TechConnect Magazine

Techconnect Review Round-up 11/11/09

CPU & Motherboard

- Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200 @ Tom’s Hardware
- AMD Phenom II 955 @ Techware Labs
- ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard @ t-break
- High-End P55 Motherboards @ InsideHW
- Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5 @ bit-tech
- AMD Phenom II X4 965BE Rev C3 @ OC3D
- DFI P55-T3eH9 @ HardwareZone

Memory

- Kingston HyperX T1 4GB DDR3-2133 @ PureOC

Storage

- Verbatim Store n Go Micro 4GB Flash Drive @ OCModShop
- Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Boot Drive SSD @ Benchmark Reviews

Graphics cards

- Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ Razor Edition - Single slot performance @ PC Perspective
- ASUS Radeon HD 5770 Voltage Tweak @ Guru3D
- Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 and Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 @ CPU3D
- Sapphire Radeon 5870 Vapor-X 1GB @ FiringSquad
- Inno3D GeForce GT 220 1 GB @ techPowerUp

Enclosures & PSUs

- Nexus RX-6300 630 W Power Supply @ Hardware Secrets
- NZXT Beta EVO Mid-Tower Steel Case @ OC Online
- NZXT M59 Case @ Neoseeker
- ABS SL Series 1050 Power Supply @ Bjorn3d
- Thermaltake Element G case @ Modders-Inc
- Enermax ECO80+ 620W Power Supply @ [H]ard OCP

Displays

- Toshiba Regza 46SV685D 46in LED Backlit LCD TV @ TrustedReviews
- Sharp LC-32LE600E @ TechRadar

Cooling and modding

- Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Compound @ HiTech Legion
- Zalman CNPS9900A LED cpu cooler @ Testseek Labs
- CoGage True Spirit CPU cooler @ LANOC
- Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme CPU cooler @ Overclockers Club

Peripherals

- Adesso CyberTablet 6400 @ OCModShop

PCs

- The Holiday MacBook Pro Roundup @ AnandTech
- Viewsonic VOT 132 Atom+Ion Nettop @ bit-tech
- Samsung X120 (JA01UK) - 11.6in CULV Laptop @ TrustedReviews
- Advent Roma 3000, Asus UL30A, Mesh Edge15 TT, Samsung R720, Asus G71Gx and Cyberpower Explorer X7-Xtreme S1 @ TechRadar

Sound

- Roccat Vire Gaming Headset @ DriverHeaven
- ZOWIE Hammer Gaming Headset @ TweakTown

Other

- Acer beTouch E200 Smartphone @ TrustedReviews
- Insignia NS-BRDVD3 Blu-ray Player @ I4U News
- Samsung Omnia 2, Acer K10 projector and Samsung YP-R1 MP3 player @ TechRadar

AMD lists its 2010 targets

During today's Financial Analyst Day AMD has talked about its 2009 achievements - making the transition to 45nm CPUs, shipping 6-core Opterons, being the first with 40nm and DirectX 11 GPUs, but, more importantly, it mentioned the resolutions for the upcoming year.

As listed below, in 2010 AMD aims to release four PC platforms - Danube and Nile on the mobile side, Leo and Dorado for desktops, make further advancements in terms of mobile performance and battery life and release the 12-core Opteron (codename Magny-Cours ) processors as well as the 6000 (Maranello) and 4000 (San Marino, Adelaide) series server platforms.

Also next year, the plan is to make the move to DirectX 11 in the mobile market too, with the first DX11 Mobility Radeons being expected as soon as Q1, and to enhance the OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 dev tools available.

Last but certainly no least, AMD wants to begin sampling its first Bulldozer, Bobcat and Fusion chips. Bulldozer is a next generation CPU architecture, K10's successor which will debut in 2011, while Bobcat is a low-power processor that will take on Intel's Atom in the MID and CE markets. As for Fusion, it's the codename for APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) or chips that feature CPU cores and a graphics core in the same package. The first Fusion parts will be the desktop-bound 'Llano' (up to 4 cores, DX11 GPU) and the 'Ontario' (2 CPU cores, DX11 GPU) mobile chip, both scheduled to arrive in 2011. Busy times, but that's how we like them.

3D games for Zune HD now available

As expected given the release of the 4.3 firmware, the Zune Marketplace has now been added the first 3D games that are craving to find their way onto Zune HD players. For starters, Microsoft is offering six such games - PGR: Ferrari Edition, Audiosurf: Tilt, Vans Sk8: Pool Service, Checkers, Lucky Lane Bowling and Piano, all of which are free for download, use and abuse.

More titles are likely in the works so Zune HD owners, keep an eye out for additions. Now go play on your Tegra-powered thingie.

Picture courtesy of hellofromeurope.com.

G.Skill announces the Falcon II SSD family

Seven months after coming up with the first Falcons, G.Skill has now revealed the Falcon II line of solid state drives. Still coming in a 2.5-inch form factor, the new SSDs make use of 34nm NAND flash memory chips, Indilinx's new ECO controller, have 64MB of cache, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours, and support Windows 7's TRIM command.

The Falcon IIs will be available in 64, 128 and 256GB capacities, the 'smallest' one offering read/write speeds of up to 220/110 MB/s, while the other two models top 220/150 MB/s. These unpriced SSDs are backed by a two-year warranty.

LG presents the XD5 Mini portable hard drive

LG has this week also unveiled the XD5 Minis, 2.5-inch portable hard drives coming in some sleek and shiny shells painted in black or white, with red and pink lines, respectively.

The new storage solutions are just 13mm thick, make use of 2.5-inch SATA hard drives but boasts a USB 2.0 connection interface, and will, for starters, sell in South Korea for about $86 and $121, for the 320GB and 500GB versions.

Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20 embraces WinMo 6.5

Garmin-Asus has now announced that its M20 phone/premium navigation system (detailed here), has moved up from Windows Mobile 6.1 and is now coming with WinMo 6.5 pre-installed. The operating system update adds an improved interface to the M20, with touch-optimized icons and a streamlined Home screen, easy Facebook access, and also enables users to check out the Windows Marketplace for new applications to expand the phone's functionality.

"Through its innovative integration of a phone, navigator, and browser, the nüvifone M20 is designed to enhance the lives of consumers today," said Benson Lin, Vice President and General Manager of the ASUS Handheld Business Group. "With Windows Mobile 6.5, users can enjoy the same great LBS (location-based service) features of the original nüvifone M20, but with a richer and more rewarding user experience."

The Windows Mobile 6.5 'enhanced' nüvifone M20 will be reaching Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czech, Turkey and other markets by the end of this year.

Lite-On reveals the eHAU324 24x external DVD writer

Lite-On has now announced the latest addition to its optical drive line-up, the eHAU324 external DVD writer. Seen below, the drive measures 165 (W) x 58 (H) x 192 (D) mm and weights 1.3kg, has USB 2.0 connectivity, and delivers write speeds of up to 24x for DVD+R/-R, 12x for DVD-R/+R DL and DVD-RAM, 8x for DVD+RW, 6x for DVD-RW, 48x for CD-R and 32x for CD-RW.

Set to become available this month at 65 Euro, the eHAU324 also features the SmartErase technology which will 'erase' write-once discs by overwriting the original data with random meaningless characters.

Radeon HD 5970 detailed in advance

While AMD is gearing up to release it, the Radeon HD 5970 card has made a stealthy appearance online, exposing its likely final specifications. Made by Sapphire, the listed Hemlock card, which is most likely an all-stock product, has two 725 MHz-clocked Cypress 40nm GPUs, each with 1600 Stream Processors, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory set at 4000 MHz, both frequencies being at HD 5850 level.

The dual-GPU, dual-slot card also has a 2x256-bit memory interface, DirectX 11 and CrossFireX support, and dual-DVI outputs plus one mini DisplayPort connector (no HDMI like for the HD 5800 cards). The Radeon HD 5970's pricing and release date are still unconfirmed.

Microsoft delivers fixes for 15 vulnerabilities

November's Patch Tuesday is behind us now but it's worth noting that it brought to the table no less than six updates to fix 15 problems. Four patches tackle vulnerabilities found in Windows and Windows Server, while the other two go after Office bugs.

Three critical-rated updates address remote code execution issues within the Web Services on Devices Application Programming Interface in Windows OSes, the Windows kernel and the License Logging Server in Windows 2000 SP4. The lonely 'important' patch for Windows targets a vulnerability in Active Directory directory service, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS).

As for the Office-aimed fixes, they address remote code execution problems in Excel and Word.

This week's batch of updates, which has nothing for Windows 7, is detailed here.

LG details the XPION 30 series desktops

LG Electronics has today unveiled back home in South Korea its upcoming XPION 30 family of desktop PCs. Coming in some compact, shiny and quite stylish enclosures, the systems are loaded up with Windows 7 Home Premium, and are based on Intel platforms. Let's detail the machines.

The XPION T30 is equipped with a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo E7600 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 640GB hard drive, a DVD writer and a GeForce 210 graphics card with 512MB VRAM. Also packing an E7600 processor, the A30 model has 3GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD, a Super Multi DVD drive and a GeForce GT 220 1GB card.

The flagship XPION S30 includes a 2.66 GHz Cote i5 750, 3GB of RAM, a 640G HDD, the same DVD burner, and a GeForce GT 9600 GT 512MB.