IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Legit Reviews) 11/09/2009

AMD Demonstrates the PCs Next Act - Eyefinity Multi-DIsplay Technology

At experience events on three continents this week, AMD and its industry partners introduced ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, a revolutionary feature in the upcoming next generation ATI Radeon family of DirectX 11 enabled graphics processors. Legit Reviews is at one of the experience events this very second, so check out our coverage of Eyefinity here. The full press release can be read by following the link below.

ATI Eyefinity technology brings AMD closer to delivering true eye-definition experiences, where the display of a virtual environment is so detailed that it seems optically real to the human eye. Using ATI Eyefinity technology in a single PC, it is now possible to power displays with a combined theoretical resolution of 268 megapixels,2 roughly equivalent to the resolution of a 90 degree arc of what the human eye sees.3 For reference, todays average 19 inch LCD display typically has an image quality of only slightly more than 1 megapixel.

ASUS Introduces the Designo MS Series LCD Monitors

ASUS today unveiled the brand new ultra-slim Designo MS Series LCD monitors MS246/ 236/ 227/ 226/ 202. Inspired by the binary state, the Designo MS Series incorporates contrasting elements like the numbers 1 and 0, and black and white into an ultra-slim 0.65 inch profile. A unique cylindircal ring stand lets viewers adjust the monitors tilt angle with just one finger. The Designo MS series delivers crisp visuals in Full HD 1080p, 50,000:1 contrast ratio, 2ms response time and ASUS Splendid Video Intelligence Technology for amazing visuals in a head-turning package.

The Designo MS Series LCD Monitor features class-leading specifications such as Full HD 1080p, 50,000:1 high contrast ratio, 2ms quick response time, ASUS Splendid Technology, and an HDMI port to deliver high quality entertainment from Blu-ray movies and console games. The Designo MS Series doubles productivity levels when paired with a notebook via a DVI/VGA cable connection, and has been ergonomically designed to sit at the users eye levelthus matching the height of the notebook screen.

Free VoIP Service with Google Voice & Intel Atom

Take a look at our latest how-to article to be able to send and receive phone call from your Google Voice phone number with your traditional analog phone number. With an ATA and an Intel Atom PBX server running open source PBX in a Flash, you can have free VoIP service in your home!

To satisfy my performance needs, I am now going to put together a low-power server built around an Intel Atom 230 processor in order to install PiaF natively to get the best performance I can out of my homebrew VoIP solution using Google Voice. With a budget of about $225, this article is going to give step-by-step instructions on how to build your Atom-based server, install and configure PBX in a Flash, and finally configure your Linksys SPA-3102 ATA...

VISION Technology from AMD Announced - See, Share, Create

AMD today announced a new way to help consumers select the PC that best meets their needs. Working with retailers and PC manufactures, VISION Technology from AMD breaks the model in how PC benefits are communicated. Rather than the traditional model, which focuses on the technical specifications of individual hardware components, VISION communicates the value of the whole system and demonstrates the combined processing power of both the CPU and GPU to deliver a superior visual experience to mainstream PC users. It emphasizes how an AMD-based PC is optimized for video, digital media and content creation activities. VISION guides the industry past the era of CPU-centric marketing and describes the PC capabilities in terms of what can be enjoyed on the system see, share, create. This helps consumers to make better informed buying decisions and they have broken VISION down into four categories.

VISION - Basic is for people who use productivity tools like Microsoft Office and who surf the web, maybe listen to music and look at their photos
VISION - Premium is for those who also want to watch High-definition and Blu-rays, edit photos and play some games
VISION - Ultimate is for the video editor and 3D game player
VISION - Black is for high-end users

Notebook PCs with VISION Technology from AMD are expected to be widely available on retail shelves and online during the holiday buying season timed to the release of the Windows 7 operating system from Microsoft. Complementing VISION, Windows 7 supports DirectX 10, Direct X10.1, and Direct X11 for richer 3D detail on games and other media apps, and a Unified Video Decoder to free up the CPU so that users can have a superior visual and more responsive computing experience while converting video for use on hand held devices. This last activity is greatly simplified and much more rapid with the new Drag and Drop feature of Windows 7.

ASUS Launches The P7P55 WS SuperComputer Motherboard

ASUS today unveiled the ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer motherboard. Built around the Intel P55 Express chipset, it features the new LGA1156 socket for next-generation Intel Core i5 processors and DDR3-2133 (O.C.) memory for outstanding yet cost-effective performance. To enable multiple-GPU rendering, the motherboard supports both 3-way and 2-way graphics card configurations based on SLI or CrossFireX technology. Additionally, it leverages the NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture to support three NVIDIA Tesla cards and one NVIDIA Quadro card for 250* times more computing power.

With NVIDIA Tesla GPU support, the ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer provides the foundation for users to build a cost-effective personal supercomputer. The system leverages the NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture for a massive performance boost from four graphic cards: three NVIDIA Tesla cards and one NVIDIA Quadro card. This generates four teraflops of computing power250 times of a standard PCfrom 960 parallel processing cores. Thus, the P7P55 WS SuperComputer is suited for virtualization and heavy workload computing in the life sciences, engineering, financial modeling, and electronic design automation fields.

WD Unveils Redesigned My Book Essential and My Book for Mac Users

WD today introduced its new, smaller, sleeker My Book Essential and My Book for Mac desktop external hard drives equipped with the new WD SmartWare software and hardware-based encryption. The new appliances visually present consumers' data in a software control center, providing them peace of mind that their precious photos, videos and files are securely protected. The new My Book Essential drives are offered in capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB and 2 TB. My Book Essential drives are available now at select retailers and online at shopwd.com. MSRP ranges from $99.99 to $249.99 USD depending on model.

"Keeping an extra copy of your digital life used to be a painstaking, manual task undertaken only by the most expert and diligent of users. WD's new My Book Essential and My Book for Mac external hard drives, powered by WD SmartWare, have finally made it easy enough so that anyone can do it," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. "WD's new drives combine massive storage capacity, visual backup, and hardware encryption, so consumers can now actually see their digital life, safe in one place."

Asustek sees on-month increase, while MSI and Gigabyte see decline in August 2009 revenues

Motherboard makers Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology have announced revenue results for August 2009, with Asustek seeing an on-month increase of 14%, while MSI saw a drop of 1%, and Gigabyte a drop of 16.46%.

Asustek posted revenues of NT$22.99 billion (US$704.26 million) for August, an increase of 14% on month, but a drop of 11.2% on year. Some market watchers expect the company's third-quarter revenues to grow 30-40% sequentially. Asustek is expected to see its motherboard, notebook and netbook shipments in the third quarter rise to 5.5-6 million units, 1.8 million units and 1.5 million units, respectively, from around five million units, 1.2 million units and 1.1 million units in the second, according to market watchers.

AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 To Launch on September 22nd in the U.S

AMD will unleash its next wave of high-end graphics products in under two weeks. AMD is expected to launch two new products in the form of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850 on September 22nd in the U.S. and September 23rd in Europe. Legit Reviews is in California right now for the AMD Evergreen Vision launch event, but so far the only cool picture is this one from dinner last night.Later today we will be getting to see the actual hardware in public for the very second time here shortly. Legit Reviews brought you some of the very first pictures of Evergreen back last month during Quakecon 2009.

AMD Evergreen Vision launch event dinner

According to Fudzilla, the Radeon 5870 (codenamed RV870) will come in two versions initially -- one with 2GB memory and one with 1GB. The Radeon HD 5870 1GB should sell for $399 at launch, while it's bigger sister the Radeon HD 5870 2GB should sell for $449. A slower Radeon HD 5850 with 1GB memory will sell for $299. The Radeon HD 5870 X2 is due to hit shelves about a month after the Radeon HD 5870. Other Radeon HD 5870 specifications include:
GPU runs at 825MHz (725Mhz for the Radeon HD 5850)
1600 shaders
2.1 billion transistors
GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.3GHz /150GB/second bandwidth.
180W power usage, 27W in idle

VIA Adopts Sequans Mobile WiMAX Chip Technology

VIA Technologies today announced the availability of the new VIA eNote Turnkey Solution, a thin and light notebook that strikes the perfect balance between netbook ultra-portability and notebook performance and functionality. The snappy 11.6" design, which incorporates both state-of-the art WiMAX and Wi-Fi connectivity, will be demo'd from September 15-18 at 4G World in Chicago in Sequans' booth, number 423. Here is a quick video with Tim Brown from VIA showing off the technology.

The VIA eNote Turnkey Solution's Mobile WiMAX chip is provided by Sequans Communications, the leading supplier of chips for the WiMAX market. Sequans technology delivers high throughput with low power consumption using Sequans mimoMAX technology, which combines a maximum likelihood decoder on the downlink with two transmitters (2Tx) on the uplink - a unique feature that can significantly improve link budget and greatly enhance coverage and capacity.

September 10 News from Around the Web

Corsair X256 CMFSSD-256D1 MLC SSD @ Benchmark Reviews and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

The competition among Solid State Drive manufacturers is reminiscent of the video card wars between AMD and NVIDIA a few years ago. The invention of new controller technology has slowed somewhat, while each company races to combine high-speed NAND with custom firmware tweaks to produce the fastest SSD speeds possible. The Indilinx Barefoot controller has exploited a dominant hold over the consumer SSD market during the past several months, and 'overclocked' Solid State Drive products are beginning to replace 'new' product designs. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the fastest MLC SSD we've discovered to-date: the 256GB eXtreme-edition Corsair X256 CMFSSD-256D1.

VIA ARTiGO A2000 Barebone Storage Server

With the ARTiGO A2000 storage server, VIA aims to attract a wider audience to the idea of network attached storage by offering this small, low-power network storage server. A barebones system based on the VIA C7-D processor and a custom Nano-ITX motherboard, the ARTiGO A2000 was designed from top to bottom to be an easy, long-lasting solution for the average user's storage requirements.

AMD Shows off 24 Panel Eyefinity on DirectX 11 Graphics Cards

AMD is showing off a brand new technology today called Eyefinity. AMD's next-generation of DirectX 11 graphics cards come with support for up to to six independent displays, which allows you the ability to connect anywhere from one to six displays to just one video card. AMD says that the experience is unlike anything you have ever seen before.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

IT News HeadLines (Legit Reviews) 11/09/2009

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