Conceptual 'Fujitsu Lifebook X2' folds into quarters, makes regular notebooks look lame

Being that doomsday and the robot apocalypse are nearing quickly, now seems an appropriate time to gaze into the future of laptop design, right? Well, maybe those anomalies aren't actually around the corner, but you know us -- we always fancy a warm cup of concept tea. Designer Park Hyun Jin over at Yanko recently posted some renders of the Fujitsu Lifebook X2, a laptop-like invention of his fervent imagination that allows for two orientations thanks to its four folds. The design features a full QWERTY keyboard that can be used when the notebook is folded out in full, as well as a half-folded option with an onscreen keyboard, pictured above. Naturally, we'd love for this concept design to become a reality, but we can't wrap our brains around the seam between the two screens. Well actually, we could probably get used to it.

VIA  Engadget
SOURCE  Yanko Design

Crysis 2 Review

One of the most awaited games of 2011, Crysis 2 pits the player against aliens (Cephs) and human soldiers (CELL). Players will play as a one man army with a super suit named Nanosuit 2 in a devastated New York. I have personally played the game and it really looks nice! However many complained of the "watered down graphics" and the lack of DX11 support out from the box. Personally, it is one of the prettiest games I have seen. I can't alt+tab out of the game so I am sorry for the lack of screenshots proving the prettiness of this game. It might be one of the prettiest FPS you can play out there. Even my GTX460 1GB is stressed out even though it supports only DX9. I will take screenshots tomorrow when I play it again.

P67, X58, And NF200: The Best Platform For CrossFire And SLI

Most enthusiast swing between buying a Sandy Bridge or Bloomfield processor for gaming, now that the pricing is almost similar. Buying a Bloomfield system opens the route to upgrade to a Gulftown 6-core processor when the prices comes down to reasonable rates while buying a Sandy Bridge setup will enable one to upgrade to the Ivy Bridge architecture later. However, there are pros and cons as in any case involving technology and money spent. The advantages and shortcomings of Intel’s mainstream platforms are well-known to anyone who follows technology. A total of sixteen PCIe 2.0 lanes originating from the CPU reduce latency (good) and total available bandwidth (bad) compared to Intel’s high-end X58 chipset which has up to 36 lanes. Which would be the best choice to spend your hard-earned cash on right now?

Intel Z68 chipset to launch May 8

Intel’s new Z68 chipset is set to debut on May 8, just in time to commemorate VE Day.

The new chipset is designed with high-end Sandy Bridge processors in mind and it will deliver a few features lacking on P67 and H67 products. The Z68 should deliver improved overclocking performance, as well as support for RST SSD caching and a host of other features geared towards the premium markets. 

Basically, Z68 will be the chipset of choice for Sandy Bridge processors and best of all, it shouldn’t end up much pricier than existing 67-series boards.

AMD Radeon HD6790 Review : GTX550 Ti Killer?

The HD 6790 is set to beat the GTX550 Ti, which is quite a failure by nVidia, performing even worse than the previous generation's GTX460. It is based on AMD's 40 nm "Barts" GPU which is the very same graphics processor used in the Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870. Next to that this product comes with a full 256-bit wide memory bus giving it very nice memory bandwidth and really, aside from slicing some shader processor clusters and ROPs away, this is a R6800 series card.

Armed with plenty of power for a products in the 125 EUR (RM544) range this product could be just what the doctor ordered for gamers on a budget, have a quick peek at the actual reference sample and then let's head on over into the review.

AMD Radeon HD6990 vs nVidia GTX590

A short history lesson on dual GPU cards.

Most consumers don't even need dual GPUs with single GPUs more than enough for gaming purposes. However, some people like to be extreme, and dual GPU cards are the most extreme cards one can buy in the market. Right now we are looking at dual GF110 and dual "Caymans", essentially giving you two slowed down GTX580 or two HD6970 respectively.

SPECIFICATIONS

	GeForce GTX 590	GeForce GTX 580	Radeon HD 6990	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturing Process	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC	40 nm TSMC
Die Size	2 x 520 mm²	520 mm²	2 x 389 mm²	389 mm²	389 mm²
Transistors	2 x 3 billion	3 billion	2 x 2.64 billion	2.64 billion	2.64 billion
Engine Clock	607 MHz	772 MHz	830 MHz	880 MHz	800 MHz
Stream Processors / CUDA Cores	1024	512	3072	1536	1408
Compute Performance	2.49 TFLOPS	1.58 TFLOPS	5.1 TFLOPS	2.7 TFLOPS	2.25 TFLOPS
Texture Units	128	64	192	96	88
Texture Fillrate	77.7 Gtex/s	49.4 Gtex/s	159.4 Gtex/s	84.5 Gtex/s	70.4 Gtex/s
ROPs	96	48	64	32	32
Pixel Fillrate	58.3 Gpix/s	37.1 Gpix/s	53.1 Gpix/s	28.2 Gpix/s	25.6 Gpix/s
Frame Buffer	2 x 1.5 GB GDDR5	1.5 GB GDDR5	2 x 2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	853 MHz	1002 MHz	1250 MHz	1375 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory Bandwidth	2 x 163.9 GB/s (384-bit)	192 GB/s (384-bit)	2 x 160 GB/s (256-bit)	176 GB/s (256-bit)	160 GB/s (256-bit)
Maximum Board Power	365 W	244 W	375 W	250 W	200 W

With the current top single GPUs  being so powerful, things will only get better when doubled, right? Read more on the GTX590 and how well it performs in SLI vs the HD6990 in Crossfire here.

For the AMD HD6990 review, please click here now.


SOURCE: Tom's Hardware, Guru3d, Guru3d

ASUS Rampage III Black Edition

If one thing is a fact then it's that the X58 chipset is technology that keeps on living on the edge. Quick match tells me that the X58 chipset is now roughly two and a half years old. And it is still alive and very much kicks ass big-time! While P67 for Sandy Bridge is the equivalent kickass product, the X58 based motherboards give you some advantages, and that would be the Core i7 socket 1366 processor, including the 6-core Nehalem based processors of course.

Study: Computer Gamers less likely to go to a University

A recent study at the University of Oxford indicates that those who play computer games are less likely to reach University level education.

As ZDNet reports, those who play video games on a regular basis and who have little or no other extracurricular activities were found to have slim chances of going to a University. Both males and females suffered a 5% drop in their likelihood of attending a University.

However, those who read a book for pleasure, spent some time at a movie theater watching a movie, or participated in something artistic at least once a month, had a higher chance of attending a University.

However, there is one thing to note. This study uses data from 1970 to the present. Gaming has changed over the years with the inventions of the Wii and the Xbox Kinect. Games are now more brain stimulating rather than one-dimensional. If Mr Taylor used current data reflecting the change in the gaming climate from the past few years, perhaps his findings might be a little different.


SOURCE  Winbeta

Stealth unveils the LPC-670 mini-PC: small in size, vast in price

Stealth has been in the compact computing game for some time, and the company has just rolled out its most powerful pint-sized PC to date, the LPC-670. Packing Intel's Arrandale Core i5-520M, Core i5-580M, or Core i7-620M silicon, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, a DVD or Blu-ray burner, a max 750GB 2.5-inch HDD or 128GB SSD, optional 802.11g WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and DVI connections, Stealth's new mini-PC has the brawn of much bigger machines. The price of such lilliputian luxury? An account-emptying $1650, and that's just for the base model -- check the right option boxes and the final tally will run you over three grand. That should ensure the customer base will be just like the machine itself... tiny.


VIA  Engadget

Alienware M14x manuals leak out, confirm the gaming notebook once and for all

Just yesterday Dell's leaky website poured out details about the upcoming Alienware M11x R3 gaming notebook, and it didn't take long for its larger brother to follow suit -- today, we've got the full user and factory service manuals for Alienware's M14x, confirming a number of juicy rumors. Unfortunately, there's no mention of a Full HD 1080p LCD screen for the 14-inch visitor from another planet, but there will apparently be both 1366 x 768 and 1600 x 900 options on tap, both driven by NVIDIA's GeForce GT555M switchable Optimus graphics with up to 3GB of dedicated memory. Of course, you'll also find Intel's latest Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs and up to 8GB of RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA 6Gbps and optional 3G / 4G connectivity, optional WirelessHD, a two megapixel webcam, and even a 8-cell, 63Whr battery to make portable gaming vaguely possible. Hit up our source link to see how Dell put this machine together -- and how you can tear it apart -- while we wait for the company to finally make the smokin' hot notebook official, and let us know how just badly our wallets will feel after it rips their innards out.


VIA  Engadget
SOURCE  Dell

IBM shows smallest, fastest 155GHz graphene processor

IBM demonstrated its fastest graphene transistor, which can execute 155 billion cycles per second, which is about 50% faster than previous experimental transistors shown by the company's researchers.

The transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz, making it faster and more capable than the 100GHz graphene transistor shown by IBM in February last year, said Yu-Ming Lin, an IBM researcher.

What's more, the thing is also IBM's smallest to date, with a gate length of 40 nanometers; that's 200 nanometers less than the 100GHz iteration. This smaller, faster transistor was produced as part of a DARPA research project that aims to develop high-performance RF (radio frequency) transistors.

We won't be seeing these in our personal computer anytime soon but might be operating war machines of the future.


VIA  Computerworld
SOURCE  Engadget