Australian PC maker Pioneer Computers has introduced a new 10 inch mini-laptop that weighs just 1.28 pounds. It also looks extraordinarily thin, although the dimensions listed on the product page look like they’re off — unless the notebook is 17 inches thick.

Part of the secret is that the Pioneer DreamBook Lite E10 chucks the usual Intel Atom processor for a 533MHz VIA 8505 ARM-based processor which shouldn’t need much in the ay of cooling. The computer also has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 128MB of RAM, and 2 to 4G of flash storage. It runs Google Android or Windows CE.

The E10 also has 802.11b/g WiFi, a 0.3MP webcam and an SD card slot, a well as 3 USB ports and an optional 3G module. It comes with an 1800mAh battery which Pioneer says should be good for up to 3 hours of run time.

via Netbooked

Titan Fenrir Evo Hands-on

Posted on 17th May 2010 at 11:40 by Richard Swinburne with 48 comments

Announcing: Gateway NV59C and NV7 Series

Gateway has announced the NV59C and NV7 series of notebooks featuring 15.6” and 17.3” screens respectively. These models will be Gateway’s two pronged attack on the crowded mainstream notebook market. Gateway is not only claiming that the new notebooks will offer the best in cinematic entertainment thanks to Blu-ray drives, vibrant16:9 displays and HDMI connections, but also seamless social networking capabilities. The latter comes in the form of an integrated “social networking” shortcut button that will connect users to sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. To be honest it seems like a bit of a gimmick, but bearing in mind the target audience it will probably come in quite handy.

The first model to be released is the NV59C09u, which features an Intel Core i3-330M running at 2.13GHz on the Intel HM55 chipset with 4GB DDR3 RAM. The integrated Intel GMA HD graphics will drive the 15.6” LED-backlit display comfortably due to its lowly 1366×768 resolution. The notebook has a 320GB HDD and a Blu-ray drive which is a nice addition. While the low resolution screen may not make the most of it, there is an HDMI port to output your high definition films to a better display. Further connectivity comes in the form of 802.11b/g/n wireless and Gigabit Ethernet wired networking as well as three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, a media card reader, and the usual audio in and out ports.

The notebook also features a 1280×1024 webcam, two stereo speakers, a dedicated numeric keypad, and a multi-gesture trackpad that will provide functionality such as pinch to zoom and twist/rotate photos. A 6-cell battery is standard with a quoted 4.5 hour battery life in the 5.72Lbs chassis. The machine runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. There is also a new fingerprint-resistant lid with a wave pattern and colorful finish as well as some other small aesthetic alterations that generally improve the look of the machine.

The NV59C09u is available now for $800. On the face of it, the specifications are identical to the $650 NV5933u which has been available for some time now. (We’ll have a review of the NV5933u in the near future.) However, the new model has an improved 2-year warranty compared to the single year available on the older model as well as the social networking key and improved aesthetics. Still, $150 extra for what amounts to an extra year of warranty coverage and a slight tweak to the design still seems a bit too much. If you don’t feel like you need these changes, the current $650 for the “old” NV59 series is a great deal.

Further models will be available in the coming weeks and are said to range from mainstream family orientated products to powerful gaming and video editing machines and will feature Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors as well as AMD Athlon and Turion processors, a move HP has recently taken with its new Pavilion range of mainstream notebooks. Standard across the range of new notebooks will be media card readers, 802.11b/g/n, Gigabit Ethernet and a1280×1024 webcam. They fill feature storage ranging from 320GB to 640GB. The cheapest of the new NV series notebooks will start at $530.

The NV7 Series will feature models with ATI Mobility Radeon HD graphics to make the most of the 17.3” 1600×900 screen. Unfortunately, there’s no 1080p resolution to make the most of the Blu-ray drive models, which is a crime for notebooks of this screen size. The new notebooks also feature Gateways “MyBackup” software to make backing up to internal partitions or external drives an easy task rather than a mundane chore.

We’ll have to wait and see how these machines weigh up against their mainstream counterparts, as undoubtedly there will be a flurry of releases to catch the school and college notebook buyers over the summer. The two year warranty is a nice extra (something ASUS already provides on many of their laptops), but in the meantime the NV59 series is a lot cheaper and offers the same performance at a much lower price.

Remember that MSI Wind U250 notebook that we spotted on the US Energy Star web site a few months ago? No? That’s OK, I’d kind of forgotten about it myself — until it showed up at an AMD event in Cannes yesterday.

The folks at NewGadgets.de got a chance to snap a few photos of a pre-production version of this 12.1 inch notebook with an AMD processor. There’s not a lot of information about the specs at the moment, but according to the Energy Star web site, the notebook will have a 1.3GHz AMD Athlon II Neo dual core K325 processor — which just so happens to be one of the new low power chips for ultrathin laptops that AMD introduced yesterday.

The K325 has a total power draw of 15W and 2MB of L2 cache. It’s basically the slowest/cheapest dual core AMD processor for ultrathin notebooks. It will also support up 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 4GB Toxic Review

Manufacturer: Sapphire
UK Price (as reviewed): £900+ (inc. VAT) MSRP
US Price (as reviewed): $1099 (exc.Tax) MSRP

Pre-overclocked graphics cards have been around for years and, while not for everyone, can offer that extra sliver of performance if you’re willing to foot the bill. What we regularly ask though is why manufacturers hold back so much? If our own experiences, many graphics cards yield decent amounts of overclocking headroom, yet pre-overclocked cards often settle for tiny overclocks of 3-5 per cent. Even watercooled pre-overclocked cards rarely stray beyond overclocks of 15 per cent.

Part of the reason is the availability and quality of individual GPUs and their ability to handle higher clock speeds, but Sapphire has taken note, and decided to really push the boat out with its new Radeon HD 5970 Toxic. Not only do both GPUs ship with a massive 24 per cent overclock, but the card comes fitted with twice the GDDR5 memory of the stock model, and a massively upgraded cooler too. Make no mistake, this is a pre-overclocked partner card done to the limits of what’s possible, to the point that the production run will be extremely limited; Sapphire tell us that less than one thousand units will be produced.

Underneath the pomp, ceremony and huge cooler (more on that in a bit) though, this is still a Radeon HD 5970 card, already the most powerful graphics card on the planet even before Sapphire started tinkering. The Toxic is still 31cm (12.2in) long and is still built around two full-fat Cypress GPUs (codenamed Hemlock XT).

After Sapphire’s tweaking and the addition of the massive cooler, these GPUs run at 900MHz, up from the 725MHz of a stock-speed HD 5970. This theoretically makes the Toxic comfortably faster than two HD 5870s (which share the same GPU and are clocked at 850MHz) in CrossFire. To achieve these clock speeds, Sapphire has had to increase the GPU’s voltage, and this has necessitated the two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors used to fuel this beast. Sapphire recommends an 850W PSU for any PC that includes the Toxic.

The doubling of memory from 2GB on the stock HD 5970 to 4GB also requires extra power. This is doubly true, as Sapphire has chosen to use twice the number of DRAM chips, rather than use higher density 256MB modules, with 16 chips on either side of the PCB. This has required a slight PCB reshuffle, as well as extra power phases compared to the typical HD 5970, but the stock HD 5970’s PCB is roomy enough to allow for the extra memory without issue. The memory has also been overclocked, from 1GHz (4GHz effective) to HD 5870 speeds of 1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective).

With the extra power coursing through its circuitry, not to mention the noise that a stock HD 5970 makes under load, replacing ATI’s stock cooler was a mandatory requirement for the Toxic – this is a likely reason why we’ve not seen many attempts at a pre-overclocked HD 5970 yet. Sapphire’s cooler is a monster fit for this purpose though; it’s a modified Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme H5970 triple-slot construction of heatpipes, aluminium fins and three slim-line 92mm cooling fans. We’d recommend leaving another slots-worth of space beyond this to allow the fans to work efficiently.

Each GPU is fitted with a copper contact plate through which run four nickel-plated copper heatpipes. These two sets of bi-directional heatpipes dump their heat into the cooling fins of the cooler, with the cooling fans blowing directly down through the fins and onto the PCB. The card also uses a backplate to cool the 2GB of GDDR5 memory mounted there. Due to the upped power demands of the card, there’s also a separate VRM heatsink that sits above the card’s power delivery circuitry, and which is secured by both thermally conductive tape, and screw-through bolts.

At the rear of the card are the usual pair of DVI ports and the mini-DisplayPort output, and the card supports three-screen Eyefinity. The Toxic is certainly a very impressive card on paper – superior to two HD 5870, with the advantage of having the two GPUs closer and fed by a PCI-E bridge chip, plus the significantly upgraded cooling. We were understandably eager to see how this monster of a graphics card performed.

Specifications

• Graphics processor 2 x ATI Radeon HD 5970, 900MHz
• Pipeline 2 x 1,600 stream processors (900MHz), 2 x 32 ROPs
• Memory 2 x 2GB GDDR5, 4.8GHz effective
• Bandwidth 2 x 153.6GB/sec, 256-bit interface
• Compatibility DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.1
• Outputs/Inputs 2 x DVI, 1 x mini-DisplayPort, 1 x CrossFire
• Power Connections 2 x 8-pin, side-mounted
• Size 310mm long, triple-slot
• Warranty two-year

If you recall from our 15-inch Core i5 MacBook Pro review, one of our only criticisms was the inability for users to manually change between lower-power integrated Intel HD graphics and the discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M GPU. As it stands, within OS X users can only disable the Intel HD graphics in favor of using the discrete, but more power-hungry GT 330M full-time. Since being tipped in the comments section on one of our MacBook Pro articles, we’ve been keeping our eyes on a particular utility developed by independent OS X developer Cody Krieger called gfxCardStatus. Until now, this has been a useful tool exclusively for reporting at-a-glance which GPU was in use in the menu bar. But now, there’s something more:

With verison 1.6 comes the ability to manually change GPUs on the fly, whenever users desire. That’s right, you can manually change from the discrete GT 330M back to the more energy-efficient Intel HD graphics even from applications that otherwise cause an automatic switchover. This is a huge boon to mobile road warriors that want to wring every last minute out of their batteries if need be.

In the application, you can see which process(es) were responsible for the change to discrete graphics, and optionally switch GPUs. The only exception to this (thus far) unrestricted ability to use Intel HD graphics in favor of the GT 330M is when an external display is connected. Use of an external display is only possible through the GT 330M due to physical connector restrictions. At the same time, if you’re using a multiple monitor setup, you’re also likely at a desk, and thus don’t need the power savings.

We’re still playing around with it, but thus far everything appears to work perfectly, and we’re switching from the GT 330M back to Intel HD graphics dynamically without any major issue. Hit up the link and give it a shot if you’re feeling adventuresome.

Update: The developer is fast, and has updated gfxCardStatus to 1.6.1 minutes after we posted the story. Nothing has really changed though aside from some tweaks mentioning that manual switching is obviously highly experimental, and removal of the dependent processes tab when Intel HD graphics is in use.

We haven’t yet run into any drastic problems, but have only tested with basic things like Photoshop CS4 with GPU acceleration disabled (this previously caused a switch to the 330M), X11 under OS X, and a few other simple 3D programs that previously triggered a GPU switch, like Grapher. 

LogMeIn Ignition beta for Android

Yeah, I know this week’s roundup of stories about smartphone apps is a few days late… mostly because I kind of forgot. I’ve been busy, OK? And so have mobile app developers, because over the past 10 days or so we’ve seen some really awesome apps hit the streets. Here are a few of my favorites, rounded up from Mobiputing:

Google Android

• LogMeIn Ignition Beta for Android: Control your PC with your phone
• Google Goggles lets you translate text with your Android Phone’s camera
• 4 Cloud-based storage apps for Android
• Twitter launches official Android app, complete with contact sync
• Google Android .1 ported to the T-Mobile G1
• Skyfire 2.0 web browser for Android available for download
• Firefox pre-Alpha now available for Android

iPhone and iPod touch

• iPhone OS 4 to include screen orientation lock
• Adobe Ideas: Vector-based sketchpad for the iPhone, iPad
• The iPhone DVR Remote scheduling apps
• First look at Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone

Other platforms

• HP to purchase Palm for $1.2 billion
• iMulator: Finger-friendly music player for Windows Mobile

You can find more smartphone news and app reviews at Mobiputing.

How AMD Core Unlocking Works

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks travelling the length of Taipei, seeking answers from the three main motherboard companies: ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, learning how exactly they’ve each achieved the core unlocking capacity for AMD AM3 CPUs, especially as it’s been officially removed by AMD from its latest 8-series chipsets.

We’ll start with a bit of background first. At the time of AM2+’s demise, AMD was losing ground (and money) hand over fist to Intel and needed any advantage it could grab. While AMD must have been concerned about the fact that core unlocking could erode the market for the company’s latest Phenom II X4 CPUs and pushed the ASP (average selling price) downwards, the vast majority of consumer CPUs it sells are sub-£100 models and core unlocking helped revitalise interest in these.

With its previous SB710/SB750 Southbridge, AMD introduced a new feature called Advanced Clock Calibration. This included an “EC Firmware” function in the BIOS that could be issued a set of codes (subsequently provided by AMD to partners) and this would enable the extra cores of compatible CPUs that had previously been disabled. The EC Firmware is specific to each CPU that has a hidden core(s), so there’s a list of codes need for all the CPU individually, rather than just one global setting.

In the latest SB850 southbridge AMD hid the EC Firmware function and declined to issue a new set of compatible codes, much to the dismay of motherboard manufacturers. They could either accept that it was game over for core unlocking, or call in the engineers and come up with their own ways to get it working again. They feared that without it – and facing a rejuvenated £100 Intel line-up with the excellent Core i3-530, interest in AM3 would decline.

Asus

First out the blocks with an 890 chipset board capable of CPU core unlocking was Asus’ 890GX based Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB. Clearly it took the other motherboard companies by surprise as both MSI and Gigabyte were at least a month behind. It’s highly unusual for one company to have such a big, clear lead – chalk one up to Asus’ secrecy there. It wasn’t until recently that Asus would let us in on how it able to achieve this.

Asus engineers basically replaced the whole advanced clock calibration circuit (ACC) and then substituted in a hardware switch which issued its own EC Firmware codes for the CPUs instead. This costs a few dollars more, but Asus claims it not only gives more control to select individual cores (if there’s more than one available) for the maximum unlocking success rate, but given previous experience the engineers have developed a feature to test and check if the unlocked cores even function correctly and disable bad ones automatically.

On Most Asus boards this option is available with a BIOS switch, but with its recent [Crosshair IV Formula motherboard it now has a hardware button on the board to turn it on and off, although we’re unsure if it still requires the complete system reboot in the same way.

One of the big things at the moment is the home theater computer, or HTPC. Many manufacturers are designing and building computer enclosures to enhance your entertainment rooms for this purpose. One such manufacture that is no stranger to quality computer enclosures is Antec. Antec was founded in 1986 and has been building computer enclosures since its beginning. Today at HardwareLogic, we are going to take a close look at one of Antec’s media enclosures, the Fusion Remote Black. The Fusion Remote Black is one of their Veris series and comes in two flavors; The Fusion Remote, which carries a silver brushed aluminum front bezel, and the Fusion Remote Black that we will be taking a look at today.

About Antec

Quote

Antec, Inc. is the global leader in high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself markets. Founded in 1986, Antec is recognized as a pioneer in the industry and has maintained its position as a worldwide market leader and international provider of quiet, efficient and innovative products. Antec has also achieved great success in the distribution channel, meeting the demands of quality-conscious system builders, VARs and integrators.

Antec’s offering of enclosures includes a wide range of cases, such as its advanced Performance One Series, economical New Solution Series and VERIS family of media components designed for the home theater PC market. Antec’s products also include front line power supplies, such as its premium Signature Series, powerful TruePower Quattro Series and EarthWatts, one of the most environmentally friendly power supplies available. PC gamers are an increasingly significant consumer of performance components, and many Antec products are designed for the gaming demographic, like the premier gamer enclosure: the Nine Hundred. Antec also offers a line of computer accessories comprising many original products, including its patented LED fans and notebook cooling solutions.

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/index.php?page=info_about

Packaging

As we take a look at the front of the main box that the Fusion Remote black comes in, we can see that Antec has given us a glimpse of what we can expect when we open up the box to see the goods. We see that it comes with a nice remote control for our home theater system. It also gives us a nice picture of the case itself, as well. Looking to the left of the case, we can see some icons that show music, game pad, and video camera. This would indicate to us that Antec’s case can serve many different applications.

Specifications

At the back, we see that Antec has given us a description of some of the features that we can expect when building in the Fusion Remote Black enclosure:

• Black aluminum plate front bezel with monochrome LCD and a remote control to work with Microsoft Vista and Media Center Editions.
• iMedian HD by iMON software included for media management and playback.
• Built in infrared receiver compatible with Windows Vista and Media Center Editions. (We tested this running Microsoft® Windows 7, and the software, and remote control worked great).
• Triple camber structure to separate heat and noise of power supply.
• Removable hard drive brackets with extra soft silicone grommets to reduce vibration noise.
• 3 drive bays. 1 x 5.25 front accessible, 2 x 3.5 internal.
• 4 expansion slots.
• Advanced cooling system. 2 x 120mm tri-cool 3 speed fans.
• Micro ATX form factor.
• Front mounted ports for multimedia connections.
• Durable 0.8mm cold rolled steel construction.
• Newegg Link, Amazon Link.

Now we’ll dive into the additional parts that come with the case.