NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (1024MB)

NVIDIA's new born .. a Siamese twin.

That's right people, come and see come and see! NVIDIA officially gave birth to Siamese twins today! I promise, I'll try not to make any twin jokes okay? So what is it about Siamese twins that makes them so special? Well they look alike, you feel for them yet they are a little peculiar aren't they? And yes that's exactly what is going on with today's tested products. And I do say products as we will be testing both the NVIDIA reference design GeForce 7950 GX2 and XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 "XXX" edition, which obviously is a pre-overclocked version of the reference model of the card.

So I started the first paragraph of this review with a word that I do not use that much on graphic Card , peculiar. As this concept of graphics cards is rather unique. It's no secret, thanks to to fundamentally disturbed websites that constantly do everything to try and leak details about undisclosed products you already know what the product is about. NVIDIA's double-whammy GeForce 7950 GX2 is marketed as a "single" card design, where any infant obviously can see that this "single" card is nothing more than two cards merged together in SLI mode. The two PCB's with a little bridge in-between them gives a pretty strong idea about that.

I'm still a little confused as to why it was not possible to mount two GPU's on one PCB (one card) as at exhibit some board partners (which I can not disclose at this time) were showing dual 7800 GT's and GTX's on one PCB already. The answer from NVIDIA is plain and simple, the PCB (the card's print board) would become really long, too long. I'm not sure about that but hey NVIDIA's engineers obviously are way more knowledgeable then I am and I'm sure it's a pretty good reason. We'll talk more about the design later on in this review though with the guidance of some high-resolution photo's.

The GeForce 7950 GX2 (GX2 from now on) is targeted directly at ATI's delicious Radeon X1900 XTX and obviously does that job extremely well. Compared in NVIDIA's own line of graphics card solutions and with a price tag of roughly 599 to 650 USD/EUR the card will performance wise position itself "exactly" in-between a GeForce 7900 GTX 512Mb and two GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB in SLI mode. I phoned some board partners, they have the products in stock and you can expect a price of 649 EUR here in Europe.

So there you have our brief introduction, wanna go in depth with me? Good. Over the next dozen or two of pages we'll tell you all about this Siamese twin. We'll look at both the reference design and a pre-overclocked XFX card. Since one and one is two and the fact that I'm rather curious by nature, we'll also set these cards up in Quad SLI configuration. Which I must add NVIDIA is not supporting at all at this time. Even though the card is designed for Quad SLI, there will not be any four-GPU support at the time of launch with the GeForce 7950 GX2 due to massive driver constraints. It's just me and my crazy thing for hardware.

Adobe Photoshop Vs CorelDRAW

I'm had been expose for this subject when first time walk in to design department.First question,what kind of software have you learn at previous college?Wow,make me shock,because i never explore any kind of editing software for create and editing graphics except using Adobe Photoshop.Nowadays,corelDRAW had been use widely,many of design company.3 Days,that I had be train from senior staff at my workplace,to understand the basic of corelDRAW.

Corel DRAW
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite. Its latest version, named X4 (actually version 14), was released in January 2008.Several innovations to vector-based illustration originated with CorelDRAW: a node-edit tool that operates differently on different objects, fit text-to-path, stroke-before-fill, quick fill/stroke color selection palettes, perspective projections, mesh fills and complex gradient fills.CorelDraw is the well-established "other" vector drawing program, covering the same ground as Adobe Illustrator does.CorelDRAW differentiates itself from its competitors in a number of ways. The first is its positioning as a graphics suite, rather than just a vector graphics program. A full range of editing tools allow the user to adjust contrast, color balance, change the format from RGB to CMYK, add special effects such as vignettes and special borders to bitmaps. Bitmaps can also be edited more extensively using Corel PhotoPaint, opening the bitmap directly from CorelDRAW and returning to the program after saving. It also allows a laser to cut out any drawings.CorelDRAW's chief competitors are Adobe Illustrator and Xara Xtreme. Although all of them are vector-based illustration programs, the user experience differs greatly between the two. For instance, CorelDRAW and Xara Xtreme can work with multi-page documents directly; Illustrator only offers a single-page layout view, but it will allow you to divide that large layout in the print options so that it prints on multiple pages. While these programs will read their native file types and vice versa, the translation is almost never perfect. CorelDRAW can open Adobe PDF files, Adobe PageMaker and InDesign, Microsoft Publisher and Word, and several other programs can print documents to PDF using the Adobe PDFWriter printer driver, which CorelDRAW can then open and edit every aspect of the original layout and design. CorelDRAW can also open PowerPoint Presentations with little or no problem.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current and primary market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as "an industry standard for graphics professionals and was one of the early "killer applications" on Macintosh.Photoshop CS3, the current tenth iteration of the program, was released on 16 April 2007. "CS" reflects its integration with other Creative Suite products, and the number "3" represents it as the third version released since Adobe re-branded its products under the CS umbrella. Photoshop CS3 features additions such as the ability to apply non-destructive filters, as well as new selection tools named Quick Selection and Refine Edge that make selection more streamlined. On April 30th, Adobe released Photoshop CS3 Extended, which includes all the same features of Adobe Photoshop CS3 with the addition of capabilities for scientific imaging, 3D, and high end film and video users. The successor to Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS4, will be the first 64-bit Photoshop.Photoshop has strong ties with other Adobe software for media editing, animation, and authoring. Files in Photoshop's native format, .PSD, can be exported to and from Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Adobe Encore DVD to make professional standard DVDs and provide non-linear editing and special effects services, such as backgrounds, textures, and so on, for television, film, and the Web. For example, Photoshop CS broadly supports making menus and buttons for DVDs. For .PSD files exported as a menu or button, it only needs to have layers, nested in layer sets with a cuing format, and Adobe Encore DVD reads them as buttons or menus.Photoshop can utilize the color models RGB, lab, CMYK, grayscale, binary bitmap, and duotone. Photoshop has the ability to read and write raster and vector image formats such as: .EPS, .PNG, .GIF, .JPEG, Fireworks, etc. It also has several native file formats:

• The .PSD (Photoshop Document) format stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, Clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality. Photoshop's popularity means that the .PSD format is widely used, and it is supported to some extent by most competing software.

• The .PSB (Large Document Format) format is a newer version of .PSD designed for files over 2 gigabytes.

• The .PDD (PhotoDeluxe Document) format is a version of .PSD that only supports the features found in the discontinued PhotoDeluxe software.

Vista: In or out?

Can it be that Microsoft has finally got it right with Windows Vista? After all, we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes, and Microsoft has had a tumultuous history with its Windows operating system.There is no doubt that the software giant has pulled its act together with Vista and you get to see this right from the start when you install the operating system.Once you pop in the Vista DVD and restart your PC, all it takes to get the installation going is the serial key. Unlike Windows XP, the installation process will not stop halfway to ask you stupid questions.The installation roughly takes 25 minutes and after that Vista takes another five minutes to benchmark your computer.The benchmark rating will help you buy software as Microsoft is encouraging vendors to label their applications with similar ratings.This, of course, will be a lot easier than trying to remember how much memory your computer has or how fast your processor is, and comparing it to the minimum system requirements of the software.

Looking lovely

If you have read previews about Vista before, then you probably have heard about its Aero interface, as this has been one of the most talked about improvements.Aero looks really nice, modern and stylish – I don't think anyone will hate it but it is not as breathtaking as we expected it to be.Still, we have to be thankful that it is not tacky as Windows XP – I still hate the green Start button, which thankfully has been replaced in the new OS by the Vista logo.But the Aero interface is not just a superficial cosmetic makeover, as Microsoft has revamped the design of almost everything, including the views of folders, Control Panel and the Start menu.The first thing you will notice when viewing folders is that there is no longer a menu bar, and surprisingly I didn't miss it that much because most of the useful functions are within reach from the new toolbar.And the left task pane now displays a tree view of the folder you are viewing and favourites – you can customise this to include folders you frequently access.The other noteworthy improvement is Windows Sidebar, which allows you to install Gadgets – tiny but useful applications such as a clock, calendar, performance monitor and such.Whether you find Windows Sidebar useful or not will depend on how big your monitor is – if you have anything smaller than a 19in monitor, it is going to look really cramped.On the other hand, if you own a widescreen monitor, you are really going to love the Gadgets as it will make great use of the extra space you have on the sides.

Superior security

Contrary to popular belief, Vista is not based on the source code of Windows XP but rather on the more secure Windows Server 2003 operating system. This alone makes it a lot more secure than Windows XP.Then there is the User Account Control (UAC), which will prompt you to approve any system sensitive actions like running an application that wants access to the inner workings of the operating system or even creating a folder in the Programs Files directory.UAC might seem to make Vista behave a little paranoid but it is something that you have to learn to live with because it is a very unsafe world out there.Without question Vista is definitely built much tougher than Windows XP but that is not going to be enough because Windows has always been avery popular target among hackers.Like it or not, some hacker is going to find a flaw in Vista sooner or later – it is just a matter of time and how big the flaw will turn out to be.

Compatibility concerns

With any new operating system, backward compatibility with older software is going to be a problem. In this case, a lot of applications will work fine under Vista but there will be some that just won't install or will behave quirkily.Earlier versions of Nero and Diskeeper, for example, won't even install but new versions that are Vista-compatible are already available online.Some programs will install without a hitch but won't be fully functional due to the higher security level of Vista. For instance, I had problems saving the settings on Reget, a popular download manager. Usually, running apps in administrator mode solves the problem.And if you are a gamer – hey, if you don't play games, you should be using a Mac – then there is a lot to look forward to as Vista comes with the DirectX 10 game engine, which will not be made available to Windows XP.There are no DirectX 10 games right now, but if the screenshots of the upcoming games are any indication, then things can only get better. Much better.Games like Crysis look absolutely gorgeous when rendered using DirectX 10 and look unusually datedwhen rendered with DirectX 9.Although the new games will still support the older DirectX 9 engine, they just won't look the same anymore.However, to play these games you will also require a DirectX 10-compatible graphics card and so far only nVidia has them and they are not cheap.Also, games run a bit slowly on Vista than on Windows XP but this could be due to poor drivers as nVidia and ATI are still struggling to come out with better ones.

Various versions

One of the big complains is that Microsoft has six versions of Vista for you to choose from – Starter Edition, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. Is that too many and too confusing? Not really.If you are playing to deploy Vista on your home computer, the choice is a simple one – go for Vista Home Premium unless you are a hardcore user.You can forget about the Starter edition, which is not available yet, and is really meant for very niche markets.

And the Home Basic edition has very limited functionality – it doesn't have the glass-like Aero interface, DVD maker, Movie Maker and more.So if you are going to plonk down money to buy Vista, you might as well pull the purse strings a little more to get the Home Premium version.The Business and Enterprise editions, as the name implies, are better used in offices.The ultimate choice is, er, Vista Ultimate, which unifies all the home user and business features – basically you'll get everything and then some.This edition comes with what Microsoft calls Ultimate Extras – games, apps and utilities that Microsoft will roll out for free from time to time.We are not sure how compelling it is going to be in the future but if DreamScene is any indication, you might feel a little left out if you don't get this edition.DreamScene, which Microsoft is planning to release soon, will allow you to set videos as your background wallpaper and so far it looks really cool.If you are a hardcore user that wants it all, then Vista Ultimate edition is the only one that is going to satisfy you.However, if you want thebest return for your ringgit, then you are better off with Vista Home Premium. And you can always upgrade to the Ultimate edition in the future if you want to.

Pricing issues

The standalone editions of Vista are not cheap – Home Premium costs RM1,020 and the Ultimate edition costs RM1,700. That is a lot of money to spend on an operating system.But if you already have own Windows 2000 or XP (all editions) then you can save quite a lot of money by opting for the upgrade editions. The Home Premium upgrade costs RM690 and the Ultimate upgrade costs RM1,020.However, you should keep in mind that to install an upgrade edition of Vista you must have an earlier version of Windows on your PC. If you don't, Vista will not install.Also, depending on which flavour of Windows you own and version you are upgrading to, you may be able to upgrade in-place, meaning you can install Windows Vista and retain your applications, files and settings,Or you may have to do a clean install – in other words, Vista will wipe your hard disk clean before it installs but you can still use the Windows Easy Transfer tool to automatically copy all your files and settings to an extra hard drive or other storage device.After the installation of Vista is complete, Windows Easy Transfer will reload your files and settings on your upgraded PC. However, you will still need to reinstall your applications.Also note that if you want to reinstall the Vista upgrade edition after a hard disk format, you must first go through the tedious process of installing the earlier version of Windows before reinstalling Vista.According to some online reports, there is also a risk that the Vista upgrade edition will fail to work because it will wrongly identify a licenced copy of Windows 2000/XP as an illegal copy.To solve this problem, there is a workaround that goes something like this:Boot the machine using the Vista DVD but refrain from entering the serial number. Instead just leave it empty and click Next and ignore whatever warning messages you receive.You will then be prompted to choose the version of Vista you purchased – do that and compete the installation and Vista will run with full functionality for 30 days.Now insert the Vista DVD again and choose to upgrade. This time, enter the Vista key you purchased and it should install and activate properly.

OEM option

The third and cheapest option is to get an OEM version of Vista, which is supposed to come pre-installed with new machines.Although Microsoft clearly states that an OEM copy must come pre-installed with a machine, you can easily get an OEM copy on its own.If you are tempted to go down this path, here is a little-known fact about OEM versions of Vista – once you install it on a machine, the licence is non-transferable.That means Vista will be tied to the hardware it is on. While it will accept minor upgrades to the machine, if you ever change the motherboard, it will no longer work because Vista will then "see" it as a new machine.So, if you are the type that changes hardware often, you might want to get the full edition instead.

Vista verdict

There is a lot to like about Vista as it is easily the best (if not best-looking) operating system to ever come out of Microsoft's labs.It is very easy to use and very customisable – unlike previous its operating systems, nothing is forced on you and you can change almost everything about it.On top of that, it packs a lot of features – most of which you will only discover when you have a need for it such as the hard disk partition tool or the improved screen capture tool.Of course, there is a fair amount of relearning involved as some functions that you could easily access before on Windows XP are nowhere to be found on Vista.However, there are two easy ways to find them. The first is the excellent Instant Search function, which locates not only files but also Control Panel functions. When you feel lost, just type away and more often than not, it will locate what you need.The second method is to revert to the Windows XP look.So, why isn't everyone going crazy over Vista? It is because it doesn't come with a killer feature – there is no single feature that you can't live without as Microsoft pulled out some of the more interesting features during the development cycle to meet the deadline.Also, a company like Microsoft, which has excellent financial standing and industry backing, could have done a much better job with Vista.As it stands, Vista is a good operating system but not great – it just doesn't break any new technological boundaries.Ultimately, whether most people choose to upgrade or not will probably hinge on how new their PCs are.If your machine is older than two years, chances are it is outdated for Vista. Finding drivers for your computer will also be a problem.To run Vista comfortably you will need to have three important ingredients: A fast processor, ample memory and a dedicated graphics card.A machine with a dual-core processor, 1GB or more RAM and a graphics card with at least 128MB of video memory should be just fine.I tested Vista on a PC with an Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor, 1GB RAM and an nVidia GeForce 6800 card and it had no performance issues.So if you bought a computer recently or have been upgrading it over time, what better way to make better use of it than by installing Vista?

Getting To iPOD

Almost everyone has heard od iPODs by now.Invention from Apple inc,and effective marketing campaignsm,the term iPOD has almost become generic for MP3 player.For the first time using iPOD,customer basically have a lot of question from which iPOD is right for them to how getting songs and other media file onto an iPOD.There are now many variations of the iPOD.There's an iPOD Classic,an iPOD 5.5 Generation,an iPOD Photo,an iPOD Nano,an iPOD Miniand an iPOD shuffle.The Nano,Mini,and shuffle are flash-based devices that hold less but significantly smaller that the other models.Until the latest,third generation of the Nano,none of the flash-based models were capable of displaying video.The larger iPODS are generally the most expensive,but offer higher capacities,video playback,photo storage and other interface niceties.The Nano and Minis are fashion accessories as much as they are playback devices,as they come in a range of different colour.Many people have wrong impression about iTunes.i-Tunes actually 99% delivery service that force consumer buy a music by purchasing music through iTunes.There (iTunes) also can use and organise and transfer to iPOD that you have in computer.iTunes,In short is an application that perform many same function as the Windows Media Player,but more suit to iPOD which there can recogise an iPOD immediately once it's plugged in to your PC.Most of battery life for iPOD,between 8 and 14 hours.iPOD also can charges when it's hooked up to PC USB.