5 Ocak 2008 Cumartesi

Microsoft Windows XP SP3 RC Does NOT Support High Definition Audio

In Windows XP, if we need to run a High Definition Audio (HDA) device, we would have to install the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver. This is either the KB835221 (for SP1) or the newer KB888111 (for SP2 or SP1).

However, this does NOT work for the latest Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate Release. If you've already tried installing the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate v3264 with a High Definition Audio (HDA) device in your computer, I'll bet you have encountered problems with the audio drivers as I did.

When you try installing the KB888111 which works for SP1 and SP2, it will not work for Service Pack 3, at least for the current SP3 RC v3264. Instead, you will be prompted with a message saying that the current service pack installed is newer than the fix you are trying to apply. Even the older KB835221 does not work.

It looks like Microsoft "forgot" to add the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) driver for High Definition Audio devices in the latest release candidate of the Windows XP Service Pack 3. We hope they will not forget to add it into the final release. Fortunately, all is not lost. There is a way to fix this problem for the current release candidate.

You can try tinkering with the Universal Audio Architecture driver's INF file to make your Windows XP SP3 think that the driver is meant to be installed on Service Pack 3. redxii from MSFN forum did just that and created a modified KB888111 driver which is available for download. Before I tried it out, I found that the feedbacks were all positive!

I tried it on my Windows XP SP3 system and it worked! Just download the 7z (7zip) file or zip file below, extract it and then right-click at the ? mark at the Device Manager where your High Definition Audio (HDA) device is located and reinstall the driver by pointing to the folder you extracted the files to. After that's done, install the audio driver for your motherboard. That's it!

If you need the fix (or add-on, as it's called), you can download it from any one of the two links below. Have fun with Service Pack 3!

Download (right-click and save) :

Fix for KB888111 for Windows XP SP3 RC v3264 (Original)
Fix for KB888111 for Windows XP SP3 RC v3264 (Mirror)

Linux Mint 4.0 Beta "Fluxbox", 4.0 Alpha "Debian"

mint Clement Lefebvre announced the release of Linux Mint 4.0 Fluxbox CE Beta 028, the first ever release of a Fluxbox-based Linux Mint Community Edition, which will be followed by a stable release: "The first BETA of Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna Fluxbox Community Edition was released. Maintained in Romania by Shane Joe Lazar, this edition replaces Gnome with Fluxbox to provide a much more lightweight operating system." Follow the announcement and the release notes for related information. Also announced is Linux Mint 4.0 Debian Edition Alpha 023, labelled as Alpha to show that it is a preview and won't be followed by any Beta or stable release: "We ported our desktop on top of Debian Testing and the result is very interesting. This Alpha release comes as a non-installable liveCD and gives an idea of how Linux Mint would behave if it was to switch base and adopt Debian as its supporting technology." The announcement and the release notes. Download: LinuxMint-4.0-Fluxbox-BETA-028.iso (513MB, MD5) and LinuxMint-4.0-Debian-ALPHA-023.iso (695MB, MD5).

Notepad++ 4.7.2

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. It also gives the extra functionality to define a user's own language for the syntax folding and syntax highlighting. You can print your source code in color. It allows a user to edit the different document in the same time, and even to edit the same document synchronizely in 2 different views. It supports full drag and drop.

The programming languages supported by Notepad++ are:
ASP, Ada, ASCII art, Assembly, AutoIt, BAT, C, C#, C++, Caml, CSS, doxygen, FORTRAN, HTML, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, KiXtart, Lisp, Lua, makefile, Matlab, Objective-C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PostScript, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Unix Shell Script, Smalltalk, SQL, Tcl, TeX, Verilog, VHDL, VB/VBScript, XML

This project, based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence.

Here are the features of Notepad++ :
• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N' Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmark
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
Macro recording and playback

Changes in version 4.7:
1. Make the "recovery system" for 3 mandatory xml files (config.xml, langs.xml and stylers.xml) to prevent the fail loading due to the corrupted files.
2. Extend plugin capacity - add the Scintilla external lexer capacity.
3. Add the ability to hide the tab bar with "-notabbar" flag in command line (ie. Notepad style).
4. Column selection is remembered now while switching among the files. As well this settings will be stored in the next session.
5. Add 2 Commends (beside Toggle Comment) Comment (Ctrl+K) and Uncomment (Ctrl+Shift+K).
6. Change "UTF8 without BOM" menu item behaviour.
7. Fix the hiding bug while launch time because of change of environment from duel monitors to mono monitor.
8. Remove vista UAC warning for GUP. Add "Update Notepad++" menu item.
9. Add NPPM_HIDETABBAR and NPPM_ISTABBARHIDE plugins messages.
10. Add NPPM_GETNPPVERSION message for plugin system.
11. Enhance the horizontal scroll feature.
12. Change Find in files behaviour : all the hidden directory won't be searched (for example : .svn).
13. Add build date-time in about box.
14. Fix a bug where a file with 2 or more consecutive spaces gives problems with sessions and history.
15. Fixe the problem where opening a file when in save as dialog saves the wrong file.
16. Add "Clean Recent File List" menu command.
17. Enhance full screen feature (F11).

Included plugins :
1. TexFX v0.24a
2. NppExec v0.2 RC2
3. Spell Checker v1.3.1
4. Quick text v0.02
5. Explorer plugin v1.6.1
6. Hex editor v0.84
7. Base64 encoder/decoder v1.2
8. FTP_synchronize v0.9.5.0
9. NppExport v0.2.5.0

Homepage - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

Size: 1.95 MB

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Vista Manager 1.4.1

Yamicsoft Software Vista Manager - The Best Tuning and Optimizing Utility for Windows Vista!
Windows Vista is the new Operating System for home users and professionals alike. Windows Vista brings clarity to your world, so you can more safely and easily accomplish everyday tasks and instantly find what you want on your PC.
Vista Manager is the powerful software, All-in-One utility to optimize, tweak, tune up and clean up your Windows Vista. It bundles more than 20 different utilities in one! Get access to hundreds of hidden options to improve system's performance and security, clean registry, junk files and defrag Registry, optimize network to speed connection, Mange the startup entries with Windows, change wallpaper automatically, and many other miscellaneous utilities. It is an excellent companion for Windows Vista..

Features and Benefits of Vista Manager :
- Information. Get detailed system and all hardware information on your system; show all detailed information of running processes and threads on your machine; Vista Manager offers 1-clicking cleans your system automatically.
- Optimizer. Tweak your system to improve windows startup and shutdown speed; tweak your hardware to increase system speed and performance.
- Cleaner. Find out which files or folders engross your disk space and shown with chart; Find and clean junk files to increase Hard Disk space; Duplicate Files Finder can scan your computer for files with the same size, name and modification time; Registry Cleaner can easily checks your registry and repair incorrectly linked registry entries, automatically remove invalid entries; Registry Defrag rebuilds and re-indexs your registry to reduce application response time and registry access time.
- Customization. Control what is started on Windows startup; edit context menus of mouse Right-Clicking; customize system desktop, menus, toolbar and notifications settings; automatically change your desktop wallpaper on background.
- Security. You can improve desktop, menus, Windows logon securities, and enable numerous hidden performance options of system, disable system updates and error reports; hide and restrict to access drives, specify which applications are not allowed to be executed on your computer; encrypt/decrypt and shred files, change the location of system folders; Privacy Protector can maintain your personal privacy by eliminating the tracks that you leave behind; create lots of randomization password once.
- Network. Optimize your Internet connection speed, manage all shares items; tweak your internet Explorer easily.
- Misc. Utilities. Show the collection of Windows utilities; help you find out the installation key of Windows, Office products; shutdown your PC or remind you automatically.

Changes in Vista Manager 1.4.1, 1/4/2008:
- Junk File Cleaner updated to v2.0
- Startup Manager updated to v2.0
- Duplicate Files Finder updated to v2.0
- Disk Analyzer updated to v2.0
- Service Manager updated to v2.0
- Registry Cleaner updated to v3.0
- Wallpaper Changer updated to v2.0
- Registry Defrag updated to v2.1

Homepage - http://www.winxp-manager.com/vistamanager/index.html

Size: 5.39 MB

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Webyog SQLyog 6.15 Enterprise Edition

Webyog SQLyog 6 with HTTP/ HTTPS/ SSH Tunneling is a easy to use, compact and very fast graphical tool to manage your MySQL database anywhere in the world. SQLyog was developed keep in mind the necessities of all who use MySQL as their preferred RDBMS. Whether you enjoy the control of handwritten SQL or prefer to work in a visual environment, SQLyog makes it easy for you get started and provides you with tools to enhance your MySQL experience.

Enhanced Connectivity Options:
- HTTP/HTTPs Tunneling
- SSH Tunneling

Migration Tools:
- Wizard Driven Migration Toolkit
- Import task can be scheduled for transferring data at regular intervals

Synchronization Tools:
- Structure Synchronization
- Checksum based Network Efficient Data Synchronization
- Data Synchronization can be scheduled

Other Power Tools:
- Scheduled Backups
- Notification Services
- Job Manager

Developer / User Productivity:
- HTML Schema Documentation
- Shortcuts to quickly generate SQL statements and paste object names
- Learn MySQL by looking at the SQL generated by SQLyog
- Multi-tab Query Editor and Result-set Editor
- Multiple Query Execution
- Multi-threaded Query execution with option to stop long running queries
- SQL Templates
Excel-style grid interface to view/update resultsets
- Multi-format Blob editor
- View data in Grid/Text Mode
- ResultSet/Data Export to CSV/XML/HTML
- Full Support from 3.23.38 to the latest 5.x
- Support for all MySQL table handlers
- Excel friendly resultsets/table-data export to clipboard/file
- Dialogless table and resultset editor

DBA Productivity:
- Restoring / Importing large SQL dumps
- MySQL 5.x objects support
- User Management
- Managing hosted MySQL
- Connection Manager
- Index Management
- Relationship/Foreign Key Manager
- Reorder Columns
- Copy objects to another Host with single click
- Table diagnostics
- Flush Tools
- Object Browser
- Creating/dropping database
- Optimized for managing Hosted MySQL
- Profiling
- Multiple database connections

Technology:
- Turbo Speed MySQL Management. Uses native MySQL C API - the fastest way to communicate with MySQL server
- 100% keyboard friendly
- Small compact binary
- Minimal use of Registry - easy migration of User Preferences by dragging and dropping config files.
- Non-cluttered look and feel, ability to show/hide panes

Features of SQLyog version 6.0:
* SQLyog is now fully UNICODE-compliant.
* Advanced GUI Query Builder.
* Filtering of data from the context menu of a cell in the GRID of DATA tab.
* Sorting on multiple columns in DATA tab

Changes in SQLyog 6.15:
Bug fixes (as compared to 6.14):
* Fixed a bug with migration of a Access 'text' type that could occur when when more/many such columns were migrated.
* When the content of an editor tab was changed using 'search and replace' the tab was not properly 'flagged' internally as changed. As a consequence the (*) indicator for this 'change-status' would not display and program would not prompt user if changes should be saved.
* fixed a bug in validating the SP/VIEW/... name while creating. A symptom was that an empty name could be used.
* With a TINYINT having (-1) as default Structure Sync would use COLLATE specification and thus generate an invalid statement when connected to a MySQL 4.1.x server.
* When expanding/collapsing the folder tree in the Object Browser by clicking the "+" and "-" in a very fast manner, data could be copied to the editor when it should not.
* When connected to MySQL 3.23 and 4.0.x < 4.0.18 'reorder columns' could generate invalid SQL with a Primary Key definition.
* Improper message was returned when invalid or non-existing path was used for exporting a dump.
* After an unsuccessfull import (because of syntax error in the file for instance) the file handler was not properly free'd. As a result next attempt would fail with 'Error saving .. ' message. Only HTTP-connections were affected.

Miscellaneous:
* "SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0" is now default where it applies (exports, data sync).
* The display for F5/F9 shortcut settings in 'preferences' was changed. 'reverse' setting now means that F5 executes! It is 'reversed' as compared to what help .. keyboard shortcut tells.
* This build does not use 'urlencode' in HTTP header. This is probably not the final solution, but we realize that it is more rare that it is needed compared to the situations where it won't work!

Homepage - http://www.webyog.com

LimeWire Pro 4.14.12 / LimeWire Pro 4.15.3 Beta

LimeWire - The Fastest P2P File Sharing Program on the Planet, running on the Gnutella Network. It is open standard software running on an open protocol, free for the public to use. LimeWire allows you to share any file such as.mp3s, .avis, jpgs, tiffs, etc., allows you to search for multiple files at the same time, available in several different languages, and is most famous for its ease-of-use and cross-platform compatibility. Limewire is written in Java, and will run on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and other computing platforms.

1. NO BUNDLED SOFTWARE OF ANY KIND! No spyware. No adware. Guaranteed.
2. Firewall to Firewall Transfers. Since about 60% of users are currently firewalled, this feature greatly increases the amount of content on the network.
3. Faster network connections. Using new "UDP Host Caches", LimeWire starts up and connects faster then ever before!
4. Universal Plug 'N Play. UPnP support allows LimeWire to find more search results and have faster downloads.
5. iTunes Integration. Windows users can now take advantage of LimeWire's iTunes integration.
6. Creative Commons Integration. LimeWire now recognizes OGGs and MP3s licensed under a Creative Commons License.
7. "What's New?" feature. Users can browse the network for the most recent content additions.
8. Search drill down results. Searches in LimeWire now immediately display the artists, albums and other information that fully describes files.
9. Proxy support. Users can now use web proxies to route their to protect their identity.
10. Support for International searches and international groups. Users can now search in any language, and LimeWire ensures that a user will be connected to other users with their own language to aide international users to receive search results in their native language and to find content from sources that are close to home.

LimeWire still has the following great features:
- Ease of use - just install, run, and search
- Ability to search by artist, title, genre, or other metainformation
- Elegant multiple search tabbed interface
- "Swarm" downloads from multiple hosts help you get files faster
- iTunes integration for Mac and Windows users
- Unique "ultrapeer" technology reduces bandwidth requirements for most users
- Integrated chat
- Directly connect to a computer
- Browse host feature--even works through firewalls
- Added Bitzi metadata lookup
- International versions: Now available in many new languages
- Connects to the network using GWebCache, a distributed connection system
- Automatic local network searches for lightning-fast downloads
- Support for MAGNET links that allow you to click on web page links that access Gnutella

Release History

Homepage - http://www.limewire.com

Vista Codec Package 4.5.6

With Vista Codec Package installed, you won't need to install any other codec or filter. Many user suggested default settings are implemented. It does not contain a media player. It does not associates filetypes. With this package installed you will be able to use any media player (limited only by the players capabilities) to play DVD's, movies and video clips of any format. Streaming video (real and quicktime) is supported in web browsers. Visit the homepage to get a 64bitAddon which enables xvid, divx and DVD playback in Vista's MediaCenter.

Vista Codec Package does not associates filetypes. With this package installed you will be able to use any media player (limited by the players capabilities) to play DVD's, movies and video clips such as quicktime, realmedia, avi, mpeg, Flv, swf, wmv, etc. Streaming video is supported in most web browsers. By default you shouldn't need to make any adjustments to enjoy your media content immediately.

Users have the ability to choose what is installed using the public redistributable and after an unattended install, you can select to remove specific portions without removing the entire package. Future releases will recognize previous releases and perform upgrade installations.

Changes in version 4.5.6 on January 4th, 2008:
- update Haali components
- update FFDshow components (multicore patched)
- improve x64 compatibility (AC3)
- update FLV, MP4 filters

Homepage - http://www.jtow.net/users/triess/

Size: 12.2 MB

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Download Vista Codec Package x64 Components 1.3.4

Opera 9.50 (Kestrel) Build 9721 Beta

Opera started out as a research project in Norway's largest telecom company, Telenor, in 1994, and branched out into an independent development company named Opera Software ASA in 1995. Opera Software develops the Opera Web browser, a high-quality, multi-platform product for a wide range of platforms, operating systems and embedded Internet products.

Opera is known as the fastest and smallest full-featured browser, a first choice for people using older PCs and Windows 95 and a brilliant alternative to the default IE from Microsoft. Opera, first of all, is client World Wide Web, that is the program for extraction of the information from WWW as the documents created with help HyperText Markup Language (language of a marking of hypertext HTML).
Low requirements to resources of system. Opera will work even on 386 computer about 6 MB of operative memory. MDI the interface. You can open without special expenses of memory any quantity of windows inside one working window, having chosen thus a tabulared or cascade mode.

• The world's fastest...now even faster. Even though it's hard to imagine, we made Opera faster.
Following the release of Opera 9 last year, we re-wrote Opera's rendering engine for the coming Opera 9.5 release. As a result, Opera 9.5 contains more than a year's worth of speed, standards and performance improvements. Some enhancements include:

Some enhancements include:
* Faster and less-memory intensive ECMAscript engine
* A greatly improved layout algorithm
* The font-rendering speed is improved significantly, along with the tiling of bitmaps
* More responsive user interface

Internal benchmarks show up to 50 percent increase in speed compared to the previous core version in Opera 8. But, performance is more than just showing Web pages faster. Performance is about making your browsing experience more enjoyable and productive. In the past, we introduced much-loved and powerful features like Tabbed browsing, Mouse gestures, Fast Forward and Rewind, Speed Dial all designed to make you get more out of your time browsing the web. With Kestrel we add another powerful feature to this family:

• Synchronize: The preview
Log in just once. Then access your stuff anywhere, anytime.

A new Internet revolution is under way and millions of people are now surfing their favorite Web sites every day. But they're not just browsing on their computers. Instead, they're browsing from practically any device mobile phones, TVs, game consoles, PDAs. In fact, Internet users today tend to browse from various devices throughout the day.

• Full History Search
Have you ever read something interesting, but then later struggled to find your way back to that same small portion of a Web page? Now you can say goodbye to that problem. With Opera 9.5, we introduce full history search - search the complete Web pages you visited, but without requiring you to bookmark them.
Unlike previous and other browser history searches which only look at the URLs of the pages you have visited full history search searches the actual content of the Web pages you have visited. When typing a keyword, Opera 9.5 will automatically search the text of Web pages in your history.
Moreover, we have directly integrated Full History Search into the URL field of the Opera 9.5 browser, making it extremely easy and quick to find what you're looking for.

• Status bar with Zoom and Image control
Opera's excellent zoom function and the bandwidth saving control of images are now made easily available on the Status bar. Tip: Add your own buttons like the developer console to the Status bar.

• Restore closed windows and changes in Speed Dial
Kestrel has an improved version of the much loved trash-can feature by adding support for opening closed windows, not only the closed tabs. You can also use the undo function now for Speed Dial.

• Improved BitTorrent™ performance
We added support for BitTorrent Peer Exchange to allow you to connect to more download hosts and improve your download speeds.

• Platform integration
We worked to make Kestrel feel even more integrated with your platform. Mac users can expect a nice new visual look and feel, while Opera for Linux will add a QT4 build, so you can easily adjust your skin to match the desktop. 64-bit Linux/FreeBSD packages will also be available.

• VoiceOver support
Kestrel adds support for Apple's screen reader "VoiceOver" found in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This allows visually impaired Opera users to more easily use all of the features in the browser. For more details, please see: www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover

• Skin
Our skins in Opera 9.5 feature improved conformance to Apple Human Interface Guidelines. We have also added a new native skin with a brushed metal appearance, for those of you in to that sort of look.

Mail improvements
Kestrel features great stability and performance to Opera's integrated email client, M2. We've added a new mail backend and new IMAP support. M2 is also much faster than in previous versions of Opera.
Note to existing M2 users: Please be aware that you will need to install this version on top of your existing Opera version to use this version for mail. Opera will then re-index all your email, something which can take several minutes if you have thousands of emails.

Changes in Opera 9.50 Build 9721 Beta:
# Fixed getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect
# [Bug 299224] Fixed broken account settings when adding a new IRC/Chat account
# [Bug 303604] Fixed Link icon in the toolbar not showing
# [Bug 304214] Fixed crasher on emptying trash
# [Bug 303586] Fixed spatial navigation
# Sync'ing new bookmarks in folders works again.
# Importing *.mbs files now works again. Recursively importing is still work in progress.

Homepage - http://www.opera.com

Size: 4.94 MB

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----------------------------

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Player Classic 6.4.9.1 Revision 2008-01-04

Media Player Classic is an extremely light-weight media player for Windows. It looks just like windows Media Player 6.4, but has many additional extra features. MPC has, for instance, a built in DVD player with real-time zoom, support for AVI subtitles, QuickTime and RealVideo support (requires QT and/or Real player); built-in MPEG2/SVCD/DVD codec.
It also supports SVCD/CVD selectable subtitles and lots more. The best part about Media Player Classic is the ability to modify the filters when playing your favorite video files.

Changes in 6.4.9.1, 2008-01-04 (SVN revision 29):
* MPC: The INITIAL value of the setting "Auto-load subtitles" will now default to OFF when DirectVobSub is detected as installed and to ON when DirectVobSub is not found.
* MPC: Restored the subtitle database functionality and updated it with a working URL.
* MPC: various small changes.

Homepage - http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Size: 1.94 MB

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Nvidia Readies Dual-Chip, Single-Chip High-Performance Graphics Cards

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 9800 GTX, GeForce 9800 GT Approaching

Nvidia Corp., the world’s largest designer of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs), reportedly plans to update its lineup of expensive graphics cards with at least two new offerings later in the quarter. The most powerful of the novelties will carry two graphics chips, whereas another will feature single-chip designs.


The new top-of-the-range graphics card by Nvidia is called GeForce 9800 GX2 which is based on two yet unknown 65nm graphics chips with 128 unified shader processors inside. The board, according to [H]ard|OCP web-site, will be 30% faster compared to Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra and will enable 4-way multi-GPU configurations. The novelty will have 256 stream processors in total, but will rely on driver support to demonstrate its potential, just like any multi-GPU solutions.

The least expensive solution – Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX – is projected to be released in late February or early March and is claimed to be based on one GPU. The new model 9800 GTX will replace existing GeForce 8800 GTX, thus, should offer performance on par with GeForce 8800 Ultra and support 3-way SLI configuration. In addition, there will be a the least expensive version of GeForce 9-series called GeForce 9800 GT and due in March or April.

Based on information reported earlier, Nvidia GeForce 9800-series graphics processors will support DirectX 10.1 feature-set along with powerful video encoding engine and post-processor.

Even though the new GeForce 9800 GX2 is projected to offer performance only 30% higher compared to Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra, whereas the new GeForce 9800 GTX should outperform the 8800 GTX by a similar margin, the new lineup represents a great threat to ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2.

At present Nvidia sells GeForce 8800 Ultra for $849 in retail, whereas the GeForce 8800 GTX costs about $549 - $649. Provided that the new solution by graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices offers performance of the GeForce 8800 Ultra, AMD’s new dual-chip graphics card will have to cost the same amount of money as the new GeForce 9800 GTX. Unfortunately, dual-chip configurations offer performance advantages over a single-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 only in cases when its driver can take advantage of multi-GPU ATI CrossFireX technology. Therefore, in all other cases the GeForce 9800 GTX will be faster compared to ATI’s dual-chip solution, making it very hard for ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 to finds its place on the market.

Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.

3 Ocak 2008 Perşembe

Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 Review

Introduction:

An atom is the smallest particle known to man and if that atom is split, it can cause devastation in such great proportion its effects will last for years. Since the creation of the atom bomb in the 1940s, man has been trying to harness the energy of the atom and use it for sources of energy other than devastation. We have been living in the atomic age for over sixty years and man still has much more to learn in order utilize it to its fullest potential. Since most of the population is aware of what an atom can do on a nuclear level, many manufacturers name or use the word Atomic in their products to either express that said product has incredible power or is small in stature, or sometimes a combination of both.

The Sapphire HD 3870 Atomic Edition is a product that uses the word atomic, but is it to profess that the Sapphire card is fast and should blow the other video cards in its class out of the water? The HD 3870 Atomic Edition is an overclocked version of the ATI Radeon 670 chipset, which is the basis of the 3800 series of graphics solutions. The Sapphire HD 3870 Atomic Edition also has something small which would be its heatsink. The heatsink is a single slot cooling solution which utilizes a vapor-x chamber to enhance its cooling properties. So what will we be able to relate the Atomic Edition to, performance, size, or both?

Closer Look:

The Sapphire HD 3870 Atomic Edition comes packaged for awe. It is encased in a silver briefcase with the Atomic logo on its face.




Source: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_atomic_hd3780/


(Linux) MEPIS antiX 7.01

mepisMEPIS antiX 7.01, a lightweight derivative of SimplyMEPIS 7.0, was released as an update to antiX 7.0: " antiX is built and maintained by MEPIS community member anticapitalista, as a free version of MEPIS for very old 32 bit PC hardware and is designed to work on computers with as little as 64MB RAM and Pentium II or equivalent, but not AMD K5/K6 processors... This updated version of "Lysistrata" is built using the MEPIS Linux 7.0 core including the MEPIS 7 updated and security patched 2.6.22.14 kernel and upgraded MEPIS utilities, Debian security upgrades and application upgrades since antiX-M7 was released on Oct 29. Livecd scripts have been improved, extra cheatcodes added and bugs squashed. Kernel headers are now included and antiX uses Xorg 7.2 from the Debian Testing repos. This release contains the new grub menu theme developed and contributed by the MEPIS community." Check the full release announcement, the website of antiX, and its forum for more information. Download: antiX-M7.01-base.iso (installable LiveCD using fluxbox, 177MB, MD5), antiX-M7.01.iso, (309MB, MD5).

Nvidia Omega Drivers (Windows Vista) v1.169.25

The purpose of the Omega Drivers is to provide gamers with an alternate set of drivers, ones that have more options and features than the original sets. The drivers contain optimizations, extra features (like OC capabilities), more resolutions and internal tweaks that can give them the edge in a gaming environment over the normal drivers, which are often tailored for synthetic benchmarks. All Omega driver sets are tested (unless noted) by myself in my own PC or in an alternate PC (in the case of the Nvidia drivers) to ensure maximum compatibility and reliability.

Modified drivers simply means that the author takes official or beta drivers from the manufacturer and starts to tweak them for either better image quality and or performance. Please bare in mind that the driver manufacturer, in this case NVIDIA, does not support drivers like these.

What's New in Omega Drivers (Windows Vista) v1.169.25:
* Based on the Forceware 169.25 Official drivers.
+ Added resolutions not available on normal drivers and tweaked some that where.
* Added D3D/OGL tweaks.
+ My first Omega Drivers release for Windows Vista.

Known Issues: Since this is my first nvidia driver's release for Vista and I have been working hard on the website, some features will not be available at the moment, like for example, laptop support, yeah, sorry, but I had to cut something out in order to make the release on time with the new website. Don't worry thou, laptop support will be added on next release for sure or in a possible re-release of the 169.25 drivers, that will depend on how fast nvidia releases their next WHQL set.

Homepage - http://www.omegadrivers.net

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2 Ocak 2008 Çarşamba

PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB Graphics Card Review

9.0/10
I4U Rating

Features & Specifications
The PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB has a clock speed of 650MHz on the core, 1625 MHz on the shader and 1940MHz on the memory. The card uses 512MB of memory with a 256-bit memory interface. The memory bandwidth is 62.1 GB/sec and the fill rate is 41.6 billion pixels per second. Read the specification section of this review for more details.

Test Machine
The test machine I will be using for this review has the following specifications:

  • CPU- Intel QX6850
  • Mainboard- XFX 680i
  • PSU- PC Power and Cooling 1KW
  • Display- Dell 30-inch
  • OS- Windows XP Pro

Benchmarks & Testing
To test the PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB I will use 3DMark06, Quake Wars, Bioshock, and Crysis. The first test up is 3DMark06.

3DMark06
I ran 3DMark06 at default settings in the 3DMark06 application and in the NVIDIA control panel. The PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB scored as follows on 3DMark06:

  • Total 3DMarks- 13905
  • SM2.0- 5807
  • HDR/SM3.0- 5680
  • CPU- 4718
  • Return to Proxycon- 47.780
  • Firefly Forest- 48.995
  • Canyon Flight- 55.005
  • Deep Freeze- 58.589
  • CPU1- 1.563
  • CPU2- 2.279

To compare the XFX 8800 GTS 512MB XXX overclocked card I reviewed scored 14012 3DMarks, the XFX 8800 Ultra XXX scored 14378 3DMarks and the XFX 8800 GT 512MB XXX scored 13546 3DMarks.

Quake Wars
The next test up for the PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB is Quake Wars. I ran the game at a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 with 8x AA, all settings on high and smooth foliage on. I used Fraps to record frame rate data on single player Africa campaign. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:

  • Min- 12
  • Avg- 33.731
  • 61- fps

Bioshock
Next up was Bioshock, which I ran at a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200, all settings on high, high detail shaders on, high detail post processing on, real time reflections on, distortion on, and shadow maps on. I used Fraps to record frame rate data on the single player Fontaine fisheries map where you leave your weapons behind. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:

  • min- 38 fps
  • Avg- 55.656 fps
  • Max- 82 fps

Crysis
The final game test up is Crysis. I ran Crysis at a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 with 4x AA and all settings on medium. I used Fraps to record frame rate data from the point where you are inserted on the beach after the parachute drop. Fraps recorded the following frame rate data:

  • Min- 13 fps
  • Avg- 20.777 fps
  • Max- 36 fps

Final Thoughts
I was surprised by the performance of the stock clocked PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB. It was very close to the performance of the overclocked XFX 8800 GTS 512MB XXX card I reviewed previously. The MSRP of the PNY XLR8 8800 GTS 512MB is $369.99 from PNY.

Source: http://www.i4u.com/full-review-358.html

Endian Firewall 2.2 Beta 1

endian Raphael Vallazza has announced the second beta release of Endian Firewall 2.2, a RHEL-based firewall with anti-virus/spam tools, content filters, SSL/TLS VPN, IDS, and other features: "The Endian Team is glad to announce a new release of the Endian Firewall Community version 2.2 Beta 2. Endian Firewall Community is an all-in-one Linux security distribution that turns every system into a full featured security appliance. Changes from 2.2 Beta 1: Updated kernel to version 2.6.22.15 (features a lot more drivers, better SATA, SCSI and NIC support); updated ClamAV to version 0.92; updated Openswan to version 2.4.11; updated Snort to 2.8.0.1; 55+ bug fixes and minor feature enhancements." Read the release announcement and changelog for a detailed list of changes. Download: EFW-COMMUNITY-2.2-beta2-200712281931.iso (109MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 6.3-RC2

freebsd Ken Smith has announced the second release candidate for FreeBSD 6.3: "Sorry for the delay with this phase of the 6.3 release. A few glitches were found during testing of the 6.3-RC2 ISOs that included pre-built packages. The 6.3-RC2 builds for amd64 and i386 should now be available on the majority of the FreeBSD mirror sites. This is the last planned RC for 6.3. Unless a major show-stopper problem is found, the release of 6.3 should happen in about two weeks. If updating an older system using cvs or c[v]sup based mechanisms, the branch tag to use is RELENG_6_3. Or you can give FreeBSD Update a try, see the instructions here." More info in the release announcement. Download (MD5): 6.3-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (625MB), 6.3-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (673MB).

EVEREST 2007 v4.20.1237 Beta

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

Radeon Omega Drivers v4.8.442(Catalyst 7.12)

The Omega Drivers are compatible with all ATI Radeon cards:
(PCI, PCI-E, AGP, Mobility, On-Board, Retail, OEM or 3rd Party)

Radeon Mobility (M6 and up)
Radeon All In Wonder
Radeon 7k Series
Radeon 8k Series
Radeon 9k Series
Radeon x1k Series
Radeon HD2k Series

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Starting from Catalyst 6.6 and up, the following cards/chipsets (including Mobility) are no longer supported by the ATI or Omega Drivers:

Radeon 7k Series
Radeon 8k Series
Radeon 9k-9250 Series

For these cards please use the Omega Drivers v3.8.252 or older, thank you.



What's New in Omega Drivers?
v4.8.442


[*] Based on the Catalyst 7.12 Official drivers.

[*] Major video card support rewrite from scratch. This time every Radeon card under the sun should be supported, if the divers don't install on your card you either have a freak of nature card or a card too new that not even the ATI has support for it. ;) (Many thanks to all the people that sent their unsupported IDs)

[+] Added support for desktop HD3k Series and laptop HD2k Series.

[+] Experimental Gamma settings. Now whatever gamma setting you set on your desktop should pass on to your 3D applications. (tested with Adobe Gamma)

[+] The "temporary" fix for AGP cards still included. Waiting for ATI releases an official fix... *sigh*

[*] Upgraded installer to reflect logo/site changes.

[*] Upgraded drivers to v4 because of the previous details, plus thanks to a new install method I found, reduced the driver's size by a lot without loosing any features or options.