GeForce GTX 650 Ti Specifications with Good Performance New GPU

We were quite a bit disappointed to find out here that Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 650 video card is nothing more than a GT 640 with GDDR5 memory. The company is apparently going to use a different chip for its Ti version. Therefore the new GeForce GTX 650 Ti is powered by Nvidia’s Kepler-based GK106 silicon, Donanim Haber reported. This chip is made in the same 28 nm manufacturing process at TSMC just like the GK104 and AMD’s Tahiti. GK106 has 960 CUDA cores inside and that almost three times the raw power when compared with the plain GTX 650. The card features a rather short PCB that comes fitted with 1GB or 2GB of GDDR5 memory working on a tight 128-bit bus. This means that playing games at very high resolutions...

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CoolerMaster Horizontal Vapor Chamber Coolers

Well-known computer cooling systems manufacturer Cooler Master has decided to switch from using a solid copper base for its high-end coolers to using a horizontal vapor chamber. The solution seems to be considerably more efficient in theory. It is very important to mention that all this must be proved in real life tests using retail products as the Company’s own TPC812 cooler failed to impress the enthusiasts. In the TPC812, Cooler Master decided to use a large U-shaped vapor chamber that added additional heat transfer capacity next to the 6 heatpipes already present on the cooler. The cooler provides very good cooling results, but fails to surpass many of today’s cooling stars. This is why we’ll take Cooler Master’s 8x...

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Apple CPU Expert Leaves A6/A7 Chips Production Might Be Affected

AMD announced that Jim Keller has left Apple to become the corporate vice president and chief architect of AMD’s microprocessor cores. He will be reporting directly to Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Technology and Engineering, Mark Papermaster, who also worked at Apple. The co-author of the HyperTransport specification, as well as the innovative x86-64 processor instruction set, Keller is said to have been poached by Papermaster who left Apple in 2010, on grounds of a PR nightmare caused by the Antennagate fiasco after the iPhone 4 launch. It is believed that Papermaster didn’t do everything in his power to prevent the debacle. Keller, for his part, “will lead AMD’s microprocessor core design efforts...

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BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B Device, RIM Confirmed

Research In Motion released a few months ago a BlackBerry 10 device aimed at developers. The company is known for launching multiple builds of upcoming devices in order integrated the best user experience in the final products. The latest device launched by RIM, the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha was handed out to developers at the last BlackBerry 10 Jam event. Today, the folks over at CrackBerry have learned that there's a new BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B in the works, which will be given for free to developers in the following weeks. RIM already confirmed the existence of the device and stated that “there will eventually be a minor hardware bump to Dev Alphas coming off the line – normal part of any pre-release program.” In...

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Sony Xperia SL Press Photos Leak Again with Additional Colors

The first Sony Xperia SL press photo leaked about two weeks ago, along with some of the smartphone's specs sheet. Although the Xperia SL only appeared in pink, it looks like Sony plans to launch the device in more color options. The folks over at UnwiredView report the handset will also be available in black, silver and white color-schemes. No other details on the phone's hardware and software configuration emerged, but we already know the Xperia SL will be equipped with a dual core processor clocked at 1.7 GHz. We can also speculate the device will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform. It is also worth mentioning Sony Xperia SL is expected to be announced on August 29, two days ahead of IFA 2012 trade fair...

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Windows 8 Status Now RTM

Only two months after the latest preview flavor of Windows 8 was made available for download, Microsoft announced that the platform was released to manufacturing today. The availability of the RTM flavor of the operating system means that Microsoft finally applied the latest touches to it, and that OEM partners are currently receiving the final code. Thus, Windows 8 PCs can start entering production, so that they would be ready for the commercial release of the platform, set for October 26th. On that day, Windows 8 will be available for users with a price tag of $39.99 attached to it for upgraders, or on new devices powered by the platform. Moreover, Microsoft notes that all those who will purchase an eligible Windows 7 PC...

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Intel Haswell-EP Processors Come in 2014

World’s greatest semiconductor company has been historically working against the interests of early adopters and enthusiasts, so we’re happy to find out that users that invested hundreds of dollars in their LGA2011 motherboards will stand a chance to get an Ivy Bridge upgrade. We only need to remember how they changed from LGA1156 to LGA1155 just to get people to spend money for new motherboards alongside new CPUs and how they left LGA1366 adopters with no upgrade option, despite the fact that Intel actually manufactures Xeon processors using the LGA1356 format. It’s quite upsetting to see that exactly the ones that spent almost $1000 for their motherboard and CPU are the ones left without an upgrade option. We reported...

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Texas Instruments Charging Technology Breakthrough

We suppose the words “universal USB” are a bit redundant, considering what USB stands for (Universal Serial Bus), but we figure a breakthrough like this deserves it. Long story short, Texas Instruments has introduced an intelligent USB charge controller that automatically detects and adjusts charge algorithms. It is composed of a current-limit USB power switch and a USB dedicated charging port identification circuit. Long story short, it can detect USB 3.0 and USB 3.0 data line voltages and provide the correct electrical signature needed to safely charge them. In other words, this is a chip that can allow consumer electronics companies to build USB chargers that work on anything that can recover energy from a USB source. Here...

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Raspberry Pi Running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

While people may have made their own ports, the Raspberry Pi credit card-sized PC doesn't actually come loaded with the Android 4.0 operating system out of the box. This has now changed. After months of work, the Raspberry Pi foundation has finally finished the first Raspberry Pi loaded with Ice Cream Sandwich. It was a chore to get the OS to recognize the VideoCore IV GPU, but both GPU-accelerated graphics and video should be working now. Only AudioFlinger is still non-operational, but it is only a matter of time before that loose end is tied. That said, we don't know for sure when Raspberry Pi will add Android 4.0 ICS to the OS list, but we hope it won't be more than a few weeks from now. After all, 12 to 17 weeks (because of orders number and shipping distances)...

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Intel Xeon Phi with B0 Stepping Now Shipping, Specifications Revealed

Intel has apparently removed Nvidia from some supercomputer deals originally planned to use Nvidia's Tesla GPU compute cards. The largest CPU company in the world apparently used its influence and some bold claims to sway the supercomputer architects to go Xeon Phi instead of Tesla. As VR-Zone reports, Now, Intel is ready with a newer revision of its Knights Corner chip and, this time, different board configurations have been sent out to various technology partners. The B0 stepping has been configured in three main configurations containing 57 cores, 60 core and 61 cores. We know the numbering seems strange, but Intel’s previous versions weren’t any easier to remember. Let’s call these versions 57C, 60C and 61C. We...

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Intel Confirmed 40 UltraBook Designs with Touchscreen in 2013

Intel is working hard at making its UltraBook concept a little more popular. The company confirmed that many new UltraBooks that are coming in 2013 would feature touchscreens. Intel’s UltraBook concept is a surprising initiative from the company. The world’s largest semiconductor company is proposing various innovative enhancements to its mobile concept. Intel is the main supporter of using slim 5mm HDDs, hybrid hard drives or SSDs and ultra-high resolution screens. All these coming from Intel have surprised everybody, as the company often proved it was very conservative, never desired huge performance improvements, never cared about user experience and always charged end-users an “arm and a leg” for every meager improvement. Now,...

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