I know that some of you have been anxiously awaiting some news of the site enhancements I talked about recently. You won't have to wait much longer, it looks like we'll be able to get these changes online quite soon. What exactly are they? Well, a whole lot of fun, thats what they are.

Now, don't think I'm going to spill all the beans now...  Well, maybe one bean.

This just in, Nvidia and Ageia have announced that Ageia will soon be acquired by  Nvidia.  This will give Nvidia access to the worlds only  hardware physic processor, also known as a ppu. What make this even more interesting is that Intel recently completed its purchase of rival physics company, Havok. This certainly leaves ATI\AMD feeling a bit  like a fifth wheel. You'll find the press release below.

NVIDIA, the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and Gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK.

“The AGEIA team is world class, and is passionate about the same thing we are—creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences,” stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. “By combining the teams that created the world’s most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce®-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world.”

“NVIDIA is the perfect fit for us. They have the world’s best parallel computing technology and are the thought leaders in GPUs and gaming. We are united by a common culture based on a passion for innovating and driving the consumer experience,” said Manju Hegde, co-founder and CEO of AGEIA.

Just a note, it is widely reported the Microsoft has released Vista sp1 and server 2008 to manufacturing (rtm). What that means is the final code has been tested and is now being put on cds and dvds as quickly as possible. You can expect a reasonably quick availability.

Here's a link with more details. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=988

Vote for your favorite case badge! The members of the forum came up with the idea to make custom case badges with the OCW logo. I'm a huge fan of this idea and the site's graphics guy, synaps3, volunteered to make a few designs for us. We're at the point where your help is needed to help us choose the best looking badges. Please, hit the link and vote for your favorite. Then, check back soon to find out how you can get your own. 

Just and FYI, the new 3 series from AMD has been soft launched today. You can't go buy one, yet. We're hearing they will be available in the very near future but only time will tell if thats the truth. The are midrange and low end cards, nothing super high performance this time around. It seems that you'll have to wait until the summer for new highend parts.

 Still, is 36xx and 34xx cards sound good to you we've got some launch coverage you can check out. AMD Launches Sub-$100 Radeon HD 3400, HD 3600and

AMD rolls out Hybrid Graphics on budget DX10.1 GPUs.

Here's a listing of the most commonly used tags on the forums. Clicking on a tag will take you to all threads containing that tag. For the fully formatted page try this link .

32b 64b 780i 3870 8800 9800 ambient temp ambient temperatures amd article asus ati atitool avermedia award bios brand new bug report c2q channel clear qam cod4 cooling core 2 quad cpu cpu-z craplet crysis customer service dell design digg drivers evga f@h file server first post format wars frys gpu guild wars hardware monitor how to htpc humor ihs intel introduction ipod lapping linux mac mac mini media center microatx milestone motherboard msi newegg new line nvidia overclock overclocking p5k p965 physx picture problem q6600 qam qx9650 ram room temperature scsi server service pack shroud sli smp spam spam thread studio synaps3 tag tag cloud tags teamspeak tite buget tv tuner unread post unreal tournament 3 user title video card vista vista 64 vista mce vista media center wallpaper wiki windows

 And, here are the 100 most searched for tags. This is a more interesting list, I think.

32b 45nm 64b 680i 3870 9800 alienware ambient temp ambient temperatures amd asus ati atitool award bios bluray bug report bug reports c2q cloud cod4 contest cooling core 2 quad cpu cpu-z craplet crysis dell drivers e6750 evga f@h fah cpu benchmarks file server first post format wars frys ftw gpu how to htpc humor ihs intel introduction lapping last post linux media center microatx milestone motherboard msi newegg new line nvidia oem overclock p5k p965 paramount physx pic picture q6600 qx9650 qx9750 ram room temperature room temps scsi senior service pack sli smp spam spam thread statistics studio synaps3 tag tag cloud tags teamspeak tite buget tv tuner ubuntu unread post unreal tournament 3 user title video card vista vista 64 vista mce wallpaper warner brothers wiki windows xp

For the fully formatted list, try this link and scroll to the bottom of the page . 

 PS, sorry for the link spam but I thought this was worth taking a look at.

ATITool is a terrific overclocking utility for NVIDIA and ATI video cards. It uses the method of incrementally increasing clock speed and scanning for artifacts to determine the maximum stable speeds of the GPU and RAM. This program also accounts the effects of heat buildup and can be configured to properly heat up the video card and all related cooling components to ensure the most stable overclock.

Once the maximum speeds have been determined, saving them to a profile and having ATITool launch that profile the next time you start gaming will enable the overclocked speeds. Or, simply run the overclocked speeds at all times.

By far, this is the easiest way to get a stable overclock for your video card. See also, coolbits, RivaTuner and NVClock for other methods.