Alienware’s X51 is the only small form-factor PC that could look at home with your regular entertainment systems and could even replace the need for a console for some people. The X51 is based off desktop parts and requires very little maintenance. Its fully upgradeable and also negates the need to buy Valve’s console box when it launches. Read on to see why you’d want one. 

By default the X51 ships in two flavours; the low-end version houses a Intel Core i3-2120 LGA1155 processor, 4GB of DDR3-1333 RAM (upgradeable to 8GB), a 1TB Western Digital hard drive, a dual-layer DVD drive and a full-sized Nvidia GT545 desktop card. When ordering the X51 from Dell’s Alienware site you can also choose any component up to a Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770 processor, any solid state drive of your choice, a Blu-Ray reader as well as Nvidia’s GTX555. You might have your jaw on the floor and tongue wagging by now, but the best thing is how Dell got all this kit into such a small chassis.

The X51′s chassis is tiny, comparable to the Xbox 360 Slim more than Sony’s trying-to-be-anorexic PS3. The chassis was designed from the ground-up to be modular and its slim design is thanks to – you guessed it – an external power brick. The more expensive X51 with the Core i7 option comes with a 330w 80Plus rated power supply which means one of two things; 1) if your power supply blows, your hardware is still safe from frying out and buying a new one is all it takes, even if its expensive and, 2) the power circuitry is specially designed for the TDP of the entire system including the CPU and graphics card. That’s why, on the 250watt power supply, the most you’d ever do is a Core i5-2400 as an add-in. In their review of the console-like PC with the larger power supply, The Verge managed to use a GTX560Ti inside the chassis with room to spare. The GPU slots in sideways inside the chassis and uses a riser board (those of you more than twenty years old will probably remember those) that plugs into a modified PCI-Express 16x expansion slot, all in an effort to keep space usage to a minimum. I wish more things were designed with as much thought and attention to detail as the X51. When powered on, the plexiglass cut-outs glow with a range of colours that you can configure in Alienware’s customisation program in Windows – red, green or blue.

Its probably the best usage of space I've ever seen.

At the back you’ll see a host of ports for use of the X51 as a desktop PC or a entertainment console/media centre. USB3.0 ports are found on the front and back of the chassis, there’s a slot-loading DVD drive at the front as well as HDMI and Digital Audio-out ports at the back. Its designed to usurp your consoles with better gaming performance and ability and this is certainly true in The Verge’s tests. Most games play with high settings at 720p resolutions, with some allowing for the use of AA and AF. That’s on the GTX555, which I need to remind you is a last-generation part. With the minimum TDP of 150w that Alienware recommends for the 330w power supply, you could squeeze in a GTX660 when it launches and have 1080p visuals and not-so-anemic settings. Hell, stick in a HD7770 or the GTX660 and you could theoretically put up three 46″ Tvs running at 3840 x 720 for the best gaming experience this side of the equator. The potential is nearly limitless with this machine.

Stacked with the consoles, the X51 looks right at home.

Sadly, this is not an option for most of us. While the X51 would end up being the perfect LAN partner with a 22″ monitor, an Xbox controller or wireless keyboard and mouse and some comfy earphones, the basic version starts at $699 direct from Dell. For the best balanced configuration, you could order the Core i3-2120 with 8GB of RAM, the GTX555 and the 330w power supply if you phone Dell and ask them nicely. That at least leaves you open to upgrades to a quad-core Core i7 processor, a GTX or Radeon-whatever and an SSD stuck somewhere inside where you can fit it. You’d be putting up at least R9000 for the convenience of the small chassis, but at least you aren’t shooting yourself in the foot with the low-end option either.

For those of you who use high-end workstations, ask your IT department to consider getting you an X51 if you’re due for an upgrade. Choosing the 8GB option with the Core i7-3770, a 240GB SSD, Blu-Ray reader and perhaps a mid-range Quadro card would mean you’ve got a lot less desk space to be occupied and a quieter and better-looking machine. But what if you can’t afford to buy the X51, what other choice do you have for getting a low-cost, slim gaming desktop to have fun with? You could go with an ITX chassis and motherboard, which I’ve outlined for you below (convenient, isn’t it? Drool no more, you can have something similar too!)

LIAN LI PC-Q07 (Black) @ R585

INTEL DH67CF CLEAR FORK @ R1050

Intel Core i3-2120 3.3Ghz @ R1183

Geil Value Plus DDR3-1333 4GB x2 @ R478

Club 3D HD7750 1GB DDR5 Single-slot @ R1145 or Gigabyte GTX550Ti 1GB DDR5 @ R1377

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB @ R804

LITE-ON iHAS524 DVD-RW @ R174

Antec EA-380D Earthwatts Green @ R452

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit @ R1077

Total: R6892

Its closer to the X51′s default asking price, yes, but what you lose in slim width and convenience you make up in flexibility. You’ve got the same range of upgrade options, a comparable chassis that allows you to use a third-party CPU cooler if you wanted. The Lian Li does have one caveat though and that’s the use of a single PCI slot for your graphics cards. You’d only be able to use single-slot solutions which isn’t too bad, as the coolers are still allowed to be dual-slot sizes. However, you’ll get all that heat back into your chassis. A better option for those who worry about heat would be the Cooler Master’s Elite 360, which is a slimmer desktop chassis and allows the use of cheaper mATX boards and dual-slot graphics cards. You can even turn the case sideways and put your monitor on it, saving space in cramped environments.

If you’re a purist, however, there’s only one option for you – the Alienware X51! And that’s why its today’s Fantasy Friday hardware item.

Source: Alienware.com, The Verge, Eurogamer

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OpenCL looks to give customers heterogeneous computing abilities no matter the platform, allowing applications to take advantage of GPU acceleration together with your CPU to make short work of things like video encoding, photo editing and animation, to name a few workloads and AMD’s Bulldozer cores currently suck at. With Trinity, AMD has pushed forward their agenda to open the OpenCL standard to all applications that could use it and Anandtech showed the world how it could help Intel users, too.

OpenCL doesn’t care which platform its on. Its an alternative to the proprietary QuickSync technology used by Intel which is only supported in paid-for applications like Cyberlink’s MediaEspresso converter. Intel’s Quicksync is really, really good at accelerating the transcoding process while preserving framerate, image quality and picture-perfect colour. by comparison many didn’t favour Nvidia’s approach using CUDA cores, as the final video was more leaning towards performance and a faster, smoother frame rate than image quality. AMD’s Stream achieves the kind of quality seen with Quicksync, but doesn’t have nearly enough chops to do it at the same frantic pace.

 In the test Anandtech ran with MediaEspresso, OpenCL shows that Trinity’s transcoding time nearly halved and now draws up squarely to Intel’s best chips with Quicksync disabled. Not shown here is AMD’s Llano under the same OpenCL benchmark, but I assure you it reaches a similar level of performance, nearly halving the time taken to complete the video. Trinity will never rival the 12-second record set by QuickSync but it doesn’t have to – its almost $300 cheaper than Intel’s flagship.

For those of you who really weren’t paying attention in class and staring at your classmate with the pretty eyes/nice smile/big boobs, OpenCL is actually royalty-free software, free to implement wherever you choose. Who designed it? Apple Inc. No, I’m not joking. All those rumours that Apple was looking to put AMD chips in its laptops in future? Looks a lot more likely now than it ever was, doesn’t it?

Moving onto other applications, a really popular option for those who don’t want to pay the ridiculous fees for MediaEspresso can grab Handbrake, the open-source GPL-distributed video transcoding software. Handbrake is multi-threaded and has been a popular option for many media enthusiasts, but suffers from a lack of GPU acceleration. Nvidia’s CUDA, Intel’s QuickSync and AMD’s ATi Stream are all licensed technology and a free program like Handbrake wouldn’t be able to recoup the kinds of losses it would otherwise incur. It’d just be another media converter that costs roughly $25 to do the same thing as everything else. Handbrake’s dev team is working on an OpenCL-capable build and Anandtech had an early version in their hands for testing. Both Intel and AMD receive a boost from the standard, but wait ’till you see the scores!

Two things should be noted here. First, Intel’s Sandy Bridge platform doesn’t support OpenCL on their HD3000 GPU. Thats surprising considering that it still does better, finishing second behind Ivy Bridge. Both get around a 5fps boost, suggesting that there was a slight amount of power left. It should also be noted that this is with QuickSync disabled, since there’s no discernable benefit. Trinity’s scores double, bringing it right up to the Intel Core i7-3720QM. For a low-end solution, that’s pretty impressive. Even more surprising is Llano’s improvement, more than doubling its original score.

Its a win for AMD either way, and consumers who focus on content creation but need something on a low budget, they’d be happy enough with a capable Llano or Trinity notebook/Ultrabook. Intel users have nothing to fear for now, but this may change in future.

Source: Anandtech

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If you bought a GTX670 Superclock with the batch product number 02G-P3-2672-KR, you might want to stress out your card for a while and see if anything happens. It might be something, it might be nothing at all discernable to your eye. You might not even know you had a problem and you could go for years without knowing it was there until one day it smacks you in the face with a spade. Maybe you’re losing a few frames and your settings are at stock or the fan is too loud. At this point, if you’re desperate, you really could make up anything you want until you hit on the right fault. 

If you do or don’t find anything but still have that card from the batch, you need to e-mail EVGA’s Jacob Freeman (no relation to Gordon) and he’ll set about replacing your card to the GTX670 FTW. Which, I hardly need tell you, is a bargain of note since FTW cards are binned chips rated for higher performance.

Source: HardOCP

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Wanna see me? Buy a telescope!

An anonymous electrical and systems engineer who calls himself “Dan”, nicknamed by the Internet as “Scotty”, has uploaded plans and details of how we could build a full-scale version of the starship USS Enterprise that takes us to the Red Planet in ninety days. And all with technology currently available to us.

Scotty’s designs and plans for the ship are detailed on his website, BuildTheEnterprise, and show that the ship could be built in space for $1 trillion and could take up to twenty years to complete. His site shows many concepts and proof-of-concepts that would work on a spaceship of this scale. The ship’s gravity generator would provide 1G of force and would measure 960 metres from front to the rear Ion engines.

The ship would be too big to build anywhere on the planet.

Scotty writes that the ship would have to run off a nuclear reactor as solar power wouldn’t afford the same kind of recharge rate and batteries would add to the expense and weight of the materials needed for the ship. The reactor would have to be incredibly efficient given its smaller size to ones used in nuclear power plants and would have a maximum of 1.5 Gigawatts of heat energy. His plans also include provisioning for a 100MW laser to be used as a weapon. While in use, the engines would have to be powered down as there wouldn’t be enough current to fuel the weapon. Lasers of a similar calibre are already in use on naval battleships commanded by the United States, to the much lower tune of 15MW, which can target and sink a boat up to a mile away. 100MW would easily carve mount Rushmore on the moon’s surface and wipe the smile off Thanos’ face (spoiler for some and shame on you for not watching The Avengers yet if it is). Hold on to your hats, lightsabers might come next.

But back to the ship – Scotty’s even taken the radiating heat from the laser weapon into account with an aluminium coating for the surrounding area of the ship, preventing the outer body from being melted. The engines will be based on current Ion thruster designs in use in small satellites, and are designed to be very efficient. The ship could carry up to 1000 crew members and tons of cargo and would act as a docking station for other, smaller ships.

If the project were to launch now, it would take nine years of research, eleven years of construction in zero-gravity space outside of the field of space junk and the backing, military and monetary support of the richest and most technologically-capable countries in the world.

What are you waiting for, guys?! Let’s go to space. Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!!!

Source: Tom’s Hardware, BuildTheEnterprise

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The Finnish Anti-Piracy Centre (FAPC) wanted to claim €6000 from the woman (approximately R64,000) for some piracy that took place over a twelve-minute period. What was actually shared has never been mentioned outside the courts, but recently the case came to a head and the judge rules that the woman was not guilty. But what this means for other cases all around the planet is a bit unclear. 

See, the defendant’s claim was that it was impossible to discern who actually shared/downloaded the files in question. She had an open Wi-Fi network that could have been accessed at any time. The defendant also lives next door to a school and free internet isn’t something you get every day as a kid, so perhaps someone took advantage of that. During the 12-minute observed period, there was also a school concert on the hall next door, and parents with less-than-honest consciences could have linked to it and downloaded a couple of things off MegaUpload before it was taken down this year (Rapidshare very quickly got a court to deem its activities legal this year, surprise surprise!).

The court went on to forget the whole scenario, taking into account that it was a ridiculous amount of money at stake and looked at whether the matter of having an open Wi-Fi network was an offense on its own right. Luckily this wasn’t Germany, where you can be fined for having an unprotected network with internet connectivity. Had the judge found that it was an offense, the FAPC would have legal grounds to sue and shut down Wi-Fi networks of others which weren’t protected or encrypted. That would have opened up network owners to multiple cases involving piracy and theft if the FAPC could prove that the files were illegally downloaded on the owner’s network.

Its likewise debatable that the FAPC would also ask the government to rule that protecting a network with WEP encryption was just as bad as allowing it to be open. WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) has been shown to be a weak protection scheme and one that could be cracked in less than five minutes. But the really interesting twist comes at the end, you see. If the courts had rules in the FAPC’s favour, they would then have legal grounds to sue Google for their Wi-Fi snooping.

The street drive cars get lost and pass a map, of all things.

If you remember, Google’s Streetview endeavor used cars fitted with cameras, GPS recorders and Wi-Fi receivers to create a map of the world and use Wi-Fi networks and cell-towers to create a complete and accurate layout of the landscape. Cell phones commonly use GPS locators in addition to cell towers and nearby Wi-Fi networks to get a more accurate lock. If there isn’t a GPS signal, they use the wireless networks to triangulate their position and estimate where the user is on the map. While Google collected all this data, it also identified unprotected Wi-Fi networks and packet-sniffed the unprotected information over the air. Google being Google, they knew about it and kept quiet, collecting terabytes of information in each region they visited.

When civilians found out about this, they alerted their respective governments to the information theft. Germany critisised Google about the data they collected and made it law that an owning an unprotected Wi-Fi network was a criminal offense. The FCC launched its own investigation into Google’s network snooping on American soil and found that while it wasn’t illegal, a measly fine was still applicable. Even the Spaniards didn’t like it and most of the European countries launched their own investigations into the incident to see whether it was worth the worry.

But in the end, nothing’s going to come of it. Hacking into wireless networks is a daily, nay, minutely occurance and aside from large companies who are able to track the hacks taking the people responsible to court, there’s not a lot the average Joe can do. I’ve never heard of someone in SA being taken to court for illegal filesharing on their network, but anything’s possible now.

So do what you can to protect yours. Use WPA2 encryption with a 16-character complex password. Hide your SSID. Reduce your transmitting power especially if your wireless signal only needs to cover a small area. Block other IP addresses from accessing your internet or network. For businesses that have mission-critical material being passed around, isolate your users in your router’s software and employ passwords to protect sharing files.

Its your duty to protect yourself and your data connection, lest someone else abuse it for their own gain and you end up in court for the same thing as the Finnish woman. And you may not find a court that sees things the same way.

Those of you who don’t know about the kind of methods the RIAA uses to twist people into paying the fines they ask for in court can read up on Joel Tenebaum’s columns for the Guardian that he wrote between 2009 and 2010. He was sued for $4.5 million for sharing 30 old Nirvana songs as a student six years ago. He is still fighting the case today, with the absurd sum of $675,000 owing to the RIAA from their original lawsuit.

Source: Tom’s Guide, ZD Net, Time Magazine

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Left to Right: Llano, Trinity and Phenom, three distant cousins

Yes, despite that some people say AMD’s FX-8120 is a octo-core chip, its really four Bulldozer modules with two single-core chips per module, squashed together and forced to share cache, floating point units and bandwidth. Likewise for the quad-core chip, which has two modules and really can’t contend with even Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based Pentiums. For laptops and desktops, AMD promised that Trinity would improve performance by 15% overall and prove a worthy upgrade from the Llano chips of old. Lets see how they’ve delivered.

While AMD’s low-power Brazos and Llano chips may have used the integrated “Sumo” graphics core as leverage in the past, Intel’s Ivy Bridge quickly caught up with their improved integrated graphics core. As Sandy Bridge filtered down into the low-end laptops, AMD’s market and mind share took another dip. Only Brazos-based netbooks and cheap Ultrabook alternatives gained any traction and a reputation for being capable media consumption devices. Gaming was an option on Llano chips, but as you’ll see later, Intel’s HD4000 chip actually does really well for itself in comparision.

Trinity's lineup only consists of dual and quad Piledriver cores, with two processors for each core.

Devastator brings some design wins for AMD.

The graphics core improves with Trinity and launches with “Devastator”, an improved version of the previous chip inside Llano. One of the biggest problems with Llano is that its graphics core was, essentially, too big for its boots. Devastator is based on AMD’s VLIW4 architecture that was used in the HD6000 series and is a more streamlined version of VLIW5 which Llano used. VLIW4 chucks out an ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) that was sitting idle in Llano/s SIMD units. Most applications only take advantage for up to four ALUs so AMD cut out the unused one and used the extra space to fit in more texture units and thread processors (similar to Nvidia’s plan to increase the amount of CUDA cores in a chip, while cutting out the fluff).

In addition, Devastator brings a number of improvements that we saw with the release of the HD7000 series. Devastator supports up to four display outputs using DisplayPort (Sumo was limited to two). You have to daisy-chain on the fourth monitor, but that’s pretty impressive for a notebook processor. In addition,  each output supports its own audio path so that as you cycle a playing video in VLC between monitors with their own speakers, each one plays sound in turn as the video player is moved between each one. Its a really impressive piece of tech and will be useful to people who hook up their laptop to an HDTV and expect things to work without fiddling. Display grouping is also supported and you can group displays in relation to their position in front of you.

Trinity improves the original Bulldozer design but remains on the 32nm process. That has implications for die size and power consumption, but AMD is confident that they’ve got things under control with this new generation of processors. They’re also banking on apps and more software to make use of OpenCL, which allows acceleration using just about any graphics core regardless of make or model. The biggest flaw Bulldozer and Llano have is that floating-point performance is still mainly performed on the processor and OpenCL was nowhere near the kind of polish or potential it has today.

For those of you who are still confused, OpenCL is a framework for other software that allows code to be executed on the CPU and GPU simultaneously, cutting down on completion time and the resources required to accelerate the process. Adobe’s Photoshop  and CS5 suite famously support GPU-accelerated editing options when using certain Nvidia graphics cards. OpenCL aims to remove limits like those and open heterogeneous computing to anyone who needs it.

The next thing to note is that Piledriver improves everywhere that Bulldozer cut corners to get to market as quickly as possible. There are lots of small improvements made from the way code is handled, improved branch prediction and even faster and more optimised L2 cache memory. Its still a bunch of Bulldozer modules clustered together, but they’re made a lot more efficient and robust. Given all the improvements, Piledriver reduced power consumption by as much as 20% which is great given that its designed for laptops and low-power Ultrabook designs. In addition, the floating-point weakness of Llano has been addressed, but not by much – AMD still chooses to put its eggs in its basket with OpenCL.

The last notable improvement has to be AMD’s changes to the way Trinity uses Turbo Boost. When the chip identifies a GPU-intensive workload, it underclocks the processor and raises the clock speed on the GPU. Likewise for a CPU-intensive load, the GPU is underclocked and the CPU’s speed is raised to as much as 3.2Ghz as we see below in the case of Cinebench. Its an interesting idea, and allows Trinity to stay within the 35w power envelope. What does this mean for battery life? You won’t have to worry about how long it will last you, regardless of the workload you’re doing.

This approach will be interesting for overclockers on the desktop if it’s implemented there as well. You might have to turn it off completely to keep settings stable, or you could overclock to find the chip’s operating limits and then keep boost on while raising default clock speeds, allowing the chip to speed up to the maximum stable speed for certain workloads. If we could raise the default power envelope and use our desktops at a nominal 2Ghz but increase that to 3.6Ghz on all cores when there’s a multi-threaded CPU-intensive workload, that would automatically be a far better option in terms of power consumption than Intel’s Turbo boost because it only goes up to a certain point before hitting the maximum power envelope.

In general, performance has improved in all areas and we see this in the benchmarks below. Anandtech’s tests showed Trinity gaining a small lead in PCMark 7′s benchmark, achieving roughly half the computational power of Intel’s Ivy Bridge-based Core i7-3720QM. That scenario plays out in the rest of the benchmarks too, showing better performance than Llano and almost catching up to Sandy Bridge dual-core chips in the Productivity benchmark. Moving to the Creativity test, its shown the the optimisations to Piledriver do their best to improve performance when creating content. However the Computational test shows that Trinity, even though it improves hugely over Llano in the Computation test, still falls very far from the baseline set by Intel’s Core i3-2367M.

Its an improvement nonetheless and for mobile users the battery savings implications are huge. Moving onto battery life tests, Anandtech found a notable boost in performance, gaining nearly an hour extra in the idle test with the screen at medium brightness settings, achieving nearly nine hours off the wall. Its interesting to see how performance actually drops with Ivy Bridge – even with a bigger battery, Intel’s Core i7-3720QM achieves roughly half the battery life of the Core i7-2637QM. Moving onto browsing, Trinity takes a huge leap forward with its efficiency and only loses under two hours of  battery life from idle. The Ivy bridge i7, however, barely loses half an hour, suggesting that the processor underclocks itself severely to let the GPU take all the rendering load of the web browser. In the video playback test things take a dive to just under four hour’s running time, but it does draw up favourably with Ivy bridge.

For gaming, however, here’s where we see the real improvements to Trinity. In Batman: Arkham Asylum we see the Devastator GPU drawing up alongside Llano’s Sumo chip, delivering playable performance at medium details. Intel’s HD4000 chip in the Ivy Bridge processors also provides playable performance and once overclocked, may even break the 60fps barrier. Battlefield 3 is a disappointment but it is a texture-heavy game, with Trinity beating out Ivy Bridge despite the more expensive solution having a lot more power available to throw at the game. Nvidia’s GT630M is the only solution providing a playable frame rate here and shows that EA’s latest cash cow is GPU-limited. Civilisation V shows Trinity shooting to the top thanks to its improved Compute and tesselation abilities, easily besting the GT640M. However, settings had to be turned to low here, demonstrating the power Civilisation V has of bringing stronger systems to their knees.

Moving onto DiRT3, Ivy Bridge and Trinity square off again with 40fps at medium details. DiRT3′s EGO game engine is used in Codemaster’s other racing games like F1 2010/2011 and in Racedriver: Grid. Skyrim again shows the 1-2 finish, but with both chips barely showing performance differences. I doubt many gamers will notice the 5.8fps difference in-game. Nvidia’s GT640M is looking to be the gamer’s choice here, almost always ending up with 60fps in most games. Portal 2 is processor-limited, and surprisingly shows Trinity in a huge lead over Ivy Bridge. This is again seen in Total War: Shogun 2, with Trinity showing nearly double the performance of the HD4000 inside the Ivy Bridge processor.

So what should we take away here? Firstly, Trinity almost always usurps the combination of Intel’s Core i7-2820QM in games along with the HD3000 and is now the baseline for acceptable gaming at medium details and native 15.6″ resolution. Ivy Bridge may end up performing marginally better, but that chip combination costs nearly $300 more to implement for manufacturers. Should you find a nice Ultrabook with the Trinity A10-4600M, that’s your best choice by a clear mile if you spend a lot of time gaming or at LANs. In fact, compared to Ivy Bridge, AMD’s price/performance ratio shoots through the roof.

Its only in very specific scenarios where you’d be better off with an Intel chip, especially if your workload is almost exclusively related to content creation – but consider that if OpenCL attains the kind of lofty support AMD hopes, there’ll be no reason to buy an Intel quad-core processor in a notebook over Trinity unless your application makes use of Intel’s Quicksync, which really can’t be matched in the notebook segment. For all other workloads, Trinity performs very well and the Turbo boost feature is implemented nicely.

So while AMD can celebrate a win over Intel here, what does it mean for consumers? Ultrabooks are approaching the $800 price point and the same notebook with Trinity could save you $200. However, given Intel’s history of forcing out its only competitor by asking suppliers to stick with its chips even when they’re not as good,  for Ultrabook builds I’m guessing there’s little chance you’ll see an AMD-based one in your local Game, Makro or even Incredible Connection. HP’s Sleekbook range is the first that I’ve seen with a focus on Trinity and it remains to be seen how other manufacturers approach AMD’s platform.

But certainly, we’ll see some interesting designs. Given the 35watt TDP, who could say no to a Trinity-powered Ultrabook alternative with an 11.6″ screen to rival the Macbook Air at half the price? How about options from Alienware to have this in their M11x? Or a 15.6″ R5000 Makro bargain with Windows 7 Home Basic and the A6-4455M processor? There’s a good chance AMD’s next Bulldozer refresh will bump up performance by another 15%, so things are looking up for the underdog once again. Shove an SSD into the chassis and you’ll be good to go. Things are even more promising for desktop users, as Piledriver for socket FM1/AM3+ is still coming later this year.

I only hope AMD can capitalise on the small lead they now have to improve their standing with customers and suppliers. After all, its the consumer they’re servicing and what better way to serve that consumer than to give them options?

Source: Tom’s Hardware, Anandtech, Hardware Canucks

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Just last year, in August, Apple was alerted to a botnet building up among their customer’s computers, at its height claiming over five hundred thousand desktops under its control in under two months. By the third, another hundred thousand desktops and laptops were under hacker’s control and there wasn’t any word immediately from the Cupertino company about how they were going to fix it. Oracle’s Java was the source of the vulnerability and it was patched by the company four months later in February – but Apple never pushed out the update immediately, choosing o rather wait and teat it out before pushing to their servers last week. 

Its this head-in-the-sand approach that makes me wonder how some companies still make their money. Apple hides in a corner and cries foul while vulnerabilities are exposed and slowly patched. Samsung releases mobile phones and only updates them once Google’s Android moves to the next version in the family. At least Google and Microsoft pay hackers for revealing exploits to the company to help beef up security. Android is still the most malware-riddled mobile OS today but at least something’s being done about it.

For any software company, when a major vulnerability is found the first thing they should do is alert their customers to the fault and how to avoid it. Microsoft issued an alert to all users who were infected by the “Popureb” trojan within weeks telling them to reformat their systems and deep-clean their hard drives (it was later found out that it was the more extreme approach) if they were significantly affected by the virus. Its not the company’s fault if someone found a clever hack into the operating system, its just their job to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Likewise, Apple needs to be more proactive and start plugging holes that have been in their build of OS X for a long time. It makes no sense that the latest version of Mac OS X ships by default with the firewall turned off and its that kind of mentality, that they’re smaller and still Unix-based, that makes their approach to security all the more dangerous for users. Imagine if that botnet had reached  servers running OS X? The incredibly long time it took for Apple to even address the issue would have been enough, for some people, to launch a lawsuit against the company.

Eugene Kaspersky quipped a few weeks ago that Apple has always been “ten years behind Microsoft” in terms of security measures implemented and the secure-by-default standard that servers are released to. Granted, no operating system is ever truly safe (goes for Linux as well) but its simple steps that help users avoid being infected that will go a long way to preventing another Conficker disaster (which is still a threat, by the way and still no-one knows exactly what it does).

After the Info Security 2012 conference where Kaspersky spoke to an audience, Apple invited the company to have a look at its code and help secure the operating system before more malware grabs hold of their customer’s computers. Is it possible that all Macs could ship with Kaspersky in future like McAffee and Norton do for Windows? I sure hope so.

Source: TechpowerUp!

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Some of you may also need something that falls between the two for photographers and professionals who need some monstrous computing power to enable to you do your work while you’re moving, because you’re always moving. Today I’ll be looking at Ultrabooks, Ultrabook alternatives and laptops up to R15,000 and I’ll try to cover all the bases as to what you, dear reader, have been looking for.

R9000 Budget:

Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 15.6″ @ R8307 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

HP Probook 6465B (LY432EA) 14″ @ R8946 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

Lenovo ThinkPad T420i 14″ @ R8548 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook @ R8999.95

ASUS U36SG-RX046X 13.3″ Ultrabook @ R10723

Apple Macbook Pro 13″ MC700 @ R9999.95

Now I think you kinda get the idea here. Between R9000 and R11,000 there’s mainly full-fat notebooks and Ultrabooks to consider. There are also 15.6″ Ultrabooks as well, but what’s the use of that? It doesn’t work as a desktop replacement nor as a mobile alternative, so they’re rubbish in the interim. For the gamer, the Lenovo Y570 is easily the cheapest mid-range gaming option out there, with the combination of a 15.6″ HD-Ready screen and a Geforce GT555M, which should allow most games out there to run at medium to high settings depending on the game, the game’s age and the engine in use.

Road warriors have three options here: HP’s AMD quad-core toting notebook with 3G, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 (the T-series being the original road warrior’s choice) and the ASUS U36SG Ultrabook. While I heartily support shoving an SSD into the former two, the latter would end up being way over budget. Its a good alternative and even has a discrete Nvidia graphics card with Optimus, and a much longer battery life than most Ultrabooks out there. Its value as a light, easy-to-carry Photoshop and Lightroom-capable companion necessitates some consideration, especially if you were looking at Apple’s Macbook Pro anyway.

As for Ultrabooks, Acer’s Aspire S3 leads the current crowd, being cheaper than competing brands and also offering a full three-year warranty. It also ships with a regular-sized 320GB hard drive, with a 20GB SSD used for caching your frequently-used data. In real life scenarios, the differences between this setup and a single SSD are negligible for most users. Note the lack of a Macbook Air here – Apple has pulled all stock out of the country’s retailers in preparation for the imminent Ivy Bridge refresh across the board.

R12,000 Budget

ASUS U36SG-RX046X 13.3″ Ultrabook @ R10723 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

Samsung Series 5 14″ Ultrabook @ R10999.95 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

HP Envy 17 (LF123EA) @ R11999

Apple Macbook Pro 13″ MC700 @ R9999.95 (SSD Option: Intel 330 180GB @ R2299)

When shopping around the R12000 mark, its a little more difficult to discern what’s actually good value and what’s fluff. This is the domain of Ultrabooks, offering thin-and-light laptops to those who don’t actually need all the bulk for the relatively low workload they’re going to do. I chose two Ultrabooks that could actually be useful outside of media consumption. I’m recommending the ASUS E36SG again along with the Samsung Series 5 14″ notebook. Both have discrete graphics cards, both are equipped with more powerful processors than you’d normally find in Ultrabooks in the retail sector and the ASUS in particular will have a much longer battery life with the SSD installed. You might even find some playable settings for your games on the Samsung as well.

For gamers there’s not a lot of choice here, as most manufacturers tend to have the same specs but vary on the graphics card in use. While you’d find the GT555M in most laptops here, the HP Envy  lineup was designed to compete with Apple’s Macbook Pro 15″ lineup, and this one I’ve listed ships with a Radeon HD6850M. You will have very little trouble running any game at high settings here and the better build  quality of HP’s product revamp needs to be seen to be believed. For gamers, this is your baseline. Oh, the keyboard’s also backlit for you night owls.

For graphic artists, photographers and the guys and girls who are deeply involved in content creation, the Macbook Pro 13 is again an option, but will be a lot more efficient and useable with an SSD installed. If you’re squeamish about doing this yourself, have the techies at Incredible Connection do it for you. Sorry, Air fans, nothing here for you yet. Wait a bit longer.

R15000 Holy Cow Budget

Alienware M14x 14″ @ R14999.95 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

Alienware M11x 11″ @ POA

HP Envy 17 (LF123EA) @ R11999 (SSD Option: Intel 330 180GB @ R2299)

Apple MacBook Air 13” @ R13700

Apple Macbook Pro 15″ (MC721) @ R13999.95 (SSD Option: ADATA S510 120GB @ R1347)

Again, we have a lack of options for gamers at the high-end where the lineup usually includes Alienware, ASUS and MSI. With many manufacturers and retailers trying to get on the Ultrabook bandwagon, its no surprise that high-end gaming laptops are not so much advertised and finding a bargain means knowing in which places to look. With the launch of Ivy Bridge you’d expect a slew of high-performance laptops geared towards the gamer, but I’ve seen nary a squeak from anyone beyond Alienware upgrading all its customer’s current orders to Ivy Bridge at no extra cost. Mayhap the NAG staff can chip in with some insider information to the contrary?

For the gamers, you’ve got the Alienware M14x and M11x as your options. Both are excellent value for money and I challenge you to find a manufacturer that shows off build quality as good as these units. The only one that comes close is the HP Envy 15, which when fitted with an SSD, comes close to being the best personal choice you can make.

For Apple fans, the Macbook Pro 15 is still in stock in a few Incredible Connection stores in the country and are great workhorses. With the AMD Radeon HD6750 inside, gaming is also an option and you’ve got Steam to thank for that as well. There’s finally a Macbook Air, but the price of the unit shot up once other competitors came into the market and Apple began to freeze stock to prepare for the yearly refresh. There’s a possibility of an 11.6″ Air in the works at $800 but we’ll have to wait and see.

Next week I’m going to set on the final episode of this series this month looking for purely gaming-orientated options starting from R18,000 and landing up at R25,000. I warn you, its going to mostly Alienware-dominated as there are very few competitors in that segment. With high prices like that and the diminishing returns you get with a high-priced laptop, perhaps its better at that point to get an ITX chassis and lug that around. Tune in next week!

Discuss this in the forums: Linky

Yes, the video above shows a set of eight floppy drives performing the tune of the opening of the show. There are many examples of people using these old floppy drives for music. There’s one for Skyrim’s opening done by the same guy, as well as other popular hit songs and video game soundtracks. Give MrSolidSnake745′s page a visit, won’t you? Its the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Discuss this in the forums: Linky

I had a quick look online and through the major retailers that I usually rely on for prices. Other retailers might have stock as well and you might be lucky if your brick-and-mortar local shop has them in stock. Price levels of the GTX680 have dropped a bit and general availability is improving. The GTX690 is a bit of a rarity and is still very hard to find. Impresively, the GTX670 has finally reached our shores, astounding considering the card only launched four days ago. Nvidia is trying very hard to regain market and mind share and that effort is very noticeable in the amount of cards available online today. Have a look for yourself. 

REBELTECH

MSI GTX670 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R4432

Gigabyte GTX670 OC 2G DDR5 OC @ R4699

Gigabyte GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5990

Gigabyte GTX680 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R5990

PROPHECY.CO.ZA

Inno3D GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5660

KFA2 (Galaxy) GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5685

ASUS GTX680 2GB DDR5 (Can be overvolted) @ R7416

NIVO

KFA2 (Galaxy) GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5669

Gigabyte GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5990

SYBARITIC

Gigabyte GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R6269

IKONIC IT

ASUS GTX680 2GB DDR5 (Can be overvolted) @ R7061

Inno3D GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5549

KFA2 (Galaxy) GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5399

MSI GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5740

LANDMARK COMPUTERS

Gigabyte GTX670 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R4704

KFA2 (Galaxy) GTX670 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R4923

KFA2 (Galaxy) GTX670 2GB DDR5 @ R4800

MSI GTX670 2GB DDR5 @ R4554

ASUS GTX680 2GB DDR5 (Can be overvolted) @ R6647

EVGA GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R6154

Gigabyte GTX680 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R6524

Gigabyte GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5889

MSI GTX680 2GB DDR5 @ R5908

MSI GTX680 OC Twin Frozer 2GB DDR5 @ R6589

Gigabyte GTX690 4GB DDR5 @ R13049

Discuss this in the forums: Linky

For your reference:

Nvidia GTX680 Analysis Part One

Nvidia boggles the mind with the GTX670

Nvidia GTX690 Analysis: Should you buy one?

Cue those "Winter is Coming" puns. Yes, I know you want to.

So now for those of you who don’t want to toy with a wanna-be flagship for the gaming graphics card industry, there’s the GTX690 to consider. Go on, click that “More” button! You’re going to want to know what’s inside this analysis…

Ah, you’re here! You were expecting something interesting? Well in a sense the GTX690 is extremely interesting, but I’ll first have you read the GTX680 Analysis that I wrote in three parts looking at Kepler and how it functions and how its going to blow socks off. The architecture is both complex and simple to understand at the same time and even launch prices for Nvidia’s GTX680 and GTX670 have undercut the competing offers from AMD.

Had Nvidia sorted out their issues with TSMC and their 28nm process before this launch, AMD would have a lot more to worry about today. The GTX680 is the competitor for the HD7970, but in reality it punches above that line and very often goes straight up to insult the HD6990 and GTX590 in the face. However its not such a rosy situation for Nvidia – AMD had finished with their 28nm issues a while ago and has had the market for themselves in the last five months. Price cuts to the popular sells like the GTX560 Ti haven’t helped. Winter was coming, and Nvidia had to do something.

The company recently posted a 55% profit loss. Note that they still made a profit, but they really weren’t selling anything towards the end of Fermi’s production run. The main reasons were the lack of 2012-era Tegra design wins with various third-party manufacturers like ASUS and the financial setback that Kepler created. I don’t know why Nvidia didn’t turn to other fabrication-capable companies like Samsung or Intel earlier on, especially considering the latter is actively renting out fab space in its production lines for other companies who need 28nm dies made. Regardless, they’ve decided to tackle the situation with paper launches and hope to hell that their fans will still hold out while things return to normal.

Its an incredibly handsome card, IMO.

And the second of their paper launches was the GTX690. The teaser on Nvidia’s Facebook and Geforce.com pages showed a cropped image of the dual-slot, all-aluminium shroud that covers the dual-GPU monster. There’s plexiglass on both sides of the fan to show off the heatsinks and the LEDs when the card is operating. Its a great way to get that euphoric feeling out when you’re holding an incredibly expensive piece of kit in your hands. The card employs a central blower fan that exhausts heat out both sides of the chassis. It also uses a combination of heatsinks and water vapor chambers to move heat around and out the shroud. Enthusiasts who buy this, however, are going to have a headache dealing with getting rid of the heat going into their chassis, as you’re getting all of the heat off of one GK104 chip.

Its not the most ideal solution, if one has to be honest. Nvidia could have gone the same route as Intel and AMD with their processors, shipping a high-end, top-of-the-range graphics solution with a closed-loop, low-maintenance water cooling kit; but then that would have created headaches for quad-SLI setups. How about custom-designing a reservoir, pump and fan that would fit in unused hard drive bays? A good idea, but the majority of chassis that gamers employ have their drive cages mounted sideways, so that idea goes out the window. You only really see something like that in a dedicated water-cooling setup and you’d actually want the reservoir to be higher than the thing its cooling. 5.25″ bays, then? Too much clutter.

But regardless, the important thing is that it looks like a high-end piece of kit. That first impression is everything and Nvidia even went through the trouble of packaging review units of the cards in boxes that needed a crowbar to open it. Its worlds and away from the feeling you get with the plastic shrouds on the HD7970, for instance. I’d like to see how AMD gets the HD7990 to look better than this (and they will have to, make no mistake). Moving around to the back of the card, we see three dual-link DVI outputs and one mini-Display Port connector. (be sure to tune in on Wednesday, I have something to say about this)

Going under the heatsinks, we finally see the two GK104 chips sitting alongside each other, with a small green chip in the middle. That there is the driving force behind the card’s ability to scale performance well with the two chips in SLI. Its manufactured by PLX Technologies and its a 48-lane PCI-Express 3.0 switch manufactured on the 40nm process. Most motherboards wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of PCI resources that this chip could and we’ll see later that it was a wise decision. Using SLI on most modern motherboards requires eight lanes per GPU with the other eight per 16-lane port used for two-way communication between the cards in addition to the PCI bridge on the top. Nvidia’s GTX590 used the ageing NForce200 chip which didn’t provide any significant benefits to running two GTX580s in SLI. The PLX PEX 8747 provides 16 lanes to each GPU and 16 for use in PCI-Express 2.0 or 3.0 slots. All of the benefits of SLI, almost none of the drawbacks.

Moving right along we see the two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors used to power the beast that lies before you. While the GTX590 required two as well, it was a full-fat implementation of Fermi and was so close to its power limit of 375watts that overclocking it was a big no-no. The GTX680 sits comfortably at 300watts thanks to Kepler’s redesigned architecture and lower power requirements, giving owners more headroom in future for overclocking and possibly allowing companies like ASUS to really go full throttle and give their CU II lineup a dual-GPU option. The card achieves such a low TDP thanks also to its lower clocks of 915Mhz for the core and the same 6Ghz speeds found on the GTX680.

I would also like you to stop for one moment on the image that shows the naked front of the GTX690. Use your hand to cover roughly half of the card on the left-hand side. What’s left on the right, sans the PLX chip, is essentially the same plan as the redesigned circuit board also found on the GTX670, flipped horizontally. It might not be exactly the same but the maximum TDP of 141watts points to the very same thing. The fact that the core clocks are also the same might be a clue as well. With the disabled shader, two GTX670s in SLI would fall just under the GTX690 and would consume the same amount of power and have the same amount of overclocking headroom.

But I’ve babbled on enough already, lets see some tests! In Battlefield 3 at native 30″ resolutions we see the card drawing up next to the GTX680, but not quite beating it. That’s thanks to the higher clocks on the flagship, and there’s an even smaller gap when you’re looking at a multi-monitor setup. When I said in my analysis on the GTX670 that the disabled shader was possibly not being used that much, the results here further surprise me – about 100Mhz separates the clocks of the GTX690 and GTX680, yet there’s very little difference between them performance-wise. Take note of the HD7970s in Crossfire, that’s roughly what you can expect from the HD7990 as well. Not a bad showing from AMD, all things considered. Crysis 2 shows the same results but is a texture-heavy game, showing off Nvidia’s improvements with the bindless textures I talked about in the GTX680 Analysis.

Skyrim shows the two SLI options battling it out again, both pushing neck-and-neck for the performance crown. The HD7970s in Crossfire still lands up in third place, but isn’t far off in the multi-monitor test. FXAA performance at the native 30″ resolution needs to be looked at though, and I’m assuming that’s down to driver issues more than anything else. DiRT3 shows the same three-place finishers, with the slightly higher clock speed of the GTX680s matching the dual-GPU king every time.

WOW: Cataclysm has proven itself to be mostly processor-limited and has a very mixed ending for all contenders here. Again showing a lack of GCN optimisation, it allowed the GTX590 to finish in third place for once at the native 30″ resolution, while the game allowed the single GTX680 to hang with the big boys when no AA was applied. Crossfire scaling in the game is horrible and definitely one for the driver team’s To-Do list later for Catalyst 12.5. The Radeon team finally take the lead in Metro 2033, showing Kepler’s single biggest flaw – low Compute performance.

Speaking of Compute performance, what’s really going to bake your noodle later on is the results Anandtech posted with their review – two GTX580s in SLI would come close to matching or beating the GTX690 in any game that relies heavily on Tesselation and Compute performance. Games like that, Civilisation V in particular, favour the raw power that Fermi offered to gamers and is the main reason why professionals who couldn’t afford the high prices of Quadro cards ended up buying GTX580s instead. AMD’s GCN architecture is miles ahead of what Fermi and Kepler could deliver but as long as Nvidia has a stranglehold on the market with Quadro and Tesla, I don’t see many enterprises switching to AMD anytime soon. If you still play Civilisation V, Alien vs Predator or Crysis 2 with the High Res textures and Tesselation pack, you don’t need to upgrade yet.

Temperature-wise the card holds its own, idling under 50 degrees on the Windows desktop. Windows 7′s desktop is inherently a 2D interface and the card is likely to stay at that level while you’re interacting with the regular environment. At load Nvidia’s power enhancements to the card keep temperatures under 80 degrees and actually ends up being cooler than the GTX680. Its interesting because the GTX680 spends nearly all of its time in boosted mode and one would assume the GTX690 does the same, staying mostly at its max boost of 1045Mhz for the duration of your game.

Idle power consumption on the desktop is a little higher than the single GTX680, signaling that perhaps one of the chips are completely powered down in idle more. AMD does much the same with its ZeroCore technology, powering down one or more graphics processors when they’re not in use. You can see this working in the idle test with the screen turned off – Crossfired HD7970s consume 20watts  less while Nvidia’s cards only lose three, suggesting that their power-saving technology isn’t being put to good use by the drivers yet. That certainly seems to be the case with the load test, where the GTX590 consumes about 50watts more on average than the GTX690. Its also telling that Nvidia’s GPU Boost settings by default are very restrictive – all the cards power down to the same level in exactly the same spot, but the GTX690 returns to full load power very quickly. By turning up the boost power limit by 20%, we might see a bit more flexibility in how the GPU responds to alternating workloads.

So in conclusion, what do we know? We know that, given the 28nm yield and supply issus and TSMC’s public announcement to concentrate on getting Nvidia’s products sorted out, we can only expect general availability of this beast in about two months. Delays for the GTX680 should be the same, while the GTX670s worldwide supply should be sorted in about a month’s time. Nvidia expects to sell the GTX690 in far greater numbers than the GTX680 where SLI setups are concerned. The dual-GPU solution has clearly shown its more than up to the task of replacing a complicated setup while consuming less power and producing less heat.

In fact, anyone still running a single or dual-GPU setup that’s outdated by at least two generations should really have a look at this especially if they’re looking at triple-monitor gaming. For one its kinder to your power supply and those of you still on Nehalem processors and even those stuck on LGA1156 shouldn’t have many bottleneck issues – its a good bargain and the first time ever that a dual-GPU card has been the better choice by far than two of its lower-class brethren together. The only distinct disadvantages are heat generation and the price, as well as the requirement for a high-end Intel chip to get the most out of the card. As of this writing, its near impossible to get one in the country, as they’re all immediately sold out the moment they land in supplier warehouses. Since there’s such a low yield and a lot of people want one, expect the retail price to bump up about R1000 or so while stock levels even out.

For those of you still running two GTX580s, a GTX590 or two HD6990s, its a little less clear-cut as to whether you should upgrade or not. Fermi’s not too outdated and will hold its own for the rest of the year, at least until the Geforce 700 series arrives. Considering the power savings seen in this card, you can definitely expect a Ti version of this baby, especially if AMD’s HD7990 ends up being a better card and competitor (and I expect it won’t, given the need to have a 250watt TDP for the HD7970).

All in all, a great showing by Nvidia and something you could definitely expect to land up in the NAG Dream Machine next month. Who’ll be buying one? (that’s a joke, in case you didn’t know)

Source: Tom’s Hardware, Anandtech, Guru3D, TechpowerUp!

Discuss this in the forums: Linky

Like the GTX680 and GTX690, the GTX670 is based off the GK104 design, which is essentially an upgraded GTX460 with parts chopped off, parts added together and parts made smaller to make today’s Frankenstein. The chips boast a smaller node process to 28 nanometers and are much more efficient than their predecessors in the outgoing Geforce 500 series. But what’s really interesting that we’ll see in the coming months is exactly how Nvidia plans to differentiate their chip lineup. After all, today you’ll see Nvidia’s equivalent of the HD7950 – a card performing a hair’s breadth away from the flagship, costs far less and once overclocked takes the performance crown easily.

But first, the interesting thing to take away here is that TSMC is still having yield issues with Kepler and the 28nm process. Nvidia’s actually gone and re-branded their GT540 parts as the GT640, producing a few different versions but having two of them – the GT645 and the 144-core GT640 - manufactured using the 28nm process to allow Nvidia to sell off dies that would have otherwise been tossed out. The breakdown between TSMC and Nvidia gets more tense because there aren’t any known reports of other manufacturers having fault with 28nm yields. Either their designs are more fault-tolerant, or something is wonky with getting Kepler tapered out properly.

One shader disabled, the rest left intact.

Whatever the case may be, today is another paper launch. Nvidia still can’t get enough GTX680s out the door and into the right regions. Yes, you read that right, regions. There are tons of shops online and in other countries that have stock of the flagship, but aren’t selling either because of high prices, AMD’s bundle of three games with their HD7000 series or simply because the customers are waiting for the GTX670. Well you’ll have to wait a bit longer, as TSMC’s assumed outputs of Kepler units per month is only 10,000. What you will see today isn’t a different card that would have been a GTX670, its actually a GTX680 with a disabled shader module.

Looking at the chip layout, the GTX670 ships with 1344 CUDA cores and 112 Texture units, making up seven out of eight possible shaders, the extra one being fused off by laser. I expect that these weren’t perfectly functioning GK104 units and Nvidia changed their plans for the lineup in the interim. If you’re getting one of these puppies, it’s best you save up for one now before Kepler’s yield issues are sorted, as Nvidia may change the chip later for whatever reason. The GTX670 is now only a slightly slower GTX680 and fits in the same space in the market, fighting off the onslaught by the HD7950 and HD7970 for the high-end and enthusiast segments. Clocks stand at 915Mhz for the core and 6Ghz for the memory.

But anyway, onto the card itself. Its covered by a dual-slot cooler and features a blower fan on the far right exhausting all heat out the vents. But wait, that PCI-Express power slot in the middle HAS to be a shop, right? I mean, that’s completely the wrong place to put it. Yeah, if you flip the card over, the PCB is dwarfed by the 10″ shroud, measuring only 6.75″. Disabling the shader module allowed Nvidia to adjust core circuitry and focus on cooling the card and getting power consumption down (remember what I said about this being a faulty/disabled GK104 chip? Looks like I’m right). What’s really impressive is that with a shortened PCB to begin with, third-party OEMs might figure out a way to produce a single-slot and much longer GTX670.

The card requires two six-pin PCI-Express power connectors and has a typical power draw of 141watts. This card will end up being the overclockers choice because the board now has a maximum power limit of 225 watts including the 75w that the motherboard provides through the PCI-Express slot. With extreme cooling and more aggresive BIOS and clock settings, I can see quite a few vendors creating their own version of the GTX670 in a “Ti” guise. The back of the card reveals two dual-link display ports, one full-size display port (pity, should have been a mini-connector) and a HDMI 1.4a port. All four can be used to drive a screen each for Nvidia’s Surround feature. This previously required two cards in SLI to achieve a three-monitor setup.

Moving onto the benchmarks, its apparent that the disabled shader doesn’t reduce performance that much, even though it also cuts power consumption down by 30w. In Battlefield 3 the GTX670 finished within a ten-frame margin behind the GTX680 and you can see it easily showing the HD7970 its tailpipes. Running at native 30″ resolution, it sticks even closer to its bigger brother to within 5fps, drawing equal with the HD7970. Its the same story with Crysis 2, drawing up with the competition in DX9 and blowing past them in DX11. Its a really tremendous thing to see, and Nvidia must be commended on their design of Kepler – even with the loss of a limb, it still keeps up. The card loses out at 30″ resolution in Crysis 2, but this is more to the HD7970 having a bigger framebuffer.

I’m only going to show 30″ resolution tests for now because all other games produce 70+ frames per second at 1080p. What you saw in Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 basically plays out everywhere else. Performance in Metro 2033 splits the cards by less than four frames – was that extra shader core being unused in games? In Skyrim the card draws up again next to the HD7970 and the GTX680, showing playable performance even with FXAA enabled. DiRT3 gets close to the magical 60fps barrier, easily beating out the HD7970. DiRT2 favoured AMD cards, but this time round the tables have turned. WOW Cataclysm finally gives the HD7970 the boot, clearly showing that the game isn’t optimised for GCN yet.

So now, you may be wondering what kind of knock Direct Compute performance has on the GTX670. I mean, if shaders aren’t used in the game that’s fine, but if CUDA cores aren’t being fully exploited, then that’s another thing altogether. Look below the the MediaEspresso benchmarks where video files are recoded into a high-quality clip that an iPad could play. Recoding to MPEG2 shows Kepler-based cards finishing the recode in half the time of AMD’s offerings. Changing to H.264, the GTX670 draws up neatly with its bigger brother, producing idential results. Anandtech’s Civilisation V Compute benchmark shows the GTX670 only slightly behind the GTX680. Honestly, for most games and applications, it looks like disabling that core didn’t much damage the card’s ability to perform well.

Finally, moving into temperature and power consumption, the card keeps temperatures in really well, idling at 41 degrees and maxing out at 80 degrees on load. Power consumption is reigned in , roughly matching the HD7950 for performance. You’d only need a decent, stable 550w power supply at this point to power the beast, just like the GTX680. What’s really going to boggle your mind, though, is the SLI scaling. That, right there, is GTX690 performance. Two cards that are cheaper than two GTX680s, hanging with Nvidia’s fastest card to date. Even dual HD7970s stand a chance, the scaling is just phenomenal at an average of 80% improvement across the board.

So, here’s the drill. Its cheaper and better to get the GTX670, overclock it and have GTX680 performance for approximately R1000 less.  Even if it sells for R4500 here, you’d be mad to choose the HD7970 over this because it wipes the floor with it, all things considered. Those of you considering a dual-GPU solution, you’ll only need a 700watt power supply to get GTX690 performance for less than you’d pay for an actual GTX690. This card will also effectively cannibalise GTX680 sales unless Nvidia reveals that drivers weren’t optimised and bla bla bla and fixes everything. The card is crippled, for heaven’s sake, and it still plays tag with the flagship costing considerably more. And uses more power.

But, there’s a crucial flaw in Nvidia’s plan for dominance and that’s TSMC. Without a supply, a healthy one at that, of 28nm dies and good yields, their entire lineup of Kepler’s derivatives will be starved. Obviously they’re going to focus the majority of development and supply to the GTX660 (when it arrives and kicks the HD7870 aside) and the GTX670. Only ten GTX690′s arrived in the country this week. Ten.  Those are using good dies that could have been put to better use in the GTX680 or even the 670 to give fans more than another stupid paper launch.

I said before the reveal of the GTX690 that I wondered if Nvidia had developed some common sense what with all the problems they’re having. Giving gamers in the mid-range a good supply while they worked on the real flagship would have been just fine – AMD’s HD7990 is only showing off at Computex, after all. When the GTX670 lands, it’ll likely sell for much higher than its suggested retail price and stocks will be limited.

A paper launch for what will become the gamer and overclocker’s card of choice? That deserves  an honorary mention, not an award. The recommended retail price is $400 (approx R3244), so all that’s left is to wait for the obligatory price drop from AMD in the coming weeks. And we’ll probably see the GTX660 with another shader module disabled in three or less weeks.

Source: Tom’s Hardware, TechpowerUp!, Anandtech

Discuss this in the forums: Linky

A few years ago there was a rumor doing the rounds that Valve was working on a port of the Steam client for Linux operating systems. At the time there was already confirmation of the client being ported to Mac OSX back in 2010. The natural train of thought landed on a Linux version as well, since OSX is based on Unix, and shares kernel changes occasionally with Linux. Likewise, many of the improvements to the custom Unix kernel found in OS X have also been implemented into Linux (albeit through reverse engineering, but I digress), so its not like the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

In fact, there were even screenshots that showed a semi-working native port of the Steam client, but unfortunately those developments were cancelled when the group doing the unofficial port dropped the project. And then they disappeared. Where on earth did they go? Who took the work and project with them? I speculated on another forum at the time that Gabe must have hired them to continue work for the client with Valve’s support and backing. And two weeks ago I was proven right (well, I still don’t know where the hell they went). There’s even a job listing for it still up.

Pictured above is a copy of Left for Dead 2, running natively on Ubuntu 10.04LTS. The game is running without any back-ports, without WINE and just behind the game window is a customised version of AMD’s Catalyst Control Center. If Valve is this far ahead with getting things to work properly, we can assume one of two things:

1) Gamers who buy titles exclusively over Steam with a Windows machine can, in future, run Ubuntu or any other distro and save money over the license costs associated with Microsoft’s proprietary software. Linux has come a long way since the original Red Hat, Fedora and Debian variants, and ranks up there with the leaders in terms of ability. Many software companies nowadays have at least a semi-updated Linux port of their software, so its certainly getting some attention.

2) If Valve does something, usually the entire industry stops, looks sheepishly at their investors, curses under their breath and begins a catch-up process right away. They’re not always the trend-setters, but they usually hit the nail on the head with their games. Once a Steam client for Linux lands, both EA and Microsoft need to think long and hard about how much that 1.3% of desktop users on Unix is worth to them. Yes, currently they don’t support the OS, but no-one really has any idea how this would take off. Out of forty-plus million gamers worldwide, Valve could have as many as an eighth of those move over to Linux as time passes, assuming they aren’t already dependent on Windows.

Currently work is being done to port over the Source Engine, rather than try to get the games running as the WINE project has done for years. Once the engine works natively in Linux with OpenGL, porting them over should be much quicker. Which Source-based games could be available?

D.O.T.A. 2 (still to be released)

Half-Life 2 (and all expansions/episodes)

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2

Portal 1 and 2

Team Fortress 2

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (still to be released)

If you’re still wondering, Source is a game engine that Valve created to be compatible with multiple platforms and operating systems. Source currently runs on Windows, OS X, Xbox and PS3 systems, with the Xbox running a customised version of Windows CE and Sony’s Playstation 3 on a custom Linux kernel (see, all the code was there from the start). The titles I’ve listed are all Source-based and have been Valve’s best sellers for years (with two exceptions, but I expect those to sell really, really well).

Steam also supports and acts as a retail system for games based off other engines, and it’ll be up to those publishers and developers to make sure their games are up to date when Valve releases the client. Valve’s CEO, Gabe himself is working on the port. The porting project had been running for a few years already, but Newell joined the team and is looking to speed things up. Gabe has been a big proponent of Linux in previous interviews and it’ll be interesting what the company can bring to the open-source (see what I did there? Har har) community.

Source: Phoronix

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So I’m using an old laptop for my long-term review. I’ll have to hook it up to my keyboard and mouse because there’s no way in hell I’m moving back to a trackpad for work, but its going to take place of my desktop for now. I’ll be exploiting the OS as much as I can and learning more in-depth about it at the same time. Its not enough that I just use it for writing and editing photos (that much is easy enough to do on any platform) but I’m going to start learning how to administer it, how the new Universal Search bar takes over everything you do in a menu and how extras like Ubuntu’s Cloud and third-party music and movie services work for the average Joe.

So to the laptop, its an old Sahara model that I fixed up myself. Its got a miserly 1024 x 768 screen, 768MB RAM and a 40GB HDD. Linux has a reputation for being fast even on slower machines, and I’ll be testing that out as time goes by. I last tried running Linux permanently when I was in college which ended up failing spectacularly. At that stage the Linux environment was in a bit of a fritz over itself and hardware vendor support was a pipe dream. Of course, using hardware this old would feel like a crime, wouldn’t it? Not from where I can see right now. Its snappy, but not in the same way that my desktop is/was.

Will this benefit me in the long run, or am I wasting my time? I often ask that of others who question whether open-source is worth the effort and its a different answer everytime. No-one in the NAG office, I’m sure, could use it because their jobs require Windows to be pre-loaded on all machines. Were Microsoft’s DirectX API not so ubiquitous, we’d certainly see more gamers on Linux than there are now (more on that tomorrow). I’m comfortable with it so far, but only time will tell how much I’ll like it when this review comes to an end.

Testing it on an Ultrabook would be sweet, but beggars can't be choosers.

“When’s the end?”, I hear you ask. That could be in a month, three months or even six. As it is, my standing with Linux has waned over the years and I haven’t touched it again in over three until I started with 12.04 in the virtual machine. I’m planning to cover the hardware at rAge this year and I’ll need to buy myself a netbook to go along with me. If I can skimp out on the R800 for Windows 7 Home Basic, so much the better. If I can get one with built-in 3G, that’s even more swell. The point is, though, that I’m trying to save money for myself and potentially for you, dear reader.

See, we’re going to have Windows 8 this year on every single consumer machine money can buy and although I’ll also be giving that a shot in a review concurrent to this one, I’m not sure I’ll buy it. That should apply as well to millions of other computer users who want to know if its necessary to upgrade to it or not. On the forums, someone mentioned, quite accurately I think, that Windows 7 is going to land up as the XP of its time. To prevent OSes from getting long in the tooth, Microsoft is going to start blocking updates and support from them far quicker, one by one until you’re almost forced to upgrade to the new and shiny because X feature has been included. You have to pay for that privilege.

Linux is free and I’ve watched online as Ubuntu turned from the ugly ducking to a beautiful swan (with the exception of Unity, some people still hate it as do I). Its become one of the most widely-used distros by default and every year it gets updated twice to the current bleeding edge, all for free. That’s a bargain, if I may say so myself, and worth one checking out. Follow me as I do!

Source: Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

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On the consumer side, the Pavilion series gets a major design switch to  a very stylish range of colours and new brushed aluminium panels for various parts of the chassis. HP calls the new lid design “Mosaic”, and HP says that it combines rich colours, premium materials and purposeful shapes to create a work of art. Speaking of art, if you had to put all the lids from the newly-design laptops together, you’d be able to lay them out to complete a much bigger mosaic. 

The Pavilion M6 is the first up which comes close to Ultrabook slimness, but includes a DVD drive, 15.6″ LED HD LCD (yes, that’s right, an HD screen, not this 1360 x 768 crap), a choice of AMD or Intel processors and up to eight hours of battery life. There’s also an optional backlit keyboard, Beats Audio by Dr. Dre with a subwoofer and a discrete graphics card (think Nvidia GT640M) for light gaming, video and photo editing. Note the tapered end of the lid, allowing the screen a much larger angel of tilt than most laptops. Pricing is yet to be determined, but it’ll compete favourably compared to the high price tags of Ultrabook devices. This might not land on our shores as I’m told its exclusive to Best Buy and Amazon, but anything’s possible.

The rest of the Pavilion series gets a revamp as well. The DV6, DV7 and DV4 get the new brushed aluminium chassis, with the DV4 coming in black, white and red colour options. There are soft-touch plastics at the bottom of the lid to improve grip when carrying the notebook and Beats-approved speakers integrated into the display’s bezel at the top and sides. The DV range offers Intel processors at the moment, but AMD options will become available throughout the year. Standard is an HD Webcam and HP’s ProtectSmart technology, as well as discrete graphics options. Pricing starts at $549.99 for the DV4 and DV6, (approx R4415.29 before import taxes and levies) and $799.99 for the DV7 (approx R6422.28). It doesn’t help adoption rates here in S.A. though, as the current retail price of the entry-level DV7 stands at R14,000, quite high for most buyers and easily within range of the Alienware M14x.

Small, but the DV4 makes a statement at its low price tag.

The Pavilion G6 and G7 get  a new touch as well, upgrading the plastic chassis with more shiny options and a range of colours to choose from. The G6 range is more popular with home users and professionals who don’t have the cash for the DV range of laptops, yet still need some decent power to get work done. The G-series follows the same basic cues of the M6 with the tapered bottom and of the laptop and the slimmer DVD drive, bringing the laptop’s design closer to 2012-esque ideas. It might not compete with the Ultrabooks, but its a great choice in its own right. Some are even practical gaming options. The other optional colours are black, white, purple and pink. The G6 starts at a retail price of $449.99 (approx R3612.50) while the G7 starts at $499.99 (approx R4013.89) for the lowest-spec version.

In the Ultrabook segment, HP’s Envy range is geared towards both high-powered home users and business professionals. The Envy range has been selling so well for business-use that HP can’t keep up with demand, and this revamp will hopefully make the brand more prominent in the market that’s getting very slowly swamped with Ultrabook options. The Envy SpectreXT tops out the range  with a 13.3″ HD LED LCD, eight hours of battery life, a range of Intel Ivy Bridge chips, 128GB solid state storage, USB3.0 and HDMI-out.

In a way, the Ultrabook market is shaping up a lot like the current state of the Windows Phone offerings – same OS, same basic hardware design inside, with the OEMs allowed to customise their designs as long as they’re within specific limitations. Like the M6 and the Pavilion range, the SpectreXT features Beats Audio, an HD webcam and an all-aluminium chassis. The SpectreXT also comes with free editions of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements for video and photo editing on the go, as well as a dedicated support line for SpectreXT buyers. The SpectreXT will begin retailing for $999 (approx – oh just sell my kidney, okay? Seriously, R8019.92) from the 8th June in the U.S. There’s also the XT Pro, designed for businesses (but essentially the same thing).

The rest of the Envy lineup for consumers comes in 14″ and 15.6″ flavours (take that, Macbook Pro 15!) and comes with all the upgrades seen today along with mSATA, up to nine hours battery life, Intel’s Rapid-Start Technology and a different finish on the lid, further taking the Mosaic concept through HP’s entire lineup. If you’re an eager Apple fan waiting to see what the new Macbooks will offer this year, this is roughly what you can expect Apple to bring to the table. One crucial difference – these both have DVD drives, slot-loading ones, on the top left side of the notebook. The Envy 14t starts from $749.99 (approx R6020.88) and the 15t (pictured below) will retail for $799.99 (approx R6422.28).

Also in the works is a new model, the Sleekbook. Now while it may come with Intel processors and for all intents and purposes look and feel like the regular Envy range, the Sleekbook family will also offer AMD’s Brazos 2.0 and Trinity APUs as options for buyers. It includes the updates from the rest of the family, but comes in two paint jobs – the boring grey steel and the undoubtedly sexy Hero Black and Red. There’s just something about that colour scheme that leaves me at a loss for words. Laptops and Ultrabooks of late have looked very boring, but this could be a sleeper hit. No mention is made of which processors or APUs will be available, but its going to end up as the spiritual replacement for the Alienware M11x anyway thanks to Trinity’s promised graphics prowess. Prices start at $699.99 (approx R5619.48 and I’m so hoping local pricing is similar) for the 14-incher, while the 15.6″ model will hit U.S. stores in mid-June at $599.99 (approx R4816.69).

Finally, for those whose IT departments haven’t gone crazy over the Dell XPS13, have them look at the HP Folio 9470m. Yes, its an Ultrabook again, but HP is creeping up on Dell’s market share in the business and enterprise segment with their “Software as a Service” motto. The Folio range (yes, there’ll be more) comes with optional 4G modems, VGA and Displayport connectors, new docking stations, a nine-hour battery life and the option for a second extended battery to fit under the Ultrabook, giving it up to twelve hours of operating time. Its different because the battery is user-replaceable and the back panel can be opened, a must-have for businesses who have to support multiple devices which need fixing in a short period of time. Ordinarily Ultrabooks have to be sent back for repair by the manufacturer due to their high level of complexity and extreme price.

The Folio range also comes with HP-approved Enterprise management and tracking apps, and also comes with Smart Card and TPM security measures, as well as HP Bios Protection and HP’s Business set of Antivirus software which doesn’t require CD keys and auto-manages all viruses and potential threats to provide peace of mind. Price? If you’re asking, you can’t afford it, period. You have to be an enterprise-level business to even get prices quoted for you.

Source: TechpowerUp and TechpowerUp

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While there’s no left-hand version of this one announced, Razer is looking to produce the left-hand Naga for release either later this year or in early 2013. When launched, the MMO-centered Naga launched with three rows of buttons on the side with up to twelve programmable keys.

The new version ups the ante by introducing interchangeable side panels for proper pinky grip, and the three styles offered benefit both claw and grip styles. The mouse ships standard with the 17-button configuration, adjustable DPI to 5600 (really, really sensitive), Razer’s “Zero-acoustic” mouse feet (I really didn’t know mice feet made a noise) and an anti-slip, anti-fingerprinte black matte finish.

The new Naga for MMO gamers should be available now in the RazerStore for U.S. and European gamers for $79.99 (approx R640, but that’s before taxes and levies). If it ever lands on our shores, it’ll sell quite well.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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So I give you the Crystal White (no, its not a codename for a drug) Playstation Vita. 

Yes, its not that special on the inside, but it does look very good in white. The Japs and most of east-Asia will have it retailing in their stores by the end of June for around £232 (roughly R3000) for the 3G version or £193 (roughly R2500) for the Wi-Fi only edition, which is the one I’m slowly but surely saving up for. Its a pity that our ones retail for above R3000, but since we are at the bottom of the globe, its to be expected.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t cost any more than the original black version, suggesting that Sony waited to coin it a bit with the cheaper black paint and then opt for a white edition. The original PSP went through about six or seven different colours, and if the Vita sells as well as Sony expects it to, it may go through the same process. There will be matching white earphones available as well as white protective cases and other accessories.

Source: Eurogamer

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The icing on top is the HD7850 – a gamer’s friend at R2600 which clubs the GTX560Ti effectively at its price point and may force Nvidia into a major price war. As manufacturers design and price their GTX560Ti units closer to R2000, I began to wonder how AMD was going to cope with that. Behold, Tom’s Hardware may have stumbled on the answer. 

What you see above is a single-slot edition of the Radeon HD7850 which was mistakenly sent to Tom’s Hardware in Europe for testing purposes. After all, the site has a number of technical writers who could provide valuable input to AMD in the process of designing and testing out new hardware. They were told they would be receiving a test unit for a single-slot HD7850, a card that would fit even better in many gaming computers and would be perfect in that high-powered HTPC you’re planning to build.

Only 768 shaders lit up.

But it was not the card that they were expecting. The test unit has a large number of shaders disabled for a total of 768 shaders, which puts it in the half-way mark between the HD7850 and the HD7770. If there ever was a planned HD7830, I’d bet this would be the way to go. On closer inspection and with some exchange with AMD’s offices in Shanghai, Tom’s learned that the board was intended for testing purposes, to demonstrate to board partners how chip yields could affect how they’ll supply graphics cards to customers. That’s actually a normal thing, and plenty of manufacturers disable circuits of their cards to test out designs while the final product is being tapered out. But this one is special.

With only 768 shaders enabled, the card falls in line with the GTX560Ti and GTX560Ti 448-core in many benchmarks, drawing alongside and almost beating it in Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 respectively. In the past, HD-x830 cards were praised for their value for money, straddling the bargain bin line but offering up extremely good value for money.

If AMD is making an HD7830, it would be priced closer to R2200 to make it more competitive and to secure market share for buyers who don’t want the HD7770, but can’t stump up the extra grand for the HD7850. Tom’s sadly wouldn’t go into benchmarks for power consumption or thermal performance, but revealed that on average the card consumed 10w less than the reference HD7850 – not surprising considering the PCB does belong to the reference HD7850 design, but interesting because with a few more tweaks it could easily fall to as much as 20w more under its bigger brother. Being a single-slot cooler, though, there is more heat to deal with, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue for enthusiasts with the proper chassis.

In the conclusion, Tom’s summed up that the card, if it indeed was a plan for a HD7830, would do well in its place next to the GTX560Ti and if equipped with 1GB of DDR5 RAM, would be cheaper and the better value choice. Nvidia hasn’t said or revealed how they’re planning on improving the GTX560Ti – they thankfully can’t do a rebrand this time because Fermi is old hat now. Going even further, by making this version of the HD7850 more efficient, it may actually be able to run without a PCI-Express 6-pin connector, powerful enough to combat the “Green” editions of the GTX560 that are still around.

All in all, I really hope AMD sees the potential in a card like this and releases it to the public as a cut-down HD7850. It would give gamers a choice at the lower price points the GTX560Ti is being driven to and, if nothing else, will keep the company in mindshare as well. I wouldn’t upgrade to it just yet as my HD6870 is still ticking along nicely, but for those of you still on the HD4770, HD4850 and HD4870 this would be a good deal.

Source: Tom’s Hardware, AMD Pitcairn With 768 Shaders: What is This Mystery Chip?

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Google’s project now has obtained permission from the Nevada Department of Motor vehicles after a private demonstration. The state department previously had to draft up amendments to existing road laws to allow the cars to be on the road.

Its an interesting development. We last saw driver-less cars in two recent-ish films: I, Robot (with the Audi RSQ/R8 concept that could drive itself) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The famous Kitt could also drive himself anywhere without Michael, and the public has always been enamoured with the idea of a car that can “think” for itself and drive without your assistance.

While it would take out the fun in driving, I suppose that’s why the Prius was selected as its possibly the most boring car on the planet (I lie, actually, that honour goes to the Morris Marina). While the cars are able to take corners, speed up and down and drive on freeways by themselves, the driver always has to be present to take control of the situation should the auto-pilot decide to have a massive brain fart or come across a paradox.

Honestly, if this kind of thing can derail an intelligent train, who knows what kind of damage paradoxes can cause elsewhere? Or dragons, come to think of it.

In addition, the cars get special license plates that alert law enforcement and other drivers on the road that the car is automated and in the testing phase. The vehicles are all privately owned by Google, and one day the company hopes to launch the system for motorcar manufacturers as an add-on option once the patent pending is awarded to them.

But here’s the thing. Given that the car uses Google Maps and the system would track your EVERY move, would you really want that? The search giant recently amended its terms and conditions of use of their services and it basically amounts to: “We now can legally know what you’re doing on our servers all the time, everytime. We will sell this off, and keep the interesting stuff to ourselves. Kthnxbai!”

Oh yeah, Google can also control the cars remotely. Is that you, Skynet?

Source: Fudzilla

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Orwellian similarities aside, the best bit of tech seen in the movie were the touch-interface gloves Tom Cruise uses in one scene where he’s in the debriefing room. And the gloves he wears are gesture-controlled, linked to an augmented reality computer that projects images before him (in fact, this entire scene was the basis for the design of Jarvis seen in the Ironman movies). Yeah, that’s a real thing today. Well the glove, that is.

The original idea of the gloves used in the movie was concocted through a brainstorming session in which  Speilberg and his effects producers wanted to create the feeling of the technology in the movie being far more advanced than what was available at the time. Aside from the fact that the newly-released PS Vita blows my mind with its augmented reality potential, the gloves released today by Bellco are strikingly similar to those in the film.

The device has a gyroscope on the back of your palm to track movement from your hand and to differentiate vertical and horizontal adjustments. It has a wireless transmitter embedded, linked to another sensor in your index finger that has another sensor for more finely-tuned movements. The glove connects to your PC and uses a nanoUSB dongle to keep everything out of the way. The glove’s software works out of the box and is Windows, Mac OS X, Android and Linux compatible.

The Ion is designed to be mass-marketed.

The biggest thing that pains me when people do presentations is that they have to use crummy wireless presenters, These days things need to have a bit more of a “wow” factor if you’re trying to jazz up a bored audience in your AGM meetings. The gloves move the cursor on the screen as you would a physical mouse, but movements don’t have to be sweeping or made with much effort for them to be detected. If you’re thinking “cool!”, then you’re not thinking big enough.

In Ironman, Stark moves objects around his 3D holotable with his hands, manipulating 3D objects with his fingers and with hand gestures to control Jarvis’ manual interface. He grabs something and sweeps it in the direction of the “Trash” bin, and it gets deleted. One particular showcase of what Jarvis could do is test out a design of the suit’s arm on Starks right forearm – that’s a real ongoing idea, again, but the glove at least lets people get the gist of the idea when you whip it out and control your machine on a 100″ Digital-Cinema 4k monitor.

Bellco’s made no mention of whether the glove actually supports gesture-based controls. It would be reasonable to assume so, since it uses the basic controls and software as the PS/2 mouse. However, like the Neural Impulse Actuator which NAG magazine reviewed eons ago, it may be a success, or it may fall by the wayside.

Buy it now at www.3dionwirelessairmouse.com. The single glove is available for $79.95 excluding shipping and only fits the right hand. Sorry lefties, Razer didn’t design this one.

Source: TechpowerUp!

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Launching this May, the company’s Trinity APUs are set to improve the performance of their current lineup and perhaps give manufacturers another option for when they’re assessing their Ultrabook alternatives. Trinity packs a processor and a graphics solution in the same package, with the GPU promising a more capable option than Intel’s Integrated HD chips when it comes to gaming. 

However, will it be the better option? Intel’s HD3000 and HD4000 chips found in their Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge parts are technically just as capable, but Intel’s Quicksync technology makes the choice for OEMs more difficult. Quicksync uses the integrated graphics core to accelerate functions like Photoshop edits, video decompression and re-coding video from one format to another. In addition, Intel’s putting a lot of money behind the Ultrabook initiative – $400 million, to be exact. As it is, AMD’s Brazos platform is beaten in raw computational power by low-end Sandy bridge Pentium options.

A leaked screenshot shows the A10 chip in the hands of overclockers, with AMD clearly looking to their input for their K-series.

AMD’s mobile Trinity chips haven’t been completely specced, but TDPs are expected to be under 40w, and Brazos 2.0 chips will now boast a 18w TDP. The desktop parts scheduled for release are the  A10-5800K, A10-5700, A8-5600K, and A8-5500. All are quad-core parts, with the A10-5800K being an unlocked processor running at 3.8Ghz with Turbo Boost to 4.2Ghz. Graphics performance for the desktop parts is expected to be improved by 50% thanks to the new Radeon HD7660D, with CPU performance improving 10% over the previous generation.

While its nowhere near Core i5 2500K standards, at least AMD’s roadmap is completely on track – it was predicted at a conference last year that Trinity would yield about 10% in performance gains. Whether the same applies to the 15% improvements promised by Piledriver remains to be seen, but these chips are still sitting on the 32nm process. Trinity for the desktop is only expected to be released in Q3 of this year.

The new Brazos 2.0 processors will be named the E2-1800 and E1-1200, both being low-power dual-core APU solutions, and these will go in AMD’s much cheaper Ultrabook options that should retail for about $500 when they launch later this year.

The Piledriver-based new FX chips are already on the cards, called the FX-8350, FX-6300, FX-4320 with four, three and two Bulldozer cores respectively. AMD’s “Vishera” processors are scheduled to release much later this year, possibly close to Q4 2012 with quad-channel memory and based on the “Terramar” server chips. It won’t require a new socket but does pack no less than five (yes, that’s right, five) Bulldozer modules for a total of ten threaded cores. Its intended for parallel  and virtualised environments, although packing an extra two cores above Intel’s inevitable octo-core processors might be a better value-add for some.

Stay tuned to NAG Online for more info as it leaks. This is going to be an interesting year for AMD fans, even if they feel a little disappointed by Bulldozer’s performance.

Source: PC Perspective, TwojePC, TechpowerUp!

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Those of you who’ve been following the System Builder’s Thread on the NAG Forums will know that its almost impossible to buy a laptop for under R6000 that provides decent gaming performance. That’s certainly the case with netbooks and subnotebooks, but things are improving. For instance, AMD’s APU processors based on the Brazos platform provide capable hardware and a decent experience if you keep settings low, and are perfect for those game that are typically played – Counter Strike, Starcraft, Half-Life Deathmatch, cracked copies of Unreal 2k4 and so on. I hazard that only laptops from R6000 and upwards are  capable LAN options, so for the rest of the time I’m looking for models that offer practicality, performance, productivity and portability in as small a package as is comfortable.

With the “surge” in Ultrabooks we’re certainly seeing buyers lust after similar, far cheaper options to the Macbook Air, and I’m here to show you that they do exist, if you know where to look. I’ll offer an SSD where possible for the Ultrabook alternatives, and where I feel it would benefit performance on the notebook in the long term. Battery life is also always a concern, and any measures that can be taken to improve that will be considered.

Netbooks:

Aspire One D270 10.1″ @ R3100 (SSD Option: OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R844)

Mecer W210CUQ 10.1″ @ R4027 (SSD Option: OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R844)

I choose both these notebooks because they’re the only Intel Cedar Trail netbooks in stock with the Atom N2800 processor. Its a dual-core chip with two extra threads, and it helps with the minimal workloads that netbooks have to deal with on a daily basis. The improved chipset and the GMA 3650 integrated graphics allows the playback of HD content using players like VLC and the Mecer model in particular can pack up to 4GB RAM, has an option for which version of Windows you’d like to load (in case you’re wondering, always choose Home Premium) and comes stock with a 3G HSDPA network card built-in. When buying the Mecer, make sure you switch the notebook to 64-bit Windows as the Cedar Trail platform is 64-bit capable, despite what the sales guy will tell you.

In particular, I like the idea of swapping out the stock hard drive for an SSD and then using the one you originally got as an external. Netbook workloads don’t usually deal with incompressible data unless there’s video involved, so the OCZ Agility would fit in just fine here. Both feature six-cell batteries, providing up to eight hours of life away from the wall.

R5000 Notebooks/Subnotebooks:

MSI X400-WB 14″ @ R3966 (SSD Option: OCZ Agility 3 90GB @ R1132) (Ultrabook Alternative)

Fujitsu Siemens AH530 15.6″ @ R4999 (Makro Special)

Asus X54C 15.6″ @ R4561

Because there’s such a huge range of models out there, I only listed a few here for comparison, and ones that I would personally use. Most 15.6″ laptops here have decent enough specs to be productive workhorses, but don’t expect miracles from the Intel i3 processor, even though it is up to most tasks that you put to it. You would be able to play LAN games with the integrated graphics, but you’d be doing so at low-to-medium settings, depending on the game at hand.

Pay attention though, to the MSI I listed. Its essentially an Ultrabook before they were even a thing. Omitting the DVD drive and swapping in a low-power Core 2 Duo, its still powerful enough for any task you throw at it. Chuck out the HDD, throw in the 90GB Agility 3 and you should be good to go. The Macbook Air is smaller and lighter, but tops out at 64GB for the entry-level model. Granted, the laptop ships with Vista but you do get a free upgrade to Windows 7 in the box. If possible, install the 64-bit version and get another 2GB of RAM for good measure.

If you really want to get that one step closer to the allure of the Macbook Air, though, you can turn the notebook into a Hackintosh by following this guide for the X340 and by installing a compatible wireless card that works with OSX Snow Leopard. At your own risk, obviously. If you’re that serious, install Ubuntu Linux with a custom OSX skin – less grey hairs for everyone involved, and still a pleasant experience.

R7000 Notebooks:

Dell Inspiron 1090 10.1″ @ R5299 (SSD Option: OCZ Petrol 128GB @ R1276) (Letexo alternative)

HP Paviliion G6 1270Si 15.6″ @ R6999.95

Mecer W170HN 17.3″ @ R7197

I looked around and round, round and around for anything better than the options we have here. I didn’t cover any laptops between the R5000 and R7000 budgets, mainly because they’re all copy-pasta versions of each other, and each one equally as crappy in the gaming department. Here we have two decent options, starting with the HP Pavilion G6 with AMD’s quad-core Brazos-based processor, AMD Radeon graphics that end up performing the same as a desktop HD6570, 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium. Its a sure-fit for multi-tasking users, and AMD’s APU is more than up to the challenge of playing games at medium settings.

The Mecer W170HN is by far the more capable platform, though. Seeing as its customisable, I recommend buyers move up to Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, the dual-core Intel i3-2350M, stick with the default 320GB hard drive and up the total RAM to 8GB for the cheapest gaming solution this side of the equator. The Nvidia Geforce GT540M is capable enough, though you’ll need to be playing at low resolutions and medium settings to get an enjoyable experience. Starcraft II would run really nicely here at medium settings.

Finally, I know a lot of people like tablets. A lot of people like notebooks. What about those of you who like both? Intel’s Letexo platform is a long way away, but if you’re willing to compromise and wait for Windows 8, go for the Dell Inspiron 1090. Its a netbook with a flip-touch screen, and should be more than up to the tasks you’d normally set for netbooks anyway. RAM is capped at 2GB, but that should be fine for the use case of this interesting hybrid, although an SSD is recommended to get around the hardware limitation of the weaker Atom processor.

Next week I’m scaling the walls of R9000 to R15,000 budgets, be sure to check out that if you’ve got that amount of money stuffed away in your piggy, your mattress or bank account.

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The next Galaxy ships with a in-house-design quad-core processor, a Note-rivaling 4.8″ Pentile Super AMOLED screen and Android Ice Cream Sandwich as standard. The phone ships at the end of May to major carriers around the world, and we may see it at the end of June. The phone comes in 16, 32 and 64GB varieties to match the iPhone 4s.

Of course, the new Galaxy is not without its drawbacks, as Samsung has chosen to reinvent its design with the third iteration in the series. Whether its appreciated or not is a matter of personal opinion, however I don’t like it. A flagship should show off the highest levels of design within the respective family, and the Galaxy S III bears no resemblance to its cheaper brethren. The chassis is entirely plastic made through a manufacturing process Samsung calls “Hyperglaze” which textures the plastic to feel like brushed aluminium.

Pictured: Fooling the world, one user at a time.

The phone retains a removable battery cover with a large 2100mAh unit to power the flagship through at least a single day of heavy use. The SD card still sits under the battery and isn’t hot-swappable. Micro-SIM use is also now standard, but there’s no reason why it should be here – the phone isn’t a unibody design like the Lumia 800/900/N9/iPhone 4 and doesn’t need a uSIM slot to save space. The handset also retains hardware front-end keys for call answering, ending and a menu button.

On the subject of space (there’s lots of it), the front is dominated by the massive 4.8″ LCD screen. Pentile displays are a common feature now in Samsung’s higher-end mobiles, and its what enabled the Note to work so well as a mini-tablet. The front-facing camera is used to track your eye movement and will switch the screen back on for you if it’s been blacked out – this is called Smart Stay, and will keep the screen brightened for as long as you’re staring at it.

So if you like looking at, say, porn, you don't have to keep touching the screen to turn it on again. Just blink.

The phone is powered by Samsung’s proprietary Exynos chipset, featuring a 1.4Ghz Cortex-A9 quad-core processor and the Mali-400 GPU. Samsung has abandoned the use of Nvidia’s Tegra in its mobiles, choosing its own ARM-based variant instead. The handset also has 1GB of RAM, although competitors are already releasing ICS handsets with 2GB of RAM for RAM-intensive tasks. In its own right, this phone is as powerful in some respects as some older Pentium/Celeron processors on the LGA478 platform.

Software-wise the phone tricks it up with Samsung’s answer to Apple’s impressive Siri, S-Voice. Now, you’ve got to understand a few things first. Apple controls its entire hardware and software platform, hence the reason why Siri has such deep integration to iOS on the iPhone 4s platform. S-Voice is a software overlay with limited commands, and doesn’t take words in context like Siri does. It can function, however, and will do things like take a picture or check the weather.

Whether it talks back to you like Siri does is another question.

It will improve though with time. S-Voice delivers answers to you just like Siri and also features a similar button layout at the bottom of the screen. You can also call it up by the phrase, “Hi Galaxy!”, although thankfully this can be changed. If I ever get my hands on one, it’ll be “Caroline” or “HAL”. Or “Otacon”, because I’m a nerd and like to nerd-freak out all my friends occasionally. Ooh, “Jarvis”, that’s an even better idea. (On a related note, download Rainmeter and apply this Jarvis skin. Feel free to stare at your desktop for hours)

Also featured is an improved version of NFC called S-Beam, which improves filesharing and speeds when using NFC. The Galaxy S III also has Smart Alert (vibrates when you pick the phone up to alert you that you’ve got a notification), Pop-Up Play (which continues playing whatever video you’re currently watching despite switching apps in a smaller, movable screen) and finally a camera app that takes photos while recording video, similar to HTC’s One X capability.

All in all, after watching the Live reveal I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, its definitely an upgrade to the S II. Hell, its even a far better option for people who would have looked at the iPhone 4s and didn’t feel like getting sucked into the vortex that iTunes creates once you put it on your system. But design-wise I’m not convinced. We’ve already had years of the old Samsung pushing copies of successful Nokias and Sony Ericsson’s to the market.

The S3 is purposely designed to avoid those bitter patent wars but it doesn’t look like the flagship people hoped for. Its just…round. It doesn’t make a bold statement aside from its monstrous size, it doesn’t make itself noticed next to a sharp piece of hardware like the Motorola Razr. Its been transported back to the time when all consumers wanted was good hardware and great battery life, something the Galaxy S III has in spades. I’m not so sure regular consumers will want to go back there again, but only time will tell how much of a hit the phone will be. I’m quite sure the NAG team at HQ will get one for review, so watch out for when that lands for what they think given more time with the phone in regular-use environments.

Source: GSM Arena

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Tom’s Hardware recently benchmarked the game and as expected, the engine scales well for users of cheaper and older graphics cards. If you’ve got an ageing HD 3870, you’re still in the green for hours and hours of pure questing bliss. They started by testing the game at minimum details. Its recommended you start off with at least 1GB of RAM, although 512MB is also acceptable if you lower your settings. Performance scales incredibly well with increased resolution, and the Geforce GTX 550 Ti should be the baseline for gamers looking for acceptable performance in Diablo III.

Moving onto maximum details, once again the GTX 550 Ti is the default baseline for gamers looking for a great experience, even with AA enabled. It looks like the game’s engine scales up according to the number of shaders present on a graphics card’s architecture. It favours neither NVIDIA nor AMD, but rather presents the kind of performance you’d expect at the price point you bought the card at. Quite simple, and I applaud Blizzard for this approach.

Now here’s where things get interesting. It seems the game is heavily GPU-biased, as there’s no discernable benefit playing it on a octocore FX-series processor as opposed to a 3.1Ghz Core i3 setup. The game requires a dual-core processor as minimum, and doesn’t even scale according to clockspeed. This is great news for those guys running an APU setup, since you’re guaranteed to get playable frame rates even on 1080p screens with high settings. AMD’s FX processors also perform well, but are all beaten by a low-end Pentium dual-core based on the Sandy Bridge architecture.

For those of you using an older Radeon graphics card from the HD 2000 or HD 3000 series, you’ll have to play the game with Catalyst 12.3 installed, lest you want to tear your hair out with multiple glitches and graphical hiccups. That the game runs at all on these old cards is a big enough feat. This game is definitely a day 1 buy, guys. Don’t miss out!

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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A "modest" DVD collection for movie buffs

So,  I heard recently that they’re cutting out DVD Play in Windows 8 and only including it as an extra purchase through the Windows Store when the OS goes golden. HTPC owners are already shaking their heads. I’m quite sure I remember how this all plays out, and its not good for Microsoft or their reputation.

See, the original plan with Vista when people were going over the Longhorn beta was to cut out DVD Playback support and rather giving buyers the option of either buying the Media Center pack for around $20 (this was back in 2006). After that, you could play DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu Ray titles all off your computer or HTPC – a ludicrous idea, really, for 2006 when the internet wasn’t as entrenched into society as it is now. Okay, I admit, you could use something like VLC, or Media Monkey or even Media Player Home Cinema to give you the codecs and support you needed to keep watching your copy of The Shawshank Redepmtion over and over again. But that cuts out a huge market of people who don’t know they can do that.

Pictured: A lot of countries that still prefer XP. First time I've seen use of the OS being highlighted as a danger.

Lets stop and consider all the people who run Windows – that’s a large number of users, easily on the other side of 1.2 billion users worldwide. That pie is split into business licenses and ones sold to the public either separately or with hardware. A larger number still of those in the public domain don’t change their default browser, or even consider other options. As of this year, Windows XP still sits at 32.9% market share, an astounding feat considering the platform is ten years old. With the jump to Vista and 7, many still left their machines at default, including their browsers and video codecs.

I know many people who are still satisfied with Internet Explorer 8. Yes, they’re an anomaly in the minds of guys like me who know better, but they’re representative of the majority of users who would be hurt moving to Windows 8. Microsoft was forced to support them when Vista was released after a long and drawn-out public outcry and calls for a boycott. HTPC enthusiasts who had a decent setup with XP Media Center Edition had a tantrum when it was announced that playback was a paid-for option. Plainly, the landscape the Microsoft envisioned for its customers just wan’t ready for a major shift away from consuming content on optical disc-based media. On the flip side of the coin, people may have been ready to make the transition to disc-less media, but Linux XMBC servers weren’t an option six years ago.

Yes, that's Obama taking notes on an iPad 2. The world is moving forward, but slowly.

Businesses who standardise on a setup for all their computers also won’t be allowing extra programs into their repertoire of random programs that the I.T. department has to support. Its not enough that people are mucking up security systems set in place by domain administrators by bringing in their iPads and Blackberries for work, but if they have to start supporting Chrome, VLC and any other program people use nilly-willy to get their job done easier or in a different way, that opens up holes in a system’s defence and only gives guys like me a headache in the long run.

If Microsoft is genuinely going to gun for cutting support and relying on third parties to make up for it if people won’t pay for the as-yet-undefined license fee, they can say goodbye to Windows 8 sales for businesses. Tablets won’t be affected for the most part, but Windows Media Center does have built-in support for playing movies from the Video_TS folder and, with the right plugin, ISO images of DVDs. Cutting out Blu Ray support for the majority of users who buy computers with Blu Ray drives won’t win you brownie points.

Its a scam, I know.

“But why,” I hear you ask; “are they doing this again?” You can thank Motorola for bringing that point forward. Miklos reported last week that sales of Windows 7 and the Xbox 360 were halted in Germany because Motorola filed an injunction, claiming that Microsoft was using a patented form of video compression which Motorola owns the rights to. Yeah, if you followed that link, Motorola really does thing that the license is worth $4 billion a year. They’re not pulling your socks, that’s what they genuinely believe is owed to them.

Going back in time, Microsoft’s reason for not supporting DVD playback in Vista was that the licenses for DVD playback are costly. They’re now moving forward with this in Windows 8, recouping the license cost through selling the Media Center capability at a fee. Apparently this works for them, since apparently many Windows users stream video already and don’t need the option anymore.

Oh hai, Microsoft. I live in South Africa. The closest I get to video streaming is Youtube. Can I watch titles off Hulu? Nope, sorry, country not supported. Crunchyroll? Maybe next decade. How about Netflix? Nope, just Chuck Testa with another failure to understand a world outside the American market by Microsoft. Honestly, its throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you want to cut out those license fees, start supporting open formats. Ogg, Matroska and FLAC are all free to implement and MKV files in particular are favoured in the video-sharing community for having a higher quality and smaller file size.

Educate your standard users by telling them there are other options, but offer the Media Player option if they prefer your solution. For businesses, you owe them support by default as your operating system is already a world standard. If you really feel like going and changing the EULA and SLA you accepted/signed with companies like Dell, HP and IBM, be my guest.

In short, I’m not supporting your money-grab. You seem to have managed just fine with over half a billion sales of Windows 7, and you can certainly keep paying up that license while the rest of the world plays catch-up. I support moving with the times, but this isn’t the way to do it. I know its a hard decision, but keep paying that license until DVDs become obsolete and keep advertising alternatives to people who don’t know about them. You may end up sending them to the Linux or Mac OSX camp, but its the nature of the beast today – pay exorbitant fees to keep up a standard for your customers or let them have a choice in the matter.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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I first heard about the R.A.T. series in February last year via a viral video showing off the R.A.T. family’s unique ability – using a set of gears neatly integrated into the mouse, you can adjust it to fit your hand and the style in which you use it, claw or grip. I was initially (and still am) gobsmacked at the asking price, but I suppose if you’ve got the kind of cash to buy this mouse, you probably won’t have an issue with anything else either. You’re looking for something to augment your gaming. 

The R.A.T. family’s signature feature is the huge room for adjusting the mouse for comfort or practicality. You get a set of different thumb and palm grips and weighted washers and a few other spare ends. You can adjust the thumb rest location, the tail end of the mouse and even how heavy it feels. One of the biggest grips people have with mouse reviews is that not everyone feels comfortable with a Razer Naga, for instance, while others will take to it like a fat kid to his favourite chocolate mousse cake.

Other notable features of the R.A.T. 7 are the thumb wheel and action button, both of which I hope to see picked up by other manufacturers. The scrollable wheel by the thumb is customisable and Maximum PC found that it was perfect for switching through weapons in fast FPS titles. Productivity-wise, it could also be configured to switch through browser tabs, run through folders or a myriad of other things which someone could program for it. Its better than having a million buttons on the left side and an LCD panel hidden under your pinky.

Lots of spare parts for you, and most importantly the choice of doing what you want with the mouse.

The action button is coloured red, and always in the same position on the adjustable thumb rest. When pressed, the mouse temporarily lowers the DPI level to around 1600, giving you more control when sniping someone hundreds of meters away and useful if you chose to have shaky hands at that same moment.

Specs wise, the R.A.T. 7 equals its more expensive wireless cousin with a 5600 DPI count, polling rates up to 1Ghz (utterly useless for most scenarios, but a welcome improvement nontheless), tracking speeds up to 6m/s, seven buttons with five being programmable, three switchable modes giving you up to 15 button combinations and interchangeable palm and pinkie grips. Its also interesting that Cyborg used a sort of matte paint for the grips, and its likely that you can take apart the R.A.T. 7, custom-paint the panels and put them back together without fuss.

Its well worth your consideration if you’re shopping around the Logitech G9 territory, and also a great buy if you’re one of those people who chop and change their styles to suit their mood every so often. If you’re one of those people, the R.A.T. 7 has something for you.

Buy it now: Jump Price comparison, Pricecheck.co.za comparison

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Standard with Android Eclair, Gingerbread and ICS is now an option for this ageing giant.

Revealed in March 2010, the Galaxy S started off Samsung’s range of “hero” mobile handsets with a bang, showing off a monster with a 4″ screen and mostly better specced than the competing Apple iPhone 4. The phone was one of the first handsets available with a 1Ghz processor, and began a mobile revolution, a race to see who could fit what into the smallest, slimmest frame.

The rear of the phone has a textured feel that absorbed fingerprints.

Today the Galaxy S still inspires other manufacturers to equal its popularity, with Motorola designing the Razr and Razr Maxx a year later. The Galaxy was surpassed by the dual-core race and replaced by the S2, its bigger brother. However, its still worth a look at today as a entry-level option for those who wish to experience Android to the fullest extent. With the Galaxy S3 now open for a launch at the end of May (I’ll be looking at it on Monday), prices for the Galaxy S may drop right through the floor.

The phone ships standard with a 4″ Super AMOLED touch screen with 800 x 480 resolution, a 1Ghz Cortex A8 processor and a 5MP camera capable of 720p video capture, all running off the (then-latest) Android Eclair 2.1 platform. Later platform updates and third-party hacks allowed the phone to capture 1080p video, but the frame loss in certain scenes didn’t make it a viable option. The phone can be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich through the use of third-party custom ROMs like Cayanogenmod.

The handset had full 3G support with tri-band support, Wi-Fi b/g/n, a built-in GPS with A-GPS support along with a digital compass, handy for navigating the streets by hand. GPS support was originally handled by Samsung’s proprietary Route 66 navigation software which required a license to be purchased. After rooting the phone and removing the software, you were free to load the much better Google Maps, along with 3D support.

The phone also ran off a 1500mAh battery, included Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA support (added in a later update), free document editing with Swype pre-loaded and full Adobe Flash support which was added in a later update.

Its worth mentioning the drawbacks with the phone though, even though its only two years old. The rear camera didn’t have a flash, and this wasn’t even fixed with the Galaxy S-Plus, an update to the handset with a faster processor and bigger battery. If you’re taking photos, you’ll need a lot of light. Loudspeaker performance wasn’t always up to scratch, and quite a few early adopters complained of poor chassis construction, although this wasn’t indicative of the majority of buyers. All in all, though, Samsung managed to hold things quite well together.

These days the Galaxy family is the first line people are introduced to when they’re asking about Android phones. From the Y Pro Duos to the Ace 2 to the flagship, the S3, there’s something for everyone. There may be competitors that are just as good, or even better but its a sign of how far Samsung has turned things around for themselves in the consumer electronics market. They’ve concentrated on serving good products and capturing mind share and they’ve succeeded to a large extent. Thanks to the launch of the Galaxy, Samsung has entrenched itself in the Android market and for that honour, the Galasy S gets to be today’s Oldie But Goodie.

Source:  GSM Arena

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Still trapped in the box, and you can still kill him with your mind. No really, I'm not kidding.

 For those of you not familiar with the theory of quantum computers, I’ll start with the oft-mentioned experiement known to physicists as Schrodinger’s Cat (also the most annoying one). Erwin Schrodinger theorised in 1935 a basic experiment that would solve the problem poised by contemporary theories of quantum mechanics in his era. Imagine you’ve gone and stuck a cat inside a sealed box (that poor cat!) along with a vial of deadly, lethal gas. That gas could, at any moment, become inert and completely harmless to the animal, or it could also be in its lethal state, ready to kill. Lets say that vial breaks when the cat’s tail brushes against it and knocks it over while inside the box.

Pictured: Erwin Schrodinger. He doesn't like cats.

Okay, so you might now have a dead cat. It could have exploded from the inside out, spilling guts and gore everywhere. That furry feline has gone to Jesus, and you’re left with the remains of a cruel experiment!… Or the gas could have been inert, and the cat lives on. Which is it?

Quantum states allow the cat to be alive and dead at the same time, and without knowing the fat feline’s true fate we can only assume both possibilities are true. This is the basic, school-boy version of quantum mechanics as best can be described without pulling in some very advanced mathematics, LSD and some very smart people into the same room. Why did Erwin come up with the idea? Contemporary theories only tried to quantify the fate of the cat after a certain period of time. Erwin’s theory required that the cats fate be ambiguous immediately once it entered the box and the box was sealed off.

Its a perplexing thought for some. Trying to quantify which fate the cat has is quite difficult without opening the box. Once you do, the state of the cat is quantified and one of the possibilities are true. While death is extremely probable, the cat still has a chance of survival, even though its statistically a lower one because we’ve seen what lethal gases can do. It still has a chance of revenge. 

A quantum computer doesn’t actually kill any cats. It uses the states of molecules called quibits to perform analysis on a data set that needs to be analysed. There are computers based on traditional binary mathematics that use non-deterministic and probability theories to do the same thing, but a quantum computer reaches the finish line far quicker than both.

You know that old fact that you can’t divide by zero? Well, you can’t do that on a normal binary computer. A traditional computing model can’t actually figure out the answer because dividing by zero actually gives you two things – zero, which is a real number, and nothing, which is actually quantifiable using special relativity theory. Which one you land up with is an easy answer for us: you get both states. But binary information can’t exist as both 0 and 1 at the same time. Its the best kind of paradox you could ever give to an artificially-intelligent train that knows tons and tons of riddles and wants to commit mass suicide with you.

A typical scientist. A real one.

But I’m going off-track here (and so did the train) and we need to get back to the breakthrough researchers made this week. Quantum computers use molecules called quibits to generate data and feed that data off into an answer to our calculation that we’ve given to the computer. A quibit is the quantum manifestation of an atom with electrons around it and the computer is composed of dozens of these quibits in order to reach the answer scientists seek in the most reliable fashion. With quibits, scientists had the problem of reading the states of those surrounding electrons without very quickly losing that information. Quibits have the same problem as the cat in that we can’t quantify its state without opening the lid and looking inside.

If you read your science texbook properly, electrons lose their energy states very quickly. You’d have to keep them constantly charged with electricity (thus, information) in order to not lose their information and thus complete the quantum calculation. Previously a few clever white coats who may or may not have perfectly trimmed beards and carried crowbars around threw some nuclei into the mix. Nuclei are extremely slow compared to electrons, but can preserve energy states for far longer.

The nuclei absorb the same energy states of the electrons, allowing us to reach the end of the calculation without bothering the quantum state of the charged electrons. Up until now, quantum computers operated using an Unprotected quantum gate – with a direct link to the environment, it would be the equivalent of having a window in the box the cat died in open for all to see during the experiement. Trying to complete the quantum calculation would be impossible when reading the electron’s state, causing information loss.

Previous decoupling attempts resulted in information loss

But last week in their labs, the U.S. Department of Energy had a breakthrough in their Ames laboratory. Using electrons and nuclei together, they were able to take the environmental factor out of the equation and preserve the quantum state of the molecules, enabling the calculations to take place with more precision than previously capable. This was a major stumbling block in the past for adoption of quantum computing into the modern idea of the computer.

Previously it was demonstrated how quantum teleportation and coupling could allow for super-fast transfer of information between hardware over varying distances, eliminating the lag introduced using electrical circuits. With the decoupling of quibits without a loss of information, quantum mechanics and science can now team up and use the tech for the next generation of solid-state devices designed for enterprise and home usage. Only time will tell when the tech reaches us or our walk-in hardware stores, but for the moment its an interesting branch of science and definitely warrants some late-night Wikipedia browsing.

Source: Tom’s Hardware, Wikipedia

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Of course, there’s a lot of debate on whether Valve’s approach to business is the best way for the company. Lots of people think it’s be like a marathon run of Survivor, but the company has yet to fire anyone for making a mistake.  Not having bosses or managers might be a bad thing in many companies and corporate environments because things won’t work that way, but for Valve it brings out the best in the people they hire, and it clearly works for them.

Read on to see how they manage it in the Valve Handbook for New Employees. One of the things I’ve taken from it is the moving desks idea – I am totally having that in my office one day.

Also worth a read is a write-up on the design process and behind-the-scenes work done by the company during development of Half-Life. Ken Birdwell was a designer on the Half-Life team, and gives an interesting perspective on game design within the company and how things work for them there, when it would fall apart everywhere else.

Source: Kotaku

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Pictured: Another wolf in a bland outfit

I have to admit, smartphones of late have been boring. Only after we saw new designs at MWC from the likes of Huawei, HTC and Sony do I have some renewed hope that people will start experimenting again with touch screen devices, choosing to add some form into the bland slates that stare back out the windows of phone shops these days. While the Xolo looks more or less like a generic Android handset, what it represents is something different.

The Xolo ships with Intel’s Atom Z2460, a single core with Hyper-threading at stock speeds of 1.6Ghz (yes, being an Atom-based design, you can overclock it, too). Graphics are courtesy of a Power VR GPU running at 400Mhz. It sports a 4″ LED-backlit LCD screen with 1024 x 600 resolution which we’ve seen in netbooks for years. Also standard is a 8MP camera at the rear with LED flash, 1MP at the front and ships with Android Gingerbread. yes, there’s no Ice Cream Sandwich, but Intel promises an update in the future.

Everyone and their moms are going on about how this is only another hardware choice and bla bla bla. Clearly no-one sees how Google’s stock standard Nexus handsets are the ones being picked up by enthusiasts who prefer a phone that always receives updates first before other manufacturers and always ships with the naked, un-skinned version of Android, perfect for customising everything the way you want it.

We’ll never see the Xolo on our shores but we might see a Medfield-based phone in the form of the Lenovo K800 landing here sometime this year. Pricing and specs of the handset aren’t finalised, but its going to be very similar to the Xolo I’ve shown you here.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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As for what I think they’re doing to the Galaxy III, here’s how I think it’ll pan out:

“Where a galaxy fits perfectly into your hand” – We’ve seen curved glass and even curved phones from other manufacturers in the last few years. I’m going on a limb here and going to bet that the Galaxy S III will feature curved edges and sides, allowing for one-handed use even though the phone will be large.

“Your view of the world grows ever wider”  - In spy shots we’ve already seen that the successor will sport a much larger screen, similar in size to the Galaxy Note but small enough to still pocket comfortably – 4.7 inches diagonally. It will be a 720p screen, but this leaked video shows a resolution of 1184 x 720p. It might not be the final screen in the test hardware, but the strange resolution certainly points to a special LCD unit.

“As you gain power to explore it freely and swiftly” - In benchmarks which just popped up this morning, the S III breezes past the iPhone 4s and Galaxy II and rules the roost with only the iPad 3 to worry about. Other sites that have leaked benchmarks point to a dual-GPU configuration with a quad-core processor that could be running at 1.4Ghz. RAM’s not certain, but it should be set at 2GB for these high-class devices.

Set your calendars for the third of May, its going to be interesting!

Source: GSM Arena

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On November 2nd last year, a Valve employee tweeted that he was working with a ITX-based PC consisting of a Intel quad-core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, a ZOTAC Z68 ITX board with an onboard Nvida graphics card. Yes, that’s exactly the same specification for Dell’s Alienware X51 mini-desktop, if you’re wondering. So, the hardware is there.

But who made that tweet? Greg Coomer, Valve designer. Greg’s in charge of product design and was the guy who came up with the name for the company. He’s been there since the beginning, and is pretty much second-in-command     at Valve. He developed software products for Microsoft and user interfaces for Nintendo before working at Valve, and even was even leader on the first game that Valve ever developed (and subsequently cancelled). But nevermind that, its his background and position that you have to pay attention to.

Greg is a user interface designer and is in charge of product design. If anything hardware or software-related to Valve pops up, it goes through his office first. You have Greg to thank for the initial design of Steam, Valve’s online store and game update and authentication service and also for the Razer Hydra motion controller that Valve helped design and improve. In fact, the Hydra is only compatible with Steam-enabled games as of this writing and is one of the few hardware items ever to be produced or co-produced by the company.

The Razer Hydra: a motion controller compatible with a few Steam games so far.

Judging by the photo, Valve may be working on a console-like set-to box for gamers to enjoy their service. It makes all the sense in the world, really, coming off the enormous appeal, popularity and success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Today its all about the platform, not the hardware and Valve recognises this as much as any company. Gabe Newell himself says that Valve runs as a service-based company, not one that sells and markets products. Like Amazon, Valve’s job is delivering content to consumers.

And recently there was also much ado about the job posting Valve put up on their website for a Hardware designer/Electronic Engineer. Yes, that’s right, someone who can build, design and conceptualise hardware for them to work with. While I don’t think it’ll be anything radical, at the most it should be something like the X51, branded by Valve and ships standard with Windows 7 and a custom Steam interface that takes control of the whole system. And why should we stop there?

The rumoured controller in a recent Valve patent.

More pictures have popped up online showing a controller design that Valve may already be working on. Its actually in a patent pending to the company that shows a possible interchangeable design that would allow you to switch controls and other things to suit the game you’re playing. It looks like an Xbox controller, yes, but thats to be expected – Valve can tell, through their Steam survey, just how many gamers play their games with controllers. Or how many have a similar standard configuration that allows them to play all the games at their medium-to-high settings. They can easily put together a console-like box, sell it for the same price as a medium-spec gaming computer, and be swimming in money in no time.

Its the truth; people love convenience. Why do you think Walmart coins it so big? It simply out-prices or buys out its competitors, puts everything in a single store which is easy to locate, and watches you waddle in and spend all your cash there. Amazon’s Kindle Fire now allows access to ALL the content they provide including movies, books, music, games and so much more. The question isn’t why Valve would enter into the market with a specialised hardware device for their Steam service.

The question should be: why not? And they don’t have to stop there. The Steam service already allows for demos and trailers to be downloaded. Why not offer game soundtracks? Movies? Comic books relating to games, the universe they allow gamers to explore, or simply those already published by Marvel and DC Comics? The comic publishers already complain that less people read their stuff and buy it – this is the perfect way to get around that. Amazon already reports that more people are purchasing from their service thanks to the Fire  than ever before. If Valve wants to keep their #1 spot in the hearts and minds of gamers around the world, they’ll have to innovate.

I think we can all agree that they’re better, miles and away, than Origin or Windows Live. They’ve got the right minds behind it, and a huge, absolutely massive fan base. And they have something no other company has: rights to produce, distribute and sell what will be the biggest-selling video game in history: Half-Life 3.

Source: Tom’s Hardware, Kotaku

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The front panel has a set of alternating LED lights and multiple layers of clear and painted acrylic to capture the light further and make the case glow more. Many parts of the chassis were cut out and white acrylic inserts were glued in to make the white panels you see on the Corellian Corvette Defender-class gunship, which the design is inspired by. LED mods were made to the fans and lights to create a white-blue hue reminescent to the afterburner trails you see on many spaceships in the Star Wars universe.

What makes this build such an achievement? All of the red and white mini-panels were painstakingly glued together to create the bulkhead on the top of the chassis that is meant to resemble the cockpit of the Defender gunship. More LEDs were placed in the top of the chassis inside the cockpit and can be controlled through software.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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A dinosaur now, but a force to be reckoned with back in the day.

Since then, even with Nvidia’s G80 family taking over once again (and the 8800GT still widely in use today in older machines), AMD/ATi competed on the basis of a better price/performance margin and offered more to consumers who had less cash to spend. Sure, that didn’t stop them from charging top-dollar for cards such as the HD4870x2, but that’s because they simply could. Those of you who still own these cards are going to be chopped out of future driver support, though.

AMD is going to discontinue official driver support for these ageing titans and will completely drop support for the HD4000 series as well, even though they do well enough for modern titles. Starting with Catalyst 12.6, driver support by AMD will only be for graphics cards set over three generations. The company usually only releases a new family each year, so by the time your graphics card is three years old you should be looking at a replacement already, warranty notwithstanding.

However, there will still be legacy support in the form of a special driver package that Windows and Mac users will be able to download that includes driver improvements and bug fixes that have been implemented due to requirements by enterprises who still use the cards daily. Linux users will be out of luck and they’ll have to use open-source options to keep their rigs up to date from now on.

Source: Phoronix

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The header is located above the front panel pins.

Thunderbolt wins over DVI and HDMI as the connection standard has a near-direct line to the processor and is very handy in systems that need one port to do everything. Thunderbolt can be used as an alternative to DisplayPort and in fact is actually backwards compatible with the DP standard connector. Thunderbolt has four PCI-Express lanes dedicated to it and is capable of 10Gb/s bi-directional communication.

Like DisplayPort, it can run up to six monitors off one daisy-chained cable and can even power them at the same time in upcoming revisiosn to the standard. It uses the same drivers as DisplayPort and can be embedded into most PCB designs that use DispayPort without much hassle. For those of you interested in multi-monitor setups, Thunderbolt support is certainly something you can look for in future.

Those of you interested in buying a new Z77 or H77 board for your build in time for the launch of Intel’s Ivy Bridge, have a good look at ASUS’ lineup: Maximus V Gene, P8Z77-V Deluxe, P8Z77-V Pro, P8Z77-V, Sabertooth Z77, P8H77-V, and P8H77-M Pro. For those of you interested in adding in Thunderbolt support to your existing setup, Intel should be releasing a PCI add-in card on the 27th of this month.

Source: TechpowerUp!

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Pictured: A trap!

The press the invite is garnering is astounding – within hours #GalaxyS3 was a trending topic on twitter and many sites wrote up stuff about their expectations and whatnot. Spy shots have only surfaced this week and gives us a very rough idea of what Samsung is planning.

Now on the outset, it looks like a slightly redesigned Galaxy SII – and that’s because this is only a disguise. Samsung sent out engineering prototypes to cellular carriers around the world for testing and feedback and this is an example of the kind of prototype Galaxy networks have been using for the past three months. In fact, no network gets the same one – other spy shots in the past few months have been vastly different, but this one is closer to what i expect the real phone to look like.

According to the source that leaked the shots, the model number on the back is GT-I9300 which is logically the next one for the Galaxy flagship. Its thinner than the S II, and sports a larger 4.7″ LCD display which could be capable of 1080p resolution. Nothing has been revealed about the hardware inside, but we can be sure its a quad-core Tegra setup in order to keep up with the likes of the Huawei Dragon platform and HTC’s One X, which is already enjoying healthy sales all around the world.

But for those interested in what kind of improvements we can expect, look at the back of the phone. Yes, its a 12MP camera just like the Nokia N8 surrounded by both Xenon flash and a LED unit at the bottom. Its going to be a tough competitor alright, and may even gun straight for the iPhone 4S, currently hailed as the best all-round handset on the market today.

Whatever we could speculate here, all will be revealed on May the third, and I’ll be sure to bring that straight to you readers, here on NAG Online’s Tech section. Keep your eyes peeled.

Update: BGR has a few more high-definition photos of the prototype phone for you to peruse. 

Source: GSM Arena

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But rather unlike Nvidia, the picture hints that there’s only going to be one card revealed. What could it be? Speculation is rife on every social network that it could be the dual-GPU GTX690, but I’m inclined to think a little differently – I think its going to be the GTX670.

“But wait, that makes no sense,” I hear you say. “The GTX690 must come now to kick some ass!” But you’re forgetting that the GTX680 already holds the single-GPU performance crown and can leapfrog the HD7970 and tag along with the bigger boys. Even AMD’s HD6990 is going to have a little trouble selling the last of the stock as the GTX680 comes within inches of siding along that card as well. No, the GTX670 is coming, and here’s why.

Remember the Radeon HD7950? It’s functionally equivalent to the HD7970, albiet with lower clock speeds and an artificual limit to how high it can overclock, enabling AMD to sell cores that didn’t make the cut for the HD7970 as the smaller companion to their flagship. If you buy an HD7950 and overclock it, you’ll end up toe-to-toe with the flagship and you’ll have saved a bunch of money.

Kepler-based cores that couldn’t make the fit for the GTX680 for whatever reason will appear, fully functional and identical to the flagship, in the GTX670 with slower clock speeds in order to compete against the HD7950, a major threat to GTX580 sales since it launched. And there’s even better news as well – two GTX670s in SLI will likely show you what performance you can expect from the GTX690.

Hold onto your hats anyway, this is going to be a fanboy war of note.

Source: Nvidia Geforce Facebook page

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Nvidia GTX680 Analysis: Part One

For those of you who don’t know, Letexo is the codename for Intel’s all-in-one sliding Ultrabook. Slide the screen all the way up and it becomes a notebook; slide it half-way down and it becomes an all-in-one PC. Put the screen completely flat, and you have a tablet ready for work. It is a good idea, and one of the many concepts that Intel’s IDF showed that may provoke other manufacturers to look into the same kind of thing.

Intel: smothering you with options.

Its worth noting that many of the things you’ll see in the video are concepts, except for the Android smartphones. Intel’s Atom is going inside Android ICS 4.0 handsets and has been available in one or two models for a while now. Acer notably ships one already and Intel is expected to ship its own handset, the XOLO (which I’ll be looking at tomorrow).

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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Update: Tom’s Hardware has also just revealed that Letexo will probably cost around $1000, which incidentally is Intel’s self-imposed limit for the price of Ultrabooks. Its not known when the hybrid Ultrabook will hit stores, but it should coincide with the release of Windows 8 later this year.

The notebook ships standard with a 18.4″ LED-backlit LCD monitor capable of 1080p visuals, 2MB webcam, colour-configurable backlit keyboard and comes in your choice of red or black. Hardware-wise the options start from Intel’s Ivy Bridge-based Core i7 3610QM featuring four cores at 2.3Ghz all the way to the i7 3820QM at 2.7Ghz.

Storage options start from a 500GB hard drive and top out at 512Gb for a Micron C400 SSD. The previous M18X had a spare slot for a second drive and you could RAID two 512GB drives if you have deep enough pockets. Memory starts at 4GB and will go up to 8GB which is great news for power users who keep lots of Chrome tabs open. Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate are available for the default OS.

Finally the graphics muscle is provided by both AMD and Nvidia  in various configurations. On the Nvidia side the GT660M will be offered, as well as two GTX675s in SLI. AMD-wise, the Radeon HD7970M doubles up in Crossfire for extreme gaming performance in a portable powerhouse.

Sadly no mention is made of USB 3.0 support or any inclusion of a Thunderbolt port. Dell’s M18X-R2 should go on sale after Intel’s official launch of Ivy Bridge, but rumors only start at an early Q4 release this year. Interestingly, though, the notebook does come with the option for Intel’s Wireless HD card, which is used for streaming content wirelessly to a WiHD-capable TV.

The price? Expect it to be very expensive.  As with most Alienware products, I could easily use the money to fix my car, much less buy a gaming laptop.

Source: Dell-Lab

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If you’re into Ultrabooks, ASUS has released the first of their budget line of Ultrabooks with AMD processors, starting with the U23U-ES21. The ES21 features a 13.3″ LED-backlit LCD display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The thin-and-light notebook is powered by AMD’s E-450 dual-core APU processor running at 1.6Ghz and featuring built-in Radeon HD6320 graphics.

The notebook is one inch thick and has an aluminium lid. It ships standard with 4G of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, a built-in VGA webcam, speakers by Altec Lansing, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, a card reader, HDMI-out and an 8-cell battery capable of up to ten hour’s battery life. You can buy the notebook now for $499.99 on Amazon, but no mention has been made on availability here in local shops.

BIOSTAR reveals their TZ75B motherboard

BIOSTAR joins the fray to update their lineup before the release of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor family this month. The TZ75B motherboard is the first in their lineup with the Z75 chipset and features a lot of enthusiast-orientated features that gamers and overclockers are sure to appreciate. The board has a black PCB with red and white-coloured DIMM and PCI slots. The board additionally has native USB 3.0 support with a front-panel header located above the red PCI-Express 3.0 slot.

The four DIMM slots support up to 32GB of RAM and speeds of up to 2133Mhz through overclocking. There are two PCI-Express 1.0 ports, two PCI slots and two PCI-Express 16x 3.0 slot for graphics cards. There are additionally six SATA ports, two of which are 6Gb/s compatible, and all support RAID arrays in various configurations. There’s Gigabit LAN by default, six USB slots on the back panel, HDMI, VGA and DVI-out, and support for Crossfire graphics. The board also comes with a UEFI BIOS which can be updated from within the BIOS and also comes with overclocking and tuning software that can be used from within Windows.

HTPC enthusiasts should take note as BIOSTAR’s boards now have a new feature as standard called BIO-Remote2, which allows you to control the computer using an Android or iOS device through a client on your phone that connects to the internet.

New Keyboard for the iPad3 from Logitech

Logitech makes a lot of good tablet accessories, and today announced a revised keyboard for the Apple iPad family. The keyboard comes built into a screen protector for the tablet and attaches via small magnets to keep it tied to your iPad.

The keyboard rests upon a thin aluminium tray and pairs to the iPad using Bluetooth. Unlike other covers, the Logitech one isn’t adjustable but has been optimally designed for work and play. The add-on also works as a smart cover – unfold the keyboard tray and the iPad wakes from sleep mode. Once you close the tray, the keyboard puts the iPad back into sleep mode, conserving battery life. The keys sport a piano black glossy finish (perfect for fingerprints) and also include function and navigation keys for convenience. The attachment is expected to launch on European shores at the end of April with a suggested retail price of $99.99

Canon showing off a 4k display at NAB 2012

Does anyone remember when I mentioned that the new H.265 standard supports resolutions up to Digital Cinema-4K? Well Canon seems to be following Ezio’s trend by showing off a 30″ 4K display to be used in consumer electronics at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) tradeshow. Ultra High-resolution displays have been popping up at every booth at NAB and it looks like the industry wants to finally move away and up from 1080p which has dominated the TV and digital home cinema standard for nearly six years.

Canon’s display is meant for content creation and is slated for availability at the end of this year to professional videographers and film producers for use in film production and editing. Canon’s method of delivering 4K resolutions to the display are thought to be proprietary and won’t be seen in consumer electronics in your local Makro store anytime soon. Not surprising really, considering you could buy a decent car for the same price as Ezio’s 4K computer monitor.

Cooler Master updates its Extreme Power series

Cooler Master recently announced updates to its Extreme Power series, a budget line of PSUs for gamers and desktop users that want both performance and reliability at a cheap price. The updated lineup still features dual 12v rails with OCP and other power protections built-in. The series has updated Japanese capacitors rated to work up to temperatures of up to 105 degrees Celsius and all come standard with a three year warranty. Availability should be towards the end of April and the series spans various power requirements from 475 watts all the way up to 725watts for gaming rigs with multi-GPU setups.

The red version will go on sale this quarter for approximately £249 (approximately R3100). While there has been no word on what our local packaging will include, Amazon’s box set from Sony contains the console decked out in matte red, with two matching controllers and a 320GB hard drive as standard. UK customers should get the console in the beginning of May and that means we’ll be up for it around a month or so after that.

And I have to add: it looks sexy!

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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 As part of their “Gaming Evolved” initiative, the company announced that they’ll be packaging three games with the purchase of a new Radeon HD7900, 7800 or 7700-series graphics card. Teaming up with THQ and Codemasters, the company will be bundling Deus Ex: Human Revolution, DiRT: Showdown and Nexiuz as free downloads with each card. Deus Ex also comes with The Missing Link, a DLC expansion for the game which fills in a gap in Human Revolution’s story, detailing what happened to Adam Jensen on his journey from Heng Sha to Singapore.

In addition, the recommended retail price for the cards also drops down quite healthily. The Radeon HD7970 drops from $539 to $479 which undercuts even the cheapest GTX680 available. The HD7950, the gamer’s favourite, drops from $450 to $400 RRP. Seeing as the HD7950 is essentially an underclocked HD7970, this card offers great value to games and overclockers.

Going lower, the HD7800 family remains unchanged in pricing, as there are no Nvidia cards in that price range able to compete with the benefits brought to consumers by AMD’s GCN architecture. However the HD7770 does drop from $150 to $139 and is a sure fit for gamers who don’t have a lot of cash to drop but need good performance at 1080p and lower resolutions.

While these price changes may not reflect on our shore as yet, in the coming weeks we can expect to see some great deals in stores and with three free games to boot it might change mind share back to AMD’s Radeon lineup once more.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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The first group to receive boosts will be DSL 384KB/s users who’ve been stuck with the same speeds for nearly seven years and will be upgraded to 1Mb/s. Ideally all 384 users should be within 2km from their nearest exchange to receive full benefit and will be able to download at speeds which peak at 114KB/s. One megabyte of data should finish in under 11 seconds and it will be ideal for users who need to keep in touch with Skype, social networks and online gaming. Users currently pay R159 for access to the lowest-cost broadband that Telkom offers, and should really give a big boost to the value-for-money that Telkom so desperately needs to provide.

Next are the guys who signed up for Telkom’s 1Mb/s service. They should be bumped up to 2Mb/s by the end of July and will enjoy download speeds of up to 256KB/s. With the new speeds, downloading 1GB worth of Steam updates should now only take 66 minutes. With double the speed, the line can support simultaneous use of Skype, VOIP, online gaming and browsing for a small to medium-size family or business and should be the baseline option for gamers and heavy downloaders.

In fact, this week MWEB announced price cuts to their 1Mb/s services and higher, effectively pricing it the same as their 384 Uncapped offering that they previously had. Other ISPs are also readying themselves for some kind of change, and this might actually happen if all goes according to plan.

As always, though, take this with a pinch of salt. Unless your area has been recently upgraded with Fiber to the curb (FTTC) by Telkom and if you’ve noticed your line becoming faster and more stable in recent months, you probably won’t get the full advertised speed. Even if the upgrades do happen, it’ll probably take around a year for them to finalise the increase in all areas. Those of you connected to exchanges that are already running at full capacity may have to wait while Telkom upgrades your area first.

Finally, for those on 4Mb/s, you can look forward to higher speeds up to 10Mb/s as exchanges around the country are upgraded thanks to Telkom’s confirmed network revamp, and those of you in trial areas for VDSL and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) connections may be up for testing at speeds up to 1Gb/s. Telkom expects to have a Fiber network commercially available to all consumers by 2015, with minimum broadband speeds of 2Mb/s in all areas.

Source: MyBroadband

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For starters, there’ll still be 32 and 64-bit editions for sale, though you can still use a 32-bit key for a 64-bit install just like Windows 7. Microsoft’s third version which won’t be available is a customised version for the ARM platform which will only ship on tablets that feature the hardware. We may also see mini set-top boxes with the OS and ARM hardware in the same vein as the Apple Mac Mini and those adorable little Intel Atom mini-desktops, so Microsoft will be looking to cover all the possible bases where peeps like me and you can spend our money.

I expect the ARM version to be downloadable, but a pain for techies like me who have to eventually fix those installs. The way the OS runs on ARM is very different to traditional x86 software, and may require different approaches to things like boot loaders and OS fixes for hardware issues. But forgetting that for the moment, there’ll be two versions we can buy: Windows 8, and Windows 8 Pro. The ARM version will be called Windows RT

The standard version is equivalent to what we’ve been getting from Home Premium, and will be the default baseline for most computers and tablets you will find in stores. The Pro version is equivalent to Windows 7 Ultimate, rolling up all the features from Enterprise and home versions into one. Yes, there will be an Enterprise version as well, but that will be vastly different from Pro. For one, that version will launch with special tools for network admins that will ”enable PC management and deployment, advanced security, virtualization, new mobility scenarios, and much more.” Many businesses that I helped didn’t see the sense in using Enterprise and instead bought multiple license keys for Ultimate, so this might persuade them to stick to volume licensing for multiple computers.

In addition, there will be a Starter version available locally, as we’re one of Microsoft’s targeted “emerging countries”, although I’d hesitate to recommend that version to anyone short of those who’ll run it on a netbook. While Windows 7 Starter is moderately functional, netbook users might be better served by using a Linux variant that supports their hardware properly, as the limitations that  Starter imposed were frustrating to the point of madness. While Brandon mentions that all the editions will offer a no-compromise experience, Starter might very well be the opposite of that ideal.

What’s really interesting is what kind of features are chucked out for which version. In the blog post, its noted that Windows RT will come by default with Microsoft Office and device encryption (not Bitlocker, as previously thought) and strangely enough, a lack of Windows Media Player. Only the Pro version will support Remote desktop sessions, which means that users like me will have to use Teamviewer for logging in remotely to my work computer if I’m away somewhere. For more feature lists, you can hop over to the original blog post here and catch up on all the details.

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Okay, so here we hit the big time. The guys or girls with the kind of bankroll we’re looking at here don’t really mind spending tons of cash for extra performance. Users in this segment aren’t interested in wasting time and they will go to lengths to achieve the kind of performance they want from their rigs – so the list of people interested in these parts are enthusiasts, overclockers and Lotto winners (or the dedicated few who save up for months to get it all on their own steam. To those guys, I salute you).

Whatever workload you’re looking at, both rigs in these price points can chew through anything you throw at them with gusto. Programming, video compilation, 4k resolution photos and gaming on 30″ screens is easily processed by these beasts, and they are capable of many more things. But there are caveats here that I think need pointing out. More to the point, its getting very tricky to balance things all the way up here.

I mentioned earlier when making recommendations for the R10,500 build that it gets hard to distinguish where your money is being well spent on things that actually improve performance and complement your machine, or whether you’re just spending for the sake of filling up your budget. For example, thanks to Nvidia’s GTX680 and AMD’s Radeon HD7970, its sheer lunacy to be buying anything more expensive than these two cards unless you’re getting two cards and running SLI or Crossfire. Once the GTX690 and HD7990 land, maybe we can rethink that idea. Likewise, Neo recently mused that using processors with larger cache sizes doesn’t help if you’re going bigger then 7MB of L3 cache – performance actually drops soon above that limit.

So here you’re going to be seeing the highest price points where the price of what you’re buying is still a factor. If there’s change for a Blu-Ray drive maybe I’ll add it in. I’m not going to slot in useless items because we’re still working to be within budget here. Only items that gain me extra performance will be considered, and no expense will be spared where its worth it. Neo might put together a dream machine that we can only dream of owning, but I’ll show you stuff us more down to earth people can afford. On to the builds!

R12,000

Intel Core i7-2700K @ R2994 (AMD FX-8150 @ R2874)

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H @ R1756 (ASUS M5A99X EVO @ R1796)

Kingston Hyper-X DDR3-1866 4GB x2 @ R690

Gigabyte HD7850 2GB DDR5 @ R2668 (No Nvidia equivalent)

OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R905

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB @ R1161

LITE-ON iHAS524 @ R167

Corsair Carbide Series 400R @ R817

Corsair TX650M @ R1197

Total: R12,361

So here, a couple of things were changed to make room for future upgrades and things like that. I moved up to Intel’s i7 2700K as the unlocked multiplier, higher cache count and extra four threads make for a worth upgrade to the i5 2500K. I only moved up the ladder slightly for the motherboards as I needed to future-proof things a bit, starting with extra SATA ports and USB3.0 front panel headers. I stuck with a lot of things from the previous R10,500 build as the HD7850 is essentially an underclocked HD7870 – there’s no need to change it yet. I used higher clocked memory that’s normally recommended for AMD builds, but it will help where bandwidth benchmarks are concerned and for overclockers who want to fiddle a bit more with their memory timings. I also deviated with the Corsair TX650M which is a modular power supply, and will be able to comfortably run two cards in SLI or Crossfire while also supporting the load of a highly overclocked processor.

Some will note that the water cooler I used in the R10,500 build is gone. Stock cooling is enough for decent overclocks at this point, but for those of you who remain anxious about it, I recommend you pick up the Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo for around two hundred bucks.

R16,000

Intel Core i7-3930K @ R5472

GIGABYTE X79A-UD3 @ R2575

GEIL Evo Corsa DDR3-2133 8GB @ R587

Gigabyte HD7850 2GB DDR5 @ R2668

OCZ Petrol 128GB @ R1425

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB @ R1161

LITE-ON iHAS524 @ R167

Corsair Carbide Series 500R @ R1125

Corsair TX650M @ R1197

Total: R16,377

So here we have something a little different. I must admit that in haste I forgot to look at RAM kits starting in 4x2GB bundles – the GEIL Corsa set I’ve listed here is much faster than anything I’ve recommended so far but suffers the curse of having huge heatsinks. Some aftermarket coolers won’t fit here, but the tradeoff is higher room for overclocking. Speaking of which, this rig starts off with a LGA2011 Core i7-3930K which was recently reviewed by Neo in this month’s issue of NAG. While blindingly fast, LGA2011 and X79 is still in enthusiast territory and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Sure, you can get the processors without the K moniker at the end, but what would be the point in that? You’d be better off with a Core i7 2700K at that point.

Speaking of which, I had another dilemma here. While its good that the entry cost of X79 and LGA2011 isn’t as stratospherically high as X58 was at launch, it does bring more caveats here. I had to compromise on graphical performance to even make it in, something I wouldn’t normally recommend if I wasn’t interested in future-proofing my rig. For gamers I would rather suggest dropping to the Gigabyte Z77X board I listed above and pair it with an i7 2700K. Drop the GEIL RAM to this DDR3-1600 8GB set, stick with everything else and raise the HD7850 to a Gigabyte GTX680. You’ll be just over budget, but with superior graphics performance as a result. I do hear AMD fans asking about their options but I’m sorry to have to tell you this: if you’ve got this kind of money, switch to Intel. Honestly, you’ll be better off.

But why did you go to X79 in the first place, I hear you ask? Its a valid question but again its all got to do with future proofing. X79 will be the enthusiast platform for at least the next two years, will support Ivy Bridge processors and possibly other processor families after that as well. The quad-channel memory allows up to 32GB of RAM in most X79 boards, with more expensive ones supporting up to 64GB. Sadly while most boards do have PCI Express 3.0 support, none of them support quad-SLI or quad-Crossfire with four physical cards. That will be remedied soon enough, but for now its not a train smash.

Additionally, there are still tons of guys and girls the world over who still run X58 boards with Core i7 920 processors, and they’re still happier than ever. Three years on the i7 920 is still the baseline for enthusiast performance in a high-end rig, and you can be sure that X79 will end up the same even at the end of its shelf life.

Of course, the program is only limited to people based in the United States. If anyone’s been using the consumer preview recently, you’ll have noticed that all services that you can access on the Consumer Preview, including the weather widget, are only functioning if you’re in the land of the free. Of course, that means Maps also won’t work anywhere else in the world, and users who have valid complaints for the software working outside the US won’t be able to voice their opinions.

Of course, many people would just start complaining about the lack of the Start Button since its inclusion in Windows 95 all the way to Windows 7, but Microsoft’s looking for other things, deeper aspects to the OS they their design team couldn’t think up and that may help the OS to be more popular. We can look forward to some improvements to Metro and the way Microsoft introduces the new user interface to their customers, and its expected that many journalists from the likes of Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech will be putting in their two cents if they’re accepted into the program.

As for the program itself, its actually a random draw. No really, Microsoft will choose winners for the program from a pool of entrees and will use the opinions of the people who get to participate in their design and programming choices for Windows 8. So that means you may land up with average Joe next to Kevin Parrish, which might not be a bad idea as you get a more general view of things as the consumer sees them. So you can just lie about your country of origin, right?

Nope – the program already reached the full amount of participants within two days and you can’t get in any longer. Sorry guys, I know you wanted that Start button and Menu as much as I did. Looks like we might be stuck with it. But cross your fingers and hope against everything that the people who joined in might shape things up for the better.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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The flagship card based on Nvidia’s GF110 was a second-generation Fermi design that didn’t suffer the woes of the GTX480 that preceded it. The card is still held in high reverence by many hardware sites and still enjoys healthy sales. This month the card celebrates its death with an anticipated $100 price drop as stocks clear out. While it creates a lot of heat, the GTX580 is more efficient than the GTX480 and also compares well with AMD’s Radeon HD6970 although the latter has been usurped by the brilliant HD7970.

For those of you looking to snag one on the cheap, the GTX580 requires a power supply capable of delivering 550watts or more with a 8 and 6-pin PCI Express power connector. Most cards feature redesigned heat shrouds and coolers and all take up at least two PCI Express slots on the back of your chassis. Note that the GTX580 cannot run three monitors off a single card – for that you need a GTX680 – but Nvidia 3D Vision is easily managed by a single GTX580 and brings a pleasurable new experience to your games and they way you interact with them.

Overclocked, the card may even hang ten with the HD7950 and will most certainly deliver playable performance for the next few years. Pick up one now and perhaps upgrade it when the GTX700 series pops up sometime in 2013.

Source: Fudzilla

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Pictured: Game streaming, clearly not working.

Firstly, Gakai has to be commended on their idea. OnLive, another cloud-based streaming company that also has a game streaming service, allows users to subscribe to their Desktop service where they gain access to a streamed, remote desktop-like environment on Windows Server 2008, enabling them to access a desktop that they can use for work or pleasure from anywhere in the world without the hassle of corporate IT agreements, domain servers and loads of passwords and smart cards.  Gakai does much the same, but allows access to a server that hosts these games for you at no extra cost – no scratched DVDs, no CD key hassles and, best of all, no requirement for high-end hardware to support your hobby.

Pictured: Game streaming STILL clearly not working. Man, oh man.

But while it is a good idea, its still being shot down by major game publishers while they figure out how this affects them and their revenues. Hardware manufacturers will certainly have to look at lowering their prices and costs of entry for low-end gaming computers that play all these titles at moderately good settings (they’re not really affected, but its the thought that will count). However, the service will probably require a 2Mb/s connection by default which isn’t something a lot of people in this country have access to. The big three consisting of EA, Activision and Blizzard haven’t come forward and embraced the idea. Other companies like Ubisoft, Codemasters and Konami apparently have no problem with it, and OnLive already streams many titles from both publishers for your enjoyment.

In addition, OnLive had issues last year with their offering of a streamed, cloud-based Windows 7 desktop. See, Microsoft’s EULA allows for desktops to be streamed to corporate end-users provided they actually work for (and provided the software remains the property of) the company. OnLive is essentially Terminal Services for the masses and Microsoft doesn’t like that due to the way its structured licensing makes companies pay for each remote desktop. OnLive apparently got around this by using Server 2008 instead of Windows 7, but it still costs the company a sizeable amount per end user to get the license from Microsoft.

Both Gakai and OnLive could get around this using Linux and this would more benefit Gakai because they can design a custom user interface and run the games off WINE. But there’s still a licensing issue to be considered, and that’s the one the game publishers set. Take Spore, a 2008 title, that had incredibly restrictive DRM. The game had a limit of three installs maximum. If you reached that limit by installing the game on three machines, you couldn’t reinstall it on another machine without removing it from a previous one and calling the EA helpdesk to reset your install limit. You couldn’t uninstall and reinstall it on the same computer three times without calling them for a reset. You similarly couldn’t install it if some mongoloid cretin with half a brain installed it three times, cracked those copies and pawned off the disc to your local Cash Crusaders so he could buy some cigarettes – you weren’t the original owner, and he still had all three license available to him. I guess its the same issue fundamentally as Steam, but at least Steam has been proven countless times to be worth every cent you’ll ever pay to Valve and towards Gabe Newell’s bed with a mattress stuffed with money.

Pictured: Steam earning its keep. Yeah, I got Portal 2 for free.

EA subsequently increased the limit to five installs and released a de-authorisation program so you could do it yourself at home, but still consumers faced the same problem that they simply weren’t owners of the game they paid money for. Gakai will inevitably run into a similar problem because now they’re the actual owners of the games, and not the subscriber. Will they stream one copy per subscriber, or allow many subscribers access to a single copy of the game? Thus far they’re only demoing their service with PC demos, but which publishers will support their offering? You won’t be getting Steam games, that’s for sure. CD Projekt Red will no doubt support the initiative, but only because they’re awesome guys and don’t put any DRM of any kind on their games. But the big publishers like EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard? Probably not. I can see Bethesda finding a way to bring games that gamers across the world love to the service, but not EA because they already have Origin to concentrate on.

My question though, is why don’t publishers come out in support for Gakai? They all complain left, right and center that the second-hand games market tears their revenue down and they only want you, the consumer and gamer, to buy new titles in launch day or as new packaged products. Gakai’s service ensures this won’t happen and will allow cash-strapped gamers to buy more games. but critically, the service will require the removal of DRM for the whole thing to work properly. Its not like people will all find a way to pirate the games straight off the accounts, but its possible that they will be hacked and games will be stolen and then there’ll be an uproar by the game’s publishers and they’ll just further cripple the service with their DRM, additionally including the same increased punitive measures for legitimate gamers who buy physical copies because no-one can be trusted. No one, evar. Herp derp and all that.

Gakai: Wait. You're telling me that if streaming works for us these guys might not earn money? EA: Hooray?

Why won’t they show support? Because if Gakai ends up being a success because the DRM is gone and gamers have a better time without it, the big three at large will be forced to re-think their approach to DRM as more internet-connected gamers boycott the crappy systems introduced that don’t really combat piracy at all.

If Gakai shows that without DRM, more gamers are more than happy to pay for launch titles without fail, then the gamers, journalists and reviewers will have something concrete that shows that piracy isn’t the real threat to the industry – its the way you approach the problem that creates need for pirating those games in the first place.

Discuss this in the forums: Linky.

In my earlier analyses, I showed you that the GTX680 was unlike any Geforce card we’ve ever seen from the company. Nvidia has scaled down performance in areas not-so-important and improved things in general elsewhere, even dropping power usage a whole 60watts down from the GTX580 on average. This card punches so far above its weight, it matches a dual-GPU Radeon HD6990 and GTX590 in some benchmarks.

If it wasn’t so scarce right now, your grandmother would be running one. But we must finish off this three-part saga with a final look at the other things that make the GTX680 a worthy card to nab the performance crown, starting off with something everyone’s asking about: overclocking.

GPU BOOST

Or rather, the apparent lack of needing to. Kepler launches this year with a new feature called GPU Boost. One of the things about turbo-boosting a chip is that consumers no longer have to sit with the same performance in a single-threaded app. When Intel debuted their Turbo Boost (a variant of the old Speedstep), users of single-threaded apps like iTunes recorded a marked improvement when the single core in use was dynamically overclocked to TDP limits that the chip imposed.

With GPU Boost, the graphics card’s drivers constantly monitor your performance in applications and dynamically adjust the clock rate to improve performance. For example, when you’re in a room or closed-off building in Battlefield 3, the GPU clock will drop back to stock speeds to save on power and heat – you’re only drawing as far as you can see in the room, so why waste resources and power by using everything at your disposal to render a tiny model?

By default, Kepler increases voltage automatically according to a strict table relating to clockspeed.

Once you’re out of the room, your clock rate gets adjusted according to current temperature, thermal limits and power draw – and you’ll get better performance outdoors. Well, this is all in theory as there are several scenarios where your GPU will be at its power draw limits already, and won’t be able to overclock itself. In the case of running benchmarks, GPU boost doesn’t activate for all of them as the card has already been approaching its power draw and won’t dynamically accelerate itself.

However, when overclocking the card yourself, its worth noting that you can’t turn off GPU Boost. If you raise clock speeds to 1.2Ghz, the software will automatically assume that you can boost up to 1.3Ghz. If you previously were fine at 1.3Ghz in stress tests and benchmarks then this should be perfect, but for card that won’t clock that high this will be a problem. On the other end of the scale, if the card thinks you’re already at its power limit it won’t dynamically boost your manual overclock. You can get around this in the driver’s settings, but Nvidia needs to release an overclocking manual for noobs who won’t know about this (or you can just bookmark this column, either way the noob wins). Right now, Nvidia has imposed a limit of 225watts for the maximum power draw of the GTX680, and third-party manufacturers are already using a 8 and 6-pin combo to get higher overclocks.

DIRECT COMPUTE TAKES A SMALL HIT

Moving along to Direct Compute, I showed you all earlier a single slide (see left) that compared performance in Civilisation V against other Compute-aware cards. Civilisation V uses Direct Compute to accelerate the decompression of textures used on the buildings that are saved on the hard drive. Nvidia made sure that they would hold back Direct Compute a bit, since many enthusiasts who would normally use a Quadro card went for the GTX570 or GTX580 instead, both offering the same or similar performance for far less green bucks.

In a bid to keep their Quadro lineup attractive, I expect Nvidia to artificially limit Compute performance in the GTX690 so that it beats the HD7990, but stays away from what the Quadro lineup will offer. Yes, you can get a Quadro card and still play games with it, but its not advisable. If you really still need the performance, get a board with more PCI Express slots and run two Nvidia cards. Or a board with Lucid Logix’s Hydra chip and then put a Radeon card in for gaming – either way, its going to achieve the same aim.

ADAPTIVE V-SYNC…ADAPTS!

The next must-have feature Nvidia decided to implement was Adaptive V-sync. V-sync works against your high-performance graphics cards to artificially limit the framerate to a maximum of 60FPS. Without it, you would see frame tearing on your screen every time you moved the camera from side-to-side. Early adopters of Eyefinity setups would have noticed a line running down the middle screen every now and then – this was a driver issue and for some reason disabled V-Sync on the main screen showing the Windows desktop.

For all owners of Geforce 600-series cards, a new feature in the drivers will be available that allows the card to card to turn V-Sync off when it isn’t needed. If you fall under the 60FPS mark the drivers turn off V-Sync to prevent stuttering in-game. Go back to 60FPS and it turns back on to prevent tearing. Its such a simple, welcome improvement that many have no idea why this wasn’t implemented long ago (you probably could do it with a customised version of something like FRAPS, but only enthusiasts, game developers/programmers and hard-core gamers are willing enough to put in that kind of work). If you previously had V-Sync on and it took a little longer than usual to render a frame, V-Sync would force that frame to wait until the next screen refresh.

For the most part V-Sync won’t turn off while you’re playing with the GTX680 and really taxing games will be the only thing likely to activate this feature. Still, a welcome addition and it enables smooth gameplay with the card even a year or two onwards. If you run SLI in any form, you’ll have this on all the time to combat micro-stuttering as well, especially playing with multi-monitor configurations. Along with this, I also wrote earlier that Nvidia has made optimisations to the frame rate in the centered screen in a multi-monitor setup.

Well your middle screen will always run at 60FPS with Adaptive V-Sync and the monitors in your peripheral vision won’t run at the same speed at the same time, but rather at a slightly lower speed. This is again a measure to combat micro-stuttering in multi-monitor and SLI setups and should help gamers enjoy a far better experience this time round. I’m not sure if Nvidia will include this in a driver update for all Geforce cards, but AMD’s driver team had better get on this horse pretty quick.

SOMETHING NEW: BINDLESS TEXTURES

This is something I didn’t report on earlier because I wanted to address it here separately. What Nvidia’s done with the re-arranging of Kepler is allow for more threads to be executed per core clock. In a single clock cycle the CUDA cores in Kepler’s Shader Modules chew through 64 threads regardless of dependancies, enabling Kepler to do double the work of Fermi in the same time frame. What I didn’t tell you is how games are going to use this to their advantage and here’s how. Bindless textures is an improvement to the method of applying textures from a pool of textures to polygon models once they’ve been drawn and put in their place. Once textures in the binding pool are loaded into RAM, they can be assigned to polygon models to give each one their own unique look.

Now lets say you have a room to draw up with lots of detailing and there’s 128 different textures to be processed (for reference, the maximum number of textures in a binding pool you could address with Fermi was limited to 128). For each polygon model, you’d have to assign a set amount of textures from the pool because you didn’t want to waste resources – a new polygon  that needed its own texture pool was a huge waste of resources. Fermi could address textures that were binded to polygons better than AMD’s comtemporary designs could and that’s the reason why Crysis 1 and 2, both texture-heavy games, performed better on Geforce 400-series cards. It also helped that the GTX470 and GTX480 both featured framebuffers larger than 1GB, which was a crucial weakness for any card that you played Crysis on.

However, there was still a limit of 128 textures per polygon model that developers had to work around. If you wanted more, you’d have to keep a second set of textures ready for binding to polygons that needed to look a little different from the rest. If you were careful, you could have a group of like-objects and have them share a pool of 128 textures – this was how Bioshock and Borderlands worked past that limit and you’ll notice it whenever you load a level from the desktop. On lower-end systems, you would watch various textures being loaded while the game was initialised properly – in Borderlands it was your gun and surrounds that loaded last, while both Bioshock games loaded up weapon and special textures like scratches on the wall last.

Your games could look as detailed as this soon enough.

With Kepler and Bindless textures there’s no more of this binding crap. The shader module can now reference up to one million textures, allowing polygon models to have loads more details put onto them. If you wanted to create a scale version of the Sistine Chapel and individually draw and texture each painting, each tiny detail, you’d now have the power to do so without having to work within the constraints of a low memory count or a crappy hardware limitation. And now with double the number of available texture units, it’ll be drawn up and processed in half the time, too.

Civilisation V’s benchmark that I showed you earlier is a great metric for performance, because games that use lots of textures will have to do the same thing in future. Having a 3GB frame buffer on a card might be a big help, but its easier to have the textures fetched from the hard drive, decompressed and cached into RAM when they were needed. You can address up to a million textures with Kepler, but you’d never really want to.

Its far too much work.

FXAA AND TXAA: HOW THEY AFFECT YOU

Finally, the biggest development to come from Kepler is the new anti-aliasing algorithm, TXAA. But hang on, I mentioned FXAA as well? I want you to look at the Samaritan demo below first, run off entirely on the Unreal 3 Engine:

For those of you with 4Mb lines who are able to watch the demo in the full 720p resolution, take note at how the demo has no jagged edges in straight-edged objects. Thats FXAA at work and it works better than regular AA or MSAA (Multi-Sampled AA) because it smooths over all lines in the demo that need AA applied to it. Fast Appropriate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) analyses all the pixels on the screen before it gets shown to you on your monitor. If there are any pixels that create artificial edges, FXAA smooths them over by adding in extra pixels to take out the rough edges. Other AA options like MSAA introduce extra pixels to smooth over lines while the polygon and textures are being melded together, increasing draw and render time because things all have to be worked out in advance on a more complex scale.

Not even bleeding edge cards could keep up with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with Dynamic Lighting enabled.

Many hardware reviewers chose to use a specific level in S.T.A.L.K.E.R that incorporated rays in sunlight beamed into a room as a measure of how much the game could stress your card. S.T.A.K.E.R. used dynamic lighting as much as possible in every level and if you couldn’t make it through that specific part of the game without choking at your native resolution, your experience would degrade from there. As you moved through the room, the game’s engine would apply AA to smooth out lines and ridges, going so far as to correct the beams of light themselves. Enabling MSAA created a huge performance hit, because everything had to be re-drawn constantly as you moved through the room. It was a good measure of how your GPU coped with applying AA to games and is still used as a performance metric for some sites, even adding on DX11 to up the ante and really stress things out.

In Samaritan, three GTX580 cards in SLI were used to run the Unreal 3 engine at its highest levels of detail. Today, a single GTX680 would be able to achieve a similar level of detail, as would AMD’s GCN architecture in cards fast enough to run it. But while FXAA end up being better and faster than any form of AA before it, appearing in many mainstream games today following its inclusion into Skyrim, TXAA will be available to Geforce 500 owners in a future driver update, however there isn’t any word on how AMD’s GCN will run with it.

Temporal Anti-aliasing (TXAA) is a hardware upgrade to MSAA and works on the same principles. That means FXAA is still faster, right? In some respects, yes, but the slight speed deficit is a decent trade-off for the huge increase in image quality. TXAA has the performance hit of 2x MSAA, but with a much higher image quality at 4x MSAA. MSAA works by taking all lines on the edges of polygons in the game engine, applies textures to the polygon model and then reduces or fills in pixels where necessary, ensuring a smooth look all-round. MSAA works in most games and can even be forced in older versions of game engines that unofficially supported it. But while regular AA only does a single run over the polygon model, MSAA makes several passes over it to make sure things are all smooth and kept relative to each other (hence, Multi-Sampled AA).

TXAA improves this by instead running a few passes over the object and then altering the light source to make sure that there’s no aliasing. If Onona reads this, I’m sure she’d pipe in and say that the film industry has used this technique for a while for CG effects. To smooth out and sharpen objects on-screen, TXAA takes out any aliasing it detects just like MSAA, but then also does something a little more special. While applying AA, the edges of a moving object are slightly blurred to avoid unnecessary sharpening of an object that doesn’t need it.

Oh wait, you’ve all seen something similar in two games that I know of – Need For Speed Carbon and GTAIV. Both games employed AA to smooth out the edges, but both also blurred objects in motion intentionally to make things look smoother and crisper at the same time. Look at the image to the right, and you’ll see what I mean – the car is in full focus, fully anti-aliased and looking great, while the game only aliases the bridge above slightly and uses a blurring effect to make it look less visible.

Sneaky, huh? Unfortunately it works, as I’m sure many of you wouldn’t have noticed this. Sadly this wasn’t possible on consoles, and so things will continue to look crappier until we see what the PS4 and Xbox Durango are capable of. If both use AMD’s HD7000 series cards properly, we’ll see FXAA on both as well. TXAA, unfortunately, won’t be coming to that party.

And that’s that, finally! After a good, in-depth look into what the GTX680 brings to gamers today, its clear that Nvidia’s on the warpath again not just for the performance crown, but also for graphical dominancy and superior image quality. The GTX680 at R5500 not only invalidates the need to buy a Radeon HD6990 or even a GTX590 because both end up being beaten in many scenarios by a card with a single processor, but also provides remarkable value for those looking for a new card that they won’t have to upgrade for several years.

TECH: NVIDIA GTX680 ANALYSIS, PART ONE

NVIDIA GTX680 ANALYSIS, PART TWO: PERFORMANCE

I’ve always been a fan of the SFF-PC (Small Form Factor) and ZOTAC has seen to it that the market is kept pleased. The new ZBOX Plus comes standard with an AMD E-450 APU with two cores running at 1.65Ghz, a AMD Radeon HD6320 GPU, 2Gb of DDR3 RAM and a 64GB mSATA solid state drive.

Really, the biggest boon here is the SSD. Traditionally SFF PCs were held back by the Atom’s weak chipset performance and the slow mechanical laptop drives they shoved in with them. Even specifying an SSD was a big expense and you were better off buying one separately and swapping drives out. No fear, as now you’ve got everything packaged in an even smaller chassis then ever before.

The ZBOX features two USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.4a-out, Gigabit Ethernet, a wireless USB adapter, eSATA, a memory card reader, S/PDIF output that doubles as a normal 3.5mm audio jack, a microphone line-in port, a wireless IR remote and all the mountings required to stick the tiny thing onto the back of your monitor. Thanks to AMD’s Llano and APU architecture, you’ll get the low-power benefits in the range of 18watts while enjoying far better graphics performance thanks to the built-in Radeon HD6320.

While the ZBOX would be better suited as a media player and all-in-one solution for those looking to integrate a computer with their existing home theatre setup, it should double incredibly well as a cool, small little computer for those who need more desktop space and want to save on their electricity bill.

Source: TechpowerUp!

Discuss this in the forums: News: ZOTAC ZBOX Plus Nano XS is out