InsaneTek

Up until now, Nvidia's Quad SLI technology has only been accessible to those who don't mind shelling out for a PC manufactured by a big OEM. Nvidia has released a beta Quad SLI driver to the public. Now you can have the baddest computer on the block and still maintain your DIY dignity. However, be prepared to deal with the usual beta bugs if you do decide to go out and buy a pair of Geforce 7950 GX2's right away.

"This driver is a Beta driver that enables Quad Nvidia SLI technology, allowing you to put two GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics cards in a single system with an Nvidia nForce SLI motherboard. This driver is strictly for end user Beta testing with two GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics cards only and is not intended for production,” a statement by Nvidia reads.

Insane 32x FSAA is now available to anyone who is willing to pay for it. Don't come crying to Nvidia if you run into a problem though, beta drivers are hardly ever supported. Nvidia provided a few hardware qualifications if you want to find out if the rest of your hardware is up to snuff. 

Have you ever felt like Mario needed to run faster? Well now he can, thanks to some crazy Japanase modder. The Nintendo DS Lite 1.7x speed improvement not only speeds up the video of the game, but also the audio. To see a video of the fastest consumer Nintendo DS Lite out there go here.

The reason? Because you can (supposedly it helps with long RPG games too). I laughed at the end of the guide when it says "It's very easy."

Microsoft said Tuesday that it filed 26 lawsuits against companies that were allegedly selling pirated copies of Microsoft Windows XP. This is part of a crack down on people profiting from piracy.

The lawsuits, filed in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and South Carolina, allege that the computer resellers pirated software or installed unlicensed software on computers they sold, Microsoft said.

Could WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) be a contributing factor to this round-up? In my opinion, it is plausible that it had an impact. This also shows what really is hurting Microsoft is not the kid in his parents basement downloading the latest Windows version from a torrent, rather it is companies actually profiting from the sale of illegal software.

Although Microsoft is touting Vista as their most secure OS ever, Symantec examined the new Vista networking technology and determined that it had plenty of bugs just waiting to be exploited. Of course, any time new code is written, there is bound to be at least some bugs in it. Symantec did concede that over the long run, it should be more secure. As far as short term goes, it won't be any more secure.

"Microsoft has removed a large body of tried and tested code and replaced it with freshly written code, complete with new corner cases and defects," the researchers wrote in the report, scheduled for publication Tuesday. "This may provide for a more stable networking stack in the long term, but stability will suffer in the short term."

Symantec is the same company that just last week said in a posting on their blog that Mac OSX had not one existing virus threat.

The "Cell" processor, the brains of Sony's yet-to-be-released PS3, is having some yield problems. It seems yields are as low as 10-20%. The new production methods for the complex chip still need some refining. Although it would be easy to draw a conclusion that this low yield would have an effect on PS3 availability, it isn't as bad as it may seem.

Reeves' figure is likely to centre on the top-grade chips, so the number of suitably operational PS3-oriented parts coming off the production line is likely to be higher - and will continue to rise, in all probability, as more wafers are completed and the Cell partners continue to refine the process.

It would be improbable that this would have an impact on Sony's price, however. Sony most likely has a contract with IBM for for a fixed price. Will the low yield end up impacting availability? That is something we won't know until further down the road.

If you haven't heard of the Optimus, it is a keyboard that has an OLED screen in each key. This allows the user to have custom static images and even animated images. Some examples of the use were shown with profiles for Quake and Photoshop. It has been just over a year since the design was proposed. You won't be able to buy until later this year.

But the keyboard isn't what this piece of news is about. So why the heck did I just spend a paragraph talking about it? Well, the creator's of the Optimus Keyboard also designed another peripheral called the Optimus Mini-Three which has just 3 OLED buttons. This can be used for tasks like displaying computer stats, displaying current song, email updates, etc.... It is kind of like those LED screen case mods, except this one looks hotter and has more functions. You can also use the 3 buttons as actual buttons for launching programs.

I'm still questioning how much I would use a product like this, but if you have $120 to burn then you can pre-order one now. If you don't pre-order then it will cost you a cool $160...for a 3 button keyboard accessory. But hey, it is pretty innovative and it comes in silver or black.

Shipment date is September 1 in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Lithuania and the rest of the world on August 15, 2006. Pre-order is available until August 1st.

Rumors have been spreading in the past couple months about a technology called "reverse-Hyper-Threading". A site called X86-secret first mentioned the technology on April 9th. They reported that the next AMD K10 chip would include the reverse-Hyper-Threading technology. They described it as an “emulation [of a] single virtual processor with two (or several) physical processors”.

Well those rumors have been dispelled it seems. According to sources close to AMD, X-bit labs now claims that the rumors were false and AMD has no such technology in development.

Sources with knowledge of the matter told X-bit labs that no technology, which is widely referred to as “reverse-Hyper-Threading” is available in Advanced Micro Devices modern central processing units (CPUs). The information about appropriate technologies is claimed to be “misunderstanding”.

Of course, there was no official comment from AMD, but X-bit labs is pretty reliable in my opinion. It would be nice if they were wrong about this one but hopefully AMD has something else up its sleeve.