Gigabyte shows Sandy Bridge P67 motherboard

Gigabyte announces five Intel 6-series motherboards

Gigabyte will soon be releasing five new motherboards that will support the second generation Intel Core processors and utilise Intel's 6-series chipset

All five boards support the LGA 1155 Intel 2nd Generation Core Processors, otherwise known as Sandy Bridge. The boards feature four dual in-line memory module (DIMM) slots which can house dual-channel DDR3 RAM

The new lineup features enhanced phase power design, with the P67A-UD7 clocking in at 24. The P67A-UD5 has 20 phase power design, while  the P67A-UD4 and P67A-UD3P use 12 phase power design. The H67A-UD3H does not feature this design

The motherboards come with up to 10 USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ones, and six 6Gb/s SATA ports on the highest model. The ports feature Gigabyte's 3x USB Power design and have On/Off Charge capability, which allows fast charging of external devices

All of the new series utilise Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 design, which includes 2x copper printed circuit boards (PCB) for what Gigabyte is touting as stability, reliability, and longevity. The boards feature a Matte Black colour PCB to blend in with traditionally black cases

All five motherboards support CrossFireX, while the P67A-UD7 supports 3-way SLI and the P67A-UD5 and P67A-UD4 support 2-way SLI for Nvidia graphics cards

The boards feature Gigabyte's DualBIOS technology to ensure a high level of failure protection

The P67A-UD4, P67A-UD3P and H67A-UD3H come with Dolby Theatre support for enhanced audio. All five boards feature 8-channel audio

No details on pricing or release dates have been revealed

P67A-UD7

P67A-UD5

P67A-UD4

P67A-UD3P

H67A-UD3H

Gainward rolls out two GTX 580s

Golden Sample clocked at 835MHz

Getting in line with the Nvidia launch day, Gainward has prepared two different GTX 580 cards, the reference and the Golden Sample factory overclocked version

As you all probably already know, the reference card is clocked at 772MHz for the 40nm GF110 GPU, 1544MHz for 512 CUDA Cores and 2004MHz for 1536MB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface. On the other hand, Gainward's Golden Sample version features a rather nice factory overclock despite the fact that it still has the same reference cooler. The Gainward GTX 580 Golden Sample ended up clocked, or rather overclocked, to 835MHz for the GPU, 1670MHz for shaders and 2,100MHz for memory

As we wrote before, the cooler is based on vapor-chamber technology, which is actually the first time that a reference card uses such a cooler and it looks like it is doing a great job. Both cards should be available as of today and you can expect the Golden Sample to be priced at a bit over €500, at least according to the first listing of similar factory overclocked cards

Geforce GTX 580 review is here

Review: Fastest single GPU around, quiet too

Nvidia has a mid-life kicker. It is called Geforce GTX 580 and the card as we said before is based on a “new” improved GF100 chip that now bears the GF110 moniker. In reality is a GF100 done right, with some optimisation on the transistor level and the card itself has a new vapour chamber cooler that is really quiet, at least for a high-end card

Does it really deserve the Geforce GTX 580 name? Well, continue reading and decide for yourself

The card works at 772MHz while the shaders run at twice that clock, or 1544MHz. The card has 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory clocked to 2000MHz and paired up with a 384-bit bus. It is the same size as Geforce GTX 480 and it measures 10.5 inches or 26.67 centimeters in length. It has one 6-pin and 8-pin power connector and 244W TDP. The TDP is somewhat lower as the chip was slightly tweaked and the board has better power management. The TDP is also better as Nvidia redesigned the chip and introduced a new cooling solution to reference high end graphics cooling, the vapour chamber. It's worth noting that vapour chamber has been around for a couple of years, but it was usually reserved for non-reference boards. This is the first time we see it as part of the reference design

The TDP is some 50W lower than on the old Geforce GTX 480. Nvidia didn’t talk about size of the core in square milimeters, but it should be very close to the original GF 100 core, so around 500mm² sounds about right
We can only cut the card in half and measure it, but since we have only one sample, we probably won't do it

The transistor count is around 3 billion. Once again Nvidia doesn’t talk about the real number, probably in order to hide some things, like the fact that the chip has 512 shaders and all eight clusters turned on, the same number as it was possible on a fully enabled GT100 chip

Nvidia took care of leakage on the transistor level, something that was responsible for many performance and temperature related issues and managed to gain some performance by increasing the clock. Nvidia also talked about the fact that you should see this new chip as a merger of some architectural advantages of the GF104 and GF100, and this was the formula that resulted in the GF110.

The video engine didn’t change, it is the same as on GF100, Fermi chips. You still have maximum of two display supported, no DisplyPort, at least not on reference boards. The reference card has two DVI ports and a mini HDMI. The mini HDMI cable might be bundled by partners and if not it will cost you much more than a standard full size HDMI that you use for your HD TV. Let's hope that Nvidia can control this otherwise we see little use of mini HDMI

Nvidia couldn’t put the full size HDMI port as it didn’t have enough space on back of the part. One slot is reserved for the connectors, while other one is used as a blow out metal grille that is very important for Nvidia's new cooler. You could use a mini HDMI dongle to get a proper HDMI port, but the other downside for some users will be the fact that Nvidia only supports HDMI 1.3 and not later standards. Clearly consumers deserve to get HDMI and DisplayPort on any high-end card and we're not trhilled by the lack of the latter

The video engine will most likely change on the other 500 series cards such as the GTX 560 but this is something that we need to wait and see. For this chip it was too risky to meddle with that as changing more parts of the chips on a new design that simply has to succeed is very dangerous, especially when you report to Jen Hsun Huang

There are two more things related to the card itself, something that we haven't seen before. First is the new power current regulation with two circuits and these circuits regulate the speed of the fan much more preciously than before. In previous designs the CPU temperature was the key element in fan speed regulation and with this innovation Nvidia can get smoother fan control



This also helps the vapour chamber cooler, one of the cool features of this new card. The principle is simple, there is a chamber full of a water-like liquid that evaporates and transfers the temperature from the GPU. Once the gas cools, it drops down to the GPU again and starts all over. It's basic physics, but it works

Heatpipes are gone and vapour chamber looks like a more efficient way to cool the card. As a result of this the metal plate is gone and the cards temperature dropped from an average 94 degrees Celsius on the GTX 480 to 84 Celsius with GTX 580. You can now touch the card and not get burned, which is a great improvement over the GTX 480.

Since the card doesn’t have metal plate it is lighter and won't easily break the PCIe slot in transport, but of course this dual-slot card is still quite heavy

We have been waiting for a long time to see technologies similar to water cooling and vapour chamber in GPU cooling. Basically GPU development  has come to the point that air coolers and heatpipes are not simply enough, they simply needed more performance

For the GTX 580, Nvidia decided to use the new vapour chamber cooling. This is not much of a surprise as the GTX 480’s cooler has taken enough flak for Nvidia to realize that they have to raise their game in this field

However, vapour-chamber technology is anything but a new technology, and as far as we recall it was Sapphire who first used it to cool GPUs. Thanks to this tech, Nvidia can get rid of the heatpipe solutions such as the one on GTX 480 (picture below). As you probably already know, the GTX 480 is a pretty hot and loud card, but the GTX 580 is a different beast. It is, in fact, surprisingly quiet for a high-end card

The GTX 580’s PCB design hasn’t changed much from the GTX 480, but there have been improvements in power regulation circuitry (picture below). Nvidia added Advanced Power Management, a feature which monitors consumption and performs power capping – all to protect the graphics cards from excessive power draw

The GTX 480 has a hole in the PCB below the fan, so that the fan could draw fresh air in scenarios where another card in SLI mode blocks the fan. The GTX 580 has no holes in the PCB or the cooler’s metal block

The memory modules are in contact with the cooler’s metal block whereas the GPU is in direct contact with the vapour-chamber    picture below

One of the positive aspects of vapour chamber technology is that it doesn’t take up much space, while at the same time it renders heatpipe solutions obsolete

The GTX 580’s vapour chamber is the largest one we’ve seen so far. The heatsink is on top of the chamber, which allows for quick heat transfer from the GPU and further dissipation via the heatsink fins

The GF110 GPU takes up the same amount of space as the GTX 480’s GF100.



Since the cards’ PCBs are pretty similar, we thought it would be nice to try whether GTX 580’s cooler will fit onto a GTX 480. Unfortunately, a few capacitors in the power regulation area wouldn’t allow for our GTX 480 makeover



GTX 580 comes with two dual-link DVI connectors and one mini-HDMI





The card is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. The picture below compares the GTX 480 and GTX 580.

 

Testbed

Motherboard: EVGA 4xSLI
CPU: Core i7 965 XE   Intel EIST and Vdrop enabled
Memory: 6GB Corsair Dominator 12800 7-7-7-24.
Harddisk:   OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB
Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 800W
Case: CoolerMaster HAF X
Fan Controler: Kaze Master Pro 5.25".
Operating System: Win7 64-bit
262.99_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit_english
10.10 CCC

Aliens vs Predator

GTX 580 outruns the GTX 480 by up to 20% in AvP, which is similar to the results in other tested games. The difference is about 3-4% lower at 2560x1600 than at 1929x1080.





Dirt2

Dirt 2 rates the GTX 580 way above the GTX 480 as it beats it by 25.9%.

 

Metro 2033 – DX10 & DX11

In Metro 2033 we performed DirectX 11 as well as DirectX 10 tests. In DX11 tests the GTX 580 outperformed the GTX 480 by 17%, whereas DX10 testing increases this advantage to 23.9%.


In this gae we had some issue with Radeon cards in tests with antialiasing

Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet 2 reports the GTX 580 to be in a constant advantage over the GTX 480 by about 18%, regardless of the resolution and in-game settings








 3DMark Vantage

We’ve been hearing about the GTX 580 performing 30 percent better than the GTX 480, but we now know that these figures are not actual gaming results but rather 3DMark Vantage scores



TessMark

TessMark shows that tessellation is one of the main advantages of Nvidia's Fermi architecture over AMD boards. With each level of tessellation, the GTX 580 widens the performance gap between it and GTX 480 – it starts at 14% in the least demanding test and goes up to 21% in the most demanding tests.  However, tessellation is still not implemented in numerous games and it's hardly a major selling point, but it does help make the GTX 580 a bit more future proof



Unigine Heaven

The Unigine Heaven test, which we used to test the card’s tessellation capabilities, shows that the GTX 580 is 18% faster than the GTX 480, with the new cards GPU running 9% faster than GTX 480’s one

Overclocking, Consumption and Thermals

As our results readily confirm – GTX 580 packs plenty of OC potential. We managed to hit 855MHz for the GPU and 1190MHz (4760MHz effectively), all without meddling with voltages or changing the fan speed from AUTO mode. Reference clocks for this card are 772MHz for the GPU and 4008MHz for the memory. We heard that most GTX 580 can be clocked up to 890MHz by adding voltage but we will check this later on

The fan isn’t too loud during intensive gaming and we can finally say that we’re pleased with the noise levels. Speeding up the fan didn’t significantly contribute to overclocking headroom. MSI’s Afterburner v.2.0 allowed us to set the fan at maximum 85% RPM, where we were able to push the GPU to 860MHz. MSI’s Afterburner beta does support changing voltages and we should play with it later
  



Nvidia uses a new technology dubbed Advanced Power Management on the GTX 580. It is used for monitoring power consumption and performing power capping in order to protect the card from excessive power draw

Dedicated hardware circuity on the GTX 580 graphics card performs real time monitoring of current and voltage. The graphics driver monitors the power levels and will dynamically adjust performance in certain stress appllications such as FurMark and OCCT if power levels axceed the cards spec

Power monitoring adjust performance only if power specs are exceeded and if the application is one of the apps Nvidia has defined in their driver to monitor such as FurMark and OCCT. This should not significantly affect gaming performance, and Nvidia indeed claims that no game so far has managed to  wake this mechanism from its slumber. For now, it is not possible to turn off power capping

GTX 580’s power caps are set close to PCI Express spec for each 12V rail (6-pin, 8-pin, and PCI Express). Once power-capping goes active, chip clocks go down by 50%. It seems that this is the reason why GTX 480 scores pretty bad compared to GTX 480 in FurMark



FurMark temperatures didn’t go over 76 °C, which isn’t very realistic – in gaming tests we measured up to 85°C, which seems to suggest that Nvidia overdid the preventive measures



GPUZ 0.4.7 doesn’t show downclocking during FurMark, but the new version is set to change that. Below you see the GPU temperature graph we captured during Aliens vs. Predator tests
 


After overclocking, temperatures were at the same level as before. The fan was a bit louder, but still not too loud



The older FurMark, version 1.6, shows that GPU can hit 90°C



Consumption is on par with the GTX 480. You’ll find older FurMark test resulst below, because in new FurMark tests our rig didn’t consume more than 367W. During gaming we measured rig consumption of about 450W

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EVGA to roll out factory overclocked GTX 580

EVGA GTX 580 SuperClocked works at 792MHz

The early listing at Newegg.com also revealed the factory overclocked EVGA SuperClocked GTX 580 card, which is currently available and selling for US $579.99, US$20 more than the reference clocked one

The EVGA GTX 580 box shot also reveals that EVGA will probably be working on SSC and FTW versions of the GTX 580 and these usually end up with a higher factory overclock. The EVGA SuperClocked GTX 580 on the other hand works at 797MHz for the GPU, 1594MHz for those 512 CUDA Cores while the memory ended up clocked at 4050MHz. The card still uses, what appears to be, the reference cooler and features two DVI outs and one mini-HDMI out

You can find it listed here

Armed robbers steal 100 copies of CoD: Black Ops

Video games cause violence after all

 

In an effort to prove that video games truly do cause violence, two men held up a GameStop store in the Baltimore area and stole 100 copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops

The local sheriff's office said that the robbers pounced on Saturday night, just as the store was about to close. The fact that they had nothing better to do on a Saturday night clearly indicates that the suspects have no life whatsoever

Both men were armed with semi-automatic handguns, but luckily none of the shocked store clerks were injured in the robbery. Oddly enough, this is the second robbery of a GameStop store in Harford county and investigators believe that the incidents are related

More here

Hacker sinks the British Navy

Something that the Spanish Armada could not manage

 

A Romanian hacker has done something that the Germans, French and Spanish never managed to do – sink the British Navy

The Royal Navy website has been suspended while security teams work out how a Romanian hacker known as TinKode managed to shut it down. The hacker gained access to the website on 5 November using a SQL injection which is not exactly rocket science.         November 5? Guy Fawkes is alive and well in Romania. sub.ed

He then published details of the information he recovered, which included user names and passwords of the site's administrators. The Royal Navy website currently shows a static image on which is a black box bearing the text: Unfortunately the Royal Navy website is undergoing essential maintenance. Please visit again soon

TinKode showed off his attack on his Twitter stream and added a web link to a page that contained more details about what he had found. This text file contained the names of the site's administrators and many regular users, so nothing top secret. Media friendly insecurity expert Graham Cluely from Sophos, said the incident was "immensely embarrassing, particularly in the wake of the recent security review where hacking and cybercrime attacks were given the top priority

Black Ops expected to top MW2

Sales today expected to be biggest yet

 

With the release today of Call of Duty: Black Ops we already know that developer Treyarch and Activision have another hit on their hands. The big question is how many copies it will sell, and according to a number of retail sources, it is now expected that Black Ops will top Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in sales

Retailer GameStop had most of its stores in North America open at midnight for the launch of Black Ops, and fans were lining up at retailers as early as noon yesterday eagerly awaiting their chance to get their hands of the title. GameStop isn’t the only retailer that received higher than expected pre-orders for the game. Sources confirm that they have more pre-order copies of this title than they did for Modern Warfare 2, which, of course, is a good sign

While Activision isn’t talking numbers yet, it is a given that they are expecting the game to became the best selling game ever, or close to it when Tuesday ends. Activision has placed a much larger promotional push behind Black Ops and it is expected that the title will deliver. The midnight launches have gone well and now it is more of a question of how quickly the remaining copies that retailers have will sell

Retail contacts we spoke with claim to have ample stock of Black Ops, so we will have to see if this is still the case when Tuesday ends

BFBC2 gets Map Pack 7

Free for VIP players

 

News from the DICE camp confirms Map Pack 7 for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Map Pack 7 will be free for VIP gamers of both the PC and console versions of the game. Map Pack 7 will add four new maps, which are called Oasis and Harvest Day from Battlefield: Bad Company and two all new maps which are called Cold War and Heavy Metal

Oasis and Harvest Day from the first Bad Company title have been updated with better and destructible graphics and new re-mastered audio. Both Oasis and Harvest Day were fan favorites from the original Bad Company and made a good choice to bring over to Bad Company 2.

Oasis, Harvest Day, Cold War, and Heavy Metal will be available for multiplayer modes of Bad Company 2, as expected. While no release date has been finalized, it is expected to arrive soon. It is unknown if Map Pack 7 will arrive ahead of the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion pack which still is expected to arrive yet this year, although some whispers that we have heard suggest that it could be pushed back, depending on a number of factors

New Vegas ships 5 million

Despite the bugs, latest Fallout a hit

 

The sales numbers for Fallout: New Vegas have arrived, and you can almost see the smiles on the faces at Bethesda as they have confirmed that they have shipped over 5 million units. The news is even more surprising, considering that the game has been criticized for the number of bugs the title had at release

Bethesda claims that an upcoming patch will address the bug issues and fix the majority of the issues that players are complaining about. It is unknown when the patch will arrive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions of the title

We do know, however, that sales don’t seem to be slowing down; and Bethesda is confirming that retailers are already ordering more copies to keep it in stock over the holiday season

EVGA Geforce GTX 580 pictured, listed at $499

ASUS, PNY, MSI boards show up as well 

We have come across a few early Geforce GTX 580 listings featuring ASUS and EVGA boards. The ASUS ENGTX580/2DI/1536MD5 appeared on Amazon with a $519 price tag, but the listing was pulled shortly after it went public. However, it's relatively easy to google the board designation and find a few other listings, ranging from $519 to $545.

A US retailer is currently listing EVGA' s Geforce GTX 580 at $499 and the card should be available starting November 9, or tomorrow. We've already talked about the Geforce GTX 580 specifications in great length, but here's a brief reminder. The Fermi-done-right Geforce GTX 580 is clocked at 772MHz, it features 512 CUDA cores and packs 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4008MHz and capable of delivering 192.4 GB/sec worth of bandwidth

Not to be outdone by their southern neighbors, a couple of Canadian retailers have listed the PNY Geforce GTX 580 at prices starting at CAD 566. Yet another Canadian store has also leaked MSI's Geforce GTX 580 board at CAD 568. Sadly, we didn't manage to find any pictures of PNY or MSI boards, so the EVGA pic will have to do for now

Patriot updates its Box Office media player

Renames it to PBO Core

Patriot has decided to update and relaunch its Box Office media player that will now offer a couple of new features, better compatibilty and a slightly different design. The Patriot Box Office Core as Patriot calls it now, will get Internet Media Services, better compatibilty with HDTV devices and an ability to support external optical USB devices

The new PBO Core still has pretty much the same looks with an aluminum casing although the front mask has been slightly redesinged. It still features a single internal 2.5-inch HDD bay, features three USB ports, and has support for full HD 1080p playback via HDMI output. The similar media players have been flooding the market for quite some time, including the previous Patriot Box Office

The new PBO Core can also brag with a slightly redesigned and "enhanced" user interface. According to Patriot Memory, the PBO Core is a result of feedback and ideas that were left on Patriot's forum and as such were "worthy" to be included in a whole new product

The new PBO Core HD Media Player should appear in retail/e-tail pretty soon with a price tag of around US $99.

George W. Bush owns an iPad

Fits the demographic quite well

 

Former US president and, as the world has already seen, an incredible wordsmith, George W. Bush, has revealed that he owns an iPad. We, on the other hand, suspected this all along

Admittedly, Bush is not big on watching TV but he does surf the web. He said how he reads The Wall Street Journal and uses iPad to visit places that “feed [his] political curiosity”, such as Politico

Apparently, all this is going on when he’s not reading the Bible, so the former president hasn’t changed much. We just can’t get over the irony of Bush owning an iPad, since Apple spinners like to depict their consumers as enlightened individuals, progressive intellectuals and connoisseurs of fine art

HIS rolls out factory overclocked HD 6870

Works at 920MHz

HIS is one the first partners that has decided to roll out a factory overclocked HD 6870 card, the HIS 6870 Fan Turbo. Although it is still based on AMD's reference design and has a reference cooler, HIS decided that it is enough to keep the card running at a rather modest but still a factory overclocked settings

The card works at 920MHz for the GPU and 4480MHz for the same 1GB of GDDR5 memory. Bear in mind that the reference card ended up clocked at 900MHz for the GPU and 4200MHz for memory. The card still packs 1120 Stream processors, a 256-bit memory interface, and support for AMD CrossfireX and Eyefinity. It has two DVI, single HDMI 1.4 and two DisplayPort 1.2 outputs

We are quite sure that more partners will follow once AMD gives a green light for a non-reference/custom cooled cards. The new HIS is already listed in Europe for as low as €265.13.

GTX 580 listed for 399 pounds

30 percent faster than GTX 480 in Vantage

The company behind the YoyoTech brand has revealed the full spec and the UK price of Nvidia's upcoming Geforce GTX 580. The card is listed at £399 including UK VAT tax and the company claims that the card runs 30 percent faster in 3Dmark Vantage than the GTX 480.

Some of the specs included in the listing state that the card has 512 Cuda cores, 1.5GB of 384-bit GDDR5 memory, 4Bbps Data Transfer and Dual DVI and mini HDMI support

Consumers in the continental EU should expect a price of between €399 and €429 depending on the Euro zone country

The link is here at least until Nvidia doesn’t force it down, but here is the picture just in case

Intel plans aggressive Sandy Bridge transition

Massive share increase throughout 2011

 

Intel has rather ambitious plans for its new Sandy Bridge architecture and it is currently projecting that Sandy will make up close to 20 percent of its desktop shipments in Q1, while the share should jump to around 75 percent by the end of 2011.

The first Sandy Bridge based processors should start to trickle into OEM stocks before the end of the year, under Core i5 and Core i7 brands. However, they will have a negligible effect on overall shipments with a total market share of about 2 percent

Things will get much more interesting in Q1 2011, when Intel plans to introduce Sandy Bridge based Core i3 parts. They should make up around 8 percent of total sales in Q1, while Core i5 share should jump to 7 percent as well. The Core i7 share should double to 2 percent. By the end of Q1, the total Sandy Bridge share should come close to the 20 percent mark

In Q2 2011 Intel will introduce its first Sandy Bridge based Pentiums, which will bring the new architecture closer to the masses. Although the Pentium series parts will start off with a share of about 5 percent in Q2, shipments are expected to triple in Q3 and by the end of the year Sandy Bridge Pentiums will account for roughly 25 percent of total Intel desktop shipments. The Core i3 will see somewhat slower growth, but it will also end the year with a similar share. Basically every second Intel desktop CPU sold in Q4 will be either a Core i3 or a Pentium based on the new Sandy Bridge core

In the performance and high end segments, Sandy Bridge will also have a sizable chunk of the market in Q4. Core i5 will make up over 20 percent of total shipments, while Core i7 parts will account for 3 to 4 percent

Clearly we are looking at a very ambitious transition plan, as Sandy Bridge will start to dominate nearly all market segments by mid-2011. AMD will have a tough time keeping up with Intel's aggressive strategy, but we are confident that the red team will manage to deliver competitive products as well, mainly in the mid-range and entry level market segments

Cayman reportedly plagued by manufacturing issues

TSMC stuck at single digit yields

 

As we reported on Friday, AMD's upcoming Cayman appears destined for a delay or a paper launch, as some partners have still not received the boards, or final bios versions

According to TechEye, the delay was caused by poor yields, which is supposedly in the single digit range. This is somewhat surprising, as the 40nm process is rather mature. Nonetheless, building a 3 billion transistor chip was never going to be easy, a fact clearly demonstrated Nvidia's GF100.

Taiwanese sources told TechEye that there was only a slight chance of AMD keeping its schedule and shipment targets in Q4. Cayman was originally scheduled for a November 22 launch, just in time for the holiday season. We can only hope that AMD and TSMC will manage to work out the kinks plaguing the new GPU in time to start volume shipments in early December

1 vs. 100 has a new project

New episodic game show headed to beta

 

The team responsible for 1 vs. 100 apparently has a new episodic game show that is ready to head into closed beta. The name of the show is called “Full House Poker,” according to reports of closed beta invites that Microsoft sent out via Email

While all of the details are a little unclear, sources suggest that it will be, of course, an Xbox Live Texas Heat Poker show where users can use their avatars to play against other users with a change to work their way to the final table. Players will be able to earn experience points, as well, as the chips bankroll their progress that can be tracked on the leaderboard

While the title is headed for closed beta, no date or time is projected as to when the product might be released. Microsoft asks those who have received the invites to participate to keep the information confidential, but apparently that didn’t stop those who let us in on what was up. It is hard to tell if a Poker show would meet with as much success as 1 vs. 100 did, but you have to hand it to Microsoft for at least being willing to apply their knowledge to try something new

Nvidia has 28nm sample chips

TSMC made

 

We have very limited information, but we have just heard a quite spectacular piece of news - Nvidia already has 28nm samples of its new core

It looks like the core is entry level, but it’s not conclusive and of course it is made in TSMC's High Metal gate 28nm process. We heard the GF1x9 as the codename, but we have to do some more digging

The production of these actual chips won’t happen before the second half of 2011 but it is impressive to see that they already have some samples

Globalfoundries should also be ready to get the first 28nm samples in this quarter, but we are not sure if AMD already got its silicon back. We expect this to happen soon as well

Cayman HD 6970 has 2GB RAM

256-bit

Information about AMD's upcoming Cayman core is still hard come by, but we have at least one new fact that we can rely on

Cayman has 2GB of GDDR5 memory and the controller of choice is 256-bit. While in terms of RAM quantity the card beats Nvidia's GTX 580 which has 1.5GB, we can definitely say anything over 1GB is overkill for most users, but it looks good for marketing purposes

Despite its 256-bit bus, Cayman Radeon HD 6970 looks to be quite close to GTX 580 performance, but we still don’t have anything better than this claim. Launch appears to be set for the week of November 22nd  and samples are supposed to get to AMD selected press very soon

Operating Payback hits US copyright office

At this rate they will be labelled terrorists

 

Supporters of Operation: Payback, which is made of various hacker groups have declared war on the US Copyright office

The group which includes members of Anonymous and 4chan attacked the US Copyright Office at 11am yesterday. There was intermittent downtime and the site is loaded a lot slower than normal

This is the first time that Operation: Payback has struck at a US Government website. The outfit is expected to do something tomorrow, probably in the UK

However attacking Government sites might get them identified as a Terror group in the US, which tends to take a rather over the top view about such things

Google settles over Buzz

Writes a cheque for  $8.5 million

 

Search engine outfit Google has agreed to write a cheque for $8.5 million to settle a class action settlement involving its Buzz social hub

The lawsuit had been filed by users of  Gmail. In February, Google added a new social hub called Buzz, which let Gmail users track their frequently emailed contacts' status updates and other information shared online

The class action suit claimed Google violated privacy rights by automatically adding Buzz to Gmail without making it clear what information would be shared and with whom

Google has since made many changes to Buzz to ease privacy concerns. It said that it is creating a $US8.5 million fund, mainly to go to internet privacy and policy organisations. So it does not seem that actual users will get a dime. We guess this was one for the lawyers

Vertex3D rolls out overclocked HD 6850

Runs at 800MHz

Vertex3D has rolled out its newest factory overclocked card based on AMD's Barts GPU, the HD 6850 X Edition. Featuring a custom cooler, the new HD 6850 X also comes with a rather modest factory overclock.

As noted, we are talking about the HD 6850 based on AMD's Barts GPU with 960 stream processors. The card works at 800MHz for the GPU and comes with 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4200MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. The new HD 6850 X Edition features a custom cooler with a 92mm fan and two copper heatpipes

The new card still needs a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector and features two DVI, one HDMI and single DisplayPort outputs. The card should show up in retail pretty soon, and we expect the price to be somewhere around €160 to €170.

Exceleram rolls out its new DDR3 memory kits

6GB and 4GB kits

Following the recent release of its "Blue Culvert" 1.35V kits, Exceleram has released no less than eight different 1600/1333MHz, triple-channel 6GB and dual-channel 4GB kits

All the kits are using 8-layer PCBs, are made by the same guys that did Mushkin in Europe and should be decent overclockers. The new kits will be a part of Exceleram's Red Culvert and Blue Culvert line. The 1600MHz Red Culvert kits range from 1333MHz to 1600 in both dual-channel 4GB and triple-channel 6GB configurations. The top of the line offer are 6GB (3x2GB) and 4GB (2x2GB) 1600MHz kits with 6-8-7-24 latency settings at 1.65V

Exceleram has also announced 6GB and 4GB 1.5V Red Culvert kits working at 1333MHz and featuring 7-7-7-21 latencies. You can check out the full offer below




EB3102A 4GB 1600 6-8-7-24 1,65V RedCulvert
EB3103A 6GB 1600 6-8-7-24 1,65V RedCulvert
EB3100A 4GB 1600 6-9-8-24 1,65V RedCulvert
EB3104A 6GB 1600 6-9-8-24 1,65V RedCulvert
EB3120A 4GB 1600 7-8-7-24 1,65V BlueCulvert
EB3121A 6GB 1600 7-8-7-24 1,65V BlueCulvert
EB3117A 4GB 1333 7-7-7-21 1,50V RedCulvert 
EB3118A 6GB 1333 7-7-7-21 1,50V RedCulvert

Medal of Honor sequel is likely

Has already passed 2 million in sales

 

Sources tell us that Electronic Arts is satisfied with the release of Medal of Honor. From the dark corners, sources admit to us that the reviews could have been a bit better and the sales could have been a little stronger, but overall to restart the franchise they are off and running

The best news for Medal of Honor is that the company has confirmed that they have sold over two million copies across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. This news is good for those wanting to see a sequel, as from the whispers that we have heard it does appear that a sequel will be green lighted by EA for development

While EA has not officially committed to producing a sequel yet, we suspect that an announcement will be coming at some point next year that a sequel is in development. Don’t expect to see a sequel in 2011, however, as sources suggest that it will be a 2012 release

Kinect sales predictions going up

Will sell better than originally projected

 

Despite the continued whispers from retailers that we hear about Kinect being in limited supply at launch, Microsoft apparently now thinks that it will beat its original projection of 3 million units sold before the end of the year

Reportedly, none other than Don Mattrick from Microsoft is quoted as saying that he expecting Kinect to now sell 5 million units before the end of the year. Considering that Microsoft is spending a truck load of cash on advertising and promoting Kinect, it isn’t surprising that more interest in the device has been generated and the buzz has picked up

According to both chain and independent retail store managers that we spoke with, they admit that the buzz has increased in the weeks leading up to the launch, but they continue to be worried that they will have enough product to sell

To sell 5 million units before this holiday season is going to take more than a little luck. Early reports of independent video game retailers apparently having little, if any, product on launch day is troubling. It would seem, however, that big box retailers have ample numbers of units to sell on launch day and the inventory situation will have to continue to improve if Microsoft is to achieve this projected sales number

The other factor is, of course, actual sales. It is necessary for the buzz to translate into actual sales numbers. Should Microsoft be able to move 5 million units before the end of the year, Kinect will be off to a solid start; which should see more developers embrace Kinect and produce more software for it. We still believe that software in the end will be the key in Microsoft’s ability to sustain the growth of Kinect long-term

Security experts ally to sort out mobile security

European research project kicks off

 

A European research project which is designed to get a decent set of security standards for smart phones and tablets has just kicked off

SEPIA (Secure Embedded Platform with advanced Process Isolation and Anonymity capabilities), wants to define security standards for next-generation mobile devices including smartphones and tablet devices. Involved in the project are  ARM, Brightsight, Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) and Infineon Technologies, and it is being coordinated by Graz University of Technology. The project is co-financed by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and will run for three years

Herbert Reul, chair of the European Parliament committee on Industry, Research and Energy, said that SEPIA will fix an ever more pressing security problem that is receiving increased attention on the European level, especially regarding mobile applications like eBanking

SEPIA standards should allow execution of security-critical applications on mobile phones, while ensuring that personal and confidential data are stored and processed within a separate trusted environment. The hope is that security-critical software will run in a protected and isolated environment, alongside other services such as games and software downloads, without risk of being affected by viruses, Trojans, or other malicious software

Nvidia's dual 5x0 card comes in 2010

So should Antilles

 

We got a fresh update on what happens after GTX 580 eventually launches. There should be a faster card, coming most likely in December 2010.

The new card is based on two GF100-derived cores, probably similar to the GF104, so we can only imagine the TDP of that card. Our educated guess for this time is at least 400W card, something that will get very hot indeed. It would appear that we are almost at the verge of a new era, where water cooling will be a must

AMD also plans Antilles, Radeon HD 6970 dual Cayman card, and this one also looks to be quite a hot one. A GF100GX2 was on the roadmap for quite some time, but Nvidia never decided to release the card. We guess that chose to drop it because of its enormous TDP, courtesy of two GF100 chips

So the launch is this year, which usually means December, but we know that super high end enthusiasts will wait to see who wins this round Radeon HD 6970 or Geforce GTX 5x0 GX2, before they make the buying decision

Yamauchi claims GT5 discs in production

Gran Turismo 5 will ship this year

 

Speaking during an interview at the SEMA tradeshow, the father of all things Gran Turismo claims that not only will Gran Turismo 5 ship this year, but the discs are currently at the manufacturing plant and being stamped now

Despite the reassurances from Kazunori Yamauchi, we remain unconvinced (as do many others) that his information is accurate. With the release date of GT5 being all over the place and rumors of additional delays, we are just not that confident that GT5 will arrive in any market but Japan before the end of the year

Sources continue to insist that the timeline is tight to get it released in all markets before the end of the year. The comments from Yamauchi do seem to be running counter to everything we are hearing from other sources

Super Talent rolls out its cheap USB 3.0 flash drive

Express DUO at US $29

Super Talent Technology has released two new Express DUO USB 3.0 flash drives that certainly redefine the word cheap as these two will be available with a price tag set at US $14 for the 8GB version and US $29 for the 16GB one

The new Express DUO drives feature a USB 3.0 interface and provide transfer speeds of up to 67MB/s for read and 23MB/s for write. As noted, both drives feature USB 3.0 and are backward compatible with the USB 2.0.

The new Express Duo flash drives are scheduled to show up in November and at that price range are simply a steal

You can check out the benchmark video below

Creative to release its ZiiO tablets in December

7 and 10-inch tablet with ZiiLabs chip

It looks like Creative will also be snatching a part of the tablet market as of December with its Creative ZiiO tablets. The 7- and 10-inch tablets will be powered by Creative's ZiiLabs chip and will run on Android 2.1 OS

The ZiiO 7 will be a 7-inch, 800x480 resolution device with a resistive touchscreen, 802.11bg WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, microSD slot, an accelerometer, and will be available in 8 and 16GB versions. The 10-inch has the same specs but packs a 10-inch, 1024x768 touchscreen. Both devices will use ZiiLabs' ZMS-08 chip and will feature Android PUre Audio technology for that extra audio experience

The 7-inch should be price at €229 and €259 for the 8 and 16GB versions while the 10-incher has the €289 (8GB) and €319 (16GB) price tag

You can find more here