http://www.thetechlounge.com Recent News: Hardware en-us Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:15:34 -0500 Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:15:34 -0500 Hardware news Copyright 2010, TheTechLounge, Inc. 60 http://www.thetechlounge.com/templates/thetechlounge/images/88x31_ttl.png http://www.thetechlounge.com 88 31 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/14029/NVIDIA-Hard-at-Work-Not-Making-Video-Cards/ "These new algorithms are developed for the calculation of illumination of the virtual space with the influence of multiple dynamic light sources. Modern algorithms for calculation of lighting illumination levels calculated for each pixel of the resulting image, which itself requires an enormous expenditure of computing power. The new algorithms use a much faster way, hoping to spot once the vector of the virtual world, and only then creating the final pixel image. Algorithms for calculating lighting, designed Morgan McGuire, associate professor of information technology from Willi...]]> Recent News: Hardware Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:43:02 -0600 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/14029/NVIDIA-Hard-at-Work-Not-Making-Video-Cards/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/14003/Look-Monkeys/ "It’s been a hot season for PC gamers, with the recent releases of games like DiRT 2, Modern Warfare 2, and Dragon Age: Origins. To get the most out of these games – to play at the best frame rates, at higher resolutions, and with the most eye candy turned on – a graphics upgrade might be in order, and, for some of your readers, that prospect may be a bit daunting. Not to fear. For those who might find upgrading tricky, AMD’s here to prove otherwise. In fact, AMD thinks it’s so easy to install a graphics card that even a monkey can do it, and they brought in their primate pal Lou...]]> Recent News: Hardware Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:42:06 -0600 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/14003/Look-Monkeys/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13958/Mouse-Testimony/ Recent News: Hardware Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:34:29 -0600 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13958/Mouse-Testimony/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13954/Dragon-Ages-PaytoKeep-Inventory-Scheme/ "The first step to solving this problem of limited inventory space is to use your characters as mules. In my game, every single character has a secondary weapon equipped. Every amulet and belt slot is used. Both ring slots are filled. Not necessarily because the character is going to use those items, but because it frees up slots in my backpack. The second step is to shell out for the backpack expansions. These are an ingame money sink. They partly encourage you to visit various merchants to see if they sell one of the precious backpack expansions. But they mostly force hard decisi...]]> Recent News: Hardware Tue, 3 Nov 2009 18:57:53 -0600 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13954/Dragon-Ages-PaytoKeep-Inventory-Scheme/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13952/Use-Wireless-as-a-Hotspot/ "A Philadelphia developer has rooted out an unfinished feature of Windows 7 that turns any laptop into a wireless access point, allowing other Wi-Fi-enabled devices to share the connection without special software. Nomadio, which specializes in military network consulting and development, used the new "Virtual Wi-Fi" feature in Windows 7 to create Connectify, a free application that it released as a beta last Friday." Windows 7 Turn Laptops into Wi-Fi Hotspots "PC Advisor reports that Philadelphia developer No...]]> Recent News: Hardware Mon, 2 Nov 2009 23:56:00 -0600 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13952/Use-Wireless-as-a-Hotspot/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13939/i5s-More-Flammable-Than-German-Video-Games/ " The picture above is after our Core i7 870 (LGA-1156) processor was overclocked up to 5.19GHz using our cascade with a -102° Celsius evaporator head temperature under full-load. Processor VCC power draw at these frequencies is around 160W (this is possible only due to subzero cooling), as measured with a clamp meter installed at the 12V EPS power lead. Study the pictures closely and you should notice something peculiar. Keep in mind it comes from a CPU installed in the same type of socket from a particular manufacturer. If you noticed something weird in the pictures then you unde...]]> Recent News: Hardware Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:43 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13939/i5s-More-Flammable-Than-German-Video-Games/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13936/TeenageBuilt-Diesel-Hybrid-Does-060-in-4-Seconds/ "Students from West Philadelphia High School have built a diesel-hybrid race car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds. While the car currently gets 60+ mpg, they hope to soon break 100 mpg. Why? They are competing for $10 million in the Automotive X-Prize . Called the Hybrid Attack, the car was built by kids from West Philly’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. And if that alone doesn’t make them cool, they are the only high school team competing out of 90 different teams from the U.S. and overseas." I think the fact that high school students are involved poi...]]> Recent News: Hardware Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:57:49 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13936/TeenageBuilt-Diesel-Hybrid-Does-060-in-4-Seconds/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13914/Light-Peak-Part-Apple/ "Remember how Intel showed off its new, advanced optical standard -- Light Peak -- this past week on a Hackintosh? Well it turns out there's more to that story than you probably know, and it all leads back to some revealing facts about the connection... literally and figuratively. Engadget has learned -- thanks to an extremely reliable source -- that not only is Apple complicit in the development of Light Peak, but the company actually brought the concept to Intel and asked them to create it. More to the point, the new standard will play a hugely important role in upcoming produc...]]> Recent News: Hardware Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:58:17 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13914/Light-Peak-Part-Apple/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13908/Review-Roundup-Radeon-HD-5870-1GB/ Recent News: Hardware Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:46:23 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13908/Review-Roundup-Radeon-HD-5870-1GB/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13889/Eyefinity-Pretty-Cool-Actually/ "We spent a few hours with AMD today out in Sunnyvale, California looking at its next generation GPU. We can't tell you a lot about the video card since we are still bound by our Non-Disclosure Agreement until the product's launch date in a few weeks. However, AMD is allowing us to show you what is likely the most impressive feature this video card has to offer, besides the monster performance increase over current top end AMD GPU hardware. The demo system shown is utilizing ATI Radeon multi-monitor gaming technology. What you are seeing below is a single air cooled AMD n...]]> Recent News: Hardware Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:55:46 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13889/Eyefinity-Pretty-Cool-Actually/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13887/Free-Trip-to-California/ "If there were any time for symbolism, the graphics guys at AMD definitely picked the right time and place. The initial batch of several tens of thousands of chips is now in the final stages of packaging and is about to be shipped to PC Partner and similar factories to manufacture the top-to-bottom line-up. So, something special was definitely in order. AMD will hold briefings in EMEA and APAC regions prior to the North American event on September 10th, but the North American launch will be the date when a lot of details will go out in public. The company is preparing quite a spect...]]> Recent News: Hardware Tue, 8 Sep 2009 23:56:25 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13887/Free-Trip-to-California/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13885/Ubuntu-For-Kindles/ "I took this photo of a Kindle 2 hacked by Jesse Vincent at Foo Camp this past weekend. Apparently, aside from being a popular e-book reader, the Kindle is like Lego for Linux geeks. Here's Jesse's description of what we're looking at: "What you see there is a Kindle 2 with the Ubuntu 9.04 port to ARM running in a chrooted environment. On the screen you see xdaliclock in front of an xterm with the remains of a "top" command and a few mildly embarrassing typos. "To open up the Kindle, I used the USB networking debug mode Amazon left hanging around when they first s...]]> Recent News: Hardware Mon, 7 Sep 2009 23:42:30 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13885/Ubuntu-For-Kindles/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13882/Evergreen-Pricing-Leaked/ "Next week, AMD will reveal its top-to-bottom DirectX 11 lineup, with the top three parts heading out to the stores. As ATI Evergreen family of graphics cards is taking its shape as multiple parts that cover top to bottom of world's PC line-up. As it usually goes, the availability won't be on the same date, but ATI will do a multi-part launch targeting hard availability in the whole world for the each part. We managed to learn some interesting details about the top-end, Radeon 5800 series. Unlike some inaccurate publications that toyed with the name "Radeon 7", the Radeon...]]> Recent News: Hardware Thu, 3 Sep 2009 23:40:51 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13882/Evergreen-Pricing-Leaked/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13870/Possible-Nokia-Netbook/ "I’m going to put this one squarely in the rumor category for now, but Sascha of NetbookNews.de has a source who is telling him that the upcoming Nokia Booklet 3G will sell for $799 in the US. Considering the machine will reportedly pack 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, HDMI, and other features into a 2.7 pound case and provide up to 12 hours of battery life, that figure might actually be somewhat realistic. But if Nokia were actually going to charge that kind of money, I can tell you, they wouldn’t sell very many of these netbooks in the US, where you can regularly get a mini-laptop with ...]]> Recent News: Hardware Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:59:38 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13870/Possible-Nokia-Netbook/ http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13864/Razer-Focuses-on-Hot-Right-Hand-Action/ "What do you get when you mate a phone dialpad with a gaming mouse? Razer's Naga MMO mouse, apparently. There's 17 buttons, as in sixteen candles plus one, minus the candles. Surprisingly, that's not the most interesting thing about Naga. Not only can you program macros to Naga's 17 buttons however you want, but the mouse works with custom software extensions, called Add Ons, that actually add new interfaces to the game and allow you have to unlimited character profiles: " And just when you think it's safe to buy a kick-ass chunk of gaming paraphernal...]]> Recent News: Hardware Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:40:08 -0500 http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/13864/Razer-Focuses-on-Hot-Right-Hand-Action/