Nvidia Explains the Disappointing Tegra 3 Benchmark Results

The disappointing graphics performance showed by some recent benchmarks run on Tegra 3 powered tablets have raised quite a few questions about the power of the Nvidia built-in GPU used in this SoC, so the chip maker has recently released an official statement detailing these results. The response came from Nvidia Poland and basically calls today's GPU benchmarks unfit for testing the performance of its graphics cores as they rely on low resolution and low complexity scenes for its results. “When benchmarking, please be aware that popular mobile GPU benchmarks typically are not good examples of today's mobile gaming experiences.[...] “The new gaming content to be available for Tegra 3 Enables more effects, true dynamic lighting for more realism,...

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Asus Transformer Prime Up for Pre-Order on Amazon US

After becoming available for pre-order on Amazon Germany in the middle of last week, Asus' upcoming Transformer Prime tablet has now also reached Amazon US with prices starting at $492 (363.5 EUR). The price is for the 32GB version of the tablet while the more spacious 64GB model is going to run for $585 (about 432 EUR). As I am sure that most of you have noticed, both prices are actually a tad lower than those recommended by Asus for the Prime, but not by much. No shipping date is available at this time, but Amazon has both the silver and the champagne versions of the tablet up for pre-order, the only thing missing being the keyboard dock. Asus' Transformer Prime will be the first tablet to use Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 SoC and outside...

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AMD's Radeon HD 7470M GPU Spotted in HP Pavilion dm4 Notebook

It's not all that uncommon for unreleased hardware to make its appearance in various desktop and notebook systems, so we aren't all that surprised to see AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7470M GPU listed in the recently announced HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition laptop. No details about the specifications of this GPU were provided by HP, but fortunately just yesterday we managed to dig out some info about AMD's entry-level Radeon HD 7000 graphics cores. From what we know, the HD 7470M should be based on AMD's so called Seymour GPU which can pack either DDR3 or GDDR5 graphics memory connected through an 64-bit memory bus. Just like the current AMD graphics cores the HD 7470M is also built using the 40nm fabrication process and is most probably just...

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Asus Official Transformer Prime Product Page Now Live

Asus has just updated its Website with a product page dedicated to the Transformer Prime tablet, one of the hottest items on this year's Holiday gift list, which means that we are getting nearer to the release of this 10.1-inch device. The page is available over here (thanks go out to Phandroid for spotting this) and apart from providing detailed specs for the Transformer Prime also pictures a couple of the tablet's accessories. These includes a micro-HDMI to VGA adapter cable, the TranSleeve protective cases that are already up for pre-order on Amazon.de and a couple of other devices that should make life with the Prime easier. As far as the specifications are concerned, the page confirms what we already knew about the Prime which is built...

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Galaxy Nexus Shows Up at Amazon as “Samsung Galaxy S II Nexus Prime 4G”

Rumors about the upcoming release of the Galaxy Nexus at Verizon Wireless have come and gone, but the carrier has yet to confirm the smartphone's official launch date. However, it appears that one of Best Buy ads leaked earlier today reveals a new naming scheme for Verizon's version of Galaxy Nexus - “Nexus Prime.” It looks like Amazon confirms the “Nexus Prime,” as Amazon is the second major retailer that prepares for the upcoming release of the Galaxy Nexus. In this regard, the phone is now listed as “Samsung Galaxy S II Nexus Prime 4G,” but hopefully will be adjusted to reflect the correct name of the device. There are no details on the phone's exact release date or price options, but the device shows up as backordered with a shipping...

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ARROWS μ F-07D from Fujitsu Is the Slimmest Android in the World

When it comes to being the slimmest Android smartphone in the world, Fujitsu’s ARROWS μ F-07D handset claims the top spot, leaving Motorola's RAZR behind a little. The handset, which can be seen in the photo attached to this article, has managed to receive the necessary approvals from the FCC and revealed itself as the world's thinnest smartphone at only 6.7mm. For comparison purposes, we should note that the Motorola RAZR comes to the market with a body that is 7.1mm thin, and that Apple's iPhone 4 is 9.3mm thick. One of the most impressive features of the new device is the fact that it manages to remain almost as slim through the entire length of its body. Other smartphones that are renowned for their slimness, such as the Motorola RAZR...

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Asus Gives You the Chance to Win an UX31 Zenbook

Like anyone else, hardware vendors are also preparing for the Holiday season and what better way to promote your products than giving away a few prizes to your loyal users. Asus is the latest company to start such a giveaway enabling its consumers to win an UX31 Zenbook or the U36SD ultra-portable. For entering the sweepstakes, one has only to log-in into its Facebook account and give a “Like” to Asus' North America fan page to be automatically entered into the competition. As I am sure that most of you already know, the Asus 13.3-inch UX31 Zenbook is an ultra-thin laptop powered by Intel's ULV Sandy Bridge processors which thanks to its optimized hardware and software can resume from a sleep mode in just a couple of seconds. The U36SD on...

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Zotac's Passively Cooled GTS 450 Zone Edition Makes Appearance

The high power consumption of modern mid-range GPUs has kept graphics card makers from releasing too many passively cooled solutions built on these cores, but Zotac has found a way to surpass these issues with its recently introduced GeForce GTS 450 Zone Edition. While the GTS 450 is no longer what we would call a cutting edge GPU this is still able to deliver some decent frame rates at lower resolutions in most of today's games as long as the image quality settings aren't turned all they way to the top. In Zotac's latest creation, the Nvidia graphics core is cooled by a large aluminum heatsink which draws the heat from the GPU via three copper heatpipes. This takes two PCI slots inside the system case and even protrudes beyond the margins...

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Intel's Unreleased Core i3-2370M CPU Gets Detailed

Intel seems devoted to offer its clients as many Sandy Bridge CPUs as possible from which to choose from as recently it was uncovered that the Santa Clara-based chip maker is working on a new notebook Core i3 chip, dubbed the Core i3-2370M. This upcoming processor was spotted by the CPU-World publication in HP 's Maintenance and Service Guide for the ProBook 4530s and 4730s notebooks, while also being confirmed by an internal Intel document detailing its Core i3 Sandy Bridge chip range. The upcoming Intel processor was designed to come as a replacement for the Core i3-2350M CPU launched at the start of September and slightly improves the specs of its predecessor. What this means is that we will get a 100MHz bump in the base frequency of...

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VIA Intros ARTiGO Barebone Powered by Eden X2 CPU

Over the last couple of months, VIA launched an entire arsenal of compact mainboards for industrial use packing their dual-core Eden and Nano processors, and now the company thought its just about time to release a similar solution of the end-user market. The result is the compact VIA ARTiGO A1150 barebone system that is built around an 1.0GHz dual core VIA Eden X2 processor seconded by the VIA VX900H chipset. This media system hub, as VIA likes calling it, sports hardware acceleration support for various HD video formats, including MPEG-2, H.264, VC-1, WMV9 and HDCP for Blu-ray content. Users have the option of pairing the VIA processors with up to 4GB of system memory via a single SODIMM socket and the A1150 case also packs space for a...

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Antec Eleven Hundred Case Supports XL-ATX Motherboards and 4-way GPU Setups

Antec, one of the highest regarded case makers around, has recently announced the introduction of yet another chassis in the company's popular gaming series, the Eleven Hundred, which is one of the most advanced cases offered by the company. When it designed the Eleven Hundred, Antec wanted it to provide enough room to fit even some of the most powerful systems out there so it made the case large enough to accommodate an XL-ATX sized motherboards and four-way GPU configurations. But since such advanced hardware also requires some impressive cooling, the case was also fitted with default 200 mm top and 120 mm rear fans as well as with additional mounts for up to seven more fans. These will be used to blow air over the GPUs and hard drives...

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Firefox 8.0.1 Officially Released

Mozilla has released its first bug-fixing update to the latest Firefox 8. The new Firefox 8.0.1 fixes two main bugs and possibly some more minor issues. A pre-release build Firefox 8.0.1 had previously been pushed to the Mozilla FTP servers. It was later pulled, probably because it failed Mozilla's quality assurance tests. But Firefox 8.0.1 has now been officially released and it's safe to grab and install it. If you're already running Firefox 8, you should be getting an updated soon. Firefox 8.0.1 fixes a bug that affected the Mac OS X version. In some cases, loading a Java Applet via the Java SE 6 1.6.0_29 would lead to a crash. The new Firefox also fixes a startup crash bug that affected Windows users running RoboForm versions older than...

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AMD's Canceled Deccan Platform to Be Replaced by Brazos 2.0 - Report

With the low-power Deccan platform reportedly canceled, AMD is now turning its attention in the direction of the recently unveiled Brazos 2.0 APUs to take the place of Wichita and Krishna in its partners ultra low-voltage (ULV) netbooks, notebooks and nettops. The decision makes a lot of sense now that Deccan has been scrapped, although it won't surely offer the same bump in performance as that expected from the Wichita APUs. According to a source cited by Xbit Labs, it seems like AMD's cancellation of this new platform was conditioned by a series of production problems, but at this point in time we can't tell if these issues were caused by glitches in the design of the APU or by TSMC's problems with the 28nm node. The Brazos 2.0 platform...

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Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard for Android 2.2 and Newer Devices

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is definitely a great mobile OS, and its visual appeal determined people to start porting various features to older flavors of Android, so that more users could benefit from them.  One of these is the keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich, with has just been ported to all devices that are based on Android 2.2 or newer OS flavors. This is a direct post of the keyboard from the latest Android release, performed by XDA-Developers forum member for.digit. Available for free via the Android Market here, the Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard can be installed on almost all devices that are based on the said Android 2.2 or newer versions of Google's platform. Clearly, not all handsets and tablets available on the market at...

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