Gigabyte launches out BRIX mini PC

Tiny NUC wannabe

Gigabyte has launched a new mini PC with some quite powerful internals, all packed in a diminutive 29.9mm x 107.6mm x 114.4mm chassis. If you think it looks familiar, it should. It is practically Gigabyte’s take on the Intel NUC

Like the NUC the BRIX PC will ship as a barebone DIY kit and it is available with a range of Intel processors, including Core i3, i5 a i7 chips. As it is too small for traditional 2.5-inch storage, it relies of an mSATA slot for SSDs. It also has two SO-DIMM memory slots and can take up to 16GB of RAM

HDMI, mini DisplayPort, WiFi and two USB 3.0 ports are also on board. All in all it looks like a more powerful version of the NUC and the price will probably reflect this. Sadly though, Gigabyte has not revealed any pricing info

The BRIX should show up this summer. However, judging by the weather in much of Europe, summer is probably coming in August or September

Western Digital announces WD Se line of HDDs

24x7 and up to 4TB

  

Western Digital has announced the availability of its new WD Se line of hard disk drives designed for use in datacenters. Made to deliver the right combination of performance, reliability and robustness for large-scale replicated environments, mid-sized NAS deployment and backup/archiving applications

Since it is based on an enterprise-grade platform and aimed at 24x7x365 operation, the new WD Se line will be joining the WD's other datacenter HDDs, the WD Xe and WD Re as well as the WD Red line of HDDs. Together with those lines, the Western Digital now offers a total portfolio of robust storage devices to match every size and scale of NAS deployment

In addition to harsh testing of 5 million hours of functional and thermal testing, over 20 million hours of additiona testing under actual workloads the WD Se HDDs also feature a dual processor for maximum performance, Enhanced Rotrary Acceelartion Feed Forward (RAFF) technology that include sophisticated electronics to monitor the drive, StableTrac, multi-axis shock sensor, RAID-specific, time limited error recovery (TLER) as well as dynamic fly height technology that ajdust head's fly heigh in real time

As noted earlier, WD's Se HDDs will be shipping in 2, 3, and 4TB capacities and should already be available through wide range of distributors and resellers with a MSRP of US $159.99 to US $309.99. WD's Se HDDs are backed by a five-year limited warranty

Intel reveals 3D NAND plans

It is coming right at ya

Keyvan Esfarjani, technology & manufacturing VP at Intel and co-CEO of IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) told the Imec Technology Forum some of Chipzilla’s plans behind its 3D NAND strategy. IMFT is a joint venture between Intel and Micron and its role is to find out how to move NAND flash memory ICs into the third dimension

Already it thinks that its development of a 20nm memory cell has bought it a generation or two of 2D scaling. Currently an industry-wide transition for the nonvolatile NAND flash memory technology from memory cells in a 2D array to strings of NAND transistors integrated vertically. But 3D memories could be arranged as a 2D array of vertical semiconductor channels with many levels of gate-all-around (GAA) structures forming the multiple voltage level memory cell transistors

Esfarjani said that there is a scaling limit for 2D NAND flash but 2D NAND flash can scale to two more nodes at about 15 and 10nm. The first 3D NAND generation is likely to be brought up alongside that 15nm 2D node. Esfarjani added. The 16 layer NAND flash ICs will not be enough to provide an economic benefit and there will need to be 64 or at least 32 layers for it all to work

Planar floating-gate high-K metal gate cell introduced by IMFT at the 20nm node to replace a "wrap-around" cell used at 34 and 25nm would help to scale the idea further. IMFT introduced a 128Gbit NAND flash memory at the 20nm during 2012. Meanwhile the plan is to extend the 2D NAND flash generation by using nitride film and nanodots. Esfarjani pointed out that the transition to 3-D is not limited by lithography and it could manage on a 40nm diameter semiconductor channel

The problem is finding materials that can handle the temperatures of multi-layer semiconductor processing and the high aspect ratio etch to drive in the vertical channel

Inno3D officially announces custom Geforce GTX 780

Meet the iChill HerculeZ 2000

 

Inno3D has now officially unveiled its custom version of the Geforce GTX 780, the Inno3D GTX 780 iChill HerculeZ 2000.

Based on the GTX 780 design paired up with a custom cooling solution, the new Inno3D custom GTX 780 graphics card still features 2304 CUDA cores but works at slightly higher 900MHz base and 936MHz Boost GPU clocks. In comparison, the GPU clocks were raised from reference 863MHz base and 900MHz Boost clocks. It still feature 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface and clocked at reference 6000MHz

In order to keep the GPU and other temps at bay, Inno3D decided to use the dual fan, dual slot cooler with a rather hefty heatsink. While Nvidia's reference Titan cooler is quite good, Inno3D certainly has a lot of confidence in its own version

The new Inno3D GTX 780 iChill HerculeZ 2000 should already start to appear in retail/e-tail with a slight premium compared to reference cards

G.Skill to show gaming headset at Computex

Wants a piece of the market

  

G.Skill has announced that it will announce a new product at Computex next week that will announce its entrance to PC gaming peripherals market. G.Skill will start with some sort of gaming headset

According to a teaser, the upcoming gaming headset from G.Skill will feature various industry-first features that will provide gamers with enhanced competitiveness and a unique gaming experience. G.Skill had some interesting memory kit designs and had its share in the SSD market as well so we are sure that gaming headset will be a quality product as well

Unfortunately, G.Skill is holding all the juicy specifications and details for the Computex launch so we will have to keep our eye on them next week

Cooler Master launches N300 and N500 ATX cases

Mid-tower N-series

Cooler Master has announced the N-series, a brand new series of compact mid-tower mainstream cases that feature support for 240mm radiators, improved air cooling performance as well as a subtle and simplistic design

According to Cooler Master, the new N-series were designed with cooling performance in mind, especially liquid cooling. The entire series will feature full mesh front panels with large amount of vents for maximum air streaming as well as enough room to instal extra long graphics cards and several ODDs, HDDs or SSDs, despite its compact design

The N500 has support for up to 9 fans while N300 will have stick with support for up to 8 fans. The N500 can take two 120/140mm on top, two 120mm front fans, two 120mm rear, two 120mm side, one 120mm bottom fan as well as the one optional HDD cage 120mm fan. As noted earlier, both cases support top 240mm radiator. There is enough room for 400mm long VGA cards (320mm long on the N300) that are placed next to a 2.5-inch rack that can hold three 2.5-inch HDDs/SSDs

Both the N300 and the N500 will be available in four different versions, with and without a window side panel and with either two USB 3.0 or one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports on the I/O panel

Both cases will be available in Europe as of this month, but the precise MSRP has not been announced

Sapphire announces new HD 7990 Malta graphics card

Reference design for now

 

Just as expected, Sapphire has announced that it will start shipping the AMD Radeon HD 7990 graphics card with two 28nm Tahiti GPUs based on AMD's GCN architecture

Like all AMD partners Sapphire will also have to stick with AMD's reference design. In case you missed it, the AMD Radeon HD 7990 features two 28nm fully enabled Tahiti GPUs for a total of 4096 stream processors and 6GB of GDDR5 memory (3GB per GPU). The GPUs are working at 950MHz base and 1000MHz Boost clocks and while 6GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with 2x384-bit memory interface ended up clocked at 6000MHz

The new AMD Radeon HD 7990 Malta features an impressive dual-slot, triple-fan cooler that can easily cope with those two GPUs and even do it at reasonably low noise levels. It features four DisplayPort and single DVI output supporting up to 5 displays in AMD Eyefinity mode

As announced earlier, the Sapphire Radeon HD 7990 will also be a part of AMD's Never Settle Reloaded campaign and will be bundled with no less than eight games, including BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, FarCry 3, and Tomb Raider and others

Nvidia rolls out Geforce 320.00 beta driver

 

Up to 20 percent performance improvement on some cards

  

Nvidia has released its new Geforce 320.00 beta driver bringing new SLI profiles for some game titles, as well as performance improvements that go up to 20 percent on some graphics cards

According to the release highlights, the new Geforce 320.00 beta driver is called as the Geforce "game ready" driver for Dead Island: Riptide, Neverwinter and Star Trek game titles and brings performance improvement by up to 20% for Geforce 400, 500 and 600 series graphics cards when compared to the Geforce 314.22 WHQL driver

Nvidia also posted examples of measured gains on Geforce GTX 660 and GTX 660 in SLI graphics card that reached up to 20 percent in Dirt: Showdown, up to 18 percent in Tomb Raider, up to 8 percent in StarCraft II and up to 6 percent in Sniper Elite V2, Metro 2033, Far Cry 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution as well as up to 5 percent in F1 2012. The performance for GTX 660 SLI are quite similar but also includes couple of other games as the new beta driver brings SLI profiles for some new games

You can find the new driver as well as full release highlights here

AMD Radeon HD 7990 Malta roundup

Roundup: Flagship performance at US $999

  

As expected. AMD has lifted the NDA curtain and officially unveiled its newest flagship Radeon HD 7990 Malta dual-GPU card based on two fully enabled 28nm Tahiti GPUs

Detailed earlier, the Radeon HD 7990 Malta packs two 28nm Tahiti GPUs based on AMD's GCN architecture for a total of 4096 stream processors (2048 per GPU), 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 384-bit memory interface for each GPU connected to a total of 6GB of GDDR5 memory. AMD did a great job in keeping the power requirements as the card actually "only" needs two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors and ended up with impressive 950MHz base and 1000MHz Boost GPU clocks while memory ended up clocked at 6000MHz adding up to 288GB/s of memory bandwidth per GPU

Since we are talking about a dual-GPU graphics card, AMD opted for a PLX PEX8747 48-lane PCI-Express 3.0 bridge chip in order to connect those two GPUs in Crossfire. The reference design is quite good and does not leave much room for custom solutions. It is pretty much what we had a chance to see from Nvidia's flagship offerings as it does a great job in keeping both GPUs well cooled at impressively low noise levels. In order to give as much value to the new graphics card, same as it did with its entire HD 7800/7900 series, AMD decided to bundle no less than eight free games, including Crysis 3, Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Sleeping Dogs, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Hitman Absolution

As far as the performance goes, the AMD Radeon HD 7990 is unquestionably the fastest graphics card that money can buy, especially if you plan to do some gaming on higher resolutions. It wastes more power than the GTX 690, the main competitor from the green camp, but since we are talking about US $999 graphics cards here, talking about power consumption is pretty pointless. As it was the case with all previous graphics cards, the performance is a mix bag as it is good in some games and not so good in others

AMD does have an upper hand over GTX 690 as it offers more memory per GPU, 3GB over 2GB, which will eventually become important and currently is in case you want to talk about extremely higher 4k resolutions and extreme multi-monitor setups. It pretty much has the same problem as the GTX 690 as you need to have proper Crossfire driver in order to see those impressive performance in any game

On the other hand it undeniably offers more value than the GTX 690 due to the Never Settle bundle, a quite big thorn in Nvidia's eye. The bottom line is that AMD Radeon HD 7990 Malta is currently the fastest graphics card that money can buy and since it is a dual-GPU solution as it offers more value and better future investment than the GTX 690, especially for those with deeper pockets that are looking to game at 2560x1440 single/dual setups or even 4096x2160 ones

It is pretty much a battle for bragging, i.e.  the graphics card throne, and according to various reviews around the net, AMD has won this round

Anandtech.com
Techpowerup.com
HotHardware.com
Tweaktown.com
Tomshadware.com
Benchmark.rs
Legitreviews.com
Hardwareheaven.com

Western Digital shipping 5mm 2.5-inch drives

WD ultra slim Blue and Black HDDs/SSHDs

 

Western Digital has announced that it has started to ship the world's first ultra-slim 2.5-inch 5mm thick HDD and solid state hybrid drives (SSHD) desinged for slimmest devices and space-constrained computing environments

To be available in capacities of up to 500GB as well as high performance SSHD technology the new slim line will overcome usual tradeoffs between capacity, pshysical size and performance. Western Digital actually announced both WD Blue and WD Black 5mm drives that will enable new levels of devices portability

According to Western Digital, the new 5mm ultra-slim form factor reduces weight by up to 36 percent compared to a standard 9.5mm HDD and is also quiet at mere 17 dB during seek operations making it over 10 percent less noisy when compared to competing 7mm drives. The new 5mm HDDs and SSHDs implement the new Edge Card and Edge Card connector features that maximize the mechanical sway space, ensure shock performance and are actually the first drives that use SFF-8784 edge connector recieving power and intefacing with the host I/O bus via SATA connector

Unfortunately, Western Digital did not shed much details regarding the specs of the WD Black 5mm SSHD model other than it is currently shipping to OEMs and integrators. The WD Blue 5mm on the other hand will be available as a single 500GB HDD (model: WD5000MPCK) with MSRP of US $89 and should be shipping to OEMs and distributors

HD 7990 goes official, $999

AMD’s foray into 4K

The HD 7990 is official, sort of, and it will hit retail in two weeks time. Here are a few figures - $999, over 8 TFLOPS, 8.6 billion transistors, 6 gigs of GDDR5 and a bunch of bundled games

AMD is touting the HD 7990 as the ultimate 4K graphics card, as it is supposed to handle any current game at 4K with max settings. The dual-GPU monster boasts an equally impressive game bundle, including titles such as Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. In total, AMD is giving away eight AAA titles

The generous bundle should offset the $999 asking price, which is high but in line with expectations. AMD claims the new card is faster and quieter than Nvidia’s GTX 690. It is pricey, but it sounds like a better deal than NV’s flagship, especially when you take into account the eight game bundle

Cooler Master announces V-Series PSUs

Single-rail and up to 1kW

  

Cooler Master has announced a new addition to its line of power supply units. The new modular V-series PSUs will be available in 700, 850 and 1000W versions

The new V-series will feature a single-rail design and feature outstanding voltage stability, ripple suppression and efficiency. Paired up with 135mm high-quality FDB fan will make the V-series as quiet as possible, even under full loud. The V-series will also use a modular design that will feature new, all black, extra slim flat-ribbon cables

The insides of the entire V-series will be based on Japanese electrolyte, solid capacitors and high quality 42mm transformers. It also feature a custom design PCB that lines up all rails ensuring minimum voltage plane cross-overs, thus keeping the crosstalk, EMI and droop at a minimum. The entire series is rated with 80 Plus Gold certification with up to 93 percent efficiency at 50 percent load and features five years of warranty

All three models in the V-series should be available across Europe by the end of April and should be priced at €159.58 for the V1000, €134.37 for the V850 and €109.16 for the V700.

GPU-Z gets updated to v0.7.0

 

Brings support for upcoming Radeon HD 7990 Malta

 

Techpowerup have released a new version of GPU-Z, its popular graphics subsystem information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility. The new version brings updated and added support for various GPUs including the upcoming Radeon HD 7990 Malta and also fixes some bugs found in the previous versions

 

In addition to the support for Radeon HD 7990 Malta dual-GPU graphics card, the new GPU-Z v0.7.0 also brings support for Radeon HD 8550M, HD 7340, HD 7290 and HD 8670D Richland GPUs as well as Nvidia-based Geforce GTX 680MX, GTX 675MX, GT 218, and the 9400 GT GPUs

As far as improvements and bug fixes are concerned, the new GPU-Z v0.7.0 fixes TMU count for the RV620 GPU as well as fixed voltage monitoring on the recently released AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics cards

You can find the new GPU-Z v0.7.0 here

Asus PCIe-based SSD Raidr pixellized and detailed

Up to 830MB/s and 810MB/s read and write

  

Asus appears to be getting ready to release their first storage device, a PCIe storage card that will be a part of the Republic of Gamers line of products

Based on dual LSI Sandforce SF-2281 controllers paired up with Toshiba's 19nm 16K page size MLC synchronous NAND flash chips, the new Asus Raidr will offer some impressive sequential read and write performance of up to 830MB/s and 810MB/s with 4K read and write both set at 100k IOPS. Since we are talking about PCIe-based SSD it of course features the PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface

The Raidr will be available in 120 and 240GB capacities for starters and while the 240GB one offers the aforementioned transfer speeds, the 120GB one is slightly "slower" at 765MB/s read and 775MB/s write. The Raidr comes with support for TRIM, has 128-bit AES data encryption support while the load and idle power consumption is at 16 and 7 Watts

Ocaholic.ch did a nice photo-shoot session with the new Asus ROG Raird which you can find here

Toshiba introduces ultra hi-res 13-incher

Odd name, 221ppi screen

       

Toshiba is stepping up its ultrabook game a notch, with an all new ultra high resolution 13-incher

 

It is called the Kirabook and it is a sign of things to come, as it is supposed to be the first in a line of Kira products. We’re not entirely sure about the name, but we like everything else

The 13-incher features a 2560x1440, 221ppi display. A 10-point touchscreen with Gorilla Glass is optional. It will ship with a range of Ivy Core i5 and Core i7 chips, 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 and a 256GB SSD. It packs three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, memory card reader, Bluetooth 4.0 and a Li-Poly battery, which is supposed to deliver all-day battery life

The rest of the spec just screams premium. It has a couple of Harman Kardon speakers with DTS audio processing, two microphones and an HD webcam. All this is packed in a 1.18kg chassis constructed from a pressed magnesium alloy and it measures just 0.7 inches at the waistline

The first Kiras should ship in May. There’s no word on pricing yet, but judging by the spec it will end up very pricey indeed

Asus Qube Google TV box coming on April 23rd

 

With Marvell 1500 Armada SoC

  

Asus is apparently preparing for the launch of its first smart TV device, the Asus Qube. Previously seen back at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, the Asus Qube might end up to be quite a neat little device to have next to your TV screen

Specification wise, the Asus Qube is based on Marvell's ARMADA 1500 media SoC and comes with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage space. Asus will also throw in 50GB of free Asus cloud storage and a neat looking remote control with QWERTY keyboard. As is the case with most Android systems, it will be able to stream content from Amazon, Google Play, Netflix, HBOGo, Pandora and others

The Asus Qube should launch in the USA on the 23rd of April with a US $129 price tag

Asus officially ships 13.3-inch Taichi 31 notebook

Dual-screen hybrid

    

After getting a lot of press attention with its 11.6-inch Taichi 21 hybrid dual-screen notebook, Asus has now started to ship its bigger 13.3-inch sibling, the Taichi 31. Featuring two 13.3-inch full HD IPS touchscreens on both sides of the lid, the Taichi 31 can be used as a standard notebook, tablet, or even as a presentation device with an extra screen

The Taichi 31 will be available with a couple of Core i5 or i7 processors, 4GB of RAM and various SSD storage options. It has a rear facing 5-megapixel camera, 720p front one, noise-suppressing array microphone and Band & Olufsen ICEpower sound system. The rest of the features include dual-band 802.11bgn WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, WiDi support and two USB 3.0 ports for connectivity

The battery life is rated at around seven hours, at least according to Asus. Unfortunately, Asus did not announce prices of any SKU but you can expect it to go well over US $1500.

Haswell Crystal Well has L4 cache for iGPU

Core i7 exclusive

Haswell will save your battery, Haswell has connected stand by, it promises higher performance per clock and for some it is important that. It also gets significantly better graphics

Since Intel makes huge dies, it won't be a problem to squeeze some L4 (fourth level cache) to boost memory bandwidth and lower the latency in some of its Haswell SKUs. The Haswell variant that is internally known as Crystal Well offers much larger L4 cache

The size of the cache is not clear, but we heard that there can be up to 64MB cache dedicated for graphics. This does sound a bit too much

From the mouth of engineers in the Far East, it could be that the L4 cache remains dedicated only for the GPU, but the other independent sources claim that L1, L2, L3 and L4 memory will be shared between CPU and GPU. We will have to look into which of these two theories is right

Crystal Well is reserved for GT3 based highest end processors from Intel, and we have heard that it remains an exclusive technology for Core i7 processors. You will have to pay up to enjoy it

L4 cache is nothing new to the GPU world and consoles have been using such cache to make the texture and antialiasing faster on them. Dedicated cache on GPUs has been considered by Nvidia and ATI (even before the 2006 AMD acquisition) for years. The main obstacle was always that the transistor count for GPU cache memory was very high and it would result in a huge chip, something that semiconductor manufacturers tend to avoid

It will be interesting to see Haswell Crystal Well in action when it launches later this year, but we are certain that we can see a huge performance leap from Intel Ivy Bridge 4000 series graphics

Haswell-E supports DDR4

4-channel memory. 

Even before Ivy Bridge-E hits the market, Intel is busy working on a successor to this ultra high end processor simply codenamed Haswell E. Ivy Bridge-E is on schedule to launch in Q3 2013, using the same LGA 2011 socket, existing X79 chipset as well as four channel DDR3 1866 support

There have been some rumours that Intel even considered cancelling this chipset in favour of speeding up the launch of Haswell-E, the next generation high end enthusiast chip, but so far that hasn’t been announced to partners

Haswell-E has support for upcoming DDR4 memory as well four channel memory, promising much more bandwidth compared to the previous generation. It comes with up to 12 or 16 cores and should deliver tons of computing power

Looking at the server side of things, four channel DDR4 memory and 12 to 16 cores will make a great chip for high end servers and sitting at 130W. It won't save a lot of trees in the Amazon, but it will offer a lot of compute power. At current schedule Haswell-E should show up in later part of 2014, in case Intel doesn’t change its mind and speed up the introduction of this new enthusiast core

E is supposed to have DDR4 IMC, but DDR4 is still quite far from being finalized and mass produced

Powercolor teases passive HD 7850

Powercolor HD 7850 SCS3 coming

  

Powercolor shared a quite interesting picture at its Facebook page, showing a fully passive Radeon HD 7850 graphics card

Although it did not reveal any precise details regarding the new HD 7850 SCS3 graphics card, it is safe to assume that the card will be based on reference clocks set at 860MHz for the GPU and 4.8GHz for 1 or 2GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. The Powercolor HD 7850 SCS3 will actually be the only passively cooled HD 7850 once it appears in retail/e-tail, at least as far as we know

The new graphics card uses what appears to be a reference PCB, takes two although we do not doubt that the SCS3 will be able to cope with HD 7850 temperatures when it comes to passively cooled graphics cards a good case airflow is a must. It features DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and it appears that it will need a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector

Unfortunately, Powercolor did not shed any details regarding the actual release date or the price

OCZ working on 20nm SSD refresh

Both Vector and Vertex to get it

  

Ever since we heard a rumor regarding OCZ's Vertex 5 series SSDs, we have been asking around and once again our sources came through and gave us a clear picture of what we can expect from OCZ pretty soon

The rumor from Nordichardware was somewhat accurate, as OCZ is indeed working on a new Vertex SSD with 20nm MLC NAND flash memory. According to our sources, we will also see a new controller that, although based on Barefoot 3 design, is a new, or to be precise an optimized respin that will feature some sort of power saving opimization. It is still not clear if the performance would benefit from the respin

The name Vertex 5 is not carved in stone as our source points out and although it has been mentioned a couple of times it might also end up to be Vertex 4.20, something that OCZ already did with the Vertex 3. Until the boxes go out to printing the name can be changed easily

In addition to the new Vertex 4, our sources point out that OCZ will eventually come up with a new Vector as well and as you could have guessed it will be a Vector with 20nm NAND flash chips

It is also not clear on what kind of effect will these two new SSDs have on pricing of previous models but according to our sources we might see it, or even them, as soon as next month

We will certainly keep an eye out for further updates

ZTE unveils new Geek smartphone

5-incher with Android and Intel

  

ZTE has unveiled its first Android smartphone based on Intel's Clover Trail+ CPU and it chose a rather awkward nam, the ZTE Geek

Built around a 5-inch 1280x720 screen, the ZTE Geek does not look that bad and can be considered a cheaper alternative to the Lenovo K900 revealed earlier. The Geek features the same Intel Clover Trail+ dual-core Z2580 CPU clocked at 2GHz paired up with PowerVR SGX 544MP2 graphics and 1GB of RAM. The resto of the features include 8GB of internal storage, rear 8-megapixel and front 1-megapixel camera and 2300mAh battery with wireless charging

On the connectivity side of things we are looking at 3G with HSPA support, 802.11abgn WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS but lacks LTE. It runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean OS which is very commendable

ZTE did not reveal any details regarding the actual availability date or the price. Why it decided to call it a geek phone is anyone's guess

Via Electronista.com

Asus Fonepad coming to UK on April 26

The real Nexus 7 killer at £179.99

  

Techradar.com managed to get their hands on the official release date and price for the UK launch of the Asus Fonepad, a 7-inch, Intel Atom based tablet that has full phone and 3G HSPA+ support

According to Techradar.com, the new Asus Fonepad might be the real Nexus 7 killer considering that it packs some impressive specs, full 3G capabilities with phone support and most importantly, an impressive £179.99 price tag. For comparison sake, the Google Nexus 7 16GB WiFi-only actually has exactly the same price tag

In case you missed it, the Asus Fonepad is based on Intel's Lexington single-core (dual-thread) Atom Z2420 clocked at 1.2GHz and paired up with PowerVR SGX 540 GPU clocked at 400MHz. It has a 7-inch 1280x800 touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, 1.2-megapixel front camera, 16GB of storage, mircoSD and microSIM slots that brings full phone and 3G HSPA+ support. It features 4270mAh battery that should, according to Asus, keep it alive for up to 10 hours of video playback and around 32 hours of 3G calls. It will initially run on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OS but Asus promised that the Android 4.2 update will come as soon as possible

According to Techradar.com, Asus Fonepad should appear for pre-order in the UK at Carphone Warehouse, Amazon and Sainsbury's as of April 12, while shipping should start on April 26.

Of course, we are yet to see some reviews so we'll hold our final judgement until we see it in action

More here

Gelid launches new SlimHero CPU cooler

59mm tall low-profile cooler

  

Gelid Solutions have announced the new SlimHero CPU low-profile cooler, a new member of its Silent line of products

Based on a combination of copper heatpipes and uniquely shaped heatsink that lower the air flow resistance, the new SlimHero comes with a silent and slim 120mm fan with PWM control. The full height of the cooler is 59mm, making it suitable for most if not all SFF cases but also ends up with enough cooling power to cope with up to 136W TDP CPUs

The new SlimHero supports Intel socket 775/1155/1156/1366 and AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1/FM2 sockets and should be available immediately with an MSRP of US $32 or €25.

Asus MeMO Pad starts to ship

Tries to take on Nexus 7 with US $149 price tag

  

As promised back in January, Asus has now started shipping its 7-inch MeMO Pad to retail/e-tail outlets. Priced at US $149, the Asus MeMO Pad aims to take some of that cheap glory from the Asus-made Google Nexus 7.

In order to keep the price at US $149, Asus obviously had to make some cut-backs so the MeMO Pad ditches the Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset for VIA WM8950 chipset with a 1GHz clocked Cortex A9-based single-core CPU paired up with Mali-400 GPU and 1GB of RAM. It features a 7-inch 1024x600 TN touchscreen. On the other hand, while Nexus 7 is limited with either 16 or 32GB of internal storage, Asus MeMO Pad will have 16GB of internal storage that will be expandable by dirt cheap microSD card

According to the specification sheet, the Asus MeMO Pad will run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS, have all the usual connectivity options and feature a 16Wh 4270mAh battery that should keep it live for up to 7 hours

The new Asus MeMO pad should start to appear in a number of major retail/e-tail shops including Amazon, GameStop and Fry's Electronics and will be available in grey, pink and white color options

Via Electronista.com

New Xbox will be always on

Or still on the shop shelf

Microsoft deep throats have confirmed to Paul Thurrott that the much rumoured pricing options for Microsoft's next-gen platform, claims always-online requirement are accurate

Thurrott has claimed that the Xbox 720 will launch in November beginning at $300 for a subscription-based model. A standard model will sell for around $500. In other words it is going to be very expensive. But he said that the Xbox 720 won't be the only new Xbox on shelves this season. Microsoft is planning a $99 "Stingray" Xbox 360. There is no information on what this box is yet

Thurrott said this is a confirmed feature for the platform, claiming the system's notes specifically state that the Xbox 720 "must be Internet-connected to use." Apparently the Xbox 720 reportedly stops functioning if an Internet connection drops for three minutes. This was my experience of the early Xbox so I am not surprised

EVGA and Kingpin break 3DMark Fire Strike world record

EVGA X79 Dark and EVGA GTX Titan cards to blame

 

EVGA and Vince “k|ngp|n” Lucido have set a high bar in the new 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark, setting a new world record for each category including Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme in SLI mode as well as Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme on a single card

EVGA noted that EVGA Pricison X 4.0 utiliy was used to overclock the graphics cards and the record was obtained using the upcoming EVGA X79 Dark motherboard and two EVGA Geforce GTX Titan graphics cards. The results are certainly impressive and according to 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame, Kingpin was running Intel Core i7-3930K CPU and managed to get 22,054 points in 3DMark Fire Strike with two GTX Titan graphics cards and 11,559 points in Fire Strike Extreme, again with SLI

With a single GPU, Kingpin and EVGA's hardware scored 14,600 in 3DMark Fire Strike and 7,308 in 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme benchmark. Currently, Kingpin is firmly holding the first place followed closely by Shammy with Asus hadware

You can check out more over at the 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame

Samsung Galaxy S II getting Jelly Bean update finally

Most likely last one for the 2011 flagship

 

Samsung Galaxy S II, the 4.3-inch flagship launched by Samsung back in 2011, is getting its taste of Jelly Bean

Updates started rolling out to the GT-I9100P model which is based on the Exynos 4120 and earlier Samsung already updated the GT-I9100G version, based on a TI SoC. According to Phonearena.com, the update is massive and one of the biggest one. Keep in mind that Galaxy S II launched with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and now it will be getting the same OS as the  Galaxy S III. This will also most likely be the last update for the Galaxy S II, but having Jelly Bean on a two-year old smartphone is something to really brag about

The quick list of release notes include buttery smooth performance and stability thanks to Google's Project Butter, a full user interface revamp, TouchWiz Nature UX, S Cloud, improved camera features, new lockscreen, new widgets, a bunch of new features including Google Now, a new notification bar and two home screen modes

It is definitely nice to see Samsung taking care of its 2011 flagship smartphone and some other manufacturers could certainly take a leaf out of Samsung's book

More here

LG Optimus G Pro hits Japan

With 5-inch IPS FullHD screen

 

Following the recent succesful launch in Korea, LG Optimus G Pro has found its way to Japan shores and is now available through NTT Docomo. Packed in an Optimus G body, the Japanese version features a slightly smaller 5-inch FullHD IPS screen

As noted and rumored earlier, the Japanese version of the Optimus G Pro will feature a 5-inch IPS LCD FullHD touchscreen rather than the 5.5-inch bound for international release. This means that it also has a slightly better 440 ppi. The rest of the specs include quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage expandable by microSD card slot. It still features 13-megapixel main snapper, 2.1-megapixel front camera and the same 3000mAh battery which is now non-removable

The Japanese version of the Optimus G Pro is slightly thicker than its international counterpart since it is packed in an Optimus G body so full dimensions are set at 139x70x9.9mm

It runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OS and, as noted, available through NTT Docomo

Asus ROG Rampage IV Extreme Black pixellized

Will not go on sale

 

A set of pictures featuring a full black version of the ROG Rampage IV Extreme has showed up at Asus ROG site. Based on the same design layout as the original ROG Rampage IV Extreme the new one will never reach e-tail/retail shelves as this one is made for some special project

In case you missed it, the Asus ROG Rampage IV Extreme Black is based on Intel X79 Express chipset, supports Intel socket LGA2011 processors, up to 64GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory in eight DIMM slots, as well as 4-way SLI/Crossfire and comes fully packed with all the standard Asus ROG features

According to a post over at Asus ROG Nordic Facebook page, the ROG Rampage IV Extreme Black will not be available for sale and Asus only made a few of those for a small project. The ROG.Asus.com site notes that those motherboards are currently at Nvidia HQ and we would surely want to see more of that special project

You can check out more here