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>Essential Computers >SilentMaxx >nVidia >Toshiba
card? If anyone can get to the bottom of
this, it must be you. Thank you in advance.
—JONATHAN HAYTON
THE DOG RESPONDS: The Dog contacted an
nVidia spokesman who cleared up the confu-
sion over this issue. He said the 6800 does
indeed include the advanced video support
that’s touted on the web site, but consumers
must download a newer set of drivers that was
made available at the end of November.
According to the spokesman: “nVidia is
also working with application vendors to
take advantage of the programmable encode
features of the GeForce 6800 and 6600. Just
like programmable pixel shaders when they
were first introduced, this requires additional
collaboration with application vendors. The
first application that nVidia is targeting to sup-
port its GPU encode capabilities is Windows
Media Center Edition 2005.
“You only need nVidia’s DVD decoder if
you want the advanced post-processing fea-
tures (i.e. motion adaptive de-interlacing and
inverse 3:2 pulldown), in addition to hardware
MPEG-2 decode.
“For MPEG-2 decode only, any application
built on DirectShow can take advantage of the
hardware decode in the 6800 and 6600 as long
as they access the hardware through DirectX
Video Acceleration. WinDVD, for example, can
take advantage of nVidia’s hardware decode.”
There is one difference between the 6800
and the newer 6600 core, though; and that’s
how the two cards handle Windows Media
Video 9 hardware acceleration. nVidia says
the 6600 does more offloading when playing
WMV9 content than the 6800 is capable of, but
the 6800 does do some acceleration. ■
Got a bone to pick with a vendor? Been spiked by a fly-by-night operation? Sic the Dog on them by
writing [e-mail]. The Dog promises to get to as many letters as possible, but only
has four paws to work with.
SilentMaxx.net has shut its doors, but the
German-based company hopes to sign another
vendor to distribute its products again.
Toshiba is alerting its customers of potentially
bad memory modules in some 25 models of its
notebooks that may cause blue screens, lockups,
and undetected memory corruption. Toshiba says
the risk is low, but it has made a utility available
to consumers to detect the error; you can find it
at www.toshibadirect.com/utilityCEP. Consumers
can opt to replace the memory themselves or
to return the notebook and have it replaced at
Toshiba’s service center. Consumers have until
April 30, 2005 to obtain the replacement mod-
ules. For more information consumers may
call Toshiba at 866.544.1325 or visit: www.
toshibadirect.com/content/pc/b2c/CEP.html
for more information.
The affected notebooks include:
➤ TECRA S1, 9100, M1, M2
➤ Satellite 2400, 2405, 1110, 1115, M30, M35
➤ Satellite Pro M10, M15, M30
➤ Portege R100, M200, M205
➤ Dynabook T5, E6, V7, SS S7, SS 2100, E7, V8,
RECALL ALERT
➤
➤
“
AM I, ALONG WITH MANY
OTHERS, STUCK WITH
JUST A GREAT GAMING CARD?
”
V9, VX1, SS M200, Dynabook Satellite M10
Hewlett-Packard suffered a similar mem-
ory module problem last summer and was
forced to replace modules in some 900,000
Compaq Evo, Compaq Presario, NX7000, and
Pavilion ZT3000 notebooks.