Cooler Master releases two new chassis into the merket, the product cover the smaller chassis segment as they have been working on two additions in their Elite series.

The products are the Elite 342 and Elite 371 the first being a mini-tower the 371 a mid-tower. The Elite 371 measures 190 by 424 by 490 mm, has three 5.15-inch ODD bays, five internal 3.5-inch HDD/SSD bays and a front panel with USB 2.0 and audio ports.

The Elite 343 has a steel body, a removable HDD cage, a pair of 5.25-inch bays and a front IO panel with the same USB 2.0 and audio options. The cases come with tool-free drive installation and uses a 120mm fan, at the rear, for heat dispersion.

The 343 is expected to cost 45 EUR and the 371 roughly 55 EUR.

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A new review on the Radeon HD 6950. MSI went back to the drawing board and redesigned the PCB, armed it with quality components and decided that they would need to slap a nice cooler on there. As such we see the model as tested today, running slightly above reference specification yet with the latest twin Frozr II cooler mounted on top of it.

Okay I know the entire +++ thing is getting a little confusing, but PowerColor announced a dual mode setting design in the HD 6950 series: the PowerColor PCS++ HD6950. The PowerColor PCS++ HD6950 features a dual BIOS setting, allowing a bump in performance with factory overclocking to at 880MHz core speed and 1250MHz memory speed. The bump enables performance to increase out its own segment and maximize gaming experience like never before.

The PCS++ HD6950 also has embedded with a back up setting, easily delivering the extreme performance to tackle the game titles. Gamers can manually switch the different settings to meet their own demands.

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We already have these in house pending a review but HIS added two new Radeon HD 6850 cards to its lineup: the IceQ X and the IceQ X Turbo. Both models are equipped with the IceQ cooler, this fansink features four heatpipes, an aluminium fin array and a central 92mm fan. According to HIS, the IceQ X will reduce temperatures by 13
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Gigabyte introduced two new high-wattage Sumo Power Silver PSUs; a 900W and 1200W model with 80Plus Silver certification (up to 88% efficiency). Both units feature modular cabling.  and are ATX12V V2.3 compliant.

The products come with sleeved cabling, a 120mm blue LED-equipped fan backed and feature respectively five and six 12V rails. Pricing has yet to be announced.

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Lancool, a Lian Li spin-off, introduced three First Knight series mid-tower computer cases.
Lancool, maker of mid to high-end computer chassis for over twenty years, has launched three, new, mid-tower PC cases: the PC-K57, the PC-K59, and the PC-K63. Utilizing their affiliation with high-end chassis manufacturer Lian-Li, Lancool has designed all three of these PC cases with anti-vibration, tool-less installations of components, all-black SECC steel exteriors, and superior thermal performance capabilities, while providing exceptional aesthetic appeal.

PC-K63
The extremely sexy PC-K63's blacked-out interior is visible through a transparent side-panel window. Blue LEDs illuminate the PC-K63's two 140mm front panel fans as well as the 120mm rear panel fan. Two, top panel 140mm fans improve airflow inside the PC-K63 as well.

PC-K59 & PC-K63
Users can mount ATX, Micro-ATX, and Mini-ITX motherboards in Lancool's new PC-K59 and PC-K63. Six 3.5

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1C and Ubisoft sent out a press release announcing IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, a new installment in the IL-2 series of combat flight simulators planned for release in March. 1C and Ubisoft also announced that IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover will be available in a special Collector's Edition, along-side the standalone version.

Key Features:

• New aircraft: incredibly detailed true-to-life modeling of aircraft systems based on thousands of hours of dedicated research. Every single aircraft component can be damaged for realistic and immensely satisfying results.
• Flyable aircraft - Over a dozen famous and highly detailed English, German and Italian aircraft available, with all crew positions open to players. All flyable aircraft have been painstakingly researched, resulting in incredibly accurate cockpit interiors (including Spitfire, Hurricane, Messerschmitt and the Stuka).
• Non-flyable aircraft - 13 AI controlled additional aircraft are also available to allow an even more accurate and immersive experience thanks to a varied aircraft.
• Immersive game modes:
• Exciting Single-Player Campaign - The campaign thrusts the player into the middle of the battle. The player will join the British Air Force to fight the German forces and renegade pilots on his own side, or join the German Luftwaffe and take part in meticulously recreated historical battles.
• Massive multiplayer - Customizable modes range from simple deathmatch-style free-for-alls to epic, ongoing 128 player battles that can last hours, days, weeks, or even longer.
• Interactive training - Comprehensive interactive training for new players - fly a real WWII trainer plane with a computer controlled instructor through a series of training missions.
• Brand new setting - The battle will take place on a large area spanning London and southern England in the north, to Northern France and Belgium in the south. The huge map will contain thousands of historical cities, towns, roads, airfields, radar stations, ports, and industrial areas - all located exactly where they were in 1940.
• New 3D engine - Latest-gen graphics engine with DX10 and DX11 API support. Huge variety of photorealistic ground vehicles, buildings and other environmental elements recreate minute details of 1940s Europe.
• Customizable difficulty - dozens of realism options allow newcomers to the franchise to reduce the difficulty and focus on the fun while learning the ropes of being a pilot.
  
  The Collector
  

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AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix (BETA 8.82.2) Win7 x86/x64

ECS P67H2-A motherboard review

Today the turn goes to the folks from ECS who put out some serious kit on the market. ECS was also working on a few of these P67 motherboards and is making sure that both NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards work combined together. Yep, they are adding a Lucid Hydra chip like some of the competition is doing as well. Anyway, the offering tested today is the P67H2-A socket LGA 1155 motherboard which is powered by a 14-phase VRM.

An absolutely lovely to look at motherboard as this is a serious design you guys, go check out the review.

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AMD today announced immediate availability of the new AMD Embedded G-Series processor, the world's first and only Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) for embedded systems. The AMD Embedded G-Series, based on AMD Fusion technology, delivers a complete, full-featured embedded platform and incorporates the new low-power, x86 CPU based on the "Bobcat" core with a world-class DirectX 11-capable GPU and parallel processing engine on a single piece of silicon.

"AMD's commitment is to ensure the game-changing technologies we develop for consumers and the enterprise are also available for the vast and growing embedded market," said Patrick Patla, corporate vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Division, AMD. "Today, we have a record number of embedded launch partners. They are using the unique advancements of the AMD Embedded G-Series APU to develop a brand new generation of highly differentiated, energy-efficient, small form-factor embedded systems that can deliver the vivid visual experience expected in our always-connected world."

• This new class of accelerated processor combines more compute capabilities on a single die than any processor in the history of computing and represents opportunity for major advancements in embedded systems.
• No solution with this level of advanced computing is available for the embedded market today.
• Numerous embedded systems based on the AMD Embedded G-Series are available today or expected to launch in the coming weeks from companies including Advansus, Compulab, Congatec, Fujitsu, Haier, iEi, Kontron, Mitec, Quixant, Sintrones, Starnet, WebDT, Wyse, and many others.
• Expected products include graphics-intensive solutions like digital signage, internet-ready set top boxes, mobile and desktop thin clients, casino gaming machines, point-of-sale kiosks, and small form factor PCs, as well as numerous single board computers (SBCs).
• Shane Rau, research director of Computing and Storage Semiconductors at IDC, expects shipments of processors for embedded systems to increase at a double digit rate each year for the next five years.
• This brand new platform continues AMD's mission to lower power, shrink physical component area, and reduce the costs of designing and producing x86 embedded systems.

AMD has assessed many of the trends shaping today's embedded market, including the ever-pressing need for power efficiency and a small footprint, along with high CPU performance, full feature sets, and a strong graphics solution. The embedded market is one where differentiation can be critical to the long-term success of a design. The AMD Embedded G-Series APU provides a small, open and flexible platform where system designers can be creative yet still meet strict requirements around development cost.

 

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The lads of Hexus posted a small picture of the upcoming ASUS ROG Rampage III Black Edition motherboard. It has a X58 chipset and the main novelty is ThunderBolt, a new expansion card from ASUS that integrates Xonar sound as well as BigFoot's Killer NPU. Pricing and availability is unknown.

Despite the launch of Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, the ultra-high end is still served by the venerable X58/LGA1366 platform, and it's that audience that the Black is targeted at. The spec-sheet for the board itself reads pretty much the same as last year's Rampage III Extreme, although there have been a few tweaks along the way, including redesigned heatsinks.

Basically, this means that the board sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and all the other high-end features you'd expect on a ROG board. Click on the thumbnail.

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Advanced Micro Devices late on Monday announced the incoming of premium-class Radeon HD 6950 graphics board with reduced amount of onboard memory at $269 - $279 price-point as well as the massively factory-overclocked versions of its Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards, as x-bitlabs reports.

Various partners of AMD plan to release ATI Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards based on the Cayman graphics processing unit (GPU) with 1408 stream processors and featuring only 1GB of onboard GDDR5 memory, according to a statement of AMD. The new graphics cards will be available starting from mid-February and will cost $279 in the U.S.

At the $279 price-point the Radeon HD 6950 1GB and will pose a more affordable alternative for the company's Radeon HD 6950 (which has similar processing power, but 2GB of memory onboard and $299 price-tag) and a more expensive alternative for the Radeon HD 6870 (which has lower performance and costs from $225 to $259). While in very high resolution, with high FSAA levels and in generally demanding games the model 6970 with 1GB of memory will be slower than be slower compared to the model 6950 with 2GB of memory, in loads of today's games performance of the novelty is likely to be close to that of the 6950 with 2GB of GDDR5.

The intention of AMD to release a lower-priced version of its latest and highest-performing graphics processing unit may indicate that the company is trying to boost or sustain the share on the market of graphics cards of enthusiasts, who like novelties, high speeds and adore latest architectures.

AMD also informed that PowerColor, Sapphire Technologies and XFX plan to release graphics cards based on the Radeon HD 6870 graphics processors with 940MHz - 975MHz chip clock-speed (up from 900MHz on default models) with 1GB of 4400MHz - 4600GHz memory (up from 4200MHz) onboard. Prices will range between $229 to $259 in e-tail depending on partner SKU, AMD said

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A German store made a booboo and published MSI's GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II on its website. This new card features the Twin Frozr II cooling solution with two 80mm fans, 8mm heatpipes and a large aluminium fin array. The core is overclocked to 880MHz (820MHz stock) and the 1GB GDDR5 has a 4200MHz frequency (4000MHz stock).

The expected launch date is January 25th.

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A new chassis from Silverstone is inbound, the white, limited edition Raven 2 Evolution case. This model has a 90-degree angled motherboard mounting system and is equipped with one 120mm exhaust fan and three 180mm Air Penetrator fans at the bottom.

" The RAVEN RV02-E is an evolution of the original RV02 case that aims to provide even more accessible performance and utility. Making a debut for the first time in a tower chassis, SilverStone

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It's cool just to see really, Engadget writes about the NoteSlate, a concept of a $99 touchable slate with a 13" 750 x 1080 pixel "eInk" screen. The device features touch or pen input and will supposedly be available in June. There will be two editions: one with a white background and black foreground and also one with a black background and white foreground. Additionally, the company also promises that green, blue, or red text, as well as a 4 color edition will be released in the future. When it's produced, supposedly by June, you'll be able to select from the traditional white background and black foreground or go with a black background with white. Other colors, including green, blue, or red text, or a "4 colour edition" that does all of them at once, are due sometime down the road. The tablet works with touch or pen input, will offer 180 hours of battery life, and is to be fully open-source, with the initial software release supporting simple drawing, storing of notes, and MP3 playback. Version 1.5 will add PDF and text viewing, while version 2.0 will be rocking OCR handwriting recognition.

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Check it out, I know a lot of you are waiting on this one, here's the official Video preview for the First Strike Map Pack for Call of Duty Black Ops. The map pack will be available 2/1/11.


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Download GeForce Forceware 266.58 Windowns XP (32-bit)

Download GeForce Forceware 266.58 Win 7 | Vista (64-bit)

Download GeForce Forceware 266.58 Win 7 | Vista (32-bit)

GeForce Forceware 266.58 Windows XP | 7 | Vista are out for grabs.

Performance

Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. the latest Release 260 drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 580:

o Up to 7% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
o Up to 12% in Battleforge (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Very High)
o Up to 11% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
o Up to 7% in Dirt 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
o Up to 7% in Far Cry 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
o Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Dark Tower)
o Up to 5% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI

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Today the turn goes to the folks from ECS who put out some serious kit on the market. ECS was also working on a few of these P67 motherboards and is making sure that both NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards work combined together. Yep, they are adding a Lucid Hydra chip like some of the competition is doing as well. Anyway, the offering tested today is the P67H2-A socket LGA 1155 motherboard which is powered by a 14-phase VRM. An absolutely lovely to look at motherboard as this is a serious design you guys.

HWiNFO32 is a professional hardware information and diagnostic tools supporting latest components, industry technologies and standards. Both tools are targeted to recognize and extract the most possible amount of information about computer's hardware which makes them suitable for users searching for driver updates, computer manufactures, system integrators and technical experts too. Retrieved information's are presented in a logical and easily understandable form and can be exported into various types of reports.

Changes:

• Fixed measuring of CPU clock on certain AMD CPUs under Windows 7.
• Improved displaying of CPU and GPU logo.
• Improved measurement precision of CPU Power consumption on Ibex Peak and Sandy Bridge platforms.
• Fixed recognition of Sandy Bridge K-series when used on platforms other than P67.
• Added Smart Battery monitoring into sensors.
• Enhanced sensor monitoring on ASRock P67 and H67 series.
• Added reporting of BIOS EFI capability.
• Enhanced sensor monitoring on ASUS P8P67, P8H67 and SABERTOOTH P67 series.
• Enhanced sensor monitoring on ASUS Maximus IV Extreme.
• Enhanced sensor monitoring on GIGABYTE P67 and H67 series.
• Enhanced Ivy Bridge support.
• Added nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti.
• Enhanced sensor monitoring on ASUS G73SW.
• Fixed possible GPU/Display issues on HP 8730w (caused by GPU I2C).
• Fixed reporting of GPU clock on some nVidia G9x-based GPUs.

Download

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Tomorrow we'll have the first P67 based ECS review here at Guru3D, but in the meantime another product was announced.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is delighted to introduce the latest Intel based mini-ITX motherboard

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Tech site Donanim Haber received leaked information about AMD's Llano CPUs. They claim that all performance figures came from official AMD documents.

According to the news:

• Dual Core Llano with Winterpark integrated graphic is slower than not only Athlon II X2 250 but also Pentium E6500 in general performance. But It's dramatically (4.7x) faster than Intel platform in general conclusion which includes visual performance and compute capacity.
• Quad Core Llano with Beavercreek integrated graphic is slower than Athlon II X4 640 but faster than Core i3-540. And also Quad Core Llano provides graphics performance between Radeon HD 5500-5600 level with integrated graphic.
• AMD will launch Fusion Llano as A Series Vision Premium processors.
• AMD also working on special graphics technology for Lynx platform
  

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The guys at TC mag reported that a Chinese store has a listing on Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. This model has a dual-fan WindForce 2X cooling solution and is equipped with 384 CUDA cores, a 900MHz GPU (822MHz stock), 1800MHz shaders (1644MHz stock) and 1GB GDDR5 clocked at 4000MHz. Outputs include Dual-DVI and Mini-HDMI. The Chinese shop lists the card for 1899 yuan, which equals around $288 at the current currency exchange rate.

It's rumored that this product will launch next week and should be pitted against even a Radeon HD 6950 in terms of performance.

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That's nice and fast portable storage alright, SanDisk revealed the Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-I, a new memory card capable of achieving up to 45MB/s read and write speeds. It will be available in 8GB to 32GB capacities with prices ranging from $109.99 to $349.99.

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced the SanDisk Extreme

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Zalman announced the ZM-VE200, a new external HDD enclosure with a 3Gbps eSATA interface. What makes this product a little more special is its virtual drive function, it enables you to store and load ISO images of CD/DVDs.  Unlike any other External HDD enclosures, we have spiced it up with world

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Transcend announced the launch of its upgraded 2.5

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