Today's Reviews
Chipsets
Cooling
Memory
Motherboards
Multimedia
Processors
Storage
News Archive
Thursday, July 31st 2008
Galaxy GeForce 9500 GT Overclocked 512 MB Review
NVIDIA recently launched the GeForce 9500 GT. This low-end card in the GeForce 9 Series is designed to offer acceptable gaming performance for the small wallet. Galaxy has created an overclocked edition which runs at higher clocks and comes with a quiet heatpipe cooling solution. In our testing we saw amazing overclocking potential of over 35% compared to the reference design clocks.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT Amp! Edition Review
NVIDIA's new GeForce 9800 GT Series is not really new. The performance, specification and GPU are identical to that of the GeForce 8800 GT. Only a few minor features like Purevideo HD and Hybrid Power are present. At least Zotac showed a bit of creativity and added a bright orange PCB and higher clocks out of the box.
Calling all Gamers, OCZ Announces the “Win with the nia” Contest for Case and Prizes
OCZ Technology Group today announced its latest contest, "Win with the nia," where competing gamers can use the revolutionary Neural Impulse Actuator to contend at national and regional levels for prize money and OCZ computer products. Gamers from all over the world will have the chance to put their nias to the test at LAN parties and e-sport competitions around the world, showing the gaming world just how incredible this new input device is at increasing immersion and lessening reaction times in the top PC titles.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Series Driver 2.18.0004 for Windows Vista Released
A long time has passed since Creative last released any new Vista drivers for its X-Fi audio cards. Usually new drivers are being published every single day, and they don't concern us much, but in Creative's case a new driver release can be considered a break-through. It goes even worse, because when we talk about new Creative drivers for Windows Vista we expect something new to be added, but in reward we receive only features that are supposed to work by default with this concrete product. A perfect example for my words is the brand new Windows Vista 2.18.0004 driver for Creative X-Fi cards released today. It is now here to re-establish the hardware Dolby Digital, DTS decode and DVD-Audio playback functions, that were available in Windows XP for more than two years. If you own a Creative X-Fi card just like me and you use it under Windows Vista 32/64-bit, please follow this link to download Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Driver 2.18.0004.
HP Issues Statement on NVIDIA Mobile GPU: Defects Since November 2007
Hewlett Packard has released a list of affected notebook models. These 24 units may have the defective GPUs from NVIDIA, dating back as far as November 2007. Check out this HP website to see if your model is part of this group. C|Net quotes the HP rep:
HP has taken appropriate actions for any HP notebook products that use the known affected Nvidia chips," We initiated a customer program to address this issue in November 2007, and have notified registered customers who have notebook PC models that are included in this HP program. HP became aware of this issue when we began performing an investigation based on field performance data."Users with problems, may be eligible for a free repair.
Toshiba Unveils Three New Tough And Stylish External USB 2.0 HDDs
Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division, the world leader in high performance hard disk drive (HDD) technology, today launched three new external and fully portable HDDs that meet the performance requirements of today's technology-savvy and style-conscious consumers.
The colourful new high-quality external devices are Toshiba-built throughout and further extend the company's pioneering design pedigree in HDDs. Highly ergonomic, sleek and ruggedised to withstand the demands of being constantly in transit, the products feature a 2.5 inch drive and fit into the palm of the hand. They are ideal for users with large volumes of video, picture and audio files that want to use that data wherever they are, whether that be with friends and family, when entertaining or for professional uses. Compatible with both PCs and Macs, they are ideal for anyone needing to store and carry information and entertainment files.
The colourful new high-quality external devices are Toshiba-built throughout and further extend the company's pioneering design pedigree in HDDs. Highly ergonomic, sleek and ruggedised to withstand the demands of being constantly in transit, the products feature a 2.5 inch drive and fit into the palm of the hand. They are ideal for users with large volumes of video, picture and audio files that want to use that data wherever they are, whether that be with friends and family, when entertaining or for professional uses. Compatible with both PCs and Macs, they are ideal for anyone needing to store and carry information and entertainment files.
Confusion about Point Of View 8800GT with 128 bit Memory Interface
German website Computerbase.de is reporting, that there are several users out there, who have received GeForce 8800GTs, which do not have the usual 112 Shaders and 256 bit memory interface you would expect from this model. Their cards seem to have only 96 shaders and an 128 bit interface. While the 128 bit interface is clearly advertised, the 96 shaders are not. This would make the card even slower than a 9600 GSO. The problem is, that these cards are still being sold as 8800GTs and you won't know that you have gotten a slower one, until you check it after installation. The card in question is from Point Of View with the model number R-VGA150868.
UPDATE: Looks like one affected user has heard back from Point Of View, he will get his card replaced. All shops selling this card should clearly advertise it as 128-bit variant. The number of shaders on the R-VGA150868 product is intended to be 112, not 96. That's why Point of View offered to replace the card.
Update no. 2: Both Point Of View and NVIDIA have commented on the issue. Point Of View states that they are only the first to offer this card at such specs and other manufacturers will follow. Meaning, that all 8800 GTs will suffer this change. NVIDIA on the other hand is not aware of any such change and has underlined, that Point Of View is acting alone on this one.
Update no. 2: Both Point Of View and NVIDIA have commented on the issue. Point Of View states that they are only the first to offer this card at such specs and other manufacturers will follow. Meaning, that all 8800 GTs will suffer this change. NVIDIA on the other hand is not aware of any such change and has underlined, that Point Of View is acting alone on this one.
SteelSeries Acquires Ideazon In An Asset Transaction
The leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, SteelSeries, today announced its acquisition of certain assets in Ideazon, Inc., the North American-based developer and manufacturer of gaming peripherals and technologies. This acquisition further strengthens SteelSeries' peripheral technology and will help expand the company's broad support within the gaming community.
Hitachi Brings CinemaStar 7K1000.B and CinemaStar 5K320 to the Market
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today introduced two new CinemaStar hard drives optimized for use in digital video recorders (DVRs) and set-top boxes. The CinemaStar 7K1000.B is available in a broad range of capacities up to one terabyte (1TB) and the CinemaStar 5K320 delivers up to 320GB of capacity and incorporates innovative Hitachi CoolSpin technology.
Wednesday, July 30th 2008
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Silverstone CMD01 Commander ESA Edition Review
The Silverstone Commander ESA Edition enables complete system monitoring functionality through the nTune System Monitor. Instead of going for one of the few ESA enabled cases out there, the CMD01 Commander gives unprecedented flexibility, as you can enable ESA connectivity for any case of your choice.
KDE 4.1 Released
Six months after the release of KDE 4.0, the KDE community today announced KDE 4.1, the second most important release in the KDE 4 era. KDE 4.1 brings support for a lot of new applications and newly developed features. It is also the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to a point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users. If you're using KDE Linux distribution, and you find KDE 4.1 to be interesting for you, make sure to take some time and read through the full changelog here. To download the complete source code for KDE 4.1.0 please click here.
Akasa Announces infinity and infinity ZOR Cases
Akasa announced today they are shipping the new Infiniti and infiniti Zor - professional and gaming PC case designed for pro-gaming systems and high performance work stations. infiniti's distinctive 11 bay design was created by Akasa's Hong Kong based industrial design team. Akasa is targeting the ZOR at the gaming market and infiniti at those who want top performance with thermal efficiency and require low noise levels from the chassis. The infiniti case has a totally ventilated aluminium and mesh front panel with two 12cm fans, a top panel mesh window providing a watercooling facility for bay fitting radiators and fixings for 2 x 12cm fans.
Introducing the new era of classic gaming performance - WinFast PX9800 GT 512MB
Leadtek Research Inc., the global leading brand for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new high-end graphics card, WinFast PX9800 GT 512MB. Based on the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics processing units and unified architecture design, the new graphics card can provide customers the best-in-classic gaming performance.
Walton Chaintech Announces GeForce GSE9500GT DDR3 512MB Graphics Card
Walton Chaintech, the world's renowned graphics card and memory module manufacturer, announces today the GeForce 9 series GSE9500GT DDR3 512MB graphics card, the officially appointed gaming graphics card for the famous game C.S. On-Line in Taiwan. CHAINTECH GSE9500GT is the mainstream graphics card not only geared by the latest NVIDIA GeForce series core G96 technology but with an easier price tag, providing consumers a two-times more exciting visual experience than its prior version.
Exclusive layout design - Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT 512MB
Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for extreme visual graphics technology development, is pleased to announce the launch of new mainstream graphics cards, WinFast PX9500 GT GDDR3 and GDDR2. The new cards, with Leadtek exclusive performance-driven layout can enhance overclocking capabilities without system instability and offer the excellent performance like never before. The 4th generation Heat-exhaust-efficiency Fansink can create a dramatic cool-down effect and reduce noise level further. Users would never worry about the cooling issue of graphics card.
Point of View Unveils The GeForce 9500 GT
POINT OF VIEW, well known for its range of NVIDIA based Graphics cards, is launching today the GeForce 9500 GT.Your PC is now more visual than ever. Supercharge this visual experience with the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT GPU - there is no better investment to provide more vibrant photos, smoother videos, and more realistic gaming.
BFG Readies New GeForce 9800 GT, 9800 GT OC and GeForce 9500 GT Graphics Cards
BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, 9800 GT OC, and the GeForce 9500 GT graphics cards. All three new BFG graphics cards offer best-in-class price versus performance, and are backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry.
Tuesday, July 29th 2008
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Multimedia
Networking
Processors
ZOTAC Intros New GeForce 9500 GT AMP! Edition, 9500 GT DDR3 and 9500 GT DDR2 Cards
ZOTAC International today also unveils its new lineup of budget graphics cards based on NVIDIA's new GeForce 9500 series graphics processors. The latest GeForce 9500 series lineup delivers extreme levels of visual reality at affordable prices and consists of the ZOTAC GeForce 9500 GT AMP! Edition, GeForce 9500 GT DDR3 and GeForce 9500 GT DDR2.
ZOTAC Unleashes New Performance Lineup
ZOTAC International, a leading manufacturer of NVIDIA-based graphics cards, today unleashes a new generation of performance graphics cards with the new ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT series. The new series includes the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT and 9800 GT AMP! Limited Edition - a power packed duo ready to take on the latest DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.1 3D games and applications.
Buffalo to Start Offering Bigger SSDs for Eee PC 900/901 Netbooks
Originally ASUS' Eee PC 900/901 netbooks are limited to a maximum of 20GB onboard SSD storage and possibly a bit more if you add an additional storage card or extra USB flash memory. While it may be enough for some, it's unacceptable for others. For that reason, Japanese firm Buffalo has teamed up with various SSD suppliers to offer special Eee PC storage bundles that include more capacity for a little extra cash. Soon Buffalo will start offering two HDD upgrade kits for Eee PC 900/901 series, a 32GB SHD-EP9M32G and a 64GB SHD-EP9M64G models, that will make the netbook more flexible. Buffalo forecasts the two replacement drives to become available sometime in September with the 32GB model priced at ¥14,800 (US $136) and the 64GB model priced at ¥29,800 (US $275).
NVIDIA GeForce Driver Version 177.79 Released
Along with the release of the new NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, and 9500 GT GPUs comes a new beta driver. The GeForce driver release 177.79 comes to add nothing but these three GPUs to the database of supported GeForce 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs. It may also bring some performance improvements in various games and applications. Give the release notes a try for more information.
DOWNLOAD: Windows XP 32-bit|64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit|64-bit
DOWNLOAD: Windows XP 32-bit|64-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit|64-bit
NVIDIA Brings GeForce 9800M and 9700M GPUs to Notebook PCs
NVIDIA Corporation has unveiled a new era of notebook PC gaming, featuring advanced rendering and physics effects that will transform gaming beyond what consumers know today. Enabling this evolution is a new generation of notebook PCs equipped with NVIDIA's newest GeForce 9800M and 9700M GPUs and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX physics engine. Perhaps the most significant advancements in PC gaming since DirectX 9, the new GPUs and PhysX will let notebook gamers enjoy the latest games in all their glory, experiencing ultra-realistic graphics and physical effects that mimic the real world, transforming their gaming into a truly cinematic experience.
NVIDIA Amps Up GeForce Lineup With Immediate Availability Of Three New GPUs
NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced the immediate availability of three new desktop GeForce 9 Series graphics processing units (GPUs) that bring support for NVIDIA PhysX technology and CUDA general-purpose parallel computing to mainstream PC computing markets.
Dell Comes Up with 24-inch 16:9 Widescreen Display
True HD computer displays have become increasingly popular for the past year. Now Dell knows that and has released S2409W, Dell's first 24-inch 16:9 widescreen display. The 16:9 aspect ratio brings along 1920x1080 Full HD display resolution, 5ms response time, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 160° / 170° degree viewing angles. At the back you'll find a VGA, DVI and HDMI connectors. The 24-inch Dell S2409W is available now directly from Dell for just $379. Once you order it, it will be at your front door in two days time. More info is available here.
Dell Launches New Studio Hybrid and Inspiron Systems
Dell's smallest, most personalized and most environmentally responsible consumer PC, the Studio Hybrid, launches today. Available immediately at Dell, the PC's new unique shape and size, personalized with six external jewel-toned color or bamboo finish options, unleashes stylistic expression, inspiration and fun and looks great in any room.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 to Arrive on August 31st
It has been said that Intel is preparing to launch its latest Core 2 Quad processor, the Q8200 on August 31st. The forthcoming processor features four 45nm Penryn cores, 2.33GHz core clock, 4MB of shared L2 cache, a 1333MHz front-side bus, and a suggested price tag of just $203. Specs may be right, but consider the other information a rumor, at least until further info is available.
Monday, July 28th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
GeForce 9600GT Gets a Die-shrink, the Name Lives on
Following the die shrink from the 65nm silicon fabrication process to the newer 55nm that brings down thermal envelope and allows higher GPU parameters for the GeForce 9800 GTX to 9800 GTX+, NVIDIA apparently provided the G94 core a die shrink, the product based on this core will continue to maintain the GeForce 9600 GT brand name. The mark on a 65nm die is G94-300-A1 and 55nm die is G94-300-B1. It keeps 650MHz/1625MHz/900MHz (core/shader/mem) parameters and more overclocking headroom can be left to customers and vendor partners.
Sophos to launch €217 million offer for shares in Utimaco Safeware AG
Sophos Plc ("Sophos"), a global leader in endpoint security and control solutions, today announced its intent to acquire Utimaco Safeware AG ("Utimaco") (Frankfurt Stock Exchange ISIN DE0007572406), a global leader in data security solutions for enterprises, headquartered in Oberursel, near Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Sophos intends to launch a voluntary public takeover offer in cash for all outstanding Utimaco shares. Concurrently, Sophos has entered into an agreement with Investcorp Technology Partners, the largest shareholder of Utimaco, to acquire its 24.99% stake in Utimaco for cash and Sophos stock upon the takeover offer becoming unconditional.
Pictures of the ASUS 9800 GT Ultimate Emerge, Looks Familiar
Picture of the ASUS 9800 GT Ultimate Emerges, Looks Familiar
Donanimhaber released the first picture of the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Ultimate, which should be released very soon. In many aspects the GPU is at most part a re-branded 8800 GT with its 512MB GDDR3 memory, 112 Stream Processors and identical core/memory clockspeeds. The Ultimate model from ASUS however features much higher parameters, 725MHz core, 2000MHz memory and 1750MHz shader clocks. The picture shows the card to have a cooler similar to that of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512M. It remains to be seen if the GPU uses the newer 55nm silicon fabrication process.
Donanimhaber released the first picture of the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Ultimate, which should be released very soon. In many aspects the GPU is at most part a re-branded 8800 GT with its 512MB GDDR3 memory, 112 Stream Processors and identical core/memory clockspeeds. The Ultimate model from ASUS however features much higher parameters, 725MHz core, 2000MHz memory and 1750MHz shader clocks. The picture shows the card to have a cooler similar to that of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512M. It remains to be seen if the GPU uses the newer 55nm silicon fabrication process.
Sunday, July 27th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Graphics Cards
AirLive AirTV-1000U Review
The AirTV-1000U DVB-T TV Tuner is something you would not expect from a company like AirLive. They are known for their excellent networking products, not TV Tuners. The USB based AirTV-1000U features some interesting features, like recording, EPG and time shifting support.
Channel Vendors Demand Recall of Desktop NVIDIA Products
Lack of proper clarification by NVIDIA on exactly which products have defects that require a recall, certain channel vendors now demand that some of their desktop graphics cards be recalled for a replacement. It had been established that certain discrete graphics processors for the mobile platforms had problems caused due to manufacturing defects and announcements were made on NVIDIA's part that they would recall and replace the faulty parts.
NVIDIA has commented that the faulty notebook GPU problem only exists in a few specific notebook models made by specific clients. The company contended that desktop-based discrete graphics card products are not affected by the issue.
NVIDIA has commented that the faulty notebook GPU problem only exists in a few specific notebook models made by specific clients. The company contended that desktop-based discrete graphics card products are not affected by the issue.
Microsoft's 'new' OS Gets a Website
Last week, Microsoft conducted an experiment in San Francisco, USA where 120 users with a negative opinion on Windows Vista were introduced to a new OS to which a majority of them gave positive feedback, only to discover it was Windows Vista under the covers (covered here). Microsoft now wants to publish its results in a new website presumably with promotional tones over its so-far-flop Windows Vista operating system. Results come out in the form of videos, text and presentations. The website titled "The Mojave Experiment" can be reached here.
OCZ Could Bring NIA to Gaming Consoles
OCZ Technology could take the Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA), a device that provides input by interpreting brain waves to a PC, to gaming consoles where they replace the function of game-controllers. Using the device you could play games with complex and sometimes rapid control such as Unreal Tournament or Crysis without using your hands on a PC, proving it could provide a device input at a very rapid rate. TechRadar met Tobias Brinkmann, director of marketing at OCZ. Brinkmann told that the company was looking into the possibility of developing the NIA to function as an input device for major gaming consoles.
"It's definitely something we are looking into," he said. "The thing we think would be most cool is to get the NIA working with the Nintendo Wii - that would be good. But of course it would be great if we could get it working with all the consoles." Brinkmann also revealed that in the past Microsoft made attempts to acquire the technology from OCZ which was turned down by OCZ, pointing at the potential this technology has.
"It's definitely something we are looking into," he said. "The thing we think would be most cool is to get the NIA working with the Nintendo Wii - that would be good. But of course it would be great if we could get it working with all the consoles." Brinkmann also revealed that in the past Microsoft made attempts to acquire the technology from OCZ which was turned down by OCZ, pointing at the potential this technology has.
More Graphics Card Vendors Likely to Sell IGP Motherboards
Industry sources tell DigiTimes that more graphics card vendors could venture into IGP Motherboards. An IGP motherboard is that which uses integrated graphics processors (IGP) made by AMD or NVIDIA. This move follows a noticeable fall in the demand for entry-level discrete graphics cards, with consumers opting for motherboards with IGPs instead. IGPs such as the AMD 780G and the upcoming 790GX and those from NVIDIA such as GeForce 8200, offer performance on par with entry-level discrete graphics and also offer power-saving features.
Most vendors have outsourced their IGP motherboard manufacturing to OEMs, with the Minix 780G ITX creator J&W Technology, followed by Palit Microsystems and Jetway being the biggest gainers. It's also known that first-tier channel vendors (such as ASUS, MSI, etc.) dominate sales of these products leaving these new upcoming vendors to compete mutually before they take on those dominant players.
Most vendors have outsourced their IGP motherboard manufacturing to OEMs, with the Minix 780G ITX creator J&W Technology, followed by Palit Microsystems and Jetway being the biggest gainers. It's also known that first-tier channel vendors (such as ASUS, MSI, etc.) dominate sales of these products leaving these new upcoming vendors to compete mutually before they take on those dominant players.
Fujitsu U2010 Atom-based UMPC Announced
Fujitsu has announced an Intel Atom-based UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC), not to be confused with ULPC. This ultra-portable will focus on the high-end market with a US $1000 to $1200 price tag. It has a 5.6-inch LCD screen, 3.5G data connectivity and GPS and tips the scales at 610g. Specifications can be summarized as:
- Intel Centrino Atom Z530
- SCH US15W (Poulsbo) Chipset
- Touch Screen, 5.6 inches diagonally, 1280 x 800 pixels (WXGA)
- 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz memory
- 60 GB conventional HDD
- Wireless interfaces - Wi-Fi 8021.11n and Bluetooth
- Other - fingerprinting sensor, web-camera, kartovod SD format and CF
- 20wh 2-cell battery
Saturday, July 26th 2008
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Keyboards
Multimedia
Networking
SSD
Comparison of Catalyst 8.6+Hotfix versus Catalyst 8.7 Reveals Insignificant Gains
Expreview conducted a comprehensive comparison between the performance of ATI graphics hardware using the older Catalyst 8.6 + Hotfix driver versus that of the newest Catalyst 8.7 driver. The testbed comprised of:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 overclocked at 4.05 GHz
- ASUS Maximus II Formula motherboard
- G.Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1100
- ASUS Radeon HD 4870 TOP
Cooler Master|KODE5 rendezvous for Extreme Gamers
Brandished under the Cooler Master Storm series being introduced in the KODE5 gaming championship event held in Europe is the CM HAF932 gaming system case. This Full-tower ATX Case launch accompanies a fleet of products that include the CM V8 series CPU cooler and the UCP line up of high performance power supply units (PSU).
Newegg.com En Route Canada
The ever-popular American IT online store Newegg is heading for a sister-store in Canada. Newegg draws hits from all over the world for having the broadest range of IT products and at some very attractive prices, in close to 99 percent of the orders placed in the US, deliveries were approved within 24 hours of placing orders.
The entry of Newegg into Canada could shake up the Canadian online retail sphere and promises to bring the best available prices to Canadian buyers. With expansion being a key company policy for Newegg, starting off with a Newegg Mall in the United States, and now the store in Canada, we can tell the company is aggressively expanding. The site is currently at a construction stage, another URL to keep handy is www.newegg.ca
The entry of Newegg into Canada could shake up the Canadian online retail sphere and promises to bring the best available prices to Canadian buyers. With expansion being a key company policy for Newegg, starting off with a Newegg Mall in the United States, and now the store in Canada, we can tell the company is aggressively expanding. The site is currently at a construction stage, another URL to keep handy is www.newegg.ca
GIGABYTE Intros Industry’s Most Secure, Green, High Performing G45 Motherboard
GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards today launched the new GIGABYTE EG45 Series motherboard - GA-EG45M-DS2H. Featuring the most secure, green and high performing integrated graphics solution on the market and powered by the latest Intel G45 Express chipset with Intel GMA X4500HD graphics core, the GIGABYTE EG45 Series delivers extensive high-definition video and audio capabilities to enable the latest high-definition digital multimedia systems. The GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-DS2H supports the powerful and energy efficient Intel 45nm Core2 Quad processors and features the new Intel G45 chipset. At the heart of the Intel G45 Express chipset is the Intel X4500HD graphics media accelerator, which features several unique innovations including more Execution Units for enhanced 3D performance breaking 1100+ scores on 3DMark 06 benchmark and Intel Clear Video Technology for sharper images and precise color control. The G45 chipset also supports smoother HD video playback, and includes support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, thanks to built-in hardware video decode acceleration.
The GA-EG45M-DS2H is equipped with several unique GIGABYTE features including Ultra Durable 2 design, the fundamental building block of GIGABYTE motherboards, Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, GIGABYTE's Ultra TPM, and a host of other features that not only maximize performance and energy efficiency, but also provide the highest levels of data security.
The GA-EG45M-DS2H is equipped with several unique GIGABYTE features including Ultra Durable 2 design, the fundamental building block of GIGABYTE motherboards, Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, GIGABYTE's Ultra TPM, and a host of other features that not only maximize performance and energy efficiency, but also provide the highest levels of data security.
Friday, July 25th 2008
Today's Reviews
Chipsets
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Mouse
PSUs
Cool IT Systems NV Reference SLI Cooler Review
The CoolIT Systems coolers are certainly a unique way to get into liquid cooling. They come pre-assembled and are maintenance free. We are taking a look at their dual card cooler for two GeForce 8800 GTXs, but CoolIT offers a very similar variant for the GTX 260/280 and for AMD cards as well.
Mushkin Launches X-Line Range of Memory Modules
Mushkin Enhanced, a leading manufacturer of high performance PC - components, announces the immediate availability of the three best-selling 2x 2GB DDR2 memory kits of 2008 announced its PCB used a special feature. Instead of the familiar green PCBs, Mushkin has invented something special. Based on the slogan "Black is beautiful" is the new X-line 8 series using "Challenger 8" series PCBs. Casemodders and all others who lay emphasis on special details, will be pleased with the black 8 SKILLED "Challenger" PCB. The black PCB now fits perfectly with the other PC components in the interior life and evaluates the overall picture.
The X-Line modules are now available in the following specifications:
The X-Line modules are now available in the following specifications:
- 4096 MB, XP2-6400, 4-4-4-12 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996580X)
- 4096 MB, XP2-6400, 4-4-4-12 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996580wX)
- 4096 MB, XP2-8000, 5-5-5-15 Dual Pack (2x 2048 MB), REDLINE, with EPP, Retail, X-Line (996593X)
Microsoft Spins Over a 'Mojave' Approach to Grow Vista User-base
Choice is a wonderful thing. Informed Choice is even better, where you choose something after knowing its inside-outs. The very opposite of informed choice is dogma, where you rigidly oppose something and stick to your beliefs. Incidentally, dogma seems to be one of the significant factors keeping users away from embracing Windows Vista OS, of what can be inferred from an experiment by Microsoft in San Fransisco, United States. A group of Windows XP users having negative impressions on Windows Vista were introduced to a "new" operating system they referred to as "Mojave". User experiences on using this operating system were noted and feedback taken. A surprising 90 percent of these users gave positive feedback on this new OS. They were later told that the new OS was nothing else but Windows Vista.
Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.
Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.
Google Knol Opens to Public, Article Authors Entitled to Revenue Share
Touted as Google's answer to Wikipedia, the current most sought after online information resource, The Knol opens to public. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, Google is making Knol available to everyone.
Unlike Wikipedia being based on a MediaWiki system where users cen edit pretty much every article, and in some cases even abuse the system, Knol's approach includes that the author of an article maintains control over changes to it, the author can accept or reject changes before they become visible to public.
Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.
Here's another URL worth keeping handy: knol.google.com
Unlike Wikipedia being based on a MediaWiki system where users cen edit pretty much every article, and in some cases even abuse the system, Knol's approach includes that the author of an article maintains control over changes to it, the author can accept or reject changes before they become visible to public.
Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.
Here's another URL worth keeping handy: knol.google.com
Point of View releases GeForce 9800 GTX+
POINT OF VIEW, well known for its range of NVIDIA based Graphics cards, is launching today the GeForce 9800GTX+, an upgraded version of one of the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market, the GeForce 9800 GTX.
The GeForce 9800GTX+ has major improvements compared to its predecessor. The GPU has been down-sized to 55nm, which offering a major improvement to its power consumption efficiency, operating temperature and core speed. Its 512 MB DDR3 memory is running on 2200 MHz whilst the GPU core has a speed of 738 MHz. The speed of the internal processors has been increased with almost 250 MHz to an impressive speed of 1836 MHz.
The GeForce 9800GTX+ has major improvements compared to its predecessor. The GPU has been down-sized to 55nm, which offering a major improvement to its power consumption efficiency, operating temperature and core speed. Its 512 MB DDR3 memory is running on 2200 MHz whilst the GPU core has a speed of 738 MHz. The speed of the internal processors has been increased with almost 250 MHz to an impressive speed of 1836 MHz.
Super Talent MasterDrive SSD Gets a Performance Boost
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced that the company has dramatically improved the write speeds of its MasterDrive DX, MasterDrive KX and MasterDrive MX solid state drives (SSDs).
These three series of SSDs already boast exceptionally fast read speeds of up to 120 MB/sec. But, fast write speeds are important in applications such as video editing and encoding, image processing, compressing and extracting files, installing applications and copying files to the drive. These newly revised SSDs categorically outpace the fastest hard drives in the world.
These three series of SSDs already boast exceptionally fast read speeds of up to 120 MB/sec. But, fast write speeds are important in applications such as video editing and encoding, image processing, compressing and extracting files, installing applications and copying files to the drive. These newly revised SSDs categorically outpace the fastest hard drives in the world.
NZXT Unveils Guardian 921 Gaming Chassis
NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce the Guardian 921, a gaming chassis in the NZXT Crafted Series. Building off of the original Guardian's success, the Guardian 921 features a robust set of features for the budget conscious PC Gamer.
Walton Chaintech Debuts APOGEE GT DDR3 1800 4GB Low Voltage Memory Module
The overclocking memory module specialist, Walton Chaintech Corporation, today debuts the APOGEE GT Blazer DDR3 1800 4GB Low Voltage Memory Module. Supporting EPP 2.0 as well, APOGEE GT Blazer DDR3 1800 4GB kit attains the lowest voltage of 1.8V compared with other memory modules of similar speed in current market place for more power saving operation, and longer product life.
Lexar Media Announces Expanded Crucial Ballistix DDR3 Product Offerings
Lexar Media, a leading global provider of memory products for digital media, today announced immediate availability of Crucial Ballistix PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz) and PC3-14400 (DDR3-1800MHz) high-performance memory modules. These new modules expand on the award-winning Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 and DDR3-2000MHz product offering. As part of its commitment to the PC enthusiast and gaming community, Lexar Media continually seeks to bring new memory offerings to market and enhance its product lines.
Thursday, July 24th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Keyboards
Motherboards
Mouse
G.Skill F2-8800 Pi Series CL5 4GB Kit Review
The G.Skill Pi Series goes a completely different route, than other high-end memory today. Instead of pushing the envelope on voltage, it gives you some crazy performance at default or close to default DDR2 voltage.
Spy-shot of Roadmap Slide Reveals a ''Big Bang II'' from NVIDIA this September
Chile Hardware (CHW) managed to take a snap of a screen reportedly showing a roadmap slide of NVIDIA drivers which shows an entry called "Big Bang II" under the September time-scale. There are markers which NVIDIA informally refers to as "Big Bang" when the drivers bring about something very significant in terms of features. To give you an idea, the first "Big Bang" brought about support for the SLI multi-GPU technology years ago.
Although the shot is fairly illegible, it shows Big Bang II to bring in features such as driver-level Display Port connectivity support, performance and quality improvements and support for OpenGL 3.0, which seem rather plain since NVIDIA didn't regard DirectX 10 compatible drivers under a "Big Bang" either, and performance and quality increments are a day to day affair with driver releases. It would be interesting to see how this pans out.
Although the shot is fairly illegible, it shows Big Bang II to bring in features such as driver-level Display Port connectivity support, performance and quality improvements and support for OpenGL 3.0, which seem rather plain since NVIDIA didn't regard DirectX 10 compatible drivers under a "Big Bang" either, and performance and quality increments are a day to day affair with driver releases. It would be interesting to see how this pans out.
Intel Pre-pones Nehalem Launch
Intel Prepones Nehalem Launch
Although the introduction of Intel Bloomfield, the next-generation processor from Intel was slated for November later this year, sources at motherboard companies report that Intel could prepone its launch to September along with the X58 system chipset platform. However it is known that motherboard vendors will not be in a position to bring LGA-1366 socket based motherboard into retail channels until early October. This might not cause internal-competition between Intel's products.
Although the introduction of Intel Bloomfield, the next-generation processor from Intel was slated for November later this year, sources at motherboard companies report that Intel could prepone its launch to September along with the X58 system chipset platform. However it is known that motherboard vendors will not be in a position to bring LGA-1366 socket based motherboard into retail channels until early October. This might not cause internal-competition between Intel's products.
Intel's Long-term SoC Plans Surface, Embedded Platforms in for a Treat
With wide-spread news about AMD integrating a graphics controller on a CPU, the AMD Fusion, the concept of "Small is Big" is being redefined. Fusion may look like a step in the right direction but is merely prelude to another computing methodology, the SoC (system on a chip). Fusion could be confined to consumer desktop/notebook central processing with graphics thrown in, but a concrete step taken by Intel into this which is more of targeted to the enterprise, embedded systems and consumer electronics is the EP80579 integrated processor. HotHardware spoke with Gadi Singer, Vice President of Intel's Mobility Group, and Doug Davis, Vice President of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. Intel's brand new product line targeted at security, storage, communications, and industrial applications, basically embedded computing were discussed. The EP80579 integrated processor was central to this conversation. The need for this product came about by Intel as a preparation of the company for the impending onslaught of smart, Internet-connected devices and appliances predicted to arrive over the next few years.
WD Announces 2.5-inch 10k RPM VelociRaptor HDD for Blade Servers
WD announced today the WD VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM enterprise SATA hard drives in an enterprise-class 2.5-inch form factor for blade servers and 1U and 2U rack servers. The newest WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built for business-critical applications with enterprise-class mechanics and packs up to 300 GB of capacity into the enterprise small form factor bays, while consuming 35 percent less power than the previous-generation WD Raptor drive.
Wednesday, July 23rd 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Motherboards
Processors
Speakers
Lian-Li Tyr PC-X2000 HTPC/Gaming Chassis Review
Lian-Li is pulling out all the stops with the new Tyr case series. On our testbench is the X2000, which is not only the tallest case we have ever tested, but is packed with SATA backplates for six hard drives, three 140 mm fans and a long list of other features, too numerous to mention.
PhysX Driver that Works on all Capable GPUs to be out by August
Reports by TG Daily suggest that NVIDIA could release a WHQL-certified stable release PhysX driver that supports all capable GPUs GeForce 8 series thru 9-series and GTX 200 series. The driver would expand driver-level support to all PhysX-based game titles including the likes of Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfighter, Warmonger and Cell Factor: Revolution.
It is expected that downloads of free games such as Warmonger and Cell Factor could spike in August since the user-base of PhysX substantially increase then. The driver is expected to be out on the 5th of August.
It is expected that downloads of free games such as Warmonger and Cell Factor could spike in August since the user-base of PhysX substantially increase then. The driver is expected to be out on the 5th of August.
BFG Technologies Announces NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC
BFG Technologies, Inc., the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card.
Backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry, the BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC graphics card is overclocked out of the box and pushes the limit in ultra realistic game play with NVIDIA PhysX technology, offering extreme HD gaming with 3-Way NVIDIA SLI. The BFG 9800 GTX+ OC provides optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Packing more performance than the standard BFG 9800 GTX, this graphics card offers a first-class entertainment experience.
Backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry, the BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC graphics card is overclocked out of the box and pushes the limit in ultra realistic game play with NVIDIA PhysX technology, offering extreme HD gaming with 3-Way NVIDIA SLI. The BFG 9800 GTX+ OC provides optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Packing more performance than the standard BFG 9800 GTX, this graphics card offers a first-class entertainment experience.
Lancool Unveils PC-K12 Mid-Tower Chasis
Today the PC-K12 midi chassis is launched under the Lancool brand. This is a Midi-Tower case with 9x 5.25" bays giving you plenty of options and tonnes of room. The strength of the Lancool series lies not only in the structure, but also in the features, which include support for the modular patented anti-vibration HDD cage, supporting 3x HDD's. Each HDD is mounted with a special thumbscrew and rubber grommet to ensure that HDD's are secure and vibration free. The modular cage can be secured as you see fit within the roomy interior of the case. It has a120mm fan mounted into the bracket, making sure that the HDD's are cooled and that air flow is optimal according to your needs. Incorporating outstanding quality and craftsmanship; the Lancool series have a steel inner-core, making them stronger than all-aluminum chassis, but also considerably cheaper.
Salient Features:
Salient Features:
- Modular patented anti-vibration HDD cage (3xHDD's)
- 9x 5.25" ODD bays
- PSU mounted high (back), supports large PSU's
- 120mm intake (front-adjustable);
- 120mm exhaust (back-high)
- Door panel with lock and silent padding
- Aluminum shell, with steel core
New Gun in Browser Town, Plans to Take on IE, Firefox
While Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) still dominates the web-browser market and Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera among others catching up, a new browser is taking shape at a global level (read stable English version) called Sleipnir. This browser originates from Japan, made by Yasuyuki Kashiwagi that leads the company Fenrir Inc. This browser is popular among Japanese technophiles. The browser uses two rendering engines, Trident and Gecko. Trident is that which drives IE while Gecko runs a host of former Netscape-derivatives such as Firefox among others. A small button at the bottom-left corner of the browser window allows user to switch the render-engines since different pages display differently depending on the browser used, a functionality already achieved by Firefox when the popular add-on 'IE-tabs' is installed.
At this point the makers of this browser hope to capture at least 5% of the browser market share which looks steep but since Firefox was written off in the same way, who knows? Just that Firefox was something 'refreshing' when it came about. Following the success of Firefox, several browsers did mushroom before Sleipnir, FoxIe comes to mind, which used IE engine and a Firefox-like interface. Although Sleipnir doesn't have a rendering engine of its own, using Trident and Gecko helps with compatibility. You can visit the official website here.
At this point the makers of this browser hope to capture at least 5% of the browser market share which looks steep but since Firefox was written off in the same way, who knows? Just that Firefox was something 'refreshing' when it came about. Following the success of Firefox, several browsers did mushroom before Sleipnir, FoxIe comes to mind, which used IE engine and a Firefox-like interface. Although Sleipnir doesn't have a rendering engine of its own, using Trident and Gecko helps with compatibility. You can visit the official website here.
TMS Breaks Speed and Capacity Records with its SSD
Texas Memory Systems (TMS) devised a SSD storage called the RamSan-440 that the company claims to have broken speed and capacity records. This 4U rack-mount device has a sustained speed of 600,000 IO/s with available storage capacities of 256GB and 512GB. The SSD also uses proprietary technology from Texas Memory called IO² (Instant-On Input-Output) that improves availability by making data requested from users or applications available instantly when the system is on.
The system uses DDR2-SDRAM, data backup is done instantly by transferring data to the internal flash memory with minimal system overhead. The device can be attached through SAN or using eight 4 Gbps fibre-channel ports.
The system uses DDR2-SDRAM, data backup is done instantly by transferring data to the internal flash memory with minimal system overhead. The device can be attached through SAN or using eight 4 Gbps fibre-channel ports.
AMD 45nm Deneb Consumes up to 12% Less Power Compared to 65nm Agena
The newest fleet of quad-core desktop processors from AMD, the Deneb series is tested by Chinese website Zol to consume up to 12 per cent less power compared to equally clocked 65nm Agena parts, add to that, the fact that the 45nm Deneb comes with three times the amount of L3 cache, 6 MB.
The 45nm and 65nm parts were compared on a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 card, a single 320 GB HDD, two modules of 1GB DDR2 1066 MHz memory, the test-bed was powered by a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU. Power consumption was calculated in idle and load (the CPUs were stressed using instances of Orthos).
The 45nm and 65nm parts were compared on a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 card, a single 320 GB HDD, two modules of 1GB DDR2 1066 MHz memory, the test-bed was powered by a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU. Power consumption was calculated in idle and load (the CPUs were stressed using instances of Orthos).
RAIDON Rolls-out a DIY SSD Solution
With the prices of solid state drives (SSD) on the fall, this gadget comes a tad late, but if you're (still) looking for an inexpensive SSD-like solution, Taiwanese manufacturer RAIDON unveiled an SSD enclosure, a device that holds up to two Compact Flash (CF) cards in either RAID 1 or NRAID (capacity increment) modes. Another demerit is that while the prices of SSDs are on a fall, the prices of CF cards aren't. 16 GB cards are selling for prices which make buying two 16 GB CF cards pointless compared to 32 GB MLC SSDs. What looks like the a 2.5 inch SSD with the hood closed, clearly isn't. The enclosure has the same exact dimensions of a 2.5 inch drive with mount-holes. The device supports both IDE and SATA host interfaces.
Art Lebdev Presents Optimus Pultius 15-key
Art Lebedev has presented a new member of the Optimus family, Optimus Pultius. This gadget like its older full-featured cousin the Optimus Maximus, uses 15 OLED embedded keys that make them fully-programmable. The Optimus Maximus did go on sale with a price tag as much as US $1900. The Pultius can be used with the Maximus for expansion of programmable keys or a side-kick to your existing keyboard. This product launches sometime end of 2008 thru early 2009.
Tuesday, July 22nd 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Processors
Lian-Li PC-V1010 Aluminum ATX Case Review
The Lian-Li V1010 is the successor of the very popular V1000. It now incorporates some of the new and unique features, which you will find in the X2000 or X500, at a much lower price point.
Microsoft DirectX 11 Details Emerge
Microsoft has released a handful of details about DirectX 11, the latest version of the company's API.
- Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
- Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
- New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
- Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
- Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close
IPv6 Protection by OSes Inadequate, Potential Vulnerabilities Surface
Rudimentary software-level protection for IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), a network protocol which comes pre-installed with several operating systems (OS) but poorly implemented in the real-world makes it a protocol ignored by security providers, and effectively a soft-target for hackers to compromise a system.
Several OSes including Linux 2.6 upwards, Windows Vista, Solaris, Mac OS X and mobile OSes such as Windows Mobile 5 and 6 come with IPv6 enabled by default, though the user would probably not use the protocol in a year 2008 setting where the networks haven't embraced the protocol to level that makes it an explicit requirement for all internet-enabled computers the way IPv4 is. Keeping this in mind, software level protection for IPv6 is close to non-existent, having strong intrusion detection-enabled protection might keep you safe at an IPv4 level that's still standard, but with IPv6 enabled and with protection that doesn't cover IPv6, the PC is as vulnerable as one without any firewall at all. With IPv6 'listeners' (programs that open ports and allow incoming connections) in place the PC becomes vulnerable to intrusions. All it takes is for a hacker to create an IPv6 listener program (malware) and plant it on a PC.
Several OSes including Linux 2.6 upwards, Windows Vista, Solaris, Mac OS X and mobile OSes such as Windows Mobile 5 and 6 come with IPv6 enabled by default, though the user would probably not use the protocol in a year 2008 setting where the networks haven't embraced the protocol to level that makes it an explicit requirement for all internet-enabled computers the way IPv4 is. Keeping this in mind, software level protection for IPv6 is close to non-existent, having strong intrusion detection-enabled protection might keep you safe at an IPv4 level that's still standard, but with IPv6 enabled and with protection that doesn't cover IPv6, the PC is as vulnerable as one without any firewall at all. With IPv6 'listeners' (programs that open ports and allow incoming connections) in place the PC becomes vulnerable to intrusions. All it takes is for a hacker to create an IPv6 listener program (malware) and plant it on a PC.
Sandisk CEO: ''Windows Vista not Optimized for SSDs''
During a conference of the company's second quarter earnings, the CEO Eli Harari of Sandisk, a significant player in the solid state drive (SSD) industry said that Windows Vista would present a special challenge for solid state drive (SSD) makers. Says Harari: "As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,". He hints at the design of Vista as a cause for performance not being upto the mark, adding that Sandisk's next generation drive controllers should aim to "basically compensate for Vista shortfalls".
"Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," said Harari. Ironically, he has also been quoted saying that such issues didn't affect the "very low-end, ultra low-cost PCs" (read ULPCs), where existing controller technologies could handle 8 ~ 32 GB drive capacities. Clever choice of words since that's the segment that has drive manufacturers, both SSD and HDD, eying at since it's an emerging segment.
"Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," said Harari. Ironically, he has also been quoted saying that such issues didn't affect the "very low-end, ultra low-cost PCs" (read ULPCs), where existing controller technologies could handle 8 ~ 32 GB drive capacities. Clever choice of words since that's the segment that has drive manufacturers, both SSD and HDD, eying at since it's an emerging segment.
Intel Gives Some Models of Xeon a Price-cut
Following price-cuts for some of the desktop offerings (covered here) , Intel has cut the prices of some models of the enterprise-segment Xeon processor, reports industry observer DigiTimes.
The Xeon X3220, X3210 and E3110 get a roughly 12% cut with the X3220 and X3210 both dropping from an original price of US $224 to US $198 with the E3110 price dropping from US $188 to US $167, according to the company.
The Xeon X3220, X3210 and E3110 get a roughly 12% cut with the X3220 and X3210 both dropping from an original price of US $224 to US $198 with the E3110 price dropping from US $188 to US $167, according to the company.
Intel Atom-based Servers: Sufficient for Dedicated Servers
Intel Atom, the 'small wonder' of the computing industry, may have been making a mark with ULPC notebooks and inexpensive ITX solutions, but the UK-based web-hosting company Bytemark found a new application of this chip, dedicated servers. The Atom processors have sufficient computing power to handle web server processes. In Bytemark's words, they're "pushing the boundaries of what Intel Atom was intended to do". Although for now the design is simplistic, ITX based, Bytemark plans to take this concept to a large-scale, making inexpensive, energy-efficient servers. A dedicated server with a 1.60 GHz Atom, 2 GB memory, 2x 100 GB HDDs in RAID 1 (that's 100 GB of available storage), for £495 (US $992) per annum.
Xbox 360 Could Stream Netflix Content Soon
This fall, Xbox 360 gaming console could be given capabilities to stream content from providers such as Netflix. Microsoft announced a tech partnership with the popular movie rental company Netflix at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles, United States. That gives you access to the thousands of movies and TV shows Netfilx has in store for rental viewing. It's a good deal for Netflix as it adds to its market media, even more so for Microsoft since its squeezing in all the value-added-services it can for the Xbox 360 which already seems to be threatened by the Japanese Nintendo Wii on home-turf, and the Sony Playstation 3 which comes with capabilities to play Blu-Ray discs, the next big physical content medium.
OCZ Technology Unveils First Fatal1ty Brand DDR2 and DDR3 Memory
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today announced the first memory modules available in their Fatal1ty Series after the partnership was announced last month. These high-performance memory kits were co-developed with the expertise of Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, 12-time World champion, to meet the specific needs of fellow gamers. OCZ Fatal1ty Professional Series kits are the official memory modules of Championship Gaming Series (CGS), and feature incredible performance to power through the latest PC titles and contribute to the success of professionals and everyday gamers.
"OCZ worked closely with Fatal1ty and his team to design new memory kits that pair perfectly with the top selling motherboards for a superior gaming experience," commented Alex Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of the OCZ Technology Group. "Fatal1ty knows what it takes to win at the highest level of eSports, and these new kits deliver superior stability and performance to gamers whether you are a professional player on the Championship Gaming Series, or a weekend warrior looking to dominate when playing the latest titles."
"OCZ worked closely with Fatal1ty and his team to design new memory kits that pair perfectly with the top selling motherboards for a superior gaming experience," commented Alex Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of the OCZ Technology Group. "Fatal1ty knows what it takes to win at the highest level of eSports, and these new kits deliver superior stability and performance to gamers whether you are a professional player on the Championship Gaming Series, or a weekend warrior looking to dominate when playing the latest titles."
Monday, July 21st 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Input Devices
Motherboards
PSUs
Speakers
AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 8.7 Graphics Driver Package
AMD released stable versions of the ATI Catalyst driver package for the Radeon series graphics accelerators. According to the release notes document (located here), improvements on both the features and performance fronts have been brought about. The drivers specific to your version of Windows, Linux, Windows on Macintosh (Bootcamp), Mac OS and on your model of Radeon accelerator can be found on the company website here.
GeForce 9800M, 9700M Offer Performance and Energy Savings in a Broad Range
NVIDIA has released two lines of high performance graphics processors (GPU) for the notebook PC market, the GeForce 9800M series and the 9700M series. These are sub-classified into GT and GTS for the 9700M and GT, GTS and GTX for the 9800M. These new GPUs provide a wide range of options for manufacturers to choose from and design high-performance gaming and multimedia notebooks.
These 9800M GTX GPU is based on the same G92 core, and will outperform its previous generation 8800M GTX that also happens to be based on the same core. The rest are based on the G94 and the newer G96 cores. These GPUs are CUDA compliant and will be able to accelerate game physics using the PhysX API. They support NVIDIA Hybrid Power technology. Simply put, on notebooks with integrated graphics processors (IGP) along with these GPUs, the system will be able to switch over to the IGP when not gaming, and switch over to the GPU when heavy graphics tasks are running (such as gaming, 3D rendering, HD Video acceleration, etc.). Speaking of video, these GPUs support Powervideo HD technology, includes VP2 acceleration. There's no information on these GPUs' fabrication technology yet. Specifications provided below.
These 9800M GTX GPU is based on the same G92 core, and will outperform its previous generation 8800M GTX that also happens to be based on the same core. The rest are based on the G94 and the newer G96 cores. These GPUs are CUDA compliant and will be able to accelerate game physics using the PhysX API. They support NVIDIA Hybrid Power technology. Simply put, on notebooks with integrated graphics processors (IGP) along with these GPUs, the system will be able to switch over to the IGP when not gaming, and switch over to the GPU when heavy graphics tasks are running (such as gaming, 3D rendering, HD Video acceleration, etc.). Speaking of video, these GPUs support Powervideo HD technology, includes VP2 acceleration. There's no information on these GPUs' fabrication technology yet. Specifications provided below.
Shuttle presents the XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe PC barebone
Shuttle Inc., market leader in the mini-PC segment and manufacturer of Multi-Form-Factor solutions, today unveils a new XPC Barebone from the P2 model series building on Intel's X48 Express chipset. Specially designed for high performance systems, the XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe is ideally suited for Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors with up to four cores.
The XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe is the first mini PC barebone ready to be equipped with DDR3 memory modules. A maximum capacity of eight Gigabytes on four sockets can be installed into this model. "The pioneering DDR3 memory technology promises more performance with less energy consumption and reduces heat development which is ideal for mini PCs," explains Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots enable the use of high-end graphics cards with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 being supported as well.
The XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe is the first mini PC barebone ready to be equipped with DDR3 memory modules. A maximum capacity of eight Gigabytes on four sockets can be installed into this model. "The pioneering DDR3 memory technology promises more performance with less energy consumption and reduces heat development which is ideal for mini PCs," explains Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots enable the use of high-end graphics cards with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 being supported as well.
2 Watt PC Here, Sufficient Power for Cloud-computing
A relatively unknown brand, Cherrypal introduced a PC module dubbed 'cloud computer'. It carries a price tag of US $250. Sure you do find pre-owned full-size PCs for that price, but just think of it: this PC consumes a mere 2W of power when idle (excludes the consumption of monitor and other peripherals).
On the features front, there's enough computing power to get you onto the internet, it is driven by a 400 MHz Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT triple-core processor, 256 MB DDR2 memory and 4 GB of NAND flash memory to store the OS, a Debian-derived Linux OS, Mozilla Firefox as the core internet application (supports all add-ons and Linux media plugins). 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, two USB ports, an Ethernet port, VGA out, and stereo audio out. It beats the $929 VidaBox PC convincingly at its price-point. Sure, such devices are mere toys for average users like us sitting cozy with powerful gaming PCs, but such devices are a step in the right direction, towards Cloud Computing.
Cloud computing, a new buzzword in the computing industry, is the computing methodology where software is thin and light, and streamed onto a computer. A user accesses software either freely or on a subscription basis. All you need is a standards compiant web-browser, OS isn't a factor. This has gotten players such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe and others looking up to it as the next big thing. You don't need to buy those installation discs and throw gigabytes of hard-drive space at applications anymore.
On the features front, there's enough computing power to get you onto the internet, it is driven by a 400 MHz Freescale MPC5121e mobileGT triple-core processor, 256 MB DDR2 memory and 4 GB of NAND flash memory to store the OS, a Debian-derived Linux OS, Mozilla Firefox as the core internet application (supports all add-ons and Linux media plugins). 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, two USB ports, an Ethernet port, VGA out, and stereo audio out. It beats the $929 VidaBox PC convincingly at its price-point. Sure, such devices are mere toys for average users like us sitting cozy with powerful gaming PCs, but such devices are a step in the right direction, towards Cloud Computing.
Cloud computing, a new buzzword in the computing industry, is the computing methodology where software is thin and light, and streamed onto a computer. A user accesses software either freely or on a subscription basis. All you need is a standards compiant web-browser, OS isn't a factor. This has gotten players such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe and others looking up to it as the next big thing. You don't need to buy those installation discs and throw gigabytes of hard-drive space at applications anymore.
MSI Launches Montevina-based GX620 Notebook
MSI has launched the GX620 a Centrino 2-based notebook with the company's exclusive Turbo Drive Engine technology to enhance the speed of CPU. The GX620 includes the new ECO Engine power saving technology to extend battery running time. The ECO quick launch touch sensor allows consumers to switch among five different modes including Gaming, Movie, Presentation, Office, and Turbo Battery.
GX620 features a 15.4-inch LCD display, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 3D graphics card and MSI's exclusive vivid image enhancement technology. GX620 also features Digital/Analog 5.1 Channel headphone output and SPDIF connection. The GX620 features Intel Centrino 2 processor technology, including Core 2 Duo processor and PM45 Express chipset, to deliver mobile solutions and provide HD capabilities, wireless connectivity, and long battery life for Blu-ray movie playback, highlighted MSI.
GX620 features a 15.4-inch LCD display, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 3D graphics card and MSI's exclusive vivid image enhancement technology. GX620 also features Digital/Analog 5.1 Channel headphone output and SPDIF connection. The GX620 features Intel Centrino 2 processor technology, including Core 2 Duo processor and PM45 Express chipset, to deliver mobile solutions and provide HD capabilities, wireless connectivity, and long battery life for Blu-ray movie playback, highlighted MSI.
Intel Slashes the Prices of Several Core 2 Duo CPUs, Cuts the Price of C2Q6600
Pentium developer Intel, today slashed the prices of several Core 2 Duo processors, and most notably has slashed the price of its 65nm Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU. The price of Core 2 Quad Q6600 drops 14%, from $224 to $193 in 1000 units tray quantity. In addition to making its most popular quad-core CPU cheaper, Intel has also slashed the prices of three 45nm dual-core Core 2 Duos. The Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 is now 31% cheaper, from $266 to $183. Intel's Core 2 Duo E8400 and E7200 CPUs are now 11% and 15% cheaper, fixed at $163 and $113 respectively.
Sunday, July 20th 2008
GPU PhysX Doesn't get you to 3DMark Vantage Hall of Fame Anymore
With NVIDIA releasing their GeForce PhysX drivers, users of the PhysX accelerating GeForce cards were at an advantage over their Radeon counterparts, reason being that in a certain CPU test routine of the 3DMark Vantage benchmark, the physics processing abilities of the computer are tested, and since the physics API used happens to be PhysX, users of GeForce get higher scores despite not having a physics processor device such as an Ageia PhysX card. This differs from a real-life scenario where a GeForce accelerator does both graphics and physics and the overhead of physics processing affects the graphics processing abilities.
The relation of GPU acceleration for gaining higher 3DMark scores in physics tests has been controversial to say the least. Futuremark has now decided to update its Hall of Fame to exclude all results using PhysX on a GPU, simply because this was not how they intended it to work. It has also been updated to organise the results better for easier comparison. You will be able to use GPU physics processing to get a 3DMark score, you will not be able to make it to the Hall of Fame using it. You can use an Ageia PhysX card to assist your 3DMark score to make it to the Hall of Fame, as that's how Futuremark intended PhysX processing scores to assist your final scores.
The relation of GPU acceleration for gaining higher 3DMark scores in physics tests has been controversial to say the least. Futuremark has now decided to update its Hall of Fame to exclude all results using PhysX on a GPU, simply because this was not how they intended it to work. It has also been updated to organise the results better for easier comparison. You will be able to use GPU physics processing to get a 3DMark score, you will not be able to make it to the Hall of Fame using it. You can use an Ageia PhysX card to assist your 3DMark score to make it to the Hall of Fame, as that's how Futuremark intended PhysX processing scores to assist your final scores.
Lancool Introduces PC-K6 mid-size ATX System Case
Lancool launched the PC-K6 mid-size ATX system case. Its salient features include:
- Aluminum shell, with steel core
- 4x HDD bays with special HDD tool-less bracket
- PSU mounted high (back), supports large PSU's
- 2x fans; 140mm intake (front-low); 120mm exhaust (back-high)
- Removable, anti-vibration, silent front panel
Saturday, July 19th 2008
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Input Devices
Keyboards
Motherboards
Atom-competitor from AMD Codenamed Bobcat
CEO for AMD, Dirk Meyer said that AMD would unveil its plans to take on the Intel Atom processor to cater to the emerging ULPC market, making it part of the roadmap. Sources suggest he core codenamed Bobcat is derived from the K8 design, it is a 64-bit single core processor that could debute with a 1 GHz clock speed. It uses an 800 MHz (1600 MT/s) HyperTransport link as its system interconnect, a total of 128 KB L1 and 256 KB of L2 caches. A DDR2 memory controller will be on-die.
It is composed of a 22 sq. mm ball grid array (BGA) package with 812-pins. While its power consumption may be 8W, more than three times that of the Atom, the fact that currently Atom-based solutions make use of northbridge chips such as the i945 which consumes around 6W, the equation is more or less balanced. With Intel currently having problems coping with demand, it would have been a good time for AMD to materialise the Bobcat, and if it takes as far as this November before plans even surface, forget materialise, precious time is lost in the competition. Currently VIA C7-M and some low-power Intel Celeron parts are making up as alternatives to the Atom.
It is composed of a 22 sq. mm ball grid array (BGA) package with 812-pins. While its power consumption may be 8W, more than three times that of the Atom, the fact that currently Atom-based solutions make use of northbridge chips such as the i945 which consumes around 6W, the equation is more or less balanced. With Intel currently having problems coping with demand, it would have been a good time for AMD to materialise the Bobcat, and if it takes as far as this November before plans even surface, forget materialise, precious time is lost in the competition. Currently VIA C7-M and some low-power Intel Celeron parts are making up as alternatives to the Atom.
PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 PCS OC Emerges
PowerColor is preparing an overclocked Radeon HD4870, the PCS (Professional Cooling System) model. This model uses 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and uses overclocked parameters, such as 800 MHz core. This card comes with a cooler made by Zerotherm comprising of heatpipes conducting to aluminum fins on either sides of a fan. According to TG Daily, this card could be based on the SuperRV770 concept, where high-performing parts are used along with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. According to PowerColor, this cooler could keep the temperatures down by up to 20° C versus reference ATI cooler even at the overclocked 800 MHz core setting.
ZOTAC Unleashes GeForce 9800 GTX+
ZOTAC International, a leading NVIDIA partner, today unleashes two new high-performance graphics card based on NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 graphics architecture - the ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX+ and GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! Edition. The new ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX+ series graphics cards are the result of extensive tweaking and tuning to extract superior clock speeds and performance from NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 architecture.
PCI Express 3.0 by 2010, Supports Heavier, Gluttonous Cards
System component expansion interface PCI-Express could get its next major face-lift in 2009, following which products compatible with the interface could be out by 2010. The PCI Express Special Interest Group (SIG) is in the process of devising the new interface that provides devices with twice the amount of bandwidth as that of the current PCI-Express 2.0, that's 8 Giga-transfers per second (GT/s). it is said to be backwards compatible with older versions of the interface.
Changes in specifications are being made that allow this interface to support triple-slot, 300W (from the interface), 1.5 kg (roughly 3 lbs) graphics cards. Perhaps this is the ideal interface for 'heavier' products from NVIDIA, AMD, and soon Intel.
Changes in specifications are being made that allow this interface to support triple-slot, 300W (from the interface), 1.5 kg (roughly 3 lbs) graphics cards. Perhaps this is the ideal interface for 'heavier' products from NVIDIA, AMD, and soon Intel.
960 SP-laden RV870 in the Works, and more
Sources at TSMC told Hardspell that the next graphics processor (GPU) by ATI/AMD, the RV870 in the works have specifications such as:
Another interesting news is that R800, unlike its predecessors the R700 and R680, might not be a dual-GPU card but the world's first dual-core GPU.
- 40nm or 45nm fab process
- 140 sq. mm die size
- 192 ALUs, 960 stream processors
- 256-bit GDDR5 memory controller
Another interesting news is that R800, unlike its predecessors the R700 and R680, might not be a dual-GPU card but the world's first dual-core GPU.
Possible Specifications of the GeForce GTX 350 Emerge
Hardspell released is list of possible specifications for the GeForce GTX 350 graphics processor (GPU):
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 350
- GT300 core
- 55nm technology
- 576 sq.mm die area
- 512bit GDDR5 memory controller
- GDDR5 2GB memory, doubled GTX280
- 480 stream processors
- Grating operation units are 64 the same with GTX280
- 216 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Default clock speeds of core: 830MHz, shader: 2075 MHz, memory: 3360MHz (effective)
- Pixel fill-rate 36.3G pixels/s
- Texture fill-rate 84.4Gpixels/s
- DirectX 10, no DX 10.1 support yet.
Friday, July 18th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Multimedia
Storage
R700 Launch in for Wet-Weather, GTX 280 Slash Coming Up
In what could be a serious blow to AMD's R700 dreams as the company struggles to survive, NVIDIA could be working out another price-slash for the GeForce GTX 200 series, signs of which are already surfacing. You can get a GeForce GTX 280 for US $440. American e-tailer Newegg has already put several brands' GeForce GTX 280 on shelves for $440 (listed here), lower than the launch-price of the GeForce GTX 260.
Implications are:
Implications are:
- This paves the way for a 'GeForce GTX 280 Extreme', a new model which has been put on pre-order on British website OCUK (covered here).
- While board partners seemed displeased at the current market trend with the GTX 200 series (covered here), all of a sudden, they are all offering price-cuts. Could NVIDIA be subsidizing these products, given that some reports suggest poor reception of these products in the North American markets?
- Assuming the R700 comes in at around $499 and $549, it loses badly to the GTX 280 at its newest price on both fronts of price/performance and performance per Watt.
- No price-cuts for GTX 260 have been noted, showing this cut is very much specific to the GTX 280, serves two purposes: 1. Phasing out the 65nm parts, 2. striking R700 when it hurts the most, during launch.
- While NVIDIA has the resources to maintain the leadership of GeForce GTX 200 (by affording to slash prices), AMD doesn't.
Diamond Multimedia First to Launch All-in-wonder HD Series Cards
Being a niché product is never easy unless you pack what the public likes into a product. A graphics card, a sound card (HDMI output), a HD-DVR TV tuner, all rolled into one: ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder HD. This graphics card features ATI Theater 600 chip, a graphics core based on the RV635 (Radeon HD 3650).
Diamond Multimedia launched two products, the All-in-Wonder and the All-in-Wonder HD Premium, with the Premium featuring an expansion bracket with additional connectors. For more details, please visit the product page here.
Diamond Multimedia launched two products, the All-in-Wonder and the All-in-Wonder HD Premium, with the Premium featuring an expansion bracket with additional connectors. For more details, please visit the product page here.
WoW Turns Woo, New Achievements Added
World of Warcraft (WoW), the largest MMORPG, is fun. People have gone lengths and breadths to achieve higher in the game. Those endless hours of playing it comes at a cost, the WoW subscription. But once you reach a high level (say 70), and own lot of gold, and basically have all achievements under your belt, your inclination to play the game retards. The fact that you have to pay to keep your subscription alive only makes it worse. For you, it means that you're bored, WoW isn't fun anymore, and so you could join another MMORPG. For Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard), it means losing revenue. Not that they're short of it, but no company would want to lose it.
In what can be seen as a bid to woo such players and maintain their patronage, new achievement levels have been added to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion pack. Similar to the achievements you have with console gaming, players will now be awarded titles, gear, bragging rights for several tasks, serious thru trivial. They can be as serious as defeating scores and scores of enemies or as trivial as getting a hair-cut done. Custom animations and sounds would accompany each achievement earned and in-game pets, special clothing and titles will also be awarded. According to Blizzard, these rewards will be "purely cosmetic" and won't affect actual gameplay.
In what can be seen as a bid to woo such players and maintain their patronage, new achievement levels have been added to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion pack. Similar to the achievements you have with console gaming, players will now be awarded titles, gear, bragging rights for several tasks, serious thru trivial. They can be as serious as defeating scores and scores of enemies or as trivial as getting a hair-cut done. Custom animations and sounds would accompany each achievement earned and in-game pets, special clothing and titles will also be awarded. According to Blizzard, these rewards will be "purely cosmetic" and won't affect actual gameplay.
Danamics Innovates the First Liquid-metal Based CPU Cooler
Here's something new: A CPU cooler that comprises of a circulatory mechanism of liquid-metal, the liquid-metal has higher thermal conductivity than other liquid media, flowing liquid metal across an array of metal fins to disperse heat, and the cycle continues. What's more, the liquid is inextinguishable. That's 'cool'. Danamics innovated such a cooler for today's CPUs called the LM10.
The cooler also has no moving parts. The pump that circulates liquid-metal across tubes doesn't have them either. The pump functions on the principles of electromagnetic flow, the ferromagnetic liquid is subjected to flow caused due to changes in polarity of electromagnets. With no moving parts, the MTBF is substantially increased. Of course, you can use a retention module of some sort to hook up a fan or two on each side of the heatsink. This product will be available soon. For more information, please visit this page.
The cooler also has no moving parts. The pump that circulates liquid-metal across tubes doesn't have them either. The pump functions on the principles of electromagnetic flow, the ferromagnetic liquid is subjected to flow caused due to changes in polarity of electromagnets. With no moving parts, the MTBF is substantially increased. Of course, you can use a retention module of some sort to hook up a fan or two on each side of the heatsink. This product will be available soon. For more information, please visit this page.
AMD BoD Elects Dirk Meyer President and CEO
AMD today announced that its board of directors elected President and COO Dirk Meyer as the company's chief executive officer. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. As executive chairman, Ruiz will ensure a smooth executive leadership transition, focus on driving the company's asset smart strategy to completion, and assist with high-level government and strategic partner relations.
"Dirk's election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD's board of directors and executive team," said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. "Under Hector's strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.
The full press-release could be read here.
"Dirk's election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD's board of directors and executive team," said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. "Under Hector's strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.
The full press-release could be read here.
QNAP Announces Next Gen. 500MHz CPU+256MB DDRII TS-109 Pro/TS-209 Pro II Turbo
The leading network-attached storage (NAS) provider QNAP Systems, Inc. today unveils the next generation Linux-embedded one-bay and two-bay NAS: TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II for power users, SOHO, and business users. The TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series adopts high performance Marvell 500MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII large memory, which is a double of the memory size of the previous generation (TS-109/209 series) and becomes the best hardware specifications in the present SOHO NAS market. The Turbo NAS maintains superior system performance even if there are multiple accesses to various network services of the server concurrently. The new models are equipped with enhanced software functions, including the new BitTorrent download engine, built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1 for ease of PHP/MySQL-based web server hosting and upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4 for DLNA compliant media playing. Other professional features such as HDD S.M.A.R.T., complete log system, schedule backup from NAS to external storage device, etc. are also available. TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series is the ideal choice of high performance and energy-saving NAS for modern business and home users.
NVIDIA Slates nForce 730i MCP for August
This August, NVIDIA plans to release its latest desktop core-logic (chipset) for the current Intel platform processors, the nForce 730i MCP, also known as MCP7A. The MCP7A features a GeForce 9-series mGPU dubbed IGP. Two variants, the MCP7A-U with a GeForce 9400 graphics core and the MCP7A-S with GeForce 9300 are known so far. Both IGPs carry 16 stream processors, they differ in specifications such as the GeForce 9400 featuring a core frequency of 580MHz and shader frequency of 1500MHz, while the GeForce 9300 to be clocked at 450MHz and 1200MHz core and shader respectively. The MCP7A supports a FSB up to 1333MHz, dual-channel DDR2 or DDR3 memory, and PCI Express 2.0. The GPU is based on NVIDIA G86 graphics core, which supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, supports HDMI, dual-link DVI, DisplayPort and D-sub connections. It will also support Hybrid SLI, PureVideo and CUDA technology.
Following the August launch, motherboard vendors could start shipping boards come September.
Following the August launch, motherboard vendors could start shipping boards come September.
Intel Could Price its Next Highest Offering At Moderate Price
"Moderate" is a very relative term here. The Taiwanese industry observer DigiTimes reports that the next highest desktop CPU offering from the silicon giant Intel wouldn't be priced like the current Core 2 Extreme QX9770, QX9775. It could be as much as US $500 cheaper, that's $999 in 1,000 unit tray quantities. Expect the PIB (processor in a box) unit to cost on par with the current Core 2 Extreme QX9650. The highest offering from what we know, is a 3.20 GHz Bloomfield core based processor with in the LGA 1366 package.
In addition to this 3.20 GHz Extreme CPU, Intel will also introduce a performance version clocked at 2.93 GHz and quoted at US$562, and a mainstream version running at 2.66GHz and carrying a price tag of US$284. All three models will run on X58 chipset motherboards with the new LGA 1366 socket.
In addition to this 3.20 GHz Extreme CPU, Intel will also introduce a performance version clocked at 2.93 GHz and quoted at US$562, and a mainstream version running at 2.66GHz and carrying a price tag of US$284. All three models will run on X58 chipset motherboards with the new LGA 1366 socket.
Thursday, July 17th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Memory
Motherboards
Processors
PSUs
Three New NVIDIA Tools Help Dev's Quickly Debug and Speed-up Games
Today's top video games use complex programming and rendering techniques that can take months to create and tune in order to get the image quality and silky-smooth frame rates that gamers demand. Thousands of developers worldwide including members of Blizzard Entertainment, Crytek, Epic Games, and Rockstar Games rely on NVIDIA development tools to create console and PC video games. Today, NVIDIA has expanded its award-winning development suite with three new tools that vastly speed up this development process, keeping projects on track and costs under control.
The new tools which are available now include:
The new tools which are available now include:
- PerfHUD 6-a graphics debugging and performance analysis tool for DirectX 9 and 10 applications.
- FX Composer 2.5-an integrated development environment for fast creation of real-time visual effects.
- Shader Debugger-helps debug and optimize shaders written with HLSL, CgFX, and COLLADA FX Cg in DirectX and OpenGL.
VidaBox Presents Monolithic PicoPC
While not attempting to be a HTPC, the VidaBox PicoPC is a light-weight (quite literally) device that adds PC functionality to your HDTV. It features Windows XP Embedded OS on a ROM, it has security software embedded too. It features no moving parts, the software is on a ROM (hardwired, a-la the software that drives routers), you it ships with a Compact-Flash slot and a 2GB CF card, you can expand storage based on the capacity of the CF card. Optionally, the device can come with a 32GB SSD.
The device features two USB ports, an Ethernet port, a D-Sub for video output and line-in/out for audio. The unit is also available with 802.11b/g options. It comes with a multifunctional wireless keyboard. The device is so tiny that you could hide it behind the HDTV. For now, it's priced at a sore US$ 929 at the moment. For details, please visit the product page.
The device features two USB ports, an Ethernet port, a D-Sub for video output and line-in/out for audio. The unit is also available with 802.11b/g options. It comes with a multifunctional wireless keyboard. The device is so tiny that you could hide it behind the HDTV. For now, it's priced at a sore US$ 929 at the moment. For details, please visit the product page.
Sun and Samsung Develop Ultra-Endurance SSD memory
Sun Microsystems and Samsung developed a solid-state drive (SSD) NAND Flash chip (the chips that go into making a SSD) which is based on the single-level cell NAND Flash design (better performance than MLC). Compared to other brands' memory, this part claims to provide a five-fold increase in write-and-erase data cycles, up to 5-10 million read-write-cycles. This makes the device an enterprise-friendly, ready for use in servers-grade SSDs. Samsung claims that this component provides 100-fold increases over conventional hard drives, in terms of the number of data transfers (input/output per second or I/OPS) per watt (Price / Performance, in other words). The new memory could be used for video streaming, high-transaction data processing, search engine operations and other high-speed server functions.
Mozilla Firefox 3 Updated to 3.0.1
Mozilla has released an update for their Firefox 3 web-browser. The update brings. Changes as condensed in the Release notes include:
Current Firefox 3 users will be automatically updated.
A list of security issues fixed is issued here.
- Fixed several security issues.
- Fixed several stability issues.
- Fixed an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch.
- Under certain circumstances, Firefox 3.0 did not properly save the SSL certificate exceptions list.
- Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
- In certain cases, installing Firefox 2 in the same directory in which Firefox 3 has been installed resulted in Firefox 2 being unstable. This issue was fixed as part of Firefox 2.0.0.15.
- Fixed an issue where, when printing a selected region of content from the middle of a page, some of the output was missing (bug 433373).
- Fixed a Linux issues where, for users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) Firefox always started in "Offline" mode (bug 424626).
Current Firefox 3 users will be automatically updated.
NVIDIA Joins SOI Consortium
The SOI Industry Consortium has announced that NVIDIA has joined the organization. NVIDIA now joins a league of companies such as AMD, Applied Materials, ARM, Cadence Design Systems, CEA-Léti, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Magma Design, Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Tyndall Institute, UCL and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC).
So what is SOI? Silicon on Insulator technology involves use of variable layered silicon-insulator-silicon substratum, used to minimize parasitic device capacitance and thereby improve performance.
So what is SOI? Silicon on Insulator technology involves use of variable layered silicon-insulator-silicon substratum, used to minimize parasitic device capacitance and thereby improve performance.
NVIDIA Launches First Emerging Companies Summit at NVISION '08
NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced the Emerging Companies Summit, a two-day conference on August 26-27, 2008 in San Jose, California, aimed squarely at entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investment bankers who are focused on learning more about the visual computing industry. The Emerging Companies Summit, sponsored by Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, Morgan Stanley, and RR Donnelley will be held at the NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, California, and include tracks focusing on CUDA and high-performance computing; visual computing; lifestyle computing; and gaming.
"Our first-ever NVIDIA Emerging Companies Summit provides a unique and exciting venue for our attendees to meet some of the most relevant and creative companies, and people, who are passionate about visual computing and the GPU," said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA. "Our goal is for the summit to serve as a catalyst for innovation and business opportunities throughout the visual and high-performance computing ecosystems."
"Our first-ever NVIDIA Emerging Companies Summit provides a unique and exciting venue for our attendees to meet some of the most relevant and creative companies, and people, who are passionate about visual computing and the GPU," said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA. "Our goal is for the summit to serve as a catalyst for innovation and business opportunities throughout the visual and high-performance computing ecosystems."
Sapphire Intros Toxic Radeon HD4850 and Radeon HD4850 1GB
Following the introduction of the highly acclaimed HD 4800 series, SAPPHIRE Technology, the leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of AMD/ATI based graphics solutions is now shipping two new models of HD 4850 providing a further choice of price:performance points for the enthusiast.
The new SAPPHIRE HD 4850 1GB is a new version of the HD 4850 designed by SAPPHIRE for the user who demands more memory for specific applications like rendering. It offers similar overall performance to the standard model, with clock speeds of 625MHz (core) and 993MHz (memory).
The new SAPPHIRE HD 4850 1GB is a new version of the HD 4850 designed by SAPPHIRE for the user who demands more memory for specific applications like rendering. It offers similar overall performance to the standard model, with clock speeds of 625MHz (core) and 993MHz (memory).
First Sketch of AMD Socket G34 Presented
AMD wants to leave the Barcelona (rather K10) debacle behind it as it moves closer to a newer processor architecture. This paves way for AMD to incorporate strong memory and system interface links. The G34 socket though touted to be a successor for the current socket 1207, is believed to be a standard socket for both enterprise and PC processors. AMD is working on a new CPU architecture codenamed 'Bulldozer'. Derivatives include monolithic 8-core and 12-core processors. The 12-core processor is now codenamed Magny-Cours, the 8-core part is called Sao Paulo. These processors could feature four parallel HyperTransport 3.0 interconnects, upto 12 MB of L3 cache and 512 KB L2 cache per core. It's known that AMD could be working on quad-channel DDR3 (both registered DDR3 under G3MX and unregistered). Socket G34 seems to have 1,974 pins.
The provision of four independent HyperTransport interconnects means that the fourth interconnect can be dedicated as a peer-to-peer interconnect between two sockets in a dual-socket setup, or its bandwidth split to form daisy-chains with multiple sockets. A prelude to AMD's Torrenza enterprise platform, which would allow use of several co-processors of different architectures including ClearSpeed to be embedded in workstations.
The provision of four independent HyperTransport interconnects means that the fourth interconnect can be dedicated as a peer-to-peer interconnect between two sockets in a dual-socket setup, or its bandwidth split to form daisy-chains with multiple sockets. A prelude to AMD's Torrenza enterprise platform, which would allow use of several co-processors of different architectures including ClearSpeed to be embedded in workstations.
Wednesday, July 16th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Graphics Cards
Memory
Motherboards
Speakers
Hiper Osiris Aluminum ATX Case Review
The Hiper Osiris is the company's newest offering in the crowded case market. It features numerous improvements over the Anubis, while coming in at a lower price point. The case also comes in black or silver and successfully improves on everything we criticized in our Anubis review.
Zotac Readies nForce 610i ITX
And just when you thought the AMD 780G based ITX solution by J&W Technology slated for next week was one of a kind, (covered here), there already is competition for it, this time from the opposite front. Zotac has innovated an Intel + NVIDIA ITX board based on the nForce 610i chipset called Zotac nForce 610i ITX. This LGA 775 board comes features a single chip core-logic, supports the latest Intel processors including FSB 1333 MHz, the 45nm Wolfdale chip is supported, older quad-core chips are as well. Unlike the 780G ITX solution this features two full-size (240-pin) DDR2 slots, two SATA II ports and an IDE port. A single PCI-E x1 slot is present. The board in the picture only has one D-Sub display output driven by the GeForce 7050 IGP, and a 6-channel audio. This board isn't as feature-rich as the AMD 780G solution, but it's a nifty solution for internet shacks and cybercafe use. With even a cheap Pentium Dual Core E2000 series processor, it provides sufficient power for everyday tasks.
Intel Roadmap Provides Insight into Upcoming Nehalem Models
The latest publication of model-specific launch schedule of Intel processors up to Q3 2009 show several models of Extreme processors based on the Bloomfield core beginning from the 3.20 GHz Bloomfield part, which could be succeeded sometime in Q2 2009.
The very first wave of Nehalem architecture based processors arrives in Q4 2008, with the 3.20 GHz Extreme Bloomfield part, the Core 2 Quad is already cleaved into Performance and Mainstream segments, with a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield part making it to the former and a 2.66 GHz part to the latter segments. This is also the time when Intel makes the final additions to the Yorkfield family with the Q9650 processor in the performance and a Q9400 to the mainstream segments. The roadmap shows a gradual synthesis between the current generation and the next. By Q3 2009, Intel will have a full-fledged line-up of processors, including the part that has overclockers looking forward to, the Havendale. This chip is a successor to Wolfdale. It is a dual-core Nehalem-derived chip that supports Hyper-Threading. Also by Q3, the mainstream quad-core offerings would divide between lower Bloomfield and the Lynnfield core processors.
Also, a rather interesting tidbit is a slide which shows Lynnfield schematic with "Integrated or discrete graphics", with the video hardware marker attached to the CPU. Would this mean Intel beats AMD in the race for the firstCPU+GPU CPU+IGP?
The very first wave of Nehalem architecture based processors arrives in Q4 2008, with the 3.20 GHz Extreme Bloomfield part, the Core 2 Quad is already cleaved into Performance and Mainstream segments, with a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield part making it to the former and a 2.66 GHz part to the latter segments. This is also the time when Intel makes the final additions to the Yorkfield family with the Q9650 processor in the performance and a Q9400 to the mainstream segments. The roadmap shows a gradual synthesis between the current generation and the next. By Q3 2009, Intel will have a full-fledged line-up of processors, including the part that has overclockers looking forward to, the Havendale. This chip is a successor to Wolfdale. It is a dual-core Nehalem-derived chip that supports Hyper-Threading. Also by Q3, the mainstream quad-core offerings would divide between lower Bloomfield and the Lynnfield core processors.
Also, a rather interesting tidbit is a slide which shows Lynnfield schematic with "Integrated or discrete graphics", with the video hardware marker attached to the CPU. Would this mean Intel beats AMD in the race for the first
RiData Announces Low-cost MLC SSDs
Advanced Media, Inc., is a manufacturer and marketer of the popular Ridata brand of recordable CD and DVD media, electronic storage products, and digital media accessories. The company is pleased to introduce its Ridata Ultra-S Plus Series of Solid State Drives (SSD) featuring faster transfer speeds than current Ultra-S products. Ultra-S Plus MLC now offers users products featuring a Multi-Level Cell (MLC) SATA configuration for fast read and write speeds plus larger storage capacities at a lower cost.
"We are pleased to offer laptop and other mobile computing device users an affordable SSD alternative to Hard Disk Drives (HDD). SSD drives offer a host of benefits over traditional hard disk drives especially for notebooks. Cool and silent running, low battery usage, fast data access, dependable performance and resistance to temperature, shock, vibration and humidity make SSD ideal for the mobile computing environment, remarked Harvey Liu, Advanced Media President.
"We are pleased to offer laptop and other mobile computing device users an affordable SSD alternative to Hard Disk Drives (HDD). SSD drives offer a host of benefits over traditional hard disk drives especially for notebooks. Cool and silent running, low battery usage, fast data access, dependable performance and resistance to temperature, shock, vibration and humidity make SSD ideal for the mobile computing environment, remarked Harvey Liu, Advanced Media President.
Scientist Develop 60x Faster Internet Scratch Switches
Scientists at the University of Sydney claim to have found a technology that would possibly allow the internet to become up to hundred times faster than current networks. After four years of development they have created a switch that's "only" 60 times faster than current networks. With little extra work the scientists are confident that they can reach the 100 times faster speed rates. "This is a critical building block and a fundamental advance on what is already out there. We are talking about networks that are potentially up to 100 times faster without costing the consumer any more," says Federation Fellow Professor Ben Eggleton, Director of CUDOS which is based within the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. The switch is created using a small scratch on a piece of glass. This scratched glass is actually a photonic integrated circuit that has the capacity to increase the slow rate of information carried by optical fibres. Using photonic technology that has terabit per second speed, the circuit uses the scratch as a guide or a switching path for information. Similar to when trains are switched from one track to another, this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. Therefore in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times. Additional information on the new scratch switches can be obtained at the University of Sydney's website here.
Microsoft Preparing Gamer-friendly Keyboard
Microsoft is working on a new keyboard design that features modularity of key-clusters, the model Sidewinder X6 features a modular num-cluster that can be positioned for convenience of both left and right oriented users. Additionally, A row of programmable keys for binding game macros and a "cruise control" feature that will repeat keystrokes without the need for holding down a key (like the Turbo buttons on some SNES gamepads).Expect an official announcement from Microsoft in the near future as the Sidewinder X6 is expected to launch in September at a US $80 price-point.
ATI (AMD) and NVIDIA Fix Prices in the US, Class Action Slapped Against them
Class actions charged against NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) reveal that the two companies may have staged a competition over the past half-a-decade or so. A judge read out an email which suggested price fixing was rife in the graphics card market. That follows a class action of 51 different plaintiffs, now combined into one, and across different legal jurisdictions, alleging cartel behaviour not only in graphics chips, but flat panels and CRTs too.
In other words, NVIDIA and ATI may have been fixing prices of their products for a while now, it is believed that they held secret meetings to discuss staged competition, chart out prices, timings of product launches among other things. These pseudo-competitions staged provided improved sales among other things. A PDF File available to us at this point shows that the two indulged in conspiracy to mutually benefit from staged competition, so as to:
In other words, NVIDIA and ATI may have been fixing prices of their products for a while now, it is believed that they held secret meetings to discuss staged competition, chart out prices, timings of product launches among other things. These pseudo-competitions staged provided improved sales among other things. A PDF File available to us at this point shows that the two indulged in conspiracy to mutually benefit from staged competition, so as to:
Toshiba Launches 400GB 2.5-inch HDD, Introduces New Line-up of 7,200 rpm Drives
Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of high performance 2.5-inch HDDs, including a low-noise flagship model that boosts areal density to 477Mbit/mm2 (308Gbpsi) to achieve a capacity of 400GB on just two platters, plus five drives that bring new levels of performance and 7,200rpm rotational speeds to the company's full range of storage capacities.
Toshiba Launches CELL-embedded Qosmio G55 Laptop
Toshiba launched the Qosmio G55-802, the first laptop available with a CELL-design based Co-Processor. The CELL developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM comes in a 4-SPE avatar which Toshiba chooses to call Toshiba Quad-Core HD processor. The laptop features a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P7350 at 2.00 GHz as the primary system processor, certain CPU-intensive tasks such as hardware HD video decode, transcode, etc., are performed by the CELL processor. It also features a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M graphics processor for smooth video playback and exceptional gaming performance. 4 GB of DDR2 800 memory is standard, with the GPU supporting TurboCache for additional video memory. A DVD-SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash (think of it as something similar to LightScribe) drive, 2x 250GB 5400rpm HDDs, and 802.11b/g/n supportive wireless network controller. The chassis features rugged yet stylish matte finish. It tips the scales at 5.4 kg (~ 10.8 lbs), rather heavy. It is priced at US $1549.99. An online brochure can be viewed here. For product details, please visit this page.
Tuesday, July 15th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Keyboards
Motherboards
TekNmotion Pulsar SX Gaming Headset Review
TekNmotion Pulsar SX is the name of a brand new headset aimed at gamers. The Pulsar SX features a USB sound card, vibration feature, and blue lights. This headset has a lot of unique features and costs a mere $59.99 which is cheap considering the integrated USB sound card.
Sony Announces $399, 80GB PLAYSTATION 3 Bundle
During the E3 Media & Business Summit today, Sony announced that it is returning back the 80GB PS3 to the market in September, but this time with a new price of US $399.99. This move is probably dictated by the Xbox 360 price cut which became official two days ago. The 80GB "Core Pack" PLAYSTATION 3 as it will be called will offer all of the features and functionality of the currently selling 40GB model, but with double the storage.
XFX Offers Cash-Back to GeForce GTX 200 Owners
If you happened to have bought a GeForce GTX 280 card when it released for US $649, you'd probably be extremely disgruntled, with people paying as low as $499 for the same thing now, and just weeks after release. Such changes in the tech-industry even cause major legal trouble for card vendors when such customers sue them in this regard. Ironically, the role of NVIDIA is limited to dictating prices, the partners have to bear the brunt of such awkward situations. XFX is the first partner to have announced a cash-back scheme for people who purchased their GTX 200 series products at their old (high) prices.
CPU Errata Turn Security Vulnerabilities
Security vulnerabilities have plagued the computing world ever since computing became a significant advance of mankind. As of today, the plethora of security software we use that gobble money, system resources and network bandwidth to keep our computers and networks safe, have done a good job and it's relatively 'peaceful' these days. And just when we thought so, enter Kris Kaspersky, eminent security researcher, comes up with the hypothesis that microcode errors, known errors and flaws in the design of CPUs could be exploited by malicious code to attack and compromise systems irrespective of which operating system (OS) and other software are running. Kaspersky claims that different errata of the CPU could be exploited differently.
Synthetic Benchmarks of NVIDIA G96 and Component Details Presented
Chinese website XFastest released some pre-release synthetic benchmark evaluations of the upcoming NVIDIA G96 graphics processor (GPU) on which is based, the GeForce 9500 series, slated for a July 28 release. XFastest also released detailed pictures of the components that go into making these cards.
The GeForce 9500 secured a score of 5894 in 3DMark'06 and 12331 in 3DMark'05 in default settings. It secured 658 o3DMarks at 1280x1024 resolution in the Ozone3D FurMark 1.40.
The GeForce 9500 secured a score of 5894 in 3DMark'06 and 12331 in 3DMark'05 in default settings. It secured 658 o3DMarks at 1280x1024 resolution in the Ozone3D FurMark 1.40.
Microsoft Details New Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE Service Improvements, Enables HDD Play
Based on the feedback received from the beginning of the Xbox LIVE entertainment dashboard, Microsoft said today it will be enhancing the service soon with a new update. Among the new features that will be included, one deserves special attention. Called "play from hard drive" it will allow Xbox 360 owners to copy their games from the game disc to their hard drive and also start the game from there for faster load times. The game disc is still required for piracy reasons though, but it won't be spinning after the game is started. A quick look at some of the other features you might find interesting follows below.
AMD 780G-based Mini-ITX Motherboard in the Works
Just when you thought Mini-ITX would mean extremely compact system components for great HTPC builds, came in the limitations of integrated graphics and relatively weak processors. VIA for example, have had ITX boards for quite some time. Just that the features most essential for HTPC builds such as graphics capable of high-definition video output, processors capable of decoding them at acceptable rates lacked, and hence those older ITX solutions from VIA remained a niche solution for embedded computing or thin-clients.
Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.
Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.
Intel Said to Prepare Quad-core Mobile Processors for Launch Next Month
Intel is preparing the launch of new quad-core processors for laptops next month, Yahoo! News informs today. "We're bringing quad-core to mobile in August," said Sujan Kamran, regional marketing manager for client platforms at Intel in Singapore. Specifics of the forthcoming quad-core chips are missing, but Australian PC maker Pioneer Computers is already taking preorders for laptops based on an unreleased quad-core mobile chip. This CPU is branded as Core 2 Extreme QX9300 and is said to work at 2.53GHz. Pioneer Computers is now offering it in its DreamBook Style 9008 laptops for US $1,390, more than the laptop's basic price ($1,399) without the CPU.
Core 2 Duo E7400 Planned for Q4 2008
Intel's next addition to the budget Core 2 Duo E7000 series, the E7400 is slated for fourth quarter 2008. This processor at a US $133 price-point will come with a 2.83 GHz core clock with a 1066 MHz front-side bus (FSB), with 3 MB of L2 cache and a rated TDP of 65W. More importantly, a high FSB multiplier would mean that at its price it could be overclockers' delight.
Lian-Li Launches PC-7F & PC-60F Mid-tower PC Cases
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd today launches the PC-7F & PC-60F; the newest advanced Midi Tower chassis' in their aluminum product lineup. These unique clean cut style cases dimensions stand at 215 x 440 x 490mm (W, H, D). They support ATX, and Micro-ATX form factors, with 4x 3.5" drive bays; 7x PCI Expansion Slots, and 5x 5.25" ODD bays. The refined handmade craftsmanship and high quality standards combined with the ultimate attention to detail including filed and folded edges for safety bring Lian Li products into a class of their own. The stylish, minimalist and optimized theme incorporates 1.5mm to 1.2mm thick aluminum anodized panels with a hairline brushed finish to an all round quality product. The difference between the PC-7F and PC-60F is the front panel design. The PC-7F has smooth rounded vent holes, while the PC-60F has a more open bezel front face. Each caters for a unique different taste.
Intel Centrino 2 Mobile Platform now Official
Intel Corporation unveiled its Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology products for laptops today, powered by five new Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Close to 250 innovative consumer and business notebook PC designs are on the way, including those equipped with the right combination of powerful processors, graphics and battery life to enjoy viewing stunning high definition videos and myriad other computer and Internet activities.
Intel also introduced the world's highest-performing dual-core mobile processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor running at a brisk 3.06 GHz, as measured by SPECint*_rate_base2006, an industry benchmark.
Intel also introduced the world's highest-performing dual-core mobile processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor running at a brisk 3.06 GHz, as measured by SPECint*_rate_base2006, an industry benchmark.
Elpida Develops Top-Tier Power Efficient 2Gbps High-Speed DDR3 SDRAM
Elpida Memory, Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), announced today that it has developed a top-tier power efficient 1 Gigabit DDR3 SDRAM, which is capable of operating at an ultra-fast speed of 2 Gigabits per second (Gbps). By reducing power consumption to around the lowest possible level the new high-performance environmentally friendly DRAM marks an important milestone in Elpida's aggressive development of eco-products.
AMD to PhysX: 'Acceptable Under Conditions'
Following the NGOHQ episode with devising software that lets users accelerate GPU-based NVIDIA PhysX API on Radeon accelerators, and with NVIDIA coming in support of such an effort, a general opinion was made that NVIDIA sought an industry-wide domination of CUDA as the de-facto general purporse graphics processing (GPGPU) architecture, with putting their investment of acquiring Ageia Technologies to good use by pushing the PhysX API. Although it comes as a good news for AMD that their graphics cards that are already optimized for Havoc physics could now support PhysX acceleration, it's not in the best interests of the company that they allow the growth of CUDA and components based on it to this extent, since AMD has its own FireStream line of products and a GPGPU architecture in the making.
TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.
TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.
OCZ Unveils Intel Centrino 2 and Intel Core 2 Extreme Powered Laptops
OCZ Technology Group today introduced a new whitebook solution powered by the long awaited Intel Centrino 2 ("Montevina") platform. This state-of-the-art platform technology provides a breakthrough in mobile computing for higher performance, advanced connectivity, and longer battery life. In addition, the new OCZ whitebooks are built for superior on-the-go gaming by harnessing the world's highest-performing mobile processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme X9100.
Monday, July 14th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Memory
Motherboards
Processors
PSUs
Coolink Chipchilla Chipset Cooler Review
The Chipchilla from Coolink manages to decrease chipset temperatures while maintaining a low noise level. It is extremely light-weight being constructed of copper and aluminum all for an decent price. Limited availability and some installation issues are all that hold this cooler back.
Xbox 360 Games Could run off the Hard-drive
Soon, you will be able to slash load-times of Xbox 360 games by a nifty feature update that allows the console to cache the game on to the hard drive. You will need the game disc in the drive to be able to play the game as a counter-piracy measure, just that the console won't read resources from the disc, but instead from the cached data on the hard drive. In a way this also means improved sales for the new 60GB variant, since hard-drive space is 'more-the-merrier' now on, you can cache as many games as your hard drive can take. This was announced by Microsoft during a press-conference at E3.
Lucid Introduces Groundbreaking Parallel Graphics Technology
Aiming to radically improve graphics performance for any kind of PC, LucidLogix Technologies today took the wraps off its new parallel graphics technology that will allow PC manufacturers to satisfy consumer demand for visual reality without compromise. The real-time distributed processing engine, called HYDRA, offers a groundbreaking approach to scaling 3D graphics performance in a multi-GPU environment. Outlined for the first time on the new Lucid web site, the novel technology is the industry's first to work with any GPU, any CPU or chipset and on any application that gamers and professionals may choose.
Coolaler Sets New Super Pi 1M Record, 7.281 seconds
Chinese PC enthusiast website Coolaler set a new world-record score for the lowest time taken to crunch Super Pi 1M benchmark, their setup did it in 7.281 seconds. Here's what they used to achieve this feat:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 at 6.253 GHz (625 x 10) with VCore of 1.936V
- DFI LAN-Party UT P35 motherboard
- G.Skill 4GBPI DDR2 at 1285MHz memory
- Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) cooling
Radeon HD 3000 Series Reaches EOL in this Quarter
With the advent of the Radeon HD 4000 series, AMD is regaining lost ground in the consumer PC graphics industry. They have been 'third time lucky' in their DirectX 10(.1) conquest after HD 2000 and HD 3000 series didn't quite make a mark against the might of NVIDIA. Apparently AMD is through with preparing the RV710 and RV730 graphics processors (GPUs) which will drive video-cards with several different configurations of memory and GPU parameters. AMD looks to compete in the sub-US $150 market with these cards for which it will phase-out the HD 3000 series cards within this quarter (Q3 2008). The products will reach End-Of-Life (EOL).
AMD Slates 40/45nm GPUs for Early-2009, RV870 on the Cards
As we inch closer to the R700 release, which previews prove to have dethroned the GeForce GTX 280 convincingly, taking the crown for the fastest graphics card there is, NordicHardware reports AMD could be giving 'final-touches' to a fresh-wave of GPUs for early 2009. The timing is a critical factor here as that's the time-range the proposed NVIDIA G300 carrying 384 SP's and 512bit GDDR5 memory bus is marked for. The R800 cards could carry 2,000 stream processors, with its unit processors the RV870 holding 1,000 stream processors each. They could enter the realm of either 40nm or 45nm fabrication process.
HP Brings TouchSmart PC Within Reach for the Masses
HP said today that it is bringing the latest HP TouchSmart PCs to customers all around the world. Debuted at last month's HP Connecting Your World event in Berlin, the new TouchSmart family of PCs have earned the privilege to be the only touch-enabled, all-in-one PCs in the market. The HP TouchSmart PCs combine a 22-inch diagonal, high-definition widescreen display and a variety of options when choosing the right hardware for your needs. You can select either the base IQ504 model for $1,299 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of memory, and 320GB hard drive or the deluxe IQ506 model for $1,499 and equip yourself with a 2.16GHz processor, a TV tuner, dedicated GeForce 9300M GS graphics, and a 500GB hard disk. To give the TouchSmart just the right finish, HP has also integrated a DVD burner, WLAN module, some stereo speakers, a webcam and a microphone. A low-profile wireless HP keyboard that lights in the dark, as well as a wireless mouse are also supplied just in case there's something you can't do using the touchscreen display.
NVIDIA Brings SLI Technology to Intel Bloomfield CPU Platforms
PC enthusiasts, manufacturers, and developers around the world have a lot to be excited about today with NVIDIA Corporation's announcement that it will be bringing the power and performance of its SLI multi-GPU technology to Intel's upcoming line of Bloomfield CPUs. With this winning combination, consumers will have an SLI platform designed for current and future graphics-intensive games and applications; these platforms can be powered by one, two, or even three NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, including the new, award-winning GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 GPUs.
AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Previews Posted
With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.
Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.
Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.
2.66 GHz Bloomfield Chip Could be Priced at US $284
While Lynnfield is touted to be the budget offering from Intel based on the upcoming Nehalem processing architecture, reports from HKEPC suggest that the a 2.66 GHz Bloomfield part which returned stellar scores in pre-release evaluations by ChipHell we covered here, could be priced at US $ 284 making it one extremely compelling buy, considering it dethrones the current QX9770 in some tests. It's not confirmed at this point if the part could feature unlocked performance management features or whether they could be exclusive to a higher-priced premium product. This chip is slated for H1-2009. Lynnfield and Havendale could follow in H2, being based on the LGA 1160 CPU socket.
Sun Microsystems Announces World's First One Terabyte Tape Storage Drive
Sun Microsystems again raised the bar on the storage industry with the release of the industry's first one terabyte tape storage drives. The new eco-efficient Sun StorageTek T10000B tape drive offers customers one terabyte of native storage capacity on a single cartridge for open or mainframe systems environments. The leader in tape storage automation, Sun has delivered on its commitment to the best-in-breed archive innovation and continues to trump the industry with high-performance, high capacity solutions that offer significantly greater return on investment versus the competition.
PowerColor Launches World's First 2GB Frame Buffer Graphics Card for PCS HD 4850
TUL Corporation -a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards today announced the industry's first 2GB memory graphics card - PowerColor PCS HD4850 2GB. As the successful HD4800 series launched around the end of June, PowerColor got many positive feedbacks from both customers and media; in order to provide the greatest solution to the market consistently, PowerColor today provide the new generation architecture - the first 2GB memory graphics card to market.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce 280 GTX Price Cuts Now Official
NVIDIA today slashed the prices of its latest generation of GeForce GTX video cards. The GeForce GTX 280 is now available for as low as $499 and the GeForce GTX 260 costs $299. The high-end GTX 280 was originally priced at $649, while the 260 was priced previously at $399. With a price tag of $299, the GeForce GTX 260 now matches ATI's comparable Radeon HD 4870. The higher end GeForce GTX 280 is still waiting to meet its main competitor in the face of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, due to become available later this quarter.
GeForce GTX 200 ''Worst Product Launch in the History of NVIDIA'' - Vendors
NVIDIA has been the 'hare taking a nap' for the past 18 months or so, just that when it woke up (or rather woken up), it realized that it's another hare that just blew by it. In other words, the Radeon HD 4800 series has not only proven to be a 'challenger' to NVIDIA but also a winner. There are (only) two winners here, ATI and you. The 55nm RV770 is very economical for ATI to make, sell and use in a variety of products. The same RV770 goes into making the HD 4850 that brought the GeForce 9800 GTX to its knees and forced NVIDIA to bring in a GTX+. And then you have the HD4870 which made spending $449 on the GeForce GTX 260 a joke. Yes it overclocks well and what not, but still didn't warrant that $150 price difference. Hence, over a period of three weeks or so, the GTX 260 is pushed down, 'way down' in NVIDIA's terms (explained later) to $329, which e-tailers such as Newegg.com can give you for as low as $299.
This means great news for you, like I said, there are only two winners, ATI and you. ATI gets its share of the $300 graphics card shoppers, while you get to choose between HD 4870 and GTX 260. What does NVIDIA get? Trouble. Sure the GTX 260 is selling, but selling at a loss. It takes around $100 to make the GPU alone. Selling the whole card for $299 inclusive of all taxes hurts NVIDIA, and hurts partners and retailers even more. TG Daily spoke with several retailers, some of which while maintaining anonymity, are quoted saying about the GeForce GTX 200 series as: "the worst product launch in the history of NVIDIA", also revealed is that NVIDIA could be selling "less than 3000 GTX 260/280 cards per month" in the North American markets.
In other words, retailers are not happy with NVIDIA and their stranglehold over pricing their products at both the retailer and board-partner level. Here's a chart tracking the fall of price for GTX 260:
This means great news for you, like I said, there are only two winners, ATI and you. ATI gets its share of the $300 graphics card shoppers, while you get to choose between HD 4870 and GTX 260. What does NVIDIA get? Trouble. Sure the GTX 260 is selling, but selling at a loss. It takes around $100 to make the GPU alone. Selling the whole card for $299 inclusive of all taxes hurts NVIDIA, and hurts partners and retailers even more. TG Daily spoke with several retailers, some of which while maintaining anonymity, are quoted saying about the GeForce GTX 200 series as: "the worst product launch in the history of NVIDIA", also revealed is that NVIDIA could be selling "less than 3000 GTX 260/280 cards per month" in the North American markets.
In other words, retailers are not happy with NVIDIA and their stranglehold over pricing their products at both the retailer and board-partner level. Here's a chart tracking the fall of price for GTX 260:
Radeon HD 4870 X2 Previewed, AA Performance a Trump Card
HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.
The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.
The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.
Sunday, July 13th 2008
Meet the 'Nintendo DS' for Grown-ups
There was a time I remember when owning a laptop used to be a status-symbol, affluent people despite little (or no) computer literacy owned one. A lot of factors decided the price of those things, the most important being the cost of producing LCD displays, compact hard drives and more importantly, the batteries. In came competition, the computer reached many hands, literacy rose, developing economies rose and with it, the laptop changed from being 'a machine' to 'a gadget'. Laptops are in all shapes an sizes, all forms and prices these days, and with the introduction of the ULPC concept, a laptop or better still, a portable computer is soon becoming a standard issue for every person a-là mobile phone or wrist watch. What's the next step? The answer lays in a neat new concept design by V12 Designs called the Canova, which resembles the popular handheld gaming device, the Nintendo DS in essence of having two screens. Both screens are touch-sensitive LCDs, where one of them morphs into a human-interface (keyboard and track-pad cluster):
Samsung Readies its First Wave of Montevina Notebooks
Following the delayed introduction of the Intel Centrino 2 "Montevina" mobile computing platform, several manufacturers are preparing their line-ups on this platform. Among all, Samsung prepares three notebooks: the R510 "Aura", R710 "Eclipse", and two variants of the model Q210 and Q310 with 12.1 and 13.3 inch screen sizes respectively.
The R510 (first picture) will have a 15.4 inch screen, Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor at 2.53 GHz, integrated X4500 graphics, 4 GB of memory, DVD Writer, and 320GB HDD. It weighs about 2.3 kg.
The R710 (second picture) will feature a 17 inch screen, the same Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, and other features common to the R510 except that it features a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M 512 MB graphics processor.
And finally, the Q210 and Q310 have common looks and features albeit aforementioned screen-sizes. Features common to them include: Intel Core 2 Duo P8200 which runs at 2.26 GHz in the Q210 and 2.40 GHz in the Q310, 4 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9200M 256 MB graphics processor.
The R510 (first picture) will have a 15.4 inch screen, Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor at 2.53 GHz, integrated X4500 graphics, 4 GB of memory, DVD Writer, and 320GB HDD. It weighs about 2.3 kg.
The R710 (second picture) will feature a 17 inch screen, the same Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, and other features common to the R510 except that it features a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M 512 MB graphics processor.
And finally, the Q210 and Q310 have common looks and features albeit aforementioned screen-sizes. Features common to them include: Intel Core 2 Duo P8200 which runs at 2.26 GHz in the Q210 and 2.40 GHz in the Q310, 4 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9200M 256 MB graphics processor.
Microsoft Announces Xbox 360 60GB for $349 and Starts Selling the 20GB Model for $299
Microsoft Corp. officially announced today that it is giving consumers more gigabytes for their buck with Xbox 360 60GB. The new console comes to replace the 20GB Pro model and is offered with the same estimated retail price (ERP) of $349, but with triple the storage space. As previously mantioned Xbox 360 60GB will be available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada starting in early August. In addition, Microsoft today dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 console in the U.S. and Canada to just $299 (U.S.) (ERP) while supplies last, a savings of $50. "We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we're giving it to them at no extra charge," said Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management at Microsoft. "No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you'll have three times the storage to manage all that great content." Microsoft's Xbox 360 Arcade console, which comes with a 256MB memory unit and five Xbox LIVE Arcade games, will continue to sell for $279 (ERP), while the premium Xbox 360 Elite model with a 120GB hard drive will sell for $449 (ERP).
R700 Supports 4-way Crossfire X?
Yes, you read that right. You can use upto four HD4870 X2 accelerators in tandem for an 8-GPU, 9.6 TFLOP, 8 GB graphics crunching monster. You need a 4-slot motherboard though. There are 4-slot solutions available on the AMD 790FX platform, for Intel though X48 did support 4 slots and images of prototype X48 boards with 4 slots did surface months back, there isn't such a board out yet. You do have the Skulltrail platform and upcoming X58 Bloomfield-supportive boards do promise to come in 4 slot flavours.
In a press-conference, Raja Koduri, worldwide CTO (Products Group), AMD talked to Indian website TechTree, among minor revelations such as "Fusion in 2009", here's a shocker:
"AMD has already built a computer that has four 4870X2s in it. So it has eight GPUs; drivers will not be supporting eight GPUs at this point of time."
-Implies that AMD is fully geared up to go head on against GT200b whenever it comes up. It's all a matter of them releasing a supportive driver. Again, unreliable sources point towards the possibility that also in the pipeline could be a R700+ which could be based on 'Super-RV770XT' processors. If you thought you're witnessing the peak of the GPU battle for supremacy, hold on, you're only getting appetised.
In a press-conference, Raja Koduri, worldwide CTO (Products Group), AMD talked to Indian website TechTree, among minor revelations such as "Fusion in 2009", here's a shocker:
"AMD has already built a computer that has four 4870X2s in it. So it has eight GPUs; drivers will not be supporting eight GPUs at this point of time."
-Implies that AMD is fully geared up to go head on against GT200b whenever it comes up. It's all a matter of them releasing a supportive driver. Again, unreliable sources point towards the possibility that also in the pipeline could be a R700+ which could be based on 'Super-RV770XT' processors. If you thought you're witnessing the peak of the GPU battle for supremacy, hold on, you're only getting appetised.
Saturday, July 12th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
First Pictures of Sapphire HD 4850 1GB Presented
The ATI Radeon HD 4850 has been a success so far and Sapphire decides to expand their product range with Sapphire Radeon HD4850 1GB. Chinese website ITOCP released fresh pictures of this new card. It looks promising. This follows the release of pictures of the Toxic Radeon HD4850 we covered here.
The pictures show the card in the usual blue Sapphire PCB, and a heatsink covering in a similar fashion to that of some NVIDIA cards.
The pictures show the card in the usual blue Sapphire PCB, and a heatsink covering in a similar fashion to that of some NVIDIA cards.
Microsoft Unveils Details on New Arc Mouse, Revamps the Sidewinder Gaming Mouse
Microsoft's hardware division has released details on its upcoming peripherals for the summer of 2008. Among the new devices, two make a good impression. First is the new Arc Mouse, a wireless mouse that's all about fashion, style and portability. The Arc Mouse is a collapsible peripheral that will hit the market this Holiday Season, with an affordable price tag of $59.95. The mouse will be available in two colors - red and black. Microsoft has also announced that a new revamped Sidewinder gaming mouse will be out soon. The X5 Sidewinder will look much like its predecessor, but it will no longer feature custom weights and the current sensitivity information LCD that was presented in the original Sidewinder mouse. The X5 will come with nine programmable buttons, hardware DPI switching, and a quicklaunch shortcut. Because some of the features of the mouse are missing, the price will also be lowered to $59.95. Technical specifications of both pointing devices remain unknown until their official launch.
Bloodbath for AMD at the Stock-Markets, Company Struggles to Survive
Sure, the graphics division brings some cheer for the company but seriously, to what extent is it helping the company alongside a marginally increased market-share with processors? Not much. AMD struggles to survive as stocks plummet below the $6 mark at NASDAQ index, which was priced at $15 /share only a year ago; this is the lowest value for the AMD stock since 2002.
AMD's survival is crucial for the entire computing industry as it keeps check on inflating prices by major players such as Intel and NVIDIA (who themselves are seeing bad days at the stock-markets these days). It has immense engineering potential to take on major players and force them to slash their prices. There are talks already doing rounds of CEO Hector Ruiz planning to quit.
Market forces and mal-informed consumerism are also to blame. A person chooses competitive brands over AMD products mainly because they're supplied and marketed better, sure Intel and NVIDIA do make better products in many categories but 'better' is a very relative value, how much better and for how much more (price) is something that keeps fluctuating, again fluctuations are mainly triggered by competition that AMD brings into the market. In other words, thank AMD for making NVIDIA sell GeForce 8800 GT for as low as $120 or better still, giving rise to a whole new SKU, the GeForce 9800 GTX+, with the '+' matching the red cross on first-aid kits.
AMD's survival is crucial for the entire computing industry as it keeps check on inflating prices by major players such as Intel and NVIDIA (who themselves are seeing bad days at the stock-markets these days). It has immense engineering potential to take on major players and force them to slash their prices. There are talks already doing rounds of CEO Hector Ruiz planning to quit.
Market forces and mal-informed consumerism are also to blame. A person chooses competitive brands over AMD products mainly because they're supplied and marketed better, sure Intel and NVIDIA do make better products in many categories but 'better' is a very relative value, how much better and for how much more (price) is something that keeps fluctuating, again fluctuations are mainly triggered by competition that AMD brings into the market. In other words, thank AMD for making NVIDIA sell GeForce 8800 GT for as low as $120 or better still, giving rise to a whole new SKU, the GeForce 9800 GTX+, with the '+' matching the red cross on first-aid kits.
GT200b Already hit Stores?
A suspicious new model of the flagship GeForce GTX 280 made by Leadtek going by the name 'GeForce GTX 280 Extreme' is put on pre-order on the popular British computer component online store Overclockers UK (OCUK). It can be found here. There are some hints that point toward this being based on a 55nm core:
- Extremely high parameters such as 738 MHz core, 1666 MHz shader domain and 2520 MHz memory albeit GDDR3, traditionally Leadtek doesn't offer such high manufacturer overclock for even its premium variants.
- Such insanely high parameters cannot be reached by a manufacturer on reference cooling, for example, even the EVGA e-GeForce GTX 280 HC (liquid-cooled) comes with 670 MHz core, 1458MHz shader domain and 2430 MHz memory.
- Although traditionally OCUK isn't very discount-friendly, and that this is a premium GTX 280 variant, that still doesn't warrant a whopping £387.74 (US $771.29) price-tag.
Microsoft Windows 3.11 to Finally Disappear Forever
Now we all know that Windows 3.11 is long gone, but after that you read this strange title again and start wondering? Yes, although you know that retail distribution of Windows 3.11 has been out for very long, it had been around for a good 15 years selling through the so called Embedded Channel. Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 is still used in a countless number of low-horsepower platforms such as cash registers and train schedule displays. That's until today, when Microsoft is officially ending all sales of Windows 3.11 for good. Microsoft's John Coyne announced:
for those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEM's will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. Now we all know that it's been long gone in the standard (retail/OEM) channel, but one of the unique things in the embedded business is that we allow the classic OS products to be sold longer than the other channels. it's *finally the end of an era!
No Far Cry 2 Demo Planned Says Ubisoft
Clint Hocking, the creative director behind the upcoming Far Cry 2, has confirmed that there will be no demo released for the game. Developed by Ubisoft, future Far Cry 2 players won't be able to play a level or two to get the idea, before the full game is out. According to Hoking there's no easy way of making a Far Cry 2 demo, because of the open nature of the game that will leak almost 12 hours of gameplay from a possible demo. "One reason is, even if we were to give out what you played today - even if we put invisible walls around it and said, here's the demo, you can go anywhere you like inside these walls and play it how you want - that's potentially right there eight-to-ten hours of gameplay," said Hocking. "I don't know too many people who are willing to give away a 12-hour game for free", he continued. In related news, Clint Hocking also informed that Far Cry 2 is almost complete and it only needs a good testing before retailing.
New AOC Monitor 'Does not Require a PC'
That's right, a new 22" widescreen monitor by AOC, the 2230Fm is a PC monitor. It supports DVI-D and D-Sub VGA and HDMI inputs and sports a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 px. Stylish looks aside it adds a nifty feature that makes it a media-center in itself, the feature is called HD3.
Says AOC: "HD3 defines a new category in high definition displays with its built-in media player, allowing consumers, for the first time, to view movies without the use of an external DVD player or PC. With the 2230Fm, simply load a film onto a memory device, plug it into the display and use AOC's proprietary, user-friendly menu and remote control to enjoy a movie PC-free. AOC's first HD3 Display is the 2230Fm, a combination of multi-functional high-definition video capabilities and stylish, 360° design that provides a stunning array of features all developed to cater to the digital needs of today's consumers."
Simply put, the monitor has a 4-in-1 digital media reader and has three USB 2.0 ports. You can connect a USB flash-drive. You do have flash-drives with really high capacities these days capable of carrying Hi-resolution videos, also that in some European countries a new video-download facility has come up where you download movies onto a flash drive in public shacks a-la ATMs. Apart from videos, this device can view images up to 8000 x 8000 px, and play audio files from its integrated stereo speakers. It remains to be seen if the USB 2.0 hub could connect to external hard drives or external optical drives. That would make it a full-on media center. It lacks a TV-tuner though. The embedded media software looks pretty intutive, The 2230Fm supports MPEG-1, 2, and 4 video formats. the supported audio format are too numerous to list, but they include MP3, WMA, WAVE, OGG-Vorbis, FLAC, and M4A. Supported photo formats include JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF images with resolutions up to 8000x8000 pixels.
The monitor has a 2ms response time making it ideal for gaming consoles and gaming PCs, it has a respectable 20,000:1 contrast ratio. It is priced at a US $399 and will be available next month onwards. Talk about convenience.
Says AOC: "HD3 defines a new category in high definition displays with its built-in media player, allowing consumers, for the first time, to view movies without the use of an external DVD player or PC. With the 2230Fm, simply load a film onto a memory device, plug it into the display and use AOC's proprietary, user-friendly menu and remote control to enjoy a movie PC-free. AOC's first HD3 Display is the 2230Fm, a combination of multi-functional high-definition video capabilities and stylish, 360° design that provides a stunning array of features all developed to cater to the digital needs of today's consumers."
Simply put, the monitor has a 4-in-1 digital media reader and has three USB 2.0 ports. You can connect a USB flash-drive. You do have flash-drives with really high capacities these days capable of carrying Hi-resolution videos, also that in some European countries a new video-download facility has come up where you download movies onto a flash drive in public shacks a-la ATMs. Apart from videos, this device can view images up to 8000 x 8000 px, and play audio files from its integrated stereo speakers. It remains to be seen if the USB 2.0 hub could connect to external hard drives or external optical drives. That would make it a full-on media center. It lacks a TV-tuner though. The embedded media software looks pretty intutive, The 2230Fm supports MPEG-1, 2, and 4 video formats. the supported audio format are too numerous to list, but they include MP3, WMA, WAVE, OGG-Vorbis, FLAC, and M4A. Supported photo formats include JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF images with resolutions up to 8000x8000 pixels.
The monitor has a 2ms response time making it ideal for gaming consoles and gaming PCs, it has a respectable 20,000:1 contrast ratio. It is priced at a US $399 and will be available next month onwards. Talk about convenience.
Friday, July 11th 2008
Today's Reviews
Motherboards
Multimedia
PSUs
Cooler Master Ultimate Circuit Protection 900W Review
Cooler Master's new Ultimate Circuit Protection power supply is among the first to receive the prestigious 80plus Silver certificate for an efficiency of above 85%. With 900W of output power this PSU can easily handle every rig that you put it into. During our testing we saw very stable voltages, especially 3.3V and 5V delivered great results.
Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4850 Spotted
Fudzilla released the first pictures of an upcoming ATI Radeon HD4850 model from Sapphire, the Toxic Radeon HD4850. This card looks very familiar. It reminds us of the successful Radeon X1950 Pro custom-design by Sapphire using the familiar Zalman VF900-Cu cooler. It uses small aluminum heatsinks over the memory chips, a copper heatsink is used to cool the card's VRM. Expect this card to come with overclocked parameters.
Activision-Blizzard planning a Music Store
The 'newly-wed' Activision-Blizzard is reportedly planning a music store and content delivery service to directly compete with Apple's iTunes service. For now nothing is even close to concrete, Activision-Blizzard is considering launching its own download store on its Guitar Hero game platform for now. Says CEO Robert Kotick: "When you think about the potential for what we will be able to do together, there have not been many viable alternatives to iTunes." in an interview to Reuters. He adds: "If you're downloading a song to play on your 'Guitar Hero,' there's no reason why you can't download the performance also. So there's all kinds of things you can think about."
Vivindi currently owns the World's largest music publication company, Universal Music. This could serve as a content source for this delivery platform.
Vivindi currently owns the World's largest music publication company, Universal Music. This could serve as a content source for this delivery platform.
Microsoft to Unveil DirectX 11 Later this Month
We are barely into experiencing DirectX 10 / 10.1 games with proper levels of detail with upcoming titles demanding hardware, and Microsoft already has plans for DirectX 11, the next big version of this API set. Microsoft will show off DirectX 11 at the XNA Gamefest which is scheduled to take place on July 22 and 23 in Seattle, United States. This year's Gamefest is to be centered by DirectX 11 and the advancements that are proposed to be brought about.
Thankfully Microsoft isn't doing a 'Vista' this time around, this new multimedia and gaming API will be built for both Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 operating systems. The API could be released to public anytime in late 2009.
There are several implications of this:
Thankfully Microsoft isn't doing a 'Vista' this time around, this new multimedia and gaming API will be built for both Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 operating systems. The API could be released to public anytime in late 2009.
There are several implications of this:
Sony to Fix PS3 Consoles Damaged by 2.40 Firmware Update
The Sony Playstation 3 console firmware update 2.40 rendered several units dysfunctional, forcing users to either try 'DIY homebrew remedies' (and possibly voiding warranties in the process) or seeking professional technical assistance which could cost the user anywhere up to US $150. With several users in distress continuing to express disgust on the official Playstation 3 forums, Sony has decided to work closely with users whose consoles have damaged solely due to the 2.40 firmware update. After it is determined that 2.40 firmware update is the sole cause of damage, the console would be either repaired or replaced free of cost.
Pre-release Tests Conducted on AMD Denreb
Pre-release Tests Conducted on AMD Deneb
AMD Deneb is the code-name for the 45nm quad-core CPU which AMD plans to release soon. Chinese website ITOCP got their hands on two engineering samples. They used these samples at various clock-speeds set by altering the FSB multiplier and Vcore voltage. These chips were then subjected to rounds of Super Pi 1M benchmark. The results look rather luke-warm compared to what we saw of the Intel Bloomfield chips recently. The Deneb CPUs were supported by an AMD RD790 motherboard and 2 GB of DDR2 800 MHz unganged memory, running at timings of 5-5-5-18. The Phenom X4 Deneb 45nm will feature 6 MB of L3 cache apart from the usual 512 KB L2 caches dedicated to the cores.
AMD Deneb is the code-name for the 45nm quad-core CPU which AMD plans to release soon. Chinese website ITOCP got their hands on two engineering samples. They used these samples at various clock-speeds set by altering the FSB multiplier and Vcore voltage. These chips were then subjected to rounds of Super Pi 1M benchmark. The results look rather luke-warm compared to what we saw of the Intel Bloomfield chips recently. The Deneb CPUs were supported by an AMD RD790 motherboard and 2 GB of DDR2 800 MHz unganged memory, running at timings of 5-5-5-18. The Phenom X4 Deneb 45nm will feature 6 MB of L3 cache apart from the usual 512 KB L2 caches dedicated to the cores.
Rambus Files Patent Infringement Suit Against NVIDIA
Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today announced it has filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against NVIDIA Corporation for patent infringement.
R700: Several Product Details Exposed
The Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware revealed several confidential (no more) slides pertaining to the AMD R700 product line, exposing details of the product codenamed "Spartan". It's now confirmed that it comes with a total of 2 GB of GDDR5 memory spanning across sixteen 1 Gb chips.
The picture is that of the HD4870 X2 itself in an angle never pictured before:
The first slide shows certain details about the R700 "Spartan", the GPU core speed isn't disclosed yet. Crucial bits: 32Mx32 GDDR5, driver version 8.52 or later, deviceID: 0x9441.
The picture is that of the HD4870 X2 itself in an angle never pictured before:
Bloomfield + SLI: Possible
Industry sources indicate that NVIDIA has acquired a QPI license to manufacture desktop core-logic (chipset) for the upcoming Nehalem-based processors. NVIDIA looks at a quick-fix solution to offer SLI support for the upcoming LGA-1366 motherboards. It's too late for them to prepare a full-fledged chipset since X58 is dressing up to go to office and that's slated for as early as Q4, 2008. The quick-fix solution is that NVIDIA offers a certain chip that can be used on X58 motherboards that allows those boards to support NVIDIA SLI. This solution is in many respects similar to the Intel D5400XS "Skulltrail" board, where two NForce 200 (BR-04) chips were used alongside the Intel 5400A northbridge that allowed 2-way SLI. The NVIDIA BR-04 chip costs US $30 for motherboard manufacturers.
As for Lynnfield, NVIDIA will try to debut a full-fledged LGA-1160 motherboard since there is ample time to work on that. The quick-fix ensures that when LGA-1366 X58 does come out, and NVIDIA doesn't have a chipset ready, the advantage of multi-GPU doesn't go to ATI since X58 supports ATI Crossfire and is already touted to support 4-way ATI Crossfire X technology. LGA-1160 boards lack QuickPath interconnect as a chipset bus. Since NVIDIA lacks access to QuickPath technology, it can continue to use its competitive HyperTransport link which it's been using since the NForce 2 days.
Don't expect too many of these SLI LGA 1366 boards soon though. Reason being that each BR-04 chip costs $30, requires motherboard makers to re-design their motherboards (since most vendors seem to be ready with their X58 board designs), and a redesign would push back entry by a few months (for release of these SLI supportive boards).
As for Lynnfield, NVIDIA will try to debut a full-fledged LGA-1160 motherboard since there is ample time to work on that. The quick-fix ensures that when LGA-1366 X58 does come out, and NVIDIA doesn't have a chipset ready, the advantage of multi-GPU doesn't go to ATI since X58 supports ATI Crossfire and is already touted to support 4-way ATI Crossfire X technology. LGA-1160 boards lack QuickPath interconnect as a chipset bus. Since NVIDIA lacks access to QuickPath technology, it can continue to use its competitive HyperTransport link which it's been using since the NForce 2 days.
Don't expect too many of these SLI LGA 1366 boards soon though. Reason being that each BR-04 chip costs $30, requires motherboard makers to re-design their motherboards (since most vendors seem to be ready with their X58 board designs), and a redesign would push back entry by a few months (for release of these SLI supportive boards).
Picture of the Radeon HD 4650 Floats
A picture of the ATI RV730-based Radeon HD 4650 floated at ChipHell. This picture was edited to protect source. A colour picture of the cooler was already revealed earlier. The Radeon HD 4650 will succeed the HD 3600 series and will come in a variety of memory configurations, we covered here. It will support up to 1 GB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit wide memory bus.
Thursday, July 10th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Harddisks
Memory
Motherboards
Mouse
Multimedia
PSUs
A-DATA 16GB Turbo Compact Flash Review
A-DATA is pushing the performance envelope with their Turbo series of CF cards. The series goes up to 16 GB and aims to give you the best possible performance - if you are willing to pay for it.
OCZ Introduces Elixir Keyboards
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and components, today announced the expansion of its gaming peripherals under a new "Alchemy" line, with the introduction of the Elixir keyboard series for highly advanced functionality in game-play. Featuring a wealth of user-friendly features combined with an ergonomic and sturdy design, the Elixir keyboard will deliver a unique combination of performance and value to gamers as they blaze through the latest PC titles.
The Alchemy line, introduced earlier this year at Computex, embodies the needs of gamers through a diverse lineup of gaming peripherals and components that will provide PC players the ultimate hardware to take on the most demanding games. The Elixir keyboard is the first product under this line, and will be the first of many gaming keyboards, mice, another other computer gaming accessories. The Alchemy line was created by OCZ in its never-ending quest to meet the demands of each segment in the enthusiast community.
The Alchemy line, introduced earlier this year at Computex, embodies the needs of gamers through a diverse lineup of gaming peripherals and components that will provide PC players the ultimate hardware to take on the most demanding games. The Elixir keyboard is the first product under this line, and will be the first of many gaming keyboards, mice, another other computer gaming accessories. The Alchemy line was created by OCZ in its never-ending quest to meet the demands of each segment in the enthusiast community.
Intel Launches the Centrino 2 Mobile Platform this 14th
Intel launches the Centrino 2 mobile plaform this Monday, the 14th. Centrino 2, codenamed Montevina is behind launch-schedule owing to issues detected in the integrated graphics controller. The chipset released will be that which supports discrete graphics controllers from ATI or NVIDIA.
Intel Centrino 2 for now is targeted towards the business-class and enterprise segments. The chipset supports DDR3 memory which brings in a certain level of energy efficiency with added performance. At the heart of it would be a 45nm processor based on the Penryn architecture. Initially dual-core processors, with quad-core based notebooks later. The wireless network controller supports the newer 802.11n and WiMAX standards. Security and management features come in through the vPro technology.
These 45nm dual-core processors are said to run at 25W, an efficiency increment over previous generation running at 35W.
Intel Centrino 2 for now is targeted towards the business-class and enterprise segments. The chipset supports DDR3 memory which brings in a certain level of energy efficiency with added performance. At the heart of it would be a 45nm processor based on the Penryn architecture. Initially dual-core processors, with quad-core based notebooks later. The wireless network controller supports the newer 802.11n and WiMAX standards. Security and management features come in through the vPro technology.
These 45nm dual-core processors are said to run at 25W, an efficiency increment over previous generation running at 35W.
R700 up to 80 % Faster than GeForce GTX 280
Pre-release performance evaluations suggest that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 model will on an average be 50% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 and in some tests 80% faster. A second model, the HD 4850 X2 (2GB GDDR3 memory, 2x RV770Pro) will also convincingly outperform the GeForce GTX 280. The R700 series will be brought into the market late-July thru August.
Seagate First to Introduce 1.5-Terabyte Desktop PC and Half-Terabyte Notebook PC HDDs
Seagate today unveiled the industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives to meet explosive worldwide demand for digital-content storage in home and business environments. The debut of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives - a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.
NVIDIA Preparing GT300 Graphics Processor?
Hardspell reports that NVIDIA may have cancelled working on the G200b (the 55nm version of GT200). Details on this new DirectX 10.1 graphics processor trickled in, it has 384 shader units, uses a 45nm fabrication process and incorporates 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 4.00 GHz (effective) while the core could be clocked at 800 MHz with a 2.00 GHz shader domain. NVIDIA hopes to take on the R700 and its successor which unreliable sources claim to be based on the Super-RV770.
Microsoft to kick-off a 300M Dollar Vista Campaign
If you have watched the TNT Original movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley or read the book Fire in the Valley, you would know Steve Ballmer to be quite a character although both the book and the movie are unauthorised documentaries. Under the leadership of Ballmer, Microsoft plans to start a US $300 million-worth campaign aimed to demystify Windows Vista and encourage users to adopt the new operating system.
These are good times for Apple. The lack of success for Windows Vista means growth in the sales of Apple Mac for first-time buyers. And it is true- numerous reports and surveys point out to the fact that Apple Mac is seeing a growth in sales of late. Add to that, Apple won't spare any chance to take pot-shots at the software giant, its 'bloated' operating system (as if Apple OS X isn't) in its series of TV and web-cast commercials around the 'cool Mac guy and uncool PC guy'.
These are good times for Apple. The lack of success for Windows Vista means growth in the sales of Apple Mac for first-time buyers. And it is true- numerous reports and surveys point out to the fact that Apple Mac is seeing a growth in sales of late. Add to that, Apple won't spare any chance to take pot-shots at the software giant, its 'bloated' operating system (as if Apple OS X isn't) in its series of TV and web-cast commercials around the 'cool Mac guy and uncool PC guy'.
OCZ Intros DDR2 PC2-8000 SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel Memory
OCZ Technology Group today announced the latest addition to the award-winning OCZ NVIDIA SLI certified series, the world's first 4GB PC2-8000 SLI-Ready DDR2 modules. Optimized specifically for the nForce platforms, this series features an ideal combination of reduced latencies and high density to support the ultimate gaming experience. The PC2-8000 SLI-Ready Series are certified to run at optimal performance levels and are the ultimate upgrade for entry-level enthusiasts seeking an exceptional memory kit with true "plug and play" functionality at an excellent price point.
Pictures of the Non-Reference 2GB Radeon HD 4850 Emerge
The Radeon HD 4850 has been in for a while and boy, did it change the face of the market as we knew it. PowerColor / TUL came up with the first non-reference design for the HD 4850, it sticks to the AMD reference PCB alebit changes to the cooler and the memory. It uses ZeroTherm full copper GPU cooler with CVVT technology(Continue Variable Velocity Timing). The card now features a mammoth 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are minor changes to the GPU parameters as well: 665 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory.
We could have understood if they gave it 1 GB of memory, knowing that the RV770 is a capable GPU and might be able to use higher amount of memory but 2 GB seems too much. The card is loaded with 16 x 1 Gb GDDR3 chips. The chips on the other side of the PCB have a heatspreader. There's no information about availablilty and pricing yet.
We could have understood if they gave it 1 GB of memory, knowing that the RV770 is a capable GPU and might be able to use higher amount of memory but 2 GB seems too much. The card is loaded with 16 x 1 Gb GDDR3 chips. The chips on the other side of the PCB have a heatspreader. There's no information about availablilty and pricing yet.
At Least a Year for Mainstream Nehalem Derivatives
The recent publications of pre-release benchmarks of the 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Bloomfield processsors gave us a taste of Nehalem bringing in something special into the industy. Sure it's got us all flying but here's a reality: Bloomfield and X58 platform are premium products and come with high-pricing. They aren't mainstream products, not even that 2.66 GHz Bloomfield. They run on the LGA 1366 socket and incorporate QuickPath interconnect as a system bus.
The real mainstream product is a processor called Lynnfield. It has many features of its wealthier cousin, like 8 MB L3 cache, four cores with HyperThreading technology, etc. But the crunch is here: It features a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller (Bloomfield has tri-channel), it will use a different socket: the LGA 1160 and the supportive chipset codenamed Ibex Peak uses the old DMI as its chipset interconnect.
The most recent roadmap slide shows all this coming our way only in Q3 2009, and that's about an year from now, enough time for them to flush current LGA 775 processors from the market.
The real mainstream product is a processor called Lynnfield. It has many features of its wealthier cousin, like 8 MB L3 cache, four cores with HyperThreading technology, etc. But the crunch is here: It features a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller (Bloomfield has tri-channel), it will use a different socket: the LGA 1160 and the supportive chipset codenamed Ibex Peak uses the old DMI as its chipset interconnect.
The most recent roadmap slide shows all this coming our way only in Q3 2009, and that's about an year from now, enough time for them to flush current LGA 775 processors from the market.
Albatron Launches Three PCI Low-Profile GeForce 8 Video Cards
If you're on the market, looking for a card that will work on most of today's PCs, you'd be surprised to know that Albatron is launching a trio of new PCI low-profile graphics cards. Yes they are PCI, not PCI-Express compatible and they are part of the GeForce 8 generation. The cards are dubbed PCI8600GT-256X, PCI8500GT-256X, PCI8400GS-256, and represent GeForce 8600 GT, 8500 GT and 8400 GS respectively. The first two cards come equipped with GDDR3 memory, 128-bit interface and HDMI connectivity while the PCI8400GS-256 makes use of GDDR2 chips, a 64-bit interface and has no HDMI. All three cards come with 256MB memory, DVI and TV-Out connectors.
ATG Releases Flash-drive with Biometric Protection
Avalon Technology Group (ATG), specialists in biometric data protection, announced the ATG 8GB USB Biometric 256 AES Speedster. This USB flash-drive features two close to fool-proof levels of data security. First, it's the fingerprint sensor that allows access only to one person with the right print. Second, the data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption algorithm, something which even government security agencies find hard to crack.
The drive offers impressive 34 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write speeds with hi-speed USB 2.0. The metal casing provides water-proofing to its components, the drive slides open. It is priced at US $79.00 and offers 8 GB of space.
The drive offers impressive 34 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write speeds with hi-speed USB 2.0. The metal casing provides water-proofing to its components, the drive slides open. It is priced at US $79.00 and offers 8 GB of space.
R700 Could be Rushed in
Although it's known that the HD 4870 X2 (R700) is slated for a July thru August launch, reports from GPU Café suggest that AMD could subject the R700 to an early launch, and that's as early as four days from now, July 14. That's more than two weeks ahead of its launch schedule. It's not clear as to what's the nature of the launch, presumably a 'paper-launch', since there already is concrete information from industry observers in Taiwan as to the time-line of the R700 launch we covered here. Some high-profile overclockers are already to have their sample of the R700. Unreliable sources already point at the possibility of a HD 4850 X2 which comes with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.
Update by W1zzard: Sorry guys but my sources tell me "middle of August" launch.
Update by W1zzard: Sorry guys but my sources tell me "middle of August" launch.
Bloomfield 2.93 GHz Performance Data Disclosed
Benchmarks of Nehalem derivatives are on a roll. We had seen the Bloomfield 2.66 GHz scores and thought it was great. A couple of days ago, Tom's Hardware showed off their newest toys to the world in which was a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield we covered here. Interestingly, they had then stated that Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prevented them from releasing any benchmark data, though following ChipHell's publication, they thought they would disclose theirs as well.
They carried out their tests on the Foxconn Renaissance X58 motherboard with dual-channel Crucial Ballistix 2x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Windows Vista SP1 and hotfix_vista32-64_dd_ccc_hd4800series_64906 patch. A 750GB Seagate SATA II hard drive was used.
In 3DMark 06, it secured a CPU score of 5183. In PCMark 05, a CPU score of 9583 with a memory score of 9010 was noted. In 3DMark Vantage, the CPU score was 17966 (CPU Test1: 2515.1 Plans/S, Test2: 23.08 Steps/S). 2.93 GHz Bloomfield had a Mere 11% performance advantage over a QX6800 (that clocks at 2.93 GHz). It is also said that this 2.93 GHz chip is 23% faster than a Phenom X4 9950.
They carried out their tests on the Foxconn Renaissance X58 motherboard with dual-channel Crucial Ballistix 2x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Windows Vista SP1 and hotfix_vista32-64_dd_ccc_hd4800series_64906 patch. A 750GB Seagate SATA II hard drive was used.
In 3DMark 06, it secured a CPU score of 5183. In PCMark 05, a CPU score of 9583 with a memory score of 9010 was noted. In 3DMark Vantage, the CPU score was 17966 (CPU Test1: 2515.1 Plans/S, Test2: 23.08 Steps/S). 2.93 GHz Bloomfield had a Mere 11% performance advantage over a QX6800 (that clocks at 2.93 GHz). It is also said that this 2.93 GHz chip is 23% faster than a Phenom X4 9950.
Wednesday, July 9th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Apevia X-Supra Blue Special Edition Review
The X-Supra is a new mainstream case from Apevia, which features all the usual extras like a handful of colorful fronts, screw-less design and fan controller. On top of that you can go for a huge 250 mm side fan or a windowed variant with a smaller 120 mm fan. The special edition features a solid side panel.
Intel Bloomfield 2.66 GHz: First Comprehensive Evaluation
ChipHell carried out the first comprehensive evaluation of the Intel Bloomfield 2.66 GHz processor, a derivative of the eagerly anticipated Nehalem architecture, which already has fan-sites mushrooming all over the internet.
The most prominant benchmarks used by enthusiasts and overclockers, 3DMark Vantage (CPU Tests), Super Pi 1M, Cinebench and SANDRA were run on this processor.
In the 3DMark Vantage test, the processor secured a CPU score of 16294. It crunched Super Pi 1M in 15.475 seconds. With the Cinebench, it secured 3048 with a single thread, the multi-threaded bench belted out 12627 CB-CPU hinting at the processor's high multi-core efficiency. And finally, Bloomfield takes SANDRA out on a date. You have to look at the red dot compared to a QX9770 yourself.
I'm appetised and looking forward to a great processor architecture and so could you.
The most prominant benchmarks used by enthusiasts and overclockers, 3DMark Vantage (CPU Tests), Super Pi 1M, Cinebench and SANDRA were run on this processor.
In the 3DMark Vantage test, the processor secured a CPU score of 16294. It crunched Super Pi 1M in 15.475 seconds. With the Cinebench, it secured 3048 with a single thread, the multi-threaded bench belted out 12627 CB-CPU hinting at the processor's high multi-core efficiency. And finally, Bloomfield takes SANDRA out on a date. You have to look at the red dot compared to a QX9770 yourself.
I'm appetised and looking forward to a great processor architecture and so could you.
ECS G10IL Slated for September 2008
Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) will be releasing the G10IL sub-notebook this September, says Henry Kwan, VP of sales, ECS to Laptop Magazine in a recent interview. What makes the G10IL special is that ECS has managed to squeeze in EDGE, HSUPA, and HSPDA mobile broadband support, but will not feature support for WiMAX. This 'netbook' comes in two screen sizes, 8.5" and 10". The version most likely to enter US markets in September is the 10" model. Prices start US $399. Most likely, the $399 variant could feature a 8 GB SSD with Linups Lite 9.4 Linux. A variant with an 80 GB HDD with Windows XP is also on the cards. ECS says that the G10IL is the first netbook designed specifically for the business user, than students.
Eee PC 901, 1000, and 1000 H Released in North America
ASUS today introduces the new generation of Eee PC. The new models include revolutionary features that are designed to enhance efficiency and connectivity. With up to 7.8 hours of battery life, Eee PC users can enjoy portability while work, learn and play on-the-go.The all new Eee PC 901 and 1000 are equipped with built-in SSD (Solid State Drive) while the 1000 H adopts a 3.5" Hard Disk Drive (HDD).
New Xbox 360 Pro 60GB Variant Could Hit the Stores
According to XboxFamily.com, a leaked email that Microsoft may have sent to major retailers reveals that a new Xbox 360 variant, the 60 GB Pro is on the cards and slated for release later this month. The timing of this alleged new variant entry comes after price cuts were indicated for the popular 20 GB Pro variant.
The new variant provides:
The new variant provides:
- 60 GB hard drive
- 3 months' Xbox Live subscription
- Wired headset
- Ethernet Cable
Hitachi Unveils the Most Energy-efficient 1TB HDD
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has rolled out its second-generation terabyte hard drive (HDD), which it claimed to be the most energy efficient 7200rpm 1TB HDD. The 3.5" Deskstar 7K1000.B consumes 43 per cent less power than its predecessor, Hitachi said. That's in part because it uses three platters, each holding up to up to 375 GB of data, rather than five, cutting the number of read/write heads from ten to six. Part of the energy-efficiency also comes from the fact that 3Gb/s SATA (SATA II) drives also use power management techniques developed for mobile hard drives.
Hitachi said the drives provide on-board automatic data encryption based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)tough enough for the US government. The Deskstar 7K1000.B and an enterprise version designed for 24/7 operation, the Deskstar E7K1000, go on sale later this month priced at US $239 and US $279, respectively.
Hitachi said the drives provide on-board automatic data encryption based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)tough enough for the US government. The Deskstar 7K1000.B and an enterprise version designed for 24/7 operation, the Deskstar E7K1000, go on sale later this month priced at US $239 and US $279, respectively.
AMD 790GX, an Early Performance Evaluation
Presenting the fastest IGP to date. The upcoming AMD 790GX chipset, unlike preliminary reports suggesting it was going to be an extreme performance competitor to the GeForce 8200 IGP incorporated NForce 780a, is a high-end chipset armed to compete with the likes of NForce 750a, Intel G35. It supports ATI Crossfire multi-GPU technology.
In two new company slides published by the Chilean website CHW.net, early performance evaluations of the 790GX IGP were conducted, where the AMD chip beat the GeForce 8200 IGP by a very significant margin. It outperformed the Intel G35 by nearly 300 per cent margins in some tests. Apart from this ferocious little IGP, the 790GX supports ATI Crossfire with the energy-saving Hybrid-Crossfire feature. When not gaming, the display is handled by the IGP, depending on the load, the graphics card(s) are powered and speeds are adjusted. So when playing a game that the graphics card(s) can churn out 300 fps from, the GPU parameters can be lowered so you still get say, 100 fps while the GPU power is reduced significantly.
In two new company slides published by the Chilean website CHW.net, early performance evaluations of the 790GX IGP were conducted, where the AMD chip beat the GeForce 8200 IGP by a very significant margin. It outperformed the Intel G35 by nearly 300 per cent margins in some tests. Apart from this ferocious little IGP, the 790GX supports ATI Crossfire with the energy-saving Hybrid-Crossfire feature. When not gaming, the display is handled by the IGP, depending on the load, the graphics card(s) are powered and speeds are adjusted. So when playing a game that the graphics card(s) can churn out 300 fps from, the GPU parameters can be lowered so you still get say, 100 fps while the GPU power is reduced significantly.
Activision and Blizzard to Merge Today
Publisher Activision today announced that its merger with Blizzard Entertainment parent company Vivendi Games has been approved by the board of shareholders, and the transaction is expected to officially close today, July the 9th. The new company, dubbed Activision-Blizzard, is valued at roughly US $18.9 billion.
Activision and Vivendi Games will combine their businesses through the merger of a newly formed, wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision with and into Vivendi Games. As a result of the merger, Vivendi Games, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment and Sierra, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision. Vivendi will receive approximately 295.3 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock. Concurrently with the merger, Vivendi will purchase approximately 62.9 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock at a price of $27.50 per share for a total of approximately $1.7 billion in cash, resulting in a total Vivendi ownership stake in Activision Blizzard of approximately 52% on a fully diluted basis and approximately 54% of shares outstanding. As of the closing of the transaction, Activision will be renamed Activision Blizzard and will continue to operate as a public company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ATVI.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Blizzard, Inc. is a worldwide pure-play online and console game publisher with leading market positions across all categories of the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry.
Activision and Vivendi Games will combine their businesses through the merger of a newly formed, wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision with and into Vivendi Games. As a result of the merger, Vivendi Games, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment and Sierra, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision. Vivendi will receive approximately 295.3 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock. Concurrently with the merger, Vivendi will purchase approximately 62.9 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock at a price of $27.50 per share for a total of approximately $1.7 billion in cash, resulting in a total Vivendi ownership stake in Activision Blizzard of approximately 52% on a fully diluted basis and approximately 54% of shares outstanding. As of the closing of the transaction, Activision will be renamed Activision Blizzard and will continue to operate as a public company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ATVI.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Blizzard, Inc. is a worldwide pure-play online and console game publisher with leading market positions across all categories of the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry.
Corsair adds a 2.13 GHz DDR3 kit to its Shelves.
Corsair adds a 2.13 GHz DDR3 kit to its Shelves
This 2 GB dual-channel kit is the farthest a production-level kit has ever gone before, 2133 MHz. The TW3X2G2133C9DF attains this rated speed at 9-9-9-24 and 2.0 V. The kit is branded under the usual Dominator DHX banner, it comes with the Dominator Air-Flow block, and enhanced cooling. It is tested to perform with NVIDIA motherboards at its rated speeds and comes with life-time warranty, although features such as NVIDIA SLI and Intel XMP certifications are missing.
This 2 GB dual-channel kit is the farthest a production-level kit has ever gone before, 2133 MHz. The TW3X2G2133C9DF attains this rated speed at 9-9-9-24 and 2.0 V. The kit is branded under the usual Dominator DHX banner, it comes with the Dominator Air-Flow block, and enhanced cooling. It is tested to perform with NVIDIA motherboards at its rated speeds and comes with life-time warranty, although features such as NVIDIA SLI and Intel XMP certifications are missing.
Samsung gets 128 GB SSDs into Production
The Korean semiconductor giant says that it will begin mass-producing 1.8" and 2.5" Solid-state drives (SSDs) for use by the mobile-computing industry. With the scale at which Samsung claim they're producing these parts, they hope to sell the parts at very competitive prices. This indicates a full-on reach of the SSD into consumer strata and of SSD becomming mainstream.
The Multi-Level Cell (MLC) drives slated for production feature 70 MB/s of write and 90 MB/s of read speeds, that's below what a single level cell (SLC) drive can offer, read speeds of 130 MB/s, an important specification to look out for when in the market for an SSD.
Samsung claims that the 128 GB SSD, which is built from 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16 Gb (2 GB) each, is energy efficient at 0.2 W in standby mode and 0.5 W in active mode. Samsung claims the drive's expected life to be over 20 times that of conventional drives....80~100 years if a conventional drive lasts 5 years.
The Multi-Level Cell (MLC) drives slated for production feature 70 MB/s of write and 90 MB/s of read speeds, that's below what a single level cell (SLC) drive can offer, read speeds of 130 MB/s, an important specification to look out for when in the market for an SSD.
Samsung claims that the 128 GB SSD, which is built from 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16 Gb (2 GB) each, is energy efficient at 0.2 W in standby mode and 0.5 W in active mode. Samsung claims the drive's expected life to be over 20 times that of conventional drives....80~100 years if a conventional drive lasts 5 years.
Tuesday, July 8th 2008
Today's Reviews
Graphics Cards
Networking
Processors
OrigenAE T12 Touch Screen Review
The OrigenAE T12 is a 12" touch screen that will set you back 800$. It is capable of processing up to 1080p resolution - perfect for that home theater. Thanks to the umbilical cord, you not only have a mouse at your fingertips, but also an IR receiver and USB 2.0 hub. Best of all the OrigenAE T12 does not even require an external power source, everything is integrated in the single cable.
Interview: Alex Mei / OCZ Review
Alex Mei has recently been promoted to Executive Vice President of OCZ Technology. In our interview he shares interesting details about how he got into the Industry, also he talks about OCZ's past and planned future. For example DIY notebooks and the Neural Impulse Actuator.
Lian-Li Launches New MUSE HTPC Cases - C36 and C37
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-C36 & PC-C37 HTPC chassis. Both have slim, low profile form factors at 435mm x 94mm x 378mm (W, H, D) , incorporating outstanding quality which has been designed to align with standard audio equipment dimensions, giving the slim look, but allowing room for a standard size 5.25" ODD and two 3.5" HDDs.
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Breaks the 6 GHz Barrier
Another good story from the Chinese website Coolaler.com has come to my attention. It brings along some good news for the Intel followers. Intel's highest-clocked 45nm Wolfdale processor, the yet unreleased Core 2 Duo E8600 appears to have some great overclocking potential. Coupled with a DFI LP UT P35 motherboard, 4GB of DDR2 memory, single Radeon HD 4870 card, and liquid nitrogen (LN) cooling the E8600 CPU was able to reach 6146.9MHz (614x10). That compared to its default speed of 3.33GHz (333x10), and we might have a new dual core overclocking winner. According to the information available on the Net, when released the E8600 will cost somewhere between $266 and $299.
Pictures Emerge of the ASUS Rampage Extreme
This motherboard board looks a work of art, simply put. The ASUS Rampage Extreme is the upscale version of ASUS' ROG line Intel X48 chipset based motherboard, the Rampage Formula. Although Rampage Formula resembled the X38 based Maximus Forumla in many ways, to an extant that you could use the Rampage Formula BIOS with Maximus Formula, don't expect the same with Rampage Extreme and its predecessor. This board features the X48 chipset, supports DDR3 memory, features a total of 16 CPU-power phases, water-cooling ready, out of the box. Apart from the plethora of features the ROG series products come with, this board bundles the SupremeFX X-Fi sound module which supports PCI-Express X-Fi Audio. It supports ATI Crossfire at full x16, x16 PCI-Express 2.0 mode.
Here's the most interesting feature: You can tweak system parameters on the board using a feature called TweakIt. This makes you adjust your overclock using special controls located on the board, keep track of the settings you're making using the LCD poster. The board is rich in heatsinks, ample cooling is provided to the MOSFETs surrounding the CPU area and above the memory area. Expect this to be priced anything above US $250.
Here's the most interesting feature: You can tweak system parameters on the board using a feature called TweakIt. This makes you adjust your overclock using special controls located on the board, keep track of the settings you're making using the LCD poster. The board is rich in heatsinks, ample cooling is provided to the MOSFETs surrounding the CPU area and above the memory area. Expect this to be priced anything above US $250.
Playstation 3 Firmware Update 2.41 Posted
After last week's fiasco involving the 2.40 firmware update, Sony has launched the 2.41 update. No added features, just that issues brought up with the previous update are said to be fixed.
Sony is positive that all bugs with the previous update have been fixed. In a statement, they say: "As many of you know, we released PS3 firmware update v2.40 last week, but had to take it offline temporarily because, for a limited number of users, the XMB wouldn't display after the update was installed," said Eric Lempel, Sony's PlayStation Network Operations Director. "We've been able to fix the problem, and I'm happy to report that firmware update v2.41 will be released shortly. We want to extend our apologies to the PlayStation community for any inconvenience."
For details on how to update, please visit this page.
Good Luck.
Sony is positive that all bugs with the previous update have been fixed. In a statement, they say: "As many of you know, we released PS3 firmware update v2.40 last week, but had to take it offline temporarily because, for a limited number of users, the XMB wouldn't display after the update was installed," said Eric Lempel, Sony's PlayStation Network Operations Director. "We've been able to fix the problem, and I'm happy to report that firmware update v2.41 will be released shortly. We want to extend our apologies to the PlayStation community for any inconvenience."
For details on how to update, please visit this page.
Good Luck.
Palit Announces GeForce 9800 GTX+
Palit Microsystems, leading graphics card manufacturer, today announces Palit GeForce 9800 GTX+. Armed with NVIDIA PhysX and NVIDIA CUDA technology the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is ready to enable a total new class of physical gaming interaction.
The Palit GeForce 9800 GTX+ features a core speed of 738MHz, a 1836MHz shader clock and 2,200 MHz on its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory with a 256bit interface, supports for the latest NVIDIA PhysX technology enables real-time physics simulations in leading edge PC and console games. It also supports NVIDIA CUDA technology, which unlocks the power of the GPU's processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks-such as video transcoding to deliver up to 7x the performance over traditional CPUs.
Supports the HybridPower power management technology, Palit GeForce 9800GTX+ allows users to unleash graphics performance or opt for a quiet, low-power PC experience when using non graphically-intensive applications. The Palit GeForce 9800 GTX+ is not only for gaming, equipped with the second generation NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology engine, but also delivers unsurpassed Blu-ray and HD DVD picture quality, which make it one of the best graphics solutions.
The Palit GeForce 9800 GTX+ features a core speed of 738MHz, a 1836MHz shader clock and 2,200 MHz on its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory with a 256bit interface, supports for the latest NVIDIA PhysX technology enables real-time physics simulations in leading edge PC and console games. It also supports NVIDIA CUDA technology, which unlocks the power of the GPU's processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks-such as video transcoding to deliver up to 7x the performance over traditional CPUs.
Supports the HybridPower power management technology, Palit GeForce 9800GTX+ allows users to unleash graphics performance or opt for a quiet, low-power PC experience when using non graphically-intensive applications. The Palit GeForce 9800 GTX+ is not only for gaming, equipped with the second generation NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology engine, but also delivers unsurpassed Blu-ray and HD DVD picture quality, which make it one of the best graphics solutions.
GeForce 9800 GT: Sales Begin, No Announcements yet.
Chinese website Zol.com.cn reports that in China, stocks of the GeForce 9800 GT card can be purchased from a local production company, a product which hasn't even been announced yet. The 9800 GT differs from 8800 GT in having a 55nm fabbed core that should allow higher parameters, though iroically being identical to its predecessor, the 8800 GT (600/1500/1800 MHz).
We could expect an official announcement soon, and this card could well be priced between US $120 and $140.
We could expect an official announcement soon, and this card could well be priced between US $120 and $140.
NVIDIA Could Dump VIA for Intel Atom
Relations between NVIDIA and Intel have not been at their best of late, with each trying to take every opportunity to take pot-shots at each other. There is still uncertainty about NVIDIA getting the technology assistance to devise a motherboard chipset for Intel's next generation desktop processors.
However, the Ultra Low-Cost PC (ULPC) market has been an overnight success for several companies, be the likes of ASUS and their dozens and dozens of laptops and upcoming desktops for the ULPC market or others like MSI and ECS trying to bring ULPC to the desktop with their motherboard solutions.
However, the Ultra Low-Cost PC (ULPC) market has been an overnight success for several companies, be the likes of ASUS and their dozens and dozens of laptops and upcoming desktops for the ULPC market or others like MSI and ECS trying to bring ULPC to the desktop with their motherboard solutions.
New Intel Wolfdale Derivative Overclocks Like Dream
Chinese website Coolaler.com has access to an engineering sample of the upcoming Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 processor. This processor is based on the 45nm Wolfdale core and features a total of 2 MB L2 cache. It has a default 200 MHz FSB and 12.5 x FSB multiplier and clock-speed of 2.50 GHz. Owing to this high multiplier and the Wolfdale design, this chip facilitates high overclocks, Coolaler.com has been able to take this chip to 4.00 GHz core with a FSB of 320 MHz and Vcore of 1.384 V. More than impressive for a budget processor.
Eran Badit of NGOHQ now Part of NVIDIA Developer Program
Eran Badit of the NGOHQ ATI PhysX driver fame now joins the NVIDIA developer program. In a more assertive statement, he believes that NVIDIA wants to "take on Intel with CUDA and to deal with the 'latest' Havok threat from both AMD and Intel.".
In a conversation with TG Daily, Roy Taylor, vice president of developer relations for NVIDIA says: "Eran and I have been talking via email and we have invited him to join NVIDIA's registered developer program. We are delighted at his interest in CUDA and in GPU accelerated physics using PhysX. Eran joins a long line of developers who are now working on using the GPU to run physics and who are doing so with the world's leading physics software - PhysX. "
Derek Perez, in charge of Nvidia's PR department, joined Taylor with this statement:
"We'll help any and all developers are using CUDA. That includes tools…documentation…and hands on help. We're delighted with the interest in CUDA and PhysX; and that includes the news on www.ngohq.com."
Once feared by many for aggressively defending its intellectual property, NVIDIA seems to have changed its approach towards things. In a bid to popularize their technology, it is willing to give the 'PhysX advantage' to even its competitor, AMD. But it still remains to be seen if PhysX performs on Radeon "the way it's meant to perform", now with Eran Badit working in close collaboration with NVIDIA. He says he still awaits samples from AMD so he could devise PhysX drivers for them. Surely NVIDIA has brought in good days for small developers with big aspirations.
In a conversation with TG Daily, Roy Taylor, vice president of developer relations for NVIDIA says: "Eran and I have been talking via email and we have invited him to join NVIDIA's registered developer program. We are delighted at his interest in CUDA and in GPU accelerated physics using PhysX. Eran joins a long line of developers who are now working on using the GPU to run physics and who are doing so with the world's leading physics software - PhysX. "
Derek Perez, in charge of Nvidia's PR department, joined Taylor with this statement:
"We'll help any and all developers are using CUDA. That includes tools…documentation…and hands on help. We're delighted with the interest in CUDA and PhysX; and that includes the news on www.ngohq.com."
Once feared by many for aggressively defending its intellectual property, NVIDIA seems to have changed its approach towards things. In a bid to popularize their technology, it is willing to give the 'PhysX advantage' to even its competitor, AMD. But it still remains to be seen if PhysX performs on Radeon "the way it's meant to perform", now with Eran Badit working in close collaboration with NVIDIA. He says he still awaits samples from AMD so he could devise PhysX drivers for them. Surely NVIDIA has brought in good days for small developers with big aspirations.
OCZ Readies DDR3 Laptop Memory for High-End Mobile Systems
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the all-new DDR3 SODIMM modules as its next generation notebook memory to support the impending Intel Centrino 2 mobile platform. These latest memory offerings for notebooks help reduce power consumption and increase speed and bandwidth, resulting in a higher performing laptop. As next-generation laptops are introduced in the upcoming weeks, OCZ is prepared to deliver high-performance DDR3 for these advanced gaming and professional systems.
Monday, July 7th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Mousepads
Multimedia
Processors
Rosewill R2-RAID Enclosure & RC-218 Controller Review
The Rosewill R2 is a dual bay RAID enclosure for two 3.5" SATA HDDs. It supports connectivity via USB or eSATA. With the included software you can create RAID 0, RAID 1 or JBOD arrays for increased performance or data safety. Since eSATA offers the same performance as you would see from an internal drive, the RAID 1 performance is very impressive with over 108 MB/s.
Diamond HD 4870 XOC Premium Black Edition: First Picture
As we reported earlier here Diamond Multimedia is preparing a special unlocked Black Edition Radeon HD 4870 card. We just received a first picture:
Material Used in LCD 17,000-times More Warming-Effective Than CO2
A lot of us switched over to LCD displays over CRT for reasons such as reduced electricity bills, thereby reducing our carbon-footprint. It is true, LCD displays have done a great job reducing power consumptions and effectively reducing CO2, but to what extant is this 'carbon-footprint reduction' helping reduce green-house gases?
New studies find that a material used in the manufacture of LCD displays called Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is the 'missing gas' which adds up to the equation of exactly which substances contribute to global-warming. A study conducted by Michael Prather (read here) reveals that this gas has a stunning 17,000 times greater contribution to global-warming. This compound is still used in the manufacturing of LCD and synthetic diamonds. According to Prather, the compound was initially missed by the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty governing response to global warming, due to the fact that it was not widely used at the time and its nature wasn't established.
The Kyoto Protocol missed several such compounds because they felt they were used in very insignificant quantities, although at that time the harmful effects of NF3 might not have been established since Parther's letter is dated 26th June. The amount of nitrogen nitrofluoride emissions is expected to total this year to approximately the emissions of a smaller industrialized nation, such as Austria in CO2, the equivalent of about 67 million metric tons worth. The rise of digital and high-definition television resulting in increased production of LCD and related technologies in the consumer electronics industry, contributes to the rise of emission of this substance.
Environmentalists will have a tough time convincing governments to enforce regulations. The demand for LCD products is so huge, industrialists will find it too big an expense to halt production and make core redesigns to a 'hot'-selling technology.
New studies find that a material used in the manufacture of LCD displays called Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is the 'missing gas' which adds up to the equation of exactly which substances contribute to global-warming. A study conducted by Michael Prather (read here) reveals that this gas has a stunning 17,000 times greater contribution to global-warming. This compound is still used in the manufacturing of LCD and synthetic diamonds. According to Prather, the compound was initially missed by the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty governing response to global warming, due to the fact that it was not widely used at the time and its nature wasn't established.
The Kyoto Protocol missed several such compounds because they felt they were used in very insignificant quantities, although at that time the harmful effects of NF3 might not have been established since Parther's letter is dated 26th June. The amount of nitrogen nitrofluoride emissions is expected to total this year to approximately the emissions of a smaller industrialized nation, such as Austria in CO2, the equivalent of about 67 million metric tons worth. The rise of digital and high-definition television resulting in increased production of LCD and related technologies in the consumer electronics industry, contributes to the rise of emission of this substance.
Environmentalists will have a tough time convincing governments to enforce regulations. The demand for LCD products is so huge, industrialists will find it too big an expense to halt production and make core redesigns to a 'hot'-selling technology.
Scythe Launches Ninja 2 CPU Cooler
Cooling manufacturer Scythe has introduced Ninja 2, the new and improved version of its famous fanless Ninja CPU cooler. Now, before I start talking about the cooler I must admit that in Ninja 2 nothing has changed, at least by the outside look of it. It's the same old Ninja from the outside, but that's not what Scythe thinks. According to their PR, the new Ninja performs 5% better in fanless operation (TDP 65W at 25°C/77F ambient temperature) and 15% better in active cooling operation (TDP 130W at 25°C/77F ambient temperature) than the standard SCNJ-1100P Ninja. For good or for bad, the new Ninja still uses the original LGA775 retention mechanism, no bolt through kit again. The new Ninja is also compatible with Intel Socket 478 and AMD Socket 754 939, 940 and AM2/AM2+. Scythe Ninja 2 (SCNJ-2000) can be yours now for as low as USD $54.00 or Euro 30.95 excl. VAT. More information about the cooler is available here.
PLAYSTATION 3 Firmware 2.41 Out ''midweek'', says Sony
After Sony recently pulled off its long awaited XMB PS3 2.40 firmware, many customers were left with empty hands. Moreover, little of them knew what exactly happened and why the update was removed. Now Sony is reported to be working on firmware version 2.41, which should be clear of all errors and will make all PLAYSTATION 3 owners happy again very soon. Although Sony is yet to make an official announcement to confirm this information, various sources already claim that the update will be out by the end of this week.
Microsoft Would Reopen Yahoo Talks with New Yahoo Board
Microsoft said on Monday that it was willing to reopen talks on a "major transaction" with Yahoo if the Internet giant replaces its board of directors. Microsoft confirmed comments from corporate raider Carl Icahn about talks that could lead to a new takeover bid if Yahoo replaces its board of directors next month.
"We confirm ... that after the shareholder election Microsoft would be interested in discussing with a new board a major transaction with Yahoo, such as either a transaction to purchase the 'Search' function with large financial guarantees or, in the alternative, purchasing the whole company," Microsoft said in a statement. The software giant said "it would be premature to discuss at this time important details such as the price or other terms of a possible transaction." They added: "We respect the right of Yahoo's shareholders to determine the destiny of their company, and we do not intend to engage in ongoing commentary on these issues in advance of Yahoo's shareholder meeting."
Some reports said Yahoo is seeking other alliances to fend of a bid from Microsoft, including a tie-up with AOL, a unit of Time Warner.
"We confirm ... that after the shareholder election Microsoft would be interested in discussing with a new board a major transaction with Yahoo, such as either a transaction to purchase the 'Search' function with large financial guarantees or, in the alternative, purchasing the whole company," Microsoft said in a statement. The software giant said "it would be premature to discuss at this time important details such as the price or other terms of a possible transaction." They added: "We respect the right of Yahoo's shareholders to determine the destiny of their company, and we do not intend to engage in ongoing commentary on these issues in advance of Yahoo's shareholder meeting."
Some reports said Yahoo is seeking other alliances to fend of a bid from Microsoft, including a tie-up with AOL, a unit of Time Warner.
Gigabyte Announces Low-priced Tablet PC
Gigabyte announced that a new low-priced tablet PC, the M912V. This ultra-portable and affordable tablet PC has a 8.9" frame has a screen that swivels 180 degrees. It has a screen resolution of 1280 x 768 px. The LCD is backlit to enhance battery life. At the heart of this is a 1.60 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB SATA HDD, 802.11b/g wireless, Bluetooth, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. Connectivity includes 3 USB 2.0 ports, 56k modem, NIC, an ExpressCard slot, and an internal expansion slot for HSDPA.
With so much packed, the M912V tipps the scales at only 2.86 lbs. Gigabyte's new netbook will be available for purchase later this month with a price tag of $699.
With so much packed, the M912V tipps the scales at only 2.86 lbs. Gigabyte's new netbook will be available for purchase later this month with a price tag of $699.
2.93 GHz Nehalem Derivative Presented
One of the newest toys at Tom's Hardware is a Nehalem derivative Intel Bloomfield processor clocked at 2.93 GHz. This processor brings with it, a host of changes. To begin with, say goodbye to FSB. The processor communicates with the system using a technology called QuickPath interconnect. This is a high-speed, low-latency point to point link. It's comparable to the HyperTransport technology, which AMD has been using for close to five years now. Initially, Bloomfield will use a 20-bit wide 25.6 GB/sec. QuickPath link. The CPU incorporates the memory controller, which implies that your choice of memory will depend on the processor. As already noted in regard to the AMD processors, this approach of integrating a memory controller greatly reduces system-level latency. The CPU supports 3-channel DDR3 1333 MHz memory. That's 32 GB/s of bandwidth, with support for up to 24 GB of system memory. Of the six DDR3 slots, the first slot is required to be populated.
Unfortunately, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) don't allow them to disclose performance evaluations at this point though - ironically - their Taiwanese team ran preliminary tests on a Radeon HD4850 and a Foxconn X58 motherboard we covered here.
Read the whole article here.
Unfortunately, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) don't allow them to disclose performance evaluations at this point though - ironically - their Taiwanese team ran preliminary tests on a Radeon HD4850 and a Foxconn X58 motherboard we covered here.
FOXCONN Renaissance X58 Nehalem Motherboard First Look
The crew over at Tom's Hardware is taking an exclusive look at a fully assembled Nehalem system that consists of a FOXCONN X58 motherboard and a Nehalem CPU. Details on the platform and the new architecture are already well detailed so I'll skip them. It's the motherboard that's cool and worth looking. That's FOXCONN's reference board powered by Intel's X58 chipset and ICH10-R southbridge, the same used on today's Intel P45 platforms. ICH-10 supplies up to four PCI Express x16 paths, of which two, are PCI Express 2.0. FOXCONN's Renaissance board also allows up to 24GB of DDR3 memory to be installed on 6 slots. With Nehalem, the memory is running in triple-channel mode (the name is pretty self explanatory). Initially the motherboard will support DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333 configurations. The Renaissance also has six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel audio and a Gigabit Ethernet. Speaking to the other motherboard features, they include the usual heatpipe cooling for the chipset, solid ultra-low SR capacitors, debugging LED lights, clear CMOS button round the backplate and a six-phase power circuit design. Expect benchmarks and price information when the official launch date of Nehalem approaches.
Thermaltake Intros Big Water 770 Liquid Cooling System
After the successful launch of the Bigwater 760i liquid cooling system in 2007; Thermaltake is releasing the new Bigwater 770 to fulfill more demands of DIY players this year! Keeping the easy installation and space saving advantages of Bigwater 760i, Bigwater 770 also allows extremely easy installation process using the front 5.25" expansion bays and intelligent interconnect for tubes; None will need to worry about the difficulties and mess caused by traditional liquid cooling systems anymore. And now with Bigwater 770, you can even fit the liquid cooling system in your middle tower chassis.
Bigwater 770 has included the all cooper waterblock design with the best heat conductivity that is also suitable for high temperature welding. Adding the high quality production technology from Thermaltake, you will not need to worry about leakage problems under long operation hours. The Redundant Micro Channel Design within the waterblock effectively divides water flow into micro channels thus accelerating heat transfer from the heat source.
Bigwater 770 has included the all cooper waterblock design with the best heat conductivity that is also suitable for high temperature welding. Adding the high quality production technology from Thermaltake, you will not need to worry about leakage problems under long operation hours. The Redundant Micro Channel Design within the waterblock effectively divides water flow into micro channels thus accelerating heat transfer from the heat source.
Pioneer Preparing a 400 GB Optical Disc
Pioneer is preparing what it claims to be a 16-layer optical disc. Though no information about its format have been released yet, Pioneer claims each layer of this disc can carry the same amount of data as a Blu-ray disc layer. With 16 such 25 GB layers, that comes up to a huge 400 GB capacity, enough for..err..whatever you want to do with all that space.
The disc however seems to have problems relating to each layer interfering between the surface of the disc and the one the player is trying to read from. Pioneer said it applied an array of optical and signal processing techniques to create a "16-layer optical disc that can play back high-quality signals from every layer".
Apart from having similar layer-sizes to the Blu-ray disc there are other features that make this disc format suspiciously similar to that of Blu-ray, such as the specifications of the lens. Pioneer is quick to defend saying that it's just so the player could maintain compatibility with Blu-ray discs.
The disc however seems to have problems relating to each layer interfering between the surface of the disc and the one the player is trying to read from. Pioneer said it applied an array of optical and signal processing techniques to create a "16-layer optical disc that can play back high-quality signals from every layer".
Apart from having similar layer-sizes to the Blu-ray disc there are other features that make this disc format suspiciously similar to that of Blu-ray, such as the specifications of the lens. Pioneer is quick to defend saying that it's just so the player could maintain compatibility with Blu-ray discs.
Presenting: Packard Bell ipower X2.0 Gaming Desktop
Packard Bell, one of Europe's top consumer PC brands in Europe, will reveal the next generation of its ipower gaming desktop PC to the gaming community at the Electronic Sports World Cup, which is being held on 4-6 July 2008 in Paris. The new gaming PC is christened: ipower X2.0.
Selected as the official ESWC gaming system in 2007 and 2008, the ipower range had to be up to the task of meeting the demanding requirements of amateur and professional PC gamers. Packard Bell confirms its engagement to the PC gaming community by unveiling the ipower X2.0, a stunning combination of power, graphics performance, state-of-the-art cooling and ergonomics.
A sound mind in a sound body goes the saying. The magnificent chassis of the ipower X2.0 shows off its inner secrets including its components and build quality through a translucent siding with red LED trim lights. To satisfy the 30 per cent of PC gamers who say that design is one of the top selection criteria1, the Packard Bell design studio developed a sexy tower case that unites a black colour scheme with metal trim, transparent housing, gloss finish, bevelled angles and harmonious dimensions
(510 H x 217 l X 530 L).
Selected as the official ESWC gaming system in 2007 and 2008, the ipower range had to be up to the task of meeting the demanding requirements of amateur and professional PC gamers. Packard Bell confirms its engagement to the PC gaming community by unveiling the ipower X2.0, a stunning combination of power, graphics performance, state-of-the-art cooling and ergonomics.
A sound mind in a sound body goes the saying. The magnificent chassis of the ipower X2.0 shows off its inner secrets including its components and build quality through a translucent siding with red LED trim lights. To satisfy the 30 per cent of PC gamers who say that design is one of the top selection criteria1, the Packard Bell design studio developed a sexy tower case that unites a black colour scheme with metal trim, transparent housing, gloss finish, bevelled angles and harmonious dimensions
(510 H x 217 l X 530 L).
NVIDIA Plans to Nuke R700
NVIDIA Plans to Nuke R700?
Let's face it, the ATI RV770 and its derivatives have become a rage. Everybody loves this chip and wants a card based on this, be it the card that made NVIDIA slash their prices, the HD4850 or the HD4870 which rivals the GeForce GTX 260 at a decent price. In surveys conducted by several websites, be it TweakTown or Hexus.net, majority community members chose ATI as a brand over NVIDIA, rougly indicating that the HD4000 series has done an excellent repair job with ATI and its brand value.
Nothing (exciting) is going NVIDIA's way these days, their notebook graphics division has taken a beating over the recent faulty parts issue. The NVDA stock is a little volatile at the stock market these days, after the company announced it predicts weaker earnings this quarter financial year. Here's something to ponder: If NVIDIA predicts weaker earnings, how come talks are they have something to counter the R700, which AMD already made statements about, saying it will "overwhelm the GeForce GTX 280"?
Let's face it, the ATI RV770 and its derivatives have become a rage. Everybody loves this chip and wants a card based on this, be it the card that made NVIDIA slash their prices, the HD4850 or the HD4870 which rivals the GeForce GTX 260 at a decent price. In surveys conducted by several websites, be it TweakTown or Hexus.net, majority community members chose ATI as a brand over NVIDIA, rougly indicating that the HD4000 series has done an excellent repair job with ATI and its brand value.
Nothing (exciting) is going NVIDIA's way these days, their notebook graphics division has taken a beating over the recent faulty parts issue. The NVDA stock is a little volatile at the stock market these days, after the company announced it predicts weaker earnings this quarter financial year. Here's something to ponder: If NVIDIA predicts weaker earnings, how come talks are they have something to counter the R700, which AMD already made statements about, saying it will "overwhelm the GeForce GTX 280"?
MCE Releases Blu-ray / HD-DVD Drives for Macs
MCE Technologies released MCE Drive, which allows Mac users to read, write and print labels on optical discs.
The drive can read and write up to dual-layer Blu-ray discs at 2X speeds for BD-RE, 4X for BD-R. It can read BD-R at 6X and BD-RE at 2X speeds. The drive can read HD-DVD at 6X speeds. All DVD and CD reading and writing formats are supported. The drive comes with Toast 9 Titanium as an option for $100 extra.
This drive comes in two major variants, the external drive which connects using Firewire or USB 2.0 for use by all Mac users, or the internal drive version for Mac Pro and Power Mac users. The external drive sells for US $750, and the internal drive for $500.
The drive can read and write up to dual-layer Blu-ray discs at 2X speeds for BD-RE, 4X for BD-R. It can read BD-R at 6X and BD-RE at 2X speeds. The drive can read HD-DVD at 6X speeds. All DVD and CD reading and writing formats are supported. The drive comes with Toast 9 Titanium as an option for $100 extra.
This drive comes in two major variants, the external drive which connects using Firewire or USB 2.0 for use by all Mac users, or the internal drive version for Mac Pro and Power Mac users. The external drive sells for US $750, and the internal drive for $500.
Sunday, July 6th 2008
Arctic Cooling Breeze Review
The Arctic Cooling Breeze is a small desktop fan. It is not intended to cool computer components, instead it helps you keep your cool. The Breeze requires no additional power source, but uses USB 2.0 instead.
Intel Larrabee Capable of 2 TFLOPs
German tech-journal Heise caught up with Intel's Pat Gelsinger for an article discussing the company's past and future as the silicon giant heads towards 40 years of service this 18th of July.
Among several topics, came up the most interesting one, visual computing and Intel's plans on it. 'Larrabee' strikes as a buzzword. It is the codename of Intel's upcoming graphics processor (GPU) architecture with which it plans to take on established players such as NVIDIA and AMD among others.
What's unique (so far) about Larrabee is that it's entirely made up of x86 processing cores. The Larrabee is likely to have 32 x86 processing cores. Here's a surprise: These processing cores are based on the design of Pentuim P54C, a 13+ year old x86 processor. This processor will be miniaturised to the 45nm fabrication process, they will be assisted by a 512-bit SIMD unit and these cores will support 64-bit address. Gelsinger says that 32 of these cores clocked at 2.00 GHz could belt out 2 TFLOPs of raw computational power. That's close to that of the upcoming AMD R700. Heise also reports that this GPU could have a TDP of as much as 300W (peak).With inputs from Heise
Among several topics, came up the most interesting one, visual computing and Intel's plans on it. 'Larrabee' strikes as a buzzword. It is the codename of Intel's upcoming graphics processor (GPU) architecture with which it plans to take on established players such as NVIDIA and AMD among others.
What's unique (so far) about Larrabee is that it's entirely made up of x86 processing cores. The Larrabee is likely to have 32 x86 processing cores. Here's a surprise: These processing cores are based on the design of Pentuim P54C, a 13+ year old x86 processor. This processor will be miniaturised to the 45nm fabrication process, they will be assisted by a 512-bit SIMD unit and these cores will support 64-bit address. Gelsinger says that 32 of these cores clocked at 2.00 GHz could belt out 2 TFLOPs of raw computational power. That's close to that of the upcoming AMD R700. Heise also reports that this GPU could have a TDP of as much as 300W (peak).With inputs from Heise
Lian-Li Introduces TR-5 Fan Bus & Temp Gauge Combo Unit
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the TR-5 Fan Bus and Temp gauge combo unit. The innovative device takes up one 5.25 bay, and has a full frontal LCD, showing the various fan speeds and temperatures within your chassis environment. It comes in two flavors; one metallic silver, the other matt black.
Allowing up to four different temperatures (0 °C to 99 °C ~ +/-2 °C) and fan speeds, ranging from (1) CPU, (2) VGA, and (3 & 4) system 1 & system 2 fans, the TR-5 is more than adequate for your cooling needs. In addition the device has an Alarm / Date and Time function, with settings for either °C or °F temperature display modes at the touch of a button.
The TR-5 works on 12V DC, with 0.45A maximum current 3 pin fans. At standard factory settings, the fan speed will be regulated according to pre-set temperature ranges. These can be adjusted. You may also force the device to maintain slow/medium or high speeds or allow it to continue in automatic mode. There is a failsafe alarm option should any fan malfunction or if the temperature sensors detect overheating. When the alarm is activated, the backlit LCD displays a flashing red color.
For more details on features for the TR-5 please go to the Lian-Li website here.
Allowing up to four different temperatures (0 °C to 99 °C ~ +/-2 °C) and fan speeds, ranging from (1) CPU, (2) VGA, and (3 & 4) system 1 & system 2 fans, the TR-5 is more than adequate for your cooling needs. In addition the device has an Alarm / Date and Time function, with settings for either °C or °F temperature display modes at the touch of a button.
The TR-5 works on 12V DC, with 0.45A maximum current 3 pin fans. At standard factory settings, the fan speed will be regulated according to pre-set temperature ranges. These can be adjusted. You may also force the device to maintain slow/medium or high speeds or allow it to continue in automatic mode. There is a failsafe alarm option should any fan malfunction or if the temperature sensors detect overheating. When the alarm is activated, the backlit LCD displays a flashing red color.
For more details on features for the TR-5 please go to the Lian-Li website here.
R700 to Come in 2048MB Flavour?
Although unreliable sources have been pointing out to the possibility that The Radeon HD 4870 X2 (R700) could come in a 2GB variant for a while now, we now get reports from even the Taiwanese industry observer, DigiTimes that the R700 in fact could come in a 2048 MB GDDR5 flavour. Similar reports have also been sourced from the likes of HKEPC and ChipHell. Current products such as the Radeon HD 4870 come equipped with "IDGV51-05A1F1C-40X" 512 Mbit GDDR5 chips made by Qimonda, the cards feature 8 such chips. It's already known that the R700 comes with a total of 16 memory chips, 8 on each side of the PCB, Qimonda readies its 1 Gbit memory chips slated for a July, 2008 release, Hyundai/Hynix already have their parts in the making.
Expect this product to launch by late August.With inputs from DigiTimes
Expect this product to launch by late August.With inputs from DigiTimes
Fresh Product Images of the R700 Emerge
With the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, codenamed R700, inching towards an August launch, ChipHell released fresh pictures of the R700, these are product images of the card in the form in which it will be sold, all built to order.
Visually, the R700 can be regarded as a black colored R680 (HD 3870 X2). While early shots of the cooler showed it to have a red colored leaf-blower, these shots show a black one. The appearance can be described as: Black PCB, black see-thru cooler cover, black leaf-blower, black heatspreader over the rear-side of the PCB.
Visually, the R700 can be regarded as a black colored R680 (HD 3870 X2). While early shots of the cooler showed it to have a red colored leaf-blower, these shots show a black one. The appearance can be described as: Black PCB, black see-thru cooler cover, black leaf-blower, black heatspreader over the rear-side of the PCB.
Saturday, July 5th 2008
Today's Reviews
Chipsets
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Mousepads
PhysX on Radeon 'Saga': What we Missed
Amidst this whole 'nGOHQ' saga, and us getting astonished at the way things turned out, here's what we missed:
NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:
NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:
Service Providers Could Subsidize Ultra-portable Notebooks
A lot of us have high-end mobile phones which have high MSRP subsidized to a great deal of its original price by service providers (such as AT&T, Vodafone, etc.) after signing a time-bound contract for using their serivice. Some variants of ASUS Eee PC and other competing brands are equipped with 3G High Speed Down/Uplink Packet Access (HSDPA) connectivity, which allows service providers to provide internet connectivity among other features. This means a good venture for them since they could sign you on a service contract and sell you these ultra-portable notebooks at subsidized prices a-là mobile phones. ECS is already in the process of signing partnerships with several service providers in Europe.
With these notebooks falling in the same price-band as mid-high end mobile phones, PDAs, etc., internet connectivity, PC-style, is more affordable than ever before.
With these notebooks falling in the same price-band as mid-high end mobile phones, PDAs, etc., internet connectivity, PC-style, is more affordable than ever before.
MSI Looks to Compete with VIA Pico-ITX, Rolls out MS-7314 Wind-Board
The competition heats up with compact-computing. MSI has released a special motherboard which could compete with the VIA Pico-ITX board. This compact motherboard has a hardwired Intel Atom N230 processor clocked at 1.60 GHz that is passively cooled by an aluminum heatsink, it shares this heatsink with a Intel 945GC northbridge that's the core-logic used accompnied with a ICH7 southbridge. It features an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 and Realtek ALC 888HD audio.
While the board doesn't feature an onboard PSU unlike the offering from VIA, it features two DDR2 slots for DDR2 667/533 MHz, two SATA II ports, an IDE connector, ports arranged in the standard ATX fashion. A PCI slot is provided. The board features onboard ethernet along with 6-channel audio. This board has started selling in Japan, where it's priced at approx. US $95 and measures 19cm x 17cm.
While the board doesn't feature an onboard PSU unlike the offering from VIA, it features two DDR2 slots for DDR2 667/533 MHz, two SATA II ports, an IDE connector, ports arranged in the standard ATX fashion. A PCI slot is provided. The board features onboard ethernet along with 6-channel audio. This board has started selling in Japan, where it's priced at approx. US $95 and measures 19cm x 17cm.
AMD Chipset Roadmap for 2009 Uncovered
As of today, AMD is close to over a year and a half behind Intel with the implementation of the DDR3 system memory standard, and it doesn't look like we are going to see a DDR3 AMD platform only until late this year or early next year. Chilian website CHW.net published slides of the roadmaps for AMD chipsets in the months to come, also published are slides refering to the details of the next generation southbridge by AMD, even though the latest entry, the SB700 is only teething and only the latest motherboards with 7-Series chipsets feature this.
Intel Sees a Clear Path to 10nm Fabrication Process
Pat Gelsinger of Intel says that they will be in a position to shrink their chips to a 10 nanometer silicon fabrication process within the next ten years.
Referring to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his famous law, Gelsinger said: "There was a time where Intel and his colleagues wondered whether they could reach 100nm chips." continued, "But we did do that, and today we see a clear way to get to under 10 nanometers. With Moore's Law we always have about 10 years of visibility into the future, so beyond 10 nanometers, we're not sure how we'll do it".
Gelsinger said that "We are putting more and more of the periodic table onto that silicon scaffolding. Today we use about half of the elements on the periodic table. When [Intel co-founder Robert] Noyce and Moore started, they used six elements, more elements have to be added to facilitate such a shrink".
Referring to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his famous law, Gelsinger said: "There was a time where Intel and his colleagues wondered whether they could reach 100nm chips." continued, "But we did do that, and today we see a clear way to get to under 10 nanometers. With Moore's Law we always have about 10 years of visibility into the future, so beyond 10 nanometers, we're not sure how we'll do it".
Gelsinger said that "We are putting more and more of the periodic table onto that silicon scaffolding. Today we use about half of the elements on the periodic table. When [Intel co-founder Robert] Noyce and Moore started, they used six elements, more elements have to be added to facilitate such a shrink".
NVIDIA Prepares GeForce 9500, up to 3 times Faster than 8500 GT
NVIDIA is preparing an addition to its GeForce 9 series, the GeForce 9500, slated for a July 29, 2008 launch. This product is positioned at an entry-mid range level, consists of two variants, the GeForce 9500 GDDR3, and a DDR2 model. Early tests prove this graphics processor (GPU) to be close to three times faster than the previous-generation 8500 GT. Unlike the reference 8500, this GPU supports 2-way SLI.
The nomenclature isn't certain yet. While the GDDR3 variant could be named 9500 GT, it remains to be seen what the DDR2 variant would be named. Provided, are images (in order) of the DDR2 and GDDR3 variants, followed by the specifications sheet.
With inputs from Hardspell, Images courtesy Tom's Hardware
The nomenclature isn't certain yet. While the GDDR3 variant could be named 9500 GT, it remains to be seen what the DDR2 variant would be named. Provided, are images (in order) of the DDR2 and GDDR3 variants, followed by the specifications sheet.
Microsoft to Offer Software on a Subscription Basis
Soon, among your usual utility bills of electricity, water, gas, telecom, could be a new addition, software. Microsoft has come up with a new subscription model, where instead of outright buying a license to use the software, consumers can subscribe to use it. A monthly or annual subscription charge has to be paid by the user (subscriber) to continue using the product.
This scheme for now covers products such as Microsoft Office and One Care security software. Analysts are already beginning to predict this will be Microsoft's next big business model which will fuel its growth in the years to come. There's much in store for both consumers and the company.
This scheme for now covers products such as Microsoft Office and One Care security software. Analysts are already beginning to predict this will be Microsoft's next big business model which will fuel its growth in the years to come. There's much in store for both consumers and the company.
Friday, July 4th 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Memory
Motherboards
Acer Announces G24 LCD With 50,000:1 Contrast Ratio
Acer introduces the world's first LCD monitor, the G24, that supports up to 50000:1 in contrast ratio. Designed to entice PC gamers, the G24 is dressed-to-thrill in an extreme contrast of orange-black colors and sleek contours, and supports high-definition (HD) graphics for intense gaming entertainment.
The eye-catching exterior of the G24 with solid angled surfaces makes an immediate impression, while satisfying PC gamers' needs and imagination. For a complete gaming package, the G24 and the Aspire Predator desktop PC are both painted with uncompromising metallic copper and feature deeply carved line design elements. Blue rays of light emanate from the power button of the LCD and desktop to exude a polished, powerful look.
The eye-catching exterior of the G24 with solid angled surfaces makes an immediate impression, while satisfying PC gamers' needs and imagination. For a complete gaming package, the G24 and the Aspire Predator desktop PC are both painted with uncompromising metallic copper and feature deeply carved line design elements. Blue rays of light emanate from the power button of the LCD and desktop to exude a polished, powerful look.
Details Surface About Defective NVIDIA Notebook Parts
Following NVIDIA's announcement of a US $150M to $200M package towards covering anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses relating to faulty 'packaging material', suppliers in Taiwan have gone low-key on the issue.
By 'packaging material', they don't mean 'packaging' as in the logistics, but 'packaging' as in electronics, a package simply put is a ceramic or plastic enclosure in which is embedded a chip (die) with tiny wirings connecting parts of the chip to an interface on one side, be it an array of pins or solder balls. Unlike CPUs, graphics processors are connected to the circuit boards using ball grid arrays.
By 'packaging material', they don't mean 'packaging' as in the logistics, but 'packaging' as in electronics, a package simply put is a ceramic or plastic enclosure in which is embedded a chip (die) with tiny wirings connecting parts of the chip to an interface on one side, be it an array of pins or solder balls. Unlike CPUs, graphics processors are connected to the circuit boards using ball grid arrays.
Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 Pink Gold Limited Edition In the Market
Built for the fairer sex, in-built support for 3.5G (HSDPA) WWAN glossy color and appearance are the two highlights of this new lifestyle notebook, Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 Pink Gold Edition, dubbed a limited edition.
Tipping the scales at 1.3 kg, this notebook is equipped with a 12.1" SuperFine-widescreen display with 1280x800 (WXGA) display format with a contrast ratio of 400:1. At the heart of this notebook is an Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100. A 1.3 megapixel web-camera, DVD-RW and a fingerprint reader for enhanced security. It comes with up to six hours of battery life. It's priced at US $2600.
Tipping the scales at 1.3 kg, this notebook is equipped with a 12.1" SuperFine-widescreen display with 1280x800 (WXGA) display format with a contrast ratio of 400:1. At the heart of this notebook is an Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100. A 1.3 megapixel web-camera, DVD-RW and a fingerprint reader for enhanced security. It comes with up to six hours of battery life. It's priced at US $2600.
Radeon PhysX Creator: 'NVIDIA Offered To Help Us', 'Expected More From AMD'
In a dramatic turnaround of events, NGOHQ.com, the creators of a special system software that allowed users of the ATI Radeon graphics accelerators to use proprietary features of NVIDIA graphics accelerators such as GPU-accelerated version of the NVIDIA PhysX game physics API, claim that in fact NVIDIA wanted to help them with this effort. On June, the 26th we had covered reports of the said outfit improvising a driver after proving that NVIDIA's proprietary GPGPU architecture, CUDA was flexible enough to work on a ATI RV670 graphics processor.
Leadtek Launches WinFast PX9800 GeForce 9800 GTX+ Card
Leadtek Research Inc., a global front runner in extreme visual graphics technology development, announces the launch of the latest products in its WinFast series. The new WinFast PX9800 GTX+, represents a dazzling 15% speed boost over the PX9800 GTX. The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX-based graphics card can vamp up performance like never before and provide optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Compatible with 3-way SLI technology, the new card gives every user the thrill of extreme HD gaming and first-rate entertainment experience.
Featuring a powerful single GeForce 9800 GTX GPU with 128 streaming fast cores each running at a blistering all time record GPU clock speed of 738MHz, WinFast PX9800 GTX+ delivers the smoothest ever game-play quality and exceptional value on price/performance. With the latest Microsoft DirectX 10 with full Shader Model 4.0 support, it can also offer realistic film quality gaming effects, guaranteeing users best possible performance in 3D graphics user interface under the Windows Vista operating system.
Featuring a powerful single GeForce 9800 GTX GPU with 128 streaming fast cores each running at a blistering all time record GPU clock speed of 738MHz, WinFast PX9800 GTX+ delivers the smoothest ever game-play quality and exceptional value on price/performance. With the latest Microsoft DirectX 10 with full Shader Model 4.0 support, it can also offer realistic film quality gaming effects, guaranteeing users best possible performance in 3D graphics user interface under the Windows Vista operating system.
Transcend Introduces aXeRam DDR3-1800 MHz Gamer and Enthusiast Memory
Transcend Information Inc. (Transcend), a global leader in the manufacture of high performance memory modules, is proud to unveil aXeRam DDR3-1800+ Extreme Performance memory. Designed specifically for hard-core gamers using only top-binned, premium quality DRAM chips and custom high-purity aluminum heat sinks with cooling fins, the aXeRam DDR3-1800 dual-channel kit delivers amazing high-speed overclocking performance while maintaining cool temperatures and rock-solid system stability.
Transcend's 2GB aXeRam DDR3-1800 kit's two identically-matched 240-pin unbuffered 1GB DDR3 1800MHz DIMMs are carefully matched for use in dual-channel configuration, which together provide memory bandwidth of up to 28.8GB/s. To ensure extra-stability and signal integrity at high clock speeds, all aXeRam modules use robust eight-layer PCBs that fully comply with JEDEC standards. The aXeRam 128Mx8 DDR3 DRAM chips are selected with the strictest quality and performance standards and are manufactured using small Fine-Pitch Ball Grid Array (FBGA) packages to assure better thermal dissipation, electrical efficiency and improved overclocking performance. Transcend's aXeRam DDR3-1800 modules also support new Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) technology, which allows users with high-performance motherboards to easily overclock their memory with aXerRam's built-in aggressive speed-maximized profiles, or manually input their own memory timing parameters to take their system to the next level.
Transcend's 2GB aXeRam DDR3-1800 kit's two identically-matched 240-pin unbuffered 1GB DDR3 1800MHz DIMMs are carefully matched for use in dual-channel configuration, which together provide memory bandwidth of up to 28.8GB/s. To ensure extra-stability and signal integrity at high clock speeds, all aXeRam modules use robust eight-layer PCBs that fully comply with JEDEC standards. The aXeRam 128Mx8 DDR3 DRAM chips are selected with the strictest quality and performance standards and are manufactured using small Fine-Pitch Ball Grid Array (FBGA) packages to assure better thermal dissipation, electrical efficiency and improved overclocking performance. Transcend's aXeRam DDR3-1800 modules also support new Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) technology, which allows users with high-performance motherboards to easily overclock their memory with aXerRam's built-in aggressive speed-maximized profiles, or manually input their own memory timing parameters to take their system to the next level.
Thursday, July 3rd 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Sound Cards
Point of View GeForce GTX 260 Assassins Creed Edition Review
At this time NVIDIA's new GTX 260 graphics cards are positioned to be quite a bit more expensive than ATI's similar performing HD 4870. However, NVIDIA includes support for CUDA and PhysX. We also saw amazing overclocking potential on our GTX 260 card, even surpassing the $200 more expensive GTX 280.
Memory Configurations of RV730 and RV710 Come to Light
Admidst the a virtual arms race between the two giants of the discrete graphics industry, information trickles about the memory configurations that the mid-range RV730 (Radeon HD4650 / HD4670) and entry-level RV710 (Radeon HD4450 / HD4470) come in.
NordicHardware reports that two different GDDR3 memory configurations could be seen with RV710. Both configurations operate at 800MHz, but the density varies from 512MB Hynix memory to 1024MB Samsung chips. This points to that the HD4450 and HD4470 models will be separated by GPU clock. RV730 offers a bit more variation with three different clock frequencies and two different densities. One 700MHz 512MB model, and two 900MHz models, of which one sports 512MB Hynix memory and one sports 1024MB Samsung chips. And finally, there is one model with 512MB Hynix memory operating at 1000MHz. It is assumed that the Radeon HD 4650 is the 700MHz cards, while the 4670 model is represented by the three remaining cards.
NordicHardware reports that two different GDDR3 memory configurations could be seen with RV710. Both configurations operate at 800MHz, but the density varies from 512MB Hynix memory to 1024MB Samsung chips. This points to that the HD4450 and HD4470 models will be separated by GPU clock. RV730 offers a bit more variation with three different clock frequencies and two different densities. One 700MHz 512MB model, and two 900MHz models, of which one sports 512MB Hynix memory and one sports 1024MB Samsung chips. And finally, there is one model with 512MB Hynix memory operating at 1000MHz. It is assumed that the Radeon HD 4650 is the 700MHz cards, while the 4670 model is represented by the three remaining cards.
Hitachi Positive About 5 TB Hard-Drive by 2010
The first hard-drive vendor to reach the 1 TB milestone, Hitachi says that it feels positive about being able to supply commercially-available hard-disk drives (HDD) with 5 TB capacities by 2010. The new drives would be able to increase density of information stored on a standard platter using the current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistance (CPP-GMR) technique.
This technique aims to push data density above 1 TB per sqare inch though the technology is only starting to get implemented on a large scale. Says Yoshihiro Shiroishi: "By 2010, just two disks will suffice to provide the same storage capacity as the human brain."
This technique aims to push data density above 1 TB per sqare inch though the technology is only starting to get implemented on a large scale. Says Yoshihiro Shiroishi: "By 2010, just two disks will suffice to provide the same storage capacity as the human brain."
Price-cuts of GeForce GTX 200 Series Imminent
Sources tell TG Daily that there are a series of price cuts scheduled for the GeForce GTX 200 series graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 260 which now sells for as low as US $379.99 (after e-tailer rebates), could have its price slashed by US $30 sending its price down to as low as $359.99, and the flagship GTX 280 could face a US $90 slash sending its price down to as low as $559.99 (versus the original price). There is a likelihood of e-tailers coming up with their own rebate schemes. The fresh price-bands could take effect from the 7th of July, 2008.
NVIDIA Roadmap Suggests DirectX 10.1 GPU in Q4 2008, GDDR5 in 2008
TG Daily stumbled across roadmap information of NVIDIA which provides certain details of the green giant's DirectX 10.1 implementation plans. Currently, ATI and S3 Graphics make graphics processors (GPU) compliant to DirectX 10.1 specifications. In a presentation slide, are seen plans of NVIDIA coming up with a brand new fleet of mobile (notebook) DirectX 10.1 graphics processors slated for spring 2009 and desktop GPUs either for late Q4 2008 or early 2009 with a possible ramp throughout Q1 and Q2 of 2009.
This gives competitors at least a 6-month time advantage in which they could build developer relations and aid development of games based on the DirectX 10.1 API since it's now certain that the API is going to become an industry-wide standard, with the biggest player in the discrete-graphics industry having plans to embrace it.
The second revelation that slide brings up is that NVIDIA will implement GDDR5 memory with its upcoming products within 2008.
This gives competitors at least a 6-month time advantage in which they could build developer relations and aid development of games based on the DirectX 10.1 API since it's now certain that the API is going to become an industry-wide standard, with the biggest player in the discrete-graphics industry having plans to embrace it.
The second revelation that slide brings up is that NVIDIA will implement GDDR5 memory with its upcoming products within 2008.
NVIDIA Admits to Selling Faulty Mobile GPUs, Shares Plummet
NVIDIA Admits to Selling Faulty Mobile GPUs, Could Cost it up to $200 M
NVIDIA admits that some of its notebook graphics processors are failing at "higher than normal rates", in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These chip failures will cost NVIDIA anywhere between 150 and 200 million US Dollars this quarter financial year toward warranty, repair, return and replacement for laptops with such NVIDIA products incorporated.
Nvidia says that "significant quantities" of chips are experiencing thermal issues caused by possibly weak die and packaging - in essence the parts are overheating and failing, while not pointing out exactly which laptop models are affected by this. As an immediate response, NVIDIA prepared an emergency driver that maintains the fan cooling speed higher than original parameters. Expect the notebook to be noisier.
NVIDIA had announced yesterday that they were looking at a Q2 revenue falling more in the range of $875 million to $950 million contradicting analysts' speculation of a $1.1 billion figure. Repercussions soon followed at the Nasdaq, where the NVIDIA stock plunged 21.94 per cent or $3.95 to $14.08 a share.
NVIDIA admits that some of its notebook graphics processors are failing at "higher than normal rates", in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These chip failures will cost NVIDIA anywhere between 150 and 200 million US Dollars this quarter financial year toward warranty, repair, return and replacement for laptops with such NVIDIA products incorporated.
Nvidia says that "significant quantities" of chips are experiencing thermal issues caused by possibly weak die and packaging - in essence the parts are overheating and failing, while not pointing out exactly which laptop models are affected by this. As an immediate response, NVIDIA prepared an emergency driver that maintains the fan cooling speed higher than original parameters. Expect the notebook to be noisier.
NVIDIA had announced yesterday that they were looking at a Q2 revenue falling more in the range of $875 million to $950 million contradicting analysts' speculation of a $1.1 billion figure. Repercussions soon followed at the Nasdaq, where the NVIDIA stock plunged 21.94 per cent or $3.95 to $14.08 a share.
OCZ Introduces a Range of Intel XMP-compliant Memory
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the expansion of its Intel Extreme Memory modules lineup, the latest memory solution that implements a high-performance specification optimized and predefined for the Intel X38 and X48 chipsets. The new modules are rated at DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 and feature the all-new Intel branded black XTC heatspreader. With a long history of providing the most innovative products to the enthusiast community, OCZ is excited to take advantage of Intel's interest and development of overclocking platforms with these latest additions to the series.
Arctic Cooling Intros AC Twin Turbo with HD 4000 Series Support
The Swiss cooling solutions provider ARCTIC COOLING today announced the launch of the dual-fan Accelero TWIN TURBO, adding another multicompatible high performance merchandise into their reputable VGA cooler product line. Specifications are provided below:
Blizzard Intros WoW Authenticator Device to Counter Account Misuse
Following countless complaints of World of Warcraft (WoW) user account hijacks and misuse, Blizzard has come up with a device, a security code generator that each user possesses, the device generates a six-digit security code that the user has to enter when logging on to the WoW account. The generation pattern is unique for each user's generator and this effectively eradicates account misuse, or at least attempts to. Blizzard CEO and cofounder Mike Morhaime says "It's important to us that World of Warcraft offers a safe and enjoyable game environment", he further adds that an aspect of that is helping players avoid account compromise, so they are pleased to make this additional layer of security available to them.
Once activated with Blizzard, the authenticator offers a six-digit code that must be used within 60 seconds on a gamer's WoW account. The user has to enter this number alongside username and password. Similar methods are adopted by PayPal, banks, and other financial institutions to help protect data, PayPal charges US $5 for the PayPal Security Key.
Blizzard plans to charge US $6.50 for the device but no announcements are made as to when it will be available.
Once activated with Blizzard, the authenticator offers a six-digit code that must be used within 60 seconds on a gamer's WoW account. The user has to enter this number alongside username and password. Similar methods are adopted by PayPal, banks, and other financial institutions to help protect data, PayPal charges US $5 for the PayPal Security Key.
Blizzard plans to charge US $6.50 for the device but no announcements are made as to when it will be available.
Sony Scraps 2.40 Playstation 3 Firmware Update
In what can dubbed as a fiasco, the much anticipated 2.40 firmware update for the Playstation 3 (PS3) gaming console which was released the other day, has been scrapped owing to several units facing acute problems with the new firmware. The new firmware had brought in new features such as an in-game XMB access and a trophy support along with enhanced gamer profile system.
Shortly after the update went online, several users began reporting problems with the update. A thread at the official Playstation 3 forums is currently over 60-pages and is filled with a number of ranting PS3 owners. Kokatu.com reports that the new firmware causes controller malfunctions, and sometimes corrupts the system completely. One of the solutions included that the user could remove and format the hard-drive and reinsert it, the system will prompt the user to format it following which the system will return to normalcy. Of course, you lose all previous firmware update along with all your saved games and user profiles. If you are a victim of this, please visit this site for possible solutions.
Sony has come up with a statement saying "In order to further assess the issue, we have temporarily taken the firmware offline for further testing. We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up".With inputs from Kokatu, Gamesindustry.biz
Shortly after the update went online, several users began reporting problems with the update. A thread at the official Playstation 3 forums is currently over 60-pages and is filled with a number of ranting PS3 owners. Kokatu.com reports that the new firmware causes controller malfunctions, and sometimes corrupts the system completely. One of the solutions included that the user could remove and format the hard-drive and reinsert it, the system will prompt the user to format it following which the system will return to normalcy. Of course, you lose all previous firmware update along with all your saved games and user profiles. If you are a victim of this, please visit this site for possible solutions.
Sony has come up with a statement saying "In order to further assess the issue, we have temporarily taken the firmware offline for further testing. We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up".With inputs from Kokatu, Gamesindustry.biz
Firefox Downloaded 8,002,530 Times in 24 Hours, now Official Record
Mozilla now holds the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software within 24 hours. On the Mozilla Firefox 3 launch day, from 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008 the browser software was downloaded 8,002,530 times as recorded by Guinness - thus official declaring it a world record.
Wednesday, July 2nd 2008
Today's Reviews
Cooling
Graphics Cards
Harddisks
Keyboards
Memory
Motherboards
PowerColor AMD TV Wonder 600 PCIe x1 Review
The new TV Wonder 600 PCIe TV tuner card is the PCI-Express x1 entry level model of the new series. This is also the first time that the TV Wonder series is available in Europe with the PAL standard. It can be used for analog or DVB-T signals and manages MPEG encoding by software. The card is built on a fancy purple PCB, comes with an extremely stylish IR receiver along with a remote and PowerCinema 5.
ASUS Inflates the Eee PC Series Even More
They just keep coming in, keep coming in bunches. I'm refering to the Eee PC series by ASUS which has unofficial product releases almost on a daily basis now. As the competition for ultra-portable notebooks hots up with prominent players such as Dell, HP and the more recent MSI with the Wind series, ASUS have scheduled several variants of the Eee PC concept for launch. Feeling the heat of the 10" MSI Wind series, ASUS have announced the Eee PC 1000 and Eee PC 1000H complete with Intel's Atom processor, nearly full-size keyboard, and the option to select a HDD for the first time on the Eee series.
Apart from these, four new models, the 903, 904, 904 HD, and 905 are in line. Coming to the Eee PC 904 and 905, although not much is known about the differences between the 904 and 905, both use the larger 10" Eee PC 1000's frame with the smaller 8.9" screen from the Eee PC 900/900. So users can now have the 8.9" screen and a larger keyboard; but they now have to deal with the increased screen bezel. With the 904 HD, the 'HD' doesn't refer to a high-definition display as most of us would assume, but that you get a conventional hard-disk drive instead of a solid-state drive. We've already covered the Eee Monitor in a recent news item here.
With inputs from DailyTech
Apart from these, four new models, the 903, 904, 904 HD, and 905 are in line. Coming to the Eee PC 904 and 905, although not much is known about the differences between the 904 and 905, both use the larger 10" Eee PC 1000's frame with the smaller 8.9" screen from the Eee PC 900/900. So users can now have the 8.9" screen and a larger keyboard; but they now have to deal with the increased screen bezel. With the 904 HD, the 'HD' doesn't refer to a high-definition display as most of us would assume, but that you get a conventional hard-disk drive instead of a solid-state drive. We've already covered the Eee Monitor in a recent news item here.
Intel Downplays the Growing Popularity of NVIDIA CUDA
The co-general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, Pat Gelsinger told Custom PC that NVIDIA's CUDA programming model would be nothing more than an interesting footnote in the annals of computing history.
Gelsinger says that programmers simply don't have enough time to learn how to program for new architectures like CUDA. Says Gelsinger: "The problem that we've seen over and over and over again in the computing industry is that there's a cool new idea, and it promises a 10x or 20x performance improvement, but you've just got to go through this little orifice called a new programming model. Those orifices have always been insurmountable as long as the general purpose computing models evolve into the future.". The Sony CELL and the fact that it didn't live up to all its hype as something superior to current computing architectures proves his point.
Gelsinger tells that Intel's Larrabee graphics chip will be entirely based on Intel Architecture x86 cores, and the reason for that is so developers can program for the graphics processor without having to learn a new language. Larrabee will have full support for APIs like DirectX and OpenGL.
Gelsinger says that programmers simply don't have enough time to learn how to program for new architectures like CUDA. Says Gelsinger: "The problem that we've seen over and over and over again in the computing industry is that there's a cool new idea, and it promises a 10x or 20x performance improvement, but you've just got to go through this little orifice called a new programming model. Those orifices have always been insurmountable as long as the general purpose computing models evolve into the future.". The Sony CELL and the fact that it didn't live up to all its hype as something superior to current computing architectures proves his point.
Gelsinger tells that Intel's Larrabee graphics chip will be entirely based on Intel Architecture x86 cores, and the reason for that is so developers can program for the graphics processor without having to learn a new language. Larrabee will have full support for APIs like DirectX and OpenGL.
Microsoft Slashing the Price of Xbox 360 Console Variant
Industry sources confirm that Microsoft will be cutting the prices of its popular Xbox 360 gaming console variant, the 20GB Pro by US $50, bringing it down to US $299. A major retailer said that this move would come in before E3 which runs July 15-17 in Los Angeles.
The previous price-cut to this console was during the launch period of Halo 3, where the price cut from $399 ro $349. This slash is more of a ploy to increase the product's competitiveness against the Nintendo Wii while also making it a good deal over the Blu-ray-equipped PlayStation 3 in terms of market share, even so with the holiday season around the corner. While Sony could be pondering its own price cut, the consumer electronics giant did note recently in an annual report that the PlayStation 3 has cost the company $3.3 billion since its late 2006 launch because of a strategic decision to sell the system for less than it costs to make.
The previous price-cut to this console was during the launch period of Halo 3, where the price cut from $399 ro $349. This slash is more of a ploy to increase the product's competitiveness against the Nintendo Wii while also making it a good deal over the Blu-ray-equipped PlayStation 3 in terms of market share, even so with the holiday season around the corner. While Sony could be pondering its own price cut, the consumer electronics giant did note recently in an annual report that the PlayStation 3 has cost the company $3.3 billion since its late 2006 launch because of a strategic decision to sell the system for less than it costs to make.
SSDs Don't Reduce Power-consumption, they Increase it
And you thought your solid-state hard-drive (SSD) increased your laptop's battery life? Think again. In a new article, Tom's Hardware investigated the possibility that SSDs in fact increase power consumption of the system, and the results were astonishing.
While a conventional hard-drive idles at 0.5W to 1.3W, it's only during heavy-duty as in lots of random-access, when the actuator moves the heads back and forth that the drive could peak at up to 4W. NAND Flash based SSDs only know two power states, 'idle' and 'active', SSDs from some vendors don't even feature these. While power consumption of conventional drives are proportional to their form-factor since it affects the weight of the platter(s) and effectively the load on the motor, with SSDs, form factor doesn't affect consumption, and a 1.8" SSD could have higher idle consumption than its conventional counterpart.
You can read the article here.
While a conventional hard-drive idles at 0.5W to 1.3W, it's only during heavy-duty as in lots of random-access, when the actuator moves the heads back and forth that the drive could peak at up to 4W. NAND Flash based SSDs only know two power states, 'idle' and 'active', SSDs from some vendors don't even feature these. While power consumption of conventional drives are proportional to their form-factor since it affects the weight of the platter(s) and effectively the load on the motor, with SSDs, form factor doesn't affect consumption, and a 1.8" SSD could have higher idle consumption than its conventional counterpart.
You can read the article here.
BFG Tech Announces Factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 260 Variants
BFG Technologies, Inc., the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC2 and the BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCX factory overclocked graphics cards.
Backed with 24/7/365 free technical support and a lifetime warranty, the BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC2 and OCX versions are factory overclocked graphics cards that go through extensive testing to find the right mix of speeds for the core, memory, and shader clocks that will produce the best performance and uncompromisable stability at each level.
Backed with 24/7/365 free technical support and a lifetime warranty, the BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC2 and OCX versions are factory overclocked graphics cards that go through extensive testing to find the right mix of speeds for the core, memory, and shader clocks that will produce the best performance and uncompromisable stability at each level.
ASUS 'Eee Monitor' on the Cards
First talked about at Computex 2008, the newest entry to the ASUS 'Eee family' is the Eee Monitor. This product aims to give you everything you would expect a monitor to provide alongside display. The monitor in the pictures looks to be 19 to 20 inch, has a fixed web-cam, a 4-port USB hub, but what looks rather strange is that this 'monitor' doesn't looks like it has a D-Sub or DVI connector leading us to believe it's a self-contained PC a-là Apple Mac. The connectors behind show an ethernet port, a phone jack, standard sound jacks (line-in, line-out, mic), and the usual power-input. If it's meant to serve as a monitor, it must also double as a docking station, because otherwise there's no reason to have Ethernet and audio ports. The product also features integrated speakers made by Denon. It also features integrated data-card readers.
Playstation 3 Firmware Update 2.40 Released
The much-anticipated Sony Playstation 3 Firmware 2.40 is now available, as promised, just as July 2nd rolled around. The update includes:
- Xross Media Bar (XMB) access in-game.
- Trophy Support (the PS3's answer to the Xbox 360's achievements).
- Expanded Gamer Profiles.
RiData Presents Single Level-Cell SSDs
Advanced Media, Inc., is a manufacturer and marketer of the popular Ridata brand of recordable DVD media, electronic storage products, and digital media accessories. The company is pleased to announce the Ridata Single Layer Cell (SLC) 2.5" IDE Ultra-S to its award-winning Ridata Solid State Drive (SSD) product line up. IDE is an established interface that is pin-to-pin compatible and eliminates setting the BIOS on installation. The Ridata SLC 2.5" IDE Ultra-S 16 and 32GB are now available, the 64 GB arrives in Q3 2008.
Tuesday, July 1st 2008
Today's Reviews
Cases
Graphics Cards
Motherboards
Processors
AXP 2.5/3.5" SATA to eSATA & USB Dock Review
AXP is now offering the very popular external hard drive docking station for SATA drives. The unit can take a 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives and offers eSATA on top of the usual USB 2.0 connectivity.
Intel Nehalem Turbo-charges Radeon HD4850 Benchmark
Intel Nehalem Posts Impressive CPU Scores with 3D Benchmarks
The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.
The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.
SentrySafe Intros Fire and Water-safe QA0005 External HDD.
SentrySafe Intros Fire and Water-safe External Storage
This 78 year old company, specializing in fool-proof safes that are supposed to be safe from fire and water introduce their latest product, the SentrySafe QA0005 Fire-Safe Waterproof, a fire and water safe external hard-drive.
The device uses a fortified Maxtor OneTouch4 Mini and bundles password protection and data encryption software. According to the company, this device can withstand up to 30 minutes at 840 °C and can be completely immersed in water for up to 24 hours.
The QA0005 sells for US $400.
This 78 year old company, specializing in fool-proof safes that are supposed to be safe from fire and water introduce their latest product, the SentrySafe QA0005 Fire-Safe Waterproof, a fire and water safe external hard-drive.
The device uses a fortified Maxtor OneTouch4 Mini and bundles password protection and data encryption software. According to the company, this device can withstand up to 30 minutes at 840 °C and can be completely immersed in water for up to 24 hours.
The QA0005 sells for US $400.
Survey Shows Apple Safari on a Surge Versus Firefox
A new survey by Net Applications shows a steady increase in the market share (not to be confused with browser usage) of Mozilla Firefox and more importantly, a surge in the usage of the Apple Safari web browser. The two web browser software have been chipping away share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) and it appears that Microsoft could use a convincing new browser rather sooner than later.
According to the survey, Internet Explorer (all versions together) still holds a 73.01 per cent market share, which is down by 1 per cent from 73.75 per cent in May and 74.83 per cent in April. While this growth of web-browser software against MSIE cannot be regarded as an upsurge just as yet, the growth of Apple Safari against other MSIE-alternatives is close to being called so. The Apple browser with a current share of 6.31%, up from 5.81% in April, has long overtaken Opera which was once considered the best alternative to MSIE and since early days believed in platform-diversity to gain market share.With inputs from TG Daily
According to the survey, Internet Explorer (all versions together) still holds a 73.01 per cent market share, which is down by 1 per cent from 73.75 per cent in May and 74.83 per cent in April. While this growth of web-browser software against MSIE cannot be regarded as an upsurge just as yet, the growth of Apple Safari against other MSIE-alternatives is close to being called so. The Apple browser with a current share of 6.31%, up from 5.81% in April, has long overtaken Opera which was once considered the best alternative to MSIE and since early days believed in platform-diversity to gain market share.With inputs from TG Daily
NZXT Debuts Sentry LX High-Performance Fan Controller
California based NZXT debuted today its first fan controller named Sentry LX. While it looks cool and might actually be cool, Sentry LX is just another new fan controller on the market. All of its features listed below are pretty much the standard these days.
- Simple Installation - Sentry LX slides easily into any dual 5.25" drive bay
- Complete Control - 5 Temperature Probes keep tabs on all areas of your system while the 5 Fan controllers adjust the fans' RPM speed
- Auto/Manual Modes - Allows users to automatically adjust the fan speeds to correspond to a specific temperature or manually set your system for extreme overclocking capabilities or absolute silence
- Temperature Alarm - Instant notification if temps rise above a designated point
- Intuitive Interface and LCD Display - NZXT's ergonomic interface design allows you to customize your airflow on the fly
- Sleek Design - Aluminum plated front panel is designed to match any high-end chassis
NVIDIA Appoints First CUDA Center of Excellence
NVIDIA Corporation and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) today announced that UIUC has been named as the world's first CUDA Center of Excellence. In addition to the appointment, NVIDIA has donated $500,000 to UIUC for the development of parallel computing facilities and the continuation of its research programs.
Apple Mac OS X 10.5.4 Combo Update Released
Apple posted today the 10.5.4 update recommended for its Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 Leopard operating systems. The 10.5.4 update includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. You can download the 561MB update code directly from Apple, or by using the Software Update feature in Mac OS X Leopard.
Lian-Li Launches the All New PC-A77 Full Tower Chassis
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-A77 full tower case incorporating outstanding quality with a clean simple style. Standing at 220mm x 595mm x 590mm (W,H,D), with every part of the front cover decked out in 5.25" bays. In total, 12x 5.25" bays which can support all your ODD needs, alternatively they can be stacked with HDD's via the internal HDD cages. The blue lit LED fan speed monitor surveys the temperature zones diligently and determines the best speed for your fans, keeping your rig cool and well ventilated.
Antec Intros Premium Line of Power Supplies with 80 PLUS Bronze Certification
Antec today presented its newest and most advanced family of power supply units, the Signature Series. Available in 850W and 650W models, the Signature PSUs feature several innovations that distinguish them from the competition. One of them is that they use active DC-to-DC voltage regulation, as opposed to the standard passive magnetic amplifier method, providing for shorter transient response times and greater system stability. In addition, the Signature Series boasts an advanced cooling system with a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) controlled fan, that ensures quiet and efficiend operation in any condition. Other features of the Signature Series include a dual power circuit board (PCB) layout and a hybrid advanced cable management system that uses modularized cables only for connectors that are of second importance. Main connectors such as the 24-pin ATX one, and the PCI-E power connectors are fixed. The Signature 650 and Signature 850 are available now and will retail for estimated street prices of $249.00 and $299.00, respectively. The PSUs are backed by Antec's Quality 5-Year Warranty for parts and labor.
Razer Launches Gaming Keyboard Exclusively for Chinese Gamers
Razer, the world's leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming and lifestyle electronics peripherals, has announced the launch of Aurantia (China Pro-Gaming Edition) - Razer's first entry level gaming keyboard that will be sold in China only. Physically the keyboard measures 446mm L x 205mm W x 29mm H (with the wrist rest attached) and offers 104 programmable keys with macro capabilities plus an additional three keys for 'gaming mode' (this one disables the Windows key), 'profile switching', and 'mute' functions. Future owners of Aurantia can also store and load up to 10 different keyboard profiles with on-the-fly switching function. A detachable non-slip wrist rest is supplied with the keyboard's package as well. The Aurantia uses red as lables for the keys and will be sold together with the Razer Salmosa mice (China Pro-Gaming Edition) as a bundle, at an MSRP of RMB 399. The public in China will have a chance to test the Razer Aurantia at the Razer booth at ChinaJoy 2008, happening in Shanghai later this month.
OCZ Announces Core Series 2.5-inch SATA II Solid State Drives
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Core Series SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drives (SSDs). OCZ has gained momentum in this pioneering technology, which uses NAND flash instead of rotating platters as the storage medium, and is a high-performance, highly reliable and energy-efficient alternative to conventional hard disc drives.
AMD Intros New Phenom X4 Processors
AMD Introduces New Phenom X4 Processors
AMD Introduces three new Phenom X4 quad-core desktop processors, the flagship Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition along with two low-power parts, the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e.
The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition is targeted at the performance/enthusiast segment, it features a 2.60 GHz clock speed and comes with an unlocked FSB multiplier among standard AMD Phenom specifications. This part however has a rated TDP of 140W and not all motherboards will be able to run it owing to its thermal and power characteristics. ASUS have already released a partial list of their motherboards that are ready for these 140W CPUs we covered here. You have to check with your motherboard vendor for compatibility. This chip attains its speed at a voltage of upto 1.3 V.
AMD Introduces three new Phenom X4 quad-core desktop processors, the flagship Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition along with two low-power parts, the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e.
The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition is targeted at the performance/enthusiast segment, it features a 2.60 GHz clock speed and comes with an unlocked FSB multiplier among standard AMD Phenom specifications. This part however has a rated TDP of 140W and not all motherboards will be able to run it owing to its thermal and power characteristics. ASUS have already released a partial list of their motherboards that are ready for these 140W CPUs we covered here. You have to check with your motherboard vendor for compatibility. This chip attains its speed at a voltage of upto 1.3 V.
AMD/ATI Tempts Game Developers with DirectX 10.1
With a market position resurrection in progress, AMD/ATI look to compete using a tried and tested tool for technological supremacy over its rival(s), developer-level optimizations for their games. Blizzard has been looking at implementing DirectX 10.1 with its future games. If that happens, it becomes a favorable scenario for AMD's products since Blizzard aren't habituated to making games that run best on only the most expensive hardware, but that with DirectX 10.1, they will look to implement certain DX10.1-exclusive effects, which means that even mid-range users of ATI products could enjoy the best visuals that the game has to offer, something NVIDIA and its users could miss out on.
ATI Preparing 'Super RV770' to Challenge GeForce GTX 200 Series
The RV770 is perhaps the best thing that happened to AMD in a long while. But more than AMD, it's perhaps the best thing that happened to us, the consumers. But general product launches seem to be just the tip of the ice-berg. The new PCB's designed by ATI for RV770 cards are actually running at well below the clock speed they can support and there is every reason to believe that these cards will be challenging NVIDIA's very best.
The HD4870 PCB with two 6-pin power connectors can support a maximum TDP of 225W (2x 75W from the power connectors + 75W from the PCI-Express interface). While at stock parameters, the HD4870 will not consume over 170W, it implies that with a fair bit of binning for high-performing parts, there is a serious lot of room for overclocking way beyond what the ordinary HD4870 cards can take.
The HD4870 PCB with two 6-pin power connectors can support a maximum TDP of 225W (2x 75W from the power connectors + 75W from the PCI-Express interface). While at stock parameters, the HD4870 will not consume over 170W, it implies that with a fair bit of binning for high-performing parts, there is a serious lot of room for overclocking way beyond what the ordinary HD4870 cards can take.
Jan 16th, 2025 16:55 EST
change timezone
Latest GPU Drivers
New Forum Posts
- Blackwell GPU die sizes revealed; regression in some cases (19)
- Need help with PSU advice (29)
- Lenovo ideapad 3 15iau7 stuck at 0.2ghz (3)
- What are you playing? (22603)
- Sapphire RX 6900 XT Toxic & Nitro+ SE Led Controller Chip Same? (0)
- Solidigm NVMe Custom Modded Driver for All NVMe Brands SSDs & Any NVMe SSDs (199)
- Anime Nation (12933)
- Ryzen 7600 ram 64gb vs 2 /4 channel,vs higher speed (54)
- i have beeping issues in my geraphic card (1long beep and 3 short beep) (24)
- Free Games Thread (4378)
Popular Reviews
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Technical Deep Dive
- AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review - The Best Gaming Processor
- ThieAudio Origin In-Ear Monitors Review - Basshead Love
- ASUS ROG Strix B860-A Gaming Wi-Fi Review
- ASRock Arc B570 Challenger OC Review
- G-Wolves Hati-S2 8K Review
- GPU Test System Update for 2025
- Sparkle B570 Guardian OC Review
- ASUS ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi Review
- LAMZU Maya X Review
Controversial News Posts
- NVIDIA 2025 International CES Keynote: Liveblog (468)
- AMD Debuts Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 Powered by RDNA 4, and FSR 4 (348)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Features 575 W TDP, RTX 5080 Carries 360 W TDP (217)
- AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Alleged Benchmark Leaks, Underwhelming Performance (204)
- 32 GB NVIDIA RTX 5090 To Lead the Charge As 5060 Ti Gets 16 GB Upgrade and 5060 Still Stuck With Last-Gen VRAM Spec (174)
- Potential RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Pricing in China Leaks (173)
- AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Boosts up to 3.10 GHz, Board Power Can Reach up to 330W (167)
- AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Tested in Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong (166)