Latest News - Page 3213

FutureMark has just finished updating its entire lineup of benchmarking applications which offer improved system hardware detection, fix several issues and add improved GPU clock detection.

In the case of 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06, their respective updates also give better compatibility for the latest multi-core processors. Further to this, 3DMark Vantage's latest update is said to make the loading times much faster.

Of course, none of these updates influence the actual scoring system and the basis for all scores remain unchanged.

China based hardware news website Zol has managed to get a number of snaps along with some details on ASUS' upcoming HD 5870 MATRIX Edition graphics card.

the EAH5870 MATRIX is quite radically changed from the reference model with double the amount of memory onboard at 2GB, superior voltage regulators, a much more effective cooling system and of course a big bump in clock rates.

Thanks to the use of a superior VRM circuit, the card can easily reach higher clock speeds and comes clocked at 900MHz on the core and 1225MHz (4900MHz effective) on the 2GB of memory. The card requires 2x8-pin PCI-E connectors for its source of additional power.

ASUS has bestest its ROG series of notebooks with the introduction of the new G73Jh which is all about giving the best rounded gaming platform using some of the latest and fastest mobile hardware available.

The new G73Jh's outer design is inspired by the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter plane with its unique angular characteristcs. The display is 17.3-inch in size which is FHD LED-backlit and supports resolutons of up to 1920x1080. The twin rear venting system keeps heat and noise as far away as possible from the user and careful placement of internal components allows ASUS to slope the keyboard toward you 5 degrees with the palm rest area being very thin for a notebook of this calibre.

Inside is a real party. The system is based around Intel's HM55 chipset with a Core i7-720QM processor. It houses 8GB of DDR3 memory, ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5870 w/ 1GB of GDDR5 memory, space for two 2.5-inch drives (of which it comes with 2x500GB, making up a Terabyte), a DVD Super-Multi or choice of Blu-ray Combo drive and built-in 2 mega pixel camera.

It looks like Apple will be sticking with AT&T for at least the near future. Why? you ask. Well there are more than a few issues with moving to another carrier but the biggest reason is the negotiated contract rates that Apple gets from AT&T. As it stands right now Apple gets a rather large chunk of the money that people spend on their monthly AT&T plans for the iPhone. This will continue with the iPad as well.

If Apple moved to someone like T-Mobile (who also uses GSM) their much lower rates would not give the same revenue stream. This is something that the accountants at Apple would not like to have happen to their favorite cash cow.

But aside from the monthly money, Apple would have to put some real R&D money into phones to work on other networks. Both Verizon and Sprint (which will have a faster network once they finally get LTE out) are CDMA in the US and GSM in most of the rest of the world with the exception of India and some countries in Africa. This would mean that to Apple would have to make either a global device with both GSM and CDMA capabilities or one for each geographical region. Both of these choices cost money and would impact the margins that Apple so covetously guards on the iPhone.

Over the years, Microsoft has produced lots of peripherals for computers for gaming and general office work. With a few exceptions, the products are typically not all that exciting and have boring designs. I did like the design of the SideWinder keyboard for gamers that had the removable number pad from Microsoft, but it was the only cool product from the company in a long time.

A new design concept has been spied on Yanko Design that carries the Microsoft logo. The triangular device is a combination of a traditional mouse and a digital pen. The front tip of the triangle has the mouse buttons and scroll area that are touch sensitive and light up when pressed.

When the user wants to do some design work, the mouse can be picked up from one of the angled sides and used like a digital pen. The device looks like it would be rather uncomfortable to use as a normal mouse due to the size of the thing.

The recent additions to AMD's HD 5000 graphics card lineup still haven't brought the series to a close with talk of the entry top-end HD 5830 still on the way.

We first heard about this model over a month ago, with word that it would arrive in early Feb, but AMD appears to have delayed the release by up to several weeks intentionally and won't give an exact date of launch.

The Cypress LE core which is used in the HD 5850 models is also used for the HD 5830. However, where the 5830 differs is in the way of fewer shaders (1280 instead of 1440), less texture units (60 vs 72), but surprisingly this model apparently runs a higher core clock speed than the HD 5850 at 750MHz vs 725MHz.

There are few things worse for the gadget hound and tech fan than dropping one of your beloved gadgets and breaking it. You can protect your gear by putting it in a case or being extra careful, but accidents do happen.

If you are looking to get yourself an iPad when they start shipping soon, you will want to protect the tablet. A new protective system called iBallz has been spied that promises to protect the iPad by giving it balls. The foam balls have a slot that slips onto the corner of your iPad.

A cord then wraps around the balls and keeps them in place if dropped. The cord can also be held when gaming or carrying the iPad as well. Multiple color options are available and a full set of iBallz will sell for $14.99.

Logitech has been making keyboards, mice, and other peripherals for Mac and PC users for years. The company is one of the biggest names in peripherals and other stuff for computers. Logitech has unveiled its latest wireless desktop called the MK710.

The desktop includes a keyboard and a mouse that each promise three years of use on a single set of batteries. The keyboard uses Logitech's Incurve keys with rounded edges for more comfortable typing. The keys also promise longer travel for comfort. The palms rest area is cushioned as well and the keyboard has an LCD to show caps lock and other notifications.

The mouse is a sculpted design for the right hand with several buttons that can be mapped. The scroll wheel uses the Logitech hyper-fast scrolling tech. Both the keyboard and the mouse connect to the PC via a Unifying receiver that barely sticks out of the USB port. The keyboard and mouse will ship soon for $99.99.

The following news story was submitted by Jim Handy of Objective Analysis.

Late Tuesday Micron announced that the company had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Numonyx in an all-stock transaction. Micron will issue 140 million shares of the company's common stock, worth approximately $1.27 billion, to Numonyx shareholders Intel, STMicroelectronics, and Francisco Partners.

Micron Re-Enters NOR

First unveiled at last months CES, Dell's very tasty UltraSharp U2711 monitor is starting to show up on the market now.

The real eye-catcher in terms of specs for this model is its native resolution' 2560x1440. It uses an IPS panel and sports a 6ms response time, contrast ratio of 1000:1 (80,000:1 DCR), typical brightness level of 350 cd/m2, 110% color gamut and also houses a card reader and four USB 2.0 ports for convenience.

Connectivity is rich with support for D-Sub, dual DVI, HDMI 1.3, DisplayPort and composite.

There are times when a notebook user needs less performance and more battery life from their notebook. There are also times when the user has an AC outlet and needs all the performance the machine can muster. Not so long ago that would have meant you need two machines to meet both of those needs.

NVIDIA unveiled its switchable graphics tech that let the user change between a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU when needed a while back. The catch was that the change often required the closing of open apps, a reboot, or logging out of the user account to complete. NVIDIA announced new technology today that make changing between two available GPUs in a notebook a process that needs no user input and happens seamlessly.

The technology is called Optimus and it will change between the available GPUs as the demands on the system change without input from the user. The new technology allows the user to continue working as well requiring no stops or closing of applications. The new tech will first surface in notebooks coming soon from Asus. Optimus is compatible with the latest GeForce 200M and 300M GPUs and will work with Fermi-based GPUs coming soon.

Some comments made by a high-up executive of NVIDIA just recently indicate the company's interest in external graphics adapters for notebooks. Whilst there's no definitive plans to introduce products of this nature to market as yet, Rene Haas who is the general manager of the notebook GPU sector at NVIDIA believes it is a big oppportunity for success :-

I think it is a big opportunity. We have two strategies at Nvidia: one is to put graphics everywhere, the other one is to [find more ways to] integrate discrete chips into the box. I think there is definitely a place for [external graphics cards for notebooks], no question. We continue to look at whether this is a GPU [docking stations] or external devices.

ATI had already come out with something like this in 2008; an external graphics card in a sleek looking box, connected using XGP (External Graphics Port) technology, but this has yet to be really pushed in the market and there is currently only the one solution available from Fujitsu called the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Graphics Booster which houses ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPU and can be connected to Fujitsu's Amilo SA3650 or Acer's Aspire Ferrari One.

Amazon is doing very well with its Kindle eReader and the device is one of the most popular readers on the market. Amazon is being forced to up the pricing of the digital books that go along with the reader, thanks in large part to Apple.

Amazon announced a while back that it was launched a new Kindle Developers Program that would allow devs to build active content for the reader. Amazon announced recently that the KDK program was now rolling in limited beta and offered a few more details on the active content the program will produce.

Three pricing options for the content developed with the KDK will be available. The free option requires the app to be under 1MB in size and use under 100KB/user/month of wireless data. A one-time purchase plan will be for apps with data use of no more than 100KB/user/month. A monthly subscription plan will be used for apps that use more data. The largest app size allowed is 100MB and apps larger than 10MB will only be available to upload via USB.

Both NVIDIA and AMD partner Club 3D has just unveiled a non-reference version of AMD's Radeon HD 5850 graphics card which it simply calls the Radeon HD 5850 Overclocked Edition with its higher clock rates on tap.

There's more to the card than just higher clock speeds, however. It uses a custom PCB and cooler to make sure its 760MHz GPU and 1050MHz (4200MHz effective) memory clocks are as stable as a rock. But while those increases over the stock 725MHz/1000MHz setup don't seem like much, there's bound to be a lot of headroom for some manual overclocking goodness with this variant.

A bit about the cooler; it is of a dual-slot nature with the use of four protruding heatpipes that run to a large heatsink with aluminum fins of which a centrally positioned fan blows air directly down.

GIGABYTE has just kindly let us know about a firmware update for the NEC USB 3.0 controller found on many of its latest motherboards. The update is primarily for the purposes of improving USB 3.0 device compatibility.

The new firmware is inclusive of an executable update tool which you simply run from within Windows to have your controller updated to the latest. Please note; this Update Tool is only suited to Windows 7 and Vista.

If you have one of these boards from GIGABYTE, then you have NEC's USB 3.0 controller which can be updated with the use of this firmware update tool :-

ASRock has announced a new P55 motherboard today which has it all. Dubbed the P55 Deluxe3, this board is one of ASRock's new True 333 series models which means it has SATA3, eSATA3 and USB 3.0 support.

Both SLI and Crossfire(X) are of course supported on this full ATX sized motherboard via the two residing PCI-E x16 slots. Also, what's nice to see here is that ASRock recognise the P55 chipset taxes needed bandwidth from the x16 PCI-E slots for SATA3 and USB 3.0 operation, so they have incorporated an additional bridge to take care of it so there are no tradeoffs no matter what your configuration is.

Along with P55's usual six SATA-II connectors, there are two additional white connectors controlled by Marvell's 6Gbps controller, and also a third powered eSATA-III/USB2.0 connector on the rear I/O.

SilverStone has come up with an interesting device that works differently to anything else we've seen on the market up until now. The newly release HDDBOOST is designed to give a 'best of both worlds' setup using a traditional mechanical HDD and an SSD.

The device itself resides in a 3.5" drive bay in which an SSD can be mounted inside it. Meanwhile, a mechanical HDD can also be connected to the device via a second SATA port which allow the HDD and SSD to talk together in a unique automated way.

Once setup and the system is turned on, the device will mirror the front-end data on the HDD to the SSD so that all of the most commonly used files will be read from the faster flash drive. Unlike simply running an SSD on its own for your operating system drive, this device puts less wear on the drive as any new writes performed will be done to the mechanical HDD.

When it comes to a new case for my gaming computer, I want lots of space, good looks, and good cooling. There are lots of PC cases out there to choose from and what you buy will depending on how much you want to spend.

Sharkoon has added its latest PC chassis to the wealth of options already on the market. The case is called the Nightfall and it has a black aluminum front bezel. The case places the PSU at the bottom and has integrated wire management system.

The Nightfall is drilled for water cooling and has front IO ports. The case is a midi ATX design with five 5.25" external drive bays and five internal 3.5" drive bays. Cooling for the case includes a single 120mm fan standard with LED lighting for the front. Optional cooling fans can be added with two 120mm side panel fans, a 140mm top fan, and a 120mm back fan.

A short while back we learned of a highly unique GTS 250 graphics card from NVIDIA partner GALAXY in that it carries two GTS 250 GPUs onboard. The information that our VGA reviewer Shane acquired was somewhat limited at that time, but he's now learned a lot more about it along with having confirmation that GALAXY does in fact intend to mass produce this model.

As you can see from the fresh pictures above which reveals the type of cooling setup used, due to its design it looks like it'll take up three slots in your case, but will ensure there are no problems with its out of box overclock at 675MHz on the core and 1696MHz shader.

With the GTX 285 having reached EOL, the GTS 250 GPU is currently the fastest desktop GPU NVIDIA has in its lineup (until Fermi arrives) and GALAXY have done everything they can to make the most out of the model, not only stopping at making it a dual-GPU setup.

There are some computer users that rely on accurate colors. People like graphic designers, photographers, and video editors need to see the correct colors on screen to make things look good. NEC has unveiled a new LCD just for this user group.

The screen is called the NEC MultiSync PA241W and is 24-inches in size. The screen has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and uses a 10-bit IPS panel with a 14-bit lookup table. Those features allow the screen to show more than a billion possible colors.

NEC claims the screen covers 102% of the NTSC and 99.3% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. Inputs include a 10-bit DisplayPort, DVI-D with HDCP, and a USB hub. The stand tilts, swivels, and height adjusts. The PA241W is now shipping for $1079.