Our review of the ATI FirePro V8750 workstation GPU showed that the card is blazing fast at DCC. We tested the V8750 against the venerable NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, and the difference in performance was staggering. But the 8800 GTX is almost four years old, and the question kept pouring in: How would the V8750 fare against the fastest single GPU on earth?

It just so happens that Icrontic recently fitted its test bench with such a GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 5870. And with that, it’s time to finally put the question to rest: How does the best workstation card AMD offers compare to the Radeon HD 5870, a desktop card that’s 100% faster on paper? The results may shock you.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the flagship DirectX 11 GPU. Released on September 23, it is the fastest of the four available GPUs compatible with DirectX 11. As with any new flagship GPU release, gamers and enthusiasts have flocked to NewEgg and other retailers to buy it. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it answers “yes” to the legendary “Can it play Crysis?” question. But will it blend?

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Netflix integration in Windows Media Center 7

The HTPC, or Home Theater PC, has been an elusive beast. For years, people have bandied about the concept of building a PC that is a dedicated home entertainment hub rather than a general-purpose computer. Up until very recently, building an HTPC has been a difficult journey to find the sorcerous combination of parts and software that would enable exactly everything one wanted the PC to do.

Luckily, everything has recently started coming together. Retail availability of key technologies such as efficient power supplies, cool and quiet processors, HDMI-enabled and 1080p-capable GPUs, massive storage capacities, and–perhaps most importantly–an HTPC-optimal OS have all come together in a ballet of technology which can provide a seamless and graceful HTPC experience.

We have put together an amazingly high performance and relatively low cost HTPC just in time for the 2009 holiday season. While we did operate with a liberal cost philosophy when it came to component choices, we feel that this remains an affordable project for those in the market for a full-featured home entertainment hub.

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Intel and Numonyx are today announcing a key breakthrough in the development of Phase Change Memory (PCM) technology.

The breakthrough has enabled the partnership to develop a 64Mb test chip that demonstrates multiple layers of PCM arrays on a single die. These findings will enable future PCM-based devices to offer lower power consumption, higher capacity and greater storage density.

The company is calling the breakthrough chip a PCMS, or Phase Change Memory and Switch. The PCMS interleaves layers of thin-film PCM arrays with controlling thin-film selectors called Ovonic Transfer Switches (OTS). The sandwiched PCM and OTS layers are arranged in a crosspoint architecture and fitted to a CMOS substrate to create high-density, high-bandwidth PCM cells.
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A couple of years ago, we switched mail for our domains to Google instead of hosting it ourselves. Using Google Mail for Domains, we were able to easily manage email for over 25 users scattered all over the world, without having to deal with POP3 servers, and explaining to people how to configure their mail clients. Everyone is familiar with Gmail, and the web interface is second to none.

We switched several of our domains over. The configuration was a bit tricky, as Google provides several alternate servers, and offers different MX priorities for each server.

Back in 2007, when we migrated, the official Google server configuration looked like this:

icrontic.com. MX (10) aspmx.l.google.com.
icrontic.com. MX (20) alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
icrontic.com. MX (20) alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
icrontic.com. MX (30) aspmx2.googlemail.com.
icrontic.com. MX (30) aspmx3.googlemail.com.
icrontic.com. MX (30) aspmx4.googlemail.com.
icrontic.com. MX (30) aspmx5.googlemail.com.

And that was that. Then, a few months back, there was a problem…
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Windows 7 is here, and a new operating system makes for a raft of new questions. While you could certainly spend your days plugging away at Google for the answers, Icrontic has made it easy for you by putting all of them in one place.

This FAQ covers questions related to Windows 7’s development, editions, licensing, installation, features and applications. This is a living document, which means it will be updated frequently with questions we find, and questions you ask of us. Questions which can be concretely answered will be added to this guide, while questions with multiple variables will be answered in the comments as they come.

Without further ado, let’s get down to business.

Development

Q: When did Windows 7 begin development?
A: There is no precise date, but estimates place the beginning around Vista’s release in January of 2007.

Q: What was Windows 7’s codename?
A: Windows 7.

Q: I thought Windows 7 was codenamed Vienna?
A: Windows 7 is based on the Vienna project, which itself was based on the hugely-delayed Blackcomb project. However, Vienna was renamed to Windows 7 when development began in 2007.

Q: How long was Windows 7 in development?
A: Windows 7 was in development for approximately 30 months.

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You spent the weekend trudging through a reformat to load Windows 7, and now you want to know what your time and money have earned you. There are plenty of toplists that could give you the skinny, but none quite like ours. Sure, we paid lip-service to old news like Jump Lists and Aero Peek, but we’re hot for lesser-known goodies like ATA TRIM and WDDM v1.1. So, if you’ve been hunting for the real scoop on Microsoft’s newest, put your peepers on these 20 brand spanking new features.

Aero Snap

Windows of Microsoft past used ugly phrases like “tile windows vertically” to ask the question: “Hey, do you want to put these windows side by side?” Windows 7 kicked that to the curb with a little feature called Aero Snap. Simply drag a window to the left or right edges of the screen and it will automatically be resized to fill half of the screen’s vertical real estate. Windows can also be maximized by dragging them to the top of the screen.

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He wasn’t exactly… thrilled that he couldn’t make it.

Noob shoulda gotten his passport! Not my fault!

Fooman and Hitman, my sister and brother respectively, were in town this week. Only a fool would believe that they would leave me alone. When I wasn’t dealing with their tomfoolery, I was thinking about Windows 7! The brand-spankin’-new OS was released on Thursday, and no one is more ready for it than Icrontic.

In an ultimate display of progression, Icrontic laid Windows Vista to rest (RIP). We also give some suggestions on what you can do with Vista’s newer, hotter sister. Of course, what is talk of Windows 7 without a little DirectX 11 action? The stunning trailer to Shattered Horizons has been revealed, and it is beautiful.

Finally, the community is exploding in activity. The third annual Icrontic Sekrit Santas is underway, and we are but a single week away from Oktoberfest 2009. It’s going to get epic up in here real quick. Enough talk, time to watch. Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.

This guide details how to prepare a Windows 7 DVD for flash drive installation. If you have a Windows 7 ISO, please go here.

Windows 7 is officially on the prowl, and that means a huge crop of users just got their hands on a minty fresh DVD. Sure, you could install it from the disc and be on your way, but that’s so ordinary, and Netbook users are still up the creek. Why not build a little geek cred and install Windows 7 from USB? We’ll show you how to do it in just four simple steps.

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Cliff Forster came up with the idea, and Semper Media Group provided the original soundtrack for us.

Green is a hot adjective. In fact, it was one of the fastest growing buzzwords in 2008. Across every industry, green is the new black, being slapped on products that destroy the earth only slightly less than other products.

There are truly green products though, and anything that can cut down on electricity usage in a significant way deserves to be called green. In addition to a spiffy green logo, AMD has been putting out low-TDP processors that provide lower power and cooling requirements with all the horsepower of their regular chips since 2006.

What is TDP, and why does it matter?

Rather than gloss over it, Icrontic has given this topic the proper treatment in another article. In summary, lower TDP means a chip is able to operate reliably below the voltage it was engineered to operate at. This lower voltage results in cost savings due to lower energy usage, lower heat emissions, less noise from the cooling system, and better overclocking due to stability at a lower voltage and thermal envelope.

Low-TDP chips are a boon to businesses, those with environmental concerns, silent PC enthusiasts, home theater PC builders, and gamers alike. (more…)

In the lexicon of acronyms frequently bandied about by geeks, gamers, and computer professionals, TDP doesn’t come up too frequently. Phrases like “How many GHz?” “How many MB of L3?” and “What’s the FSB?” are far more likely to come up in conversation than, “What’s the TDP on that chip?”

What is TDP?

But TDP, or thermal design power, is something that those with energy concerns, noise requirements, or overclocking aspirations should definitely pay attention to. The TDP of any processor describes the amount of heat dissipated during nominal operation. That heat emission is largely the product of a processor’s operating voltage and electrical efficiency; those, in turn, are dictated by clock speeds, fabrication size, and overall architecture.

For example, chips like the Intel Atom and AMD Athlon Neo are designed to use minimal power by drawing a low voltage and running at a low clock speed. Typically armed with single cores and minimal cache, these processors are intentionally simple so they top out around 15W TDP.

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