Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K Overclocking Potential Explored

With three more months to go until Intel makes official its first Ivy Bridge processors, a Taiwanese overclocker has entered into the possession of an engineering sample Core i7-3770K CPU, which he put through all sort of tests to reveal a bit more about this chip and its overclocking potential. The tests run by TOPPC covered both the stock and overclocked performance of the Ivy Bridge CPU and while no exact numbers were specified it seems like, on average, the ES i7-3770K was 10% faster than the current Core i7-2600K. Overclocking wise, the chip also had a similar performance with that of its Sandy Bridge counterparts, the highest frequency achieved with all cores active being set at 4.8GHz. TOPPC expects these results to improve when the...

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‘OPPO Find 3’ Android Phone with Dual-Core CPU Gets Launched in China

Although there’s plenty of room for everyone in the Chinese smartphone market, the competition is fierce, especially that more regional handset manufacturers are trying to best other well-known brands like Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Motorola.  ‘OPPO Find 3’ is the latest Android-powered smartphone released on the Chinese market. The device is meant to compete with Meizu MX and Xiaomi M1, but with other smartphone in its price range as well. One of the most important aspects of this competition is design. If you manage to offer an appealing smartphone, people will start asking about its hardware and software configuration. That being said, it appears that ‘OPPO Find 3’is quite the looker. The handset manufacturer borrowed iPhone 4’s bar...

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Troubled Company Kodak Sues Samsung over Galaxy Tab

Looks like the turmoil of patent infringement lawsuits is not even in the least bit over for Samsung, as its Galaxy Tab was targeted again, by Kodak this time.  Kodak has definitely stopped playing nice now that its financial position and existence as a brand is being threatened more than ever before.  What it did not long ago was begin a legal action against Samsung, over alleged patent infringement.  As some may have suspected, the Galaxy Tab tablets are the ones supposedly infringing Kodak's intellectual property.  Like all patent lawsuits before it, it will take months, perhaps years, for the dispute to be settled, one way or another.  If Kodak brings enough weight to its claims, it may receive royalty payments,...

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Firefox to Get a 'Reset' Button

Mozilla is planning to add a 'reset' button to Firefox. The idea is to enable users to repair their Firefox install or revert to a default state, while also retaining their data, bookmarks, history and so on. Work is underway on implementing the feature, which will be accessible in several ways. "There are a number of serious Firefox issues (not starting, crashing, unexpected behavior, lost toolbars and more) that can be solved by creating a new profile," the Mozilla wiki page dedicated to the new feature reads. "The problem is, creating a new profile (which is an incredibly difficult task) is not enough. A user will almost always want to also migrate their data to the new profile which is another difficult task," it says. Firefox, just...

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Asus Readies HD 7970 DirectCU II Top for February Release

Asus’ DirectCU II graphics cards have long been among the best in the industry, so many will rejoice when hearing that the Taiwanese company is getting ready a highly customized version of the Radeon HD 7970 for being released into this series. The card in question will be called the HD 7970 DirectCU II Top and just like its predecessors it features a massive tri-slot cooler, a highly customized PCB and a series of other overclocking optimizations. These include a series of voltage measurement points, a 12-phase VRM circuitry with supper alloy caps and chocks as well as a special SAP capacitor added to maximize overclocking headroom according to Asus. The tri-slot cooling system is also just as impressive since it uses two 100mm fans sitting...

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Samsung Joy and Samsung Fresh Trademarks Emerge

Two of the new handsets that the South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung is set to make available this year could arrive on shelves as the Samsung Joy and Samsung Fresh.  The names have just popped up at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO), both of them being registered there on January 13th, 2012 in the ‘Telephones; smart phones; mobile phones; computer software for mobile phones, portable media players and handheld computers’ section.  For the time being, no specific info on what these devices could be all about has emerged, but we would not be too surprised if they turned out to be two new Android-based smartphones from the company.  Samsung might offer some more details on these devices as soon as next...

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Casio Readies Android 4.0 ICS Smartphone with Quad-Core CPU and 4G LTE

There’s no telling how much success Casio’s G’Zone Commando Android phone has at Verizon Wireless, but we’ve just received word that the company plans to release a top-notch smartphone sooner than expected.  The information comes from a DroidLife reader who was fortunate enough to play with Casio’s prototype while attending to a focus group session a few days ago. In fact, it appears that the company plans to launch more than one device, most of them headed to Verizon Wireless. According to DroidLife the unannounced Casio device is big. Even though it does not have a name yet, the smartphone is said to feature a large 4.5-inch or 4.7-inch Super AMOLED capacitive display and a quad-core processor of unknown type and speed. In addition,...

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Conurus Smart Adapter Lets You Mount Canon EF Lenses on a Sony NEX Camera

If you are a longtime Canon EOS camera owner, but consider buying a Sony NEX from travelling a bit lighter from now on, Conurus has prepared an accessory that will sure capture your interest. Called the Smart Adapter by the outfit, this is basically a Canon EF to Sony NEX lens adapter, which will let you mount EOS lenses on your new NEX interchangeable lens camera. Conurus says that the adapter allows for the electronic aperture to be directly controlled via the camera body without losing any of the exposure modes available. Furthermore, the Smart Adapter supports image stabilization, if the Canon lens has this feature, along with EXIF. The only downside is that while using the Smart Adapter autofocus no longer works, which is definitely...

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Humongous Yeston Radeon HD 7970 Takes Up Four Expansion Slots

You'd think that Gigabyte's triple-fan AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card qualifies as a big and bad beast, but that's nothing compared to what Yeston came up with. For some reason or other, Yeston decided that a dual-slot cooler was not big enough, so it added a quad-slot one.  Yes, you read it right: the new design has a heatskin so massive that, when you add the two fans on top of it, it takes up four expansion slots.  The fans measure 120mm in diameter and use 18 impeller-style blades each.  Unfortunately, the card's performance specifications are a mystery, the same as the reason for actually inventing such a massive cooler.  We'd be sorely disappointed if Yeston left the stock clock speeds as they were, although we...

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Deepcool Dracula VGA Heatsink Gets Ready for the Radeon HD 7970

The number of third-party cooling solutions available for AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 keeps growing, Deepcool being the latest to join the party with a special version of its Dracula VGA cooler redesigned for the HD 7900-series. The new Dracula heatsink will be released by the company into the same Gamers Storm series as its predecessor and targets gamers and computer enthusiasts alike. Compared to the other VGA cooling solutions launched before by Deepcool, the Dracula uses an entirely new design which relies on two separate heatsinks.  Heat is driven form the GPU and into the two separate fin stacks by no less than six U-shaped heatpipes.  Just like the heatsink, these are also silver nickel plated in order to protect the cooler from...

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CyanogenMod 9 Ported to Original Motorola DROID

Motorola DROID got an unofficial Ice Cream Sandwich port last month, which was said to be based on an earlier version of CyanogenMod 9. However, the folks over at XDA Developers have just released a CyanogendMod 9 alpha build for the original Motorola DROID. While this is still a work in progress, there are some things that are fully functional so users can flash this in case they want a glimpse of what ICS has to offer. For the time being, the camera and the accelerated video decoding are not functional. The person responsible for this release, XDA forum user kabaldan, also says that a fix for these missing features will not be available any time soon. For more details on this CyanogenMod 9 alpha build for Motorola DROID  head over...

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Gigabyte Officially Intros Triple-Fan AMD Radeon HD 7970

It would appear that Gigabyte didn't want to wait too long before launching a customized version of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics adapter.  Like most every other AMD partner out there, Gigabyte released a stock-clocked Radeon HD 7970 when AMD formally launched it.  Now, the company has had enough of waiting, so it has revealed the GV-R797OC-3GD.  Overclocking enthusiasts will probably like this newcomer quite a bit once they get their hands on it (no price known yet, unfortunately).  The GV-R797OC-3GD is not only factory-overclocked, but it also has special components and cooling that allow for further clock tweaking.  The GPU (graphics processing unit), was set at 1,000 MHz instead of the reference 925 MHz.  On...

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Gigabyte Adds Dual-UEFI BIOS to H61MA-D3V Entry-Level Motherboard

Gigabyte has just introduced in Japan its first entry-level motherboard to use the company’s Dual-UEFI technology, the GA-H61MA-D3V (rev. 2.0), which is expected to arrive in other parts of the world starting with May of this year. Gigabyte’s Dual-UEFI technology was designed to replace the BIOS found in many pre-2010 motherboards with a more capable software interface between the operating system and platform firmware. The Taiwanese motherboard maker was actually one of the last in the industry to adopt this technology, but it now seems like it plans to transition it to more board models. Moving to the GA-H61MA-D3V rev 2.0 spotted by TechPowerUp, this LGA 1155 solution is built around the Intel H61 chipset which was paired together with...

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