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:: PC Perspective . News Archive
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.:News Archive ( 9/2008 )
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Phoronix | Subject: General Tech
It looks like SilverStone was not about to let NZXT take over the mouse market unchallenged. They have launched the Raven RVM01B gaming mouse as a counter to the Avatar. It's most striking feature is the large scroll wheel on the side of the mouse that bears a passing resemblance to an eyeball glued to it's side, though the OLED screen on the top is also worth mentioning. Phoronix liked it fairly well, even though all 11 buttons didn't function under Linux. Maybe this is the mouse for you; at least until Thermalright comes out with an all copper mouse.
"While SilverStone Technology has long been known for their high-end (and very expensive) computer cases such as the Sugo and Temjin series, as of late they've begun manufacturing other computer peripherals while driving new and interesting innovations into these conventional products. Earlier this month we looked at the SilverStone Treasure TS01, which was a 2.5" SATA drive enclosure, but separating it from the other enclosure devices on the market, this one would encrypt the drive and secure it using two RFID keys. If these small keys were not exposed to the TS01, the drive enclosure would not work. Another interesting creation from SilverStone Technology is the Raven RVM01B. This here is SilverStone's first computer mouse and we are looking at it today." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: General Tech
We are giving away three cards from our new sponsor, Galaxy Tech. A GeForce 9500 GT, a GeForce 9600 GT and a GeForce 9800 GT. You can see our review of the Galaxy GeForce 9800 GT here.
The rules are quite strict ...
Josh Walrath | Source: CNet News.com | Subject: Processor
It is no secret that AMD has been feverishly working on both their 45 nm designs and the 45 nm process that these products will be produced on. Today we have received word from our friends at C-Net that AMD has apparently overcome most of the hurdles to producing large quantities of these 45 nm parts. Pat Patla, general manager of AMD's server and workstation processors, went on record saying that production of the Shanghai part is now going full speed ahead. While the first chips from this production run have not made it out of the fab, they are expecting to ship the first products to their partners within the next month, and allow these partners to produce and ship server and workstation end products to customers well before the end of this year.
The 45 nm Shanghai/Deneb die from AMD. Now that's a bit-o-cache. Shanghai is the server level product based on the Phenom architecture. Just as Barcelona was to Agena, Shaghai is to Deneb. Deneb is the 45 nm Phenom aimed at the desktop. The 45 nm Phenoms have some significant differences between themselves and the older 65 nm Phenoms, other than just the smaller geometries that the 45 nm process enables. The first major difference is the amount of L3 cache that AMD is able to squeeze into the design. Current Phenoms have 2 MB of L3, but the upcoming Phenoms will have that expanded to a full 6 MB of L3. Considering how much the current Phenom design likes its fully functional L3 cache, this extra space will allow a greater amount of efficiency from the architecture. AMD has also done a lot of fine tuning and re-architecting to enable a higher IPC from the previous 65 nm parts. Pat goes on to say that they are seeing a 20% gain in performance per clock with the new design as compared to the old. This brings per core performance to the same type of levels as the mighty Core 2 Duo/Quad chips. Add onto that the ability to clock above 2.6 GHz without breaking any power and thermal envelopes. We see that AMD finally has a part that can compete against the Core 2 architecture in most instances. This is assuming that AMD is not feeding us a line about what to expect, and then not be able to deliver. AMD seemingly is turning their ship around. Their graphics and chipset divisions are putting out compelling parts, and the price/performance of the current 65 nm Phenoms is pretty impressive. While AMD is not making bucketloads of money from their CPU division, they are at least putting out products that people can afford, and do give a lot of performance compared to the money spent. They have also worked their way into other markets with their triple core products as well as their low power Athlon 64 and Phenom products. The latest Radeon 4000 series of parts have achieved widespread acclaim for their performance, features, and highly competitive price. The Radeon 4870 is in the range of GTX 260 performance, and typically costs slightly less, the Radeon 4870 X2 is the fastest "single" video card out there, and the newly introduced Radeon 4670 takes gaming performance to new levels at a $79 price point. The chipset division is also fighting strong with their introductory level 740G, the higher end 780G, and the latest 790GX. Put against that background, AMD's potential resurgance in the server field is a welcome one for the company. The server and workstation markets are very high margin, and obviously a good money maker for AMD when they are hitting on all cylinders. The delay of Barcelona hurt that division quite a bit, but with the introduction of the 45 nm server chips, their fortunes may well change. AMD certainly has a leg up on Intel when it comes to multi-socket systems with their mature and widely adopted HyperTransport system, and with the release of the new 45 nm parts AMD will allow their partners to start utilizing the full HT 3.0 featureset and bandwidth. As I have stated in the past, AMD typically starts shipping new products into the server market before they start releasing their desktop counterparts. This has been happening since the Athlon MP/XP days, and has been further refined to what we see now. The majority of production for the first several months of 45 nm parts will all go to the server and workstation guys, mainly because of three reasons. The first is that it is a smaller market and AMD can fulfill demand while still ramping production on these new parts. The second reason is the obviously high margins on these products that will help AMD regain as much money as possible from what was spent ramping initial production. The final reason for this mode of operation is that the server and workstation markets do not demand the highest MHz/GHz, and so AMD can still get away with shipping lower speed products but still cashing in on the nice margins. This allows AMD to further refine their 45 nm process in full production conditions, and allow them to tweak it so they can start achieving higher speed bins throughtout the next few months. When they reach a certain point where they are content with the speeds they are seeing, then they will start stockpiling parts to allow a desktop release with 45 nm parts and higher speeds. AMD has seemingly announced this right at the end of Q3, which is when they were expecting the first production parts to be out. It seems they are slightly behind that schedule, but still targeting a mass release of 45 nm products in the upcoming Q4. We also expect to see the first 45 nm desktop parts to hit in early Q1 2009, but the official stance is that initial products will be seen later this coming quarter (but I think that may be a bit too optimistic for AMD at this time). The long and short of this is that it is good to see AMD in a fairly competitive position across most of their lines. The big "if" is going to be the Nehalem release from Intel. This is certainly an impressive looking part, but the motherboard infrastructure is going to be immature for several months. Especially on the server side. So, AMD does have a window of opportunity here to regain some marketshare. Even if the 45 nm chips are not equal to Nehalem in per clock performance, AMD can still carve a niche out for themselves and make some money. OEMs, even though they may not see AMD as the most performant part, will gladly take a solid second supplier of parts to keep the pressure on #1. Now we only have to wait and see what AMD will do with their design and manufacturing groups with their "Asset Smart/Lite" program. Hopefully, we will get some solid answers on that as well.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: InsideHW | Subject: General Tech
Using Integrated Audio used to be a source of shame for those that had to use it in the not too distant past. That started to change with nVIDIA's Soundstorm and it has only improved since then. InsideHW has rounded up a fair number of onboard sound solutions, representing the market as it stands today. They tested them on multiple uses, including gaming, so that you can see the difference in performance between the various chips as well as how they fare against the Creative X-Fi Music.
"In the beginning of era of integrated sound cards, they weren’t for any recommendation because of many troubles. Even though the sound quality on certain models was satisfactory, by purchasing quality speakers, you could notice difference in sound quality compared to quality nonintegrated sound cards. There were even some relatively "bad" models of C-media nonintegrated sound cards with better sound quality. Beside sound quality there were also some problems with too big noise, as also sound interruptions during reproduction of audio contents (if someone remembers well known "integrated" PC-Chips motherboards in their own time)…" Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Hardware Zone | Subject: Mobile
The new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is an 8.9" netbook powered by an Atom N270 (1.6GHz) with 1GB of DDR2-533 RAM. It's 60GB SSD drive runs a flavour of Ubuntu and it features wireless support as well as a host of input and output plugs. Hardware Zone did find out that it is expected to sell at $799, but they didn't manage to get a firm number for the battery life of the netbook.
"Dell is the next major vendor to jump into the netbook arena with its upcoming Inspiron Mini 9, an Atom powered netbook with a 8.9-inch screen. We managed to get some early shots and specifications in this preview so read on to find out more" Here are some more Mobile articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: AnandTech | Subject: Graphics Card
The graphics card market is developing a distinct pear shape as it's lower end swells with more and more value priced cards. There are only two species at the pinnacle, the GTX280 and HD4870 X2, who along with their assorted sub-species rule the market. From there however the choices available swell as each price point has more and more cards created to fill any gap between the prices. The newest are AMD's HD4350 and HD4500. There is a reason that they are both under $60, the number of stream processors has been reduced to 80 from over 300 for the 4650, the memory bus speed has been halved to 64-bit from 128-bit and the transistor count has been reduced by about the same percentage. That doesn't mean their video processing power has been halved; both the 4550 and 4350 support 8-channel LPCM over HDMI, making them the perfect HTPC card, apart from their lack of a TV Tuner. Check them out an AnandTech.
"Oooh, new GPUs from AMD - however these ones aren't going to be breaking any performance records, they are both priced below $60. The Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 are slotted in between integrated graphics and the set of hardware we took a look at recently in our Radeon 4670 review. The Radeon HD 4550 will run you around $45 - $55, while the Radeon HD 4350 will be priced at $39. Generally speaking, if you're a gamer you're not spending any less than $150 for a graphics card - so these GPUs are mostly for enabling hardware Blu-ray acceleration or providing a boost in performance over games running on integrated graphics." Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Slashdot | Subject: General Tech
Chicago and the Washington-Baltimore area have been a testing ground for Sprint and Clearwire's new WiMax/ODFM technology, which will hopefully leave the previous failed attempts far behind. The newest spot you can test this technology out is in Reno, which is where it was tested against 3G wireless. With throughput of 1.5 - 2.0Mbps down and 275 - 325Kbps up, the speeds are approaching boradband and the 240 mile range is certainly a nice touch. On the other hand, you can pick up a 3G signal in a lot more places that you can pick up a WiMax, and the reviewer found that they could not connect from a moving vehicle. Find out more from Slashdot.
"Carriers have promised WiMax networks for years. But will they deliver the goods, or be slow like many early 3G networks or patchy in coverage like the metro Wi-Fi attempts in most cities? This hands-on review looks at a nearly-WiMax deployment (technically, OFDM) in Reno, testing its speeds and reach, as a measure of what Sprint and Clearwire will deliver in their joint WiMax rollouts starting next month. The good news is that this time, the carrier promises look to be delivered on." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Super Talent Technology | Subject: Storage
San Jose, California - September 30, 2008 - Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today launched a pair of new high quality SATA-II SSDs that shatter previous price barriers. Super Talent's MasterDrive SSDs have become legendary for their many advantages over hard drives. MasterDrive SSDs offer five times better resistance to shock and vibration, consume less power, support a wider range of operating temperatures and altitudes, and are completely silent. The new MasterDrive LX, offered in 64GB and 128GB capacities, offers all these benefits. The MasterDrive LX has also undergone Super Talent's rigorous battery of validation tests, ensuring the highest levels of compatibility and reliability. What's unique about the MasterDrive LX is its incredibly low price point; the 64GB model will retail for about $179, while the 128GB unit is expected to retail for under $300. Both models will begin shipping this week. Backed with Super Talent's 1-year warranty, the MasterDrive LX is built with NAND flash and uses a SATA-II 3Gbps interface that makes it 100% interchangeable with hard disk drives. These SSDs support sequential read speeds of up to 100 MB/sec, and sequential write speeds of up to 40 MB/sec. Integrated ECC, wear leveling and bad bit management functions dramatically improve the reliability and lifespan of these SSDs.
"The MasterDrive LX is our most cost-effective SSD yet. However, we've made no compromises in quality and reliability", Super Talent Director of Marketing, Joe James explained.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PCStats | Subject: Storage
If you have a hard time deciding which drive you want to save your data on, or maybe you like to have a half dozen or so HDDs with different types of files on them, you might really need a four disk hot swappable SATA rack. You could also use it to start up an incredibly intricate back up regimen. PC Stats thought it would be perfect for a dual RAID-1 configuration, read through the review and think what you might do with the IcyDock MB454SPF-B.
"Hot-swap bays are such a convenient way to mount hard drives into a PC system, particularly the new "rails-only" variety, that I can't see ever going back to the old method. In today's review, PCSTATS is looking at Icydock's MB454SPF-B multi-bay hot swap module. It's an aluminum box the size of three stacked 5.25" optical drives which contains up to four 3.5" SATA hard drives. Each drive slides in with rails-only, and is individually hot swappable." Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Corsair Memory | Subject: Storage
Fremont, CA, September 29, 2008 - Corsair, a worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, announced today that it is expanding its best selling Flash Voyager USB family lines with a new 64GB capacity offering. The new 64GB USB Flash Voyager has enough capacity for a library of DVD-length movies and tens of thousands of high-resolution digital images. Thanks to the 64GB USB Flash Voyager, users now have the ultimate solution for storing, transporting and backing up large amounts of personal and professional data. With storage capacity that just a year ago could only be found in hard drives, the 64GB USB Flash Voyager drive also provides the added ruggedness, water resistance and performance not found in storage drives utilizing rotating media. Corsair 64GB USB Flash Voyager drives provide the capacity necessary to store complete seasons of your favorite TV shows or the entire contents of most notebook hard drives. These large density drives can also be used as portable back-up devices for critical or sensitive information. In addition, Corsair 64GB USB Flash Voyager drives are bootable, which means users can actually store full versions of operating systems and applications in order to quickly “re-create” the necessary software environments to troubleshoot system problems. Corsair 64GB USB Flash Voyager drives will be available immediately at a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price of $249.99 "Corsair is always developing new and exciting flash products, and the 64GB USB Flash Voyager is no exception," said John Beekley, Vice President of Applications at Corsair. "With more storage space than most laptops, we can offer a full suite of features - whether it be backing up data, building a portable media library, or simply transporting huge amounts of data." added Beekley.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: Motherboard
AMD based motherboards tend to take second place on the reviewers bench, behind the various models and chipsets that run Intel processors. That is too bad in a way, as the new 790G chipset is a rather impressive step forward for AMD. Don't take my word for it though, read through what Josh has to say and see how his benchmarking turned out.
"The AMD 790GX chipset is aimed at creating a new enthusiast level of product that should be far more accessible to regular people, both in terms of price and the ability to wring every spare MHz of performance out of the latest generation of AMD processors. While it succeeds in some areas, it is weighed down by some extraneous baggage that may not make it as appealing as AMD hoped to its targeted market." Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: The Tech Report | Subject: Graphics Card
The Tech Report investigates whether you can spend less than $100 on a graphics card and still be able to play your favourite games. The short answer is that if your monitor is stuck at 1280x1024, then go right ahead and buy one of the many lower end video cards you can pick up from AMD and nVIDIA. If you can go to 1920x1200 and want to see at least a few effects, or play some of the more intensive titles, up the budget to the $150 and you won't be disappointed. You won't be playing at maximum settings, but you will be playing something a little more fun than an interactive slide show.
"So just how much money should you spend on a graphics card? The latest models for under 100 bucks might surprise you with their potency, both in games and HD video playback. We've lined up eight cards, ranging from $60 to $170, to see where the values are. Cheapskates everywhere, take note!" Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Ars Technica | Subject: General Tech
Head to the Intel Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles this October and you will walk out with a 160GB HDD with a pile of programs on it, including an alpha of Windows 7. The rest of us still have to wait until sometime in 2009; though Ballmer would prefer you would buy a couple of copies of Vista in the mean time. Ars Technica gives a run down of what we know about Windows 7 along with the information on the 'pre-beta'.
"Attendees at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference next month are in for a treat: everyone going will get a 160GB hard disk with a copy of all the software on show, including Windows 7. "Software + Services" is the company's big idea at this PDC, and, as previously announced, Microsoft will be showing off—and giving out—a new cloud computing framework. Related Stories Though there's sure to be interest in the cloud computing software, the software giveaway just got a whole lot more exciting with the news that attendees will receive a "pre-beta" build of Windows 7. Mindful of the lukewarm reception that Windows Vista received on its eventual release, Microsoft has thus far kept quiet about the next version of Windows; this time around, the company wants to make sure that expectations match with the software that will actually be released." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: TG Daily | Subject: Graphics Card
Well, I hope none of you were attached to the GeForce 8-series or GeForce 9-series names; it looks like the G100-series will be taking over all the 55nm product names. Nothing too dramatic here but perhaps a new way for partners to market, right?
Following a recent announcement that the companywould lay off about 7% of its staff, it seems that Nvidia is busy bringing the company back on track. Rumor has it that the company will be announcing additional graphicscards in the GT200 series on October 15. Coinciding with the product launch, Nvidia is expected to depart from its sequence numbering system of the 8000- and 9000-series and transition to a system that is in line with the GT200 series.
Industry sources told TG Daily that while the 8000 series is being phased out, all 55 nm 9000-series GPUs will carry a G100-series name. By the end of 2008, Nvidiawill be offering today’s 9000 series as G100, GT120, GT130, GT140 and GT150 models. When the 2009 45 nm GPUs arrive, which seems to be the case around Q1 or Q2, Nvidia will have fully transitioned to the new branding structure: Enthusiast GPUs will be integrated into the GTX200-series, performance GPUs into the GT200-series, mainstream GPUs into the GS200-series and entry-level products into the G200-series.
Ryan Shrout | Source: 3DCenter | Subject: Graphics Card
Ah, this is why we love the Internet and its ability to spread stories at such speed. On Wednesday TGDaily reported that "thousands of Diamond multimedia graphics cards potentially defective" and that the company "may have shipped between 15,000 and 20,000 AMD/ATI HD 3800-series with design/manufacturing defects to system builders and the retail market." Of course as you'd imagine the S hit the F after that and since then some of the information has been adjusted.
Today at TGDaily, this is the headline: "Diamond Multimedia says only 188 cards faulty, not thousands". Huh quite the difference....
Chicago (IL) – This story has all the signs of becoming an entertaining soap opera for bystanders and a big mess for everyone affected by the events. Following a conversation yesterday and an article thereafter, Diamond’s chief executive officer followed up with us that far less graphics cards are faulty than claimed by an industry source, which said that more than 15,000 cards with design or manufacturing errors may have been sold or are still in channel. Is this your typical story how to make an elephant out of a mouse?
It was clear that Bruce Zaman was not especially happy about a story we ran yesterday and updated early this morning. According to industry sources, there may be lots of faulty Diamond graphics cards in the market and consumers may be ending up with such a card. Zaman limited the information on this matter to standard phrases two days ago, but followed up today. While documents TG Daily has seen indicate that Alienware found higher than usual failure rates with Diamond’s cards and ended up returning its entire lot of more than 2600 graphics cards and eventually dropped Diamond as a supplier, Zaman said only 188 cards “out of many thousands that were shipped” were found to have caused problems. He conceded that there was an issue, but Diamond worked on the problem and eventually solved it. However, Alienware was already gone at that point.
Ryan Shrout | Source: Ars Technica | Subject: Processor
There have been some rumors circulating in recent days that AMD's Bobcat project, a CPU made for the Atom/Nano market, might have been taken behind the wood shed for a little "project culling." According this very short but sweet post at The Inquirer, the deal is done. Another post at EE Times claims that the project is dead as well.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Rumors are running rampant that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has dropped its ''Bobcat'' processor project. The processor is expected to compete with Intel Corp.'s Atom.
But, another perspective is on the topic was posted at Arstechnica that claims the project might not be cancelled after all. That brings us to the present day and the current rumor that Bobcat is canceled. We call shenanigans. What little formal guidance AMD has actually given on the chip to date has only confirmed its existence; any confusion on that topic is due to speculation from the press, not the company's statements. The idea that AMD would cancel its next-generation Atom competitor is even more ludicrous if Bobcat is a derivative of Bulldozer—why kill the smaller, simpler, and less-expensive part at such a late date? Doing so would imply that Bobcat consumed too much power to fit inside a netbook (bad), while simultaneously failing to meet a performance level that could make it attractive in a low-end notebook (worse). There's no question that AMD's roadmap is currently cloudy with respect to both Bulldozer and any 32nm transition; the company's product guidance through 2010 doesn't show an obvious point denoting when Sandtiger (Bulldozer for servers) would enter the market. One fact that shines through the murk, however, is that canceling Bobcat would mean things at AMD are an order of magnitude worse than anything we've seen thus far, to the point that the company's roadmap through 2010 would seem less of a guidepost, and more of a cliff. Put simply, I think not.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: Case and Cooling
Lee has been busy putting the Zalman CNPS9300 AT through the paces. The cooler continues in Zalman's preferred style, with bright copper fins in a circular design. The cooler it's self performs well, and Lee has no problems recommending it as a cooler; for those looking for performance and quiet simultaneously, you may wish to look elsewhere. If you haven't read the full review yet, get busy!
"The CNPS9300 AT CPU cooler features a copper base (with aluminum cap), two figure 8 shaped copper heat pipes and a large, circular array of thin copper fins. Although there are physically just two heat pipes, the near figure 8 configuration results in four evaporator sections (where the ends of each heat pipe contact the base and absorb heat from the CPU) and two condenser sections (where heat is dissipated into the central copper fins)." Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Beyond3D | Subject: Storage
The HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 2640x4 is a ~$150 PCI-e RAID controller card that will let you operate SAS drives in your PC. There are a few differences between SATA and SAS storage, some are more arcane like the difference between SAS's Tagged Command Queuing and SATA's Native Command Queuing, other qualities like the 15,000 RPM speed of SAS drives are easier to understand. Take a look at what that means for real world performace over at Beyond3D.
"What is important when shopping for hard drives is the storage space, rotational speed, amount of cache, and of course the price. Currently, for desktop computers, 7,200 RPM SATA II hard drives are the most common type of storage. For enterprise and business, there is SAS, which stands for Serial Attached SCSI. Although SAS HDD's are primarly aimed for the enterprise market whose main goal is to achieve the highest performance, the fact that you can find these drives in speeds of up to 15,000 RPM makes them a good candidate for enthusiasts as well. Current desktop SATA HDD's have rotational speed of either 5,400 rpm or 7,200 rpm. For the enthusiasts, SATA drives can be found in speeds up to 10,000 RPM. SAS, on the other hand, can be found commonly at rotational speed of 10,000 RPM and 15,000 RPM." Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: [H]ard|OCP | Subject: General Tech
Jack Thompson will have to torment game makers and players as a regular citizen now, he's gotten to the point where even lawyers don't want to be associated with him. Drop by [H]ard|OCP for a look at how the disbarment happened, as well as Jack's response.
"Thompson now has thirty days to close out his practice--in "the interests of existing clients." Adding to his problems, "no motion for rehearing will be considered unless signed by a member in good standing of The Florida Bar other than [Thompson]." That is, if Thompson wants to seek a retrial, he has to have another Bar member vouch for him--something no one has done in his current trial. " Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: NVIDIA | Subject: General Tech
MotionDSP has taken the same multi-frame video technology that powers FixMyMovie.com and ported it to NVIDIA's CUDA architecture, with stunning results, (as demonstrated at last month's NVISION '08 show). Now, MotionDSP is creating a version that will run on your home PC -- out in early Q1 '09 and tastily running in real-time on NVIDIA graphic cards, as well as standard CPUs (albeit much slower). MotionDSP's new software product, codenamed 'Carmel', is one of the first mass-market consumer applications to use NVIDIA's CUDA architecture, which makes this all possible in real-time. Virtually all the other announced CUDA apps are scientific or very vertical in focus. MotionDSP is an important element in the software ecosystem around CUDA: NVIDIA needs to expand its market away from games, and video is the #1 non-gaming application that all consumers use. With Carmel, your PC will use the same super-resolution algorithms that power MotionDSP's video high-end forensic tools (which are in use at the Secret Service, CNN, and intelligence agencies) to make all the video on your PC look better. Starting with user-created content and moving on to video conferencing and fixing YouTube videos. All this running a LOT faster, and indeed real-time, thanks to NVIDIA. In a grossly oversimplified nutshell - we track every pixel through dozens of frames of video, and by tracking its motion trajectory and combining the information from multiple frames, we are able to re-construct a video that is dramatically enhanced from the video. Much less noise, higher resolution, corrected lighting, and smoothed motion. As you can imagine, this consumes ludicrous numbers of CPU cycles - 10X more than H.264 encoding, which is itself extraordinarily math-intensive. We are talking about requiring close to 1/2 a Terraflop in compute power to enhance a YouTube-sized video in realtime. Right now, without GPU acceleration, it would take more than 8 Intel cores to make our algorithm work in real-time on a PC. We are obviously very excited about this, and I would be happy to put you in touch with NVIDIA or MotionDSP to bring clarity to any queries you may have. Please feel free to contact me (or NVIDIA) if either party can be of any help. If you are on deadline, please do contact me on my mobile at US +1 408 393 4900. Should you like to embed an example of how well we can enhance video, here are two embed codes for your readership's online pleasure: Making jerky videos smooth with frame-rate interpolation Restoring dark videos with powerful lighting controls and super-resolution noise suppression
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: OCZ Technology | Subject: Case and Cooling
Sunnyvale, CA-September 25, 2008-OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the "HydroFlow" HF-MK1 Waterblock for superior CPU watercooling. Designed with the highest possible exchange rate between the block and coolant, the HydroFlow can be easily integrated into any enthusiast system and help efficiently lower the processor temperature. "The HydroFlow HF-MK1 targets the highest possible thermal exchange rate between a solid body and the surrounding fluid, while maintaining enough cross sectional area for superior thermal conductance within the fin structure," commented Dr. Michael Schuette, V.P. of Technology Development at OCZ Technology. "Additionally, the relieved contact area concentrates the pressure on the actual die area of any processor, thereby minimizing the thermal interface material-induced loss in heat dissipation. In short, the HydroFlow epitomizes the recent advances in fluid cooling at an affordable price.” The triangular fins in the HF-MK1 provide the highest volume to surface ratio of any geometric shape for best dissipation possible, and this special design also creates sufficient turbulence to eliminate the “skin” effect caused by laminar flow. The base block of the HydroFlow increases center contact with the processor core for the greatest possible cooling potential, ensuring maximum exchange and functionality between the waterblock and CPU. Whether you're a first-time builder or a seasoned case-modder, OCZ makes the HydroFlow easy to integrate into your rig by supplying both high-flow 3/8” and 1/2” barbs in the packaging without the hassle of searching for compatible hardware. The HydroFlow HF-MK1 is affordable with an MSRP of $39.99, yet a technologically advanced solution to keep your processor functioning at optimal levels.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Red & Blackness Mods | Subject: System
Checking out the GMC Noblesse AVC-S1 HTPC case is a great idea if you are looking for a case that doesn't take up much room, and can still manage to show HD content. On the other hand, if you are looking for an HTPC that can fit normal sized components and heatsinks, you may not want to go this route. Drop by R&B Mods to see why.
"Home theater PC cases come in all shapes and sizes, but to look like other pieces of home theater equipment, the case need to be small. But does the small size come with a sacrifice? GMC, a Korean company that makes a wide range of computer cases, sent us one of their popular HTPC cases, the GMC Noblesse AVC-S1. Will this case prove that good things come in small packages? Read on to find out." Here are some more Systems articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: GIGABYTE Technology | Subject: Motherboard
City of Industry, CA, September 24th, 2008 - GIGABYTE UNITED INC., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards today is pleased to introduce their revolutionary Ultra Durable 3 technology, the industry’s first consumer desktop motherboard design to feature 2 ounces of copper for both the Power and Ground layers, delivering a dramatically lower system temperature, improved energy efficiency and enhanced stability for overclocking. GIGABYTE once again leads the motherboard industry for the highest quality, most innovative motherboard design with the launch of their latest Ultra Durable 3 technology. Ultra Durable 3 motherboards are the first consumer desktop motherboards to feature double the amount of copper for the Power and Ground layers of the PCB. Most traditional motherboard designs utilize a single ounce of copper for each layer, whereas GIGABYTE’s ultra Durable 3 motherboards feature 2 ounces per layer. Benefits of 2 oz Copper design
In addition, doubling the amount of copper lowers the PCB impedance by 2X. Impedance is a measure of how much the circuit impedes the flow of current. The less the flow of current is impeded, the less amount of energy is wasted. For GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 3 motherboards, this means total PCB electrical waste is reduced by 2X, which also means less heat is generated. 2 ounces of copper also provides improved signal quality, providing better system stability and allowing for greater margins for overclocking. 50,000 Hour Japanese Solid Capacitors
DDR2 1366+ Native Memory Support
Quick Boost Technology GIGABYTE Quick Boost provides 3 levels of CPU performance enhancement; a simple click on the desired level delivers quick and effortless overclocking for novice and experienced users alike. Designed with user-friendliness in mind, GIGABYTE Quick Boost allows CPU performance to optimize automatically according to different hardware combination with hardware profiles test approved by GIGABYTE engineers. New GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced GIGABYTE's Dynamic Energy Saver (DES) has once again proven itself as the industry leading energy saving technology with newly introduced Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced. Featuring improved algorithms that provide a more accurate power saving calculation, GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced provides better energy saving capabilities and enhanced system performance. GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced is the world’s only motherboard energy saving technology with hardware-based Dynamic 6-Gear** Switching. With support for VRD 11.1, GIGABYTE’s DES Advanced allows the motherboard to switch to 1 Gear phase switching during idle, allowing for a dramatic increase in power savings. Designed with advanced users in mind, Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced allows users to take advantage of energy savings with or without the use the Dynamic Energy Saver Utility, for always-on, hardware based power savings. GIGABYTE has also retooled Dynamic Energy Saver to allow overclockers to experience the benefits of multi-gear power phase switching while overclocking, providing ultra stable, ultra smooth overclocking performance.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: [H]ard|OCP | Subject: Graphics Card
Buying a video card is getting quite difficult, especially if you want good value. There are an incredible amount of choices right now, with tiers running from the $150 value cards to the $500 top of the line models. [H]ard|OCP takes you through the 48xx series from AMD and the 2xx series from nVIDIA to try to figure out which cards offer you the best value. Whichever price level you are looking at, this review covers it.
"We look at the 10 combined Radeon 4800 and GeForce 200 series configurations. Our evaluation scales from what you get when you spend $150 on a video card, to what gaming gains should be expected when you spend $1100 on 4870X2 CrossFireX . Real world gameplay and Apples-to-Apples as well." Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Portal: Prelude | Subject: General Tech
Portal fans have something to look forward to, apart from importing the portal gun into Half Life 2 and getting stuck in places you were never meant to go. There is a mod coming out called Portal: Prelude which is set in the Aperture Science labs before the rise of GlaDOS, strangely enough. Due for release on the first birthday of the Orange Box, October 10th, you can expect 8 chapters, 19 test chambers, 48 challenges, 6 advanced maps, a brand new storyline and more than 400 lines of speech. Drop by the developers site, check out the screenshots and maybe offer some thanks.
"Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees, whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, and also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa's superiority." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: The Inquirer | Subject: Case and Cooling
Drop by The Inquirer for an overview of the plans that AMD and Intel have for making their platforms the best for virtual computing. First up is memory management, with the way virtual I/O traffic and devices are handled, then it will be on to getting the heavy lifting of virtualization
from software to hardware. Servers may never be totally real again.
"AS VIRTUALISATION continues to find uses for itself on top of being a server consolidation tool, AMD and Intel are both racing to cash in on the hype and bring the technology to a processor and chip-set level. According to EWeek, Intel and AMD spent much of their time at Vmworld waffling on about how to adapt their hardware to keep up with the workloads of virtual environments. First up on both companies' 'To-Do' lists; I/O virtualisation and making more intelligent use of memory allocations in both virtual and physical environments." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: Fudzilla | Subject: Graphics Card
I saw over at Fudzilla that ASUS has a new graphics card on their site today under the "Dark Knight" moniker. While I am not sure if the lawyers at DC Comics know about it yet, the card itself looks pretty cool and is based on the GeForce 9800 GTX+ 55nm G92 GPU.
The clocks on the card will run at 738 MHz core, 1836 MHz shader and 2200 MHz memory speeds - all of which are bone stock quite suprisingly. But hey, you do get a cool custom cooler design and a leather mousepad! Head over to ASUS.com for the rest of the data.
Asus has placed a new card on its product pages that will use a rather interesting "Dark Knight" cooler. The new EN9800GTX+ DK/HTDI/512M will have a dual slot cooler with four heatpipes, a large heatsink and a center placed fan. The new cooler might appear to look like a Batman sign but we just don't see a point and the "Dark Knight" just sounds weird.
The new Asus 9800GTX+ card uses non-reference blue PCB and works at 738MHz for the core, 1,836MHz for Shaders and 2,200MHz for 512MB of GDDR3 memory. As you can see from those numbers, despite the Dark Knight cooler and a non-reference PCB, the card is still working at reference clocks. Asus will bundle this card with a leather mouse pad and as always Asus wasn't kind enough to announce a cards release date and price.
Ryan Shrout | Source: General | Subject: Processor
In what will likely be the last series of dual-core processors to come from AMD's desktop team, the Athlon 6500 is based on the Kuma core and runs at 2.3 GHz. It is a 65nm CPU with HT3.0 support, it still uses a built-in DDR2 memory controller, shared 2M L3 cache, Cool''n'Quiet 2.0 and adds SSE4A support courtesy of other K10 processors. Expreview apparently got their hands on one and posted up a review of sorts.
From our test result, you can see lots of improvements have been done compare to Brisbane core. Take benchmark tool PCMark Vantage as an example, we've experienced about 8% in total score increase. You can see more improvement in real game and video transcode software: a same MPG video clip transcode, Kuma only used 1min 37sec, but Brisbane need 2min 26sec to finish the job, very impressive. In other words, Kuma is more better than other AMD dual core, not only the basic performance, the overclocking and memory ratio adjustment are also proved that the CPU is AMD's advancement in dual core arena. Power consumption is one of con of Kuma. We don't know if Kuma is a Agena with two cores disabled, but it really feels like. In default clock Athlon 6500 is 300MHz lower than Athlon64 X2 5000+, but power consumption is 20W higher no matter idle or active. It is still unclear that AMD will position the Kuma on which level. Till now we didn't see the product hit local market massively, only some E-tailers listed the Kuma CPU Athlon 6500. So if you got any info about the CPU's availability, please leave a comment here.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: techPowerUp! | Subject: Case and Cooling
400mm, 40cm, 16 inches ... no matter how you measure, the fan on the side of the
Aerocool Hi-Tech 7 Pro
is huge! The specs say the fan runs at 400 RPM, moves 250 CFM and only produces 12dbA, and techPowerUp's testing does show that it certain keeps things cool. Add a front LCD display with a few different modes to choose from and you have a rather nice that should fall at about the $100 price range.
"The Aerocool Hi-Tech 7 Pro features a huge 400 mm fan which is the biggest ever seen on a computer case so far. Also included is a fan controller and thermal monitor up front. We fire the turbine up to see how that monster fan performs." Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Pro-clockers.com | Subject: Memory
The 1800MHz DDR3 Extreme Performance kit from Patriot sports their Aluminium Copper Composite heatsinks, which for some reason are painted green. The run 8-8-8-24 @ 1.9V out of the box, Pro-Clockers pushed them to 2000MHz by relaxing the timings to 9-9-9-24. The $339 price tag doesn't hurt either!
"Patriot is one of those companies that are putting several kits of DDR2 and DDR3 for various users in mind. We have gone through several kits here at Pro-Clockers. These kits have been some of the best overclockers we have ever seen. And to satisfy the appetite of the overclocker and enthusiasts Patriot has unleashed the PV34G1800LLKN dual channel kit. Now that is a mouthful so we will break it down some to give you some idea of what the kit is about." Here are some more Memory articles from around the web:
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