Category: Computers
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. requirements
I admit I have been surprised when I recently read the official recommended requirements from THQ for their upcoming FPS game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Shadow of Chernobyl: Minimum Requirements None given, but compatible with DirectX 8 (as well as DirectX 9). Recommended Requirements CPU: AMD Athlon 64×2 4800+ or Intel Core 2 Duo Graphics: 3D Hardware Accelerator…
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MacBooks burn too
We thought that last year’s story of burning and exploding laptop batteries from Sony was a dead one, but everybody is speaking about this now: A MacBook burned while charging its battery. And this is not one of the batteries recalled by Sony. The problem may not be fully under control.
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GeForce 8600: Starting in silence
According to PCinpact, the availability of the next generation of nVidia graphics cards, GeForce 8600, will happen with immediate presentation of passive cooling (thus 100% silent solution). It is definitely true that this has become a major problem for the most powerful graphics cards. They usually come with a fan that reminds us of the…
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Intel: (Upcoming) giant price cut
Today, in an unusual announcement, Intel told observers that they prepare to cut the prices of their Quad-core CPU line. Usually, Santa Clara tells about the near future price cuts, but here they extended it to Q3 forecasts: The 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPUs will go down 70% from $851 to $266 in the…
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Pixels and LCD diagonals
An importance feature to check when considering the size of an LCD screen. The pixels do not always have the same size on all the screens. At some diagonal sizes, the manufacturers just increase the glass surface but not the number of pixels. This is the reason why the French-speaking Hardware.fr web site made a…
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Commodore is back with gamer PC
This is a dear old brand name that is back: Commodore would be ready to announce a new line of PC for hard-core gamers. This morning, I’m waking up with 20 years less.
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LCD color calibration
I recently installed on my main Windows-PC computer a (rather old) LCD display from Hyundai: ImageQuest Q17. I wanted to improve significantly the correct color calibration. Fortunately, I could get a Pantone ColorVision SpyderPro for the weekend. It was only a matter of minutes to setup the sensor and run the calibration process. Everything goes…
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Best performance / noise ratio
As previously announced here, PowerColor just announced the launch of a graphics card based upon the AMD-ATI X1950 pro chipset in a totally silent version (PowerColor X1950 SCS3) that should immediately be awarded the title of the most powerful slinet grpahics card in the world. This is no small thing seeing the difficulty to cool…
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Video games on a wide screen
It seems clear that if you have interest in a video game that is not just out to the market (even if it is only a few months old), the addition of a new wide LCD display can be source of endless troubles. You may not find the game using all the nice display surface…