Review: BFG Tech BFGR1000WPSU Power Supply
For those times, you just gotta have kilowatt of juice...

BFGTechnologies is a well known graphics card supplier whose products have been the premium choice of computer gamers for several years now. Today, however, a quick check of BFG’s website shows that the days of simply supplying high end video solutions are a thing of the past and they are spreading out into a number of areas including branding computer power supply units, or “PSUs.” BFG’s power supplies have to date typically been built by the Taiwanese company Topower. Topower has been a large supplier of PSUs under both their own label and through contract production for other brands since 1986. Today’s review unit the BFGR1000WPSU is another product of a partnership between Topower and a contract partner, in this case BFG Technologies.

Shhh, It’s a Secret
Also, it is worth noting that we are hardly giving away trade secrets here as to the manufacturer of the BFGTech branded power supply. A quick search of the Underwriters Laboratories number on the unit will tell you what you want to know very quickly about its origins.
Big Power for Power Users
The BFGR1000WPSU is on the upper end of today’s PSU market in both price and rated output, 1000w, making it a perfect fit for BFG’s target crowd the high end enthusiast. This also makes it a perfect fit for the first PSU review here at [H]ardOCP. Let’s begin by seeing what BFG has to say about their entry into the 1000w fray.


Read all about it here courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

FarCry2 Game Engine Demos
Grab a pair of adult diapers, this will make you wet yourself!

Two clips, one showing off a leafy hillside mansion, the other a city street and some trams. Just in case you needed further (a?) reason to start looking a little harder at DirectX 10.

Read and see it all here, courtesy of kotako.com

Eric

AMD's newest offering hope to compete against Intel

AMD Strikes back against Intel with new offerings and further Price cuts

AMD has been taking a beating lately; when Intel released its Core 2 microprocessor family it was priced and performed aggressively, too aggressively for AMD to adequately compete with at the time. AMD's marketing even went into remission as reviewers weren't even seeded for speed bumps to the Athlon 64 X2 line, the X2 5000+ and FX-62 were the fastest Socket-AM2 parts AMD sent out for review and they were the first ones we'd ever reviewed as well. Sometimes no PR is good PR, and an article around the launch of the Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 5400+ or 5600+ simply proclaiming that Core 2 is once again on top would only work in Intel's favor.

Quad FX came and went with limited interest from the enthusiast community, but the new platform signified a change in AMD's product lineup. Expensive FX series processors would no longer be simply speed bumps of mainstream CPUs with more cache, they would be reserved for a completely different socket as well and sold in bundles of two for Quad FX platforms. It's almost fitting that the FX line has been relegated to a platform that we didn't recommend as it makes the task of encouraging users to stay away from FX-class processors a little easier. And if having to move to a new socket wasn't reason enough to pick an AM2 processor over its FX counterpart, AMD's latest price cuts should seal the deal:

Read all about it here courtesy of anandtech.com.

Eric

Security Boot Camp!
The first part of a guide to secure and keep your pc running in tip top condition.

If you are experiencing even one of the following problems with your computer, then you obviously need a quick guide on improving the security of your PC, and keeping it secure.

• Your fast PC becomes so slow that even a snail with arthritis could outrun it.
• Annoying messages or advertisements keep popping up all the time.
• Annoying spam mails are clogging up your PC.
• You have a nagging feeling at the back of your head that someone is watching?
• Your software just simply don't work as it used to.

I'm going keep this guide simple, so that anyone can use it to keep their system security in tip-top condition. Security and privacy are common issues for all of us so my objective would be to keep it simple, with education as the main objective.

So, don't worry. I'm not going to delve into anything complex like 801.X authentication, KERBEROS, AES, auditing, EM attacks, traffic analysis or anything like that. This guide is squarely aimed at teaching you how to safely surf the Internet and keep your PC in good health.

To make it more accessible, we will break down this guide into several short, topic-specific sections. This will also help you zoom into the relevant section whenever you need to consult this guide. Here are the topics we will be covering.

Read all about it here, courtesy of techarp.com

Eric

HTPCs: A Victim of Evolution?
Once a "novelty", these specialty PC's will be the wave of the future.

The Evolving HTPC

Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) were poised to be the next must-have toy for technophiles. The idea was to have a single component to store and play your entire digital library of music, movies, and photos. The concept was nothing new. For several years, computers have been edging out TVs, stereos, and DVD players as the entertainment appliance of choice for college students confined to cramped dorm rooms. But the plummeting cost of high capacity hard drives and TV tuner cards, along with the ever-shrinking form factor size, led many average consumers to consider moving their PC from their desk to the den or living room.
Those consumers who made the leap soon realized that the reality didn’t quite live up to the fantasy. Users with vast MP3 collections, for example, quickly noticed that compressed music doesn’t sound so hot coming through full-size speakers. Getting it to sound right would mean countless hours of re-ripping CD’s (assuming they owned them in the first place) to their hard drive using a lossless audio codec (such as FLAC or Apple Lossless), which in turn made for significantly larger file sizes. An album’s worth of material now took up 500MB instead of 50MB.
DVD content, on the other hand, could be compressed down to about 1GB/hour of material using a codec like DIVX and would still look fine on most televisions. The prospect of having a video jukebox similar to what music lovers had been enjoying for years was very enticing.
Enter: High Definition Television (HDTV). Consumers who sprang for the big-screen experience encountered their own version of the MP3 phenomenon. Plagued with fuzzy image quality, compression artifacts, and washed-out colors, the DVD media’s inherent limitations suddenly materialized when blown up on a 40-inch+ screen.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

Hot in '07: Robots, guitars, more digital toys
What new and cool for 2007...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you think that souped-up cell phones, iPods and videogames have rung the death knell for toys, then think again.
A preview of some of the hottest new toys that will be unveiled for the first time next month at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York, show that toymakers are ready to battle for their turf with plenty of innovation and creativity

Some of the standouts include high-tech robots, guitars, MP3 players for babies and a singing "diva" Barbie. Jakks Pacific has a new laser tag game that actually shoots out a visible beam.

No doubt, these examples show how companies like industry leaders Mattel (Charts), Hasbro (Charts), Jakks Pacific (Charts) and others have accepted that kids are becoming more technology savvy at a younger age, and therefore are more inclined to discard their Barbie dolls and Power Ranger action figures for the cool MP3 player or camera cell phone.
Indeed, that trend is reflected in the fact that the $21 billion toy industry has struggled to grow sales in recent years.
Chris Byrne, an independent toy industry analyst, said the macro trend for the industry over the past two years has been this push toward tech innovation in traditional toys.

Read all about it here, courtesy of money.cnn.com

Eric

AMD's "frantic price cuts" may pressure Intel
I just love it when "price wars" start, because the consumer always wins...

(International Business Times) - Price competition is sparking up again between the world's largest chip makers, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD).

As Intel took a technological lead late last year, AMD responded with "frantic price cuts" after a weak start to its first quarter, Needham analyst Y. Edwin Mok said in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Mok contends AMD has cut prices three times in three weeks to spur demand.

"Intel will likely feel pressured to respond with cuts of its own," Mok contends, driving down profits for both firms. "We would avoid both names here, as believe lower prices and higher capital spending may continue to limit margins."

He says AMD is offering "very competitive pricing" to Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) in order to win more market share, and that as a result, is helping penetration at the computer maker.

"Clearly, this OEM is playing AMD and Intel off one another," said Mok.


Read all about it here, courtesy of ibtimes.com

Eric

ATI's Vista Drivers...
After 200 + man hours and a whole bunch of blood, sweat and tears...they are finally done.

Today I was able to speak with Terry Makedon, the head of software development for ATI/AMD; basically the man to hit up with Catalyst questions. He shared several interesting notes with me that I will discuss below.

First though, let's review what ATI's Catalyst team was able to get right and what was left out in our first look at gaming performance under Windows Vista. All of the DX9 titles we tested worked very well and showed performances very similar to drivers we used in Windows XP; a great achievement so early in the game. However, the OpenGL support in the 7.1 Catalyst driver had some performance issues; the initial problem of Prey not running at all was fixed with a slight installer change. There was also no support at all for CrossFire configurations and OpenGL applications. In all, those two issues were the worst we found in our testing of the Catalyst 7.1 Vista driver; but how would ATI's software team address these issues and the future of DX10?

Read all about it here, courtesy of pcper.com.

Eric

Top 10 Funniest Viruses, Trojans and Worms
Who said this stuff isn't funny?...

Virus, Trojan, Worm – the very words conjure up crossbones and skulls, the symbol of danger. These malicious programs are the scourge of the Internet, the proof that every innovative and useful technology has an equivalent downside – one that has the most adverse consequences at times. They steal your passwords, corrupt your files memory and OS, open backdoors to your systems, install quirky programs that replicate and spread, and generally cause your computer to behave abnormally.

But there was a time not so long ago when viruses were written just for the fun of it – not to create any real harm, but rather to see if they worked. The creators were usually extremely clever young programmers who spent most of their time in front of their computers. Though the files spread rapidly from one system to another, all they did was produce some funny faces or a cascade of raindrops on your screen. But then, these form just a drop in the ocean of malware that roams through the Internet.

Read all about it here, courtesy of businessintelligencelowdown.com

-Eric

GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
Small price, BIG perfromance...maybe the best vid card deal going?

ntroduction

It has been only three months since the hard launch of NVIDIA’s next generation GPUs, the GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS supporting DirectX 10. Three months in and NVIDIA is here to debut a third entry into their new lineup for the more price conscious. We have yet to hear or see what AMD/ATI has to offer in their next generation; everyone is waiting with bated breath for that one. While we wait, NVIDIA is basking in the limelight with the only GPUs available to the end user that support the latest DirectX 10 technology.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any DirectX 10 games to exploit that technology yet. In fact, it could be several more months before we are able to enjoy the benefits that DirectX 10 is promising to deliver. While we cannot test DirectX 10 performance or image quality in games now, we can still enjoy what the GeForce 8 series GPUs have to bring to the table in today’s games. The GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS simply offer the best gaming experience you can get on planet Earth right now in current DirectX 9 games.

While we wait for NVIDIA Windows Vista ForceWare drivers to mature (and boy do they need to) we can go ahead and test current gaming performance with current games in Windows XP. Currently Windows Vista offers no tangible benefits to gamers to upgrade at this moment. Sure, the only way you are going to benefit from DirectX 10 is going to be by upgrading to Windows Vista, but currently there are no DirectX 10 games, therefore the argument is moot. With that in mind we are going to evaluate today’s video cards with the good ole tried and true Windows XP.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

Desktop CPU Comparison Guide
Everything you need to know about today's processors.

Team ARP has updated their massive Desktop CPU Guide for your reading pleasure.

Currently covering over 585 desktop CPUs, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare up to 18 different specifications for each and every CPU!

Read all about it here, courtesy of Techarp.com.

-Eric

Apple's Windows Applications Aren't Ready For Vista
Why? Why I ask...

An Apple technical support document confirms that none of the company's Windows applications are yet compatible with Windows Vista.

News that iTunes for Windows isn't yet ready for Microsoft's new operating system emerged earlier this week, with Apple warning PC folk to hold off on a Vista upgrade pending the release of updates.

Today's tech support document names a range of additional Windows applications from Apple that don't support that new operating system.

These include: QuickTime, the iPod shuffle reset utility, Bonjour for Windows, AirPort for Windows, the iDisk utility, AppleWorks for Windows, and Apple Software Update for Windows. The stand-alone iPod updater for iTunes 6 for Windows also isn't ready for Vista.

No schedule for Vista compatibility has been given. Microsoft has said it has a team working with developers such as Apple to establish support for its new operating system.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ITWorld.com

-Eric