There’s been a lot of buzz about the code-name Fermi series of cards NVIDIA has been cooking up. They’re the company’s first DirectX 11-compatible cards, and rival AMD has had the DX11 58xx series on the market for months now, giving them a definite head start. The hope (among NVIDIA fans) was that the Fermi/GF100 cards would blow AMD’s out of the water despite the delays. That doesn’t seem to be the case: although the new GTX 480 flagship card is competitive with AMD’s best, it doesn’t blow it away by any means, and the feature set ends up being the deciding factor.

Here are some reviews by our favorite hardware sites:

• Hot Hardware
• PC Perspective
• HardOCP
• Neoseeker
• Guru3D
• ExtremeTech

And if you’re crazy, check out Maingear’s triple-SLI setup. Give me a break!

They don’t all agree — HardOCP found nothing to like about the mid-range GTX 470, while PC Perspective thought it a great bargain — so if you’re in the market, it might be worthwhile to wait a month and see what secondary vendors are going to offer in terms of custom clocking, better heat management, and so on. Drivers will also be improved once the cards are out there and bug reports and performance data start streaming in.

The first reviews of major hardware releases like this are always hotly anticipated in case, as was the case with ATI’s 48xx series, they totally serve the competition. That didn’t happen in this case, but depending on your needs and existing setup, the new NVIDIA cards could easily be the hardware for you.

Want a one stop access point for all those extended control panel settings in Windows 7? Well, it’s easy: just use CrunchMode*.

“CrunchMode” is really easy to set up: just create a new folder and then rename it to CrunchMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and then double click it and you’re rocking. This trick won’t work on 64-bit Vista, but it works like a charm on all the different versions of Win7.

[via HardOCP]

*To be fair, “CrunchMode” is just what we call it. The code is the important part, so you can call it whatever you like, like “IDDQD” for instance.

I’m afraid it’s time for me to upgrade my media center. My old Xbox just isn’t cutting it any more, between the composite input and the lack of processing power, it looks like it may be time to put the old reliable out to pasture and upgrade to something new. Is the Patriot Box Office Media Player the solution? Well HardOCP seems to think so, and I think it just might be.

The Box Office supports pretty much everything, costs $99 after rebate and works at up to 1080p. The only thing that HardOCP didn’t like about it (and the thing that I don’t care for) is the interface. I’d love to see XBMC on this thing since the screenshots of the stock interface looks pretty bland.

Of all the people on Earth, I’m probably at least in the top 100 of “most mice handled.” Not a particularly prestigious list to be on, but I’ll take what I can get. And I’m probably one of the biggest proponents of splurging on a good mouse. Mamba, G500, Mighty Mouse (if it’s any good)… just go for it, you use this thing for hours in a row and it might as well be the perfect fit. But like all things, there are exceptions. For instance, when a mouse costs over a grand.

Now, that’s not to say the ID Mouse from Intelligent design doesn’t look good (it does) or that it won’t be comfortable (it might be) — and honestly, you don’t need anybody to tell you that $1200 is too much to spend on a mouse. The most expensive mouse worth buying is the Mamba, and even then I advise trying to get a rebate or something.

But of course, this mouse isn’t meant to be a good mouse. It’s meant to be a piece of art. In that case — well, still not worth $1200. Besides, it’ll get all smudgy.

Lastly… you called your design house Intelligent Design? Come on now.

[via The Design Blog and HardOCP]

Update: Reviews from Anandtech, HardOCP, HotHardware, MaximumPC, and PC Perspective are all live. Nvidia’s dual-chip GeForce GTX 295 card outperforms the Radeon HD 5870 on most tests by a noticeable margin, so AMD can’t claim that the Radeon HD 5870 is the fastest single-card solution. The good news is that new Radeon does outperform Nvidia’s best single-chip card, the GeForce GTX 285. The dual-chip GTX 295 is also a $499 card with no DirectX 11 support. The Radeon HD 5870 goes for a more reasonable $379.

AMD introduced its ATI Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850 desktop graphics cards Tuesday evening, beating rival Nvidia to the marketplace with the first DirectX 11-capable products. As DirectX 11 is the Windows 7 version of Microsoft’s code for linking up hardware with, among other things, 3D game software, winning the race to launch is a significant boon to AMD’s efforts to market its new cards. It also ensures that even if few games will actually use DirectX 11 at launch, Microsoft can claim that the graphics hardware is ready to support one of the major new features of its new OS.

Expect a whole family of Radeon HD 5000 series cards to come to market over the next few months, but for now we get two cards, the $399 Radeon HD 5870 and the $250 Radeon HD 5850. AMD says it plans to ship 500,000 chips in the fourth quarter, but it also anticipates high demand will strain retail supplies during the first few weeks after launch. On the system builder side, AMD said that one large OEM has claimed the majority of the first round of Radeon 5800s, so the cards will also be scarce from other system builders, at least early on.

AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics card.

(Credit: AMD)

Dropping its chip manufacturing process from 55 nanometers to 40 nanometers in the Radeon HD 5800 series has let AMD ramp up the speeds and feeds of its new chips impressively over those of the Radeon HD 4800 series. The transistor count in particular has jumped from 956 million on the old design to 2.15 billion in the new model. AMD also claims an uptick from 1.2 teraflops of processing power to between 2.09 and 2.72 in the each of the new cards.

…

Those of you who follow the Robocalypse tag know that I find the rise of machine-based warfare and biomimetic freakery… troubling. Well, it just got a lot more so. Not content to have robots simply feed on widely available sunlight, or use an versatile diesel engine or something, some robo-pioneers have decided that this new robot should refuel on biomass.

Yes, it can use plants and compost and stuff like that, but let’s be honest. You’re deploying these on a battlefield. These sons of bitches are going to be eating bodies all day long. And you think it’ll stop there?

In the presentation on the EATR (I know) robot’s construction and AI, it is shown that the robot creates plans for the next 50ms to the next 24 hours. Sure, if it’s in a foxhole with you, its one-hour plan is to sit tight and wait for backup. But if shutdown is imminent, it may start implementing Code Dahmer in its long-term strategy.

Seriously, it’s not enough to create simple sniper-bots, you have to make some that actively crave flesh?

[via HardOCP and Fox News]