Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Enthusiasts Set World’s Performance Records with GeForce 7800 GTX 512. 3DMark05 World’s Record Beaten by Two Gainward Graphics Cards

10:02 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Only weeks have passed since the official release of NVIDIA’s new top-of-the-range GeForce 7800 GTX 512 graphics processing unit (GPU), but already now computer enthusiasts set the world’s records in terms of overclocking the parts. While this piece of hardware is only a dream for some users, some hardcore fans use a pair of such graphics cards for their extreme overclocking and record braking.

Famous Swedish overclocker Marcus Hultin aka Kinc in cooperation with Gainward and Overclokk companies has managed to set a new world record in 3DMark05 benchmarking application. A score of 18614 was achieved on a heavily overclocked testbed powered by AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 chip clocked at 3928MHz, DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR mainboard, 2x512MB Corsair XMS3200LL memory modules as well as two Gainward Ultra/3550PCX XP graphics boards.

In order to show the world’s record result Kinc had to significantly overclock a pair of Gainward Ultra/3550PCX XP graphics cards running in SLI setup. The frequencies on each card were set at 779MHz for GPU and 2052MHz for memory. The system was cooled by cascade compressor cooling.

Until now world’s highest 3DMark05 result was 17433. It was obtained on two overclocked GeForce 7800 GTX graphics cards in multi-GPU SLI mode.

The performance level of two ATI RADEON X1800 XT graphics cards running in the CrossFire setup as well as overclockability of such a system is still to be seen.

• NordicHardware: Kinc and Overklokk Sets a New 3DMark 05 WR at DreamHack.
• Futuremark: Online Results Base.
• Gainward: Gainward, Kinc and Overklokk Take the World Record in 3DMark 2005!

Startup Wants to Get Rid of Top Level Domain Names. Firm Wants to Rid Net of Suffixes

10:00 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Although the Internet is considered to be infinite and totally free, there are some rules: for example web-site name usually consists of a certain word or words followed by a suffix, or top level domain (TLB), such as .com. Given that there are a lot of domain names, it sometimes hard for people interested in launching new web-sites to find a proper name. Furthermore, complex names of web-sites usually add complexity to web-surfing, something which harms online business in general. A company from the Netherlands wants to solve both issues: it plans to rid the Web of suffices, or TLDs.

A Dutch technology company called UnifiedRoot has breathed life into a project to rid the Internet of suffixes such as .com, and instead offer single names which can be countries, company names or fantasy words. Such a system, which enables countries, individuals and firms to have a Web address which consists of a single name, offers flexibility and is language and character independent, reports Reuters news-agency.

While it is definitely very convenient to have your web-site called “xbitlabs” instead of “www.xbitlabs.com”, there are some things that need to be addressed first. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls the root domain by delegating control over each top-level domain to a domain name registry, does not allow any web-sites to exist without TLDs. This means that UnifiedRoot will have to create its own root of domains and circumvent ICANN by pointing every single Internet computer around the world to their own root servers – which contain a copy of ICANN’s root server plus the addition of own-made TLDs. Another way to make the new root available is to close deals with Internet service providers (ISPs), which is not that simple, as there are too many providers in the world.

Registering a name costs $1000 plus an annual fee of $240. After this, companies can then invent additional web-site addresses in front of their top-level domain (TLD) name, such as flights.schiphol or parking.schiphol, in case of Dutch airport Schiphol.

Needless to say that ICANN is unlikely to support dumping of TLDs.

“Those who claim to be able to add new ‘suffixes’ or ‘TLDs’ are generally pirates or con-men with something to sell,” said Paul Vixie, who sits in several committees of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with day-to-day control of the Web.

• Reuters.com: Firm Wants to Rid Net of Suffixes.

A Guide to PC Backup Opportunities. How to Backup Data More Efficiently

9:59 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Many people carelessly think that if data is stored on a computer’s hard disk drive (HDD) it is to stay their forever. The real life experience shows that HDD breakdowns happen more than often due to failures of the hardware, virus attacks or accidental deleting.

PC Mechanic web-site has examined different possibilities of data backup and put up a guide. In this article author speaks about advantages and disadvantages of using such backup storages as tape, CD/DVD discs, USB thumb drives, Internet services, various RAID setups of multiple HDDs and external HDDs.

“Backing up your data is vital to an ongoing computer experience. Storage media regularly fail, so you need to plan for it. The best backup options for home users are usually an external hard drive and/or DVDs. Adding in other options like a USB flash drive or an Internet backup service can keep the backup more available no matter where you happen to be at the time of the data failure. You may find that you don’t need software at all, especially if you’re doing a hard drive to hard drive backup. However, it does make life easier, keeping older versions, doing incremental backups, and automating drive spanning. Commercial software is generally much more feature-filled, and there are plenty of good options out there,” writes PC Mechanic.

• PC Mechanic: Guide to PC Backup Options.

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