AMD working on another Phenom II X6

Higher clock in Q3

According to a roadmap snatched by the guys over at ati-forum.de, AMD is preparing yet another Thuban Phenom II X6 CPU that should come sometime in Q3

In addition to the Phenom II X6 1035, 1055 and 1075, working at 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz AMD's roadmap shows an unnamed Phenom II X6 10xx that might have a higher clock speed

If you follow AMD's logic, the new one could end up to be named as the Phenom II X6 1095 and could have a 3.2GHz clock, but considering that this is purely speculative information, you should take it with a grain of salt

In any case, AMD is working on another Phenom II X6 CPU and this one will come in Q3 according to current AMD plans

You can find more here

Powercolor officially launches its HD 5770 Eyefinity

To cost around €150

Previously pictured and detailed during CeBIT show, Powercolor has now officially announced its HD 5770 Eyefinity 5 graphics card. The new card is a hybrid of the original HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 and the HD 5770, as it only has five mini DisplayPort outputs

The new card is targeting office and home users that need more than two displays as the HD 5770 is nowhere near the performance needed for some Eyefinity multi-display gaming

The Powercolor HD 5770 Eyefinity 5 has 800 Stream processors, 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz and paired up with a 128-bit memory interface while the GPU ticks at 850MHz. It features a well known Arctic Cooling cooler and it is quite unique considering that Powercolor is the only partner that decided to launch a card capable of handling more than three displays with a HD 5770 GPU

According to our info, the card should be around €25 more expensive than the standard HD 5770 with 1GB of memory, and this price premium puts it somewhere between €150 and 160  € depending on the retailer/e-tailer

The card should show its face in retail in next two weeks

Overclocked GTX 480 possible

Special editions

According to a few pictures of Zotac's Fermi boxes for the Asian market caught by pcpop.com  it appears that Nvidia might have given the green light for some special editions of the GTX 480 card

We still don't know what will be the difference between the standard and this "special" GTX 480 version but we guess that it might be slightly overclocked as we doubt that any partner will change such an elaborate and beefy cooler that Nvidia is using for its reference design GTX 480

We are quite sure that Zotac isn't the only Nvidia partner that will gladly sell overclocked GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards. Another unknown fact is the availability date for such  special edition cards, but they will eventually come

You can check out the rest of the pictures here


 

Fermi has 480 shaders, 675MHz+ clock

The GTX 480 version

A few things have been cleared up. Fermi should be shown to the world on the 26th in the US and very early on the 27th in Europe. Mass availability is expected April 6th

April 6th should be the day when you should be able to buy Fermi even in some smaller markets that are not as big as UK, Germany, Spain or France and some smaller players such as Austria Slovakia and similar countries might have Fermi on April 6th to sell as well

The number of shaders is 480, something that our colleagues in the press reported a few days ago, but we managed to confirm it just recently

The clock should be just slightly higher than 675MHz, somewhere in the 675MHz to 700MHz range, but we don’t know the exact number yet

Google to leave China on April 10

Chinese sources

The Chinese press has revealed that Google will make an announcement that it is leaving China on April 10. The leak comes from a sales person within Google who has not been identified and his information has not been confirmed  independently

According to the China Business New Google would reveal its plans for its China-based staff that day. Google, has a significant share of the search market in China, announced in January that it no longer intended to censor search results in that country and would consider leaving entirely

The crisis was preciptated by an attacks on e-mail accounts belonging to human rights activists, though it has not revealed the specific people behind them. Chian has denied any involvement. After months of negotiations over whether it can run Google.cn with or without restrictions, it seemed that Google was getting ready to make a decision in the near-term future

The Chinese government has reportedly warned Google business partners to prepare for the day when they can't use Google services such as a search bar on their Web sites. Earlier this week Google confirmed that it had received a letter purportedly signed by 27 advertising partners in China that complained of a lack of communication on the part of Google and demanded to know how they would be compensated if the company withdrew from China

AMD claims to have been on a cloud for years

Everyone else is catching up
Chipmaker AMD is so keen to be “with it” it is claiming that has been using cloud computing before it became fashionable

Like your Dad who insisted on dancing at the school disco, AMD is staking its claim that it really knows what cloud computing is and can really get down with the “beat tradition”. AMD has been telling the world+dog how it plans to get solution providers, software vendors, OEMs and hardware manufacturers up to speed on what is sure to be the next big thing

Margaret Lewis, Director, Commercial Solutions and Software, and Worldwide Product Marketing, AMD pointed out that it was silicon and processors that run the cloud. AMD has become an evangelist for cloud computing despite being lower in the stack, she claimed. AMD said it is helping partners, OEMs and vendors understand the infrastructure needed to support the cloud and the new ways of conducting business that it introduces

Gary Bixler, Director, Worldwide Partner Programs, AMD told CRN that AMD was “cloud before cloud was cool.” We think we have found your problem here. Cloud computing has never been cool. Anyway AMD is looking to continue its foothold in the cloud when it releases the AMD Opteron 4000 series processors for 1P and 2P servers and Opteron 6000 series processors for 2P and 4P/8P servers

Bad Company 2 sales ahead of projections

Likely to sell at least 4 million copies in the first year

DICE and Electronic Arts are pretty happy, as the sales for Battlefield Bad Company 2 are clearly well ahead of where they thought that they would be at this point. According to reports, BFBC2 has already passed 2.3+ million in sales globally and is on track to move 4+ million copies in the first year

The sales are not the only thing that has been good for BFBC2; the reviews have been excellent, as well, with many reviewers raving about the excellent multiplayer experience delivered by BFBC2. Currently, the game is averaging a score of 88 on Metacritic, which translates into favorable reviews by both the reviewers as well as the consumers. The majority of the reviews are 90 or higher, however

Still, the multiplayer has not been without its bumps in the road. DICE was not expecting the avalanche of players at launch which led to some server issues. Since then, DICE has turned up more servers to support players, and these problems have all but disappeared since launch. At peak, BFBC2 has had over 230,000 users playing, which is impressive

While the positive momentum for BFBC2 is good news for EA, this alone will not rescue the stock price. Still, we have to think it is a solid step in the right direction

Geforce GTX UK price is £429

Around €479 in Continental Europe

Geforce GTX 480 and 470 got their prices, but again, these prices will vary from country to country. While in most of countries the pricing guideline is to sell GTX 480 for €450 in some countries it might sell for less than that, but in some it might go as high as  479 €

The UK price is £429 at this also depends of the greed of retailers that will sell them, and Nvidia´s (read Fionas) power to sanction the ones who cross this price guide set by Nvidia

The Geforce GTX 470 will sell for €349 in most of Euroland, but the same rules apply. Some “cheaper” countries will get it below this price and some more expensive countries e.g Scandinavia will have to pay a bit more than this. The UK chaps can count with £299 suggested etail price. We are very sure that Danish at Greenland will have to pay much more than the suggested etail price but won't worry about the cooling and the high TDP

The launch is still early morning, midnightish on the night between 26th and 27th of March, but mass availability is expected April 6th

PCS are behind when it comes to 3D

Need to play catch up

TVs are ahead on the technology to play 3D content, but many PCs are not ready

Comcast earlier this week said it will stream live 3D footage over the Internet from The Masters golf tournament Samsung said it will streaming 3D movies over the Internet starting in the fourth quarter of this year. While these streams can be played back on 3D HDTVs with Internet connectivity, but some major hardware changes are needed for 3D playback on PCs

Ironically while PCs have shedloads of power, most people have monitors and graphics cards which can't manage it. John Jacobs, director of notebook market research at DisplaySearch Except for enthusiast buyers like gamers, 3D displays are in low demand. Asustek Computer and Acer are already shipping laptops with 3D capabilities for less than US$1,000, but for now those are just fringe features

The other problem is that 3D glasses do not work for all viewing devices. While lots of cash is being spent on 3D research it will take a while before it ends up on PCs. The irony is that with its always on connection to the Internet, a PCs is ideal for storing and watching 3D content

Another Fermi slide leaks

Is this the final design

Guys from Donanimhaber.com managed to get their hands on a slide which shows crude specs of the GF100 based GTX 480 card in what appears to be the final design. We can confirm that this is the same slide that we had a chance to see during CeBIT but that was when photographing was strictly forbidden and fingers were held on shutdown buttons

The slide does show some specs that were quite well known even before CeBIT, but the interesting part is the picture next to the specification list which shows four heatpipes sticking out from the top of the card. Bear in mind that this slide was shown at CeBIT and that Nvidia might have changed some things as partners still didn't get a full batch of cards

The card on the slide should have 1536MB of memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface, 6 and 8-pin PCI-Express connectors, two dual-DVI and mini HDMI outputs

In any case, more leaks should happen pretty soon as March 26th launch is drawing closer

You can find out more here

Google denied Nexus One trademark

Integra Telecom has a similar brand

Google’s request for a trademark on its Nexus One smartphone has been denied by the U.S Patent and Trademark office

The reason is that the name is too similar to Integra Telecom’s trademark term NEXUS, which is used to describe a series of calling services. The ruling says that "Registration of the applied-for mark is refused because of a likelihood of confusion with the mark in U.S. Registration No 3554195

Google hasn’t been very lucky in acquiring Nexus One or Android trademarks either for the fact that planet Earth is running out of trademarks or that Google's "creativity" is someone else's bread and butter, and this seems to be no exception to the tradition

The funny thing is that theoretically, someone could spitefully launch Nexus Two and not be punished. Goojje perhaps? Now who’d say no to that, even if only for kicks

Cyberlink announces its PowerDVD 10

All about HD and 3D

CyberLink has released the new version of its quite popular PowerDVD media player, and as every novelty in this part of industry the new PowerDVD is also all about High Definition and 3D technology

The new PowerDVD now has the ability to convert 2D movies into 3D thanks to a little piece of technology called the TrueTheater 3D. In addition to 3D, the new PowerDVD 10 can upscale SD video content to HD and features latest CPU/GPU optimizations for some fun with ATI Stream Nvidia's CUDA and latest Intel CPUs

Other features include a bundle of technologies which include the mentioned TrueTheater 3D and TrueTheater HD, TrueTheater Noise Reduction and TrueTheater Stabilizer. The "Mark II" version of the software should appear sometimes in summer season that will bring Blu-ray 3D and 2D-to-3D video file conversion, and most importantly, will be free for those that purchased PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D

PowerDVD 10 also has full support for Windows 7, with Touch Support, Ambient Light and support for Windows 7 music library features. In addition to all of this, it will also use a new interface, extensive file format support as well as new playlist features

The latest version of PowerDVD 10 is already available online in three versions with US $49.95 for the Standard, US $69.95 for Deluxe and US $99.95 for the Ultra 3D version

Those that are proud owners of the previous version can easily upgrade it for as low as US $29.95

You can find them all here





 

Nvidia releases Geforce 197.13 beta drivers

Fixes fan speed issues and much more

Nvidia has released a new beta version of its Geforce driver which supports Geforce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and 300 series desktop cards, as well as support for Nvidia IONs. The new driver fixes the quite prolofic fan speed issue which plagued 196.75 drivers and brings support for new GPUs and cards, as well as some performance improvements

The new 197.13 beta driver adds support for Nvidia's next-gen ION as well as its Geforce 300 series, GT 320, GT 330 and GT 340 cards. The PhysX has been updated to 9.10.0129, and the HD Audio Drive is now in version 1.0.9.1. The rest of the updates include SLI and multi-GPU support for bunch of new games including Assassin's Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2 and enhanced SLI support for Metro 2033, Supreme Commander 2, Unigine Engine and WOW

The performance improvements include Crysis: Warhead for up to 13 percent with a single GPU or 30% in SLI mode, increase in H.A.W.X. of up to 13 and 15 percent in single and SLI mode as well as the Left 4 Dead with up to 30 for single and up to 28 for SLI mode

The new driver can be found here

Gigabyte's P55 UD3 loves breaking records

Pick your favorite

We’ve come across an interesting slide showing Gigabyte’s P55 UD3 was pretty busy helping overclockers break almost every record imaginable

The slide lists records such as highest channel DDR3 frequency 1729.8MHz * 2 = DDR3 3459.6 the highest LGA 1156 CPU Overclock (5.72GHz), fastest LGA 1156 SuperPi 7.703sec

The slide also says that Gigabyte’s P55 UD3 is the best performance P55 board for Core i5 750 as well as Core i7 870 and lists a few other accomplishments 

Note that some records date as far as September 6th, which means that we wouldn’t be prepared to bet our money on whether those records are still standing, but nevertheless – it still proves that Gigabyte’s P55 UD3 was (and still is?) a wise investment

You can find the slide here

Commodore 64 style returns in style

Is it a keyboard? Is it a computer

We must admit it’s been a while since we’ve seen a “keyboard” form-factor PC. Well, that’s if you disregard the old Alienware laptop that we beheaded or rather bemonitored, and which still happily churns out some nice fps. This time however, Gizmodo reports the good old Commodore 64 style is back in action

The device is actually called ZPC-GX31 and it’s an All-in-one made in a different taste than currently popular devices. The rig runs based on Intel’s G31 Express chipset and supports Intel’s Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad CPUs up to 3GHz/95W as well as some others. It will take up to 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory and up to 1TB SATA HDD

As you can see, the C64 lookalike isn’t quite what we’d call top notch as it comes with four USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 ports (Two? Seriously?), touchpad and DVI and VGA outs

The ZPC-GX31 comes in silver and black and at a pretty steep price of between $699 to $1099 depending on the configuration, but in the good old-times-reminiscent spirit, we’re willing to not care for once. I mean, look at it - it looks like Commodore 64







More here where you can find Gizmodo's "Commodore" version

DivX releases new package

With HD video

DivX has announced the latest version of its flagship video software package, DivX Plus Software with HD video, which supports up to 1080p HD H.264-based videos in the MKV file format

DivX has redesigned their software interface to make it easier to use. The DivX Plus software package includes the DivX Plus Player, the DivX Plus Web Player, the DivX PlusCodec Pack, and the DivX Plus Converter

DivX Plus Player's new DivX To Go feature lets you transfer videos from the computer to any of the 250 million DivX devices, including DVD players, Blu-ray players, digital TVs, gaming consoles and mobile phones. The DivX Plus Software Package is available for free download for Windows 7, Vista and XP at DivX's Website

Asus Rampage III Extreme pixellized

Detailed pictures this time

Although it was pictured during CES, Asus has officially revealed its newest and detailed pictures of the upcoming Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard based on the Intel X58 chipset

Asus is still withholding all the key specifications, price and the availability date, but some features, like support for Intel's LGA 1366 CPUs, triple-channel DDR3 support, four PCI-Express x16 slots with Nvidia NF200 bridge chip and the support for SATA 6.0Gbps and USB 3.0 can be seen from the newly released pictures

The new Rampage III Extreme will be packed with overclocking-friendly features as well as the support for mobile phone tweaking via Bluetooth, something that Asus is quite keen on promoting these days. The rest of the features include Gigabit LAN, 7.1-channel audio, eSATA, Firewire and bunch of USB 2.0 ports

The rest of the details should be available pretty soon, but we guess that such a goody-packed motherboard will have a pretty hefty price tag


Click for a bigger picture


Click for a bigger picture

Click for a bigger picture

 

IE 9 available for test drive

GPU accelerated platform preview

Microsoft has launched a test drive version of its upcoming web browser - Internet Explorer 9

 The version is still far from beta and is designed to give web designers a sneak peek at the upcoming techs such as GPU accelerated HTML5, web graphics, text, etc 

The test drive version will over time evolve into a beta, and despite being in its raw version, which confirms that the company has developed a healthy hatred towards the back button, it still has a lot to show. With IE9, Microsoft plans be ready for new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3 and will make the GPU work harder in order to provide users with much improved browsing experience 

Unfortunately, the author's poorly updated "typewriter" required too many updates, including Vista SP2, IE8 and DirectX (yes, I'm that lazy) before the request for DirectX 2D made me quit trying, but the fact that Mozilla's Mike Shaver congratulated its competitors and said how IE9 looks great speaks louder than words.

In order to install IE9 test drive, you'll need Windows 7 or Vista operating system and Internet Explorer 8 

You can download the test drive version here and find out more on IE9 blog here or check out a more detailed hands on preview here 

Geforce GTX 480 massive availability April 6th

Should launch on the 26th US / 27th EU

Fermi is certainly one heck of a headline stealer. Despite the fact that Nvidia has announced the launch date and the cards' names, there is still plenty of information to write about this particular card

The recent development is that the card might launch on the 26th in the USA and 27th in Europe  mainly due to the 9 hours time difference between California (Pacific time PT) and Central Europe time (CET). At this time, they should remain the launch date but of course it can be pushed

Now for the fun part, the world-wide availability of Fermi based Geforce GTX 480 and 470 is most likely to happen on the April 6th, due to some logistical issues. The final cards are ready and benchmarkers are getting them as we speak, but it takes some time to manufacture the cards and fly them from China to Europe and US and get them in shops. This might be the cause of the availability delay from 27th of March to April 6th

As this is all under heavy discussion and it tends to change daily, there will probably be some more changes before 26th

ATI fights 58x0 shortage

Not enough 40nm chips

Fermi is finally coming and it should be in shops in the next two to three weeks and now all eyes are on ATI and what their plans are

Our sources are telling us that ATI still struggles to get enough Radeon 58x0 based cards and that partners are quite happy to keep the prices of cards around €375 for the card in European etail with VAT on. Naturally TSMC is to blame and our sources even suggest that Nvidia booked majority of 40nm wafers for its notebook DX10.1 parts for Calpella and Fermi chips

Since this will roughly be the price of Geforce GTX 470, which should start selling for €350 and since current Radeon HD 5870 price tag is some €75 lower than the pricing on Geforce GTX 480 cards, people are expecting some price cuts, but at this time there are no any indications that this will happen

Knowing the mind of ATI's sales machine, we know that ATI will wait until the last moment, but they are most likely to react with a price cut. The main advantage is that Radeon HD 5970 remains the fastest card on the market for at least few more months

ATI still has a week or three to prepare before Fermi becomes available

EVGA shows its Classified SR-2 motherboard

Dual-socket LGA 1366 beast

Although it has been detailed before, EVGA has now officially unveiled its top-notch overclocking motherboard powered by Intel's 5520 chipset. The Classified SR-2 is designed specifically for overclockers and it's no wonder considering the fact that Shamino was heavily involved in the process

Featuring the HPTX, 345.4x381mm (LxW), form factor, this motherboard supports two LGA 1366 Xeon CPUs, 8+2-phase design, twelve DDR3 memory slots (six for each socket), two NF200 brigde chips for seven PCI-Express x16 slots and bunch of other neat and high-end features

It features rather large active cooling, and comes with dual Gigabit LAN, 7.1-channel audio, two USB 3.0 and two SATA 6.0 ports, six standard SATA 3.0 ports, and two eSATA ports. The motherboard can also disable PCI-Express slots and features, and has on-board clear CMOS Power and Reset buttons as well as support for EVBot external OC device

The new Classified SR-2 motherboard comes with a lifetime warranty and a quite high US $600 price tag

Opteron 6000 6 core platform is out

SR5690 Chipset supports up to 12 core CPUs

Today AMD officially announced its AMD Opteron 6000 series platform and revealed plans for strong support, and we're happy to finally report that Magny-Cours + AMD SR5690 chipset are locked and loaded

Opteron 6000 generation is based on AMD's 6100 CPU, a.k.a. Magny-Cours, and will deliver the first 8 and 12 core x86 CPUs. The company is also announcing strong infrastructure and channel support and naturally, with partners such as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Supermicro and few others that shouldn't be too hard

Asus seems to already have its KGPE-D16 motherboard ready and it should nicely pair up with AMD’s Opteron 6100 Magny-Cours CPUS, whereas the rest are to follow promptly. You can expect the availability in the following weeks

6-core i7 980X makes it to notebooks

The desktop replacement to die for

Eurocom has announced the company’s support for the latest and greatest Intel 32nm i7-980X as well as new Xeon W56xx desktop processors, which have found their way to Eurocom’s high-end D900F Panther desktop replacement rig

The specs are as expected from such a device – smoking. This 17-inch device (WUXGA 1920x1200 or WSXGA+ 1600x1050) packs a choice between i7 or Xeon processors, up to 24GB of triple channel DDR3-1333 memory, up to 2.4TB of HDD storage (4 HDDs, RAID support) and Nvidia GTX 285 or Quadro FX 2800/3800 graphics

Eurocom says that the machine will be great for those looking for a mobile professional workstation, and Quadro FX 3800 or Quadro FX 2800 will surely comply, but that's not all as it will be great for a mobile server or "just" one fierce gaming machine

The D900F Panther comes with a 12-cell 6600mAh Li ion battery and weighs in at 5.4kg, so if you’re looking for a top of the line solution for pretty much whatever you think of, you can configure your own here 



 

Blu-Ray kills PS3

Microsoft claims

Microsoft claims that the cost of Blu-ray is killing off Sony's PS3. Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's director of product management told Edge magazine that "Sony bet on the physical disk" for entertainment. As a result it is facing "associated costs" that might be holding the PlayStation 3 back

He said that Redmond could offer a console starting at $199 is a benefit of not being burdened with that cost and being $100 cheaper is part of the reason why Redmond has nearly twice  Sony's installed base

Microsoft offers HD movies and television shows through Xbox Live. However it is unlikley to be Blu-ray so much as the fact that Sony has been more expensive than any others in the market place. Once Sony announced the PS3 Slim and its $299 price tag in August, sales started taking off. Many now think Sony, not Microsoft or Nintendo will win the console wars

StarCraft 2 Mac development continues

Mac Beta targeted for an April start

Blizzard wants to make sure that Mac users know that the company is still fully committed to a Mac version of StarCraft 2, and despite the fact that the PC version is already in beta, development continues on the Mac version of the game as well. Currently, the company is targeting an April release for the Mac version of the StarCraft 2 beta, but that date could be subject to change

Blizzard has been committed to the Mac platform and the company has normally offered a Mac version of their titles right alongside the PC releases. While many Mac users have complained about the wait, as the PC beta has already been going for some time, our sources claim that the projected April time frame for the Mac beta is accurate

The current beta cycle is said to be on track to end in the late spring and it is still expected that StarCraft 2 will arrive at some point before the end of the year, according to our sources

Kingston shows its 2400MHz XMP kit

Intel certified HyperX

Kingston has announced that its KHX2400C9D3T1K2/4GX dual-channel DDR3 kit has been certified by Intel which means that this one will be the fastest XMP memory kit in retail

The new Kingston HyperX kit features two 2GB modules working at 2400MHz with CL 9-11-9-27 latencies at Intel friendly 1.65V. The new kit is cooled by Kingston's recognizable blue T1 HyperX heatsinks

Although Kingston was keen on announcing the Intel certification, it has yet to reveal the precise availability date or the actual price of this kit, but considering the specs we doubt it will be cheap

The KHX2400C9D3T1K2/4GX kit is backed by a lifetime warranty

Razer shows some love for left-handed gamers

Announces left-handed DeathAdder version

Razer has announced a new, left-handed version of its quite popular DeathAdder mouse. In addition to Razer's claims, this might indeed be the first mouse specifically designed with left-handed gamers in mind

The only difference between the old DeathAdder is that this one is designed for left-handed gamers, while all the specs remained unchanged. The new one still features a 3500dpi Razer Precision 3.5G infra red sensor, five programmable buttons, Ultraslick Teflon feet, 1000Hz Ultrapolling and 1ms response, and braided fiber cable with gold-plated USB connector

It should be available as of next week at the same US $59.99 and €59.99 price as the old DeathAdder

NFS World closed beta starting

Still time to apply for a chance to get in

Some time back we told you about Electronic Arts’ plans to make over the Need For Speed franchise. The first effort in the plan was the release of Need For Speed: Shift, which received excellent reviews and sold pretty well. Now, the next game in the NFS reboot is finally set to start closed beta testing

Need for Speed: World will represent a significant departure from the previous Need for Speed titles, as Need for Speed: World is what is being billed as an MMO racer. Need for Speed World will feature a persistent-world that you are connected to with other players that resides on EA’s servers or in the cloud, if you like

Beyond knowing that the game will arrive this summer, many of the specifics are still unknown about the title beyond the fact that it will offer an extensive progressive leveling system with a variety of power-ups; and, of course, there is the racing experience, which will be at the heart of the game. If you are a racing enthusiast you can head over to the Web site and apply for your chance to get into the beta, but since it is exclusive to the PC, only PC users can apply

Apply for the NFS: World beta here

Intel intros X25 value SSD

40GB for €99

Intel has finally made the X25-V SSD official. We've talked about Intel's new Value series for months and although it doesn't offer stellar performance, it is probably one of the most important SSDs to show up in months

SSDs are anything but mainstream and the V series is supposed to change that. The 40GB X25-V is a 2.5-inch drive based on 34nm MLC chips and it features read and write speeds of 170MB/s and 35MB/s respectively. So, although it's a value product, the performance is still pretty good

However, the X25-V is all about the price. It is expected to sell for €99 in Euroland and around $129 stateside. The price makes it an interesting choice for the vast majority of users who find SSDs too pricey even as tiny system drives

ASUS releases Supercomputer motherboard

USB 3.0 onboard

ASUS has launched its new ASUS P7F7-E WS SuperComputer motherboard

The motherboard maximises transmission speeds by integrating USB 3.0, SATA 6G storage interface, and IEEE 1394b FireWire standard. It comes equipped with the LGA1156 socket and the latest Intel 3450 chipset with onboard graphics

If you are up to run such a board for gaming, you can run up to four ATI CrossFireX cards or 3-way/2-way NVIDIA SLI cards. It is also possible to use NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture to support up to four NVIDIA Tesla cards with Clarkdale Processors

However the motherboard's main job will be to supports high-performance computing for life sciences research, engineering and financial modeling with its NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture

By using Tesla cards with built-in Clarkdale processors, the ASUS P7F7-E WS SuperComputer generates up to 4 Teraflops of processing power from a total of 960 CUDA parallel processing cores. No word on price yet