Intel Xeon E5 Server CPU Performance Detailed

With the desktop version of its Sandy Bridge-E processors out and about, Intel is now focusing its attention towards the server version of these chips, the Xeon E5, and has recently provided the press with a series of new details about these CPUs. Intel's Xeon-E5 processors are supposed to replace the company's current Xeon 5000-series CPUs and judging by the data provided by Intel these should deliver an impressive jump in performance. According to the Santa Clara chip maker, in synthetic benchmarks an eight-core Xeon E5 CPU running at 2.7GHz should be more than twice as powerful as an Xeon X5690 six-core chips that runs at 3.46GHz. In real life scenarios, the performance difference between the two server parts won't be as high, but Intel...

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IBM to Deploy 20 Pflops Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer at LLNL

IBM may soon take back the title of world's fastest supercomputer with an upcoming Blue Gene/Q machine that, when installed, should be able to deliver almost twice the performance of today's fastest HPC system. The supercomputer, names “Sequoia,” is expected to be fully deployed in 2012 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and should achieve 20 petaflops peak performance. In addition to its impressive number crunching capabilities, IBM also expects its system to become one of the most power-efficient supercomputers in the world, churning out no less than 2 gigaflops per watt. These advancements in energy efficiency and computing power were made possible by IBM's new PowerPC A2 processing architecture which adds 16 computing cores...

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Android 4.0-Based CyanogenMod 9 in a Few Months

Many of those who own devices running under Google's Android operating system have already tried a custom ROM on their devices, with those builds based on CyanogenMod being some of the most popular unofficial OS flavors installed on devices out there.  The team behind CM seems set to bring along a new version of their custom software in a matter of months, at least this is what a recent tweet explains. Moreover, they seem committed to delivering the new ROM with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich inside, something that should prove easily to accomplish, considering that the source code for the new OS flavor has been already released. Currently, users can download and install CM 7.1 ROMs on their devices, which are based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread,...

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Yeston Intros Custom Designed Radeon HD 6790

Yeston has just expanded its graphics card portfolio with another solution based on the Radeon HD 6790 design that was specially developed in order to provide users with a mainstream graphics solution at an attractive price point. The Radeon HD 6790 is built on top of the Barts LE core, a cut-back version of the Barts XT and Pro GPUs used to power the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards. Compared with these cores, Barts LE features only 800 stream processors, 40 texturing units and 16 ROP units, but retains the same 256-bit memory interface that connects the GPU to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer. The stock operating frequencies of the graphics card are set at 840MHz for the core and 1050MHz (4200MHz effective) for the memory. As far as...

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Opteron 6200 CPUs Get New Motherboard and Barebone from Tyan

Tyan, a company well renowned for its high-quality and high-performance server and workstation motherboards, has announced the introduction of a new G34 dual-socket motherboard, which is compatible with AMD's latest 6200-series Opteron Bulldozer processors. Dubbed the S8236-IL, the motherboard is based on the AMD SR5690 chipset and supports a maximum of two 16-core Opteron 6200 series processors. These are linked together via four HyperTransport links capable of transferring up to 6.4 GT/s. Tyan's latest motherboard creation also pairs each of the two CPUs installed with no less than eight DIMM slots, enabling users to install as much as 256GB of DDR3 memory inside the system. In addition, the board also features three PCI Express x16 Gen...

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Sapphire Develops Low Profile Radeon HD 6670 for HTPC Use

Since HTPC users are always on the lookout for new graphics cards that can deliver both quiet operation and a low profile, Sapphire has thought that it's just about time to introduce such a solution into the market and came out with the Sapphire HD 6670 Low Profile. The resulting card is one of the most compact HD 6670 solutions that we have seen to date as it takes up just a single slot inside the system case while carrying a half-height PCB. Cooling for the whole card is provided by a single low diameter fan placed all the way in the back of the HD 6670 Low Profile. Like most other graphics cards built for HTPC duties, Sapphire's latest creation is also equipped with both a standard and a low profile back plate. The rest of the card's...

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Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook Beefed-Up with Core i7 CPU and 240GB SSD

No to be outdone by its competitors, Acer has now unveiled a new version of its Aspire S3 Ultrabook that increases the ultra-thin's performance significantly thanks to an Intel Core i7 processors and a 240GB SSD drive. The new version of the Acer Ultrabook should already be available for purchase from several retailers including Amazon, NewEgg, TigerDirect and BestBuy.com, who will sell it for $1299 (961.5 EUR). This is quite a departure from the $899 Core i5 version of the Aspire S3 announced just the last month, but the 1.7GHz Core i7-2637M should offer slightly better performance that the 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M fitted in the cheaper version of the ultra-thin. In this new Aspire S3 version, the Intel CPU is paired together with the same...

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Asus Transformer Prime Up for Pre-Order On Amazon Germany, Keyboard Dock Included

After becoming available for pre-order on the Website of a less known German retailer, Asus' Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Transformer Prime was now featured on Amazon.de which also carries the tablet's accompanying keyboard dock. Amazon Germany added to its website two Transformer Prime bundles that include the 32GB version of the tablet and the keyboard dock for EUR 599 ($809 US), as well as the 64GB model that retails for the same price but without the dock. The tablets are available in both Silver and Gold and users also have the option of picking up the keyboard dock (also available in the two colors mentioned above) as a standalone accessory for EUR 149.00, or roughly $201 US. Before getting too excited about this news, we have to mention...

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KFA2 Nvidia GTX 570 Can Drive Four Displays Simultaneously

KFA2 continues to expand its lineup of Nvidia GeForce solutions with multi-display support as the company has just announced a new GTX 570 graphics card which can drive up to four displays simultaneously. KFA2 was able to overcome the limitations imposed by Nvidia's hardware by using a third-party IDT VMM1400 controller, a chip that is usually found in multi-display hub devices. Going for a quick look, KFA2's latest creation seems to resemble the company's previous GeForce GTX 570 design as it uses the same same custom cooling solution, but which was now painted black together with the PCB for a more aggressive look. However, unlike the other GTX 570 model in KFA2 lineup, the MDT version comes with a dual-link DVI output, a mini-HDMI port...

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