Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 Hybrid 750GB Review
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MSI N560GTX-448 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Review
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OCZ Announces Talos 2 Enterprise SAS SSD Series
OCZ is one of the names you look toward when you are ready to purchase a new solid state drive, and today the company has a new SSD aimed at enterprises. OCZ has announced the Talos 2 Enterprise SAS SSD series, which is the follow-up to the Talos Series. The original Talos was only available in a 3.5" form factor, but the Talos 2 is a 2.5" drive. It is an Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD, meaning it is ideal for businesses needing a faster, more reliable drive. The Talos 2 offer improved capacity over the original Talos, along with increased I/O performance and scalability in "enterprise storage environments." The Talos 2 SAS SSDs are available in capacities between 100GB and 1TB, and in MLC, eMLC, and SLC NAND configurations. The drives will be made available to businesses and enterprises through OCZ's global business-to-business channel.
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Corsair Sets Memory Overclocking Record
The current memory overclocking world record has once again been set using Corsair memory, with overclocker and Corsair employee Jake "Planet" Crimmins at the helm. The record was set using 1GB of Corsair Dominator GT CMGTX6 memory, along with an AMD FX-8150 processor, with the whole system powered by a Corsair Professional Series Gold AX1200 PSU. The memory reached a frequency of 1733.8MHz, equivalent to DDR3-3467. The whole system was kept at a remarkably low temperature using a custom-built liquid nitrogen cooling system. Pictures of the system, and full system specs can be found at HWBOT.
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Mass Effect 3 Returns to the Citadel
In the first Mass Effect, you spend a fair bit of time in the Citadel, the massive space station that greets you with its gigantic arms within the game's first hour. It is where you get a great deal of missions, become a Spectre, and experience the game's climatic boss fight. When Mass Effect 2 came around, gamers were once again greeted by the Citadel and got a small glimpse of the improved design of the Wards, but that was pretty much it. Gone was the exploration of any parts of the Citadel and overall, it played a fairly small role in the grand story of ME2. Mass Effect 3 is just a few months away, and BioWare is letting gamers return to the Citadel for a more involved experience. There will even be a mission that takes place on the Citadel that was cut from Mass Effect 2, but is being included in Mass Effect 3. BioWare also said it has learned its lesson from the suicide mission ending of Mass Effect 2 and said it was not the company's greatest idea. Hopefully taking into account any dead characters from the millions of endings gamers went through in Mass Effect 2 will not affect anything in Mass Effect 3.
Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6th, 2012, for the PC, PS3, and 360.
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NVIDIA Launches Special Edition GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 CUDA Cores
I'm sure by now you have seen our review of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti that packs just a few more CUDA cores than a regular GTX 560 Ti. Well, NVIDIA has gone ahead and launched a special edition GPU: the GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 CUDA cores. The regular GTX 560 Ti has 384 CUDA cores while the GTX 570 has 480, so this special edition 560 Ti sits right between the two in price and performance. The card has 448 CUDA cores (GF110 instead of GF114) running at 1.46GHz, a 748MHz graphics clock, and 1.25GB of GDDR5 memory at 3.8GHz. There is also support for 3-way SLI (the 560 Ti only supports 2-way), plus you will find a DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connector on the card. NVIDIA is putting this card as a limited edition just for the holidays, so if you need that little extra oomph to play Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, this would make for a great addition.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 CUDA cores is available now for $289.
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Live Action Film Half-Life: Origins Remakes Half-Life's Opening Scene
For many gamers, there is a special place in their hearts for Half-Life, the game that showed a strong narrative could work in a first-person shooter. The opening scene alone is a classic, as it introduces us to Gordon Freeman and exactly what is going on at Black Mesa. Today, we have a live action recreation of the opening scene of Half-Life from the folks that brought us the short film Beyond Black Mesa. Titled Half-Life: Origins, this live action film shows the opening moments of Half-Life as Gordon Freeman rides the train into Black Mesa. We do not get to see too much of the labs, but we do get to see the HEV Mark IV suit. The video mixes live action with CGI work, but all in all it is quite stunning. Hopefully we will be seeing more of Half-Life: Origins later on, as this short trailer looks very promising.
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Are Biofuels Really Best for the Environment?
A new study from Oregon State University challenges what many people believe to be obvious; that biofuels are good for the environment. By considering the cost effectiveness of gallon-for-gallon biofuels, the researchers found their production and use would be worse for the environment and economy than implementing a gas tax and calling for improved efficiencies. The reasoning comes from analyzing the total costs of production of biofuels, including the amount of gasoline used, and the CO2 likely to be released when new acreage is used for additional biofuel production.
The results predict money used for implementing and improving energy efficiency would be 20 times more effectively used than if it went to corn ethanol programs. Increasing the gas tax is predicted to be 21 times more effective than promoting cellulosic ethanol. Altogether, US-produced biofuels would be 20-31 times more expensive than energy efficiency improvements that would reduce the consumption of gasoline by 1%. When all of the biofuel mandates are combined, reducing the use of fossil fuels by 2.5% would cost $67 billion, while increasing the gas tax by $0.25 would lead to the same reduction but only cost $6 billion.
The study did not consider the impacts biofuel production would have on water use, pollution, and food prices, which the researchers point out must be considered when promoting biofuels.
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Working Toward a Power-Grid Battery
An interesting fact about the US power grid is its lack of large-scale storage. This means that whenever there is a new draw on the grid, more electricity has to be produced. This isn’t much of an issue with traditional power plants that will run 24/7 and have additional generators activated. For solar and wind power systems though, there is no equivalent. Solar power production will vary throughout the day, and both it and wind power are subject to the chaos of weather. To address this researchers are working on batteries to regulate the fluctuations. (In truth though, a battery backup system would be good for traditional power plants too.)
Researchers at Stanford University have created a remarkable electrode with the ability to survive 40,000 charge/discharge cycles before having its capacity reduced by 20%. To put this in perspective, the average lithium ion battery, like those in cellphones, laptops, etc. becomes effectively useless after just 400 cycles.
The researchers designed the electrode from the nanoscale to give it this tremendous reliability and increased performance. The electrode comprised of crystalline copper hexacyanoferrate has holes throughout it to enable faster travel of the electrolyte, allowing for much faster charging and discharging, and higher voltages. The electrolyte was also specially developed to be especially effective and cheap compared to electrolytes using lithium.
This electrode should be perfect for use as a high voltage cathode, leaving the low voltage anode to be developed before a full battery can be made. Luckily, the researchers already have some ideas in mind.
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From Food Poisoning to Fuel Production
For the production of biofuels, researchers are constantly looking not at the crops we grow, but at bacteria. These microscopic organisms have a strong ability to consume and convert materials from one thing to another. Researchers that are part of the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) at Berkeley Lab have engineered E. coli to produce advanced biofuels.
The E. coli has been engineered to convert cellulose and hemicellulose, found in many plants, into biofuels which can replace gasoline gallon-for-gallon and, unlike ethanol, can be used in the modern car engine. The challenge the researchers had to overcome is how the actual extraction of these materials, because they are locked in a tough material called lignin. By pre-treating the biomatter with an ionic liquid, the E. coli is able to extract the complex sugars of the plant material to convert them into biofuels. Much of the chemistry involved has been fit into the bacteria, and in such a way it should be possible to replicate this with other kinds of bacteria.
The researchers are now working on how to improve the efficiency of the E. coli or other bacteria, as there are still more economical methods of advanced biofuel production out there, and gasoline is still cheaper than them all. Still, there is potential with this research as condensing so much of the process into a single component is a powerful ability.
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Insect Power to the Rescue
Technology not only has the potential to improve our lives but to save them too. Robots and other devices have been made to keep humans safe by examining a dangerous situation, like a burning building, before a person. The University of Michigan has developed another system for the same purpose; a cyborg bug.
The researchers have designed a system of sensors that can be attached to an insect’s body and, most importantly, a power system to harvest energy from the bug’s surroundings and movement. The power system is the real accomplishment here as it had to be made small enough to not overburden the insect, yet efficient enough to power the sensors. Part of the power system is a piezoelectric generator capable of converting the energy of an insect’s wings flapping to electricity, as well as photovoltaic cells to fit on wings.
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Battlefield 3 Declared Illegal in Iran
When a blockbuster FPS like Battlefield 3 depicts your beloved city being assaulted by the US Military with powerful tanks and deadly-sleek aircraft, what would you do? Iran's government apparently wouldn't take it lying down, and has subsequently made all copies of the best-selling game illegal. An iron-fist implementation of this decree can be seen with Iranian police routinely patrolling local shops for any copies of the now-contraband videogame, and some shop owners have already been arrested. A concerned group of Iranian youths have also voiced outrage over the fictional depiction of Tehran being bombarded by US forces in the game, through an online petition supported by 5,000 signatures. "We believe the game is purposely released at a time when the US is pushing the international community into fearing Iran," says the group.
Granted, EA probably wouldn't care much for this national act of defiance, as the mega-publisher virtually has no retail presence in the country, with local shops carrying mostly pirated copies of the game. Still, with the whole nation of Iran united against Battlefield 3, EA and DICE may have to think twice before fictionally assaulting another foreign city in their next game.
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