Latest News - Page 3211

Whilst motherboard makers continue to offer better and better incorporated audio solutions onto select enthusiast oriented models, there are those of us who still refuse to use anything but a quality discrete solution and Creative are one of the most trusted in this area with its Sound Blaster range.

The company has just extended its Sound Blaster lineup with two new models in the form of the X-Fi Titanium HD and USB based X-Fi HD Audio.

These two audio solutions are said to be the first on the market to make use of THX's TruStudio PC technology. Here's a bit of a rundown on it :-

There's been a bit of a hole in AMDs mobile lineup for a while now when looking at Intel and its dominance with the Pine Trail/Atom families for the ever-growing netbook market. But it looks like the company's been at the drawing board for a while and we learn today that they do indeed have something on the cards.

AMD's John Taylor has let it be known that the company is working on a netbook-class Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid setup codenamed 'Ontario' which he thinks they'll have ready for release by sometime next year (take this with a grain of salt given we've been waiting for any form of Fusion from the mob for years now).

The graphics side of things does sound tasty, though, with word that its integrated graphics will be DX11 supporting. Stronger graphics abilities are much welcomed in the netbook world, but with that said, NVIDIA already has a good answer for that with its Optimus based Ion 2 chipset that combines Atom's efficiency for extended battery life + discrete GPU performance. Not to mention, a lot can happen between now and this time next year; who knows where Intel will be at in this area of the market by the time AMD finally gets this product to market.

A day after Intel lifts the NDA on its latest bad boy that is the 6-core Gulftown monster, leaked slides have made their way onto the web which paint a clearer picture for AMDs processor release plans throughout the remainder of the year.

We can ascertain from this road map that indeed AMDs naming scheme on its soon to be unveiled six-core (Thuban) processors will stick to the Phenom II X6 branding. Three six-core models will hit the market initially in the form of the 1075T, 1055T and 1035T and we can see there will also be some new quads coming which make up the Phenom II X4 900T series.

This new quad core family of processors will also be based on the Thuban dies, but with two cores disabled and carrying the codename 'Zosma'. AMD will make six-core Thubans into quads when there are minor defects in one or two of the cores in order to salvage its foundry produce which also in turn gives the ability to target lower price points in the market.

We've heard bits and pieces about Galaxy's plans to release a one of a kind dual GPU GeForce GTS 250 graphics card to market in the near future and more recently obtained concrete information that it was definitely being produced, but until now have seen very little in terms of performance expectations or how it looks in its final form.

Expreview have obtained some nicely presented images of the final retail version of the card together with a screenshot indicating its performance capabilities using 3DMark Vantage. They were able to confirm it uses 1GB of memory (512MB per GPU) and comes with clock speeds of 600/1500/1000 MHz for the core, shader and memory clocks. Galaxy also bundles the card with its Galaxy Magic Panel HD software that gives the ability to further push the clockspeeds.

The card requires two x 6-pin PCI-E connectors for power and has a unique cooling solution with the heatsink also covering the memory and VRM areas. It uses dual 70mm fans running at 2000RPM, each nestling directly above one of the two GPUs onboard.

With GDC (Game Developers Conference) underway this week, OnLive took this opportunity to unveil the launch date and pricing for its upcoming service which is unlike anything else available on the internet at this point in time.

OnLive gives the ability to play games across the internet with the entire performance aspect of the game being offloaded to a remote server, meaning even entry-level computers can get somewhat smooth gaming at up to 720p without the requirement of faster hardware. The only real important requirement is relatively fast broadband internet.

The system allows for multiplayer gaming across the net and is capable of also providing saved replays of game sessions for later. Lag has been removed as much as possible with a lot of clever work done to fine tune the coding, but would still cause an issue for more timing-sensitive gaming titles. However, games like Borderlands and Mass Effect 2 are in the works and there's some older popular ones on the cards as well.

Our VGA man Shane Baxtor has managed to sus out when AMD/ATI plans to officially announce its new Eyefinity6 technology which gives the ability to drive up to six monitors from a single card.

We can expect the launch to take place during the week of the 29th of this month and it shouldn't be far beyond that date when we begin to see cards surface from AIBs which harness this extended form of multi-monitor support with half a dozen mini-DisplayPorts on their I/O plates. Word at the moment is that initial cards with Eyefinity6 support will be HD 5870s carrying double the RAM (2GB) to better assist the extended multi-monitor abilities.

However, there will be some super duper Eyefinity6 equipped variants of the top dog dual-GPU HD 5970 coming out as well, one of which got some showtime at CeBIT last week from XFX.

After reading a story from Ars Technica discovered by way of Elite Bastards, I thought it may be worth chiming in on the subject of Internet ad blocking in this day and age and how it harms the websites you frequently visit.

Ars Technica recently published an article titled 'Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love' and as a long time tech site owner, I naturally found it very interesting. The article basically starts off by mentioning that one of the editors recently discovered how its ad blocker audience didn't fully realize how blocking ads affected the sites that they love. If you are an ad blocker, I encourage you to read on for my take on the situation.

As Ken Fisher from Ars mentioned, many people believe that if they don't click ads, banners, text links and the like, there is no harm in blocking the ads. This couldn't be any further from the truth, though. While TweakTown does run programs that pay CPC (cost per click), the majority of our ads are based around CPM campaigns. That means we are paid a set rate for every 1000 views of any particular ad. While obviously advertisers prefer as many clicks on their ads as possible, we still get paid that set amount no matter if it gets clicks or not.

We learned when reviewing ASUS' new M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 motherboard based on the just released 890GX chipset last week that one of the main unique features ASUS is promoting with the board is its ability to unlock extra cores that by default are disabled on a dual or tri-core processor, though not all dual and tri core processors are designed in this way.

We didn't get time to check this feature out in detail as to how well or if it even works; ideally we'd have a decent amount of dual and tri-core AM3 processors in hand to whack into the board and see how consistent the results are, but unfortunately we don't at the moment and am yet to hear of reports giving the thumbs up to it.

In theory it seems difficult to believe that it would work as effectively as ASUS says, what with AMD themselves disabling cores on some quad core and tri-core processors due to those cores not being as reliable as AMD would like during QA testing.

SPARKLE is giving NVIDIA a helping hand in pushing its 3D Vision technology by putting together a promotional bundle package which includes the 3D Vision glasses, drivers, software and a bunch of 3D Vision supporting game titles together with one of SPARKLE's factory overclocked GeForce GT 240 graphics cards.

Two models of card carrying the bundle are on offer, one being the GT 240 GDDR5 OC Edition which runs clockspeeds of 561/1371/3400 MHz for the GPU, shader and memory out of the box and comes with either 512MB or 1GB memory.

The other card SPARKLE is doing with the bundle is part of its Calibre series, the X240/X240G with 630/1677/3600 MHz frequencies.

We first saw the use of the Lucid Hybrid chip on MSI's new Big Bang P55 based motherboard which is a ground breaking bit of tech that gives the ability to mix up your graphics cards from different makers (NvIDIA + ATI) and still be able to harness the power of them both in a bastardized SLI/Crossfire type fashion.

MSI once again decide to implement it on a board, this time one based on the AMD 870 + SB850 chipset for AM3 processors. MSI calls this board the MSI 870A-GD60 Hydra. While AMD 870 has no PCI-E external switching and only one PCI-E 2.0 x16 link, MSI connected this link to the Hydra chip which in turn gives two full-bandwidth 2.0 x16 links for some mix and matching goodness.

Other specs of the board include a 10-phase DrMOS VRM, four DDR3 slots for dual-channel operation, SATA 6Gbps support thanks to SB850 as well as NEC controlled USB 3.0 ports, FireWire, eSATA and 8 channel HD audio w/ S/PDIF connections.

Maingear makes a line of desktop and notebook computers that are typically aimed at gamers. The company is set to unveil a new multimedia notebook today called the mX-L 15. The notebook will use Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.

The machine will start at $999 and uses DDR3 RAM. Other features include ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics, an optional 15.6-inch screen is LED backlit screen with 1600 x 900 resolution. WiFi is built in along with a 2MP webcam. The OS is Windows 7.

The keyboard has a full number pad, typically only found on larger notebooks. Storage options will include various SSDs and HDDs and a DVD burner will be built-in. The standard screen on the notebook is a 1366 x 768 LCD with CCFL backlighting.

Whilst entirely impractical on so many levels, Patriot went on a mission with a PC build to produce something they could sit on display during CeBIT and call it the "fastest system in the world".

That might be true as far as the storage sub-system goes, but the PC itself certainly doesn't appear to be anything unlike we've seen before. The system itself comprises a SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DTH-6F-O motherboard running dual Xeon W5590s along with 96GB of ECC DDR3-1333 memory.

But the real standout that Patriot claims to deliver the best performance in the world is the use of 40 256GB TorqX SSDs in conjunction with five LSI SAS PCI-E cards to produce a sustained rate of 155,000 IOPS/s.

Some images have surfaced on the web of a couple upcoming 890FX based boards from ASUS which go the full hog in features and power under its ROG series.

Dubbed the Crosshair IV Formula and Extreme, these two boards give the best ASUS has to offer in conjunction with the 890FX chipset; this including its own OC buttons, iROG and ROG Connect overclocking features and a specially designed cooling system to give better stability across the board.

Both boards also include four PCIe x16 slots for CrossfireX configs, six SATA 6Gbps ports thanks to the SB850 Southbridge (plus one or two SATA-II ports), Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio.

I am a big fan of PC gaming and always look forward to new video cards hitting the market to give me better graphics when I play. A new video card has turned up at CeBIT from Sapphire and the card is a beast.

The Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5970 has 4GB of on-board memory of the GDDR5 flavor. It uses a Sapphire Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme cooler packed with three fans and four copper heat pipes. That massive cooler should keep the card running nice and cool.

The GPU clock is 850MHz and the memory clock is 4800MHz. The card needs a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors and has two DVI outputs. The card also has a pair of DisplayPort outputs too. Exactly how much the beast will cost is unknown, but it won't be cheap.

Sascha of netbooknews.de has managed to get some playtime with ASUS' upcoming Eee PC 1018P during a CeBIT conference and first impressions are real good, calling it "by far the most solid Eee PC I've ever, ever, ever had in my hands and the best keyboard I ever had on an Eee PC".

This is ASUS' first aluminum netbook and it sure looks sweet enough, coming in both silver and black aluminum attire.

The 1018P's internal specs include Intel's Atom newly released N470 CPU (1.83GHz), 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD and an option for 3G, whilst the 10-inch screen sticks with a 1024x600 resolution.

Our VGA guru Shane Baxtor has posted some hot news over at his Blog page pertaining to the new HD 5830 which is already a hot little number in AMD's HD 5000 series lineup with solid performance at a good price.

He learns that we might be seeing a bit of de ja vu, reminiscing of the X800 days where it was possible to unlock more stream processors by simply flashing the card with a different BIOS.

Whilst not confirmed nor said to be happening with every HD 5830 to hit the market, Shane hears that companies are looking to place the HD 5850 core on select HD 5830 cards which would then make it as simple as using a BIOS hack to unlock the extra stream processors the HD 5850 has on tap. Followed by a core and memory overclock from there and you're looking at sensational performance that makes the already attractive value factor of the stock HD 5830 glow even more.

Intel had planned for a big brother to Atom N450 to be launched come March 1st (today) in the form of the Atom N470, but decided to jump the gun on itself and make a brief announcement over the weekend introducing the faster Atom series processor for netbooks and nettops.

The Atom N470 heads north of the N450s clockspeed (1.66GHz) to 1.83GHz, whilst all other specifications remain the same; 45nm, single core with Hyperthreading, 512KB L2 cache, on-die single channel memory controller with support for DDR2-667MHz memory and Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics.

Lenovo was quick to mention its IdeaPad S10-3t convertible tablet would use N470 in a previous announcement, whilst many more netbooks are expected to hit the market in the coming months with the new slightly quicker chip.

A David Smith of SolarisUtilityDVD has been made aware of a method to enable SLI on ASUS' Crossfire only P7P55D motherboard which might be of interest to those of you with the board who wish they could double up on their existing GeForce card.

As the P7P55D Deluxe board comes with SLI support (albeit at a fair bit higher price tag), it was as simple as getting into a hex editor, comparing the deluxe board's BIOS to the vanilla variant and copying the required string across to the current BIOS.

For the end user, the hack is as simple as updating your BIOS with one which has been modified to include the SLIC string that enables the support on the board.

The folks at Plaza.fi have obtained both a CAD drawing along with performance expectations of ASUS' suped up Republic of Gamers Ares graphics card which is basically a custom-designed HD 5970 which as many bells and whistles ASUS could jam into it.

This upcoming limited edition model uses two Radeon HD 5870 GPUs with 1600 stream processors each, whilst the core and memory clock remains the same as the HD 5870 at 850MHz / 1200MHz (up from the stock 725/1000MHz on a stock HD 5970). On the subject of memory, ASUS also doubled the memory with 4GB of it residing here.

As the CAD drawing above indicates, the card sticks with a single PCB whilst the cooling system is what mostly catches the eye; not too dissimilar to what NVIDIA uses for its current top-end dual GPU based GTX 295 with a centrally positioned fan which pushes air onto copper GPU blocks on both sides. This overall fan design looks pretty mean and chunky and is said to be quieter than AMD's reference HD 5970 cooler as well while no doubt being more effective.

In now knowing when NVIDIA plans to unveil its GTX 400 Series (based on Fermi/GF100), which happens to be at PAX 2010 next month (March 26 to be exact), information is beginning to trickle out as to the underlying specs on the GTX 470 and 480 cards, in turn helping give a better perspective on the performance expectations of the models.

NVIDIAs next-gen GF100 silicon physically has 512 CUDA cores, 16 geometry units, 64 TMUs, 48 ROPs and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. GTX 480 will of course be without limits and make use of every bit of this power in all regards. GTX 470 is of course a cut-down lower priced variant, but we're not yet sure in which areas and by how much NVIDIA will restrict it.

DonanimHaber gets a hint by sources that the GTX 470 may be limited to 448 or possibly 480 CUDA cores and have a narrower memory interface, down to maybe 320-bit. Clock speeds on the core/memory will likely take a bit of a drop as well. This card is said to have a power draw of around 300W and perform somewhere in between the HD 5850 and 5870.