Ankur Gupta Online

It was a pleasant surprise this morning when I connected to my net and found that I was getting blazing speeds for a change…256kbps had become more of a dialup speed after I had been using it for over 20 months.

I suddenly jumped up with joy and opened the internet speedometer from MTNL’s site and voila!…1.8mbps speed… Read the rest of this entry »

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Microsoft is in the giving mood for the holidays

In what could be seen as a big plus to all Xbox 360 users out there (save for those that have units that are more than a year old), Microsoft has extended the warranty of all Xbox 360 consoles from 90 days to a full year in the United States and Canada. This latest move comes exactly three months after Microsoft decided to offer free repairs to Xbox 360 manufactured before 01/01/2006.

As if the case with most all electronic purchases, the one-year warranty period starts from the original date of purchase. Customers that have already paid out-of-pocket for Xbox 360 repairs after the original 90-day warranty period, but before the new one-year warranty period will receive automatic credits for repair costs. Customers will not need to contact Microsoft at all for the reimbursement checks which will be mailed out within 10 weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sapphire’s Dual-Radeon X1950, dubbed “The Godfather,” running in action

If waiting for R600 has you down, Sapphire has an upcoming alternative. Early this morning the company internally demonstrated its dual-GPU Radeon X1950 Pro board, dubbed The Godfather. The dual-slot GPU uses two 6-pin power connectors but still fits within the standard 9″ riser-board dimensions.Sapphire representatives tell us the performance of the single card is comparable to two Radeon X1950s in Crossfire mode. The card runs on a single x16 PCIe connector. Both dual-link DVI connectors can be utilized at the same time.Previous Radeon X1950 Pro cards have a GPU core clock of around 575MHz with a memory clock of 700MHz. The clock frequencies for The Godfather were not revealed.Also visible on the adaptor are the two interfaces needed for AMD Crossfire. We have confirmed that the upcoming adaptor does not need a Crossfire motherboard as well in single-card implementations. However, memos from the company reveal that the card can be put into Crossfire mode with another identical card on a Crossfire motherboard — the upcoming implementation would be the first capable of Quad-Crossfire.

Like other X-series Radeon cards, The Godfather is also capable of physics processing via Havok or any other middleware capable of interfacing with the Radeon FPU for physics calculations.

Expect to see demonstrations and benchmarks of the card during the upcoming CES 2007. Sapphire claims the card will be available in Q1′07, well ahead of the R600 launch. Sapphire recently announced its AGP version of the Radeon X1950 Pro, but the company would not respond if The Godfather would be available in AGP versions.

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The founders of Skype wish to bring quality TV programs to consumers who have broadband Internet

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, creators of the popular Internet calling program Skype, are reportedly developing a broadband television service. Using part of the funds received from selling Skype to Ebay, the two hope to utilize peer-to-peer technology to help make a service for “tens of millions of users.” The project, dubbed the Venice Project, will allow users to view high-quality, full-screen videos through an ad-supported network.On his blog, Friis said “We are trying to bring together the best of TV with the best of the Internet.” Because the TV market is so large, the Venice Project appears to be a good move by the two entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this entry »

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AMD executives reveal more cache, more quad-core en route for AMD

Over the last few months much as been revealed about AMD’s next-generation quad-core architecture. This architecture, previously dubbed K8L by Henri Richard, is scheduled to be the first monolithic quad-core design.

Since unveiling the details of the chip, AMD has started to use the codename Barcelona to describe the server variant. The Barcelona chipset is a member of the Cities family — all server-based AMD codenames for 2007 and 2008 are named after Cities. Desktop codenames are all named after Stars even though architecturally, many Stars and Cities CPUs are identical.

AMD has revealed to DailyTech that Barcelona, which AMD just recently demonstrated, will be “enhanced” with the Shanghai core in early 2008. AMD’s Senior Vice President, Marty Seyer, would not elaborate on what the enhancements are, claiming that the new core would simply “bring further performance enhancements, as well as cache efficiency.” Read the rest of this entry »

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