PAX East 2011, which kicks off tomorrow, is widely expected to finally deliver a dual-GPU solution from NVIDIA’s Fermi family of graphics chips, a PCI Express-saturating single-card workhorse to be known as the GTX 590. While we wait for its arrival, however, here’s a sentimental look back upon 2010 and another little prototype that NVIDIA had kicking around its labs back then. Emerging over in a Chinese forum, this dual-GPU board features two GF104 chips (the same that made the GTX 460 such a winner) and a snow white PCB paintjob that makes it look utterly irresistible. We’re loving the four DVI outputs, and just like you have no idea why this card never came out, but that shouldn’t obstruct the enjoyment of looking at the darn thing. More pics after the break.

Continue reading Visualized: NVIDIA’s dual-Fermi card that never was

Visualized: NVIDIA’s dual-Fermi card that never was originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 06:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just like the previous three generations, the Z-Drive R2 is designed for high-speed enterprise usage and not for your average enthusiast – that’s why the Velocripator exists. But think about how fast you’ll be able to move you 8.5GB MKVs with the Z-Drive RS p88 1 or 2TB drive that features 1400MB/s read and write speeds. The smaller Z-Drive RS p84 still zips right along at 850MB/s read and 800MB/s write speeds.

These speeds are achievable with 8 PCI-E lanes along with an eight-way RAID 0 configuration. The drives are bootable and even feature interchangeable memory modules making the drive truely field-serviceable and upgradeable.

The word is mum on pricing just yet but seeing as the older and smaller 256MB PCI-E drive commands $1,335 from Newegg right now, chances are these drives are probably going to cost more than a used Honda.

Short Version: The AVerMedia MTVHDDVRR is a PCI Express video capture card with HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite inputs. The card retails for around $100 (you can find it for close to $90 online) and is capable of capturing up to 1080i video.

Features:

• PCI Express video capture card
• HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite inputs
• Records up to 1080i resolution in MPEG-2 format, also records H.264 and iPod formats
• Includes low profile bracket and 10-in-1 input cable, plus on-card HDMI input

Pros:

• Easy installation
• Good recording quality
• Relatively inexpensive

Cons:

• Included media center software looks like it’s from 1999
• No 1080p recording
• HDMI connection is wildly unpredictable

Review:

The AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR video capture card (model number MTVHDDVRR) is for people who want to digitize footage of some type. Be it old VHS movies or camcorder tapes, video game console gameplay, or grabbing shows off of a DVR, the card handles most recording tasks pretty well.

Setup is easy, provided you’ve cracked open a desktop and installed something before. The card face has two slots; one’s an HDMI port and the other is used for the included 10-in-1 AV cable that’s got component, S-video, and composite connectors. You can plug a bunch of different sources in at the same time and then switch between them using AVer MediaCenter.

The included AVer MediaCenter looks and feels like very early DVR software. It’s got TV, Video, Audio, and Photo functions but you’ll just use the TV function to record stuff. The video player, audio player, and photo viewer are just fluff.

Recording works well over anything but HDMI, which was a total crapshoot depending upon which device was hooked up. My Comcast DVR box caused the software to crash every time without fail (see photo below), my Xbox 360 would sometimes only record the sound but no picture, and a Gateway notebook with HDMI output worked fine every time. For reference, I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, the latest 64-bit Beta drivers for the card, and latest AVer Media Center software. I used the latest stable, non-Beta version of the card’s drivers for a while, too, and experienced similar results.

Anything hooked up via component, composite, or S-video recorded just fine without any problems. So it’s likely an issue with HDMI’s digital handshake and could also have something to do with the whole copy protection thing (HDCP). After a while, I just stopped trying to hook things up via HDMI. Here’s a video of HDMI video capture that actually worked—a Gateway notebook playing a 720p video recorded at 720p by the card.

Download the full-size original MPEG-2 file…

Your format options for capturing HD video are MPEG-2 and… well, that’s it. You’ve also got H.264 and “iPod” settings but they max out at 720×480. The maximum HD resolution is 1080i, so plan accordingly.

Conclusion:

I can’t broadly recommend this product due to how poorly the included software handles HDMI connections, but if you’re patient enough to wait for AVerMedia to get all the kinks worked out and you’re content to only use the component, composite, and S-video connections, then you’ll find everything to work relatively well aside from the HDMI input. On the whole, though, there are more stable options out there right now.

AVerTV HD DVR [AVerMedia-USA.com]

It’s official. NVIDIA’s ION 2 GPUs are coming. You’ll see them on more than 30 products come summer time. The company is promising “10x faster graphics and up to 10 hours of battery life.” So much for that whole power-versus-battery-life tradeoff.

Some of the first products we’ll see outfitted with the discrete GPU will be Acer’s 532G netbook (covered here) and the Asus Eee PC 1201PN, shown above. We’ll also see plenty of all-in-ones and small form factor PCs to boot. The GPUs attach via PCI Express to Intel’s new-ish Pine Trail platforms to provide dedicated video memory—no more sharing.

Expect honest YouTube HD streaming, “and smooth gaming performance on titles like World of Warcraft,” according to the press release. Acer’s 532G will be the first out of the gate next month, with other products to follow.

USB 3.0 is just around the corner, with us having reported about more and more compatible devices in the last few months. And today, Tokyo-based Greenhouse, usually a reliable maker of crap gadgets, announced [JP] a USB 3.0-compatible PCI Express interface card.

Greenhouse says the maximum data transfer rate stands at 5Gbps (see the chart below), but take that with a grain of salt. The card is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7 machines.

It will go on sale on Greenhouse’s Japanese web site in the next few days for $40.

Pine What?

Okay, so one of the big things about the new Atom chips is that for the first time, it integrates a graphics core and a memory controller directly onto the same die as the processor. This whole platform, that is, the processor, graphics and memory controller is “Pine Trail,” while the processor by itself is “Pineview.”

More specifically, the graphics core is 45nm die shrink of Intel’s GMA 3100, redubbed GMA 3150, that runs at 400MHz. So, not only does it still suck, it also doesn’t hardware accelerate H.264 video as AnandTech points out, meaning it’s completely useless for Flash video, even with all of the new Flash acceleration hotness Adobe is delivering next year.

Instead, netbook makers will still have to bundle, at the very least, an “HD decoder” that accelerates H.264 for decent Flash playback, and it’s not anywhere near Nvidia’s Ion in terms of graphics performance. (This chip from Broadcom, to be precise.) And, not that you’ll be pushing 1080p video out of your netbook, but video res is capped at 1366×768 out of the HDMI and DVI ports. Bottom line, Intel’s stock offering still blows goats when it comes to video, and we’re still waiting to see what Nvidia’s going to do about it, given that they can’t plug in Ion the way they used to. (Anand speculates they might just tack on through a PCi Express port.)

These are the three chips Intel’s launching today, only one, the N450, is for netbooks, and as you’ll notice, it’s 1.66GHz single core chip (Intel thinks that’s just fine) and supports just 2GB of RAM. The improvements you’ll see with the N450 over the current Atom chips aren’t exactly explosive—they mostly come from faster memory, and even Intel admits they’re incremental.

Sure, it’s 20 percent more efficient than the last Atom chips, but if you want remotely decent video performance in a netbook right now, it looks an Nvidia Ion-based system is still the way to go, even with Intel flashing new silicon. If you can stick it out for another month, it might be worth seeing what’s a little further around the bend. [Intel]

Samsung has a tiny solid state drive that might make its way into future notebooks and netbooks. Based on the mSATA (mini-SATA) interface, the drive would require no external housing and “would plug directly into an internal PCI Express (PCIe) slot in a desktop, laptop or netbook,” according to Computerworld.

The main hurdle is that the PCIe slot isn’t integrated into most current motherboard designs, so it’d have to become a standard present in future products. As for the drive itself, capacities reach 64GB and it uses the serial ATA interface to transfer data.

For use in netbooks or notebooks, 64GB may be enough storage for everyday use but in desktops and more fully-featured portable computers, the mSATA drives could house the operating system and programs while a standard high-capacity hard drive would be used in tandem to store other files like photos, videos, and music.

It’s unknown how much additional cost the mSATA drives would add to a computer’s bottom line but the draw would be that we’d theoretically see much thinner and lighter systems since the drive itself is about a third of the size of a business card.

[via Computerworld]

Courtesy Tom's Hardware

The financially frivolous exercise (see prices below) was Tom’s Hardware US’s response to an email by Samsung’s PR agency, which apparently showcased a RAID array of 24 Samsung PB22-J flash SSDs achieving 2.12GB/s. Looks like Samsung needs to come out with something new!

Despite the unofficial 2.23GB/s throughput (read/write performance) record, the tech-heads at TH weren’t completely satisfied. With an average claimed speed of 200MB/s per individual drive, hooking up 16 X25-Es should’ve produced a throughput of 3.2GB/s. Ah, but despite applying “all optimizations”—including the use of two drive controller cards to overcome PCIe x8’s limitation of 2GB/s—sometimes the rest of a computer simply can’t keep up with an awesome setup.

Product Links and Prices:

• Adaptec 2244300-R PCI Express SATA / SAS 5805 Controller Card – $519.99
• Intel X25-E 64GB 2.5″ SSD – $669

Yes, ladies and gentlmen, Tom’s setup was worth $9,000!

Source

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Nonetheless, one should be aware of the fact that a PC’s integrated graphics and the RAM of your PC use the same video memory. The integrated graphics cannot efficiently handle 3D applications. You will definitely find your PC inadequate if you are into some hardcore 3D based games or doing some advanced graphics editing work. In this case, you have no choice but to have an applicable graphics card with the proper amount of memory space.

The earlier versions of graphics cards were integrated into the system of the PC through a compatible PCI slot. The later generations of PCs had outfitted a separate slot specifically to accommodate graphics cards. These are also known as the AGP. These new slots allow for the faster transfer of data between your CPU and the graphics cards, which resulted in better precision of timing and transactions on your PC.

The most recent version of graphics port is the PCI Express x16. This latest version of card slot provides for data transfer rate that is twice as fast as the quickest AGPs. Most of the present versions of graphic cards are designed for the PCI Express slots. PCI Express is considered normal for today.

At present, it is quite common to see the need for more than one graphics card to run certain applications. In which case, you have PCs that have more than one card slots or ports to accommodate the requirement of these advanced applications.

The built-in video memory of these graphic cards ranges from 128 MB to a maximum of 512 MB. The video memory of graphics cards is defined as a DDR-memory. This type of memory is capable of transferring data at twice the maximum speed of any other type of memory card.

At this point, it is important to note that many other things affect the running of your PC too. Previously, the basis of the level of performance of a graphics card was the memory’s size. However, present generation PCs sets the level performance based on the memory of the graphics card, and many other things. However, the main determinant of the level of performance of your PC shall be the type of graphic cards that you will use.