NF200 True 3-Way
Featured
NF200 "True" 3-Way SLI Preliminary ResultsWe take a look at NVIDIA's answer to "true" 3-Way SLI on current Intel X58 chipset equipped motherboards. We all know SLI on X58 was a good thing, but do gamers need to pay for the NF200?
EVGA X58 3X SLI MotherboardEVGA brings us its first Intel processor motherboard using the X58 chipset. We've seen quite a few exceptional X58 motherboards so far. Is EVGA’s design going to have what it takes to compete with the rest in terms of performance, stability, and overclocking?
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black EditionIf you thought it couldn’t get any better than XFX’s well known “XXX” edition of highly clocked video cards, then you haven’t met its “Black Edition” yet. XFX has a new line poised to take the performance crown sporting the latest GeForce GTX 260 specifications. Six games played and A2A as well.
ASUS P6T6 WS RevolutionThe ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard has six PCIe x16 slots and delivers true x16 bandwidth for 3-Way SLI and CrossFireX, but does it work? Overall performance looks to rival that of the current reigning X58 chipset champs while delivering none of the features you don’t want.
Announcements
[H]ard News
Wednesday January 07, 2009
WD Extends Its Line of Mac Compatible External HDDs
Broadening its storage solutions for Mac, WD, the world leader in external storage solutions, today introduced two new external hard drives -- the My Passport™ for Mac portable drive and the My Book® Mac Edition external hard drive. Pre-formatted for Mac and offering a simple USB interface, these drives offer the ever-growing Mac community reliable, easy-to-use storage. WD's latest Mac-ready drives work seamlessly with Apple® Time Machine™ or other popular Mac backup software to provide protection for consumers' valuable digital photos and media.
Business Solutions Magazine Names Seagate Best Channel Vendor In Storage
Seagate today announced that Business Solutions Magazine, a leading channel publication focused on U.S. value added resellers (VARs) and integrators, has named Seagate as the Best Channel Vendor in the storage category. “This great recognition underscores Seagate’s unwavering commitment to delivering the industry’s best storage products and support and programs to our channel partners not just in the United States but worldwide,” said John Vossoughi, vice president of Americas Sales and Marketing at Seagate.
VIA To Demonstrate Innovative Products At CES 2009
VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced that it will participate in the annual Lunch@Piero's media event, to be held during CES in Las Vegas on January 8th and 9th. Attendees will be able to see a host of high performance mini-notes, thin and light notebooks, eco-friendly PCs, and power efficient embedded systems designed for a new digital world where Small is Beautiful, all made possible through VIA's expertise in platform miniaturization.
Tuesday January 06, 2009
The Best and Worst Jobs In The U.S.
A list of the best and worst jobs in the U.S. has been published today and, if you want to become a software engineer or computer programmer, I got good news for you. If you are a taxi driver or lumberjack…I got bad news. On a side note, how the hell a parole officer ranks in the top twenty and a nurse ranks at the bottom of the list is beyond me.
The study, to be released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.
[H]ardware Round-Up II
ETC.
Phoenix Technologies HyperSpace @ Phoronix
Memory
ATP ProMax II 4GB SD/SDHC Card @ Test Freaks
Motherboards
ECS A780GM-A AMD 780G Motherboard @ PCStats
Jetway NC91-330-LF Mini-ITX Motherboard @ Fusion Mods
Power Supply
Hiper Type R II 680W PSU @ Bit-Tech
ToPower PowerTrain 1200w PSU @ Hi-Tech Reviews
BFG Technologies Unveils Phobos
BFG Technologies, known as a leading supplier of premium power supplies and 3D graphics cards, is excited to announce its first line of complete gaming and multimedia PCs, called Phobos. These sleek hand-built, high performance machines were designed with the "Graduated Gamer" in mind. This audience is looking for all the performance associated with a high-end gaming system, but none of the hassle related to building and servicing such a system. As a result, Phobos is sold with complementary Concierge Service which includes expert in-home installation and a six month follow up maintenance visit.
"Phobos was designed for gamers and media enthusiasts who demand top of the line performance, but may not have the time, desire, or expertise to build or maintain a high end system," said John Malley, senior director of marketing for BFG Technologies. "Our Concierge Service ensures our systems meet those high expectations-delivering Unbelievable Performance without monopolizing our customers' time."
This is the very same system we gave you a sneak peek at weeks ago. Feel free to leave your comments here.
Wearable Space Toilet
Private sector engineers and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) have teamed up to make a next-gen wearable space toilet. If these ever hit the market you can bet I am getting one, imagine how much more work you can do if you never have to leave your chair! WoW players around the world will be buying stock in these things. Hit the link above for a picture.
Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times. Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container. In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor.
Apple Disappoints: No Jobs or Big News at Macworld
Apple’s announcements of a slimmer 17” laptop and plans to drop DRM by the end of the quarter doesn’t seem to be making anyone happy. To be honest, without Steve Jobs at Macworld, I doubt anything they say is going to make anyone happy.
Apple Inc said on Tuesday it was dropping copy protection from songs sold on the Internet and debuted its slimmest 17-inch laptop yet, but with no dramatic products or master pitchman Steve Jobs, the company's final Macworld performance disappointed Wall Street.
Bogus LinkedIn Profiles Harbor Malicious Content
Just so you know, there are fake celebrity profiles on LinkedIn that have links to malicious code. Damn it! I was sooo close to clicking that Beyoncé link too. Must. Resist. Urge.
Advanced Threats Researcher Ivan Macalintal found some bogus LinkedIn profiles which contain links to malware, using the names and images of famous personalities such as: Beyoncé Knowles, Victoria Beckham, Christina Ricci, Kirsten Dunst, Salma Hayek, Kate Hudson … and several others.
Gaming News
LIVE Activity for Week of December 29th @ Major Nelson
'Major' Gears of War 2 Patch Due This Month @ Shacknews
Midway Games Gets Reprieve From Creditors @ VE3D
New Ninja Blade Screens / Facts @ Kotaku
StuntMANIA!pro Demo v3.0.5 @ FileShack
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Screenshots @ 1up
Hackers Hit MacRumors Keynote Coverage
Live coverage of Macworld was marred today when MacRumors' live-blog feed was hacked during the event. Pranksters posted stuff like “Steve Jobs Just Died” during the event causing a bit of a panic before people realized the site was under the control of hackers.
Some nasty pranksters, likely associated with Web forum 4Chan, have hacked into Apple gossip mainstay MacRumors' live-blog coverage of Tuesday's Macworld keynote. Hosted on a separate domain, MacRumorsLive.com, the site was plagued by offensive messages about Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health and general inanity (i.e. "SEX ME") before finally succumbing to "technical difficulties."
Left 4 Dead Developer Illuminates Lighting Choice
Left 4 Dead developer Randy Lundeen talks about the lighting choices made by Valve during the development process of the game. You can see a before and after image below to give you an idea of how the game was changed:
"While sudden zombie attacks were inarguably scary, they were also frustrating--players weren't being given the information they needed to react," said Lundeen. "They wanted that 'Here they come!' moment, and we weren't giving it to them. The solution? Light-colored fog."
For those of you that missed it, our Left 4 Dead image quality and gameplay performance evaluation can be seen here.
[H]ardware Round-Up
Cases & Modding
Raidmax Wind Storm @ Overclockers Club
Cooling
CoolIT Domino A.L.C. @ Pro-Clockers
Thermaltake MaxOrb EX CPU Cooler @ Modders Inc.
Power Supply
AeroCool Horsepower 650W @ PureOC
Video
EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 55nm Superclocked Edition @ Hardware Cunucks
Logitech Announces G-series Peripherals for PC Gaming
The G-series line of gaming peripherals from Logitech® gives gamers what they want: complete control. Today, Logitech unveiled an extension of its award-winning G-series by introducing three new products that deliver precision, high performance and customization: the Logitech® G19 keyboard for gaming, the Logitech® G35 surround sound headset and the Logitech® G9x laser mouse.
Delivering everything gamers need for a competitive edge – from programmable buttons to 7.1-channel surround sound and 5000 dpi laser sensors to backlit keys – Logitech’s best-in-class gaming peripherals are engineered to deliver everything you have always wanted.
What Does 256 Cores Look Like?
Monitoring your quad-core desktop processor with Windows task manager is a snap but, as the world moves towards processors with many more cores (even thousands of cores), how will you monitor your processors’ performance? Intel’s Doug Holland has an interesting blog post today that addresses this very issue explaining how Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 group logical processors into sub groups so that displaying 256 cores in the Windows task manager will not require a 30” monitor. Yes, I said 256 cores:
It is most likely true that there aren't many of us who have access to a machine with 256 cores at the moment and unfortunately neither do I. I received the following screen shot of the Windows task manager showing 256 cores running on Windows Server 2008 R2 which uses the same kernel as Windows 7, both of which can now accommodate 256 logical processors.
Ask an Intel SSD Engineer
We are going to be doing an interview type discussion that will be run by our readers. Mr. Schmidt, an engineer with Intel's Solid State Drive division has graciously offered to answer any questions we might all have about Intel's SSDs.
So please post your Intel SSD questions here...in the form of a question. Those questions lacking proper spelling and grammar will be fed to the lions.
Here is our original video review coverage from September for those of you wondering just what an Intel SSD is.
Model Files Lawsuit Against Google
Have you guys been following this story? Some model is suing Google to find out the names of the person or people that called her a “skank” and “old hag” online. Ummm, what? Is this really something that needs to be tying up the court system?
"I can't begin to imagine why someone would post these things then hide behind a screenname. I guess we're going to have to find out," The New York Daily News quoted her lawyer, Steven Wagner, as saying. As part of the defamation suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the blonde beauty seeking a court order compelling Google and its Blogger.com subsidiary to identify the person who led the vicious Internet assault against her.
Even in Recession, CES Has Stuff Worth Seeing
The Associated Press says that even though the country is in a recession, CES 2009 will have stuff worth seeing. If by “seeing” they mean big ass HDTVs measured in feet instead of inches, I say bring it on!
The recession figures to tone down the flashiness of this week's International Consumer Electronics Show, but the lineup of innovative products likely will measure up to those of past years. The CES product list still looks intriguing partly because startups haven't yet been hit as hard by this downturn as they were when the Internet boom collapsed in 2000. And bigger companies haven't yet had time to adjust to consumers' belt-tightening.
Macworld 2009 Coverage
In just a few short hours the internet will be ablaze with all things Apple so it is probably best to figure out where you are going to get your Mac news fix ahead of time. Sites providing real time Macworld coverage are:
In the mean time, you can check out the Macworld rumor round-up at Gizmodo and PC World’s predictions to see what they actually get right once the event starts. If it is really big news, we’ll post it here too.
Seagate Ships 500GB Per Disk Desktop Hard Drives
Seagate today announced first-to-market volume shipments of a mainstream desktop hard drive with the industry’s highest areal density. Packing 1TB of capacity on just two disks, Seagate’s Barracuda ® 7200.12 HD, a 3.5-inch 7200-RPM drive features an areal density of 329 Gigabits per square inch to deliver the best combination of capacity, performance and reliability for PCs, desktop RAID and personal external storage. “Demand for more desktop PC storage capacity is far from letting up as computer users worldwide generate massive amounts of digital content every day,” said Tom Major, Seagate vice president , Personal Compute Business. “Seagate is leading the industry with new storage solutions designed to store, share and manage all of that business- and user-generated content.”
Fujitsu Says “No Deal” With Western Digital
It looks as though months of talks between Fujitsu and Western Digital have ended with Fujitsu’s CEO saying there is “zero chance of a deal” between the two companies.
The two companies were in talks about such a deal in October, Reuters reported at the time. A company official had said the unit was a money loser for Fujitsu. Fujitsu wanted to sell all its domestic and overseas hard-drive factories together and allow many of the workers to keep their jobs, the report said. It said the two sides could not reach agreement on these conditions.
Americans View 34 Percent More Online Videos
While we are on the subject of “time wasting” activities, it seems the U.S. also likes to watch online videos…lots and lots of online videos. 12.7 billion videos were watched online in November to be exact and that’s without counting porn. 
comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released November 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that U.S. Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 34 percent versus year ago.
Early Results Show Strong Holiday Console Sales
Sales of video game consoles have been so strong over the holidays that industry analysts are calling them “outright recession-proof.” It seems that people like to play video games to take their minds off everyday worries / economic issues.
The PS3 was the only one of the three next-generation consoles to see its November 2008 sales drop from a year earlier. According to NPD, sales of the PS3 fell 18.8 percent, from 466,000 to 378,000. By comparison, Wii sales skyrocketed 108 percent, from 981,000 to 2.04 million and the Xbox grew 8.6 percent, from 770,000 to 836,000.
AMD Delivers Groundbreaking Platform for Ultrathin Notebooks
AMD today announced the availability of the AMD platform for ultrathin notebooks, enabling exceedingly thin and light OEM designs with rich entertainment capabilities at an affordable price. Previously codenamed “Yukon,” the platform is based on the new AMD Athlon™ Neo processor, ATI Radeon™ X1250 integrated graphics and optional ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3410 discrete graphics2 and brings true HD entertainment1 to a new category of stylish notebook PCs. The AMD platform debuts within the HP Pavilion dv2 Entertainment Notebook PC ultrathin notebook, which measures less than one-inch thick and weighs less than four pounds. The HP Pavilion dv2 also comes equipped with a 12.1-inch diagonal LED BrightView display, nearly full-size keyboard, and optional external optical disc drive with Blu-ray capability.
Intel and NBC Create 'Monstrous' 3D Super Bowl Event
DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. and PepsiCo's SoBe Lifewater today announced that they have joined together with Intel Corporation and NBC to create a first-of-its kind, nationwide ‘Monstrous' 3D event for Super Bowl XLIII. This first-ever all 3D Super Bowl commercial break event will mark the debut of DreamWorks Animation's premier 3D movie trailer for its upcoming feature film, "Monsters vs. Aliens," which comes to theaters in the U.S. on March 27th.
Monday January 05, 2009
Sony Responds to 'Sacred Cow-Slaying' Report
Sony has responded to an earlier report that claimed the company was on the “brink of upheaval.” A spokesman for the company said that Sony has no plans to announce any additional restructuring beyond the 16,000 layoffs announced in December. Thanks to Shacknews for the report and headline of the day.
The statement comes in response to a recent report by Times Online, which said Sony was "on brink of upheaval" and that employees were preparing for a "a series of 'sacred cow-slaying' measures" that would see major divisions and factories closed.
Blu-ray Dominates Christmas Sales in UK
Blu-ray sales in the UK are up 400% this holiday season compared to the previous year. Now, before you go giving all the credit to record sales of The Dark Knight, it seems people are also buying non-special effects driven movies on Blu-ray too. Sales figures for the U.S have not been released yet.
Across the whole holiday season 3.7 million Blu-ray units were sold in Britain, and that doesn't include sales of Sony's Playstation 3 console, which also plays Blu-ray movies. A large contributing factor to the rise in Blu-ray sales was the release of the movies The Dark Knight and Mama Mia on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight sold almost 300,000 copies in its first few weeks, becoming the fastest selling Blu-ray title to date. Mama Mia was no slouch either selling 5.1 million copies by year-end.
[H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals
Welcome to the Monday edition of [H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals! Let’s see what we have in the way of [H]otDeals for you guys today, shall we? There is a pair of GTX 280 deals going today, one for the BFG GeForce GTX 280 and one for the EVGA GeForce GTX 280 both have a price tag of only $294.99 with discounts and rebates. Those of you on a budget will go for one of these XFX GeForce 9800GT that are $109.99 with free shipping. Speaking of budget, you can still get one of those quad-core AMD Phenom 2.3GHz processors for $104.99 with free shipping but you better hurry, deal ends today. Those of you looking for storage space should check out this Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB SATA HDD, is still just $129.99. Oh yeah, show your [H] pride and pick up a RatPadz GS or RatPadz XT while they are still $5 off with free shipping (in North America).
MSI Announces CES 2009 Product Lineup
MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce it CES 2009 Product Lineup. MSI will be displaying its newest additions to the Wind Netbook U-Series, the MSI “NetOn” All-in-One line, new G-Series Gaming Notebooks, and the latest versions of E-Series Entertainment Notebooks. Read the full press release here.
EVGA X58 3X SLI Motherboard
I feel it is my duty to warn you ahead of time that reading our evaluation of the EVGA X58 3X SLI motherboard will give you an uncontrollable urge to take the 3x SLI plunge. This has been a public service announcement from the staff at [H]ard|OCP. Consider yourself warned. 
EVGA has built a very good X58 motherboard that most computer hardware enthusiasts are going to be very happy with. Performance and stability are solid. It should easily get any Intel Core i7 920 to 3.6GHz or better which is going to push your gaming into being GPU limited very quickly. EVGA continues to bring its customers the best support and service in the motherboard business which to some is worth more than the cost of the board.