Computer News

Following in the footsteps of many of ATI’s other board partners, XFX will be looking to launch a single slot HD 5770 1GB card in the following weeks.

The NVIDIA soon introducing a card which will act as a direct competitor to the HD 5770, ATI’s board partners are have been searching for ways to make their 10 month old products maintain the public’s interest.  To this end, several will be launching single slot HD 5770 cards in the near future.  The goal of these isn’t necessarily to appeal to the enthusiast mindset but rather to bring high performance to a smaller form factor.  Since the Juniper XT core produces a fraction of the power of higher end cards, it is a prime candidate for this single slot treatment.

XFX is following in the footsteps of their competitors with their own single slot HD 5770 1GB.  Judging from the pictures alone, we’re hoping it will be a relatively quiet card as well since it does seem to sport a rather large fan.  Otherwise, clock speeds will likely run the gamut as XFX has been known to release pre-overclocked versions of their products.

Expect a review in the next few days.

Despite well publicized antenna issues with the iPhone 4, that didn’t seem to stop many Canadians who waited in line at Apple stores around the country today for the official launch.

Apple’s latest product is being brought to the wild north over a month after its USA release and will be featured on all three primary carriers; Rogers, Telus and Bell with Rogers being the only one to currently have it available. And while Canucks are often used to paying more for products over their America counterparts, the iPhone 4 will actually be cheaper, at only $159 for the 16GB and $269 for the 32GB; this of course with a new three year contract.

Rogers will also be bringing back the 6GB data for $30 promotion, and for die -hard Apple users, for $20 a month, you can share that data plan with your iPad; rumours are Bell will be offering a completely identical deal and it could be so will Telus. Who needs competition, right?

Those looking at purchasing an unlocked iPhone 4 directly from Apple Canada stores can do so for $659 and $779 respectively.

Don’t forget your free bumper!

Kingston is one of the largest and best known memory manufacturers in the world but their production facilities are usually hidden from prying eyes.  In this article, we take you deep within Kingson’s factory in Taiwan in order to see the birth of the products we all buy.

Another day, another GTX 460 review.  This time we take a look at MSI’s overclocked, custom cooled Cyclone OC edition.  Not only does this GTX 460 have one of the largest heatsinks we have seen in a while but it also retails for a mere $10 more than the reference version.  Could this be a match made in heaven?

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer peripheral solutions, today announced the immediate availability of three new capacities to the award winning Inferno Series of SSDs. The Inferno 60GB, 120GB and 240GB drives build upon the earlier 100GB and 200GB product offerings found in the family.

Designed around the SandForce SF-1200 SSD processor, the Inferno series delivers incredible performance while also providing superior reliability and longevity utilizing SandForce DuraClass technology. Inferno’s blazing performance of 285 MB/s read and 275 MB/s write (sequential) are more exceptional when the 24K IOPS (write) at 4K file sizes are considered. The result is a series of SSD optimized for enthusiast use as a primary system boot drive.

“The Inferno series of SSDs are the fastest and most exciting that Patriot has yet brought to the market,” states Les Henry, Vice President of Engineering at Patriot. “Our Inferno series has been well received and reviewed. We are excited to expand the product family with the introduction of the new larger capacity Inferno drives as well as the new 60GB capacity option. With the addition of the 60GB capacity drive, enthusiasts can enjoy the blistering performance of the Inferno SSD at a more affordable price point making it ideal as a boot drive in a high performance system.”

Patriot Inferno SSDs are paired with specially screened MLC NAND Flash to deliver class leading performance, include a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter plate for easy installation into desktop computer chassis and are covered by a 3 year warranty. SandForce DuraClass technology provides enhanced endurance and reliability by an average of 20x over traditional SSD controllers through innovative write technology and Wear Leveling. Check with your favorite distributor or reseller for the Patriot Inferno series SSD.

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer peripheral solutions, today announced the immediate availability of three new capacities to the award winning Inferno Series of SSDs. The Inferno 60GB, 120GB and 240GB drives build upon the earlier 100GB and 200GB product offerings found in the family.

Designed around the SandForce SF-1200 SSD processor, the Inferno series delivers incredible performance while also providing superior reliability and longevity utilizing SandForce DuraClass technology. Inferno’s blazing performance of 285 MB/s read and 275 MB/s write (sequential) are more exceptional when the 24K IOPS (write) at 4K file sizes are considered. The result is a series of SSD optimized for enthusiast use as a primary system boot drive.

“The Inferno series of SSDs are the fastest and most exciting that Patriot has yet brought to the market,” states Les Henry, Vice President of Engineering at Patriot. “Our Inferno series has been well received and reviewed. We are excited to expand the product family with the introduction of the new larger capacity Inferno drives as well as the new 60GB capacity option. With the addition of the 60GB capacity drive, enthusiasts can enjoy the blistering performance of the Inferno SSD at a more affordable price point making it ideal as a boot drive in a high performance system.”

Patriot Inferno SSDs are paired with specially screened MLC NAND Flash to deliver class leading performance, include a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter plate for easy installation into desktop computer chassis and are covered by a 3 year warranty. SandForce DuraClass technology provides enhanced endurance and reliability by an average of 20x over traditional SSD controllers through innovative write technology and Wear Leveling. Check with your favorite distributor or reseller for the Patriot Inferno series SSD.

NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce Phantom, the company’s most elegant and intelligent chassis design to date.  Phantom exudes sophistication with pristine contours and a robust menu of high performance features that will satisfy the demands of even the most discerning PC enthusiast.

High Performance Cooling Advantages – Phantom’s extensive cooling capabilities include 7 fan cooling options with dual 200mm, single 230/200mm, triple 120mm, and front 140mm fans.  For enhanced control and expandability, NZXT includes dual radiator support, quad watercooling cutouts, and an integrated fan controller with up to five 20W channels.

Extensive Compatibility and Expandability – Features support for larger heat sinks, graphics cards, and E-ATX motherboards enabling enthusiasts to include any of today’s hottest components. Vast space within the enclosure allows for 7 hard drives with SDD support and up to five 5.25” bays.

Simple Installation – Phantom celebrates an array of innovative features designed to enhance every stage of the build.  Meticulous wire management is easily attainable with large spacing behind the motherboard. The innovative all-new 5.25” screwless rails make installing and swapping HDDs an effortless process.

Additional Advanced Features – Further distinct features include an LED on/off button to control case lighting, rubber PSU and case feet to reduce vibration, easily removable front and top panels, and top mounted USB, Audio/Mic, and E-SATA ports.

“This is the most intelligent and elegantly designed chassis we’ve ever conceived” said Johnny Hou, Founder and Chief Designer at NZXT.  “The profoundly unique contours combined with a highly functional, robust feature set solidifies Phantom as one of the most innovative case designs on the market.”

NZXT reached out to the enthusiast community and enlisted the design input from the renowned modder of the L.O.S.I.A.S., Rogue, and OSIDIAS Projects, Craig Brugger, to aid in the creation of Phantom.  “NZXT has shown that there are still companies willing to listen to the community, and that collaboration can lead to innovation and a product with few compromises,” remarked Brugger.

Phantom will be available in early September in White, Red, and Black for the MSRP of $139.99.  For more information, visit http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/crafted_series/phantom.

NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce Phantom, the company’s most elegant and intelligent chassis design to date.  Phantom exudes sophistication with pristine contours and a robust menu of high performance features that will satisfy the demands of even the most discerning PC enthusiast.

High Performance Cooling Advantages – Phantom’s extensive cooling capabilities include 7 fan cooling options with dual 200mm, single 230/200mm, triple 120mm, and front 140mm fans.  For enhanced control and expandability, NZXT includes dual radiator support, quad watercooling cutouts, and an integrated fan controller with up to five 20W channels.

Extensive Compatibility and Expandability – Features support for larger heat sinks, graphics cards, and E-ATX motherboards enabling enthusiasts to include any of today’s hottest components. Vast space within the enclosure allows for 7 hard drives with SDD support and up to five 5.25” bays.

Simple Installation – Phantom celebrates an array of innovative features designed to enhance every stage of the build.  Meticulous wire management is easily attainable with large spacing behind the motherboard. The innovative all-new 5.25” screwless rails make installing and swapping HDDs an effortless process.

Additional Advanced Features – Further distinct features include an LED on/off button to control case lighting, rubber PSU and case feet to reduce vibration, easily removable front and top panels, and top mounted USB, Audio/Mic, and E-SATA ports.

“This is the most intelligent and elegantly designed chassis we’ve ever conceived” said Johnny Hou, Founder and Chief Designer at NZXT.  “The profoundly unique contours combined with a highly functional, robust feature set solidifies Phantom as one of the most innovative case designs on the market.”

NZXT reached out to the enthusiast community and enlisted the design input from the renowned modder of the L.O.S.I.A.S., Rogue, and OSIDIAS Projects, Craig Brugger, to aid in the creation of Phantom.  “NZXT has shown that there are still companies willing to listen to the community, and that collaboration can lead to innovation and a product with few compromises,” remarked Brugger.

Phantom will be available in early September in White, Red, and Black for the MSRP of $139.99.  For more information, visit http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/crafted_series/phantom.

NVIDIA today launched the era of the ‘computational visualization workstation’ for designers, engineers, researchers and animators by introducing its Quadro graphics processing units (GPUs) based on NVIDIA Fermi architecture, and by also introducing the new NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro solution. The new Quadro GPUs deliver performance that is up to five times faster for 3D applications and up to eight times faster for computational simulation, shattering previous benchmarks.

The NVIDIA Quadro Plex 7000 array, and Quadro 6000, Quadro 5000 and Quadro 4000 GPUs feature the new NVIDIA Scalable Geometry Engines and leverage NVIDIA Application Acceleration Engines (AXE) to enable the world’s fastest performance across a broad range of CAD, DCC and visualization applications. Rated at an unheard of 1.3 billion triangles per second in raw performance, the Quadro 6000 enables users to interactively work with models and scenes that are five times more complex than ever before.

“For over a decade Quadro has been the choice of professionals around the world. We’ve also built Engines like AXE to enable the creation of next-gen applications,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “When you couple these technologies with our Fermi architecture, the result is a new Quadro family that’s exponentially better than anything the market has ever seen.”

Redesigned from the Ground Up to Accelerate Entire Workflows

Combining high performance computing capabilities with advanced visualization, the new Quadro GPU is the world’s first professional graphics solution with Error Correction Codes (ECC) memory and fast, IEEE double precision floating point performance. These are intended for applications demanding the highest accuracy, such as medical imaging, finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics.

“In high-end visual effects development, fast iteration is essential,” said Olivier Maury, research and development engineer, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). “By using NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, we are seeing up to eight iterations each day of complex fire, dust and air simulations, representing speed improvements of ten to fifteen times. NVIDIA CUDA and Quadro GPUs have entirely changed the way we solve complex visual effects challenges.”

The new Quadro GPUs are built on industry standards, including OpenGL 4.1, DirectX 11, DirectCompute and OpenCL. In addition, Quadro leverages technologies that are unique to NVIDIA — such as the company’s portfolio of Application Acceleration Engines (AXE) and NVIDIA CUDA parallel processing architecture. The result is that software developers are able to create and deliver the next-generation of professional applications that incorporate compute-intensive tasks. Among these tasks are ray tracing, physics simulation, computational fluid dynamics and real-time video effects processing.

“NVIDIA isn’t just working on building better graphics hardware, but the software tools needed to drive the needed advancements that are now changing the industry,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst, Enderle Group. “NVIDIA was committed to building tool after tool this past decade in order to drive the market where they needed it to go, and their efforts are paying off.”

The new Quadro professional solutions introduced today include:

-Scalable Visualization Systems:

Quadro Plex 7000, with 12 GB (total) of memory and 896 CUDA cores

-Board and Desktop Workstation Solutions:

Quadro 6000, with 6 GB of GDDR5 memory and 448 CUDA cores

Quadro 5000, with 2.5 GB of GDDR5 memory and 352 CUDA cores

Quadro 4000, with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and 256 CUDA cores

-Mobile Workstations:

Quadro 5000M, mobile workstation GPU with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and 320 CUDA cores

Additionally, all Quadro products are compatible with the new NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro active shutter-glasses solution, also announced today, for the highest-quality stereoscopic 3D immersive experience.

Widespread Adoption

Workstation OEMs and System Integrators, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, BOXX Technologies and NextComputing, are among those that are offering the newest Quadro solutions. Quadro products are also available from value added resellers through master distributors PNY Technologies in North America and Europe, Leadtek in Asia Pacific, and ELSA in Japan.

“As the first professional-class GPUs to integrate high performance computing with advanced visualization, NVIDIA Quadro combined with Dell Precision workstations are poised to transform workflows,” said Greg Weir, senior manager, Dell Precision Workstations Product and ISV Marketing. “With this technology, we are enabling our design, research, animation and film customers to deliver higher quality results in less time.”

“NVIDIA continues to push the envelope on delivering cutting-edge graphics solutions,”said Rob Herman, director of product marketing, worldwide ThinkStation Business Unit, Lenovo. We’re actively incorporating these latest graphics into our newly upgraded ThinkStation C20 and D20 workstations to deliver innovative, ‘visual supercomputers’ to our customers.”

Availability and Pricing

The Quadro 4000 ($1,199 MSRP, USD) and Quadro 5000 ($2,249 MSRP, USD) are available immediately through all channels. The Quadro 6000 ($4,999 MSRP, USD) and Quadro Plex 7000 ($14,500 MSRP, USD) will be available this fall. Mobile workstations based on the Quadro 5000M will be available in the third quarter of 2010 from HP and Dell.

Rambus, a company well known for the aggressive protection of their intellectual property, has been successful in a patent investigation launched against NVIDIA in 2008.

The investigation, headed by the US International Trade Commission, alleged that  NVIDIA, as well as its customers including Asus,  BFG, Biostar,  Diablotek Inc., EVGA, Giga-Byte, Hewlett-Packard, MSI, Palit, Pine Technology (XFX) Ltd., and Sparkle infringed on memory controller patents held by Rambus and found on graphics processors, application processors, media and communications processors, and chipsets.

Yesterday, the ITC sided with Rambus and found that NVIDIA infringed on nine of the companies patents. The ITC has issued a Limited Exclusion Order, which, while technically banning the import and sale of infringing products, does allow NVIDIA to post a bond of 2.65% of the products value and continue importing and selling for the next 60 days.

The ruling on the injunction will be forwarded to USA President, Barrack Obama for Presidential review.

NVIDIA has promised consumers it will continue to produce and ship products, while appealing the ruling. However, there is a possibility that the fees could be passed on to consumers and supply in the USA markets of some NVIDIA products may dwindle. If NVIDIA is unable to successfully appeal the ruling or have changes made during the review it may be forced to come to a financial settlement with Rambus, cutting deep into their revenue and ultimately driving up prices.

Roughly a year ago, the US Patent office dismissed multiple Rambus patent infringement allegations. Approximately 96% of Rambus’s $113 million dollar revenue in 2009 came from patent licensing royalties.

In the competitive world of SSDs, there are two things that consumers usually look for:  price and performance.  Usually, these two don’t go hand in hand but Corsair is seeking to rewrite the book when it comes to these two factors.  They are trying to do this with the brand new F120 drive and they seem to have succeeded.

ATI’s lack of anti aliasing support for StarCraft II has been well publicized but official responses to the situation were few and far between.  We now have what we have been waiting for:  clarification.

As some of you may know, in our StarCraft II GPU Comparison we noted that Blizzard will not be including an optional anti aliasing (AA) setting in the retail version of their new game.  NVIDIA decided to leap forth into the AA pool right off the bat by including an override option within their Control Panel but the result was a significant performance impact in-game.  Nonetheless, the option was there.  ATI didn’t follow suit for reasons we will see below.

Before the GPU comparison article went live, we asked ATI for a statement and while we received a “we’re looking into it” at the time, they have since clarified their position.  We won’t editorialize here in any way and let you draw your own conclusions.

AMD constantly strives to deliver great gaming experiences for our customers and the upcoming launch of Starcraft II is no exception.  Blizzard’s focus on incredible game play for all, means that gamers using ATI Radeon(tm) products can enjoy smooth HD gameplay and industry leading image quality with our current generation of ATI Radeon products as well as many of our past generation cards.

In discussions during the development of StarCraft II, Blizzard indicated that they would not initially include options to set levels of in-game anti-aliasing (“AA”). This meant that support for AA within StarCraft II would only be made possible by including it in the driver, an approach that could significantly impact performance.

Some third party reviews of the Starcraft II beta echo our concerns that AA can cause gameplay impairment.  In these reviews, the third parties found that 4x AA led to a reduction in fps rendering at lower screen resolutions, which only became more noticeable at larger resolutions.

After evaluating our options, our engineering team opted not to provide AA support for StarCraft II within the Catalyst Control Center, even though the competition has included AA support in their driver at launch.

We are committed to making AA perform at an acceptable level before we release it to our customers.  We will continue to work with Blizzard on this matter and hope to offer our customers an acceptable AA solution at a later date.

It’s that time again for the ATI Catalyst™ driver update!  We have been getting some great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site.  Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new this month!

New Windows Features

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release for Microsoft Windows include:

ATI Eyefinity Technology – Enhancements for HydraVision™

• Maximizing a window across multiple displays will now take user defined bezel compensation into account
• Automatically adjusts window position when dragging and dropping windows to ensure title bar visibility
• Proper dialog box placement – dialogs do not cross displays, are not hidden behind bezels, and can be designated to be shown on the users “preferred” display

Enhanced Pull-down detection

• The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on certain types of video content
• Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of GPUs

ATI CrossFireX™ technology – support for rotated displays

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ enables end users running supported ATI CrossFireX™ configurations to rotate their displays (single or ATI Eyefinity display configurations) and still enjoy the performance benefits of ATI CrossFireX™ technology

ATI Radeon™ GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player

• Enables GPU acceleration of h.264 video content when using the VLC 1.1.1 Media Player – enabling a better user experience by consuming less system resources
• Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of GPU products
• Requires VLC version 1.1.1 and later

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.7 release include:

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: 
  • Ubuntu 10.04 production support

ATI Eyefinity support

• ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.7 provides support for ATI Eyefinity technology under all supported Linux distributions

For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release notes.

To download the driver, click here.

It’s that time again for the ATI Catalyst™ driver update!  We have been getting some great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site.  Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new this month!

New Windows Features

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release for Microsoft Windows include:

ATI Eyefinity Technology – Enhancements for HydraVision™

• Maximizing a window across multiple displays will now take user defined bezel compensation into account
• Automatically adjusts window position when dragging and dropping windows to ensure title bar visibility
• Proper dialog box placement – dialogs do not cross displays, are not hidden behind bezels, and can be designated to be shown on the users “preferred” display

Enhanced Pull-down detection

• The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on certain types of video content
• Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of GPUs

ATI CrossFireX™ technology – support for rotated displays

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ enables end users running supported ATI CrossFireX™ configurations to rotate their displays (single or ATI Eyefinity display configurations) and still enjoy the performance benefits of ATI CrossFireX™ technology

ATI Radeon™ GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player

• Enables GPU acceleration of h.264 video content when using the VLC 1.1.1 Media Player – enabling a better user experience by consuming less system resources
• Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of GPU products
• Requires VLC version 1.1.1 and later

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.7 release include:

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: 
  • Ubuntu 10.04 production support

ATI Eyefinity support

• ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.7 provides support for ATI Eyefinity technology under all supported Linux distributions

For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.7 release notes.

To download the driver, click here.

When we think of high end graphics cards, prices floating around the $600 or $700 mark usually pop up but a number of manufacturers are now trying to push the boundaries of pricing and performance even further.  ASUS has now entered the bleeding edge market with what they are calling the ARES; a dual HD 5870-totting behemoth that retails for a cool $1200 USD.  Could any single graphics card be worth that much?  We intend to find out.