DIY-Street

Here's a long, uninteresting look at the phenomenom known as "Rock Band" and the troubles that it has generated for the tens of thousands of customers who have bought it because it's basically legal crack...

   Most everyone knows that the lack of available 2.4GHz Phenom processors is being attributed to an issue with the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) when run above a certain speed. Well, evidently that is only part of the problem. AMD is no longer shipping Opteron processors for general retail sale. What is strange though is the 9500 and 9600 are still being shipped and sold.

   Michael Saucier, Desktop Product Marketing Manager at AMD has apparently stated that the TLB issue is not triggered by clock speed. In other words all quad-core processors are affected. For the unlucky users that have bought or will buy the 9500 or 9600 there is a fix that will be made available in the form of a BIOS update. This does come at a price though. There will be a loss in performance of at least 10%, possibly more.

   The fix will be implemented at the chip level for all processors mid to late Q1 in the form of the B3 stepping. As the 9500 and 9600 processors are already released, to differentiate these new chips from the current broken ones, they will be renamed 9550 and 9650. Other than the degraded performance BIOS patch, AMD has no plans for any other fix for current processors. They also seem content selling both of these processors until the release of the B3 stepping.

   AMD knew this issue existed prior to the launch of the Phenom. Mr. Saucier has stated that AMD's OEM partners were informed about this issue prior to launch so they would have time to implement the work-around in the BIOS.

   If the above is indeed true, AMD has gone way past troubled times. Besides missing multiple launch dates and releasing a product at a lower performance point then specified, the only processor they could release is a broken one. Not only is it flawed, but the flaw was known prior to release.

   For those of us that were hoping that AMD was saving their best for a near-future release date, that now seems improbable. AMD no longer has a product line that cannot compete with the competition. From a fully functional viewpoint, they have no product line at all.

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

Discuss this article in our Forums.

Yeah, so DON'T throw away any of those old Micron ATX cases. Why? Because thankfully Intel stuck with their ATX spec all the way back to...hell, original Pentium machines. These old cases are almost perfect for a replacement case when one doesn't want to use the very last Coolermaster Elite 330 case still sitting sealed in a box...especially for a business machine!

So Angry you gonna shut your yak-hole and show us wtf you are talking about?

Why sure son, follow along and get some learnings from these here internets!

Well, today I had an interesting trek through Sony's world. I've always hated Sony's inferior optical drive technology (I've yet to encounter any cd/dvd made by Sony that lasted longer than 6 months), and I definitely have always hated their proprietary computer hardware/software nonsense. Today was a special day, please read on...

Well, as you all know, I LOVE Guitar Hero game for Playstation2/Xbox360.

We were all excited to know that on the Xbox360, Downloadable Content would be available, basically giving us all of the songs from Guitar Hero 1, plus (we hope) some completely new tracks.

Well, we now see the price-gouging that Red Octane (developer), Activision (publisher), and Microsoft (Xbox Live owner) are going to do to us.

Personally, I consider it rape. Red Octane/Activision promised us before the game was released that the songs would cost "as much as any other downloadable songs" ie: iTunes...about $.99 per song.

So yesterday everyone's butthole felt very abused and bloody when we found out that the songs were released in packs of 3, for 500 MS Points...that's $6.25 in REAL money for those of you who don't know.

*sigh*

Anyway, here's a link to the petition that already has over 6,000 signatures. Please do all of us a favor and put your name on it so that these money-grubbing companies can feel the sting of consumers who reject being raped by their money-hungry schemes:

http://www.petitiononline.com/GHIIDLC/petition.html

As the price of HDTV's plummet, as well as surging popularity of PC's that contain digital media enhancements (Windows Media Center/Vista), we thought we would open with a new Guide.

This guide is by no means the be-all/end-all of HTPC guides. It is a starting step that is intended to let you understand what HTPC's are, as well as what parts should be considered when building one.

Future Guide updates will cover assembling the HTPC, installing different software titles for different HTPC functions, integrating the HTPC into your Home Theater setup, and finally tutorials on how to actually use the HTPC and software.

Let's start with Part 1!

Well, you all know how I LOVE the game Guitar Hero for Playstation 2...and guess what?

Yep, it's coming for my favorite console, Xbox360, and will have a lot of new and/or better features!

Read the Gamespy.com Preview by click this story's link! (DO IT!!!)

If you ever wondered just how good Foxconn's video cards are, then you are in luck. I have a secret image that was confiscated from one particular Foxconn 8800GTS OC owner, Mr. Angry_Games himself!