IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Overclockers Club) 11/03/2010

Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W Power Supply Review

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New Maps on the Way for Modern Warfare 2

Well it looks like the first map pack for Modern Warfare 2 will hit Xbox Live on March 30th. And just in case you didn't know the 360 will have a one-month exclusive on the DLC as well. Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at IW tweeted that the DLC is definitely coming for PS3 and PC, although at a later and undisclosed date. Even though I have my copy of MW2 for the 360, I'm wondering if they will release the DLC for free to PC gamers as they have in the past, or if they'll get greedy and charge them. I hope for their sake they release the DLC for free to PC gamers, with all the terrible feedback they've gotten about no dedicated servers, field of vision, etc etc if they screw up the PC version any more, they're going to lose what few fans they have left. Speak your mind in the comments or our forums.

It's all about the Benjamins for PhysX Developers

If you've been keeping up with PC games as of late, there's no doubt you've noticed that more and more of them support Nvidia's PhysX technology. There's also no doubt that you've read or even experienced that some of these games make much better use of the technology than others. Well if what Richard Huddy says is true, there might be a reason why. Huddy is AMD’s senior manager of developer relations in Europe and he says that "Most game developers implement PhysX in their games not because they want to, but because it is implied by the marketing deal they have with Nvidia" and that "With the exception of Epic, don't actually want PhysX but they end up using it after all because NVIDIA pays them to." He goes even further to say "What I have seen with physics, or PhysX rather, is that Nvidia create a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game. The problem with that is obviously that the game developer doesn’t actually want it. They are not doing it because they want it; they’re doing it because they are paid to do it."

Obviously these are pretty strong words, but Nvidia doesn't exactly have a clean record. Discuss it in the comments or our forums.

Cisco lives up to their promise of changing the internet forever

On Monday, Cisco announced that they were going to change the internet forever and there was a lot of speculation on what the hell they were talking about. Well we can stop speculating, Cisco introduces their CRS-3 Carrier Routing system. While the name doesn't sound that impressive, what it's actually capable of sure is. Designed for the next-generation of internet serving, the CRS-3 is capable of delivering 322 Terabits of data per second. Not quite sure how much is a Terabit? I could pull some wikipedia data, but that's pretty boring and we don't need to see a bunch of zero's and commas anyway, so I'll let Cisco explain it better:

The CRS-3 enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

Oh. My. God. Do want! How do you think this will change our internet experience? Discuss it in the comments

Want to know the best way to bike across town? Ask Google

During the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC yesterday, Google announced it was adding "the most requested addition" to Google Maps, bike directions. Now when you get directions on Google Maps, in addition to By Car, By Public Transit and Walking... You can now select Bicycling. While how useful this will be depends largely on where live, there will be several cool features. Selecting the Bicycling option will show bike-only paths, bike lanes on streets and will even calculate the estimated travel time based on hills and fatigue. Now they just need to add options to select your fitness level, because some people are less like Lance Armstrong and more like Comic Book Guy.

Facebook Could Soon Give Away Your Location

Facebook is rumored to finally bring location information to its users. This feature has long been speculated, ever since a change to the privacy policy hinted at it. The information will only be available to those that you wish to share with, much like those inappropriate photos. The location feature will be available to third party developers through an API, and through the standard Facebook features. Other services such as Google Buzz and Twitter already have this feature, and this should be popular among Facebook users. I hope this will integrate nicely with mobile phones, as so many people use Facebook from their phones.

Google Apps Getting Own Store

Google is bringing the popular concept of an app store to its Google Apps suite of online productivity software. Third party developers will be able create their own software that will integrate with the core Google Apps products. One example comes from Intuit, maker of payroll and accounting software. An interesting feature of its software is the ability of an employee to get pay stubs by simply going to their calendar. Another developer is integrating support for Gmail, calendar, and chat into its software. By having all the applications in one window, it should be able to increase productivity. This move is aimed towards business customers, and is unknown how it will affect the average internet user.

Cisco Planning to Change the Internet

Cisco has announced it will make an announcement at the close of the market today, one which the company claims “will forever change the internet.” There is plenty of speculation as to what the announcement will deal with, with some popular theories including a fiber network and internet video traffic. A Cisco rep debunked the first theory, stating that Cisco is in the business of helping others do such things, and that it has no desire to build its own network. The latter theory is supported by the acquisition of Starent Networks, which specializes in mobile phone communication. I'm hoping that the announcement will enable companies to bring cheaper high speed internet to the United States.

Around The Forums

While we may be The Overclockers' Club, there is a lot more going on than just pushing our systems to the limits. Here is a few of the active discussions currently going on inside the OCC Forums:

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Intel's Nehalem-EX Octo-Cores Releasing End of the Month

This month Intel will be releasing their first Octo-Core Xeon server parts to go head to head against AMD’s Dodeka-Core Magny Cours Opteron. It will be manufactured on the 45nm HKMG fabrication process, coming with -if you haven’t guessed it already- 8 cores and another 8 threads, giving a total of 16 threads and a whopping 24MB of L3 Cache. This will come with 4 QPI links (mainly for use in Quad/Octo socket servers) and support for Intel’s TurboBoost technology. This will be nicely packaged with 2.3 Billion transistors. Clock speeds, models and pricing have yet to be revealed, but fear not for they will be revealed soon.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

IT News HeadLines (Overclockers Club) 11/03/2010

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