On the same note it looks like it has some compitetion from the new Ubuntu on the alternative OS area.
"Back on Friday we published Mac OS X 10.6 benchmarks and found it to offer some terrific performance improvements, but at the same time, there were a few notable regressions. Apple engineers have been working hard at pushing technologies like Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), OpenCL, full 64-bit support, and other changes to their OS X stack to bolster its performance capabilities and reduce the overall footprint. Now that we have tested Mac OS X 10.6, we are seeing how its performance compares to that of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" will be out in October and does have some performance improvements as our earlier tests have shown, but Canonical engineers have not been exclusively focusing on performance optimizations with this release. Can the Karmic Koala outperform Snow Leopard? Yes and no."
Windows 7 all the way!
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MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2009 Grand Final in Beijing - Video Coverage @ TweakTown
Published: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 | By: WillThese overclocking events are becoming all the rage, and we here at Ninjalane love it. We cannot wait to get a team in on this someday in the near off future.
We just got back from Beijing, China where we attended MSI's Master Overclocking Arena (or MOA) 2009 grand final. MSI decided to host the event at the 2008 Olympic city as it themed the event in the same style, except with IT athletes.
There were about 100 people in the group consisting of MSI staff, overclockers and media from all over the world. As far as the competition went, there were a total of 20 global overclocking teams (two competitors per team) from about 15 different countries."Ninjalane FTW!
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4-Way SSD Round-Up Redux: OCZ, Corsair, PhotoFast @ HotHardware
Published: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 | By: WillHere is a good roundup of the ever popular SSD produsts. At the Ninjalane labs we have tested a couple of these drives and have been very impressed with them.
"Solid State storage products continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Over the last year or so, solid state drives, or SSDs, specifically targeted at PC enthusiasts have transformed from buggy, generally underperforming products to the preferred, high-end storage solution for performance hungry enthusiasts. Available capacities have increased, cost per gigabyte has decreased significantly, and a number of useful features have been introduced that enhance or otherwise optimize performance.
We have already covered a number of different solid state storage products at HotHardware, but in this article we're rounding-up another quartet of solid state drives, the updated OCZ Vertex Series drive with garbage collection, and OCZ Vertex Turbo Series drive, Corsair's P64, and a beast of an SSD from PhotoFast, the G-Monster V5..."Move on over Raptor, the SSD is moving in.
