Blog - Tim Smalley - Page 2

IntelliTXT is no more

Posted on 20th Mar 2009 at 13:05 by Tim Smalley with 49 comments

Over the past month or so, we have been trialling IntelliTXT text link advertisements on all of the article pages on bit-tech and I'm now pleased to tell you that they have gone.

It was a type of advertising that we had discussed on a number of occasions prior to bit-tech's acquisition last year and each time we decided to hold off. This time, the decision went the other way and that's part of the reason why I wanted to gather your feedback – both positive and negative – on it shortly after it went live.

Based on the valuable feedback we have received – both from the community and the industry – the decision has been taken to remove it from the site with immediate effect.

Where is bit-tech's GeForce GTS 250 review?

Posted on 3rd Mar 2009 at 12:53 by Tim Smalley with 30 comments

You've probably heard the news by now: Nvidia announced the GeForce GTS 250 this morning at CeBIT and yes, the rumours are true - it's a rebranded GeForce 9800 GTX+.

But that's not the real story.

Normally, you'd expect us to have a review of the card on launch day, but that is sadly something we haven't been allowed to do. Nvidia had remained uncharacteristically quiet - both on and off the record - about the GeForce GTS 250 for one reason or another and we didn't find out about the card until Tuesday last week.

Nvidia's Hybrid SLI technology no longer matters

Posted on 26th Feb 2009 at 13:39 by Tim Smalley with 5 comments

One of those technologies that showed so much promise, but delivered so little last year was Nvidia's Hybrid SLI technology. We covered this in quite a lot of depth even before the actual products arrived. And when they did arrive, they weren't exactly brilliant.

To me, the most interesting part of Hybrid SLI was in fact Hybrid Power, which would essentially allow gamers to switch off their power hungry graphics cards when they weren't being used for gaming or GPU computing and instead use a more power-efficient integrated GPU to drive your display. And it was the one reason to introduce the GeForce 9800-series because a number of the cards in that line up were simply re-hashed G92 based GeForce 8-series products that featured Hybrid Power technology.

Ever since Nvision ended a massive bombshell, where Nvidia announced that it was to open SLI out to Intel's X58 chipset, we've been wondering where Hybrid SLI - and in particular Hybrid Power - stood in the DIY market today. We managed to get some answers that shed a lot more light on Nvidia's plans for the technology than our previous attempts where the water wasn't left quite as clear.

What's going on behind the scenes at bit-tech?

Posted on 18th Feb 2009 at 11:50 by Tim Smalley with 3 comments

In an effort to bring you even more comprehensive coverage of the latest hardware, games and technology industry related news, we are working hard to make the bit-tech team a more rounded and versatile machine.

I know that some of you have probably been sticking pins into your very own Felix Dennis doll following some of the recent happenings. And even though this might not sound quite right at the moment, Dennis doesn't want to damage the great relationship we have built up with our readers.

Your feedback on things like IntelliTXT in particular has been invaluable and it's helping us to ensure that great relationship we have with our readers doesn't diminish because, like I say, we (both the bit-tech team and our new owners) don't want the great community we have to disappear. With that in mind, it's been very much a learning process for the new team of people helping us to run the site behind the scenes.

But even though there have been a couple of things that haven't gone quite to plan in recent weeks, it's not all doom and gloom – there's actually a lot of great things happening at bit-tech.

Feedback on bit-tech advertising

Posted on 10th Feb 2009 at 20:48 by Tim Smalley with 251 comments

You probably haven't noticed too many changes since bit-tech was acquired by Dennis in October 2008. We moved into our new offices at Dennis HQ over the weekend and we're slowly unpacking our boxes while hoping that we won't be moving again for a very, very long time.

One thing we've always prided ourselves on here at bit-tech is that we have always tried to provide advertising that is both non-intrusive and pertinent to the site and you, our readers. Without advertising, there would be no bit-tech at all – it's our sole source of revenue, which pays for the content, our facilities and equipment as well as the servers to keep the site running.

Tags advertising, bit-tech, feedback

This week, we're mostly looking at...

Posted on 4th Feb 2009 at 15:13 by Tim Smalley with 8 comments

We look at a lot of cool products here at bit-tech, but some of them aren't so cool. Today, we took delivery of a rather large package that's going to be taking up a big chunk of our time this week.

This one falls into the 'not cool' category and we honestly can't wait to see the back of it!

Tags dennis, office move, packing

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon?

Posted on 3rd Feb 2009 at 15:21 by Tim Smalley with 2 comments

Although most of the world is hurting right now because of the economic slowdown, Intel looks set to release a new high-end Core i7 processor in the coming weeks or months following some early benchmark results which have appeared on the Xtreme Systems forums.

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon? Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon

Xtreme Systems honcho Charles 'Fugger' Wirth teamed up with Corsair, Gigabyte and Intel to break the 3DMark05 world record, stealing it back from Team Finland, who put AMD back on top in this benchmark for the first time in a long time. He broke the previous record of 45,474 with his pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2s humming along at their stock speeds and clocked up a new highest score of 47,026.

So, I built my new gaming machine last night

Posted on 2nd Feb 2009 at 12:55 by Tim Smalley with 33 comments

I've been wanting to build my new PC for some time now because I've been having my fair share of issues over the past few months, but it's not as new as many of you would expect. I've been running a quad-core processor since 2006 and I haven't felt the need to upgrade it yet, even though Intel has now released its true successor, Core i7.

I'm still running a QX6700 and this is the third system upgrade the same processor has gone through. I guess it's a testament for how forward looking Intel's quad-core processors were - performance enhancements came with the 45nm Penryn core and then there's even more performance available with a Core i7, but I'm more than happy with how much performance there is on tap with my QX6700.

So, I built my new gaming machine last night So I built my new PC last night

I've merely upgraded some parts of my system that were either on their last legs or just getting a bit long in the tooth.

Latest Sapphire 4850 X2 BIOS goes some way to silencing noise issues

Posted on 31st Jan 2009 at 00:27 by Tim Smalley with 9 comments

At several points during the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 review we published a week or so ago, we complained quite vocally about the amount of noise the card produced when it was sitting idle. Although not quite as loudly as the card itself.

It was so loud that we unanimously decided that the card wouldn't go anywhere near one of our own home PCs - I'm probably the most tolerant to noise in the bit-tech office and it was even far too loud for me.

Following the review, Sapphire admitted that it was "aware that [the 4850 X2] had some issues with noise on the first pass of these boards." At least we weren't alone.

Welcome to the bit-tech Blog!

Posted on 30th Jan 2009 at 14:51 by Tim Smalley with 19 comments

Today, we are pleased to announce that we have launched the all-new bit-tech Blog. It's a feature that we have wanted to add to the site for quite some time now, but only now have we managed to actually roll it out. You see, we've had our share of distractions in the last six months or so, which prevented us from finishing this section of the site off.

For those of you who think we're heading down the path of no return, fear not because we're not going to be telling you about what we ate for breakfast (but I had Shreddies and Weetabix since you asked). Instead, we're going to treat the blog as an area of the site to sound off about things that don't fit into any of the news or article categories.

But wasn't that what columns were for?

bit-tech.net

Archive for Tim Smalley

IntelliTXT is no more

Where is bit-tech's GeForce GTS 250 review?

Nvidia's Hybrid SLI technology no longer matters

What's going on behind the scenes at bit-tech?

Feedback on bit-tech advertising

This week, we're mostly looking at...

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon?

So, I built my new gaming machine last night

Latest Sapphire 4850 X2 BIOS goes some way to silencing noise issues

Welcome to the bit-tech Blog!

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