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CES 2012: Intel had quite a few announcements at CES 2012, and one of them was from Intel PC chief Mooly Eden where he says that so far, there are 75-plus Ultrabooks set to launch this year. Yes, more than 75 different Ultrabooks!

Out of these 75, 50-percent of them will sport 14- and 15-inch displays. This is a move to take some of those customers away from buying an Apple MacBook Air, as they'll be just as, if not more thin, light and inexpensive than their fruit-logo'd counterparts.

On top of this, Intel is kick starting one of their biggest marketing campaigns for the Ultrabooks. This new marketing campaign has been dubbed "A New Era in Computing". This will be Intel's biggest marketing campaign since 2003, so you can see they mean business. They haven't planned a launch this large since they introduced Centrino chips for Wi-Fi-capable laptops eight years ago.

ASUS are rolling out their eagerly-awaited Transformer Prime update, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). This is actually 48 hours earlier than previously known, with a few sites and people already updated to the new OS, the first impressions of it seem to be that the Prime is vastly-improved with ICS, especially with web browsing.

Sites that usually took 10-20 seconds, now reportedly take around 6 seconds. A very nice, and free, improvement. Another nice UI update that comes with ICS is the Roboto font scheme Google have introduced. Swipe-to-dismiss notifications are now baked in, which is much better than trying to squeeze your finger down to a smaller pin size to hit that 'x' next to the notification you want to dismiss.

But, it feels like a bit of a sour update. Considering ASUS teased the super-Transformer yesterday in the form of the TF700T Transformer Prime that sports the 1920x1200 display and is overall, much better - the OTA update feels... stale. But, you can't complain about getting something for free. If you've got a Transformer Prime and haven't updated to ICS, you should really do so. Once you're done, let us know how you go. I'm interested on your thoughts between Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich, which one tastes better?

CES 2012: Razer are a hardware PC gaming orientated company and are constantly living life on the edge by releasing new product after new product. At CES, they unveiled Project Fiona. It is handheld PC gaming, made by Razer. The possibly future of portable PC gaming.

Project Fiona is a proof-of-concept design shown off at CES as part of Razer's strategy to stand out from the crowd of been-there-seen-that smartphones and tablets. Last year they unveiled the Razer Switchblade and now, Project Fiona. Switchblade never really made it to the market, but elements of the technology were baked into Razer's Blade gaming laptop.

Razer's Project Fiona may just be a proof-of-concept, but Razer CEO and creative director, Min-Liang Tan has said that they plan on shipping an actual project by the end of the year, and what will be sold as an actual product, will differ to just shipping a tablet PC with handlebars. Min-Liang Tan said to Kotaku, "I love my iPad," as he explained Project Fiona to them. He went on to say:

CES 2012: LG have announced during CES 2012 that it is adding voice recognition and 3D gesture control to their Cinema Screen range of 3DTV products in 2012. Not only are LG putting the Smart in TV, but they're adding interactivity.

They unveiled an 84-inch "ultra-resolution" TV that has a 1mm bezel, other displays will arrive in 55- and 60-inch and will be slimmer than 5mm. The new Cinema Screen lineup sports an upgraded LG Smart TV platform with a redesigned Magic Remote and touch-screen plasma. It will also include voice recognition and a 3D gesture interface to enable gaming and searching by gesture. You'll be able to talk to the TV and gesture commands at it, too.

LG didn't stop there with the unveiling and announcements, they also mentioned Smart Share Plus with Wi-Fi, which lets you watch whats on your TV, directly on your mobile device. The new platform will also reportedly make it easier for developers to create new apps for the TV.

Shamino posted a thread on the kingpincooling forum, where the ASUS R&D have figured a way to publish voltage modifications for graphics cards.

These include control of the VGA loadline, switching frequency, OverCurrent Protection and core voltage. The picture above shows what to solder with the Rampage IV Extreme. These headers are then plugged into the video card, in the below shot. There are some steps you should follow:

Internode have today begun its first program to rent industry-leading FRITZ!Box broadband routers and accessories to customers, and at the same time, have slashed pricing across its range of FRITZ!Box equipment. Internode customers can save themselves up-front costs from the AVM FRITZ!Box 7270 and 7390 routers, and FRITZ!Fon DECT handsets, by opting to pay a monthly rental fee within a 24-month contract.

Internode will then rent customers the 7270 for $9.95 per month, the 7390 for $14.95 per month, and the DECT handset for $4.95 per month. If customers choose to purchase the equipment outright, Internode has slashed pricing of the two FRITZ!Box routers by $50, and taken $20 off the FRITZ!Fon handset.

Internode product manager, Philip Dempster has said:

CES 2011: CES is a time where technology porn is at its highest. ASUS stepped up their game by showing off their ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard which supports the soon-to-be-released Intel Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon E5 platform.

As you can see in the above shot, the board looks insanely hot, sporting no less than seven PCIe slots, and eight DIMM slots. It also has ten SATA ports, and of course, dual Socket LGA 2011 support. The board is powered by a single 24-pin ATX power connector backed up by dual 8-pin connectors.

Considering how feature-packed the board is already, it's surprising that on the rear panel we only see two USB 3.0 connectors. On top of using Intel PHYs and Realtek audio, there's an ASPEED AST2300 2D VGA controller and also provides management over IP. Also spotted on the board is a swappable LOTES 'X-Socket' which is also used on the X79 ROG boards and CHiL PWMs.

As a huge, huge fan of original two Max Payne games, I can't help but think this is pure marketing speech here, but I have my fingers crossed anyway. VG247 had a quick quote from Remedy Entertainment's Oskari Hakkinen praising Rockstar's work on the new entry into the Max Payne series, Max Payne 3.

Rockstar threw a copy of Max Payne 3 over the Remedy, who made the original two games, to see if it lived up to the franchise, where Remedy said:

CES 2012 - One of the most interesting stories to come from CES 2012 has to do with Mushkin. Mushkin is an old timer, been around this market for a long time. Remember who made the first PC-150 SDRAM? Yeah, now you get it. Well Mushkin has some new backing and they bring the two things needed to return a company to greatness, money and engineers.

So how many engineers you might be wondering, let's just say enough to pull off a PCIe card with built in RAID on 2, 4 or 8 SSDs on board. All of the power requirements are handled by the main PCB and the SSDs are on daughter cards. The controller is different on all three cards but at this time they are Marvell based. Mushkin is looking at some of the new upcoming LSI controllers so nothing is set in stone at this time. Either way they go, look for this to compete on the high end enthusiast market and steer into some entry level enterprise systems.

mSATA is about to take off and Mushkin is getting ready to dive right in as well. Here we see two modules, one with 25nm IMFT asynchronous flash the other with 24nm Toshiba Toggle flash. Mushkin is looking to hit both the entry level and those of us with a need for the highest speeds possible today.

CES 2012: The Republic of Gamers team is pretty damn awesome, not only do they make some truly kick arse motherboards, but they also have gaming accessories like keyboards, mice and headsets and are now set to enter the sound card market, too.

ASUS teased at CES the ROG Xonar Phoebus (the God of Music and Light) and is a standalone product (not bundled with a motherboard). Xonar Phoebus is rated at 118db SNR and includes the regular outputs, a dedicated amplifier for driving up to 300ohm headphones and a volume control/wire extender for gaming headsets.

It sports the usual ROG black/red theme and looks insanely sexy for a sound card. I/O wise we have headset connectors, power for the volume control, line-in, 5.1 audio and SPDIF-out as pictured below.

CES 2012: Samsung's president of consumer electronics took the stage of CES in an Apple-like fashion to tell the world the future of where Samsung's Smart TV's are headed. He said that they will eventually be able to "listen, see, and do" without any interaction with a remote control.

Samsung showed off a demo video which teased the motion control capabilities, with Kinect-like controls of the TV. Tim Baxter, president of Samsung America then introduced something we should be seeing and hearing much more of: the Samsung ES8000 Smart TV. This isn't just a name, either, "Smart TV". The Samsung ES8000 Smart TV includes a dual-core processor and support for multi-tasking. It also sports a built-in camera and microphone.

It also includes a revamped Smart Hub with a "cleaner, more intuitive design" for navigating, and finding apps. There's also a new U-shaped stand as well, that got quite a few gasps from the CES crowd. Baxter also announced something that will keep the casual gamers happy: Angry Birds will be available on their Smart TV platform, as well as a free channel featuring Angry Birds cartoons.

CES 2012: Ultrabook, ultrabook, ultrabook. Say it three times in front of mirror and it'll haunt you for this entire year. I think that's all we're going to see from companies this year, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, either.

Samsung unveiled their Series 5 line of ultrabooks, which include a 13-inch model and a 14-inch model which sports an optical drive. Both Series 5 ultrabooks are powered by Intel Core i5 processors, sport 4GB of RAM, eight-hour batteries and Intel integrated graphics. They also feature the same matte, 300-nit (1366x768) display that was in the Series 5 Chromebook.

The 13-inch model includes a 128GB SSD option, but both the 13- and 14-inch models feature a standard 500GB 5,400RPM drive, with 16GB of express cache for that faster boot time you all want, as well as speedy application launches. The Series 5 ultrabooks from Samsung weigh in at 3.5 and 3.95 pounds for the 13- and 14-inch models, respectively. While they may weigh in a bit heavier than other ultrabooks we've seen lately, they do sport a tonne of connectivity.

CES 2012: It's not all consumer electronics to be used indoors at CES, there's also ourdoor-y type in the form of a car from Ford. Ford have just announced their 2013 Fusion, which is an all-new car packed to the rim with gadgets and tech like adaptive cruise control and comes in gasoline, hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants.

Effiency for the mid-sized sedan ranges from 26MPG city and 37MPG highway in the gasoline variant to 44MPG city and 44MPG highway for the lithium-ion-packed hybrids. The Fusion Energi plu-in sports an estimated 100MPGe, which is 7MPGe better than the Volt and 13MPGe better than the Prius plug-in. Not only that, the Fusion is actually bigger than the two models mentioned.

It can also drive for 20 miles on electricity before starting its engine, and will accelerate all the way up to 62MPH on battery power alone. This is a great feature for those who just want to duck out to the shops, or go out to dinner or see a movie.

CES 2012 - So as Jen-Hsun Huang gets into the gaming segment of their CES press conference, a FPS is loaded, and the camera for the big screen moves over to a couple of guys off to the side of the stage are connected via LAN, but it seems there are three actual players!

As the discussion continues, Jen-Hsun Huang starts talking smack to the two individuals, and asks them why are you getting hit so much, who is doing all that damage, who is doing all the PWN'ing on this match? While this is going on, the large screen was showing the odd man out's view of his screen, and the player in question was handing out punishment with little damage to his own character.

A few seconds later Jen-Hsun Huang spills the beans and informs the audience that he has enlisted the help of the World's top FPS gamer, Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel! As you can see he was sitting in the audience with a lady holding his tablet as he delivered the pain to the other two LAN combatants.

CES 2012 - We managed to sneak into the OCZ suite here in Las Vegas before anyone else and we got a look at their range of new enterprise storage solutions and the one that stood out for me was the demo of two Z-Drive R4 RM1616 PCI-E 2.0 drives running together in RAID 0 to produce some really mind-blowing performance numbers.

The Z-Drive R4 RM1616 is not a desktop part and easily out of reach for pretty much all consumers, if you have the big bucks, this is the ultimate storage though. The drives come with no less than 16 SandForce 2500 series controllers and up to 16TB of storage capacity. In the video of the demo you can see above, OCZ had two RM1616 drives setup in one system running together in RAID 0 mode.

This outrageousness is able to produce almost 13GB/s (yes - we are talking 13,000MB/s) and close enough to 100,000 IOPS with random 128k reads. And with random 4k reads IOPS hit a crazy 1.4 million IOPS and that is being limited by an Intel X79 system. With a faster computer, OCZ reckons the solution can hit up to 2 million IOPS in the 4k read range.

CES 2012 - We had a little treat today while visiting GIGABITE. Colin Brix stopped by with a hand full of new motherboards right from the R&D labs. We can't say too much about them but you can start to see how these will eventually become XXX-UD3, XXX-UD5 and so on.

Being the storage editor here at TweakTown I started looking closer at the storage options on these next generation motherboards. SATA III all over the place, check! Intel motherboards today are limited to just two SATA III ports but that will be a thing of the past really soon. What is even more impressive though is that most of these boards include either an mSATA or mini PCIe slot for HDD cache capabilities. We still need to determine if these boards are using mSATA or mini PCIe but will be digging for the information this evening. With OCZ showing their new Kilimanjaro, a joint OCZ and Marvell controller that uses mini PCIe 3.0 we have to wonder if mSATA is going to be replaced for Intel SRT with mini PCIe 3.0.

I'll update this post when I know more.

OCZ Technology have been snapping up companies lately and today is no different with the acquisition of SANRAD Inc., an Israel-based provider of flash caching and virtualization software and hardware. The addition of intellectual property to OCZ's growing portfolio is expected to increase the adoption of PCIe SSD storage solutions specifically in VMware and Citrix Zen environments.

SANRAD currently sells its flash caching and virtualization software to OEMs such as NEXSAN and Brocade. The deal between OCZ and SANRAD is reportedly worth approximately $15 million, which consists of approx. 2.1 million shares of OCZ stock. From the press release:

CES 2012 - It took me a couple of days to get the spelling right but now I'm ready to talk Kilimanjaro. OCZ was ready to talk Kilimanjaro today as well so.

Usually when we start talking about PCIe to flash controllers (as opposed to SATA to flash) we are talking about Fusion-io. Well there is a new game in town and this game is being played on the PCIe 3.0 field. The Kilimanjaro controllers I've seen so far were branded with both OCZ and Marvell names.

In the shot above we see the enterprise Z-Drive R5 which uses an 8x PCIe 3.0 slot, can push up to 3GB/s and churn around 1.8 million IOPS as long as your processor or processors can handle the load. OCZ it talking about capacities up to 12TB. There should be a few different models based on capacity and flash type, either MLC, eMLC or SLC. No word on pricing but I think Honda Civic range should sound about right.

CES 2012 - GIGABYTE just got done holding their "Meet the Executives" event at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and one of the big points for staying ahead of their competition (ASUS) was to be first out with new technology.

One big new piece of technology coming out sometime later this year is Intel's Ivy Bridge platform. We are already bound by an NDA, so there is little we can say. A quick search on Google though shows things like native USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0 support. It will be a mid-range platform, you can think of it as an updated Z68 Express for upcoming Intel processors.

After giving attending media a rundown on GIGABYTE's aims for 2012, Colin Brix of GIGABYTE started bashing on the door of a nearby room in the hotel suite and asked if we could interrupt and show off the Taiwanese company's range of upcoming Ivy Bridge boards. We got see the full model range including the G1. Sniper 3, G1 Sniper 3 M3 (Micro-ATX), Z77X-UD5H, Z77X-UD3H and B75M-D3H.

First up - this does not surprise me. I've thought for a very long time that this happens, as with most things, right under our noses and no one even knows. I'm sure it goes much deeper than this, and we'll never find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes, but on with the news. A group of Indian hackers known as "The Lords of Dharmaraja" had posted documents that were pillaged during the hack of an Indian military network. It was removed, but thanks to Google Cache, you can see an image of it below, and if that's not good enough, click here to read it directly.

Slashdot had reported on it too, and unveils some more info: