CES 2012: Asus Challenges EVGA with a Dual-Socket LGA 2011 Board of Its Own

Asus has done nothing to challenge EVGA’s dual-socket SR-2 motherboard in the LGA 1366 days. But now that Sandy Bridge-E has arrived, the Taiwanese company won’t do the same mistake again and it started preparing a dual-CPU solution of its own, dubbed the Z9PE-D8 WS. A preproduction sample of this board was present at the company’s CES 2012 booth, and while we can’t tell you anything about its performance at this point in time, it certainly looks like it will be a great competitor for the EVGA SR-X. As with EVGA’s creation, its most distinctive feature is the inclusion of the dual LGA 2011 sockets which are paired with four DIMM slots each, in order to enable the motherboard to hold up to 256GB of RAM. Seven PCI Express x16 slots are also...

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Official: Tizen Source Code Preview Now Available for Download

The open-source project developed by Samsung, Intel and other MeeGo devs is now one step closer to official release. The development team has just announced that a preview of the operating system’s source code (SDK) is now available for download here. It appears that this is an early preview and is not recommended for those who plan to use it to create production apps. Aside from the Tizen source code, this build includes middleware, basic UI and menu interface. It is only intended for developers who want to test its capabilities and provide feedback on Tizen. In the same news, rumor has it that the first device to run Tizen OS will be announced next month at the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. There’s a high chance that this device...

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Nokia Lumia 900 Hands-On Video Available

Nokia’s long rumored Lumia 900 smartphone is now official and should arrive on shelves in the United States in the coming months.  After formally introducing it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nokia also published the phone’s specifications list, and made available a hands-on video, embedded above. Coming from the guys over at Nokia Conversations, the video brings to the spotlight some of the main features of the new handset and of the Windows Phone Mango platform that is loaded on it.  Nokia Lumia 900 is the first LTE-capable smartphone from the Finnish vendor. It packs a large 4.3-inch screen, along with a 1.4GHz application processor, an 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, and around 14.5GB of mass storage.  In addition to LTE, it also supports 3G networks...

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CES 2012: Asus Eee Pad MeMO 7-Inch Tablet Runs Android 4.0

Outside of the updated Transformer Prime TF700T and the 7.7-inch quad-core ME370T tablet, Asus’ CES lineup includes another Android 4.0 running slate which is called the Eee Pad MeMO (ME171) and packs a 7-inch screen as the ME370T. As some of you may remember, the tablet was actually leaked a couple of months ago, but this time we have a complete specs list and an approximate release date to accompany its pictures. Thanks to this we know that the 7-inch screen is actually using an IPS panel with support for a capacitive stylus. Right underneath this, the Asus MeMO tablet hides a dual-core Qualcomm 8260 SoC that runs at 1.2GHz and which is paired with 1GB of RAM. Storage is set at either 16GB or 32GB, depending on the model chosen, but Asus...

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Microsoft Brings Windows 8 at CES 2012

Among the products that were showcased at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last night during Steve Ballmer’s keynote, we can count the Windows 8 operating system.  The platform, made official in September last year, during the BUILD conference, is expected to become commercially available sometime in the second half of the year.  Until that happens, however, we should see it move from the Developer Preview state in which Microsoft has it available for the masses at the moment.  At CES, Tami Reller, chief marketing officer, Windows, took the stage to provide a demonstration of the most important features that Windows 8 sports.  The support for touchscreens was one of them. The platform is meant...

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Full Nokia Lumia 900 Specifications Available

Yesterday, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia announced the release of a new flagship Windows Phone, none other than the long-rumored Nokia Lumia 900. The handset is set to arrive on shelves in the United States soon, with support for AT&T’s LTE network.  This is the first smartphone from Nokia to be announced with support for 4G networks, and will be delivered to the United States in the coming months exclusively on the airwaves of wireless carrier AT&T.  Following the official announcement at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nokia published the full hardware specifications list for the new device. For those who missed the official announcement,...

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CES 2012: MSI Presents Intel Z77 Ivy Bridge Motherboards with Thunderbolt Support

With Ivy Bridge on track for an early Q2 release, motherboard makers have already started presenting their upcoming solutions for these processors, and MSI is one of the first to do so with the Z77A-GD80 and the Z77-GD65 Panther Point boards. As it becomes apparent from the names of these two motherboards, they are both based on the Intel Z77 chipset, which means that they feature native USB 3.0 support. Four such ports are available from the PCH, two of these being routed to the back of the MSI boards while the other two are available via an USB 3.0 header angled at 90 degrees to improve cable routing. This feature is present in both of the motherboards presented by MSI, but the Z77A-GD80 does come with one important addition that isn’t...

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A Modded Driver to Enable X-Fi Features on Your Realtek Onboard Card

Here's one rather interesting modded driver which promises to make X-Fi capabilities available for all those people who own an onboard Realtek audio card.  First of all, this driver is unsigned and is provided as is. Since there is no signature, you might get some Windows warnings or even some positives (false or not) from your anti-virus software. Users around the Internet who have installed and run this driver haven't reported virus infections, though, and recommend disabling anti-virus systems when downloading/ installing. The "X-Fi-er" works with Realtek driver version 2.67 only, and just under Windows 7 x64. It looks like it will install all the applications that normally come with a Creative X-Fi card. Nevertheless, don't let...

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