Straight edge refers to a subculture of hardcore punk which was a direct reaction to the sexual revolution, hedonism, and excess associated with punk rock. In its simplest form, straight edge is a philosophy of staying clean and sober: meaning refraining from using alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs. For some, this extends to not engaging in promiscuous sex, following a vegetarian or vegan diet, not using caffeine or prescription drugs. The term was coined by the 1980s hardcore punk band Minor Threat in their song "Straight Edge."

Since the late 1970s, straight edge has been a part of the punk scene. During that time, a wide variety of beliefs and ideas have been incorporated into straight edge including violence, vegetarianism, animal rights, communism and Hare Krishna beliefs. In many parts of the United States, straight edge is treated as a gang; however, recent studies suggest that only a small minority of the people who refer to themselves as straight edge are violent.
History

In 1999, William Tsitsos wrote that straight edge had gone though three eras since its founding in the early 1980s. Later analyst have identified another era that has taken place since Tsitsos's writing.
1970s and early 1980s

Originally, straight edge was most closely associated with hardcore punk which developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was partly characterized by shouted rather than sung vocals. Straight edge individuals of this early era often associated with the original punk ideals such as individualism, disdain for work and school, and live-for-the-moment attitudes.

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AMD has yet again stepped up excitement and anticipation surrounding a product-launch. This time, it's the company's fastest GPU: the RV790, whose single-GPU product, the Radeon HD 4890, is dressing up to go to office between April 6~8 worldwide. Taiwanese tech community website XFastest went found that volumes of the card by AMD partner Gigabyte have already reached a certain store.

The Gigabyte Radeon HD 4890 1 GB (model: GV-R489-1GH-B) is based on AMD's reference design, which has been pictured earlier, and whose early 3DMark performance figures have began surfacing. The card, features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, which now seems to be the standard amount of memory on the reference design card. The unboxed card has been pictured from a good angle, which gives us a better indication of its length. It is longer than the HD 4870. Another scoop we can bring to you, is that from the first picture of the RV790 GPU that was published by DailyTech, it has been observed that the die is slightly larger than that of the RV770. What makes it larger is not known at this point in time.

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ZOTAC International, an award-winning manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today expands its GeForce 9800GT product lineup with the new more power-efficient ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco. The new ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco delivers phenomenal performance and breathtaking visuals with 40-percent greater power efficiency for a high-performance graphics experience that is easy on the power bill.

“Our mainstream ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT has won many awards for its performance. With the new ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco, you can have the competitive performance of the GeForce 9800GT series but with 40-percent greater power efficiency,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

The ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco packs a performance punch with its 112 stream processors and high-speed GDDR3 memory technology. A wide 256-bit memory interface joins the screaming-fast stream processors with the high-speed GDDR3 memory for smooth frame rates and vivid visuals.

NVIDIA CUDA, PhysX and PureVideo HD technologies take the ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco beyond gaming graphics to enhance everyday tasks and applications such as video and image editing, video processing, gaming and video playback.

“We’ve come to a crossroads with graphics technology where we can use our graphics cards to accelerate non-3D applications. With this power, PCs are able to use the graphics cards to speed up image and video editing and transcoding to achieve better results than a quad-core CPU, calculate realistic physics effects, and playback high-definition video with greater image quality than most standalone players,” Mr. Berger added.

ZOTAC is confident in the long-reliability of the GeForce 9800GT Eco and backs it with an extended warranty for trouble-free ownership. It’s time to play with the more power-efficient ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco.

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Weeks ahead of launch, Sapphire's Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator has already started to to get listed on online stores, not concentrated in a particular region. The HD 4890 is characterized by the upcoming RV790 graphics processor, it is a current-generation successor to the HD 4870 accelerator. Its specifications are unclear, though most sources in the industry and press have so far revealed it not to be much of a featureset expansion over the RV770.

Dutch retailer Salland Automatisering BV has listed the Sapphire-made accelerator for € 253.95 inclusive of VAT (€ 218.95 excluding it). Another retailer, PB Technologies Auckland (New Zealand), has listed it for NZ $613.97 (325 USD), including applicable taxes. The Dutch retailer went on to list some of the card's specifications. It features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3.90 GHz. Its core is clocked at 850 MHz. No pictures, or information about the GPU's internals (such as stream processor count, TMU/ROP counts) were provided. Both retailers have put the product on pre-order. AMD is expected to release the card on April 8, 2009.

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AMD is on the course of releasing a new line of high performance products based on its upcoming RV790 graphics processor. The high-end single GPU SKU, Radeon HD 4890 is expected to be competitive with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 (216 SP). NVIDIA on the other end of the field, is planning a retaliation to the RV790. The GPU giant is carving out a new SKU based on the 55 nm G200b: GeForce GTX 275.
The new SKU will be placed in the US $225~275 range. While the specifications are not known at this point in time, there are two theories: G200b with 216 stream processors and 512-bit memory interface, and the other theory suggesting 240 stream processors with the existing 448-bit memory interface on GTX 260. The latter looks inexpensive as the former would step up manufacturing costs due to the addition of two memory chips.

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As the price-war between the two graphics processor giants intensifies, ATI is reportedly preparing yet another price-cut for the Radeon HD 4870 1 GB graphics accelerator. The company had implemented significant reductions in prices of HD 4800 series accelerators as recently as in the first week of March.

The older price-cut placed the HD 4870 1 GB at the US $199 price point. Following NVIDIA's move to push the GeForce GTX 260 to that price-point, ATI's response is indicated to be a further $20 cut, sending the price down to $179. There is no word on when the new pricing would be implemented.

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ATI pada bulan April nanti akan meluncurkan RV790 (Radeon HD4890) yang merupakan seri penerus chip grafis terlaris tahun 2008 lalu yaitu ATI RV770 (Radeon HD4870).
Namun tampaknya RV790 tak lain hanyalah RV770 yang berjalan di kecepatan lebih tinggi saja. ATI hanya sedikit melakukan perombakan design pada arsitektur RV770 agar dapat menjalankannya pada kecepatan yang lebih tinggi.
Sample produk RV790 yang telah dibuat memiliki GPU yang berjalan pada kecepatan 850MHz dan menggunkan memory Qimonda IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X yang mampu berjalan di 1GHz, namun hanya dijalankan pada kecepatan 975MHz.
Meski sempat dikabarkan bakal memiliki Stream Processor sebanyak 960SP dan 48 TMU, namun ternyata GPU pada sample produk RV790 masih memiliki jumlah Stream Processor yang sama seperti pendahulunya, yaitu 800SP dan dibekali 40 TMU dan 16 ROP.
Memory interface yang digunakan juga masih sama seperti RV770 yaitu 256-bit dan mendukung memory GDDR5, GDDR4, dan GDDR3. Proses produksi RV790 juga masih 55nm seperti halnya RV770 dan juga masih dibuat di TSMC, dan belum dikerjakan sendiri di pabrik AMD.
Dengan clock speed yang lebih tinggi ketimbang Radeon HD4870, Radeons HD4890 diharapkan memiliki kinerja 20% lebih tinggi ketimbang pendahulunya tersebut. Kinerja Radeon HD 4890 akan mengimbangi Geforce GTX285, namun harga jual Radeon HD4890 akan jauh lebih murah yaitu berkisar $200-$250.

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