HD 6990 comes after Chinese New Year

Antilles likes to party

 

According to our sources close to AMD AIBs in the Far East, the upcoming Antilles dual-GPU card should ship shortly after Chinese New Yea

This is hardly a surprise, as we expected it to appear in this timeframe. If all goes well the new card should appear in late February, or early March in smaller markets. As usual, Nvidia will also introduce its dual-GPU card at about the same time

Until then AMD's HD 5970 will be the king of the hill. Despite its age, it's a lightning fast card and several weeks ago AMD slashed its price to €399. Sadly, this tempting price has gone out the window and the HD 5970 is currently selling for upwards of €460 in the EU

GTX 580 overclocked to 1519MHz

All it takes is LN2 and Shamino

 

Nvidia's GF110 is a power hog, but it also has quite a bit of overclocking headroom

This was demonstrated by overclocking legend Shamino, who managed to push an Asus card to a whopping 1519MHz

Of course, this really isn't something you should or could do in the comfort of your own home, as it takes quite a bit of LN2 and a bit of tinkering with the voltages. The core was juiced up to 1.5v with 2.12vdimm and 1.35vpll

You can check out the gory details here

Zotac comes up with its own GT 440s

The 512MB and 1GB versions

 

Following the announcement of yet another Nvidia card that is "based on the Fermi architecture", Zotac has announced its own versions of the GF108 based GT 440 with either 512MB or 1GB of DDR5 memory

As detailed earlier, the GT 440 features the almost identical specs as the now quite old GT 430 as both cards are based on the same GF108 chip with 96 stream processors, 4 ROPs and a 128-bit memory interface. The difference is the memory as the old GT 430 used 1 or 2GB of GDDR3 memory while the GT 440 is happily running either 512MB or 1GB of GDDR5 memory

Both of Zotac's GT 440 cards are pretty much identical and work at 810MHz for the GPU, 1620MHz for those 96 CUDA Cores and come with either 512MB or 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3200MHz and paired up with a 128-bit memory interface. Both cards feature DVI, HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort outputs. Both of the cards use a dual-slot cooler that covers most of the cards PCB, which honestly sounds like an overkill considering the TDP and temperatures of this card

Since we are talking about a card that has a TDP range from below 10W in idle and shouldn't go over 65W under full load, it doesn't need any PCI-Express power connectors as it is quite happy with 75W from the PCI-Express slot

Unfortunately, the price hasn't been announced although some retailers/e-tailers are listing these cards for around €80 to €90, depending on the region

MSI first with low profile GT 440

Dual fans and 1GB of GDDR3 memory

 

MSI is the first Nvidia partner to roll out a low-profile GT 440 card but unfortunately it sticks with DDR3 memory rather than much faster GDDR5 modules. In addition to the LP card, MSI has announced a 512MB GDDR5 version with full height PCB

The N440GT-MD1GD3/LP as MSI names it has a low profile PCB, dual slot, dual fan cooler and works at reference 810MHz for the GPU, 1620MHz for shaders and 1800MHz for 1GB of DDR3 memory paired up with a 128-bit memory interface. MSI was keen on advertising that the card uses Military Class II Components like Super Ferrite Chokes and All Solid CAPs as well as the fact that it comes with double overvoltage support, so both GPU and memory voltage adjustments are possible via MSI Afterburner software

The N440GT-MD512D5 on the other hand is a full height PCB card with a dual slot cooler. It works at 810MHz for the GPU and comes with 512MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3200MHz and paired up with the same 128-bit memory interface. Both cards feature DVI, D-Sub and HDMI outputs

These are currently the only two GT 440 cards that are listed in Europe and the lowest price tag is set at €73,58 for the low profile one and €90,89 for the 512MB GDDR5 version

Gigabyte pulls the brakes on Sandy Bridge

Stops shipping all 6-series motherboards

 

Gigabyte has halted all Sandy Bridge shipments and it's setting up an online program for all consumers who happened to buy a 6-series motherboard

Gigabyte noted that the SATA issue would eventually affect about five percent of all users over the course of three years, so there doesn't to be much to worry about in the short term

The company has set up call centres and users are advised to visit http://ggts.gigabyte.com for online support

Core i7-990X ships in Europe

Gulftown's swan song

 

A bunch of Polish retailers have apparently jumped the gun and started shipping Intel's flagship Core i7-990X Expensive Edition at prices starting about €900. However, we are still not sure when to expect availability in all markets

The new processor has already been listed by several OEMs in their high-end rigs, but it was not available to the great unwashed in retail. The Gulfton-based six-core is clocked at 3.46GHz and it clocks to 3.6GHz with Turbo Boost. The TDP stands at 130W and it packs 6x256kB of L2 and 12MB of L3 cache

This is the end of the line for Gulftown. Intel will replace the current generation with new Sandy Bridge E parts by the end of Q3 2011. Hopefully it won't sell them with broken chipsets

HIS rolls out its new HD 6870 cards

With IceQ X cooler

 

Following the release of previously announced Radeon HD 6850 IceQ cards, HIS has now announced the Radeon HD 6870 cards that will be a part of the same series and feature the same dual slot IceQ cooler. As it was the case with Radeon HD 6850 cards, HIS has announced two versions in the IceQ Radeon HD 6870 series, the "plain one" and the factory overclocked Turbo model

The dual-slot IceQ cooler features a single centered placed 92mm fan, four heatpipes 8mm heatpipes and a somewhat larger aluminum heatsink. According to HIS, the IceQ cooler should keep the card up to 15°C cooler while being up to 15dB quieter when compared to the reference cooler. Spec wise, both cards will feature 1120 stream processors and 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface

The plain one ended up clocked at AMD's reference clocks of 900MHz for the GPU and 4200MHz for memory while the Turbo X model ended up clocked, or rather overclocked to 975MHz for the GPU and 4600MHz for memory. Both cards feature a standard two DVI, HDMI and two mini DisplayPort output configuration

Unfortunately, HIS didn't announce the price while the availability date is set for February 7th for Europe

Asus EeeKeyboard drops to €299

A bit less pointless now

 

Remember the Asus' EeeKeyboard? Yes, that stylish and embarrassingly overpriced all-integrated rig that is sure to bring back fond memories to any Spectrum, C64 or Amiga user

Well, it launched last summer after several delays and needless to say it never took off, which probably had something to do with the €549 price tag. However, Asus has slashed the price by 45 percent to €299, making it quite a bit cheaper, but we're really not sure about the hardware

It packs Intel's ancient Atom N270 and 1GB of memory. On the upside, it does have a 16GB SSD, HDMI and rather good connectivity, including Bluetooth, WiFi and three USB 2.0 ports. Also, it packs a 5-inch multitouch 800x480 screen

Still, it's quite hard to recommend it, mainly due to the ageing N270, but look it was never meant to be a practical rig. But if you think of it as a piece of furniture or a nice vase, just something that will look interesting in your living room, we guess it still not that bad

MSI halts Sandy Bridge shipments

Few products affected

 

MSI has halted shipments of Sandy Bridge products following Intel's announcement of chipset related issues with the new platform

As of Tuesday, MSI has stopped shipping all P67 and H67 motherboards and it is currently investigating which product batches have been affected

On the notebook front, MSI has halted shipments of GT680 series products. Luckily, this is the only Sandy Bridge notebook in MSI's offer so far

MSI is looking into a solution for all consumers who have already purchased MSI products based on Intel 6-series chipsets and the company will make a subsequent announcement as soon it gets more information

Intel's 6-series recall to cost $1 billion

All expenses paid by Intel

 

The latest news on the chipset front has it that Intel 6-series chipsets come with a flaw that could cause your HDDs and DVDs to malfunction. Many motherboard makers as well as OEMs/ODMs have already pulled some products and this move is expected to cost Intel a pretty penny indeed

Intel said “In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives.” The rapid succession of “in some cases”, “may degrade” and “potentially impacting” is there to make you feel like it’s never going to happen

Samsung today announced that the company intends to refund or exchange each of their products launched so far. Namely, the company launched six Cougar Point based PC lines in Korea and one in the US. The company said this act of good will be funded by Intel. Gigabyte also instructed distributors and resellers to halt motherboard sales and we hear that Newegg deactivated many listings as well

Intel says that the issue has been corrected and that new versions of the chipset will ship late February, with full volume recovery expected in April. Unfortunately, it has been said that the entire thing will cost Intel as much as $1 billion in repairs, lost revenue and resulting delays

PlayStation Move headed for PC

Sources suggest that it is very possible

 

According to a number of sources, Sony is apparently looking at the possibility of opening the PlayStation Move up to the Windows PC platform due to a project called Move Server. It is apparently more than just a possibility, according to sources we spoke with

Sony is apparently sponsoring a session at this year’s Game Developer Conference. It is expected that John McCutchan from Sony will explain what Move Server actually is. The description says that they will discuss Move Server, which will allow hobbyists and academics to develop software using the PlayStation Move controller on their own PCs

While a number of hacks have been released for the Microsoft Kinect that allow PC/Mac users to experiment using the device with their PC or Mac, Microsoft has acknowledged those experimenting with the device and has not ruled out the possibility of bringing Kinect out for Windows users. Of course, the interesting experimentation that has been going on with Kinect has been noted by Sony and the uses for the product are opening new avenues and ideas for the use of the technology

TimeSplitters 4 possible

Need to get Crysis 2 out first

 

Since Crytek acquired TimeSplitters developer Free Radical, many have wondered if a fourth edition in the franchise was in the cards. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, has acknowledged that the possibility has been discussed, but nothing is confirmed or in the pipeline at this time

Free Radical was acquired by Crytek back in 2009 and most recently has been working on the multiplayer component of the upcoming Crysis 2. Of course, the team at Free Radical is working to finish the multiplayer component of Crysis 2 before any resources would potentially be available to work on a new TimeSplitters installment

Those who claim to have seen into the Crytek crystal ball suggest to us that it is possible that a new TimeSplitters game could be a possibility, but until Crysis 2 is out the door and Crytek has a chance to see what kind of sales numbers it produces, don’t look for them to commit to a new TimeSplitters title. The TimeSplitters franchise does seem to have quite a following and Crytek does seem to be aware of this fact

AMD mobile quad-cores are all the rage

Very competitive pricing

 

In mid-2010 AMD managed to secure several major design wins for its mobile quad-core Phenoms and it appears that vendors are rather keen to embrace these affordable chips

AMD has managed to carve out a small portion of the entry level market and looking at the prices it is easy to see why. The cheapest AMD-powered quad core notebooks sell for as little as €549 in major European markets, courtesy of Lenovo. However, Lenovo’s Z565 can hardly be described as an entry level notebook. This 15.6-incher packs a 2GHz Phenom N930, HD 5470 graphics, 4GB of memory and 500GB of storage

Acer’s Aspire 5553 sells for just over €550 and it’s similarly spec’d, although it doesn’t have discrete graphics. HP and Asus are offering similar rigs in the €600 to €650 price range and several smaller vendors also carry AMD’s mobile quads

Mind you, the cheapest Intel based quad-core notebook sells for €750. Granted, some users prefer Intel in the mobile market for a variety of reasons, but we beg to differ. The price difference is simply a bit too high. AMD quad-core lappies often cost as much as mid range models based on Intel dual-core parts, so they’re nothing short of a bargain for anyone who needs a lot of portable muscle

In terms of design wins, Intel is still in a pretty big lead and notebooks based on Core i7 quad parts outnumber AMD designs by about eight to one. However, it’s worth noting that AMD also offers tri core processors and nearly all vendors who carry their quads have triple-core SKUs as well

FBI swoops on Anonymous

Searches 40 people's houses

 

The Untouchables have swooped on the homes of people suspected of being members of Anonymous

More than 40 search warrants were executed across the United States on Thursday, the bureau announced. This follows the arrest in the UK of five men who allegedly participated in the Anonymous group’s denial of service attacks on Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Amazon in mid-December

Anonymous said its attacks were to punish financial-service companies’ who prohibited donations to Wikileaks. Amazon was also targeted after it kicked Wikileaks off its web-hosting service

The FBI seems to want to make an example of those who conduct DDoS attacks. They say that it is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing participants to significant civil liability,” the FBI said in a press release

However the Untouchables did not seem to arrest anyone after the searches

Layoffs at Disney Interactive continue

The count now is about 200 that were let go

 

Disney Interactive continues to struggle, as it was announced that the company has lost over $787 million over the last three fiscal years. Sales have not been great, and much of the blame seems to rest with the movie tie-in titles that have not been too successful for the company

Leading the restructuring of Disney Interactive will be Alex Seropian, who will try to get the company profitable again. Despite working hard to carve a niche out in the mainstream game market, the publisher has just not been able to get it done

Seropian will also be taking charge of all the remaining studios left, which include: Avalanche, Black Rock, Gamestar, Junction Point and Wideload. The company needs these studios to start producing some winners if the company ever hopes to gain a foothold in the mainstream marketplace

Most recently, the new Tron title, Epic Mickey, and Split/Second all didn’t fare so well on the sales front. It was not that they were not good titles, but it was more likely the games never found an audience. From what our sources tell us, despite the fact that 200 have already been let go many do not believe that the blood letting is done yet

Powercolor announces new HD 6970

The PCS+ series

 

To further fill up its own PCS+ series Powercolor has announced yet another Cayman based card, the HD 6970 PCS+. Featuring a dual slot, dual fan cooler, the new HD 6970 will also come with a factory overclock, just as you would expect from a card in the PCS+ series

The new HD 6970 PCS+ is based on, now quite well known, 40nm Cayman GPU with 1536 Stream Processors and works at 940MHz for the GPU and comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5700MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. The non-reference cooler on the HD 6970 PCS+ comes with three 8mm copper heatpipes, two 92mm fans and takes up two slots. According to Powercolor, this cooler should keep the card up to 20 percent cooler than the reference one

The backplate features two DVI, an HDMI and two mini DisplayPort outputs for some Eyefinity fun and the card will be available in two versions, with or without the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 bundle. Unfortunately, the price or the availability date haven't been announced