AOpen Low Profile GeForce 6600 Card For SFF

AOpen, recognized worldwide as a manufacturer ofhigh-performance, high-quality display cards and computer peripherals, launched“Aeolus PCX6600–DV128LP”, one of the most powerful PCI Express video displaycards in the world today.

The new product is built with NVIDIA’s powerful GeForce™ 6 Series GPU — 6600.The graphics processing unit is designed to deliver a new generation ofperformance for powering 3D graphics and video processing.

Its foundation is a revolutionary new 3D graphics architecture that is the firstto deliver Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support for ultra–realisticimages, and a superscalar design for unmatched performance. In order to addressthe growing demand from PC users for advanced video functionality, an on-chipvideo processor is added to the GeForce 6 Series GPUs — a first in the GPUindustry.

The company’s new display card comes with heat pipe solution which ischaracterized by excellent heat dissipation performance because high-end GPUsnormally generate high temperature and require heat reduction design.

A second unique feature of the graphics display card is its small size (lowprofile). It fits ideally into small size personal computers such as minibaresystems. In order to provides ultimate graphic power, Aeolus PCX6600-DV128LPuse MicroBGA type with latest DDRIII-2ns memory. “The Aeolus PCX 6600 will bethe perfect graphic card for small form factor with silence solution which basedon NVIDIA’s 6600 GPU,” asserts Jonathan Yen, product manager of the company.

Despite its compact size, the display card provides many valued-added strongfeatures with its integrated HDTV encoder. Within AOpen standard package, itprovides HDTV-output cable so that a computer system installed with this cardcan display world-class full-screen HDTV or plasma TV video of 1920 x 1080resolutions.

When a computer is installed with this graphics card and a TV tuner card, a usercan watch a TV program with higher resolution because the card providesexcellent video encoding capability. A user can store video sources (TV program)into the hard disc drive of such a system, and then copy the stored video onto aDVD disc given that user has the required software.

The card is designed with supercharged gaming performance that ensures top-notchcompatibility and performance for Microsoft DirectX 9 Shader Model 3.0 andsupports PCI Express bus architecture. It supports games like Far Cry andS.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. Its PCI support delivers 8GB/sec of rawgraphics bandwidth in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

With the on-chip CineFX 3.0 engine, the card powers the next generationcinematic realism, which delivers stunning and complex special effects andfaster and smoother gameplay.

With the UltraShadow II technology, it enhances the performance of bleedingedgegames like id Software’s Doom III, that feature complex scenes with multiplelight sources and objects.

The 64-bit texture filtering support of the display card delivers full-speed,high dynamic-range lighting effects. It also delivers unmatched image qualitythrough the new 16x anisotropic filtering and rotated grid antialiasing.

The on-chip video processor delivers an unmatched multimedia experience. Thecard’s hardware-accelerated MPEG and WMV9 decoding delivers smooth,artifact-free video. The dedicated video hardware reduces CPU utilization andimproves overall system performance.

The high quality video scaling and filtering improves playback quality at anywindow size. The OpenGL 1.5 optimizations and support ensures top-notchcompatibility and performance for all OpenGL applications. “In conclusion, thedisplay card is an ideal product for consumers who require high-end graphicsdisplay card,” Yen says.

christmas with the psychopaths “santa’s slay”

Let’s wrap up our little Batshit-Crazy-Santas review series with a look at the 2005 straight-to-DVD “starring” vehicle for ex-wrestler Bill Goldberg, Santa’s Slay, shall we? Glad you agree.

So, yeah, here’s the straight dirt on Jolly Old St. Nick — he’s really a demon, got it? in fact, truth be told he’s not just any garden-variety demon, he’s the son of the Great Horned One, good ol’ Lucifer himself! Okay, so you could already have guessed as much.? Nobody’s that fucking cheerful out of the goodness of their heart, it just ain’t natural. He’s an unlucky demon, though, in that he lost a bet to an angel and had to go around being nice for the next 1,000 years. Time’s just about up, though, and this Christmas is the Christmas that Santa gets to revert back to his old ways and pay back the human race — with interest!

Teenage schmuck Nicholas (Douglas Smith, who’s absolute cardboard and represents the weakest link in this movie’s casting) lives amidst a family of typically nauseating Christmas-lovers (even his girlfriend, future Lost beauty Emilie de Ravin seems to enjoy the “festive” season), with one notable exception : his curmudgeonly old grandpa (the late, great Robert Culp, who I guess it’s fair to refer to here as a Christmas-horror veteran since he also featured in Silent Night, Deadly Night 3), who for some mysterious reason knows the truth about the jolly fat man and shares it with his grandson. It might be too little, too late though, since (again, for reasons initially unexplained) Santa’s set his newly-evil sights squarely on Nicholas and intends to make him and his family the first victims of his new campaign of sadistic evil!

I’m not much for the whole wrestlers-turned-actors thing, but Goldberg’s casting as the wicked Santa here was definitely a stroke of genius — he tackles the role with absolute relish and looks to be having the time of his life. Culp is fantastic as always as grandpa (sporting an uncharacteristic five o’clock shadow here), and Fran (The Nanny) Drescher ,? Dave Thomas of Mackenzie Brothers fame, and the always-solid Saul Rubinek turn in fun ? performance in smaller roles, as well.? the direction from David Steiman (who also wrote the screenplay) is unremarkable in any sort of stylistic sense, but certainly workmanlike and highly competent. My only gripe with this flick is that some of the CGI looks pretty dated (and was probably even substandard for its time), but apart from that this is a fun, original, slapstick-ish Christmas horror-comedy.

Santa’s Slay is available on DVD from Lionsgate and features a nice selection of extras including a full-length commentary track and some behind-the-scenes-type stuff. The anamorphic widescreen transfer looks great and the 5.1 surround-sound mix is very nicely done, as well.

If foul-mouthed children, even-fouler-mouthed old ladies, a flying bison, a gaggle of strippers, a demonic St. Nick out for revenge, jokes about caulk, and a cinematic salute to the sport of curling sound like your cup of tea, look no further — you’ll not only enjoy the hell out of Santa’s Slay, it will become a new holiday tradition in your home.

AMD HD 5800 quot;mass widespread availability quot; by year's end

In a conversation with AMD Product Manager Dave Baumann, HardOCP hasclarified most of questions surrounding the much-debated availabilityof the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series. Excess demand and limited supply hasmeant it is difficult to get a HD 5800 series card, even at higherprices, and even though the product has enjoyed 6 weeks of launch.

However,availability has been improving, albeit slightly and at the cost of ahigher price. Mr. Baumann expects mass widespread availability by theend of 2009, assuming AIBs continue air freighting the products, whichis very likely.

Fortunately, there are no issues expected with HD 5700 stock - and indeed, they are widely available on e-tail.

Here's a summary of the conversation (Courtesy HardOCP):
TSMC is steadily rolling out production of 5800 series GPUs albeitat a slower rate than AMD wishes. There are daily production runs of5800 series GPUs.

AMD’s Add-in-Board (AIBs) partners are currently shipping thousands of 5800 series video cards per week on a worldwide basis.

The number of 5800 series video cards that have been shipped into the channel already is in the very "high tens of thousands."

While currently there are thousands of video cards shipped on aweekly basis, we will likely see this weekly number reach into the"tens of thousands" come late November or early December. This hingeson whether or not AIBs keep air freighting video cards. The likelihoodof air shipments to continue is very high, but AMD does not directlycontrol this.

Should air freighting continue we are still not going to see"mass widespread availability" by years end, but certainly supply willcontinue.

Most of these 5800 video cards are moving into e-tail and retail sales while the great minority are going into OEM sales.

Expect "well into the hundreds of thousands" of 5800 video cards to be shipped into the channel by year’s end.

Expect no issues with 5700 stocks.

TSMC is still having some 40nm production issues, but as youcan see from the points listed above, production is not close to astandstill and has ramped up greatly in the last 30 days. TSMC also hasnew 40nm machines as of September and that capacity is starting to nowcome online.

The current mix of 5870 and 5850 cards is running approximately 50/50.With Nvidia's Fermi nowhere to be seen, we can't expect price drops; at least not in a few months. Though, we can expect the prices to fall back to normal once supply meets demand.

Of course, both TSMC and AMD are working hard to ensure maximum availability of HD 5800 as soon as possible. Considering availability patterns and statements from both TSMC, it seems likely that a majority of availability issues will vanish by December. Another anecdotal evidence is that Hemlock is finally expected to hit retail in late November. Of course, AMD would only put out Hemlock when they have enough Cypress dies.

To conclude, while there are HD 5800 cards available, and you can get them if you are lucky, a widespread availability can be expected in December. There will be no big price drops however, though we can expect prices to return back to normal. Following which, let's hope a competition (Fermi) emerges soon.

Reference: HardOCP

ATi AIW Radeon 9600 Pro

ATI enhances the multimedia PC experience with the new ALL-IN-WONDER® 9600 PRO. ATI’s newest multimedia video card joins the award-winning ALL-IN-WONDER® family to provide customers with all the best of current PC Multimedia technologies combined with fantastic new features such as FM Radio, Dual VGA, Faster-than-Real time DVD / CD Authoring and the next generation REMOTE WONDER™ II radio frequency (RF) Remote Control.

ATI’s award winning MULTIMEDIA CENTER Software has been updated to version 8.6, which now includes DVD and CD Authoring. A customer can easily archive recorded television, video and audio programs to the media of their choice with a couple of clicks of the mouse. ATI’s media authoring solution supports DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, and CD-R/-RW. Depending on the media drive speed, ATI’s solution allows Faster-than-Real time authoring which makes real time authoring obsolete because it does not tie up a computer for an extended period of time.

Designed as ATI’s mainstream multimedia solution, ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 PRO also includes the new REMOTE WONDER II and dual VGA support. The ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 PRO will be available from selected partners in Europe and Asia-Pacific within 4 to 6 weeks.