Tuesday, December 15, 2015

IT News Head Lines (techPowerUp) 16/12/2015

techPowerUp!



AMD Readies 4 GB Variant of the Radeon R9 390
In a bid to step up the pressure on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 and the product-stack below it, AMD is getting its add-in board (AIB) graphics card partners to launch cost-effective variants of the Radeon R9 390, with 4 GB of memory, instead of the 8 GB that was standard to the SKU. These cards feature 4 GB of memory across the chip's 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, and could help AMD and its partners shave a few dozen Dollars off the standard version, which is currently selling for as low as $309.



4 GB of memory would make the R9 390 a complete re-brand of the R9 290, if not for its clock speeds. The custom-design variants of the 4 GB R9 390 ship with clock speeds that are 10% higher than those of the R9 290, and the performance was found to be proportionately higher, by Expreview. Of the three cards spotted crawling their way out of product launch pipes in China, the ones from XFX and PowerColor retain the design and packaging of their 8 GB siblings; while Sapphire mated the chip with a new dual-fan cooler with a meaty, split aluminium fin-stack heatsink.
Sources: VideoCardz, Expreview

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(PR) Sharkoon Announces SharkZone MK80 RGB Mechanical Keyboard
The Sharkoon SHARK ZONE MK80 RGB, in a 3-block layout, offers both brilliant illumination and unmatched individuality. Thanks to the premium quality switches from Kailh, the keyboard provides advantages for professional gamers. The other technical details will also leave you impressed: N-key rollover, on-the-fly macro recording, gaming mode, up to five game profiles, onboard memory, integrated media hub with audio and USB connection possibilities plus a polling rate of 1,000 Hz. A total of eight pre-programmed lighting effects, with up to 16.8 million colors, will leave a colorful lasting impression. A comfortable palm rest supports ergonomic gaming, which is of course detachable.



The mechanical Kailh switches promise an average operating life cycle of at least 60 million clicks per key. The MK80 is available with either red, brown or blue switches, each provide different characteristics: Kailh Red has an operating force of 50 g, a linear switch and undetectable switching point and click point. The distance to actuation point is 2 mm. The operating force for Kailh Brown is 45 g, the switch is tactile, the switching point is detectable and the click point is undetectable. The distance to actuation point is also 2 mm. The Kailh Blue offers a precisely detectable click point with a detectable switching point plus tactile switch. The distance to actuation point is 1.9 mm; the operating force is 50 g.


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TechPowerUp News: AMD's Liquid Cooling Tangle, EVGA's 2 GHz GTX 980 Ti and More
In this week's episode of TechPowerUp News: AMD dragged into Asetek vs. Cooler Master liquid cooling patent-infringement mess; EVGA and K|ngp|n's 2 GHz GTX 980 Ti conquest that breaks several 3DMark records; and EVGA's new liquid-cooled GTX 970 graphics card.





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Rejoice! Base Clock Overclocking to Make a Comeback with "Skylake"
Since Intel fully integrated the core logic (northbridge) with its processors, overclocking them by tinkering with the base-clock (BClk, the primary clock domain from which the CPU's clock speed is set using multipliers), became unstable, as it was used as a cadence for other key components on the chip, such as iGPU and PCIe root-complex. Apparently, with its 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors, Intel has de-linked base-clock from other clock domains, re-enabling overclocking using BClk, which is particularly helpful on non-K (upwards multiplier locked) SKUs.



Some of the first motherboards that enable BClk overclocking on Skylake CPUs come from Supermicro, the server/workstation motherboard maker that's dipping its toes into DIY enthusiast platforms these days. "Dhenzjhen," an overclocker from the Philippines struck gold by achieving a 5.00 GHz overclock on a Core i3-6320 dual-core chip, using a Supermicro C7H170-M motherboard (which is driven by an Intel H170 chipset). Shortly after news of this feat broke, ASRock fired an email to the press, stating that its Z170 Extreme7+ motherboard is able to support 4.50 GHz clocks on a Core i5-6600 quad-core chip, using an experimental BIOS. ASRock is validating this BIOS internally, and hopes to release it "very soon."







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Available Tags:AMD , Radeon , Keyboard , TechPowerUp , GTX

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