Geforce GTX 480 to be as hot as GTX 285

Higher TDP, but similar noise

We got some word that Nvidia's upcoming Fermi-based Geforce GTX 480 single GPU card should be as hot as the GTX 285. These are still preliminary results, as Nvidia still has to send out the final cards with the final coolers, but this looks like slightly better result that the GTX 480 that we saw at CES 2010

The TDP of the GTX 480 will end up higher than on GTX 285, but with the help of a good cooler the thermals should be very close

The noise lever should also be very comparable and the card should not end up much noisier than GTX 285. We heard numerous times that GTX 480 will end up with different cooler than the one we saw at CES 2010 and that was showed to Nvidia's loyal press at Editor Days

All in all, you won't burn your fingers on the GTX 480, but it won't be cold either

AMD’s answer to Fermi is Trillian

OC'd 5870 won't be enough

We learned that some of AMD loyal press (not us) got samples of a card codenamed Trillian

Ever since the HD 5870 paper launch in Oakland, when we had a bit of an argument with ATI's PR chap, we never received any sample for them since we don't do what they want us to do. Well, that is called free press and I guess that we're willing to pay the price for it. We have lived through communism and censorship, and sorry, no matter how red you are or how hard you try we're just not easy to impress or tame

Anyway, Trillian is a tuned HD 5870 card with slightly higher performance. Last year AMD boosted HD 4870 specifications with the HD 4890 1GHz card, and this is exactly what we expect this time around

We don’t know if AMD plans to use the HD 5890 brand, but we would not be surprised if they do but what we are quite sure is that Trillian won’t be enough

The smart part of AMD knows that but they still have to play the game that Geforce GTX 480 is bad, evil and broken as they know that Nvidia should be able to challenge them, well once it finally launches Geforce GTX 480

Metro 2033 on PC to feature DX11

Most advanced DX11 feature content to date

If you have not heard much about the post-apocalyptic game Metro 2033 from 4A Games, you are likely not alone. The game, which is to be distributed and marketed by THQ, will be headed to the Xbox 360 and PC platforms on March 16th

What is unique about Metro 2033 is that on the PC this title claims to be the first to really start to truly take advantage of DirectX 11. The developers are boasting that the PC version of Metro 2033 will feature “the most advanced DX11 techniques yet seen.” Of course, DirectX 11 is still bleeding edge for most, but Metro 2033 will be one of the first games to take advantage of the latest technology

Our sources claim that Nvidia has been working closely with the developer and, as a result, the title will offer support for both Nvidia 3D Vision and PhysX technology beyond the standard DirectX 11 features. Some are describing the visuals as incredible and beyond what we have seen previously out of PC games. The real question is whether or not this game will actually be any good; or will it just end up being a technology demo that isn’t really that playable? We will have to wait for it to arrive on March 16th to find out

Sandy Bridge to be 20 percent faster

Compared to Arrandale

Intel told its special few that upcoming Sandy Bridge, dual-core mobile CPU should be around 20 percent faster compared to Arrandale

These are still projections despite the fact that Intel has had Sandy Bridge since last IDF that took place in late September 2009 and that prototypes of this new 32nm architecture are out

The „around 20 percent“ projections are made when Intel compared the top range Sandy Bridge (SNB) and top of the bin dual core Arrandale. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean that Intel compared two processors at the same clock. We do know that Sandy Bridge has new Intel AVX instructions but we doubt that they can pull some 20 percent performance increase clock to clock

All in all, we are sure that the top high end Sandy Bridge should end up around 20 percent faster than top currently shipping Core i7 based on Arrandale 32nm dual-core

Danamics announces new LMX Superleggera

Cheaper liquid metal cooler

Danamics has announced yet another liquid metal based cooler that is cheaper than the previously announced LMX, the LMX Superleggera

The new LMX Supperlegera is based on a similar design as the original LMX and should provide the same performance as the LMX, but at a much lower price tag and with PowerBooster 2

It has a nickel-plated copper heatpipes/tubing and nickel-plated aluminium heatsink, supports all AMD socket AM2/AM2+/AM3 as well as Intel's socket 775/1156/1366 processors. It should provide the same performance as the first LMX and features Molex type smartplug for the new PowerBooster 2 which is now designed in a 3.5-inch form factor for easy mounting

In case you missed the previous LMX, the PowerBooster is a device that powers the electromagnetic pump which is needed for liquid metal circulation

The best part of the new Danamics LMX Superleggera is its price which should be somewhere around €90 + VAT. Of course, this will depend on the retailer and the country as it is currently listed for around 120  € 

You can check it our here

Mushkin announces new 4GB DDR3-2000 Blackline kit

Tightest latencies so far

Mushkin has announced yet another Blackline dual-channel DDR3 kit for Intel's Core i5/i7 based systems, the 4GB Blackline DDR3-2000

The kit features two 2GB modules with recognizable Mushkin Blackline Frotsbyte heatspreaders. It works at 2000MHz with quite tight 7-10-8-27 latencies at 1.65V

This new kit is the fastest DDR3 kit that came out from Mushkin, and although it shares the 2000MHz speed with bunch of other Redline and Blackline kits, so far it has the tightest latency

The new Blackline kit, model number 996829, should be available pretty soon at a price tag of around US 180  $

War game highlights cyber attack vulnerabilities

Phones dead, electric grid down, Army in the streets

Top US officials and ten former White House advisors took part in a comprehensive war game simulating the effects and the aftermath of a crippling attack on the US digital infrastructure

The results were anything but reassuring. The scenario starts when a bunch of basketball fans downloads a free app to their smartphones. Since it's free, they probably weren't using the iPhone, so this is one thing we can't blame on the Jobs mob. The app contained spyware which quickly spread across the mobile network, turning some 60 million phones into overpriced paperweights

This was just the start. Soon, the almighty internet buckled under the strain of the attack

Financial markets and commerce collapsed and most of the US found itself without power. The Amish didn't seem to mind much and just went about their business. The White House even considers deploying the Army into US cities. Well, it's not like they would have anything better to do since there are no phones or internet

Eventually, the US manages to pinpoint the origin of the attack to Russia and implicates an individual in Sudan as the main culprit. Retired Air Force Charles F. Wald, who played Defense secretary in the war game and obviously never watched Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, called for military retaliation if any government is involved in the attack. Other panel members, such as John D. Negroponte, called for a more diplomatic, or should we say sane approach and wanted to negotiate with the perpetrators. Jamie Gorelick suggested that intelligence agencies should kidnap the perpetrators and offer them a cup of tea in a cozy third world prison. "We have authority to do renditions," she said

At the end of the simulation, the panel did not come up with ingenious plan to stop the attack and being former White House advisors we really can't say we are surprised that they managed to get nothing done. Well, apart from threatening to bomb Russia. Also, it is not very surprising or reassuring for that matter that they agreed to advise the president to federalize the National Guard even if governors objected and deploy guardsmen and US Army troops to guard the power infrastructure and prevent unrest. And seize iPhones at gunpoint. sub.ed

At least we can find solace in the fact that this lot are no longer White House advisors

Buffalo shows its new MicroStation

SSD based one

Buffalo Technology has announced a new version of its 2.5-inch MicroStation external storage device that uses a solid state drive instead of the regular HDD

The new MicroStation will be available in 32 and 64GB capacities. It measures 57x13x98mm and weighs 64 grams. The only specification that is missing is the actual transfer speeds of the device but we guess that they might exceed the maximum transfer speed of the USB 2.0 interface which these drives feature

The drive is packed in a neat box and will be available in black, red or white colour. It is bundled with Memeo Autosync and Secure Lock Ware software for data protection and syncing

The new MicroStation (SHD-PEU2) is backed by two years of warranty and should show up in retail by the end of this month. The suggested price is around €115 and we guess that Buffalo is talking about the 64GB version

MSI's CR620 notebooks shows up in the USA

With Intel Arrandale CPUs

MSI's Classic series notebooks with Intel's Arrandale CPUs have been announced a while back and have now become available in the USA. The new CR620 series 15.6-inchers are all based on Intel's HM55 chipset combined with one of the new 32nm mobile Arrandale CPU

The trio that has become available in the USA feature either Intel's Core i3-330M for CR620-030 and CR620-033 models or Intel's Core i5-430M for the CR620-031 SKU. All three come with 4GB of memory, Intel's integrated graphics and a 15.6-inch glossy display with 1366x768 resolution

The rest of the specifications for all three include a 1.3M webcam, 4-in-1 card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11bgn WiFi, 6-cell battery and Windows 7 Home Premium OS. The only difference between the CR620-030 and the CR620-033 is the fact that the latter one comes with a BD combo optical drive and a higher US $729.99 price tag, while the CR620-030 has the SuperMulti optical drive and a US $649.99 price tag

The last but not least, CR620-031 has a larger 500GB hard drive, SuperMulti optical drive, the Core i5-430M CPU, and a US $749.99 price tag






 

Codemasters at work on new FPS title

Effort being led by Black co-creator

Quietly over the past year, Codemasters has been rumored to be at work on a new FPS title. While we heard some rumblings that this was the case, we never could get anyone to provide more details. Sources have been friendlier as of late with word that Codemasters has been working on this first-person-shooter initiative for about a year

The project has a lot of top names involved with it, including Stuart Black, who was a co-creator of Black. The team also has Andrew Wilson, who was previously a Senior Producer at Blackrock Studios where Pure and the upcoming Split Second were developed

A team of 80 developers are working on the FPS project that does not yet have an official name that we know of. The title itself will use the company’s ERO Game Technology Platform that is best known for use in driving titles such as DiRT, Race Driver, and Grid, but has been used on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, as well

According to our sources, the majority of the development will be taking place at the company’s Guildford facility; and the company is recruiting for slots for this project as well as additional original IP that the company is gearing up to produce

Our sources suggest that Codemasters is planning to show off the Stuart Black shooter at the upcoming E3 show in June, when a formal announcement of the title will be made. While Codemasters has enjoyed some success with FPS titles in the past, the company is perhaps best known for the racing titles it has produced to much critical acclaim. Recently, the company released Dirt 2 to excellent reviews, but most recently, the company has been working on its second Formula 1 title for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC since acquiring the license after Sony opted not to renew it

Xbox to get more exclusive programs

The new interactive television platform

For years, people have been talking about the interactive television platform of the future Personally, I can remember when Warner cable had a division called QUBE and they trailed an interactive television platform in addition to some of the first new next wave services to be delivered by cable. While it wasn’t a total flop, as many of the technologies have made it to the cable and satellite television services we have today, the interactive part of QUBE just never really went anywhere, it was costly to produce the two hours of programming five nights a week

It seems that Microsoft has discovered how to change all of that and it has found with the interactive show 1 vs. 100 that they do have a serious hit on their hands. The success of this show is leading to the development of new programming that will be coming to the Xbox 360 in the future

While no one is saying what might be next, ideas of what could be coming are all over the place The advertisers and sponsors seem to be anxious to get behind additional programming, as what advertiser/sponsor would not want to get their message out to 23 million people in a difficult to reach demographic

Our sources tell us that the announcement of a new interactive programming offering will come before the end of the year. It is more likely that owners will see something in the way of testing before the end of the year. There is strong suspicion from our sources that such a new offering might use Natal as part of the way to interact with the program. We think, however, that the use of Natal might be pure speculation

Paradise DLC to get bundle pricing

Special deal for PS3 owners only

Criterion, developers of the award winning Burnout Paradise, has announced a special bundle deal for those that have yet to experience what the add-on DLC content has to offer. While the developer recently announced that they had moved on from Burnout Paradise and there would be no additional downloadable content, the bundle deals are a great offering; this is despite the fact (at least to start with) that they will only be available on the PlayStation 3 platform

The first deal is a bundle that includes all of the downloadable content for Burnout Paradise in one massive package. The bundle includes: Big Surf Island, Party Pack, Time Savers Pack Legendary Cars Collection, Toy Cars Collection, Cops and Robbers and the Boost Specials. You can get all of this for the low price of $19.99, which is a great deal that really adds a good amount of play value to the game

For those that have yet to experience Burnout Paradise at all, Criterion has not forgotten about you. In an unbelievable deal, buyers can get Burnout Paradise the Complete Edition for $29.99 which includes the full Burnout Paradise game with all of the free updates, plus Big Surf Island Party Pack, Time Savers Pack, Legendary Cars Collection, Toy Cars Collection, Cops and Robbers and the Boost Specials. This comes in one downloadable package that basically includes the game and all of the add-ons for the game

You can download all of this directly from the PlayStation Store, but you had better get on it, as this special offer will only last till March 31st. Despite reaching out to our contacts asking if there would be some sort of bundle deal for Xbox 360 owners, our sources tell us that while the possibility does exist, no plans are in place at this time. We do suspect, however, that we are likely to see a bundle deal for the DLC content in the Xbox Live Marketplace before too long

Acer first to show ION 2 netbook

The 10.1-inch Aspire One 532g

Acer is the first manufacturer to show a netbook based on Nvidia's ION 2 platform. The Aspire One 532G features Intel's Pinetrail Atom N450 CPU and an ION 2 GPU with 512MB of video memory

The Aspire One 532G has a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen and weighs around 1kg. Specs wise, the new netbook doesn't bring anything new that we haven't seen in an army of similar netbooks except of course, for Nvidia's ION 2 GPU. As you could have guessed, the new Aspire One will use Nvidia's recently announced Optimus "switchable graphics" technology which means that it will use both the integrated GMA 3150 IGP and the dedicated GPU from Nvidia

Nvidia's Optimus will take care of the battery life, as the "real GPU" will kick in whenever it is needed. The battery life is rated at up to 10 hours which is a nice result considering that the actual ION 2 GPU has a lot to offer when compared to Intel's GMA 3150 IGP

You can find more here

HTC intros HD mini

Windows Mobile on a diet

HTC has unveiled a rather interesting handset for punters who find the HD2 a bit too chunky and pricey

The HD mini is, well, just that - mini. It measures 103.8 x 57.7 x 11.7mm and weighs 110g  which sounds quite compact compared to the rest of HTC's lineup. It doesn't miss out on a lot of features, though. The mini features a 3.2-inch 320x480 touchscreen, which doesn't sound to impressive compared to the HD2, but it has a 600MHz Qualcomm processor, 384MB of RAM microSD slot for storage and a 5MP camera, so the rest of the package is quite good actually



It also includes GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and a 1200mAh battery. The mini runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 with HTC's Sense interface and it ships with the highly acclaimed Opera Mobile browser. HTC even managed to squeeze an FM radio into the slimmed down handset

The company claims it will start shipping it in select markets in April, but there's no word on price yet  

Redmond intros Windows Mobile 7

Innovative hub UI

Microsoft has unveiled its next generation mobile OS, dubbed Windows Phone 7

The new OS features a rather interesting UI, centered around what Microsoft calls hubs. Hubs integrate multiple individual applications into groups, thus offering faster access to each one of them

Windows Phone 7 has six hubs. The People hub includes a contact list, social networking applications and Windows Live. In the Picture hub, users can easily organize their photos and access social networking sites to post them. The Games hub features Xbox Live support, including some games and Spotlight feed. Through the Marketplace hub users can access Microsoft's app store

The most important hubs are, however, Office and Music and Video. Office includes apps such as Office (who would have guessed), OneNote, SharePoiint Workspace and Outlook, while the Music and Video hub turns the phone into a Zune player. It offers content synchronization with the user's PS, FM radio and online music services

While some might argue that the new OS does not come close to the iPhone, it is a vast improvement over Microsoft's previous mobile solutions. Redmond claims the first Windows Phone 7 products should appear in late 2010. Add some Tegra into the mix and we might be looking at a rather appealing mobile platform

You can check out a short YouTube clip here

Kingston shows its new 16GB microSDHC card

Class 10 16GB card

Kingston has rolled out a 16GB microSDHC card that has a Class 10 speed rating and comes with all the adapters to convert it to an SD or miniSD card

The new 16GB microSDHC card has a Class 10 rating which means that it is capable of transfer speed of at least 10 MB/s. It is features SD Specification v3.0 support and comes with a lifetime warranty

The card can already be found listed for around €90 to €100 depending on the package, or to be precise, the adapters

Spammers target Buzz

Already

Spammers have already targeted Google's Buzz just a few days after it launched. Beancounters at Websense said that when Twitter launched it took a little while before it was targeted by spammers. However, in the case of Buzz it took just two days

Carl Leonard, security research manager at Websense said that it was s worrying that spammers have an improved knowledge of social networks these days that allows them to hit new services like Google Buzz so quickly

The security firm said Web 2.0 sites allowing user-generated content are a top target for cybercriminals and spammers, and research revealed that 95 percent of user-generated comments to blogs, chat rooms and message boards are spam or malicious. During the second half of the year, 81 percent of emails contained a malicious link

Google has admitted that it committed several security blunders when it released Buzz

OLED take up too slow

Sony pulls products

It turns out that OLED is not the next big thing for flat screen tellies. Sony has pulled the plug in Japan on sales of a next-generation flat TV due to sluggish demand

Sony has pulled the production of ultra-thin TVs using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology for Japan, just a little over 2 years since it launched its first set. Apparently it is going to keep selling the TVs in overseas markets

OLED displays were heralded as the next big thing because they use organic, or carbon-containing compounds that emit light when electricity is applied. They produce crisp images and do not need backlighting, making them slimmer and more energy-efficient than LCDs, the most popular type of flat TV

Sony has aimed to become a leader in the technology and positioned the product as crucial in its drive to regain its reputation as an innovator. However it is still technologically difficult to make large OLED panels and to produce them cheaply, limiting their potential as a mass-market product. Sony's only model is an 11-inch set sold for $2,222 in Japan, considerably smaller and more expensive than other flat TVs

Analysts say that the next big thing will now be 3D TVs and LCD TVs using light emitting diode backlights, and that mass adoption of TVs with OLED panels is some time off

AMD to launch four six-cores in Q2

95 to 125W TDP

We just received word that AMD plans to launch a total of four six-core CPUs and while some of them will share the same specification, it will not be the case for the TDP

The top one is going to be called Phenom II X6 1075T and it will have 125W. Some people have suggested that there will be a faster version of this CPU with 140W but we are not aware of that at press time

The runner up is Phenom II X6 1055T and this one will come in 125 and 95W variants. The last one is named Phenom II X6 1035T and comes with lower frequency and 95W. We heard that the entire line-up will end up at lower than 3GHz clock speed but we don’t know the exact values, at least not at press time

The launch date is Q2 2010 but we don’t have any better date than that

Command & Conquer classics go freeware

Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun

If you’re looking for a quick nostalgia fix to start off your week, then look no further than the latest  freebie coming from EA – three Command & Conquer classics completely free of charge and there for the taking

So, Command & Conquer site now offers users a chance to download Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun + Firestorm for free, and relive the good old times once again

There’s a catch though – the games were not built to run on Vista and/or Windows 7 but EA kindly included the installation procedure that should work for users

You can download the games and find the installation instructions here

Core i7 880 3.06GHz comes in Q2

Lynnfield 45nm Quad
Despite the enthusiasm to transition to 32nm, quad-cores in 2010 remain 45nm. Intel will continue to sell the mixture between old Nehalem 45nm generation of CPU and the new Nehalem, better known as Lynnfield 45nm CPUs

Lynnfield was introduced in Q3 / Q4 2009 and Intel already plans to refresh this offer. Core i7 880 is planned for Q2 2010 and it runs at 3.06GHz with all four cores and eight hyperthreading treads and with the help of Turbo it can overclock to 3.73GHz

Lynnfield has an improved memory controller as it can support DDR3 1066 and 1333MHz, while the first Nehalem can only officially support DDR3 800, 1066MHz. The CPU has 95W TDP and comes in LGA1156 socket, which naturally works 5 series chipset except X58 that wants LGA1366 processor

This processor should coexist with Core i5 870 clocked at 2.93GHz that got introduced last year

Asus shows another multi-touch tablet

10.1-inch Eee PC T101MT

Asus has officially announced yet another multi-touch capable Eee PC, the T101MT. This 10.1incher has already been rumoured, detailed and pictured during CES, but Asus has finally decided to officially listed it on its web site

The new Eee PC T101MT features a 10.1-inch LED backlit multi-touch resistive display in 1024x600, Intel's Pinetrail N450 CPU and GMA 3150 IGP, Windows 7 OS, up to 2GB of memory, either a 160 or 320GB hard drive (and 500GB of web storage), 0.3M web cam, 802.11bgn WiFi and Bluetooth

The battery is only detailed as "35Wh Slim and Eco-friendly Li-polymer" and rated at 6.5 hours. The entire T101MT has a 1.3kg weight and will be available in white and black colour options

The previous pre-orders were listing Asus' T101MT for around €500, but we'll wait for more retailers before we can say this is the final price

You can check it out here



 

Assassin's Creed 2 is DX9 only

Even without Nvidia PhysX

According to an interview with Assassin's Creed 2 3D Lead Programmer David Champagne the upcoming Assassin's Creed 2 game will be DirectX 9 game. And although Assassin's Creed is quite a game for physics implementation it will not support Nvidia's PhysX

While console owners had their share of fun with this game, the PC version was delayed and we quietly hoped that there will be some interesting modifications that were the reason for the delay, but it looks like that Assassin's Creed 2 will be a plain Xbox 360 port. It will support much higher resolutions that the console version and multi-sampling modes up to 8x while the console version is limited to 2x

Although the game run smooth on both DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 systems, there will be no visualization differences and improvements over DirectX 9 hardware. According to David Champagne, until the Steam HW Survey numbers change, they still don't see a point in changing to DirectX 11, but we guess that once Nvidia jumps on the DX 11 bandwagon, things might change

The game should be available sometime in March and you can find the full interview here

Motorola reshuffles

Handset + Set-top box division

Motorola recently confirmed that the current plan includes “reorganizing” the company by Q1 2011. The mobile handset division will team up with set-top box division and spin it off into a publicly traded company

With Motorola’s mobile handset business leaving little to be desired in the wake of successful Razr line, the company is apparently considering ways to differentiate its handset unit, and the answer might come in the form of combining it with its set-top box business. The newly combined unit could very well fit into “three screens” lifestyle touted by carriers, which would enable viewing content on TV, computer and mobile phone screens

Motorola had apparently been looking to offload or spin off its mobile business as well, but the new handsets such as Android based Droid phone have introduced renewed hope in the long term success of the division

Handset and home business will keep hold of Motorola brand and will license it to the enterprise and networking company, whereas the wireless networking business will probably be sold

More here

Linux not ready for 4096-byte sector hard drives

Performance impact

While the world+dog is getting all excited about the move from 512-byte to 4096-byte sector hard drives, Linux is clearly unready for it. Timothy Miller, the founder of the Open Graphics Project said that on paper Linux should unaffected by some of the pitfalls of this transition, but his own experiments prove that Linux is just as vulnerable to the potential performance impact as Windows XP

Despite this issue being known about for a long time, basic Linux tools for partitioning and formatting drives have not caught up and users of the drives will suffer from a  slow write performance. He thinks it is caused by improper logical-to-physical sector alignment. “OS's like Linux use 4K blocks (or multiples of 4K) to store data, which matches well with the physical sector. However, nothing restricts you from creating a partition that starts on an odd-numbered 512-byte logical sector. This misalignment causes a performance hit since the drive has to read and rewrite the 4K sectors with whatever 512-byte slices changed,” he said

He said that while the drives are on the market now, the Linux community have  known about this issue for a long time, and now it's here, and we haven't fully prepared. Ubuntu, uses "parted", which has a very nice "--align optimal" option that will do the right thing. But parted is incomplete, and we must rely on tools like fdisk for everything else, he said

iBuyPower integrates Asetek in its Level 10 system

Watercooled Level 10 system

iBuyPower has joined up forces with Asetek to integrate the quite well known Asetek LCLC watercooling system into its Level 10 system based on Thermaltake's unique Level 10 chassis

Asetek had to make some minor modifications to its 120mm LCLC cooler in order to fit it into the unique Level 10 layout, but considering the quality and performance of LCLC, we think it was worth it

iBuyPower has offered this modified Asetek LCLC as a free upgrade with Level 10 systems, which is reasonable considering that the Level 10 starts at around US $2,000 before you start to add some extras

You can find the iBuyPower Level 10 system here

Asus shows its custom HD 5870

Matrix series with 2GB of memory

According to some pictures taken by a Chinese website, Asus is apparently preparing a new Republic of Gamers Matrix series card based on the ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPU. In addition to the fancy name, Asus has also tweaked the PCB with better voltage regulators, factory overclock higher overclocking potential and double amount of memory

The card should work at 900MHz for the core and 1225MHz for memory (4900MHz effective). It should have a stronger VRM circuit which could lead to even higher clocks once this one reaches the hands of overclockers. It has two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors, and feature DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs

Asus also tweaked the cooler which looks similar to the previously released Geforce GTX 285 Matrix. The back plate also features a "safe mode" button that reverts the card to failsafe clocks and voltage once things go wrong. The card will most probably feature Asus' VoltageTweak voltage control software support

Unfortunately, the price or the availability date hasn't been announced but we guess that Asus is keeping this one under wraps for CeBIT, as it could easily be the crown jewel in Asus' Cebit VGA lineup

You can check out more pictures here

Sapphire working on Toxic HD 5850

Custom designed HD 5850

In addition to the bunch of entry-level DirectX 11 capable cards that were launched a few weeks ago, Sapphire is also working on a custom HD 5850 that will be a part of Sapphire's Toxic series

The new one features a custom blue PCB with duals slot Vapor Chamber cooler and is overclocked to 765MHz for the GPU and 4500MHz for the 1GB of GDDR5 memory. This is a quite an impressive overclock, considering that the reference card works at 725MHz for the GPU and 4000MHz for memory

The card still features 1440 stream processors, a 256-bit memory interface, DirectX 11   CrossfireX and Eyefinity support. The Vapor Chamber cooler should be 10dBA quieter and up to 15 degrees cooler than the reference cooler, but that is something that we have to wait and see

The card has showed up at Overclockers.co.uk site and ETA is 15th of February. The preorder price stands at £269.99 inc VAT which is around €310/$420

Microsoft rolls out WGA update to China

Months late

Microsoft is to roll out its latest update to Windows 7 activation technology months later than users elsewhere

Redmond is apparently taking a softly softly approach on China. The rest of the world will automatically start receiving the update later this month, but the process will not start in China until this summer. Foreign companies have long complained about poor protection of intellectual property rights in China, but the problem lies as much with Chinese users themselves as with lax government regulation

Redmond created fury among Chinese users in late 2008 when it released an automatic update that turned the computer screen black for pirated versions of Windows XP

The update for Windows 7 however, looks for known hacks used to activate unlicensed copies of the operating system. Users with the hacks will have their desktop wallpaper turned black and be shown reminder messages, though the OS will still function

Meanwhile Microsoft is playing up the fact that pirated Windows 7 copies have malware on board. Nearly one in three pirated copies of Windows 7 were found to have malicious code in a recent analysis by Media Surveillance, an anti-piracy services company, Microsoft said

High mouse DPI numbers are just marketing ploys

It really doesn't matter much

Slapping the highest number you can think of on a product box has long been one of the fail-safe strategies for selling your products, and it works more often than not. This however shouldn't always be so as SteelSeries’ CMO, Kim Rom, recently said how high and higher DPI figures touted on mice products mean pretty much nothing

Indeed, DPI number has long been seen as something pretty important when purchasing a mouse, but Rom says that “in reality it doesn’t really mean that much”. He argues that, for instance, moving your mouse an inch on your desk for it to move twice the screen length might sound impressive, but it doesn’t really introduce any value or precision. Quite the contrary, in the latter case it will negatively affect what should’ve been your goal in the first place - precision

Rom goes on saying that professional players on pro-tournaments, who depend on their equipment for their bread and butter, usually stay within 800 to 1,600 DPI limits, despite the fact that their equipment might support higher resolutions

So there you have it, if you’re looking at buying a mouse and are looking at various numbers, there’s one more number not to pay much attention to. Quite refreshing if you ask us, as seeing someone downplay numbers is not an everyday occurrence in the IT world

More here