Sony’s Vaio Z…now with 4 SSD’s
January 19, 2010
Announced at CES with a “late Spring” availability, this Core i7-620M pumpin’ VAIO Z series from Sony will be hitting Europe in late March. The Z’s biggest claim to fame is its ultra-fast Quad SSD, a rather unique Sony innovation that writes data in parallel to four SSDs (up to 256GB total capacity in RAID 0) at speeds up to 6.2x faster than typical 5400 rpm laptop hard disks. Sony also fits the Z with a hybrid graphics solution that combines 1GB of NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with Intel HD graphics allowing you to automatically (or manually) switch between “speed” and “stamina” modes. The remaining specs are 6GB of DDR3 SDRAM, 802.11n WiFi, integrated optical drive, and optional VAIO Everywair 3G mobile broadband module all stuffed into this 13.1-inch laptop with 1920 x 1080 pixel LED backlit display with 210 x 23.8-32.7 x 314mm and 1.43kg footprint.
Samsung busts out three all-in-one PCs for Korean market
January 14, 2010
We saw plenty of Samsung’s wild conceptual efforts while at CES, but it looks like they’ve not yet completely given up on actual products. Good news for Korea, today — it looks like they’ll be getting three new all-in-one PCs from the company any day now. The MU100 boasts an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and Intel GMA 3150 graphics, while the 20-inch MU200’s got an Intel Pentium T4400 processor and GeForce G310 graphics with 512MB of VRAM. Finally, the 23-inch, full HD MU250’s got an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 CPU, 3GB of RAM, a 500GB of HDD, GeForce G310 graphics with 512MB of VRAM. Both the M200 and the M250 displays are multitouch, and all three systems run Windows 7 Home Premium. There’s no word yet on pricing or availability outside of Korea.
NVIDIA CEO shoots down talk of Intel-compatible x86 chip, says his home is ‘all Apple’
November 9, 2009
NVIDIA’s feud with Intel may be at an all-time high these days, but it looks like the company isn’t about to go as far as to produce its own Intel-compatible x86 chip, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. That word comes straight from NVIDIA’s always talkative CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who flatly said “no” when asked if there was any truth to the rumors. He further went on to add NVIDIA’s focus is on visual and parallel computing, and on “getting our GPUs into the lowest power platforms we can imagine and driving mobile computing with it” — as it’s now attempting to do with Tegra. In a separate discussion after a talk in Dubai, Huang also interestingly revealed that the computers in his household are “all Apple,” but he naturally didn’t just leave it there — head on past the break for the complete, must-read quote (as reported by Shufflegazine).
Read - CNET News, “Nvidia CEO says ‘no’ to Intel-compatible chip”
Read - Shufflegazine, “NVIDIA CEO, visiting Dubai, says “I’m all Apple”
ASRock readying three Ion-powered nettops, one with a BD drive
October 29, 2009
The nettop might not be the most riveting piece of machinery out there, but ASRock’s hoping to generate at least a small amount of buzz by outfitting its next trio with NVIDIA’s Ion graphics technology. Reportedly, the Ion 330HT, Ion 330Pro and Ion 330HT-BD will all ship with a dual-core 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 7.1 channel audio, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI / VGA outputs, six USB 2.0 sockets and a powered eSATA port. The 330HT and 330HT-BD are both bundled with MCE remotes, while the latter also gets its DVD burner swapped out with a Blu-ray drive. There’s no mention of a price or release just yet, but we’re figuring that both of those points should be clarified shortly.
Samsung X420, X520 CULV laptops outed
September 1, 2009
Now, details are slightly thin here (as well as machine translated), but we’re getting word of two new Samsung laptops on the horizon — the 14-inch X420 and the 15.6-inch X520. The X420 will supposedly boast a 1.3GHz Intel Pentium dual-core SU2700, Intel GMA X4500M graphics, 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, with not an optical drive in sight. Similarly the X520 will also feature the ultra-low power consumption SU2700 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 320GB HDD. The X520 will weigh in at 2.09 kg with its 6-cell battery, while the X420 will supposedly weigh 1.7 kg. We’re hearing these bad boys are coming to European soil in mid-October, and while we don’t have any solid pricing information — both have been estimated to run somewhere in the €700 range (around $1,000).
Intel’s Nehalem-EX - 8 cores & 16 threads…mmmmm
May 27, 2009
Intel’s latest, the Nehalem-EX. It’s an evolution of the architecture that some of you may be spinning in your Core i7 machines, but boosted to support up to 16 threads and 24MB of cache. 2.3 billion transistors make the magic happen here, and Intel is pledging a nine-times improvement in memory bandwidth over the Xeon 7400. Chips are set to start hitting sockets sometime later this year, and while nobody’s talking prices, staying hip in the enterprise server CPU crowd doesn’t come cheap.
Intel slapped with $1.45 Billion fine
May 13, 2009
The verdict is in and it’s huge. As expected, the EU is fining Intel a record €1.06 billion or $1.45 billion (Billion!) dollars due to violations of antitrust rules in Europe. The record fine surpasses that of the €497 million fine originally levied against Microsoft. The EU ruled that Intel illegally used hidden rebates to squeeze rivals out of the marketplace for CPUs. In a statement issued by European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the EC said,
Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years.
Intel was ordered to cease the illegal practices immediately and has three months from the notification of the decision to pay up. Of course, Intel will appeal and this will drag the litigation on for years as did Microsoft. Regardless, we’ll bet that AMD, who raised the complaint against Intel back in 2000, will be celebrating come dawn in Sunnyvale.
Update: Intel has issued a formal response to the ruling saying that the commission “is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace,” and that its practices have caused, “absolutely zero harm to consumers.” Oh, and it will <gasp> appeal the decision. Hurrah for corporate lawyers!
[Via Canada.com]
