We review and test the KFA2 GeForce GTX 480 Anarchy edition. Roughly half a year after the introduction the first custom air cooler GeForce GTX 480 cards arrive on the market. One of NVIDIA's AIBs KFA2 immediately cocked their gun when Artic Cooling, or just 'Artic' these days, released their Acelero Xtreme Plus cooler. A massive three slot cooler with three 90mm fans capable of disposing 250W heat from the graphics card. It really is exactly what the doctor ordered as this is the very first cooler that can keep any GeForce GTX, factory overclocked, at roughly 50 to 55 Degrees C when fully stressed. The KFA GeForce GTX 480 as presented today falls within their Anarchy series graphics cards, the card is pre (factory) overclocked for you at 760 MHz on the core, 1520 on the shader processors and its memory is bumped towards 3800 MHz (effective). In this baseline configuration the card barely touches 55 Degrees C when fully stressed, while operating at very normal noise levels. It doesn't stop there though, thanks to the superb cooling we will take the product towards 900 MHz whilst remaining under 65 Degrees C at normal noise levels.

KFA2 GeForce GTX 480 LTD OC Anarchy gets tested

We review and test the KFA2 GeForce GTX 480 Anarchy edition. Roughly half a year after the introduction the first custom air cooler GeForce GTX 480 cards arrive on the market. One of NVIDIA's AIBs KFA2 immediately cocked their gun when Artic Cooling, or just 'Artic' these days, released their Acelero Xtreme Plus cooler. A massive three slot cooler with three 90mm fans capable of disposing 250W heat from the graphics card.

It really is exactly what the doctor ordered as this is the very first cooler that can keep any GeForce GTX, factory overclocked, at roughly 50 to 55 Degrees C when fully stressed. The KFA GeForce GTX 480 as presented today falls within their Anarchy series graphics cards, the card is pre (factory) overclocked for you at 760 MHz on the core, 1520 on the shader processors and its memory is bumped towards 3800 MHz (effective). In this baseline configuration the card barely touches 55 Degrees C when fully stressed, while operating at very normal noise levels. It doesn't stop there though, thanks to the superb cooling we will take the product towards 900 MHz whilst remaining under 65 Degrees C at normal noise levels.

Check out the full Guru3D review here.

SteelSeries announces Shift, a gaming keyboard that offers full customization and interchangeable keysets. The keyboard will be available soon for $89.99 (89.99EUR) and Shift Keysets will be sold separately for $24.99 (24.99EUR).

Interesting, as I did not expect this. AMD is to introduce more high-end AM3 CPUs in the fourth quarter of this year, including a new flagship six-core chip and its fastest quad-core model, according to X-bit Labs.

Specifications of the new chips:

• Phenom II X6 1100T: six-core Thuban, 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo, 9MB cache, 125W TDP
• Phenom II X6 1065T: six-core Thuban, 2.9GHz, 3.4GHz Turbo, 9MB cache, 95W TDP
• Phenom II X4 975: quad-core Deneb, 3.6GHz, 8MB cache, 125W TDP

In an attempt to boost performance of its six-core and quad-core processors in advance of the Holiday season, AMD intends to release two new six-core processors Phenom II X6 1100T (3.30GHz), which will be the fastest chip the company has to offer and Phenom II X6 1065T (2.90GHz), which will be the highest-performance six-core offering with 95W thermal design power. In addition, the company will introduce its most powerful quad-core Phenom II X4 975 chip with 3.60GHz clock-speed. The chips are specifically aimed at the higher end of the market and will rise performance bar for AMD central processing units.

Wow .. here's some news alright, could even be considered as some form of force feedback :) Sony issued a consumer alert today stating that certain counterfeit PS3 controllers may explode.

Counterfeit PlayStation

All new brand KFA2 is pushing the limits of the GeForce GTX 480 be releasing the  LTD OC Anarchy edition. The card will get the new Acelero Xtreme Plus cooler slapped on top of the PCB making the card not only silent, yet keeps it cool under 60 Degrees C when stressed.

To spice things up a little KFA2 will factory overclock the product for you as well and fires off a 760 MHz core clock frequency at the product.

Now we have had this product in-house for a couple of days already, and it even overclocks to 900 MHz with a little voltage tweaking. Tomorrow on Friday you can expect a full blown review on what is a very interesting product.

KFA2 is a very new company you guys, visit them here

AMD will follow Intel's and NVIDIA's lead by hosting its own conference. The event will take place on October 18-20, 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan.
For as long as we can remember, AMD's way of showing up what's the latest and greatest with the company was done through two ways: Analyst Days which are usually open for only a limited amount of press, and no tech partners etc - and piggy backing off "the other big blue" when that company brings press and analysts for its IDF show in San Francisco's Moscone Center. Looking through a looking glass, that was a wise use of resources for some, but it also sent a message that AMD is an "also ran" company, rather than one of industry heavy-weights and a leader in a lot of technology fields.

In the past couple of years, AMD organized a single gathering, every year in October time in Taipei. However, this time around the company decided to evolve the event into a fully-blown conference, which is going to be hosted between October 18-20, 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan [via BSN].

In a conference online representatives of GOG.com confirmed that its suspected marketing ploy of closing down was just that, a marketing plot. According to an online press conference today with GoG.com reps, 98 percent of the site's code has been rewritten for the relaunch that will allow six times the amount of users and traffic compared to the old version.

The game will still offer DRM-free downloads of PC games and will still not use a download client. The relaunch will happen on Thursday at 8 am Eastern time and will add the original Baldur's Gate and its expansion pack to the service on Thursday as well for $9.99. GoG.com execs also said during the online press conference that the ultimate goal is for GoG.com to be the 'number one alternative' to the Steam download service [via ggmania].

Some interesting news coming from NVIDIA. It seems that they have been hard at work on a new GPU architecture. Typically NVIDIA introduces a new architecture one every two years, they are certainly skipping a beat this time as the product might launch somewhere in 2011. According to Jen-Hsun Huang hundreds of engineers are already hard at work on new GPU architecture under codename "Kepler", expected to go to production this year and ship in 2011.

Huang noted that Nvidia doesn

The screen has a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution and features a 1,000:1 contrast ratio. Outputs include DisplayPort, DVI-D, HDMI and Component, and the screen is also equipped with a three-way USB 2.0 hub and an integrated cable manager.

This model is very expensive at $1,249, and optionally offers are a hood and blue eye colorimeter.

Lifelike Clarity
The LaCie 324i P

Samsung has rolled the marketing ball for the Galaxy Tab. It has put up a 2 minute promo video which shows what the device can do, all with lots of happy faces and horribly satisfied customers..

The video shows other features, all titled under the "It's Go Time" slogan.

Features presented:
- Widgets (probably the highlight feature of Android so far)
- Google maps navigation
- Music & Videos portal
- Emails
- 4 e-books apps (very cool)
- 32GB SD memory slot (yes! finally a freedom from storage tyranny)
- Stream to any monitor (yet another neat capability)
- 7 Hours battery life
- Front webcam for video chat
- Adobe Flash support for games and apps (well, surely that you won't have on the iPad).
 

I know what i am doing over the weekend ! Sid Meier's Civilization V is now available in stores and also unlocked and available for people who pre-ordered via Steam. The latest in the turn-based strategy series from developer Firaxis Games and publisher 2K Games also comes with a playable demo on Steam as well. There's no word yet if there will be a stand alone demo for the game.

For the graphics freaks among us (um yea all of you) the title has a full DX11 codepath for some interesting eye-candy.

Civilization V takes this definitive strategy game series in new directions with the introduction of hexagonal tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire. The brand new engine delivers a spectacular visual experience that brings players closer to the Civ world than ever, featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time. Wars between empires feel massive, as armies dominate the landscape and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before. The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging them to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield. In addition to the new gameplay features debuting in Civilization V, an extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements will also be available.

Sid Meier's Civilization V is rated E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) by the ESRB and is available today on the PC for $49.99. A playable demo is now available to download for free.

Additionally, the Sid Meier's Civilization V Digital Deluxe Edition is available at participating digital distribution sites for $59.99, and the Sid Meier's Civilization V Special Edition is available at select outlets for $99.99. For more information please visit www.civilization5.com [via ggmania].

Jen-Hsun Huang stated over at the GPU Technology Conference that CUDA (the general-purpose computing language for NVIDIA GPUs) will be ported directly to x86 chips. The approach developed with the Portland Group will let systems without NVIDIA cards handle the code. It will work best with multi-core processors and is seen as ideal for servers.

A timetable isn't yet available for when CUDA will be ready to make the switch or which platforms will have direct access to x86. Both Mac OS X and Windows have native CUDA support and may get the added support relatively soon.

The move is potentially a hedge against universal standards. Both Microsoft's DirectCompute and the more universal OpenCL don't require a graphics chipset to run. Concepts of general-purpose computing languages came about to help calculate physics and other advanced math in parallel rather than depend solely on a single stream of code.

If you don