After looking through all the feedback Windows 7's public beta version received, Microsoft added 36 changes to its Release Candidate. While some of them are only of "cosmetic" nature, others are quite essential and increased performance and various compatibility fixes are only two of the many benefits you can expect to see. Apparently, Microsoft is being careful this time around though, and tries not to repeat mistakes it previously made with Vista. Therefore, don't expect any drastic changes or even a radical remodeling of Windows 7.

Summed up, changes have been made in the following areas:

• Desktop Experience
• Touch
• Networking
• Control Panel
• Windows Media Player
• Device Stage
• Sound UX
• Windows Explorer and Libraries
• Performance

The main focus was on the desktop, as it accounts for 10 of the 36 changes. Also noteworthy is the increased audio reliability and the added .mov support, as we already reported earlier. If you want to read the full blog post, made by Microsoft's senior program manager, Chaitanya Sareen, just click here.

Each month here at Guru3D.com we feature one of you guys, your PC, your DIY project. It is quite honestly amazing how much detail and dedication you put into an PC, and every now and then it really shows. Today something simple on the outside, yet scrumptious on the inside, all done by Benjamin Field, a school science teacher.

His PC is Guru3D's PC of the Month February 2009, not too complex .. yet very nice.

Click here to read all about his PC build.

Motherboard makers said the credibility of the reports is very high, but added that the method may only apply to certain batches of CPUs. AMD responded in saying that Phenom II X3 CPUs speak for themselves in terms of value, but said it cannot comment specifically on the unlocking claims.

For those interested, the Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz sells here for $149.99

Gigabyte will release a GeForce GTS 250 based on Zalman cooling. The product under SKU codename GV-N250ZL-1GI

uses the company's own design. Certainly the GeForce GTS 250 is a re-spin product of the NVIDIA's 9800 GTX+ accelerator based on the same 55nm G92b core and similar specifications.

Gigabyte's first accelerator sports the Ultra Durable PCB construction. The PCB consists of 2 oz (56.6 g) copper layers that help spread heat and minimize ground electrical noise. It also consists of the all solid-capacitor, ferrite choke, low effective RDS on MOSFETs design.

The daunting feature of this card is its cooler: a Zalman VF1050. Heat is drawn from the GPU-contact block using four heatpipes that convey it to a dense array of copper fins, nucleated by a PWM-controlled fan. The clock speeds on this card remain close to the reference speeds: 740/1850/2000 MHz (core/shader/memory). We expect it to be in the stores around the 10th of MArch, and we'll probably review this unit.

Next week on the 3rd, starting at CeBIT. Geforce GTX 250 will be launched, we'll be sure to cook up a review for you guys, so you know what you can expect (or not).

The 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N USB Adapter supports MAC, Windows and Linux systems and will be available at the retail price of $59.99.

Windows 7 already has built in DivX support in the current beta. Hidden inside the various changes since beta for the RC is a change to Windows Media Player to natively support the .mov files. Yeah, the support for .mov files was mentioned deep in a long list of changes that are coming to the Windows 7 Release Candidate. While this may delight owners of cameras which output in the .mov format, it's also good news for anyone who enjoys watching movies on their PC, as movie trailers, particularly those on Apple Movie Trailers, come in .mov format, and so require QuickTime (or a freeware player such as VLC) to view.

Now, if WMP would have native support for GPU acceleration on all formats as well, I'd be such a happy puppy (cute too).

Accompanying the launch of Resident Evil 5 in March, Microsoft today confirmed the release of its long-rumored limited edition of the Xbox 360 Elite. Officially, it is called Xbox 360 Elite Limited Edition Resident Evil 5 Bundle, and besides its red finish, it comes with a red Xbox 360 Wireless Controller, a black Xbox 360 Headset, a 120 GB Hard Drive, and an exclusive premium "Resident Evil 5" theme (downloadable via Xbox LIVE).

Here's an excerpt of its included features:

• Xbox 360 Elite Console with Exclusive Red Finish
• Matching red wireless controller
• 120GB hard drive
• Resident Evil 5
• Super Street Fighter
  

Yesterday, Dell reported that its net income for the fourth quarter, ended Jan. 30, fell 48 percent, to $351 million from $679 million reported in the fourth quarter of the prior year. Revenue dropped 16 percent, to $13.4 billion from $16 billion. That is the lowest level in earnings for Dell since 2002. As a result, they announced to cut their annual costs by an additional $1 billion - on top of the already existing $3 billion cost-cutting program, which has included layoffs and the closing of plants, for example.

"We will be the first to admit that this is a work in progress, and there is more to do," Brian T. Gladden, the company's chief financial officer said. Apparently, the main reason for this decline are the decreased desktop and laptop computer sales. Currently, Dell is trying to broaden its product offerings in a "turnaround effort". "Our strategy is to develop disruptive technology and innovation and shift our business to higher margin products and services," Mr. Dell said.

The AMD OverDrive application was designed to be a utility the provides the ability to maximize the capability, flexibility, and adjustability of the AMD chipset products

It allows user to tune parameters to ensure system stability, optimize performance, and control cooling/acoustic characteristics. Our target is to provide an all-in-one utility which can deliver all-around stellar operation.

Check out the latest release, which is version 2.1.6

Download here.

We test the Patriot Warp v.2 Series 128GB SSD. We like the SSD development for sure. Fast performance and no noise is just fantastic. If you are a gamer, you just might settle for a nice HDD as boot drive and install your games at a SSD device, you'll seriously increase level and game load times very much.

This is where we land at the premises of Patriot memory. Not too long ago they released an SSD series of drives. They branded it as the WARP series. It comes with an advertised read performance of 175 MB/sec and a 100 MB/sec write speed, how on this earth could we not like that ?

You can check out the full Guru3D review right here.

The display features 250 nits of brightness, 5ms panel response time and provides 1000:1 of contrast with ability to extend up to a whooping 1 million:1 dynamic contrast ratio. Panel is TN type with 16.7 million colors and 160/170 viewing angles rating. It

Man, this concept is going to flop so miserably.This is the GeForce 9600 GT Green Edition graphics card from Zotac, which will be released next month. This card uses 40 percent less power than a standard GeForce 9600 GT. The card has a 600MHz core and 512MB GDDR3 memory clocked at 1800MHz. There's no 6-pin power connector and it uses 2+1 phase power supply.

Zotac is going to ship its GeForce 9600GT Green Edition soon according to the latest information. With model of N9600GT-1GD3, Zotac 9600GT Green Edition features black-color PCB, fins and PWM cooler, which might impress you in another way as the looks are just great to be honest.

Fun video. Earlier this month Intel published a video on YouTube that shows how Intel is moving from manufacturing microprocessors using 45 nanometer circuitry to even smaller 32 nanometer circuitry.

Check it out.

Build and sustain your own expansive empire

• Explore the beautifully detailed world and discover new places to create your civilization 
• Set up trade posts in the spice mines of the Orient and explore new trade routes to keep your nation growing 
• Learn from other nearby cultures to expand your horizons and master the challenges of establishing a prosperous society

Developed specifically for Wii, DS and PC audiences

• Unique art style and clever integration of the Wii Remote and DS stylus makes building your empire more fun and interactive than ever before 
• All new scalable 3-D engine ensures unmatched visuals, optimized for all PC's - from high-end to low-end desktops 
• Seamless user interface delivers multiple gameplay modes and faster player rewards for both long or short play sessions
• Exclusive multiplayer modes across platforms
• Build your civilization and make history along with a friend in the 2-player co-op mode for Wii 
• Integration with Ubi.com allows PC players to track achievements, climb leaderboards and challenge others online

Accessible for everyone from beginners to pros

• Intelligent help system offers contextual hints for any situation 
• In-game encyclopedia includes illustrated tutorial filled with tips and strategies for building your civilization

All of you, who are eagerly awaiting the release of Windows 7, might like the following statement, made by Ray Chen, president of Taipei-based Compal Electronics Inc., at an investor's conference today. Regarding the question when it is being shipped with PCs, he said: "According to current planning, it should be late September or early October." Compal builds laptops for Hewlett-Packard and Acer, among others.

This is interesting news, as Microsoft officially talks only about January 2010 as a release date for Windows 7, so far. This somewhat conservative date might be used as a cushion to soften any unexpected delays in its current development process, though. Therefore, recent news about Microsoft's announcement of only one public beta and one RC before the RTM version would support the statement Chen made today.

The current beta version of Windows 7 seems to be surprisingly stable and well performing already and received prevalently good reviews throughout the whole IT community during the last weeks and months.

If there's one thing that can be said about ECS, is that they really do listenen to comments made in reviews like we show you guys at Guru3D.com

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS introduces the latest cutting-edge M.I.B. II (Motherboard Intelligent BIOS II) tweaking utility for new-born Black Series motherboards, providing solutions to meet the demands from the market without high price tag. Unleashing the full potential of hardware components that brings great benefits to users, ECS M.I.B. II incorporates plenty of detailed tweaking options especially in voltage control to enhance the overall system performance. In addition, gathering every tweaking option all in a single page is extremely convenient for users that spending precious time in searching merely a BIOS setting is never necessary. Just buy ECS

That is a pretty sick design really. Our colleagues from Tech PowerUp report that ASUS will intro a new motherboard concept, the Marine Cool series.

The Marine Cool series design goes far ahead from current Republic of Gamers (R.O.G.) mainboard products. For starters, the new motherboard has a new back plate that utilizes "micro-porous ceramic" technology and spreads across the whole PCB. The heat-pipe system that cools the motherboard's main components is also different, compared to current shipping products. Although the cooling technology remains the same, the whole look of the system reminds of a robot armour.

The weirdest thing is this though, ASUS engineers have decided to use SO-DIMM modules to cope with current Core 2 processors (if I'm right that appears to be LGA775 socket). I know it sounds a bit crazy, but pictures don't lie. Have a look and write what you think.

The ASUS Marine Cool prototype will first appear during this year's CeBIT 2009 in Hannover, Germany.

Rivatuner has been updated towards version 2.24 RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters.

The widest driver-level Direct3D / OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and real-time hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine make RivaTuner's feature set absolutely unmatched. RivaTuner supports all NVIDIA display adapters starting from Riva TNT family up to the latest GeForce series and widest range of NVIDIA drivers starting from the oldest Detonator 2.08 up to the newest ForceWare drivers family. In addition to complete NVIDIA hardware support, RivaTuner also provides support for display adapters based upon newer ATI graphics processors. All RivaTuner's features besides driver-level tuning options are also available on supported ATI hardware.

Guru3D.com is Rivatuner's official homepage, click here to find version / build / changes and FAQ information.  Direct download, click here. 

Dubs W2261VG, the new LG boasts a Full HD resolution TN panel LCD with 1000:1 contrast, 300 cd/m2 brightness and 160/170 viewing angles rating.

But like most monitor displays with dynamic contrast feature, with a flip of switch, the 2ms rated panel is capable of extending its 1000:1 base contrast rating of up to 50k:1; and revealing more details in dark areas scenes.

For connectivity, it packs HDMI, VGA and a HDCP compliant DVI-D digital port. The spec sheet is suggesting the LG is better suited for gaming and multimedia uses. It

If accurate, a new leak has NVIDIA releasing an updated version of its Ion platform with support for more than just netbook processors.

NVIDIA has acknowledged that it will launch a second-generation version that supports not only the Atom and VIA Nano but also regular Celeron, Pentium and Core 2 chips. The update would allow full-speed notebooks to use the smaller footprint.

The company sees Ion 2 shipping in the fall and partly positions the integrated graphics and system controller chip as an alternative to the upcoming Pineview generation of Atom processors, which will get integrated graphics and memory controllers. NVIDIA believes the new option "forces" netbook and nettop makers to use Intel's graphics despite relatively little improvement.

In defending Ion, the video hardware designer also refutes claims that Ion has "no advantages" over Intel graphics and higher power consumption, showing benchmarks which match the 10X graphics performance boost assertions and noting that a typical Atom-plus-Ion configuration only uses about a half-watt more of power versus the Intel reference version.

The first official customer for Ion is rumored to be Lenovo, with companies like Apple and veteran netbook producers also expressing interest.

Last year around this time, I blogged about some changes for Windows Vista that were released with SP1. These changes included an update for Windows Vista users which helps detect the presence of activation exploits, then alerts the customer (if affected) and provides some guidance and a Web link to learn more about what can be done to fix it. I'm excited to announce that beginning this week, and over the next several weeks depending on where you are, we will be releasing an update to that particular technology to help Windows Vista Ultimate Edition based systems detect the presence of additional activation exploits, namely the activation exploit commonly referred to as the 'SoftMod hack'. We're releasing this update to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition only at this time and only to systems with English as their primary language. As I've said before, we continuously evaluate the risk each reported hack poses to our customers, our partners and the protection of Microsoft's intellectual property; then we plan our activities accordingly.

Below is a screenshot showing what a user would see on a system that has detected the SoftMod activation exploit.

Hey .. do you guys remember the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB ? I bet loads of you actually still have one. Check out the photo below then, this is the new design for the upcoming GeForce GTS 250.

More info is detailed around the web on the GTS 250 release next week of course. But it's pretty safe to say that the card will use the 55 nm G92b graphics core and is as rumored specs wise similar to the GeForce 9800 GTX+

There are some interesting features though ...  The GeForce GTS 250 will come in 512 MB and 1 GB configurations, partners will be free to use their own designs as well. Rumor has it that some partners even seem to be working on 2 GB models, which can be discussed of course. Since the card is based on 9800 GTX+ the card is equipped with 128 stream processors. The 9 inch long PCB and cooler visually bear a striking resemblance with the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB for sure. Also a change, a single 6-pin PCI-E power input is enough to feed the card. The GTS 250 graphics cards are NVIDIA's 'new' card series to address the 125-175 USD market.

NVIDIA will lift the embargo on this card on March 3, the cards will reach retail and etail by March 10.

Exclusive: Radeon HD 4750 (RV740 - 40nm) preview

Guru3D.com today has a special and exclusive preview read for you guys. It's the worlds first article on a 40nm based graphics card, it embeds the RV740 ASIC and is due to be released in April. For the sake of it we'll name this product the Radeon HD 4750, it comes with a 40nm core, 640 shader processors and pack GDDR5 memory.

So here's the deal, performance wise the product is awfully close to the Radeon HD 4850, yet the trick is .. it'll be so much cheaper. Have a look at this article, you'll find only one review on this globe.

Click on the link to read this  Guru3D article.