Commodore's Gaming PCs Revealed

Ghost Recon 2 painted Commodore is indeed back but it's no different from everyone else this time around. DailyTech previously reported that Commodore was expected to make a splash back into the gaming scene by introducing computers targeted specifically towards gamers. The company left the scene more than two decades ago after launching the famous Commodore64. Commodore confirms the reports after it launched its new website and revealed upcoming system specifications. Officially called the Commodore xx, the new flagship system will be based on current off-the-shelf components.

Official specifications include:
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core processor QX6700: 2.66GHz 8M Cache
ASUS P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard
2x 150GB 10000 RPM SATA Raid 0 and 2x 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Raid 1 hard drives
4GB Corsair Dominator 2xTwin2x2048-8500C5D memory: 1066MHz
Philips DVD-RW optical drive
1000W ICE Cube power supply
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
2x NVIDIA 8800 GTX 768MB graphics cards

I would just like to add that It's a great idea! I remember playing on my first-ever computer C64 some legendary games like Laser squad, Ghosts'n'Goblins, Rick Dangerous, Commando etc, etc...
It's really nice to play on PC thinking it's powerfull as much as legendary C64.
Ah... memories come to life with this computer. My first 'bloody eyes effect' happened with C64 and an old TV :-) ... ah, the nostalgia is all around me :-)

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NVIDIA Ships 128-Core Graphics Cards for High-End Film Editors

NVIDIA just cranked up its highest-end Quadro graphics cards a notch or two, rolling out three products, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 5600 (pictured above), and NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS Model IV that the company says represents the biggest leap in performance for its graphics cards yet. One giant leap indeed, because these parallel processing monsters have the rough equivalent of 128 1.35GHz processors cranking away at graphics in a whole new way.
These cards have more circuitry than ever, with three quarters of a billion transistors on board, and NVIDIA says not only can they display larger graphics faster than ever but use a concept called GP-GPU, allowing general-purpose programs to run on the GPU instead of the CPU.

Sharing some of the same technology with NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series of consumer cards released last November, these cards are aimed at high-end film effects artists and oil and gas explorers, and maybe a few absolutely fanatic gamers. More info, pics and pricing, plus a tantalizing hint from NVIDIA about Apple's interest in this technology, after the jump.

Additional features in the new Quadro solutions include faster 3D texturing and massive 8Kx8K texture processing for better performance when zooming and panning of high-resolution images; NVIDIA® SLI™ technology for improved graphics performance; dual dual-link display connectivity; and NVIDIA® PureVideo™ technology for outstanding picture clarity, smooth video playback, and accurate color and precise image scaling for SD and HD content. NVIDIA GSync and HD SDI options are also offered.

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DDR2 Memory latency performance with nForce 680i SLI chipset

Recently published an article titled “DDR2 Memory Frequency Performance” which looked at the value of high speed memory. The reason I found the need to write such an article was to demonstrate that there really is no need to try and overclock your memory when pushing a Core 2 Duo processor to the max. Often readers complain about poor Core 2 Duo overclocking performance and 99% of the time it comes down to memory instability at higher frequencies. This article showed that when running a Core 2 Duo E6700 on a 500MHz FSB, DDR2-667 was just as fast as DDR2-1181 memory and in some cases even faster.
The point of the DDR2 Memory Frequency Performance article was to prove that when overclocking, the 1:1 ratio is not important and we proved this with the 1066MHz configuration. Moving on, there were a few good suggestions made by readers about the first article that they would have liked to have seen. That being a broader range of memory timings, not just memory frequencies, so it could be determined whether low-latency DDR2-800 memory for example, was really required. While this kind of testing could have been done with DDR2-533 or even DDR2-667 memory, we chose DDR2-800 memory as it is the more popular choice. Furthermore, the price difference between these three standards is often very minimal.

Therefore the DDR2-800 memory was tested with CAS 3-3-3-8 T1, CAS 4-4-4-12 T1, CAS 4-4-4-12 T2, CAS 5-5-5-15 T2 and even CAS 6-6-6-18 T2 timings. This time all the testing was done on the ASUS Striker Extreme which uses the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset with the Core 2 Duo E6700 processor clock at its default operating frequency. Again this is primarily gaming related and not a general usage article, since high-speed expensive memory is generally associated with gaming!
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XFX showcased 680 LT SLI at CeBit

XFX wants to make a lot of noise with Fatal1ty and we saw Jonathan playing around XFX boot and fragging some butts. If you didn’t get yourself arrested by XFX police girls you would be able to take a picture of a new stuff that is coming from this company.
The most interesting one is of course Mother board how XFX calls it branded as 680LT SLI. This is nothing more than 680I stripped for some features. The board looks very reference to me and you can notice that two PCIe 16X are far from each other and there will be a lot of place for two 8800 GTX dual slot cards. The board also has two PCI slots but its clear that if you have two 8800 dual slot cards inside that you will lose one PCI slot. You can plug four memory modules DDR2 only of course. The board supports socket 775 CPUs only and it is designed by Nvidia. Lets simply say it’s a reference board as much as EVGA is reference but with a nice XFX sticker on.

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