Intel ships densest chip

Voted Lib-dem to keep the Tories out

Intel has announced that it is shipping to equipment manufacturers its 25-nanometer (nm). NAND flash memory chip, which doubles the capacity of its previous 34nm chip

The new chip, which can hold 8GB of data, was revealed last February. Manufacturers of solid state drives (SSD), USB sticks and removable and embedded memory cards put multiple NAND flash chips on a board along with multiple I/O paths to create mass storage devices

It was made by Intel's and Micron Technology's joint venture company, IMFT, it measures 0.35-in. by 0.74-in. According to Intel it can hold 7,000 photos, eight hours of video or 2,000 songs. It is made up of 64Gbit NAND chips and IMFT's latest lithography technology makes it possible to build products using half as many chips as is possible with the current 34nm lithography technology

It will also cut the overall cost to produce mobile products. The 25nm flash product uses Version 2.2 of the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) specification, which currently has a data transfer rate of 200MB/sec

Mafia II will feature PhsyX

Tommy guns will chip bricks, mince meat

2K Games has announced that all versions of Mafia II will feature Nvidia's PhysX technology to bring an extra dose of realism to the mob underworld

The game will be based on 2K Czech's Illusion Engine and in addition to PhysX it will also use Nvidia's APEX Clothing Module to make pin stripe suits and silk shirts look just as good as in the Godfather

The engine will offer more dynamic character animations and particle systems will deliver much more realistic explosions, debris and destructible environments. A short burst from the Tommy gun will chip brick walls and splinter wood. We're not sure what it will do to flesh, but we're guessing Jack Thompson would not approve

The game is slated to launch in late August and if it turns out half as good as the original, it could be one of the biggest titles in 2010.

More here

OCZ launches its Fatality 750W PSU

Modular cables and red LEDs

Previously seen and introduced at CeBIT back in March, OCZ has now officially launched its 750W Fatality power supply unit

The new 750W model features low-profile modular cables in order to maximize the airflow and it comes with a single +12V rail, 80+ Bronze certification (85% efficiency) and ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V compliance. Since it features four 6+2-pin PCI-E connectors it has SLI-ready support as well. Other specifications include six peripheral connectors, two floppy, six SATA and of course the standard 8-pin CPU, 4+4-pin CPU and 20/24-pin ATX power connectors

The entire PSU is cooled by a bottom placed 135mm double ball-bearing fan with red LEDs and it comes with a 5 year warranty

The new 750W Fatality PSU should be available pretty soon with a price tag of around €140.

Foxconn resorts to exorcism

Serious suicide rates in the company

We’ve seen a fair share of inexplicable and silly moves, but this one seems to take the cake. Foxconn, the company that needs no introduction, has allegedly resorted to exorcism in trying to deal with serious suicide rates within the company

Eight Foxconn’s employees have taken their lives in 2010, with the ninth incident occurring only recenly. The most recent victim turns out to have fallen with already existing knife wounds, so it hasn’t been pegged as suicide, but it seems to have alerted the company officials

It has been reported that the company’s chairman, Terry Guo has resorted to calling an exorcist, but we’re not sure of his findings

We’re also not sure whether this danger extends to those purchasing Foxconn’s products but if you are a proud owner and do indeed feel quirky, immediately call an exorcist or change your motherboard. Or find a job with a higher pay, as we’ve heard that such a move, strangely enough, helps with feeling low

More here

Seagate confirms 3TB drive for late 2010

Too big for XP and too cool to boot

Seagate has officially confirmed that it will introduce a 3TB drive later this year. In a chat with Thinq, Seagate's Senior Product Manager Barbara Craig confirmed the plans and noted that getting to 3TB is not as easy as it seems

Due to logical block addressing (LBA) limitations inherited from DOS, it is impossible to increase storage size beyond 2.1TB without introducing a new LBA standard. Seagate did just that, by extending LBA to Long LBA addressing and increasing the number of bytes used to define addresses. However, Long LBA is not supported by older operating systems, such as Windows XP. Hence, only Vista and Windows 7 users can hope to use the new drives

This might not sound like a major issue, as most users have already migrated to more recent operating systems, but booting from the new drives is also troublesome. Most current motherboards can't cope with Long LBA due to BIOS and controller limitations. Despite this, Craig is optimistic and believes the industry will embrace the new standard by year's end

More here

Nvidia prepares GF106 and GF108 chips

As well as GF104.

There are a few new chips coming from Nvidia this summer and we managed to confirm that a mainstream and entry level Nvidia cards are among the plans

We don’t want to bug you much with the new promised performance market king, the GD104 chip, as we mentioned this one a few times, but it’s quite interesting to get some basic details about the mainstream and low end chips from Nvidia

The chip that sits in mainstream market is GF106 and this one should power the cards that should replace the already overused GTS250, G92-based cards. The cards based on the GF106 chip should have some 75W TDP power but this specification is not final at press time, so no guarantees there

The second chip that is coming from Nvidia is GF108 again a Fermi derived chip with much less shaders and other vital parts of the chip and this new chip should end up in a few entry level SKUs. It should feature support for GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory configurations and according to some early specs from the Far East, it should feature a 128-bit memory interface

Both GF106 and GF108 should be ready for back to school, or should we say late summer time in the western hemisphere, but don't mind us for being skeptical about Nvidia’s schedules

Take-Two looking for big sales on Red Dead

Estimating 2 to 4 million because of strong pre-orders

Take-Two is really hoping for big things from its release today of Red Dead Redemption. The company is hopeful that the Rockstar- developed title that was delayed twice will live up to the strong amount of pre-orders that the company already has for the title. Sources tell us that the game could sell an estimated 2 to 4 million units in the first year because of the strong pre-order demand and strong early reviews for the title

To help with the sales of the game Take-Two has embarked on a huge advertising campaign to raise awareness of the title prior to release. The title has been at the top of the pre-order lists for many retailers, and the game has generated a big buzz. While the title has a long development cycle, Take-Two is hopeful that this title will help establish a new franchise in years when it does not ship Grand Theft Auto; and from what we can tell, it just might have a winner on its hands

Clarkdale supports Blu-ray 3D

Something we saw back in January

Clarkdale, Intel's Core i3 and Core i5 32nm processors with 45nm stitched graphics can support Blu-ray in 3D stereo. We saw a live demonstration back in January 2010 at CES but in this particular case, you needed a special 120 Hz monitor to make it possible

The hardware capability is there and we can only hope that Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs based on Clarkdale and Arrandale 32nm cores and 45nm graphics will be able to push Blu-ray 3D to a TV set near you. The bad thing about it is that this 3D TV set will feature hardware capability to play Blu-ray 3D on it's own, making Clarkdale quite useless

Still there will be a chance that you go out and buy 3D monitor and in this case Clarkdale will do just fine in playing the Blu-ray 3D on your Core i3 / Core i5 computer

We already told you that the next generation, Sandy Bridge CPUs will also continue with Blu-ray 3D support. I guess you won't need Nvidia's Geforce to get yourself some decent 3D playback, Intel finally came to the point that it doesn’t lag with multimedia performance and it can even accelerate video streaming experience with Adobe Flash player 10.1. If only you could play games on Intel’s HD (cough) graphics

Infineon chats to Intel

Wants to flog wireless chip business

German chipmaker Infineon is chatting to Intel about flogging its wireless chip business. German business daily Financial Times Deutschland reported that the Munich-based Infineon, which supplies chips for Apple's iPad and Nokia, Samsung and Research in Motion, is unsure whether a divestment makes sense

While most analysts say the sale would make sense for Intel to buy Infineon's wireless business they are less enthusiastic about the idea that it is such a hot move for Infineon. Its Chief Executive Peter Bauer told Reuters in March he saw no reason why the chipmaker should not try to further develop the business

While the mobile phone chip business is likely to be a growth driver for Infineon, it is so small that it may be as useful as a chocolate teapot when it competes with rivals such as ST Ericsson and Qualcom

Intel however could use the technology and its huge cash reserves to do something with the technology

Samsung Rogue turns into incredible exploding mobile

Who needs Semtex

If you want to get on board a flight to the US with a pile of explosives, you might want to pack several  Samsung Rogue phones

According to Steve Jobs' favourite newspaper Gizmodo, a reader had a  Samsung Rogue mobile the phone fell in between the seat and the center console. After unsuccessfully trying to retrieve it by the tips of my fingers, he got out of the car and moved his seat up

As he was trying to see the phone it exploded in his face and he got black crumbs and remnants of what he thought was the screen out of his eyes. After rushing to the hospital and getting rinsed out, checked for scratches on the eye, and being prescribed antibiotics he is feeling a bit better

Samsung has get to get back to the reader,  so the picture of the melted phone has ended up in Gizmodo. We expect a lawyer's letter will be following and a lucrative out of court settlement

It looks to us like a battery fault

Harmonix considers Rock Band artists

Wants to know which one you would buy

Harmonix is looking at the future of the Rock Band franchise and trying to figure out what you, the Rock Band player, want. As part of this process the company is apparently conducting a survey to find out whether buyers would be interested in a Rock Band artist-only title from Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen and the Eagles. Our sources at the company are being careful not to fuel rumors by saying that they have no deal in place with any of these artists and have not embarked on producing any of these artist-only editions

Apparently, the company was so successful with the Beatles Rock Band release that it wants to make sure that it picks the next release that will have the best chance at repeating the same success. While Rock Bad Green Day is next up, it is been whispered to us that despite all of the head scratching that has been going on about this release, Green Day has some of the most popular songs that work really well for Rock Band and apparently are heavily enjoyed by those that play the game

It is hard to say which one will come out on top and which one might be the next Rock Band artist release, but we have to think that the bands being considered do offer a lot of variety in both music and selection. We hope that Harmonix announces the actual winner; but don’t count on it

Point of View GTX 470 put to the test

Review: Viable alternative to HD 5870 cards



Today we’ll be talking about Point of View’s GTX 470, a card that by now certainly needs no introduction. Both the GTX 470 and GTX 480 are aimed at high end market and are the HD 5800 series’ direct competitors. Nvidia launched the GTX 470 and 480 more than a month ago, and the cards are based on the largest and fastest Fermi GPU

We expected the GTX 480 to get the full version of the GF100 GPU but Nvidia thought differently and the GF100 ended up with one disabled Streaming Multiprocessor (SM). This means that out of 512 available stream processors (16 SM x 32 cores) or CUDA cores as Nvidia likes to call them, the GTX 480 lacks 32 to reach the full number. Going downstream to the GTX 470, this card has two disabled SMs and 448 stream processors in total. Naturally, this raises questions of what happened to the full version of GF100, but at this point we can only speculate

The GF100 is a complex chip that’s made of four Graphics Processing Clusters, four Raster Engines, six memory controllers, six ROP clusters and, as we’ve said before, 16 SMs. We’re not sure of exactly which SMs are disabled on the GTX, but we do know that the GTX 470 also comes without one ROP cluster containing 8 ROPs. At the same time, this means that the GTX 470’s memory bus is 320 bit, rather than 384-bit like on the GTX 480, which comes with all available ROP clusters. Each individual ROP cluster is assigned with one 64-bit memory controller

In order to make the performance difference evident, the usual practice is to lower operating clocks. This is the case with the GTX 470 where the GPU runs at 607MHz, compared to the GTX 480’s 701MHz. Stream processors on the GTX 400 cards run at 1401MHz and 1215MHz for the GTX 480 and GTX 470, respectively 

The memory on the GTX 470 runs at 837MHz (3348MHz effectively). Coupled with the 320-bit memory bus, the card’s bandwidth totals at 133.9 GB/s

Nvidia opted on using GDDR5 memory, but the company did run into some problems with the speed. We see that the memory is clocked lower than on AMD’s high-end cards, but AMD uses 256-bit memory bus. As a result, the HD 5870 scores 153.6 GB/s with GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz, whereas the GTX 480 (384-bit memory bus) is capable of 177.4 GB/s despite featuring memory clocked at 3696MHz

Point of View’s GTX 470 comes with 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory while the faster, GTX 480 packs 1536MB

The GF100 is a fast and powerful graphics processor, but cooling it on GTX 400 cards has proven to be quite tricky. Nvidia uses dual-slot cooling on both cards and while it does get the job done, both cards get pretty loud. The GTX 480’s TDP stands at 250W and the GTX 470’s at 215W. Idle consumption for the GTX 480 and 470 is 47W and 33W, respectively

Point of View GTX 470 is no different from the reference GTX 470, except for the stickers on the fan and the cooler. So, the card comes with reference dual slot cooling, which is a smaller version of the GTX 480’s cooler. To transfer the heat from the core to the heatsink, the cooler uses 5 heatpipes. The heatpipes are short and managed to fit beneath the plastic hood, so you won’t see them like on the GTX 480. The pictures below show the difference between the GTX 480 and GTX 470.








 
 
Point of View’s GTX 470 is 241mm long, which means it’s 26mm shorter than the GTX 480 and similar to the HD 5850.

A small 70mm fan is the same one used on the GTX 480. It’s a Delta fan rated at 1.8A. The fan, located at the far end of the graphics card, blows through the aluminum block and hot air leaves the case via the I/O panel’s outlets. In order to provide as much fresh air, the PCB features holes behind the fan. This trick was first done by Nvidia on its dual-GPU GTX 295 cards, and has now found it’s way to the GTX 400 cards


 
The GTX 470's cooler is made of four parts. The fan and the plastic hood used to direct air are visible but the plastic hides the third and the fourth component – a large aluminum block and metal block


 
Like on the GTX 480, our today’s card also features 5 heatpipes, but they’re much shorter and don’t exceed the GTX 470’s height. Since the heatpipes on this card are not visible, Nvidia decided not to “pimp” them the way they’ve done on the GTX 480.


 
The heatpipes are in direct contact with the GPU


 
The heatsink with the heatpipes cools the GPU only, while the memory is cooled by the metal block which extends the entire length of the card and cools other hot components


 
Nvidia’s Fermi GTX 400 series is in many respects the company’s first. Namely, this is the first time that the green team used GDDR5 memory on their high-end cards. The GTX 470 comes with 10 128MB GDDR5 memory chips (1280MB), whereas the GTX 480 comes with 12 memory chips (1536MB).


 
On their GTX 480, Nvidia uses 348-bit memory bus with memory clocked at 924MHz (3969MHz effectively), while the GTX 470 uses a 320-bit bus and memory at 837MHz (3348MHz effectively).


 
The GTX 470 comes with a 215W TDP and the card requires two 6-pin power connectors. In comparison, the GTX 480’s TDP is 250W and the card needs one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector Recommended PSU for the GTX 480 is 600W whereas for GTX 470 Nvidia recommends a 550W PSU. Power connectors are located on the top of the card


 
The I/O panel features two standard DVI outs and miniHDMI. We presume Nvidia opted on mini-HDMI to leave more space for ventilation, as the GPU can get pretty hot. The GTX 480 and GTX 470 feature the same I/O panel, as you can see from the picture



It’s worth noting that the GF100 supports DisplayPort, but Nvidia opted on HDMI as it’s much more common. However, if partners deem it appropriate, they can easily add DisplayPort out on the GTX 400 cards’ I/O panel

Nvidia included an HDMI sound device within the GPU, which means there’s no need to connect an external audio source to the graphics card when trying to bring both video and audio to your HD device via one cable only. In this respect, the GF100 features the same audio/video capabilities like the 40nm GT200 cards

Testbed:.

Motherboard: EVGA 3xSLI
CPU: Core i7 965 XE (3.6 GHz / 1.270 Volts, Intel EIST and Vdrop enabled).
Memory: 6GB Corsair Dominator 12800 7-7-7-24.
Power Supply: CoolerMaster Ultimete 1100W
Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D
Fan Controler: Kaze Master Pro 5.25"
Operating System: Win7 64-bit
197.41 WHQL
CCC 10.4.





Vantage

Vantage reports that GTX 480 is currently the fastest single-GPU card and it’s clearly faster than the GTX 470. The GTX 480’s advantage over the HD 5870 melts from 10.5% in Performance to 6.2% in High and ends up at about 3% in Vantage Extreme, but it still manages to beat the HD 5870 in every single test, albeit with a rather tight margin

In Vantage tests, the GTX 480 constanlty beats the GTX 470. Performance test reports 24.7%. better results, High settings report 26.6%, whereas Extreme settings result in a 27.2%. advantage, naturally in favor of the GTX 480.

Comparing the GTX 470 to the HD 5870 shows that the latter card packs more punch in more demanding tests. The GTX 470 ends up 12.7% slower in Vantage Performance, 19.3% at High settings and 23.4% at Extreme settings
 





Far Cry2.

In FarCry 2, Nvidia’s high-end GTX 400 series comes out on top and it’s even more evident when 8x antialiasing is turned on. FarCry2 results prove that by redesigning ROP subsystems in the GT100 chip, the company managed to improve compression and rendering efficiency as well as rendering smaller primitives that can’t be compressed. Throughput was also much improved compared to GT200 architecture, which resulted in overall better antialiasing performance and significantly smaller drops in performance when switching from 4xAA to 8xAA

Radeon HD 5870 ends up about 50% slower than the GTX 480 in both tested resolutions with 8xAA. The difference ducks to 39% at 1920x1200 and 4xAA and to 33.6% at 2560x1600, which proves that Nvidia’s GF100 is more efficient with 8xAA. With antialiasing turned off at 2560x1600, the performance difference ends up at only 15.5%.

Point of View’s GTX 470 outpaces the HD 5870 in few occasions, and the highest gap Nvidia’s ace made was at 1920x1200 and 8xAA – 17%. By increasing resolution and turning on antialiasing, the GTX 470 loses the fight versus the HD 5870.





Dirt 2 is one of the newer games that utilize certain parts of DirectX 11. At 1920x1200,  the GTX 480 beats the HD 5870 by about 20%. This difference melts to about 7% at 2560x1600, with and without AA. Point of View GTX 470 fares well versus the HD 5870 at 1920x1200, but as soon as we hit 2560x1600, the HD 5870 proves that it’s faster. At 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 (no AA), the GTX 470 is slower by 1.6% and 15.9%, respectively. After turning antialiasing on, the difference melts to 3.4% and 16.7%, respectively





Overclocking

Point of View GTX 470 runs at 607/1215/837 MHz for the GPU/Shaders/Memory – meaning we’re talking about reference clocks. Nvidia strapped the GTX 470 with a dual-slot cooler, but the card easily hits 90° in 3D. The cooler is similar to the one used on the GTX 480, and it uses the same Delta 1.8A fan

The cooler is capable of keeping temperatures in check, but it does get pretty loud when the GPU heats-up. Still, it’s quieter than the one on the GTX 480. At reference clocks, maximum GPU temperatures didn’t exceed 93°C and the fan spun at 3400 RPM. In idle mode, Point of View’s GTX 470 ran pretty quiet

Overclocking always requires some kind of sacrifice – thermals, noise or both. In this case, we had to push the fan to maximum RPM, but the fan was unbearably loud. We didn’t meddle with voltages but managed to push the GPU from reference 607MHz to 700MHz. Truth be told, we expected more. We managed to hit 740MHz for the GPU, but the card didn’t run stable in all the tests. Overclocking the memory on GTX 400 cards is a bit tough, and we only managed to reach 880MHz (3520MHz, reference is 837MHz). Overclocking brought 13% better results in FarCry2.

Patriot launches Inferno SSD series

Sandforce-based

Patriot Memory has updated its line of solid state drives with Inferno series, a Sandforce SF-1200 series based SSD. The new Inferno series will be available in 100GB and 200GB capacities

The new Inferno series features SF-1200 series controller, or to be precise SF-1222 paired up with MLC NAND flash memory chips. The maximum read and write speeds are set at 285 and 275MB/s. One thing that really pushes Patriot ahead of the competition is the five years warranty, which is definitely something that you don't see every day

Compared to previous SSD controllers these SSDs, thanks to Sandforce DuraClass technology, provide enhanced endurance and reliability via

innovative write technology and Wear Leveling

The new Inferno is already listed over at Newegg.com with a US $369.00 price tag for the 100GB version and US $679.00 for the 200GB one. You can find them both here 




 

Dual GF100 Fermi to be replaced with dual GF104 card

Due to high TDP projected for 2X Fermi


It looks like that upcoming mainstream miracle chip simply codenamed GF104 is going to find its place in Nvidia’s dual-chip card

The card that some roadmaps new as D12U-50 is internally canceled due to its too high TDP

 The Chinese roadmap claims that such a card should end up with whopping 375W TDP

The new dual-chip card based on two GF104, second generation Fermi chips should be coming this year, most likely for back to school but we can only speculate on the launch date

According to the same roadmap the GF104 based D12U-15 card branded as Geforce GTX 460. should have a TDP of 150W, or some 25 percent less than the GF102 (Fermi) based GTX 465. that should come with a 200W TDP

Until this dual GF104 chip card launches, Radeon HD 5970 remains the fastest card around, as well as the only dual-chip DirectX 11 card

Huron River 2011 Platform supports 3D Blu-ray

And HDMI 1.4 3D

Intel believes that the future of computing is 3D especially when it comes to all us lazy folk that like to watch movies or a lot of TV

The plan for Huron River is to include new Sandy Bridge based Intel HD graphics and as a part of that, this 2011 notebook platform will support HDMI with 1.4 version, the one that brings the 3D support in

When it comes to Blu-ray support, Huron River plans to introduce a Blu-ray Stereoscopic 3D playback support but we can only hope that notebooks based on Huron River will come with a display with refresh rate that can support Blu-ray 3D on your notebook

If not you are stuck with HDMI 1.4 and its ability to support 3D stereo on your 3D enabled TV Since Huron River comes in Q1 2011, you still have a few quarters to save some money for a new 3D stereo supporting TV, if you really feel like it

Wal-Mart to sell iPads

Needs some overpriced stuff

US retail giant Wal-Mart plans to start selling Apple iPads later this year

The move is a bit surprising, as Apple has not announced any plans to push iPads through retail partners. Also, it's a bit odd that a retail chain that made a name for itself peddling value products would choose to sell something as overpriced as an iPad

However, Wal-Mart is fully aware that US consumers crave tech. The company is also planning to add more gadgets in its offer, including internet-connected TV's and routers, as well as more Blu-rays and mobile phones

More here

GTX 465 benched, apparently

Mixed bag

Chinese hacks have apparently managed to get their hands on an early sample of the GTX 465, Nvidia's third graphics card based on the Fermi architecture

If the numbers are to be believed, Nvidia enjoyed crippling the new card, as it only features 352 stream processors and a 256-bit memory bus. It packs 1GB of GDDR5 memory and it's clocked at 607/1215/3206 MHz

This is quite a bit less than the GTX 470, let alone a GTX 480 and it's clear that performance was significantly effected. The card ended up a bit faster than the HD 5870 in Far Cry 2, but it was quite a bit slower than an HD 5830 in Crysis Warhead. In Unigine's Heaven benchmark the card ended up between the HD 5850 and HD 5870

Mind you, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Even if the benches are legit, it's still too early and Nvidia has quite a bit of time to polish its drivers prior to launch. However, the card probably won't have an easy time against AMD's rather affordable HD 5800 series cards

The original article over at enet.com.cn has been removed, but you get some details at TweakTown

Nvidia shipped hundreds of thousands of Fermi GPUs

We'd like to know where

Nvidia has apparently already shipped hundreds of thousands of Fermi GPUs and it says it's churning them out like sausages

During a recent conference call Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang claims that the GPU is in full production and that the company has seen some rather strong demand. Huang also noted that Nvidia raked up record revenues from Tesla processors and that its Quadro business is also going strong

We must admit that we are somewhat miffed by the announcement, as Nvidia has struggled to ship Fermi-based cards in significant volumes over the past several weeks. The company launched three Fermi based products thus far, the consumer oriented GTX 480 and GTX 470 and the Tesla C2050 computing board. However, the company is still lagging behind AMD, which has already shipped millions of DX11 parts

The company also posted strong revenues and profits. Its revenue rose to $1.0 billion, a 2. percent increase sequentially and a 51 percent jump compared to the same quarter last year Profits rose from $131.1 million to $137.6 sequentially, while in the same quarter last year Nvidia incurred a $201.3 million loss

Next CODMW2 map pack to arrive in June

Said that it will be called “Resurgence Pack”

Apparently, while Activision has referenced the release of a Map Pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for this fall, another Map Pack will be released on the Xbox 360 on June 3rd

 According to what our sources are telling us, this Map Pack will be called the “Resurgence Pack and it will be priced at $15 or 1,200 Microsoft Points

It seems that the news about the “Resurgence Pack” was confirmed by Thomas Tippi during a financial earnings call last week, but went unnoticed. Some of our sources are speculating that while the “Resurgence Pack” will arrive for the Xbox 360 on June 3, it could be that the PC and Playstation 3 versions might be released later on in the year. Some are even suggesting that a third map pack might be on tap for later this fall, as well

As for the price of the map pack again at $15, Activision seems unwilling to budge on the price of the map pack, despite all of the negative press and complaints from the community. The problem, according to one of our moles, is that people are buying it in droves at $15, so why would Activision charge less for it to satisfy a few very vocal people complaining about the price? While we think it is a lot more than just a few unhappy with what Activision is charging, unless the next map pack doesn’t sell, we see no way that they are going to even consider charging less for the map packs. After all, when you have sales like they have had with the Stimulus Pack, there no reason to think that they can’t go to the well again and cash in

Acer shows its new Aspire notebooks

Based on AMD's ultrathin platform

Following the yesterday AMD announcement, Acer has officially announced three new notebooks based on AMD's 2010 ultrathin platform, the Aspire One 521, Aspire One 721 and Aspire 1551.

The Aspire One 521 features AMD's single-core AMD V-series V105 processor clocked at 1.2GHz paired up with ATI Radeon HD 4225 GPU, and this 10-incher looks quite good according to the few videos posted over at Netbooknews.de. The rest of the features include 1GB of memory, a 160GB HDD, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and D-Sub outputs, and an ability to easily cope with 1080p HD video

The bigger 11.6-inch Aspire One 721 features AMD's Athlon II Neo K325 paired up with the same Radeon HD 4225 GPU. As far as the ports and specs are concerned, this one is pretty much the same as the Aspire One 521 except for the obvious change in screen size and CPU

The last but not least is the Aspire 1551 featuring the same 11.6-inch 1366x768 display but will be available with either AMD Turion II Neo K625 dual core processor, up to 4GB of memory, 640GB of HDD space, and the same Radeon HD 4225 integrated graphics. It also comes with HDMI output and is capable of playing 1080p content

Hopefully more information will be available pretty soon as we guess that we'll see a lot more similar notebooks sooner or later. You can check out the Aspire One 521 hands on video here

MSI's Wind U250 breaks cover

Equipped with Athlon II Neo K325

In addition to the Vision event at the Cannes Film Festival, AMD apparently had a couple of notebooks on display there as well and apparently MSI's 12-inch Wind U250 was also up and running

The U250 was rumoured a while back and this 12.1-incher happily runs on AMD's Athlon II Neo K325 CPU clocked at 1.3GHz. Some of the specifications should include a DirectX 10.1 capable integrated graphics and Windows 7 OS. Unfortunately, besides a bunch of pictures, Newgadgets.de was pretty scarce on the rest of the specifications

Hopefully bunch of other detailed specifications should show up eventually. You can check out the the rest of the pictures here



 

Silicon to be replaced by DNA

Boffin comes up with cunning plan

Duke University engineer Chris Dwyer has a cunning plan to kill off the use of silicon within computers and replace it with DNA

The idea is to use DNA to coax circuits into assembling themselves could produce more logic circuits in a single day than the entire global silicon chip industry could produce in a month. Dwyer said that DNA is perfectly suited to pre-programming and self-assembly. He has worked out that by creating and mixing customized snippets of DNA and other molecules, he can create billions of identical, waffle-like structures that can be turned into logic circuits using light rather than electricity as a signalling medium

What he does is add light-sensitive molecules called chromophores to the structures. These absorb light and get the electrons all excited within. That energy is passed to another chromophore, which uses the energy to emit light of a different wavelength and creates a logic gate. The really cool thing is that rather than needing electricity the DNA switches can run on light

Golden Systems releases new GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard

Completely redefining hyperbole
Golden Systems has unveiled its new Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard with a press release which setting out to

completely redefine what is possible performance and feature-wise on the X58 platform

Setting aside the hyperbole, it looks like the motherboard is designed to maximize power delivery for Intel’s latest 1366 socket CPUs. This includes the Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (6 core) CPUs. The board has DDR3 memory support, 4-way PCI Express 2.0 graphics support and a unique iPhone charging feature. Golden said that the GA-X58A-UD9 X58 chipset motherboard delivers "utmost system stability and overclockability" by providing maximum power delivery through the company's new 24 phase Unlocked Power design

It has a 4-way PCI Express 2.0 graphics support for both Nvidia SLI (with 2 nF200 SLI bridges) and ATI CrossFireX, DDR3 memory support, and seven PCIe 2.0 expansion slots. There is support for high speed data transfer rates in GIGABYTE's 333 Onboard Acceleration, which includes the industry's latest technologies such as SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA 3.

It also has a dual power switching design that allows two sets of 12 power phases operate in tandem, helping to extend component lifespan. As one set is powered up the other is turned down, allowing the non active set to rest. With built-in failure protection, the system can continue to boot even if one of the phase sets fails. When CPU loading requires boosting, the dual power mode automatically suspends the whole thing. All 24 phases are unlocked which Golden thinks the highest amount of CPU power currently available on any desktop motherboard

The GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard is available worldwide for a suggested retail price of US$649.

US Air Force miffed at Sony's anti-Linux move

Collateral damage
The US Air Force has suffered collateral damage after Sony decided to stop its PS3 from using the Linux OS

According to ArsTechnica the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York picked up 336 PS3 systems in 2009 and built itself a 53 teraFLOP processing cluster. When they got it working Air Force researchers then scaled up by a factor of six and found 1,700 more

It spent $663,000 to a small company called Fixstars that could provide 1,700 160GB PS3 systems to the government. Basically the move gave the Air Force a supercomputer which was much cheaper than could be done with conventional PC chips

Sony's decision had no immediate impact on the cluster because the PS3s are not hooked into the PlayStation Network and don't need Sony's firmware updates. However if a PS3 dies or needs repair it can't be fixed and the supercomputer will be a fraction less than clever

Wii to get Black Ops after all

Will arrive on the 9th with the others

When the first news of the new Treyarch-developed Call of Duty title known as “Black Ops” was announced, we were told that it would be arriving for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. In the past, Treyarch has produced a Wii version of their titles, as well, but this time around we could not get any confirmation of the existence of a Wii version. We can now confirm that the Wii will be getting Black Ops, as well

The Wii version of Black Ops will arrive on November 9th alongside the other platform releases. Currently, it is unknown how much the Wii version will differ from the other platforms, but we do suspect that there will be significant differences. Nothing else is known about the Wii version beyond this, but we are being told that the Wii version should start showing up for pre-order from your favorite gaming retailer in the next couple of days

AMD shows its Vision trailer

Cannes Film Festival

Taking a piece of Cannes Film Festival action, AMD has launched a new trailer for its Vision and has officially announced its 2010 Mainstream and Ultrathin platforms as well as its 2010 Desktop platforms

AMD is really pushing hard with its Vision program and with longer battery life, better thermals, more power claims for notebook platforms and recently announced new CPUs for desktop platforms, it's no wonder that AMD is scoring quite a few design wins

You might remember AMD's "109 design wins" claim, which is now looking pretty real, especially considering the full launch of AMD ultrathin and mainstream notebook CPUs

You can check out the trailer here



 

AMD announces its 2010 notebook platforms

Mainstream and ultrathins

Following their Cannes Film Festival Vision trailer, AMD has officially announced its 2010 mainstream and ultrathin notebook platforms and has officialy released a full list of its notebook processors including the new V-series V105 and V120, Athlon II Neo single-core K125 and dual-core K325, as well as Turion II Neo, Turion II dual-core, Athlon II dual-core and Phenom II dual, triple and quad-core CPUs

AMD is quite keen on promoting its Vision platforms and claims that these can bring quite an impressive performance when compared to Intel and Nvidia equipped platforms thanks to the ATI Radeon HD 5400 or Radeon HD 4200 graphics. In addition to the graphics options, the entire lineup boasts an improved battery life and thermals. Hopefully some of those new HP, Lenovo, Acer, Dell notebooks will show up in a review somewhere

The top of the line for ultrathins goes to Turion II Neo dual-cores, K665 and K625 clocked at 1.7 and 1.5GHz with 2MB of L2 cache and a 15W TDP. The novelty here is the V series CPU clocked at 1.2GHz with 512KB of L2 cache and a mere 9W TDP. The V-series is also present in the Mainstream segment as well but under V120 model name, clocked at 2.2GHz with a 25W TDP

The top of mainstream segment takes the Phenom II Black Edition quad-core X920 clocked at 2.3GHz with 2MB of L2 cache and a 45W TDP as well as a Phenom II Black Edition dual-core X620 clocked at 3.1GHz with same amount of cache and the same TDP. The rest of the mainstream linup include bunch of Phenom II quad, triple and dual core as well as Turion II and Athlon II dual-core CPUs and aformentioned V-series V120.

It looks like AMD is pushing hard with its Vision and it will be quite interesting to see how well will this one do once it starts to appear on the market. You can check out the full ultrathin lineup here while the mainstream notebook CPU list can be found here

Bad Company 2 to get new Co-Op mode

4-Player Onslaught to be released soon

We are not sure whether EA and DICE are in a giving mood with the announcement that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has sold over 5 million copies across all platforms, which beats the heck out of the original estimates; or whether they simply had this planned all along.  Whatever the case, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 fans are going to get a real treat in the form of a new mode that will be released soon. The new mode is known as Onslaught and it will be a 4-player Co-Op mode

The Onslaught mode will be available for the following four maps: Atacama Desert, Isla Inocentes, Nelson Bay, and Valparaiso. The maps have been redesigned with some new lighting, vehicles and the time of day during which the map takes place. The Onslaught Co-Op 4 vs. 4 mode will have its own leaderboards to allow you to track the progress of your 4-player squad

While no official release date has been announced, Onslaught has only been confirmed so far for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3; but our sources insist that Onslaught will be released for the PC platform as well, but not at the same time that the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions are released. Our sources are confirming that the Onslaught mode add-on from DICE will again be free for players to download

Of course this is all great, but are they ever going to release Battlefield 1943 for the PC as they promised?.

All in on 3D and motion controller titles

EA confirms that it is a big part of their strategy

Word has leaked from the halls of Electronic Arts that they are all in on the new 3D and motion controller technology. Sources tell us that EA will be showing off several new and unannounced titles during E3 that use these new technologies in a variety of different ways

John Schappert, COO of Electronic Arts, said during a recent fiscal conference call with analysts that “…we will unveil games that make use of the new motion controllers from both Sony and Microsoft.”  In addition, Schappert also promised that they would be showing a marquee title in “breathtaking 3D.”  The news confirms what we have been hearing from our sources

While the identity of the actual titles to be shown are still unknown to us, EA has a large catalog from which to draw that they could incorporate either the motion control or 3D technology. The decision by EA to move forward with the development of a number of titles that support either the motion control or 3D technology, or even both, could prove to be a risky decision; but with most publishers on board, that does reduce the potential risk. It is also likely that the titles will still be able to be used without the supported motion control or 3D technology

Some analysts are already suggesting that the addition of motion control technology or 3D technology by Microsoft and Sony could end up being a gimmick that gamers might not end up buying into. Some analysts are suggesting that unlike the Wii, the gamers who make up the vast majority of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners may not be as quick to embrace the motion control technology, and some of the most popular games on these platforms may not lend themselves to this technology. As for 3D, it is still relatively unknown if 3D will become popular for gaming

Batman pre-order content released

Arkham Asylum additional challenge maps sold

For those that didn’t pre-order Batman: Arkham Asylum and missed out on the pre-order bonus of the “Dem Bones” challenge map and the “Crime Alley” challenge map that only came with the collector’s edition release of the game, you will now be able to purchase these two challenge maps as they are released on Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store

The challenge maps are being sold for 240 Microsoft Points, or $3 for Xbox 360 owners, or $3.49 for PlayStation 3 owners. The decision to release these challenge rooms just happens to coincide with the release of the Game of The Year Edition of Arkham Asylum, which adds 3D support to the game as well as all of the previous DLC content and the previously difficult to obtain challenge rooms, Dem Bones and Crime Alley

Selling pre-order or special edition bonuses after the fact seems to be a trend that is continuing to grow. While not every studio and publisher is following suit and going in this direction, studios and publishers claim that consumers that didn’t pre-order or choose to buy the Collectors/Special Edition of the game are now asking how to obtain these bonuses, even if they have to pay extra for them

The decision to sell this content has not been an easy one. In the recent case with Turn 10 studios and Forza 3, the studio struggled with the decision to sell the VIP access and bonuses that were included with the Special Edition of the game. Despite loud protests from loyal community Turn 10 members who had spent money and pre-ordered the Special Edition, Turn 10 eventually decided to offer these extras for sale from the Special Edition in the Xbox Live Marketplace. At the time, it was believed that this decision was based more on selling the content after a period of time had gone by than to simply satisfy the requests of consumers who wanted it