OCZ Technology Group today announced its latest contest, "Win with the nia," where competing gamers can use the revolutionary Neural Impulse Actuator to contend at national and regional levels for prize money and OCZ computer products. Gamers from all over the world will have the chance to put their nias to the test at LAN parties and e-sport competitions around the world, showing the gaming world just how incredible this new input device is at increasing immersion and lessening reaction times in the top PC titles.

A long time has passed since Creative last released any new Vista drivers for its X-Fi audio cards. Usually new drivers are being published every single day, and they don't concern us much, but in Creative's case a new driver release can be considered a break-through. It goes even worse, because when we talk about new Creative drivers for Windows Vista we expect something new to be added, but in reward we receive only features that are supposed to work by default with this concrete product. A perfect example for my words is the brand new Windows Vista 2.18.0004 driver for Creative X-Fi cards released today. It is now here to re-establish the hardware Dolby Digital, DTS decode and DVD-Audio playback functions, that were available in Windows XP for more than two years. If you own a Creative X-Fi card just like me and you use it under Windows Vista 32/64-bit, please follow this link to download Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Driver 2.18.0004.

Source: Creative

Hewlett Packard has released a list of affected notebook models. These 24 units may have the defective GPUs from NVIDIA, dating back as far as November 2007. Check out this HP website to see if your model is part of this group. C|Net quotes the HP rep:

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HP has taken appropriate actions for any HP notebook products that use the known affected Nvidia chips," We initiated a customer program to address this issue in November 2007, and have notified registered customers who have notebook PC models that are included in this HP program. HP became aware of this issue when we began performing an investigation based on field performance data."

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Users with problems, may be eligible for a free repair.

Source: C|Net

Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division, the world leader in high performance hard disk drive (HDD) technology, today launched three new external and fully portable HDDs that meet the performance requirements of today's technology-savvy and style-conscious consumers.

The colourful new high-quality external devices are Toshiba-built throughout and further extend the company's pioneering design pedigree in HDDs. Highly ergonomic, sleek and ruggedised to withstand the demands of being constantly in transit, the products feature a 2.5 inch drive and fit into the palm of the hand. They are ideal for users with large volumes of video, picture and audio files that want to use that data wherever they are, whether that be with friends and family, when entertaining or for professional uses. Compatible with both PCs and Macs, they are ideal for anyone needing to store and carry information and entertainment files.

German website Computerbase.de is reporting, that there are several users out there, who have received GeForce 8800GTs, which do not have the usual 112 Shaders and 256 bit memory interface you would expect from this model. Their cards seem to have only 96 shaders and an 128 bit interface. While the 128 bit interface is clearly advertised, the 96 shaders are not. This would make the card even slower than a 9600 GSO. The problem is, that these cards are still being sold as 8800GTs and you won't know that you have gotten a slower one, until you check it after installation. The card in question is from Point Of View with the model number R-VGA150868.

UPDATE: Looks like one affected user has heard back from Point Of View, he will get his card replaced. All shops selling this card should clearly advertise it as 128-bit variant. The number of shaders on the R-VGA150868 product is intended to be 112, not 96. That's why Point of View offered to replace the card.

Update no. 2: Both Point Of View and NVIDIA have commented on the issue. Point Of View states that they are only the first to offer this card at such specs and other manufacturers will follow. Meaning, that all 8800 GTs will suffer this change. NVIDIA on the other hand is not aware of any such change and has underlined, that Point Of View is acting alone on this one.
Source: Computerbase.de (german)

The leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, SteelSeries, today announced its acquisition of certain assets in Ideazon, Inc., the North American-based developer and manufacturer of gaming peripherals and technologies. This acquisition further strengthens SteelSeries' peripheral technology and will help expand the company's broad support within the gaming community.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today introduced two new CinemaStar hard drives optimized for use in digital video recorders (DVRs) and set-top boxes. The CinemaStar 7K1000.B is available in a broad range of capacities up to one terabyte (1TB) and the CinemaStar 5K320 delivers up to 320GB of capacity and incorporates innovative Hitachi CoolSpin technology.

Six months after the release of KDE 4.0, the KDE community today announced KDE 4.1, the second most important release in the KDE 4 era. KDE 4.1 brings support for a lot of new applications and newly developed features. It is also the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to a point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users. If you're using KDE Linux distribution, and you find KDE 4.1 to be interesting for you, make sure to take some time and read through the full changelog here. To download the complete source code for KDE 4.1.0 please click here.


Source: KDE Community

Akasa announced today they are shipping the new Infiniti and infiniti Zor - professional and gaming PC case designed for pro-gaming systems and high performance work stations. infiniti's distinctive 11 bay design was created by Akasa's Hong Kong based industrial design team. Akasa is targeting the ZOR at the gaming market and infiniti at those who want top performance with thermal efficiency and require low noise levels from the chassis. The infiniti case has a totally ventilated aluminium and mesh front panel with two 12cm fans, a top panel mesh window providing a watercooling facility for bay fitting radiators and fixings for 2 x 12cm fans.

Leadtek Research Inc., the global leading brand for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new high-end graphics card, WinFast PX9800 GT 512MB. Based on the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics processing units and unified architecture design, the new graphics card can provide customers the best-in-classic gaming performance.

Walton Chaintech, the world's renowned graphics card and memory module manufacturer, announces today the GeForce 9 series GSE9500GT DDR3 512MB graphics card, the officially appointed gaming graphics card for the famous game C.S. On-Line in Taiwan. CHAINTECH GSE9500GT is the mainstream graphics card not only geared by the latest NVIDIA GeForce series core G96 technology but with an easier price tag, providing consumers a two-times more exciting visual experience than its prior version.

Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new mainstream graphics cards, WinFast PX9500 GT GDDR3 and GDDR2. The new cards, with Leadtek exclusive performance-driven layout can enhance overclocking capabilities without system instability and offer the excellent performance like never before. The 4th generation Heat-exhaust-efficiency Fansink can create a dramatic cool-down effect and reduce noise level further. Users would never worry about the cooling issue of graphics card.

POINT OF VIEW, well known for its range of NVIDIA based Graphics cards, is launching today the GeForce 9500 GT.Your PC is now more visual than ever. Supercharge this visual experience with the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT GPU - there is no better investment to provide more vibrant photos, smoother videos, and more realistic gaming.

BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, 9800 GT OC, and the GeForce 9500 GT graphics cards. All three new BFG graphics cards offer best-in-class price versus performance, and are backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry.

ZOTAC International today also unveils its new lineup of budget graphics cards based on NVIDIA's new GeForce 9500 series graphics processors. The latest GeForce 9500 series lineup delivers extreme levels of visual reality at affordable prices and consists of the ZOTAC GeForce 9500 GT AMP! Edition, GeForce 9500 GT DDR3 and GeForce 9500 GT DDR2.

ZOTAC International, a leading manufacturer of NVIDIA-based graphics cards, today unleashes a new generation of performance graphics cards with the new ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT series. The new series includes the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT and 9800 GT AMP! Limited Edition - a power packed duo ready to take on the latest DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.1 3D games and applications.

Originally ASUS' Eee PC 900/901 netbooks are limited to a maximum of 20GB onboard SSD storage and possibly a bit more if you add an additional storage card or extra USB flash memory. While it may be enough for some, it's unacceptable for others. For that reason, Japanese firm Buffalo has teamed up with various SSD suppliers to offer special Eee PC storage bundles that include more capacity for a little extra cash. Soon Buffalo will start offering two HDD upgrade kits for Eee PC 900/901 series, a 32GB SHD-EP9M32G and a 64GB SHD-EP9M64G models, that will make the netbook more flexible. Buffalo forecasts the two replacement drives to become available sometime in September with the 32GB model priced at ¥14,800 (US $136) and the 64GB model priced at ¥29,800 (US $275).


Source: TechConnect Magazine, PC Watch

Along with the release of the new NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, and 9500 GT GPUs comes a new beta driver. The GeForce driver release 177.79 comes to add nothing but these three GPUs to the database of supported GeForce 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs. It may also bring some performance improvements in various games and applications. Give the release notes a try for more information.

DOWNLOAD: Windows XP 32-bit|64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit|64-bit

Source: NVIDIA

NVIDIA Corporation has unveiled a new era of notebook PC gaming, featuring advanced rendering and physics effects that will transform gaming beyond what consumers know today. Enabling this evolution is a new generation of notebook PCs equipped with NVIDIA's newest GeForce 9800M and 9700M GPUs and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX physics engine. Perhaps the most significant advancements in PC gaming since DirectX 9, the new GPUs and PhysX will let notebook gamers enjoy the latest games in all their glory, experiencing ultra-realistic graphics and physical effects that mimic the real world, transforming their gaming into a truly cinematic experience.

NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced the immediate availability of three new desktop GeForce 9 Series graphics processing units (GPUs) that bring support for NVIDIA PhysX technology and CUDA general-purpose parallel computing to mainstream PC computing markets.

True HD computer displays have become increasingly popular for the past year. Now Dell knows that and has released S2409W, Dell's first 24-inch 16:9 widescreen display. The 16:9 aspect ratio brings along 1920x1080 Full HD display resolution, 5ms response time, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 160° / 170° degree viewing angles. At the back you'll find a VGA, DVI and HDMI connectors. The 24-inch Dell S2409W is available now directly from Dell for just $379. Once you order it, it will be at your front door in two days time. More info is available here.


Source: Dell

Dell's smallest, most personalized and most environmentally responsible consumer PC, the Studio Hybrid, launches today. Available immediately at Dell, the PC's new unique shape and size, personalized with six external jewel-toned color or bamboo finish options, unleashes stylistic expression, inspiration and fun and looks great in any room.

It has been said that Intel is preparing to launch its latest Core 2 Quad processor, the Q8200 on August 31st. The forthcoming processor features four 45nm Penryn cores, 2.33GHz core clock, 4MB of shared L2 cache, a 1333MHz front-side bus, and a suggested price tag of just $203. Specs may be right, but consider the other information a rumor, at least until further info is available.

Source: TweakTown

Following the die shrink from the 65nm silicon fabrication process to the newer 55nm that brings down thermal envelope and allows higher GPU parameters for the GeForce 9800 GTX to 9800 GTX+, NVIDIA apparently provided the G94 core a die shrink, the product based on this core will continue to maintain the GeForce 9600 GT brand name. The mark on a 65nm die is G94-300-A1 and 55nm die is G94-300-B1. It keeps 650MHz/1625MHz/900MHz (core/shader/mem) parameters and more overclocking headroom can be left to customers and vendor partners.


Source: Expreview

Sophos Plc ("Sophos"), a global leader in endpoint security and control solutions, today announced its intent to acquire Utimaco Safeware AG ("Utimaco") (Frankfurt Stock Exchange ISIN DE0007572406), a global leader in data security solutions for enterprises, headquartered in Oberursel, near Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Sophos intends to launch a voluntary public takeover offer in cash for all outstanding Utimaco shares. Concurrently, Sophos has entered into an agreement with Investcorp Technology Partners, the largest shareholder of Utimaco, to acquire its 24.99% stake in Utimaco for cash and Sophos stock upon the takeover offer becoming unconditional.

Donanimhaber released the first picture of the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Ultimate, which should be released very soon. In many aspects the GPU is at most part a re-branded 8800 GT with its 512MB GDDR3 memory, 112 Stream Processors and identical core/memory clockspeeds. The Ultimate model from ASUS however features much higher parameters, 725MHz core, 2000MHz memory and 1750MHz shader clocks. The picture shows the card to have a cooler similar to that of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512M. It remains to be seen if the GPU uses the newer 55nm silicon fabrication process.


Source: Donanimhaber

Lack of proper clarification by NVIDIA on exactly which products have defects that require a recall, certain channel vendors now demand that some of their desktop graphics cards be recalled for a replacement. It had been established that certain discrete graphics processors for the mobile platforms had problems caused due to manufacturing defects and announcements were made on NVIDIA's part that they would recall and replace the faulty parts.

NVIDIA has commented that the faulty notebook GPU problem only exists in a few specific notebook models made by specific clients. The company contended that desktop-based discrete graphics card products are not affected by the issue.

Source: DigiTimes

Last week, Microsoft conducted an experiment in San Francisco, USA where 120 users with a negative opinion on Windows Vista were introduced to a new OS to which a majority of them gave positive feedback, only to discover it was Windows Vista under the covers (covered here). Microsoft now wants to publish its results in a new website presumably with promotional tones over its so-far-flop Windows Vista operating system. Results come out in the form of videos, text and presentations. The website titled "The Mojave Experiment" can be reached here.


Source: CNET

OCZ Technology could take the Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA), a device that provides input by interpreting brain waves to a PC, to gaming consoles where they replace the function of game-controllers. Using the device you could play games with complex and sometimes rapid control such as Unreal Tournament or Crysis without using your hands on a PC, proving it could provide a device input at a very rapid rate. TechRadar met Tobias Brinkmann, director of marketing at OCZ. Brinkmann told that the company was looking into the possibility of developing the NIA to function as an input device for major gaming consoles.

"It's definitely something we are looking into," he said. "The thing we think would be most cool is to get the NIA working with the Nintendo Wii - that would be good. But of course it would be great if we could get it working with all the consoles." Brinkmann also revealed that in the past Microsoft made attempts to acquire the technology from OCZ which was turned down by OCZ, pointing at the potential this technology has.


Source: TechRadar

Industry sources tell DigiTimes that more graphics card vendors could venture into IGP Motherboards. An IGP motherboard is that which uses integrated graphics processors (IGP) made by AMD or NVIDIA. This move follows a noticeable fall in the demand for entry-level discrete graphics cards, with consumers opting for motherboards with IGPs instead. IGPs such as the AMD 780G and the upcoming 790GX and those from NVIDIA such as GeForce 8200, offer performance on par with entry-level discrete graphics and also offer power-saving features.

Most vendors have outsourced their IGP motherboard manufacturing to OEMs, with the Minix 780G ITX creator J&W Technology, followed by Palit Microsystems and Jetway being the biggest gainers. It's also known that first-tier channel vendors (such as ASUS, MSI, etc.) dominate sales of these products leaving these new upcoming vendors to compete mutually before they take on those dominant players.

Source: DigiTimes

Fujitsu has announced an Intel Atom-based UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC), not to be confused with ULPC. This ultra-portable will focus on the high-end market with a US $1000 to $1200 price tag. It has a 5.6-inch LCD screen, 3.5G data connectivity and GPS and tips the scales at 610g. Specifications can be summarized as:

• Intel Centrino Atom Z530
• SCH US15W (Poulsbo) Chipset
• Touch Screen, 5.6 inches diagonally, 1280 x 800 pixels (WXGA)
• 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz memory
• 60 GB conventional HDD
• Wireless interfaces - Wi-Fi 8021.11n and Bluetooth
• Other - fingerprinting sensor, web-camera, kartovod SD format and CF
• 20wh 2-cell battery

This notebook will be available in three colour models: U2010BU (Ocean Black), U2010GU (Pink Gold), U2010RU (Fuchsia Red).


Sources: UMPC Portal, iXBT, DigiTimes

Expreview conducted a comprehensive comparison between the performance of ATI graphics hardware using the older Catalyst 8.6 + Hotfix driver versus that of the newest Catalyst 8.7 driver. The testbed comprised of:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 overclocked at 4.05 GHz
• ASUS Maximus II Formula motherboard
• G.Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1100
• ASUS Radeon HD 4870 TOP

Tests included a majority of games, real-world performance tests along with synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark. The performance gains of the hardware using the 8.7 Catalyst driver never crossed 2.33%, in fact in some tests there was a performance loss of up to 1.08% against the older 8.6 Catalyst driver plus the hotfix. It shows that on a Radeon HD4870, the newer driver did not bring about significant improvements, at least not on par with what the release notes suggested. Expreview also suggests that if users aren't experiencing other issues which the Catalyst 8.7 fixed such as video output corruption in rare cases, the older driver is worthwhile. Test results are provided below.


Source: Expreview

Brandished under the Cooler Master Storm series being introduced in the KODE5 gaming championship event held in Europe is the CM HAF932 gaming system case. This Full-tower ATX Case launch accompanies a fleet of products that include the CM V8 series CPU cooler and the UCP line up of high performance power supply units (PSU).

The ever-popular American IT online store Newegg is heading for a sister-store in Canada. Newegg draws hits from all over the world for having the broadest range of IT products and at some very attractive prices, in close to 99 percent of the orders placed in the US, deliveries were approved within 24 hours of placing orders.

The entry of Newegg into Canada could shake up the Canadian online retail sphere and promises to bring the best available prices to Canadian buyers. With expansion being a key company policy for Newegg, starting off with a Newegg Mall in the United States, and now the store in Canada, we can tell the company is aggressively expanding. The site is currently at a construction stage, another URL to keep handy is www.newegg.ca

Source: Hardware Canucks

GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards today launched the new GIGABYTE EG45 Series motherboard - GA-EG45M-DS2H. Featuring the most secure, green and high performing integrated graphics solution on the market and powered by the latest Intel G45 Express chipset with Intel GMA X4500HD graphics core, the GIGABYTE EG45 Series delivers extensive high-definition video and audio capabilities to enable the latest high-definition digital multimedia systems. The GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-DS2H supports the powerful and energy efficient Intel 45nm Core2 Quad processors and features the new Intel G45 chipset. At the heart of the Intel G45 Express chipset is the Intel X4500HD graphics media accelerator, which features several unique innovations including more Execution Units for enhanced 3D performance breaking 1100+ scores on 3DMark 06 benchmark and Intel Clear Video Technology for sharper images and precise color control. The G45 chipset also supports smoother HD video playback, and includes support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, thanks to built-in hardware video decode acceleration.

The GA-EG45M-DS2H is equipped with several unique GIGABYTE features including Ultra Durable 2 design, the fundamental building block of GIGABYTE motherboards, Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, GIGABYTE’s Ultra TPM, and a host of other features that not only maximize performance and energy efficiency, but also provide the highest levels of data security.

Mushkin Enhanced, a leading manufacturer of high performance PC - components, announces the immediate availability of the three best-selling 2x 2GB DDR2 memory kits of 2008 announced its PCB used a special feature. Instead of the familiar green PCBs, Mushkin has invented something special. Based on the slogan "Black is beautiful" is the new X-line 8 series using "Challenger 8" series PCBs. Casemodders and all others who lay emphasis on special details, will be pleased with the black 8 SKILLED "Challenger" PCB. The black PCB now fits perfectly with the other PC components in the interior life and evaluates the overall picture.

The X-Line modules are now available in the following specifications:

• 4096 MB, XP2-6400, 4-4-4-12 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996580X)
• 4096 MB, XP2-6400, 4-4-4-12 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996580wX)
• 4096 MB, XP2-8000, 5-5-5-15 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), REDLINE, with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996593X)

Images provided in the order 996580X, 996580wX and 996593X:

Choice is a wonderful thing. Informed Choice is even better, where you choose something after knowing its inside-outs. The very opposite of informed choice is dogma, where you rigidly oppose something and stick to your beliefs. Incidentally, dogma seems to be one of the significant factors keeping users away from embracing Windows Vista OS, of what can be inferred from an experiment by Microsoft in San Fransisco, United States. A group of Windows XP users having negative impressions on Windows Vista were introduced to a "new" operating system they referred to as "Mojave". User experiences on using this operating system were noted and feedback taken. A surprising 90 percent of these users gave positive feedback on this new OS. They were later told that the new OS was nothing else but Windows Vista.

Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.

Source: CNET

Touted as Google's answer to Wikipedia, the current most sought after online information resource, The Knol opens to public. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, Google is making Knol available to everyone.

Unlike Wikipedia being based on a MediaWiki system where users cen edit pretty much every article, and in some cases even abuse the system, Knol's approach includes that the author of an article maintains control over changes to it, the author can accept or reject changes before they become visible to public.

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

Here's another URL worth keeping handy: knol.google.com

Source: Official Google Blog

POINT OF VIEW, well known for its range of NVIDIA based Graphics cards, is launching today the GeForce 9800GTX+, an upgraded version of one of the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market, the GeForce 9800 GTX.

The GeForce 9800GTX+ has major improvements compared to its predecessor. The GPU has been down-sized to 55nm, which offering a major improvement to its power consumption efficiency, operating temperature and core speed. Its 512 MB DDR3 memory is running on 2200 MHz whilst the GPU core has a speed of 738 MHz. The speed of the internal processors has been increased with almost 250 MHz to an impressive speed of 1836 MHz.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced that the company has dramatically improved the write speeds of its MasterDrive DX, MasterDrive KX and MasterDrive MX solid state drives (SSDs).

These three series of SSDs already boast exceptionally fast read speeds of up to 120 MB/sec. But, fast write speeds are important in applications such as video editing and encoding, image processing, compressing and extracting files, installing applications and copying files to the drive. These newly revised SSDs categorically outpace the fastest hard drives in the world.

NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce the Guardian 921, a gaming chassis in the NZXT Crafted Series. Building off of the original Guardian's success, the Guardian 921 features a robust set of features for the budget conscious PC Gamer.

The overclocking memory module specialist, Walton Chaintech Corporation, today debuts the APOGEE GT Blazer DDR3 1800 4GB Low Voltage Memory Module. Supporting EPP 2.0 as well, APOGEE GT Blazer DDR3 1800 4GB kit attains the lowest voltage of 1.8V compared with other memory modules of similar speed in current market place for more power saving operation, and longer product life.

Lexar Media, a leading global provider of memory products for digital media, today announced immediate availability of Crucial Ballistix® PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz) and PC3-14400 (DDR3-1800MHz) high-performance memory modules. These new modules expand on the award-winning Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 and DDR3-2000MHz product offering. As part of its commitment to the PC enthusiast and gaming community, Lexar Media continually seeks to bring new memory offerings to market and enhance its product lines.

Chile Hardware (CHW) managed to take a snap of a screen reportedly showing a roadmap slide of NVIDIA drivers which shows an entry called "Big Bang II" under the September time-scale. There are markers which NVIDIA informally refers to as "Big Bang" when the drivers bring about something very significant in terms of features. To give you an idea, the first "Big Bang" brought about support for the SLI multi-GPU technology years ago.

Although the shot is fairly illegible, it shows Big Bang II to bring in features such as driver-level Display Port connectivity support, performance and quality improvements and support for OpenGL 3.0, which seem rather plain since NVIDIA didn't regard DirectX 10 compatible drivers under a "Big Bang" either, and performance and quality increments are a day to day affair with driver releases. It would be interesting to see how this pans out.


Source: CHW

Although the introduction of Intel Bloomfield, the next-generation processor from Intel was slated for November later this year, sources at motherboard companies report that Intel could prepone its launch to September along with the X58 system chipset platform. However it is known that motherboard vendors will not be in a position to bring LGA-1366 socket based motherboard into retail channels until early October. This might not cause internal-competition between Intel's products.

Source: DigiTimes

With wide-spread news about AMD integrating a graphics controller on a CPU, the AMD Fusion, the concept of "Small is Big" is being redefined. Fusion may look like a step in the right direction but is merely prelude to another computing methodology, the SoC (system on a chip). Fusion could be confined to consumer desktop/notebook central processing with graphics thrown in, but a concrete step taken by Intel into this which is more of targeted to the enterprise, embedded systems and consumer electronics is the EP80579 integrated processor. HotHardware spoke with Gadi Singer, Vice President of Intel's Mobility Group, and Doug Davis, Vice President of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. Intel's brand new product line targeted at security, storage, communications, and industrial applications, basically embedded computing were discussed. The EP80579 integrated processor was central to this conversation. The need for this product came about by Intel as a preparation of the company for the impending onslaught of smart, Internet-connected devices and appliances predicted to arrive over the next few years.

WD announced today the WD VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM enterprise SATA hard drives in an enterprise-class 2.5-inch form factor for blade servers and 1U and 2U rack servers. The newest WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built for business-critical applications with enterprise-class mechanics and packs up to 300 GB of capacity into the enterprise small form factor bays, while consuming 35 percent less power than the previous-generation WD Raptor drive.

Reports by TG Daily suggest that NVIDIA could release a WHQL-certified stable release PhysX driver that supports all capable GPUs GeForce 8 series thru 9-series and GTX 200 series. The driver would expand driver-level support to all PhysX-based game titles including the likes of Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfighter, Warmonger and Cell Factor: Revolution.

It is expected that downloads of free games such as Warmonger and Cell Factor could spike in August since the user-base of PhysX substantially increase then. The driver is expected to be out on the 5th of August.

Source: TG Daily

BFG Technologies, Inc., the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card.

Backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry, the BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC graphics card is overclocked out of the box and pushes the limit in ultra realistic game play with NVIDIA PhysX technology, offering extreme HD gaming with 3-Way NVIDIA SLI. The BFG 9800 GTX+ OC provides optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Packing more performance than the standard BFG 9800 GTX, this graphics card offers a first-class entertainment experience.

Today the PC-K12 midi chassis is launched under the Lancool brand. This is a Midi-Tower case with 9x 5.25" bays giving you plenty of options and tonnes of room. The strength of the Lancool series lies not only in the structure, but also in the features, which include support for the modular patented anti-vibration HDD cage, supporting 3x HDD's. Each HDD is mounted with a special thumbscrew and rubber grommet to ensure that HDD's are secure and vibration free. The modular cage can be secured as you see fit within the roomy interior of the case. It has a120mm fan mounted into the bracket, making sure that the HDD's are cooled and that air flow is optimal according to your needs. Incorporating outstanding quality and craftsmanship; the Lancool series have a steel inner-core, making them stronger than all-aluminum chassis, but also considerably cheaper.

Salient Features:

• Modular patented anti-vibration HDD cage (3xHDD's)
• 9x 5.25" ODD bays
• PSU mounted high (back), supports large PSU's
• 120mm intake (front-adjustable);
• 120mm exhaust (back-high)
• Door panel with lock and silent padding
• Aluminum shell, with steel core

While Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) still dominates the web-browser market and Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera among others catching up, a new browser is taking shape at a global level (read stable English version) called Sleipnir. This browser originates from Japan, made by Yasuyuki Kashiwagi that leads the company Fenrir Inc. This browser is popular among Japanese technophiles. The browser uses two rendering engines, Trident and Gecko. Trident is that which drives IE while Gecko runs a host of former Netscape-derivatives such as Firefox among others. A small button at the bottom-left corner of the browser window allows user to switch the render-engines since different pages display differently depending on the browser used, a functionality already achieved by Firefox when the popular add-on 'IE-tabs' is installed.

At this point the makers of this browser hope to capture at least 5% of the browser market share which looks steep but since Firefox was written off in the same way, who knows? Just that Firefox was something 'refreshing' when it came about. Following the success of Firefox, several browsers did mushroom before Sleipnir, FoxIe comes to mind, which used IE engine and a Firefox-like interface. Although Sleipnir doesn't have a rendering engine of its own, using Trident and Gecko helps with compatibility. You can visit the official website here.


Source: ComputerWorld

Texas Memory Systems (TMS) devised a SSD storage called the RamSan-440 that the company claims to have broken speed and capacity records. This 4U rack-mount device has a sustained speed of 600,000 IO/s with available storage capacities of 256GB and 512GB. The SSD also uses proprietary technology from Texas Memory called IO² (Instant-On Input-Output) that improves availability by making data requested from users or applications available instantly when the system is on.

The system uses DDR2-SDRAM, data backup is done instantly by transferring data to the internal flash memory with minimal system overhead. The device can be attached through SAN or using eight 4 Gbps fibre-channel ports.


Source: DailyTech

The newest fleet of quad-core desktop processors from AMD, the Deneb series is tested by Chinese website Zol to consume up to 12 per cent less power compared to equally clocked 65nm Agena parts, add to that, the fact that the 45nm Deneb comes with three times the amount of L3 cache, 6 MB.

The 45nm and 65nm parts were compared on a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 card, a single 320 GB HDD, two modules of 1GB DDR2 1066 MHz memory, the test-bed was powered by a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU. Power consumption was calculated in idle and load (the CPUs were stressed using instances of Orthos).

With the prices of solid state drives (SSD) on the fall, this gadget comes a tad late, but if you're (still) looking for an inexpensive SSD-like solution, Taiwanese manufacturer RAIDON unveiled an SSD enclosure, a device that holds up to two Compact Flash (CF) cards in either RAID 1 or NRAID (capacity increment) modes. Another demerit is that while the prices of SSDs are on a fall, the prices of CF cards aren't. 16 GB cards are selling for prices which make buying two 16 GB CF cards pointless compared to 32 GB MLC SSDs. What looks like the a 2.5 inch SSD with the hood closed, clearly isn't. The enclosure has the same exact dimensions of a 2.5 inch drive with mount-holes. The device supports both IDE and SATA host interfaces.


Source: Hexus.net

Art Lebedev has presented a new member of the Optimus family, Optimus Pultius. This gadget like its older full-featured cousin the Optimus Maximus, uses 15 OLED embedded keys that make them fully-programmable. The Optimus Maximus did go on sale with a price tag as much as US $1900. The Pultius can be used with the Maximus for expansion of programmable keys or a side-kick to your existing keyboard. This product launches sometime end of 2008 thru early 2009.


Source: Live Journal

Microsoft has released a handful of details about DirectX 11, the latest version of the company's API.

• Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
• Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
• New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
• Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
• Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close

Source: Shacknews

Rudimentary software-level protection for IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), a network protocol which comes pre-installed with several operating systems (OS) but poorly implemented in the real-world makes it a protocol ignored by security providers, and effectively a soft-target for hackers to compromise a system.

Several OSes including Linux 2.6 upwards, Windows Vista, Solaris, Mac OS X and mobile OSes such as Windows Mobile 5 and 6 come with IPv6 enabled by default, though the user would probably not use the protocol in a year 2008 setting where the networks haven't embraced the protocol to level that makes it an explicit requirement for all internet-enabled computers the way IPv4 is. Keeping this in mind, software level protection for IPv6 is close to non-existent, having strong intrusion detection-enabled protection might keep you safe at an IPv4 level that's still standard, but with IPv6 enabled and with protection that doesn't cover IPv6, the PC is as vulnerable as one without any firewall at all. With IPv6 'listeners' (programs that open ports and allow incoming connections) in place the PC becomes vulnerable to intrusions. All it takes is for a hacker to create an IPv6 listener program (malware) and plant it on a PC.

During a conference of the company's second quarter earnings, the CEO Eli Harari of Sandisk, a significant player in the solid state drive (SSD) industry said that Windows Vista would present a special challenge for solid state drive (SSD) makers. Says Harari: "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,". He hints at the design of Vista as a cause for performance not being upto the mark, adding that Sandisk's next generation drive controllers should aim to "basically compensate for Vista shortfalls".

"Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," said Harari. Ironically, he has also been quoted saying that such issues didn't affect the "very low-end, ultra low-cost PCs" (read ULPCs), where existing controller technologies could handle 8 ~ 32 GB drive capacities. Clever choice of words since that's the segment that has drive manufacturers, both SSD and HDD, eying at since it's an emerging segment.

Source: CNET

Following price-cuts for some of the desktop offerings (covered here) , Intel has cut the prices of some models of the enterprise-segment Xeon processor, reports industry observer DigiTimes.

The Xeon X3220, X3210 and E3110 get a roughly 12% cut with the X3220 and X3210 both dropping from an original price of US $224 to US $198 with the E3110 price dropping from US $188 to US $167, according to the company.

Source: DigiTimes

Intel Atom, the 'small wonder' of the computing industry, may have been making a mark with ULPC notebooks and inexpensive ITX solutions, but the UK-based web-hosting company Bytemark found a new application of this chip, dedicated servers. The Atom processors have sufficient computing power to handle web server processes. In Bytemark's words, they're "pushing the boundaries of what Intel Atom was intended to do". Although for now the design is simplistic, ITX based, Bytemark plans to take this concept to a large-scale, making inexpensive, energy-efficient servers. A dedicated server with a 1.60 GHz Atom, 2 GB memory, 2x 100 GB HDDs in RAID 1 (that's 100 GB of available storage), for £495 (US $992) per annum.


Source: Hexus.net

This fall, Xbox 360 gaming console could be given capabilities to stream content from providers such as Netflix. Microsoft announced a tech partnership with the popular movie rental company Netflix at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles, United States. That gives you access to the thousands of movies and TV shows Netfilx has in store for rental viewing. It's a good deal for Netflix as it adds to its market media, even more so for Microsoft since its squeezing in all the value-added-services it can for the Xbox 360 which already seems to be threatened by the Japanese Nintendo Wii on home-turf, and the Sony Playstation 3 which comes with capabilities to play Blu-Ray discs, the next big physical content medium.

Source: Popular Science

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today announced the first memory modules available in their Fatal1ty Series after the partnership was announced last month. These high-performance memory kits were co-developed with the expertise of Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, 12-time World champion, to meet the specific needs of fellow gamers. OCZ Fatal1ty Professional Series kits are the official memory modules of Championship Gaming Series (CGS), and feature incredible performance to power through the latest PC titles and contribute to the success of professionals and everyday gamers.

"OCZ worked closely with Fatal1ty and his team to design new memory kits that pair perfectly with the top selling motherboards for a superior gaming experience," commented Alex Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of the OCZ Technology Group. "Fatal1ty knows what it takes to win at the highest level of eSports, and these new kits deliver superior stability and performance to gamers whether you are a professional player on the Championship Gaming Series, or a weekend warrior looking to dominate when playing the latest titles."

AMD released stable versions of the ATI Catalyst driver package for the Radeon series graphics accelerators. According to the release notes document (located here), improvements on both the features and performance fronts have been brought about. The drivers specific to your version of Windows, Linux, Windows on Macintosh (Bootcamp), Mac OS and on your model of Radeon accelerator can be found on the company website here.

NVIDIA has released two lines of high performance graphics processors (GPU) for the notebook PC market, the GeForce 9800M series and the 9700M series. These are sub-classified into GT and GTS for the 9700M and GT, GTS and GTX for the 9800M. These new GPUs provide a wide range of options for manufacturers to choose from and design high-performance gaming and multimedia notebooks.

These 9800M GTX GPU is based on the same G92 core, and will outperform its previous generation 8800M GTX that also happens to be based on the same core. The rest are based on the G94 and the newer G96 cores. These GPUs are CUDA compliant and will be able to accelerate game physics using the PhysX API. They support NVIDIA Hybrid Power technology. Simply put, on notebooks with integrated graphics processors (IGP) along with these GPUs, the system will be able to switch over to the IGP when not gaming, and switch over to the GPU when heavy graphics tasks are running (such as gaming, 3D rendering, HD Video acceleration, etc.). Speaking of video, these GPUs support Powervideo HD technology, includes VP2 acceleration. There's no information on these GPUs' fabrication technology yet. Specifications provided below.


Source: Notebook Italia

Shuttle Inc., market leader in the mini-PC segment and manufacturer of Multi-Form-Factor solutions, today unveils a new XPC Barebone from the P2 model series building on Intel's X48 Express chipset. Specially designed for high performance systems, the XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe is ideally suited for Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors with up to four cores.

The XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe is the first mini PC barebone ready to be equipped with DDR3 memory modules. A maximum capacity of eight Gigabytes on four sockets can be installed into this model. "The pioneering DDR3 memory technology promises more performance with less energy consumption and reduces heat development which is ideal for mini PCs," explains Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots enable the use of high-end graphics cards with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 being supported as well.

A relatively unknown brand, Cherrypal introduced a PC module dubbed 'cloud computer'. It carries a price tag of US $250. Sure you do find pre-owned full-size PCs for that price, but just think of it: this PC consumes a mere 2W of power when idle (excludes the consumption of monitor and other peripherals).

On the features front, there's enough computing power to get you onto the internet, it is driven by a 400 MHz Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT triple-core processor, 256 MB DDR2 memory and 4 GB of NAND flash memory to store the OS, a Debian-derived Linux OS, Mozilla Firefox as the core internet application (supports all add-ons and Linux media plugins). 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, two USB ports, an Ethernet port, VGA out, and stereo audio out. It beats the $929 VidaBox PC convincingly at its price-point. Sure, such devices are mere toys for average users like us sitting cozy with powerful gaming PCs, but such devices are a step in the right direction, towards Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing, a new buzzword in the computing industry, is the computing methodology where software is thin and light, and streamed onto a computer. A user accesses software either freely or on a subscription basis. All you need is a standards compiant web-browser, OS isn't a factor. This has gotten players such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe and others looking up to it as the next big thing. You don't need to buy those installation discs and throw gigabytes of hard-drive space at applications anymore.


Source: TG Daily

MSI has launched the GX620 a Centrino 2-based notebook with the company's exclusive Turbo Drive Engine technology to enhance the speed of CPU. The GX620 includes the new ECO Engine power saving technology to extend battery running time. The ECO quick launch touch sensor allows consumers to switch among five different modes including Gaming, Movie, Presentation, Office, and Turbo Battery.

GX620 features a 15.4-inch LCD display, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 3D graphics card and MSI's exclusive vivid image enhancement technology. GX620 also features Digital/Analog 5.1 Channel headphone output and SPDIF connection. The GX620 features Intel Centrino 2 processor technology, including Core 2 Duo processor and PM45 Express chipset, to deliver mobile solutions and provide HD capabilities, wireless connectivity, and long battery life for Blu-ray movie playback, highlighted MSI.


Source: MSI

Pentium developer Intel, today slashed the prices of several Core 2 Duo processors, and most notably has slashed the price of its 65nm Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU. The price of Core 2 Quad Q6600 drops 14%, from $224 to $193 in 1000 units tray quantity. In addition to making its most popular quad-core CPU cheaper, Intel has also slashed the prices of three 45nm dual-core Core 2 Duos. The Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 is now 31% cheaper, from $266 to $183. Intel's Core 2 Duo E8400 and E7200 CPUs are now 11% and 15% cheaper, fixed at $163 and $113 respectively.

Source: TechConnect Magazine

With NVIDIA releasing their GeForce PhysX drivers, users of the PhysX accelerating GeForce cards were at an advantage over their Radeon counterparts, reason being that in a certain CPU test routine of the 3DMark Vantage benchmark, the physics processing abilities of the computer are tested, and since the physics API used happens to be PhysX, users of GeForce get higher scores despite not having a physics processor device such as an Ageia PhysX card. This differs from a real-life scenario where a GeForce accelerator does both graphics and physics and the overhead of physics processing affects the graphics processing abilities.

The relation of GPU acceleration for gaining higher 3DMark scores in physics tests has been controversial to say the least. Futuremark has now decided to update its Hall of Fame to exclude all results using PhysX on a GPU, simply because this was not how they intended it to work. It has also been updated to organise the results better for easier comparison. You will be able to use GPU physics processing to get a 3DMark score, you will not be able to make it to the Hall of Fame using it. You can use an Ageia PhysX card to assist your 3DMark score to make it to the Hall of Fame, as that's how Futuremark intended PhysX processing scores to assist your final scores.

Source: NordicHardware

Lancool launched the PC-K6 mid-size ATX system case. Its salient features include:

• Aluminum shell, with steel core
  
• 4x HDD bays with special HDD tool-less bracket
  
• PSU mounted high (back), supports large PSU’s
  
• 2x fans; 140mm intake (front-low); 120mm exhaust (back-high)
  
• Removable, anti-vibration, silent front panel
  

CEO for AMD, Dirk Meyer said that AMD would unveil its plans to take on the Intel Atom processor to cater to the emerging ULPC market, making it part of the roadmap. Sources suggest he core codenamed Bobcat is derived from the K8 design, it is a 64-bit single core processor that could debute with a 1 GHz clock speed. It uses an 800 MHz (1600 MT/s) HyperTransport link as its system interconnect, a total of 128 KB L1 and 256 KB of L2 caches. A DDR2 memory controller will be on-die.

It is composed of a 22 sq. mm ball grid array (BGA) package with 812-pins. While its power consumption may be 8W, more than three times that of the Atom, the fact that currently Atom-based solutions make use of northbridge chips such as the i945 which consumes around 6W, the equation is more or less balanced. With Intel currently having problems coping with demand, it would have been a good time for AMD to materialise the Bobcat, and if it takes as far as this November before plans even surface, forget materialise, precious time is lost in the competition. Currently VIA C7-M and some low-power Intel Celeron parts are making up as alternatives to the Atom.

Source: Register Hardware

PowerColor is preparing an overclocked Radeon HD4870, the PCS (Professional Cooling System) model. This model uses 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and uses overclocked parameters, such as 800 MHz core. This card comes with a cooler made by Zerotherm comprising of heatpipes conducting to aluminum fins on either sides of a fan. According to TG Daily, this card could be based on the SuperRV770 concept, where high-performing parts are used along with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. According to PowerColor, this cooler could keep the temperatures down by up to 20° C versus reference ATI cooler even at the overclocked 800 MHz core setting.


Sources: PCGH, TG Daily

ZOTAC International, a leading NVIDIA partner, today unleashes two new high-performance graphics card based on NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 graphics architecture - the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX+ and GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! Edition. The new ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX+ series graphics cards are the result of extensive tweaking and tuning to extract superior clock speeds and performance from NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 architecture.

System component expansion interface PCI-Express could get its next major face-lift in 2009, following which products compatible with the interface could be out by 2010. The PCI Express Special Interest Group (SIG) is in the process of devising the new interface that provides devices with twice the amount of bandwidth as that of the current PCI-Express 2.0, that's 8 Giga-transfers per second (GT/s). it is said to be backwards compatible with older versions of the interface.

Changes in specifications are being made that allow this interface to support triple-slot, 300W (from the interface), 1.5 kg (roughly 3 lbs) graphics cards. Perhaps this is the ideal interface for 'heavier' products from NVIDIA, AMD, and soon Intel.

Source: GPU Café

Sources at TSMC told Hardspell that the next graphics processor (GPU) by ATI/AMD, the RV870 in the works have specifications such as:

• 40nm or 45nm fab process
• 140 sq. mm die size
• 192 ALUs, 960 stream processors
• 256-bit GDDR5 memory controller

It is believed that this GPU could perform 1.2 times better than RV770, purely based on the paper-specs.

Another interesting news is that R800, unlike its predecessors the R700 and R680, might not be a dual-GPU card but the world's first dual-core GPU.

Source: Hardspell

Hardspell released is list of possible specifications for the GeForce GTX 350 graphics processor (GPU):

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 350
• GT300 core
• 55nm technology
• 576 sq.mm die area
• 512bit GDDR5 memory controller
• GDDR5 2GB memory, doubled GTX280
• 480 stream processors
• Grating operation units are 64 the same with GTX280
• 216 GB/s memory bandwidth
• Default clock speeds of core: 830MHz, shader: 2075 MHz, memory: 3360MHz (effective)
• Pixel fill-rate 36.3G pixels/s
• Texture fill-rate 84.4Gpixels/s
• DirectX 10, no DX 10.1 support yet.

Source: Hardspell

In what could be a serious blow to AMD's R700 dreams as the company struggles to survive, NVIDIA could be working out another price-slash for the GeForce GTX 200 series, signs of which are already surfacing. You can get a GeForce GTX 280 for US $440. American e-tailer Newegg has already put several brands' GeForce GTX 280 on shelves for $440 (listed here), lower than the launch-price of the GeForce GTX 260.

Implications are:

• This paves the way for a 'GeForce GTX 280 Extreme', a new model which has been put on pre-order on British website OCUK (covered here).
  
• While board partners seemed displeased at the current market trend with the GTX 200 series (covered here), all of a sudden, they are all offering price-cuts. Could NVIDIA be subsidizing these products, given that some reports suggest poor reception of these products in the North American markets?
  
• Assuming the R700 comes in at around $499 and $549, it loses badly to the GTX 280 at its newest price on both fronts of price/performance and performance per Watt.
  
• No price-cuts for GTX 260 have been noted, showing this cut is very much specific to the GTX 280, serves two purposes: 1. Phasing out the 65nm parts, 2. striking R700 when it hurts the most, during launch.
  
• While NVIDIA has the resources to maintain the leadership of GeForce GTX 200 (by affording to slash prices), AMD doesn't.
  

Although the new $440 price tag looks tempting, you could wait for the R700 to launch, following which a more informed decision on your part could be made.

Being a niché product is never easy unless you pack what the public likes into a product. A graphics card, a sound card (HDMI output), a HD-DVR TV tuner, all rolled into one: ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder HD. This graphics card features ATI Theater 600 chip, a graphics core based on the RV635 (Radeon HD 3650).

Diamond Multimedia launched two products, the All-in-Wonder and the All-in-Wonder HD Premium, with the Premium featuring an expansion bracket with additional connectors. For more details, please visit the product page here.


Source: GPU Café

World of Warcraft (WoW), the largest MMORPG, is fun. People have gone lengths and breadths to achieve higher in the game. Those endless hours of playing it comes at a cost, the WoW subscription. But once you reach a high level (say 70), and own lot of gold, and basically have all achievements under your belt, your inclination to play the game retards. The fact that you have to pay to keep your subscription alive only makes it worse. For you, it means that you're bored, WoW isn't fun anymore, and so you could join another MMORPG. For Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard), it means losing revenue. Not that they're short of it, but no company would want to lose it.

In what can be seen as a bid to woo such players and maintain their patronage, new achievement levels have been added to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion pack. Similar to the achievements you have with console gaming, players will now be awarded titles, gear, bragging rights for several tasks, serious thru trivial. They can be as serious as defeating scores and scores of enemies or as trivial as getting a hair-cut done. Custom animations and sounds would accompany each achievement earned and in-game pets, special clothing and titles will also be awarded. According to Blizzard, these rewards will be "purely cosmetic" and won't affect actual gameplay.

Source: TG Daily

Here's something new: A CPU cooler that comprises of a circulatory mechanism of liquid-metal, the liquid-metal has higher thermal conductivity than other liquid media, flowing liquid metal across an array of metal fins to disperse heat, and the cycle continues. What's more, the liquid is inextinguishable. That's 'cool'. Danamics innovated such a cooler for today's CPUs called the LM10.

The cooler also has no moving parts. The pump that circulates liquid-metal across tubes doesn't have them either. The pump functions on the principles of electromagnetic flow, the ferromagnetic liquid is subjected to flow caused due to changes in polarity of electromagnets. With no moving parts, the MTBF is substantially increased. Of course, you can use a retention module of some sort to hook up a fan or two on each side of the heatsink. This product will be available soon. For more information, please visit this page.


Source: Danamics

AMD today announced that its board of directors elected President and COO Dirk Meyer as the company's chief executive officer. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. As executive chairman, Ruiz will ensure a smooth executive leadership transition, focus on driving the company's asset smart strategy to completion, and assist with high-level government and strategic partner relations.

"Dirk's election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD's board of directors and executive team," said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. "Under Hector's strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.

The full press-release could be read here.

Source: AMD

The leading network-attached storage (NAS) provider QNAP Systems, Inc. today unveils the next generation Linux-embedded one-bay and two-bay NAS: TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II for power users, SOHO, and business users. The TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series adopts high performance Marvell 500MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII large memory, which is a double of the memory size of the previous generation (TS-109/209 series) and becomes the best hardware specifications in the present SOHO NAS market. The Turbo NAS maintains superior system performance even if there are multiple accesses to various network services of the server concurrently. The new models are equipped with enhanced software functions, including the new BitTorrent download engine, built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1 for ease of PHP/MySQL-based web server hosting and upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4 for DLNA compliant media playing. Other professional features such as HDD S.M.A.R.T., complete log system, schedule backup from NAS to external storage device, etc. are also available. TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series is the ideal choice of high performance and energy-saving NAS for modern business and home users.

This August, NVIDIA plans to release its latest desktop core-logic (chipset) for the current Intel platform processors, the nForce 730i MCP, also known as MCP7A. The MCP7A features a GeForce 9-series mGPU dubbed IGP. Two variants, the MCP7A-U with a GeForce 9400 graphics core and the MCP7A-S with GeForce 9300 are known so far. Both IGPs carry 16 stream processors, they differ in specifications such as the GeForce 9400 featuring a core frequency of 580MHz and shader frequency of 1500MHz, while the GeForce 9300 to be clocked at 450MHz and 1200MHz core and shader respectively. The MCP7A supports a FSB up to 1333MHz, dual-channel DDR2 or DDR3 memory, and PCI Express 2.0. The GPU is based on NVIDIA G86 graphics core, which supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, supports HDMI, dual-link DVI, DisplayPort and D-sub connections. It will also support Hybrid SLI, PureVideo and CUDA technology.

Following the August launch, motherboard vendors could start shipping boards come September.

Source: DigiTimes

"Moderate" is a very relative term here. The Taiwanese industry observer DigiTimes reports that the next highest desktop CPU offering from the silicon giant Intel wouldn't be priced like the current Core 2 Extreme QX9770, QX9775. It could be as much as US $500 cheaper, that's $999 in 1,000 unit tray quantities. Expect the PIB (processor in a box) unit to cost on par with the current Core 2 Extreme QX9650. The highest offering from what we know, is a 3.20 GHz Bloomfield core based processor with in the LGA 1366 package.

In addition to this 3.20 GHz Extreme CPU, Intel will also introduce a performance version clocked at 2.93 GHz and quoted at US$562, and a mainstream version running at 2.66GHz and carrying a price tag of US$284. All three models will run on X58 chipset motherboards with the new LGA 1366 socket.

Source: DigiTimes

Today's top video games use complex programming and rendering techniques that can take months to create and tune in order to get the image quality and silky-smooth frame rates that gamers demand. Thousands of developers worldwide including members of Blizzard Entertainment, Crytek, Epic Games, and Rockstar Games rely on NVIDIA development tools to create console and PC video games. Today, NVIDIA has expanded its award-winning development suite with three new tools that vastly speed up this development process, keeping projects on track and costs under control.

The new tools which are available now include:

• PerfHUD 6—a graphics debugging and performance analysis tool for DirectX 9 and 10 applications.
• FX Composer 2.5—an integrated development environment for fast creation of real-time visual effects.
• Shader Debugger—helps debug and optimize shaders written with HLSL, CgFX, and COLLADA FX Cg in DirectX and OpenGL.

While not attempting to be a HTPC, the VidaBox PicoPC is a light-weight (quite literally) device that adds PC functionality to your HDTV. It features Windows XP Embedded OS on a ROM, it has security software embedded too. It features no moving parts, the software is on a ROM (hardwired, a-la the software that drives routers), you it ships with a Compact-Flash slot and a 2GB CF card, you can expand storage based on the capacity of the CF card. Optionally, the device can come with a 32GB SSD.

The device features two USB ports, an Ethernet port, a D-Sub for video output and line-in/out for audio. The unit is also available with 802.11b/g options. It comes with a multifunctional wireless keyboard. The device is so tiny that you could hide it behind the HDTV. For now, it's priced at a sore US$ 929 at the moment. For details, please visit the product page.

Source: Electronic House

Sun Microsystems and Samsung developed a solid-state drive (SSD) NAND Flash chip (the chips that go into making a SSD) which is based on the single-level cell NAND Flash design (better performance than MLC). Compared to other brands' memory, this part claims to provide a five-fold increase in write-and-erase data cycles, up to 5-10 million read-write-cycles. This makes the device an enterprise-friendly, ready for use in servers-grade SSDs. Samsung claims that this component provides 100-fold increases over conventional hard drives, in terms of the number of data transfers (input/output per second or I/OPS) per watt (Price / Performance, in other words). The new memory could be used for video streaming, high-transaction data processing, search engine operations and other high-speed server functions.

Source: TG Daily

Mozilla has released an update for their Firefox 3 web-browser. The update brings. Changes as condensed in the Release notes include:

---

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Fixed an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch.
• Under certain circumstances, Firefox 3.0 did not properly save the SSL certificate exceptions list.
• Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
• In certain cases, installing Firefox 2 in the same directory in which Firefox 3 has been installed resulted in Firefox 2 being unstable. This issue was fixed as part of Firefox 2.0.0.15.
• Fixed an issue where, when printing a selected region of content from the middle of a page, some of the output was missing (bug 433373).
• Fixed a Linux issues where, for users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) Firefox always started in "Offline" mode (bug 424626).

---

A list of security issues fixed is issued here.

Current Firefox 3 users will be automatically updated.

Source: Mozilla

The SOI Industry Consortium has announced that NVIDIA has joined the organization. NVIDIA now joins a league of companies such as AMD, Applied Materials, ARM, Cadence Design Systems, CEA-Léti, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Magma Design, Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Tyndall Institute, UCL and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC).

So what is SOI? Silicon on Insulator technology involves use of variable layered silicon-insulator-silicon substratum, used to minimize parasitic device capacitance and thereby improve performance.

Source: CIOL

NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced the Emerging Companies Summit, a two-day conference on August 26-27, 2008 in San Jose, California, aimed squarely at entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investment bankers who are focused on learning more about the visual computing industry. The Emerging Companies Summit, sponsored by Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, Morgan Stanley, and RR Donnelley will be held at the NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, California, and include tracks focusing on CUDA and high-performance computing; visual computing; lifestyle computing; and gaming.

“Our first-ever NVIDIA Emerging Companies Summit provides a unique and exciting venue for our attendees to meet some of the most relevant and creative companies, and people, who are passionate about visual computing and the GPU,” said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA. “Our goal is for the summit to serve as a catalyst for innovation and business opportunities throughout the visual and high-performance computing ecosystems.”

Following the introduction of the highly acclaimed HD 4800 series, SAPPHIRE Technology, the leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of AMD/ATI based graphics solutions is now shipping two new models of HD 4850 providing a further choice of price:performance points for the enthusiast.

The new SAPPHIRE HD 4850 1GB is a new version of the HD 4850 designed by SAPPHIRE for the user who demands more memory for specific applications like rendering. It offers similar overall performance to the standard model, with clock speeds of 625MHz (core) and 993MHz (memory).

AMD wants to leave the Barcelona (rather K10) debacle behind it as it moves closer to a newer processor architecture. This paves way for AMD to incorporate strong memory and system interface links. The G34 socket though touted to be a successor for the current socket 1207, is believed to be a standard socket for both enterprise and PC processors. AMD is working on a new CPU architecture codenamed 'Bulldozer'. Derivatives include monolithic 8-core and 12-core processors. The 12-core processor is now codenamed Magny-Cours, the 8-core part is called Sao Paulo. These processors could feature four parallel HyperTransport 3.0 interconnects, upto 12 MB of L3 cache and 512 KB L2 cache per core. It's known that AMD could be working on quad-channel DDR3 (both registered DDR3 under G3MX and unregistered). Socket G34 seems to have 1,974 pins.

The provision of four independent HyperTransport interconnects means that the fourth interconnect can be dedicated as a peer-to-peer interconnect between two sockets in a dual-socket setup, or its bandwidth split to form daisy-chains with multiple sockets. A prelude to AMD's Torrenza enterprise platform, which would allow use of several co-processors of different architectures including ClearSpeed to be embedded in workstations.


Source: DailyTech

And just when you thought the AMD 780G based ITX solution by J&W Technology slated for next week was one of a kind, (covered here), there already is competition for it, this time from the opposite front. Zotac has innovated an Intel + NVIDIA ITX board based on the nForce 610i chipset called Zotac nForce 610i ITX. This LGA 775 board comes features a single chip core-logic, supports the latest Intel processors including FSB 1333 MHz, the 45nm Wolfdale chip is supported, older quad-core chips are as well. Unlike the 780G ITX solution this features two full-size (240-pin) DDR2 slots, two SATA II ports and an IDE port. A single PCI-E x1 slot is present. The board in the picture only has one D-Sub display output driven by the GeForce 7050 IGP, and a 6-channel audio. This board isn't as feature-rich as the AMD 780G solution, but it's a nifty solution for internet shacks and cybercafe use. With even a cheap Pentium Dual Core E2000 series processor, it provides sufficient power for everyday tasks.


Source: Expreview

The latest publication of model-specific launch schedule of Intel processors up to Q3 2009 show several models of Extreme processors based on the Bloomfield core beginning from the 3.20 GHz Bloomfield part, which could be succeeded sometime in Q2 2009.

The very first wave of Nehalem architecture based processors arrives in Q4 2008, with the 3.20 GHz Extreme Bloomfield part, the Core 2 Quad is already cleaved into Performance and Mainstream segments, with a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield part making it to the former and a 2.66 GHz part to the latter segments. This is also the time when Intel makes the final additions to the Yorkfield family with the Q9650 processor in the performance and a Q9400 to the mainstream segments. The roadmap shows a gradual synthesis between the current generation and the next. By Q3 2009, Intel will have a full-fledged line-up of processors, including the part that has overclockers looking forward to, the Havendale. This chip is a successor to Wolfdale. It is a dual-core Nehalem-derived chip that supports Hyper-Threading. Also by Q3, the mainstream quad-core offerings would divide between lower Bloomfield and the Lynnfield core processors.

Also, a rather interesting tidbit is a slide which shows Lynnfield schematic with "Integrated or discrete graphics", with the video hardware marker attached to the CPU. Would this mean Intel beats AMD in the race for the first CPU+GPU CPU+IGP?


Source: Expreview

Advanced Media, Inc., is a manufacturer and marketer of the popular Ridata brand of recordable CD and DVD media, electronic storage products, and digital media accessories. The company is pleased to introduce its Ridata Ultra-S Plus Series of Solid State Drives (SSD) featuring faster transfer speeds than current Ultra-S products. Ultra-S Plus MLC now offers users products featuring a Multi-Level Cell (MLC) SATA configuration for fast read and write speeds plus larger storage capacities at a lower cost.

"We are pleased to offer laptop and other mobile computing device users an affordable SSD alternative to Hard Disk Drives (HDD). SSD drives offer a host of benefits over traditional hard disk drives especially for notebooks. Cool and silent running, low battery usage, fast data access, dependable performance and resistance to temperature, shock, vibration and humidity make SSD ideal for the mobile computing environment, remarked Harvey Liu, Advanced Media President.

Scientists at the University of Sydney claim to have found a technology that would possibly allow the internet to become up to hundred times faster than current networks. After four years of development they have created a switch that's "only" 60 times faster than current networks. With little extra work the scientists are confident that they can reach the 100 times faster speed rates. "This is a critical building block and a fundamental advance on what is already out there. We are talking about networks that are potentially up to 100 times faster without costing the consumer any more," says Federation Fellow Professor Ben Eggleton, Director of CUDOS which is based within the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. The switch is created using a small scratch on a piece of glass. This scratched glass is actually a photonic integrated circuit that has the capacity to increase the slow rate of information carried by optical fibres. Using photonic technology that has terabit per second speed, the circuit uses the scratch as a guide or a switching path for information. Similar to when trains are switched from one track to another, this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. Therefore in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times. Additional information on the new scratch switches can be obtained at the University of Sydney's website here.

Source: TFOT

Microsoft is working on a new keyboard design that features modularity of key-clusters, the model Sidewinder X6 features a modular num-cluster that can be positioned for convenience of both left and right oriented users. Additionally, A row of programmable keys for binding game macros and a "cruise control" feature that will repeat keystrokes without the need for holding down a key (like the Turbo buttons on some SNES gamepads).Expect an official announcement from Microsoft in the near future as the Sidewinder X6 is expected to launch in September at a US $80 price-point.


Source: Hexus.net

Class actions charged against NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) reveal that the two companies may have staged a competition over the past half-a-decade or so. A judge read out an email which suggested price fixing was rife in the graphics card market. That follows a class action of 51 different plaintiffs, now combined into one, and across different legal jurisdictions, alleging cartel behaviour not only in graphics chips, but flat panels and CRTs too.

In other words, NVIDIA and ATI may have been fixing prices of their products for a while now, it is believed that they held secret meetings to discuss staged competition, chart out prices, timings of product launches among other things. These pseudo-competitions staged provided improved sales among other things. A PDF File available to us at this point shows that the two indulged in conspiracy to mutually benefit from staged competition, so as to:

Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of high performance 2.5-inch HDDs, including a low-noise flagship model that boosts areal density to 477Mbit/mm2 (308Gbpsi) to achieve a capacity of 400GB on just two platters, plus five drives that bring new levels of performance and 7,200rpm rotational speeds to the company's full range of storage capacities.

Toshiba launched the Qosmio G55-802, the first laptop available with a CELL-design based Co-Processor. The CELL developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM comes in a 4-SPE avatar which Toshiba chooses to call Toshiba Quad-Core HD processor. The laptop features a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P7350 at 2.00 GHz as the primary system processor, certain CPU-intensive tasks such as hardware HD video decode, transcode, etc., are performed by the CELL processor. It also features a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M graphics processor for smooth video playback and exceptional gaming performance. 4 GB of DDR2 800 memory is standard, with the GPU supporting TurboCache for additional video memory. A DVD-SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash (think of it as something similar to LightScribe) drive, 2x 250GB 5400rpm HDDs, and 802.11b/g/n supportive wireless network controller. The chassis features rugged yet stylish matte finish. It tips the scales at 5.4 kg (~ 10.8 lbs), rather heavy. It is priced at US $1549.99. An online brochure can be viewed here. For product details, please visit this page.


Source: Toshiba

During the E3 Media & Business Summit today, Sony announced that it is returning back the 80GB PS3 to the market in September, but this time with a new price of US $399.99. This move is probably dictated by the Xbox 360 price cut which became official two days ago. The 80GB "Core Pack" PLAYSTATION 3 as it will be called will offer all of the features and functionality of the currently selling 40GB model, but with double the storage.


Source: Daily Tech

If you happened to have bought a GeForce GTX 280 card when it released for US $649, you'd probably be extremely disgruntled, with people paying as low as $499 for the same thing now, and just weeks after release. Such changes in the tech-industry even cause major legal trouble for card vendors when such customers sue them in this regard. Ironically, the role of NVIDIA is limited to dictating prices, the partners have to bear the brunt of such awkward situations. XFX is the first partner to have announced a cash-back scheme for people who purchased their GTX 200 series products at their old (high) prices.

Security vulnerabilities have plagued the computing world ever since computing became a significant advance of mankind. As of today, the plethora of security software we use that gobble money, system resources and network bandwidth to keep our computers and networks safe, have done a good job and it's relatively 'peaceful' these days. And just when we thought so, enter Kris Kaspersky, eminent security researcher, comes up with the hypothesis that microcode errors, known errors and flaws in the design of CPUs could be exploited by malicious code to attack and compromise systems irrespective of which operating system (OS) and other software are running. Kaspersky claims that different errata of the CPU could be exploited differently.

Chinese website XFastest released some pre-release synthetic benchmark evaluations of the upcoming NVIDIA G96 graphics processor (GPU) on which is based, the GeForce 9500 series, slated for a July 28 release. XFastest also released detailed pictures of the components that go into making these cards.

The GeForce 9500 secured a score of 5894 in 3DMark'06 and 12331 in 3DMark'05 in default settings. It secured 658 o3DMarks at 1280x1024 resolution in the Ozone3D FurMark 1.40.

Based on the feedback received from the beginning of the Xbox LIVE entertainment dashboard, Microsoft said today it will be enhancing the service soon with a new update. Among the new features that will be included, one deserves special attention. Called "play from hard drive" it will allow Xbox 360 owners to copy their games from the game disc to their hard drive and also start the game from there for faster load times. The game disc is still required for piracy reasons though, but it won't be spinning after the game is started. A quick look at some of the other features you might find interesting follows below.

Just when you thought Mini-ITX would mean extremely compact system components for great HTPC builds, came in the limitations of integrated graphics and relatively weak processors. VIA for example, have had ITX boards for quite some time. Just that the features most essential for HTPC builds such as graphics capable of high-definition video output, processors capable of decoding them at acceptable rates lacked, and hence those older ITX solutions from VIA remained a niche solution for embedded computing or thin-clients.

Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.

Intel is preparing the launch of new quad-core processors for laptops next month, Yahoo! News informs today. "We're bringing quad-core to mobile in August," said Sujan Kamran, regional marketing manager for client platforms at Intel in Singapore. Specifics of the forthcoming quad-core chips are missing, but Australian PC maker Pioneer Computers is already taking preorders for laptops based on an unreleased quad-core mobile chip. This CPU is branded as Core 2 Extreme QX9300 and is said to work at 2.53GHz. Pioneer Computers is now offering it in its DreamBook Style 9008 laptops for US $1,390, more than the laptop's basic price ($1,399) without the CPU.

Source: Yahoo! News

Intel's next addition to the budget Core 2 Duo E7000 series, the E7400 is slated for fourth quarter 2008. This processor at a US $133 price-point will come with a 2.83 GHz core clock with a 1066 MHz front-side bus (FSB), with 3 MB of L2 cache and a rated TDP of 65W. More importantly, a high FSB multiplier would mean that at its price it could be overclockers' delight.

Source: TechConnect

Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd today launches the PC-7F & PC-60F; the newest advanced Midi Tower chassis’ in their aluminum product lineup. These unique clean cut style cases dimensions stand at 215 x 440 x 490mm (W, H, D). They support ATX, and Micro-ATX form factors, with 4x 3.5" drive bays; 7x PCI Expansion Slots, and 5x 5.25” ODD bays. The refined handmade craftsmanship and high quality standards combined with the ultimate attention to detail including filed and folded edges for safety bring Lian Li products into a class of their own. The stylish, minimalist and optimized theme incorporates 1.5mm to 1.2mm thick aluminum anodized panels with a hairline brushed finish to an all round quality product. The difference between the PC-7F and PC-60F is the front panel design. The PC-7F has smooth rounded vent holes, while the PC-60F has a more open bezel front face. Each caters for a unique different taste.

Intel Corporation unveiled its Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology products for laptops today, powered by five new Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Close to 250 innovative consumer and business notebook PC designs are on the way, including those equipped with the right combination of powerful processors, graphics and battery life to enjoy viewing stunning high definition videos and myriad other computer and Internet activities.

Intel also introduced the world's highest-performing dual-core mobile processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor running at a brisk 3.06 GHz, as measured by SPECint*_rate_base2006, an industry benchmark (spec.org)**.

Elpida Memory, Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), announced today that it has developed a top-tier power efficient 1 Gigabit DDR3 SDRAM, which is capable of operating at an ultra-fast speed of 2 Gigabits per second (Gbps). By reducing power consumption to around the lowest possible level the new high-performance environmentally friendly DRAM marks an important milestone in Elpida's aggressive development of eco-products.

Following the NGOHQ episode with devising software that lets users accelerate GPU-based NVIDIA PhysX API on Radeon accelerators, and with NVIDIA coming in support of such an effort, a general opinion was made that NVIDIA sought an industry-wide domination of CUDA as the de-facto general purporse graphics processing (GPGPU) architecture, with putting their investment of acquiring Ageia Technologies to good use by pushing the PhysX API. Although it comes as a good news for AMD that their graphics cards that are already optimized for Havoc physics could now support PhysX acceleration, it's not in the best interests of the company that they allow the growth of CUDA and components based on it to this extent, since AMD has its own FireStream line of products and a GPGPU architecture in the making.

TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.

OCZ Technology Group today introduced a new whitebook solution powered by the long awaited Intel Centrino 2 ("Montevina") platform. This state-of-the-art platform technology provides a breakthrough in mobile computing for higher performance, advanced connectivity, and longer battery life. In addition, the new OCZ whitebooks are built for superior on-the-go gaming by harnessing the world's highest-performing mobile processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme X9100.

Soon, you will be able to slash load-times of Xbox 360 games by a nifty feature update that allows the console to cache the game on to the hard drive. You will need the game disc in the drive to be able to play the game as a counter-piracy measure, just that the console won't read resources from the disc, but instead from the cached data on the hard drive. In a way this also means improved sales for the new 60GB variant, since hard-drive space is 'more-the-merrier' now on, you can cache as many games as your hard drive can take. This was announced by Microsoft during a press-conference at E3.

Source: Engadget

Aiming to radically improve graphics performance for any kind of PC, LucidLogix Technologies today took the wraps off its new parallel graphics technology that will allow PC manufacturers to satisfy consumer demand for visual reality without compromise. The real-time distributed processing engine, called HYDRA, offers a groundbreaking approach to scaling 3D graphics performance in a multi-GPU environment. Outlined for the first time on the new Lucid web site, the novel technology is the industry's first to work with any GPU, any CPU or chipset and on any application that gamers and professionals may choose.

Chinese PC enthusiast website Coolaler set a new world-record score for the lowest time taken to crunch Super Pi 1M benchmark, their setup did it in 7.281 seconds. Here's what they used to achieve this feat:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 at 6.253 GHz (625 x 10) with VCore of 1.936V
• DFI LAN-Party UT P35 motherboard
• G.Skill 4GBPI DDR2 at 1285MHz memory
• Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) cooling

Looking at their previous run of 6.143 GHz, this is also the highest overclock for the E8600 so far.


Source: Coolaler

With the advent of the Radeon HD 4000 series, AMD is regaining lost ground in the consumer PC graphics industry. They have been 'third time lucky' in their DirectX 10(.1) conquest after HD 2000 and HD 3000 series didn't quite make a mark against the might of NVIDIA. Apparently AMD is through with preparing the RV710 and RV730 graphics processors (GPUs) which will drive video-cards with several different configurations of memory and GPU parameters. AMD looks to compete in the sub-US $150 market with these cards for which it will phase-out the HD 3000 series cards within this quarter (Q3 2008). The products will reach End-Of-Life (EOL).

Source: NordicHardware

As we inch closer to the R700 release, which previews prove to have dethroned the GeForce GTX 280 convincingly, taking the crown for the fastest graphics card there is, NordicHardware reports AMD could be giving 'final-touches' to a fresh-wave of GPUs for early 2009. The timing is a critical factor here as that's the time-range the proposed NVIDIA G300 carrying 384 SP's and 512bit GDDR5 memory bus is marked for. The R800 cards could carry 2,000 stream processors, with its unit processors the RV870 holding 1,000 stream processors each. They could enter the realm of either 40nm or 45nm fabrication process.

Source: Nordichardware

HP said today that it is bringing the latest HP TouchSmart PCs to customers all around the world. Debuted at last month's HP Connecting Your World event in Berlin, the new TouchSmart family of PCs have earned the privilege to be the only touch-enabled, all-in-one PCs in the market. The HP TouchSmart PCs combine a 22-inch diagonal, high-definition widescreen display and a variety of options when choosing the right hardware for your needs. You can select either the base IQ504 model for $1,299 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of memory, and 320GB hard drive or the deluxe IQ506 model for $1,499 and equip yourself with a 2.16GHz processor, a TV tuner, dedicated GeForce 9300M GS graphics, and a 500GB hard disk. To give the TouchSmart just the right finish, HP has also integrated a DVD burner, WLAN module, some stereo speakers, a webcam and a microphone. A low-profile wireless HP keyboard that lights in the dark, as well as a wireless mouse are also supplied just in case there's something you can't do using the touchscreen display.


Source: BusinessWire

PC enthusiasts, manufacturers, and developers around the world have a lot to be excited about today with NVIDIA Corporation's announcement that it will be bringing the power and performance of its SLI multi-GPU technology to Intel's upcoming line of Bloomfield CPUs. With this winning combination, consumers will have an SLI platform designed for current and future graphics-intensive games and applications; these platforms can be powered by one, two, or even three NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, including the new, award-winning GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 GPUs.

With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.

Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.

While Lynnfield is touted to be the budget offering from Intel based on the upcoming Nehalem processing architecture, reports from HKEPC suggest that the a 2.66 GHz Bloomfield part which returned stellar scores in pre-release evaluations by ChipHell we covered here, could be priced at US $ 284 making it one extremely compelling buy, considering it dethrones the current QX9770 in some tests. It's not confirmed at this point if the part could feature unlocked performance management features or whether they could be exclusive to a higher-priced premium product. This chip is slated for H1-2009. Lynnfield and Havendale could follow in H2, being based on the LGA 1160 CPU socket.


Source: HKEPC

Sun Microsystems again raised the bar on the storage industry with the release of the industry's first one terabyte tape storage drives. The new eco-efficient Sun StorageTek T10000B tape drive offers customers one terabyte of native storage capacity on a single cartridge for open or mainframe systems environments. The leader in tape storage automation, Sun has delivered on its commitment to the best-in-breed archive innovation and continues to trump the industry with high-performance, high capacity solutions that offer significantly greater return on investment versus the competition.

TUL Corporation -a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards today announced the industry's first 2GB memory graphics card — PowerColor PCS HD4850 2GB. As the successful HD4800 series launched around the end of June, PowerColor got many positive feedbacks from both customers and media; in order to provide the greatest solution to the market consistently, PowerColor today provide the new generation architecture — the first 2GB memory graphics card to market.

NVIDIA today slashed the prices of its latest generation of GeForce GTX video cards. The GeForce GTX 280 is now available for as low as $499 and the GeForce GTX 260 costs $299. The high-end GTX 280 was originally priced at $649, while the 260 was priced previously at $399. With a price tag of $299, the GeForce GTX 260 now matches ATI's comparable Radeon HD 4870. The higher end GeForce GTX 280 is still waiting to meet its main competitor in the face of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, due to become available later this quarter.

Source: CNET News

NVIDIA has been the 'hare taking a nap' for the past 18 months or so, just that when it woke up (or rather woken up), it realized that it's another hare that just blew by it. In other words, the Radeon HD 4800 series has not only proven to be a 'challenger' to NVIDIA but also a winner. There are (only) two winners here, ATI and you. The 55nm RV770 is very economical for ATI to make, sell and use in a variety of products. The same RV770 goes into making the HD 4850 that brought the GeForce 9800 GTX to its knees and forced NVIDIA to bring in a GTX+. And then you have the HD4870 which made spending $449 on the GeForce GTX 260 a joke. Yes it overclocks well and what not, but still didn't warrant that $150 price difference. Hence, over a period of three weeks or so, the GTX 260 is pushed down, 'way down' in NVIDIA's terms (explained later) to $329, which e-tailers such as Newegg.com can give you for as low as $299.

This means great news for you, like I said, there are only two winners, ATI and you. ATI gets its share of the $300 graphics card shoppers, while you get to choose between HD 4870 and GTX 260. What does NVIDIA get? Trouble. Sure the GTX 260 is selling, but selling at a loss. It takes around $100 to make the GPU alone. Selling the whole card for $299 inclusive of all taxes hurts NVIDIA, and hurts partners and retailers even more. TG Daily spoke with several retailers, some of which while maintaining anonymity, are quoted saying about the GeForce GTX 200 series as: “the worst product launch in the history of NVIDIA”, also revealed is that NVIDIA could be selling “less than 3000 GTX 260/280 cards per month” in the North American markets.

In other words, retailers are not happy with NVIDIA and their stranglehold over pricing their products at both the retailer and board-partner level. Here's a chart tracking the fall of price for GTX 260:

HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.

The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.

Source: HardOCP

There was a time I remember when owning a laptop used to be a status-symbol, affluent people despite little (or no) computer literacy owned one. A lot of factors decided the price of those things, the most important being the cost of producing LCD displays, compact hard drives and more importantly, the batteries. In came competition, the computer reached many hands, literacy rose, developing economies rose and with it, the laptop changed from being ‘a machine’ to ‘a gadget’. Laptops are in all shapes an sizes, all forms and prices these days, and with the introduction of the ULPC concept, a laptop or better still, a portable computer is soon becoming a standard issue for every person a-là mobile phone or wrist watch. What’s the next step? The answer lays in a neat new concept design by V12 Designs called the Canova, which resembles the popular handheld gaming device, the Nintendo DS in essence of having two screens. Both screens are touch-sensitive LCDs, where one of them morphs into a human-interface (keyboard and track-pad cluster):

Following the delayed introduction of the Intel Centrino 2 "Montevina" mobile computing platform, several manufacturers are preparing their line-ups on this platform. Among all, Samsung prepares three notebooks: the R510 "Aura", R710 "Eclipse", and two variants of the model Q210 and Q310 with 12.1 and 13.3 inch screen sizes respectively.

The R510 (first picture) will have a 15.4 inch screen, Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor at 2.53 GHz, integrated X4500 graphics, 4 GB of memory, DVD Writer, and 320GB HDD. It weighs about 2.3 kg.

The R710 (second picture) will feature a 17 inch screen, the same Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, and other features common to the R510 except that it features a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M 512 MB graphics processor.

And finally, the Q210 and Q310 have common looks and features albeit aforementioned screen-sizes. Features common to them include: Intel Core 2 Duo P8200 which runs at 2.26 GHz in the Q210 and 2.40 GHz in the Q310, 4 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9200M 256 MB graphics processor.


Source: Engadget

Microsoft Corp. officially announced today that it is giving consumers more gigabytes for their buck with Xbox 360 60GB. The new console comes to replace the 20GB Pro model and is offered with the same estimated retail price (ERP) of $349, but with triple the storage space. As previously mantioned Xbox 360 60GB will be available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada starting in early August. In addition, Microsoft today dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 console in the U.S. and Canada to just $299 (U.S.) (ERP) while supplies last, a savings of $50. "We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we're giving it to them at no extra charge," said Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management at Microsoft. "No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you'll have three times the storage to manage all that great content." Microsoft's Xbox 360 Arcade console, which comes with a 256MB memory unit and five Xbox LIVE Arcade games, will continue to sell for $279 (ERP), while the premium Xbox 360 Elite model with a 120GB hard drive will sell for $449 (ERP).

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Yes, you read that right. You can use upto four HD4870 X2 accelerators in tandem for an 8-GPU, 9.6 TFLOP, 8 GB graphics crunching monster. You need a 4-slot motherboard though. There are 4-slot solutions available on the AMD 790FX platform, for Intel though X48 did support 4 slots and images of prototype X48 boards with 4 slots did surface months back, there isn't such a board out yet. You do have the Skulltrail platform and upcoming X58 Bloomfield-supportive boards do promise to come in 4 slot flavours.

In a press-conference, Raja Koduri, worldwide CTO (Products Group), AMD talked to Indian website TechTree, among minor revelations such as "Fusion in 2009", here's a shocker:

"AMD has already built a computer that has four 4870X2s in it. So it has eight GPUs; drivers will not be supporting eight GPUs at this point of time."

-Implies that AMD is fully geared up to go head on against GT200b whenever it comes up. It's all a matter of them releasing a supportive driver. Again, unreliable sources point towards the possibility that also in the pipeline could be a R700+ which could be based on 'Super-RV770XT' processors. If you thought you're witnessing the peak of the GPU battle for supremacy, hold on, you're only getting appetised.

Source: TechTree

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 has been a success so far and Sapphire decides to expand their product range with Sapphire Radeon HD4850 1GB. Chinese website ITOCP released fresh pictures of this new card. It looks promising. This follows the release of pictures of the Toxic Radeon HD4850 we covered here.

The pictures show the card in the usual blue Sapphire PCB, and a heatsink covering in a similar fashion to that of some NVIDIA cards.


Source: ITOCP

Microsoft's hardware division has released details on its upcoming peripherals for the summer of 2008. Among the new devices, two make a good impression. First is the new Arc Mouse, a wireless mouse that's all about fashion, style and portability. The Arc Mouse is a collapsible peripheral that will hit the market this Holiday Season, with an affordable price tag of $59.95. The mouse will be available in two colors - red and black. Microsoft has also announced that a new revamped Sidewinder gaming mouse will be out soon. The X5 Sidewinder will look much like its predecessor, but it will no longer feature custom weights and the current sensitivity information LCD that was presented in the original Sidewinder mouse. The X5 will come with nine programmable buttons, hardware DPI switching, and a quicklaunch shortcut. Because some of the features of the mouse are missing, the price will also be lowered to $59.95. Technical specifications of both pointing devices remain unknown until their official launch.


Source: Softpedia

Sure, the graphics division brings some cheer for the company but seriously, to what extent is it helping the company alongside a marginally increased market-share with processors? Not much. AMD struggles to survive as stocks plummet below the $6 mark at NASDAQ index, which was priced at $15 /share only a year ago; this is the lowest value for the AMD stock since 2002.

AMD’s survival is crucial for the entire computing industry as it keeps check on inflating prices by major players such as Intel and NVIDIA (who themselves are seeing bad days at the stock-markets these days). It has immense engineering potential to take on major players and force them to slash their prices. There are talks already doing rounds of CEO Hector Ruiz planning to quit.

Market forces and mal-informed consumerism are also to blame. A person chooses competitive brands over AMD products mainly because they’re supplied and marketed better, sure Intel and NVIDIA do make better products in many categories but ‘better’ is a very relative value, how much better and for how much more (price) is something that keeps fluctuating, again fluctuations are mainly triggered by competition that AMD brings into the market. In other words, thank AMD for making NVIDIA sell GeForce 8800 GT for as low as $120 or better still, giving rise to a whole new SKU, the GeForce 9800 GTX+, with the ‘+’ matching the red cross on first-aid kits.

Source: Yahoo Finance

A suspicious new model of the flagship GeForce GTX 280 made by Leadtek going by the name ‘GeForce GTX 280 Extreme’ is put on pre-order on the popular British computer component online store Overclockers UK (OCUK). It can be found here. There are some hints that point toward this being based on a 55nm core:

• Extremely high parameters such as 738 MHz core, 1666 MHz shader domain and 2520 MHz memory albeit GDDR3, traditionally Leadtek doesn’t offer such high manufacturer overclock for even its premium variants.


• Such insanely high parameters cannot be reached by a manufacturer on reference cooling, for example, even the EVGA e-GeForce GTX 280 HC (liquid-cooled) comes with 670 MHz core, 1458MHz shader domain and 2430 MHz memory.


• Although traditionally OCUK isn’t very discount-friendly, and that this is a premium GTX 280 variant, that still doesn’t warrant a whopping £387.74 (US $771.29) price-tag.

The Leadtek website neither has a product entry for this nor is it part of any of their press-releases leading us to believe it’s an upcoming product. With such parameters, it only puzzles us if it indeed is the GT200b making for ‘UFO sightings’ in the markets.


Sources: Overclockers UK, iXBT

Now we all know that Windows 3.11 is long gone, but after that you read this strange title again and start wondering? Yes, although you know that retail distribution of Windows 3.11 has been out for very long, it had been around for a good 15 years selling through the so called Embedded Channel. Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 is still used in a countless number of low-horsepower platforms such as cash registers and train schedule displays. That's until today, when Microsoft is officially ending all sales of Windows 3.11 for good. Microsoft's John Coyne announced:

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for those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEM's will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. Now we all know that it's been long gone in the standard (retail/OEM) channel, but one of the unique things in the embedded business is that we allow the classic OS products to be sold longer than the other channels. it's *finally the end of an era!

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Source: Ubergizmo

Clint Hocking, the creative director behind the upcoming Far Cry 2, has confirmed that there will be no demo released for the game. Developed by Ubisoft, future Far Cry 2 players won't be able to play a level or two to get the idea, before the full game is out. According to Hoking there's no easy way of making a Far Cry 2 demo, because of the open nature of the game that will leak almost 12 hours of gameplay from a possible demo. "One reason is, even if we were to give out what you played today - even if we put invisible walls around it and said, here's the demo, you can go anywhere you like inside these walls and play it how you want - that's potentially right there eight-to-ten hours of gameplay," said Hocking. "I don't know too many people who are willing to give away a 12-hour game for free", he continued. In related news, Clint Hocking also informed that Far Cry 2 is almost complete and it only needs a good testing before retailing.

Source: bit-tech.net

That's right, a new 22" widescreen monitor by AOC, the 2230Fm is a PC monitor. It supports DVI-D and D-Sub VGA and HDMI inputs and sports a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 px. Stylish looks aside it adds a nifty feature that makes it a media-center in itself, the feature is called HD3.

Says AOC: "HD3 defines a new category in high definition displays with its built-in media player, allowing consumers, for the first time, to view movies without the use of an external DVD player or PC. With the 2230Fm, simply load a film onto a memory device, plug it into the display and use AOC's proprietary, user-friendly menu and remote control to enjoy a movie PC-free. AOC's first HD3 Display is the 2230Fm, a combination of multi-functional high-definition video capabilities and stylish, 360° design that provides a stunning array of features all developed to cater to the digital needs of today’s consumers."

Simply put, the monitor has a 4-in-1 digital media reader and has three USB 2.0 ports. You can connect a USB flash-drive. You do have flash-drives with really high capacities these days capable of carrying Hi-resolution videos, also that in some European countries a new video-download facility has come up where you download movies onto a flash drive in public shacks a-la ATMs. Apart from videos, this device can view images up to 8000 x 8000 px, and play audio files from its integrated stereo speakers. It remains to be seen if the USB 2.0 hub could connect to external hard drives or external optical drives. That would make it a full-on media center. It lacks a TV-tuner though. The embedded media software looks pretty intutive, The 2230Fm supports MPEG-1, 2, and 4 video formats. the supported audio format are too numerous to list, but they include MP3, WMA, WAVE, OGG-Vorbis, FLAC, and M4A. Supported photo formats include JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF images with resolutions up to 8000x8000 pixels.

The monitor has a 2ms response time making it ideal for gaming consoles and gaming PCs, it has a respectable 20,000:1 contrast ratio. It is priced at a US $399 and will be available next month onwards. Talk about convenience.


Source: HotHardware

Fudzilla released the first pictures of an upcoming ATI Radeon HD4850 model from Sapphire, the Toxic Radeon HD4850. This card looks very familiar. It reminds us of the successful Radeon X1950 Pro custom-design by Sapphire using the familiar Zalman VF900-Cu cooler. It uses small aluminum heatsinks over the memory chips, a copper heatsink is used to cool the card's VRM. Expect this card to come with overclocked parameters.


Source: Fudzilla

The 'newly-wed' Activision-Blizzard is reportedly planning a music store and content delivery service to directly compete with Apple's iTunes service. For now nothing is even close to concrete, Activision-Blizzard is considering launching its own download store on its Guitar Hero game platform for now. Says CEO Robert Kotick: “When you think about the potential for what we will be able to do together, there have not been many viable alternatives to iTunes.” in an interview to Reuters. He adds: “If you're downloading a song to play on your 'Guitar Hero,' there's no reason why you can't download the performance also. So there's all kinds of things you can think about.”

Vivindi currently owns the World's largest music publication company, Universal Music. This could serve as a content source for this delivery platform.

Source: Reuters

We are barely into experiencing DirectX 10 / 10.1 games with proper levels of detail with upcoming titles demanding hardware, and Microsoft already has plans for DirectX 11, the next big version of this API set. Microsoft will show off DirectX 11 at the XNA Gamefest which is scheduled to take place on July 22 and 23 in Seattle, United States. This year’s Gamefest is to be centered by DirectX 11 and the advancements that are proposed to be brought about.

Thankfully Microsoft isn’t doing a ‘Vista’ this time around, this new multimedia and gaming API will be built for both Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 operating systems. The API could be released to public anytime in late 2009.

There are several implications of this:

The Sony Playstation 3 console firmware update 2.40 rendered several units dysfunctional, forcing users to either try 'DIY homebrew remedies' (and possibly voiding warranties in the process) or seeking professional technical assistance which could cost the user anywhere up to US $150. With several users in distress continuing to express disgust on the official Playstation 3 forums, Sony has decided to work closely with users whose consoles have damaged solely due to the 2.40 firmware update. After it is determined that 2.40 firmware update is the sole cause of damage, the console would be either repaired or replaced free of cost.

Source: PS3 Fanboy

AMD Deneb is the code-name for the 45nm quad-core CPU which AMD plans to release soon. Chinese website ITOCP got their hands on two engineering samples. They used these samples at various clock-speeds set by altering the FSB multiplier and Vcore voltage. These chips were then subjected to rounds of Super Pi 1M benchmark. The results look rather luke-warm compared to what we saw of the Intel Bloomfield chips recently. The Deneb CPUs were supported by an AMD RD790 motherboard and 2 GB of DDR2 800 MHz unganged memory, running at timings of 5-5-5-18. The Phenom X4 Deneb 45nm will feature 6 MB of L3 cache apart from the usual 512 KB L2 caches dedicated to the cores.


Source: ITOCP

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today announced it has filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against NVIDIA Corporation for patent infringement.

The Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware revealed several confidential (no more) slides pertaining to the AMD R700 product line, exposing details of the product codenamed "Spartan". It's now confirmed that it comes with a total of 2 GB of GDDR5 memory spanning across sixteen 1 Gb chips.

The picture is that of the HD4870 X2 itself in an angle never pictured before:

The first slide shows certain details about the R700 "Spartan", the GPU core speed isn't disclosed yet. Crucial bits: 32Mx32 GDDR5, driver version 8.52 or later, deviceID: 0x9441.

Industry sources indicate that NVIDIA has acquired a QPI license to manufacture desktop core-logic (chipset) for the upcoming Nehalem-based processors. NVIDIA looks at a quick-fix solution to offer SLI support for the upcoming LGA-1366 motherboards. It's too late for them to prepare a full-fledged chipset since X58 is dressing up to go to office and that's slated for as early as Q4, 2008. The quick-fix solution is that NVIDIA offers a certain chip that can be used on X58 motherboards that allows those boards to support NVIDIA SLI. This solution is in many respects similar to the Intel D5400XS "Skulltrail" board, where two NForce 200 (BR-04) chips were used alongside the Intel 5400A northbridge that allowed 2-way SLI. The NVIDIA BR-04 chip costs US $30 for motherboard manufacturers.

As for Lynnfield, NVIDIA will try to debut a full-fledged LGA-1160 motherboard since there is ample time to work on that. The quick-fix ensures that when LGA-1366 X58 does come out, and NVIDIA doesn't have a chipset ready, the advantage of multi-GPU doesn't go to ATI since X58 supports ATI Crossfire and is already touted to support 4-way ATI Crossfire X technology. LGA-1160 boards lack QuickPath interconnect as a chipset bus. Since NVIDIA lacks access to QuickPath technology, it can continue to use its competitive HyperTransport link which it's been using since the NForce 2 days.

Don't expect too many of these SLI LGA 1366 boards soon though. Reason being that each BR-04 chip costs $30, requires motherboard makers to re-design their motherboards (since most vendors seem to be ready with their X58 board designs), and a redesign would push back entry by a few months (for release of these SLI supportive boards).


Source: Expreview

A picture of the ATI RV730-based Radeon HD 4650 floated at ChipHell. This picture was edited to protect source. A colour picture of the cooler was already revealed earlier. The Radeon HD 4650 will succeed the HD 3600 series and will come in a variety of memory configurations, we covered here. It will support up to 1 GB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit wide memory bus.


Source: ChipHell

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and components, today announced the expansion of its gaming peripherals under a new "Alchemy" line, with the introduction of the Elixir keyboard series for highly advanced functionality in game-play. Featuring a wealth of user-friendly features combined with an ergonomic and sturdy design, the Elixir keyboard will deliver a unique combination of performance and value to gamers as they blaze through the latest PC titles.

The Alchemy line, introduced earlier this year at Computex, embodies the needs of gamers through a diverse lineup of gaming peripherals and components that will provide PC players the ultimate hardware to take on the most demanding games. The Elixir keyboard is the first product under this line, and will be the first of many gaming keyboards, mice, another other computer gaming accessories. The Alchemy line was created by OCZ in its never-ending quest to meet the demands of each segment in the enthusiast community.

Intel launches the Centrino 2 mobile plaform this Monday, the 14th. Centrino 2, codenamed Montevina is behind launch-schedule owing to issues detected in the integrated graphics controller. The chipset released will be that which supports discrete graphics controllers from ATI or NVIDIA.

Intel Centrino 2 for now is targeted towards the business-class and enterprise segments. The chipset supports DDR3 memory which brings in a certain level of energy efficiency with added performance. At the heart of it would be a 45nm processor based on the Penryn architecture. Initially dual-core processors, with quad-core based notebooks later. The wireless network controller supports the newer 802.11n and WiMAX standards. Security and management features come in through the vPro technology.

These 45nm dual-core processors are said to run at 25W, an efficiency increment over previous generation running at 35W.

Source: eWeek

Pre-release performance evaluations suggest that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 model will on an average be 50% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 and in some tests 80% faster. A second model, the HD 4850 X2 (2GB GDDR3 memory, 2x RV770Pro) will also convincingly outperform the GeForce GTX 280. The R700 series will be brought into the market late-July thru August.

Source: Hardspell

Seagate today unveiled the industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives to meet explosive worldwide demand for digital-content storage in home and business environments. The debut of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives - a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

Hardspell reports that NVIDIA may have cancelled working on the G200b (the 55nm version of GT200). Details on this new DirectX 10.1 graphics processor trickled in, it has 384 shader units, uses a 45nm fabrication process and incorporates 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 4.00 GHz (effective) while the core could be clocked at 800 MHz with a 2.00 GHz shader domain. NVIDIA hopes to take on the R700 and its successor which unreliable sources claim to be based on the Super-RV770.

Source: Hardspell

If you have watched the TNT Original movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley or read the book Fire in the Valley, you would know Steve Ballmer to be quite a character although both the book and the movie are unauthorised documentaries. Under the leadership of Ballmer, Microsoft plans to start a US $300 million-worth campaign aimed to demystify Windows Vista and encourage users to adopt the new operating system.

These are good times for Apple. The lack of success for Windows Vista means growth in the sales of Apple Mac for first-time buyers. And it is true- numerous reports and surveys point out to the fact that Apple Mac is seeing a growth in sales of late. Add to that, Apple won’t spare any chance to take pot-shots at the software giant, its ‘bloated’ operating system (as if Apple OS X isn’t) in its series of TV and web-cast commercials around the ‘cool Mac guy and uncool PC guy’.

OCZ Technology Group today announced the latest addition to the award-winning OCZ NVIDIA SLI certified series, the world's first 4GB PC2-8000 SLI-Ready DDR2 modules. Optimized specifically for the nForce platforms, this series features an ideal combination of reduced latencies and high density to support the ultimate gaming experience. The PC2-8000 SLI-Ready Series are certified to run at optimal performance levels and are the ultimate upgrade for entry-level enthusiasts seeking an exceptional memory kit with true "plug and play" functionality at an excellent price point.

The Radeon HD 4850 has been in for a while and boy, did it change the face of the market as we knew it. PowerColor / TUL came up with the first non-reference design for the HD 4850, it sticks to the AMD reference PCB alebit changes to the cooler and the memory. It uses ZeroTherm full copper GPU cooler with CVVT technology(Continue Variable Velocity Timing). The card now features a mammoth 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are minor changes to the GPU parameters as well: 665 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory.

We could have understood if they gave it 1 GB of memory, knowing that the RV770 is a capable GPU and might be able to use higher amount of memory but 2 GB seems too much. The card is loaded with 16 x 1 Gb GDDR3 chips. The chips on the other side of the PCB have a heatspreader. There's no information about availablilty and pricing yet.


Source: Expreview

The recent publications of pre-release benchmarks of the 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Bloomfield processsors gave us a taste of Nehalem bringing in something special into the industy. Sure it's got us all flying but here's a reality: Bloomfield and X58 platform are premium products and come with high-pricing. They aren't mainstream products, not even that 2.66 GHz Bloomfield. They run on the LGA 1366 socket and incorporate QuickPath interconnect as a system bus.

The real mainstream product is a processor called Lynnfield. It has many features of its wealthier cousin, like 8 MB L3 cache, four cores with HyperThreading technology, etc. But the crunch is here: It features a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller (Bloomfield has tri-channel), it will use a different socket: the LGA 1160 and the supportive chipset codenamed Ibex Peak uses the old DMI as its chipset interconnect.

The most recent roadmap slide shows all this coming our way only in Q3 2009, and that's about an year from now, enough time for them to flush current LGA 775 processors from the market.


Source: Expreview

If you're on the market, looking for a card that will work on most of today's PCs, you'd be surprised to know that Albatron is launching a trio of new PCI low-profile graphics cards. Yes they are PCI, not PCI-Express compatible and they are part of the GeForce 8 generation. The cards are dubbed PCI8600GT-256X, PCI8500GT-256X, PCI8400GS-256, and represent GeForce 8600 GT, 8500 GT and 8400 GS respectively. The first two cards come equipped with GDDR3 memory, 128-bit interface and HDMI connectivity while the PCI8400GS-256 makes use of GDDR2 chips, a 64-bit interface and has no HDMI. All three cards come with 256MB memory, DVI and TV-Out connectors.


Source: Albatron

Avalon Technology Group (ATG), specialists in biometric data protection, announced the ATG 8GB USB Biometric 256 AES Speedster. This USB flash-drive features two close to fool-proof levels of data security. First, it's the fingerprint sensor that allows access only to one person with the right print. Second, the data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption algorithm, something which even government security agencies find hard to crack.

The drive offers impressive 34 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write speeds with hi-speed USB 2.0. The metal casing provides water-proofing to its components, the drive slides open. It is priced at US $79.00 and offers 8 GB of space.


Source: ATG

Although it's known that the HD 4870 X2 (R700) is slated for a July thru August launch, reports from GPU Café suggest that AMD could subject the R700 to an early launch, and that's as early as four days from now, July 14. That's more than two weeks ahead of its launch schedule. It's not clear as to what's the nature of the launch, presumably a ‘paper-launch', since there already is concrete information from industry observers in Taiwan as to the time-line of the R700 launch we covered here. Some high-profile overclockers are already to have their sample of the R700. Unreliable sources already point at the possibility of a HD 4850 X2 which comes with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.

Update by W1zzard: Sorry guys but my sources tell me "middle of August" launch.


Source: GPU Café

Benchmarks of Nehalem derivatives are on a roll. We had seen the Bloomfield 2.66 GHz scores and thought it was great. A couple of days ago, Tom's Hardware showed off their newest toys to the world in which was a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield we covered here. Interestingly, they had then stated that Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prevented them from releasing any benchmark data, though following ChipHell's publication, they thought they would disclose theirs as well.

They carried out their tests on the Foxconn Renaissance X58 motherboard with dual-channel Crucial Ballistix 2x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Windows Vista SP1 and hotfix_vista32-64_dd_ccc_hd4800series_64906 patch. A 750GB Seagate SATA II hard drive was used.

In 3DMark 06, it secured a CPU score of 5183. In PCMark 05, a CPU score of 9583 with a memory score of 9010 was noted. In 3DMark Vantage, the CPU score was 17966 (CPU Test1: 2515.1 Plans/S, Test2: 23.08 Steps/S). 2.93 GHz Bloomfield had a Mere 11% performance advantage over a QX6800 (that clocks at 2.93 GHz). It is also said that this 2.93 GHz chip is 23% faster than a Phenom X4 9950.


Source: Tom's Hardware

ChipHell carried out the first comprehensive evaluation of the Intel Bloomfield 2.66 GHz processor, a derivative of the eagerly anticipated Nehalem architecture, which already has fan-sites mushrooming all over the internet.

The most prominant benchmarks used by enthusiasts and overclockers, 3DMark Vantage (CPU Tests), Super Pi 1M, Cinebench and SANDRA were run on this processor.

In the 3DMark Vantage test, the processor secured a CPU score of 16294. It crunched Super Pi 1M in 15.475 seconds. With the Cinebench, it secured 3048 with a single thread, the multi-threaded bench belted out 12627 CB-CPU hinting at the processor's high multi-core efficiency. And finally, Bloomfield takes SANDRA out on a date. You have to look at the red dot compared to a QX9770 yourself.

I'm appetised and looking forward to a great processor architecture and so could you.