Latest News - Page 3120

While most attention is now on Sandy Bridge-E with the mid November launch date closing in fast and Bulldozer having left a trail of despair, that doesn't stop Z68/LGA1155 remaining with a super firm hold of the market thanks to its characteristics in providing a brilliantly balanced, high performance platform for all types of users.

That said, it's worth mentioning that MSI has just outed another Z68 offering in m(icro)ATX form - the Z68MA-G43 (G3). The highlight of this particular offering is, as its model name denotes, the inclusion of PCI-Express Gen 3 via a couple PCI-E (3.0) x16 slots.

Apart from that, it gives much of what you'd expect from such a board - four DDR3 DIMM slots, a couple SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, a couple USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit ethernet, 7.1 channel audio and for video output there's D-Sub, DVI and HDMI on tap. MSI rounds the feature set out with its OC Genie II overclocking facility and of course, that lovely UEFI BIOS we've all quickly grown to love.

The folks over at OCWorkbench were lucky enough to have witnessed a Sandy Bridge-E processor being overclocked earlier today and kindly shared some details that help give us an idea of how well these chips will clock up.

The specific LGA2011 Core i7 model used was not mentioned, so it's possible it was only a quad core offering. Alas, using a "regular" air cooler it still managed to cruise along just shy of 5GHz (4.92GHz to be exact) with its idle temp holding at 45c.

This was made easily possible via the BClk that can be increased on Sandy E without any dramas. This particular result was achieved by setting the BClk to 120MHz, using a multi of 41X and a core voltage of 1.51v. As for the memory, this was DDR3-2400MHz RAM with a CAS latency of 10T.

I remember importing the first iPhone into Australia because we were left out of Apple's circle of power, and I remember the camera being good, for the time. I upgraded to the iPhone 3G on launch day and I remember the camera only being a little better. But, now we have side-by-side shots of the same picture, from all of the iPhone's.

Gizmodo have a news piece where Lisa Bettany has taken the same picture with every iPhone (the original, 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S) to see the differences, and PetaPixel stiched them together to show you just how much the camera has improved from each generation.

As we can see from the above picture, the original to the 3G was not that much of an improvement, but the 3GS is when the iPhone became a serious photo-snapping camera. The iPhone 4 is another step up in quality, but the iPhone 4S... very, very nice indeed. Lots of detail, near-perfect quality when compared to even the 3GS and blows the 3G and the vanilla iPhone out of the water. Back when the original iPhone came out, most people had point-and-shoot cameras, but these days? There's just no real need if you take pictures in a non-serious, I-don't-need-a-DSLR way.

KFA2 has been quiet for a while, since announcing their MDT (Multi Display Technology) range of graphics cards, but now we have something to sink our teeth into. KFA2 have unveiled the KFA2 GTX MDT 570 which is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570, and sports a black PCB, custom aluminium cooling solution and is said to offer unique voltage control features.

The KFA2 GTX MDT 570 is set to launch next month and is said to be factory-overclocked. But that's not the most special part of this card, it features support for four 1080p displays, or three 1080p displays if you want to use NVIDIA's Surround Vision. Output wide, it will include three DVI-D ports, a single Dual-Link DVI port and a single mini HDMI port.

These cards will be a great purchase for anyone wanting to do Surround Vision from a single GPU, as currently, NVIDIA requires SLI to do Surround Vision. But, keep in mind this card will not do 3D Vision Surround as it only has a single Dual-Link DVI port. Three Dual-Link DVI ports are required for 120Hz/3D gaming, so you would need two cards with at least one of them sporting dual-dual-link DVI.

My, my, how time has flown by. I still remember triple-booting my PC with Windows 98SE, Windows 2K and Windows XP, how has ten years gone by? Microsoft include the infographic below, which is not only cool, but it shows just how long ago 2001 was with all of the old technology (or lack thereof).

For example, in 2001 we have in-person meetings, now we have video conferencing. Working at the office, can now be done anywhere (such as me posting this news out to the world, I can do so in my boxer shorts and you wouldn't even know it - begin dreams, now). Chat rooms have been swapped for social networking, dial-up for broadband/Wi-Fi, and hard drives for "the cloud".

Microsoft also try to get people to upgrade by saying that batteries in smoke detectors, oil in your car, tires on your car, toothbrushes, and cell phones all require replacing at some point. I guess this is a push to "why haven't you upgraded to Windows 7 yet?". Going back to 2001, or Windows XP feels like a step into a time machine. Isn't it funny that at the time, it was so "magic" and "revolutionary", and now it feels like a bad hair-do, or those really embarrassing clothes that you wouldn't want to be caught dead in*.

Rumor has it that Apple could be preparing to launch the long-rumored Apple television in 2012. The project is reportedly being led by the same software engineer who developed iTunes, according to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the product. Jeff Robbin, who helped created the iPod, is set to be leading the Apple television development.

Piper Jaffray analyst, Gene Munster, believes that Apple already has a prototype in the wild, and could be prepared to launch it late 2012, if not, early 2013. But, Munster has been saying this since 2009, so we should always take that with a grain of salt. Rumors have floated around of an Apple-branded television set for years now, but what has changed the playing field is Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs.

Excerpts hit the Internet last week, with Jobs telling Isaacson that he wanted to create a television set that was integrated with Apple products and would be easy to use. Jobs elaborated in the Biography with:

HTC has partnered up with Dropbox to offer a new deal with all of the latest Android-based handsets that will give a bonus of 3GB storage in addition to the 2GB of free storage offered by Dropbox if they connect to the platform with the new phone - launching in October.

The deal which is set to extend to all Sense 3.5 devices in the futurer, all allow users to save files and photos on their phone and have them automatically synced to their computer at home, or other devices running the Dropbox software. Dropbox currently offers users 2GB of storage, free, with the change to upgrade that by 8GB by getting friends to sign up to Dropbox. HTC's additional deal with 3GB makes reaching the 10GB storage for free, not that hard at all.

HTC wasn't clear whether this deal will come to their Windows Phone 7-based smartphones, this may be because Microsoft has Skydrive, which is built directly into the OS. Skydrive also offers 25GB free storage, which blows away the Dropbox offer.

Skyrim is only 2 weeks away and Bethesda have just confirmed the system requirements for the upcoming title. The requirements aren't too bad, but they're a tad higher than the 2006-based Oblivion, so if you're still chugging along on older hardware and want to get the most out of Skyrim, you might want to start an upgrade, now.

Recommended system requirements:

Quad-core Intel/AMD CPU

Fathers of the iPod, Ton Fadell who created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three versions of the iPhone, and Matt Rogers who was responsible for iPod software development at Apple, have a new startup: Nest Labs. Their first product? The Nest Learning Thermostat, which is designed to intelligently "learn" the behaviors of the user and adjust accordingly.

During the first seven days of use, the customer will set base temperatures using a single dial which is like a big click wheel. Click the wheel right for the temperature to increase and the display to turn orange, or to the left, to bring it down and the display turns blue. The Nest then records your initial settings and starts to take over after the first week or so. As usage continues, Nest will fine-tune settings using sensors, algorithms and cloud computing.

As an example, Nest is able to detect when users have left the house using a motion sensor and it will throttle back heating or cooling accordingly. The thermostat also includes an ambient light sensor and will adjust the brightness of the display relative to the surrounding light in the room to not cause eye strain.

To celebrate the launch of Battlefield 3 (for some initial impressions, check it out here), SAPPHIRE Technology have introduced the SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition, which sports two SAPPHIRE exclusive technologies, SAPPHIRE FleX and Vapor-X cooling as well as performance enhancing options for the enthusiast and finally, a FREE copy of Battlefield 3.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6970 BF3 Special Edition includes a Dual BIOS switch which goes between two performance settings delivering the best performance in its class. While sitting in the 'normal' setting, clock speed sit at 880MHz for core, 1375MHz for memory and a quite fan profile. Choosing the "boost" setting throws the card up to 930MHz as well as increasing core voltage, fan speed and overclock limits to deliver higher performance.

SAPPHIRE's FleX technology is also great as it allows Eyefinity from three DVI monitors, without the need for DisplayPort or any adapters. Vapor-X cooling is also awesome, which enables the performance to be maxed out, but keeping those noise levels down low.

For everyone who reads TweakTown, and more specifically, my news posts, you'll know that I've been waiting for Battlefield 3 for what feels like, my entire life. I've posted everything from screenshots, to launch trailers, alpha footage to beta/full release footage, interviews, details and everything in-between. I found out on a forum last night that the game can be unlocked for some who change some VPN settings, so I did so...

I have a 3 screen (Alienware AW2310's) in Portrait, backed up by 2 x GIGABYTE GeForce GTX570's and a 4GHz Core i7... the beta, I had a few little issues, but they somehow worked themselves out and I was bug-free for the rest of the beta. The full game on the other hand... doesn't even work on my 3 screen setup. Yes, that's right: the beta worked and the full game does not.

My issue is, I launch the game, and it goes full-screen. Once its in full-screen, I can hear it load up and finish, if I move my mouse I can hear the cursor going over menus, but I cannot see the menus. If I alt-tab and go to a window, the menus appear and it's OK. If I click a menu, it goes back to full-screen. So I have to click a menu, alt-tab, full-screen, click a menu, alt-tab, full screen, etc until I get to video and change it to run in a window.

Yesterday we attended an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei where we were introduced to its range of upcoming Intel X79 Express chipset based motherboards. These motherboards will support second generation Intel Core i7 processors for high-end desktop systems using the new and larger LGA 2011 socket.

Intel has super tight restrictions on what can be said about these new products and as we are bound by an Intel NDA, we need to stick to the rules. That is one of the reasons why the video below might seem a little cryptic at times - we both had to be very careful what we said. The man in the video below is Jack Cheng who is with the ASUS motherboard R&D team and was kind enough to tell us some ASUS ROG driven features of the Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard.

Some of the big ASUS features with this board include the OC Key for simple on-screen and very much on-the-fly overclocking, subzero sense for finding out temperatures under extreme cooling conditions and VGA hotwire for putting your video card through hell and back. There is also the X-Socket which allows you to bring along your old coolers and they'll work on the new 2011 socket - it will also be good for extreme LN2 overclockers and their pots. Besides just the video above, there is a selection of pictures below in the gallery which we took.

Yesterday we attended an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei where we were introduced to its range of upcoming Intel X79 Express chipset based motherboards. These motherboards will support second generation Intel Core i7 processors for high-end desktop systems using the new and larger LGA 2011 socket.

Followers of ASUS will know the Sabertooth motherboard from previous generations and some will also be happy to know that it is back again with the X79 Express chipset. Impressive cooling is a big part of the Sabertooth and Jack Cheng who is with the ASUS motherboard R&D team and was kind enough to go on video and tell us about some of the ASUS driven features of this motherboard.

It's not just cooling though, with the included software powered by the impressive Digi+ VRM power control design you get really good monitoring (12 different parts of the board are digitally thermally monitored) and control over the board and all the different aspects of it using the included Thermal Radar software. There are no real big single handed massive features that will take the crown for the Sabertooth, but the message being sent is that it's "tough".

The VGA market almost seems like it's in hibernation at the moment for the most part, as we all anticipate the launch of new families from both sides of the fence sporting 28nm GPUs, of which we know won't be until a bit of a ways into 2012.

However, it appears NVIDIA has been working on a little bit of a side project in the meantime; some more love towards its popular GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Apparently the company is preparing a new suped up release of the model that switches the GF114 GPU on the original version for the GF110 that's used on the GTX 570 and 580 models.

This in turn would give the card 448 CUDA Cores, as denoted by the supposed model name NVIDIA is going for, "GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Core). This compares to the 480 cores on the GTX 570 and 512 on the GTX 580. The card will have 56 TMU's a 320-bit memory interface, 3-way SLI support, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and will most likely carry 1280MB of GDDR5.

A bunch more details have surfaced today on AMD's upcoming "Virgo" PC platform which comprises their next-gen mobile "Trinity" APU using an FM2 package. The latest details confirm that Trinity will in fact be compatible with AMD's current-gen A75 "Hudson-D" chipset, but we are yet to learn whether or not FM1 and FM2 are pin compatible.

AMD's Trinity mobile APUs are 32nm based and run a TDP of up to 35W. The four x86-64 cores used are based on AMD's next-gen "Piledriver" architecture (rumoured to be between 10 and 15% quicker on average when compared to Bulldozer) and these four cores are arranged in two modules. Each of the two modules holds two cores and is given certain shared and dedicated resources.

The new APUs sport an integrated DDR3-2133MHz memory controller, up to 4MB (2MB per module) of L2 cache and Radeon HD 7000 series IGP (said to be about 30% quicker than Llano's iGPU). AMD is talking a 20% performance improvement over current-gen Llano APUs which comprise K10 "Stars" cores. A new 3rd generation form of TurboCore technology will also be included that gives superior power management and overclocking features.

We just got back from an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei today where we were introduced to its upcoming range of next-gen Intel motherboards.

Right at the end of the presentation, ASUS announced that it will be offering a full game bundle of Battlefield 3 with its upcoming next-gen Rampage IV Extreme ROG motherboard.

ASUS were not prepared to release any details on pricing at this stage, but they did mention that you would save a lot of money by selecting the bundle version. ASUS will also offer normal versions of the motherboard without BF3 bundled.

Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs is set to hit next week, and within, we find out more details of how Steve Jobs was absolutely furious about Android "ripping off" the iPhone. Of course, multiple smartphone makers and OS builders have "copied" the iPhone, but its not to say that Apple did it first.

Apple bought something to the market that had been attempted before, but just did it better. Google were hot on the heels and have innovated multiple times within their Android OS, where Apple's iOS has not really grown outside of its initial iPhone launch. Yes it has been upgraded with more features, etc, but an actual change in the way it works, no. It still features the same tile-based icon layout, and has only seen "Notifications" in the last iOS 5 upgrade - something from Android.

But Steve Jobs hated, hated, hated Android. With a passion. To the point where he wanted a "thermonuclear war" with the company because they "ripped the iPhone off". Isaacson has written that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features found on the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-filled rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft".

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google Inc. has talked to at least two private-equity firms about potentially helping them finance a deal to buy Yahoo Inc.'s core business. This would be a very strategic move for Google, which would push them right against Microsoft in its bid for the company. The move is of course still in "early-stage discussions" with no formal bid put together. The Journal has a few words as to why the move could be a huge win for Google:

Then we have Microsoft's joint bid for Yahoo, but the same anti-trust concerts that stopped an "advertising partnership" between Google and Yahoo in 2008 could stymie the search company's efforts.

Netflix have had a very bad time lately, with them admitting on Monday that they lost more customers than expected in the third quarter, which stems from an issue to divorce rentals of DVDs from streaming video services, and they've also predicted that subscriptions for DVD delivery will sharply decline in the current period.

Netflix have also projected that they'll begin to lose money for a few quarters starting in the next period, because of costs associated with their expansions in both the UK and Ireland, also announced on Monday. Investors... not so happy. It was a near-instant reaction with share prices dropping once again. They had already fallen 61-percent from their all-time high in mid-July, falling 26-percent more in after-hours trading Monday, following the quarterly report.

Netflix's market value was $16 billion and has now plummeted to just $4.6 billion, all in the space of three months. Netflix have also stated they've lost roughly 800,000 subscribers in the third quarter, which ended with 23.8 million U.S. customers, this is after years of a steadily increasing subscriber base.

GIGABYTE has unveiled their X79-based boards on their Facebook page, and boy do they look good. There's four boards on show, the G1.Assassin 2, X79-UD7, X79-UD5 and finally, the X79-UD3. All four boards feature totally different color schemes with the G1.Assassin 2 sporting a green PCI-e slot look, with that sexy as hell looking chipset heatsink in the shape of a pistol.

Next up is the X79-UD7 that features an orange and black scheme, just in time for Halloween in just under a week! The X79-UD5 features a very nice looking blue and black combination and finally, the X79-UD3 features a gun-metal grey and black combo. All of the boards look very hot indeed.

The boards all sport different looks and specs when compared to their first unveiling at IDF 2011, now featuring Digital PWM's. GIGABYTE are calling it 3-Way Digital Power, 1 CPU Digital PWN, and 2 Memory Digital PWMs. The PWNs in the picture seem to be based on (from what I read on Xtreme Systems) IR/Chil's newest PWM technology as the controllers seem to be VRD12 and VRD 12.5 certified. Interesting time ahead for enthusiasts! Not only do these boards look sweet, but they now use International Rectifier Digital PWM's!