Mereley two weeks after the initial release FutureMark released an update to 3DMark 11 to fix problems and add a couple of requested features. Note, until NVIDIA release new drivers SLI will continue to be unavailable in 3DMark 11.

3DMark 11 version 1.01 release notes

All Editions

• Fixed an issue with SystemInfo that prevented the Physics and Combined tests from running.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash if the DirectX 11 API or .NET was not available.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash if the number of system GPUs was unknown.
• Letterboxing and scaling now works with wide displays.
• The benchmark UI is now minimized during the benchmark run.
• Improved result security when submitting to 3dmark.com.
• Added automatic update notification.
• Updated SystemInfo component to version 3.54.1.1.

Advanced and Profession Edition only

• Added option for manual GPU Count selection to the Advanced tab.
• Added Scaling Mode selection to the Advanced tab, choose from centered or stretched.
• Results tab now shows the individual scores for each of the six tests.

Professional Edition only

• Demo audio now works when running from the command line.
• Image Quality tool now handles unexpected parameters correctly.
• Image Quality tool now works correctly with the reference rasterizer option.

Download

• Download v1.0 to v1.01 patch (17 MB)
• Download v.1.01 Full install (282 MB)

Wire Ltd. released AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.50 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business Edition 1.50 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises.

The new AIDA64 update implements AVX-optimized benchmarks for the upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge processors, adds a brand new video encoding benchmark, and supports the latest AMD and nVIDIA graphics processors.

New features & improvements

• Support for the upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge desktop and mobile processors
• AVX-optimized 64-bit fractal and security benchmarks
• AVX-optimized System Stability Test module
• 64-bit multi-threaded VP8 video encoding benchmark
• Revamped ZLib data compression benchmark
• GPU details for AMD Radeon HD 69xx and nVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
• Enhanced support for nVIDIA RAID controllers
• Estonian localization

Download

Guru3D and MSI have been working hard on AfterBurner, today we release an updated  Beta  revision of Afterburner, this application successfully secured the leading position on graphics card utilities.

Afterburner 2.1 Betas started to support voltage adjustment on HD 6850 series cards. And video capture function is now working better and faster on Core 2 Duo CPU to capture 1680x1050 high resolution video.

This beta basically added the support to GTX 570 and GTX 460 SE. It also fixed some typos in the database such as GT 430.

Download

Affected OSs:
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP

Symptoms:
BSOD on restart after update
Unsuccessful startup

Affected Products:
AVG Free 2011

Workarounds:
1. Use System Restore. To restore to a previous date prior to Dec 1. Disable automatic update until this is fixed.
2. Go into your System Recovery menu and enter the command prompt and rename the whole AVG folder until this is fixed.

Thanks to ST19AG_WGreymon for this post.

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.

• Added support for GeForce GTX 570, GTX 460 SE
• Added support for PCI-Express 3.0
• Added PowerColor Giveaway
• Added Colorfire PCI vendor ID
• Added detection for AMD Radeon HD 6310, HD 6370 
• Fixed BIOS >64k reading on GF110
• Added GT215 based GT 220
• Fixed TMU count on GF104
• Improved default clock reading on GeForce GTX 580
• Better error handling for memory type detection code

Download

The latest download of Realtek's HD audio driver version available for Windows XP, Vista, it runs under Windows 7 too.

The HD audio driver version for Realtek chips is available for download on our server. This download offers both the Windows XP and Vista/7 binaries, the files contain drivers for the 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions. All Realtek HD audio chips, which are common on many motherboards and in notebooks, are supported.

Realtek High Definition Audio Codec Driver - this is the sound drivers for a new generation of audio Realtek (HD Audio), namely models ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267, ALC268 and ALC269.

Changes in Driver Package R2.55:
Realtek HD Audio Driver support all of Realtek HD Audio Codec.
1. Vista/Windows 7 WHQL Supporting: ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC892, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262,ALC267, ALC268, ALC269, ALC270, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887,ALC670, ALC275, ALC680
2. Windows 2000/XP WHQL Supporting: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC892, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267,ALC268, ALC269, ALC270, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887,ALC670, ALC275, ALC680
3. HDMI Device WHQL Support: ATI HDMI Devices
4. OS Supporting: Microsoft WindowsXP, Widnows2000, Windows Server 2003, Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows7 - x86/x64
5. Pack with Microsoft High Definition Audio UAAV1.0a(5013)
6. Add/Fix
1.) Driver :
1. Customizations.

Download

Here you can download SiSoftware Sandra 2010 SP2 which includes remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers and networks.

SiSoft Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. SANDRA will provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, ODBC Connections, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Download

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.

Changes in version 0.4.8

• Added support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and future GF104 variants
• Updated TMU/Texture rate calculation method. Please report any errors in the forums
• Fixed memory clock monitoring on HD 6850, HD 6870
• Fixed label corruption on cards without any shaders
• Fixed rare CrossFire detection bug on ancient ATI drivers
• Added voltage monitoring fallback for ATI cards with unsupported voltage controller
• Updated PCI vendor ID for PowerColor

Download

Guru3D - Driver Sweeper is very easy to use. You only have to select the drivers you want to clean. he current supported drivers are NVIDIA (Display and Chipset), ATI (Display), Creative (Sound), Ageia (PhysX), MMouse, ASUS  and Realtek (Sound). The Guru3D - Driver Sweeper is fully tested on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows & 7 RC. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported.

Version 2.6.0 holds the following changes:

New:

• Added ASUS - Sound cleaning.
  Thanks to topyrz.
• Added process stopping to prevent several entries being locked.
  This includes several OS processes and third party software (RivaTuner, Afterburner, etc).       
• Added service stopping and cleaning.

Updated:

• Improved file cleaning methods.
• Improved ATi - Display cleaning.
• Improved Creative - Sound cleaning.
  Thanks to DyP and MrBozack.
• Improved NVIDIA - Display cleaning.

Fixed:

• Some registry entries not showing up in the analyse list.
• Some file and directory entries not marked as cleaned.
• Additional cleaning methods not working when files are protected by OS.
• Unhandled Exception crash occurred while trying to find some directories.

Download:

 Driver Sweeper (Setup)

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.

Changes in version 0.4.7

• Improved support for AMD Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870
• Added support for NVIDIA GeForce GT 430, GT 420
• Fixed default clock reading on Fermi architecture cards
• Added voltage controller support for Colorful iGame GTX 460
• Added PCI Vendor detection for Colorful
• Added TMU count and die size for GF106
• Synchronization mutexes are global now
• Improved stability when running multiple instances of GPU-Z / Fixed "the driver has been marked for deletion" error

DOWNLOAD

One of the best, if not the best, and totally free, HTPC applications available on the web has been updated. Personally I have two HTPCs and both run this software. It's extremely handy, user friendly and very configurable.

Imagine Microsoft MediaCenter, but then 10-x better. That's what MediaPortal is and the good thing is .. it is totally free. The release of MediaPortal 1.1.0 was a big success. Now, it is already time to release version 1.1.1, as planned. This release fixes some small, but very annoying problems in the 1.1.0 version.

MediaPortal is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC in a very advanced Multi-Media Center / HTPC. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more.

MediaPortal turns your PC and TV into a very advanced home media center. Our software allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio stations; watch and store your videos and DVDs; view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder; and much, much more. MediaPortal is open source software. This means you can help develop MediaPortal or tweak it for your own needs with lots of innovative plugins from our great community.

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The Open Hardware Monitor is a free open source application that monitors temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load and clock speeds of a computer. It supports most hardware monitoring chips found on todays mainboards like the ITE, Winbond and Fintek families. The CPU temperature can be monitored by reading the core temperature sensors of Intel and AMD processors. The sensors of ATI and Nvidia video cards as well as SMART hard drive temperature can be displayed. The Open Hardware Monitor runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows and any x86 based Linux operating systems without installation.

Latest News

2010-10-02: Release Version 0.2.1 Beta

• Fixed a missing assembly problem on .NET Framework 4.0.
• Reduced the number of referenced assemblies.

2010-10-02: Release Version 0.2.0 Beta

• New desktop gadget (enable with "View / Show gadget").
• Added bus and core clock sensors for AMD K8 and K10 CPUs.
• Added support for the Alphacool Heatmaster fan controller.
• Added support for the ITE IT8721F super I/O chip.
• Added a fan control sensor for ATI GPUs.
• Added an ISA bus mutex for accessing the super I/O chips.
• Added a mainboard specific configuration for the ASRock 880GMH/USB3, ASUS P6X58D-E, ASUS Rampage Extreme, ASUS Rampage II GENE, ECS A890GXM-A, Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3 and Gigabyte P55M-UD4.
• Improved the stability of reading and writing the settings file.
• Added an option to minimize when the close button is clicked.
• Reimplemented the GUI menus using the native Windows menus.
• Improved a few optical details of the GUI.
• Added support for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.
• Refactored the hardware monitoring code into a library.
• Fixed a few problems where the Open Hardware monitor would crash.
• Added SMART data and details of AMD CPUs to the report.

Tweak Me! is a Windows Tweaking Application which supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Never has it been so easy to tweak all most used versions of Microsoft Windows using just one application. Tweak Me! has a modern user friendly GUI which makes it extremely easy for you to manage the most important tweaks which save you a lot of time when setting up Windows!

Compared to other tweaking utilities, Tweak Me! contains mostly tweaks which do not just represent settings you can change using the ordinary Windows GUI. Tweak Me! also recognizes the operating system you use and offers you only tweaks which are supported by your current system!

Changelog for version 1.1.0.6:

• Bugfix: Fixed: System Restore windows did not closer after throwing an exception
• Bugfix: Fixed: Default profiles were damaged
• General: Fixed: Several typos
• General: Only system's default profile can be loaded now
• Cleaner: Improved: Remove History (added run history, typed paths, etc.)
• Cleaner: Improved: Internet Explorer History
• Cleaner: Improved: History (Chrome)
• Cleaner: Improved: Temporary Internet Files (Chrome), detected twice the amount of existing data
• Cleaner: Added: "Open-/Save Dialogs' History"
• Cleaner: Added: "Registry Editor History"
• Cleaner: Added: "Windows Media Player History"
• Cleaner: Added: "Wallpaper History"
• Cleaner: Added: "Autocomplete" (Internet Explorer)
• Cleaner: Added: Support for Chromium based browsers

Download

Somewhere somehow the speed of web browsers became a pissing contests didn't it ? Google promised that the upcoming Chrome 7 browser will be 60 times faster than Chrome 6!

Microsoft's bold claims are accurate but one has to remember the product is still in beta. Google on the other hand has a remarkable way of dishing out product updates with lightning speed. The web search giant is currently readying Chrome 7 which it claims will be 60 times faster than Chrome 6. 2D graphics performance and canvas acceleration is now available in trunk and canary builds of Chrome 7. "This system picks the best graphics API to use on each OS that Chromium supports: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS and Linux", wrote James Robinson, Software Engineer at Google - via neowin.

It won't be long now, before we read the ciontent before even loading the homepage ;)

Here you can download SiSoftware Sandra 2010 SP2 which includes remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers and networks.  SANDRA will provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
 
 It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, ODBC Connections, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

DOWNLOAD

NVIDIA Inspector is a handy application that reads out driver and hardware information for GeForce graphics cards.

The nVIDIA Inspector Tool is basically an nVIDIA only GPU-Z utility but with a decent OverClocking feature and you can set your clocks and fan speeds. Orbmu2k has released this program, which seems to NVIDIA graphics cards and offers information on tools for GPU and memory clock speed, GPU operating voltage and fan speed increase.

This is a quite simple user interface with an application that will rely entirely NVIDIA drivers, so there is reason to be downloaded from NVIDIA's website WHQL-certified driver. The program offers roughly the same information as the GPU-Z program, but with a few extra spice box.

Download

Driver Sweeper is very easy to use. You only have to select the drivers you want to clean up.
The best way to clean drivers is to first uninstall the drivers using the official uninstallers, reboot in Safe Mode and run Guru3D - Driver Sweeper. However, rebooting and not going into Safe Mode also works, but can cause some files not to be cleaned.

What can it be used for ?
The current supported drivers are NVIDIA (Display and Chipset), ATI (Display), Creative (Sound), Ageia (PhysX), MMouse and Realtek (Sound).

All the settings are saved in an ini file. Nothing is created in the registry, so it's possible to use it as a portable program. Log files can be saved to the harddisk and viewed as well. You can find the logs under the Tools menu.

System requirements:
The Guru3D - Driver Sweeper is fully tested on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows & 7 RC. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported.

More info and revision history can be found here:

• Official Guru3D - Driver Sweeper homepage click here.
• Official Guru3D - Driver Sweeper forums click here.
• Official Guru3D Download - Click here

New in this release:

• Replaced cog icon with a new icon.
• Character to seperate registry keys from registry values in the analyse list.
• Some layout changes.
• Increased default window size.
• Update notifications, auto update has been removed.
• Directory wildcard search for custom filters.
• Added Norwegian translation. Thanks to Magnus Gran
  

EVGA Precision allows you to fine tune your GeForce graphics card for the maximum performance possible, with Core/Shader/Memory clock tuning, real time monitoring support including in-game, Logitech Keyboard LCD Display support, and compatibility with almost all EVGA (and other) graphics cards.

• Added software automatic fan control mode allowing end users to define custom temperature to fan speed mapping curve
• Added floating tooltips based help system for advanced EVGA Precision settings window
• Now it is possible to pause hardware monitoring module via "Pause" command in the context menu of hardware monitoring window
• Performance profiler status information is no longer power user oriented, now it is possible to toggle the performance profiler status visibility directly via "Show status" command in the context menu of hardware monitoring window
• Now it is possible to clear hardware monitoring history via "Clear history" command in the context menu of hardware monitoring window
• Now it is possible to get directly into hardware monitoring graph properties by clicking a tray icon associated with it or via "Properties" command in the context menu of hardware monitoring window
• Added multilanguage system and sample Russian localization pack
• Added SDK folder containing reference guide documentation for third party EVGA Precision skin and localization creators
• Now core clock controls are displayed on GeForce 400 series if built-in skins are in use. Please take a note that it is still impossible to adjust core and shader clocks independenty on these cards due to GPU architecture limitations
• Now it is posssible to use both core and shader clock as the primary clock when adjusting the clocks in linked mode
• Removed some outdated options from advanced EVGA Precision settings window
• Framerate monitoring graph limits have been changed to [0,100] FPS
• Fan tachometer monitoring graph limits have been changed to [0,5000] RPM
• Fixed videomemory usage monitoring for non-primary NVIDIA graphics cards
• Added ability to assign a hotkey for toggling the On-Screen Display Server blocking. This hotkey is aimed to provide a simple way for diagnosing the server related compatibility issues
• Now EVGA Precision uses previously undocumented power user oriented DirectInput based hotkey handler. New hotkey handling mechanism drastically reduces hotkey response time in applications heavily loading CPU. Please take a note that new sophisticated hotkeys handling can cause some system security applications (e.g. KIS proactive defense module) to warn you about possible keylogging threat
• Now screen capture events are also indicated by notification messages in the hardware monitoring window
• Added new black skin edition.

Download: click here

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.

Changes in version 0.4.6:

• Added MSI hardware giveaway
• Fixed temperature readings getting stuck on ADT7473 sensor (GTX 400 cards)
• Fixed broken BIOS reading on all cards
• General improvements to Intel support, still far from perfect
• Added support for ATI FirePro V8750
• Added support for GeForce GTS 455, GTS 450, GT 440, GT 430, GT 420, GT 330, GT218 based ION, GTX 470M, GTX 460M, GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M, GT 415M, GeForce 310M
• Added basic detection for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• Improved handling for unknown NVIDIA cards
• Added fan RPM monitoring for NVIDIA cards

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Afterburner is world first utility to support over-voltage of GeForce GTX 480/470/465, it also implement screen capture function for DX10 and DX11 games and monitor history function. Also, built-in benchmark Kombustor has a lot of improvement. MSI encourage all graphics card users to try it, even you don't have a MSI graphics card. (but they highly recommend you to buy one!)

We announce new version 2.0.0 of highly-acclaimed MSI Afterburner. The most important function of Afterburner 2.0.0 is "Triple over-voltage" and you can start to use it on our hot-selling N460GTX Hawk that also is announced and reviewed here today.

We plan to announce our next major Afterburner revision in coming month, we can assure you the best will be EVEN BETTER in next version! Stay tuned!

[2.0.0 Changelog]

• Voltage control layer has been seriously revamped to give additional freedom to extreme overclockers with new custom design MSI graphics cards. Now MSI Afterburner is able to control up to 3 voltages on custom design MSI Fermi and other future custom design MSI graphics cards. New adjustable voltages include memory voltage and special multi-purpose auxiliary voltage feeding either memory bus (also known as VDDCI on AMD graphics cards) or PCIE bus and crystal (PEXVDD on NVIDIA graphics cards)
• Added core, memory and auxiliary PEXVDD voltage control for custom design MSI N480GTX Lighning series graphics cards with uP6225+uP6262 voltage regulators
• Added core, memory and auxiliary PEXVDD voltage control for custom design MSI N470GTX Twin Frozr II OV3 series graphics cards with uP6218+uP6262 voltage regulators
• Added core, memory and auxiliary PEXVDD voltage control for custom design MSI N460GTX Hawk series graphics cards with uP6262 voltage regulators
• Added core voltage control for custom design MSI N460GTX Cyclone series graphics cards
• Added auxiliary VDDCI voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON HD 5870 series graphics cards
• Added fan tachometer monitoring for NVIDIA graphics cards. Please take a note that not all graphics cards are tachometer reading capable. So depending on graphics card and cooling system fan tachometer monitoring can be unavailable
• Optimized NVIDIA driver-level clock frequency monitoring codepath
• Minimum clock limits for all graphics cards have been reduced from 75% to 50%
• Dynamic overclocking, voltage and fan speed limits. MSI Afterburner no longer uses static slider limits calibration and adjusts the limits dynamically when some external factors affect it (e.g. Overdrive clock limits on AMD cards or VGA BIOS fan speed and voltage limits on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 cards)
• New temperature hysteresis settings for software automatic fan control mode gives you additional way to improve cooling system thermal and acoustic parameters
• Now fan speed limits (i.e. minimum and maximum fan speeds accepted by VGA BIOS and display driver) are displayed in custom fan speed curve editor window
• Built-in skin sizes have been reduced due to optimized internal skin panels representation and optimized compiled bitmap cache
• Optional skin compression ability in the built-in skin compiler. Skin format reference documentation has been updated to document new compression options
• Minor built-in skins appearance tweaks
• Now MSI Afterburner uses previously undocumented power user oriented startup mode via the task scheduler under Windows Vista / Windows 7. MSI Afterburner launch no longer requires UAC confirmation at Windows startup. Please take a note that Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 runtime libraries must be installed to get new startup mode working
• Now MSI Afterburner automatically fixes startup link if or is enabled but the registry or task scheduler startup entry is missing
• Startup profile is now displayed in option floating tooltip instead of the main window
• Now power users can enable optional DirectInput based hotkeys handler via the configuration file. DirectInput based hotkeys processing can seriously reduces hotkey response time in the applications heavily loading CPU (mostly 3D games) and leaving not enough time for processing standard keyboard input message queues. Please take a note that enabling such sophisticated hotkeys handling mode can cause some system security applications (e.g. pro-active application behavior analysis module of KIS) to warn you about possible keylogging threat
• Improved skin engine, now skinned controls support horizontal and/or vertical centering. Skin format reference guide has been updated to document these new alignment modes
• MSI On-Screen Display server has been upgraded to version 3.7.2. New version gives you the following improvements:
• Now screen capture events are identified visually by text message flashing in On-Screen Display during 0.25s
• Built-in skin sizes have been reduced due to optimized compiled bitmap cache
• Added On-Screen Display profile for Startcraft II : Wings of Liberty
• Added configuration file switch allowing sending MSI Afterburner to system tray instead of closing on button click
• option is no longer set in the startup task settings to allow automatically starting application via the task scheduler on laptops or on some UPS models
• Added optional data filtering mode for all hardware monitoring graphs. Now it is possible to enable special math data filtering algorithm independently for each hardware monitoring graph to reject misreading spikes caused by sensor access conflicts when running multiple hardware monitoring tools at the same time
• Now it is posssible to use both core and shader clock as the primary clock when adjust the clocks in linked mode
• Fixed videomemory usage monitoring for non-primary NVIDIA graphics cards
• Application restart is no longer required to apply new user interface language
• Updated localization engine. Now floating tooltips based context help system supports macro definitions
• Localization reference guide documentation has been updated to v1.1
• Various typo fixes in different language packs
• Added Korean localization

DOWNLOAD AfterBurner 2.0.0 Final (7MB)