Today Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day all around the world. True, I will be enjoying a thanksgiving turkey 6000 miles east of San Francisco, with my friends from US that decided to move to Croatia. As every holiday turned into a shopping extravaganza, Thanksgiving Thursday is followed by Black Friday, when all stores make fireside deals in order to clear stock for Christmas. Honestly, I’ve seen my share of crazy deals, such as 52″ LCD TV from Sharp for $700 after Instant-Off (get’em!) at Best Buy, but if you’re strapped for cash, all those expensive items don’t mean a thing. What is pure gold though, is
ANALYSIS: Why will GDDR5 rule the world?
This memory standard will become a pervasive memory during next four years in much more fields than “just” graphics. Just like GDDR3 ended up in all three consoles, network switches, cellphones and even cars and planes, GDDR5 brings a lot of new features that are bound to win more customers from different markets. Background The reason for development of radical ideas inside GDDR5 lies in the fact that ATI was looking at future GPU architectures, and concluded that the DRAM industry has to take a radical step in design and offer interface more flexible than any other memory standard. Then, ATI experienced huge issues with
US economy melted down, but people bought TVs like there’s no tomorrow
If we read the papers and check our wallets, US economy is in deep turmoil, and the ripple effect spans across the globe. But, good to see that consumer confidence is still on a high, since LCD and Plasma TVs market their best quarter in history. You’ve read it correctly. According to a brand new market research report made by DisplaySearch, Americans bought more than 10 million TV units in Q3’08, marking an increaseof 6% QoQ and 12% YoY, beating Q4’07 (record for now). So, economy might be in shambles, but people want to see America’s Got Talent. Most popular screen size is 32″, in
Intel Core i7 965 Gallery – from Silicon to Benchmarks!
Following my yesterday’s article, I received news that GTX280 kicked the bucket so my friend decided to install the ATI Radeon HD 4870X2 as a replacement, and the machine is now working like a clockwork. I won’t go into fashion decisions, as I am not a big fan of acrylic cases, but I wish my friend all the best when it comes to cleaning up. When it comes to the CPU itself, Intel Core i7 965 (codename: Bloomfield) works at 1.6 GHz in SpeedStep mode, and works at 3.4 GHz by default. E.g. it works in ASUS motherboard at 3.4 GHz by default, since the
ASUS kills PATA and PCI standards!
Back on the INQ, I wrote about dangers lying ahead for AGEIA, Creative Labs and Bigfoot Networks, representatives of these respected companies just told me that their business model is solid and that they are indeed, future-proof. Well, that turned out nicely – AGEIA never took off because of $250 charge for a PCI card, Creative now exists almost solely on patent charges and selling off its own property, while Bigfoot networks made the greatest network card on the planet – and failed to pack it up in an attractive and future-proof package. The reason for this rant is a story on Xfastest.com, introducing ASUS
UPDATED: Elemental’s video transcoder rocks the world
Back in May 2008, Nvidia’s Editors Day hosted a presentation by young guys from Elemental Technologies Inc (ETI). The demonstrated software was Badaboom, CUDA-powered video transcoder that demolished Intel’s Core 2 Quad processor when used in conjuction with GeForce 8800GTS. Months have passed, and guys worked hard on developing Badaboom in order to be ready for August release. But, their second project, RapiHD encoder for Premiere CS4 Pro needed some engineering help. So, the guys pushed back the release of Badaboom and Badaboom Pro until after the launch of CS4. It was a tough call, but with the release of Adobe Creative Studio 4 over
YES – Somebody finally made a decent Blu-ray burner!
I’ve just received word from Woodstock, IL – and this press release is something that I’ve just had to share, because the words that came out of my mouth were “Finally, darn it!” Karen Thomas sent me an e-mail with press release containing the title “OWC ANNOUNCES INDUSTRY’S FIRST BLU-RAY EXTERNAL DRIVES WITH “QUAD INTERFACE”. Now, naturally, my comment for this spinning paper (press release) would be the bin, but this device actually has some true muscle. OWC Mercury Pro is external Blu-ray burner, but it features e-SATA port. Yep, you’ve read it correctly – it does come with FireWire 400 and 800, USB 2.0,
Best buy introduces custom design notebooks from HP, Toshiba
In a bid to win more customers, Best Buy introduced Blue label series of products. Starting with two notebooks, BB is introducing products that were designed based upon customer feedback. BB received feedback from their sales spots and decided to do something about it. It seems that most customers demanded discrete graphics card, 4GB of memory, baclkit keyboard improved battery life and a 64-bit operating system. Said – done. First two Blue label products are HP Pavilion dv3510nr and Toshiba Satellite E105-S1402. Both notebooks come with similar features and boast more than four hours of battery life. Personally, I like HP more due to integrated
New “nForce for AMD” chipsets take shape under GeForce name
Last week, Chinese site Expreview.com published a story about the new generation of nForce chipsets for AMD processors. We managed to find more details through course of the weekend. For starters, the lineup will consist out of three (not two) chipsets with various capabilities. MCP82-S1, MCP82-S2 and MCP82-S3 will round the lineup, all targeting their respective markets (high-end, mainstream and entry-level). The S1 and S2 will support SLI, while S3 targets lucrative OEM/ODM deals – our sources indicate that this variant will be pitched as a successor to GeForce 6150 line that conquered many Dells, HPs and Acers out there. MCP82-S1 targets the high-end, with
Patriot launches era of storage expansion for netbooks
As netbooks or nettops are starting to conquer notebook sales charts, the add-on market is slowly, but certaintly – starting to pick up. As storage is one of biggest limitations, memory makers are starting to recognize that there is a large market happening right in front of them. PATRIOT is one of very first companies that is jumping on netbook market with the launch of 32GB and 64GB SSD for netbooks such as ASUS EEE PC. The “Lite Series” are compatible with EEE 900, 900 16G, 900A, 901 and 1000 series. Pricing was of course, unavailable at press time, but availability is as of today.
Congrats to Jadranko Jelavic
It’s been a while since we last met, but it is always to hear good news when friends earn respect in their businesses. It is my great pleasure to announce that Jadranko Jelavic became General Director of Sales for the entire distribution team at takeMS International AG. Prior to this role, Jadranko was responsible for Eastern and South East Europe. Thanks to his team effort, the company expanded to 25 countries in the afore mentioned regions, and the logical step for the takeMS management was to promote Jadranko to the role of General Director of Sales for the whole company. “We enjoy having won Jadranko
Free speedup for owners of Seagate SATA drives…
“There is no such thing as free lunch”, as the old saying goes. Thus, there should be no doubt that there is no way that you can achieve substantial performance boost for free. Or is there? One of my friends works in largest Croatian assembly of computers. In our conversation couple of days ago, he said that worst nag in assembly of computers is removing the jumpers from Seagate hard drives in order to enable SATA-II (aka SATA 3.0 Gbps) support. If you don’t remove the jumper, the drive will stay in SATA-I (1.5 Gbps) mode. Intrigued by this one, we’ve called our friends and
