Rivatuner breaks a milestone and passes 10 million downloads.
To commemorate this event we give away a Point of View GeForce GTX 285 graphics card.
Today is a monolithic day in the history of Guru3D.com, ever since 2002 when we started counting our downloads there where few utilities so extremely popular as Rivatuner.
Today we mark a milestone as Guru3D served over 10 million downloads of Rivatuner ever since that moment. It shows how remarkable this application is and how much dedication comes from project. Rivatuner has grown to become the number one tweak utility for Radeon and graphics cards. What some of you don't realize is that products like D3DOverrider and EVGA's Precision are based off Rivatuner. This project grew intensely big and wild.
Both Alexey (programmer) and yours truly would like to thank you guys for the continuous support. The project requires tremendous input , our energy and resources, but we get a lot of that back from you guys with simple things as just writing a thank you note every now and then.
Rivatuner Contest - Win a GeForce GTX 285 from Point of View
To celebrate this milestone, one of Rivatuner's sponsors, Point of View in collaborations with Guru3D.com figured we just had to give-away a graphics card to commemorate this moment. Please head on over to this page for the details on how to join a little competition and perhaps win a nice prize.
Again thank you guys for your support, and onwards to 20 million !
The release candidate version of the Service Pack 2 for Vista and Server 2008 was sent to Microsoft Connect testers, a couple of days ago. The internal version number of this RC is 6002.16670.090130 and, besides the currently 691 included hotfixes, a few highlights of this SP2 are going to be:
An interesting detail is that apparently even the final build requires you to have the first SP installed in order to use the SP2. The main reason for this seems to be the sheer size such a cumulative update consisting out of SP1 and SP2 would have ...
Philips has priced out the unprecedented 21:9 Cinema LCD and announced a June release in UK. The 52-inch ultra wide Cinema display will cost you
From what it sounds like, a British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, that resembled a pattern of a street grid. According to the United Kingdom's Press Association, the pattern of streets equated to an area the size of Wales. In case you've had more important things to read about for the past few thousand years, Atlantis was a legendary island city first mentioned by Plato, allegedly a hard-core naval power located somewhere near North Africa that disappeared when it sank into the ocean. Guess global warming was a problem back then, too.
Anyway, most people think that Plato made it up, kind of like how those guys in Georgia made up the story about shooting Bigfoot, but others just won't stop believin'. So this guy is trawling the ocean floor with Google Earth--ah, if only we had that kind of free time on our hands--and was quick to announce his discovery. It looks like The Telegraph reported the story first, adding that the exact coordinates are 31 15'15.53N, 24 15'30.53W.
AMD has just released ATI Catalyst version 9.2, as always these drivers have been mirrored Guru3D.com
Catalyst
We all know Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons are targeting server and workstation computers, but today AMD lifted some secrets of it's upcoming products, and thus future, with its six-core Opteron processor code-named "Istanbul".
"Istanbul is a fairly straightforward upgrade over current 'Shanghai' Opterons: a 45nm processor with 6MB of L3 cache that fits into a Socket F-style motherboards, only with six cores rather than four. As a result, the upcoming Istanbul-based Opterons will serve as drop-in upgrades for existing Socket F systems. The chips will take advantage of the same 2P, 4P, and 8P infrastructure as today's Opterons, with HyperTransport and two channels of DDR2 memory per socket.
AMD has previously stated that Istanbul processors will become available in the second half of this year, and the firm hasn't yet provided any more specific guidance about when to expect Istanbul-based systems. However, the presence of working silicon would seem to indicate that Istanbul Opterons could be introduced much earlier in that broad "second half" time-frame than originally anticipated. (...)" [via Tech Report].
Games may be too expensive according to Valve's Software President Gabe Newell, he revealed sales data from Steam that suggests games are too expensive. Something we all have been saying for years now.
The reason why few have arrived at this conclusion is because you cannot easily experiment with pricing at retail, says Newell. But you can with Steam, Valve's burgeoning digital distribution platform.
On the PC-only Steam service, a wide range of prices are attached to games, and attractive weekend deals throw more pricing variability into the mix. Although Valve was initially afraid that volatility or variability in pricing would confuse or anger its customers--or even cannibalize retail sales--Newell says that was not all the case.
In fact, it dramatically increased sales. Illustrating his point, Newell showed the results of a Left 4 Dead promotion Valve ran last weekend, which cut the price of the game in half to $25. The discount (and promise of new content for the game) rocketed sales of the game on Steam by 3,000 percent.
"We sold more in revenue this last weekend than we did when we launched the product," says Newell. "We were driving a huge uptick in revenue and attracting new customers." And while people believe that we're "screwing" retail, Newell showed that brick-and-mortar sales were unaffected by the online discount.
This phenomenon is not limited to Valve games. Over the holidays, Steam discounted third-party titles. Sales increased 300 percent and units-sold increased by 600 percent.
Still skeptical? Newell said that a weekend sale of one third-party title drove that game's sales up by 18,000 percent and units-sold increased 36,000 percent. It energized the user base, says Newell. When the sale ended, baseline sales were double what they were prior to the weekend discount.
Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales.
The conclusion: The games industry is not pricing its products correctly. It's only through the experimentation that such services as Steam allows will the industry be able to find the golden ratio of price and sales. As Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences President Joseph Olin concluded Wednesday night, this is going to generate a lot of controversy about pricing [via edge-on-line]
Unclewebb (RealTemp developer) updated his RealTemp plugin for RivaTuner.
It works with Intel CPU's which has a digital thermal sensor (DTS). Works with Nehalem, Quad's, Core2Duo's and it's a big step forward from "old" Core2Duo plugin. Unzip and copy the attached files into your RivaTuner/PlugIns/Monitoring directory and the rest should be easy. This plug-in includes Distance to TJMax for each core for those that like to keep an eye on that number.
We have a discussion thread + some screenshots active here in this forums thread.
Download - click here
It's time for an update on some good deals. Today I'd like to have a look at some great deals on procesessors from both AMD and Intel:
AMD processors:
A great motherboards to go with these processors are is MSI AMD 790GX DKA790GX, it sells at only $124.99.
Intel processors:
As far as Core i7 motherboards go, we noticed that the GigaByte X58 GAEX58UD3R motherboard dropped under 200 USD and is selling at $184.99. That's a grand price for sure.
Recently Zalman introduced the CNPS 9900 LED fan. An all new heatpipe based cooler with not one, but two heatsinks. The fun part is, it just looks really extraordinary as in-between the two heatsinks, an actual LED lit 120mm ventilator is located.
Yes The cooler has been split down the middle, moved away from each other to make room for that fan integrated into the center of the heatsink.
At 75,- USD you should expect a lot from a CPU cooler though, it's the CNPS 9900 LED living up to majestic Zalman reputation ?
You can read this Guru3D article right here.
That thing is SICK, I love it ! As insane Steampunk PC case mods go, this Frankenstein machine by D. Mattocks will take some beating.
Standing almost eight feet tall, and bristling with copper piping, vintage gauges and glass indicator lights from an old navy ship, it
PC users are probably more familiar with OCZ performance components inside a PC tower than peripherals like a keyboard, but they do have gaming peripherals lineup named Alchemy, and today they have announced a new upscale keyboard, Alchemy Illuminati that features an adjustable backlit keys with user-selected color choices of blue and red.
Aside from the illuminating keyboards in the dark, the Alchemy Illuminati also features 14 multimedia and Internet hotkeys, and is completely plug-n-play with windows XP and Vista but as usual, it shows no love for OSX.
The board measures 215mm x 495mm x 30mm and weights only 850g. The rubber-coated keys are designed to improve tactile feedback and its durable outfit are said to have reliable life span of 5 millions cycles. Other than that, OCZ has not released pricing or product availability on the Illuminati.
Update: we just confirmed pricing to be 34.99 USD/EUR = bargain :)
| Part Number | Description | UPC |
| PSD33G1066K | Patriot Signature 3GB Tri Channel Kit | 879699007405 |
| PSD33G1066KH | Patriot Signature 3GB Tri Channel Kit w/heat shield | 879699007764 |
| PSD36G1066K | Patriot Signature 3GB Tri Channel Kit | 879699007412 |
| PSD36G1066KH | Patriot Signature 6GB Tri Channel Kit w/heat shield | 879699007771 |
QNAP is on a roll lately, yet another model of theit NAS devices is palced into the market, this time a 4-bay Intel Atom-based NAS TS-439 Pro.
TS-439 Pro is designed for SMB/Business featuring low power Intel 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, and stylish industrial design. The TS-439 Pro supports dual Giga LAN, five USB 2.0 ports and two eSATA ports, RAID 0/1/5/6/5+spare configurations, Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration, and offers advanced functions such as iSCSI target service with Thin Provisioning, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, and SSL secure certificate etc.
Powered by Intel 1.6 GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, the TS-439 Pro delivers superior performance for multiple business applications. Advanced RAID configurations, including RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5+Spare, JBOD, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, and Online RAID Level Migration are all supported.
The TS-439 Pro supports file sharing across Linux, UNIX, Mac, and Windows platforms. Different applications are supported, e.g. file server, FTP server, printer server, web server, and encrypted remote replication. Also, windows AD (Active Directory) is supported to help create an easy-to-access environment and lower the maintenance cost. SSH login and web page SSL login enable users to transfer, store, and share data securely.
Especially designed for the ATI Radeon HD4870X2, the Accelero XTREME 4870X2 follows the sophisticated design of the Accelero XTREME series, offering the best cooling solution for this high-end VGA card.
Main features
Extreme Cooling Performance
Outstanding cooling comes from outstanding components. The Accelero XTREME 4870X2 is equipped with three 92mm PWM fans running from 1,000 to 2,000 RPM, generating 81 CFM airflow which allows the fans to remove the heat from the two GPUs efficiently. The eight-heatpipe design also improves heat dissipation and achieves 320 Watts cooling capacity. The result is significant
The latest download of Realtek's HD audio driver version available for Windows XP and Vista -it supposedly runs under Windows 7 too. Guru3D placed these drivers on their own download servers, for fast downloading.
This download offers both the Windows XP and Vista binaries, the files contain drivers for the 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions. All Realtek HD audio chips, which are common on many motherboards and in notebooks, are supported. The sound specialist still offers the Beta version 0.1 of the 3D Sound Back Utility which preserves or reactivates 3D sound effects such as Surround, reverb and stereoscopic effects of older games under Windows Vista. Since it is a beta version, the use is used at one's own risk only. You should backup your important files before using the software.
Here is an extract from the change log . Unfortunately improvements of performance are rare for new audio drivers. An uninstall problem in Windows 7 has now been fixed.
Driver Package R2.16
Realtek HD Audio Driver support all of Realtek HD Audio Codec in Vista/WinXP/Win2000/Win2003 .
Download: click here
