More details on the entire Radeon 7000 series have surfaced on a website called lenzfire. As many of you surely know, the first solution from the HD 7900 series to arrive will be the HD 7970 and HD 7950, which will both become available on January 9.
We are not going to get into too many details as far as these GPUs are concerned as we already covered them in previous reports, but it
A Gigabyte X79 model has set a new overclocking record. Ironically, this is precisely what happened, as this submission on HWbot proves.
The exact motherboard is X79-UD3, while the central processing unit was an Intel Core i7-3930K chip.
Faulty firmware was found to have been responsible for the failure of some Gigabyte X79 mainboards (GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2). The company quickly released a new BIOS for the boards that had not yet failed in such a manner but were in similar danger.
Thus, while unfortunate customers have to replace their burnt platforms, the rest of the populace can download BIOS version F7, which can be found here. Unfortunately, this BIOS cripples overclocking by throttling the CPU clock speed when extreme workloads are detected, or so people feared.
Overclocker HiCookie, who also happens to be part of Gigabyte's PR team, took it upon himself to prove that the new BIOS doesn't hinder overclocking at all. Thus, he put a dual-core Core i7-3930K on an X79-UD3 and pushed the processor all the way to 5,543.2 MHz.
The overclocker also made sure no one could say this was just a fluke by running the Super Pi M, Super Pi 32M and PiFast benchmarks. The base clock of the chip was set at 99 MHz, the multiplier at 57.0x and the voltage at 1.584V.
To assist with the experiment, HiCookie equipped the motherboard with 8GB Kingston HyperX Genesis DDR3 RAM (random access memory) and an AX1200W PSU (power supply unit) from Corsair. Needless to say, much liquid nitrogen was poured over the CPU during the experiment (a home-made cooling array was required). At this point, it is safe to say that the F7 BIOS does not, in fact, eliminate the overclocking potential of Gigabyte motherboards.
Aquacomputer is the first to unveil a waterblock for AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series. Availability is expected in about three weeks.
Aquacomputer
Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney have created a new kind of keyboard technology for touchscreens. LiquidKeyboard breaks down the keyboard to chunks of keys that a finger is most likely to hit.
This technology ensures faster typing, particularly in touchscreen devices such as tablets. By now you may have guessed that LiquidKeyboard is in fact a virtual-keyboard application, but the concept itself opens up many possibilities. Think of keyboards that are entirely made of touchscreen, coupled with Senseg's revolutionary haptic touchscreen technology.
Have a peek at the video ...
A Japan based overclocker was able to get a 96% CPU clock speed increase and 121% GPU clock speed increase during a "suicide-run" using a retail AMD A8-3870K Black Edition processor.
Then end result of 5,875 MHz is pretty amazing, done with a base clock speed of 125 MHz versus a 47.0x multiplier.
The CPU Voltage required, get this ... 1.872V :)
The integrated IGP was overclocked to 1,327 MHz from its default 600 MHz.As impressive as the clock frequencies are, the system was too unstable to run benchmarks whatsoever. The motherboard used was a ASUS F1A75-V Pro motherboard, G.Skill RipjawsZ memory and a lot of Liquid Nitrogen.
Intel will be launching three new Sandy Bridge processor without the integrated graphics core, one of which will be the rumoured Core i5-2550K. Next to the Core i5-2550K Intel is also planning a Core i5-2380P and Core i5-2450P. Assumed is that the P indicator has something to do with the lack of an active graphics core.
It might be possible that these are fully fteched Sandy Bridge processors, yet with the IGP simply disabled as due to bad yields the graphics core wasn't working properly (yet the rest of the chips is fully functional).
As VR-Zone reported the Core i5-2380P is clocked at 3.1GHz, the same as the Core i5-2400 and it has the same Turbo Boost frequency of 3.4GHz. The Core i5-2450P is the odd one out here, as it's clocked at 3.2GHz with a top Turbo Boost frequency of 3.5GHz, in other words 100MHz slower than the Core i5-2500. The Core i5-2550K on the other hand is 100MHz faster than the Core i5-2500K at 3.4GHz with a top Turbo Boost clock speed of 3.8GHz. All three models have 6MB cache, but none of them have VT-d or TXT support, a feature all previous non-K SKUs have had in the Core i5 family.
Sadly we don't know when these models will launch, but we'd expect them to arrive sometime early next year. We'd expect the P SKUs to be priced slightly lower than models with built in graphics, but we're not sure where Intel is planning on positioning the 2550K, as in reality it's a lesser version to the 2500K, so we'll see how Intel prices it and explains the lack of integrated graphics as a selling point.
We first heard about the Iconia Tab A700 back in November, when the tablet was leaked by Acer in a document published on its website, and now the specifications as well as a few pictures of the slate made their way to the Web says softpedia:
As NoMobile.ru has found out about the A700, the tablet is expected to be unveiled by Acer during CES 2012 with market availability being scheduled for March of the same year.
Those willing to wait that long for Acer
Taiwanese manufacturer Biostar introduced its first LGA 2011 motherboard, the TPower X79 targeting enthusiasts, overclockers and gamers.
Biostar
Intel probably irritated a lot of manufacturers by making some changes to the configurable TDP of its Ivy Bridge ultrabook processors because it wasn't able to provide large enough quantities of the CPUs. The changes are relatively small, but could potentially mean notebook makers will have to do a redesign of the cooling system.
Although good news in a way for Intel, it seems that the demand for its Ultrabook specific Ivy Bridge processors have been much higher than Intel initially anticipated and the company has as such had to make some changes to the configurable TDP of said processors. It appears that the company can't meet its earlier targets, at least not if it's going to be able to provide large enough quantities of the CPUs.
The changes aren't big and the nominal TDP remains at 17W and the same goes for the highest configurable TDP for these chips which stays at 25W. However, the lowest configurable TDP has been increased from 13W to 14W and the same goes for the low frequency mode. In addition the low power mode has increased from 11W to 12.5W.
"LG is pushing the limits of home entertainment innovation with this 3D UD TV," said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company. "We are bringing together all our Smart TV and 3D knowledge in the 3D UD TV in order to demonstrate to the CES audience that LG is committed to being the world's leading brand for immersive home entertainment in 2012 and beyond."
LG's 3D UD TV boasts superb picture quality with 8 million pixels, four times the resolution clarity (3840x2160) of existing Full HD TV panels. Combined with LG's Slim and Narrow Bezel Design, the 3D UD TV provides the most convincing 3D viewing experience currently available outside of a movie theater. What's more, 3D Depth Control allows users to customize their viewing experience by controlling the 3D effect while 3D Sound Zooming provides users with 3D sound that rivals the output of all but the best home theater systems.
Via the superior display panel, users can access LG's Smart TV ecosystem, which comprises over 1,200 apps and gives users access to a growing range of premium content services such as the 3D Zone where viewers can select from a wealth of 3D movies. The imbedded 2D to 3D conversion engine expands the availability of 3D content to limitless levels. Users can easily browse and navigate the Smart TV ecosystem using LG's new, ergonomically-designed Magic Remote which now recognizes four different types of command input: Voice Recognition, Wheel, Magic Gesture and Point.
A researcher has discovered a security hole in WPS technology that affects millions of Wi-Fi routers around the world.
A few weeks ago I decided to take a look at the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) technology. I noticed a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide.
I reported this vulnerability to CERT/CC and provided them with a list of (confirmed) affected vendors. CERT/CC has assigned VU#723755 (will be released today) to this issue. To my knowledge none of the vendors have reacted and released firmware with mitigations in place.
First off, a recent report citing sources from Taiwanese PC makers has revealed that the chip giant plans to launch Intel
Intel reelased its Atom N2600 and N2800 processors for netbooks, they are now shipping. These CPUs promise to deliver netbooks with a battery life of up to ten hours.
Cedar Trail CPUs bring a few updateslike a 32nm fab process (enabling higher clocks and a drop in power draw of up to 20% for the whole platform), plus a media engine that allows for Full HD (1080p) video playback and Blu-ray support, an integrated memory controller supporting DDR3-800/1066 memory, and updated, but still DirectX 9-enabled graphics (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 based on the PowerVR SGX 545 from Imagination Technologies).
Intel Corporation today announced the availability of the latest mobile Intel Atom processor-based platform, formerly codenamed "Cedar Trail." Designed to provide small, compact, on-the-go computing with great battery life at an affordable price, the latest platform adds several new features to netbook computers made popular by students, families, and those looking for light productivity and Internet browsing. These devices will be available in early 2012 from major OEMs including: Acer*, Asus*, HP*, Lenovo*, Samsung*, and Toshiba*.
The new design's dedicated media engine enables full 1080p high-definition playback of videos and Blu-Ray content and includes additional digital display and output options including HDMI and DisplayPort. The integrated Intel
Galaxy unleashes its Laser GT series consumer SSDs. Built in the common 2.5-inch SATA form-factor these drives use the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and are driven by SandForce SF-2281 SSD controllers.
The 120GB version drive offers maximum sequential transfer speeds of 550 MB/s (read), and 500 MB/s (write), with 4K random performance of 30,000 IOPS reads, and 41,000 IOPS writes. The MLC NAND based SSD has with 5,000 rewrite cycle life. The 120 GB Laser GT variant is priced at roughly 220 USD.
Reuters reports Samsung, Sharp, Chimei Innolux, Hitachi Displays, HannStar Display, Chunghwa Picture Tubes and Epson Imaging Devices have agreed to pay more than $553 million to settle consumer and state regulatory claims in a price-fixing case. The companies pleaded guilty to inflating prices and stiffling competition in the LCD panel market between 1999 and 2006. Full details on the settlements can be found in the Reuters article.
In December 2006, authorities in Japan, Korea, the European Union and the United States revealed a probe into alleged anti-competitive activity among LCD panel manufacturers. Many companies and executives have since pleaded guilty to criminal antitrust violations and paid more than $890 million in fines.
The latest payout includes $538.6 million to resolve claims by "indirect" purchasers that bought televisions and computers with thin film transistor LCDs, as well as claims by eight states: Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
It also includes payments of more than $14.7 million by five of the companies to settle civil fine and penalty law claims by the states, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.
Intel's upcoming "Centerton" Atom processor will be a true single-chip SoC, without the PCH. This chip is aimed at low-power servers and NAS units. Centerton's core and uncore components, housed on the same piece of silicon, are detailed in the first picture, below. It packs two x86-64 cores. Each core has 32 KB L1I cache, 24 KB L1D cache, and 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache.
There is no shared tertiary cache between the cores, however, they converge at the integrated memory controller (IMC). This IMC can control a single DDR3 memory channel, supporting 1.5V DDR3 UDIMMs with ECC support or 1.35V DDR3 SO-DIMMs, at speeds of PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333 MHz). Up to 8 GB of RAM is supported. The core can be clocked as high as 1.60 GHz. It features HyperThreading technology, enabling four logical CPUs for the OS to deal with. Any current 32-bit or 64-bit x86-capable OS should run.
It seems that yesterdays report on the burning CPU VRM of X79 motherboards got an update from Gigabyte. The problem lies in the BIOS which allows a far to extreme setting. They are upgrading board replacements for free and add a lifetime warranty.
For those that have not had an issue, a BIOS will fix and rpevent the motherboard from overheating:
Gigabyte Technology, in response to questions concerning a defective BIOS design in its X79-series motherboards, has offered remedies including recall of certain versions of X79 motherboards, replacements with upgraded BIOS and lifetime maintenance warranty for related models, according to the company.
The defective BIOS design was found when some enthusiastic players were testing the limit of overclocking of Gigabyte's high-end X79-UD3 motherboards, which then caught fire and released smoke when the devices were overclocking, revealed industry sources.
In addition to the replacement of new products, Gigabyte said that it will also offer lifetime warranty for X79 motherboards that have been upgraded to F7 BIOS and beyond.
Rival vendors Asustek Computer and ASRock have also launched X79-based motherboards but the two companies both have set overclocking limits on the devices, whereas Gigabyte did not set a maximum clock limit on its X79 boards previously, indicated the sources.
