Intel’s new SSD 310 is eight time small than your notebook’s HDD

Intel has announced a new SSD. Nothing fast that’ll kill SandForce, but something that’s extremely small which Intel hopes to give a fight to Toshiba. Intel’s just announced a new SSD 310 line that offers spectacularly minimal 51mm by 30mm by 5mm dimensions, while retaining X25-class performance (up to 200MBps read and 80MBps write speeds).

To give you an idea of what those measurements mean, the industry-standard 2.5-inch form factor, an already diminutive footprint, is eight times larger than these new-fangled storage chips. 40GB and 80GB variants of the SSD 310 are shipping out to OEMs already and Lenovo has confirmed it plans to roll these into its next refresh of the venerable ThinkPad laptop line.

Prices are set at $99 and $179 (depending on size) when bought in batches of 1,000, though direct sales to end users are predictably off the table for now, as expected. The next SSD might be more expensive, and you’ve been warned.

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Xigmatek’s new Pantheon mid-tower casing

Xigmatek has just launched their newest mid-tower PC case called the Pantheon. Available with or without a side window, the case comes with a full black colour coating (inside and outside), a top-mounted fan controller (with two knobs) and 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA and two audio ports, four 5.25-inch external drive bays, six hot-swap HDD cages with anti-vibration mounts, tool-free installation for optical drives and PCI cards and has three fans – two 120mm on the side and one 140mm white LED fan at the back. No price was given during the launching though.

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Team Releases Xtreem LV DDR3-1866 And DDR3-2000 MHz Memory Kits

Team Group, the memory enthusiast company today announced two new members from its Xtreem family of memory modules. Known as the Xtreem LV DDR3 1866 and Xtreem LV DDR3 2000, these memory kits provide superfast speed of 1866MHz and 2000MHz, respectively. This baby will definitely push your Core i5 or Core i7 (Socket 1156) setup much further.

The next-generation Xtreem LV series comes equipped with high-speed 256×8 chips that were manufactured through new process which should be OC-happy for overclocking enthusiasts. Additionally, these low-voltage (LV) modules work only at 1.65V and deliver a low latency at 9-11-9-27. The Team Xtreem LV DDR3-1866 and DDR3-2000 MHz memory kits are now available for purchase. Too bad, there is no info on pricing so far. Up for some overclocking party?

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Nvidia GTX 580 coming soon?

Woot, what do we have here? Accidental addition or intentional planting of a seed of doubt to innocent lambs? The Fermi-based GF100 cards might be out not just long ago, but there’s no harm for Nvidia to refresh their DirectX 11 lineup, if they were serious on fighting AMD this time. NVIDIA briefly listed a card called the GTX 580 on its System Requirements page and, and it was quickly pulled after news of its presence started making the rounds.

Thus far, all rumored specs should be taken with a pint of salt, as there’s just no solid source with a trustable spec to refer to. Anyway, we might see the refreshed new products hitting shelves as early as end of December, which is about 2 months’ time. Hopefully this won’t need you to upgrade your power supply again. Probably a refined GTX 480 with better heat dissipation and power consumption. But it’ll be pretty hard to beat AMD’s current generation card’s efficiency numbers.

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Speedlink Cue is your mighty mouse for your Windows 7

If you like Apple’s Magic Mouse for its fun gesture experience, and yet don’t want to buy a Mac cause you’ve been using a windows ever since you’re born, you’d kill Steve Jobs because he didn’t gave the Magic Mouse a driver for Windows system. But now, you can look elsewhere.

More specifically, over here at Speedlink. Their latest Cue mouse seemed to be your best (or only) choice of a multitouch gesture mouse for Windows system. The wireless 1000 dpi optical mouse is naturally PC-compatible, with software to allow you to configure your own gestures, and it has a somewhat flatter and more extensive touch surface than the Magic Mouse, which might make gestures a bit more doable. Basically, it’s somewhere in between the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad, minus the hyperbole, and plus clear demarcation of right and left click. It’ll retail for €40 when it ships in November (about $56 USD).

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AngelBird’s PCIe SSD solution brings breakneck speeds at a price of a shoe

PCIe SSD solutions have always been bloody expensive. SSD itself is already expensive to implement, but when you bring in PCIe SSD solutions for even faster speed, that’s gonna bloody hell blow away your bank. But now, your instantaneous booting dreaming can come true, in a fraction of a price all thanks to the holy Angelbird Wings solution.

With read performance of up to 1GB/s and writes happening at up to 900MB/s and costing ‘merely’ $239 for a 16GB model, the pricing isn’t too bad – for this sort of setup, anyway. At least they tried. It’s a good start you know. What you’re getting for that money is an expandable PCIe controller board with slots for up to four SSDs of 120GB in size, each offering SandForce 1200 controllers. With one board you’ll get pedestrian read and write speeds of just under 300MB/s. But, with each new drive you basically multiply that, with the maximum figures quoted above coming with four. Interestingly, the controller comes with its own onboard Linux flavor called Virtue, a full UI that you can boot directly into and get all your RAID ducks in a row. Full cost for a fully kitted out system with four boards? $1399, which is hardly cheap for a mere 500GB or so of storage, but is a solid price for 1GB/s performance.

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AMD launching next generation of Radeon graphics cards next week, shipping by end of the year

The attentive gang over at Anand have picked out sweet news from AMD’s earnings call last night, citing CEO Dirk Meyer as saying “we will be launching our second-generation DX11 graphics offerings next week.” After announcing the new product line next week, AMD promises to flood the market with “hundreds of thousands of units,” which will be shipping before the end of this quarter — meaning you’ll have a Radeon HD 6xxx in time for the holiday gaming craze if you really want it. That’s great. Last time AMD had a crisis of shortage for HD5000-series when it was launched.



The AMD Radeon 6870 has a core clock speed of 900MHz with 960 stream processors, and 256-bit memory frequency GDDR5 at 1050MHz; effectively result in a frequency of 4200MHz. The HD 6850 on the other hand has a clock speed of 725MHz from the 800 stream processors. The GDDR5 has the same 256-bit memory frequency, but at a slightly lower 1000MHz, resulting in a total of 4000MHz effectively. If you look at the leaked 3Dmark Vantage score, the replacement numbering is rather odd. The HD6870 is a replacement of the HD5850 instead of the HD5870. Same thing goes to the HD6850, which will replace the HD5830 or HD5770 instead of the HD5850. Then again, AMD might change the naming at least minute, so take these with a pint of salt.

3DMark Vantage (Performance-preset)/3DMark06:

NVIDIA

* GeForce GTX 480: P18376/19671
* GeForce GTX 460 (256-bit & 1 Gt): P13623/18601
* GeForce GTX 460 (192-bit & 768 Mt): P13386/18259
* GeForce GTS 450: P9792/15793

AMD

* ATI Radeon HD 5870: P17924/19433
* AMD Radeon HD 6870: P16270/19480
* ATI Radeon HD 5850: P15593/18762
* AMD Radeon HD 6850: P14872/18750
* ATI Radeon HD 5830: P14014/17298
* ATI Radeon HD 5770: P11017/16358
* ATI Radeon HD 5750: P9124/14966

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DisplayLinkwill give your USB 3.0 ‘any device, any display connectivity’ freedom

We’ve seen some big corporates trying to push the Display-over-Ethernet concept, but now some other people have another idea. DisplayLink Corp wants your monitor to be powered up by a USB 3.0 connection too. Here at IDF 2010, DisplayLink has come forward with public plans to gravitate towards “any device, any display connectivity” with its new USB 3.0 chip platform. The DL-3000 and DL-1000 single chip series are being introduced in San Francisco, with each offering integrated display and networking connectivity, HD video support and “third generation DisplayLink adaptive real-time compression technology that dynamically manages bandwidth, taking full advantage bi-directional throughput of SuperSpeed USB.”

This new platform will enable a wide range of applications that create an interactive connection between device and display. These include:

* USB or Ethernet bus powered monitors
* Universal USB docking stations with graphics, networking, and audio
* Affordable Ethernet and USB zero clients for shared resource computing
* USB to HDMI adapters for PC to TV connectivity
* USB to DVI, VGA or DisplayPort adapters for multi-display notebooks
* Mobile device to display
* Dual-Headed USB bus powered graphics adapters


“DisplayLink technology has enabled the new category of universal docking stations, in addition to zero clients and other devices that are used by major corporations and educational institutions globally,” added Dennis Crespo, executive vice president of marketing and business development at DisplayLink. “We look forward to working with our customers to develop a host of next-generation, creative devices that solve real world problems for the digital consumer.”

Thanks to SuperSpeed bandwidth increases, multiple full HD videos, high resolution graphics and networking data can be processed simultaneously, and there’s even the potential to enable graphics delivery over gigabit Ethernet. Now, will Intel join in the ‘greatness’ of this?

SOURCE via Engadget

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Frag and hear footsteps wirelessly!

I remember what happened to my last Logitech headset. The audio cable snapped while I try to stand up instantly to kill that annoying mosquito, because the audio controller got stuck in the edge. Luckily my new neckband from Steelseries comes with an extender. But this new Logitech might win back my heart, as I always love Logitech products.

Logitech has updated their headset products with this new G930. It comes with Logitech’s original 7.1 surround sound gaming headset, but wireless. Logitech says the G930 uses “gaming-grade wireless” tech, whatever that actually means. But what happens if you’re in the middle of a frag session and the batteries die? Whoops!

The charging station basically turns it into a standard USB 7.1 gaming headset, so you can keep playing while it’s charging. Smart, right? Like the preceding G35, it’s got three programmable keys on the side to use for voice morphing, music or chat controls. It even comes with a premium ‘gaming’ grade price tag of $160. *shrugs* But that’s how gaming gears costs these day, leeching those poor and ‘innocent’ lil` gamers.

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Finally a USB external Blu-ray drive hit retails.

It might cost an arm and a leg if you want to have Blu-ray drive in your computer or laptop. Perhaps your existing computer works great that there’s no point in buying a new computer just for the Blu-ray drive. But now, Plextor has a solution for you. It’s latest USB-equipped Blu-ray drive will spoil you with the amount of Blu-ray movies out there.

The new PX-B120U is a USB-powered BD-ROM drive, which not only plays back Blu-ray flicks but also burns DVDs and CDs of the blank variety. The standout feature, of course, is the ability to function entirely off of USB, which means there’s no need for that annoying power brick. What’s more, the external drive can be converted into a living room Blu-ray player just by connecting it to the PlexMedia. And the best part of all, it’s not going to cost you your limb, as the $99.99 price tag sure is juicy!

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NVIDIA release midrange Fermi, hoping for a fight with ATI

To many, it seemed late by a year, but NVIDIA still insist for a fight despite being late. It’s finally ready to ‘try’ and snatch back its market share that was taken by AMD last year with the midrange Fermi, the GeForce GTX460.

The GTX460 has a 336 CUDA cores with 675MHz graphics and 1.35GHz processor speeds as its heart, and a ‘typical’ 768MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3.6GHz, which is now fondly available on all Fermi cards. Its CUDA cores have will have 192-bit bus memory interface to push your frames to the DirectX 11 century.

Yes, all Fermi has native support for DirectX 11. It also comes with HDMI and 2 x DVI ports. No display ports it seemed though. For $200, that’s quite a good card to choose from, if you haven’t get 1 DirectX 11 card to play Assassin’s Creed 2 or DiRT 2. Hopefully they do run cool enough to not cook an egg this time.

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10-inch iMo Monster seek to be your best secondary display

In the right corner, weighting at only 1.77 pounds, with 10-inch of touchscreen-capable display, from the famous Mimo Monitors company, it’s the iMo Monster! It’s new, and it’s here ready to storm the crowds! With a native resolution of 1024 x 600, it’s ready to support all your Windows and OS x platforms with a single and simple USB 2.0 cable. Yes, you heard it right! With just one USB cable, it can provide power and connectivity to your new secondary display.

This makes it an idle optional display to offload your videos, your documents, display your web browsers, or even your security display from your main display, making the system more efficient. It’s even great to be your design pad as it supports touchscreen. But you might want to be fast, as it goes with ‘limited availability’ and is yours for only $259.99!

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Pandigital revolutionize our photo scanning experience

When I think of Photo Scanner, all that I can think of are those bulky flatbed scanners from Canon and Epson. I always thought of the possibility that we might see some compact scanners in the size of rods using rollover technique, or at least not that big like a flatbed. But it looks like the wait is over, all thanks to Pandigital.

Typical scanning of a photo entails something along the lines of placing the photo onto a device, loading some photo software, waiting while the scanner groans away, cropping the resulting image, and then shuffling the resulting bits off into a folder somewhere. That’s classic. But Pandigital plans to alter that, by few inches at least.

Their latest Personal Photo Scanner/Converter can be fed with documents or photos up to 8.5 x 11 in size, and is able to load em all straight into your memory card with the integrated card reader (SD, Memory Stick, etc.) at 600dpi resolution quality. Your work could significantly increase and your workflows smoothen. You can even dump that dusty bulky scanner at home if you need to travel a lot. The output is not only the card reader though; you can still connect the Personal Photo Scanner through a miniUSB and have the photos saved into your computer. The only downside is an integration of a battery. With it, this new age scanner will surely be the best buy for portable scanner. But then, for a price of $149.99, it’s hard to ask for so much.

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USB3.0 HDD compact chassis starts surfaces.

This decent looking 2.5inch HDD chassis is manufactured by Icy Dock. Named the MB668U3-1SB, this is an aluminum enclosure that can house a notebook HDD or an SSD. It also has a USB3.0 interface. Standard status LED is present, but there’s no info on the read/write speed as well as the release date and price, yet.

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Kingston’s USB3.0 ext. HDD delayed, sad case for speedy nerds.

Kingston’s ‘HyperX’ products have always been marketed as speed kings in hardware and gadget world. Their famous ‘Data Travelers’ & ‘Hyper X Rams’ have always live up to expectation. But now big fans of Kingston will need to hold their horse on this new product.

The upcoming external SSD ‘HyperX’, which is an external hard disk equipped with SSD and USB3.0 interface, has been delayed until September, instead of the scheduled August release. This pocket-sized zippy SSD is promised with read and write speeds of 195MB/s and 160MB/s respectively. That’s surely one nice external to store all my mobile HD clips. Think about the time saved while sharing files among friends. However, typical SSD, the size would only consist of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB respectively. There’s no pricing yet at the moment, but we’ll surely update you with it as we go along. Time to get yourself a USB3.0 compatible motherboard. Those China-made adapters sure are untrustworthy. Well then, wake me up when September comes.

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eSATA to USB2.0/3.0 adapter for those not upgrading.

eSATA products are getting rare these days, obviously due to the superiority of the USB3.0. But we still see eSATA ports on many boards and notebooks coming as a combo port with USB2.0. Thankfully for those who doesn’t have eSATA supported, Addonics has released an adapter just for you. This is the new eSATA to USB 3.0 which has near similar speeds as the eSATA. What’s more, it’s so cheap at $34, that you won’t even break a sweat buying it.

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Belkin retails HDMI to Mini DisplayPorts converter, with new AV360.

Not a very popular market, but we’re now starting to see some LCD displays from manufacturers that provides mini DisplayPort which will eventually replace DVI port. Belkin has jump in to sell converter which takes the 1080P signal from the HDMI cable, and downgrade the signal to 720P for the mini DisplayPort, along with a stereo-out for the audio signal, though DisplayPort will soon carry audio signal too. The market for such converter also seemed skeptical, as not many has jumped over to the DisplayPort boat, and many displays are coming with HDMI ports despite the display size. With the price tag of $150, it doesn’t seem to be very encouraging.

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Belkin retails HDMI to Mini DisplayPorts converter, with new AV360.

Not a very popular market, but we’re now starting to see some LCD displays from manufacturers that provides mini DisplayPort which will eventually replace DVI port. Belkin has jump in to sell converter which takes the 1080P signal from the HDMI cable, and downgrade the signal to 720P for the mini DisplayPort, along with a stereo-out for the audio signal, though DisplayPort will soon carry audio signal too. The market for such converter also seemed skeptical, as not many has jumped over to the DisplayPort boat, and many displays are coming with HDMI ports despite the display size. With the price tag of $150, it doesn’t seem to be very encouraging.

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Samsung introduces 512GB SSD for SATA 3Gbps. New king of SSD?

With more and more companies joining into the elite market of SSD, things are going to bloom. Samsung has finally released 512GB SSD, utilizing 16 pieces of 30nm 32GB NAND flash memory chips. Combined with a low power controller, the new SSD is big, yet energy efficient. What’s more, Samsung is throwing in an insane 256bit AES (advanced encryption standard) security into the new drives. Imagine the boot-time for a system running on this baby! Let’s check out Samsung’s press release after the jump.

Samsung Introduces High-speed 512GB SSD Utilizing New Toggle-mode DDR NAND Memory

SEOUL, South Korea–Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today introduced the first solid state drive (SSD) utilizing high-performance toggle-mode DDR NAND. The new 512 gigabyte (GB) SSD provides electronic data processing application designers with advanced performance and reliability for notebooks with premium value.

“The highly advanced features and characteristics of our new SSD were obtained as a direct result of an aggressive push for further development of our NAND flash technology, our SSD controller and our supportive SSD firmware,” said Dong-Soo Jun, executive vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. “Early introduction of this state-of-the-art toggle DDR solution will enable Samsung to play a major role in securing faster market acceptance of the new wave of high-end SSD technology,” he added.

The new 512GB SSD makes use of a 30 nanometer-class 32 gigabit chip that the company began producing last November. The toggle-mode DDR structure together with the SATA 3.0Gbps interface generates a maximum sequential read speed of 250 Megabyte per second (MBps) and a 220MBps sequential write speed, both of which provide three-fold the performance of a typical hard disk drive. At these speeds, two standard length (apprx. 4GB each) DVD movies can be stored in just a minute.

Samsung provides further gains in power efficiency by having developed a low-power controller specifically for toggle-mode DDR NAND. The resulting power throttling capability enables the drive’s high-performance levels without any increase in power consumption over a 40nm-class 16Gb NAND-based 256GB SSD. The controller also analyzes frequency of use and preferences of the user to automatically activate a low-power mode that can extend a notebook’s battery life for an hour or more.

The Samsung 512GB SSD makes use of reinforced 256bit AES (advanced encryption standard) encryption to ensure higher security, protecting personal data against online hackers or undesired access when its host PC is misplaced and lost.

Samsung also provides streamlined boot time and application access with this new SSD, showing an approximately nine-fold improvement in random performance over HDDs. Also, an intelligent operation management function optimizes the SSD’s background working environment. Coupled with the popular Windows 7 TRIM feature the operation management function secures the reliability of the drive in write mode.

Samsung plans to begin volume production of the 512GB SSD next month. The new capacity extends Samsung’s range of SSD densities from 64GB to 512GB.

For more information about Samsung SSDs, visit www.SamsungSSD.com

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Bigger storage coming to your mobile device, all thanks to Toshiba.

We’ve got to give the salute to Toshiba, for making such a wonderful product coming. Quadrupling the ceiling of current technology that is 32GB of embedded memory, the Japanese company has announced a new 128GB of NAND flash memory. Based on a 32nm process, the engineers somehow managed to fit sixteen 8GB NAND chips, along with their controller, inside a 1.4mm case. Samples are expected to hit out at autumn. Likewise, the 64GB deviation counterpart will also be coming alongside it. Now how would Samsung respond to this? Hopefully we would see an iPhone 128GB soon.

“TOKYO-Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced the launch of a 128-gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module, the highest capacity yet achieved in the industry. The module is fully compliant with the latest e•MMC standard, and is designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, tablet PCs and digital video cameras. Samples will be available from September, and mass production will start in the fourth quarter (October to December) of 2010.

The new 128GB embedded device integrates sixteen 64Gbit (equal to 8GB) NAND chips fabricated with Toshiba’s cutting-edge 32nm process technology and a dedicated controller into a small package only 17 x 22 x 1.4mm[3]. Toshiba is the first company to succeed in combining sixteen 64Gbit NAND chips, and applied advanced chip thinning and layering technologies to realize individual chips that are only 30 micrometers thick.

Toshiba now offers a comprehensive line-up of single-package embedded NAND Flash memories in densities from 2GB to 128GB. They integrate a controller to manage basic control functions for NAND applications, and are compatible with the JEDEC e•MMC Version 4.4 and its features. New samples of 64GB chips will also be available from August.

Demand continues to grow for large density chips that support high resolution video and deliver enhanced storage, particularly in the area of embedded memories with a controller function that minimizes development requirements and eases integration into system designs. Toshiba has established itself as an innovator in this key area, and is now reinforcing its leadership by being first to market with a 128GB generation module.”

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