Sunday, April 11, 2010

IT News HeadLines (techPowerUp) 11/04/2010


techPowerUp!
My production Fermi arrived!
This morning the first of the long awaited retail GeForce GTX 480 cards arrived. The card came from Zotac and photos are below. It is from the same shipment that will be sold on store shelves in the next days. At first glance the card looks completely identical to the NVIDIA press sample, with the exception of some black foam on the back of the card. Another diffence is the BIOS which I put up for download here.

I am told that the reason for the black foam is to ensure some spacing between the cards when running in SLI mode, so that they can breathe. It also acts as safeguard against short circuits which could happen when the metal cooler surface of one card touches the back of the other card.


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ASRock Intros 870 Extreme3 Motherboard with CrossFire Support
ASRock is ready with its premium motherboard based on the AMD 870 + SB850 chipset, the ASRock 870 Extreme3. Either the company seems to have jumped the specifications of the 870 by adding external PCI-Express lane switching that gives it proper CrossFire capability, or that the 870 will indeed support 2-way CrossFire with its lone PCI-Express 2.0 x16 link split into two x8 links between the two cards, leaving no room for a "890X" chipset. The 870 Extreme3 supports socket AM3 processors with a 4+1 phase VRM that can take 140W TDP processors. It will support upcoming Phenom II X6 and Phenom II X4 T series processors. It integrates ASRock's proprietary UCC chip that unlocks disabled cores on certain processors.

The board is advertised to support DDR3-1800 MHz memory by overclocking. Expansion slots include two each of PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8, when both are populated), PCI-E x1, and PCI. The SB850 southbridge gives out five internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, with one eSATA. Other connectivity features include 8 channel HD audio, a 2-port USB 3.0 controller, a number of USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, and gigabit Ethernet. Diagnostic LED display and onboard power and reset switches make for the rest of it. The ASRock 870 Extreme3 will retail a little later this month.



Source: TechConnect Magazine
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(PR) BIOSTAR Unveils T-Power TA870 Series Motherboards Based on AMD 870 Chipset
BIOSTAR, a professional manufacturer of motherboards today reveals its new AMD 870X chipset motherboards; both models "TA870+" and "TA870" are from the T-Series family representing high quality components and excellent overclocking capability. "TA870+" supports existing and upcoming socket AM3 processors, including Phenom II X6 core processor. "TA870+" is ATX form factor, powered by a 5 phase PWM supporting 140W processors; 100% X.D.C. solid capacitor, with two PCI-Express 2.0 slots and five SATA 6 Gb/s ports; on-board 8 channel audio with Blu-Ray support.

BIOSTAR's AMD 8xx series chipset family motherboards have adopted 3 unique features to differentiate with others; they are "GTO 6آ³", "BIO-unlocKING" and "BIO-Remote". "GTO 6آ³", it allows 60%+ overclocking capability on CPU frequency; it also supports true SATA 6 Gb/s for fast data transfer rate; and fully compatible with AMD Phenom II X6 six-core processors.


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NVIDIA Posts GeForce 197.41 WHQL Drivers for GeForce 400 Series
NVIDIA released version 197.41 of its GeForce driver suite, specifically for the DirectX 11 compliant GeForce 400 series GPUs. These drivers are WHQL-signed, and come in time for the market-availability of GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 graphics cards. Although NVIDIA didn't mark out any significant changes to this version, it bundles PhysX system software v9.10.0129, and on-chip HD audio driver v1.0.9.1. These drivers enable support for CUDA 3.0 and OpenGL 3.2. A proper release-notes document from the company is awaited for more details.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 197.41 WHQL for GeForce GTX 400 series
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(PR) Super Talent Introduces Value SSD Product Line
Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced a new value solid state drive (SSD) product line dubbed Super Talent VSSD that brings performance and solid-state technology together at an incredible price.

Super Talent VSSD offers shorter OS bootup time, faster application loading, less system power consumption and a brand new experience the customer can never get from traditional hard-disks. VSSD takes full advantage of the 3Gbps SATA-II bandwidth. The VSSD is capable of sequential read speeds up to 150 MB/sec and sequential write speeds up to 100 MB/sec.


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(PR) OCZ Technology Announces Vertex 2 and Agility 2 Solid State Drives
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series. These are new enthusiast-class SSDs designed for consumers who are seeking unprecedented speed and reliability with the goal of enhancing both their daily computing experience and long-term productivity.

"OCZ's original Vertex Series of solid state drives have become a top seller due to the product's exceptional performance and reliability," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "The new Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSD lines continue that tradition by incorporating the latest controller and firmware technology. They are an excellent solution for customers who are looking for improved transfer rates and best-in-class input/output per second (IOPS) for a wide range of uses, ranging from entertainment to workstation and tier 2 storage applications. Additionally, this new product line highlights our continuing determination to be the market leader in the high reliability memory and flash-based storage market."


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