AMD Vishera Piledriver FX 8320 and FX 8300 8-Core Processors

AMD customers that are still enjoying the AM3+ platform are not forgotten by the company and the Texas based CPU and GPU designer is getting ready to launch some very powerful eight-core processors. The new models use the long-awaited Piledriver enhanced x86 core and the same 8 MB level 3 cache. The maximum supported memory is still 1866 MHz DDR3, but the processors themselves will likely offer an overall 20% performance increase over today’s FX 8150 CPU like we’ve reported here. The new additions are called FX 8300 and FX 8320, as Fudzilla report. These are unlocked CPUs and the former runs at a base frequency of 3.3 GHz while the latter rated at 3.5 GHz with a 4.0 GHz Turbo option. AMD’s FX 8300 has every chance of becoming...

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Microsoft Launch Office Next Blog

While getting ready for the release of the next major flavor of Office, Microsoft is also making sure that it keeps the hype around the product at a high level. Thus, the company has announced the launch of Office Next blog, through which info on the upcoming suite will be delivered to users. For the time being, no specific info on the product has been provided, but the first post on the blog, coming from PJ Hough, Corporate Vice President of Program Management, Microsoft Office Division, promises such details for the not too distant future. “I'm really excited to kick off this conversation and connect you with the engineers who are building future releases of Office—here, they'll discuss the improvements we make, the designs...

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Nexus 5 Concept Phone Design

Last month, Google unveiled to the world the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, which came to the market in conjunction with the first tablet PC included in the popular Nexus series, the Google Nexus 7. Before the end of the year, however, Google is expected to add more devices to the Nexus family, some suggesting around five. The reason appears to be a simple one: Google will celebrate five years of Android this fall, and a host of new Nexus devices would certainly come as a great gift for enthusiasts. What we don’t know at the moment is who will manufacture those handsets, or what hardware specifications they would feature when released. One designer, however, decided to up the ante, and published his own ideas...

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ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Matrix Sets New World Record in 3D Mark 2003

We all know that AMD’s “Tahiti” GPU is capable of reaching very high frequencies. The GPU designer itself decided to launch a new series of Radeon HD 7970 video cards that feature increased GPU and video memory frequencies without bothering to change anything in the hardware design. The new line of cards is, of course, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and you can flash your own “ordinary” HD7970 into an AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition using the method we described here. While breaking numerous of other single-GPU records, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 has recently managed to get the record for highest 3D Mark 2003 score. As reported by Overclockers.ua The card of choice was ASUS’ Radeon HD 7970 Matrix and the score was 214,700 3DMarks. Intel’s...

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Here are Concept If Windows Phone 8 Powered the New Blackberry Smartphones

RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins hopes the company’s next generation BlackBerry 10 operating system will win back the hearts of BlackBerry fans. Unfortunately, the first devices powered by OS 10 are set to arrive on the market in January 2013. Heins also confirmed a few days ago that the company would launch at least two new BlackBerry 10 devices, a full-touch smartphone and another one that will come with RIM’s traditional QWERTY keyboard. Still, what could happen if the Canadian company’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS won’t be able to turn tides in its favor? Well, it appears that Michal Bonikiwski anticipated the answer to that and created some concept images of a BlackBerry smartphone powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform. If...

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Now You Can Pause ASUS Maximus V Extreme Benchmark

Benchmarking tests during overclocking runs can take a long time to finish, and many of them need constant supervision. ASUS is the first company to make it possible to pause a benchmark, through the OCKey tool. Once installed (as described here), it permits a benchmark test to be paused by pressing CTRL+F1. Later, all it takes to resume is pressing CTRL+F1 again. The feature will prove useful for overclockers that have a benchmark running but would really want to go eat something, or do something else for a while. Of course, you'll need an ASUS Maximus V Extreme mainboard for this to work, but it's a sure thing that OCKey will be included on other models in the future. We wonder how long it will be before other companies come up with something similar (assuming...

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MSI GT60 and GT70 Laptops Upgraded with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M

It seems fitting that we would end up writing about the GT70 and GT60 gaming notebooks just half a day after we documented an unexpected move on MSI's part. And by “unexpected move” we meant, of course, the newly-discovered plans of Micro-Star International to enter the solid state drive segment. There, we gave GT60 and GT70 as the first examples of MSI products with the company's own SSD technology. Not MSI SSDs, but a MSI-developed RAID setup. The reason we are mentioning the gaming notebooks again has nothing to do with the alleged intention to enter the SSD segment though. Rather, Micro-Star International has issued a press release to announce the inclusion of a new GPU in the specifications list. The discrete...

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Intel Core i7-3630QM and i7-3632QM are set for Q4

Details on unannounced products show up in the most unlikely of places sometimes, but this isn't quite such an occasion, although the sources of info on two future Intel CPUs aren't totally common either. Yesterday, data on AMD's A4-3450 APU surfaced on Biostar's CPU support information update. It was actually something that made us hope new desktop Trinity APUs would be launched in August. We were disappointed, of course. AMD had, in fact, delayed the chips to October, but we won't dwell on that here. Instead, we will draw attention to the specifications of the Dell XPS 15 laptop, a certain eBay auction and yet another eBay auction. Clicking on the Tech Specs tab on Dell's product page will show the list of CPUs,...

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Microsoft to Announce Office 15 on Monday

Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is reportedly gearing up for the unveiling of the next major flavor of its Office suite as soon as Monday, July 16th. On that day, the company should make official the beta version of the productivity suite, as the final product is expected to arrive only next year. Microsoft has previously announced plans to make the beta version of Office 15 – which will be called Office 2013 – available for the public sometime this summer, but it did not offer a specific release date for it. However, a recent article on USA Today cites industry sources stating that the new software will make an official appearance on Monday. The new product promises a host of new features, many of which are...

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Kontron Nvidia Tegra 3 Mini-ITX Mainboard

Not many computer enthusiasts were expecting to see standard ARM mainboards entering the market so soon. German company Kontron has just launched a new mainboard based on just that, an ARM processor. The new addition comes in standard miniITX format and features a dual-core A9 processor. We were talking about a future ARM vs x86 war for a long time now, but we were not expecting to see end-user ARM powered mainboards pop up so soon. Just like most other miniITX mainboard powered by Intel’s Atom or AMD’s Brazos processor, Kontron’s new addition is powered by a dual-core Cortex A9 ARM processor called Tegra 3. Tegra 3 or Tegra “4+1” comes clocked at just 7 watts, but this practically beats any Atom or Brazos processor...

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AMD Trinity Desktop Processors Truly Delayed to October

We've been pretty excited about the prospects of AMD launching its next desktop accelerated processing units a month from now, but reports say this won't actually happen. Advanced Micro Devices was supposed to release a new batch of Trinity desktop accelerated processing units in August 2012. Unfortunately, assuming Digitimes knows what it is talking about, the likelihood is higher for the launch to be delayed by another two months. We admit, this isn't the first time someone says the units have been pushed back to the fourth quarter. Hints towards this have existed since June, and even earlier. We still hoped the rumors would be invalidated though, especially since manufacturing issues have long since lost their credibility...

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Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E435 and E535 with AMD Trinity APU

Well-known notebook and computer systems manufacturer, Chinese company Lenovo has just announced today the availability of its new ThinkPad Edge mobile systems powered by AMD’s Trinity APU. These come configurable with the top-performing mobile Trinity APU, the A10-4600M. The two new models in Lenovo’s ThinkPad Edge product line are the E435 and the E535. The former sports a 14” display featuring a standard 1366 by 768 pixel resolution, while the latter boasts a larger 15.6” display with the same mediocre resolution. The notebooks can be configured with up to a 1 TB HDD and 8 GB of system memory. Lenovo targets these two laptops at entry-level market and has endowed them with 1 HDMI connector, a Powered USB 2.0 port, three...

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Full Touch and QWERTY BlackBerry 10 Smartphones Will Land Together

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is determined to bring the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones to the market only in the first quarter of the next year, yet it will launch two of those at once, not a single device. The company has already confirmed the push back to the first three months of the next year, explaining that the move would help the platform more than a hasty launch this year would. In fact, RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins told CrackBerry that, for a successful launch in Q4 this year, they would need to have devices ready for unveiling in the September-October timeframe. A late November launch would not offer enough time for carriers to push devices to the front, and holiday sales won’t bring the expected...

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