Asus ARES II dual HD 7970 available in Europe

Impressive and most meaningless graphics card

During a quick check of our favorite search engine we noticed that Asus' CES 2013 pride and joy, also known as the Asus Ares II dual HD 7970 limited edition graphics card, is actually available all over Europe

Although we are looking at a very impressive dual-GPU graphics card paired up with hefty water-cooling system, the fact that the lowest price is set at €1272,29 in the UK and €1349 in both Germany and Austria, simply makes it a most meaningles graphics card that we have ever seen. Even the Powercolor's limited edition dual HD 7970 Devil13 graphics card is cheaper with a lowest price tag set at €939,84.

Of course, we must mention that you can actually buy two MSI R7970 Lightning Boost Edition 3GB graphics cards at €444,36 a piece (€888,72 for a pair) or even go for Sapphire's Vapor-X HD 7970 GHz Edition 6GB selling for €491,29 a piece €982,58 for a pair

Of course, we understand that this is a limited edition card, a collector's dream, but those things do not give it any more meaning

In any case, if Ares II is just what you were looking for, you certainly will not have any trouble finding it in anywhere in Europe as it appears to be widely available

You can check it out here

LG shows off Optimus G Pro

5.5-inch display, curved glass and quad-core

LG has shed more light on its upcoming LG Optimus G Pro 5.5-inch flagship that is expected to debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month

Although there are no details regarding the precise specs of the smartphone, LG did release the first official picture showing the LG Optimus G Pro and its 5.5-inch 1080p screen as well as the entire design in their full glory. The 5.5-inch 1080p screen has a pixel density of 401ppi and is placed behind a curved glass that should, at least according to LG, produce a 2.5D effect

LG did note that the heart of the LG Optimus G Pro is a quad-core CPU and according to previous leaks we will most likely see Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 clocked at up to 1.7GHz and paired up with Adreno 320 GPU

LG also scheduled the release for late February, which makes the MWC debut that much more likely

More here

Cooler Master's Seidon 120XL/240M hits Europe

Liquid cooling for the masses

Cooler Master Europe has announced two new liquid coolers that will be a part of its Seidon line, the Seidon 120XL and Seidon 240M

Both are designed to be an extremely compact solution and thanks to a pretty low price, they are supposed to bring liquid cooling to average consumers. Both feature a high performance water block made out of a single block of copper and designed wiht Micro Channels for maximum heat dissipation. The pump is integrated with the water block clearing more space around the CPU socket while providing a performance similar to good air-based CPU coolers

The radiator is cooled by an included 120mm PWM fan(s) that spins between 600 and 2400RPM, thus providing both the silent operation and maximum performance when needed. The Seidon 240M features 273/27mm radiator and is cooled by two 120m fans while the Seidon 120XL sticks to 150/38mm radiator and a single 120mm PWM fan

Seidon line coolers are self-contained units that are pressure tested, pre-filled and sealed in order to provide a long maintenance-free operation. They support all the latest Intel and AMD sockets including LGA 2011 and FM2.

The Sedion 120XL and the Seidon 240M are scheduled to appear on retail/e-tail shelves across Europe as of next week with a suggested price set at €67 and €75.50, respectively

Asus launches two Geforce GTX 650-E graphics cards

Energy efficient ones

Asus has announced two new Geforce GTX 650-E graphics cards that are aimed at desktop PCs with low-wattage power supplies thanks to their 60W TDP

Based on Nvidia's GK107 28nm GPU with 384 CUDA cores and drawing power solely from the PCI-Express slot, the new Asus Geforce GTX 650-E comes with either 1 or 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 128-bit memory interface and work at 1071MHz for the GPU and 5000MHz for the memory. Both cards are cooled by a dual slot cooler with dust-proof fan and feature Asus' Super Alloy Power components for enhanced durability and cooling

Unfortunately, the price or the availability date have not been announced. A quick check at our favorite price search engine shows that they are coming to Europe sometime during this or the next week, with the lowest price set at €93,44 and €109,96.

Intel speeds up Linux servers with SSDs

Thanks to Nevex Virtual buyout

 

Chipzilla has sped up Linux server SSDs using Cache Acceleration Software technology

Intel said that the solid- state drive-based Cache Acceleration Software (CAS) for Linux servers can dramatically speed up the performance of read-intensive applications. Intel said its CAS can triple the performance of SSDs on standard databases and offer up to 18 times improved performance on read-intensive online transaction processing applications

The product supports caching on NAND flash in storage arrays and VMware vMotion. An Intel spokesman said that at the moment Intel’s CAS fixes I/O bottlenecks by accelerating applications. The latest update featuring support for Linux, enables administrators to use software that will benefit from the higher performance SSDs. They can also allow the CAS to automatically redistribute I/O intensive data to the flash memory

The CAS technology was acquired by Intel from the Canadian startup Nevex Virtual Technologies which it bought last year

HTC M7 aka HTC One breaks cover

Sense 5.0 on top

An official press photo of the M7, that will be known simply as the HTC One, has finally popped up online, giving us an idea of what to expect from the upcoming flagship

The picture came from a Twitter post by evleaks a proven source of some of the earlier leaks. Judging by the picture, HTC decided to turn to a new design page and got rid of the calssic three button design. The phone is rather symmetrical and certainly looks like a true flagship, at least on the design side

According to earlier rumors, the new HTC One should end up with a 4.7-inch 1080p (468ppi) screen, Qualcomm's APQ8064 SoC clocked at 1.7GHz, 2GB of RAM and Android 4.2. Interestingly enough, it appears that the new HTC One will be the first smartphone to feature HTC Sense UI 5.0. The rest of the features include a 13-megapixel main camera with stacked sensor

As detailed earlier, HTC plans to unveil the new One at two simultaneous events in New York and London on February 19th

More here

CyberPower launches new FangBook X7 gaming notebook

17.3-inch beast

CyberPower has launched a completely new line of gaming notebooks, the FangBook X7. Based on Intel's HM77 Express chipset and Ivy Bridge Core i7 Mobile Extreme Edition CPU paired up with Nvidia graphics, the FangBook X7 line will certainly be enough to run any game on its 17.3-inch 1080p screen

Measuring 42.8x28.8x5.5cm (16.85x11.34x2.17-inches) and weighing in at just below 3.6kg (8lbs), the FangBook X7 is a trueblooded desktop replacement. The new FangBook X7 wil be available in three base options as FangBook X7-100, FangBook X7-200 and the FangBook X7-300. All three will feature the same Intel Core i7-3630QM CPU and the same 17.3-inch 1920x1080 LED-backlit screen, Windows 8 OS, 802.11bng WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI output, USB 3.0 ports and a 720p webcam

The base Fangbook X7-100 pairs up Nvidia's Geforce GTX 675MX 4GB graphics card with the aforementioned Intel i7-3630QM CPU and comes wiht 8GB of DDR3 memory, 750GB 7200rpm HDD and DVD Super-Multi optical drive. The FangBook X7-200 has the same GPU but features 16GB of DDR3 memory and a 64GB SSD/750GB HDD combination. The last and the most expensive option is the FangBook X7-300. It features Nvidia Geforce GTX 680M 4GB graphics, 16GB of DDR3 memory, 64GB SSD/1TB HDD combination and a Blu-ray combo optical drive

The Fangbook X7-100 starts at US $1,299, the X7-200 at US $1,499 while the FangBook X7-300 starts at US $1,799. As it was the case with all previous CyberPower systems, the FangBook X7 is also fully customizable with more powerful CPUs, more memory and higher capacity SSDs/HDDs. It also comes with a 1-year limited warranty

You can check them all out here

New COD on tap for Q4 2013

Will be released for current and next-gen

 

Yes, COD fans, a new Call of Duty game will be arriving in the 4th quarter of this year. In a move that really isn’t so surprising, Activision has confirmed this as fact, but has released no other details at this point. It is expected that the new COD title will be a Modern Warfare offering

In addition, while the company has yet to confirm it, sources tell us that Activision is planning to release this franchise offering of Call of Duty on both current generation as well as the next-generation of console platforms. While the move is considered to be the best choice, many expect because of cost the transition to the next-generation platforms will be a bit slower this time around

It is expected that this release of Call Of Duty will have the widest ever platform support, with Activision offering versions for the new Microsoft and Sony consoles as well as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC. It is unknown if the publisher is planning to release all of the versions at the same time or not. We can, however, expect Activision to be showing off the new COD at E3, and it will likely be one of the star attraction titles running on the new Microsoft hardware, if previous demos are any indication

Asus announces F2A85-V FM2 motherboard

Budget Trinity motherboard

Following the success of its F2A85-V Pro motherboard that managed to set a 3DMark Vantage record for APUs, Asus has announced a new F2A85-V motherboard that will join its F2A85 series

As you could guess from the name, the F2A85-V is a budget design that does not feature all the goodies seen on the F2A85-V Pro, so it comes with slightly weaker VRM, no heatpipes for heatsinks and a single PCI-Express x16 slot. It has a 6-phase VRM and requires a single 4-pin ATX power connector, features four DDR3-DIMM slots for a total of 64GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory and comes with one PCI-Express 2.0 x16, one PCI-Express 2.0 x4, two PCI-Express x1 and three PCI slots

The rest of the features include seven SATA 6Gbps ports and one eSATA port, Gigabit Ethernet, Realtek ALC887 8-channel audio, four USB 3.0 (two via header) and ten USB 2.0 ports (six via header) and DVI, HDMI and D-Sub outputs

Although the price or the actual date has not been announced, the new F2A85-V is already listed in Europe with a lowest price set at €75,57 and is around €40 cheaper than the F2A85-V Pro

LG to host its MWC press event on February 25th

F-series, Optimus G Pro incoming

 

LG has finally announced the precise date for its Mobile World Congress press event, pinning it to February 25th, which is actually the first day of the Mobile World Congress

While some smartphone makers have decided to host their own press events before the actual show kicks off, it looks like the first day of MWC will belong to LG, judging by their invite that pins the press event for February 25ht at 8:00AM local time

There has been a lot of talk and rumors regarding LG's lineup at MWC, and it is pretty sure that we will see the new F-Series of LTE-enabled smartphones as well as the possible Optimus G Pro, an international version of the already launched Optimus G

Of course, there could be an ace or two hidden up LG's sleeve so we'll have to wait just a tad bit longer for MWC to kick off

Via PhoneArena.com