Latest News - Page 3227

Here is some news that we all have been waiting for. The crew over at DICE has been hard at work on the Frostbite Engine. This is the engine that is used in the Battlefield games. The current version supports up to DX10 and can be run on the XboX 360, PC, and PS3. The new version will have support for DX10.1 and DX11.

The main feature they are interested in is the highly parallel workings of the engine. It is capable of running two to eight threads. This is perfect for the i7 and represents a real multi-core advancement over past games.

The actual port of the game was not that difficult as it reportedly only took three hours to complete. You can now add Battlefield to the list of coming DX11 games. This shows a much faster adoption than DX10 did when it was at the same place. Of course there are not as many differences between DX10 and 11 as there were between DX9 and 10.

Yesterday we heard about the new Nokia Booklet 3G. There was not much detail at the time so we did some wishful thinking.

Well today we have more information about the new Book. One thing we know now is the price. This comes in around $799 and makes this about the most expensive netbook I have ever personally seen.

The Booklet 3G will also have an Atom Z530 (1.66GHz) 3G capability, WiFi, SD Card reader, swappable SIM cards (for use worldwide), a 120GB HDD and a few other nice features.

Despite some nice improvements from the AMD side of the CPU world, Intel is not lying down or indeed planning to slow down at all. Instead they have launched the Lynnfield (Socket 1156 Core i5 and Core i7) and are hard at work on the Core i9.

As things stand now Intel will be demoing their sexa-core Core i9 CPU at the September IDF. This will be a demonstration of not only a six core CPU but also a 32nm one.

Core i9 will be the first of the Westmere CPUs from Intel. Westmere will have the whole range of core potions including native Dual, Quad, Sexa and Octo cored options. The rumored launch date is sometime in Q4, if this is true AMD will have to make some very hard decisions. They will need to push out their version or they will get passed by. If you remember the last time they rushed to catch up to Intel it did not go well. Barcelona was not ready for launch and as a result AMD dropped further behind in the performance world. If the same thing happens again AMD will be in real trouble as they lose not only market share but developer support.

Wow, I know this little bit of news is sure to annoy a few people out there. As Mozilla complains that a browser election when Windows 7 is installed is just not enough it is having a hard time competing with IE 8 in terms of security.

According to a recent Study performed by NSS Labs Internet Explorer is more secure than FireFox 3, Chrome, Safari 4, and even Opera.

The test was to see if each browser was capable of withstanding common Web-Based attacks.

Apple is pushing its new OS onto the faithful starting on the 28th of August. Keeping with the feline naming convention OSX 10.6 will be called Snow Leopard.

The new OS is supposed to be faster, more stable, and offers a ton of new features and improvements. There is one that is creating a lot of back and forth between the Mac Lovers and the Mac Haters.

This is the claim that Snow Leopard is a 64 bit OS. Now technically this is true but it is not true for all MACs. You see not all Intel CPUs can support EM64T (Intel's implementation of 64-Bit memory extensions) although that number is very small. Still even in some models that do support EM64T the installer will only install a 32-Bit Kernel. According to Apple even though the Kernel will be 32-bit you will still be able to run 64-bit applications.

Ah it is my daily head ache. I power on the work laptop and get ready to start browsing the internet in search of something to write about. I also crank up the usual instant messaging applications. First MSN, then Skype; however lately Skype has been more of an annoyance than a benefit.

Starting about a month ago I began receiving invitations to view people's web cams. These are so obviously spam that it would be funny if I was not getting 3-7 per day and often 2-3 each time I open Skype.

Despite having my privacy settings to not allow IMs from people not in my contact list, and not allowing people to see me as on line unless they are in my list I still get these. They are also happening more and more frequently. To make matters worse the only recourse is to block them and select the "report abuse from this person" checkbox.

nVidia is going after AMD and their "Dragon" platform. To do this they are leveraging the new Intel P55 Chipset.

You see they really do not have a complete platform solution like AMD did and now they are rapidly building one.

Referred to as "Power of 3" in the PR Slides that have gotten out into the public eye, nVidia claims that P55 with built in SLI support is perfect for their new SLI + PhysX design.

Intel was not happy with recent rumors that popped up about Larrabee being on its fourth attempt. In fact Intel called the rumors and reports "nonsensical rubbish"

The rumors say that Larrabee is having some problems, the first is TDP and the others are software. These rumors all appear to come from nVidia and ATi. So you have to wonder what is going on.

Is this a FUD campaign? Or is this a reality that Intel does not want to get out. If Intel is trying to hide something is there more behind the issue than TDP and Software?

Android can now join the ranks of the iPhone. Not in terms of style, quality or performance. For the most part Android is pretty much equal to the iPhone OS and in many ways better. No today I am talking about being jailbroken.

Of course you do not call it jailbreaking for the Android OS, You call it rooting. This has always been possible but it has also always been out of most people's hands. Doing it has required more work than most thought it was worth.

However all that has changed, there is now a quick and easy method to open up your Android based phones. The App called Recovery Flasher can be downloaded from the Android market and all you so is run it, make a backup and then flash it to Cyanogen Recovery 1.4.

Earlier today we told you that AMD/ATI would probably launch the Evergreen GPU family before the scheduled launch of Windows 7. We felt that they would want to get these out with plenty of lead time.

As it stands Windows 7 should have a good adoption rate and having DX11 parts on the shelves at launch will help AMD/ATi.

Well it seems we were right. According to new information September 10th looks to be the launch date. The launch will take place on the USS Hornet. This is plenty of time for the media to be sampled, reviews to be published and the stores to get stock before Windows 7 hits the retail shelves.

With all the news on ATi DX11 hardware coming out of Quakeconn it is interesting to see that someone finally managed to get a good picture of the whole adapter used.

The picture that we found comes from Chiphell and shows us what the 40nm Juniper will look like.

The new card will look familiar as it closely resembles the HD 4770 with the exception of the black PCB. The card pictured also shows two DVI ports, one HDMI, and one Display Port. Not bad for connectivity.

Remember when AMD talked about integrating a GPU into the CPU? Remember when this was going to be the next big thing? Well somewhere along the lines AMD seems to have stopped working on this new technology.

Intel, on the other hand, did not. They have been at work and are close to the release of their Clarkdale CPU. This is a 32nm CPU that has an IGP stuck under the IHS with the CPU core.

Now we have all heard about this but with the recent fervor over leaked Lynnfield CPUs, e-tailers and retailers selling Lynnfield early and pretty much everything else about Lynnfield many have lost track of Clarkdale.

What's in a name? After all a rose... ok no Shakespeare this morning. But you know, you really have to wonder about that. I can remember a time when naming was simple. CPUs were nammed after their speed. For example the Pentium 133 was a 133MHz Pentium CPU. The K62 333 was a 333MHz CPU. They we got into equivalent performance Like P1200+ meaning that it should run like a competing 1.2GHz CPU. But nothing on how fast it was.

Well over the years this has gotten worse and worse, especially with companies like nVidia renaming and rebranding continually in an attempt to confuse the consumer.

Well it looks like nVidia is at it again with another name change for the upcoming 40nm GPUs. Gone is the GT and GTX labeling and back is the old GeForce so we are going to see things like GeForce 210 (like the old GeForce 3 and 4 series. I suppose next we will see the GT and GTX go at the end of the number again just to keep things simple...

We have more Intel rumors today. This one is surrounding the Turbo Memory successor Braidwood. Intel Turbo memory was a method of increasing I/O performance through the use of an NVRAM module. This feature showed up in a few notebooks but never really took off. On the whole the performance gain was not measureable so it was deemed as un-needed by many people that tested it.

Braidwood was supposed to bring this technology to the P55 in the form of the P57 chipset.

All of that is out the window if the rumors being reported are true. You see they claim that Intel is shelving the whole Braidwood project until a later date. This means that since the P57 is not much more than a P55 with Braidwood there is no reason to release the P57.

It is not often that you see true innovation in case designs. Far too often PC enclosures are simply a revamp of the same old tired design. Even the enclosures that flip the mainboard upside down or move the PSU from the top to the bottom are not all that exciting.

However today I got a chance to see something truly different. This new design represents a new direction and a new way of looking at the PC and how it works.

SilverStone has launched their new Raven RV02 case. This new case rotates the mainboard 90 degrees. This means that your I/O ports are no longer facing the back of the PC, now they are easily accessible right on the top of the case. The next added benefit is that heat from components is not stacking up or stagnating in the middle. instead the heat from these is able to rise naturally without heating the next component above it.

In what seems to be a "Twilight Zone" moment it has been uncovered that UK pricing for Windows 7 will be roughly half of what the cost will be in the US.

According to a CNET article Microsoft is pushing Windows 7 Home Premium full version for less than you can buy an upgrade in the US. The official pricing is 65 GBP, which converts to $107 USD. This is $13 less than the US upgrade price for the same product.

Of course the 65 GBP does not include the standard VAT (Very Annoying Tax) that is imposed in the UK. This 17.5% tax adds 11.37 GBP to the cost pushing it up to 76.37 GBP $126.11 plus shipping.

Asus has maintained its lead over Apple in RESCUECOM's reliability report for the second quarter running.

Now the report is interesting as it only deals with trouble calls that are placed with RESCUECOM directly. This makes it at the very least inaccurate in terms of true reliability.

Still we can see an interesting localized trend here. Asus has been increasing its market presence beyond of the Ad-in and component segments for the last few years. They are increasingly a one stop shop for many, many products. These products on the whole are well put together and designed for the average consumer. Typically when a manufacture does this there are growing pains involved.

This morning K-Mart let the proverbial cat out of the bag on the Sony PS3 Slim. This is the same console that Sony has been denying for the better part of a year. Well K-Mart messed up by putting this up on their website for $299.99. The launch date was set for the 24th of August.

At the same time Sony was preparing for a news conference at Noon Eastern Time in the US. Many knew that they would hear word of the PS3 Slim from the horse's mouth.

Well Sony did officially announce the PS3 Slim and for the listed $299 but the launch date is a little off. Sony says that it will be ready in early September. The new PS3 will have a larger HDD at 120GB but will feature pretty much the same hardware otherwise.

720p HD video is coming to a Microsoft webcam near you. The Redmond based giant is planning the release of their LifeCam Cinema. The new product should be able to capture video at 1280x720 @ 30 fps.

The device also has a noise canceling microphone on top of the camera. The camera uses a now traditional USB 2.0 connection. It will be out-of-the-box compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP. The new camera will integrate with Live Messenger, Live Movie Maker and Photo Gallery.

The system requirements are quite high with a Dual Core 1.6GHz CPU just to run the camera while MS recommends a 3GHz Dual Core and 2GB of memory for best performance.

AMD had some good news this morning. It seems that although they are running far behind Intel in the CPU market and behind nVidia in the desktop GPU market they are the leader in the Discrete Mobile GPU market.

This is an interesting turn of events since nVidia has been shoving its higher end mobile GPUs into everything it can. The reasons for the change are probably less complex than you would think.

The biggest reason is going to be the lingering effect of the defective bump material that is still hurting nVidia. Since the effects of this appeared to be confined to the mobile GPU space it has only impacted consumer confidence in this small area.