With the release of Dell Alienware’s M18x laptop, many gamers and enthusiasts have been impressed by the performance seen with its dual NVIDIA GTX 580M SLI graphics cards. Owners of the M18x predecessor, the M17x-R2, upgraded their laptops from the 285M SLi configuration to that of the 580M SLI platform, thinking it would be an easy upgrade to make their laptop of equal value in comparison to the M18x. Unfortunately, while the 580M cards were installed correctly, SLI was not enabled in the driver as the graphics upgrade was not natively supported by Alienware or Dell, effectively only allowing the use of one GPU. Now, that’s no longer the case.

Anatolymik, author of HyperSLI, has developed a modified driver allowing M17x-R2 users to enable SLI on their laptop for the full graphics performance and experience. HyperSLI enables SLI with a click of the mouse on motherboards and chipsets normally considered to be “non-SLI” compatible. With the advent of HyperSLI and its wide range of success on a variety of systems, HyperSLI was adapted with the addition of a modified driver based off NVIDIA’s latest ForceWare version 290.53. By installing HyperSLI and the modified driver, users can have the same SLI capabilities thatClick here to continue reading

Courtesy of windows8geek.com

Windows on ARM (WoA), a combination of Windows 8 and ARM-based processors, is expected to make an official appearance at the end of 2012 and will try to compete in the notebook market as soon as June 2013, according to sources from notebook vendors.

Since players such as Nvidia and Qualcomm have been enhancing their ARM-based processors’ power consumption and performance, if their processors can successfully pair up with Windows 8 and receive Windows software support, the WoA platform may soon be able to compete against Intel and AMD.

The sources pointed out that players with ARM-based processors are aggressive about WoA platform and are hoping that the platform will be able to raise their share in the tablet PC market as well as help them enter the notebook industry that has been dominated by Wintel.

The ARM CPU players are already aggressively cooperating with notebook players such as Asustek Computer and Lenovo and are set to launch WoA-based notebooks to test the water in mid-2013 with expectations to see the platform take off in 2014 and further grab share from Wintel in 2015 toClick here to continue reading

Varghese George, senior principal engineer, has detailed information on the upcoming Ivy Bridge microarchitecture that’s due to be released in 1H 2012.

Ivy Bridge is the successor to incumbent Sandy Bridge – the design which powers the majority of Intel’s silicon available today – and it’s considered a tick in Intel’s nomenclature.

Ivy’s central core design is similar to Sandy Bridge in some ways, George said, as it features the same two-chip solution – PCH and CPU – socket, shared cache, and memory-controller found on the incumbent chip.

But George went on to explain that shifting down to 22nm and using the new-fangled tri-gate transistors enables Intel to offer either greater power efficiency or more performance than Sandy Bridge for a set die size, though he would not divulge actual numbers at the technical seminar at IDF.

While performance is clearly important for an architecture that’ll scale from ultra-low-voltage laptops through to servers, George was keen to point out that many of the improvements in Ivy Bridge relate to power efficiency. For example, new power-management features enable more-granular control over the chips’ cores and voltages, extending through to particular chips havingClick here to continue reading

The HP MediaSmart Server is a versatile OEM Windows Home Server Version 1 product, and is well known for its low power consumption and small form factor. Several months ago, BIOS-Mods helped several other developers compile a BIOS image that would enable true dual core and quadcore CPU support for the EX485 platform to have similar if not better performance than the emerging EX495. After many successful upgrades without BIOS modification, it was established that there were several issues with sleep and shutdown with the “R0″ revision Intel CPUs.

The modding then plunged onward with flashing the EX495 BIOS to the EX485. This was very successful, except there was an incompatibility with the fan speeds and it was determined it would not be a suitable solution. After another few attempts, a bad image was produced and indeed “bricked” the MediaSmart server at BIOS-Mods. Several other owners were also affected.

For anyone who wishes to recover from a bricked BIOS on their Mediasmart after a bad flash, BIOS-Mods now has a proven method for BIOS recovery. Please note if you are testing images for RAID orClick here to continue reading

Our team of experts works daily to help modify and update your BIOS, and answer your requests within 24hrs.

What is a Bios? A BIOS is defined as a Basic Input Output System.The BIOS is boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on. The initial function of the BIOS is to identify, test, and initialize system devices such as the video display card, hard disk, floppy disk and other hardware. The BIOS sets the machine hardware into a known state, so that software stored on compatible media can be loaded, executed, and given control of the PC. This process is known as booting, or booting up, which is short for bootstrapping. One of the most important elements of the BIOS for the user is the setup screen, where users can configure startup options and push PC hardware to its limits.

Where do we come in? As the modern age of technology exponentially grows in complexity, so does the BIOS. Bioses become more complex, larger in size, and harder to understand. Not only do they become more complicated, but OEM manufacturers (HP, Dell, Acer, etc.) attempt toClick here to continue reading