Reviews: ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe is based on the upcoming Intel P45 chipset. We've gotten a chance to test one of the first functioning motherboards and today we present this review where we compare it to previous generations of Intel chipsets. Date: 2008-05-06 - 14:05 | Comment
Reviews: Intel Skulltrail preview Intel Skulltrail is the meanest, baddest piece of hardware available today. Two Intel Core 2 Extreme processors and four GPUs, either ATI or NVIDIA, it just doesn't get much better than this, or does it? Date: 2008-05-02 - 19:05 | Comment
Articles: Interview with Asetek CEO André Sloth Eriksen Asetek is a company that should ring a bell for anyone with at least minor overclocking experience. The company was founded on the idea of bringing advanced cooling to the ordinary user. We got the chance to ask Asetek CEO and founder André Sloth Eriksen a couple of questions about his past, Asetek and the future. Date: 2008-04-14 - 22:04 | Comment
Reviews: High-end graphics card roundup We decided to put something big together by gathering most of the high-end cards of today and put them against each other. Radeon HD 3870X2, 3870, 3850, 3650 meets GeForce 9800GTX, 9600GT, 8800GTS, 8800GT and 8800 Ultra. Date: 2008-04-04 - 12:04 | Comment
It seems Creative and driver modder Daniel Kawakami have made amends, as Daniel has been allowed to release a Dolby Digital Live Unlocker for the SoundBlaster X-Fi series. He was allowed to release the patch under the circumstances that he did not modify any existing executables or DLL files. We also heard that Creative is trying to repair some of the damage from the previousdrama by offering refunds to those who bought ALchemy.
SuperTalent has announced a new family of Solid State Drives, consisting of two series. One based on the faster, but also more expensive kind of flash memory, SLC (Single-Layer Cell); MasterDrive DX, and one based on the more affordable MLC (Multi-layer Cell) flash chips; MasterDrive MX. Both series sport a read speed of 120MB/s, while the DX line excels with a write speed of 70MB/s, which is far from record-breaking, but more than acceptable, while the MX series sports a mere 40MB/s read speed.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 is a highly popular cooler because of its very attractive price and decent performance. Like most modern after-market coolers, it has a tower design, which unfortunately makes it impossible to install in most HTPC cases. Arctic Cooling has therefore adapted the Freezer 7 design to a smaller, low-profile format with the launch of Freezer 7 LP. Freezer 7 LP is only 42mm high and weighs 263g. It sports two heatpipes leading from the base up to the top of the heatsink, 40 fins and an 80mm PWM fan.
AMD's will start production of 45nm processors this summer, quad-core Deneb and tri-core Propus, but it will not be using IBM's high-k process, but stick with vanilla 45nm SOI. In early 2009, AMD will introduce the next revision of the its K10 architecture, which will not only bring octo-cores to the market in late 2009, but also twice the L2 cache. Each core will then have 1MB of L2 cache to play with. This new revision will also bring a switch to the 45nm high-k process, which should enable AMD to go higher on the frequency ladder, but also change the behavior of the processors when hit by sub-zero cooling. We will just have to see if it's for better or for worse.
It wasn't long ago we told you about how Intel had snatched one of AMD's most important partners, Cray, and now it has slapped AMD's already torn face another time. Intel and SGI has announced that the two of them will design and build two supercomputers for NASA. One sporting a capacity of 1 PetaFLOPS, which will be ready in 2009, and a second system with a capacity of 10 PetaFLOPS in 2012. The supercomputer will be built at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, in California.
AMD revised it's naming pattern for its graphics cards when it launched the Radeon HD 3000 series. Instead of using twelve hundred different suffixes, it started to use nothing but numbers, which made it a whole lot easier to compare the cards. NVIDIA has now agreed that a simplified naming pattern may not be such a bad idea after all. While those who are well familiar with the GeForce series have no real trouble keeping the cards apart, new customers might be scared off from the many different cards and their complicated names;
We usually don't cover games here, but since this is so closely related to Linux we're going to make an exception. It has been confirmed that Valve is going to port its very popular Source engine to Linux. Source is the heart of many of the most popular online games we have today; Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat: Source, Portal, Garry's Mod and Team Fortress 2, and it based on Microsoft's DirectX API, but also supports video game consoles Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 has reached beta stage and the developers have decided to make the beta available to everyone (although only in English). Version 3.0 brings numerous new features to all applications in the suite (found below), both visible and beneath the shell. The most obvious update is the new neat-looking Start Center where you pick which of the modules you want to work in, or just open an existing document.
if you remember, we had a couple of stories about a concept card from ASUS that had three RV670 cores, where each core was on a separate MXM module attached to a mother card. It worked as a single card, alas it was just a concept even though it is the current world record holder for single cards in 3DMark 03. However it seems that EAH3850 Trinity has spawned a follower, which is much more than just a concept.
Rumors are going that the "asset smart" plan which AMD CEO Hector Ruiz announced last year, is in fact a plan to split the manufacturing part from the chip design and R&D. AMD has chosen not to comment on these rumors, and even though there's a share holders meeting tomorrow, AMD is not expected to make a statement on the matter. Analysts believe that AMD will share manufacturing with Chartered Semiconductor, or simply outsource to TMSC, in the future.
A secondary source has told us some interesting bits about the upcoming GeForce 9900GTX, a card which will be based on the GT200 chip. We provided you with quite a lot of information last month, and the second source confirms pretty much all of it. The only real difference is that GT200 will be the heart of the GeFoce 9900 series, which was confirmed earlier. The source confirms 240 shader processors, 32 ROPS, and a 512-bit memory controller. This means that the high-end card will sport 1GB GDDR3 memory.
Capacity and high frequency are usually two things don't go hand in hand when working with memories. Most high-end kits usually consists of two 1GB modules, but there are of course exceptions like SuperTalent's recently launched 4GB DDR3 kit that operated at 1800MHz. OCZ has no intention of being worse though, and has announced a 4GB kit of its own, and it has trumped SuperTalent by raising the frequency up to 2000MHz. The timings are set at 9-9-9 and the operating voltage 1.9V.
Yesterday we published a review of ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe, world's first review of a working Intel P45 motherboard. P5Q3 Deluxe has all the goodies ASUS' high-end boards usually has, but it also uses DDR3, a memory standard which is yet to be embraced by everyone. There's no need to panic though, because ASUS has a DDR2 version of the same board coming. It's called ASUS P5Q Deluxe and has almost all of the features P5Q3 Deluxe has, the only thing missing is the wireless network interface.
NEC has announced a new model of its MultiSync series [EDIT: for Scandinavia]; MultiSync LCD3090WQXi. The new model measures 30" diagonally, and sports a resolution at 2560x1600 pixels. The monitor can show 102% of the NTSC spectrum and 97.8% of Adobe's RGB, much thanks to the use of the high-grade H-IPS panel. The contrast ratio is set at 1000:1, response time at 6ms and brightness at 350cd/m². The monitor is said to sport viewing angles up to 178° without color distortion.
NVIDIA has finally announced the nForce 780a SLI chipset with Hybrid SLI technology. nForce 780a SLI is for the socket AM2+ platform and has an integrated graphics processor, which is kind of the key component here. Those who don't need a powerful graphics card will do just fine with the integrated graphics, but those who need more can install a discrete graphics card, GeForce 9800GTX or 9800GX2, and get an extra punch.
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