Hardware Post: 02/09/11

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

MSI R6870 Hawk, only for real overclockers

MSI has unveiled a new video card belonging to the Hawk series. This series has become very popular among fans of overclocking because it integrates all the "extreme features" found on these customized versions of VGA top of the range products more affordable for the mainstream segment and performance.

The board is based on the core Barts XT Radeon HD 6870, but this is the only similarity to the reference model AMD. The PCB is novel and offers a power circuitry to 8 +2 phase surrounded by the electrical components of "military class" that best support the operation of the above is that this product may be exposed.

Nokia's smartphone kill N9 Intel / MeeGo

According to a Reuters report, Nokia has abandoned his N9, reportedly the first smartphone using the Intel Moorestown platform and operating system Meego. Reuters cites two sources close to Nokia. Nokia has not commented on the information. Such abandonment would be surprising then that the device seems finalized and could benefit from the Mobile World Congress next week as a springboard to launch.

SSD of 64 GB and 2 Port USB 3.0 ExpressCard

The manufacturer has unveiled a RunCore ExpressCard/34 adapter rather original, combining an SSD of 64 GB and two USB 3.0 connectors. Enough to significantly improve the characteristics of a laptop, provided it is equipped with an ExpressCard slot. Level performance, the SSD announcement RunCore integrated flows of about 110 MB / s read and 80MB / s write.

Caution, however, do not forget that the bandwidth allowed by the PCI-Express x1 this ExpressCard, or 250 MB / s, will be shared between the SSD and USB 3.0. The manufacturer has not stated the price or availability date of its ExpressCard Adapter 2-in-1.

ExpressCard (wikipedia) Universal Serial Bus (wikipedia) Solid-state drive (wikipedia)

Asus PA246Q "ProArte" a 24 "for graphic designers

Asus has announced the PA246Q ProArte, a 24-inch LCD monitor for professional use, covering 98% of AdobeRGB. With a P-IPS panel with a response time GTG 6 ms, this screen displays a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. It has viewing angles horizontally and vertically reaching 178 degrees and has VGA, DVI-D, HDMI 1.3 and DisplayPort 1.1a.

The contrast ratio is 1000: 1 (50,000: 1 dynamic) while the brightness peaks at 400 cd / m². A card reader 7-in-1 is integrated, and two USB 2.0 ports are available. The PA246Q ProArte is finally adjustable in height, swivel, rotation (+60 ° to -60 °) and tilt (+20 ° to -5 °). Expected for the month of March, the LCD screen should be offered at a suggested retail price of 499 euros.

Android 3.0 on Dell Streak

The Android 3.0 SDK was released a few days ago and developers so fun to install on commercial devices. Some thought qu'Honeycomb would be reserved for devices with a dual core processor, but it is not, at least with the SDK: Tablet Dell Streak makes the system work perfectly and its processor, however, is that a very classic Snapdragon to 1 GHz.

The tablet of Dell, which is for some big smartphone offers a 5-inch screen with 800 x 480, less than 1 280 x 800 expected on the 'real' shelves Android 3.0, but the system seems responsive and usable, which is a good point. Stephen Hyde, originally from the port, even a video of the whole.

Dell Streak (wikipedia)

Dell abandons Adamo

Dell has officially signed the death warrant its ultraportable, the Adamo, whose greatness was only launched matched only by its failure. The Adamo 13, released in March 2009, was intended to be the crown jewel of Texas. Supposed to compete with the MacBook Air, the manufacturer has released with great fanfare with teasers and conferences (see "The luxury ultraportable Dell Adamo finally launched").

Fusion of a Sony VAIO

Sony has added a new model for ultra-portable computer to its catalog: the VAIO Y Series. Featuring a 11.6 inch screen (1366 x 768 pixels), this notebook uses an AMD Fusion platform. There is therefore an APU dual-core (a Zacate E-350 running at 1.6 GHz), Radeon 6310 graphics chipset built into the same APU, 4 GB of DDR3 memory and a 500GB hard drive can also be found Supervisors 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 and VGA and HDMI outputs.

OCZ SSDs in 25 nm problematic

OCZ recently introduced, and without actually indicate Vertex with two memory etched into 25 nm. Besides the fact that the process is rather cavalier, this change poses two problems. The first is that the capacity decreases: while qu'OCZ announces 120 GB (114 GiB, so) and models with memory 34 nm have this much capacity, the 25 nm versions offer only 115 GB depending on returns, So about 109 GiB.

Sharkoon: boxes with 6 or 9 x 5.25 "

The German manufacturer Sharkoon has unveiled two new models of medium-size boxes in turn: the Scorpio 1000 to 2000. With dimensions of 500 x 210 x 503 mm, these cases show a slightly higher weight to 7 kg on the scale. Relatively similar, these two models differ only in their facade. The Scorpio 1000 has six bays at 5.25 inches and a 120mm fan (complete with blue LEDs), while the Scorpio 2000, has nine, but no fan of facade.

Intel and the bug Series 6

The long adventure continues with Intel, the chip maker introduces a new policy to solve the problem with the bug of PCH Series 6, introduced in January. The chipmaker, which has just started producing bug-free processors and resumed the distribution of the defective chip, changing the configuration of the standard operating platform.

In practice, the defective motherboard Serial ATA ports are disabled defective. Intel, according to different manufacturers, decided to begin deploying systems with H67 and P67 PCH as long as PCs are not configured to use serial ports from 2 to 5, with specific 3-Gbps. Remain active and functioning ports 0 and 1, which use the standard 3 to 6 Gbps Serial ATA.

Gartner, slow market in Europe in 4Q 2010

Gartner recently released data for the fourth quarter of last year for the PC market in EMEA. Leaving the market down, with a -4.4% in sales year over year, amounting to 19.4 million units. Together with data timestre was also announced on the report through 2010: the sector closed with 46 million units sold, without, therefore, a substantial change from 2009.

E 'to consider that Gartner does not include the tablet PC market, for now. To lose more in 2010 was the consumer sector, with a worrying 8.1% in Q4. In the aftermath of the recession, has affected much of the steering device manufacturers to the emerging world of information technology: tablet, console and e-readers have attracted investment from companies at the expense of PC.

Scythe Universal Retention Kit 3: secure mounting for last-generation CPUs

Scythe has announced the launch of the third version of its universal retention kit for heatsinks. This upgraded version comes with several enhancements and Multisocket broad support for both AMD and Intel. The list of compatible sockets containing Intel Socket T LGA775, LGA1156, 1366 and the new socket LGA1155.

As for AMD, is compatible with sockets 754, 939, AM2, AM2 +, AM3 and 940. The Universal Retention Kit 3 is, again, based on a mounting backplate that allows contact pressure and securely mount sinks even larger and heavier the market. The retention brackets are usually provided with motherboards AMD are plastic, and are likely to break if you install a high performance cooler.

Already started the production of the Apple iPad tablet 2

According to the latest rumors, Apple has already started production of the new iPad tablet 2 at the beginning of February. The information that is leaked confirm some previous assumptions while citing topics that may seem obvious. The WSJ, in fact, speaks of the fastest processor and graphics chip, more RAM memory and two camera, one front and one rear.

Apparently, though, there will be an upgrade on the resolution of the display which will remain confined to the existing 1024x768 pixels as compared to that of first generation, iPad 2 will be thinner and lighter. Fishing in the past news, however, you can make more concrete assumptions: CPU dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 running at 1.2 GHz, 512MB of RAM and SGX543MP2 PowerVR graphics chip dual-core processors.

Apple, the leading distributor of films for download in the U.S.

According to research conducted by iSuppli, Apple confirms the leading distributor of films for download in the United States, with a market share of 64.5%: iTunes is in fact the major tool for buying movies online in the U.S.. The second and third place went to Microsoft and Sony rank, increasing their market shares, corresponding respectively to 17.9% and 7.2%.

Despite these results, Apple has been a decline in market share of 10%, but what has allowed the company to maintain the primacy of Cupertino have been the boom in sales of iPad and the second generation of Apple Tv With covers the market for DVD, Paramount Pictures last quarter of 2010 declined by 44% in the sale of home video, while Time Warner has seen a fall of 23.5%.

Apple (homepage) LSE: APC (googlefinance) NASDAQ: AAPL (googlefinance) Apple (AAPL) (wikinvest) Apple (crunchbase) Apple Inc. (musicbrainz) Apple Inc. (wikipedia)

SP1 Windows 7? In 1 or 2 weeks

A body of evidence suggesting that the Service Pack 1 of Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) would come out in January. He was eventually do anything. A new rumor predicted the release of SP1 for February 16 for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and February 22 for the rest of the world. The sources, however, SP1 would indeed completed since mid-January.

Version 7601.17514.101119-1850 having transpired on the internet would be the RTM. Anyway, that SP1 will bring no new blatant particular user. It compiles mostly security updates issued since the launch of Windows 7 and adds two features - RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory - Windows Server 2008 R2.

Battlefield 3, first shots and new details

Game information was found in the latest issue of the first images of Battlefield 3, accompanied by new information and commentary on the game. The full scan of the note pages magazine is available in our gallery at this address, here are a summary of the new details: The Frostbite engine will handle the 2 radiosity in real-time, deferred rendering, audio, high dynamic range The animation system Destruction 3.0 ANT.

Action game for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360: Bullet Storm: censored German version of the game strongly Baller

"Bullet Storm" is a brutal action in the style of the Hollywood director - a fact that the responsible authority in Germany for the rating of computer games () certainly does not like. Thus, the manufacturer has adjusted the artillery duel for the local market. According games publisher Electronic Arts is omitted in the censored version - blood and splatter effects.

Opponent can not break up. The trimmed version of the action game, was recently awarded by the release of "18 years". In July 2010 announced that People Can Fly yet to develop any abridged version of "Bullet Storm. Compared to the online magazine of manufacturers said succinctly: "It would be great if the title is in Germany on the market.

Sharing licenses between IBM and Samsung

Samsung and IBM have announced they have signed an agreement to share a license. The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed. Both companies are known to possess an incalculable number of patents as diverse as their researchers. IBM is the first holder of patents in 2010 in the United States, followed by Samsung.

The statement cites very broad fields such as semiconductors, telecommunications and software. So we are dealing with a large share of license. This kind of partnership is often a desire to collaborate on specific technologies or solving a legal dispute cheaply. We know that the two companies already work together on software solutions for businesses and the Korean has recently announced work with Big Blue on research and development of 20 nm (see "IBM and Samsung against Intel's 20 nm) .

HIS today announced the Radeon 6950 1GB Fan

After Sapphire HIS also presented its version of the Radeon HD 6950 1GB. The card acts as a direct rival to the GeForce GTX 560 nVidia Ti and has a custom cooling system with fan central. The clock frequencies are the same as HD 6950 2GB, 800MHz for the GPU and 5000MHz (effective) for video memory, while the PCB is blue in color and has no switch Dual-Bios.

Under the shell version are "neutered" AMD GPU Cayman 1408 with SPs, 88 TMUs, 32 ROPs and 256-bit bus. The producer of Hong Kong indicates a date of sale for this model, called Fan HIS 6950 1GB, that of February 18 but without specifying the price.

Radeon (wikipedia)

For the first time, sell more smartphones than PCs

Firms IDC and Gartner have delivered a startling statistic: in the fourth quarter of 2010, for the first time ever, smartphone sales have exceeded those of PCs worldwide. This symbolic milestone reflects the gradual replacement of PC by other terminals. This phenomenon is, however, that in rich countries.

In the fourth, 2010, in rich countries like Europe and the United States, PC sales were lower than in 2009 (down 6.6% in the U.S. and 4% in Western Europe ). In contrast, in markets less mature and saturated, the PC still has a good health: + 15% in South America, 4.1% in the Asia-Pacific and 6.2 in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa).

An IBM supercomputer of 10 PFLOPS

IBM has announced that the U.S. Department of Energy had ordered a 10-petaflops supercomputer. For advancing research on the development of new batteries, or global warming, the BlueGene / Q nicknamed Mira will be operational by 2012. It should be 20 times faster Intrepid, the supercomputer used today by the U.S.

laboratories of the Department of Energy that are located in Chicago. It will also be twice as fast as the Tianhe-1A fastest supercomputer today (4.7 PFLOPS) (cf. "The first supercomputer in the world is Chinese). It will employ a total of 750,000 cores.

LSE: IBM (googlefinance) NYSE: IBM (googlefinance) IBM (homepage) International Business Machines (IBM) (wikinvest) IBM (crunchbase) IBM (wikipedia) FLOPS (wikipedia)

Samsung introduces two new series of ultra-thin LED monitors

Samsung has announced the launch of two new series of ultra-thin LED displays: the SA300 and SA350 series. Both are designed for the consumer sector and are distinguished by features that enhance the display and saving energy. These new monitors include the Magic Angle integrated function that lets you view images without distortion from different positions.

There are 5 ways to enjoy a variety of viewing options, among them the way reclined, feet and side. With regard to energy saving, mentioned both the Eco Saving makes possible to choose the monitor power consumption depending on the needs of each user and the other, the brightness of the monitor.

In Sicily, telephone and internet WiMAX from 10 Euro per month

The Adventure of WiMAX is now truly complete, Sicily: Mandarin launches call for bids through this wireless broadband technology, also available in areas not served by DSL. From 10 € per month (promotion). The coverage of Mandarin is widespread throughout Sicily, also in the countryside, where there are cases where even the telephone line malfunctions and is subject to long periods of blackout.

Acer GN245HQ full support for HDMI nVidia 3D solution

Enjoy movies and games in 3D is one of the most exciting and engaging entertainment. To make the most experience, has the Acer monitor GN245HQ, among the first 3D world that can support the HDMI nVidia's 3D solution that enables users to fully exploit all the possibilities of stereoscopic technology.

Thanks to the excellent graphics performance and the remarkable technology, the Acer GN245HQ 3D monitor is ideal for gaming and watching movies: the perfect solution for users passionate about technology and for gamers. The new Acer combines three-dimensional images in Full HD, HDMI connectivity offered by the 3-D or DVI-DL (dual link) with the nVidia 3D Vision technology, thereby setting the standard for advanced multimedia experiences in 3D.

Eric Besson does not grow in the net neutrality

In his speech at the parliamentary meetings and that the minister has on his Facebook page, Eric Besson advocates to charge the websites consuming the most traffic. The leitmotif of his speaking was a picture of a highway where the truckers, that is to say the biggest consumers of bandwidth demand to be treated the same way as individuals in their car and requesting an ambulance traffic faster.

What sounds are faulty hard drives?

Want to know if your hard drive to a problem simply by ear? It may be possible. Data Center, a company specializing in data recovery, has a page referencing the sound of a hard drive when he has a problem. And according to the noise and make of hard disk, it is possible to identify - with varying degrees of accuracy - the kind of failure.

Indeed, a record that has a problem of heads does not make the same noise as a hard disk with bearings in poor condition, for example. Disks Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi GST, IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Quantum are the party and even if not totally reliable, able to say "I know the problem" to your uncle / neighbor / friend / brother (delete as appropriate) just by hearing the hard drive is always impresses.

Bruit (wikipedia)

AMD Athlon X2 BE 565

AMD is constantly renewing its product line, both in terms of CPU Athlon II, both in terms of the most powerful Phenom II. The Phenom processor family II is currently distributed in three variants and two low-power standard. And then there are units with two, three, four and six cores, proposed for different application fields, from the performance of mainstream applications, to get to the gaming and compute-intensive parallel.

Intel restart deliveries of some systems Sandy Bridge

Not all the donuts come out with a hole, it is true, but this is an assumption that could also be seen on the contrary, Intel, which has not been made to make sweet, thought to look in the basket system Sandy Bridge after discovering the flaw Serial ATA controller, and non-affected fish. This means that from next February 15 of the sales will be restored.

In essence, since the bug is related only to three SATA ports, along with OEM partners, Intel has also decided to use the faulty chip, and systems based on them for selling them. For notebooks will be required that the disks and optical drives are connected to the two SATA ports that work perfectly 6Gbps.

What performance for a RAID of SSD?

In environments where performance are paramount, it is not uncommon to see dozens of clusters formed RAID disk drives. Today we try the experiment with January-May SSDs in RAID 0 via a robust controller LSI!

RAID (wikipedia)

App for iPhone, iPod touch: Google Translate: Free Translator for 57 languages

The operation of the app is very simple: First determine the source and target language and then enter any text in the space provided. Shortly thereafter, the full translation appears. For target languages with a small speaker icon that goes by voice: tap on the microphone icon, recite word or sentence - after a few seconds, the result appears on the display.

For 23 languages is a debate coach is available, which you reads the translation. Prerequisite for the use of Google Translate is an active Internet connection. All translation requests entered the app store, so they are also available offline. In a first short-Check Google Translate worked amazingly well.

Scheduling via the Internet: Meet Doodle launches new service

Meet provides users with insight into the scheduling of business partners and friends. To do this, lay down on the platform for free-Doodle own profile. In a calendar view you list your appointments already made. The schedule is fully public. Colleagues and friends set up based on your time planning the Meet-profile with no registration or login at any time request an appointment with you.

Your privacy remains intact: In the summary calendar will appear only your availability. Details of each of your appointments, the portal will not start. A model profile and more information, visit.

MeetMe (homepage) Internet (wikipedia)

Role-playing game for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360: Dungeon Siege 3: Manufacturers call date

In a land called Ehb things are heated. The guardians of the kingdom lost due to various disputes, the desire for job - the kingdom falls into chaos. Yes, you read that right - is in contrast to its predecessors it in "Dungeon Siege 3" is a story. After Obsidian Entertainment has taken over the production of the game developers and legend Chris Taylor only advise, the focus is on comprehensive action.

Cult-Game for iPhone & Co.: Angry Birds Seasons: Valentine's Day Special

The 15 new levels are part of the game "Angry Birds Seasons", which also includes Halloween and Christmas episodes. Those who bought the game because of this level, the Valentine's adventure get free, the rest will pay fair 79 cents - and get all three game worlds. On the gameplay also changes nothing on Valentine's Day: With a catapult to shoot angry pig birds to entrench themselves to take back the stolen cattle from the bristle eggs.

Fractal Design Unveils 3000 Core Case

The manufacturer Fractal Design has unveiled a new model of tower chassis compatible with ATX, Micro ATX and Mini ITX: Core 3000. Showing the dimensions of 200 x 430 x 480 mm, the housing has two bays in the format 5.25 inch and six 3.5 "internal sites, organized into two bays. By removing one of the two, it is possible to integrate a graphics card with a maximum length of 420 mm.

Three fans are included with the Core 3000: two 140 mm running at 1000 rpm and placed at the front and top, and a 120 mm (1200 rpm) on the back cover. The bulkhead will simplify the mounting of a liquid cooling system. Fractal Design has unfortunately not yet provided pricing or availability date.

MetaCreations Corp. (wikipedia)

Gaming PC Gaming PC Acer Aspire G5910 Predator

Intel's "Core i5" - and "Core i7" processor second-generation models bring the Predator on the go. The version 2.0 of the "Turbo Boost" technique is similar to the CPU utilization of the system and gives you smoother multitasking and energy efficiency. The presentation is a combination of the Intel chipset "P67" and, depending on the model, an external graphics card "GeForce" (Nvidia) or "Radeon" (AMD) is responsible.