Mushkin Callisto 120GB SSD Review
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OCZ Adds High Capacity Vertex and Agility SSDs
OCZ today announced it is expanding its Vertex 2 and Agility 2 series of solid state drives to include 400GB and 480GB capacity units. Adding these new devices effectively doubles the storage capacities of existing units and delivers faster boot up and shut downs as well as extensive space for the latest operating systems, game titles, and programs. Both Vertex 2 and Agility 2 400GB editions feature 250MB/s read and 240MB/s write speeds which is a bit lower than the 285MB/s read and 275MB/s write speeds found on the smaller units. OCZ hasn't announced pricing or availability on the Vertex 2 or the Agility 2 400GB and 480GB drives but a quick look online found one site with the units in the $1,800 - $2,000 range.
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Prolimatech Announces Samuel 17 Low Profile Heatsink
Prolimatech today has announced a new CPU cooler that is aimed at HTPC enthusiasts or small form factor case users. The new cooler is of the low profile variety and it has a rather unique name. Samuel 17 is taken from the Old Testament and it is the chapter in which David knocks out and then kills Goliath. A fitting name for a relatively new company which has sights set on the big names in the CPU cooling world so it will be interesting to see if this new cooler performs as well as the other models from Prolimatech. The Samuel 17 cooler measures in at 92 x 42 x 82mm and weighs 410 grams. It is a nickel plated cooler with six 6mm heatpipes, a copper base, and aluminum fins. The cooler also has supports for a 120mm fan though you will need to supply your own. You can mount this cooler on Intel sockets 775, 1156, and 1366 and AMD sockets AM2, AM2+, and AM3.
The Samuel 17 cooler is expected to launch at the end of May for 40 Euros.
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NVIDIA Lets Loose the Release 256 Drivers
NVIDIA has finally gotten around to launching the Release 256 drivers today, which promises improvements in the GTX 400 series by as much as 5-10%. The drivers launched today, the 257.15 beta, supports all NVIDIA cards from the 6 Series on up. These drivers are supposed to offer the most improvement since the "Big Bang II" drivers that launched back in 2008, so it should be interesting for everyone who has an NVIDIA card to see what kind of gains can be made. There are performance increases expected for all DX11 games but the DX10 games should see a nice improvement as well. Just Cause 2 is supposed to get up to a 25% boost while Metro 2033 will see a 40% boost in SLI mode. Now, these numbers are the ones NVIDIA gets during its internal testing so your mileage may vary, but the early reports from around the web point to an average of 5% performance increase in all games.
New features in the Release 256 series include support for Open GL 4, CUDA 3.1, BluRay 3D, extreme aliasing modes, and a handful of others. Several bugs, such as EVR video output lags and video editing/image manipulation software crashes, have been fixed so it seems non-gaming programs are getting a nice treatment as well.
The 257.15 beta drivers are available today but please remember that these are beta drivers. WHQL certified drivers should be launching shortly. For users wanting to take advantage of the 3D Vision Surround on the GTX 400 cards, you will need to download separate drivers that are found on the download page of the 257.15 beta drivers.
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Yahoo Partnering with Nokia
Yahoo has announced a new mobile partnership with Nokia. This will bring popular Yahoo services such as e-mail and instant messaging to all Nokia phones. Additionally, Nokia will lend its services to Yahoo maps and navigation. This partnership will aim to position both companies better in the American mobile market, where companies like Apple, Research in Motion, and Google currently dominate. It will be interesting to see how this works out. Motorola was able to get back in the game with the Droid, so maybe Nokia can find some success.
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3DMark 11 Announced, Deep Sea Tech Demo Previewed
Now that DirectX 11 capable hardware is widely available from both major GPU manufacturers, we naturally want to see what kind of benefits we can expect to see as gamers and enthusiasts. Releases of the 3DMark benchmarking suite have often shown what new DirectX features are capable of before we see them being consistently adopted in games. Finnish based Futuremark has today announced the latest iteration of the series, 3DMark 11. It's hard to say if the naming is a return to the traditional scheme we saw before Vantage was released or whether it is simply because it uses a native DirectX 11 engine. What we do know is the benchmark will consist of two game tests: Space and Sea (reported at bsn* at the end of last week) and that Futuremark has released a teaser of the "Deep Sea" tech demo along with today's announcement. It makes extensive use of features such as tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.
While the action isn't exactly fast paced, it does highlight how much detail and realism is displayed in the surfaces and lighting used. Let us know what you think of the demo in our forums. You can expect 3DMark 11 to be released in the third quarter of this year.
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