AMD 6950 Easily Modded Into 6970 Via Bios Flash. #amd

As any true PC enthusiast knows, it’s not the biggest, highest end, fastest piece of hardware that is most sought after. It’s the cheapest part you can snag that can be overclocked and hacked to run as fast or better than the high-end offering. In the world of custom computers, the two heaviest modded parts are easily processor and video card. Both pieces benefit greatly from faster clocks, unlocked cores, etc., etc. Today’s story of unlocking hidden potential comes by way of the recently released AMD 6950 and 6970 graphics cards. Would you believe you can get all the performance of the 6970 in the cheaper 6950?

Well, you can — because they’re the same exact card. The only difference the two cards is that the higher-end 6970 has a few more unified shaders unlocked — 1536 vs. the 6950′s stock count of 1408.

But the best part about this new-found power is that it’s easily obtained. A simple bios flash on your 6950 will get the job done. At this point, there is absolutely no reason to pay extra for the 6970. With that said, I can’t imagine AMD will be too happy to see such information released, that’s there fault for designing the card the way they did.

In the meantime, I suggest you hop to it. Who knows how long AMD will let this hack run rampant. I’m sure a future update will some how block the feature highlighted above. But as we’ve seen today, the PC enthusiast crowd is persistent and determined. Another cat and mouse game in the making?

Get the full list of instructions and needed files over at Tech Power Up.

Rollei Unveils 3D Point-and-Shoot Camera. #rollei

The 3D fad is still relatively strong — if not in consumers’ eyes, at least in the eyes of manufacturers. TV’s, cameras/video cameras, and even picture frames are joining the 3D club. In regards to the latter, there aren’t many options with which the normal consumer can easily take 3D photos just yet. That is, until Rollei releases their dual-5 Megapixel packing camera, the “Power Flex 3D”…

MuscleNerd and iPhone Dev-Team Save the Day. Promise “Backup” Untethered Jailbreak by Christmas Weekend. #ios

Yesterday, iPhone hacker @Comex tweeted that he was uncertain of the Christmas timeline for a true, untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1 on later devices. Such news was obviously disappointing. Though there was some hope brought forth by iPhone Dev-Team’s @MuscleNerd. MuscleNerd stated that they (Dev-Team) had a “Plan B” backup solution in case Comex could come through.

Today, that plan is now public. While the inner workings of the backup jailbreak aren’t known, the more important fact to highlight is release date, — MuscleNerd is we’ll all see it sometime this weekend

In the meantime, MuscleNerd is requesting some beta testers of the new jailbreak before things go completely public to ensure nothing blows up or turns into shiny bricks of uselessness. Some words from MuscleNerd:

Over the Christmas weekend we’ll be releasing a version of redsn0w that implements the “backup plan” to the 4.2.1 untethered jailbreak. We’re seeking your help to test this redsn0w and find any bugs before we do a general release!

(If you have an iPhone 3G, or an old-bootrom ipt2g or iPhone 3GS, you already have an untethered jailbreak! Just use the latest public redsn0w.)

To keep things manageable, this will be a Mac-only test program. We also request that any volunteers *NOT* need the ultrasn0w unlock (in case things go very wrong).

Right now, the “backup plan” requires that you have the 4.2b3 IPSW on your Mac, and that Cydia has your 4.2b3 SHSH hashes. Please don’t pirate that 4.2b3 IPSW! (We’re also working on a way that this technique might apply to all those with 4.1 IPSWs, but that’s not the first goal right now.)

If you fit all the above qualifications, please follow @redsn0w_testers on twitter for announcements, and use the comments section here for feedback. Thanks very much for your help, and Happy Holidays!

We’ll be sure to update you when it drops. Stay tuned!

Sprint Rep Shows She Clearly Doesn’t Use Internet. Bashes Competing 4G Networks Based on Misinformation. #4g #fail

Look at that garbage above you. Where do we begin? Oh let’s get started. First up, the claim that T-Mobile doesn’t have “real” 4G and Sprint does. If we go by the ITU’s guidelines for what defined a “real” 4G network two weeks ago, no one had a real 4G network — not even Sprint. If we go by the ITU’s most recent ruling on what defines “real” 4G, then everyone has a true 4G network. So either way you look at it, Sprint’s @svinge is completely wrong on all accounts.

And then there’s the petty argument of who has more devices — @svinge boasts of Sprint’s (2) 4G phones and in the same breath mocks Verizon’s total of (0) and T-Mobiles…”Oh wait, they don’t even have a 4G network yet…”. It’s pretty humorous to see such ramblings when Verizon’s own 4G network is consistently faster than Sprints. Not to mention, Verizon and even T-Mobile have begun pushing their network upgrades much faster than Sprint. Hell, Sprint has been at this WiMax thing for over 2 years and still only manages 70 markets in the U.S.

Sadly, 4G has become nothing but a marketing term as the ITU has caved in to the rampant mis-use of the “4G” title. Nonetheless, to see someone (regardless if they’re speaking on Sprint’s behalf or not) so mindless when it comes to topics in her own fields is pretty alarming. But that’s just one person. How intelligent are the rest of Sprint’s pool of empoyees?

– Merry Christmas —

Tumblr Redesigns Login Page. Now Even More Simple. #tumblr

Tumblr was already known as a stylish, design-centric micro-blogging service. Over the last few weeks, they’ve also come to be known as rather poor in terms of reliability with the most noteworthy incident last over 24 hours! And now, the simplistic micro-blogging service gets even more simple with the new login page. Looks good to us.

Comparison between old and new after the jump…

OS X to Support Searching of Mac App Store for Unknown File Types. #macappstore

At one point in time, we’ve all come into possession of a particular file that we didn’t have an appropriate piece of software to open said file. On that same note, Windows users have been able to simply click “search online” to give Windows a chance at clearing things up. I’ve never had particularly good luck with the in-house app searching within Windows, ultimately turning to Google to find the required app. Perhaps on OS X it will be better, as according to a Mac developer from MacGeneration testing out the latest 10J537 build of 10.6.6, it appears that Apple will now add the same feature. The only difference in this case is that OS X will search the Mac App Store instead of the entire web, potentially resulting in a much better result, and at the very least, much faster searches.

SHAtter Jailbreak Exploit Leaked! #shatter

Tonight, the jailbreaking scene for end users and jailbreak developers alike received a crush kick in the pants. Someone close to the hacking scene has leaked the SHAtter exploit. For one very short second, this sounds like a good thing. But in fact it is very, very bad. Now that there are two jailbreak exploits in the wild, Apple has a chance to patch both with the next firmware/hardware update meaning jailbreak devs will have to start all over from scratch. That very same ideology is the sole reason why SHAtter-based exploits were witheld win Geohot went public with his own personal exploit back in October.

Further adding to the drama is a miniature spat between Chronic-Dev team’s @P0sixninja and iPhone Dev-Team’s @MuscleNerd over who supposedly leaked the SHAtter exploit. P0sixninja is saying MuscleNerd did it. MuscleNerd meanwhile claims he’s innocent and that it was one of the other 15-20 people in attendance the day that the SHAtter exploit was shown off by “pod2g”. Regardless of who leaked the exploit, the next update will ruin everyone’s fun.

Twitter exchange showcasing the drama is after the break…