Tech Link (Industry): RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Eeew, I got this interesting news from Legit. Apparently, MSI is planning to release an "April Fool's Joke" email to its mailing list, but it seems it got out too early and the email is rather, umm, distasteful. Check it out...

Yesterday, I got a rather disturbing e-mail from MSI. In this e-mail it basically stated that MSI was fed-up with explaining things that can be answered by reading the manual that comes with their products and even said to RTFM!! It was a mass e-mail that looks like it went out to everyone on their mailing list for the MSI HQ User to User Forum. The MSI forum has 97,624 members and many of them include vendors, customers, enthusiasts and of course the press like us. MSI now claims that the whole ordeal is due to an Aprils Fools Day joke that started a week too soon. What do you guys think? Is this a cover up or did MSI really just blow up on their customers? Follow the link below for all the details and to read both of the full e-mails that MSI sent out.

The MSI-forum and MSI-support team are fed-up with explaining you what can be found in the manual. I mean, come on, how hard is it to read a manual? They are printed on paper so you see them. As we have been monitoring peoples behavior for some time and combined those with the RMA information from returned boards. At the same time monitoring questions on the forum and matched the IP's. We have made a discovery. A lot of RMA is unneeded and unwanted, many happens due to user mistakes, numbers show that 90% of the RMA is OC people killing boards and newbies connecting the wrong connectors or insert parts that should not be inserted. Or simply forget to remove standoffs or CPU-power.

Source:LegitReviews

Tech Link (Industry): Adobe's Content-Aware Fill Sneak Peek

You have got to watch this Adobe feature about Content-aware thingamajig. I just found this out from one of the tech hardware site (which I forgot) so I quickly re-scanned my YouTube history and wolah, found it again.

Source:YouTube

Tech Link (Motherboard): First Look: MSI XPower X58 Big Bang Motherboard

The folks at bit-tech had their paws and fangs wet with their first look with MSI's latest board MSI XPower X58. It looks cool, black and blue combo with heatpipe hogging the CPU VRMs. Forget about your "legacy" add-on card because this board won't take any old technology in its six 16x PCI-Express slots!!!!

Everyone seems to be in the midst of an X58 refresh right now; partly due to the arrival of SATA 6Gbps and USB 3, but mostly thanks to Intel's new 6-core Gulftown Core i7-980X Extreme Edition. We've seen Asus' latest Republic of Gamers motherboard and we got an early look at MSI's latest XPower board at the start of last month. The board has been refined since, so MSI dropped it off at the bit-tech lab in order for us to take it apart have another look.

Source:bit-tech

Tech Link (Cooler): Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler For Core i7-980X Processors

I just want to share this YouTube how-to installation of the new Intel stock heatsink fan. Remember, you saw the stock cooler first here at FanBoy and it's just so awesomesauce. Check out the video by expanding this article, FanBoy out!

This is the new Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler that comes with retail boxed Core i7 980X processors. This video goes over how to install the new cooler!

Source:LegitReview via YouTube

Tech Link (Storage): Intel's X25-V & Kingston's 30GB SSDNow V Series: Battle of the $125 SSDs

It seems the headmaster guru leader tophonch Anand has an inside info about the deal between Intel and Kingston, but hey I suggest skip that part of "unvalidated" information and instead, focus on the article benchmark results. Check out the latest value SSD (which is my latest craze) review from AMDTech.

The story goes like this: Intel let Kingston build a value version of its X25-M G2 drives. This became the 40GB Kingston V Series Boot Drive. When Intel added TRIM support to the G2 drives, Kingston was told to wait. Kingston would get TRIM support when Intel launched its own 40GB version of the G2. Here’s where things get hairy. Intel and Kingston couldn’t work out terms for the TRIM enabled firmware on the V Series Boot Drives. Intel wanted too much money and Kingston wanted to keep the drive price below $100. The outcome? Kingston V Series Boot Drive owners never got official TRIM support and the product was dropped altogether.

Source:AMDtech

Brag: Oooo, 4GHz easy on my Intel® Core™ i7- 980X Extreme Edition

Yeah baby!!! I got 4GHz...well, not the best out there but hey, if you're as busy as me with my kids and what nots, you won't have enough time to tinker with these bad boys. I always want to play around and find the sweet spot of the QPI and the Multiplier combo but I guess gone are those days for me.

I mean, wow, so many hexa cores and a dozen of threads, I can only guess about the price. Yes, I think this would be "pricey" compared to what's out there right now, but considering how Intel price their EE (extreme edition process) and if it remains the same, then the price is very much "reasonable".

Case in point, the Intel® Core™ i7-975 Processor Extreme Edition and Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition both runs at estimated $999 bucks. And I'm pretty sure the older Intel® Core™2 Extreme Processor used to cost as much.

Good luck and have fun, FanBoy out!

Tech Link (CPU): The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU

Anandtech has an article about Gulftown. They seem to like it though their overclocking is quite lacking. I'm pretty sure that despite the performance, there will always be fanboys that will hunger for more!

It’s rare that anything we review has the longevity that Intel’s Core i7 Bloomfield platform has enjoyed. If you were one of the fortunate few to buy a Core i7 920, 940 or 965 back in November 2008, you’d still have one of the fastest desktop CPUs today in March 2010.

Source:AnandTech

Tech Link (Industry): CeBIT 2010 Coverage

The folks over at Madshrimps has a pretty cool CeBIT coverage. They have lots of images of new products, and dang, they got pretty hot girls in there!

It´s that time of year again at Hannover Messe. CeBIT 2010 gave us high expectations. New CPUs from Intel and AMD, Nvidia Fermi video cards and loads more motherboard releases. Since we had only 2 days to wander around, we made the choice to meet and greet first the partners we work closely with and that supply us with all the review hardware. Our schedule had to be quite closely adhered too. Day 1 was less hectic in total visitor numbers, day two was already pretty crowded and much harder to snap decent pictures and guided tours.

Source:MadShrimp

Tech Link (Graphics): NVIDIA Leaks GeForce GTX 480 Unigine Benchmarks, 3D Surround Vision Demo

The folks at HotHardware has put up a report about the upcoming video card from nVidia. Apparently, nVidia has leaked out info of their own technology ahead of time. Go check it out...

Tom Peterson over at NVIDIA gets all the chicks. I mean with his technical know-how, witty banter and boyish good looks, it's easy to see why. Okay, maybe that's not why. Maybe it's because he gets daily hands-on time with the soon to be released but not yet, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, otherwise known as GF100. Not only that, he also has the ability to defy and breach NVIDIA's very own NDA embargo launch times for the product, well ahead of us here in the lowly Tech Press community. I mean really Tom; do you have to steal all our thunder? Well, there is still plenty more to see in the weeks ahead, as we take our turn at the test bench with the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, but in the mean time, take a look at what Tom has cooking in the NVIDIA lab. You can almost here the groupies up front chanting "Free Bird" and holding up lighters. Wait, that's just his florescent green test rig...

Source:HotHardware

Tech Link (Industry): Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked

THG has posted a web-browser speedfest. They pit the top 5 browsers known to mankind and put them to the test. Are you a fan of any browser? Well, I am. I am mostly a FireFox / Chrome guy (leaning more to FireFox). Check out whether your favorite browser wins some score or performs poorly like umm...just check it out!

"The fastest browser on Earth."

That's what the Opera homepage has said since Tuesday. After five release candidates and two betas, the boys from Oslo just recently launched the final build of Opera 10.50. That's a pretty heavy claim to make, though, especially with well-establish competition already in the field demonstrating impressive performance at an unbeatably-low price. Does it hold up?

And although you might have missed it due to iPad hysteria, both Mozilla and Google recently released new versions of their browsers as well. Opera isn't the only one making bold statements on performance, either. In the days leading up to the unveiling of Apple's impossibly over-hyped slate, Mozilla dropped Firefox 3.6 and claimed a whopping 20% speed gain over version 3.5. Three days later, Google quietly unveiled Chrome 4.0 stable, though the actual version number is 4.0.249.78.

Source:THG

Tech Link (Industry): Intel DH57JG “Jet Geyser” - Intel's First Mini-ITX H57

Bah, I have this board and I never got around to testing it. Anandtech has gotten their mouth wet and the author seems to like the board *oops*. Before I spill out any more beans and spoil your fun, go check out the article and drool with me...

It’s been a few years since we’ve written a full review featuring an Intel motherboard. The reason for that is simple; we just didn’t see some of the Intel boards as being competitive in terms of features, performance and pricing when compared to products from third party vendors. Probably not a good decision on our part because appearances can be deceptive... Take a look at our H55/H57 coverage and you’ll see that sub-vendors often struggle to get the basics right.

Source:Anandtech

Rant: I r failzorz

I totally forgot about my Blog, oh my, what a failzzzzzzzzzz. I got sucked up doing "real world" stuff, you know, it's called "work and responsibility". Bugger, I want to do stuff and share and brag and show off and do my hobby, and yet, those mundane and trivial tasks always take up my time.

Sorry to my readers, I can't promise I'll be better in posting, but I'll see what I can do. I'll target at least 2x post per week, but not zero. Of course, the more the merrier...

Gosh, I r sux

Brag: Intel® Xeon® Processor W3520 overclocked to 4GHz

I am just too itchy to get myself rolling back to the picture again. You know, my Blog, I'm trying to make it active. And what's the best way to get your Blog active? Well, post your hobbies and things that you like.

And this time around, I pushed an Intel® Xeon® Processor to a blazing fast 4GHz processor! I love how this processor overclock so easily, considering my board isn't the best overclocking board out there. Well, I almost gave up when I can't even bring Host Frequency a wee bit pass 160Mhz but nevertheless, I found what's holding me back and zoom, 4GHz is achieved!

I'll probably try and post a benchmark as well as my OC experience, but don't hold your breath for that. The keyword here is "try" =). Fanboy out!

Misc: Breaking 4GHz with Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor

I played around with this process for some time and overclocked it a bit. I had a lot of fun and interesting experience pushing this processor to 4GHz. I would have posted a review, but there are a lot of reviews about this processor already so I never made one. Besides, almost every enthusiasts, except those AMDroids, will be very familiar of how this processor performs.

If I got some time, I'll post some benchmark results and some settings I used to achieve this overclock. I did encounter a few hiccups along the way, but nothing mind boggling or out of the ordinary.

So how's your 920's overclock experience? If you have anything to share or ask, just hit the comments section!

Misc: Visitor Map Add-on

Revolver Maps offered free site visitor mapping services and I find it pretty cool. You can see it as a map at the upper right with "pinging" circles. You can get one for your site too.

Let me know what you think of it. It is loading properly for you? Does it slow you down? Any error? You wanna get one too?

If ya have feedback, don't hesitate to hit the comments.

Brag: Gulftown Stock Fan is so awesomesauce!

I forgot to post a picture of the stock fan that came with my "Gulfy". It's quite a looker I might say. It sports a copper core, heat pipes, and blu-lit fan.



It has manual speed control (hi, lo) and has a retention frame commonly found on after market coolers. The fan has an Intel logo on top, and the heat pipes are nicely "embossed" compared to other heatpipe cooler where heatpipe ends are just "protruding".

Brag: Intel Gulftown CPU-Z is up and validated

As I used to say back in the "old days", the Dark Force is strong, alive, and kicking. Oh dear, I need to find where I stashed all my decent RAM. Oh yeah, the motherboard is a workstation board.

I'll tinker around and see if there's some tweaking options for this board. If there is, I'll probably overclock it a little. Hmmm, I need to "steal" someone else's video card too, probably a decent GTS 250. But sorry, I can't show any benchmark whatsoever. And oh, you can click on the image of CPU-Z to get to the validation thingie.

If you want to see Task Manager, temperature, voltage, and other CPU details, click this link (not a virus, I assure you)!

And oh, if you're saying how come its frequency is so low, well I uploaded another CPU-Z validation here!

Sorry for this incoherent mubling disguised as a post trying to pass it like a readable blog entry, till next, FanBoy out!

Brag: Intel Gulftown Processor sighted at...FanBoyReview!

Ok, what's the cooooooooolest Valentines gift you have received yesterday (post it in the comments)? Ok, "physical" contact isn't included, I meant gift as in "tangible" thing. Mine is, umm, to say it modestly, is a CPU! Yeah, a CPU. It is, none other than, a six-core (yes six core), 3.33Ghz, 12MB L3 Cache! Read on to see more pix of processor on a Jollibee napkin, yeah, it's on a napkin! (Note, I know the markings is blurred, it's just so you check out the rest of brag and go read it more...)

Ok, first I will post the obligatory "Intel" processor box. Ok, it's not really obligatory and I just made that up, but I think it's kinda cool to say something like that, don't you agree? Anyway, if you're the type of person who always get processors before they are launched, you'd be pretty familiar of this kind of box. Of course, if you get more than one, you usually get a "tray" of CPUs...

And here's the shot of the processor in all its glory (I tend to say "All it's glory" because my vocabulary is limited, bleh). As is usual of me, I erased some of the CPU markings so as to, umm, let's just say, "cover my tracks". This is in case my cover is blown, and so I won't have any one nibbing at my heels trying to track me down. (I know, markings are still blurred, but wait till you get to the Jollibee part)!

Oh geeeeeez, it's the innards of the CPU. Well, you get the point, I got to show off the underside trying to make it sound cool!

And last but not the least, here's the "Jollibee" shot. Its marking says Q4EG so go Google it to check out teh interwebz for infoz...

p.s. I'll post CPU-Z screenshot and validation tomorrow. Fanboy out!

Brag: My very own Intel® X25-M SATA Solid-State Drive

OH-EHM-GHEE! It's my very own Intel-branded ES-ES-DEE (SSD) aka Solid State Drive. I mean come on, I have always drooled on having this baby.


Performance freaks shouldn't settle for anything less. An SSD is just the uber awesome part of a PC that really needs a major uplift. Hey, you have smokin' processor, superb memory, jaw-droppin' motherboard and you have a SATA "Hard" Drive....oops, wait up, "Hard" Drive is the slowest part of those components actually...so the best ever complement for this system is none other than: AN SSD.

Ohh, the box....so, dull...

Opened, taking a peek (*hands shiverring*)

Oh look, it comes with a sticker and a manual!!!

So sexy *puppy eyes*

YOU ARE MINE, ALL MINE!

Misc: Site Clean Up

I noticed that some of my scripts doesn't make sense anymore and mostly pointing to dead links which cause long load times. I finally got the time to clean up those that slows the site. Hopefully, it should speed up the whole Blog site.

Next is, thanks to those visits, seems like I still have some visitors out there, no matter how random *yay*. Those visitors make me post more and become more active. Bah, besides, Facebook is being a pain anyway, with all the long loading times and unable to login...

Guess that will be all for now, FanBoy out...