Samsung Releasing Dual-SIM Galaxy Y Pro

Unveiled back in August, Samsung Galaxy Y Pro is about to receive a twin brother with dual-SIM capabilities.

The folks over at GSMArena have been tipped on the alleged dual SIM Galaxy Y Pro, which might be announced by the end of the year.

The new device is called Samsung Galaxy Y Pro DUOS, and apart from the dual SIM function, it may also be delivered with a secondary front-facing camera.

However, there are no details on the phone’s specs sheet, so we can only speculate on what we noticed from the leaked picture.

Those unfamiliar with the Galaxy Y Pro should know that this is an affordable Gingerbread smartphone that offers both worlds, a 2.6-inch capacitive touchscreen and a full portrait QWERTY keyboard.

Obviously there’s no word on the price yet, but this one should be a bit more expensive than the standard variant.

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Sapphire Readies Pure White A55M for AMD A-Series APUs

It’s certainly been a while since we last laid our eyes on a new Sapphire motherboard design, but after the official announcement of the Pure Black 990FX it has also been uncovered that the hardware maker is working on anew FM1 solution, dubbed the Pure White A55M.

Just as its name implies, the Pure White A55M is based on AMD’s A55 Fusion Controller Hub, FCH for short, which was designed specifically to power low-cost FM1 boards.

In order to fit into this role, the A55M drops the native USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps support found in the more powerful A75, to sport just a standard set of features.

Sapphire however decided to take matter into its own hands and installed on the Pure White A55M an USB 3.0 ASMedia host controller, according to VR-Zone, that adds support for two such ports.

Both of these are placed in the back of Sapphire’s micro-ATX creation and they are accompanied by four USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 port, three audio jacks for 5.1-channel audio, as well as by D-Sub, DVI and HDMI video outputs.

The available expansion options are also up to par and include a PCI Express x16 slot, two PCIe x1 slots and a single 32-bit legacy PCI slot, while storage is provided via six SATA ports that support 3Gbps speeds.

Despite this being an entry-level FM1 solution we also get a capable 5+1 phase VRM as well as dual BIOS support, on-board Power and Reset buttons and a feature called Memory Free by Sapphire, which seems to be similar to Asus’ Mem OK function as is designed to quickly recover after a failed memory OC attempt.

No information regarding pricing or availability was mentioned, so we don’t know when the Pure White A55M motherboard will make its way into retail.

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AMD Allows AIBs to Create Custom Radeon HD 7950 Designs – Report

AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 7950 graphics card will arrive in much more flavors than the company’s previous solutions, as with the release of this new GPU the chip maker will allow AIBs to stray way from its reference design and use their own custom PCBs and coolers.

Traditionally, for the first few months after the release of a new high-end graphics card, GPU makers impose their reference designs on AIBs in order to limit the potential problems that could hurt the reputation of their new cores.

However, with the launch of the Radeon HD 7950, AMD will ditch this rule and allow its board partners to come out with their own custom designs of the card, according to SemiAccurate.

The reason for this decision is unknown, but Hardcore Hardware seems to believe that the HD 7950 requires a relatively simple PCB design.

A reason for this could be the low power consumption of the 28nm GPU that can probably get away with a not so complicated VRM.

No other information regarding the specifications of the Radeon HD 5970 was provided, but previous reports suggest that the Tahiti Pro core utilized by AMD for this card includes 30 Compute Units for a total of 1920 streaming cores that operate at 900MHz.

The number of ROPs seems to be set to 60, which will be paired with 120 texture units while the memory controller will be 384-bit or 256-bit wide with the memory clock set at 1.25GHz.

The card is expected to be launched by AMD on January 9, one day before CES 2012 officially opens its gates, together with the other HD 7900 part, the Radeon HD 7970.

No official info regarding pricing is available yet, but previous reports have revealed that these graphics cards should occupy the $349-449 price bracket once they arrive.

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Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge Compared to SNB Core i7-2700K

In the last couple of weeks we have learned quite a great deal about the performance of the upcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs, but so far nobody showed us how will this stack up against Intel’s current processors. 

As CPU-World has uncovered, a user on the hwbot forum had the same dilemma so he put together a quick graph that compared the results achieved by his Core i7-2700K CPU with those of the Core i7-3770K ES processor that was tested a short while ago.

While this certainly isn’t the most scientific test in the world, it does go to show just what we should expect from these two similarly clocked chips.

Of course that since the Core i7-3770K tested is actually an engineering sample the final revision is expected to feature somewhat better performance.

Pair that together with the lower power consumption (77W for the i7-3770K vs 95W for the i7-2700K) and you pretty much know what your next upgrade will be. 

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AMD to Release 3.8GHz FX-6200 Bulldozer CPU on December 26

Even though Bulldozer has proven be to a disappointment for many, AMD isn’t going to let this architecture go and until the end of this year will release another FX-series CPU into the market, dubbed the FX-6200.

Just as its name implies, AMD’s upcoming processor will feature three Bulldozer modules for a total of six processing cores and according to Donanim Haber it will come clocked at 3.8GHz.

The processor will be able to dynamically adjust its operating speed, according to the number of threads run, thanks to the inclusion of the Turbo Core 2.0 technology which enables it to reach a maximum speed of 4.1GHz.

The rest of its specs are rather standard for a six-core FX-Series chip as it includes 6MB of L2 cache as well as 8MB of Level 3 cache memory, but the TDP has been increased to 125W from the 95W of the current FX-6100.

This could partially be explained by the increase in operating frequencies, but there’s also a chance that given Globalfoundries’ 32nm yield issues AMD may have decided to raise the TDP on purpose in order to make it easier for its chips to qualify as an FX-6200.

As far as performance is concerned, an internal AMD document places this new Bulldozer chip between the AMD FX-6100 and the FX-8150 in video encoding tasks.

The same graph also shows Intel’s Core i5-2400 running this application, reveling that the two processors are almost equal when it comes to video encoding.

More info should become available on December 26, when the new AMD FX-6200 is expected to make its entrance.

Pricing for this new chip will be set at $175, which translates into about 134 EUR, and makes the AMD CPU slightly less expensive than its Intel counterpart, the Core i5-2400, that sells for $184 to $195.

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Nokia Maps Suite for Symbian Gets Updated

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has just announced the availability of an update version of its Nokia Maps Suite for devices that are based under the Symbian operating system. 

The Nokia Maps Suite packs a series of applications that are meant at providing users with location and navigation features on their devices. 

It includes Places, enabling users to discover places around them, Public Transport, for easy planning a trip, and Pulse for sharing location, photos, and more. 

Most of the enhancements included in the new release of the application are related to Pulse, the changelog shows. 

Nokia did not bring changes to the Public Transport and Places, but made the following modifications to Pulse:

Login – fewer Nokia Account login prompts

Notifications – more reliable push notifications

Keyboard – various bug fixes including stuck CAP lock, frozen cursor, delete key stops functioning, and we also added split-screen feature

Interoperability – compatible with latest versions of various Qt components, especially important because the latest Store client available this week uses a new version of a dependency that is not compatible with the previous Pulse v0.91(6)

The latest Nokia Maps Suite for Symbian release is available for download, via the link below.

Before hitting the download link, users should learn that the application is available in beta at the moment, which means that there are a series of issues that might affect the experience they receive from it. 

In addition to announcing these enhancements brought to the Nokia Maps Suite, the team behind the application also mentioned a new Nokia Live View release. 

The app is no longer part of the Nokia Maps Suite for Symbian, but users will be able to download and install it as standalone software. The latest version of Nokia Live View is available for download as well. 

Download links below:

Nokia Maps Suite 2.00 beta 4

Nokia Live View v2.0.3 for Symbian [SIS]
Nokia Live View v1.0 for MeeGo

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Netlist Claims Its HyperCloud Memory Is Faster Than LRDIMM

Netlist, a well known maker of high performance server memory, claims that its HyperCloud DDR3 modules are faster than the more common LRDIMM memory according to the company’s own internal tests.

As Netlist explains, these tests were performed on two identical dual-socket systems powered by Intel’s upcoming Sandy Bridge-E Xeon E5 processors and running 3 DIMMs per channel. 

The test results, confirmed that HyperCloud memory is able to achieve the 1333 MT/s (mega transfers per second) speeds touted by the maker for such modules, while LRDIMM is only able to achieve 1066 MT/s.

Both the LRDIMM and HyperCloud technologies were developed in order to enable servers to support higher capacity memory modules.

In the case of the HyperCloud memory modules these rely on a patented rank multiplication technology that allows for the four individual physical ranks of chips to the hidden from the memory controller hub, making it believe regular 2 vRanks memory is used.

"The fundamental difference between HyperCloud and LRDIMM is that HyperCloud is based on a distributed buffer architecture that reduces long data path delays by utilizing multiple small buffers located along the bottom (connector) edge of the module reducing the lengths of data signal paths between the data buffer and DRAMs," stated Dr. Hyun Lee, Chief Technology Officer, Netlist. 

"The LRDIMM, in contrast, uses a single buffer architecture that has longer data signal trace lengths between the DRAM and connector because all the data signals have to pass through a single buffer (register) and back out to DRAM."

Netlist HyperCloud memory modules are available in various capacities, ranging from 8 to 32 GB, and were designed to run at 1333MHz or 1066MHz while requiring 1.5V in order to operate.

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Official Ice Cream Sandwich ROM for Samsung Galaxy S II Available for Download

It only took several weeks for an official Android 4.0 to leak into the wild. Although the ROM spotted is just a test build the most important features seems to work.

The folks over at Sammobile got their hands on the XXKP1 build, which is in fact an Android 4.0.1 ROM cooked on December 7.

According to the ‘insider’ that leaked this official build, all the basics of the phone work smoothly, including calls, SMS, data and the rest.

However, there are several apps that force close occasionally, and those who flash this ‘custom’ ROM may experience lags from time to time or even reboots.

The current Android 4.0.1 ROM is not recommended to those who usually flash stock ROMs, but those who want to risk it can check it out here.

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