A panel of Penny Arcade enthusiasts discussed this topic at a convention in Seattle recently.  The five girl-gamer panelists had some advice for the audience of 100-plus. 

Here are some of their suggestions.

• Don’t impose your favorite game on your gal pal. “Girlfriends may not be into ‘Halo,’ but they might like something else, so don’t force ‘Halo’ on them and expect them to love gaming,”
  
• Play co-op. Many games have a cooperative mode, where you and a buddy can tackle missions as a duo. Or if that’s still too intimidating, have your girlfriend sit with you and watch while you game. Heck, you can even ask her to be your wingman.
•  Ask her to help you spot snipers,  Chicks like flattery. If she feels like she’s helping, then you’re making it a positive experience.
• Internet casual games — which are popular with the female set — are a great entrée into the video-game world. Some are just online versions of offline games, such as poker and Sudoku, and still others are variations of well-known themes, such as match games and hidden-object puzzles.
• And, of course, everyone gave props to Nintendo for making gaming more inclusive. Heck, Carrie Underwood has a pink DS, right? And the Wii made being a gamer as easy as operating a TV remote.

Basically, treat it as a way to spend time together and interact.   Even if its not a girls game, just sit down with them cause you never know, they might just be a natural at it.  Above all, try to ignore the stereotypes and myths.

Source: MSN

As you may recall we posted [link ] that all Nvidia gpus 84 series up to 98 series and possibly higher were made with a faulty part that allowed the gpu to overheat.  Several manufacturers have been struggling to keep up with increased repairs.  The only fix that has been released is a Bios update that makes the fans run at full speed to try and control temperatures.

Several people have been poking holes at the sources that find fault with the Nvidia gpu. Much of the information came from the inquirer and some felt the authors to not be trusted.  Well that doesn't matter anymore as the shareholders have two lawsuits against the company.  The main lawsuit was filed by the shareholders saying the Nvidia allegedly held back information regarding the bad part to keep their stock from plumetting anymore than it already had.  The 2nd suit was filed as a class action lawsuit for anyone that bought stock in the last year. 

Definitely not a good time for Nvidia.

Source: Toms Hardware

Do you have an Nvidia card in your system.  Well chances are you have a defective card.  What kinds of odds.  Do you have an Nvidia 8400, or 8600 series card?  Sources have leaked information that all, yes every single Nvidia 84 or 86 series card may be defective.  That is a huge model lineup of possibly bad cards.  So all of you 8800, 9 series and mobile cards are lucky.  Well you guessed wrong too.  More research is citing that the faulty parts that were in the 8x series are also in pretty much every other Nvidia card up to the 9800. 

The faulty part basically deals with how the card cools down the card.  So the cards are actually melting due to faulty temperature management. Repair companies are seeing a huge influx of display problems with computers with any of the Nvidia cards.  The parts are based of the G84, G86, G92, G94 series type cards.  Nvidia has denied absolutely all wrongdoing.  They have only admitted to the bad mobile chip sets that were supposedly only given to HP as OEM parts.  This has also proven to be false as many other manufacturers are seeing more and more problems and in some cases have to exchange laptops at their own expense because Nvidia will no provide enough support.

These new cards from ATI are aimed for the gamers who wants high end performance without having to shell out insane amount of money for it. At a MSRP of 200$ for the 4850 and 300$ for the 4870, these cards are dealing a heavy blow to the green giant who has been for a long time using his performance crown to charge a hefty premium for gamers who wants high end FPS.
The 4850 and the 4870 are much alike in terms of features, they have a single GPU based on the 55nm RV770 chipset and both cards have 965 millions transistors, 800 stream processing units and 40 texture units all on a 256-bit bus. The differences between the 2 cards are on clock speeds and memory, the 4850 is a single slot card with GDDR3 memory clocked at 625/1000Mhz (1986Mbps) and the 4870 got a dual slot cooler on it with GDDR5 memory clocked at 750/1800Mhz (3.6Gbps).
The 4850 performs pretty much the same as the 9800 GTX from Nvidia while the 4870 brings the war to the GTX 260 and sometimes outperforms it. Now its up to you to chose which brand you will get for your next video card, but thanks to ATI, gamers on a budget are now getting more for their money.

-Here are some reviews and benchmarks-

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-4870-review--asus/
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-r...70-and-hd-4850/
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=581&type=expert