Techie Xplorer » Hardware

Sharp unveils 100GB Blu-ray Disc

sylv3rblade — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:21:42 +0000

Still popping DVDs? How about a 100GB BluRay disc to replace all that? Sharp has recently announced that it will be the first Blu-Ray disc maker to launch a recordable triple layer Blu-ray format with 100GB of storage capacity. Thats twice the capacity of current Blu-ray discs in the market.

Sharp’s new beefy disk, the VR-100BR1 will be available in Japan on July 30 and will be using the new BDXL format specifications introduced by the Blu-ray Disc Association in April. The BDXL format allows for a maximum 128GB of write-once capability for Blu-ray discs and can support up to 100GB of Blu-ray data in rewritable disc format.

BXDL’s secret lies in the addition of more recordable layers and allows for three to four recordable layers, while current 50GB Blu-ray discs have just two recordable layers.

By the numbers, Sharp’s VR-100BR1 can store up to 12 hours of regular digital TV broadcasts or nearly nine hours of digital satellite broadcasts. No word on pricing or a US release date but you can bet that upon seeing that number a lot of folks have had their curiousity piqued.

source PC World

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BluRay, Sharp, VR-100BR1

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Nvidia’s $200 GPU King: GeForce GTX 460

sylv3rblade — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:51:03 +0000

The release of the very first Fermi cards brought in mixed reactions. While it received praise for the architecture, speed and raw power, a lot more were disappointed at the cost and power consumption of these cards.

Nvidia’s newest Fermi card, The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 packs a lot of punch for just $200.

Compared with other Fermi cards, here’s where the GTX 460 stands:

	GTX 480	GTX 465	GTX 460 1GB	GTX 460 768MB
Stream Processors	480	352	336	336
Texture Address / Filtering	60/60	44/44	56/56	56/56
ROPs	48	32	32	24
Core Clock	700MHz	607MHz	675MHz	675MHz
Shader Clock	1401MHz	1215MHz	1350MHz	1350MHz
Memory Clock	924MHz (3696MHz data rate) GDDR5	802MHz (3208MHz data rate) GDDR5	900MHz (3.6GHz data rate) GDDR5	900MHz (3.6GHz data rate) GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
Frame Buffer	1.5GB	1GB	1GB	768MB
FP64	1/8 FP32	1/8 FP32	1/12 FP32	1/12 FP32
Transistor Count	3B	3B	1.95B	1.95B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm
Price Point	$499	$249	$229	$199

The GeForce GTX 460 is launched at ATI’s 5830 price point and AMD’s expected response is to drop price with it’s 5830 and 5850 cards.

Reviews for this new NVIDIA Fermi card can be found at:

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: FERMI, GeForece, GTX 460, Nvidia, video card

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Intel to Phase out Celeron Chips

sylv3rblade — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:03:24 +0000

It’s a long time coming but Intel may just phase out it’s Celeron line as early as next year in favor of upcoming Dual-core Atom processors.

DigiTimes reports that Intel is to put three new mobile Celerons on the market in September, but the rollout has hints of a product overlap for the Celeron and Atom line-up. The dual-core, 1.5GHz Atom N550 is due to launch soon and, at $86, would cost as much as Intel’s best Celeron.

Intel has not yet confirmed whether they intend to phase out the Celeron brand by 2011 or not. Though as old, the Celeron monicker is still powering some of the new netbooks and notebooks sporting CULVs.

source DigiTimes

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Atom, Celeron, Intel, Processor

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

HDBaseT looks to replace the HDMI standard

sylv3rblade — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:34:23 +0000

Several big names in the TV industry, Samsung, Sony, LG and others, are touting HDBaseT, a new audiovisual standard that looks to replace the HDMI standard while offering more bandwidth but keeping costs at a minimum. Now, you may be wondering how would a new cable keep costs down? HDBaseT will be using our trusty old CAT5/6 LAN cables instead of the more expensive (pricey… VERY pricey) HDMI cables.

HDBaseT supports cable lengths up to 328 feet, can pass HD and 3-D video signals, as well as data through an integrated 100MBit Ethernet connection. Having this much bandwidth should allow for new internet-connected TV services, such as Google TV which delivers advertising-funded services to TV sets.

The new standard also aims to declutter the growing mess of cables in our households, replacing old standars like S-Video, HDMI, DisplayPort, RGB, etc.

The standard will begin its rollout later this year. The majority of its volume will hit in 2011. Check out the comparison table below:

via Digital Trends

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ethernet cables, HDBaseT, LAN, LG, Samsung, Sony, TV

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

ATI Catalyst 10.6 Released

sylv3rblade — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:39:09 +0000

AMD has released the Catalyst 10.6 drivers for those running on ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 series desktop cards and Radeon HD 3000 and 4000 series IGPs.

Grab the download right here.

List of New features after the jump

ATI Catalyst 10.6 New features

- GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1

- Video De-blocking support

Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback (for users of Radeon HD 5000 series cards)

- Mosquito noise reduction

Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback (for users of Radeon HD 5000 series cards)

- Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 (OpenGL 4.0 supported by Radeon HD 5000 series only)

Performance improvements

- 3DMark Vantage

Overall scores improve up to 5% on a single ATI Radeon HD 5970

- Batman: Arkham Asylum

Performance improves up to 5% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 series cards

Performance improves up to 10% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

- Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark

Performance improves up to 4% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 10% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

Performance improves up to 3% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards

- Company of Heroes – DX10

Performance improves up to 7% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 5% with single card and CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

- Crysis Warhead

CrossFire performance improves by up to 7% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series cards

- DiRT 2 – DX9

Performance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

Performance improves up to 4% on single card ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards

- The Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena

Performance improves up to 15% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 13% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

Performance improves up to 8% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards

- Unigine Tropics

CrossFire performance improves by up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series cards

- World in Conflict

Performance improves up to 6% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 8% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

- Wolfenstein

Performance improves up to 18% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series cards

Performance improves up to 18% on CrossFire and single card ATI Radeon HD 5970 configurations

Performance improves up to 11% on CrossFire ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series cards

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ATI, Catalyst, Drivers, Graphics Cards

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Intel unveils Canoe Lake and Oak Trail Ultrathin Platforms

sylv3rblade — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:41:13 +0000

So how slim would you like your next netbook to be? Intel’s current offering for small computing devices AKA netbooks, the PineTrail line are usually housed in cases with thickness of an inch or less. Canoe Lake, the platform set to replace PineTrail is meant to slim down that size by half.

Intel has took the wraps of two new processor platforms, one for tablets, and the other for notebooks.

Canoe Lake is meant to address the ever increasing demands for notebooks and netbooks alike, more power and less space. This is highlighted by a “futuristic dual-core netbook measuring in at 14 millimeters thick – the world’s thinnest netbook” as shown below

As for the tablet side?

“Oak Trail”, a platform headed to consumers in early 2011, aims to “up to a 50 percent reduction in average power consumption with full HD-video playback.” Oh, and yes, it’ll also be thinner than existing tablet solutions

Of course if you’re familiar with laptops and/or tablets in anyway, you’ll quickly identify the two troublespots that such thin gadgets could encounter. Battery life, and heat dissipation. While there’s little doubt that these platforms will run on less power than that of today’s current offering, there’s a question of how much power they’ll be requiring and how much heat will they generate.

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Canoe Lake, Intel, Netbooks, Notebook, Oak Trail

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

AMD to ship several new processors

sylv3rblade — Tue, 11 May 2010 10:36:59 +0000

AMD is updating their current line of processors for budget-conscious system-builders. Nothing ground breaking since they’ll still be using existing core technologies but if you’re looking to build a cheap HTPC (like me), or are in need of an immediate upgrade, you may want to keep a look out for these new cores.

All these processors are AM3/AM2+ compatible which means they’ll work even if you have an older (relatively) motherboard without needing an expeditious motherboard upgrade. Below is a table of the new processors arranged by number of cores (it’s confusing at first but just keep the core count as your reference).

New Processor	Speed / Mhz	Cores	TDP	Price	Processor Replaced
Athlon II X4 640	3000	4	95W	$122	Athlon II X4 635
Athlon II X4 610e	2400	4	45W	$143	Athlon II X4 605e
Athlon II X3 445	3100	3	95W	$87	Athlon II X3 440
Athlon II X3 415e	2500	3	45W	$102	Athlon II X3 405e
Athlon II X2 260	3200	2	65W	$76	Athlon II X2 255
Athlon II X2 245e	2900	2	45W	$77	Athlon II X2 240

As with any update in processor models, you can expect the older models (the column to the furthest right) to drop down in price. If you’re looking for an energy efficient rig however, you may want to check out the ‘e’-labeled processor models.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Nvidia’s FERMI GF100 chips have arrived

sylv3rblade — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:05:29 +0000

After deliberately being late for a full cycle and the launch of Windows 7, NVIDIA has finally announced it’s new-generation graphics solution; Fermi-based GeForce GTX480 and GTX470.

I’m quite sure fanbois from the green and red camp are eager for benchmarks with the latest NVIDIA GF100 cards and ATI’s 5000 series flagship cards so I collected the reviews form MOST of the top hardware review sites and put them here.

A couple of mugshots before anything else.

This is the GTX 480.

And this is the GTX 470

As for the reviews, take your pick:

Anandtech
Benchmark Reviews
Bjorn3D.com
Computerbase
Elite Bastards
Firingsquad
Gaming Nexus
Guru3D
Hardocp
Hardware Canucks
Hardwareheaven
Hartware.net
HotHardware
Hardware.info
HEXUS.net.
HT4U
Ixbt
Legion Hardware
Legit Reviews
Neoseeker
Ninjalane
PC Games Hardware
PC Perspective
Sweclockers
Tom’s Hardware
TweakTown
TechPowerUp & 2
TechSpot
TweakTown

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: FERMI, GF100, Graphics Cards, Nvidia

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 Drivers Fix Fan Speed Issues

sylv3rblade — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:15:38 +0000

After confirming the problems GeForce 196.75 Drivers had with fan speeds, Nvidia releases GeForce 197.13 for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300-series and ION desktop GPUs, but not for the new GTX400 series.

Aside from fixing the fan speed/overheating bug, there’s also quite a few additions bundled in.

What’s new:

Adds support for Next Generation ION.
Adds support for GeForce GT 320, GeForce GT 330, and GeForce GT 340.
Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0129.
Upgrades HD Audio driver to version 1.0.9.1 (for supported GPUs).
Increases performance in several PC games from v196.21 WHQL. The following are examples of measured improvements. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

Up to 13% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with a single GPU
Up to 30% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with SLI technology
Up to 13% performance increase in H.A.W.X with single GPU
Up to 15% performance increase in H.A.W.X with SLI technology
Up to 30% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with single GPU
Up to 28% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with SLI technology

Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for top new gaming titles including Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver.
Enhanced SLI support for Metro 2033, Supreme Commander 2, Unigine, and World of Warcraft
Adds override anti-aliasing support for Mass Effect 2.
Includes numerous bug fixes.

Download: GeForce 197.13 Drivers

GeForce/ION Driver 197.13 Windows XP 32-bit
GeForce/ION Driver 197.13 Windows XP 64-bit
GeForce/ION Driver 197.13 Windows 7/Vista 32-bit
GeForce/ION Driver 197.13 Windows 7/Vista 64-bit

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Drivers, GeForce 197.13, Graphics Cards, Nvidia

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Intel unveils 6-core i7-980X Gulftown

sylv3rblade — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:03:44 +0000

6 Cores, 12 threads and a thousand dollar price, that’s Intel’s latest flagship processor, the i7-980X. Unveiled at the Game Developers Conference, Intel previewed it’s latest Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor, the fastest single chip processor on the consumer market (taking the crown from.. you guess it another i7 processor).

The Gulftown is Intel’s first six-core processor fabricated at 32nm, capable of handling 12 computing threads at once. As part of the Extreme Edition line, the i7-980X is targeted at enthusiasts and hardcore-gamers who have enough cash to purchase one (or even two ) of these benchmark monsters.

Specifications & Features

Core Frequency: 3.33GHz (Up To 3.6GHz w/ Turbo)
QPI Speed – 6.4GT/s
TDP (Thermal Design Power) – 130W
Stepping – 2
Number of CPU Cores – 6 (12 Threads w/ HT)
Intel SmarCache – 12MB
L2 Cache – 1.5MB (256K x 6)
Processor input voltage (VID) – .95v
.032-micron manufacturing process
Shared Smart Cache Technology
PECI Enabled
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled
Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled
Intel 64 Technology
AES-NI: 12 new processor instructions
Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
Packaging – Flip Chip LGA1366
Total Die Size: Approximately 248mm2
Approximately 1.17B Transistors
MSRP – $999

Intel bundles in a new stock cooler that matches it’s flagship processor speed with stylish looks we’d normally expect from Zalman, Coolermaster, etc.

Neat huh?

Here’s a run down of reviews from several top hardware sites:
AnandTech
Hothardware
Toms Hardware
PC Per
Tech Report

© sylv3rblade for Techie Xplorer, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 980X, i7, Intel, Processor

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh