IT News Head Lines (Tech Report) 22/04/2016

This is your three-month warning for the "second-10th" TR BBQ
I know what you're thinking after reading that headline: what the heck does "second-10th" mean? It's pretty simple, really. We started hosting The Tech Report BBQ in 2004, and it took place near Detroit for its first three years. From the fourth BBQ onward, the venue for our annual get-together has been my family's cottage on the big lake in Holland, Michigan. We celebrated our 10th BBQ with style in 2013, but this summer will mark the 10th year since the move to Holland. I want to go overboard all over again.
The date for this year's event is Saturday, July 23 , but BBQ regulars know that you can make a whole weekend out of it. The TR BBQ is a family-friendly event open to all friends and readers of The Tech Report. ...
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Lian-Li DK-04 case doubles as a powered standing desk
Lian-Li's DK-04 was properly unveiled today after being shown in an early state at CES this year. This is (somewhat ironically) the fifth case in Lian-Li's series of desk cases and its largest to date. None of these desk enclosures are cheap, but this version may present the best value for the money. It doubles as piece of furniture that's pretty expensive on its own: a motorized standing desk. Using buttons on the front of the desk, the height of the desktop can be adjusted between 31" (78 cm) and 46" (117 cm).
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April showers Surface Book and Surface Pros with updates
Microsoft released a range of updates for the Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book this morning. The Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book both get new system firmware, camera drivers, audio drivers, and graphics drivers. Unique to the Surface Pro 4 is an embedded controller firmware update that improves thermal tuning. For gamers on the Surface Book, the Nvidia GeForce graphics driver update adds support for some of the latest popular games, too. The Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book should all exhibit improved stability and compatability with external monitors and passive video adapters when they're plugged into the Surface Dock after these updates.
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Asus' ROG GT51CA desktop blends power and panache
Asus' ROG GT51CA gaming desktop first made an appearance at CES 2016, and now it's coming to market. This high-end desktop can be configured with overclockable Intel CPUs, a range of Nvidia graphics cards, and NVMe PCIe SSDs. It also features aggressive styling and an optional NFC module that works with Asus' ROG Band wearable to trigger included system tuning and security features.
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Nvidia pulls out the silicon chainsaw to make the Quadro M2000
Nvidia has pulled out the world's smallest chainsaw again. Last time we heard of this mythical tool, Nvidia split the GM204 inside the GeForce GTX 980 to produce the GM206 of GeForce GTX 960 fame. This time, the workstation-oriented GM204GL found inside the Quadro M4000 and M5000 is on the chopping block. When the silicon sawdust clears, we're left with the GM206GL and the shiny new Quadro M2000.
AIDA64's patch notes effectively spilled the beans on the lineage of the GPU inside the newest Quadro a little over a week ago. The Maxwell GM206GL GPU in the M2000 has 768 CUDA cores, roughly half of the M4000's GM204GL GPU with 1664. The ...
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Intel cuts its workforce by 11% as it releases Q1 financial results
Intel announced its first-quarter 2016 financial results today. The company made $2.6 billion in operating income on $13.7 billion in revenue. Profits were unchanged compared to this time last year, but the company grew its revenue by 7% compared to the year-ago quarter. Net income remained flat at $2 billion, and gross margin fell 1.2 points to 59.3%. Here's a table of the company's results for easy reference:
The company said that it'll be eliminating as many as 12,000 positions worldwide—or 11% of its workforce—by mid-2017 as it transitions from "a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices," according to a separate press release . Intel says its growth is coming primarily from ...
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Razer deploys its Turret living-room lapboard
PC gaming in the living room has always been subject to compromises, and Valve's Steam Controller is just the most recent example. Those compromises often leave the hardcore keyboard-and-mouse enthusiast wanting. Razer thinks the real solution to living-room PC gaming is a lapboard, and its take on the formula is the Turret. Like similar products from competitors Corsair and Roccat, the Turret is essentially a keyboard with an attached mousepad, although the Turret appears to be sleeker than the competing offerings.
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Nvidia's GTX 1080 cooler may have leaked on Chinese social media
Things are already a little smoky in the TR newsroom lately with the volume of next-gen graphics card rumors floating around, but we might have to call the fire department this morning. A user on Chinese social media site Baidu Tieba has posted an image that purports to show the reference cooler for Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. Behold:

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World of Warcraft's Legion invasion arrives August 30
Blizzard's iconic antihero Illidan returns to Azeroth this summer.  The demon armies of the Burning Legion will invade on August 30, and pre-orders are now available. In this new expansion to the ever-popular World of Warcraft, players will have access to a new continent called the Broken Isles, a new hero class, and, of course, a new set of dungeons and raids.
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Updated MacBooks make Skylake Core M pretty in pink
It's been a little over a year since Apple introduced the ultra-thin MacBook, so that means it's about time for a refresh. For its spiced-up MacBook, Apple retained the overall design from last year's model while upgrading a few key pieces of hardware and adding a new color option.
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Western Digital refinishes its RE hard drives in Gold
Western Digital's RE series of data center hard disks has been renowned for its top-tier performance and durability for some time now. Buyers will need to stop looking for the RE branding and start looking for Gold in the near future, though. The RE series of drives will soon be superseded by a new product line called WD Gold.
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Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro coolers dare to be different
Cooler Master's next generation of all-in-one liquid CPU coolers is here. The company's MasterLiquid Pro 120 and MasterLiquid Pro 240 coolers incorporate a number of design changes over the Nepton 120XL and Nepton 240M that could potentially improve their performance and durability. As their names imply, the MasterLiquid Pro 120 uses a 120-mm, 1.5"-thick (or 38-mm-thick) radiator, while the Pro 240 is built with a 240-mm, 1"-thick (or 27-mm-thick) radiator.
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Huawei VR goggles turn compatible smartphones into VR portals
Huawei is bringing its latest flagship smartphones on par with Samsung's in an important respect. At the Shanghai launch of its P9 smartphone Friday, the Chinese mobile giant announced its plans for "Huawei VR."  This plastic shell with optics inside looks outwardly similar to Samsung's Gear VR. Both devices cradle a smartphone inside to take the wearer inside 360-degree videos or other VR experiences. Huawei says there will be two different versions of the Huawei VR: one for the P9 smartphone and one for the company's Mate 8 phablet.
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Toshiba cuts over 14,000 jobs worldwide
Over the past few months, we've been reporting on financial troubles at Toshiba. In December, the company announced its intent to lay off 7,800 workers in 2016 as part of a plan to stabilize its business. That news was bad enough on its own, but according to Nikkei Asian Review, Toshiba has announced that it now plans to cut over 14,000 jobs, or almost double the number it projected in its December announcement.
7,610 of the jobs on the chopping block come from Toshiba's "lifestyle" division, which handles consumer electronics and PCs. Most of the remaining cuts come from the company's semiconductor division. Nikkei Asian Review says 4,590 employees ...
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HP refreshes Z1 all-in-one workstation PCs
Tower workstations are very nice, but sometimes what one needs is a powerful piece of machinery that takes up less space. Enter HP's Z1 G3 all-in-one (AIO) workstations. The Z1 G3 machines, as you might have guessed, are a refresh of the previous Z1 G2 models. HP claims the newcomers are 47% smaller, 51% lighter, and about 20% cheaper when compared to the previous generation. I bet you're dying to hear about the hardware, though.
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Available Tags:Asus , Nvidia , Intel , GTX , Western Digital , Cooler Master , Toshiba , HP , 

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 07/03/2016

AMD's ultra-thin gaming notebooks should be powered by Thunderbolt 3
AMD has already teased that it will "spice things up" at the Game Developers Conference next week, but what has me excited is the promise of next-gen, ultra-thin gaming notebooks.

During an AMA on Reddit, AMD's Robert Hallock said: "Ultra-thin notebooks are awesome to carry, but nobody in their right...
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CD Projekt Red confirms 'most of The Witcher sales are for the PC'
The Witcher series of games have been widely successful on both the PC and various consoles over the years, but during a recent interview with CD Projekt Red (the developer behind The Witcher series), we've found out that the PC is the lead platform when it comes to sales.

CD...
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Gears of War: Ultimate Edition will soon have multi-GPU support
The Coalition and Microsoft have found themselves in a pretty insane position right now, launching Gears of War: Ultimate Edition onto the Windows Store. Windows Store-based games do not feature multi-GPU support, so with it being a DX12-powered game - those high-end GPUs in SLI or Crossfire are wasted on...

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HTC will soon offer Vive-optimizing VR gaming PCs
If you pre-ordered the HTC Vive but don't yet have a fast enough gaming PC to handle VR, you might want to keep an eye out for Vive-optimized gaming PCs that are on their way.

According to the VP of Planning and Product Management for HTC Vive, Dan O'Brien: "We'll...
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Free Up Space On Your iOS Devices with the iKlips Flash Drive

Running out of space on your iPhone? You don't need to spend hundreds on a new phone with more storage or delete those treasured photos of your cat-just get the iKlips iOS Flash Drive, now starting at $65 at TweakTown Deals. Get the free iKlips iOS app for your iPhone,...
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Capcom to start punishing rage quitters on a weekly basis
Capcom is as tired of rage-quitters as you are, and they're going to implement some keen punishment for those that take advantage of the ability to quit mid-match in Street Fighter V.

The problem is that the system is far too lenient for those that wish to simply quit as...
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Keanu Reeves is Neo in real life, while training for John Wick sequel
Keanu Reeves is currently training for John Wick: Chapter Two, where a new video has emerged of him "shedding" - or training with guns - with Taran Tactical.

Taran Tactical Innovations took to Facebook, explaining: "Well ladies and gents, everyone loves a little shredding. Make sure you guys check...
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Netflix members viewed 42.5 billion hours of TV in 2015 alone
We all know how powerful Netflix is, but what kind of impression is it leaving against the traditional TV market? Well, Netflix is really cutting into traditional TV ratings, and that's both a good, and bad thing.

In 2015 alone, Netflix accounted for around 50% of the 3% decline in...
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NVIDIA rumored to have Pascal-based gaming notebooks at Computex 2016
NVIDIA is reportedly preparing a big gaming notebook push for Computex 2016, which kicks off in June in Taipei. According to SweClockers, NVIDIA will be launching their new Pascal-based mobile GPU at the show, with a big focus on portable Pascal-powered gaming notebooks.

Computex 2016 starts on May 31, and...
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The new ASUS GeForce GTX 950 requires no PCIe power connector
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 950 was already a pretty damn efficient video card, but with a more efficient GTX 950 rumored to be in the works, ASUS seems to be the first AIB partner with a super-efficient GTX 950.

ASUS has introduced a new GTX 950, which features the same GM206...
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He-Man should have his own RPG, he needs a comeback in gaming
He-Man is likely one of the most iconic action heroes of our time. Not just historically, but even currently. The most powerful man in the universe has survived extinction since 1976, appealing to the imagination of multiple generations by being both generic and providing a true sense of wonder. That's...

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Latest Windows 10 preview has lots of love for Cortana
Windows 10 Build 14279 has been released today to Windows Insiders on the Fast ring.

If you're a big Cortana user, this one should make you very happy: Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) or French (Canada) languages are now supported, as are quick reminders. To set a quick reminder, say something...
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Amazon's Fire OS 5 dropped local encryption
Amazon's Fire OS 5 came out in September, but only now is it being discovered that the operating system no longer supports local encryption (which makes data accessible only with a passcode or key). Concerns have arisen as a result, given Amazon just filed a brief supporting Apple's defense of...

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Remedy confirms Alan Wake: The Return isn't a sequel
When Remedy Games trademarked "Alan Wake: The Return", the gaming world flipped out--it looked like we'd finally get the Alan Wake sequel we've been waiting on for ages. Sadly, Remedy has stepped in to squash the hype.

Alan Wake: The Return isn't a sequel, it's just a spoof serial TV...
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Akamai has big plans for curbing gamers frustrations in the future
It's no secret that there's a general, and seemingly persistent, level of saltiness in the air when it comes to gaming. Positivity exists, but it's not as prevalent as it should, or could be. Akamai has your back, and they're working towards finding a solution to your problems, making gaming...

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Gods of Egypt (2016) Cinema Movie Review

Gods of Egypt (2016)

The merging of Ancient Egypt and sci-fi been a genre owned almost entirely by Roland Emmerich's Stargate franchise, but now we have a new challenger, which on paper has everything going for it: A visionary director behind the lens, solid production values, and a generous budget....
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Samsung Introduces World's Largest Capacity (15.36TB) SSD for Enterprise Storage Systems
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it is now shipping the industry's largest solid state drive (SSD) - the "PM1633a," a 15.36 terabyte (TB) drive.

First revealed at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit in August, the 15.36TB SSD is based on a...
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Samsung Portable SSD T3 Now Available for Purchase
Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today announced availability and pricing of the Samsung Portable SSD T3, a premium, palm-sized, external solid state drive (SSD) that offers multi-terabyte (TB) storage capacity. "Today's consumers and business professionals are increasingly relying on external storage, seeking faster data transfers and larger capacities. The Samsung Portable...

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QNAP Announces Budget Dual-core TS-128 and TS-228 Compact NAS
QNAP Systems Inc. today announced the release of the energy-efficient and budget-friendly dual-core Compact NAS, including the 1-bay TS-128 and 2-bay TS-228. Designed with a mini-tower form factor that takes less desktop space, they are ideal for home users to create their own personal cloud. The feature-rich TS-128/228 helps users...

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AMD GPUOpen Fuels Seismic Supercomputing Efforts for Geoscience Leader CGG
AMD today announced that CGG, a pioneering global geophysical services and equipment company, has deployed AMD FirePro S9150 server GPUs to accelerate its geoscience oil and gas research efforts, harnessing more than 1 PetaFLOPS of GPU processing power. Employing AMD's HPC GPU Computing software tools available on GPUOpen.com, CGG rapidly...

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Lian Li Hosts Facebook Giveaway for its First Ever Brushed Aluminum Keyboards
Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd is pleased to announce a giveaway event to kick-start its latest venture: the TerminAl keyboard and mouse bundle. Participants have a chance of being the first owners of Lian Li's first ever peripherals. Come participate in the giveaway!

From March 1st to March 25th, fans can...
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AMD Announces the A10-7890K and Athlon X4 880K Processors
AMD today announced new additions to its 2016 Desktop processor family, offering increasingly powerful processor options available for anyone seeking outstanding gameplay and power efficiency for their desktop PC. Setting a new APU Standard, the new AMD A10-7890K is the fastest AMD desktop APU released to date, with 1.0 TFLOPS...

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Kingston Digital Details Plans for IronKey's Future
Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced that it has finalized the integration plans for IronKey. As a leader in the USB Flash drive market since 2004, Kingston will utilize its IronKey product line to deliver...

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Western Digital Expands its Hard Drives and External Storage Solutions to 8TB
Western Digital Corporation, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning portfolio of performance storage solutions with 8 TB capacity drives for NAS, video surveillance and desktop external applications. Increasingly centralized, rich-content, which continues to grow in popularity among enterprises, small business and consumers alike,...

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Valve-HTC VIVE Available for Pre-order
HTC and Valve today announced their 2016 CES Best of Show winning VR system is available now for pre order with first shipments targeted to begin on Tuesday, April 5th. A complete VR solution, Vive includes two wireless VR controllers, room scale movement, a full 360Ã,° of tracking, and an...

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LaCie Enhances Award-Winning 5big with Enterprise Class Hard Disks
LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), announced a leap forward for its award-winning 5big Thunderbolt 2 professional 5-disk storage solution. Now featuring Seagate's industry-leading 8 TB Enterprise Class hard disks the new LaCie 5big provides more capacity totaling 40 TB, superb reliability and an extended warranty....

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Available Tags:gaming , Thunderbolt , HTC , iOS , TV , NVIDIA , ASUS , GeForce , GTX , his , Windows , gamers , Samsung , SSD , AMD , Facebook , Kingston , Western Digital ,

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 03/03/2016

Acer Announces Predator XB321HK Monitor: 32” 4K IPS With G-SYNC

Today Acer is rounding out their Predator lineup of gaming displays with a heavyweight addition. The XB321HK is a 32-inch IPS display with a 3840x2160 resolution, which works out to 138 pixels per inch. Acer’s Predator line is gaming displays, and this model is clearly targeted towards that crowd with the feature list.

The first is G-SYNC, which is NVIDIA’s variable refresh rate technology. It only works with NVIDIA based cards, but with NVIDIA having the lion’s share of the add-in graphics card market at the moment that shouldn’t be an issue for many people. The addition of G-SYNC is of even greater importance here with such a high resolution, as even the highest end graphics cards can still struggle at UHD. Acer is also advertising a 4 ms response time on this panel to avoid ghosting issues. Acer is claiming 100% sRGB coverage and accuracy.

Acer also has customizable display profiles which can be quickly toggled to without having to use the on-screen display menu on the display itself. You can adjust the black levels to help see better during games, enable aim-point assistance, and select the on-screen refresh rate. Acer is also including their EyeProtect features including a blue-light filter and low-dimming technologies to reduce glare.

The display features DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI, and a USB 3.0 hub with four outputs. In addition, it has stereo 2-Watt speakers that are enhanced with DTS sound. The stand features 4.7-inches of height adjustment and can be tilted with -5° to 25° of adjustment.

Acer’s MSRP on the Predator XB321HK is $1299, which isn’t inexpensive but this is a pretty full featured display. This monitor has been announced earlier than today but Acer says it is now available in North America

Gallery: Acer XB321HK

Source: Acer

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SD Association Announces SD 5.0 Specification: SD Cards For UHD and 360° Video Capture

The SD Association, the multi-vendor consortium responsible for developing standards for Secure Digital flash memory cards, has unveiled the newest version of the Secure Digital standard, SD 5.0. The latest iteration of the standard has been released specifically to accomdate video capture, particularly the write speeds needed to record 8K (7680x4320) and 360° videos. To that end, the upcoming SD 5.0 memory cards will introduce the Video Speed Class labeling, as well as a newer protocol that takes into account new NAND flash architectures, enables higher transfer rates and supports multi-file recording.

In order to address the needs for video, the new standard will be tackling both transfer rates and the overall nature of writes with video recordings. The new standard does not introduce a new bus - the current UHS-II bus supports over 150MB/sec in full duplex mode, more than any SD card can currently handle - but rather the focus is on the cards themselves and how they behave.

In particular, the SD 5.0 standard takes into account the fact that recent, high capacity NAND flash chips feature larger block sizes (the smallest area of NAND flash memory that can be erased in a single operation) than previous-gen chips. For example, SK Hynix recently released planar MLC and TLC NAND ICs (integrated circuits) with 6 MB page and 9 MB block sizes, whereas upcoming 3D NAND flash from Intel and Micron will feature 16 MB (MLC) or even 24 MB (TLC) block sizes. . Erasing a group of larger blocks takes less time than wiping out a huge number of smaller blocks, which is why larger blocks enable faster write operations, something that is needed to build memory cards for UHD video capture.

The Video Speed Class standard includes a set of 37 block sizes that range from 8 MB to 512 MB, which should be sufficient for the foreseeable future. In addition, the SD 5.0 VSC protocol supports simultaneous interleaving of eight different files, which is useful for 360° videos, multiple independent video streams, or even numerous high-quality still pictures taken at the same time.

It should be noted that while bigger NAND blocks enable faster writes, NAND flash controllers dealing with such blocks should support sophisticated algorithms to minimize the number of block erases. If they do not, memory cards will wear out rather quickly if used intensively. Moreover, the new controllers will have to "know" how to efficiently work with modern NAND flash architectures. As a result, SD 5.0-compatible host controllers are going to get more advanced than today’s SD card controllers.

Meanwhile when it comes to total write throughput, the new standard will also introduce new speed classes that require higher minimum write speeds than any of the previous classes, in order to ensure that cards that can handle the high speeds required for 8K and 360° video capture are labeled as such. The Video Speed Class label will have classes for 6 MB/s, 10 MB/s, 30 MB/s, 60 MB/s as well as 90 MB/s and will be marked as V6, V10, V30, V60 and V90, respectively. V60 and V90 are the most significant changes here, as the 60 MB/s and 90 MB/s write speeds are two to three times faster than the old UHS speed class requirements, which topped out at 30 MB/s.

SD Cards Performance Comparison
Minimum Sequential Write Speed	Speed Class	UHS Speed Class	Video Speed Class
90 MB/s			V90
60 MB/s			V60
30 MB/s		3	V30
10 MB/s		1	V10
6 MB/s	6		V6
4 MB/s	4
2 MB/s	2

The SDA is positioning the V60 and V90 classes for 8K and 360° video capture, whereas V30 and V10 are intended for 4K or full-HD video with high framerates. While the new SD cards with V30 and V10 marks offer similar performance as SD cards with UHS Speed Class 3 and 1 labels, some of them may only be able to demonstrate their capabilities when paired with host controllers compatible with the SD 5.0 specification. Therefore, there will be be overlapping labeling where cards are labeled with multiple speed classes to denote their performance with each of the three speed class standards.

SD Association did not reveal when the new cards and compatible devices are set to hit the market, but said that this will happen "soon". When SDA introduced its SDXC standard in early 2009, it took one card maker about three months to release its new cards with 32 GB capacities and a read/write speed of 400 Mbps. However, at the time there were no devices to utilize such cards. The first cameras with SDXC support as well as SDXC cards from well-known producers hit the market only in 2010, so it likely will be a bit until cameras supporting the new standard show up on the market.


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AMD Launches the A10-7890K and Athlon X4 880K

In what seems to be a common theme every month, AMD’s recent APU release schedule has been to introduce one or two models each news cycle. For the most part, the new elements so far this year have been increases in frequency and efficiency, either replacing previous units or expanding the product stack. This is usually due to adjustments in binning the silicon as it gets produced, or minor improvements in the back-end of production that gives efficiency benefits.

So far this year we have seen the A10-7860K and the A6-7470K, both adjustments to the stack, but using some of AMD’s new 65W/95W CPU coolers. We also saw the announcement of the Athlon X4 845 which was interesting as it stands to be the single processor from AMD that is based on Excavator for the FM2+ platform. Today AMD is announcing two new processors which sit on the top of their FM2+ stacks respectively – the A10-7890K is an APU with increased frequencies, while the Athlon X4 880K is similar without the integrated graphics.

AMD A10 and Athlon X4 Kaveri Lineup
	A10- 7890K	A10- 7870K	A10- 7860K	X4 880K	X4 860K	X4 845
Modules	2	2	2	2	2	2
Threads	4	4	4	4	4	4
Core Freq. (GHz)	4.1-4.3	3.9-4.1	3.6-4.0	4.0-4.2	3.7-4.0	3.5-3.8
Compute Units	4+8	4+8	4+8	4+0	4+0	4+0
Streaming Processors	512	512	512	N/A	N/A	N/A
IGP Freq. (MHz)	866	866	754	N/A	N/A	N/A
TDP	95W	95W	65W	95W	95W	65W
Cooler	Wraith	125W NS	125W NS	125W NS	95W NS	95W NS
DRAM Frequency	2133	2133	2133	2133	1866	2133
L2 Cache	2x2MB	2x2MB	2x2MB	2x2MB	2x2MB	2x1MB

The A10-7890K will use a 4.1 GHz base frequency, moving up to 4.3 GHz on turbo, with 8 graphics compute units (512 streaming processors total) at 866 MHz. This is all within the 95W thermal envelope, and the A10-7890K will be the second processor from AMD bundled with their new Wraith cooler, rated at 125W with a shroud and LEDs. The Athlon X4 880K will have similar specifications at 100 MHz less, but without the integrated graphics. It is also rated at 95W, but instead gets AMD’s new 125W ‘near-silent’ thermal solution, which is essentially the Wraith cooler without the shroud (which apparently adds a couple dB due to vibration).

Both the X4 880K and the now second highest APU, the A10-7870K, will get this new 125W ‘near-silent’ thermal solution. The other A10 and X4-800 series members will get the new 95W thermal solution, which is a modified version of the high end cooler we normally associate with AMD. AMD has stated that parts that get the new coolers will not be sold for more than their current suggested retail pricing, except the FX-8370 previously announced.

These parts are being made available to the channel and distributors today, although it may take up to a month to hit the shelves for end-users to purchase (there’s no specific date set). Pricing for all the new parts are listed as follows:

• AMD FX™ 8370 Wraith - $199.99 USD
• AMD FX™ 8370 - $189.99 USD
• AMD A10-7890K – $164.99 USD
• AMD A10-7870K – $139.99 USD
• AMD A10-7860K - $117.99 USD
• AMD A8-7670K - $105.99 USD
• AMD A8-7650K - $95.99 USD
• AMD Athlon™ X4 880K – $94.99 USD
• AMD Athlon™ X4 870K - $89.99 USD
• AMD Athlon™ X4 860K - $79.99 USD
• AMD Athlon™ X4 845 - $69.99 USD

We have samples inbound, and I have plans to revisit our APU data to update the parts with our most up-to-date benchmark suite. Keep an eye out for that in the next couple of months.

Source: AMD

Gallery: AMD Launches the A10-7890K and Athlon X4 880K

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Voyo V3 Review - A Fanless Intel Atom x7-Z8700 (Cherry Trail) mini-PC
Intel transitioned their Bay Trail-T Atom lineup (targeting affordable 2-in-1s, tablets and Compute Stick form factors) to 14nm with the introduction of Cherry Trail-T. The Atom x5 and x7 SoCs coming under this family have four Airmont cores and Broadwell-class Intel HD Graphics. We have already seen the x7-Z8700 in action in the Microsoft Surface 3 and the x5-Z8300 in the Cherry Trail Compute Stick. Due to the success of UCFF (ultra-compact form factor) PCs, many vendors (including no-name Asian brands) have resorted to making small computers by using these tablet platforms with minor modifications. One such vendor is Voyo, and their V3 mini-PC is a unique take on the Atom x7-Z8700 platform compared to traditional tablets / affordable 2-in-1s. Read on for our review of the Voyo V3 mini-PC using the Intel Atom x7-Z8700.


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Western Digital Introduces Its First Helium-Filled HDDs for Consumer Applications

Helium-filled hard drives have a number of mechanical advantages compared to traditional HDDs, but they are also more expensive to manufacture. Western Digital subsidiary HGST introduced the world’s first commercial helium-filled hard drive in 2013, targeting datacenters. Since then, the company has launched two more generations of its helium drives, including two models with 10 TB capacity. This week Western Digital unveiled the world’s first family of helium-filled HDDs designed for consumer applications, which will be sold under the WD brand.

The family of WD’s hermetically-sealed helium-filled hard drives will include WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Purple 3.5” internal HDDs as well as My Cloud, My Book and My Book Duo external storage systems based on the new drives. Western Digital’s first helium-filled WD HDDs feature 8 TB capacity and HelioSeal technology for hermetic sealing. WD confirmed that the upcoming WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Purple hard drives may include components and technologies originally designed by HGST, but the WD drives are not re-branded Ultrastar He10-8 HDDs with six platters. While it is logical to expect the new helium-filled WD-branded drives to use the same 1.33 TB PMR platters as the datacenter-class HGST Ultrastar He10-8 HDDs, Western Digital has not confirmed that.

WD is not disclosing much int he way of technical details about its new hard drives, but indicates that they are based on different platforms that are tailored for their respective applications. For example, the WD Red 8 TB and the WD Purple 8 TB helium-filled HDDs feature 5400 RPM spindle speed, whereas the WD Red Pro 8 TB will sport 7200 RPM-class spindle speed. Like other contemporary HDDs, the new helium-filled drives from WD will feature 4 KB sectors, but will also support 512 byte sectors using emulation. Just like their predecessors, the new hard drives come with SATA III (6 Gbps) interface.

Since the WD Red 8 TB is aimed at personal or small business NAS systems with up to eight bays, it is optimized for mixed workloads. The WD Red Pro 8 TB is engineered for small business and enterprise-class NAS systems with up to 16 bays, which is why the drives feature extra protection against vibrations, larger caches and improved random read performance (thanks to both 7200 RPM spindle speed and firmware tuning). The WD Purple 8 TB drives are designed for surveillance applications that operated 24/7 and required support for ATA streaming technology, writing-related optimizations, as well as protection against vibration in systems with up to eight HDDs.

The density of helium is one-seventh that of air, which reduces drag force acting on the spinning disk stack and lowers fluid flow forces affecting the disks and the heads, allowing for platters to be thinner and a larger number to be packed more densely. Meanwhile thanks to helium and increased areal density of platters, the new WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Purple HDDs will increase sequential read/write performance, lower power consumption and reduce noise levels compared to their predecessors. Unfortunately, precise specifications of the new drives will only be available when the HDDs are commercially released later this year.

Initially, Western Digital will only offer My Book (WDBFJK0080HBK) and My Book for Mac (WDBYCC0080HBK) external HDDs with 8 TB capacity for $299.99 in select U.S. stores as well as online. Typically, WD’s My Book external storage systems use hard drives with 5400 RPM spindle speed. Therefore, it looks like Western Digital starts to sell the basic helium-filled consumer-class HDD first, which is a logical decision for a brand new platform. It is noteworthy that while the new external drives are not cheap, they are around $70 more expensive than Seagate’s Archive internal 3.5” drive with 8 TB capacity and SMR platters (which has been on the market for well over a year). It is hard to say whether Western Digital has managed to develop an inexpensive helium-filled HDD platform, but it certainly looks like the company intends to use helium in order to increase capacities of its high-end hard drives and without needing to implement SMR. At present, Western Digital only uses its helium platform for NAS drives, but eventually it may adopt it for its high-performance WD Black HDDs for desktops.

The hermetically-sealed helium-filled internal WD HDDs will be available later in H1 of this year, just like My Cloud- and My Book Duo-series storage systems with multiple drives.


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Available Tags:Acer , AMD , Intel , Western Digital , 

IT News Head Lines (Tech Report) 25/02/2016

Hackers compromise Linux Mint Cinnamon ISO and forums
The leader of the Linux Mint project, one of the more popular Linux distributions for the desktop, has revealed the project's website was attacked. In two separate posts to the project's blog, Clement Lefebvre wrote that the damage to the project includes a compromised ISO for Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition and a stolen forums database.
The linuxmint.com domain remained down until earlier today, and now the blog.linuxmint.com subdomain isn't responding. ...
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Play Tennis Day Shortbread
The Starting Five

1. Reuters: U.S. government, Apple take
   
   encryption case to court of public opinion
   
2. The Motley Fool: Intel Corp. confirms first
   
   10-nanometer product on track for 2017 introduction
   
3. VideoCardz: AMD Radeon 400 series leaks and rumors
   
   and AMD Radeon M400 series to be released in April
   
4. Android Police: Cyanogen launches a new MOD
   
   platform for deeper integration of apps in Android
   
5. VideoCardz: Microsoft feared XBLA would
   
   "completely destroy the console industry"
   

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Lenovo's new convertible laptops are portable and flexible
Balancing mobility and utility can be difficult. At Mobile World Congress this weekend, Lenovo revealed the Yoga 710 and Yoga 510 laptops and a 2-in-1 detachable Miix tablet. All of these machines can be used as a laptop or tablet, but each one emphasizes different qualities of that combination.
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MSI Cubi 2 Plus PCs make the most of mini-STX mobos
A little while ago, Intel introduced its 5x5 motherboard standard, now called mini-STX. These mobos are even itty-bittier than Mini-ITX boards, measuring a mere 5" x 5". MSI is now taking advantage of that new standard for its Cubi 2 Plus lineup of mini PCs.
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Western Digital experiences a setback in its SanDisk acquisition
In the last few months, Western Digital has made moves to become a player in the SSD market. It acquired Skyera, a solid-state storage systems developer, before launching a $19 billion takeover of SanDisk. Today, despite some disappointing financial news, Western Digital affirmed its continued interest in acquiring SanDisk. Western Digital still expects that transaction to close sometime in the second quarter of 2016.
The disappointing news for Western Digital is that a proposed $3.775 billion equity investment from Unis Union has fallen through. After the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States announced that it would investigate the investment, Unis bowed out. That exit has triggered an alternate offer for SanDisk, ...
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Nvidia Shield TV update serves up Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Nvidia has released a software update for its Shield Android TV streaming box. Upgrade 3.0 brings an OS update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow and new external storage options. When we took the Shield for a spin last year, we noted that the ability to store apps on SD cards and USB drives was rather hit or miss. Considering the base model comes with 16GB of internal storage, owners could run up against a storage wall in a hurry. With this update, apps and games can now be encrypted and stored on SD cards and external USB drives. When plugged in, external storage should be seen as internal storage.
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Aerocool's Dream Box kit lets builders shape their own case
Construction kits never quite lose their cool. Today's Lego kits might not be as awesome as the ones I played with as a child, but they're still fun in a way that other kinds of toys aren't. Perhaps this is why Aerocool's new Dream Box DIY PC case construction kit caught my eye, even if it isn't the most convenient or practical way to build a system.
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Available Tags:Linux , MSI , Western Digital , Nvidia , TV , Android ,