Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
Monday, October 19th, 2009
When ATI announced the 5870 and 5850, with superbly high performance and HD audio bitstream support, we knew it was only a matter of time before they announced and released cheaper cards relying on the same technology with these ground breakingly high performers. Enter Radeon HD 5770 and 5750! Priced at $159 and $109 respectively, the two card are easy on the budget, while still maintaining their positions as high performers with a computing power of over 1 TFLOPS. The early reviews found 5770’s performance to be almost as high as ATI’s past generation star, the 4890.
Another upside of these two mainstream graphics adapters is, of course, HD audio bitstream support for transmitting untouched, HD quality Dolby Digital Plus and DTS HD MA audio to supporting home theater receivers. This translates to HTPC users losing the dedicated audio card in their system while upgrading their graphics adapter. I personally have been using a Sound Blaster X-Fi card with my system and have been waiting for Auzentech’s HD audio solution (and it’s availability where I live). ATI’s latest offerings look almost perfect to me. I’ll probably want to see like products from nVidia as well, as their drivers tend to agree with me more. If you’re system is generally problem-free with ATI’s drivers, I’d strongly suggest these two cards for HTPC systems…
Here are some reviews of the two cards:
Hot Hardware review
PC Perspective review
HardOCP review
TweakTown review
Techgage review
AnandTech review
Hexus review
via Engadget
Tags: ATI Radeon HD 5700, Bitstream
Posted in Computers, Gaming, HTPC, Hardware, Home Theater | No Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Although blank media prices are my main concern for Blu-Ray, it’s good to see the main players in the game release better and faster products each day. Although there isn’t any BD-R media that officially supports 12x writing speeds, Pioneer’s latest burner is a step in the right direction, without a doubt. Now, let’s get these media prices lower shall we??
Tags: BD-R Burner, Blu-ray, Pioneer
Posted in Computers, HTPC, Hardware, Home Theater | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Level 10, the concept case designed in conjunction with BMW is definitely a jaw dropper, drooler, or simply, whatever you call it, it’s a beauty. With compartments for individual PC components hanging from a central pillar, Thermaltake’s Level 10 is not your ordinary PC case. With advanced aerodynamics to help keep the system cool and quiet, the chassis also features 6 removable HDD cases, with support for both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives, as well as smaller drives such as SSDs. Check out the pictures in the gallery, watch the video by clicking the “Read More” link. To see a (p)review hit the via link…
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Tags: PC Chassis, Thermaltake, Thermaltake Level 10
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
As the name suggests, it’s FAST! With a bandwidth of 10Gbps, at over 100 meters of distance, Light Peak technology will enable mobile devices, displays and networking devices get connected to other devices/PCs/Macs, at high speeds. Rumour has it that Apple suggested the technology to Intel and that we will start seeing this technology implanted in Apple computers/notebooks as early as 2010…
via Engadget
Tags: Light Peak
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Freecom announced the other day, world’s first USB 3.0 HDDs. The drives come in 3 flavors, from 1 to 2TBs. Also backward compatible with USB 2.0 specifications, Freecom’s USB 3.0 drives will be out in November.
via PC Launches
Tags: HDD, USB 3.0
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
This one’s a rather different product, but it’s nevertheless important, for people with diabetes. Bayer’s new Contour USB Blood Glucose Meter, not only accurately measures your blood glucose, but also doubles as a USB thumb drive. It manages to store up to 2,000 test results in its memory, and with its special software, helps you monitor your past and present blood glucose levels through your PC or MAC. Not to mention it’s one of the smallest Blood Glucose Meters (if not the smallest of all)… Read on for the press release…
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Tags: Diabetes, Flash Disk, Health Care, USB
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
We all know it was inevitable but it still has news value when you hear something like this. After its defeat against Blu-ray (RIP HD-DVD, seriously) this is the first Blu-ray drive bearing device from Toshiba: The Cosmio X500 (a Blu-ray burner even). A multimedia giant, the 18.4-inch desktop replacement notebook carries within the new Intel Core i7 2.8GHz CPU and nVidia’s GeForce GTX 250MNV GPU with 1GB memory. The X500 is expected to hit the shelves by the end of October. Read more for the press release…
via Slash Gear
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Tags: Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Intel, i7, nVidia, Toshiba
Posted in Computers, Hardware, Laptops | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Intel announced the Clarksfield mobile chip the other day, which means laptops will get i7ed. There will be 3 different chips at first, two regular quad-cores and one i7 Extreme which will be able to selectively turns off some of its cores to bring more horsepower to the remaining core(s). Below are some reviews of the new CPUs and a link to the press release from Intel…
Hot Hardware
Legit Reviews
Laptop Mag
Press Release from Intel
via Engadget
Tags: Intel, i7, Quad Core
Posted in Computers, Hardware, Laptops | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Although I do love AMD’s CPUs, I’m not a real fan of Radeon graphic cards (due to the driver related problems I have had with them). But still I do admire the technology and horsepower behind them. The Radeon HD 5800 series seems to be a monster that will be very hard to contain on a simple graphics board.
I’m still eagerly waiting for graphics cards that transmit bitstream HD audio though. HTPC users know what I mean… Press release after the break…
EDIT: ATI Radeon HD 5870 does bitstream HD audio! It’s only a matter of time cheaper models with bitstreaming get released too.
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Tags: ATI, ATI Radeon HD 5800, Bitstream, HD-Audio, Radeon
Posted in Computers, HD, HTPC, Hardware, Home Theater | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Maximum PC reports that AMD is to release a hexa-core to consumer PCs in 2010, which will be backward-compatible with AM3 and AM2+ chipset mainboards. The 45nm CPU will feature an integrated DDR3 memory controller, 3MB L2 Cache and 6MB L3 Cache. The 904-million transistor chip will likely be called Phenom II X6.
via Maximum PC
Tags: AMD, AMD Thuban CPU, CPU, Hexa-Core
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
It took Auzentech a while to get the product together but the X-Fi HomeTheater HD was finally released a few months back with all its HDMI 1.3a glory. After reports started coming in, claiming that the sound card caused static & noise on older Denon receivers, Auzentech approached the problem with maturity and started posting open letters to all its customers and the subscribers to their news feeds. They’re explaining every step they take towards fixing this issue and I must say I love Auzentech’s open approach. They reported that they reproduced the problem on a newly acquired Denon receiver (model dating back to before 2008) and I’m sure they will get the hang of it in no time.
Tags: Auzentech, Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD, Bitstream, HD-Audio
Posted in Computers, HD, HTPC, Hardware, Home Theater | No Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
Dell released these two 1080p LCD displays through their website a few days ago as a follow-up to the previously released 24″ display ST2410. Both displays come with a 50,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio (no word on the real contrast ratio though), full 16:9 aspect ratio for a cinematic experience, 16.7 million color support, and anti-glare coating, with the only difference separating the two being their sizes.
The larger of the two, ST2310 is available for $229 with 1-year Exchange Warranty (extras available) and the 21.5″ ST2210 is available for $259 with the 3-year Exchange Warranty included in the price.
Tags: 1080p, Dell, Dell ST2210, Dell ST2310, Displays
Posted in Computers, Hardware | No Comments »
