Tech News
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Lamptron FC-10 fan controller review
I was one of the first sites to feature a review of a Lamptron fan controller and for the most part they were always 100%. The thing I liked most about them was that the company kept trying to improve the design and would often ask me what I thought of certain designs.
Many years have passed since they fell off the map but, they continued to create fan controllers and the FC-10 is quite nice and looks like it should be in a Metro game.
It's been over ten years since I've last reviewed a Lamptron product on DV Hardware! Back then the company was primarily known for its CCFL products, but now Lamptron is best known for its fan controllers and some of its other modding products. The subject of this review is the Lamptron FC10 Special Edition, a unique four-channel fan controller that uses vintage Nixie tubes!
I still think there is a market for fan controllers and hope companies like Lamptron continue to build them.
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Tracking f-bombs via twitter around the world
The nice thing about the webby tubes is how you can find a post, say on facebook, and follow it to a legitimate website, say Techgage.com, and read an amazing story about a website that tracks when and where people type the word fuck on twitter.
Fiddlesticks! Fracking! Fudge! Nope, not THAT F-word. We're talking about the saucy verb that was supposedly first used in "Flen flyys," a circa-1475 poem that mocked friars for their alleged extracurricular activities with other men's wives. (Seriously, look it up on Wikipedia to spice up your small talk at parties and wedding receptions.)
The site FBomb.co maps in real time whenever the F-word is dropped on Twitter. America and Britain are leaders in cursing online, according to the interactive map, with New Yorkers tagged as the biggest offenders.Techgage noticed that leaving the website running proved that the US East Coast and California are the biggest offenders along with a large portion of the UK. Seems fitting since those are English speaking countries (even though a vast majority may refuse to speak it) Strangely enough large parts of Canada and Australia (also English speaking countries) only recorded a handful of f-bombs.
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Samsung Roadmap - With lots to show
We all know that big companies spend a good portion of their profits on plans for the future. Sometimes those plans are well thought out and other times they are like the imac. Either way it is good to see what companies have planned for the future and by the looks of it Samsung is setting the bar high.
On the General Outlook
A fun tidbit on slide 3 -- Samsung wants to make $400B USD by 2020. That's more than double Samsung's 2012 haul of 201T Won ($189.6B USD). Slide 5 shows Samsung expects OLED and SSD to be the fastest high-tech growth places from 2012-2017. Samsung also expects modest growth in smartphones and "smart TVs", slowing by 2017.When considering the products they sell, how do they figure what the lifespan will be. (this speaks to innovation and R&D money.
Product replacement schedule/lifetime:
Mobile -- 1.8 years
Note PC -- 5.0 years
TV -- 7.0 years
Refrigerator -- 14.0 years
Washer -- 15.9 yearsAs you can imagine they have timed their product cycle to be about the "buy up" period for American mobile device plans.
DailyTech has the slides posted, be sure to check them out.
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NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti Launch Day
The great thing about being NVIDIA is that they always have something available to take on the competition and today they have launched the world’s fastest GPU the GTX 780 Ti(tan)ium. When this card was announced figured it was nothing more than an overclocked GTX Titan with a 700 series name badge. However, final specs uncovered that it was so much more.
GTX 780 Ti comes with 2880 CUDA cores (more than Titan) 7000Mhz memory modules (Faster than Titan) and a 875Mhz Core Clock (Quicker than Titan) which makes this card, at the lowest level, a powerhouse of parallel processing.
Web Reviews
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti: Taking GK110 To The Max @ HotHardware
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Performance Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti review: Titan killer!
- Nvidia GTX 780 Ti @ LanOC Reviews
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Graphics Card Launch Review @ HardwareHeaven
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3 GB @ techPowerUpI suspect there will be more reviews throughout the day so we'll be checking the inbox for more goodness. Althought right now I'm curious to see what EVGA is doing with the GPU
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Free Games with GeForce GTX 780 Ti and Discount on SHIELD
This is a great promotion from NVidia.
From October 28th until December 31st, gamers who buy a GeForce GTX 780 Ti will receive free downloadable copies of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Splinter Cell Blacklist from participating retailers and e-tailers. So not only are you going to get the greatest gaming GPU on the planet, you’ll also get three great games that showcase the latest graphics technologies to go along with your GeForce GTX 780 Ti purchase.
But that’s not all. In North America, participating retailers and e-tailers will also offer the Holiday Bundle with SHIELD, which includes all three games and a voucher for $100 off an NVIDIA SHIELD portable game console! Gamers must act fast though! This special offer expires November 21st.
This is a huge value for anyone who was already planning to purchase a graphics card this holiday season.
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AMD R9 290 Launch Day
We have already seen the launch of the R9 290X and even reviewed an R9 270X which begs the question. "What will fill the middle ground?"
It would seem that the R9 290 (notice no "X") will fit the bill nicely and, with a last minute drive update, comes with enough power to take on the GTX 780. *shudder*
Web Reviews
- AMD Radeon R9 290 review: cheaper Hawaii vs. GTX 780
- AMD Radeon R9-290 and 290 Crossfire reviews
- AMD Radeon R9 290 Review: Hawaii Just Got Cheaper @ HotHardware
- AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- AMD's Radeon R9 290 graphics card reviewed
- AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB Review @ Hardware Canucks
- AMD Radeon R9 290 Graphics Card Launch Review @ HardwareHeaven
- AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB @ techPowerUpI'm pretty sure a R9 290(X) killer is coming along, sadly since AMD finds my site offensive they have opted *not* to send me a sample and at 600 bones I don't want to afford a substandard GPU.
That is until the MSI Lightning edition comes around, it should clock like crazy!
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EA Scraps Upcoming Command and Conquer Game
I was talking with a friend about Battlefield 4 and we got on the subject of "crap game" Basically the conclusion of our discussion was that we are both totally burned on COD (Call of Duty) because it was basically the same game over and over. For me I loved COD 4 and both of the Modern Warfare games to follow but Black Ops ruined the franchise for me. Along the same lines I loved Battlefield 2 and I was expecting nothing less when Battlefield 3 came out.
Oh was I wrong. Yes, I know Battlefield is a "multiplayer" game but under that assumption why bother including in a single player aspect?? Anyhow the reason I bring this up is because for Battlefield 3 I got an Alpha and Beta invite and was given an opportunity to voice some feedback about the game. Sadly since they only offered a single multiplayer map and matchmaking was crap I wasn't able say much about the game that wasn’t already voice by someone else. The real sad thing is based on my retail experience, DICE didn't change much either.
Maybe that is because the game was "solid" in their eyes or maybe they didn't have the right people playing the Alpha like they did with Command and Conquer.
Part of being in a creative team is the understanding that not all of your choices are going to work out. In this case, we shifted the game away from campaign mode and built an economy-based, multiplayer experience. Your feedback from the alpha trial is clear: We are not making the game you want to play. That is why, after much difficult deliberation, we have decided to cease production of this version of the game. Although we deeply respect the great work done by our talented team, ultimately it’s about getting you the game you expect and deserve.
Over the next 10 days we will be refunding any and all money spent in the alpha. If you have a question about your refund, please contact help.ea.com.Now, ^^ THAT ^^ isn't something you never hear a game development studio say and it took some balls that is for sure.
Oh and back to Battlefield 4, I might buy it but only when it is on sale and if it comes with the expansions. Of course if EA wants to push a key to my Origin account I'll be glad to give it a go and I might even write about it.
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A Deuce of SSD Goodness from Custom PC Review
Whoa check this out, Two SSD reviews at Custom PC Review!
- PNY XLR8 Pro 240GB SSD @ Custom PC Review
- Toshiba Q Series Pro 256GB SSD (HDTS325XZSTA)’Toshibas competing product comes in the form of the Toshiba Q Series Pro, which we’ll be reviewing today. Toshiba appears to have modeled their SSD lineup off of Samsung’s highly successful 840 Series with Toshiba releasing their latest Q Series and the Q Series Pro SSDs. The Toshiba Q Series Pro offers greater performance in comparison to its vanilla sibling
I'm no SSD expert but Toshiba has been rather popular in custom pcs for the past several months. Call me a Crucial snob but of the SSDs I have I like my "M" drive the most.
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In Win GRone @ techPowerUp
Can you argue with a chassis that has a "disarming price?"
The In Win GRone is a menacing-looking chassis at a disarming price, filled to the rim with features. Available in two cool color choices, the stylish chassis leaves little to be desired.
The thing about computer cases these days is you can get just about everything and still not get what you want. Personally I would much rather see expansion bay covers that blend into the front panel. Very few cases actually do that anymore. I also want to see proper cooling in a chassis instead of just bigger fans. Finally I want to see the death of external drive docks. (Sadly seems China likes the drive dock so fat chance of that happening)
Nice case btw, worth a check for the photos if anything.
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Gigabyte Z87X-OC Force review: extreme overclocking board even more extreme?
Some people don't know this but Gigabyte released two orange Z87 OC motherboards in this last round. The first was a trimmed down version designed for CPU and Memory overclocking while the other is a fully featured motherboard with an onboard PLX chip for proper 4-way GPU support.
Which one is better? Well, it would depend on who you ask.
The main difference is that the Z87X-OC Force is equipped with a PLX PEX8747 chip that can double the 16 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes from the CPU. Because of that, the four orange PCI-Express slots can be configured 16/0/16/0, 16/0/8/8 and 8/8/8/8 which supports 4-way SLI and 4-way Crossfire. The black PCI-Express x16 slot is directly connected to the CPU, so if you have one video card you want to overclock you have 0 extra latency. It's a clever solution we've seen before with MSI and ASRock.
There are actually quite a few differences between the boards and I really need to get off my duff and write an article about them.
