EVGA launches GTX 680 FTW Edition graphics cards

With 2 and 4GB of memory

EVGA has finally launched its Geforce GTX 680 FTW Edition graphics cards that will be available with either 2GB or 4GB of memory

Both versions of the EVGA Geforce GTX 680 FTW will feature the same cooler and board design that we've seen on the EVGA Signature Edition. According to EVGA, tghe new GTX 680 FTW Edition will feature several enchancements including an 8-phase VRM design, 8+6-pin power input and vapour chamber cooling

The 2GB version of the EVGA GTX 680 FTW ended up factory overclocked to 1100MHz for base, 1176MHz for boost core clock and 6.2GHz for memory. The 4GB version shares the same base and boost core clocks but memory has been set at reference 6GHz. The 4GB version will also feature a backplate in order to cool that additional 2GB of memory placed on the backside of the card

The price for the EVGA GTX 680 FTW 2GB is set at US $569.99, while the EVGA GTX 680 FTW 4GB will sell for US $629.99.

 




 

Toshiba grows its profits

Earns better than expected

Despite continuing weakness in its television division and a global slow down Toshiba forecast an annual operating profit of $3.75 billion. This figure is above the $3.6 billion that Wall Street Analysts predicted

The company's operating profit is down 14 percent from the previous year, thanks to weak domestic TV sales and a global economic slowdown, things could have been a lot worse. As it was expected the LCD TV sector posted a big loss but then again the same thing happened to Sony, Panasonic and Sharp

In the fourth quarter Toshiba operating profit rose by 18 percent which was better than expected

Toshiba grows its profits

Earns better than expected

Despite continuing weakness in its television division and a global slow down Toshiba forecast an annual operating profit of $3.75 billion. This figure is above the $3.6 billion that Wall Street Analysts predicted

The company's operating profit is down 14 percent from the previous year, thanks to weak domestic TV sales and a global economic slowdown, things could have been a lot worse. As it was expected the LCD TV sector posted a big loss but then again the same thing happened to Sony, Panasonic and Sharp

In the fourth quarter Toshiba operating profit rose by 18 percent which was better than expected

Nvidia GTX 690 reviews show up

 

Roundup: Reaches GTX 680 SLI levels easy

The GTX 690 is finally here and now we can see Nvidia's latest dual-GPU beast in action. Based on two Nvidia's 28nm GK104 Kepler GPUs placed next to each other on a single PCB, the GTX 690 clearly ends up to be the fastest graphics card that money can buy, and speaking of money you will need a lot of it to get your hands on a GTX 690.

In case you somehow managed to miss it, Nvidia's 28nm GK104 Kepler GPU certainly surprised everyone when Nvidia started to mention performance per Watt and with a total of 1536 CUDA cores, 128 texture units and 32 ROPs, all below 195W TDP, certainly made a significant pressure on AMD's high-end lineup

Nvidia has always put a lot of effort to have a fastest graphics card around, no matter the cost, actual design, thermals or power consumption, but with Kepler, the job was certainly a much more easier. The GTX 690 features two fully enabled GK104 Kepler GPUs for a total of 3072 CUDA cores, 256 texture units, 64 ROPs and dual 256-bit memory interface paired up with 2GB of GDDR5 memory for each GPU



In order to keep the TDP under 300W Nvidia had to cut some corners and clocks were the obvious way to go. While the GTX 680 was clocked at 1006MHz for base and 1058MHz for boost GPU clock, each GPU on the GTX 690 works at 915HMz for the base and 1019MHz for the boost clock. The memory on the GTX 680 was clocked at 6008MHz and luckly the GTX 690 shares the same clocks. As the new GTX 690 features two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors, the theoretical maximum TDP is set at 375W (150W per 8-pin PCI-E power connector + 75W from PCI-E slot). This leaves a lot of headroom for GPU boost as well as additional overclocking in case you want it faster for some reason

The good part of the story is that the GTX 690, perfomance wise, easily reaches the levels of two GTX 680 graphics cards run in SLI. Two HD 7970 in Crossfire still end up a bit faster in some benchmarks and games but we are yet to hear some precise details regarding AMD's dual Tahiti HD 7990 graphics card that is allegedly scheduled to show up at Computex and driver issues just make Crossfire too unstable

Of course, since we are talking about ultra high-end graphics cards, it is just a waste to talk about resolutions below 2560x1600 and with a price set at US $999 it ends up to be the most expensive reference consumer graphics card to date

We also must mention the looks of the new GTX 690 card as Nvidia certainly did its best with this one and cast aluminum, injection molded magnesium fan housing, transparent heat resistant polycarbonate shrouds and laser etched Nvidia and GTX 690 logos certainly makes it one of the most impressive graphics cards when it comes to design

The GTX 690 is the fastest, the best looking, and the most expensive graphics card around. With a price tag set at US $999, it is reserved for those with deepest pockets that like to game at 2560x1600 and higher resolutions. All we need to see now is AMD's response that could hopefully push the price a bit down

You can check out some reviews below

 Anandtech.com
 Techpowerup.com
 Bjorn3d.com
 Hardwareheaven.com
 Hardwarecanucks.com
 Neoseeker.com
 Xbitlabs.com
 Hothardware.com

Galaxy S III looks like Nexus done right

 

TouchWiz 4.0 still ugly

Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S III will definitely be the talk of town for weeks to come, so it is probably time for my two cents. To be honest, we did not cover a lot of Galaxy rumours over the past few weeks, simply because many of them were too farfetched. This is a good thing, Samsung did a great job in keeping the new Galaxy under wraps and thus created a lot of hype, not unlike the masters of suspense at Curpertino

However, shortly after the live stream Samsung showed a pre-recoded hands-on video and showed some of the new features. You can tell that TouchWiz UI looks similar to the one that on 2.33 and 3.2 Android phones / tablets, and we still believe that the icons could look better. Of course, UI is a matter of personal taste, some users love Sense, other just like plain vanilla ICS, while others are in the TouchWiz fan club

Direct call from SMS is a nice feature as well as S voice that wasn’t demonstrated on this short video. From what we can tell from the video, the HTC One X camera is somewhat faster in burst mode and HTC’s flagship can take more burst photos than the new Sammy (99 vs. 20). Although this indicates that HTC has a faster camera, both the One X and the SIII still lack a dedicated camera button and Sony is the only vendor to implement it in this market segment - yes, we are looking at your Xperia S



The S Beam feature looks nice, it is very similar to basic Android beam. Eye tracking is a nice touch but sadly it wasn’t demonstrated in the video. The shape of the phone is definitely inspired by the good old Galaxy Nexus and if you liked that one, you will love the Samsung Galaxy III. The SIII does not only look better, but it also features a much better finish than the Nexus. What’s really impressive from an aesthetic point of view is the tiny bezel. Measuring just 136.6x70.6x8.6mm, the SIII is no bigger than the One X or Nexus, although it has a bigger screen. However, Samsung opted for a PenTile panel and many fans who expected a non-PenTile screen will be disappointed

Samsung’s trump card is storage. The SIII will be available in 16GB and 32GB versions at launch, with a 64GB version on the way later. Even better, a microSD slot is also on board. Samsung also slapped a 2,100mAh battery in the package and if the Note is anything to go by, we should see pretty good battery life

This brings us to the CPU, the new 32nm quad-core Exynos. We still have to see it go head to head with Qualcomm’s S4 or Nvidia’s Tegra 3, but the 1.4GHz chip looks promising to say the least. Samsung retained the Mali-400 graphics core, but at a higher clock. Although some might be a bit worried about overall graphics performance, it should cope with the extra pixels nicely. Frankly until next generation mobile cores such as the Mali-T604 are ready for prime time, chipmakers don’t have much of a choice in the matter

Samsung has done it again. The Korean giant generated a lot of hype and the SIII lived up to most of it. It looks gorgeous, it packs an impressive processor backed with plenty of storage, but it is not perfect, i.e. Samsung went for a PenTile screen and then there is TouchWiz, which could and should look better. [Why do I get the feeling that you hate TouchWiz

LG announces Optimus LTE2

Trumps Galaxy S III with 2GB of memory

Just in time to somehow counter Samsung's yesterday launch, LG has announced yet another smartphone that will be a part of its Optimus lineup, the Optimus LTE2. According to first details, it appears that Optimus LTE2 has more than it needs to go neck to neck with Galaxy S III

The LG Optimus LTE2 will feature, what LG likes to call, TrueHD IPS screen. The screen is most likely 720p, and we guess that LG threw in the "True" part just to note that we are looking at standard RGB pixel layout rather than PenTile one that Samsung uses. Another novelty is something that we haven't seen so far on smartphones, a total 2GB of RAM memory. Of course, we aren't sure if 2GB of memory will actually do anything as it depends solely on Android, but you'll certainly won't run out of it during multi-tasking

The rest of the known specs include obvious LTE support, a main camera that will feature high response and voice activation feature, a some sort of wireless charging option and a high capacity 2150mAh battery. Unfortunately, the CPU behind the Optimus LTE2 is unknown but our best bet is that we are looking at Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4.

The new Optimus LTE2 is expected to hit Korea by mid-May and we guess we'll see an international launch pretty soon, alongside some precise specs of course

You can check out LG Korea press release here

 

EVGA launches its own GTX 690 graphics cards

Special Edition card coming

Following the GTX 690 launch yesterday, EVGA has announced its own lineup based on this dual-GPU beast, including standard EVGA GTX 690, a Signature Edition card as well as a hint that a special model is also in the works

Both the standard and the Signature Edition share the same specs including a total of 3072 CUDA cores, 915MHz base and 1019MHz boost clocks and a total 4GB of GDDR5 (2GB per GPU) memory clocked at 6008MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface for each GPU

As expected considering that Nvidia certainly made quite an effort in designing this graphics card, the Signature Edition doesn't change anything but throws in a special bundle that includes limited edition EVGA gaming poster, GTX 690 Signature t-shirt and EVGA 690 signature mousepad

On its GTX 690 product page, EVGA also hinted that there is a some sort of "special edition" coming and we must say that we are certainly looking forward to it, although Nvidia was pretty keen on saying that we won't see that many custom cards

The plain version is currently listed at EVGA's web shop for US $999.99 while the Signature Edition goes for US $1049.99. You can check out the EVGA product page here

 

Galaxy S III 32GB and 64GB priced in Germany

We hope retailers got it wrong

Samsung unveiled the highly anticipated Galaxy S III earlier this week and the Korean giant should let it loose on unsuspecting markets by the end of the month. However, Samsung has not officially released the price, although multiple sources and leaks point to a €599/£499 price for the 16GB flavour

At €599 it is no bargain, but it is pretty much what we’ve come to expect in the superphone market and the price should drop a bit one it starts shipping. However, several German retailers are now listing the 32GB version and even the 64GB version for €699 and €799 respectively. Back at launch day we said Samsung took its cue from Apple and now it seems it is also pricing the S III in €100 increments

Of course, the prices are not official yet and although several retailers are listing the 32GB and 64GB versions, it would be wise to take the listings with a grain of salt. There is really no precedent when it comes to Samsung, as the S II was only available as a 16GB model. However, the Galaxy Note came in 16GB and 32GB versions and the price difference at launch was €80, so €100 sounds plausible, albeit a tad too high

The S II also launched at €599, but the price came down to €550 or less in a matter of weeks. We suspect carriers will be able to offer the S III at similar price points to HTC’s One X and other superphones, but many consumers will probably have a bone to pick about 32GB and 64GB pricing. If these early listings are correct, and we can only hope they are not, Samsung will end up in a rather awkward situation of treating consumers like Apple. So much for Sammy’s controversial iSheep ad campaign.

However, unlike the iPhone, the S III features a microSD slot, so consumers will be able to add some cheap (and slow) storage. So, every cloud has a silver lining and speaking of clouds, S III owners will also be able to enjoy 50GB of Dropbox storage

Asus Padfone might be delayed

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 shortages to blame

Ever since it was showcased by Asus about a year ago, Asus' tablet/smartphone hybrid has been filling news sections around the web, despite the fact that it never hit the market. Now, it looks like Padfone won't be available this month, at least not in all markets

The info is a bit vague, but according to The Verge, shortages of Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 will have an impact on Asus' Padfone as well. According to Asus' reply sent to The Verge, a company spokesperson said that Qualcomm's shortage is affecting all of Qualcomm's customers. Unfortunately, the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is exactly the chip that Asus decided to use for its Padfone. In case you missed it, we are talking about a hybrid tablet/smartphone device that has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen while the Padfone Station uses 10.1-inch screen that adds a 1.3MP camera and 24.4Whr battery

The Padfone was previously scheduled to be launched in Taiwan by the end of April, while some other markets should get in late May

You can check out more here

 

EVGA GTX 680 SC Signature previewed

Preview: 1086MHz GPU and 1552MHz memory

 EVGA currently offers six GTX 680 graphics cards, the fastest one being its GTX 680 Hydro Copper, whose GPU runs at 1150MHz. Of course, those of you that prefer traditional air coolers have five other GTX 680 cards to choose from. Air cooled graphics usually run at lower clocks and our today’s guest is EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature, which is the fastest of the company’s air cooled GTX 680s. The card’s GPU runs at 1086MHz and the memory at 1552MHz (6208MHz effectively). Note that reference clocks are 1006/1502MHz for GPU/memory

Apart from the clocks, EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature isn’t much different from the reference design. The cooler had a corrective surgery and it totally reflects EVGA’s image – all in all, pretty nice. Most importantly though, the factory overclocked GPU is cooled well

The card is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector

The cooler packs a nice punch and a little effort will considerably speed up EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature, even beyond the clocks on EVGA’s GTX 680 Hydro Copper. As the picture below proves, 1185MHz ran stable. We managed to get this score with standard voltages set in the card’s BIOS and AUTO fan operation. After some work with voltages and speeding up the fan, we managed to overclock it even further. Since we still don’t have the final maximum clock, we’ll leave it for our full review

Those of you who’d rather see dual fan cooling should know that EVGA is preparing Signature 2 card with special cooler design, which should cool better and be quieter due to two fans. However, if you’re not bent on low noise, Signature’s cooling is nice and not too loud. Thankfully, the times of GTX 480s and other noisy cards are past us

Max Payne 3 DLC plans announced

Season Pass to offer discounted price

Rockstar has confirmed its DLC plans for Max Payne 3, which will be starting in June. The developer is planning a lot of content to add on to the title. They are planning so much content, in fact, that Rockstar will be offering a Max Payne 3 Season Pass for 2,400 Microsoft Points, or $20, for PlayStation 3 and PC users; this represents a 35% discount over buying it all individually

The offerings will be kicking off in June with the release of the Local Justice Map Pack and then into the summer with releases of the Disorganized Crime Map Pack, Deathmatch Made In Heaven Mode Pack, Hostage Negotiation Map Pack, and the New York Minute Co-Op Pack. The fall will bring the release of the Painful Memories Map Pack and Trickle Down Economics Map Pack

While exact release dates will be announced closer to the actual releases, you can see that Max Payne 3 players will have a variety of content arriving until the end of the year to extend and add on to the life of the game. Sources tell us that you can expect some surprises with these releases, as well

Netgear announces R6300 802.11ac WiFi router

1300Mbps in 5GHz mode

Netgear is gearing up to unveil its first 802.11ac dual band gigabit WiFi router, the Netgear R6300. Featuring support for the yet to be finalized 802.11ac standard, the new R6300 is on course to be launched sometime next month with a US $199.99 price tag

The Netgear R6300 will be one of the first routers to use the recently introduced Broadcom 5G WiFi chip and it is expected to be adopted by other companies in next few months, probably including Apple

In addition to the dual band 802.11ac support that pumps out 1300Mbps in 5GHz and 450Mbps in 2.4GHz mode, the new Netgear R6300 WiFi router packs two USB ports for storage and printer sharing and five Gigabit Ethernet Ports (one WAN) as well as on board WiFi on/off and "Push 'N' Connect" easy WPS connect button

The Netgear R6300 also features Netgear Genie and MyMedia app support, AirPrint, ReadySHARE Printer, Media Sever-DLNA, Live parental controls, Automatic WiFi Security and hassle free security

As noted, the new R6300 is expected to hit retail in May with a US $199.99 price tag

MSI's Z77A-GD80 shows up in full glory

Thunderbolt ports still there

Although it was pictured back during Cebit, we managed to stumble upon what appears to be the final version of the Z77A-GD80, MSI's flagship Z77 chipset based motherboard

As far as specs go, the new Z77A-GD80 features a 22-phase VRM design with Military Class III components, support for LGA 1155 processors, a total of three PCI-Express slots (two PCI-E Gen 3.0) as well as four PCI-Express x1 slots. It also comes with four DIMM memory slots with support for up to 32GB of DDR3-2666 memory, four SATA 6Gbps and two SATA 3Gbps ports, a total of four USB 3.0 slots (two via header) and a bunch of USB 2.0 ports, THX TruStudio Pro audio, as well as mini-DisplayPort, HDMI and D-Sub outputs

As expected, the new Z77-GD80 still features the Thunderbolt/mini-DP port and also features MSI V-Check Probes, OC Genie II, on-board power, reset and clear CMOS buttons and multi BIOS support

The MSI Z77A-GD80 motherboard showed up in MSI MOA 2012 competition hosted by Hwbot.org as an actual award for fourth place. You can find the competition here

 

AMD dropped FX-6200 price as well

Down to US $149.

In addition to the silent price drop of the flagship FX-8150, it appears that the six-core FX-6200 has also dropped down to US $149.

In the wake of Intel Ivy Bridge launch AMD has apparently decided to drop some price on the FX-8150, as we wrote about here, as well as the FX-6200. In case you missed it, the FX-8150 dropped from US $245 in 1000-unit quantities down to US $215, or €180 in Europe. Of course, AMD is also preparing a new FX-8170 and the price cut is simply a move to make some room for the upcoming refresh

According to Xbitlabs.com, AMD also dropped the price of its six-core FX-6200 that has made a drop from the official 1000-unit quantity price of US $165 down to US $149 in the US. In Europe this one has dropped from around €150 down to around €140.

Despite the fact that AMD's FX-Series have been quite a dissapointment, due in large part to the pre-launch hype, but we are hearing that FX parts are selling quite well. Of course, the upcoming refresh will raise the bar a bit higher and speed bumps across the range is always welcomed

More here

Mount Eddie DLC to hit today

Retools SSX for a the retro SSX experience

While the new SSX reboot was not the out of the park hit that everyone hoped, it seems that Electronic Arts has been listening to feedback and will attempt to address it with the release of the first DLC pack for SSX

The new retooled retro add-on is called “The Mount Eddie DLC Pack,” and it will be released later today with the promise that it will rekindle your memories of what you liked of SSX past and deliver the retro-SSX experience that many have been longing for

The Mount Eddie DLC Pack is focused on tricks; these are not just any tricks, but are the out-of-this-world tricks that players remember, with great layouts of ramps and rails to trick on while beating your opponents to the bottom of the mountain
The Mount Eddie DLC Pack will be released later today for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation and, of course, it will require the already released version of the new SSX. It will cost 800 Microsoft Points or $10 when it arrives for download later today

GTA V to be shown before E3

A number of analysts seem to think so

A growing number of analysts, including some of the ones we have spoken with, believe that Grand Theft Auto V will be shown right before E3. One of the best known analysts, none other than Michael Patcher at Wedbush Morgan, believes that Rockstar will show it in a pre-show blowout before E3. Some we have spoken with claim that it is possible, while others tell us they doubt it will happen

Patcher claims that Rockstar has outgrown the show and thinks they are way too cool to attend, and they instead would rather steal everyone’s thunder by dropping this bomb right before the event starts. It should be noted that Rockstar North has not participated in E3 in a long time. The last time we remember they attended was when they showed up at Sony’s press conference showing Agent for the PS3.

Release dates for GTA V are being tossed around, suggesting an October launch. With BioShock 2 scheduled for release in October, it is hard for us to think that Take 2 would push two big games like this out so close together, as this could have the potential to impact sales for both titles

Club3D announces PokerSeries graphics cards

Starts off with HD 7870 JokerCard

Club3D has rolled out a new graphics card series, the PokerSeries that will represent Club3D's premiere lineup when it comes to graphics cards

According to Club3D, the new PokerSeries will offer a new level of special graphics cards that deliver the best performance, newest features and best coolers. The new PokerSeries will be split into four different segments, the jokerCard, presenting Best of the Best Limited Edition, royalQueen with Best of the Best with Club3D's CoolStream cooling, royalKing with factory overclock and CoolStream, and royalAce, that will feature "super overclocking" with CoolStream cooling

The first card that will have a chance to be a part of the PokerSeries is the HD 7870 JokerCard based on AMD's 28nm Pitcairn XT GPU with 1280 stream processors. This one ended up clocked at 1000MHz for the GPU, features 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4800MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface

As noted in the feature list, the HD 7870 JokerCard will feature Club3D's quite good CoolStream cooler. On HD 7870 JokerCard, it packs three copper heatpipes paired up with a hefty heatsink and single center placed fan. The 7870 JokerCard will ship with DIRT Showdown game title voucher as a bonus. The new JokerCard is expected to hit retail during second week of May

In addition to the JokerCard, Club3D has also shed some details on its RoyalKing and RoyalQueen cards that will be apparently featured in HD 7970, HD 7950, HD 7870 and HD 7850 versions, while RoyalAce cards are still left to be seen

You can check out Club3D's full lineup here