I have GOT TO GET me one of these (we have this Godfather / Mafia thing going on with the entire Guru3D staff). Inspired by the epic film "The Godfather", these USB Flash drives from Super Talent are designed to capture the spirit of "The Godfather" in a small mobile storage device that is ideal for carrying data, digital images, presentations and music.

The Super Talent Godfather USB Flash drives are fully compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1. As an added bonus, these drives come loaded with still images and quotes from the film. The drives are available only in USA.

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LaCie has unveiled its latest external devices, the d2 DVD burner and a dual-drive RAID system. The DVD burner is driven by Windows XP Embedded and touts a maximum write speed of 22x. Users can choose from a USB 2.0 connection or FireWire, and write to DVD-R, DVD-RW, Dual Layer, CD-R or CD-RW media. The drive also features LightScribe technology for burning custom labels directly onto the discs.

The Hard Disk MAX dual-drive external storage device provides 2TB of capacity, configurable to RAID 0 for the fastest transfer rates or RAID 1 to protect against data loss if one drive fails. A LED stripe changes from blue to red to warn of conditions that could lead to malfunction. The company claims 60MB per second transfer rates using a USB 2.0 connection. Software is included for Windows and Mac platforms.

The d2 external DVD burner works across Windows, Linux and Mac platforms and can be purchased for $120. The Hard Disk MAX storage system carries a price of $270 and includes management software for Windows and Mac.

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Lexar Media has introduced Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1333MHz and 1600MHz triple channel DDR3 memory modules for the Intel Core i7. Oddly enough, the full specifications aren't available just yet.

The Ballistix name is synonymous with high-octane gaming; these new three channel products are designed with the latest Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP) for pre-defined memory optimization. Intel's QuickPath architecture, which connects the memory directly to the processor as opposed to communicating through a separate chipset, enables faster memory throughput and performance. Enthusiasts can continue to count on Ballistix memory for some of the fastest, most responsive performance available.

"Ballistix memory is known for its extreme performance and our new three channel kits are an excellent fit for the new Core i7 platforms. By utilizing Intel's latest XMP specifications, we are delivering a product that will allow consumers to easily configure their memory for excellent performance," said Jeremy Mortenson, senior product marketing manager at Lexar Media. "Like all Ballistix memory, the new three channel Ballistix kits incorporate specially selected components that are 100% tested at the component and module level and are a desirable memory solution for achieving outstanding throughput and speed gains. Additionally, they carry a limited lifetime warranty and feature world-class service and support."

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Two more days until we can publish our Phenom II review ;)

Following AMD's recent update to it 45nm consumer desktop CPU schedule, sources at motherboard makers have revealed the company also plans to launch six 45nm processors for its business class lineup in the third quarter of 2009.

The planned CPUs are the dual-core Athlon X2 B23 (2.9GHz/2MB) and B21 (2.7GHz/2MB), triple-core Phenom II X3 B73 (2.8GHz/7.5MB) and B71 (2.6GHz/7.5MB), and quad-core Phenom II X4 B93 (2.8GHz/8MB) and B91 (2.6GHz/8MB), the sources indicated.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the company is also expected to issue last order notices for the Phenom II X4 9850B, 9750B, 9600B and Phenom II X3 8850B, 8750B, 8600B as well as Athlon X2 5600B, 5400B, 5200B, 5000B, 4850B, 4450B and Athlon 1640B, added the sources.

AMD declined the opportunity to respond to this report saying it cannot comment on unannounced products.

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Unlike three-platter 1TB hard drives from Hitachi, Samsung, and Western Digital, Seagate's new 3.5" Barracuda 7200.12 spreads 1TB of capacity across just two platters, and Seagate says it's shipping these HDDs right now. The new 'cuda's platters have areal densities of 329Gb/in

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New rumors appeared on the web on NVIDIA follow-up flagship product to be released later this year. The website Hardware-Infos came up with a bucket load of technical specs on NVIDIA's upcoming flagship. It's the GT212 architecture based on 40nm

GT212 is the follow-up to 55nm GT200b (GeForce GTX 285) which is currently rolling into production.  It entails a die shrink to a smaller fabrication process and interestingly enough, a decrease in memory interface width. But more on that in a minute.

See, the memory interface of GT212 will decrease from 512-bit on GT200 to 256-bit, however, Nvidia will plant Hynix 7Gbps GDDR5 on the GT212.  One of the most interesting facts is a healthy increase in the Shader domain of the GPU. The shader processor count of GT212 will go from 240 in GT200 to 384, and the number of texture mapping units will increase from 80 to 96.

Due to all the changes the number of transistors could jump towards 1.8 billion.  Interesting stuff.

Thanks Cowie, for submitting this one.

	GT200	GT200b	GT212
Geometry	65nm	55nm	40nm
Chip area	576mm2	470mm2	<300mm2
Transistors	1400M	1400M	<1800M
SPE's	240	240	384
Texture units	80	80	96
Memory interface	512b	512b	256b
Memory Type	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR5
Launch	Q2/08	Q4/08	Q2/09

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GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.  new update on GPU-Z is out and it supports the latest catalyst & latest forceware drivers.

Here is the list of changes :

0.3.1 changelog:

* Fixed crash on systems without NVAPI (Win 2K, old NV drivers)
* Optimized RV770 BIOS reading code for speed (faster application startup)
* Improved voltage reading code for recent ATI cards
* Added support for fan speed monitoring on ForceWare 180.xx and up
* Added voltage monitoring for NVIDIA (GT200)
* Changed reading method for RV770 sensors, fixes race conditions with other software and on-board fan control
* NVIDIA 9800 GTX+ listed as 55nm now
* Added support for Intel Q43/Q45
* Added support for NVIDIA Quadro FX 4700 X2, GTX 295, GTX 285
* Added preliminary support for NVIDIA GT212, GT214, GT215, GT216, GT218

Download - Click here.

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If there was one graphics card spectacular in 2008, it was the Radeon HD 4870 series. Yet this year a good number of games were released that actually make good use of a frame buffer larger than 512 MB.

Specifically at higher resolutions with a decent amount of Anti-aliasing and in DX10 games. Suffice to say we'll look at a 1 GB graphics card today. It's based on the Radeon HD 4870 and comes from HIS technology. The all new ICEQ4+ cooling based model. A spectacular looking graphics card ..

You can find this Guru3d review at this URL.

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New info on the web outlines NVIDIA's plans for the mobile graphics market. In the first half of this year NVIDIA will introduce a mix of 55nm and 65nm notebook GPUs. The enthusiast market will get the G92b and G94b, while the G96b will be targeted at the performance market. For the mainstream notebook market NVIDIA will introduce new G98 and G98b cards.

In the second half of 2009 NVIDIA will transition its mobile GPUs to the 40nm process. The enthusiast market will get the GT212 and GT215, performance market will get the GT216 and the mainstream market will receive GT218 chips.

Nvidia is going to class their mobile GPUs as N10x this year and the confusing part is that it could be G9x based or GT21x based. However, the process technology will show which GPU architecture they belong to. Nvidia will transit all the G9x based mobile GPUs from 65nm to 55nm by quarter and it will be denoted by the suffix "1" behind their codename except for N10M GE1 which is still 65nm based. As for their marketing names, Nvidia is going to call them GeForce GTX 180M/170M, GTS 160M, GT 130M/120M, G 110M/105M.

Segment	2008	H1 2009	H2 2009
Enthusiast	NB9E (65nm) GTX - G92 GT, GS, GE - G94	N10E (55nm) GTX1 - G92b GT1 - G94b	N10E (40nm) GTX - GT212 GT, GS, GE - GT215
Performance	NB9P (65nm) GT, GS, GE2, GV - G96	N10P (55nm) GE1 - G96b	N10P (40nm) GS, NS, GE, GLM - GT216
Mainstream	NB9M (65nm) GS, GE - G98	N10M (55/65nm) GS1 - G98b GE1 - G98	N10M (40nm) GS, GE - GT218

 

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An unannounced air combat game titled "Stormbirds," in development by Juice Games, was recently cancelled by THQ, according to former Juice artist Greg Calvert. Stormbirds was set for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC--before THQ apparently got cold feet.

As a result, the team of over 30 developers was laid off by Juiced owner THQ [via ggmania].

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Verbatim announced today two new Quad Interface Desktop Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) with capacities of 500GB and 1TB. The pro audio/video-grade storage and backup solutions offer Mac and PC users universal connectivity with plug and play support for all four of the leading interfaces: USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA II (external Serial ATA II). With these connection options and the equivalent of 1000 Gigabytes of storage backed by Verbatim
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I winder if that green logo is going to be changed. Recently XFX announced that they'll be selling ATI cards soon as well. They just announced the first batches of cards. From the looks of it these are all reference models with a sticker slapped on top of them.

Model	Memory	Price
XFX HD 4350	512MB ddr2	44 euro
XFX HD 4650	512MB ddr2	64 euro
XFX HD 4650	1GB ddr2	73 euro
XFX HD 4830	512MB gddr3	123 euro
XFX HD 4850	512MB gddr3	165 euro
XFX HD 4870	512MB gddr5	230 euro
XFX HD 4870	1GB gddr5	258 euro

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Microsoft Windows operating systems like Windows XP and Windows Vista provide troubleshooting options for errors that occur in your PC and sometimes provide a link which can have a solution for that error. But finding a proper fix has always been a difficult task for many. Sometimes we may think why can't Microsoft fix this for me?

The Fix-it teams' http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/default.aspx purpose is to help users fix their problems in a click of a button. The Microsoft KB articles and the Windows Error Reporting are now fix-it enabled with a list of steps that can be followed to resolve the issue. Once you click the Fix it button in the KB page, you are prompted to download an installer for the fix.


Watcher

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Okay, this could easily already be the best video (for hardware geeks) this year already. Check it out Brendan Gregg from Sun's Fishworks team who discovered vibrations (like the sound wave from a loud scream) have a bad effect on the performance of hard drives:



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At the request of many of you we mirrored this new NVIDIA GeForce beta driver set.

In the wake of the new year, NVIDIA's GeForce Forceware drivers have surfaced. While being in a beta stage the 185.20 Forceware provide support for NVIDIA's upcoming products namely the GeForce GTX 295 and GeForce GTX 285. All other GPUs GeForce 6 Series onward are supported as usual. The driver is dated for 26-12-2008. The package includes PhysX system software version 8.11.18. Drivers for both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows XP ,also tested and worked with windows 7 ultimate 32-bit (use the vista 32-bit one). We can't stress enough that this is a BETA release. It's not supported whatsoever. So If it doesn't work for you ... don't complain.

Before installing, we have a discussion thread open on these drivers, right here. Please read that first before trying.

 GeForce ForceWare 185.20 Vista 64-bit
 GeForce ForceWare 185.20 Vista 32-bit
 GeForce ForceWare 185.20 XP 32-bit

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German PC Games Hardware writes the the ATI RV770 (Radeon 4850 and 4870) actually has 900 stream processors, but that only 800 of them are currently activated:

The RV770 is supposed to have 900 stream processors of which only 800 are currently activated . The RV770 would theoretically improve its shader performance by 12.5 percent with the additional 100 stream processors.

According to Hardware-Infos the additional ALUs are only used due to redundancy reasons. Technically the activation of the 100 shaders would not provide any advantages in practice except for GPGPU computing. It is nothing new that AMD installs more stream processors than actually needed since chip defects can be compensated very fast. The chips on which all stream processors are working can also be sold as upgraded models.

900 stream processors are supposed to be seen on this GPU picture.

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Intel will unveil a trio of 65 Watt quad-core processors on January 18th. Furthermore, the chip giant will also drop the price of the Q8200 from $193 to $183. The faster of three is Core 2 Quad Q9550e and this CPU will work at 2.83GHz with FSB 1333 and 12MB cache. At launch it will cost $369. Then we spot the Core 2 Quad Q 9400s, clocked at 2.66GHz with FSB 1333 and 5MB cache.

This CPU will launch on January 18th and sell for $320. The last of these new, 65W TDP energy efficient CPUs is Q8200s and this CPU with FSB1333 and 4MB cache will sell for $245 at launch.

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It's time to pick a winner for the Guru3D and Gigabyte 2008 Christmas contest. We had nearly a thousand proper answers submitted and from all the good answers we have drawn a random number corresponding to the chronological arrival of the email entries.

The winner is Daniel Peterson, Daniel lives in Toledo, Ohio - USA where his package with the GeForce GTX 260 OC 896 MB (Core 216) and GA-EG43M-S2H motherboard will be shipped to first thing on Monday. Congratulations !

Some of you had a hard time spotting the hidden Santa, other had it within a minute or two. The location where Santa could be found was the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5P X58 motherboard review on page 8.

Thanks everyone for joining the competition, thanks to Gigabyte making the contest possible,it's always good to spread some Christmas cheer.

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In Hong Kong the first GeForce GTX 285 already is selling in the stores. GeForce GTX 285 will be a respin product based on the GeForce GTX 280. The new GPU however is based on a 55nm production node and apparently should be roughly 10% faster. This product will be announced on January the 8th 2009.

When we look at prices we see something interesting though, two HK stores sell them at 3399 and  3200 Hong Kong dollars respectively. This is roughly 299 EUR. Perhaps we'll see a price fall as well (though that is speculation).

According to the specs the GTX285 will have a  nice 183W TDP (maximum watt peak) where the GTX280 was at 236W. The reference clock was 600MHz and now is 648MHz, the shader domain was 1300MHz and now is 1476MHz, and memory remains at 1100MHz (x2).

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The new Realtek HD Audio 2.13 driver is available for download. The binaries support Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 x64, Windows Vista, Windows Vista x64, Windows XP, Windows XP x64.

Due to the UBER slow servers from Realtek we made a package containg both the XP and Vista drivers. 1.Vista WHQL Supporting: ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262,ALC267, ALC268, ALC269, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887 2.Windows 2000/XP WHQL Supporting: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267,ALC268, ALC269, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887 3.HDMI Device WHQL Support: ATI HDMI Devices 4.OS Supporting: Microsoft WindowsXP, Windows2000, Vista x86/x64 5.Pack with Microsoft High Definition Audio UAAV1.0a(5013) 6.Add/Fix 1.)

Driver Package R2.13
Realtek HD Audio Driver support all of Realtek HD Audio Codec in Vista/WinXP/Win2000/Win2003 .

1. Vista WHQL Supporting: ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262,ALC267, ALC268, ALC269, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887
2. Windows 2000/XP WHQL Supporting: ALC880, ALC882, ALC883, ALC885, ALC888, ALC889, ALC861VC, ALC861VD, ALC660, ALC662, ALC663, ALC665, ALC260, ALC262, ALC267,ALC268, ALC269, ALC272, ALC273, ALC887
3. HDMI Device WHQL Support: ATI HDMI Devices
4. OS Supporting: Microsoft WindowsXP, Widnows2000, Vista x86/x64
5. Pack with Microsoft High Definition Audio UAAV1.0a(5013)
6. Add/Fix
   1. Driver :
      1. Customizations.

Download - click here.

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