Microsoft issued two patches allowing Windows vista 32 and 64-bit user to update their DirectX towards DX11 with Compute Shader capability.

Overview - The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library contain the latest advancements in modern graphics technologies for gaming, multimedia, imaging and printing applications. It includes updates to DirectX, DirectCompute, and XPS Library. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Please make sure you have Windows Vista Service Pack installed. The download contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit patches.

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One day after releasing the SSD Trim tool and Firmware upgrade Intel pulled down the software as users reported corrupted and broken SSD drives. The firmware flashes fine yet users report that after loading the OS troubles tart with bad sectors and occasionally systems are refusing to boot whatsoever.

02HA Firmware Upgrade for Windows 7* Systems - Unavailable

Intel has been contacted by users with issues with the 02HA firmware upgrade on Windows 7* systems and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware update while we investigate.

Thank you for your patience.

Today we look at a P55 motherboard in the extremely high-end range .. it's the all new eVGA P55 Classified 200. A board designed for the extreme overclockers a board for the uber enthusiast PC aficionado's.

The motherboard we'll look into today is the absolute finest offering from eVGA ... in all its ways a black and red colored motherboard with a very nice feature set and then some more in the form overclocking options, a tweakers wet dream really.

Check out the Guru3D review right here.

Mushkin Enhanced releaseds a pair of new DDR3 dual-channel and triple-channel memory kits utilizing the new Blackline PC3-12800 high-density 4 GB module.

These kits operate at 1600 MHz, with timings of 7-7-7-20, with DRAM voltage of 1.65V. In dual and triple channel kits, they offer 8 and 12 GB of memory, respectively. Below are the details of the kits as listed by the company:

• 996776 - Mushkin Enhanced Blackline PC3-12800 8192 MB Dual Channel Kit CL 7-7-7-20 1.65V
• 998776 - Mushkin Enhanced Blackline PC3-12800 12288 MB Triple Channel Kit CL 7-7-7-20 1.65V

No word on  pricing just yet.

Heree's a couple of photo's of the upcoming Radeon HD 5870 graphics card from Sapphire with Vapor-X cooling. This card is expected to be available by early November but it features only a modest factory overclock. The GPU has been overclocked 20MHz to 870MHz, while the memory clockspeed has been bumped from 4.8GHz to 5GHz.

HighPoint has introduced two Serial ATA 6Gbps PCI Express 2.0 cards, the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622. Both cards will start shipping soon.

HighPoint Technologies

Earlier on already a photo was spotted on an MSI GD80 motherboard with Lucid Hydra chipset. It now seems that MSI is planning a launch fairly soon and will actually launch it under the tag Trinergy.

Over at a Turkish website early photo's have leaked on this motherboard and what's so interesting is that the box mentions Big Bang and Trinergy.

The motherboard will be based on the P55 chipset, is the GD80 version of the motherboard and thus supports Core i7 and Core i5 processors. LucidLogix will place their Hydra chip on there allowing the motherboard to make use of different graphics card and have them run together to render games. The fun thing here is that you can actually use an NVIDIA and an ATI card if you wanted to.

Next to all the cool features the board already offers MSI added a few more extra's which seem to be a combo of THX TruStudio PC and Creative's EAX Advanced HD 5.0 A possibility is (but we are not certain) is that this motherboard also carries support for Sata 6Gb/sand usb 3.0-ports.

It is also rumored that an X58 version of this motherboard will become available under the name Fuzion.

I;m just curious, some of you ptrobably need to ask/explain to your parents or girlfirend that you want a 'Big Bang' for Christmas ? :)

The motherboard will be available likely in early December, prices are TBA. Theck out the thumbnails.

Scythe is announcing two new entry-level versions of Katana 3 CPU Cooler. Both new models are offered at a lower price, and are equipped with dedicated mounting bracket and thermal grease. Katana 3 "Type A" (SCKTN-3000A) is compatible to AMD socket 754, 939, 940, AM2(+), AM3 whereas "Type I" (SCKTN-3000I) is compatible to Intel socket 775, 1156 and 1366.

Katana 3 TYPE A & I CPU Cooler is equipped with a genuine Scythe 92 mm fan which supports the PWM feature for flexible fan control by motherboard. Fan speed can be adjusted between 300 to 2,500 rpm which provides airflow of 12 to 95 m

The firmware also adds Trim support, for improved handling of deleted data blocks and prolonging drive lifespan in not only Windows 7 but XP and Vista systems.  Owners can download the firmware here, and find the SSD Toolbox and Optimizer here.

Third quarter shipments of graphics processors jumped an amazing 21.2% over Q2, which was already a great quarter clearly signaling the holidays will be robust for PCs and the industry in general.

AMD showed the biggest jump in quarter-to-quarter growth at 30% followed by Intel at 21%.
Intel shipped the most parts at 63 million, over twice as many as its nearest competitor Nvidia.

"A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in Q3, 2008," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon, California. "So the market has caught up with, and exceeded, last year's highs. The crash of fall 2008 is now behind us."

 Once again a record was broken and the growth from Q2 to Q3 was the largest in nine years.

Portables lead the way
 Notebook shipments led the market again topping out at almost 56 million units with discrete graphics processors jumping more than 36% over Q2 indicating what the OEMs think will be the hot sellers in Q4.  Peddie notes that, "Integrated graphics in notebooks, which includes the popular netbooks, increased 27% over Q2 - a great gain but less than discrete. Netbooks will remain popular but they will not have the high market share they had during the recession when they were just introduced. Rather, consumers are expected to "buy up" in the next quarter.

Tilera on Monday announced new general-purpose CPUs, including a 100-core chip, as it tries to make its way into the server market dominated by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

The two-year-old startup's Tile-GX series of chips are targeted at servers and appliances that execute Web-related functions such as indexing, Web search and video search, said Anant Agarwal, cofounder and chief technology officer of Tilera, which is based in San Jose, California. The chips have the attributes of a general-purpose CPU as they can run the Linux OS and other applications commonly used to serve Web data.

"You can run us as an adjunct to something else, though the intent is to be able to run it stand-alone," Agarwal said. The chips could serve as co-processors alongside x86 chips, or potentially replace the chips in appliances and servers.

Chip makers are continuously adding cores as a way to boost application performance. Most x86 server chips today come with either four or six cores, but Intel is set to release the Nehalem-EX chip, an x86 microprocessor with eight cores. AMD will shortly follow with a 12-core Opteron chip code-named Magny Cours. Graphics processors from companies like AMD and Nvidia include hundreds of cores to run high-performance applications, though the chips are making their way into PCs.

The Gx100 100-core chip will draw close to 55 watts of power at maximum performance, Agarwal said. The 16-core chip will draw as little as 5 watts of power.

Tilera's chips have an advantage in performance-per watt compared to x86 chips, but some will be skeptical as the chips are not yet established, said Will Strauss, principal analyst at Forward Concepts.

"I don't think an average person is going to run out to buy a computer with Tilera in it," Strauss said. Intel has the advantage of being an incumbent, and even if Tilera offered something comparable to Intel's chips, it would take years to catch up.

But to start, Tilera is focusing the chips on specific applications that can scale in performance across a large number of cores. It has ported certain Linux applications commonly used in servers, like the Apache Web server, MySQL database and Memcached caching software, to the Tilera architecture.

In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

AMD released the Mecha and LadyBug technology demo's yesterday on the developer website. Unfortunately it required a developer login in order to download them. Therefore we hosted them on our file-severs.

AMD Mecha DirectX 11 Demo
The Mecha demo shows the results of a new approach to rendering semi-transparent objects without pre-sorting, known as order-independent transparency (OIT). It is made possible by the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series of graphics processors and the new features of Microsoft DirectX 11 technology. Blending is an order-dependent operation that requires sorting objects before rendering them. Atomic operations and append buffers make it possible to construct per-pixel fragment lists and sort them on the GPU. The results are a significant increase in speed and accuracy over those possible with traditional techniques.

Download

AMD Ladybug DirectX 11 Demo
The Ladybug demo shows the results of a new approach to simulating lens-accurate depth-of-field effects based on real-world parameters of focal length and focus distance. This technique is made possible by the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series of graphics processors and the Microsoft DirectX 11 and Direct Compute 11 technologies. Depth-of-field is used in feature films by cinematographers to subtly guide a viewer

When you purchase Windows 7 from Microsoft Store, you have the option to download an ISO file or compressed files. The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD.

The ISO file contains all the Windows 7 installation files combined into a single uncompressed file. When you download the ISO file, you need to copy it to some medium in order to install Windows 7. This tool allows you to create a copy of the ISO file to a USB flash drive or a DVD. To install Windows 7 from your USB flash drive or DVD, all you need to do is insert the USB flash drive into your USB port or insert your DVD into your DVD drive and run Setup.exe from the root folder on the drive.

Note: You cannot install Windows 7 from the ISO file until you copy it to a USB flash drive or DVD with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and install from there.

To install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool:

1. Download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool installation file.
2. When you are prompted to either save the file to disk or run it, choose Run.
3. Follow the steps in the setup dialogs. You'll have the option to specify where to install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and whether to create shortcuts on your Start Menu or Windows Desktop.

System Requirements

• Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)
• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• 50MB of free space on your hard drive
• DVD-R drive or 4GB removable USB flash drive

Download - click here

S3 Graphicsannounced the latest addition to its power-efficient embedded graphics processor family, with the unveiling of the OpenCL 1.0 capable Chrome 5400E GPGPU processor. The S3 Graphics 5400E will be unveiled at the Electronic Manufacturer Exposition (eMEX), October 22nd - 25th, in Suzhou, China at the Suzhou International Expo Center, Hall 4A, Booth No. 4K08.

OpenCL is an open, cross-platform standard used to harness the power of a GPUs internal shaders to accelerate parallel computations in applications ranging from scientific, medical, and other high performance computing (HPC) markets. The native OpenCL engine in the 5400E GPU enables our partners to go beyond graphics and video, and penetrate these diverse HPC markets.

"S3 Graphics continues to empower key embedded technology providers, helping extend their market offerings based on our growing portfolio of feature-rich products, incorporating next-generation technologies like General Purpose GPU computing, as well as the latest 3D graphics architectures, HD video decode and encode, and the latest HDMI and Display Port display interfaces," said Dr. Ken Weng, GM for S3 Graphics. "Our new Chrome 5400E truly bridges the gap between PC and embedded device design, giving customers true GPU versatility."

Native support of OpenCL with the industry's best GFLOPS per watt rating including a DirectX 10.1 / OpenGL 3.1 graphics engine, ChromotionHD video core for HD video decode including Blu-ray, H.264, and VC-1, a video encode engine, and OpenVG 1.1 engine in the 5400E creates the most versatile GPU for embedded applications requiring longevity, customization, performance, features, and low power.

DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.1 applications on Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms can be effectively run using the Chrome 5400E programmable shader cores to speed up 3D simulations, 3D rendering applications, and other visual processing functions. OpenVG 1.1 support boosts 2D based vector graphics for scalable graphics and video vector based applications.

Driver support of Microsoft operating systems includes Windows 7 Aero, Vista Aero, XP, and CE. Linux kernel 2.6.xx with support for RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Debian, along with other Linux distributions are supported by the 5400E drivers. For more information, visit the product page.

ASUS is very soon introducing a motherbaord with support for SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 under product name P7P55D-E Premium. According to ASUS,this P55 board expects to show up in late October. The motherboard  follows P7P55D Deluxes design and features except for enhanced SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0. P7P55D-E Premium is available soon.

According to a new study, if HDDs continue to progress at their current pace, then in 2020 a two-disk, 2.5-inch disk drive will be capable of storing more than 14 TB and will cost about $40 (today, a typical 500 GB hard drive costs about $100). Although flash memories have also become popular - with advantages such as lower power consumption, faster read access time, and better mechanical reliability than HDDs - the cost per GB for flash memories is nearly 10 times that of HDDs. In addition, flash memory technology will reach technical limits that will prevent its continued scaling before 2020, keeping them from replacing HDDs.

In a study published in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Professor Mark Kryder and PhD student Chang Soo Kim of Carnegie Mellon University have investigated 13 up-and-coming NVM technologies to see whether one of them might outperform HDDs on a cost-per-TB basis in 2020. Their results showed that most technologies will probably not be competitive with HDDs or flash memories at that time, except for two potential candidates: phase change random access memory (PCRAM) and spin transfer torque random access memory (STTRAM).

As Kryder and Kim explained, PCRAM is based on the phase change properties of chalcogenide glass. With the application of heat, the glass can switch between two different states (amorphous and crystalline) to be used as a memory. With their small cell size and ability to store multiple bits per cell, PCRAMs have the potential to offer high densities and be cost-competitive with HDDs, but their biggest drawback is that they require somewhat higher power than most other technologies. PCRAMs are already beginning to be marketed by Numonyx Inc., an Intel-ST Microelectronics joint venture, and so are closer to practical realization than STTRAM.

STTRAM, which is similar to magnetic RAM, uses a spin polarized current to write data by reorienting the states of a magnetic tunnel junction between parallel and anti-parallel orientations. In their evaluation, Kryder and Kim found that STTRAMs appear to potentially offer superior power efficiency, among other advantages. If STTRAMs could be improved to store multiple bits per cell, the researchers predict that STTRAMs

Cooler Master designed the Cooler Master LAB Test Bench v1.0. It's what has been missing here at the lab alright, a nice looking, easy to use chassis where we can pop on and off hardware components, it makes motherboard, cooler and RAM testing really easy. And as simple as this product is, we really like it. And rest assured we'll be using it with pretty much any future motherboard review. It's not a suitable product for everybody, but if it applies to you we can wholeheartedly recommend it.

Read the Guru3D review