EVGA Brings Out 2 GB and 4 GB GTX 670 Cards

We've seen the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, we've written about the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II and DirectCU II TOP and now we are doing the same for EVGA's own boards.  EVGA has, or will soon have, five versions of the GTX 670 graphics cards up for sale. One might also say that there are only three boards available. The number five is reached because two of them come in both 2 GB and 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM memory capacities. The third comes only with 2 GB.  The regular EVGA GTX 670 is one of the models with two memory options. Obviously, it sticks to the reference clock speeds: 915 MHz for the GPU (980 MHz GPU Boost) and the 6008 MHz GDDR5 frequency.  The second card with both 2 GB and 4 GB versions is the EVGA GTX...

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Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 670 was meant to be a more affordable alternative to the GeForce GTX 680, but ASUS didn't see any problem with increasing the tag a little, not it if meant it could heavily overclock the GPU and toss a beast of a cooler on top of it. For those who haven't read our article on the original GeForce GTX 670, the card is priced at $399 / 379-399 Euro. ASUS's GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II TOP wants $419 in exchange for its services, and probably just as many Euro in Europe. The name comes from the well-known DirectCU II cooler, with two fans and a large, long heatsink. This cooling module is as much a deliberate addition on ASUS's part as it is a necessity: the company used a custom PCB and factory-overclocked...

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2048pixels - World’s Best iPad Retina Wallpapers

A trio of talented and passionate people have been so impressed with the new iPad’s screen that they decided to launch a web site designed specifically to fulfill the need for higher resolution artwork required by the new tablet computer. Launching with a bunch of wallpapers of their own, as well as allowing others to submit works, “2048pixels provides a venue for anyone to download original 2048x2048 iPad retina artwork by some of the best designers in the world.” The site is truly breathtaking, featuring a clean design and super easy navigation between the works. If we didn't know any better, we'd be inclined to say it was crafted by Apple Inc. themselves. “With the release of the latest iPad, there is a real need in the...

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Gigabyte 15.6-Inch Full HD Gaming Laptop Debuts

There is a new gaming laptop up for order, or there will be as soon as Gigabyte finishes whatever loose ends have to be tied up in regards to shipments. Called P2542G, the mobile personal computer is a gaming notebook with a Full HD screen (native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels) and a display diagonal of 15.6 inches. We've already run into people who feel that there is no point to Full HD on that screen size. There is no shortage of people holding the opposite view of course. For our part, we feel that if tablets are using Full HD or better screens, laptops may as well do it by default. The 15.6-inch P2542G relies on a third-generation Intel Core i7-3610QM Quad-Core central processing unit (CPU). For those who don't...

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Gainward Launches the Cool Phantom GTX 670 Video Card

Well-known graphic card manufacturer Gainward has just announced the custom designed Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Phantom along with the reference design, on its official website. This is a sleek-looking powerful video card with a pretty silent cooling system. The card expectedly comes with factory pre-overclocked frequencies. The powerful cooling system will ensure reliable functioning of the GPU at 1006 MHz base frequency with a boost setting of 1084 MHz.    Memory frequency is also increased from the default 6008 MHz to a mediocre 6108 Mhz, resulting in a less than 3 percent overclock. It’s better than nothing we may say.    Unlike the GTX 680 Phantom, the GTX 670 version comes with only two fans underneath...

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ZOTAC’s GeForce GTX 670 AMP! Edition Is Official!

Popular video card manufacturer Zotac has just launched the GeForce GTX 670 AMP! Edition custom Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Kepler-based design, on its official website. It comes with a very powerful VRM and custom cooling system. Zotac’s custom video cards have always impressed the PC enthusiast gamers, but the company’s GeForce GTX 670 AMP! Edition is actually bringing a record under the belt. Having a memory frequency of 1,652 MHz with a GDDR5 6600 MHz effective frequency, the GeForce GTX 670 AMP! Edition achieves a staggering 211 GB/s memory bandwidth. That is the highest memory bandwidth ever achieved on a 256-bit BUS. Most of the GTX 670 AMP! Edition design is inherited from the company’s GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition that...

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NVIDIA Launches GeForce GTX 670 Graphics Card

After weeks of leaks and reports, NVIDIA has finally made the formal introduction of the GeForce GTX 670 graphics adapter, powered by the GK104 graphics processing unit.  The GK104 GPU is the same chip used in the making of the GTX 680 and the dual-chip GTX 690, constructed on the 28nm Kepler architecture. In the new video board, though, the processor does not have all CUDA cores active, nor as high a clock speed as on the flagship cards.  The fully unlocked GK104 boasts 1,536 CUDA cores, but GTX 670 has only 1,344. Of course, this is still a nice number, but we digress. Meanwhile, the frequency of the GPU is 915 MHz, although the GPU Boost technology can take it to 980 when the need arises. For the sake of...

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Windows 8 Introduces New NTFS Health Model and chkdsk

Among the various changes that Windows 8 will bring along when compared to previous platform versions, Microsoft included a new NTFS health model, complemented by a redesigned tool for disk corruption detection and fixing, none other than the chkdsk utility. Whenever disk corruption occurs, Windows must isolate and resolve them, so as to continue to offer access to data on the disk. When launched, the NTFS file system would bring a simple approach to this, through looking at the file system volume as being either healthy or not.  Provided that errors had been found, the drive would be taken offline to fix them, and access to files would be denied for as long as it was necessary to bring the volume back to a healthy...

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Calxeda Presents First ARM Ubuntu Cloud Server

Calxeda, a company backed financially by ARM and which strives to make data centers as efficient as possible using ultra-low power technology, has revealed its Ubuntu powered EnergyCore reference server, in the presence of Mark Shuttleworth, at Ubuntu Developer Summit.  Canonical, the company that developes the Ubuntu operating systems, has been working with Calxeda for a few years in order to make this server a reality. The solution presented at Ubuntu Developer Summy can easily deploy OpenStack based clouds using MAAS and Juju. The server dubbed EnergyCore can house up to 48 Quadcore nodes at under 300 Watts with up to 24 SATA drives, which meas that it is possible to house 1000 server in just one rack. Calxeda EnergyCore...

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HP Says Its Spectre XT Is Nothing Like the MacBook Air

After launching the new ENVY Spectre XT Ultrabook this week, HP design executive Stacy Wolff was pressed to respond to a question regarding design, and a potential design-centric lawsuit from Apple. The similarities between Apple’s MacBook Air and the Spectre are not as striking as with other laptops out there. In fact, Wolff defended HP’s design approach with a pertinent argument, stating the following (via Engadget): “I would go back to the TC1000 Tablet PC from about 10 years, and that's a tablet. I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple....

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ASUS Unveils Zenbook UX32VS with Nvidia Graphichs and FullHD Display

We all remember how Nvidia bragged about three hundred Ivy Bridge and Kepler design wins. Well, the first Ivy Bridge notebook on sale was using an AMD GPU and many of Nvidia’s Ivy Bridge design wins are, in fact, Fermi-based, not Kepler. Asus reportedly briefly unveiled some small details about its new Zenbook UX32VD. The new MacBook Air competitor form Asustek comes with a very high quality FullHD screen using an IPS display panel. To power that high resolution display, Asus decided to include Nvidia’s Fermi-based 40 nm graphics processing unit (GPU), called GT 620. This part is based on Nvidia’s Fermi GF116 GPU that comes with just 48 CUDA cores, 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs. The GPU has an 810 MHz frequency, but considering this...

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Intel Xeon CPUs Arrival Date, Prices and Specs

Intel's next batch of processors from the Xeon collection has been in the making for some time, and it's high time the official release finally happened. A recent report offers not just the announcement date of the inbound chips, but also the specifications of some of them. By all accounts, Dell's release of the PowerEdge C5220 microserver was evidence that the Santa Clara, California-based chip giant would soon unveil Xeon E3 and E5 chip models. Keep in mind that “announcement date” does not necessarily mean arrival date. Even if Intel does formally launch fresh E3 and E5 models on May 14, there is no guarantee they will immediately be up for sale. May 14 is next Monday, which means that we should brace ourselves...

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Intel Core i7's Vain Struggle Against AMD R-Series

Advanced Micro Devices will have both desktop and laptop accelerated processing units for consumers to buy, but that doesn't mean it won't have other chips too.  In fact, the Sunnyvale, California-based company is also going to launch the R-Series, which is basically the mobile “Trinity” series only for the embedded market instead of notebooks.  It is this R-Series that appeared in an Advanced Micro Devices PDF not too long ago. A graph shows the AMD R-464L and the R-272F pitted against the Core i7-2710QE, Core i5-2520M and Core i3-2310M.  All the chips were tested under 3DMark 06 and 3DMark Vantage v1.1.0, and the results can easily be seen in the picture. The R-464L did 206% better and the R-272F...

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