This one we already have ready for publication likely tomorrow, MSI today officially unveiled its N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC graphics card featuring the award winning Twin Frozr II Thermal Design.

The MSI GTX560 Ti Twin Frozer II comes all customized and factory overclocked, armed with some military grade components and a robust build the dark PCB of the MSI GTX560 Ti Twin Frozer II will carry a GPU clocked at 880 MHz and its memory at 4200 MHz, both thus a nice chunk faster than reference. To top things off, MSI put the Twin Frozr II cooler on this card and that admittedly does make wonders as we measure peak temperatures BELOW 55 Degrees C. As a result of that excellent cooling we can actually overclock this card (without voltage tweaking whatsoever) close to 1 GHz.

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The MSI GTX560 Ti Twin Frozer II tested today indeed comes all customized and factory overclocked, Armed with some Military grade components and a robust build the dark PCB of the MSI GTX560 Ti Twin Frozer II will carry a GPU clocked at 880 MHz and it's memory at 4200 MHz, both thus a nice chunk faster than reference. To top things off, MSI put the Twin Frozr II cooler on this card and that admittedly does do wonder as we measure peak temperatures BELOW 55 Degrees C.

Some interesting news came in from digitimes, general manger of Asustek's motherboard business unit revealed that prices of motherboard are expected to increase by 5-10 percent on average, and even as much as 15 percent for some models. The price hike reflects the labor shortage in China, the appreciation of the Taiwanese dollar and the increase of commodity prices.

The increase is to cope with the labor shortage in China, the NT dollar's appreciation and rising material costs, especially when copper price has soared to over US$9,000 per ton, Lin noted.

Prices of motherboards are expected to hike by 5-10% on average, or even as much as 15%, in the first half of 2011, according to an estimate of industry sources.

The price hike is unlikely to affect the growth momentum of motherboards or sales in DIY channels as some key PC parts and components have actually see prices slide and therefore, the overall purchasing costs for consumers will not increase significantly, Lin commented.

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Small tweaks in AMDs roadmap as the 32nm release lineup has shifted a little, the Llano APUs are now expected to hit the market in Q2 2011 while the high-end Bulldozer processors have been delayed to summer 2011. According to AMD interim CEO Thomas Seifert, the Orochi desktop parts will arrive in early summer while the Orochi server models will arrive in late summer.

"We have entered a new phase with our 32nm ramp and are now sampling thousands of Llano products to a wide variety of OEMs and ODMs as they prepare for production in Q2," said Thomas Seifert, interim chief executive officer of AMD, during a conference call with financial analysts.

Back in early November it was, reported citing unofficial sources, that AMD would commence commercial manufacturing of code-named Llano accelerated processing units (APUs) for desktops and mobiles in July '11, which is Q3 2011.

Meanwhile, microprocessors with Bulldozer micro-architecture were supposed to hit the mass production sometime in April '11, according to unofficial sources.

Also below some leaked specs in a screenshot:

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Last week AMD revealed that it has shipped over 1 million Fusion APUs and more than 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs.

"Industry momentum for Fusion is strong and growing. OEM adoption of Brazos is excellent. We shipped more than 1 million Brazos platforms in its debut quarter to world class OEMs including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba," said Thomas Seifert, interim chief executive officer of AMD, during the company's fourth quarter-related conference call with financial analysts.

One million APUs is a rather significant number as AMD formally started to commercially ship its APUs in early November. The wide adoption of the new series of chips means that the there is a lot of interest towards low-power solutions with advanced graphics and video support, a clear indication that end users now pay attention on multimedia functionality like never before.

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Battlestar Galactica Online, inspired by one of the most popular sci-fi series in television history, is a tactical space combat and adventure MMOG that can be played directly in an Internet browser. Built with the Unity development platform, Battlestar Galactica Online aims to set new technical and artistic benchmarks for 3D browser games. Battlestar Galactica is the gripping saga of humanity's last remnants and their struggle to find a new home while fleeing from their deadly Cylon enemies. Gamers will be able to choose to play as Cylons or Humans.



The game is being developed by Artplant, a Norwegian development studio specializing in 3D MMO games, for Bigpoint. Currently in private beta for select players in Europe and North America, Bigpoint is planning to launch the open beta in early 2011. When the game launches in the United States, it will be available exclusively on Syfy.com for a 30-day period. battlestar-galactica.bigpoint.com
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Why not double up that shader count and thus performance with the help of NVIDIA's SLI technology. We'll tell you a bit about multi-GPU gaming, the challenges, the requirements and of course a nice tasty benchmark session. We'll have a peek at temperatures, power consumption and overclocking of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI mode to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

The product in queue for review today comes from Gigabyte, they unleashed a product tagged as SOC edition (Super OverClock), and that surely applies as the GeForce GTX 560 Ti SOC (GV-N560SO-1GI) is brutally clocked at in the factory at 1 GHz for you (reference is 822 MHz). The full gigabyte of 256-bit gDDR5 memory clocks in at 4580 MHz (effective data rate) over the reference 4008 MHz.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti itself, aimed against the Radeon HD 6800 series the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is based on a new GPU refresh, the GF114 silicon which features 384 shader processors, a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and a core clock speed of 822 MHz. All factors combined deliver a product onto the market that is quite interesting performance and features wise, a product that is noiseless and has a power consumption level we can all life with.

Digitimes reports that Memory module supplier Kingston Technology will likely subscribe to a private placement of JMicron Technology, which specializes in controller chips for solid-state drives (SSD), according to industry sources.

JMicron will host a special investors meeting on January 25 to pass the company's proposal to raise new funds via a private placement.

The sources revealed that JMicron had intended to draw investment from Toshiba, but gave up partly due to concerns that relationships with other chip sources could be affected.

Kingston has become more aggressive in the SSD field since 2010, the sources pointed out. The company's successful push of low-priced SSD series earlier last year helped it further penetrate into the market, the sources said. Later in 2010, Kingston expanded its line of SSD with 64-512GB products.

In the second half of 2010, Kingston started to use JMicron's storage controllers in its SSD series, the sources indicated. Cooperation between the two has been growing since.

The sources estimated that JMicron's SSD controller shipments for 2010 totaled more than one million units. Kingston accounted for over 30% to the output, the sources said.

Kingston also holds stakes in controller design firms Phison Electronics, Skymedi and Solid State System (3S). Kingston works with Phison for eMMC solutions, and the other two for flash drives and cards. JMicron is part of the United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) Group and led by Tsai Ming-Kai, who is also the chairman of MediaTek.

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Galaxy is set to release the GeForce GTX 560 soon and they will apply intersting cooling, and ... a white PCB, something very expensive to manufacture actually. The GTX 560 Ti White edition features slightly upped clock speeds of 835/1670/4000 MHz (core/shaders/memory).

Have a quick peek:

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That's right, in February Intel will release a handful of new Sandy Bridge processors. This time addressing the mid and low-range segment. Added in the desktop line-up will be the Core i5 2390T and the Core i3 2120, 2100 and 2100T. The T designates energy efficient processors.

Model	Cores / Threads	Clock Speed	Turbo Boost Speed	DMI Speed	L2 Cache	TDP	Price
Intel Core i5-2390T	2 / 4	2.7 GHz	3.5 GHz	5 GT/s	3 MB	35 W	US$ 195
Intel Core i3-2120	2 / 4	3.3 GHz	None	5 GT/s	3 MB	65 W	US$ 138
Intel Core i3-2100	2 / 4	3.1 GHz	None	5 GT/s	3 MB	65 W	US$ 117
Intel Core i3-2100T	2 / 4	2.5 GHz	None	5 GT/s	3 MB	35 W	NA

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Crytek and Electronic Arts just announced that a multiplayer demo for Crysis 2 is available exclusively on Xbox Live starting next Tuesday (January 25th). The names for all of the six game modes are: Assault, Capture The Relay, Crash Site, Extraction, Instant Action and Team Instant Action. Additionally, there will be eight variants of those modes available. Three new map names popped up as well: Sanctuary, Parking Deck and Skyline There will be twelve maps in total.

Crysis 2 will be available for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 on March 22nd in North America and March 25th in Europe. 
 

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LA Times is reporting that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be hitting shelves this coming November 2011, despite all of the legal issues surrounding the series and Infinity Ward.

Activision has quietly tapped Sledgehammer Games, a Northern California studio, to help out with the making of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, according to people familiar with the situation. The game has not been officially announced by Activision. But the title is well into production and is expected to come out in November, the same month that the publisher has annually released a new Call of Duty installment, people with knowledge of situation said. Modern Warfare 3 will be the first game Infinity Ward has produced since the departure of of company co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.

People close to the matter said Infinity Ward is working closely with Sledgehammer, which is led by a team recruited away from Activision's rival Electronic Arts Inc. The two studios are equally sharing duties of producing the single-player portion of the game, the sources said.

Activision has also brought in Wisconsin-based Raven Software, which is working on the online multi-player elements for Modern Warfare 3, sources said.

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Nvidia will be shipping a Tegra 2 3D processor this year as TechEye reports, intended for use in mobile gadgets featuring a 3D screen. The new Tegra 2 3D will be based on a Dual Cortex A9 clocked at up to 1.2 GHz, offering 5520 MIPS. According to the slide, Nvidia will start churning them out some time in the first quarter.

It can be reasoned coming mobile handsets will offer a Master Image TN-LCD display using cell parallax, a technology using the individuals cells to create a 3D effect instead of a parallax barrier, as Nintendo will be using in its 3DS console.

Master Image's Roy Taylor, a former green goblin, also explained looking at a mobile or a tablet basically kills peripheral vision, allowing the 3D effect to work its magic. It's the same in the cinema because one is plonked in front of a large screen, yet also thanks to the glasses.

Actually, its the shutter glasses which make 3D tellies function, thanks to them shutting out peripheral vision. Without the shutter glasses, the brain couldn't cope all too well with all the real life surrounding a telly with a fixed position. Taking a glimpse to the right or left would make things all wobbly and warbly. Tablet and mobile phone users will be staring at a 3D screen and always move it around in line of sight, inside the viewing cone.

This is the reason one can call Nvidia's Tegra 2 3D the real deal. It will be hitting smartphones and tablets this spring, offering new ways of earning money for companies and their shareholders, while consumers trade in their wages for pleasure and cheap thrills to be had without leaving the sofa.

Upcoming 3D tablets and phones will also pose a difficulty to Nintendo and its 3DS console, as well as Apple and its current generation of iPhones, iPods and iPads. Master Image itself has already shown off a Hitachi handset offering a slide-up 3D display.

Nintendo won't be hit so hard thanks to its strong heritage - kids, as well as some grown-ups, will love playing Mario, Zelda and third-party titles such as Resident Evil in 3D, as well as watching 3D movies on the console, such as "How To Tame Your Dragon" and "Guardians of Ga'hoole".

Nvidia's Tegra 2 3D holds the promise of being a game changing platform in the mobile arena, much to the detriment of Intel, whose Atom simply can't compete in terms of energy nor graphical performance. It seems trying to shut Nvidia out of the world of netbooks backfired, a sign of imperial hubris, letting Chipzilla fall flat on its face in a new, infant market.

 

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Today we have a new review on the Radeon HD 6950. A series (6900) that has been received with somewhat mixed feelings. Everybody expected the overall performance to be a notch higher.

As such MSI went back to the drawing board and redesigned the PCB, armed it with quality components and decided that they would need to slap a nice cooler on there. As such we see the model as tested today, running slightly above reference specification yet with the latest twin Frozr II cooler mounted on top of it.

Check out the full Guru3D article right here.

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We unfortunately can't say anything else than 3 GB is complete overkill for this card, but Palit Microsystems announces the double memory sized Palit GTX 580 3GB.

With massive 3072MB of GDDR5 memory, Palit GTX 580 3GB offers rich, realistic and explosive HD gaming performance under maximum resolution setting. Palit GTX 580 3GB is built for enthusiast gamers!

With 3072MB memory at 4020MHz, Palit GTX580 3GB provides incredible gaming performance in the hottest title such as StarCraft II even under an extreme resolution. On a 30" monitor with 2560x1600 resolution, Palit GTX 580 3GB provides 2.5X faster performance than 1GB version with 44.7 frame per second. Play with Palit GTX 580 3GB under maximum resolution, you will have a surreal experience that makes you hard to go back to anything less! Play StarCraft II with Palit GTX 580 3GB under maximum graphics setting, you can experience the excellent gaming performance!

Top notch performances with nice design, Palit GTX 580 3GB comes with dual fan and 4 video output. The dual fan cooler provides a more efficient thermal solution, whilst the 4 video output is a much friendly offering that includes a full-size HDMI, Display Port and two Dual-link DVI output. Palit GTX 580 3GB provides the best gaming experience.

Check the thumbnail, as the product has an interesting cooler alright.

 

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Admit it, you'd buy it for the sheer looks alone. Cisco introduces the Linksys E4200, a new dual-band router capable of achieving transfer speeds of up to 450Mbps on the 5GHz band. The 802.11n router will be available in stores for around $179.99.

The Linksys

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A couple of months ago this rumor already popped up, AMD would rebrand its Radeon HD 5750 and 5770 cards to Radeon HD 6750 and 6770 and that looks to be true. Word is spreading that AMD has released these cards for the OEM market, they feature a somewhat different cooler shroud and HDMI 1.4a support but other than that they're identical to the Radeon HD 5700 series.

The bassis for this is that the 6770 is based on the 40 nm Juniper silicon, with 800 VLIW5 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 128-bit wide memory interface. The HD 6750 on the other hand has 720 stream processors. There's no information at present on when (or if) AMD plans to release this to the consumer market. Again the products seem to be OEM only.

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Mike Rayfield, general manager of mobile solutions at NVIDIA in an interview with Hexus, revealed that Maxwell (future generation IC) will be the company's first product using Project Denver. The 22nm Maxwell GPU is expected to be released in 2013, it promises big gains in computing power as well as new features that make it less dependent on the CPU.

Lastly we asked about Project Denver: the surprising announcement that NVIDIA will be designing a CPU in partnership with ARM, with a view to using it in high-end computers. We asked Rayfield to elaborate.

"As well as licensing Cortex A15, we also have an architectural license with ARM to produce an extremely high performance ARM CPU, which be combined with NVIDA GPUs for super-computing," he said. When we asked for timescales, Rayfield revealed: "The Maxwell generation will be the first end-product using Project Denver. This is a far greater resource investment for us than just licensing a design."

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AMD announced a fourth-quarter profit of $375 million, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $1.65 billion. Revenue is flat year-over-year and on a non-GAAP basis, earnings came in at $106 million, or 14 cents per share, 3 cents more than the year before. Wall Street analysts expected the chip maker to post earnings of 11 cents per share on revenue of $1.63 billion.

AMD expects Q1 2011 revenue to be flat to slightly down sequentially.
Fourth Quarter 2010 Results

• AMD revenue $1.65 billion, 2 percent sequential increase and flat year-over-year
• Net income $375 million, EPS $0.50, operating income $413 million
• Non-GAAP(1,2) net income $106 million, EPS $0.14, operating income $141 million
• Gross margin 45 percent

2010 Annual Results

• AMD revenue $6.49 billion, an increase of 20 percent year-over-year
• Net income $471 million, EPS $0.64, operating income $848 million
• Non-GAAP(1,2) net income $360 million, EPS $0.49, operating income $553 million
• GAAP annual gross margin 46 percent, non-GAAP annual gross margin 45 percent

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 of $1.65 billion, net income of $375 million, or $0.50 per share, and operating income of $413 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $106 million, or $0.14 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $141 million. The non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP operating income primarily excluded a net of tax gain of $236 million, and a pre-tax gain of $283 million, respectively, that the company recognized related to a patent license and legal settlement.

For the year ended December 25, 2010, AMD reported revenue of $6.49 billion, net income of $471 million, or $0.64 per share, and operating income of $848 million. Full year non-GAAP net income was $360 million, or $0.49 per share, and operating income was $553 million.

"AMD enters 2011 with significant momentum, amplified by the successful launch of our first Fusion APUs," said Thomas Seifert, CFO and Interim CEO. "I am confident we can drive profitable growth based on the strength of new products we will bring to market. Our customers recognize that Fusion APUs are at the core of delivering the world's most vivid digital experiences."
AMD shares are currently trading at $8.00 (-0.25%) in after-hours trading, after initially soaring towards $8.30.

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THQ's unleashed a new trailer on its open-world blaster Red Faction Armageddon for your entertainment. Red Faction Armageddon will be released in May 2011 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.


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Atari sent out a press relese that Test Drive Unlimited 2 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 has gone gold. The game is to be released on February 11th, 2011.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 expands on the traditional racing experience providing gamers with M.O.O.R.: Massively Open Online Racing; immersing drivers in a persistent online environment and revolutionising multiplayer racing communities as players compete, team up, and share their achievements and creations online. Unlike any other driving game, TDU2 blends the open world experience with realistic vehicles and performance dynamics and for the first time, TDU2 features vehicle damage, weather effects, day and night cycles, and a brand new island to explore.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 puts the world

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