System Diary Technology News Blog

Issue-One “Southbridge” AMD SB850 allowed the company to upgrade the entire line of chipsets. Upgrading is a modification of the seventh family (770, 780G, 790GX, 790FX), which resulted in the light of an eighth – 870, 880G, 890GX, 890FX. And if the “north bridge” with integrated graphics core, AMD engineers have something to do, the creative freedom for discrete chipsets, they have proved very little. However, nothing is perfect, and some work on the bridge 890FX still were. Surely the developers with some of the shortcomings 790FX chip at the hardware level, which allowed a modest increase in productivity. The fact is that any chip (chipset, processor, video core) of any manufacturer has minor errors that the user never sees, thanks to the additional program code in the drivers. And, as a rule, these errors are eliminated in the next stepping chip, resulting in an additional code is not needed, and the system works a little faster. Therefore we can say that, despite the almost complete identity specifications “northern” bridges 790FX and 890FX, the last chip – better.

The only significant difference between these “bridges” is a new version bridge compound A-Link Express 3 with a capacity of 4 GB / c. This is logical, since the “southbridge” SB850 adds support for interface SerialATA 6 Gbit / s, and the increased capacity of the disk subsystem must meet the bus bandwidth between the “south” and “north bridge”.

Purpose of chipset AMD 890FX completely changed compared to the 790FX. This chipset is still designed for high-end motherboards, which are three or four slots PCI Express x16. However, we note that in the version with four PEG-slots on each of them stands out for eight lines of tires, but thanks to the support of PCI Express v2.0 specification with double bandwidth (compared to v1.0), about any performance drop it no go.

Motherboard ASUS Crosshair IV Formula is based on chipset AMD 890FX, and, as you guessed, it is the top product in the range of AMD-cards from this manufacturer. Incidentally, the family of motherboards ASUS Crosshair Formula very rich past. In particular, the first generation of this board (more on the chipset NVIDIA) was considered the best of all AMD-products, and third-generation (already on chipset AMD 790FX) showed record results in the field of overclocking. We are therefore very interesting to see how the fourth generation motherboards ASUS Crosshair Formula will be consistent with such a high fence, given predecessors.

Gigabyte company released a very interesting motherboard X58A-UD9 on chipset Intel X58, which immediately attracted the attention of the whole IT-industry. The reason is quite clear – on this board is installed, seven (!) Slots PCI Express x16, and board size exceeds the size of a standard form factor ATX.

Of course, the market already present on board chipset Intel X58, which has four PEG slots, in particular – a model ASRock X58 SuperComputer, which is made in a standard form factor ATX. However, the fundamental difference between these boards are. The standard Intel X58 chipset provides for the needs of developers of 36 lines, bus PCI Express v2.0, that in the case with four PEG slots for maximum configuration of 4×8. At the same time, the motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD9 for each of the four “core” PEG slots allocated to 16 lines of tires, that the amount required to 64 lines. Gigabyte engineers have additional lines PCI-E by installation fee of two chips NVIDIA NF200, in this case is a “core” PCI-Express slot with alternation, which allows you to install four video cards with dual slotted cooling system.

Between these slots are “additional” PEG slots, which are allocated to eight lines of bus PCI-E. Moreover, the data lines are collected “from the” core “slots, and the final distribution lines, PCI-Express bus is as follows – 8 8 8 8 8 8 16. It is clear that the installation of two additional chips NVIDIA NF200, as well as other essential elements, has led to the need to increase the size of payments to the form factor XL-ATX – 262 mm x 345 mm.

The motherboard X58A-UD9 is the flagship product line Gigabyte, so it is not surprising that the developers have set her a large number of additional controllers. The most powerfully realized disk subsystem, which includes 10 (!) Channels SerialATA 3 Gb / s and two channels SerialATA 6 Gb / s. In this case the engineers left the support of one channel ParallelATA, that allows you to connect to the board a total of up to 14 drives! Other possible extensions are also made at a high level, as a set of overclocking tools. Therefore, the reasons for the hype around the board Gigabyte X58A-UD9 become so understandable.

A wide range of products Antec recently includes power supplies under the general title EarthWatts, interesting especially the presence of certification 80PLUS. In practice this means that the efficiency of the power supply is not below 80% in the range of workloads from 20% to 100%. That is why the manufacturer positions the whole series as a cost-effective “green” solutions.

To date, the family of PSU Antec EarthWatts includes five models with a root certificate 80PLUS – it EA380-EC, EA430-EC, EA500-EC EA 650-EC and EA750-EC, a capacity of 380 watts, 430 watts, 500 watts, 650 watts and 750 W, respectively. In addition, the series includes three models with a certificate 80PLUS Bronze – EA-380D Green, EA-430D Green and EA-500D Green.

Our present material is devoted to acquaintance with the characteristics and capabilities of senior 750-watt power supply series EarthWatts, model EA750, equipped with a powerful cooling system with a quiet 135 mm fan. The model is also interesting modular hybrid system of cables, resulting in the possibility of disconnecting the cables, only those whose use is really unusual for the average PC of that class.

Model Antec EA750 has 4-channel distributing tire supply 12, an active PFC and a full range of modern methods of system protection, including overvoltage, overload and short circuit.

Company Jetway added to the list of their motherboards on AMD 880G chipset with the AMD SB710 south bridge model Jetway BA-218, made in the form factor ATX.

Novelty is equipped with an original design for the copper passive cooling system, consisting of three radiators in different sizes and a heat pipe. The platform is designed to fit the performance of AMD processors in Socket AM3 and is equipped with an integrated graphics chipset ATI Radeon HD 4250 supports DirectX 10.1, UVD 2 and the technology of ATI Hybrid CrossFire.

This other product specifications are as follows:

Four 240-pin DIMM-slots to accommodate up to 16 GB of DDR3 1333/1066/800 MHz frequency;
128 MB DDR3-memory SidePort to serve the needs of graphics;
For two slots PCI Express 2.0 x16 and PCI Express x1, and one slot PCI;
Six SATA II ports with an opportunity for RAID-arrays levels 0/1/1 0;
One IDE-connector;
Audio codec Realtek ALC883, which provides output 7.1-channel audio HD Audio;
Gigabit Ethernet-controller Realtek RTL8111DL;
Located on the back of the PS / 2 port, coaxial S / PDIF-out, six ports USB 2.0, ports VGA, DVI and HDMI, RJ-45, six standard audio connectors.
Price and terms of the beginning of massive sales of the board until the developers are not made public.

The company announced today nVidia GeForce GTX 460 graphics card, rumors of which went on the Internet for a few weeks.

As expected, the novelty will be available in two versions: with 768 MB of GDDR5 memory with 192-bit bus and 1 GB of memory with 256-bit bus. The maximum resolution output to display an image – 2560 × 1600 pixels.

Card features 336 stream processors, socket Dual-DVI and HDMI. Clock Speed chip is 675 MHz, Shader Clock – 1350 MHz. The memory operates at a frequency of 1800 MHz. The claimed power consumption does not exceed 160 Tues

The technology, which is applied dual slotted cooling system, supports DirectX 11 API, technology, CUDA, PhysX, 3D Vision Surround and 2-Way SLI.

The cost of GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB of memory is about $ 200; gigabyte model will cost $ 230.

His version of the GeForce GTX 460 already provided us Palit Microsystems, EVGA, MSI, Gaiward, Zotac, etc.

LG Electronics and iRiver presented at the South Korean market, the joint development – the mobile phone LG LB4400. The purpose of partner stood creation device, which would be absorbed the best phone idea (by LG) and musical possibilities (from iRiver). How successful a product too early to say – sales have not started yet.

In the LG LB4400 embedded 3-megapixel camera, touchscreen AMOLED-display with a diagonal of 2.8 inches and a resolution of 400 x 240 pixels, the receiver for mobile TV DMB, as well as technology for surround sound Dolby Surround Mobile. iRiver «taught” LB4400 player to work with the formats MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, APE, FLAC, AAC, AAC +.

Design music phone is that at first glance it is not clear – it is the player or phone. As it comes to Korea, we can expect a lot of colors. Price and release dates are not known.

Introduction GeForce GTX 465 can be held on the traditional trade show COMPUTEX 2010. Will it have the third model in the family gaming GeForce graphics cards based on chip Fermi achieve the effect of the GeForce 8800 GT, we can not yet say. And here is to acquaint the reader with images of the GeForce GTX 465 from Gigabyte, can completely.

Model GV-N465UD1GI based on produced by 40-nm process technology chip GF100, has 352 stream processors and has 1 GB of local memory GDDR5 256-bit interface. As the cooling uses a new dvuhslotovy cooler, which is 25% effective the reference. Additional power is provided by two 6-pin connectors. This tells us that the maximum power consumption could reach 225 Tues What it will actually show the first test.

Graphics Accelerator GV-N465UD1GI operates at frequencies 607/1215/3206 MHz (core / shader units / memory) and is able to dial in the benchmark 3DMark Vantage Performance score of 13513, while in 3DMark Vantage Extreme – 5734. Graphics Card GeForce GTX 470 in this test is approximately 25% faster.

A year or two ago newswires were full of loud title. «USB 3.0 will be ten times faster!”, “USB 3.0 specification approved”, “A new standard of data!” Time has passed. USB 3.0 already exists in the real world, not only in gikovskih dreams and in the laboratories of the developers. From time to time the announcement of the new standard and its appearance on the public motherboards, notebooks, and drives went very considerable. But much awaited event finally happened, and we are honored to see the first drive with USB 3.0 on board. Previous My Book we have tested, so you can at the same time and watch the development of the popular line.

The main characteristics of Western Digital My Book 3.0: Form Factor – 3.5”, location – external interface – USB 3.0 (socket on the “body” – specific) speed – 7200 rpm, capacity – 1 TB to 2 terabytes, a set of software from Memeo, compatibility with Windows 7/Vista/XP. Price – from 4000 to 6000 rubles, depending on capacity. Color – only “wet asphalt. We got the hard drive of 1 TB.

Intel is preparing to release another version of the low voltage mobile chips in addition to what will come this summer. Autumn it is planned to release 1.46-GHz Core i7 680UM. He will have the same meaning TDP – 18 watts, but the frequency of 2.53 GHz mode Turbo Boost.

Like other members of the family Core i7, the new chip will support Hyperthreading, which brings him closer to the actual quad. Cache size is 4 MB.

According to Technology News Blog, currently PowerColor is working on a new wonder of the technical ideas based on the Radeon HD 5970. As it turned out, this card from the Taiwanese company will be equipped with 12 ports DisplayPort, not 6, as in the case with the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition. Map a fairly solid: it is a trehslotovoe solution and can simultaneously display the image on 12 screens. Although at present little is known about its technical characteristics, well aware that it has 4 GB of VRAM GDDR5. With regard to its power, it is obvious that she had “an appetite” more than excellent.

Apparently, this card from PowerColor is on display at Computex ‘10 in June. Unfortunately, its costs, and the exact date of commencement of sales has not been revealed.