Blake Niemyjski

How-to: Run Windows Live software on 64bit Windows

Blake Niemyjski : 64bit — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:57:00 GMT

I'm guessing that many of you have attempted to download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger or other Windows Live Software but have been prompted with the following error: " Sorry, Windows Live programs cannot be installed on Windows Server, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, or Windows operating systems earlier than Windows XP Service Pack 2." You're not alone, as I have received the same error when trying to install the latest version on Windows Server 2008 64bit. The folks at...(read more)

Microsoft Releases new compatibility, reliability and stability patch for Windows Vista X64

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:49:00 GMT

Microsoft released an incremental update to Windows Vista on 10/23/2007, I have included the description of this patch below.

"This update improves the compatibility, reliability, and stability of Windows Vista. This update includes the following improvements:
It extends the battery life for mobile devices.
It improves the stability of portable computers and of desktop computers that use an uninterrupted power supply (UPS).
It improves the reliability of Windows Vista when you open the menu of a startup application.
It improves the stability of wireless network services.
It shortens the startup time of Windows Vista by using a better timing structure.
It shortens the recovery time after Windows Vista experiences a period of inactivity.
It shortens the recovery time when you try to exit the Photos screen saver.
It improves the stability of Windows PowerShell.

This update also resolves the following issues in Windows Vista:
A compatibility issue that affects some third-party antivirus software applications.
A reliability issue that occurs when a Windows Vista-based computer uses certain network driver configurations" ( New version of the compatibility, reliability, and stability update for Windows Vista ).

Download ( KB941649 )

ESET Smart Security 3.0.414 RC1

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:41:00 GMT

Today I installed ESET Smart Security 3.0.414 RC1 and I was impressed. It is very quick, and the updated UI is very nicely done.

"ESET Smart Security is a fully integrated security solution and includes antivirus, anti-spyware, a personal firewall and antispam. While some competitive solutions purport to have similar functionality, ESET has developed a unique approach that provides true and full integration of point security solutions. The key advantage of this approach is that individual protection modules are able to communicate together seamlessly, to create unparalleled synergy to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of protection. Moreover, the integrated architecture guarantees optimal utilization of system resources, so ESET Smart Security continues ESET's well know reputation for providing rock solid security in a small footprint that will not slow down an individual's computer."

Download ( ESET Smart Security 3.0.414 RC1 X64 )

Octal core Opertons coming in 2009

Blake Niemyjski — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:45:00 GMT

Lately AMD and Intel have been cutting there prices left and right. I always love when this happen because that means someones being competitive. Which is surprising due to Intel's tactics lately. However, DailyTech is reporting that we can expect the third-generation of AMD Opteron in 2009. I'm really happy for this news, because it reminds me that ddr3 is here today, and technological innovations are taking place.

"AMD previewed its third-generation Opteron platform during the company's Technology Analyst. The third-generation AMD Opteron platform is set for a 2009 debut with a new Sandtiger-core processor. AMD's current Socket 1207 platform is the Opteron's second-generation platform and designed to accommodate Opteron revision F, Barcelona and the 45nm die-shrink Shanghai processors.
Sandtiger ups the core ante with eight-cores. AMD will manufacture the octal-core Sandtiger on a 45nm fabrication process. Sandtiger introduces HyperTransport 3.0, or HT3, to AMD's server and workstation platforms. The processor will have four HyperTransport links with a new Direct Connect 2 infrastructure.
Sandtiger will also support DDR3 memory. The third-generation AMD Opteron platform will be the first platform to support G3 Memory Extender, or G3MX, technology for larger memory capacities. The platform also supports PCI Express 2.0.
New server and workstation chipsets will accommodate the new platform. AMD makes no mention on socket compatibility of the third-generation Opteron platform, but AMD's track record shows socket changes with a new platform.
Before Sandtiger, AMD has Shanghai up its sleeves. Shanghai will be the 45nm shrink of Barcelona. AMD has Shanghai on the road map for a 2008 launch to replace Barcelona. Shanghai will drop into existing second-generation AMD Opteron platforms.
Shanghai features minor improvements such as a 6MB L3 cache and IPC improvements. The core will continue to have 512KB of L2 cache per core with three HT1 links. Registered DDR2 memory continues to be the memory of choice for Shanghai.
Expect AMD to unveil its third-generation AMD Opteron platform with G3MX technology and Sandtiger core in 2009 and Shanghai around the second half of 2008" ( DailyTech ).

AMD's Phenom: Four Cores on One Die

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:37:00 GMT

I really hope the Phenom processor is going to kick Intel's butt! The only current thing on my mind is what Intel will do next.

"After about ten months of watching somebody else marching ahead as the all-around leader in both price and performance, AMD this morning stopped making purely defensive plays, and at last launched its counter-offensive. It will be introducing a new CPU architecture for the second half of this year, aimed at performance-hungry customers perhaps willing to pay a premium.
With the Phenom processor series, which will include a single-die quad-core and a double-quad-core package, AMD will soon be managing three consumer desktop CPU lines, as Athlon moves into the midrange, mainstream space, and Phenom assumes the company's high-performance mantle from Athlon FX.
It is perhaps the last trump card in AMD's hand, and the company may have no choice but to play it now: Since its earliest entry into the multicore space, AMD has used an architecture which moved the memory controller onto the die itself, eliminating the need for a front-side bus architecture, simplifying the chipset, reducing power consumption, and expediting memory transfer through the HyperTransport bus.
Up to now, AMD has delivered so-called "quad core" by way of a dual-socket design for Athlon FX dual-cores. But with the new Phenom architecture in place, AMD can pull four cores into the same die, letting them share a memory controller and an L3 cache while delegating separate L2s and L1s for each core. It's AMD's on-die memory controller design which has been the company's hallmark for the last three years, and it will rely on that design yet again to pull it through.

But as Phenom comes into being, AMD will be a whole manufacturing process generation behind Intel, which came from behind last year in stunning fashion to wrest back not only the price/performance crown but huge chunks of both market share and consumer confidence.

As AMD is just now moving into the 65 nm generation beginning in the second half of this year, Intel is gearing up for 45 nm retooling in the same timeframe, and appears further along in the adoption of breakthrough HK+MG transistor technology - an advance which AMD partner IBM claimed to have discovered on exactly the same day, though which may not be ready for AMD until later next year.

So the challenge before AMD will be to win back the hearts of the enthusiasts, the performance buyers, and the system builders and OEMs, while at the same time keeping their minds from getting too curious about the massive missing performance margin that used to distinguish it from its chief competitor. As BetaNews learned from AMD in recent days, the Phenom campaign this time will be less about statistics and proof points, and more about feeling - about whether the product is marketed well enough for users to feel satisfied, even if it turns out the performance edge over Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad is negligible.

"You're going to see more consumer-like marketing come from us than you've traditionally seen in the past," stated Ian McNaughton, Phenom's senior product manager, in an interview with BetaNews. "You're going to hear us talking about our products in a different way than we traditionally have, and it's not going to be, we're sending a data sheet. It's going to be more terms like, 'Exquisitely powerful, intensely visual."'

Indeed, that's the new slogan for Phenom technology that AMD will begin "beta-testing," if you will, today. "When we look at our architecture as it stands today, with four cores, it starts to really shine," McNaughton continued. "The actual benefit of having our architecture versus our competitor's architecture starts to really become apparent."

This is the endgame AMD wants to see, at least for this round: It wants its new Phenom processor line to feel right, to give the appearance of smoothness and sure-footedness, in an everyday work setting or in a hard-driving gaming environment. Maybe it won't win every benchmark - at least not any more, not in the competitive market AMD helped catalyze. But AMD wants it to have that "certain something." And if it tries too hard to quantify it, to measure it, to pronounce it 2% or 12% better than Intel in some obscure contest, it could just lose it anyway.

"When you look at the R&D budgets of the three players in the industry - Intel, nVidia, and AMD - it's unrealistic for anyone to believe that any of the companies are going to be in a leadership position from an absolute performance perspective for a very long period of time," admitted Henri Richard, AMD's senior vice president for sales and marketing, in a webcast a few weeks ago.

"I think that the game has changed when AMD came out with AMD64 architecture, and launched Opteron. Until then, Intel had this almost undisputed monopolistic position. It was challenged in 2000 by Athlon, then they came back with Pentium, and then when we came with AMD64 and the Opteron processor, people thought, 'Well, this is just a repeat of the same game.' And I'm telling you, the game has changed a lot. It changed a lot because we merged with ATI, and so we now have a complete platform."

AMD needs to give its new performance customer the feeling of reliability from Phenom. To accomplish this, it's relying fairly heavily on Microsoft, whose software is probably more responsible for the "experience" factor than the CPU, and on ATI. For the first time, AMD is timing its Phenom launch to coincide with ATI's new Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards, and hoping performance customers will perceive them together as part of a collective platform...and that they won't mind the platform name "FASN8."

"We're bringing emotion to our products," AMD Phenom product manager Ian McNaughton told BetaNews. "When we were AMD traditionally, we've been a processor company. With the acquisition of ATI, now we're a platform company. We're an experience company. And that's something that we're wanting to get across with our processors: It's not just about doing subtraction, multiplication, and division quickly. It's about doing more with your PC. It's about the experience with your PC, and how a quad-core or a Phenom dual-core will help you with that experience."
If you've ever listened intently to a Microsoft presentation, you'll hear a lot about what "it's about" and what "it's not about." It's a very simple method for steering the viewer's mind toward the "takeaway points," and away from the unpleasant facts you don't want the viewer to recall.
Take, for instance, Intel's recent demonstration of the 80-core stack, as an example of the extrapolation of its current architecture. Isn't that a demonstration that Intel has a cohesive roadmap, and is well on its way to executing that plan?

"AMD is not about how many cores," answered McNaughton. "AMD, when you look at our future...the Fusion and Torrenza initiatives that we're doing, it's about heterogeneous cores. It's about having the right technology for the market. It's not about just throwing more cores [into the mix], because that doesn't do everything for everyone...You can throw more cylinders in a car. It doesn't necessarily make it better."

What about Intel's new "cadence," already moving to the 45 nm generation on the heels of just having successfully launched its 65 nm generation? Pay no attention to those nanometers behind the curtain, AMD tells us.

"No consumer buys nanometers," stated McNaughton flatly. "So whether we're at 90 nm or 45 nm or 32 nm, it doesn't make a difference. To the consumer, they're not buying nanometers. They're buying the performance and the experience of their whole platform.

"So what do nanometers do? Let's be frank. What do nanometers give you?" McNaughton went on, challenging us to explain the whole intrigue behind the need for things to get smaller. "It gives you a more efficient manufacturing process, which reduces power, increases yields, and reduces costs. As you move through the manufacturing steps...it's going to be cheaper for you to make those wafers, and you pass that on to your consumers and your OEMs. So it's good to get to 65 and 45 and what not, but now unnaturally you do things to get there, that's really what makes sense, right? Our customers are not banging down our door saying, 'You need to get to 32 nm tomorrow!' Because there's no benefit."

No benefit? What about the fact that smaller processors naturally consume less power - a fact AMD taunted Intel about all through the long summer of 2005? "Why don't you take that and look at current CPUs that are available in the market in the server space, where it really, really matters, and look at performance-per-watt leadership?" McNaughton challenged us. "And we have performance-per-watt leadership. That tells me that either our competitors have an incredibly inefficient architecture or manufacturing process, regardless of what nanometers, or we are very good at what we do."

Then we heard an argument we didn't expect: a contention that there's only so much of this shrinkage a company can do.

"There comes a point in time when there's diminishing returns," McNaughton told BetaNews. "I don't think we're there yet, and everyone's still keeping pace with Moore's Law...[but] I don't think you're going to see a big benefit to [Intel] to move to 45 [nm]."

He explained that Intel may perhaps need the continued die size reduction more than AMD, to compensate for Intel's other design inefficiencies, as well as in order to improve yields - implying they really needed to be improved. "We are focused on delivering the products to our customers that our customers are asking for, and we're committed to giving our customers the innovative products that we've traditionally always delivered."

The message we received from AMD this week was this: Do we really feel all that better about the performance improvements Intel claims to have delivered? Maybe we can see the difference in the benchmarks, but is it something we can truly appreciate? If not, perhaps there's something else that defines quality in the hearts of the performance buyer...if not yet their minds.

Whatever that something else is, AMD may need to get a handle on it quite fast. As SVP Henri Richard told reporters two weeks ago, thanks in part to Intel, the CPU market doesn't work the same way in 2007 and into 2008 as it did in 2005.

"I think what you're going to see is really a change of the game where leadership position in the absolute benchmark that a lot of the enthusiasts are looking at, may change as quickly as every six months," Richard confessed.

"And that's good, frankly. That's good for the industry, that's good for the end user, competition is a great thing. Sure, if we can have leadership for a long period of time, that's something that's a position you enjoy. But I really think that the dynamic of the market has changed, and without wanting to take too much credit for it, I still think we can thank AMD for having changed that dynamic. And I think the end user will benefit from that."

Source ( BetaNews )

NVIDIA Unveils GeForce 8xxx For the Next-Generation Notebooks!

Blake Niemyjski — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:48:00 GMT

I'm really happy to hear the announcement of DirectX 10 for laptops; hopefully this is integrated quickly into other mobile areas like tablets.

"Nvidia has announced a new family of Nvidia GeForce 8 series of graphics processors targeted at the newly evolved notebook PC market. These new GPUs (graphics processing units) help power notebook PCs with their multimedia output.
Initially available in GeForce 8600M and GeForce 8400M versions, the new GPUs' features include Nvidia's PureVideo HD video processing engine for playback of HD-DVD, Blu-ray and HD (high-definition) movies, and Nvidia PowerMizer technology which intelligently balances the user's need for longer battery life and performance, noted the company.
The new GeForce 8M series notebook GPUs are the first to support DirectX 10 and are available from PC makers such as HP, Toshiba, Acer, Samsung, and Asustek, added the company." Source (http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20070510PR207.html)

For more information about the GeForce 8 series of graphics cards, don't forget to visit Nvidia website for notebook graphic card specifications and release dates. (http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebooks.html)

AMD's K10 features listed

Blake Niemyjski — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:45:00 GMT

The AMD 10h processor family - also known as K10 - has 20 key features. We will put them all on paper for you. Some of them are known, but some of them are not. Let's list them.

First of all, the K10 has an integrated DDR2 memory controller with memory pre-fetcher and the K10 core has 64kb of L1 instruction cache + 64 KB data cache. It also has on chip L2 and L3 cache and this varies depending on the core. The Barcelona / Agena quad core K10 for example has 4x512 KB L2 and 2 MB of L3 cache. K10 supports 32 Byte instruction fetch, instruction pre code and branch prediction during cache line files, decoupled decode / execution code, 3-way AMD64 instruction decoding, sideband stack optimizer, dynamic scheduling and speculative execution.

The new core also features 3-way integer execution and address generation, 3-way 128 bit wide floating point executions, enhanced 3Dnow! Architecture, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 & SSE4A Single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instruction extensions.

Further the CPU can cope with advanced bit manipulation instructions, super forwarding, pre-fetch into L1 data cache, deep out of order integer & floating point execution, 8 additional XMM registers (SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4A) & 8 additional GPRs in 64 Bit mode.

Last but not the least is Enhanced Hyper Transport architecture. If this is too much for you don't worry, it is too much for most of us, but we like that the K10 supports SSE4A so it might have a fighting chance in encoding.

Source ( All K10 features listed )

Nvidia releases new Windows Vista 64-bit (Version: 158.18)

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 02:49:00 GMT

Nvidia released today a new version of their forceware drivers! These truly are the superb drivers that should have been released when vista was released. You should now be on par with your XP Professional x64 performance.

Adds support for GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, and GeForce 8500 GT, GeForce 8400 GS, and GeForce 8300 GS GPUs.

Increased performance in 3D applications.

PureVideo™ HD support.

Add support for forcing Vertical Sync in DirectX applications.

Updated NVIDIA Control Panel with improved user interface (Please see the Release Notes for more details).

Numerous game and application compatibility fixes

This driver supports the following 3D features:

Single GPU support

DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs

DirectX 10 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs

OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs

NVIDIA SLI support

DirectX 9 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs

OpenGL support for GeForce 8800 GPUs

DirectX 10 NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available in a future driver

If you would like to be notified of upcoming drivers for Windows Vista, please subscribe to the newsletter

Please read the release notes for more information on product support, feature limitations, and known compatibility issues

Download ( Nvidia ForceWare Version: 158.18 )

A glance at S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl's performance.

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 02:34:00 GMT

For those of you who don’t really know me, I play video games quite a lot, although recently it hasn’t been too much due to school. The main game you can catch me playing is Counter-Strike: Source, (I so can’t wait until valve makes Counter-Strike: Source 64bit!!!!!)

Today I installed “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl” on my Desktop. I’ve been reading reviews and watching trailers for some time now, thinking that this game would be amazing. However After installing it and getting it up to date. I find that playing the game is absolutely horrible experience.

My system specs.

CPU: 939 AMD 4400+ x2 Over clocked to 4800+ Specs
RAM: 1.5GB
VIDEO: 7800gs CO SUPER CLOCK (AGP)
Display: Sceptre 20.1in widescreen.
Drivers: Nvidia 101.41
OS: Windows Vista x64 RTM.

I can play any games on ultra high settings (1600x1050) and get decent fps. Normally I game in XP Pro x64 SP2; I also know I should be experiencing some fps drop In Vista.

“THQ Inc. today announced it is working with AMD to create an optimized version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for the AMD Athlon64 processor architecture.”S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is expected to leverage the strengths of AMD64 technology to provide an immersive gaming experience with a larger playable world, more detailed surroundings, better AI, and more people per map".”

THQ should be spending about a year optimizing this game. I normally game at High Settings on 1600x1050 resolution, and get around 100fps constant. This game is the only exception. So after installing I turn everything to the max; I’m getting decent fps until I walk outside. There my game lags horrendously and the system monitor on my g15 keyboard tells me the game is using no CPU and 100% ram constantly. This game should be using more CPU and less ram, resulting in much better performance.

After spending 5 minutes to get the resolution turned down to 1024x768, I venture off into the environment once again. At first the game lags, but then I get about 20fps consistently with the game pausing every now and then to (auto save / refresh game content). It feels like the days on the old p2 playing Half-Life 1 and having it load game content.

My personal opinion is that this game doesn’t look that good for how it performs. It performs so awful that I’m wondering if the highest end quad core processor and 2 8800’s can even break 100fps with this game. If I was THQ I would spend a month optimizing this game so that it runs better on above average hardware.

I’m going to be installing “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl” on XP SP2 and will let everyone know how it performs. I will also get a hold of my friend with the quad core setup with dual 8800’s and ask him how this game performs. I’d really like to see if the 64bit version of this game runs better the current version that I have my hands on. But it’s not likely that I’m going to go buy this game again for a 64bit version when the current 32bit version runs poorly on my setup. Feel free to let us all know how this game runs on your system.

Windows Defender 7.0 Released for the x64 platform

Blake Niemyjski — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:29:00 GMT

Today Microsoft released Windows Defender 7 Windows Server 2003 (x64) and XP Professional (x64) are the only supported operating systems. I personally wonder when this update is going to come out for x64 vista. The new features to version 7.0 are as follows:

A redesigned and simplified user interface – Incorporating feedback from our customers, the Windows Defender UI has been redesigned to make common tasks easier to accomplish with a warning system that adapts alert levels according to the severity of a threat so that it is less intrusive overall, but still ensures the user does not miss the most urgent alerts.

Improved detection and removal – Based on a new engine, Windows Defender is able to detect and remove more threats posed by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Real Time Protection has also been enhanced to better monitor key points in the operating system for changes.

Protection for all users – Windows Defender can be run by all users on a computer with or without administrative privileges. This ensures that all users on a computer are protected by Windows Defender.

Support for 64-bit platforms, accessibility and localization - Windows Defender supports accessibility and 64-bit platforms. Microsoft will release localized versions including German and Japanese soon after the availability of the English versions. Please be sure to use WindowsDefenderX64.msi for 64-bit platforms.

Delta definition updates - Windows Defender now downloads smaller delta definition updates when possible which reduces the time required to download and install definition updates. Customers can expect shorter download times when updating their definition updates.

Free Limited Support - As a part of our commitment to the security of our customers, Microsoft is offering two free support incidents relating to Windows Defender on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Examples of valid support scenarios are installation, configuration, definition update, detection and removal errors. Please refer to the Windows Defender support policy for more information.

WGA enforcement - There are significant risks to running non-genuine Windows. Only genuine Windows customers can receive product downloads, Windows updates and special offers. Windows Defender will validate that your copy of Windows is genuine before installation. Furthermore, Windows Defender will only remove Severe threats for machines that are not genuine. Low, Medium and High threats will be detected, but not removed unless your copy of Windows is genuine. For more information, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/genuine

My Personal favorite is what they did to WGA and Windows Defender

Download ( Windows Defender 7.0 )

Windows XP Professional x64 and Server 2003 x64 Service Pack 2 Released!

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:19:00 GMT

Today Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for the operating systems listed below.

Windows Server 2003, x64 Editions
Windows Server 2003 R2, x64 Editions
Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition with Service Pack 1
Windows Server 2003 Storage Server R2, x64 Editions
Windows XP Professional, x64 Edition

Please let us know your thoughts on Service Pack 2, (performance, stability, etc...)

View the Service Pack 2 Read Me

Download Service Pack 2

Happy New Years!

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:12:00 GMT

On behalf of extended64.com's Staff I would like to wish our readers a Happy New Years! I hope everyone actually stick with their New Years resolutions :). I know I actually plan on following them this year for once. Anyways Hopefully we will see some very interesting stuff in the CPU and PC market. I've heard we might be seeing an dual quad core macs coming out in q1. If so that would be kind of cool to see, Also with the leak of information about ATI's new graphics (600) cards surpassing Nvidia's 8800GTX by 5 to 20%. It is going to be a very interesting year for AMD-ATI.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 & Quad FX Platform Review

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:35:00 GMT

HardOCP.com has managed to get there hands on the very latest hardware from AMD. The bench marks are quite intresting when compaired to the top of the line Intel CPUs. Continue reading At source.

Source ( HardOCP.com )

AMD 4x4 Motherboard Details Unveiled With Pictures!

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:41:00 GMT

Daily Tech has managed to get there hands on information and pictures of AMD's Upcoming Quad Core Platform. For more pictures click on source at the bottom of the article.

"ASUS L1N64-SLI WS to be the first 4x4 motherboard

DailyTech has obtained a couple of images of an upcoming motherboard for AMD’s 4x4 enthusiast platform. The motherboard is an ASUS L1N64-SLI WS powered by two NVIDIA nForce 680a MCPs. Two socket-1207 processors are supported with four memory slots—two slots per processor. With two nForce 680a MCPs the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS features 12 SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and one PATA for storage connectivity. There’s also an additional e.SATA port on the back I/O as well.

As far as PCI Exress goes the L1N64-SLI WS features a grand total of four PCI Express x16 slots for plenty of SLI and SLI physics processing power. Due to space limitations the L1N64-SLI WS only has one PCI and PCIe x1 slots.

Networking features of the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS include dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. The onboard Gigabit Ethernet features NVIDIA’s FirstPacket, DualNet, Teaming and TCP/IP offload technologies. Audio is powered by a high definition audio codec with optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs. It is unknown which codec ASUS has equipped the L1N64-SLI WS with, though it could be Analog Devices or Realtek. The board is not legacy free and still has PS/2 and parallel ports.

Due to the complex design of AMD’s 4x4 platform, the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS uses an eATX form factor which will not fit in smaller cases. Since dual processors require a little extra power, ASUS has equipped the L1N64-SLI WS with an 8-pin EPS12v and Molex power connectors" (DailyTech).

Source: DailyTech.com

Microsoft releases Windows Server 2003 and XP Professional x64 SP2 Release Candidate

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:34:00 GMT

I received this email today about the RC release of Svr2003 and XP x64. To download this Release Candidate you must be in this beta and be signed into connect.microsoft.com.

"Windows Serviceability is pleased to announce the release of the Release Candidate (build 2825) of Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. This build contains:

Roll up of hotfixes released to date
Roll up of security updates released to date
Fixes for bugs reported by Beta customers and other known issues on previous Service Pack 2 builds

This build should be used for full deployment purposes, including pre-production testing or general compatibility testing. In order to have a stable test environment we strongly recommend un-installation of any previous SP2 builds from your machines before installing build 2825."