Raidmax Quantum Review
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Mars Rover Upgraded With AI Software
NASA announced yesterday that one of its Mars rovers, Opportunity, had been upgraded over the winter with artificial intelligence (AI) software that will enable the rover to determine whether to stop and analyze rocks as it traverses the surface of the Red Planet. Opportunity has been crawling across the surface of Mars for over seven years. Along with its twin, Spirit, the units have been sending data and imagery back to NASA scientists. Unfortunately, NASA announced Spirit has become mired in the Martian dirt and was no longer mobile.
The software now onboard Opportunity, called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS), has been under development for several years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. With the new software, Opportunity will be able to recognize rocks meeting certain criteria, such as shape and color, and then use its narrower-angle panoramic camera to take multiple images of it. Previously, such determinations were made by NASA scientists back on Earth after looking at photos sent back by the rover.
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Reminder: New Contest Starts March 25th
Just a friendly reminder to the OCC community, a new contest will begin sometime on March 25th. While the complete list of prizes is still under wraps, we can say that there will be two computers given away as well as "a bunch of other stuff." Make sure to check out the contest discussion topic, as more details will be coming soon.
Why start the contest on March 25th? We're doing this to honor Ryan "Verran" Bredin, a beloved member of the community and staff, who we lost to cancer late last year. March 25th was his birthday. Ryan was very passionate about computers and the OCC community, so doing this in his memory only seemed fitting.
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AMD Magny-Cours Prices Surface
US-based site PROVANTAGE has listed the prices of 16 AMD Magny-Cours series CPUs which can be found by searching "Opteron X12." The prices range from $290 for an Opteron 6128 to as high as $1,485 for the Opteron 6176 SE.
If you read news on OCC regularly, you'll know that the AMD started production of the 8-core and 12-core Magny-Cours series of processors last month. Back then it was estimated that the series would range from $345 and $1,560; around $55 to $75 off PROVANTAGE's listed retail prices.
For those of you who don't know, the AMD Magny-Cours series are aimed at the server markets and will feature a 12MB L3 cache and 512KB L2 cache per core, with speeds ranging between 1.7GHz and 2.4GHz. Magny-Cours will be available in 8-core and 12-core variants and will support the G34 and C32 Sockets.
Although there's no official word on the launch of Magny-Cours, the release looks imminent given the surfacing of PROVANTAGE's retail prices.
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Skype Mobile Coming to Select Verizon Smartphones
It was almost no secret to anyone, but Verizon has officially announced that Skype Mobile will be on some of its smartphones. Starting on Thursday, March 25th, Verizon Wireless customers with nine select smartphones and accompanying data plan will be able to use Skype Mobile to make calls. The service will work over Verizon's 3G Network and will not use your minutes. Once you have downloaded the app, you can make Skype-to-Skype calls both nationally and internationally. This provides a relatively cheap option to call internationally that will also not use up any of your minutes. The smartphones that will have the app available are: BlackBerry Storm 9530, BlackBerry Storm 2, BlackBerry Curve 8330, BlackBerry Curve 8530, BlackBerry Curve 8830 World Edition, BlackBerry Tour 9630, Motorola Droid, Motorola Devour, and the HTC Droid Eris.
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Sony Lowers Pocket Reader Price
Sony has discreetly lowered the price of its Pocket Reader by $30. So now instead of costing $199, it is only $169. However, the price cut lasts only till April 4th which is just two days after the Apple iPad officially launches. This sale of sorts could determine how other e-readers will try and compete with the iPad. By the lowering of the price of each company's e-reader, even for just a few weeks, could ease the customers decision on whether to get an iPad or just an e-reader. Since Sony took the first step in lowering one of its e-readers, this could also mean a price war between the various manufacturers to see which one can cut into the sales of its competitors or even the iPad itself. Since the iPad can do more than just display books for the user, e-readers need some way to compete and a price war could be the answer.
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Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.0 Increases Tessellation Load
Unigine was one of the companies showing off its wares at the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco earlier this month, notably demoing an updated version of its popular Heaven DX11 benchmark. Heaven 1.0 really highlighted some of the new features added with the introduction of DX11, particularly it heavy use of tessellation to increase detail levels. The second version of Heaven pushes the tessellation load further and introduces an "extreme" tesselation mode. Further optimizations have also been made to the engine, though for the exact differences you will probably want to run it for yourself (unfortunately I lack the DX11 hardware to do so). The new version hasn't made it onto Unigine's site yet, but the folks over at NGOHQ have a download available, so those of you with ATI 5xxx series cards will probably want to grab it. Be sure to let us know how you get on if you do.
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Sprint Announces More 4G Coverage
With the other main mobile carriers lagging behind still in the 4G coverage race, and not offering any of its service in any city yet, Sprint has been leading the pack. The company has just announced that it planned to increase its WiMAX service to new markets, including cities such as Miami, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. These cities will tack onto the already twenty-seven main cities across the United State that Clearwire offers 4G coverage in through Sprint. Clearwater has also announced alongside this announcement that it will be doubling its number of transmitters and receivers in every single one of its sites. 4G coverage lacks behind all together when compared to 3G technology, but speeds are much greater, and can even deliver up to ten times the speed for consumers.
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