Sapphire rolls out its HD 6800 cards

Sapphire has rolled out its Barts based cards, the HD 6850 and the HD 6870. The Sapphire HD 6870 is based on the reference design while the HD 6850 is based, like every other card on the market, on non-reference, in-house design.

Both cards are based on AMD’s newest 40nm Barts GPU and features support for DirectX 11, Crossfire, Eyefinity and brings more display option when compared to the previous generation. Both cards feature HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 1.2 and two DVI outuputs.

The HD 6870 packs 1120 Stream Processors and works at 900MHz for the GPU and 4200MHz for 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. It needs two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors and has a suggested retail price set at US $239.99

The non-reference HD 6850 features 960 Stream Processors, has 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 256-bit memory interface and works at 775MHz for the GPU and 4000MHz for memory. This one has a suggested price tag set at US $179.99.

Read More

HP’s Slate 500 Business Tablet Makes Retail Debut

When Hewlett-Packard bought Palm earlier this year, it looked like the final nail in the coffin of the Windows 7 tablet it had trotted out in January. The company was now on the horns of a dilemma, torn between WebOS and Windows 7. The world’s leading PC maker eventually chose to accommodate the Windows 7-based Slate 500 in its WebOS-dominated tablet plans, albeit only as a business-oriented product.

The back-from-the-dead Slate 500 is now available for purchase. The 8.9-inch device features a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, a 64GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, a 3MP camera on the back, one front-facing VGA camera, and a Broadcom graphics accelerator. The Slate 500 sports a $799 price tag

Read More

Amazon’s Kindle Circumvents “Great Firewall of China”

It’s long been known that the Chinese authorities don’t take kindly to people using sites like Twitter and Facebook in the country. The possibility that people might anonymously congregate on these popular sites frightens them to such a degree that they are blocked by the so-called “Great Firewall”. While traditional internet devices and services in China cannot access these and other sites, it looks like the 3G Amazon Kindle is capable of bypassing the Great Firewall.

The 3G version of the Kindle connects to Amazon’s Whispernet to access web services. There appears to something about the routing, even using Chinese 3G networks, that allows the device to reach forbidden websites. The result is a thriving grey-market for the e-reader in mainland China. Amazon is not able to sell the Kindle direct to consumers.

One individual that resells Kindles in China claims to be selling over 300 devices per month. Chinese auction sites too are havens for illicit Kindle sales. The only drawback to this method is that the Kindle’s web browser is not very pleasing to use, being on a slow device with an eInk screen. We’ll have to wait and see if Chinese authorities find a way to block this as well.

Read More

Intel high end 2011 chipset remains X58E

Intel Gulftown six-core Extreme Edition CPUs are working happily on X58 based motherboards, and most of the new socket B 1366 motherboards already have X58E chipset.

Intel still officially talks only about X58 chipset that was introduced almost two years ago in Q4 2008 and there are no any changes in the official chipset listing at Intel’s webpage.

Some daring companies such as Gigabyte claim that many of their motherboards do have this new chip including Gigabyte MB GA-X58A-UD3R, GA-X58A-UD5 and GA-X58A-UD7.

At this time there is no indication about any changes in the high-end chipset market and we can confirm that the future Core i7 990X Extreme edition fits in the same X58E motherboard. There are no X68 plans, at least not now and they won’t materialize soon.

It looks like that X58E motherboards will have to reach for USB 3.0 support from the third party vendors as two years can do a lot to features inside of one’s chipset.

Read More

iPad 2 features leak, include FaceTime + USB

Information about the iPad 2 leaked today, claiming that the device (which is expected sometime in April) will come with five new features. These feature include: a front-facing camera, lighter weight, USB port, new display glass (similar to iPhone 4) and 3-axis gyroscopes, according to a Chinese-language newspaper via DigiTimes.

It isn’t surprising that Apple will be introducing the front-facing camera to the iPad 2, as the iPhone 4 iPod touch 4G and even Mac’s have device-to-device video conferencing. During the teardown of the original iPad, it showed a placement for a front-facing camera, something that Apple scrapped sometime during the production phase. The camera placement was located in the top middle, when the iPad was held horizontally.

The report also suggests that the iPad 2 will be lighter in weight; a complaint that many customers raised when they first held the iPad. The next shocking feature is the USB port. Being able to load multimedia or even applications through a USB port would be a huge benefit for the device. iPhone-to-iPad 2 tethering anyone?

The newspaper also claims that the iPad 2 will feature ‘new display technology’, which could only mean that Apple plans to use the same glass they used in the iPhone 4 in the iPad 2. This would also mean that Apple would be able to pump a much larger display out of the device, like it did for the iPhone 4.

The last feature leaked is the 3-axis gyroscope. The next iPad will have a 3-axis gyroscope, like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G currently have. Gaming on the iPad just got better.

Apple will likely hold another press conference in late March to announce the new iPad 2.

Read More