Benchmarkers won’t be happy to hear that Futuremark’s Latest 3DMark11 has been delayed due to bug fixing.
We have heard information from the vice president of Futuremark Mr. Oliver Baltuch citing:
Over the weekend we made the difficult decision to postpone the launch of 3DMark 11 by a few days. Our aim is to provide accurate, reliable and consistant results from the start. With that goal in mind we taking some extra time to fix a couple of difficult bugs rather than patching the benchmark immediately after release. It might take one day, it might take one week but either way we’ll be in touch again soon to confirm the new launch date and send you your review copy and complimentary press licence. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
The email recieved by press and eager users points out why it’s been delayed, granted it’s not going to be what people waiting for the benchmarking tool are going to want to hear but working on fixing bugs can never be construed as a bad thing.
Common rumour seems to put the release date back to December 3rd.
This delay will certainly annoy those people who have 3DMark on pre-order, but Futuremark are hoping that a free copy of the online shoot ’em up Shattered Horizon will soften the blow somewhat.
If you haven’t heard about 3DMark11, check out the video below:
From the Palit line up of Nvidias flagship card we can reveal the specs rumoured to be in the GTX 570.
Our friends over at SweClockers.com have obtained a leaked product spec sheet suggesting that the card will come equipped with 480 processing cores running a core clock of 732MHz, 1280Mb of GDDR5 ram with the Memory clock at 1900MHz (giving a combined of DDR3800Mhz).
Good news for all the gamers with a conscience out there, the card should run cooler and quieter with less power usage over the current line of GTX480s.
Two 6 pin PCI express power connectors are expected to be in place rather than the typical 8+6.
Graphic outputs remain the same however with 2 Dual link DVI and a single mini HDMI out.
Key card features include:
Nvidia SLI Ready
Microsoft DirectX11 Support
Nvidia CUDA Technology with CUDA C/C++
DirectCompute 5.9 and OpenCL support
With Palit pencilling in a December 7th Release date it will be very interesting to see what the final specifications are and just how much better it will be compared to the GTX480.
Razer recently have posted on their facebook page, a rebranded product originally developed by Belkin, the well known n52 gamepad which was released a few years back and its here again with new updated drivers and new features.
Razer and Belkin did co-operate again back in 2007 developing the upgraded version of the first Belkin n52 and named it the N52te tournament edition.
Here is the press release of the the n52te back in 2007:
October 4, 2007 Belkin International, Inc., announces its new n52te, a hybrid gaming keyboard built to dominate in FPS (first-person shooter), MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing games), and RTS (real-time strategy) computer games. An improvement over its predecessor, the critically acclaimed n52, the n52te is enhanced by Razer’s killer performance software, which boasts a competitive advantage with portable player profiles, robust customization tools, and cool blue backlighting.
Today Razer uses their own technologies to provide a more comfortable, accurate and “deadly” product to meet today’s competitive gaming demands.
The design is the same as the n52te, with a 16-button keypad, eight-way directional thumb pad, soft-touch rubberized wrist pad and 16 fully-programmable Hyperesponse gaming buttons.
What changed except the name (now recalled Razer Nostromo) is that you can switch instantly between eight key-maps instead of just three of the n52te and also you can store up to 20 gaming profiles, twice as many as the n52te.
Razer also claim to have changed the chip of the game pad and redefined the drivers & program to make them more “deadly” for the opponents.
The Razer Nostromo is now available to order for $69.99 (USA site) / 69.99(EU site), with an estimated ship date of November 29th worldwide.
Here is the press release from Razer website Here is what Razer web site claims
And here is a short description of what the new Razer Nostromo features are:
Ergonomic form factor for precision and maximum comfort:
The Razer Nostromo’s 16-button keypad layout and form factor are ergonomically optimized for easier, highly intuitive access to critical gaming commands, improving your key activation accuracy while letting you game in comfort. And for those marathon sessions, a soft-touch rubberized wrist pad cradles your palm and significantly reduces hand fatigue and wrist strain so you can rain digital death on your opponents without pause or mercy.
16 Fully programmable keys with on-the-fly keymap switching:
Razer Nostromo’s 16 fully-programmable Hyperesponse gaming buttons and 8-way directional thumb pad are engineered for rapid key actuation and crisp response. A programmable 8-way directional thumb pad that you can use either for movement or modifier keys rounds off your instruments of mass destruction. In addition, you can switch instantly between 8 keymaps by assigning the different keymap toggles to any button on the keypad.
Customize to your game with Razer’s configurator software:
The Razer Nostromo’s all-new configurator software is as easy to use as it is deadly, allowing you to conveniently customize all the buttons with any game command or key binding to open up a massive repertoire of killer combinations with your fingertips.
For users who like the design of the n52te and don’t own one might have a look at this product closely. If you already own a n52te and your satisfied with it you don’t really need to have an upgrade yet till the design will be completely changed.
Although if your interested the new features then this is the Christmas gift for you.
The design on the box really grabs your eye and gives lot of information on CPU support and information on the graphics support as well as the integrated Radeon graphics.
The back gives lots more information detailing about eJIFFY, CrossFire support, display connections and that it’s compatible with Windows 7. Other information included on the back of the box is information on the chipset.
When opening the box up, we get 4 right-angled SATA cables, a legacy IDE ribbon, I/O panel shield plate, support CD, eJIFFY CD, hardware installation leaflet, user’s guide and the A785GM-M motherboard in anti-static bag.
Kingston have stuck with the same design on their packaging for quite some time now, giving you a clear view of the memory and the security sticker detailing the model number, size, speed and cas latency.
The label is used as a security seal, to stop the memory being tampered with.
Upon opening up the packaging by breaking the seal, we can see that you get the two memory modules and a lifetime warranty leaflet, which also details installation instructions.
Overclockers Online is giving away a Tempest EVO, HALE90 PSU and a Sleeved LED Kit this holiday season. Drop your name in the ballot to see if you win!
Wow. If you’ve spent your life gaming at a 17″ – 19″ screen and haven’t experienced a game on anything bigger at a 22″ LCD, there really are no words to describe gaming at 3240×1920. Even if you’ve gamed on a full 1080p large TV, keep in mind that the MD230X3 setup is THREE TIMES the resolution of a single 1080p panel.
The ASRock X58 Extreme6 is one of the most high-end socket 1366 motherboards available in the market today, featuring 12 SATA ports (six SATA-600 and six SATA-300), six USB 3.0 ports, six memory sockets, and three PCI Express x16 slots. Let’s check it out.
After AMD with the ATI Radeon HD 5000 family a few months on the market and rival Nvidia represented just with the cards based on GeForce GTX 460 and GTX 465 is in a good position, one presented recently before the next generation desktop graphics cards. This is heard by the Radeon HD 6000-series, whose first two members to the names Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870th Similar to the naming scheme of the 5000 generation, it is also this to graphics chips from the mid-range, which will evolve over the coming weeks and months by other models both in terms of performance and price up and down extended accordingly. Both newcomers are based on the RV940/Barts-Grafikchip who sees in a 40 nm manufacturing process, the light of day and to Nvidia’s midrange cards make life difficult. According to AMD, there are improvements, especially in image quality, the next version of the Unified Video Decoder (UVD), and for Eyefinity, which now also allows a single card to connect up to six monitors. Really attractive but the cards are recognized only by the aggressive prices because about 150 for a HD 6850 is a word!
We have invited the new Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, a detailed test. We received not only the 3D performance of the cards, but also have the power, the temperatures and the resulting noise of the active cooling systems examined in detail. For this purpose we will newly designed Windows 7 test system is used, based on a recently Six-Core Intel Core i7-970 and a fast Solid State Drive (SSD) as the primary system drive coupled with a conventional HDD used as a data drive. We do, as always, enjoy reading the article!
ASRock 890FX Deluxe4 is really a Deluxe Socket AM3 motherboard based on the AMD 890FX chipset with SB850 southbridge. Five PCI Express slots, four USB3.0 ports, whereby two of them are connected with the enclosed USB3.0 front panel, six SATA3 connectors provided by SB850, two additional SATA3 ports provided by a Marvel SE9120 chip, one eSATA3 connector, one conventional IDE port, Gigabit LAN, optical and coaxial SPDIF sound output in addition to the six analog sound connectors of the ALC892 soundchip and a few more features makes this a Deluxe motherboard.
Let us take a look at the details of this ASRock 890FX Deluxe4.
AMD Phenom II X4 970 needs just a bit more to equalize the Phenom II X4 and Core i5-700 series in rights. Both product lines offer solutions that currently give you most performance for your money. Of the rest, Phenom II X6 1055T may be the least obvious choice. Subjectively, an unlocked Phenom II X6 1075T seems a better variant. Of course, if your tasks are well-parallelized.
Last week NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 460 SE which is designed to give a good price/performance level without compromising on memory amount. But is this enough to compete with the full GTX 460 variants that have 768 MB or 1 GB of memory?
The power supply on the test bench today is one of Sparkle Computer Corporation’s latest and greatest. For those that haven’t heard of Sparkle Computer Corp. , they’ve been in business for over 25 years and have primarily focused on delivering NVIDIA products. Lately they’ve also started delivering power supplies and they look quite promising on paper.
The model we are taking a look at today is their 850W Gold Class power supply, the SCC-850AF. It comes packed full of options at a modest price. Keep reading to find out how well the SCC-850AF performs when put through the gauntlet of tests here at TweakTown.
ASUS is a well-known innovator of technology, but there are times when they recognize a good idea and strive to simply make it better. Queue the GeForce GTX 580 video card. Armed with the maximum number of CUDA cores and PolyMorph engines NVIDIA can deliver with the Fermi architecture, the GeForce GTX 580 represents their trophy effort to seize the performance market. While being similar to the GeForce GTX 480, the GeForce GTX 580 design updates the Fermi formula, improves upon the power appetite, reduces heat output, and increases graphical frame rate performance. ASUS raises the GF110 fixed function clock speed from 772 MHz to 782, while the graphics cores now operate at 1564 MHz. 1536MB of GDDR5 video frame buffer use a familiar 384-bit memory bus, clocked to 1002MHz for a 4008MHz data rate. This is before ASUS Voltage Tweak gives us access to unlocked potential…
Evercool is a company focused on cooling and with the Hawk1 they have another great cooling product for the portable computing market. The Hawk1 NB Cooling pad is thin, light and easily portable making it an ideal choice for netbooks and ultra portable notebooks.
You MUST like the Brenthaven Facebook page at here!
Rules and regulations
As ALWAYS spam will NOT be tolerated and offending user(s) will be subsequently dealt with!
The winner will be the member picked at RANDOM
In the event of a dispute, the judges’ decision is final and no discussion will be open for it!
The winner will be notified via their registered email address no later than 14 days from the closing date of the competition!
The ONLY prize is TWO laptop sleeves from Brenthaven and a premium membership for a year to eTeknix.
The competition is open worldwide and all shipping costs and cost of prize(s) are covered by eTeknix!
In any event that the above prize offered is unavailable due to circumstances beyond our control; we reserve the right to offer an equal or greater specification alternative without any hesitation!
No entrant details will be passed on to any third-party companies!
Prize draws are not open to eTeknix staff, affiliates, suppliers or sponsors!
If a user is found to be creating or using multiple accounts, that user will be disqualified from the competition and subsequently dealt with!
By entering into this competition, you are hereby accepting the above mentioned terms and conditions of the competition!
Last but not least, have fun, enjoy and good luck!
The competition ends on 17th December 2010 at 8:00pm GMT
You MUST like the Brenthaven Facebook page at here!
Rules and regulations
As ALWAYS spam will NOT be tolerated and offending user(s) will be subsequently dealt with!
The winner will be the member picked at RANDOM
In the event of a dispute, the judges’ decision is final and no discussion will be open for it!
The winner will be notified via their registered email address no later than 14 days from the closing date of the competition!
The ONLY prize is TWO Ipad sleeves from Brenthaven and a premium membership for a year to eTeknix.
The competition is open worldwide and all shipping costs and cost of prize(s) are covered by eTeknix!
In any event that the above prize offered is unavailable due to circumstances beyond our control; we reserve the right to offer an equal or greater specification alternative without any hesitation!
No entrant details will be passed on to any third-party companies!
Prize draws are not open to eTeknix staff, affiliates, suppliers or sponsors!
If a user is found to be creating or using multiple accounts, that user will be disqualified from the competition and subsequently dealt with!
By entering into this competition, you are hereby accepting the above mentioned terms and conditions of the competition!
Last but not least, have fun, enjoy and good luck!
The competition ends on 17th December 2010 at 8:00pm GMT
Corsair have released details about their new Vengeance series of memory modules.
The new range which will go alongside the Dominator and Dominator GT ranges will be purely DDR3 and will come in single, dual and tripple channel kits all clocked in at 1600MHz. All of the kits that have been announced so far will come in 8-8-8-24 or 9-9-9-24 latencies and will require a steady throughput of 1.5v to keep them running at their rated specs
Unlike the Dominators multi-blade fins, the Vengeances fins will be solid metal elongating up from the heatspreder and will look a bit like that of the GSkill RipJaws series of memory.
Initially there will be 6 kits varying from a modest 4Gb all the way up to a whopping 16Gb and will be available for both AMD and Intel based systems.
Today we are looking at the Cooler Maser Centurion 5 II Mid Tower case. It has room for five fans and can hold approximately five 3.5 inch drives. Has a black steel mesh design with a transparent window on the side, so that you can see inside of the case. The I/O panel consist of two 2.0 USB ports, One Audio port, One MIC port, and one IEEE 1394 port.
PACKAGING AND EXTERIOR
The box is the classic Cooler master purple and white colors with a picture of two towers I’m assuming the two designs that this particular tower comes in. All black steel mesh and the black steel mesh with a silver trim. Also on the other sides of the box you have the specifications of the tower. Pictures of the different views of the tower are also available on the box. It shows cases all the stand out features of the chassis. The features are also listed on the box. Inside the box the tower was covered in a clear plastic cover and wedged inside of the box with Styrofoam to make sure that the tower was safely secured inside of the box. Inside the chassis was a box that had screws, zip ties, hard drive rails, a tray for your 5.25 inch devices and the installation guide. The right side panel of the tower was made up of solid black steel, and the left side is also black steel trim with a clear plastic panel in order for you to be able to look inside the case. The Back is a plain steel design and the front of the tower is a black mesh design that has the I/O panel and slots for four 5.25 inch drives.
Now that we are well into the lifespan of DDR3, the focus for many enthusiasts has turned to speed and capacity. With 64-bit operating systems now a viable option, it makes sense for end users to have over 4GB of system memory. Those who do video editing or extensive Photoshop work know how important it is to have a substantial amount of system memory on tap. For those that want the best of both worlds (fast and high capacity), we present today’s review product, the OCZ Flex EX DDR3 12GB Triple Channel Memory kit.
While the mid-tower dominates the PC computer case aftermarket, there are some enthusiasts that demand the larger full-tower form factor. Whether it’s the extra room for storage devices, fans or watercooling equipment, these folks will gladly overlook the unwieldy size and increased weight that a full-tower chassis brings with it. A top-notch feature set and a bit of style is always a plus, and the big-case crowd will appreciate these more than most.
Recently, I got the opportunity to review In Win’s Dragon Slayer case (see the review HERE) and was very impressed with what they had done with the micro-ATX form factor. This time out, we jump to the other end of the spectrum and get a look at their brand new full-tower offering, the Dragon Rider. At first glance, the In Win Dragon Rider may appear to be just a scaled-up version of the Dragon Slayer, but is has a few surprises of its own. Follow along as we give you a detailed tour of the Dragon Rider and see what this big boy brings to the table.
In early November we had two graphics cards based on AMD’s Radeon HD 6850 and presented today follows now a third. This is the model of the manufacturer MSI R6850-PM2D1GD5, which differs in terms of board layout and design of AMD’s reference cooler design. PowerColor followed a similar path, could we in terms of power consumption and overclocking potential is not entirely convincing, however. If the MSI R6850-PM2D1GD5 do better?
Just like AMD’s reference card and PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 GPU with the MSI can be 775 MHz and 1000 MHz memory with the graphics work. When we speak of 1000 MHz, these are the simple timing of GDDR5 memory. Some manufacturers prefer to talk of 4000 MHz, because it sounds better, but while they throw the clock and the data rate, which is located at 4000 Mbps through each other.
As far as performance goes, the V+100 performance exceeded my expectations that were based on experience with the earlier drives with the same controller. Kingston and Toshiba have done a really nice job on reworking the firmware to get a nice performance boost. Their “always on” and OS independent garbage collection is more aggressive and can help mitigate the performance degradation of long-term use on a system that does not support TRIM. This said, if you are running RAID array(s), Mac OS X, or a Windows version prior to 7, this drive was made with you in mind as all of those do not support TRIM…
I still distinctively recall myself saying this out loud back in the early 2000s. “60GB? What can I do with that!?” As we approach the end of 2010, I caught myself saying the same thing — albeit in an entirely different context. “60GB? What can I do with that!?” In the days where 1000GB hard drives are a dime a dozen, the rise of solid state drives in recent years among enthusiasts and high end computer users has always been focused on one thing: Performance. Sure, you can fill up a 60GB drive with a couple movies and a few songs, but that’s not the point. Because the cost-per-gigabyte of an SSD is probably more than thirty times higher than a traditional mechanical hard drive at the time of writing this review, most users probably can’t afford to use them for mass storage — and at the same time, it is not a practical solution at the time being, either. After all, you probably don’t go through everything in your hard drive every single day, right? Therefore, here is a popular solution for people trying to squeeze more performance out of their system: Buy a modest capacity SSD for your operating system and all your programs, and a big fat hard drive to store everything else. The OCZ Vertex 2 60GB solid state drive we are reviewing today is designed for this very purpose. Powered by the popular SandForce SF-1200 controller, promising up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s read and write speed respectively, 0.1ms access latency, and up to 50,000 IOPS, how well does this high performance storage device improve your computing experience? Read on to find out!
If you travel a lot having one always in your notebook travel bag can be of great benefit as doing this will eliminate you forgetting to take your original one along. I remember this happening to me last year when traveling to Las Vegas for CES. To combat that dilemma FSP Group (Fortron/Source) have produced the NB L90 laptop power adapter. The L90 is capable of producing a whooping 90 watts of power, or 4.74A at 19 volts (+/-1V), which is enough to power most laptops up to about 17. We will be testing this new adapter on my Sony notebook to see if it is worthy of your hard earned dollar.
New ArticleSince the consumer computer mouse was introduced in the early 1980s, we’ve seen design innovations like the scroll wheel (1995), the wireless mouse and optical mouse sensor (2001), and the laser-based mouse sensor (2005). Various companies have added extra programmable buttons, internal LED lighting, and even built-in fans to cool your sweaty hands. Today’s gamers have a plethora of high-performance gaming mice to choose from. Is there anything else left to innovate? Mad Catz thinks so, and Benchmark Reviews checks out their latest mouse, the Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 9 wireless gaming mouse, to see if they’re right.
Remember when Bluetooth 2.0 came out, and everyone bought stereo headsets to take advantage of the new capabilities? Nope, me neither.
However, the boffins at Buffalo have implemented the new(-ish) Bluetooth 3.0 technology into one of their current mice, and through the new power-saving system the standard introduced, have increased the battery life by 20% over the normal, with very few hardware changes, an nifty piece of work.
The mouse is priced at aproxamately $30, with the reciever at $20 if bought separately.
It will be interesting to see how the new standard pans out, and how the new features will be implemented.
