Sep 7, 2010

Taiwanese USB 3.0 chipset makers not getting USB-IF blessing

Intel might still give USB 3.0 a chance

BY NOW WE expected to have seen at least some competition in the USB 3.0 host controller market, but it seems like making a host controller is trickier than many thought. The Taiwanese IC makers aren’t having much luck with getting their solutions approved by the USB-IF which controls the certification of all USB devices to make sure that they’re interoperable as well as meeting the standards of the various specifications.
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Sep 3, 2010

Toshiba launches world’s fastest SDHC cards

Are actually SDXC cards with a twist

THE SD CARD standard has so far been shunned by most professionals as the SD media has been considered too slow to be used in professional DSLR cameras and camcorders. However, it seems like that’s all about to change with Toshiba’s announcement of some “really fast” SDHC cards. In fact, the only reason that these cards are labelled as SDHC appears to be a 32GB capacity cap, where a 64GB version would’ve been an SDXC card.
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Sep 3, 2010

GeForce 400M launches at IFA

Seven new mobile GPUs from Nvidia, plus a desktop card

THE MOBILE GEFORCE 400M series was introduced at the IFA show in Berlin and it seems like Nvidia has ousted most, if not all of its GeForce 400M GPU’s, at least for the time being. So what are we looking at? Well, two high-end models, namely the GTX 470M and 460M, then we have something of a fence sitter with the GTS 445M that seems to end up between the high-end and mid-range models, which is followed by the GTS 435M, 425M and 420M and then there’s the lonely entry level GT 415M.
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Sep 2, 2010

GeForce GTS 450 benchmarks slips out early

Full set available for your viewing pleasure

MOST WEBSITES TEND to stick to NDAs they sign, but from time to time people slip up and this seems to be the case of some early Nvidia GTS 450 benchmarks that were posted over at Xtreme Systems. It’s not clear where the details come from, although some of the pictures of the card are watermarked with the word overclock, but we’re fairly certain that Nvidia are none too happy with this leak.
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Aug 31, 2010

Intel’s mobile Sandy Bridge details revealed

Alongside roadmap

THOSE OF YOU that have been waiting for more details on Intel’s mobile Sandy Bridge processor are in luck, as thanks to Anandtech we now have quite a few additional details of what will be on offer. One of the main missing pieces of the puzzle was the clock speeds of the integrated graphics, but it turns out that there’s another surprise on store for us that had yet to be revealed.
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Aug 30, 2010

Lucid Hydra gets official on graphics cards

With some help from PowerColor

LUCID’S HYDRA HAS yet to prove itself as a replacement for either CrossFire or SLI, but today Lucid announced a new solution which might see the company gaining some more ground. Lucid’s new Unity graphics card design looks set to change the way that the Hydra chips have been used so far, as by moving the Hydra chips to the graphics card, the motherboard is no longer a limiting factor.
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Aug 27, 2010

Sandy Bridge gets thoroughly benchmarked

Clears up some of the confusion, wows in the graphics department

THE FIRST IN-DEPTH benchmarks of Sandy Bridge have appeared courtesy of Anandtech and it looks like Intel has done more than just a few tweaks to Clarkdale and has managed to come up with something quite impressive. Not only is the new CPU core a big improvement over Clarkdale, but Intel has really delivered on its promise to boost the graphics performance by two times that of Clarkdale. Some explanations as to how Sandy Bridge will overclock is also provided, but this is unlikely to make everyone happy.
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Aug 26, 2010

AMD spills beans on Northern Island codenames

Yes, Northern, not Southern

AMD APPEARS TO have slipped in the codenames for its entire Northern Island range of GPUs in its latest Catalyst 10.8 driver release. Confused? Well, it turns out that AMD had some internal naming issues as the 32nm Northern Island parts never happened thanks to TMSC pulling the plug on 32nm, but now the code names have been applied to AMD’s upcoming 40nm Evergreen refresh that is set to launch later this year.
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Aug 26, 2010

Zotac launches two new mini-ITX boards

And a pair of mini PCs

ZOTAC HAS FINALLY launched its CULV powered mini-ITX motherboard that we spotted back in June at Computex. Alongside it Zotac also announced a pair of new ZBOX mini PCs which also use Intel’s CULV processors paired up with Nvidia’s ION chipset. We’re still waiting for a few more products from Zotac that we were shown behind closed doors at Computex, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, instead let’s take a closer look at today’s announcements.
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