THE GOOD: It took ATI just some weeks after introduction of high end 48xx series of graphics cards, to introduce the entry level and mainstream models. Even with their announcement, month ago, before we even got the card in our lab, ATI told us that 4670 will kill the competitor's offering = nvidia 9500gt (in same price range). Card is slim and uses only one slot. It does not require additional power, which proves lower energy usage, and hints that maybe soon we will see a completely passively cooled models - which is possible, as this card uses less power than 38xx (which offered passively cooled models). But since card has to be price competitvely, price of copper probbably prevents big copper radiators needed for good passive cooling at least at launch. Nevertheless although fan is default one, card in idle mode is silent. Even under full load card works preety lukewarm - we measured only 41C. Card is also very power efficient, and uses on average 15W of energy less than nvidia's 9500GT. With street price around 120 USD (90 eur), card offers much better value than its price competitor (9500gt). In 3Dmark Vantage test, the difference in performance in 1280×1024 performance test is INCREDIBLE 70 PER CENT! Although nvidia lowered the price of 9500GT to 99 USD (70 eur), ATI still remains better buy - at least in our opinion.
THE BAD:Its too bad that Sapphire did not opt for a bit larger fan, that would make this card almost silent even under load, as with default fan some noise is heard when card is under full load. Besides this, HD 4670 is great card with excellent price/value!
24-inch monitors are becoming available, and while 22-inchers are still mainstream, we are still more demanding of 24-inchers… Recently we got an opportunity to review DELL’s 2408WFP, and while we like the monitor, as it has a trillion of input connectors, and looks good on paper (specifications), we found out an interesting problem, that DELL is not adressing.
As you can see on our video, the prolem is with lagging. Now, every LCD monitor has a delay between time when video card sends a picture, and when it is actually displayed on monitor. This time is called lag. CRT monitors had 0 lag, and some of smaller LCDs are also very fast. This is something which can put off serious gamers and is a delay between graphics card and monitor output. By hooking up a CRT you can show that the LCD lags behind somewhat, which can affect users in some situations where they rely on the screen image being as fast as their inputs (e.g. fast FPS shooting games). Often, input lag is very low and probably wouldn't represent too much of a problem in real terms.
You should not mistaken lag delay with response time, as that simply means how many picture refreshes (frames) can monitor display in a second… But lag is more problematic, especially for gamest, as it introduces another delay – which might be crucial when playing online, and when every milisecond counts, as who will open fire first…
As you can see from out comparison video – even on multi monitor setup, this DELL is quite annoying to work with, as it is plain obvious that there is noticable lag in video processing.
Zango is an entertainment content provider. They offer free access to videos, music, games, and also other downloads. This content is free to all users, as it is paid for by advertisers.
Users are presented with an license agreement that they must accept before they can access any content. When user accepts the licence and downloads Zango software, access to content is provided. Zango's program includes a search assistant and a toolbar. Since Zango's software does not collect or share any information about users (but it did before 2005) it is not considered spyware but rather just adware.
Advertisers participating in Zango's network sponsor free software that anyone can view and play, as long as user is willing to view the ads that go along with it. Zango is harmless. If you want to check out Zango, visit this watch movies online site, and accept the licence.
Zango also has an affiliate program for webmasters and web publishers. This type of Zango is mostly found on websites that provide valuable information or commercial content that is normally payable. When visitor comes to this website, Zango overlay is displayed and in order for visitor to see the page itseld, he is incouraged to install Zango. Webmaster gets up to $1,40 USD for every new installation. If you wish more information about Zango Affilaite program, visit their partner's site.
After playing with Chrome for few hours, i must say that it is awesome! As power user, that usually has few instances of Firefox open, each with 20-150 tabs, I simply love Chrome. But, is it worth switching to? Is it ready for production and daily use for work? Stability and speed wise, the answer is a definite yes. But, feature wise, things are a bit more complicated…
ADVANTAGES
1. Speed - this is the only browser that is multi process. This means that for every new tab or plugin there is a new process created. This is not only fast, but for the first time that multi core cpu of yours will come in handy. Also javascript is compiled directly into machine code, which is run with greatest speed.
2. Stability - for the same as above, in case of plugin or tab crash - all other processes survive. This means you can only loose one tab. And you also get a process manager.
3. Lightweight - On long term Chrome uses less memory than other browsers. Especially memory usage is very clean, as once you close a tab, whole process is ended and all its memory is released. You also get process manager which shows you memory hogs, and where you can kill processes.
4. Incognito mode - You can browse privately and securely, without writing a single file or data into history, cookies, or cache. Ideal for "finding that surprise gift for wife" as google puts it, or as we all know - ideal for browsing pron late at night…
5. UI and ease of use - Chrome has completely renewed user interface with tabs put on top. Use is very simple, installation is a snap. Since there are just a few features and things you can configure, there is nothing to mess up.
Few hours before official worldwide unveiling of new Nikon mid-class D-SLR, Nikon D90, we managed to get sneak peak and hands-on demonstration of new DSLR. Nikon D90 will start retailing on September 19th, and its start price will be 825 € (body), or 1000 € for kit with all-new kit objective 18-105VR. These are European prices without tax, from earlier experience we estimate that US prices will be approximately 999 USD for body, and 1200 USD for kit.
Nikon D90 is similar to D300 introduced earlier this year, and among its strongest new feature is support for video recording with stereo voice. Video goes up to 1280×720 with 24 frames per second, which relies to 720p in HD world. Demonstration video, that was made using D90 is impressive, and although one minute of HD footage takes almost 100 megabytes, D90 is still offering something new and refreshing to amateur photographers and movie directors… Video clips are currently limited to length of 5 minutes, and are saved as MP4 or AVI formats.
Usage of D90 for HD videos is lacking auto-focus mechanism found in most compact video cameras and standalone camcorders, but is offering more creative freedom with depth-of-view and manual focus, something that was not seen from times of 8-mm cameras… Users can completely manually select everything (high ISO, aperture, color filters…) so D90 should be fun!
Among other new things, D90 features advanced Live-View with focusing ability, and improved 11-point auto-focus mechanism, 3-inch LCD screen with 900k pixels, HDMI output, and most of features found on D300… Nikon's D90 is taking place of above D80, which will be discontinued by October, so expect to see some nice clearance prices for great D80 in October/November time frame…
Nikon also said that this is not the last DSLR with video function, and we expect to slowly see it in lower priced levels, and also in higher priced models - but hopefully with 1080p support…
In few hours AMD will unveil the crown jewel of graphics cards - ATI Radeon 4870X2. Card which is based on R700 gpu core, will be clocked at 750Mhz core and 900 MHz GDDR5 memory. Card is dual slot design, with powerful, yet silent cooler. Due to 55nm process, AMD managed to get power usage and working temperature under control. 4870X2 is expected to beat anything in 3Dmark 06 and 3Dmark Vantage, and will take the top performer position away from Nvidia's 280 GTX. Even though NVIDIA has one last thing to unveil, AMD is feeling pretty confident right now.
AMD will announce two models sporting 1GB (512+512MB) and 2GB (1+1GB) GDDR5 memory, but partners will also introduce GDDR3 models that will be called Radeon HD 4850X2 with a varying amount of memory. The clock frequencies of the respective cards will be the same as the single-GPU card Radeon HD 4870, I.e. 750/3600MHz and 625/1000MHz. Also, the company said the card would allow higher over clocking rates than any Radeon HD 4870 board on the market. Cards use dual slot cooling, and look identical (FRONT and BACK) to 3870×2 but with black PCB.
AMD has put a lot of work into the newest Radeon HD 4870X2 graphics board in its attempt to make it the next true high-end card. At least, when it comes to the company's graphics product line, this card goes straight to the top. As showed before, Radeon HD 4870X2 pairs RV770 GPUs on the same PCB, and features high-speed GDDR5 memory for quick memory access. Since the card promises so much, other manufacturers have started making their own 4870X2 based cards, adding few more features to differentiate them from the stock.
We will also see over clocked editions of cards, already announced are XFX's and Diamond's versions - which will set core clock to 850MHz, while the memory will be 4000MHz. Not all cards will feature the usual Qimonda GDDR5 memory chips, as some manufacturers chose Hynix memory instead. It hasn't been determined yet which of these are faster, but time will tell. Also, this goes in line with AMD's story that partners are able to choose the memory type they like.
The testing results of the Radeon HD 4870X2 was expected to equal those that would be showed when testing two Radeons HD 4870 in CrossFire. But our first tests show, that AMD managed to optimize process and drivers beyond our belief. At direct comparison 3Dmark2006 and pair of 4870 in CrossFire managed to squeeze around 22.100 points, while 4870X2 in similar configuration blew past 25.000! is required. See screenshots (and forget 3Dmark score - just look at SM2 and SM3 subscores!)!
The extra difference in overclocking should arise from different memory as well, as it is already known that Qimonda ones can easily get to 4800MHz, while Hynix GDDR5 remains a mystery for now…
Larrabee provides practical solution to current limitations of GPUs. Larrabee does not special API for Larrabee, it works with current APIs for DirectX and OpenGL. Larrabee uses 1024-bit ring bus to transfer data efficiently and fast between gpu cores. All cores are true x86 processors, based on original Pentium architecture + many extensions and additions added to that base.
Larrabee is completely flexible and completely programmable, offering many optimization compared to existing technology and will revolutionize graphics industry. To paint this more plasticly - picture this - Larrabee gpu will be able to support DirectX 10, and then when released DirectX 11, and some years in future - DirectX 12 - yes on the same board…
Larrabee supports massive parallelism and scalability, which should be high-end GPU selling point probably (maybe not at the start). Memory technology used in final product was not yet reveled, but Intel's engineers say that there is no limitation to which memory technology can be used.
Developers who were revealed more architecture details, were very pleased as Intel would like us to believe.
More information on Larrabee will follow soon - on august 4th, but collective info is available on wikipedia.
THE GOOD: We know Xen Micro from recently introduced Nanoxia fans… which were superb because of several features, but which were also preety much high priced… While it seemed that they were removed from the market due to patent dispute in may (as it is claimed on nanoxia.com), this is actually not true. Company is resuming production, development and sales, but due to internal dispute it moved its operations to www.nanoxia.net…
A refreshment in fan family comes with Xen-Core Carboon, quality fans with acceptable price. We tested 12-cm fans that are sold in 6-pack packets, which really is best-buy! To test the quality of whole brand we also tested 8-cm and 9-cm variants. They are all designed superbly, and offer high performance, low noise cooling. Fan blades are designed to be silent, and special SPS bearings and japan motors with long lifetime and low vibrations are an ideal combination. Fans turn with speeds of 800-rpm and on and ofer 34,5 CFM. Lifetime is awesome 35.000 hours! All modes have included mouting caps. Fans did really well on our test, and did that while being silent and therefore have our recommendation.
THE BAD: While these are very good fans, they do not reach ultimate superiority of the Nanoxia series, which had unbelivable lifetime of 150.000 hours and were half more silent. Nanoxia did make new standards in fan industry also with its 10 years of warranty… With Carboon we also miss potenciometer to regulate speed of fan. We still do not understand why all models only have 3-pin concector, which prevents them being used on motherboards that can regulate fan speed thru BIOS accordingly to detected heat…
EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) is future BIOS replacement… EFI is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface used by modern PCs. The EFI specification was originally developed by Intel, and is now managed by the Unified EFI Forum and is officially known as Unified EFI (UEFI).The EFI specification was primarily intended to support Intel's past and future architectures under one umbrella, but has taken sometime to come be adopted by manufacturers.Intel's biggest win was Apple, which implemented EFI throughout the entire Intel based Mac range.
While specification is years in making, this year's CeBit was a place to see first (kinda) working demonstration, and as all technology that matters, we reviewed it. It featured graphical menus, standard mouse point-and-click operations… Another feature of EFI - pre-operating-system application support such as web browsers, mail applications and media players, was not yet implementated in demo version of MSI's motherboard.
We created a video of EFI in action:
MSI will start to phase EFI into its next generation motherboard platform (end of 2008), and they hope this will allow users much easier accessibility of motherboard BIOS systems. The ability to use a GUI and mouse will encourage users to attempt to unlock the full potential of today's modern motherboards, although hard core overclockers will still use text-based BIOS with all the settings…
MSI demonstrated an EFI motherboard there. Interface was pleasant and colorful. Surely more attractive than the regular BIOS in text mode. Five choices are available in the menu: Basic settings, overclocking (the only functional aspect of the demonstration), ECO (which looks like the energy saver feature) and Games (hmm?). This version of EFI also doesn't seem to take advantage of the possibility to connect to the Internet and get updates directly yet… It was only a demonstration and MSI clearly stated that it wasn't planning on selling the board any time soon.
At CeBit we managed to sneak behind the scene in AMD's meeting booth, and we were showed a live demo - a comparison of Blu-Ray HD movie playback on upcoming PUMA laptop (this sample was produced by MSI), and yours today's standard intel Centrino… Difference was huge - AMD played HD video nicely and smoothly all the way, while Intel had big problems - skipping frames, freezing for few seconds at the time, broken image with lots of artefacts (boxes)… We also noticed that PUMA had an Engineering sample of new Turion, clocked at 2,4 GHZ! We were forbid to take a close picture of CPU clock screen…
After playing with Chrome for few hours, i must say that it is awesome! As power user, that usually has few instances of Firefox open, each with 20-150 tabs, I simply love Chrome. But, is it worth switching to? Is it ready for production and daily use for work? Stability and speed wise, the answer is a definite yes. But, feature wise, things are a bit more complicated…
Nikon D90 is similar to D300 introduced earlier this year, and among its strongest new feature is support for video recording with stereo voice. Video goes up to 1280×720 with 24 frames per second, which relies to 720p in HD world. Demonstration video, that was made using D90 is impressive, and although one minute of HD footage takes almost 100 megabytes, D90 is still offering something new and refreshing to amateur photographers and movie directors… Video clips are currently limited to length of 5 minutes, and are saved as MP4 or AVI formats.
partners will also introduce GDDR3 models that will be called Radeon HD 4850X2 with a varying amount of memory. The clock frequencies of the respective cards will be the same as the single-GPU card Radeon HD 4870, I.e. 750/3600MHz and 625/1000MHz. Also, the company said the card would allow higher over clocking rates than any Radeon HD 4870 board on the market. Cards use dual slot cooling, and look identical (FRONT and BACK) to 3870×2 but with black PCB.
Larrabee provides practical solution to current limitations of GPUs. Larrabee does not special API for Larrabee, it works with current APIs for DirectX and OpenGL. Larrabee uses 1024-bit ring bus to transfer data efficiently and fast between gpu cores. All cores are true x86 processors, based on original Pentium architecture + many extensions and additions added to that base.
were removed from the market due to patent dispute in may (as it is claimed on nanoxia.com), this is actually not true. Company is resuming production, development and sales, but due to internal dispute it moved its operations to 
EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) is future BIOS replacement… EFI is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface used by modern PCs. The EFI specification was originally developed by Intel, and is now managed by the Unified EFI Forum and is officially known a