iBuyPower on Wednesday introduced its latest gaming PC, the Chimera 2. The various hardware components are housed in a new Chimera Inferno II Chassis with a wraparound flame color scheme. Users can spec a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 or i7 but can also switch over to AMD’s 2.8GHz or 3.2GHz Phenom II processors.
AMD on Wednesday bragged of the graphics performance crown with the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5970. The card uses two 5800 series chipsets on one card to provide the most performance possible. While each has the speed of a 5850 with a 725MHz primary clock speed and 1GHz GDDR5 memory, the 3,200 stream (effects) processors, 160 texture units and 2GB of memory give it as much performance as two 5850s but in half the space.
ASUS will release a 17.3-inch 3D notebook, the G72GX, early in 2010 with high-spec features such as an Intel Core i7 CPU, GeForce GTS 160M graphics, 4GB of memory and two 320GB hard drives, according to Chinese daily Digitimes. Before that, however, the computer maker will unveil a smaller, 15.6-inch version known as the G51J3D that should otherwise have near-identical specifications.
Electronista has received one of the first Core i5 iMacs and is putting it through its paces. Since many already are already familiar with the 27-inch iMac in Core 2 Duo form, we'll provide impressions specific to the faster model. We also have some of the first benchmarks of the system, which is Apple's first quad-core system ever outside of its Mac Pro workstations.
PC vendors that rely on AMD graphics cards are delaying their shipments scheduled for the first quarter of 2010 by nearly two months, say sources at the manufacturers, DigiTimes claimed on Thursday. Radeon HD 5000-series GPUs and HD 4000-series GPUs are reportedly facing shortages through a combination of factors. The shortage of the 40nm Radeon HD 5000 cards is due to a low yield at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 40nm factories, while the 4000-series GPUs scarcity is allegedly AMD's own doing as it has scaled back production of older technology after releasing the more advanced 40nm parts.
By May of 2010, chipmaker AMD will officially introduce two new desktop platforms, with the high-end Leo and more mainstream Dorado, says Digitimes. The information comes from motherboard makers, who revealed the Leo will be made up of current 45nm Phenom II or future six-core Thuban CPUs paired with either 890FX or 890GX northbridge and SB850 southbridge chipsets.
While there was no official announcement, MSI will soon offer a new netbook-class Windows 7 portable, according to a product page for the Wind 12 U230. The PC has AMD's new 1.6GHz Athlon Neo X2 dual-core processor, which is paired with ATI's Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics chipset. Other specs are common to the current U210 notebook, including a display that's sized at 12.1 inches and with 1366x768 resolution.
Maingear today tackled the very high end, designer category of gaming PCs with the SHIFT. The system is specially designed by Maingear with an aluminum chassis and a rare, vertically-aligned cooling system; besides using an Asetek system to cool the processor without fans, all other components point upwards and have their heat naturally vent upwards instead of front-to-back like in most PCs. The system is also subtler with an all-black design and a pop-up port array on the top with card readers, FireWire, USB and audio.
MSI on Thursday announced the upcoming release of the CR610, a 16-inch notebook PC running on AMD's Tigris platform with an Athlon II processor. Also, the PC ships with Windows 7 preloaded onto its 2.5-inch hard drive, which can be had in 250, 320 and 500GB capacities. Up to 4GB of RAM can be specified, with graphics handled by an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 chipset.
Toshiba UK on Friday launched four new business notebooks in its Satellite Pro series, all preloaded with Windows 7 Professional. The additions include the 13.3-inch U500, the 15.6-inch L500, the 17.3-inch L550, 15.6-inch L450 and the same-sized L450D. Each includes Toshiba's LifeSpace application suite just for Windows 7-powered Toshiba notebooks, which helps users to organize their appointments and help them find up to 5,000 recently accessed files visually.
Apple today completely revised its iMac with a new design and much faster performance. The series now switches to wider 16:9 aspect ratio, LED-backlit displays and a new look with edge-to-edge glass and a seamless aluminum body. The displays are also much denser and start at 1920x1080 (1080p) for a 21.5-inch display and an extremely sharp 2560x1440 for a new, largest-ever 27-inch model. Both now use color-accurate IPS (in-plane switching) displays versus the cheaper TN (twisted nematic) panel from the old 20-inch iMac.
Acer today prepped for the upcoming release of the Aspire Z5610, its first all-in-one desktop with multi-touch input support. The system draws on Windows 7 for its extra touch features and has a relatively large 23-inch, 1080p display to work with. Processing power is basic and comes from a dual-core 2.6GHz Pentium, but the system brings both 4GB of RAM and relatively fast graphics from an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570.
AMD's graphics label ATI today extended its next-wave hardware into the mainstream. The Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5750 scale back to a 128-bit memory bus and significantly fewer effects cores but still have the full DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.x feature sets of the 5800 series as well as support for multi-display Eyefinity. They remain dual-slot cards but consume much less power at 108W peak for the 5770 and 86W for the 5750.
Some specs and details of the upcoming Dell Zino HD series of nettops were revealed, thanks to a recent DellZinoHD search. Two models in the Zino HD series will be offered, including the Inspiron 300 and Inspiron 400. Both have potentially been readied for Windows XP, Windows Vista or the upcoming Windows 7, with the support page also including a manual for Ubuntu.
The just-unveiled Fermi graphics architecture will find its way into Macs and play an important role in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, NVIDIA chief scientist Bill Dally said today. While it's expected that NVIDIA would continue to play an important part of future Macs, the researcher drew a particular connection between the new GPU design and Apple's new OS, expecting that it would provide a significant boost for those apps that implement OpenCL. Windows 7 will also get support through DirectX 11 and DirectCompute.
AMD's first mainstream graphics chipset in its ATI Radeon HD 5000 series has been leaked with photos, specifications and even performance tests. The reference model seen by Chinese site MyMyPC is a dual-slot card but has a unique teardrop-shaped cooling system. It should be a slightly scaled-back version of the 5800 line with 1,120 effects cores (versus 1,440 for the 5850), a 700MHz core (down from 725MHz) and an unknown amount of 1,150MHz GDDR5 memory.
The ATI Radeon HD 5870 x2 and a new 5850 X2 graphics card have been spotted in photos recently. The former has been leaked earlier, and should be out on the market sometime in October. The photos show the card is ultra-long, raising questions as to whether it will fit into mid-sized or large tower cases. The single-core HD 5870 is 11 inches long, with estimates from the photos putting the dual-core version at perhaps 12 or 12.5 inches.
Three custom-order PC builders today became some of the earliest to pick up AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 series as a video option. CyberPower has added the option to three of its systems and will see the Core i5-based Xtreme 4200 and Phenom II-based Gamer Dragon 9500 come with a Radeon HD 5850 as standard while the Core i7-founded will ship with a Radeon HD 5870. Prices start from $927 for the Gamer Dagon and mode up to $999 and $1,393 for the Xtreme 4200 and 5200 respectively.
AMD's graphics label ATI tonight claimed to set a new benchmark for graphics with the Radeon HD 5800 series. The new video hardware is theoretically twice as fast as the 4870 and has an extremely large set of 1,600 stream (visual effect) cores -- enough to calculate 2.72 teraflops per second. Besides handling twice as many rendering tasks at once, the 5800 is also running a sixth-generation engine that shades and tessellates geometry more quickly, more GDDR5 memory bandwidth (150Gbps), and much improved techniques for antialiasing and anisotropic texture filtering.
As part of a shift to ultra-thin notebooks, HP tonight launched two crossover 13.3-inch notebooks that it hopes are both fast and portable. The ProBook 5310m is unofficially the most portable full-performance notebook ever with an 0.93-inch thick body (versus Apple's 0.94 inches) and a 3.8-pound weight; it accomplishes the feat through an aluminum shell without an optical drive and, unusually, by giving the option of a full-speed 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo as well as a CULV-based 1.2GHz Celeron dual-core. Using the Celeron gives the system as much as 7 hours of battery life using the stock 4-cell battery.
AMD will launch its ATI Radeon HD 5700-series GPUs, including the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750, in October, according to sources at graphics card makers. A Monday DigiTimes report maintains that ATI will also release Radeon 5800-series graphics chips on September 22nd, while the 5870 X2 (R800) has been slated for November.
AMD at a press conference today demonstrated one of the core features of its upcoming Radeon HD 5800 series graphics chipset. Nicknamed Eyefinity, the ATI-branded technology gives a single video card up to six DisplayPort outputs running at their full resolution. It can also merge these into a single picture and create a live image as large as 8192x8192 once technology allows this; current technology would still allow six 2560x1600 displays that could produce a typical resolution of 7680x3200.
A Chinese leak today has slipped many core details of AMD's next ATI notebook graphics platform. The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series is expected to be a direct translation of the desktop models and should have similar lines. At the top, the 5870, 5850 and 5830 will all have a very large 1,600 shader units (effects processors) and should support CrossFire on gaming-oriented desktop replacements. The top two will support fast GDDR5 memory while the 5830 will need GDDR3.
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 line will have five models by the time it's complete, a detailed leak of data shows. The 5870 and 5850 known to be launching first are now believed by Xbit to be just upper mid-range parts that would replace the 4870 and 4850 sold today. Falling under the codename Juniper, they would use the same processor as higher-end chips but would be eclipsed by two higher-end models, Cypress and Hemlock.
BenQ recently announced the launch of two notebooks powered by Intel's Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) processors. This includes the 13.3-inch Joybook S35 and 14-inch Joybook S43. Processor choices include a 1.4GHz single core Core 2 Solo, 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300, 1.2GHz Celeron 723 or 1.3GHz Celeron 743 chips. Both sport a 1366x768 resolution along with high brightness and contrast levels thanks to LED backlit screens. Graphics processing is thanks to an ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 GPU on the S43 or Intel's integrated GMA4500M GPU on the S35.
MSI’s ultra-low voltage 15.6-inch notebook PC, the X600 can now be purchased and is priced at $800. Part of MSI's ultra-slim X-Slim series, the X600 features a 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo CPU, a six-cell battery, a 320GB hard drive with Windows Vista Home Premium and a 15.6-inch LCD with a 1366x768 resolution, in a package that's less than one inch thick and weighs about 5.5lbs.
AMD's major video chipset update this fall has had its feature set and release date uncovered thanks to a slip of information Monday. The ATI Radeon HD 5800 series should be fronted by the 5850 and 5870, both high-end cards that could be the first to support Eyefinity, a technology that not unlike Matrox cards will support three displays on a single card. They are also to be AMD's first graphics cores to support DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.1 visual effects in hardware.
Fujitsu's Celsius Ultra gaming PC, which is claimed to be the fastest air-cooled gaming system around, has been priced and images have been captured, as it has been tested by an independent source. The 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-powered system sports dual EVGA GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards set up in a 4-way SLI configuration on a single board. Each card has 1.8GB of dedicated RMA. The cards' cooling capabilities haven't been modified, though their speeds have been slightly increased. There is also 12GB of RAM onboard.
MSI Computer on Thursday announced it has now released five previously introduced notebook PCs to its Classic series, with the CX600, CX700, CR600-013, CR600-017 and CR700. The three 600 models sport 16-inch screens with 1366x768 resolution, while the 700s have 17.3-inch screens with 1600x900 resolution. MSI touts the 600s as much thinner than conventional notebooks, at just 1.18 inches thick. They weigh just 5.4lbs, while the 700s weigh just over 6lbs.
iBuyPower wound down its afternoon with a new Chimera Killer Special Edition PC. The new model is tailored just to the hardcore gaming market with a Killer Xeno Pro standard in every model to hopefully lower latency by reducing the overhead of Ethernet traffic. Every system also has a special flame art case with an illuminated side window and a small display to show the heat levels inside the case.
HP has released a pair of business notebooks, with the 14.0-inch Compaq 515 and 15.6-inch Compaq 610. Either sports an LED-backlit display with 1366x768 resolution, and the 515's processing power coming from a choice of AMD Athlon X2 or Turion X2 processors paired with as much as 8GB of RAM. Graphics processing is handled by the integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU. Otherwise, users can opt for a 250GB hard drive, and there is a standard-issue DVD burner and optional 2-megapixel webcam. Wi-Fi is integrated, and the systems start at 5lbs with a standard 6-cell battery.
At the SIGGRAPH show that kicked off on Tuesday in New Orleans, the Khronos Group announced the release of its latest OpenGL graphics standard, OpenGL 3.2 (PDF). This update, the third major one in the last year, improves performance, quality, accelerated geometry processing and greater flexibility in dealing with 3D applications. Open GL 3.1 was released in March.
Chipmaker AMD has announced that its ATI FirePro M7740 GPU will find its way into Dell's Precision M6400 series of notebooks. The chipset provides 1GB of DDR5 memory, along with 30-bit DisplayPort and dual-link DVI output. It is aimed mainly at graphics professionals, such as CAD users.
AMD on Tuesday revealed a new flagship professional workstation card. The ATI FirePro V8750 has the same 800 shader (visual effect) units as the company's fastest Radeon HD cards but excels in sheer memory performance: the card comes with 2GB of GDDR5 graphics memory that handles a peak 115.2GB per second. The bandwidth is about 30 percent more than an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 but is estimated to be between 56 and 118 percent faster for high-end 3D modeling and other tasks that often need large amounts of fast memory.
HP has recently made the highly-configurable 13.3-inch ProBook 4310s available for purchase via its webstore. The LED-backlit display itself can be had in a standard 1366x768 or ultra-bright 1366x768 resolution, and there are six processor choices, ranging from a 1.8GHz Intel Celeron dual-core CPU to a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.
Taiwan's MSI on Friday announced the last pair of notebook PCs that make up its newly-formed Classic series, with the 17.3-inch CX700 and CR700. These join the recently-introduced 16-inch CX600 and CR600 duo, which, in turn, followed the debut of the 14-inch CR400. While exterior styling is shared by all five notebooks, the CX700 and CR700 are meant for multimedia enthusiasts, with both sharing 2.1-channel speaker systems, an HDMI output and the same LED-backlit, 1600x900 resolution display.
The recently introduced Classic series of notebooks from MSI, which kicked off with the 14-inch CR400 notebook last week, was just expanded with the promised arrival of the 16-inch CX600 and CR600. Either is wedge-shaped and sports 45-degree edges, as well as the same imprint finish as the CR400. The 1366x768 resolution displays are LED-backlit, while the touchpad buttons are brushed metal. Where they begin to differ is in their graphics processing powers, as the CX600 runs an ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 3D card with 512MB of RAM, while the CR600 has NVIDIA's GeForce 8200M G GPU that shares system memory and adds an HDMI port.
Four new notebook PCs from ASUS have appeared in Italy, including the 15.6-inch K50AB and K50IJ, the 17.3-inch K70AB and ultrathin 15.6-inch U50VG, some of which were shown at CeBIT in Germany a few months back. The official release of the notebooks for Italy also revealed some further specs, including the K50AB's AMD Turion 2.3GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM. Graphics are handled by ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 that sports 512MB of dedicated memory, while users work on an LED-backlight, 1366x768 resolution LCD.
MSI will soon add to its Entertainment-series of notebook PCs with the 14-inch EX460. The system is relatively advanced with an LED-backlit display and ships with a 512MB version of ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics chipset, giving it better than usual video in the class. General processing power is courtesy of an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, though its clock speed is not specified. It's not known how much RAM the EX460 ships with, but the twin DDR2 slots can hold up to 4GB.
PC maker Medion recently announced it will soon offer its 11.6-inch Akoya Mini E1312 netbook. The screen has a 1366x768 resolution and is paired with an HDMI output for a similar resolution on a TV, with graphics processing coming via an ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset. Rather than choose Intel's Atom, Medion instead opts for AMD's low-power 1.5GHz Sempron 210U, and there is 1GB of RAM onboard. The 160GB hard drive will be preloaded with Windows XP.
Dell may soon begin offering a new-generation graphics card for its multimedia-oriented Studio XPS 16 notebook lineup. If true, it would begin offering the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 instead of the current, aging ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 with its 512MB of dedicated memory. The HD 4670 will most notably double dedicated graphics memory and is based on smaller 55nm manufacturing process.
Shuttle PC has recently announced a new barebones mini-PC, the SA76G2, which is its first barebones product to support AMD socket AM3 processors using the 760G chipset, including the Phenom II as well as original Phenom, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 and Sempron CPUs. There are also two DDR2 DIMM slots for up to 8GB of RAM. The PC is backwards-compatible with AM2 and AM2+ CPUs.
BenQ recently announced the upcoming release of its ultra-portable netbook, the 13.3-inch Joybook Lite T131. Weighing in at just under 4lbs, the 13.3-inch T131 sports a 1.6GHz AMD Sempron 200U processor based on the same platform as the Athlon Neo and which should give performance better than netbooks without a major increase in bulk. A minimum of 1GB of RAM is onboard, as is an ATI Mobility Radeon X1270 graphics chipset that can drive HD video playback. The standard 250GB hard drive -- a 320GB drive is an option -- comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Basic.
HP this morning rolled out a trio of notebook refreshes it's gearing towards students, particularly in price but also in design. The Pavilion dv6 is being given a headlining dv6z Artist Edition 2; the 16-inch notebook has special lid artwork that won a recent MTV design contest and also comes with relatively high specifications for an AMD-based system, including a 2.3GHz Turion X2 Ultra, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a Mobility Radeon HD 4650 for its video. It also gets a bundle of three Corel audiovisual editing apps and will launch on June 10th for $950.
At a press conference at Computex in Taiwan on Wednesday, PC maker Acer announced it will soon offer the Moblin Linux operating system in its products. This will include Aspire One nettop PCs and regular notebook and desktop PCs. Several Moblin-powered Aspire One netbooks are currently being shown at Computex, along with netbooks from other manufacturers, albeit there was more than one version of Moblin. The Linux-based operating system was developed by Intel to get the most out of the Atom CPU used in ultra-portable netbook PCs.
AMD took its graphics in a new direction on Monday by rolling out the ATI Radeon E4690. The embedded chipset has the same feature set as modern Radeon HD 4000 chipsets but fits the visual core and 512MB of GDDR3 memory all into a single 35mm package small enough for very tight spaces. It's estimated to be about three times faster than the previous E2400 and can not only produce advanced 3D but, in a rarity for the class, handle two displays at once.
ASUS may soon release its Eee PC netbooks and Eee Box nettop PCs running on the NVIDIA Ion mainboard that would tie in Intel's Atom CPU with NVIDIA's hybrid graphics and system controller combo. The computer maker is apparently already testing such configurations, Digitimes reported on Monday, citing industry sources. The same source has an Ion-based Eee Box B1006 coming to stores in the summer of this year, though no estimated dates are being guessed at.
Computer hardware maker ASUS will soon add two new EeeBox small form factor desktop PCs, the EB1002 and EB1006, according to a Friday NotebookItalia report. The former is said to have an integrated graphics processor while the latter will ship with dedicated graphics.
A new version of the MSI WindBOX nettop PC, the DE200, was spotted in Europe recently. The main and most significant change of the DE200 from lesser WindBOX nettops is its use of an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card with a dedicated 512MB of RAM instead of the integrated Intel GMA 950 chipset. Otherwise, the new WindBOX shares the same 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Wi-Fi.
ASUS has confirmed a new, special netbook designed for extra visual performance. The Eee PC 1000HV is a direct sibling of the 1000HE which replaces the Intel integrated graphics with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450. The move not only gives it much faster 3D and video playback but also supplies 256MB of dedicated video memory that reclaims more of the 1GB of system RAM for other tasks. It shortens battery life but still results in a relatively long 5 hours of use.
