Synology Inc. today introduced the Plex Media Server package, which provides selected DiskStation and RackStation users with a complete media solution, hundreds of channels of online content, and the capability to stream the content to user's iOS and Android devices, Windows and Mac computers, and Roku Media Streamers. The Plex media server is developed by Plex.

Plex Media Server package seamlessly streams media content stored in DiskStation and RackStation to various devices, offering users with the convenience of browsing and watching their video collections anytime, anywhere. "We appreciate Plex's effort to develop a package for DiskStation and RackStation users. The Plex Media Server package brings users unified and unsurpassed media experience which is cost effective, flexible, and easy-to-use," said Darren Lin, product manager of Synology Inc.

Toshiba Corporation today announced the development of NPEngine, the world's first hardware engine for streaming servers that directly delivers video content from SSD to IP networks, without accessing the server's CPU or memory resources. NPEngine can simultaneously deliver up to 64,000 high quality video streams at a rate of 40Gigabit per sec, far surpassing the performance of a typical server, and reducing power consumption, the number of servers and the space required.

Toshiba will showcase a server integrating the NPEngine at the NAB show in Las Vegas, from April 16 to 19. Server products running NPEngine will be available this year.

Palit unveiled a premium custom-design GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, called "JetStream". TweakTown got to review the card (find it at the source). The card features Palit's in-house designs for both the cooler and the PCB. The cooler consists of a sporty-looking shroud that holds three PWM-controlled fans, two 80 mm (sides) and one 90 mm (center); which ventilate a large aluminum fin heatsink that spans the entire length of the card. This heatsink relies on four heat pipes that make direct contact with the GPU, to draw heat. While the main heatsink only cools the GPU actively, a secondary base-plate heatsink cools the memory and VRM. The fans in the cooler are LED-lit.

Moving on to the PCB, Palit employed a 6-phase VRM, which makes use of high-grade chokes and DrMOS (driver-MOSFET) components, to power the card. The card draws power from 6+8 pin PCIe power connectors. The card is also factory-overclocked, with the Core (base) clock pushed up to 1085 MHz (from 1006 MHz reference); and Core (boost) upped to 1150 MHz (from 1058 MHz). The memory, on the other hand, has been stepped up to 1575 MHz (6.30 GHz GDDR5 effective), up from 1502 MHz (6.00 GHz GDDR5 effective) reference. It doesn't end there, Palit assures 10% overclocking performance, 9 dB quieter operation (than reference design), and 8°C lower temperatures. The card is expected to cost US $20-30 higher than NVIDIA reference design (so, around $530).

TechPowerUp released the latest version of GPU-Z, the PC enthusiast community's favorite graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility, which gives you up to date information about your installed graphics hardware, and helps you monitor clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and even exotic readings such as video memory usage and ASIC quality (on supported graphics cards). Version 0.6.0 introduces a host of new features, including refined support for upcoming NVIDIA Kepler architecture GPUs, such as GeForce GTX 680, and GeForce GT 6x0M; and the recently-launched AMD Radeon HD 7800 series.

GPU-Z also embraces an installer, which places shortcuts, and an uninstall entry. GPU-Z can very much also be used as a portable, standalone utility, without needing an installation (just choose not to install, and use it standalone instead). AMD altered a high-level API with its Catalyst 12.2 drivers, which GPU-Z conventionally uses to talk to the hardware. Those updating from older Catalyst versions to 12.2 won't see its effects on older GPU-Z versions, but those with Catalyst 12.2 "clean-installed", might. GPU-Z 0.6.0 addresses this issue, and should now work normally with systems running Catalyst 12.2 clean-installed. A large number of other changes were made with version 0.6.0.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.0, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.0 ASUS ROG-Themed

If online gaming wasn't hard enough a game-hacking site called Artificial Aiming has some members that are now targeting innocent players for Punkbuster bans in Battlefield 3. They were able to do this by corrupting a streaming Punkbuster ban list shared by certain server admins. A junior member from the Artificial Aiming forums that took the lead on this attack is focusing on servers that use GGC-Stream. He is are quoted as saying,

"We have selected ggc-stream as the target since they have the most streaming bf3 servers and makes it very easy to add fake bans. In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban wave and now were are banning real players from battlelog while ggc-stream is totally unaware. We have framed 150+ bf3 players alone"

AMD today released the second hotfix update to Catalyst 11.6, which provides immediate fixes to bugs found with the previous hotfix. Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix update fixes a BSOD error noted when connecting a HDMI and DisplayPort based display to an AMD Radeon HD graphics card running on Catalyst 11.6. It also fixes random screen flickering noted when idling, as well as a mouse pointer corruption issue found with older Catalyst releases. Apart from this, it packs the key feature of Caralyst 11.6a Hotfix, support for AMD A8-3800 and A6-3600 series accelerated processing units.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.6b Hotfix Update

Japanese cooling expert Scythe is announcing today the successor of popular Mugen 2 CPU Cooler. Mugen 2 CPU Cooler was awarded many times and is well known world-wide to mainstream users, Overclocker and Enthusiasts. During the development process main focus was set on improvement of performance and mounting mechanism as well as shrinking the heatsink dimensions. New Mugen 3 CPU Cooler is ready to take on the legacy.

While optimizing the performance the whole heatsink design of Mugen 3 CPU Cooler was re-worked which resulted in creation the improved fin-structure M.A.P.S. (Multiple Airflow Pass-Through Structure). Enhancements were achieved by reducing the aerodynamic resistance as well as improving of the overall heatsink stability. Furthermore Mugen 3 is equipped with total of six high-quality copper-heatpipes where the predecessor had only five. Typical for Scythe is the excellently processed and flat surface of the copper base which was refined by a thin nickel layer to prevent corrosion.

Bigfoot Networks, the technology company behind the Killer line of high-performance networking products, today at Computex announced that ASUS has expanded its line of Killer E2100-based motherboards with their new ROG Crosshair V Formula/ThunderBolt Motherboard.

The new ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula/ThunderBolt Motherboard supports AMD FX Series CPUs with up to 8-cores, DDR3 Memory with overclocking speeds up to 2133 MHz, multi-GPU technology for CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI, 8-ch HD, SupremeFX X-Fi 2 audio from Creative Labs and more. Powered by Bigfoot Networks' Killer E2100 networking platform and a host of other gaming-centric features, this AMD FX-based motherboard combines innovative design and technical intelligence to make the PC gaming experience more rewarding and accessible. This is the second motherboard offering from ASUS to incorporate Killer E2100 gaming network capabilities, preceded by the ROG Rampage III Black Edition.

ASUS has launched WAVI, the world's first wireless HDMI kit to feature innovative two-way wireless USB control designed to stream PC content to the big screen TV. WAVI (Wireless Audio Video Interaction) is offered as a pair of devices that bridges the gap between the home office and living room. Watch movies, play the latest PC games, enjoy social networking or even do online shopping, all on the big screen TV from the comfort of a couch.

The WAVI HDMI streaming kit consists of a transmitter and receiver for two-way input and streaming. Unlike other wireless HDMI kits, the WAVI allows users to control the PC content in the living room with a wireless keyboard and mouse, thanks to wireless USB support. The WAVI operates at the wireless 5GHz band and provides up to 25 meters of coverage. Additionally, under the Extend Mode, users can continue working on the PC screen while streaming multimedia content to the living room TV - maximizing the use of a single home PC while also providing home entertainment experiences.

Rovi Corporation today unveiled Roxio Game Capture and Roxio PC Game Capture, two affordably priced products that offer a straightforward way for gamers to quickly and easily capture and share PC and console game play videos.

In-product tutorials help everyone get set up quickly and immediately begin to capture and showcase their latest campaigns, adventures, ball skills, and race sequences. Gamers may use the products to post their high scores, tips & tricks, game reviews, or even a feature-length movie, or Machinima, based on game play footage. See the products in action here.

Japanese cooling specialist Scythe hereby officially announces the launch the new high-end CPU Cooler Mine 2. The Mine 2 CPU Cooler is based on a twin cooler Layout. Eight copper heatpipes transport heat to two generously dimensioned cooling blocks. By placing the fan in between the 2 heatsink towers, intake as well as exhale airflows are optimized to provide high performance. Furthermore, the lower part of the installed fan is designed to cool the devices around the CPU socket, such as voltage regulators and RAM. The structure of the heat sink makes it possible to use a total of up to three fans by purchasing separately sold fan clips. In this manner, the air flow and thus the cooling capacity of the Mine 2 will be significantly increased by using the push / pull principle.

By default, the Mine 2 will be delivered with a centrally placed, adjustable 140 mm Slip Stream PWM & VR fan. Although the fan supports the PWM feature, the user can manually adjust the PWM bandwidth between 470 to 1,370 rpm and 740 to 1,900 rpm. Despite the changed bandwidth, the fan is still controlled by the PWM signal from the motherboard, allowing an individual but also dynamic fan control. Alternatively it is possible to disable the PWM function. Instead the fan can be controlled manually in a range of 500 to 1,700 rpm. This gives every user the option to optimize the Mine 2 CPU cooler for performance or low noise according to own preferences.

AMD today announced availability of the updated AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Software Development Kit (SDK) v2.3 with full support for the first AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), OpenCL 1.1 and AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series graphics. AMD APP technology enables AMD GPUs and CPUs to work together to run many demanding computing tasks faster than possible with just the CPU alone.

AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing SDK v2.3, previously known as the ATI Stream SDK, empowers software developers to write new applications that can take full advantage of the parallel processing power of heterogeneous computing platforms, such as those based on new AMD E-Series and C-Series APUs that combine a multi-core CPU and DirectX 11-capable GPU on a single die.

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform manufacturer, and a subsidiary of MiTAC International Corp., today announced four server platforms that are fully compatible with AMD FireStream GPU compute accelerators.

The AMD FireStream GPU compute accelerators are general purpose graphics processing units that deliver exceptional floating point processing capabilities, and are used widely in HPC, cloud and enterprise-scale applications, helping reduce cycle times with up to 2.64 TFLOPs of single precision performance.

AMD today announced that, along with partners Pixelux Entertainment and Bullet Physics, it has added significant support to the Open Physics ecosystem by providing game developers with access to the newest version of the Pixelux Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), a breakthrough in physics simulation. In addition, to enabling a superior development experience and helping to reduce time to market, Pixelux has tightly integrated its technology, DMM, with Bullet Physics, allowing developers to integrate physics simulation into game titles that run on both OpenCL- and DirectCompute-capable platforms. And both DMM and Bullet work with Trinigy's Vision Engine to create and visualize physics offerings in-game.

"Establishing an open and affordable physics development environment is an important accomplishment for both game developers and gamers, signaling a move away from exclusionary or proprietary approaches," said Eric Demers, chief technology officer, AMD Graphics Division. "Not only does the integration of Bullet Physics into partner middleware help drive broader adoption of physics in games, it ensures that when those games are released, all gamers, regardless of the hardware in their PC, can benefit from the more realistic experience enabled by those effects."

AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card, bringing gamers the cutting-edge features and performance of the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 5800 series at a lower price than ever before at less than $250 USD. With the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 5830, gamers have another great choice in graphics hardware, with full support for DirectX 11 gaming, ATI Eyefinity technology, and ATI Stream capabilities.

"The ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card makes enthusiast-level performance even more accessible to gamers, adding another compelling choice to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 5800 series," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division. "Cutting-edge features such as full DirectX 11 support, ATI Eyefinity multi-display capabilities and ATI Stream technology position the ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card to become a favorite with the gaming community."

AMD today announced availability of the production release of its second-generation ATI Stream SDK, its second-generation ATI Stream SDK, the first production SDK for both AMD GPUs and x86 CPUs. This release of ATI Stream SDK v2.0 supports a wide range of ATI graphics processors, including the new ATI Radeon HD 5970, the world's fastest graphics card generating five teraflops of compute power. Enabling compute intensive codes to leverage all of the system's resources, the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 helps developers deliver a better application experience.

This release of AMD's ATI Stream SDK v2.0 provides developers, ISVs and OEMs with a production development environment that allows them to more easily accelerate applications. By enabling developers to utilize combined CPU and GPU computing power, ATI Stream technology helps developers to leverage heterogeneous architectures to improve the computing experience.

AMD today announced the flagship installment in the award-winning line of graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest card ever created. The new ultra high-end model joins a growing list of the world's first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology.

Designed to support the most demanding PC games at ultra-high resolutions and image quality settings, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 has unlocked overclocking potential, granting access to every bit of power the card has to offer through ATI Overdrive technology. Now shipping from retailers and available in the channel, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 also launches today in new Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktop PCs.

AMD published its near-monthly installment of the ATI Catalyst Software Suite, which provides essential drivers for the company's ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD 7-series chipset IGPs, ATI multimedia products, and the AMD FireStream GPGPU processors. Version 9.11 announced today, comes with the same hardware support base as the older version, includes two new features, and carries the usual application-specific fixes.

New features include GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta, and High Quality downscaling for video transcoding MSE. The release of ATI Catalyst, according to AMD, supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life. Hardware acceleration is supported on all existing Radeon HD 5000 and HD 4000 series graphics processors. The release of ATI Catalyst includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920x1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320x240 @30p - iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive. For a list of minor issues fixed in the release, refer to the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.11 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

AMD released its fourth beta of the ATI Stream SDK version 2.0, that provides the first complete OpenCL development platform. The release is certified to be fully compliant with OpenCL 1.0 by, the Khronos Group. A wide range of AMD GPUs as well as any x86 multi-core CPU supporting SSE3 instruction set are supported. For more information on this release, and to download, visit this page.

An interesting discovery by TechConnect Magazine shows that in these OpenCL drivers, are identifiers for a yet to be announced "Radeon HD 5900 Series", with the device IDs 689C and 689D, both marked under "Evergreen", like other members of the Evergreen family, such as Radeon HD 5700 and Radeon HD 5800 series. The most plausible explanation for "Radeon HD 5900 Series" could be that it is the name of the graphics cards based on the Hemlock GPU architecture, which pairs two Cypress GPUs onto one board. The driver also gives away device IDs, if not product names of GPUs based on the upcoming entry-level Redwood and Cedar GPUs.

AMD and Pixelux Entertainment announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine. By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms. The latest graphics technologies, like the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of GPUs, offer incredible visual fidelity and high performance physics simulation by taking the next step in realistically animating how rendered game objects move, deform and break.

"Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs," said Eric Demers, chief technology officer for graphics at AMD. "By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach."

AMD today launched the most powerful processor ever created, found in its next-generation graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards, and the world's first and only to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11, the new gaming and compute standard shipping shortly with Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. Boasting up to 2.72 TeraFLOPS of compute power, the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series effectively doubles the value consumers can expect of their graphics purchases, delivering twice the performance-per-dollar of previous generations of graphics products. AMD will initially release two cards: the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, each with 1GB GDDR5 memory. With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards, PC users can expand their computing experience with ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, accelerate their computing experience with ATI Stream technology, and dominate the competition with superior gaming performance and full support of Microsoft DirectX 11, making it a "must-have" consumer purchase just in time for Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

"With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cars driven by the most powerful processor on the planet, AMD is changing the game, both in terms of performance and the experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Products Group, AMD. "As the first to market with full DirectX 11 support, an unmatched experience made possible with ATI Eyefinity technology, and ATI Stream technology harnessing open standards designed to help make Windows 7 that much better, I can say with confidence that AMD is the undisputed leader in graphics once more."

To meet the extreme productivity needs of today's CAD, Digital Content Creation (DCC) and oil and gas professionals, AMD announces that the ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator is joining the AMD line of ultra high-end professional graphics hardware.

ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator brings the highest number of shader engines (800) with the highest memory bandwidth (115.2 GB/s) in the entire 3D professional graphics offerings today1 which enables professionals to render incredibly complex models and photo-realistic images in real-time.

AMD is ready with the industry's first WHQL-certified set of drivers for Microsoft Windows 7. The Catalyst WHQL Windows 7 driver comes as yet another first for AMD, and a first for Microsoft's Windows 7 certification program. Dated 5/5/2009, the drivers carry the version 8.612, feature full support for Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.1 and works with ATI Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000 series. The drivers also provide support for ATI Stream GPGPU technology.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.612 WHQL for Windows 7 64-bit, and Windows 7 32-bit.

AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, driven by the world's most powerful graphics processor. The newest addition to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4000 series boasts a whopping 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, superior GDDR5 memory, and super-high engine clock speeds capable of nearly 1GHz. The advanced design of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 delivers the best game experience in its class, including the latest ground-breaking DirectX 10.1 titles. In addition, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4890, AMD continues to enhance its "Dragon" desktop platform technology, designed to provide exceptional value to OEMs, channel partners, and do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers.

AMD today announced the availability of the ATI FirePro V7750 graphics accelerator for the high-end market, ideally suited for graphics professionals working in engineering, digital content creation and scientific fields. These professionals need a 3D graphics accelerator that can quickly handle large models and shader-intensive applications, while delivering accurate color reproduction and superior visual quality. The ATI FirePro V7750 delivers features that matter most to these users at $899 MSRP.

"Creating astounding visuals for movies is a tremendous challenge - it has to look absolutely perfect, but time is always of the essence," said Jabbar Raisani, visual effects expert, Troublemaker Studios. "The ATI FirePro V7750 graphics accelerator helps me achieve flawless effects fast by speeding up rendering so I can focus on creating content rather than waiting for it. I need stable and robust performance graphics hardware to get the job done quickly and the ATI FirePro V7750 is the perfect solution."