AMD’s Radeon 8000 Series “Sea Islands” Family Detailed, 40% Faster than “Tahiti 2”

As Nvidia is readying the new GK110 Kepler-based monster GPU targeted for GPU computing and later for top gaming performance, AMD is preparing its new Radeon 8000 “Sea Islands” GPU family. The top performing member of the “Sea Islands” family is codenamed “Venus” The other members of the Sea Island family are rumored to be called Sun, Oland and Mars and their internal configuration will likely be: Sun: Die size: 230 square millimeters; Transistor count:  3.2 billion; Stream processing units: 1536 units.; TMUs: 96 units.; ROPs: 32 units.; Memory BUS width : 256 bits. Oland: Die size:  135 square millimeters or 160 square millimeters; Transistor count:  1.7 billion or 2.0 billion; Stream processing...

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Samsung GT-B5330 with QWERTY Keyboard and Ice Cream Sandwich Spotted in China

Samsung plans to release new affordable Android smartphones aimed at customers who don’t want to spend a fortune on an ICS-based device. Such a device has been recently spotted in China at the TENAA, the country’s regulatory commission, and has been filed by Samsung as GT-B5330. According to the folks over at SammyHub, the GT-B5330 is powered by Google’s Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, which seems to be the only reason the South Korean company may want to put it in the mid-range category. The photo of the phone shows that Samsung GT-B5330 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, which is a bit unusual for a smartphone that runs Ice Cream Sandwich platform. Unfortunately, the device falls short when it comes...

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First BlackBerry 10 Devices Postponed (again) for Q1 2013

Research In Motion has recently released its Q1 earnings report, which looks shockingly bad for the Canadian company. Aside from the 5,000 job cuts, RIM has a $518 million USD net loss. The company also claims it has shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones and only 260,000 PlayBook tablets, which is clearly disappointing for the handset maker. Although RIM announced earlier this year that the first devices powered by its next-generation BlackBerry 10 OS will arrive on the market in the last quarter of the year, the Canadian company had to delay the launch of these smartphones. Even though there are no details on the reasons behind RIM’s decision to postpone the release of the first BlackBerry 10 devices for Q1 2012,...

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Windows Explorer Name to Become File Explorer in Windows 8 RTM

Microsoft is reportedly making some more changes to its Windows 8 platform in preparation for the upcoming RTM and final flavors. One of these will affect the name of one of the most popular tools the platform has at the moment, namely its Windows Explorer. Since it is being used mostly for exploring the files and folders on the computer, Microsoft has decided to rename the tool to File Explorer, rumor has it. The change is not a big one, since the Explorer will continue to sport the same features as it did before, yet it does mark another change when compared to the Windows we knew so far. Windows Explorer has been with the platform since Windows 95, being called File Manager before that, and providing users with...

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Leaked Video Shows Nokia Belle FP2 Features

The first smartphone to come with Nokia Belle FP1, PureView 808 has been recently launched on the market. However, the Finnish company plans to release a major software update this year, which will improve the overall user experience. Dubbed Feature Pack 2, the new update is likely to become available for Nokia 808 PureView initially, but other Symbian smartphones will get it as well. Although Nokia did not confirm any timeframe for the release of the FP2, it appears that a video demoing the new features of the update has just been leaked online. The following new options have been added in this update: New swipe-unlock, New transition effects, New camera UI, New navbar, New widgets, New QWERTY keyboard, New image editor, New web browser, New Gallery and New music...

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AMD Radeon HD 7870 Custom Video Card with 120mm Cooling Fan

For our readers who don’t really know who Colorfire is, we can say that it is a subsidiary brand belonging to the well-known Chinese video card manufacturer Colorful. Colorfire is preparing to launch a new custom design of AMD’s Radeon HD 7870 graphics adapter. The new card is called Colorfire Radeon HD 7870 Xstorm and is powered by a Pitcairn GPU that has a frequency of 1 GHz. It comes with 1,280 shaders and 80 texture units all using GDDR 5 memory running at 4800 MHZ effective speed. Colorfire’s Radeon HD 7870 Xstorm comes complete with AMD’s UVD3 video decoder, Eyefinity and ZeroCore technologies. The cooling system consists of five nickel-plated heatpipes cooled by a very large single cooling fan. Mydrivers...

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AMD Brazos 2.0 E2 2000 Processor in Q4 2012

AMD’s new Brazos 2.0 platform can be characterized as bringing higher working frequencies and Turbo Core technology to the same Zacate low-power CPU architecture. The new APUs fit in the same FT1 sockets, and they also bring USB 3.0 support by using the new A68M chipset codenamed Hudson-M3L. Another important addition to the Brazos 2.0 support is the chipset-based RAID 0.1 support and the Gb Ethernet MAC 10/100/1000, along with two USB 3.0 ports next to 8 USB 2.0 ports with no specific USB 1.1 support. The new chipset also has the same 4.7W TDP that the first generation Brazos chipset had. We’re talking, of course, about the well-known A50M chipset. The new E2 2000 processor reportedly comes with the same Bobcat dual-core...

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Intel Atom 22nm Coming in Q4 2013

Intel’s low-performance Atom D7500, D2550 and D2500 is all that the company is planning to offer for nettop and low-power desktop systems for the next year and a half. Many of our readers were hoping to see a more capable desktop version of Clover Trail, but Intel doesn’t have such plans. The world’s biggest CPU designer is planning to skip releasing desktop versions of its Clover Trail and Medfield architecture. We’re not saying that such versions were ever in its plans, but considering how low the performance abilities of the current Atom processors are and the fierce competition from AMD’s Brazos 2.0, many were already thinking about upgraded desktop Atom CPUs. Intel’s Medfield is a quite capable low-power chip, and...

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Windows Phone 8 Get Curved Keyboard for Single-Hand Use

Windows Phone 8, the next-generation mobile operating system from Microsoft, is set to arrive on shelves in the fourth quarter of this year, with a nice range of new features and updates from the previous platform releases. One of the elements that might become available for Windows Phone 8 users at some point, but that has not been announced yet, is a keyboard specifically crafted for use single-handedly. The keyboard, which was spotted in a leaked presentation from Microsoft Research, sports a curved design, which would make it great for use with the thumb. Windows Phone 8 was rumored before to be set to receive a keyboard optimized for use with a single hand, yet Microsoft did not make official any plans on the matter. However,...

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Office 2013 Icons Leak, Show More "Metro"fication

Microsoft’s Office 2013 productivity suite is expected to become available in a beta flavor later this summer, with a nice range of goodies packed inside, including a new, Metro-fied user interface. We already had the chance to have a look at some of the visual changes that Microsoft plans on packing inside the new application version, and now we can have a look at the manner in which its icons have been changed. Each of the previous Office releases brought along redesigned icons for the applications included in the suite, and the upcoming Office 2013 is no exception. The guys over at LiveSide.net have managed to get hold of some of the icons destined to accompany the suite, such as those for OneNote 2013 and Excel 2013. Just...

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ASUS AMD Dragon HD 7850 DirectCU II

Nvidia is getting ready to announce the GeForce GT 600 series for the high volume mid-range market, so AMD and its partners are getting ready to counteract the launch. ASUS is showing a great deal of care and work, especially for the China region. Therefore, ASUS is now preparing a special version of its DirectCU II HD 7850 graphics cards that’s specifically made to achieve better performance and cooling results than the reference AMD Radeon HD 7850 design. As reported by VR-Zone, The new version will come with two extra 8-millimeter cooling pipes next to the usual three heatpipes inside the DirectCU II cooling system. We can only see three heatpipes in the pictures, so we'll have to wait until the final product is pictured...

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