Tech News
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Leaked Windows 8 tablet pricing suggests Microsoft may have.. Ya, Not Good?
Published: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 | By: DennisAs hardcore hardware enthusiasts you put less emphasis on price and more on features. While that holds true for the ultra-high end the same cannot be said for tablets.
If, like me, you thought Microsoft would price Windows RT competitively, you were wrong: A leaked slide from Asus says that its Vivo Tab RT, due to be released alongside Windows RT at the end of October, will start at $600. Unbelievably, this is $100 more than the iPad 3, and a full $200 more than the iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.
For $600, you would expect some sensational hardware specs — but alas, that’s sadly not the case. The Vivo Tab RT has a low-res 10.1-inch 1366×768 IPS display, quad-core Tegra 3 SoC, 2GB of RAM, NFC, 8-megapixel camera… and that’s about it. Like its Androidesque cousin, the Transformer, the Vivo Tab RT can be plugged into a keyboard/battery dock — but it’ll cost you another $200 for the pleasure. (Curiously, the Transformer’s docking station only costs $150 — go figure.)Much like in the PC space Microsoft is looking to make their cut on every OS they sell, either it be PC, Tablet, Tablet RT, Phone, car, soda machine, horse and buggy, whatever. Because of this you'll have to accept that WinTabs are going to cost a little more than the IOS and Android equivalents. That is also assuming you'll be able to do more on them.
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GTX 660 Review Launch Wrap-Up
Published: Monday, September 17, 2012 | By: DennisI am aware that most Ninjalane readers aren't so much interested in the GTX 660 and 650 GPUs but don't think I won't continue to post the reviews that come in.
Web Reviews of the GTX 660 and GTX 650
- The TR Podcast 119: GTX 660, Haswell, Sleeping Dogs and iPhone 5 Its a long one (per the usual) so grab some popcorn and s soda
- nVidia GeForce GTX 660 and nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Roundup @ OcInside
- In Win GreenMe 650 W @ techPowerUp
- NVIDIA 600 Series Video Card Overclocking Guide @ ThinkComputers
- GeForce GTX 650 MSI Power edition review @ Guru3D
- Gigabyte GTX 660 Windforce @ PureOverclock
- MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr @ PureOverclock
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB Review @ TechgageDon't worry this will be the last review block (like this) for awhile
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NVidia GTX 660 Launch Day - Lots of gaming goodness
Published: Thursday, September 13, 2012 | By: DennisMainstream gaming was just given yet another lower cost jolt in performance. Enter the GTX 660 [Non-Ti]. This card comes with 980 CUDA cores and 128-bit memory interface. By the looks of it most of the board partners have decided to release overclocked editions which speak to the power of Kepler or the conservative nature of NVidia.
The jury is still out on that topic, and while they decide you can check out the following reviews from around the web including our very own Gigabyte GTX 660 Review @ NInjalane
GTX 660 Web Reviews
- ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II Video Card Review @ [H]
- EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SC (SuperClocked) 2GB @ Bjorn3D
- nVidia GeForce GTX 660 & SLI @ ocaholic
- MSI GTX 660 OC Edition Twin Frozr Review @ KitGuru
- ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II TOP review @ Guru3D
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Round-Up: MSI, ZOTAC, Gigabyte @ HotHardware
- MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr 2GB OC @ LanOC Reviews
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Overclocked Graphics Card Review (EVGA/ZOTAC)@ HardwareHeaven
- Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 graphics card by TechReport
- EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked 2Gb @ LanOC Reviews
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Review @ Hardware Canucks
- KFA2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 EX OC @ Hexus
- MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr 2 GB @ techPowerUp
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 660 2 GB @ techPowerUp
- Gigabyte GTX 660 Windforce OC 2 GB @ techPowerUp
- ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Direct Cu II 2 GB @ techPowerUp
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Video Card Review with MSI and EVGA @ Legit ReviewsMore gaming goodness to come.
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Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI and GA-X79-UP4 @ PureOverclock
Published: Thursday, September 13, 2012 | By: DennisThe first wave of "refresh" motherboards has been making their rounds to the review sites. PureOverclock is looking at the new X79 boards from Gigabyte using the new UD5 technology.
New products in the desktop sector have taken somewhat of a break for a bit. Intel's latest Ivy Bridge release has settled in and Haswell is slated for mid 2013. As for the immediate future, Intel is on the brink of releasing Ivy Bridge "E" extreme processors in the next quater, and Intel continues Socket 2011 with the X79 chipset. In the meantime, some may have forgotten that Sandy Bridge "E" processors still remain a viable and even better performing platform than Ivy Bridge. Today, we have a dual-motherboard review, and both of them are from Gigabyte: the GA-Z79S-UP5 WiFi and the GA-X79-UP4. Let’s see how they fare.
With the rumors of Ivy Bridge E trickling out of IDF you can be assured there will be more attention paid to X79 in the near future.
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Sapphire FleX HD 7770 GHz Edition @ LanOC Reviews
Published: Thursday, September 13, 2012 | By: DennisSapphire is pretty famous for offering "flex" edition video cards that allow you to connect more displays to a single card than the non-flex edition.
Sapphires selection of cards for the HD 7000 series has been impressive to say the least. On top of having stock and overclocked versions of every model, they also have a few different models like the Vapor-X and FleX, each serving a different purpose. The vapor-X models having ungraded cooling and their FLeX models have improved support for multiple monitors. We have taken a look at everything else from their HD 7770 lineup; it’s only natural that we take a look at the HD 7770 as well. We know that FleX cards can be great deals for people looking for a cheaper way to run multiple monitors without having to pick up active Displayport adapters or Displayport monitors, let’s take a look at the HD 7770 FleX and see if it holds up to the FleX name
Just don't expect the card to be the fastest among your friends.
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Undercover reporter details work at Foxconn's iPhone plant
Published: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | By: DennisThis is a c|net story and appears to be a report from a larger posting from the Shanghai Evening Post. The worker who broke the story talks about his 10-days working at Foxconn making the backplate for the new iPhone 5.
It would seem he didn't get what he was expecting.
The reporter worked a night shift, which included a midnight to 6 a.m. stint without a break. He was in charge of marking the smartphone's backplate in four points using an oil-based paint pen. He worked with dozens of other employees doing the same thing, and the goal was to do it as fast as possible.
If you read the translated version of this story at SEP and have ever applied for a job working in a factory you will see many familiar things. For instance during the application process you are given a test designed to determine your level of intelligence. I'm not sure why they need to know this but my guess is that they are looking for a certain type of person to work there.
Factory work is not easy either, the hours are long and the work is repetitive. On the side of the factory they get paid based on how many products they move out the door and the more they move the higher the profit margins. If you have one assembly line running slow the factory risks missing their profit mark and starts losing money.
I wouldn't be surprised if the poor guy who submitted his story gets a visit in the middle of the night, heck it might have already happened.
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FBI launches nationwide facial recognition system
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 | By: DennisThere is always a fine line between maintaining security and respecting privacy. For security to work you have to give up a little bit of privacy, in the case of criminals that can mean giving up a mugshot and a copy of their fingerprints. This is an expected outcome for those individuals and is accepted by society.
The problem starts when privacy is no longer respected in an attempt to find criminals who are trying to hide or are good enough not to get caught. The result, non-criminals get caught in the crossfire and are often victims of mistaken identity.
According to New Scientist, facial recognition systems have reached the point where they can match a single face from a pool of 1.6 million mugshots/passport photos with 92% accuracy, in under 1.2 seconds [PDF]. In the case of automated, biometric border controls where your face and corresponding mugshot are well lit, the accuracy approaches 100%. Likewise, where DNA or iris records exist, it’s a very expedient way of accurately identifying suspects.
It would seem that before long privacy will be a thing of the past. There will be naked pictures of us at the TSA and the FBI will have faces of ever American searchable at a moment's notice. Of course for that information to be useful it must contain meta data such as "who it is"
The author and Zuckerberg might be on to something, next thing you will know Calvin Klein will start making stylish hoodies lined with copper mesh.Of course the real question most enthusiasts will want to know is. Does the FBI still use LGA775 or have they finally upgraded to CyberPowerPC based Sandy Bridge Extreme systems using the latest watercooling options from Thermaltake backed by a SSD RAID array? or will they fire up an Android tablet and store their person data in the cloud??
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MSI Geforce GTX 670 Power Edition @ Rbmods
Published: Monday, September 10, 2012 | By: DennisNVidia might have been a little too aggressive with the Kepler given that an overclocked GTX 660Ti is often faster than a GTX 670 when it comes to games. The jury is still out on raw overclocking performance but its not looking good.
Of course if you are in the market for a GTX 670 you can't go wrong with the custom Power Edition cards from MSI.
On the market for a hardcore videocard? On our test bench today we have the GTX 670 from MSI. We are going to test this in various benchmarks and games so stay tuned to see how this videocard performs and what we rate it at in the end!
Not sure how to react to that teaser but the card does feature the Twin Frozr IV cooler and "should" come with triple overvoltage controls. If you want to get the best overclocking performance you'll need them both.
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Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi Intel LGA 2011 @ techPowerUp
Published: Monday, September 10, 2012 | By: DennisThe Gigabyte Ultra Durable 5 technology was announced at Computex this year and the new technolgoy has sparking a total refresh of the entire Gigabyte product line.
Got a ton of hard drives, and not enough ports? Looking to buy a RAID card, and found the $400+ pricing too much? What if you could get a motherboard, and a RAID controller, for less than a RAID card itself? Gigabyte says you can! The Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi is no normal LGA2011 board - fitted with an Intel C606 chip instead of a standard Intel X79 Express, this Workstation product not only has eight SAS ports, but also everything else you need to build your own supercomputer.
Before LGA2011 was publically available Intel made it clear that if a board was using the retail chipset you could not enable the onboard SAS controller. The X79-UP5 with C606 Workstation chipset is the Gigabyte work around to this limitation.
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NL: Review Block - Thermaltake Water 2.0 Cooler Reviews
Published: Monday, September 10, 2012 | By: DennisSelf contained watercooling units seem to be the hot item this year, and why not? They are cheaper than building a DIY and perform better than your standard aircooler.
Water 2.0 Reviews
- Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme AIO CPU Cooler @ Pro-Clockers
- Thermaltake WATER2.0 Performer & Pro CPU Coolers Review @ TechgageWant to take your CPU cooling to the next level and adopt a self-contained liquid cooler? The market at the moment is packed with such offerings, and Thermaltake just padded it further with its WATER2.0 series. Available in three flavors, we're taking a look at the Performer and Pro variants here to see if they deserve to be in your rig. -Techgage
During our testing of the Water 2.0 system we determined that the fans were not powerful enough to really take advantage of the larger radiator in the Pro system. The good thing is swapping fans is an easy fix.
