Tweaktown

"The HD 4870 has been quite the performer from the word go, but it’s in our blood that we have the need for even more power. This is where overclocking comes into play; today Palit has placed the HD 4870 under their Sonic naming scheme, which means we get a nice little out of the box overclock.

Palit hasn’t just bumped the clock speeds up, though, they’ve also decided to change it by removing the boring reference cooler that we’ve been seeing for so long and adding their own design.

Before we check out the cooler and the clocks the new HD 4870 Sonic from Palit offers, we’ll quickly take the time to have a look at the package to see if there’s anything inside the box to get excited about. "

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BBC

"A Briton accused of hacking into secret military computers has lost his appeal against extradition to the US. Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon was said to be "distraught" after losing the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. He faces extradition within two weeks.

The unemployed man could face life in jail if convicted of accessing 97 US military and Nasa computers. The 42-year-old admitted breaking into the computers from his London home but said he sought information on UFOs.

Mr McKinnon asked the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to delay his extradition pending a full appeal to the court against his extradition but his application was refused. He claimed the extradition would breach his human rights. "

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ReviewAge

"There's said to be two chips in the pipeline, the FX-80 at 4Ghz and  the FX-82 at 4.4GHz. The FX-80 at stock out performs a 5.0GHz Kentsfield. The Deneb core apparently has a multiplier of up to 25x! "

TechReport

"Far Cry 2 isn't even out yet, but Ubisoft has wasted no time starting work on a sequel. Ubisoft's Patrick Redding told videogaming247 the Ubisoft Montreal studio is at the "preliminary stages" of development on the "next game" in the Far Cry series.

Like Far Cry 2 but unlike Crytek's original, the third game in the series will take place in Africa. Redding explained, "For us Africa still has a huge amount of promise . . . There are still things we want to do with the African setting, and I think it’s safe to say we’ll continue to explore it." He added that, although the Far Cry 2 engine could handle gameplay set in a South-American forest, sticking with the Africa locale will "save time."

Now, Far Cry fans have two games to look forward to. Based on what we heard in March, Far Cry 2 is coming out some time this fall for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The game has reasonably tame system requirements and will reportedly feature varied, open-ended gameplay. (Thanks to Shacknews for the tip.)"

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Tweak

"MSI reveals its latest N9400GT series graphics cards! It's the N9400GT-MD512H and N9400GT-MD256H. The N9400GT-MD256H is passive cooled and have a 550MHz core clock and a 800MHz DDR2 clock."

Digitimes

"Nvidia will authorize native SLI support on Intel X58 motherboards without the need for its nForce 200 chip, according to Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP products at Nvidia.

Peterson detailed that the company's partners will need to certify their X58 motherboards through Nvidia and, after certification, will receive an approval key to place in the system BIOS. Nvidia's drivers will check for the approval key and the device ID of the chipset before determining whether to enable SLI support on the system.

Nvidia will charge motherboard makers for certification, but the price will be cheaper than that for its nForce 200 chip, costing around US$30, which until recently Nvidia insisted was required to enable SLI on motherboards not using its own chipsets. Peterson also noted that Nvidia will continue to support the nForce 200 solution.

Peterson stressed that certification will apply on an individual basis for each motherboard maker, meaning in other words that makers cannot just buy X58 chipsets from Intel and automatically gain a license to enable SLI. However, Nvidia remains open to further negotiations with Intel over the SLI licensing, he added.

As for whether SLI authorization will be expanded to other platforms, Peterson said Nvidia only plans to only allow SLI on X58 motherboards, alongside its own nForce chipset products, and is currently not considering supporting other chipsets.

Peterson also noted that although Nvidia has received a license to use Intel's QPI technology, the company is currently not planning to launch any chipsets supporting QPI. It will however launch Intel Socket 1160 platform-based chipsets supporting DMI."

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Techreport

"Yesterday afternoon, a blogger at Microsoft-Watch put up a post asking readers whether they cared about Internet Explorer 8. That pretty much highlights the disinterest surrounding Microsoft's upcoming browser. Lack of excitement or not, though, Microsoft has just released the second IE8 beta.

You can grab IE8 beta 2 for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Although the download only weighs in at 13-23MB depending on the version, Microsoft has packed in a surprising number of features, including the new "standards-compliant" rendering engine that debuted in IE8 beta 1.

In the features department, Microsoft touts new privacy functionality, a search box that shows suggestions and pictures, a dynamic "Suggested Sites" bookmark for users who don't know where they want to go today, "Web Slices" that let you subscribe to content within a page, and "Accelerators," which can serve up maps, translations, or dictionary definitions when you highlight a piece of text. There are many more smaller features, some of which look like they've come straight from Firefox 3—check out the IE8 tour for all the details."

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BBC

"A television advert for the iPhone misled consumers, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled. Two complaints to the watchdog noted that the advert said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone".

But the ASA said because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java - two programs that form part of many webpages - the claim was misleading. Apple had argued its claim referred to availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance.

The iPhone employs a web browser called Safari, which is built on freely available software. Many webpages, however, employ small software programs like Flash and Java to display graphics and animations.

Those programs are proprietary software, and Apple opted not to enable them on the iPhone. The result is that pages viewed with Safari may look different to those same pages viewed on other browsers. "

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Dailytech

Microsoft later settled with Immersion, agreeing to pay $26 million to settle the litigation between the two firms. Immersion also filed a similar patent suit against Sony for using rumble in its game controllers. Sony refused to license the technology, leading to the lack of rumble effects in PS3 controllers when the PS3 first launched.

Part of the settlement stipulations between Microsoft and Immersion stated that if Sony should ever come back and license Immersion's technology to add vibration effects into PS3 controllers, Immersion would pay Microsoft a portion of any settlement received from Sony."

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HardOCP

"ASUS’ newest ROG (Republic of Gamers) branded board, the Rampage Extreme, sports both style and power. With its water cooled capable chipset cooling system, this just might be the board to beat the heat, and a few benchmarks.

... The ASUS Rampage Extreme motherboard is the newest member of ASUS’ Republic of Gamers product line. ASUS designed the board using the Intel X48 chipset, with support as follows: all current Intel LGA 775 processors, DDR3 memory operating in Dual Channel mode up to 1600MHz officially, and dual card CrossFireX graphics mode using matched ATI graphics cards. The Rampage Extreme board is a feature complete solution, requiring only a minimal set of components for an operational system including: an Intel LGA 775 processor, DDR3 memory, video card, hard drive, optic drive, and PSU."

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