Realtek issued version 2.02 of their HD Audio Driver which supports all of Realtek HD Audio Codecs in Vista/WinXP/Win2000/Win2003.  

1. Vista WHQL Supporting: ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC260, ALC262,ALC267, ALC268, ALC269, ALC272
2. Windows 2000/XP WHQL Supporting: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267,ALC268, ALC269, ALC272
3. HDMI Device WHQL Support: ATI HDMI Devices
4. OS Supporting: Microsoft WindowsXP, Widnows2000, Vista x86/x64
5. Pack with Microsoft High Definition Audio UAAV1.0a(5013)

This package has both the Vista and XP drivers in it.

Download - Click here

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CPUCalc is an overclocking-calculator able to overclocking with many Intel and AMD processors.  You just need to set your wished clock and it calculates all other settings, for example. It automatically sets the correct CPU-RAM-ratio and Referenceclock:HTT-Ratio.

It

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Lian Li launched new Silent Force PSUs that meet the 80 Plus standard (>80% efficiency) as well as the Intel ATX 12V V2.3 and EPS 12V standards. The series includes 650W, 750W and 850W models with active PFC.

The new power supplies utilize 135mm 2500rpm fans and feature heatsinks designed for maximum heat dissipation. Also, thanks to Japanese capacitors, the MTBF has been increased to 100,000 hours.

Modular cable management allows to use fewer enclosure cables -- only those you need -- and place them to keep airflow unaffected. Besides, the PCI-E connector is EM-shielded with a ferrite ring to provide cleaner output. Finally, cables have special sleeves to improve enclosure airflow.

The universal input supports voltages from 100 V to 240 V. According to Lian Li, the 650W, 750W and 850W Silent Force power supplies are already shipping and have recommended price tags of $159, $195 and $210 respectively (prices without VAT).

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From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving gameplay, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G.

The HardwareOC Crysis Benchmark is a very hard opponent against the synthetic benchmark. Many usefull options, many tweaks, many lost FPS...

System requirements

• 32/64 bit Windows XP / VISTA
• The latest drivers for your graphics card
• The v1.2 or 1.2.1 patch

Feature

• Change the resolution from 800
  

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Experience yourself physically immersed in the game. From the beginning the Far Cry series has been all about suspending belief via high-end graphics and gameplay, and it looks like as far as that's concerned the upcoming Far Cry 2 will not disappoint.

The trailer below released this weekend at PAX in Seattle goes into some nice detail about how the FC2 will seek to push the envelope further by immersing players in the game world through its open world play, dynamic weather system, weapons functionality, vehicles and navigational tools. The game releases on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms on October 21. 
 

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Check this out. Harman Kardon revealed a pair of new products on Friday, at the opening day of the IFA show in Berlin. Predominantly meant for Mac and iPod users, the GLA-55 speaker system does include a 3.5mm audio jack. It is powered by a 100 watt digital amplifier and sports a DSP equalizer. The audio set-up's name undoubtedly comes from its original plastic casing, which shows off the speakers' magnets and wiring quite elegantly.

Another new audio is the all-in one MS 100 system, which does not rely on a computer for its source material, as there is a built-in CD player, FM radio tuner and iPod dock as well as a clock radio. The two-way speaker system features 5-inch drivers and dome tweeters, all powered by a built-in amplifier. Connections are fairly generous, and include an S-video and composite video outputs in addition to a USB port. For audio, there is an optical output and three auxiliary inputs.

The GLA-55 system will cost about $915 when it launches in Apple and other stores in the UK later this year. The MS 100 system is expected to carry a similar MSRP when it launches in the UK in October.

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The release of V9 Chassis from Thermaltake today is certainly one interesting news for the PC gamers. The stylish all black color pleasing our eyes at the first sight, a tremendous 23cm top fan with a series of strategically designed ventilation system ..

Not just the stylish all black color pleasing our eyes at the first sight, but the tremendous 23cm top fan with a series of strategically designed ventilation system are also tickling our gamer desires!

V9 was definitely created for proud gamers at Lan Parties! To boost up the system performance for extreme gaming warriors, the air flow within V9 has been independently designed to focus on the four different heating sources in the chassis, CPU, VGA, HDD and PSU. The 23cm top fan that is impossible to ignore, works perfectly with the metal meshed front panel and rear fan. CPU cooling is further enhanced with one side fan and another optional fan installation on the motherboard tray. The second fan installed on the side panel is then strategically positioned to increase the air intake for VGA heating areas. Together with the bottom placed power supply unit and the 12cm red LED fan at the front for HDD cooling; the ventilation design excellence of V9 is equally stimulating as its stylish appearance!

It is also pretty easy to discover the extra careful touches for users on V9, like the dust filter included with the metal meshed front panel, the top tray for your installation tools or small hi-tech gadgets and the basic tool free mechanisms. Considering the ventilation, style, convenience, and future upgrading flexibility of a Gaming Chassis, Thermaltake V9 is definitely one marvelous new innovation!

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Jamie and Adam from Discovery Channel's Mythbusters show were at NVIDIA's NVISION event to show the difference between a CPU and GPU, in their own creative ways.

We had to leave back to Europe before this show started, yet fortunately someone filmed it and uploaded it to YouTube:

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Somehwat morbid news today then. CNET news reports that an electronic gaffe at news outlet Bloomberg mistakenly sent an incomplete obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs over the wire on Wednesday afternoon, and a tipster promptly sent the soon-retracted file to gossip blog Gawker. The lengthy file contains not only a preliminary obituary for the iconic Apple chief, but also a list of suggested contacts for a more extensive story--Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and early Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, among others.

The summary of Jobs' accomplishments, per the obituary, is that he "helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music, and refashioned the mobile phone."

It's not out of the ordinary at all that Bloomberg would have this written; all major news outlets have notable persons' obituaries prepared in advance so that only minor changes need be made at the actual time of death. That way, the news can be reported almost immediately and can be updated with further detail.

But a Jobs obituary, however premature, is more chilling than, say, a Bill Gates obituary. The Apple CEO successfully battled pancreatic cancer earlier this decade, and a magazine profile indicated that he had kept it secret for nine months while researching alternative treatments--a questionable move for any chief executive of a publicly traded company, but especially one as crucial to the runnings of the business as Jobs is.

When Jobs appeared onstage at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, his thin appearance led some bloggers and company critics to speculate that he was ill again, and some of them pushed the bounds of decency in demanding that Apple reveal the state of the executive's health to shareholders.

So given a CEO whose health has been discussed so speculatively in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, and whose company's stock has been shown to be far from immune to the influence of the rumor mill, the appearance--however brief--of a Jobs obituary online must certainly have been disquieting for those who stumbled upon it.

Bloomberg released a retraction later on Wednesday that made only the vaguest of reference to the content of the gaffe. "An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today," the retraction read. "The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted."

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Edge Online has some quotes from Harald Seeley taken from an upcoming interview with the Engine Business Manager at Crytek about controversial remarks by Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli about the dire impact of PC piracy on sales of Crysis. While some argue that piracy can increase game sales by letting players take a 'try before you buy' approach, Crytek business manager Harald Seeley isn't one of them. Based on downloads of the last Crysis patch, he argues, there were 'a lot more active [Crysis] players than there were unit sales.' And since those pirates are still playing the game months after release, Seeley reasons that "then they were a sale that didn't happen but probably would have had it not been possible to obtain the game illegally." He also makes observations about DRM, saying: "For example, the consoles themselves are, in one sense, simply very good DRM technologies that consumers welcome and pay for, in order to receive the benefits that come with them..."

Crytek, the studio that created the hardware intensive Far Cry and Crysis games exclusively for PC, has repeatedly stated that the upcoming Crysis Warhead will be its last PC-only game due to the abundant piracy of PC games. But just because Crytek is no longer developing PC exclusives, that doesn't mean the company will abandon the platform. "We want to continue to provide our fans in the PC world a rich and engaging experience," Seeley explained to EDGE Online.

The studio will soon release Crysis Warhead, a spin-off of the original, which will be PC-exclusive (the title was in development prior to the studio's commitment to multiplatform development).

We have a discussion thread open on this topic in our forums, check it here.

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OCX is short for 'Overclocking eXtreme' and it literally boils down to the fact that this is BFG's most high-end specced product in whatever the product range might be. Today we take the fastest NVIDIA single GPU graphics card available on the planet. The GeForce GTX 280. A 1400 million transistor counting piece of merchandise that raises the bar of single-GPU graphics processing. But first a quick peek at the demonic product we are reviewing today in our test-environment. And I say demonic as the core domain frequency of this product is clocked at the number of the beast himself -- 666.

Article URL:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/bfg-geforce-gtx-280-ocx-review/

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In the tradition of Murphy's law of course the most interesting news releases are released once you actually have physically left a trade-show -- that's what I call a Phys-X factor ;)

You return home from an 11 hour flight, and bam .. a PDF file in the email from NVIDIA that makes you wanna bitch-slap some people over at NVIDIA. So it should be no secret that Nvidia earlier on already announced plans to bring its SLI multi-GPU technology to the upcoming Bloomfield platform from Intel, based upon the Nehalem CPU, this was announced already in June/July.

Now here's the schocking fact .. there's giving support without the nForce 200 chip which for example is used on Skulltrail. That literally means native 2 and 3-way SLI support on upcoming high-end Intel X58 based motherboards.

One dowside for the mainboard manufacturers. The mainboard manufacturer will have to submit the mainboard to NVIDIA for certification (done by them) and then provides a BIOS allowing SLI in which the graphcis card driver can properly detect the corresponding device ID.

What's so interesting about this ? Well, it fianlly means we'll see mainboards that both support NVIDIA SLI and ATI's Crossfire. It will be possible to get X58/SLI going with either two or three cards. 3-way SLI + 1 card PhysX acceleration is supported as well.

Nice !

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NVISION Overview of articles

It's time to clean up our frontpage a little. In this post you can find all links towards the content we posted on the NVISION conference that took place in San Jose this year. NVISION is a conference organized by NVIDIA and is all about the visual computing experience.

Articles:

• NVISION 08 Day 1 - The Fun begins
• NVISION 08 Day 1 - Part 2 Keynotes, Case Modding and Tricia Helfer
• NVISION 08 Day 2 - It's Buzz Aldrin dude
• NVISION 08 Day 2 - Let's see some hardware
• NVISION 08 Day 2 - Video games Live Concert

News:

• NVISION 08 - Day 4 - NVSCENE 2008 60 MB demo downloads online
• NVISION 08 - Day 3 - Mythbusters at NVISION: CPU vs GPU (Video)
• NVISION 08 - Day 0 - San Jose Going is going NVIDIA Green
• NVISION 08 - Day 0 - Electronic Sports World Cup Grand Finals Starts today
• NVISION 08 - What's it all about ?

Click on the links to check the content.

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San Jose Getting sounded loud with VGL concert

We have one more item from  NVISION to show you guys. Though not 100% related to NVISION I figured this would be fun to show you. In San Jose there was a concert given. Now typically we gamers are not your average classical concert attendees, but the guys from video Games Live setup their gear in the San Jose concert hall and we figured it would be a nice opportunity to attend it and at thee very least show you some photo's on what is actually happening as such a concert.

BTW - It rocked! If interested, click on the link.

• NVISION 08 Day 2 - Video games Live Concert
   

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