Qbits and quantum computing

According to sources, the University of Michigan has created the worlds first quantum chip, but what's the difference you ask? No it can't teleport you to mars, but it could very well crack your neighbors wireless in less than a minute.

The immediate future doesn't hold this technology in it's hallways. But contrary to popular belief, it won't be that hard to mass produce as the chip uses a similar creation process to todays standard microship, what's the advantage of this? When the military's ready to release it to the public (they always take the good stuff first) Dell should be pumping it out with in months. Although I have to admit, it probably will take at least a decade to get the chip to gold state.

You know what, i'm not going to bother trying to explain how it works, i'd just confuse you to the point of annoyance and anyway, it's written better over at Vista. 

The other interesting point to quantum chips, is the related technology to manipulate atoms to form any atom on the periodic table. You can read more about it here and here.

I honestly hope I see the day these chips come to light.

...and I hope that was partially educational for those who new nothing about digital technology.

S60 theme uninstall

In response to the tens of people on Symbian Freak looking to uninstall themes:

I've decided that a majority of people using S60 can suck my balls. Obviously 30 people trying to figure out how to uininstall themes don't have the processing power of my brain.

To unistall applications and themes, go into >Tools>App manager>the program you want to unistall.

Twats.

Battlefield Heroes, It's Free, It's a cartoon, and it looks damn fun

Alright,

Most gamers reading this will be well aware of the EA Games Battlefield series, consisting of Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142.

Which have mostly been aimed at realism (or as realistic as people shooting beams of light at each other to kill them consistently can be.), but now EA has decided to try the new approach, a free game, which is paid for by the advertising that is placed around it on walls etc.

I guess it's their new approach to stopping people downloading the games illegally via Torrents etc, they still make money, and people download the games for free, everyone wins.

here's a little video to get you interested:


Looks like it's coming out later this year, I'm hoping it's going to be sooner than that.

(Did someone say Team Fortress 2 ripoff?)

Analogue VS Digital

There had been a quarrel among society for many years now, and epic battle which has been raging throughout the minds of audiophiles, the one big question. No, it isnt when is phillip glass going to release a new album and will he release it in Dolby 5.1? It is:
is Analog Better than digital?
The battle is similar to the Cold War, with technological advances and factions and revisionists and whatnot.
The Tube Screamers: Vouching for the warmness and unique sound of analogue recordings. They are sticking to their traditions and are quite opposed to any ideology other than theirs. They usually hang around the Electro Harmonix Factory in NYC and compare the dynamic range on each other's vintage amplifiers. They are usually quite upper middle class as they have to have thousands of dollars to spend on Neve Studio Consoles and old Fender Super Reverb Amplifiers and such. Analogue was the main form until the electronic music movement of the 1980s, which became more digital based.

VS

The General (digital) Population

Who do you know that doesn't own an ipod or some kind of digital music player?
All of the songs on these players are encoded digitally. And the majority of songs since the 90s are recorded while using digital technology. The use of digital software and hardware made recording an album possible by the average joe, and therefore helped create a bunch of independent labels and artists in the 90s.
This allowed people to express themselves musically without having to spend too much money.

The problem that many people have with analogue technology is that it is simply messier and harder to control, also technical limtations cause many analogue mixes to sound unpolished and dirty. In contrast, if a person is recording in a digital studio, they can record unlimited takes and really perfet the sound. The problem with this though is that many digital recordings sound too polished and cold, lacking the sonic warmth of an analogue recording.

Many artists nowadays look back on the early analogue recordings of the 40s and 50s and see great artists, struggling with technical limitations. Imagine if the Beatles had of had unlimited multi tracks! But then again, would this technical freedom have been daunting, like the open page of a book, and would they have died struggling for that perfect sound?
That question must be left to George Martin.

I was Liam, Good Night and Good Luck

Mac vs. PC, the age old battle...

Alright, now most people who know me in person will know me as a windows supporter, and that is that,

Truth be told, I'm really not, I have quite a genuine liking for Mac and their nifty designs, I don't however like how Mac owners can't SHUT THE FUCK UP about how much awesome their computers are because they have bigger wallets.

now, some simple facts:

• Microsoft owns about 90% of the market, while Apple owns about 10% (Linux obviously not really counting because nobody is stupid enough to charge for it).
• Microsoft is SOFTWARE ONLY while Mac is also hardware in a sense, so they have a lot more to protect.
• Microsoft does not make it against the license of their software to use it on anything but their computers (unlike Apple).
  

Right now while that is out of the way, Mac's can do anything a PC can do, but they just cost a lot more to do it, and even more to do it better (meaning gaming mostly).

Point in question being that Mac's can run windows, but to get the same hardware that's in a Windows PC that costs about $1500-2000, you would need to pay about $2500-3000. Don't bother arguing with me on this because quite plainly I don't care if you have another opinion.

In my honest opinion, Mac's are better for designing, and that covers ALL types, they are also better for music creation etc, they are not better for office stuff, they can do it, but they are not better or anywhere near as economic to use in an office environment. And they are not as good for gaming at all (minus the new expensive ones with the Nvidia 8 series cards which STILL need to be running windows to fucking play the games properly).

This is also why there are next to no virus's for Mac, there is like a 3 digit figure, that represents how many Mac Virus's there are IN TOTAL. I mean come on, who wants to attack artists and musicians right? While conversely with Windows, the mainly used operating system by nearly every business in existence, there is something like millions, possibly billions of Windows virus's, ranging from minor annoyances to the dreaded Cuddly Bear Virus. Windows needs virus updates every day to make sure you have a hope of staying clean, and even then sometimes that isn't enough, while Mac does not need an Anti-Virus program AT ALL, because if a virus is made, it is usually patched out within a few weeks maximum.

Okay, Mac's look better, have a more streamlined interface, and much less issues than PC's, but that's because everything is set in stone!

If you want to customize your Mac, you do it when you buy it, because afterwards there's no going back, unless you buy one of the behemoth Mac Pro's.

while on a PC, you can pretty much switch anything for something else, and it will still work after some tweaking or re-installing.

Now since Mac switched to Intel CPU's, the ONLY THING separating them from PC's (whether Mac owners admit it or not, frankly, I think they are just annoyed because they paid for something different, and now its not so special) was the software, and the shiny box/screen it was running from.

and even that is no longer unique, because I happen to be running OS X Leopard 10.5.2 fully functioning on my current PC without ANY issues whatsoever.

so the only thing left is a shiny box, which can be bought if so desired (or something that looks almost identical.

so, final thoughts:

Macs are better for music composition, designing, and art.
PC's are better for gaming/office stuff.

Mac's are no longer unique because of points expressed above, so stop being so stuck up, stop trying to put yourself above the rest of the world because you have a Mac, and just fucking enjoy it quietly!

Windows Games on Linux. Wait what?

At first the idea sounds silly, but in all honesty it shouldn't seem so far fetched.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I was not expecting such good results.

There is of course the WINE application for Linux which allows windows applications to run in Linux systems (Of course I'm using Microsoft's definition of RUN because there is a subtle difference between running and running WELL).

Normal WINE cannot play games very well, there are no performance increases or anything of the sort. However, there are variations, which perform quite well. Such would be a program called CrossOver (there is also a version for Mac, but I am unaware of the performance details of said application).

It is a modified version of WINE which is not free (Which unfortunately led to it no longer being updated because the people who released WINE for free, didn't want their work paying for other peoples pleasure). However, the way the program works is you install a game like you would in windows, it creates a small, system within Linux, allowing windows applications/games to be installed and played. This is not to say that there is 100% compatibility, but there is enough for it to be worth a shot.

I tried it with some steam games, like Team Fortress 2, Portal, and have tried it with some others, and as long as you have proper Drivers for your system, the results are quite nice.

I could run Team Fortress 2 at a higher frame rate than on XP (as in 1.5-2x better than XP) with a higher resolution and graphics settings. The only issue is that Directx9 is not supported yet (emphasis on yet), so you will be stuck with 8.1 (for the moment), but in all honesty, this does not make a difference.

The things I had a problems with, are running things in fullscreen, and fonts, just make sure that if CrossOver does not install the fonts for you (usually it will automatically), get them yourself, or it will be illegable or worse, there just wont be any text at all.

And instead of running in fullscreen, just run it in a window, this is good because you can multi task, and it wont mess up your desktop (this is not a consistant problem, majority of the time it works fine, but SOMETIMES it can mess up your desktop).

But see if you can get your favorite distribution of Linux (mine being Ubuntu or something easy like that)

And give CrossOver a try. CrossOver Site.

If your lucky, you might be able to run your windows games off you windows partition as well!

Just make sure your NTFS drivers are installed and fully functional, otherwise write permissions will be missing and you wont be able to play any of the games.

Worst case scenario you would just need to copy the game files to the emulated windows system in the Linux partition.

Nvidia 7 Series - "Good-Bye and thanks for all the fish"

It would seem Nvidia's 7 series was one of the best for sticking with it.

I remember when they first were coming out, oh say... more than 3 years ago, that's right, 3 years running and they still pack a punch.

I only recently upgraded from my Leadtek 7800 GTX (above) about 2 months ago. The reason that it lasted so long being, with a proper processor backing it up, (like say the Intel Core 2 series or the AMD equivalent) the card still managed to perform remarkably well (and it's not even the highest card in the series!).

It's the longest I have ever had a graphics card at one time (a bit over 2 years), and it is only now that it's power is starting to fall behind. I could play Team Fortress 2 at 1440x990 without any lag if I turned down the graphics a little, which was quite surprising honestly, but the problem being I can't stand lag, I usually only like an FPS of 60 or above (for stability purposes, having it at 30 is great until a lot of stuff happens and you get lag spikes). So I went for the 8800 GT, but the fact is, if you can play games without having to have everything set to high and can handle a LITTLE lag, that card would still be able to play ANY game that is currently on the market.

So I bid farewell to my Leadtek 7800 GTX (which is now in the hands of my brother, who will no doubt get my 8800 GT when I upgrade as well).

Usually I wouldn't make a bit deal out of such a thing, but considering the rate at which technology is advancing IS increasing, about 2 years running (and a number of different liquid cooling systems and coolers, and hundreds of overclocks) is pretty damn good.

The annoying thing is, this kind of reliability seems to be diminishing, I doubt my 8800 GT will last me the year, (which is good news for my brother I guess hehe).

Firefox 4 Alpha before Firefox 3 released? What?

Alright,

Anyone who uses the internet would be aware of, or at least HEARD of firefox open source internet browser.

It's the most customizable internet browser around with support for the three main operating systems in use (Windows, Mac and Linux).

Mozilla (the creators of firefox) have decided to take a leaf from Microsoft's book and start work on versions ahead of the next one to be released (Microsoft for example was already working on Vista's successor before Vista's release).

The result of this, is firefox 4.0 Alpha.

Now in most cases Alpha's are not very good, they are in early stages of development, and are in the early stages of the ladder:

1. Patent
2. Alpha "Alpha1"(normally more than one)
   
3. Beta "Beta1"(normally more than one)
4. Release Candidate "RC1"(normally more than one)
5. Release to Market "RTM"
   

As a result they are buggy as hell (such is the story with Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 1)

but this is not the case with Firefox 4, all of it's features seem fully functional, it's highly responsive, does not display ANY errors so far during my usage of it, and adds nifty features here and they such as Spell Check etc for the forum retards who can't spell.

It also has some interface/usability changes, some people find this ugly, I quite like them:






Of Course, a new nifty codename (Minefield) until the official release







Be aware however, as this is quite a recent release, there is next to no extension support, so if you are dependent on certain extensions or themes, then download this, take a look to see what's coming, but you probably wont keep it.

Firefox 4 Alpha 1 (click to download)

S60 Theme

Symbian, mobile operating system that has one advantage over XP, they let you make themes.

There are a few great sources for S60 themes, of which google is NOT one, make sure never to visit a site that has "FREE" in it's name. Deviant art is probably the best site for GOOD or at least decent quality themes, although Symbian fan-sites like Symbian Freaks has a topic dedicated to themes, although quality does vary (Don't tell them I said anything).

IMPORTANT:
Now before you go installing themes, make sure you like it as you CANNOT uninstall any themes until Nokia patch the S60 software.

Before you run off and begin downloading themes, i'll put up a few of my preferred themes with a brief review of them. My phone is a N95, so these themes will only be compatible with 240x320 px screens.

Vista Media Center Theme
Worth a look, it follows in the long string of currently popular vista themes.
Pros:
Works relatively well with landscape
Has custom icons
Cons:
SMS and calender text is a pain to read, doesn't contrast.

HTC/Windows Mobile 6 Theme
The black theme works very well as a minimal theme. Although green has an issue with text contrast. So i'll review the black theme.
Pros:
Works perfectly, no stretching occurs in landscape.
Defined and easy to read, text contrasts.
Cons:
No customised icons.

iPhone alfa
Probably the best iPhone recreation I could find, the background blurs when you enter the menu which makes you feel like your viewing the foreground.
Pros:
Diverse background
Well created menu bars
Landscape blur works very well
Cons:
Fish look warped in landscape home page
Text badly contrasted in some places
Signal/Battery bar is absolute shit to read
Analogue watch background stays when you change the time setting to digital

Nokia N-Series theme
Your N95 may or may not come prepacked with this theme.
Pros:
Text is incredibly easy to read
Simple theme
battery/signal icons are easy to glance at
Cons:
Landscape home page FAILS.

Ayofe
Completely original, it'a a hate or love theme. It may take some getting used to, I found it strange staring at the colour scheme.
Pros:
Everything is easy to read and contrasted
Made from scratch
Works perfectly in landscape
Custom icons
Cons:
Icons look very similar, and are hard to distinguish
Battery and signal bars aren't easy to read.

Good luck finding non-windows themes.
Start with DA and see where it takes you. If you have any links to themes you want placed up here, drop a line by me.

XFX Nvidia 8800 GT XXX Alpha Dog Edition

I have had this graphics card for the past few months now, and I am THOROUGHLY pleased with the results it has been giving me.

I purchased it for $460, it is the overclocked model, and comes with some goodies bundled.

so far, I have been able to play nearly EVERY game on Maximum graphics with little or no lag, Crysis can be run on 1680x1050, all settings on high, but obviously it lags a little.

The card performs just as good as a 8800 GTX, this being because it has a newer generation Graphics Processing unit in it, which makes it pretty much half the price for the same performance :D while also using half the power.

Here are the specifications for those interested:
____________________________________________

Clock rate: 670 MHz	Dual Link DVI - Supporting digital output up to 2560x1600: Yes (Dual)
Memory Clock: 1.95 GHz	Chipset: GeForce 8800 GT
Memory: 512 MB	Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
Memory Type: DDR3	Memory Bus: 256-bit
Highlighted Features: HDTV ready , HDCP Ready , RoHS , Vista , Dual DVI Out , TV Out , SLI ready

____________________________________________

The things to note, would be:

• the PCI-E 2.0 Bus type, which doubles the connection bandwidth
• the Memory clock overclocked from 1.8ghz to 1.95
• the Clock rate overclocked from 600mhz to 670mhz

These are stock overclocks meaning that they are covered under warranty, which, hehe is just brilliant.

Also, some things to note, the card can't be pushed much further without getting liquid cooling, but you should be able to get to about 2ghz Memory Clock and something like 700-720mhz Clock rate, which should provide SOME sort of a difference.

All in All, good value for money, and I cant wait to see this card be used as an Ageia PhysX card either.

and an interesting feature of Windows 7 being SLI with differing cards so I might get the opportunity to use a 9800 GX2 with my 8800 GT :D

N95 Review

The Nokia's N95 spell check defines 7386588466279 as 'revolutionary', and that's just what the N95 brings to the mobile phone market. Multimedia functions, 5mp camera, Carl Ziess lens, Symbian OS, 160mb in-built memory with expandable memory, TV out, USB connectivity, Wifi, Bluetooth, Infrared, Themes, 3rd party apps, GPS, maps and FM radio are the primary features on the N95 and that's without naming any technical specifications! It's release in late 2007 spelled disaster for any older smart phone models. Originally retailing for just a few hundred more than the HTC P3600i that could very well be considered the N95's rival, it goes to show that this phone will be sitting in the high-class range for a good year or so.

As well as the N95 performs it's job, the one major set-back EVERY N95 user will happily complain about is the battery life. Imagine running a 3G phone with a large well lit screen and multiple Symbian apps in the background, understandably a good battery would probably only reach about two days of usage if you were lucky, sadly, the N95 averages at 6 hours usage (MP3 player + Games/camera use) and about 4 hours if you spend another 40 minutes of internet usage on top of that. This is the predominant issue for people looking at the N95 and you need to ask yourself, can I handle charging my phone the moment I get back from work, every day? Although one up-side to the phone is it only takes about an hour to fully charge, so if your job involves driving or being inside, having a spare charger will keep the phone going full-boar all day.

Style and goo hardware vary rarely mix, save for the few extremely expensive toys floating around. The N95's colour scheme has about as much thought in it as Maxis' Llama mascot, Dark purple (Plum) and Sand are your options (Personally the contrasting colour of Plum appealed to me more than Sand, although high class business men may think otherwise). Streamlined designs are another important feature to classy phones (probably more important than the glossy finish), the N95 is like carrying what it is; a big rectangle of plastic and silicone, but that's just it's appearance from the outside. The most intruigin thing about this phone, is it's unique sliding function, slide up and you get the keyboard, slide down and you get multimedia keys. Although not everyone will find this useful (IE. Anyone who doesn't use multimedia on phones) it is a lot easier to use than pressing the next button on the D-pad.

The keyboard is fairly standard, it has lumps on each key to aid with touch typing, although it isn't large, so a user with large fingers may have trouble using their thumbs. Literally above the keyboard is the D-pad [menu buttons], since this was my first nokia, it took a little getting used to the menu buttons and Symbian OS. The standard keys all take their respefctive places, although the two larger and more noticable keys are the gallery and menu buttons. At first I had no idea how to access the menu, so I slapped away at a few keys before realising (stupidly) the large left button took me there, this button is extremely well placed and useful, allowing you to open multiple apps at the same time with ease. The gallery button on the other hand, isn't so useful, it takes you to a somewhat useless, in fact, completely useless un-editable second menu that link to preinstalled apps that you may very well never use. Unlike the exit/hang up button though, it quit your application. Speaking of which, I have a score to settle with that g*****n button, to many times have been writing a long email and slipped from the 3 button to the exit/hang up button, although this may only be attributed to my sloppy typing.

Side buttons are as standard, one camera button, volume and quick access media button. The feel of the phone is very much like a 5mp camera of 2 years back, this is helped by the camera button which i've come to love, because the screen can be used as either landscape or portrait, it has been designed to take photos and movies in landscape so that you can hold the phone on it's side and feel like your using a real camera, which I have to admit it pretty much is with PAL DVD-standard video and a 5mp camera. The N95 also has a lens cover which they took out for the N95 8gb, I found that a bit of an odd move.

I could've gone on for longer about more trivial hardware features, but I think it's -about- time I got to the operating system; Symbian. Windows Mobile and Symbian are the two best selling mobile OSs, so as you can expect, they do their job well. Windows mobile is good, but it packs in to much for the screen, and is designed specifically for touch screen phones. Symbian on the other hand, is designed to work as an upgrade to the old generic phone user interfaces. As such, it works efficiently with the N95 and any other phone that has a keypad, the home screen is simple, although it appears they've tried to fit in to much information up the top as they've reserved the bottom half for calender dates. Although they make up for this by allowing you to use a minimal version of the home screen. The most noticable thing of the home screen is the small little icons below the time, these are shortcuts to your apps, somewhat equivalent of OSX's dock. I love this feature to death, but I get really annoyed when I have 7 or more apps i want on the dock, as the N95 only holds 6 (note the N95 8GB holds 7) but this is Dependant on the phones resolution.

Symbian contains very average apps, .PDF viewer, basic web browser, MP3 player and RealPlayer. Although the massive advantage that using a mobile operating system, is that there is the ability to install third party apps, such as Google maps and Opera mini browser. I installed Opera the day I got the phone and have enjoyed using it, it's simple and feels like your using a web browser. Google maps was a lot more useful than Nokia maps for me, as I don't want additional GPS charges to my phone bill, although from what i've been able to figure out, it doesnt have the ability to save a local map (Buzz me if i'm wrong). Anywho, there's a bunch of funky apps floating around the web, i'll list a few at the end.

Summary:
The N95 delivers as a great platform for Symbian, which is really the most predominant feature on the phone for anyone who doesn't need the GPS (granted when smart phones become standard it won't be anything special). The 5MP camera really is as good as they say, and quite possibly is the best camera on the market at the moment and being able to hook the N95 straight to the TV to watch your PAL DVD-quality (640x480 at 30fps) footage is something special. The battery life of the phone is what will turn most people away, if your using a power intensive app such as Opera for more than a few hours the battery will die (with about 6-7 hours of MP3 playback), so if you fancy yourself as someone who only needs to call people or take photos, then a Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot phone might better suite you. Although if yur still looking to use Symbian but want a cheaper alternative, the 6500 delivers a stylish alternative.

But if you haven't been put off by the poor battery life, and you want either a reeeeaaally good camera phone or are just looking for a top-end smartphone, this could be your phone.

In one sentence (hard for me to do :P)? This phone has EVERYTHING.

Rating:
Design: 7/10
[Although I like chunky]
Hardware: 9/10
[The camera balances out the battery]
Software: 6/10
[I found pre-installed software to be nearly useless, much better 3rd party apps]
Camera: 10/10
[Hell i'd be willing to give it 11]
Overall: 8/10
[It'd have 10/10 if it weren't for the battery, the N95 is THE BEST phone I have ever used]

Links:
Fring (yes it's safe for them to text you)
Opera mini
Trifinite (bluetooth ware etc.)
Google mobile maps
RotateMe
Ownskin (create your own themes)

Windows Vista Gaming, ironically fails...

Alright, well let me start by saying I gave Vista a chance, and while it isn't really that good today, it has come a LONG WAY from where it once was.

I was one of the people who was testing its various versions about a year and a half before it was released. So I can say with a lot of certainty, it's definitely made some strides, but nowhere near enough to leave bum town...

As a result, I buy a soupped up PC:
Quad Core CPU
3GB DDR2 RAM
Nvidia 8800 GT
Gigabyte Motherboard to support all of these.

I install Windows Vista Ultimate, Install Crysis, and here is the Ironic part.

The very operating system REQUIRED to play Crysis in DirectX10 graphics OBLITERATES the performance SO MUCH that it actually makes it unplayable when it is set to DirectX10 mode.

One of the worst ripoffs ever.

THERE IS ONE VERSION HOWEVER of Vista that is the best there is to TRY to counteract this.

TinyVista (don't bother asking where to get it, it's not a legitimate copy, unless you use a legitimate serial with it like me), it's a 700mb CD, which unzips to 1.24gb (versus the normal 4.5gb DVD which unzips to something like 10GB) and ONLY installs the needed programs and services for running games/general internet browsing etc.

It does have a tremendous performance advantage over any other version of Vista, but more in the system performance than the gaming performance.

This would be because Vista takes much better advantage of Dual and Quad core processors than XP does (by design of course).

And because TinyVista removes all the useless services from Vista, it makes it possibly the best windows experience availiable (for system performance not for gaming).

SO, final word, if your a gamer, Vista is not for you, even if you have an insanely good PC, it does not seem to be able to quite make up for the performance loss. For System performance alone, it will beat XP if you buy a good PC, otherwise, don't bother and stick with Windows XP until Windows 7 (Vista being version 6) comes out.

Which is why I currently am running XP SP3/Mac OS X Leopard on my PC.

Nvidia and Ageia (good news for Nvidia 8 Series owners)

If any of you are even remotely up to date with Tech news you would probably have heard of this, but perhaps I should drown your head in the deep seas of knowledge anyway.

There are two companies in play here, Nvidia (one of the Big Graphics card Company Duo) and Ageia (Gaming Physics Company).

Ageia alone was coming into trouble, this being because while they had an awesome idea, that being that Physics in games could be stepped up, but a seperate Processor would be needed to do so, so they created the Ageia PhysX card:




While the card did it's job nicely, there were issues with proving it actually took some of the weight off the main CPU and Graphics card, which would help persuade people to fork out a quite obscene $400 for the card alone.

Which has left them in such a pickle that they were starting to run into Financial issues...

Nvidia seeing the fantastic opportunity (to further their cards even more and gain a huge advantage over ATI) decided to buy out Ageia and start implementing them in their own cards later down the line.

This presents FANTASTIC gaming experience possibilites, and the good news keeps coming;

Nvidia 8 series owners are due to recieve a Software Update within a few months that will turn their Graphics Cards into one of these $400 paperweights AS WELL as their original functions of being graphics cards.

this is possible because Nvidia has found a way to utilize the PhysX engine with their Nvidia 8 Series CUDA processors quite well. This is good news for me of course because of my 8800 GT :D

So I wish Nvidia good luck on their venture, because I look forward to this kind of gaming very soon :) :

New Nvidia 9 Series

Well it seems Nvidia are finally going to answer the call that ATI have put out.

ATI unfortunately have been ahead recently but Nvidia is aiming to make a comeback with it's 9 Series cards (which are surprisingly cheap).

So far the only one that has been released is the 9600 GT, this might not seem like much, but it is nearly as powerful as the 8800 GT (which is what I just so happen to have) while being a bit more than half the cost. This of course presents tremendous value and consumer appeal.

However, what I MYSELF am personally interested in is the Nvidia 9800 GX2.


the MASSIVE fan has vents on both sides which make it perfect for SLI-ing right next to each other without the loss of ventilation.


Why on earth someone would need to Quad SLI these is beyond me, but given the chance, that does look pretty damn awesome :)

Of course it support's all the awesome connections (being DVI and HDMI)

And for costing slightly more than a 8800 GT (while being at least 2x more powerful)

You seem to get a lot of Bang for Your Buck.

I look forward to testing this card out :)