Download of the Day: CPU-Z 1.57
Our Download of the Day today is CPU-Z 1.57.
CPU-Z is a freeware utility that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. CPU-Z does not need to be installed, just unzip the files in a directory and run the .exe. In order to remove the program, just delete the files. The program does not copy any file in any Windows directory, nor write to the registry.
CPU
• Name and number.
• Core stepping and process.
• Package.
• Core voltage.
• Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier.
• Supported instructions sets.
• All cache levels (location, size, speed, technology).
Mainboard
• Vendor, model and revision.
• BIOS model and date.
• Chipset (northbridge and southbridge) and sensor.
• Graphic interface.
Memory
• Frequency and timings.
• Module(s) specification using SPD (Serial Presence Detect) : vendor, serial number, timings table.
System
• Windows and DirectX version.
The latest version includes the following changes:
Changes in Version 1.57
- Intel Xeon "Westmere-EX" support
- GPU frequency report on Intel Sandy Bridge processor
- AMD Zacate/Ontario processors support
- Report TDP on main page when available
- Cores clocks on floating menu
- P67/H67 stepping report
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Deal of the Day: Logitech LS21 3-Piece Speaker System for $14.99!
Our Deal of the Day today is the Office Depot - Logitech LS21 3-Piece Speaker System for $14.99!.
Offer: Office Depot has the Logitech LS21 3-piece speaker system for 1/2 the normal price. Order online and pick it up at your local store to avoid any shipping charges. Expires 2/26/11.
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Kinect hacked to work with iPhone, iPad
Supertouch has put the magic touch on the Kinect, by allowing some pretty amazing hacks to happen. It allows an iPhone or iPad to be used as an accessory. It's not quite there yet, but with 100's of millions of iOS customers by the end of this year, it's quite a big deal.
The iPhone and iPad are used to send balls into Kinect Dodgeball, obviously this is not standard but some next-gen polish on upcoming consoles allowing them to communicate and use Smartphones as controllers, or extra accessories would be very, very cool.
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Samsung aiming to sell 10 million 3D TV's this year
Samsung gave themselves a target with the Galaxy S, but that's in the smartphone world. The gimmick of 3D and lack of great substance in 3D movies is going to be a very large hurdle for Samsung to overcome this year.
But, they're expecting sales of 3D sets to jump by releasing new models and new technologies that Samsung say will enhance the 3D experience. Samsung's 2010 target for 3D sales was 2 million, this year brings a 500-percent increase in sales targets. Yoon Boo-geun, president of Samsung's visual display business told reports that Samsung expect to grab between 9 - 10 million 3DTV sales in 2011 and has hailed the so-called active shutter technology it uses.
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Apple to announce new high-speed interconnect, Light Peak, is that you?
Rumor has it that Apple are set to use the new connector technology on their upcoming MacBook Pro update which is rumored to happen on February 24. Even if the MacBook Pro refresh doesn't include Light Peak, Apple are expected to use the technology in the future - but most likely under a different name.
Intel themselves have said that the first Light Peak products should pop up in the first half of 2011. If Apple have included it on their upcoming refresh of the MacBook Pro it would be a huge coup - as it's faster than USB 3.0, being capable of 10 gigabits per second in both directions, simultaneously.
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Artwork for new boxes on Gigabyte, MSI, Asus motherboards has been signed off and sent to production
It looks as though the big motherboard players have their Sandy Bridge-based motherboards hitting revision 2.0 with new box designs being approved and sent for manufacturing. Gigabyte is now showing a "rev 1.0" on their website as the pic below shows:
Will the box-art bring a huge change to the look of the box itself, to differentiate between the "broken" 1.0 boards and the newer 2.0 boards? Only time will tell, but to calm to worry from customers I'm guessing the boxes will bring a change and most likely have a big sticker placed on them to stop people from worrying.
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Quick Review: Kingston HyperX T1 Series PC3-17066 8GB Kit
With the release of P67 has come a massive amount of memory to look at, and as I was sitting here testing a bunch of 2133MHz DDR 4GB kits, I was thinking to myself; I wonder if we could get two kits of something and have 8GB of memory running at 2133MHz DDR. I knew it would have to come in the form of four modules, as there are simply no 4GB modules that carry 2133MHz rated speeds.
Of course, four modules and all, your memory banks full can open up a whole lot of more issues. Anyway, I continued to think that once CNY was over I would email someone and see if they could send another 4GB 2133MHz DDR kit over to see if it was possible.
Much to my surprise, I already had a set in the form of Kingston HyperX. I originally thought the Kingston was two different sets, but when I examined it, even though packed in pairs, it's an 8GB kit. In conclusion, it seemed like I was going to answer my own question a lot sooner than I thought.
The packaging is pretty simple, there are two versions of the HyperX package; the normal brown box, and a more retail looking one. We got the boring one. No big deal, though, as we weren't interested in that.
The modules themselves hold no surprises; they're the tried and trusted T1 heatsink that we've been seeing for ages from Kingston and it's always been a pretty good heatsink.
Specification wise, the kit is a 2133MHz DDR one as we mentioned at the start. As for timings, they come in a little relaxed at 9-11-9-27-2T @ 1.65v. They're quite loose, but considering we're dealing with a kit that's guaranteed to work with four modules at this speed, the timings don't come as a shock.
With all our memory banks full we fired up the BIOS, set everything to what it's supposed to be at and got on our way. We got straight in to Windows with no issues and you can see that CPU-Z validation here. With that all going well, it was time to check out a couple of benchmarks to see what we can do.
Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 20,996 MB/s / 18,144 MB/s, Copy speed of 22,475 MB/s and latency of 40.7ns. Looking at SiSoftware Sandra, our memory bandwidth numbers are 27,190 MB/s for Integer and 27,200 MB/s for Float.
They're not the highest 2133MHz DDR speeds we've seen; they're probably one of the lowest, but that's due to the more relaxed timings. With that all looking good, it was time for a reboot to get back into the BIOS. We've had some luck lately setting our BCLK to 104 and we thought we'd try the same thing with this kit.
Not expecting it to boot for the simple reason being all the banks where full, I was pleasantly surprised when it did and we got into Windows with again with no problems. You can see that CPU-Z validation here. At 2219MHz DDR it was time to fire up the benchmarks again and see what kind of performance boost we could achieve.
Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 21,885 MB/s / 18,920 MB/s, Copy speed of 22,065 MB/s and latency of 93.1ns. Looking at SiSoftware Sandra, our memory bandwidth numbers are 28,290 MB/s for Integer and 28,220 MB/s for Float.
We ended up with a nice little boost across the board. With that all running fine, we decided to jump back in the BIOS and just push our CPU multiplier up. We've had a good run of putting it to 45 and firing up our testbed at over 4.5GHz.
It wasn't meant to be this time, which we can honestly say wasn't a surprise. Instead we dropped it down to 43 and it fired up and got into Windows. This put our CPU at 4472MHz and our memory stayed the same at 2219MHz DDR.
We again managed to get a nice performance boost and under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 24,360 MB/s / 23,232 MB/s.
Below you can also see both our copy speed and latency improved.
With everything working so well, I thought we'd push our luck a little and see if we could drop the kit down to 1T. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be with our testbed choosing not to post.
I can honestly say, though, at the end of it all the Kingston kit managed to perform better than I thought it would. Of course, we expected it to work at the default timings, otherwise Kingston wouldn't be selling it, but to then fire up at over 2200MHz DDR, we were shocked. Not because we didn't think Kingston couldn't do it, but more so because when you fill up all your RAM banks, overclocking can be quite hindered.
Priced at $208.99 USD, the kit as amazing value considering most 2133MHz DDR kits sit around the $150 USD mark. Sure, the timings are a little more relaxed, but it's a small price to pay for the speed you're able to achieve and the luxury of having 8GB of memory to play with.
Kingston has always been a personal favourite of mine and what I've always loved about the company is they offer this higher end memory that runs a little more relaxed than some other competitors, but just works in absolutely everything. Throw in the fact you're not paying twice as much as other 2133MHz DDR kits for twice the amount of memory, and you've got a fantastic kit on offer.
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Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 1GB Video Card Review
Introduction
The GTX 560 Ti is a killer card and at launch we saw some companies do some fantastic things with the model when it came to overclocks. This is great for you the consumer, but for AMD and its partners, not so great.
The HD 6950 offers great performance, but with 2GB of GDDR5 the price of the card is higher than the GTX 560 Ti which carries with it only 1GB of GDDR5. Personally, I thought it was a mistake for AMD to push 2GB models of the card, as it means prices are higher and if the past has told us anything, it brings little gains when compared to its 1GB counterparts.
Instead of dropping the price on the model, though, they've decided to halve the memory which helps bring the overall cost down. The question we ask, is it enough for AMD?
We've got the Sapphire version of the HD 6950 1GB on hand and we're going to find out exactly what halving the memory does not just to performance, but price. First, though, let's check out the package.
The Package
Quite a full on package actually with a lot of cables. The stand-outs would be that mini-DP to DP cable and HDMI cable; two things a lot of companies are choosing not to include in the bundles.
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Colorful Announces Two Models of GT440
Colorful Announces Two Models of GT440
Colorful, one of the biggest NVIDIA graphics card suppliers in Asia market, announces two models GT440 - iGame440 1G Ymir-U and iGame440 1G Buri-Slim. Both of these two cards are based on the same PCB solution, but with different coolers and clocks.
iGame440 1G Ymir-U has better performance, it uses the "shark" design on the cooler, which with pure cooper base and nickel plated heat-pipe, providing better thermal and 3D performance. The clock is setting at 850/3800MHz (Core/memory), comparing to the reference edition 810/3600MHz, iGame440 has about 5% improvement.
iGame440 1G Buri-Slim is a single slot graphics card, uses Aluminum Wire Drawing on surface of the cooler shell, the speed of the PWM fan is 500-3000rpm, so that it could ensure the low noise level even in full-load. The clock of this card is setting at 810MHz/3600MHz.
Colorful says that these two cards will be exhibited in CeBIT2011 with other Colorful's products during March 1-5, and their booth is in K15, Hall 14.
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CoolIT Systems and PC Specialist Partner Up in UK
CoolIT Systems and PC Specialist Partner Up in UK
Calgary, AB - February 17, 2011 - CoolIT Systems and PC Specialist Limited have teamed up to deliver cutting-edge gaming systems and home office PCs to consumers in the UK & Ireland. CoolIT Systems, leaders in advanced liquid cooling and thermal management solutions, brought the ECO line of liquid CPU coolers to market in 2010 with great success, followed by the advanced ECO II in 2011. The new cooler is already promising exceptional performance gains over other cooling products on the market. PC Specialist is offering the ECO A.L.C. with all their high-end systems, with the intention of implementing the ECO II in future product lines.
"It's great to be working with CoolIT. CoolIT produce innovative liquid cooling solutions that enable us to offer high spec overclocked systems that run cool, quiet and stable." Says Danny Williams, Director of PC Specialist Ltd., "CoolIT A.L.C products offer what traditional CPU fans have been trying to offer for years."
"We are very pleased to offer CoolIT products through PC Specialist. Their commitment to quality and dedication to the highest level of service has made them one of the UK's premier system builders." Says Geoff Lyon, President and CEO of CoolIT Systems, "They possess a unique perspective that has allowed them to differentiate in the market, and to create meaningful machines for a wide variety of applications."
CoolIT's 2011 product line features two new CPU coolers with low-profile head units, and an advanced chassis control system for unmatched thermal management potential. To further increase the personalization, system builders can add in the CoolIT's CI LED hardware which integrates dynamic software controlled lighting capable of thousands of colors. The latest generation of Advanced Liquid Cooling demonstrates unparalleled performance gains with all modern CPU sockets. The products are being offered through partnerships with System Builders and OEM manufacturers.
About CoolIT Systems
CoolIT Systems are leaders in advanced liquid cooling who research, design, and deliver next generation cooling products that provide a comprehensive solution while exceeding high industry standards for reliability and maintenance-free operation. CoolIT's model is around complete thermal balancing and advanced knowledge sharing. Their exceptionally designed and patented technology provides superior cooling performance and acoustics in customized configurations to partner customers who wish to gain a competitive advantage in the market. The CoolIT Technology can be found in the top names in performance computing like Corsair, Maingear, Shuttle, SYX, Apple, Alienware, Inno3D, PC Specialist and Velocity Micro. www.coolitsystems.com
About PC Specialist
PC Specialist is a UK based system integrator that assembles computers and laptops specially to order using only the highest quality components. From a basic home office PC, through to the very latest cutting-edge gaming systems, each system is custom assembled by our expect technicians and tested with our in-house designed software to ensure each system meets our strict quality assurance guidelines. Visit www.pcspecialist.co.uk to configure your perfect computer online.
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