General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

iPhone 4 Siri Hack Proves Apple is Withholding Features to Sell Hardware

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 05:36 PM PDT

SiriNormally we pass on Mac or iPhone specific news, but just in case it ever comes up in a debate, 9 to 5 Mac has proven that without a doubt, Apple is indeed shafting iPhone 4 customers. It seems an enterprising young hacker by the name of Steven Smith has not only ported the Siri AI interface to the iPhone 4, but the two way communication with Apple servers is now working perfectly. 

A short video posted by Smith shows not only how well Siri works on an iPhone 4, but that performance is almost completely identical to the iPhone 4s sitting beside it. You could make the case that Siri is exclusive to the iPhone 4s as a result of it being a "beta" product, but current iPhone 4 owners might still be tempted to label this as somewhat disingenuous. 

Some have suggested that Siri is exclusive to the iPhone 4s to help improve the value perception of potential customer's, but we'll let you be the judge of that.

Click here to checkout the proof for yourself.

HP Claims That Any Plans to Kill WebOS are an “Unfounded Rumor”

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 05:02 PM PDT

CrazyWe do our best to report the truth here at Maximum PC, but sometimes companies just don't make it easy. First Microsoft tells us the Zune is dead, then alive, then dead. Then HP tells us HP us WebOS is dead, then alive, but just between us, we still think its dead. We fully admit that on Friday we wrote a piece informing everyone that WebOS development at HP was not long for this world, along with dozens of other mainstream news outlets, however HP's Vice President Todd Bradley has gone on the record to label this an "unfounded rumor".

According to Bradley, WebOS is not only alive and well, but they are looking for new ways to "utilize" the platform going forward. If HP has no plans to release phones or tablets, we have to question what if any use they will find for webOS in the future, but I guess we're going to find out. 

Hit the jump to see the interview for yourself, and fast forward to about 4:40 for the important bits.

AMD’s Overclocking Record Smashed, Still Held By the FX-8150

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 03:46 PM PDT

CPU CoolingBack in mid-September AMD turned its elite team of overclockers loose on one of its upcoming Bulldozer chips, the FX-8150, and ended up earning a Guinness World Record in the process. 8429.38 MHz was a pretty impressive feat, but as with anything in technology, it was short lived. The overclocking crown has officially been passed to Andre Yang, though luckily for AMD, he was still using the FX-8150.

According to the CPU-Z's Validation page Yang managed to crank AMD's flagship Bulldozer part up to 8461.51 MHz, using a base clock of 272.95 Mhz, and a 31x multiplier. Maintaining this clock speed wasn't easy however, and along with a heavy dose of nitrogen, Yang pumped in a punishing 1.992V to keep everything stable. I'm guessing at 2V the chip would launch into orbit.

The memory used was a single 2 GB Corsair-branded module, cranked up to 909 MHz (1818.16 Mhz DDR), with timings of 9-9-9-24T. Yang also following AMD's lead by disabling all but 2 of the FX-8150's cores to cut down on heat and allow for better stability. 

Intel fan's will no doubt chime in to remind everyone that clock speeds don't matter, but they sure are impressive!

CPU

AMD Readying Brazos 2.0 for Q1 2012

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 03:50 AM PDT

A new report at Computerbase.de (translation) suggests that a successor to the successful Brazos platform is on its way from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). They say appearances can be deceptive, but so can be names. Even though it's codenamed Brazos 2.0, there is nothing to suggest that it will be a generational leap in terms of performance. On the contrary, everything in the report points to a more subtle performance boost.

AMD is said to be readying two Brazos 2.0 chips, the E1-1200 and E2-1200, for launch in the first quarter of 2012. Both chips will contain slightly improved CPU and GPU parts as compared to the chips they will replace.

The E2-1800 will be replacing the E-450. When compared with the outgoing chip, the E2-1800 will pack slightly higher-clocked Bobcat cores (1.7GHz vs 1.6GHz). Likewise, the GPU in the new chip too will be clocked marginally higher than the E-450 (680/523 MHz vs 600/508 MHz). However, the slightly overclocked integrated Radeon core inside the E2-1800 will go by a new name, HD 7430.

The E1-1200 will be replacing the E-300. The former will have its CPU clocked at 1.4GHz and the GPU at 500MHz. Again this is a minuscule improvement over the outgoing part. The E-300 has its CPU clocked at 1.3GHz and the GPU at 488MHz.

Brazos 2.0 will bring with it a new mobile chipset called A68M, which will feature a couple of USB 2.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports and two SATA 6Gbps ports. The total number of ports are considerably less than the A50M. This is intended to cut down on power consumption.

ITG xpPhone Successor to Run Windows 8

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 03:37 AM PDT

When even the purpose of our own existence continues to be a mystery, Taiwan-based ITG has every right to sell a desktop OS-running phone that apparently has no clearly defined purpose. By the same token, it also has the right to come up with a successor to that pointless phone. And that's exactly what ITG plans to do.

The Taiwan-based company has announced a Windows 8-running successor to its hugely disappointing XP-running xpPhone. Where specs are concerned, the xpPhone 2 is a throwback to the days when netbooks were still a rage. It features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 2GB RAM and up to 112GB of solid-state storage. It sports a 4.3-inch display, which is slightly smaller compared to the original's 4.8-inch screen.

ITG expects to begin shipping the phone as early as January. But early adopters will have to make do with Windows 7 as Windows 8 won't be out until much later in 2012.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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