ATI Radeon HD 4870 to Crash Nvidia’s GeForce 200 GTX

Diamond Multimedia, a well-known supplier of graphics cards in the USA, has unveiled its new graphics board that would be, at least initially, available exclusively from a builder of high-end computers called Smooth Creations. The graphics card supplier claims that the graphics adapter powered by ATI Radeon HD 4870 chip is pre-overclocked so substantially that it can leave behind even Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280.
“The Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition was clocked to kick some ass. We didn’t just want a fast card out in the market, we wanted the fastest card that could kick the living daylights and bust some performance records. We wanted a card that kicked the competitions teeth into the curb, and that’s exactly what our engineers accomplished,” said Mario Gastelum, director of product development and engineering at Diamond.
Diamond “Unlocked” Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition graphics card comes with graphics processing unit clocked at 800MHz and 512MB of GDDR5 memory operating at 4400MHz, up from 750MHz/3600MHz on reference design ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics adapter. Moreover, according to Diamond Multimedia, the firmware of the board was modified and the board can be overclocked even further and can leave behind the current flagship Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 280.
“The firmware was custom designed to enable end users to go beyond the normal over clocked speeds and allow them to push their cards for higher performance via the Catalyst Control Center. The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950MHz and Memory of up 1200MHz,” said Mr. Gastelum.
The Diamond’s Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition comes with a custom liquid-based cooling system from Danger Den, which ensures that extreme overclocking of the product does not affect its lifespan and stability of work.
Market rumours indicate that other leading suppliers of graphics boards may also start making “über-overclocked” graphics boards based on ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processing units. Theoretically, with custom cooling solution, modification of power supply system and overclocking the ATI Radeon HD 4870 may leave behind much more expensive Nvidia GeForce GTX 280, but what should be kept in mind is that the latter may also be overclocked beyond its stock speeds as well.

Sony Ericsson K550i (Review)

Good bye my good old Nokia 3120,you've been serving me for almost 4 years. Thats not an excuse to keep you longer with me. Things do change,so do I. Welcome home my all new Sony Ericsson K550i (I'll use "SE" instead of Sony Ericsson through out this article!)
I wasn't a SE fanboy at all, I did hate their menu structure,especially the fact that the space bar button is to the right(in contrast to Nokia's bottom-middle key),needless to say I did texting more often than anyone of you :P,as for a witness my outgoiung txt msg count was somewhere around 8500 and incoming was around 23000, that is hell a lot haa:D. Ok its enough bragging about the old rag, lets start with my SE550i review.

The Sony Ericsson K550i( I would say this is a bang for the buck)



Most of you may have seen the technical specifications of the SE K550 on Gsmarena.com, but for the rest I'll include the most basic Specs here.
P.S . The SE K550 review on gsmarena.com is based on a prototype model so that review is no longer valid(most of the features are changed)

Network :Quad band
Dimensions : 102 x 46 x 14 mm
Weight :85g
Display type : TFD(Thin Film Diodes- Battery friendly) 256KColors
Resolution : 176x220 pixels

The phone supports Memory stick micro (M2) slot and features about 70MB internal free memory. It supports all common connectivity methods except 3G and Wi-Fi
Thats pretty enough for an introduction, lets dive deeper, would you join me ? :D and forgot to tell you, I'll be focusing youngsters rather Business personnel in this review, so basically on the Processing speed, Audio quality, Camera ,Video playback and Applications

At the first glance you will notice that this nifty phone is pretty slim( not the slimmest though) the display is vivid and very bright (TFD Nature) . And another noticeable thing is the awkward keypad buttons. It was pretty hard for me to get used to it, but after fiddling with it few days i could somehow satisfy. I was surfing the internet and saw the JBenchmarking web site and got to know this little phone was a wicked performer. "ARM 9 CPU @ 201MHz", when I saw that I was like "Wow",even the very popular and expensive N73 has the same Cpu running at 209MHz.
The UI is quite fast and very responsive,even when you run 5 or 6 apps it's still the same. Audio quality is satisfiable, tell you what ; SE K550 has the exact same hardware as the W610 which is a walkman 2.0 device. So this K550 can be easily flashed to a W610 so comes the term "Cybershot-Walkman".
The 2MP camera is pretty much OK for the price you pay,needless to say its much better than most of the mid-range Nokia 2MP cams. Auto focus and powerful LED flash lights play a vital role here. The K550 sports a panorama mode as well as macro mode which can be used to take closer shots.

Video playback is impressive,even a high bit rate(512Kbps) QVGA resolution video can be played without a glitch(remember the ARM9 201MHz CPU?). Video quality is also adorable, you will feel like watching a video on your PC.
So guys and girls if you are on a tight budget (like I was) and looking for the best within the price range don't think twice go and get this.
Thumbs up!

Crawling for Bass - Subwoofer Placement

Since i used to be a PC enthusiastic I've used Sub Woofer PC sound Systems. I tried every bit of me to get the maximum bass output from the sound systems,too bad. I'm not an audiophile(Well..mm.. I'm a lame audiophile :P). My room and the furniture didn't allow me to do as i wanted :(.

I came across several reviews on the net and thought that would be useful for you(Who are passionate about music!). So here it goes..

Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks in placing your speaker system whether it is a 2 channel or multichannel surround system is finding the best location for your subwoofer. It is not only a matter of choosing which location will sound best, but it is also a matter of ergonomics and dealing with space constraints of the listening room.

My advice in this matter is simple yet useful. I recommend doing the following procedure listed below when nobody is home or at least able to witness what you are doing as it may potentially result in having you committed or at the very least it will lead to a psychiatric evaluation.
Subwoofer Placement Procedure
onnect the "Sub Out" of your Receiver / Preamp Processor using an RCA cable into a Y-cable into the "L" and "R" inputs of your subwoofer. Note: Unless otherwise stated by the manufacturer, be sure to utilize both inputs of the sub as many subs sum the "L" + "R" inputs to yield a 6 dB gain from the input voltage of the processor.
lace the Subwoofer in the most common location of your listening area. (Usually your couch, chair, or bean bag).
lay a bass heavy CD or other format (not 8 track!) that you are familiar with and turn the volume up so that the sub is really working.

ote: The reason why you should crawl is that standing will put you about 5 feet off axis (depending on how tall you are) with the sub and thus will change the characteristics of the sound enough to potentially cause you to place the sub in a non optimal position.
Now get on your hands and knees and pay homage to the subwoofer (just kidding). Seriously, for the next part of this set-up, prepare to do some crawling (this is the part that could get you committed, but its all worth it!)
rawl around the listening room and listen for when the sub seems to sound the best. (IE. Listen for depth, loudness, tightness and definition)
f possible, place the sub as close to this position as you can. This will ensure you have chosen the best location in the room.
ow get off your knees and calibrate your system.

or Example:

Adjust crossover point on the sub for optimal blend with main speakers.
djust gain control of sub to tonally balance your system.
epeat A + B until satisfied.

This is a starter for those integrating a Subwoofer into their system for the first time. A more detailed placement guideline will be presented shortly for the more advanced users.

GDDR5 in Production

Qimonda, a leading manufacturer of advanced dynamic random access memory (DRAM), said that it could deliver next-generation GDDR5 memory for graphics cards and other applications that require high memory bandwidth in volume. At this point Qimonda can supply makers of graphics boards GDDR5 memory with up to 4.50GHz clock-speed.

“Qimonda was the first to announce samples of GDDR5 back in November 2007. We have proven the technology and we can deliver in volume production to the market today,” said Glen Haley, communications director of Qimonda in North America, in an interview with X-bit labs web-site.

Presently Qimonda has 512Mb (16Mx32) GDDR5 chips at 3.60GHz, 4.0GHz and 4.50GHz clock-speeds in PG-TFBGA-170 packages in production. It is interesting to note that current-generation GDDR3 chips from Qimonda use PG-TFBGA-136 packing, which means that GDDR5 has more pins and requires more complex print-circuit boards of graphics cards.

It is projected that GDDR5 will play a substantial role in the next round of war between the leading designers of graphics processing units (GPUs) because it can double bandwidth available for graphics chips. Unfortunately, the price of GDDR5 memory from Qimonda is unclear. But while Qimonda does not unveil the exact pricing, it is likely that GDDR5 will be more expensive than GDDR3 and GDDR4, at least initially.

“If you look at the best performing GDDR3 parts today, they are running at about 2Gbit/s. With our GDDR5 we are able to at least double this data rate. We believe that Qimonda offers the highest performing graphics memory. There is a price/performance curve, and we are well-positioned to accommodate market demand as adoption increases,” Mr. Haley said.

Existing GDDR3 memory chips may run at 2.0GHz – 2.2GHz, which provides up to 140.8GB/s memory bandwidth in case of 512-bit bus, though, such chips are pretty expensive, just like print-circuit boards with 512-bit memory bus. For ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, the use of high-speed GDDR4 is an option, but Nvidia’s GeForce 8 and 9 GPUs do not support GDDR4. Therefore, the company either needs expensive GDDR3 in conjunction with wide memory bus, or GDDR5 with its extreme clock-speed potential.

In addition to Qimonda, Hynix Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics also plan to make GDDR5 memory.

Xbox 360 "Jasper" 65nm GPU in Production

Microsoft preps 65nm GPU for cooler Xbox 360s



Chip process evolution is a usual thing in a console’s lifecycle, but rarely has it been as important as in the case of the Xbox 360.

Known for its relatively hardware fragility, the original design of the Xbox 360 would frequently fall to the “Red Ring of Death” failure, which Microsoft terms as the three flashing red lights. While improvements in cooling and a CPU die shrink to 65nm in the Falcon revision have surely improved the situation, the problematic GPU still sits with its 90nm process.

The 65nm drop for the GPU in the Xbox 360 revision codenamed Jasper isn’t expected until August, a time frame backed up by a report from CENS. Microsoft has contracted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) and Nanya PCB Corp. to build the chips that will ship with the Jasper consoles later this summer.

TSMC will produce the 65nm chips, ASE will package and test them, and Nanya will supply the flip-chip packaging substrates. Microsoft has supposedly booked a production capacity at TSMC estimated to be at around 10,000 300mm wafers.

Inventory of the existing Falcon chips are reportedly depleted, paving the way for the transition to Jasper. The next step for the Xbox 360 console is dubbed “Valhalla,” which will integrate both the GPU and CPU in a single package as a cost-cutting measure, isn’t expected until a year after Jasper.

Nehalem chipset won't do SLI

no Jensen, look what you did Bosnian people tends to say don’t play with fire if you are not a fireman and Jensen Huang is everything but a fireman. We learned that Intel is really upset with a little green thing called Nvidia and that the chipset that will support Nehalem CPUs codenamed Bloomfield won't support SLI. This is not big news as traditionally the X38 and X48 high end chipset in its reference boards didn't support SLI, and yet again Intel was fine. First generation Nehalem won't do SLI, but it will support Crossfire as Intel likes AMD more than Nvidia, which is kind of an awkward situation. If there is a mechanism for Intel to remove Nvidia from its chipset list for future products, this is highly likely to happen. Just remember the Nforce 680i where Intel intentionally forgot to tell Nvidia that it changed the Yorkfield 45nm quad cores and the final score is that Nforce 680i doesn’t run with 45nm quad cores. This cost Nvidia a lot of money as it decided to swap all Nforce 680i reference designed boards for 780i and this happened when Intel was rather cold to Nvidia. It also caused an upset in the market, as not all of Nvidia's partners got in on the upgrade scheme. Well, Nvidia wanted a fight and a fight is what they're going to get.

Microsoft fanboys fight for XP

Microsoft fanboys are gearing up for a fight as the outfit threatens to pull the plug on Windows XP.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Fanboys have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions. They say that XP was better than Vista, which has hefty hardware requirements, is slower than an asthmatic turtle on its way up a hill towards a turtle soup convention. It is to software compatibility what Robert Mugabe is to economic strategy. 

Since January the Save XP Web petition, has gathered more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010. Redmond has extended the XP deadline once, but it shows no signs it will do so again and is refusing to talk to the Save XP Website organizers.