Asus announces Silent Square EVO CPU cooler.

After the Silent Knight II, Asus has unveiled yet another cooler said to be perfect for keeping the temperatures of quad-core CPUs as low as possible. The Silent Square EVO works with Intel LGA 775 and AMD 939/940/AM2 sockets and features a "wave-shaped" double side fin design, a copper base and five copper heat pipes can efficiently transfer the heat to the fins.

The fan with which the Silent Square comes equipped is positioned inside the frame of the heatsink and measures 92×92×25mm. The fan spins its blades at 22dBA. The whole cooler and nothing but the cooler weights in 745 grams. A price tag for the new cooling solution has not been announced.

Eric Traut talks and demos Windows 7 and MinWin.

Microsoft’s distinguished engineer Eric Traut gave a presentation at the University of Illinois about Microsoft’s virtualisation technology and also mentioned Windows 7 - the next version of Windows after Vista. Believe it or not it was on video. Whilst the presentation is not directly about Windows 7, it does contain a demonstration of MinWin - an internal project to build the most efficient Windows kernel which will in turn be used in Windows 7.

The presentation (WMV) goes for approximately 1 hour and includes a very deep look into hyper visors. If you think Windows at its core is bloated, think again.

The 8 minute segment has been clipped out which Eric focuses on Windows 7 specifically to make it easier to watch.

Full WMV video (1 hour & 6 minutes)

Windows 7 Footage (8 minutes)

Want Vista SP1 Beta but you are not a certified tester?

That's right! There is a hack available that will permit you to access, download and install the official release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 straight from Microsoft.

The first service pack for Vista was initially released in pre-beta stage in mid July 2007, concomitantly with the original preview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. Microsoft subsequently dropped another pre-beta version of Vista SP1 in August and revealed that the first fully-fledged beta for the service pack would be delivered by the end of September. And the fact of the matter is that in the last week of the past month, the beta of Windows Vista SP1 Build 6001.16659 was open to in excess of 12,000 testers.

A public beta of Windows Vista SP1 is expected sometime near the moment Microsoft will make available the first Release Candidate for the service pack, but the company has offered no timetable in this sense. The final version of Vista SP1 is currently planned for launch in the first quarter of 2008, following the release of Windows Server 2008, at the end of February. In this context, in excess of 70 million Vista users are locked out of the beta testing process of Vista SP1. The Beta Build 6001.16659 of the service pack has been leaked to peer-to-peer file sharing networks but downloading the refresh as a torrent is not even close to an option. However, a hack that will permit users to grab the official Vista SP1 Beta Build 6001.16659 right from the Microsoft Windows Updates server, is.

All you have to do is a little registry hack, as exemplified by GHacks. Open a notepad file and copy paste the following code. Make sure to save the file with a name similar to the one that follows: WindowsVistaSP1_Beta_Hack.cmd. In the file format area of the dialog box do not select .txt but opt for All Files instead.

CODE
@echo off
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSp1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSP1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f

echo Vista SP1 registry key has been set. Please check for updates in Windows Update.

Then navigate to the location where you saved the file and right click it in order to select the Run as administrator from the contextual menu that will pop up. In this manner you will launch the registry hack with administrative privileges, otherwise the changes that the file is designed to introduce to the Windows Vista registry will fail. Microsoft is delivering the first beta for Windows Vista SP1 through the Windows Update infrastructure and the registry hack will render WU to display the refresh as available for download.

Following the execution of the WindowsVistaSP1_Beta_Hack.cmd and the associated registry alterations, run Windows Update in Vista. You will come across update KB935509 and you have to download and install it. After reboot make your way to Windows Update again and this time grab and deploy update KB937287. After yet another restart you will be able to find a third update – KB938371. The next time you boot into your copy of Vista and access Windows Update you will be able to find Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta.

Source

Sony and Blu-ray have lost their exclusivity in JB Hi-Fi stores with the announcement that effective from November, the major retailer will start selling HD DVD players and content. The big winner is Toshiba, with JB Hi-Fi Marketing Director Scott Browning conceding that it was the exclusive Paramount content deal with HD DVD that swung him over to the HD DVD format.

Back in February this year at the launch of the Blu-ray Disc Working Group, Browning said that JB Hi-Fi would only sell Blu-ray hardware and software because of the strength of the format.

But in an interview with SmartHouse today Browning said, "We have come to the conclusion that cutting the consumer out of a HD DVD opportunity was not right, as content is critical and the move by Paramount to support HD DVD exclusively influenced our decision. In addition, Toshiba is a strong brand and we are currently...

Source

IBM, AMD, Nvidia & Intel Talk The Future Of Gaming Processors

Last Thursday in San Francisco, Cadence held a roundtable discussion with high-level staff responsible for some of the most crucial processors in the gaming space.

According to AMD's Feldstein, who led the design for the Xbox 360 GPU, "The great thing about game console chips is that you're not bound by the linear path the PC has to take -- the dictators who say where the PC is going, like Microsoft." Feldstein even said Microsoft behaves differently when it comes to the 360. "You're also looking at a longer time. You're looking at something that has to live for years rather than months. It's a closed environment, you don't have the open factors of PC. It's a great place to prototype and design."

Setting the tone for his comments throughout the session, Intel's Randy Stude, whose company has no current console products since the cease in production of the original Xbox, argued that consoles do not help with innovation. "Throw Moore's Law out of the window when you talk about consoles -- except every five or ten years when one comes out. Moore's Law applies to the PC industry."
However, IBM's Jim Kahle, chief architect of the Cell project which resulted in the processor for the PS3, disagreed totally. "Moore's Law is about density, and density applies to cost. On consoles you're trying to get the cost down."

Peddie then posed the question that Stude argued earlier -- can consoles be considered a place for innovation in processing?

Feldstein said, "360 is where we got our 'go forward' architecture. You can make interesting tradeoffs in these convergence devices. If you don't oversize your system you have a system that attacks the problem -- especially in the game consoles, more entertainment."
Feldstein suggests that since game development has made a major shift to consoles, so too does chip innovation. "If you talk to [software] developers today, their prime target is the console first. This is almost universal. Then they spread it out to the PC. I don't think it was this way five years ago. This year they're starting to go to the consoles first, because it's a more consistent place to play games."

Feldstein talked practicals. "Cost downs are a real pain if you were Intel or AMD doing new processors, because you can't change anything." As processors shrink, "significant parts change. If you're doing an Xbox or a Sony, everything has to be consistent, the last game has to [run] the same as the first game that was bought. NVIDIA and AMD, we're so hell-bent to do the performance and the density and you have to restrain yourself because things have to stay the same." However, when questioned about the AMD GPU's role in the Xbox 360's billion-dollar unreliability issues, Feldstein demurred comment.

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Over 200 Developers Working On Metal Gear Solid 4

Meta Gear Solid 4! One of the biggest games (if not the largest) that will hit the PS3 has over 200 developers working on the title, this game will certainly move many PS3 consoles and with the price drop I'm more than certain the new 40Gb SKU's along with MGS4 is aimed to please even the most harsh critic. Do not forget that Kojima productions also plan on implementing the most with the Dual Shock 3 controller for our gaming pleasure also.

Talking as part of an in-depth interview published on Gamasutra today, Kojima Productions' Ryan Payton has revealed that there are over 200 developers working to complete Metal Gear Solid 4 for PlayStation 3, also commenting on the game's use of DualShock 3.

"But the game is definitely under a lot of pressure, because the way things are turning out, this could be the first "must have" PlayStation 3 title on store shelves. Or, if not the first, then the second or the third. So, in that sense, there's a lot relying on it. People at Sony know that, and we've got literally 200 guys working on this title, day and night, making sure that it's perfect."

"This will be the premiere DualShock 3 supporting game coming out within the next six months. Gran Turismo 5 is, I'm sure, going to be impressive, but we've got some things that I can't talk about that people are going to really dig."

Source

Drive advance fuels terabyte era.

A single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi.


The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk.
Hitachi said the advance would fuel the "terabyte era", with a 4TB drive able to hold more than a million songs.