NGOHQ.com - News http://www.ngohq.com/ Read the latest hardware and software news en Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:02:02 GMT vBulletin 10 http://www.ngohq.com/images/en/misc/rss.jpg NGOHQ.com - News http://www.ngohq.com/ Law Firm Starts Xbox Live Class Action Investigation http://www.ngohq.com/news/16840-law-firm-starts-xbox-live-class-action-investigation.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:19:13 GMT http://www.ngohq.com/images/xboxban.jpg Texas-based law firm Abington IP is organizing a class action suit against Microsoft over the exaggerated ban on modified Xboxes. Personally, I believe that the measures Microsoft has taken are worse than piracy itself. Microsoft placing itself as judge...

Texas-based law firm Abington IP is organizing a class action suit against Microsoft over the exaggerated ban on modified Xboxes. Personally, I believe that the measures Microsoft has taken are worse than piracy itself. Microsoft placing itself as judge and jury, has decided, that in addition to Xbox Live banning, as collective punishment, to remotely sabotage all banned consoles, corrupting data and disabling hard drives.

Abington IP has published the following information: "An investigation is currently being conducted regarding business practices of Microsoft with respect to its recent cancellation of certain modified Xbox consoles for use with Xbox Live.

As has been reported widely in the media, tens of thousands of Xbox owners have had their modified Xbox consoles banned from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live. Although modification of Xbox consoles is *arguably* against the terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft "conveniently" timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game. This "convenient" timing may have resulted in more Xbox Live subscription revenues for Microsoft than it would have generated had these Xbox console bans taken place at some time before the release of Halo 3: ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Additionally, sales of both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (published by Activision) and Halo 3: ODST (published by Microsoft Game Studios) would likely have been greatly diminished had the Xbox console ban occurred prior to the release of these games.

Additional *reported* problems resulting from the bans include, but are not necessarily limited to:
* Disabling/altering Xbox functionality *NOT* associated with Xbox Live or piracy (HDD functionality for example);
* Disabling/altering Xbox functionality *NOT* associated with piracy (Netflix, game add-ons, music, and arcade games for example);
* Obtaining information from Xbox consoles without permission of the owner;
* Other problems/consequences associated with these bans have been reported here and elsewhere.

As an aside, PIRACY IS A LEGITIMATE CONCERN for Microsoft and other content producers. HOWEVER, (to use a poor analogy) Microsoft has chosen to use one of the most indiscriminate "weapons" in its arsenal in an effort to combat piracy -- as a result, use of this "weapon" has resulted in a great deal of collateral damage -- many people were affected who had nothing to do with piracy. Furthermore, Xbox console functions that have nothing to do with piracy were also affected or disabled. Details aside, Microsoft's bans could (and should) have been more measured.

If you are an Xbox Live subscriber, had your modified Xbox console banned from Xbox Live, were not refunded a prorated sum for the time left on your subscription or have experienced other problems as a result of being banned, and would like to participate in a class action against Microsoft, please submit your information below."

I'd like to wish them good luck. And if you would like to participate, here's the link to their website. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16840-law-firm-starts-xbox-live-class-action-investigation.html Internet Explorer 9 Preview http://www.ngohq.com/news/16837-internet-explorer-9-preview.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:43:40 GMT At the Professional Developers Conference 2009 day two keynote, Microsoft president Steven Sinofsky showed off a very, very early version of Internet Explorer 9, the next major version of Microsoft's now-venerable web browser. This was an unexpected development, given that Internet Explorer 8 shipped earlier this year and was just included with Windows 7, which shipped last month. But Microsoft clearly wanted to demonstrate that it would continue advancing IE at a rapid pace, meeting criticisms of the current product and--the real surprise--delivering on some unexpected functionality.

What we don't know about IE 9 is a much broader discussion than that about what we do know. It's early yet, so that's OK, but I do want to set some expectations: The very early IE 9 preview build we saw this week at PDC did not contain any hint at all about the future user interface or other functional aspects of the browser. In fact, the build used in the keynote, and the one I saw separately in a meeting, lacked any kind of user interface at all. It's just a bare window frame that's designed to let the rendering engine do its thing and show off the few bits of functionality Microsoft is now publicly committing to.

"This is just a preview, an early look at where we are with IE 9 for developers," IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch told me during a briefing. "We're focusing on three very specific areas: Performance, interoperability standards, and hardware acceleration."

Anyone hoping that Microsoft would do something radical like adopt a competing web rendering engine (like WebKit) or even more radical, like dropping IE all together (and yes, those people are out there) will likely be confused by this early focus. And judging from what I've seen from people's reactions to the keynote demonstration online, there's further confusion about what was announced. I'd like to take this time to try and communicate what's really happening.

Read the entire article in SuperSite. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16837-internet-explorer-9-preview.html ATI Tray Tools 1.6.9.1435 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16836-ati-tray-tools-1-6-9-1435-a.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:40:39 GMT ATI Tray Tools is a free utility that runs in the system tray and provides easy right-click access to all of your ATI video card's crucial settings. You can change anisotropic filtering and antialiasing levels in Direct3D and OpenGL, adjust image quality, turn on/off special driver features, or simply just fool around with clock settings (core and memory speeds). It uses minimal system resources and isn't intrusive. Quite handy and quite a small download.

• Support for ATI Control Center
• Support for TV Out and displays with profiles
• Options to change Theater mode together with TV Out
• Overclocking with templates including FAN Control
• Automatic Overclocking when application required 3D mode
• Temperature monitoring
• Artifact Tester with ability to find maximum stable clocks for GPU and Memory.
• Game profiles with desktop shortcut creation.
• Direct3D settings with templates, GUI form and tray popup menu
• OpenGL settings with templates, GUI form and tray popup menu
• Hardware low level color correction
• Hardware tweaks. Setting PCI latency timer
• Radeon Information Show information about memory type, active rendering pipe lines and more
• System wide Hot Keys. (Load profiles any profiles/work with colors/run any application)
• Refresh Lock system with ability to set separate refresh rates for each resolution.
• Tweak for overriding Pixel and Vertex Shaders
• Speed improvement tweaks for Anisotropic/Trilinear Filtering. Support for Catalyst A.I.
• Support for system options, VPU Recover, DMA Copy and so on
• Support Display Rotation.
• Support for MMC applications
• Support for HYDRAVISION applications
• Monitoring Graphs. (GPU/Env temperature. GPU/Mem speed, Main CPU Usage).
• Unique OnScreen Display module with ability to show information about speed and temperature. Support Plugins API.
• A lot of useful things. Like Save/Restore Desktop icon positions and more
• Audio Recorder
• Screenshots system
• Powerful Plug-Ins support. (API for VC++/Delphi included)
• PCI Register Set. Allow to program any registers in any PCI device at start up time. For advanced users only!
• Source code for plugins as examples.
• Shared memory allow other application to retrieve information about clocks, temperatures and general 3D settings.

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16836-ati-tray-tools-1-6-9-1435-a.html Mionix Launches Naos 5000 Gaming Mouse http://www.ngohq.com/news/16835-mionix-launches-naos-5000-gaming-mouse.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:40:19 GMT Mionix, the Swedish manufacturer of professional high-end gaming accessories today unveiled their new gaming mouse, Mionix Naos 5000. Ergonomically designed and stuffed with new and innovative features, Mionix Naos 5000 not only stands out from the crowd, it sets new standards when it comes to... Mionix, the Swedish manufacturer of professional high-end gaming accessories today unveiled their new gaming mouse, Mionix Naos 5000. Ergonomically designed and stuffed with new and innovative features, Mionix Naos 5000 not only stands out from the crowd, it sets new standards when it comes to comfort, tracking capacity and customization options.

"When we started this project our goal was to create a fully adjustable and innovative gaming mouse with unique features. It has been very challenging and we put in a lot of effort to archieve our goals. Mionix Naos 5000 is a big step forward to become one of the world's leading manufacturer of gaming accessories with a wide range of gaming products that gamers can identify themselves with. We are very proud to be the first Swedish manufacturer of gaming accessories to develop a gaming mouse”, said Carl Conradsson, Mionix.

Features
• Truly ergonomic design
• Maximum grip
• Balanced weight tuning system
• 5040 dpi laser sensor
• 128 kb built-in memory
• Customizable LED light system
• S.Q.A.T - Surface Quality Analyzer Tool
• 3 steps customizable dpi in-game adjustment
• 7 programmable buttons
• In-game profile switch
• Adjustable polling rate

Where Innovation Meets Performance
The design of Mionix Naos 5000 is interesting due to the fully support to all five fingers. It has been under development since the beginning of this year and has been tested by gamers, both professionals and amateurs in order to find the perfect ergonomic grip.

The new innovative weight tuning system is completely new to the market. Gaming mice with traditional positioned weight tuning systems sometimes gets heavy in the back. In order to prevent this, Mionix Naos 5000 has a centralized weight tuning system that improves the weight distribution of the mouse. Another stunning feature is the S.Q.A.T (Surface Quality Analyzer Tool), a smart tool that measures the tracking quality of the mousepad surface.

Mionix Naos 5000 carries only carefully chosen high-end components. The 6 integrated LEDs supports extensive color options and can be configured from the software among other functions such as adjustable lift-distance, dpi sensitivity, macros and much more. Mionix Naos 5000 also has a built-in memory that manages up to 5 profiles, when you go on LAN just plug in your mouse and start immediately, no driver or other software needs to be installed.

A Star Has Been Born
This prominent gaming mouse is named after the star Naos, a blue super giant and one of the brightest stars in our galaxy. Naos means “ship” and is enough powerful to create comet tails and huge clouds of auroras visible from Earth. Naos is constantly moving away from its original position in the constellation of Vela and it spins about 100 times faster than our sun. Since its birth it has covered a distance of 400 light-years. No one knows exactly why Naos has such a high rotation speed, but an explanation to this phenomenon lies in the gravitational interaction between many other stars.
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]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16835-mionix-launches-naos-5000-gaming-mouse.html GPU-Z 0.3.7 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16834-gpu-z-0-3-7-a.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:20:19 GMT GPU-Z is graphics sub-system information and monitoring utility that provides information on installed graphics hardware, their various specifications, provides real-time updates on their parameters such as clock-speeds, temperatures, fan-speeds, etc., all in a neat, tabbed user-interface, backed... GPU-Z is graphics sub-system information and monitoring utility that provides information on installed graphics hardware, their various specifications, provides real-time updates on their parameters such as clock-speeds, temperatures, fan-speeds, etc., all in a neat, tabbed user-interface, backed by our overclock validation system and an extensive video card BIOS database.

• Added Infotips for sensors.
• Fixed crash when ATI ULPS CrossFire enabled.
• Added full support for ATI HD 5970 (Hemlock).
• Added full support for NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 (GT215).
• Added "ULPS active" note to CrossFire status when ULPS active.
• Fixed overclocks via CCC not showing correctly.
• Added checkboxes to show availability of CUDA, PhysX, OpenCL and DirectX Compute.
• Improved memory type detection for GT 216, GT 218.
• Added voltage monitoring support for HD 5770.
• Disconnected fan now shows correctly in sensors (when detectable via hardware).
• Improved accuracy of ATI GPU load monitoring.
• Added detection for ATI RV380/RV530 cards relabeled to NVIDIA 9400/9500/9600 GT.
• Added support for NVIDIA 9300 SE, NVS450, GT 240, GTS 250M, G102M.
• Added support for Intel G41.

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16834-gpu-z-0-3-7-a.html EVGA, where did your lifetime warranty go? http://www.ngohq.com/news/16833-evga-where-did-your-lifetime-warranty-go.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:18:08 GMT Ever since premium service vendors appeared on the IT market, one of main selling point was the level of service. When vendors such as Corsair, BFG, EVGA, OCZ appeared and offered lifetime warranty and excellent end-user support, most of our Taiwanese sources started to disclose their business... Ever since premium service vendors appeared on the IT market, one of main selling point was the level of service. When vendors such as Corsair, BFG, EVGA, OCZ appeared and offered lifetime warranty and excellent end-user support, most of our Taiwanese sources started to disclose their business models and claimed that operations such as EVGA cannot succeed due to low margins.

More than half a decade later, EVGA turned into quite a large operation, and with acquisition of EPoX engineering team the company started to produce brilliant motherboards as well. Recently, the company launched several engineering projects of their own, such as Classified motherboards and graphics cards [GTX285 Classified can take up to 600W of power] or GTX 275 Co-Op and there was no telling that we were impressed with the level of commitment.

Read the entire article in BSN. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16833-evga-where-did-your-lifetime-warranty-go.html Fraps 3.0.2 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16832-fraps-3-0-2-a.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:16:40 GMT Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. Fraps (derived from Frames per second) is a benchmarking, screen capture, and real-time video capture utility for DirectX and OpenGL applications. It is commonly used to determine a... Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. Fraps (derived from Frames per second) is a benchmarking, screen capture, and real-time video capture utility for DirectX and OpenGL applications. It is commonly used to determine a computer's performance with a game, as well as record gaming footage.

• Fixed inability to put machine to sleep with Fraps running.
• Fixed bug preventing people from updating the benchmark timeout value.
• Fixed problem restoring Fraps window to previous position upon startup.
• Fixed AUDIODG.EXE consuming large amounts of CPU for some user.

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16832-fraps-3-0-2-a.html Facebook Becomes Third Most Popular Video Site http://www.ngohq.com/news/16831-facebook-becomes-third-most-popular-video-site.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:14:48 GMT YouTube might still reign supreme in online video, but the big surprise coming out of Nielsen's VideoCensus release on Thursday is that Facebook is now the world's third most popular place to view video online.

According to Nielsen's latest VideoCensus numbers, which look at the number of video views in October, YouTube serviced over 6.6 billion streams. In a distant second, Hulu offered up over 632 million video streams. But it was Facebook with over 217 million streams in October that easily beat out Bing, Yahoo, and several other online sites. In September, Facebook was ranked tenth in total streams.

In October, Facebook placed second in total number of unique viewers: over 31.5 million. YouTube had almost 106 million unique viewers during October. Hulu placed fifth with 13.4 million viewers.

According to Nielsen, the amount of time Web users spent viewing videos on social-networking sites increased 98 percent year over year. In October 2008, users watched 503.8 million minutes of video; they watched 999.4 million video minutes in October this year. That growth far outpaced growth in number of online video streams as a whole, which grew 26 percent year over year.

Read the entire article in Cnet News. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16831-facebook-becomes-third-most-popular-video-site.html Microsoft Office 2010 Beta http://www.ngohq.com/news/16829-microsoft-office-2010-beta.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:27:44 GMT With Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, your people get a wide range of powerful new ways to do their best work from more places – whether they’re using a PC, smartphone or web browser. From insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook, to new server integration capabilities that... With Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, your people get a wide range of powerful new ways to do their best work from more places – whether they’re using a PC, smartphone or web browser. From insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook, to new server integration capabilities that make it easier for everyone to track, report and share vital information, Office Professional Plus 2010 offers the complete package through familiar, intuitive tools.

Download this file in Microsoft's website. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16829-microsoft-office-2010-beta.html S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Benchmark http://www.ngohq.com/news/16827-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-call-of-pripyat-benchmark.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:16:24 GMT http://www.ngohq.com/images/CoP.jpg GSC Game World has released a benchmark version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. This benchmark is based on one of the ingame locations. The testing process includes four stages, those utilizing various weather and time of the day settings (day, night,...

GSC Game World has released a benchmark version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. This benchmark is based on one of the ingame locations. The testing process includes four stages, those utilizing various weather and time of the day settings (day, night, rain, bright sun). In order to test your system thoroughly, the benchmark is provided with a number of presets and options including different versions of DirectX (9.0, 10.0, 11), screen resolution, antialiasing and etc.

If you like competitions, pay attention to the special Test and Rate feature they included into this benchmark. The Test and Rate mode allows you to compare your performance results with those of other players. Be assured, when sending your test results, they collect only the data explicitly visible in the query, it has no commercial or harmful purpose with this test.

Independently of the results, every participant will receive a present of personalized web banner with the rating place and overall achievement marked on it. Names and test results will be placed in the official rating boards that will launch publicly once GSC Game World receives the first 500 test results.

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16827-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-call-of-pripyat-benchmark.html AMD Launches Radeon HD 5970 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16823-amd-launches-radeon-hd-5970-a.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:25:54 GMT AMD today announced the flagship installment in the award-winning line of graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest card ever created. The new ultra high-end model joins a growing list of the world's first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology.

Designed to support the most demanding PC games at ultra-high resolutions and image quality settings, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 has unlocked overclocking potential, granting access to every bit of power the card has to offer through ATI Overdrive technology. Now shipping from retailers and available in the channel, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 also launches today in new Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktop PCs.

Record-breaking overclocking capabilities take Dragon Platform technology to the forefront for users that demand the utmost control in performance tuning. The unrivaled overclocking capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 are enabled by the unique design of the card, which features advanced fan and vapor chamber technologies and a fully vented exhaust to keep the card cool and ensure overclocking headroom using ATI Overdrive technology. The formidable combination of AMD Phenom II processors, AMD 7-Series chipsets, and ATI Radeon HD graphics deliver comprehensive tuning, immersive entertainment, and outstanding value.

Enthusiasts can expand their field of view, ATI Radeon HD 5970, driving up to three displays at once, delivering an unmatched maximum resolution of 7680x1600 and creating an unparalleled game play experience. For the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX technology leverages the power of multiple graphics processors to deliver even more game performance in 20 of today's popular titles when using ATI Eyefinity technology, with more to come.

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card delivers nearly 5 TeraFLOPS of compute power, ensuring superior performance in the latest DirectX 11 games, as well as in previous versions of DirectX and OpenGL titles. With the world's most powerful graphics core built on 40nm process technology harnessing up to 3,200 stream processors, gamers can enjoy DirectX 11 games now, such as EA Phenomic's BattleForge and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Call of Pripyat from GSC Game World, with many more titles on the way, including:

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 from EA DICE
• DiRT 2 from Codemasters, arriving December 1, 2009,
• Aliens vs. Predator from Rebellion,
• Update to The Lord of the Rings Online from Turbine,
• Update to Dungeons and Dragons Online Eberron Unlimited from Turbine.

New features and functionality of ATI Stream technology allow users to harness the ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card to enhance their computing experience, helping to improve the performance of enabled media, entertainment and productivity applications. ATI Stream technology and the HD 5970 support both Direct Compute 11 and OpenCL industry standards for application acceleration.

Delivering full-fledged performance when needed, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 also leads in power efficiency by automatically powering down unused GPU resources when not in use, resulting in idle desktop power consumption as low as 42 watts.

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is supported by a wide range of add-in-board companies, including ASK, Asus, Club 3D, Diamond, Gigabyte, High Tech, MSI, Sapphire, Tul/Power Color, Visiontek and XFX.

To celebrate the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 and to conclude a series of contests created to celebrate AMD's 40th anniversary year, AMD is announcing the third and final contest designed to give back to AMD fans and supporters. Starting today, fans of AMD on Facebook will be able to enter to win one of 10 Microsoft Xbox 360s or one of 10 Wiis from Nintendo. One gaming system will be given away every weekday for four weeks.

"With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we've cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group. "With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers."

"The extraordinary performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a perfect match for the Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktops," said Frank Azor, senior product planning manager, Dell Gaming. "By offering this level of graphics capability as well as the visual and performance enhancements made possible by DirectX 11 hardware, gamers will benefit from enhanced image quality enabling an incredibly intense gaming experience." ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16823-amd-launches-radeon-hd-5970-a.html ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review http://www.ngohq.com/news/16822-ati-radeon-hd-5970-review.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:33:14 GMT Just last year, ATI snatched title of world's fastest graphics card from NVIDIA with their dual-GPU Radeon HD 4870 X2 from NVIDIA's single-chip GeForce GTX 280. This prompted a fierce response from the green camp, and it came in the form of the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295. The GeForce GTX 295 was fantastic card in many aspects, because not only was it blazingly fast, it was also launched at a lower price than the competition. That's a huge double whammy in our books.

Lately, the tables have been turned. ATI has launched their new Radeon HD 5000 series to great success (although we hear availability of these cards are poor, no thanks to yield issues at TSMC), and NVIDIA is still sitting on the sidelines with nothing really noteworthy to show yet (besides the still shrouded Fermi).

The Radeon HD 5870 might be the fastest single GPU yet, but it is not the undisputed single fastest graphics card. While it is certainly a match for the GeForce GTX 295, it doesn't exactly beat it.

More firepower is needed and that's exactly what ATI is giving. Deviating from the usual "X2" suffix, the new Radeon HD 5970, codenamed Hemlock, is ATI's biggest, boldest and most powerful graphics card yet. The Radeon HD 5970 essentially squeezes two Cypress XT chips onto a single GPU, and as such the card boasts a whopping transistor count of 4.3 billion, 3200 stream processors, 160 texture mapping units and 64 raster operator units. This makes the new Hemlock card, the most powerful graphics card in existence.

Read the entire article in Hardware Zone. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16822-ati-radeon-hd-5970-review.html ATI Catalyst 9.11 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16820-ati-catalyst-9-11-a.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:52:02 GMT AMD has released a new build of their Catalyst software suite. This particular software suite updates both the AMD Display Driver, and the Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. The AMD Catalyst... AMD has released a new build of their Catalyst software suite. This particular software suite updates both the AMD Display Driver, and the Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power, performance, and reliability. The AMD Catalyst software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability. Catalyst 9.11 brings the following features:

• Support for Radeon HD 5700 Series
• GPU Acceleration for Adobe Flash Player 10.1
• High Quality Downscaling for Video Transcoding MSE
• Numerous Bug Fixes

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16820-ati-catalyst-9-11-a.html Nvidia ForceWare 195.55 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16819-nvidia-forceware-195-55-a.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:43:39 GMT Nvidia Corporation has released a new beta ForceWare driver. This driver supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 series and ION GPUs on Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, 2003, MCE, Vista, 7 and their 64-bit flavors as well. This driver adds support for GPU acceleration on Adobe Flash Player 10.1, GeForce... Nvidia Corporation has released a new beta ForceWare driver. This driver supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 series and ION GPUs on Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, 2003, MCE, Vista, 7 and their 64-bit flavors as well. This driver adds support for GPU acceleration on Adobe Flash Player 10.1, GeForce GT 240, OpenCL 1.0, CUDA Toolkit 3.0 and SLI support for new titles such as: Borderlands, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 10. This driver also includes numerous bug fixes including improved performance for Need for Speed Shift.

Download this file in our downloads section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16819-nvidia-forceware-195-55-a.html New ATI Stream OpenCL Platforms http://www.ngohq.com/news/16818-new-ati-stream-opencl-platforms.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:44:50 GMT AMD announced developers can now acquire fully configured ATI Stream technology-enabled development platforms from Colfax and Exxact. These new systems provide developers and researchers with complete development platforms, leveraging the latest high-performance AMD GPU architecture along with... AMD announced developers can now acquire fully configured ATI Stream technology-enabled development platforms from Colfax and Exxact. These new systems provide developers and researchers with complete development platforms, leveraging the latest high-performance AMD GPU architecture along with AMD’s OpenCL 1.0-compliant ATI Stream SDK 2.0 to deliver up to 2.72 TFLOPS of compute performance.

The systems feature a mix of high-performance AMD CPUs and chipsets, as well as the ATI RadeonTM HD 5800 Series graphic processors. Colfax and Exxact Corporation both excel in offering customers highly customizable, powerful computing solutions in a range of form factors. Both companies work with AMD to address highly compute-intensive applications that span from the data center to the desktop, and ATI Stream technology helps these solutions to maximize the entire system’s processing capabilities.

“Developers have been very enthusiastic about the ATI Stream SDK and its support for industry standard OpenCL on both GPUs and CPUs,” said Patricia Harrell, Director of Stream Computing, AMD. “These high-performance platforms from Colfax and Exxact Corporation help developers to immediately realize the benefits of ATI Stream technology.”

“AMD and Colfax have a history of working together to deliver leading-edge GPU computing solutions that help accelerate application performance, ultimately enabling fast development and time to market,” said Gautam Shah, President and CEO of Colfax International. “The new Colfax platforms deliver all the tools developers need to create and optimize applications using ATI Stream technology.”

“AMD and Exxact have a history of working together to deliver leading-edge GPU computing solutions that pack an incredible amount of performance into a range of form factors,” said Jason Chen, Director of Business Development, Exxact Corporation. “Enabling our customers to have access to development platforms optimized for OpenCL combines that performance with much needed open standards, helping to maximize the hardware for an engaging experience for the end user.” ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16818-new-ati-stream-opencl-platforms.html The Pirate Bay Tracker Shuts Down for Good http://www.ngohq.com/news/16816-the-pirate-bay-tracker-shuts-down-for-good.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:22:19 GMT Today marks the end of an era, as The Pirate Bay team announces that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is shutting down for good. Although the site will remain operational for now, millions of BitTorrent users will lose the use of its tracker and will instead have to rely on DHT and... Today marks the end of an era, as The Pirate Bay team announces that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is shutting down for good. Although the site will remain operational for now, millions of BitTorrent users will lose the use of its tracker and will instead have to rely on DHT and alternative trackers to continue downloading.

In the fall of 2003, a group of friends from Sweden decided to launch a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. It soon became one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, coordinating the downloads of more than 25 million peers at its height.

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Read the entire article in TorrentFreak. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16816-the-pirate-bay-tracker-shuts-down-for-good.html Fedora 12 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16815-fedora-12-a.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:18:18 GMT Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that provides users with access to the latest free and open source software, in a stable and easy to manage form. We strongly believe in the bedrock principles that created all the components of our operating system, and because of this we guarantee that Fedora will always be free for anybody, anywhere, to use, modify and distribute.

Fedora is more than just software, though. It is a community of contributors from around the world who work with each other to advance the interests of the free culture movement. Everyone is invited to join, and no matter what your skills are, we have a place for you in our community! The Fedora community includes software engineers, artists, system administrators, web designers, writers, speakers, and translators -- all of whom will be happy to help you get started.

Download this file in Fedora's website. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16815-fedora-12-a.html Russia Bans Modern Warfare 2 http://www.ngohq.com/news/16814-russia-bans-modern-warfare-2-a.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:15:01 GMT While most retailers in the U.S. and Europe have tolerated the violent content, it has led some gaming sites, including Gamespot, to question whether the content pushed the envelope too far by allowing players to assume the role of murderous terrorists. Now the Russian government has laid the... While most retailers in the U.S. and Europe have tolerated the violent content, it has led some gaming sites, including Gamespot, to question whether the content pushed the envelope too far by allowing players to assume the role of murderous terrorists.

Now the Russian government has laid the smack down on Infinity Ward/Activision over the scene. Angry about the depiction of their country, the government has temporarily banned the game, ordering its recall from all store shelves.

In trying to appease the Russians, Infinity Ward has released a patch which removes the airport level from the Russian version of the game. It hopes to rerelease the patched game in Russian stores as soon as next month. The new version has to first get past Russian censors, though. Despite the game's reportedly unfavorable depiction of (some) Russians, the game has proven surprisingly popular in Russia, as it has in the rest of the world.

Read the entire article in DailyTech. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16814-russia-bans-modern-warfare-2-a.html Nvidia GeForce GT 240 Review http://www.ngohq.com/news/16813-nvidia-geforce-gt-240-review.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:08:47 GMT Currently Nvidia is releasing new versions of their lower end graphics card series. All new cards are based on Nvidia's first 40 nm graphics processors. The GeForce GT 220 uses the GT216 GPU, while the G 210 uses the GT218 processor. Today marks the release of the GeForce GT 240 - Nvidia's first GDDR5 memory card. It uses the GT215 GPU which is made in a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. While the GT 210 and GT 220 were position in the low-end segment, the GT 240 will offer performance similar to the GeForce 9600 GT, yet considerably below the again GeForce 9800 GT.

Nvidia lets partners build a wide range of different configurations, 512 MB or 1 GB of memory, GDDR3 or GDDR5, choice of DVI, VGA, DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. MSI has sent us their N240GT which comes with 512 MB of GDDR5 memory and a slightly higher memory clock of 1800 MHz.

Read the entire article in TechPowerUp. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16813-nvidia-geforce-gt-240-review.html Left 4 Dead 2 Now Available http://www.ngohq.com/news/16812-left-4-dead-2-now-available.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:06:45 GMT Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the availability of its zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead 2, at retail outlets across North America (360, PC) and worldwide via Steam (PC). Retail... Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the availability of its zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead 2, at retail outlets across North America (360, PC) and worldwide via Steam (PC). Retail outlets around the world will launch the title later this week.

Exclusively available for the Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 promises to set a new benchmark for co-operative action games and become one of 2009's marquee titles. The title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaws, frying pans, axes, baseball bats, and more.

With the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.

Finally, with new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original, featuring more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, new Survival maps, and the new competitive game mode, Scavenge, all available at launch.

In-game screenshots are available in our screenshots section. ]]> News Regeneration http://www.ngohq.com/news/16812-left-4-dead-2-now-available.html