Thursday, May 21, 2015

IT News Head Lines (techPowerUp) 5/22/2015

techPowerUp!



(PR) Streacom Announces the F12C Chassis
Announcing the F12C from Streacom. The F12C is our first case designed to accept all standard ATX hardware, but of course being Streacom, the design is anything but standard. The ultra-minimalist exterior is made from 4mm thick premium grade extruded aluminium panels which are sandblast finished to create this simple but timeless design.



The unique design isn't just skin deep, we have developed a new drive and fan mounting system that does away with traditional fixed location bays, making this case incredibly adaptable and configurable. Drives and fans can be mounted anywhere along both sides of the case and at virtually any orientation. This allows you to mix, match and perfectly position drives and fans for optimal cooling and hardware compatibility.


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AMD "Fiji" HBM Implementation Detailed
Back in 2008, when it looked like NVIDIA owned the GPU market, and AMD seemed lagging behind on the performance and efficiency game, the company sprung a surprise. The company's RV770 silicon, the first GPU to implement GDDR5 memory, trounced NVIDIA's big and inefficient GeForce GTX 200 series, and threw AMD back in the game. GDDR5 helped the company double the memory bandwidth, with lower pin- and memory-chip counts, letting the company and its partners build graphics cards with fewer components, and earn great margins, which the company invested in development of its even better HD 5000 series, that pushed NVIDIA with its comical GeForce GTX 480, to hit its lowest ever in market-share. Could AMD be looking at a similar turnaround this summer?



Since the introduction of its Graphics CoreNext architecture in 2012, AMD has been rather laxed in its product development cycle. The company has come out with a new high-end silicon every 18-24 months, and adopted a strategy of cascading re-branding. The introduction of each new high-end silicon would relegate the existing high-end silicon to the performance segment re-branded, and the existing performance-segment silicon to mid-range, re-branded. While the company could lay out its upcoming Radeon R9 series much in the same way, with the introduction of essentially just one new silicon, "Fiji," it could just prove enough for the company. Much like RV770, "Fiji" is about to bring something that could prove to be a very big feature to the consumer graphics market, stacked high-bandwidth memory (HBM).


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(PR) ZOTAC Announces ZBOX R-Series Mini-PC
ZOTAC International, a global innovator and manufacturer of graphics card and mini PCs, today puts the limelight on the brand new R Series, the new member of the ZBOX mini PC family. This is the small form factor solution that is more than a personal PC with its storage solution and functionalities while providing the same power efficiency and space saving features that users expect from ZBOX.



"This is certainly a breakthrough for both the mini PC and personal computing," explains Tony Wong, CEO, ZOTAC International. "We are adding more functions to elevate the mini PC to a whole new plane while keeping our signature space saving design and power efficiency. This new addition to the mini PC family will open new doors to even more functionalities."


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(PR) Scythe Releases Slip Stream 120 DB Fans with Dual Ball Bearing
Japanese cooling expert Scythe expands the 120 mm case fan portfolio with the announcement of the new Slip Stream 120 DB axial-fans. The new line up includes five regular models with fixed fan speed as well as one PWM-enabled model. Special highlight of the series is the Dual Ball Bearing, which has been developed in Japan. Thanks to the new bearing an intense life span increase to 350.000 hours (MTBF) has been accomplished.



The successful "small hub & large fan blades" concept was initially introduced with the first Slip Stream series and is handed down to the Slip Stream 120 DB. Increased flow area and airflow could be achieved at the same fan speed, thanks to this concept. Slip Stream 120 DB lineup includes six different models, including a PWM-enabled version, which offers a wide fan speed range starting at 300 RPM and going up to 1.300 RPM.


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(PR) OCZ Announces Z-Drive 6000 NVMe SSD
OCZ Storage Solutions -- a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced its Z-Drive 6000 SSD Series that combines PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 3 and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) technologies with an extensive enterprise feature-set and robust endurance and reliability. The NVMe-compliant Z-Drive 6000 Series is available in multiple configurations supporting a variety of form factors, capacity points, and endurance ratings.



The NVMe specification extends traditional PCIe flash storage to new levels and was architected from the ground up to enable specific benefits of non-volatile memory-based solid-state storage. It features a streamlined memory interface, command set and queue design that delivers faster access to critical data and highly resilient storage capabilities. This enables both system builders and storage vendors alike to develop different parts of a storage ecosystem to a standard specification with broad interoperability support between storage devices, host platforms and software. NVMe is expected to open new opportunities for faster, better and stronger flash-based storage applications while significantly improving PCIe SSD deployments over the next five years.


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Raidmax Intros XT-Series Entry-level PSUs
Raidmax announced three XT-series entry-level PSUs, the 300-Watt RX-300XT, the 400-Watt RX-400XT, and the 500-Watt RX-500XT. The three offer a very basic feature-set, but offer a few neat features such as a low-noise, temperature-controlled 120 mm fan; Core "Haswell" C-states support, a single +12V rail design, and modern electrical protection mechanisms, against over/under-voltage, overload, and short-circuit. The 300W model lacks PCIe power cables; the 400W model offers a single 6-pin cable; while the 500W tops it with a 6+2 pin cable in addition to the 6-pin. Other connectors include 24-pin ATX, 4+4 pin EPS, 4x SATA-power, and two 4-pin Molex. The company didn't announce pricing.




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NVIDIA Gives Away "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" to GeForce GTX TITAN-X Owners
NVIDIA is giving away game codes to "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," to new and existing owners of GeForce GTX Titan X graphics cards, provided they simply install and "beta test" GeForce Experience. To participate, all GTX Titan X owners need to go is install the latest GeForce Experience, and the latest GeForce drivers, and then click on a "redeem rewards" button in the app, and follow these steps to get a Steam key to the game. The company is already giving away the game with new purchases of GeForce GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980, and notebooks with GTX 970M and GTX 980M graphics.


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It's Now Been Over 160 Days Since a Catalyst WHQL Release
As of today (20/05/2015), it has been over 160 days since AMD released a WHQL-signed Catalyst driver update, in what is a clear sign of decay in the company's after-sales support for the consumer graphics market. Once tuned to a near-monthly release of its Catalyst Software suite, which added optimzations for new games, improved upon support for existing ones; CrossFire multi-GPU support profiles; even if not adding support for new GPUs; AMD slipped into quarterly WHQL release cycle in 2013-14. It now seems to have deviated from even that.



The company's last WHQL-signed Catalyst release was Catalyst 14.12 Omega WHQL, which released on 09/12/2014, 161 days ago. The company has since only released two "Beta" drivers, notably Catalyst 15.4 Beta, with optimization for Grand Theft Auto V, and AMD FreeSync support. In contrast, NVIDIA adopted a faster driver update cycle than its previous monthly GeForce WHQL driver releases, under its "Game Ready" driver program. New WHQL-signed releases predate almost every AAA PC game release. There's still no word on a Catalyst WHQL update, and with launch of new graphics cards slated for the third week of June, it's unlikely that the company will release one interim. By then, it will have been 196 days since a Catalyst WHQL driver release. Such a slow driver update cycle would do little to inspire confidence in buying the next-generation Radeon product, even if it establishes a performance lead over GeForce.


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Available Tags:AMD , ZOTAC , OCZ , SSD , NVIDIA , GeForce , GTX , Catalyst , WHQL

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