AMD Trinity A10-5800K Performance Tested, Provides 50% Faster Graphics

Even though AMD isn’t expected to announce its next-gen APUs based on the Trinity architecture until the second quarter of this year, a Chinese website has recently posted online a series of benchmarks comparing the performance of the upcoming A10-5800K with that of the current A8-3850 processor. When it will see the light of day, the A10-5800K will become AMD’s most powerful Trinity APU for desktop computers thanks to the inclusion of four computing cores clocked at 3.8GHz. With Turbo Core enabled, these will be able to reach speeds as high as 4.2GHz, while the chip will also feature 4MB of L2 cache memory and a built-in Radeon HD 7660D graphics core with 384 shader cores. The enthusiast who tested this CPU on the Chip Hell forums, compared...

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Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3610QM Notebook CPU Benchmarked

Despite the fact that more than a month separates us from the official launch of Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors, benchmarks of an upcoming Core i7-3610QM notebook processor have recently made their appearance online. The tests, which were published by Donanim Haber, show Intel’s CPU running Super Pi, as well as Cinebench R11.5, two benchmarks that are well known to hardware enthusiasts. While the former is of little use when it comes to testing the performance of modern multi-core chips, Cinebench is one of the most representative benchmarks around, since it tests the rendering power of the CPU. The good news for Intel is that, in Cinebench R11.5, the Core i7-3610QM proves to be faster than quite a few other processors, including AMD’s FX-8150,...

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Sony Launches Xperia Neo L MT25i with Android 4.0 ICS in China

Japanese company Sony has just announced the upcoming availability of its first smartphone to be launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform out of the box, the Xperia neo L MT25i. Unfortunately, the smartphone is aimed at the Chinese market, and there’s little to no hope to see this one available outside the country. No word on exact release date or price tag for the moment. Sony Xperia neo L MT25i is just a software-updated variant of the Xperia neo and Xperia neo V, which were launched on the market last year.  However, while the older handsets will receive an Android 4.0 update later this year, the Xperia neo L will be shipped with Ice Cream Sandwich platform at launch. The rest of the spec sheet seems to be similar to...

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LTE-Enabled ZTE N910 with Android 4.0 and 1.2 GHz Dual-Core CPU Spotted at FCC

It looks like ZTE is about to launch another smartphone in the United States. However, this time it’s not just an ordinary budget-friendly handset, but a top-notch ZTE device that is meant to strengthen its presence on the North American smartphone market. The folks over at Engadget have just learned that the ZTE N910, which was showcased last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, has just been approved by FCC (Federal Communications Commission). ZTE N910 features full LTE support for AWS and PCS bands, and it could be priced lower than other 4G-enabled smartphones already available on the market, to give ZTE an edge over better equipped handsets. Still, the N910 is not totally “helpless” as the phone is said to feature a powerful...

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Office 15 with Changes to Office Web Apps

Starting with the upcoming availability of the Office 15 productivity suite, Microsoft plans on delivering a series of changes to the Office Web Apps that it currently provided to its users.  Basically, Microsoft is expected to move its Office Web Apps to a new and separate server product, which should enable faster performance and a better experience.  These tweaks are meant to alter the web versions of Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley notes in a recent article.  Office 15 / SharePoint 15 will bring along a product called Office Web Apps Server, which should be able to deliver multiple SharePoint farms for viewing and editing documents.  A server or a farm running Office Web Apps...

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iFixit Tears Down Apple TV 3rd Generation

After tearing down the new iPad, the technically savvy bunch at iFixit got their hands on a third-generation Apple TV to do more surgery. They popped open the small black box to find that “Apple added [a] new antenna to address complaints about range and signal strength,” and that the new hardware doesn’t rely on a thermal cooling pad, which means the custom-designed A5 chip isn’t working overtime, even though it’s now required to output video at 1080p. Speaking of chips, the teardown revealed that the A5 is a single-core processor, as well as the following details about the rest of them: Hynix H9TKNNN4K 512MB RAM stacked within the A5 Toshiba THGVX1G6D2HLA01 8GB NAND Flash Broadcomm BCM4330 (the same as the iPad 3rd Generation) SMSC LAN9730...

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Script: CodeMirror

CodeMirror is not solely a simple client-side syntax highlighting script, it can also allow users the ability to write and edit their code, in an IDE-like manner, all inside their browser tab. Currently supports over 40+ programming language modes and 10 editing themes. It also includes common code editing features like searching (and replacing), keyboard shortcuts, nested collapsible structures, programming language auto-detection, code indentation, fullscreen editing, autocompletion and many more. CodeMirror has been successfully deployed to famous projects around the web, like JSBin, Google Code, MyWebSQL, JSHint, BlueGriffon, sourceLair, Mergely, and WeScheme, just to name a few. Of course, the library is open-source under a zlib-type...

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Synology 4-Bay DiskStation DS412+ NAS Server Makes Its Debut

Synology has just introduced an updated version of the high-performance 4-bay DiskStation DS412 NAS (Network Attached Storage) server, the DS412+, which adds a couple of new features to its predecessor. In order to build the DS412+, Synology started by redesigning the case of its previous model so that it could add hot-swap support, as well as a new cooling system. This uses a series of passive CPU heatsinks and dual exhaust fans that control their rotation speed according to the temperatures recorded inside the NAS case. Another modification brought to the DS412+ when compared to its predecessor, is the inclusion of a front panel USB 3.0 port, which makes this Synology's first 4-bay server to add support for this interface. Two more USB...

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So This Is What’s Draining the iPhone’s Battery

A computer whiz at Purdue University, Indiana, formed a team to carry out a study and determine the major cause of battery drainage on smartphones. Abhinav Pathak and his tech-savvy buds found (PDF) that between “65%-75% of energy in free apps is spent in third-party advertising modules.” The tests were conducted on non-iOS devices, but they should apply the same on Apple’s platforms. They made an example out of the immensely popular Angry Birds, which comes in free and paid variants – and we can safely assume it’s the free game that most people downloaded. They found that the core part of Angry Birds Free sucks about 20 percent of the energy it uses for the game. The remainder goes on location-tracking and serving ads. In other words, the...

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Super Flower Readies GX550 Module Power Supply for Gamers

With new CPUs, motherboards and video cards almost available, gamers only need a nice case, storage and memory to make everything work.  Still, what they might want to spend more time looking for is a suitable power supply, like the 80Plus Gold-rated Super Flower GX550.  Spotted by Expreview, it boasts an output of 550W and a modular design, which means that owners will get to choose what cables to connect to the PSU and which to let lie in their plastic bag.  Its unspecified price is supposed to be convenient, which means that even gamers with fewer funds might afford it.  Only the key cables, like the 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors are impossible to completely remove from the unit.  Moving on, a single 12V...

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MSI Slips Out Pictures About GeForce GTX 680 Kepler

NVIDIA will release the Kepler-based Geforce GTX 680 video card in a few days, but MSI, like others, jumped the gun a bit, though it hasn't outright revealed its version of the card yet.  A few pictures, borderline screen shots really, have made their way to the net, showing some of the features of the upcoming MSI GTX 680.  The PCI Express 3.0 video card will have 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, a memory interface of 256 bits and four display outputs.  It will also be fully supported by the MSI Afterburner overclocking utility, which will allow for “'GPU/Memory Clock Offset and Power Limit Control.”  For those interested in other options, Gigabyte, Zotac and ASUS have also leaked info about their GTX 680 models.  The official...

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Linux Kernel 3.2.12 Is Available for Download

Greg Kroah-Hartman announced last night, on March 19th, the immediate available for download of the twelfth maintenance release of the stable Linux kernel 3.2 series.  Linux kernel 3.2.12 includes some IPv6 and IPv4 networking fixes and improvements, a couple of sound patches, as well as the usual driver updates. "I'm announcing the release of the 3.2.12 kernel. All users of the 3.2 kernel series must upgrade." "The updated 3.2.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.2.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary" - said Greg KH in the email announcement. As usual, the Linux...

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Gets FCC Approval

Unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is about to make its debut in the UK sometime this month. Shortly after the slate is launched in the UK, Samsung plans to introduced the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 in the United States, though the company has not unveiled any release dates until now. However, we know that it shouldn’t take Samsung too long to debut the tablet in the US, especially given the fact that the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 has just been spotted at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). Even though only the Wi-Fi model of the tablet got approved by FCC, we can safely assume that the 3G version will get its approval soon. The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is one of Samsung’s tablets with support for GSM voice...

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Windows 8 to Be Ready for an October Release

Windows 8, the next version of Microsoft’s client, is expected to become available sometime in October, when the first tablet PCs to run under it hit shelves.  Microsoft hasn’t provided specific info on when the platform will arrive on the market as of yet, but we’ve already seen a great deal of rumors emerging on the matter.  Microsoft is expected to have the final flavor of Windows 8 commercially available in October for both Intel and ARM architectures.  Apparently, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans on the matter have confirmed the same, Bloomberg reports.  Basically, it means that we’ll be able to purchase both Intel and ARM tablet PCs running under Windows 8 before the end of this year.  These devices...

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AMD Radeon HD 7990 Specs Unveiled: Dual Tahiti XT GPUs Clocked at 850MHz

AMD’s plans to release the Radeon HD 7990 have been common knowledge for quite some time now, but recently a Chinese website managed to uncover the specs of this upcoming flagship dual-GPU video card. Expected to arrive in April, the Radeon HD 7990 is rumored to be built using a pair of Tahiti XT graphics cores, which is the same GPU as the one installed in the HD 7970. These will be linked together in CrossFireX thanks to the inclusion of an on-board bridge chip, so the card will feature 62 Compute Units for a total of 4096 stream processors, 256 texture units and 64 ROP units. Each one of the two GPUs will also feature a 384-bit wide memory bus that will be connected to 3GB of GDDR5 video buffer, delivering a whopping 6GB of VRAM on a...

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Transcend Intros 16 GB and 8 GB Server Memory Modules

Intel may have made it possible to build newer, better and more secure servers, but its Xeon E5 processors can't do anything on their own, so Transcend decided to offer some backup, so to speak. While leaving it to others to create motherboards and racks or server blades, Transcend looked at the field where it excels: memory. Long story short, it has launched a pair of Registered DIMM (RDIMM) memory modules. Their capacities are of 16 GB and 8 GB, while the rest of their specifications make them suitable for different types of applications. To start off, the 8 GB RDIMM is a low voltage module with a clock speed of 1,333 MHz. It is constructed with DDR3L 512Mbx8 DRAM chips. It can operate on 1.35V instead of needing 1.5V and, by using it...

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Samsung’s Exynos 5 Mobile CPU Gets Detailed

One thing that Samsung’s upcoming flagship Galaxy S III won’t include is 32nm Cortex-A15 core.  The smartphone will arrive on the market with a Cortex-A9 chip inside, although Samsung is also working on the release of a Cortex-A15 processor, namely the Exynos 5.  Following various leaked details on the specifications list of the upcoming Galaxy S III, info on what the Exynos 5 processor will have to offer has also emerged.  For example, we know that the device will be manufactured using the 32nm process, and that it will feature an ARM Mali T-604 MP4 GPU.  A recently leaked slide shows that the processor will feature two CPU cores and four GPU cores, along with 64-bit memory up to 1600MHz, and that it will run at up to...

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