Articles: Intel Core 2 Duo: E0 vs C0 While waiting for the Nehalem platform to launch, Intel has updated its 45nm Wolfdale core from C0 to E0 stepping. We have taken a closer look at what the new stepping has to offer in terms of overclocking and power consumption. Date: 2008-11-11 - 19:11 | Comment
Reviews: Ikonik Zaria A20 Fresh face Ikonik is launching several new products and we will look at one of its more stylish cases. Tough Ikonik Zaria A20 isn't just a designer product but also offers some interesting features. Date: 2008-11-06 - 21:11 | Comment
Articles: Overclocking Core i7 at Intel 2008 Overclocking at Intel is a world unique event that happens on the fall, right before Intel is about to unveil the next generation microprocessor architecture. Liquid nitrogen, tons of hardware and a group of elite overclockers. It just doesn't get any better than that. Date: 2008-11-03 - 21:11 | Comment
Reviews: Antec MicroFusion 350 Remote Antec MicroFusion 350 was the microATX version of the Fusion 430, and MicroFusion 350 Remote is an updated version, answering some of the calls from the HTPC community. We look at what it all adds up to in this review. Date: 2008-09-23 - 22:09 | Comment
AMD decided to takes things in its own hands during an event in Austin, Texas. It took the unreleased Phenom II, based on the quad-core Deneb architecture, and slapped a pot suitable for exotic on it. After lowering the temperature to -185°C and raising the voltage to somewhere north of 1.9V the processor was able to move north of 6GHz. We don't know the exact frequency. At this time this is actually higher than what Nehalem can do.
S3 Graphics is hardly what you would call a major actor on the graphics card actor, but with its Chrome family it offers cheap GPUs that supports most technologies expected from a modern graphics card. It has now launched its latest series of Chrome GPUs in the form of Chrome 500 Series that supports everything from DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.0 to an integrated Dolby Digital audio processor. S3 also say that the new series will offer up to 30% better performance at when playing Blu-ray movies but also 3D graphics.
Intel rocked the Solid State Drive market when it launched its MLC-based X25-M SSD a few months ago. The performance was unmatched at the time, a few SLC devices could keep up on some levels. Intel announced that it was working on an even faster model that would use Single-level Cell technology for even better performance. This unit, Intel X25-E, is on the way and the first benchmarks have now been posted and they look promising.
A few days ago the final specification for USB 3.0 was unveiled by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group. This was timed to happen at the start of SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference, where companies have been showing off their own USB 3.0 solutions. One of the perhaps most impressive demonstration was down by Synopsys Inc that showed how you can stream HDTV over the USB 3.0 interface. Not just any HD signal though, but an uncompressed 1080p signal at 30 fps that requires a transfer rate of up to 450 MB/s.
The HDMI interface is finally starting to get a foot in on the PC market. Almost all new monitors sports at least one HDMI input and even most graphics cards have HDMI outputs, or at least DVI->HDMI adapters in the box. It is still the home electronics market that is the ace up HDMI's sleeve as 95% of all digital TVs launched in 2008 had at least one HDMI input. HDMI is continuing to grow on the PC market and the next market to enter is the mobile one, which will reduce the spread of DVI by 30% annually up to 2012, while the HDMI will increase by 23% in the same period, according to In-Stat.
During an event in Japan, MSI decided to show off its successor to the Wind Notebook. The first model available in most countries was called U100 and the new model will be called U120. The differences may not be plenty, but U120 does bring some news for both the design and the hardware. First of all the computer how has a more angular look, for from the classic Volvo 242, but still not as curvy as the first model, which felt a bit too round to yours truly.
Samsung is one of the leading harddrive and memory manufacturers and that it is also a spearheading the development of Solid State Drives is anything but shocking news. It has now announced the mass production of a 256GB flagship model. Samsung claims that its new SSD doubles the performance of previous models, I.e. read speeds up to 220MB/s and read speeds of 200MB/s. This despite the fact that the drive uses MLC chips, but with in-house memory chips, memory controller and firmware Samsung has managed to reach new levels of performance. Samsung's 256GB will appear on the market relatively soon, but the price is yet to be announced.
Smooth Creations has unleashed its latest series of systems, based on the new Intel Core i7 processor series. The series is called Prophet and contains systems with each of three CPU models; Prophet XV with Core i7 920, Prophet iX with Core i7 940 and Prophet FX with Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. There is a selection of Radeon HD 4800 series graphics to choose from, but also GeForce GTX 280 or 260 from BFG. You should also know that any Core i7 system built with a pair of BFG Geforce GTX 260 or 280 will get a free custom-painted BFG logo & themed Fender guitar and a free copy of Far Cry2.
Asetek has announced the immediate availability of its liquid cooling solution LCLC (Low Cost Liquid Cooling) for Intel's new Core i7 processor series. The product is mainly designed for OEMs and we wouldn't be surprised if we see systems sporting both Core i7 and Asetek cooling soon. Many OEMs are already using LCLC with their systems and should be moving on to both Core i7 and the updated LCLC soon.
NVIDIA recently unveiled its desktop supercomputer Tesla C1060 whose technology is already being used in bigger systems. NVIDIA has namely contributed no less than 170 Tesla S1070 U1 rack systems to a supercomputer at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The supercomputer is called TSUBAME and its the first using a Tesla-based cluster. The system earlier used a Sun Fire cluster, alternating between Opteron and Xeon processors. After the upgrade to NVIDIA's Tesla cluster TSUBAME was clocked at a maximal performance of 162 TFLOPS. That makes it the 29th fastest computer on the planet.
Displays reacting to physical actions are hardly news but most of these touchscreens have been rather simple and can only handle a single touch, or command, at a time. The latest touchscreens allows users to put several fingers on the screen to control their devices. One of the most interesting markets for this technology is the notebook market. Mobile phones and other devices with small screens have been using touchscreen technology for long, but HP has now launched a small notebook that brings multi-touch into the sub-$1,300 segment.
NVIDIA has been spending a lot of energy on the CUDA concept enabling its GPUs to more than just render advanced graphics in games. NVIDIA has now taken the GPGPU concept one step further by launching a supercomputer that uses graphics circuits exclusively. The core of the system is the Tesla C1060 GPU that enables massive parallel calculations with up to 4 graphics cards. The price and size is just a fraction of what an equally fast computer cluster according to NVIDIA.
Noctua has built a reputation for making some of the quietest processor coolers and fans on the planet. It's critically acclaimed NH-U12P processor cooler (great name by the way) has won numerous awards and the same goes for its NF-P12 120mm fan. Noctua has now updated its lineup with NH-U12P SE1366 bringing the best of both of the previously mentioned to the new Intel Core i7 processors. The cooler will become available this week and cost EUR 56.90 / USD 64.90.
Corsair isn't just a busy RAM manufacturer, but also does some analytical studies on RAM and how it impacts the overall system performance from time to time. As a media that tries to remain objective it's hard to consider these articles entirely unbiased but the fact remains they are often well done and thoroughly executed. This is also the case with its latest article that looks at how the memory capacity affects performance in a Core i7 system.
Commodore is one of the brands that played significant role in the early years of the Personal Computer, and especially Commodore 64 will bring back a lot of memories for the nostalgic users. In 1994 Commodore went bankrupt and stopped making computers, but a few years back the brand was revived with the same focus on gaming and performance as in the past. Nowadays it is just the system building that needs to be done, the hardware is the same as in other PCs. Commodore has now announced that it will launch Core i7-based system, something we did not expect happening a few years back.
Copyright
NordicHardware 2000-2008 The content of this page is copyrighted by law and may
not be copied, redistributed, recreated or in any other way be used without written
consent from NordicHardware. NordicHardware takes no responsibility for any material damage
that has resulted from the content of this site.
S3 Graphics Launches Next Generation Chrome 500 Series
Winter? Hardware is blocking the windows
