Computers Hardware

As far as benchmarks are concerned, it looks like the HD 2900 XT is a bit behind NVIDIA’s 8800 GTS 640MB. However, the AMD/ATI newcomer shows abnormal behavior in a series of games. For instance, in "Company of Heroes" it even crushes the 8800 GTX in any resolution and quality setting. Moreover, at 8xAA/16xAF, 2560x1600, the HD 2900XT performs two times faster
than the 8800GTS and beats the 8800 GTX by a small margin. While we blame the driver developers for such puzzling results, AMD/ATI acknowledges that their HD 2900XT cards can be further overclocked to make up for the initial performance issues.

Graphics card makers that figure on AMD/ATI’s partner list officially announced that they will offer factory overclocked versions of the HD 2900XT reference boards. These overclocked cards are expected to arrive two weeks after the initial 14th of May launch.

AMD/ATI’s reference boards are clocked at 745 MHz core and 1656 MHz memory, but rumor has it that the GPU may still be working stably at 840 MHz with the same reference cooler. Not bad for a GPU that heats up to around 80 degrees C. Just think of what a water cooled solution would mean in this situation. My best guess is that, with a suitable water-cooling system, the HD 2900XT GOU core could go beyond 900MHz, with memories clocked around 2000 MHz.

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Hewlett-Packard said it will be beefing up select high-end PCs this week with options including a dual format HD DVD/Blu-ray optical drive by LG, digital cable tuners, Intel Core 2 Quad Processors, and Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 graphics cards. According to an HP representative, the company will make these new options available on May 9 for select configure-to-order PCs, such as the HP Pavilion Media Center m8010y and d4890y series.

While pricing was not immediately available on either series, both Media Center PCs will come with an optional LG Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter and HD DVD-ROM Drive (GGW-H10N), which the company demoed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

It is expected that the drive will cost $1200, falling into a comparable price range to LG’s standalone BH100, also known as the Super Multi Blue Player.

New USB flash drives become a replacement for floppies, CDRWs and even of the old ‘ritual’ of lugging around whole hard drives just to show off a ’successful’ holiday photo or film shoot. We’ve seen small drives, rugged drives, but this one is small (another “smallest in the world” claim), rugged, decent-looking and also claims to be ‘intelligent’.

It’s the PQI i810, a USB flash drive that is so tiny as to be unbelievable. The dimensions are in millimeters, and the numbers are 30 x 15.2 x 5.

The i810 is protected against all manner of harm. It’s dustproof, waterproof, vibration-proof, and shockproof. It comes in capacities ranging from 512MB to 2GB. Even at the top end, it weighs just 2.2 grams. [via]

Solid State Drives are taking the world by storm, because they offer all sorts of advantages over the spnning platters found on conventional hard drives. Mtron has jumped all over this opportunity by releasing a 2.5-inch SSD of their own. Boasting a standard ATA connection — allowing you to easily swap it into your laptop or portable hard drive enclosure — Mtron’s solid state drive contains a formidable 64 gigabytes of memory.

Along with displaying the SSD itself at Korea IT Show (KIS) 2007, Mtron was also selling people on why SSD is so much better than the usual 5400rpm 2.5-inch HDDs found in laptops. The average access time is substantially lower (0.1msec vs. 17msec), the sustained read and write speeds are much improved, and power consumption is cut in half. This makes for better productivity and longer battery life.  [VIA]