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100th No BS Podcast Spectacular: Nathan's New PC (The Apologies in Advance Edition)

The Maximum PC Staff — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:51:41 -0500

Welcome to Maximum PC's 100th Podcast Spectacular! This week, we visit with a ton of old friends, talk about Nathan's new PC, Pallette-Swap Ninja, and listen to a reader question. This week's show features the talents of: Dan Amrich, Kat Auch, Andy Bauman, Norman Chan, Nathan Edwards, Gordon Mah Ung, Will Smith, Captain Spaulding, and Jeremy Williams. Make sure you hang around for the end, we have a very special guest appearance by Veronica Belmont! We sincerely apologize for the wait, but we hope it's been worth it! Enjoy the show!

We also have come into posession of a ton of SteelSeries keyboards and headsets, speaker systems, and even more t-shirts to give away in our weekly Twitter contest. Be sure to sign up for @willsmith's feed to get in on the action.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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Another Core i7 Launch Rumor: Week 46

Chris Moody — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:24:16 -0500

The mighty Fudzilla has dropped a rumor that we can expect the first Core i7 to arrive in the US in week 46, between the 10th and 14th of November. They also said that Japanese customers might even be able to buy them as early as the first days of November. They cite unnamed sources.

Intel of course, remains mum only saying to expect it sometime in Q4 of 2008. Intel is more of a tease than my first girlfriend.

As Fudzilla notes there are plenty of X58 based motherboard prototypes that have floated on the internet in the pasted few months from names like MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus. If there is a mid November launch of Core i7, there should be a selection of motherboards available for it, some with overclocking features.

I have only had my Newegg wish list system configured since last March. It has gone through several revisions waiting on Core i7, and the power supply is up in the air depending on the stated needs of the motherboard I pick. I figured on $300 on the CPU and another $300 on the Motherboard. Yeah, I know it is no Dream Machine. However, I have to operate like the government and tell the wife that my stated budget is $1800, when in reality its $2,200 and I am going to run a little over that. Better to beg forgiveness and have a nice new game machine to console myself with, than to ask permission and be denied. I know my limits however and racking up a $5,000 bill on a game system would result in my summary execution. Another $500 bucks I can fix with flowers, chocolate and extra attention (I hope).

Anyone else have a wish list for their new Core i7 system? Tell me about it below!

Alpine 7 Pro

David Murphy — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Given its small size, we didn’t expect maximum cooling performance from Arctic Cooling’s Alpine 7 Pro. And while the Alpine 7 Pro doesn’t set any performance records, in some situations it does match the capabilities of our cooler of choice, Thermaltake’s DuOrb. Given the sheer size difference between this 9x9x3cm cooler and the, well, monstrous DuOrb, the Alpine 7’s performance was a pleasant surprise.

The Alpine 7 Pro does an exceptional job of cooling when your processor is idle—it even ran head to head with the DuOrb in this capacity. Both coolers dropped the temperature of all four cores of our Q6700 to 36 C, but when we cranked up our processor to 100 percent usage rates, the Alpine 7 faltered.

As always, our burn-in test separated the lion from the lamb. The DuOrb is reasonably quiet and provides flawless cooling. The Alpine 7 Pro’s attached 9.2cm fan is similarly silent—far less audible than a beastly cooling apparatus like the Zalman CNPS9700. It just doesn’t cool as well. We appreciate the Alpine 7 Pro’s ability to offer better cooling than a stock Intel cooler, but as we expected from the get-go, this is not a high-performance cooler.

The cooler supports the Intel LGA775 spec to a T. Prior to this, we had never tested a cooler that included all four installation prongs that Intel stock coolers have. The inclusion of these prongs eliminates the need to remove the motherboard to install the cooler. It’s a welcome relief from a tiresome process that we could really do without. All air coolers that fit an LGA775 motherboard should come with a four-prong mounting system—period.

Overclockers might want to steer clear of the Alpine in favor of a bulkier cooler, but the Alpine 7 Pro’s smidgen of additional cooling over a stock part and superlow price make it a fantastic value.

Antec Twelve Hundred

David Murphy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:25 -0500

ou will not find a more powerful air-cooled case on the market than Antec’s Twelve Hundred—not unless you strap a box fan to the side of your chassis. That’s what it would take to challenge the cooling prowess of this full-tower enclosure, which features one 20cm fan on top and five 12cm fans placed throughout the interior. These six blue LED fans are attached to individual switches that allow you to tweak the strength (and sound) of each fan to suit your needs.

While the case’s cooling is top-notch, not all of the Twelve Hundred’s features are so thoughtfully designed. The fans’ cables could stand to be longer to better utilize the case’s numerous holes and attachments for cable management. And while the Twelve Hundred comes with an additional switch to turn the 20cm fan’s light on and off, it would be nice if we could control all the lights at once. And the installation procedure for hard drives is overly complicated. You have to remove a grand total of 16 screws to insert a single drive—what ever happened to no-fuss rails?

The case has plenty of room on the inside—vertically. Larger graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s 8800 GTX, fit inside the chassis but leave little room for stringing cables along the card’s side. We would have preferred a wider case to the unusable space above the motherboard. The chassis supports three 5.25-inch devices and nine 3.5-inch drives, but we’d gladly trade two drive bays for more usable space.

We liked the Antec Nine Hundred, but we expected the Twelve Hundred to improve on its predecessor’s shortcomings—such as the narrow body and overly complex drive installation. Antec has done nothing to fix these issues. We could excuse these things in the Nine Hundred because its exceptional cooling-based design impressed us greatly. We’re now at the design’s second iteration, and the Twelve Hundred offers little above and beyond what we’ve already seen. This isn’t an improvement; it’s a resize.

BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC 1GB

Will Smith — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:17:23 -0500

Sporting almost the same configuration as the reference design we previewed last month, BFG’s GeForce GTX 280 delivers amazing performance with the second-generation DirectX 10 chipset from Nvidia. It soundly spanks ATI’s new 4870, as well as all but the dual-GPU graphics solutions from the previous generation—and even against those, the GTX 280 wins all but a few benchmarks. The real question we’re asking is, Do we need this much power?

Luckily for Nvidia, the answer is yes. The company’s GT200 GPU, which forms the heart of the GeForce GTX 280 and 260 boards, is a great performer, despite its massive footprint and huge energy requirements. BFG overclocked the GPU core ever so slightly—it runs at 615MHz—while the GDDR3 memory ticks along at a stock 1107MHz. The GTX 280 features 240 stream processors running at 1350MHz—a touch more than double the GPU’s core speed.

It’s not surprising that the GTX 280 fares so well against older Nvidia cards; far more interesting is its performance compared with the new Radeon HD 4870, which streets for about half the GTX 280’s $660 list price. The good news for Nvidia is that the 280 is faster across all our benchmarks than a single 4870 board. However, the ATI card delivers as much as 80 percent of the performance of the single GTX board at a much lower price. Still, despite ATI’s accomplishment, the GeForce GTX 280 is the fastest single videocard you can buy today.

The GTX 280 features all the great video-processing capabilities of the 9000-series Nvidia boards—it accelerates the decode of H.264, MPEG-4, and MPEG-2 videos and supports HDCP and dual-link DVI.

Before you rush out and purchase a GTX 280 board, make sure your system supports its power requirements. This is the first single-GPU board we’ve tested that requires both a 6-pin and 8-pin PCI Express power connector, and you need to make sure your power supply is up to snuff. We recommend a 650W PSU to run a single card—potential SLIers will need at least a 1000W supply, but you should check Nvidia's PSU compatibility list before you buy.

ATI to Nvidia: You're a Dinosaur

Will Smith — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:00:00 -0500

On the eve of the GeForce GTX 280 launch just last week, ATI unveiled a bombshell—a brand-new GPU architecture that utilized better process technology and a more power efficient design to outperform Nvidia's gargantuan new GPU. ATI eschewed the huge, hot monolithic GPU for a more compact, but modular core. With twin goals of decreased power consumption and more efficiency per die area, ATI looks poised to dethrone Nvidia, and all without building a videocard that sports an aural footprint roughly equivalent to a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

With the new RV770 GPU comes two products, the $200 Radeon 4850 and the $300 Radeon 4870. While their prices vary wildly, the videocards all use the same GPU. Let’s find out what makes it tick.

Under the Heat Spreader

ATI says the day of the giant monolithic GPU is over. Instead of using giant, power-hungry GPUs, ATI is planning on designing smaller, more efficient GPUs that can work together to handle big workloads.

We’ve walked this path before. When Intel’s Netburst architecture reached the end of its life, we were seeing the largest, hottest, most power-hungry CPUs ever, but performance wasn’t scaling up as fast as the power and heat were. In order to see a 10% performance increase, the new CPU would generate 30% more heat and require 30% more power. This was an untenable situation, so Intel and AMD quickly moved away from monolithic cores to more efficient multi-core designs. If your applications can take advantage of all the CPU cores in your system, you should see significantly better performance with a much slower, cooler multi-core design than you would with a similar sized single-core design running at twice the speed.

The two main GPU manufacturers are at a similar crossroads, and each chose a different direction with this generation of GPU. Nvidia has launched its GTX 280 boards, which sport a massive monolithic GPU design. These are among the largest chips ever put into mass production—a single GTX 280 chip is 576mm^2, features a 512-bit memory interface, and draws 236W when it’s running at full bore. To contrast, the RV770 chip that ATI is using in its new line of GPUs is just 260mm^2, features a 256-bit memory bus, and draws about 170W when running at full bore. But, despite a much smaller die, drawing less power, and running a memory bus about half the width of the GTX 280, the Radeon 4870 delivers about 75% of the speed of the faster card in most of our benchmarks.

GPU Core Competencies

With this generation of GPU, ATI’s beginning to see the payoff from the premature move to a 55nm die size last generation. While Nvidia languishes at 65nm, ATI is packing more silicon into a smaller space, and increasing efficiency at the same time. But, that’s not all ATI’s done. The new RV770 series GPUs feature a redesigned GPU core with an astounding 800 stream processors—the little silicon dynamos that handle everything from rendering soft shadows and bump maps to decoding H.264 video from Blu-ray movies.

By integrating 16KB of cache, bundles of 10 stream processors, and four dedicated texture units in so-called SIMD units, ATI has juiced much better shader performance out of the overall package. The 10 stream processors share can share information with other processors in the same bundle using their shared memory, which makes the new shader core much more efficient than previous designs. And, because the shader cores pump their output directly into dedicated texture units, there’s very little time lost between writing the output to texture memory.

By integrating the stream processors in modular units around the texture processing cores, the RV770 design minimizes latency and improves performance. Each SIMD unit is connected to four dedicated texture units with 480GB/sec of bandwidth between them. This was absolutely crucial to maintain performance, or the texture units, which render the actual pixels that are displayed, would become the bottleneck again.

Under the Hood: RV770 Unveiled

ATI packed the latency-sensitive silicon, like the stream processors and the basic texturing units in the center of the RV770s GPU. Surrounding that is are the memory controllers and L2 cache, and on the periphery of the chip rests the memory interface (GDDR5 on the 4870 and GDDR3 on the 4850), the PCI Express connection, the Crossfire controller, and the various display controllers for DVI, HDMI, VGA, and DisplayPort. And they packed all that on a 260mm^2 55nm die.

Sometimes Narrower is Better

There are two basic ways to increase memory bandwidth. You can increase the clock speed of the memory or you can transfer more data with every clock cycle by increasing the width of the memory bus. Like ATI’s previous-generation GPUs, Nvidia’s GTX 280 uses a 512-bit wide memory bus. The new GPU utilizes a narrower 256-bit bus, but it’s using new GDDR5 memory, which allows twice as many transfers per clock cycle as GDDR3. This gives ATI roughly the same memory bandwidth as the GTX 280 on a board with a cheap 256-bit bus and which transfers more data at lower clock speeds.

GDDR5 also uses fewer pins to connect the memory to the board. This reduces board complexity compared to DDR3, which is especially important when you consider the greatly reduced space available for connector pins on GPUs that use smaller process technology. By using a less complex 256-bit bus and cranking the clocks up on the GDDR5 memory, ATI should be able to able to bring decent memory performance in without harming yields for the GPU.

The high-end Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 runs its GDDR3 memory at a punishing 1100MHz and pushing an impressive 115GB/sec of bandwidth. Meanwhile ATI’s 4870 just ticks along at 900MHz, but runs at the same 115GB/sec. The net result is that the ATI card’s memory draws less power and generates less heat, while delivering the same level of performance as the more expensive card.

Running GDDR5 memory at speeds lower than GDDR3 memory with the same bandwidth is great, but the current low-end and mid-range ATI boards only support 512MB of total memory (the GeForce GTX 260 ships with 896MB of memory on a 448-bit interface and the GTX 280 ships with a full gigabyte). For the most part, performance doesn’t seem to suffer due to lack of memory, but that could change as graphically intensive games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 are released this year.

Video Playback and Encoding

As we’ve covered in the past, video decode acceleration is a crucial feature for modern GPUs. The new RV770-series GPU handles advanced Blu-ray-required features, such as picture-in-picture, on the hardware, which allows for much lower CPU utilization with supported players. In our testing, CPU utilization went up about 5% when we flipped on picture-in-picture playback, while there was about a 20% increase when using an older ATI card on the same system.

Like Nvidia, ATI has demonstrated GPU-accelerated video transcodes from MPEG2 to H.264 video. While the demos run at an impressive clip, there’s no way for us to compare performance between the two cards, as neither encoder will work with both Nvidia and ATI GPUs, and neither the Element BadaBoom encoder that Nvidia uses, nor Cyberlink’s PowerDirector 7 encode using similar enough settings that we feel comfortable comparing them.

This illustrates the fundamental problem with GPU-based computing today, which we’ll talk about next.

Stream Processing

GPU-based computing promises to bring massive performance to all tasks that require massive numbers of parallel computations to occur, and the early apps, such as the Folding@Home clients, are extremely promising. However, the problem is that there’s one GPU computing API for Nvidia’s cards and a second one for ATI’s cards.

That means that anyone who writes software and wants to harness the power of GPUs needs to write not one, but two programs—one for ATI and one for Nvidia. If anything about the last 13 years of DirectX have taught us anything, it’s that in order for hardware-accelerated anything to succeed, you need to have common APIs that allow developers to write code once that works on both platforms.

We don’t know whether ATI’s Stream or Nvidia’s CUDA is the better API. Because we’re not programmers, we don’t care. But, we do know that there needs to be a common API that developers can write to that will run on every supported GPU. To make that happen, ATI and Nvidia need to put aside their differences and work together to build a common API that works on all hardware. If the two companies need a place to start, Apple pitched OpenCL, which does just that.

The Speeds and Feeds

And now, it’s time to talk about the hardware. By the time you read this, ATI will have launched both the Radeon 4850 and the Radeon 4870. Priced at $200 and $300 respectively, these cards are set to compete squarely in the mid-range.

The 4850 ships with 512MB of GDDR3 running at 993MHz on a 256-bit bus. The board we tested runs a 625MHz core and sports the same 800 stream processors as the more expensive 4870. The card will sell for between $200 and $250 depending on configuration and specs.

The Radeon 4870 is ATI’s new mid-range part, slotting it the $300 price range. The GPU core runs at 750MHz and the boards 512MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 900MHz on a 256-bit bus. Remember though, that the GDDR5 memory transfers 4 chunks of data per clock, giving it an effective memory bandwidth that’s almost double that of the 4850. For $50-$100 more, this is a Good Thing.

Specifications

	Radeon 4850	Radeon 4870	GeForce GTX 280
GPU Core	55nm RV770	55nm RV770	65nm GT200
GPU Clock Speed	625MHz	750MHz	602MHz
Memory Type/Interface	256-bit GDDR3	256-bit GDDR5	512-bit GDDR3
Memory Speed	993MHz	900MHz	1107MHz
Die size	260mm^2	260mm^2	576mm^2

The Performance Story

Do ATI's new graphics cards deliver 75% of a GeForce GTX 280’s power for a fraction of the price? We went into the lab to find out.

The short answer is "yes". The Radeon 4870 runs nearly as fast as a GTX 280 in most benchmarks for about 60% of the cost. Running two 4870 boards together in Crossfire delivers performance that beats a single GTX 280 board for the same cash outlay. The performance you get from a single 4870 card is quite impressive, especially when you consider that it's half the price. When you look at the scores the Radeon 4870s chalked up in Crossfire mode, you may even be tempted to pony up for a pair of 4870s, but think before you leap.

Dual-card solutions are well and good in practice, but before you make the jump to a dual-GPU, you need to be aware of the pitfalls. First, adding a second card to your rig completely obviates the power and noise benefits the 4870 has over the GTX 200. Second, functionality that you may take for granted, like multiple monitor support, doesn't work with dual-card solutions from either ATI or Nvidia. Third, new games frequently require a driver update or even a patch before they'll properly take advantage of your second card. Multiple-cards are great for power users, but you need to be aware of the sacrifices entailed with these rigs, preferably before you whip out your credit card. We can't wholeheartedly recommend SLI and Crossfire as more than niche products until these problems are solved.

During the course of our testing, we also discovered that many of these new cards were CPU-bound on our testbeds in all but the most demanding games. That means that even adding a second (or a faster) videocard to your system shows very little performance improvement because the CPU can't handle its tasks fast enough to keep multiple GPUs occupied. We'll be updating our testbed before the next round of GPU reviews, however, if your current CPU is slower than an Intel Core2 Duo X6800--a 2.93GHz dual-core Conroe--then you probably won't see much benefit in games outside of Crysis if you upgrade to more than one graphics card, whether it's a GTX 280, a Radeon 4870, or even a Radeon 4850.

But, we digress. The short, short verdict is that ATI's new Radeon 4850 and Radeon 4870 deliver stunning performance at an extremely compelling price point. If you've been waiting to upgrade to a DirectX 10-compatible graphics card, now is the time. For less than the price of an Xbox 360, you can upgrade your GPU and get kick ass gaming performance on most modern PCs.

Radeon 4870 Benchmarks

	GeForce GTX 280	Radeon 4870	Radeon 4870 Crossfire
Crysis (fps)	15.9	9.3	19.9
World in Conflict (fps)	32.0	28.0	34.0
Company of Heroes (fps)	32.0	39.6	44.6
3DMark'06 Game 1 (fps)	46.0	34.0	47.1
3DMark'06 Game 2 (fps)	45.5	36.7	49.5
3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps)	15.5	10.7	19.9
3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps)	11.9	9.0	17.4

Best scores are bolded. Allbenchmarks runat 1920x1200 with 4x AA enabled, unless otherwise specified.

Radeon 4850 Benchmarks

	GeForce GTX 280	Radeon 4850	Radeon 4850 Crossfire
Crysis (fps)	15.9	8.1	19.2
World in Conflict (fps)	32.0	31.0	34.0
Company of Heroes (fps)	32.0	32.7	45.1
3DMark'06 Game 1 (fps)	46.0	24.4	45.5
3DMark'06 Game 2 (fps)	45.5	29.7	48.1
3DMark Vantage Game 1 (fps)	15.5	8.1	13.1
3DMark Vantage Game 2 (fps)	11.9	7.0	10.0

Best scores are bolded. Allbenchmarks runat 1920x1200 with 4x AA enabled, unless otherwise specified.

Daily News Brief: EVGA Owners, Rev Your GPUS!

Paul Lilly — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:49:08 -0500

New GPU Overclocking Program

EVGA is one of only two companies to officially allow their videocards to be overclocked without voiding the warranty (XFX being the other) , and to help customers push their GPUs, EVGA has released a new overclocking tool. Dubbed Precision, the OCing utility joins the ranks of RivaTuner, nTune, and ATITool. Precision works with EVGA 6, 7, 8, and 9 series graphics cards, offers core/Shader clock link/Unlink capability, and more. And if you own a Logitech G15 keyboard, you can view your OCing stats on the LCD display. Grab the download and read the FAQ here, and follow the forum discussion here.

And the $11 Million Merger Belongs To...

Infogrames said Wednesday it would acquire the remaining outstanding equity interests of Atari for $1.68 per share, or $11 million, making Atari a wholly-owned subsidiary. The move falls in line with Infogrames' effort to gain a stronger foothold in the US, while also jiving with Atari's recent major restructuring initiative.

Apple Invests in Instant Gratification for iTunes

Apple yesterday announced that new movies will now be available for purchase on the iTunes Store the same day as their DVD release. Participating studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, and First Look Studios. New releases are priced at $14.99 and most catalog titles run $9.99. Kicking off the concurrent DVD/iTunes releases this week are American Gangster and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. See the full press release for more information.

Guess Who's Turning 30?

SPAM! That's right, the first known spam email was sent 30 years ago, traced back to a marketer for the now defunct DEC computer company. Flash forward to today, and unwanted emails toting their wares are now a staple of everyone's inbox. And according to an FBI report, 75 percent of Americans who were tricked into parting with $239.09 million were bamboozled through a spam message. More on the life and times of spam here.

GTA IV Shatters Own Sales Record in UK

Rockstar's highly anticipated Grant Theft Auto IV sold a record 609,000 copies during its first day of release in the UK, surpassing the previous record of 501,000 copies held by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game has also become the fastest selling Xbox 360 title in the UK with 335,000 copies sold, besting Halo 3's first-day sales of 266,000. Good thing too, as Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies revealed in an interview that GTA IV had a budget of roughly $100 million, the most costly development of any game to date. And who held that record previously? Shenmue, with an unprecedented $70 million budget when it was released for the Dreamcast back in 2000!

Router Bling

Had we found this out on April 1st, we'd be sure it was a prank, lest we're led to believe there's a legion of surfers out there looking to spruce up their D-Link routers. Well, now they can! Through a partnership with SkinIt, D-Link now offers both pre-configured and customized skins for anyone who owns a DIR-655, DIR -625, DIR-615, DGL-4500, DGL-4300, DGL-4100 or DIR-624 router. We'd offer our condolences to Linksys owners and others, but would they care?

What's Your Velocity?

That's not a rhetorical question, but the tagline behind Velocity Micro's video contest. Entrants are tasked with creating a video 3 minutes or less based around the tagline's theme for a chance to win a "$10,000 ultra performance Skulltrail gaming PC." Three runners up will receive a 22" Velocity Micro monitor. More rules and details here.

Daily News Brief: Can You Trust Local PC Repair Shops?

Paul Lilly — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:24:01 -0500

Who Can You Trust to Fix Your PC?

Maximum PC readers have no problem opening up PCs and performing self-diagnostics and repairs, but for everyone else, a trip to the local repair shop may be in order when something goes awry. But can they be trusted? Denver's local ABC news affiliate sent their Call7 Investigators team on an undercover mission to answer that question. Armed with a laptop with intentionally dislodged RAM, the undercover team pinged 7 local repair shops, four of which misdiagnosed the ailment and blamed the motherboard, power supply, or power drive. Read the full story here.

New Version of AVG Free Available

Penny pinchers can now download the newest version of Grisoft's widely popular AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, updated to version 8.0. The latest release introduces a cosmetic makeover while adding anti-spyware protection and Safe Search technology, which scans and rates Google, Yahoo, and MSN search results in real-time.

PC Makers Give XP Life Support

By June 30, PC manufacturers are supposed to stop selling computers with Windows XP, but rather than kick the OS to the curb, Dell and HP will still offer XP. How? By taking advantage of "downgrade rights" offered as part of Vista's license agreement. Technically Vista Business and Ultimate machines, the PCs will have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer's request, providing them with a no-charge Vista upgrade path to boot. Much more here.

Dealing with Defcon

Anti-virus vendors are taking exception to a new contest being introduced at the Defcon hacker conference this August. Called Race-to-Zero, participants are challenged to circumvent anti-virus software, with awards to be given for "Most elegant obfuscation," "Dirtiest hack of an obfuscation," "Comedy value," and "Most deserving of beer." Security vendors fear the contest will only help malware writers learn new tricks, but contest organizers contend it will help highlight that anti-virus protection alone doesn't provide a complete defense.

Getting Your X-Fi Soundcard to Run on Linux

If you're even the slightest bit curious about Linux, consider giving the newly released Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a spin. And if you own a Creative X-Fi soundcard, keep your eyes peeled for an updated beta driver from Creative (the current one supports Ubuntu 7.10, openSUSE 10.3, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1). In the meantime reference this thread for status updates and workarounds.

Duke Nukem Forever Update

Should the game ever ship, one of the longest running jokes in PC gaming will finally come to an end. And according to ShackNews, that's a very good possibility. ShackNews claims to have "witnessed several different DNF gameplay scenarios, mechanics, and environments being demonstrated," concluding that "Duke Nukem Forever is looking great, and will easily stand apart from the crowd in both visual and gameplay styles." More here.