Archive for September 2010
Intel Sandy Bridge might get USB 3.0 after all?
The guys over at Fudzilla report that Intel all of the sudden changed its mind regarding native USB 3.0 on the Sandy Bridge platform.
"However, just like Intel didn
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OCZ announces HSDL SSD interface
OCZ announced its High-Speed Data Link (HSDL) interface for solid state disks, to accelerate the progression of solid-state storage.
Unsatisfied with existing interface options, OCZ developed HSDL to eliminate I/O bottlenecks and enable SSD technology to operate at its full potential. With this initiative, OCZ aims to enhance high performance computing (HPC) and I/O-intensive infrastructures for its clients.
"Solid State Drive throughput speeds are increasing at a rate in excess of what current storage buses can support, and as a result, storage protocols are quickly becoming the bottleneck to storage subsystem performance," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "Designed for both high-performance computing and enterprise storage applications, our new High Speed Data Link interface addresses this issue and revolutionizes data storage by significantly outperforming other current interfaces delivering performance at levels that saturate most CPU busses."
Capable of running up to 20Gbps of data bandwidth per channel, HSDL significantly outperforms existing storage interfaces such as Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) which only offer 3Gbps/6Gbps data rates. Furthermore, multiple HSDL channels can be combined for maximum bandwidth to increase productivity levels in both consumer and enterprise applications.
OCZ's new HSDL interface is the driving force behind the "OCZ IBIS," an upcoming 3.5-inch SSD to be launched under the new HSDL initiative. As the first solution to make use of the HSDL interface, the OCZ IBIS Series has the potential to redefine storage and surpass the limitations currently placed on hard drives as well as other SSDs.
HSDL is an open standard and allows other devices to leverage this high-speed internal interconnect technology. OCZ is diligently working with platform partners for mass HSDL adoption, and in the meantime, single port adapter cards will ship with every HSDL solid-state drive such as the IBIS Series, while quad port cards for multiple drive configurations will also be available to clients seeking even greater storage and bandwidth.
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Corsair Builder budget PSU series
Next to the recently released Game Series (GS), Corsair now also introduces budget power supplies with fixed wires, a single +12V rail and up to 80 percent energy efficiency. The Builder series is available in 430W, 500W and 600W versions for $49.99, $64.99 and $74.99, respectively.
Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced the new Builder Series range of power supplies. The Builder Series CX430, CX500 and CX600 power supplies have been designed to provide continuous, reliable power output, and worry-free compatibility with your home or office PC. They are the ideal choice for PC builders and upgraders who need an affordable, quiet, and energy efficient PSU for mainstream performance, single GPU systems.
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MSI Launches N480GTX Twin Frozr II Graphics Card
MSI today officially launches the N480GTX Twin Frozr II graphics card. Built on the latest 40nm manufacturing process, the N480GTX Twin Frozr II is equipped with 1536MB of high-speed GDDR5 memory. The exclusive, award-winning Twin Frozr II thermal design meets the performance and thermal demands of graphics enthusiasts.
Along with various exclusive technologies from NVIDIA such as 3D Vision Surround, PhysX, and CUDA, the N480GTX Twin Frozr II allows games to be played at the highest resolutions. The Twin Frozr II dual-fan thermal design from MSI reduces temperature by 14
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BitFenix Design Lab Survivor Chassis
ASUS CineVibe Rumble Feedback USB Gaming Headset review
ASUS CineVibe Rumble Headset review
ASUS CineVibe Rumble Feedback USB Gaming Headset review
At first glance you might think that comparing the CineVibe to audiophile quality headphones may not be in the best of taste, however, we find that the CineVibe are actually pretty good. The shock! The horror! The screeching violins! Oh, we
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Antec Releases Open-Air Chassis: The LanBoy Air
Antec announced the LanBoy Air: Antec's state-of-the art, fully-modular chassis designed to provide extensive customizability and flexibility to high-performance PC gamers, modders and workstation users.
The LanBoy Air sports unprecedented top-to-bottom mesh construction for extensive air ventilation and includes five 120 mm fans (two front-adjustable speed 120 mm blue LED fans and three 120 mm TwoCool two-speed blue LED fans) with space to mount up to 15 total fans. The fans are positioned to create positive air pressure, bringing cool air in and around hard drives and graphics cards, and expelling hot air and dust through the chassis' perforated panels.
The LanBoy Air has an entirely reconfigurable interior with 11 total drive bays (including nine modular bays to accommodate six internal 3.5" drives and three external 5.25" drives). The 3.5" drives can also take advantage of Antec's exclusive AirMount suspension mounting system, which suspends hard drives in the drive bays, reducing vibration and increasing ease of use. Additionally, the 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays can be easily configured in three horizontal orientations: facing the front, right or left to accommodate users' desired chassis arrangements. This chassis also comes with two internal bottom-mounted 2.5" SSD drive bays.
The chassis' motherboard tray comes complete with a CPU cut-out and the power supply unit (PSU) mount is situated on the bottom of the chassis. In addition, both the motherboard tray and PSU mount slide out for easy installation and can be repositioned for increased customization -- meeting the exacting demands of end users as well as system builders.
The LanBoy Air has space to fit graphics cards 15" and over and also features two rugged carrying handles for easy transport while at LAN parties, eight expansion slots, three USB ports (including one USB 3.0 port) and a convenient bottom-installed tool box for hardware and screw storage.
"Antec's Skeleton was universally lauded as the most innovative chassis ever. The LanBoy Air builds on the Skeleton's open-air frame design, combining it with a familiar form factor and fully modular construction," said Scott Richards, senior vice president at Antec. "This chassis offers our most avid users the platform they need to push the limits of what they imagined possible in high-performance system design."
Among its accolades, the LanBoy Air was awarded the prestigious COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2010 Design & Innovation prize for excellence in design quality in the "Components and Parts" category earlier this year.
The LanBoy Air is available now for an estimated price of $219.95 through major retailers, e-tailers and distributors and is backed by Antec's Quality 3-Year (AQ3) Limited Warranty on parts and labor.
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Pizza + Star Trek = Pizza Cutter
Alright, not at all hardware related. But this is just cool (if you are a true geek), and face it .. we all have been Star Trek fans at one point in our lives.
Now if you liked the series, then you'll surely appreciate this ! Check out this Star Trek Pizza Cutter. As pizza connoisseurs and Star Trek fans, the minds at ThinkGeek devised a product to incorporate both loves into one outstanding product.
"After years of staring at the iconic shape of the Star Trek Enterprise we finally realized in one
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Radeon HD 6800 series
A lot of rumors on the upcoming AMD Graphics card line seem to be invalid. Some websites have jumped onto that, let me iron out some of the gossip.
Despite rumors from DigiTimes earlier this week that mentioned delays of the Radeon HD 6000 series until November, we still think that the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 graphics cards will be released on October 18th, give or take a day.
As you guys know, both cards will be and are based on what is now know as the 'Barts' GPU. One rumor is correct though, the 6800 series will in fact be segmented into mid-range, and not high-end as many people expected.
So the Radeon HD 6800 will segment itself in the mid-range market, whereas the Radeon HD 5800 series will be updated with the Radeon HD 6900 (Caymen) series, with a dual-GPU part named Radeon HD 6990 (Antilles).
So that is certainly something to think about, as the naming scheme has changed. The 6800 products will be targeted directly against NVIDIA's GTX 460 series products (GF104). The Radeon HD 6850 will be faster than the Radeon HD 5830 and the Radeon HD 6870 will be faster than the Radeon HD 5850.
The Radeon HD 6870 will be a pure reference product, while the Radeon HD 6850 will see many custom designs and boards. In the end it will be all about pricing. Here are some leaked (unconfirmed) specs that show the differences in-between some of the old and new products:
Specifications | Radeon HD 5770 | Radeon HD 5850 | Radeon HD 6850 | Radeon HD 6870 |
GPU | Juniper XT | Cypress Pro | Barts Pro | Barts XT |
Manufact. tech. | 40nm | 40 nm | 40 nm | 40 nm |
GPU frequency | 850 MHz | 725 MHz | 725 MHz | 850 MHz |
Stream processors | 800 |
1440 | 800 | 960 |
Memory frequency | 4 800 MHz | 4 000 MHz | 4 000 MHz | 4 200 MHz |
Memory bus |
128-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
Memory buffer |
1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 | 1 GB GDDR5 |
Power consumption |
108 watt | 151 watt | ~ 120 watt | >150 watt |
Performance |
- | - | Better than 5830 | Better than 5850 |
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Darkspore Gameplay Trailer
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Logitech wireless headset F540
Hey, I always wanted that! A modern, high quality wireless headset that enables me to enjoy gaming experience and don
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POV ultra charges their GeForce GTS 450
The POV/TGT GeForce GTS 450 Ultra Charged is of highest quality and feature rock solid stability even beyond the documented clock settings of 891 MHz core clock, 1782 MHz shader clock and 4008 MHz memory clock (1002 MHz times 4 due to GDDR-5).
The POV/TGT GeForce GTS 450 ChargedTM guarantees rock solid stability at a minimum of 835 MHz core clock, 1670 MHz shader clock and 3800 MHz memory clock (900 MHz times 4 due to GDDR-5).
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ECS working on Sandy Bridge mobo with Hydra
The launch of Intel's Sandy Bridge (mainstream at first) processors is getting closer, and with it comes a new CPU socket, and a new motherboard chipsets. The first photo's on P67 chipset based motherboards have been floating around the web for a while now. ECS is also working on a few of these motherboards and is making sure that both NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards work combined together. yep, they are adding a Lucid Hydra chip like some of the competition.
Now we are not keen on the extra chip at all, as overall experiences with Hydra are far from impressive and user friendly.
The motherboard we refer to is the P67H2-A based on the upcoming socket LGA 1155 is which is powered by a 14-phase VRM.
The motherboard comes with three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16, x16, NC / x16, x8, x8 most likely) as well as a pair of PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots. The motherboard also shows dual Gigabit Ethernet and two NEC USB 3.0 controllers that will bring you a total of four USB 3.0 ports. We also can see six SATA 3 Gbps ports and two SATA 6 Gbps controllers (for two internal ports) and a number of USB 2.0 ports, plus eSATA. The colleagues over at BitTech snagged a photo of this unit, have a peek (click on the thumbnail).
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Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 pictured
Zigmatek revealed the Gaia SD1283, an upcoming CPU cooler with three 8mm copper heatpipes, an aluminium fin array and a 120mm white LED fan.
The cooler is sized 120 (W) x 50 (D) x 159 (H) mm and as stated comes with an array of hree 8mm copper heatpipes, nice and thick alright. The included fan is sized 120mm and operated at 800 to 1500 RPM at 16 to 24 dBA. It also has four white LEDs embedded as it seems. Pricing and availability unknown at this time.
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Motorola and HTC to use NVIDIA Tegra 2
Good news for NVIDIA, their Tegra 2 has received orders from HTC and Motorola, according to a report by DigiTimes.
As iPad has recently triggered several IT brands to launch tablet PCs, Nvidia has successfully caught up with the trend and its Tegra 2 has already landed orders for use in Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI), Toshiba and High Tech Computer's (HTC's) tablet PCs, while the processor has also entered the smartphone market and landed orders from Motorola. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, at the company-hosted GTC 2010 also noted that Motorola is one of the major clients that Nvidia is cooperating with for the long term.
After receiving orders from Asustek, HTC and Motorola, Nvidia's GPU lineup has successfully expanded from only the PC market to also the handset and the consumer electronics markets. The company's inferior status in competition against AMD and Intel, is expected to see a significant improvement.
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OCZ Launches Onyx 2 SSD
OCZ Technologyunveiled the OCZ Onyx 2 Series, a 2.5 inch SSD with affordability designed for mainstream desktops and mobile systems. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient solution, the Onyx 2 delivers excellent performance with lower price per gigabyte than that of other comparable drives on the market.
"While we are constantly looking to push the envelope in solid state drive performance, we are also dedicated to making the technology more affordable to consumers," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The new Onyx 2 Series SSDs give customers the very best of both worlds when it comes to performance and value, and they are an ideal solution for mobile and desktop users that want to take advantage of all the benefits that SSDs offer over traditional rotational based drives."
OCZ continues to expand its consumer SSD lineup with the goals of not only delivering cutting-edge performance, but also of making SSDs more affordable to help foster adoption of this game-changing technology. Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the SandForce-driven Onyx 2 delivers 270MB/s read, 265MB/s write, and up to 10,000 random write IOPS (4k aligned), without the higher costs normally associated with similar multi-level cell (MLC)-based solutions. The Onyx 2 SSD delivers an enhanced computing experience for netbooks, laptops, and home desktops with faster application loading, snappier data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life and feature TRIM support as the ultimate Windows 7 upgrade.
OCZ Onyx 2 SSDs feature a durable yet lightweight housing, and because they have no moving parts, they are more rugged than conventional hard discs. Available in ample 120GB and 240GB capacities, the Onyx 2 is an ideal hard drive replacement for first-time SSD upgraders in need of primary laptop storage or a spacious application and OS boot drive. Designed for superior reliability, Onyx 2 Series is backed by a 2-year warranty and renowned technical support.
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Tweak Me! 1.1.0.6
Tweak Me! is a Windows Tweaking Application which supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.