Today's Reviews
Accessories
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
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PSUs
News Archive
Thursday, April 30th 2009
PowerColor HD 4890 PCS 1 GB Review
PowerColor is one of the first board partners to release an overclocked, custom designed HD 4890. Instead of the AMD reference cooler a solution from Zerotherm is used. The clock speeds have also been bumped to 950 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory. Due to their improved PCB, PowerColor has managed to position their HD 4890 PCS at the price that normal reference cards go for: $249.
Windows 7 Release Candidate Available to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers
Today Microsoft Corp. has reached a significant milestone with the Release Candidate (RC) of the highly anticipated Windows 7 operating system, now available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers here. Broader public availability will begin May 5 on the Microsoft Download Center here. The RC milestone is a result of feedback from millions of customers and partners around the world. It indicates the operating system is entering the final phases of development and is ready for partners to develop new applications, device drivers and services, and ready for IT pros to evaluate Windows 7 and examine how it will operate in their environment.
Patriot Launches Fusion SSD, Featuring Latest in Buffered SSD Technology
Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the release of their Fusion SSD Series. The Fusion SSD line has been specifically designed with cutting-edge technology by adding 64MB of DRAM cache in conjunction with its current equipped NAND technology. The ultimate result is an SSD that allows faster transfer rates between the controller and the host device.
"By the addition of the DRAM cache, the Fusion greatly increases the random and sequential read and write transfer rates," according to Meng J. Choo, Patriot's Flash Product Manager. He goes on to say, "The DRAM acts as a buffer and increases the reliability, and lessens the possibility for 'bottlenecks' within the data transfers."
"By the addition of the DRAM cache, the Fusion greatly increases the random and sequential read and write transfer rates," according to Meng J. Choo, Patriot's Flash Product Manager. He goes on to say, "The DRAM acts as a buffer and increases the reliability, and lessens the possibility for 'bottlenecks' within the data transfers."
NVIDIA Releases GeForce 185.81 BETA Drivers
NVIDIA today published a new version of its GeForce driver suite, this time including Windows 7 in the update. Version 185.81 of the driver has been released as a beta, meaning it is unsupported by product warranties. The following changes have been brought about:
- Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications
- Expands GPU hardware acceleration for the NVIDIA Video Encoding library to GPUs with less than 32 cores. Applications using this library include CyberLink PowerDirector 7, Nero Move it 1.5, Loilo SuperLoiloScope MARS, and CyberLink MediaShow Espresso
- Accelerates performance in several 3D applications and, compared to Release 182 drivers, delivers:
o Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
o Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
o Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
o Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
o Up to 30% performance increase in Half-Life 2 engine games with 3-way and 4-way SLI
o Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror's Edge with antialiasing enabled - Automatically installs the new PhysX System Software version 9.09.0408
- Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3
- Numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release documentation notes for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7
ASUS P6T7 SuperComputer Packs Two nForce 200 Chips, Graphics Expansion Galore
There is a new X58 "SuperComputer" motherboard, this time not from ASRock, but from ASUS. The company is ready with a new LGA-1366 single-socket workstation motherboard that concentrates quite heavily on its PCI-Express expansion slots. THe motherboard packs seven full-length PCI-Express slots. To support these, ASUS used a clever design: two 16-lane PCI-Express channels from the X58 northbridge provide connectivity to an NVIDIA nForce 200 (BR-03) chip each. Each of these chips in turn broadcast the connection to two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots (blue slots). The blue slots with a neighbouring black slot further have PCI-E switching logic that can divert 8 lanes to the black PCI-E x16 slots, when populated. As a result, it has seven slots worked out in all. The board supports ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI.
A large heatsink cools the lower cluster of chips that include the board's ICH10R southbridge, and the two nForce 200 chips. Heatpipes distribute heat to an elaborate array of heatsinks over the northbridge and the board's VRM areas. The board features six DDR3 memory slots for supporting up to 24 GB of memory. Storage is care of the southbridge and an additional controller to provide extra internal SATA ports along with the eSATA connectivity. 8-channel audio, and two gigabit Ethernet controllers, and an ASUS-exclusive system diagnostics card make for the rest of the equation. The P6T7 SuperComputer is yet to hit stores.
A large heatsink cools the lower cluster of chips that include the board's ICH10R southbridge, and the two nForce 200 chips. Heatpipes distribute heat to an elaborate array of heatsinks over the northbridge and the board's VRM areas. The board features six DDR3 memory slots for supporting up to 24 GB of memory. Storage is care of the southbridge and an additional controller to provide extra internal SATA ports along with the eSATA connectivity. 8-channel audio, and two gigabit Ethernet controllers, and an ASUS-exclusive system diagnostics card make for the rest of the equation. The P6T7 SuperComputer is yet to hit stores.
Fujitsu Introduces New M2010 Netbook, Designed for Visual Indulgence
Fujitsu PC today proudly unveils the second of its netbook range, the Fujitsu M2010. Measuring a luxurious 10.1 inch, this lightweight darling comes adorned in refreshingly chic colours that exude stylish appeal amid its slim design. Together with the generous storage capacity, suite of high-efficiency office tools, bigger keypads and delightful little touches like webcam and preloaded ArcSoft software, the Fujitsu M2010 is the netbook to have and to hold.
Mr. Lim Teck Sin, Director of Product Marketing, highlights, "The huge popularity of the Fujitsu M1010 has spurred Fujitsu to deliver an even more wholesome experience in our netbook category. The new Fujitsu M2010 is designed to give users higher productivity and efficiency at work with greater visual enhancement and connectivity experience at play. In all, the Fujitsu M2010 upholds the true mobility assurance that Fujitsu is so committed to deliver and users so desire to have."
Mr. Lim Teck Sin, Director of Product Marketing, highlights, "The huge popularity of the Fujitsu M1010 has spurred Fujitsu to deliver an even more wholesome experience in our netbook category. The new Fujitsu M2010 is designed to give users higher productivity and efficiency at work with greater visual enhancement and connectivity experience at play. In all, the Fujitsu M2010 upholds the true mobility assurance that Fujitsu is so committed to deliver and users so desire to have."
GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition Coming This June
NVIDIA is pushing forth a special variant of its high-end GeForce GTX 285 graphics accelerator. This one is specific for use in Apple Mac systems that support PCI-Express addon-cards. Its hardware specifications remain the same: 240 stream processors and 1 GB of 512-bit GDDR3 memory. Available in June, the accelerator will benefit the upcoming Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" that makes use of GPGPU. NVIDIA partner EVGA seems to be ready with one. Pictured below, the card resembles the reference design accelerator commonly available for PCs.
XFX First to Use Premium Reference Design for Radeon HD 4770
XFX continues to show enthusiasm with its ATI Radeon line of products, by coming up with the first Radeon HD 4770 accelerator for the market to use the premium reference design for Radeon HD 4770 (model: XFX 4770ST D5 512MB). AMD had come up with two choices of coolers for its partners. Most of them choose the one which is more cost-effective, so the sales margins could be improved in an already tight pricing-segment.
XFX used the premium reference-design cooler and PCB, with a major difference that it comes in black instead of red. XFX has so far had a knack of trying as hard as it can, to color its cards black. The company did so with the Radeon HD 4870 reference design accelerator recently. This card retains the reference clock speeds of 750 MHz (core), and 800 MHz (memory). Given that XFX chose the more expensive parts in making this card, it will pass on the premium to the consumer, making it slightly more expensive than the reference design cards in its league.
XFX used the premium reference-design cooler and PCB, with a major difference that it comes in black instead of red. XFX has so far had a knack of trying as hard as it can, to color its cards black. The company did so with the Radeon HD 4870 reference design accelerator recently. This card retains the reference clock speeds of 750 MHz (core), and 800 MHz (memory). Given that XFX chose the more expensive parts in making this card, it will pass on the premium to the consumer, making it slightly more expensive than the reference design cards in its league.
3R System Boss 2 Surfaces
3R System, a Korean company that specializes in PC cases, cooling products, and power supplies unveiled a new high-end CPU air cooler, the Boss 2. This cooler uses the most common tower-design coolers in its class use. The unit measures 131(L)x95(W)x152(H) mm, and weights around 730 g (1.61 lbs). The cooler design consists of a CPU block that doubles up as a tiny heatsink. Here, five heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU. The heatpipes propagate through a dense array of aluminum fins. Its air-flow is care of a 120 mm LED-lit fan that rotates at speeds between 1000 and 2000 rpm, 53.5 CFM to 78.5 CFM, with a noise output range of 19 to 32 dBA. Sources indicate that the cooler will be released worldwide very soon, though there is no word on its price.
VIA Nano Processor Brings Higher Performance to Media Servers
VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announces the VIA VB8002 Mini-ITX board targeted at media server markets. The VIA VB8002 brings the superior performance efficiency of the VIA Nano processor to consumer-focused server products that require the right blend of power efficiency and raw processing performance.
The VIA VB8002 Mini-ITX board continues VIA's drive into compact, power-efficient multimedia server markets and is designed to meet the needs of consumers who not only want to securely store, manage and share their media libraries, but also stream high quality content in their homes.
The VIA VB8002 Mini-ITX board continues VIA's drive into compact, power-efficient multimedia server markets and is designed to meet the needs of consumers who not only want to securely store, manage and share their media libraries, but also stream high quality content in their homes.
Wednesday, April 29th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Headphones
Motherboards
Mouse
Netbooks
Nettops
Printers
Processors
PSUs
Cooler Master Introduces HAF 922 Mid Tower Chassis
Following the overwhelming success of the full tower HAF 932, Cooler Master extends the HAF (High Airflow Flow) line to a mid tower in the HAF 922. This beastly machine comes with rugged looks, massive air flow cooling and the Cooler Master trademark interior. Building the dream machine is now well within reach.
ARCTIC COOLING Launches Alpine 64 Pro Cooler for AMD Processors
Offering computer market the ultimate stock AMD CPU coolers replacement, the innovative Swiss cooling solutions provider ARCTIC COOLING today unveiled Alpine 64 Pro, a new product of the comapny's acclaimed Alpine 64 series. The Alpine 64 Pro features aluminum heatsink and a 92 mm PWM controlled fan that spins from 500 to 2000 rpm and produces maximum airflow of 36.7 CFM. The cooler weight 428 g and fits all AMD AM3, AM2+, AM2, and 939 sockets. The Alpine 64 Pro comes with a 6-year limited warranty. It will be available in May 2009. The MSRP is US$10.9 and 7.60€ (excl. VAT).
Sapphire Atomic HD 4890 Vapor-X Pictured
Sapphire has a new high-end graphics accelerator in the works for launch next week: the Atomic HD 4890. The card features a blue reference PCB by AMD with a few enhancements, paired with Sapphire's Vapor-X cooler to keep this factory-overclocked card cool, and more importantly, quieter than the reference cooler.
What makes this card even more special is that Sapphire generously overclocked it. The core runs at 1000 MHz, and the 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 1050 MHz (2100 MHz DDR, 4200 MHz effective). The Catalyst Control Center ATI Overdrive page shows its GPU core overlocking limit upped to 1100 MHz, from the 1000 MHz limit release-drivers were noted to come with. To sustain such high speeds, the card's VRM has been slightly expanded. The card uses an 8-pin PCI-E power connector alongside a 6-pin one. The price of this card is yet to be known.
What makes this card even more special is that Sapphire generously overclocked it. The core runs at 1000 MHz, and the 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 1050 MHz (2100 MHz DDR, 4200 MHz effective). The Catalyst Control Center ATI Overdrive page shows its GPU core overlocking limit upped to 1100 MHz, from the 1000 MHz limit release-drivers were noted to come with. To sustain such high speeds, the card's VRM has been slightly expanded. The card uses an 8-pin PCI-E power connector alongside a 6-pin one. The price of this card is yet to be known.
TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.3.4 Released
TechPowerUp today released a timely update to GPU-Z (version 0.3.4). GPU-Z is our graphics sub-system diagnostic utility that provides information on the computer's installed graphics hardware, their various specifications, and provides real-time updates on their parameters such as clock-speeds, temperatures, and fan-speeds. The utility is backed by our overclock validation system, and an extensive video-card BIOS database.
With the new version, we have isolated and fixed a few bugs, added general application compatibility and expanded support for new GPUs. The most significant changes are listed below:
With the new version, we have isolated and fixed a few bugs, added general application compatibility and expanded support for new GPUs. The most significant changes are listed below:
- Fixed RV740-specific Bugs: ROP count, shader count, real-time core clock, BIOS dump size
- Added voltage reading support for Radeon HD 4890, fixed BIOS reading, fixed its transistor count
- GPU-Z should work again on Windows 2000 without PSAPI.DLL
- Fixed default clock-speed reading on ATI cards that have default clock lower than boot clock
TakeMS Enters the SSD Market
TakeMS International AG, German manufacturer of flash memory products for your needs, today joins the SSD business by starting to offer 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB solid-state drives in its product portfolio. Using no special model name, the Take MS drives use 2.5-inch enclosures full of MLC NAND flash chips and a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface to achieve transfer rates of up to 150 MB/s. The new drives are already starting to appear in European shops for 94.55, 149.17 and 270.06 Euro for the 32 GB, 64 GB, and the 128 GB models.
Comfort Wave 450 Keyboard Joins Logitech Line of Products for Business
To save businesses money, eliminate installation costs and deliver productivity-enhancing comfort, Logitech for Business today introduced the Logitech Comfort Wave 450 keyboard - the latest in a line of keyboards, mice, webcams and headsets especially designed for businesses.
Logitech for Business offers computer peripherals and accessories that help companies adapt to the evolving face of the workspace. For businesses that want to get the most out of their IT expenditures and their workforce, Logitech for Business is ready for what businesses need right now. With its acclaimed Wave design, the Comfort Wave 450 keyboard delivers natural and adjustable comfort for people working with a desktop computer or a notebook PC in a docking station or notebook riser.
Logitech for Business offers computer peripherals and accessories that help companies adapt to the evolving face of the workspace. For businesses that want to get the most out of their IT expenditures and their workforce, Logitech for Business is ready for what businesses need right now. With its acclaimed Wave design, the Comfort Wave 450 keyboard delivers natural and adjustable comfort for people working with a desktop computer or a notebook PC in a docking station or notebook riser.
Intel Slashes X18-M and X25-M SSD Prices
Intel on Thursday, adjusted the prices of its 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch solid-state drives, bringing them closer to the mass market. Top of the line 160 GB Intel branded SSDs are now selling for as low as $630, the 1.8-inch 80 GB X18-M model is now dropping down to $320. The 2.5-inch X25-M 80 GB version is also going down from $390 to $340. Last but not least, the "little" 32 GB X25-E solid-state drive drops from $410 to $390. All prices are in US dollars. Newegg is already selling some of the drives with their new prices.
Microsoft RTM of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Announced
Microsoft has announced the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Except applying all updates released to date, this issue of SP will bring some key features to both operating systems. Those are:
- Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
- Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
- Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
- Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.
Intel Launches New Motherboards to Fuel Growth of Nettops and SFF Computing
At Intel's largest annual channel customer event today, the company launched two new motherboards designed to fuel the growth of nettops and small form factor computing. The Intel Desktop Board D945GSEJT with the Intel Atom Processor is designed for building into stylish and affordable nettops that push the traditional imagination of what an all-in-one or an enhanced thin client should be. Another new small form factor motherboard, the Intel Desktop Board DG41MJ supporting low power (65W) Intel Core 2 Quad processors and Intel Core 2 Duo processors, offers users a space saving desktop solution that meets their everyday multimedia needs.
Intel Desktop Board D945GSEJT comes fully integrated with the 45nm Intel Atom Processor N270 and the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset making this affordable, thin form factor, low-power nettop platform ideal for building into all-in-one PCs or enhanced thin client PCs. For all-in-one PCs, this versatile motherboard can be customised into entry-level or secondary home entertainment PCs, education PCs, or internet-centric PCs for businesses. For commercial usage models, this motherboard can be customised into industrial designs such as such as internet kiosks and home surveillance units.
Intel Desktop Board D945GSEJT comes fully integrated with the 45nm Intel Atom Processor N270 and the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset making this affordable, thin form factor, low-power nettop platform ideal for building into all-in-one PCs or enhanced thin client PCs. For all-in-one PCs, this versatile motherboard can be customised into entry-level or secondary home entertainment PCs, education PCs, or internet-centric PCs for businesses. For commercial usage models, this motherboard can be customised into industrial designs such as such as internet kiosks and home surveillance units.
GE Breakthrough Validates Technology to Enable 500-Gigabyte Disc
GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Company, today announced a major breakthrough in the development of next generation optical storage technology. GE researchers have successfully demonstrated a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc. This is equal to the capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs, 100 DVDs or the hard drive for a large desktop computer.
GE's micro-holographic discs will be able to be read and recorded on systems very similar to a typical Blu-ray or DVD player. Holographic storage is different from today's optical storage formats like DVDs and Blu-ray discs. DVDs and Blu-ray discs store information only on the surface of the disc; holographic storage technology uses the entire volume of the disc material. Holograms, or three-dimensional patterns that represent bits of information, are written into the disc and can then be read out. Although GE's holographic storage technology represents a breakthrough in capacity, the hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and BDs.
GE's micro-holographic discs will be able to be read and recorded on systems very similar to a typical Blu-ray or DVD player. Holographic storage is different from today's optical storage formats like DVDs and Blu-ray discs. DVDs and Blu-ray discs store information only on the surface of the disc; holographic storage technology uses the entire volume of the disc material. Holograms, or three-dimensional patterns that represent bits of information, are written into the disc and can then be read out. Although GE's holographic storage technology represents a breakthrough in capacity, the hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and BDs.
EVGA Precision v1.7.1 Released
EVGA introduced version 1.7.1 of the EVGA Precision graphics cards overclocking and monitoring software. This version adds two nifty features over the previous version, 1.7.0, that includes an update-checker module that automatically checks for new versions of the software and alerts the user. The other feature benefits users of Logitech gamer keyboards with built-in LCDs. The users can now use the keyboards' soft-buttons to scroll text posted by EVGA Precision on the LCD both horizontally, and vertically. The scrolled text can be easily reset by pressing up-down or left-right soft-buttons simultaneously. EVGA Precision v1.7.1 can be downloaded from here.
XFX Readying 1 GB Radeon HD 4770 Variant
Following ASUS, XFX is another partner breaking away from the reference design mold for the Radeon HD 4770 accelerator soon after its launch. The company is ready with a variant that features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. For now, a picture of only its box can be found from an incomplete promotional page of the company, with links leading to its 512 MB base-model, but what the one picture reveals, is a rather lavish packaging. The "X" shaped box shows no signs of a "XXX" branding, or anything that suggests the card features factory-overclocked speeds, though the "1 GB GDDR5" is legible. The card is backed by the company's "5-star" warranty. Its pricing and availability are not known.
Sharkoon Introduces SilentStorm PSU Series with Flat-Modular Cables
Sharkoon re-released its SilentStorm power supply series today, featuring a new design with modular cable system, 135mm fan and in three different power ratings: 460, 560 and 660 watts.
The power supplies in the SilentStorm CM series are built in an elegant black case with a silver fan guard. Built to ATX 12V version 2.2 and EPS 2.91 specifications, the PSUs support all current Intel and AMD systems. The models function with active PFC and have a maximum efficiency rating of 84 percent. Four separate 12V rails produce a maximum of 72 amps and provide the CPU, graphics card, mainboard, storage and disc drives with sufficient and reliable power.
The power supplies in the SilentStorm CM series are built in an elegant black case with a silver fan guard. Built to ATX 12V version 2.2 and EPS 2.91 specifications, the PSUs support all current Intel and AMD systems. The models function with active PFC and have a maximum efficiency rating of 84 percent. Four separate 12V rails produce a maximum of 72 amps and provide the CPU, graphics card, mainboard, storage and disc drives with sufficient and reliable power.
Lian Li Introduces New Accessories
Today Lian Li is launching many accessories to make the highly stylish and brushed aluminum chassis products look even better and work exactly as you desire. Each component fits like a glove for the chassis it was designed for. The classics Lian Li style prevail throughout.
First up, we have the W-X2000, which is a side panel for the Full Tower TYR X2000 Chassis with two transparent windows to allow your friends and family a clear view of your computer's internal components.
First up, we have the W-X2000, which is a side panel for the Full Tower TYR X2000 Chassis with two transparent windows to allow your friends and family a clear view of your computer's internal components.
Scythe Expands S-FLEX Series Fans
S-FLEX 120mm case fans produced by the Japanese cooling specialists Scythe Co., Ltd. have already made a name and won numerous awards. To expand its product portfolio Scythe now published new 80 mm and 92 mm versions of the S-Flex series.
The unique S-FDB bearings (Sony Fluid Dynamic Bearing) developed by Sony Corporation reduces the friction between the fan bearings and spindle, resulting in a significant reduction in operating noise. By using additional magnetic structures in the interior of the fan, additional reduction in operating volume has been achieved. To avoid electromagnetic noise, the fan is equipped with a linear drive IC.
The unique S-FDB bearings (Sony Fluid Dynamic Bearing) developed by Sony Corporation reduces the friction between the fan bearings and spindle, resulting in a significant reduction in operating noise. By using additional magnetic structures in the interior of the fan, additional reduction in operating volume has been achieved. To avoid electromagnetic noise, the fan is equipped with a linear drive IC.
Tuesday, April 28th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
- AMD HD 4770 Benchmark Reviews
- HIS HD 4770 Elite Bastards
- AMD HD 4770 Guru3D
- AMD HD 4770 HardwareCanucks
- AMD HD 4770 Hartware (de)
- HIS HD 4770 Hexus
- AMD HD 4770 HotHardware
- AMD HD 4770 Legit Reviews
- Gigabyte HD 4770 Motherboards.org
- AMD HD 4770 NeoSeeker
- ASUS HD 4770 PCStats
- AMD HD 4770 TechPowerUp
- AMD HD 4770 TechSpot
- Gigabyte HD 4770 Tweaktown
- AMD HD 4770 X-bit labs
- Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 X-bit labs
Memory
Notebooks
Processors
Sennheiser IE7 Review
Sennheiser's long awaited performance IEMs are finally here. The IE7 earphones aim to take on some of the very best in-ears around with their bold design and conventional driver. For a price of $300 you get some of the best in-ears on the market today that impress with a detailed bass and full sound stage.
ASUS Announces First Overclocked Radeon HD 4770 Accelerator
Barely 24 hours into the launch of the Radeon HD 4770, ASUS has announced its factory-overclocked, and overclocker-friendly variant of the ATI Radeon HD 4770 (model: EAH4770 TOP/HTDI/512MD5). Giving it the "TOP" branding, the company upped the clock speeds, and backed the product with its Voltage Tweak technology, and its popular SmartDoctor performance control application. The gains end-users have compared to using a reference design accelerator are two fold.
First, ASUS set the clock speeds at 800 MHz (core), and 850 MHz (memory), both 50 MHz bumps over the reference AMD clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory). Second, using the value-added features, the voltages can be upped from 0.95 V to 1.2 V, increasing the overclocking headroom. ASUS claims the core could be set at freqencies as high as 971 MHz, and 1150 MHz for the memory: a seemingly massive increment over the reference speeds, which ASUS rounds off as a 35% speed improvement. The card retains the reference AMD design, and the most common cooler design partners are currently using. Its pricing and availability are yet to be known.
First, ASUS set the clock speeds at 800 MHz (core), and 850 MHz (memory), both 50 MHz bumps over the reference AMD clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory). Second, using the value-added features, the voltages can be upped from 0.95 V to 1.2 V, increasing the overclocking headroom. ASUS claims the core could be set at freqencies as high as 971 MHz, and 1150 MHz for the memory: a seemingly massive increment over the reference speeds, which ASUS rounds off as a 35% speed improvement. The card retains the reference AMD design, and the most common cooler design partners are currently using. Its pricing and availability are yet to be known.
HP Unveils Affordable ProBook Business Notebooks
HP today unveils a new brand of affordable notebook PCs that merge business functionality with sophisticated design to stand out from the crowd. The ProBook series joins HP's EliteBook series with a total of five new notebook models which incorporate a choice of merlot or glossy noir finishes, and feature high-definition (HD) LED backlit wide displays ranging from 14-inch to 17.3-inch diagonal sizes. The cheapest offering starts at $529. Please read the full story for more information.
NEC Electronics and Renesas to Integrate Business Operations
NEC Electronics Corporation (NEC Electronics), Renesas Technology Corp. (Renesas), NEC Corporation (NEC), Hitachi, Ltd. (Hitachi), and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Mitsubishi Electric) today agreed to enter into negotiations to integrate business operations at NEC Electronics and Renesas.
NEC Electronics was established in 2002, separating from NEC, and Renesas was established in 2003, integrating semiconductor units at Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. Both as leading semiconductor companies, NEC Electronics and Renesas provide a wide variety of semiconductor solutions, primarily specializing in microcontroller units (MCUs). In light of fierce global competition in the semiconductor market, NEC Electronics and Renesas have agreed to explore the possibility of business integration in order to further strengthen their business foundations and technological assets while increasing corporate value through enhanced customer satisfaction. By integrating the world's two largest MCU suppliers, the new company will provide one of the most competitive MCU product lineups throughout the world.
NEC Electronics was established in 2002, separating from NEC, and Renesas was established in 2003, integrating semiconductor units at Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. Both as leading semiconductor companies, NEC Electronics and Renesas provide a wide variety of semiconductor solutions, primarily specializing in microcontroller units (MCUs). In light of fierce global competition in the semiconductor market, NEC Electronics and Renesas have agreed to explore the possibility of business integration in order to further strengthen their business foundations and technological assets while increasing corporate value through enhanced customer satisfaction. By integrating the world's two largest MCU suppliers, the new company will provide one of the most competitive MCU product lineups throughout the world.
CoolIT Systems Acquires Delphi Liquid Cooling Assets
Today, CoolIT Systems announces the acquisition of Delphi Thermal Liquid Cooling assets including intellectual property, machinery, and equipment. The Delphi acquisition will provide CoolIT the additional mass market production resources to better accommodate the rapidly growing global industry demand for liquid cooled computers. As part of the Purchase Agreement, CoolIT Systems will be immediately servicing industry giants including Dell and Apple. With the acquisition, CoolIT reaffirms its position as the global leader in advanced liquid cooling for computers.
Radeon HD 4770 Released, Industry's First 40 nm GPU
AMD today released the ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics card. The release marks several milestones for the company, mainly winning the race for the first GPU to be built on the 40 nm process, and the introduction second-generation GDDR5 memory for the mainstream consumer segment.
The brains of this card is the 40 nm AMD RV740 GPU. Its specifications include 640 stream processors that churn out over 900 GFLOPs of shader compute power, 32 texture memory units, and 16 render back-ends. The GPU is aided by 512 MB of fast GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. This provides the same amount of bandwidth as 256-bit GDDR3 commonly found in most graphics card in the range. The card is DirectX 10.1 compliant, and supports the ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU standard.
The card has been launched worldwide, with its initial US price set at $109, and an optional rebate that can send its price further down. In its range, it competes with NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and AMD's own Radeon HD 4830. TechPowerUp is one of the first technology portals to publish a thorough review of the Radeon HD 4770. Our review can be read here.
The brains of this card is the 40 nm AMD RV740 GPU. Its specifications include 640 stream processors that churn out over 900 GFLOPs of shader compute power, 32 texture memory units, and 16 render back-ends. The GPU is aided by 512 MB of fast GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. This provides the same amount of bandwidth as 256-bit GDDR3 commonly found in most graphics card in the range. The card is DirectX 10.1 compliant, and supports the ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU standard.
The card has been launched worldwide, with its initial US price set at $109, and an optional rebate that can send its price further down. In its range, it competes with NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and AMD's own Radeon HD 4830. TechPowerUp is one of the first technology portals to publish a thorough review of the Radeon HD 4770. Our review can be read here.
New AMD Athlon X2 7850 BE Delivers Up to 55% Greater Value over Competing Products
AMD today announced the AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition processor, delivering leading technology and strong performance to the mainstream PC user for under $70 MSRP. Focused on designing and developing new products and platforms over the last 40 years, AMD's unique technologies continue to create compelling user experiences at an exceptional value. As part of this anniversary celebration, the newest addition to the AMD Athlon X2 7000 series of processors delivers a superior dual-core, performance-per-dollar PC experience for solutions at home and at play.
Given the current economic environment, consumers are seeking the best computing value without sacrificing the performance required to maintain their digital lifestyle. This new processor enables AMD technology partners and OEMs to address the industry need for affordable, powerful and energy efficient desktop PCs that help consumers to quickly and easily create, enjoy and share their digital world.
Given the current economic environment, consumers are seeking the best computing value without sacrificing the performance required to maintain their digital lifestyle. This new processor enables AMD technology partners and OEMs to address the industry need for affordable, powerful and energy efficient desktop PCs that help consumers to quickly and easily create, enjoy and share their digital world.
Monday, April 27th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
Monitors
AMD Radeon HD 4770 Review
Today AMD released the world's first GPU that is produced in a 40 nm process. The HD 4770 is aggressively priced around ~$100 and offers great performance for your hard earned dollars. In our testing realized out that the card performs almost on par with the HD 4850. With the amazing 30%+ memory overclock we got on our sample, the HD 4850 will be surpassed easily.
Lian Li PC-A05N & Maxima Force 470 W Review
The Lian Li PC-A05N is an extremely compact chassis, which can still hold a full size ATX board, thanks to a unique interior layout. This should make the case a great choice for LAN party gamers or those looking to stuff as much in as little space as possible. Pair the case with one of those Lian Li Maxima Force power supplies and you have a great base for an ultra compact power house.
PC Power & Cooling Introduces the Silencer 910 PSU
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today unveiled the new Silencer 910 power supply from PC Power & Cooling. The Silencer line has proven itself as one of the most trusted PSU series on the market over the past twenty years, built for absolute stability and reliability for high end enthusiast systems, and the newest addition to our legendary Silencer series completes the family of ultra-quiet highly reliable and efficient PSUs which now range from 370W to the new 910W (1KW peak). Featuring an industry-leading 80+ Silver Certification, the Silencer 910 offers one of the highest efficiencies on the market combined with a power output to meet the demands of the most component-heavy systems. Where ultimate power meets top efficiency, the robust Silencer 910 is the ideal solution for today's high-end gaming systems and professional workstations.
Core i7 975 XE Breaks 5 GHz Barrier, With Air Cooling
Intel's newest high-end processor, the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition is gearing up for launch later this year, on course of which, it already passed a milestone. Xtreme Systems Forums member PcCI2iminal scored one with overclocking a Core i7 975 XE D0 stepping chip past the 5 GHz mark, 5015 MHz to be precise using only air cooling for the processor, with an ambient temperature of 20 °C as claimed by the overclocker. Its cooling was care of a Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120. Its partners in crime were Biostar TPower X58 motherboard, and Corsair Dominator DDR3-1866 memory. At that speed, the setup made it through a CPU-Z validation. PcCI2iminal was further able to put the chip through SuperPi 1M at a speed of 4750 MHz, where its crunch time was measured 8.672 seconds. For more pictures and screenshots, head over to the thread at Xtreme Systems.
TriGem Debuts New 12-inch $699 Averatec N2700 Notebook
TriGem USA today announced the expansion of its mobile computing line with a new 12-inch Averatec N2700 notebook, featuring a 2 GHz Intel dual-core processor, 250 GB hard drive, 4 GB of memory, Microsoft Vista Home Premium and an 8X super-multi DVD optical drive. The notebook, which is currently shipping, is offered at an MSRP of $699.
"The N2700 notebook is an ideal solution for consumers looking for the sweet spot in terms of price, portability and performance," said Henry Hewitt, vice president of sales at TriGem USA. "It's larger and more powerful than a typical netbook computer and offers great portability over notebooks sporting 13-inch screens and larger."
"The N2700 notebook is an ideal solution for consumers looking for the sweet spot in terms of price, portability and performance," said Henry Hewitt, vice president of sales at TriGem USA. "It's larger and more powerful than a typical netbook computer and offers great portability over notebooks sporting 13-inch screens and larger."
New Seagate Replica PC Backup Appliance Makes Data Backup And Recovery Effortless
Continuing its commitment to helping people preserve, protect and enjoy their digital content, Seagate today introduced a new backup appliance that completely eliminates the need to manually learn, manage, or dedicate any time to the backup process. Unlike most backup utilities, the new Seagate Replica backup appliance is a complete PC backup system, which automatically and continuously stores up-to-date copies of everything on a PC, including installed applications, operating system, e-mail, pictures, music, movies, Internet bookmarks and settings. Available in two configurations, the Seagate Replica solution delivers seamless backup for either a single PC or multiple PCs in a household.
Point of View Out With 2 GB GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA partners seem to be gaining interest in releasing GeForce GTX 200 series products with double the amount of memory. Several partners have announced 1792 MB variants for the GTX 260 and GTX 275, while GTX 285 with its lavish 512-bit memory interface is facilitating 2 GB of memory. Point of View now has one such model of its own.
The card uses reference clock speeds as far as the GPU goes: 648 MHz (core) and 1476 MHz (shader), while going light with its memory, 1161 MHz against the reference speed of 1242 MHz. The rest of the card is pretty standard: 240 shader processors, acceleration for NVIDIA CUDA, and support for PhysX technology, and 3-way SLI support.
The card uses reference clock speeds as far as the GPU goes: 648 MHz (core) and 1476 MHz (shader), while going light with its memory, 1161 MHz against the reference speed of 1242 MHz. The rest of the card is pretty standard: 240 shader processors, acceleration for NVIDIA CUDA, and support for PhysX technology, and 3-way SLI support.
Toshiba to Launch World's First 32 nm Process NAND Flash Memory
Toshiba Corporation, reinforcing its leadership in the development and fabrication of cutting-edge, high density NAND flash memory, today announced that it will start shipping NAND flash memory products fabricated with 32nm process technology. Samples of the world's first 32 nm generation, 32-gigabit (Gb) single chips (4 gigabytes (GB)), offering the largest density of any NAND flash chip, are available from today, and 16 Gb chip (2 GB) products, the current mainstream density, will be available in July in Japan. The 32 Gb chips will first be applied to memory cards and USB memories and subsequently extended to embedded products.
Gigabyte High-End P55 Motherboard Pictured
With the industry inching closer to the launch of Intel's Core i5 series processors, motherboard vendors are busy readying waves of motherboards to go with the processors' launch. Earlier in March, a picture of Gigabyte's first P55 chipset motherboard, the GA-IBP surfaced. The pictured then revealed a motherboard based on the Ultra Durable 2 component package. At an overclocking event in Los Angeles, Gigabyte unveiled a second motherboard. This one, yet to be named, is up to date with the Ultra Durable 3 package, a seemingly powerful CPU VRM design, support for dual-channel DDR3 memory, dual-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, an additional storage controller for four SATA ports over the six P55 offers, among standard features. The expansion slots on this board include three full-length PCI-Express slots, the first (blue) one being of full x16 bandwidth that shares 8 lanes with the first orange slot if populated, while the second orange slot is electrically x4, and probably connected to the P55 PCH. No other details have emerged about this board, though we're keeping track of things.
CFD Unleashes the Interceptor line of SSDs
Japanese company CFD has unveiled a new line of multi-level cell SSDs under the "Interceptor" series. The series consists of four models based on the capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. The former two offer read/write speeds of 200/95 MB/s, while the latter two offer 240/150 MB/s: a significant difference in performance. The company also published raw performance figures on the product page, where the drives were tested on reasonably powerful current-generation machines. As for prices, the 32 GB model will be priced at 18,800 JPY (around US $194.5), 64 GB for 28,800 JPY (around $298), 128 GB for 45,800 JPY (around $474), and 256 GB for 79,800 (around $825).
LG Intros 21.5'' Full HD W2243T Display
LG introduced the W2243T LCD monitor. The glossy, piano-black casing packs a 21.5 inch LCD panel, with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The panel features an access time of 5 ms. It has a static contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a dynamic ratio of 30000:1, with a maximum brightness of 300 cd/m². Standard DVI and D-Sub make for the monitor's connectivity options. It is available in the US for around $182, with its Japan launch set for April 30.
Windows 7 to Pack Virtual Windows XP
Across generations of its Windows operating systems based on the NT architecture, Microsoft has been courteous enough to pack application compatibility layers that let users run applications in compatibility modes for older versions of the OS. The company seems to be taking this to the next level with Windows 7. The release candidate of the OS slated for April 30, will pack an "XP mode" virtualization feature. The feature quite literally runs a Windows XP environment inside a sandbox complete with support for applications such as Internet Explorer 6, etc.
The environment will work on a virtual machine created by Windows 7. Native Windows XP applications you install in the environment, along with your documents and settings will further be accessible from the host OS. Client variants of Windows 7 may feature a Hyper-V hypervisor that handles applications such as these. The feature makes Windows 7 especially something to look forward to, for those complaining lack of Windows XP features. In short, it's the OS some probably clung onto, and refused to move to Vista, running as an application.
The environment will work on a virtual machine created by Windows 7. Native Windows XP applications you install in the environment, along with your documents and settings will further be accessible from the host OS. Client variants of Windows 7 may feature a Hyper-V hypervisor that handles applications such as these. The feature makes Windows 7 especially something to look forward to, for those complaining lack of Windows XP features. In short, it's the OS some probably clung onto, and refused to move to Vista, running as an application.
Hynix Announces High Speed, Low Power 50nm-class DDR2 DRAM
Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. announced that it has developed the world's first mobile 1Gb DDR2 DRAM using 54nm process technology. By successfully developing a 50nm-class process, Hynix has overcome the challenge of producing mobile DRAMs with both high speed and low power consumption features.
This device is offered at a maximum speed of 1066MHz, and with 32-bit I/O, boasts bandwidth of 4.26GB/s(Giga byte per second) on a single channel device and 8.52GB/s on a dual channel. Hynix's 'One Chip Solution' design, offers the customer flexible options with 2-bit or 4-bit prefetch, and 16 or 32-bit I/O on a single chip. Additionally, Hynix's new mobile DDR2 is an eco-friendly device since it consumes only 50% of power compared to the previous generation mobile DDR, and 30% compared to standard DDR2 DRAM.
This device is offered at a maximum speed of 1066MHz, and with 32-bit I/O, boasts bandwidth of 4.26GB/s(Giga byte per second) on a single channel device and 8.52GB/s on a dual channel. Hynix's 'One Chip Solution' design, offers the customer flexible options with 2-bit or 4-bit prefetch, and 16 or 32-bit I/O on a single chip. Additionally, Hynix's new mobile DDR2 is an eco-friendly device since it consumes only 50% of power compared to the previous generation mobile DDR, and 30% compared to standard DDR2 DRAM.
AMD Demos 48-core Opteron Server
Having recently made its plans with the server market public, AMD demonstrated a 4-socket server featuring four 12-core, next-generation Opteron processors. That's 48 cores in all. The company has pulled its six-core Istanbul Opteron processors' launch from H2 2008 to Q2 2008, and is set to launch its Opteron 6000 series processors based on the "Magny Cours" architecture in 2010.
Processors in the series come with 8 or 12 cores. The company seems to be ready with a few of these, enough to put together a 4-socket demo system. While AMD did not run any benchmarks on the system, it managed to draw some attention due to the fact that there hasn't been so much parallelism in a 4-way server till date. On the course of its 2010 launch, the company may hold more demonstrations, perhaps with benchmarks to show how the platform compares to competing solutions from rival Intel. The "Magny Cours" processor will be the first in line for the company's G34 "Maranello" platform for AMD Opteron 6000 series processors with up to 16 cores, 4 sockets, and quad-channel memory interfaces per socket. The 16-core processor in the making is slated for 2011, is based on the Bulldozer architecture, and will be built on the 32 nm process.
Processors in the series come with 8 or 12 cores. The company seems to be ready with a few of these, enough to put together a 4-socket demo system. While AMD did not run any benchmarks on the system, it managed to draw some attention due to the fact that there hasn't been so much parallelism in a 4-way server till date. On the course of its 2010 launch, the company may hold more demonstrations, perhaps with benchmarks to show how the platform compares to competing solutions from rival Intel. The "Magny Cours" processor will be the first in line for the company's G34 "Maranello" platform for AMD Opteron 6000 series processors with up to 16 cores, 4 sockets, and quad-channel memory interfaces per socket. The 16-core processor in the making is slated for 2011, is based on the Bulldozer architecture, and will be built on the 32 nm process.
''Real Men Use Real Cores'': AMD
AMD finally stepped out of its shell after Intel's launch of its newest line of Xeon processors based on the Nehalem architecture. In an interview with TechPulse 360, AMD's Pat Patla and John Fruehe took on Intel's recent marketing drive for Nehalem Xeon products. The conversation revolved mainly around the issues of platform costs, and the features the new Xeon processors introduce (or reintroduce) to the server/enterprise computing industry, namely the company's proprietary FSB-replacement, QuickPath Interconnect, and HyperThreading.
The two first took on Intel's marketing, particularly on its material that said that the slowest Nehalem Xeon chip was faster than the fastest Opteron chip, saying that Intel's statements weren't backed by real figures. The two also alleged that Intel's server platform was too expensive and delivered lesser value in an ailing state of the economy. Perhaps the most audacious statement from AMD since the somewhat famous "only real men have fabs" statement by Jerry Sanders III, came from this interview, where AMD responded to a question on HyperThreading saying that "real men use real cores". "We've got real cores across our products. HyperThreading is basically designed to act like a core except that it only gives 10 to 15 percent performance bump for real applications workload." they said. Is AMD making a real point, or fighting fire...erm marketing with marketing? Find out in this interview.
The two first took on Intel's marketing, particularly on its material that said that the slowest Nehalem Xeon chip was faster than the fastest Opteron chip, saying that Intel's statements weren't backed by real figures. The two also alleged that Intel's server platform was too expensive and delivered lesser value in an ailing state of the economy. Perhaps the most audacious statement from AMD since the somewhat famous "only real men have fabs" statement by Jerry Sanders III, came from this interview, where AMD responded to a question on HyperThreading saying that "real men use real cores". "We've got real cores across our products. HyperThreading is basically designed to act like a core except that it only gives 10 to 15 percent performance bump for real applications workload." they said. Is AMD making a real point, or fighting fire...erm marketing with marketing? Find out in this interview.
Sunday, April 26th 2009
Today's Reviews
Motherboards
In Win X-Fighter & Commander 750 W Review
The X-Fighter takes its inspiration from the Star Wars universe. In Win has gone to great length and created their own design around that aspect. The result is a very interesting chassis with a lot of unique features and one of a kind, animated LEDs, which are certain to draw a lot attention at the next LAN Party.
Core i5 to Feature Lower QPI Multiplier
Intel's newest line of CPUs, the Core i5 series is generating quite some buzz ahead of its release, with each piece of detail emerging about the processors adding to the attention it's gathering. Expreview has learned that the Core i5 series processors will feature a slightly different system interface in comparison to their Core i7 cousins.
Coming to the QPI interface between the CPU and NB dice, Intel will raise the QPI base frequency at the expense of lowering the multiplier. For example, the Core i7 uses a 20+ multiplier with a base frequency of 133 MHz. This frequency could be scaled up to 166 MHz at 24x multiplier due to the theoretical speed-limit of QPI at 8.00 GT/s. With the Core i5, Intel will set lower QPI multiplier values (around 16X), while upping the base frequency to around 250 MHz.
Coming to the QPI interface between the CPU and NB dice, Intel will raise the QPI base frequency at the expense of lowering the multiplier. For example, the Core i7 uses a 20+ multiplier with a base frequency of 133 MHz. This frequency could be scaled up to 166 MHz at 24x multiplier due to the theoretical speed-limit of QPI at 8.00 GT/s. With the Core i5, Intel will set lower QPI multiplier values (around 16X), while upping the base frequency to around 250 MHz.
EVGA SLI Enhancement Patch v10 Released
EVGA released the 10th version of its SLI Enhancement Patch since its initial release in mid-February. The patch expands upon the SLI profiles NVIDIA's official drivers come with. An SLI profile is an application-specific optimization to take advantage of two or more NVIDIA GPUs in an SLI setup. With this release (version 10, 04.24.09), EVGA adds SLI support for the games Zeno Clash and Merchants of Brooklyn. The patch is based on NVIDIA GeForce 185.68 driver, and is available for 32/64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista. Registered EVGA users can download the software from here.
Saturday, April 25th 2009
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Monitors
Nettops
VIA Announces 4Q'08 Results
VIA Technologies, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced financial results for fourth quarter 2008. Net sales for 4Q'08 and 4Q'07were NT$ 1,465 million and NT$ 2,502million respectively. Net income for the two quarters were negative NT$ 1,954 million and negative NT$ 2,310 million respectively; based on the weight average shares outstanding of 1,291.517 million shares and 1,291.239 million shares, earnings per share were reported as negative NT$1.51 and negative NT$1.79 for 4Q'08 and 4Q'07 respectively.
For the whole year 2008, net sales totaled NT$ 7,927 million and net income for the year was negative NT$ 4,016 million; based on weight average shares outstanding of 1,291.517 million shares, earnings per share for the year were reported at negative NT$3.11.
For the whole year 2008, net sales totaled NT$ 7,927 million and net income for the year was negative NT$ 4,016 million; based on weight average shares outstanding of 1,291.517 million shares, earnings per share for the year were reported at negative NT$3.11.
Athlon X2 7750 BE Unlocked to Quad-Core
Earlier this year, a Korean source had pointed out an easy method to enable a fourth core on the Phenom II X3. This was made possible by the way AMD has been designing its triple-core and dual-core processors based on the K10 "Stars" architecture: by disabling one or two cores on the quad-core die. "Sloppy" BIOS coding lead to the Phenom II X3 anomaly. It looks like a somewhat similar mod enables not one, but two cores on the sub-$100 Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition. A Korean technology website GiggleHD.com has reported a successful unlock of two cores.
The method is similar to that of the Phenom II X3 unlock: using flaws in BIOS code to enable cores, by enabling the "Advanced Clock Calibration" feature in the BIOS setup. The OS, Windows XP SP3, was able to see the processor as a "AMD Phenom(tm) FX-7750", while CPU-Z reads the name string correctly and lists the core count as 4. The motherboard in use is an ASRock A790GX/128M.
The method is similar to that of the Phenom II X3 unlock: using flaws in BIOS code to enable cores, by enabling the "Advanced Clock Calibration" feature in the BIOS setup. The OS, Windows XP SP3, was able to see the processor as a "AMD Phenom(tm) FX-7750", while CPU-Z reads the name string correctly and lists the core count as 4. The motherboard in use is an ASRock A790GX/128M.
Western Digital Announces Q3 Financial Results
Western Digital Corp. today reported revenue of $1.6 billion, on shipments of approximately 31.6 million units and net income of $50 million, or $0.22 per share, for its fiscal third quarter ended Mar. 27, 2009. The company's results include charges of $14 million for in-process research and development related to the SiliconSystems, Inc. acquisition and $4 million associated with the restructuring plan announced Dec. 17, 2008. Excluding these charges, non-GAAP net income was $68 million or $0.30 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.1 billion, unit shipments of 34.5 million and net income of $280 million, or $1.23 per share.
The company generated $355 million in cash from operations during the March quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $1.6 billion.
The company generated $355 million in cash from operations during the March quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $1.6 billion.
Sparkle Launches Overclocked Calibre X260/X260 HM Video Card
Sparkle on Friday made official its latest graphics card - the Calibre X260/X260 HM. The card uses 55nm GeForce GTX 260 GPU for base model, but adds bumped clock speeds, custom black PCB with enhanced GPU and memory power circuitry, solid capacitors and a custom dual-slot cooler. A 448-bit memory interface and 896 MB of GDDR3 memory are used to finish the whole picture. Sparkle bundles the card with its own SPA Tune, a software that controls the card's clock speeds. It provides three modes - overclocking mode (648 MHz/ 1998 MHz), standard mode (576 MHz/ 1998 MHz), and green mode (400 MHz/ 600 MHz). You can switch between the three modes whenever you want. Click here if you are more interested in the card.
Cooler Master Prepares Limited RC-690 Pure Black Chassis
Cooler Master plans to take another couple of hundred all black limited cases to the field. After Cooler Master Cosmos Black Limited, now it's turn for RC-690 to make its debut in black dress. Since the case is very well known to all of us, and it will be exactly the same, except for the fact that it will be all painted in black and have limited labels attached to it, I won't talk about specs. Here's a direct link to the manufacturer's page here, just in case. The Cooler Master RC-690 Pure Black is expected to become available in September.
[27/04/2009] UPDATE: We've received new info on the case. It's going to sell as an ordinary model, not as limited chassis like we first reported (forget about the limited number badges too). Also, Cooler Master said that the case will be available in June for exactly € 79.90.
[27/04/2009] UPDATE: We've received new info on the case. It's going to sell as an ordinary model, not as limited chassis like we first reported (forget about the limited number badges too). Also, Cooler Master said that the case will be available in June for exactly € 79.90.
Friday, April 24th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Game Controllers
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Mousepads
PSUs
Patriot Memory Intros New DDR3-2000 Viper Triple Channel Kit
Patriot Memory launched a new high-performance Viper series DDR3 memory kit today. Codenamed PVT36G2000LK, the 6 GB kit includes three 2 GB modules optimized to work at 2000 MHz DDR3 and cooled by special Viper heatspreaders. At this speed each module uses CL8-8-8-24 latencies with 1.65V. In other words, that's one of the good memory kits for your high-end Intel X58 machine. On top of everything, Patriot gives a lifetime warranty for its products including this one. There's no price information, though.
MSI Unveils N285GTX SuperPipe 2G Graphics Card
Leader in graphics card cooling technology, MSI International is always inventing new, better thermal designs to give our customers the most efficient products. Launched today, the N285GTX SuperPipe 2G is not only powered by one of the most powerful GPU in the market - the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 - but also adds an amazing 2GB GDDR3 RAM, and utilizes MSI's exclusive SuperPipe and Twin Frozr thermal design. This card dominates the market with peak performance in both graphics and cooling efficiency.
The N285GTX SuperPipe 2G is one of the most powerful cards equipped MSI SuperPipe technology. The heatpipe on a graphics card is a very important component which is responsible for dissipating heat away from the GPU to the surrounding fins. The thicker the heatpipe, the faster the heat can flow to allow better cooling. MSI SuperPipe technology is using 8mm thick heatpipe that is 60% thicker than the traditional heatpipes, and improves the cooling by 90%. With such performance, there is no doubt that MSI SuperPipe technology is perfect thermal solution for high-end graphics cards.
The N285GTX SuperPipe 2G is one of the most powerful cards equipped MSI SuperPipe technology. The heatpipe on a graphics card is a very important component which is responsible for dissipating heat away from the GPU to the surrounding fins. The thicker the heatpipe, the faster the heat can flow to allow better cooling. MSI SuperPipe technology is using 8mm thick heatpipe that is 60% thicker than the traditional heatpipes, and improves the cooling by 90%. With such performance, there is no doubt that MSI SuperPipe technology is perfect thermal solution for high-end graphics cards.
DFI LANParty Announces Project Europa World Overclocking Contest
DFI LANParty, one the most famous mainboard brands worldwide, will hold the first session of global online overclocking competition during April to May of 2009. In addition to a handsome sum of money as prize and awards to the top three, the top ten candidates will also be honored as "LANParty certified overclocker".
"LANParty certified overclocker" enjoys the priority to obtain information on the new products, directly talk with R&D engineers and provide suggestions for the products under development. For more information, please visit this page. For registration or inquiries mail to wr@dfi.com.tw.
"LANParty certified overclocker" enjoys the priority to obtain information on the new products, directly talk with R&D engineers and provide suggestions for the products under development. For more information, please visit this page. For registration or inquiries mail to wr@dfi.com.tw.
PowerColor Unveils the Fastest Radeon HD 4890
TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, today announced a powerful addition to the PowerColor HD 4890 series: PCS+ HD 4890. PowerColor's Professional Cooling System PLUS or PCS+, delivers the ultimate overclocking ability with GDDR5 onboard memory, 950MHz core speed and 1100MHz effective memory speed with memory data transmission rates up to 4.4Gbps, offering the power to tackle the most extreme 3D games.
PowerColor's PCS+ HD4890 features ZEROtherm's exclusive cooling system. A 52-piece designed fin and 4 heat pipes brings substance to the stylish black Ni coated surface that enhances hardness and anti-oxidizing. The PCS+ HD4890 also provides an enhanced fan control helping to automatically adjust speeds with different temperatures, allowing a better user experience.
PowerColor's PCS+ HD4890 features ZEROtherm's exclusive cooling system. A 52-piece designed fin and 4 heat pipes brings substance to the stylish black Ni coated surface that enhances hardness and anti-oxidizing. The PCS+ HD4890 also provides an enhanced fan control helping to automatically adjust speeds with different temperatures, allowing a better user experience.
DFI LANPARTY UT P55 Motherboard Pictured
Surprisingly, VR-Zone today posted pictures of the LANPARTY UT P55 board, a twin of the recently spotted DFI LANParty Dark P55 T3eH6, that packs several interesting features. Quick introduction, the board uses Intel's P55 chipset for the upcoming LGA-1156 socket processors. The board has a total of four DDR3 DIMM slots, three PCI-E x16 slots, digital power circuit and DFI's usual color theme. Also note, that there's a slot on the motherboard for NAND flash installation. Additionally, a mini USB port is located on the I/O backpanel. For now the presence of this NAND flash slot remains mystery. DFI will showcase the motherboard at Computex Taipei 2009 where we hope they will say what is it for.
ASUS Launches New G Series PSUs
ASUS today also presents two new power supply units - the 1 kW G-1000HA and the 850 W G-850HA. With 80 PLUS certification, Active PFC and a MTBF of more than 500,000 hours, both PSUs settle among the best in its class power supplies that deliver just the right amount of power when and where your PC needs it. The G PSUs make use of Japan-made capacitors that provide enhanced stability. More over they come with a silent 13.5cm ball-bearing fan and modular cables that are sleeved to ensure better ventilation and looks inside the case. The G Series are also Intel ATX12V Version 2.31 compliant, and provide 5 dedicated 12V rails. Both PSUs ship with enough external power leads for video cards. The 1 kW model comes with a total of six 6+2-pin PCI-Express 2.0 connectors, while the 850 W has four of them. The new ASUS G Series PSUs should be out selling very soon.
ASUS Presents Express USB 2.0 TV Receiver with 4 GB Free Extra Storage
ASUS today releases the ASUS Express TV Stick for high quality digital (DVBT) and analog TV signal reception. This stick offers complete TV solution for the PC, even for absolute beginners. By simply inserting it into a high-speed USB 2.0 port, the stick will do everything alone - from installing its drivers for the appropriate OS, to installing the needed software that enables viewing or recording digital or analog TV programs. That's possible due to the embedded 4 GB memory that keeps all the necessary software and drivers. This memory also allows the stick to be used as common USB flash storage media. Simply insert it and use the storage space left to transfer your data. The ASUS Express TV tuner is fully compatible with Microsoft Vista Home Premium, Vista Home Basic, Vista Ultimate, and Windows XP platforms. It requires no external power adapter, just a free USB 2.0 port to occupy. Find more information here.
Microsoft Reports Third-Quarter Results
Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.65 billion for the third quarter ended March 31, 2009, a 6% decline from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $4.44 billion, $2.98 billion and $0.33 per share, which represented an increase of 3% and declines of 32% and 30%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
The financial results for the third quarter ended March 31, 2009, included $290 million of severance charges related to the previously announced plan to reduce up to 5,000 positions and $420 million of impairments to investments. Combined, these two charges reduced earnings per share by $0.06.
The financial results for the third quarter ended March 31, 2009, included $290 million of severance charges related to the previously announced plan to reduce up to 5,000 positions and $420 million of impairments to investments. Combined, these two charges reduced earnings per share by $0.06.
OCZ Technology Officially Announces the Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD for Enthusiasts
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the Z-Drive, a PCI-Express based SSD solution designed to meet the stringent demands of enthusiast computing environments and high-end workstations. First debuted at Cebit 2009 in Germany, the Z-Drive is the latest premium solid state storage solution from OCZ.
"It is our goal to deliver tailored SSD solutions for the complete spectrum of high performance applications," said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "Designed for ultra high performance consumers, the Z-Drive takes the SATA bottleneck out of the equation by employing the ultra fast PCI-Express architecture with a RAID controller and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 within an all-in-one product, making this solution ideal for applications that put a premium on both storage performance and maximum capacity."
"It is our goal to deliver tailored SSD solutions for the complete spectrum of high performance applications," said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "Designed for ultra high performance consumers, the Z-Drive takes the SATA bottleneck out of the equation by employing the ultra fast PCI-Express architecture with a RAID controller and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 within an all-in-one product, making this solution ideal for applications that put a premium on both storage performance and maximum capacity."
Thursday, April 23rd 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Headphones
Motherboards
Notebooks
Processors
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Benchmark Reviews
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Bjorn3D
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Club Overclocker
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition DriverHeaven
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and Phenom II X4 945 Guru3D
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Hexus
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition HotHardware
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition HT4U.net (de)
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition I4U
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Icrontic
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition NeoSeeker
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition OCaholic
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Overclockers Club
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Planet 3DNow! (de)
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Tech Report
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition TechSpot
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition TrustedReviews
- Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition D0 Stepping (preview) X-bit labs
Razer Goliathus Review
Razer recently launched a new mouse mat concept dubbed Goliathus. The Goliathus mats are available with two different surfaces and in three different sizes. Add the fact that they can be had for as low as $14.99 makes them extremely interesting.
AMD Introduces New Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Processor
AMD announced a platform refresh today for Dragon platform technology, including the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor. As AMD's fastest ever quad-core processor, it brings all the capabilities gamers, enthusiasts and do-it-yourselfers have come to expect from AMD, including world record setting performance, high-speed DDR3 memory support and AMD OverDrive 3.0 technology, giving users more control over their computing experience.
The Dragon technology refresh consists of the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor, AMD 7-Series chipsets and award winning ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics. With this platform refresh, AMD is combining its fastest processor with the massive graphics processing muscle of its most powerful GPU to deliver high definition video entertainment and "beyond HD" resolutions3 that allow gamers to take the latest games to the extreme.
The Dragon technology refresh consists of the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor, AMD 7-Series chipsets and award winning ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics. With this platform refresh, AMD is combining its fastest processor with the massive graphics processing muscle of its most powerful GPU to deliver high definition video entertainment and "beyond HD" resolutions3 that allow gamers to take the latest games to the extreme.
‘NERO MOVE IT’ Gets 5-Fold Performance Boost From NVIDIA CUDA Architecture
NVIDIA today announced that NERO has released an update to its Nero Move it software that reduces video encoding time by up to five times by utilizing NVIDIA's CUDA computing architecture built inside select NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). NVIDIA CUDA technology dramatically reduces the time it takes to transfer video files to portable devices, while freeing up the CPU to perform other tasks.
Nero Move it is designed to allow consumers to effortlessly convert and share digital media content among a variety of popular entertainment devices. It is a complete software solution for collecting, organizing, transferring, and publishing digital media files from one device to another, as well as for uploading digital content to online communities. By using CUDA technology to tap the massively parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs, Nero Move it converts videos in a fraction of the usual time, reducing the length of time to perform such tasks as customizing an HD video for an iPod, from hours to mere minutes.
Nero Move it is designed to allow consumers to effortlessly convert and share digital media content among a variety of popular entertainment devices. It is a complete software solution for collecting, organizing, transferring, and publishing digital media files from one device to another, as well as for uploading digital content to online communities. By using CUDA technology to tap the massively parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs, Nero Move it converts videos in a fraction of the usual time, reducing the length of time to perform such tasks as customizing an HD video for an iPod, from hours to mere minutes.
Scythe Kaze Server 5.25 Unveiled
Scythe Kaze Master 5.25 Fan Controller gets a big brother with additional features. The new Scythe Kaze Server provides automatic regulation of fan speed according to a freely definable temperature.
Japanese specialist cooling Scythe Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) sticks on principles and uses only the highest quality materials for new Kaze server. Brushed aluminum front accentuates the LCD display of Kaze Server in an optimal way.
As already known from the Kaze Master, Kaze Server allows controlling of four fans independently and read out of four temperatures using the supplied temperature probes. New, however, is - along with the possibility of the LCD monitor completely off - the integration of two automatic control modes which both allow regulation of fan speed depending on a user-definable temperature. The LCD display shows four temperatures in either ° C or ° F (changeable via jumper), fan speed in rpm and the chosen control mode (AUTO, SEMI, MAN).
Japanese specialist cooling Scythe Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) sticks on principles and uses only the highest quality materials for new Kaze server. Brushed aluminum front accentuates the LCD display of Kaze Server in an optimal way.
As already known from the Kaze Master, Kaze Server allows controlling of four fans independently and read out of four temperatures using the supplied temperature probes. New, however, is - along with the possibility of the LCD monitor completely off - the integration of two automatic control modes which both allow regulation of fan speed depending on a user-definable temperature. The LCD display shows four temperatures in either ° C or ° F (changeable via jumper), fan speed in rpm and the chosen control mode (AUTO, SEMI, MAN).
AMD Overdrive Overclocking Utility Updated to Version 3.01
Along with the two new Phenom processors, Advanced Micro Devices today releases an updated version of its Overdrive software. That's the company's utility for real-time monitoring, overclocking and tweaking of AMD chipsets. It is incredibly simple and easy to work with. To download the updated AMD Overdrive utility version 3.01, please click here. The link will also lead you to the full changelog.
Apple Reports Second Quarter Results
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 second quarter ended March 28, 2009. The Company posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue.
EIZO to Launch Power Saving LCD Monitors with Infrared Presence Sensor
Japanese premium class monitor maker EIZO, is taking new approach for power saving, by presenting LCD monitors that implement presence sensor. This infrared sensor will detect if a person sits in front of the monitor, and if not it will turn off the monitor until there's someone in front of it again. Placed on the lower side of the monitor, the presence sensor detects objects within a 120 cm range. The monitor shifts to the power saving mode when nobody is in the detection range for 40 seconds. EIZO will offer two monitor with the "EcoView Sense" technology, the FlexScan EV2023W-H and the FlexScan EV2303W-T. The former is a 20-inch model with a resolution of 1600x900, and the latter is a 23-inch model with 1920x1080 16:9 wide resolution. The typical power consumption of EV2023W-H is 25W, and that of the EV2303W-T model is 18W. In power saving mode, both models consume only 0.7W or lower. The EV2023W will use VA panel with better viewing angles, while the EV2303W will integrate normal TN LCD panel. EIZO will release the two monitors on May 21, 2009.
Samsung Launches New Mini Netbooks
Samsung Electronics America, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the N110 and N120 as the newest additions to their mini notebook lineup. The N110 and N120 are both currently available through Samsung.com and online retailers with an MSRP of $469 and $459, respectively.
"Our mini notebooks represent Samsung's desire to offer high quality, mobile focused solutions that create user value with important features such as design, ergonomics and battery life," said J.H. Kim, President of Samsung Electronics America's Information Technology Division. "With the addition of the N110 and N120, we have expanded our lineup with enhanced battery life, multi-media speakers and a larger keyboard and touchpad. These key features will satisfy the needs of users looking for audio video capabilities, while also supporting the road warriors needing extended battery life."
"Our mini notebooks represent Samsung's desire to offer high quality, mobile focused solutions that create user value with important features such as design, ergonomics and battery life," said J.H. Kim, President of Samsung Electronics America's Information Technology Division. "With the addition of the N110 and N120, we have expanded our lineup with enhanced battery life, multi-media speakers and a larger keyboard and touchpad. These key features will satisfy the needs of users looking for audio video capabilities, while also supporting the road warriors needing extended battery life."
Broadcom BCM4325 All-in-One Chip Becomes Bluetooth 3.0 Certified
Shortly after the official proclamation of the Bluetooth 3.0 standard, Broadcom Corporation today announces that its leading Bluetooth combo chip has been qualified as compliant with the Bluetooth v3.0 + HS specification. The new standard significantly expands the capabilities of Bluetooth wireless technology in multimedia smartphones, netbooks and other devices by enabling the transmission of large files via Bluetooth profiles at speeds up to 24 Megabits per second (Mbps), or a 10 times increase in speed over the previous Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR (enhanced data rate) standard. With the company's InConcert BCM4325 Bluetooth + Wi-Fi + FM combo chip solution and Bluetooth software, Broadcom becomes the world's first to support the standard in a single-chip solution. With this chip you get Bluetooth 3.0 support, 802.11b/g wireless capability and FM radio functionality. Hopefully, after the quick adoption, Bluetooth 3.0 enabled devices will be out very soon.
Scythe Announces Kaze Q 3.5-inch Fan Controller
With the Scythe Kaze Q, Japanese cooling specialist Scythe Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) extends its portfolio a 4-channel Fan Controller for 3.5" bays. Only best materials were used which give this product a high-quality appearance.
Maximum of 4 fans can be regulated independently with Scythe Kaze Q. Because of the wide range of output voltage (5 to 12 V) users can select whether they want their fans to be quiet or running at maximum performance level.
Due to its space-saving design (102 x 25 x 93 mm (WxHxD) and only 116 g), Scythe Kaze Q can be mounted perfectly into one 3.5" bay of conventional PC cases. The high-quality front panel made of brushed aluminum fits perfectly into the overall picture a top-quality PC system. Scythe Kaze Q 3.5" fan controller is now available for Euro 6.50 excl. VAT / US$ 16.75 plus TAX.
Maximum of 4 fans can be regulated independently with Scythe Kaze Q. Because of the wide range of output voltage (5 to 12 V) users can select whether they want their fans to be quiet or running at maximum performance level.
Due to its space-saving design (102 x 25 x 93 mm (WxHxD) and only 116 g), Scythe Kaze Q can be mounted perfectly into one 3.5" bay of conventional PC cases. The high-quality front panel made of brushed aluminum fits perfectly into the overall picture a top-quality PC system. Scythe Kaze Q 3.5" fan controller is now available for Euro 6.50 excl. VAT / US$ 16.75 plus TAX.
Shuttle Announces X 5000TA Touch All-in-One-PC
Shuttle Inc., the market leader in the Mini-PC segment and manufacturer of Multi-Form-Factor solutions announces the availability of a new product generation. The All-in-One-PC X 5000TA is a blend of energy-saving technologies and an innovative operating design. Once again, Shuttle's customary design and its high-quality finish are reflected in the new All-in-One-PC.
The only 3.6 cm thin All-in-One-PC comes supplied with an Intel Atom 330 processor (2x 1.6 GHz), 1 GB DDR2 memory, a 160 GB hard disk and Windows Vista Home Basic. The X 5000TA's high-gloss finish together with the visual chrome elements break new ground.
The only 3.6 cm thin All-in-One-PC comes supplied with an Intel Atom 330 processor (2x 1.6 GHz), 1 GB DDR2 memory, a 160 GB hard disk and Windows Vista Home Basic. The X 5000TA's high-gloss finish together with the visual chrome elements break new ground.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 Now Crafted with 1792 MB
Inno3D is excited to announce the Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 now built with double the memory of 1792 MB gaming performance.
With full GPU-acceleration for NVIDIA PhysX technology, Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 with 1792 MB offers an extreme HD gaming experience by bringing dynamic forces of nature and massively destructible environments to all the latest games.
The future PC games and everyday PC applications requires more memory to run smoothly and efficiently. Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 with 1792MB provides double the memory to offer double the performance levels.
With full GPU-acceleration for NVIDIA PhysX technology, Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 with 1792 MB offers an extreme HD gaming experience by bringing dynamic forces of nature and massively destructible environments to all the latest games.
The future PC games and everyday PC applications requires more memory to run smoothly and efficiently. Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 with 1792MB provides double the memory to offer double the performance levels.
New Workstations Benefit from Performance and Reliability of ATI FirePro 3D
AMD today announced that its entire line of industry leading ATI FirePro professional graphics accelerators are powering all-new OEM workstations for engineering, digital content creation and science professionals. AMD helps ensure that its ATI FirePro professional graphics accelerators maximize application performance and reliability by performing over 90 certifications with leading application providers such as Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks.
"The Dell Precision T7500, T5500 and T3500 and ATI FirePro graphics deliver an excellent balance of value and performance to workstation professionals," said Greg Weir, senior manager, Dell Product Group. "Dell, the world's leading supplier of workstations, is working with ATI to deliver workstation solutions that are reliable and scalable."
"The Dell Precision T7500, T5500 and T3500 and ATI FirePro graphics deliver an excellent balance of value and performance to workstation professionals," said Greg Weir, senior manager, Dell Product Group. "Dell, the world's leading supplier of workstations, is working with ATI to deliver workstation solutions that are reliable and scalable."
MSI to Showcase Android-based Netbook at Computex 2009
Reporter DigiTimes is leading us to believe that MSI is to showcase an Android-based netbook at Computex 2009. The report cites the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) as primary source. Android is a Google project for a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. Based on Linux kernel, the OS is open source and is still not widely aknowledged because of the absence of widespread working ultra-portables. Hopefully, MSI will change this once a working Android-based netbook is released. Other reports claim that HP, Dell, ASUS, Acer, and others also have already been seen experimenting with Android netbooks.
GT300 to Pack 512 Shader Processors
A real monster seems to be taking shape at NVIDIA. The company's next big graphics processor looks like a leap ahead of anything current-generation, the way G80 was when it released. It is already learned that the GPU will use a new MIMD (multiple instructions multiple data) mechanism for its highly parallel computing, which will be physically handled by not 384, but 512 shader processors. The count is a 112.5% increase over that of the existing GT200, which has 240.
NVIDIA has reportedly upped the SP count per cluster to 32, against 24 for the current architecture, and a cluster count of 16 (16 x 32 = 512). Also in place, will be 8 texture memory units (TMUs) per cluster, so 128 in all. What exactly makes the GT300 a leap is not only the fact that there is a serious increase in parallelism, but also an elementary change in the way a shader processor handles data and instructions, in theory, a more efficient way of doing it with MIMD. The new GPU will be DirectX 11 compliant, and be built on the 40 nm manufacturing process. We are yet to learn more about its memory subsystem. The GPU is expected to be released in Q4 2009.
NVIDIA has reportedly upped the SP count per cluster to 32, against 24 for the current architecture, and a cluster count of 16 (16 x 32 = 512). Also in place, will be 8 texture memory units (TMUs) per cluster, so 128 in all. What exactly makes the GT300 a leap is not only the fact that there is a serious increase in parallelism, but also an elementary change in the way a shader processor handles data and instructions, in theory, a more efficient way of doing it with MIMD. The new GPU will be DirectX 11 compliant, and be built on the 40 nm manufacturing process. We are yet to learn more about its memory subsystem. The GPU is expected to be released in Q4 2009.
AMD Future Server Roadmap at a Glimpse
At the AMD Opteron processor Sixth Anniversary event at its Sunnyvale campus, AMD today announced game-changing new additions to its server platform roadmap and a significant acceleration in roadmap execution.
- Months ahead of schedule, AMD plans to deliver the six-core AMD Opteron processor code named "Istanbul" in June this year, with up to 30 percent more performance within the same power envelope and on the same platform as current Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors.
- AMD unveiled Direct Connect Architecture 2.0, the next stage of server processor innovation: up to 12 cores initially, with superior memory and I/O capability, near native virtualization performance, and a range of full-featured power bands that continue to place a priority on low power consumption.
- AMD believes a customer value shift is currently underway, transforming the server market, with the high end moving toward performance and expandability and virtualization driving a need for more cores and greater scalability. At the lower end, AMD sees power management and overall value as primary drivers for cloud computing and ultra-dense environments that demand greater energy efficiency.
- In 2010, AMD plans to ship the AMD Opteron 6000 series for 2P and 4P servers that are designed to address the highly virtualized, high performance computing and database markets. The 6000 series will debut on the G34 socket and the "Maranello" platform, with the 8- and 12-core "Magny-Cours" processors.
- The upcoming AMD Opteron 4000 series is also planned for introduction in 2010 for 1P and 2P servers and designed to address virtualized Web and cloud computing environments. The 4000 series will launch with the C32 socket and "San Marino" platform with the 4- and 6-core "Lisbon" processor.
- The "Interlagos" 12- and 16-core processor, based on the "Bulldozer" core and manufactured on 32nm process technology, is planned to ship in 2011 and will also be supported by the "Maranello" platform. The 6- to 8-core "Valencia" processor, also manufactured on 32nm process technology, is planned for shipment in 2011 on the "San Marino" platform.
OCZ Technology Z-Drive Spotted, Offered in Three Versions
At CeBIT in Hanover, Germany OCZ Technology showcased Z-Drive - a PCI-E x8 storage device on a 245 mm x 124mm x 22 mm board that boasts up to four 256 GB (MLC-equipped) solid-state drives in a RAID 0 setup and delivers some excellent read/write speeds. It seems that the drives are already on the market, and among the first to sell them is the French e-tailer Materiel, which currently offers three versions of the Z-Drive:
- Z-Drive 1 Go PCI-Express 8x - 1 TB version thanks to 4x256 GB MLC SSDs in RAID0, 256 MB on-board data buffer, features up to 500 MB/s read speed and up to 470 MB/s write speed, price tag - 3,399.99 Euro
- Z-Drive 500 Go PCI-Express 8x - 500 GB version (2x256 GB MLC SSDs), offers up to 510 MB/s read speed and up to 480 MB/s write speed (faster than the 1 TB model), price tag - 2,199.99 Euro
- Z-Drive 250 Go PCI-Express 8x - 250 GB version probably from a single MLC SSD that offers up to 450 MB/s read speed and up to 300 MB/s write speed for 1,399.99 Euro
Wednesday, April 22nd 2009
Today's Reviews
Case Modding
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
Motherboards
Mousepads
Design Your Own HD 4890 Contest Extended
Earlier this month, amongst extensive news and reviews coverage of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator, TechPowerUp in partnership with Hightech Information Systems (HIS) announced the "Design Your Own HD 4890 Contest", where we will be giving away a special HIS Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator with body graphics designed by you. Your winning design makes it to the first prize itself, while first and second runners up receive other great prizes by HIS.
Thanks to the great response from our readers, we have decided to extend the contest up to May 31st 2009. We are overwhelmed by the creativity many of our contestants have exhibited, some even thinking they could come up with more than three design candidates. We have therefore decided to up the limit to five, just to let you step up your chances by a good margin. For participation, contest rules, or simply to browse through the entries so far, please visit this page.
Thanks to the great response from our readers, we have decided to extend the contest up to May 31st 2009. We are overwhelmed by the creativity many of our contestants have exhibited, some even thinking they could come up with more than three design candidates. We have therefore decided to up the limit to five, just to let you step up your chances by a good margin. For participation, contest rules, or simply to browse through the entries so far, please visit this page.
New Seagate Barracuda LP Hard Drives Spin at 5900 RPM
Storage boss Seagate today adds a new line of hard drives, the Barracuda LP, to its existing Barracuda series. Barracuda LP stands for low-power and the whole line focuses on low-power, cool and quiet drives that come at an entry-level price. Barracuda LP drives are available in capacities of 2 TB, 1.5 TB and 1 TB and are ideal for desktop applications, such as USB, eSATA, low-power PCs, FireWire external storage, and SOHO NAS markets. All drives carry the latest 500 GB disk platters, 32 MB data buffers and special motors that spin not at the standard 5400 rpm but the rather unusual 5900 rpm. That moves the Barracuda LP drives somewhere between a 5400 and 7200 rpm in the performance chart, while being more energy efficient than normal drives. With this new motor, Seagate measured 3W power consumption at idle and 5.6W during load. Also improved are the noise levels, which now are rated at 19 dB and 20 dB for idle and seek. The suggested retail prices are $118 for the 1 TB Barracuda LP, $156 for the 1.5 TB model, and $358 for the 2 TB drive. Learn more here.
WD Bumps My DVR Expander Capacity to 1 TB
Expanding consumers' TV recording capabilities by hundreds of hours, WD today announced in the U.S. that its My DVR Expander is now available with 1 TB capacity. Consumers can instantly and seamlessly expand their TiVo DVR recording capacity by simply attaching the My DVR Expander to their TiVo DVR.
TiVo Verified compatible with TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs, the new My DVR Expander is capable of storing up to 140 hours of high-definition (HD) television programming based on 1 TB of hard drive storage. The My DVR Expander, which utilizes an eSATA connection, is perfect for consumers who need more room to store the ever-expanding HD entertainment options offered by their service providers.
TiVo Verified compatible with TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs, the new My DVR Expander is capable of storing up to 140 hours of high-definition (HD) television programming based on 1 TB of hard drive storage. The My DVR Expander, which utilizes an eSATA connection, is perfect for consumers who need more room to store the ever-expanding HD entertainment options offered by their service providers.
Buffalo Upgrades its Solid-State Drives to 256 GB
Buffalo Japan today upgrades its SHD-NPUM series of SATA solid-state drives to deliver up to 256 GB of usable storage space. Previously available with "only" 128 GB, the 2.5-inch drives offer mini USB port for external usage and also make use of MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash memory chips. The drives will be available in Japan next month for the price equivalent of €630.
Another Radeon HD 4770 Pictured, Tested
As we head towards the launch of AMD's newest GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 4770, things certainly seem to be looking good from what we have seen of the sub-$100 accelerator so far. After the recent exposé of the HIS HD 4770, it's time now for the one from another AIB.
The card features an identical overall design to the one from HIS, indicating that the cooler is a standard reference design, not what we had seen from the company presentation of HD 4770, showing a rather visually-appealing cooler. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit interface, 640 stream processors, and DirectX 10.1 compliance. Taiwanese website CoolPC put the card through a round of 3DMark06, 3DMark Vantage, and FurMark. The testbed consisted of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor and 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory. The card secured 12,042 points at 3DMark06, and P7408 at 3DMark Vantage. After 350 seconds of FurMark stability test, the GPU temperatures were tipping 72 degrees Celsius, with the fan running at 42% speed. Here's one card to look out for.
The card features an identical overall design to the one from HIS, indicating that the cooler is a standard reference design, not what we had seen from the company presentation of HD 4770, showing a rather visually-appealing cooler. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit interface, 640 stream processors, and DirectX 10.1 compliance. Taiwanese website CoolPC put the card through a round of 3DMark06, 3DMark Vantage, and FurMark. The testbed consisted of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor and 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory. The card secured 12,042 points at 3DMark06, and P7408 at 3DMark Vantage. After 350 seconds of FurMark stability test, the GPU temperatures were tipping 72 degrees Celsius, with the fan running at 42% speed. Here's one card to look out for.
Left 4 Dead PC Downloadable Content Out Now
The Left 4 Dead Survival Pack is now available for the PC and Xbox 360, free of charge to all owners of the game. The full change list for the PC release is below. In addition, both the retail and Steam versions of the game (PC and 360) are now available for a special price. Check Steam and local retailers for pricing details. For more information about L4D, please visit l4d.com.
Samsung Ramping up DDR3 Production to Accommodate New Intel Server Platforms
Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced that it is ramping up 50-nm class production of DDR3 memory chips this month - the most advanced system memory available. This is in response to increased demand stemming from Intel Corporation's launch of its Intel Xeon processor 5500 series.
Samsung's DDR3 enables OEMs to design servers that use up to 192 gigabytes (GBs) per system (16 GBx12) and provides numerous improvements over its predecessor, DDR2, including at least a 60 percent improvement in power consumption and double the system performance, with speeds up to 1333 Megabits per second (Mbps).
Samsung's DDR3 enables OEMs to design servers that use up to 192 gigabytes (GBs) per system (16 GBx12) and provides numerous improvements over its predecessor, DDR2, including at least a 60 percent improvement in power consumption and double the system performance, with speeds up to 1333 Megabits per second (Mbps).
EVGA Offers X58 Hydro Copper Waterblock for its X58 Motherboards
Premium maker EVGA is now offering a shiny new water block for its Intel X58 powered motherboards. The EVGA X58 Hydro Copper Waterblock, part number: 200-CU-HC58-B1 guarantees to drop the temps of your chipset by half and also make your motherboard look very cool. The water block includes both 1/2" and 3/8" fittings for maximum compatibility with all water cooling systems. EVGA is asking $129.99 USD for the part. Find more info here.
AMD Adds Twelve New Opteron Processors
AMD has extended its 45 nm Opteron processor line-up with new energy-efficient chips fitting within a 40W power envelope, designed for very dense data center environments such as those built for cloud computing or web serving. Available immediately, the new Opteron EE chips include the 2.1 GHz Opteron 2373 EE with 6 MB L3 Cache and the 2.3 GHz Opteron 2377 EE with the same cache size. Since they are part of the Shanghai Opteron architecture, the new EE chips have the same features as all other Shanghai Opterons and are not cut-down versions.
AMD today also launches a total of ten other Opteron CPUs, that enrich the company's server HE (55W), standard (75W), and high-performance SE (105W) power bands. These are the 2.4 GHz Opteron 2379 HE ($450), the 2.4 GHz Opteron 8379 HE ($1165), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 2381 HE ($575), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 8381 HE ($1514), the standard 2.8 GHz Opteron 2387 ($873), the 2.8 GHz Opteron 8387 ($2149), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 2389 ($989), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 8389 ($2649), and the two Opteron SE 2393 and 8393 SE with 3.1 GHz clock speeds and $1165 and $2649 price tags respectively. All ten CPUs have 6 MB of L3 cache.
AMD today also launches a total of ten other Opteron CPUs, that enrich the company's server HE (55W), standard (75W), and high-performance SE (105W) power bands. These are the 2.4 GHz Opteron 2379 HE ($450), the 2.4 GHz Opteron 8379 HE ($1165), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 2381 HE ($575), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 8381 HE ($1514), the standard 2.8 GHz Opteron 2387 ($873), the 2.8 GHz Opteron 8387 ($2149), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 2389 ($989), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 8389 ($2649), and the two Opteron SE 2393 and 8393 SE with 3.1 GHz clock speeds and $1165 and $2649 price tags respectively. All ten CPUs have 6 MB of L3 cache.
ASUS Launches Ultra-portable P30A Business Notebook
ASUS today launched the P30A business notebook, an everyday business companion designed for professionals who desire portability, dependability, data security and long battery life. A recipient of the Red Dot (Germany) Design Award, the P30A is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor for extensive multitasking, and features a suite of technological innovations designed to provide effortless computing to business professionals everywhere. It boasts a magnesium alloy construction for strength and ShockShield for data protection. Business users will also appreciate ASUS Xpress Charge, which allows them to charge their ASUS P30A to 90% of its battery life in 90 minutes. With ASUS Smart Assist, users can access a wealth of troubleshooting resources through 'live' interactive chat or e-mail correspondences with ASUS technical support.
AMD Reports First Quarter Results
AMD today reported first quarter 2009 results.
For financial reporting purposes, AMD consolidates the operating results of GLOBALFOUNDRIES in its results as of March 2, 2009 and has created the Foundry segment as of the start of the fiscal year. References to "AMD" in this announcement include these consolidated operating results which are reported for GAAP purposes. "AMD Product Company" refers to AMD, excluding the operating results of the Foundry segment and intersegment eliminations.
AMD reported revenue for first quarter of 2009 of $1.177 billion. First quarter 2009 revenue was flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2008 and decreased 21 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008.
For financial reporting purposes, AMD consolidates the operating results of GLOBALFOUNDRIES in its results as of March 2, 2009 and has created the Foundry segment as of the start of the fiscal year. References to "AMD" in this announcement include these consolidated operating results which are reported for GAAP purposes. "AMD Product Company" refers to AMD, excluding the operating results of the Foundry segment and intersegment eliminations.
AMD reported revenue for first quarter of 2009 of $1.177 billion. First quarter 2009 revenue was flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2008 and decreased 21 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008.
Tuesday, April 21st 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Mouse
- Roccat Kone TweakPC (de)
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Netbooks
Dell Now Offers Updated Studio 15 Laptop
The updated Dell Studio 15 laptop that was rumored for two months, is now finally available for purchase. This newer version comes with improved 15.6-inch LED-backlit display, which packs a native 1366 x 768 resolution, and gets image from the new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics with either 256 MB or 512 MB of on-board memory. The rest of the specs remain unchanged. The machine can still be powered by a range of Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The built-in 2 MP webcam, 5.1 channel sound, HDMI output, plus the optional Blu-Ray drive and backlit keyboard are still present. The Studio 15 is also offered in six different colors including Black Chainlink, Ruby Red, Midnight Blue, Plum Purple, Spring Green and Promise Pink. Base prace starts from the reasonable US $649, all options will bump it considerably.
AMD Intros CPU Price Cuts, Makes Space for New Products
AMD has implemented price-cuts for its desktop CPUs under the Athlon X2, Phenom and Phenom II series. The price cuts affect Athlon X2 model 7750, Phenom X3 models 8750, 8650 and 8450, and the company's current flagship product Phenom II X4 940. The Phenom X3 8750 in particular, is pushed into the $100 mark with its 26% reduction in price.
With the revised price-table, AMD looks to make space for three upcoming products that include the much awaited Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Expected to have reached retail in the US on April 20, the chip has been pushed to a later date, when the company plans four launches in all: Phenom II X4 955, Phenom II X4 945, Athlon X2 7850, and AMD Overdrive 3 software.
Phenom II X4 945 is a 3.0 GHz quad-core processor with its multiplier locked at 16x, while the Athlon X2 7850 takes over as the company's flagship dual-core chip spec'd at 2.80 GHz, 3 MB of total cache, and a TDP of 95W. The chip is based on the 65 nm Kuma core. Phenom II X4 955 has already received listings in Europe, where it is priced at €229.90 including taxes.
With the revised price-table, AMD looks to make space for three upcoming products that include the much awaited Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Expected to have reached retail in the US on April 20, the chip has been pushed to a later date, when the company plans four launches in all: Phenom II X4 955, Phenom II X4 945, Athlon X2 7850, and AMD Overdrive 3 software.
Phenom II X4 945 is a 3.0 GHz quad-core processor with its multiplier locked at 16x, while the Athlon X2 7850 takes over as the company's flagship dual-core chip spec'd at 2.80 GHz, 3 MB of total cache, and a TDP of 95W. The chip is based on the 65 nm Kuma core. Phenom II X4 955 has already received listings in Europe, where it is priced at €229.90 including taxes.
Bluetooth Technology Gets Faster With Bluetooth 3.0
From its annual All Hands Meeting in Tokyo this week, the Bluetooth SIG formally adopted Bluetooth Core Specification Version 3.0 + High Speed (HS), or Bluetooth 3.0. This latest iteration of the popular short-range wireless technology fulfills the consumers' need for speed while providing the same wireless Bluetooth experience - faster. Manufacturers of consumer electronics and home entertainment devices can now build their products to send large amounts of video, music and photos between devices wirelessly at speeds consumers expect.
Bluetooth 3.0 gets its speed from the 802.11 radio protocol. The inclusion of the 802.11 Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) provides increased throughput of data transfers at the approximate rate of 24 Mbps. In addition, mobile devices including Bluetooth 3.0 + HS will realize increased power savings due to enhanced power control built in.
Bluetooth 3.0 gets its speed from the 802.11 radio protocol. The inclusion of the 802.11 Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) provides increased throughput of data transfers at the approximate rate of 24 Mbps. In addition, mobile devices including Bluetooth 3.0 + HS will realize increased power savings due to enhanced power control built in.
Cooler Master Presents Gladiator RC-600 Mid-Tower Chassis
Cooler Master introduced last week a new mid tower chassis - Gladiator 600 (RC-600). The RC-600 is a symbiosis between Cooler Master RC-690 and CM Centurion 5, it shares the RC-690 inside design with PSU situated at the bottom of the case, and the clean, elegant all black exterior of Centurion 5. The mid-tower case ships with a front mounted 120 mm blue LED fan and a single top mounted 140 mm case fan. A total of five 120 mm fans can be installed, two more on the side panel and one at the back. Inside the case there are these little tweaks that only Cooler Master products can offer, such as the big hole around the processor socket that allows for easy CPU cooler installation, as well as the cable management system for quick cable routing. You can visit the Cooler Master RC-600 product page here, for the rest of the info.
Fujitsu Launches its Second Netbook, the LOOX M
Fujitsu debuts today its second netbook into the market for ultra-portable computer systems. The LOOX M netbook offers new sleek exterior design, a 10.1-inch LCD screen (1024x576) and probably nothing new that we haven't already seen in other netbook offerings. The main processor of LOOX M is Intel's 1.6 GHz Atom N270, coupled with 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, integrated wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR connectivity, three USB 2.0 ports, a multicard reader, built-in webcam and a D-Sub connector for external display. As with most of other netbooks, the LOOX M comes with Windows XP Home Edition SP3 operating system installed. Fujitsu is asking around US $611 for the LOOX M.
Samsung Introduces New ''Rugged'' High-capacity 500 GB 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drive
Samsung Electronics Co, a world leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, today introduced their new 500-Gigabyte (GB) 2.5-inch hard disk drive with a shock operation tolerance of 400G/2ms. The Spinpoint M7 500 GB 2.5-inch hard drive with 250 GB per platter features a rugged base and cover design, offering better data protection for road warriors and other mobile laptop users.
"Our customers have been requesting hard drives with higher density, lower power and greater reliability for their mobile applications," said C.H. Lee, vice president, Storage sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "The Spinpoint M7 answers these needs with a high-speed operating shock specification and extraordinary drive capacity for storing large data files, music, photos and videos."
"Our customers have been requesting hard drives with higher density, lower power and greater reliability for their mobile applications," said C.H. Lee, vice president, Storage sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "The Spinpoint M7 answers these needs with a high-speed operating shock specification and extraordinary drive capacity for storing large data files, music, photos and videos."
Powercolor Announces Partnership with Arctic Cooling for Mainstream Graphics Cards
TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, is proud to announce the collaboration with award-winning cooling solution provider, ARCTIC COOLING. The partnership brings a premium cooling solution, typically only found in performance and enthusiast cards to the mainstream market.
With its 92 mm cooling fan, this soon to be part of the Professional Cool Solution (PCS) product line, increases air flow at a lower fan speed that easily dissipates heat from an optimized heat sink which fully covers the PWM and memory. The special fan design avoids direct contact with high temperatures emanating from the heat sink, extending the life cycle of the cooling fan. Keeping fan noise at a minimum with PowerColor's unique fan control technology, the fan speed automatically adjusts while it's under idle, in 2D or 3D mode-helping to deliver the perfect heat dissipation, allowing a better user experience.
With its 92 mm cooling fan, this soon to be part of the Professional Cool Solution (PCS) product line, increases air flow at a lower fan speed that easily dissipates heat from an optimized heat sink which fully covers the PWM and memory. The special fan design avoids direct contact with high temperatures emanating from the heat sink, extending the life cycle of the cooling fan. Keeping fan noise at a minimum with PowerColor's unique fan control technology, the fan speed automatically adjusts while it's under idle, in 2D or 3D mode-helping to deliver the perfect heat dissipation, allowing a better user experience.
NVIDIA Releases OpenCL Driver To Developers
NVIDIA Corporation, the inventor of the GPU, today announced the release of its OpenCL driver and software development kit (SDK) to developers participating in its OpenCL Early Access Program. NVIDIA is providing this release to solicit early feedback in advance of a beta release which will be made available to all GPU Computing Registered Developers in the coming months.
"The OpenCL standard was developed on NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA was the first company to demonstrate OpenCL code running on a GPU," said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of technology and content at NVIDIA. "Being the first to release an OpenCL driver to developers cements NVIDIA's leadership in GPU Computing and is another key milestone in our ongoing strategy to make the GPU the soul of the modern PC."
"The OpenCL standard was developed on NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA was the first company to demonstrate OpenCL code running on a GPU," said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of technology and content at NVIDIA. "Being the first to release an OpenCL driver to developers cements NVIDIA's leadership in GPU Computing and is another key milestone in our ongoing strategy to make the GPU the soul of the modern PC."
MSI Debuts Wind U100 PLUS
Ready to enjoy a mobile life that is as easy as a breeze? MSI Wind, best seller of the year 2008, now launches its new Wind U100 PLUS to extend the fever! Two brand new colors rose champagne and metallic blue together with three colors that never go out of style -Imperial Black, Angelic White and Regal Red- will definitely be your must-buy electronic gadgets of the year!
Retaining the handy and practical design concept of Wind U100, MSI U100 PLUS is powered by the latest Intel Atom N280 processor, which not only enables better computing efficiency but also achieves lower power consumption. What's more, the lightweight of Wind U100 PLUS (only 1kg), 10" LED backlight display, 802.11n WLAN and 1.3M built-in webcam make it the perfect companion of your work, travel and on the go. Why not get a U100 PLUS to capture every single moment of your life?
Retaining the handy and practical design concept of Wind U100, MSI U100 PLUS is powered by the latest Intel Atom N280 processor, which not only enables better computing efficiency but also achieves lower power consumption. What's more, the lightweight of Wind U100 PLUS (only 1kg), 10" LED backlight display, 802.11n WLAN and 1.3M built-in webcam make it the perfect companion of your work, travel and on the go. Why not get a U100 PLUS to capture every single moment of your life?
Intel Prepares Fresh Price-Cuts for SSDs
Silicon giant Intel is preparing a fresh round of price-cuts, this time with its High-Performance SATA SSDs. The price cuts revolve around the company's X25-M and X18-M series, with cuts ranging between US $50 and $100. The SLC-based X25-E series however, is exempted from price cuts. The 80 GB variants of X25-M and X18-M get $50 off, while the 160 GB ones get $100 off. The new prices will be effective from April 26. It remains to be seen as of how these prices affect those of the SSDs Intel co-braded with companies such as Kingston, A-Data, etc.
ATI Months Ahead of NVIDIA with DirectX 11 GPU Schedule?
Never in recent times have we seen NVIDIA and ATI locked in such fierce market competition. The two are seen exchanging blows with product launches and price-cuts. ATI looks to be in the mood to take this competition to the next-level: DirectX 11 compliant GPUs. Microsoft has already released DirectX 11 with the pre-release versions of Windows 7 operating system. A recent report by Heise Online indicates that AMD will be ready with an ATI RV870, the company's first DirectX 11 GPU by the end of July, or early August.
Another source, The Inquirer, states NVIDIA's GT300 GPU launch for October. If you were to count these claims, AMD is put two to three months ahead of NVIDIA when it comes to time-to-market introduction of a new GPU generation. Now, whether you have DirectX 11 compliant software that makes use of the new technology available that soon is a different thing altogether. This will determine the practicality of a DirectX 11 GPU in July/August.
Another source, The Inquirer, states NVIDIA's GT300 GPU launch for October. If you were to count these claims, AMD is put two to three months ahead of NVIDIA when it comes to time-to-market introduction of a new GPU generation. Now, whether you have DirectX 11 compliant software that makes use of the new technology available that soon is a different thing altogether. This will determine the practicality of a DirectX 11 GPU in July/August.
Zotac Readies NVIDIA Ion Mini-ITX Motherboards
After several technical hurdles and some controversy with Intel, NVIDIA was able to go ahead with its Ion platform initiative, where partners are allowed to use Intel Atom processors (both single and dual-core variants) with NVIDIA MCP79-class chipsets. The most distinct feature on offer is the powerful integrated GPU in the form of GeForce 9400M. NVIDIA partner Zotac is ready with two ULPC-friendly mini-ITX motherboards based on the platform, that promise features filled to their brims.
The Zotac IONITX-A-U and IONITX-B-E are powered by Intel Atom 330 dual-core or Atom N230 single-core processors respectively. The only other difference is that the former features an onboard DC-DC power supply. Both feature NVIDIA MCP79 chipset with onboard GeForce 9400M graphics, that comes with clock speeds of 450/1100 MHz (core/shader). Two 240-pin standard DDR2 DIMM slots support DDR2-667/800 MHz memory. There are three SATA II ports provided on the board, with the fourth one placed as an eSATA connector. RAID 0/1 modes are supported. Display outputs are taken care of by D-Sub, DVI and HDMI connectors. The 8-channel audio also provides co-axial and optical SPDIF connections. Six USB 2.0 ports on the back, four through headers, a gigabit Ethernet and WiFi make for the rest of the concoction. It is indicated that the two will hit Japanese stores at prices of JPY 29980 (US$303) for the IONITX-A-U and JPY 19980 ($202) for the IONITX-B-E.
The Zotac IONITX-A-U and IONITX-B-E are powered by Intel Atom 330 dual-core or Atom N230 single-core processors respectively. The only other difference is that the former features an onboard DC-DC power supply. Both feature NVIDIA MCP79 chipset with onboard GeForce 9400M graphics, that comes with clock speeds of 450/1100 MHz (core/shader). Two 240-pin standard DDR2 DIMM slots support DDR2-667/800 MHz memory. There are three SATA II ports provided on the board, with the fourth one placed as an eSATA connector. RAID 0/1 modes are supported. Display outputs are taken care of by D-Sub, DVI and HDMI connectors. The 8-channel audio also provides co-axial and optical SPDIF connections. Six USB 2.0 ports on the back, four through headers, a gigabit Ethernet and WiFi make for the rest of the concoction. It is indicated that the two will hit Japanese stores at prices of JPY 29980 (US$303) for the IONITX-A-U and JPY 19980 ($202) for the IONITX-B-E.
Noctua Presents NF-S12B 120 mm Premium Fan
Noctua today introduced the new NF-S12B 120mm premium fan. Succeeding the vastly successful NF-S12, the NF-S12B is a next generation quiet fan featuring Noctua's advanced SCD2 technology as well as a highly optimised blade geometry with Bevelled Blade Tips that improves its award-winning predecessor's airflow efficiency by up to 10%.
"Our popular NF-S12 series is renowned for its excellent airflow/noise ratio, so further improving it was by no means an easy feat", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "It took us quite a lot of time and effort, but we couldn't be happier with the result. The new NF-S12B doesn't only provide more airflow at the same noise level than the original NF-S12, it also produces higher static pressure."
"Our popular NF-S12 series is renowned for its excellent airflow/noise ratio, so further improving it was by no means an easy feat", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "It took us quite a lot of time and effort, but we couldn't be happier with the result. The new NF-S12B doesn't only provide more airflow at the same noise level than the original NF-S12, it also produces higher static pressure."
OCZ Technology Announces Vertex EX 2.5-inch SLC-based Solid-State Drives
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled OCZ Vertex EX 2.5" Solid State Drives that is designed to meet the stringent demands of server environments and enterprise applications. These new premium offerings are the pinnacle storage option excelling in performance, reliability, and power consumption that offer professionals and enthusiasts an unparalleled computing experience.
Monday, April 20th 2009
Today's Reviews
Accessories
Cases
Cooling
Game Controllers
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Keyboards
Memory
Motherboards
Notebooks
PSUs
NVIDIA Unveils Industry's First Integrated GPU Platform For Broadcast Production
NVIDIA Corporation today introduced the NVIDIA Quadro Digital Video Pipeline, the industry's first integrated GPU-based platform for broadcasters to acquire, process and deliver virtual effects to video.
The solution offers the fastest graphics computation engine for broadcast production, in a flexible, reliable and cost-effective PC-based platform. By providing a direct path for image processing into and out of the GPU, it allows professionals to incorporate higher quality, graphic-rich broadcasts in real time. It also offers the fastest path for capturing and transcoding HD broadcast-quality video for use in real-time Internet streaming services.
The solution offers the fastest graphics computation engine for broadcast production, in a flexible, reliable and cost-effective PC-based platform. By providing a direct path for image processing into and out of the GPU, it allows professionals to incorporate higher quality, graphic-rich broadcasts in real time. It also offers the fastest path for capturing and transcoding HD broadcast-quality video for use in real-time Internet streaming services.
NVIDIA Brings Highly Acclaimed Quadro FX 4800 To MAC Market
NVIDIA today brings to Mac Pro users its award-winning NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800, the market's most advanced professional graphics card. With its sophisticated GPU architecture and industry leading features, the Quadro FX 4800 delivers a substantial boost in graphics performance and capabilities, allowing users to continue to push the boundaries of realism and performance in markets such as: architecture, content creation, science and medicine.
The new Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac is on display at the NVIDIA NAB 2009 booth: SL 7906, lower South Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, April 20-23, 2009.
The new Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac is on display at the NVIDIA NAB 2009 booth: SL 7906, lower South Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, April 20-23, 2009.
Toshiba Unveils Dynabook UX 10.1-inch Netbook
Toshiba is launching its second foray into the netbook market, with the 10.1-inch Dynabook UX netbook offering. The Dynabook UX-series netbooks are based on the Intel Atom N280 chip and come with 1 GB of DDR2 memory, a 160 GB hard disk drive and integrated GMA 950 graphics from Intel again. The 10.1-inch LED backlight display boasts 1024 x 600 pixels native resolution. The Dynabook UX comes in two colors - brown or white, and a choice of batteries - a standard battery that will last for about 4 hours, or an extended battery that could provide up to 10 hours of use. Microsoft Windows XP Home OS comes pre-installed with the netbook. The UX-series computers will be launched in Japan on Friday for around ¥60,000 to ¥70,000 (US $606 to $707), and follow in other markets later this year.
Jetway Releases XBLUE Series Motherboards
Jetway announced its newest line of mainstream motherboards for the AMD processor platform: XBLUE series. The two models currently part of the lineup include XBLUE-78GA3 (AMD 780G) and XBLUE-77A3 (AMD 770). Jetway used an identical PCB design for the two, with a few components' presence determined by the chipset. The core idea is to provide support for the entire range of processors right from AM2 to AM3. The board features two DDR2 (supports up to DDR2-1066 standard) and two DDR3 slots (supports up to DDR3-1333). For AM3 processors, either kind of memory can be used, while for AM2 and AM2+ ones the DDR2 slots have to be used.
On both the boards, Jetway implemented ATI Crossfire, not by using external PCI-E switching for the PCI-E x16 slot, but rather providing a PCI-E x4 slot powered by the SB700 southbridge. The XBLUE-78GA3 even packs SidePort memory for the IGP. Its output options include DVI, D-Sub and HDMI. The XBLUE-77A3 relies on discrete graphics. Other features include six SATA II ports, and six-channel HD audio. The company is yet to announce pricing and availability.
On both the boards, Jetway implemented ATI Crossfire, not by using external PCI-E switching for the PCI-E x16 slot, but rather providing a PCI-E x4 slot powered by the SB700 southbridge. The XBLUE-78GA3 even packs SidePort memory for the IGP. Its output options include DVI, D-Sub and HDMI. The XBLUE-77A3 relies on discrete graphics. Other features include six SATA II ports, and six-channel HD audio. The company is yet to announce pricing and availability.
NVIDIA Outsources 40 nm to Foundry Partners in Q2
With rival AMD having a production-grade 40 nm graphics processor, and UMC's recent announcement of being ready with a high-performance 40 nm manufacturing node, the conditions are increasingly favourable for NVIDIA to flag-off large-scale production of 40 nm GPUs. According to Chinese print-media Commercial Times, the company set its foundry outsourcing schedule for within Q2 2009, with TSMC and UMC being the regular foundry-partners.
Within this quarter, NVIDIA will start mass-production of the entry-level GT218, high-end mobile GT215 and mainstream desktop GT214 and GT216 GPUs. Additionally, the company may also expand its output for the 55 nm G200b high-end GPU.
Within this quarter, NVIDIA will start mass-production of the entry-level GT218, high-end mobile GT215 and mainstream desktop GT214 and GT216 GPUs. Additionally, the company may also expand its output for the 55 nm G200b high-end GPU.
WD Ships 2 TB RE4-GP Enterprise-Class HDDs with Next-Generation GreenPower Technology
Western Digital Corp. today expanded its enterprise family of hard drives to include the next-generation 2 TB capacity, the largest and only 2 TB enterprise-class hard drive shipping today. Combining industry-leading 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density, WD RE4-GP hard drives yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.
WD's GreenPower technology platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. These drives reduce average drive power consumption by up to 50 percent over currently available competitors' drives and are ultra-cool and quiet, all while delivering solid performance.
WD's GreenPower technology platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. These drives reduce average drive power consumption by up to 50 percent over currently available competitors' drives and are ultra-cool and quiet, all while delivering solid performance.
Oracle to Buy Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt.
"We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined," said Oracle President Safra Catz.
"We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined," said Oracle President Safra Catz.
Intel Cuts Core 2 Prices, Introduces Core 2 Quad Q8400 and Q8400S
Our friends at TCMagazine have just posted an updated chart of Intel's Core 2 and Xeon processors that reveal two new CPUs, and some interesting price reductions. The new socket LGA775 Core 2 Quad Q8400 and Q8400S processors are both made using 45 nm technology, feature a frequency of 2.66 GHz, a 1333 MHz FSB and 4 MB of L2 cache. The S model has a TDP of 65W while the normal Q8400 has 95W TDP. Both processors cost $183 and $245 respectively.
LaCie Introduces Three High-Performance Storage Combinations for Video Professionals
Today LaCie announced a new 8 TB model of the LaCie 4big Quadra and three new product combinations for professionals who expect fast, large and reliable storage solutions to enhance their workflow. Leveraging the quality and reputation of the award-winning LaCie 4big Quadra-which is recognized for its high capacity, speeds, data protection, and design-LaCie premieres the 4big Quadra Bundle, which boasts huge capacities up to 32 TB and fast transfer speeds up to 700 MB/s. LaCie also announced today a new 8 TB model of the 4big Quadra, an integral part of the 32 TB LaCie 4big Quadra Bundle.
TechPowerUp! WCG Team Announcement
Recently, a member of our community asked me personally to do him a big favour and publish the good cause he and his followers are trying to defend. I'm complete noob when it comes to World Community Grid (WCG) Teams, I really haven't got enough time to participate in such projects, but we know they exist for some time now and they're trying to make the world a bit better. Now techPowerUp! has its own WCG Team led by our forum member Fitseries3 and we're glad to inform you that it's doing pretty well. An averaging 113,000 points a day are being made by the team of 32 members. Full statistics of what's going on can be found here. The team is using me and this news story to become even bigger and recruit more members. To participate, please visit our forums thread here.
HP Firebird 802 Gets $500 Discount
HP's flagman gaming rig, Firebird 802, just got $500 cheaper. That includes a $150 cut to the $1,799 base price and a $350 instant rebate that brings the final price down to $1,299. For that money you get a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad 9400 processor (6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB), 4 GB of PC2-6400 RAM, 2x 250 GB hard drives, and dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S MXM 3.0 graphics cards with 512 MB DDR3 memory on each card, working in SLI mode. The system also includes a DVD burner, a 350W external power supply, an unique vertical HP casing and a factory-sealed liquid cooling system for almost noiseless operation. Visit HP for more information.
MSI Launches N260GTX Lightning Fast Graphics Cards
MSI releases two GeForce GTX 260 video cards today - MSI N260GTX Lightning, and N260GTX Lightning Black Edition. First introduced at Cebit 2009, MSI N260GTX Lightning has twice the standard GeForce GTX 260 GDDR3 memory - 1792 MB, utilizes a Twin Frozr cooling with heatpipes, dual slot heatsink and two big fans. The card is reported to utilize 10 Phase PWM design, where 8 phases are reserved for the GPU and 2 phases for the memory.
There are two versions of the card, that are essentially the same, but differ only from the bundle package. The better version N260GTX Lightning Black Edition is paired with the company's AirForce Panel, an external touch panel that can change the card's voltages and clock speeds on the fly. It is not included in the Lightning edition. Detailed information on the clock speeds of both cards is below.
There are two versions of the card, that are essentially the same, but differ only from the bundle package. The better version N260GTX Lightning Black Edition is paired with the company's AirForce Panel, an external touch panel that can change the card's voltages and clock speeds on the fly. It is not included in the Lightning edition. Detailed information on the clock speeds of both cards is below.
Microsoft Windows 7 RC to Go Public on May 5
The offficial release candidate (RC) version of the next-generation operating system from Microsoft - Windows 7 - will be publically released on May 5th, and should be available for MSDN and Technet subscribers now. This information comes directly from Microsoft, who by mistake updated one of the Windows 7 related web pages to display the following text: "Partners: if you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now. Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 starting May 5, 2009." As you can expect, the page is now fixed and the text was removed. The page has now been reverted back to inform about Windows 7 beta, and how to obtain trial keys for partners.
G.Skill Announces the Falcon MLC-based SSDs in 64 GB to 256 GB Capacities
G.Skill International Co. Ltd., a world leader in extreme performance storage and memory products with solid quality, today launches Falcon SATA II 2.5" MLC-based Solid State Drive (SSD) Series based on the latest, cutting edge Indilink controller. With a huge 64 MB dram buffer, the Falcon series represents the best read/write performance stability while avoiding OS stutter. The Falcon series is available in large capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB: the read/write performance of the 128 GB and 256 GB drives are an industry leading 230/190 MB/Sec, while the 64 GB drives are capable of 230/135 MB/Sec.
G.Skill is a dedicated provider of the best PC enthusiast computer storage and memory solutions, and the Falcon SSD once again reaffirms this, providing both desktop and laptop users the best choice of data storage device, retaining reliable quality and a highly power efficient nature. G.Skill SSDs are designed to yield an impressive 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and include an international 2 year warranty as well as ever ready technical back-up. For more information, please visit this page here.
G.Skill is a dedicated provider of the best PC enthusiast computer storage and memory solutions, and the Falcon SSD once again reaffirms this, providing both desktop and laptop users the best choice of data storage device, retaining reliable quality and a highly power efficient nature. G.Skill SSDs are designed to yield an impressive 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and include an international 2 year warranty as well as ever ready technical back-up. For more information, please visit this page here.
OLPC Selects VIA for Gen 1.5 XO-1 Laptops
Last Friday, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization announced that it is leaving Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as main processor partner in favour of VIA Technologies. This is a step that will lower the price of OLPC's laptop further. From this point on VIA's C7-M processor instead of AMD's Geode will power OLPC's XO-1 laptops. The processor will be a VIA C7-M, with plans on using one whose clock speed ranges from 400 MHz (1.5 W) to 1 GHz (5 W). The clock may be throttled back automatically if necessary to meet thermal constraints. Gen 1.5 XO-1 laptop will come with the VIA VX855 all-in-one chipset solution, as well as with an updated HD Audio sound. The upgraded XO laptops will also include 1 GB of RAM and between 4 GB and 8 GB of storage, which is considerably more than the currently existing XO systems with 256 MB RAM and 1 GB of storage. There are two more changes being made, the network interface will be upgraded to an 88W8686 with wake-up functions, which halves the power consumption of current XO-1 network adapter, and a new OLPC OS 8.2.x will be installed to support all the hardware variations. Overall, the Gen 1.5 XO-1 laptop will remain the same from the outside - same display, same form, same power consumption, probably the same price - but come with upgraded internals.
Early versions of the hardware (bare board) should be available for driver development at the end of May. A larger number of prototype laptops (several hundred) for software development and testing will become available around the end of August. It's unclear when children will get their hands on the final product, though.
Early versions of the hardware (bare board) should be available for driver development at the end of May. A larger number of prototype laptops (several hundred) for software development and testing will become available around the end of August. It's unclear when children will get their hands on the final product, though.
Sunday, April 19th 2009
Today's Reviews
Mousepads
Netbooks
PSUs
DimasTech Bench Table Easy V2 Review
The DimasTech BenchTable Easy is a metal overclocking/testing station with the possibility to hold large water cooling kits. Unlike some other tables out there, you can stuff this puppy with three optical drives, four hard drives and add double or triple radiators to the rig. On top of that, you can freely choose from a whole array of colors to customize the look of your own Bench Table.
Team Group Unveils New 3 GB and 6 GB Elite Triple-Channel DDR3 Kits
Team Group recently unveiled four new low-voltage DDR3 memory kits for high-performance desktop machines that boast Intel's DDR3 loving X58 chipset. The new kits are available in both 3 GB (3x1 GB) and 6 GB(3x2 GB) flavours and come in both 1066 MHz and 1333 MHz varieties. The memory modules itself feature a 6-layer PCB, 128x8 die layout, and operate at CL7-7-7-21 timings for the 1066 MHz and at CL9-9-9-24 for the 1333 MHz models. Operating voltage for all memories is 1.5V. All four Team Group Team Elite memory kits come with a lifetime warranty.
Saturday, April 18th 2009
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
Monitors
Motherboards
Mousepads
HIS Radeon HD 4770 Makes Early Appearance
AMD's newest line of desktop graphics cards in the making, Radeon HD 4700, will be launched in weeks to come. The Radeon HD 4770 model in particular, is the company's move to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GT, while at some highly competitive price-points. Earlier in February, a sample made its way to Guru3D, which revealed quite a bit about the SKU. It looks like AMD's partners, at least HIS, is ready with its HD 4770 card, according to a press-shot leaked by Chinese website ITOCP.
The pictures show the card to feature a PCB visibly identical to the reference PCB candidate spotted on the Guru3D sample, while featuring a company-designed cooler. The cooler consists of a GPU block from which metal fins project radially, on which a fan is present, decked with a fancy shroud. Also pictured are the box design, and package contents. The common features of the Radeon HD 4770 are known to be: 40 nm RV740 GPU, 640 stream processors, 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and CrossFireX support. This card features 512 MB of memory. The price of this card is not known, though AMD reportedly set a US $99 target SEP price for the Radeon HD 4770.
The pictures show the card to feature a PCB visibly identical to the reference PCB candidate spotted on the Guru3D sample, while featuring a company-designed cooler. The cooler consists of a GPU block from which metal fins project radially, on which a fan is present, decked with a fancy shroud. Also pictured are the box design, and package contents. The common features of the Radeon HD 4770 are known to be: 40 nm RV740 GPU, 640 stream processors, 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and CrossFireX support. This card features 512 MB of memory. The price of this card is not known, though AMD reportedly set a US $99 target SEP price for the Radeon HD 4770.
OCZ Technology Introduces MiniPCI–Express Solid State Drives
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled their first miniPCI-Express Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the affordable flash-based storage option to significantly increase the capacity for netbooks. For on the go computing professionals and students looking for an ideal storage upgrade on their ultra-portable platforms, the OCZ miniPCI-E SSD is the cost effective alternative to traditional standard storage drives as a reliable upgrade on mobile systems.
Friday, April 17th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
AMD SB850 Southbridge to Pack Gen. 3 SATA 6 Gbps Support
As the market receives AMD's homegrown chipsets well since its successful 7-series, the company is preparing a new breed of platform core-logic technologies that will serve present and upcoming generations of the company's processors. From what we know so far, the company has designed the RD8xx and RS880, and has reportedly prepared prototype motherboards based on the chipsets. Several motherboard vendors have already prepared their upcoming SKUs based on the RS880 (AMD 880G), though all of these feature current SB710/SB750 series southbridge chips.
The successor, SB850, has been known to bring in an expanded feature set, and more importantly, an update with its storage controller. The southbridge will be one of the first ones to feature the third-generation SATA interface, that offers a maximum bandwidth of 6 Gbps between the system and the storage device, in comparison to 3 Gbps SATA II offers. In RAID mode, the controller will provide RAID 0, 1, JBOD, and RAID 5 modes. Six SATA channels will be supported in all. Other known features include support for 14 USB ports, albeit USB 2.0. AMD won't be embracing USB 3.0 just yet. The new southbridge will be released in Q4 2009 according to a portion of a roadmap slide by the company.
The successor, SB850, has been known to bring in an expanded feature set, and more importantly, an update with its storage controller. The southbridge will be one of the first ones to feature the third-generation SATA interface, that offers a maximum bandwidth of 6 Gbps between the system and the storage device, in comparison to 3 Gbps SATA II offers. In RAID mode, the controller will provide RAID 0, 1, JBOD, and RAID 5 modes. Six SATA channels will be supported in all. Other known features include support for 14 USB ports, albeit USB 2.0. AMD won't be embracing USB 3.0 just yet. The new southbridge will be released in Q4 2009 according to a portion of a roadmap slide by the company.
Intel Virtualization Technolgy Makes it to Five More Chips
In a recent press release, Intel has announced that the Intel VT (Virtualization Technology) feature would be added to five existing desktop processor SKUs. The technology accelerates virtualization software. It will be now added as a feature to Core 2 Quad Q8300, Core 2 Duo models E7400, E7500, Pentium Dual-Core models E5300 and E5400.
The company will release VT-enabled stocks of these processors come June 12. The processors will feature new S-spec and MM number schemes. To support these processors, a BIOS update will be required. The update will merely enable the VT feature and provide an option to toggle it.
The company will release VT-enabled stocks of these processors come June 12. The processors will feature new S-spec and MM number schemes. To support these processors, a BIOS update will be required. The update will merely enable the VT feature and provide an option to toggle it.
IBM Announces Availability of 28 nm Semiconductor Technology
In a move that signals a firm and ongoing commitment to advanced semiconductor technology leadership, IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., and STMicroelectronics have defined and are jointly developing a 28-nanometer, high-k metal gate (HKMG), low-power bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology.
The low-power, 28nm technology platform can provide power-performance and time-to-market advantages for producers of a broad range of power-sensitive mobile and consumer electronics applications, including the fast-growing mobile Internet device market segment. The favorable leakage characteristics of the HKMG technology result in optimized battery life for the next generation of mobile products.
The low-power, 28nm technology platform can provide power-performance and time-to-market advantages for producers of a broad range of power-sensitive mobile and consumer electronics applications, including the fast-growing mobile Internet device market segment. The favorable leakage characteristics of the HKMG technology result in optimized battery life for the next generation of mobile products.
Samsung, Dell Provide Data Encryption for SSDs
Samsung Electronics on Thursday said it is boosting security on solid-state drives by bundling data encryption software from Wave Systems' Embassy with drives from 64GB to 256GB.
The drives with encryption software will be available from PC makers, Samsung said in a statement. Coinciding with Samsung's announcement, Dell said it would offer the self-encrypting SSDs with its Latitude line of laptops in the upcoming months.
Full-disk encryption is already available for hard drives, but this is the first time it is available for SSDs, Samsung said. The software automatically encrypts information as data is stored on the SSDs. Additionally, the company claims that SSD performance is not affected by encryption because the drive has no moving parts.
The drives with encryption software will be available from PC makers, Samsung said in a statement. Coinciding with Samsung's announcement, Dell said it would offer the self-encrypting SSDs with its Latitude line of laptops in the upcoming months.
Full-disk encryption is already available for hard drives, but this is the first time it is available for SSDs, Samsung said. The software automatically encrypts information as data is stored on the SSDs. Additionally, the company claims that SSD performance is not affected by encryption because the drive has no moving parts.
The Pirate Bay in Legal Soup, Owners Fined and Jailed
The Pirate Bay, one of the largest BitTorrent tracker websites, that allows peer-to-peer file sharing and is infamous to host torrent links to copyrighted content on users' computers, is in legal soup vide a verdict from a Swedish Court of law. The Court has convicted four men responsible for running the website after its founding anti-copyright group, Piratebyran gave up control. The four men, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of multiple counts of copyright infringement, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. A fine of around US $3.5 million was further issued, with each of the four having to pay around $905,000.
The verdict comes as a victory for record companies, that welcome it, despite the fine imposed not being anywhere close to the $17.5 million + damages, several groups of record companies were pushing for. Speaking in a video address hosted on the website, Peter Sunde described the verdict as "bizarre". "It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organized. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime" he said. Speaking about the fine, he said "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."
The verdict comes as a victory for record companies, that welcome it, despite the fine imposed not being anywhere close to the $17.5 million + damages, several groups of record companies were pushing for. Speaking in a video address hosted on the website, Peter Sunde described the verdict as "bizarre". "It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organized. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime" he said. Speaking about the fine, he said "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."
Core i5 Specifications and Prices Surface
Intel's next big thing in the making, the Core i5 series processors are nearing launch, which is reportedly delayed to October. The new processors replace the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo series of processors, while leaving the high-end market for Core i7 to play with. These processors are based on the LGA 1156 socket, and are incompatible with Core i7 motherboards. Recent reports shed light on three models in the making to start the lineup, all of which are quad-core processors based on the Lynnfield core, built on the existing 45 nm process.
The common features of these processors include: four x86 processing cores with support for HyperThreading technology, an integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller specified to run DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1333 modules, 8 MB of L3 cache, and support for TurboBoost technology. The three models will come with core clock speeds of 2.66 GHz, 2.80 GHz, and 2.93 GHz. The three will be priced at US $196, $284, and $562 respectively. With the TurboBoost technology enabled, the clock speeds card be stepped up to 3.2, 3.46 and 3.6 GHz respectively, on the fly. Shortly after launching these processors, Intel may introduce the industry's first 32 nm processors. With these prices, the chips clearly intrude the price-domain of Core i7, though perhaps their lower platform costs could serve as deal-makers.
The common features of these processors include: four x86 processing cores with support for HyperThreading technology, an integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller specified to run DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1333 modules, 8 MB of L3 cache, and support for TurboBoost technology. The three models will come with core clock speeds of 2.66 GHz, 2.80 GHz, and 2.93 GHz. The three will be priced at US $196, $284, and $562 respectively. With the TurboBoost technology enabled, the clock speeds card be stepped up to 3.2, 3.46 and 3.6 GHz respectively, on the fly. Shortly after launching these processors, Intel may introduce the industry's first 32 nm processors. With these prices, the chips clearly intrude the price-domain of Core i7, though perhaps their lower platform costs could serve as deal-makers.
Galaxy Second in League for GPU Keychains
Earlier this week, news on NVIDIA selling keychains with real GPUs in them, made waves. The company has these keychains up in its online store that caters to the North American region, for US $9.99. It looks like the ploy to sell or give away GPU keychains is bigger than we thought it was. Galaxy, one of NVIDIA's largest board partners, has its own GPU keychain up for grabs, which it plans to sell in Mainland China, United States, and Japan. Currently Galaxy isn't selling it, but instead using it as a company souvenir in events held by the company. Perhaps the most interesting part of this keychain is that the GPU in it is not G98. Expreview notes that the GPU has the same area as the G94 GPU on the company's GeForce 9600 GT Low Profile Edition. We'll leave the guesswork to you.
Lian Li Launches Latest NC-09 Notebook Cooler
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the NC-09 Notebook cooler pad. The brushed all aluminum black anodized structure has a huge 220mm 5V silent DC Fan with a blue LED and a large steel mesh which allows extra air-flow under the notebook. The Notebook Cooler has dual USB connectors with one mini USB power connector which can accept either a notebook power source, or a Universal 5V USB Cellphone charger. In addition there is a on/off switch to facilitate ease of use. The mini USB provides power to the fan and other USB connectors (Fan uses 300MA only).
The NC-09 cooler has a three level height adjustment, or alternatively the smooth base panel can conveniently be placed on a flat sur face or on one's lap. The NC-09 is perfect for High End notebooks, since Aluminum is four times more effective than steel to transfer and dissipate heat. The NC-09 has been designed for 12.1"/14"/15"/17" notebooks. For more details on features for the NC-09 please go to the Lian-Li website.
The NC-09 cooler has a three level height adjustment, or alternatively the smooth base panel can conveniently be placed on a flat sur face or on one's lap. The NC-09 is perfect for High End notebooks, since Aluminum is four times more effective than steel to transfer and dissipate heat. The NC-09 has been designed for 12.1"/14"/15"/17" notebooks. For more details on features for the NC-09 please go to the Lian-Li website.
Thursday, April 16th 2009
Today's Reviews
Accessories
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
Memory
Motherboards
Mousepads
Notebooks
Arctic Cooling Releases Arctic F Pro PWM Ultra Quiet High Performance Case Fans
The Swiss low noise cooling solution provider ARCTIC COOLING today announced the launch of the ARCTIC F Pro PWM case fans. They are in 3 sizes - 80mm, 92mm and 120mm. With the patented PWM Sharing Technology (PST), these new fans are surely the best choice for quiet enthusiasts.
CPU and VGA cards nowadays generate increasing amount of heat which leads to high case ambient temperature. Some users will use more case fans to cool down the case. However, this will produce more noise, and energy will be wasted as all fans run at full speed even after the case temperature is lowered.
CPU and VGA cards nowadays generate increasing amount of heat which leads to high case ambient temperature. Some users will use more case fans to cool down the case. However, this will produce more noise, and energy will be wasted as all fans run at full speed even after the case temperature is lowered.
Scythe Announces Zipang 2 CPU Cooler
Japanese PC cooling specialist Scythe has a new CPU cooler up its shelves: Zipang 2. The cooler-design comes across as an evolution of that of Scythe Kabuto, and consists of a base that doubles up as a heatsink. From here, arise six 6 mm copper heatpipes, that convey heat to six blocks of aluminum fins. It measures 145x149x106 mm, and weighs 715 g (around 1.57 lbs). The 140 mm fan spins at around 1000 rpm, and pushes 51.43 CFM of air, with a noise output of 22.74 dBA. The cooler supports all current sockets from Intel and AMD, including Intel LGA-1366, and AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3. Its pricing and availability are yet to be disclosed.
Shuttle Releases Power-saving Nettop with OpenSUSE Linux Operating System
Shuttle Inc., the market leader in the Mini-PC sector and manufacturer of Multi-Form-Factor solutions, is now expanding its portfolio of Mini-PCs with Open Source operating systems. The latest offshoot is the X270V complete system based on the Shuttle Barebone X27D.
As with earlier Shuttle Mini-PCs with pre-installed Linux operating system, the X270V uses OpenSUSE - now in version 11. All PC functions are configured after the first start-up in only a few steps and can then be used immediately. Expansion with program packages is possible at any time by a 1-Click-Installation from the openSUSE website to meet individual requirements.
As with earlier Shuttle Mini-PCs with pre-installed Linux operating system, the X270V uses OpenSUSE - now in version 11. All PC functions are configured after the first start-up in only a few steps and can then be used immediately. Expansion with program packages is possible at any time by a 1-Click-Installation from the openSUSE website to meet individual requirements.
Phenom II X4 955 Inches Toward April 20 Launch
AMD is attempting to set its record straight with the Phenom II series of 45 nm desktop processors. The company had started off its Dragon desktop platform with the introduction of its flagship CPU, the Phenom II X4 940. This processor however, is not compliant with the AM3 socket, and will not support DDR3 memory, unless an AM3 socket motherboard can provide DDR2 memory support. Come April 20, and AMD will have released its newest processor: Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Based on the 45 nm Deneb core, this processor supports AM3 socket motherboards, and DDR3 memory. It features a core clock speed of 3.20 GHz (16.0 x 200 MHz), 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 6 MB of L3 cache. It is overclocker-friendly thanks to its unlocked bus multiplier, and the "massive headroom" AMD has been brandishing lately.
One of our sources from Hong Kong was able to make an early-purchase this processor in its retail "processor in a box" (PIB) package (marked with the OPN HDZ955FBGIBOX), from the Golden Computer Parts Center, who took a few snaps of the package. It could be bought for around HKD 2170 (US $280).
One of our sources from Hong Kong was able to make an early-purchase this processor in its retail "processor in a box" (PIB) package (marked with the OPN HDZ955FBGIBOX), from the Golden Computer Parts Center, who took a few snaps of the package. It could be bought for around HKD 2170 (US $280).
I-O Data Readying ExpressCard SSDs
Solid State Disks (SSDs) come are coming in all shapes, sizes, and interfaces. I-O Data is preparing a new SSD design that is compatible with the ExpressCard 34 slot that most notebooks feature. The purpose of this design could be portability, or simply expanding the notebook's storage beyond what its hard drive allows. The ExpressCard interface provides fast connectivity between the system and the SSD's own storage controller (up to 2.5 Gbps in PCI-Express mode).
The drive measures 34x74x5 mm, and weighs around 21 g. It comes in two variants, based on the storage they offer: 32 GB and 64 GB. Backed by a one-year warranty, the 32 GB variant is priced in Japan at US $170, and the 64 GB at $243.
The drive measures 34x74x5 mm, and weighs around 21 g. It comes in two variants, based on the storage they offer: 32 GB and 64 GB. Backed by a one-year warranty, the 32 GB variant is priced in Japan at US $170, and the 64 GB at $243.
Buffalo Japan Intros External Hard Drive with Automatic Data Encryption
Buffalo Japan introduced the HDS-CU2 USB external hard drive. Coming in capacities of 500 GB and 1 TB, this product is targeted to the SME and SOHO markets. The biggest USP of the HDS-CU2 is its automatic data encryption feature. Once configured with what type of data to auto-encrypt, the drive automatically manages encryption, using the 128-bit AES algorithm.
The drive can be configured to use Windows-level login authentication and a more compulsive authentication every time files are accessed. The encryption is care of the drive's own hardware, and has no overhead on the host computer, to which it uses USB 2.0 for connectivity. It is supported by most recent versions of Windows (2000 SP3+, XP, 2003, Vista, and 2008), and Mac OS 10.4.
The drive can be configured to use Windows-level login authentication and a more compulsive authentication every time files are accessed. The encryption is care of the drive's own hardware, and has no overhead on the host computer, to which it uses USB 2.0 for connectivity. It is supported by most recent versions of Windows (2000 SP3+, XP, 2003, Vista, and 2008), and Mac OS 10.4.
Cogage True Spirit and MST-140 Coolers Surface
A seemingly new gun in the PC cooling town is Cogage. The company sources its produce from Thermalright, a company well-known for its CPU coolers. Taking its name from the Thermalright Ultra Edition (popularly abbreviated as TRUE), the company has readied the True Spirit cooler, which even ends up looking like the cooler it's trying to impersonate. This cooler is built exclusively for Intel LGA-1366 socket processors. It measures 133x156x38 mm, and weighs 670 g (1.47 lbs). It packs four copper heatpipes that convey heat to 48 aluminum fins. Active ventilation is care of a 120 mm fan that rotates in speeds between 1000 and 1500 rpm, with rated noise levels of 19.6 to 37.4 dbA.
The other cooler in the works, MST-140, sports a design where the a fan of similar specifications as the one bundled with the True Spirit, blows air perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard, rather than parallel. This cooler supports both LGA-775 and LGA-1366 sockets. It measures 144x147x70.2 mm and weighs 410 g (0.9 lbs). From its base, arise four "U"-shaped heatpipes that convey heat to two dense aluminum fin arrays (40 fins each). The pricing and release dates of these coolers are yet to be known.
The other cooler in the works, MST-140, sports a design where the a fan of similar specifications as the one bundled with the True Spirit, blows air perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard, rather than parallel. This cooler supports both LGA-775 and LGA-1366 sockets. It measures 144x147x70.2 mm and weighs 410 g (0.9 lbs). From its base, arise four "U"-shaped heatpipes that convey heat to two dense aluminum fin arrays (40 fins each). The pricing and release dates of these coolers are yet to be known.
MSI Introduces the Light and Slim X340 Notebook
MSI announces X340 in X-Slim Series. The concept for the bottom framing of the X340 originated from the lightness of the feather as well as its elegance and richness, further freeing our notebook from the traditional grimness.
The most unique features of the X340 has to be that it is only 6 mm at its thinnest, 19.8 mm at its widest, and the entire notebook is only weights 1.3 kilograms added with the battery! Making the X340 the world's lightest and slimmest 13" notebook.
The most unique features of the X340 has to be that it is only 6 mm at its thinnest, 19.8 mm at its widest, and the entire notebook is only weights 1.3 kilograms added with the battery! Making the X340 the world's lightest and slimmest 13" notebook.
Photos Emerge of Intel's 32 nm Clarkdale Processor
Not long after Intel was said to have sent out samples of its new 32 nm mainstream processor based on Nehalem micro-architecture, someone over at XS forums, has posted photos of an as yet unnamed Clarkdale processor, running at 2.4 GHz, with 4 MB L3 Cache. The only official information from Intel we have about these processors is what we covered two months ago, when Intel spread open its plans to deal with the mainstream and value markets using its Nehalem micro-architecture.
Triplex Designs Radeon HD 4830 Without Auxiliary Power Connector
A relatively unknown company, Triplex, has designed a Radeon HD 4830 graphics accelerator that does not require the 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. This is especially interesting for two reasons: that it is RV770, and that it runs at reference clock speeds despite shedding its traditional power design. Spotted on XtremeSystems, this engineering sample PCB features a 2+1 phase power design, that draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot.
Also featured are 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory, DVI-D, HDMI and D-Sub outputs, and a seemingly two-slot cooler design that is yet to be pictured. The card lacks CrossFireX fingers. The GPU has 640 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 compliance, and a 256-bit memory interface. It has AMD reference clock speeds of 575/900 MHz (core/memory). For reference the third picture shows a Radeon HD 4670 accelerator of the same make, and PCB length.
Also featured are 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory, DVI-D, HDMI and D-Sub outputs, and a seemingly two-slot cooler design that is yet to be pictured. The card lacks CrossFireX fingers. The GPU has 640 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 compliance, and a 256-bit memory interface. It has AMD reference clock speeds of 575/900 MHz (core/memory). For reference the third picture shows a Radeon HD 4670 accelerator of the same make, and PCB length.
Wednesday, April 15th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Multimedia
Networking
Notebooks
Processors
Sennheiser IE6 Earphones Review
Sennheiser recently launched the IE6 earphones. Marketed at budget conscious sound enthusiasts, Sennheiser aims to conquer a market already booming with new and innovative products. For a price of $200 you get a very smooth listening experience with a nice balance between the lows and highs.
Acer Offers New Premium Aspire Notebook PCs to U.S. Customers
Acer America, part of the world's third largest PC company, today announced U.S. availability of the Aspire 3935-6504, a thin-and-light notebook series which combines distinctive style with cutting-edge technologies, and the Aspire 8935, the next generation in the highly-touted series of large-screen Gemstone notebook PCs.
Super Talent Launches 6 GB and 3 GB DDR3-2000 Kits
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today launched a new Chrome Series of extreme performance triple channel DDR3 kits for Intel Core i7 based enthusiast motherboards.
The new Chrome Series is Super Talent's highest performance line of DDR3, which supports extremely high memory clock speeds at a relatively low 1.65 Volts to match the requirements of the new breed of Core i7 based motherboards. The first four Chrome Series triple channel kits include 6 GB and 3 GB kits in DDR3-2000 and DDR3-1800 speeds.
The new Chrome Series is Super Talent's highest performance line of DDR3, which supports extremely high memory clock speeds at a relatively low 1.65 Volts to match the requirements of the new breed of Core i7 based motherboards. The first four Chrome Series triple channel kits include 6 GB and 3 GB kits in DDR3-2000 and DDR3-1800 speeds.
Transcend Reveals Eye-catching Shock-Resistant StoreJet 25M-R Portable Hard Drive
Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend ), an international leader in storage products, today announced a stylish new addition to its exciting line of StoreJet portable hard drives. The StoreJet 25M-R portable hard drive is an innovative combination of anti-shock construction with an attractive design that masks the drive's true rugged nature in a tantalizing blend of crimson red and jet black.
Intel Reports First-Quarter Results
Intel Corporation today reported first-quarter revenue of $7.1 billion, operating income of $670 million, net income of $647 million and earnings per share (EPS) of 11 cents.
"We believe PC sales bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. "Intel has adapted well to the current economic environment and we're benefiting from disciplined execution and agility. We're delivering a product portfolio that meets the needs of the changing market, spanning affordable computing to high-performance, energy-efficient computing."
"We believe PC sales bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. "Intel has adapted well to the current economic environment and we're benefiting from disciplined execution and agility. We're delivering a product portfolio that meets the needs of the changing market, spanning affordable computing to high-performance, energy-efficient computing."
ASUS Intros the VENTO TA-M2 Screw-Less Chassis
ASUS, producer in top-class computer chassis, today released the new ASUS VENTO TA-M2 chassis. This stylishly designed chassis utilizes a sturdy and visually-pleasing design that incorporates a user-friendly screw-less design for easy installation; while providing an advanced ventilation system that maximizes thermal efficiency for key components-especially the CPU and graphics cards.
ASUS Expands its GENE Pool with Second mATX Motherboard
Giving the Rampage II GENE a competition, ASUS has now unveiled Maximus II GENE - the second high-performance micro ATX motherboard that is part of the company's Republic of Gamers line-up. Based on the Intel P45 Express Chipset, the Maximus II GENE delivers overclocking friendly environmnet for the Intel Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo platform. The board has four DDR2 1300/1200/1066/800/667 MHz memory slots (up to 16 GB), two PCI-Express x16 slots for CrossFire setups, 7 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports, a built-in SupremeFX X-Fi 8 channel sound from Creative and a lot more. As with the ROG Rampage II GENE, the Maximus II GENE offers a wealth of other high-end features including MemOK!, CPU Level Up, Keyboard-TweakIt, Extreme Tweaker, iROG, Loadline Calibration, LCD Poster, EPU-6 Engine, and Voltiminder LED. Also, inside the package of every motherboard, ASUS has kindly included full-version of Kaspersky anti-virus, and a license for Futuremark 3DMark06 Advanced Edition. ASUS is mum on the pricing and availability date of the Maximus II GENE mATX board.
LaCie Launches Rugged XL 1 TB External HDD
Today LaCie announced the Rugged XL, a super-sized expansion to LaCie's award-winning line of Rugged hard drives. Showcasing more than just its extra-large exterior, the Rugged XL doubles capacity to 1 TB, and will surely amplify the style of any creative desktop.
Rugged XL leverages the design and durability of the popular Rugged drive, offering aluminum casing for superior protection on your desktop, as well as the signature orange rubber sleeve. Taking advantage of the Rugged's reputation for resilience, the Rugged XL also features an internal bumper and heat dissipating features, making the LaCie Rugged XL able to withstand the challenges and blunders that can occur on anyone's desk.
Rugged XL leverages the design and durability of the popular Rugged drive, offering aluminum casing for superior protection on your desktop, as well as the signature orange rubber sleeve. Taking advantage of the Rugged's reputation for resilience, the Rugged XL also features an internal bumper and heat dissipating features, making the LaCie Rugged XL able to withstand the challenges and blunders that can occur on anyone's desk.
Tuesday, April 14th 2009
Today's Reviews
Accessories
Cooling
Game Controllers
Graphics Cards
- HIS HD 4850 IceQ4 1GB Bjorn3D
- XFX ATI HD 4000 Series Overclock3D.net
- Coolink GFXChilla VerdisReviews
- SilenX iXtrema IXG-80HA2 Noiseless VGA Cooler w/IXG-3F2 Fan Kit Think Computers
- NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision X-bit labs
- ASUS GTX 250 Overclockers Club
- Inno3D GTX 275 OC 896M TechPowerUp
- Galaxy GTX 275 Overclocked Tri-Fan Tweaktown
Motherboards
Mouse
Netbooks
Processors
PSUs
Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 OC 896M Review
Inno3D's latest graphics card release is the GeForce GTX 275 Overclocked. It is based on NVIDIA's P897 design but comes with considerably increased clocks. This results in a nice performance boost over the reference cards and allows the card to beat the much more expensive GeForce GTX 285.
Pioneer Launches New Blu-Ray Burner
Pioneer on Tuesday announced the release of its latest Blu-ray, DVD and CD writer, the BDR-2203. Using SATA interface, the BDR-2203 writes dual-layer Blu-Ray media at up to 8x speeds, equal to about 15 minutes of your time for writing a single-layer 25 GB Blu-Ray disc, or just about 30 minutes for completion of a dual-layer 50 GB disc. The burner also writes recordable DVDs at 16x, dual-layer DVDs at 8x, CD-R media at 32x, and CD rewritable discs at 24x. Along with the burner you'll receive CyberLink PowerDirector, PowerDVD, and Power2Go software products. The BDR-2203 should already be in stores, with a suggested retail price of $250.
ATTO Technology and Hitachi GST Demonstrate 6 Gb/s SAS Interoperability
ATTO Technology and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced interoperability of their respective 6Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) products designed for use in high-performance server and storage applications. The combination of ATTO ExpressSAS Host Bus Adapters with Hitachi Ultrastar C10K300 hard drives deliver fast 6 Gb/s data transfers for high I/O enterprise environments. The new 6 Gb/s SAS interface delivers 100 percent faster data throughput than previously available using a 3 Gb/s SAS interconnect. The companies began working together early in the development of 6 Gb/s SAS to share design implementations and debug information, as well as conduct extensive testing to ensure an interoperable solution that delivers compatibility and overall system performance.
ASUS High-End EAH4890 Cooler Pictures and Details Emerge
Towards the end of March, we caught a glimpse of a yet to be named high-end custom-designed Radeon HD 4890 accelerator from ASUS. The accelerator makes use of an exotic VRM design to facilitate high clock speeds and overclocking potential. Back then, we couldn't get pictures of what cooled the beast. Thankfully, NordicHardware has a few pictures of the cooler, along with more details in place.
OWC Announces Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 “Quad Interface” PnP Hardware RAID Solution
Other World Computing (OWC), a leading PC and Mac technology company, announced today the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 for the ultimate in flexibility and convenience in a Plug and Play desktop hardware RAID storage solution. Featuring a "Quad Interface" of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports; 4 Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive bays; and 4 user selectable hardware RAID settings, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 offers up to 8TB of total storage capacity and data transfer speeds up to 300 MB/s for the ultimate professional grade RAID storage solution.
NEC Intros Watercooled ValueStar W All-in-One Desktop, ValueStar N Joins League
NEC introduced two new lines of all-in-one desktop PCs: ValueStar N, and ValueStar W. The launches push the company's monolithic all-in-one design approach further, into the realm of luxury PCs. The ValueStar N comes in three bezel colours: black, white, and cherry red. The main unit packs the 21.5-inch full HD display, and all the hardware otherwise found in a mini-tower. Under the hood is an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 processor, 4 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT graphics, and 1 TB of storage.
There is also a 19-inch variant with a display resolution of 1440 x 900 px, and 500 GB storage. Both variants pack a DVD Super Multi drive. A media-center remote is bundled along with the keyboard and mouse. The ValueStar W on the other hand, packs beefier hardware with its Core 2 Quad Q8200 quad-core processor that is watercooled, 4 GB of memory, digital TV tuner, 1TB of storage, Blu-Ray drive and a 22" LCD. Better as it seems, ironically, this display features an underwhelming resolution of 1680 x 1050.
There is also a 19-inch variant with a display resolution of 1440 x 900 px, and 500 GB storage. Both variants pack a DVD Super Multi drive. A media-center remote is bundled along with the keyboard and mouse. The ValueStar W on the other hand, packs beefier hardware with its Core 2 Quad Q8200 quad-core processor that is watercooled, 4 GB of memory, digital TV tuner, 1TB of storage, Blu-Ray drive and a 22" LCD. Better as it seems, ironically, this display features an underwhelming resolution of 1680 x 1050.
New Microsoft SideWinder X3 Mouse Fits Your Hand and Your Wallet
Microsoft Corp. today announced a new addition to the award-winning family of SideWinder gaming products, the SideWinder X3 Mouse, which combines gaming performance and versatile design at a value price of $39.95. This ambidextrous, eight-button gaming mouse delivers comfort for either hand along with the performance features fans of SideWinder products know and love, including a 2,000 dots-per-inch (dpi) laser-tracking engine with on-the-fly dpi switching between high, medium and low sensitivity. The SideWinder X3 Mouse is easy on the wallet, but it does not skimp on performance, offering gamers a full set of features and launching them ahead of the competition.
"Our research shows that in-game comfort continues to be the main consideration for PC gamers," said Bill Jukes, product marketing manager for Microsoft Hardware. "We designed this mouse to be ambidextrous and small in size, providing comfort to a wider variety of people and making it ideal for gaming as well as everyday use."
"Our research shows that in-game comfort continues to be the main consideration for PC gamers," said Bill Jukes, product marketing manager for Microsoft Hardware. "We designed this mouse to be ambidextrous and small in size, providing comfort to a wider variety of people and making it ideal for gaming as well as everyday use."
Intel Releases New Firmware for its X18-M and X25-M Solid-State Drives
Intel has released a new firmware for its high-performance X18-M and X25-M solid-state drives. The new update brings the firmware up to version 1.1 and aims to further improve the performance of the solid-state drives. Last but not least this update fixes the severe performance degradation of these drives after extended periods of use. Download the update and learn more about the update procedure from here.
Monday, April 13th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Game Controllers
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Gigabyte Setto 1000 & ODIN 470W PSU Review
The Gigabyte Setto 1000 looks great on the outside, with its stylish aluminum front and choice of three different colors. The case goes all out on looks, but keeps to the bare minimum on interior features and the price tag as well. This is for all of you who want to pimp their entry level PC or simply want to steer clear of beige OEM enclosures on their first build.
OCZ Technology Introduces AMD Optimized Memory for the AM3 Platform
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today expanded their memory lineup for AMD enthusiasts and power users with new DDR3 kits qualified and optimized specifically for the AM3 platform. The new low-voltage kits were designed exclusively for AMD's transition to DDR3 and are tailored to make full use of the latest computing environments as well as establish a future-proof system with restricted voltage requirements.
"AMD's new AM3 architecture is designed specifically for the gaming community, with emphasis on high data transfer rates between the system memory and the graphics subsystem," commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ. "The key improvement over the AM2 platform is the embracing of DDR3 technology where OCZ has a track record of being a market leader. These new AMD kits further establish our leading role in this category and show our commitment to both industry partners and the gaming community by complementing AMD's gaming platform with future-oriented, low voltage memory technology."
"AMD's new AM3 architecture is designed specifically for the gaming community, with emphasis on high data transfer rates between the system memory and the graphics subsystem," commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ. "The key improvement over the AM2 platform is the embracing of DDR3 technology where OCZ has a track record of being a market leader. These new AMD kits further establish our leading role in this category and show our commitment to both industry partners and the gaming community by complementing AMD's gaming platform with future-oriented, low voltage memory technology."
NVIDIA offers GPU Keychain
Among all the core products NVIDIA has listed on its website, that include graphics cards, motherboards, software and other computer hardware with NVIDIA branding, the company seems to have come up with a good way of making use of G98 GPUs rejected by its partners: using it in memorabilia.
Geeks wanting a piece of the NVIDIA GPU can buy a clear Lucite keychain with a real G98 GPU in it, complete with all markings, and the company logo. The main body is a 1.5 inch square. The keychain carries the part code GS-NV1544, is priced at US $9.99, and is available at the NVIDIA Online Store here.
Geeks wanting a piece of the NVIDIA GPU can buy a clear Lucite keychain with a real G98 GPU in it, complete with all markings, and the company logo. The main body is a 1.5 inch square. The keychain carries the part code GS-NV1544, is priced at US $9.99, and is available at the NVIDIA Online Store here.
A-DATA Introduces XPG Gaming Series Memory, now in DDR2-1066
A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in high performance memory products, today introduced its newly speed of XPG Gaming Series DRAM module in DDR2-1066, as dual channel 2GBx2/1GBx2 and single channel kits up to 2GB. Designed for consumers who want to enhance their gaming ability, the XPG Gaming Series DDR2-1066G DRAM module provide CL6-6-6-18 timing at 2.0V±0.1V to delivering outstanding performance, speed, and gamer experience.
Optimized for the latest gaming platform, the XPG Gaming Series DDR2-1066G DRAM module delivers the perfect blend of performance, durability, and stability with low power consumption. It is an affordable midrange offering for gamer of all levels and the professionals demanding the latest DDR2 technology.
Optimized for the latest gaming platform, the XPG Gaming Series DDR2-1066G DRAM module delivers the perfect blend of performance, durability, and stability with low power consumption. It is an affordable midrange offering for gamer of all levels and the professionals demanding the latest DDR2 technology.
SandForce Reach the SSD Market with New SF-1000 SSD Processor
SandForce, the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable commodity NAND flash deployment in enterprise and mobile computing applications, today emerged from stealth mode and unveiled its first product, the SF-1000 SSD Processor family. These highly-integrated silicon devices address the inherent endurance, reliability, and data retention issues associated with NAND flash memory, making it possible to build SSDs that deliver unprecedented performance over the life of the drive with orders-of-magnitude higher reliability than enterprise-class HDDs (Hard Disk Drives).
The SandForce patent-pending DuraClass technology promises to accelerate mass-market SSD adoption. Leading OEMs are expected to release both SLC (single level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell) flash-based SSDs using SandForce single-chip SSD Processors later this year.
The SandForce patent-pending DuraClass technology promises to accelerate mass-market SSD adoption. Leading OEMs are expected to release both SLC (single level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell) flash-based SSDs using SandForce single-chip SSD Processors later this year.
MSI U123 Netbooks Now Official
MSI today also starts the new U123 netbook line-up composed of the U123, U123H and U123T machines. U123 series netbooks are light and compact, they fit into an A4-sized bag, but come with a relatively large screen and keyboard. All four models have very nice exterior design and can be purchased in four different colors - pearl white, dolphin gray, midnight blue and silver red. Further more, U123 series use the latest Atom platform from Intel, a 80 GB, 120 GB or a 160 GB 2.5-inch SATA hard drive, 1 GB on-board DDR2 533MHz RAM (up to 2 GB) and although the name suggests a 12-inch screen, all models have a 10-inch LED backlit display with 1024 x 600 native resolution. No detailed information on the difference between the three models is published, MSI only mentions that the U123T integrates a TV tuner, the hard drive space varies between models, and that the U123H has a 3.5G HSDPA module.
MSI Preparing X58Pro-E Motherboard
Adding to its now 6-strong lineup of motherboards for the Intel Core i7 processors, that includes the recently pictured X58M micro-ATX board, the company is preparing yet another full-sized motherboard, the X58Pro-E. This board is designed to be a notch above the X58Pro thanks to support for the GreenPower design. This is perhaps to compete with similar offerings from other manufacturers, under the $220 price-point.
MSI has taken care of the essentials with this one. A basic 4+1 phase VRM powers the CPU, which uses the company's proprietary Driver-MOSFET (DrMOS) technology. Six DDR3 memory, three PCI-Express x16 slots supporting ATI CrossFireX technology, seven SATA II ports (six routed to the ICH10R, with one on the board routed to an external controller, the same controller providing an eSATA port), several USB ports, IEEE-1394 and gigabit Ethernet, make for all of this board's feature set. We predict this board to be launched alongside the X58M. Many thanks to one of our readers for providing the pictures.
MSI has taken care of the essentials with this one. A basic 4+1 phase VRM powers the CPU, which uses the company's proprietary Driver-MOSFET (DrMOS) technology. Six DDR3 memory, three PCI-Express x16 slots supporting ATI CrossFireX technology, seven SATA II ports (six routed to the ICH10R, with one on the board routed to an external controller, the same controller providing an eSATA port), several USB ports, IEEE-1394 and gigabit Ethernet, make for all of this board's feature set. We predict this board to be launched alongside the X58M. Many thanks to one of our readers for providing the pictures.
MSI Intros 14.1-inch GX403 Gaming Laptop
Micro Star International (MSI) has just introduced its latest notebook, the 14-inch GX403 small gaming laptop. Designed to be thin, light, power efficient, and affordable, the MSI GX403 features 14.1-inch 16:10 aspect ratio screen with a 1280x800 WXGA resolution. Available only with one screen size, the MSI GX403 will feature yet unspecified gamma of Intel Core 2 Duo processors paired with Intel's PM45 Express Chipset. Built-in NVIDIA Geforce GT 130M 3D graphic card with 512 MB DDR3, 4 GB DDR2 RAM (2x2048 MB), up to a 500 GB SATA hard drive, and a choice of either a DVD or a Blu-Ray optical drive round out the specifications. The new laptop also comes with a 4-in-1 card reader, 10/100/1000 LAN card, WiFi, Bluetooth (optional), a 1.3 MP camera and a 6- or 9-cell battery. The GX403 is expected to hit retail shelves in the near future.
Fusion-io Plays 768 DVD Video Streams Simultaneously from One SSD
High-performance storage solutions vendor Fusion-io may have gone way ahead of setting a record, when during the Storage Networking World event, the company demonstrated its 640 GB PCI-Express ioSAN card to support as many as 768 simultaneous DVD-quality video streams. To do so, the engineers set up a storage network consisting of a host workstation for the ioSAN card, 12 disk-less servers with quad-socket, quad-core processors, using an InfiniBand backbone, two 10 gigabit Ethernet switches, and NVIDIA graphics cards to provide the video acceleration. The resulting display consisted of about a dozen 50-inch HD LCD TVs running to form a compound display panel, onto which the 768 video streams were played on.
Joshua Aune, Fusion-io systems architect, says that the ioSAN card could have stored 2,500 DVD-quality movies, and will further be able to support 1,024 video streams, which the company plans to demo in two weeks time at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, in Las Vegas USA. The ioSAN 320GB PCIe card boasts a 1.5GB/sec. read speed and 1.4GB/sec. write speed with 32k packets or 186,000 IOPS for reads and 167,000 IOPS for writes using 4k packets. The card used in this feat had 640GB of single-layer cell (SLC) NAND flash memory in two 320 GB modules. A video of the feat can be watched here.
Joshua Aune, Fusion-io systems architect, says that the ioSAN card could have stored 2,500 DVD-quality movies, and will further be able to support 1,024 video streams, which the company plans to demo in two weeks time at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, in Las Vegas USA. The ioSAN 320GB PCIe card boasts a 1.5GB/sec. read speed and 1.4GB/sec. write speed with 32k packets or 186,000 IOPS for reads and 167,000 IOPS for writes using 4k packets. The card used in this feat had 640GB of single-layer cell (SLC) NAND flash memory in two 320 GB modules. A video of the feat can be watched here.
AMD Releases Fusion Media Explorer
Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices has released a beta version of Fusion Media Explorer, the company's first 3D media browser. Distributed for free for Windows and Linux, the AMD Fusion Media Explorer (FME) works relatively simple. The software allows people who installed it to easily upload and share multimedia files such as video or music through social-network sites like Flickr, Facebook, Microsoft Live and YouTube. They only need to select the files for upload from a rotating 3D interface and drag and drop them to finish the procedure. Similarly, multimedia files can also be downloaded from some of the above mentioned sites to a PC through drag and drop. The FME also integrates own search engine, and a player for the locally stored multimedia files. The point of existance for such a browser according to AMD, is to showcase the multimedia capabilities of PCs based on AMD's Phenom II and Turion Ultra processors along with ATI premium graphics cards. You can get the browser for free here.
AOpen Intros XC Encore OE700 Barebone PC
In the market to compete with the likes of Shuttle, AOpen released a the new XC Encore OE700 barebone PC, that makes for the basic framework of a PC, requiring you to add a compatible processor, memory and storage. Measuring 106 (H) x 200 (W) x 321 (D) mm, the XCore OE700 sports a motherboard based on the Intel GM45 chipset, that supports Intel Core 2 Duo processors, with GMA X4500 integrated graphics that supports output using DVI-D and HDMI. 7.1 channel HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of the connectivity. Three SATA ports are provided internally. An LED display and slot-in DVD-Writer are provided on the front-panel.
MSI mATX X58 Motherboard in the Works
A photo has emerged showing a prototype Micro ATX motherboard from MSI, based on the Intel's X58 chipset. Dubbed the MS-7593 the board comes with six DDR3 slots supporting triple channel, two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots (SLI compatibility is at present unknown), 7 SATAII ports, 8 channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet and an on board power switch. Further details such as availability and pricing are currently unknown.
DFI Preparing Budget P45 Board
It appears DFI is preparing an update to its current Intel P45 based P45-T2RS board, called the Blood Iron P45-T2RS Elite. Although an update, the new board with its revised PCB layout and new LAN chip, drops from two PCI-E x16 slots to one, in favour of a third PCI-E x1 slot. Despite being a budget board, it has been said that speeds in excess of 600 FSB are easily attainable. Like most other P45 based boards, the Blood Iron P45-T2RS Elite will support LGA775 Processors ranging from 800 to 1333 FSB, 4 DDR2 slots for up to 8 GB of 1066 MHz, 6 SATAII ports, 12 USB 2.0 ports, legacy support for IDE and floppy, 8CH HD audio via a Realtek ALC885 chip, 1 Gigabit LAN port via a JMC250 chip, a Software Debug LED and on board power and reset switches.
BIOS voltage tweaks include, Vdimm, Vnb, Vcore, Vsb, VHT, and then the usual adjustments for FSB in 1 MHz increments and CPU multiplier. It is also said that DFI have fixed the issue of automatic shutdown while overclocking and that mass production will start next week.
BIOS voltage tweaks include, Vdimm, Vnb, Vcore, Vsb, VHT, and then the usual adjustments for FSB in 1 MHz increments and CPU multiplier. It is also said that DFI have fixed the issue of automatic shutdown while overclocking and that mass production will start next week.
Sunday, April 12th 2009
Today's Reviews
Bluetooth 3.0 Launches on April 21st
The anticipated Bluetooth 3.0 is gearing up to be launched this month. Set to be released on the 21st of April, the third Bluetooth specification will offer improved speeds, though they're not yet finally specified. Bluetooth 3.0 will be backward compatible with older Bluetooth standards. Most importantly Bluetooth 3.0 will use 802.11 protocol to transfer data. This will allow devices to pair through an 802.11 protocol and if there is no Wi-Fi detected, older Bluetooth standard will be used. The new Bluetooth specification will also add Enhanced Power Control - a feature that is said to reduce the number of disconnects between the paired devices and this way save the battery life. Later this month, when Bluetooth 3.0 is finally announced, the Bluetooth SIG will probably start making a list of manufacturers that will incorporate the new technology.
Five ASUS VH Series Monitors Get the Highest EPEAT Gold Rating
Five ASUS VH Series LCD monitors with screen sizes ranging from 20" to 24" have been EPEAT registered at the Gold level, the highest EPEAT rating possible. Designed and manufactured in strict adherence to GreenASUS principles, the ASUS VH202T-P, VH222H-P, VH232H-P, VH236H-P and VH242H-P successfully met or exceeded the required criteria and at least 75% of the optional criteria necessary to receive a Gold rating from EPEAT. These LCD monitors now join ASUS' Bamboo Series and N Series notebooks in the elite rung of electronic products bearing the EPEAT Gold eco-label.
CEA/Leti and IBM to Collaborate on Future Nanoelectronics Technology
CEA/Leti (the Electronics and Information Technology Laboratory of the CEA, based in Grenoble), and IBM today announced that they will collaborate on research in semiconductor and nanoelectronics technology. This five-year agreement is focused on advanced materials, devices and processes for the development of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology for the production of microprocessors and integrated circuits at 22nm and beyond.
With this agreement, CEA/Leti becomes a research associate of IBM and IBM's semiconductor Joint Development Alliance ecosystem centered in Albany, N.Y. CEA/Leti will reinforce this ecosystem through its specific expertise in low-power CMOS (such as SOI technologies), in e-beam lithography and in nanoscale characterization and modelling. This agreement strengthens the links between the IBM and Crolles-Grenoble ecosystems, following STMicroelectronics' decision to join the IBM Alliance in 2007, for the development of core CMOS and value-added application-specific derivative technologies and industrialization of these processes.
With this agreement, CEA/Leti becomes a research associate of IBM and IBM's semiconductor Joint Development Alliance ecosystem centered in Albany, N.Y. CEA/Leti will reinforce this ecosystem through its specific expertise in low-power CMOS (such as SOI technologies), in e-beam lithography and in nanoscale characterization and modelling. This agreement strengthens the links between the IBM and Crolles-Grenoble ecosystems, following STMicroelectronics' decision to join the IBM Alliance in 2007, for the development of core CMOS and value-added application-specific derivative technologies and industrialization of these processes.
Saturday, April 11th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Speakers
NVIDIA Releases PhysX System Software 9.09.0408 WHQL
NVIDIA made an update to the PhysX system software, the common backend for all NVIDIA products that support PhysX: GeForce 8 series and above graphics processors, and Ageia PhysX accelerator cards. Version 9.09.0408 packs the following changes and features according to the company:
DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA PhysX System Software 9.09.0408 WHQL
- Updated runtime to improved operation of Cryostasis Game.
- Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory.
- Experience GPU PhysX acceleration in many games and demos, some of which are highlighted in PowerPack downloads on www.geforce.com.
- Runtime upgrade ONLY for AGEIA PhysX processors users. (New installations should install older PhysX system software such as version 8.09.04 - prior to installing this update).
- Includes the latest PhysX runtimes used in the latest game titles.
- Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on GeForce via CUDA 2.0 for SDK versions 2.7.3, 2.7.2, 2.7.5, 2.8.0 and 2.8.1 (requires graphics driver v177.81 or later).
- Includes all the latest PhysX SDK Runtimes.
- Supports control of your GPU PhysX configuration from the NVIDIA display driver control panel. (requires graphics driver v180.00 or later)
DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA PhysX System Software 9.09.0408 WHQL
UMC Becomes the First Company Ready for Real, High-Performance 40 nm Manufacturing
UMC, a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that it has delivered customer ICs produced on its High Performance (HP) 40 nm process technology. The products were manufactured with excellent cycle time and yields for the large die-size programmable logic chips, which leveraged the foundry's triple-gate oxide, 12 metal layers and copper/low-k technology to enable 65% reduced power consumption and more than twice the density improvement over previous 65nm generation products. The advanced 40 nm ICs have already begun shipping in volume to the customer's end users for product sampling.
S.C. Chien, vice president of advanced technology development at UMC, said, "UMC continues to remain at the forefront of semiconductor foundry technology through the timely delivery of leading-edge processes that meet the demanding requirements of today's advanced applications. The delivery of these 40 nm customer products underscores this technology commitment, we look forward to bringing the performance advantages of our proven 40 nm technology to even more UMC customers."
S.C. Chien, vice president of advanced technology development at UMC, said, "UMC continues to remain at the forefront of semiconductor foundry technology through the timely delivery of leading-edge processes that meet the demanding requirements of today's advanced applications. The delivery of these 40 nm customer products underscores this technology commitment, we look forward to bringing the performance advantages of our proven 40 nm technology to even more UMC customers."
EVGA Intros GeForce GTX 275 FTW Edition
Pushing up the ante, EVGA introduced the GeForce GTX 275 FTW Edition (model 896-P3-1173-AR). FTW means "for the win", in gamer jargon. The company has been using the "FTW" label for peak-performance variants of graphics cards and motherboards. In the case of graphics cards, it comes with the highest factory-overclocked parameters available in its lineup.
Featuring the default design of the rest of the cards in its series, the GeForce GTX 275 FTW comes with clock speeds of 713/1512/2520 MHz (core/shader/memory), against the reference speeds of 633/1404/2268 MHz. The card features 240 stream processors, and 896 MB of memory across a 448-bit wide GDDR3 interface. The card is listed on the company store for US $299.99, a $50 premium over the base-model.
Featuring the default design of the rest of the cards in its series, the GeForce GTX 275 FTW comes with clock speeds of 713/1512/2520 MHz (core/shader/memory), against the reference speeds of 633/1404/2268 MHz. The card features 240 stream processors, and 896 MB of memory across a 448-bit wide GDDR3 interface. The card is listed on the company store for US $299.99, a $50 premium over the base-model.
Thermaltake Announces V14AX CPU Cooler
Thermaltake, known as the leader in Thermal industry by continuously introducing innovative product, today officially releases another masterpiece, V14AX. With its excellent performance and included clips, it can support the latest and fastest Intel Core i7 processors.
V14AX is the best choice for gamers and over-clocking enthusiasts. It equips a giant 14cm VR fan. Users can adjust the fan speed according to their own needs. Side flow design is to integrate with the system fan and optimize the ventilation. Meanwhile, V14AX has 6 heatpipes and mirror coating copper base that can maximize the heat transferring speed from CPU to the heat sink. The large dissipating aluminum surface will also maximize the heat dissipation. With these features, users can definitely experience the ultimate performance of latest Intel Core i7 processors.
Topped off with a tube of Thermaltake superb performance thermal grease TG-1, V14AX is without a doubt the best choice for your high end cooler. For more information, please visit the product page.
V14AX is the best choice for gamers and over-clocking enthusiasts. It equips a giant 14cm VR fan. Users can adjust the fan speed according to their own needs. Side flow design is to integrate with the system fan and optimize the ventilation. Meanwhile, V14AX has 6 heatpipes and mirror coating copper base that can maximize the heat transferring speed from CPU to the heat sink. The large dissipating aluminum surface will also maximize the heat dissipation. With these features, users can definitely experience the ultimate performance of latest Intel Core i7 processors.
Topped off with a tube of Thermaltake superb performance thermal grease TG-1, V14AX is without a doubt the best choice for your high end cooler. For more information, please visit the product page.
Friday, April 10th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Keyboards
Motherboards
Networking
Notebooks
PSUs
Walton Chaintech Announces the Release of DDR2 SO-DIMM for the Netbook
Walton Chaintech, the critically acclaimed computer parts manufacturer, has announced the release of DDR2 SO-DIMM module. Under the APOGEE brand, this new DRAM module is specifically designed for the Netbook, featuring next-generation 65nm processing, FBGA packaging, operational effectiveness, and energy efficiency; all the while maintaining high performance levels. APOGEE's DDR2 SO-DIMM is especially tailored for the Netbook, promoting its "think-green" concepts through its design and functionality.
Operating with low power consumption, the DDR2 SO-DIMM is manufactured with selected, original factory components and JEDEC approved RAWCARD F PCB designs. Regardless if CPU speeds are at 667 or 800, the DRAM still provides outstanding performance with cycle times of 5-5-5-15. Available in 1GB or 2GB capacities, APOGEE provides the flexibility for any user.
Operating with low power consumption, the DDR2 SO-DIMM is manufactured with selected, original factory components and JEDEC approved RAWCARD F PCB designs. Regardless if CPU speeds are at 667 or 800, the DRAM still provides outstanding performance with cycle times of 5-5-5-15. Available in 1GB or 2GB capacities, APOGEE provides the flexibility for any user.
ASUS Formula Series VGA Coolers Detailed
PC Hardware giant ASUS is preparing a the Formula series graphics card air-coolers. The coolers in several shapes and sizes, are designed to streamline air-flow to achieve better cooling performance, and overclocking headroom, as ASUS puts it.
The most distinctive features of these coolers are the F1 car-shaped shrouds, and almost centrally-located, dust-proof fans that blow air onto aluminum fins, or radially-projecting heatsinks. The coolers first caught the eyes of the press during the CeBIT event.
A presentation by ASUS dealing has been sourced by Expreview, that reveals the company's claims of the cooler providing better distribution and dissipation of heat, and quieter operation in comparison to other coolers. It is unclear at this point in time, whether ASUS markets these coolers "as is", or as parts of their graphics cards.
The most distinctive features of these coolers are the F1 car-shaped shrouds, and almost centrally-located, dust-proof fans that blow air onto aluminum fins, or radially-projecting heatsinks. The coolers first caught the eyes of the press during the CeBIT event.
A presentation by ASUS dealing has been sourced by Expreview, that reveals the company's claims of the cooler providing better distribution and dissipation of heat, and quieter operation in comparison to other coolers. It is unclear at this point in time, whether ASUS markets these coolers "as is", or as parts of their graphics cards.
Lian Li launches ARMORSUIT PC-P50 Gaming Mid Tower Chassis
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the ARMORSUIT SERIES PC-P50 Mid Tower chassis ideal for gaming systems. The hair-line brushed all aluminum chassis features advanced thermal dynamics, using one fan on the front (1x 120mm@1200RPM), plus dual vibration reduced top mounted fans (2x 140mm@1000RPM) and one rear 120mm@1500RPM extraction fan. The 8x PCI expansion slots enable CrossFireX and Tri-SLI graphic card setups. The chassis front face has 9x 5.25"ODD bays which have filters that are washable. The front panel clips off easily and conveniently. The entire chassis is designed for tool-less implementation, so installing your hardware and getting your syst em up and running is extremely quick and easy. The dimensions stand at 210x490x490mm (W, H, D). The top and front panels are clipped via special plastic kits which reduce metal on metal contact wear as well as prevent vibration.
Intel Displays Larrabee Wafer at IDF Beijing
Earlier this week, Intel conducted the Intel Developer Forum (IDF): Spring 2009 event at Beijing, China. Among several presentations on the the architectural advancements of the company's products, that include Nehalem and its scalable platforms, perhaps the most interesting was a brief talk by Pat Gelsinger, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, on Larrabee. The term is Intel's first "many cores" architecture used to work as a graphics processor. The architecture will be thoroughly backed by low-level and high-level programming languages and tools by Intel.
French website Hardware.fr took a timely snap off a webcast of the event, showing Gelsinger holding a 300 mm wafer of Larrabee dice. The theory that Intel has working prototypes of the GPU deep inside its labs gains weight. Making use of current-generation manufacturing technologies, Intel is scaling the performance of x86 processing elements, all 32+ of them. As you can faintly see from the wafer, Larrabee has a large die. It is reported that first generation of Larrabee will be built on the 45 nm manufacturing process. Products based on the architecture may arrive by late 2009, or early 2010. With the company kicking off its 32 nm production later this year, Larrabee may be built on the newer process a little later.
French website Hardware.fr took a timely snap off a webcast of the event, showing Gelsinger holding a 300 mm wafer of Larrabee dice. The theory that Intel has working prototypes of the GPU deep inside its labs gains weight. Making use of current-generation manufacturing technologies, Intel is scaling the performance of x86 processing elements, all 32+ of them. As you can faintly see from the wafer, Larrabee has a large die. It is reported that first generation of Larrabee will be built on the 45 nm manufacturing process. Products based on the architecture may arrive by late 2009, or early 2010. With the company kicking off its 32 nm production later this year, Larrabee may be built on the newer process a little later.
OCZ Introduces Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) SODIMMs
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, is pleased to be one of the first to offer Intel Extreme SODIMM modules to the enthusiast market. These memory solutions implement a high-performance specification optimized and predefined for platforms utilizing Intel Core 2 Extreme mobile processors. Extending beyond a traditional capacity upgrade for high-end gaming and professional laptops, OCZ's XMP SODIMMs offer superior performance qualified by Intel for ultimate compatibility and stability.
Thursday, April 9th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Game Controllers
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Mouse
Notebooks
Processors
PSUs
SSD
OCZ Eclipse & Behemoth Laser Gaming Mice Review
OCZ’s newest offerings on the mouse market are the Behemoth and Eclipse gaming mice. Equipped with the latest sensor technology available and an abundance of buttons they face the competitors. Competitively priced at 26.99 € for the Behemoth and only 24.99 € for the Eclipse they are sure to create quite a stir in the midrange market.
Patriot Memory Announces the DDR3 12 GB Tri-Channel Viper Kit
Patriot Memory, a global provider of premium quality memory modules and flash memory solutions, today announced their DDR3 12 GB Tri-Channel Viper kit.
Designed specifically for the Intel Core i7 processor/Intel X58 Express Chipset, the Patriot Viper 12 GB kit has been built to excel for the Core i7 triple channel tehcnology. The Patriot Viper 12 GB are hand tested extensively on X58 motherboards to ensure maximum compatibility and supreme quality. The kits will be offered in 1333 MHz and come in both CL7 and CL9. "With all memory slots utilized in all three channels, the Core i7 brings the effectiveness of a server to mainstream desktops, and for a fraction of the price, says Benny Chea, Patriot Memory's Applications Engineer. Mr. Chea went on to say, "Multi-applications users will appreciate the increased bandwidth."
Designed specifically for the Intel Core i7 processor/Intel X58 Express Chipset, the Patriot Viper 12 GB kit has been built to excel for the Core i7 triple channel tehcnology. The Patriot Viper 12 GB are hand tested extensively on X58 motherboards to ensure maximum compatibility and supreme quality. The kits will be offered in 1333 MHz and come in both CL7 and CL9. "With all memory slots utilized in all three channels, the Core i7 brings the effectiveness of a server to mainstream desktops, and for a fraction of the price, says Benny Chea, Patriot Memory's Applications Engineer. Mr. Chea went on to say, "Multi-applications users will appreciate the increased bandwidth."
Corsair Ultra Fast 256 GB SSD Sneak Peek
It's unusual for Corsair products to be proclaimed before their official press release is posted on the manufacturer's site, but in this case a little "sneak peek" from our colleagues at HotHardware allows us to break the rules. We are talking about Corsair's ulta-fast 256 GB solid-state drive that will be out "sometime in the not too distant future". This new 256 GB model features updated controller from Samsung (Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40), 64 MB of on-board cache and thus must offer significantly increased performance. The official product name will be Corsair P256. The drive will feature SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, a heavy-duty aluminum enclosure, average read speeds of over 200 MB/s, average write speeds of 169.1 MB/s, 0.1ms random access time, and a 248.2 MB/s burst speed. The Corsair P256 is expected to cost around $749.
ASUS P Series Notebooks Now Equipped with New Intel Anti-Theft Technology
ASUS today announced its plans to equip its notebooks with Intel Anti-Theft Technology, in an effort to help customers address the growing theft of notebooks. In the commercial world where businesses operate with the strictest level of confidentiality, and where notebooks belonging to highly mobile business professionals are likely to contain confidential company or personal information, the theft of vital information may be costly. ASUS addresses this concern with its new P Series notebooks, which are equipped with Intel Anti-theft PC Protection Technology. This new technology provides users with the ability to send a "poison pill" remotely, rendering the notebook inoperable by comprehensively shutting it down. As such, the risk resulting from a stolen or lost notebook is eliminated. Once the notebook has been recovered, a local passphrase or recovery token can be used to reactivate the notebook.
Viewsonic Quietly Intros 24-inch VG2427 1080p LCD Monitor
A day ago Viewsonic quietly added the VG2427 24-inch model to its range of LCD monitors. The VG2427 boasts native resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with 16:9 aspect ratio. The panel has a 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio as well as 300cd/m2 brightness. The monitor's stand is height-adjustable, also hidden are two stereo speakers and a USB hub with pair of USB 2.0 ports.Priced at $499, the Viewsonic VG2427 is available for purchase now.
Spire Launches the Simplicity M-ATX Chassis
Spire today officially announces its new Micro ATX Chassis called Simplicity. This distinctive Micro ATX case is sophisticated, stylish and innovative and stands out from the crowd with its modern looks. This case has been made to the highest possible quality to provide you with the satisfaction you are looking for in a small, yet powerful enclosure. Complete with pre-installed Silent ATX power supply and optional Silent 120mm fans in the front and 90mm or 120mm fan in the back for outstanding cooling performance. No matter the challenge, this case will be sure to deliver satisfaction.
VIA Announces NSD7200 Home and Media Server
VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced its entry into the design manufacturing service business to offer provide flexible system hardware solutions, starting with the new VIA NSD7200 home storage and media server.
Building on its success as a pioneer of system level innovation in small form factor and IPC markets, VIA can provide OEM and ODM customers with customized versions of home and SOHO storage platforms targeting specific markets. By combining energy-efficient processor platforms and high quality chassis designs with a full design manufacturing service and comprehensive engineering support, VIA enables customers to more accurately address the needs of system integrators and retailers by speeding up product cycles and reducing production costs.
Building on its success as a pioneer of system level innovation in small form factor and IPC markets, VIA can provide OEM and ODM customers with customized versions of home and SOHO storage platforms targeting specific markets. By combining energy-efficient processor platforms and high quality chassis designs with a full design manufacturing service and comprehensive engineering support, VIA enables customers to more accurately address the needs of system integrators and retailers by speeding up product cycles and reducing production costs.
AMD to Sell DirectX 11 Notebook Integrated GPUs by 2011
Being on the forefront of technology adoption as far as its graphics products go, AMD will have a notebook platform with DirectX 11 compliant integrated GPUs ready by 2011, reveal company slides sourced by Expreview. The iGPU will be part of the company's "Accelerated Processing Unit" (APU) design approach to the PC's central processing. The APU draws parallels with Intel's upcoming processor designs where the CPU package holds both the CPU and northbridge dice in a multichip-module. One of the first AMD APUs, codenamed "Llano" will be part of the company's "Sabine" mobile platform. Typically consisting of the CPU, a DDR3 memory controller, a northbridge with integrated graphics processor, and the PCI-Express root complex, APU eliminates discrete northbridge from board design.
Slated for 2011, the Llano APU comes out at a time when DirectX 11 is expected to be an established API. The iGPU will also pack UVD 3.0, a next generation hardware-accelerated video decoder by AMD. It will be built on the 32 nm manufacturing process by AMD's foundry partner(s). It features up to 4 x86 processing cores, an iGPU, a memory controller supporting DDR3-1600 memory, 128-bit floating-point execution units (present even with current generation Phenom processors), and a BGA design with a low-TDP package. Llano will be accompanied by the SB9xxM series southbridge. This chip would make for most of the board's nucleated machinery apart from the APU. It will integrate the "DAC" (we interpret audio DAC), USB 3.0 hubs with 16 ports, a 6-port SATA controller, and clock-generator.
Slated for 2011, the Llano APU comes out at a time when DirectX 11 is expected to be an established API. The iGPU will also pack UVD 3.0, a next generation hardware-accelerated video decoder by AMD. It will be built on the 32 nm manufacturing process by AMD's foundry partner(s). It features up to 4 x86 processing cores, an iGPU, a memory controller supporting DDR3-1600 memory, 128-bit floating-point execution units (present even with current generation Phenom processors), and a BGA design with a low-TDP package. Llano will be accompanied by the SB9xxM series southbridge. This chip would make for most of the board's nucleated machinery apart from the APU. It will integrate the "DAC" (we interpret audio DAC), USB 3.0 hubs with 16 ports, a 6-port SATA controller, and clock-generator.
Spire Launches EZvault Tool-free HDD Enclosure
The newest in toolless technology, the eSATA EZvault is the pinnacle of stylish design and functionality. Made with the highest quality materials combined with outstanding design, the EZvault is vibration proof and excellent at getting rid of and keeping out any heat that could damage your harddrive.
NVIDIA Introduces Industry's First Debugger and Profiler For GPU Computing
The CUDA architecture continues to blaze a trail as the leading platform for developing and running GPU Computing applications, with support for C, OpenCL, DirectX Compute, Fortran and other languages and APIs. The latest CUDA 2.2 Beta contains a host of significant new features, including:
Hardware debugger for the GPU
Linux developers can now use a debugger on CUDA-enabled GPUs that offers both the familiar interface of the popular open-source GDB debugger and the ability to debug kernels as they execute on the GPU. The GPU-side debugger has all the features that developers expect from GDB, including the ability to have breakpoints, watch variables, inspect state, etc., as well as additional functions for CUDA-specific features.
Hardware debugger for the GPU
Linux developers can now use a debugger on CUDA-enabled GPUs that offers both the familiar interface of the popular open-source GDB debugger and the ability to debug kernels as they execute on the GPU. The GPU-side debugger has all the features that developers expect from GDB, including the ability to have breakpoints, watch variables, inspect state, etc., as well as additional functions for CUDA-specific features.
Micron’s DDR3 Server Memory Validated with Intel’s Next-Generation Xeon Processors
Micron Technology, today announced that its suite of DDR3 server memory modules are validated with Intel's next-generation Intel Xeon processor chips. Micron's validated 1, 2, 4 and 8-gigabyte (GB) DDR3 modules are performance-driven, delivering speeds of 1066 megabits per second (Mb/s) and 1333 Mb/s, greatly increasing server throughput. Additionally, Lexar Media, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Micron, has validated its corresponding Crucial-branded modules, leveraging Micron's award-winning DDR3 memory.
Super Talent Announces World’s First Commercially Available 512 GB 2.5-Inch SSD
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced that it is now shipping the MasterDrive RX family of Solid State Drives (SSDs) in capacities up to 512 GB.
The MasterDrive RX features Super Talent's proprietary RAIDSSD Technology to enable extremely fast sequential read and write speeds. The MasterDrive RX with MLC NAND Flash comes in 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 160 MB/sec. The MasterDrive RX with SLC Flash comes in 128 GB and 256 GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 200 MB/sec.
The MasterDrive RX features Super Talent's proprietary RAIDSSD Technology to enable extremely fast sequential read and write speeds. The MasterDrive RX with MLC NAND Flash comes in 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 160 MB/sec. The MasterDrive RX with SLC Flash comes in 128 GB and 256 GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230 MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 200 MB/sec.
Wednesday, April 8th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Gaming PC
Graphics Cards
Processors
ATI Catalyst 9.4 Released
AMD have just released their ATI Catalyst 9.4 Driver for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.4 Windows release include:
New Features
New Features
- ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application to estimate the over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon Graphics accelerators
Designed for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series
- "World of Warcraft" or "World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King": Flickering no longer occurs when Shadow is set to medium/high using ATI CrossFire configurations
- Google Sketchup no longer displays blank screen
- Resolutions above 1024 x 768 will now full screen properly for specific HDMI displays
- Artifacts no longer visible while playing Age of Conan DX10
- VC-1 progressive disc playback no longer exhibits block corruption.
- The Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL) driver now functions properly under Windows XP
Rambus Acquires Inapac Patents
Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today announced it has acquired a number of patents from Inapac Technology, Inc. to broaden its offerings for the mobile memory market. These patented innovations complement the high-bandwidth, low-power memory technologies developed by Rambus as part of its Mobile Memory Initiative, announced earlier this year. Specific terms of the deal are not disclosed.
These newly acquired patented innovations are key enablers for achieving high manufacturing yields in System-in-Package (SiP) implementations. SiP consists of a number of stacked integrated circuits (IC) - such as a media processor, DRAM, and Flash memory device - enclosed in a single package or module. This technology allows designers to achieve high functionality in a very compact space, ideal for mobile products such as mobile phones and mobile gaming devices. Given its performance characteristics, SiP has applicability in computing and consumer electronics products as well.
These newly acquired patented innovations are key enablers for achieving high manufacturing yields in System-in-Package (SiP) implementations. SiP consists of a number of stacked integrated circuits (IC) - such as a media processor, DRAM, and Flash memory device - enclosed in a single package or module. This technology allows designers to achieve high functionality in a very compact space, ideal for mobile products such as mobile phones and mobile gaming devices. Given its performance characteristics, SiP has applicability in computing and consumer electronics products as well.
NVIDIA Releases GeForce 185.68 BETA Drivers
Less than a week since they released the 185.66 BETA drivers (which in themselves superceeded the 182.50 WHQL and 185.65 BETA drivers in the space of 24 hours), NVIDIA has released yet another GeForce BETA Driver of version number 185.68. From these latest BETA releases, it seems NVIDIA has dropped support for the 8-Series graphics cards which as of now are only supported using the 182.50 WHQL driver. With the recent release of so many driver revisions from NVIDIA, it could be their answer to what EVGA were trying to do with their SLI Enhancement Patches, to keep up to date with the latest releases. This driver supports GeForce 9-series, 100-series, and 200-series desktop GPUs, the only documented change in this version over the 185.66 BETA drivers is:
- Optimized performance for the PC game The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Seagate Introduces SV35.5 Series Hard Drives for 24/7 Operation
Seagate today introduced its Seagate SV35.5 Series hard drives, designed for optimal performance in digital video surveillance systems. The Seagate SV35.5 hard drive is built for rigorous 24x7 use, and combines best-in-class reliability, performance, capacity, acoustics and power consumption along with features that make SDVR integration easy, making it the ideal solution for the demands of the growing video surveillance market.
ECS Pairs GeForce 9 Series Cards with Arctic Cooling L2 Pro Coolers
ECS is introducing two new GeForce 9 series accelerators which feature low-power designs. The accelerators based on GeForce 9800 (N9800GTE-1GMU-F) GT comes with reference clock speeds, while GeForce 9600 GT (N9600GTE-1GMU-F) with slightly reduced clock speeds. The cards feature 1 GB of GDDR3 memory, double that of the reference design.
The cards make use of Arctic Cooling L2 Pro GPU cooler with a 92 mm PWM-controlled fan. Power is drawn entirely from the PCI-Express slot, as the cards lack the 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. The N9800GTE-1GMU-F comes with clock speeds of 600/900 MHz (core/memory), which are the reference speeds for 9800 GT, while the N9600GTE-1GMU-F 550/900 MHz.
The cards make use of Arctic Cooling L2 Pro GPU cooler with a 92 mm PWM-controlled fan. Power is drawn entirely from the PCI-Express slot, as the cards lack the 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. The N9800GTE-1GMU-F comes with clock speeds of 600/900 MHz (core/memory), which are the reference speeds for 9800 GT, while the N9600GTE-1GMU-F 550/900 MHz.
Powercolor Preparing Non-Reference HD 4890 PCS
Barely a week into the launch of Radeon HD 4890, AMD's partners are already emerging ready with non-reference PCB and cooler designs for the card. One of the first in the league is Powercolor Radeon HD 4890 PCS (Professional Cooling System), a name given to the card owing to its superior cooling system and factory-overclocked parameters. The company seems to have worked on a non-reference PCB design.
The 10-layer PCB breaks away from the reference design with its simpler VRM area consisting of standard chokes and MOSFETs. The design-approach is known to greatly reduce manufacturing costs. The GPU is cooled by a Zerotherm cooler with a large central fan, and aluminum fins to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The card will feature a rather high clock speeds of 950/1100 MHz (core/memory), against the reference speeds of 850/975 MHz. The price isn't known at this point in time, though we don't expect it to be priced much higher, looking at the design.
The 10-layer PCB breaks away from the reference design with its simpler VRM area consisting of standard chokes and MOSFETs. The design-approach is known to greatly reduce manufacturing costs. The GPU is cooled by a Zerotherm cooler with a large central fan, and aluminum fins to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The card will feature a rather high clock speeds of 950/1100 MHz (core/memory), against the reference speeds of 850/975 MHz. The price isn't known at this point in time, though we don't expect it to be priced much higher, looking at the design.
Apple Updates Xserve with the Latest Intel Xeon 5500 Series Processors
Thanks to the addition of the new Quad-core Intel Nehalem Xeon processors series 5500, the updated Xserve announced today delivers up to twice the performance of the previous system. For those not familiar with the term Xserve, this is the name of Apple's first 1U rackmount line of servers. It was first introduced in 2002, and thanks to this update now it is available with up to two 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors, up to 3 TB of hot-plug internal storage using various hard drive modules and up to 32 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory on 8 slots. Starting at $2,999, Xserve includes an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard and enough power to become your file or web server. For the full tech specs, please click here.
Acer Reveals the World's First NVIDIA ION-based AspireRevo PC
Today Acer and NVIDIA bring Acer AspireRevo - the world's first NVIDIA ION based PC and the world's first small PC in its own category. With the size of a book, the AspireRevo is a fully capable desktop with advanced graphics from NVIDIA's ION GPU and impressive multimedia features, such as support for 1080p HD video with true-fidelity 7.1 audio and CUDA accelerated graphics. The AspireRevo is boasting a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 230 processor, up to 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, up to 250 GB of HDD space, a 4-in-1 card reader, HDMI / VGA outputs, gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 ports, audio in / out, and a license copy of Windows Vista Home Premium or Vista Basic.
Intel Celebrates One Year from Atom Launch, Brings New Atom Processors to the Public
Celebrating the 1-year anniversary of Intel Corporation's introduction of its wildly popular Intel Atom processor family, Anand Chandrasekher, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Ultra Mobility Group, introduced two new processors for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and several other milestones during his keynote today at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
Chandrasekher was joined by two other Intel executives, Craig Barrett and Pat Gelsinger, whose keynotes focused on the company's directions for the next year and beyond. The event, held at the Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel, was geared toward the Chinese market in support of local innovation and Intel's industry leadership in the region.
Chandrasekher was joined by two other Intel executives, Craig Barrett and Pat Gelsinger, whose keynotes focused on the company's directions for the next year and beyond. The event, held at the Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel, was geared toward the Chinese market in support of local innovation and Intel's industry leadership in the region.
Patriot's Warp 128 GB Gets even Faster with New Release of v3
Patriot Memory,a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions, today announced their 128GB Warp SSD v3, Patriot's newest addition to the Warp Series.
The 128GB Warp SSD v3 provides and quenches your thirst for speed. With blazing transfer speeds up to 240MB/s read and 160 MB/s write this drive is a perfect solution for a wide range of applications that require ruggedness, minimal power consumption, cooler temperature and silent operations. Keeping reliability in mind, the Patriot Warp 128GB SSD v3 drives has 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and built in wear leveling technology. Warp's v3 continues to be in a 2.5" form factor with SATA I/II connections for fast, reliable data transfer rates.
The 128GB Warp SSD v3 provides and quenches your thirst for speed. With blazing transfer speeds up to 240MB/s read and 160 MB/s write this drive is a perfect solution for a wide range of applications that require ruggedness, minimal power consumption, cooler temperature and silent operations. Keeping reliability in mind, the Patriot Warp 128GB SSD v3 drives has 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) and built in wear leveling technology. Warp's v3 continues to be in a 2.5" form factor with SATA I/II connections for fast, reliable data transfer rates.
OCZ Technology Launches Mac Edition Vertex Series SSDs and Notebook SODIMMs
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled OCZ Vertex Mac Edition Solid State Drives and mobile memory solutions qualified by OCZ for ultimate compatibility with the latest family of MacBooks. These new premium offerings are designed for Mac enthusiasts demanding the latest technology in storage and memory to increase productivity and performance on their Apple notebooks.
"OCZ is excited to announce two new products that are specifically designed for Mac consumers," commented Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "Both the Vertex Series Mac Edition solid state drives and the new Mac Edition SODIMMS are designed to be an easy upgrade for consumers that want to boost the performance of their MacBooks, and have been tested in Apple's Development Center (ADC) to ensure stability and compatibility."
"OCZ is excited to announce two new products that are specifically designed for Mac consumers," commented Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "Both the Vertex Series Mac Edition solid state drives and the new Mac Edition SODIMMS are designed to be an easy upgrade for consumers that want to boost the performance of their MacBooks, and have been tested in Apple's Development Center (ADC) to ensure stability and compatibility."
Tuesday, April 7th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Game Controllers
Gaming PC
Graphics Cards
- HD 4890 vs. GTX 275 Tech Report
- Sapphire HD 4890 Bjorn3D
- Sapphire HD 4890 OC+ Hexus
- ASUS EAH4890 HD 4890 1 GB PCStats
- Sapphire HD 4890 OC TechPowerUp
- Zalman VF950 GPU Cooler XSReviews
- Sparkle Calibre P980X+ Overclockers Club
- GTX 275 Overclocking Guide Guru3D
- Gainward GTX 275 Tweaktown
- GTX 285 Round-Up HotHardware
- ASUS ENGTX295 GTX 295 IT-Review
Harddisks
Headphones
Keyboards
Memory
Motherboards
Netbooks
Processors
PSUs
Sound Cards
BFG Updates its Phobos High-Performance PC
BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, and award-winning power supplies announced today that the Phobos Performance Edition Gaming/Home Theater System now comes standard with two BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC graphics cards running in SLI, and fast Intel solid-state drives as an new available upgrade option.
BFG Technologies recently updated the default configuration for the Phobos Performance Edition after tests showed that two BFG GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards running in NVIDIA SLI offer performance exceeding that of one GeForce GTX 295 graphics card.
BFG Technologies recently updated the default configuration for the Phobos Performance Edition after tests showed that two BFG GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards running in NVIDIA SLI offer performance exceeding that of one GeForce GTX 295 graphics card.
Video of the Day: 23 GeForce GTX 295 Video Cards Installed in a Single Server Rig
Wanna see what crazy is? How about 23 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 video cards installed in a single rig. Yep, that's not a typo. Named Atlas Folder, this wholesale pack of G200b GPUs (dubbed: folding server farm) is like an industrial grinder for Folding@Home. Watch the cool YouTube video here and feel free to leave a comment. I bet even NVIDIA engineers dream for such a monstrous distributed computing station.
Microsoft Windows 7 Will Allow Downgrades too
Even though there's still some time left before the official release of Windows 7, Microsoft - the creator of this OS - confirmed today that just like some Windows Vista distributions could be downgraded to Windows XP with ease, the same will apply to Windows 7. General users of Windows 7 will be given the option of downgrading right over Vista to Windows XP, a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed.
"This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor," the spokesperson told Betanews, "and our Software Assurance customers can always downgrade to any previous version of Windows."
Microsoft hasn't detailed exactly how downgrade rights will work with Windows 7 - for now we know that Windows 7 will be downgradable to either Windows Vista or Windows XP - the rest of the details remain unclear.
"This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor," the spokesperson told Betanews, "and our Software Assurance customers can always downgrade to any previous version of Windows."
Microsoft hasn't detailed exactly how downgrade rights will work with Windows 7 - for now we know that Windows 7 will be downgradable to either Windows Vista or Windows XP - the rest of the details remain unclear.
Intel Makes New Processor Rating System and Logos Official
Intel made a new rating system for its client processors (desktop and notebook) official. The company also made new company logos for the various brands of processors official, which first surfaced in February. The new system involves segregating processors based on the performance indices they offer, measured by "stars", five stars being the top-tier of processors offering the ultimate technologies and performance, down to one stars with value and reliability. The grading system is best described by the company:
Each processor is assigned between one and five stars depending on a combination of features, including cores, GHz, cache, and other technologies. More stars indicate greater features and increased capabilities compared to other Intel processors.The list of processors segregated by the new rating system can be found here.
G.Skill Announces New Trident Series Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Kits
G.Skill International Co. Ltd., a world leader in extreme performance memory with solid quality, today launches Triple Channel DDR3 2000HMz "Trident" series at timings CL 9-9-9-24 designed for Intel Core i7 processors / Intel X58 Express Chipset.
The "Trident" series provides the ultimate performance and speed for enthusiasts, overclockers and extreme gamers. The dynamic Trident heatsink blends the best in cooling effectiveness while retaining a stylish design and extreme performance at 2GHz or more. With G.SKILL Lifetime Warranty and ever ready technical back-up, Triple channel kit is total solution for all memory module enthusiasts. For more information, please visit our product page.
The "Trident" series provides the ultimate performance and speed for enthusiasts, overclockers and extreme gamers. The dynamic Trident heatsink blends the best in cooling effectiveness while retaining a stylish design and extreme performance at 2GHz or more. With G.SKILL Lifetime Warranty and ever ready technical back-up, Triple channel kit is total solution for all memory module enthusiasts. For more information, please visit our product page.
Dual-RV790 Accelerator Improbable in the Foreseeable Future
AMD clinched the performance crown from NVIDIA, and retained for a significantly long amount of time with the dual-RV770 based Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics accelerator. The company recently introduced the RV790 GPU, which went into making the Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator. Our reviews of this card, especially the AMD Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire review, brought forth some interesting findings with regards to how the accelerator works in tandem with another of its kind.
Holding significantly higher clock-speeds than the Radeon HD 4870, the accelerator managed to consume lesser amount of power in a pair than a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 accelerator. As a solution, it emerged faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. The findings of several such reviews sparked of fresh speculations surrounding AMD planning a dual-RV790 accelerator with which it could potentially regain the performance crown. All such speculations were laid to rest by David Cummings, AMD's director of product marketing of discrete desktop graphics, under the graphics product group, in a recent interview with X-bit Labs (read here). Cummings claims that the company has no plans to create a "Radeon HD 4890 X2", at least not yet. The Radeon HD 4890 fills the gap between the HD 4870 and HD 4850 X2, while the HD 4870 X2 holds post at $399. A dual-RV790 card would not be feasible keeping the global economic climate in mind. The HD 4890 accelerators though, are capable of running in tandem with up to four cards of its kind, provided the system supports such a configuration.
Holding significantly higher clock-speeds than the Radeon HD 4870, the accelerator managed to consume lesser amount of power in a pair than a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 accelerator. As a solution, it emerged faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. The findings of several such reviews sparked of fresh speculations surrounding AMD planning a dual-RV790 accelerator with which it could potentially regain the performance crown. All such speculations were laid to rest by David Cummings, AMD's director of product marketing of discrete desktop graphics, under the graphics product group, in a recent interview with X-bit Labs (read here). Cummings claims that the company has no plans to create a "Radeon HD 4890 X2", at least not yet. The Radeon HD 4890 fills the gap between the HD 4870 and HD 4850 X2, while the HD 4870 X2 holds post at $399. A dual-RV790 card would not be feasible keeping the global economic climate in mind. The HD 4890 accelerators though, are capable of running in tandem with up to four cards of its kind, provided the system supports such a configuration.
EVGA Adds SuperClocked Variant to GeForce GTX 275 Lineup
Having begun its GeForce GTX 275 lineup with two cards: the 896 MB base-model (896-P3-1170-AR) and its 1792 MB twin (017-P3-1175-AR), EVGA sought to expand it with factory-overclocked models with its usual overclock-grading scheme. The first in its series is the SuperClocked (SC) model (896-P3-1171-AR). The card features the design and color-theme EVGA used for its GeForce GTX 260 55 nm series. It features 240 stream processors, 896 MB of GDDR3 memory across a 448-bit wide interface, and support for 3-way SLI.
Featuring a tier-one factory overclock, the card comes with clock speeds of 648 MHz (core), 1458 MHz (shader) and 2376 MHz (memory), against the reference clock speeds of 633/1404/2268 MHz (core/shader/memory). Put on pre-order by the EVGA store, the card is set to retail for US $269.99.
Featuring a tier-one factory overclock, the card comes with clock speeds of 648 MHz (core), 1458 MHz (shader) and 2376 MHz (memory), against the reference clock speeds of 633/1404/2268 MHz (core/shader/memory). Put on pre-order by the EVGA store, the card is set to retail for US $269.99.
A-Data Introduces Intel X25-M SSDs
A-Data Memory introduced its first line of solid-state drives (SSDs). The company co-branded the X25-M series SSD originally manufactured by Intel. Information of the partnership between the two companies surfaced in February, early this year. A similar deal was also reportedly struck between Intel and Power Quotient International (PQI).
The A-Data X25-M SSD comes in capacities of 80 GB and 160 GB. Featuring the SATA II interface, the drive supports advanced SATA features such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with 32 concurrent operations. The drive uses multi-level cell NAND flash chips built on the 50 nm manufacturing process. The read/write speeds on this drive are commonly known to be 250/70 MBps.
The A-Data X25-M SSD comes in capacities of 80 GB and 160 GB. Featuring the SATA II interface, the drive supports advanced SATA features such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with 32 concurrent operations. The drive uses multi-level cell NAND flash chips built on the 50 nm manufacturing process. The read/write speeds on this drive are commonly known to be 250/70 MBps.
Water Cooled Radeon HD 4890 Launching Next Week
PowerColor will launch the world's first water cooled Radeon HD 4890 next week, less than one week after the RV790 card was officially launched.
Part of PowerColor's LCS series, the upcoming Radeon card comes with a single-slot EK-made waterblock that has a copper base and high-flow 3/8" or 1/2" fittings. The waterblock should lower the GPU temperature by up to 20°C compared to the reference air heatsink. PowerColor will ship the Radeon HD 4890 LCS with GPU and memory clocks of 900 and 4000 MHz respectively.
The MSRP of the card will be $339.
Part of PowerColor's LCS series, the upcoming Radeon card comes with a single-slot EK-made waterblock that has a copper base and high-flow 3/8" or 1/2" fittings. The waterblock should lower the GPU temperature by up to 20°C compared to the reference air heatsink. PowerColor will ship the Radeon HD 4890 LCS with GPU and memory clocks of 900 and 4000 MHz respectively.
The MSRP of the card will be $339.
AMD Launches Opteron Upgrade Program
Offering partners and customers another cost-effective way to benefit from the performance and efficiency of AMD Opteron processor technology, AMD today announced a global AMD Opteron Upgrade Program. The program includes 2000 series and 8000 series dual- and Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors along with the upcoming six-core processor codenamed "Istanbul." Channel partners and customers can receive up to a 35% discount in price ($50 off 2000 series, $100 off 8000 series) by upgrading the generation of their AMD Opteron processor, providing a fast upgrade path to improve performance and energy efficiency within the data center without needing to replace and buy entirely new systems.
Smoothcreations Announces Redeemer - Fastest Core i7 Desktop on a Mobile Platform
Smoothcreations, a leading manufacturer of Custom PC gaming systems, desktop workstations, and Laptops, introduced today, in collaboration with BFG, are proud to announce the Smoothcreations "The Redeemer" Notebook. The Redeemer is a x58 Mobile desktop solution with Intel Core i7 Desktop processor.
Stop showing up to LAN parties with gaming rigs that look like they were all bought at the same store. Turn heads, and then shred them with The Redeemer. The first kick ass full size chassis with performance PC from Smooth Creations.
The Ultimate LAN party system: The Smooth Creations The Redeemer was designed to intimidate, perform and back up every piece of trash talk you fling at your gaming buddies. Plus, the best part of Reaper system was it's custom specs. Our builders worked closely with Gaming Graphics Guru BFG, Corsair Memory, and Intel to make this system - an ass kicking system that can deliver smoking benchmarks, immersive HD gaming effects. Design to perform, this system will be every game title's nightmare.
Stop showing up to LAN parties with gaming rigs that look like they were all bought at the same store. Turn heads, and then shred them with The Redeemer. The first kick ass full size chassis with performance PC from Smooth Creations.
The Ultimate LAN party system: The Smooth Creations The Redeemer was designed to intimidate, perform and back up every piece of trash talk you fling at your gaming buddies. Plus, the best part of Reaper system was it's custom specs. Our builders worked closely with Gaming Graphics Guru BFG, Corsair Memory, and Intel to make this system - an ass kicking system that can deliver smoking benchmarks, immersive HD gaming effects. Design to perform, this system will be every game title's nightmare.
OCZ Unveils the PC Power & Cooling Pro-Source 1500 UPS
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today unveiled the Pro-Source 1500, the first Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from PC Power & Cooling. Built for absolute stability and reliability from one of the most trusted names in power supplies, the Pro-Source 1500 UPS is the cost effective power protection solution for today's high-end enthusiast and mission-critical systems.
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 ''Namoroka'' Details Revealed
Mozilla has just released details on what they plan to include for the future version 3.6 of their Firefox browser, and so far it's looking good. Logically, version 3.6 will come after Firefox 3.5 "Shiretoko" is released. The code name for Firefox 3.6 is "Namoroka", from the Namoroka National Park located in the northwestern part of Madagascar. Namoroka will be based on Gecko 1.9.2, with an intended release target of early-to-mid 2010. For the full development schedule of Mozilla Firefox 3.6 please visit the official Mozilla wiki page here.
Monday, April 6th 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Headphones
Keyboards
Motherboards
Netbooks
Nettops
Networking
Notebooks
Processors
PSUs
NVIDIA BIOS Editor - NiBiTor Version 5.0 Released
NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor), the ultimate tool for NVIDIA video cards tweaking, was updated today towards version 5.0. Using NiBiTor graphics card enthusiasts can change the boot up message text & color, GPU/shader & memory clocks, hidden features like SBA (Side Band Addressing) and much more. All this is to gain some extra performance or just to customize your card the way you want it. This new version is built upon the logic of the previous version, with some minor fixes. It adds support for a couple more new NVIDIA video cards (the full list is below) and a voltage IC Option in the program.
DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) 5.0
DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) 5.0
LG Launches New Full HD SMART Monitors That are Easier on the Eyes
LG Electronics (LG), a leading provider of business solutions, today announced the launch of its new W53 SMART Monitor Series with cutting-edge SMART technologies that offer top picture quality while greatly reducing eyestrain during extended use.
These monitors include an incredible Auto Brightness feature that allows them to automatically optimize their brightness and other picture settings based on the ambient light in the room and the content being viewed. LG based these settings on the unified glare rating (UGR) recommended by International Commission on Illumination to ensure a comfortable viewing experience.
These monitors include an incredible Auto Brightness feature that allows them to automatically optimize their brightness and other picture settings based on the ambient light in the room and the content being viewed. LG based these settings on the unified glare rating (UGR) recommended by International Commission on Illumination to ensure a comfortable viewing experience.
ATI FirePro 3D Video Cards Now Offered on Top-to-Bottom Line of HP Workstations
AMD today announced that its top-to-bottom line of industry-leading ATI FirePro graphics accelerators are now featured in the new HP Z Workstations. Graphics professionals who use and demand interactivity with complex 3D models in engineering, digital content creation and scientific fields now can take advantage of the new ATI FirePro V7750, as well as the ATI FirePro V3700 and ATI FirePro V5700 graphics accelerators in the new HP Z400, Z600 and Z800 Workstations.
Designed and engineered to operate in a wide range of professional operating environments, including Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux, ATI FirePro 3D graphics accelerators are thoroughly tested and certified based on industry standards at AMD test labs. HP Z Workstations with ATI FirePro graphics already have more than 35 application certifications by major applications such as SolidWorks 2009, 3ds Max 2009, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and previous versions with many more certifications pending.
Designed and engineered to operate in a wide range of professional operating environments, including Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux, ATI FirePro 3D graphics accelerators are thoroughly tested and certified based on industry standards at AMD test labs. HP Z Workstations with ATI FirePro graphics already have more than 35 application certifications by major applications such as SolidWorks 2009, 3ds Max 2009, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and previous versions with many more certifications pending.
New Heatsink Material - Copper-diamond Alloy
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed a new material which allows better cooling than the conventional copper and aluminum solutions. To achieve this result, diamond powder has been added to metallic copper. Diamond conducts heat five times better than copper.
The result is a bond with 1.5 times the heat conduction of copper. Another advantage is that the material does not expand too much when heated, otherwise it couldn't be used in electronic devices.
The result is a bond with 1.5 times the heat conduction of copper. Another advantage is that the material does not expand too much when heated, otherwise it couldn't be used in electronic devices.
Buffalo Introduces Slim External Blu-Ray Drive
Buffalo's optical drive line-up has been updated to include a new model, the BRC-P258U2 external Blu-Ray drive. The drive measures 141 (W) x 23 (H) x 155 (D) mm and weights 370 grams, has a 4.5 MB buffer, a USB 2.0 interface, and can read Blu-Ray discs at 2x and write DVD-R/+R SL at 8x, DVD-R/+R DL, DVD-RW/+RW at 8x, CD-R at 16x and CD-RW at 10x.
According to its maker, the BRC-P258U2 should already be hitting stores in Japan with a price tag of about $218.
According to its maker, the BRC-P258U2 should already be hitting stores in Japan with a price tag of about $218.
ASUS Launches EAH4890 Series with Voltage Tweak for 15% Performance Upgrades
ASUS, world-leading producer of top quality graphic solutions, has today introduced the ASUS EAH4890 Series-the world's first graphics cards to utilize Voltage Tweak technology. With this innovation, users will be able to boost GPU voltages via the SmartDoctor application and enjoy up to an amazing 15% in performance improvement. For users who are looking for a graphics card offering astounding graphical performances even on default settings, the ASUS EAH4890 TOP will enable an 8% performance boost, delivering exhilarating gaming experiences.
JEDEC Announces Publication of LPDDR2 Standard for Low Power Memory Devices
JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of JESD209-2 LPDDR2 Low Power Memory Device Standard. Available for free download from JEDEC's website here, the new standard offers advanced power management features, a shared interface for nonvolatile memory (NVM) and volatile memory (SDRAM), and a range of densities and speeds. The standard will enhance the design of such products as smart phones, cell phones, PDAs, GPS units, handheld gaming consoles, and other mobile devices by enabling increased memory density, improved performance, smaller size, overall reduction in power consumption as well as a longer battery life.
ASUS Launches ENGTX275 Series Graphics Cards with Fuse Protection Technology
ASUS, world-leading producer of top quality graphic solutions, has today introduced the ASUS ENGTX275/HTDI/896MD3 that incorporates the latest generation of NVIDIA GPUs, the GeForce GTX 275. In line with ASUS' commitment to providing users with the best possible computing experience, the ENGTX275/HTDI/896MD3 comes equipped with 3 sets of Fuse Protection devices to guarantee doubled defense against over-current for risk-free computing. Additionally, with the inclusion of the EMI Shield, covered chokes, low RDS(on) MOSFETs, and solid capacitors, users will achieve extreme performance and peace of mind at the same time. Furthermore, to show that ASUS cares for all gamers, the ENGTX275 Series graphics cards will come bundled with a special coupon to obtain up to $25 or 10% off on a total of 5 games or CUDA applications at the NZONE webpage.
ZOTAC AC Accelero EXTREME GeForce GTX 275 Spotted
It seems that ZOTAC has also borrowed Arctic Cooling Accelero EXTREME VGA cooling for some of its high-end graphics cards. Soon enough ZOTAC will make an announcement for its third GeForce GTX 275 card, the Accelero equipped ZOTAC GTX275-896D3 with 896 MB. The upcoming card is based on the P897 PCB with a 6+1 phase power design, a 448-bit memory interface, DirectX 10 and 3-way SLI support. In contrast to the GALAXY GeForce GTX 275 with AC, the ZOTAC card will come with stock frequencies - 633 MHz core, 1404 MHz shaders and 2268 MHz for the memory. Zotac's Accelero-powered GTX 275 is expected sometime this month, price is yet unknown.
Sun Microsystems Rejects IBM Buyout Offer
In March IBM was reported to be in the midst of negotiating to acquire Sun Microsystems. On the time of the publication there was no more to talk about, but on Saturday IBM finally made a formal bid of $9.40 a share for Sun, or a deal that would have been valued at about $7 billion. Unfortunate for IBM, Sun rejected the offer and has terminated IBM's right for exclusive merger talks, making Sun open for other merger candidates. IBM, in return, withdrew its buyout offer. Two reasons stay behind Sun's decision, one being the belief that the bid was too low, and the other being the terms of agreement, which give IBM too much flexibility in walking away from the deal. It is unclear if a second bid will be proposed by IBM, or will the negotiation between the two companies continue. Representatives from both IBM and Sun declined to comment on an unannounced information.
GALAXY Intros Custom Overclocked GeForce GTX 275 Card with 896 MB GDDR3 Memory
GALAXY, well known for its highly customized video cards, has once again developed a GeForce GTX 275 card that feels a bit different than stock cards. The new GALAXY GeForce GTX 275 comes with a huge cooler, developed by Arctic Cooling. That's the AC Accelero EXTREME with three 80 mm PWM fans, 5 heatpipes and 107 fins, enough to cool the overclocked to 650 MHz core, 1475 MHz shader and 1200 MHz memory card and even sufficient for further overclocking. The card also uses self designed PCB and elements desing with digital PWM and digital MOSFETs. It has two BIOS chips and is bundled with GALAXY's Xtreme Tuner software for BIOS recovery, fan speed, and overclocking adjustments. The memory capacity is 896 MB GDDR3. There's no public information on pricing and availability date.
Researchers Develop Gene Viruses to Build a Better Battery
Last week Reuters reported interesting information on a new virus that can be used to create batteries that can last three times as long as current lithium batteries.
Researchers who have trained a tiny virus to do their bidding said on Thursday they made it build a more efficient and powerful lithium battery. They changed two genes in the virus, called M13, and got it to do two things: build a shell made out of a compound called iron phosphate, and then attach to a carbon nanotube to make a powerful and tiny electrode.
Such an electrode could conceivably make more powerful memory devices such as MP3 players or cellular telephones, and are far more environmentally friendly than current battery technologies, said Angela Belcher, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials scientist who led the research.
Intel Finds a New Material to Make Transistors, Tries for Cooler Processors
A quick and brief report on Innovation@Intel claims that the company's engineers have discovered a way to make transistors using new silicon substrate and thus reduce the heat and voltage output of future processors. The new transistors run far cooler - at about ½ the voltage, consuming only 1/10th the power of today's transistors.
Intel recently disclosed advancement details on a P-channel transistor, built on a silicon substrate, that makes use of compound semiconductors, also known as III-V materials because they are made of elements that straddle silicon in the periodic table, silicon being in column IV. This research resulted in the highest performing P-channel transistors reported to date. A year earlier, Intel described III-V N-channel transistors, also built on a silicon substrate. When combined, these two results could form the building blocks for CMOS logic circuits, which use both N-channel and P-channel transistors. Potentially suitable for future microprocessors, they run far cooler - at about ½ the voltage, consuming only 1/10th the power of today's transistors.
GE and Intel Invest $250 million in New Market Opportunity
GE and Intel Corporation announced today an alliance to market and develop home-based health technologies that will help seniors live independently and patients with chronic conditions manage their care from the comfort of their home or wherever they choose.
GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide, a care management tool designed for healthcare professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions. With the dramatic increase of people with chronic conditions and an aging population there is a need to extend care from the hospital to the home. GE Healthcare and Intel are helping to address these pressing issues. The market for telehealth and home health monitoring is predicted to grow from $3 billion in 2009 to an estimated $7.7 billion by 2012.
GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide, a care management tool designed for healthcare professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions. With the dramatic increase of people with chronic conditions and an aging population there is a need to extend care from the hospital to the home. GE Healthcare and Intel are helping to address these pressing issues. The market for telehealth and home health monitoring is predicted to grow from $3 billion in 2009 to an estimated $7.7 billion by 2012.
Albatron Starts Selling ATI Radeon Video Cards
Albatron, an official NVIDIA partner, has gently started producing cards from the red camp without making any announcements. So far Albatron was NVIDIA exclusive, but a few more cards in the portfolio, no matter NVIDIA or ATI, won't hurt much. The first ATI card from Albatron is a Radeon HD 4890 named Radeon HD 4890-1G. This model will be all-stock, clocked at 850 MHz for the GPU, with 256-bit memory interface and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3900 MHz. The card should hit the market any time soon with a suggested retail price under $250. Later Albatron plans to release more products from the Radeon HD 4000 series.
Friday, April 3rd 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Memory
Motherboards
Multimedia
Netbooks
Notebooks
G.Skill Triple-Channel 1600 MHz 6 GB Kit Review
G.Skill offers a full range of tri-channel memory kits at speeds of up to 2000 MHz. We are taking a look at their red kit rated at 1600 MHz and CL9. Even though this memory is on the lower end of the line-up, it manages to surprise with good overclockablity and the possibility of tighter timings.
Thermaltake Toughpower 700W Reaches 80 PLUS Silver
Thermaltake Technology is pleased to announce its high performance line of power supply, Toughpower series, has been added an 80PLUS Silver power supply - Toughpower 700W (W0295). With Thermaltake's commitment to offer users quality products, the 800W / 1200W (all 80PLUS Silver ready) will also be ready in Q2.
80 PLUS is a cutting-edge, electric utility-funded program whose mission is to integrate energy-efficient power supplies into desktop computers and servers. The 80PLUS Silver standard certifies PSU that has 85%, 88%, and 85% or higher energy efficiency rate at 20%, 50%, and 100% of loading, respectively. This requirement makes an 80 PLUS Silver certified power supply considerably more efficient than any other traditional 80 PLUS power supplies.
80 PLUS is a cutting-edge, electric utility-funded program whose mission is to integrate energy-efficient power supplies into desktop computers and servers. The 80PLUS Silver standard certifies PSU that has 85%, 88%, and 85% or higher energy efficiency rate at 20%, 50%, and 100% of loading, respectively. This requirement makes an 80 PLUS Silver certified power supply considerably more efficient than any other traditional 80 PLUS power supplies.
NVIDIA Tegra-based Mini-Notebook Spotted
It looks like NVIDIA's attempts to let Tegra make it to bigger platforms are beginning to bear fruit. LaptopMag got its hands on one of the first mini-notebooks based on Tegra, a fully-integrated computing architecture that focuses on making more powerful and visual portable computing devices possible. The Tegra CPU core is based on the ARM11 architecture, working along with NVIDIA's own graphics processing, and system controlling technologies.
The model in use with the mini-notebook is Tegra 650, which runs at 750 MHz (core clock speed), supports hardware HD video decoding, an S-Video out, and USB. It supports DDR memory running at 200 MHz, and an IDE channel for a sold-state drive for primary storage. Apart from the IDE interface, Tegra has its own NAND-flash controller so small amounts of flash memory (up to 8 GB) could be embedded onto the main PCB. The mini-notebook features an OS that lets the user achieve all the tasks one would ask from this 90~200 Dollar mini-notebook. Windows CE and Linux are the likely candidates. The screenshot below is that of the Windows CE-based prototype that takes advantage of the 3D processing power of the core. Also pictured is the prototype system board by NVIDIA.
The model in use with the mini-notebook is Tegra 650, which runs at 750 MHz (core clock speed), supports hardware HD video decoding, an S-Video out, and USB. It supports DDR memory running at 200 MHz, and an IDE channel for a sold-state drive for primary storage. Apart from the IDE interface, Tegra has its own NAND-flash controller so small amounts of flash memory (up to 8 GB) could be embedded onto the main PCB. The mini-notebook features an OS that lets the user achieve all the tasks one would ask from this 90~200 Dollar mini-notebook. Windows CE and Linux are the likely candidates. The screenshot below is that of the Windows CE-based prototype that takes advantage of the 3D processing power of the core. Also pictured is the prototype system board by NVIDIA.
Albatron Delivers Radeon HD 4890-1G
To bring consumers various choices, professional motherboard and graphics card manufactures, Albatron Technology Co., LTD. announces Albatron Radeon HD 4890-1G. Full line of ATI products will be available soon to the market.
Albatron Radeon HD 4890-1G is based on ATI Radeon HD 4890 GPU by advanced 55nm process, the fastest GDDR5 memory, and 800 stream processors. With massive graphic power, its data rate can speed up to 3.9Gbps. It can help increasing users' working efficiency and playing 3D game without lag. For professional users, they can set their own overclock mode; moreover, collocating ATI OverDrive utility and ATI CrossFire Technology, Albatron Radeon HD 4890-1G can blurt its power and performance up to next level.
Albatron Radeon HD 4890-1G is based on ATI Radeon HD 4890 GPU by advanced 55nm process, the fastest GDDR5 memory, and 800 stream processors. With massive graphic power, its data rate can speed up to 3.9Gbps. It can help increasing users' working efficiency and playing 3D game without lag. For professional users, they can set their own overclock mode; moreover, collocating ATI OverDrive utility and ATI CrossFire Technology, Albatron Radeon HD 4890-1G can blurt its power and performance up to next level.
Lian-Li Launches EX-10, EX-20, EX-30 & EX-50 External HDD Rack Mount Kits
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched EX-10 (1xHDD), EX-20 (2x HDD's), EX-30 (3xHDD's) and EX-50 (5xHDD's) external HDD rack to support your storage needs in an all aluminum frame and housing. The HDD rack has a front loading door, with individual handles on a bracket for each HDD, as well as a back panel PCB with a RAID controller from Silicon Image. The Sil5744 chipset offers hot plug and play capability with many of the RAID settings required today.
The SATA HDD configuration is in a Hot Swap Plug & Play backplate with an integrated RAID controller chip. To keep the device cool there is an appropriately sized fan for your unit with a washable nylon filter keeping dust and debris out.
The SATA HDD configuration is in a Hot Swap Plug & Play backplate with an integrated RAID controller chip. To keep the device cool there is an appropriately sized fan for your unit with a washable nylon filter keeping dust and debris out.
GIGABYTE Extends SLI Support on Entire X58 Series Motherboards
GIGABYTE Technology CO., LTD., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is pleased to announce their entire range of Intel X58 chipset motherboards now officially support NVIDIA SLI technology, allowing users to take full advantage of blazing-fast NVIDIA multi-GPU performance.
With a simple BIOS upgrade from the GIGABYTE website, users can enable NVIDIA SLI support on their current motherboards for ultra smooth 3D rendering, blazing-fast frame rates and enhanced visual quality possible with a multiple graphics card solution. Whether playing current and future graphics-intensive games at max settings, or enabling multi-monitor support for enhanced productivity, GIGABYTE gives users the flexibility to design their system according to their specific needs.
With a simple BIOS upgrade from the GIGABYTE website, users can enable NVIDIA SLI support on their current motherboards for ultra smooth 3D rendering, blazing-fast frame rates and enhanced visual quality possible with a multiple graphics card solution. Whether playing current and future graphics-intensive games at max settings, or enabling multi-monitor support for enhanced productivity, GIGABYTE gives users the flexibility to design their system according to their specific needs.
MSI Launches R4890-T2D1G Graphics Card with Ultra-High Bandwidth
MSI, leading brand manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today launched their latest R4890-T2D1G graphics card powered by 55 nanometer core and 800 stream processors coupled with 1GB of GDDR5 124.8 GB/s ultra-high bandwidth memory supporting DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0. Now gamers can experience superior performance with the most realistic special effects ever, all in life-like high definition. If you are in for best possible performance, the CrossFireX technology for multi-GPU operations will help you push your visual experience to the utmost maximum. In addition, the integrated UVD 2.0 hardware decoding technology makes sure that high definition audio and video playback will always be smooth and crisp. High Performance, High Efficiency and High image quality are the three focus strengths of the MSI R4890-T2D1G.
EVGA Announces the EVGA GeForce GTX 275
EVGA, the leading-edge 3D processor graphics cards and motherboard manufacturer, announces the EVGA GeForce GTX 275, offering first rate graphics, physics, and GPU computing performance. The EVGA GeForce GTX 275 appeals to today's value conscious gamers who desire a powerful GPU and support for both, enhanced 3D image quality and an extended range of 3D special effects that guarantee the best gaming experience for current and upcoming titles. The powerful 3D processor features the NVIDIA GeForce 275 GPU with a complete set of 240 processor cores plus super fast 0.8ns DDR3 memory. Also, EVGA is offering both 896MB and 1792MB versions ensuring you get enough memory to handle the highest of resolutions and texture quality.
BFG Announces Versatile GeForce GTX 275 OC Graphics Card
BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies, and the Phobos High-Performance Gaming/Home Theater System, announced today the BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC graphics card that offers outstanding PC gaming performance and advanced processing power in other applications from which even non gamers can benefit.
The BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC with CUDA technology provides superior gaming performance as well as advanced GPU computing performance for everything from video transcoding to video and photo editing. Whether it's transferring HD videos in minutes to your portable video player using the Badaboom Media Converter, "upscaling" standard definition movies to near HD quality with Arcsoft SimHD, or rapidly editing digital photos using Adobe CS4, the BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC graphics card does it all with outstanding performance and reliability.
The BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC with CUDA technology provides superior gaming performance as well as advanced GPU computing performance for everything from video transcoding to video and photo editing. Whether it's transferring HD videos in minutes to your portable video player using the Badaboom Media Converter, "upscaling" standard definition movies to near HD quality with Arcsoft SimHD, or rapidly editing digital photos using Adobe CS4, the BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC graphics card does it all with outstanding performance and reliability.
OCZ Achieves 80 Plus Gold and Silver Efficiency with New Z-Series Power Supplies
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, is pleased to announce that their Z-Series line of PSUs have been certified at the highest efficiency levels by 80 Plus, making the power supplies an exceptional choice for power users demanding the ultimate in performance and efficiency. As one of the first consumer PSUs to meet the strict requirements of the 80 Plus Gold 90% efficiency standard, the Z1000 is now in production and is slated to be the first 1KW power supply available to end-users with the prestigious 80 Plus Gold rating. In addition to the 1000W configuration, two Silver 80 Plus rated power supplies are included in the series-the Z550 and Z650.
Thursday, April 2nd 2009
Today's Reviews
Cooling
CPU Coolers
Graphics Cards
- ATI Radeon 4890 and NVIDIA GTX 275 Review DriverHeaven
- NVIDIA GTX 275 vs HD 4890 Legit Reviews
- AMD HD 4890 CrossFire TechPowerUp
- Sapphire HD 4850 512MB Vapor-X Elite Bastards
- Sapphire HD 4890 Benchmark Reviews
- Sapphire HD 4890 Club Overclocker
- Sappphire HD 4890 Elite Bastards
- PowerColor HD 4890 PLUS Elite Bastards
- Sapphire HD 4890 1GB HardwareCanucks
- ASUS EAH4890 Hartware (de)
- Sapphire HD 4890 OC and XFX HD 4890 XT Hexus
- ASUS HD 4890 1GB HotHardware
- PowerColor HD 4890 InsideHW
- Sapphire and PowerColor HD 4890 NeoSeeker
- XFX HD 4890 XXX Overclock3D.net
- ASUS EAH 4890 Overclock3D.net
- PowerColor HD 4890 Overclockers Club
- Sapphire HD 4890 Overclockers Club
- ATI HD 4890 Linux Performance Phoronix
- Sapphire HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5 TechPowerUp
- PowerColor HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5 TechPowerUp
- Gigabyte HD 4890 1GB Tweaktown
- PowerColor HD 4890 PLUS X-bit labs
- NVIDIA GTX 275 Bjorn3D
- NVIDIA GTX 275 Guru3D
- NVIDIA GTX 275 HardwareCanucks
- NVIDIA GTX 275 HotHardware
- NVIDIA GTX 275 Ninja Lane
- NVIDIA GTX 275 Overclockers Club
- Zotac GTX 275 Amp! Edition TechPowerUp
Keyboards
NAS
Processors
NVIDIA Releases GeForce 185.66 BETA Drivers
The day after releasing the GeForce 182.50 WHQL drivers, NVIDIA has also released a GeForce BETA driver with version 185.66, for both Windows Vista and XP.
New in Release 185.66:
UPDATE: The day following the release of the 185.65 BETA drivers this article originally covered, NVIDIA removed the driver links and updated the BETA to 185.66, this article has therefore been updated accordingly.
New in Release 185.66:
- Adds support for the new GeForce GTX 275 GPU.
- Adds support for Ambient Occlusion - the newest NVIDIA Control Panel feature to offer enhanced 3D gaming realism exclusively to GeForce GPUs. (Vista Only)
- Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See nvidia.com/cuda for more details.
- Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185 drivers vs. Release 182 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
- Up to 11% performance increase in Call of Duty: World at War
- Up to 5% performance increase Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
- Up to 22% performance increase Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
- Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror's Edge with antialiasing enabled - Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3. Download these FREE PhysX and CUDA applications now!
- Numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release documentation notes.
UPDATE: The day following the release of the 185.65 BETA drivers this article originally covered, NVIDIA removed the driver links and updated the BETA to 185.66, this article has therefore been updated accordingly.
ZOTAC Expands GeForce GTX 200 Series Lineup
ZOTAC International, an award-winning manufacturer of high-performance graphics cards, today unleashes the latest addition to its GeForce GTX 200 series lineup - the new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 275 and GeForce GTX 275 AMP! Edition - the latest generation of graphics cards that deliver class-leading performance at value prices. Powered by a 2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture with 240 screaming-fast stream processors, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 275 series is ready to take on the latest DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.0, NVIDIA CUDA and PhysX powered games and applications for phenomenal performance and breathtaking visuals.
NVIDIA Releases GeForce 182.50 WHQL Drivers
NVIDIA today released its GeForce 182.50 driver suite for Windows XP and Windows Vista. This release comes at a time when the company released the GeForce GTX 275 accelerator, making it obvious the driver extends support to it. While the driver doesn't aim bring in application-specific enhancements, it does fix numerous bugs, which invariably may improve product quality. It brings in single-GPU and SLI optimizations for seveal upcoming game titles. For a complete list of changes, refer to the Release Notes documents for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
DOWNLOAD:GeForce 182.50 WHQL for Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista 32-bit | Windows Vista 64-bit
DOWNLOAD:GeForce 182.50 WHQL for Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista 32-bit | Windows Vista 64-bit
AMD Unveils ATI Radeon HD 4890, the Most Powerful Graphics Processor in the World
AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, driven by the world's most powerful graphics processor. The newest addition to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4000 series boasts a whopping 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, superior GDDR5 memory, and super-high engine clock speeds capable of nearly 1GHz. The advanced design of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 delivers the best game experience in its class, including the latest ground-breaking DirectX 10.1 titles. In addition, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4890, AMD continues to enhance its "Dragon" desktop platform technology, designed to provide exceptional value to OEMs, channel partners, and do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers.
TechPowerUp and HIS Announce Design Your own HD 4890 Contest
TechPowerUp and Hightech Information Systems (HIS) present you a great opportunity to bag a Radeon HD 4890 1 GB graphics accelerator with body-graphics designed by you! The contest is pretty simple if you have the creativity and competitive spirit. We will provide you with a template and some image resources (company logos). You put your skills to work, and come up with a body-graphics design in one month's time. You get to submit as many as three candidates of your own. At the end of the contest, a panel of judges from AMD, HIS and TechPowerUp will select three of the best entries.
The winner gets his/her design printed on a special Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator made by HIS, and of course, the accelerator itself! The first and second runners up receive HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 512 MB, and HIS Radeon HD 4650 iSilence 512 MB respectively. For more information, contest rules, and to participate, visit this page. Good Luck!
The winner gets his/her design printed on a special Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator made by HIS, and of course, the accelerator itself! The first and second runners up receive HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 512 MB, and HIS Radeon HD 4650 iSilence 512 MB respectively. For more information, contest rules, and to participate, visit this page. Good Luck!
NVIDIA Extends Performance Lead With New GeForce GTX 275 GPU
NVIDIA today announced the GeForce GTX 275 GPU, the latest addition to NVIDIA's performance GPU lineup, offering first-rate graphics, physics, and GPU computing performance, as well as the absolute best price-performance for today's value-conscious gamers.
Based on the GT200 architecture, the GeForce GTX 275 GPU features 240 processor cores operating at 1404 MHz, 80 texture processing units, a 448-bit memory interface, and an 896 MB framebuffer. In price and performance, it sits between the GeForce GTX 260 and the GeForce GTX 285.
Based on the GT200 architecture, the GeForce GTX 275 GPU features 240 processor cores operating at 1404 MHz, 80 texture processing units, a 448-bit memory interface, and an 896 MB framebuffer. In price and performance, it sits between the GeForce GTX 260 and the GeForce GTX 285.
Silicon Graphics to be Acquired by Rackable Systems
Rackable Systems, a leading provider of servers and storage products for medium to large-scale data centers, today announced its agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) for approximately $25 million in cash, subject to adjustment in certain circumstances, plus the assumption of certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets.
The combined businesses will provide customers with market leading hardware and software technology within large-scale x86 cluster computing, HPC, Internet, Cloud Computing, large-scale data storage environments and visualization platforms across many verticals and geographies. This combination is also expected to result in a stronger global services organization; reaching commercial, government and scientific sectors on a worldwide basis.
The combined businesses will provide customers with market leading hardware and software technology within large-scale x86 cluster computing, HPC, Internet, Cloud Computing, large-scale data storage environments and visualization platforms across many verticals and geographies. This combination is also expected to result in a stronger global services organization; reaching commercial, government and scientific sectors on a worldwide basis.
Wednesday, April 1st 2009
Today's Reviews
Cases
Gaming PC
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Multimedia
PowerColor HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5 Review
AMD has just announced the availability of their latest HD 4890 graphics card series which is based on the new RV790 GPU. The highlights of RV790 are considerably higher clocks speeds and 1 GB of fast GDDR5 memory on all boards.
Sapphire HD 4890 1 GB GDDR5 Review
Sapphire's new HD 4890 comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and yet unseen clock speeds offering much better performance at a competitive price. Will that be enough to beat NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 275 ?
Zotac GeForce GTX 275 Amp! Edition Review
Today NVIDIA released their GeForce GTX 275 Series. While there are no architectural improvements, the new cards offer substantially improved performance at competitive prices. Zotac's Amp! Edition offers higher clocks out of the box - is that enough to combat ATI's new offerings?
AMD Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire Review
Our HD 4890 CrossFire review investigates whether running two of these brand-new cards is a viable choice if you need that extra bit of performance or want to run with even more eye candy than what is possible with a single HD 4890 board.
Razer and Valve to Codevelop New Game Title Equipped with a Dedicated Game Controller
Razer, the world's leading manufacturer of high-end gaming and lifestyle peripherals and Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises and leading technologies, today announced an unprecedented partnership to usher the first person shooter (FPS) genre to the next stage of radical gaming evolution.
The debut title - "HellRazer", will be a co-op squad based tactical FPS game that will be distributed through the Steam network. Legendary game developer Gabe Newell will lead software development, while Razer will dedicate its time to design and create an intuitive game controller in its new research laboratories in Singapore. The new peripheral is slated to be the first true 1:1 motion sensing and gesture recognition controller.
The debut title - "HellRazer", will be a co-op squad based tactical FPS game that will be distributed through the Steam network. Legendary game developer Gabe Newell will lead software development, while Razer will dedicate its time to design and create an intuitive game controller in its new research laboratories in Singapore. The new peripheral is slated to be the first true 1:1 motion sensing and gesture recognition controller.
MSI Publishes Specs of the new Wind U123, X320 and X340 Notebooks
It's a strong week for MSI, today the company publicized the full specifications of the new Wind U123 and the X320 & X340 X-Slim notebooks. The new Wind model is MSI's first to offer a 3G solution and a TV Tuner. Both the X320 and X340 laptops are just new models that refresh MSI's current line-up of mobile offerings, the X320 will utilize an Intel CULV processor, while the X320 is to use the new Intel Atom Z530 1.6 GHz processor. Full specs of all three participants follow below.
Geil Launches EVO ONE DDR3 Memory
Geil has announced the launch of its EVO ONE DDR3 gaming memory series. Both dual and triple channel memory kits will be available, ranging from 2 GB (2x 1GB sticks) in dual channel to 6 GB (3x 2GB sticks) in triple channel.
All memory kits feature Geil's EVO One Heatspreader with MTCD technology.
All memory kits feature Geil's EVO One Heatspreader with MTCD technology.
Super Talent Develops 2048 GB PCIe RAID SSD with 1.3 GB/sec Throughput
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced its patented RAIDDrive, which dramatically increases the performance and slot capacity of PCI Express-based storage solution. The new RAIDDrive is the market's largest and most innovative server-based solid-state storage solution, and an extension of its patented technology from the RAIDSSD product lines.
XFX Readies Radeon HD 4890 XXX, XT OC Editions
XFX is starting its Radeon HD 4890 lineup with three models graded by the core clock-speed they come with. The base-model will carry reference clock speeds of 850/975 MHz (core/memory), the XFX HD 4890 XT, with clock speeds of 875/975 MHz, and the XFX HD 4890 XXX, with clock speeds of 900/975 MHz.
Something about the XXX model is interesting: almost every other AMD partner has a Radeon HD 4890 variant with the same core clock-speed: A certain ASUS Radeon HD 4890, Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic, HIS HD 4890 Turbo, and MSI HD 4890 OC, and a recent AMD slide exposé showing two distinct grades of Radeon HD 4890, with the second one being a "Radeon HD 4890 OC". This grade, according to Expreview, is believed to have high clock speeds, to increase competitiveness against the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 accelerator.
Coming back to the XFX HD 4890 XXX, the card (not pictured yet) comes in a peculiar "X"-shaped box. It comes with a free copy of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., and is backed by the company's "5-star support". It is expected to be priced above US $250, which is supposed to be the base-price for Radeon HD 4890.
Something about the XXX model is interesting: almost every other AMD partner has a Radeon HD 4890 variant with the same core clock-speed: A certain ASUS Radeon HD 4890, Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic, HIS HD 4890 Turbo, and MSI HD 4890 OC, and a recent AMD slide exposé showing two distinct grades of Radeon HD 4890, with the second one being a "Radeon HD 4890 OC". This grade, according to Expreview, is believed to have high clock speeds, to increase competitiveness against the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 accelerator.
Coming back to the XFX HD 4890 XXX, the card (not pictured yet) comes in a peculiar "X"-shaped box. It comes with a free copy of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., and is backed by the company's "5-star support". It is expected to be priced above US $250, which is supposed to be the base-price for Radeon HD 4890.
Intel Losing CPU Market-Share to AMD
With the introduction of the K8 architecture, years ago, AMD found inroads into significantly rising in market-share for CPUs, at the expense of Intel. That growth ceased with Intel's introduction of the competing Core microarchitecture, following which, AMD was pushed into some deep financial trouble. Eventually the company spun-off its manufacturing division to form the Globalfoundries with investment from Advanced Technology Investment Company, recently.
With the introduction of the 45 nm Phenom II series of processors however, sharp growths in demand for AMD have been observed, with Phenom II X3 700 series triple-core, and the Phenom II X4 920 quad-core desktop processors. The surge in demand is caused due to recent price-cuts by the company. Motherboard vendors forecast the overall global market-share for AMD desktop processors to go up by 30 percent in Q2, 2009. With a conservative-estimate of its current market share to be around 20 percent, the growth would send the figure to 26 percent. The company plans to further expand its desktop CPU lineup with the introduction of an entry-level desktop platform before September.
With the introduction of the 45 nm Phenom II series of processors however, sharp growths in demand for AMD have been observed, with Phenom II X3 700 series triple-core, and the Phenom II X4 920 quad-core desktop processors. The surge in demand is caused due to recent price-cuts by the company. Motherboard vendors forecast the overall global market-share for AMD desktop processors to go up by 30 percent in Q2, 2009. With a conservative-estimate of its current market share to be around 20 percent, the growth would send the figure to 26 percent. The company plans to further expand its desktop CPU lineup with the introduction of an entry-level desktop platform before September.
Spire Announces VertiCool II Pro
Spire is officially introducing the release of the all new Spire VertiCool II Pro. This universal turn-n-lock mounting, high-performance cooler has everything that you could need. Featuring 45 stamped aluminum micro-fins thermally supported by 2 U-shaped 8mm thermally improved heat-pipes and all copper base for rapid heat transfer. Patented Turn-n-Lock EZ Installation is simple and tool-free, Spire 420 Thermal compound and multi language installation manual is included in the retail package. Supporting the latest Intel 775 & AMD AM2 and AM3 micro-processors, this towering cooler is a great pick for those upgrading their system with a modest budget.
Gaming Good For Eyesight
A study has found that gamers' contrast sensitivity vision improves when playing FPS games. Contrast sensitivity is the body's response to a change in visionary situations, enabling you for example, to see in the dark or read. Like everything else it degrades in old age, but a new neuroscience study has shown that this may not be the case for avid gamers who enjoy a good gunfight.
According to leading researcher, Professor Daphne Bavelier of Rochester University "This is not a skill that people were supposed to get better at by training. It was something that we corrected for at the level of the optics of the eye - to get better contrast detection you get glasses or laser surgery."
So, after hooking a group of gamers for more than 50 hours on Call of Duty, and another group on an non-violent game, results showed that the vision of those who played Call of Duty had improved by 43 percent. When set against the results of the other group, whose vision failed to improve at all, such a result can no doubt be deemed as statistically significant.
According to leading researcher, Professor Daphne Bavelier of Rochester University "This is not a skill that people were supposed to get better at by training. It was something that we corrected for at the level of the optics of the eye - to get better contrast detection you get glasses or laser surgery."
So, after hooking a group of gamers for more than 50 hours on Call of Duty, and another group on an non-violent game, results showed that the vision of those who played Call of Duty had improved by 43 percent. When set against the results of the other group, whose vision failed to improve at all, such a result can no doubt be deemed as statistically significant.
Pretec Offers Dual-Interface eSATA/USB SSD Flash Drives with Power Over eSATA
Pretec, creator of the world's smallest USB drive and pioneer of SSD technology innovation, today introduced fresh line of 32 GB and 64 GB eSATA/USB dual interface solid-state drives compliant with the Power Over eSATA specification. In other words these SSDs do not need external power connector to operate normal and transfer data via either eSATA or USB. Another nifty feature of the new Pretec Cobra pocket SSDs are their super fast read and write speeds of 90 MB/s and 60 MB/s respectively. Considering the size and the mobility of the drives, these speeds are more than you can ever want. Unfortunately, Pretec didn't mention the price and availability date in their announcement.
Dell Ships Three New Precision Workstations
Dell, the world's No. 1 workstation supplier for the last nine years, today unveiled Dell Precision T7500, T5500 and T3500 tower workstations. One of the first workstation lines to ship with Intel Xeon 5500 "Nehalem," the Dell Precision T5500 and T7500 deliver up to 90 percent better multi-threaded digital content creation application performance versus previous generation systems. The new systems are purpose-engineered for professionals in engineering, media, entertainment, biosciences, exploration, economic modeling and risk analysis.
OCZ Receives ''Intel Mobile Innovation of the Year'' Award for DIY Laptop Program
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, components, and systems, is proud to be the recipient of the "Intel Mobile Innovation of the Year" award, in recognition of its groundbreaking DIY laptop program introduced in 2008. This Intel Innovation awards recognize technology leaders within strategic partner programs, and OCZ's configurable bareones laptops proved to be the ultimate contender out of this year's nominees.
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