Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the launch of Seagate Innov8, the world's first USB-powered desktop hard drive. Seagate Innov8 features innovation from the inside out with its industry-leading 8 TB capacity, trend-setting Ignition Boost Technology and expressive design.

There is still an abundance of consumer electronics that require an external power supply, placing a premium on power outlets. With advancements in USB 3.1 technology, major manufacturers like Apple are beginning to rely on one connection-type for everything. Today, with the introduction of Seagate's new Ignition Boost Technology, Innov8 is the world's first 8 TB desktop hard drive that does not need to be plugged into a power outlet. Similar to a standard car requiring a battery kick to start the engine, Ignition Boost together with USB 3.1 enables Innov8 to thrive off bus power. No dedicated power source or adapter required.

What's more, Innov8 features industry-leading capacity with Seagate's 8 TB HDD. Now users simply plug in the reversible USB-C cable and have access to a lifetime of data - including more than two million songs, four million photos and eight hundred HD Movies.

AMD made its second release of Radeon Software Crimson Edition for March 2016, with version 16.3.2. The new drivers come with official support for the two popular VR headsets, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It also adds support for the recently announced Radeon Pro Duo dual-GPU graphics card. The drivers improve CrossFire performance for "Hitman (2016)" in DirectX 11 mode, and "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture." It also fixes critical bugs related to the Radeon R9 Fury, which saw display corruption on system idle mode; and XCOM 2 stuttering.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.3.2 for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

AMD released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimson Edition. Version 16.2.1 is marked "non-WHQL" and hence should be a beta. The driver comes with a CrossFireX profile for "Far Cry Primal," along with a variety of game-specific bug fixes for "Fallout 4," and "Rise of the Tomb Raider." It also fixes an issue of choppy display on systems with both FreeSync and CrossFire being enabled. Grab the drivers from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1 for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

Patriot, a leading manufacturer of computer memory, SSDs, flash storage solutions, mobile accessories and gaming peripherals has released a new version of its V560 gaming mouse software.

The V560, Patriot's first offering in the gaming mouse market and part of the company's Viper line, made its debut to the public in early November. Initially featuring 8200DPI, five customizable profiles with color indicator, nine programmable buttons, up to 29.4g of adjustable weights and two interchangeable grips for even more customization, the V560 was set at a starting MSRP of $49.99.

AMD released a quick follow up to Tuesday's (02/02) Radeon Software Crimson Edition (RSCE) 16.1.1 Beta release; with a Hotfix release. Version 16.1.1 Hotfix includes AMD CrossFire profiles for "Fallout 4," in addition to "Rise of the Tomb Raider," and in particular a flickering issue which was noticed on CrossFire machines running "Fallout 4." The rest of its feature-set is identical to that of the 16.1.1 Beta. Grab the driver for your OS from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1.1 Hotfix

AMD unveiled Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1 Beta. The latest version of AMD's suite, which provides drivers and system software for its Radeon GPUs, comes with a large complement of game-specific performance/stability improvements. This includes bug-fixes specific to Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Star Wars: Battlefront, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Grab the driver from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

AMD released the WHQL-signed version of Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 as the new 15.12 WHQL. It addresses a variety of game-specific issues, including rendering errors on Star Wars: Battlefront; bugs on Fallout 4; texture-compression issues with Just Cause 3; poor CrossFire performance with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. It also addresses a critical issue in which the driver would either spool fan-speeds all the way up to 100% on load, or lock them down at 30%, causing certain GPUs to overheat. A variety of bugs specific to the Radeon Settings app were also addressed.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.12 WHQL for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

AMD today released Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 Update. A follow up to last week's major release, version 15.11.1 addresses a major issue with driver-level VGA fan speed control, which saw the driver either crank fan-speeds up to 100%, or lock them down to 30%, causing GPUs to overheat. In addition, the driver addresses several game-specific bugs related to Just Cause 3, Fallout 4, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Call of Duty Black Ops III.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 15.11.1 for Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bitImage Courtesy: PCAuthority.com.au

AMD's ambitious Radeon Sofware Crimson Edition drivers are seeing its first user experience issue in the form of a fan-speed bug. The driver, in some cases, spins graphics card fans up to 100%, and in others, the fan-speed is locked at 30% regardless of load. Over the past weekend, AMD acknowledged the issue and is tasked with a hotfix driver scheduled for release later today.

AMD released its latest Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta drivers in the run up to its major Radeon Software Crimson Edition launch. One of the last drivers to bear the name "Catalyst," these drivers come with performance optimization for all of the season's biggest releases - Star Wars Battlefront, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Fallout 4, and Assassins Creed: Syndicate. These optimizations could include CrossFire profiles on games that support it. Grab them from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta 32-bit | AMD Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta 64-bit

In this episode of TechPowerUp News, we talk a little bit about the big week it's been for AMD - with its massive Radeon Software Crimson Edition announcement, someone taking issue with the way AMD counts its cores, and GlobalFoundries announcing it's ready with its 14 nm node for Zen. Then there's the epic fail of the week - Batman Arkham Knight for PC, with its second misfire.

Crucial, a leading global brand of memory and storage upgrades, today announced significant updates to its Storage Executive tool. The new version (3.20) features Momentum Cache, an intelligent caching feature that can enhance burst performance by up to 10x[1], and allows users to extend SSD lifetime by reducing redundant writes. The tool uses idle memory for caching as needed, and installs easily via the Storage Executive interface.

In addition to the new features, Storage Executive also allows users to:

• Update to the latest firmware
• Monitor drive's temperature and health
• Reset the drive's encryption password
• Easily check how much storage has been used

NZXT is proud to announce the launch of its advanced CAM version 2.0 PC monitoring software. Now equipped with double the data detection, a customizable interface and a highly functional FPS overlay, CAM 2.0 makes it easier than ever to monitor and maintain your PC.

CAM offers a wealth of information for both new and advanced users alike that are interested in maximizing the efficiency of their PC. With its all-encompassing approach to PC health, CAM actively monitors and records all essential statistics including network speeds, storage space, component temperatures and load usage over time. Additionally, new advanced detection offers comprehensive data on CPU / GPU specifications, motherboard voltages, HDD S.M.A.R.T. data and much, much more.

NVIDIA released its latest "Game Ready" driver, this one being marked Beta, instead of WHQL. The new GeForce 347.09 Beta introduces performance optimizations for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and Elite: Dangerous. It adds a GeForce Experience application profile for Project: Cars; and tags along PhysX System Software version 9.14.0702, and GeForce Experience 16.18.9.0. Grab the driver from the links below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 347.09 Beta for Windows 8/7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 8/7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, and Windows XP 64-bit

AMD today announced a multi-year agreement with Mentor Graphics Corporation to expand availability of open-source embedded Linux development for heterogeneous and multi-core processors from AMD. Dedicated to providing embedded developers with a more manageable and focused open source framework, the agreement will provide embedded developers with more supported processor options, robust development tools, and greater speed in open platform development.

As a Yocto Project compatible product, Mentor Embedded Linux will now bring standardized features and tools, and ensure quick access to the latest Board Support Packages (BSPs) for AMD 64-bit x86 architecture beginning with the upcoming AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-a-chip (SoC) (codenamed: "Steppe Eagle") and AMD Embedded R-Series APU/CPU (codenamed: "Bald Eagle").

ADATA Technology has announced the release of its proprietary software for monitoring the status and maintaining the performance of ADATA solid state drives. The new software, named ADATA SSD Toolbox, will enable users to quickly and conveniently configure, optimize, and monitor the overall health of their solid state drives.

ADATA SSD Toolbox allows for the monitoring of drive health and remaining life through Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) attributes. It also lets the user keep track of the current operating temperature, capacity, and total space used. The drive utilities include SSD security erase, which wipes all data from the drive and restores the drive to its factory default, firmware update, and SSD Toolbox update. For achieving best performance with the drive and the operating system, the software supports both system (SSD) and OS optimization functions. Supported operating systems include Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit), Windows 8 (32 & 64-bit), and Windows 8.1 (32 & 64-bit) versions.

AMD kicked off its 2013 Developer Summit (APU13) today, announcing a new unified Software Development Kit (SDK,) an improved CodeXL tool suite with added features and support for the latest AMD hardware, and added heterogeneous acceleration in popular Open Source libraries. Together, these tools provide a substantial step forward in productivity and ease-of-use for developers wishing to harness the full power of modern heterogeneous platforms spanning form servers to PCs to handheld devices.

"Developers are essential to our mission of realizing the full potential of modern computing technologies," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Solutions, AMD. "Enriching the developer experience by harnessing these technologies is a critical part of AMD's mission to accelerate developer adoption."

AMD today announced it is enabling its accelerated processing units (APU) for next-generation servers through important advancements in software tools developed by AMD and in collaboration with technology partners and the open source community. In his keynote address at APU13, AMD Corporate Fellow Phil Rogers highlighted the significant progress AMD has made in both developing software internally and empowering others to develop software to take advantage of the capabilities of AMD APU technology, which combines industry leading AMD Radeon graphics processing engines with x86 computational processing on a single chip.

"Servers must be efficient, scalable and adaptable to meet the compute characteristics of new and changing workloads. Software applications that leverage server APUs are designed to drive highly efficient, low-power, dense server solutions optimized for highly parallel and multimedia workloads," said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, corporate vice president and general manager of the Server Business Unit, AMD. "We have evolved our processor roadmap to support this opportunity, and now we are showcasing how the APU software ecosystem is gaining momentum and what developers can do to participate."

According to IDC, the CAGR of the storage market for enterprises will continue to grow by 3.9% in the future. By 2020, the global data volume will increase by 50 folds than that of today. Thus, how to manage such large volume of data is bound to be the significant task for IT managers, which includes a vital issue of hard disk real-time monitoring and diagnosis.

Currently, most traditional hard drives and Solid State Drives (SSDs) adopt S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), which is the optimal early warning tool for single PC, to check the drive's status at any time, such as temperature, usage time, erase times, charging times, for analyzing and predicting the timing to replace the drive. However, with the coming of cloud computing era, 3A management (Any time, Any where, Any device) are required for managers to monitor cloud storage device, while S.M.A.R.T. still functions for monitoring single PC only. Once the user is not at the scene, the "golden hour" for data rescue would slip away especially in situations such as unexpected tampering, power supply abnormality, interface destruction.

IBM today announced it has acquired Daeja Image Systems Ltd., a leading provider of software that makes it easier for business and IT professionals to view large documents and images. Daeja is a privately held software company with headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As unstructured business data continues to grow exponentially, business users need not only access to information, but a compelling user experience as well. By putting content in the context of how people work every day, professionals can solve problems and make decisions that deliver better outcomes, faster.

With the travel season just around the corner, the Scandinavian browser-maker Opera Software today released the final version of its all-new Opera for Windows and Mac, debuting with a fresh look and completely new features.

If you were to visit every website in the web for just one second each, you would need over 20 years of non-stop browsing to see them all. It's pretty much the same amount of time you would need to spend a week in every city with more than half a million habitants worldwide. You may never get to visit all of these cool places, but, with the new Opera browser, surfing through an ocean of inspiring web content is now easier than ever.

AMD Super Pi History To Be Rewritten, Courtesy Of The Stilt

AMD's typically underwhelming Super PI performance, that was usually attributed to architectural limitations when it comes to the X87 instruction set, appears to have been nothing more than a blunder on the part of the developers responsible with BIOS development and optimization for AMD platforms. Finnish overclocker, The Stilt, figured out how to considerably improve performance by going through the BIOS developers guides. The exact same guides available to the BIOS R&D teams of motherboard vendors, a surprising fact considering a single man managed to outdo an entire industry. Here is the download link to the patch: click

The Stilt posted a video in which he showed a 4.1GHz A10-6800K completing SuperPI in 17 minutes and 34 seconds. The fastest 5GHz Richland SuperPI 32M is around 18 minutes and 15 seconds. A lot faster! For more information, check out the thread in the HWBot forums.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components, today announced two new solid-state drive (SSD) related products. The first, the SSD & Hard Disk Drive Cloning Kit, enables users to easily duplicate and transfer data between drives. The kit, which includes a cable and software, is ideal for users upgrading from traditional hard disk drives (HDD) to faster, more rugged Corsair SSDs. In addition, the company announced the Corsair SSD Toolbox, a free software utility which enables users to configure, optimize and monitor their Corsair SSDs.

The SSD & Hard Disk Drive Cloning Kit enables users to move data between a hard drive and SSD by simply selecting the source drive and destination drives and then clicking a button. Designed for users migrating their data to newly installed SSDs, the kit includes data migration software, a USB-to-SATA cable, and Quick Start Guide. The cable supports USB 3.0 and 2.0 delivering transfer rates up to 180 MB/s with USB 3.0 ports, 4 times faster than USB 2.0.

Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, is now shipping its Caustic Series2 PC boards, the R2500 and R2100, which accelerate PowerVR OpenRL applications including the Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max and the Neon viewport in Rhinoceros 5 from Robert McNeel and Associates.

The Caustic Series2 is the first family of high performance ray tracing accelerator PC boards using Imagination's unique ray tracing technologies in the world's first chipset dedicated to high performance, fully interactive ray tracing in a workstation environment.

McAfee and Intel today announced their commitment to lead in delivering innovative security solutions aimed at protecting a consumer's entire digital life, reflecting the broad adoption and usage of personal devices. Together with Intel, McAfee is redefining the consumer security experience with a focus on safeguarding consumer devices, securing personal data and protecting identities online. This user-centric approach will deliver a comprehensive and valuable service offering that helps meet the evolving needs of consumers as they enjoy their digital lives, anywhere, from any device. The first of these personalized security offerings from McAfee is available in beta to partners, with a consumer version of the product available mid-year 2013.

The explosion in connected devices and the availability of online content and services has consumers spending more of their lives online. Always-connected consumers who are shopping, banking, and sharing information online have an unprecedented amount of their personal and financial information at risk to increasingly sophisticated attacks and scams. Because of these new usages and the resulting distribution of personal information, a more comprehensive approach to security is required to protect consumers.