Silicon giant Intel is preparing a fresh round of price-cuts, this time with its High-Performance SATA SSDs. The price cuts revolve around the company's X25-M and X18-M series, with cuts ranging between US $50 and $100. The SLC-based X25-E series however, is exempted from price cuts. The 80 GB variants of X25-M and X18-M get $50 off, while the 160 GB ones get $100 off. The new prices will be effective from April 26. It remains to be seen as of how these prices affect those of the SSDs Intel co-braded with companies such as Kingston, A-Data, etc.

UMC, a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that it has delivered customer ICs produced on its High Performance (HP) 40 nm process technology. The products were manufactured with excellent cycle time and yields for the large die-size programmable logic chips, which leveraged the foundry's triple-gate oxide, 12 metal layers and copper/low-k technology to enable 65% reduced power consumption and more than twice the density improvement over previous 65nm generation products. The advanced 40 nm ICs have already begun shipping in volume to the customer's end users for product sampling.

S.C. Chien, vice president of advanced technology development at UMC, said, "UMC continues to remain at the forefront of semiconductor foundry technology through the timely delivery of leading-edge processes that meet the demanding requirements of today's advanced applications. The delivery of these 40 nm customer products underscores this technology commitment, we look forward to bringing the performance advantages of our proven 40 nm technology to even more UMC customers."

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a leader in application-optimized, high-performance server solutions, today launched a comprehensive new line of server and workstation solutions specially designed to support the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed Nehalem). Supermicro has started shipping its new 2U Twin2 ("Twin Squared" with four hot-pluggable DP nodes), newly invented Twin GPU 1U server/workstation, the award-winning 1U Twin, SuperBlade, flexible Universal I/O (UIO) server, SAS2 storage systems, as well as its strong line of traditional application-optimized server solutions. Featuring the highest efficiency in the industry power supplies (93%+), cooling subsystems and motherboard designs, Supermicro solutions set a new record for the best performance-per-watt (375 GFLOPS/kW) and also deliver the best performance-per-dollar and performance-per-square-foot.

Based on the company's latest application-optimized Server Building Block architectures, Supermicro maximizes the new Nehalem technology, which includes QPI (Intel QuickPath Interconnect) for up to 6.4GT/s, Integrated DDR3 Memory Controller, multiple power envelops, and Intel Turbo Boost Technology, to provide the industry's highest performing and most optimized new generation server solutions.

AMD today announced the availability of GPU PerfStudio 2.0, a free, platform-agnostic, next-generation AMD graphics application development tool for game developers, obtainable through a closed beta program. GPU PerfStudio 2.0 has been designed from the ground up to easily integrate with existing projects, and help to identify and resolve performance issues early in the development cycle. With these tools, AMD is bringing its unparalleled understanding of 3D graphics technology and the leadership of its line of ATI Radeon graphics cards to bear on the development process.

"The GPU PerfStudio 2.0 suite of tools is extensive, customizable and, most importantly, based on open standards, which is critical for developers looking to integrate them into their existing workflows," said Neal Robison, director, Developer Relations, Graphics Products Group, AMD. "AMD is committed to arming developers with a full complement of hardware and development tools that help increase their development efficiency and improve 3D performance quality."

Taiwan-based English tech website OC Heaven has disclosed some performance figures of the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4890 1 GB graphics accelerator. The tests run are two of the most popular synthetic benchmarks: 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06. Also disclosed, rather verified, are the card's clock speeds as read by ATI Catalyst Control Center and GPU-Z. The test bed, from what the 3DMark06 window shows, consists of an Intel Core i7 920 CPU running at 2.66 GHz, coupled with 3 GB of system memory. In 3DMark06, the HD 4890 accelerator secured a score of 16,096 points, with SM 2.0 score of 6155, HDR/SM 3.0 score of 7521, and CPU score of 4836. In 3DMark Vantage, it secured a score of P10996. Catalyst Control Center reveals the card's memory bandwidth to be 124.8 GB/s, up from the 111 GB/s on its predecessor, the HD 4870. The early driver in use makes provides "RV790" as the device string to GPU-Z.

Update (03/19):Ukrainian website Overclockers.com.ua has come up with a more comprehensive 3DMark shootout between cards in this segment. Radeon HD 4890 and HD 4890 CrossFireX are part of the comparison. The testers used an Intel Q6600 CPU running on an X48 motherboard with 4 GB of memory. The article can be read (Google-translated to English) here.

Mushkin Enhanced, one of the leading manufacturers for High Performance Computer announces the availability of his first SSD-series called "Europe". The capacities are 32, 64, 128, 192 and 256GB in a noble aluminium housing and captivating with aggressive pricing.

"Once, Zeus felt in love with the beautiful Europe, now, every speed enthusiast can do the same." smiles Steffen Eisenstein, CEO of Mushkin Logistic GmbH and looks on the aluminium dressed SSDs. But like always for Mushkin, the inside value is one of the finest: With 150MB/s read and 90MB/s there is a convenient working guaranteed, no stuttering in games for loading, no vibration in your case and no annoying clicking for reading and writing. Due to the integrated Mini-USB 2.0 connector, you can also use the new SSD as an external storage without additional power supply.

There is a valid reason behind why Safari is growing in browser market-share, apart from the fact that iPhone carries it: it is arguably the fastest browser there is. The fourth beta version that surfaced earlier this week went a few notches ahead of Firefox (Minefield) 3.2a1 and Google Chrome in a review conducted by CNet, to take the top-sport for the fastest web-browser. Internet Explorer (IE) versions 7 and 8, Opera 9.6, Firefox 3, Chrome, Firefox(Minefield) 3.1 Alpha 1 and Safari 4 were put through JavaScript tests using the SunSpider suite. The PC was equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.10 GHz. Safari 4 beta gave IE 7 a sound thrashing at the test, emerging 42 times faster. The performance difference between the two were so vast that the reviewers had to prepare a seperate graph without IE 7 so there could be more resolution in the charts showing the differences between the rest of the contendors. Then again, one must take into account the fact that Chrome and Firefox (Minefield) 3.2 weren't all that behind Safari 4 beta, only a few notches. The scores are denoted by render time in terms of milliseconds. Lesser the better. The scores stand at:

• Safari 4 (Total time: 910 ms)
• Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136 ms)
• Google Chrome (1,177 ms)
• Firefox 3 (3,250 ms)
• Opera 9.6 (4,076 ms)
• Internet Explorer 8 (5,839 ms)
• Internet Explorer 7 (39,026 ms)

Solid-state drives are relatively new technology for anyone of us, and up until now we've heard only good things about them. They are fast, small, they have no moving parts, but what happens after extensive use of the flash memory that is incorporated in them? Yesterday a review was posted over at PC Perspective, entitled "Long-term performance analysis of Intel Mainstream SSDs". According to the information posted, it appears that Intel's X25-M MLC SSD drives may degrade in performance after a period of time when they are put to extensive use. PC Per claims that once an Intel solid-state drive is used, after a period of time it will no longer be as fast as a new one, neither its rated transfer speeds will be the same.
In response, Intel stated today: "Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences." Intel also said: "In general, when a PC's drive (SSD or HDD) is full, there will be some reduction in system performance, however the performance reduction reported by PC Perspective is higher than we generally expect, which is why we are looking into the methodology."
We'll keep you posted if there's new information on the matter.

ASUS, a pioneer in the adoption of cutting-edge notebook graphics, announced today the ASUS N81Vg, the world's first notebook to feature the new NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M graphics processing unit (GPU). The NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M GPU features NVIDIA CUDA technology with 32 processor cores, DirectX 10 support, and 1080p High Definition video playback through NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology. Coupled with the ASUS N81Vg's 14-inch LED backlit display, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M delivers unrivaled visual clarity and vibrancy.

Seagate today introduced its Constellation family ofnew enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.

"The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points."

Mushkin Enhanced, one of the leading manufacturers for High Performance Computer Parts announced today the release of its XP3-15000 DDR3 modules. Rated for 933MHz (1866MT/s data rate) and 8-9-8-24 latencies, the XP3-15000 modules provide astonishing performance on Intel X58 platforms while using a safe 1.65V supply voltage.

"Following our tradition of innovation in the high performance memory market, the new XP3-15000 brings Core i7 triple-channel kits to an elevated standard", said Brian Flood, Mushkin's director of product development. "Enthusiasts and gamers alike will enjoy the flexibility and stability of this new product while overclocking their machines."

"Spider" is the codename for a high-end desktop platform by AMD, which came to light late last year. It consisted of an AMD Phenom series processor, an AMD 790FX-based motherboard, and Radeon HD 3800-series graphics card(s). AMD would be offering a new high-end gaming platform based on its products, called "Dragon". It consists of a Phenom II processor, running on an AMD 790-series motherboard, and Radeon HD 4800-series graphics card(s). Expreview sourced a company-confidential side which illustrates the company's expectations from the platform, in terms of performance increments over its predecessor.

With office and productivity applications, AMD slates a 20~40% performance increment. The trend stays with multimedia applications. The gaming performance is where the money lies, with increments up to 280%. Again, take into account that the Dragon testbed is using a Radeon HD 4800 accelerator. 20~40% seems a significant figure, nonetheless.

A spy-shot of the dual-core Intel Atom processor has surfaced. The picture reveals an important bit about the design of the processor. Dual-core Atom isn't about two processor cores integrated onto one die, but two dies sharing a package and front-side bus, much in the same way its distant ancestor, the Pentium D was built. This design allows modularity and helps Intel cut manufacturing costs. They don't have to build separate wafers of dual-core dice but rather use two single core dice and integrate them onto one package. The Atom 330 will be the first product based on this design. Early performance tests with arithmetic and memory bandwidth reveal a good level of scaling, close to 100% that of the N270, a single-core 1.6 GHz part:

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.

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.

Most of you know that Microsoft created a new Service Pack for Windows Vista, and is in the middle of getting it out to people. Some select testers, such as CNET, already have a copy of the final batch, and were obliged to give it a test drive. What they found confused and made people wonder why Microsoft worked so hard in the first place. While, yes, Vista SP1 is a lot more stable, and there are performance boosts in some areas, there are a sizable chunk of tests where Vista SP1 performed worse in than it's predecessor. The CNET tests concluded that while Vista SP1 definitely oozes with effort, most users will hardly notice the difference between vanilla Vista and Vista SP1. Most of the performance hits were seen when copying or transferring files. If you'd like to read the full review, please check out CNET here.