Latest News - Page 3085

NVIDIA's Kepler GPU may not be available for the desktop yet, but Acer has let their latest Ultrabook, the Acer Aspire Timeline M3, go on sale, and the company has decided to lift the embargo early for the mobile part. Yippee!

This Ultrabook marks the first time NVIDIA's Kepler-based GPUs have been included in an Ultrabook. Acer's Aspire Timeline M3-581TG is a 15.6-inch Ultrabook that sports a full-sized keyboard. The M3 still sits within the constraints of Intel's Ultrabook restrictions, but still packs quite a huge punch in terms of performance.

Acer's M3 features an Intel Core i7-2637M (1.7GHz dual-core, 4MB of L3 cache), 4GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, a 256GB SSD, a 3-cell Li-Polymer battery, and the standout feature: NVIDIA's GeForce GT 640M 1GB. The GPU in question is known as the GK107 which sports 384 cores and operates at up to 625MHz. When idling the GPU clocks down to 135MHz, with the standard clock rate sitting at 405MHz, while it can scale up to 625MHz, when needed.

Marvell have just announced their third-generation SSD which has gone into mass deployment, the Marvel 88SS9187 SATA controller is powered by high-performance embedded processor technology and sports a 6Gbps SATA III interface.

Marvell have said that a number of high-profile SSD manufacturers are set to deploy Marvell's 88SS9187 controller immediately, with more partners to jump on board over time. Marvell's latest and greatest technology offers an open, world-class architecture that supports industry-standard, high-speed NAND flash interface with up to 200MB/sec per channel.

The new Marvell 88SS9187 controller also offers something new, a ground-breaking correction capability thanks to its high-performance ECC engine with Adaptive Read and Write Scheme and on-chip RAID functionality to allow use of the latest generation of NAND flash devices in the fast-growing SSD markets.

Regina Dugan, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is leaving and joining the warm, cuddly arms of Google. Dugan has only been with DARPA for three years, but was "offered and accepted [a] senior executive position" with Google, according to DARPA spokesperson Eric Mazzacone.

Mazzacone also added that Dugan felt she couldn't refuse an offer from such an "innovative company" like Google. Dugan has accepted the offer, and will slide into an unspecified "senior executive position" with Google. Currently there's no word on when exactly she'll join Google, but it should be over the next few weeks.

Considering Dugan worked for a company that worked on shape-shifting robots, Mach 20 missiles and mind-controlled limbs, it would have to be an extraordinary opportunity for her to switch ranks and join Google. Working for DARPA must feel like working for Skynet, so maybe that's what made her change her mind? Maybe she saw some crazy things at DARPA that just made her want to disconnect and have more of a "real" job where she could talk about what she was working on with her loved ones, friends, etc.

It was only a little over 24 hours ago that we reported that game retailer, GAME, had "two weeks to turn its fortune around", but it seems those two weeks were a bit of a stretch. It's now being reported that The Game Group PLC is losing share prices, and fast. Dropping from 62p per share of last year down to a catastrophic 1.28p per share yesterday.

In response to this, the group has now placed their entire business up for sale, desperately looking for a buyer. GAME owns 610 stores in the UK alone, with 6,000 staff, as well as another 4,000 staff and 663 more stores across the world, with brands such as ScoreGames, Centro Mail, GAME, Gameplay, and Gamestation. The board has said:

Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group have released a video showing off their work on reducing input lag for touch screens. Microsoft have said that most touch-sensitive devices have a response lag somewhere between 50 and 100ms. But, their new screen technology reduces this to not just 25, or 10, or 5, but 1ms.

For larger touch-based surfaces like Microsoft's Surface, input lag can be a huge problem. The input delay becomes especially perceptible when drawing or quickly moving objects on the screen with your fingers. This issue has prompted Microsoft engineers to look into other ways of improving touch screen input lag deficiency. Microsoft haven't revealed how the technology actually works, but the video below demonstrates how their research may greatly improve the touch-based user experience.

Assistant director at Microsoft Applied Sciences, Paul Dietz, compares most flavors of input lag from 100ms, 50ms, 10ms and 1ms devices, by dragging an object around with a single finger. Between 100ms and 10ms the difference is quite substantial, where from 10ms to 1ms, is big, but not as big as the jump from 100ms to 10ms. You can definitely "feel" how the 1ms looks/feels right when being compared to the higher input lags of 50, 100ms.

Apple's new iPad is all that is really talked about these days, I personally think that an alien ship could land tomorrow in the middle of the White House lawn, or an earth-splitting 10-magnitude earthquake could happen on March 21/22 and it just wouldn't matter: because the new iPad is here.

After that's all said and done, one of the first video unboxings of the new iPad is here, where some folks over in Vietnam have claimed they have their hands on their retail version of the new iPad and have video evidence to prove so. The video above is your proof, and it looks great.

Not much can be understood, as I only speak English, but I have eyes and my eyes were greeted with the new iPad, and that's all I have to see. The video is just a tease of the flood of reviews, unboxings, and thoughts on the new iPad over the next week or so.

More details are arriving for NVIDIA's soon-to-arrive GEFORCE GTX 680, and these new specs are quite interesting. Fudzilla's source are saying that the new GTX 680 will sport two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors to provide a total TDP of around 190W.

Higher performance per watt is expected from not only users of the card, but NVIDIA, too. Considering the card features 1536 shader units, 2 (or 4GB) of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6GHz, a reported 'very high' GPU clock, we should expect very good things from the GTX 680. Performance is said to be in the area of AMD's Radeon HD 7970, where it wins in some benchmarks, and loses in others. These results are from NVIDIA, so we'll have to wait for some real-world testing.

The GPU itself is said to be around 300mm² in size, too. Price-wise, we should expect a US$549 price, but that is to be expected. NVIDIA is launching a card with more performance than the GTX 580, with much better performance per watt numbers. We should expect some competition in pricing, but that comes down to GPU flavor from other companies such as ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, etc as well as heated up competition from the already-released HD 7970.

Instagram is huge, I have so many friends who post their picture of the day on my Facebook wall, and to be 'cool', I've always wanted to get in on this, but, I have an Android phone. Instagram's co-creator, Kevin Systrom, used a presentation at South by Southwest's technology conference to showcase the Android-based version of Instagram.

The version shown was a closed beta, but should support multiple screen resolutions and should 'run very quickly'. Systrom did hint that there could be some features that the iOS version doesn't include, where he said to the audience "in some ways, it's better than our iPhone app".

Systrom didn't give a timeframe for when the app will hit Android, other than it is coming "really soon". Systrom also reiterated his view that Instagram had kept an iOS-exclusive app since launch its launch in 2010 in order to focus on the basics of scaling the platform, as well as coping with the insane number of users.

Earlier on today I did an unboxing video of the brand new and upcoming ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard. This new board based on Intel's Z77 Express Ivy Bridge chipset is due out soon and comes with plenty of features packed in such as ASRock XFast 555 technology (XFast LAN, XFast USB, XFast RAM), Lucid VirtuMVP, Intel Smart Response, Intel Smart Connect and much more.

ASRock told us to say that this board supports 2nd and 3rd generation Intel Core processors and not "Ivy Bridge" processors, but at this stage of the game we're going to say Ivy Bridge, because we all know what we are talking about here.

ASRock's Z77 Extreme6 motherboard features a stylish and attractive gold and black color scheme which looks really great. The PCB is black and gold comes into the theme by way of the gold touches on the coolers as well as the Japanese golden caps. The board includes three PCI Express x16 slots for up to three-way SLI and CrossFireX support. ASRock does claim that the board can support Quad SLI, which it can, but only by way of using two dual-GPU video cards such as the GeForce GTX 590.

Apple's just-released iTunes 10.6 sports the ability for users to option higher quality audio conversion bitrates when syncing songs to iOS-based devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod. Before iTunes 10.6, users were given the option to down-convert higher bitrate songs to a crappy 128kbps level.

This allowed more songs to be synced to devices, but some users would rather higher quality audio, than savings to their device's storage capacity. With iTunes 10.6, users now have two options: to down-convert audio to quality levels of 192, or 256kbps, giving users three options of bitrate when syncing music to their mobile device.

iTunes purchases are encoded at 256kbps, but CD rips are at 320kbps, this means that the new setting allows people the option to reduce the quality slightly down to 256kbps when syncing to a mobile device, whilst keeping the higher quality 320kbps rip stored on their main desktop or notebook.

Apple announced the new iPad just last week, and people haven't been able to drag their jaws from the floor yet. Once they did, they began the feverish clicking of their mice or tapping of their fingers to pre-order the latest and greatest tablet from Apple.

The original release was slated for March 16th, but Apple have experienced (in the words of Obama, as he uses the word about 3 times every second) unprecedented demand for the iPad 3, and have been forced to now push back delivery times for online buyers. Originally, those who pre-ordered were to expect delivery of their brand new 2048x1536-sporting iPad on launch day, as Apple had set aside stock for pre-order customers.

But they have sold out of this pre-order stock, as demand is "off the charts" according to an Apple spokesperson. For those who ordered online and are based in the US, you'll have to wait until March 19th for delivery, with a two device limit on orders. The lucky people who pre-ordered before stock ran out will receive them on launch day.

The original Razer "the world's first true gaming laptop" Blade is loved by swarming groups of fans, but there are of course, critics who don't like it. I'm one of those people. Don't get me wrong, I love Razer gear. I rock their mouse and keyboard combos and love them. My BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth Edition sits on my desktop as my everyday keyboard, and my Mamba, I love her to bits.

But the Blade was a bit of a miss for me, it had a lacklustre GPU that really made the Blade struggle when compared to other gaming laptops. The GPU in question was the GeForce GT 555M, which to me, just isn't powerful enough to let Razer claim its the "world's first true gaming laptop", but, it still sold in supreme numbers. Selling out, not once, but twice.

So it doesn't really matter what Razer baked into the Blade, it sold well, and that's all that matters. Time moves on, and now we're staring down the barrel of the Razer Blade 2.0 eventually hitting the hearts and souls of gamers around the world. The Bright Side of News is reporting that they've heard rumbles from within the industry that Razer is preparing a refresh of the Blade.

Google is my browser of choice. Everytime I use it, I feel like a cowboy in the western era, pulling my gun out of my holster and swinging it around my finger and then shooting some tin can at 100-feet. More exciting news, though: Google have confirmed they're working on a version of Chrome that will run in the Metro environment found within Windows 8, says Mashable.

The Google spokesperson told Mashable that the new version of Chrome would be based on the desktop browser, as opposed to the Android-based version. The representative has been quoted:

It's here! Samsung have just announced through their Facebook page that the upgrade for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is now available for their flagship Galaxy S II smartphone. Samsung have announced it will be served up in European countries first.

The first to get it are Poland, Hungary, and Sweden, as well as Korea. It should roll out around the world over the coming days. Samsung have also said that the ICS-based upgrade should roll out to other Galaxy-branded phones soon, with the Note, Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 all getting the delicious upgrade.

On top of this, Samsung will offer Android 2.3 Gingerbread firmware upgrades to Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab 7-inch, Galaxy S Plus, Galaxy S SCL (Super Clear LCD) and Galaxy W from the end of March. The new firmware upgrades for Galaxy S sport features such as Facebook Unlock, Snapshot, Photo Editor, and more.

The team behind Crysis, Crytek, have just released a new video showing off some next-generation CryENGINE 3 graphics. If that's not enough "cry's" in one sentence, then sit back and relax with the nearly 4 minutes of the updated graphics engine below.

Impressed? I am. It looks gorgeous. But, we'll never see those graphics. Right now, I'm putting my foot down and declaring we will never see those graphics, in all that detail, smoothly, in any game from Crytek (or anyone who licenses that engine) for a very long time. Why? First up, we never see tech demo graphics make it to the final game, it's just too much. Secondly, how much detail can be inserted into a pillar, or water... look at that water for example. It looks absolutely beautiful.

That's the problem, there is so much wasted computational power used for something that will never see the light of day. Even if it did, all that water is, is scenery. It's not an actual useful item within the game, it's background graphics. Unless it plays some pivotal role within the next CryENGINE 3-based game, it means nothing to me.

According to The Verge, ASUS are working on a major Ultrabook refresh, which should slide right onto shelves close to the time that Intel unleashes their Ivy Bridge CPUs, with The Verge getting their mits on the full spec sheets, oh boy!

Currently, we have the UX31 and UX21, with the replacement models the UX31A and UX21A, respectively. The similar model numbers may fool some, but the upgrades are pretty serious. Matte screen options are said to be available on both new models, with the highest spec sporting a 1920x1080 resolution, with an IPS-based display. Hot. Another bonus is, that's for both the 13.3-inch UX31A and the 11.6-inch UX21A.

If you opt for the IPS-based display, you'll be greeted with 350 nits of brightness, with the LCD-based display only sports 300 nits of brightness, and a drop of resolutions to 1600x900 and 1366x768 for the UX31A and UX21A, respectively. Intel Ivy Bridge-based processors will be found inside the new ASUS Zenbooks, with the low-voltage (17W TDP) models making an appearance, from the simple Core i3 model, right up to the powerhouse Core i7:

Heavy Rain, to me, was great. It had its problems (frame rate, and the whole "Jaaasssooonnnn" bit) but it was a completely different game to the usual genres out there. The mastermind behind the game, David Cage, and his company, Quantic Dream are back again, and want your socks blown off, again.

Enter Kara. Kara was shown off during GDC, where it was again a PlayStation 3-exclusive, and just a technology demo that was showcasing the company's new game engine. Cage says:

The $25 wonderchild that is the Raspberry Pi has been delayed, reportedly due to a manufacturing problem. The company behind the Raspberry Pi have posted on their website saying that they're found a problem in their networking hardware.

The first batch of Raspberry Pi devices have been delayed, with the company citing a hardware parts substitution that was made in the factory by accident. What exactly happened was that the specific jacks with integrated magnetics in the BOM and schematics, the factory had actually soldered in non-magnetic jacks.

Without the magnetics, it means no network connection. They've known about this for a few days now, and haven't been able to say anything about it until they had done proper testing, which they have done now and should start shipping the fixed parts within the next week or two.

If the current estimated BOM (bill of materials) from UBM TechInsights is anything to go by, we're looking at Apple cutting their profit margins ever-so-slightly for the new iPad when compared to the previous two models.

UBM TechInsights estimate shows a BOM of $310 for the new iPad - the 4G LTE 16GB model. The retail pricing on this model is $629, which gives Apple a very nice margin of 51-percent. Compared to previous models, this is down 6-percent or so.

The firm does note that a proper teardown is required to get their numbers more refined, but preliminary estimates typically match more accurate teardowns to within just a few dollars. More precise number should be available by the end of the week when the new iPad ships.

An MCV-exclusive article has said that Microsoft have been telling their partners that the next-generation Xbox will ship without an optical drive. MCV's source has described the briefings and associated NDA's "the strictest NDA's" they've ever encountered. Obviously not strict enough if this news is leaking out.

The new Xbox would ship without an optical drive, but would sport some form of interchangeable solid-state card storage, where it's not known if this would be a proprietary format, or something more familiar and wide spread like SD.

More news was available apart from the no optical drive business, where it has been "confirmed" that the new Xbox will see a release in 2013, with an announcement of the console at this years E3.