In the server segment there already is 6-core up and running under codename Dunnington, however it seems that Intel will release a six core consumer processor based on the Nehalem (Core i7) processor architecture later this year. This Socket LGA1366 processor would arrive in roughly the same timeframe as the Lynnfield (Core i5) and Intel P55 chipset based motherboard releases.

From what we heard, after a BIOS update all X58 motherboards currently available are going to support this new processor. Though the product is Nehalem based .. the word is not yet final if it'll be tagged under the Core i7 family name.

Good times, it is nice to finally see some activity on processor development again.

Hey Benelux folks !

Here's a gentle reminder that our Dragon contest (win a high-end AMD PC) is ending this friday ! If you reside in the Benelux then be sure to jump onto this competition. And if you win, you'll meet the Guru himself as I will be personally delivering this PC at your doorsteps !

Here is the prize:

• Motherboard: MSI 790FX GD70
• CPU: AMD Phenom X4 955 3.2 GHz
• Scythe Mugen II CPU cooler
• Gpu: MSI R4890-T2D1G (880 core / 999 mem).
• Memory: Patriot 4GB DDR3 memory
• DVD-RW
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 640Gb HD
• 850 Watt Corsair PSU 
• Gigabyte Poseidon 310 Chassis
• Cardreader
• Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit registered (installed)

Check out all details here on the contest page. Please give the sponsor tones.be a visit.

WD introduced its new 4 terabyte capacity My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage systems  provide an ideal blend of high performance and power conservation. The new My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage systems are available now at select retailers and the WD online store.

The new 4 TB My Book Studio Edition II external storage system's dual-drive RAID 0 configuration and high-speed interfaces deliver high performance for creative professionals, workgroups, small offices and anyone looking for fast data transfer. The system offers four interfaces: eSATA and FireWire 800 for maximum performance as well as FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 for maximum flexibility. The eco-friendly system uses WD's hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology for power savings and cool and quiet operation.

• Massive 4 terabyte capacity;
• Extra-fast performance with four interfaces (FireWire 400/800, eSATA, USB 2.0);
• Cool, eco-friendly operation with WD's drives with WD GreenPower Technology that consume approximately one-third less power than standard dual-drive external storage systems and efficient convection cooling architecture and power-saving mode and designed without a fan to run quietly;
• Quad interface with connections for ultra-fast eSATA and FireWire 800 and for flexibility and convenience FireWire 400 and USB 2.0;
• Automatic and continuous backup software;
• User serviceability, enabling owner to open the enclosure and replace the drive inside;
• Capacity gauge to see at a glance how much space is available on the system; and,
• 5-year limited warranty.

MSRP for My Book Studio Edition II with 4 TB is $649.99 USD.

Very silently eVGA introduced a GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition graphics card, which is its fastest offering to Mac users. The card uses a standard PCI-Express interface available with Intel x86 based Mac Pro workstations, and provides all the features of NVIDIA's fastest GPU.

The card is obviously similar in all it's ways to its PC counterpart, using a reference design for the PCB and cooler, reference clock speeds of 648/1476/2484 MHz (core/shader/memory), and 1 GB of GDDR3 memory across a 512-bit interface. It bundles the necessary power dongles, and packs system software for Mac. Two dual-link DVI connectors support two Apple Cinema displays with resolutions of 2560 x 1600 each. The OpenGL 3.0 acceleration backs the advanced drawing features of Adobe CS4 applications.

EVGA is pricing this at US $449.99, slightly higher than the GTX 285 2 GB FTW graaphics card for PC.

It is good to see NVIDIA release more and more notebook drivers lately. As such today they updated its driver package for notebooks to WHQL version 186.03. This is a reference driver that supports GeForce 8M, 9M, 100M, and 200M-series notebook GPUs. Please read below for the full list of bugs fixed and performance improvements version 186.03 has to offer.

• This driver supports GeForce 8M, 9M, 100M, and 200M-series notebook GPUs. Refer to the Products Supported tab for the list of supported GPUs and notebooks. Some notebooks are not supported by this release.
• Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See nvidia.com/cuda for more details.
• Expands GPU hardware acceleration for the NVIDIA Video Encoding library to GPUs with less than 32 cores. Applications using this library include CyberLink PowerDirector 7, Nero Move it 1.5, Loilo SuperLoiloScope MARS, and CyberLink MediaShow Espresso.
• Adds support for Ambient Occlusion - the newest NVIDIA Control Panel feature to offer enhanced 3D gaming realism exclusively to GeForce GPUs.
• Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185 drivers vs. Release 179 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
  - Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  - Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
  - Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
  - Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
  - Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror's Edge with antialiasing enabled
• Includes full support for OpenGL 3.0.
• Supports NVIDIA PhysX hardware acceleration on GPUs with a minimum of 256 MB dedicated graphics memory (this driver package installs NVIDIA PhysX System
• Software v9.09.0203).
• Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3. Download these FREE PhysX and CUDA applications now!
• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL.
• Supports NVIDIA SLI Multi-monitor support, giving you the ability to use two monitors with your GeForce graphics cards in SLI mode. Learn more here.
• Includes numerous bug fixes.
  

DOWNLOAD GeForce Release 186.03 for Notebooks for:

1. Windows Vista 32-bit
2. Windows Vista 64-bit
3. Windows 7 32-bit
4. Windows 7 64-bit

As many as 100,000 websites where destroyed by attackers who targeted a zero-day vulnerability in a widely-used virtualization application.

Technicians at UK-based Vaserv.com were still scrambling to recover data on Monday evening UK time, more than 24 hours after unknown hackers were able to gain root access to the company's system, Rus Foster, the company's director told The Register. He said the attackers were able to penetrate his servers by exploiting a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs.

"We were hit by a zero-day exploit" in version 2.0.7992 of the application, he said. "I've heard from other people they've been hit by the same thing."

Foster said he's been unable to reach anyone at LXLabs to discuss the suspected vulnerability. The Register has also received no response to inquiries sent to the company, which according to its website is located in Bangalore.

According to Foster, data for about half of the websites hosted on Vaserv was destroyed all at once sometime Sunday evening, shortly after administrators noticed "strangeness" on the system. The attackers had the ability to execute sensitive Unix commands on the system, including "rm -rf," which forces a recursive delete of all files.

Some 50 percent of Vaserv's customers signed up for unmanaged service, which doesn't include data backup, Foster said. It remains unclear of those website owners will ever be able to retrieve their lost data, he said. As a result, at least half the websites that were hosted on the site remain offline.

"Since last night, I've had probably 40 phone calls from clients saying 'Why is my website down,'" said Daniel Voyce, a web developer for Nu Order Webs who uses Vaserv to host customer sites. "It's making me look bad."

Voyce said the hackers, given the high level of server access they gained, were likely able to intercept a wealth of sensitive data stored on Vaserv's servers. Voyce said his customers are safe because all sensitive information was encrypted [via the register].

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed this literally hot new Black Edition product from MSI product already, yet our conclusion was somewhat spicy related to temperature and noise levels we had seen on the GTX260 Lightning graphics card.

MSI was absolutely convinced we had received a defective card and submitted a new one with the question if we wanted to have  second go at it. So we did, and it certainly made a massive difference. Temperatures of this graphics card are now over 30 Degrees C lower and the noise levels fine.

So today we bring you a review in the MSI GeForce N260GTX Lightning 1792 MB, but then revised and revisited !

What is the  GeForce N260GTX Lightning 1792 MB ? Well, it's a graphics card with  twice the standard GeForce GTX 260 GDDR3 memory summing up to an incredible 1792 MB, it utilizes a Twin Frozr cooling with heatpipes, dual slot heatsink and two big fans. The card design is Phase PWM, with 8 phases are reserved for the GPU and 2 phases for the memory. Furthermore, this graphics card has important overclocking features like V-Check points to measure the voltage.

Check out the full review right here.

There aren't that many companies out there that offer liquid cooling products which you can purchase separately. There's a handful of them.

One of them is the German based Alphacool. Recently they introduced a new CPU block called the Alphacool HF 38 Niagara.

This new water-block is designed for Socket 1366 processor, aka Nehalem aka Core i7. A high-end liquid cooling CPU block priced fairly. Let's check it out at the URL right here.

For those that do not like to download the full versions of the software mentioned below, please be aware thatw e have upload the upgrade patches onto our file-server now as well.

June 2009 updates are available for 3DMark03, 3DMark05, 3DMark06, 3DMark Vantage, PCMark05 and PCMark Vantage.

This updates the system information detection component to the latest version for each of these benchmark products. This fixes numerous issues related to hardware detection in the benchmarks.

Benchmark version numbers will remain the same and scoring will not be affected. Older versions of the installer and benchmark will continue to work as before.

Download Patches:

  PCMark05 v1.20 June 09 upgrade patch
  PCMark Vantage v1.01 June 09 upgrade patch
  3DMark03 v1.01 June 09 upgrade patch
  3DMark05 v1.30 June 09 upgrade patch
  3DMark06 v1.10 June 09 upgrade patch
  3DMark Vantage v1.01 June 09 upgrade patch

If you like to download the full versions, click here.

Guru3D WARNING - the new download files include a pre-selected toolbar installation and can be considered ad-ware ! Please unselect it prior to installation.

It is said that AMD is to cut their prices of the Radeon HD 4890, 4870, 4850 up to as much as US$50.

This move is probably to lower the current inventory of their high end GPUs to make way for the RV870 series in September.

Price of HD 4890 card will be lowered from US$249 to US$199 while HD 4870 will be priced at US$149, down from US$199. Lastly, HD 4850 which we already saw the prices plummeting due to HD 4770 shortages will go below US$100 this time.

Of course these are MSRP prices, meaning in e-tail they'll be even lower.

NEC let us know that they intrduced two new LCD displays available in the U.S. today. These models are to match the recent release of similar models in Japan. The LCD2490WUXi2 and the LCD2490W2 both sport 24-inch screens and feature some delicious IPS panels.

These displays have a much better image quality than TV or PVA screens and allows them to show 96.7% of the sRGB color space. Professional graphics editors could definitely make use of these.

Other features include auto-brightness, 12-bit color lookup tables, ambient light sensors a 320cd/m2 brightness, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, VGA and DVI inputs and more. a SpectraView color calibrator comes with the LCD2490W2 display as well.

You can get both models by the end of the month for $1,099 and $1,299, respectively.

Presenting at the 2009 WWDC keynote, Apple has announced the iPhone 3GS. Said to use the same exterior design as the 3G, the interior is nevertheless described as "entirely new," able to load apps two to three times faster, and render websites as much as three times faster. OpenGL ES 2.0 rendering is present for games, and the phone's HSDPA reception is now rated at 7.2Mbps instead of 3.6Mbps.

A new three-megapixel camera with autofocus is present, which should also have better ISO sensitivity, as well as macro capabilities. Video capture has been confirmed, rated at 30fps in 640x480 resolution with audio. Videos can be shared via e-mail, MMS, MobileMe and YouTube.

A new voice-dialing function is enabled by holding the Home button, which pops up the voice control and enables "call" or "dial" commands. The control scheme can also be used to play iPod audio, by speaking an artist or playlist name, or saying "play more songs like this" to spawn a Genius playlist. Asking "what's playing now" will read out current track info.

Other features include a magnetometer with a compass app, and hardware support for Nike+, as well as data encryption including iTunes backups. Battery life has been raised to nine hours for Wi-Fi, 10 hours for video, 30 for music, 12 hours for GSM calling and 5 hours for 3G data.

A 16GB model will cost $199, while a 32GB phone will be $299. Black and white colors will be options for each; the iPhone 3G is expected to remain available in 8GB form for $99. The 3GS ships June 19th in regions including the US, Canada, France and Germany.

Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

TriGem's US label Averatec today introduced a new flagship all-in-one PC, the D1200. As the largest model, it's treated as a media center with a 25.5-inch, 1080p display and an internal ATSC TV tuner to pick up over-the-air HD signals. Combined with 802.11n Wi-Fi, the system is treated as a hybrid PC and TV combo that can be used either as a kitchen PC or a combination unit that can handle both roles in a very tight space.
The desktop strikes a relative balance between price and speed.

It has just a 2.5GHz Pentium dual-core for its processor but counterbalances this with 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. An internal DVD burner, 2-megapixel webcam and gigabit Ethernet fill out its feature set. Averatec should have the system available on Tuesday for $999.

But that looks great though.

We have a threefold of Top tens for you today where you can check the best selling games of the last week of May. 

NPD's Top Ten (5/24 - 5/30)
1. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis / $20
2. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King / Blizzard / $39
3. Spore / EA Maxis / $40
4. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest / Blizzard / $40
5. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard / $20
6. Empire: Total War / Creative Assembly / $49
7. Reel Deal Slots Adventure / Phantom EFX / $20
8. Civilization IV: The Complete Edition / Firaxis / $40
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Exp. Pack / EA Maxis / $20
10. Left 4 Dead / Valve / $29

Direct2Drive's Top Ten (5/24 - 5/30)
1. BioShock / 2K Boston, 2K Australia
2. Civilization IV / Firaxis
3. X-Com Complete Bundle (UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep, Interceptor, Enforcer, Apocalypse) / Take-Two (Publisher)
4. The Sims 3 (Pre Order) / The Sims Studio
5. Delta Force: Xtreme 2 / NovaLogic
6. Sid Meier's Railroads / Firaxis
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis
8. Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword / Firaxis
9. Civilization IV: The Complete Edition / Firaxis
10. Sid Meier's Pirates / Firaxis

Steam Weekly Top Sellers (by revenue, as of 5/24 - 5/30):
1. Team Fortress 2 / Valve
2. Killing Floor / Tripwire
3. Left 4 Dead / Valve
4. Counter-Strike: Source / Valve
5. Plants vs. Zombies / PopCap
6. The Orange Box / Valve
7. Unreal Deal Pack (Unreal Gold, U2, Unreal Tournament, UT2004, UT3) / Epic
8. Unreal Tournament 3 Black / Epic
9. Assassin's Creed / Ubisoft Montreal
10. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare / Infinity Ward

Sometimes we stumble over a gadget that just catches the eye and though not necessarily related to the main focus of Guru3D, a USB powered microwave deserves some attention. Especially, from geeks like us, don't you think?

Called Beanzawave and made by Heinz, it measures 7.4'' in height, 6.2'' in width and 5.9'' in depth. "Mr Andrews, the managing director of GAMA Microwave Technology, said it is possible to 'tune' the radio-frequencies to provide the best results with any small product. 'It is possible to heat a pie, a burger, a cup of soup or tea in quick time,' he said. 'There is the option of powering it with lithium ion batteries that would make it completely portable, which would be a help to fishermen, campers or sportsmen.' Mr Andrews said he created the oven after being approached for help by Heinz, who wanted a portable microwave that would work with its Snap Pots.

'The single serve microwavable Snap Pots allow people to quickly heat and eat. We are therefore delighted to be working with Gordon as the Beanzawave is the perfect partner to Heinz Snap Pots, allowing a nutritious snack to be whipped up anywhere in just 60 seconds.'

Heinz said that any decision on whether to support production will depend on the feedback it receives from the public."

With the pending release of Windows 7 and thus the highly anticipated DirectX 11 most of us expected NVIDIA to deliver at least one DX11 class graphics card roughly in the Windows 7 release time-frame. As it looks right now, that's not going to be the case. In fact it might not even be 2009 at all.

Earlier last week at Computex ATI already hinted about a DX11 class graphics card under codename EVERGREEN. That product will definitely be available in Q4 2009.

Though an unfounded rumor, it seems that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is reponsible for leaking information about the fact that NVIDIA is redesigning it's future GPUs. As a result they'll be launched probably in the first half of 2010. The reasoning behind a redesign is not known. Mind you that this is a rumor, not a fact. I can't stress that enough.

Either way, for AMD this means good news, as they'll be the first with a DX11 class adapter on the market.

Of course the success of DX11 will be highly dependant on actual DX11 class games. According to ATI ATI developers like Codemasters, Phenomic, Electronic Arts, Emergent and Rebellion will be amongst the first to release DirectX 11 class games.

Over at Computex in Taiwan last week ATI had a press-conference in which they took the moment and inform press that they are ready for the DirectX 11 onslaught released along with Windows 7.

During the presentation ATI showed off a DX11 demonstration from the Microsoft DX11 SDK. ATI's first DX11 ready graphics cards will hit the market later this year already, and ATI made the bold promise that at the very least they'll be earlier than 'their competition'.

What was interesting is that the demo showed the codename of the GPU, which is EVERGREEN. A name rather familiar in Taiwan and Asian countries.

We have highlighted a couple of slides from the ATI slide deck / presentation. If interested, have a browse.

The Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship (GO OC) 2009, the world