Today we release an updated Beta revision of Afterburner, this application successfully secured the leading position on graphics card utilities. We're happy to see MSI Afterburner is leading the overclock applications. MSI Afterburner 2.2.0 Beta 14 is ready

This beta supports the voltage control of HD 7X50 card, if you get the card, you may try to play it.

Changes list includes:

• Fixed sub-zero temperatures reading on certain custom design MSI graphics cards with LM96163 and NCT7718W dedicated thermal sensors.
• Added workaround for bug in AMD drivers causing unofficial overclocking to be reset to defaults after adjusting PowerPlay settings. Now unofficial overclocking settings are being forcibly reapplied after applying new PowerPlay settings.
• Hardware abstraction layer (HAL) architecture has been improved to provide compatibility with future NVIDIA graphics cards series.
• Now multi-GPU overclocking and fan control settings synchronization is performed at HAL level instead of display driver wrapper level to improve HAL architecture extendibility and provide compatibility with future NVIDIA graphics cards series.
• Shared control memory format has been upgraded to v2.0. New format provides power limit adjustment support and forward compatibility with future NVIDIA graphics cards series.
• Now it is possible to override group names for values displayed in the On-Screen Display or in Logitech keyboard LCD display.
• MSI On-Screen Display server has been upgraded to v4.3.3. New version gives the following improvements:
  o Fixed issue causing gamma correction to be applied twice under certain conditions and causing video to appear too bright when capturing video with gamma correction option enabled.
  o Output video dimensions are no longer being forcibly cropped to be multiples of 16. Now cropping is optional and can be enabled via GUI
  o Dedicated 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 frame downsampling routines have been replaced with unified arbitrary downsampling routine. Now MSI Afterburner provides arbitrary frame downsampling functionality and allows selecting 360p, 480p, 720p, 900p, 1080p frame sizes for both 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios. Please take a note that arbitrary frame sizes list is user extendable so you may add your own custom frame sizes if necessary via the configuration file.
  o Improved tabbed text formatting provides better compatibility with custom group names.

Download

 

OCZ releases the ZT model in a three fold of models, a 550W model priced at 55 EUR, a 650 model priced at 75 EUR and a 750W model priced at 90 EUR (USD conversion is roughly similar at the moment). So you are in the market for an affordable PSU, want a modular design and want bang for buck ? Well, the new ZT series from OCZ seems to do the job quite well.

Read the review here.

 

Rumors regarding NVIDIA's upcoming graphics cards bounce up and down. First it was a February release, then April, now rumors mention March again.

A report claims that NVIDIA is finally set to release the first Kepler GPU in March. As expected, first in line will be GK104 - to be branded as GeForce GTX 670 Ti. They peg the release date in March after Cebit 2012. This suggests a release some time between March 11th and March 31st. The GeForce GTX 670 Ti is vaguely indicated to have performance "better than GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950", which implies average performance somewhere between HD 7950 and HD 7970.

Rumours suggest GK104 will bring a radically new architecture, with specifications including 1536 shaders, 128 TMU, 32 ROP and 2 GB 256-bit memory GDDR5. Core clock for the top bin, GTX 670 Ti, is expected to be around 950 MHz.

As the nomenclature suggests, GK104 / GTX 670 Ti is more of a successor to the GF114 / GTX 560 Ti. The flagship GTX 580 sucessor is at least half a year away, and will not be released till Q3 or Q4 2012. Till then, AMD is expected to hold on to the single GPU crown with Radeon HD 7970 with the GTX 670 Ti and HD 7950 following behind.

Mach Xtreme launched the MX-STARTER PREMIUM Series 2.5" SSD for mainstream users demanding the latest technology at an affordable price point.

The new MX-STARTER PREMIUM Series of SSDs is the latest addition to the Mach Xtreme lineup of solid state drives. This series is offering users robust data protection with enhanced hardware BCH ECC engine, StaticDataRefresh technology support and data shaping for higher data reliability. Replacing OS hard disk drive with MX-STARTER PREMIUM will revolutionize user's computing experience. Games load quicker, computer starts faster, and multiple applications run smoother, all while running cool and silent.

The MX-STARTER PREMIUM drive delivers best-in-class read and write speeds clocking in at up to 150 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write along with the maximum of 10,000 IOPS and superior durability (1.5 million MTBF) compared to regular hard disk drives. Available in capacities 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, Mach Xtreme Technology MX-STARTER PREMIUM SSDs come backed with 1 Year Warranty and outstanding after-sales service.

MX-STARTER PREMIUM Series 2.5

Intel shows off Rose Point, a new research project that integrates WiFi on the die of an Atom SoC. The project means we're getting one step closer to a chip that integrated CPU, GPU, I/O, and WiFi into a single package. One issue with a processor that integrates WiFi is electromagnetic interference, therefore the chip giant is working on new miniature shielding methods and noise-cancelling technology to counter corruption issues.

As they say, every rose has its thorns, and Rose Point was no exception. Part of the difficulties with the new SoC were inherent -- due to the fact that traditional modem designs incorporate a slew of analog circuit components, such as synthesizers and amplifiers. These components allow wireless modems to operating on a large range of device voltages, but they also mean that Intel had a heavy redesign on its hands, in crafting its revised silicon modem, which used only two voltages.

And that wasn't the only thorny issue with Rose Point. Electromagnetic frequency (EMF) interference also proved a key stumbling block for electronics giant. As the speed of Wi-Fi communications (2.4 GHz) is close to Atom's base CPU's base clock speed, the two portions of the chip would interfere with each other, leading to corruption issues.

Hossein Alavi, director of Intel

Slides that reveal the graphics performance of the Intel HD 4000 graphics integrated into the 22nm "Ivy Bridge" based Core i5-3570K. According to the leaked data, the new generation is 67 percent faster than the Core i5-2500K, but still 36 percent slower than a +2 year old entry-level graphics card like the GeForce GT 240. The Intel HD 4000 graphics core beats the HD 3000 hands down, with performance leads as high as 122% in a particular test. The chip produces more than playable frame-rates with Left4Dead 2 and Street Fighter IV, both well above 50 FPS, even DiRT 3 and Far Cry 2 run strictly OK, over 30 FPS. StarCraft II is where it produced under 30 FPS, so the chip might get bogged down in intense battles. A mainstream discrete GeForce or Radeon is a must. On average, the graphics core embedded into the Core i5-3570K was found to be 67.25% faster than the one on the Core i5-2500K.

  

Gamejuegos has posted a five minutes of new gameplay footage of Ubisoft's Far Cry 3. The game is scheduled to launch on September 6 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Vendors will ship 14.97 million tablet PCs in the first quarter of 2012, dropping 30.6% on quarter but rising 77.6% on year, according to forecasts by Digitimes Research.

Shipments will consist of 11 million iPad 2 and iPad 3 units as well as 3.97 million non-iPad tablet PCs which will decrease by 50.8% on quarter and include 1.5 million Kindle Fires and 300,000 Nook Tablets, Digitimes Research said.

Of tablet PCs to be shipped in the first quarter of 2012, 13.3% will be equipped with processors developed by Texas Instruments and 26.3% will be based on Android.

Taiwan-based ODMs will ship 13.51 million tablet PCs for a global share of 90.25% in the first quarter. Foxconn Electronics will account for 83% of Taiwan-based makers' total shipments, followed by Quanta Computer with 9.6%, Digitimes Research indicated.

There was some confusion last week that Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs, boun dto be released in April, would be delayed.

Intel denied having changed the product plans it had in place however the dual-core laptop units seem to be the exception. More precisely, due to the large supply of Sandy Bridge central processors, the Santa Clara, California-based company is putting off the release of dual-core mobile units.

That means that all the desktop components will be up for sale as planned, and the same goes for most of the notebook platforms.

Nevertheless, both standard voltage and ULV (ultra-low voltage) dual-cores are subject to the delay, while the Core i3 chips have been pushed back even further, all the way to August or September instead of May/June.

The supply of Sandy Bridge CPUs is said to be so high that not only are vendors overstocked, but also even Intel's own warehouses still have shipments that, had sales been better, would have been sent out quite a while ago.

For those that know about the different sorts of notebooks out there, this all means that strong consumer and business PCs will be updated soon enough, but ultrabooks won't be so lucky.

This puts a damper on the hopes that the new, super-thin machines would drop in price. While they will, eventually, become cheaper, this will happen at a slow enough rate that only in 2013 will they be considered affordable.

With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos.

It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental). Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use. Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers.

VLC 2.0.0 is available here for Windows and Mac OS X (or just OS X).

 

Two models from Intel's Desktop Board Executive series of motherboards for office PCs got pictured and detailed by VR-Zone:

These are Intel's motherboards for office computers as far as the chipsets are concerned, but at least one of the new models should be more than suitable for home users too.

Starting at the bottom of the executive series we have the DB75EN

Chinese motherboard manufacturer that specializes in high cost-performance motherboard, ONDA, is working on a micro-ATX motherboard based on the Z77 chipset. Its pictures made it to the press as TPU reports:

The board mostly sticks to the chipset's feature set, except using an additional PCIe-PCI bridge that gives out two legacy PCI slots. As a Z77-based motherboard, it should support both overclocking and Smart Response SSD caching. The LGA1155 socket, which supports today's Sandy Bridge and tomorrow's Ivy Bridge processors, is powered by a simple 4+1 phase VRM. It is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory.

All of the chipset's SATA ports are wired internally, including two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s. The board provides four USB 3.0 ports, two on the rear panel, two via header, all four are wired to the PCH. Apart from the two legacy PCI slots, we have one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and one PCIe 2.0 x1. Display outputs include DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. 6-channel HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of the connectivity.

Details about Lynx Point, the new chipset that will accompany Intel's Haswell architecture in the first half of 2013, have surfaced.

First, we see some of the display port features have been transferred over to the CPU under the new architecture for Haswell. As discussed here, the Lynx Point chipset will only handle analog displays, while the CPU will be handling the digital displays. In theory, this makes the Lynx Point not as advanced as Panther Point in that regard but it does still have its advancements.

Lynx Point marks Intel's switch to full SATA 6.0 Gb/s support for all native SATA ports (no more native SATA 3.0 Gb/s SATA ports). Intel has added two additional USB 3.0 ports for a total six ports, which is two more than Panther Point. Intel is introducing I/O port flexibility feature with Lynx Point. As the feature suggests, it should give users the ability to allocate which ports are USB 3.0 and which are USB 2.0. Additional features for Lynx Point include: SSD performance/power optimization, new Rapid Storage Technology driver & Intel vPro Technology enhancements, lower TDP and power usage, a smaller package (22x23mm FCBGA), and support for quad-read SPI devices. Based on the slide, it looks like Intel has still not moved to a faster DMI interface, as the chipset's PCIe ports are still running at PCIe 2.0.

Lord Vader looks a little different in this awesome trailer. When the power of The Force is put in your hands, will you be tempted by The Dark Side? Find out what happens :)

Bioware's released a teaser for a new Mass Effect 3 trailer set to debut this weekend. CG trailer 'Take Earth Back' will air in full on Sunday, February 19 during an episode of The Walking Dead on US TV.

Arena FPS 'Nexuiz' has a new trailer, showing off the Dynamic Mutators. These are described as 'game-changing power-ups' and feature things like Jetpacks, Uber-Nuke, Low Gravity, Big Head Mode. Powered by CryENGINE 3, the game will feature nine arenas, 4V4 online multiplayer, and offline bots. It's out on LIVE at the end of this month, and is also heading to the PSN and PC.

The NZXT Switch 810 is a new chassis from NZXT. It is a large tower case with enough room on the inside for most motherboards and CPUs. Likewise, it is possible to install even the biggest CPU coolers, thanks to a large cutout on the motherboard tray that lets such things be installed without removing the platform. Moving on, up to seven HDDs or SSDs can be held by the internal HDD pull-out cages.

Furthermore, the various 5.25-inch and 2.5-inch drive bays permit tool-free installation of storage devices.

One of the so-called

There are three new processors, well APUs. from Advanced Micro Devices closing in on retail stores, according to Donim Haber.

They are called FX-8140, FX-6120 and FX-4150 and will probably be launched in March, 2012 (next month).

FX-4150, as the weakest of the trio, features four cores, each working at a base frequency of 3.9 GHz and a Turbo Core rating of 4.1 GHz. The second unit, FX-6120, can reach the same Turbo Core level as above, even though its six cores function at 3.5 GHz normally.

As for the FX-8140, it is a strong, 8-core central processor (4 modules) whose base frequency is of 3.2 GHz and whose maximum Turbo Core performance is of, again, 4.1 GHz.

All three newcomers draw 95W of energy, though it may be possible for the 8-core to come in a 125W variant as well.

If anything, this shows that AMD is not about to back out of the processor segment, even if it has stopped bothering with trying to outmatch Intel on the high-end front.

Finally, the FX-4150 boasts 12 MB of cache memory, while the FX-6120 comes with 14 MB and the FX-8140 has 16 MB.