Tech Olive

Maybe hell froze over or something, but it’s straight out of Chipzilla’s mouth that the frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, Will.i.am, is now the “director of creative innovations” at Intel. As far as his duties are concerned, it’s all pretty foggy at this point. Intel only had this to say about what he’ll be doing:

“In his unique role, will.i.am will collaborate with Intel on many creative and technology endeavors across the “compute continuum” that may include such devices as laptops, smart phones and tablets. Complementing his visionary role as the front man for The Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am is also already working on music expressly for Intel.”

Intel, what have you done?

[Intel via LA Times]

Always finding new things that we never knew we needed, Razer has announced their newest product: a small speaker system for portable devices. The Ferox is an omni-directional speaker that features a 12-hour battery life and pocket-sized design that promises full-size sound quality and coverage. The product is shipping now for a price of $59.99

[Info Page, Store Page]

Wow, it seems like yesterday when Nvidia released its first-generation Fermi cards, and now a year later, here we are admiring the second coming of Fermi in the form of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. This hunk of a beast boasts 384 CUDA processing cores, 822 MHz graphics clock, 1.6 GHz processor clock, 4.0 GHz memory clock, and a full gig of GDDR5 memory. Prices will start at $250 at numerous online retailers. Coincidentally, AMD lowered the price of their HD 6870 to $220 and the HD 6950 down to as low as $270. AMD also outed a new, different model of the HD 6950 to directly compete with the GTX 560. The price on that card will start at $260.

Hot Hardware has an in-depth, 12-page review of the new GTX 560 here. It’s worth the read if you’re considering such a card, but if you’re pressed for time, here’s their no-nonsense summary:

“The GeForce GTX 560 Ti, whether in its stock or overclocked configurations, performed very well throughout out testing. In comparison to its closely related cousin, the GeForce GTX 460, it’s no contest—the GeForce GTX 560 Ti smokes the GeForce GTX 460 across the board. It’s harder to summarize the 560 Ti’s performance versus competing cards from AMD, however. In some circumstances, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is actually faster than the more expensive Radeon HD 6970 (Far Cry 2, Lost Planet 2). Other times the GTX 560 Ti hangs right alongside the new Radeon HD 6950 1GB (Unigine, Just Cause 2). In the rest of the games and apps we tested, the Radeons came out on top. Suffice it to say, the new GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a strong competitor to similarly positioned graphics cards from AMD.”

[Press Release]

Because we’re undying fans of Defend the House‘s awesome gaming Mythbusters series, we’re here once again to tell you about their newest episode. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, then check out their previous three episodes focusing on Call of Duty: Black Ops, and be sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel for future updates! Check out episode 4 after the break.

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Hot on the heels of Intel‘s release of newer-gen Core processors, Asus says that they’re set to raise quotes on their motherboards. Chewei Lin, general manager of the motherboard division at Asus, said the increase isn’t due to greed or taking advantage of the new Sandy Bridge CPUs, but rather to cope with the labor shortage in China, the NT dollar’s appreciation and higher material costs (copper mostly). However, Lin continued on saying that this will hardly affect everyday consumers and DIY system builders since prices have already been on the rise recently. It mostly affect OEMs and their contracts with motherboard makers like Asus.

via [DigiTimes]

Image Credit: jepuy

27 years ago today, Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh 128K computer. It was Apple’s first computer to run on Mac OS, which was called System 1.0 back then. This revolutionary machine featured a 9-inch black and white monitor, an 8 MHz processor, 128 KB of RAM, and used a 400 KB 3.5-inch floppy disk as storage space. All of this could have been yours for only $2,495.

This week on Steam’s Weekly Top Seller list, DC Universe Online stays at the number one spot while Call of Duty: Black Ops is back on the list in 2nd. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Civilization V are still managing to scrounge up numbers, and both Dead Space titles also make in the top ten thanks to the current weekend deal. Hit the break for the complete top ten list.

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Well, it seems that EA isn’t living up to its recent acquisition of CampaignforPCGaming.com just yet, which means that the publisher isn’t going to give PC gamers a multiplayer demo of the upcoming sci-fi shooter Crysis 2. If it makes you feel any better, PS3 gamers aren’t getting the demo either, which means that it’s exclusive to the Xbox 360 (more specifically, Xbox Live Gold).

Crysis 2 is still set for release for all platforms on March 22nd, 2011 in North America and March 25th, 2011 in Europe.

[EA via Joystiq]

This May — after 14 years of waiting — gamers will once again take the shoes of Duke Nukem to save the world from evil aliens. Publisher 2K Games has finally locked in a May 3rd release in North America, with the rest of the world having to wait an extra three days to get their hands on some good ol’ Duke.

via [Big Download]

Bringing further fixes to the game’s multiplayer experience, a new patch has hit everyone’s Steam queues for Black Ops, but what changes are tagging along with this 63MB download?

Call of Duty: Black Ops

• MP Audio stuttering on certain systems.
• Playercards sometimes not showing properly.
• Added three Private Match Server Settings: Team Change, Team-Up Period, and Keep Balanced Teams.
• Added Alternate Color Scheme for accessibility: Settings / Multiplayer / Player Name Indicator.
• Changed Team-Up Period countdown interval to 10 seconds.
• Combat Training sessions are no longer counted in Server Browser Unranked tab.
• Friends on your team will now show as blue on your minimap.
• Prevention of various exploits.
• Objective markers localized for all languages.
• Various stability improvements

Call of Duty: Black Ops Rcon Tool
Recognize new “invalid password” server response

[Press Release]