NVIDIA SLI on AMD Chipset Motherboards Soon
NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU technology is going through a rough patch on the AMD platform, with very few NVIDIA nForce 900 series motherboards available/sold. With AMD looking to come back strong in the performance CPU market (which might cause high-end gaming PC users to switch platforms), it is wise on the part of NVIDIA to make SLI available to AMD platform users in some form. NVIDIA is making a cautious move: licensing SLI to motherboard vendors in the same protocol in which it licenses them to provide NVIDIA SLI support on Intel 5-series and 6-series chipset based motherboards.
This move is particularly wise because NVIDIA wouldn't need to invest on making a chipset (though it can) for AMD's upcoming "Bulldozer" CPUs, and still get licensing fees for NVIDIA SLI. That way, it wouldn't have to rely on the platform's overall market success. NVIDIA will offer SLI licenses to motherboards based on AMD's upcoming 9-series chipset, particularly to models that lack integrated Radeon graphics (that's AMD 990FX, and AMD 990X). It will offer 2-way SLI licenses to motherboards running AMD 990X, and 3-way/2-way licenses to boards based on AMD 990FX. It won't offer nForce 200 bridge chips. Further, only those motherboard manufacturers that are currently tied up with NVIDIA for SLI licenses on Intel platform, will be granted SLI licenses on AMD platform.
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Second Wave of Motherboard Price Hikes in May
Desktop motherboard prices are expected to increase industry-wide for the second time this year, in May. Earlier this year, motherboard vendors hiked prices citing escalating raw material and labor costs, by 5-10%. This time around, prices are influenced by upstream component shortages in the industry caused by the recent series of natural disasters that struck Japan, which produces high-grade electrical components for use on motherboards.
If not actual damage to manufacturing facilities, the disasters, and the resulting shutdown of nuclear power plants (which amount to a large part of Japan's power generation), is causing power shortages and reduced industrial output. Industry sources told DigiTimes that several raw materials and components are already seeing price fluctuations and prices should see a more obvious increase starting in April. To reflect the increasing costs, makers are set to raise motherboard prices in May. The sources predict retail increases in prices by 3-8% after May and companies will make adjustments every month based on costs.
Source: DigiTimes
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AFOX Unveils its GeForce GT 530 Graphics Card
Hong Kong-based NVIDIA AIC partner AFOX is ready with a graphics card based on GeForce GT 530, a GPU unheard of, till now. Some specifications were also leaked out. The GeForce GT 530 from AFOX has core clocked at 750 MHz, GDDR3 memory clocked at 1333 MHz (2.66 GHz DDR) and memory amounts of 1 GB and 2 GB. Its CUDA core count is unknown, but we don't expect it to be higher than 96 (GF108 CUDA core count). The card relies entirely on the PCI-Express bus for power, it lacks SLI support, and display outputs include one each of D-Sub, HDMI, and DVI. It is expected to be priced around US $100.
Source: TechConnect Magazine
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(PR) Sharkoon Introduces Two New Low-Priced Aluminum Tower Cases
Users on a budget who are looking for an aluminum tower will find one available from Sharkoon: The ATX tower Sharkoon AL4 and the Micro ATX tower Sharkoon AL2 score with a reasonable functional range, stable processing and a simple yet elegant design in brushed aluminum.
The ATX tower Sharkoon AL4 is available in either titanium or silver and offers space for four optical drives, four 3.5 inch devices and seven expansion cards. A 3.5 inch bay is externally accessible. Screwless mounting of the hard drives occur through the decoupled quick-locking mechanisms. Cooling of the hard drives take place through a 120mm blue illuminating fan, which sits behind a mesh window in the front panel. The backside allows two 80mm fans to be retrofitted. An audio and two USB2.0 ports are provided in the front. The Sharkoon AL4 measures 470 x 420 x 190 mm (L x H x W) and weighs 3.2 kg. The tower is designed for graphic cards up to 27 cm long and CPU coolers up to 15 cm high.
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(PR) QNAP Expands Exclusive QPKG Application Offerings for Turbo NAS Customers
QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers announced today 4 new QPKG add-on applications and 3 updates to the original QPKGs for its NAS customers. These QPKGs give users a versatile NAS covering their need from web applications such as Gallery, to media servers and download utilities consisting of PS3 Media Server, pyLoad, and Transmission. These applications improve a QNAP NAS by enabling it not only as a pure storage server, but also a powerful yet energy-efficient downloading machine, multimedia sharing center to game consoles with transcoding capability, IP TV streaming, online photo sharing server, and an all purposed web server with advanced manageability.
QNAP's QPKG applications are free to download and convenient for end users to install. "The QPKG platform is a great feature for users to explore unlimited possibilities of what a QNAP NAS is capable of," said James Wu, Product Manager of QNAP. "With over 20 QPKG apps now available to help create and manage databases, run websites, implement ecommerce, enjoy multimedia files, and much more". QNAP strives to stay ahead of consumer needs by providing innovated add-ons to make today's data-heavy society a more user friendly world.
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(PR) Mach Xtreme Technology Unveils 1.8'' micro-SATA MX-MDS Series Solid State Drives
Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user friendly designed PC components, today unveiled the 1.8"micro-SATA MX-MDS Series SSD. Based on the best-in-class SandForce SF1222 controller, the 1.8" MX-MDS Series delivers an enhanced mobile computing experience with much faster application loading, ultra-fast data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life of all laptops with micro-SATA interface.
This series maintains the highest level of read and write performance though the life of the SSD. Highly intelligent block management and wear leveling optimizes longevity of MX-MDS series drives. The MDS series supports DuraClass, DuraWrite and unique RAISE technologies. DuraClass technology provides best-in-class endurance, performance, and low power. DuraWrite technology extends the endurance of MLC memory providing at least 5 year lifecycles with 3-5K cycle MLC flash. RAISE provides the protection and reliability of RAID on a single drive without the significant write overhead.
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ColorFire Readies Radeon HD 6870 Graphics Card for Extreme Overclocking
ColorFire, the associate brand of Colorful that specializes in AMD Radeon-based graphics cards, today released a new Radeon HD 6870 card geared for extreme overclocking. Its design revolves around high-grade VRM, powerful cooling, and dual BIOS, each packing overclocked settings. The ColorFire Xstorm HD 6870 is a completely non-reference design card, the GPU is powered by a 5+1 phase VRM that uses POSCAP capacitors. The card uses two BIOS ROM chips that can be selected using a push-switch on the rear panel. The "normal" BIOS packs clock speeds of 940 MHz core and 1100 MHz (4.40 GHz effective) memory, while the "turbo" BIOS runs the card at 1050 MHz core, 1150 MHz (4.60 GHz effective) memory.
The card is cooled by a large custom-design cooler the company earlier used on an HD 6850 card with similar design. It uses a large heat pipe-fed heatsink that is cooled by a 110 mm fan. Other overclocker-friendly features include consolidated voltage measure points with cables; and hardware-based voltage adjustment using DIP switches on the card. It draws power from two 6-pint power connectors. Display outputs include two DVI, and one each of full-size HDMI 1.4a, and DisplayPort 1.2. Colorfire will first sell the card in Asia, and then in Europe.
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(PR) Samsung Becomes the World's First in Mass Production of Transparent LCD Panels
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced today that it began mass production of a 22-inch transparent LCD panel in March this year. The panels come in two types, the black-and-white type and the color type, and they have a contrast ratio of 500:1 with WSXGA+ (1680x1050) resolution.
Compared with the conventional LCD panels that use back light unit (BLU) and have 5% transparency, Samsung's transparent LCD panel boasts the world's best transparency rate of over 20% for the black-and-white type and over 15% for the color type. The transparent LCD panel has a high transparency rate, which enables a person to look right through the panel like glass, and it consumes 90% less electricity compared with a conventional LCD panel using back light unit. It's because a transparent LCD panel utilizes ambient light such as sun light, which consequently reduces the dependency on electricity for generating power.
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NVIDIA Readies Non-Ti GeForce GTX 560 To Ward Off HD 6790 Threat
NVIDIA is readying a new SKU based on the GF114 GPU: the GeForce GTX 560, to help strengthen the company's competitiveness against AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6790, and probably higher SKUs in the HD 6800 series. Next week, AMD will unveil its Radeon HD 6790 SKU, which will compete with the GTX 550 Ti, and probably seat itself in the market somewhere between the GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560 Ti. It is this gap that NVIDIA is looking to fill.
The GeForce GTX 560 is said to have 336 CUDA cores enabled (same configuration as the GF104-based GTX 460 1 GB), 56 TMUs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB of memory. The thing that sets this SKU apart from the GTX 460 is going to be clock speed and overclocking potential, which is known to be higher on GF11x GPUs in general. Unlike HD 6790, there's no set launch date for the "non-Ti" GeForce GTX 560. Tentatively mid-April or early May.
Source: Heise
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