Galaxy preparing a dual-GPU GTS 250 graphics card

Too much, too late

With Nvidia keeping busy gluing strings, sticks and paper to its paper dragon, some of their partners have decided to use some of that spare time to try and squeeze more performance from currently available technology. Expreview now reports that Galaxy has something “new” up its sleeve – the first ever dual-core GTS250 graphics card

Galaxy uses two low-power edition G92-426 GPUs, which should do well to keep power consumption at more reasonable levels. Each GPU has 1GB worth of 0.8ns DRAM chips at its disposal, which run on a 256-bit memory interface. The card boasts 6-phase design and uses Bussmann chokes, which should cater mostly to hardcore overclockers

We’re not sure whether Galaxy can pull this card off and make it commercially viable, but we’re pretty sure that it will be a tough task. Performance aside, DirectX 11 is here and simple juicing up of “old” cards won’t be that appealing to those looking forward to playing new titles in all their glory. What we’re sure of, though, is that this card won’t do much to divert media attention from the fact that Nvidia ain’t got squat on AMD as of yet, and it looks to remain that way for a while 

You can read more here

Inno3D gags Nvidia's GT 240

With a massive heatpipe cooler

Inno3D apparently got fed up with the GT 240 giving it mouth on a bad hangover and decided to slap a passive cooler on its 40nm GPU

According to Expreview, the new GT 240 will use the reference PCB and it will be clocked at 550MHz/3400MHz for the core and memory. It sports a rather large passive cooler, with four heatpipes and 50 aluminium fins

Zotac is the only other AIB to offer a passive GT 240. However, Zotac's GT 240 Zone Edition ships with slower DDR3 memory clocked at 790MHz, and it has a much smaller heatsink, with no heatpipes

More here

Nvidia releases its Geforce 196.21 WHQL drivers

SLI support for new games

Nvidia has rolled out a new version of its Geforce graphics WHQL certified drives, the 196.21 WHQL 
 
The new 196.21 version bring SLI and multi-GPU support for numerous games, a bunch of bug fixes for Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems as well as the new version of the PhysX System Software

The new driver supports all the cards from Geforce 6 series as well as ION GPUs. Games that are getting attention this time around include Avatar Demo, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, City Bus Simulator, Dirt 2, Ferrari Virtual Race, GREED: Black Border, Mass Effect 2, Mortal Online, Ninja Blade, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Demo, Planet 51, RUSE, Serious Sam HD, and Wings of Prey

As noted, the new driver is available for Windows 7, Vista and XP in both 32 and 64-bit flavours

You can download the new driver here

ASRock Ion330HT-BD detailed

Review: Multimedia Player replacement

It's been quite a while since our last Ion review, which was an Acer Revo. Meanwhile development didn't stand still and ASRock released a bunch of Ion Desktops. The latest ASRock incarnation features a dual-core Atom 330, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a 320GB 2.5" hard drive and in our case a Blu-ray reader which can also burn CDs and DVDs

It is rather small with 197x70x186mm and comes either in glossy white or glossy black. While the look is quite appealing, beware of finger prints



The backside hosts all the connections you might need. Six USB 2.0 ports, one Gb LAN port, VGA and HDMI, optical out, 5.1 audio out and eSATA/USB 2.0 combo gives you plenty of connection options. If your monitor does not feature an HDMI input, ASRock put an HDMI to DVI converter inside the box



Looking at it as a replacement for any multimedia player we see one design flaw. The USB ports are located only on the back side. When such a box is installed, it would have been wise to put at least one USB 2.0 port and the eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port on the front, so you would have been able to plug your external hard drives in without any hassle



Inside the box you find a 65W notebook power adapter, an additional SATA connector for a second hard drive and a remote control

Opening the case reveals it's really crowded in there. On top you see the optical drive which comes in two flavours, either a DVD burner or the more expensive DVD-burner with Blu-ray reader



Removing the drive bay you see the hard drive beneath the optical drive. We are not sure, if it's wise to mount a hard drive head over, ASRock could adapt the mechanism to fit the HDD in a normal position



Without the drive bay, we get a good look on the board. During our photo-shot in bad light conditions we did not remove the board entirely, because you need to remove the backplate. As you can see, there are two massive aluminium heatsinks inside. The most disappointing is a 3cm mini-fan mounted to the Atom heatsink



While Acer with its Revo used a netbook board, ASRock went the desktop way. The VRM is pretty conservative which means, it does not really save energy. Again, if this box comes at €150 nobody would care, but with a price about €300 for the DVD edition and €395 for the BD edition we expected more

Of course we checked the basics of the machine, and as CPUz and GPUz reports, all is within the norm






As you can imagine, installing Windows XP and Windows 7 was a strain and took quite long. Surprisingly booting both systems was done within 35 seconds, not bad for such a lame CPU While we worked the original small fan truly annoyed us, so we had no choice but to remove it

 Before disassembling the case we noticed the bottom of the case where the board is mounted gets very warm which is not good either, because the heat can't dissipate. After removing the fan we put the case on the side which does help to keep the board cooler. Besides that, we reduced the settings of the FSB to 100 to underclock the Atom 330 CPU to 1.20GHz. Reduction of the VCore is limited to 0.1V, but it helps. The new "speed" is still sufficient to run all basic applications such as browsers and media players without noticeable delay. The new fan did help and the box was not as annoying anymore, but it was still not silent

The strong side of Nvidia's Ion is the ability to accelerate HD content decoding. To achieve that you need a player capable of using DXVA during playback. If you think the Windows Media Player is the choice to go, you are wrong. Microsoft is not able to do so with containers they don't like such as .MKV and even under Windows 7 WMV decoding was not as fast as it could be

Of course we used Media Player Classics with DVXA support. It can internally accelerate decoding of H264 and VC-1. The later only when the frames are progressive, interlaced material is not common and so not yet supported. In Windows 7 we used the 64-bit flavour but our impression is, XP is the faster way to go, even when you disable all the eye-candy Windows 7 is providing

Normal .AVI files encoded with either DivX or XviD are no problem whatsoever. All decoding is done by the CPU



720p works even better, because Ion accelerates decoding



With 1080p content it gets more interesting. Under Windows XP the Windows Media Player is hopeless. While the Task Manager shows about 50% usage, the movie is stuttering 



Media Player Classic on the other hand, had no problems to provide a proper HD experience



Under Windows 7 the Windows Media Player did better, but we don't think it is, because Ion helped. We think the 64bit code did accelerate the decoding a lot. The original source is a WMV file



Now the same file inside a MKV-container but decoding still with Windows Media Player



The Media Player Classic x64 did not struggle, regardless of container. The first is the WMV-file



The same file in a MKV-container



ASRock provides an OEM version of Cyberlink so you may watch a BluRay disc. It does just work

We are sorry not to bore you with useless 3DMark numbers, except 2003 which we used for full power consumption. Neither the Ion nor the Atom are designed to give you a gaming experience and we have better things to do than waste time with that. If you happen to use games which were state of the art in 2003 or before, you can play them. As we have shown decoding HD content is the strong suite of the Ion as long as you have a player to do so. We had no problems with XP or Windows 7. Kudos to the Media Player Classic developers which managed to support DXVA for XP and decoding mostly faster as a 64-bit Windows 7



Power-Consumption was a bit off from what we originally expected, but a dual-core running mostly under 30W in normal operation is not a bad thing. Under load Ion does contribute about 15W. All LEDs, IR and WLAN were disabled to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. Due to the normal board design in contrast to the Revo power-consumption is higher Downclocking the Ion and the Atom resulted in 5W reduction and a very quiet system




Conclusion


The ASRock Ion330HT box is a two edged sword. While we were impressed with the HD support of the Ion and the quite delay-free operation under Windows, we have some issues with the box itself. The 3cm fan is a bad idea, because it's not possible to remove the noise completely, as it has to spin at a considerable speed to generate any airflow. In Europe we like noiseless computers, especially if they don't feature superior performance. A better cooling system is the wish for the next revision of the box. Also to have left out USB 2.0 ports and/or SATA connectors on the front is bad choice

The box is not a bargain. You can buy it for about €220,-as a barebone, or cash out €80,- more to get it with a DVD burner, 320GB hard drive and 2GB memory. The top model we tested here comes with a Blu-ray reader and DVD burner combo drive for about €395,- which is the best offer, considering the optical drive costs €150,- alone

Removing the 3cm fan and downclocking the Atom and the Ion made the experience quite nice, but we think ASRock should consider noise before they design a desktop. ASRock did send us a BIOS which can reduce the Ion to 300/800MHz, which should be released in a week or two. The lower speeds are still good for HD-content but will decrease the heat and enables any user to remove the 3cm fan. You can also reduce the speed of the back-fan to ultra-silent and the box gets really quiet

All in all, we like the box despite these flaws and if you are searching for a second machine to save some energy without the need to run your quad-core/SLI machine all the time, this is the computer for you to do basic stuff and watch HD-content

Sparkle shows its Calibre Cuti nettop

Intel Atom 330 and ION

Looking a bit different than the Calibre Cuti n30 which was shown at last year's Computex show, Sparkle has announced a new version of its Calibre Cuti ION nettop

The new one features pretty much the same specifications as the n30 showed at Computex, but it looks a bit different. It comes with Intel's Atom 330 dual-core CPU combined with Nvidia's ION platform. It can be equipped with up to 4GB of memory, 160 or 320GB hard drive (supports up to 500GB), has integrated Geforce 9400 graphics, courtesy of ION, Gigabit LAN, 802.11bgn WiFi optional Bluetooth, 7.1-channel audio, six USB ports, and a card reader

As far as the outputs are concerned, Calibre Cuti has it all covered with DVI and HDMI with support for 1080p reproduction, thanks to the Nvidia Geforce 9400 GPU. According to Sparkle

the new Calibre Cuti consumes 30W under full load and 14W in idle, while the noise level is around 26dBA under full load and 3dBA in stand-by

The price or the availability date haven't been announced yet, but we must note that Calibre Cuti does look neat. It will be available in white or black colour options and the minimalistic and simple design always works best

Here are some pictures of the new Calibre Cuti and we will keep an eye on it to make sure we spot it once it hits retail/e-tail







 

LaCie launches new über-cool USB keys

Sweet little CooKey and WhizKey

LaCie is a rather interesting company, not due to its tech prowess, but thanks to its love of good design. Over the years LaCie contracted several top notch design teams for its products

 including Porsche. The new CooKey was designed by 5.5 designers, and kudos to them



The all-metal CooKey is a rather pricey device, as it costs about twice as much as a regular drive. Performance is not impressive, but that's really beside the point. The outfit has been flogging key shaped USB drives for ages and we think they're among the best looking drives out there. Prices start at €19 for a 4GB unit, while the 32GB version will set you back a saucy €99

 Expensive? Sure, but they just look like they're worth it



In addition to the CooKey, LaCie also launched the alcoholic friendly WhizKey, which is reminiscent of the old itsaKey, pictured left. It also offers the imaKey, seen on the right

Intel ships three new-old CPUs

Celeron, Pentium and Core 2 Quad

Intel has started shipping three new CPUs, which really aren't that new, or exciting for that matter

The Core 2 Quad 9500 is a no thrills quad core clocked at 2.83GHz. It will replace the 2.67GHz Q9400 and the price should end up the same, €149

The Wolfdale based Pentium E6600 is basically a slightly faster incarnation of the old E6500 and it's clocked at 3.06GHz. It is already available in Germany for €75, which is not bad, but it's not great either, as AMD is shipping its Athlon II 620 quad-core at virtually the same price

The E3400 is available for €46. It's clocked at 2.6GHz and like the E6600, it's based on the Wolfdale 1M core. Sounds like decent deal for office machines or undemanding consumers

Although Intel's Core architecture is going from strength to strength, we will still see quite a few Socket 775 processors in the months to come, especially in the low end

Dual GF100 Fermi should be in April

Grain of salt is a must with Nvidia's schedules

Single-chip Fermi and the card codenamed GF100 should launch in March. This should be the launch time frame and a dual-chip version might follow in roughly one+ months after the official single-chip launches

This is roughly the plan as it will take some time to prepare this dual headed beast, especially since Fermi will be the hottest chip in Nvidia's history. Naturally,  putting two such chips on the same card won't be a walk in the park

The important thing is that dual-chip card is possible and Nvidia is working on it. The big issue is of course that it will take roughly three months from today before you will be able to buy one whereas ATI's dual-GPU card has been selling for more than a month, closer to two now

ITG xpPhone priced

From US $400 to $650

A phone that has recently stirred up quite a bit of interest is ITG's xpPhone, a MID-like device that runs on Windows XP, has finally got its price tag. According to ITG, the xpPhone will be available with a US $400 to US $650 price tag (3,000 - 4,500 Chinese RMB) depending on the version, or to be precise, depending on the configuration

The xpPhone still features a mysterious "AMD Super Mobile CPU" and will be available with either 512MB or 1GB of memory. The storage also has wide variety of HDD from 30GB to 120GB and SSD options ranging from 8 to 64GB. It has a 4.8-inch 800x480 TFT touch screen and almost every connectivity option that you might need

In order to come up with a phone that runs on Windows XP OS, the guys from ITG had to come up with some pretty neat technologies like the one that pulls the phone from standby mode when there is an incoming call or a message, as well as a neat dial-up interface

All in all, it does look quite neat but we'll hold our final judgment until we see some reviews. Unfortunately, ITG is still holding back on the availability date for both China and the rest of the world

You can check out more details about the xpPhone here

Megadeth reveals plans for a Guitar Hero game

Guitar Hero box set not attractive for them

While answering fan mail on the band's official site, Megadeth’s frontman Dave Mustaine hinted at the band’s big plans on the gaming front by saying that he had “high level meetings with the people from Activision and Neversoft

Mustaine said that the idea of a Guitar Hero box set is not attractive to him but he mentions a “new idea that they offered [him]” and how “the creative stuff we’re talking about is over-the-moon!” While many will interpret this move as his longstanding wish to outshine Metallica, we must admit that we’re looking forward to seeing just what this is about

Yours truly must admit that the notion of making a big deal out of the same game with a different band does get boring after a while, but let’s hope Mustaine and the Guitar Hero team will find a way to refresh this genre a bit

More here

EVGA to release benchmarking and stress testing utility

Multi-GPU benchmarking, EVGA Precision integration

Yesterday, our friend Jacob Freeman from EVGA uploaded an image on TwitPic depicting an upcoming proprietary benchmarking and stress testing utility for desktop graphics cards

Not much is known about the utility at this point other than the fact that it will be designed and developed to run on Nvidia Geforce desktop cards. We aren’t sure about ATI compatibility at this point, but it could very well be under consideration. In perspective, the utility can be seen as EVGA’s version of Furmark or ATI Tool, complete with GPU artifact scanning by stress testing as well as benchmarking options



According to the company, the utility will also be able to integrate with EVGA Precision which would turn the entire software combination into an overclocking, voltage tuner, monitor and stress test all-in-one package. This is definitely something that many EVGA users have been looking forward to and we are definitely looking forward to the first release

In addition, the plan is to eventually enable multi-GPU support which would mark the first time that an Nvidia-oriented application will be able to run SLI stress testing. As far as availability goes, Jacob says it will be “coming soon to an EVGA card near you,” and we are hoping the release will be sometime within the next week or two

As of now, the company is taking suggestions, comments and feedback in the official EVGA forum discussion thread here

Tegra 2 tablets coming soon

CES 2010: All down to software

Director of Nvidia’s Tegra Business Bill Henry was happy to show us two Tegra 2 based tablets, and we were able to interact and play with them. Telecoms should probably be among first companies to bring these devices to market, and we can tell that at least one of the two prototypes runs quite fast



It is all up to software, as Tegra 2 has a Cortex A9 dual-core CPU and enough horsepower to play HD video, and if the developers manage to optimize the software these devices will be fine

The operating system of choice seems to be Android, while everyone goes for the 7 inch format

 One of the two tablets we’ve seen had Jensen's personal pictures on it, and this was the faster or two. Tegra knows who's her daddy. sub.ed



The user interface is easy to use, touch navigated of course, and the whole device simply looks like an oversized iPhone wannabe. We expect to see quite a few of them, but the only reason to go out and buy them would be if Tegra-based tablets end up really cheap. At the moment you can buy most 10-inch netbooks for under $299, so tablet pricing should be close

 

MSI showcased dual screen touch notebook

CES 2010: Windows 7, Menlow,  10-inch panel

MSI seems to be the first company to ever show dual-screen notebook without a hardware keyboard. The concept is pretty simple, the notebook has two 10-inch screens and both of them are touch sensitive

MSI has the ebook market in its sights, as it claims that the device can be a good ebook reader and at the same time can run Windows 7. If you need a keyboard you will have to be satisfied with a virtual one. The device comes with an SSD drive as well as with Intel’s Menlow, low power Atom CPU



We don’t know much about battery life and potential availability but we will sure ask around. All in all except the finger smudge that you can see all over any touchscreens, there is nothing major to complain about. One can argue that hardware keyboard is irreplaceable, but millions of iPhone and similar touch copycats seems to be doing fine with touch

Don’t forget that MSI has a Tegra-2 based tablet in the pipe as well, so the choice is yours. If you still desperately want a keyboard, you will have plenty products to choose from

Globalfoundries completes Chartered Semi integration

Resistance was futile

Globalfoundries CEO Doug Grose announced Wednesday that the company has completed the integration of Chartered Semiconductor and that the companies were now effectively one big, Abu Dhabi-owned chipmaker

ATIC acquired Chartered for $5.6 billion last year and the deal was finalized in December

 Former Chartered CEO Chia Song Hwee is now Globalfoundries' Chief Operating Officer

The takeover and subsequent full integration of the companies have resulted in a rather interesting conglomeration of Globalfoundies' technological prowess, Chartered's long client list and seemingly endless ATIC's funding that will allow the company to expand at a fast pace

Globalfoundries now has more than 150 clients, a total of six fabs, as well as a fab under construction in New York State. Not bad for a company that did not even exist 15 months ago

Grouse claims Globalfoundries will double its manufacturing capacity by 2014

HD 5670 reviewed, praised and loved

Faster than GTS 240, slower than HD 4770

Hardwarezone has jumped the gun and posted the first Redwood HD 5670 review. ATI's new mainstream card looks like quite a performer, as it manages to outpace Nvidia's GTS 240 and in some scenarios it's even faster than the 9800 GT. It still ends up a bit slower than ATI's DX10 HD 4770

Reviewers noted that the HD 5670 has some difficulties coping with antialiasing on higher resolutions, but this is a mainstream product and more demanding consumers will probably go for HD 5700 or 5800 series cards anyway

The HD 5670 is a huge improvement over the 4600 series, but in our opinion it's still a bit pricey, as it sells for €70 to €100 depending on the SKU

You can check out the review here 

IT spending starts again

Forrester predicts

The soothsayers at Forrester Research have been consulting their tarot cards and are convinced that businesses and governments around the world are set to resume IT spending in 2010. In the past they saw the 10 of swords which they think shows a dismal 2009, however the other cards for this year are a lot more fortunate

Global IT spending is forecast to rise 8.1 percent in 2010 to more than $1.6 trillion, following an 8.9 percent decline in 2009, according to Forrester. It says that US IT spending is projected to grow 6.6 percent to $568 billion in 2010 after an 8.2 percent decline in 2009. Andrew Bartels, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, in a statement that the technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over and all the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound

The tech recovery in the US will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with tech spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product in 2010. Software and computer hardware will see the greatest growth. Global purchases of computer equipment will be up 8.2 percent this year. Communications equipment buying will be up 7.6 per cent, software spending up 9.7 per cent, purchases of IT consulting and systems integration services up 6.8 per cent and IT outsourcing services up 7.1 per cent

Europe will be the strongest growing region for IT spending this year, led by Western and Central Europe, where tech purchases will rise by 11.2 percent. This is thanks to the dollar's decline against the euro. IT purchases in Canada will grow by 9.9 percent, Asia Pacific by 7.8 percent and Latin America by 7.7 percent, the firm predicted

The weakest market will be Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, rising by just 2.4 percent, Forrester said  

Nintendo DS motion control claims misinterpreted

Lost in translation, Nintendo claims

Although much was made of the news in which Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata talked about next-gen DS featuring motion control, Nintendo now claims that those claims were misinterpreted and that Mr. Iwata “did not make any comments regarding the functions of Nintendo’s future hardware systems

The news originally reported online by Kotaku have been translated perfectly from the source, but it seems it was the actual newspaper that misinterpreted a thing or two. In fact, Charlie Scibetta, senior director of corporate communications in Nintendo America himself said that "The answer to the reporter's question was misinterpreted

Fortunately for us, we’ve already found someone who actually has interest in DS motion control, let’s just hope Nintendo doesn’t put a stop on that and calls it a misinterpretation

More here

CoolIT working on VGA cooler as well

The OMNI A.L.C

In addition to two new CPU coolers, CoolIT has revealed what they claim to be "the world's first universal full coverage liquid cooling solution for video cards". The OMNI A.L.C. will feature an interposer plate, that will be changeable and unique to each model of the graphics card



The OMNI A.L.C. has the same ceramic bearing CFF1 pump and will be available with both 120mm and 240mm radiator. The OMNI A.L.C. is actually a two stage system where the actual plate is separated from the system which gives it a great flexibility when it comes to upgrading, and we guess that they will be available separately



This one will also feature the new ESP (Extra Sensory Peripherals) wireless technology that enables control and monitoring via CoolIT's Maestro software and wireless USB controller

The OMNI A.L.C. "packages" will be available for a number of current and probably some upcoming card while the price will vary depending on the GPU. Unfortunately, CoolIT didn't reveal the precise availability date or even hint about the average price. Considering the fact that this one scored the CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree, we will surely keep our eye on it

OCZ And The Wrap

OCZ Sees an SSD Future

OCZ originally won hearts and minds of gamers with its memory lineup, but OCZ’s marketing manager Jessica Luken suggested that the market for DRAM modules is getting, well, a little boring given existing limitations, like the voltage restrictions on memory controllers now integrated into Intel CPUs. She noted that there’s little room for innovation, and while the company will continue to offer performance modules, it probably won’t take part in the arms race beyond 2 GHz that seems to be going on with other memory vendors

At the same time, she seemed quite animated about solid state drives, and OCZ is doing some interesting things with SSDs. Witness two products that exist at extreme ends of the spectrum: its recently-announced USB 3.0 external SSD and a PCI Express SSD card that’s both RAID-capable and expandable

EVGA unveils its dual-socket 270-GT-W555 beast motherboard

Hands on: Literally the size of an extra-large pizza

During the course of our venture at CES 2010, we had an incredible opportunity to stop by the EVGA suite at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas for two hours of talk-time with Product Manager Jacob Freeman and living overclocking legend Peter Tan “Shamino” regarding some upcoming products in the company’s queue

Last March, the company released a product lineup that drove us enthusiasts to spend our time e-camping on its product page for weeks in advance, pledged us to skip precious hours of sleep and encouraged us to converse with hundreds of fellow EVGA forum dwellers into the wee hours of the night. The company dubbed these products “the ULTIMATE in X58 motherboards,” a revolution in modern PC overclocking freedom and potential which became known as the EVGA X58 SLI Classified series. Since that time, there have been unprecedented advances in performance trends across the HWBot as enthusiasts seek to murder the 3DMark world record stats pages and motivate the cycle of hardware innovation for generations to come

EVGA’s flagship X58 4-way SLI compared with the EVGA 270-GT-W555

EVGA’s latest and greatest creation comes in the form of a dual-socket LGA 1366 enormous giant codenamed 270-GT-W555. Right off the top, it is clearly evident that this is perhaps the largest PC gaming and enthusiast-oriented motherboard to have ever been considered for release in the public consumer market. It not only features dual LGA 1366 sockets for Intel 45nm Xeon 5500-series processors and upcoming 32nm Westmere-based variants, but it also supports up to 48GB of DDR3 1600MHz+ working in triple-channel mode across all twelve slots

 

Many have been asking about the form-factor type of the 270-GT-W555 for the past few days since its official debut at CES. We tried getting answers out of Jacob and Peter, but they told us that there is currently no official ATX standard for this size board. We searched through Wikipedia and stumbled upon a form factor known as Super WTX, but not much is known about it and Intel appears to have discontinued the WTX standard almost ten years ago. What we do know is that the EVGA board will fit in a Pizza Hut extra-large pizza box – not quite a Domino’s box – and that it only fits in two computer case lineups ever manufactured in the world. One series is from Lian-Li, and the other series is from SuperMicro

 

The board also features eight USB 2.0 ports, two of which conveniently double as eSATA ports, as well as two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports powered by an NEC µPD720200 controller chip. During our time on the show floor at CES, we spoke with product managers from ASUS, MSI and even NEC, who all stated that even the high-end market sector is not showing enough demand for manufacturers to integrate complete sets of USB 3.0 ports into their latest boards. Sure, it’s possible to integrate more controllers, but even EVGA’s monstrous creation does not need them at this point in time

The 270-GT-W555 also features a total of eight SATA ports, six of which are black-colored and run at 3Gbps. The other two are red-colored and run at 6Gbps. Thankfully, there are no JMicron controllers present on this board, and we are glad to report that all of these ports run off the Intel ICH10R southbridge



We noticed that a few fellows on the XtremeSystems 270-GT-W555 discussion thread were complaining about the board not having 90-degree SATA ports. Rest assured, we can guarantee that every graphics card to date is able to fit on this board. We even brought some Radeon HD 5970s to EVGA’s suite in an attempt to test them for size and we can confirm that the 12.2-inch cards left plenty of room to spare for all of the SATA ports and even the BIOS selection switch. Out of respect, however, we didn’t take any pictures of the Radeon cards on the board due to the fact that EVGA is an Nvidia partner and a great one at that

The only issue we noticed on the board was the one that Peter pointed out to us. When the northbridge heatsink is in place and the top PCI-E slot is occupied, it becomes difficult to hold the slot latch in order to remove the GPU because there is simply not enough room for fingers to get between the heatsink and the latch. The EVGA team asked us whether we would prefer to keep the slot-latch design or whether some other type of mechanism should be implemented instead. Before the final production model enters production, it would be a good idea for some of you guys to recommend Peter alternative solutions to the problem in the XtremeSystems forum thread above

One of the more convenient aspects of the 270-GT-W555 in terms of overclocking is the fact that it features triple BIOS support, allowing overclockers to boot from three separately available startup configurations. This feature was first introduced with the P55 FTW and will continue to be standard on the company’s upcoming high-end and enthusiast product offerings



At this point, many of you are probably wondering how the seven PCI-Express slot layout works and how many lanes each of them supports in different respective SLI and CrossFire modes. In perspective, the 270-GT-W555 features two Nvidia Nforce 200 chips that enable for full PCI-Express 2.0 x16 bandwidth across Slot 1, Slot 3, Slot 5 and Slot 7 simultaneously. If all seven slots are populated by single-slot cards at the same time, then they will all run in x8 mode except for the very bottom slot which will run in x16 mode. Peter made note that Slot 7 will always run in x16 mode while the other six will vary in bandwidth depending on the number of GPUs installed. This could prove to be very useful for Tri-SLI + PhysX, in which all four cards would be able to run in x16 mode, an impressive feat only capable on this board

Peter has also included dual 8-phase Digital PWM layouts, one for each processor socket. Each of them supports frequencies of up to 1333KHz which can be managed in the BIOS. Of course, the CPU sockets themselves are infused with three times the normal amount of gold content of a standard CPU socket and feature Super-low ESR and ESL Film Capacitors right behind the sockets,  also known as “LICC Capacitors” (Low Inductance Chip Capacitors) – but most enthusiasts already know these features come standard with EVGA Classified Series motherboards

Most of us know that when Peter designs and engineers a new motherboard for EVGA, it comes feature-packed with a very purist approach to ensuring the cleanest electric currents and voltages travel to discreet sections of the board with incredible precision. On the 270-GT-W555, each CPU socket is equipped with a 6-pin PCI-Express and an 8-pin EPS12V connector, each capable of supplying its own +12V to the processors current under heavy overclocking scenarios where power strain is an issue. In addition, there is a 6-pin PCI-Express connector near Slot 1 on the PCI-Express layout, which is capable of delivering additional power to all seven PCI-Express slots if needed



Last but not least, it might be important to mention that the board does include an IDE connector, but not a floppy connector. Some of us still reluctantly sport IDE drives in our cases – you know who you are – but in 2010, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be using a floppy drive anymore. Windows XP RAID drivers can always be slipstreamed if that’s the main concern, and it usually is. At the same time, the board supports EVGA’s new EVBot for adjusting CPU voltages on the fly, and we are definitely convinced by its novelty use after Peter used it to break a Core i3 world record under liquid nitrogen during the XtremeSystems Party at CES

All in all, the EVGA 270-GT-W555 is perhaps the most powerful piece of consumer-end computing hardware we’ve seen in the past few years. While this EVGA Classified Series board doesn’t have a name yet, we really hope it will be something along the lines of “FTMFW Edition” because honestly, nothing less would do it justice. EVGA expects it to go on sale sometime between late March and end the end of April, but pricing is currently unknown at this point. The company did say that it would be priced according to the extensive hardware it packs, and we are truly expecting something in the $700 range, but this is only a rough estimate as the company’s officials haven’t yet agreed on a price point. We look forward with great anticipation to seeing Peter’s latest and greatest creation hit the retail channel in just a couple short months from now

AMD Athlon II X2 245 vs 240e dissected

Review: Energy efficiency for the masses


Since about three months ago, AMD is selling energy efficient versions of the heavily delayed AMD Propus die. The core has lost its massive L3 cache, but AMD decided to increase the L2 Cache to 1MB per core. All cores features 64kB L1 cache for data and instructions. The normal Propus CPUs have a 65W TDP rating, while the energy efficient CPUs have a rating of 45W. The 245 runs at 2.90GHz, while the 240 has to manage with 2.80GHz

It's time to check if the reduced CPU VCores do have an impact on power-consumption, because energy efficient CPUs come with a price premium. For some reason, the Athlon II X2 CPUs are only specified with 1067MHz but do overclock quite well up to 1600MHz. However, we test everything according to the official specification


Testbed

Motherboard
MSI 790GX-GD70  provided by MSI
AMD 790GX/SB750

CPU-Cooler
Scythe Kama Angle  provided by Scythe-Europe

Memory
G.Skill 4GB Kit PC3-12800   provided by G.Skill
1067MHz CL7-7-7-21 CR1T 1.30V for Athlon II X2
1333MHz CL7-7-7-21 CR1T 1.30V for Athlon II X4 

Graphics Card
MSI R4850-2D1G-OC  provided by MSI

Power supply
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W  provided by PC Power & Cooling

Hard disk
Samsung F1 1000GB RAID-Edition  provided by Ditech

Case fans
SilenX iXtrema Pro 14dB(A)  provided by PC-Cooling.at
Scythe DFS122512LS

Case
Cooler Master Stacker 831 Lite  provided by Cooler Master

OS
All tests are performed with XP SP3. As 64-bit software is still not very common, we stick with the 32-bit version. We will change to Windows 7 when we swap the graphics card for a DX11 capable one

Overview


As usual AMD CPUs have an ridiculously high VCore. Why a dual-core CPU needs 1.4250V is beyond our understanding. The so called energy efficient CPUs have a reduced VCore of 1.2500V. Also in idle the voltages are quite high. We don't like that at all. As the numbers indicate the 245 is clocked 100MHz faster as a 240e 

Overclocking


As expected, the CPUs ran stable up to about 3.85GHz on air-cooling. We settled with both CPUs at 3.80GHz. While the 245 did need 1.6000VCore for stable operation, the 240e was able to do so at 1.4300V. Because bootup-voltage is limited to the nominal VCore, some boards are limited in terms of overclocking. Some boards, such as the MSI, offer lower frequencies during bootup to ensure higher overclockability. Regardless of voltage 3.9GHz did boot up, but was not stable. MSI boards also supports Cool and Quiet with higher FSBs, not all boards can do that, so make sure, your board does to reduce power-consumption when overclocked

Athlon II X2 245








The Athlon II X2 240e is a bit harder to overclock, because it needs a higher virtual FSB due to the lower CPU-multiplier, but the CPU did not disappoint







While the AMD Athlon II X2 245 has a TDP of 65W, the Athlon II X4 with its TDP of 95W is trailing it closely. Under full load the difference between 45W and 65W TDP CPUs is minimal. As you can see with a reduced VCore the efficiency of the CPU goes up significantly, but is still no match to any Intel CPU

As always here are all the benches we performed

You can see the quad-core still outperforms any dual-core even when clocked much slower. Even the overclocked CPUs can barely outpace the slowest quad-core when more than two cores can be used

HIS shows its custom HD 5770

HD 5770 Fan Edition

HIS has rolled out a new and non-reference HD 5770 card, dubbed HD 5770 Fan. This card features a non-reference blue PCB as well as a dual slot custom cooler

HIS has decided to keep the card at its stock clocks so this one works at 850MHz for the GPU and 4800MHz for 1GB of GDDR5 memory and it still features a 128-bit memory interface, DirectX 11, ATI Eyefinity and ATI Stream support. The backplate features DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort output

The card should be available pretty soon and you can expect a €140-150 price tag

CoolIT readies new CPU coolers

ECO and VANTAGE A.L.C.

Due to big success of its Domino A.L.C. that was one of the biggest surprises that we have seen in 2009, CoolIT has launched a two new similar coolers that will easily continue the Domino bloodline, the ECO A.L.C. and VANTAGE A.L.C

The ECO A.L.C. can be considered the real successor of the Domino, as it has a similar US $75 price tag. The ECO A.L.C. features a copper waterblock, ceramic bearing CFF1 pump and a radiator with a 120mm fan that spins at 1800RPM



The VANTAGE A.L.C. incorporates the same block and pump as the ECO, but has a 120mm PWM fan that spins from 1100 to 2500RPM and a module with 84x48 LCD screen for monitoring. The module also incorporates a 2.4GHz wireless communications module, which can be used in conjunction with yet another new product dubbed the Maestro





The Maestro features CoolIT's ESP (Extra Sensory Peripherals) wireless technology which allows monitoring as well as control of the cooler via USB wireless controller and proprietary software



The CoolIT ECO A.L.C. is already shipping and can be found here at US $74.99. The VANTAGE A.L.C. and Maestro are expected to be available by mid February 2010 with a US $124.99 for the VANTAGE and US $89.99 for Maestro

Fermi-based cards to end up hotter

Than previous Nvidia cards

We got some thin information on Nvidia Fermi and our sources have strong reasons to believe that Fermi will probably end up hotter than the previous single chip generation, including Geforce GTX 285

Fermi is a big chip, so this doesn't come as much surprise. As long as it runs stable, people won’t complain about it too much. We’ve seen the card in person at least twice so far and we can tell that the first one we saw has a dual-slot air cooler and runs quite hot. However, this might not be the final revision that should ship later this quarter

You can only imagine how hot the dual-GPU card will get, and yet Nvidia still plans to make it

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 RC1 now available, benchmarked

Faster than Google Chrome beta, catching up to Safari

The Mozilla product development and engineering teams are hard at work again, this time with a rollout of the first Release Candidate build for the long anticipated Firefox 3.6. We received notification a couple days ago that the build is now available for download and is intended to be used for pre-release testing. As many know, the final build was scheduled to be released in Q4 2009 but was pushed back to Q1 2010 and could very well show up sometime later this month or during the next few weeks. In the meantime, it is possible that Firefox 3.6 RC1 could be very identical to the final build, most notably in its feature set and in its performance improvements

We took the opportunity to do some benchmarking between today’s most popular browsers, including Firefox 3.5.7, Google Chrome beta 4.0.249.64, Safari 4.0.4, Internet Explorer 8 and the new Firefox 3.6 RC1. The benchmark of choice was Futuremark’s Peacekeeper, a free online benchmarking tool for measuring and comparing the performance of common internet browsers, which has been available since March 2009. Our hardware setup consisted of a Core i7 Extreme 965 running on an EVGA X58 SLI Classified E759 with 6GB of DDR3 1600MHz and Windows 7 Ultimate x64



Our tests seem to indicate that Apple’s Safari browser still dominates the competition with a performance score of 5401. For the past few months, Safari on Windows has seen incredibly positive performance advantages which might come off as ironic to some, considering the fact that Apple is crushing Microsoft at its own game. The new Firefox 3.6 RC1 build comes in second place with a score of 4352 and seems to outperform Google Chrome for the first time in over a year since the latter browser’s initial release. The latest Chrome beta 4.0.249.64 build comes in third with a score of 3772, followed behind by the recently-released Firefox 3.5.7 build with a score of 2871

Although we didn’t have to include the last browser in the mix, it was done just for kick and at least deserved to be recognized on the map. We're talking about Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, the laughing stock of the flock, which gave a resulting performance score of 1409. In perspective, the difference between Safari 4.0.4 performance versus Internet Explorer 8 performance is roughly 47-percent

Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 brings many improvements to the browser front-end over the previous 3.5.7 release. The most notable updates include alerts about out-of-date plugins, improved JavaScript performance, support for the HTML5 file API, the ability to run scripts asynchronously, single-click appearance changes using Personas and improved automatic form-filling. Full release notes can be found here

Firefox 3.6 RC1 is now available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and can be downloaded here

Dual-GPU Fermi card to launch after singles

First to launch are two single-GPU cards

Fermi GF100 is a single chip GT300-based 40nm DirectX 11 card. Nvidia plans to launch two cards that will aim to replace Geforce GTX 285 and Geforce GTX 260 in enthusiast and performance markets respectively, while the high-end dual-chip Fermi card will come after

We don’t know how much later the dual-GPU should launch, but it should happen within one to two months. If all goes well and it doesn’t get delayed, we can hope to see it by May. Around that time, ATI might be ready with its refreshed 40nm cards that might have more juice and could compete better. However, this is only after Nvidia finally launches its GT300, Fermi-based products

It is definitely not fun to be in Nvidia's shoes, especially when it comes to the desktop graphics card market

Broker nicked our software

Big Blue furious

A New York-based brokerage firm downloaded $1.7 million worth of IBM online transaction software and didn't pay for it. In a lawsuit filed Friday, Big Blue says that between 2003 and 2008, Euro Partners downloaded extra copies of Informix software without paying for it

Apparently Euro Partners was an Informix customer. IBM purchased Informix in 2001. In 2008 IBM happened to be looking through its books and found the outfit had not paid for a while. It sent them a bill for the missing years and was a little surprised when the brokers told it to go forth and multiply. The fact that the bill was $1,730,665.24 might have had something to do with that

Much to Big Blue's surprise Euro Partners did not pay its bill and later refused to accept a new contract that would have covered previously licensed copies in addition to the extra copies. The outfit has not destroyed its copies of Informix as required by the licensing agreement and continues to use and copy the software

It is fairly odd that an outfit was able to download software from Big Blue for years and even have access after the licensing contract was ended 

Next car pack for Forza 3 almost here

AutoWeek Car Show Pack to arrive January 12th

We have been able to confirm that the AutoWeek Car Show Pack that we told you about a few weeks back will officially arrive for Forza 3 on January 12th for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace

The time to be released will be during the North American Auto Show. The AutoWeek Car Pack will include some new cars, including the 2009 Audi R8 LMS Show Car, 2010 Pagani Zonda R, and the Aston Martin One-77, as well as additional yet-to-be announced cars

When it arrives on January 12th, it is expected that the AutoWeek Car Show Pack will go for 400 Microsoft Points, as the Hot Holidays Car Pack that was released back in December did. We also expect that the AutoWeek Car Show Pack will contain about ten cars, which is a pretty good value for the Forza 3 fan who wants to drive everything
 

Lamborghini to get Tegra

CES 2010: And the rest of VW cars

A few people from Nvidia have confirmed that Audi is not the only car manufacturer from the Volkswagen Group to get Tegra chip for navigation and entertainment

As Jensen confirmed Lamborghini will get Tegra, but he didn’t specify when this will happen. He did say that by 2012 all Audi cars should have one inside. This is not all, as all Volkswagen cars should end up having Fermi inside

Audi is not really putting Tegra to good use, as the chip can do much more, even HD video in 720p should be possible in the Audi entertainment system. If they go for Tegra 2 in the future, full HD should not be any issue

This is a huge market opportunity. The Volkswagen Group consists of Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda, as well as bourgeois brands Bugatti, Bentley and Lamborghini. The group sells more than six million cars a year, but only a small percentage of them feature advanced navigation and entertainment systems. However, market trends indicate that this will probably change over the next few years, as more and more consumers opt for such systems

The only issue is that 2012 looks so far off from our stand point

Gigabyte And IBuyPower

 

Gigabyte: Riding High

There’s no question that Gigabyte has come a long way. The company's motherboard designs have, in the past, either been somewhat awkward and clunky or ho-hum. But with the advent of its newer X58 and P55 boards (Ed.: going back as far as its P35- and P45-based boards, in my experience), it is staking out high-end, high-performance territory that’s been the purview of Asus’s Republic of Gamers' line of motherboards

The new P55-UD7 board includes a PLX PCI Express bridge chip, enabling dual PCI Express x16 graphics support without stealing bandwidth from the Intel PCH chip. The PCI Express lanes from the Intel PCH will be dedicated to the discrete SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 ports

Angela Lan, PR director for Gigabyte’s US operation, noted that Gigabyte is also pushing USB 3.0 and DualBIOS into more affordable territory, including the micro-ATX H57-UD4 boards, which will be priced under $150

The company hasn’t given up on the X58 chipset, however. The new GA-X58-UD7 board adds USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gb/s and a water block cooler to the chipset. The board will be ready for Intel’s upcoming six-core Gulftown CPU, which will drop right into the LGA 1366 interface

Meanwhile, Tim Handley, Gigabyte’s deputy marketing director, noted that they’re standing firm with the use of the Foxconn LGA 1156 interface, despite the belief among some overclockers (the guys who use LN2 on bench setups) that the Foxconn socket doesn’t work well in a demanding overclocking environment. Handley noted that the Lotes socket used by some of its competitors' boards isn’t supported by Intel

Gigabyte is using the Lotes ILM (the lever and lid mechanism), though Handley said that was mostly for cosmetic reasons