ASUS Announces First Overclocked Radeon HD 4770 Accelerator
Barely 24 hours into the launch of the Radeon HD 4770, ASUS has announced its factory-overclocked, and overclocker-friendly variant of the ATI Radeon HD 4770 (model: EAH4770 TOP/HTDI/512MD5). Giving it the "TOP" branding, the company upped the clock speeds, and backed the product with its Voltage Tweak technology, and its popular SmartDoctor performance control application. The gains end-users have compared to using a reference design accelerator are two fold.
First, ASUS set the clock speeds at 800 MHz (core), and 850 MHz (memory), both 50 MHz bumps over the reference AMD clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory). Second, using the value-added features, the voltages can be upped from 0.95 V to 1.2 V, increasing the overclocking headroom. ASUS claims the core could be set at freqencies as high as 971 MHz, and 1150 MHz for the memory: a seemingly massive increment over the reference speeds, which ASUS rounds off as a 35% speed improvement. The card retains the reference AMD design, and the most common cooler design partners are currently using. Its pricing and availability are yet to be known.
Source: Tweak.dk
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HP Unveils Affordable ProBook Business Notebooks
HP today unveils a new brand of affordable notebook PCs that merge business functionality with sophisticated design to stand out from the crowd. The ProBook series joins HP's EliteBook series with a total of five new notebook models which incorporate a choice of merlot or glossy noir finishes, and feature high-definition (HD) LED backlit wide displays ranging from 14-inch to 17.3-inch diagonal sizes. The cheapest offering starts at $529. Please read the full story for more information.
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(PR) NEC Electronics and Renesas to Integrate Business Operations
NEC Electronics Corporation (NEC Electronics), Renesas Technology Corp. (Renesas), NEC Corporation (NEC), Hitachi, Ltd. (Hitachi), and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Mitsubishi Electric) today agreed to enter into negotiations to integrate business operations at NEC Electronics and Renesas.
NEC Electronics was established in 2002, separating from NEC, and Renesas was established in 2003, integrating semiconductor units at Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. Both as leading semiconductor companies, NEC Electronics and Renesas provide a wide variety of semiconductor solutions, primarily specializing in microcontroller units (MCUs). In light of fierce global competition in the semiconductor market, NEC Electronics and Renesas have agreed to explore the possibility of business integration in order to further strengthen their business foundations and technological assets while increasing corporate value through enhanced customer satisfaction. By integrating the world's two largest MCU suppliers, the new company will provide one of the most competitive MCU product lineups throughout the world.
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(PR) CoolIT Systems Acquires Delphi Liquid Cooling Assets
Today, CoolIT Systems announces the acquisition of Delphi Thermal Liquid Cooling assets including intellectual property, machinery, and equipment. The Delphi acquisition will provide CoolIT the additional mass market production resources to better accommodate the rapidly growing global industry demand for liquid cooled computers. As part of the Purchase Agreement, CoolIT Systems will be immediately servicing industry giants including Dell and Apple. With the acquisition, CoolIT reaffirms its position as the global leader in advanced liquid cooling for computers.
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Radeon HD 4770 Released, Industry's First 40 nm GPU
AMD today released the ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics card. The release marks several milestones for the company, mainly winning the race for the first GPU to be built on the 40 nm process, and the introduction second-generation GDDR5 memory for the mainstream consumer segment.
The brains of this card is the 40 nm AMD RV740 GPU. Its specifications include 640 stream processors that churn out over 900 GFLOPs of shader compute power, 32 texture memory units, and 16 render back-ends. The GPU is aided by 512 MB of fast GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. This provides the same amount of bandwidth as 256-bit GDDR3 commonly found in most graphics card in the range. The card is DirectX 10.1 compliant, and supports the ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU standard.
The card has been launched worldwide, with its initial US price set at $109, and an optional rebate that can send its price further down. In its range, it competes with NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and AMD's own Radeon HD 4830. TechPowerUp is one of the first technology portals to publish a thorough review of the Radeon HD 4770. Our review can be read here.
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(PR) New AMD Athlon X2 7850 BE Delivers Up to 55% Greater Value over Competing Products
AMD today announced the AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition processor, delivering leading technology and strong performance to the mainstream PC user for under $70 MSRP. Focused on designing and developing new products and platforms over the last 40 years, AMD's unique technologies continue to create compelling user experiences at an exceptional value. As part of this anniversary celebration, the newest addition to the AMD Athlon X2 7000 series of processors delivers a superior dual-core, performance-per-dollar PC experience for solutions at home and at play.
Given the current economic environment, consumers are seeking the best computing value without sacrificing the performance required to maintain their digital lifestyle. This new processor enables AMD technology partners and OEMs to address the industry need for affordable, powerful and energy efficient desktop PCs that help consumers to quickly and easily create, enjoy and share their digital world.
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(PR) PC Power & Cooling Introduces the Silencer 910 PSU
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today unveiled the new Silencer 910 power supply from PC Power & Cooling. The Silencer line has proven itself as one of the most trusted PSU series on the market over the past twenty years, built for absolute stability and reliability for high end enthusiast systems, and the newest addition to our legendary Silencer series completes the family of ultra-quiet highly reliable and efficient PSUs which now range from 370W to the new 910W (1KW peak). Featuring an industry-leading 80+ Silver Certification, the Silencer 910 offers one of the highest efficiencies on the market combined with a power output to meet the demands of the most component-heavy systems. Where ultimate power meets top efficiency, the robust Silencer 910 is the ideal solution for today's high-end gaming systems and professional workstations.
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Core i7 975 XE Breaks 5 GHz Barrier, With Air Cooling
Intel's newest high-end processor, the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition is gearing up for launch later this year, on course of which, it already passed a milestone. Xtreme Systems Forums member PcCI2iminal scored one with overclocking a Core i7 975 XE D0 stepping chip past the 5 GHz mark, 5015 MHz to be precise using only air cooling for the processor, with an ambient temperature of 20 آ°C as claimed by the overclocker. Its cooling was care of a Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120. Its partners in crime were Biostar TPower X58 motherboard, and Corsair Dominator DDR3-1866 memory. At that speed, the setup made it through a CPU-Z validation. PcCI2iminal was further able to put the chip through SuperPi 1M at a speed of 4750 MHz, where its crunch time was measured 8.672 seconds. For more pictures and screenshots, head over to the thread at Xtreme Systems.
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(PR) TriGem Debuts New 12-inch $699 Averatec N2700 Notebook
TriGem USA today announced the expansion of its mobile computing line with a new 12-inch Averatec N2700 notebook, featuring a 2 GHz Intel dual-core processor, 250 GB hard drive, 4 GB of memory, Microsoft Vista Home Premium and an 8X super-multi DVD optical drive. The notebook, which is currently shipping, is offered at an MSRP of $699.
"The N2700 notebook is an ideal solution for consumers looking for the sweet spot in terms of price, portability and performance," said Henry Hewitt, vice president of sales at TriGem USA. "It's larger and more powerful than a typical netbook computer and offers great portability over notebooks sporting 13-inch screens and larger."
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(PR) New Seagate Replica PC Backup Appliance Makes Data Backup And Recovery Effortless
Continuing its commitment to helping people preserve, protect and enjoy their digital content, Seagate today introduced a new backup appliance that completely eliminates the need to manually learn, manage, or dedicate any time to the backup process. Unlike most backup utilities, the new Seagate Replica backup appliance is a complete PC backup system, which automatically and continuously stores up-to-date copies of everything on a PC, including installed applications, operating system, e-mail, pictures, music, movies, Internet bookmarks and settings. Available in two configurations, the Seagate Replica solution delivers seamless backup for either a single PC or multiple PCs in a household.
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Point of View Out With 2 GB GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA partners seem to be gaining interest in releasing GeForce GTX 200 series products with double the amount of memory. Several partners have announced 1792 MB variants for the GTX 260 and GTX 275, while GTX 285 with its lavish 512-bit memory interface is facilitating 2 GB of memory. Point of View now has one such model of its own.
The card uses reference clock speeds as far as the GPU goes: 648 MHz (core) and 1476 MHz (shader), while going light with its memory, 1161 MHz against the reference speed of 1242 MHz. The rest of the card is pretty standard: 240 shader processors, acceleration for NVIDIA CUDA, and support for PhysX technology, and 3-way SLI support.
Source: Tweak.dk
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(PR) Toshiba to Launch World's First 32 nm Process NAND Flash Memory
Toshiba Corporation, reinforcing its leadership in the development and fabrication of cutting-edge, high density NAND flash memory, today announced that it will start shipping NAND flash memory products fabricated with 32nm process technology. Samples of the world's first 32 nm generation, 32-gigabit (Gb) single chips (4 gigabytes (GB)), offering the largest density of any NAND flash chip, are available from today, and 16 Gb chip (2 GB) products, the current mainstream density, will be available in July in Japan. The 32 Gb chips will first be applied to memory cards and USB memories and subsequently extended to embedded products.
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Gigabyte High-End P55 Motherboard Pictured
With the industry inching closer to the launch of Intel's Core i5 series processors, motherboard vendors are busy readying waves of motherboards to go with the processors' launch. Earlier in March, a picture of Gigabyte's first P55 chipset motherboard, the GA-IBP surfaced. The pictured then revealed a motherboard based on the Ultra Durable 2 component package. At an overclocking event in Los Angeles, Gigabyte unveiled a second motherboard. This one, yet to be named, is up to date with the Ultra Durable 3 package, a seemingly powerful CPU VRM design, support for dual-channel DDR3 memory, dual-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, an additional storage controller for four SATA ports over the six P55 offers, among standard features. The expansion slots on this board include three full-length PCI-Express slots, the first (blue) one being of full x16 bandwidth that shares 8 lanes with the first orange slot if populated, while the second orange slot is electrically x4, and probably connected to the P55 PCH. No other details have emerged about this board, though we're keeping track of things.
Source: PC Perspective
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CFD Unleashes the Interceptor line of SSDs
Japanese company CFD has unveiled a new line of multi-level cell SSDs under the "Interceptor" series. The series consists of four models based on the capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. The former two offer read/write speeds of 200/95 MB/s, while the latter two offer 240/150 MB/s: a significant difference in performance. The company also published raw performance figures on the product page, where the drives were tested on reasonably powerful current-generation machines. As for prices, the 32 GB model will be priced at 18,800 JPY (around US $194.5), 64 GB for 28,800 JPY (around $298), 128 GB for 45,800 JPY (around $474), and 256 GB for 79,800 (around $825).
Source: VR-Zone
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LG Intros 21.5'' Full HD W2243T Display
LG introduced the W2243T LCD monitor. The glossy, piano-black casing packs a 21.5 inch LCD panel, with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The panel features an access time of 5 ms. It has a static contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a dynamic ratio of 30000:1, with a maximum brightness of 300 cd/mآ². Standard DVI and D-Sub make for the monitor's connectivity options. It is available in the US for around $182, with its Japan launch set for April 30.
Source: TechConnect Magazine
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Windows 7 to Pack Virtual Windows XP
Across generations of its Windows operating systems based on the NT architecture, Microsoft has been courteous enough to pack application compatibility layers that let users run applications in compatibility modes for older versions of the OS. The company seems to be taking this to the next level with Windows 7. The release candidate of the OS slated for April 30, will pack an "XP mode" virtualization feature. The feature quite literally runs a Windows XP environment inside a sandbox complete with support for applications such as Internet Explorer 6, etc.
The environment will work on a virtual machine created by Windows 7. Native Windows XP applications you install in the environment, along with your documents and settings will further be accessible from the host OS. Client variants of Windows 7 may feature a Hyper-V hypervisor that handles applications such as these. The feature makes Windows 7 especially something to look forward to, for those complaining lack of Windows XP features. In short, it's the OS some probably clung onto, and refused to move to Vista, running as an application.
Sources: CrunchGear, betanews
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(PR) Hynix Announces High Speed, Low Power 50nm-class DDR2 DRAM
Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. announced that it has developed the world's first mobile 1Gb DDR2 DRAM using 54nm process technology. By successfully developing a 50nm-class process, Hynix has overcome the challenge of producing mobile DRAMs with both high speed and low power consumption features.
This device is offered at a maximum speed of 1066MHz, and with 32-bit I/O, boasts bandwidth of 4.26GB/s(Giga byte per second) on a single channel device and 8.52GB/s on a dual channel. Hynix's 'One Chip Solution' design, offers the customer flexible options with 2-bit or 4-bit prefetch, and 16 or 32-bit I/O on a single chip. Additionally, Hynix's new mobile DDR2 is an eco-friendly device since it consumes only 50% of power compared to the previous generation mobile DDR, and 30% compared to standard DDR2 DRAM.
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AMD Demos 48-core Opteron Server
Having recently made its plans with the server market public, AMD demonstrated a 4-socket server featuring four 12-core, next-generation Opteron processors. That's 48 cores in all. The company has pulled its six-core Istanbul Opteron processors' launch from H2 2008 to Q2 2008, and is set to launch its Opteron 6000 series processors based on the "Magny Cours" architecture in 2010.
Processors in the series come with 8 or 12 cores. The company seems to be ready with a few of these, enough to put together a 4-socket demo system. While AMD did not run any benchmarks on the system, it managed to draw some attention due to the fact that there hasn't been so much parallelism in a 4-way server till date. On the course of its 2010 launch, the company may hold more demonstrations, perhaps with benchmarks to show how the platform compares to competing solutions from rival Intel. The "Magny Cours" processor will be the first in line for the company's G34 "Maranello" platform for AMD Opteron 6000 series processors with up to 16 cores, 4 sockets, and quad-channel memory interfaces per socket. The 16-core processor in the making is slated for 2011, is based on the Bulldozer architecture, and will be built on the 32 nm process.
Source: Heise c't Magazin
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''Real Men Use Real Cores'': AMD
AMD finally stepped out of its shell after Intel's launch of its newest line of Xeon processors based on the Nehalem architecture. In an interview with TechPulse 360, AMD's Pat Patla and John Fruehe took on Intel's recent marketing drive for Nehalem Xeon products. The conversation revolved mainly around the issues of platform costs, and the features the new Xeon processors introduce (or reintroduce) to the server/enterprise computing industry, namely the company's proprietary FSB-replacement, QuickPath Interconnect, and HyperThreading.
The two first took on Intel's marketing, particularly on its material that said that the slowest Nehalem Xeon chip was faster than the fastest Opteron chip, saying that Intel's statements weren't backed by real figures. The two also alleged that Intel's server platform was too expensive and delivered lesser value in an ailing state of the economy. Perhaps the most audacious statement from AMD since the somewhat famous "only real men have fabs" statement by Jerry Sanders III, came from this interview, where AMD responded to a question on HyperThreading saying that "real men use real cores". "We’ve got real cores across our products. HyperThreading is basically designed to act like a core except that it only gives 10 to 15 percent performance bump for real applications workload." they said. Is AMD making a real point, or fighting fire...erm marketing with marketing? Find out in this interview.
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How does 101 Mbps sound? 
Tuan's QOTD series always sparks great discussions, sometimes receiving hundreds of responses. I've hijacked today's question to put forward an idea that you guys may (or may not) be into. 
Does this count as cheating at Jeopardy? 
Former IBM employee, Mark Papermaster has finally started working at Apple, following nearly seven months of legal headaches and red tape. 
Learning is a key here at Tom's Hardware. We strive to give you the latest tech info on a daily basis. However, once in a while, it's good to share and have some fun with tech too. 
Another one-weekend-only deal to keep you gaming. 
Today brings more news of hacking at the hands of Pirate Bay fans endeavoring to show support and solidarity. Is anyone surprised? 
Windows 7 to make a simple tweak that will make malware a little less sneaky 
Some of HP's entertainment notebooks are still experiencing video problems stemming from faulty Nvidia video chipsets. 
ProBook laptops are value-priced for businesses on the cash crunch. 
Find yourself visiting websites only soon after trying to cover your tracks by clearing the browser cache and history? If so, then you might be a candidate for Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. 
India has ditched its $10 PC in favor of the OLPC Foundation's 'hundred dollar' laptop. 
New Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 drivers save you RAM 
Graphics performance is one of the most scrutinized part of modern computer systems. The Windows 7 team is working on boosting the upcoming operating system’s graphics performance. 
Last week we (and just about everyone else) wrote about Skytone’s $100 Android-powered netbook, the Alpha 680. 
Axxana's slogan reads, "Built to last," and with its latest Phoenix System data system, they may very well survive with the cockroaches in a nuclear holocaust. 
General Electronics this week announced a breakthrough in holographic storage technology which could allow us to store up to 500 GB of data on one disc. In other words, ten Blu-ray Discs in one. 
Seagate Replica purportedly works like Apple's Time Machine 
In what many consider a move to bolster itself in the graphics sector, Apple has hired former ATI CTO Bob Drebin for an yet to be named project. 
Nvidia Tesla product manager Sumit Gupta said their GPUs speed up Windows 7 and Apple's "Snow Leopard" because they're cool like that. 
Gigabyte's regional finals wrapped up today. Competitors prepare for the grand finale this June in Taiwan. 
Today Gigabyte kicks off its regional finals for its world-wide overclocking competition. The regional finals is occurring in the Los Angeles area today and tomorrow. 
