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Computex 2012 - Around about an hour ago HIS showed off its brand new AMD Radeon HD 7970 X2 video card to a select group of media including TweakTown.

This is as far as we know the world's first dual GPU Radeon 7970 video card. The sample we were shown is an engineering sample and it still a little while off going on sale, but it shouldn't be too far away. With AMD's Radeon HD 7990 not all that far away, HIS would want to speed things up and deliver their X2 to the market as soon as possible.

The video card features a new and improved IceQ X2 cooler to cool the two onboard GPUs. The cooler is massive, one of the biggest we've seen for a while and that's saying a lot with the latest batch of video cards hitting the market with big and impressive coolers. The cooler will take up three slots, but obviously offer a crazy amount of performance.

Computex 2012 - Popular case maker BitFenix have unveiled their latest creation, Prodigy. Prodigy is a super-small mini-ITX case, but looks absolutely gorgeous. It will come in multiple colors, black/black or white/white and sports some decent cooling. It's made from a mix of steel and plastic, can take 1 x 5.25-inch drive, 5 x 3.5-inch (3+2 modular) or 9 x 2.5-inch drives.

Cooling on the front we find a single 120mm fan, or an optional 140/180/200/230mm fan, looking at the rear we find a single 120mm fan (included), or a 140mm fan which is again, optional. Up top we have the ability to throw in two 120mm fans (optional). What about the dimensions? It is definitely small at 250 x 404 x 359mm. I haven't touched one the stand-out feature, yet.

On the top of the Prodigy we find two handles, this is just so, so useful for lanners or for people who transport their PC around occasionally. We were giving the Prodigy a bit of a feel up when we bent the handles to see how they would take the weight of the case being fully-filled with hardware. The handles can be bent in on themselves, as they're made from some very high-end material.

A new game from Boldai aims to make game programming accessible to everyone by allowing users to design and program games without any sort of technical knowledge. Blocksworld allows players to drag and drop blocks and then program them to do things through a drag-and-drop interface. The graphics are simple and so is what you can do, but I imagine the game could be fun.

There are currently 938 open free beta slots, so if you would like to check it out, sign up on Blockworld's website. The game features 4 main parts: build, play, share, and remix. First, players build an object, or anything really, by dragging different LEGO-like blocks into place. Once the blocks are in place, colors, textures, and custom behaviors can be added.

Once a player is content with the design, they then press play and watch the object or simulation come alive. The creations are basically endless in variety. Once happy with a design, the user can share it on Blocksworld.com, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks so that everyone can marvel at your creativity.

Computex 2012 - Patriot had Wildfire Pro back on display at Computex 2012. This time we saw a working model, unlike at CES where a mock up was on display. Wildfire Pro brings back 28% over provisioning, just like many very expensive SandForce based enterprise SSDs. The catch is, Wildfire Pro isn't going to cost more than a standard Wildfire with 7% over provisioning.

Over the last year, we've read several reports and white papers about data centers using consumer SSDs since they offer very good performance and the pricing is very attractive. The Wildfire Pro is a good fit for those already entertaining the idea of low cost, high performance solid-state drives in their critical environments.

The 28% over provisioning will give the enterprise a consumer product that is closer to the specs of the enterprise class SandForce 2500 based drives.

Computex 2012 - Half of the normal cast and crew from Micron are here in Taipei, but two of our favorite contacts were no shows. We met up with a handful of Micron / Crucial team members in Tokyo, but business was off the table, a full media blackout is taking place on the consumer side of things.

On the enterprise side Micron is set to swing for the fences. Our own Paul Alcorn just met with Micron hours ago and had a nice conversation about the already announced P320h, an enterprise class PCIe SSD that is sure to take the enterprise world over with PCIe version 2 8 lane interface.

So where does that leave Micron and Crucial on the client side of things? Well to be honest we really don't know. No amount of intoxicant could break the wall of silence and that might be just as telling. This could go two ways. The first is Micron is just relying on their m4 product line, which is doing very well in the market right now. The Crucial m4 512GB model is now selling for less than 400 USD.

Computex 2012 - Corsair threw a curve ball to us this morning with a new SATA 6Gbps controller. The new Neutron GTX was up and running with 24nm Toshiba Toggle Mode Flash and delivering class leading performance in ATTO. Two models are already on the road map, the flagship Neutron GTX with Toggle Flash and a Neutron with 25nm synchronous IMFT flash.

We're told pricing should be in line with current SandForce based models like the Force GT and Force 3.

ATTO is not a very good way to measure real world performance but we'll work on that on our own soon enough. The demo systems were running the drives as the OS boot drive so we didn't get a chance to rock Vantage or our Fill Test.

I'm going to hand out some awards that are based solely on my opinion from what I have seen over the show. Some of them will be serious, some not so much, so without further ado, I shall begin.

I have to give Ubisoft the award for best press kit. No, it wasn't some amazing game or flash drive. Instead, it was a just a plain old business card with information on where to download it from. Well, why does it win? Because it is hilarious. Take a look for yourself:

Crysis 3 undoubtedly wins best game of E3 Day 1. Even in pre-alpha stage, the game has a polished look that we have come to love from Crytek. I was not allowed any pictures or videos of the game, but did post my hands-on thoughts already. I may be partial to the Crysis series, but if you had played the demo, I'm sure you would agree with me.

I got a chance to play Trion and Crytek's new game Warface. Warface is a new, online, free FPS that uses CryEngine3. The pitch from the creators is that Warface is all about bringing down barriers to Crytek games. The cost, often a major barrier, has been dropped to $0 which will allow almost anyone to play.

Additionally, the controls are intuitive and easy to use and the graphics, stunning. The game has already launched in Russia and China to wide acclaim. Crytek has already seen 50,000 simultaneous users and have over 1.5 million registered. The game, currently in closed beta, should be coming to the United States soon.

The game is said to run on hardware as old as the 8600GT which means another barrier has been removed. Most everyone in the world has a graphics card that is as capable as the 8600GT was, so it shouldn't require upgrades like Crysis 3 will. It also has a nice system of introducing players to the game so they aren't losing right off the bat. This prevents users from raging and not coming back to the game.

Words will not do the new Crysis 3 game justice, but they will have to suffice as I was unable to take pictures or video of the demo that I was able to play. As previously reported, the game returns to the jungle by turning New York City into a jungle. The graphics, as we have come to expect from Crysis games, are stunning.

Electronic Arts demoed what they were calling "pre-alpha code" but you couldn't tell that by looking at it, save for the message telling you such. Game play was absolutely fabulous except that I was used to Call of Duty. Once I returned to the PC-style gaming, the controls became intuitive and easy-to-use.

I did manage to break the game, however, and I was the first person at E3 to do so. I'm a bit proud of that achievement because it means I played the game in a different way then everybody else. That's the beauty of this upcoming Crysis: the world is incredibly open and the route to objectives is not nearly as defined as in other first-person shooters.

Computex 2012 - Yesterday on Day 1 of Computex we stopped by the OCZ suite at the TICC where naturally the American company was showing off its full range of consumer and enterprise solid state solutions. Chris is going to give you some updates on that department of products a little later on, but SSDs is not the only thing that OCZ sell.

In the corner of the room we spotted the PC Power & Cooling Silencer MK III 1200-watt PSU. This is OCZ's most beefiest power supply solution currently and it looks the goods with a lot of the features we like to see in a PSU checked off. It's a 80 Plus Platinum rated unit with up to 1200 watts of power. It is a modular unit with PC Power & Cooling's unique modular system which is said to provide better and more stable electrical connectivity than regular plastic modular plugs.

It impressed us enough to be one of the few products we've seen at Computex 2012 so far to receive our TweakTown Computex 2012 Recommended Award for products that we like and think will do well. We look forward to putting it through the paces in our full review a little later on.

Computex 2012 - On Monday we managed to get some video time with MSI's brand new MPower Big Bang motherboards, which claim to change the game of overclocking. They are said to offer higher performance, water cooling support and more stable power.

We saw two new boards that we haven't seen before and they are the Z77 MPower and the X79 MPower. As you can probably tell by the model names the first is based on the Intel Z77 Express chipset for Ivy Bridge processors and the second is based on the older X79 chipset for Sandy Bridge-E processors.

Sadly at the time we didn't have many details on hand to give to you, but at least in the video above you get a good close up look at these two boards as well as the Big Bang XPower II which you may have already seen before now.

Computex 2012 - On Monday we got some short hands on with what ASUS are currently calling the Tablet-600. This is a system that is almost finished, but has yet to receive its final retail model name.

It's a system with a 10.-inch Super IPS+ panel with a 1366 x 768 resolution that supports up to an amazing 10 finger multi-touch. It was running the Windows RT Preview Release which if you weren't sure is essentially Windows 8 for ARM based processors, as opposed to regular Windows 8 that is for traditional x86 processors.

And on that note it brings us to the CPU and this job is given to NVIDIA with its Tegra 3 quad-core processor. As far as additional specs go, it comes with 2GB of RAM, 32GB eMMC storage, 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, rear 8MP auto focus LED flash camera and front 2MP camera. It also comes with enough sensors to ship a battle ship - G-Sensor, Light Sensor, Gyroscope, E-compass, NFC and GPS.

Computex 2012 - We sat in on Intel's keynote speech today in Taipei, and let me start off with this: I've never been more excited about the PC world than I have today. We kinda knew Ultrabooks were going to be big, but consumer devices are about to get a whole lot bigger, while physically shrinking in size, while offering more features and functions than ever before.

Intel pushed that their tick-tock method is helping, where we're seeing constant pushes in the shrinking of tech, as well as teaming up with virtually every major ODM, OEM and retailer across our planet. We will have more info, and a heap of hands-on over the coming days, but for now let's quickly update you on what we saw today.

Intel had ASUS on stage, where they showed off some Ultrabooks that were very... ultra. Intel and ASUS are pushing the boundaries of security, to touch on just one of the many things discussed today. They showed off an ASUS Ultrabook that sported a camera that would sense you with increased algorithms that detect facial features such as facial hair, eyes and your smile. ASUS had an Ultrabook on show, where if the Ultrabook detects that it has been moved, it will sound an alarm and secure the system. This protects your precious data from anyone who might steal your Ultrabook if you were to turn away from it at work, Uni, or a coffee shop.

Computex 2012 - ASUS had a few amount of goodies to show off at their Republic of Gamers event, with the AMD-based MATRIX HD 7970 GPU. In usual ROG and MATRIX fashion, this card kicks some serious ass for those serious benchers and gamers. Sporting some very nice features, it can rule your game, as ASUS put it.

The MATRIX HD 7970 features VGA Hotwire, which lets you accurately read and control voltages all at the hardware level, backed up with TweakIt which offers real-time voltage adjustment and full-speed fan cooling, all at the press of a button. DIGI+ VRM with 20-phase Super Allow Power technology is featured on the MATRIX HD 7970 which delivers 'superior efficiency, reliability and performance'. Lastly, GPU Tweak utility can be used to tune those clock speeds, fan performance, GPU load line, PWN frequency and voltages, all from a swanky UI.

The center of the MATRIX HD 7970 is the GPU itself, AMD's GraphicsCore Next-based Radeon HD 7970, featuring 3GB of RAM on a 256-bit wide bus. Cooling is the usual MATRIX-featured DirectCU II which should keep the card nice and chilled under hardcore conditions. 3 or 4 of these in CFX would be quite the sight to behold. Nice work, ASUS.

Computex 2012 - ASUS took the stage earlier today unveiling a bunch of new Republic of Gamer-branded devices, first up we have their new desktop gaming rig, ROG Tytan. ASUS have crammed quite a few unique abilities into Tytan, so we'll start with the specs, shall we? Tytan sports Intel's Core i7-3960X 6-core processor with three O.C. modes, but we'll get into that a little later.

Backing up the 3960X we have Intel's X79 chipset, NVIDIA's dual-Kepler GEFORCE GTX 690 GPU, 16GB of DDR3 2133MHz RAM, two 128GB SSDs in RAID0 with a 2TB 7200RPM drive for storage, ASUS' Xonar DX sound card and a Blu-ray writer. Whilst the specs are impressive, its the housing that is the real feature here. I mentioned the three O.C. modes before, which to me is one of the stand-out features of the Tytan.

Overclocking can be quite difficult, and the results vary so much between hardware that it's hard to have a baseline of what to expect. ASUS have removed this effort for the user, with three O.C. modes all at the touch of a button. On the top of the case is a 'speed' button, sans Keanu Reeves and a bus rigged with explosives. The speed button can be pressed three times for 3 pre-defined O.C. speeds. The default stage is stock, then we have 3.8GHz, followed by 4.0GHz and finishing with 4.2GHz. It may not be the break-neck, needs-liquid-nitrogen-to-push-it-speeds, but hey, out of the box overclocking without the need to reboot is impressive.

Computex 2012 - Wow, we didn't expect to see this, but here it is. 3DMark for Windows 8, as it's called at this stage of development. The test was running at a screen resolution of 1280 x 720 with an AA sample count of 1. What you are seeing here is by no means a finished product at all.

As we walked around the Nangang Computex hall yesterday we managed to get some very exclusive eyes-on time with 3DMark for Windows 8 running on an MSI system. The system to be exact is an Intel Core i7-3960K, Big Bang-XPower II motherboard and two MSI GTX 680 Lightning video cards in SLI.

We told some of our friends last night and some questioned the relevance of a new 3DMark for Windows 8 considering at least at this stage that the new Microsoft OS will ship with DirectX 11. We don't know much more about the next 3DMark than you do based on what we can see in the video above, but it's very cool to see none the less.

Computex 2012 - Yesterday we visited the Corsair suite for an early looking at its new products and one of the biggest new items from the company is its AX1200i power supply.

Many of you would be aware of the popular and impressive AX1200 power supply, but let's introduce the brand new AX1200i PSU. It is a 80 Plus Platinum rated power supply, but the big story here is it is Corsair's first consumer fully digitally controlled power supply that features a DSP (Digital Signal Processor). That means it's able to work in conjunction with Corsair Link 2 software that allows you to do all sorts of cool things thanks to the new full digital nature of the PSU.

You can some really cool things such as monitor the real-time power in and power out of your PSU along with measure the efficiency percentage. You can even go as far as measuring the power consumption on the PCI-E power (as well as the 12v rail, SATA, main and so on) to get a fairly good idea of what your video card is using. You can also set Over Current Protection individually. Corsair also claims at the AX1200i features very impressive tight power regulation which we cannot wait to check out in our full review when we get a unit in from Corsair.

Computex 2012 - Yesterday we had an early visit to the Corsair suite where we were introduced to a range of new products that were being displayed.

First up is Corsair's Dominator Platinum memory which is still in development, but is being announced today. It's still a little while out from shipping, but at this stage the modules are able to operate at overclocked speeds of 3000MHz DDR at CL12.

Besides the obviously impressive speed, the modules also include a swappable light bar which allows you to pick a color that suits the rest of the parts inside your PC, Corsair also claims that the ICs are all hand screened. Then you get DHX cooling, but the big deal with this memory is that it includes Corsair Link compatibility that allows you to check RAM temperature along with the other parts inside your system that also work with Corsair Link.

Apparently I am not the only one who thinks that Windows 8 is going to be terrible. A Wall Street Journal writer by the name of John Dvorak shares some of the same concerns as me and even went as far as to say "Windows 8 looks to me to be an unmitigated disaster that could decidedly hurt the company and its future."

I'm not sure I would go quite that far, but some of his concerns are echoed by journalists around the web. His major problem seems to lie in the new Metro desktop interface that appears to be designed for tablets. He had some hope when it appeared that he could still use the old style desktop, but with the latest release candidate, that is no longer an option.

Dvorak says:

Computex 2012 - Again we walking the hall of Computex Nangang early we manage to bring you another exclusive and this time it is our very first and quick look at the upcoming ASRock Z77 OC Formula.

This is ASRock's first motherboard that designed especially for overclockers and it has a lot of design influence by new star recruit Nick Shih who really only joined the Taiwanese motherboard maker not that long ago. The board features a rather stylish black and yellow color theme which did remind me fairly quickly of something that you'd see in the Transformers movie.

Not that the color and resemblance is of any real importance as Nick Shih is a very well-known overclocker who knows his stuff and judging by Nick's signature on the PCB, a lot of his time and effort has gone into working with ASRock engineers to produce a board with his name on it. Besides the apparent overclockability of the Z77 OC Formula, the one big thing that excited me was that fact that this motherboard has no less than 10 USB 3.0 ports onboard.