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Found Footage: Boost your MacBook's RAM
Have you ever thought about upgrading your MacBook's scrawny 2GBs of RAM that Apple ships to something a little more deserving? Well, ChannelFlip has a very cool video showing you how to upgrade the RAM in either a MacBook or MacBook Pro. In addition they tested the performance of the 2GB and 4GB Apple RAM and the new Corsair 4GB low-latency Mac RAM. They show off the results in the video. Thanks, Wil!
Breakfast Topic: What mounts should we get for Brewfest?
It's official. No Kodos for Alliance and no Rams for Horde this year at Brewfest. The decision has been made and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it for this year. But what should Blizzard have done? Kodos really aren't too exciting, in my opinion. They feel slow. I ditched mine for PvP mounts as soon as I possibly could. Rams aren't really very interesting either, but they are at least a novelty Horde-side.Should the mounts be faction neutral, brewfest only mounts, like a steampunk car or a wooden horse made of beer barrels? Or should this be an opportunity for the factions to see how the other half lives -- at least on mounts?What mount would you like to see for next year's Brewfest?
PTR Brewfest includes summoned barmaid pets, rams and kodos segregated by faction
You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side. That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.
Testing Age of Conan: Gamespot's hardware roundup + performance guide
You got bills to pay, no computer upgrades in a year, heck maybe it's been two or three, and here comes along Age of Conan with eye-dazzling effects that you must play. It also comes with launch bugs that don't ease the stress on your computer or your nerves for that matter. Crash after crash will leave you infuriated, the problem could be drivers, maybe the PSU can't handle the load, or it's poor optimization code -- whatever it is let the debugging process begin. PC Gaming really does need some better standards, especially MMOs, but let's get back the basic computer hardware needed to run Age of Conan. What hardware will make it run like a champ, and what hardware will even run the game at all in case Grandma wants to chop some heads off in Hyboria on the most sluggish computer. Everything you need to know is available in this in-depth, fantastic hardware performance guide by Gamespot.
The Brewfest Kodo and what it may mean for WotLK's release date
Tipster Graffias pointed out an exciting find in the latest leaked Alpha files for WoTLK: An Icon for a Brewfest Kodo. You may recall that last year's Brewfest included a Ram mount that was purchasable with tickets by both sides, allowing the Horde very easy access to an Alliance mount with a few days of grinding for Brewfest Prize Tickets. Many Alliance weren't happy with this, annoyed that the Horde got such easy access to an Alliance mount without having to kill Baron Rivendare or a Troll a couple hundred times. Bornakk decided that the best way to answer this criticism would be by promising the Alliance that the Horde would be getting access to yet another previously alliance-only mount skin in the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Of course, Kisirani, being as awesome as she is, later said that we should have patience and things would work out in the end. Listening to the words of the world designer seem to have paid off, as it looks like the Dwarves are going to turn the tables on the Goblins this year and steal some Kodos from them. I can finally fulfill my dream of owning my very own Kodo. My Night Elf Druid is from Kalimdor after all, and you would think there would be some Night Elves who decided to domesticate Kodos as beasts of burden too. But really, as much as I am looking forward to grabbing myself a Kodo (and seeing a tiny Gnome riding around on a huge beast of burden), what's really exciting is this thought: If the Brewfest is in late September to early October, does that mean Blizzard is planning to give us WoTLK by September, Brewfest Kodo and all?
Next-generation ATI Radeon cards to pack GDDR5 memory
A full six months after Samsung took the wraps off of GDDR5 memory, along comes word from AMD that the next-generation ATI Radeon graphics cards will boast said technology. Apparently AMD will be tapping Qimonda for its supply of GDDR5 modules, which should boost gaming performance as well as benefit stream processing, "where GPUs are applied to address complex, massively parallel calculations." As Hot Hardware points out, the release comes just weeks away from the rumored debut of the Radeon 4000 series, so if our deductive reasoning is sound, we'd surmise that the looming Radeon 4800 will indeed feature GDDR5.[Via Hot Hardware]
Corsair Dominator memory sets new DDR3 speed record
In the world of high-end gaming rigs, it isn't size of your megahertz that equates to higher performance, but the multiplier on your bus -- if you catch our drift. Regardless, for most gamers bigger numbers will always be better, and when it comes to fast memory Corsair now holds the record with a 1GB stick of Dominator DDR3 SDRAM. Overclocking in at 2462MHz (supposedly the highest recorded frequency to date), it survived the brutal testing thanks in part to an integrated four-layer extruded aluminum sink, which helps shuttle heat away from your bits and into your case. Naturally, these numbers come at a premium: over $200 per gig. But if you absolutely must have the fastest, this is it -- for the moment.
Hynix ships fastest one-gigabit LPDDR2 chip for mobile devices
Though not quite as impressive as the idea of toppling Intel and AMD within the next ten years, Hynix Semiconductor still has a decent reason to brag today. The South Korean chip producer has announced that it has just started mailing out the "fastest data transferring advanced dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip for mobile devices." Said chip is the one-gigabit LPDDR2 (low-power double-data-rate 2), which was crafted using 66-nanometer technology and features an 800-megabits per second operating speed at 1.2-volts. No word on exactly what devices will see the super-speedy chip packed within, but a company spokesperson did note that it plans on ramping up production during Q4 to meet "growing demand for flat-panel television sets and high-end handheld devices."[Via Physorg]
Bootable flash key makes disk encryption attacks super-simple
Ruh roh, Shaggy -- you remember that disk encryption attack that involved cooling off your target's RAM and yanking it to get a bitdump before the contents faded? Well, it looks like things just got a lot simpler for would-be attackers -- check out this USB flash key designed by security researcher Robert Wesley McGrew, which can boot your machine and dump the RAM to itself without altering its contents. That means you no longer need to actually pull the DIMMs or carry around an air duster; all an attacker needs is enough time to reboot your machine and copy the contents of your RAM. Of course, that takes time -- McGrew says things are running quite slowly right now, but he suspects his test machine is dropping down to USB 1.0 speeds. That's still not too reassuring -- looks like we'll be spending even more time with our machines from now on.[Via Hack a Day]
Mac OS X password recoverable from RAM?
In a recent post over at Ars Technica, they say that Mac OS X users could have their login passwords recovered through physically accessing the RAM. This comes after FileVault was proven to be cracked. The article notes that Mac OS X and certain applications store the user's password in memory, leaving it there after you've logged in. While locally-running apps cannot readily retrieve the password, someone could get access to the contents of RAM after the computer has been rebooted or shut down. This could be accomplished by physical means and might require the hacker to remove the RAM cover on your Mac and chill the RAM, as suggested by Edward Felten's research team at Princeton. This freezing allows the information to stay on the RAM for longer than the normal 2.5 to 35 seconds -- allowing someone to place it in another computer and read the contents.In a separate approach to the password-in-RAM vulnerability, CNET witnessed an EFF demo of an attack using a custom NetBoot "EFI memory scraper" to record the RAM contents on reboot and save the data as a file on another machine over the network -- the attackers were able to clearly find the login password in the file. Again, this attack requires physical access to the machine (in order to force the NetBoot via holding down the N key on restart) within a minute or two of shutdown. However, an attacker could conceivably target a machine that was locked or sleeping (with RAM contents 'live'), power it off and back on, and use the NetBoot attack immediately.While Apple has been made aware of the attack (notified on February 5), no fixes for these issues were reported in the 2/11 security update. According to CNET, an Apple spokesperson said they were aware of the issues and were "working to fix it in an upcoming software update." Until this update comes out, you may want to set a firmware password for your Mac, or wait longer to leave your unattended Mac after a shut down. Alternatively, we have lovely TUAW-branded tin foil hats available for purchase. [via Ars Technica]
MetaRAM aims to bump RAM capacity by 4x overnight
We're not sure what whacky voodoo snakeoil these MetaRAM people are peddling, but the company's got some high profile behind it (like Intel, for one), is being led by former AMD CTO Fred Weber, has appears to have some potentially revolutionary RAM quadrupling technology. Claiming to have leapfrogged current RAM technology by 2-4 years, MetaRAM uses a specialized "MetaSDRAM" chipset that effectively bonds and addresses four cheap 1Gb DRAM chips as one, tricking any machine's memory controller into using it as a 4x capacity DIMM. Since a 1Gb chip is apparently far less expensive than a 2Gb chip, MetaRAM devices can multiply capacity at prices far lower than their competition; the company claims it'll be shipping in machines in the first quarter of this year, and Hynix has already announced their own 2-rank 8GB DDR2 RDIMMs for the second half.
iFreeMem 2.0: when you just don't feel like rebooting
As good as OS X memory management may be, if you run your system for long periods of time without shutting down you'll likely see an increasing number of spinning beach balls as your uptime counter ticks away. When applications quit – especially big, memory-hungry applications – they often leave your RAM fragmented and unavailable to subsequently launched apps. The solution is generally a reboot, but if you're looking for something a little friendlier and less time-consuming, iFreeMem is a superb solution. The utility was just updated to version 2.0 with full Leopard support. I'm a long-time user of iFreeMem. On my MacBook Pro with 3 GB of RAM, it can generally clear up about 800 MB (sometimes more) after I quit a long session in apps like Photoshop and Motion. And it's rescued me on numerous occasions where I've found myself with three or four MB free and everything starts slowing to a crawl. I just loaded version 2 and it's faster and more efficient than ever. Good stuff. The author has signed up with Trial-Pay, which I can't say improves the image of the app or increases my respect for it, but it does provide one option to get a $19 application for free. In light of the overall positive nature of this post, I won't delve into my opinions on Trial-Pay and its ilk. Suffice to say that I'm a happy customer of iFreeMem who paid full price and have never regretted it. Oh, and the 2.0 upgrade is free for users of previous versions, you just have to re-enter your registration code. You saved it, right? Get a feel for whether or not iFreeMem would save some reboots for you with a 15-day, fully functioning trial.
WoW on an Eee PC, in ten (not so) simple steps
I can't say I quite understand the ultraportable thing (why not just use a real computer?), but I have to admit that the Eee PC from Asus is a slick little device. Not as slick as the Macbook Air, but not nearly as pricey, so still pretty slick. And now it's even slicker- Dan from UltraMobileGeek has figured out how to install World of Warcraft on an Eee 701.You can see in the video above that it's just barely playable-- you couldn't raid Black Temple (or even Karazhan, I'm sure), but for logging in and grinding or checking mail, it would probably work just fine. The process, unfortunately, isn't exactly simple-- you have to run modified drivers, overclock the PC, and run experimental code (plus, memory might be a problem, as you need an 8gb SDHC card and probably more RAM than you've got now)-- but if you're interested in pushing your Eee to the limit, it might be for you. One suggestion or Dan (and anyone else messing around with this): would the Wine version of WoW let you skip installing XP, since the Eee is Linux-based? Just wondering.At any rate, sounds like a fun Saturday afternoon project if you've got an Eee to play around with and want your WoW ultraportable.
Multicore memory in the works?
Multicore processors have become a major part of the consumer mainstream in the past couple years, but if a cryptographic researcher named Joseph Ashwood has his way, the next few years will see the rise of multicore memory. Ashwood's design, which he's had positively reviewed by a team at Carnegie Mellon, allows memory to actually become faster as it gets bigger, due to the way data is organized across individual memory cells. Ashwood says the ratio is almost 1:1 -- doubling size should result in a doubling of speed -- but it's all theory for now, as he's only gotten as far as the software simulation stage. Once a manufacturer commits to the tech, however, Ashwood says chips could be coming off fabs in as little as three months, but it'll be interesting to see who signs up first -- with so many next-gen RAM techs all jostling for position, Ashwood is going to need quite a sales pitch to stand out.[Photo courtesy of MrBill]
Original PSP doesn't have enough RAM for Skype
As reported earlier, Skype will be available exclusively on PSP-2000 systems only. The revised handheld features additional RAM, previously used for UMD caching. According to Nick Sharples from SCEE, the additional memory onboard the new PSP is crucial for running the VoIP application. He told Pocket Gamer: "We had studied the possibility of supporting Skype with PSP-1000 but had to give it up because of the smaller size of main memory on PSP-1000 series."Skype is coming before month's end. For more images of the application, visit GPara. For those with homebrew-capable PSP-1000 systems, new homebrew VoIP applications may be worthwhile to you.
Korean researcher hopes to build ferroelectric RAM
If you've fantasized about how wonderful your life could be if the merits of DRAM, SRAM and Flash memory could all be mixed harmoniously into one "dream semiconductor," listen up. You may not be up to speed on all the advancements in ferroelectric materials, but we're pretty sure even the technological newbie could appreciate a new discovery by Korean researcher Dr. Shin Young-han. Reportedly, this fellow has "succeeded in figuring out the operational mechanism of ferroelectrics," which could potentially lead to FeRAM -- a technology that could "store data ten times faster than Flash memory and keep it for longer than ten years." Kudos to you, Dr. Shin, now let's get this stuff on the production line, shall we?[Image courtesy of Ferra]
Sony and Qimonda form joint venture to design DRAM chips
Barely a fortnight after Sony disclaimed reports that it was pondering the sale of its PS3 chip production facilities, the firm has decided to partner up with Qimonda in a 50-50 venture "to design DRAM chips for consumer and graphics applications." The new entity will be dubbed Qreatic Design, will be based in Tokyo and is scheduled to start operating by the end of 2007. Of note, financial terms of the deal weren't released, but Qimonda's chief executive did state that the agreement would "support its future product design and solutions development and would further pave the way for product diversification in non-PC applications." [Warning: read link requires subscription]
Ferritin to be used in uber-thin computer memory?
Earlier this year, we heard that NASA gurus were working up a biological nanobattery that utilized ferritin, and now another report is suggesting that the substance could even be used in a "biotech-based process for creating ultrathin computer memory." Reportedly, the researchers have found that by using ferritin, metal memory cells could be arranged on substrates sans heat, which consequently allows for thinner substrate materials to be used. The method could eventually lead to "computers being built on thin films that could then be integrated into eyeglass lenses or into clothing," which could add a whole new dimension to wearable electronics.[Via PinkTentacle]
A Carrot-on-a-Stick for your PC
Lev over on WoW Ladies is bummed because her computer plays WoW so slowly. Well, we here at WoW Insider are nothing if not helpful, so here's some help! While WoW is definitely a pretty forgiving PC game (unlike, say, Bioshock or the upcoming Crysis, which will make slightly older computers drop into a fetal position while sobbing), there are still a few simple things, some free, some not, that you can do to speed up your computer a bit. (Note: Most of these tips are for Windows only, although with a little Google searching, some of them can be adapted for Macs as well). Cleanliness is next to ownage: Nobody likes a mess, and your computer doesn't either. If your hard drive is extremely full (as in less than a few hundred megabytes free space), big programs like WoW won't have the space they need to stretch out. So make some space by uninstalling programs you don't use any more, and then run a defrag program to reorganize and refresh your hard drive. Slam that spam: Another thing that makes your computer run slow is viruses and spam programs that run in the background and are a pain to get rid of. If you haven't done so in a while, have your virus checker do a complete system check and delete any nasties that show up, and then download both AdAware and Spybot S&D, and run a full check using both of those. It may take up to an hour or so, but it'll be worth it. Needs more RAM! One of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to make your computer run faster is to put more RAM (Random Access Memory) in it. It'll take a little bit of research on your part (to find out what type of RAM your computer's Motherboard uses), but RAM is cheaper all the time, and installation is a snap-- literally. Videocardorama: But while RAM will lower your loading times, the only way to speed up 3D performance in WoW is to get a better videocard. The good news is that they're just as easy to install, but the bad news is that a nice videocard will be fairly expensive, depending on what you're upgrading from-- if you're playing on an old integrated video card that Dell installed, you could get a nice upgrade for as cheap as $100. One thing I do is keep an eye on sites like Techbargains-- when a good deal on a newer card rolls past, nab it up. Keep your system a lean, mean, clean machine, and upgrade it with the newest, fastest hardware when you can, and you'll be seeing Azeroth at 30 FPS in no time.
OCZ unveils "world's first" Intel Extreme Memory Modules
Get ready, OCZ is comin' atcha with some newfangled RAM technology that's likely to scare off the very market it's hoping to attract, but we're here to break things down for digestion. Put (sort of) simply, the firm's DDR3 PC3-12800 Intel XMP Ready Titanium Edition RAM will become the first memory to feature Intel Extreme Memory Profiles, which work exclusively with Intel's X38 chipset to enable the average joe (or jane) to overclock their RAM without even knowing what latency means. The sticks will come configured to run 8-8-8 latencies, but a secondary profile featuring a 7-6-6 latency can be easily activated if ran on an X38 chipset to squeeze a bit more performance out of the setup. There, that wasn't too hard, now was it?[Via TrustedReviews]
