Fastest Sandy Bridge to replace i7 930 :: Posted by THRASHER2
2.8GHz mainstream quad core
Intel's Core i7 930 is supposed to launch inQ1 2010 and this 2.8GHz quad-core should last all 2010 as the king of Intelآ’s MS3 fastest Mainstream category in the company's nomenclature.
This should change in early 2011 as Sandy Bridge is supposed to replace this product. It is way too early to hear about any concrete clock speeds but we can confirm itآ’s a quad-core with improved performance clock to clock with Nehalem generation.
Sandy Bridge will also be the first quad-core to get a monolithic CPU with graphics, as today you can only get integrated graphics with Clarkdale / Arrandale 32nm CPUs which feature a stitched 45nm graphics core. Sandy Bridge will also be the first monolithic dual core, with totally integrated graphics into same die as the CPU.
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MSI officially announces its HD 5770 Hawk :: Posted by THRASHER2
Twin fans and 7+1 VRM
In addition to a couple of HD 5450 cards announced yesterday, MSI has decided to also introduce another far more interesting card based on the HD 5770 GPU, the MSI R5770 Hawk. The new HD 5770 Hawk has all the goodies that was previously limited to MSI's Lightning series, so this one might end up to be the quietest, fastest and most reliable HD 5770 on the market.
The new MSI R5770 Hawk features a slight factory overclock for the GPU which ended up working at 875MHz, while the memory remained at reference 4800MHz for 1GB of GDDR5 memory. MSI also completely redesigned the PCB and this card comes with 7+1-phase VRM design which is quite a boost from the 4-phase VRM on the reference HD 5770.
The card features MSI's Twin Frozr II cooler which has dual PWM fans and three heatpipes. According to MSI, this is enough for up to 13 degrees lower temperature when compared to the reference cooler. The card also comes with V-Check points for easy multimeter voltage monitoring and support for Over Voltage which can be raised up to 1.35V for the GPU.
The card also features "military class components" like Hi-C Cap, solid state chokes, and solid CAPs, all included with a single goal, to make this card as reliable and stable as it can be.
The price for the new R5770 Hawk should be somewhere around آ€150, but it is still to show up in retail/e-tail.
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ATI delays 5830 again :: Posted by THRASHER2
After Chinese New Year
Our friends all over the Far East are preparing to celebrate its biggest holiday that we know as Chinese New Year and this holiday can be held responsible for a lot of graphics delays.
Fermi is of course the major one that will suffer from it, but we just learned that this holiday will also delay the Radeon HD 5830.
We were told that these GPUs are going to be delayed to factories and that it wonآ’t make it to China before February 10. At this time most factories are closed for the Chinese New Year and won't open their doors for anyone. This might delay the shipping until February 20th.
Without further words you can expect that Radeon HD 5830 will ship after this date and volume availability can probably be expected in March.
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AMD's HD 5570 detailed :: Posted by THRASHER2
Still coming February 9
In addition to the HD 5450 which was officially launched yesterday, AMD is preparing another card that should fill the gap between the HD 5450 and the HD 5670. The card in question is the HD 5570 which should be quite similar to the HD 5670, at least when you take a look at main specifications, but it will use lower clocks and cheaper memory.
According to the leaked slides, the HD 5570 card features 40nm GPU with 627M transistors and 400 Stream processors. It has 8 ROPs, 20 texture units, 650MHz core clock and uses DDR3 memory clocked at 900MHz (1.8GHz) paired up with a 128-bit memory interface.
Thanks to the the lower clocks the maximum TDP is 42.7W, while in idle the card's power consumption is 9.69W. The reference solution is based on a low profile PCB with small heatsink and fan combination cooler, but we guess that partners will go for their own solutions and we will probably see quite a few passive cards.
The card should be priced to fit between the HD 5450 and the HD 5670, which is somewhere around آ€50 to آ€60, considering the fact that HD 5450 can be found for as low as آ€40 and the lowest price for the HD 5670 is around آ€70.
According to our info, the card is still scheduled launch on February 9.
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Nvidia helps the HD 5870 beat the GTX 285 in PhysX :: Posted by THRASHER2
With 9800GT as dedicated PhysX card
Two years ago, Nvidia bought Ageia and established itself as the leader on the field of gaming physics technology. Unfortunately, while the future of gaming was never questioned, the adoption of PhysX technology by software developers hasnآ’t been an overnight feat. In order to accelerate the matter, Nvidia developed Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) which made PhysX a feature on all CUDA-supporting graphics processors, meaning series 8 and newer. This was quite an important move as it allowed millions of Geforce owners to enjoy physics effects, but unfortunately for the company the number of available PhysX supporting titles is still pretty low. The situation is improving though and more and more games include PhysX, and the reason is more than evident after even a few minutes of PhysX gaming.
Of course, all this visual goodness doesnآ’t come without cost and PhysX requires some serious muscle to run. This job is traditionally done on the CPU whereas the GPU is in charge of drawing it on screen. With Ageiaآ’s technology, Nvidia moved some of this intensive load to the GPU, which is of course much faster in this respect. However, calculating physics on the GPU also makes rendering graphics harder and framerates will usually duck significantly unless youآ’re a proud owner of one of Nvidiaآ’s fastest cards. Nvidia solved this problem by advising users to utilize a dedicated PhysX processing graphics card. This card thankfully does not have to be a pricey, fast card but rather any Geforce graphics card with a CUDA supporting GPU.
So, if you for instance own a Geforce GTX 260, you can use a cheaper Geforce such as 9600GT to handle your PhysX calculations. In practice, itآ’s as simple as choosing the dedicated PhysX card in Nvidiaآ’s driver.
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Low profile Sapphire HD 5450 is passively cooled :: Posted by THRASHER2
Review: The first sub آ€50 DirectX 11 card
AMD announced their Radeon HD 5450 yesterday and nicely filled out its HD 5000 offer in the low-end segment. The HD 5000 series will go down in history as the first Windows 7 compatible series, meaning the first to support DirectX 11. Naturally, AMD went ahead and practiced the good old آ“if youآ’ve got it, flaunt itآ” routine since Nvidia currently has no DX11 hardware to challenge the company.
HD 5000 series is also known as Evergreen series and it features Cypres, Juniper, Redwood and our todayآ’s Cedar graphics processor. Note that Cypress is the fastest in the pack whereas the rest are various iterations with less shaders and computing power with Cedar holding the last spot.
So let us recap on AMDآ’s HD 5000 series and its five sub-series. Naturally, theyآ’re easily told apart; the higher the number آ– the better the card.
HD 5900 sits proudly on top with dual-GPU Cypress-based Radeon HD 5970 as the fastest one. Cypress packs 1600 stream processors, 32ROPs and 80 texture units and its architecture is very complex, as is evident from the fact that it has 2.15 billion transistors. AMD made the card in 40nm so all these transistors fit on the 338mm2 GPU. This is the fastest AMD GPU up to date and it offers more than 2 TeraFLOPs (single precision) of pure computing power.
Next in line is the HD 5800 series aimed at hard-core gamers, and theyآ’ll surely be more than happy with Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850. Radeon 5870 is the faster of the two as it comes with full Cypress GPU whereas Radeon HD 5850 comes with Cypress LE GPU with 1440 stream processors, 32 ROPs and 72 texture units. Both cards use GDDR5 on 256-bit memory interface.
Mid-range is reserved for HD 5700 series which is priced below آ€140. The Radeon HD 5770 and HD 5750 are featured on Juniper core, which is basically a Cypress core slashed in half. Transistor count is at 1040 million and comes with 800 stream processors, 16 ROPs and 40 texture units. The slower Juniper LE GPU found on the HD 5750 features 720 stream processors, 16 ROPs and 36 texture units. Both cards use 128-bit memory interface, but GDDR5 memory means that the card wonآ’t suffer from lack of bandwidth (HD5770 bandwidth is 76.8GB/s whereas HD 5750 has 73.6GB/s).
For those looking for a sub-آ€90 graphics card that will be good for occasional gaming at lower resolutions, AMD has the HD 5600 series. These cards are based on Redwood GPU, they donآ’t consume much and need no additional power connectors. HD 5600 features only 400 stream processors, 8 ROP units and 20 texture units. The cards use a 128-bit interface and, just like on the HD 5700 series, GDDR5 memory.
The weakest link in the HD 5000 series chain is Cedar GPU, which ticks within our todayآ’s graphics card. This card does not have the processing power of the previously listed Evergreen offsprings, but it does share the flagship features آ– DirectX 11 support, ATI Stream technology, TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture, ATI Avivo HD Video and 40nm technology.
Cedar core features 80 stream processors, which is only 20% of what Redwood GPU offers or 5% of the SPs on the Cypress GPU. In order to meet the price of آ€40-50, AMD had to reduce quite a few features, so youآ’ll get only 4 ROPs and 8 texture units. The card uses 64-bit interface combined with either DDR3 or DDR2 memory, depending on the partnersآ’ choice.
Naturally, reducing processing power and shader count does introduce benefits of its own, most notably power consumption and thermals. The HD 5450آ’s TDP is only 19.1W whereas idle consumption is as low as 6.4W.
HD 5450آ’s thermal properties were virtually begging for passively cooled iterations, and Sapphire pounced on the chance to deliver such a product. Sapphireآ’s passively cooled cardآ’s GPU runs at 650MHz and the DDR3 memory at 800MHz (1600MHz effectively).
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SilverStone intros HDDBoost :: Posted by THRASHER2
Up to 70 percent faster SSD/HDD hybrid drive
SilverStone has reinvented the hybrid drive concept with a rather interesting product dubbed HDDBoost.
The contraption is not much to look at, but SilverStone claims it is a clever piece of kit that can boost HDD performance by up to 70 percent. Basically it allows users to connect just about any 2.5-inch SSD to 3.5-inch HDD, thus combining the best of both worlds - SSD seek times and HDD capacities.
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Synology DS210j - 2 Bay NAS Review @ XtremeComputing :: Posted by THRASHER2
"If youآ’ve not heard of Synology before, itآ’ll probably be because they only make NAS devices (for home and office), and youآ’ve not really looked into any. The reason I say you wonآ’t have looked into any, is because Synology are quite a big name in the NAS world, so youآ’d have been hard pressed to miss them."
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Silverstone DS221 Dual HDD Raid Enclosure @ Pro-Clockers :: Posted by THRASHER2
So my most reasonable option would be to build my on drive enclosure. This way I can pick whatever enclosure style I like. And I can load the enclosure with any drive I want. Yeah....I like this option better. Silverstone has a new enclosure that will help me accomplish my goal. The new DS221 dual 2.5" drive enclosure is a stylish unit that can house two laptop size drives that can be insert without having to tear apart the box. And if that doesn't get you excitement level up how does it support for RAID 0, 1 and even JBOD.
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Cooler Master ATCS 840 Case @ TechwareLabs :: Posted by THRASHER2
Many of the computer cases these days include an array of features that typically make it a bit more difficult to pick the "better" of the bunch from the very large choice. The choice for many comes down to the external aesthetics because the bigger and better cases tend to all have superb cooling, removable motherboard trays and tool less designs. If you like a classic looking brushed aluminum design and three whopping 230mm fans sounds like a good combination of the two, then you should have a look at Cooler Master's ATCS 840.
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Kingston MobileLite G2 USB Card Reader Review :: Posted by THRASHER2
"The Kingston MobileLite G2 card reader makes for a nice travel companion for those using one of the variety of cards it supports. If you are compact flash card user, you are out of luck here but that's hardly surprising given the reader is near the same size as a compact flash card. I don't have any real complaints about the reader or the accompanying SDHC card. There was the minor issue with the amount of play with the retractable cover on the card end of the device but this was minimal and at no point was I concerned that it may break or become stuck. For reassurance, Kingston offers a 2-year warranty on the G2 reader and a lifetime warranty on the SDHC card..."
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ASUS Maximus III Gene LGA 1156 Micro ATX Motherboard Review :: Posted by THRASHER2
"There were a host of features and capabilities on the Maximus III
Gene that we haven't seen in any micro ATX motherboards since the form
factor was created. ASUS continues to push the envelope in terms of
performance, overclocking, and the amount of hardware they can fit on this
form factor too. The included SupremeFX X-Fi audio chip, dual PCI-E x16
slots, and unique innovations to the memory DIMMs are just a few features
that will enhance any gamer or HTPC user's experience with this
motherboard."
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Kingston HyperX 1600MHz 12GB Triple Channel :: Posted by THRASHER2
"Kingston one of the premier names in memory business has released the HyperX 1600MHz 12GB Triple Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K6/12G). This set is designed for those using an X58 LGA 1366 motherboard in conjunction with the Core i7 series. The kit is composed of six 2GB sticks of DDR3 memory designed to operate at 1600 MHz. "
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Microsoft Explorer Wireless Rechargeable Mouse Review :: Posted by THRASHER2
"After using Microsoft's new Explorer mouse for over a week, I'm very impressed by both the functionality of the BlueTrack Technology and the overall design and feel of the mouse. Careful shopping can get you one of these units for around $40 or so, and while cheaper mice are available, I would consider this an excellent value and would have no reservations in recommending this product."
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